Episode 574: More Than Meets The Eye

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

He's Jim Cornette!

Well, he's never fake a phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prevent

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Get the experience.

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Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Jim Cornette Experience.

The WWE has more control over the future of wrestling.

AEW debuts its latest game changer, the human pin cushion.

Plus the mighty Igor in Nigeria and me in the Superdome.

All that and more today in joining me.

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

Co-Host to you.

He's the man who puts all the other podcasters' heads on a spike.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

We talked about a great segment, the segment of the week on the drive-thru.

And now we get to talk about one of the grossest, most awful segments here on your show.

Oh,

you know, that's why I'm trying to be.

I'm trying to be upbeat.

I'm trying to be positive, Brian, because

we don't have to, once we speak of it, then we never have to speak of it again.

And of course, in that world, it'll be quickly forgotten and on to the next segment of SAW or whatever it is they're doing.

But

we got some other things to talk about on the project to be upbeat today.

That's why I'm trying to be chair.

And also because I can't sleep since they changed the time.

As what, two weeks ago, and then last weekend,

I'm banging on the desk now for emphasis here.

If I disconnect our carefully choreographed audio setup here today,

last weekend was when I was up at midnight on Saturday night, Sunday morning, and never went to bed again because of the severe weather warnings and all that shit.

And it got me all off kilter.

And now I'm waking up before the chickens.

Literally, a guy down from me's got chickens and they ain't making any noise when I'm up.

It's pitch black out there, darker than a banker's heart.

So I got to get me some energy here are you going to help me pep up today i'm feeling peppy i think we're going to have a good show hold on

does that help you that kind of thing or are you more on the

yeah and i think i'm peppy and you're the pew

well played but uh so anyway what we're going to do today on the program is like aew we're going to put the trash in the middle so that the last thing that you hear is it doesn't leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

We're going to have some, it's like like an idiot sandwich.

We're going to have some good stuff.

We're going to talk about Moxley and we're going to have some more good stuff after that.

It's kind of softened the blow.

And I've got a couple of,

what would we,

not a correction here, but just more information.

Because we were talking the other day.

on one of these fine programs about when Vince blundered

and

called

one of the African-American members of the roster Shelton when it wasn't Shelton Benjamin.

And we couldn't remember who it was.

And guess who reminded me who it was?

Brian?

Dr.

Michael Eno.

Don't give him my email address.

Jay Sharknado,

amongst many other people on Twitter in various forms, but Jay Sharknado jumped right in.

Do you remember Michael Tarver?

No wonder we couldn't remember who it was.

Michael Tarver.

He was in the Nexus NXT angle in 2010.

Apparently, he had been doing dark matches about eight months or a year before NXT started, and he had been there for some period of time and asked a question.

And Vince didn't know who he was.

And many people may not have known who he was at that point because we don't remember him now.

Or do you with your encyclopedic knowledge?

I remember his name.

I don't remember anything else about him right now, no.

Well, anyway, this is it.

Now, this is an update.

This is an eyewitness report.

Do you have the newsroom music?

No.

Why does your newsroom music sound like you're coming out of the fucking dugout at fucking the ninth inning?

That explains a lot about me, actually.

well there you know every time it comes up on a ninth inning there you are out of the bullpen out of the dugout out of the bullpen or the dugout what exactly are you talking about well what is is what is it is it a dugout or a bullpen what is it a foxhole well who are you talking about are you talking about the closer or just someone off the bench to pinch hit or something

well i'm just the baseball players where do they reside well but if it's the ninth inning it depends they reside in a dugout but the pitchers the relief pitchers are in the bullpen the closer would be in the bullpen what's the difference between the bullpen and the dugout the bullpen is where is that when they pin all the bulls in and then they dig holes to get under the fence and they got dug out well i guess here's the question who has the lead if we're going into the ninth if i'm coming in which team is winning beetle bomb

all right i give up

anyway we got an email from uh brian in detroit

that's as that's as close as he wants me to get to describing him just for the sake of, you know, I think he may have some legal ongoing issues.

Whatnot, real quick, because this is the only time that it would be a natural transition.

Dave Brzezinski just put up a video.

I think it's on YouTube.

It's a tribute to Brian Bucanthis with lots of photos.

So Brian from Detroit made me think of it.

So let me plug it in.

Whoa, hold on here.

Hold on here a second while we're seeing now with my lightning speed internet.

And by the way,

by the way, blow me there, oh, blazing fast boy.

947 over 899 is what I have on my internet.

Is that

Hotchkiss is over here?

No,

that would mean I would be at like a fucking ring of honor taping or something.

No, I'm talking about the internet speed in which

that I am, I'm, these words are flying through the airwaves.

Like Tom Snyder used to say on the Tomorrow Show, sit back and watch the pictures fly through the air.

And speaking of Detroit, hello to handsome Gary Kamensak and Gary Mancuso.

And yes, well, that's what I'm trying to do here.

Now I got to,

I was learning you about my blazing fast internet.

You look at Dave.

Well, everybody knows how to spell Dave Berzinski, right?

Maybe look up Dave Drayson.

No, no, it's Dave.

It's his YouTube.

Dave Berzinski, B-U-R-Z-Y-N-S-K-I.

Blame his parents, folks, but he's got the Brian Buchantis RIP video up on his YouTube channel that I'm looking at right there that for our old friend and compadre, speaking of old-time photographers and fans and things and such of that nature.

But where was I going with this?

You're in an email.

I know where I was.

I was going in Detroit.

Yes, Brian, because he's in Detroit.

at this current time.

And he's updating us as an eyewitness on one of these Hulk Hogan

beer store of baloney blowouts, whatever the fuck they're doing, where they rush this aging icon with artificial body parts in and out of vehicles to rush him from one beer store to the other across metropolitan areas where he disappoints people and tries to make others drunk.

Have we established the

the premise of this yet?

I believe that premise is called Clearwater Beach.

Yes.

Well, no, apparently he disappointment and drunks welcome to clearwater

you don't have to move in see he's bringing it to you you don't have to be in clearway he's bringing drunks

drunks and disappointments

on the road across america and he was in the motor city detroit baby get out of each of you get up

All right, I went to, he says,

after saluting us, hi, Jim, and Brian, I went to one of Hogan's beer events last year, not because of his political views, but I grew up on him and I wanted to see.

Here's how the event was run: this event was at a party store in a small town in the metro Detroit area.

So, someplace, I guess, like a ham tramack or a Sterling Heights or something of that nature.

How far outside of Detroit is Ann Arbor?

Oh, that's that's way on the other side of fucking

the beer store.

No, and it's not that, it's what's

now, goddammit, because you've stumped me.

It's not that far, but it ain't that close either.

But here's the thing.

You know, when Steve Perry said born and raised in South Detroit, there is no South Detroit.

The way it's laid out, South Detroit would be fucking Toledo.

It'd have to be more of a West Detroit or a Northern Detroit type of thing, or you could just be out in the middle of the fucking water,

which is where Brian is reporting in from after he got drunk at the Hogan beer store event.

But anyway,

event at a party store, small town metro Detroit area.

You buy a case of the beer, God.

Oh, and get your receipt about $18 for 12 cans.

So it's a 12-pack.

Brian, you don't hang out with a lot of wrestlers if you think a 12-pack is a case.

But 12 cans of this beer for $18.

Brian, I don't drink beer, I haven't watched people purchase beer in years and years.

Are you a beer person?

How much does a beer cost these days if it

doesn't come out of the fucking Detroit River?

I couldn't tell you.

It's been a while, so I haven't certainly would because a sprite now.

I can tell you, a goddamn 16-ounce sprite in a bottle at your average convenience store is going to be what, $1.69, $1.89, somewhere around that point.

So this

beer is selling for about the fucking cost of a sprite.

For want of a price of beer and a slice, Hulk Hogan went bankrupt.

So

here's what happens.

You buy a case of the beer and get your receipt, about $18 for 12 cans.

You wait in line.

You walk in, you get your picture taken with your phone, and show your receipt to grab your signed case of beer on the way out of the store.

So they apparently pre-signed the beer.

And you just, you walk up and stand in his immediate vicinity, and somebody takes a picture with your phone, and then you just get out of, just,

all right, you can leave now.

They pat you on the back, put a white chalk mark on your shoulder, and send you off.

That's me editorializing.

That's not Brian in Detroit.

But he says, Brian does say his team was selling real American beer shirts and hats, $25 unsigned or 50 autographed

and because hogan would sign those but wouldn't sign other items so as far as the scheduling we've talked about

why was he late or cutting people off or whatever brian says that this one hogan showed up about 45 minutes late and the quote-unquote meet and greet started about 40 minutes after that He had five other spots to appear at, and it was going to be late all day going forward, just based on local traffic five so at least six and if this was his first one

in the same day

uh brian says finally his team for these are complete idiots and it was run poorly from the start they did say they could get through about 200 people i'm not sure if he left early as he arrived late and once i saw him i left

So there, there's an eyewitness from the road.

Brian, don't you think you should take over that Hulk Hogan touring business?

Sounds like you have a better grasp on

scheduling and

items,

details of things.

I don't think I would want to be in business with that outfit.

You have to deal with his son, Stooges.

Jimmy Hart seems all right, but the hell is he doing?

Well, you could get the beer for so cheap, though.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's pre-signed.

We're going to find out it's pre-drank.

I haven't heard anyone say, you know, that Hulk Hogan beer, despite what you think of him, it's a good beer.

We haven't heard anyone say that.

There's nobody trying to fucking bootleg import it like cores from

another state.

You know, if it was actually a good beer, you'd be hearing people like, you're not going to believe this shit.

This Hulk Hogan beer is actually really fucking good.

I got all fucked up.

Nah, no one.

No one is saying that.

No, they're saying that about the woo energy drink.

I got all fucked up.

Is that still around?

We haven't heard anything about that in a while.

I think

much like IcaPro, some of that probably is still around unless they had a landfill project in Stanford.

I'm thinking that.

They announced a multi-year deal with AEW,

and then after a certain point, we never saw that drink again and never heard Flair's name mentioned again.

But that doesn't, well, now, just because they're not advertising on AEW television doesn't mean that they're still not an ongoing business concern.

They may be wooing in different venues and different platforms.

So the Rock's got tequila, and Flair's got an energy drink, and Hogan's got a beer.

Yeah.

Someone's got to do like a milk or juice.

McGregor.

McGregor's got the whiskey.

Oh, that's well, he's not a wrestler.

Well, but I mean, if you're talking in the genre,

hey, maybe some of these other people aren't currently wrestlers either.

You never know.

Cody's dressed like he may own a distillery 100 years ago.

Maybe he's got some plans.

The fucking banker on the monopoly.

But

where was that guy I was going with something?

Oh, well, you were saying milk.

I'm thinking somebody needs to come to me,

to me,

about our own version of the elixir of the gods, the sprite.

I'm sure we can.

Our own.

You know,

much like some songwriters or Hollywood types, we can make something confusingly similar while at the same time not violating any copyrights and infringe on somebody else's fucking profits at the expense of our own or whatever.

How similar is 7-Up to Sprite?

Oh, no.

7-Up has that aftertaste.

It doesn't go down as smoothly.

or as refreshingly, and it has the aftertaste.

Now, Sierra Mist from a restaurant,

if it is

that type of building rather than with Coke products, it can work just so you can choke your food down.

But no, if you want the true nectar of the gods, you have to go with the Sprite Zero now is the only way for me to go because I'm off the sugar.

But whatever.

If you want to walk on the wild side, kids, go ahead, B-Lou Reed.

Go ahead and drink the

actual

hard stuff and with the sugar in it.

You'll regret it later in life, but if you're young, be like Lou Reed.

But it's got to be the sprite.

Candy came from out on the island, but she had sugar, so Jim ignored her.

She said, Hey, kids, take a walk on the sprite.

When did you give up sugar?

When did you go to sprite zero?

Ah,

ah, sound like Lance now.

Two

thousand.

i was in tna but probably later in the 2008 ish i'm going to say because i guess my question is if you look back at like you in the 90s like smoky mountain when you were probably the most stressed because you were running everything and there was so much going on

you ate pretty badly by your own i mean all you you may

garbage garbage but if you had just done the switch from sprite at that time to sprite zero and got rid of the sugar do you think it would have affected your weight

probably Probably, I would say

it would affect anybody's weight, depending on how big you are to begin with.

You're not going to lose 15 pounds if you cut out sugar if you're, you know, five foot two and 114 pounds.

Uh, but it definitely would have affected mine and anybody that cuts completely the sugar drinks for the diet drinks.

But mine was

driving back and forth to the TNA tapings, my legs were swelling like sausages.

And

cutting out the sugar

made that fucking subside, believe it or not.

So there, that, and that's how I noticed that it was.

But now, if I drink a fully sugared sprite, it will make me thirsty.

Because it will, it will dry something about the real sugar now, or even a restaurant, you know, when they don't have the sprite zero.

and once again, got to choke down the food.

Uh, but it'll make me thirsty if it's a real strong fountain sprite with sugar.

Because this, something about not being used to drinking sugar and then that going on.

I don't know.

Were you able to do it right away, or was it a tough thing to go from Sprite to Sprite Zero?

You love it now, but obviously, it must have been some sort of change.

Well, oh, it's got to be ice cold.

It's got when you make the switch, the zero has to be as cold as you can get it, Cold as a witch's heart.

Because otherwise, you'll notice and it will put you off at the start until you get used to it.

You will notice the difference and you'll notice the

it's it's um

it's a different taste at first, but then once you get used to it, it's the same fucking thing, but without the harmful sugar.

All right.

Why am I preaching this to you?

This has been the Hogan Beer Tour segment.

Oh, that's right.

Well, thank you, Brian,

from Detroit, not you,

for

reporting in on it.

But now I got another one now, and you may need to help me with this

because this may be

with your, again,

you know, photographic memory for some of these things, you may be able to help me put two and two together here.

But we got another email from one of our listeners, Elijah

Odonade.

And I say that with conviction because he parenthesed

a pronunciation guide for it.

Elijah Odonade from Norcross, Georgia,

who wrote, I'm a younger listener, 24 years old, and enjoy your takes on wrestling and mostly agree with you on how it should be presented.

But I was recently talking to my dad about the wrestling they got in Nigeria after he moved there from the U.S.

when he was five.

Apparently, the wrestling on TV in Nigeria during the 1980s was reruns of the Cleveland-based IWAV and the Eddie Einhorn Pedro Martinez collaboration that we've talked about a number of times, Brian, on a program.

He says, which led wrestlers like the mighty Igor, Mil Mascaris, Jerry Lawler,

and Ox Ox Baker.

His dad might be misremembering on Jerry Lawler.

Did he ever work for the IWA or ever tour Nigeria?

He must be confusing Jerry Lawrence with Luscious Larry Hainamimi.

You know, he might be because at that time he was going for that gimmick.

But and Ox Baker, but Igor, Moscaris, and Ox Baker, yes, to become very popular in Nigeria.

Because of this, a major local promoter in Nigeria named Power Mike.

Do you remember that name?

I remember a different guy named Power Something.

Well, hold on.

We'll get there.

We'll discuss this.

Oh, boy.

But Power Mike had wrestled in the U.S.

and began to book former IWA talent, including a match between Oxbaker and local star Power Uti.

That's who I know.

UTI.

Apparently in Nigeria, they have a different phrase for a urinary tract infection, but he would Power Uti

and a match between Mighty Igor and Ray Apollo, both of which caused riots.

Well, hold on.

Ray Apollo.

Ray Apollo

was the.

Oh, God damn it.

You're thinking Phil Apollo, Doink the Clown.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

No, no, but Ray,

that's easier than giving you Ray Apollo's biography off the top of my head.

But nevertheless,

Elijah's question is: why would IWA be the American promotion being aired in Nigeria instead of bigger promotions like the WWF or Crockett?

And what do you know about Power Mike and Americans going to wrestle in Nigeria in the 1980s?

And he included a picture in an office somewhere.

I mean, it's paneling with distinguished people's picture on the wall.

And there's like these three Nigerian people on either side of Milmascaris and Mighty Igor, and they're just smiling, beaming.

So it looks like some kind of official welcoming thing by some municipality or something.

And,

but that's the tapes that the IWA made from what would that have been, 75, 6, and 7, that

era, were on TV in Nigeria in the 1980s.

And

I think this may have been

maybe Igor's last run as far as chronologically where where he was on top.

And,

you know, that's not unheard of.

But Brian, the point being,

the fact that WWF wasn't on TV in

Nigeria and 10-year-old tapes of the IWA were doesn't have as much to do with the popularity of wrestling at the time as it does who knew who knew somebody in a right fucking place.

Howard Brody got me more money

for reruns of my Smokey Mount Wrestling shows two years after we'd gone out of business from fucking Germany

than I ever made air in it when we were actually going.

That's why a lot of the WWF guys after the 80s

When the guys had left the WWF or they'd been gone a few years or whatever, they were still names in

the international wrestling world because

they were sometimes behind on the tapes and places.

But this one, I don't know.

That's why I asked if you remembered Power Mike, because

I don't know whether, and somebody else may be able to help.

I don't know whether he wrestled in the U.S.

or not,

but he may have told the people over there that he did.

But he was the guy who was promoting

Nigeria at one point in the mid-1980s.

And this power UT

guy would occasionally get a picture in the magazines over here or whatever.

But these guys that hadn't been on TV in 10 years or featured in a major deal were suddenly getting to go over there and get payoffs on these tours, where that was the only wrestling at the time that people in Nigeria knew.

Do you remember what they started wrestling in Puerto Rico with?

What they started wrestling in Puerto Rico before WWC?

They had rockets come in there, didn't they?

Well, yeah, but that was the way that WWC,

some way or another, and again,

for chapter and verse, I'm free to read an email from an expert on a subject, but in broad terms.

Yeah, Matt Farmer, if you're listening, he knows his Puerto Rico history.

Well, there you go.

But

Carlos Colon formed the, and Brian Solomon, on the book he's doing and has done and is going to be available soon on Guerrilla Monsoon, has some details on Puerto Rico territory in the 70s, but this didn't particularly come up.

The point being,

in the early, what was it, 1973, 72, 73, Carlos Colon.

They bring full-time wrestling to the island before the Florida office had been there back in the 40s and the 50s or whatever, but just,

you know, spots here and there or a tour here and there, but for a local promotion, but somewhere, and Gorilla Monsoon was involved early on and had an interest in it for many years.

But the story, in some way is, is that the tapes that the people in Puerto Rico had been seeing on television before that Carlos began this venture

were some of the old fucking capital wrestling tapes from the Northeast in the early 60s with like the fabulous kangaroos

and Raqqa.

That's why Raqqa got the last full-time run of his career in Puerto Rico because 10, 12-year-old tapes

had been airing of him, and he was still a star to those people because they knew no different.

And

Miguel Perez,

because Miguel Perez was their top local babyface when they first started.

And he and Raqqa had been the tag team.

So the kangaroos, it wasn't even the same two kangaroos, but Al Costello, and by that time, it was Don Kent.

They were the team that Raqqa and Perez were working with in Puerto Rico to kick that off because that had been the program from like 15 years before.

So

in those days before the worldwide interwebs and YouTube and all of this stuff, you had countries where if they didn't see it on their TV,

you know, they didn't know what was going on.

And when they saw it, they didn't know how old it was.

There was no way to find it.

And you think people in fucking Nigeria in 1984 are going to have a burning desire to find out how old their wrestling show is.

So that's how that

was able to be done.

And in a lot of cases, it depended on if you knew somebody in TV syndication or somebody in an office that would supply tape and say there was an inn with a local, whatever, rather than just TV stations weren't sitting there pondering all over the world, how do we get a wrestling show

at a world-class?

Remember, when for a time, they, including us, we, I,

uh,

were the number one TV show in Israel, right?

From what, 1983 to 1986?

Because they said that the fighting would stop when world class came on.

That's, I mean, it's probably an exaggeration to some extent, but it also probably isn't to some extent.

But, but no, but it wasn't like the wrestling reporters saying that.

It was like the fucking.

I'm not saying it was even true, but in some case, there was some effect.

It was the public officials saying that and people being quoted in the newspaper when asked about the popularity of the Von Ericks and world-class wrestling in fucking Israel.

And, you know, they had the Von Ericks over as guests of various dignitaries and etc.

And

that happened because

Channel 39 that was doing the, remember we've talked about this and it's been on the triumph and tragedy of world-class wrestling or whatever.

But they had for years had had television on Channel 11 in Detroit, in Detroit, Channel 11 in Fort Worth

on Saturday nights, KTVT.

And that was a show from the Will Rogers Coliseum.

But when they rebranded to world-class is when they got that syndicated show, the One Hour World Class Championship Wrestling,

which was produced by...

and syndicated by the ownership of Channel 39 there in Dallas.

And that's

one of besides how they began getting on in Boston or Las Vegas or whatever the fuck.

And they had the production upgrades and that story has been told.

But because,

again,

I don't know how this whole odd fellow, odd bedfellow relationship began otherwise.

And Fritz was noted for being, and the Von Ericks were Christian, except when they all weren't.

But the local religious community was into it.

And Channel 39 was owned or overseen by some kind of Christian organization.

So they ended up

a fucking religious TV.

This is, boy, that's sacrilegious, isn't it?

A fucking religious TV organization syndicated a show.

a pro wrestling show produced by the von Ericks into the Holy Land.

Brian, am I making this up?

Just testify, I'm not making this up.

I'm not making this up, no.

Okay, so then they became the number one TV show in fucking Israel.

And the people were going crazy over the Von Ericss.

And that's when we were there is when they announced they were going to do their first tour, which is another thing.

When I told the story, I credited the lousy payoff we got at Texas Stadium and our

lack of upward mobility from what we were doing.

And we had Charlotte waiting for us.

But But another thing that may have hastened it a little bit

is they announced that they were going to do the first world-class tour of Israel.

And I thought, which they did do,

we left July 1st.

I think they were over there by August or September, weren't they?

But I could, I said, oh, fuck no.

Again, me and Bobby from Huntsville and Dennis from Florence, Alabama.

And

well, what we could see.

When did Mike Von Eric get hurt?

Because that's when they were over there the first time, right?

Well,

it was

we were living.

Well, get hurt which time?

His shoulder.

When his shoulder popped out.

Okay, the shoulder.

I think that

was right after we left, wasn't it?

Fall of 85.

Okay, I thought it was maybe before then, but you're probably right then.

Okay.

No, see, we worked with him before he

had brain damage and still, I'm going to look it up though.

Maybe I'm misrepresenting it, but

he wasn't the sharpest knife in a drawer to begin with.

But nevertheless,

we were thinking that we would, they was, because we saw how they ran the fucking rodeo arena in Sulphur Springs, Texas, or whatever, where they're going to take us over to fucking Israel with these boys.

And do you know what, but there are going to be some kind of international incident?

Or because we're the biggest celebrities and it's the front page of the paper, we're going to be the victims of a terrorist attack.

And I'm going to say they're not going to read in the Louisville Courier Journal, noted local personality locked in closet and pissed on by terrorists.

We'll just go to Charlotte and stay in this fucking general side of the world.

And

when they went over there and did that tour, they had fucking

soldiers.

I'm again, not sure of the exact terminology for the military over there, but they had some type of people in uniforms armed with machine guns

going along with them from the hotel to the fucking building and on the floors of the hotel by the elevator and shit like that outside their doors.

No, thank you.

I want to be at the Hampton Inn where a drunk CPA wanders in at two o'clock to use the candy machine.

The fuck.

Did you check on that at all?

I can't find an exact date.

It's probably right after you left because August 30th, I have an article here from the L.A.

Times.

That's when he was critical after surgery and he got the toxic shock.

Yes.

So that's August 30th.

So obviously.

And okay.

And I know why I remember because I remember watching that unfold on World Class Wrestling on Petesino's Superstars of Wrestling block.

I was living in Atlanta.

That was between

July and October of 85.

That makes me jealous.

Just the idea you had that, that anyone who lived there had that Joe Petacino block where you had everything, just everything that was available.

He had it on that block.

Yeah, I had his block.

I had his nose.

No, Joe was good to me.

Joe was a nice guy.

He just, he wanted to desperately to be

more.

I don't know,

there was an element of narcissism, but

also just as a, to contribute to wrestling, and he wanted to be a bigger deal, a bigger promoter, a bigger TV personality, a bigger proponent of wrestling

than he.

And he was always, and he gave it multiple fucking,

you know, good old-fashioned tries.

But

somebody tweeted a picture the other day of him

and Olu Oliani

in a business office, in a business.

But it,

here's the thing where I hate to.

A business office.

That's why.

Well, yes, but

when we tell the story, I always try to just explain that, yes, Joe did get paperwork.

It may be knowing what I know now, but what I didn't know when I was a 29-year-old fucking kid, but suspectified, was it his bogus ass paperwork and you could check it out now with the internet.

And, but in those days of, you know, oh my gosh, it's international dealings.

This is important.

People didn't know.

Point being,

Joe saw this fucking guy in an office behind a desk wearing a suit.

Because I remember when I saw him, he was wearing a suit.

If you didn't examine the preposterousness of what was being proposed, he did look like somebody that could have been important, been a businessman, and have access to some level of funds.

So it wasn't just completely ridiculous for but joe was smoking the hopium

and he wanted to believe this and that's you know

and a lot of people don't even know what we're talking about do they right now oh we somehow do we even have time to get into it we've discussed it in the past i was just going to say it's amazing we circle back to nigerian wrestling Well, yeah, and that's all.

There you go.

See?

Hey, Elijah.

Boom.

You know, because,

okay, this makes even more sense because this guy was Nigerian.

He wasn't doing a fucking accent, right?

He had the accent and he had the name.

He could produce a driver's license.

They don't name people Olu Oliani in fucking Pittsburgh or whatever.

This is 1990, right?

90 or 91.

One of the others.

91 is when GWF started.

Okay, but this, so whenever he started talking to Joe, so they're in Nigeria,

wrestling has been so big, apparently, from what Elijah just said and the picture that he sent.

And it was, you know, the IWA, but they didn't know it was old.

But point is wrestling's hot.

And then this Olu comes over here.

And I don't even know if they ever found out what he really did or what he really had or where he really went or whatever.

right

but he in some way thought well i can be a wrestling promoter with this large jolly gentleman, and I will convince him I have funds, and he will make me a bunch of money so I don't actually have to spend it or something like that.

And then, oh shit,

he really had to come up with $25 million or some bullshit.

It's amazing how much we still don't know about things that were happening internationally in the 70s and the 80s, even in the 90s.

I remember the story, because even back then no one knew.

Was it, I think, maybe South Africa?

I could be wrong.

Terry Funk lost to Hulk Hogan when Hogan was with New Japan and Terry was with all Japan.

And Terry was okay doing it as long as it didn't get back to Japan.

Yeah.

And Hogan, I think he accused of leaking it back to Japan.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

Do you remember that story?

Yes.

The basic gist of it, which is that.

And there was

Kevin Sullivan used to talk about being on international tours within places that I didn't even know they had places.

And

because like he knew Steve Ricard

from New Zealand, who,

you know, you don't have to just, if you're a wrestling promoter in some of these parts of the world, it doesn't just have to be your home country.

You know, some guy gets in contact with you from wherever the fuck.

Oh, it's this general area.

But I got the contacts.

So there there have always

throughout the year, even back in the pioneer days, you see the clippings now with the Londos book and, you know, so many of the historical books that have been printed where they left and went to this fucking country or spent three months touring Europe or whatever.

A local promoter somewhere, even if they're not a wrestling promoter, finds a way to make a contact with somebody who has the wrestling connections or vice versa.

And then that shit would happen.

And especially as TV, American TV got big.

And

that's a thing

I'm trying to remember.

I think they didn't have color television in Puerto Rico color broadcasting until sometime in the 70s, I believe.

So

same thing with Australia.

All that classic footage from the early 70s is black and white.

So you could, you could sell

if you got a if somebody worked in one of the offices and got a hold of 25 or 30 of their fucking tapes masters, they could have sold that shit to goddamn Bolivia.

You know, Cole Aquariati's coming to town.

You got anything to sell him?

Whatever the fuck.

And it, you know, then somebody did a tour of Bolivia.

A lot of this shit's lost to fucking history.

You know, the other thing is we talk so much about the tapes that were erased, the tapes that were taped over, the master tapes that are gone.

How much money was was really left on the table in the 70s and 80s, or even just the 70s, with guys that could have made money internationally, let alone if there was any syndication money in America at that time for wrestling.

IWA was really the only example, actually, in a lot of cases.

But was there money left on the table?

You know, Jerry Jarrett erased all those shows.

Michael Bella erased all those shows.

Could they have had a second life?

Yes, Yes, and

it would have needed someone to work those international markets to try to sell the wrestling tape, whichever one it may be, as

just a standalone program, because most of those territories,

even if you'd have, if you'd have called anybody, but maybe Vince Sr.,

Mike LaBelle probably may have seen the value in it because he was from Los Angeles, Angeles, but I don't think he went to work that hard from all the accounts I've heard.

But Vince Senior would have been the best example because he had the, you know, one of the bigger operations.

You would normally, if you were a promoter and sent your tape out somewhere, you would expect to take your talent there to do a fucking tour or whatever.

And most of the territories producing television,

you know, if it's Australia, there was an NWA promoter there.

If it was New Zealand, same thing.

You know, whatever.

Are they going to go to England?

Well, they don't fucking know, right?

So

it's considered an international event when Vern goes over into Canada.

So it would have needed some agent or somebody to have said, I can sell this just as a standalone program to the TV networks or stations over there.

They're not going to get live tours, but do they want people to just watch it because it's good wrestling?

And then it has to be one of the better better programs?

And then

again, a lot of the overseas television makes the people in fucking American television look like Boy Scouts.

They're over there.

What are you going to do?

Come get the fucking money.

Fuck you.

You have to really know who to deal with and what the thing.

Howard went through.

All kinds of shit when he was syndicating the New Japan television program for all those years, him and Matsuda.

Was Bill Behrens international or was he just domestic?

No, well, I'm not going to say that Bill has never stepped across the border and gone, you know, into the other countries or whatever, but primarily he was domestic television and,

you know, helping with stations in all 50 states, but not international distribution and or

chasing those people to get paid.

But nevertheless, so, and there just wasn't anybody really offering to do that and be the go-between.

What it would usually be is, like I said, one of those promoters in another part of the world or one of the boys that's come back and Kevin Sullivan was able to facilitate, come back and said, hey, I know so-and-so over there, and I bet you I could get us booked for such and such and we could have a tour or whatever.

Let me see if we can put the, and that just would happen that way.

And then finally, toward

the 90s,

Vince always from the early expansion wanted to be in Europe.

But in the 90s is where they really started just going a variety of places around the world.

And I'm talking with the television program.

Yeah, even WCW.

And sometimes with live events.

Remember when WCW started sending their stuff, I think, to England, it kind of blew up for a while.

Yes, because, and that was under TBS, because they understood the value of international television,

but they just didn't understand the value of having a good fucking wrestling company.

So that's, you know, yeah, all of those things.

There was, if we think it was crazy in the United States for wrestling, think about that all these other places that was going on all over the world for so long

and the histories that we don't even remember from Spain and France and all of that type of thing.

There's always a bunch of fucking nuts involved.

Speaking of bunch of nuts involved, Brian,

I'll have you know that the March merch sale is ending soon at jimcornet.com because the month of March is marching to a conclusion.

So

if you want to get $5

off on the behind the curtain graphic novels autographed only $19.95 and the free two-hour classic wrestling DVD with every action figure that you purchase, you need to hurry up.

but we've got some nice plans for maybe in about four weeks or so.

Hopefully, I got to get on the ball.

Some vintage and/or one-of-a-kind merchandise is going to be part of our spring sale coming up soon.

Because,

again, I'm trying to make some room in the vault.

Things are out of control.

But in the meantime,

Brian, we have

at long last, I would play my drum roll, but you'll complain that my audio, even though my speed is 947 over 899, on your onio.

But we have what the people have been clamoring for all this time, brand new show merchandise to show your undying and even undead support of our fine programming.

That is correct.

Finally, by popular demand, we have some new stuff and there will be a whole whole lot more in the weeks and months ahead.

You may hear the wind behind me.

Everyone's

interested.

An ill wind is blowing behind you.

Is that something wicked this way comes?

I'm not exactly sure, but you can go to arcadianvanguard.com to get it directly.

But we are on Shopify, of course.

So if you just use the shop app, we should be in there.

We should be on YouTube pretty soon, everywhere else.

Of course, social media.

But for the first time, we have official drive-through shirts, official Jim Cornette YouTube channel shirts with a lot more to come.

We've heard people demand hoodies and hats and designs and everything over the years.

Hold on now.

Hold on.

Now, don't let them just start making demands this soon into this thing.

We have to retain some kind of control here.

You can't just become a mob.

These are old demands.

I'm saying we've been keeping track of the demands over the years.

Well, I'm an older man.

I'm an older man.

And

I want to fucking have a little goddamn breathing room here.

We can't just be caving into every demand.

Now, we've already got

the drive-thru logo shirt.

That's a stunning

stunning piece of apparel.

Well, two different ones.

Some people like the logo on the front.

Some people don't.

So we have one where the logo is on the back and it's just a little logo over the breast.

Oh,

the breast.

Well, now, now you're talking.

So two options right now.

And also one of the big things, the very first since 1990, Jim Cornette t-shirt in white.

Because there haven't been too many white t-shirts with Jim Cornette on it.

Get it right now.

There'll be other colors, other designs to come.

Well, you don't just don't just act like it's a white fucking shirt.

It's a white shirt with the design on it.

Corny by our own Travis Bickle.

Did you see that AEW are selling a

it's pretty much a blank white shirt.

And at the bottom of the shirt, like on one of the corners, it says Death Riders.

Oh, good.

Well, it's a white t-shirt that barely says anything.

If your shirt's tucked in, it doesn't say anything.

Well, that's what I'm thinking: is that that's a way to go ahead and try to get them some merchandise money.

But at the same time, nobody wants to display that on their person.

So it's a play where you can, like, maybe they ought to do one of those flaps where you can tuck it under your crotch and button it so your shirt tail doesn't come out.

But back to our shirts.

We got the drive-through logos, and you don't need a monkey on your back when you got a corny on your back.

And also, and the corny shirt.

So, I was trying to explain this to these people.

And how do you, how,

have we ever told the people, or do we just assume that they know how to spell Arcadian Vanguard?

Well, if you can't spell, there's a dictionary that Jim can sell you right now.

Go, Jim.

Look at here.

American Heritage Dictionary, third edition.

I'm going to look up Arcadian.

Arcadian.

Authorization.

Avuncular.

I've gone too far.

Hold on.

A taint.

I didn't even know a taint was one word.

I thought it was two words.

Like, oh, that's a taint.

Anyway,

well, I thought I was going to be able to find this quicker.

That's an exciting segment.

Great job.

But once again, it's an exciting segment.

Right now, you go to our social media.

Archaeology, archaic, archangel, Jesus, archbishop,

flogging the bishop point being we got these fine t-shirts if you go to arcadianvanguard.com or if you go to the the shopify spot in the shop is what you said

that's right we are available through shopify so wherever you get your finest products the shop app we are there too and Oh, the shop app.

That's right.

I used to have a shop vac.

Is that anything like a shop app?

I don't know what that is.

What's a shop vac?

A shop vac.

It sucks up all of the fucking the water and the dirt and the mud and the muck or the screws or the ping-pong balls or whatever you've spilled in your shop, the shop vac.

It vacuums them up.

You've never said it's a, it's a, it's a no, it's a, it's a tub-like structure.

It sure is.

where and with a long hose and you could even suck up water.

Let's say that your, your basement is, leaking and you can suck up the water with the shop vac and carry it out and dispose of it out there.

Well, once again, like we were saying, you can go to the shop app and just put Jim Cornette in.

You'll see the official Arcadian Vanguard shirts.

Of course, you can put Arcadian Vanguard in.

Go to ArcadianVanguard.com.

The links are on our social media accounts and there'll be more posted as we introduce more things down the road.

And

this should be fun.

This should be exciting.

And it gives us a chance to do some really creative stuff we wanted to do for a while.

Well, speaking of creative things,

Uncle Dave is apparently making stuff up again.

So

he's not so much making stuff up, he's just

making

words and phrases in combinations with each other at this point that really cover pretty much every possible occurrence and vaguely allude to things that he has no

details on in such a way that you

get more confused.

And then there's the level of

the writing where

your brain doesn't process that many words without a period or a comma or anything.

And so you kind of just go along with it.

So we've come up with another in our segments that,

Brianna, that we have to start calling Dave Splaining

because this is the way that Dave explains things.

Have I explained that well?

Either yes or no.

I'm not exactly sure.

You kind of Dave explained it to me.

So we'll see how this goes.

Well, see.

What issue are we talking about specifically that, Dave?

Well, now last in between.

The last program we did and now,

Dave had put out some details on what he believed was the relationship between the WWE and the independent promoters that are using the wrestlers that are under the WWE ID

banner.

And what does that stand for again?

Help me.

The ID part of it.

Do you even remember?

Oh,

it's something development, image development.

I don't fucking know.

But basically, they reported some time back that the WWE is starting to find people that they on the independent scene that they believe they don't want to put under contract now.

They don't want to bring into the whole training system, but there may be some upside.

There may be some potential.

So they're going to give, they're going to throw them a bone, as the promoters used to say.

They're going to give them a little bonus just to

they, I'm sure the WWE has some right of first refusal.

Independent development.

Independent development.

Okay.

So

if for in exchange for

look here consult us about anything major don't do anything stupid

uh and you know and we'll send you a check and and we've got the right to bring you into the system before you would go anywhere else because we're investing in you that type of deal right

And

you may know more about this from what was on Twitter, but the story then was

that David explained this

intricate, you know, deal that they were needed to do to be the ID people with the promoters.

And then, when somebody called him on it, he deleted that.

And now, apparently, this week, he's saying, Well, he deleted that story last week because it wasn't supposed to be out last week.

He was working on it.

It was supposed to be in this week's issue.

But so, but

apparently he broke this story and then deleted it and it became a thing.

This is what people were talking about.

Is this correct?

Yeah, there was something, because again, it all happened pretty quickly.

And I think we were actually in the middle of recording, if not right after our recording.

But Dave put in the observer, which comes out on Friday,

what he said was the protocol.

for WWE ID wrestlers and the promotions that work with them, and specifically about Gabe Sapolsky delivering finished scripts and dictating how the WWE ID performers would be used or booked.

And that was kind of shot down pretty quickly by a few people.

I have a tweet here from Brett Lauderdale.

That's the promoter of GCW.

They work with WWE.

I guess they're part of this ID program.

Oh, good lord.

Even the garbage folks now.

Have they no shame?

Is it all about profit?

My experience with WWE ID,

Gabe doesn't put the matches together.

I've never seen or heard of a script.

We are allowed to push WWE ID on talent announcements, but we don't.

Not aware of any travel stipend or travel share, but that would be cool.

So

that is a response, and I believe Matt Farmer, who has a promotion, Defy, I believe is the name of it.

He's a wrestling historian.

He also

very respectfully said Dave was wrong about this.

And then if you got the observer that morning, you had it in it.

If you downloaded the observer later that day, it was out of it.

He just deleted that section and never put a correction.

And a lot of people have been jumping on Dave for doing that over the last year and a half, two years.

Remember, he put up a thing on his message board saying, here's an internal document, or I saw an internal document.

And it was actually just some fan guessing on Reddit.

And he never retracted it.

He never said, I got that wrong.

There's been a few different cases of this where,

you know, Dave still gets things right.

There are people now that think he gets everything wrong because there's definitely people pushing that narrative.

He does get things right, but he also, more than ever before, reports half the story or doesn't get the full story.

Well, or gets excited.

And by the way, now, sooner or later, even a blind squirrel finds a nut.

Now, we know that, right?

No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah, Dave's right and wrong and indifferent like everybody else.

But

at the same point, I'm just afraid that, you know, the

decline that

Father Time brings to us all, because can I just, I don't want to misrepresent what Dave meant.

So I want to read

his explanation so we're crystal clear.

This is

everybody.

He put something in the news.

Yes, there's something in this week's observer that I've been sent from the front office in Lincoln, Nebraska.

And this is Dave's own words.

So we'll clear this whole matter up, right, that we've been talking about and guessing.

We're just going to go right to the source here.

He says the, hold on,

because now the goddamn, the print is so small.

Ah, regarding the note last week.

that applied to WWE ID showcase matches involving WWE ID wrestlers as well as these matches.

Basically, WWE was trying to push the idea to indie promoters of doing WWE ID showcase matches, which the promotion would then promote through social media involving wrestlers under contract.

For these matches, Gabe Sapolsky of WWE puts the matches together and scripts them for the promoters.

The promoters are in charge of paying the talent.

In the case of these shows,

the the promotion can stream the shows and own the footage, but WWE has the right to use the footage in any way it wants.

This was incorrectly put in the last issue, as the story was to be in this issue,

but wasn't moved and the issue had already been put up by that time.

Well, hold on, stop there.

So he's saying that.

For whatever reason, the story intended for this issue somehow got into the middle of the text of the last issue?

Yes, and now he's repeated

in trying to explain what he's explaining and correcting, he's repeated the goddamn incorrect story in such long,

drawn-out detail that now you think that he's, this is a correction, that he's given you the correction, right?

But no, that's what he's about to correct.

Hold on now.

See, we're not done.

This was incorrectly put in the last issue as the story was to be in this issue, but wasn't moved and the issue had already been put up by that time

wwe id wrestlers are under no restrictions as far as working on independent shows and those matches can be booked and put together by the promoter and they could even work against aew talent but wwe will not promote those appearances promoters can advertise the talent as wwe id talent wwe pays the id talent a stipend or salary that they could use to better their nutrition and to help better their nutrition and to help with travel costs to get to yeah you put them on food

uh

and to help with travel costs to get bookings training etc

one promoter noted they've had some id talent offer to get themselves to their company shows but the promotion has no restriction as far as finishes or who they work with but wwe won't promote these matches When the champions are established and the idea is that they would be working indie shows and perhaps evolve, WWE would have control of scripting the title matches and rights to use the footage.

So has he cleared that up for everybody?

That is the most confusing way to say any of that.

I'm still not exactly sure what he was trying to either correct or state.

Let me talk to you about this because you actually, the only person here who has experience dealing with WWE, although under different management,

giving you talent for those six flag shows, you always had big WWE stars.

What were you allowed to do?

What were you not allowed to do?

What were you told to do by the office?

Or like in this case, I guess it would be Gabe Sopolsky delivering a script if that part was true.

Yeah, Jeff, I've jotted down this 25-minute match.

I'd like to have the guy.

Yeah, go ahead.

But all this, you know, what you're hearing about this or what you could decipher from what Dave is trying to say to what you actually experienced with OVW.

Well, first of all,

I've been on both sides of the fence because

not only did I booked

at a couple of different times, I booked talent in Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

That was way long ago.

But I booked their guys in OVW.

But also, as we've talked about before, while I was up in Stanford, I was often tasked with booking the guys that were allowed to do third-party dates then.

The

underneath and middle card talent that weren't getting a lot of bookings could do extra work if it was approved by the office.

We've told stories like that.

So I've been on both sides of the fence.

Since this probably more closely resembles an OVW type of situation than it does, you know, when I was booking them in Smoky Mountain Wrestling,

they didn't put any restrictions on me

because they knew that I wasn't going to do anything stupid.

And if I did suggest anything stupid,

they had a pretty good idea that the talent wasn't going to want to do it.

And they would probably

change it.

I mean, but when I would book

the guys,

when they would send talent from the WWE to Ohio Valley Wrestling for

some time period because they were rehabbing an injury or to get them back in shape or to whatever, And they were going to be there for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Then they understood that in my ongoing television, I was probably going to have these guys do a job to

the local guys or at the local shows.

I was going to have them do a job at some point if it fit my story.

They didn't care, but that I wasn't going to do anything stupid and just have them.

have people wiping the mat with WWF at the time superstars

and that they were probably going to come out pretty good in the end because I'd want these guys to come back either as talent or trainers.

So that was never an issue.

Nobody ever bitched about anything on either side, talent or offices.

I can recall about the guys that were sent down here.

Well, I mean, Mark Henry, when he first got here, still had the big head.

It was well publicized.

He complained about doing a personal appearance at like a...

fucking fair meeting or whatever, but he got straightened out.

But as far as doing jobs or putting people over, no, and when I would book the top guys specifically,

instead of the office sending them because

they needed to work on a gimmick or a rehab or whatever,

once I approved having the talent, whoever it was on that date,

I would, at the same time, actually, most of especially when I was dealing with Jim Ross, I would say, I wouldn't just say, Give me Kane.

I'd say, I want Kane to come down and work with Leviathan, Batista,

or

JR especially, Laurenitas' imbecile.

But they knew that when I would ask for talent on the big show to draw, when we were doing the garden shows and we needed a major name or the Six Flags show,

I was going to figure out something for them that most fit.

in terms of helping one of their contracted developmental wrestlers.

When we got a date on Chris Jericho at Six Flags, big main event, I put him with Johnny Jeter,

who was the young blonde thrill seeker from 10 years before, right?

So they could have a match.

Both did that style.

If we got Chris Benoit for the Gardens event in front of 5,000 people, I was going to be for the OVW title against Nick Dinsmore because that's my technical wrestling wizard.

When we had the, Stacey was working, we had the Disciples of Sin.

I got the Hardys and Lita

because there is the six-person tag.

And the only time that the WWE ever changed any of the bookings that we did were when I had the

Undertaker booked at the last dance at the Louisville Gardens, the last show before they closed down that time with Leviathan.

And I don't know why for sure,

but suddenly it was either the day, the morning of or the night before

it was JR announced.

Well, we're going to make it a tag team match.

And they sent me Diamond Dallas Page.

Bless him.

It came right down on short notice for free.

And,

oh, God damn it.

Who?

Who was on the other side of the fence?

I think

either Taker was either

didn't want to get hurt before a big show they had coming up, or maybe had a nagging injury and didn't want to work

a single match against Batista, who was greener than a pepper tree,

or whatever.

But to not disrupt my booking that we had featured as the main event of the show, they sent me two other guys.

And Paige was the one having the angle with Taker at the time because he was stalking Undertaker's wife or whatever.

Do you remember some

some foolery like that so yeah there you go

so it was she's kind of

history hasn't she

uh apparently scrubbed off of the neck of history she's not going into the hall of fame uh no

uh no

so who was who was

neck of history it took me a second yeah i took sentence that was a depth charge

But it was, goddamn it.

It was Leviathan and Paige against Taker.

And And they sent me somebody else, but they made it a big tag match.

Nobody was bad.

But that was a change they make.

But that was the thing.

I would talk to individuals.

I would ask for individual guys that were stars, not only that could draw money.

We always had to have for those garden shows that we were selling to clear channel radio, we had to have the Steve Austin or the Undertaker or whatever.

Undertaker and Kane versus Leviathan and Dallas Page, 62701.

Okay, then they gave me Kane back.

Okay, which and it made sense because earlier

in the series, we had had Kane and Leviathan in a single match.

But

nevertheless, it's not like they fucked me around on that, was what I'm saying.

So what I would do is I would get guys I knew could work with one of my featured talent.

And they didn't have to worry about guys doing jobs on shows like that because you wanted to send the people home happy.

And

at the same time, yes, I did have some of the middle-level WWF stars that came in on those shows put my local guys over.

But in the main event, most of the time, it would be preposterous and kind of seen by the fans as bullshit if the wrestling school champion had defeated the WWF champion.

So we would figure out a way where it was more palatable for our local guy to lose and maybe blame one of our local guys going forward, that type of thing.

JR didn't have to worry about fucking asking me about finishes.

He knew there was not going to be an issue.

And then, as I said, I'd go to the guys and explain to them briefly,

you know, what we'd been doing with the local guy and what his gimmick was, what his personality was like, and some of the things people...

And so that way.

Now I've tagged you in.

You're the star.

You're coming in here.

Here's this kid.

You know the drill.

Help him out.

And, you know, I didn't book guys on the show if I thought they were going to be pricks about it and not want to contribute.

So, you know, then I would hand it off to the professionals and they'd give me the fucking match.

It was not a,

but, but you can't do that with everybody, to be quite honest.

But the other thing, too, is you're talking about stars.

In Smoky Mountain, you were sent stars, Sean Michaels, Undertaker, Steiner Brothers, whoever it may be.

In OVW, you were developmental, but you were sent stars.

In this case, we're speaking about the opposite.

Indie wrestlers or developmental talent, not stars.

So, I mean, how would you react to that if you were being sent people that weren't necessarily, although I guess in some cases they may be indie stars, they may be indie draws, but you're not being sent the Undertaker, you're being sent the Underfaker.

And here's the script.

How would you react to that?

Well, okay,

but on the other side of it, because that's what I was doing with the, I wasn't, when I was booking talent in Stanford, yes, I'd book Steve Austin or Undertaker for autograph sessions at, you know, major shopping malls.

That was a big thing back then, and $20,000, $25,000 payoffs and all that shit.

But a lot of the underneath guys, headbangers,

you know, the, I've mentioned Road Dog and Billy Gunn at one time before they found their angel.

They weren't getting booked even on all the shows WWF was running.

And

they were valuable to the independent promoters.

So

if it was, you know, a show in the Northeast or the Midwest or whatever, if they wanted to pay $500 to $750 or $1,000, that was the range.

Now that would be,

you know, $2,500 to whatever, four grand or whatever in today's money.

But

if they wanted to pay that guarantee, they could have some of these guys come in.

Vince was allowing it.

I was responsible for booking them because I'm the one to do all the fucking responsible independent promoters work.

They had a contract.

You had to sign.

Basically, here's, it was a booking contract.

And you're going to give 10% of whatever the payoff to the talent is comes to the office for us facilitating this deal, right?

And otherwise, again, JR put me in charge of it.

We knew these were people that weren't going to do anything stupid.

Nobody was going to be set on fire.

There wasn't going to be a fucking barbed wire match.

There was not going to be any goddamn, you know, women being pile driven and,

you know, anal probed by aliens on a show.

It's not going to make the newspapers for the wrong reasons.

These people are promoters that have run multiple events for years, and it may be low budget.

There's certainly a charm to it, but it's where the guys can work and get paid and not get hurt.

And the WWF name is not going to be sullied in some kind of, believe it or not, that was a thing.

You could actually get the WWF name dirty back then.

And so it was Dennis Coraluzo, or it was Blaine DeSantis in Redding, Pennsylvania, or Jimmy Kittner down in Delaware, or, you know, the guys, some of the guys in the Midwest.

That's how I met Chris Daniels.

You know, and

those guys.

Those local promoters that have been around for a while before this hardcore, just whole indie style with furniture became a thing,

they were presenting regular wrestling shows, and you could book the guys out.

And from what I understand, after I left and came here to Louisville, they did it for a while longer.

And

then they had a couple of guys either didn't get their money or was on a show where somebody did something stupid, or somebody was a goddamn on some kind of watch list.

And it made the local paper and they just said, okay, our guys can't wrestle anywhere else anymore.

Cause it was a pain in the ass.

But what was the question?

Well, I guess we go, how would I take it?

Yeah, well, going back to the actual story here.

And again, I'm a little confused based on what you read that Dave wrote on exactly.

But there are,

there are no scripts for matches.

It's ridiculous.

And I can see if

here's what I would think would be a legitimate level of control that the WWE would have in this.

Because since we don't know what the fuck is going on, how about we just talk about what should be going on?

If the WWE is paying, subsidizing these guys' careers for what we talked about earlier,

they make extra money.

They don't have to worry about paying bills.

So, yes, they can go to the gym more often, but they don't have to have to wait tables at Chili's or whatever.

And

if they're giving them some kind of money in return for going out and getting more experience and figuring out who they are and coming up with a gimmick or just, you know, just learning.

And because eventually, if you get better,

maybe we'll bring you in the system.

And by the way, you can't go anywhere else unless we say you can.

or whatever.

We're not just going to, you know,

Johnny appleseed the whole wrestling business for free.

We get you if you turn out good.

Or we can say, no, we don't want you and then be free and fly away.

I would think that would be the deal.

And for that,

depending on what the office's issues are with what's been raised in meetings, they don't want these guys

potentially beating up women.

Maybe intergender matches.

Might that be out?

Because, well, oh, golly, old Paulina fucking

Smith got dropped on her head in Cherry Hill, New Jersey the other night by a guy on a pro wrestling show and she's in a wheelchair.

Oh, this guy signed to the WWE.

They don't want shit like that.

So I would think there would be some level of,

you know, concern with who they're working with or what kind of show is it?

Is it the fucking insane clown posse show where they

all roll around and fucking barbed wire in a goddamn field of mud

and drunken on psychedelics and woo energy drink

maybe you don't want your talent in that environment

or you know just

somebody that's not going to in any way bring bring shame or disfavor any more than has already been done by its former chairman on the name or get the talent that they're investing money in hurt or just pictures of them doing really stupid things.

I doubt they'll be drinking blood or being having hypodermic needles stuck through their faces.

I think that's reasonable.

I don't think they care whether these guys do jobs or not,

unless, as they said,

they establish some kind of championship.

And

I think that's stretching it a little bit.

I don't know, but maybe they've got a grand plan.

And Gabe knows what he's doing with he, he

has been involved in running the booking of a wrestling promotion on a shoestring budget.

So he knows how to deal with local outfits and trying to cater to people as best they can when they're trying to sell every 10 tickets they can sell.

And

he likes dealing with young talent, but I'm sure he will impress on all of them, don't do anything stupid and don't get hurt and go out and learn the right things and the right skills and the right way to deal with things.

But I, I, there's not match scripts where, oh, so-and-so grabs that headlock.

That doesn't happen anyway.

Well,

what happens, or at least hear about it.

I don't know how much we're going to see, but we'll hear about what happens.

And I mean, at the end of the day, I really believe all this stuff.

A lot of it's about just WWE

doing what they can for future talent, but I think a lot of it's just about shutting AEW out of everything.

And

I think WWE is doing a masterful job, and Tony doesn't know how to fight back.

WWE is shutting Tony out of access to just about everything, whether it's podcasts that have suddenly gone WWE-friendly because WWE is being really friendly to them.

Or whether it's independent promotions being locked up or schools or talent.

So much of this is about

there's a billionaire competitor.

Let's make it so he can't have access to any talent or any assets.

I would expand that, what you just said.

Instead of

controlling AEW, it's controlling everybody.

The industry.

Controlling the industry.

The industry.

And the thing is.

I don't think they want to play with Tony anyway, and they know that he's too petulant of a man-child to play with them.

But they've already got a deal going with TNA where TNA is clearly, and it's helped TNA's business from what we understand exceptionally.

We may watch one of those here sooner or later.

But it's clear that TNA is the little brother, and they're fine with that because everybody's benefiting.

And they've made deals with some where every deal they make is where everybody's the little brother.

And they've, I'm sure,

with the level of legal power that they've got, legal minds behind them, et cetera, et cetera, that the contracts are all written very well.

The WWE is in charge of these relationships, but as long as they're beneficial to the other party, there's no reason why they shouldn't have them.

But Tony ain't going to give up.

He's not going to be anybody's little brother.

And he's never going to admit publicly that,

you know, that, yes, we

need you

or that, you know, we want to engage in some kind of goddamn deal where we look subservient to you and we feature your smaller stars like bigger stars or thing like that.

So they're just shutting him out.

But

everybody's either under the thumb or down the drain.

And with the money they've got and the fucking reach they've got and the ability now to take it.

Vince just didn't want to fuck with it.

He did, except for

me, Paul, and Lawler are the three companies that he acknowledged, right?

Memphis Wrestling, Smoky Mountain, and ECW.

Yeah.

He didn't want to fuck with anything else.

He didn't want to, he didn't give a shit.

He just, he owned wrestling and why fucking bother with acknowledging.

Well, actually, let me change that.

He acknowledged Smoky Mountain Wrestling and ECW.

Other than maybe a passing mention, like in the Royal Rumble, USWA was never mentioned.

Well,

he worked on Lawler's shows and had some fun down there, and they didn't beat it to death.

They traded more talent than they did mentioning the promotion.

But the king of Memphis, everybody got the fucking gist.

But he did that for Lawler.

But the point is now, instead of just having a hard rule, we don't work with anybody

except maybe somebody internationally, and

you know, just fuck it, ignore everybody else.

TKO is like, okay, how can we either

make everyone else subservient to us, our little brother, establish a pecking order, look beneficent in order to avoid any antitrust actions of a legitimate kind,

open ourselves up to a much wider net of talent that we can cast out and snatch in, and shut off the only competitor that even though there's no competition,

we know that they're not going to play with us.

And this idiot's going to overpay talent for years to come.

So we need to shut him off at the fucking

okay corral.

And they run everything in one way or another.

They either run or influence every outlet there is for this shit.

Except ours.

We're still going to be independent.

That's right.

But does that sound reasonable?

What I just said to you there?

I think so.

But, you know,

I think shutting down AEW is a priority.

Or I shouldn't say a priority.

I think it's something they want.

Maybe not a priority, but they're hoping the things they do

do what ended every wrestling war, cut off talent.

That's it.

I mean, that's what ended the Georgia War.

They couldn't get any more talent.

They had the same talent they had two years earlier and people were done.

And georgia had nothing but fresh young talent and a good booker well but also think about this now here's something else they can do besides cut off talent they can make him spend money he doesn't have to spend they can cost him money he would have taken in

and but he doesn't care but he's the first guy that doesn't care because the bottom line is not what matters Well, I know, but at some point, see, that's, I'm not saying it's their number one priority and it's this big high-pressure tactic because there's these people going, oh, yeah, they're trying to, when they schedule a wwe event against aew's pay-per-view or go to the same town beforehand or whatever you know the drill with the scheduling oh yeah they just the saturday night's made event against all in texas against all in texas and boy they're going to be all in you know what they ought to have they ought to have the same 10 fans run around the stadium over and over until they're all in

But anyway, they're not going to just make this their life's mission, but where they can, they're going to make them make Tony spend more money because that's what Tony is doing to them or has done or is trying to do to them.

Tony is willing to pay the fucking boys and even the wrong ones, especially multi-millions of dollars to not produce anything and just be part of his bad wrestling show.

And that's where either the guys are going to retire or the young guys are seduced by this and are willing to devote, or not devote, but willing to donate the rest of their career to medical science to go on a shitty program because they're making millions of dollars.

But the WWE, as a business, I would think, does not want this fucking lunatic just throwing money around like a drunken sailor because it does upset.

And of course, the WWE could certainly

afford to compensate its wrestling talent more than it does.

But that's another story.

As a business, what I'm telling you, hey, what I'm telling you, is that the WWE is pissed off because this guy is spending a fucking fortune and driving all the salaries up.

And then

not only that, but

the fact that it's a rotten program.

It's not that

AEW is succeeding in taking viewers away from WWE.

It's that AEW,

as long as it exists, will cost

WWE more money

in the amount of money they potentially would have to pay fucking talent if Tony takes a fancy to him.

I think that's why they're trying to get these young guys under retainer, so to speak,

you know, before that they catch Tony's radar, because

That's the problem.

It's not that this is not a wrestling war in terms of AEW is going to damage WWE's attendance or put him out of business or outdraw him in Pittsburgh or whatever the fuck.

It's that Tony is willing to pay a fortune for these people.

It ain't halfway worth it.

Tony can raise the pay scale industry-wide just by doing it.

Yes.

So imagine what

I mean.

I hate to say this, but if Gunther, I hope that this doesn't happen, but if Gunther, goddamn, his contract was about to come up and Tony would pay him $5 million dollars a year to work one day a fucking week.

I bet he'd do it.

$5 million a year and I'll fly you back and forth to Austria as much as you want.

I mean, that's the kind of thing.

But let me ask you this because we've gone on a while and we have other things we have to talk about.

So let me end with a question here that referred to something later.

And we'll return to this conversation.

If you're WWE,

what really worries you right this second?

Is it Tony Khan increasing?

everyone's pay, which, you know, it only takes one dumb owner in like baseball to offer a stupid contract.

And next thing you know, like every first baseman's making ridiculous money.

Tony can kind of do that.

It's him against WWE.

But if you're WWE, you more worried about that

or more worried about the actual content at times that he's putting on TV.

And if,

you know, Jerry Jarrett got hurt because of footage the sheik had on TV.

Yeah.

against a different animal today, but would you be more worried about the negative connotation, the negative,

Would you be more concerned about how negative wrestling looks because of stuff like the Moxley match and that spot specifically than about the pay scale issues?

That you have an outlaw promoter in a lot of ways because he'll just

if yeah, if I am the WWE

because they're strictly cold-hearted businessmen, I'm more concerned about him upsetting the pay scale.

And I'm happy that he did the fucking spike in the back or he does the bleach or whatever

because they are so much farther above everybody now that they can differentiate

it's the same thing as are you going to see the rolling stones are you going to see some punk band at a local

you know bar that used to be a garage

i'll take i'll take option b and i love the stones well i know that but you know what i'm saying they can differentiate from you can take your kids to see the rolling stones nobody's going to be stabbed on the fucking dance floor or whatever

it's not 1969 anymore

uh

but i think that i would be more upset if i was wwe i'm offended as a wrestling purist and traditionalist and with some respect for you know the industry and the art form

i'm offended more by the you know the garbage wrestling but i think wwe'd be offended more by them costing them millions of dollars.

They probably wouldn't have had to pay if it weren't for this fucking guy.

So that's my thought.

But you know what?

The problem is, Brian, what?

None of them have enough protein.

They're all just

lacking in the protein.

Who, who were we just talking about?

Tony Khan, wrestlers, WWE.

Yes.

They all need more protein, and this would be solved because

if they had more protein, they'd feel better.

They'd be in better health.

They would be able to be kind

to their neighbors and everyone would become a friend.

There'd be no competition.

They'd all be singing Kumbaya.

We'd be one race.

Imagine, imagine there's no heaven.

It's easy if you try.

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But you know what the sugar does, don't you, Brian?

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What?

That's where your chest is down in your drawers.

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You do that in the car and then you go in and you close another deal, Brian.

You sell another account, you beat the other guy, you triumph over the competition, you send the guy that you triumphed over out in the street, wandering around in the gutter where he's broke and jobless, wondering what his future is.

How can he go home and tell his wife and children that he's a failure and that he can't support him or feed him?

And that she's going to have to turn to some type of prostitution or illegal sexual activity.

And the kids, well, they're probably going to an orphanage.

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You will love it too.

They tell us to push the chocolate.

The vanilla is something that Suzanne and the kids like.

Oh, organe.

Yeah.

And you are true.

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But I don't know if I would go as far as when you say everyone loves my organ.

I don't know about that.

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But Jim, let's stay on the topic of Dave Meltzer momentarily because

I don't know how up on these things you are.

You don't spend a lot of time on Twitter like you used to.

But the Meltzer Says What Twitter account tweeted this out, so I just got to see this.

Apparently, and I saw people write about this,

Dave had some interesting comments about something we talked about.

The John Cena Cody Rhodes segment on Raw, the first John Cena heel promo.

No mention of The Rock.

There was no mention of Travis Scott, too, when you think about it.

And we mentioned that they weren't necessary and weren't needed in the deal, and it was refreshing.

Yeah, this showed that the John Cena heel turn obviously didn't need The Rock.

And now here we are with the first promo, no mention of The Rock.

Dave Meltzer has always been a good source for rock information.

May or may not know The Rock's mom or anyone else.

He calls him Dwayne.

Did you hear anything about what he's reported?

No,

I'm in the dark on this one, but I have a feeling it's more Dave Splaining.

Well, let's go to this.

This apparently is from Wrestling Observer Radio, as tweeted out by Meltzer, says what?

Or Meltz said what?

Not says.

Meltzer says what.

Meltzer said.

Say what?

Roll a coasta of love.

Say what?

Well, let's go to this right now.

Brian Alvarez and Dave Meltzer talking about the Cody Rhodes and John Cena segment on Raw.

Well, tell me about Cody and John Cena in their promo.

You know who they didn't mention hardly at all?

I don't think they've mentioned him at all.

Who's that?

Dwayne.

Well, yeah, I mean, we talked about that on Monday.

They got six weeks.

Yeah, well, there's more to it than meets the eye, apparently.

So he's dropped again?

No, no.

Oh, I'm sure he's not dropped.

But there's something going on.

So what does that mean?

Well, it means there's something going on.

We shouldn't have brought this up if you can't tell us anymore because now you just made people angry.

I don't know what's going on.

I was actually just told it's what you think.

And I don't even know.

I asked.

I said, like.

It's what you think.

What I think is they're holding it off for the next couple of weeks.

It's not.

They said that, well, the other sentence when they said it's what you think is

when you figure, you know,

they thought that I knew, which I didn't, and they said that even if you say it, they're going to all deny.

Everyone in the company will deny it.

So it's,

but I don't know exactly what.

So there you go.

stop it stop it stop it wait stop it

i don't want to interrupt this train of thought but if

because he's doing he's doing well enough on his own of interrupting his own train of thought but has he ever said what it is

that it would be what you think it is well what is it

Or what was it?

Or what did you think?

That's the best Faith No More song I've ever heard right there.

I don't know.

And they think that you thought that he thinks that they know that you know, I know.

Well, let's talk about what he did say so far.

There's a little bit left.

He said, there's more to this than meets the eye.

Well, of course, that would mean there's more to this than there is on television.

And yes, that's the whole thing.

We know that, and we've been saying the rock comes in.

last minute with brilliant ideas for rock and it screws up everything else and some people don't want to go along with it.

And last year it got public.

And so this year people were looking for it.

And to a lesser extent, he's done it again.

He's interjected himself into this thing for some nebulous reason.

But then when they actually did the turn and Cena explains it, it's on their issue, him and Cody.

Not talking about the rock, not talking about the discount rapper throwing potatoes, but what the fans want to see and what's going to draw some money.

And I guarantee you, what's going on that you don't know, or I don't know, or behind whatever scenes is that Triple H and/or Cody and/or other people

have said, No, we have to concentrate on the talent in the match.

And the rock is getting in the way at some points and is overshadowing people

or

screwing up plans for what our most devoted audience wants wants to see.

Overshadowing people, including Triple H.

Yes.

So I think that, and I, and we're Brian there, they're his Brian, not you, Brian, my Brian.

You know what I mean?

It's, it's who you think I mean.

I don't think they're going to come back to it a couple of weeks.

I think they're going to do as little coming back to it as they possibly can unless the rock

insists on fucking hopping the rail and getting on TV.

The last thing Dave Melter said here, we'll go back to the tape.

I don't know what more that's going on.

I was actually just told it's what you think.

I think they thought I knew, which I didn't.

And they said that even if you say it, they're going to all deny it.

Everybody in the company will deny it.

So it's something,

but I don't know exactly what.

I know there's something going on.

Doom, doom, doom, doom.

What could it be?

Well, let's hear the rest of the audio.

Then we'll try to guess what this could be.

What could be going on?

Here's more with Meltzer and Alvarez on Wrestling Observer Radio.

I don't know exactly what.

So there you go.

All right.

Yeah.

Well, you know what we can talk about soon is the new Japanese.

So I guess, I mean, you know, it's, there's always stuff going on behind the scenes there, that's all.

You know, so yeah.

Well, the New Japan Cup is, uh, I think it's going on right now as we speak.

Well, there it is, I guess.

That was a profound statement.

There's always something going on.

No, most of the time, the building's empty.

You see, this is when Dave is right and he's wrong.

Again, people get mad at me for saying this because I'm not supposed to, but yeah, there are issues with the rock.

There are legitimate rock issues company-wide.

And there will be probably going forward for at least until Ari Emmanuel understands it, maybe.

Who knows?

But at the same time,

what the hell is Dave saying?

That

what you think is really happening, but I don't know what I think.

And I was told that I know it, but I don't know it.

However, it must be something.

There's more to this than meets the eye.

What about the ears and the brain?

Is there more to this that meets the brain?

And we connect some dots between those organs.

And here's another thing.

If you put any other wrestler in that news story, would he have called them by their first name?

And I know Dwayne The Rock Johnson is a movie star, but would he have said it was Sting

or Flair

or what?

Dwayne,

it's like, yeah, Dan Rather may have been friends with fucking President Reagan, but he wouldn't go around saying, well, what Ronnie was saying,

it just

I have heard Dave address this in the past, and I don't think it necessarily is the right explanation, at least for what you're asking, but I think he said that Dwayne once told him, call me Dwayne,

which is probably when you're talking one-on-one, not...

Anytime I review anything with you or not review or just say nothing about anything you're not doing or possibly are doing who knows what that was

call me dwayne to my face give me a mr johnson every once in a while

to the public all right so what could the issue be

with the rock with whatever this is yeah well it the i'll try to say this a little shorter and a little plainer that dave did

I think the rock has these grand ideas and shows up with his people and

shoehorns this stuff in.

And then it doesn't get a great response from a lot of the most devoted fans.

And when he's not there, he being The Rock,

they talk about it and mention it as little as fucking possible and refer to him in some cases as little as possible.

And they couldn't have done it on this promo because it needed to be between Cena and Cody

and it just would muddy the fucking water.

And I think probably The Rock will come back with another great idea, or he might be around for WrestleMania or whatever.

But I think that a lot of people that don't like The Rock's ideas are trying to minimize them and the

not necessarily damage they'll do, but the way that they'll get into of other shit.

He's getting in people's way.

He likes the stuff he wants to do.

But we don't know if everyone else does.

I mean, I'm sure John Cena

could see the picture of a lot of things he could do for this last year, especially as a heel.

Did everything go the way he would have wanted it to?

I don't know.

Again, no reference at all.

The Travis Scott thing.

Cody, everything that's been going on.

Cody does not want to be involved in a lot of this.

I mean, not with Cena, but with The Rock sticking it in.

And he definitely didn't want to turn heel if that

concept that was floated has been,

if there was any validity to that.

Yeah, I don't know about the actual angle or or any of the things they've done, but it seems like The Rock has a Cody obsession.

I'm not exactly sure, but we'll see.

Dave knows something, or he doesn't know it, but everyone thinks he does, but they'll deny it.

We'll see what we can find out or deny.

But it's what you think it would be.

Why did he say anything?

Why did he open the door and then just hit us with more gibberish?

Because that's the things Dave do.

It's more than meets the eye.

Elementary, my dear Alvarez.

The pipe, please.

All righty, then.

Should we, before it's too late, talk about this thing that happened the other night on the television with the folks at AEW?

They were in a snowstorm and not the kind of snowstorm that some

people like to associate poor Tony with on the internet, but an actual snowstorm from

up in the sky there in Omaha, Nebraska.

I bet it can get cold out there in Omaha.

And they apparently had

transportation difficulties.

And some people, you know, had to make other plans and some people may not have made it.

But here's the thing.

Everything that we're going to chastise them for on this program, which was March 19th, if I didn't mention the date, date.

They meant to do this.

This was not like, oh my God, it's a snowstorm business.

We haven't got our people here.

We got to just throw something out there.

They meant to do.

They advertised the shit that came off in large part here.

They meant to do this.

Brian, you got to keep that in mind.

This was on purpose.

Not because of an act of God.

I mean, most of these matches, like you said, were announced in advance.

I don't remember if the A.R.

Fox one

was.

Well, I mean, not.

I'm talking about the main.

Oh, the Moxley Copeland thing?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, as offensive things go.

Well, the main parts of this program,

which wasn't A.R.

Fox and Will Ostrich or what,

but the main parts of this program were intentional.

And

they open up in the snowstorm in Omaha.

And the first thing you see is pockets.

Here he has.

So, and then the second thing you see is our

new friend, Hong Kong Fui, Spitball Bailey, the dollar store steamboat.

He's so small on his entrance, they had to use a telescopic lens, Brian.

It's like he was right next to Alpha Centauri.

That's the only way we could see.

What the ridiculous fist in the hand pose is he wearing on you already?

The smile, the the pose the weird dorkish look

the minute physical appearance the

he's like

i hate to say this but he's like if if kenny was even more unappealing he does more of kenny shit and he's smaller he's like a little

a little nugget kenny

like i say i'm looking forward to your future reviews of his matches the way it's been going the last couple weeks but Christ got a cracker.

You know, I go back to what I said previously.

I wasn't joking.

I think Tony should,

as a way of branding and just a way to differentiate yourself from WWE, should really go for having a middleweight division and putting a lot of these guys that when you watch them on TV in the ring with a Mark Davis who's gigantic,

it just, you know, again, I know early UFC, small guys can beat big guys.

I get it.

And David versus Goliath.

And lots of booking throughout the years.

However, if every guy, Orange Cassidy is just about the same size as speedball Mike Bailey.

And there are plenty of other people.

I think he's a little taller.

He's a little taller.

We got to give him that.

But very slight.

And there are a lot of people like that.

Jack Perry, there's a lot of people in AEW that.

I forgot about him.

He's with his buddies in Kookamunga playing video games, getting paid because they took their ball and went home.

He's hanging out with Anna Jay.

She's off TV too.

It was one of these Tony Khan vacations until he brings everyone back.

She took his balls and they went home.

Maybe so.

The thing is, okay, and you bring this up.

You got Pockets, you got Hong Kong Fuye.

Here comes Mark Davis.

His ass weighs as much as all three of these other guys.

And then here's Ricochet.

So it looks like Mark Davis brought his three delinquent children on a field trip.

But it's not a middle, a middleweight division wouldn't solve the Connor McGregor.

I don't know what he's weighing in at these days, but he's got some heavy burdens.

But he's a different kind of 180 pounds or whatever than this fucking grinning simpleton playing of, again, a cross between Ricky Steamboat, Bruce Lee, and a video game character.

And

they have a four-way

where the winner gets a shot at Ken, what title Kenny has.

He just won a belt, one of the bells.

International.

There you go.

And it's a four-way to get a shot at that against Kenny,

where you've got,

you know,

three gymnasts and a fucking behemoth.

And they go into the phony choreography.

And I wasn't going to, I figured, let's see what the rest of the program

holds for us.

Because if I treated this like real pro wrestling, it would take me two hours to pick it apart because I would do it like we would do it in a wrestling school class.

But

actually, I wouldn't do that in a real wrestling school class because I would fire everybody involved in this after the first fucking minute.

But again,

finally,

they do a deal where Ricochet and Spitball both

pin Mark Davis.

So they made both of them winners and they made the match with Twinkletoes for whatever title a three-way

between

the three biggest goddamn acrobatic swing dancers in the company.

So can you imagine the silliness that's going to be on display in that show?

But

30 minutes, the first 30 minutes of this program was three goofy kids and a job guy.

And forget about the weight categories.

Just make it, be honest, children's wrestling, by children for children.

Even if we're not chronologically children, we have childlike minds.

So mentally, we're still children.

And we're the size of children.

And the only people that this appeals to is children.

that are about to enter the sport of gymnastics.

Because it's a bunch of choreographed tripe.

No wonder wrestling lost all the UFC crossover.

I think we've safely avoided any crossover between any of this horseshit and any kind of real fucking fight.

30 minutes, Brian.

What have I missed that the people are just loving about that display of.

There was a spot where Mark Davis picked up Orange Cassidy by the feet and brought him into a pile driver that looked really good.

But it wasn't even the best pile driver on this show, actually, now that I think about it.

This went a while.

You know, I was thinking, how are they going to beat Speedball Mike Bailey if they just brought this guy in and they want to do something with him?

But then again, you're going to have him beat these other guys and get a match with Kenny, and they got around that.

I'll say, Tony's finishes are getting worse and worse.

Obviously, they wanted to set up a three-way here, but the Moxley matches, one on this show, not just the finishes, but the things happening around the finishes.

Well, now, I don't think we can blame Tony for Moxley.

I think Moxley, this is his art being expressed in real time, sort of like after a fucking enema after a dinner at Taco Bell is expressed in real time.

But they want to be cute.

They all want to be cute if.

Every match has to be cute in some description.

I guess my point is if they're going to sign all these guys and at a certain point, it may be all they can get because of what WWE is doing to lock down the industry because of the decline in Japanese wrestling, a whole number of things.

If all the guys you're going to be able to sign, or a lot of them, are smaller guys,

should AEW do something to take advantage of that?

Instead of it just being like, we'll pretend everyone's a heavyweight.

Should they do something to differentiate themselves from everyone?

Okay,

I was being a smart ass earlier, but I will answer it seriously.

Now, that might even be something they could do, but that's not the answer here because it's

there is not a lot of money in these people at any fucking weight

because

not of the

what they weigh, but because of their level or lack thereof of charisma, of talent, of ability to get over, of not being repetitious.

And

you've again, you know, Bailey looks like a dork guys don't want to be him and women don't want to him so he's as a babyface i thought you're talking about bailey and wwe for a second it's like what the is he talking no spitball here i'm not bringing her in no but i bet a bunch of women would like to

her anyway nevertheless back to uh yes It's it's talent, it's charisma, it's personality, it's ability to fucking speak.

It's not having this indie mindset of these repetitive video game fucking goofy matches that appeal to the same people that are going to see this.

The talent changes in AEW regularly, but all the ratings do is go down because they've already done everything you can fucking do.

And now they've just got the replacement people doing some more of it.

They don't make stars.

They make moments and big bumps off the fucking roof.

They don't develop stories and rivalries.

They have dream matches.

It's just all meaningless.

Tony can't pick talent.

Inmates run the asylum.

So it doesn't matter what size they are.

They're all going to have the same problem.

They do the same shit as everybody else does because they're all a bunch of indie fucking wrestlers.

Outlaw, as the old saying goes.

And they can't be told that they don't know every fucking thing.

And Tony makes them believe that they're goddamn, God's gift of wrestling with the way he treats them.

Jesus Christ, the money that he's paying people that don't even show up to work or that he flies in from other countries for two or three

shows a month and they don't make any difference.

It's the same it's always been or less.

Less crowds in the house shows, less people watching TV, same kind of thing on the pay-per-view because that's the

real litmus test.

Those people would rather not pay their rent than buy these pay-per-views.

So,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I just told you I'm sick of the three-way matches because they set up the Roman Punk and Rollins one and the Rhea EO and

now here's this.

There's three people that can do flips instead of two people.

So it'll be even an even bigger match, and even greater.

All right, let's move on because we got to get to the

meat of the matter.

They did a nice package putting the Hurt Syndicate over.

They're the only real major league talent in the company right now that seems like they're actual

serious pro wrestlers and et cetera.

But as soon as they play that package, here comes Mercedes Moon and her little stripper shimmy to kill the vibe of that whole thing.

But

in this case, Brian, she was

the experienced veteran of the piece because she's defending the women's title of whichever description against Billy Starks,

the teenage prodigy from Louisville, Kentucky.

I've never run into her at the post office.

You think she lives down in Shively?

I don't know.

Probably never comes out to this part of the county.

I really don't know.

Well,

this did nothing to dispel the notion that this is children's wrestling.

Mercedes, I know she's, she looks like a skinny honey boo-boo.

Now, think about that.

Mercedes, I mean, she's not, she's not as portly as honey boo-boo was, but she's dressed up with the hair and the fucking spangles like she's going to one of those little

darling children's pageants.

Are you talking about Mercedes or Billy Starks?

Mercedes.

Mercedes is all dressed up in all of the glamour and the spangle and everything, and she's about 110 pounds.

I don't see the boo-boo connection at all.

Billy Starks.

She's a kid.

I don't know if she's ready for national TV yet.

She has poor posture.

She stands with her head drooping over.

Is it scoliosis?

I don't know.

She needs to stand up straight.

But the point is,

you know, Billy Starks right now, is she 20 years old or however old she is?

She doesn't have much of a tan.

She doesn't have much of a physique.

She's not very old.

She's not full grown yet.

She might do good on the Indies, but do you put her on national TV as a prodigy?

And the answer is: no, you don't, because she ain't.

She's not Nadia Komanichi as a fucking athlete.

She's not

a mirror.

She's not Terry Gordy.

Because the WWE has Rhea Ripley against Bianca Bel Air.

AEW has Billy Starks against Mercedes.

It's

just visually,

this is just not national television.

And they both almost killed each other at one point or another.

Old Billy dropped Mercedes on her fucking head.

Oh, did you see that one spot in the way they shot it?

You didn't see the exact landing where she kind of just shoved her right under?

I thought Mercedes was onto her head.

That's that was the head fall in which I was speaking of.

I mean, she tucked her just in the nick of time, but there was not

a lot of room for error, let's say.

And it probably

jarred her a bit anyway because of the impact.

But

Mercedes won,

and we were 50 minutes into this television program from seeing the four-way nonsense and the exhibition with the teenage participant.

And then we got to see a promo with the Outriggers giving a pep talk to the Omaha Mavericks.

Did you see that?

It wasn't like the fucking footage you see where Ric Flair walks into the fucking room with the NBA team or the college team or whatever, and everybody starts going, woo, and they're all gathered around, and he's the center of attention.

These two Nimrods are just running through the locker room, firing everybody up.

And the players are looking at him like, what the fuck is going on here?

Did you see this part?

I did see this part, and it was timely.

The Omaha Mavericks just played the St.

John's Red Storm, and the Johnnies destroyed them 83 to 53.

They're done with their season.

Thank you, Outrunners.

But I mean, because they were in town.

I was proud of the tournament.

Did they say we're going to get some famous pro wrestlers to come give you guys a pep talk and then in walk these guys because they're in the building the next day or whatever?

And the ball players went, what the fuck?

Well, I'm sure there have to be some wrestling fans amongst them.

Usually in every locker room, there are wrestling fans and you have to figure if there are wrestling fans.

Some may be aware of AEW.

So there's a potential chance that they were already fans of the Outrunners and

said, how would you guys like to take a trip to Omaha?

That's a lot of thinking and thoughting.

No, they were there because they were in the building the next night.

They were in town.

AEW, all the top talent was busy.

And MJF, where the fuck is he?

He's on tape again.

Has he left the country again?

Is he filming another major motion picture?

Is he somewhere trying to establish a new identity free from?

If there was ever a week to get out of coming to TV, it's the week of the snowstorm in Omaha.

Hopefully he's in somewhere where he can sit back and reflect on all of this.

He did a promo running down the competition.

It's clear to him that he needs a click to combat Moxley and company.

Why is MJF?

I know he wants to get the, this is what this booking, he wants to get the belt back,

but the belt is currently in the hands of this fucking shit heel.

I mean, he really is the shits, but he's a heel.

MJF is supposed to be a heel, so he's going to go to other heels to help him fight the fucking heels.

Is it any wonder that nobody gives a fuck for these baby faces?

Between

nerd face, off leave it to Beaver Bailey and the rest of these goddamn ineffectual twits.

All the heels are the interesting ones.

So he's going to have an answer for MVP next week, is MJF.

And then the nine o'clock hour came.

And Brian, this is what I was talking about earlier in the program.

They put the garbage in the middle to try not to leave the people with a bad taste.

Or do you think that Dick the Boozer finally got smart and figured nobody's going to watch the end of the show no matter what, and I'll get blamed for it.

So we're going to put this in the middle.

Which do you, which of those hypothesises

would you support?

I think this is a match they've actually built up for a few weeks, and they were smart enough to know that if they put that match at the end of the show, it will die no matter what.

At this point, that's the way you trained your audience.

So, they had they were going to try to get anything out of this, they had to do it here at the nine o'clock hour.

Let's put them at the top of the nine o'clock hour, see if we pick something up from the curious, right?

And then, Moxley, he's walking through the parking lot for absolutely no reason.

It wasn't snowing at that point, but there's snow on the ground.

He's coming into the building from out in the parking lot, but there's no vehicle

that he has obviously left.

What did he just walk up at that moment?

What sense does this make, Brian?

He's not coming from anywhere.

Did they just, somebody just dropped him off?

Would he Uber over?

He looked cold.

He's walking through the parking lot.

And as he gets up to the TV trucks, Edge jumps him in the parking lot.

And they gave that away because as soon as he got up there, all of a sudden for the first time, the camera wasn't in front of him.

The camera went behind him.

So you could see someone run up.

Yeah.

Well, because,

you know, they want to make sure they get all the shots because they're trying to win an Emmy.

And he couldn't see, even though he was in a parking lot of snow.

And snow, boy, really heightens your vision with all that light and reflectivity.

So Edge jumps him in the parking lot.

They fight walk into the back of one of the semis where they have a fake fight with things in the semi.

And then they take a bump out of the semi and they fight walk into the building where the cameras are waiting to pick them up

because they obviously knew this was going to happen.

It looks so bad.

It's not only is it more of the same shit, but they're not even

They're not even trying anymore.

They just go from place to place and rattle their toys around.

And but Edge could have retired after the WWE and still been a big star.

And but people would have had fond thoughts of him.

He's going to get probably another $10 million or so out of this little run, but he's damaged his reputation if he gives a shit about that.

But they fight through the hallway into the arena.

And there the fans see him.

So finally they, you know, oh, here they are finally.

mildly react

and they get to ringside and of course this is an aew world title match with edge against dick the boozer but it's also it's a street fight

no disqualification anything goes lazy booking

and again they're

they're on the floor And the pace is not blistering, but they're fighting on the floor.

And the fans are either staring or they're trying to take a selfie of themselves with the fight going on in the background.

So they send to their friend, yeah, look, I'm here.

Or they're kind of giggling.

It

this is this.

These are supposed to be the two, the world title and two of the biggest main event guys they got.

And people are just standing there gawking at it.

They're waiting for somebody to

crash through furniture or get hit by a car or be impaled.

And they got the garbage can, and they got, was it a kendo stick or a cue stick?

It wouldn't make any noise.

It looked solid

and it fucking looked like it hurt.

I think they couldn't find a kendo stick, and they just said that a cue stick was a kendo stick.

And then they fight walked through the arena again so they could go out in the bleachers and in the back part of the arena.

Oh, how cutting edge, how revolutionary.

We never see anything like that.

And Brian, am I overstating?

I don't mean to drone on, but am I overstating the case that this looks fucking fake?

They don't have to go these places.

They're cooperating with each other to walk to these places and then exchange blows, most of which don't look very good.

Am I overstating this?

No, I don't think any of this looked very good.

I don't think any of these kind of matches with Edge have looked good.

since he returned to wrestling.

That one with Randy Orton at WrestleMania was one of the worst things I've ever seen in my entire life.

And Moxley, on a good night, his stuff looks like shit.

So even if you get past the sickening spot later on, the work itself was bad.

And this was a bad match in my eyes.

Well,

let's get to some more of that because they finally, they got back to ringside.

And Moxley gave the DDT to Edge on the desk, which didn't...

didn't budge.

It didn't collapse.

They go to the break.

When they came back from the break, they were in the ring for the first time.

And there's the plumber beating Edge up with a chair and then puts the chair on Edge's neck and just leans on it for a while.

And then he gives the people the finger on camera.

And then he puts the chair gently around Edge's neck.

And Edge lays there immobile, in no way trying to remove this chair.

While Moxley goes to the fucking top rope, and then Edge gets up and throws the chair at him.

And then he superplexes him, the big superplex off the top rope.

And then they got up and traded fake forearms.

It's the same fucking match.

And then

Edge went under the ring and looked around for a second and came out with what appeared to be a cricket bat with spikes sticking out of the end of it.

It wasn't a baseball bat because it was flat.

There is nothing, no implement like this in the real world.

They made it.

I assume that maybe it was a cricket bat because there was a flat side that they could technically try to hit each other with.

But Edge gets the fucking bat with the spikes and gets in the ring.

And Moxley gives him an RKO and he drops it.

And so that was smart of Edge.

Every babyface wants to get out, get under the ring, introduce a weapon in the match that nobody's ever fucking seen before,

and then lose it to the heel like an idiot.

But Mox didn't lose it or didn't use it then

because, well, why would you use a bat with spikes in it when you can

fucking go outside the ring, pull out a table and slide it in?

That'll win you a fight a lot quicker than a bat with spikes in it.

And he took forever to lean it up in the corner, but that gave Edge an opportunity to get the bat with the spikes that even when Moxley took over, if he didn't want to use it, wouldn't you throw that out of the vicinity of the fight you were having, Brian?

Right away.

Well, no, Edge gets that and hits him with a gut shot

and then hits him with a shot to the back.

Now, Moxley didn't bump for either one of them,

but also

neither one of those drew any blood.

Which, again, my theory that they left a flat side so that you could hit with it.

But I'm trying to figure out what the spikes are because they were too light to be steel spikes, the way they're swinging that thing around.

But they didn't look like rubber.

Maybe they're plastic, I'm thinking.

And just then,

Edge grabs Moxley with the bat laying on the ground and gives him a suplex.

And Moxley lands back first on the bat,

and the spikes stick in his back.

Now, we're again, we're not talking about steel spikes that impaled him up to a depth of six inches.

It's like, I guess, stepping on a Lego or whatever the fuck.

These things stuck in,

and there were enough of them.

What

even a half inch deep?

I don't know what the fuck, this fucking idiot,

but they stuck in deep enough, and there were enough of them that it was stuck in his skin, and you could see it pulling his skin.

And he could stand up with the back in here or with the bat in his back,

and it was hanging off of him.

And the referee was looking and didn't know what to do.

And

they fucking

he's walking around with it in his back.

And it looks like some kind of goddamn

insane clown posse juggalo fucking dinner party or some bullshit.

That's my favorite album of theirs: Juggalo Dinner Party.

Well, they did have good horsesy overs.

But again,

the idiot took a bump on sharp plastic spikes, if that's what indeed it happened.

Hold on now, there's more.

Suddenly,

here comes Wheeler Useless, and he runs in and gives Edge the big knee.

And then he's trying to pull the bat out of the back.

And he can't.

So then

suddenly,

again, here's his teammate with a bat stuck in his back.

He can't figure out how to get it out.

So then suddenly he jumps out of the ring, runs around, and jumps up in Edge's arm.

So Edge can power bomb him through a fucking table on the floor at ringside.

So you think Moxley must have said, Let the referee get it out.

Go to your spot.

And then the referee pulled the bat out.

Have you noticed the fans groan when Wheeler Yuta appears in these because it's always a run-in to help Moxley near the end?

The fans groan when it happens.

Yes, and so do I.

And again, here's the thing.

Of course, the bat sticking in his back.

People are going, oh,

but

we'll talk about the psychological implications here momentarily.

But the point is, in the middle of this, now they've just completely lost track of what the fuck's going on.

Because it's supposed to be a world title match, but now this other guy's come in and knocked out the challenger and the fucking champion had a goddamn bat sticking out of his back.

And then here comes Claudio and Pack out and beat up Edge right in front of the referee because it's no disqualification.

So they get in the ring and they repeatedly double team him.

This is what pisses people off.

That's what causes the groans, even amongst smart fans.

Amongst regular fans, this would have caused a riot back in the day.

They would have been so mad at the referee and the promotion.

And this is what makes people lose faith in babyfaces.

Where are this guy's friends?

Oh, wait a minute.

They've got to wait until the heels set up a concerto because that's the spot where then

FTR can come out and start to save poor Edge.

But in the meantime, they look like idiots because this has been going on and going on and nobody's doing any goddamn thing.

And then, and again, by the way, Brian, you said

when the bat was stuck in dip shit

that you turned away, you didn't want to look at it.

That's what you told me earlier, but I didn't.

Yeah, no, when they first started pulling it out and I saw the skin kind of come up, that's when I was like, you know, I'm going to leave the room for a few minutes.

Yes, it was like pulling a guy out of barbed wire, whatever.

The skin is pulling and whatever.

But that I watched closely because I don't give a fuck about this guy.

I don't care whether he's hurt himself or not.

He did it on purpose and he's an idiot.

But I wanted to try to figure out

what kind of material they thought they could get by with making spikes out of.

And then they've got the concerto going on, but

FTR comes out and beats up.

And now the bat has mysteriously disappeared, even though that seems like that would win any fight anywhere.

But that's disappeared now.

But FTR beat up Claudio and PAC, and Dax gave Moxley a pile driver and then left the ring.

I'm sure Moxley put that spot in because here's another rule of thumb that they're too stupid to realize.

If you have babyfaces come out to save another babyface from a heel numbers attack in this situation, if FTR gets rid of the people that interfered, that makes it even.

But if one of the saving babyfaces does something offensive to the fucking guy in the match, then

the babyface he's wrestling has allowed somebody else to help him

and treads.

And subliminally, that's wrong psychology.

But Dax had to give Moxley that so that Moxley could get up after a pile driver.

And then Edge speared Moxley through the table.

Great looking pile driver, by the way.

That was perfect.

Oh, yeah, great-looking pile driver.

Yeah.

And Moxley was on his feet within seconds, standing in front of the table that Edge was supposed to spear him through.

And then cover one, two, and then Marina Schaefer shaves.

Marina Shafer, I wonder if Marina Schaefer shaves.

She uses Harry's from what I understand, Jim.

Let's talk more about our friends.

Well, no, you're only supposed to use Harry's on your face.

Now, I'm wondering if she's using manscaped.

But nevertheless, Schaefer shaved.

And

then here's Marina Schaefer.

beating up Edge in front of the referee.

And now the referee is a goddamn grown adult man, and he's not trying to do anything when a woman is beating up the participant.

But here comes Willow.

Hit Willow, hit Willow, hit Willow.

And she saves the day by beating up Marina Schaefer.

But

Pip Sabian comes in.

Have you lost track of who's involved in this match yet, Brian?

Not yet.

Pip Sabian comes in and Edge spears him.

But when Edge spears him, Nick Plain rolls in and gives Edge the Cody cutter

and then rolls out and referees what and

Moxley covers him two count.

And then Moxley gets the choke

and the referee stops it.

He just choked him out again.

At least that would have been some kind of fuck when the catch him.

But he gets him in a stationary hold where they're all immobile.

And then the referee just fucking ring the bell.

And the fans disappointed Boo.

It was the surly Boo, like,

oh, God, no, Boo.

Again, Boo.

Again, again.

And

the Boer horsemen leave,

flipping more fingers.

The faces are in the ring.

Dax will not help Edge up.

When Edge tries to reach up and get a hand, Edge won't help him up.

He walks out of the ring.

He blows off cash.

So you had

one, two, three, four,

six, seven.

You had seven.

No, I forgot.

You had 10 people interfere.

Was it nine?

After a guy was impaled by a fucking spiked bat.

And now the baby faces in the same segment are turning on each other

where the heels are trying to fuck some of the heels in the earlier day.

It's sad.

So sad.

It's a sad, sad situation, and it's getting more and more absurd, Brian.

Well, we'll see what happens.

The post-match tease and FTR turn.

I can't imagine it would turn against each other.

I would have to think the entire team would turn.

Otherwise, what the hell are you doing?

This was a bad match.

And I'm sorry.

I know Edge has a lot of fans from when they made him a main event and the stuff he did.

I used to be one of them.

I have not enjoyed anything with him.

His matches are terrible.

And Moxley's the worst wrestler on the planet.

Yeah.

We used to get a lot of heat.

If you think I get heat for things I say about the Rock, when I used to say that about Moxley, people wanted to kill me.

And now all those people realize I was right.

He's the worst wrestler on the planet and his instincts to do stupid stuff.

You know, for all the complaining you did about the pizza cutter spot during the domino spot or your commercial, whatever it was.

To me, I would rather have people see that than if they tuned in and saw that board sticking out of his back as it's being yanked and the skin pulling away.

That's too much.

That's a step way too far.

Watch the staff infection this fucking guy's going to get for that stupid thing.

No, no, no.

Staff is going to get a Moxley infection.

And again, the Death Rider stuff causes the AEW fans to feel unfulfilled.

The finishes are always bad.

The run-ins are like, you know, everyone loves the four horsemen, but they had too many run-ins in 1988.

And people expected it.

And they stood up and looked to the back.

You expect Yuda and Claudio to run in.

You look at who could potentially beat Moxley from Darby to Osprey, which is probably the most logical one, to whoever else.

It doesn't seem like that's on the horizon.

We may have to wait till Texas for that.

This Moxley run is Hall of Fame awful and it's one of the worst things I've ever seen as a wrestling fan in terms of just the worst stable, the worst promos, the worst matches.

The fans who go to these events don't like it, and the fans who watch it on TV don't like it.

Well, here's the thing with,

in all serious now, not even talking about...

I'm serious.

Well, no, in all serious now, what I'm about to say, not even talking about the

whether it's a good match or not.

It's not a debate now.

It's not up for,

you know, well, there's points to be made on both sides.

Moxley has mental issues of some description.

I'm not saying that he's fallen off the wagon.

He needs to go back to rehab.

I don't think this is a substance issue.

I think this is a mental problem.

Whether it's concussions, however many times he's been hit, whatever the fuck, did he used to act like this?

I've never met the fucking guy.

But we can all agree he's got problems.

And I think

they ought to have somebody looking at his fucking problems.

From his own mouth.

I think we can always say he has problems.

Yes.

I mean, what the normal people don't look like this, don't act like this, don't do these things.

And normal people don't like to watch people do these things.

That's why it's a subset of

modern society that gets into this type of fucking falder.

And Moxley idolizes.

That's right.

He idolizes Nick Gage.

He said that on TV.

I'm not putting words in his mouth.

Oh, he's the greatest fucking, yeah.

A mentally impaired criminal who was before and may or may not still be on drugs that nobody rational would want to associate with is this guy's fucking hero.

And

he has these fantasies that he is allowed and indulged to by the billionaire boy child to go on national TV and masturbate himself to these fantasies that he's Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees or a circus sideshow tough guy.

And

what he does is he makes people think like if

you put one of these juggalo conventions on goddamn network television.

People would laugh and they'd say, look at these fucking low-class brain-damaged trash.

Although that album, Juggalo Dinner Party, is

a real sleeper hit.

Well, they did try to do chamber music, but it's not just about running viewers off.

It's not just about

it's going to run their TV network off one of these days because let me get this straight.

TBS executives would not let.

Jay Briscoe be on their network because of tweets that he had made, not even on a wrestling program or but in his personal life.

But this

living, breathing septic tank, sewer dweller, can cuss and flip people birds and slice himself with razor blades and try to pour bleach down people's throats on their television network, and that's okay.

What is going on here?

Somebody needs to send this guy somewhere where professionals can examine or treat him, not put him on national television and indulge him.

He makes everybody think,

everybody that watches him think that people in wrestling are the equivalent of the geek, the sideshow geek.

The old pencil neck geek line from Freddie Blassey: the geek in the carnival sideshows was the lowest form of human life.

He was the guy that would bite the head off a live chicken if you bought 10 cents to see it.

And that is what Jon Moxley is.

Well,

he's making people in the business look like him, which is bad.

So I wish he would go bite the head off another chicken somewhere else.

Because this is,

that's why I say this is another chance for the WWE to, it doesn't make them look bad because you'll never see something like that on their television.

They can say, no, that's these other people.

That's these, you know, fucking outlaw people.

That's this low-class fucking bullshit company.

You don't want them.

You want us.

And they get the big money from sponsorships and they get the big money from deals.

And

they can differentiate themselves from that.

But

what the fuck?

There's even all of their audience they have already in AEW didn't like this.

So how do they think they're going to get a new audience with something like this?

They don't.

It's just what Moxley, Dick the Boozer, thinks is cool and badass and dope.

Is it dope, Brian?

No, it's Dope Moxley.

Well, there you go.

Even what Dope Moxley thinks is dope is what they're doing.

It's what's in the briefcase.

My dope.

And it's obviously not a belt because that's another thing.

The briefcase is way too light.

But

they have now impaled somebody on, well, he impaled himself on television.

But they think

that's where their minds are at.

This is an indie niche product, indie riffic, fringe mindset that they all have where they're all playing these parts that people just can't see in most all of them.

And they don't want to see this bullshit.

This was as distasteful as the time I was talking about when that

Judas Messiah on TNA made his debut and sliced Abyss up with fucking broken glass.

Abyss bladed both of his arms like a foot long apiece.

And I'm just, how are we still on the fucking air?

Thank God nobody at Spike TV paid any close attention.

The Spike representative came down and sat in a production meeting and then went and played golf.

And then came back and saw part of the show and then left early.

Otherwise, I think we'd have got cut off that night.

No, they only started paying attention when they heard that Russo was sending around emails about the product again.

Yeah, well, that was years later.

They say, he's back.

Oh, fuck.

No, we'll let somebody be sliced up with broken glass, but not that.

But that's, I mean,

again,

you know, until Tony takes a stand and until somebody just refuses to work with Moxley and indulge in this type of garbage, they're going to keep doing it, but they won't because they think it's good.

Got news for you, buckos.

Normal people don't want to see shit like that.

And somebody's going to say, well, Cornette likes blood and wrestling and violence and wrestling.

And if a trained professional who knew what he was doing and was over in the midst of having a great fight with another trained professional who was over and knew what he was doing, took a chair and swing and hit the other guy over the head with it.

And that guy bled buckets and they carried him out on a fucking stretcher in an ambulance, I would applaud that.

Because that is believable violence done and executed in a working fashion.

The reason I don't applaud this is because this was in the middle of an obviously fake fight

where everything looked like shit.

And then the guy took his own bump onto a stupid, goofy fucking weapon that doesn't really exist.

And the people sitting there knew that they're working together and he still impaled himself.

That means to me that I think that Jon Moxley is a stupid motherfucker.

As I'm sitting there going, well, they're working together.

He did that to himself on purpose.

You're a fucking idiot, John.

That's the difference.

It's gross.

It did, and not a dollar was drawn.

One is a fucking angle to shock people into, oh my God, I bet that guy wants to get even when he gets out of the hospital.

And the other one is, yeah, yeah that guy's a goof

that's it i like the fact that he's out there bleeding from multiple holes in his back dressed like a bum then you go to the back and there's his wife dressed like she just came out of bloomingdale's

the's going on there and what do you think that he she would have to say to him what what are you doing

You know what?

Honestly,

if it was me doing something like this, I would get a speech from Suzanne about the kids and me being there for the kids and them seeing things I do, whatever it was.

There's a lot of different ways to look at it.

That'd be the approach I'd probably.

How about don't be stupid in front of our children?

They think that their father is a moron and the kids at school make fun of them.

So drop it.

Oh, well.

Well, that was the worst segment of the week and one of the worst matches I've seen in forever.

But now you know what it's safe to do, don't you, Brian?

No, what is safe to do now?

No.

Now we can eat.

You didn't want to eat before you watched that match.

You would have lost your dinner, but now we can we can eat a fine meal.

Now that we know that Moxley's out of the way, nothing more can hurt us.

You got to look at it that way.

You got to space your dinner time out, Brian.

Don't eat before you have to watch Moxley.

Because there could be involuntary responses from the gut and the esophagus and the trachea that would just hurl anything that you ate right back out into the open air.

Well, why don't we focus on when it is a good time to eat and specifically what you should eat?

What's good to eat when it's a good time to eat?

Well, it's a good time to eat after Moxley's out of the way because you don't want to look at something like that.

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And you know, when you can control randomization, you've got it made.

It's just like sincerity.

When you can fake that, you're on Easy Street.

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I'm still alive and still enjoying the fine.

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Oh, keto.

But I'll tell you something right now, folks.

You can heat them and eat them, but don't eat them and heat them.

I made that mistake.

I read it wrong the first time.

How does it happen?

I ate them.

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Well, Brian, for good or bad, that was most of the television program.

We will finish it out here briefly.

Renee, Mochle Good, was in the back.

Like, you know, like her husband had not just been impaled,

talking to another one of the lucha guys.

Was this Bandito?

You made my mother cry.

This was Bandito, yes.

Yeah, well, Bandito's mother was crying.

Boy, you should have seen her reaction when his brother was born.

She positively sobbed.

And then we had A.R.

Fox and Will Osprey.

And

maybe that was because somebody didn't show up, but how did

They're in Omaha in a blizzard, right?

And they've got travel issues.

How does a guy show up that we haven't seen in a year in good weather?

How the fuck did he get there?

He's a true pro.

He's always ready for action.

Always,

he just said, I'll just stay in Omaha and wait till they need me sometime.

And

Will one with the elbow.

He hit him with his armpit, at least this time.

He didn't go straight over his head.

God, Domite, of all the things that guy does that looks so much better than the elbow is the thing he goes to.

Do you think Oscar is going to be the guy to take the belt off Moxley?

Based on what we know about how Tony treats people that he likes and based on what he would want, and who do you think it'll be?

That's the thing is,

it would have been good if Will could have won it in,

you know, the big stadium in England.

Since they're going, the stadium show this year is in Texas.

I'd say maybe they have a cowboy win it but the only cowboy they got is adam page and he drives a fucking tesla and he's from virginia and the people in texas would laugh at him and he lost all charisma that he actually had when he cut his hair

he cut he also he's he's coloring it

either or was he coloring it before and now he's not coloring it he needs to go back to whatever he was doing Well, we'll have more next week about simpler hair color.

A friend of ours here on the show.

Yes, maybe that maybe they could help him out with one way or the other, get him restored back but nevertheless the main event on this fine program

megan brain versus chris statlander

and i think they meant to do this too but moxley didn't want to go on last and have nobody seem so they put the girls on last and they put tony storm on color to try to keep an audience maybe it worked maybe it didn't

But seriously, they put these girls in this position, a one-on-one girls match when they've just had gang warfare with 10 people run in and a guy impaled 20 minutes previously.

Is that building a show to

an explosive climax, Brian, or is this more like a premature ejaculation?

Well, it also depends how you see it.

Do you think that Moxley Copeland match, when it ended, did it drive anyone off?

And then beyond that, the normal drop-off at the end of the show.

And then beyond that, the women segments always do an AEW typically worse than the male segments, especially at the end of the show.

So, yeah, they didn't have a lot of hope here.

But I thought it was an all right match.

I liked it.

Well, I got to be honest with you.

I saw that this was going on and I thought, well, maybe somebody's going to come out and be beheaded at the end of the program.

So I was fast-forwarding and

I got to the end of the show.

And apparently, the girls overran.

So I followed the protocol and recorded modern family and went to the overrun and fast forwarded and nobody came out and got beheaded

they just had the girls match and that was it

yeah i'm not sure why uh megan bain needs penelope ford it doesn't really seem like a good fit

and uh

it would be like a screen door needing needing a submarine or vice versa you know who'd be perfect i don't know how the matches would go let me just say that but in terms of just presence you know it'd be perfect to come back and confront Megan Bain?

Camille.

But

then again, as you said, how would the matches go?

Because

the one advantage Camille has

in working with a lot of these greenhorns is that she's big enough to move them around, even if they don't know where to go.

But boy, old Megan Brain, if she don't know where to go, she'd be hard to put there.

Just food for thought.

brain food

well that was i don't know why you call her megan brain megan bain

oh is that her name and chris statlander who you've always said nice things about so no reason to yeah but shit on everything they do they just bring her in now just for somebody to beat her so i've kind of lost the hope that anything will happen

but i have a pad and a pen of paper here brian A pad and a pin of paper.

Well, good for you.

A pen and a pad of paper.

Well, hey, I got some shit to write with over here.

And I need for you to dictate to me what the ratings were on this fine episode of Dynamite featuring Vlad the Impaler and his Transylvania quartet.

What were the ratings?

What were the quarters?

What did they like?

What did they not like?

Are they still stuck where they've been?

AEW Dynamite on TBS, Wednesday, March 19th, 2025,

8 to 10:08 p.m.

on average, watched by 658,000 viewers.

Hey,

that is the highest key demo number since November 20th and the highest overall number since January 15th.

I was about to say that they got, what, 30,000 or so better than last week?

Because they have been stuck in the pocket.

They went from the high fives through the, what, 620s or something, and they were in there for

what, last five or six weeks, right, at least.

And now they've broken out of that and they got a whole 650.

Remember when their rotten-rated quarters at the end of the show a while back were 658,000?

Now that's their overall average.

Where did they start this fine week?

Well, let's go to the quarterly breakdown.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one, eight to eight fifteen p.m.

Orange Cassidy versus Ricochet versus Mark Davis versus speed ball Mike Bailey with picture in picture

765,000 viewers.

Okay,

well, I don't think that's going to last long.

Well, we go to quarter two.

I guess that's all you have to say.

The continuation of the aforementioned match, the post-match, and an ad break,

666,000 viewers.

99.

They missed it by that much of losing 100,000 people.

And, you know, I had somebody on Twitter the other day say, well, the Big Bang theory isn't giving them the lead in like it used to because they've cycled through all the however many seasons of Big Bang and now it's reruns of reruns.

So

it still seems to me the same thing, just fewer

people

involved in that when they were starting with 900 and something thousand off the Big Bang, they would lose 100,000, they'd be down to 800 and something.

That's still better than 600 and something, but they always,

no matter what's going on since the start of this program, they lose.

With very few exceptions, 100, 150,000 people of their big lead in, and then it settles down and then droops at the end.

Is this where we're going?

We shall find out.

We go to quarter three, 8.30 to 8.45 p.m.

Mercedes Monet

versus Billy Starks with Picture and Picture,

675,000 viewers.

Ooh, they actually picked up 9 more thousand.

And in the key demo, other than quarter one, which is slightly inflated from the show that airs for a minute into the show, which was 293, the high point in the key demo at 274,000.

And that

also,

well, that's kind of pretty much normal fluctuation, but they've stopped the bleeding that they don't continue to drop when normally they drop on a girls match.

But they've still got the world title main event coming up.

Let's see what happens there.

Well, we first go to quarter four,

8:45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of Monet versus Starks,

the Outrunners video,

an ad break, the MJF video promo,

and the start of Jon Moxley versus Cope,

647,000 viewers.

Ouch!

That uh, they hit a rough patch there.

That's 28,000 to the to the negative.

So they're starting the top of the hour with 647,000.

It's a world title.

It's the top of the hour.

It's stars such as they have.

They've got to pick something up here, don't they?

We go to quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour.

The continuation of Cope versus Dope with picture-in-picture ads.

678,000 viewers.

Okay, they picked up 31,000.

I guess beggars can't be choosers, except for the opening quarter.

That's the highest rated 15 minutes so far.

And they've been in the pockets: 666, 675, 647, 678.

But now,

how do we feel after the vampire had the stake driven through his heart?

There's more vampire.

We go now to quarter six, 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

The continuation of Moxley versus Copeland.

The post-match with the Death Riders, FTR, and Willow Nightingale.

An ad break.

The Bandito Johnny TV backstage angle.

704,000 viewers.

Oh, they went back up another 26,000.

Do you think 26,000 people got on the phone to somebody and said, hey, this fucking idiot's got a bat stuck in his back?

I think that match went through three quarters.

And if there's anything that gets credit for it, it has to be that match.

But is it the, is it credit for wow, we're really interested in this product, or is it credit for, wow, this fucking horrible car wreck took place?

Take a look at it.

That's the point.

It gets credit for the number.

It doesn't get credit for whatever the after results are.

But we go now to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

A.R.

Fox

versus Will Ospreay with Picture and Picture Ads

and the Adam Page Backstage Promo.

597,000 viewers.

Oh, gee, okay.

So 107,000 now said, well, there's nothing more to see here.

We go now to quarter eight.

I remind you, we have an eight-minute overrun.

Oh, I can't wait to hear that one.

An ad break.

Stop it now.

An ad break.

The Megan Bain versus Chris Statlander match.

And picture-in-picture ads.

594,000 viewers.

Oh, not as bad as I thought.

Eight-minute overrun, including the post-match with Tony Storm,

537,000 viewers.

That's as bad as I thought.

So they went not a bad week for them over.

They went from 765,000 to 537,000 in two hours.

That's only 228,000 people.

That's not as bad as normal.

I think it's a big positive for, well, it's a positive for them because the stuff I don't like that they shoved down everyone's throat.

This is the one week where people actually tuned in to see this thing.

Whether it was the build, whether it was the social media reaction as it was happening to the sickening freak show that it was.

Who knows?

We'll see who comes back next week.

But those were the numbers.

AEW Dynamite, March 19th.

Next week, they'll say the geek is back and he's got a bigger chicken to bite this week.

Well,

you know, Brian, I think some of these people need a new line of work.

Some of these people just need to get out of the wrestling business.

But fortunately, there's a place where they can go where they can actually make money, especially if they stay in their own homes and avoid sharp implements.

And that's with our friends at Shopify, because we now have put our literal money where our mouth is.

Shopify is helping us deliver these fine program t-shirts that we talked about earlier in the show to the fine folks out there in the cult of Cornette, whether it be the drive-through shirt or the corny show or any of the drive-through shirts or the corny shirt or more to come.

Shopify is involved because you know what you hear, Brian, when you talk about Shopify,

boy, howdy.

That's the sound you're going to hear of money pouring into your cash register.

If you don't have a cash register shopify will sell you one and then they'll take the money out of your account but it'll be well worth it because folks shopify is the number one checkout on the planet they are the platform that sells wherever your customers are nobody does selling better than shopify and

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Right now,

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A dollar or no, three cents a day.

See, I put the, see, that's why we got Shopify.

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Very professional ending.

Thank you very much.

Shopify.

Oh, you keep, you keep harassing me if I talk about how you can, you know, charge hookers on your Shopify account.

Again, don't do that.

But Shopify, we're not just a client we're also a client yes

and we're also hookers well this is your show i'm just trying to stall yes it is

all right

and now we have to do mid-south so let's get on the road

hold on hold on instead of because i've got a an out here we have been here a while so why don't we do this why don't we reschedule because i want to talk about the superdome We're going to reschedule the mid-south segment for next week when we have even less to talk about because certainly nobody's going to be impaled next week.

And let's give the people a little nice, fun,

light,

frivolous, classic wrestling type of guest the program segment to close out

our festivities here.

So we don't leave the people with the impaling.

And then we'll dive deep into Mid-South on the next experience.

What a great idea.

So this is your show.

So are we going through your programs?

You're going to be asking me.

No, I'm asking you.

that's not the way it works i we tried that one time and you were

you were too good all right you were not entertaining is what it was so so now you're gonna ask me and i'm gonna fucking divulge this information well i have some of the stuff here i was saving for the drive-through i meant to get to it on the last drive-through and we ran out of time that's because we keep running out of time I got here, you know, one of these days I got to talk to you about these two.

I got a whole collection of like mid-50s fan club bulletins, but these aren't like the 70s ones.

These are professionally printed.

Amazing, like quality of paper.

It's incredible, these things.

What's the title?

Well, this one here

I got three editions of the Don Arnold Fan Club.

We're still on the mat for Don.

This is Bulletin 16, Bulletin 15, and Bulletin 13, September 55.

And this is all.

I do not have any of the Don Arnold Fan Club bulletins, but they went to more trouble back in those days.

And then I have the anniversary issue, Rogers International, the world for Rogers, Nature Boy Buddy Rogers, April 1st, 1955 to April 1st, 1956.

The first anniversary edition

features some photos, some mimeograph paper,

some articles, birthday wishes, and much more.

And much more.

Let's get to some programming.

Mimeograph.

That's a word you don't hear enough anymore.

Mimeograph.

All right, Jim, let's start with this card.

The opening bout.

Actually, it appears that the participants in a tag team bout had two singles bouts beforehand, too.

Pampero Furpo versus Pete Sanchez.

And the Great Antonio versus Thomas Maron.

Okay.

Then the two teams wrestled in a two out of three false tag team bout.

Pampero Furpo and the Great Antonio versus Thomas Maron and Pete Sanchez.

Iron Mike DiBiase

versus Arnold Skoland.

Don Curtis versus Jack Vansky.

Tiger Jack Vansky.

Bear Cat Wright versus Chet Wallach.

And the final preliminary or undercard match, time limit, one fall.

Bruno San Martino versus Larry Simon.

Oh, Larry Simon later to become the great Boris Malenko.

The main event, one fall to a finish.

Antonino Raca

versus Haystack Calhoun.

Whoo, alrighty.

Well,

this on the surface of it would appear to be in the Northeast.

We're talking the New York, New Jersey, Boston area.

It is the early 60s.

Mike DiBiase being on the card kind of thread.

And Bruno against

Bruno against Larry Simon.

When you mentioned Bearcat Wright and then Bruno, I'm thinking, maybe am I leaning toward Toronto, but then Raqqa and Calhoun.

to me brings it back to the Northeast.

Pampiro Furpo and the great Antonio actually had,

they won or did they have maybe two tag team matches in Madison Square Garden, did they not, in 61 or 62?

But they were a team.

Thomas Marin and Pete Sanchez, longtime Northeast underneath talent, Arnold Skolin, say no more.

Don Curtis

would have been in the Northeast around that time.

Curtis and Lewin were a team.

Geez.

And of course, Raqqa and Haystacks Calhoun.

This would have been, with Raqqa on top of Bruno, this would have been before 1963.

The question is, it doesn't seem like that would be Madison Square Garden,

but it would be

a secondary

town in that.

And I don't even think it looks like

a Boston card or

a Philly card might have been

an in-between town.

But let's go with

something in the state of New York in 1962.

Impressive and also very close.

The Sunnyside Garden, Long Island.

Okay.

So you get the area.

May 31st, 1960.

1960.

Brat.

Okay.

Bruno was a complete rookie.

And that's why Raqqa and Calhoun was okay.

Yeah.

I agree.

So who was the babyface and who was the heel in that main event?

Calhoun would have probably got booed more than Raqqa just because of where it was in the time period.

But I think they just went on a main event on a spot show based on names that would draw.

How often was Haystack Calhoun a

Almost never.

I mean, he would have just been the heelish.

It's like Seth Rollins and Punk now.

More people are cheering for Punk, but Seth is still kind of a babyface.

The people in the building would have just picked Raqqa probably more than Calhoun.

But they were the biggest names at the time on the card.

Bruno was nobody yet.

And Bearcat Wright

was nobody in that territory.

And he wasn't yet to main event in Chicago.

So really they were the two biggest names by far on the card.

So that's the main event.

And by the way, the times

two years off.

And the times of the matches, the main event, 11 minutes, 15 seconds.

San Martino versus Simon, 6 minutes, 45 seconds.

Barricat Wright versus Chet Wallach, 4 minutes, 15 seconds.

Don Curtis versus Jack Vansky, 7 minutes, 45 seconds.

Iron Mike DiBiase versus Arnold Skoland.

Okay, I don't know if these times are for this match or the one under that are two out of three falls.

6.45, 7.35,

6 on the button.

And the two singles matches, Furpo versus Sanchez, 3 minutes, 10 seconds.

Antonio versus Thomas Maron, 5 minutes, 20 seconds.

Oh, I bet that was a long five minutes, too.

So for a house show, too, I mean, you never hear people complain, oh, the matches were always so short.

But compared to now, it stands out, really.

everything there one minute went over 10 minutes and well and

that was a spot show in in the northeast because this is 1960

in 1960 most of the territories in let's say out at texas way or in the south would have only had

three, maybe four, maybe five matches anyway.

And a lot of them would have been two out of three falls and there wouldn't have been this many guys on the card.

But since they had a lot of mouths to feed and this was a spot show, not Madison Square Garden or Philadelphia or whatever.

Is it a spot show if it's a regular club, though?

They're here every Tuesday.

Well, okay.

Well, I shouldn't say spot show.

That's

mischaracterizing it, but it was one of the smaller towns, Sunnyside Gardens.

They're going to have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight matches.

with a lot of underneath names and a main event and nobody's going to put and the tag guys had to work twice, so nobody's going to put a lot of time in.

But

when you dick around with announcements in between the matches and an intermission, you got your two-hour show.

It's for the same reason that,

you know, at the same year in Nashville, they would have had a tag match and two singles matches on the card, and it would have still lasted two hours.

All right.

Well, that was the first program.

Let's go to this next one.

I got two here to choose from.

I think I'll go with this.

The opening bout,

the first preliminary, Carol Krauser, 220 out of New York, versus Ellis Bashara, 239 Norman, Oklahoma.

The person who wrote in the program wrote, hate him.

The second preliminary also won fall 15-minute time limit.

Al Lovelock

versus Jack LaRue,

220 out of Washington, Iowa.

Okay, I'm wondering if this is a woman's program because Al Lovelock, it says don't know.

Jack LaRue, it says do know.

There's like they've never seen that person before or whatever.

And then next to a few of them, it says swell.

Jim Casey, third preliminary, one fall, 15-minute time limit.

Jim Casey, 220 out of Ireland, versus Paul Bosch, 228, Long Beach, New York.

The semifinal, one fall to a finish.

Corporal Lewis Fez

vs.

Bob Wagner

240 at a Portland, Oregon.

And the main event for a championship I won't name

at Catch Waits.

Buddy Rogers, the champion.

It says here, Dream Guy

versus Leroy McGurk.

Swell, like him.

Leroy McGurk, 195 out of Tulsa.

Buddy Rogers, 215 at a Camden, New Jersey.

Okay.

Carol Krauser, and this was not the same one, but at one point, Carl Gotch used that name, did he not, in later years?

Am I thinking of something else?

He used Carl Krauser, maybe.

Carl Krauser.

By the way, this is autographed by Carol Krauser, and it says on the program that Carol Krauser will be at the program desk at eight o'clock, and Corporal Louis Thez will autograph during intermission.

Well, there's somewhat of a giveaway here that it happened during the World War II years

because of Corporal Lou Thes.

Al Lovelock later on would go to become go on to become the great Bolo, right?

Ellis Bashara was an old-timer

in the 40s and 50s, worked a lot of the southern territories.

Bob Wagner, unlike his more successful older brother, Honus,

never

got too big of a reputation.

Paul Bosch, we all know who that was, but this was in his wrestling days.

And Jim Casey

is because Steve Casey and

God damn, what was the other Casey's brother's name in Boston?

It wasn't Jim, was it?

Is he trying to, is this trying to be like a fake Dusik, a fake Casey brother?

You're not going to give me any help, are you?

C-A-S-E-Y, Jim Casey, I don't know.

I'm looking around the program to see if it indicates anything, but I don't see anything.

What I've said, because in Boston,

Steve Casey was one of the world champions for Paul Bowser.

And Buddy Rogers and Leroy McGurk.

For a title you will not name, Rodgers,

it wasn't the world title

because Rogers never had it that early, but was it McGurk and the junior heavyweight title?

People think Texas for Paul Bosch.

People think

Oklahoma for Leroy McGurk.

Fez

being on this card, he was booked at that time or in those days in the 40s out of the St.

Louis office.

Is this

god damn it?

Is it, this is 1945, and it's either somewhere in Texas or Oklahoma.

The year or the date, Wednesday, April 10th, 1946.

Houston, Texas.

Okay.

I was going to say Houston, but I thought, you know, it's

and it's

ironic, Paul Bosch working there on the card with what he would go on to do later on.

But I didn't think they would still be calling Thez a corporal when the war was over.

So I do apologize.

Yeah, no, Thez ought to be, whoa, this is a.

But I should have known Houston because Rogers was at one point, didn't he win the Texas title as one of, what was that?

Was it the Texas title?

It was the World Junior Heavyweight title.

The Texas Heavyweight Championship.

Rogers was an early Texas heavyweight champion.

That's one of the first major belts that he won.

So there you go.

And this is when Corporal Lewis still had his Unibrow.

Let's go to the second one.

All right.

I'm trying to find a good one for you.

Trying to find a good one.

Let's go to this one.

The program itself is interesting.

It may be a giveaway, but we'll find out.

Buck Zumhoff versus Bob Kinkade.

Mickey Doyle

vs.

Tony Roko

Johnny Eagle

vs.

Kurt von Steiger

The final preliminary Dutch Savage vs.

Apache Bull Ramos

A Super Special Bout

Jimmy Snooka

vs.

The Avenger

and the main event for a championship I will not name,

Ed Wiskowski versus Lord Jonathan Boyd.

Okay, well, we're definitely in the Portland territory.

What was the giveaway for that?

I'm not going to lie and pretend that we aren't.

Well, the whole card, but when you got to

Johnny Eagles and Von Steiger.

Oh, okay.

And then Savage and Ramos, that kind of...

Yeah, I thought that was the giveaway, if anything.

Yeah, well, I was...

at first when you said zoom hoff obviously besides prison i was thinking about the await but then tony rocco and mickey doyle i don't think mickey doyle ever worked for vern

johnny eagles was an english or a british wrestler

that uh that had a big eagle tattooed on his chest but they brought him into the tennessee territory in 1973

as Johnny Eagles.

And as soon as people saw him facially, he looked exactly like Eddie Marlin with a little bit longer hair so

they changed his name to Johnny Eagles Marlon and then Johnny Marlon as as Eddie Marlin's cousin from England like a sitcom because they were almost identical but he was the man of a thousand holes type of deal Kurt von Steiger Dutch Savage and Bull Ramos are two guys that are

really identified with the Portland territory.

And this snooker was there before he

went on to greater things.

I can't remember who the Avenger was, but probably one of their longtime heels doing a hooded thing.

And with Wiskowski,

Ed Wiskowski would later become Colonel DeBeers in the AWA.

And Jonathan Boyd would be one of the sheepherders with Luke Williams for a while, but in this case, he was a royal kangaroo,

I believe, at that time period.

Jonathan Boyd, Luke Williams, and Butch Miller would rotate around in that team at various points.

So, yes, we're in the Portland territory, probably Portland.

And the year,

with Snooka there, and Boyd, is it 19?

And Zumhoff, is it 1977?

We are in the Pacific Northwest, the Portland Sports Arena.

Don Owen presents

Northwest Wrestling Tuesday, August 22nd, 1978.

Ah!

Some interesting things in this program.

Of course, Sandy Barr's Flea Market has an ad for that, as well as

if I look over here, we have what happens when bad guys turn good.

Also, please mention Northwest Wrestling when patronizing our sponsors.

But the interesting thing about this program is it's a tribute to Lonnie Maine, who had just died.

Moondog Maine.

Okay.

It has an interesting article here.

I don't know what this is from.

It's entitled 24 Hectic Hours.

On April 14th, 1978, the wrestling world wept, wrestlers and fans alike.

The news was shocking when it went out through the hearts of young and old, and rich and poor.

Lonnie died in the hospital at Anaheim, California after being in a coma for 24 hours.

The following is an account of what happened, according to our exhaustive searching, of which we have not yet got answers to all of our questions.

Who's writing this?

It doesn't have any name attributed to it.

On Sunday, august thirteenth, nineteen seventy-eight, Lonnie Main, alias one man gang, blonde bomber, moon

had his last wrestling match.

It was at San Bernardino, California.

Upon leaving the dressing room and walking to his car, he dropped his wrestling bag and almost collapsed to the ground.

Another wrestler behind him asked Lonnie if something was wrong.

Lonnie picked up his bag and turned to the wrestler and said, You know, I feel like I'm gonna die.

The other wrestler responded, I'll drive your home, Lonnie, to Long Beach, at which Lonnie retorted, Nah, I'll make it.

At that, he went on to his car.

A few minutes later, he was in Anaheim in an ambulance, unconscious, on his way to the hospital.

Witnesses at the scene related to the police that the Red Trans Am, which he purchased in Portland last summer, was traveling a little faster than the other traffic when it went to the right a little, hitting about six groups of fog bumps.

Then all of a sudden, it turned about 40 degrees to the left, never turning again.

The Trans Am came to a stop after crossing to the other side of the freeway and colliding head on with another car.

Lonnie had some lacerations where his head hit the windshield.

A lady, driving the other car, was killed instantly.

At the hospital, doctors repaired his head lacerations and discovered that he had been bleeding internally.

He had been for quite some time.

Lonnie did not have any identification whatsoever, and no one knew of his whereabouts until 24 hours after his death.

Those who knew Lonnie knew that he had a big fat wallet which he always took out of his back pocket and placed on the dash of his car.

So his ID was either lost in the accident or stolen by spectators at the accident.

I feel, as many others do, that from the loss of blood, Lonnie Main passed out and slumped against the steering wheel, holding the car in a straight course,

which took him to the other side of the freeway.

The state of California recorded his death as a traffic fatality.

This is a sorry epitaph for an athlete who put his life on the line every time he climbed in the ring.

Boy,

in more ways than one, it was a sorry piece of writing, also.

But that's, you know, basically what happened is that car wreck, he

apparently passed out or whatever.

And

boom, but he was, it was like the Randy Savage thing where he'd had a heart attack.

And by the time he hit the tree, he was probably gone anyway.

He's another one of those guys,

almost like Dennis Condry, where you hear his age and you're like, no way.

And Ronnie Mayne, what was he?

He was in his like 30s, right?

When he died.

Oh, yeah.

He may have just been 30 or 31, 32, something like that.

But because of the moondog gimmick and the long hair and the craziness and the scars, you know, he looked older.

He didn't really look old, but he didn't look young.

He just looked like

he shouldn't be that young.

All right.

This is your show.

So I'll stop you with a, or I'll end here with one final one.

Very good.

I'm going to get this one.

I have both the card and the flyer here.

All right.

The opening bout:

Brad Ringgans

vs.

Dave Barbie.

The second bout, Jerry Allen vs.

Salvatore Balomo.

The third encounter, Tom McGee

vs.

Red Demon.

The fourth bout, Coco Beware

vs.

Frenchie Martin.

A tag team bout, Brian Blair, B.

Brian Blair, and Jim Brunzell, the Killer Bees,

versus Brutus Beefcake and Greg the Hammer Valentine.

And the main event, one fall, one-hour time limit, the natural Butch Reed versus Jake the Snake Roberts.

Well, obviously, it is a WWF event from the 80s.

And

the question is the exact year and/or where it would have been.

And going from the top down, Butch Reed versus Jake Roberts,

that's a B-show main event that they were running or that they would have run at this particular point in time.

And Blair and Brunzel, the killer bees against Beefcake and Valentine.

I wish I was as good with my WWF history as

you are, because that would tell you right there.

I'd narrow it down when they were a team.

Coco being on the card, doesn't it?

Tom McGee.

This is during the period of time where they were trying that experiment.

They were putting him on BC shows non-televised against,

you know, guys, just to see if something could come through.

The red demon, who the fuck knows?

It may have been Lombardi under a hood.

Sal Balomo was a big deal in the WWF or a bigger deal a few years before, but he was just riding it out now.

And Ringens

against whoever the fuck Dave Barbie was makes me

want to think that maybe they were in Minnesota

because I don't remember Brad Reynolds having a full-time run of any kind with

the WWF.

So,

but this doesn't look like a show that they would have booked into Minneapolis

at the Target Center or the St.

Paul Civic Center.

It wouldn't be that big.

So

maybe Wisconsin.

Green Bay, Wisconsin, in

1986.

I didn't think you'd get the town because it is a spot show.

You said B town and maybe a C show.

Remember, at the time, they ran four shows a night.

WWE.

That's how crazy it was.

Tuesday, February 24th, 1987.

The Susan B.

Wagner High School, Staten Island, New York.

Oh, Jesus.

This is promoter Tommy D's 11th anniversary show celebrating 1976 to 1987.

The best misprint on here is natural hacksaw butch reed managed by sleek.

Sleek.

Staten Island, New York.

What?

Brad Ringans?

Was he there?

I didn't even remember that.

Tickets, by the way, way, on sale at the Corner Market on Forest Avenue, Rays Island Sports, Carvelle Ice Cream Store at the Staten Island Mall.

Also, the Susan Wagner High School Football Office.

And that's how you do local promotion in New York.

There you go.

Susan Wagner.

That was Bob Wagner's.

daughter.

You know what?

I don't know about that.

It's interesting.

I have a bunch of them here.

We won't do anymore.

I said that was the last one, but how often WWE ran small shows in the New York area, even as things were blowing up.

Here's

Walt Whitman High School, Huntington, New York.

That's on Long Island, February 3rd, 87.

May 24th, 87, Canarsie High School, Brooklyn, New York.

And then this one here,

this is a different one.

This is in Salisbury, Maryland, but that was guest approach.

And I can tell you real briefly why they did that because

when they were running three or four towns a night, they couldn't all be, you know, big metropolises.

But at the same time, if they didn't run those three or four towns, these guys, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, there are 14 guys wouldn't get paid.

So

they ran a lot more in the Northeast because they still had the connections.

They'd been running those fundraisers at high schools through the 70s in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, New Jersey.

Arnold Scholin, a lot of those guys had contacts that they could run and they could still make money on them, but they didn't need to

make a fortune on Staten Island, New York.

If they paid the boys for that night and the office got a booking fee and the local promoter got a payoff, then that was fine because the main crew was at the spectrum or at the Boston Garden or whatever, and they were going to make the office a $50,000 profit in one night.

So this was.

This was just repetition and volume and keeping the guys paid.

And the more money the guys made from Staten Island, New York that night instead of being off, that contributed to them being happier and wanting to stay.

And this was Tommy D.

Tommy D.

had been a local promoter for them up here for years.

You may have seen his pictures and programs every now and then.

And somewhere in the next couple of years after this, they stopped working with him and he just ran indie shows.

And a lot of the guys that...

When they would leave WWE, they would come up here and they would work for him in Brooklyn or Staten Island.

But that was.

Yeah, they stopped working with a lot of the local promoters when they got too big and were only running bigger buildings.

And that opened up opportunities for guys to go and do independent shows.

And those people knew had all the connections with the arenas and the advertising.

But there it was.

There it was.

And this is your show.

And there we were, folks.

We've been here for a while.

We will have more next week.

And the drive-thru is coming up in a couple of days.

And hopefully nobody gets impaled between now and next week.

And until then, thank you.

impale you and bye-bye everybody get the experience get the experience of jim card net

of jim cornet

of jim cornet