Episode 572: Naked

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Like the midnight and the rock and roll, he's in a fight for wrestling soul using a racket and some mind control.

He's Jim Cornish.

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 Cornet.

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 prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another fine, fine edition of the Jim Cornette Experience.

I am indeed Jim Cornette, and today, AEW tried to jump the shark, but it looked more like evil can evil falling into the Snake River Canyon, and the WWE is caught between the rock and a hard way.

We're going to talk about all that and more in joining me.

Hawaii and Brian the Podcasting Lion, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-Host of you.

If I'm I'm in shark-infested water, he's always my chum.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

I messed that up.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again for another fun-packed show.

I guess the last couple of shows have been really WWE-heavy.

We're kind of in a weird little middle period before they do something else that everyone's talking about.

Well, they're still talking about it.

We're going to talk about what people are talking about that they did.

So that's a big part of it

uh apparently um

mr hollywood is uh is just bopping in and making some changes uh

that we sort of could tell because it didn't really flow but now a lot of people talking about it so we'll talk about it we'll talk about what they're talking about you're talking about the rock

Well,

you know, no, your favorite movie star.

Well, when you said Mr.

Hollywood, I actually thought you were talking about yourself for a moment there.

Well, no, I am released today

uh i got the official paperwork i don't have to report anymore but no i'm i'm released uh today as we are talking here right now i'm talking to you the queen of the ring is officially released nationwide i'm sure to not only the critical acclaim that it's been getting so far you know

a lot of the

experienced thespians in the in the piece have been getting some quite excellent reviews.

I think mine are going to start dribbling and drabbling in as they see, wait a minute, who is that exciting newcomer that lit up the screen and captivated us like a De Niro or a Pacino

or a

David Faustino?

He's the only one I can think of to rhyme with Pacino.

You know, I think those are going to start coming in as they see my performance and the magnitude of me has a chance to sink in, Brian.

What do you think?

You know, a lot of the greats, when when they debut, the reviews are slow in coming in that they steal the picture eventually.

Yeah, I guess you could be a sleeper star of the film.

A lot of people were asleep by the third scene I was in.

Have you seen the pictures of like the other openings of the various wrestling stars from both companies and beyond?

Yes.

That have been going on.

Yes, but

Infinity and Beyond.

Certain people not under contract currently with a major company.

Well, yeah, well, well, there's a lot of people because there's the people associated with the people that are in the movie, and then they come and then they bring people that they're associated with.

But all I know is that some of these big stars didn't bother to come to Louisville like they came to New York, apparently.

I'll excuse Prince Nana because he lives there.

He would have had to come a pretty fur piece for Louisville.

Well, anyway, Brian, right here at the top of the program is generally

where we

get acquainted with what's going on in our lives here.

We don't do like the WWE does.

We don't have the hell in a cell before we have a hell in a cell, or we don't have a Royal Rumble before we have a Royal Rumble.

We do the show, and we have a brief,

very minimal conversation before the program so as not to talk and catch up and then we'll be done really the show, right?

That's why we sound just like two bros catching up on the phone.

Just two bros,

bro A and bro B.

See, we don't, we don't, if we had four guys, we'd have to include bro D.

But we do, we, we, we, we just, we catch up.

Let's see, it would naturally follow.

That was a sleeper joke.

Took me a second.

Yeah, well, see, I'm a, I'm a sleeper kind of guy.

So

we catch up here at the top of the program on what's going on in our lives.

And sometimes we just refer to it in gloss over terms, a happy talk.

What's going on?

Sometimes it's what's going on in our lives.

Sometimes it's what's going on in the news.

It's something funny, something ironic, like Ray

on your wedding day.

That's actually more like just bad luck.

But it's something that, you know, some amusement, some people can get some entertainment out of.

And

since i talked to you it's only been a couple days there's really nothing entertaining happened in my life so i thought i would turn to the news because i looked on the on the yahoo thing

and that's there's always the the funny story about somebody just doing something really stupid or some crazy thought-provoking thing going on it just makes you go hmm or whatever

Something of an entertaining, uplifting, light-hearted, little way to break into the program.

I looked at the news today.

There is no happiness.

There is just misery and fucking negativity in every area of fucking news,

of every headline that I was argument in Congress and fucking so-and-so reveals tumors and so-and-so was dead for days before the body was found.

I mean, just fucking ridiculous.

What the fuck?

Even we,

with our not only amazing talent, but also questionable taste, can't make fun out of this shit.

And then I found something here, and I haven't even clicked on it because I wanted to wait

to reveal it to you as well as the world for the first time.

But do you remember, as I was there then,

in TNA.

When they brought in the football, the NFL football player named Pac-Man Jones.

Oh, yeah, we just saw him.

He was at one of the WWE events in the crowd.

Well, he was, they actually, this was, God, almost 20 years ago now.

But he was in some fashion suspended for something.

And

he was, I think, playing for Tennessee at the time in Nashville.

So

Jeb Jarrett knew every sports team and everybody in Nashville.

And they had this guy, he shot an angle.

And I think, wasn't he the one wherever they shot an angle in the NFL said, but nobody can touch him.

So he had to have a tag team match without anybody touching him?

Wasn't that the one?

It was, you know, it was so long ago, and I wasn't watching TNA, but it was a big deal at the time because he was in the kind of, I think it was a shooting or someone got killed.

It was one of those.

Well, yeah, I said, at a nightclub, he was notorious for going out to nightclubs and throwing money around and creating fucking scenes.

And

I think one of the bouncers got shot.

Because I remember and he was a wrestler.

He was a wrestler.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

See, we're twin sons of different mothers.

The bouncer that got shot and

fucking killed or whatever was a wrestler.

At the time, people were mad that TNA were even using him.

Yes.

And you should have seen the fucking

retinue.

Google it, kids.

It's a word that's not used often enough.

R-E-T-I-N-U-E,

of shady associates and affiliates and goofy-looking motherfuckers that this guy

trooped into Universal Studios with.

And there was one that, and I'm not being racist

when I say that he was...

Can I start?

Well, no, I'm not being racist because he was a white guy.

But he was a fat, pudgy-looking, round-faced white guy that looked like he would be Lumpy Rutherford's little brother on Leave It to Beaver.

And he was dressed like Swerve Strickland with chains around his neck and the whole rapper gang, whatever the fuck that these people with Pac-Man were doing, they had the whole gimmick, right?

But here's this fucking fat, floppy, flat-footed fucking white, fat white guy

that was dripping in chains and bling and fucking whatever that they were using him to run around and do their errands and they'd pull up in the fucking limo and the blah blah blah.

And so anyway, Pac-Man Jones, and there was a bunch of the guys that are going, he plays the NFL because they're football fans going up and wanting to meet this fucking Cretan.

But anyway, he was an unsavory person for a number of fucking reasons back then.

And now I just looked at USA Today Sports as sports is in the headline.

Ex-NFL player Pac-Man Jones reveals he never used his own urine in NFL drug tests.

No wonder if it's in wrestling.

Would you like to, I'm clicking on this now to see how he claims that he did this.

He

outspoken advocate, outspoken abatus, outspoken advocate of cannabis.

It sounds like it.

And even revealed last year that he smoked marijuana before playing in NFL games.

But an interview that aired Tuesday,

Jones came clean about how he concealed his marijuana use to avoid getting in trouble under the NFL substance abuse policy.

He said he never used his own urine

in league drug tests.

I cheated the program, Jones said.

It was Howard Fank.

Poor Fank Noga.

Like I I was really good.

People don't know how smart I am, but like I can say it now.

I don't play no more, but like I've never used my urine for a urine test, not one time.

Sanders, the show's co-host, Dion Sanders, I guess,

he's a football feller, right?

Oh, he's an amazing athlete.

He was a baseball player and a football player, and now he's a head coach.

Well, there you go.

Well, he tried to tell Jones that such cheating, quote, can't happen today.

Oh, yeah.

Apparently, he's still beholden to the folks at the NFL, is Dion,

because the NFL has made it harder for players to do that.

Jones disagreed with Sanders.

It can happen if you know what you're doing.

Don't say it can't happen, Pop.

Hey, Pop, don't say it can't happen.

The reason it can't because they go in there with you right now, Sanders said of NFL drug testers.

No, no, they go in there and watch you pull it out.

And Jones said, you can still get them.

What does he do?

I got the fake dick.

It's got to be a fake dick.

You don't think it's like a tube next to his dick that he holds and like there's some kind of apple juice or something?

I think, no, here's what's going on is he's got a

swedish made fake dick because you know the drug test guy is going to have to give it a couple of the strokes with the five knuckle shuffle to get it a little harder just to make sure that he's getting a good look at it so it's got to be one of those flesh like fucking things that you can kind of pump a little bit and then

you take the

well yeah and then then you

you take the

the surgical quality balloon filled with your legitimate urine that you're squeezing between your butt cheeks,

and you clamp down on it and it shoots right out the fucking end of the fake dick

and it's right into the fucking drug tester's hand.

Well, if he wants to hold a cup to it, you know, he can do that too.

Wait, does the drug tester hold the cup?

Well, no, with me, they just held their hand out and I would just kind of fill up their palm a little bit.

You seem to know a lot about the prosthetic penis market.

Well, that's what's going on on it?

I worked as a tester.

But anyway,

I made the Howard Finkel joke for anyone who just thinks I was being mean to the Fink for no reason because that was, I believe Howard Finkel was the one who did the drug test for Hulk Hogan, it turned out years ago.

Yes, it was.

Well,

he didn't do it.

He provided the evidence of the urination and Hulk did the rest.

We don't want to, you know, Howard was a mere prawn in the game.

It

It was his urine, wasn't it?

Yeah, well, no, it was.

But when he handed it to Hogan, he said, this is urine.

So Hogan thought it was his.

But anyway, the point I'm making is: here is old Deion Sanders, old Neon Deon, I think I remember they used to call him.

He's trying to take up for the NFL.

Oh, they can't do that today, please.

No, no, no.

And this fucking guy, oh, yeah, they can.

And oh, hold on.

Sanders' co-host,

Roxy Diaz, asked Jones how he could still evade testing under the league policy today.

You want me to tell you how?

I'm going to give you all the secrets right now.

All right.

But Sanders, who doesn't drink or smoke, wouldn't let him say more.

Nope, nope, nope, Sanders said.

Jones continued, the cups they give you, Sanders then shut it down before Jones could explain.

Oh, what a heel.

I want to hear this.

Apparently, everybody does, including the players in the NFL.

The cups they give you.

I mean, he starts with that.

Where could that go?

What does that mean?

The cups they give you.

Well, see, that's what I was saying.

It's better to take it in your bare palm.

See, that proves my point.

It doesn't prove any point.

Was that your point?

Well, that was

at some point that was.

But hold on.

Let's see.

Jones was the sixth overall NFL draft pick in 2005, went on to play for four NFL teams, including the Tennessee Titans and Cincinnati Bengals, last played in the NFL in 2018.

But

in 2007, he was suspended for the entire season.

So that's when it was under the league's personal conduct.

policy after a number of off-the-field incidents and run-ins with the law.

In 2008, he was suspended another six games after an alcohol-related incident in Dallas, which led to increased drug testing for him,

including, he said, every other day and even when he was out of the country,

I don't know if somebody was, did he have a personal fucking piss boy following him around every 48 hours?

Yeah, what's the cost of the NFL of having someone tested every other day?

I believe that's an exaggeration.

I don't know.

But now

I'm willing to be shown proof otherwise.

But nevertheless.

Who in wrestling

at getting around the drug test like Tom Zink it turned out he had more weed in him than any human being on the planet you couldn't hide

well no he didn't get around anything he's our son right there in front of it I'm saying a lot of guys you couldn't hide anything they didn't even try to was there anyone who was specifically known as being good at getting around the drug testing well

that's almost

self-contradictive because if you were particularly good at getting around it people wouldn't fucking know

I was a bragged,

unless you told the other boys what was going on.

Well, then you're a fucking moron.

I mean, everybody,

you know, at some point or another, you know, everybody is

probably beaten the system.

But

in a lot of cases,

you're not going to know what they were fucking doing at a high level.

If the office really cared and were really taking the

results legitimately.

If it was during one of those eras and the guys at the top were getting by with something, I don't know that maybe even

their best friend or two might know, but I don't think it would be public.

But when they

did drug tests, like you said, zinc in WCW

it would have been 1990.

I think they were catching on that 89 or 90, Vince was doing this or was he doing it yet or he hadn't done it so were they doing it because vince wasn't doing it or were they doing it because vince was doing it i forget which

vince announced it well vince announced it in 91 when everything really started getting a lot of publicity 89 i think is when they started changing things because that's when linda mcmahon heard that jordan saharian was under investigation and then wcw of course

famously with you there turned down tully blanchard after saying they were going to to sign him.

I don't have turned down some.

Okay, well now, but that was in 89.

So

Vince had already done a drug test because Tully flunked it.

That was in late 89.

But that wasn't, I guess I'm just specifying there's a difference, I guess, between steroid testing and just overall drug testing.

Oh, I'm just talking any kind of test.

Until

the only kind of test in Jim Crockett was, are you able to sign this contract?

Can you write your name?

Otherwise, you know, and any other wrestling territory.

I'm talking about when they first started testing for anything that's when when wcw first did the test i think it was 89

89 into 90

and that's why i heard that comment about zank he just he had like

what they said i don't know this is just i think what barnett said he's saying He's got epic levels of weed and has, I mean, they talk to him like, is there some issue?

Apparently, he's set some kind of new record.

But that was the thing is,

they were testing because this publicity was starting to come out about Vince, and that was whatever.

They were trying to follow it.

TBS was the ownership now, so it was a legitimate company.

But everybody flunked for something

because they didn't.

We said the only people that passed were me and Ole Anderson.

And if they'd have checked for cholesterol, cholesterol, I'd have been out.

And if they'd have checked for alcohol, he'd have been out.

But

they didn't do anything.

They just basically went to see where everybody was at the first time.

And then later on, I think

they started fining people or whatever for

marijuana and cocaine, whatever the fuck that they might find.

But I don't even know if it was still a couple more years before they started checking for steroids.

And then they didn't.

And then Vince did.

And then Vince didn't.

And they did.

It was just,

there was somebody always beating something with that screwy fucking system and playing,

you know,

had the old shell game on what they're even checking for.

It was ridiculous.

Which wrestlers?

And that's, and that was why.

Heard

gave an excuse for not hiring Tully because he'd flunked Vince's fucking drug test on the web because he didn't care because he knew he was leaving.

I'm sorry, Go ahead.

What was your question?

Just were there any wrestlers that would flip out if a drug test was coming?

Again,

you know,

they did most of that in the WWF on the road.

I wasn't there.

I wasn't even there.

I certainly wasn't having anybody tested for even for food in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, to paraphrase Dutch's old joke.

And that was where a lot of the WWF tests happened was on the road because TV was awful busy.

They did do a few at TV.

I was actually kind of insulted the first time that they asked me, like,

what the fuck?

Seriously?

But

again, I don't remember anybody storming out of the fucking building.

And then we had

with OVW.

Well, no, I'm just saying, with OVW,

because it was a developmental program,

we had in Kentucky more testing going on from the Athletic Commission than the office did of those guys after their initial,

and that wasn't even as extensive a physical and,

you know, health check as they would do later on.

Then they didn't, unless somebody had a goddamn issue that made a headline, they didn't send anybody around to make anybody in developmental piss, but State Athletic Commission every once in a while would, or, you know,

check you for fucking

steroids or weed or whatever the fuck.

But the WWE wasn't even looking that close to those guys then.

Was there any kind of change that anything happened in terms of from higher up when the thing went down with Lesnar and Waterman?

Well, that's what I was talking about.

But, you know, in case something didn't make fucking headlines,

it didn't make any headlines, but it made the police blotter.

And

do people, do people know what's going on here?

Do I need to preface this?

I don't know.

I think you may have told the story many years ago, and I don't know if you said both guys' names when telling the story.

Well, that's true, but also it was in some book, either by Brock or about Brock's never read a book.

Somebody wrote the story.

Book by Brock.

Well, Well,

yeah, by book, by Brock.

That's the spot.

Buy book, buy Brock.

Chapter two, Animals.

Fucking Brock and Ron Waterman call me at home here one night when they're both here in OVW and say, well, we've got a little problem.

And this has been.

Goddamn 25 years.

So

I don't want to give any wrong details.

So I'll basically give the gist of it: is they've just been arrested because their steroids that they ordered through the mail,

when they picked them up at, I believe, the manager's office of their apartment complex and accepted delivery of them, they were soon afterward visited by Louisville's finest to take exception to it.

And they wanted to know basically if they were fucked or not.

And I said, Well, I'll get back to you as soon as I can talk to one of the fuckers.

So

I called, technically, he was an ex-fucker.

I called Dean Hill, who had been a police officer here in Louisville for about 25 years, and,

you know, said, How much trouble are these idiots in?

And

he told me probably, you know, potentially a bit, if not more.

And then I'm struggling as I tell the story because then I called them back and I

think at that point we had to,

you know, get them an attorney

or have them contact someone who could represent them.

Oh, here, let me pay for your fucking attorney for this stupid error.

And I'm trying to remember.

What the resolution was now, to be honest with you, because it's been 25 fucking years.

And I just remember these people called me and said, yeah, well, we picked up our illegal drugs that we ordered through the mail.

They fucking arrested us for it.

But some way or another, it was a while before the office found out, I think.

Because

I wasn't going to fucking, you know, tell them that I knew that they had called me.

So it was a little while and then things came to light, but I can't remember what happened, though, but nobody went to jail obviously

and i think that i think they were mere prawns in the game i think it was a bigger investigation they may have they may have just named names brian

named names did you ever have any issues with dean hill having a conflict because wrestlers always get in trouble even before ovw he was the ring announcer for the uswa shows in louisville any issues with the fact that he was such a high-profile police officer in town and wrestlers commonly get into trouble.

Did he ever have any conflicts because of that?

Well, no, because

most of the guys,

I think that during the USWA years, was it Chris Champion?

It may have got arrested at the Toy Tiger, but there was never any wrestlers getting in trouble around town in Louisville in the Jarrett years, at least until certainly after Christine Jarrett left the road in the early 90s.

Except for, and then, of course, there were the epic

Lawler situation where he was staying overnight actually in southern Indiana at the, at the Day's Inn in Jeffersonville.

But that was unusual.

Guys didn't stay in Louisville and go out and get drunk and, you know, get in fights at the bar or do anything really in Louisville besides come in, wrestle, and leave again, or come in, wrestle, and stay over at the fucking Day's Inn and then go to Evansville the next day.

There was not that many incidents incidents where the guys in those days would have brushes with police and or

legal issues was getting in fucking fights at the gardens

with fans either in the ring, hitting the ring or, you know, coming back from the ring.

And Dean was a valuable guy there because he knew that in

Pretty much in those days, you didn't need to go out and instigate anything.

99% of the shit, it was the fucking fans' fault for doing something first

and dean was good at not only diffusing those situations by snatching these first but also by

being a guy who was smart to the business who was there to say as a police officer yes this guy's drunk and he jumped in the ring and the guy was defending himself

uh but you didn't have to

We didn't have to rely on Dean's expertise.

Really, in the days he was a police police officer, where then the younger generation,

they just flaunt authority, Brian.

These young kids came along when Dean was already a successful retired announcer, slash,

he had horses at a stable at that time, slash

repair service technician.

He's always had 18 jobs.

But we didn't have to

use him to testify in court i was always shocked years later when i found out after watching ovw with him with him with you and him that he was a police officer because again he was the ring announcer in louisville the night that he told them to put the spotlight on us and then the fans started trying to attack us that was cool he's also he's also got a wicked sense of humor too i see some fans from smoky mountain are here tonight and all of a sudden the lights on us like oh shit yeah but in the building if if if they'd have tried to to jump you guys, Dean could have taken care of him all by himself.

One Riot, one Ranger.

One Riot, one hill.

See, I'd never caught on quite like One Riot, One Ranger.

You know, I thought this opening segment was going to be a hell of a hill to climb.

It turned out pretty well.

Well, and let's fall off the other side, folks.

It's March.

And you know what that means?

A sale is going on now at jimcornet.com.

The March Merch Sale, where this month, the featured item behind the curtain, the incredible graphic novel filled with true pro wrestling stories hosted and curated by yours truly on sale, autographed to your specamications

for only $19.95.

And

anybody that gets a, that purchases, I should say,

any action figure or any tag team action figure set or whatever gets a free two-hour classic wrestling DVD from the Wrestling Gold series.

That is during March.

And everything that the folks have ordered, by the way, Brian,

through the morning of February the 28th has already been signed, already been handed off to the feather bottoms.

It's getting labels processed on it.

If not, well, by now,

much of it is being delivered to the fine folks.

I finally caught up at the end of the month, and I thank everybody for

their support and patience during that period of time that i was behind but now i'm ahead instead of an ass i'm ahead

and you know how hotchkiss featherbottom is doing these days brian have i told you this have you told me what how hotchkiss featherbottom is doing these days i i don't i don't really know no he's he's he's off the hard liquor

He is off the hard liquor.

The probation officer's pep talk finally sunk in with him, and now he's only only drinking wine, and he's been much happier.

So he's trying to make some improvements in his personal life also.

And as a matter of fact, I'll have you know that he's even saving money because I gave him the promo code for our new friends over at Naked Wines.

And now he gets naked and drinks wine also.

And it's done wonders for his mental health.

Well, I don't know about any of that, but of course, you don't have to be naked to enjoying the fine wines from Naked Wines.

They send you a fine package with the finest wines.

And we have a great deal because the listeners of our show deserve fine wine.

That's what I always say.

Well, now, wait a minute.

See,

you told me when we first started this on the last program, our friends at Naked Wines, they sent us both boxes.

Of course, Stace loves wine and she loved whether it was the white or the red, a bottle of red, bottle of white.

It's whatever you feel like tonight.

The thing is, you told me that it wasn't that the people who deliver the wine will deliver it naked.

You said it wasn't that.

Even though, once again, the guy that brought my shipment, he stripped to the waist for an extra 20 bucks.

But so I thought that's not part of that.

That's not part of the fine package from the fine people at naked wines.

Well, that's why you said that.

So I thought that that meant that you have to be naked when you drink it.

Because you said that the people who deliver it ain't naked.

And you said that the people who stomped on the grapes weren't naked.

So where does that leave us?

It's branding.

Of course, naked is their brand.

Like AEW elite is their brand.

What if they have nothing that's elite?

They get away with it.

It's their brand, but they're not getting away with anything.

What they're doing is almost giving away fine wine to the fine listeners of this fine program.

Well, yes, this is nothing like AEW at all.

This isn't some kind of bait and switch tactic.

It's not good wrestling.

It's bad wrestling.

This is incredible wine because they connect the winemakers and the wine drinkers.

They work with the world's finest independent winemakers for award-winning wine, but delivered straight to your door.

Over 90 independent winemakers around the world.

And the independent winemakers,

they're not.

polluted like the wrestling landscape.

The indie winemakers don't jump through barbed wire wrap tables to stomp the grapes.

They still do it the old-fashioned way.

They squish them around in between their bare toes.

And then they put the whole thing in a bunch of vats and it ferments and foments and bubbles.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble until finally

you get an award-winning wine and boom, they ship it to Naked Wines and Naked Wine ships it to you.

And that's what they've been doing over at Naked Wines for 15 years.

And for the record, Jim knows nothing about the process to create Naked Wines, fine wines.

So let's laugh along with him, but know that he has no idea what he's talking about.

Well, now, wait a minute.

I thought that's the way that they did the wine thing when they're independent winemakers.

That's better than because the big companies, well, they'll just put it in some kind of storage bin and stir it with a boat ore, and you never know what's falling in the giant.

Giant insects, even small animals could fall into the industrial winemaking vats and you'd never even notice.

But these are independent winemakers that take pride in their product that work with naked wines.

Well, yes, you hit us with a very true comment there at the end.

Independent, fine, fine, wine, wine, fine lady, independent winemakers that you can trust because they care about you because they're not the major company.

They are someone who relies on pleasing the wine consumer and they will please you with naked wines.

Tell them, Jim.

Oh,

yes.

I don't know why you're so verklimp there, young Brian, because everybody knows you don't want to drink wine with small farm animals

fomented in it.

So

right now, go to nakedwines.com

slash JCE.

And

when you click enter voucher, you can put in my code, JCE.

for the code and the password

and it's going to be worth it folks these hoops you're going to jump through six bottles of wine for 39.99

free shipping

that's 40 minus a penny six bottles of wine well i do the math that well that's that's cheaper than a ripple

and that is cheaper than thunderbird these days i bet you can't just in terms of price in terms of price in terms of well how

what do you mean the The quality of the wine is outstanding.

I'm saying the quality of the wine is outstanding.

It's just a matter of they got a great deal for the listeners of this show.

That's all I always say.

Thank you there.

You have a firm grasp, Captain Obvious.

That's the point I'm making.

I'm trying to firmly keep you on that track.

It's so inexpensive is what it is.

It's cheap.

Cheap, I say.

It's cheap.

It's a mere pittance, a bag of shells that you can throw out your window, 39.99 for six bottles of world-class independent wine spooty that's that's the point that i'm making that's right bodie odi nakedwines.com slash jce

you click enter voucher you put in the code jce for the code and the password six bottles of wine 39.99 shipping included they'll bring it to your door they may or may not be topless and probably it's up to luck at that point It has nothing to do with naked wines.

That is your courier, and there aren't too many topless couriers, so don't worry about that, folks.

Well, if you're in a southern climate, a more temperate zone, they may do it in Brazil.

I don't know.

Do our listeners in Brazil, can they avail themselves of this opportunity?

I'm not sure if this is a deal that's good for the Brazilian listenership, but.

Well, they'll do it down there.

Have you seen those beach pictures?

They'll do it down there, boy.

They just, they're all

out there.

Not a fat person in the whole thing.

Okay.

Okay.

Let's talk about doing it up here and doing it with naked wines one more time.

What's that promo code?

Jim.

Yes.

Bring them to your own home and strip down and drink them, either by yourself or with a significant other or potentially any stranger you might want to invite into your home that will take you up on the offer.

Nakedwines.com slash JCE.

Click enter voucher.

JCE for the code and the password.

That's how you get this secret super super-duper discount price.

That's right.

From our friends at Naked Wines.

And when you get your box of Naked Wines, send us a picture on Twitter and let us see and we'll give you a grade.

We'll grade yourself.

Yes.

Yes.

Send us a picture of you naked drinking the wine.

No, we don't want that.

No, no.

Well, that's what I thought you were talking about.

We want to see the wine, not the person.

Well,

what do you, we, you got a frog in your pocket over there?

Have you seen some of our listeners?

You're going to to get naked pictures of who?

Well, has it been a message?

It's a crapshoot, I know, but still, something might turn up.

Well, what will turn up is on your doorstep naked wines.

The promo code was repeated about 150.

See, you just said, turn up on your doorstep naked, wines.

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Well, there's some naked ambition going on in the pro wrestling industry, apparently.

I said a lot of people have started to talk about this.

There are people now that they're convinced, first of all, that you're on a one-man crusade to

just eliminate, eradicate, and decimate

the rock.

Poor Dwayne,

he's put upon.

I tell the truth and it upsets people who don't want that truth to be a reality.

I hear from people like, you must be miserable.

Dude, I'm like the happiest person I know,

but you're miserable because I'm telling the truth about something you love and don't want to believe.

But you'll come around, Mr.

and Mrs.

Listener out there.

Everyone else has.

Mr.

and Mrs.

First Nighter.

Well,

there are the segment, though, that believe that you are anti-rock.

And

I was always, up until somewhat recently, very pro-rock.

Because, well, he's a star.

He can say anything.

He can do anything.

Until he started saying anything and literally doing anything.

And then he's just become,

and then he wanted to become a heel, but then he wanted to be liked for being such a heel.

And it's just, it started to make my head hurt.

And it started to make me think.

Because, you know, if

Seinfeld was a hit television program watched widely for eight or nine seasons.

But if there had been a fifth member of the regular cast,

if there had been

the biggest star in the world at the period of time that show, if Tom Cruise had been the fifth guy in Seinfeld, but he had only come in like every season and a half, and then everything circulated around him to the expense of all of the other

things that they had going for a couple of shows and then he's gone.

Maybe that wouldn't have worked either.

It's just, I'm

anyway, that's where I'm at is that, yeah, Rock is a great

pro wrestling personality and a big star, but now he's, I think he's embraced that he can just come in and just blurt out anything

or just do whatever,

even if it conflicts with

things that have been going on that have been pointed to and led to and planned for months and months and months.

And they're saying it again even even Uncle Dave who who

apparently sends The Rock's mother flowers every Mother's Day.

I mean he's been close to the family

just you know

love I think he's in their home movies

and he is even

starting to say that yes there's talk that

he just came in and kind of said, what about we do this

hey should we talk about a little of this, Brian?

Yeah, I mean, specifically everything I just went down, because obviously after the major success that was the John Cena heel turn at Elimination Chamber, you started hear from people, see, it was all neatly planned out long in advance.

You just have to sit back and be patient.

And I think the reality of the situation, and some of us have known it, and more people probably will, and it'll be a growing story, I would think, in the years ahead, is, like you said, Dwayne Johnson swooping in with his own writers, with his own creative, producing himself,

doing whatever he wants.

And it's a tough dynamic.

When I said a few weeks ago, there's a rock problem, this is what I'm talking about.

The Rock's agent runs the company.

The Rock's childhood friend is Triple H's partner in running WWE

and does a great job.

And he has a lot more on his plate now because they just launched a boxing company that he's going to be in charge of.

What's next?

Curling?

The Canadians are doubled over laughing.

But The Rock at his press conference kind of said it.

You know,

he puts a very rosy spin on everything, as an executive should publicly.

Although, again, not a heel who just did an angle shouldn't be coming out there to say, I did such a wonderful job as the bad guy character, the final boss, that it's stupid to do it now.

Wait a while.

You can wait a while.

But he said it.

Paul and his team are doing great.

And then me and Brian Gewertz and Maya, my team, we come in and do our thing.

So if you have a year, an average year, where the booker, for lack of a better term, Paul Leveck, is laying out everything, not just across raw, but it's raw and it's SmackDown and it's increasingly involving NXT,

which involves other things now like TNA.

There's a whole lot on his plate.

And someone just comes in and says, it's time to change creative because this is what me and my team decided we should do without consulting any of you.

And even if you're a giant rock fan, you have to understand how problematic that is.

And if you say, and we'll get back to this to tie this together, if you say, see,

the Cena turn, it all makes sense.

It turns out much like last year, the pivot that was forced by,

you know, the fans get a lot of the credit and they deserve it, but a lot of it also was internal pushback from people who could.

And it seems that potentially that may have happened again, leading to the Cena turn.

Well, because

apparently, poor John was choice number two.

That the

Rock's original idea was that Cody would indeed align himself with the rock.

But when that

and who knows what was it shot down, did Cody turn it down?

Was it a combination of all of these things?

But that's, you know,

that shows you there that

what the fuck?

They were doing something

or they were going to do something different and they're pivoting.

And what bolsters the idea that there were last-minute changes during the day, even with all of this stuff going on,

was that remember, and I think you mentioned it when we talked about the show, they played the rock

video in the middle of the show.

So you thought that that was going to be next was the rock and Cody's decision.

And then they went into, what was it, Owens?

Yeah.

And because that was,

they changed the format so late in the day.

Originally, they were going to do that they were going to go from the rock video to the rock cody segment and that was changed so late that they didn't even get the

proper runtime established for the video and they were going to end with the lights out unsanctioned match

where they dropped the cow and hit each other with everything except common sense But they couldn't do that because

when Cena was just originally going to win the elimination chamber, that was fine.

But then Cena turning on Cody, which was not originally scheduled as part of the programming,

wouldn't have made sense for anything to follow that.

So they fucking re-wracked the whole goddamn show at last minute.

And there's evidence to support that theory, as well as unnamed people being quoted as saying it.

You know, the other thing is for everyone who compared the Cena turn to,

you know, for the people who didn't like it, the comparison we heard was Steve Austin turning at WrestleMania 17.

Steve Austin and The Rock, and he went with Vince McMahon.

If Cody had turned, that's what it would have been.

It would have been the most nonsensical time to turn him heel.

And it would probably have not as big as an effect on business.

You know, today it's such a juggernaut, it's almost bulletproof, but it would have...

It would have hurt their business and hurt their ability

to get hurt Cody, hurt their business, and hurt their ability to get somebody in that Cody position again because

you've wronged another generation of fans.

They'll have wounded feelings.

With the Cena people, there is some element of,

well, when they were kids or they were whatever, the innocent

years of their life.

That's been a long time ago.

Now they're just, okay, he's kicking people into balls.

It's Cody's era now, and that would have been similar to an Austin type of thing.

But

again, that's where I mentioned Uncle Dave because he described

the story that The Rock

is telling.

He said after the show, Dwayne Johnson claimed that everything was planned for the long game from Bad Blood, although others have called that version the Hulk Hogan version of the story.

And

this can't be planned this way.

Because

again, from big show to big show, and I'm not talking about Paul White, from the Rocks appearances,

they whipped the shit out of each other, beat shit out of each other, and bled, and it was hard feelings.

And then I'll see you again.

I've got, remember when Rock walked off into the sunset to go back and,

you you know, trudge through the desert making movies in Hollywood, I'll see you again someday.

And then he came back and stared at everybody.

And then he was,

was he a heel again?

Then he was a babyface.

Then he was hugging and kissing them.

Then he turned back and forth at one promo.

Then he's goddamn wiping the guy's blood

on a fucking belt with a rap star

the day before or the night before the early morning press conference where he's telling people that he had such fun creating this such evil character that he just play acted.

It's just,

he's just coming in and doing whatever the fuck.

Talk me down.

I think the damage

that his reputation took from Black Adam affected him.

That's not to say he's not still getting big opportunities.

He has a deal with Disney.

But I think people knowing that it was his creative and his direction and his ex-wife and manager involved

that made that project a disaster for DC and the studio.

And I think with wrestling, the Rocks always had a safe place that he can come back to and do almost nothing.

And that's one of the reasons I started to not like his on-air performances, not right now, but a few years ago, because he was doing nothing.

It was just coasting to get a nice night out of it.

Now he needs it, but now he wants this weird recognition.

It's not even approval.

It's recognition.

You know, when we played the press conference audio, Triple H was out there earlier that night.

And

to the best of his ability in that kind of setting, kind of walks the line of trying to not completely give away K-Fib.

But I'm not saying he's going to lie or work anyone.

Right, but at the same time, he's being somewhat respectful and,

you know, not just showing you, here, here's where we hide the handkerchief that comes out of my fucking collar.

But he's out there earlier there talking about an overarching, you know, series of questions about the night, about the record, you know, whatever it was, record gate, record revenue, everything's always a record.

But then about the individual wrestlers on the show.

And then it ends with Dwayne Johnson coming out there like he's running the show.

And in a lot of ways, for certain things, he is.

And I think that

is a problem.

And don't just believe there is no problem because The Rock comes out there, an actor comes out there and says, everything's great.

We get along great.

Everything's working great.

And my creative is great.

There is a level of not in touch with what's happening right now that The Rock has, and that doesn't take away from the things that work.

And by the way, he's still a dynamic television performer.

To the people thing like, oh, you can't say anything good about The Rock.

I can.

Some of you can't face the reality of the bad shit.

You go, look at the good shit.

That's easy.

And

I don't know how many more years this could happen around WrestleMania time, where starting in whatever it was, November, October, he just swoops in, starts doing his own things.

If you're trying to book out a WrestleMania.

Well, remember, he just swooped into stare in October.

He just showed up for real again a few weeks ago.

Yeah.

And that's what happened last year, too.

It was around January.

All of a sudden, he started showing up.

And

again, if you have plans and you're trying to lay stuff out, it's hard if someone comes in and their first demand is, I want to turn Cody heel and have him as have him as being under me.

It's not even just have Cody turn heel, which there was a time to do that.

If Cody had stayed in AEW, he had to become a heel.

He wanted to be a babyface.

He came to WWE and it worked out better than he ever could have hoped for.

If you turned him heel and then made him subservient to the rock, would have killed him dead.

It would have killed the audience enthusiasm, too.

Well, and let's talk about this for a second because

Cody, allegedly, a lot of people saying it, was Rock's first choice.

But when, again, that was somehow averted by method or methods unknown,

then they went to John because Cena was the number two choice.

Well, you know, what about this guy?

So automatically now they're,

that's why I thought it came, the feeling was to me, turning John Cena heel

came out of not maybe not nowhere, but certainly

not a long fucking planned out thing.

And John said, okay, you know, when they came to him, but now they're they're taking

an idea that was for one guy and they're using the same idea for another guy and everybody's situation is always different so is it wouldn't you just to me have started from scratch with an idea or just left it lay but nevertheless

I now that

if I hear that story and that if that's true that Cena said okay I'll do it because Cody

was not going to do it

Then

it's pretty obvious that he's got to get,

as we talked about on the last show, we were shocked.

You said, well,

you know, he'll turn back at the end of the year of whatever and retire that way.

That's probably how they pitched it to him.

Turn heel and do it.

We can get this match and that match and the other match with you against these baby faces, but by the end of the year, we'll

turn you back some way.

And he said, ah, yeah, okay, I don't give a shit.

Go ahead.

What if he doesn't retire?

What if it was a heel saying something that wasn't true?

But

I don't know that it was a heel saying something that wasn't true because to me, it's like he's already been retired.

He just came back to fucking retire again.

I mean, it's,

is it a year?

Does he go till next fucking March?

Okay, maybe whatever the fuck, or next WrestleMania, but it ain't going to be long.

We're not talking years.

And again,

if in four years he's the fucking top heel, then somebody play this back for me.

And he has a good story to tell.

We haven't heard anyone talk yet.

Again, Raw took place two days later.

No Rock, no Cena.

But Cena, every time he's come back in the last four years or so, he's lost.

He lost every match.

Austin Theory, Bray Wyatt.

I can't remember the last match he won before the Royal Rumble.

Solo Sokoa, didn't Solo beat him too?

So now

there's at least a reason I'm coming back and I want to win the title.

I have to do something different.

There's reasoning there if it's explained.

But if Cody had turned, it would have been a disaster and there would have been no valid reasoning that would have worked.

Oh, I agree with you there.

And one more thing about Jonathan, we'll talk about something else that we may have called,

is

with Jonathan, the reason why that he is lost most of the time or all the time or whatever, when he's because he has only been a part-time guy in wrestling for a while now.

And he's not, he's a guy who understands business and he's not greedy about, you know, getting somebody else over and all that stuff.

But I think you can tell that this came up because the new ownership, they probably made him a hell of an offer for millions and millions of dollars to come back and do a year.

And if they said, yeah, hey, stick around for another quarter and go to WrestleMania, I'm sure he'd do that too.

But it ain't going to be long.

And at some point, even then,

you risk not going out with a bang because people get a sour taste in their mouth because you didn't go out when you said you were going to.

So I think he's probably going to honor mostly and or in principle

the idea that he's not going to be in these towns multiple times because then they've already said the last time in every town then they're going to lie to all those people that are their most ardent ticket buyers in these markets where he's supposed to be in for the last time if he was to come back next year

yeah

why

did they advise did they lie or did the heel lie

well

No, that anymore in today's environment, they know it's the company fucking fucking lying because people buying the tickets in a lot of cases are the most dedicated consumers.

And they'd be like, wait a minute, he just had his fucking last match here nine months ago.

That would be bullshit.

I think it would hurt consumer confidence.

I don't think any of them want that.

The office might, but I don't think Cena does.

So I'm thinking.

That somehow by the end of this run, whether it's the year or the fucking run, he will switch back babyface and still be able to go out with somewhat of a bang.

He might not win his last match, but he'll go out with the audience's sympathy and appreciation instead of slinking off like a dirty heel.

That's my prediction.

This last year is like the last three years of Andre's career.

Andre suddenly turns heel and then he's a heel the entire time in his last night, WrestleMania, or his last night as an active wrestler, him and Haku lose, and then he he turns baby face against Bobby Heenan and Haku, leaves with people cheering him for the last time.

Well, but it ain't gonna take three years, right?

Ceno will be still more mobile than

Andre was, poor thing.

But one more thing I want to bring up about this whole fiasco at the elimination chamber and the turn and the Zabada.

I saw,

and

again, I don't even know, it wasn't the angle that they shot on the pay-per-view.

I saw the pay-per-view, but then I saw this angle on Twitter.

I don't know where they got it.

It was good quality video, but this fucking Travis Scott character

slapping Cody Rhodes across the side of the fucking head.

And you could see fucking Cody sell it too, like, aha.

And I said, what?

You can, this idiot, this mark in there potatoing people, you can

bust somebody's eardrum like that.

Because if you slap them hard on the ear, the concussive effect,

it's worse than a knockout punch.

If

that ear, that air is forced into your eardrum and it busts it,

you can have infections.

It's a horrible fucking pain.

It can, you're bleeding out the ear possibly.

It can lead to serious issues, a whole nine yards.

That's why I hate these fucking idiots-dewey slap fights.

You know, one good, well-placed, in the right-place slap that somebody sells is good.

The rest of them are just needless risks to your hearing.

But nevertheless, apparently, from what is being reported,

who could have known this, Brian, he busted Cody Rhodes's fucking eardrum and gave him a black eye with the same slap.

What the

there were people not happy, and I was amongst them.

I don't think you were too warm on it, that this clown was standing around

with his dick in his hand, literally once I saw

in the middle of this angle between these great top pro wrestling stars.

And just because the Rock likes this guy, because he's a star to

apparently,

the people at Rock aspires to be a star to and is trying to leech off of his popularity.

But otherwise, he was as useful as, as Adrian Street would say, a spare prick at the wedding in this wrestling angle.

And he fucking nearly deafened

the most popular wrestler in the company.

Your thoughts on whether he should be strung up across a fucking hood of a car and run through a flaming fucking doughnut.

Well, sadly, this is the least amount of people injured at a Travis Scott event.

But no, I think when The Rock at his press conference said

that

he told Travis Scott to lay it in or whatever he said, you said he wanted to get his hands dirty.

I said, well, you better make it look good.

You better.

And then he went out there and he shoot, slapped Cody in the face when Cody wasn't prepared for it.

Cena was right behind him after trying to tug him up, too.

Apparently Cody has a black eye.

Apparently Cody has a busted eardrum.

And again, I hate to pile on the rock,

but if the rock books a celebrity and then tells them to go in the ring and do whatever they want or make it look good and they have no idea how to throw a working punch or slap, and most of us don't,

that's a problem.

And I said, Cody's going to give him his receipt.

Trust me, the rest of the locker room is not too happy about it either.

It was one of the more unprofessional things we've seen on this show ever.

I would love to see Travis Scott and the Royal Rumble now, I'll tell tell you that.

But no,

I don't care who it is.

If there is somebody in the ring, when you are doing an angle, I've never had

a fireman that was giving an award for a charity fundraiser when physicality broke out.

I've never had one of them unaware of

the basic thing is do not do any just get out of the way.

If they get involved, get out of the way.

And anything on up, any kind of celebrity or outsider or even member of your announced staff or anybody who's not normally part of the physical program encompassing everybody in the world of wrestling, if it's not a wrestler or somebody that's normally physical,

they are specifically told in any production I've ever had anything to do with, in any promotion from the WWF, WCW, Ring of Honor, Smoky Mountain, OVW, whatever the fuck.

Either don't do anything or here's exactly what you're going to be doing.

There's no gray area left like, I didn't know what to do or room for interpretation.

Like, I thought I should do something.

It's clearly spelled out because they're not experienced and because you don't want

something that's going to well, I always worried about something looking phony because

with most people, that's what they try to do.

They try to do what they've seen on television and it looks as phony as a fucking football bat.

But this guy just committed felonious assault on a guy because he was laying face down with his head turned to the side, basically, and didn't even know that it was coming.

That's completely unprofessional.

And unless

it was specifically told to this fucking idiot, Travis Scott, by

The Rock or Cody or Cena or the producers of the segment,

to just hit him at will, whether he's looking or not,

then that's something that you'd be a stupid idiot to do.

to begin with.

To hit a guy that's in that position that doesn't even know it's coming that hard.

So he's just an asshole.

And the producers, I'm sure, were mortified.

And,

you know, and I'm sure they didn't say anything to him because he's allegedly this fucking star.

But if I was Cody and he popped my eardrum, I'd snatch him around his fucking goozle pipe as soon as I got to the back.

It was un and I think I said that on last week's program.

It was uncalled for and it was stupid.

Unless he thought he was in a real fucking fight, in which case, somebody needs to be goddamn sending him in for some kind of evaluation.

Travis Scott needs to have somebody kicking him up between his fucking

taint.

I'm going to burp there.

That's what I think of Travis Scott.

Yeah, but who should be the person to say lay it in?

The Rock or Cody?

Well,

if there was anyone to say it, obviously.

The rock saying that I told him, you know, he wants to get his hands bloody or whatever.

So make it count or something like that.

That sounds like some,

you know, bullshit fucking bravado trying to make up for the fact that this guy just went into business for himself.

And The Rock said, I told him to make sure he makes it count.

He may very well have turned around and went, what the fuck did you just do?

But

no, it's

if the time for that to be said would have been when Cody was sitting there when they were talking about this whole fucking thing.

If anybody says lay it in, it's it's when they're talking about what they're actually going to do.

You can't,

you, I can't say to you,

lay it in on somebody that's not even here in this conversation, unless if you do, that guy's going to come back and bunch the shit out of you because he wasn't part of the fucking agreement

it does it just doesn't make sense i think the guy just thought i'm standing around i ought to do something i'll slap this son of a bitch

and the rock's trying to take

somehow credit for that because it didn't even make sense where he hit him where he was

if they had called for the spot

to feature Travis Scott striking Cody in some kind of fashion, then The Rock would have picked him up in a surfboard type of thing with his arms behind his fucking back and on his knees so that

Travis Scott could have a good shot at it.

Instead, it was just like a fucking guy who didn't know what he was doing

trying to do something.

And I think that's what it was.

Well, we'll see what happens.

We'll see who gets that receipt.

If Cody does himself, maybe Brandy can go in there and slap Travis.

That would be a hell of a fight.

Hey, Jim, before we move on, on the topic of WWE, some breaking news.

Uh-oh.

A bit of a follow-up on something we talked about on the drive-thru.

Lex Luger going into the WWE Hall of Fame.

Are you kidding?

I am not.

Oh, hold on.

Hold on here one second.

Sorry again.

That sounds like a comedy club in Poughkeepsie on a Wednesday night, but

my big applause is out for repairs.

It's, well, it's overdue because with this here's the thing with as many of questionable picks as they've had lately i think it just poor lex he's undergone so much abuse from the previous administration over being ignored and harassed and fucking buried over the last 30 years or whatever it's nice to see he's getting into

now that now that he's a kindly older gentleman

even if chris cruise doesn't like him chris Cruz won't be doing the inducting, from what I understand.

No, I think that would make good television, though.

If Chris Cruz inducted him, and then

even as though Lex isn't as stout as he used to be, he could probably still get the Cruz up in the torture rack, couldn't he?

You know, that would be amazing if he comes out there in the wheelchair.

He's been working with DDP and he just slowly stands up, gets the big pop.

You think that's it?

And then all of a sudden he just spins Chris Cruz around and puts him in the

what you think of the torture rack as a a finisher?

Well, for Lex, it was good because it showed off his body and it was somewhat believable and it was picturesque and everything.

But overall, I think maybe it worked better for Raqqa.

But I digress.

But anyway, the point is, Luger being in the Hall of Fame.

And I like the idea of him walking across the stage and getting a big pop for the,

you know, for the sake of it.

Of course, if Vince was there, if that did happen or he did get that far somebody come out and knock him down and put the boots to him but that'll be a nice feel-good uh type of thing for the hall of fame and

again

i'm not saying lex should have gone in before bruno samartino but considering some of the other cast characters i don't think he's out of place at all in this in this current environment of the hall of fame well and reportedly i'm looking at another post here online jim apparently also going into the WWE Hall of Fame this year will be the natural disasters earthquake and typhoon

although the picture here has him as tugboat

but I guess continuing wait a minute wait a minute

well no that's you know what he's the only wrestler that ever shipwrecked himself the tugboat was caught in a typhoon and grounded on a sandbar And then he became a shock master.

But Earthquake and Typhoon, the natural disasters, WWF tag team champions.

Any thoughts on Earthquake and Typhoon?

Well, they weren't exactly the Briscoe brothers as technical wizards as a team, but they had the size and they had the gimmicks.

And I think we talked about, and when we mentioned the Dark Side of the Ring episode last year, John Tenta was a nice fellow and a poor old...

Poor old Uncle Fred is a nice fellow himself.

So

again, with the other inductees and the precedent said, I have no problem with that.

They were in a classic era of WWF programming.

Not to say one thing has anything to do with the other, but now we have The Undertaker's wife.

We have Triple H, who's obviously in the family, and now Cody's uncle going into the Hall of Fame this year.

What other families available?

That's

Fred Ottman, ladies and gentlemen, Typhoon, tugboat, shockmaster.

He was Big Bubba at one time in San Antonio,

but not that Big Bubba.

In Memphis.

In Memphis.

He is the uncle of Cody because he's Dusty's, he married Dusty's sister.

Is that that's correct, right?

That's the chain of events.

That's correct, but I've always been confused.

So he married Dusty's sister, who I guess she was in Florida or wherever.

I don't know where that would have happened, but also, isn't Jerry Sags also Dusty's brother-in-law?

Well, did Dusty have two sisters?

That would explain it without any kind of Mormonism or

anything going on.

Let me look it up and see if it says anything about Jerry Saggs' personal life.

Jerry and his wife, Laura, have four children.

Sags' sister-in-law, Michelle, was married to the late pro wrestler Dusty Rhodes.

Oh, so maybe this is Dusty's wife's sister.

Interesting.

What an interesting.

Okay, so now where, now you lost me around a far turn.

So Dusty's wife, Michelle,

her sister married Sags, is what you're saying.

Sags's sister-in-law, Michelle.

Sags's sister.

It's a weird sentence.

Sags's sister-in-law, Michelle, was married to the late pro wrestler, Dusty Rhodes.

Yes, so if Sags married Michelle's sister, then that would make,

and that's the thing about

your mother and my mother were both mothers, so there you go.

So,

well, it's all in the family.

By the way, Glenn Miller played

songs that made the hit, Terrain.

Oh, the way.

It's like it's all in the family, baby.

All right.

Well, you certainly have gone to the Eve of the Bunker School of Singing.

I think all the listeners would agree with that.

Well,

there's things that, you know,

that you got to do.

You got to entertain yourself, Brian.

You got to, you got to keep a jaunty tune in your head as you go about the world these days.

I just talked earlier about how all the news is bad and negative and everything.

You got to be upbeat.

That's probably what Travis Scott was doing.

While Travis Scott was in the ring, while Cody and Cena and The Rock were interacting, he was probably listening to one of his alleged recordings on his Raycon everyday wireless earbuds.

And with the, he had the active noise cancellation on, so he couldn't hear all those thousands and thousands of people screaming and yelling and cat calling.

And he also apparently couldn't hear what anybody was telling him to fucking do because he just stood there and then he took a fucking cheap shot at an unarmed man while he was down and blind.

Now, Cody.

That means that he.

And now Cody can't hear.

Cody will only need one earbud.

Cody will soon soon be advertising the Raycon everyday earbud

because he's going to be a poor, one-eared son of a bitch.

But folks, if you've still got two ears, you need two Raycon earbuds.

At least two.

If I were you, once again, I'd figure out a way to make it quadraphonic by inserting a pair of these things in another orifice, but it seems like it would work.

But the latest Raycon model, folks, is better than ever with a 32-hour battery life and multi-point connectivity that lets you kinky folks pair up with two devices at once after answering a blind classified ad to a post office box.

And speaking of battery, with Raycon's quick charge function, just 10 minutes of charging, just plug this bad boy in for the mere 10 minutes, and it's going to run you for 90 minutes.

And you can list a two whole albums on that or one double album, but no triple albums.

And watch out for, well, the 45s just throw you into too much mathematics.

And Raycon started just half the price of the other premium audio brands with similar features because they want your business.

And they want you not only to beware the Raycon everyday earbuds, but Brian, they want you to send them out to your friends.

to your family, to your work acquaintances.

Get them hooked too.

Because once they put these bad boys in their ears and they receive the electronic stimulation sent down from satellites orbiting the Earth, they're not going to be able to take them out.

It's going to be like a Pavlovian response.

They're going to need their buds, baby.

That's how Raycon stays in business.

It's a very addictive Curare derivative from the jungles of Bolivia.

That is carefully coated around the earbuds and it will give you play.

Your pleasure zones will be off the charts what are you talking right now folks you can have oral orgasms see a u r a l eargasms eargasms oral eargasms go to buyraycon.com slash j c and you're going to get 20 off of the best-selling everyday earbuds

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Whether it's at the gym or at work or in bed when you're listening to something a little bit naughty.

The Raycon everyday earbuds are going to be your friends every day.

Some of you, it'll be the only friends you have.

But at least when they talk back to you, you won't mind.

Buyraycon.com slash JCE.

20% off, Brian.

Sounds like a great deal.

We love Raycon.

You will too.

Raycon.com slash JCE.

And now the people that bring the Raycons, are they naked like the wine people?

There are no naked couriers that we can talk about because we're not aware of any and they have nothing to do.

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Well, Brian, before we move on to the other side of the promotional street, what is the rest of the down and dirty doo-do in the WWE these days?

I have one other thing here.

This was just sent sent to us.

And actually, as I'm looking, a bunch of people have tried to post something about this on the Cult of Cornet page.

This is from ITR.

Is that Inside the Ropes?

Inside the Ropes.

Inside the Ropes.

Why Mickey James was replaced on WWE LFG?

That's that show on A ⁇ E that's airing right now that we haven't watched, but the clips are being played in another Kayfe busting moment.

In the middle of the wrestling shows, now they play clips like this.

Yeah, the wrestling school on television, but yeah, she was originally one of the

lady trainers.

What I didn't know she'd been replaced because we hadn't been watching it, but what happened?

Either have I,

and either did I.

Here's what it says: here either have you.

By Sandra Ruth.

A new report sheds light on Mickey James being replaced by Michelle McCool.

WWE LFG.

Back in December, a press release from WWE announced that AE is strengthening its relationship with the sports entertainment giant as it picks up an in-ring competition series called WWE LFG,

which stands for Legends and Future Greats.

The show is similar to

best, but go ahead.

The show is similar to Tough Enough, featuring aspiring pro wrestlers attempting to secure a WWE contract while receiving training in the ring from legendary performers of the past, such as Booker T, Sean Michaels, Triple H, The Undertaker, and Mickey James.

WWE LFG has officially been renewed for a second season on AE,

and the announcement revealed that Class of 2025 WWE Hall of Famer, Michelle McCool,

had been added to the cast while Mickey James had been removed.

According to a new report from Fightful Select, sources close to A ⁇ E indicate that the Undertaker had a hand in this change being made.

Sources close to the series told Fightful that the Undertaker would be open to continuing to work on the show if his wife were added to it.

So the decision was made to replace James with McCool.

The report makes it clear that the Undertaker did not specifically call for James to be replaced or removed from the program.

Just for his wife to be added.

Just that he wanted McCool involved.

So

what are your thoughts on?

Again, it's a weird error where everyone's getting their family hooked up in WWE.

I believe him that he didn't want Mickey James fired.

I actually believe him on that.

However, what do you think was going to happen?

Well, and that's,

again,

Mickey James, and besides they're not saying there was nepotism, but she's married to Nick Aldiss.

So she's part of the family.

That's right.

But the thing is, Mickey James, she was in OVW in 2004.

That's 21 years ago.

And before that, she had already been working on the independents.

She's had.

She had the best trainers, worked with the best talent, upcoming talent in OVW, the same kind of classes that the Victorias and etc.

came from.

She worked there for years and then has gone on to TNA and etc.

She's got worlds of experience in a variety of companies against all kinds of opponents.

And so if you're going to have somebody training somebody,

well, that sounds like that would be what you want.

And but

so the same thing I said when they presented Michelle McCool with, you know,

you want to be in a hall of fame, couldn't she just say, ah, you know, I don't want people to think it's because it's going to, it's going to be because of the Undertaker.

And the same thing here.

Did she work for three years?

Was that the length of her career?

Or was it that long?

Or we,

I mean, we had a bunch of people said, oh, she was the greatest thing ever during the period of time you weren't watching the show.

So we can't really disprove that.

I didn't watch the show in a dedicated fashion, but I always kept up with Raw.

Like every wrestling thing, you never completely turn away.

Everyone knows that's true.

You could say, I turned away.

You know what?

We could still talk about wrestling, though.

But

I paid attention to what was happening.

I always hoped something would pull me back in.

That's why I was here for things to pull me back in.

They sucked.

Michelle McCool was a diva who like transferred into having a job on the roster.

At the time, as it was happening, I don't remember anyone saying that

that woman should train others.

Well, that's the point.

I would wonder the same thing with the Hall of Fame announcement.

Do we remember a great,

does anybody talk about a great Michelle McCool moment?

Have they been played on these endless documentaries and rehashes of WWE history?

Has any great Michelle McCool promos or matches been highlighted?

So I, and I don't see how that

you could make a case that of anybody that's available to him, that she would be the best trainer of the female gender.

But there you go.

There you go.

I see here another report.

Nick Con is insisting on Killer Con being put into the Hall of Fame.

Here's a quote.

I don't have any family.

This is as close as it gets.

But T Joe, cousin TJo, is going to have to be the one to induct him.

Yeah, like I said, I don't think The Undertaker wanted Mickey James Fire, at least I hope not.

But what did you think was going to happen if you say, if you don't end my wife, I'm leaving the show?

What did you think was going to happen?

Yeah, well, it's not a Cecil B.

DeMille production.

They can't have a cast of thousands.

How many people can you listen to?

She was already the only female trainer of the list that you rattled off there.

And

you know,

I always liked her name in OVW,

Alexis Larie.

I always thought that was such a great name for a female wrestler.

Except

it, you know, it was unfortunately she had been

using that beforehand, so they weren't about to let her get away with that.

Anyhow, would you like to talk about what apparently Tony Khan can't get away with anymore?

I'm thinking

as I watch this show

from March the 5th, AEW Dynamite, when I say this show,

I don't think they're at a point where anything can turn this.

Can they come back

from this at this point?

I was teasing about they tried to jump the shark and missed the jump and landed like evil can evil in the Snake River Canyon.

All of their, there's nobody they can sign

that will make a difference.

They've nullified their million-dollar acquisitions already.

The homegrown talent they have is nullified or nil anymore.

The ratings have becked

and they can't get out of their own way.

They will find some way, even in advantageous positions, to make this thing look like it's goddamn amateur hour.

And I mean, there was nothing as blatant

as

last week when Chris Daniels was knuckling his own face on a fucking drive-in movie screen in front of their most faithful fans.

That had to be, what the fuck?

But it just looks the WWE is having drone shots flying into stadiums and into up a goddamn fucking top babyface's nose with precision like a network production.

And they've got their top guys cutting promos at out back of the building like they're out in the fucking hood.

It looked like the back of the Tupelo Sports Arena.

It's a fucking fence and some trees with a goddamn alley and a garbage can.

Am I overstating this?

How

low rent they've and the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento inside it looked great.

It's an old building with the ornate movie palace stucco or whatever the fuck.

It was full because it seats like, what, 2,500?

It looked great inside.

So they spent an inordinate amount of time shooting the outside where it looks like it's in a goddamn residential neighborhood to seen better days.

And if you walk two blocks to the right, you could probably find some crack.

Yeah, see, I like the MJF promo, but the location, it just looked like, hey, let's go behind the building.

Yes, that's where they were!

Next to the production trucks, but it wasn't like they were behind the goddamn

New Orleans Superdome or the, you know, the

fucking Jell-O Pudding Center in Butte, Montana, even.

It was goddamn, it was a fucking hood.

I don't.

The other thing I want to say, based on what you're saying here about the production and everything, and it was hard to,

you know, it was glaring watching this coming off a weekend where WWE ate up the conversation with their big show and then Raw and just the energy and the feel and the look.

And then you go to this.

I've watched NXT several times recently when they're, you know, out of town, I guess we would say.

On the road.

They do a better job than AEW.

of shooting the smaller rooms and making it feel, making it have a feel.

AEW, it feels like, let's go to a room and shoot it.

Like, nothing ever feels like it's done to,

I don't know, bring you in.

It just feels like you're watching from a distance.

I don't know how to explain it.

Not that I don't want the steady cam, that's maybe not the best example, but

the way NXT has shot these smaller rooms brings you right into the action.

It still feels like there's a big disconnect.

And a lot of AEW's fans feel like people going to the zoo just looking at the animals.

It's

a part of it is that the, again, planning and preparation.

And

it seems to me like there's a lot of this that I've seen it in Ring of Honor

in the day and in other places that I've been, MLW, you know, any place with a lower battna

sometimes.

Where you just, you go out, they say, just go out and shoot something.

And definitely back in Smoky Mountain or the territory days, go out and shoot something.

But the WWE now is cognizant that they're doing a big league television production and they're not just

sending guys out with a germ of an idea to shoot something.

The locations are the thought is put into them.

They've got a full crew, including a producer.

When a guy's, you know, and I don't.

Again, a lot of this comes down to, we talked about Tony Khan and AEW not having production meetings, but TonyCon not having shows done.

Is this

like, you know, in some cases, this shit's live.

In some cases, it's pre-tape, but is that their only shot at it?

Get it now.

We got to get it to the truck.

I've been in that position on low-budget fucking

productions.

So,

but it's, it's just that they,

again, inside this building with it full and the old-style arena,

it looked good

in an underground, vibey way.

So they did everything they could to open up and find out that, well,

the back of the, in the back door is a goddamn alley

with nobody there.

There's like one car passes in the background of MJF's fucking minute promo.

Or they went to the front later on.

So, oh my God, will we get to that?

So Wheeler Useless could walk into the arena with purpose when he walked up empty front steps on a residential side street of a goddamn sleepy town with the aura that somebody on Twitter, I think it was Dave Meltzer says what or something like that, or Meltzer's thoughts.

Triple H's thoughts, somebody said he looked like a used vinyl store clerk.

But they're just, they're showing this, and they're showing the old parts of the building in the back where it looks like they're in a goddamn

there.

They are in an old auditorium that they used to do plays in with the

backstage pulleys and ropes and shit.

They showed more of this building than they showed when they were running the NBA arenas.

This point I'm trying to make.

Let's move on.

MJF was out on the fucking

street in an alley behind the building and cutting a promo on Adam Page, and it was shortened to the the point, but boy, he's

going to have an aneurysm, poor fella.

And then we went into the building for the contract signing for the fucking

pay-per-view main events going to take place in nine days from this very moment that they're doing the contract signing.

Seems like they'd nail these details down.

And Tony brings out Swerve and Nana, and then Tony brings out Ricochet.

And one thing you got to say, Ricochet is embracing acting like a big goof.

What do the kids say, dweeb?

Do the kids still say dweeb?

Not really.

What is Ricochet acting like?

I don't know, putz, but he's doing a good job.

I actually was going to say the same thing.

He's kind of starting to win me over.

I don't know what the endgame is, but he's starting to win me over as this character.

Do you think it's just art imitating life?

Someone said he laughs like Raj for what's happening.

Well, he's the one that argues with individual fans on Twitter, like, I know you are, but what am I?

Type of level shit.

But is that a gimmick?

See, that's the question.

That's what we don't know.

How nuts is it?

But this was before they switched him fucking heel.

Oh, that's true.

Yeah.

Anyway, Ricochet said they asked about the robe, Prince Nana's robe, the embassy robe, the robe, the coat of many colors.

Reese said, don't worry about the robe.

It's being upgraded.

It's being modified.

And he says, at least I'm here, Swerve, so you don't have to worry about somebody burning your house down again.

And I mean, you know, you say he's embracing it, but I think that's the thing is here's this small guy

in kind of a nondescript look

that it comes off like an indie guy pretending to be a heel wrestler

and doing

a contract signing skit.

I don't believe him, the sincerity.

He's playing bad guy wrestler.

And while he's nattering off all this stuff to swerve and

the camera has a close-up of him, over his shoulder, there are two fat people in the front row eating nachos and dipping them in cheese and paying no fucking attention.

And they're in the front row.

And then when I saw that, that's all I could fucking see from that camera shot i would just and they were mowing through those fucking nachos boy

go back if anybody's got it on you on your dvr i didn't notice this when he is talking watch i'm telling you there's one on the left doesn't have a waistline it's got a coastline

Hey, but anyway, so yes.

No, I was, I didn't know if you were going to go back to the contract sign.

I was going to ask you

what you thought of Swerve's mic work here.

Well, that's the thing.

When Ricochet signed and then Swerve started his promo,

his whole thing is

being the most dangerous man in AEW and you've unleashed me.

And he was being very serious, but it's hard to take

him being the most dangerous man in AEW seriously since ever since people started liking him, he's been laid out.

He's been involved in these preposterous scenarios where his house got burned down and the blood.

And

he says then he made the mistake, Ricochet made the mistake of leaving him breathing.

Like Ricochet doesn't look like he could kill time to begin with, but

People know that there's going to be no death involved here unless it's accidental.

And that

probability increases weekly with what they do, but nobody's going to kill anybody.

And then the fans started chanting Swerve's house, but randomly, while Swerve was talking,

he didn't call for it.

They just, that's all they want to do now.

When they see Swerve is chant Swerve's house.

Whose house?

Swerve's house, because that's their.

Time to do something.

But it threw Swerve off his promo because they just started chanting in the middle of his fucking interview.

And,

you know, Swerve said, Ricochet is going to be known for me kicking your ass and your ring announcer wife, and I'm going to end you.

And Ricochet got pissed.

But I mean, is it?

He had the aura and the people

supporting him at one point.

We've talked about that was months ago and months and months.

And as soon as they decided to make his baby harassing and fucking home invading,

you know,

make him a baby face, then he's been

ever since, hadn't he?

And poor Nana,

just a wishy-washy fucking dishrag being passed around.

That's why I asked you about what you thought about Swerb's mic work, just because I was kind of blown away how it seemed like he was having a tough time saying whatever he wanted to say.

He had a lot of it probably in his head.

He stutter stepped a few times.

But no, I think the enthusiasm for the Swerves House chant is up.

The enthusiasm for his promos and matches, maybe not so much.

And I'm

not looking forward to the match, but you know, the Ricochet character as it's developing.

It is at least at least I'm interested in that.

At least I'm interested in that.

And we'll see what happens there.

How many times are they going to take the biggest babyface free agent on the market and make the people boo him out of the building?

What'd you think of the line about Samantha Irvin?

Well, they went ooh about that just because that sounds inside, right?

Well, because they all know that she was a WWE ring announcer.

Well, yes.

And

that was the ooh moment.

But then

when Swerve signed the thing and the fans were chanting, holy shit, because he mentioned his wife,

I didn't actually mention by name his wife, but he mentioned his wife.

Swerve just turns around and turns his back on Ricochet and stands there.

And it was almost like they were doing a walkthrough.

I was like, why don't you just stand up and turn your back and stand there?

Ricochet

pulls scissors out of his inside jacket pocket and goes to stab Swerve in the head.

He spins Swerve around and Swerve blocks the scissors,

pulls out his own scissors with the other hand, and stabs Ricochet in the head.

And Ricochet takes a bump over the table, and the camera's off of him for a while, and on a close-up of Swerve, so that we don't have any of those embarrassing.

We're going to call them Moxleys, where you can see the guy drilling for oil in his own fucking scalp.

But then we saw Ricochet again, and he's selling it like he's been impaled on a goddamn lance from Sir Lancelot.

And he got a pap smear.

That's what they used to call it in the business, Brian.

When you were scared to get juice and you got a trickle that maybe extended to your eyebrow, he got a pap smear.

And Swerve turned around and walked off.

What the fuck are we doing now?

Block the scissors and stab me is now being called as a high spot.

Should AEW start selling scissors at the merchandise stand?

No, I'm afraid the fans will cut their fucking wrists.

If you know someone's coming at you with scissors, how would you do it?

Would you prepare yourself with your own scissors or would you get?

If the motherfucker was trying to stab me with scissors and I'd reached up with my left arm and managed to block it, I'd either poke him in the eyes or kick him in the balls.

I wouldn't stand there while I pulled my own scissors out of my coat pocket.

If only she had a long head of hair, at least you could say they're building up to him losing that long head of hair.

But that ain't it.

But this, it's just so

childish or stupid or not well thought out or fake.

Or again, everybody being involved in these things cumulatively over time,

it diminishes their standing in the eyes of most of the viewers, except the, again,

most dedicated, hardest

core to run off.

And that's why they're down to where they can barely hit 600,000 people.

Uncle Dave will try to, well, we can't measure Netflix, but

it's the same goddamn number before

Netflix as after.

It's made negligible difference either way.

There wasn't a drop of any kind, and there hasn't been a rise because nobody's fucking,

oh, goddamn, now that I've, I can finally see AEW on

what is it?

Not Netflix, but

Max, it's changed my life now.

No,

who's saying that?

Who's coming to this?

And it's because of shit like this.

What do you think is worse, the scissors or the screwdriver?

The chicken or the egg.

They're both stupid.

And

you don't use things you can't work with.

You don't use things that,

you know, I mean, if they,

I'm sure somebody would say, what a great angle if they made a foam baseball bat and just hauled off and Babe Ruth swing somebody in the head and they took a bump but then got up.

They'd go, wow.

But for most people, it's like, what the fuck?

That's you've now you've just insulted me.

This is ridiculous.

This couldn't possibly happen.

It's just a bad program with bad acting and bad stunt work.

And when they go through fake walls, bad special effects.

And that's why I'm saying it's and it's just over and over now.

And that's why everybody's been diminished in the viewers that

they're down to almost half of where they were regularly five years ago.

And yes, the WWE is so much better, but AEW is legitimately worse.

And they have run off a bunch of people that were watching their program for a while and don't anymore because this kind of just goofiness.

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and speaking of goofiness the aew pay-per-views will now be on prime video

brian what's that

that is amazon's uh streaming service prime it's something where they have a lot of videos that are included with your prime purchase or a lot of uh things you go watch your prime membership i should say i can't speak today

and apparently this will be more like a pay-per-view situation, it'll be available for purchase on Prime.

It's not coming with Prime.

Either way, I think it's a good thing, obviously, for AEW, another platform you're on, for anyone complaining, but it's not free.

I mean,

I mean, unless Amazon's a pay-per-view, yeah, Amazon's not saying, hey, AEW, we'll pay you to come be over here.

They're saying we'll let you sell your pay-per-view over here, and that's a good thing.

Well, regardless,

does it get at some points more confusing for people?

Well, you can see instead of, yeah, I'm on Netflix or I'm on Fox or on whatever.

Well, I'm on this and that and the other fucking thing.

And you can do this also.

Does that confuse the advertising?

Well, I don't know about the advertising, but the fan, you wonder.

I mean, here we are.

March

and the pay-per-views aren't available on Macs.

You know, I can't just tune into Macs and watch it.

You know, I can watch allegedly Dynamite and Collision live.

That's not even available the next day, the last time I checked, and they have an archive going back to 2019.

But the pay-per-views aren't streaming there.

AEW's big win with Macs beyond the money would have been, you'll carry everything.

The way WWE is treated by Netflix and Peacock.

No one's treating AEW that way, and that's what they really need.

But they also have to perform as well.

And,

you know, it's just, again, going back to this, it's another platform the pay-per-view is on, and you want to be on every platform you can.

In a dream world, you want a streaming partner who's going to pay you a shit ton of money, and you don't have to worry about pay-per-view ever again.

Well, you know what?

We don't have to worry about talking too much in detail about the next match because it was an eight-man tag team match with

Mark Davis, Brian Keith, Brian Cage, and Lance Archer against Will Osprey,

Powerhouse Hobbs, Mark Briscoe, and our little puppy Pockets.

And

again,

besides that, eight-man

pulled out of our ass,

besides the fact that this gets busier than Grand Central Station at five o'clock on Friday afternoon with stupid sub-plots and ridiculous red herrings and time-wasting, time-killing, momentum-killing bullshit, bad acting.

We first had to suffer through 15 minutes of this match for no reason.

Because there are three legitimate talents out of eight guys, Osprey, Hobbes, and Briscoe.

Briscoe's been completely nullified.

Hobbs has been completely nullified.

And Osprey is still supposed to be one of the top guys.

And they're fucking around with this bullshit for 15 fucking minutes.

And they put pockets in there.

So you can't take it seriously.

It's just more indie bullshit.

So.

As I said, it took 15 minutes and Osprey beat Brian Keith by swinging his elbow forcefully over the top of Brian Keith's head, missed him again with the thing.

One, two, three.

But then suddenly,

this 30-minute afterburst starts,

Davis comes in.

And by the way, have I mentioned his ass is bigger than Sacramento?

You have.

He's just.

Unfortunately, that's all I could see now.

And once you see it, you go, yeah, this guy's got a big ass.

He's filled filled with

sand

um

so he jumps on osprey's back and grabs him in a sleeper and holds him

and archer and cage are getting sloppy heat on the other baby faces and they double power bomb hobbs on the stairs i'm like for fuck's sake

And then Davis basically, Osprey never got out of the sleeper.

Davis choked him out.

You remember that famous night on Raw when the Brooklyn brawler choked out Stone Cold, right?

So he just choked him out while Archer and Cage, without taking a lot of effort, beat up the other three babyfaces.

And then they play music.

And out walks Kyle Felcher.

And when I say walks, I mean walks.

He meanders, as Aunt Lola would say.

He strolled to the ring, trying to look

all bad and tough.

And while he was doing that,

Osprey is laying down in the ring, having been put out by the sleeper.

And Archer stands there with one foot on his fucking head.

Again, Lance Archer could have been a talent for them years ago before they ruined him, and right now is meaningless.

And you got a meaningless fucking guy standing on the neck of your top baby face.

And then Kyle gets in the ring, and Archer and Brian Cage hold Osprey, and Kyle hit him with a bunch of fake girly punches.

And then he

started shoving and yelling at Mark Davis, who's the one who choked Osprey out to begin with.

And now he's berating him because that's all part of this ingenious subplot where Davis is being abused and mistreated and verbally malingered by the fucking.

And they took forever with this.

And then they took forever to make Davis hit Osprey with a chair.

And it was going slowly enough.

That you realize that, well, Mark Briscoe and Hobbs and Pockets apparently have all been killed

because there's been people been run over by fucking buses that got back to their feet quicker,

but they're gone and nobody, you'd never see them again.

And then finally, Davis hits Osprey in the back with a chair,

and then the heels all together yelled at Davis and banished him from the ring.

And he said, Okay, I'll go.

And then Felcher sets up the chair in the ring and slowly picked Osprey up and gave him a brainbuster on the chair and then posed.

And there was nobody trying to help.

It was never explained where the tag team partners and the referee went.

They just disappeared.

They have security.

We're going to see them later on.

Believe me.

But nobody came out because it's selective security.

You've heard of social security.

This is selective security.

When they're back there, they're saying, oh, shit, it looks like somebody's going to get hurt.

You guys, you want to go?

No, I'm not feeling this one.

Fuck that guy.

He's on his own.

None of it makes any sense and it takes for fucking ever.

Brian, your thoughts on this.

Can't hear too much.

I was surprised coming out of, again, the enthusiasm right now around what WWE is doing.

You would think some of that would almost carry over to AEW just in terms of overall wrestling enthusiasm.

To begin with, an 8-man,

the first match on the show being this 8-man,

I cringe.

I'm sick of these multi-man matches where they just throw people together.

And then they even tried to explain on commentary why.

Briscoe and Orange Cassidy were the conglomeration.

There is no good reason for any of this.

And the Mark Davis stuff is bizarre

because he was there and then he got hurt and left.

Felcher's all Fletcher, not Felcher, Fletcher's stuff all happened, and then he returned.

They did a little thing with him, and then he was gone again.

And then they brought him back now as a heel with Callis.

And then they go right back to the heat between or the issues between him and Fletcher.

I'm not a fan of any of this,

and it went on a long time.

Yes, very long, very

long time.

You know what happened to me, Brian?

It took so long for this thing to happen?

Do I know that?

My hair got grayer.

How's that possible?

My hair got grayer during the time that this match took to take place.

And I'll have you know that I don't have much time left on this earth.

I know I'm closer to the end than the beginning, and I'll just be damned if I'm going to let these people turn me gray.

So, every night now,

after I finish watching AEW Dynamite, I'm going to turn to our new friends at Simpler Hair Color,

and I'm going to color my hair back to the way that it looked before I started watching that television program.

Every week from now on, no longer am I going to wake up on Thursday mornings looking like I've spent the night in a haunted house, Brian.

Because with Simpler Hair Color, I can just easily get rid of, just wash that gray right out of my hair.

And I won't look like Andy Warhol after he went to give blood.

Have you tried this out?

Have you had a couple of grays sneaking into your beardage area lately since you turned 45?

Well, I have indeed been hearing a lot about simpler hair color.

And, you know, I know a lot of people, a lot of people in my age group, they, I mean, I hate to say it, they kind of look like garbage.

And a lot of it is just because of their hair color.

They kind of have a youngish face and an oldish head of hair for no good reason.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because they, and, you know, there's, there's the messiness of all these home dye kits.

And

yeah.

And there's the harsh ingredients.

that salons use.

You know, you go in there to the salon, you say, make me look 20 years younger.

And they're going to put all kinds of bleach and chemicals and phosphorus and battery acid on top of your head.

Just like when, well, I have it on good authority, you know, old Penelope Pitstop.

She felt like she was getting a little older.

So she went in and to a plastic surgeon said, make me look 20 years younger.

He added a tail.

But nevertheless, folks, simpler hair color.

was started by a couple of guys named Patel and Brown, two men who appreciate better dying options for hair and beards.

And I don't know, you might be able to use this for the garden down south.

You never know.

The last thing you want.

No, we know.

It should just be applied.

Let's worry about one place to use it.

And that, of course, is that head of hair.

Well, you don't want your wife to get cross-eyed in certain moments when she's looking at it.

Let's worry about it.

It's not as gray as it used to be.

Boy, that hair is gray there.

You don't want your wife looking at your head of hair and ever thinking that.

You want to surprise her with the hair color you used to have, or maybe the hair color you should have had.

Fix all your wrongs with the right of the right hair color.

That's what I always say.

Repent.

Repent now while there's still time.

You can still not look like you're ready to be laid out and have words spoken over you with a bad die job from a rotten mortician.

No.

Don't worry about that stuff you buy in the stores and the, again, corrosive ingredients of the salons.

Simpler hair color.

They've got a full variety of shades to match any guy's hair and beard.

It's easy to use.

It's not a messy

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One dispenser gives you the same amount of dye as four boxes of the store-bought stuff.

It's an all-in-one product you can use on your hair and beard.

And also,

the shrubbery around General Johnson's house may be able to benefit.

And it's not going to irritate your skin.

It's both gentle and effective.

And see, you always want stuff to be gentle and effective.

Because those two things go hand in hand.

With your hair?

Always, yes.

Yes, or any other things that are affected by gentleness.

But folks...

Fucking know what that means again.

Yeah, but we're talking about the way you want to treat your hair and you want to treat it with the gentle care, but get the fiery results, whatever they may be.

Yes,

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Treat your hair gentle and every once in a while have somebody pull a big handful of it.

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Just change your fucking hair color.

That worked for the fugitive.

Did you ever see the first season?

With simpler hair colour.

Was blonde.

Once again, with simpler hair color, think of what it could do for Mox, for Cope, for all the stars of AEW, and think of what it could do for you.

One more time, Jim.

Our friends, simpler hair color.

What's that promo code?

JCE, and you have not yet acknowledged that you're aware that David Jansen in the fugitive, Richard Kimball, the wrongfully accused doctor, was originally a blonde-haired guy and he dyed it black.

Yes, of course.

Well, you say yes, of course, now because I've told you.

They literally showed you with him on the train to start the show.

So every episode began with that.

Yes, and hair dye, the bottle there.

He'd be a real

if he was a fugitive and didn't dye his hair.

It's the first thing you do.

Well, that's and that was simpler hair color that he used.

Well, no, let's not say that some television criminal used a product that didn't exist yet, but it could work for you.

Can you prove he didn't?

It could work for you, simpler hair color.

Well,

I think he did.

Back to

Dynamite.

Back to Dynamite.

Back to AEW Dynamite.

It's one of those shows, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, good God.

Well,

we were back outside the building.

And again, the front door, it looked the stairs up to this old historic auditorium.

The building looks fine.

There was no people, Jerry.

There were the people, Jerry.

There was literally nobody on the streets, the front steps.

It's just an empty building with this fucking knucklehead wheeler useless with no shirt on and his wrestling tights out on the sidewalk where it was no people.

So it looked bizarre.

And as the guy said, he looked like a used vinyl store clerk stripped to the waist.

Maybe he's delivering the naked wines.

What do you think?

That would have been a reason to be out on the street.

It looked like, is the city closed?

That's my first thought.

That's what he looks like.

They had thrown a police cordon around this entire block to, so you would think that it was

the front steps looked like the final scene in in in uh time enough at last the twilight zone episode with burgess meredith the world has come to an end he's sitting on the steps of the library

he walks in and the camera follows him into the arena the over-the-shoulder shot

it looks like the evansville coliseum it's a hundred-year-old building

and it's small

and they've accentuated that by walking us through the whole thing and showing us that it's in a goddamn neighborhood.

And that's why I said earlier, the WWE, you get the drone shot or this hell of a handheld over the Jey Uso's shoulder when he goes down to this sea of people.

Here, you got a lone cameraman following an indie guy into a barn.

So what

if he's supposed to be useless, is supposed to be on the

outs or sideways in some way with Moxley and the rest of the bunch anyway.

Have him come down the entrance.

Have him

commit the cardinal sin.

Dress in the locker room.

What the fuck is going on?

Well, he didn't have issues with Moxley before the match, did he?

Well, he's always the whipping boy and the guy that they take advantage of and they push him around.

And then he started to accept it.

I didn't realize until this match that we had a new problem.

Well, he liked it.

It was a tension.

See, he comes from a broken home.

His mother wanted a girl and his father wanted a boy, and they were both satisfied.

But they have this match with him and Edge because now

Wheeler is the only one left.

Edge has caved the brains in of

Claudio and I think Pac.

And they got Willow to commit homicide on Marina Schaefer because a guy can't hit a girl in the head with a fucking folding chair like Paul Bunyan, but it's okay if a girl does it.

So now they're all injured, all of Dick the Boozer's Boar horsemen except for Wheeler here.

So Edge is going to go through him.

And he did.

It took him 10 minutes before he speared him.

One, two, three.

So if he needs 10 minutes to beat Wheeler, I guess he's going to need four days to beat Moxley.

But afterward, Edge pulls Wheeler up to his feet and shakes his hand and says, This is what respect looks like.

And then walks out.

So there's Wheeler standing there.

And then here comes Dick the Boozer into the ring.

And he's yelling at him and he's pie-facing him and he's fucking berating him and he's screaming.

And this whole production takes place where he's just abusing this guy.

And the people are, you know, they want to see

the underdog turn on authority.

So they start Wheeler, Wheeler.

And Wheeler kind of minorly pie faces Moxley and stalks out of the ring and goes to the back.

And the boozer follows him.

He missed the pie face.

He didn't get to the bottom.

He missed the pie face.

Yeah.

Well, because he was intimidated.

He didn't want to potato Moxley.

He was afraid Moxley beat him up.

He looked like a scared little kid.

And that after the people were getting behind him, if he'd have really shoved the fuck out of him and fucking took off, he'd had something, but instead, he's a fucking wimp.

And Boozer followed him to the back and taught, yeah, keep walking, keep walking, yeah, you've been

as Yuda is leaving, he's going,

but he's leaving.

And then Moxley cut the promo to the camera.

All right, Cope, you did it.

I'm all alone.

You've taken them all out.

But then he cut

the normal promo about how he's going to drink Edge's bones.

And

I mean, if his job is to sound like

the raving serial killer testifying in court, he kind of nails that, but it's so over the top for wrestling.

And he just looks so

sad and pathetic.

And his work is so

bad and pathetic.

And it makes me so mad.

Delirious was a more coherent promo than Moxley, but that was this segment again.

Everybody, every group, every team has people that are mad at each other that are on it.

Have you noticed?

It can't just be one.

The only ones that have evolved or not evolved, but evaded

some kind of indie booking pollution has been the Hurt Syndicate.

But

I don't know.

You think Cope's getting the belt?

And do you think Christian's going to cash in?

But then where would that?

Nobody is

clamoring to see Christian Cage be the world champion.

They might momentarily cheer for Edge becoming the champion just because, hey, we like Edge kind of.

And Jesus Christ, somebody beat Moxley, thankfully.

But then you've got

a 51 or three year old champion that just came off a broken leg.

Well, and who's his next promo set up with or program set up with?

With simpler hair color, he may look as young as 40.

He always had blonde hair.

He doesn't anymore.

Well, but you can't, it's not as jarring when somebody goes from blonde to gray as from when they go from like

Bill superstar Dundee jet black to gray.

You think we see Danielson?

What do you think is going to happen here?

I mean, it's it's such a positive thing.

Last few weeks, one by one, as each member of the Death Riders got killed off, I was like, man, I'm starting to like this show a little more.

What do you think the next step is?

Do you think Danielson's going to come back and cost Moxley?

Do you care enough that you put any thought into it?

I've put no thought into it, except that this is literally now the title picture.

is being dominated by the over the hill gang.

That's what got me, though.

When Moxley said, I think he said in the promo, I'm the world champion.

And it's like, you know, it hit me when I realized he's the world champion.

Look at everything happening over at WWE.

Their main feud is Adam Copeland versus Jon Moxley.

It just seems like two different worlds.

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Well, speaking of a different world,

we go back to the alley.

Back to the back alley, ladies and gentlemen.

Renee Moxley Good.

With MJF, he's in the same place screaming for hangnail Paige to show up.

And it,

again, it looks so low rent to begin with that they're just out there.

There's not even a three-story building in sight.

And then suddenly, Paige drives up behind him in another one of those goofy trucks with the bullhorns and jumps out and chases

MJF past the TV trucks into the back of the arena

in the dark,

grabs him kind of at the gorilla position,

drags him into the arena, throws him down in the entranceway, and a guy turns over.

It's not MJF, it's some guy dressed like MJF that's screaming, He made me do it!

He made me do it!

As Paige is standing there, well, how can this alchemy occur?

That I grabbed MJF, and now, lo and behold,

and verily, it is not that knave and varlet.

Why did I suddenly go back to the Middle Ages?

And suddenly,

MJF levels Paige from behind and throws him into the ring and is going to give him the heat seeker, but Paige shoves him off and takes the time to take his jacket off and then go for the buck shot.

So when he goes for the buck shot, MJF meets him with a kick to the balls.

And then he gives him the heat seeker and takes his jacket off.

And the shirt says, MJF did nothing wrong.

Because, again, that is

the reasoning behind MJF's

turning of the fans is that the fans turned on him, started cheering for other people, which

would be valid in there.

There's valid logic in there somewhere around all of this.

But nevertheless,

he tried to get more heat on Paige, but Paige was covering up and blocking everything so it looked like shit because he didn't have a target.

And I know I've mentioned this before, but a lot of people are saying, well,

yeah, you would cover up in a fight.

Not if you're knocked goofy and you can't cover up in a fight.

That's the idea of kicking a fucking dead horse.

That's the idea of beating a man when he's down.

The guy's already down, he's helpless, and you're beating him up.

And then, if

you are allowed a target, you can work and your shit looks good,

or it should

without the other guy blocking it, and you can't, you don't have a target, or then you're trying to pull because you don't want to throw a punch at a guy's head and have him put his hand up in between, and your fist hits his wrist and drives his hand into his own nose and breaks his fucking nose.

That's why guys historically were always pissed and considered it an insult

to their work if they got on a guy and the guy was flinching and covering up all the time.

Say, open up, give me a fucking target, idiot.

Watts did that to me in the superdome.

When I was begging off from fucking JYD and I turned around and I didn't realize Watts was so close.

And when I turned around, he legitimately did startle me.

And I jumped and moved on when he slapped me.

And he's like, Goddamn, Corney.

Or it's Cornette then.

I wasn't Corny yet.

God damn it, Cornette.

Open up.

So I let him slap me again.

Have I made that point, Brian?

You made points.

I've made it.

With specific words.

The point of open up and don't make guys heat look like shit.

Give them a target, but the guy has to be able to work.

So then

here comes three or four security guys into the ring.

They must have gotten there late because there was a goddamn attempted murder here a little while ago.

Nothing happened.

But then

MJF, he just hit them with forearms and boom, and they took a bump and rolled out and you never saw them again.

Again,

they weren't killed.

They weren't murdered.

And there's only three of them.

We know there's going to be more here in a little while.

Hold on, they've got an excuse for this.

MJF puts on the ring, but Paige is back up and leg dives him and throwing punches at him.

But MJF gets up and hits Paige with the ring and knocks him out

and gets the microphone.

He goes, well,

you like and you cheer for Adam Page when he burns shit.

How are y'all going to feel when I burn shit?

And then he goes under the ring and gets a jar, a can of lighter fluid.

And he actually does get into the ring

and starts squirting the lighter fluid on Adam Adam Page like he's going to set him on fucking fire.

And where are the guards that he killed with one punch two minutes ago?

Ian Ricobani,

who was there,

thankfully on commentary, said, Well, he knocked out some of the guards and the other securities with Moxley.

Doing what?

Having a beer?

And then

MJF squirted the fluid all over Adam Page and he starts flicking a lighter

and suddenly the referees and at least a dozen security guards all at the same time instantly swarm him and tackle him and they're on top of him like goddamn secret service agents

and they carried him out screaming i just want to prove my point

I think this was worse than the the dinner dance with Jericho.

As far as just making him.

Oh, whoa.

How much phonier could anything be than this?

He wasn't going to set the guy on fire.

The thing was so...

Well, I had the hope.

But no, I don't have that hope.

Because it makes MJF.

as bullshit as the rest of everybody here and as goofy and as outlaw indie

and is laughable.

The one thing he had that set him apart at the start was the people couldn't see through him.

They believed he was legitimately a prick.

He was the heel, that he was, he never broke character, as the kids say.

He, he was,

he did great stuff, and then they slowly chipped away at it until now he's just one of these fucking morons.

And the angles take so long, there's no urgency.

It's not like.

I mean,

if you watched porn,

but the guy is fucking Sika

at the pace of two pumps per minute,

you're going to hit the goddamn fast forward button.

There's no urgency.

There's no

violence.

There's no mayhem.

There's no chaos.

That's what set the.

hello?

That's what sets Sika apart.

Yes.

That's what set Sika apart.

That's what set Seth and fucking Punk apart with their pull apart the other night on Raw.

They looked like they were fighting and people were trying to stop it and they wanted to kill each other and people were trying to stop it.

And they didn't go for goddamn 15 fucking minutes or at a snail's pace.

And that's these angles are so phony.

There's so many holes in them.

They take so long you can see through them.

There's no urgency to them.

There's no reason to raise the fans' blood pressure.

It's just the anticipation of the next stunt.

And so here's something somebody else

said that I saw on Twitter when I was talking about

who Orton the other night did like seven or eight RKOs in a row.

And I said, anytime that you do

a big move or a great move or whatever, a number of times right in a row, you give people multiple chances to see through it and

the response is somewhat diminished.

Here's a great way to put it.

Somebody said this on Twitter, said, magicians say

one time is a trick, twice is a lesson.

And I like that.

I just wanted to stick that in.

That is good.

What are your thoughts on this whole fucking thing with MJF and

the lighter fluid?

He's an arsonist.

Well, clearly, Adam Page is going to go over at the pay-per-view because he didn't get lit on fire, and now he has a reason to be mad because someone wanted to light him on fire.

Adam Page is all for lighting structures on fire, but not people.

That's a step too far.

Come on, baby, light my fire.

They used a flamethrower, so why?

That's another thing.

Why couldn't he pull the flamethrower out from under the ring?

Because they've already used that and they set the other fucking Yahoo on fire.

My first thought when MJO started going for the flicker was, is Adam Page covered in that stuff they covered Cody in when they lit him on fire?

When I realized he wasn't, I'm like, oh, he's not lighting him on fire.

I thought this wasn't as bad as you did.

I think the lighting him on fire, clearly, he was not going to burn him to death on live TV.

But beyond that, I didn't think it was terrible.

But that's a big thing to get past.

So

otherwise than the attempted illegal immolation,

the rest of it wasn't too good or too bad.

Or either.

Either or.

Either or.

I mean, the other thing is the scenes outside, it's weird when you have like outside scenes and you see like vegetation.

Like, I just didn't see like the outside of a building and Renee's out there.

So now it's like, what's going on?

It's like behind the Eddie Graham fucking building.

Well, yeah, it was like you were going to see the boys with one of those egg grills having a fucking cookout next to the production truck.

Like yeah, I was waiting for just a group of kids to walk home from school right behind the camera.

Because it was daylight, too.

It wasn't, I mean, here it was dark, but over there it was daylight.

So it was.

Yeah, well, they were they were on West Coast time.

It was like six o'clock in the evening or whatever.

So it just looked like, you know, after school.

Here we are in after school special AEW down the street.

That's what

that's what they should have brought Jericho in to do the schoolhouse rock deal.

He could have been on the front steps going,

they call me a bill and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.

Maybe they could have brought him in and do scared straight.

This is what will happen to you if you don't grow up.

Boy, now that may have, that may have worked.

You know what?

They ought to go back and do a network special on all the kids that got scared straight back in the 70s by and look it up.

Young people, they had prisoners and inmates talk to kids and scare them straight and put it on TV.

I bet if you went back and looked at those kids that got scared straight, they were probably all gang members and rapists and fucking wife beaters and goddamn drug addicts.

We don't know this to be a fact, but it is a idea to see where they are now.

What do you think if your parents say, well, as a disciplinary measure, I'm going to expose you to the worst criminal element of society.

It's going to tell you all the bad things are going to happen to you.

So you don't think anyone got scared straight?

I think they scared them so far they fucking went around a complete lap.

They got straight and they got crooked again.

Then they say, you know what?

Fuck my mom and dad for fucking making me go through this.

These fucking guys, at least they look like they got some pussy every now and then.

And off they went into the world of gangs.

Well, this has been the MJF Adam Page segment review here on the show.

And then we came to, okay,

they figured out a way to make Tony Storm's Storm's gimmick work.

They actually put her in a fucking movie.

There was

Lexi Nair.

At least it wasn't Marvez.

Good God.

With Ash Avaldson, our friend,

the director

for you goes wrong show fans

and screenwriter of Queen of the Ring and Tony Storm.

At least her gimmick worked here.

She legitimately is a movie star in a movie, but they did.

she did her accent and Ash did a bit with her.

And I don't really know how to even paraphrase this or describe it in any way otherwise than

they were plugging the movie and Tony Storm was doing her gimmick.

She's very good at the gimmick.

Apparently they did some kind of angle on one of the red carpets where for the movie where Mariah May attacked Tony Storm.

Yes, and the blood is what turned the carpet red.

What are your thoughts on that, though?

Are you for that or against that?

The idea if you have a wrestler who's in a movie and she's going to be doing red carpet events, doing an angle in front of all the media, that would make it.

Well, I'm never against, under the right circumstances, I'm never against the concept of doing an angle.

No matter where the time or place, it has to be depending on what the angle is and who's in it.

However, having said that before, I would validate this.

I might have to see the angle.

Just to, you know,

Again, Tony Storm had something with this until it just went just

too far.

Would that be just a catch-all phrase?

It's

well, the thing, hold on, they did another thing here in a few minutes.

Let's just talk about that.

Because Renee Moxley Good was sitting down with Maria May and Tony Storm later on.

And as soon as Renee says, thank you guys for sitting down here today and agreeing to no physicality, Maria stands up and just spits in Tony Storm's face.

And then Tony says, it's nice to know you still care.

Otherwise, she doesn't move a muscle.

And they proceeded to do the most ridiculous

acting

in quotation marks that I've ever seen.

It's like they're letting out all of their aspirations of doing parodies of lifetime movies.

I mean, they're exhibiting, especially Maria too, some

element of talent in being able to say all this shit,

but it's just ridiculous, isn't it?

I mean,

I'm not a big fan of the stuff on wrestling that's overly theatrical like that at this point.

Tony Storm is more committed than most

and her stuff tends to be...

She may be committed.

Her stuff's over until the bell rings, and she's good in the ring.

I'm not saying she isn't, but you know, they still haven't been able to overcome for the most part the fan apathy in AEW when the women are in the ring.

But her gimmick's over, and her personality and promos are over.

She got a big pop when she revealed that she was still timeless.

Maybe they could uh make Ash like her full-time director.

You have Ash following her around and telling her what to do.

I don't know.

I think he's got a better, better chance with Queen of the Ring winning an Oscar in that respect.

But is that the thing?

Is it that

the stuff that's going to get over in AEW now is basically the silly wrestling because they are down to that

indie audience that just wants silly fucking wrestling.

That's what they've got and that's all they're going to get.

And that's the point of this show that we're continuing to talk about is I think that there's nobody they can sign to make a difference.

I don't see any genius angle that they can come up with or match that they can promote that's going to make any difference to,

you know, to spike anything.

Can you?

And I don't even know if that's their biggest problem.

I think the bigger problem is that long-term, WWE is doing everything they can to lock down the industry away from Tony Khan.

Everything.

I mean, I'm talking about infiltrating podcasts.

I'm talking about doing everything they can, locking down indie talent at the most basic of levels, locking down schools.

They're doing everything they can.

Churches?

Again, what do you do in a wrestling war?

With the NWA versus Georgia, they never ran out of talent, the NWA.

Georgia did.

And it's a little bit of a different dynamic.

You don't have a conglomeration of, to use the term, wrestling promoters working together.

You just have one with a lot of money and a desire to own

everything in the space.

That's, again, it goes back to the frustrations with Tony Khan.

It's Tony Khan's wrestling company.

That will be a distant number two unless AEW does things to change things at the top and they're never going to.

It's a frustrating ordeal to kind of watch.

I think that's problem.

Well, speaking of frustrating to watch, Thunder Rosa and Chris Statlander versus Penelope Pitstop and Megan Brain.

And I say, okay, I'll watch for a second.

See if this turns into a shoot and Thunder Rosa stretches somebody.

And it didn't and she didn't.

So apparently all has been forgiven from these two nitwits exposing the business a week or two ago.

I don't know, but I'll tell you, that Megan Bain, I looked it up.

I think she's like 6'1.

She's got a look and an aura, and she's not bad in the ring.

WWE should have been all over her.

How did she slip by?

That somebody that looks like that doesn't just come around every day.

There must be something wrong with her.

Yeah, I hate to say it because it would need a build and they would have to do things a little differently.

You know, it would be the perfect opponent for her down the road.

Someone who's tall and big, and if you let her talk, she may get over as a good person as opposed to a heel.

Camille.

Camille.

What kind of private hell are you sentencing Camille to, I wonder?

With what may be wrong?

I mean, you're right.

If WWE

didn't see her, know she was there, that's surprising.

If they did and they passed, that means there's got to be something wrong somewhere.

Is she an idiot?

We'll find out.

That's her first, but that stopped WWE.

I heard they were going to sign this wrestler, but he's a real idiot.

Well, I mean, you know,

there's certain types that, you know, you don't want to

go down that road.

Anyways, what, speaking of idiots, what did Max Caster do to these people?

They never

really bury anybody on purpose.

A lot of people get buried, but it's all accidental.

They just don't know any better.

But

they have taken this guy and made him look like the biggest fucking idiot.

It's almost like it's, that's that's their

this is not accidental.

They've done it a lot accidentally, but this is not accidental.

He was part of the hottest team in the company.

Everybody loved his wraps.

Everybody loved the scissoring.

They completely tore that all apart.

They lost their Billy gun.

He turned on his partner, Anthony Bowens, and now he comes out.

and tries to get people to chant that he's the best wrestler alive.

And nobody gives a shit.

And they hoot at him.

And then they send out Jay White,

who beats him with one move, one, two, three,

and then cuts a promo about how Edge is going to beat Moxley while Caster is laying there selling and groveling.

And this is not the first time they've made him look like an idiot when he comes out trying to say he's the best wrestler alive.

And this whole thing that

he's got a trademark in a frame that's obviously not going to work.

Nobody gives a shit.

The fans are not reacting to him.

Otherwise, please go away.

What did he do?

I think this may be something he's enjoying.

I don't know.

They think he's going to get over by proclaiming himself as the greatest wrestler alive and losing every match quick.

It is entertaining.

No, it's not.

I'm entertained by it.

I'm not going to lie.

I'm entertained by it.

I wasn't so enthused when Jay White.

You're a sadist.

And then we get Jay White's promo about Edge winning the title.

Well,

yeah.

So then, and we already talked about the girls sit-down and spitting session.

And then actually, if, you know, if Tony Storm and Maria Mayvoy just sit there and spit on each other, I bet they could raise some money on OnlyFans for that.

But they gave it away for free.

But the main event was scheduled for, well, it wasn't just scheduled, it indeed turned out to be

Swerve Strickland and Brody King versus Okada and Ricochet.

So you got Swerve, the babyface, with the babyface manager, Prince Nana,

teaming up with the

I get he's a babyface now because he's a member of the Hounds of Hell.

They repackaged him and who's he what's he what's his partner's name buddy

because malachi left so they became the hounds of hell then they brought him out as a team and beat him and then they brought brody out as a single and beat him no buddy is a single and beat him

so they're taking on okada the guy that has a heel manager that never actually manages him anymore Because wait, he was a member of the family, wasn't he?

What family?

Who are you talking about?

Wasn't Okada in the in the family at one point that he went with the no, I'm sorry.

It was Tega Shit that was in the family.

Okada went with the Bucs.

Then the Bucks left.

No Kada's a heel, but now he's teamed up with Ricochet, who used to be a babyface, but now he's a heel.

And he just got stabbed in the head with scissors.

But he's still got to wrestle in the main event.

Is this a fucking rib?

I was surprised when I realized that the guy who was stabbed with scissors is wrestling in the main event.

Yes, and they were calling it a preview of Revolution because you got Swerve and Ricochet both in the ring with each other.

They were in the ring with each other an hour ago when the one guy stabbed the other guy in the fucking head.

Well, it's also a preview because we're getting Okada versus Buddy at the pay-per-view.

But Buddy wasn't in here.

It's Brody.

I meant Brody, excuse me.

Okada versus Brody at the pay-per-view.

Well, then, but

big shit, Okada versus anybody but a mortician

is not something I want to see.

And I watched a little bit of the, the bell didn't ring until seven minutes till 10, but I'm always

tempted to watch Okada's matches to see if at some point

he just falls apart.

It just shit falls off, an arm falls off, a leg falls off,

or if he just creeps across the ring with his little steps, with his hunch-shouldered stance and lightly taps on somebody,

it's embarrassing.

But

after one minute of nothing happening, immediately they broke into a four-way and they rolled out on the floor.

They were on the floor endlessly

because the corpse referee was in charge, which means they really don't have a referee.

And they did about three minutes on the floor and then went to the break at three minutes till 10.

So they could come back at 10 o'clock and sap the modern family audience.

And it was a rotten tag team match because these aren't teams.

They didn't mesh.

Okada is

embarrassingly bad and senile.

And at 10.07, Ricochet hit swerve with the fucking title belt and pinned him 1-2-3 after a

fairly phony-looking finishing sequence that made the referee look like an idiot along with the rest of the wrestlers in the ring.

And that was the main event.

Well, there it is, Jim.

Another AEW Dynamite, another

episode, the go-home episode for the big AEW Revolution pay-per-view, which we will be reviewing on the drive-thru this coming week.

You know what the problem is with Okada, poor old fella?

Oh, backup.

He just didn't plan ahead.

He didn't plan ahead.

He didn't have a backup plan.

That's why he's out there now when every time he's so broken down, every time he falls down, takes a bump, dust shoots out his sphincter.

He's just a shell of his former self because he didn't plan ahead.

He didn't have a business that he could fall back on with the greatest commerce platform in the whole ding-dong world.

He did not go to our friends at Shopify, and now that's why he's in a position he's in, where the poor old thing has to be beat on like

an old rug hanging on a line in a backyard because he wasn't ready to grow his business, to go to the home of the number one checkout on the planet, to go to Shopify, to

make some money, make sure that his carts weren't going abandoned, because he looks like he's been abandoned, abandoned by his...

doctors, abandoned by his family, abandoned by people that care about him.

He just looks like he's laying around in a back alley somewhere, wasting away to nothing.

And that's what's going to happen to you too, people out there.

If you don't have Shopify in your corner, when the corporate conglomerate takeover of the world happens, you got to have a big brother to take care of you.

And Shopify, they've got tentacles.

They reach all over the world.

They can sell icicles to Eskimos.

They can sell suntan lotion to people living on the equator.

And they can sell whatever it is that you're trying to pawn off on the unsuspecting public.

Brian, you know this is true.

You get just any kind of dog and pony show to you, the pet rock.

Shopify could have made the guy that came up with the pet rock a billionaire.

Instead of Elon Musk, now we'd be dealing with the guy that came up with the pet rock because it's all about your platform, Brian.

It's all about who's selling your stuff.

It's all about who's making the conversions.

It's all about who, well, you know it.

You know it's true.

It's all about you want to get your product among, among, in front of the most amount of eyes, the most amount of potential customers as possible.

And with Shopify, you can do that.

And you want to have that platform taking those people's money just like that, just sticking their hand in their pocket and pulling the money out of these people's pants.

No, no, no, no.

I wouldn't say it like that at all.

They got to be

accepting the money.

They're accepting the money that is given to them for your fine products that you are selling with Shopify.

Yeah, and you better turn that money over too.

If you know what's good for you, because Shopify, they got friends.

And if you don't part with at least part of your money, they're going to make sure that some of your parts don't go back together the same way.

That is not what Shopify will do.

Shopify is on the up and up, and your business will be going up and up and up and away with sales.

Get away.

And some people might be going away for three to five years for what they do to you no one is going away for well no one involved with shopify i don't know what you do in your personal life well no that they they contract this out it it won't be shopify plausible deniability it'll be somebody named named frank or joe there are no contracts

no contracts no buttons just your items on shopify get the get Get out.

Just do it.

Get in front of the most customers you can with Shopify.

That's what I'm saying, Jim.

Just get out there and mingle amongst them.

And boom, and your cash registers.

Your cash registers will

be kachinging with the money that you'll be making.

And it won't cost you anything because we can get you a $1 a month trial period.

If you don't believe the things that we are saying is true.

Or we are saying is true, or we is saying are true.

A lot of people don't think it'd be like it is, but it do.

But Shopify will only charge you a $1 a month trial period if you go to shopify.com slash JCE.

That's all lowercase, by the way, that JCE,

and you can upgrade your selling today and see how wonderful they are and how that they will make people turn over a significant portion of their income just to be left alone from you.

If you have Shopify in your corner.

Well, no, again, I wouldn't, no, I wouldn't phrase it like that.

You would.

Well, you you ought to open a business where you say, I will leave you alone if you'll pay me money.

There are certain people that could make that go.

I don't think that business is a legitimate thing.

Some press agents I know actually may call that a business, but that is not a legitimate business that they will be selling or helping you sell or being involved in any way.

Let's talk about your business.

Let's talk about what you could sell.

Let's talk about the customers.

A pleasant experience, easy to track, Shopify without any more trouble.

What's that promo code, Jim?

JCE.

Let's talk about Shopify.

Okay, I don't know what that was, but that's right.

Shopify.com

slash JCE.

So

do they sell the Nielsen ratings on Shopify's

incredible number one checkout on the planet and incredibly successful commerce platform?

Or do the ratings come out in another way?

I think if you could buy the ratings, Tony Kahn would certainly spend the money he loves spending.

Although they are cutting some of the roster we hear this past week, but AEW Dynamite March 5th on TBS, 8 to 10.08 p.m.,

according to WrestleNomics, on average, watched by 600,000 viewers.

Oh, even.

Dead even.

And even Steven this week.

Well, at least they got back up to 600,000.

That's been a struggle for them the past few weeks.

But now,

as always, the devil is in the details and the

entertainment is in where they started and where they finished.

Well, and let me just say, because I'm reading WrestleNomics's report here,

the story of this week is the key demo.

It's the lowest in dynamite history

in the normal time slot.

The previous low was October 8th last year, but that was a show that started at 9 p.m.

And NXT NXT was on for half the show.

Now, in a lot of the country, NXT was against this because it had been preempted the night before because of the president's speech to Congress.

So,

but still the lowest ever.

So, we'll discuss that a little bit as we go through this.

Jim, here are the quarter hours.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one,

8 to 8:15 p.m.,

the MJF outdoor promo and the swerve strickland ricochet contract signing

694,000 viewers

okay that is markedly lower than normal which means that

according to the average they're not gonna they're not gonna fall that precipitously this week is this one where

Only the most devoted came, but they stayed.

And now I'm looking at this, and I got to wonder how much of it is an NXT issue.

The quarter one key demo was 198,000 viewers.

That is

well off the 90-day trend line.

They're never that low.

Lately, sometimes they get into the 100s at the end of Dynamite, but to start it off like that, I have to think that's NXT.

Chipping away the younger view.

Which again, though, that makes you question, had they get 694 if they lost so many of their other viewers, how high would they have been?

But let's go to quarter two: 8.15 to 8:30 p.m.

An ad break.

Powerhouse Hobbes and the conglomeration and Will Ospreay versus Brian Keith and the Don Callis family with picture-in-picture ads,

563,000 viewers.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

171 in the key demo, 18 to 49.

But they lost

131,000 people, which is not unusual after the first quarter, but not when they start with under 700,000 to begin with.

And how,

without going drastically upward, are they going to hit their

average here?

You know, and another question, we've asked it in the last several weeks, last few months, how much of their audience isn't into Swerve Strickland anymore.

We've seen the main event matches with him at the end of the show dying in the ratings.

He was in the first quarter, people tuned out right away for the second quarter.

But we go now to quarter three, the continuation of that match, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.,

and the post-match with Kyle Fletcher and the Takesha video,

645,000 viewers.

Okay, and they just gained

37, 782,000, which never happens.

There has not been a quarter since we have

been reviewing this that they gained 82,000 people after losing.

So that's got to be a significant amount of people switching back and forth, depending on what's on NXT, does it not?

That's the only thing I think for a wrestling audience that would cause it like that.

We go to quarter

to lose 130 and then gain 80 something.

That doesn't happen.

We go to quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.,

an ad break, and the start of Cope versus Wheeler Utah with Picture and Picture,

584,000 viewers.

And then to turn around and lose almost an equivalent amount.

This is a ping-pong match at this point.

They're switching back and forth

some segment of 100,000 or so to see what the fuck is going on with the other show.

Well, we go now to quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour, nine to nine: fifteen p.m.

The continuation of Cope versus Yuda,

the post-match with Moxley,

the Outrunners video,

MJF's promo outdoors, and then the MJF Adam page,

lighter fluid angle,

667,000 viewers.

Jesus Christ.

Okay, now they're up.

Wait a minute.

They started at 694.

They lost 131,000.

Then they gained

82,000.

Then they lost

61,000.

And now they've just gained

83,000.

So they're almost back to where they started at.

This is the most unique pattern that they've had in potentially in history.

We go now to quarter six, 9.15 to 9.30 p.m.

The Tony Storm backstage promo.

The Megan Bain and Penelope Ford versus Chris Statlander and Thunder Rosa match with Picture and Picture.

579,000 viewers.

God damn it.

And now

6, 7, 8, 7, 80, they just lost eighty-eight thousand.

And from here on, looking at making that average,

we got to have a significant drop.

We go now to quarter seven, nine thirty to nine forty-five p.m.

The continuation of Bain and Ford vs.

Statlander and Rosa, the Mercedes-Monet backstage promo, the Max Caster promo, Jay White vs.

Caster, the Tony Stormer IMA backstage angle, and an ad ad break,

596,000 viewers.

Well, they picked back up.

There's another

17,000.

This is very, a very odd pattern, to say the least.

And Jim, finally, quarter eight.

We have an eight-minute overrun.

9:45 to 10 p.m.

Okada and Ricochet versus Brodie King and Swerve Strickland with picture and picture

519,000 viewers

eight-minute overrun 505,000 viewers

so that match ended up losing a total of 91,000 people

and

they still they they went back and forth in the middle, but they still managed to finish up 189,000 people down from where they started.

I thought for a while they had some promise there.

Very interesting.

And

a lot of this has to be the NXT opposition until, what, quarter seven?

And then when they saw what they were going to get for a main event, they just said, fuck it.

It's very interesting.

Well, there you have it.

It's very interesting how it affected the key demo.

Again, key demo is males 18 to 49.

This is the lowest in show history.

198, 171, 191, 163,

181, 155, 161, 142,

154 for the overrun.

The fact that they lost their...

I mean, then it was everyone.

I mean, it got kind of like collision numbers, but they lost a lot of the younger viewers who chose NXT over there or chose something else because it wasn't every market, I guess.

Well, the combined age of the main event

on the pay-per-view this weekend is, what, 90?

Moxley's 40, right?

You got to be

edge is a bit over 50.

Unless they want to try simpler hair color.

It'll change everything.

But that was AEW Dynamite.

Well, you know, I think...

Judging from this, do you think that it's time that Tony Kahn maybe is coming to a point of realization that, boy, I'm in the soup here.

My viewers are eroding.

I can't sell tickets to the live events.

People aren't interested in my talent because the booking is all over the place.

Do you think Tony has finally come to grips with that and is being honest with himself and going to try to do something about it?

No.

No.

I think Tony is going to double down on his leadership.

I think Tony will double down on his creative skills.

And Tony will tell you everything is great.

And of course, we have examples, apparently.

Jace Nakarado has put together some notes here from the Tony Khan media call for AEW Revolution.

Let's go to some of the questions here.

We have a question about the improved quality of the show and what Tony attributes that to.

Have you thought a lot about the improved quality of dynamite?

I would attribute it to psychedelic drugs on behalf of the viewer.

I didn't hear from Bill Bodkin with the pop break, and he'll be followed by Bill Pritchard from WrestleZone.

Bill writes: You mentioned the improved quality of dynamite and collision in your upfront remarks.

What do you attribute this marked improvement to?

That's a great question.

I think there was five years ago around the same time on the path to the original revolution.

I made a lot of New Year's resolutions to myself, and I felt like the television in January, February, and into March five years ago around the original revolution, was better and some of the best television we ever did.

And every week we delivered a great show.

We never took the foot off the gas pedal.

And

I think there are many elements that make a wrestling show great.

And

I made a promise to myself five years ago

around New Year's.

going into 2020 at the end of 2019 that we were going to deliver great shows every week and really the big thing i told myself myself, this is no secret, I said it back then.

So you can go back and look at the interviews.

I told myself, if I don't like something and somebody pitches me an idea, I'm not going to be nice anymore.

I'm just going to tell them, no, I'm not going to do it.

I'm sorry.

And I

have really pushed back on a lot of stuff in recent months where a large percentage of what you're seeing is being handwritten by me.

And

that is the exact same thing that I did five years ago.

And it worked really, really damn.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold up, hold up.

So

basically what he's just said is five years ago, I made a New Year's resolution.

I'm going to try to start doing a good show every week.

And I guess by implication, but yeah, later on I quit doing that.

So now it's five years later, but I'm promising myself to do it again.

What is he fucking talking about?

What is great about any of this?

And why does it take him

five years to think I should do more great stuff?

And why did he come to the original realization, yeah, I should try to do a really good TV every week?

Like that's something that is a revolutionary thought.

You know, most weeks I'm just going to try to get by and maybe every once in a while I'll suck.

Help me, Brian.

I'm going to help you.

The idea that he's the one shooting down ideas because he believes in his ideas.

And the big lesson of AEW is he should go back to when he took full control of the creative.

And,

you know, guys have always had input.

And Tony's saying that any again, the question was about improved quality of the show.

He's saying the improved quality of the show is because he went back to his mindset of, I'm in charge, I'm writing the show alone.

So it all goes back to his belief in.

his ability to write a wrestling show.

Go ahead.

And I

realized that's probably what I should do going into this revolution because it worked really well for the first one.

And I never meant to look back, but you know, a lot of times you try things, you get into habits, and I really like working with people.

And most of

AEW is about collaboration.

And that's really one of the things that makes AEW stand out.

And there's times where I've been too collaborative and just need to push back.

And I think in this, you know, past couple couple months and five years ago at the same time, you saw that.

And the product was

one of the best shows we've done week in, week out, five years ago.

And I think we've gotten that kind of quality going again.

And I love the idea that he thinks,

you know, like, where was he too nice as a collaborator when he said, sure, Miro, I'll hire your wife and let you guys do whatever weird shit you guys want to do on the fucking show.

I'm not exactly sure.

And again, he's acknowledged all along that everything's great.

Now he's kind of saying, well, things are great now because I'm going back to when things were great five years ago.

He wishes he could go back to those numbers, by the way, that he had five years ago, because they were almost double what they are now.

But go ahead.

He wouldn't know.

So I sometimes see people who haven't clearly watched the show talking about it.

But I think the people who are watching it week in, week out right now are.

very, very happy with the quality of the AEW dynamites on Wednesdays, the collisions on Saturdays.

And one thing we've consistently done from the beginning of AEW is great pay-per-view.

We never got away from that.

Last year was the best year on pay-per-view, I believe, show to show to show we've ever done.

I don't think we've ever done more great pay-per-views or been more consistent on pay-per-view.

I made a promise to myself that I would try to carry over the same level of detail and precision to the television.

I said it five years ago I would do it, but that was when we were just doing dynamite and it was- Detail and precision.

Detail and precision.

What the fuck?

Whether it's not knowing the building codes details when they put up their fake walls or just all of the details that we point out, why does any of this make sense?

And who can follow this?

And the string of...

I get great pay-per-views because they have indie garbage matches involving blood drinking and barbed wire on every pay-per-view.

And for the audience that he's already got and he's one of them,

that's great stuff.

But for everybody else that's not watching, because it's hokey indie horseshit with people that are either not stars or stars that have been made meaningless by the booking, Doesn't matter what kind of fucking match you have.

And that's another part of the problem.

He genuinely believes, like old Uncle Dave, who at least can use senility as some level of defense mitigating factor, Tony believes that these fucking hokey ass indie bullshit matches are really great wrestling matches.

And as long as he

can't see the problem there, nothing's going to change.

But I digressed.

Let's go back to TonyCon.

A very different setup now with the importance of dynamite and collision.

And it was really important to me to make the collision shows great week in, week out, which I just think we're on this fantastic run of collision shows going back.

In particular, really through the Continental Classic, I thought there was so much fantastic stuff on TV in December, but a lot of the TV in December was the Continental Classic, and it was fantastic.

So I really loved those shows, but it's hard, especially when there was one less week than the year before.

I wanted to

subtract from the continental classic i wanted it to be better than the year before i think it was even better or at least every bit as great and it's one of the real highlights in the history of aew for me was how great this continental classic was and brian what was one match in that tournament

name one match in that tournament we watch the thing and take notes on it this year's continental classic

Shelton Benjamin versus Commander.

You're right.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

You always remember the preposterous.

I remember a second thing.

How did Commander get into the tournament?

Didn't somebody else fall on his head?

Juice Robinson got hurt.

That's right.

Back to the great tournament.

JuiceCom.

Into that and realizing that our pay-per-views in 24 were just fantastic.

We did a lot of great TV shows.

If we could just be as consistent on TV every week as we are on pay-per-view, even though that's a really tall task, 52 weeks a year we can we can do anything and i really believe the shows have just been fantastic and i think if we keep putting on great shows every wednesday on dynamite on tbs and and max and put on great shows every saturday for collision and continue what we have been doing going back a long time and all of last year Every pay-per-view last year, I thought was fantastic.

I would watch any of them again, and I would hold up any of them and say, this is a great show.

And I think that's maybe the first year where I would hold up every pay-per-view and say every pay-per-view was just absolutely fantastic.

2021, I thought all the pay-per-views were also like that, but there were only four of them.

So

to maintain that quality with more pay-per-views and develop the great franchise.

Doesn't he have other things to do?

Doesn't he have just words to do?

Words, words, words.

I'm waiting for new.

I mean, this is still the same question.

I'm just waiting for the answer to end.

This is about the quality of the shows and what Tony attributes it to.

Verbal diarrhea.

Franchises we've added since 2021 and then have that quality maintained in 2024.

I thought that was a really big deal.

And now, just like we're doing more pay-per-views and we maintain that great quality, I think we can do more TV and maintain that great quality.

And a lot of it is really about

collapse.

the right amount of collaboration, which is a lot of collaboration, but also sometimes means telling people no.

And

I really appreciate you asking because I think our, like I said, our pay-per-views last year were fantastic and we did a lot of great TV shows.

And I think we can be as consistent on TV this year and have been that kind of consistency, especially the last few months.

Thanks for asking.

Thanks for finishing.

Well, there's Tony.

But here's the thing.

So again, we've pointed out everything in excruciating detail that's wrong with this fucking dog and pony show.

And his response to how everything's been great is that, yeah, as long as he tells the right people no and does his own shit, everything's great.

And we're going to try to continue to be great like we were great five years ago and could, we're all great, and everything's great.

Well, Jim, let's go back to Tony Khan.

There's more?

There is indeed more.

Tony Khan was asked about something we just talked about on the show.

You talked a lot about it.

The lack of AEW production meetings, or I guess the question was about overall, what's going on with these production meetings.

Let's go to Tony Kahn's answer.

Yeah, I meet with everybody involved several times a day in a couple different groups,

in a few different working groups.

And I've got all of the commentators.

I've got the top production people led by Mike Mansuri and his group and coaches.

And I'll meet with them individually and in groups.

I'll get the production people and the commentators together.

I'll get with the individual coaches.

The coaches will also meet with the production people and we'll go over things throughout the day.

And like all processes in life, I think we're constantly looking at this.

And when you depend on people, there's got to be good communication between people.

And it's one of those things that I'm constantly looking at.

And I want to do better with always and with everything.

It's like, and like, I do think it's a great process for us.

And we've had great shows recently.

And,

you know I'm very proud of the shows we've been putting on and I think we have a great staff of people and

that's that's kind of how we do it so I'll generally come in with an outline for what I'm looking for

we know who our top stars our top rivalries are where we're going we know big matches big moments and I've got a lot of ideas and I'll get with a group of coaches a group of producers and production people and the announcers and then we'll all come together

and it's possible that I'll meet with several of the groups as individual groups, and then they'll meet with each other, and then I'll get with them

generally one-on-one.

I'm going to stop for a moment.

So he's meeting with groups, different groups, and then he breaks away and meets with the

star of the group one-on-one.

I mean, I don't know how that works.

What do you mean?

Well, okay, let's say,

so he meets with production.

He tells them what he's thinking that's going to happen.

And then some talent in that segment comes and says, We don't want to do that.

We want to do this.

Okay.

Well, but then you got to get the other guys that are involved that are going to run in and tell it, well, then, okay.

Well, now you got to go back to production and tell them what's happening now.

When all these running around back and forth,

modifying things

leaves more opportunities for shit to get lost in translation or stuff to be overlooked because it was was not all being discussed with all

parties present.

They didn't have the finish with all the talent specifically nailed down and then have the production meeting or vice versa, have the production meeting and then tell the talent how the finish is going to go.

They're just all running around fucking revamping shit.

And

that's what, that's the easiest way to see what you're seeing is not even not to have a meeting, but to have too many meetings.

Well, let's go back to Tony Cotton.

And then I'll get,

before showtime, all the announcers and production people together.

And

it's, you know, it's something I think has worked for us.

And we've put on really, really good television.

And I believe have had the most consistent shows week in, week out.

So

that's kind of where we're going.

I do think in all wrestling companies and really in all sports companies,

you get reports and anonymous reports and things like that.

But in this case, I thought some of the things I read were completely untrue, which is why then you saw people backtracking from the things they said pretty quick or putting out a totally different version of what they said.

What is he talking about?

Who backtracked on what?

I have no idea.

In terms of the lack of production meetings, I can't even turn my head that far.

My neck is too bad.

Yeah, I mean, in terms of lack of production meetings, I heard that from talent.

So no one's backtracking me.

Well,

that's the problem is he's probably having a bunch of these meetings and forgetting to tell everybody to join.

Saying, oh, well, I said, this is what I meant.

And you get that a lot.

And it's just part of sports.

And, you know, when I was first breaking in 10, 12 years ago, I used to think about that stuff a lot more.

But right now, I'm just focused on trying to do shows and eliminate those kinds of distractions.

And when it comes to.

When I was breaking into the sports biz, your dad gave you a fucking job.

What do you mean?

You were breaking in.

When I was working my way in the mail room.

When he was breaking in back in the old day, Boimingham, I remember Boimingham, one of my better towns.

Meeting with everybody and brainstorming.

We do a lot of that throughout the day.

And that's really what the whole day is about is meetings.

So

I found the

I found some of that

discourse to be amusing, especially in the midst of the great quality.

But I guess consider the source, right?

Thanks for asking.

Well, there we go.

Thanks for asking.

And considering the great quality,

if you hold these recent AEW televisions up to AEW television from three years ago, it doesn't even hold up.

And we found plenty wrong with it then.

i'm i'm just i i can't

i can't stomach anymore of whether it's uncle dave or whether it's tony or whether it's any of these apologists well the matches are great no they're not

it's just the wwe is so hot no it's not

other comp another company can be hot if it deserves it while the WWE is hot.

See the attitude era.

But these matches aren't great.

And this this booking isn't great.

And it's not because the other company is hot.

It's because the other company, the booking is great.

And the talent is great.

And that's why they're hot.

And meanwhile, the other company has the stench of grisly death because of all the chickens that have come home to roost and they're pecking away at Tony's fucking bones.

Yeah, it's not that WWE is hot.

It's that AEW is a lot more appealing when WWE is cold.

But let's go back to exactly tony kahn i know there's another question coming up let's see if there's anything in between here

thanks tony dave melter with the wrestling observer you're up next and you'll be following

barcelona with the miami herald dave

hey dave

Dave?

Dave, you gotta unmute yourself.

We gotta unmute Dave, Dan.

Oh, he's not even there in person?

Oh, it's a phone call.

The fuck?

Oh, I thought it was one of these crummy scrums.

Is he still on mute?

Is he for a second?

Can we help someone help Dave?

Okay.

I think him and I are hitting at the same time.

Who's that?

Some mute woman.

Can you hear me now?

Got you, Dave.

All right, thanks.

Tony, yeah, I was just wondering, you know, in the last couple of weeks,

we've been hearing about some of the guys that had been under contract.

And I was wondering, you know, I'm talking about Starks and Black and Phoenix and Miro.

And is it a change of philosophy for you as far as releasing guys under those circumstances?

Or is this like an individual case-by-case basis as far as the decisions on those particular four guys?

Good question, Dave.

It's a fair question.

And

I think some of it's in line with what I've been talking about.

You know,

I do think, to your point, it is a case-by-case basis.

I think everything is really a case-by-case basis.

So much of life is a case-by-case basis.

But I do think

philosophically, you're right.

It was a change from what I've been doing, but it just felt like the right thing for the company and everyone involved at this point.

And

that's the thinking behind that.

But like I said, it's on a case-by-case basis.

And

they're all different situations.

But in this case,

those did have similar outcomes.

So in the other case, it'll be case by case until we case the joint and then pack it away in the briefcase.

And

ask why now and why I wouldn't have done that before.

And,

you know, I just decided that's what I thought was the right thing to do at this point.

But

it's definitely fair to ask, but that's really all there was to it.

Thanks, Dave.

Well, I'm glad he was able to clear that up.

It's definitely fair to ask.

Why does he always have have to like give his re like, that was definitely a good question.

That was definitely a fair question

at the end of all these.

Ray Phoenix released.

We haven't talked about that.

What are your thoughts?

Here we are, a couple months in the Panthers run,

and now his brother's been released.

What do you do?

Well, and

I don't recall, and I don't know if it's public knowledge, how much time that he was

committed to still serve there if he hadn't been released.

But I'm wondering if maybe Tony thought, well, this fucking guy, he's wanting to go anyway, and I've held him up long enough that they've already introduced Penta.

So I've kind of screwed up an introduction.

So maybe now I've accomplished what I wanted and I can just let him go and I don't have to pay him anymore.

Who knows what is going through any of these people's minds.

But I wonder,

it's not really that late, and Penta hasn't been there that long, and obviously they wanted both brothers.

So

how quickly do you think that they can gear up into

having a reason on WWE television for Penta's brother

to suddenly join him and potentially help him out in a two-on-one situation?

I would think they'd probably have some ideas, wouldn't they?

I think they probably had ideas they were working on previously.

I think the only problem would be, and not that it's a problem, but I've really come to like Penta as a single.

He stands out more, especially in WWE land.

You know, I wonder about just throwing him into a tag team, but we'll see what happens.

Also, well, yeah, what would Phoenix do remarkably different from what they would do with Penta?

And then you've just got two people doing almost the same thing.

Also, apparently released or about to be released, whatever it may be, Abaddon.

Nick with a lot of

Ambadon and

Komarato, Solo, Agogo.

That's from five years ago.

Has he been paying these people

to just

exist?

Also not being brought back, released, whatever exactly it may be.

The brother, I forget the exact name now, and I apologize, of Paige, or that's not her name anymore.

Saraya.

Is it Zach?

One of her.

Zach Knight, isn't it?

I believe so.

Yeah, he apparently is not being brought back either.

But he had a contract?

He was under contract, apparently.

We haven't seen her in months.

God damn.

This is like, okay,

six degrees of separation.

Everybody six degrees away from you gets a contract in your life.

You know, shits hit the fan when they release Anhelico.

That's when you know, like, oh my God, he stole.

Holy Christ.

These people have been getting checks.

Good for them.

You know, it really says something about the guys they haven't brought back.

They really must have.

Like, Jack Evans never returned.

I brought up Angelico.

It made me think of him.

He was there in the early days.

And then they're like, you know, we've had enough of him.

He's not coming back.

We have one more question here, Jim, of Tony Khan.

And that is on John Cena.

turning heel and if he feels any creative pressure now that that's happened let's go to this

like the rest of us when it comes down to it you're a wrestling fan so i'm sure you're aware that john cena recently turned heel

unlike the rest of us you own your own wrestling company and you book your own shows and it just so happens that aew a week later has a huge pay-per-view in los angeles i'm curious in these moments

Is there any sort of added pressure possibly to maybe take a big swing creatively that maybe you wouldn't normally do i'm curious as to kind of your mindset and your thoughts and how you handle these types of moments and let me stop it for one second apparently that question was asked by joey hayden of the dallas morning news but before we get to tony's wait wait a minute wait a minute that's a goddamn legitimate recognized newspaper what that was uh i guess their wrestling reporter for the dallas morning news my question was going to be

What do you do?

If you had a national promotion and the other company did something that the entire world is talking about, do you have added pressure on you having him pay-per-view the next week?

No.

As a matter of fact,

if he was to say, oh, shit, I got to have some major happening that wasn't already planned, that he didn't have worked out in advance and was fitting his stories, then he's just being a mark trying to chase big news that he's not going to make in light of

Cena turning took a lot of the oxygen out of anything else in the wrestling space, as they say.

So, if I were Tony, I just worry that hopefully Revolution will do about the same number of buys it always does and let me start thinking about something that when everybody stops ejaculating and wipes themselves off over Cena, that maybe then I can come up with something.

But to do something now would just be such an obvious plea for attention, and it would have to be the last-minute and unplanned because

you're reacting to something that just happened last week.

Well, let's go to Tony Kahn's answer.

This will be our final question and answer.

That's a great question.

I think we're really very happy with the shows right now.

I think the quality of the show has been tremendous, and we helped build a lot of excitement around the original Revolution by just doing great shows week in, week,

and that worked so well for us.

And I think if we do that here,

it will pay off for us and keep putting on the great shows.

And we do take big swings and do exciting things on the shows.

And we have big developments, big matches, big moments.

And I want to keep doing that.

But I don't want to change anything we're doing just because another wrestling promotion has changed what they're doing.

And I think it's important to keep an eye on what's happening all around the world of wrestling.

And there are exciting things happening all over the sport.

And one of the most exciting things and the thing I'm focused on most excited for is this Sunday AEW Revolution pay-per-view.

It's been a great run at AEW shows going into Revolution, as I was saying.

And I think that's going to serve us very well going into this pay-per-view, if that makes sense.

Thanks for asking.

Well, there it is, if that makes sense.

Tony Khan, any final thoughts on Tony Khan, his answer to the Cena question?

It's just, well, there's really,

he answers every question

with the same thing, but revolution is going to be great.

At least he's smart enough to realize that no, he shouldn't try to top the scene a thing, or maybe he just realizes that he hasn't been able to think of anything he originally was going to try.

But that was

probably the best answer of the bunch of them.

No, I'm going to go and do my own thing, and then later on, I'll think of my thing.

But

there's a lot of words and a lot of circles, and

there's no

again that's when i first talked to him

yes you should be confident and you should

you know like a vince mcmahon type of leader exuded confidence and you know the the the the the aura that he had this handled and he had his grip on everything but still he would admit when something is a task or something's a challenge or you know we must work

with tony everything was a foregone conclusion.

He was going to beat Vince.

His show was going to be great.

His wrestling was going to be great.

This was going to have, there's no chance whatsoever of failure.

And that's a stupid way to look at things.

When you have just convinced yourself that everything's going to be great

and there's no chance of failure or anything sucking.

And it, you know, for Tony, it might work when your father has $12 billion or whatever.

But for anybody else in the legitimate real world,

you have to go into anything

with

a realistic viewpoint of the challenges and the advantages that you might face and have.

And

Tony is grossing more money than any wrestling company ever, except for the WWE, but he's also spent more money than any wrestling company ever, except for the WWE.

And he still has this little problem with his shows on TV are the shits.

And people are stopping watching them.

And I still have to think, and then I will, I'll make this my last statement.

I still have to think that at some point,

there's got to be a goddamn

fucking trigger in that contract with WBD that says if your rating goes down to 72 people, we are not not going to pay you these hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, where is that benchmark?

That, you know, or at what point do people start going, oh, fuck.

So, you know, we'll find out.

We will find out.

Back to you, Brian.

This is your show, and that was the end of

then.

I can't go back to you.

It's got to be back to me.

Back to you.

Can we go back to the starting board?

Perhaps we'll go back to next week.

Should we do that?

Should we just go back to next week?

We will be here next week with more.

And, of course, on the drive-thru, we'll have the review of Revolution and so much more.

Well, that's there.

You go.

Well, in that case, then

we're pretty much done here, right?

Right.

Well, in that case, it's been great, folks.

Thank you.

Fuck you.

It's been great.

And bye bye, everybody.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Connet

of Jim Connet

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