Episode 571: The Dark Side

Like a midnight and the rock and roller.

He's in a fight for wrestling solar.

Using a racket and some mind controller, he's Jim Cornette!

The keys to the future, held by the past.

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

He's Jim Cornette!

Well, he's never fake a phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prevent

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

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Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another exciting Jim Cornette experience.

Today, I'm an amazing motion picture, and AEW is doing fit comms, baby.

Plus, morals,

check that, morale is low in the WWE office.

All that and dark side of the ring, too.

And joining me.

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

Co-Host to you.

He's got the highest morale in the history of morals.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim, and hello again, friends.

It's wonderful to be here.

Another fine day.

That song gets us in the positive spirit.

Listen to me.

You've screamed in my aloha and about busted my eardrum.

Fortunately, it was held.

The eardrum was held in by these vice-like headphones.

Stop it.

That you've got me.

That's the one thing you couldn't replace was the thing that actually causes me physical pain when we did this upgrade.

And now we sound like the fucking super duper extra sound quality, high-def vinyl pressing of dark side of the moon.

But I still have to have my heads.

My eyeballs are starting to pop somewhat.

I looked in the mirror.

I looked like Marty fucking Feldman.

I think that's a way to keep your youth, though.

You know, if your eyes sink in, that's not helpful.

What if they bug out?

Is it helpful?

It'll even out in the end.

It'll even out in the end.

I don't think it'll be Marty Feldman level just yet.

I got to keep my young, impressive, good looks, Brian, because I was on the red carpet here last week.

This week, actually, we're still in the week that it was.

I was on the red carpet because I was on the silver screen.

Other people are green with envy.

what other kind of colors can i incorporate in this thing

uh the queen of the ring was premiered here in louisville kentucky the other night i went and just everyone had a fine time and

uh camille came up from uh nashville she's living down there she ought to be a country music star

with her spare time now that

she's not

i don't know but who would notice to be a country music star, she has to do something.

Well, she's in Nashville.

So, right there, you go.

But Camille came up, and Ash Abelson came, the director and the writer of the screenplay, and Emily Bett Ricards, who plays Mildred Burke.

I don't know where she lives, but she came here to where we live.

And me and Dean Hill were representing

the Louisville stars of the film.

But we had a nice time.

Stace

got to take Stace, and we took her mother and stepfather and had a nice little seating area there.

We're not too close, but not too far.

And a bunch of the fans came out.

The both shows were full.

And I say a bunch of the fans.

This is the movie business now.

Should I still say fans like it's wrestling?

A bunch of the moviegoers, a bunch of the excited local citizens,

they came out and we took a bunch of pictures.

As a matter of fact, there is video of this, of me in public, that was shot by Hotchkiss Featherbottom that has been delivered to the Arcadian Vanguard offices.

And

it's going, some of it,

whatever may indeed be usable, is going on the Arcadian Vanguard.

is going on the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Now, bear in mind.

Might as well have given a camera to Helen Keller.

I don't know what the hell.

Come on now.

What was he doing?

What was he filming?

No, it wasn't his fault.

I told you they did the QA after the

showing of the movie in the theater, and they just kind of lined us up in the front underneath the screen.

And the house lights were like.

It looked like Whitechapel in the 1880s that Jack the Ripper was fucking lurking around.

It was very dark and it was shot from the side because the people were in their seats and the camera people couldn't get in front of the people in their seat.

You might not see any of the Q ⁇ A,

but there were other, there was a few other things that happened.

And you may hear parts of it.

Well, there was, there was a lot of hubbub, Bub.

Have you ever been to a movie premiere blind last?

Have you?

Well,

I try to go to one of them every now and then.

Well,

there's a lot of hubbub and there's noise being made and things, but

I guess we'll tell people if any of that makes the YouTube channel.

When we put up footage that looks like it was shot on Super 8, you'll know it's from the film premiere of Queen of the Ring.

Oh, come on.

That's my high-quality

telephone that I did cameos with that has the Super Duper.

Of course, I had actual

light and quiet in my.

My office when I was doing it, but something's going to go up, isn't it?

you didn't just on all of it yesterday when you told me how bad it looked no no it's it's definitely uh i think it needs to be seen i think if we cut it the right way it'll look very artistic it needs to be seen i think we can make it avant-garde just by kind of splicing some of it together you know here's someone's foot here's the wall

one of the movies that they made on gilligan's island a herald hecuba production looks like one of the movies yoko ono made i don't know what but we'll get something underneath.

Great content.

Great content coming to the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

But what was it like for you to sit there and watch a movie and, I guess, anticipate when you would be in it and see yourself on the big screen?

Well, and here's that.

I mean, even if you have read the script, and obviously there were many more days of shooting that I was not involved in where

like in the wrestling business, they improvised something and went with it.

So it's not, you know, just recited word for word from, from the script.

And so I was seeing a lot of this stuff for the first time and even,

you know, getting the flavor of it for the first time.

And

I got to be honest with you, and we'll talk about as a documentarian, and you know me and you know you.

And as a historian, I should say, it's not a documentary.

So that part drives me crazy that every fact and figure and place and name is not mentioned.

But as a movie, it's fucking great.

And I think they got something there because not only

as a period piece, they shot it well.

It's very artistically done.

This is not some cable access production.

You think you're at the carnival or you think you're back in the 30s on the street in front of the Sealback Hotel.

It looks the same way now it did 90 years ago or whatever.

But also,

the non-wrestling people, because there were quite a few people

that came either because they had heard the movie was shot in Louisville or,

you know, it's a premiere.

It was on the news here.

And

or they were new people that were extras or were extras.

or whatever, or my in-laws who don't know shit from apple butter about Mildred Burke or female wrestling, but they like the movie because it tells a great story.

So having said that,

again, nobody looks like those people.

I said,

did I tell you this or did I say this on, I said it when we were talking to Camille, Francesca Eastwood that played Mae Young, she had asked me, she said, do you think I'm doing her justice?

I said, I think you're doing a charity.

I mean, my God, Mae Young would have had to have plastic surgery not yet invented to look like this young lady.

But so

facts and dates and places have to be somewhat overlooked and nobody looks or sounds like Jack Pfeffer.

But from what I've heard from people who are just looking at it as a movie and can be independent because they don't know the story, the movie's great.

And I play very pivotal roles, Brian.

I'm lobbying for nominations from the voting members of the Academy for

an Oscar for best cameo, at least, or

isn't there a best newcomer, best debut?

There may be an age cap on that.

And well, I'm

now wait a minute.

I just heard the other night on Turner Classic Movies that Sidney Greenstreet was 65 years old before he made his movie debut.

So just think about that.

But nevertheless, it opens nationally at a theater near you on March the 7th, Queen of the Ring.

And again,

Uncle Dave has reported that I actually play Sam Muschnik.

And it was in The Observer?

I didn't see that.

Yes, yes.

Oh, several people have brought it.

Oh, you were playing Sam Muchnick.

And no, and the interview we did with Ash Abelson, I think we mentioned it.

And also I did an interview on video with Ash, which hopefully meets your fucking

discerning standards.

But no, I play like a composite of

State Athletic Commission authority figures and NWA

representative authority figures that they would have had to come in contact with over a period of the years because you couldn't introduce

15 different fucking miscellaneous characters and have them, the audience understand

who they are.

Why did I do my third scene if I wasn't established as being that person in number one and number two?

It moves the thing along.

So I'm not any one person, but since Martin Cove was Al Haft, he started calling me Sam just because we were sitting there bored watching him shoot one day in the background and couldn't move for like 10 hours.

Well, I guess the question is, you're insisting you're not Sam Mushnick.

It's a composite.

However, is the official word from the film maker and the studio that the composite's name is Sam Mushnick?

No, on the credits, I am.

Um, what does it say?

NW.

God damn it.

Now, in

NW, oh shit, I forgot.

NWA

representative or athletic commissioner, or there's no name attributed to me,

but I am, and then the credit is James M.

Cornette because they just took it the way I signed my fucking

deal to get paid.

But so I, but I'm not an officially named character, although I think I turn in a stunning performance once again.

I have to say so myself because nobody else is.

No, many people are praising it.

My in-laws.

My wife praises it.

You know, many people unrelated to me

have, are, I'm sure, are praising it.

I just haven't heard from them yet.

Well, you said it.

March 7th, Queen of the Ring opens up.

Go see it.

Let us know what you think of Jim's debut performance.

Also, Anista Reggie plays one of the girls in one of the scenes where they shoot.

Hey, you know what?

No, that

got cut.

That was, we were just testing the light that day when I put that costume on.

I believe you play Gladys Killem Gillum.

Isn't that right, Joe?

No, no, boy, Killum.

I'll tell you what.

Wrecked him.

They nearly killed him.

We want to say just real quickly,

in a more serious vein, as we're being juvenile here,

we want to send best wishes to Ryan from the UK.

He's just many thanks from the UK.

Didn't narrow it down any further, but Ryan wrote us his wife had been in the hospital last week.

He was having to go back and forth between visiting her and be home with their daughter and their little chihuahua.

But his wife is feeling better now.

She's back home too.

So they're all together.

But he passed some time listening to our show.

So

it was when we were debating about either how fucking, he says how fucking bad Dick the Boozer is or just Chris Jericho in general.

But at least now your wife is home.

So you continue to listen to us.

It'll probably make her sick again.

I'm sorry.

Not that he wants that.

I'm sorry.

But yeah, the show will get better.

It might be an unnecessary, you know, but unavoidable side effect of the thing.

Have I told you what we're doing in March?

We got a big show, by the way, today.

And Evan Husney with Dark Side of the Ring is going to be on.

We're going to talk about all the episodes coming up on season 10.

But have I told you what we're doing in March at Cornettes Collectibles?

No.

Would you like me to?

Is it spring training at Cornettes Collectibles, a baseball theme for the month?

It wouldn't.

No, I'll tell you, I got a bat over here, but I'm not allowed to, it's put behind glass.

No, the much maligned Hotchkiss Featherbottom that you like to poo-poo his ideas.

He had such great ideas, the whole sale thing.

And the bonus item, if you buy one, you get the other thing.

Well, we're doing it again in March now.

The February sale is over with.

The action figures back to regular price.

However,

still the the deal goes on the entire month of March.

If you buy any Jim Cornette action figure, Midnight Express or Heavenly Bodies tag team set,

anything involving something with a head on it, then you get the free two-hour classic wrestling DVD from the 70s and 80s from the Wrestling Gold series.

Any figure at all whatsoever, you get the free DVD.

And this month's featured product, the Behind the graphic novel,

that has

been an award-winning.

I'll get you that list of the awards after the show.

An award-winning graphic novel.

This month only is $5

off its normal price.

You get it for $19.95, autographed behind the curtain at jimcornet.com.

That's what's going on in March.

I figured I'd get the financial news, you know, out of the way there with all of the sales and the various prices

because apparently

the WWE, UFC, TKO,

I don't know if there was any bull figures.

There's some bull figures in here, all right, but bull riding figures.

I don't know if that's involved yet.

But has this

giant megalithic corporation has just sent out its earnings report, Brian, and I need help here.

You know, you're the wolf of Wall Street.

And I am just,

again, a simple small-town bird lawyer.

So I'm going to give you the headline, and you got to explain to me how the fuck can this be

that the

UFC and WWE

umbrella, as it were,

grossed $2.8 billion,

billion dollars in 2024

and ended up making

$6 million $400,000 in profit.

The fuck

I'm going to pay more taxes this year than they are.

But what the it at that point was it worth it?

All that work, Brian, all that struggle, all that work, all those people going to all those places and beating up their bodies and working in the office and slaving, working their fingers to the bone.

All of that 24 hours a day, something going on seven days a week, somewhere around the globe, all these people to make $6 million.

The fuck is going on here?

It's funny if you really think about it, like some guy comes home from work.

Hey, I had a great year.

We made $2.8 billion.

Oh, yeah, how much did you get to keep?

$6.4 million.

It's not even in the the same category.

You know, they have a lot of debt, and it's a big company with a lot of expenses, even though they keep firing people.

And

Ari Emmanuel is now a billionaire.

I saw that.

Well, that's, yeah, I think that the people running the thing

are doing just fine.

But when you think about it,

that's some kind of Tony Khan level stuff to be willing to spend

almost

$2.8 billion to make $6 million at the end of the year.

And I, and, and

again, it's being reported that, well,

the Kung Li,

Kung Fu lawsuit.

Well, no, it wasn't Kung Fu, it was just Kung Lee.

He has nothing to do with it.

Well, he was using Kung Fu.

No, well, I mean, I don't know exactly.

See, there, yeah.

I don't even know what discipline it was.

could have been.

Well, it could have been, I don't think it was that, and I don't think it was been Taekwondo.

See, you never know.

I think he was a kickboxer or something.

Well, and then, see, that maybe he'd have been if he'd have changed disciplines, he would have been more successful.

But

that's like $375 million.

Um,

and part of it is being paid this year,

and they paid $250 million

in interest.

But again, that's okay.

So there's five,

you got one point fucking, however many almost two, no, more than $2 billion left over.

They make $6 million.

The fucking profit margin on Cornet's collectibles

last year was much closer to the gross.

When we got down to the net, they missed the net and they fell all the way in the fucking hole.

They're down the well.

When you worked for WWE, wasn't there one of those years where they where they netted like six million, or am I wrong?

Or gross?

No, it couldn't have been gross at that point.

No, you're, you're, you're thinking of, no, you're thinking about the year that Vince was pissed off was 1995, I believe, or 95, six into the fiscal year, whatever.

He lost $6 million.

That's what it was.

And he was fucking highly pissed.

But I just can't fathom

taking in $2.8 billion.

And by the time you finish doing whatever the fuck you need to do, there's only $6 million somehow left over.

And is UFC is

apparently most of the blame there, right?

Because the WWE doesn't spend that much fucking money.

And they were both about

even in what they

grossed

$1.4, well, yeah, about $1.4 billion dollars each.

But

am I

just picking at nits here to think, my God, you would think there would somehow this has to be a tax dodge or something for the IRS because how the fuck there was only $6 million left over?

Well, you're good with your calculator, Jim.

What percentage of

2.8 billion is 6.4 million?

hold on let me just enter that

i'm sure that's exactly what it sounds like when you try to enter that yeah blow me with the good with your calculator to enter that uh is is the the response that i'm getting here you remember when you used to be able to when the texas instruments calculator first came out kids and it became a thing and in the public schools

It was great when you would write like, what was it, 8008 and turn it upside down and it looked like boob.

Whatever, that was a big deal.

Well, that's about what I've got to say about the

earnings report there, Brian.

I think somebody needs to crack a whip at the office, maybe some later hours, put these people

their nose to the grindstone because,

well, I mean, they've got to be ashamed of themselves, the employees, right?

That's why we're hearing the morale is low, because they're ashamed that they took in almost three billion dollars and they were only able to keep six million of it they don't think they're doing their jobs properly that's why they're all depressed right

well these reports started coming out about morale issues and not necessarily in the locker room where it seems like everyone's just having a party

or anyway uh it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with the arena it's all in the office the new office I don't know how much of this have you seen?

I saw a little bit about it, but the story started going around.

I think Brandon Thurston did a big write-up on it.

And

it's interesting because they're supposed to be this, I mean, they're making more money.

Let me rephrase that because of what we're talking about.

They're grossing more money than ever before.

Yes.

Obviously, it's not the giant net you would hope for with that,

but

is it something that should cause issues with the workforce that aren't the executives?

Well, I mean,

I don't think that they're yet going to the lengths that Vince went when he made him take the water coolers out and not bring in any more bottled water or whatever.

But

we're hearing that at the same time as these grosses are setting records, these gates are off the charts,

the rights deal, they're talking in billions of dollars.

And they're cutting employee incentives, telling them they can't have any more free tickets,

cutting the,

what was the goddamn plan they were cutting where they were the employees would benefit from it in the end of their their it was an employee incentive program the point is all the people working in the office are

getting put through the ringer while

these figures have never been higher and still some way they say they're only making six million dollars So that's why morale is somewhat low around the

what do they call it now?

Is it still Titan Tower number two, or what do they call that building these days?

That's a good question.

I don't know what they actually call it, but how would you feel?

Because you were never really there for that, where you're not getting a raise, where you're expecting a raise, where usually there'd be an annual raise, whatever the situation may be.

You're not going to get it.

You're not going to get increased benefits.

You may lose some of your benefits.

At the same time,

You could see it's a publicly traded company.

The major perks,

the stock,

everything being given to the top executives there.

You could see how that would cause problems.

You never had that.

It was never like, we're struggling, but Vince just gave himself $28 million.

No, and that's the thing is

even then in the 90s, the amounts of money were somewhat realistic that

anybody was talking about.

It wasn't off the charts like this.

And no, that's,

you know, you got to think for those people that

that are there in the office doing whatever they're doing, whatever department they're in.

If they're getting a whip cracked at them and they got to live in that, I'm sure it's still an overpriced hellhole, Connecticut.

To go through all that and they're seeing the people running the company that are literally worth billions of dollars.

that the executive down the hall from you is, you know, just got $50 million worth of stock or whatever.

And there's, meanwhile, down the hall, even further, there's people getting their heads shit on.

You know, these people got to think, what the fuck?

And now they're cutting my goddamn free tickets to the shows and I don't get a goddamn Christmas bonus.

That's got to be, you know, and these people keep that thing going one way or the other.

They've got to.

do their jobs.

It's not like the company has ever been noted for bloating their staff of employees where people are sitting around with nothing to do because there's too many of them.

So that's kind of a slap in the face.

No wonder their morals are low.

Well, no wonder.

Well, I don't know what else to say.

I mean,

again, it's an interesting new era for WWE in this regard that,

you know, Vince McMahon is Vince McMahon.

Now you have a bunch of figures who everyone knows and you can see they're all just getting a ton of money.

Vince, you know, rewarded lots of, like, Kevin Dunn was getting tons of stock.

But

I guess at least the world's most miserable millionaire.

I guess at least some people felt that there was possible upward mobility, or at least they had good benefits, whatever you want to say the excuse was.

If all of a sudden you start cutting all those things,

you start losing good people.

And it's always better to have good people than bad people,

as Mama Cornette used to say.

You want your master's degree.

You know you can earn it, but life gets busy.

The packed schedule, the late nights, and then there's the unexpected.

American Public University was built for all of it.

With monthly starts and no set login times, APU's 40-plus flexible online master's programs are designed to move at the speed of life.

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Well, should we talk about something good before we talk about something bad?

We can try.

Let's lift it up.

Let's go.

Let's lift it up, baby.

Let's go.

Okay.

And I know it's several days old, but we just wanted to make mention of a couple of things on this past week's raw from Cincinnati on February the 24th.

We're apparently in Cincinnati for a television taping.

They had 12,259 people.

Holy crap.

I mean,

it's not even in the realm of realism anymore.

This Netflix, whatever the fuck Netflix did domestically, I figured it would increase their worldwide audience.

But why are people

now just watching or reacting to Raw like this because it's on Netflix when it's been on TV in other places for 20 fucking years, 30 years.

Well, I don't think it's just raw.

I think it's

across the

company.

I think NXT is having a remarkable hot run right now.

I think SmackDown obviously is.

And, you know, AEW was just in Cincinnati with the hometown boy, Jon Moxley.

Remember, it was a smaller room, which they're doing now, and it's the right thing to do, but it just didn't look.

It didn't have the energy.

It didn't have the look.

And then you see WWE come to the same town and it's night and day.

And boom, goes the dynamite.

But there were two segments

that were kind of the opposite ends of each other that I wanted to point out real quick.

And I'm not going to go through

the entire exchange word for word, but Logan Paul was in the ring.

He was cutting a promo.

He's got heat.

He's a good heel promo.

And apparently, he really is a dick.

So it works, and you can tell.

And he said he's going to win win the elimination chamber and so he again he's a star they the people see him at that level

and they don't like him

and then suddenly boom

like mussolini with skyline chili brian have you ever had any skyline chili from cincinnati no

Heavenly shades of night are falling.

It's skyline time.

That's the jingle.

Oh, boy.

No, that's not.

Because they were open late.

Oh, they've been there.

Look up Skyline Chili.

They've been up there in the Cincinnati area since at least the 50s or 60s.

And

it's a whole new presentation of chili.

You'd love it.

And it's got the spaghetti or it's got the five ways or it's got all kinds of stuff.

Whatever gets you to stop singing.

And again, we have a lot of audio.

We're upgrading still.

If you hear peeking because of Jim's singing,

we're working on it.

You hear peeking because that was me hitting a note that the yeah that even a modern microphone couldn't pick up because it's so

it has such a rare note octave to it sounded like a mayan death whistle

so

like a disemboweled cat

So here comes Punk and they're chanting CM Punk, CM Punk.

And Punk was wearing the Chicago Teachers Union shirt.

So Punk supports education and Logan Paul supports the guy who wants to abolish education.

So at least we

got that clear on who's on which side.

And, you know,

they cut the promo on each other.

And Logan Paul,

that's the difference because he still isn't that experienced on what he's doing in this world.

He does great heel shit, but he still has that element of, I'm saying this to get a reaction, whereas punk is so fucking natural.

But punk's more natural than most of the boys.

But, you know, Logan Paul's doing the heel shit, and it was good.

And he mocked Punk for being injured.

And it's only a matter of time before the fans are chanting for me and all that stuff.

But Punk was zinging him.

You're a dime a dozen loudmouthed kid who does and says stupid things for a reaction.

There's no substance to you.

And

me and the other people that you mentioned i think cena and whoever

are legends that make history and you're a flash to pan that won't be here long enough to make history you're going to be history

and punk is going to win the elimination chamber and face cody blah blah blah but

punk said i'm satan himself in this business and you're nobody

And in Logan Paul and the face off, he slaps him and rolls out.

And Punk says, run while your legs still work, because when i get you you're going to understand why they chant my name i like that you get a clear baby face you got a clear heel you understand

what their

issue is and the delivery was very good on logan paul's part and excellent as usual on punk's part

and i want to see now they've set that up i want to see that match it doesn't

You think it's mania?

Well, I and they set it up before this.

Remember, all of a sudden, Punk Punk took a shot at Logan Paul.

Was it an interview with Sammy?

One of his recent confrontations with someone took a shot at Logan Paul.

Kevin Owens, you even lost the Logan Paul.

That's what it was.

So they've been kind of slowly building and then the Royal Rumble elimination.

Do you think it's Mania?

This kind of match.

Well, but see,

with The Rock coming in to

disrupt whatever the fuck's going on, you never know where they were going or what the

final mania card was going to be

but if it's going to be cody and cena

punk's going to need something to do but nevertheless the thing is they've got multiple options they're they've got all these top guys

have issues with each other to the point where

you can do something like this especially if you've got a

member of the board of directors coming in to insert and inseminate himself into

into things.

But this made you want to see Logan Paul and punk.

And that would be the goal.

Yeah, I thought Logan Paul killed it here.

I thought Logan Paul was exceptional.

And you say he still comes across, you know, whatever you said, in an unbelievable way.

Well, not unbelievable, but you know he's kind of, he's saying yes, because he's a dickhead.

He's a heel.

He's a heel that clearly enjoys being a heel.

That makes him a bigger heel.

Yes.

And you can tell that that he has prepared a public statement to tell people how great he is and what a dick, you know, or what shitheads they are.

But it's still punk's so natural that you believe him.

You believe that he is,

and there's some element of truth to this, that Logan Paul is indeed a fucking flash to pan and, you know, the kid that's shouting.

obscenities to get noticed.

You want to make people believe?

Take a shot at him over CryptoZoo or whatever his crypto thing was That apparently, there's a lot of people who feel like they were owed some money or whatever, whatever the situation.

He's suing Coffeezilla, whatever the situation is.

Ask him about that.

No, nobody ever said Logan Paul was the soul of honesty now.

But the point is, they made you want to see this with this

segment.

You know what?

They made me want to see it, although, if I think about it,

it's not an easy

match for either guy.

Like, as I'm thinking thinking about them working together, very, very different physically in terms of style.

Logan's tall, Logan tall.

Logan Paul is tall and lanky,

although muscular, punk.

You know, I don't know.

And Logan Paul isn't,

I punk in there with someone who knows how to work.

It's amazing.

But punk in there with someone who,

you know, either memorizes a routine or just doesn't have the instincts that you wouldn't have if you haven't done this day in and day out for a while.

Right, right.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know.

I actually wonder how that match would be.

Or can

Punk work with him enough to bring him up to a level to where without stunts, because you know that Punk is not going to be engaging in double springboards off the top rope through furniture to the floor or whatever the fuck.

Can he bring Logan Paul up to where, does Logan Paul have the drive and determination to have a really well-worked fucking match to his repertoire of

crash test dumminess?

And I'll take those promos leading up to WrestleMania back and forth, Punko Logan Paul.

Yeah.

And, you know, and we've said

Logan Paul is a,

we've praised him for being as good, having matches that good with the experience level that he was at.

And of course, yes, they've been walked through or run through or gone through or whatever ahead of time.

But at the same time, if he's a good enough athlete to do the

moves that he's done and put everything together, then he's also a good enough athlete to be able to tell a physical story if he's got a guy leading him in that direction.

So I think we'll see if,

as the veterans used to say, if he can keep his ears open and his mouth shut.

I bet you it's good.

It would be pretty good.

I'm about to say gun up.

We don't know if we're getting it or not.

And it's good, too, because it gets punk away from the guys that he's been working with pretty much non-stop since he came back.

Seth and what's his name?

McIntyre, obviously.

You know, it's time for something new, and this is something very, very new.

But there, the problems is that the other big, major

monologue segment, or soliloquy, or dramatic rendition

on this show was Cody in the ring and with our friend Seth Franklin Rollins.

And it was later on in the program.

And as much as

the thing with Punk and Logan Paul made me want to see them do something,

this didn't work.

It didn't do anybody any favors.

It didn't get us.

And it's

this rock stuff.

That's exactly.

Yes.

It's killing Cody.

Because they were having to talk about this shit that you could tell that the people didn't want to hear about.

Because Cody came to the ring ring

and he asked, again,

instead of, what do you want to talk about?

It was like, Cincinnati, I'm pretty sure I know what we're supposed to talk about.

And

they didn't want to talk about it.

And

he was so down and, you know, and what does it mean to ask for a man's soul?

And they didn't.

and then he was we still don't know by the way that was never answered no just a question into the ether the question is hanging in the air but that cody was going into one of the ones that you don't like and now i see

the promos where he's trying to with

with flowery verbiage and eloquence of

of you know language make up for the fact that they know story here that anybody wants to hear told to him it's been it's come out of nowhere and it's been shoved in, and this audience ain't looking for it.

And he said, it's it's good guy 101 that I never lie to you.

I will never lie to you.

But then he said, this decision that I'm faced with doesn't just affect me, but my wife, my daughter, my sister, my students, my nephews, my mother, the memory of my father.

Dusty got a nice ovation.

And then he said, the offer is everything that I would fight and scratch and claw to get without having to fight and scratch and claw.

He was presenting it like he was thinking about it,

like he was actually legitimately considering it.

And they didn't want to hear that.

Do you agree with me or not from the people's reaction?

That's the thing.

I don't think anyone, and it just happened on Friday.

So it was a few days earlier, but it had a major audience.

It was The Rock.

It was known for at least enough time that people tuned in.

Nobody came out of that and said, I want to.

I shouldn't say that.

The audience that came out of that and said, I want more of this and I want to see where this is going.

Was a lot smaller than the people who just wanted Cody to continue what he was doing, working with whoever was going to win the Elimination Chamber at WrestleMania.

Cena.

I mean, I think they would have wanted Cena more than, I mean, they could still pull Cena into this, but the rock stuff is unnecessary.

Well,

as he got to that point where again, you're left with the thought that is he considering this, which just doesn't do Cody any favors.

And Seth's music plays, and here he comes to the ring in a red leather raincoat and baggy red leather pants.

And I wrote this promo wasn't getting over, and now I don't know where it's going.

But Seth's whole thing is, what the hell are you thinking?

Which again gives credence to that Cody is thinking about this because Cody's not denying it.

He's not blowing it off immediately.

Like, I'm not thinking about this shit.

What do you think?

What the hell are you thinking?

We fought the rock and the bloodline last year, and now he's back and he wants you to sell him your soul and that you didn't slap him in the face as a slap in my face.

And then Cody said, Well, Seth, that sounds awfully judgmental coming from you.

I'm like, God damn it.

God damn it.

Now, no.

Because now Cody is fucking, Seth just said

what all the fans are saying to Cody in their head.

And now he's telling them they're judgmental is what is happening there.

Because somebody is crafting this story.

But he's, yeah, you're judged.

The rock didn't ask for your soul because it's tainted.

Because you've turned on people.

You hit so-and-so with a chair and

did this and that and the other thing.

But you were my shield at WrestleMania

and you helped me achieve my dream, even though you had a bad leg and blah, blah, blah.

And I wrote, this is long and going nowhere.

And

Seth wants to protect Cody from making the mistake that he made years ago, doing all these treacherous things.

And he tells Cody, don't make me hate you, Cody.

God damn.

And Seth

fired up and

said that he wanted to face the good Cody because he's still

going to win the elimination chamber and then fight Cody and me, but he's not coming for his soul, just his title.

So he gave him a pep talk before he told him that he was going to win the right to kick his fucking ass and take his belt away this was not not not good

was it good to you it wasn't good to me

people like the motivated cody people like the rah rock cody more than i would but they do they don't like the sad and this was like hangman page and mjf the other day in aew except they're not going to wrestle each other

And again, we're putting over, it's all about The Rock, who's not even there.

So you have the world champion talking to another top guy, all about someone else who isn't even there, and they don't even say outright what the hell he wants.

What does it mean when someone wants your soul?

That's a really deep question, Cody.

Why don't you tell me what you think?

We don't get anything on that.

And

the other question is:

based on what happened last year, the pivot,

because the fans,

the fans were rejecting what they were getting from the Dwayne Johnson camp, and WWE, WWE, amazingly, reacted quickly.

They can't do that two years in a row.

That'll cause a problem.

Right?

How do they go two years in a row and go, Nick, you got to sit down and talk to this fucking guy?

He can't just roll up and do this shit.

We've come a long way since Gewertz was writing for the show, and this rock stuff is self-indulgent, which only works if it works.

This ain't working.

He left the ring from that Cody segment on SmackDown.

The fans were quiet.

I don't know if I've ever heard the fans that quiet when The Rock left the ring after any of the comeback segments since like 200

whatever.

Yeah, well, because they're confused because he's a prick one second and he loves them the next.

And then he comes out afterwards and tells him I enjoy playing this wild, wacky character of the final boss.

They're like, he's just.

He's just coming in because he can.

And they don't like that.

And that's the other thing, because it's The Rock doing that at a scrum.

That shit goes around.

You know, it always goes around whenever anyone at AEW does it.

Some of them stay in K-Fab.

Tony Storm is the wacky Tony Storm, but the scrum.

But Dwayne Johnson, immediately after this confusing segment, going out there and saying, oh, you know, I love what I did.

Cody loved it too.

And we don't even have to wrestle.

I think that's the genius of what I did.

Again, Jericho disease, talking about the genius of the idea you have.

The magnitude of him.

And now we have this.

We have Seth Rollins coming out there to console Cody Rhodes or whatever this was.

This can't continue.

Otherwise,

and on Monday night, also the Women's World

tag team title match.

You said, watch this match.

It was a really good match.

Bianca and Naomi against Liv and Rochelle, Rochelle.

And you said, watch the match, it's good.

And afterwards, I said,

the match was just average.

The finish was incredible.

You thought it was just average.

I mean, the fans were really into it, especially at the end.

No, the finish.

I'm not, but now the finish was about the last five minutes of the match.

Okay, okay, good.

I thought you meant like just the last thing.

No, no, see that.

Well,

see, that's pedestrian thinking.

Pedestrian, I say.

When they were

what they did, I would have, I didn't time it, but I say the last five minutes, but it was probably a good five-minute go-home queue where they went into

the roller coaster ride of the build

of the false finishes and the peaks and valleys and ebbs and flows and twists and turns and

ramadama ding-dongs

of their finish.

And that's what I'm talking about when I say,

you know, not only I've, I've talked in the past about how, you know, we'd have guys do it, get a three-minute cue or a four-minute cue or whatever to go home.

That's not just the finish, not just like, oh, small package.

That's going into

what you have called for a finish.

And that's the old Eddie Graham shit.

You know,

Kevin Sullivan said if they had a 15-minute match, Eddie's finish would take seven and a half minutes or whatever.

But the match itself was

average, but not only, and I'm not just indicting the talent here,

whoever their producer was or whoever figured this finish, it was fucking brilliant, but everybody in the match did it perfectly too.

And they were in the right spot at the right time and they got the right reaction and Dominic interfered and they got multiple two counts.

And that's where the this is awesome.

chance started coming because there was a lot of back and forth and hot false finishes and things where you would think the baby faces have triumphed, but no, at the minute.

Or the heels have got the fuck, but no, at the last second.

And then finally,

while Naomi is about to

do whatever the fuck she was going to do to live,

Rochelle posted Naomi and Liv Pinder, Boom, 1, 2, 3, and got a big pop because people like Liv Morgan.

Now that she's

fairly iconically a heel, they're kind of getting into her.

And also, it's a title change, but that's what I mean.

You know, a lot of times, even average workers,

if they just click just right, whether it's a single match or a tag team match or whatever, and they've got a really good finish,

they can have a four-star fucking match.

Or you can have guys that are goddamn some of the premier workers in the business.

And if their finish sucks or their styles clash or whatever, it's going to be key.

So, you know, every once in a while, your finish will really elevate the match if it's got the right twists and turns and people take the ride with you.

So I love that.

And everybody involved did a wonderful job.

Allow me

to give a...

a round of applause that sounds like a meeting room of the future farmers association.

What'd you think of Dominic?

Oh, yeah, yeah it was very good what'd you think of dominic the way he worked ringside

oh yeah well he's got a lot of oomph to him he has energy and commitment the young whipper snapper i'm i'm glad to see him doing well he was a horrible babyface this is so good for

remember when the first year he was a babyface we said jesus christ oh you and it made ray look rotten too because his

geeky kid was a foot and a half taller than him.

Must have fucking married the tallest woman in the world for the jeans to come out even.

But

I wonder, is, you know, I don't know that I've ever seen her standing up next to anyone.

Is Rey Mysterio's wife seven feet two?

We've seen a picture of her.

I believe she's maybe 5'5 at the very most.

Well, but got tall jeans.

But I thought it was an excellent match, excellent finish.

Liv and Raquel are really good together.

The fans are really into the Liv, Dominic, Raquel

thing, and it works.

Where are they going to go now with the Who Injured Jade storyline?

Is the interesting thing?

Well, it isn't.

Where is Jade, and what was her injury?

Did she have a brain transplant?

How long has she been out?

They only do that in Japan, apparently.

Well, people have recovered from, you know, goddamn limb amputations in less time.

Well, we'll find out, I assume soon.

Apparently, she's been training for her comeback, but that was WWE Raw in Cincinnati.

You know what they're starting to do now before they go out on television all the all the wrestlers the top athletes the the basketball players the football players the snowboarders the ping-pongers you know what they're all doing don't you i don't know what you're referring to no they're they're taking a big shot of protein oh it's all the people that have the active lifestyle and they go out and they move and they groove and they shuck and they jive and they They just fight like big dogs.

They all take care of their bodies.

They need the nutritious stuff.

They don't need the chemicals, the processed things of today, the sugars, the carbs.

They don't need all that stuff.

They need protein.

Protein.

And they can't just gnaw on lion flanks all day.

So sometimes you have to take portable protein, Brian, protein that you can consume on the go.

And that's like our organe.

30-gram complete protein shakes.

You don't have to go home to drink one one of those.

You can stick one in your pocket and pop the top on it at any time.

You're out in the woods, you're out on the street, you're laying in the gutter, whatever your personal habits may be.

You can drink one of these right out of your pocket, boom, chuck it down 30 grams of protein.

I think it's only one gram of sugar, almost negligible.

And

it helps you maintain a healthy lifestyle

when you're laying there drunk, spun out on crack, in a gutter somewhere with hooker's piss

dribbling all around you.

You still want to maintain a healthy lifestyle and keep your body in decent condition.

Why is there hooker piss all around you in the gutter?

Is it from something you personally ordered or is it just because it's the gutter and that's where they piss?

Well, most of the time when I'm laying in the gutter, that's kind of the ambiance that I've got around me.

But you can still have one of these protein shakes.

See, that's the thing.

You can look good.

It tastes amazing.

It tastes like a chocolate milkshake without all of the things that are bad for you in the chocolate milkshake, like the sugar and the, you know, they put pure cane sugar in a lot of these things and it just, your teeth immediately fall into powder and just fall down your throat.

It tears up your digestion.

With organe, you'll poop better too.

At least I do.

I don't, it might be unrelated.

And they've got protein powders and bars and shakes and other nutritional products that the whole family will love.

If you could take like a six-month-old baby and take one of these protein bars and just, well, just go ahead and chew it up and just go like the birds do and just kind of chew it up in your mouth and then dribble it into the little baby's mouth.

Well, that gets them started early on a healthy lifestyle.

Nope.

Eating well.

I don't know who would advise that other than nobody.

Just rub their throat so it goes down better.

Listen, let's worry about yourself and worry about you, the adult listening to this, the adult who has a way of purchasing a fine, fine source of protein that is delicious.

You will enjoy it.

It will taste like a chocolate milkshake, or maybe even better, maybe you enjoy something better than that.

And maybe this will be on par with that.

You need to try it to find out.

Jim, Organe is great.

It's protein.

Tell them, Jim.

Yes.

And apparently you need to be an adult.

So just show your your driver's license.

Head right now to organe.com.

O-R-G-A-I-N, Oregaine.com slash Jim.

Now you're going to have to show your driver's license or proof of age.

This is like ordering porn through the mail.

You got to be an adult.

So,

as a matter of fact, maybe a passport

or some type of legal document.

Like, do you have a deed to your home?

Listen, this is one of the wonderful things about Oregain.

You don't need any of that.

All you need to do is go to Oregon's website, use the promo code, and you can purchase a fine, fine amount of protein that's delicious at a great, fine price just for you because you listen to this show and because we have a great relationship with Oregain that we're going to make sure we keep right, Jim.

Yes,

it's a wonderful discount.

You're going to, 30% off is what you're going to get.

30% off.

So let's say you order 10, you're going to get three for free.

You're only going to pay for seven.

As long as they don't catch you, this is something we've done.

We've hacked their website.

It's no, we haven't hacked anything.

Let's not joke about that.

It's 30% off the price.

No hacking.

Well, that's if you use the code Jim.

See, they don't know about this.

This is totally unsanctioned.

We've just gotten into their back end of their system.

No, we haven't.

And we're offering our listeners

this discount, orgame.com slash Jim.

30% off your order when you use the promo code Jim.

You can't even get into your emails.

You can't even get into your emails.

You got to do the back system.

What are you talking about?

I had Hotchkiss do it.

He's familiar with getting into people's back ends.

Once again, Organe,

they are our friends and they are delicious friends.

One more time, what's that promo code, Jim?

Organe.com slash Jim.

Use the promo code Jim.

30% off your order.

Helps with pooping.

That could be totally coincidental.

I'm not sure.

We can't make any kind of statement like that.

That would go against the rules, but we could say that you will certainly poop if you are living.

And why not have a poop with the remnants of the protein in your gut?

Once again, organe, the best protein.

It's delicious.

Well, we'd like to go now to remnants of a phone conversation

that I had.

Without a phone.

It was amazing.

It was like magic.

Yes, it was a, well, a phone conversation that I had earlier on the phone with me right now.

We got none other than, no, with Evan Husney, who is the one of the creative forces behind Dark Side of the Ring on Vice.

The new season is coming up Tuesday, March 25th at 10 p.m.

Eastern.

And

we recorded this conversation, as I said, at an earlier time, discussing the various superstars and...

old friends that are going to be the topics of the season six episodes.

So, Brian, without further ado, would you like to take it over to my conversation with Evan Husty?

All right, on the phone with me right now, one of the creative forces behind the hit series Dark Side of the Ring, Vice TV's top-rated program, along with his partner, Jason Eisner, they created this concept that has been widely imitated, but never duplicated.

And the new season starts on Tuesday.

March 25th on Vice TV.

And he's back again to talk about the new lineup, Evan Husty.

Evan, good to have you back.

Hey, thanks, Jim.

It's another year, another season, another podcast with you.

Very happy to be back.

Thanks so much.

Some more dark stories with light at the end of the tunnel

on a few of these.

And we've been talking about the

lineup, but we want to get from the from the horse's mouth.

I'm sorry, Evan.

No, since you got your teeth fixed, that's no longer a problem.

But we want to get direct from the source because, for example, I don't know if these are in order or not.

As you can hear, I have my sheet with me.

But when we were talking about this, I was talking with Brian on a recent show and the Hell in a Cell episode came up.

And obviously, the Hell in a Cell, Mankind and Undertaker.

Right.

And I was trying to explain because he said, well, how can this be covered differently?

you know, than what's already been covered.

And I was trying to explain, but you probably can better that this comes from trying to look inside the

bizarre mind of our friend Mick, mankind's mind.

Say it better.

Well, that's exactly it.

I mean, you know, one of the, one of the, I guess from the beginning of this show, you know, we worked with Mick Foley on our pilot episode, the, you know, the killing of Bruiser Brody episode.

And I've always been fascinated by Mick.

I mean, you know, his sort of approach to wrestling, his craft, you know, his philosophy that he brings to his style of performance is very unique.

You know, obviously he's very committed to all the characters he plays, but he also, you know, subscribes to that sort of theater of pain style of performance art, if you will.

That's that self-harm, self-sacrifice type of performance.

And to me, it's always been fascinating anytime to hear him talk about, you know, just how he sees that approach and his philosophy to that approach and how he got himself over with that.

I mean, you know, obviously it's brutal to watch and, you know, you, you know, sympathize with him and what he's dealing with now.

But for him, it was a way to connect with the audience.

You know, he sort of felt like it might have been difficult for him to connect in a different way.

And this was his way to get that reaction from people, like that they had never seen, you know, somebody take a flat back on the concrete or, you know, some other brutal thing that he does to himself,

you know, hardway stuff or whatever it is.

That was his way to connect.

And for him, it's this very deep sort of need to,

not acceptance, but, you know, he always wants to make sure, you know, the audience is getting their money's worth.

you know, and that they, and that he needs that love, you know, from the audience.

And this was, I think, from a very young age, something that he saw the power of having a kind of gross-out, wild, weird sort of reaction out of people.

And I think that's what his talents are, you know, to do this.

And so for me, it's like to look at it or to use the hell in the cell match as sort of a microcosm of,

you know, his approach to wrestling, I think, made a lot of sense because it is the quintessential moment for Mick in a lot of ways.

I mean,

for people my generation,

you know, when I saw that live on pay-per-view it was happening, it had, I had never seen anything like that before because I joined the club.

Yeah, well, right.

I mean, but

as an impressionable viewer, it transcended the idea of like a wrestling storyline, you know, because now you have concern over the individual.

This whole thing is, this, this must be real because it's not like, you know, a part of the quote-unquote script or whatever.

And there's this like intense immediacy to it.

And it was just, it was just, it was an incredible, indeluble experience for me watching it.

And I know a lot of people had the same reaction.

And so to me, that's sort of like the perfect canvas, you know, for him, for lack of a better term, to kind of craft, you know, everything he had been trying to craft up until that point.

Well, that's, that's the thing with, with Mick.

And, and, you know, I've told a story.

I was there that night and

astonished at what he put himself through.

And we've told that story a bunch.

But a lot of people, before I get to my main point, I'll say that the one thing that Mick had over everybody else that tries to do the same thing is that he still had the talent to somehow make it look uncooperative.

Right.

Like,

he didn't want to go along with this.

He was, you know, flung into it.

But

that's what Mick,

that's what got Mick over, got him noticed, got the attention.

And I think I told you this one time when we were speaking about him, is that after a couple of years and performances like this and some of the other things that he did during that, you know, onset of the attitude era,

at one point when he became dude love, because that story came up from his another face of Foley from his, you know, teenage years, dude love, the guy that dove off the roof.

He felt like he was shortchanging the fans because

Dude Love was not the guy that took the big bumps or had the wild, bloody matches.

He was the gimmick.

But at that point, I had to tell him, I said, the reason why I think that the fans loved Mick on a personal basis is because he had that unique personality.

They could identify with him.

100%.

And at first,

the bumps got him noticed and the punishment got him noticed.

But then as they started to like him more and more as a person rather than as an athlete or a celebrity or whatever,

it made him uncomfortable.

Instead of going, wow, they go like, oh, no, no, Mick, please.

They felt like somebody was hurting their friend.

And

you know what?

I think that's when he realized that it was the tail end of his career that he could back up on that stuff and

just be Mick, right?

Yeah, no, 100%.

And obviously, there is

a darker side, if you will, to that, you know, to the stuff he was doing in this time period.

You know, for example,

obviously the effect it would have on his body, you know, now, you know, flashing forward to now and what he's going through.

But also like what the episode gets into is his family.

I mean, you know, his wife, who he, you know, met, they met very young, and she sort of understood his philosophy and what he was trying, these moments he was trying to make, you know, through wrestling and his plight, you know, of wanting to be this very hardcore, believable wrestler.

But then, of course, as you have a family and there's this escalating need to outdo yourself

and this the snowball effect, it has a, you know, you have children now, mouths to feed, and you have a family, and they're kind of now tagging along on this ride, and that's difficult.

And I think our episode definitely gets into the family side of having, you know,

a husband, a father like Mick, with, you know, kind of wrestling with, you know, the things that he wants to do and to achieve, but also at what risk, you know?

And so I think that's definitely part of it.

But also it's scary in terms of

what he has to live with now in terms of what he's going through cognitively and the unknown of what's going to happen in 10 years from now, 15 years from now.

And this sort of, you know, it's for him, him it's a mixed blessing this match because it's something that sort of made him the legend that he wanted to always become but it also is something that he very narrowly escaped uh you know some real some even worse consequences that he did you know so yeah And who else is on this episode?

I know I gave you some comments.

I may end up on the cutting room floor, but

you got some other interesting people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think with this episode, we really wanted to try and

live in the match as much as possible.

So

I think the amount of time we spend talking about the moment to moment in the match is actually longer than the match, it is in actuality, which is always fun.

I think that's very fun to watch.

So we wanted to get a lot of people that were, you know, there and covering it or involved in it in some way.

So, you know, so we got Gerald Briscoe in it, you know, who's watching the monitors, you know, and producing there.

And from his perspective, we did get Dr.

Francois Petit, who

makes a run-in in the episode, who's an incredible character.

And he's just, he's awesome.

Is it Mick?

His body is like a whale.

It is just, he has no bone structure.

You can just move him around.

Yeah, right.

Let me fix you, baby.

But

he's great.

and he gives a great perspective in terms of, you know, calling Mick like, you know, his greatest patient in many ways of the types of stuff he's had to do to reset him and, you know, throughout the years.

But it's cool to hear from him.

I mean, I had no idea he was sub-zero in the Mortal Kombat movie.

I did not know that.

I didn't either.

I did not know that.

I thought he was just the guy that did handstands on the boys' backs.

No, he's in the movie.

And so he gives a very unique, you know, perspective.

Of course, you know, Mick's family is in there.

You know, his wife, Colette, Noel, his daughter, and Mickey, his son.

Jimmy Corderis is in the episode as well.

Al Snow,

who sort of took care of Mick that night,

trying to get him, giving him all the help he could get to get into bed and all that stuff.

It's pretty brutal.

Jim Ross returns for it, of course, on color commentary, yourself.

And yeah,

I think that's everybody.

Is that the season premiere?

I don't know if my list is in order.

Yes.

That is.

So on March 25th, we're going to take the ride on the Hell in a Cell train.

Yes.

But

following that,

another episode that I shot some comments for, and that I was peripherally involved in the man's career.

I was having, that was his

only run where he wasn't as successful as he was everywhere else.

Vader gets an episode this season.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah, very excited about that.

You know, just one of my favorites, again, from childhood in terms of that, you know, super heavyweight, big man, strongman

character, you know, always a huge fan of his stuff in Japan with that crazy mask, you know, with the steam coming out of it.

Incredible.

It's incredible stuff.

So, yeah, this episode is, again, very family-based as well.

You know, his ex-wife is in there, his son, and they're tremendous in the episode.

The story covers a lot of the development of, you know, his incredibly incredibly stiff, strong man style and

also

contrasting his

very emotional volatility at times.

He sort of had that,

he had that.

And

how he broke into the business.

I think he broke in

with Brody and Stan in the same locker room, you know, and they sort of kind of beat the shit out of him and kind of

showed him what it was all about.

You know, obviously he comes from the hard knocks football background, of course, too.

But you can see the development of that and how he came in.

And then, you know, he was chosen for that big Van Vader gimmick in Japan and the sort of creation of that monster character.

And yeah, yeah, as I said, it dives into the dichotomy of his intense performance and his intense physicality and just somebody who really had a

very sensitive and volatile inner side.

It gets into the

he could swing swing from a wrecking ball to

a teddy bear in like the twinkling of an eye, right?

Yes, yes.

And I think one moment that's very, that really illustrates that is the incident that occurred with Joe Thurman.

Are you familiar with that?

Yes, the power bomb gone somewhat awry.

Yeah, yeah.

So Joe, so Joe is in the episode, which is interesting.

And I don't think he's really ever talked much about that incident.

But, you know, he describes basically, you know, Vader,

I don't know, a switch went off and he saw red and just became this vicious monster when the bell rang.

And then, you know, following what was pretty much like a temporary paralysis moment, that, you know, what happened to Joe after you see that, the, you know, the moves he took and how kind of careless Vader was in the ring with him, that he instantly was just like an emotional wreck after that.

You know, Vader was in terms of what he had done to somebody else.

You know, so that is kind of part of his,

you know,

emotional makeup, if you will, you know,

and part of it, I've talked about, you know, the biggest comment I always have is Vince never got Leon.

Yes.

Vince never got Leon and Leon didn't get Vince.

And, you know, part of it may have been because, I mean, other pro football players have made the successful transition of right, you know, whether they played for just a few years or a number of years in the NFL.

But Leon just always had that football mentality of

here's how I should be treated.

And here's that blah, blah, blah standing up.

And I guess they have a union over there in football.

And

it worked for him when he was taking care of himself in the Wild West like Brody did in Japan or, you know, in Mexico or whatever.

But When he got into the Vince environment, Leon hadn't been a lifelong wrestling fan, got into into business late.

Vince

saw a whole different person.

He had never seen the Vader that everybody else in the world knew because he wasn't watching.

Right.

And it just, it didn't connect.

That was,

and I get the opportunity to manage Vader the only place they ever wrestled in his,

after his rookie year where he wasn't the world champion.

But, but, but go on, Evan.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

I mean, you mentioned in the episode about how Vince didn't have much of a frame of reference for him.

And so it was kind of this idea, you know, I mean, you have to know how to position somebody like that, you know, when you're, when you're given a monster heel like that, a one-of-a-kind one, especially.

And it seemed like it never really connected.

Obviously, he was pretty banged up at that time, too, I think.

And so he was slowing down a bit.

And his weight was...

getting he was getting heavier and you know jr talks about this the the weight clause the weight clause right right and and and jr's is kind of responsible.

Steen and Ring of Honor was pissed off.

I said, just lose 40 pounds for your health and performance sake, right?

I said, we have to put a weight clause to your contract.

He's like, what the fuck?

I said, hey,

if Vince can do it to Vader, we can do it to you.

Right.

Yeah.

And you kind of get a peek into just the talent management side of things, you know, through JR.

who kind of has to deal with trying to get Vader

healthier.

And I think he enrolled vader and yokozuna into this kind of university program that had a weight loss oh duke um

they didn't go at the same time because i was monitoring yoko when he was there i've told that story but i okay i want to say

I don't know that Lee Hun ever actually went.

I think they wanted to.

I don't know now.

JR may have a firmer memory, but I think they wanted him to.

And somehow he avoided it, but he might have gone.

There was was talk of it.

Yeah, I think JR mentioned maybe he's conflating the stories or whatnot, but he was mentioning how, like, you know, he found out.

I wasn't sure if this was Yoko or Vader, both, whatever, that, you know, he found out that somebody was smuggling in fried chicken.

Oh, yeah, that was, that was Yoko.

Got it, right?

That was Yoko.

He had actually

that was the joke in the office.

We sent Yokozuna to the Duke Weight Loss Clinic and he ate it.

Right.

But anyway, back to Leon, though.

That's

another episode this season.

And,

you know, again, I've mentioned this before, but

I love the

subjects that you guys have the opportunity to cover.

Now that the first couple of seasons, we got to have the big names, right?

Because you're proving yourself.

But now that you got the track record and you blow all the competition away.

uh you can

you can go into some some of the things because when has vader ever really been featured any vader footage or whatever by any of the wwe yeah authorized programming and

you know a lot of your guys fit the uh or your episodes i should say fit that picture including

the next episode on uh a guy who the wwe has definitely featured him in the past but he had a career outside that for a long period of time and and a few interesting stories mr usa tony atlas Yes.

Yep.

And now Tony's still alive and kicking and around with us.

So the story isn't all that dark and gloomy, but he's gone through some shit in his career,

to say the least.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean,

I think, you know, Tony says, you know, Hogan had told him once that, you know, he's one of the only wrestlers he had seen that had worked his way from the top to the bottom, you know.

That is.

I don't know.

I've known a few of those also.

I'm sure there's a few others, yeah.

But he, he, you know, that is kind of his story.

I mean, you know, Tony's autobiography is, you know, too much too soon, is what he calls it.

And he kind of came in with this incredible body.

You know, he was a bodybuilder, turned wrestler, and came in with this amazing physique

and was given a lot of opportunities out of the gate.

And again, he just kind of had this emotional volatility.

And of course, you know, it's the sort of obligatory mention of, you know, his shoe fetish, which,

you know,

is actually

a,

according to Tony, like a

bigger, it played a bigger part into his career trajectory than I would have thought.

You know, he talks about,

you know, for those who don't know, I mean, Tony, you know, likes to be walked on quite often by women wearing, you know, platform shoes.

Not promoters.

Promoters can't walk on it, but the women wearing the big big shoes.

Yeah, I've seen it firsthand before many times.

Or first foot.

First foot, exactly.

Excuse me.

But it's something as he says in the episode, like, you know, he would no show events out of the temptation of an opportunity to get walked on, you know?

And that was sort of his happy place, his place of,

you know,

you know,

that's how he de-stresses, you know?

And so that played a big part into him missing a lot of opportunities, according to himself.

Well, and you know, also

for people who might not be familiar because they see his body, but they think, oh, you know, superstar Graham and those other bodybuilders at the time, they, you know, were California and they're on Muscle Beach.

Tony White is his real name.

And he grew up.

outside of Roanoke, Virginia, in a little small town and dirt poor.

And he managed to build that body and that reputation and start winning the,

what was it, teenage, you know,

contests with just with nothing.

Yeah.

So, I mean, genetically, obviously, he was gifted, but just the work that he put into that, and that's what

led the promoters to notice him.

Yep.

And he broke in there in

In the Carolinas of the 1970s.

Everybody knows that was the place where every major NWA talent and every top in-ring worker and a blah, blah, blah.

They were flocking there.

So he got in with,

I mean, you know, here's a game's worker with Ric Flair and Andre the Giant, people like this in his rookie year.

He had a lot of people there to teach him.

It was, I've, I saw, I have some of the films and have seen, you know, saw him early on.

It was rough at the start, but he had an amazing athleticism for a guy that size.

Yeah.

But the point is, too much too soon.

A guy that goes from, you know, lifting paint cans on a broomstick or whatever, because he can't even afford barbells.

And suddenly those guys on top of the Carolinas in the 70s were making a couple or three grand a week.

Exactly.

That's boom.

Then that goes.

And there's, I'll, I'll pitch it back to you with this classic story of his rookie year.

He's in the locker room in the Carolinas.

And somebody looks over and sees Tony and he's got a bottle of baby oil and he's pouring the whole goddamn bottle of baby oil over all around his head, his neck and shoulders, his chest.

And they say, what are you doing?

And you know his accent like that when he talked like that because that Virginia, he said, they tell me I got, I got to be, I got to shine tonight because old man Crockett's here.

Oh, man.

So it was a, it was a learning experience there.

That's right.

Very, very, a lot very soon, but go ahead.

Well, as you were saying, I mean, he came, you know, from this upbringing, you know, that he had.

And, you know, he was, he was, he was a fighter, you know, having to, you know, he got into a lot of fights as a kid and he came from, you know, not a great section of town.

And, um, you know, all, you know, he had a lot to prove.

And I think that coming from, you know, his sort of socioeconomic background and then coming into the wrestling business and making all of this money very quickly and not really knowing, you know, how to save or, you know, what he should do with it.

I mean, he was just that, that money came in and went immediately out, you know, and I think that's obviously he's not the only wrestler who had that sort of issue, but I think that was a big part of it.

And,

you know, for him, though, this, this episode definitely also gets into, you know, he, he also struggled with addiction and he had kind of a downward spiral and his career, you know, fizzled out.

And he became homeless and he was living on the street

for periods of time.

And then he met his wife,

you know, who basically essentially saved him, you know, from living on the streets and brought him in and took care of him.

You know, Vince called him back and had brought him back as Saba Simba, you know,

and

he had that experience of kind of seeing the bottom, you know.

And what's kind of heartwarming to see, and not to spoil it or anything, but you know, his wife has, you know, suffered a stroke, I think, in the last few years, and he's been taking care of her like day in and day out.

And so to see that, you know, just the relationship that they still have to this day is very moving.

And so that's something people will see, which is cool.

Well, then

an inspirational in some way story like Tony Atlas, then you

go to the other side of the coin with,

and he may be a blip on a lot of wrestling fans' screens, especially in America.

They might remember him a bit in Japan.

But

the guy whose real name was Tony Holm,

but they may know him as Ludwig Borga.

You told me you were going to do an episode.

I was like, what, was he a wrestler for 15 minutes?

I mean, I forgot that I had managed him.

Remember that?

You had to remind me I managed him the one, right?

Right, you're right.

And he was just the quiet guy sitting in a corner with the weird look.

And he had the, you know, and I guess he was that generation's Gunther, except he couldn't work and he couldn't talk.

Yeah.

Vince loved that, you know, U-boat captain look.

But now that you you have done the episode, you told me some of the stuff that this guy was into away from wrestling.

Yeah.

This is just one of those ones.

It's a heck of a story.

This guy was,

he was shady in a number of areas.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is a wild story and one that I can't believe we didn't do sooner.

It's been one that a lot of people have recommended to me.

And we would look into it and try and, you know, I just can't believe we didn't pull the trigger on it sooner.

But he basically, yeah, Ludwig Borga, I mean, he was, I think he was in the WWF for a year, maybe at the most.

They probably signed him for a year, and that's when he left when it was up.

Yeah, right.

And so, you know, fans might remember him.

He does have a Hasbro action figure.

I think it's one of the more valuable ones, too,

as a frame of reference.

But basically,

most of the run ended up in a landfill, probably.

So the ones remaining are very valuable.

Right, exactly.

But yeah, he was booked as a Finnish Finnish heel, a heel from Finland, the Hellraiser from Helsinki.

You know, what you say in the episode, you know, Vince, well, if we don't have an issue with a country, Vince will find one, you know, and

those goddamn Finns, they've stabbed us in the back again.

Right.

But one of the big.

moments with him in the WWF behind the scenes is they all figured out that he had he had an SS tattoo.

You know, he had a Nazi SS tattoo on his calf.

And that was quite alarming to a lot of folks.

And I think it was, okay, we didn't know this.

We had to do the background check on

him.

And I think it was about

when they do the background check, does it include a list of your tattoos?

Yeah.

Cavity search.

Yeah, but that's what I was trying to remember when we were talking about this last week.

And then one of the readers, one of the readers, one of the listeners, God damn, how old am I?

The readers.

One of the listeners sent a picture on Twitter.

I was reading on Twitter and it's what I was doing.

And the listener sent the picture.

Right.

And it was, yeah, the SS lightning bolt thing with the eagle around it and everything, like you would see on God, Herman Goering or whatever.

Right.

And

where is Finland in relation to Germany?

I don't mean to derail your story, but

I don't know.

It's somewhere around there, isn't it?

Somewhere in the area, I guess.

Yeah.

But nevertheless, so yeah, first they saw the tattoo and they're like, no, we got to cover that up.

Yep.

And I think any kind of reason at that point to get rid of him, because he also was just very,

you know, he wasn't easy to get along with.

You know, he was confrontational, cantankerous.

You know, he didn't have a very good reputation among the boys.

And then, so, I mean, for many, that's kind of where his story stops and starts, you know.

But for our episode, it was looking, we actually partnered up with a documentary crew in Finland who had done a story on Tony Hollamay over there because he's a much much more infamous person, obviously, in his home country.

You know, like he's, he's, he's, you know, everybody knows who he is, kind of thing.

And apparently, they're not real warm on him either.

No, they're not.

But there was a time where they were.

So, you know, he comes from Finland.

His sort of background is, you know, he grew up as a very bitter and full of resentment

kid

and joined gangs and, you know, was kind of violent in the streets, beating people up, sort of thing, very confrontational kind of guy and he uh you'll love this he his inspiration for wanting to come to america uh the uh the the the person that uh inspired him to want to be a celebrity was Travis Bickel from Taxi Driver

So he saw something in Taxi Driver that made him want to move to America.

So he moved to America, you know, went to the Gold's Gym sort of route and met people there and were like, hey, you'd you'd be good for wrestling.

You got the body and the whole thing.

And so he actually wound up wrestling in Herb Abrams UWF first, I believe.

So he was the Viking in for all the Herb Abrams fans out there.

And then, you know, he got WWF and all that.

But when he was let go, he went back to Finland sort of in pursuit of, you know, local stardom and did a very number of things.

He became like one of their, they have like their, their whole equivalent to the American Gladiators, you know, so he was a gladiator.

And then he like, you know, made his own, I think he recorded his own album, It's Terrible.

Yeah, he was trying to become famous.

And he basically, I think he wrote an autobiography, which most of it is like obviously fabricated, but he would say these very controversial, you know, racist, divisive rhetoric.

stuff that he was starting to put out into the media and on television appearances and it gained a lot of traction for being very controversial.

And then

there were politicians at the time who were part of, you could say, the sort of Nazi-ish party in Finland.

There was a growing anti-immigration sentiment going on in Finland, and they saw an opportunity to have someone.

Wait, wait, wait a minute.

You mean all this shit's happened before in Finland?

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, the parallels are pretty uncanny, actually.

That's one of the most illuminating things is how prescient this story is.

But anyway, and

yeah, and basically they brought him into the into politics as

someone who would run for parliament.

And he, you know, was with that sort of, you know, the sort of troublemaker party.

And lo and behold, he won in a landslide victory.

He's actually one of the most, I think he's still looking back into like the Finnish electoral history, he's one of the people that's been voted for like the most out of any.

And so he came into power.

Mass hysteria gripped Finland and Ludwig Borga

was elected to what was his title or office?

Parliament.

I don't know exactly how it works over there, but it's like a parliamentarian.

Parliamentarian or whatever it is, but he, he, yeah.

And yeah, and things didn't work out well for him.

You know, the hubris, the ego out of control, drugs, trying to keep up the body.

You know, and everything.

And then it obviously ends in a very grim ending for himself there.

But it's a fascinating story.

It's not so much a wrestling story, but it is, because I mean, wrestling and politics are so linked in a lot of ways.

And I think it's a fascinating,

I think it's one of the more fascinating episodes we've done, actually.

And just looking at, you know, his trajectory after his career in wrestling and the parallels that are there.

So yeah, it's definitely one of the ones to not miss.

Well, and another one of the ones that I know that

our listeners, and well, anybody who's followed this fellow's story over the last few years is not going to want to miss.

We get all kinds of people always asking us about what's going on with Billy Jack Haynes.

And now

we're going to find out on TV on vice with Dark Side of the Ring.

And you've got a number of illuminating talking heads in this one, too.

Yeah, Billy Jack Haynes, man.

It's funny, like when we started, I think maybe season two or three, somewhere in there, you know, we were always oddly compelled and fascinated by his shoot interviews because they were so wildly crazy, you know, and

the things that he would,

you know, espouse and the sort of conspiracies he would put out there.

And

confess to even.

Right.

And putting himself at the center of certain things and his look.

I mean, just you can't ignore how he looked in those interviews with the hair and the

scars and everything.

It was such a wild look.

But I think it was, I'm trying to remember the chain of events, but I think it was when we were doing the Tales from the Territories show, we were doing a Portland episode and we reached out to him to be a part of that.

It didn't quite work out, but I believe at some point he reached out to us, I think after.

you know, the alleged homicide that's happened now that people I'm sure are aware of about him telling telling us about him wanting to tell his story on our show so it was this kind of wild thing where he came to us and wanting to talk for this show so then that was obviously very compelling to us given everything that's going on but as we know this is this has not gone to trial yet so there is a limit to the things and and that he can talk about uh specifically but we were able to we were able to

essentially arrange or we were uh a uh an an interview with him behind bars, which was wild.

So this is our first sort of prison interview that we've done on the show.

You know, you knew when you got into the television business, it was going to take you places.

I guess that's a bucket list thing.

I don't know.

But it was fascinating.

And,

you know, with Billy Jack Haney.

In the same month, you went to my house and prison.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's the thing is that every

I go from sometimes I go from Vince Russo's living room to then your living room.

No, now, wait a minute.

If you didn't tell me that, or I would have had a decontaminator here with the thog you down for heaven's sake.

That's happened once or twice before.

From now on,

I'm going to make you strip naked and put a hazmat suit on when you come in.

But no, the question,

the question here that everybody.

who had ever known Billy Jack or been around Billy Jack, just, you know, way back in the day or be even a fan of Billy Jack, watch him on TV, and then would see that

gray-haired, beetle, hair-cutted, muppet-looking character

just be a raven batshit, fucking crazy as a rainbow trout in a car wash.

Yeah.

Everybody, the question was, what the fuck happened to Billy Jack Haynes and when did this take place?

Were they accident, brain injury, safe fall on his head?

Yeah.

What insight were you able to derive from what the fuck happened to Billy Jack Haines?

Well, one of the just difficult slash frustrating aspects of his story is trying to get to the truth.

You know,

there's so much of not knowing what's true.

You go down one path, sort of.

You know, realizing, oh, this is a bunch of bullshit.

It's a bunch of, you know, this is a, this is totally untrue.

And then you you find, talk to somebody else that, no, actually, he did have connections to the world of underground criminal activity, you know, and there is someone who can speak factually about that, you know.

So, so

it is, this episode does remind me in a lot of ways of our Marty Jannetti episode from season four.

In that,

I think,

I don't know, this is maybe my personal opinion, but it's like for Billy Jack to kind of had, I think he also had a pretty quick rise to success, you know, out of the gate.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and was and was put in that position.

And I'm sure that that was a difficult thing for him to walk away from, you know, just in terms of that adulation, the spotlight, you know, whatever, celebrity, whatever.

And it wasn't hard for him to walk out on a promoter, though.

That's true.

Right.

Of course.

Yeah.

But he,

I think it's like that idea of still trying to remain relevant and still trying to

insert yourself into the headlines and

maintaining that.

And I think for him, that is

something that he would do with his provocative interviews and the things he would come out and say

to get that attention.

But yeah, I also think there's

a lot of people who that we interviewed talk about his

sort of manipulative side that he was, he had a kind of,

you know, he had a, yeah, he was very manipulative to a lot of people in terms of getting what he wanted and what he wanted people to do and say and think.

And so, and he could be a very violent person as well.

So this episode is kind of our journey into trying to understand, to answer that question, you know, and trying to figure out like what life events, what things have happened to shape this person into this unspeakable, unthinkable thing, crime that has taken place.

And to try to put that all together, but also separating fact from fiction because so much of his story is unknown to a lot of people, even in the industry who knew him.

Like, you know,

what's true and what's not, you know?

So it is kind of, I would say it's similar to the Marty Giannetti story in that way.

That's the 1985 Billy Jack.

I can see being a guy who could talk you into things and, you know, the look of him and the body and the, you know, he had a tone to his voice and, you know, he could manipulate somebody into doing something.

I can't see the 2020 version of Billy Jack Haynes being to talk somebody into spitting on the sidewalk.

Well, maybe not 2020, but, you know, when, I can't remember what year, maybe it was 2018, I think, when he, when he did come out with the Boys on the Track story, you know, this.

Yeah, did he ever give you any type of indication that even he knew, even if he was trying to make you believe something that he knew that he comes off like a raving fucking lunatic,

is he aware of that and trying to just steamroller through it?

Or does he think that people are looking at him like that he doesn't have steaming turds hanging out of his mouth?

Well, my point is, though, that the families of the victims of that Boys on the Track story, you know, for those who don't know, it was this story.

I think it happened in the, I want to say it was the 80s.

Yeah, it was the 80s, I think.

Yes, at West Memphis, Arkansas.

Exactly, where there was a drug deal that went wrong and these kids were biking by and they saw it.

And then Billy Jack alleges that him and his accomplices tied them to the tracks and they were found dead on train tracks.

And it was a big news story at the time.

And

so, but Billy Jack came out, I think in the late 2010s.

with the story, coming out, taking responsibility that I was there and I was part of this.

It's tied to the Clintons, you know, it's tied to the Yeah, yeah, because the drug deal was supposedly orchestrated by bill clinton oh yeah he got phone calls directly from bill you know kill the kids you know or whatever um

i'm i'm paraphrasing um but basically uh yeah so but but there are but like he did insert himself with the with the real victims families so he was communicating with the victims families and getting them to believe he was

and also and wasn't his story the

why were you there if this was some kind of drug deal supposed to be done in the dark in west memphis arkansas on a train tracks you're a television star he said he was wearing a wrestling mask and he was there to shoot video yep so they'd have proof in case anything went wrong or what What the fuck?

So nobody's going to notice this giant man in a fucking lucha mask with a camcorder

attending this goddamn drug summit here.

I'm sorry.

I just get outraged at the at least come up with a good fucking story.

But and then wasn't

there someone

now with the modern research, the date that the murder happened, he was booked to wrestle in fucking Rhode Island or some shit?

I think so.

Something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

yeah, but then like you hear, you hear that story, and then as preposterous as it sounds, right?

Which it is,

but you then hear a story with photographic evidence

him

getting involved in local mob types in Portland,

who had financed his, you remember when he tried to go up against Don Owens up there for his own promotion.

And apparently the money from that was kind of sketch.

And he was like beaten up like to like an inch of his life or something.

And there's a journalist that's in the episode who talks about that and was also just fascinated by Billy Jack in terms of trying to separate fact from fiction.

But here's here's these pictures of him being beaten in the hospital

for his connection to organized crime.

So it's like there is some connection that he has.

Well, maybe if he wouldn't go screaming from the rooftops every crook that he works for, they wouldn't keep beating him up.

I guess so.

He loose lips sink ships.

Right.

But

anyway.

Another episode, though.

Unfortunately, the subject is not

here to be a part of it, but one of the more interesting stories I think that hasn't been told on any type of television,

the WWE programs, obviously, but something that's long overdue,

a look into hot stuff Eddie Gilbert.

Yes.

Yes.

And,

you know, this is a guy who

unfortunately gets no national television today in any of these retrospectives or documentaries because he was he was instrumental in a lot of places with a lot of talent behind the scenes and and did a lot of great work but was in a lot of cases in the wrong place at the wrong time for the yep the eventual winners of all the promotional wars and the libraries that are out there now and he didn't get to

you know experience the the attitude era that almost everything comes from but uh a little bit about the eddie gilbert episode from your yeah definitely a passion project you know, for our team, uh, something we've always wanted to do.

And I'm so glad we did.

You know, Eddie Gilbert, one of the great minds of wrestling and as you were saying, kind of sadly a forgotten figure to a lot of modern fans.

Um, and, you know, because he did kind of predate the internet age in a lot of ways.

Uh, and he died kind of before, yeah, like the Monday Night Wars.

Like I kind of think like what he would have been like during, I don't know, like WCW Nitro or something, like what kind of role he might have played in that, maybe as a kind of wild Brian Pillman-esque sort of character or something.

Yeah.

So this is a big time what if story, I think is what I would frame it.

But yeah, he had a debilitating car accident early on in his career that he always suffered the repercussions of, you know, the injuries he had from that.

Coincidentally, it was the same night as the snook Nancy Argentino situation, that car accident.

But yeah, and so for him it was kind of dealing with that pain, dealing with that kind of inherent paranoia that comes with the wrestling industry, being kind of a smaller size guy in a big man's world,

and really his love of the business and his desire to really be the booker.

I think that was always his dream,

was to be somebody who was booking the matches and had a really forward-thinking mind for that.

Sort of be the template for the future.

You know, Paul Heyman talks a lot about, you know, Eddie being an early in, of course, ECW

there and what an influence he had on him.

Well,

in Paul's autobiography, he didn't even mention Eddie's name.

He said, a friend of mine asked me to, and that was boom.

There you go.

But if you catch him.

off camera when he can be honest.

Yeah, he owes a lot to Eddie.

And Eddie was the first one to see Sting in Mid-South before he came to Crockett as a guy that they needed to feature.

And you and I talked about for the episode that

that was the thing Eddie wanted to be the booker.

Eddie, Eddie, he grew up, he idolized his father, Tommy,

who was a fantastic worker,

not the flashy, modern kind of baby face, but the southern baby face that just everything he did looked good and made sense and he could sell and blah, blah, blah.

but eddie wanted to be his father he wanted to be jerry the king lawler because that's the guy he grew up watching and and the the promo style because that was not tommy's thing was promos

and he wanted to be the booker because he was fascinated by it and he had yep stood there and stared at jerry jarrett with moon eyes like we all did you know jerry jarrett is the god of wrestling

And those were, and that's what drove him.

But at the same time,

whereas people think that I am a bit impetuous, or used to be at least back in the day, as far as telling somebody off and saying, fuck this or whatever.

Eddie, I had a longer fuse than Eddie did.

Eddie, if he would get in a

sideways with somebody about something, generally about his booking or the booking or something related to business, and boom,

he's gone.

He was out of Memphis five or six or seven or eight times, maybe and back over a number of years.

And I think that's, that's what kept him,

you know, maybe

if he'd lived to the attitude era,

he would not have been featured as a wrestler as much as a,

maybe a Roddy Piper style player coach.

And behind the scenes, he would have been in some type of producer or creative role if he could have existed by being a cog in the machine rather than the, because there wasn't any the booker by the late 90s.

Yeah.

But that's, that's where he would have,

you know, everybody would have been trying to draw on his

just he had a feel for the business because he'd watched it since he grew up and he understood it.

It just sometimes he didn't understand how to be the the businessman, even though he understood the business.

Exactly.

And I think it's all, and and what's also fascinating, you know, historically about him, too, is that he sort of

was, I mean, he did one of the first shoot interviews ever, you know,

kind of getting into the inner workings of the business, which I think came as somewhat of a surprise coming from someone like him who was so dedicated to, you know, protecting wrestling and the secrets and so forth.

But he did one of the first shoot interviews, which is very

is interesting.

Well, and I can I can tell you that because we talk about it in the episode, Eddie and I were the same age, a month apart in age, and I'd known him since we were 15 years old.

And he, you know, we were pen pals back in the day when people did that stuff.

He'd send me, you know, a picture or a letter.

Hey, I'm working for Vince now up in the WWF,

whatever.

But concurrently with what was going on the last couple of years of Eddie's life.

It

me and Paul and Eddie were the same age, basically.

Yep.

And where I'd just been on the creative team in WCW and now I'm doing Smogy Mountain.

And Eddie

has been booking and working in Memphis.

And then he had just come off booking Continental, where he got Paul a spot also.

Paul has, they've both gone to Philadelphia.

Paul has stayed.

Eddie's come back.

Point is.

We understood that there was a subculture

of wrestling fans that were smart, and they were the epicenter was probably Philadelphia.

And there might be three of them in Evansville, Indiana, or there might be 26 in fucking Indianapolis.

But

it was a small market, and there was an individual way to reach those people, those early shoot interviews.

Eddie decided to do it before I did.

But at the same time, Eddie was campaigning at that point because he was kind of looking to be recognized, which that audience did.

So that, you know, somebody higher up on the food chain might say, well, let's give this guy a job.

But it wasn't,

it wasn't like in those days,

it was a trickle theory.

It wasn't like you were exposing the business to the outer world.

You were exposing the business to the people that it was already exposed to.

Yeah, good point.

That were hungry to find out more.

And they were the ones coming to, unfortunately, in Eddie's position in Philadelphia.

That's the audience that was coming to his matches almost exclusively.

So to

reach that audience, you had to do something like that.

Paul did it in different ways.

And he was trying to hook into the

grunge culture up there, which turns out there was more of them than there was the hardcore fans at that point.

And

I was, you know, doing the approach of, we're down here at a wrestling school.

So you have to,

you know, in OVW in those years, the late 90s and the

video era, you have to kind of acknowledge what's going on in wrestling because people know it's a wrestling school, but you create your own conflicts in that universe.

Blah, blah, blah.

But anyway.

Yeah,

who's on the Eddie episode?

The Eddie episode, uh i have that right here oh uh well you know you you know you're in it well i mean i you know once you've got past the star of the show but i mean i have a supporting cast um his brother doug is in the episode of course um ricky morton is in the episode i think it might be the first time he's been on dark side and he's fantastic i think you're oh ricky ricky is hilarious yeah it's like why hasn't he been on every episode before that uh he's great uh he was really good um

we have a childhood friend, Darla Staggs, in there.

Dutch Mantel is in the episode.

Todd Gordon is in the episode.

Medusa is in the episode.

And I think that might be it.

And also, I knew Darla Staggs.

We were pen pals.

Okay, cool.

Because she was part of the WFIA.

I mean, we didn't like write constantly.

I mean, you know, she was too sexy for me at that time.

But no, she was one of the 70s WFIA era fans.

And

Eddie actually, I gave you some pictures that might make the cut of Eddie and Tommy being

speaking at the WFIA convention when Tommy had gotten an award.

Eddie was still a photographer.

So this is kind of a, again,

this all started, Eddie's story started in Memphis at the same time that I was growing up.

We were on opposite ends of the territory.

So

a lot of this stuff is, it's nice to see getting a spot on television, childhood memories.

Yes.

Yeah.

And

there's another guy that I've been lobbying for for a while.

You did the Graham family, but the stories were so

the that tree branches all over the place.

It's like a dogwood.

The stories were so

mixed and intertwined and then went in separate directions that you focused on Eddie and Mike Graham and their side of the family.

But now that's rectified this season, Superstar Billy Graham gets his own episode of Dark Side of the Ring.

That's right.

And there was thought, you know, when we did the Graham family episode in season four that we would try to,

it seems like an absurd task now, but in hindsight, but trying to work in more of Billy Graham's story into that, but of course him not being,

you know, as close to the Graham family sort of

gimmick as much as the others were.

And also on a timely, because again, you

had to talk about Dr.

Jerry and Eddie and Mike and their family story was as interesting as the, yes, you know, the in-ring part of their lives.

So, but superstar Graham, because my God, at

at one time, the biggest box office attraction in the business by virtue of being the WWWF champion and selling out Madison Square Garden,

like, you know, people were

there to to get a cure for the plague, they were beating the doors down.

Yeah,

and then the dark side of that is that he went from

the biggest star in the business to hiding in his house in depression, yeah, in like the space of 12 months.

And then his career

never recovered.

Certainly, everybody can agree on that.

His legacy endured, but his the rest of his in-ring wrestling career was

at best and sad in some cases.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah, this episode is

great.

I'm really happy with how this episode's shaped up.

It's very moving.

It is, I would say, ostensibly, mostly a family story, almost more than anything else.

Of course, we interviewed his wife Valerie, his son, Joey, and his daughter, Capella.

And it's, it's,

yeah, I mean, tracking his career, obviously, as you said, you know, he was the original kind of superstar wrestler, the one that so many imitated.

And he was such a blueprint for what would come next in a lot of ways.

And

the episode tracks, you know, his origins, you know, coming from the ministry, you know, being a preacher, ripping phone books, bending steel bars, you know, during steel.

Typical preacher.

Typical preacher shit.

And really developing that promo style, you know, during that, of course, obviously taking the name Billy Graham, you know, which from the real Billy Graham.

But for him, like the big

moment is centering on getting the championship, right, from Vince Sr., having the belt, but knowing that the day was going to be coming where he had to drop it to Bob Backlund.

And he thought that at some point, just by

by his own pure charisma, sheer will, that he could change Vince Sr.'s mind and see that we should be going this direction with what I'm doing and

as the champion in the company, and maybe we don't need to go with this Bob Backlund plan, you know.

And I think

him not being able to prove himself in that way to Vince Sr., that he could be that person and should always be that person in that moment, and basically continuing to be the person who's drawing the houses and going to the next level.

I think that was an extremely difficult thing for him to overcome.

And that was sort of, as a lot of people in the episode talk about, the sort of beginning of the end with him in terms of the effect it had on him psychologically, whether that's from childhood in a relationship to his own father and, you know, sort of trying to prove himself in that capacity.

Because, you know, there are voices in the episode like Steve Kern, you know, who's like,

you know,

kind of saying, well, you know, it's just a belt.

You're a mark, you know, and don't lose sight of the money and, you know, stuff like that.

And for others, especially his family.

But now, to be honest, the belt, if you got the belt, you get more money.

He had both.

He had the adulation.

He had the,

he was a hero in New York City.

He was the first cool heel they'd really ever had, maybe the Valiant Brothers, but they didn't get over like this.

Right.

And,

you know, he had everything.

That's why people

thought that Vince Sr.

was nuts for taking the belt off of him at the time.

And,

you know, and I always in hindsight looked at how in the world did they not somehow manage to switch him babyface at the same time and go with the flow.

But when Vince wanted to keep up with his plan and he had no idea that he was, you know, employing this legendary figure, this was the guy he chose to be the heel transition champion.

Yep.

Yep.

And they were selling out everywhere anyway, anyway but superstar was selling out

everything yep

yeah and of course you know he uh

it all you know it also tracks kind of you know he went through so many medical issues

um i think as a result of a lot of the steroid abuse that he had that he had done to his body over the years oh and especially that era of steroids where they were mixing it up in the bathtub right exactly yeah right right and and just you know going through that um and having a very sort of fractured fractured relationship with his children and how their children, you know, and basically like how his kids came to reckon with that is very moving in the episode.

There's one thing I didn't know that I had never seen before, but I guess at some point, I think in the 90s,

Billy Graham put on this like stage production play that was this autobiographical.

theater production that is very abstract.

Like, I think it takes place all in a wrestling ring, but it's like the story of his life and like drug abuse and all this stuff.

And I, and, and, and, and, and Jake Roberts plays him in this theatrical production.

Oh, good lord.

Wait, what?

Hold on, back up.

Pump the brakes.

Have you not seen this?

No, Jake Roberts plays superstar Billy Graham.

Well, I don't know if it's supposed to be like him exactly.

I was going to say, is he hitting the double bicep?

No, no, no, no.

I think it's, he's just kind of playing an archetypal version version of him.

Okay, so it's not like that it's, you know, actually

appear.

I can't think of people who look less similar to that.

No, no.

But it's, you see footage of it in the episode and it's just like, wow, I had no idea that was a real thing.

But we are going to get to see the superstar Billy Graham story

on this on this season.

And, you know, and that's the thing is he lost the belt to

Backland in what was it, February of 78.

Am I remembering that right?

I think that sounds right.

And then, you know, he's out of the wrestling business for a while.

Gorilla Monsoon reported him dead.

And

he shows up in the Memphis territory

in,

I guess it was probably October-ish, September, October-ish.

Jarrett wanted to establish the CWA world title because everybody else was, you know, being being stingy with their world champions.

And so he, to get a championship level

star to carry the thing, I, you know, I don't know, and I never thought to ask Jerry Jarrett now how the fuck he booked superstar Billy Graham or how that came to be.

But here was the guy that was selling out Madison Square Garden, was one of the highest paid wrestlers in the world a year before that.

And he's working in Memphis.

And he had lost a lot of, he looked like a 40-year-old ex-bodybuilder.

and yeah and he didn't have the history behind him and he could still talk but the people are like

because it's first time they'd ever seen him in person and he wasn't exactly busting his ass to you know

get over like a young lion at that point and it just didn't work as far as him selling any tickets but i was thinking how the

Yeah, he couldn't even go back to work for Vern.

He was a huge star for Vern in 72, but it was just, it was sad that between the depression and the

substances and whatever, that, you know, that was pretty much

by the time he got back to work for Vince, his body had betrayed him.

Yeah.

And then when he came back to the WWF, he also had, you know, the karate character, you know, which is, which is painful to see.

I think

his family too is like that.

That was the hardest time to watch him, you know, was during that period

when he was in that character because you could really see that, like, he's on pills during all that, and it's really, it's really tough.

Well, there's another one this season that's that's a tough story, and uh,

you know, again, one that doesn't get any mention on national television these days or in any of the you know widely seen retrospectives.

But she was

well known for a variety of promotions for several years, And then

unfortunately, her career kind of went the way of some Daphne.

Yes.

And,

you know, Daphne was out of wrestling, I guess, sometime, I've lost track, sometime before her passing,

but she was just, you know, one of those girls that.

You know, I think, how big a turning point was it?

The turning point was her injury from

that goofy bump in TNA and,

you know, and it screwing up a variety of things in her body?

Well, I can't remember exactly what year the TNA spot was, but that definitely, that injury was a huge, you know, part of her,

you know, in terms of her,

you know, like

her downfall in a lot of ways, you know, that injury.

And she

she tried, I think, to sue the company at that uh for what had happened but they settled which is just so shocking they they they settled with her and i think just gave her like a thousand of her action figures as payment

what yeah yeah it's something i did not know and it's just like oh my god so like that's what she got as like her settlement out of that whole situation so and it was for the folks who don't know and i don't remember the specific details but it was some kind of goofy

furniture weapons, no DQ match where she somehow got choke slammed off a ladder through a table or some shit or other.

To the outside, yeah.

Yeah, to the floor and fucked herself up in a variety of ways and was trying to get TNA to pay for her medical bills.

Exactly.

At one point, they said they would do, and then

apparently forgot that they said that.

And

she had a garage full of action figures,

which is just crazy.

But, you know, she's,

you know, I'm so glad we did this episode too.

We got a lot of voices, you know, from sort of the

inner circle, if you will, the close friends and family of hers.

You know, they're obviously very protective of her and her legacy.

And so for us to be able to tell that story with that sort of intimate access, I think is very powerful for this episode.

You know, and for her, it's tough because, you know, she broke into the business.

She was actually a child actor, which I didn't know either.

Yeah, I didn't know that myself.

Yeah, she was a child actor.

She's actually, it blew my mind for all the cinephiles listening that she was in.

Hey, we don't let those kind of people listen to the show.

She was in Nicholas Rogue's Insignificance, which is pretty amazing, which stars Gene Hackman, of course.

All right.

That just blew my mind.

But she broke into the wrestling business and instantly developed a deep passion and love for it.

But she kind of broke in at this awkward time where women's, I mean, she broke in in what, 2000, the WCW era.

It's like women's wrestling was not what it is, obviously, today.

It wasn't much of a thing.

And so I feel like it was kind of, I think what's in part tragic about this episode is, you know, she cared so much about the business

and wanted to do so much with the business.

But it kind of reminds me of our Luna Vashon episode in a way, too, where it's like Luna also wanted to participate in doing more physicality and more things, but there wasn't that sort of role for someone like that.

Yeah.

And so I think she kind of got into this mode, especially with the TNA thing, where it was kind of doing, you know, whatever is asked of you in that moment to do these things.

And then looking at kind of what the ultimate cost of that is, if you know what I mean.

So,

yeah.

So

she was there.

I worked with her some in TNA.

I think this incident happened.

I had already depotted, as they say.

Right.

Stacey continued to stay in touch with her on social media,

Facebook, whatever the kids do.

They stayed in contact until

her death.

Stacey was broken up to hear about it, but she was definitely gung-ho.

And

the whole scream and the gimmick, she had personality.

Definitely.

And, you know, that's another one of those that I won't even go off on the soapbox about, but having girls, weapons, table, furniture, concrete matches.

But

she had personality.

She didn't need all of that.

She, you know, had some oomph to her.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I think, you know, as her story is, you know, tragic in several ways.

I think it does also spotlight her as a talent and really show what was special about her.

And just you can just get this sense of her of like what had there been more of an outlet at that time for a women's wrestler, like what she would have been able to do, you know.

So, that is kind of difficult to see.

It definitely, the episode does, you know, look into you know, bipolar disorder and has you know very honest conversations in terms of struggling with that.

That was a big part of, you know, her struggle in life.

And, but I think it's a very moving tribute to her, and I think it's going to be one that a lot of people are going to be talking about after it airs.

Well, there's another one that, again, I think people are going to be talking about because

even though there's been some highlights of him on dark side,

mostly with the

FMW episode and all that stuff, you are delving into the subject of exclusively the sheik.

Yes.

A wild man from Syria, the noble sheik.

And just again, for the footage and the pictures and the stories alone, you know, I'm loving this.

Anytime the shei can get on Tim, we've seen enough of the rivalry between Stone Cold and The Undertaker on Raw from 1999.

Right.

Give me some Sheik on national TV in 2025.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's been real, it's been a great process putting this together, working with the family, you know, but it is, it is challenging in a lot of ways, getting the real story of the Sheik, you know, because, you know, as you know, he was someone who held held his cards so close to his chest, you know, and the importance of Kfabe for him was at, you know, the utmost.

Um, and it kind of feels like in some ways his family is still trying to be very protective of the, you know, who, where do you draw the line between the chic and and and ed farhat, you know, I know.

Oh, hey, since I've been doing this podcast, I've heard on social media, I think it was a few years ago, that his son, Captain Ed George, was offended that Jim Cornette and on his show said that the chic used razor blades.

There you go.

Exactly.

But see, that's the great part because even in the wrestling business, most of the people in the wrestling business weren't sure about what the fuck was going on with the chic and the whole thing and the mythology.

Right.

Having different people tell the stories from different perspectives.

And there's some grain of truth to every single one of them, even if they've been magnified.

That's part of the fun these days is this was the last guy that could kayfabe other people in the business.

Exactly.

And, you know, it was challenging to produce in many ways because a lot of his contemporaries have passed on.

You know, there's not a lot of people around from his, you know, the height of his powers.

But of course, you know, we talked to, you know, Sabu,

who gives, I think,

I think is his best interview he ever has for us.

I mean, it's a deeply personal interview.

And, you know, he's also somebody that,

you know, you don't really get,

like, I sort of feel like

there's also a mystique about him.

And he's very, I think, you know, he goes very personal and he's very emotional about his uncle.

And I think it kind of doubles in some ways

kind of, you know, his story

and his origins with wrestling are absolutely coming up through his uncle.

And so I think that's really fascinating.

Of course, Rob Van Damme is in it as well, too.

He was trained by the Sheikh and I think that's kind of our modern day connection, you know, to someone like him.

But yeah, it's it's uh it's it's a fascinating look at the creation of this character

and and the dedication that he had to his craft.

And of course, it was something that was very difficult, I think, for him to let go of, you know, when his time was quote unquote up.

You know, I mean, he pushed the envelope at a, at a, you know, especially with what he did in FMW and WCW, well, well past his prime, shall we say.

Well,

he was a star, a superstar so late.

Yes.

Because he was a star in the 50s, but he didn't get to be a superstar until he got a hold of Detroit in the 60s and featured himself and had Toronto.

Then he could get

his contemporaries, Bruiser and Wilbur Snyder, and those guys, they had 10 years on him where they had been superstars when he was just,

he's a star on TV.

Right.

And

so 20 years later, he didn't want to give it up.

But now instead of being,

you know, a star for 20 years and he's 40, he's been a star for 20 years and he was 60.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, being that age and being in a, in a, in a, you know, in a, in a wrestling ring surrounded by fire and his skin falling off.

And it's crazy.

It's, it's absolutely nuts.

Well, there's, there's such.

He had such drive to be himself and do what he did for so long.

and we've we've made that one in bruiser's territory right next door to it an example here on the show so many times of

wrestling promotions that just aged out because right the top guys were still the the top guys

exactly and it was because nobody drew more money and during the period of time chic was hot from what

67 to 75, nobody, he was the top drawing box office attraction as a a heel in the business.

Nobody was drawing money like that.

And he was spending it as fast as he got it.

But he dressed the part.

He looked the part.

He went to Los Angeles and main invented the Olympic auditorium so he could have his suits made.

You know, the whole thing, it's an incredible story.

It is.

It is.

Yeah.

I'm very excited for people to check that out.

Definitely.

And, but, you know, there are, like I was saying, like, you know, Brian Solomon put out that great book,

you know, about the chic semi-recently.

And you can imagine sort of the challenges he had too, in terms of,

you know, separating fact from fiction, I guess, or trying to find the real story of the real person, you know, Ed Farhat.

And I do want to put it out there.

I might as well.

I mean, you know, we're still, you know, we always work on these episodes up until the very end.

Like we're, we're locking them the week before they air usually.

So if any, if anyone out there or any collectors have any, you know, interviews with Ed Farhat that have been done over the years, man, we would love to get our hands on that if that exists.

Boy, howdy, that would be like the Lost Sea Scrolls, wouldn't it?

It would.

I've heard rumor of a few, but I have not seen any of them.

But I'll tell you, my favorite Sheik story real quick is that

Sheik and Dory Funk Sr.

were very close.

They had been, they'd had a business relationship going back,

you know, years and years where Sheik used to spend lengthy times in the West Texas territory, even after he owned Detroit, because he'd go in and work for Funk Sr.

and he knew Dory Jr.

and Terry.

And so when the Sheikh's territory in the late 70s had fallen on hard times in Detroit, Dory and Terry came in and worked with Sheik and Abdullah, this program with the blood and the violence to get the thing up.

They were throwing everything out there they could, doing it, boom.

And finally,

they draw a house one night in a kobo.

But, you know, it's not sold out, but it's not like the glory days, but it's a work.

And Terry said, he was sitting there going, Junior, we're finally going to get a payoff for this thing.

And that's when Captain Ed George, the Sheik's son, ran in and said, they've robbed the box office.

Because as much money as Sheik gave to down and out wrestlers when he was on top of the world and he gave guys bookings and gave guys jobs and spent money like whatever

when the territory was down

the box office got robbed a time or two that year i think that's amazing and and and that's another thing that captain george tried to deny having terry told me that to my to my face and i it's been confirmed by i won't mention he still lives in detroit they might put a hit out on him up there but a friend of mine but nevertheless there you go yeah uh well it i i should say that it's pretty exciting because we did interview dory funk jr for this so he's in the episode which is cool excellent that was a good uh bucket list interview for sure

and there's one more episode where it is

he's kind of a modern day type of chic he was he was an arabic uh affiliated character but he didn't have the

the longevity or longevity, the longevity or the success, and not because of his own lack of merits, but because he was the victim of one of the stupidest booking decisions in the history of professional wrestling.

Yeah.

Mohamed Hassan.

That's right.

That's right.

A more contemporary story, I guess.

But yeah, man, this episode, I'm very much looking forward to the reaction of, because

seeing it all laid out, you know, it's obviously an episode that's been

recommended to us many times on social media.

Fans have wanted to see, you know, Mark Capani, that's his real name, his story being told, because it's so fascinating where he's cast in this role as an Italian guy, you know, to play this,

you know,

from a Middle Eastern descent, ostensibly a terrorist, you know, portrayal, you know, off the heels of 9-11.

And it's just this powder keg of controversy that he walks into.

But it's sort of this, again, it's this dichotomy where it's, here's a chance for me to come out of developmental, you know, with you and OVW, to getting the chance to go zip right to the main event scene, you know, working with, you know, Undertaker and Batista and like all these people.

And it's just an amazing trajectory, but at what cost?

You know, you have to play this extremely offensive character that, you know, is missing nuance and

is offensive on many levels.

By today's standards, something that, of course, they would never do.

I mean, I think he's one of the only other,

along with, I think, Chris Benoit, like you can't search for his matches on any of the WWE platforms, you know.

They've pretty much erased that function.

So they've equated him with a murderer.

Well, I don't know.

That's a way to characterize it, but it's definitely something they want to, you know, they want to erase from their history.

Well, and that's, you know, and I obviously have contributed something to this episode.

Hopefully, I've contributed.

I'm going to be on it, but hopefully, I've contributed something.

I don't think you've ever been cut from an episode, Jim.

So, well, oh, but you know, I know it's coming then.

See, yeah,

um, it could just be just you and some of these, but go ahead.

But, like you said, here Mark Capani is his real name, but he was in OVW.

He came to one of our tryout seminars and

started, as far as I remember, from scratch in the OVW program and was in great shape, had a great body, great look.

Italian guy from Rochester, I believe, or is it Syracuse?

I can't remember.

I think it's Syracuse.

I think you're right.

I think it's somewhere over there.

Yeah.

And just pleasant to work with and dedicated and rose through the ranks.

And I've hopefully some of these worked, the VHS tapes that I gave to you.

You're a fine researcher, Mr.

Boucher.

Yes.

Shout out.

Bobby Boucher.

But he progressed from like dark matches at the flea market show

to television to being used in the top heel group to being a top single with his own female valet and a gimmick with the leather pants and the wristbands.

And he's gorgeous and he's tan.

Mark Magnus, right?

Mark Magnus.

And he went from in like 18 months, he progressed that quickly and was doing a

very good job of keeping up with whatever we threw at him.

And then they, and they gave him a developmental deal, and that's all well and good.

And then, as I told you, they called me and said, well, we want him to be an Arab.

I said, to what?

I said, he's Italian.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we had to disrupt what he was doing, where he was doing so well learning with all the guys he was working with, the coaches we had coming in he they take him off television he still go to class but now he's got to

revamp his entire gimmick and we we at least had him as a

as a sympathizer because sean davari yep came with came in and i love sean davari as a person again the gimmick you know that they were doing here was not my favorite

But at least

he's gone away because he had a losing streak and now he's found a guy with a different ideology to tell him what's up.

And also, this guy's got a lot of money and he's financing this fucking arrogant heel

who's also still from fucking New York State, right?

But yeah, right.

But now he's, he's, he's, he's changed, changed his name.

Somebody changed their name to Muhammad in Louisville.

People would get it.

I said that, right?

But then they just take him and they make him a goddamn

villain from wherever the fuck in the kingdom of.

Well, no, it was was the, the, well, the idea was somewhat interesting in that he was an American, right?

And, and it was in the wake of,

you know, 9-11 and the sort of Islamophobia that, you know, he was, uh, him and his, you know, family, friends were sort of

were experiencing in the wake of that.

You know, he was like, no, I am an American.

And, you know, he was pushing back on that, on the stereotyping of

him.

But, but still.

still, then where did he get the gang of hooded terrorists to come in the ring with him?

I'll explain.

No, no, no, because it started out that way.

It started out as, you know, I'm an American too, but obviously he was clearly being portrayed as a villain.

It was not, there was no mistaking that this is still a, you're supposed to boo this guy, you know, even though he's coming from, trying to come from a somewhat sympathetic, it's weird.

There was a weird thing about it.

There was more than one weird element with the idea.

But then I think

as time went on and that sort of aspect of the character,

that origin of that character played out, they just crossed this threshold at one point, turned up the heat, and no, he's just a terrorist now.

And he's anti-American and he's, you know, da-da-da-da.

So

but meanwhile, all this is going on, there's so much pressure that the network,

I believe UPN and others were threatening to drop the shows if they didn't immediately get rid of this character because there was a lot of controversy where one of their matches coincided with,

I think it was the London bombing.

The London bombing.

No, it wasn't the match.

It was where they held Undertaker out and try to behead him with the piano.

Yeah, no, exactly.

And it was

like the London.

Why am I telling you you just did the show?

Well, we're speaking to the people, but the London bombing had happened, I think, that day or the day before.

And then they still aired the match.

And they put this little Chiron below, trying to cover their tracks and saying how if people were, you know, offended by this, you know, the beheading of

The Undertaker

does not reflect the views.

Yes, or whatever it was.

But it was crazy.

And it's one of those times where then what they did is in response was, all right, we're going to kind of throw him under the bus for this and get rid of him as a character.

And it's, it's wild going back and and seeing the footage.

He was in a match with the Undertaker, I think one of the last matches they did, and they literally powerbombed him through the entranceway onto the concrete and made it look like he just died.

Like, well, he just killed him, so that's it.

And then the character was never seen again.

So it's this wild trajectory where he kind of was thrown under the bus for all of this.

They never repurposed him.

They couldn't repurpose, like, you know, they couldn't repurpose him.

So

this whole trajectory for him is tragic in a way because, you know, he kind of is the ultimate fall guy for this, but it's also the Faustian bargain that you take, you know, when you're going to fast track your way to success at the top, you know, playing in a main event role, but

at what cost?

What are you signing up for?

This crazy freaking thing that's going to upset so many people and rile up so many people and also be this heat seeker of a thing.

And he talks about a lot of the experiences he had out of the ring where

it was insisted that he wear, you know, a turban and he wear these things out of the ring.

And, and there were a lot of people who were not happy about that.

And he also did kind of get to experience prejudice, you know, as well, too, which is also fascinating and just weird.

You know, so and that's, you know, the, the, I've said it that since now he's a grown and successful adult with a real job

in school,

helping the young, contributing to society.

He probably did better in the long run than if he'd have been stuck in the wrestling business, but he may be,

he may be the best wrestler whose career only lasted two and a half years.

Yeah, yeah, maybe so.

Maybe so.

And

he does say that he is thankful he went through all this craziness with the character because it led him to the path.

of being able to, you know, work with kids in schools and be a vice principal and, you know, do all that stuff.

So, but it's a fascinating story.

Again, one that people have wanted us to do for so long.

And then when you see it, you're like, wow, why did it take us this long to do this?

This is a good one.

Well, speaking of vice principal, you are the principal part of the vice TV

lineup because Dark Side of the Ring is the number one show on the network.

And we're going to try to keep it that way for season six, which begins.

on Tuesday, March 25th at 10 p.m.

Eastern.

And figure it out if you don't live in Eastern.

And Evan, thank you for being here.

Tell Jason we said hello.

And

can't wait to do something for season seven.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

All right.

You got plenty of free time, right?

Yeah, right.

Let's start on season seven.

Right.

Let's do, let's do 20 next time.

Oh, my God.

They'd probably want it for sure.

All right, Evan Husney, everybody, and we will be right back.

Well, there it is, Jim.

Your annual conversation with Evan Husney.

A lot of the listeners look forward to hearing you guys preview and, I guess, review in some sense what's coming up on Dark Side of the Ring, season six.

Well, and

now we've got, of course, that's on Vice and debuting Tuesday, March 25th.

But now there's TV covered.

I've got that covered.

I'm on a bunch of TV shows this year.

I'm in the movies.

We got the podcast here.

We got the YouTube.

What media, my books and publications available at jimcornet.com?

What have I not conquered yet?

What do we need to go to?

You're not going to like this.

what's that we need a jim cornet video game

oh for heaven's sake what would it be i think we look it can go a number of ways if you just wanted to be an action game it's like a kind of a super mario kind of game except it's you a little guy with glasses walking around with a tennis racket just bopping things for points but then it has to be like enemies that you have to fight like at the end of every level Well, then I'd have to give some kind of royalties to my enemies for depicting them.

Or could I just make it confusingly similar to my real enemies?

that's right mince musso

look at cornetta when you press the button he kicks the out of mints musso with his tennis racket

oh the big boss devin cunn

work on that for 2026

uh but you know that that is a good idea though brian i may need to to get another website going just for that.

And, you know, at the same time, maybe if Evan Husney, if the dark side of the ring business falls falls through, he can go online and sell his extensive golden age comic book collection that I'm so covetous and envious of.

But it would revolve around if we could get the people at Shopify to get involved with this and help us all out, sell these things around the world.

You know,

as much as you malign him.

Hotchkiss Featherbottom's father worked for Shopify.

He invented most of the things now that go into the Shopify platform, the checkout, the way that they boost conversions and

keep carts from going abandoned.

Hotchkiss Featherbottom's father, Francois Featherbottom.

He was a French fellow.

Who told you this?

Well, Hotchkiss did.

When I mentioned that Shopify was one of our fine sponsors, he said, oh, my dad did all that stuff.

He's not French.

He started the company.

He's not French, Hotchkiss.

Well, he's not anymore.

Well, he is.

He's of French descent.

He was born on American soil as a result, as a matter of fact, of a French kiss.

But his father was, Father Francois was French.

He was the French feather bottom.

He was a great inventor.

He invented the French tickler.

You didn't know that?

All right.

Well, let's get away from Father Francois and let's get back to Shopify.

Well, that's

what a lot of kids used to say.

Get away from Father Francois.

He did spend some time in the seminary.

This has nothing to do with our fine friends at Shopify.

I just want to add right now, Shopify has nothing to do with Father Francois or the scandal, the growing scandal around him.

No, they got the memo early.

But I'll tell you what, folks, what they can do, nobody does selling better than Shopify.

The home of the number one checkout on the planet, if you've got a business or a product or a dream, If you have a dream, ladies and gentlemen, they will take you to the mountaintop where you can look both ways.

And you you know what?

You'll see smog and fog, but at least you'll be up there with Shopify.

You'll be on the on the peak of things where you're going to be hearing that sound, which means you're going to be making money.

You're going to be growing your business.

Your commerce platform needs to be able to support the weight of your growing business.

It's going to get heavier and heavier until it's like an albatross or a lead anchor around your neck.

But Shopify will hold you up.

So even though the crushing weight of your business is taking its toll on you mentally and physically, you won't be able to sink down into the depths of a pit of quicksand because Shopify will hold you up and make sure that you're there until the bitter end when your body can take no more.

Folks, all you got to do to upgrade your business and get the same checkout that the big boys use is sign up for a $1 a month trial period at shopify.com slash JCE.

That's all in lowercase, so we get credit for whatever happens here.

Shopify.com/slash JCE.

It's a $1 a month trial period.

And

if you order before midnight tonight, you're going to get a free autograph picture of their founder, Francois Featherbottom, the French fella that invented the French table.

No, no, no, no.

Listen, let's not.

It's one thing joking about.

They run out of those pictures.

It's one thing joking about Father Francois.

We cannot guarantee any kind kind of giveaway.

There is no giveaway.

We can guarantee there's no giveaway.

You get what you pay for, and your customers are going to get what they pay for.

Thanks to

working relationships.

You're going to pay for Shopify.

At a dollar a month, at a dollar a month, you're going to get way more than you pay for.

But I guess they ran out of pictures of Father Francois.

They never had the pictures.

There are no pictures that I know of.

God damn it, that's just a flat statement.

They never had the pictures it was the boston globe but anyway they got they got

shopify uh baby hall has the pictures allegedly in the envelope but shopify what's one more time not the sound the promo code please sir

jce

shopify.com slash jce and now

Now, yes.

Now it's time for that.

Well, what in the world is happening over at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this fine, fine, froggy little week?

Another very serious and professional, froggy kind of week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information on all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcasts or on Facebook at facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Of course, each and every day, every morning, get your wrestling news for free from the wrestling news.

No clickbait, no paywall, just the wrestling news.

Wherever you find your favorite podcast or from thewrestlingnews.com directly.

Want to make mention of the latest episode of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, another talk with a former WWE co-worker, Tom Carlucci.

Tommy Carlucci, a TV producer for WWE.

Here, this conversation, another inside look at a bygone era.

S-U-A-WPod.com or list.

Shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon.

Yeah,

it's like the old James Cagney movie, The Strawberry Blonde.

It was the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the Mothership.

All right, we're still working on the audio.

605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcast, go through the archive.

The mothership.

Well, speaking of still working on things, no, no, let me just do away with that.

Boy, howdy AEW Dynamite was a work in progress.

It's not completely finished, even though they aired it on February 26th.

I think they still, it needs some work.

Maybe they can fix it in post for a re-release.

Oh,

this thing,

I'm not going to be here for hours picking it apart, and I could be,

but I just want to hit some of the high points.

It's not really

even our duty at this point to try to impart the stories or the angles or the build of the matches because it's just

everywhere.

It's all what was the title of that movie?

Everything everywhere all the time?

All at once.

All at once.

In San Diego, they were jacking it in San Diego this week.

And whereas they were.

Remember, we mentioned this as a ratings ploy.

They were starting the show off with, boom, as soon as the show comes up, no open, no theme music, just straight into the arena.

And here comes somebody out of the entranceway and they get in a fight.

Well, now I almost longed for those Halcyon days of

yore because

this show, they had Edge pull up in an ambulance

and get out and say, This is what the Death Riders are riding home in.

And that was it, like a 10-second fucking clip.

And then they go to the announcers.

And

again,

Taz and Tony

look fine.

You would accept them as,

of course, without listening to Tony, they look fine.

You would accept them as announcers.

And here is this fucking self-indulgent clown in this mask.

And it just looks ridiculous.

And they do.

endless show billboards.

And then we go to a clip of earlier today, MJF got his AEW tattoo removed

and cut a promo while the guy was doing whatever you do to remove the tattoo because he's mad at the fans for

not cheering him when he gave their, whatever the case.

Then they're in the back again, and Adam Page pulls up in.

What kind of dinky little pickup truck was that thing or truck of whatever nature?

It had bullhorns on it.

But it looked like something that kids had put together in a fucking

soapbox derby contest.

What was happening there?

You're

a man about town and knows about vehicles these days.

I think they said he was driving a Prius, but someone else told me it was a Rivian, which is an electric vehicle that

That stock has been in the toilet for way too long because they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

But it was one of those two with horns on top of it so it not only has to be

funny but he has to be a pussy while he's being funny stone cold steve austin would come in in a beer truck or the rock comes in in his goddamn giant pickup truck or you know punk came in in a lamborghini or whatever it was this guy comes in in a fucking pussy little truck with goddamn funny horns on it.

He's socially conscious.

That's what you want out of your top top baby face, the cowboy hangman, the socially conscious hangman.

I don't know if he's goddamn physically conscious,

but he pulled up and walked into the arena and they played his music and he made his entrance to the ring and he beat a job guy in one minute or so and then got the microphone, sat down in a chair and called out MJF.

And MJF comes out to the entranceway and throws a bloody, white, bloody hand towel down that he was holding.

I assumed that he had cut himself shaving.

And then

for about 45 seconds, MJF was back to his old self.

He was cutting the promo, but he was back to being a smart ass.

And, you know, he's going back to New York to train his took us off because he's so scared about

Adam Page and he's mocking him.

And he's not screaming and he's not just cussing for the sake of it.

A brief period where we can remember once once again the good old days.

But then he said

that he was awfully worried about Hangnail's friend,

and you should check on him.

And then he just turned around and he walked out, and the fans were quiet and puzzled, as well as

old Mr.

Page, the

Kaka cowboy, because it was just kind of, huh?

And then

here it became.

As MJF is walking back through the tunnel to exit stage right,

and Paige is standing there dumbfounded, like, what did he mean by that?

On the screen,

we are supposed to see Christopher Daniels laying in the back,

bloody and profusely bleeding, and having been attacked and left lane.

Of course,

I guess they became friends, Paige and Daniels, right after Paige crippled Daniels and ended his career.

But nevertheless, check on your friend.

He died a warrior's death, was what he said.

Yeah, well, he shouldn't have been resurrected.

But

that's what we were supposed to see.

But what we saw when they cut

to the

camera going to the screen is the handheld camera moving up on Chris Daniels while he's knuckling himself in the fucking head.

And the first thing you see is this guy that's supposed to have been attacked and be down, punching his own self in the face.

And there was a lot of,

well, there was a lot of controversy, you know, because people said they put it all over Twitter and it trended.

And

like they've caught him blading himself.

No, that's not what it was.

But they said it's in 4K, and everybody's got a shot of either from the show or a shot of their screen showing the show.

And look what stupid shit.

And how is Uncle Dave going to explain this and all that kind of stuff?

Here's what was happening.

First, we'll tell you what was happening.

Then we'll try to explain why it happened.

Chris Daniels, in my opinion, and I watched this in slow motion, I think he did get legitimate legitimate color in the back for this angle

because I could see some blood oozing from

a cut.

The way the front of his shirt looked,

unless he was just able to really, even without having a sweat worked up and out his blood pumping and not in a match, if he was able to go deep enough to get a gusher to goddamn just sit there and drip on his shirt, maybe they augmented the shirt.

I don't know.

But I think he did get some color for real.

But the problem was, apparently,

by the time that he got in position

and, you know, it was waiting for all these other things to happen,

it stopped bleeding.

Because what he was doing was he was knuckling himself.

If you take and

You can go on YouTube on some of the old matches.

You might see a guy or two doing this.

It's not uncommon if you know what to look for.

But if you've got a gig mark, either a fresh gig mark that's quit bleeding, or if you get juice a lot back in the territory days from the previous night before instead of cutting yourself again,

you can knuckle it and it'll start bleeding.

You either take the point of the middle knuckle of your middle finger and do what Chris Daniels was doing, boom, boom, boom, right on the cut.

Some guys would take the

make a fist and take the top, the bottom knuckle at the hand of their index finger and kind of the back of their fist to their head, which is a little, it looks a little bit less like you're punching yourself in the face.

It's not meant to be seen on camera.

It's, you know, another little sleight of hand deal.

But he was knuckling himself to get it to bleed more.

But it was, it was on camera.

It was up there with Hulk Hogan on the

Saturday night's main event.

They'd give me the count, brother, and start crying over Elizabeth's death or whatever.

And

so then anybody that's seen that can't unsee it.

And then this whole thing is fucking shot, but it doesn't end there

because.

But did I explain the knuckling correctly?

There could have been some augmentation on the shirt.

I think it was legitimate blood coming from his head.

And that's what he was doing because he was given no idea apparently or no count from when he was going to be on camera i think that's what he was doing although that's a horrible defense he was blading on camera no no he was just punching himself in the head yeah he was just trying to open up an old gig you know but um but that's that explains that and

and how it happened we'll we'll explain in a second because there's more because when paige

who gets freaked out over seeing his friend laying there,

he goes to the back with a chair and he's now he's walking through the back and he's screaming, where is he?

Where is he?

Now the camera is following Paige from behind.

So you're looking past him.

So you can see that straight out to the back door there of the arena,

there are like at least a half a dozen people just standing there.

Just standing there.

They're not moving.

They're not reacting.

They're just standing there.

And then as Paige turns, you can see that those people would have had a clear view,

not only of this Daniel's being attacked, but Daniel's laying there in a bloody fucking heap.

They would have been looking at him already.

Is it common that when you're standing in a goddamn public sports arena and you look over 30 feet away and there's a guy laying there covered in blood, that you would not

call somebody?

But they're standing there, but as Paige turns the corner to the right to go find his friend,

the camera's still following him.

And in the background, you see the camera crew, the cameraman, the producer, the cable puller, and I think some miscellaneous fucking stooge

that were shooting Chris Daniels for the shot on the screen.

And they either see the camera turn the corner or they are told on an IFB from the truck.

Get the fuck out of the shot

because they suddenly go into ninja mood and crouch down and fucking zoom like run from the

so they're running out of the shot like little rats as paige goes over and sees daniels laying there bloody and then what does paige do he turns around and looks to his left and tells a couple of the people that just ran out of the shot get over here

help him

And they come over with a fucking Kleenex.

And it looks like he's been beheaded, like he's had brain surgery.

He's covered in blood.

And they come over with a Kleenex to blot his head.

But if they were 10 feet away,

then why wouldn't they already be administering that aid?

Because when Paige said, come here, get in here, help him, they were there in three steps.

It's a goddamn shit show.

And then Paige stalks off

after they're applying the compresses to Daniels' head.

And they, any double parked

any double parked with the ambulance no that was edge with the ambulance yeah but you're gonna get an argument with the prius well the prius with the the bullhorns might have gotten the way of the ambulance that's right

the point is

now

now we've said what here's why it's happening

And we've heard this, they've been saying this, that they do not have, apparently, I thought they just may have a quick one or a an insufficient one they don't have any production meetings because now we're hearing people are saying well tony doesn't have the show ready in time to have a production meeting before they go do it

or is that because he's still writing it because he's overworked or he's confused or is that because

As we've also heard, a lot of the guys just come in and tell him what they're going to fucking do, which which is why it looks like a clip show, a series of

different vignettes of wrestling rather than an actual cohesive program.

And if they don't have a production meeting, then they are not laying it all out in one place in front of the crew for people to see that it's redundancy repeated redundantly.

But the production meeting,

not to go off on a soapbox here, but the production meeting is not

for the matches or the interviews as relates to how the talent perform them.

It is

for everybody else, the announcers, the crew, the cameraman, the director, the

sound,

all the other.

The production meeting is for how you shoot the matches and the interviews.

And even if the people.

are doing what they're supposed to be doing, if you're not queuing them before you go live to them and they're punching themselves in the face that's not good

or if nobody knows how to get out of the way of the other camera and they're doing it on the air this was it looked like that that show from the bbc the goes wrong show

the production meeting which uh again in the in the wwe of the 90s or f

the production meeting for a pay-per-view that the bell time was at eight o'clock.

We were having having a meeting at 11 in the morning.

And in TNA, for a seven o'clock, I think, pay-per-view, or eight o'clock pay-per-view, it would be noon, even TNA.

For television, if it was 7 or 7:30, we were ringing the bell.

We were doing a production meeting by one o'clock.

And that's the WWF.

They have a big budget.

They have a big crew.

Still,

whatever I've been involved in, the time may change, but Ring of Honor, Smoky Mountain Wrestling, OVW, TNA,

NWA, MLW, other

productions that I've been involved in, the crew may be smaller or larger.

The time may be different because people may be doing two or three different jobs or, you know, snatch and grab to get them there.

But you have to go over the show in front of the head of each department of the production, as well as the main main players like the top handheld camera guys and et cetera.

So that and ask the questions that we've talked about here on the past.

When a format's read and they just gloss over something that obviously the announcers would have a question about, how do we cover this?

Or the director would have a question, well, wait a minute, how you need to shoot that.

You ask those questions then.

You bring up what can possibly go wrong,

what might not be understood by the viewer, even though we know it because we wrote the goddamn thing and they're just watching it

and it's a whole nother set of meetings that you have with the talent on the matches and the finishes and the interviews that's more meetings

which is why this is such a high stress fucking job when you're on a shoestring budget and doing these productions

But there's a lot of details to nail down.

If they're either not having production meetings because Tony doesn't have his shit together, or because the guys are still making up their own fucking morality plays,

then that's why these mistakes are happening and that this shit,

in some cases, looks so amateur because they're shooting it on the fly based on what somebody, well, yeah, when that happens, just shoot it.

Well, ain't that fucking easy, morons.

And a lot of these guys have never been on, you know, any kind of mainstream television production before, but a lot of them have.

But they, they,

that's what first impressed me about, I'm sorry, and I'll get off this box in a second.

But that's for what first impressed me about MJF when I met him in MLW.

He not only came up and was asking questions of us in the announce booth.

on, you know, not only bringing up things that he might do that we could say or call, but also just asking us questions.

And he asked the crew, the technical crew, questions about the setup or the post-production or how will this look.

He wanted to learn everything.

And that was instantly refreshing because some of these fucking numb nutses

have been in a goddamn business where their primary exposure is on television for 10 years.

And they don't know how to fucking work television or lay television out or give cues for television.

or goddamn

explain

their angle or their match or their finish or their whatever they're going to do for the television crew so that they can understand it.

And now I'm fucking pissed off now.

Your thoughts?

There was a lot there.

It's ridiculous.

I'm sorry, but it just is, you can't do this on national television.

We put more preparation into OVW-TV.

Well, you hit on something that's a big topic here.

The production meetings or lack thereof.

We've heard whispers about it, or we've heard direct comments about it for a while.

Stories started coming out just recently again.

Brian Alvarez talked about it.

The idea that there aren't production meetings, the idea that apparently

Tony Khan is not done writing the show

until so late in the day that they can't do it.

What does that tell you?

And why would it take so long to write this show?

Where there's long multi-segment matches?

And

I mean, is there anything that would prevent a production meeting that you see?

Well, but there's, well, yes, there is.

Not that it's not necessary, but I can see what they're doing.

There's not just long multi-segment matches, but every, there's multiple run-ins and everything.

And we just saw the fuck up with Thunder Rosa and the other

Megan Brain and Penelope Pitstop or whatever, where they didn't know what the fuck was going on or obviously, obviously some part of that equation didn't know what was going on.

And if it's last minute shit and inexperienced people, we don't know.

But the point is.

is that again, like I said, it's not that there's a lot of shit going on on these shows.

There's too much going on, but they could be written in time to do them professionally.

And if you are not

doing them at the point where they can be finished at noon or one, the day of the show, so you can tell everybody how to do their job, then you need to change the way you're doing the fucking show, don't you?

And

again, is it because Tony, because we know that Tony will stay up for hours on end writing wrestling and talking talking about wrestling.

But is it not done because he's waiting after he tells these guys what he wants them to do, they go and figure out what they're going to do.

And then they come back and tell him.

And then he knows.

I mean, we,

because this,

none of this is cohesive.

It wasn't written from

one mindset from start to finish as a program with thought given to not repeating the same kind of angles or using the same kind of objects or doing the same things in the finishes or the afterbirths, or even

allotting a certain number of shits and other miscellaneous curse words to specific people.

It's just whatever gets fucking done in a segment.

So, is Tony waiting for instructions and then, you know, it's too late to give it out?

Or is he just having a nervous breakdown, a mental collapse, and

is rushing to get make it to air.

I don't, but something needs to be done different.

I mean, we're seeing this more often now.

Even if you're a control freak and it's just about you wanting control over your show, you still have to make sure the production knows what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to do it.

Well, and maybe is this the

reason behind the fake walls that they were infatuated with there for a while, wherever they would build a fake drywall wall and arena to put somebody through it.

Were they not consulting

the the the producer of the the entire show and the director or anybody in the truck a cameraman to say well no that's going to look as phony as a football bat of course you can't do that like that we can't shoot it that way there

is the production crew seeing this for the first time they're just saying he's going to run him through the wall and just shoot it and then so they don't know how to shoot around the fact that there's no stud for six feet

which would be against every every building code in the United States of America.

This shit has to be gone over its details.

Why do you think I'm a fucking insane person

and thinking of all those goddamn things that could go wrong on television shows for 25 fucking years?

But you have to.

You have to think of everything that can go wrong and walk through every way you can shoot everything.

And

there's been many times in the past where I couldn't do that because we didn't have the budget or the time.

And we were shooting a TV show in a fucking closet somewhere.

But at that level, with that budget and that amount of people working for you,

every detail ought to be nailed down.

That's just my fucking point.

And this is ridiculous.

But anyway,

I want to see a meme on Twitter of that camera crew scurrying away from the shot when they realize that they're in Paige's camera.

And then they introduced Don Fallas and Kyle Felcher in a skybox with a spotlight in the arena.

Bear in mind, we haven't had a match yet.

And then they went back in the back

earlier today.

Well, first they showed Jericho and Bandito

on collision or whatever it was, and they had just a classic match, according to Jericho.

And he's speaking like a real person again in the back with renee

and he's made a deal with don fallas and

don and kyle are walking out of the locker room that brian keith the bounty hunter is going to take out will osprey tonight

so that's the deal so

again does this it doesn't make

Don look bad because he's a weasly manager, but doesn't it make Jericho?

Well, it makes Don look bad in terms of that he thinks that this could possibly happen.

Brian Keith would take out Osprey.

But if Jericho's,

this is the best he's got to.

And then they go right into that match.

We're 15 minutes into the show already, and we got Osprey versus Brian Keith, the bounty hunter who was introduced at 189 pounds.

It's the first time in my life I've ever felt sympathy for the bounty hunter.

I hope the little fella doesn't get hurt.

The fuck are you there?

Who was the people that would collect bounties

that heels would put on babyfaces in years gone by?

Abdullah the Butcher, Bruiser Brody, goddamn King Kong Bundy, whatever.

But Brian Keith at 189 pounds, who's never won a match on this television program.

But he's going to beat up the top babyface.

Actually, he did beat up the top babyface.

It took 12 minutes for Osprey to beat him.

I think he could, it might take Osprey six or seven minutes against a fucking eighth grader.

I weighed 189 pounds in eighth grade.

That's because of Mama Cornette's cooking.

And then.

The baby hunter, Jim Cornette.

Well, there you go.

Hey, I'm bigger.

I'm right now.

I weigh 191 pounds i'm bigger than brian keith

and i got six inches on him and i'm taller too

come on

and then osprey

start jumped out of the ring and ran up the stairs and kyle ran down the stairs from the sky box and they had a short fake fight in the stands that was broken up by security

So there you got that going on.

Any comments or should should I move on?

Yeah, there's nothing really to add to that wonderful match.

So we were half an hour into the program with all this nonsense.

Then they did a package on Mercedes Monet

and Momo

Giancano.

What is her name?

Momo's name?

Oh, I don't want to mispronounce it, and I certainly will because I don't remember it exactly.

So I would just be guessing.

Okay, the Mercedes and Momo package.

And and then there was mercedes in the back cutting a promo about momo wannabe that's what it is momo wannabe oh that's right yeah yeah i didn't realize it was the same one yeah

and then mercedes sees some girl who's standing there and starts getting snippy with her and slaps a drink out of her hand

And the girl is a lousy actor.

And then she identified herself as, you know, who I am.

And nobody knew who the fuck she, because she's never seen her on this fucking television show before

and then she said i'm billy starks from ring of honor

okay do you remember seeing billy starks from ring of honor on aew dynamite maybe once because i remember we saw her once she was like 18 years old or something like still in high school or right out of high school she was a prodigy like well there yet she's from louisville she's the one from louisville yes like a nick wayne for the women's thing that's been so long ago i think she's graduated college by now yeah she might not have graduated but she old enough to anyway

she's not a great actor but she was telling mercedes off when momo came up from behind mercedes with a baseball bat and mercedes turned around and looked at her and screamed and ran off

so we are getting

again

they could have got something out of this flop

that Mercedes has been by Harley going over the other day, or at least we get a rematch, but instead we get Mercedes and Momo wannabe.

What is the matter with these people?

Why do they think that anybody's going to give a shit about Momo?

And this is them establishing Momo, because other than that, she's an unknown entity on this program.

But she's got a bat.

We don't want no Moa Momo.

So then we got the Outriggers versus Brian Cage and Lance Archer.

And I wrote, what the hell?

They had a match.

The Hurts Syndicate Music played.

One of the Outriggers dropped behind Lance Archer and rolled him up one, two, three.

And the Hurts then smiled in the entranceway.

But so just

I can understand if a guy jumps up on the apron or throws something into the ring at you or

whatever.

But when music plays, why do people have to turn in that direction and stand there dumbfounded, even if the fucking person whose music is playing is coming out?

He's fucking 75 feet away.

You can kick this guy into balls real quick and get away with it.

But that's now on both companies.

Music plays, everybody freezes like they're fucking frozen in amber.

Standing there with their jaws on the ground.

Oh, my God, it's music.

I'm grumpy, ain't I?

No, I mean, it is one of those logic loopholes in wrestling, unless they really dig the tune, I guess.

But

I guess we got Hurt Syndicate.

It's not like it's Desperado.

Are you ready for Hurt Syndicate versus Cage and Archer?

Well,

yes and no.

Because Cage, I've just,

if he was going to get it, he'd got it it by now.

And Archer needs a good long break and come back with some consistency.

Maybe to go away and learn a new hold.

But if the Hurts can get anything out of him, he was off TV for like a year and a half or so.

Well, that's, you know, that's.

If anybody can get anything out of him, is what I'm trying to say.

Shelton and Bobby can't.

We will see what happens, but at least they're strong enough to dictate the direction of the thing and keep the pace going.

Because otherwise, those two guys are so big.

if the guys if their opponents are smaller they can't move them around nevertheless we were at almost nine o'clock now

and then i i swear to at 8 55 here comes swerve strickland and prince nana

and they do a promo on ricochet

and then ricochet comes out and he's still wearing the embassy robe that was stolen from Prince Nana.

I wonder if they had to shorten it for Ricochet to wear it.

Seems like it would be dragging the ground.

The fans booed the shit out of Ricochet, which was the loudest of the night because they,

I think they legitimately now do not like him because he's such a putz.

He's like a discount Dominic Mysterio.

So they're trying to do the boo thing over him.

They just, there's not enough people in the building.

But Nana and Swerve won a rematch and Ricochet doesn't want it.

And then Nana says, well, the winner will be the number one contender for the AEW title.

And then Ricochet says, well, okay,

but not tonight.

We'll do it at Revolution.

So that means that either Swerve Strickland or Ricochet

would then face Jon Moxley for the AEW title if they indeed honor the number one contender stipulation.

Do you want to see Ricochet versus Dick the Boozer?

Yeah, actually, that sounds like it could be all sorts of

what the hell are they doing working together.

Yeah, I'd like to see that.

I don't want to see any more swerve.

I'm sick of swerve.

Well, that's the problem is we're going to be stuck with swerve versus dick the boozer, and we've seen that already.

So they're probably not going to end up going through with the stipulation.

But anyway, Ricochet looked like a small child in this shot.

And then right at the nine o'clock hour, they're done with that business and Ricochet left.

But Nana then said, I got to talk to you, boss.

And he tells Swerve

that he's been working hard

making the AEW title and, you know, everything.

But Swerve has to go back to the dangerous guy that he used to be.

It should be the number one priority.

And Nana's taking a lot of bullets for Swerve.

So Nana needs Swerve to get that robe back.

Or elsewise, I just don't know if I can do this anymore.

And then Nana walked out on Swerve and do what anymore?

Constantly be the weak link.

They keep saying that Nana's done all these things for Swerve, but every time it's portrayed as he's the fucking flunky, he got one time he bowed up and got some balls to him, right?

But anyway, now Nana's threatening Swerve that he's going to bail on this whole sweet, sweet fucking bird's nest on the ground they got

unless

Swerve gets Nana's bathrobe back from the fucking nerd flippy-doo guy.

This is gripping fucking adult entertainment.

All right.

Well,

Ricochet, wrestler name, or porn sergeant.

Well, you know, because I'll tell you what, if he got Peter North, he might bounce back.

So now we got Adam Cole, Roderick Strong, and Kyle O'Reilly against FTR and Danny Garcia.

And is this a rib?

Now, who are the heels here?

And no,

FTR has been teaming up with Edge.

Danny Garcia is supposed to be the young fair-haired boy, even though he doesn't have any hair.

But Cole and Roddy and O'Reilly, weren't they just baby faces?

Weren't we just supposed to like them?

Because who were they?

I'm so confused.

And FTR came out, nobody gave a shit.

Garcia came out, nobody gave a shit.

Except Cole and Roddy and O'Reilly, except for the fans like to hit their cues on the coal music.

They didn't give a shit here either.

They've nullified all these fucking guys.

And then

we talked about what I mentioned on the raw match, the incredible finish, and that it was brilliant.

And that's what made the match spectacular.

And they did a bit of

that.

FTR did a bit of that themselves back in the old days, having a really good finish before they

ended up here where guys couldn't keep up with them.

But this was

Dax got the sharpshooter on Roddy.

O'Reilly came up and got a front face lock on Dax while he still had the sharpshooter.

Bacash got the abdominal stretch on O'Reilly from behind.

And while all that went on, Garcia was going to give Cole a pile driver and Cole just double-legged him and jackknifed him one, two, three.

And everybody stood there.

And then Garcia offered a handshake to Cole and Cole was going to take it, but O'Reilly kicked Garcia's hand.

So Cash shoved O'Reilly.

And then they all started shoving each other.

And Cole and Garcia were the ones that I think were calming the others down.

And then we got word that Tony Kahn had announced that Saturday night on collision, it's going to be Adam Cole versus Danny Garcia for the TNT title.

And there was no reason, people didn't give a shit

to any of this.

If this is what's taken him so long to put together, maybe make it a little fucking simpler.

Did you have any pertinent thoughts on this, Brian?

I hate to be keeping you up.

The crowd was noticeably silent at the start of this in an awkward way.

I hear one of the kids screaming in the background.

It's getting late here, folks.

No, I have nothing else to add to this.

I thought that was that special panic room you had put in.

Every time you put somebody in there, they panic.

That's not the case, but let's move on with dynamite because let's not get stuck on this match

okay

in the back where it's always dangerous the shit's happening in the back in the back claudio castignoli is looking for edge he's walking through the hallway looking for edge guess what happened within five seconds of this shot coming up on the air brian

uh he found edge No, Edge found him.

Well, I mean, that's what I meant.

Edge jumped him.

What the fuck?

They just happened to come up at the exact moment that this Pearl Harbor attack.

They get in a fight and they go out in the arena.

Never seen anything like that before.

And they fight walk to the ring.

And then there's Wheelie Useless out to jump Edge and they beat Edge up with a chair.

But then Jay White came out in the entranceway.

And they turned around because his music was playing.

And Edge, who had just been beaten mercilessly with a chair, got up and took the chair away and beat up Claudio and

Wheeler.

And then Marina Schaefer jumps in the ring and she jumps on Edge's back.

And while she's on his back,

Wheelie comes with the knee, but Edge moves, and Wheelie hits Marina with a knee, and she goes down and stays there, immobile, unconscious, potentially stone-cold graveyard dead.

We never see her move a muscle again.

Bear in mind.

Jay White now gets in the ring laughing at all the things that have transpired and gives Wheeler his finish.

And then Edge

takes a chair and starts wearing Claudio out.

And then puts Claudio on the chair and milks a concerto

and does it

and you could see right

through it they had the shot from the side

not only did they you could see through it

but now the person taking it is not selling it anyway they're not their body doesn't spasm their legs don't flap their arms don't twitch there nothing happens

Because for one, they're already ludicrously unconscious for a long period of time and they're being placed on a chair and expected not to be able.

There are people in medically induced comas that have more movement than the people that are being put on this fucking chair.

And of course, they don't want to move beforehand because they'll get their brains knocked out.

But it is the phoniest, stupidest fucking movie.

It can't be done realistically.

Unless the guy's brain explodes into tomato sauce and blood shoots everywhere, it's a bullshit thing.

So

he milked it and he did it.

And Claudio just lays there.

He didn't move a muscle when he got hit.

Then Dick the Boozer comes to ringside,

our friend Mr.

Moxley,

and he pulled Wheeler over the rail to save him.

And in the ring, there was Edge.

pulling Marina Schaefer over to set her up for a concerto.

She is still completely unconscious from the knee that she took, and it's been at two to three minutes.

I mean,

if you're that unconscious, normally there's brain damage involved, right?

That long.

And he milked it forever.

Was he going to do it?

Is he not going to do it?

And then music plays.

And here comes Willow.

And Willow just comes down and rolls into the ring.

And Jay White is down on the floor with a chair holding Dick the Boozer back from coming over the rail.

Now he's scared of something.

Jay White with a chair, when he's been beating up four baby faces at a time, Jay White with a chair.

Ah, fuck Marina.

She's on her own.

And Willow

gives the concerto to Marina Schaefer.

And it also looks bullshit.

And you could, and also, she doesn't move a muscle, doesn't even twitch.

And they've been immobile there laying there for minutes to begin with i mean people turn over in their sleep

and then they played music and went to the break and i said good god

and it was 9 30.

can have i overstated the case of how

rotten this was and how nobody gave a fuck and how phony it looked

i thought it was awful but i thought it was just me because i think all the Moxley stuff is awful.

And again, he's trying to look concerned.

And luckily, Willow's music hit because why run into brain someone if you don't have your pleasant music playing?

Well, and they couldn't have Edge do it because that would be a guy hitting a girl with a chair.

So instead of just saying maybe we shouldn't give the girl

brain damage with the chair in terms of what the fuck, she's going to come back next week.

Her eyes not black, her nose isn't broken, her cheekbones, got no cuts, no lumps from that.

But that's what they did there.

And they had the go-home stretch half an hour.

So they stuck Harley Cameron and Deanna Perrazzo in that spot.

That happened, and that took a while.

I unfortunately, I looked away.

But then in the back, as a continuation of what had just gone on,

Claudio and Marina have been loaded into the back of the ambulance.

They're on the gurneys,

and they're still totally unconscious, totally immobile.

They're not moving.

And the ambulance drivers and the people are in there.

And then the doors close, and it's Edge, Jay White, and Willow that are closing the doors and giving the ambulance the pat on the door for them to pull out.

When's the last time that you saw the people that damaged the injured the person

allowed to be the people that closed the door on him after they put him in the ambulance.

I wrote, is this written by a third grader?

And then finally, we come to the main event.

Just when I thought it can't get any worse, it can get worse.

The main event was for the intercontinental title with pockets against take a shit.

And again, and I call him take a shit because if they want us to take him seriously, they wouldn't do shit like this with him.

To put him in with the way past stay old joke,

like, you know, six-month-old Fritos, just, meh.

They need to fold their tent if this is the best they can do.

If a

television program that started out with a guy punched him own self in the face on camera and ends up with a ridiculous clown joke

match

that matters not to anything involving the worst goof in the company.

They need to fold up if that's the best they can do.

Yes, I used the Wolfman in Smokey Bad Wrestling,

but not on top and mostly in tag team matches.

And Tony doesn't need.

the

job guy clown's rich friend to put money in the company because he's got his own.

So, and Pockets doesn't have a rich friend except for Tony.

So, why is he still on fucking television in any capacity?

It's just unprofessional.

And they didn't get a runover or an overrun, or they may have got run over.

I don't know,

because

they actually had soccer on

after this show.

Instead of Joe Schmo or reruns of Modern Family, they had to get out on time.

So, they've lost that

opportunity to artificially inflate, although lately it's been deflating Pockets' numbers.

But

that was a dynamite episode of Dynamite, Brian.

Well, you mentioned the numbers.

Why don't we speak about them with some specifics here?

Well, speak specifically about the specificity of their species.

AW Dynamite ratings.

I don't know about the species, but AW Dynamite Ratings, February 26th, Wednesday night on TBS, 8 to 10 p.m.,

not counting max,

598,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Well, it's not far, but they dropped below the 600,000 mark again, even though they've been a 604 and 605.

So it's just,

it's more of a moral defeat rather than a huge drop from the miserable numbers they've been to.

Dynamite ranked approximately number five for the night on cable in the key demo.

Number one, the 76ers vs.

the Knicks, followed by the Spurs vs.

the Rockets.

When you hear those names, should they come up with better tag team names, AEW, and try to compete with any of these other?

And then Fox News actually takes over here.

Let's go now to the quarterly hour breakdown.

Quarter one, these were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one, eight to eight.

Fifteen p.m.

The MJF Tattoo Promo.

Aaron Solo vs.

Adam Page.

the post-match with MJF and Christopher Daniels, the Jericho promo and Will, well, promo, his confrontation with Callis, and the Will Osprey entrance,

735,000 viewers.

Good lord.

Okay, I believe

that that was a better open than they did last.

last week and

not what they used to do, but still something and they're going to drop like a stone, it looks like, to make this average.

Well, we go to quarter two.

Will Osprey versus the bounty hunter, Brian Keith, 8.15 to 8.30 p.m.

with picture-in-picture ads,

682,000 viewers.

And that's 1853,000 people, not as big as a lot of their quarter two drops are.

So

we'll have to wait to see who the real culprit is.

And quarter two is up on the 90-day trend here.

Quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

An ad break.

Mercedes Monet and Billy Sparks.

Sparks.

Billy Starks' promo.

The Outrunners.

Or Billy Spears.

The Outrunners video.

And the start

or the entirety of the Outrunners versus Brian Cage and Lance Archer, a picture-in-picture.

636,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Okay.

Now there goes another nearly 50,000.

We're 100,000 down, 99 to be exact from the start in 45 minutes.

This is starting to go, well, still, that's not as bad as normal.

Mo quarter four, 8.45 to 9 p.m.

Jon Moxley and Adam Copeland's video, or just Cope, an ad break, and the Ricochet Swerb Strickland Live promo.

635,000 viewers.

Well,

1,000 different.

They pretty much stayed flat so that's a tribute to those folks holding what they had

not looking good for the final quarter is it well if you look at the rundown of what's on the remainder of the show ask me what would hold an audience we go now to the big nine o'clock hour quarter five nine to nine fifteen p.m.

The undisputed kingdom versus Daniel Garcia and FTR with picture-in-picture ads

571,000 viewers.

Ouch, at the top of the hour, they lost 64,000 people.

That's not a good sign.

No, it is not.

We go down a quarter six, 9:15, and 9:30 p.m.

The post-match with Cope and the Death Riders.

An ad break, the Harley Cameron and Deanna Perazzo entrances,

523,000 viewers.

Okay, there went another 48,000.

now we are 212 000 down from the start

well we go now at a quarter seven 930 to 945 p.m

the continuation of cameron versus parazzo with picture-in-picture ads and the orange cassidy tequeshta video followed by an ad break 497 000 viewers oh lord they are

they're getting to the point where they're finishing in the fours on Wednesday night.

This is, we've been covering this for a while, and it ain't been happening until lately.

Well, we're going at a quarter eight, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

No overrun this week.

Konosuke Takesha versus Orange Cassidy, picture and picture ads, 502,000 viewers.

The final three quarters, all under 200,000 in the key demo, 193, 196, 198.

And

old Pockets got 5,000 people across the country to come back from the bathroom long enough to see him there.

So they lost from start to finish 233,000 viewers out of starting with 735, 233,

466,

690, 700.

They lost 30%,

maybe 31% of the audience that they started with.

That's a pretty hefty chunk.

Hmm.

Not unsuspected, not surprising, but still disheartening if you were

pulling for these people to make a turnaround in their malaiseful ratings.

You need talent.

You need the booking, but you also need the talent.

And

there are very few people there who

make you get excited about seeing them.

I have to see what they're going to do the next week.

There's very few people, very few angles, very few feuds right now.

Actually, I want to see almost everybody in AEW next week.

Oh.

Rather than this week, if I could wait a week to see any of them, it would help me out.

Well, that was AEW Dynamite.

Well, and this is my show, and it's over with.

We've had just a full plate today, a potpourri of things.

And the drive-thru is coming up in a few days, whenever we...

get to do that and the experience will be back next week.

And Brian, if you have no more questions, you're free to leave.

Thank you.

Fuck you.

Bye-bye, everybody.