Episode 569: Getting Back To Normal

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Like the midnight and the rock and roll.

He's in a fight for wrestling soul.

Using a racket and some mind control.

He's Jim Cornish.

The keys to the future, held by the past.

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

He's Jim Cornet.

Well, he's never fake a phone phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to a Getting Back to Normal Edition of the Jim Cornette Experience, where for once, me and my co-host are the normal people, and we're going to talk about all the wild, wacky, turbulent turmoil in the world of backstage and behind-the-scenes pro wrestling.

It's all today and more.

And joining me, Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting line, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-host to you.

He's the most turbulent man I know, the great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

And we have a lot to talk about.

We have a lot.

The list is big.

We have a lot to talk about.

A lot to talk about.

And it's snowing outside right now.

Oh, don't even talk about your weather, but I'll talk about my weather before you talk about your weather.

I just

want to bring this shit up.

Well, it's just because it's happening in the moment.

I'm trying to keep the audience in the moment.

I'm trying to keep you in the audience in the moment talking about the momentary snow.

Well, I'll tell you what's going on momentarily down here.

Today in Louisville, Kentucky, it's almost 50 degrees and we're going to have heavy rain, heavy rain.

They've already issued a flood warrant.

Down in Adair County, not even 100 miles southeast of here, they're going to get six inches of rain today.

And we're going to get like three or four, supposedly.

And then the temperatures are going to plummet, finish off with snow flurries in the morning, highs in the teens and 20s for two days, and then a few inches of snow on top of all of that.

Now, what do you have to say about that, Mr.

Fucking Weatherman, Mr.

Willard Scott?

Last.

This isn't a competition.

I don't have anything to say.

Yo, it is.

Get some rock salt and a shovel.

This is your weather.

Okay, get some rock salt and a shovel and maybe a snowblower.

That's my advice.

Get some rock salt.

I got something you can blow.

You don't blow rock salt.

Is that what you think?

No, I got something else you can blow.

I'm just for telling me to get the rock salt.

You wish.

The weather is outside is frightful, but we'll,

you know, you're, you're in New Jersey.

You're supposed, it's supposed to happen to you.

We haven't had a weather, a weather, a weather like this.

We haven't had a winter like this 15 years down here.

It's goddamn just putrid.

Weather the weather.

We haven't had a weather like this either in a few days.

Well, I'll tell you what, I've been wanting to talk to you about this because I was reminded of something.

Gosh, it's probably been a week ago now, maybe, but my friend Gerald Briscoe

has a Twitter account.

I think it's at

FG Briscoe for Floyd Gerald Briscoe, which is his given Oklahoma name.

And he's on Twitter and he's been tweeting out.

pictures of stuff that he's found.

I guess he's going through one of his storage areas or whatever, and he's hashtagging shed treasures.

And it's a picture of just a might an oddball memento from his wrestling career or the his time in the wwfe

and

one of the things that he tweeted the other day was a picture of of two pages of

ideas that

And I sent it to you, Brian, because I said, this is the same thing we talked about before.

You confirmed it, but it was the ideas that our friend shitstain came up with before he was an official member of the creative team in parentheses and by the way anyone could hear the review of all three pages not the two pages that jerry briscoe tweeted out but the three pages we have the video up i think it's jim cornetta on vince russo's ideas for shotgun saturday night yeah and it's actually one of our more popular

clips, as I recall, because it was and it's not like Jerry was concealing anything.

He might not have had all three pages there.

He shot the two of them.

But

we had talked about it because I had the notes and I'd found the notes in my files.

Right.

And then he tweets out that picture and it reminded me of something else

because I had

copies of the notes here

that came off the copy machine, right?

That, you know,

and because.

In the office.

Well, in the office, because as I mentioned,

we were discussing them at a writing meeting.

It was me and Vince and Bruce Pritchard.

And Jim Ross may have been there that day and may not have, but it was definitely me and Vince and Bruce.

And

that's where I got my copy of these brilliant, earth-shattering revolutionary ideas.

But

I was reminded by Jerry's picture that Vince had told me.

Well, I guess somehow the chore between

whoever was in the room that day, the three or four of us, the chore fell to me.

I don't know if Vince told me directly to fax this shit to the agents that were going to be working on the upcoming shotgun Saturday night debacle, premiere and series that turned into such a debacle.

And that would have been Jerry Briscoe and Jack Lanza.

And

my God, I'm trying to think.

What are they thinking?

What now?

What are they thinking when these ideas just think that you guys are playing a joke on them?

When these ideas get faxed out?

What are you being in the room?

I'm going to get to it.

I'm going to get to it.

Because basically, George the Animal Steel, Jim Myers may have been in it, but it was still a small group, right?

But the task somehow fell to me, you know, sending the shotgun agents.

We're going to be, because didn't we start in January?

This was in December.

So I must back up a second.

And do the kids understand what a fax machine is now, the children out there in the audience?

Probably not, even though they still exist, because every now and then someone tells you, like, oh, we can factor records.

I'm like, to who?

Where?

How?

Yeah.

Well, kids, if you want to Google it, but for the adults in the room, maybe you need a brief refresher.

The fax machine, before the...

advent of all of this sending documents electronically through the internet and everything, you could take a piece of paper and stick it in a fucking machine on your desk and it would scan the paper there and and the

the fax machine called a phone number that the person you wanted to send that to had dedicated to his fax machine and that fax machine would answer the phone line and retrieve that image and peel it out on a piece of paper so you would get a facsimile of the original document fax paper on the other end on on fax paper which

at one point was like this fucking slick shit that took a special ink cartridge and it came in a roll and the ink would fade over time so it would be nothing.

It was like disappearing ink.

That's right.

And the shit would roll up in a fucking, oh.

But anyway, so

now here's the thing.

I've also mentioned that I didn't have any goddamn anything in my office

at the Titan Tower.

I had a desk, a lamp that I brought from home, a chair, the poster, frame poster events that I stole when I left that was hanging in there when I got there, and

nothing in the drawers because I never wanted to fucking be there.

I took it home because we were at Vince's house anyway, go home from there.

I have a fax machine at my house that I'd had since me and Sandy Scott and Tim Horner got the same kinds.

Remember that story?

Horner's probably still using his, wondering why nobody will write him back.

So,

but the thing is, what a throwback.

Well, see, it's if you got to be a listener of everything here, folks, to get all the entertainment.

But the fax machine I had at home, that was the one that I'd brought from Tennessee with me.

But now think about this, and I'll tell you how it transpired.

I had first been living in the apartment for a few months until we found the house to rent.

And so I'd really moved in the house, I think, in July, I believe it was first week of July.

And

I plugged a fax machine in the phone line I had for the fax,

but I forgot

that you could

customize

the top of the fax in the machine.

You could type it in.

So when the person on the other end got the fax, it would say, like, from

your name or your company, fax number 203, whatever the fuck.

Yeah.

Well, I'd been using a fax machine in my house for a few months.

And then somebody told me, hey, we tried to fax you back,

and it still was my Tennessee shit.

It was Smoky Mountain Wrestling 65, whatever the fuck, the fax number I had.

I was, oh, shit.

Now

I had to try to find the book.

to the the instruction manual to tell me how to change that, right?

And that took a while.

And then I set the book down.

I said, well, I'll fuck with that later on.

And so right about this time, you've heard of these happenings just converging the right place at the right time.

I'd had the book sitting there.

And now I've got a reason to fucking fax something.

And I'm going to goddamn,

you know, try to see if I can figure out how to do this at the same time.

So I'm faxing it, Jerry Briscoe and Jack Lanza, maybe George Steele or whatever.

So

these ideas from Russo were so,

like you said, they were going to think because they weren't in the meeting where Vince is taking the attitude, well, you know, some of it's way out there, but we need to just get all the ideas.

We need to make the show different.

I'm doing a lousy Vince, but you know what I'm saying.

And I'm thinking they're going to see that.

They're going to somehow think,

I want to make sure that they didn't think I had anything to do with this.

And they knew what I thought anyway.

But to try out and see if I could customize the thing,

I typed it out to where, and that's what Jerry Briscoe's picture tweet reminded me of.

The top of the fax said,

this is your fax from shithead

and 203, whatever the fucking number was.

And I faxed that stuff.

And

they thought what you would think they would think about the ideas that he had thought of.

But to kicker to this story is after I'd done that, and I think maybe the pizza came that we were having delivered or something happened and got me distracted.

And I said, well, I'll fix it later on.

And I never did change it till like a month later.

I can't even remember what it was, but it was some kind of

official shit that Vince McMahon wanted people in several different departments to know.

And he had me take it home and fax it to the fucking office the next day

or that night or whatever.

And the next day, Bruce Pritchard calls me and says, Did you send the office a fax and said, Here is your fax room shithead?

Ha ha.

But anyway, I'm sorry.

I just, but that, when I saw that picture from Gerald Briscoe, here is your facts from shithead.

I was like, God damn, I've quote tweeted it.

I said, yeah, this is what I figured out how to customize the

facts there.

That's one of the holy grails of wrestling collectibles now, the last shithead facts.

Yeah.

It went to a larger audience than the other ones, but it's still a hard-to-get item.

You know, Jerry Briscoe also tweeted out, I saw, because I went and looked through my files and I found it from your 1996 Christmas card.

It was a whole thing about how much you hated Connecticut.

I actually never realized you wrote it because I think the ending was like, I'm going back to Georgia.

I was like, oh, that can't be Jim.

No, I didn't.

I didn't write it.

And

I didn't claim to.

I just, I copied it and sent it out.

And I think because so much stuff that I sent to people I did write, they got used to it.

But

that was something.

And god damn it,

I can't remember, but a friend of mine in my social circle at the time had sent me that on my move to Connecticut.

And it was so fucking funny and turned out to be so halfway true that

I copied it and sent it out.

But I can't take credit for that.

That was,

well, that wasn't on the internet or whatever, but it was being passed around on copy machines in offices across America, I bet, at the time.

But I think some people

may have thought it was you, even though, because it came on the heels of you actually writing some stuff previously about how much you initially loved it and immediately hated Connecticut.

So I think people thought it could have been you, but the Georgia thing was the giveaway to me at the end.

Well, yeah.

And then also I,

in 96, I think it was,

is when I sent out my Christmas poems.

again that I'd written about WCW because that was the year Dick Murdoch died and

he

howled over those things.

So I sent them out again in his honor.

And those were originals.

Copies of those floating around on eBay maybe pretty soon because that was a small circle as well until Uncle Dave printed it in the Observer one year.

And actually, I wasn't upset about it because I liked it reaching a wider audience because that was the one I think that Skewered heard.

You never talk about that, though.

The fact that, like, you know, know, you look at all your accolades.

Photographer, not just a photographer, successful photographer, had his own magazine for his local promotion, syndicated photos all over the place, manager, everything at the Superdome and the Last Stampede, everything after that, executive, booker.

Where is this going?

No one ever talks about the poet and the fact that your poetry has been published in The Observer, so you're now a published poet on top of all your other accolades.

Well, and I am quite a wordsmith because, you know, in the words of Luther Hagues, when you work with words, words are your work.

In the words of Lufez, what did you say?

Well, that's because of his cauliflower ears.

What?

And we're going to talk about things that

I've been hearing about.

You're going to catch me up on some things.

I've read about some things, heard about some things.

Real quick, I will tell the customers at Cornettes Collectibles that

if you have ordered in the last,

well, say two weeks, since the first of February, the big February sale going on, some things have gone out.

Some things are remaining to be signed.

I've been slowed down by events past week or two.

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that I need to personally autograph will be caught up with by the end of this fine month and out in the mail to the customers there.

But this is my show, isn't it?

Most certainly.

It's the Jim Cornette experience.

So I'm supposed to, I've got,

I got paper.

I got notes.

I've got things jotted down.

So I am, I'm for clip.

Oh, and we're going to finally, here a little bit later on in the program, we're going to air the part two of the interview with the Queen of the Ring

director and screenwriter and co-star Ash Avaldson.

We are late with that.

We wanted to get it out a few days ago, but we're going to have that.

But

I want to bring this.

Go ahead.

Well, real quick on that topic, stay tuned to the YouTube channel because we have and it'll be coming at some point soon we have a blooper we have an outtake we have oh boy the scene everyone was talking about so stay tuned to the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel more information to come

and just so you know when you watch that uh that clip of The makeup department accentuated my bald spot when I bend over at one point.

That was, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

We got some some big stuff, but I want to ask you real quick about this.

And it may be something that we don't even know too much about, and we'll research if anybody cares for

an upcoming show.

But before we get into the meat of the matter, they're shaking things up over in TNA.

And

apparently, now, is there new people running the place again?

Is it still, Anthem still owns it.

Anthem is the big,

the big business conglomeration up there in Canada that owns this thing and Access TV or whatever they're calling that network these days.

And that's, but now there's new people running the wrestling end,

the branch office.

What's going on there?

Do you even know?

I know a little bit about it.

Let's go to an article I have here from Fightful by Jeremy Lambert.

TNA Wrestling underwent changes on Wednesday.

Changes.

Naming Carlos Silva

as the new TNA president.

Anthony Chicione.

Ciccione?

I don't know how do you pronounce this guy's name.

Oh, goddammit.

You're from New York.

And if you can't pronounce an Italian name, it's pretty goddamn odd.

Well, Anthony Ciccioni, or whatever his name is.

Wait a minute.

Is he related to Bob Ciccione from Penthouse?

That's Guccione, and he is dead.

But he was the previous TNA president.

He reported.

I didn't even know he was sick.

He is remaining with Anthem Wrestling.

And let me just say, that's what I heard from someone who knows the participants here.

He's not leaving the company.

He's staying with an Anthem, going to do something else.

And the new guy, Carlos Silva, is coming in and obviously probably wants to bring in his own team.

Josh Matthews and Christy Hemi have also departed the company.

Wait,

Christy Hemi?

That's right.

She is no longer.

Here's an affirmative.

I know who she is, but I haven't heard her name.

I know know Josh Matthews is the little peanut-headed announcer fella.

But I didn't know that Christy Hemi had been working in wrestling for fucking.

You never hear her name.

What was she doing there?

We could find out in a second.

I think she may have gotten a good position in the company after Scott DeMoore went home.

But here is an official statement: TNA issued to John Alba.

The new TNA wrestling president is Carlos Silva.

George Veris is the new executive producer of the Anthem Sports Group.

George is the 10-time Emmy Award-winning president and chief executive officer of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enterprises, as well as president of Veris Communications, Incorporated.

Josh Matthews and Christy Hemmy are no longer with the company.

We appreciate their commitment to TNA throughout the years and wish them well in their future endeavors.

Well, now, wait a minute, which one?

George Veris, and what was the other guy's name?

Carlos Silva is the new head of TNA.

His boss would be George Veris, the new executive producer of Anthony Sports.

Which one of those replaced Christy Hemi?

What job did she have?

And Josh Alexander, what did they were running the whole fucking thing?

Let me.

Yeah, we got George and Carlos now.

So fucking see you, Christy and Josh.

Let me see what her job was.

Apparently,

hold on.

She was the head of marketing.

And Josh Matthews was a senior producer, as well as the senior director of digital media.

Oh, good Lord.

Little Josh, when I was there briefly, about what was it, fucking eight years ago now, he did strike me as one of those younger fellows that thinks he's very smart.

But that's all I was ever around him.

That was

the

last,

what were they calling it at that point?

Global Force wrestling.

The point I'm making is they've had more owners and runners

in the last fucking, what, eight years now than I think than

goddamn WCW under TBS had booking changes.

It was.

Dixie and then it was, and then Jeff came back in with Global Force, and then Dixie had to sell it, and then Anthem bought it, and then this guy was running it, and then that guy was running it.

Then Damore was going to run it, but then they fucking kicked him out, and some other guy was running it.

What's going on over there?

They keep running along, but they're on a treadmill.

Does Christy Hemi have a background in marketing?

Christy Hemi has a background.

I don't know if I'd call it marketing.

What would you call it, Jeff?

I don't, you know, not not sure what you can these days.

Does Josh Matthews have a background in, what was it, digital media?

I don't know what the fuck.

He was a microscopic kid that actually tried to be a wrestler on Tough Enough, I think, is how

he got that's

when I was there.

Again, I'd only been around him one day.

I'm not, you know, maligning him as a horrible human being and don't have chapter and verse on everything he's done in his life.

But when I was there in that taping in 2017, it was when Jeff had come back and they were going to make it global force wrestling, and they brought me down to fire Bruce Pritchard because nobody else had the gumption.

And that was when they had that

leftover administration from whatever that big John Gabor, what was his name?

Garbanzo,

Big John Gibberish, Big John Gaboric.

Was had been there as some kind of producer.

Because as we said,

people that didn't know what the fuck they were doing had been sold a bill of goods that he was some wrestling executive or wrestling expert with a background in wrestling because he was an unemployed friend of Kevin Dunn's.

And Kevin Dunn stuck him on tough enough as a representative of the

studio judges or the production judges or whatever.

And they ended up hiring this fucking guy down there

to run some shit, whatever his job was.

And

did I tell you the story of my interaction with Big John with the fucking

the board gimmick?

That was, how long have we been doing this thing?

Was that before?

I don't know if I've told that story because I wouldn't have told it at the time because it would, when I worked there that brief period, it would have been destroying magic I was involved in making.

But I may have told it immediately afterwards when they fucking went to shit and fucking Jeff left and

was gone and everything else anyway.

But the bored story.

Are you bored by this story?

No, no, I'm now dying to know what it is.

Let's hear it.

Well, no, okay.

So Jeff, Jarrett, and I've told us, they have to go back to 2017 on the YouTube channel.

I'll try to synopsize

because the clip has been out there.

You know, people like to tweet that of me firing Bruce Pritchard from Global Force Wrestling.

Jeff had called me because he had come back and

joined with Dixie and they were going to do the thing with Global Force.

And I can't even remember all the chain of events that led that into being.

But he said,

he pitched to me, would you come down and be a representative of the new hierarchy, whoever is supposed to be running it at that point that outranks Bruce Pritchard and fire him and carry us to our Bound for Glory pay-per-view or whatever it was.

And I said, All right,

to do him a favor, because it was going to be like five days in a row of taping two shows a day to get him 10 weeks.

So I didn't have to go up and back, but once I just had to stay there, but I could hang out with Dutch Mantel

and help Jeff.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I used to do favors.

Remember when I would say, Next time I do anybody a favor, shoot me?

So I'd go down there, and Jeff had asked me to produce a few of the segments.

Also, you know, Wink Wink.

Now, since you're here, do you mind?

And one of them was Johnny, John Hennigan, John Morrison, Johnny Nitro, Johnny,

however many names, I don't know what name he's using today, but our friend from OVW

was

there then, and they were going to do an angle with him.

And they were going to go in and just kick the shit out.

I said, well, I was in the production meeting.

You've got three or four angles where the fucking heels come in and just kick the shit out of somebody, blah, blah, blah.

They were wondering what to do with Johnny.

Would it be better if the heel just comes in as he's cutting the promo and as he turns around from the blind side, boom, break the board over his head.

It'll fly up in the air.

The people will go, ooh, Johnny will be knocked helpless.

The guy can stand there high.

You run everybody in.

It'll make an impact.

And also,

Johnny doesn't have to take, because I think his back was bothering him.

He didn't have to take three or four big fucking wrestling moves, just a board to the head.

And Jeff said, okay, let's do that.

So I set it all up with him and give me the board and the screwdriver, the blah, blah, blah.

And then, as we're going out there and we're walking through something over in the corner, the people that are involved in the thing, we go back by the deal.

And Big John, and I think they must have called him Big John because his head was the size of a water buffalo.

And he looked like Vader if Vader gained weight in the face.

And he said, what are y'all doing?

I said, well, we're doing a board deal with Johnny instead of, you know, getting a bunch of heat on him.

I got to check and make sure that's been approved.

What?

He said, oh, we've eliminated shots to the head here.

No chair shots.

It's gimmicked.

Well, I've still got to check and make sure it's been approved.

I said, you just did.

You checked with me, and I told you it's been approved.

And he sat back down.

We didn't have any other really fucking interaction for the rest of the time I was there.

But I, you know, what the fuck?

I think he thought he was still running something at that point in time.

Who was he going to check with?

It was going to get on the fucking IFB and go have some production assistant run and find fucking

somebody.

Jeff Jarrett told me to do this.

And

I was next in that food chain because I'm the producer.

So just sit there and watch what happens.

You're probably the only person who's ever done that to him in wrestling.

Because in WWE, you had Kevin Dunn's protection and TNA.

He was kind of either running things or helped run things for a while.

And you just put him in his place.

But my God, that'd be like me going to fucking my mechanic and buttoning him out of the way under the hood and saying no god damn it screw that thing in there

what the fuck it wouldn't start much less run if i was operating it because i was not in my area of expertise at that instance he so anyway do you think kevin then i called him like watch out for cornet you know he's a bad guy watch out

he probably already knew what i would think of him anyway But I just, so is this worth

following the new ownership over here?

Not ownership, but the new hierarchy?

Are they going to make any big changes in a small product?

Big trouble in little TNA?

I mean, we'll see what happens.

A bigger thing was the TNA-WWE relationship, TNA running big shows in Los Angeles and New York this year.

Shit, I just thought, is this a good time for them to be putting new people in to run the shit when they've already announced these goddamn big events and they will have allegedly at this point some WWE

representation in these major arenas that they got no fucking chance of filling on their own.

Was this previous guy like their Kip Fry?

You know, kind of like just a corporate placeholder, someone who's going to remain within the company, someone who the company likes?

Here, hold down the fort while we find someone?

Well, but and then,

you know, maybe we should have followed this microscopic story because

were the did they announce the big buildings before or after they kicked Damor out?

Oh, well after.

Well after.

Okay.

All right.

I'm just thinking

they've announced these big buildings and they've announced this partnership and they got more interest

in themselves than in quite a while.

And,

you know,

and suddenly heads are rolling.

We'll see how that all works out for them.

By the way, it's also funny the two different sides you hear.

One side says,

You know, oh, Scott Damore was the greatest.

This company's gone to shit without Scott Damore.

I love Scott Damore.

I don't want to work there anymore.

And the other side will say, yeah, Scott Damore overpaid every single one of these people.

So they fucking love him.

And that's why we're trying to cut salaries because it's insane.

Kip Fry.

You know what Watts called Kip Fry?

Kipola.

A coppola.

Well, what was it?

Francis Ford Kipola.

Kippola, that's right.

Because he thought he was a goddamn Hollywood movie producer and he was giving guys bonuses to show up for work and fucking performance bonuses for goddamn showing up for work.

He was like a Tony Khan with a backbone.

No, now, because I think I met him once.

I'm not sure, but

I think

he was a nice guy as an executive, but I don't think he came from

such a privileged background that he was

had never been turned down in life to where that he instantly thought that he was an expert in wrestling.

He was trying to implement some of his business logic into an illogical business, to quote Bill Dundee.

And by the way, let me just jump in.

If you hear any little blips in the audio, obviously, there's been a lot going on.

We're still in the midst of upgrading everything.

Jim's audio will be completely repaired, hopefully, within a week and a half.

Oh, goddammit.

Now, no, here's the thing: somehow, in putting in my brand new Fancy Dan computer

and the brand new drive-in movie screen size monitor.

My goddamn headphones have got a short in the cable.

The headphones that you,

Brian Last, have been making me wear,

the only thing now I've got that has been furnished by you

is the headphones and a microphone.

And what happened to the headphones?

You didn't say what happened yet.

Well, it was happening before that I've jerked the cord out of.

But that wouldn't explain what's going on now.

I stepped on it, I believe, is the exact correct.

Well, I stepped on it.

I was wearing it.

I was wearing the headphones.

And when I stood up from trying to repair the problem in the audio that we believe is now caused by the headphones, I stood up.

My foot was on it.

I jerked one side out.

But that doesn't have anything to do with it.

But everything will be continued to be worked on and improved.

And we have a lot of big plans for the big year and beyond.

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Tuck, talk about how about the Big Hall of Fame.

Can we mention this real quick?

Because I heard they're starting to announce the people for the

Big Hall of Fame ceremony in where the fuck they're in.

It's in Las Vegas with WrestleMania again this year, correct?

Correct.

Well, I heard they're announcing people.

Did they announce somebody?

They've announced two people so far.

There are rumors about some other people.

Well, I know they surprise inducted Triple H, but I'm talking about the official announcements are starting to be made.

This is what I know.

Of course, Triple H was surprised.

He didn't know that his best friend and his wife and the Undertaker were backstage waiting to surprise him.

But on the heels of the Triple H.

You know, normally you don't want an Undertaker waiting to surprise you.

Well, on the heels of that big announcement.

Speaking of the Undertaker.

I know because, hey, last week I walked past a cemetery.

Two guys ran after me with shovels.

Well, Jim, speaking of the Undertaker, going into the WWE Hall of Fame in the I slept with a wrestler division.

I shouldn't say that, but what the fuck?

Michelle McCool,

WWE Hall of Famer,

according to the video that aired on SmackDown last night, I know you didn't see it, they called her a trailblazer.

The same words used for Aalia Myvilla last year, a trailblazer

and a legend.

I mean, give me, is anyone a fucking legend at this point?

Have we ever seen

Michelle McCool wrestle?

I mean, she's been retired, I guess, for a while.

Do I, have I ever spoken of seeing Michelle McCool wrestle?

I don't know if you would have ever seen her.

She was from that dark period where everything was Vince McMahon and Awful, like in the early part of, you know, the 2010s.

And she was in the team Lay Cool with Layla.

I mean,

they were both Diva Search or Diva.

They tried out to be Divas and they got into wrestling.

And I don't remember, I don't think Michelle McCool's ever had like a classic match or a good match.

I can't remember a single thing that she did that was good, but she married The Undertaker.

And it's a new era of nepotism in WWE.

And I'll tell you, I mean, we'll talk about Vince McMahon a little later.

I'm still not giving out they're going to have Vince McMahon back on this show, but we'll see what happens.

But The Undertaker's wife being put into the WWE Hall of Fame.

This is the modern era of WWE.

And this is why the Hall of Fame, while it's a big moment for the people going in, because you're being honored, it's hard to take the process that goes into picking who's a Hall of Famer seriously in any way.

Is she a Hall of Famer?

In any

realistic, any wrestling-based Hall of Fame, even if it was just about women wrestlers, would she be a Hall of Famer?

Again, I'm not the expert because I can't remember ever having seen her do anything.

And

again, I do admit that I didn't watch WWE wrestling from

around, what was it, 2005 or 6-ish, probably through

the time we started talking about things, but that era.

But

people are constantly retweeting great moments in

WWE or wrestling history.

There have been many documentaries on multiple platforms and broadcast outlets, from dark sides to light sides, to life ofs, to searching for treasures of to

people trying to confiscate, use tampons by a celebrity, whatever the fuck.

And Michelle McCool is never fucking mentioned michelle mccool is never present michelle mccool highlights are never offered for public consumption how can you be a hall of famer when the shit you just did 10 years ago nobody wants to fucking look at listen the rock got his grandmother into the hall of fame Again, there is not a single wrestling hall of fame that would legitimately put Liam Ivia in them.

The Undertaker's now got his wife going into the Hall of Fame.

Apparently, he doesn't even do The Undertaker anymore.

Now he's only the American badass.

He retired the Undertaker gimmick that worked.

So he's going with the gimmick that sucked.

Well, it's easier.

He's going with the gimmick that's easier.

He can just show up dressed as he is and speak normally and

people are only minimally let down.

Do you think if you're Steve Austin and you're negotiating to do something, remember, he wasn't a part of the big WrestleMania thing last year.

He didn't want to do something unless it was a good plan and Undertaker made the big surprise in the middle of the rock thing.

But if you're Steve Austin at this point and you're negotiating, do you say like whoever I'm dating or married to that has to go into the Hall of Fame?

Well, no.

I would demand it.

I would say you have to go into the Hall Fame.

I don't know what Steve's current romantic or domestic situation is.

So I'm not going to comment on whether or not that his.

spouse or significant other would even be a candidate for a Hall of Fame or whatever the fuck.

But no, I i think it steve austin would just negotiate for more money is what steve austin would do

uh because i don't think

i mean obviously steve appreciates him or anybody else being honored by anything legitimate but i think if it came down to a situation like this he's i don't give a fuck who you put in the hall of fame just give me more money because he's a goddamn normal human.

No, she's going into the Hall of Fame because she's married to The Undertaker, period.

End of story.

That's it.

That is kind of.

Would you even

okay?

You know, earlier you said I'm a published poet,

but more

legitimately,

you know, I was in another field.

I was a pretty decent photographer.

You've seen my work and can, and hopefully we're going to bring some more of that back to life with this project where we're going through the old files.

But

while my

photography for the wrestling business at that era

was quite good, in my opinion,

some would even say excellent.

I don't belong in the all-time worldwide photography hall of fame.

I'm not Francesco Scavulo.

I'm not fucking Annie Leibowitz.

I'm not.

And she's a bit overrated.

Listen, I don't think that's a good comparison because you are a really good, talented photographer.

So if someone was appreciating the work of the photography, even though it's wrestling, you would get in.

She was not a standout wrestler or wrestling personality.

But what I'm saying,

that's a completely different place that I was going to.

What I was about to say was, if somehow the

International Photography Hall of Fame in fucking Zurich, Switzerland called me one day and said, we are going to put you in the Hall of Fame next to

you know, Matthew Brady, the great Civil War photographer, in the all-time photo hall of fame.

I would be embarrassed to be sitting there with fucking major league people when you kind of had a peripheral involvement with a certain profession, like Michelle McCool's involvement was peripheral.

To where would you want to, would you just say, oh, you know, no, that's okay.

I'm quite happy being,

you know, Mrs.

Badass and a mom or whatever.

I don't know.

I just, it's a stretch to try to

sell that induction there.

Hopefully the speeches are going to be short this year.

See, that's the problem when they start throwing around the word legend and all-timer and Hall of Famer for anyone.

And in this case, you know, this isn't like Greg Valentine and Coco B.

Ware sitting at ringside.

They were big stars.

They sold a lot of merch.

Michelle McCool was someone on the show that married a wrestler, and now she's in their hall of fame.

I mean, you know, Ava, I'm sure, will go into the Hall of Fame any day now.

No, I told you before, I expect Dixie Carter to get into this Hall of Fame before all is said and done.

I think Brandy Rhodes is going to go into the Hall of Fame, and she deserves it.

She cut one of the all-time great promos.

Stephanie is going to go into the Hall of Fame.

They've like run out of women, I guess, that they want to induct between

the late 2000s.

And when they started to win, I don't think they've run out of women.

I think

they're doing a favor with one of their slots for women.

They could find other

people that probably would be a little more recognizable, but it wouldn't be fulfilling a favor at the same time.

And they've got the quota and the certain amount of, we've talked about it, where they can't feature too many or too few.

And one has to fit this category and the other one that category.

So they're filling a favor with a female spot.

They're going to interact with people who have no idea about wrestling.

But yeah, she's a Hall of Famer too.

She's a wrestling Hall of Famer.

It's ridiculous.

It has no legitimacy.

It's so stupid.

But I hope everyone has a good time.

Yo, it's going to be a ball.

It's going to be a blast.

I'm talking about it's the hot ticket in town.

But here's the thing, Brian.

If they don't put a limit on the speeches, you think Michelle McCool, she's going to go up there, she's going to talk for a while, she's going to thank endless people.

And by the time she's finished with that, I'm afraid that many people are going to be ready for a good night's sleep.

But then they're going to be sitting there saying, instead of at home

in the comfort and privacy of my bedroom suite, With my helix mattress that I could just fall into it, it'd be like taking a trust fall into God's arms and being rocked in the cradle of hell, rock the cradle of love.

That's what you're doing when you're on a helix.

Instead of being there, I'm over here at this Hall of Fame ceremony sitting on these hard chairs after spending hard cash.

And I'm listening to these people drone on.

And you're going to see a lot of people pull out their...

CPAP machines for their sleep apnea and just hook them up to the fancy Dan chargers they've got in the seats now in these buildings.

And they're just going going to be snoring away in bliss, but they're not going to be on their helix mattress, which is a.

Do you know what that proves, Brian?

That proved don't leave home.

I don't know what any of this proves.

Don't leave home.

I'll tell you what it proves.

Don't leave home.

Because if you leave, the farther away you get from your helix sleep mattress, the more anxiety you will feel.

Your body will start to vibrate.

You'll start to shiver and shake.

Your hands start shaking and your feet start quaking.

The farther you get away from the helix mattress because you want to get back to it and envelop in its warm embrace.

And as a matter of fact, they have a special,

it's actually a derivative of a guava plant in Bolivia that they coat these mattresses in.

That the farther away you get from it, it will chemically change your body to where you'll have a panic attack until you get back to this mattress.

That's how they keep repeat customers.

That's not how they keep repeat customers.

They have nothing to do with whatever you just said.

Well, this is only only part of the helix service the the guava plant extract

zero percent part of the service if you you know if you wear one of those devices like the apple watch or the thing that measures all of your

your various bodily functions i don't i tried to get the bowel movement measurement but it it wouldn't register

But

it takes about

how much time you sleep and how many steps you take and all those things.

Well, if you sleep on an old mattress or a tired mattress or a dirty mattress or some of the other people's mattresses, or worse than that, if you're sleeping in a doghouse because you're in trouble for various reasons, well, you're not getting any sleep.

You can prove it with that.

And then you get that same watch and you get the helix mattress and you look.

You'll see that

at some times during the course of the night when you're sleeping on a helix mattress, that watch is telling you you're not even still breathing.

you're just so relaxed you're not even as

telling you call the police is what it'll tell you what it's going to say is that you're still nothing's going to say that you stopped breathing

because of your sleep but you will sleep wonderfully well no it's just on a helix sleep mattress you're so relaxed see when you take about a minute and a half in between breaths that's not the that would not even help you take you with the mattress what are you talking about they'll slow your heartbeat down too so it helps with heart disease because the more you use your heart, folks, the quicker you'll wear it out.

If you sleep on a helix mattress, your heart's barely beating.

So right now.

That's not, again, ladies and gentlemen, you'll be beating just fine and sleeping just great.

Well, you can beat on the mattress if you want to,

but why are you so angry, Brian?

But I'll tell you what you can do.

And without getting angry or pissed off, you can go to helixleep.com.

That's H-E-L-I-X-S-L-E-E-P dot com slash J C E.

And what you do is you just get matched up by the few, answering a few questions with the perfect mattress that they have for you.

And then they will send it to you and you will receive it in a condition, a little box in which you can put in the place you need it.

And then you take it out of that and poof it becomes.

And it's wonderful.

And you'll sleep like you're in the arms of the angels.

That's the way you'll just drift off into

sunshine and lollipops.

And you'll get 20% off.

That's even better than sunshine.

I'll do it again.

Guarantee

better than that.

You'll get 20%

off.

That's better than sunshine and lollipops.

And two free dream pillows, which don't mistake these when you have dreams for large marshmallows.

I did that one time.

I was sick for a week.

20% off and two free dream pillows with a mattress purchase, helixleep.com slash JCE.

Just right now, though, because this may not last.

I don't know how long this is going to last.

I don't even know if it's still good.

You better hurry.

Do it yesterday.

What do you know about this, Brian?

Do it yesterday.

Do it today.

Do it tomorrow.

We love Helix Sleep over here.

Jim loves it over there.

You can love it wherever you are.

Helix Sleep one more time.

What's that promo code, Jim?

That's right.

If you want to get in the middle of me and Brian when you go to sleep, in between over here and over there, helixleep.com/slash JCE.

But, Brian, now, while we're on the subject

of the

WWE and/or WWE legends and/or ex-personnel,

seems like it's all one big family because now, even if Undertaker has pulled with the new administration enough to to get his wife into the hall of fame.

He's still hanging out with the previous regime.

Isn't that frowned on in most South American countries?

You're trying to buddy up to both sides.

Is Undertaker hanging out at football games with Vince McMahon?

Not just football games, at the Super Bowl.

Well, that's a football game.

Why are you trying to correct me?

The most watched event of the year.

It's the one with the biggest audience.

Now, they weren't on TV, but in the middle of the game, someone tweeted out that their father was sitting near The Undertaker and Vince McMahon.

And then quickly photos went around, including Shane McMahon in this traveling party in New Orleans.

Well, wait a minute.

Shane and Vince.

Now, see that?

That warms a lot of cockles.

To see Shane and Vince having a

bonding moment at a sporting event, because I guarantee you, I bet you Vince went at a lot of his football games when Shane was playing in school.

So this way that even in Vince's golden years, he's got his boy alongside him, patting him on the head, probably bought Shane a hot dog.

What was the Undertaker doing in all of this?

The picture of him here, he's wearing a, is that a straw hat?

He's wearing a hat.

What?

It's not a straw hat.

It looks like it's a straw hat, but it's not a close-up photo.

And he has a drink in his hand, like Julian of the Trailer Park Boys.

And apparently just enjoying a few cocktails, hanging out with Vince.

And Shane.

And there are pictures of this.

There are pictures.

I've sent you a link.

If you get a link.

Wait a minute.

You sent me, sent me.

Should I?

Oh, you sent me something, but it says don't click.

Could be dangerous malware.

No, it does not say that.

And it says that on everything you send.

Well, I get, first of all, that has nothing to do with me.

That may be the links that you're opening.

And I don't necessarily send you bad links, but why don't you click on the link I just sent?

Well, the one with the Dalmatian is the only one that worked.

But

though, so I'll click on the link you sent me.

There's no Dalmatian.

Oh my God.

The fuck the Undertaker looks like he's been marooned on Gilligan's Island in that hat or something.

I don't know what kind of apparatus is that, or is that some type of

Jim Bowie

thing from the Alamo?

Is it made out of buckskin?

Oh, yeah, that must be it.

It's made out of buckskin atop a hubcap.

Should the Undertaker start wearing a raccoon skin hat like Davy Crockett?

Would that be a new thing for him?

Well,

at least it would look like he had a ponytail.

Well, there he is, enjoying his cocktail and his hat, hanging out with

the stylish McMahons.

But

good God, Vince looks like he weighs

170 pounds?

I mean, his head's the biggest part of him.

Now, again, it's a photo where it looks like he's kind of leaning a little towards the camera, so it's not like a straight ahead, but he does seem,

while in shape, skinnier than we've ever seen him.

Well, yeah, and somebody's going to say, well, Jesus, 170 pounds, that doesn't sound like he's a goddamn, you know, starvation camp.

But no, the Vince McMahon that's, what is Vince, six foot two that has always been jacked up and was on the cover of muscle and fitness

has been

well north of 200 pounds for his entire adult life.

So this is a, but I'm not advocating for him to be that again.

I think he carried it a little too far as it was, but it's shocking now to see somebody who's looked in one fashion

at one time now suddenly

like he went to give blood and forgot to say when.

But is that Shane over onto Jesus Christ?

Shane may have fucking found the weight that Vince lost, hadn't he?

Well, Shane may just be healthy as opposed to, you know, Vince was always, you could say he looked like he was in shape, but I don't know if that means he was healthy looking.

Yeah.

He looked insane.

That's what he looked.

And the Undertaker's obviously drinking, so I don't know.

Well, I think.

Praise the Lord.

Now that I think about it with Shane here, I think, first of all, it's not a flattering top.

It's got the, you know, the wrinkles from the stretching.

He's got his arms folded and he's turning his head, which may account for some of the jowlage

on the left side of his face.

See, part of it is he's wearing tight clothing.

That's his choice.

He decided that whatever, you know, when guys want to show off their arms or their chest, you wear something tight, but it may not be good for the rest of you.

Well, now girls do that too.

What do you want?

They want to show off their arms or their chest or whatever.

Don't be sexist about it.

Both.

Who's being sexist?

Both of the gendarmes are allowed to wear tight clothing.

Some people we encourage to.

What do you think of the idea that Vince McMahon's hanging out with The Undertaker?

Forget about the shame part of it for right now, but at the Super Bowl at a very, very public event where you're almost guaranteed someone's going to see you guys hanging out.

It's a very public thing.

Well,

they're not working a big program where they're enemies on television.

I don't think it's shocking that they're together as much as

they had to be in some type of limited access section,

one would think, because

of their recognized,

it's the word I'm searching for,

the factor that they can be recognized by the public

is, and you would think that the Undertaker, people would be bugging the piss out of him.

I'm not, you know, saying harassing him, but wanting autographs or whatever with Vince,

you never know, people may come up to him going, fuck you.

But one would think that both of them would not just be milling about in the general admission section and a stadium of 75,000 people or whatever the fuck that

everybody could get into.

Do you think?

You know, the other first of all, this is days before Michelle McCool gets into the Hall of Fame.

What if this was a negotiating tactic?

Hey,

put my wife in, or I'm going to go work for whatever the hell Vince is trying to do with Shane.

You know, I think if they gave two shits, they'd say, okay, take your wife with you.

You know,

but I think that, like I said, they're just fulfilling a favor.

But, you know, I'm sure they're discussing old times and et cetera there.

But I think maybe the bigger story is Vince has decided to do away with the movie villain look.

And now why?

When he was guaranteed during the sale of the company, he was guaranteed to be on every

news network, every, you know, the ringing the bell in Wall Street, every

magazine or online source would report on this thing.

Their pictures of him were going around, Snidely Whiplash, you know, fucking

stage four Ernie Kovacs, the fucking

the whole tie Penelope to the train fucking

deal.

And that's when he was highly recognized.

He looked completely insane, out of his mind, Gomez Adams.

But now that he's just hanging out at the fucking Super Bowl in a personal capacity,

he looks like a normal human being again.

He's got his fucking old hair cut back.

It's brushed bays in a stadium, but his hair is perfect.

Ahoo!

Vince is on the prowl.

He's clean shaven.

He's had a nice trim of his sideburns.

There's no hair growing out of his ears or his nostrils.

He's not a madman.

Yeah, he is.

Was that all?

Was that a gimmick for the sale?

And now, you know, he's okay.

Now I can

look normal again.

What the fuck is going on?

You got to think it's one of two things.

Well, you could think it's other things, but I think it's one of two things.

Either he was sick and we don't know anything about it, and somehow whatever treatment he was getting blew up his face?

Because he was puffy.

His face was big.

Yeah.

And then, like, he grew a mustache and dyed everything jet black almost to distract from

everything else.

Or did he get some kind of plastic surgery right before this announcement?

And because of the timing,

there's a plane somewhere.

Because of the timing, he looked like a madman because

he was so swollen and he grew a mustache because of Douglas Fairbanks.

I really don't know, but

this looked like Vince before Mark of Zorro.

But you know, even before that appearance, the last few years when we saw Vince anything with him, facially, he looked nuts.

Like he looked like he had a lot of work done and he did not look right.

This kind of, again, one brief photo from a weird angle looks more like the classic Vince, even though slimmer.

Do you think it's been some kind of goddamn animatronic double?

Was he really in a coma like for seven years and they had the money to build a public vents

and now suddenly he woke up and said let's go to the football game son i have here the undertaker apparently did an interview somewhere and he was asked about this

i was his guest yeah look i'm gonna get hate for that people are like oh you guys were so close you know what happened i'm like I don't know what hasn't been done.

We don't talk about those things.

But he is a friend of mine.

First off, he gave me an opportunity to make something of my life and become something.

Through the course of all those years, we became friends.

After my father passed away, he was a father figure.

He was a brother.

He was a mentor.

I don't know everything that's happened, what's gone on, and I'm not the judge on this case.

There's only one judge.

That's the man upstairs.

He's going to give us all whatever we deserve in the end.

And that's what it is.

I think people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

I don't have to agree with everything that people do, but it doesn't change the fact that I love somebody and I'm friends with somebody.

And that's the quote defending hanging out with Vince at the Super Bowl.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Who exactly...

It's a weird comparison for this situation.

Vince, beyond the Janelle Grant stuff, Vince did a lot of nasty shit.

Well, I was about to, I don't know whether people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones or shouldn't fling poop.

But you shouldn't do one of those things, kids.

Stay away from both of them, just to make sure.

But no, I wasn't surprised.

Taggard doesn't give a shit if he's loyal to people.

And I was with him on that statement until he started talking about the man upstairs.

And then

credibility goes south for me, unfortunately, in times like that.

Was he saying that in Wrestlers' Court?

There's only one judge, and that's the man upstairs.

Was that what he was saying in Wrestling Court?

I don't remember that ever being part of the entertainment portion of the programming back then.

But no, I'm not surprised that he was there because he's a loyal guy, and Vince has done a lot for him.

And I'm pretty sure probably they weren't talking about,

you know, various things that have been in that suit, probably even as they were happening.

It probably didn't come up between those two.

two.

But,

you know, that's the

whole

Vince has a problem, and maybe that's why he's trying to look more normal again.

Or, you know, your hypothesis, which is more detailed, and obviously something you've thought of at length is probably more accurate.

But

anytime now that even any of his old friends that had nothing to do with anything he was doing

are seen at the fucking safeway with him,

or wherever he's going these days, as he goes about his daily life,

people are going to look at him like they got turds hanging out of their mouth.

And that's going to be awkward for a lot of people.

Like I said, Tager doesn't give a shit, and he's Tager, but

Vince's circle is going to constrict, probably.

It'll be even more awkward when they put Vince in the Hall of Fame.

I still don't know if they can sell that one or not.

At least, and will Vince.

And I'm not saying this in any other than just a fucking

look at the actuarial tables, folks.

Is Vince going to live long enough

at what is he, 79?

Is he going to be 80 this year or whatever

that

the heat will be off enough that they won't get a lot of backlash with these suits that are still going to be going on for heaven knows how long?

So that, you know,

he, I don't think he's going to be back on television.

But the whole rest of the family will be.

Boy, will they?

Is Vince in

again?

The continuing, what are the cases?

I obviously haven't been able to keep up with a lot of mundane shit, much less the

technical thing.

Vince's attorney was withholding the documents from the grand jury.

They were investigating, but now the investigation has been dropped, but they were concealing something else.

And there's an appeal, but a criminal case has been dropped.

Brian,

do we need to sit down with a stenographer and go over all this, or can you lead us through any of the high points?

I could do my best.

A lot of this happened during this week where there was a lot of stuff happening, but

I believe the first story I have here, this is from the AP.

This was on February 10th.

Vince McMahon's lawyer was wrong to withhold documents sought by grand jury.

Court rules.

A former lawyer for pro wrestling impresario, Vince McMahon, was wrong to withhold some documents from a federal grand jury as it investigated how the former WWE boss handled multi-million dollar settlement agreements with two female employees who accused him of sexual abuse.

A federal appeals court ruled Monday.

So let's stop real quick right there.

The big headline is an unnamed attorney for Vince McMahon.

And obviously everyone's thinking of one person who announced his retirement suddenly

who was always Vince McMahon's main attorney.

Well, and this goes on, I'm right here with you on this article here, but the judges upheld another lower court ruling that this stuff wasn't protected by attorney-client privilege because of an exception for crime or fraud.

And basically,

they were trying to

make Vince's paperwork look better, make the company's paperwork look better

by certain things not being in it, which was alluded to on

one of the last programs we did when we read Vince's message that got out, the voicemail to Janelle Grant about, oh, they've got to be doing all these documents, and I got to be clean or whatever, and we got to get this done super quick, baby.

Apparently, these were the

pieces of paperwork, the documents that were being prepared that were prepared in a false manner.

And the lawyer is not named in this story.

And I'll tag you back in.

I just want to make that point.

The lawyer is not named in this story.

But in the voicemail, Vince was saying, Yeah, Jerry's got to write all this shit.

God damn it.

Oh, God.

So

Jerry must have been scared.

And Jerry must have been a little scared or really understood the severity of the situation because Vince McMahon, remember what he said?

I'm not saying he's turning on me, but his hands are tied.

He has to do that.

He has to tell the truth, is basically what he's saying.

And then, of course, Jerry McDivitt was what, 70 or was He's not dead.

He's still around.

But at that time, he was in his early or mid-70s, and he announced his retirement because, you know, he wanted to enjoy his life

at that young spry age.

You think he bailed?

He finally said, this motherfucker, I've been on this fucking horse for 40 years, but it's finally going to fucking throw my ass.

Hey, listen to this.

The appellate panel said that while McMahon's lawyers submitted many materials in response to the grand jury subpoena, they also submitted a log of 208 documents that were being withheld under assertions of attorney-client privilege.

Though the identities of the parties were not disclosed in the appeals court opinion, a person familiar with the matter confirmed the unnamed, quote, former chief executive officer of a publicly traded company

was McMahon.

The person insisted on anonymity to discuss details that have not been made public.

So again, it wasn't even something that was like Vince McMahon.

People just figured it out because of what case it was.

Again, we're going back to Jerry McDivitt.

That's why people think it's Jerry McDivitt.

Well,

the status of the grand jury investigation was not immediately clear.

The U.S.

Attorney's Office in Manhattan has declined to comment.

When asked about the investigation, which it has not publicly disclosed, reps for McMahon have denied wrongdoing, no no immediate comment.

McMahon has previously suggested he was no longer under investigation.

But the appeals court said in Monday's ruling that the case concerns proceedings currently before a grand jury, but at present no indictments have been issued.

Are you

does anybody aspire to a fucking life where you can't even keep track of the federal and state investigations into you.

What the fuck?

He's 80 years old.

If I make it to 80, you know where I'm going to be?

Out in the backyard under the redbud tree,

sitting there enjoying the fucking birds.

See, but

this is part of the story.

So while they're saying it's an active thing before the grand jury, the next day,

The New York Post, the headline, an exclusive by Ben Kochman, or maybe that's not his Ben Kochman.

Ben Kochman.

Kochman.

It's K-O-C-H-M-A-N.

Ben Kochman, I assume.

Or he's the Cockman.

I really don't know.

He and Kramer could get together and be Ass Man and Cockman.

Feds drop criminal probe into whether WWE boss Vince McMahon covered up sexual misconduct allegations.

His lawyer says.

So again, the day after we hear this this concern, something active,

the next day his lawyer comes out and says, anything has been...

Did he say dismissed or just they dropped?

They just dropped his, not even dismissed it.

They dropped it.

So I don't know what.

Yeah, and here's the picture of Vince at the New York Stock Exchange looking like,

you know, Ernie Kovacs in a horror movie bit with his fucking hair and the face and the whole thing.

See, look at that picture.

Look at like his skin color.

I think he was sick there.

It's not just the hair, the black hair dye against his skin.

He's like pale, like it's not a healthy color there.

But I don't know.

Who knows?

And the drooping of the skin.

And nevertheless.

However, well, wait a minute.

Hold on here now because

I'm reading down at the bottom here.

Let's see if we can get to the bottom line, as Stone Cold might say.

The lawyer, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor, stressed Tuesday that the prosecutors have ended the probe without asking the grand jury to bring an indictment against him.

This is simply the result of an appeal of a procedural matter that was argued five months ago.

We have been in consistent communication with the government since that time and understand with no ambiguity.

that the investigation has definitively concluded and will not result in charges.

So that if you've got a lawyer that can spit out a sentence like that, you're as guilty as homemade sin.

And remember, it was in January when he settled with the SEC.

So a month ago he settled with the SEC.

Now his lawyer is saying everything else has been dropped, that this is actually an old ruling, so that's why it says an active grand jury, that they're not active anymore.

Well, it seems like they weren't active enough at the beginning.

But you know what can't be dismissed is the Janelle Grant thing.

Well, Or it can be, I guess, but it won't be by.

Well, it can't by this board of governance.

Prosecutors aren't going to say, let's not go for this because that's not what this is.

This is a civil case and that's not going away, at least not yet.

And apparently not as Vince, or so is Vince, or so not as Vince.

Well, how would I say that if I spoke the English language, Brian?

Apparently, Vince isn't going away either.

See, don't you think if Vince makes this go away, whether it's a giant multi-million dollar settlement or whatever it is, even though a lot of us think of him one way.

And to the general public, they already thought wrestling was a low-down, dirty thing.

And then they heard about Vince McMahon as the documentary on Netflix, you know.

Don't you think, knowing him, he's going to want to do some kind of victory parade?

I'm not saying it's going to be on WWE TV.

I think in his dreams it would be.

But I feel like we're going to see him get very public again just to brag about winning, even if it's not a win.

I think we're kind of on that road there right now.

I don't know.

What kind of entertainment company is he putting together with his

blooming friends?

Everyone who used to work at WWE, everyone who used to work for him at WWE that they let go of now works for him there.

He went with the Undertaker.

He didn't say, hey, let me go to the game with someone who's 5'10 or under that no one will notice.

He went with the biggest guy he can get to go hang out with.

He was looking for attention.

But

it remains to be seen in what genre he's going to pursue.

Because I think we've established he's smart enough to know he can't get

wrestlers that can compete right now just legally that are not contractually obligated.

There's not enough anywhere in the fucking world.

But what's he going to fucking try to do?

Is he going to do something with Shane?

Well, they're already going to ball games together.

Maybe they'll start going to get ice cream on Sundays down at the DQ.

Well, we will stay on top of the Vince McMahon news.

If I can tell you about something else, Jim, because it's kind of related to...

Bring me up to date.

I'm a sponge ready to soak up your learning.

Learn me.

And this is a story that I have seen a little bit about, but I'm going to learn about it on the air with you.

I have an article here from Post-Wrestling by Andrew Thompson.

Rita Chatterton reveals she was under contract to AEW for a year.

Calls Tony Kahn a gentleman.

Here's the article.

Chatterton was signed to AEW for a year.

It's a weird way to begin.

Rita Chatterton was a referee for the WWE.

At one point, I had the heartbreak of psoriasis.

Rita Chatterton was a referee for the WWE in, excuse me, and in 1992, she went public and accused now former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon of sexually assaulting her during the summer of 1986.

Chatterton's name resurfaced in the media when allegations against McMahon came to light in 2022 before he initially resigned from his role at the company.

There's a new interview with Chatterton that was pushed out.

That's a weird way to phrase that.

Wait a minute.

What is this?

The source you're reading from here?

This is the website postwrestling.com.

Is this an overseas site?

Is there a translator

issue?

I believe it's from Canada.

Okay, so there's a translator issue from the Canadian.

Go ahead.

This was from the Power and Glory podcast.

She spoke about getting back into the mix of pro wrestling after receiving the Trailblazer Award from the International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame.

That led to her being contacted by AEW President Tony Khan.

And she revealed that Khan signed her to AEW for a year.

The fuck?

Chatterton stated she never did anything for the company.

So here's a quote from this previously said interview.

So finally I said, okay, guys, I'll do this one show for you guys, this one event for you guys, and then I'm done.

Don't ask me again.

I'll do the first one.

I'll do whatever I can for you, but leave me alone.

I don't want this.

It's over.

I think she's talking about the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, but I'm not sure.

My dreams ended a long time ago.

I once dreamt of being in the WWF Hall of Fame.

That never happened.

Okay, I'm in the international pro wrestling.

You know, it's a shame.

That it's not 40 years later if she was related or involved with anybody.

She could get in.

I don't know when did she think she was going into the WWE Hall of Fame?

It didn't exist until 1993, and that was after she came out publicly against Vince.

It wasn't a combat.

I don't, I, you know, maybe she's just

saying, I, at one point, would have dreamed of being in the Hall of Fame, but they had faces then, and my dreams were dashed on the rocks.

But go ahead.

Okay, I'm in this International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame now.

But anyway, I turn around and I do this event for him, Seth Turner.

I get the Trailblazer Award.

And then, you know, it's kind of like riding a Harley because it's in your blood.

And it started creeping back into my blood.

And I'm like, eh.

So a few weeks after that, Seth calls me and says, Rita, there's this guy.

He's trying to get a hold of you.

He wants your phone number.

And I said, really?

Who's that?

Jesus, now wait a minute.

What kind of fucking phone conversation is this?

Were they paying for the minute?

He says, well, his name is Tony Khan.

Oh, no.

Who the hell is Tony Khan?

That doesn't even sound right.

I don't know what that means.

What does that mean?

Fuck.

Let me jump back into this article here.

He says, no, Rita, you should probably take his call.

And I said, why do I want to take his call?

He says, well, he owns the Jacksonville Jaguars.

He says, well, he also owns AEW Wrestling.

Okay, okay, I said.

Give him my phone number.

So he gives him my number, and I don't hear anything.

And a couple weeks later, I get this phone call, and I look, and I don't know the number.

Then I'm thinking about it.

I said, let me call that number back.

So I call it back.

It's Tony Khan.

So Tony Khan and I had a nice long talk, and I was under contract with him for a year.

Very nice man.

Gentleman.

Very, very nice man.

And that's how I ended up getting back involved in wrestling.

So it was just a crazy story.

And then here's another quote.

You know what?

I was under contract with him.

I was under contract with him for a year and I did absolutely nothing.

I did absolutely nothing.

She laughed.

And he wanted me under contract, so I was under contract with him.

We'll stop there for a moment.

She got back in wrestling by doing absolutely nothing except somebody paying her.

And

was it supposed to be as a female referee?

I mean, I don't know this woman, but if she was a referee 40 years ago, she'd have to be in her 60s.

Well, hold on.

Let me have one last little bit here.

This may explain the end of it and we can discuss it.

Accompanying Chatterton for this interview was Mario Mancini, who spent time in the WWF.

He said Chatterton had a talent scout contract.

He would put wrestlers in front of her.

Well, here's the quote.

Mancini says, it says talent scout.

And I'm like, all right, Rita, I'm going to throw as many people at you as I can.

I said, I'm just going to throw as many people at you as I can.

And every now and then, I'd go, what are you doing?

And she's like, I'm just sitting at home.

And then she said, just sitting here waiting.

And she went, I did go to a couple of football games, though, because he owns the Jaguars.

And then finally, Rita Chatterton said, in fact, I just went a couple of weeks ago to a Jaguars game.

This was recorded in December of 2024.

In January 2023, Wall Street Journal reported that Vince McMahon reached a multi-million dollar settlement with Chatterton.

Again, we don't know what we don't know.

But it has caused some people to question,

did Rita Chatterton have someone behind her with some money that made sure that Vincent Mann couldn't fuck with her with the lawsuit?

And that's why there was a settlement?

Well, and

let's examine this just on the face of it.

Let's say that nobody involved in the proceedings behind the scenes was some nefarious arch criminal trying to cover up past crimes.

The International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame gave her a Trailblazer award, which was a nice thing.

And, you know, it's the International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame.

And nobody's arguing that that shouldn't have taken place.

I think when she says, well, then it got back in my blood again.

Did I mention that maybe she's a woman in at least her early 60s?

And I don't know if she should start rethinking whatever her current path is to,

or was this a few years ago.

And I mean a few, like what, two or three, four,

she got put in the Hall of Fame

right about the same time as all this other stuff going on.

But

Tony Kahn

calling her up and saying, oh, I want to sign you up.

I mean, it was a nice way of, maybe he read about the induction.

He read about her story and how she'd been treated.

And he wanted to

give her some money.

And

I'm not saying that's not a nice thing to do.

And that's what he did, apparently, because she didn't do anything for it but

what did she expect to do why would again why would Rita Chatterton be qualified to be a talent scout in modern professional wrestling today in the same way as I said why would I classify to be in the international photography hall of fame or the what we were talking about the hall of fame issues because you've had a peripheral

association with a given field doesn't mean that everybody's a shoe-in for fucking iconic status.

So I think she should have realized that it was a gift, I would think, pretty quick, right?

And that's what it had to be was a gift because

he didn't have her do anything.

And what would she have fucking done?

I mean, he could have had a, I mean, I'm not saying this would have been worth the value of an annual contract, but he could have had her make an appearance as, you know, the first ever nationally known female referee here to supervise one of the referees or just some kind of thing on the show.

There wasn't even that.

Well, and you know, maybe I would have got more heat on her because then all the boys under contract, all boys and girls, the talent under contract would have said, Jesus Christ, this fucking matronly 60-year-old woman just made fucking $250,000 to goddamn come out and wave it to fans.

I just went through a fucking table on my head.

And then that causes all kinds of ill will.

And she might have got her house egged over that one.

You know how those mean kids are.

Or the rest of the talent may have gotten a big raise.

You know, it's...

It's Tony Khan you're talking about.

I mean, come on.

Well, it's amazing that he actually could do that.

He could just, you know, if everybody revolted and said, we'll all leave tomorrow, he could double their salary and still has the money to fucking pay it.

If Tony Khan.

was ever able to get the booking and the management of the company straight.

And that's always been the big problem, and it always will be.

He has the ability to do some remarkable things to help wrestling,

make the lives better for former wrestlers and current wrestlers.

Like, he has the ability to do all that.

And then all of a sudden, AEW is an incredibly attractive place to work for.

It's not just about the money, but there is the money, and you got to use that.

Again, going back to my other thing,

is it crazy to think that maybe Tony Khan heard she was suing Vince and said, I want to support her?

No, I think

indirectly.

Now, did he also,

she wouldn't be able to say whether he did or not.

Did he also do that?

Or he just figured, oh, if I put her on contract, it'll pay her lawyer.

That type of thing.

If she was going to Jaguar games, does she live?

I mean, was he flying her to Jacksonville?

If she went to multiple games?

Or did she live down there?

See, I don't know.

I don't.

Well, she was from New England.

Originally, yeah.

Originally, but people do as they age, they move down south and, you know, get a condo at Del Boca Vista.

I don't know where the lady lives.

And that's her business.

And we're not going to reveal her address to

813 Mockingbird Lane.

I'm not trying to expose her or where she is at all.

That wasn't my intention, but

Tony Khan paying.

I mean, it's not surprising that Tony Khan would just put someone under contract.

The fact is, we don't know who's under contract.

He's got people under contract that he never never sees and doesn't have to do anything, and they're supposed to be on television.

So why wouldn't, you know,

maybe it's he's he's setting up, you know, the motion picture country home.

Yes.

Out in California, where, you know, the aging movie stars were always allowed to go to live out their golden years when they couldn't take care.

Maybe he should set up a

pro wrestler country home.

Put him somewhere out in Montana, though, because they could, boy, if they put him in any decent place, there goes the neighborhood.

Well, but you know what, a ranch where they could roam like the polo ponies and roam free.

There ain't no retirement plan in wrestling.

You know what?

You know what?

People should have a fallback plan, a backup plan.

They should switch subjects and go to things that can make them money, right?

Hey, Jim, you know what that means?

That's exactly what I'm switching to something that can make you money.

Because if you need to get out of the business that you're in that has a dead-end future, such as professional wrestling or anything else, I mean, if you're just, if you're just butting your head against a proverbial wall, ladies and gentlemen, and thinking, I got ideas, I got dreams, I got hopes, I got aspirations, but now I got perspiration because I'm working too hard for the man.

Underneath his thumb, I want to branch out on my own and let my wings spread and fly away.

I want to fly away.

I want to fly.

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That's what I just said.

I'm reinforcing that.

I think it needs no reiteration.

It stood on its its own as a declarative statement.

I wasn't reiterating, I was reinforcing.

It's a different, it's enforcement.

Well, it's like one of those interviews that gets shoved out or whatever.

What did they say?

They shoved that interview, pushed it out.

They pushed out this interview.

It wasn't ready to stand on its own yet, but it was a sink or swim situation.

Speaking of pushing people out,

and since we were talking about

Conland,

I heard

over the last week or so.

Is it true?

I find this hard to believe that they've actually

released people over there in AEW land.

I mean, this doesn't really happen usually unless someone is going to be on the next episode of Amazing Discoveries with Robert Stack or something as a fucking guy with 16 bodies buried in their fucking crawl space.

Well, that's right.

AEW

made,

I guess, for the first time ever, just a group of releases in one day, similar to how WWE had just done it.

We just did a segment talking about all the people that WWE just released.

Well, yeah, but they've done it before.

That's right.

And they'll do it again.

And they've been doing it for years.

But yet, you almost never hear of we actually let this person go.

Now, people disappear.

We talked to one recently that disappeared.

I don't know whether that means that they're gone as as far as on the payroll, but there's a lot of people out there in

limbo, in the Phantom Zone.

You never hear about anybody really getting released unless there's been a few in the past that have just committed egregious crimes against the state.

Well, the names that AEW released are not big surprises.

They are names that people assumed, in some cases, wanted to leave.

They are names that people assumed Tony Khan refused to release because he knew they wanted to leave.

I guess Tony Khan would rather keep people off TV than have them on TV doing jobs or anything.

And in the case, maybe not everyone wanted to do jobs, but let's talk about the first name.

Miro,

39 years old, has been released finally from AEW.

He posted a picture on Twitter of him.

I think he posted it or Seamus posted it.

It's him and Seamus hanging out.

So he's back with his old gang.

But But Miro.

Wait a minute.

That could be completely unrelated.

Do we know if news of Miro's release has made it to Miro all the way in fucking Bulgaria?

Well, we don't know if he's still in Bulgaria, but.

He was there for a while while he was still under contract getting paid.

Miro was a guy who AEW immediately brought in.

And although AEW fans tried to defend it, if you go back and look, you immediately called it out.

He showed up wearing pajamas.

pajamas it looked like pajamas i don't care how much it cost he didn't look like a star and he was involved in a feud where him and kip sabian

love video games and they were feud i don't even remember who they were feuding who they feuded with oh who knows and the and the the penelope was there with them as their little sidekick and it was so childish and They were all made to look like buffoons.

And remember where they had a fight with supposedly in an arcade but they tipped the video game the big stand-up video game over it was empty

they were just prop shit yeah that was an early example of their bad television special effects and

then that went on for so long that it he just became a rib and by the time that at that one point that they

kept him off for a while and it brought him back as a beast and a monster,

Well, that was getting over, but then I guess that was all part of the plan, Smithers, that he wanted him to sign his wife, too,

so they could do that odd angle that he'd been talking about in promos where he was mad at God and his hot, flexible wife.

I don't know what the fuck.

It never went anywhere because the booking didn't get behind it.

And then when they finally did bring her in and started doing something, they weren't together.

They were apart.

But we never found out the resolution of that because

I don't know what happened first, but then they ended up firing her.

And then Miro and who's he what's he broke up

and then and now he just got released.

He hadn't wrestled there in a fucking year.

And reportedly.

And reportedly there were problems with him not being happy with the creative that he was given.

So his solution was to not do anything.

Well, but I'm wondering, I would wouldn't have been happy at all with the creative that I was given if that was not his creative when he came in working with Pip Sabian and the fucking video gang.

But if they started his other shit,

if that was his shit, it never really made a lot of sense and it never went anywhere while I had the chance.

And then they fire the wife.

And then what the fuck is going?

But at some point, if you're going to pay a guy to live in bulgaria for a year he has it come in here and do something brother because

i'm sending you the checks you ain't taking me the bumps looking at it from the other side from the wwe side because everyone presumes that's where he's going

if you're wwe does he retain the same value he once had do you see him because he hasn't been on tv as someone you can kind of give a fresh push to does he have any stink of aew on him or does it not matter what do you think of your wwe

does he return to being lusev or does he keep the name miro what is his real name

well but that's they're probably not going to let that fly because that would be something they couldn't trademark

um

here's the thing it's been so long

since that he's been on aew television and the last run he had he was basically just beating people up he i don't remember him getting beat a lot

he still didn't wrestle a lot at that point, besides throwing people around.

So, you know, and the audience for the WWE, especially now, is so much larger and all that.

The question is:

is he one of these guys that

wants to be involved and creative regardless of

where he's at?

Or was it just because this place was such a madhouse?

You want me to do what?

I listened to you about Penelope and whatever the fuck.

Whatever his issue there was, if he is a person who will

go into the WWE and say, yes, sir, that's my baby, and no, sir, I don't mean maybe,

then I'm sure they would probably investigate bringing him back

because it's another fresh fucking monster.

They're firing on all cylinders, whatever.

But if he's a problem child in general who wants to be,

you know, the producer, director, fucking star, then they don't need him.

So he might be back in Bulgaria.

But that's just me.

We shall see what happens with Miro.

Again, he's someone who has been under contract and not around.

I mean, the big story is that they made releases and they released people in a group, or at least it came out publicly as a group release.

But Tony probably should have done this.

specifically for Miro a long time ago.

I mean, he paid him for no reason.

Yeah, and and I mean,

if Miro was happy with it, because he got to go to Bulgaria for an extended paid vacation, and how much money must his contract be because he's another guy that had a WWE

reputation that Tony got and he could play with that brand new toy.

And so is he made a half a million dollars?

Is that low?

Who knows what the fuck per year

to go home and visit his Bulgarian relatives

and get over the loss of his hot, flexible wife.

Well, Jim AEW this week, in their round of releases, also released Malachi Black,

39 years old,

formerly Aleister Black in NXT and WWE.

I believe he was released, or he was one of the people.

Let me see here.

Black and Miro were released along with Buddy Matthews, William Regal, Keith Lee, and Swerve Strickland by Vince Vince McMahon.

And now everyone also presumes Malachi Black is going to go back to WWE.

Unlike Miro, who I think interesting things could be done with.

I'm not saying they couldn't do anything with Malachi, but I kind of got really sick of him in the limited times he was around in AEW.

But

what do you think of Malachi Black, or I guess it'll be Aleister Black again,

leaving AEW, being released by AEW at this point, and of course, potentially going back to WWE, where his wife works.

His name may be Mudd right about now, instead of Alistair or Malachi or whatever.

This was a shocking surprise.

Malachi Black leaves AEW.

That's the one that people have been expecting probably most for a while because he hadn't made any secret of it.

And there hadn't been any hidden,

you know,

part of Malachi Black is leaving to the point where they went ahead and repackaged his minions or followers or group disciples, whatever the fuck, already on television without him moving on past him before he was even officially released.

So it's not like this is a,

you know, sudden in the middle of the night, I just woke up, docking the pain.

And he's wanted to get out of there.

The question is,

has he wanted to get out of there because he knows he's got a deal, or has he just wanted to get out of there because he was pissed off and disillusioned?

But I'm because I'm like, you

unless, again, he's another guy that will go back into the WWE system and be produced.

And

we saw what when he was doing his own shit with this whole house of black thing and the fucking teleportation and the flashing light and the spooky and the, we don't know what the fuck.

He can't be responsible for him.

You can't let little Malachi

out by himself.

I've told you that a million times.

He needs constant guidance or he's going to run into the mailbox.

So if he'll go in and be produced in the WWE and they've got something for him that didn't involve whatever the fuck it was that he was doing,

then maybe you could get something.

But is he, again, an auteur?

Never met the fellow.

He certainly had a lot of ideas.

And,

you know, again, I wonder if he's more of a headache.

I mean, I almost wonder

if some of this with the releases is Tony Khan doing what Vince once did.

Here are the headaches.

Please sign them.

Please take them on your roster and fuck up your locker room.

I don't know.

But I'm not a big Malachi fan.

I've tried, but

he's low-key boring.

You don't expect him to bore the shit out of you, and then he bores the shit out of you.

His promos are all this.

This very careful whisper.

Again, maybe he's being produced, but I still won't like it.

I don't know.

Not big on him going back to WWE.

He'll get to work with punk.

I'm sure they both want to do that.

But

again, I didn't see the value in the House of Black or Malachi Black and AEW.

Well, but now

we've been fooled before.

And you know what they say?

Fool me once, shame on you, but we won't get fooled again.

When the change is made from from one stage to the other,

because of the new venue and the

better overall support crew, you know, these things can happen.

A turd can bloom into a rose.

Well, Jim, the other big name that AEW released, and this is one that a lot of people were clamoring for, Ricky Starks.

He was released apparently on February 10th.

Well, where in the world is he going to be able to go?

I mean, he might be out of the business.

Why?

He has no fallback plan.

Well, he'll never, we won't see him for months and months.

As I was saying, he was released on February 10th.

The next night he was on NXT.

The next night he was on NXT, a surprise debut.

Of course, Ricky Starks was the World Tag Team Champion in AEW with Big Bill.

Abruptly, they weren't.

And then Ricky Starks is off TV.

Big Bill went to work with Jericho.

One of the things that plagued Ricky Starks is running AEW, Chris Jericho.

Starks was home.

People were wondering why he wasn't there.

He was doing interviews.

He was doing interviews.

He didn't even really seem to know what the hell was going on.

And then he made a couple of indie appearances, announced he was going to be at GCW, and then AEW pulled him.

And now they've released him and he has found a new home.

What do you think of all this of Ricky Starks?

What do you think of Ricky Starks' future in an NXT or a WWE?

Well, I did see this clip of Starks coming into the

arena as a surprise.

The announcers were like, oh my gosh,

look who that is.

And the people,

and of course, this is the,

I guess it's still where they do NXT is the performance center, right?

Or their own building, regular building.

And it's a regular crowd.

And it's like the OVW crowd I used to have in Louisville.

They're regular and they're the

crowd that is most forgiving of their local show there.

But they hit their feet and they gave him a round of applause and they cheered and they chanted, Ricky, Ricky, and Lucy, Lucy.

And,

you know, but it was over there.

And he came out.

He's been working out.

His arms looked great.

He looked like a star.

He was put together.

He did a little short promo, just putting himself over the old classic new star coming into a territory.

He cuts promo to put himself over and makes people want to watch out for him.

And the fans there loved it on the show.

And that's,

if they'd have been taping NXT at 2 a.m.

in the morning in a parking lot in Des Moines the day after he got his release, he would have been there.

You know, he's been waiting for that.

And I'm sure Cody has put in a word.

And

I'm sure Cody put in a word about his plight of his friend being stuck in his company that he didn't want to be in, that he has to offer,

that he, you know, had been constantly fucking put into goofy shit.

He and Big Bill were an off-brand tag team that they put together.

And remember, we said, even that kind of,

okay, this, this could work.

The little mouthy guy and the big guy, and they were the tag team champions.

And then, because Sting had to, well, I don't say Sting had to,

because all of the lollipop guild

had to

shoehorn their way into Sting's retirement and then pay him the homage of retiring as tag team champion as the biggest honor of his life.

They took the belts off Big Bill and Starks.

It could have might have done something with them.

And for the Buckaroos to drop them at the pay-per-view.

And meanwhile, then Starks and Big Bill break up and Starks goes away and never to be seen again.

And that's been a year that they paid him when he didn't want to be there and they obviously weren't going to use him, but hindering him from

going anywhere else.

And some, you know,

when the WWE does it, in some cases, it's still prickish,

but you kind of expect it more and you can understand it better because

you expect them to be a heartless business corporation.

and hold you to every term that they can hold you to.

But also, at the same point, especially with the new administration, unless you've really been buried by the fucking booking and like, get me the fuck out of here,

you know, you've had probably a better chance there at doing something than you're going to have over here, where it's just chaos all the time.

And who's going to be on Tony's radar this week?

But

either use the guy for a year to pay him,

either have the balls to do something,

use him,

make him do jobs if you have to, or just let him fucking go because he don't want to be there and it's just going to be a downer.

You want to talk about something that exemplifies the problem with so much in AEW.

One of the last segments I remember, Ricky Stark's in the ring, there were security guards around him, and Edge had just arrived.

And he called Edge bug-eyed.

Not like just you, bug.

Like, it was in the midst of whatever he was saying.

It was a promo.

Edge didn't take it very well and went and just shut Starks down.

That didn't help anything.

And you know what?

Whatever he meant and whatever he means in other places, Ricky Starks meant more to AEW and could have meant a whole lot more than Cope.

And AEW blew it.

That was a guy that AEW had from what, 2020?

During the pandemic.

He challenged Cody, right?

Wasn't he?

He was one of the TNT title challengers for Cody at Daly's place.

They had a lot of chances with him as a babyface and as a heel.

It's amazing.

Him and MJF, the biggest feud that MJF never had that had a false start and the fans were into it was Ricky Starks.

The fans were ready for it, and then it just went away.

Was that when Starks got dragged into working with Jericho?

I don't even remember.

I can't either.

You'd have to have an

annotated glossary to keep up with his comings and goings.

They didn't say his name on NXT.

What do you think of that?

Well, I think they're probably,

they were probably wanting to gauge public reaction, and maybe they're going to do some kind of outsider thing.

If they had thoughts of

giving him a different name when the people started, were chanting it over and over on television.

They might want to rethink that.

I think people, that's part of

the nice part of getting somebody that people already know and know who they are and are predisposed to like and be into

on your show is you don't change their name and confuse the people I was just talking about that might be into him.

You take advantage of it.

Yeah,

so they might

maybe they're thinking, maybe that was a dry run.

Who knows?

But

that's where he's wanted to go.

And that's why I'm saying that I'm sure that Cody has put a word in for him as being a valuable talent that has been stuck in an untenable situation for some time that

that cody or other people can vouch for and

so he cut uh

he cut out some of the transition time that guys usually have going from one place to the next they were 24 hours right or wrong that ricky starks had any heat in aew with people for appearing on that security camera footage with Cody and if the roles were reversed, how would WWE react if one of their wrestlers were caught on security camera backstage backstage at an AEW show?

Well,

remember, I think we had this discussion a while back, and I hope, hopefully, my views haven't changed.

But if it was in public,

that would be

an issue with me, regardless whether your friends or not or whatever the fuck.

I don't know that.

They reasonably thought that the building security camera footage would be leaked of

Starks coming in the back with Cody.

And at the same time, even being seen.

So when you used to, in the territory days, if

one of the big companies would run a town and one of the guys from the local territory that was going out of business would be there, or just a guy would show up in the territory days when they were strong that wasn't booked in that territory, but he was one of the boys and he'd just show up to visit.

That was generally looked down upon because it was the most obvious form of job fishing and showed that you were desperate and seldom worked.

But

I didn't like the sheepwhere, the bush, with the

Australian, the damn man from down under, what was his name?

Vegemite, the guy that was on the TNA TV.

No, he was Scottish.

Wasn't Australian.

He was the Highlander fellow.

When he was out in the audience with the fans at WrestleMania weekend in TNA's TV taping in Orlando, you know, that was fair game,

you know, because they fired him.

But, you know,

I don't think, again,

Tony and the rest of those guys and girls in that company are such fans not only of wrestling around the world, but of supporting their friends that they often have friends in Japan going to their matches or friends here and there.

But I think if it was a public situation, the other companies, the other side shouldn't be seen in public by the fans of the general people.

But if it was going in the back of the building, I think that was

not something to make a huge deal at it.

We'll see how big a boy Starks is.

That's what we'll see.

Hey, real quick, just because I'm looking through the new observer that came out.

Let me just get your thoughts on this on Miro.

I'm looking at this story as we're we're talking about this.

It was pretty clear Miro wanted to do an angle with his wife CJ Perry since he referenced her all the time in AEW promos

before she started with the company after she was let go by WWE.

Yeah, it was God and his hot wife is what he

got across most

of his promos.

WWE had contacted Perry about returning as a wrestler starting in early 2022,

but both believe from their booking mentor that they were better off together, either as a team or as rivals, both of which they did in WWE.

Miro got Tony Khan to hire her with the idea of a storyline where they were separated and would be apart, but in the end, they would end up together trying to revive the Rusev Lana dynamic.

that was the high point of both of their careers at the end of 2023.

He was also injured and went back to Bulgaria for a few months.

And then,

soon after she turned on Andrade at World's End,

neither were ever seen again.

They were apparently under the impression that they would reunite and the pair would be pushed to the top.

And that never happened.

Those close to him.

said he was constantly pitching angles for the two of them and not getting anywhere.

And then they let her go.

So that made things worse.

And in August, he made it clear he wanted out with the firing of her and not following up on the angle.

So he had been trying to get released since then.

And there had been no talk in months regarding him returning to television.

Again, he's going back to WWE.

Lana's a free agent.

They're divorced now, but they still want to work together, apparently.

And everything he does, he wants to do it with her.

And

his booking mentor, whoever that unnamed person is.

Well, that's what I was about to say.

What is that

vague shrouded comment?

Their booking me, who would be the booking mentor

of Miro?

Because I don't, I didn't follow him earlier on in his career.

I mean, he came from, you know, wrestling school.

Did he go to wrestling school?

Was he some Heyman pet project?

Is that what Dave's vaguely referring to, his booking mentor?

Can you see Heyman saying that?

Can you see Heyman saying that the only thing for you to do is work with CJ?

Well, no, well, I mean, it depends on whether that's what Miro wanted to hear and Paul wanted to fucking get rid of him.

I don't know what their relationship is.

Paul could say anything to anybody if it fit his interests.

That's a great way to sabotage AEW.

No, no, no, that's not a good idea.

Anything you do, you have to get her involved.

Just promos about her.

Definitely.

Don't go anywhere without her.

That's the key to success.

She was more over than him when they started doing.

I mean, it's all a mess, but we'll see what happens.

More to come in the WWE, but this is your show.

Well, no, actually, that's more TNA, or not TNA.

Now, goddammit.

So many initials run through it.

More AEW because he just got...

Got out of AEW.

We don't know if he's going to WWE yet.

But before we go any further, and we're, folks, we're still...

Ash Abelson, part two, the director and major domo of Queen of the Ring is coming up.

And also, we're going to delve into some of Uncle Dave's

readership's train of thought and where they're ahead, what space their heads are in, man, with the Wrestling Observer Awards yet to come.

But even though I didn't watch the program, did anybody else watch

Dynamite from AEW this past Wednesday night?

What was it?

Wednesday, the

12th of February.

What was the story from people over at Nielsen?

By the way, is that the guy from Cheap Trick?

Does he own that joint?

Were you a Cheap Trick fan at all?

I mean, I know it was your time, I guess, but not necessarily,

not necessarily the style of music you talk about going to see or really embracing.

Well, every once in a while, I would want you to want me or whatever that fucking thing was.

But no, not necessarily a very close Cheap Trick fan, but I thought that would segue you into telling me about how cheap a trick Tony Khan and his AEW crowd was the other night.

You thought I would surrender.

Very good.

Very good.

I must admit I'm defeated on the cheap trick trivia.

Well, mom's all right.

Dad's all right, but Tony's a little strange.

All right a little weird, I should say.

Tony's getting a little bit weird.

Let's go to the AEW ratings.

And again, you did not see this.

I did.

I have to say, I thought this was a better AEW dynamite than it had been.

Oh, are you ribbing what?

I've missed one of these things in like how many fucking years?

There were several.

And it was a good one.

Well, no, let me just make sure I phrase this right.

And you'll know more with the quarter-hour breakdowns.

But there were things on this episode I thought were really good.

But then there was also the usual nonsense.

And then...

Knowing Tony likes to cycle people on and off, you know, it's like a matter of days before Orange Cassidy pops up again.

But anyway, let's go.

Oh, my God.

I hadn't thought about him for a few weeks, and that was so pleasant.

But well, tell me more about whether Tony was on his cycle or not.

AEW Dynamite on TBS, Wednesday, February 12, 2025, 8 to 10 p.m.

According to WrestleNomics, on average, 579,000 viewers.

Oh, geez, they were back up over 600,000 the last few weeks, right?

Not much, but they were there.

They were at 605 last week, so this is 4% down from that.

And the trailing four-week average, again, according to WrestleNomics, 636,000 viewers, not including Max.

Somehow, these numbers are exactly the same as what they were before Max, but it doesn't include Max.

Well, maybe Max is not being included because there ain't nobody on Max.

Well, let's go to the.

One would think there would almost have to be, but

they don't

it's it's

again

there's no jump in ticket sales or there's no

there's no perceptible change in any way if there was some new viewership pool.

And and conversely, over and I'll let you get back to the numbers in a second, but they've seen incredible leaps in the advances on in the WWE and the live events, TV tabs, since they've been on Netflix.

But I don't know.

Who am I?

Just a small-town bird lawyer.

Give me your numbers there, bean counter.

And they had a hot crowd.

They were in Texas.

And I have to say, it was a really hot crowd, and that helped.

Well, yeah, because have you ever been to Texas in February?

It can be warm down there.

Quarter one, eight to eight.15 p.m.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Max Caster's live promo, Adam Page vs.

Max Caster, the Ricochet Backstage promo,

and the Death Riders versus the Undisputed Kingdom with picture-in-picture ads.

676,000 viewers.

Well, they started much lower than normal.

And also, I've now known that I do not regret missing the first 15 minutes of the program.

The Max Caster stuff could be something.

He's got like a wacky personality that you could see connecting.

I don't know about the way they're doing it, that he's the greatest wrestler alive and he gets killed and he runs from everybody.

I don't know, but

he has something.

But we go to quarter two.

Maybe penicillin might cure it.

8:15 to 8:30 p.m.

The continuation of the Death Riders versus Undisputed Kingdom.

The post-match with Daniel Garcia, Matt Menard, Angelo Parker,

Cope, Jay White.

Oh, no, excuse me, this is a separate thing.

So that was that angle of Matt.

And Tits McGee.

And again, I'm not a fan.

And Arnold Finster.

And again, I'm not a fan of the Death Riders.

I'm not a fan of the Undisputed Kingdom.

The fans there were really into it, so it made it better than it would normally be.

It was a hot crowd.

But then in the back, Cope and Jay White's angle with Jon Moxley and Marina Shafir.

What happened here, Jim, was

Cope and Jay White snuck up on Moxley and Marina in the back, knocked Moxley out of the way, pushed Marina into a room, but kept the briefcase on the other side of the door, and then cut it loose.

So they got the briefcase with presumably the AEW World Heavyweight Championship.

So they did the old deal where they slammed the door on the arm and got the case away from the person with the case.

Marina, yes.

Well, that's happened in every gangster movie I've ever seen from Warner Brothers.

Well, we'll find out what happens, but we're going to add a quarter three.

Did I give the rating?

Oh, I did not.

No, I don't think you did.

648,000 viewers.

Well, apparently, then 28,000 people said, we don't believe that.

We've already seen it in the old gangster movies from the Warner Brothers.

We go to quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

Pre-code.

MJF and Adam Page's backstage angle.

You know, you can almost, you can almost see, like,

no, seriously, you can almost see nipples on some 1932 gangster movies where they're wearing those sheer dresses, the flappers, and they didn't have to wear a bra.

Once again, quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

Very nipply back in those days.

MJF and Adam Page's backstage angle.

They bumped into each other again and they've had some words.

Aaron Solo and John Cruz and Rosario Grillo

versus Hook, Shibata and Samoa Joe.

By the way, that John Cruz guy, that was the guy that was the tag team partner with the job guy in North Carolina you had a problem with.

This show was in Texas.

Did they fly him?

Is he being flown to shows this guy?

Either that or is he a member of the fucking merch staff?

Hey, you got some tights again tonight?

That's what it looked like.

And also, Samoa Joe is back, a major league talent, and he's in six mans against job guys with Shapoopy and Hook.

Well, then it was Joe's live promo, followed by Chris Jericho's backstage promo, an ad break, the Willow Nightingale Marina Shafir confrontation where Jon Moxley was also there,

615,000 viewers.

Ooh, and another 33,000, say see ya.

We go to quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.

And Barbara Stanwick, by the way, she was a hottie back in 1932.

I'll have you know.

Well, you know, Thelma Todd at least had a sense of humor.

That was my kind of woman.

But let's go to uh.

And boy, I'll tell you what, she looked like she's up for anything, too, old Thelma.

How dare you speak ill of Thelma?

It's too soon.

8:45 to 9 p.m., quarter four.

The film geeks are loving it today.

A reminder, Jim, Chris Jericho just pointed out that nine out of ten times, his quarters are up.

Uh-huh.

That was a quote.

The Learning Tree Outrunners Bandito Powerhouse Hobbs Live angle.

Jesus.

Followed by Cope and Jay White's promo, an ad break, Dustin Rhodes' backstage promo, and the beginning of Dustin vs.

MJF.

544,000 viewers.

Jesus Christ on a cracker, there's another 71,000 people before the top of the 9 o'clock hour and at the start of MJF's match.

That's not good at all.

Yeah, there's another lesson from the learning tree.

We go down a quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour, nine to nine.15 p.m.

Dustin Rhodes versus MJF.

And then the post-match Adam Page, MJF angle.

They had a pull apart where they kept going after each other.

The fans were into it.

596,000 viewers.

And so they got

52,000 back at the top of the hour.

Maybe they

realized that the Jericho thing was over with, and they got on it.

There's a phone network where they get on the phone to each other and say, okay, Jericho's been on.

You can switch back over now.

Somebody takes one for the team, and then everybody else switches back over to watch MJF.

By the way, MJF Dustin was presented commercial-free.

As it should be.

We go down to quarter six, 9.15 to 9.30.

Well, Dustin himself said he's an older man.

He hadn't got a lot of time left.

Don't need to sell any Franks and beans in the middle of his matches.

Are you going to watch that match or no?

I may have to go back and watch that now that I remember that it took place.

So I won't spoil the finish there.

Quarter six, 9.15.

I'm sure they did that for me.

9.15 and 9.30 p.m.

An ad break.

Megan Bain versus Maya World.

And welcome to it.

Megan Bain is worth watching.

Impressive, has size, has stature.

Let's see how they mess this up.

Penelope Ford versus Chris Statlander with picture and picture.

And there was a confrontation coming and going between Megan Bain and Chris Statlander.

560,000 viewers.

And they're headed back down south.

There's another 36,000, but they still started low, so they're only 116,000 down from the start.

We're going at a quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The continuation of Penelope Ford versus Chris Statlander.

The post-match with Megan Bain.

The Harley Cameron music video.

I don't even know if you'd say music video, just video.

The Harley Cameron video, which may be worth you watching.

You can see how talented she is.

Followed by the start of the Hurt Syndicate versus the guns,

533,000 viewers.

Ooh,

I wish that Pfeffer had pushed the Fargos the way you push Harley Cameron, but apparently it didn't salvage another 27,000 people from jumping off the ship.

I thought that was a big test.

There was a lot of women's stuff just back to back to back.

And it was going to really be a test of the audience.

Normally, you like to have your women back to front.

Let's go now to quarter eight.

That reminds you, we have have a five-minute overrun, 9.45 to 10 p.m.

The Hurt Syndicate versus the Guns continued with picture-in-picture ads.

The post-match confrontation with Lance Archer and Brian Cage.

Mariah May's backstage promo.

An ad break.

And then Cope's live promo.

492,000 viewers.

Oh.

Five-minute overrun.

Cope and Jay White threatening to destroy.

You got to see this.

Threatening to destroy the briefcase they stole with, I guess he used it in WWE and I didn't like that shit back then, so I didn't really watch.

A giant board with spikes at the end of it that apparently we're supposed to know.

No one reacted to it at all.

And he starts banging on it like that in any way was going to open this fucking case.

It was the stupidest way anyone could ever try to open a briefcase or any kind of fucking suitcase or anything.

And naturally, it opened nothing.

And eventually, the Death Riders were able to get their suitcase back.

It was kind of cat and mouse.

And they got it back?

It was a little bit of cat and mouse for a while.

Like, how are they going to do this?

I think they got it back.

I just remember the stupid board.

But five-minute overrun 478,000 viewers.

Oh, my God.

188 in a key demo.

They only started with 676,000 people, and they still lost right at 200,000 viewers over the course of the thing and

dropped below 400,000 at the end.

For is this the second week in a row?

Well,

that's a terrible thing.

You know, I said there was good stuff on the show.

I like the Hurt Send.

They could stuff with the guns, but they put that after the back-to-back women segments.

They got killed by the placement.

The Moxley stuff is not causing anyone to want to watch.

No one's willing to sit through through anything to see the continuation of whatever story they've concocted.

MJF and Adam Page

is something the AEW fans seem to be into.

So that stuff is worth seeing, but

the Death Rider stuff remains death.

Just remains awful.

You know what they got to do, Brian?

They got to beef up these ratings.

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They need more protein in their ratings is what they need.

Don't you agree?

I agree that most of us need more protein.

It's always good to get

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How's that work?

Because that way they give the ratings some protein and that way that would beef up the ratings.

I don't know if that's going to, why wouldn't you just give the ratings beef?

Well, because that's not healthy either.

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What?

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Oh, all the time.

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Well, the fishes are almost ready to come out.

Well, no, hold on.

Let's make sure we say it here that this is a fine, fine, a wonderful and delicious, to be quite honest, delicious protein shake.

It's not going to cure any sort of wacky mystery ailment you have.

You know what I mean?

Well,

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That's right.

Speaking of the proper channels, and now we will get to, I've got an update on the movie that I'm starring in shortly that's about to escape or be released.

The Queen of the Ring.

We talked in the week since we've talked about it, the world premiere on Tuesday, February 25th in Louisville, Kentucky is sold out.

And they have added a second showing.

I believe that's how they phrase it, or a second, not an airing, so it must be a showing.

They're at the same theater, AMC Stony Brook, here in Louisville, Kentucky.

And you can go to the Queen of the Ring movie site.

And I'm still trying to find out a little bit more information on details of any potential festivities going on, but we will get that out as quickly as possible.

But had to

put the movie so nice, they're going to have to show it twice.

And right here

in the the place that it was conceived in, that it was like in the product, as Stewie Griffin would say, of a drunken backseat grope fest.

It was conceived right here in Louisville, Kentucky.

And now it will be releasing generally

on March the 7th, but there's some premieres beforehand.

And we are going to pick up with, we had wanted to get this out earlier this past week.

part two of the talk that we had with the director, the screenwriter, he's in the movie, Ash Abaldson.

And Brian, unless there's anything technically I need to know, can we just go to part two of that discussion within just the whim of my asking for it?

I don't know if I should make a noise after you request the whim.

I don't know if that itself is the setup.

If it is, that was the whim.

If not, let's go now to a whimsical conversation.

The biggest star in the movie, when I was telling Brian about this,

fuck all the girls.

And

he wasn't interested in anybody except Martin Cove, the star of his all-time favorite movie, The Karate Kid.

It's a favorite, not my all-time favorite, but go overboard.

You said it was the seminal moment of your childhood.

Or when your childhood was inseminated or something that you said like that.

I still think it's ridiculous that here we are all these years later, you still haven't watched the Karate Kid.

So I don't even think you're in a position where you should be commenting on said Karate Kid

or any of the Cobra guys terrorizing him.

But yeah, Martin Cove.

I don't know what that is.

Yes,

Martin Cove has revolutionized the concept of Al Haft as we knew it.

Martin Cove is Al Haft.

That's why he was calling me Sam for Sam Muchnick.

He's a method actor.

Martin was,

you know, and for somebody, you know,

of my generation, he was the oldest person in the cast.

So I could, I could fucking identify.

We could actually speak to each other.

The kids were off playing with their phones.

But, you know,

again, you have

a mixture of active pro wrestlers, some that I never even saw.

They were shooting at different times than.

than I was on the set, but active pro wrestlers and then actresses and actors playing pro wrestlers.

And

they they seemed to kind of meld

pretty seamlessly.

All the acting talent seemed to be into telling this story and not rolling their eyes because it was the wrestling business.

Yeah,

no, all the, you know, the professional actors, if you will, they were all so great.

And I think they...

Some of them were pro-wrestling fans.

Others hadn't really ever spent any time prior to researching for the film in the world of pro wrestling.

But I think it's just a testament to how much this story transcends

any real sport.

It's just a fascinating true tale of this woman and her son and this really crazy world and the journey that they go on to try and defy the odds.

and achieve what they have in their hearts, not to be cliché, but I mean, that's kind of, you know, what we all want to do at some point

when we're growing up.

And then eventually,

for a lot of people, the world just beats you in the submission and you give up and you say, fuck it, I'm just going to do this.

But for Mildred, that was never an option.

She just said, I don't care what I have to do.

I don't care if it's illegal.

I don't care if I have to deal with

someone like Billy Wolf, which again, I tell people, you know, the elevator pitch of this is like, you know, Mildred was like a Tina Turner of pro wrestling.

It's the magic of what's love got to do with it.

I don't want to spoil anything in the second and third acts, but you guys will see what I mean by that.

You know, the elevator pitch, because people in Hollywood always like comps.

And I'm like, I hate comparing one piece of art to the next, but fine.

Elevator pitch is it's what's love got to do with it meets a league of their own with a true story Rocky third act.

And

she really was the Tina Turner of wrestling.

But it just shows you what people are willing to do

to get to where they want to go, you know,

for lack of a more

poetic term for it.

You guys had to soften Billy Wolf up a little bit, or you would have gotten an X rating.

If anything,

and it's still an impactful story, but

that's the thing.

Billy Wolf even stood out in the wrestling business of the time as a really just fucking disreputable son of a bitch.

Well, yeah, you know, it's interesting with the book.

So, anyone who has any interest in this story, if you see the movie or not, I highly recommend the book.

The book has so much drama.

We end the movie,

you know, when there's still 100 plus more pages to go in the book.

But the book,

there's a much harder R version of this movie, the sex, muscles, and diamonds of it all.

There's more abuse, there's more sex, there's more vulgarity.

I intentionally made the PG-13 version of Mildred's story because I felt that the most important and timeless and memorable parts of her story does not need to be R-rated.

And I remember as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, there were a lot of great PG-13 films that you could go see with relatives, parents, friends that could appeal to someone older and younger without being like, oh, here I am watching this PG movie with the kiddo or, oh, like, this is a crazy R movie.

This is going to be awkward because my, you know, my nephew's 14 or whatever.

I wanted to make the PG-13 version of Queen of the Ring because I believe that the story and the characters and all the most important beats all land, but that it can hopefully.

you know, get more great PG-13 stories

in wide theaters, especially as an independent film.

I mean, even just now, you know, we constantly look at what the other movies are that are going into the theaters around us because there's only so many screens throughout the country, right?

So a lot of for independent films, a lot of the game is luck of the draw of how other movies are performing, whether they're overperforming or underperforming, you know, the few weeks leading up to our release.

And there's very few PG-13 films that are out, especially on the indie side.

There's going to be Captain America, which comes out a few weeks before us, and then Woody Harrelson's film, Last Breath, about the true story diving accident the week prior.

But with the exception of those two PG-13 films that are wide, there's not much else out there.

There's a limited release coming from A24 that looks really great called On Becoming a Gaining Foul, this PG-13, but there's just not a lot.

So I purposely toned Billy down, one, for the story, and also because it can be very challenging, especially if you're not a big, big director with a big studio behind you, to get actors that are very established who want to play really dark characters.

In fact, going back to what's Love got to do with it, because I did a lot of research on how they made that movie when I was researching for Queen.

Supposedly, Lawrence Fishburne passed on the role of Ike Turner many times, multiple times, at least two or three times, because the guy was such a monster, he didn't want to play him.

Because, you know, men have a really understandably hard time being, oh yeah, I I want to be like a womanizer and someone that physically sexually abuses the woman on camera.

He passed multiple times until Angela Bassett signed on to play Tina, and then they went back to him.

He says, Okay, if she's playing Tina, I'll do the picture.

And then I believe he ended up getting nominated for his performance.

And it's a great movie.

If anyone out there hasn't seen what's lovely got to do with it, highly recommend.

Um, but uh, yeah,

you softened Jack Pfeffer up a little bit too.

He did not have bad breath, and he never once offered

he never once offered me a pickle either yeah yeah so so jack you know and look we take other creative liberties like we have him promoting in louisville in the story as well as new jersey and new york because uh you know we combine chris jordan and al haft into one promoter we haven't taken because there's just too many characters and it becomes too confusing for the for the audience and you only i'm about i'm about three or four different people at various points i i've I've mentioned to the to the listeners, I'm a representative of the Athletic Commission or I'm a representative of the National Wrestling Alliance, because you can't, again, introduce a cast of thousands to come in and say one line.

Who's that guy?

At least there's some thread of this.

You know, you got two.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And we didn't make Jack Pfeffer Polish.

When I casted Walton, who was so great to work with, we casted him very close to when we were starting the film.

And he was just like, like, Look, I know he's got a Polish accent.

We start shooting very soon.

I don't know if we're really going to have time to get into this.

He goes, How important is that?

I go, It's not.

It's not, you know, it's about

the dialogue and the character and the performance, not like if he has an Eastern European accent or a Western accent or an Asian accent.

It's really just about no one.

The nice thing about taking creative liberty is that

you should have

made him wear it.

You should have at least made him wear a suit that hadn't been washed in a month and not take a shower for a week or two.

Just for method acting.

Yeah, yeah.

The nice thing about this story not being so well known is that it's easier to get away with just taking creative liberties because it's not like you're making, you know,

the Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan biopic where everyone's like, that's not that.

Everyone knows these super famous people.

But with Mildred and Jack Pfeffer and Billy Wolf and all these people, like, no one, i mean there's very few videos out there even if any of them but i did i did learn from jack

you you could have done a worldwide casting search around the the globe and found nobody walking today that looks like jack pfeffer

did not in uh

did you know that in in um

in in notre dame they have a whole Jack Pfeffer

wrestling collection exhibit.

I guess he had compiled all,

every like piece, document, photo, ad, everything.

And the author of the book told me about this.

And maybe we take a boys trip, a road trip to Indiana.

But

apparently there's just.

I've been wanting to see that for years.

If you'll pay for everything, I'll go with you.

All right, so here's the deal.

If we do over a million dollars at the box office opening weekend, we will take a road trip.

The three of us plus, I have a Lincoln Navigator, the three of us plus three fans

that show that they bought a ticket opening weekend, and I'm completely improvising here.

Three fans with over a million at the box get to do the road trip.

And I'm committing for the two of you.

You can't say no.

I was with you.

I could say you brought other people along.

Yeah.

Well, we still get to vet them.

There's still going to be security checks, okay?

We still get to pick them.

But yes, there you go.

You can win a road trip with

the legends themselves um the two of you and i'll drive i'll be the i'll be the driver um where's the notre dame jack where's the premiere in jersey is it in teterboro

uh we don't have a jersey one we have a new york one which is going to be well then brian brian won't go brian won't go unless you premiere in teterboro He's funny about the New Jersey-New York border.

Jim is obsessed with Teterboro for reasons that myself and the listeners have never quite figured out.

I'm definitely not going into Manhattan anytime soon.

I'll say that.

It's like Wartburg.

I just like pronouncing the name.

But no, we should reiterate the world premieres for Queen of the Ring February 25th at AMC Stony Brook here in Louisville, Kentucky.

And we'll have news on who might be the guests and all the festivities coming up on the podcast over the next few weeks.

26th in Chicago, 27th in Nashville, March 4th and 5th in New York and Los Angeles.

And then all the regular people get it on March the 7th across the country.

I'm excited.

I've never been seen that many places all at the same time before as this movie will.

You're opening up a whole new world for me, Ash.

Well, hopefully March 7th, 8th, 9th.

All the people that religiously listen to your wonderful show here will be engaging.

And, you know, again, part of what we're telling people is be part of the conversation early, right?

There's, it's such a, as people that love the world of pro wrestling, when I read the book, it's just this whole other like dimension that I just didn't know about.

And one of the things that I'd love to pick your brain on this, from my research, you know,

men's wrestling prior to Gorgeous George was

not very imaginative when it came to just the theater of it all.

And obviously Jack Pfeffer

really leaned in to the theater of it all.

But it seems like the women's wrestling in Mildred's era leaned into the theatrics more than the men because they were so

trying, you know, no one knew if it was scripted or not scripted, but you know, before Gorgeous George, like the gimmicks and the characters were not,

they just weren't as flamboyant or polarizing or extravagant as they became with the women and with Gorgeous George.

Does that,

what's your perspective on all that?

Part of it was

with the women naturally,

when you were trying to make female stars in that era, you wanted to publicize, well, she wears diamonds like the movie stars do, you know, Lana Turner, whatever.

She wears diamonds.

She wears minks and furs.

You could go farther with a woman's wardrobe at that point to glamour them up rather than the guys because until

and truthfully, Jack Pfeffer was somewhat behind Buddy Rogers' transformation into the nature boy with the bleached blonde hair and the robes and the capes that he wore.

He was the atomic blonde before he was the nature boy.

They were looking to color him up and that type of colorful activity with the men's side of wrestling had been there at some point.

You know, Gorgeous George stole stuff from a guy named Lord Lansdowne.

There was the germ of it, but television is what really brought it out because now they're competing with everybody in show business, and there's got to be more color involved.

It was almost like in the 30s,

you didn't want

you know, the heel may have gotten away with wearing some outlandish colors or whatever, but the babyface, Jim Londos, he was a man of the people.

So there wasn't that element of exaggeration until the TV and the, you know, the dawn of the modern entertainment age.

Right.

But the women could get away with it.

And that's the thing people expected to see.

That was part of, as you well know, and as they talk about in the movie.

That was part of Mildred's selling point is see her diamonds, see her muscles, see her mink coats.

And they dressed her up in evening gowns for publicity pictures.

And at the same time, she had those

biceps that looked like, you know, baked potatoes.

So

it was,

you know, something that caught on.

Yeah.

And back then, this is talked about in the opening of the story.

Like,

Now, you know, there's a whole thing like the terminology, muscle mommy, and people really being into women that are very fit and have muscular definition to their bodies.

And it's very in vogue today.

But back then, it was one or the other.

It was like, you know, muscles weren't allowed on pretty girls.

It just, that was not something that was socially acceptable or at least openly coveted by men.

It wasn't considered sexy or attractive.

Now it's much different.

Our society.

loves and embraces women that are very physically fit and have muscular definition.

And I'm a a huge fan of it myself.

But Mildred, from my research, at least in pop culture, there were bodybuilders that she was influenced by, which you'll see some pictures of when she's

flexing in the mirror in her bedroom.

And there's some moments of that in the trailer.

But she was, to my research, one of the first, if not the first, woman that really brought the juxtaposition of

beauty and feminine

air makeup and wardrobe combined with muscular definition.

And that was another thing that I just got enchanted by.

I'm like, wow, so she was the one to put it on the map.

It's so in the zeitgeist today.

And I have no idea who Mildred Burke was until Jim Ross told me.

So it's just, you know, these are all things that, look, making anytime an independent film gets made, especially a period one, it's nothing short of a fucking miracle.

Like it's so hard.

You literally have to like just will it into existence and not, you know, take no for an answer every which way you go to try and raise the money, get the cast, the locations, the crew, everything.

But I just, you know, Mildred Burke, regardless of

what happens, you know, 50s onward,

the fact that her story was so forgotten

and untold,

it's one of the things that made me pissed off,

not specifically at the WWE, but just like in general, like,

how does something like this just get forgotten about?

And why

is Moolah as a you know, as a kid growing up, why was that shoved down our throats when, here, the truth is this, guys, Mula, and I get into arguments with people because they see the trailer and they just assume it's Mula, or they go, Where's Mula's movie?

Mula, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jim, Mula never fucking drew money like Mildred did.

She was not a headliner.

When they finally got rid of the band in 1972 in Madison Square Garden, Mula wrestled.

No one cares.

She wasn't a fucking draw.

So to me, I'm like, you know,

why was she the one that Vince made

every which way?

And then the Wendy Richter screw job, which, you know, I always thought the Montreal screw job was the only one that was televised.

But the Wendy Richter one, I feel like

that set women's wrestling back in the zeitgeist 20 plus years because Wendy, with the help of Cindy Lauper and MTV and WrestleMania, she was right there.

She was crossing over into the 80s, Wonder Woman.

Like she was like right there.

And then that whole screw job happened, and she was gone.

And all of a sudden, Moolah was the only woman anyone was seeing wrestling.

I go, why?

Like, Wendy was right there.

She would have been the gateway drug.

She was like, that whole thing's just trapped.

Now, wait a minute.

I don't know whether Wendy would appreciate being called a gateway drug, but Wendy Richter got me hooked on cocaine.

Hey, come on now.

That was.

That was your own.

That was your own lack of cocaine.

For the record,

I mean, gateway drug in the sense that the people to fall in love with women's wrestling.

You know what I mean?

No, we know what you meant.

Wendy is not in ecstasy.

But it's a very

era in society.

And of course, as all of our longtime listeners know, because we've talked about it, but a lot of the story that you're talking about doesn't mention, you know, that.

Mildred Burke was the first, you know, major female athlete in combat sports in this country and probably in the world.

And along with Babe Diedriksen, she was the highest paid female athlete in sports of any kind.

And

so she set records.

They were main event attraction, she and the rest of that crew.

But after Billy Wolf

was Billy Wolf and the split and everything went down, when the the promoters didn't want to, the NWA,

none of them wanted to go through shit like that again.

And they knew that Moolah, and that's when she was married to Buddy Lee, who was not only involved in a wrestling business, but

a country music promotion.

Buddy Lee was probably a more famous name in country music out of Nashville than he was in wrestling.

But they started the girls' office and they started training the girls and they could be controlled.

Moolah wanted the percentage.

She wanted to be booked as the champion with all of the promoters, and she wanted to send the girls out and be an attraction, third match on the card.

She didn't give a shit about trying to be as big a star as Mildred Burke because it wasn't going to happen again.

And that is what the promoters were comfortable with.

So, for

example, from the late 50s through the mid-80s, female wrestling became an attraction on the card in your town once or twice a year.

As long as Mooley didn't have to put anybody over.

But

speaking of putting people over, Brian, would you like to put Ash over a little bit before we wind up?

No.

I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing the movie.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the movie.

And,

you know, everyone involved in it seems to be really proud of it.

So that's a good accomplishment there.

And I guess, Ash, I think we may have to make this a multi-part thing because just you and Jim talking about this stuff is something the listeners are going to want to hear more of.

But just to follow up on my earlier question, the offices you're dealt with after WWE's talent dropped out, did you deal with AEW?

Did you deal with TNA?

Yeah, you know, Tony, Tony Khan, although he hasn't responded to my text messages

in the past while after the movie's been done.

It doesn't look like you're going to get booked in.

Yeah.

But

Tony was lovely when we were in a bind and, you know,

Tony Storm was

booked solid.

And I had to deal with Tony Khan to get her availabilities and his approval for her to shoot the movie.

He was great with that.

Billy Corgan was great for Camille.

And hopefully, Billy will be promoting through NWA.

I actually am, I connected him.

I didn't realize he was going to outright buy it.

in the blink of an eye, but I connected him with Mildred's granddaughter, which is how that belt got into

NWA, which I'm so thrilled that Billy is, you know, honoring Mildred's legacy and that he's helping reintroduce her to the world.

So Billy was great.

AEW is great.

TNA was great because Trinity was in TNA at the time.

And Trinity and Trinity's been lovely.

Honestly, everyone's been fucking awesome in the pro wrestling community, other than this like ambiguous, elusive

WWE corridor of confusion.

It's just like, what's up, guys?

Lay it on me, bro.

WWE treats filmmakers like AEW treats wrestlers.

Maybe, maybe they just want to see how many times they can come to you and offer to do business with you where you agree.

And then they say, never mind.

Well, you know, the thing to me is this.

You know, I did, I, my, my day job is running a record label.

And I was a, you know, DIY punk rock hardcore kid.

And one of the things about that culture is that everything's based on like honor, ethics, and just being fucking real.

And I, you know, some most people appreciate it.

Some people will be like, Ash is a fucking dick.

A lot of people will be like, I trust Ash.

He tells me what he thinks.

I just don't believe in.

in sugarcoating and bullshitting around the fucking truth.

I just, I'm just such a believer of like, this is what's up.

Just call me and say, yeah,

Vince doesn't think your movie is going to do anything and it's an indie film and he doesn't want his, his, his wrestlers wasting time and we fucked up submitting them to you before having the picture being approved by the powers of B.

Okay, get it.

Hey, we're not going to take your money because X, Y, and Z.

Okay, cool.

But like to put...

To just not say anything and to keep it ambiguous and just see what happens, like that's not good in anything.

In business, in friendships, in romance.

Just fucking, life's too short, man.

Just say what's up, you know, and just tell a band turns in a song.

I might hurt your feelings.

I don't think it's great.

Here's some ideas.

Or this is your best song.

Or

maybe, you know, focus on this one instead of that one.

Here's what we think.

But

to just not be just forthright, it's one of my biggest.

pet peeves and it obviously happens a lot in entertainment but um you know just

be real with fucking people.

By the way, I got to tell you, because I know the Karate Kid of it all came up.

One of the things about giving feedback, and I don't know that this was ever said, so I'm going to share it, but my dad told me about it.

So when they were doing test screenings.

for Karate Kid, which if there is any page out of the movie business, I would give to the music businesses as it's the audience test.

It's fucking fantastic.

And it's one of the things I've loved about doing the film festivals with Queen of the Ring and and seeing certain moments that work better or worse in different places and then tweaking the film for the final version, which will be seen in Louisville on the 25th of February.

The audience test.

So they were testing Karate Kid.

The original ending of Karate Kid 1 was the beginning of 2, when they go out into the parking lot and they have the kerfluffle between the two coaches and they shatter the windows and that whole thing.

That was the original ending.

When they did a test screening in Burbank, my dad asked, hey, you know, does anyone have any things that they wanted to see more or less of or anything in that regard?

And a woman in the back raised her hand and said, hey, I really love the movie, but I wanted to see Miyagi and LaRusso together at the end

because what they just saw was the thing in the parking lot.

And he goes, you know what?

You're right.

That's the whole heart of the story.

It's...

you know, people think, oh, it's a sports fighting movie.

It's a karate movie.

It's about a kid that didn't have a dad that finds a father figure in an Asian maintenance man at the rundown apartment building.

it's, that's why it's the two of them looking at each other on the poster.

It's not him looking at Johnny Lawrence in the final fight.

It's him looking at this father figure because there's no dad in his life.

So he goes to Jerry Weintraub, the producer, and goes, hey, I need to do a pickup day of shooting and fix the ending.

And Jerry doesn't want him to do it because, again, perception.

He goes, oh no, then everyone in town, everyone in Hollywood will think that the movie's a turkey and that it doesn't work.

And now we're trying to fix it.

And da, da, da, da, da, da.

And my dad's like, I'll put up my own money.

I just need a handful of background actors.

I need La Russo and Miyagi looking at each other, saying they did it.

That's the magic we got to end on.

And he was able to go get it shot in a day.

And when you watch the movie now, you can't imagine it ending any other way.

And that ending is what gives the audience that hit a dopamine or serotonin goes, fuck, you feel it.

And then bam, the credits roll.

And that was because of an audience test, because of some fan in the back row in Burbank raising their hand and giving their feedback.

And had that not happened, who knows if the movie would have been anywhere nearly as successful as it was because the ending is what, you know, the last thing people feel when they go to see it.

So

I know you didn't ask for that, but I just thought I could share it to give a little nugget of like, hey, the audience test is great.

And I'm sure there's, you know, the fun thing about pro wrestling.

is that the audience test is done live every night.

And that's

part of the things that I was explaining to the actors when we were making the movie.

I go, you have to understand

when pro wrestling is happening, it's live theater.

And while the writers and the executives may want the audience to root for this person and not root for this person, they can't control it once the toothpaste is out of the tube and the wrestling and the dialogue and the drama is happening in the ringing on the microphone.

And that's something that I've found, as I call them, civilians, people that don't watch pro wrestling, when the civilians start going into the world, they go, wow, now I see the theater of it all.

This is real, it's live theater mixed with stunts.

And I'm like, that's why we love it, because it's emotions, you know?

Yeah.

Anyway, that's my TED talk.

Thanks for listening.

Hey, Ash, if I could ask one last question.

We brought up Martin Cove earlier.

What's it like for you to work with someone who worked with your father?

Great question.

And Marty, as of today, is the only person that's worked with both of us.

He was lovely.

You know, I just,

I'm good friends with his manager in a small world.

And I just, there wasn't some big master plan of casting him.

I was just like, I needed someone for Al Haft.

I knew he didn't live too far from Louisville.

He had moved to Nashville.

And I was good friends with his manager.

And I was like, dude, what's Marty doing?

This would be fun.

And then

I had met him once before at his manager's office.

And we had a cigar together.

And he was just such a lovely guy that, and he was so warm and welcoming and had some great stories to tell that I was just like, man, I just, I really love hanging out with him.

He's just a great person.

So let me see if he would, you know, star in the movie.

And he was great.

And it, you know, the whole thing's surreal, just because

he

not.

not ever being a part of my father's life and all of, you know, the peak of his career was happening and just knowing who he was and having the last name,

but just never having any connection whatsoever because he wasn't interested in being involved.

You know, kid born out of wedlock, not a good relationship with my mom, all that stuff.

It and everyone who knew my dad in that era of my life,

it's like hard to fully,

it's hard to fully describe

what the, um,

just like

it's hard to describe that mystique and dynamic of me talking to them about that.

Uh, but I guess the, I'm trying to figure out how to verbalize this, the way that I could communicate with Marty about that time in my life and my dad's and just hear stories and hear him, you know, make

not comparisons, but like,

I don't know, man, I'm not doing, I'm not doing the moment justice and trying to verbalize this.

It's obviously a very emotional

topic, but Marty was just so lovely as someone in that unique scenario of knowing me and then obviously working, you know, on a deep level with my dad that I just found myself really grateful for his energy and his

just like the humanity in Marty.

You know, Marty is,

there's a lack of humanity to a lot of parts of Hollywood and even to the city of Los Angeles.

There's a lot of just narcissism and opportunistic behavior and very cutthroat and very Johnny come lately.

And there's a lot of that in Hollywood, as all the books tell you.

Marty has such humanity in him that I found myself just wanting to hang out with him as a friend.

And he was, he's a great hang.

You go out to dinner with him.

He just, I mean, Jim, you experienced it.

Just hang out.

Certain people just have that welcoming, endearing spirit where you're like, I'm just in a good mood every time I'm around this person.

And Marty has that gift.

And I just found myself going, I want to hang out with this guy.

I'm putting him in the movie.

He's great.

And then the rest is history.

Well, and that's a good place to wrap up and remind everybody again,

February 25th.

It's going to be history, the world premiere of the queen of the ring at amc stony brook here in louisville the 26th of february chicago 27th in nashville the 4th and 5th of march it hits new york city and los angeles and the seventh opens everywhere at a theater near you queen of the ring starring me and a few other people directed and written by ash aboldson And Ash, thank you for doing this.

And,

you know, we think it's going to be something that that all of the fans and all the listeners are going to get a kick out of seeing.

I appreciate that, guys.

And for all the listeners, sorry if I talk too much.

I'm just, I was born a rambling man.

Hopefully I didn't ramble on for too much.

You were vaccinated with a phonograph needle.

I've been called worse.

Well, thank you guys for having me.

And hopefully.

I see you sooner than later in the flesh.

Well, there you go, folks.

There was the rest of our talk with Ash Abelson about the upcoming movie Queen of the Ring.

And of course, as we talked about, the premiere is here in Louisville, Kentucky, February 25th.

I believe then they're doing Chicago the 26th, Nashville the 27th,

New York and L.A.

March 4th and 5th.

And then coming to a screen near you, including a few drive-ins, hopefully, so we can get the horny teenage crowd

on March the 7th is the wider release.

Yeah, I don't know if that's the crowd you want for the Billy Wolf Mildred Burke story.

Well, you know, I'll tell you what.

One thing I noticed about the period pieces is

people

back in those days, they had more marks on their more of that razor burn.

Brian, you know, because they had to be shaved with a straight razor by an Italian that was singing opera back in the 30s.

You know that that was a common problem across America.

That's a common maybe stereotype.

I don't think that's a real thing.

There aren't opera singing barbers all throughout the country.

Well, goddamn it.

That's the only thing I liked about Connecticut when I lived there was I could go down to that barber shop and the guys that cut my hair were the three Italian guys that sang opera.

They sang?

They sang while this?

Yes, they sang while they were.

I can't tell you

if you're working or tell this.

No,

that's one of the two things that I liked about Connecticut was the place I got my hair cut where the three old Italian guys lined up in the three chairs there in this old shop, and they sang opera and cut your hair with the scissors the way God intended it.

And a second thing was the little market down the street from me.

It had the best tasting ground beef for burgers in the world.

But I digress.

I can't believe you would like that.

I would think that would bother you, that they would somehow slip up because they're so into their song that may cut your ear or something.

No, it was one of the best haircuts I ever got.

And they were professional.

They had experience.

I felt confident in their hands because they had experience.

They'd done this a million times.

It's kind of like the people at Harry's.

Because that's where I was going with that.

It's back in the old days, in the 30s and 40s, when Mildred Burke and Billy Wolf and those people were around.

Well, I guess Mildred didn't get her face shaved a lot.

But, you know, back then, because of possible accidents, the girls had to do some grooming, even though it didn't become fashionable until apparently some magazines I've seen in the late 80s.

But nevertheless, you don't need to find the Italian guys singing opera with a straight razor at your throat to now get a close shave here in the modern world in the 21st century in the second millennium.

Or are we working on the third millennium?

Now, just get with the program, people.

Our friends at Harry's.com, H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com.

That's where you go now if you want a slick face.

I mean, it'll be slicker than whale shit in an ice flow.

It'll be slicker than cum cum on a gold tooth.

And you will not be bleeding.

And you won't get dreaded skin diseases.

And you won't shave off tops of your epidermises with these horrible nicked up straight razors that carried disease and bubonic plague.

You know, straight razors were what spread the Spanish flu, just so you know, in 1918.

And right now, folks, Harry's is making shaving products that will make your life so much easier.

The deodorant, the lotion, the body wash, the hair gel, all of the ancillary products to make you somehow publicly acceptable for regular polite society's consumption.

You'll smell better, you'll look better, you may even taste better if the opportunity presents itself.

But the main thing is Harry's shave, the German-engineered blades made in their own factory, a proprietary secret by an ancient metalsmith.

And the five-blade razor, that's right, five of them up there,

they're going to whack that whisker off right at the surface five different ways.

And it goes on a weighted, ergonomically designed handle, comes with foaming shave gel and a travel cover, so you do not slice your fingers off.

All this, the trial set, normally $13.

You're going to get it for $3 at Harry's.com slash JCE.

And when you go in the store and you try to buy one of these packages of razor cartridges,

if you do what sometimes many people do and just stick three or four in your pocket and absentmindedly forget about it, then when you're trying to go out the door, you're going to set off alarms, you're going to be electrocuted, and your body is going to be taken away and buried in Potter's Field.

Because these things are expensive, but not at Harry's.

And plus, you don't have to stick it in your pocket and sneak out the door they're going to mail it to you for three dollars no sense risking a shoplifting charge for three bucks 13 trial set only three dollars harry's.com slash jce

get a close shave and don't have a close shave with the law stay out of jail

Brian, you know, you haven't been to jail since you started shaving with Harry's.

I have not been to jail.

It can be a coincidence.

Harry's is a fine product.

We, of course, encourage everyone who needs a good shave, get that shave with Harry's one more time.

What's that promo code?

Harry's.com/slash JCE.

There it is.

That's it.

It's over there now.

That was that.

So speaking of over there, say a prayer.

Over there, say a prayer to beware because the Arcadian Vanguard Network is coming.

And they won't.

All over your face this week, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Is that where you were going?

Yes, I was about to say they won't come again anytime soon.

So

what are they doing right now?

We are.

How do I not make this perverse?

We are wherever you find your favorite podcast with the finest wrestling podcast, of course, each and every day, the wrestling news.

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Want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, a big guest this week on the show, WWE Raw General Manager Adam Pierce.

Check that out wherever you find your favorite podcast.

They even talk about Jim, S-U-A-W-Pod.com.

Now, wait a minute.

That was dangled like the sword of Damocles.

Are they firmie or again me?

No, Adam's a close, personal, lifetime, lifelong friend.

I believe they may discuss the red jacket that he wore in tribute to you, which caused AEW fans to lose their mind.

Oh, no!

He wore red.

You know what that means.

We'll hear that, SUAWPod.com or shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Get information about all shows, Arcadian Vanguard, on Twitter at Super Podcasts, or on Facebook.

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Go there right now, mcadampod.com.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the

mothership.

Tot, teleton.

Go through the archive, 605pod.com, the mothership.

Well, speaking of mothers, before we close up a shop, if not ship, this particular week or for this particular show, we got to go back to Uncle Dave's current

issue is out of his newsletter where the observer reader awards are given.

Now, these are not

Dave's choices himself.

These are voted on by the readers.

And in a lot of cases, Brian, I think you'll agree that

you get the element of the preacher polling the choir as to whether they believe in God.

This is somewhat of a target audience that's going to

lean a certain way for the most part and always pretty much has.

But in some of them,

I don't know if I'm detecting

some of these categories.

We're not going to go through this whole thing.

There's quite a few folks.

But there's some that tickles me because it's almost like they've got

They've got two groups now trying to pull for supremacy in some of these categories, two groups of readers, the

kids that,

like with Big John Gaborik, we were talking about earlier in the show, where the kids thought that because he was on television at one point, he actually was in a wrestling business and knew something.

The kids that think that Dave is a guru

and the more grown-ups and or longer-time fans who may have a more logical approach who think, what the fuck are you talking about?

It just seems to me, except when there's some categories here where I think the biggest vote-getter vote-getter amongst that group might be none of the fucking above.

But would we be boring the people if we just peruse a few of these choices?

No, I think the listeners love hearing about this each and every year.

And I think you kind of have a few categories.

One,

I think the majority of the observer readers don't vote.

And that needs to be said.

And then amongst the people that vote,

There are people that follow wrestling news and follow wrestling and read The Observer.

There are also, while Dave doesn't pick the winners anyone who thinks that's an idiot there is certainly a sect of fans

that subscribe to dave's exact brand of wrestling snobbery yes yes and that's kind of what it is you know i was thinking about it because i showed my daughter the other day hulk hogan versus andre the giant at wrestlemania 3

and she was enthralled with it the whole story behind it because they have a little video package

just to show with no real reasoning actually when you think about it why they uh hate each other now And I'm thinking, wow, the Observer and Dave and the Readers.

I mean, Dave, whatever he gave it at the time, negative five stars.

It was the worst match of the year.

I think like people didn't like it.

But then, like, there's a whole nother fan base, a much bigger one that loved it, that appreciates it.

Again, there were no high spots except for a body slam.

That was it.

But it's a form of wrestling snobbery.

And this is where kind of everything conflicts with whoever actually votes for this.

I have them in front of me here.

Well, I do also, and I want to bring up a couple here, just the placement of

the big one is the Wrestler of the Year award, which he now calls the Luthes slash Ric Flair Award, the Wrestler of the Year.

Well, one would think by

those four words description, wrestler of the year, that this would be

pretty much the greatest, the most important, the biggest wrestler of the past year in the world of wrestling, right?

By the way that sounds.

Right.

Okay.

And the number one winner with 3,385 votes or points or whatever.

And

the points, yeah, 577.

See,

again, Dave had...

He missed his opportunity trying to help fucking Einstein work out mathematical equations.

He can't just fucking vote for the guy you like, right?

It's determined by points on a 5-3-2 basis with first place votes in parentheses and

whatever the fuck that gibberish means, right?

But it works out in his mind.

Cody Rhodes won the thing.

And you can't.

You can argue with that.

You can debate that with a few other people, you know, but you can't really scoff at it because Cody's the champion of the biggest company, blah, blah, blah.

Then number two,

Will Osprey

with about half as many first place votes and somehow only 800 less overall points.

But, and I'm not knocking Osprey.

But when I say this, but here it's

you've got the AEW faction that's going to vote for

the guy they like.

And in this case, probably they were split between him and a couple other people.

And you've got the more broad fan who realizes that say what you want, but the top guys have to be the ones in the top company in most, but not all cases.

But here's who Osprey's ahead of.

Number three, Brian Danielson.

Okay, for his one match he had last year, or whatever the fuck it was, or two matches, let's give him that.

Number four, Mystico.

Number five, Swerve Strickland,

Wrestler of the Year.

Number six, Zach Sabre Jr.

And then number seven, Roman Reigns.

So Roman Reigns didn't have a year that would determine he placed higher as Wrestler of the Year than than Zach Sabre Jr., Swerve Strickland, and Mystico, and Brian Danielson.

I know there's a sentimental factor there.

And then number eight is Ceri.

Who the fuck is Ceri?

I'm sure she's a she from Japan, if I had to guess.

Well, she placed ahead of Gunther at number nine.

And at number 10, a tie between CM Punk and Drew McIntyre.

So when you're talking about Wrestler of the Year, the two guys that were in the possibly the greatest WWE match of at least the year and were the hottest feud

and have drawn incredible amounts of money, sold merchandise,

but they're behind Sari and Zach Sabre Jr.

down tied for 10th.

Hold on, I'm reading what Dave actually wrote here.

He compares Cody

being number one and Will Will Osprey being number two to Joe DiMaggio versus Ten Williams at 41 for the

Dave was

covering baseball at the time.

No, but I mean, it's a historical season.

I mean, everyone knows about what happened.

I wouldn't consider

Cody Rhodes and Will Osprey.

This is nothing.

What kind of medication does Dave Melzer need to be on that the closest comparison that he can come up with to write about between this two is a 1941 battle for the American League MVP.

Yeah.

The fuck, is that is that some shit that fucking Dr.

Leary made?

Oh, just for the record, too, you left off some honorable mentions.

Tam Nakano got 120 votes, followed by Tetsuya Naito with 73 and Mayu Iwatani with 65.

Yes, and that's

what I'm saying.

You got the Cody Rhodes and CM Punk and Drew McIntyre part of the viewing, viewing, voting base that is going to in some way vote for Wrestler of the Year to be one of the great wrestlers of the business.

And then you've got

the crowd that wants to vote for

Miu Iwatami and the Sari.

The people who had their favorite matches.

I mean, that's what, should Wrestler of the Year be who had your favorite matches throughout the year?

Or should it be, because there used to be...

I don't think it still exists.

Reader's personal favorite wrestlers.

Well, I think he's changed some names to be more politically correct.

I think we may, I think we'll, we'll get into that in a second.

But anyway, that's that.

And here is what the point I'm going to make: most outstanding wrestler.

Now,

when you change the category to most outstanding wrestler, guess who won?

Will Osprey.

But it was by a wider margin

over Brian Danielson and then Take a Shit, Zach Sabre Jr.

and Sari and Gunther's at number six.

Swerve, Mayu Iwatami,

at Cha-Cha-Chia.

And then tied for number 10, CM Punk and Cody Rhodes for most outstanding wrestler.

But

the point is, if you say most outstanding wrestler, then that doesn't mean, okay, he's not the biggest box office draw.

He's not the overall wrestler of the year.

But Will Osprey, he does all that shit, and he performs at a high athletic level.

You can at least make a case for that.

But still, when you've got a readership that is voting for Hitchhi-Chi-Chia

over Cody Rhodes, the biggest fucking babyface star on the known planet, give me a break.

Tag Team of the Year, Brian, can we talk about this for a second?

Oh, yeah, according to Dave, it was a record-breaking.

Yeah, they broke your previous record.

Yeah.

Well, yeah,

it's like fucking idiot Rand Paul from Kentucky.

He wanted to be a board-certified ophthalmologist, so he had his wife start a board and they certified him.

The tag team of the year was once again for what was it, I think, is the eighth year in a war.

Eighth year in a war.

No, eighth year they won the award, but not eighth year in a row.

Yeah, that's right.

FTR got it the last two years.

Yes.

But a record-winning eighth year for the Young Bucks.

Maddie and Nigga, hold on, let's.

That's everybody.

That's actually

legitimate audio of the crowd applauding at the last show that they may have ended.

The Young Bucks win it narrowly now with 352 first place votes and 2,449 overall points.

They narrowly

edged out Nathan Frazier and Axiom with 337 and 2320, respectively.

And I said, who, what the?

And then I realized, do you know, Brian, who Nathan Frazier and Axiom are?

Not only do I know who they are, I think you've asked me this exact question like three or four times in the last okay well,

you never know.

They are the two guys.

When we watched NXT last, a while back for some reason,

I said, and then up on the screen pops up two guys that these

neither one of them looked in any way like they should be a professional athlete.

And I thought something basically to the effect of the show should have been kicked off the air by the FCC for presenting them on the television.

They are the group, the tag team that came in in second place.

Apparently, again, all of the

regular wrestling fans checked out on this because

there are no tag teams.

So you got the trained chimpanzee fans voting for the little weird-looking fucks that do all the jumping up and down, but there's no serious choice.

Young Bucks were number one.

Nathan Frazier and Axiom, number two.

FTR, who, as you said, won it the last two years in a row, number three.

And I mean, again,

if you go on who, when presented with any competent tag team, can perform better in the ring

than any other tag team.

Yeah, you got to go with FTR because as we're seeing a dearth of competition, but the way that they've been presented and everything that we've bemoaned,

the tag team of the year in previous years would have had to been a top tag team that was working in main events, that was drawing money, that was having

great madness.

Now it's just we reward the guys that can do it if they ever get a chance just because everybody else is the shits.

And then number four, Sting and Darby Allen.

They had like fucking three tag team matches together.

Number

five, June

and Rey Saito.

They sound like a happily married Japanese couple.

Number six, Hazuki and Koguma.

Number seven, Dragon Kid and Naruki Doy.

Number.

I don't know why that one got me.

Well, I think, or is that

Naroy Dookie?

Number eight,

Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley, the poor machine guns, outrated by Hazuki and Kaguma and Dookie.

Number nine, the Outrunners.

Number 10, Kevin Koo and Dominic Garini.

And

what?

So that's what they want.

Here's the previous winners, Brian.

Let's just go back to the original winner in 1980, the Freebirds, Gordian Roberts.

How does that work, by the way?

Dave didn't have a newsletter until 8083, right?

Late 82.

Well, he was doing, I think he had a previous incarnation of some type of newsletter that did something, and he's folded that in.

They absorbed the historical lineage.

Don't fucking doubt Dave Meltzer's record keeping.

But the point is, listen to these names of these teams.

1981, Terry Gordy and Jimmy Snuka.

They weren't the biggest drawing tag team of that year, but I remember seeing that they were the best in the ring.

1982, Stan Hansen and Ole Anderson.

They were on top in Georgia.

Everybody was watching TBS at that point.

83, Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood.

In the ring, one of the all-time greatest babyface teams.

They didn't draw money all over the country, but 83 was the year that they

did such incredible business in the Carolinas.

You draw 20,000 people with the turnaways in Greensboro for a house show.

1984, the Road Warriors.

85, the British Bulldogs, Dynamite and Davy.

86, Midnight Express, Condry, and Eaton.

87, Midnight Express, Lane and Eaton.

88, Midnight Express, Lane and Eaton.

89, Sean Michaels and Marty Giannetti, the Rockers.

90, the Steiner Brothers.

And then

the decade of the 90s, as Dave's fascination

with the land of the the rising sun grew, it was dominated most of the time by Japanese teams, except 93, the Hollywood Blondes, Brian Pillman and Steve Austin.

And even then, in modern times, we get to Edge and Christian, who were a hell of a team in 2002 or 2000, the Guerreros,

Mark and Jay Briscoe one year, the American Wolves, Edwards and Richards, but now

the Shield, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns from 2013.

But now it's dominated by Dave's favorite stepsons, the Buckaroos, and

unknown foreign teams that wrestle in the subconsciouses of a lot of these people's

joyless lives.

There ain't no tag teams.

Well, yeah, that's part of the problem right there.

If you go back to that, you know, all the teams that won in the 80s, you guys won a bunch of times, Davey Boy and Dynamite.

You could think of multiple other top tag teams that were around.

Heart Foundation, not even on this list.

Not once.

Oh, because the top five, six, or seven was so deep.

Yeah.

With guys like the Heart Foundation or the Fantastics or the fucking, on and on.

I mean, so, I mean, the year the Rug Warriors won in 84, Midnight Express very easily could have won in 84.

You know what I mean?

Like, there there are multiple options for those years.

Right now,

Tag Team of the Year is a team that caused the ratings to go down every time they were on.

I think that was the case this past year in 2024.

Had to be taken off TV because that just seems to happen a lot for them.

Then they started wrestling in Japan again.

No one cares about them in Japan.

That's the Tag Team of the Year.

It's an issue where Dave loves the Young Bucks and as people that adopt Dave's view on what wrestling is good and what isn't.

But it's also a very sad commentary on the state of wrestling.

WWE can sign tag teams, but that Motor City Machine Guns DIY match had the quietest crowd reaction at a WWE show I've ever seen.

Well, it is to paraphrase the Seinfeld, right?

It's not the taking of the reservation.

It's the holding of the reservation.

It's not the signing of the talent.

It's the using of the talent.

And tag teams are always presented as the

the cheetah segment in the Tarzan movie except if it's two big singles guys teaming up against two other big singles guys and right now AEW has a new thing with the Hurt Syndicate so far it's working again whenever you see whatever you see from this past week the crowds reacting to these guys as always as every week they're on unless they do something stupid I transition back to the Bucks which

No, I heard the Bucs have already transitioned.

But if there was ever a match for Shelton and Bobby Lashley to go into business for themselves.

But the the point is,

there aren't two really good, dedicated tag team divisions that are booked well.

There are individual teams that have short runs and then everything falls apart.

That's something that's been missing now.

It's almost a generation

without well-thought-out tag team wrestling.

Not to say that, you know, FTR can't go out there and rock the house with a great match.

But there's no classic feud.

Like, there's no feuds beyond, we're going to wrestle you because we think we're better.

And now we have to show it.

And that's, I get it.

That's great.

And, you know, sports-based wrestling, but this is pro-wrestling.

There's never anything other than them getting laid out.

They're a great tag team, but there's not a great tag team division.

Well,

and here's another thing.

And we'll pick and choose a few more of these.

The promotion of the year.

In a runaway, 570 first place votes to 212 and 3801 points to 2406 was the WWE WWE over AEW.

So

much of Dave's audience recognizes and, you know, just is realistic enough to come to grips with that,

you know, yes, they're the best promotion.

And then the other large group is, oh, we're the AEW guys.

And then CMLL

came close to AEW.

And then it was New Japan Stardom,

UFC, TNA, Dragon Dragon Gate, All Japan Rev Pro.

Syndai Girls got 70 points.

No Gleet.

No Gleat.

Gleat did not place.

But at the same time, as they vote in that respect,

the very next category is Best Weekly TV Show.

And AEW Dynamite comes in at number one, blowing away

WWE SmackDown.

And remember, this was last year.

That was a SmackDown was at least two hours on network instead of three hours and boring the fuck out of us.

But if you add up Raw and SmackDown

together, the first place votes don't add up to what Dynamite got, and the points would come about about even.

And so

they know the top promotion, but they still didn't like the TV shows, but they thought AEW Dynamite was great because what Dave says,

this shows that voters here are going to vote for the show that has the best in-ring wrestling.

And even with its issues, Dynamite's in-ring quality and high-end matches blew away the competition.

He legitimately believes that there are just loads and loads of good matches, great matches

on that television show.

And it's like,

I don't know, maybe if you're just a blase basketball fan and some team gets a seven-foot-tall guy that looks great, and you every time you throw him the ball, he doesn't have to dribble.

He can just run down and dunk it.

And you don't care, then maybe

that's a great basketball game.

But

how can he be ignoring the parts in all of these matches where where everything is the same and they ignore the referee and they ignore the counts and they ignore the rules and the work looks like shit and the blows miss and the fucking cooperation is there for all to see

because they do a bunch of fucking moves and fall through some shit.

How can you judge that as high-end wrestling?

That's the problem.

That's what Tony is booking towards.

It's Dave and the readership that Tony's a part of, the ones who

kind of have adopted Meltzerism in terms of the way you're supposed to think about what's good and what isn't.

That's why WWE blows them away as the best promotion, but their shows don't stand a chance against dynamite.

And by the way, how serious are the voters' rampages on this list?

Well, yeah,

to finish it out, two is SmackDown, three is RAW, four is CMLL,

five is Collision, six is NXT,

Rampage and Impact tied for eight.

Nine, New Japan and 10, ROH Honor Club.

Got 29 points.

And the pro wrestling match of the year.

Okay, the greatest match of the year.

Will Osprey versus Brian Danielson from St.

Louis.

I'm sure we watched it and saw it.

I don't remember what happened.

But

that match and Brian Danielson versus Swerve Strickland in London was number two.

And Sting and Darby Allen against the Young Bucks is number three.

And Brian Danielson versus Zach Sabre Jr.

from Osaka

is number four.

So Danielson and three out of the four, a very sentimental voting block this year.

But number five,

Punk versus Drew McIntyre in Atlanta, the hell in a cell.

The show that

that show

there had more viewers and grossed more money than all these other fucking shows put together.

Well, I know Greensboro was big for AEW, but and then Cody Rhodes versus Roman Reigns from WrestleMania

is behind that.

Followed by Osprey versus Take a Shit, Michael Oku versus Will Osprey.

MJF versus MJF versus Will Osprey, I remember was better than Osprey and Danielson, wasn't it?

Am I

saying things?

I thought the exact same thing, but I remember went through a period where I got really bored with Danielson and got sick of his matches.

And then Osprey,

which all became self-indulgent, at least that's the way I thought.

And then he did interviews saying, oh, yeah, I was just doing this all for me.

So

that's what it felt like.

One, two, three,

four.

Five.

Five of the top ten have Osprey.

One, two,

three.

Three of the top 10 had Danielson.

But right in the middle is the two matches, Punk and Drew and Cody and Roman Reigns that everybody fucking saw.

Hey, you skipped past it, but you are a multiple-time winner.

I got to know your thoughts on best on interviews.

Number one, Drew McIntyre.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I did

skip over that, did I not?

Yeah, best on interviews, Drew McIntyre.

I can't argue with that because not only has he been fantastic, but the difference in him from before was remarkable.

But well, then you can number two, The Rock.

Well, he did a few interviews.

He wasn't there all year, but The Rock's always, except for that NXT thing, Rock's always good.

But then

I'm going to save a name because I'm going to then go to the names that this guy placed higher than.

Will Osprey?

well,

you know, I'm sorry,

as Mama Cornette would say, he couldn't say Suey if the hogs had him most of the time because you don't know, oh, Osprey, Osprey.

But CM Osprey placed above CM Punk in best on interviews,

followed by Cody Rhodes,

followed by Tony Storm.

I don't know if you could call it best or whatever, but she did interviews.

MJF, one of, even though he's been diminished, one of the top wordsmiths of the modern era, Swerve Strickland, and Paul Heyman at number 10.

Paul Heyman,

legitimately, that ought to just make it the Heyman fucking award, but he, I'm sure he would be humble enough to want somebody else to get it.

But the guy that came in number three and placed ahead of Paul Heyman, MJF, Cody Rhodes, and CM Punk,

Hangman Adam Page.

What the

so that it's it's it's nonsense

and uh it

you talked about an award that ought to be named after me.

That one actually really shouldn't because I only want it.

Let's see, hold on.

81 was Albano and Piper, 82 was Piper, 83 was Piper, 84 was Jimmy Hart, 85 was me, 86 was me, 87 was me, 88 was me, but 89 was Terry Funk.

And 90 was Arne, and 91 was Flair, and 92 was Flair, and 93 was me.

But

they shouldn't name that award after me.

Let's talk about the award they should name after me.

Now, think about this, Brian.

They've got the Luthes and Ric Flair Award for Wrestler of the Year.

They have the, hold on, I'm flipping through it.

They got the Hodge Award,

the Danny Hodge Award for a non-heavyweight MVP.

They got the Koichi Yoshizawa Award for the Japanese MVP.

And he wasn't a wrestler.

For anyone who doesn't know who Koichi was, the rest of these guys are all wrestlers.

Yeah, no, Koichi was a reporter.

He was friends of ours.

Brian Danielson Award for the best technical wrestler.

The best brawler used to be the Bruiser Brody Award, but do they do that?

They do have best brawler, actually.

Best Brawler, the Bruiser Brody Award is still here.

That is still one of the wrestlers.

I couldn't find it, but the award I'm talking about that ought to be named after me, the Best Non-Wrestler Award.

It used to be back in the old days, the Manager of the Year, and then they became no manager.

Now it's Best Non-Wrestler.

And I demand to stake my claim

because it's going to be either me or Heyman.

We're going to count them up right now.

Because in the Best Non-Wrestler category, number one, Paul Heyman, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Number two, Don Callis, and I'm embarrassed for the state of the business that

he would place number two.

Number three, Prince Nana, poor fella.

Number four, Renee Moxley Good.

Number five,

hold on.

Hold on.

Everyone's a manager.

She's just a...

She's an announcer.

She's a comment.

Not even a commentator announcer.

She's an interviewer.

She's just a mere commentator.

She's an interviewer.

She stands there with a microphone.

Well, she's the best non-wrestler.

That's where we're at these days.

You know, number five, MVP.

Jesus Christ.

They must be mad at MVP.

Number six, Nick Aldiss.

Number seven, Key Melito.

I don't even know who that is.

And number eight, Samantha Irvin.

And that's all.

And they didn't even have any runner-ups.

So.

As I said, it was in the 80s and 90s.

It was the Manager of the Year award.

And then it became the best non-wrestler after a couple of years on the shelf.

So let's count these things up.

Okay, Brian, can you do this?

Help me.

1983 was Jimmy Hart, Manager of the Year.

Then I was the Manager of the Year in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990.

So that's seven, right?

Mark that down.

And then, as everybody knows, I took 1991 off because I left WCW and I was setting up Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

So that year was sensational Sherry Martell.

Who won for her fine work with that?

That year was Savage, right?

1991.

It was Savage until Savage retired, and then it was Teddy Bease.

There you go.

And then I won in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996.

So that's one, two, three, four.

That's another five.

So then

they reinstated it in 1999

as the best non-wrestler award.

And 1999 was Vince McMahon, and 2000 was Vince McMahon.

Then 2001

was Paul Heyman.

And 2002 was Paul Heyman.

So Paul's got two, Mark Two down.

What am I at?

12?

Help me.

You're at 12.

Heyman's at two.

All righty.

2003 was Steve Austin, because that's when he was injured, but he was still a part of the deal.

2004, Paul Heyman.

That makes three for him.

2005, Eric Bischoff.

2006, Jim Cornette.

For what I was doing in TNA, I'm 13 now.

2007, Larry Sweeney.

2008, Larry Sweeney, Ring of Honor Manager.

2009 and 10, Vicki Guerrero.

My God, it was the dark ages.

2011, Ricardo Rodriguez.

2012 and 13 and 14, Paul Heyman.

There's three more for him.

That makes five, right?

No, that makes sense.

No, six.

That makes seven.

Hold on.

He 2001 and 2 and 4

and

12 and 13 and 14.

So wait, hold on.

That's six.

You know what?

You're right.

Well, son of a bitch, then you threw me all off, and I was right.

2015 was Dario Cuito.

I think it was at Lucha Underground.

2016, too.

What was his name?

He had a bright future, Dario Cueto.

Yeah, well, he got it for two years because nothing else was happening.

2017, Daniel Bryan.

That's when he was hurt, I guess.

But then 18, Heyman, 19 Heyman.

So there's two more.

That makes eight, right?

20, Taz,

21 Heyman, and 22 Heyman.

There's 10.

23, Callus, and 24, Paul Heyman.

I got him 13 to 11.

That's what I'm saying.

So why don't they rename it?

I think there should be a write-in campaign.

The Cornet Heyman Award?

No, just Coronette.

Fuck.

I edged it.

He's got two more years to fucking.

I thought you were going to share it with him.

Plus, I had a much better, I had the most consecutive run in the history of these things.

Anyway, there's some other stuff here.

Is it any of it of any importance?

Best television announcer, Nigel McGinnis.

That's a surprise.

Oh, yeah, hold on now.

I've flipped ahead and I've lost where you are.

Actually, it's not a surprise because think of the state of the announcers these days.

Nigel does a good job.

He

acted like a heel yelling at you.

Well,

when he's allowed to be serious and has something to talk about.

But then, number two, Excalibur.

I mean, say what you want about Michael Cole,

but he's more professional and more

talented at commentating on television than Excalibur.

And Ian Rickabani,

he came in below Michael Cole and Excalibur.

Who the fuck is Walker Stewart?

I don't know.

Sounds like a fake name.

Boy.

Worst television announcer, Booker T.

They don't like him much.

He's bad.

I hate to say it, but he's really bad.

Yeah, but McAfee's awful too, and he's number two.

But Excalibur is number four, and how can you not think that Excalibur is worse than McAfee?

I can't disagree with that.

Okay.

Excalibur sucks.

He's trash on his commentator.

How did Schiavone not win this?

Well, how did Shivani get this?

Because he doesn't really do that much.

Again, 30 people,

which means that he got to be seven on the list for best television announcer.

30 people said Tony Schiavone is the best.

television announcer.

They shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Well, Chris Charlton, who is the New Japan English commentator, right?

Yeah, he's the one who got in trouble for ripping on Tony and AEW.

Yeah, but is he actually on television?

He's on,

I don't know.

I don't know if he was doing when they were on Axis.

I don't know.

Yeah, I think it's the streaming service.

So he can't be on the worst television announcer list because he's not even a television announcer.

See, I found a loophole.

Save him a lot of embarrassment.

It may be time for Dave to retire the word television from the awards.

Worst television show, at least they were honest, AEW Rampage.

Worst feud of the year, Adam Cole versus MJF.

Can't argue with that.

Death Riders versus AEW came in third.

Underneath Rhea Ripley versus Liv Morgan.

People got tired of that one, apparently.

Chris Jericho versus Hook, the Elite versus Tony Kahn,

Bailey versus Nia Jacks, CM Punk versus Drew McIntyre.

Got 18 votes for the worst feud of the year, along with the acclaimed versus the Bang Bang Gang and the Usos against each other.

The best booker apparently is.

Yeah, by the way, that one worst match of the year, too.

Uso versus Uso at WrestleMania.

That awful.

Oh, yes.

And it, and it, it.

Well, it wasn't the worst.

It was the worst match of the year that anybody saw.

Okay, yes.

But, you know, there were much worse.

So that one's really, that's why

a lot of these are opinions only.

Other more horrific things have taken place, but people didn't know about it.

There was no evidence.

And I said, Paul Levesque got best booker of the year, as one would imagine, but Tony Khan got number two.

Is that like...

Give it, again, it falls off from there.

Who else are...

look at the list?

Well, I was about to say, read that, I'll read the rest of these names, but it just

points out that

Tony Khan is coming in number two, doing work that would be hard to place third in a two-horse race.

It's Paul Levesque.

Tony Khan number three is Taro Okada.

Number four, Julio Caesar Rivera and Juan Manuel Mar.

Number five, Sean Michaels down there in NXT.

Bless his little pee-picking cockeyed heart.

Number six, Sari.

So apparently, Sari is not only

placing on the wrestler of the year list,

but she's also one of the best bookers.

And confusingly, similar numbers of votes on each of these.

I think Sari has a big family.

Then Guido,

then number eight

is

this a five-way tie?

Everybody's got 13.

Who are these people?

James Darrell, Anthony Douglas,

John Budd, Mick Maynard, and Sean Shelby.

I don't think that would be a tie.

I think that would be that they are all one collective that book together.

Well, but there's no number nine.

Who are these people?

And number 10, Andy Quilden.

The fuck is going on here?

There aren't a lot of bookers.

Previous winners, 1986, Dusty Rhodes, 1987, Vince McMahon, 1988, Eddie Gilbert, 1989, Giant Baba, 1990, Giant Baba, 1991, Giant Baba, 1992, Ricky Choshu, 1993, Jim Cornette.

Hey, that's me.

1994, Paul Heyman, 95, Paul Heyman, 96, Paul Heyman, 97, Paul Heyman, 98, Vince McMahon, 99, Vince McMahon, 2000, Vince McMahon, 2001, Jim Cornett, 2002, Paul Heyman, 2003, Jim Cornette,

and then Gabe Sapolsky takes a run for three or four years.

I don't see Andy Quilden and fucking Mick Maynard on this goddamn list.

Do you consider Vince McMahon a booker?

From you being there when you were helping with the booking, do you consider Vince the booker?

Yeah.

There is an asterisk that can go beside that

placement because Vince was the

he was never the booker, but he was the overlord.

So, but at the same point.

You know, Triple H has a lot of help now.

He's not sitting down and doing the complete booking job

because you can't in a company this big with this many people at this point.

Triple H is probably putting in more valuable input about the flavor of things and the top matches and the way that they're doing things than Vince was for quite some time.

And he probably has his inner circle of go-to people that are formulating a lot of the rest of it.

If he can win this year, Vince could win those years because it's still kind of the same position.

It's just always been done a little different in that company.

So who would have won in 84, Bill Watts or Bill Dundee?

That would have been Dundee because

he was selling Watts on these ideas and Watts was tweaking them, but Dundee was still in effect the booker.

He did have the he didn't have the final say on anything.

Watts had the final say on everything, but he was unmolested in almost everything that he wanted to do, even though sometimes he had to explain it to Watts or sell it to him.

And Watts would tweak shit just to make it more of a flavor of what he'd like to present.

And a lot of the tweaks made it,

you know, made it better.

But Dundee was the booker.

Dusty was the booker.

Crocketts could still

say, well, you got to use fucking

Bunk Harris.

I don't know.

But Dusty was the booker.

Dundee was the booker.

These are bigger organizations at this point.

Anywho, worst gimmick, the learning tree.

Nice to see that.

By the way, two years in a row for the learning tree.

Yeah, well, because it's a tree that's got plenty of fucking

fertilizer all around it.

Even the observer readers have turned on Jericho.

Well, he doesn't fit.

He doesn't fit the

people who like the mainstream WWE, more adult, fresher approach now, and he doesn't fit the people that like the trained chimpanzee cosplay wrestling because he's not doing either.

He's just hanging on to get that 10-year fucking contract.

Hey, best gimmick, also two years in a row, Tony Storm,

followed by Adam Page, the Outrunners, The Rock.

I guess if you consider, I mean, do you consider just his appearances?

He's a gimmick?

He's a gimmick.

Drew McIntyre,

Harley Cameron.

I mean, again,

what's the Drew McIntyre gimmick?

He's the best gimmick.

What's the gimmick?

It's the way that the people who have learned about this on the internet and from smart folks like Dave,

they're calling that his gimmick is kind of, well, that's his persona, his character.

And now he's the evil Scotsman that has a grudge against society or whatever.

We like that gimmick.

Saya Kamitani.

He's a kit is number seven.

I don't know.

Jey Uso, number eight.

Again, if we're talking, and Tony Storm, I know there's a lot of people that like those performances.

We're talking about gimmicks that are actually over to the point where he almost became a walking, talking gimmick.

that sells tons and tons of merch.

How does Jey Uso end up at number eight?

With Adam Page at number two and a joke underneath tag team, the Outrunners at number three.

I mean, Jey Uso barely beat out the Beast Mortos.

How about this?

Frank the Lawyer.

Tony Kahn paid millions of dollars to bring in the guy from Japan who placed at number 10 for best gimmick, Okada.

Did Okada win anything

here?

Remember, they paid millions of dollars for him last year, right?

That's the gimmick.

He's a Japanese legend who took a bunch of money to come and coast.

Yeah, and he was one of the darlings.

I'm looking.

Look for Okada's name.

Look for Okada's name in anything.

Number 10 match of the year was him and Osprey in Orlando.

I can't find Okada's made no splash.

He is not

on

United States Canada MVP.

No.

Japanese MVP.

He was number nine in Japan.

He got 13 votes.

Number nine.

He was not a revolution.

Number nine.

I'm looking for Okada

anywhere else.

I'm not most charismatic.

He certainly won't be there.

Hey, I got to just say real quick, I'm looking at best wrestling book, The Man, Not Just Your Average Girl, but Becky Lynch one over the Brad Baluchian book, which we talked about on the show, The Six-Pack.

And then the John Langmead book, Ballyhoo, which I'm sorry, that's like a

one of the greatest books I've ever read.

Yeah, that's on the list of the greatest wrestling books ever, not just last year.

So, but Becky Lynch must have

written a banger, I guess.

Well, either that or they've got pictures of somebody banging her in the fucking center.

Oh, come on now.

I don't know about that.

We would have heard something.

I'm still looking for Okada's name in anything, in anything.

They spent millions of dollars.

He doesn't matter.

No one cares.

He's number 10, best gimmick because they taught him to say bitch.

And

Jesus Christ, he's no, nothing happening here.

There's a guy named Okada that's best booker, but it's not him.

Well, these are the Wrestling Observer newsletter awards.

You know, again, a lot of fans use these as their way to get out their views of what they personally like the best.

Looking at these awards, you wouldn't necessarily know that WWE is in the middle of the hottest period of time they've had.

But those, I guess.

Oh, wait, wait a minute.

Back to best book for a second.

Look at number seven, Jim Londos, The Golden Greek by Steve Johnson.

Well, that just came out, though.

To be fair, that was like the end of the year.

Well, okay.

But if you're going for pro wrestling books to understand

the wrestling business, how it came to be, and the biggest star ever in it, read the Jim Londos book by Steve Johnson and Ballywho by John Langmead, who Dave is calling Jim Langmead.

I didn't notice that.

And I don't think you need to know that much about Becky Lynch or the Wrestling Observer complete collection 1989, which came in at number eight.

Or the complete collection of 1984 that came in number six.

And I think you could go with the

Londos and Bally Who.

But anyway, those are those.

The Brad Beluccian book is excellent too, but

that John Langmead book is maybe the best wrestling book I ever read.

It was fascinating.

He captured the story group, but he actually was a great writer.

He wrote about it so well.

Man.

We got to do what we threatened each other we were going to do and come up with a list of, because people ask us all the time, what can I read to learn about the history of wrestling that's good or the history of this person?

We got to do a list that we put up on

the site of all of the approved books from

our very discriminatory palettes.

I like that.

I think we should also have a list of books we disapprove of.

Like, don't read this book.

This person's full of shit.

Boy, I've already started that list.

I could add a few to it.

But anyway, we're about done here, aren't we, for today, Brian?

Well, this is your show.

It's really your discussion.

We have done everything we need to do.

In that case, since we're at the end of it, I'm going to say this real quick so I don't get sidetracked.

But folks, thank you for the last week.

The views of

my tribute to Harley Quinn on YouTube and with the podcast are in the hundreds of thousands.

The comments are literally in the thousands and thousands.

We've had hundreds of emails.

On behalf of Stacey and I, thank you for making our little precious Poochie, the Princess, Princess Poopinhouse, the Duchess of the Dogwoods, was the most famous puppy dog on the internet this last week.

And it was because of all you guys.

So

I want to thank you for that.

But otherwise, we're back to the normal side off, and we'll see you on a few days in the drive-thru.

Thank you, fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.