Episode 570: A New Era

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.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to a new era of Jim Cornette Experiences.

It's a fun, frolicsome, and fancy-free edition.

Here today on the program, will we talk about wrestling?

I don't know.

But we're going to do something and joining me for all this and more.

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

Co-HostU.

He has fun frolicking in a fancy fashion.

The great Brian last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

And a pleasure to be here.

I won't play the full entrance song today just because.

No, no, it might blow one of our new circuits.

That's right.

Oh, good Lord.

I'm a raw nerve end.

I am a rhyme shaking like a dog shitting peach seeds.

I am just, I'm verklimped.

I'm tensed up.

I'm wound up.

I'm afraid I'm going to get a case of the sour belches today.

It's been one of those days, Brian.

You've been involved in much of this.

With the,

I told you a minute ago before we officially started broadcasting this episode that I feel like I'm in quicksand.

I feel like a drowning person

that I'm trying to figure out.

You're changing all of my habits, Brian.

And a person with OCD does not

like

having their habitations changed.

I've got a new computer here.

I've got a new monitor.

You've sent me these new headphones.

More on that in a moment.

Here recently.

And now we're on a new program, as the kids say.

Or is this an app?

What is this that we're on now?

Well, we're doing things in a different way.

We're not going to reveal too much about how we do things because people don't need to know those things, but we're going to do that.

Well, is this an app or a program?

It's a whole new way.

It's a a mix of both actually of recording this a mix see this and god damn it it's it's a it's a mongrel it's a mongrel it's a mix of everything the point is i'm doing all kinds of different on my computer now with all kinds of different computer shit

and you expect me to be calm and reasonable and fun loving

No, I don't.

You don't even know this yet, how my day started off here today.

Because

I've told everybody that Stacy's mother and stepfather have finally made the move from California.

They

got their stuff from the moving company in their new place over there.

We've been going over to help them, blah, blah, blah.

They're having a new couch delivered supposedly today, right?

Well, it was the date that it was scheduled to be delivered was today.

And so when we left there yesterday evening after helping with the unboxing and cardboard and things of that nature,

we said, Well, we'll be back over tomorrow, or Stace will, while I'm recording this episode of the program to help coordinate.

So, you know, the

bringing in of the couch and all that stuff, and everything.

She's got her phone number on the deal, she'll be sitting right there, mom.

You don't have to worry about running to the phone.

She'll take

so

the furniture company or the moving company or delivery company

called this morning at 7:30,

7:30 a.m.

already at the location,

delivering a couch to a senior living community at 7.

And

Stacey Foza, hello.

Yeah,

we've got the couch.

She said, it's 7.30.

And the woman said, Ma'am, it's 7:43.

And Stacey said, I know what time it is.

I'm just the one that told you.

What in the world are you doing

delivering a couch to a senior community at 7:30 in the morning in the snow, even?

And so

she had to get her mom up and call and get to, oh, yeah, open the door.

The couch is coming.

There's a fucking rooster sleeping outside?

So there was there was some level of panic over that.

And then

at your bequest and request, see, you're at the root of a lot of this, but I think you're trying to drive me slowly mad.

We, I had Hotchkiss Featherbottom over here this morning so that he could do

this whole revamp of all of these new things that's going on.

And also, my printer quit working again.

You know what he did?

He unplugged it and plugged it back in.

I got that going for me now.

But then you guys sat on a phone for an hour with these new programs and these new apps and all these things.

And

well,

the can you hear me now type of thing.

And you're using words and phrases foreign to me, Brian.

I'm a simple man born in a small log cabin.

And it gave me anxiety at at my stomach to hear this shit going on.

And I don't know what the fuck I'm going to have to figure out how to do or what to learn to do or whatever the fuck.

And so, as a result, finally, now all of, and by the way, what's the first thing that Hodgkin said when he put these headphones on?

Gosh, these are tight.

You're squeezing my head.

So, anyway, now

supposedly everything,

so you won't browbeat me anymore about my

primitive apparatuses here.

Now, it's just the case of the loose nut behind the wheel.

But no, I'm a raw nerve end.

It's this is very upsetting to me.

I can see you're going to take no responsibility whatsoever.

I do not accept blame for the alleged activity of slowly driving you mad.

I do not accept blame for the alleged activity of slowly driving you mad.

I do not accept blame for the alleged activity of slowly driving you mad.

I do not accept blame for the alleged activity of slowly driving you mad.

I do not accept blame.

All right, well, I think you get the point.

Hee hee, ho, ho, to the funny farm.

Yeah, to the funny farm.

All right, anyway,

I'll have you know

that I'm encroaching upon the fat area again.

I have been

since the in-laws have been in town and we've been going over there and helping out with that.

We've also been, I have been in five restaurants in the last seven days, which is more actual restaurants than I have actually had a meal in over the last two years.

But now I've discovered why that I was able to maintain my healthy, girlish figure.

Because I wasn't going to any restaurants.

Because then when I go in instead of having to think after a

you know a long hard day

you know

i'm going to binge eat and all this stuff i've been in the house controlling portions then i go to a restaurant and i've been under stress

and i just say

bring me all the food that you currently have and possess and i'll consume it in front of you there'll be nothing taken home what have you been eating

One night we had barbecue at Mark's feed store.

One night we had

what kind of cuisine would you call that?

Beef O'Brady's, need I say no more.

One night we had Mexican.

One night we ate at the hotel they stayed in their first night here.

There was sushi involved.

It's been a variety of things because we're trying to show them how close all these restaurants are.

They had to apparently get on the

well, no, where they were living in California, they had to get on the

808 to the 405 to the 213 and get off the sloss and cut off.

I don't know.

They're talking miles to just go to the restaurant neighborhood.

They have figured out the way to get free meals forever.

Jim, we can't find the restaurant.

Take us somewhere.

Well, no,

we're showing them, you know, so they can see now if you take a person

to dinner

well then you got to pay for it but if you show a person how to eat then they can eat on their own on somebody else's dime that's an old proverb have you ever heard about that i've not heard that old proverb no it's it goes remarkably like that you teach a man to fish to eat forever

Yes.

And I don't see how because goddamn pretty soon you'd get sick of fish.

Hey, what do you think about KFC leaving Kentucky?

well and this is it's a

is it a big story locally oh yeah well people are incensed about it's another one of those things there's a yeah but involved

uh and but it's a public relations and just on the surface of it it just looks horrible right but apparently

because for some time

Kentucky fried chicken has been part

of yum brands.

That's like the yum center here in Louisville.

When the WWE comes to town or, you know, they have the big basketball game.

It's literally, it's the Yum Center.

It's a 22,000-seat,

just fucking incredible arena on the inside of the thing, right in the middle of downtown.

They spent who knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars, but it's called the Yum Center because Yum Brands is not only

Kentucky Fried Chicken, but also Taco Bell.

And

I believe Long John Silver's was under that umbrella at one point in time.

And they're, I forget, because they merged from so many different places.

I think Pepsi, they've got a deal or whatever with Pepsi because that's at all of their locations.

And

Pizza Hut,

all of that shit is so.

What about Kenny Rogers?

Say it again.

What about Kenny Rogers?

Oh, no, he went out of business when they had that flashing sign and nobody could sleep.

Yeah, he had to fold up all of those.

He was going in and burning people's corneas.

But no, but to point, so to your question,

Taco Bell is now going to have the headquarters in California.

For whatever reason, they're having the Kentucky Fried Chicken official headquarters in Texas.

I don't know what they've done with poor Long John.

Maybe he just goes along with his peg leg for the ride.

And they're

his office is offshore.

That's true.

It's past the international limit.

And they're still going to have a corporate, some type of corporate office here in Louisville with like over 500 fucking KFC executives that are still going to be here.

So it's like they're just splitting this shit up for, I don't know for what corporate purposes.

Yeah, for taxes.

That sounds good.

Well, there, but there's, there's going to be people here.

There's going to be people there.

Colonel Sanders is still buried here, right?

But it's just, it hasn't really been like this major local.

I'm not

tradition is what I'm not trying to say.

This major local honor.

It's all about us.

No, it's been a big fucking conglomerate for years and years.

They just have the nice.

southern mansion off the Waterson over there where they have their, with the big white columns, where there's where their headquarters is, but it's not like it's a bunch of local fucking moms and pops.

And we're, and by the way, nobody in fucking Louisville, all the KFCs have gone to dog shit in Louisville, Kentucky.

So I can only imagine what they are everywhere else.

But

if you're eating chicken

with a discerning palate in Louisville these days, you're probably going to to Popeyes or

I wish we could get a Bojangles, but they haven't come this far.

What was the question?

The question was about KOC leaving Louisville.

I was going to say, for the first time recently, I got into a show.

I know it's been on for a while, but I never watched it.

On the history channel, The Foods That Made America, I think is the name.

Yes, I was telling you about that.

Well, they've got everything that made America: the typhoons that made America, the cars that made America, the food that made America, the TV that made America.

America's been made more times than a goddamn high school hooker.

Now, I don't know about their casting director, but I like the show.

Because there's some questionable, like, you know, these are the Kellogg brothers, really?

Have you ever seen a fucking picture of them?

And

the whole story behind the family feud when one created the serial

for the sanitarium and the other wanted to sell it to

people.

Yeah, the even crazier part is, so you have two brothers.

For anyone who doesn't know this story or watch this stupid show on the stupid channel that only I just discovered, the Kellogg brothers, one runs the sanitarium in, oh, what's it called?

Where Battle Creek, Battle Creek, Michigan.

Battle Creek, Michigan.

Hello, RVD.

I had no idea.

But

they had the sanitarium there and it was world renowned.

And Dr.

Kellogg was famous.

His brother knew that this granola mixture, that there was money there.

And the brother refused to sell it.

One of the patients was post.

And he looked there and he's like, I'll start post-toasties.

And he started making his own stuff.

And then they eventually had a little bit of a war and then he killed himself.

It's a very sad ending.

But his daughter became very, very wealthy.

Although she had.

Marjorie Post.

Yeah, it's still sad, I guess.

But yeah,

there was that.

I saw Carvelle and Dairy Queen.

It almost felt like Carvelle versus Dairy Queen, but it wasn't.

It was just like telling the two stories side by side.

Yeah, well, sometimes it's a war now.

Sometimes they had their claws out.

Well, that's what made me think of it.

They had Colonel Sanders, a younger Colonel Sanders, and two of his friends shooting up some guy.

Yes.

Well, no, that was the deal.

The original Sanders Cafe was in Corbin, Kentucky, which is the nearest town, if you can call it that,

to where my mother was born, Mama Cornette.

And this was when she was a kid, actually.

I can't remember the exact year that it happened, but

Harlan Sanders had a gas station on the side of the state highway.

And to make more money and keep people, you know, stopping in, he started, he put in like three or four tables with a couple of chairs and started selling fried chicken.

And he fucked with his chicken recipe and how to cook it faster because the people stopping for gas didn't want to wait 20 minutes for fried chicken in a pan.

And he did the pressure cooker thing.

And that's how Kentucky fried chicken had the different

je sequie than all the other fast food chicken, right?

And, but in the process of doing this, when he was just owning a gas station, there was another gas station on the other side of town.

And these guys, it was like an outlaw wrestling feud.

And they were pulling down Colonel Sanders's fucking signs and posters, come get gas and chicken at my place and blah blah blah and finally they had a legitimate shootout where the colonel and a couple of his boys went down there to fucking

you know goddamn uh settle this thing and with these other people

and

The colonel shot somebody, but he got off because he, I think self-defense, but somebody got killed.

One of them got killed in the course of it.

You can Google it, kids.

I can't remember which side they were on.

But yeah, he was already known as a goddamn local.

It was the 30s in the fucking eastern Kentucky Hills.

These people were fucking lunatics, right?

So

all those years later, when they finally, when they built the interstate and bypassed his

gas station and restaurant is when he had to actually put everything in the trunk of the car and go selling chicken because he was about to go out of business.

He was 65.

And that's when the empire started.

Have I told you too much about the Colonel?

No, I mean, of course, I just watched the show, but hearing you tell the story is so much better than the reenactment.

Well, see, that's because I paint a visual picture.

So, what you're telling the guy who went to Coca-Cola going mad while he's Coca-Cola, like all that stuff.

It was good.

I like the show.

Well, there was cocaine in it.

So,

let's go.

Anyway,

so again, folks, with all of these various stresses on my mental state that I've been put through, having to change my habits and figure out this new shit, and you better not tell me,

there better not be.

I apologize for Jim's audio in the course of this conversation we have here today.

But in the process, I have several things jotted down to talk about.

And we'll just try to go through them, hopefully, in some type of cohesive and coherent order.

And did I mention it's almost March, Brian?

Is that correct?

I guess technically, yes, that is correct.

It's midway point to February.

Yeah.

Yes, several days.

It'll be March.

That means the February sale at jimcornet.com is almost over with.

See, how quickly time flies and you think you get something that's just going on, it's just fantastic in your life, and you think it'll last forever.

And then suddenly

somebody says, no, four or five days, Cornette's cutting you off.

See, that's that's that's something people don't want to hear.

So, while you can, ladies and gentlemen, the February sale is closing soon, but it's still open.

At least if this is still February, you might listen to this next year,

and then you think, Well, so I'll be specific, February 2025.

And you,

by going to jimcornet.com, can get $20 off any of the Midnight Express or Heavenly Bodies tag team action figure sets.

Come obviously accompanied by an autographed photo.

You also,

if you buy any of the aforesaid tag team sets, you can get any of the remaining non-sold-out Jim Cornette action figure variants for half price, also autographed, and

spend over $50 and get a free two-hour classic wrestling DVD.

But that's the month of February, which is flying by fast.

So hurry if you have not already jumped into the pool.

And we almost caught up also.

By the time you hear this, I would expect that I'm within just a few days

of turnaround there from the time that it comes in to the time that it goes out.

Of course, now that's a loose description.

I guess some of the, if you were a couple of days turnaround on some things,

that'd be bad.

But just on signing merchandise and mailing it out, I think we're going to be doing pretty good here.

How's your turnaround, Brian?

My turnaround is just fine, but maybe not as good as the one at jimcornet.com.

Well, you got a point there.

All right,

before we talk about some of the

television programs that we've seen, Brian, can we talk about some of the television programs that we're going to be seeing coming up in

the not-tooo-distant future?

Okay.

You sound intrigued.

Well, I don't know.

I don't see where this is going.

Tell me more.

You have no idea what I'm talking about.

Dark Side of the Ring is coming back.

It's season six, right?

Or is this seven?

There's been so many.

Every season, there's more episodes.

They're doing the opposite of what I Love Lucy did.

Start with 39 an episode and then cut back or 39 a season.

But I have a list here because I know people.

I'm involved.

I've paid off some shady individuals.

And I got a list of all of the dark side of the ring topics for this coming season, which starts

Tuesday, March 25th on Vice TV.

They are still

cranking them out this time 10 episodes this season.

Are you ready for this?

Do we have a drum roll?

Not for this.

Let's hear what it is.

Well, come on.

I'm trying to be dramatic with my reading here.

Well, let's hear what the shows are.

Let's hear if it's well, hold on.

I want to wait a minute.

I'll get a

how about that?

All right.

That means it's going to be a great season.

I can't find my drum roll.

Here they are: the topics for season six of Dark Side of the Ring, as I mentioned, I think, premiering March 25th.

The hell in a cell match between Mick Foley and The Undertaker focused on

specifically rather than as part of the angle or part of the biography of whatever, but

all the participants gathering together to try to figure out why that,

how, why and how potentially that Mick Foley actually finished that fucking thing.

What don't we know about that?

I mean, there's been stuff done about that match.

I mean, it's a big match, right?

Is there something like an angle that we don't know, like some kind of deep, dark secret, like

you know, the Brooklyn brawler was doing something under the ring during that match?

Well, no, no, there's that's never been proven.

And somebody saw Harvey Whippleman in the parking lot anyway, so he couldn't have been under there.

Uh, no, it's it's I'm trying to figure out.

I don't want to not do it justice, and we'll probably be talking to Evan, but it's more of an examination of Mick Foley's mindset and

reasonings and determinations for doing these type of things to himself

and

trying for a somewhat scholarly, I think,

appraisal of that.

But I haven't seen it yet, the final cut, but that's what you and I know what's being talked about.

I would probably, well, I was there.

Right.

That's why I think it's.

So generally, if I was there, I'm generally in it.

Did they get the Undertaker?

I don't know that they got The Undertaker.

But did they get Francois Petit?

I believe they got Francois Petit.

You have to.

If you need an exclusive, that's the only one to get.

Yes, right.

They got Francois.

But anyway, so that's,

we shall see how

that is presented.

Also, number two,

Vader,

as in Big Van Vader.

And

I might make an appearance in that as well, but that's something that,

you know, that's new because

how much footage do you see in any of these highlights of Vader?

He,

he,

any of these highlights, any of these programs with highlights or documentaries or whatever.

I don't know now maybe going forward with a new administration, but I don't think he left

a wonderful fucking warm, fuzzy feeling in Vince's heart because

you don't see a lot of him, do you?

Hey, you know, speaking of that, real quick as an aside, WWE's been uploading all these videos to their Vault YouTube channel, and it's really good stuff.

If you actually like wrestling, there's some really good stuff they've been putting on there.

They did a Terry Funk mix and all sorts of stuff.

You and Randy Savage go-karting,

but they had footage of you with Vader backstage, just like this one thing on its own.

And it was him head-butting the lockers while you're yelling, no pain, no pain, no pain.

But they show you it long enough that you see it cut off and he's clearly in pain and you realize it.

Did you see this?

No, I haven't seen that.

Oh, yeah, the footage is going around.

We'll make sure you get it.

Well, I want to see if you remember.

I remember on like a carousel, huh?

He was wearing his, his, uh, he was wearing his trunks backwards or his leotard backwards.

However, you'd put them.

Yes, yes.

but i won't say that i even remember that specific incident but i remember he on a number of occasions would put his on backwards and not

notice because it did look similar you know with the over-the-shoulder straps and everything but

there was some yes uh but yeah i i

he would

He would often get in the zone where he would realize until afterwards, like, oh, shit.

But it'll be nice uh to see and again this is going to focus on his entire

wrestling career and not just the

the wwf stuff which honestly was as we've talked about was the low light of probably of his modern run do they do a reenactment of the riot in japan when he debuted and beat anoki

I haven't I haven't seen any of these.

These are, it's, goddamn, it's a month away.

I'm good, but I ain't that good.

I think these are these are still in production because remember the original big van vader was supposed to be jim hellwig and he signed with wwf and needed someone else and they got vader who had been just doing nothing really in the awa

and he beats anoki crushes him the first night and they riot in the sumo hall they set the the pill they have pillows on you know for the seats over there and they threw the pillows and they set the pillows on fire and broke up a bunch of stuff but they were shocked they hadn't ever seen Anoki treated like that.

And Anoki thought it was a good thing.

Well, yeah, because it made news everywhere else.

They didn't get banned anywhere.

They weren't there live.

And

they did tremendous business off of it.

But

that's the thing:

it wouldn't have worked with Warrior because Vader was the antithesis of a,

you know, a muscle, a bodybuilder, a pretty looking body that also warriors work with cup geez.

That would have been maybe a one and done against a Noki at that point in time.

Yeah, how would that have worked?

I mean, even if you want to just put him over and said squash Inoki, would he be able to competently do that?

I mean, Vader did it competently.

Well, yeah, see, I mean, you know, people are going to say, oh, he always did squashes.

No, he did the shit that didn't look like it could fucking break a Faberge egg and then one, two, three.

But to actually beat Inoki like you just beat the shit out of him and beat him in a convincing fashion, that was way above Warrior at that time or any time in his pro wrestling career.

And he wouldn't have looked as much like a monster to the people in Japan because they weren't as conditioned to, at that point in time,

to

the bodybuilders as they were to, they could understand from pro wrestling that they'd seen to the 50s and 60s, the great Antonio, for fuck's sake, a big foreigner, massive.

You know,

they

the whole Brody Hansen thing, but, you know, with Leon,

even had the weight.

It was,

that's exactly who the Japanese audience would have wanted for Vader.

And

I don't think Warrior would have got over his Vader over here either.

Because then you covered up that goofy face.

I think that's the only thing the kids liked was the face paint.

Plus, it wouldn't have lasted.

Again, Vader was able to work that style.

I'm not saying they would have worked as hard as they did with Vader with the Warrior, but they would have worked a lot harder than he was doing in the WWF.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

But that's Vader.

That's episode two.

And then one that I'm not on,

but I will wait with bated breath for Tony Atlas, Mr.

USA.

and his

i don't know how how

usually there's some kind of dark ending to the you know dark side of the ring

and tony's still alive so it ain't the the light hasn't completely gone out yet but he has had some

stories and issues in his career so i'm Looking forward to seeing that one.

You just know you're going to get a slow motion reenactment of a foot coming down towards the camera, of a foot sideways profile, just coming down onto someone's face.

You already know.

Oh, now wait a minute.

Is that the proper term to use for a sideways foot is profile?

I guess so.

Remember when in Mid-South,

after Stagger Lee debuted, like weeks later, Tony Atlas was in the territory, and they did a thing on TV where he was going to bench press and they had.

JYD and Stagger Lee there to help him because that proves that JYD is not Stagger Lee and Bill Watts was there and kids everywhere.

Kids all over the place.

Tony Atlas is wearing a shirt with his face on it getting stepped on by a woman in front of all these kids.

No, but there's a lot in there.

And remember, he married a girl that he referenced in his book as, I think, Lisa.

And according to his book, he claimed that she said she was in the room when everything happened with Jimmy Snooka.

and Nancy Argentino because she was

a girl that frequented the same places and she was around the same people.

I guess that's the nicest way to say it.

He called her a rat in the book.

I just want to put it out there.

But I wonder if they're going to touch on that.

And of course, he had problems.

He lost his WWE.

You know, he was gone by what, 87?

And then he didn't come back until he was Saba Simba.

By that point, he had cleaned up his life.

And

he has a very interesting

Tony's an interesting personality.

He's like, as Mama Cornette used to say,

he's a character.

He has a character, but he is a character.

That was one of the best chapters in that Brad Beluchian book when he went and he hung out with Tony, but then he went to Tony's hometown to talk to all the people and like all these stories that Tony was telling.

And they all kind of remembered a variation of what Tony was saying.

Yeah.

Because they're all crazy stories.

Well, it's because he's a crazy fucking guy.

What could I say?

But that's the thing is there is, you know, there's always wrestlers' exaggeration about anybody, but there's a root of most of what you hear about Tony.

There's a pretty much a grain or two of truth in there.

But at least he's still around to be part of the show.

And this one, I know everybody's looking forward to

Ludwig Borga.

Oh, boy.

And maybe, because

when I first heard that, I said, well,

like you, because what was he a wrestler for like two fucking years, maybe?

Well, no, but he was, he was the first wrestler I ever saw when I was trading tapes from Japan.

The first wrestler I ever saw just like, like, not even yell it out, but just casually just start talking and cursing in a match.

Yes.

Japan's like, what the fuck?

Get the fuck.

Holy shit.

This is what they do in Japan.

It was just him.

It was just him.

Tony Holm.

Tony Holm.

And that's the thing is that, you know, I had remembered when he passed away, they had written the obituary and things, but I hadn't got the full grip on just what a fucking nut he was in real life.

And

the MMA and the politician in fucking,

what's his guy, Finland?

Yeah, so it's the other thing.

They have to be.

They have to have something in this dark side about why did Vince think that the American fans were going to care about like a Finnish heel?

Well,

he looked German.

He talked, he sounded German enough to a kid, but then they're like, he's from Finland.

What?

Well, and I may be

in this one trying to shed some light on that because remember, I was his manager for Survivor Series as part of the Foreign Fanatics.

And it was the theme

because I was managing

Yoko.

And basically, it was like fucking Canada, Finland,

and fucking Japan or whatever is the

objects of our derision at this point.

Did you guys name yourselves the foreign fanatics?

No, no,

no.

I've showed up and there was shit on paper.

And this was before I was even on the creative team.

So I could in no way say that they,

and like sometimes I tried to throw my body on something, but in this case, i was caught completely blindsided wouldn't the foreign fanatics actually be like the american fans who like japanese wrestling what and wouldn't and was it it was crush on it too what but his gimmick used to be he was from hawaii but then they said he was from canada but then it was with yoko that's right yeah it's just uh but anyway point being lud vig borga That's what I asked Evan Husty.

I said,

does anybody in the wrestling business remember him?

And then he started telling me about all the other other shit he had done elsewhere and in other lines of work.

And I was, okay, I'm on board with this.

This guy's halfway fucking nuts.

And see, that's another problem.

After Yokozuna, that was the feud they went to with Alex Luger.

It killed Luger.

No one wanted to see him against Ludwig Borgen.

Then the matches were terrible.

No, and well, and they were asking me, they said, what do you remember about him?

I said, almost fucking nothing

because he just said, I mean, he was

the guy who talked like that, but he was over in the corner.

And I didn't know whether he was shy.

Apparently, now he was like sitting there trying not to commit murder or whatever.

But I didn't know about any of his,

apparently, he had tattoos.

He had to cover up the

whatever

Nazi or I don't, I don't think there was it a night.

What was it, a Nazi tattoo, or what was this story?

I'm not sure.

Sometimes I don't want to paint if it wasn't nazi some type of supremacist or fanatical or whatever kind of tattoo they had to have him cover up

and i you know that's another thing everybody's like oh this guy's a tattoo or whatever i have gotten so used to just seeing guys with tattoos all over i don't know what the and i'm not going to stand there and stare at a guy's titty

or whatever to find out, you know, oh, let me examine this art.

What's the deep meaning behind this?

It just, it's all a blur to me.

But anyway,

this one, I know you're going to want to hear about Brian last.

Billy Jack Haynes.

And

I'm again

trying

to delve into from people around him

and or us, you know, impartial observers, what the fuck is wrong,

including, I believe, again, I believe they've got

some footage of Billy himself.

So we'll try to examine that.

But some of it, I mean, I don't want to, again, spoil, but we're going to do more in-depth as it comes up closer with

the director and producer, Evan Jason, one both, all the above.

But Billy used to be able to, remember when he was supposedly the witness of the murder on the tracks of the boys out in west memphis arkansas the famous murder apparently he was telling everybody that he was there and he witnessed it did we talk about this yeah we talked about it on the air a couple of years ago on the air whenever it was

but the problem is now this he used to tell people that when he could just say i used to be on the road in the 80s

I used to, you know, just travel nonstop and I was all over the place place as, you know, as a wrestler.

Well, now there's an actual goddamn database, right?

Everybody's got all the results, the WWF shows, especially.

And there he was wrestling in like, I don't know, Springfield, Massachusetts.

I don't know.

You might have been spending the night with Tom Burke, whatever.

When the murder happened, and he was supposed to be there in a wrestling mask with a video camera filming a drug deal and just happened to be there.

I was at a murder sounds better than I was having a pillow fight with Tom Burke.

Oh, come on.

You know, Tom is stiff with those things.

It's about the way it sounds.

It's about perception.

Well, perception is reality.

Anyway, it can almost be two different things, though, when you really think about it.

It could be one just focused on his career, and then it could be one just focused on outside of the ring stuff and his stories.

Because just his wrestling career alone,

he should have been a major star.

He was a big star, briefly in a bunch of places.

Yeah.

But you look at the magazines from the early 80s.

I mean, they didn't really hit the mark on a lot of the guys who were the first physique guys, Billy Jack, Harry, Tony Atlas, various others.

But you would have thought, and seemingly every promoter he worked for

through 87 thought he was going to be the biggest thing.

And it just, you know, the pattern started, as I believe we've discussed before, is that

you couldn't keep him happy he couldn't stay happy he you know something would always happen and he was gone

um

from one place to another before he'd really establish himself anywhere but portland because that's you know that was home and

he stayed there the longest because what was he going to do move right and then he turned on don owen then he ran against don owen But yeah, and finally, he was on the outs with Owen and doing his own thing, which didn't last long and didn't do well

but uh by that point everybody was like well you know it looked great and then remember in 96 he came back and worked for randy hails in memphis and he didn't have the 95 sorry i got to see there i got to see him in knoxville and louisville ah well that's true uh

and he didn't have the the beautiful

you know, physique, but he was still big.

And,

you know, but I guess at that point didn't he and he had a a little not run but a little employment with wcw at that point for just a very brief time didn't he also and something happened there he was employed by wcw as uh bad blood i think yes a few years earlier not the not the title of the pay-per-view that was a few years earlier in the big josh era but when he went to the uswa as a heel

Al Snow's 1995 promos were excellent.

They became excellent very quickly, and you kind of had to see them if you were a tape trader, but it was a different tone.

Billy Jack Haynes was the best heel promo.

You believed he was a heel.

You believed this guy was bad, and he was doing the promos of his life as a heel in Memphis.

It was great.

It was maybe my favorite stuff of his career, actually.

And unfortunately, it was the only territory left, and

it was not doing well at the time.

But anyway, Billy Jack is going to be on the end.

Here you go,

hot stuff, Eddie Gilbert.

Oof, see, that's a catch-22.

I already know what the problem is going to be.

The problem is going to be: you won't get any family if you tell the truth, and then you can't tell the truth if you get any family.

And uh, I liked Eddie Gilbert, I thought he was a I was a fan of Eddie Gilbert's, and he was nice to me when I met him, but that's the problem.

Well, and I, that it necessarily remains to be seen because I may or may not have some comments on that and also uh

may have contributed some photography for that

but did they get missy and medusa

uh

one but not the other and we'll leave it as a surprise yeah

obviously doug's still around tommy passed away peggy died too right is doug i think so yeah doug and eddie's sister yeah i guess that'd be all

but uh but it's going to be nice again because

you know now it's coming that you're a

an historian par excellence but you're in the lower range of the age of the fan that's going to finally remember eddie gilbert at this point because he's been gone so long

And I think, again,

he's a guy that they ought to be talking about and a story they ought to, you know, keep alive.

And

more people appreciate him and for what he could have done had he lived longer.

And it's not something that's been regurgitated, which we'll talk about some regurgitation here after we finish the dark sideline of.

But, but, you know, there's not that many documentaries about Eddie Gilbert, but it's in the wrestling genre, it's a fascinating story about a guy that did a lot and could have done more.

And so I'm glad to see that instead of the endless rehashes of the great rivalries between A and B

on the Monday Night Wars, now on Thursday and Sunday, coming soon to Tuesday.

But I digress.

Here's what I want to see.

I think I may be on it or I may not, because in the course of one of the other

episodes from a previous season, I've talked about him, but superstar Billy Graham.

And because when the

Graham family episode, I think it was last season, when that aired, it was primarily,

you know, obviously they had some Dr.

Jerry because you had to have context of where the family came from, but it was Eddie, it was Mike, it was...

that that branch of the family.

And

because they said Superstar deserves an episode all by by himself.

So

this would be an interesting one for again.

You know, I know he, I forget, Brian, is he on with the WWE or off with the WWE?

He's dead.

Well, that's that's what I'm saying.

But is he is he as a person,

is he somebody that they're

they're able to embrace now?

Or was he on the permanent?

I can't remember how they they left things.

He was was definitely because of Vince's permanent list.

I don't know about nowadays, and especially with him past.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Is have you seen anything?

They're not talking about superstar Billy Graham when they're talking about all the great champions.

So, is

how is he with them in terms of are we ever going to see anything major on superstar Graham from the WWE?

I couldn't remember which side that he he left on because every three years for 40 fucking years, he switched sides or they switched sides.

The last time they were good, they did a documentary on him,

and then I know then he fell out again.

Well, and then they had done the book, they did the book and the documentary, and did something with the Hall of Fame.

And then he was suing them a couple years later, right?

Yep.

Anyway,

uh,

this hopefully, uh, I just want to see some more superstar Graham stuff on television unless fucking uh DX invades the goddamn Hampton Coliseum in a tank.

Can you see I'm getting a surly attitude about the WWE's new season on AE already?

I can see.

The next on the list, Daphne.

And Daphne was a great girl.

I worked with her in

TNA and

She got jacked around by TNA amongst other people.

And that was a sad story, but

I'm not in this particular episode, but

I think it's going to be, again,

she's somebody that if you're into the wrestling genre, but you only have time to watch the big TV here lately, you might not have seen all of her stuff, but she's got a great story to tell.

So,

or they've got a great story to tell about her, I should say.

So So it's not something, again, that everybody has seen, but it's interesting.

So we're looking forward to that.

And

the last two, Brian, are double whammies, kind of the two sides of the same coin.

I'll give you both at the same time.

Muhammad Hassan

and the Sheikh.

The Sheikh.

Muhammad Hassan's, I mean, the Sheikh, I don't know what else they could add to what's been out there.

Muhammad Hassan is one that that has not been tackled.

That's a good one.

Well, you got to be all over that one, too.

I'll be

all over that like a cheap suit.

And I'm going to be on the sheik, too, just because I had all the cool fucking sheik memorabilia.

But the sheik made a fortune for 40 years on being an Arab menace and was one of the biggest box office attractions in wrestling and one of the richest men and richest promoters in wrestling.

And Muhammad Hassan had a career as a fucking Arab menace for about a year and a half and got canceled out of the pro wrestling forever.

It's a fucking opposite fucking tale of two different people.

But timing was everything, as Abdullah the Butcher used to say.

But no, the sheik, I think, is going to be fun.

And I just want to see more sheik on fucking TV in 2025.

But Muhammad Hassan,

it honestly, I said

he's probably

overall, he may not have had the high of highs, but he probably hadn't had the low of lows.

He got out of the business and became a teacher and is now like, I don't know if it's his exact title.

He's a principal or some type of.

high muckety muck at a fucking school in his home up there in New York.

He's probably been more successful overall and done better than if he stuck with the wrestling thing, or he's probably better off at least.

As Mama Cornette used to say, you're better off if you didn't.

So that's going to be an interesting story.

The only wrestler in

wrestling history that got run out of the business by demand of the network.

Well, but that season.

But beyond that, one of the most tasteless things they did is an overall thing.

And then the specific angle with The Undertaker was so poorly thought out.

Well, yes.

But

the thing is,

as a point that I raise on the goddamn show, depending on the editing,

he's doing what they told him to do.

They couldn't fucking

say, oh, shit, our bad.

Sorry, Mark.

We'd like to, you know, give you a...

$100,000 salary to sit at home for a year and change your look.

And we'll bring you back and make you from

Pittsburgh or something.

And it's like, man.

So

it's not like he went out there and just made that shit up on the spot.

It was their fault.

And they, you know, well, that's what I'm, I know you're not saying that.

Nobody's saying, I know what's saying.

He tried to behead the undertaking.

Everyone blames WWE for what they did.

And of course, he was screwed.

He's the only one who got screwed.

They just went right along offending people of other genres.

And meanwhile, he got after three years in wrestling school or whatever it was, beating himself up to fucking get there.

Then he does what they tell him to do

and

boom.

See, when he was Mark Magnus, that shit wouldn't have taken place.

I had him all polished up and ready for him.

And

he's fucking Italian.

That's what I told them.

When they call me, we want him to be an Arab.

I said, he's fucking Italian.

Well, yeah, but we think, you know,

and then they had me, and him and Davari both, they had me take them to the men's warehouse.

They said, we want them to dress like rich Arabs.

And I said, well, I don't think they have the goddamn wardrobe budget, right?

So I had to take them to the men's warehouse over on Shelbyville Road, the place I get my shit or used to at that point in time,

and

tell my regular sales lady, make these two fucking thugs look successful.

And then I put it on my credit card and sent the office the fucking bill.

I said, Here's the fucking bill for the clothes for your rich Arabs.

And it was a flop.

You're going to like the way you look.

Well,

they didn't like the way he looked, and they didn't guarantee it.

Anyway, that's season six of Dark Side of the Ring.

It's got something for everybody, Brian.

It's got the old, it's got the new.

It's got the male, it's got the female, it's got the

hell and the cell.

It's got a little something for everybody.

But that's the thing, Brian, is it's it's it's got something for everybody.

But you know what?

Everybody needs

everybody needs an easier life.

Everybody needs it to be easy.

And ain't nothing easy, Brian, in this world.

Nothing is easy.

People stress you out.

Activity makes you sore.

Thoughts that keep running through your head and voices that keep talking in your ears.

They keep you from sleeping at night.

You know the only way to stop all this, don't you, Brian?

The only way to bring this agony and misery and blues, blues, despair to an end

is CBD.

I will not even CBD, but CB Distillery.

That's the CBD.

You can write it down CBD for short, but it should be CB distillery because that's the place that you get the natural plant-based solutions for sleep, stress, and post-workout pain.

Now, say, for example, you're like myself and you don't work out.

You get tired when you jog your memory.

It's still activity.

Whenever you're just

blithering through your daily life, folks, you're going to carry something, you're going to pull something, you're going to lift something,

you're going to squat over something, and you're going to hurt yourself.

It's a goddamn foregone conclusion.

Pain is going to be shooting through your body on a daily basis for the rest of your life from now on, folks.

That's just called

breathing.

So you got to start now on the cb distillery products because 90

of people report better sleep

there's 2 million satisfied customers there's a 100 money back guarantee

and if you're smart enough you can even figure out a way to get somebody else's money back have them pay for it and then just get the refund there's all kinds of ways you can figure out how to work this to your advantage, but it's going to make you feel better.

You don't want to be taking stuff you find in grandma's medicine shelf, the stuff that people have been taking for years.

It don't work.

You see it in the news all the time, how they've got these chemicals that when people put them together in a bathroom sink, they blow up the house and they get arrested for it.

But they're selling it to you at Walgreens.

I call bullshit.

You can trust CB Distillery because they're only the finest, most upstanding criminals in charge of that joint.

So no longer do you have to sit back and say, well, I'll just attach three or four of these leeches to my leg.

And when I wake up in the morning, I'll feel right as rain.

That's medicine from back in the 1970s.

What you want is CBD products from CB Distillery that can help you

take that magic carpet ride over the rainbow, baby.

And right now, if you go to cbdistillery.com, that's cbdistillery.com and use the promo code JCE,

where you're going to get 20% off.

20%

off of feeling better.

It's a bargain at any price.

You should be giving your children, at least one of them.

You can spare one.

to people that would give you this service, but instead you're saving 20%.

And

for God's sake, it's not available in Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota.

So those fucking buzzkills, call your congressman.

But cbdistillery.com, 20% off with the promo code JCE.

Brian, you're going to feel better.

Do you feel better already?

No, I need some.

Give me some.

Well, you've got to go on the website.

Cbdistillery.com.

Why can't you just be a friend?

Well, because you can't even get regular mail to me me here.

How do you think I'm going to get you CB there?

If you only knew, ladies and gentlemen, but I will go there because I can use some.

What a stressful time.

Luckily, CB Distillery is there for us.

And, well, some of us, not Idaho, Iowa, or South Dakota.

You guys apparently can just live in pain, misery, blues, and agony.

Enjoy the winter out there in...

the Netherlands.

Well, they're not the Netherlands, but out there in the middle of nowhere.

Well, what am I saying?

CB CB Distillery, tell them one more time, Jim.

Well, it's a 20% off with the promo code jce at cbdistillery.com.

And Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota, they're right up there next to Web City.

You know where Web City is, don't you?

No.

Halfway up a spider's ass.

But you know, maybe if you load up on the CBD, Brian.

You might be able to forget things that you have seen or done in the past so you could watch them all over again and they'd be new to you.

Because I think that would benefit the

advertising.

The new season of WWE programming is on AE.

I can't tell it from last season.

And that's their problem.

You didn't even know it was on.

Well, I knew

you had.

I knew about that.

You knew that the concept of it was on, but you didn't know what they had done.

Yeah, I knew that that new show was on where they keep showing like the Undertaker, Mickey James, Bubba Ray Dudley, and Booker T training people and exposing the business on TV.

I knew that was on, but I didn't realize it was like a whole season of other things.

Oh, yes, because now, remember, there's biography.

Usually, I think leading up to WrestleMania, it's been biography.

I think they've run out of people to biograph.

And it's been WWE's greatest rivals, and there's been some other

God Heels was a program, but this year, apparently,

it's WWE Rivals.

There was a 30-minute WWE Greatest Moments

show on this is on the Sunday Night Block.

And then

the show you talked about, WWE LFG Legends and Future Greats.

Well, we...

We can kind of agree on most of the legends.

I don't know about any of the future greats, but the point is nobody's watching this shit.

Because not only,

how much can you watch now?

Raw is two and a half hours on Netflix, but SmackDown's three hours on USA.

And if you're a really motivated wrestling fan, there's a little programming they do on Wednesdays and Saturdays on the other networks, as they say.

But then you've got the pay-per-views, you've got Saturday night's main event.

And now

WWE Rivals, Rivals, they did Steve Austin and The Undertaker.

These are the two

of the biggest names of the modern era.

And a show on the rivalry between Steve Austin and The Undertaker did 178,000 viewers.

We do that for audio clips talking about shit that people want to watch.

And

that in season one, or this is like season four now, they have plumbed a lot of the rivalries.

There ain't no great Hatfield and McCoy, you know, deal left to go.

The season one,

they were doing between 300 and 500,000 viewers,

except for when they had to shoehorn,

I think, Stephanie and Breeze, you know, rivalry in there.

And then the greatest moments show, I don't know if that's just a filler thing or if they're going to do an hour now going forward or just do 30 minutes or whatever.

169,000 because it was the

debut of Monday Night Raw and how it revolutionized television forever.

And

they had some

clips from the first show in 1993, and then they concentrated on

the attitude of the top 10 greatest raw moments were were all between 1997 and 1999.

And we've seen it.

They've had the rivalries, they've had the legends, they've had the biographies, they've had the fucking blah, blah, blah.

And it's the same

people talking heads, even if they're legends.

Sometimes in sit-down interviews from the same shows we've seen,

in a repurposed

and/or outtakes about a different subject in the same clothing in the same place and the same footage.

And then LFG,

which

opened the block and got the prime spot right at eight,

was the lowest rated show of the bunch of them at 160,000

because people don't want to see goddamn

the klutzy fucking wrestling school students being bullied around by halfway interested

legends

when they can watch six hours of the best in the world right now on the regular television show, but how much more time they got?

So,

yeah, 160,000, 169,000, 178,000

because we've seen it and how much, you know,

Go ahead, Brian.

I don't mean to drone on and do a soliloquy.

I'm just trying to,

I'm pissed, is what I am.

They're just, it's the same shit.

That's at least the dark side shows are different subjects.

You know, the other thing is, I think WWE has this incredible archive of programming, but they always produce the least interesting programming out of it.

You know, everything's kind of cookie-cutter, standard,

really really formatted and fake at times, especially under Vince, like those documentaries.

They had the right elements, the music and the cinematography.

They looked great.

It felt cheaper, though.

There was something about it that didn't really feel

correct to me.

And

I think they've gotten better with that stuff.

But whose biography are you interested in seeing right now?

Undertaker and Steve Austin,

if you were a major crazy fan of theirs,

of theirs, if you were a major crazy fan of theirs at their peak, how old are you now?

You probably got past the point of wanting to see a deep dive into that.

It's kind of just incidental viewing.

The only one they really hyped the most was that LFG.

I'm surprised it did as bad as it did.

Or maybe they consider that good on A ⁇ E.

I really don't know.

I mean, that's the craziest thing out there.

Not to talk about ourselves or put ourselves over, but there are other people too.

We have more people on a daily basis watching your content than watching stuff like that that's on TV.

That's not to say we're more popular than WWE.

It's a statement about TV, the programming being produced.

You know, TV's dying and part of it's because the programming sucks.

No one takes any risks.

No one takes any chances.

You know, Darkseid ended up being the most successful show in in the history of Vice TV to the point where,

you know, kind of like that show we talked about earlier, the foods that made America, now there's just copycat shows up the gazoo, dark side of the show.

Dark side of football, the cage, the 90s, the basketball, and

you know,

it again,

it's like the Road Warriors craze where everybody had the shoulder pads, the spikes, the face paint.

If something is wildly successful, try to copy it.

But in this case, with the WWE,

one would think that they would

have copied themselves instead of copying someone else's success.

They're telling the same stories too often with the same people too often.

They could, because of that incredible archive they have,

they could do

in effect a different thing of what Darkseid is doing.

They own the AWA archive,

do a series on, or they own the

Florida stuff, do a series which focuses on

an incredible talent in this genre from the Florida territory in the year 1978 and tell a fucking

interesting story about a guy.

But it's the same shit that we have seen on every program, every DVD, every documentary.

They won't do new shit.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

They should own their story in a way they never have.

You know, they should do a documentary series.

If AE is willing to put up any money for any of this garbage content and no one's watching, I say garbage content.

Content that feels like free propaganda-based content that exists on your YouTube channel.

That kind of content.

You know,

the road to the original WrestleMania, looking at the year leading up to it and really talking about each event, even the ones that were bad, even the ones that hurt the company.

It's a long time ago.

You could do it.

And you know what?

You don't have Vince looking over your shoulder.

Tell the real story.

You know, how he really bought the company.

I mean, there's all these things that other people, Darkseid exists in part,

because there's always a demand for wrestling content, but originally in part because WWE never really owned their story.

It was the only one that would tell the true story.

WWE went out there and WWE told their story and you had to accept it.

And that was it.

WWE's at a point now where they could tell that story.

Talk about David Schultz.

Talk about Roddy Piper.

Talk about Mr.

T, talk about everything and get real footage and make it a whole series.

That at least is new.

And if it's done right, because I know the content, it could be great.

But instead, we get Michael Cole picks his favorite raw moments.

There's no demand for that.

There's nothing.

And this LFG thing sounds like it's DOA.

So we'll see what happens.

And that's the thing.

The AEW

MO is let's have the same goddamn match just to people just can't tell one from another.

The WWE MO now is let's just recap and herald and praise the same shit over and over and not delve any deeper to

tell the goddamn story of anybody that we haven't already beat to death with a stick.

We could make it interesting.

That's the Chris Colt episode of Dark Side of the Ring was,

I can't remember, two or three or four away from being the lowest rated episode because people were curious because that's a story they didn't know.

And then they got to hear it.

And for all the

storytellers that the WWE claimed to be, they're just goddamn.

It's like Captain Lou, every time you'd see him, he'd tell the same fucking joke.

Pretty soon it's like, oh, goddamn it.

But I think that's the reaction people have.

If you've been watching these over the years, if Bruce Pritchard pops up, that's kind of the reaction you have because he's been the company lackey in all of these things.

There's never any insight.

It's more, here's the company justification that I think Vince would approve of.

And

I think that hurts these things.

I think that sort of element, it used to be Steve Lombardi.

He would appear in these things and just like say exactly what they want him to say.

And it didn't feel real.

And it didn't feel real.

And honestly, in Brooklyn Brawler's defense,

one of the reasons why he got started doing so many comments on the DVD releases and then the documentaries and stuff is because since he also worked backstage as the

production assistant of all trades, he assisted every producer with everything, running errands and getting this and lifting that.

He was sitting there when they had no talent, when they had nobody.

Everybody's fucking in a meeting or everybody's goddamn late.

We have to hear.

Let's shoot some comments with Brawler for so-and-so.

And that way they could get ahead of their work if they shot a bunch of comments ahead of time.

Anyhow,

they need to shoot more comments with other people and tell more stories about other fucking people.

And they might have more

people watching AE on a Sunday night in prime time as listen to us pontificate

on many of our programs here.

Yeah, they should have done like something like we do.

Like, they should have done Wrestler or Pornstar.

I think that would have been a bigger hit on AE on Sunday nights than

this stuff, than seeing the same.

I love Steve Austin.

I've seen all those clips so many times because it's the best stuff.

And you're right.

You feel like you've seen this stuff before because it almost felt like they rotated shows so that if The Rock and Austin were on biography, then the next season they were on rivals,

then the next season they were on, you know, hidden feuds or whatever they were doing.

Oh, and I forgot about hidden treasures.

Then we get to watch people buy their shit.

We used to get to watch Top Dollar harass John Pantosi on that show.

Yes, yes.

Flop Dollar started out by being a fucking

bad flea market negotiator.

for

but that's i mean i think they've plumbed the well as a lola might have said it's unless they're going to do some different people from a different era what's the matter with

if if you're telling a good story does it matter that it's in the 80s instead of the 90s

Or potentially,

was there any good stories that I've overlooked that they haven't told from 2009 or whatever?

I don't know, but just something different see i'd hit up all those guys from the 80s they haven't done even if you don't think they're worthy of a biography i think you'd be surprised at times who triggers people to watch i would do a coco beware i would do a greg valentine have they done jim duggan

i would do a jim duggan if they haven't done jim duggan no that they did a jim duggan biography they did jim buggin buggin jim buggin they did they did

they did jim buggin and his partner jim duggan but they should buggin and duggan is what they called them down south i would really mind that well and you get a lot of content out of it and again it

i don't think it's going to do remarkably worse than what they've got on there which is more of the same

fluff content fluff content yeah

and that's the thing is it's all put together well because they have a wonderful crew but it's the same same thing

uh it let's stick with the wwe news or related news you know know, we've been off the WWE

for the last 10 days or so because of my change of schedule and the sort of things going on.

But they got a pay-per-view coming up.

Should we look at, can you tell me,

is this public knowledge what the fuck the card is for the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view that's coming up on March 1st, which is rapidly approaching us?

Oh, joy, oh, bliss.

WWE Elimination Chamber taking place March 1st, Toronto, Ontario at the Rogers Center.

Now, that's the Sky Dome, right?

It was the Sky Dome and used to be the Sky Dome.

That's right.

It's a better name, Sky Dome.

In an unsanctioned match,

Sami Zayn versus Kevin Owens.

Yes, I heard that

they had officially booked that.

They're not saving it for WrestleMania with Sammy and Kevin, but

they're doing it in Toronto, which is

probably as close as you can ask for to their hometown for a situation like this so you know they're going to pull out all the stops and

with the wwe's

governance or

you know producing and and keeping an eye on them where they don't just impale each other with goddamn medieval lances

They can both work and they're motivated and they're best friends.

So

I bet you, unless it gets just really

furniture heavy, that that'll be a really good match.

The next match, a tag team match.

Naya Jax and Candice LeRae.

Oh, Christ.

Versus Tiffany Stratton and Trish Stratus.

Well, I see what they're doing there and I can't fault them.

It's Toronto.

She was in the rumble.

They had, they had, they rumbled in the rumble.

And she's going to get a huge hometown pop.

And from what I saw in the rumble, she's still better than fucking the refrigerator and candy put together.

So

I'm not saying it's going to be a good match, but I see what they're doing to get a heck of a response from the crowd and a legend on the card where they're not going to embarrass themselves.

Hopefully the

refrigerator door won't fall on Trish and she'll be fine the next day.

And again, I'm assuming they're going to be adding more matches in the next week and a half or so.

But the other two matches we have, the Women's Elimination Chamber match.

Oh, God damn it.

That's what they're going to do.

The men's and women's of this shit, too.

This is what you're doing.

Your audio is really peaking there.

For a women's world.

Yeah, so is my blood pressure.

For a women's world championship championship match at WrestleMania 41, Liv Morgan versus Bianca Belair versus Alexa Bliss

versus Bailey versus Naomi versus Roxanne Perez.

Is there anybody in that match that's over five and a half feet tall?

Bianca Bel Air?

I guess Bianca is what, about five, seven-ish.

Maybe, I think she may be a little taller, but I'm not sure she's one of the taller uh girls I think Bailey maybe Naomi maybe

definitely you know outlive Alexa all right it it's still it I ain't far off this is a pretty tight range narrow as a

I can't say that word on YouTube anymore hair

but uh

yeah

women's elimination chamber.

So that'll go on first.

And at least we've got nowhere to go but up.

and then hopefully they'll they'll give us sammy and kevin as a palate cleanser

and then what's in between that and the men's elimination chamber

that's the only other match now we have the men's

i thought there was a that's there's only oh jesus christ are they are they gonna just now do this again where survivors not survivor series The Royal Rumble was four and a half hours with four matches.

Are these elimination chambers going to take as long as it does the gestation period of a hippopotamus to fucking get finished with?

Why am I asking you these questions you have no control over?

The men's elimination chamber match for an undisputed WWE Championship at WrestleMania 41.

John Cena versus CM Punk

versus Drew McIntyre versus Logan Paul

versus Damian Priest versus Seth Franklin Rollins.

You know what that one

is, and again, this is another reason why I don't have an Elimination Chamber match in front of this Elimination Chamber match because

you've got

several a few of the best minds and several of the biggest names in the company in that thing.

and why take the fucking edge off of it?

I think a case could be made

that almost anybody in that match

could legitimately,

in the eyes of the fans,

it could be a question, is he going to win?

Is he going to win?

Except

Priest is a long shot, right?

And

obviously, I don't think Logan Paul particularly needs it.

But it's, again, there's so much going on with those names and those guys and this high-stakes match.

Why

give the people a, you know,

half-assed fucking chicken wing before you give them a whole fucking chicken dinner?

Your thoughts?

Well, that's Toronto Elimination Chamber.

They've been doing these pay-per-views with just a few matches, and it appears this will be another one of those, just a few matches.

Sir, couldn't they announce one more thing?

Maybe Maybe they will.

I mean,

there's still two more TVs before then.

There's fucking eight days from the time that we're recording this.

No.

Well, yeah, maybe not even eight.

Is this leap year?

We established that.

It's awful fucking close to be announcing anything of any consequence.

So I guess that's what we're stuck with.

Son of a bitch.

Well, I wonder if they're going to add

to the card on the pay-per-view the newest sensation.

I guess he's still down in NXT, though.

But he's saying Ricky.

We can't call him by his former name anymore.

That was his slave name, Ricky Starks.

He's now

with the big league, and he's changed his name onward and upward to Ricky Saints.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Is that correct?

That is what happened on NXT.

He had his contract signing with the ever-awkward Ava,

the fucking lurch of the Johnson family.

I don't know why they have her on TV.

She's not a performer.

Would you sign a contract of any kind with her unless she was a receptionist at a fucking doctor's office?

No.

But again, I guess anything to get into NXT,

they never say his name.

So they're all

talking about him.

He's being presented.

He's there walking around, but no one's like, hey, Ricky, how you doing?

Like, no one's doing that.

So it felt a little weird.

And at the very end, after a few people came out, Ethan Page came out and had a confrontation.

When you saw the contract that he signed, it said Ricky Saints.

Or was it not even Ricky Saint Saint Saint Saints?

Wait, was it Ricky Saint or Ricky Saints?

Well, that's what I was going to ask you because now this could mean everything.

See, now that I've got you here, is it Ricky Saint or Ricky Saints?

He's Ricky Saints.

Ricky Saints.

See, that makes less sense.

Oh, when the Saints go marching in.

No, the New Orleans Saints are the football team, and he's from New Orleans.

And I've seen it reported online that that's where the connection, when he chose, or

maybe when he chose or helped choose or advised or begrudgingly accepted, whatever the goddamn proper description was.

Apparently, Ricky Starks was off the table, but at least he could still be Ricky.

Why?

Why, though?

Why is Ricky Starks off the table?

It's weird.

Ethan Page came in as Ethan Page, although he came in from TNA.

He didn't just come in as a free agent.

Ricky Starks does.

See that.

I mean, Ricky Starks' initial value is the fact that everyone knows him.

The thing is, whether he came from TNA or whether he came from being a free agent

shouldn't really,

I could, I understand

that they want to do it.

They want to own things.

They want to trademark things, intellectual property, whatever.

But I don't know why they make certain exceptions.

I can see where they'd make it for John Cena,

but you know, right now, but not even back then, they let him be Jaihe.

They didn't want the prototype that he thought of, but they let him have his real fucking name.

Hey, Julia and Stephanie Vakor or Vaker, whatever it is.

Those were the names they used in Japan and Mexico.

It wasn't like they got their names changed.

So I don't understand what plays into the

differentiate, the

differentiation of one or the other.

But thing is, I'm not entirely,

I think Ricky Saint might even

please me just a little bit better than Ricky Saints,

but I'm not entirely against it because it depends.

Is he going to have

a nickname

or some other type of,

you know,

presentation verbally or whatever?

Ricky Saint, you can see maybe something there with his look and he dresses up.

And

I don't know, Saints.

I don't know.

It just feels weird, though, the idea that you would want to do that.

Again, he was on AEW-TV when

there were a lot more viewers.

The fans always reacted to him and took to him.

He's not a complete unknown.

And to bring him in and change his name,

it just almost seems like, I don't know.

I mean, it's almost like they're treating AEW and appearing on AEW-TV as being as good as being on the Indies,

which is crazy.

Well, that's...

That's a bad word is.

But in terms of television exposure, Ricky Starks has been a part of a lot of stuff when they had a lot of viewers.

I don't understand.

Yeah, no,

I mean, I get like you said, they want to own everything.

What's the value in that name, really?

How much more money are you going to make because you own this name that he can never use anywhere else versus you make money with him as a partner on his name?

I don't know.

That's the point that I've made often: is

when guys used to become stars after they had worked for you, when they went somewhere else and they'd come back and they could use the same name to get over, and then you could advertise that people knew who it was, blah, blah, blah.

And the lengths that they've gone to to change people's names in that company for years now

is ridiculous in a lot of cases.

Sometimes, you know, you've never heard of a fucking motherfucker, and he had a shitty gimmick or whatever.

Yes, but in a lot of cases, they changed it.

Remember, they wanted to change Vader's name, Mick Foley's name, everybody's name.

But if the point is, this one,

maybe it's not too bad.

Maybe it's a vaulter to a Gunther,

and it won't matter anyway because he'll get over.

Does it pass your name test?

See, that's the thing, depending on what he, if he

continues to look like a star and present himself like the guy and he's slick and he's dressed nice, I can see a Ricky Saints.

You know,

it's what he does with it and what they do with him.

So it could pass the name test depending on,

you know, it's not Freddie Joe Floyd.

It's not like, no, under any circumstances, nobody's going to ever give a shit about a person just specifically because of this name.

Well, we will see what happens with Ricky Saints.

Well, Brian, it's, you know, it's just the odds are up in the air.

It's, it's, it's random chance.

It's, does a guy get over or not?

Does your horse win or not?

Does your team win or not?

It's it's gambling.

It's it's going to the casino, baby.

But, you know, at least you can go to the casino now and not have to hop on a

plight, hop on a plight to Las Vegas and to play at the casino.

That's a play on words I've never heard before, but it sounds good.

He's going to hop on a plight.

He's going to hop on a plight to Vegas.

Or you don't have to go to

Atlantic City, or even, you know, some of the river boats on the Mississippi River.

You can, you can go to the casino right from your own home from your own telephone.

You don't even have to be home.

You can be sitting in the park homeless, which is probably what you'll be when you finish gambling.

But right now, folks, if the slots are spinning, you could be winning.

Because if you head over to DraftKings Casino and play the classics that you know and love,

or you can try something something new with their exclusive games.

Either way, however you want it, it's up to you.

The crown is yours and the world is in your hands.

But new players, not nude now, you have to be wearing clothes if you're sitting in a park.

In the park.

But technically, if you're doing this at home, DK Casino,

you can be in the nude.

You could be nude.

But there's only specific places in a certain bench in the park that you're allowed to be nude.

And even then, you got to have the raincoat within within six feet of you.

New players, brand new ones that give DraftKings Casino a spin can get 200 casino spins on a featured game.

All you got to do is sign up with the code Corneet.

That's my last name spelled correctly.

And you wager a minimum of $5 and you get 200, I say 200 casino spins on a featured game only

on DraftKings Casino, whereas I said before, the crown is indeed yours, except if you don't pay for it, and then they're going to repossess it.

But folks, new players, give them a spin at DraftKings Casino.

You bet $5

with the code Cornet.

You're going to get 200 casino spins on a featured game.

And that could be any, it could be the old Hoochie Coochie or the three-card Monty or the...

The old shell game.

You never know what it might be.

But all the big ones are there.

Monopoly, Clue.

The crown's yours, Brian.

The crown is yours.

I don't know if Monopoly or Clue.

In fact, I do know.

They are not there.

Monopoly.

What about Operation?

No Operation.

That fucking writer's cramp can kiss my ass.

Well, you can take that

and take it down your chutes and ladders or whatever else we're saying here.

Jim, we have a special announcement.

Let's go to it right now.

Gambling problem?

Call 1-800-GABLBLE.

In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling.

Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.

Please play responsibly.

21 and over.

Physically present in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia only.

Void in Connecticut and Ontario.

Eligibility restrictions apply.

New customers only.

Non-withdrawable casino spins valid for a featured game only and expire in 168 hours.

See terms at casino.draftkings.com slash promos.

Ends March 16th, 2025 at 11:59 p.m.

Eastern Time.

That's right.

The crown is yours.

Well, now

it's yours.

It's not mine.

Who's going to be responsible for this crown?

If the crown is yours, it can't be mine.

Void in Ontario.

That's true.

And Connecticut.

I can vouch for that.

Anyway, folks, speaking of being void, apparently a business deal that was void, null and void, dead on arrival, wasn't going to happen.

I hate to say I told you so, Brian.

You know, I say that all the time when I say I told you so, that I hate to say this, but I told you so.

Shane McMahon, the story now has been revealed, apparently, where the

deal, or not the deal, but the proposal that was made for him to become a part of AEW.

And I think it was probably kind of what I thought.

He said, well, I'll politely give this guy an offer that he absolutely can refuse.

And he did.

But is that where did this information, where was it disseminated from?

Do you have that?

I think you may be too kind.

I think it's also maybe an example of Shane really wanting to do something in wrestling still and thinking this was a chance, not realizing

nobody sees him as an executive.

We should be running a wrestling company, let alone Tony Khan, who sees himself as an executive.

We should be running a wrestling company.

This story came from a few places.

Obviously, originally, we heard a rumor that they met.

We heard that Mercedes-Monet ran into Shane in an airport.

Then we saw a photo that was a bizarre photo because Shane was like leaning over the desk and Tony was acting because it was clearly an act, like he was shocked that someone was taking a photo.

Yeah, yeah, like, oh my God, turn that camera off, put out that cigarette type of thing.

And then that got leaked.

According to, I have a couple things here.

I have the official observer write-up, but WrestleTalk put out something.

A big new update has emerged regarding Shane McMahon potentially joining AEW after meeting Tony Kahn last summer.

As reported by WrestleTalk and Fightful in July 2024, Shane met with Tony Kahn at an airport in Arlington, Texas.

As reported by Sean Ross Sapp at the time, the meeting was regarding quote, possibilities moving forward.

However, despite plenty of speculation afterwards regarding McMahon working with AEW

or potentially appearing on AEW-TV,

nothing would materialize in this regard.

And let me stop there for a second.

We didn't even bring up the rumor that he was going to be behind the Moxley thing.

That he was the mastermind of whatever gibberish Moxley says every week.

Well, and that was, on the face of it, was just ridiculous because they would

nothing to do.

And Shane being a higher power was just

fans wanting Shane to be a guy with money that was going to come in and try to, you know, buy the company or run the company away from Tony or whatever.

But then Moxley, because of those rumors, had to put that fire out by putting that line in.

I can't remember what his exact words were, but where I'm the boss, I work for me or whatever the fuck, just to make sure that everybody knew the buck ended there.

I think I made a pun.

But

here's what I think.

I think that Shane liked the former Sasha Banks when they worked together and they met in an airport and

she told him about this wonderful guy she was working for.

And boy, they ought to talk.

And Shane,

okay.

And

if they wouldn't have met in an airport.

Because I have nothing to do.

Well, no, he has plenty.

A,

he's got plenty to do, which with the money he's got is whatever the fuck he wants to do, right?

It's not like he's been flying.

That's what I'm saying.

It's not like he's been flying around the country trying to get a job in a wrestling business.

They probably met an airport because they were going to be ships passing in the night at a connecting city.

I agree with that, but I think there, I know plenty of unfulfilled millionaires.

I know plenty of people that on the face of it, they are rich enough, they should be really happy and they're miserable because they just,

whatever it is, the work thing or whatever, which Shane, you could understand that because he really believed, as a lot of us did at a certain point, that he was going to eventually one day be the heir apparent.

Yes, and I agree with that.

And

he thought he had a chance to buy UFC.

He thought, I mean, all of these things.

It disappointed him.

It disappointed him that he wasn't, but that's his father's company.

That's the WWF, the WWE.

He's not tried to, he's done, made overtures with mixed martial arts.

He's not tried to get in any kind of wrestling business.

And they've been around for five years without him making any overtures.

Because you think Tony wouldn't have met with Shane beforehand?

And obviously, it's not like he's going to keep it a secret.

He ran into Sasha and Sasha said,

Okay.

And I believe that Shane, after he talked to Tony

and said to himself, this is the guy that is running this company,

said, I tell you what, you give me a piece of it and let me run it and we'll talk business because he doesn't want a salary.

He doesn't want to work for somebody in a wrestling company that.

comes off to most people

in the wrestling business like Tony comes off.

Now, whether they're at a place where they can admit it or want to admit it, or whether they're too naive to pick up on it,

but for somebody that's been around the wrestling business for a long time, Tony does not come off like a general patent that you would follow into battle to invade fucking Normandy, right?

Well,

let me go back to this report here, some more details.

Apparently, I won't name the show because based on the name of it, I'm guessing it's a show with Vince Russo.

But Jonathan Coachman is a podcast now.

And on it,

he claimed that

McMahon asked for equity in AEW during the meeting with Khan and allegedly wanted to come in and run the entire show,

which apparently led to Khan ghosting Shane afterwards.

While Feightful wouldn't verify Coachman's claims that McMahon wanted equity, Several new details were learned via a source close to McMahon.

The source told Feightful that Khan did not follow up with McMahon after the meeting.

And while they couldn't confirm the claims that Shane wanted equity in AEW,

it did seem like he wanted to run things.

But he did not have much knowledge of AEW's product or business model, whatever that is.

Not sure there is anybody has knowledge of a business model.

But no, again, and Heyman did the same thing with Dixie and TNA, remember?

But this time it was specifically to, I think, to run her off because he knows that he couldn't have done anything under those circumstances.

But with Shane, he's not looking for a job.

He's got all the money he wants.

He sees this guy that has national television, a wrestling promotion.

And he talks to him and he realizes, what, how the fuck did this happen by

sheer happenstance and the striking of lightning?

And

he probably figured, you know what?

If he, and I,

when people are saying that by running it, or he wanted to run the whole show, like he wanted to do everything by himself, no, I bet you he didn't want to book or he didn't want to do what he wanted to run the company, to be whatever they call the

guy calling the shots in that corporate structure, the president or this, whatever,

because he could see that,

you know, Tony, I mean, do I have to fucking spell it out?

And he wanted a piece of it rather than a salary because that's an old Bill Watts technique that he used in WCW.

Give me a piece of what I save you by cutting this budget where you're losing money.

He's thinking, again, if I can make it go, then I'll make money on owning a piece of this thing.

Not to take anything away from the incompetence of Tony Khan, Shane's not a proven executive.

Shane's not an executive with a history of turning things around.

Like there's no background for that.

So even if you like him, I mean, there's no, you know, the idea that he went in there as some seasoned businessman.

Well, but hold on a second.

Again,

when, again, when the comparison is Tony Khan with the fucking,

you know, the wild hair and the crazy eyes and the hippity-hop.

attitude, Shane looks good.

He's dealt with network people and all these people for 30 fucking years or more than that.

He knows people from all of the deals that they've made and done.

He was into the thing with Tyson.

Just contacts that he has, people that he could talk to, things that he would put

more.

experienced and or learned people in a lot of these positions than Tony has because he wouldn't give a fuck who his friends were.

I mean, somebody's going to say, well, it's a rib.

Pete Gas and Rodney got jobs.

But yes,

as flunky fucking wrestlers, not as a goddamn head of marketing.

But Shane would just put, if Shane just put people that he knew from WWE, that doesn't help AEW.

I'm not talking from WWE.

I'm talking from everywhere.

He has, he knows.

All of the years that he spent in the office dealing with people from Hollywood to fucking New York to business people to sponsorships to the fucking people with the skittles, whatever.

He's worked and dealt in a bigger company with a better infrastructure, with more contacts for major league sponsors, and the whole nine yards.

I'm talking business.

I don't think anybody, whether you like Shane or not, or whether he wanted to do too many leapfrogs and his punches were the shits.

He looks and acts and comes off as a more stable, adult, experienced businessman than Tony Khan does

when he's in a suit and in that environment and not being right, but that doesn't mean he's back on TV.

But that doesn't mean he's a good businessman.

That's my point.

He comes across better.

I'm not saying he's goddamn.

My kids come across better than Tony Khan.

He's don't either.

That's why that's why I don't know why you're arguing with me.

I'm not saying he's John D.

Rockefeller.

I'm saying he'd be a grade up in terms of an administrative boss of a wrestling company.

That's the point.

I'm not willing to submit.

I'm not willing to submit to that because there's no evidence of that from anything.

There's no, Tony Khan and Shane are very similar in a lot of ways.

And obviously they're very, very fucking different in a whole lot of ways.

But there's no evidence of Shane outside of his dad's grip ever being able to develop anything, do anything, come up with ideas.

Let me read you real quick.

I didn't even finish this report.

And then I got to read you what Dave wrote about this.

Oh, boy.

Hold on.

While Feifel didn't confirm Coachman's claims, they had a source close to Shane McMahon.

Despite Khan not following up with McMahon after the meeting, Shane didn't seem to take it personally.

And it reportedly seemed as if Khan thought that Shane was joking

when mentioning the possibility of running everything in AEW.

That's funny, too.

The idea of Shane.

Okay, and again, again, to my point, Shane didn't hear from him, and it's not like he was waiting by the phone.

He didn't, you know, it's like

I'm just according to the source.

McMahon viewed his insight and abilities to run a show as valuable after years of witnessing fans and people in the industry want someone to replace his father in his role in charge of WWE.

See, right there is very interesting.

His insight and abilities to run the show were valuable.

The report notes that there was never an actual plan for Shane McMahon to appear on AEW-TV or be involved in the company, with sources within AEW telling Feifel that Khan hasn't spoken about it extensively outside of acknowledging that the meeting took place and the two sides aren't working together.

Despite that,

the source close to McMahon didn't rule out a potential cameo appearance at AEW.

Oh, come on.

But didn't think that there would be any full business relationship between them at the time.

And that's the story there.

Here's how it was reported in The Observer.

Jonathan Coachman on his podcast claimed that Shane McMahon in his talks with Tony Khan asked for an equity stake in the company and wanted to run it.

And then afterwards, Khan never called him back.

Khan hasn't commented on the report.

I mean, seriously, Khan is never going to just give a significant equity stake to somebody, nor is he going to let somebody else run the company.

It's the same situation when the first time Shane left WWE that he met with UFC.

And I told people there's no way a deal will be made because I knew Dave would come into this somehow.

Because Shane will never accept the salary position.

And then the idea of them giving him ownership, just giving it, that was never going to happen.

He's not going to come in and work for a salary.

And I'm not even sure what role he, and I'm not even sure what role he would do.

In WWF, people rolled their eyes at the idea of him doing creative there, and he doesn't know the talent nor the landscape of AEW and has never run creative or been a key part of it anywhere.

Well, see, he's harping too on the creative.

It's more than the creative.

It's the running of the actual company, putting responsible, experienced, non-wrestling people in the places where non-wrestling people

are the best for those places.

marketing and advertising and live event, etc.

And then

you try to teach them and direct them the the genre.

But

accounting,

maybe some responsible accountants to say, how much goddamn more money are you going to spend?

We heard about this.

And then the next time we saw Shane was at the Super Bowl with his dad and the Undertaker.

I'm just saying this sounds like a guy.

Do you think it was recon?

You think it was a recon mission?

No, I think this was a guy who met with a guy in the business he used to be in, the family business because of a friend that he met and he said well if this guy's really serious i'm not going to take time out of my day unless it's worth it to me and i bet you shane did think that he could run the company better than tony and i bet if you put the two of them in a room that ought to be a reality show no put shane mcmahon and tony kahn in a room and interview them to see which one comes off as a person to run anything If you would not know

any specifics about anything, I completely agree.

And I bet Shane's mind was blown by the spectacle of Tony Khan.

And considering that he grew up Vince's son, how do you think he reacted when everything he said, Tony Khan was sitting there nodding at him?

Right?

Because Vince hated that.

And that's all Tony does.

He nods at everything you say.

And just the

hyperactivity and the

overconfidence would be a word, the over-exuberance.

I'm not violating the NDA when I just describe the tone of a man's conversation

as being, again, convinced everything's great.

Nothing can fail.

And because I guess if it doesn't matter, he's used to.

It doesn't matter if something fails because

you can't give as much money away as they have.

So he's never really had a failure in his life because

what does it matter if it something doesn't work, do something else?

It's not like, you know,

we were not going to eat or anything.

But I think that that's the thing is that Shane would have figured, all right, if this guy really wants me to do something here, I'll pitch this.

And if he politely declines, then I'll go about my day type of thing.

I think Shane's going to do something with his dad.

That's what I think.

His dad who can't turn to Stephanie anymore.

Well, and

from what we have been led to believe, that's not going to be wrestling.

So I don't know that

I would argue with you there.

Tabo Kelly.

Shane might be able to do something with it.

Raw Underground or Raw After Dark.

What was it?

Raw in the Dark.

What was it?

It was.

Was it Underground?

It was Underground, right?

Raw with Riders in the Dark.

It was Raw Underground, and it should be buried

about six feet.

But anyway, so that's, and we caught up with it.

That's all going on in the WWE right now.

We're going to start watching the TV again leading up to the elimination chamber.

So more on that to come.

Well, I guess.

That's what Shane McMahon said when he left the meeting.

More on that.

To come.

Before we talk about

the TV show that I did watch,

can we talk about the ratings of the TV show that I didn't didn't watch?

Oh boy, you're talking about the one I think you're talking about, Collision in Australia.

Yes, the Grand Slam.

We did a report on,

you know, well, no, I did, I did watch that.

Son of a bitch, that's the one I did watch because we did a report on that.

So, but now we have the ratings, which we didn't have then.

And we were guesstimating

as to

they're supposed to have the big lead in.

And we said the big lead wasn't the NBA all-star game.

It was the NBA

night before the All-Star Game festivities with a dunk contest and shit.

But that was supposed to be a big lead-in, so they were looking forward to it.

And

now we know what happened, do we not?

Oh, we do.

We do.

And the rating came out on February 19th.

AEW collision, February 15th, Grand Slam Australia,

10:52 to 1 a.m.

According to WrestleNomics, preempted.

They even got a runover on the fucking Saturday night,

late night.

All right.

According to WrestleNomics, a preempted airing,

on average, watched by 502,000 viewers.

That is the highest overall and key demo number since December 21st.

And that, on the surface of it, would sound kind of impressive that they got it almost back up to where they had it when CM Punk was on it every week.

And now they haven't done that in a few months.

But

there's more to the story, Brian, than one would be led to believe by just that number alone.

Well, let's go to the ratings.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one,

10:52 to 11 p.m.

That famous eight-minute quarter.

Quarter one, 10:52 to 11 p.m.

Kenny Omega and Will Osprey versus Konosuke Takeshta and Kyle Fletcher with picture-in-picture ads.

1,030,000 viewers.

So that's the first time they've been over a million since Punk did something important.

I think.

I don't remember how many shows have been over a million, to be quite honest with you.

I don't know.

It's been a long time.

Well, again, we say quarter.

That was eight minutes.

Let's go to quarter two, 11 to 11.15, a full quarter.

Continuation of the tag match and an ad break,

669,000 viewers.

Good God.

So they lost

330, 361,000 people in 15, in eight minutes.

Okay.

As expected, I guess, because obviously NBA fans are going to turn it off.

The whole goal is you want to retain them.

Well, remember that first

eight minutes was people that they had never seen or heard of walking to the ring.

Remember, I remember.

Do you remember the boring entrances?

It wasn't November, though.

Let's continue to remember, remember, but we go to quarter three, 11:15 or 11:30 p.m.

Mercedes Monet

versus Harley Cameron with Picture and Picture ads.

567,000 viewers.

There goes another 100,000 in a quarter.

Well, we go to the next quarter.

The continuation of the Monet versus Cameron match for 1130 versus 1145.

The post-match with Momo Watambe,

an ad break.

Anyone named Momo is funny to me.

Kenny Omega.

Hey, now what?

Sam Giancana would like a word with you.

Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay's backstage promo and entrances.

I assume for the next match, 525,000 viewers.

And there were another 42,000.

So we're down now.

It's almost half, 1,030,000 to 525,000 in an hour.

50% of the audience.

Well, we're going now to quarter five, 11.45 to 12 a.m.

Cope and Jay White versus Claudio and Moxley with picture-in-picture ads,

453,000 viewers.

There goes another 46, 72,000.

And of course, the

Death Riders again strike the death blow to the ratings.

This is plummeting.

How far?

How low can they go?

Well, we know we know go.

We now go to quarter six, the big midnight hour,

12 to 12.15 a.m.,

the post-match with the Death Riders, an ad break, and the start of Okada versus Buddy Matthews with Picture and Picture.

421,000 viewers.

And that's down another 32,000.

And now they're fighting bad booking and sleep.

Well, we continue now into, I've lost track of what these are because it's all out of order here.

12.15 to 12.30 p.m.

Okada versus Buddy continued and an ad break, 401,000 viewers.

Okay.

Okay, we're officially down 629,000 viewers from the start of the program.

And we got quarter eight and an overrun?

I'm not sure about an overrun.

Well, we'll talk about that in a moment here.

Quarter eight, I guess that's what this is, 12:30 to 12:45 a.m.

And according to this, we have

another 11 minutes after that.

So, I don't know if that's an overrun because it ends at 12:56.

But

12:30 to 12:45.

Somebody's got to answer for this.

Mariah May versus Tony Storm with picture and picture.

Somebody's got to answer for that, too.

I believe that's the main event here.

351,000 viewers.

The final 11 minutes,

294,000 viewers.

Oh my.

So

they started at 1,030,000 and ended up at 294,000.

That is a loss of 736,000

viewers or basically 75%.

Has there ever been...

See, Shane McMahon doesn't understand the business model.

They just ran off the entire.

I mean, again, it's late at night.

It's after the NBA game.

You're not going to have a big audience, but they were building this thing up for a while.

It makes you question why they did this on collision.

Why not just make the Australia event dynamite at that point?

But they just lost the entire audience.

Nothing held, nothing built, and certain things hemorrhaged more than others.

The

quarter from the Mercedes-Monet match, 525 to the Moxley tag match, 453.

That was the most alarming one, or not alarming.

That was the one that stood out the most to me

after, like, you know, the first NBA fans turning off their TVs a minute in the.

I don't know.

I think from the start of regulation quarter seven at 401 to the overrun at 294 was a little shocking.

For the main event with Tony Storm, who they hype up as being one of their biggest stars.

Has there ever been,

I guess everything's happened, but a television show that in two hours lost from start to finish 75% of its audience before?

The Cheffy Chase Show.

The Chevy Chase Show.

You ever see that?

You know what?

As a matter of fact, I think I remember the tales of how rotten that was.

And then it was canceled.

But Mike, even my mother, the car car got numbers.

Well, there you go.

That was the best friend's gimmick.

My mother, the car.

I think you need to workshop that one.

Are you eating right, Brian?

Right the second I'm not eating.

I'm talking to you.

No, are you eating right?

Not right now eating.

Well, sometimes I left.

No, are you eating correctly?

Are you taking care of yourself?

Are you eating the proper things to make the your body do the proper things?

I would like to think so.

Well, it's very important that you do.

You know, a lot of people have the hectic lifestyle, or a lot of people don't want to take the time and the trouble to make the healthier, more nutritious items for themselves.

And as a result, they eat the crap.

I've been going to the restaurants lately.

I talked about that.

I'm just ordering the crap, just eating the fried food and the crap.

Well, you don't have to do that anymore.

And I don't have to accept it.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck with the family.

So I have to go out and be sociable.

But let's say, Brian, for example, the listeners at home, let's say you have no family and no friends, no one to turn to and no one to keep you company, and you want to drown your sorrows in a gourmet.

chef-made meal that you can also eat well while you're eating good.

Something that's dietician approved and ready to heat up and eat in two minutes.

So you can fuel your body up and feel great no matter what's going on in the rest of your life.

Let's say

you're just dying to have somebody give you a good gourmet meal.

Our friends at Factor can do that thing.

And it's a friend for people who feel loved and have friends and family in their life.

Let's not limit who we're talking to here.

If you are happy and having a great time and you feel fulfilled, you need to make sure your stomach is fulfilled with the right ingredients, chef crafted just for you, filled with whatever you need.

You know, they have protein here.

Protein's always good.

We need muscles, especially if you're a wrestler.

Go gym.

Well, what's the

chances of that, though, that somebody's actually going to be happy and well-adjusted and have loving family and friends?

That never happens.

Everybody's miserable and alone, and you want to put this meal in and you want to make sure that you're still looking good because one of these days somebody might love you.

So you don't want to just eat shit and old Swanson TV dinners and you'll just go to pot.

You still want to eat good while you're alone and suffering and misery.

You say you got pot?

No, you don't want to go to pot.

Well, you might want to turn to pot.

But the folks at Factor folks have 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week, like Calorie Smart, Protein Plus, Keto Friendly.

And you can lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks with Factor Keto meals because it was based on a randomized, controlled clinical trial.

How can something so random be so well controlled?

But you know about those clinical trials, folks.

With Factor Keto, the results will vary depending on diet and exercise.

Now, if you want to go out and run about 30, 40 miles a day in the hot hot desert sun in Phoenix in the middle of the summer, you probably lose 10 pounds in eight weeks.

Factor could help you feel your best all day long with the wholesome smoothies, the breakfast, the grab-and-go snacks, and more add-ons.

And as a matter of fact,

the salmon egg souffle is a favorite of mine, but they may have discontinued that, Brian.

But right now.

You can reach your goals this year with ingredients you can trust.

Because as a matter of fact, these ingredients come with a certificate of authenticity.

Before they strangle and pluck the chicken, they make that chicken sign a form

that it had no steroids in its body.

That's their going, the factor is going the extra mile to protect you people.

They will not be doing any of that.

They are not going to be supplying any certificate of authenticity signed by a chicken.

That's not.

Well, no,

they're not doing the actual testing.

That's up to the USDA.

but they will get that that

cox signature on that form

because they don't want anybody to think that they're giving out tainted substances folks anyway again chef made the signature gourmet meals is that's right

Chef made gourmet meals.

Make eating well easy.

Dietitian approved.

The dietician's not the one that has to heat it up, though.

That's you.

So it only takes two minutes.

So now, wait a minute.

It says ready to heat, need in two minutes.

So apparently you have to heat and eat it within the two-minute timeframe.

No, no, it's ready.

You don't want this stuff to cool off.

No, heat and eat doesn't mean you have to do everything within two minutes.

That means it only takes up to two minutes to get it prepared to eat.

Not that you have to eat within that timeframe.

You could take your time.

The meal will be hot.

And your belly will be full with the right ingredients Chef crafted for you.

And that's guaranteed from our friends at Factor.

You need to factor factor that into your life.

So you're saying you can eat at a leisurely pace.

Just hurry up and heat this shit up.

A gingerly

gingerly, leisurely pace.

I am saying that.

Yes.

Well, no, you could eat ravenously while still leisurely, but you can't eat gingerly and ravenously.

You could be in a gingerly mood while ravenously, I don't know why you're going crazy on this food.

It's delicious.

Enjoy it.

I'm telling you why I'm delicious.

That's why I'm going crazy on this food.

And you will too, folks.

Eat smart with factor.

Right now, get started at factormeals.com slash factor podcast.

You use the code Factor Podcast to get 50% off.

That's half, almost, 50% off your first box plus free shipping.

They will send these meals to your door ready to put in and heat up.

And then you eat them and it take as long as you want.

You can sleep with part of it, eat the rest of it the next day for breakfast.

Just set it over to the side of you and don't flail your arms at night.

Factor podcast at factormeals.com slash factor podcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.

And of course, at factormeals.com, they'll tell you all the specific kinds of wonderful gourmet meals.

that they prepare on a regular basis that they will send out to you.

And you bet.

And here's another thing: finish your plate.

There are people starving in Cambodia.

Don't be leaving things laying around.

They send somebody to check and make sure that you've cleaned your plate.

They, being factor, do not do that, but they do supply you with great chef crafted meals, delicious and nutritious.

Factor, one more time, Jim.

What's that promo code?

Factormeals.com/slash factor podcast.

Well, I guess it's about that time, Brian.

We ought to pick up our main event, AEW Dynamite for February the 19th from Phoenix, Arizona.

Actually, Glendale, Arizona.

How far is that from Phoenix?

Do we know as the vulture flies?

Is it somewhere in the metropolitan area?

Or are they trying to zoom us again?

Like suburban Nashville was Clarksville.

I was trying to look this up.

There are five miles.

I thought you had a summer place out in Arizona.

It's 10 miles.

Ted, well, that ain't bad, especially if

you're driving.

The Arizona Financial Theater, it looked like an airplane hangar draped in black sheets behind the ring because it's a theater.

They have all the seats like a movie theater on one side.

So the.

The sweeping crowd shot of that looked great, but then when they shot the ring, they just had to cover the rest of it up with black, right?

The blank walls.

The sweeping crowd shot looked amazing.

I love that look of just endless rows going all the way back.

I think that looks so cool.

And unfortunately, it was only on, well, I mean, they'd be lucky if it was on two sides or three sides.

Well, but that's, I mean, I'm not trying to pick everything.

We said we ought to run smaller buildings.

But I just,

they couldn't get far enough back on the other side

from the ring to have a real good hard camera shot of of that.

So they had to either shoot some of the blank walls on the other side or shoot the crowd one or the other, but sometimes not both.

Or one from column A and two from column B.

But like you said, we've been saying they have to run smaller buildings.

This is the reality of smaller buildings.

Some of them are not really configured for boxing or wrestling or anything to be filmed that way.

Yeah.

So you take what you can get.

Again, at least on one side, you had a great look.

It looked really cool from a certain angle.

From a certain, yeah,

if you laid down on your back and put one leg up in the air and balanced your elbow just right, it looked great.

But anyway,

the opening segment.

I swear to God, it's a real roller coaster.

this opening segment because they managed to take something that I wasn't really interested in seeing, started getting me me interested in seeing it.

And then by the time they finished off, I was less interested in seeing it than I was when they started.

How long did this go?

I think it was like 20 minutes.

It seemed like days.

And again, MJF, they have,

I mean, he's trying.

He and Hangnail Adam Page were going to have a face-off, a confrontation.

They were going to air out the grievances.

And the announcers made sure to tell us during MJF's entrance that he and Paige are not allowed to touch.

If they get in a fight, there's going to be fines, suspensions.

This is the same thing as the no interference rule in the intercontinental,

what title is it, whatever,

where they say in those matches, there's no outside interference allowed.

There's supposed to be normally no outside interference allowed.

If they can stop it here, they can stop it there.

If they can stop it at once, they can stop it for all.

Why do they set the precedent that all this tomfoolery could be stopped if they just say,

you're not allowed to do this?

Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah, and we had just talked about recently how it only works in certain scenarios and it's overdone.

The idea here are the two guys and they're going to stand in opposite corners and just give speeches to the other one

about a variety of things, apparently.

And you have to listen.

You have to stand there and listen, and then you'll get your chance to respond.

And there's not even a representative of the promotion, the announcer holding the microphone, some general manager in to keep any order.

It's just two guys running each other down endlessly because that's what they see

on the WWE programs, and that's what they're trying to do.

But the problem is, all the guys that are allowed to talk for 20 minutes in the WWE are over as fuck to a big audience who wants to hear this shit and understands what they're talking about.

And they like it.

And even then, sometimes it's burdensome on us

as we've joked about the

you know, the wrestling matches getting in the way of the oratory.

But yes, MJF can

talk his ass off, but goddamn, you need two to tango or Watusi or whatever.

And then you need somebody

to either, MJF can write his own material, but he's got to have a direction and you got to have somebody write for this other fucking guy.

And he sounds like that he

sent like a book report in 10th grade overnight writing this that he thought would sound, I'm talking about a a hangnail, that he thought would sound

literate and flowery, and the verbiage is just as grandiose.

And he's fucking fake, and he doesn't use words like that in real life.

If he does, he's a fucking nerd.

And

I didn't care.

Then MJF started talking and I kind of started, okay, this might not be bad.

And then by the time that Paige had finished and they both had rebutted the rebuttal, I was like, God damn.

I mean,

MJF started talking after nobody said anything while they just stared at each other.

Then MJF started back in 2019.

And already I was like, oh, God.

Paige cost MJF the casino battle royal and the shot at the title.

So MJF beat all of the fans' favorite wrestlers, including Paige for the first time.

He won the Diamond Ring.

And he main evented Wimbley.

He won the world title because he's better than you because he's MJF and you know it or whatever the fuck.

Okay, that's fine.

And then Paige responds, and he does the complete babyface promo

about how that he worked for everything.

At least he may have done some horrible things, but he's always been,

he's had some kind of moral compass when he was burning people's homes down and terrorizing.

But MJF can't be happy

because he hasn't won something from the fans, and he's starting to allude that MJF has not won the fans' respect.

And MJF does the thing where he flips out and screams, shut up, shut up.

And then he catches himself like, oh my God, I've lost control.

The problem I have with this is while, yes, he's trying to plant the subliminal message that he's secretly so insecure and that people can hit his button.

His button's too touchy, Brian.

it was there any reason for anybody that was trying to hide any inner emotion to flip the out at that vague illusion is what i'm asking you that's the question

you wouldn't think so but i guess the vague illusion is supposed to be part of a bigger picture where mjf seeks the approval of the masses

which causes him to do uh the wrong thing

in terms of good versus bad all the time.

Yeah, yeah.

It, it, it, it just, it, it's.

You know what?

It went too much in the direction of emotions again.

Like it just, yes.

Not with MJF, not just with MJF.

MJF and Adam Page both.

They both needed like a restart in terms of attitude.

And this went a long time.

And I'll let you know.

Well,

hold on now because we haven't got to the rebuttal of the rebuttal because MJF responded to the response

with all the dirty stuff that Paige had done, and the people cheered him, including burning Swerve's house down.

And the people chanted, or not chanted, but cheered.

They were chanting cowboy shit by the time MJF got finished here, so he accomplished that.

But they cheered

the mention of Adam Page burning down another one of the babyface's houses.

This is the amount of control that they have fucking lost.

And then

MJF says, they love you, but do you love you?

Do you love you because what you did to Christopher Daniels?

Because they said Paige ended Daniels' career.

Well, then Paige got pissed off about that and said, I would give Chris Daniels my own spine if I could.

What the fuck?

Then why'd you fucking hurt him?

And he put Daniels over.

He said, he died a warrior's death.

If people didn't know the story, they would would think they're talking about a dead person.

He didn't, wait a minute, are they trying to say he killed Christopher Daniels?

Because no mention was made until we see him here in a minute that Daniels was still alive.

Because Paige,

instead of saying, I didn't mean to break his neck, he said he died a warrior's death.

You say that all the time in fucking heated conversation with somebody you don't like.

And then Paige started rambling again about how great Daniels was to the point that he was losing the people.

There was a small fall, an angel chant, but he was losing the point of what they were trying to do here.

Daniels was a side note to where they were going, and they took the turn and went to check in at the motor lodge.

And then

Paige asked,

What would the fans say about you, MJF, if you died tomorrow, if your career was over tomorrow, and

blah, blah, blah.

And that's what I've jotted down.

I said, MJF had me and kind of the fans interested in this.

And the longer that Paige talked, the less interested I'm at.

And

the verbose and flowery verbiage turned into a bad actor.

MJF answered him back again,

made fun of Paige being a child and naive.

And then he went into a soliloquy about how Paige came in in 2019 and was pushed from the start and given the ball to run with, even though MJF has always been better.

And then they built up to a big exchange where

MJF said, name one thing you do better than me.

And Paige's response was, I am real.

Okay,

we phrased it in the form of a question.

And

that's a great statement and it was in a fake tone by the way but it's not the end name one thing you do better than me and the answer is not i am real that's not a thing i do but

this comes on the heels of announcing that someone died a warrior's death yes

and then they had a long face-off where they got an even smaller cowboy chant

And then MJF finished up with, I've got no problem being the bad guy.

But it was just back of so, so long.

Then they took their jackets off and threatened to fight, but security came out, but they couldn't touch each other.

MJAP spit in Paige's face and ran off.

And so Paige started beating up security until Chris Daniels returned from the grave

and came out looking chipper.

and stopped him.

And then the fans were chanting fallen angel louder than they'd been chanting cowboy shit.

And then Daniels gave Paige a pep talk.

You're better than this.

This is not who you are.

And by the time they walked off, like you said, we were 20 minutes into this thing.

It's just on and on.

They feel like they have to.

It was a

not counting commercials, they talked the length of a 30-minute sitcom.

And

I thought they were going to go Broadway.

You know what?

That's what they ought to do sometimes.

Just have a two-hour interview segment.

We have standby matches.

We didn't know this would keep going.

It keeps going.

We'll be back.

But anyway, Ted, talk me down off the ledge.

I wish I could.

The length was probably the single biggest issue because the length caused a whole lot of superfluous stuff to be thrown in this.

It was all over the place.

The reasoning was all over the place.

Whatever this is was all over the place.

Hangman, who

completely seems like a, you don't even want to say a gimmick because he's not like interesting like a gimmick, but he doesn't seem real.

And then he says, I am real

in a fake way.

Who thought this was a good idea?

That's what gets me is who,

was this a compromise?

Did they ask him what he wanted to do and he said, I want to talk like this?

Who thought any of that was a good idea?

You know, I think they also have a problem where MJF,

specifically, I don't know about Adam Page.

MJF's usually responsible for one of the better quarters if he's in a quarter on a show.

I can understand maybe wanting him to take up the entire quarter so that it would do that.

But this went forever.

Like I said, I thought it was going to go Broadway.

About 15 minutes in,

I didn't know when this was going to end.

And then it finally ended and they went to a really, really, really long match right after it.

But

I want to be excited to see these two wrestle.

It's coming on the heels of all this.

Where did Jeff Jarrett go?

Is he gone?

Did they just remove him from all of this?

I don't know.

I think you hit on something there, though.

I want to see Paige and MJF wrestle.

I want to see him wrestle more now if they will wrestle instead of talking again.

Can we make that trade?

Don't let Paige talk anymore.

And

I had a, I saw Jeff this morning.

What?

I had a glass of milk.

See, see now you got to be a certain age.

And I'm not a fan of Jeff Jarretts.

You know that.

But I'm always honest about his good matches or good things.

That would kind of suck if his last thing on national TV was that really bad promo.

There has to be some.

I'm sure they're going to do something with him.

It couldn't.

Well, yeah,

they announced this big year he's going to have to prove himself.

It's not even the end of February.

We have to see him again, don't we?

They removed him from TV before the end of February.

I don't know.

Well, back to Dynamite.

Hey, wonderful show on Dynamite.

Let's talk about who was there.

Yeah, they didn't have a long match right after.

They went to the Grand Slam package.

So you can see how glorious the program was that lost 75% of its audience over the course of the two hours.

And then they went to

Christian, Nick Plain, and Pip Sabian

against the team of Samoa Joe, Hook, and Shapupi,

who are now known as the OPS, OPPS.

The OPS,

who has a special forces.

operation background here.

This is another shooting shooting group

since the Blackpool Combat Club did so good.

Samoa Joe is back in the ring on television and as bereft as they are in this company of any major talent for the world title picture or the top singles spots.

And he's having six mans

involving Shapupi and Pip Sabian, among others.

Did you watch this?

Because I didn't.

I didn't.

It was a combination of my boredom with the patriarchy

and Samoa Joe.

It's like a bad A-team, you know.

We take this man, we put him with a kid and a man with no brain or a removed brain.

His brain was returned and now he's with Joe.

Whatever the fuck it is.

It's just, it's.

They have all these.

Return to Cinder, brain unknown.

They have all these factions, and now they got to the point where they just throw anyone together and put a stupid name on it, like the conglomeration, which is basically who's not booked?

Put them together.

Now you're a group.

Samoa Joe has value on his own.

Whatever Hook's value is, you got to work on that.

And

again, you got you need stars now, and you need to develop stars, but this ain't going to cause Hooker Shibata to become stars.

So Shamo.

Shamoa Joe.

Shamoah Joe should be, he's a Shmo.

Joe Schmo sponsors Shamoa Joe.

He should be

later.

What happened to the Joe Schmo show?

There was two episodes and I've not seen it again.

They moved it to another time slot.

So people would see the first five minutes of it, I guess.

Renee Moxley Good was in the back with Chris Jericho.

Now he's not doing the silly pro, the silly voice.

It's still silly promo.

But he's not doing the silly voice now

because now he says he's not getting the respect for the size of star that he is.

And

he threatened to have Renee Moxley Good thrown out of the arena

and was kind of pissed off.

Bandito beat him in the Australian Grand Slam match or whatever in the Ring of Honor portion.

So now

Bandito gets a title shot at the Ring of Honor title on collision.

against Jericho.

That was boy howdy.

And then he got bleeped for saying, I'm Chris fucking jericho but they bleeped jericho because nobody wants to hear a word like that

so is he dropping this thing now thank god that he's buried everybody involved in it with the high guys is he getting back to being just a pissy whiny bitchy type of fellow i think uh

You know, you joke about MJF.

You want to talk about someone who really wants people's approval.

I think it's bothered Chris Jericho when people criticize some of the stuff that he personally liked that was terrible.

And I think the number of people that are doing that are more now than ever before, that are at least paying attention to what he's doing.

Not too many AEW fans like this Learning Tree shit.

Even with the Observer fans,

did it win Worst Gimmick?

I think that's what won Worst Gimmick.

Did it win or just place highly?

I don't want to be incorrect.

I'm not sure, but the point is there isn't an audience for it.

No one wants to see it.

Chris Jericho needs a run where he's serious and not someone pretending to be serious.

I just don't know if that's going to come out of this.

I'd like to put the Jericho team in a feud with the Death Riders and just let them kind of ride that out on collision.

That'd be my personal pick.

Matter versus anti-matter.

Well, speaking of...

But Jericho's a non-entity right now, and I think everyone kind of knows that.

He's paid as a much bigger star than he currently is.

And he had a lot of value early on, but he's a non-entity, and most people don't want to see him anymore.

But otherwise, everything's cool.

There's still time.

There's still time.

He's only

57 or whatever.

Here is what I couldn't watch this match, but I couldn't turn away from the idea that they did it.

Powerhouse Hobbs versus Big Bill.

Hobbs, again, but time is ticking now.

It's running out.

He's had money written all over him since he was a rookie, but he's never been booked, trained, brought along,

coached or

managed, developed, as Gary Hart would say.

He's been in and out and put in stupid positions, made to do stupid things, made to look like an idiot.

Big Bill, I don't think has the upside that Hobbs has, but he's got a lot more upside than most of these Yahoos, definitely what they stuck in the main event on this program.

And so they put him in, what did they even call it?

Another

anything goes, street fight, no DQ, no count out,

shove a dildo up your ass fucking match.

So they could go out there and do

garbage wrestling like all the other indie fucks that look like somebody that ought to be bagging your groceries or changing your oil.

And these guys look like something and they're treated like this.

It offended me as a goddamn professional.

Maybe do this shit with people who can't do anything else.

That's what it's there for.

That's what garbage hardcore wrestling is.

A way for people who have no talent to still participate.

The entranceway had a shopping cart with a street sign in it and junk because Tony liked ECW when he was in his

basement of his mansion when he was 14.

And they had tables wrapped in barbed wire.

And they immediately went to the floor and fought up into the stand so they could walk fight back to the ringside area and use a trash can and a monkey wrench and the chairs and

taking bumps on the stair steps and Hobbs bleeding.

And then Brian Keith runs in so they can throw him through a table.

And then Hobbes hit Big Bill with a backpack full of bricks to get even for when Big Bill hit Hobbes with a backpack full of bricks.

And they fought on the stage.

And right at nine o'clock,

Hobbs tried to chokeslam Big Bill off the stairs, sitting on the stage, through two tables on the floor that were wrapped in barbed wire

but big bill didn't jump

i think he saw that he was gonna overshoot the thing anyway but regardless instead of the choke slam

hobbs just shoved him off and he cleared one table completely and broke the second one and hit the fucking floor and knocked the shit out of him

and referee aubrey ed

counted him out and awarded the match to Hobbes, which was apropos he was refereeing for this horse shit.

And I will finish with this: the same bad indie outlaw, fake-looking bullshit

that the pretend indie wrestlers do because they don't have any talent.

But it ruins guys like this that could be stars.

It gives them bad habits.

It makes them look like fake idiots like the rest of these knuckleheads.

It's just endless, repetitive horseshit that makes neither guy stand out.

And invariably,

while they're taking a chance at getting hurt, the things they're trying to do look phony because they're also trying not to kill each other if they can help it.

Your thoughts, young Brian Lass.

Oh, I don't know how much I could really add to that.

It's kind of a weird mid-card feud in the middle of a bigger thing that's played out mostly on collision.

So why not have a street fight on dynamite?

And

hopefully, everyone moves on from here.

Return to your homes.

There's nothing more to see here.

Do you think it's almost time, Brian, that either Big Bill or Hobbs or both just go ahead and fold it up on the wrestling business and start a new business, get a new career, start planning for the future when they can't fall off the stage through barbed wire tables anymore?

I mean, I guess they could start considering that.

You always want to think about the the future, and it's always good to have different revenue streams.

I would agree with that.

You got to have something to fall back on because when Tony Khan's stream turns into him pissing on your head, you need to, you need to be able to go home and still make some money, still bring home the bacon, still

put the chicken in and fry it up in the pan.

I'm getting hungry.

Folks, if you'd like to start a restaurant or any other kind of business where you sell things that people would like to buy, whether it be cooked animals that were formerly alive, but have now been nullified, or whether it's just a product that maybe you make with your own two hands.

Or I don't know.

Sometimes I've heard that people sell their farts bottled up in glass bottles on the internet.

I don't know, but I've heard the price is going up.

Whatever you want to sell, the people at Shopify can help you find your customers because they have...

the number one checkout on the planet.

And after all, you want people shopping, but more importantly, you want people paying.

Because if they just come in and carry stuff off, you're not going to be in business too long.

And if you're an online business, then they're going to theoretically have to just come to your house and just start boxing shit up and carrying it out.

And you might not want that to happen.

So Shopify will send people to your front door to stand watch and make sure that people don't come in your house.

and carry off all of your merchandise.

They're going to pay for this shit, by God, if they get it, because that's the Shopify way, right, Brian?

Well, exactly what I don't know if I could say right.

I mean, I agree that Shopify is great and they can help you, but based on what you just said, what exactly am I saying right to?

Well, you're just agreeing with me because everybody knows that Shopify

is not only the home of the number one checkout on the planet, but also they boost conversions.

up to 50%.

They keep carts from going abandoned.

They feed and clothe them and find them new homes.

And if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform, better be ready to sell wherever your customers are, whether it's on the web, in your store, in their various feeds of social consciousness, everywhere in between,

you want to hear that sound.

That sound means you're making money.

And businesses that sell more sell on Shopify.

They can take your ideas and concepts and they can build the whole thing out until

you're you're just ubiquitous across the planet from maine to spain on a choo-choo train or bolivia to bangcock if you're going to bang a cock let shopify help you bang it

upgrade your business right now what does that mean you get the same kind of well that means no no don't no no no don't don't i was asking facetiously don't say don't answer that don't just keep it means man have you priced the banging of cocks i i think we're talking about chickens and don't be a chicken set up your business spectacularly so that you have a wonderful uh harvest once all those eggs come in with shopify yes and you'll rule the roost with your cock upgrade your business sign up for a one dollar a month trial period right now at shopify.com slash jce that's all lowercase now make sure you do that Elsewise, there's going to be some terrible punitive action taken against you.

Shopify.com Shopify.com/slash JCE, upgrade your selling today.

Get a great platform, a wonderful checkouts, and they'll take any kind of money or trades, barters.

Sometimes in the agricultural state, they'll take beans and corn and trade and then convert it to American currency.

They won't do that.

Shopify being they will not be doing that.

You could do that on your own and then set up your business with Shopify.

Well, yeah, you can sell the corn and

the beans then.

See?

See, be double dipping.

Shopify.com

slash JCE,

because that's where you know

you're going to make some money, honey.

Well, what in the world is going on in the Arcadian Vanguard Network programming this week?

All right, right in the middle of the dynamite review.

Hello, everyone at AEW.

How are you today?

This week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, of course, listening to the wrestling news each and every day.

Get your wrestling news devoid of opinion.

Nothing but facts.

No clickbait, no paywall.

Just the wrestling news, wherever you find your favorite podcast, or of course, directly from thewrestlingnews.com.

Want to make mention of shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon, a look at Jim Londis.

Hear it today at SUAWPod.com.

And of course, look for the show wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And stick to wrestling with John McAdam.

Continue their look 40 years back, 1985 in the WWF McAdamPod.com, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam.

Of course, we're on Twitter at Super Podcast, Facebook, facebook.com/slash Arcadian Vanguard and the 605 Super Podcast, the

Mothership.

All right, there was a screen back there.

But go through the archive 605Pod.

I really felt that one.

605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcasts the 605 super podcast and thank you to everyone who's been listening to all the shows on arcadian vanguard

the mothership

baby by the way is that like are is the arcadian vanguard like some other things in ontario devoid in ontario uh you said they were devoid of opinion no we have uh we the wrestling news is devoid of opinion the broadcast that is only facts and we actually have a very strong presence in Ontario.

Thank you very much.

So it's better to be Devoid than just Void.

Depends on what you believe in.

Depends on Devoid.

You could be a Voidoid or you could be D-E-V-O.

All righty.

Well, we are Devo.

I can't watch the Tony Storm promo.

This is just ridiculous.

It's just ridiculous.

Tell me it's not just ridiculous.

I'm

it's one of those things that we complained about early on in AEW.

I'll say that we complained because that's what it was.

And even before AEW,

the thing that gets over, what do we call it, the ironic wrestling fan?

Yes.

The fan that wants to feel like they're in on

the thing.

Something.

Again, we saw what the ratings were for her match, for the title match, where she won the title.

But what did you think of this?

Well, that's what I'm saying.

I just, I'm sitting there listening to her talk like that.

I just, I just, I hit the button.

I can't, I'm sorry.

It's just ridiculous.

All of this stuff is like, you know, kids in drama school somewhere or an acting school or some kind of school trying to audition for different shit.

You got the first she has amnesia.

Now she's back to doing the

fucking takeoff on Gloria Swanson and Sunset Boulevard or whatever the fuck's going on.

And

I just, I don't, I'm not interested.

I don't get silliness to me.

And if that audience likes it, unfortunately, they'll do more of it.

And that's why they've got 500,000 people watching it and no more, because that's the only amount of people who's not going to go, what the fuck is this silly shit?

So that was what I thought about the Tony Storm in Ring promo with the return of Luther.

Oh, and that fat fuck.

Jesus Christ.

Has anybody ever leeched more money off of the wrestling business than just in five years of AEW with Brandon Cutlett, that Michael Nakazawa that they finally got rid of, and Luther.

Just because he's friends with Jericho, just because somebody's friends with somebody, they get jobs for six figures to wander around and stink the joint out.

Did they get rid of Nakazawa?

Well, he hadn't been on TV.

I'm sure, you know, he might still be up Kenny's crack.

He was Kenny's assistant.

Wasn't that his real job?

Well, what, what does Kenny need an assist with?

Well, he could have used an assist with making the video game, but apparently that wasn't one of Nakazawa's specialties.

Apparently, Nakazawa, all of his specialties involved baby oil.

We've come to that conclusion from watching television.

Let's slide on into the next segment.

Sliding on into the next segment, Renee is back there with Willow, who's mad at the Boer Horseman

because of what Marina Schaefer did.

So Marina Schaefer comes in and beats the shit out of Willow with the briefcase.

And then they walk out into the arena with Wheelie and Claudio.

And Dick the Boozer starts cutting that promo on edge and

life in general.

And again, he's twitching, he's snorting, he's

making weird movements that one would imagine

he is attempting to make you in the course of his character presentation believe that he's goddamn tweaking out on some kind of fucking homemade meth.

Is that that's the vibe I'm getting?

He's reverted back.

If you remember when he first came in, he wore the vest and he would kind of do the bez from Happy Monday's shoulders moving walk thing.

He's doing all that stuff again.

The funny walk, the vest,

the screaming and foaming at the mouth over nothing.

He's reverting back, even though he's in this other group.

He's reverting back to what he was at the start.

I don't mean that.

I don't mean that as some deep thing.

I just mean it sucks.

Well, no, I mean,

we are Devo.

He's going backwards into shit that isn't any good.

But speaking of shit that isn't any good,

as he cuts his promo on edge, then music plays and here comes Light Switch Jay White.

And he's going to come out and have something to say about this.

But

remember now that the four heels are in the ring, but there's another one.

Pack is with this group every once in a while when he bothers to.

fly into the country.

So Pack is walking out behind Jay White.

Like he never noticed he was there.

He's only 10 feet behind him.

And then Edge's music.

The only guy never wearing clothes.

Well, yeah, you know, you can see him a mile away because he doesn't want to cover that physique up.

That's the only thing he's got going for him.

And then Edge's music plays.

And

the promo that Moxley had just done was like, Edge isn't even here tonight.

So now they play Edge's music.

And Edge appears in the ring behind Moxley and they get in a fight.

And then the babyfaces actually, for once, beat up the fucking heels in this case.

The Boer Horsemen

were actually on the losing end of this thing.

And then Edge pulled out a bat.

With spikes sticking out of the end of it.

I mean, hundreds of spikes.

And I swear to God,

I almost could see him flapping in the fucking breeze when he'd swing it like they were rubber.

But he's go ahead.

Remember last week, because you didn't see it.

Remember, I told you on Dynamite that Edge and Jay White kidnapped the well, the kidnapped.

They stole the briefcase with the belt and they got it in the ring.

And their attempt to break it open was to swing that thing, which they pulled out from under the ring, to break it open as if that would ever happen.

But that's where we first saw that, apparently.

I thought it was going back to WWE.

And we heard from people that said, we've never seen that before ever.

No, they wouldn't have that on the WWE television to begin with.

And this thing looked ridiculous.

And besides that, they're horrible criminals because you can't break into a metal briefcase by smashing it flat.

You have to pry it open.

It's you're going the other way.

But nevertheless, he's swinging his thing at Moxley.

And Moxley is ducking and so Edge can hit the steps or the ring post or whatever.

And Moxley ran off, but the fans didn't care.

There was mild amusement.

It's fake as fuck.

Fake as fuck.

And it's just ridiculous visually.

It's like trying to get somebody mad by showing them a fucking

silent Keystone cops comedy.

It's just fucking slapstick.

And then Edge cut the promo in the crowd with the fans around him on Moxley and said

he's going to take out the Boer Horseman one by one until he gets to Moxley.

So they're doing that again, where he's going to, but is this

the young, exciting

new babyface that they're grooming to conquer the Boer Horseman?

Edge is 53 years old.

He's

the only one that they're selling for.

What is happening here, Brian?

That was one of my thoughts, too.

This can't all be done to

give Edge the rub.

Now, Edge has been choked out by Moxley multiple times, including as they finished in the tag match last week in Australia.

Based on Tony's booking and classic booking, you would almost think he has to win the belt from Moxley at the pay-per-view.

I told you my fears about Christian cashing in.

But again, he shouldn't be the guy.

If you've been doing all this and spending all this time with Jon Moxley, it has to be someone to get that win where the rub from whatever that means will last a long time and help someone,

not someone who's ridiculous out of nowhere, not like a Wheeler Yuta, not a Daniel Garcia, not an Orange Cassidy,

but it should be used to help someone get elevated.

And it doesn't, you know, right now, who's that going to be?

But anyway, we move on.

Dynamite rolls on because

a lot of people were talking about this.

Even Uncle Dave had to make mention of it and how really just horribly awkward it looked.

And I don't know who was confused at what,

but I,

the one thing Uncle Dave hasn't done is presided over a wrestling school.

I have.

I can't believe that this happened with people that had been in any type of

any type of wrestling training situation, more than three or four months.

And I'm still grasping for a solution.

There was a match between

Megan Bain and Chris Statlander.

And now, poor Statlander, she was the big girl that had all the promise and potential once she moved from Alpha Centauri, Alpha Centauri, Alpha Centauri back to the planet Earth.

But now they found,

well, you know, it's a long way off.

But they found this Wildebeest, Megan Bain, that's three inches taller than Statlander.

It has a tan and bigger boobs.

And so now I guess Megan is the new toy, and Statlander had to put her over.

But nevertheless, Megan Bain won, and Penelope Pitstop is apparently affiliated with Megan Bain, and she helped out in this

victory because they're the heels.

And then they start beating up Statlander, getting heat after the match.

And Thunder Rosa

comes running out to make the save with a chair and slides in the ring and draws back.

And not only did the Heels not run,

but Penelope Pitstop did not hide behind the big girl Megan Bain because now they're trying to recreate the Mercedes Moon and Camille dynamic with Megan Bain Bain and Penelope.

We'll see if they can get it right this time.

Off to a rocky start.

Penelope stands in front of the big bodyguard girl and says, Come on, do something about it to Thunder Rosa, who's standing there with a chair.

So Thunder Rosa is trying to like advance on him without doing it because they're not backing up.

And there's the awkwardness of that.

And then

Rosa draws back the chair and starts starts to swing at Megan Bain, who doesn't move a muscle.

And Thunder Rosa has to pull up and not do it.

Now she's deader than four o'clock, flatter than a plate full of piss.

And the fucking

heels are just laughing at her.

And the referee has to get in between them and is like telling the heels, kind of, you go that way.

And he's trying to help hold Rosa back so she doesn't get any more buried than she already was.

It would be hard to.

You'd come out the other side of the earth.

And I couldn't figure out what the fuck.

At one point, Penelope

grabbed the chair and they had a tug of war.

She was trying to take it away and Rosa wouldn't let go of it.

And then finally, when the heels got out of the ring,

and were walking down the entranceway, not that far away, Thunder Rosa threw the chair at them.

And

I wrote, Was there a fight in the locker room about this afterwards that hadn't been publicized?

Or are the two heels just this fucking stupid?

Or was this a personal issue where they decided to,

you know, basically start a fucking fight?

I can't believe there wasn't one,

a real one, on national television.

There is no explanation

if they knew

they're trying to figure out there's nothing because even if she was going to do a run-in without the chair, they would have left the ring or something.

It was almost like they either didn't expect her to do a run-in and therefore didn't react to it, or they decided they weren't going to react to whatever Thunder Rosa did.

Well, but not even because, okay, let's say that in the finish, they were supposed to just get heat and suddenly Tony from Gorilla said, Thunder Rosa, run in.

Here comes a babyface with a chair, and she's fucking drawing it back.

You've got to back up.

Even if the bodyguard

shouldn't back up, then me and Big Bubba, Dusty comes in with a chair.

I would grab Bubba and I would pull him out because I'm in control of him.

Penelope could pull her big bodyguard out to live or fight another day.

But that's if they're, are they just making finishes up now?

You said they knew she was going to run in, but maybe didn't know she'd have a chair.

If somebody suggested that she run in alone against the two heels, one, the big newcomer, the first thing, if I was the babyface, I would have said was, I need to bring something like a chair.

So if they knew the run-in was coming and they knew she was going to have a chair, did they not walk through the rest of it?

Like, we need to get, that's the first thing I learned when I got in the wrestling business.

If you are the heel and the babyface is hitting the ring to make a save, if you don't get out of the way, it's your fucking fault what happens.

And in those days, the baby faces were trying to catch you because they wanted to fucking not look like idiots and look like they were doing something and get a fucking pop.

So you had to really fucking exit quickly.

And there's no,

and again, if they knew she was coming, they knew she was coming with a chair and they were supposed to bail and she didn't,

then she should have hit him because that's the second thing I learned.

If you're coming into the goddamn ring and the fucking heels don't move, hit the motherfuckers

because then you end up like Thunder Rosa.

You look like a complete fucking buffucking foon.

Where was Statlander?

She was selling.

She was safe.

She was out of it.

She couldn't get any on her.

She's probably looking up and going, what the fuck?

But that's, there is no explanation.

And that Rosa didn't just go ahead and hit these two with the chair is stunning.

That's what would have happened in any other era.

She ran at them with so much enthusiasm, like with the chair.

And then she had a standoff where she had a chair and they had their faces.

Yes.

Didn't move.

And they're just laughing at her.

And then, and I'm not saying.

That somebody would have hauled off with a killer blow the first time, although many people would have.

But at the very least, you would have got one working shot that you had the opportunity to sell before the second one came and you were going to sell out regardless, unless you were ready to fight and take the chair away from the motherfucker.

But none of that happened because they're so goddamn lost out there anyway, these days.

They don't know what to fucking do.

And if

I'm sorry, but if Thunder Rosa didn't go back and punch Penelope in the fucking face, even Megan, I might could understand.

She's the big girl.

Penelope.

if she didn't punch her, then I have no respect for Thunder Rosa because that's the same thing as pissing on somebody in front of their fucking family.

And you keep saying her bodyguard.

Did they establish that?

Because this is the first time I saw Megan Bain with the family.

Well,

that's what it was looking like.

What else would be the

you think fucking Penelope is going to fight Megan Bain's battles?

You know, so but the whole thing, it just, it was,

it was odd because

they should have known what was going to happen.

They did the

exact opposite of anything they should have done with what was happening in front of them.

And then we didn't hear about a big goddamn fight and cussing match taking place afterwards.

So, are these girls smart enough to know when they're supposed to be offended?

I don't fucking know.

Well, we'll see what we hear, but that was a very interesting

awkward

segment.

And then, speaking of awkward, I don't know about interesting.

Ricochet did a promo in the ring.

And he's stolen Prince Nana's robe from the embassy.

And he's wearing the robe.

And he was the biggest heel so far on the show with the crowd there live, but I'm not sure it's because it wasn't really a great heel promo.

I think people just don't fucking like him.

But then Nana came out.

And for once,

they let Nana speak.

And they explained something.

He came out and he said, I told Swerve to stay home so that you and I could speak one-on-one, Ricochet.

Now,

of course, that doesn't explain necessarily why he told Swerve to stay home because Nana's O for life amongst people one-on-one when he's interacting physically with any other person.

But nevertheless,

he told the story, the robe doesn't belong to Ricochet.

The robe belongs.

Nana finally got to put himself over.

And he did a pretty decent promo about how much the robe meant to him and what it meant and what it stood for and who could wear the robe and the honor it bestowed on him.

And Ricochet doesn't deserve it.

And Nana says, Give the robe back.

Reminded me of put the candle back.

Give the robe back.

And Ricochet said,

I think you need to take it.

And then he just basically told Nana,

you're not getting this robe back.

And then he turned around and left with the robe.

So

he made his little noise, too.

Yeah, yeah.

So that matter is solved.

Nana ain't getting the robe back.

End of story.

Let's move on.

But again, what, I mean, it was a good promo, but the idea that it ended with, do the right thing and give this back do the right thing mr stab everyone in the head with scissors and give me back my clothing

how did they think this would go

uh but it's like the the ending shouldn't

you're not getting this robe back unless you take it from me let nana try to take it let give him

one and a half things of offense on surprise and then let Ricochet get some heat on him and then let Swerve be mad and come back to get even about it.

But he said, no, fuck you.

I'm going to walk right out of here with your shit.

You ain't going to do goddamn nothing about it, even though you're a grown man.

Fuck you.

And he left with the rope.

And then we went to the main event.

And this won't take long.

And we'll get to the ratings because the main event, it's back.

It's back.

Just when we thought it was safe to watch television, the company mascot is back.

Our little puppy pockets wrestled Roderick Strong in the main event of a show that's been losing viewers like the Titanic was taking on water over the last few months.

And they thought it'd be a good idea to put this fucking clown.

And Roddy and Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly were babyfaces three weeks ago.

And now Roddy is wrestling this fucking idiot, who's allegedly a babyface, also.

And it started at 15 minutes till 10 and still ran over.

And of course, I'm not going to try to seriously critique a match involving Pockets, which would be like trying to do a scholarly dissertation of a fucking cat's shit.

But at one minute after, just so they could say they ran over,

Pockets

quote unquote, hit Roderick Strong with a Superman punch that didn't come within a foot of him.

And

there was no doubt.

It was the hard camera shot right there.

There wasn't, it was a sideways angle.

There wasn't no mistaking that.

It's just so fake and silly and stupid.

These clownish indie jackoffs that get featured on this program in this middle of this mayhem.

One, two, three beat Roderick Strong.

And then Shivani comes in the ring to interview the Cretanist little fucking weasel.

But here comes Don Fallus out with take a shit and what's his name?

Mark Davis, Kyle Davis,

Sammy Davis.

What is Mark Davis?

Mark Davis.

And they jumped on pockets and got some really brief, sorry, bad, phony looking heat.

And then here came Canny.

Canny came out and he made a save, but then they stopped him and got some fake looking heat on him.

But then the baby faces made a comeback again and the heels rolled out and stood in the entranceway 10 feet away from them and nothing else happened.

And five minutes later, after the five minutes of the overrun, five minutes after the hour, they were off the air.

Why would you, again, you're struggling to keep the viewers that you're getting

and you put that on last to tell people, okay,

it's all, you know, 20 minutes, fuck it.

I'm done.

Hey, also, listen, Kenny Omega, one of their bigger stars, surprise appearance.

Why wouldn't you have him do something you could build up and announce to your fans?

Because he could save a fucking string bean that's lucky that he could get a job parking cars at a wrestling event.

He'd come out and save his ass.

Well, that was Dynamite.

And good news, you know, we said that it'll probably be any day now that Pockets returns.

Tony likes to cycle people in and out.

I'm sure Jungle Jack and the Bucks will be back anytime now.

Yeah, they'll be back on their cycle.

But, Jim, do you want to talk ratings?

Sure, I do.

Did anybody watch this journey through hysteria?

This journey through hysteria, otherwise known as AEW Dynamite, on TBS Wednesday, February 19th 2025 8 to 1005 p.m

according to wrestlenomics 563 000 viewers on average ouch they've been up around 600 the past two or three weeks right uh well actually this is down three percent from last week which was 579 the trailing four-week average is 611 so eight percent that's right

Last week was below six because the previous couple of weeks had been

now.

This is even worse.

It was like a 604, 605, and then

this week.

And so

they're going in a southerly direction with these numbers.

Once again, a note, this does not include max viewership, which I'm sure is in the millions.

So wait, so instead of 563,000, it's 563,386.

Well, Jim, let's go to the quarterly breakdown.

These were compiled by WrestleManics.

Quarter one,

8 to 8.15 p.m.

The MJF Adam Page Live Confrontation,

664,000 viewers.

Ooh, okay.

Therein lies a bit of a tail.

That's much lower than they've been starting with traditionally until recent times, and still not a really good opening number.

So the good news is they can't lose 75% of their audience like they did on Collision.

That's right.

And I'll just say it here, too.

Every single quarter appears to be off the trend line of 90 days.

So everything appears to be a little lower than that.

Quarter two, 8.15, 8.30 p.m.

The continuation of MJF and Adam Page.

Now with Christopher Daniels, a recap, an ad break, the Undisputed Kingdom backstage promo.

We didn't even talk about that.

Is Adam Cole on the gas?

His arms all of a sudden have some size.

Did you notice that?

Honestly, I think I was trying to get some distance between me and MJF and Paige, and I overlooked it.

Next time you see him in a promo backstage, where he's like from the waist up, look at his arms.

Because when you see him at ringside, he just looks like a little guy running around.

But quarter to that, and then the beginning of the patriarchy versus the ops,

565,000 viewers.

So

automatically 100,000 go away, but now we're down.

We're down to the faithful.

They can't make their average and lose very much more through the course of the program, but they're already under 600,000 people in the second quarter.

Well, we go now to quarter three, the continuation of the Patriarchy versus the Ops from 8:30 to 8:45 with picture-in-picture and an ad break, 554,000 viewers.

Yeah, so they're down 11,000.

Now it's going to just kind of trickle.

We go now to quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.,

The Chris Jericho backstage promo and the street fight with Big Bill versus Powerhouse Hobbs with picture and picture,

589,000 viewers.

Okay, so they picked up a 35,000.

That's unusual to actually gain in the middle of the program.

And because

I just, because I don't want to attribute that to Jericho in a 90-second backstage interview, but maybe there's still some interest in Hobbes.

And that's something to just point out because the key demo, the previous segment, 212,000 viewers.

Hobbs versus Big Bill, 248.

So that's the only match.

That's almost the entire difference.

Yeah, I think that's the only match that picked up any number in the key demo at all.

And then after it, it goes to 222.

But we go now to the big nine o'clock hour.

9 to 9.15 p.m., quarter five, Lance Archer and Brian Cage's backstage promo, Tony Storm's live promo, an ad break,

the ridiculous Willow Nightingale getting attacked by Merida Shafir segment, then the Death Riders Cope J.

White live angle,

548,000 viewers.

Good lord.

So with the world champion of this popsicle stand

involved in all this shit and the top of the 9 o'clock hour, and they lose 41,000 people and it's the lowest quarter yet.

Well, we go now to quarter six, 9.15 and 9.30 p.m.

The Cope Live promo in the crowd, the Mercedes-Monet backstage promo, and the start of Megan Bain versus Chris Statlander with picture-in-picture.

566,000 viewers.

Good Lord, the girls match picked up 18,000 people from the world champion.

Hey, you know, we spent so much time talking about the Thunder Rosa angle of it.

Beyond that, Megan Bain stands out.

She's got size, she's got a look, she's got a demeanor.

You know, I don't know if she could do a 20-minute match or anything, but

there's something there to build on if you knew how to build.

Yeah, compared to a lot of the other women that just pop up in AEW, Momo, whatever her name was, sitting at ringside.

Momo, Giancana.

She stands out.

So, again, I don't know about what happened with the Thunder Rosa thing, but back to this.

We gave that number 566.

Quarter seven, 9.30 to 9.45 p.m.

The post-match with Penelope Ford, Thunder Rosa, and Thunder Rosa.

Max Caster's in a separate segment.

Max Caster promo, the Ricochet Prince Nana confrontation, and an ad break, 547,000 viewers.

And they lost

everything they picked up in quarter six plus 1,000 more people.

Now they're down to 547.

And we go to the main event, the big return of Orange Cassidy, the man who we've been told for so long.

It's one of their biggest stars.

That he does great in the ratings, the key demo.

Quarter eight, I remind you, we have a five-minute overrun.

Roderick Strong versus Orange Cassidy, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

with picture in picture.

507,000 viewers drops under 200 for the key demo at 196.

Five-minute overrun, 467.

Oh, Jesus.

So they not only managed to lose 40,000 more people in regulation for putting this buggy whipped armed imbecile on television, but they lost another

40,000 for a total of 80,000 from the time that they first saw the guy until the end of the finish of his match and the overrun.

And they

still

only started with 664,000 people and managed to finish by losing almost 200,000.

197 to be exact.

Well, there's always next week.

Not always.

At some point,

the meteor hits the fucking planet and everything is sent out of orbit.

Yeah.

Can this

continue where next year at this time we're talking about, wow,

they actually cracked 500,000 and got more more than that but they finished up with 300 000 because last year they were starting with eight and nine hundred

and finishing with six and seven hundred now they're starting with six and seven hundred and finishing with four and five hundred

how low can you go i think there's a trend line for the last few years and you would have to believe they're going to be in the 400s regularly within the next 18 months

i'm still dying for somebody to tell us whether there's a performance clause in their big multi-$100 million contract that says that if 14 people and somebody

committed to a state home are the only audience for this program, we don't have to pay you $100 million anymore.

I still want to hear from someone that they're at a deal memo, that they actually have a finished signed deal.

But

who knows?

Well, you know what?

We've got a finished program.

Yeah.

I think we have addressed all the topics that need to be addressed until we've reversed places now.

We're recording the experience when we used to record the drive-through, and vice versa.

I don't know how to keep track.

I will sign off this program for now.

We'll be back in a few days with the drive-through and next week with the experience.

We're going to talk about the pay-per-view, who gets eliminated, and all that other stuff.

But until then,

thank you.

Fuck you.

And bye-bye, everybody.