Episode 565: Cero Miedo

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He's in a fight for wrestling solar using a racket and some mind control.

He's Jim Cornish!

The keys to the future held by the past.

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

He's Jim Cornish!

Well, he's never afraid, cause flony.

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 the Jim Cornet Experience.

The WWE is making make you motion pictures, and AEW is making sitcoms, baby.

SmackDown, raw, classic wrestling, memorabilia, and various tomfoolery, all of that.

Right here today on this program and joining me.

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

Co-Host of you, the only person who's not declared for the 2025 Royal Rumble, the great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim, and hello to the Legion of Last.

It's a pleasure to be here once again for another fun week.

You know what?

Wrestling was fun this week.

I have a lot of excitement to hear what you're going to say about things.

A lot of

anticipation, baby.

It's making me wait.

It's keeping me waiting.

You know what I just found out about you and I'm going to reveal to the world, Brian, last.

I'm going to open you up right here for all to see.

You are a germaphobe.

People say I was a germaphobe or am a germaphobe.

You are a germaphobe.

You got orange rot on you and had to take the rotten carcass of the sumo orange out completely out of your office and wash your hand before you could continue.

That doesn't make someone a germaphobe.

Well, you've got something against just the

tattletale.

It doesn't make me a germaphobe.

Well, you say, oh, this is hard.

Teacher.

Oh, teacher.

It's like he's doing something over here.

Stephen King, Geordie, and Creep Show or whatever.

It's growing on me.

No, I had a sumo orange.

It's the time of year.

They're in season.

Fuck the time of year for an orange and season.

We're encased in a block of ice.

In sumo orange

speak, in the calendar of the sumo oranges, this is prime sumo orange season.

And it wasn't good, apparently.

My thumb went into it.

Yeah.

And I didn't care about the germ.

I wasn't worried about the germs I was going to catch from the orange.

The sumo orange.

Then what was the

sudden urgency?

To rinse off my thumb, to wash my thumb against the sum.

And I don't want to stare at the fucking orange that I know is bad now that I can't eat.

That my thumb just went through.

Goddamn insects pouring out of it.

You don't know what's in the middle of that there.

Back in my day, we just kicked it over in a corner and went on about our business.

And we liked it.

See, if I was a heel, I would like do my business and then run out.

I wouldn't be able to stand there and just watch for a while.

I'd be like, you know, I got to go.

Or they got to go.

Someone's got to go.

Apparently, somebody already went if you did your business.

What in the world are you talking about?

Well, this is your show.

All right.

Well, I went to the doctor today.

I'll have you know I'm going to piss some people off again as I do once a year.

Apparently, there's I continue to baffle science.

There's nothing wrong with me.

The blood test results still have to come back, but my cholesterol, who knows, you know, anything could happen, but I'm 190 pounds.

My blood pressure was 125 over 80, and he looked into a couple of my orifices, not even any of the major ones,

and said, apparently

you're all right.

But

I almost got pneumonia to get over there because it's still freezing fucking weather here.

But I try to monitor these things and I'm having all the goddamn vaccinations

that is available to me before you have to go to Mexico or Canada to get fucking

polio vaccination for fuck's sake.

Like all responsible citizens should.

Not all at the same time.

That might be a little.

A little burdensome, but I've got my list that I need to have checked off.

I keep up to date with these things.

And I'm going to be around to make a lot of people miserable for quite some time to come.

That's a good way to look at it.

That's well, I've got goals.

I've got goals.

There's some people that need some goddamn misery in their lives.

I need to supply it.

I need to be around.

Even just to laugh at their what do they call that?

Seherazod

or Skoydenfreud?

I don't know.

When you take pleasure in other people's misfortune, Schehanahu.

Schehannafreud.

What is that word?

McManism.

No, come on now.

I don't think Vince ever took pleasure in anything.

Well, I guess now we find out he did, but

Skeherazod.

All right.

All right.

Well, I mentioned it.

Yeah, where's your dictionary?

Come on, Mr.

Oh, let me look it up.

I have the old heritage.

It's the old world dictionary.

The old

English English dictionary, whatever it is.

This is the American Heritage Dictionary, and it's a German word.

So how, you know, spell that word that I was trying to say.

Say that word that you were trying to say.

Feudenfreud.

Sigmund Freud, whatever the fuck.

Well, I've got the American Heritage Dictionary, not the German Heritage Dictionary.

And the weather's still cold.

I mentioned that, but

there's another, I need to update update on something that we talked about on one of these programs right after the holiday.

Remember, I told you about a Christmas Carol Gone Wrong

was the funniest shit from the BBC.

The Brits over there across the pond are just on the cutting edge of humor.

This fucking show was hilarious, right?

It broadcasts over here on PBS for whatever reason.

They've got a series now,

The Goes Wrong Show.

If you look it up on,

I don't know, whatever one of the streaming things is, Stacey found it

on stream.

They have a whole, where they do a play per episode, and it goes horribly wrong.

And we watched the first episode of the first season, and my stomach hurt by the time I was finished with it.

Could have had something to do with the fucking greasy cheeseburgers egg, but no, it was from laughing.

I'm just, I'm making a joke there.

But you got to watch this show.

Brian, have you watched any of these shows that I've talked to you about yet?

I watch, oh, yeah, all the time.

The treasure from the kitchen.

Treasure from it's kitchen nightmares or the curse of Oak Island.

One of those in there.

Oh, they cause me to curse like crazy.

They're great.

Well, you're missing a lot of entertainment.

Also, here's another update: Jesse Barr.

We say,

one of the first people I ever managed, Sandy Barr's son, Art Barr's brother, Barr Family Wrestling.

He went into the insurance business.

I have it from a responsible source, or

a responsible Saus.

No, source.

Out there in the Northwest, he went into the insurance business.

I know a responsible Souse.

A very responsible Saus out there.

All righty.

I just wanted to clear that up.

And also,

Chris

from wherever I don't know,

sent us an email.

It is very nice to both of us, Brian.

It is a very nice email about how we seriously, the podcast here, changed his life.

And

it just proof that the podcast, if you're listening to us now, folks, it's good for you.

He met

somebody that he lived nearby and it was a cult member on the Instagram or one of those grams.

And they went to a local show.

The guy told him about his company, hiring salespeople.

He got the job.

He's now making six figures a year.

Boom goes the dynamite.

But not only that,

not only that, ladies and gentlemen, because a couple of years later,

he meets a girl, and for Valentine's Day, she got him one of my cameos.

That, yes, I got to do some more of those one day, but I could pop the corn too.

But when she did that,

he realized that she was the one for him.

You're the one that I want.

You are the one for.

boom.

That's it.

Boom.

They're together.

They got the home.

And I won't mention where.

Well, he does say where, but I won't mention it now.

I don't want to embarrass his

lovely,

significant other.

But he says, I've never been happier.

So

we got him the girl and the job just from listening to us.

And the singing.

The singing may negate all of that.

I want to sing at their like their weddings, anniversaries, things and such of that nature.

What are you going to sing?

That song?

I said, you're the one that I want.

You are the one for me.

Sounds like Olivia Neuter John.

Hey!

Hold on.

Wait a minute.

That was great.

All right.

I got to tell you about, before we get on to to the wrestling, we're going to talk about some classic wrestling today, and we're going to talk about some

fucking fucked up wrestling today here in a second.

But I've been teasing, Brian,

that I was going to have the details on the big sale for February at Cornett's Collectibles at jimcornet.com.

The time has arrived.

And what do you think of when you think of the month of February, Brian?

What's the first thing that pops up into your mind?

Spring trainings right around the corner.

All right, what about more like the middle of the month, like right in the middle of the month, the February 14th?

What's the first thing that pops into your mind?

The 15th, got to pay my bills.

Well, I'm sure your wife is pleased, but it's Valentine's Day.

It's a day of love.

It's a day where people get people things that when they love them to show them how much they love them, love, love, love is in the air.

And so, therefore, for the whole month of February, from the first through the 28th, you can get your hands on heavenly bodies and you can ride the Midnight Express

because all of the tag team sets, the Eaton and Lane, the Eaton and Condry, the Heavenly Bodies, and the Big Midnight Express four-pack, $20

off

across the board because it's celebrate Valentine's Day by if you're a female, then you need to get your sweetie of a bunch of men's figures in tights.

It's only right.

There's somehow, you know, that that works in there somewhere.

And Brian, I'll have you know also, yes, please,

if you, if you buy any tag team set,

then you can get any of the remaining in stock Jim Cornette variants.

for half price, which I believe is going to come down to the final variant, the man in white,

the

pink and black breast cancer,

and we potentially have some left of the commentator play set.

I'm doing that off the top of my head, but nevertheless, any Jim Cornette variant for half price, only $24.95, when you buy a tag team set that's already $20 off.

So

you're saving some money there,

some big bucks.

And

if you spend $50 or more, you're going to get a free two-hour DVD of classic 70s and 80s wrestling from the Wrestling Gold series.

Oh, there you go.

That's cool.

Well, see, there you go.

I'm saving even more money because you would normally not even be able to buy that in stores now.

Most stores I went to, they said, get the fuck out of here with that.

But anyway, that's all during February.

And if you're a customer of Cornet's Collectibles or if you've signed up with your email address at the bottom of the homepage at jimcornet.com, then you will get the email information on exactly what I just said there.

So you don't have to

fucking take notes when you're listening to the program.

Somebody might have their hands full.

People are listening to us and doing other things.

I don't know what that could be.

What are you doing?

Other things over here.

JimCornet.com.

JimCornet.com.

You're doing it.

It could be that people are driving or people are working at their desk, or people are washing fucking dishes.

I don't know what they're doing, but they're listening to us.

That's why we don't do video instead of just seeing our fucking hang dog faces standing there for three hours.

Because we're doing other things.

We're doing other things.

I got another email here.

Oh, no.

Hold on.

I'm going to take a drink.

It's a long one, but it may be worth it.

Swing a stripe for the working man.

Well, remember, I said on, I think it was the first show

we saw coming back from our holiday break, AEW, they put Bobby Lashley against two job guys, handicap match.

You remember this?

Oh, yeah, you went nuts about one of the guys.

They were both smaller guys.

You really, really didn't like the guy who was doing the comedic stuff.

Well, because not only they both looked like fucking shit,

but at least the other guy, you know, I mean, that was mother nature.

He couldn't do anything about that, but he wasn't actively being unprofessional.

But this other fucking goof not only

looked like shit, but was being unprofessional.

But anyway, I got an email here

from someone whose name I will not mention, and just in case he doesn't want it out there.

But apparently, he speaks for a number of people.

He says, Dear Jim, my name is Miro.

Oh, quit now.

No, this is not from Bulgaria.

Dear Jim, because see, the Bulgarian emails have atbulgaria.com behind them.

Anyway, dear Jim, your absolute verbal evisceration of the quote, fat, slobby, pissy-looking asshole floating, deflated truck stop novelty condom was well received by many of the indie workers in the Carolinas.

The man for which you so eloquently buried is a local wrestler named Rob Killjoy,

who once teamed with another local worker named Lance Lude, calling themselves the Ugly Ducks, which was a play off both the Mighty Ducks and Slapshots the Hansons,

like the Dudley Boys prior, but really just a low-rent ripoff of an already worked gimmick executed poorly.

What's Lance Lude?

Is it L-E-W-D or is it L?

No, it's L-U-D-E.

Oh, as in Lud's.

Okay.

Yes, apparently he was the exciting one of the team.

But yeah, he says, Lude, being the only talented member of the duo with an actual physique, eventually left Rob to flounder in obscurity and walked away from wrestling entirely, leaving Rob for almost a decade since to continue on with the same shtick of pigeon waddling to the ring in a duck-sculpted hockey mask.

What?

Yelling quack repeatedly.

running through endless high spots, selling absolutely nothing, and usually going way over his allotted time by about five to ten minutes.

When Rob isn't doing no-sell car crash marathons, he can be found smoking marijuana in the parking lot,

chastising other indie guys' work like he's a wrestling savant, stuffing his gear bag with as many free food items as he can get his hands on, or training

unknowing and impressionable want to be wrestlers in small Carolina towns like Chester.

Rob's training consists of whatever he just watched on Pro Pro Wrestling Guerrilla that day, with the fundamentals scoffed at.

Physical training or working out is discouraged as a waste of time,

with importance being placed on how many Canadian destroyer spots a guy can perform.

When Rob isn't believing he is wrestling's messiah, he can be found stocking the shelves and reorganizing merchandise at a dollar tree outside of, yep, you called it, Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Did you call that?

I don't remember.

Did you call that?

I think, weren't they in Asheville?

And I said, they got some local goose from fucking Hendersonville.

Did I say that?

I can't, but you may have.

Hendersonville is about 20 miles down I-26.

Oh, boy.

Hmm.

Well, anyway.

So now that we've established what kind of extras they bring on for the program, let's talk about

the professionals they're using on the program.

And

this wouldn't even have been a thing because nobody watches Collision on Saturday nights.

We've established that, except,

again, there was a sequence that was so stunning to behold that people clipped it and put it up on Twitter and like, what the fuck?

And I saw this thing and I even wrote, I said, can someone with pro wrestling experience tell me what was supposed to be going on here?

And there's been a lot of debate about it, but it was the match between poor Dax Harwood and Chris Jericho on collision for what was Saturday night, the 11th or so?

Yes, it was.

I'll answer that for you.

It was because it was a week after January 4th.

And that's a red letter day.

But

this,

you saw this.

Did you see the match or you saw the clip?

Or what did you see here?

I saw the clip once you retweeted it.

And I said, oh, we're absolutely going to have to review this.

So let me watch Collision because I had it on DVR.

And I watched the majority of Collision.

I skipped Shibata versus Garcia.

Aww.

Because there was just no way I was watching that fucking match.

But I saw most of the rest of it.

Well, Big Bill got choked out.

Big Bill, seven feet tall, whatever he is, all jacked up like he's about to side with WWE, got choked out by Edge because, you know, Moxley chokes people out.

So now

the Cope has to choke people out to show that he can do it too, like the kids.

Big Bad Bill.

Every morning at the set, you could see him arrive.

He had a glazed over look in his eyes because he knew he was going to get choked out.

Big Bad Bill.

Big Bill.

Thank you, rhythm section.

Who was Tennessee Ernie Ford's backup guys?

Did he, he did, at one point, had a combo behind him, didn't he?

Nevertheless, Chris Jericho and Dax Harwood, I watched the whole match after I got a taste of the finish.

And then we're going to talk about the controversy that ensued afterwards when everybody's starting to.

All right.

So

they started the match with the old deal

where they grab a collar and elbow tie up, as the commentators used to say, the referees hold.

And you've seen the guys where they struggle around the ring, and then somebody, they'll fall through the ropes and never let go of the fucking collar and elbow and they're on the ground.

And boy, it looks like two bulls struggling.

So this is the way they're going to start this match out.

And the problem was they had

one bull and they had one swayback mule because Jericho lost the goddamn collar and elbow and just fell headfirst out

around the top of Dax.

And then they locked up again and went all around ringside.

And the Fed, there was an old lady that looked like she ought to be in a wrestling crowd in 1980.

She was in a front row and she was laughing at them.

Because did you see the camera shot where they're locked up at the front row and bullying around on the railing and everybody's just laughing at them?

And it's not just them two.

It's this crowd now just comes to laugh at these people, don't they?

If there was two 200 and something pound guys

that had some aura of we mean this,

jerking each other around a foot away from you, and you're a 55-year-old woman from a trailer park, wouldn't you sit your ass back down in the fucking seat just at least to get away?

You would think so, but it takes two.

Have you ever been a 55-year-old woman from a trailer park?

Only a a few times in my life.

But, you know, the thing is, Dax, you know, whatever you want to say about the booking of them and everything else,

he acts serious out there.

If you have Jericho, whose entire gimmick is that he's a gimmick,

why should you treat anything he does right in front of you seriously?

And that's the thing is

he's trying to do this shit, is Chris.

Dax gives him a dragon screw and Jericho fell

way over the top of, I don't know what the fuck was going on.

And they did the deal where.

He heard Dragon Screw started looking for the bar.

That was in catering.

And they did the deal where Dax is going to nut Jericho on the ring post, pulling his legs, and Jericho's supposed to pull his legs up, and Dax would

be posted, but Jericho, the

leg pull, Dax just had to run into it himself.

And they were in quicksand.

And I, again, Dax is trying here.

But goddamn, at one point, I was

Jerry,

the break spot was Jericho doing a Hurricane Rana off the top rope.

But if you watch the picture in picture, he then had to stand and wave at everybody with that stupid high guys.

For 45 seconds, it reminded me when I saw Roger Waters do the wall.

He was fucking 70, whatever, and he had to go back behind the wall and breathe.

And then he'd come back out out and he'd just walk from one from the middle of the stage to one side and slowly raise his arms while the other guys are playing.

And then he'd walk over to the other side and slowly raise his arms while the other guys are playing.

That's how he got through the fucking thing, right?

Jericho's Roger Waters in the commercial break.

So then, and I'm pretty sure I know who called this because

at one point, Dax fired up on Jericho, boom, pickled him, bang, bing, and grabbed his arm and shot him off and took a shoulder tackle.

Dax didn't call that.

It had to be Jericho calling that.

You would learn that in wrestling school.

You don't fucking take a shoulder tackle when you shoot the guy off.

You're in control.

So Dax kind of stutter-stepped like he looked down for a minute because he had to, but that doesn't make any fucking sense.

So anyway, then

why would jericho call it

because i think he's just lost i don't know what the fuck why he's doing any of this

but you would think as technically perfect as dax and cash are with tag team rules and the blind tags and the the intricate double team maneuver he's not going to fucking shoot a guy off and stand there and take a shoulder tackle

the fuck

We've stopped workouts in OVW for that.

Hear that that Jericho tries to do the lion salt.

He landed, thankfully, hands first, but followed by his face.

And then his dick landed in Dax's face.

And the fans went, ooh, not like, oh, what a movie.

Ooh, like somebody got hurt.

We can't really tell who.

And then, again, there's supposed to be a double-legged kickoff for Dax to go into the post, and Dax had to look like he was shot out of a cannon from a poop.

And then

they got to do the superplex, right?

For whatever reason.

No, they didn't have to and they had an out and they still didn't have to.

Well, they still, yes.

Jericho goes the top.

Dax stops him.

He's going to hook him up for the superplex.

Jericho's trying to climb up on top.

His foot slips off the turnbuckle and he drops back down to the bottom rope.

So right there, they could have fought into something.

He could have pushed Dax off, boom, gone for a fucking elbow miss, whatever the fuck, right?

Instead,

Dax is just like, oh, here, Chris, let me help you.

And Chris is like, okay, steady me while I climb up here.

And in a big superplex.

And at that point, I thought,

Jericho looks like a bloated Greg Allman.

It's just,

instead of changing his gimmick all the time, just get a full bodysuit at this point.

Or get share, one or the other.

Or play the beacon, just one or the other.

Just one of those things.

I think he'll get share before he'll play the beacon.

Anyway, then they traded a bunch of chops.

And then here,

first, they set the finish up in a way that buried the match to begin with and was a distraction for the fans rather than an enhancement.

It wasn't a flavor enhancer.

It was a fucking sour pickle.

Jericho gets the belt,

but Dax rolls out on the floor and stops him.

And they drop the belt on the apron of the ring.

And the referees in the ring, allegedly counting, but leaves the belt there.

Jericho then kicks Dax into the steps and gives him the code breaker on the floor, which I swear to God.

I don't think

people don't get that because it looks like Jericho's knocking the fuck out of himself and barely touching the guy.

You know the code breaker where he jumps up and he pulls the guy down onto his knee as he takes a flat back bump.

Yeah.

So on the on the fucking floor, wouldn't that

be more destructive?

Okay.

But anyway, he gives Dax that and then Jericho rolls in the ring and the referee's still ignoring the belt.

It's just sitting there on the apron.

And he's counting and Dax beats the count at nine.

And they start wrestling again where Dax gets the sharpshooter and Jericho gets the ropes.

The belt is still there.

The referee's done nothing.

Now Jericho, and meanwhile, people are thinking, well,

something's got to happen with that fucking belt, or just they're seeing the belt in the arena looking down, even if you're not seeing it on television.

All the people in the arena that are your audience that you're trying to get the reaction out of.

Now they know something's up with this fucking belt.

And then

Jericho goes over and gets the belt as the referee is somehow admonishing Dax.

Dax has his back turns.

So, Dax turns toward Jericho with the belt.

The referee is behind Dax.

Jericho swings the belt.

Dax ducks, but so does the goddamn referee,

even though the belt would have to be 12 feet long

to have hit him from where

the instigator of the swing was good, but it was like a double duck spot.

Okay.

So

then

after Dax and the referee duck, Dax snatches Jericho and gives him the belly-to-back

suplex, the big boom Greco-Roman backdrop type of thing that Luthes used to use.

And Jericho had the belt in his hand, so when Jericho lands, he drops the belt next to him.

Now,

the referee had no reason not to see

this belt flying out of into Jericho's hands when he was way up in the air or when he landed.

What did he think?

A fucking filling fell out of his tooth?

I don't know what.

But the belt flies down and then.

He's known for losing belts.

He's known for losing belts, unlike Michael's.

But then

Jericho looks over and sees the belt laying there and shoves it further away from him like he's trying to get rid of this evidence, making an attempt so the referee wouldn't see it, right?

Okay.

So

then, meanwhile,

Dax is going to the top rope in the corner across the fucking ring.

To do what?

Well, we're going to find out in a minute, maybe

the concept, the theory of the thing.

Because while he's gone all the way over to this other corner instead of the corner that Jericho's kind of laying in front of,

the referee now has looked down at Jericho laying there, and Jericho's turtled up at him on his back, trying to tell him something, I think.

And it looks like Jericho just reaches up and tries to poke him in the eye.

But since it was a hard camera shot, you really couldn't see what the fuck was going on.

But the announcers were saying, I believe

Jericho may have poked the referee in the eye.

But the referee, Bryce Remsburg, instead of he's he refereed the invisible man one time, so somebody should gouge his eyes out.

When he takes the poke from him being bent over, he immediately

more or less runs forward and

not dives out, but just leans over the second rope and is like somebody threw acid in his fucking face.

And he's over there.

Well, now Dax.

is going to come off the top rope now we've figured out because he's got to the top right as the referee referee looks like he's puking out on the floor.

And Jericho now reaches and grabs the belt that he just fucking shoved away from himself and is trying to pull it toward him as Dax comes off with a diving headbutt.

But I mean, this could be analyzed like the Zapruder film, but Dax, I think, gave him the diving headbutt.

And Jericho, the belt was laying on the other side of Dax.

And

if Jericho was trying to pull the belt on top of him, so Dax would headbutt, it didn't make it.

And Dax turned after he landed the diving headbutt on Jericho, turned over and looked like he may have said, fuck.

And then he immediately stood up

and he walked away, turned his back on Jericho to go check on the referee who was still selling his eye, leaned over the rope.

Jericho then picks the belt up again.

And Dax, after Dax sees for two seconds that the referee is still blind and potentially his eyeballs are hanging out because the guy hadn't let go of his face,

he turned around to go back to Jericho and Jericho hit him over the head with the title belt.

And Dax took the bump

and then Jericho dropped the belt and he fell down.

And the referee is still leaning through the ropes with his back turned.

And the crowd is not only booing by this, it's hoot booing.

It's the like, boo, no,

this is rotten.

Yeah, it sounds a lot more fluid than it was as you describe it.

No, what, the finish?

It was much less fluid than I described it.

And then the referee turns around and Jericho is crawling over to, if he threw the belt out, I don't know why he had to take a bump.

He obviously did something to the motherfucker.

It's been five minutes since the referee turned around.

Referee drops down and counts.

Jericho's got him covered.

One, two,

and Dax kicks out.

All of that.

That wasn't even the fucking finish.

That was the funniest part of the whole thing.

I laughed when he kicked out.

And then, and then they both stood up on opposite sides of the ring, and Dax stood there while Jericho trotted at him, turned his back on him, spun around and hit the Judas elbow and covered him one, two, three.

You see the bump he took off the Judas?

Yes, it was like the fucking one of the other disciples.

Just get me out of here.

That was the finish.

And the other thing wasn't the finish.

None of what the fuck was the finish supposed to be before they did what they did with the finish.

If you're a referee and the finish is screwed up and you're supposed to be hit with the belt, should the next thing be rake my eyes so I can't see?

Well, no, but he wasn't supposed to be hit with the belt because he ducked too.

But

the question is, when

then Dax got Jericho, who had spun his back when he swung it, got Jericho in the belly to back.

Was Jericho supposed to hit Dax with the belt when he was up in the air on the head?

Because that's an old finish that heels would do with like a chain or brass knucks or whatnot, a goddamn belt, because you can't maneuver those heavy things like that.

And he fumbled it, and the referee was then after he ducked, he was going to not see that, and that was the false finish.

Or was it just focusing on that, though, ignores that Jericho did not look good throughout the whole match?

Well, no, because there's more.

There's more of what-ifs.

Now, but then if that's the case, then

they had to, when they landed,

if Jericho felt like he had accomplished it, he would shove the belt farther away from him.

But if he felt like he hadn't, he would still need it somehow.

But yet, why would Dax be going across the other side of the ring to do a dive and headbutt unless he thought he was going to diving headbutt the belt, which Jericho then

had to poke the referee in the eye?

I don't know.

It was like a series of things happening and you couldn't figure out what anything was.

And then another thing happened.

Like, whoa, where did he come from?

Oh, he just landed there.

I guess that was a headbutt.

Oh, and by the way, then Big Bill and Brian Keith came in and started kicking shit out of Dax, and Edge and Cash came in, and my DVR froze in the nick of time.

But

that particular match

apparently already had enough heat on its own on the social interwebs that everybody was clipping clipping that and talking about what the fuck,

and then it blew up even further from there because of Tony Khan tweeting.

Well, that match, the clip immediately went out, and people were all talking about how embarrassing it was.

I think Jericho may have trended at one point

the next day,

as people are still freshly thinking and talking about that, and quite frankly, as AEW fans are feeling disappointed,

it's not just the Jim Cornette listeners or the AEW fans who also listen to Cornette.

It's AEW fans as a whole are not happy with the direction of the company.

They have gotten to a point where

they are finally starting to look at Tony and realize that Tony

may be a problem, that maybe there's a tone deafness

coming from AEW's owner.

And in the midst of all of these issues, and it's not just the Jericho Dax match, it's the Death Riders.

It's Cope.

Just Cope.

It's a whole number of things happening.

Tony Khan issued a tweet.

This was

January 12th, 2025, 4.20 p.m.

No.

Well, at least on the East Coast.

I don't know where it was, wherever he was.

I don't know where he was.

I don't know if he knows where he was.

This Saturday, January 18th, 8 p.m.

Eastern Time, 7 p.m.

Central on TNT and Max.

Saturday, AEW Collision.

Jon Moxley, Wheeler Utah, Claudio Castignoli, Chris Jericho,

Big Bill,

and Brian Keefe

versus Powerhouse Hobbs, the Outrunners, FTR,

and Cope.

Maximum Carnage comes to collision

this Saturday.

Maximum Carnage or Maximum Damage?

Maximum Carnage, because every fucking regular TV show needs a nickname now at this point.

I thought of,

how can I do the maximum damage to my program?

Oh, this match.

This match has angered the AEW fan base to no end because again,

who here is right now working for that fan base?

None of this is.

They hate the Jericho stuff.

They hate the Moxley stuff.

Cope hasn't really lit the world on fire.

We'll see what happens with Hobbs this week, but the feedback was incredibly negative.

Why don't we?

You know,

this reminds me of when you

may have been young or may just luckily have not been present, but do you remember hearing about the boxing match that Dennis Corluzzo had with Tommy Fierro?

Oh, I was around, but I didn't go to that show.

Well, there you go.

You dodged a bullet there.

Yeah, no.

That's why when people ask me, what's the worst thing I ever saw in one of Dennis' shows, I could still say Tommy Fierro and the Iron Sheik doing a Macarena contest because I didn't see that.

Well, Dennis asked me afterwards, said, what'd you think of it, James?

I said, Dennis, that's the worst thing I've ever seen, but I've only been watching wrestling for 30 years.

And

I didn't follow it with,

let's bring it back next week and make it a 12-man tag.

One of the, I mean, my God,

you know, that's the kind of match you come back and apologize to each other for.

One side needed to apologize more than the other, but, you know, it needs to be a mutual thing.

Keep some civility.

But you don't bring it back with 10 more fucking people in the middle of it.

Try to forget that it ever happened how

did they did they put that on their do they have a youtube channel yes they do did they did they put that thing unedited on their youtube channel at finish i wonder oh i have not gone back and checked i don't know somebody ought to look and see if they've done any creative tweaking with that if you saw a tweaking being an operative word if you saw the live version but it'll continue on with your dissertation well again and we have feedback here because i think it gives an example of the aew fan base turning on tony because they're fed up with this nonsense.

But Moxley and his crew's whole credo

is we have to like burn it down and rebuild it.

You're all too soft.

You have to murder people on team.

I don't know what exactly they're trying to do, actually.

The Boar Horseman.

But

if that's their thing, why are they teaming up with Jericho in the learning tree?

Because his object is the same thing, to bore the fuck out of us.

Well, here's some of the feedback.

Well, yeah,

that is kind of like

the goddamn space aliens coming down and teaming up with the Russians against, you know, whatever.

It doesn't really add up, does it?

The NWO are here, and they're teaming up with the Dungeon of Doom.

No, it doesn't work at all.

Here's some of the feedback directly under this.

Storyline has gone off the rails, man.

People not liking it, and it doesn't even make sense anymore.

Might be time to reevaluate direction.

Wow.

You only have two of the guys who have been on every promotional AEW thing since forever.

It was the Bucks, Moxley, Omega, Jericho, and Cody.

This is like playing Pokemon and having all bullshit cards.

I don't even, I don't even know how to play Pokemon, but it sounds pretty fucking dire to me.

I like that.

For once, can you listen to your fans and not think every idea you have is gold, Tony Khan?

That's a pretty accurate one there.

What is this shit?

What the fuck?

What is that mine?

Tony, why are you doing this?

Maximum carnage with the minimal attendance.

Nice job, Tony.

The comments speak for themselves.

What if the Death Riders beat the Learning Tree before the match and introduce three new members?

Anything could happen.

Let's wait till Saturday.

See, there's a pro AEW slant on it.

Booker of the Year, keep up the good work, Tony.

Y'all got Osprey, Okada, Omega, Takesha, and you got the world title on Moxley?

Fantastic booking.

It feels good to be elite.

AEW good, WWE bad.

How to book the nobody's watching collision, throw everybody into the show.

Jericho and Moxley on the same team is wild given their history, and it just goes on and on from there.

Tony Khan trended because of this.

He's getting killed by his fans.

The Observer board,

I went because someone told me I had to see some of the feedback.

They've turned on Tony too.

They're not ready to acknowledge yet that we've been right all along.

We're still mean or whatever.

But they realize now that all these problems are centered around Tony.

It's like we said, the TV deal happened, the TV deal, the media rights deal, which It's going to be a rude awakening when it doesn't produce any numbers for max, but we'll get there.

But ever since then, the pom-poms went down.

There was no real goalpost anymore.

Now it's just existing, floating through space endlessly.

Just where will it end up?

Who knows?

Tony will keep funding it so he can keep doing it.

And

the recognition that Tony's at the top and he's not going to step down.

I think is finally starting to set in for a lot of people.

No one really seems to be happy with the direction of AEW right now, except for Tony Khan.

What are your thoughts?

Just think about this.

It's been five years now.

This has been his best shit.

Think about every booker,

whether you burn out or you do it forever, but you don't, but you're after the first five years of the same thing, the same people, same place, whatever, that's your best shit.

And,

you know, now we're, and he doesn't have the

roster, the

cast that he used to have.

And he's signed every big

whoop-de-doo name that he can get.

And now we're down to they're making, you know, a big deal when he signs a Japanese indie girl.

So I don't see what

we said this kind of shit.

How long is it going to take before the fucking bloom is off the rose of, you know, oh, we've got to support these people because they're the common people doing the common people's good.

He's the devil doing the devil's business.

He's a rich fucking guy

that thought that he was smarter than everybody else.

And that's what I heard.

You know, he's still a nice guy, but he thought that he was a brilliant, genius wrestling savant.

And that's what I heard.

And I've heard a bunch of those.

And the problem is, the the only ones I've heard that thought they were wrestling savants are ones that weren't.

So, but

anyway, and now he's just a 12-man tag for Saturday night.

Let's see what fucking happens.

That's what the thought is that's coming down to this.

And, like I said before, someone told me I should check out some of the discourse on the Observer board because, like I always say, is the problem.

Dave Meltzer still won't come out and just say Tony can't book.

Now the argument is booking doesn't matter.

Any thoughts on that initial thought?

When you say, oh, he's a bad booker, he's a good booker, none of that matters.

The booking doesn't matter.

Look here, you can take

world-class musicians and just throw them on a stage and give them some instruments and they can come up with a show.

But you can't just goddamn take 30 fucking wrestlers and go out to, well, do whatever the fuck you want and have anything but gibberish.

So, of course, the booking matters, as we've seen, because

say what you want, the WWE was going to do most of what

the WWE has done.

But that doesn't mean that Tony needed to really, at the same time, the AEW business needed to start sucking sucking so bad,

or that

if things had been done differently from the start, one wonders, would Cody have left?

And that would have done Cody a disservice and the WWE as well.

But it's

no,

you have to be able to take the talent that is available to you, that you have compiled, put together, and interweave them and make them intermingle

in exciting and intriguing ways, which we're seeing in the WWE right now with the Royal Rumble thing and this game of jostling for the top.

Instead of a bunch of guys who are hot shots because they've got an indie reputation, they get signed.

They don't know what to do.

Another guy doesn't know what to do with them.

And then they just do shit that makes themselves look stupid to the average person

until they become one of the boys.

That's part of the, a big part of that is fucking booking.

Do you sign a dozen actors from Hollywood and just put them in a fucking room and say, have a conversation?

Or do you have to write shit for them to say?

You know, I got a movie making experience.

We're going to be talking about that here upcoming.

For example, from Dave's own board, where the people are starting to turn on him because he won't come out and say Tony, everything is something other than Tony's booking.

WWE is hot.

The media perception.

All these things.

It's never just Tony's not good at this.

The show is a mess.

The matches that Dave says are so great, he's constantly saying, Well, there's so many great matches these days.

No, there's not.

There's loud singers.

If you're not,

if you're tone deaf, but you

like loud, there's loud singers, but there's not very many artists.

And

there's not a lot of great matches.

There's a lot of fucking moves being performed and guys fucking trying to kill each other.

But we have almost a dearth of great matches, which is why they stand out.

But no, the matches on AEW television are not overwhelmingly great.

Neither are they on WWE television.

But on the WWE television, we understand why they're fighting, whose side we're supposed to be on, or what the issue is, or possibly even sometimes now we're torn down the middle, but we give a shit

because it's not fucking stupid.

Dave was asked, why do you refuse to acknowledge the importance of good booking?

And his answer, because it's so much less important than people make it out to be.

If AEW hired the best booker in the world tomorrow, at best, they'd be slightly ahead of where they are.

Not all, but most perceived AEW booking flaws exist the same in WWE.

Oh, geez.

Guys switch from face to heel, sometimes on the same show.

Angles start and are dropped before any conclusion.

Matches are decided on in the last few days, leaving shows day of with few bouts advertised.

Has somebody told him that Vince is gone?

No contenders made and constant battle royals, four ways and tournaments to create contenders because the booking hasn't been done long term to do so.

AEW is microanalyzed.

Every week on WWE,

I see things that people would kill AEW over that they do.

Plus WWE has far worse finishes.

In the end, it doesn't matter.

You know, I can't even say I agree with that really because there's so many rotten finishes on both sides, but go ahead.

In the end, it doesn't matter.

The reason for the gap is that the perception that WWE is the major league, that Tony can't book, that somehow the great matches are a bad thing.

You switch bookers tomorrow, and the situation becomes the same.

Paul becomes the trader, and every flaw would be magnified, and it would be popped up by the WWE and Heyman or whatever

or propped up, excuse me.

Popped.

Propped up.

Heyman's not doing poppers, ladies and gentlemen.

It'll be propped up by WWE and Heyman or whatever.

So again, the argument,

it can never just be about Tony specifically.

If you switch roles, WWE would do this.

WWE has done this.

WWE is currently this.

As opposed to Tony's dropped the ball.

Well, but besides that, and I agree agree with him about one thing, if they hired the best booker in the world tomorrow, they'd still maybe be slightly better off because after five years,

what about if you run a China shop and you hire the manager, and the manager spends five years inside with a sledgehammer just beating a shit out of stuff, right?

And then

you say, well, let's hire the best China shop manager in the world.

He walks into goddamn chaos.

What?

How is he going to do anything?

Tony's dug the hole now,

created the perception of, remember, I say you don't get a second chance to make a first impression, but sometimes first impressions take a while to make.

But he's created the perception of what they're doing and that people are yawning now and or laughing and or what the fuck is this and

the backstage drama and nobody likes each other, either that or they're all friends.

What is one or the other?

Either they're all friends and everybody's friend or relative gets a job or they don't like like each other, and they're fucking punching each other backstage.

And Tony's dropped the ball on everything.

The football fans hate his football team, soccer fans hate his soccer team.

And

but again, we're talking about booking, and if you just look at people,

if he decided to focus on that,

more interesting from the start, if he had established

this is the

flavor of AEW, not just we're going to have random great.

Hold up, random, great.

Oh, wait a minute, hit the wrong button.

Random, great

matches.

Then instead, if he'd have made the most of the people he had, as they have done in the WWE with the individual personalities,

instead of concentrating on putting everybody through a goddamn table and just making it over in flamethrowers and fucking whatever,

then he would be better off than he is now.

But now,

if somebody, you know, the Titanic, it hit the iceberg a couple hours ago.

It's about halfway sunk.

Bring on a new captain.

What are they going to do?

Help the old ladies to the fucking lifeboats?

And in terms of, like you said before, a Booker's lifespan.

The best Bookers burned out, and that was during an era where TV was

either once a week or maybe taped in bunches, and there weren't a lot of angles at times on them

and those guys got burned down yes and you know they were concentrating on key things every week and keeping them going and watching the house whether it was up or down or whatever but imagine what

not only imagine how mentally stressful and difficult but imagine what type of personality

It would require to keep up with over a hundred.

We've counted, they got 150, 160 something people at one point we counted on their roster in all these multiple shows these multiple matches and they've got to remember oh and one time in that match between tom and dick dick burped we got to do a callback to that

and put these tournaments together with the a block and the c team and the

fucking gold league and it's

that's what nobody gets this and i agree wwe does probably probably do too many tournaments because I'm not a big fan of them, but at least they're regular tournaments.

It's not like a multi-week, month-long thing where everyone wrestles everyone and gobbles up everything and the wins go away.

Multiple person matches and tournaments in the WWE lazy booking because they've got so many different talents.

They can do so many different things, but that's become a television.

content thing for them.

And that's what they do.

But at least, again,

you understand when somebody's in, when somebody's out, when somebody won,

and it's not just an endless car wreck where every tournament match also

in this match, we've got special rules, nobody's allowed to fucking interfere,

and then every other match on the show has somebody running in and beating the shit out of somebody.

And the fans are going, well,

why don't they just tell them it's one of those matches?

Why can't Jericho just gouge those referees in the eye?

Yes, well, I think, you know,

don't say anything awful.

Well, no, I'm just

saying that

that's the problem is that he's letting the guys who can tell him what they're going to do

do the shit that they want to do, and they're not recognizing that maybe that's shit they shouldn't be doing, whether it's Jericho or Moxley or any fucking guys doing his stupid shit or Mercedes Mooney.

That's why, and whose idea was it to pay Okada millions of dollars a year to come over and teach him one word in English, bitch.

And

otherwise than that, he walks around and wrestles like he's a Fabergé egg.

Just that there's no structure and no,

if

Toots Mond came in here, he would, you have to have talent to put a team together and run the plays, as Dutch Mantel used say.

Booker's the football coach, team runs plays.

If the coach would have to come in and actually teach the goddamn team how to play football from scratch, because they all played football in their

playground and came up with some great ways to do it,

it would now be need to be in the NFL.

There's certain fucking parameters.

Oh, golly, we don't want to do that.

The fuck?

Am I rambling here?

Well, you're a rambling man, like a bloated Greg Allman.

Yes.

No, I mean, I think they make a lot of bad decisions and they double down on, you know, Jericho had go home heat, so they doubled down on it.

So they made that the gimmick.

Makes no sense.

They wasted time on, I see it as wasted time on Garcia and Yuda.

If Moxley was so close to Powerhouse Hobbes, why'd they spend so much time with Yuda?

This is the guy that should have been pushed.

You know, AEW just feels like a lost cause right now.

And they're going to have a ruin awakening because, you know, it's going to cause

it's going to cause people to jump to WWE

when their contracts come up.

But also, if Tony wants to keep them, he's going to have to pay a fortune because you know you're stuck in a wasteland.

You may get some good shit career-wise.

You may have a good match or a good angle.

But there's a lot of problems that aren't going away.

And you know what?

Case in point we'll talk about later on with Raw.

Same week all this is happening.

That Jericho has this match with Dax.

I thought they both looked bad.

Then Tony gets killed for being a bad booker.

Then Penta debuts on Raw.

And all of a sudden, we get to see someone who was a push star in AEW,

who was over with the AEW fans.

We get to see him in a brand new setting, and it was like a different wrestler.

So we'll talk about that, but I think...

I'll withhold until we get to Raw

what I thought of that debut and who I think the star of the show is.

Well, I'm not disagreeing with how good Gable is

at all, but it goes to say something to AEW wrestlers.

If you see Penta,

night one,

merchandise better than he ever was in AEW.

Night one.

They had his masks and t-shirts and shit up before he debuted.

They were in San Jose.

How different do you think?

Because they understood his promo in Spanish.

The majority of the fans, they were popping more for that than the one in English because it was better, I guess.

It sounded better.

And I know I'm doing the review here, but what would the reaction have been in Kansas City?

Well, that's a great question because that's probably how Tony would have done it.

They did it in San Jose.

They did it with his family at Ringside.

Again, I don't want to do the review now, but to my point, if you're an AEW wrestler and you're wondering how would WWE treat me versus how I'm getting it here from Tony, where I'm getting a lot of money, I have some creative freedom,

but everything around me to me feels like it's not very good and nothing's really improving.

Penta goes in there night one, feels like a bigger star than he ever did in AEW.

Well, and that's a creative freedom away from Vince McMahon was a good thing, as we talked about a number of times.

But I don't know if there's anybody with the pull to really be free from these motherfuckers now, creatively, in the WWE, the way that

they're transforming some of these people that we used to not even give a shit to look at.

I don't know if I'd want to be free of that.

I mean, I would like input and,

you know,

a collaborative effort, but I'm not like offended by what they're doing with most people.

They've even got those,

the Viking War machine raiders

look actually now like regular fucking human beings that might have gotten over like this three or four years ago.

It's you know, it's still kind of late to make the first impression, but everything is improving to me.

And I guess that goes to the point.

Dave's right, there are perception issues, but the perception issues are from reality.

And there's also the reality issues.

And from the better booking.

So he said the booking is irrelevant, but the perception issues come come in large part from the better booking

because the guys are stars and they act and talk like it and they have something interesting going on with people they're interacting with.

It's weird.

AEW and I know we've maybe felt like this before, but never more so than right now.

It's like they

and they can't do it, but you almost need like a clean sweep, just like multiple firings in one day.

I mean, I hate to say it.

I don't want people to lose their jobs.

I mean, certain people just shouldn't be working there.

And

there are a lot of perception issues based on who's on the roster and how the roster's used.

That's the booking.

It's the booking, yes.

But the other part, and it goes to the booking, but it's the roster makeup.

It's who's actually on there and how they're used.

And again, if the AEW fans are turning against Tony, that should be a real wake-up call because they've been the only barrier.

between reality and Tony Khan is the fans with the pom-poms.

Well, and I will agree with you that there needs, they need to take the roster from top to bottom, which as it exists now is a it's an it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world of fucking pro wrestling indie stars

and get rid of half of them that you're not really using.

And maybe they could bring them back later on.

They'd be new and replace somebody else with them, but what the fuck?

And just get rid of the Drek.

But I don't, if you tried to do a hard reset by firing half of the people you see on television anytime frequently, then it would just, it would be

disorienting to the people that are left.

And

you can't just turn the battleship or you're like the fucking bat cave, the circular gimmick, right?

It takes a long time to make that wide-sweeping turn from chugging off the edge of the goddamn world to chugging back into Cancun.

Should they do something where, you know, he could stay home on the couch, but they just say Tony's like lost at sea for six months just to get the fans off his back

so they're not blaming him for all the bad TV and the bad booking.

Maybe Elaine Bennis could fucking entice him and then reject him and he'd go and join Greenpeace or whatever.

Something else.

Anything else?

Anyway, you know what?

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All right.

We said we were going to talk about some classic wrestling.

Can we do that now, Uncle Brian?

Well, anything you want to do.

Don't call me that.

You've ruined the word uncle for a lot of people.

Oh, come on now.

Hey, you ought to see my uncle.

He could ruin the word uncle.

He couldn't even spell it.

Right.

Well, classic wrestling talk starts with bad humor.

Yes, well, and so there's no place to go but up.

In the past, we have talked to our friend Tony over at Heritage Auctions about the classic wrestling trading card sets that I auctioned off a couple of years ago in that nice championship belt from world-class wrestling and well actually before big-time wrestling in Dallas in the 70s.

And Tony is a collector as well and loves the wrestling business, the collecting business and all things to do with heritage auctions.

So earlier At an undisclosed location on a telephone, I conducted an interview with Tony Giesey of Heritage Auctions about a big upcoming event that they've got going on with one of the, as I think we termed it in the talk, one of the Mount Rushmore of Classic Pro Wrestlers and an amazing variety of his merchandise.

We did record that, didn't we?

Yes.

Can we play that if I just say, can we go to that now?

Well, in that case, folks, here's Tony from Heritage Auctions.

Alrighty, I have been waiting for this one for quite a while now.

Another chance to talk to our friend from Heritage Auctions, Tony Giesey, who is on the phone with me.

And Tony, we got a couple of big ones to talk about today.

Yeah, I'm really excited to be back here.

I'm looking forward to this as well.

You do a heck of a podcast and,

you know, you've got some of the great, you have some great listeners.

I will say that last time we talked.

Hold on.

What are our listeners?

Great.

You see, great listeners.

Absolutely.

I'm just kidding.

You're wrong, Tony,

for the great Bell.

But, you know, we talked with you last time, I think, when I had some of those rare, valuable wrestling all-star trading cards that Heritage was nice enough to auction for me.

And I still curse Norman Keitzer because he sent me a Hulk Hogan with a big red or pink printing blotch on it, and it didn't get a nine grade like some of the others did.

And you guys,

before we even get started talking about the main thing we're going to go over today, you guys just set the world record for a wrestling trading card with the Hulk Hogan card from that wrestling all-star set.

That I got to ask you,

How is somebody willing to pay $130,000 for Hulk Hogan's trading card when in Los Angeles the other week on Raw, he was as popular as Pickleball with a Paraplegic?

The reason is that's considered his rookie card.

It was kind of the first mainstream wrestling card.

And there's yellow borders on that card, and there's centering issues, quality issues.

And there's, I believe, 18 PSA 9s in existence.

So I think wrestling has become much more and more more mainstream now.

Part of it could be the Netflix might be really get it to a worldwide audience.

And there's not a lot of the high-grade ones.

I know with your set, you had both of the Andres had a divot like right by the eye.

Yeah.

And that was the first card in the set.

So the Andre is the hardest one by far.

But Hogan being kind of the babe root of wrestling, a lot of people, there's a lot more interest in wrestling than there's ever been as far as collectibles.

Is it kind of following the same thing as, because you used to hear about this and still do, but I think it hit maybe

other professional sports or maybe classic, you know, muscle cars or whatever first.

But

as people grow up and make money, they turn around and they spend 100 times as much money on the same shit as they had when they were seven years old.

That's a great point.

And I've fought myself from buying LJN wrestling figures from the 80s.

That's what I collected when I was growing up.

I didn't have the wrestling cards as much.

And I think, yeah, I mean, people, you know, in their 40s and 50s now watch wrestling, loved it in the 80s is, I think, where it all started for me at least, and watching, you know, the AWAW, CCW,

WWF, of course.

And yeah, people go back to their youth and they collect what they collected as kids.

I know with some of the wrestling figures now, you're getting huge numbers on some of these because they are in the original packaging or on the cards because,

you know, Topps made cards in, I think, 85 through 90-ish.

And they made OPG were made in Canada, and those are really collectible because they're made in smaller numbers.

And there's a lot of issues with condition on a lot of these wrestling cards.

And that's what makes them so valuable.

And I think also, I mean, people, you know, your Hogan's, your Savages, your, you know, Andre the Giants, I mean, those are names that are kind of on the Malt Rushmore of wrestling, at least.

And a lot of people go back to their youth.

Well, and of course, collection or collection.

Condition in your collection matters in everything.

We've talked about it.

And so many of these things, like comic books and

pop culture collectibles, they were either meant for kids to play with.

you know,

the dog shit on them or, you know, just stick in your back pocket or whatever.

So, condition is very important in

everything that you're collecting.

But the thing now that's different is that when I was a kid, if I wanted,

you couldn't get Buddy Rogers's jacket unless you, you know, found his fucking house and broke into it, right?

Exactly.

Like

on some of the gear that they wore in the ring, I mean, they would wear that stuff until there was literally nothing left.

They would wear it.

They didn't get a new jacket every two months.

They might wear the same jacket for two years until there was literally nothing left or it was in terrible condition.

So the ring gear is so collectible because they didn't make extras of it.

You know, right?

I can, I can testify that I say, you know, the Midnight Express wore a lot of stuff until it just fell apart.

And I did too, you know, even though I I had more different things because I could go into a store and buy a suit, but still a lot of things, you know, went by the wayside just from, my God, there's more holes than there are

fabric left.

But you, you guys, you personally, because heritage auctions wouldn't operate without you, Tony,

you have landed one of those Mount Rushmore collections of ring-worn jackets and robes and gear of various sorts

from Randy Savage's family, from his personal collection that he has worn throughout his career.

And they didn't just toss you some things.

This is like a curated deal where they have

picked out the highlight of this particular era of his career, that particular era, the NWO, the mega powers, the Royal Rumble, Scepter, Slim Jim stuff.

you know, WrestleMania outfit, the high points.

And this is going to be going up pretty soon to some lucky consumer.

Yeah.

So this auction is going to open January 31st, closes February 22nd and 23rd.

And the thing about the Macho Man stuff is he had so

he had glitter.

He had everything built into these.

Michael Braun made his outfits and who he also made outfits for Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan and a very young Hulk Hogan before he was really into wrestling.

And so each one is, you know, he did such a good job.

And there's a lot of tassels and there's a lot of interesting colors, a lot of early 90s, neon, yellow, neon pink.

And the thing about it is, it's like a cross-section of his career.

We start probably in the 86s from as the first outfit going all the way through.

We've got, you know, where he cut Brutus the Barber Beefcake's hair when he was with sensational Sherry.

We got the Mega Power's first handshake, you know, and during one of the

superstar segments.

And there's an NWO outfit.

And one thing you don't really see a lot of are NWO ring-worn jackets and pants.

So

it's a great selection of Macho Man, and every piece is signed by him too.

And, you know, he passed away in 2011.

So these were signed.

in the early 2000s.

So it's cool because we have photos of him wearing from specific matches, specific feuds, and it goes all the way, you know, kind of from the beginning of his WWF until the end of his WCW run.

So it's a really nice collection.

And it's everything, you know, there's, there's, every area is pretty much covered here, which makes it really nice for the fans and for collectors.

Well, now, acting like that none of us have ever done this before, because until I started talking to you and your boy Matt over there, there, say hello to Matt.

I had not interacted with Heritage Auctions.

So where do they go to find out the

website and the way to find out more about this specific auction?

Because you guys sell everything for, you guys sell more than I do, for heaven's sake.

Yeah, we sold

the

Wizard of Oz

Dorothy's slippers for 32 million

three months ago.

Yeah.

And that was...

That's a strong ass foot fetish.

Where in the world?

Was that a Saudi Arabian?

I don't know who won it, but it was very feverish bidding.

And I think it lasted about 30 minutes.

The bidding.

That's probably the longest that guy ever lasted in his life.

But where can they go to find the Savage collection and the information on the art?

It's very easy.

It's ha.com.

A lot of the material is showing up right now.

We're writing, we're editing.

So a lot of these pieces are appearing online.

HA.com is the website.

And basically, just go to the search bar, type in Macho Man or Randy Savage.

And if you want to type in Ring Worn, you'll see all the other material that we have as well.

So

I think you shouldn't even ring worn.

That's kind of like beat up.

You know, it's worn.

You got to say

gently or lovingly performed in like the

consignment clothing stores do.

There's a nice way of saying things.

I just wrote up a jacket recently, and I put the fans love this wrestler so much that they would be pulling on his jacket a lot of times.

And that's where the rip came from.

There's nice ways of kind of softening it.

It was the guy in Greenville, South Carolina, tried to stab him.

He just cut the jacket.

He just missed.

But, and, and I'm going to.

drop a little tease here about something to say, but also you've sent me a picture and I'm not even going to go any further except to say that it is a vintage championship belt.

And

we are working to find out the providence of save and everything because that's a cool thing.

You guys,

the last, no, the last time we talked was not my cards.

It was the belt.

Guys, the belt you guys auctioned, which was from Texas, one of the old Nikita Mokovich belts.

Yeah, you were instrumental in that, by the way.

I remember taking that belt in.

And again, I'm the first person I thought of was you.

I'm like, Jim Cornette, I think may, if there's one person that's going to know, it's Jim Cornette.

And you did a wonderful job.

You dated that to the late 70s.

I think it was before Fritz started world class.

Yes.

Is when that belt was.

The American Tag Team Championship.

Yes, it was.

But you sent me a picture of another one.

That's even older.

So we're.

We're looking that one up, but also you're going to have another family-oriented

auction coming up here that's wrestling-related.

Also, I don't know how many details we're supposed to drop about this.

Are we just hinting?

We'll talk a little bit about it.

We do have the Von Erich collection and with mainly Kevin's material, but also some of these of the jackets that we have were worn by Kevin, David, and Mike.

We have one.

So, we've got some autographed photos, some autographed promos.

Of course, David be the most valuable because he passed away first.

but um there's promos there's hall of fame plaques so a lot of cool von eric stuff and the money is going towards charity so um that we're going to be announcing in in a little bit with a little more um information on that one but uh can i put in

Can I put in a standing bid on the deep fryer from the sportatorium with or without the rat bones at the bottom of the basket?

That is the one thing in life I wish I could have done.

I watched it as a kid up in northern Wisconsin.

We watched World Class on Saturday night, but I moved here in 2012.

And unfortunately, the sport autorium was gone.

And I wish I could have seen it in person.

Of course, watching the Iron Claw and watching the DVDs on World Class that were done in the early 20s.

No, but between the building in person and the crowd and the smell of the concession stand and the crowd and the building.

And you were in two blocks away from like big city downtown Dallas, Texas.

And you could have been in a pole barn in Tyler with 5,000 people in it.

And the atmosphere was insane.

It was, oh my God.

There was a reason why we were always jogging.

Whenever I saw another old clip, and they were jogging us out the side door from the ring, so we would avoid going uphill and getting stabbed.

So, no, anyway.

Did they have air conditioning at the sportatorium or was that?

Yeah, in Fritz's office.

Otherwise, enjoy a nice summer night in Dallas, Texas with a giant tin roof in the middle of 5,000 people.

I'm surprised guys didn't wear an oxygen tank to the ring.

I love it.

No, but that led to more, you know, realism and grit when the guy, every time you hit a guy, his sweat flew off of him because you'd lose six pounds in the course of the match.

I could only imagine how that was because I know how it is living here now, how hot it gets.

And I can only imagine wrestling a match and that kind of heat.

The TV lights.

Yes, the TV lights.

Sure.

Sure.

Fuck it.

They actually had an actual griddle underneath the ring and they turned that on too.

So the surface of the ring was over 200 degrees.

All right.

Anyway, Tony Giesey from Heritage Auctions and HA.com.

You got to go

right now and see all the details on the Macho Man collection throughout.

I would have loved to have gotten his 1979 ICW robe.

It looked like somebody had taken four yards of that spangly stuff you put under a Christmas tree and just made a robe out of it.

But then he got a budget.

But the Macho Man collection right now, Von Ericks are coming up.

I'm looking at a title belt and all kinds of stuff.

And Tony, maybe you can come back at some point and report in on some more details on the Von Ericks.

Absolutely.

We're always working on getting cool wrestling items in our auction and working on stuff right now.

We are going to the WrestleCon at Indianapolis.

We're going to have these items there, some of the Macho Man stuff, some of the Von Ericks stuff, and who knows, maybe some other collectibles, hopefully some cards.

So if anybody's going to the Royal Rumble, we will be down there at the show at the Marriott downtown and stop on by.

I heard there's going to be a few people in town that day for the Rumble.

I think there might be some.

I have a sneaky feeling it'll be packed.

And you'll have one of the best displays this side of WrestleMania Access, for heaven's sake.

And I'm looking forward to this because, again, these things, you put them on a mannequin.

They look so gorgeous.

And again, I mean, we're going to try to have some cards, some tickets, some other things as well.

But those robes and those jackets, they really, really jump out at you.

What now, before you go, is my personalized autographed color magazine center fold of Andre the Giant from 1975 worth?

Oh, so if Andre signed it in 75, you're probably about

7,500, 5,000 to 7,500.

10,000 wouldn't be out.

It could happen at some point.

There's not a lot of stuff.

And there's the frame.

There's the frame, too, now.

Oh, the frame.

And if it says from the Jim Cornette collection, it might add a little bit of value to it.

And he's holding Mike Pappas in his arms, so it would be huge in Greece.

Hey,

he's a tough autograph because when he, after he came back from that back surgery, he did not sign many autographs.

And having yours from like the 70s, from like 75 would be a quote, vintage Andre autograph.

Well, and the center fold is from 75, a wrestling world magazine.

And the autograph I got in April of 1976,

just to be specific.

Wow.

That's a great piece.

Again, Andre's stuff is everybody wants his autograph, but there's just not enough to go around.

And he's so hard to find.

Well, if you come to my house, you'll see him on my wall, but I'm leaving it to someone in my will.

I'm not sure who yet.

Wait, was that you or Brian?

I'm not sure who's.

We can like cut him in half.

Oh, no.

He can get the Andre and I get the giant part, or we can, you know, trade back.

Well, he can get the, he can get the upper half with Pappas, Andre, and the autograph, and you can get his dick and legs.

All right.

Anyway,

thank you, Tony.

I appreciate it.

We'll talk to you soon.

But everybody, heritage auctions, ha.com.

Stay tuned.

You ain't heard nothing yet.

I'm not finished with these weasels.

Well, there you have it.

That was our conversation with Tony Giese at Heritage Auctions.

We'll keep everybody up to date on what's going on.

But Brian, I'm wondering,

do they take bets over with our friends Draft Kings on how much that Macho Man stuff is going to go for?

Do you think, well, they might get into one of those heated betting wars or rivalries, and it could go straight to the moon.

I don't know if DraftKings would cover something that variable or not.

Maybe we ought to stick with something nice and easy, like whether a football team's going to score a touchdown.

We've established that football teams oftentimes, in the course of their duties, score touchdowns, have we not?

Very often that happens, unless you're a bad team, you will score touchdowns, of course.

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Maybe, you know, just to make it an even better jackpot, bet that a football player is going to score four points.

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You're not allowed to make recommendations.

Oh, I can't?

No.

Well, I'm an expert, you know, on the footballs.

So you must take it back.

Well, I take it back then.

I'll be the one betting on a player scoring four and then see what happens when I'm off on a Pacific island somewhere drinking my ties and having native girls dancing on my toes.

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We know the guy that's already quacked.

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Brian, I do have some additional information.

We haven't heard from our old friend that does this normally yet, have we?

Is he still celebrating New Year's?

Gerald, we haven't heard from him.

Has that bad drinking problem?

All right, anyway.

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And I did say good day.

The crown is yours with DraftKings.

It certainly is.

But speaking of crowns,

SmackDown is wearing the crown of longest wrestling show on the air now, three hours.

Three hours.

Apparently not for long.

I guess they're going back to two hours at some point in the next few months.

I'm afraid they're just milking us.

I don't want to get my hopes up.

But,

you know, we're going to keep up with our New Year's resolution of

since we're covering Raw and SmackDown, and they're both very lengthy programs, we're going to hit the high points with the major characters instead of

weeding into the minutia.

And

we'll still get into the minute minutiae of AEW because we only bother to watch one program.

And it's only two hours and seven minutes.

And we can, what about an underrun?

What would they do

over at the network if they just said, after an hour and 53 minutes one night, well, shit, we're done.

We got nothing.

Well, that would be one of the benefits of moving SmackDown to a streaming service with K.

No, I'm talking about AEW.

Oh.

They get an overrun.

What about an underrun?

I think we ought to get underruns every once in a while with them.

You know what?

I think if you're a wrestling promoter and booker, sometimes you need to recognize that an underrun or just a run to the time limit may be beneficial.

I think seven minutes less,

they could put on a Mighty Mouse cartoon.

It would probably get a better number.

I haven't seen those in circulation in a while.

Well, all the more reason there's a pent-up demand.

But anyway, we're back to SmackDown, and it's still three hours.

But

the hosts are now Joe Tessatori and Wade Barrett.

And,

you know, the new look on the new shows for the new year.

And they were in Portland, Oregon, in front of what looked to me to be a pretty, pretty daggum decent crowd.

And they started out with the recap of the Netflix raw debut, which again looked so major league.

And that place was lit up like a Christmas tree.

And then here, Paul Heyman is already in the ring.

And I really, I think he should have gotten a full entrance.

Even if they did have to wheel him down there at a golf cart like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and get a winch and pull him out of the thing and

take the turnbuckles off the bottom rope like they did for the McGuire twins and roll him in.

I think they should give the man the respect of a full full entrance.

Don't you?

He's not that big.

Will you stop?

I'm just, I'm trying.

Did you say a wench?

A winch.

Do not call Eleanor Roosevelt that.

How dare you?

No, no, I'm talking about the block and tackle type.

But he was in the ring and he was all excited, ready to address the crowd because of the big triumph.

Officially, there's only one tribal chief, and it's Roman Reigns.

And, of course, the people chant OTC.

And he's, that's right, only tribal chief.

And

Roman has instructed Paul to tell everybody what is next in the career and the life of Roman Reigns, and he's going to do that.

And to be respectful,

and he's been told to do this, to say this to this man face to face, he wants to talk to

the undisputed

WWE champion, Cody Rhodes, and he calls out Cody.

And I love this because

as he mentioned Cody's name,

the crowd started booing.

But they weren't booing Cody.

As soon as his music hit, they cheered him like crazy, but they were booing the idea.

They're starting to think, oh, Paul's going to turn.

All right.

I mean,

they're with every goddamn line that's being said by these top guys.

And so they're like, oh, what's going to happen now?

No, we want to like Paul and blah, blah, blah.

So Cody comes in, shakes Paul's hand,

and then Paul does Paul.

He puts Cody over like a million dollars.

I can't replicate the eloquence or the smarminess.

But the bottom line is, after this delivery, Paul tells Cody to his face with Roman Reigns' respect

that Roman Reigns wants his title back.

Put the title back.

Blaka.

And

Roman Reigns is entering the Royal Rumble.

And the people are popping on this.

And Cody, it sinks in on him.

And as soon as he starts to speak, there's the Cody chance, but then

he gets interrupted by Kevin Owens from the stands with the fucking microphone.

And the people pop on that.

Even though they're they're like, yes, do more of the shit that you're doing,

these soliloquies of eloquence.

So, Owen said, This is even worse.

And he's got the t-shirt on.

It says, Kevin is right.

I knew it all along.

He's from Canada.

He's got that physique.

He's George Crybaby Cannon's illegitimate son, Brian.

I could see that.

See, now you said that.

Kevin is right.

That's right.

Yep, I am right.

Kevin is right.

So Kevin Owens says it's even worse.

Now, Cody, you teamed up with Roman.

Then you kissed the rock's ass.

Now you shake hands with Paul Heyman.

And 30 seconds later, he tells you that Roman wants his title back.

What kind of fucking basically dip shit are you?

And Cody has all he can stands, and he bolts through the ropes and down the aisle and up the stands, and they get in a big fight, him and Kevin.

And the crowd is up

and they both fight out through the breezeway into this somewhere in the arena

and paul's still in the ring and he's got up on the bottom rope he's so excited

and can you imagine they must have reinforced that steel airplane cable and the turnbuckle but nevertheless he steps down off the turnbuckle from looking up in the arena and there suddenly behind him is Tonga and Jacob Fatu.

And Paul turns around and sees them and shits himself.

And they've got him cornered and they're menacing him and he's like, no, I'm a father and all the things he does.

And

here comes Jimmy Uso.

And Jimmy Uso super kicks an ass in faces,

asses and face.

No, he's only got one ass.

He ass in faces.

all the heels and he gets the chair and he whacks Tama

and then he whacks Jacob fatu,

and Jacob no sells it, and turns around and gives Jimmy a big tackle.

And Jesus Christ, what a bump he took.

And they get heat on Jimmy, and the referees now are coming out.

They can't stop.

And the agents and Ken Doan get super kicked.

And now finally, Cody comes back in.

Wherever the fuck that he left Owens, and he dumps Tonga, and he fights with Jacob and bumps him over the top.

And the heels are being held off by all the

minions.

And the people are fucking up.

And a 20-minute segment.

And it was that boom, boom, boom.

It was good.

And these people are loving this shit.

Your thoughts on the matter?

It was enjoyable.

You know, it reminded me of that match where we said it a couple of weeks ago.

What was it?

I guess it was the Roman Solo match.

The match was all right, but it was like ECW.

The right timed run-ins, the right run-ins for a big pop.

You know, it just, it smells of Paul Heyman.

Not to jump in on your.

Again, that's just because of his weight that that odor comes up, because it's the mildew under the flaps.

But go ahead.

But, you know, I'm, I'm, One of the things I'm happy with right now is the way WWE is incorporating so many people in so many different things.

AEW,

they've kind of done it the other way.

So we've seen a lot of that lately where it's just too many people running around.

Nothing makes sense.

No one cares.

Everyone's gunning for the Royal Rumble.

Everyone knows that Roman's out there trying to do his thing.

I don't know.

I liked it.

I mean, I like this stuff better than the matches on SmackDown.

Well, yeah, because this is

the stuff you really want to see.

But it's focused.

They're promoting shit.

They're making big events upcoming instead of trying to make

the TV the greatest show in the history of, you you know, like Nick Gulis.

We're in store for one of the largest crowds I've ever seen in all my years.

And then, as a matter of fact, let's in some way kind of take this chronologically here, but keeping with the

participants involved, they had Chelsea and Mia, and they had

the Lucha Heels against Purely Dreary.

And the

first spot,

the Lucha guys tried,

or maybe they're the Lucha baby faces.

I can't keep track.

But they tried the fucking double dive, but it fucked up because one of Purely Dreary took a head scissors and rolled out on the wrong side of the ring.

And the two guys start running for the ropes.

And as the one guy starts running, he sees, well, wait a minute, there's nobody there.

And he stops and just get out of here.

Oh, yeah.

I didn't even saw that.

And then he saw where he was.

And then he fucking

ran anyway.

But by the time that he got to the ropes, he wasn't sure whether the guy was going to catch him or not.

He just fucking stopped and stepped out and

just put his hands on his hips.

But anyway, then we came to the nine o'clock hour with the U.S.

title match with L.A.

Knight and Shaky Nakamura.

And again, I love L.A.

Knight.

I can't watch this other fucking guy.

But earlier, security had been trying to throw Fatu and Tama out of the building, and they weren't going.

So L.A.

Knight had come in, bum-rushed him, and shoved him out and locked the door.

So now they have this match with L.A.

Knight and Nakamura, and then as soon as L.A.

Knight hits his finish, boom, and covers him,

here comes Fatu and Tama Tonga.

They found the other way in.

You know, ever since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, they've had to have two doors to these major arenas.

And they found the other one.

And they hit the ring disqualification.

And they beat up L.A.

Knight.

And if Jacob Fatu's Samoan drop is not stiff, then it's a work of art.

And the ass in the face and the moonsault.

And then Cody and Jimmy come back out.

And they get a big fight going with the heels.

And Nick Aldiss comes out.

And he's trying to calm them down and kick them out.

and Cody said no no no I'm here and Jimmy's here and they're here how about we have the match tonight and the fucking crowd roars

and now we know what the main event is we're just gonna have to wait a while to fucking see it

but again this I mean I did did I miss an all-star spectacle of a match or was it basically to again continue Cody and

Uso

and the heels and the bloodline and the blah blah blah and I guess LA Knight, technically, because it's now multiple segments or matches that the,

what do we call them, the Bloodline?

What do we call Solo's group now that they've run into his stuff?

I don't know, and we ain't seen Solo

as of this point.

So we got to figure because

if he's lost the position of tribal chief, what is he now?

Is he going to be chief bottle washer?

What's he going to come back with?

Has he gone and found another island that he can run?

We'll find out.

And then, why don't we go again in order and then I'll come back for one thing.

But the main event after a women's four-way

that actually followed a women's talking segment that was, God almighty, I'll just go to the main event.

Cody and Jimmy against Tama and Jacob.

And again, this is a standard match.

Fatu's incredible, and most of his shit gets over, but it's a standard match, and they're not

trying to kill each other, and the people are enjoying the shit out of it.

And bing, bang, bing, finally they

Cody makes the big comeback and hits the dive and gets the chance and does the flip-flop and fly.

And they hit the superplex and the splash on Tama and a cutter on Jacob Fatu.

And

Uso hits a dive and knocks Jacob over the announce desk.

And then

here comes Kevin Owens down the aisleway.

And Cody meets him, and boom, and they get together and they fight off.

And now Jimmy's all by himself.

And he spears Tama and goes to the top and hits him with a splash.

But Jacob pulls him out and beats him up.

And then moonsaults him and pins him one, two, three.

And the announcers are even saying Jimmy was left all alone.

And then

Cody and Owens fight back into the arena,

and Cody tackles Owens off of an equipment case through two tables, and they crash there.

And they're bringing the meat wagon in as we go off the air.

But I think

because

if they were trying to give Cody a reason not to be there so that Jacob,

you know, the heels could fuck Jimmy,

then I don't know why that the announcers would say, would accentuate Jimmy was left all alone because that puts heat on Cody because he chose to tackle Owens.

And they said he was going to do it anytime, any place, anywhere.

He was going to tackle Owens.

But what

in the old days, people would have been going, where the fuck were you while your partner was getting beat?

But the way that they said that, I'm wondering if they're leaving a little hook for later that they can play something back if Jay wanted to be the WWE champion, or Jimmy, rather.

You see what I'm saying to you here?

I do.

So it's just,

and Cody can take the residual.

Well, because he did come back out and he did, you know, get thrown through a table.

So

he was occupied at the time.

But they could do something with that later on.

It's just a little

clue to be left.

Anyway,

but that was the SmackDown show.

What did you think of that big main event?

It was all right.

Well, you said it best.

It was, I don't know if you said standard.

It was just, it was a fine television main event.

A fine, clean contest.

You know, I mean, it's been a topic of conversation.

So you could say in here, not everything needs to be a five-star match.

It was a fine main event to keep furthering things along.

And the the fans there seem very happy with what they were getting.

Yes.

And

even though most of the matches that they theoretically pay to see are okay, but the fucking interviews are great, except

I will just say no more, they did a four-girl interview that led to a four-girl match that illustrates at least some of Uncle Dave's point that there's a lot of meaningless multiple-person matches on this program.

I shouldn't say meaningless because it was all the women that want the women's title and blah, blah, blah, but

that was a lot of women for a long time.

But there you have that.

Yeah.

Brian, I'll tell you what, some of those women,

you know, they might.

I'm not afraid.

Whatever you're thinking, why don't you go the other way?

Why don't you talk about something else and someone else or somehow, somewhere?

Some of those women, they might have boyfriends or husbands.

Yes, they may.

Yeah, see, so far, so good.

They might want

their boyfriends or husbands to groom themselves better.

Would you say that's fair to say?

Fair to say, so far, so good, yes.

They might want to help these men in their efforts to groom themselves.

They may want to assist somehow because the men are not doing it on their own.

So then, Brian, you would say that it would also follow that the slicker and cleaner you are, the more likely that it is as Valentine's Day is coming up to have not only roses on your piano, but tulips on your organ.

I would say that a lot of women out there probably like their man to look very nice and clean and dapper on Valentine's Day.

Yes.

And that can lead to other things.

It could.

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So, how much excess body hair are you removing over at the 605 Wrestling News Arcadian Vanguard end of the operation this week, Brian?

No hair removal

and nothing else to say there, really.

Go through the archives or listen to everything.

Go on Facebook, facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

And of course, on Twitter or X or whatever it may be, look for at Super Podcast.

Of course, the Wrestling News, each and every day, get your wrestling news for free without opinion, without star ratings, without conjecture, just actual news.

If it happens and it's reported, it'll be on the wrestling news each and every day.

No clickbait, no paywall, just the wrestling news.

Get it directly from thewrestlingnews.com, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Want to make mention of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam.

They are looking now at the beginning of 1985.

I can't believe to say this, 1985, 40 years ago.

Oh, hear that talk, makeadampod.com, or look for Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the

mothership.

Go through the archives at 605pod.com.

I felt that one.

The mothership.

Alrighty, then, let's go to the mother of all television programs the brand new raw on netflix raw is netflix that doesn't work does what's netflix backwards exilfitin

yes it doesn't work

why was you want why do you need it backwards what was the point of that remember raw is war that was a big deal well that was a big deal when i mean that was the name of the show it was a big deal yeah

so why does netflix have to be raw is netflix doesn't work because Raw is war.

War was Raw backwards.

It worked.

It was almost a palindrome.

But

Raw is Exilflnit.

It doesn't, you know.

Anyway, and by the way, here's another difference between the Netflix and the,

what's the thing that AEW is on?

Max.

Max.

Poor MJF.

He gets blamed for everything.

When you go to Netflix, the first thing that pops up is Raw on a screen to watch.

That's your first choice of anything to watch.

They are going all the way with this fucking thing, aren't they?

And meanwhile, over on Max,

Stacey had to do the goddamn search by alphabet, AE

to find the goddamn thing.

And again, Netflix, it's...

airing live on Macs.

It's a simulcast, so it's not like it's the only place you can go.

You can just stay wherever you were watching it already.

Like you said, you go to Netflix, the first thing that pops up for me is the option to watch Raw Live even before it's on.

Yeah.

And then I get like 30 minutes of like weird, I don't know what, like Seth Rollins dancing for the camera.

There's like all sorts of weird shit they put up with a clock saying like 30 minutes, 28 minutes, whatever it may be.

Yeah, live event begins in two minutes, 14 seconds.

Yeah, it's not easy to, it's not a priority for Max.

And again, I think there's going to be a harsh reality

after a year

when they look at the numbers and they realize there is not a lot.

It's not like WWE.

There is not a ton of people going through the archives of the pay-per-views, and there's not going to be a big audience watching live.

And if you can't find it on there, people aren't going to bump into it, and wrestling fans aren't going to stay to watch other things.

So no one's going to get any benefit from this whatsoever.

Right now, unless things are done differently.

Let me say that before.

They're like, oh, they said they'll never get benefits from Max.

if Max keeps handling it the way they are.

Yeah, yes, duly noted.

And you might even be able to pull up documents on this, but I heard from last week, before we talk about this week's raw, that didn't they,

you can't really, the numbers that you can,

Uncle Dave, somebody with that type of mindset can go in and just analyze these numbers right down to the cob.

But they're not the same as Nielsen numbers and it's not figured the same or whatever.

But they were figuring that several million fucking people watched that show last week from any accounts.

Yes.

Yeah.

But

it's a lot of people, whichever way you look at it.

It's exactly what Netflix wants, is regular weekly programming that'll get millions of people worldwide, not just in America, but worldwide.

And then they'll see the thumbnail for the strange housewives of Bugtussle

and

theoretically want to watch that too.

They were at the SAP Center in San Jose, California.

The drone shot came in from the parking lot into the, what a fucking crowd.

And what a product.

And again, how many did was this?

That's a big fucking building.

And I know they had

somewhat of a stage.

The end of it was blocked off to some extent, but

was that a 15,000 person crowd?

It looked every bit of it on camera.

Maybe they're using one of those wide-angle lens that at the fair, it makes you look fatter.

I believe it sold out.

The last update I had from WrestleTicks, which was a few hours before the show, there were only 407 tickets remaining for

the current setup was 12,943.

Oh, get 13,000 in.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I just eyeballed it at 15.

Pardon my error.

And the hosts of this show, Michael Cole and Pat McAfee.

McAfee's back now, and I guess

he'll be here till football, right?

When he goes and stirs up another sports fan.

Which is usually a few weeks before he wears that as welcome.

He gets annoying quick.

It's too much.

The thing is, he's doing the crusher in the AWA thing.

He's going to take the summer off because it's going to suck anyway.

He'll get mad at Vern.

He'll go to the lake, and then they'll make up in the fall.

So then an SUV pulls in the back,

and it's Punk.

He gets out and they do the follow shot.

He walks all the way to and through the gorilla position.

And then suddenly out in the arena, you hear Lock Mussolini

in SAP.

Why do they call it the second audio program center to begin with?

I don't know.

Is it is, or maybe is this a syrup company that has bought the naming rights, the SAP center?

They have SAP.

That's why it would be a syrup company.

You know, in that case, we need some pancakes.

Maybe that's why the new day is so over.

The SAP Center at San Jose, which was originally known as the San Jose Arena, and the HP Pavilion at San Jose.

It doesn't say anything about SAP.

So HP Pavilion, so they went from...

steak sauce to maple syrup?

Trying to see how SAP.

Oh, here we go.

SAP.

SAP is a European multinational software company based in Waldorf, Germany.

That's where they invented the salad, right?

This is how they conquer America by buying Arrow Stadiums.

Damn Germans.

Anyway, so Punk's on the way to the ring.

And he got a big It's Clobberin time.

These people.

They were a very with it crowd.

They knew, you know, what was going on and everything.

And he had fun with the fans.

They did the drone shots, the CM Punk chants.

And I know this crowd struck me.

Maybe I just don't watch all the WWE crowd shots, but was this crowd, did they look even younger

than even normal WWE crowds lately?

There was a lot of the demographic there.

There were a lot of Pentas kids at Ringside.

Oh, come on.

He's not.

Goddamn, that prolific for heaven's sake.

What is he?

Peter Northon, the whole goddamn northern Mexico, southern California area?

There's like six kids there, maybe.

I don't know.

But anyway, I might be.

I don't mean just children.

I mean young adult people.

This seemed like the prime, the core WWE crowd, the crowd they want.

Well, there you go.

They were to the core.

And Punk did the promo and he threw in a thank you to the firefighters and the first responders and,

you know, with the wildfires in California and everything.

And then he got down to the promo.

And

again, you know, I'm not going to do the thing word for word, and I wouldn't do it justice.

But

again, he told a story.

Seth Rollins is no longer on my plate.

Last year, the Royal Rumble didn't go my way.

I tore my tricep.

I couldn't see my dreams.

But I made my biggest setback, my biggest comeback.

And John Cena, I see you and always have.

And John Cena has declared for the Royal Rumble.

Well, so have I.

And he did a fired-up promo about how he's going to win the Rumble.

And you're going to, da, da, da, and you're going to hear his music,

cult of personality, and play my song.

And all of a sudden, it's Seth Rollins' music.

And Punk fucking sells it.

And like you should, instead, all the

everybody that ever gets interrupted not only acts like they expect it, but they don't even seem disrespected or upset by it.

And Punk's like, why can't it be Rhea Ripley?

You know, so here comes

Seth Franklin.

By the way, he really said that for anyone who hasn't seen it, that's not, because you said it in your life.

Yeah, no, yes, no.

He said, why can't it be Rhea Ripley that interrupts me?

It's got to be this fucking guy.

And Seth looked like Elton Rollins, and he came out.

And the fans whoaed for a long time.

And then, again,

these people are following everything besides the fact you're seeing ever more and more signs in these buildings, which was a big

thing that you started seeing in the Attitude era when you knew that they were hooked on stuff.

Seth took off his glasses and had a black eye and the people started chanting CM Punk, CM Punk.

And then Seth blisters punk, I'd rather be the worst version of myself than any version of you.

And last week was the worst loss of my career because it was to you.

And I'm going to flush your WrestleMania dreams down the toilet for redemption for myself.

So I

am going to win the Royal Rumble and I'm going to throw your ass out along the way.

Now they've got John Cena and Roman Reigns.

And CM Punk and Seth Rollins.

And who am I leaving out here?

Oh, wait, the next guy guy to come out.

As soon as he tells Punk he's going to dump him, then here's Drew McIntyre's music.

And now Punk is fucking, goddamn this guy, too.

And Drew comes out and says something that you think is knocking punk or that you would think is knocking punk.

About what a disappointment you are.

Blah, blah, blah.

I can't do the accent.

And Punk fires up on him, but he says, well, that's great that you're listening, but I was talking about Seth.

And Drew tears Seth down because Seth was nowhere to be found last week to stop Roman Reigns.

He's only out for himself.

And then Punk said, fuck it.

I can't take it anymore.

I hate both of you.

How about either one of you?

Come on in here and let's fight.

And then Drew said, oh, you want to fight tonight?

And the crowd's roaring.

And Drew said, no, why would I do that?

Because Roman Reigns is playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers.

So I'm going to have to do this all by myself.

I'm going to win the Royal Rumble and I'm going to win the.

Like, this is great.

Everybody has a reason.

And so, and I wrote them down then: Roman, Cena, Punk, Uso,

L.A.

Knight, Drew McIntyre, Seth Rollins, so far.

And it was a 20-minute segment again, but it kept moving.

It was great.

And you wanted to hear what they were going to fucking say.

Yeah, another great opening segment.

Then it started right.

I mean, again, they followed Punk right into the building, got going right away.

Everything's for the Rumble.

Everyone's declaring for the Rumble.

Everyone has a path to

getting to the world title through the Rumble, and it's all intriguing.

And do you notice they're not, oh, and I'm going to be in the Rumble, but I'm also going to be on Rampage Friday night.

And I'm going to be at the tournament in some woman's apartment in fucking Tokyo to get a shot at the and this

it's focused.

It's

everybody

with a reason to be in business for themselves that not only just to win the title shot,

but because their mortal enemies are also involved.

And they each want to get even with so you know

this is focused.

This is the good booking part

to make all this make sense and have these people in the building in that large of a number

not only cheering everything you tell them,

but chanting the things that you want them to chant and be involved in without you even having to tell them.

Just point a little bit.

Look at the pretty monkey.

And there it goes.

Anyway.

Brian, would you like to talk about the big debut?

Yeah, I think this is the big story everyone was talking about with Raw.

Because Chad Gable had said last week to

who runs this thing, Adam Pierce, whoever,

get the best luchador that you can find, the greatest luchador in the world, and put him against me.

I'm going to fight him.

And Gable comes out to the ring and he's getting the Kurt Angle You Suck chant, right, on the entrance.

For obvious reasons, because, you know, it's very reminiscent.

And then comes the big reveal that they even said was an open secret, like anybody to know this was happening.

But the blackout, and then the lighting, and then the zero meeto.

And here comes Penthouse.

Although now I'm going to, I'm going to,

I'm going to call him Penta McGee

in honor of Tom McGee.

And I'm going to start calling Chad Gable Brett Gable in honor of Bret Hart.

because I know, and no, I'm not saying he's just,

I'm not saying he's bad as Tom McGee,

but everybody's talking about this great debut, and we can talk about this in a second.

Chad Gable is the one that made this debut great.

I'm sorry.

Can you explain that for the listeners who don't understand the reference, the Tom McGee-Bret Hart match, what it means?

Well, and we've talked about it before and in past on the program, but for the younger listeners,

Tom McGee was a guy that Vince had found in, what was it, 1985?

And Tom McGee was a bodybuilder and a power lifter and a gymnast.

And he was like six foot five and he had blonde hair and movie star looks.

And Vince thought he was going to be the next Hulk Hogan because, you know, look at this fucking guy.

It's amazing.

And he brings him in and he has a dark match with Bret Hart.

And Bret Hart made him look like the goddamn next Hulk Hogan.

And the problem from there was that he didn't work with Bret Hart every night for the rest of his life.

And

reality set in.

And

within, what, a year, year and a half,

they'd sent him to Japan.

They'd cycled him through a couple of places.

They'd tried him in dark matches.

And finally, they just said, fuck it.

He was rotten.

I'm not saying that.

In an era where they had a lot of rotten workers on their roster, that wasn't really a thing that prevented people from being hired.

No, this was stunningly like the fans of the time laughed at shit that he did.

But I'm not saying Penhouse, our friend from AEW, is that bad, but

I wrote down, here my notes,

hear that?

I wrote down at the start of it, will he be any better here than he was in AEW?

And he was doing the same fingers and the same poses but he had a lot more energy to it

but the first thing they did when the bell rang he grabbed a headlock on Gable with his right arm

and Gable tried to shoot him off and it looked ridiculous and I'm like what the

how do you make your debut on

WWE Worldwide Television and grab a headlock with the wrong fucking arm

And Gable was doing all of the stuff that Pinta does, but he was doing it better than Penta.

And the fans were chanting, Penta, Penta, because they were in San Jose.

People are primarily

in the crowd, obviously from later on, bilingual or have some grasp of

Hispanic culture and the lucha scene or whatever.

As I said, I don't know how this would have worked in Kansas City,

But looking at this guy just with

a fresh eye,

he took a shitty turnbuckle.

Then he almost fell over on a fucking move.

Then he tried to do a spring leg drop off the bottom rope,

but he fell in a heap because he's used to cables and those ropes don't have any spring.

And then, you know, it just,

again, I'm all through this.

And my notes are Gable looks great.

Gable's heat looks great.

Gable's bump on the fucking Canadian Destroyer is classic.

At one point, I thought after they did a big dive with Penta doing the big dive, it looked like he hit hard on the floor.

They got back in.

It started to drag a little bit.

And

was there was a head kick?

Was that supposed to connect?

I'm not sure it did.

But then they did the Canadian Destroyer and got the this is awesome because the people in the WWE don't see Canadian destroyers.

If you give a guy one, he takes a great bump like Gable did and sells it like death.

Well, that's just swell.

But then

Gable got an arm lock on him for a second, and then Penta came out and

did that thing where he drops him on his head, one, two, three.

So the point I'm making is he he got over and he got over with the crowd here.

I think if these people didn't already want to like him

in this building because they had a clue to his reputation

or whatever, this match wouldn't have done it.

Chad Gable worked his ass off.

And the promo afterwards,

as I said, you know, he.

He struggled to speak English, saying, this is my new home.

And the people were listening, and kind of trying to get with it.

But when he started speaking Spanish,

it sounded good, and the people reacted to it.

So,

for the Hispanic, and we've talked about this, for the Hispanic market,

I think this guy's probably a big addition, but if they expect

him to get over everywhere that hasn't seen him to this audience,

then they better put him in with a lot of guys like Gable.

Well, it'll be interesting.

I thought it was really good.

I really enjoyed it.

By the end of this, I was like, man, the first 45 minutes of raw tonight have been amazing between the punk angle and this.

I liked it.

The only thing I was swallowing there.

I would agree that the punk angle was amazing.

This was.

I thought this was really good.

Again, hot crowd.

In saying that I thought Penta had a great debut doesn't take anything away from Chad Gable, who has always been a great worker.

Right.

We've We've been putting him over since him and Jordan were wrestling FTR or the revival.

His push has always been the issue.

You know, I mean, again, it's the same character.

Was it a year ago?

Was it less?

Where all of a sudden they were giving him kind of a serious push on Raw.

He was going after, I think, the Intercontinental title, whatever it was.

He was going after Gunther.

That's what it was.

And then he went back to kind of being silly again.

You talk about that Canadian Destroyer.

The way he took that Canadian Destroyer may be the best bump I've ever seen taken off it, but more importantly, the reaction it got.

It didn't just get a pop.

It got like a, we've never seen that before pop.

Now, this is a move that's been around forever.

But not in the WWE.

Exactly.

Penta is one of the guys, I believe,

guilty in the past in AEW, probably other places,

where one guy does it and then they pop up and they run to the other open to hit the other guy and then they do it back and forth.

This right here shows the importance of the difference when you hit it one time and it's special.

And in this case, it was right before the finish.

I know it wasn't the finish.

It was right before it.

The crowd reaction was a big part of the story.

The crying daughter at Ringside.

Henta did a promo in English.

Again, not his first language.

Did he ever speak English in AEW ever?

Ever.

They did a better job in one night.

And again, Chad Gable's a great worker, but it's also his charisma and his personality, too.

Right.

And, you know, he stands out from the average Luchador here in 2025.

They did a better job in one night with the merchandising, with everything with Penta than Tony Khan and AEW did in five years.

And they talked about his past on commentary.

Lucha, other than AEW, Lucha Underground Champion, TNA, whatever they said.

They didn't say AEW, but they did about as good as you're going to do to put him over on night one.

And that's also something they're going to continue.

They have producers for their matches.

If you ever do see the spot where the one guy gives the destroyer and then the other guy hops out, blah, blah, blah, back and forth, you'll never see it again.

And they will have called it in the ring and he'll get chastised for it because the producers won't allow that kind of thing to happen to keep the big pop when they see the move.

And

additionally, they're going to put him in with guys that can enhance him for the most part rather than,

again on the other side of the street they will put people in with anybody

with that because Tony has no knowledge of or perspective on

this guy's style won't lend itself well to getting this guy over that I want to get over he won't be able to do his stuff right I need to give him this guy or whatever they just put people in there and hope for the best

So that he will be produced and he will be much bigger, already is in this company than he was in AEW

because because they'll accentuate the strengths and eliminate the weaknesses.

What did you think of his selling?

Did you ever see him sell like that in AEW?

Well, no, because they just hop up and do things.

And at one point, I could see he's not used to this, right?

When he was down trying to sell, I think, the leg or whatever.

But he again

is being produced.

And then, and the opponents will say, oh,

no, you know, if I'm going to do this, then we need to get this reaction, and then I'll do the other thing for you.

And he will assimilate into the system, hopefully.

But

no, already, you know, there was nobody producing them or explaining the flow of the match or any goal of business of the match.

It was just, yeah, do what you guys do.

Good or bad.

That's what they were doing.

Good and bad, both.

What do you think Ray Phoenix is thinking?

He's thinking, God damn it, if only I hadn't

the choke slam off the ring apron through the table where he broke his arm, that had to be where they're at in the time, right?

I don't know, because I think that may have been that was a while ago.

I think he had to have renewed since then, unless he signed a five-year deal right out of the gate.

I don't know.

Good lord.

Anyway, moving along.

Seamus versus Ludwig Kaiser.

Now, Brian, I have to tell you, I forgot to prep the people on how I watched this.

It was on the Netflix, obviously, but I wasn't in the TV room.

I was in the bedroom because the bedroom TV remote has me a couple of buttons where I can back this thing up and

scoot it forward a little bit.

And

there's still no on screen, so I don't know what I'm missing or how far back I'm going or whatever.

But during this match, my chicken bacon, cheesy bacon, pot pie was ready.

And so I paused it, but in the process of going to get and eat my pot pie, I started it again, but I didn't make any notes because it was Seamus.

And I wish

if only they could do with Seamus what they did with Drew McIntyre, or if Sheamus could do with Seamus what Drew McIntyre did with Drew McIntyre.

But otherwise, Seamus won and argued with Braun Breaker.

Is that basically the way you saw it?

I didn't see it.

Remember, I said like a month ago, I have a rule now.

No more Braun versus Seamus versus ludwig i don't want to see any of them in any combination anymore okay but and then it's been non-stop since then i thought that was the end of it would you have wanted to see my cheesy chicken bacon pot pie what kind of cheese well it was the cheesy sauce that

i'm not a pot pie fan but i get the crust all crunchy yeah but it's still just there i don't know it kind of

it's not really my thing so now you don't like pot pies either no it just seems like i should be like i don't know sitting in the the dirt in england and like

200 years ago eating a pot pie i don't know it's guys it's chicken it's white meat chicken it's it's vegetables you got your peas you got your carrots peas and carrots you got the delicious sauce with the cheesiness in it and the hint of bacon

is there bacon

That's why they call it a cheesy, a cheesy chicken bacon.

That's why they call it that?

That's why they call it that.

It's just a hint of it.

You know what?

Maybe I would like to see that more than the shamous Ludwig match.

All right.

I'm sure it was great, though.

Now in the back, Sammy

comes up

to tell

fucking Seth that if he wants to talk, he's there because Sammy's always the peacemaker.

But they've announced that next week it's going to be Seth Rollins versus Drew McIntyre because they're going to settle their issue.

And then Seth got pissy with Sammy about Sammy helping Roman.

So even the people that are

against the people that help Roman are still mad at each other.

This is very intriguing.

And then we got Gunther in the ring.

And

again, boy, in the suit and the nerd haircut, and he looks like a nar and what a fucking heel.

And he works like Gene Kodisky at his prime.

There's There's nothing not to like about Gunther,

and he doesn't care who the head of the table is, all that matters is the World Heavyweight Championship, and that's what he's got.

And then, all of a sudden, Jay Uso's music hits, and I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ.

Because

I think now that Jimmy is a better worker than Jay, don't you?

Uh,

I can't make that judgment.

I'm just saying, Jay is he is over like crazy,

and the people love him and the gimmick, and he's selling merchandise.

But God damn, I don't even know if I want to see him wrestle Gunther

with just those matches.

And even Jimmy now, I think is.

But nevertheless, Jay got to the ring quick.

He didn't come from the crowd.

He came from the back, but he milked the wave and they had the drone shot going and the people were yeeting.

And what a fucking spectacle.

But again, the rib on him is when he started speaking, he was already blown up.

And he's made it part of his thing where he's just out of breath and just fucking, oh shit, I'm shitting myself that I'm here.

And you people love me.

And he wants the world heavyweight title.

And he made a challenge for Saturday night's main event.

to fight Gunther.

And Gunther laughed at him.

He said, you're serious?

And

Gunther did the thing, yeah, I beat you twice.

You can't beat me.

You're a really talented tag team wrestler, Jay.

So Saturday night's main event is fine with me, but you better not do that.

And Gunther starts walking out and Jay says, hold on, everything you said is true.

And it was a combination of him being heartfelt, having a little bit of a squeaky voice and still being blowed up.

But he's doing a thing where he's, everybody's always said, I'm just a brother and I'm just a guy.

Well, you're going to respect me when I beat your ass.

So if he could just tighten up his work a little bit, he's got everything else and people want to like him.

But now we got Gunther and Jey Uso coming up for Saturday night's main event.

And I got to say, I'm probably still putting my money on Gunther.

It better be Gunther.

They need to save him for something big.

Well, the other thing is, if Roman Reigns really wants the world championship, is he going to go after Cody or Gunther?

Well, see, that's the thing:

is Roman has to go after Cody

because it wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

But

since they have two world titles, they got to have somebody that wants the other one.

And that's where Jay comes in.

But nevertheless, we're going to see it.

So Saturday night's main event, they're still claiming that Hulk Hogan will be a part of it, right?

Yeah, they're going to have to pipe in the crowd noise like they used to.

I think they're going to have to throw a goddamn sound-muffling blanket over the entire arena.

I don't know if they'll be able to cover that up.

Maybe if he doesn't come out with a heel manager, maybe that was the problem.

Everybody loves Jimmy Hart at this point.

My God, he's got as much heat as a fucking igloo.

Has he ever done a good interview about music in Memphis?

You don't mean like a good promo on a wrestling show.

You mean a good sit-down interview?

I don't know if anybody is.

He's been on this program back in the day.

We did talk about some of that, I think.

You hear like random things like, oh, I was in the studio, baby.

But you never hear, like, you know,

anything about Sun Records, Stacks Records.

Oh, but Alex Chilton, the box tops.

He was on

the screen with Dick Clark in the 60s, the Dick Clark rock and roll show, and all those other fucking

sermons about,

oh, yeah, we were there, but it's never like, I remember Mark Lindsay, fucked the dog.

Like, it's never anything, you know, except I was there.

Well, Jimmy tried to stay away from most of the canine carnal knowledge.

But anyway, then they had some more shit go on on this program.

And here's another thing about the Netflix.

I watched it live because I had my doctor's appointment this morning.

And so Monday night was last night, by by the way.

I'm stooging off where we are in time.

And so I was watching it live, and this is where

things started getting a little hazy.

They had the Intercontinental Women's Title match between Lyric Valedictorian and Dakota Kai.

And I remember vaguely nodding as I said, oh, it's over.

And Sami Zayn and The Miz was next.

And that's when I really nodded off.

Nodded off.

You said I vaguely nodded.

I was vaguely.

But then, no, I was vaguely nodding off.

But then Sammy and the Miz came up, and that's when it really happened.

So I don't know what happened there.

Did anybody beat Sammy up from the various heels that are after him?

I don't remember.

Well, then, hopefully, Sammy's still okay.

And then

Rhea Ripley came out to do an in-ring promo and the chance of mommy, mommy.

And she she said, mommy is back on top.

And then the refrigerator's music played and out came

the human bark a lounger herself.

And

I didn't know that they actually bred pleathers to be that large, that they could make that outfit out of one piece.

It didn't seem like those fans wanted to see her either.

Well, that's the thing.

The nails on a Blackboard voice and the fans were booing her

in sort of that, oh, God, no, don't, please.

The residual ugly is going to ruin our chubby over Rhea.

And they started talking to each other, and I went back to sleep.

What happened?

You know, they beat each other up a little bit.

Bailey got involved, and then Bailey and Rhea got rid of Naya, and they were kind of celebrating sisterhood.

Sisters are doing it for themselves.

That's right.

Well, and let's go to the brothers because the main event of this program was a street fight

between Damian Priest and Finn Balor.

And this has been,

they have been sniping at each other since they were in the goddamn group, the Judgment Day, and then they've blah, blah, blah.

And this is maybe something that's gone on a little long.

What, what, what?

You watch this live?

Yes.

So when this came on, I tried to.

When this came on did you have the same thought as me like oh wow this is kind of early to go to the main event

well

no

because i was in the bed to where that i could see the tv screen and i could see my notepad but i couldn't look right over the bottom of the mattress and see what the clock said

so i didn't know where we were in the scheme of things time-wise when this match came up i just oh here's another one of these goddamn street fight matches

and the chairs and the crashing through the tables and the fighting in the arena.

And that's the thing is, I would nod off

and I would wake up and they'd still be doing the things I just described.

And I would nod off and wake up again and they'd still be.

So I don't know what I missed or what I saw, but there was a lot of street fighting-ness: chairs, and tables, and arena, and the same as every other goddamn thing that anybody does these days.

And so when I woke up,

the screen was frozen.

And I was like, what the fuck?

The show's over with.

So

I hit play

because I don't know how to work the Netflix, but I figured I'll just hit something to see what happens.

And the show started at the beginning,

the cold open, right?

And I'm thinking, well, I got to fast forward now a couple hours in to see the rest of this goddamn match.

So

I fast-forwarded two hours in until Stacy walked in the room and said, you know, that's last week's show.

What?

I'd popped last week's show up.

Somehow, it automatically, they're going to make you watch this shit.

Even if you're trying not to, it's going to come up.

So then I had to go back to the correct show

and then start playing it and fast forward two hours and whatever into that

to see Priest choke slam finances long.

So to answer your question, no, I was not surprised because I didn't know what time it was, but then I was surprised when the show was only two and a half hours long.

And I still didn't like the street fight because it's a goddamn street fight.

Yeah.

What'd you think?

I guess it was fine for what it was.

I'm not a big fan of these kind of matches, and I haven't been a big fan of the Priest

Bauer feud.

Hopefully it's not.

Hopefully, you're not a big fan of Priest.

Many of us aren't.

Well, hopefully, you're playing for the opposing team anyway.

Hopefully, this feud is over when he goes to AEW.

It'll be Damian Rabbi.

But

hopefully, this is a good idea.

Can he get the collar?

They did the thing where they did a spot off of a giant area.

I don't even know how to describe this.

I just saw that through a table.

And then Balor got stretchered out, but then Priest decided, now I'm going to really end this.

And he went back and started beating beating up him and the rest of the Judgment Day once and for that.

That's a babyface move.

Beat the guy up while he's on the stretcher.

Well, as a way to say goodbye to the feud.

Well,

sure,

say goodbye to the stretcher.

So I'm going to kick your ass while you're on it.

So I'm watching this and I'm like, eh, all right.

I mean, I kind of am done.

I don't want to watch anymore.

What else is going to be on this show?

Because now they can go past three hours.

They didn't go past three hours.

The credits came up and I was like, like, what the fuck?

Yeah.

And then that was it.

That was a pleasant way to end the night.

It ended up, I didn't think it was going to be a nice way to end the night.

And then it ended up being just perfect.

What a surprise ending.

All right.

I can go home now.

We got the who are, where were you watching it?

Down at the goddamn pool hall?

We don't discuss the things that happen at the food hall.

You were.

You were watching the show on the big screen over at the House of Ill Repute in Teterborough, weren't you?

I I don't go to Teterborough.

I go out of Morristown.

Okay, they opened up a closer branch.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, that was Raw for January the 13th on the Netflix.

And

again, I mean, Saturday night's main event is coming up again.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with Hulk Hogan on that program, but they've got matches lined up for that.

The Royal Rumble has...

50,000 fucking tickets sold or whatever.

There's multiple stars in that.

They're cooking for the...

They ain't going to go out of business in the next couple of weeks.

No, they certainly won't.

One last question before I think you're starting to wrap things up.

Well, I was just, I was starting to fold things over on the corners.

So with the idea that The Rock

isn't doing anything at WrestleMania, and he was just on Raw and NXT as a babyface, authority figure sort of guy dressed in a wacky way, like he's going to a nightclub in Miami.

I don't know what the hell's going on there.

But the previous time we saw him before then, was it royal rumble when cody and roman were together in the ring at the end of the main event and all of a sudden the rock came out and that was the way the the event ended

what was the point of that if he's not working with anyone

i

either

something has happened to convince him That whatever he needs to do that would make sense is not going to be the thing that he wants to do or will make him look the best.

And so he's just deciding maybe maybe we won't do it.

Or physically, it could be an issue.

I mean,

he's not getting younger.

Yeah.

Or physically, he doesn't feel like that he can

do what he needs to do and not look, you know, bad or give somebody a, you know, bum mood over it.

Or

I got to be honest with you, Roman and Rock or Cody and Rock would be.

big money matches.

And I mean, if Rock wrestles paper and scissors, it would draw money.

But there's really nothing else that you can think of for him to do in the ring that

would even be worth discussing and the hoops that you would have to jump through to get it done.

Well, there's one other thing, but I don't know if it's even worth doing.

What?

Again, I'm not saying they're even going to do this, but if you did Cena versus Rock one last time during the retirement year, it could be pretty big.

Well, again, I don't know if it would work.

That's the thing.

It would probably be big as a draw.

It'd probably be either

somewhat disappointing in the end because you're comparing it to something that happened 20 years ago, or

somebody's got to lose that one.

And unless Rock went full-fledged heel again,

it would kind of be a bummer if either guy lost.

But what I was going to say is I think

ongoing money,

not every week, but in major seasons for WrestleMania, SummerSlam, or whatever, build up to Saudi Arabia, whatever they're going to make a fucking fortune on,

the rock and Triple H, not physically, not having a match.

Oh, I agree 100%.

Cutting the promos and wanting control of the direction of the company, board of directors versus a chief content officer, whatever,

that and let their surrogates.

who could be the Romans and the Cody's and the punks and the all the top stars, could align with one or the other and be on that person's side to take control of the direction of the WWE.

Then you got months and months and months.

And no one has to work and get hurt.

Exactly.

And Heyman can be trying to be the fucking butler for whichever one wins and playing both of them against the other one.

He does that anyway.

Well,

that's why I'm saying just bring it out in the open.

How big is that angle going to be one day when someone attacks Triple H?

Oh, you know what?

He doesn't have to do anything.

He just has to bump.

He needs to have a heart attack.

No, you can't do that.

That was a disaster for Fritz.

It's Fritz in the reunion arena.

By the way, Fritz is aspirin now at Heritage Auctions.

Oh.

You know what?

They ought to bring Sean Stasak back and have him give Triple H the heart punch.

They ought to bring him back and sign him to AEW so he can record all the locker room conversations and send them to us.

Well, I have a feeling several people are probably doing that down there already

to report into their legal team whenever they're going to file the suit.

But anyway, are we meandering now?

We are.

This is your show.

We are meandering.

Well, I'm going to meander on out of here, folks.

Thank you for joining us.

It's been a wonderful week.

Again, we will be back in a couple of days with the drive-thru, which is Brian's program.

So please tune in with low expectations so that we can hopefully cross that bar.

And otherwise, we'll see you next week right here on the experience.

Until then, thank you, fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.