Episode 564: The Netflix Era

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Like the midnight and the rock and roller.

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

He's Jim Cornette.

The keys to the future, held by the past.

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

He's Jim Cornet.

Well, he's never fake a phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the first Jim Cornette Experience of 2025.

We are broadcasting from the middle of a natural disaster.

And I don't mean Raw's debut on Netflix, but we're going to cover that one too.

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

Co-host to you.

He causes earthquakes, typhoons, and all kinds of other shit storms.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Oh, oh, how Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Happy New Year.

Glad it's your show.

Well, see, now you got to talk for a minute because I'm winded, Brian.

I'm winded.

I'm a COVID survivor now.

If the people heard the drive-through, they know what I got for Christmas.

So I'm a COVID survivor.

So now you've got to lower

your expectations, ladies and gentlemen, to

about 75 to 80% 80 percent of what you would normally find entertaining about me because now I have a handicap.

That's right.

This begins the brain fog era of the Jim Corner.

Well, that's why I'm a little foggy.

See, I might not know whether to wind my ass or scratch my watch.

And you got to accept that here in the new year.

Because we had a

discussion.

on the drive-thru about how much longer we were going to be doing this type of thing.

You wanted to say that we were going to do these podcasts for the next five years.

my counteroffer was three months and i don't know we haven't negotiated further in the middle yet

but the people are going to be able to hear this somewhere between the next three months and five years that's right at least

at least no god damn it now you're talking a new a new decade you're talking a new era.

I don't think you understand that within the next 10 years, we're open up to a whole new line of sponsors for senior citizens because of your age.

Well, when they get the metamucil

that's that's chocolate-flavored, like our friends at Organe, let me know.

But I'm not ready for like adult diapers.

I'm not ready for high colonics in low places yet, you son of a gun.

You could talk about high.

You know, back in my day, I never had to worry about spillage when I was taking a bump off a scaffold.

But now, in my old age, I need something I could depend on.

Oh, I see what you did there.

See,

back in my day, we used to just have to shit in our hands and wipe it on the wall.

Depends.

You could depend on this, unlike Jim Crockett's promises.

Unlike the royalties for Starkade 8 say, all right, anyway,

so just be aware.

If I

see, I got sometimes I gotta either

drippage,

and I've got to either kind of

suck the drippage from the nose down into the mouth where it can be spittooned out, or elsewhere, if it drips down to the throat, that I got to

rump it back up.

Spittooned.

That's the leftover part of all of this

worldwide plague that I was suffering from.

So I apologize if I may be a little wet or croupy today for the people who notice that type of thing.

But we're going to talk about something else that's wet and croupy.

The weather here in Louisville.

I said we were in the middle of a natural disaster and that it was declared a state of emergency, the state of Kentucky.

Just so you, Brian, did you keep up with the weather that took place from,

I guess, from South Texas through Louisiana all the way up into

Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio and parts north from the shores of Tripoli to the mountains of Montezuma.

did you keep up with that just yesterday as we're recording?

No, I usually don't follow along until it hits the Poconos.

Well, then you've got all that real estate interest up there that you're worried about the weather problem.

What?

Okay.

You mean the people don't know that you're the one that invented the champagne glass hot tub?

Son of a bitch.

That's because your first girlfriend was so short.

But anyway, no, and the weather was

frightful yesterday across

middle and southern part of the United States.

They not only had

thunderstorms, severe high winds, and tornado warnings in,

I guess, South Texas and into Louisiana and Arkansas,

including some of the places we've been talking about on the Mid-South Wrestling Review.

So that was going on down there where people are being buffeted by the goddamn, you know, hurricane-like conditions.

And then from Kansas,

Kansas had a blizzard, high winds, and heavy snow.

And then the Ohio Valley here, southern Indiana, Kentucky, the Ohio River border,

was right on the line where they were calling for not only snow, but also sleet and freezing rain.

Where that it would be rain south of us and snow north of us, and we were going to get the ice right in like a 50-mile strip across Metro Louisville.

And you'd might not want the snow, but it ain't a big deal.

If it's going to snow six inches, might as well snow a foot.

What's the fucking difference?

And the rain, same thing, but the ice is crucial.

Because if you get a quarter of an inch of ice, yeah, okay, well, boy, there's a fucking...

miserable conditions out there.

If you get three quarters of an inch ice, it'll shut the town down.

And 15 years ago, everybody's gun shy around here because we got two inches of ice.

It wrecked the town for a week to 10 days.

Stacey and I were in a hotel in Lexington for a week.

And I mean, tree damage, power damage, that was like the freak thing of all time.

So everybody's trepidacious about the ice.

And it snowed plenty.

As a matter of fact, it was the most snow that Louisville has had in in one day since 1998

and the third largest January snowfall ever.

And they say that I think it said it was officially eight inches at the airport or whatever, but we got 10 here in the in the yard at the castle.

But then the sleet and freezing rain didn't materialize to the severity, thank goodness.

that it it might have, and we didn't have any widespread power outages outages or damages or shit collapsing or whatever, which that is the problem with that.

But

then

after the sleet and the freezing rain, that it snowed today,

another couple inches,

and it's not going to be above freezing for a week.

And then it's going to be 34 degrees.

So

this is our decoration for a little while.

And I took Harley out to egger morning Russo,

and she's kind of flabbergasted because she has not seen this much snow ever.

She likes the snow, but this is taller than she is.

But because it was frozen over, she could walk on top of it.

But when I tried to follow her, it would hold my weight for like one second, and then my foot would drop six inches.

So it's like walking on shit that's...

caving in

with every footstep.

You got it coming in your future, Brian Last.

It's coming in that direction.

I'm looking forward to it.

I'll have fun in it.

How can you have fun in

ice snow that you can't

support?

That won't say, well, it won't support you.

You can't make a fucking,

you know,

snowman out of it because you're just trying to ball up a fucking snow cone.

It's just, it's just frozen fucking

chaos now.

So, this is not the fun snow.

If there's a lot of snow, I'll go sledding.

Otherwise I won't do anything.

If you hit somebody with a snowball out of this goddamn

consistency, it would give them brain damage.

Their children would be born dizzy.

Anyway, so that's the way we're starting the year here, huh?

With great content.

With great content.

Hey, God,

I'm trying to bring the people up to date.

We were afraid we couldn't even record here today because I'd be shivering with no power and no internet, and all the wires caved in and all that stuff.

And we were broadcast.

You did say all of that in advance.

We are scheduled to record.

I may not be able to because of this incoming storm.

And here we are.

Yeah, and they were saying it on the news.

Now, there was a possibility of it.

And if we hadn't got over our snow forecast, we would have, then we would have gotten over the ice forecast.

And then we might be singing a different tune here.

But thankfully we got more snow and no tunes and no well would you like me to sing something i said thankfully no tunes i didn't say thankfully you should start singing now well i was gonna sing somebody's praises does that count because there's you know a couple people i got a couple more really cool Christmas presents.

And if you sent me something and you think I've ignored you, check the back shows because we've distributed this out where I wasn't just giving along.

And if you sent me a Christmas card, I appreciate it, but I'm not going to read.

Everybody's name has sent me a fucking Christmas card here on goddamn worldwide

broadcasting.

But I got a couple of really cool things.

One

was this amazing DVD set,

Enter the Clones of Bruce, the documentary of the

sort of like the Mid-South wrestling attempts to replace the junkyard dog,

the attempts to replace Bruce Lee as a martial arts movie star after his untimely passing.

It's a documentary and then like 10

of the

greatest in one way or another, either really good or really bad,

clone movies with the Bruce Lee's and Bruce Lies and Bruce Lays.

Yeah, see, that's the thing.

It would be like if Bill Watts brought in Master G as Junkyard Dig.

I mean, it wasn't just trying to replace Bruce Lee, it was trying to replace Bruce Lee.

Hey, since it was George Wells, they should have brought him in as Junkyard Dick.

Was he might have been.

Did you guys hate George Wells?

No, I'm not talking about that application of the word, but oh,

so anyway, uh, but yes, it's and it's got a book in it with color pictures and words that you can read

about this various

these movies and this subject.

And it was a wonderful day.

I don't have down the name of the person

that sent me that.

That's been overlooked or lost a time or whatever.

Well, it sounds like a very well-cultured person, or someone who gets free stuff and just gives it out to people he doesn't care about.

Well, I certainly hope it's the former and not the latter, or elsewhere, I may have to rethink the opinion I have of the person of who I've forgotten who the fuck that it was.

But also, guess what?

What Stacey got me among the among the plethora of things and COVID foodstuffs and

illnesses.

She got me food, illnesses,

a variety of things, but guess in the manner of a gift-giving situation.

What would Stacey get you for the holidays that you would like?

Your favorite thing is your dog, something to do with you and your dog?

Well, no, because we get together, we get Harley various things.

So

we did have a nice picture taken, Harley and I, out in the blizzard-like conditions yesterday, which I don't own a hat.

I didn't wear know.

What was that hat you were wearing?

You talk about the floppy hats.

All of a sudden, you have one.

That was Stacy's jaunty, floppy cap that matches her jaunty woolen woven sweater that's a set of things or whatever.

But I need

cornets.

Well, I needed something to cover my head out in the blizzard.

And she sees her put this on.

But there was a nice picture there on the Twitter machine.

Did she get you a one-way ticket to Thailand?

No, she got me a one-way ticket to Paradise.

Oh.

Or no, that's two tickets to Paradise.

That's two tickets.

Both things.

You're going by yourself, it sounds like.

You know,

that's like, did I tell you about last month when she won the lottery?

No.

She actually, she came in, she said, I've won the lottery, $50 million.

Pack your bags.

I said, where are we going?

She said, I don't know where you're going, but just get out of here.

But anyway, no, what she got me,

because you know, I watch, I've talked about it, the curse of Oak Island.

I've been watching on the history channel, the curse of Oak Island for what are they in like season 12 now.

And

the Laguina brothers.

Rick and Marty have not only started financing this operation, but now built it into where it's one of the most popular shows on the history channel.

So they're making money digging for this treasure in the most,

I mean, incredibly intricate ways possible.

Now, they've got the 60-ton cranes, they've got the fucking spectroanalysis, they've built buildings where they have all the fucking evidence they've gathered, and they're consulting with scientists and this fucking equipment.

They're drilling 200 feet below the surface and bringing up a core six inches wide.

It's goddamn amazing, right?

Oh, yeah.

And they really found shit worth in

American money.

I don't know that they found $25, but they found a lot of cool shit.

And you don't know what the fuck these people 800 years ago were doing making these massive stone formations and,

you know, blocking off the ocean for purposes unknown.

But anyway, I watched this because it's fascinating, possibly more interesting than the way I just described it.

And so she got me a metal detector.

You see how this fits along?

Because.

Well, are you going to go with that on your own property?

Well, hold on.

I'm fixing to get to that.

Tell me she got you a one-way ticket

to fucking Nova Scotia.

No,

when I was a kid,

and actually it was about the time,

I think I've read about the curse of, not the curse of Oak Island, they didn't call it that then, but the money pit in Nova Scotia was the article that was originally in Reader's Digest.

Then it was reprinted, or the story was reprinted in a book that I have referenced here that I have on the shelf here in my office about the legend of the money pit in Nova Scotia and the efforts.

to try to recover what the people believe is a treasure buried there for reasons unknown.

And the same time, my cousin Larry was into this kind of thing in the early 70s.

They had treasure hunter magazines and metal detectors, home metal detectors where you could just take it around and go beep, beep.

I think it really only become a thing like in the decade of the 60s.

So we got a metal.

I still have that metal detector.

in the corner of my office here leaned up next to the chest of drawers, as Aunt Lola would say.

And

you basically, you put a big nine-volt battery in it, and it had like a fucking old-fashioned audio level meter on it.

And if you waved it over something the size of a Honda fucking Civic, it was only about six inches under the ground.

It would beep, beep, beep.

But, you know, we took it around then

50 years ago or more

and found a few things and a couple coins.

I took it across the road from the castle here to

his Mr.

Stairs house back then.

They were the old couple that lived there, Mr.

and Mrs.

Stairs.

And the house is over 100 years old now.

So it was over 50, his oldest house on this road.

It was the part of one of the farm or the farmhouse to one of the farms over there.

And I got around and he said, sure, look around.

So I got around in his yard thinking, oh my God, some Confederate general has buried some shit here.

And all I found after a lot of fucking digging till finally my mom had to say, I think we need to call this, was it was a giant goddamn scrap chain that had rusted into,

you know, just pieces buried in his backyard.

But it was fun, right, for a little while.

And

back then, though,

there were places that you could actually go around here.

And by the time,

you know, that we realized the limitations limitations of this thing, we didn't really venture too far from the property.

But, like, old farmhouses and things like that, we had all kinds of them and barns and places where people used to fish next to the creek.

And you could have gone and looked around and maybe found something, but now it's some guy's fucking

three-bedroom house in a subdivision.

And if you were out in his backyard, he'd probably fucking

shoot you.

So

this is it's more for my retirement.

If we go to the fucking mountains and wander the trails

and find out what people have fucking lost on the way to the to the wandering to the top of the mountain on the trail, that type of thing.

Stacey's a genius.

She figured out I'll give him this.

He'll be running around the yard like a lunatic.

I can film it, put it on YouTube, make millions.

Is that why she was talking to you about our YouTube channel?

That's why she said, can you send me a good camera?

All right, anyway.

But so that's well, I'll report.

But these new ones are snazzy.

So where are you going to go with it?

Where do you go to the mountain?

What did you say?

She said

it's like a retirement.

She's trying to get me to quit all of this.

And she said,

we could go to Gatlinburg.

And we could go up, walk around the Smoky Mountains, and find all the gold that the fucking

Confederates had buried there.

See, this is why people are going to think you're nuts.

Hey, guess what?

I saw Jim Cornett.

Where'd you see him?

I saw him at the mountain digging for gold.

I mean, that's what you say about a lunatic.

Well, you don't dig for gold.

You pan for gold.

Looking for gold, hunting for gold.

There's a gold rush involving one person.

I would rather be walking the trails in Gatlinburg with a metal detector, Stacey and Harley, than I would to work for any major wrestling promotion on Earth today.

Just to give you a

kind of a status of where we are.

Do you think that would be your new gimmick?

Instead of a tennis racket, now you would be at ringside with a metal detector?

Is it usable?

Would you be able to use it as a gimmick?

Well, here's the thing.

I was going to say these new ones, they're fancy.

Because you can set it where you can detect precious metal or this or that, or you can memorize it where here, detect quarters, and it'll only detect quarters or whatever.

So maybe I could get one to detect money and take it around to AEW shows and see where anybody's drawing any.

But I don't think I'd get a lot of beeps.

You're better off in the mountains.

I'm better off in the mountains.

See, that's why, you know, he had a choice.

He could have worked for AEW or now he's panning for fucking gold in the mountains.

Yeah, he's made the right choice.

But anyway, so it's going to be fun to get away from things like you and this.

Just make sure you wear your big floppy hat.

I'm going to have a well, I don't want to burn.

I am fair-complected, you know.

Do you think if at that point, once you're hunting for gold, you'll be growing a beard, a long beard?

Well, I don't shave every day now.

I've cut down to probably twice a week upon average.

Maybe that's a little on the heavy side.

But I would think if you're, if you're in the mountains finding all this gold, you got no no no no time to shave no time to shave

So it it might I wouldn't let it go past my crotch

All right, well, this has been a

metal detecting time You just keep you act like you're a novice at this.

That's the idea you go where men have not gone before in a long time and see what they have left back behind these old gold coins and pieces of eight and things.

That's what you're looking for.

You're not looking for some goddamn blinkin' penny from last year.

It wasn't some guy running around the Great Smoky Mountains just sprinkling gold coins all over the place, hoping someday someone will find them.

You never heard of gold coin, Conrad?

He has sprinkled

money all across the goddamn southeast.

The legend of him

back in the 1800s when they were first panning at

Sutter's Mill down there.

What did you get, Stacey?

None of your business.

No, I got her actually two,

not for the price of one.

I paid for both of them, but I was going for one.

And then I saw the other one and I said, well, I'll just get one of each.

Two nice little

necklaces with little engraved

pendances, says pendances of things.

I'm a COVID survivor, goddammit.

It's what do you call the thing?

It's not really a, it's not a locket.

Is it a pendant on a necklace that has

our names engraved on it with our birthstones or whatever in there in an intricate little design?

I don't know what you really, it's a necklace, but that's nice.

And then the other thing

was

engraved on the other side of the thing

rather than the front side.

See, I got one in the front and one in the back.

The jewelry exchange, Louisville.

Yes, and what JimCornet.com is: we're test marketing them now.

And if she likes them,

we're going to come out with that in the spring.

I got to talk about a TV show that I was going to do this last year, and the same thing happened.

I saw this show last year for the very first time during our Christmas break.

And by the time

that we began this again,

last year, against my better judgment as well, we began this again.

I didn't even think, talk about it.

I don't think even with you.

I don't think.

So

we're going to solve both those things at the same time right now.

I'm going to talk about it with you and to the people.

Have you seen

the television program called A Christmas Carol Gone Wrong?

No, that really hasn't been on my radar.

And you've seen this aired last year, too?

Yeah, it's a, I guess it's a couple of years old.

I'll explain in a second.

But it is the funniest fucking television program I have ever seen in my goddamn life.

I saw it last week or whatever for the fifth or sixth time I've watched it, and I was still on the couch just with Stacey and Harley, laughing out loud and trying to hold myself from giving myself some type of intestinal rupture.

It's fucking hilarious, and

apparently it was done by the BBC,

not

Moxley's old group,

but

the British Broadcasting Company, right?

It was a British TV special.

And for whatever reason,

she could look it up where it's on streaming, however that fucking works.

She did.

But originally, it's on the PBS station here.

And for those of you around the world, public broadcasting system in the United States is supposed to be

civic affairs programs, documentaries, children's education,

you know, some type of uplifting type of thing like that.

But they sometimes show

programs from England or oddball movies for no apparent reason or whatever the fuck.

No, a lot of the popular British shows in America or British shows that became popular was specifically because of public broadcasting.

Monty Python, Faulty Towers, that everything was

Masterpiece Theater, right?

Still is a, yeah.

So, you know, they've got a variety of these things, but I don't know how this would fit as Masterpiece Theater, right?

Maybe more like Monty Python.

But a Christmas Carol Gone Wrong.

The first time I saw it, I still thought it was funny, but I joined it like 10 minutes in and I had no idea what the actual premise was.

And you kind of have to.

If you don't watch the first bit of it, you don't really fucking get the whole goddamn thing.

And apparently there is a

pre-existing program that may have been done by the BBC and I haven't seen where the same type of thing happened on another production.

But loosely,

they are set for a

some type of local

play company is going to perform

a Christmas carol with Scrooge and Bob Marley and Cratchit and the whole nine yards.

to perform that as a live TV special.

And at the last minute,

another repertory company, that's the phrase I was searching for, swoops in and takes over the production like commandos.

And they go into the goddamn production truck and they fucking commandeer the whole goddamn thing and their characters take over.

And it is then a series of fucking mishaps from

start to finish until the thing's over and it's the funniest goddamn thing i've ever seen

you got to find this you would this i'm looking you would love this kind of thing i'm looking now at a piece because there's all kinds of inside television shit going on

and it's witty and the physical comedy

is is insane just the whole way that they've structured this thing it came out in 2017 it's on dvd and uh i could probably find a stream of it here too.

Well, I'm encouraging, I mean, I don't just want to enrich your life, but I'm encouraging everybody else.

We're not even getting paid to say this.

You got to watch this fucking television show.

And remember, everyone, your answer should be: not until you watch Monster Squad.

Oh, goddammit.

King of Kong, let's start going through the list of this ones you've ignored over the last 10 years.

Well, this was right in front of me, and it was the holiday season.

All right, I want to talk.

Can we talk about an old friend of yours?

I said we want to catch up with the cult and what's been going on and the feedback we've been getting from the audience.

And we want to talk about an old friend of yours too.

Can we do that?

I don't have any old friends.

Who is this?

Leroy.

Oh, yeah, we can talk about Leroy.

Okay.

Well, we got an email from Jeremy.

And remember, this was probably a little over a month ago now.

We had said, you know, somebody ought to bring a Justice for Leroy sign to one of the major television broadcasts just to get Leroy's name.

And folks, if you don't know what we're talking about, YouTube.

YouTube, it's on YouTube.

What would be the title of that that they would look for?

Jim Cornette on Leroy.

Well, that's

pretty cut and dried right there, isn't it?

And Brian's old friend, who was a kindly gentleman who everyone loved and was later found out to be a cold-blooded murderer, but it has a happy ending.

So, you know, anyway, we said we ought to to get a justice for Leroy sign.

Keep his name out there.

You keep saying we.

It was your idea.

You said someone should bring the sign.

Well, I didn't know Leroy from Tom's house cat till you brought him up.

So you instigated this whole goddamn thing.

I didn't say we should bring placards.

You're the one who said bring signs.

I didn't say anything about placards.

I said signs.

Signs are placards.

Signs, signs, everywhere, signs.

I don't know whether placard counts.

You asked,

Jeremy writes, and he's from Minneapolis.

If that helps narrow down to find this, this man for the government agencies that are now listening to our program.

Uh-oh.

Dear Jim and Brian,

you asked for an appearance of a Justice for Leroy sign to appear in the crowd, and SmackDown just so happened to be at the Target Center in Minneapolis on Friday, December the 6th.

So I made the sign with the Justice for Leroy message on the A side of the poster

and a Minnesota is Tiffy territory message on the B side.

I guess A would be assholes and B would be boobies.

I guess.

Yeah, long story short, good luck getting any Justice for Leroy signs

in any WWE crowd.

For some prior reference, I've worked security in Minneapolis as a second job years ago in a Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four, and major stadium concerts, including Taylor Swift and Beyonce, came through Minneapolis.

Beyonce.

Her too.

So I have a good idea how they operate.

Security will check signs coming through the door to check for profanity, commercial products, or unwarranted political messages, which I understand.

My sign didn't violate any of those rules while being initially checked by the arena security, so I went to my seat.

The show on Friday began with Cody Rhodes cutting a promo in the the ring, and I had a security guard confronting me about my sign before Cody got his boots on the ring steps.

It was immediate.

I did attempt to fight it by asking, why would you take my sign when it doesn't violate anything from the fan code of conduct?

And you know, the code of conduct is important, folks, because he's capitalized code and conduct.

The first security guard was dumbfounded and called his supervisor for help.

I had three more security guards respond very quickly.

Again,

I asked, why can't I hold up my wrestling sign?

Remember, this is a company.

They used to have girls flashing their tits in the crowd and they would shoot close-ups.

Why can't I hold up my wrestling sign that doesn't violate the fan code of conduct?

His response off the radio was: the WWE doesn't want to see that sign.

If we see it up again, we can escort you out.

I did know that WWE does hold the ability to do that in the terms and conditions fine print on every ticket.

So I just let him take my sign instead of fighting it anymore.

The entire interaction happened quickly, I would guess under three minutes.

The sign was gone before Chad Gable came out to cut his promo.

It was very clear WWE did not want the Justice for Leroy sign to appear, and they moved quickly to make sure it didn't happen.

Somebody else at a different WWE show can attempt it, but I don't think they would get any different result.

You could try this at an AEW show,

but that would mean you would have to actually watch AEW wrestling to do so.

So it doesn't look like Leroy is going to get any justice, Brian.

And AEW has been jumping all over signs ever since everything went down with punk, so good luck.

That's why you never see any punk stuff.

It's not because no one brings it.

It's because they confiscate it.

It turns out, you know, Leroy was arrested, and I think it was a little over a year he spent in jail and they let him go for the fact that he was a kindly old man at this point in his life and even the victim's family said so.

But it turns out it's more about justice for justice for Leroy than it is justice for Leroy.

It's justice to get that sign up.

Now I think,

you know, at first I thought it was a bad idea.

Now I think we should be determined.

Now you think it's a principle of the thing.

Now we got to get that fucking thing on.

I want that on TV while Paul Levek's talking.

I want a big Justice for Leroy just right behind his head.

We should do a system where we compensate the fans in some sort of way that isn't illegal, where we could say, if you get it on air, that's like X amount of points.

If you get it on air with The Rock, if you get it on air with Triple H, if you get it on air with Punk, if you put it on air with the wrong segment, you lose points.

Punk might carry it in the ring with him.

He wouldn't dare.

He wouldn't.

I don't know what would be.

He wouldn't dare.

That would be the hit.

I thought they meant Leroy McGurk.

You got to give it to Oklahoma.

That's the case.

No.

Spring.

Here's the thing.

Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Springfield, Missouri.

Yeah.

So any of the,

as a matter of fact, you could go so far as to say the old Louisiana territory if you went back far enough.

So Leroy McGurk is a fine promoter.

And his daughter, Mike.

Mike McGurk worked as a ring announcer for the WWE justice for Leroy

and Mike.

Well, but it was.

Good luck anyone getting on the air.

Like we said, get in touch if you do.

And also, if CM Punk gets in the ring with that thing, there's no chance of that.

So let's not even pretend.

All right.

I want to see that thing on the air though.

What Triple H is talking.

Is there any wrestler today whose real name is Leroy?

When was the last time my child was named Leroy?

That's like one of those names.

Stacy has an uncle named Leroy.

How old is he?

He's goddamn so old.

He's fucking dead for three years.

There you go.

Nobody told him yet.

They're afraid to.

Other than Leroy McGurk.

Leroy Brown.

Bad, bad Leroy Brown.

Well, he was the baddest man in the whole damn town.

But the thing is, you know,

he's old.

He would be old too now if he was still around.

So it's not a young man's name.

Isn't it the story like in 1988, there was like a fan get-together and they started reading down the list of people who had died in 88, and it was like Bruiser Brody,

bad,

bad

Leroy.

But anyway, he's not in the Hall of Fame, so justice for Leroy.

But now, wait a minute.

Who's

do you remember, by the way,

what

junkyard dog's name was, the brief period of time, and what was it, maybe late 77, 78, Scott Teal would know when he worked for Nick Gulis before he went to work for Bill Watts.

Leroy Rochester.

Leroy Rochester, the most now.

1978 would have been 40 years since Nick Gulis and Roy Welch had started the Nashville Booking Office, and Roy was dead at that point, but Nick was still around.

And

that was the natural thing that he thought to do: name a black man Leroy Rochester.

He was not only going for the Leroy stereotype, but also the Eddie Rochester Anderson, just to make sure to connect with the only black human being that his fucking age group was aware of at that point.

And I'm surprised he didn't have him drive into the ring in a fucking Maxwell.

But anyway,

Dog went from, what was it, Sylvester Ritter to Big Daddy Ritter to Leroy Rochester to the junkyard dog.

And so that's like almost a

half a dozen crummy gimmicks in one place or another before he finally

struck gold with that.

Where were we going there?

Now, this is your show.

We were talking about justice for Leroy.

Oh, well, there wasn't.

I'm trying to think of other famous Leroy's.

Other famous Leroy's.

Well, and then,

and we've established there wasn't that many.

But here's somebody else.

See if you can follow along with this email from Joseph.

Who I suppose he is from Australia.

Maybe he doesn't live there anymore, but he's talking about it from years ago.

But see how long it takes you to figure out who he's talking about, and then we'll talk about that person.

He sent me this email.

He said, in 1971,

WCW of Australia, Jim Barnett's promotion, right?

There was a manager called the Warlord who wore a silver combat helmet and talked like a beatnik.

Oh, Big Bad John.

Exactly.

And I'll read the rest of this because it's short, and then we'll talk about it.

But he said, I saw him in a six-man tag between the

Graham Brothers, Mario Something French, I forget.

I think Mario Milano, he was Italian.

The biggest star they had.

Yeah, and Haystax Calhoun, Abdullah the Butcher, and possibly killer Carl Cox.

Basically, those are all the big stars of that era of

WCW.

He says, today, when you search for the Warlord, all you get is the info on the Warlord of the 1980s.

Do you know anything about this manager?

And I can see where he's,

what he's probably getting Joseph here is that at some points when Big Bad John was the leader of his, what, his army, he would say, I am the warlord,

but he wasn't officially ever advertised or billed as the warlord.

So that's where the confusion came in, and I got a tickle out of it.

But that started me thinking about, I don't know how long it's been.

We've talked talked about him in the past,

but we're coming up on 2026, one more year, which will be the

fucking anniversary.

Remember when the bicentennial came?

200 years is a bicentennial.

What's 250 years?

They have a fancy name for that.

I don't know.

Well, you could Google it if you cared about it.

I could have if I had more than a second.

You could, you could have.

What is it?

Tell Tell me now.

You get to help me because I'm a COVID survivor.

But anyway, Big Bad John, for those of you who haven't heard us talk about him in the past,

was a unique guy in the wrestling business.

And you know what?

We should have thought of this, Brian, when we talked recently about

what managers have been bigger than the boys.

Like, you know, Dallas Page, Gary Hart, blah, blah, blah.

But Big Bad John was kind of a unique case in that he broke in as a wrestler.

And he was like six foot five or six legitimately and

325 or 30 pounds and most of it belly.

I mean, he had some stork-like legs.

And he looked like a hell's angel, his long black hair and long black beard.

And he wore, when he was a heel, he wore

black tights and black trunks and black, a black top with the double over-the-shoulder thing.

And he would wear

the helmet was a combat helmet, not

a Nazi World War II Germany helmet, but what are they called?

Did they have the Iron Cross in World War I?

Baron von Richthofen, you would think, think, would wear this silver combat helmet with a goddamn thing sticking up on the top of it, Brian, if you know anything more about it than I do.

And apparently you don't.

Either that or you're on mute.

Now we know you're on mute.

It was a bit of both.

Okay.

I didn't know, and I was on mute.

And now you're getting a revenge muting.

Obviously, I could tell.

I was coughing.

I'm a survivor.

But anyway, and at various points, he looked like he was in a motorcycle gang.

And he did have this, you know, wartime paraphernalia about him.

So he looked like a million dollars, right?

As big as he was with this mean

look and the size and the promo that he was legitimately, if he wasn't the best promo.

in professional wrestling in late 60s, early 70s, then he was top five.

I mean, it was insane.

And he had his complete own unique style.

And

the problem was his work was so fucking horrible

that to take advantage of the way that he could cut a promo and the way he looked, they made him a manager.

And especially, and Barnett made a lot of money over there with him as the leader of Big Bad John's army and fighting all the top babyfaces.

It was like an NWO in 1969 or whatever.

But then

he had always been in and out of the Memphis territory.

And Jerry Jarrett had booked him in Memphis itself when he was booking Memphis while the whole thing was still owned by

Gulis and Welch

and had done the same thing.

It started using him as a top heel wrestler and then kind of

like it would have single matches with big bad john with stipulations but jared jarrett was five foot ten and 200 pounds then 198

and john was so big but he was so unbelievable as a wrestler but he could get heat with the talking and they'd do all kinds of bullshit and then john would always get a tag team partner and they'd do a tag team thing I have some audio if you want me to play some.

Go ahead.

I want people to hear this fucking guy.

Now, this may not be him wearing the helmet and yelling as the warlord, but this is something I've always been fascinated by because

he's able to grab the audience.

And what he does 99% of this promo is repeat what he says a second time

more dramatically.

Yes.

But here is Lance Russell.

With superstar Bill Dundee and the Bicentennial baby.

There you go.

This is where I was going anyway.

Big bad John.

Yeah, Dundee.

Had to bring these out here, because by golly, I want to tell you, we want to take the opportunity to congratulate Dundee.

Very much, like Big John said.

They don't belong to us.

They belong to all you good people out there.

I see it.

Now, all our brothers and sisters.

We hope you don't mind.

We accept the return championship match with a Bush Ape and Roger Nature Boy Kirby.

Hope you don't mind, but they ain't going to go nowhere.

We're keeping them.

Let me tell you something else.

We're going to have to win one more belt someplace to get it to fit because we put them both together and they won't go around the baby's midriff.

Well, John, it was a big victory in there, and our fans were really tickled to death.

And for those of you who do not know,

last Monday night down at the Coliseum, the Bicentennial Baby and Billy the Superstar came flying through and took the Southern tag team belts away from Kirby and David Schultz.

And you are coming right back with a return pitch.

You're not done.

ain't nobody out here to play.

Ain't nobody out here to play.

And we do expect everybody to get in the ring to be able to pay.

Get your dues together.

Get the dues together, baby, because I'm going to tell you.

We told you, we told you we're winning the belts for the people of Memphis.

For the people of Memphis.

Now.

Now.

You people, you people right here are the tag team champions.

Y'all are the champions.

Y'all are the champions.

Now, now

I know, I know y'all don't want to be sluffy.

I don't want you to be itchy fire because we're going to put them right back up and we're going to meet all comers.

From a pound to a ton, we don't care what their race, creed, color, reputation, or how tough they are.

Or

how big a turkey is they get to be or how much, you don't know.

I've got to control this.

Got to control control it.

Got to control it.

There's a big old dude.

There's a big old dude that has a partner named Jerry Lawler.

The big old plowboy, the plowboy, he got his plow and his team of mules out there.

He furrowing down these rolls.

He furrowing down these rolls.

Well, I'm going to tell you something, plowboy.

I have an open challenge.

We done told you about that.

And all I want you to do is get your stuff together.

Get your stuff together.

And if And if the plowboy, and if the plowboy and Jerry Lawler want a challenge for the Southern Heavyweight Tag Team Belts, we ain't gonna be long.

We ain't gonna be long.

We got one match scheduled, which is back with Kirby and with Schultz.

They want a return match.

We're gonna give it to them.

Dead gonna give it to them.

But now,

now,

as soon as we get through with them,

if Jerry Lawler wants a peace of my body, peace of my soul, I want you to come and get it, baby.

I want you to come to me and the superstar.

You know something?

In Jackson, Tennessee, in Jackson, Tennessee, Thursday night, Thursday night,

The Bicentennial baby and the superstar is going to be there in the same corner together.

Now, our opponents down there, I want you to get it together.

Get it together, baby, and bring all you got.

Reach down deep in your soul, get down in your pocket, and get it together.

Get it together, baby.

It got wild and furious last time.

Ain't no telling what's gonna happen this time.

In Trenton, in Trenton, Tennessee, tonight.

In Trenton, Tennessee, tonight,

the superstar and the Bicentennial baby gonna be there getting it.

Gonna be there getting it.

And you know something?

What we told you?

We got an open challenge there in their body.

So the ones that crawl in the ring with us tonight,

may the good Lord,

may the good Lord have mercy on their soul.

Cause their bodies belong to me and the superstar.

Now,

one other little thing, Lance.

Well, let me stop it there before

Bill Dundee.

Let me stop it before Dundee ruins it.

Lance Russell's wearing the bicentennial visor on his head

during this promo.

Bill Dundee does not look comfortable as Big Ben John randomly just puts his arm around him at times and leans in.

But what an intent.

It's almost like Jake Roberts.

Yes.

And at the same time.

With John, he could go over the top and be the heel screaming, and you would believe that too, because he looked like a maniac.

And by the way, the Schultz that they're talking about, what they did was

Dundee had just switched Babyface a few months beforehand.

He and George Barnes had come to the territory as heels from Australia.

And when they got over like crazy, but Barnes wanted to go back home.

So Dundee, as a single, was kind of floating.

But Teeny

went and told Jerry Jarrett, said,

You've got to do something with that boy.

The girls love him.

And they switched him babyface.

He became the second biggest babyface in the territory behind Lawler for the next 20 years.

Anyway,

so they bring in Big Bad John and he can talk and he looks like that.

And now he's come up with this fucking gimmick because it's January 1976.

It's the bicentennial.

It's in all the news.

That's all people are talking about.

200 years.

And so he's in a red, white, and blue Uncle Sam-inspired outfit instead of the black and the German army helmets and whatever.

He looks like Apollo Creed,

complete with the red, white, and blue top hat, right?

And he even had publicity taken, the pictures taken with this little puppy poodle.

I think Scott Teal may have shown, might have been Mike Shields,

with this little puppy poodle.

you know,

the whole thing completely opposite of this chain gang biker motherfucker.

And he became the Bicentennial baby.

Big John, not bad.

The bad was gone.

And he would do, I've seen the light.

I've seen the light last Russell.

I'm the Bicentennial baby.

I love the people.

It's Jake when he found religion.

Yes, and it lasted.

And at this time, I'm watching the TV live when it's going on, and they were here in Louisville.

And Big Bad John, or Big John, was my favorite wrestler for like nine weeks.

And then whatever

happened with him that always happened whenever he went somewhere,

because remember, he's the one that we believe as best stories have said was found murdered in his, stabbed in his bathtub.

All of a sudden he was gone and he never came fucking back.

But it was great while it lasted.

And what they were doing there was they'd put the belts on Dundee and Big John so Big John could talk and had the gimmick and Dundee could actually have the match.

And they beat

David Schultz and

Roger Kirby.

Roger Nature Boy Roger Kirby.

And they were going into a program with Jerry Lawler, who was still a heel at the time, and had his partner, Plowboy Frazier, who we've mentioned many times, the

male refrigerator Jax.

Oh, my gosh, what about when he worked with Big Bad John?

What was that like?

Well, that's the thing.

It was fucking great.

Really?

It was fucking good.

The tag matches.

They never had the single match.

Frazier was 6'10.

They said 7 feet, but 6'10 legitimately and 425 pounds all day long

with the fucking giant belly.

Lawler had established Frazier as this big, giant fucking hillbilly powerhouse that would do whatever to people for him.

And as long as Frazier could throw the punch, which he could, and drop that fucking leg, which looked like it killed you

and squash you in the corner, that was it, right?

And then later on, when Frazier turned babyface on Lawler, then Lawler is taking back drops for him, and he looked like the greatest wrestler in the world.

But meanwhile, you've got Lawler and Dundee for the first time on opposite sides of the ring to have the match.

And you've got the selling point is these two giant giant fucking fat behemoths.

And one of them on the

giant fat behemoth on the babyface side can talk.

You heard the people fucking popping when he just laughed.

And,

you know,

the other side had Jerry Lawler who was talking for the heels.

So the tag matches worked.

And

Big Bad John did one.

I don't know that this

survives on tape or not.

But when they did the first match, then John came out the second week and he said on TV, he said about his showdown in the ring and the match with Plowboys,

face to face we faced each other, stuck out our bellies and run at each other.

And when the crash came and the dust fell, tiny Frazier, the big man, was killed.

But on his grave was written these words.

Below this stone, Jerry Lawler lurks.

You hear me what I'm telling you, Lance.

But the look was insane of this fucking human.

Nobody looks like that anymore.

John Tinta, if he hadn't been quite as big and looked mean in the face, made it, but he couldn't talk like this.

Again, you know, even to go back to the Jake Roberts comparison, if Jake had a big pot belly in the 80s, a little bit, because he's like a big, tall guy, no bigger.

No, but also, no,

if you were at Central Casting and you said facially, from the top of his head to the middle of his chest, get me

the nation's head hell's angel,

that's Big Bad John, right?

Well, you know what?

Before we wrap things up, because this is rather short, just for comparison's sake, this is from Australia, 1973 World Championship Wrestling, Big Bad John.

Another one of your men, another one of your robots, another one of your voice.

You know something?

I guess everybody just don't listen to what I say.

I know Mark Lewin has a little trouble understanding me.

You know something I've issued a challenge out here for two weeks in a row.

I'm saying, Mark Lewin.

Mark Lewin, Abdullah has challenged you.

And Lewin, his usual cowardly self, ain't nowhere around.

Lewin's in hiding.

Well, I'm going to tell you something, Lewin.

You better stay in hiding.

Because you never know where Abdullah is going to come from.

He might be dressed as a spectator sitting in the crowd.

He liable to be up over the ring, tied up in one of these things dropping down on you somewhere.

So you never know where you're going to come from.

But one thing you can put in your book, mark it down good.

He is going to be there sometime or another.

He's going to drop in and pay you a visit, Lewin.

I don't care what you do, where you go, or how you carry yourself, you still got to come in this ring.

When you come in the ring, Abdullah might be in there with you.

So don't, don't be a coward, Lewin.

Go ahead and fess up to yourself, boy.

Get down and say, yes,

yes, I'll take a match with Abdullah the butcher.

Those are the words I want to hear.

Oh, you'll hear them, Big Bad John, and you can rest assured that whenever that happens, we'll all be there right behind Mark Lewin.

And that's something I'm waiting to see.

And the news, of course, you've heard about it of Jack Frisco, the new world heavyweight champion who won his title against

Harley Rice in Houston in front of 47,000 people.

And what a...

Well, hold on now.

Hold on.

I hate to say that ain't right, but that ain't right.

47,000 people.

Oh, god damn it.

Help me, the commentator.

It's not Lord Leighton, but no.

No, but this was 1973.

Barnett had sold.

And who was doing it?

Barnett still.

Was Barnett still there?

Is he about to?

He's about to sell.

Yeah, by the end of the year, Barnett's out.

That's right.

But

point being, well, the people in Australia had no way of knowing that there were 47,000 people in Houston to see

that title match that happened.

But yeah, that's a thing.

And also, if you see the, you know, the video and if

John had an aura about him that you could see he was threatening you personally.

You felt like he believed everything he was saying because it was so effortless and with that look

that he had and that on that face that he had.

So that's enough to give you nightmares, wasn't it, Brian?

It was enough to give me nightmares.

Well, it has.

You give me nightmares.

You know what you need, don't you?

I know what I need.

You need a better night's sleep.

Better night's sleep's sleep.

You know, see, that's the thing, ladies and gentlemen.

Brian Last has told me many times times that he sleeps like a baby.

He wakes up once an hour, crying and screaming and pissing a bed.

Hey.

And that's not any good.

You don't want to sleep like babies, ladies and gentlemen.

You want to sleep the sleep of the angels.

You want to sleep like you're in

the bowels of the clouds.

Have you ever been in a clouds bowel, Brian?

Yeah, I don't know if that's how clouds work.

I don't think there's a bowel of the cloud.

Well, there's got to be some type of apparatus to handle that, even for clouds.

But nevertheless, if whatever you want to be stuffed up the ass end of, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to be as comfortable as you've ever been up the ass end of anything.

If you're laying on a helix sleep mattress, I think I can say that without fear of contradiction.

Can I not, Brian?

Helix sleep mattresses, of course, very, very comfortable.

And you get to pick what you get.

You get to pick exactly the kind of mattress.

that's perfect for you.

Yes, so you don't have to be stuffing anything up anyone's orifices.

You can go with one of the standard kind.

They'll cater to all tastes and wishes, but you can stick to the standard mattress that just lays there if you don't want anything too responsive.

And it just depends on whether you're a giant fat person or a nine-foot freak on a sideshow or whether your children need to be...

in some fashion given special treatment while they sleep because they have night terrors because of the problems between you and your ex-wife.

We don't want to fucking protrude in that.

No, let's just talk about a good night's sleep that anyone can have, no matter how wonderful and uplifting your day is or isn't with Helix Sleep.

Well, you can be uplifted or downvoted, but everybody's voting for the helix sleep mattresses.

You go to helixsleep.com.

That's H-E-L-I-X sleep.com.

And as we mentioned so many times, because they're our friends, they got a mattress for everybody.

They'll heat you up.

They'll cool you down.

They got the mattress for you.

They got the mattress for you.

They got the mattress for you.

And you just pick out, you just tell them how you like to sleep.

And then they tell you, well, we got these mattresses.

And you say, well, I'd like you to send me one.

And they say, well, we'd like you to send some money.

And you do, and they do.

And it arrives at your home and you unbox it right where it lays.

And poof.

It's not dangerous in any way.

It doesn't explode into your face like some kind of airbag catastrophe off of a Tesla or whatever.

It just kind of becomes larger over a period of not too long.

And then you lay on it or do anything else you want to on it.

You can eat, you can sleep, you can make it a whoopee.

And regardless of whether you're Mr.

Whoopi or Mrs.

Whoopee, Mr.

Whoopee, you know, one of them, one of you at least is going to like it.

Helix does have a mattress that's guaranteed where one of you will enjoy the sexual relations.

Mr.

Whoopi was the man giving all that advice to Tennessee Tuxedo and Shumley, wasn't he?

He certainly was.

And he didn't get where he was at that point by sleeping on a fucking pile of rocks.

So

you got that.

You've just proved my point.

I guess I have.

I guess so.

So,

well, in that case, I'll let everybody in on how they can get this type of thing.

Whoopee?

You can go go to, and by the way, if you don't do that,

you can do that.

Go to helixleep.com/slash JCE right now, helixleep.com slash JCE

and check out these fine products.

And then be aware that you are going to get 25% off site-wide

and

two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase.

Now that's up until January the 12th.

January 13th, if you wait even

that long, you're going to lose 5%, then you're only going to get 20% off.

So

that's something you got to consider.

And that would be for three more days.

But nevertheless, the point I'm making is right now you're going to get a big discount and a couple of free pillows if you'll shut your mouth.

and just get on the internet and just order you a new mattress instead of that stinky, wine-soaked potentially urine contaminated if you've got kids or a pet you can't say it's never happened

thing that you've got laying on your bed frame right now and and get something clean that smells nice and maybe then the whoopee would be more advantageous helix sleep.com slash jce

that's right helix sleep and uh you know what jim and i'm sure this will sound completely natural i believe you said you had another email earlier that we've been following up on if I recall correctly yes well if you recall correct if memory serves me

Kobayashi um you ever watch Iron Chef the original one not the white people that screwed it all up yeah it was it was very thrilling I was more of a frugal gourmet kind of guy

Well, you know, the problem with those frugals is since they became environmentally protected, you can't kill them and sell them as cheap as you used to.

Anyway, I got an email from Erica,

who not only brings up some information that we were grasping for and didn't have, but also, again, puts an end to the rumor that we have no female listeners.

And Erica was mentioning,

well, she says, hi, Jim and Brian, and she didn't even put you in parentheses.

So you're stepping up in the world.

I was listening to the experience while baking Christmas treats and heard Brian mention a cult he couldn't think of the name of.

Remember, I don't even know what

brought it up, but you were talking about the a few weeks ago on the program, well, before our Christmas break, you were talking about some cult or other.

Well, you said something that triggered me asking if you remembered about Hail Bop or Haley Bop.

I forget exactly what it is.

Okay, okay, right there.

Mm-bop by the Hansen brothers is what I was thinking of, but you got the

Haley Mills or Haley Mills.

I'm not sure.

One or the other.

Haley Mill, possibly.

John Mills was a heck of an actor in his time, also.

But the cult that he was thinking of is Heaven's Gate.

Heaven's Gate is the cult, not Hale Bop, but hold on.

We're going to get some details here.

When you hear Heaven's Gate, do you think of the cult or the movie?

Well, actually, they probably spent more money on the movie.

Oh, I'm sure they did.

I guarantee you they spent more money on that movie.

But the cult story may be a little bit more gripping.

Probably if they'd have made a Heaven's Gate movie about the Heaven's Gate cult, they'd have made their money back.

Listen to this.

Now,

this is the story of the cult.

Marshall Applewhite

believed that he was one of the entities known as the Watcher mentioned in the Bible.

I thought he was mentioned in the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four comics.

But Marshall Applewhite.

Why would he believe this?

What made him just all of a sudden think, hey, they're talking about me in this book?

Well,

we don't have that much information now.

I assume people can Google to get deeper, but we're going to take Marshall at his word

that he's one of the entities known as the Watcher mentioned in the Bible, and

that the Watchers were actually aliens,

and that Marshall and his female partner were immortal.

But when she died, he had to adjust his doctrine.

So then.

I guess so.

I guess if your whole doctrine is we're immortal, and then one of you dies, ah, shit.

Well, no, no, see, now we're kicking this son of a bitch up a notch now, Brian.

Now we're getting to the next level.

Level up.

See, that was just for the mortal plane.

He then said that to ascend to a different consciousness,

you had to jump some barrels and climb up a ladder.

No,

to adjust, to ascend

to a different consciousness, followers had to be asexual

and follow a simplistic lifestyle.

Oh, shit.

I just realized there are members of the wrestling media that are part of this fucking cult.

Well, and this may be a problem, and we need to, we're going to see some more signs here, ladies and gentlemen.

If you detect some simpletons that are asexual, they could be a member of the wrestling media.

But the simplistic lifestyle apparently included even convincing several of his male followers.

That Tony Konkin book.

Oh.

I don't think he could have convinced them of that.

I mean, we can't get the, that can't be completely preposterous here.

But he did convince several of his male followers to go down to Mexico and and get castrated with him.

Oh.

Hey, guys, come on.

Let's go down to Cancun.

We'll have some laughs, couple of drinks on the beach.

And I know this doctor.

How do you start that conversation?

Well, this revelation that he had about him and the boys needing to go down and lose the boys

down in Mexico, it came after Applewhite had gotten in hot water over homosexual activity

that his followers apparently found out about.

So he got in hot water with his followers over the homosexuality.

Yeah, but first

he was saying that you only had to have sex with the female because he had a female and they were immortal.

But when the female died, then you weren't supposed to have sex with anybody.

But then they found out he was having sex with a guy.

And he said, oh, no,

we got to go.

Yeah, but

cut this shit right off at the root.

How did it become we?

I can understand, okay, in your crazy eyes, cult members, I've done wrong.

So I will cut off my cock and balls to show you my commitment.

How did it turn into, and these guys are coming with me?

Well, because if he can't have them, nobody should.

See?

And then

here's where Haley Bop comes in.

When the Hail Bop Comet came,

Apple White told his followers that their fallen leader, who he called

Ty,

T-I, Ty,

was driving the comet.

I thought he's the one that invented beanie babies.

Maybe both the same.

But Ty was driving the Comet.

And to get on board to go to paradise, they had to shed their mortal form.

So that's where the big suicide thing is.

This guy got people to cut off their nuts and kill themselves by claiming that he was an immortal alien that had to kill himself to not die.

And someone heard that and said, yeah, that's reasonable.

I'll follow him.

Well, there are, Erica concludes, there are still a small number of devotees

to the Heaven's Gate philosophy, and the website was still up and running as of a couple of years ago.

Due to trademark issues, they can't call themselves Heaven's Gate.

They're just the cockless.

Right here.

Some people.

You know,

and guys like that ruin it for the other aliens here on this planet trying to save civilization.

Well, you know, but the thing is, the aliens ruined it for themselves when their thumb and their forefinger is webbed, and every time you kill them, they fucking disintegrate into a red light and disappear.

Do you think there are aliens?

Well, yes.

I mean, for example, look at the fucking.

You can't tell me that the human race got this ignorant and this hateful and this spiteful and this antisocial and all the other qualities that it has without some type of interference from greater powers from above.

Normal human beings would have figured out how to live together peacefully by by now

with all the advancements we've made.

No, I definitely believe that there is some alien power dumbing down the population.

And the center is probably

Springfield, Missouri, because it radiates through the United States first.

All right.

This is a new theory we have not heard before.

Well, it's something I'm following closely on Facebook.

I'll let you, there's a lot of people talking about it on Facebook.

I'll let you know more about it as soon as, you know, you you can't trust the real news outlets.

You have to, you have to go to the source where the people are talking freely.

And you know where this is going, Brian.

This is something that happened over Christmas.

And before we get to the wrestling, real quick, I ain't going to spend a lot of time on it.

But if we would have been all over this had we not been in the middle of our break.

But it was on all the news here in the United States.

Folks, again, for our listeners around the world, I may be educating you on something for the first time, but everybody in the United States knows this happened.

And maybe they try to do it over Christmas thinking that people would be looking the other way.

But you know, there's a similar cult situation

that we have here in the United States that has taken hold, where basically a large number of the population has been convinced to cut their own nuts off, despite the rational, reasonable half's face.

And we have a new incoming administration

And the

head honcho of that new incoming enterprise,

the guy that got elected, he gets to pick

who all of the big shots are in the cabinet and in the government positions.

It's running all the various departments and everything.

Well, he gets to nominate.

And then Congress, who's also controlled by his enablers and stooges and sycophants, most of them,

they get to vote on it.

And that's why we're going to have the biggest bunch of shysters and misfits and miscreants and stooges ever,

ever before running the various important branches of government that keeps the goddamn world running.

But anyway,

Brian, you know, we got to talk about our friend, your friend and mine, Matt Gates.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're not...

For the record, he's not my friend.

I'm not friends with Matt Gates.

I would never be.

Oh,

he's gotten friendly with everybody.

Come to find out now.

Matt Gates is one of these crackpot, maggot,

right-wing.

They

wholly support this foolishness.

He'd been in Congress for a few years now.

He looks like, Brian, am I exaggerating?

His facially, he resembles a Beavis and Butthead character.

Yeah, I mean, that's the joke people make, and then

you see it when you see him.

Yes.

It's not outrageous to say that.

No.

You cannot see it.

And he's been the big Trump sucker, one of them.

And so

Trump got in trouble before because he had...

He had an attorney general.

The attorney general is the head of the Department of Justice.

He's the number one law enforcement officer in the country.

But he had a couple of attorney generals before that didn't particularly want to go to prison by doing shit he wanted them to do, and they fucking argued with him.

And so, you know, there was big trouble there.

So he figured this time,

since the whole reason I ran for president was to not go to fucking prison,

I'm going to nominate for the attorney general

some goof that will do anything that I say, no matter how illegal or improper.

And he nominates Matt Gates.

And again, for those of you around the world, it might be helpful for you to know that Matt Gates was already under investigation, not by the Democrats, by his own fucking people

for

various improprieties in office, which we'll get to here in a second.

It's not like this came out after the nomination.

They were already doing it.

They'd already been doing it.

People have been talking about the investigation on the news for fuck's sake.

If you turn on the TV or read anything,

except for the one house organ of their little cult,

you would know that.

And old Donny Dipshit apparently thought that he just had enough pull to get this done anyway.

But even his own people, even the Republicans, they, oh no,

because they all hate this guy too.

And

he resigned from Congress so that that would stop their ethics investigation once that he got the nomination, thinking he'll just hop into Attorney General.

And then they say, Oh, fuck no, we're not going to vote for you anyway, his own people.

And then they release the ethics investigation report anyway.

And while in office,

I believe I heard the phrase at one point, the best and the brightest,

The guy

that President Schitler

wanted to be the top law enforcement official in the United States of America had spent tens of thousands of dollars while in office paying women for sex and drugs.

He was on

cocaine and ecstasy.

while performing his official duties.

and

one of the women that he paid,

come to find out this was one of the sticky parts, wasn't a woman, it was a 17-year-old girl.

The top law enforcement officer in the country,

if the mango Mussolini had his way, would be a guy that paid money to a minor for sex.

While in office.

The attorney general is supposed to reduce the crime rate,

but not because when you make him attorney general, that was the guy committing most of the crime.

So I just wanted to, you know, that might make YouTube, Brian, what I just said, because

all that stuff made every other news outlet in the

known universe.

But I just want to keep everybody up to date.

We talked about Linda McMahon being the head of the Department of Education until they abolished that because they want a stupid populace.

Whenever any of these things that we all predicted was going to happen happens,

we should notate it because we're all in this together.

And I will be more than happy with a smile on my face to bring up whenever

another part of our lives is at risk of being completely fucked up beyond recognition because some dipshit criminal is in charge of the country.

But would you like to move on to what's going on in February, Brian?

Back to the talk.

I can't tell you yet what's going on in February, but I'm going to tell you next week.

See,

that's a way to build suspense.

Bullshit, that's nonsense.

What is that?

Well, no,

here's the thing with JimCornet.com and Cornett's Collectibles, we had a successful holiday season, and all of the people

will be happy to know that if you ordered anything over the Christmas break when I was

sick at death's door and the Featherbottoms were commingling with each other and their elves.

Everything that's been ordered through January the 2nd has been signed and processed and handed off to the Featherbottoms by January the 9th.

We're only a week behind now.

Boom.

And they're going to be shipping that shit out as quickly as the shit can be shipped.

And in February, another one of these big concepts that Hotchkiss-Featherbottom came up with, Brian, the big, the sale,

where we actually reduced the price of an item.

I'd never thought of something like that before.

But it was so, so successful that we plan to do it again.

And there's a big sale upcoming in February, and the details will be revealed to the fine folks next week.

And no, don't, no matter how much you badger me,

I'm not going to spill the beans.

No, no, no, no, no.

Stop now.

Quit it.

Stop.

Jim Cornette.com.

Cornets Collectibles.

Quit badgering.

Just stop now.

Just stop and quit badgering.

You're not getting advance information quickly.

About the sale?

About the big sale coming up in the month of February at jimcornet.com, where you're going to be able to save money on items that you can then keep.

The items and extra money, you're saying.

No, they got to send the money.

But they can save some money while sending the other money and then they get to keep the item.

And the extra money they saved.

Well, if you want to look at it that way, I'll look at it more like like they're sending me money.

I'm on the side of the consumer.

I'm on the side of the consumer.

Well, see, I'm on the side of the consumer, too, because they're sending me money, but not as much.

That's the other side.

That's not on the side of the consumer.

You're literally on the other side.

You're receiving the money.

Well,

you're saying I'm catching instead of pitching?

I'm saying that side of Cornette Creek is only receiving the money.

So you're not with the people.

Well, you know, that's what caused the Hatfield and the McCoy feud.

They were on opposite sides of the fucking river.

So I'm hearing, Brian, if you have the information that the

attendance over at the Tokyo Dome festivities for their double header this year, January 4th and the 5th, that it was, well, in the words of Tony Guerrillo, to paraphrase him, when they tackled Doink the Clown in Philadelphia, the crowd was down.

Oh, boy, was it.

And remember, it's two nights because the tagline is two days to move the world.

Two days to get the fuck out of here.

And of course, that's Wrestle Kingdom 19 and Wrestle Dynasty.

Let's go to Wrestle 19.

Wrestle 19.

Wrestle Kingdom 19.

It's the 19th Kingdom of Wrestling in the Tokyo Dome.

This is the annual January 19th.

Just another 19th nervous breakdown.

This is the annual January 4th event, of course, that preceded the Wrestle Kingdom name.

It is the traditional big show of the year in Japan.

Yeah, and let's be fair, they've been doing this for years and years going back to the, what, late 80s and early 90s when the business got big enough over there to do Tokyo Dome spectaculars, and they've had waves of

success and

they've had the valleys as well as the peaks over the years where the product was hot and was not and was in the middle.

And they got flummoxed with COVID.

But theoretically and traditionally, January 4th is their biggest show of the year.

Over the past couple of years, they've split it up

and done a couple of them around the pandemic.

And this one was not the most impressive.

Somebody out there is going to say, well, you draw that many people on two nights in a row in the same stadium.

Well, one of the biggest cities in the fucking world, you know, let's take a shot at it.

But it's not been as impressive as the benchmark they have set in the past for themselves.

Yeah, you have to ask yourself, actually, if WWE ran the Tokyo Dome right now, how much would they be able to draw?

It would probably be bigger than this.

This was 24,107 people,

as currently reported, for night one of WrestleKingdom 19.

Here's the card.

Hiroki Godo

won the New Japan Rambo,

which I don't know what that is.

Hold on.

New Japan Rambo is a battle royal.

He won a battle royal by eliminating the great Okam

in a four-way Tokyo Terror Ladder match.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

It's happened there, too.

Has Tony poisoned them?

Yeah, there's a lot of things you can look at for the downfall of Japanese wrestling, a lot of things outside of their control, and a lot of things that are directly the American influence on Japan.

Used to be the other way.

But the Tokyo Terror Ladder match for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.

The Ichiban Sweet Boys,

Robbie Eagle,

Robbie Eagles, and Koseibo.

Wait a minute, what's that noise out here?

Antonio Inoki is turning in his grave and his chin is making a tsunami.

The Ichiban Sweet Boys of Robbie Eagles and Kosei Fujita defeated the Intergalactic Jet Setters

of Kevin Knight and Kushida and Kushida, excuse me.

And also defeated in the same match, Catch.

It says Cash 2-2.

I don't know if it's supposed to be Catch-22.

Catch-2-2,

TJP and Francesco Akira.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

And Boet Club War Dogs.

God damn it.

Of Clark Connors and Drilla Maloney.

Well, I wonder who Clark Connors was.

But

what's his partner's name?

Drilla Maloney.

I don't know why they got me.

Because he's Adrilla.

Well, the next match, Jim, and again, things that are different now than they were 34 years ago when this tradition started on January 4th.

For the IWGP Women's Championship,

Mayu Iwatani defeated either AZM or ASM.

I believe it's AZM, but I'm not certain, so it could be ASM.

Eight minutes, 45 seconds.

Oh, well, thank you for...

Supplying that detail.

In a four-way match for the New Japan Pro Wrestling World Television Championship, El Fantasmo

defeated Ren Narita,

Jeff Cobb,

and Ryohei

Owa

with Hartley Jackson.

10 minutes, one second.

Well, how in the world did anybody accompanied by Hartley Jackson lose?

In a lumberjack deathmatch.

What the f- Do they actually have lumberjacks in Japan?

The lumberjacks were Toruyanu, Oleg Bolton, Tiger Mask.

Poor Tiger Mask.

Even though it's not the original, poor Tiger Mask.

Master Watto, Dick Togo,

Sho.

Dick Togo is still working.

Well, at least as a lumberjack.

Sho,

Yujiro Takahashi, and Yoshinobi Kanamura.

And in that match, Hiroshi Tanahashi defeated evil.

15 minutes, 70.

Just the concept of it?

Is there now going to be only good and no evil left in the world?

Apparently, next month he's taking on jealousy.

We'll see what happens there.

For the, it's a winner-takes-all match for the never

open weight championship.

Wait a minute.

It's the winner takes all, but you never get the belt?

Well, it's for both the never open weight championship and the AEW International Championship.

Konosuke Takesha with Don Callas

defeated Shingo Takagi

12 minutes, 46 seconds.

So he is now also the never open weight champion.

You know what?

They ought to be turning cartwheels if they drew 24,000 people for this show so far.

Well, Jim, the next match.

For the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship, El Desperado

defeated Doki.

If that's how you pronounce it, I apologize.

Whoa, whoa, no, it's gotta be.

It's gotta be Dookie.

Does it have to be Dookie?

There's Dookie.

Listen, D-O-U-K-I.

How do you pronounce it?

D-O-U.

That's Dookie.

He defeated Dookie.

El Desperado defeated Dookie.

Dokio, Doki.

Okay, think of it.

D-O-U-C-H-E.

Do.

All right, well, that was

only five minutes and 20 seconds.

It was a little Duke.

But it was a lot of Dookie.

In a singles match for the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship.

They've done the same thing to them that they have over here.

They've killed their own fucking golden gooses.

This is meaningless gibberish.

Oh, and by the way, Dookie lost the championship to El Desperado in that previous match.

And in this match, Yoda Suji defeated David Finlay for the championship.

Two more big matches on the Big Tokyo Dome Show.

Tetsuya Naito defeated Hiromu Takahashi 17 minutes, 4 seconds.

And finally, the main event for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship.

Zach Saber Jr., the champion.

Oh, good lord.

With Hartley Jackson, Kosai Fujita, Robbie Eagles, and Ryohei Oiwa

defeated Shoto Umino 43 minutes, 44 seconds.

Boy, I bet you it felt like every single second of it, too, after all that other stuff you just read off.

You know, before we even get to night, too, Japanese wrestling is dead.

And obviously, they drew 24,000.

You can point that out.

I mean, you know, that's Wembley.

Wembley.

Look at Wembley.

Oh, yeah.

What was last year?

Hold on.

Wrestle Kingdom 18.

What was that?

Previous year was 18.

Let's open this in a separate tab.

27,422.

What was the previous year?

The previous year was two nights in 2023.

26,085 night one.

Night two, 5,533.

Is that right?

And that was a combined 31618.

And then the previous year to that was...

Was the pandemic, wasn't it?

Yeah, I mean, well, it's getting closer to that.

But nothing was going to happen.

Well, but then

go to the year before the pandemic.

We're talking, go back five years.

Let's look at the five-year plan.

See where when AEW was just starting,

and let's see where New Japan was in 2019.

All right, let's do these two.

Wrestle Kingdom 14, going backwards, January 4th and 5th, 2020.

So, really, right at the beginning of AEW.

Night one,

40,008.

Oh,

night two, 30,063.

A combined 70,071 people two nights.

Okay, and I forgot 2020, I thought, was the pandemic, but it's in January, duh.

So it was right beforehand.

So they did 70,000 people for their two nights.

And the main event, night one, the top matches, Okada defeated Koda Ibushi.

Naito defeated Jay White.

Hiromu Takahashi defeated Will Ospreay.

And Jon Moxley defeated Lance Archer.

So

the point is, is that New Japan was actually able to draw money with some of these fucking guys.

$38,000 a year before for one night.

And then Tony Khan, being a mark for Japanese wrestling, thinking he could replicate it and that these guys would be that good in a completely different environment, hired all of them and killed Japanese wrestling.

And these guys are over here making a fucking lot of money, but not drawing any.

And they can't go back over to where they could draw money and draw any for New Japan.

So Tony has managed to kill two goddamn companies at the same fucking time.

Well, we go now to night two.

Let's talk about night two.

Well, and that's where I was going because night two, the focus was on

AEW talent.

And whatever you think about,

you know, 24,000 people, it's better than fucking almost half that, which they dropped to 16,000 for the New Japan and AEW

combined circle jerk.

Technically, it's New Japan, AEW,

as well as World Wonder Ring Stardom,

CMLL,

and Ring of Honor.

Okay,

put the blame on them.

It can't be New Japan or AEW.

The opening match, an International Women's Cup Final four-way match.

The winner receives a women's championship match from the participating promotion of their choosing.

Momo Watambi

defeated Willow Nightingale, Persiphone,

Persiphone,

and Athena.

11 minutes, 13 seconds.

In a tag team bout for the Ring of Honor World Tag Team Championship, the champions, the Sons of Texas, Dustin Rhodes, and Sammy Guevara defeated the House of Torture.

Sho

and Yoshinobi Kanamura.

Nine minutes and 27 seconds.

In an eight-man Lucha Gauntlet match,

Taiji Ishimori defeated Hetchichero, Kosei Fujita, Soberano Jr.,

Master Waddo.

Mascara Dorada,

Titan.

Wait a minute.

I thought he was a fucking midget.

No, that's Mascarita.

This is Mascara Sagrada.

Or Dorada.

Not even Sagrada.

This is Dorada.

Oh,

what about the Doritos?

Plus, Titan and El Desperado, 16 minutes, 23 seconds.

In a grappling rules exhibition match, Hiroshi Tanahashi and Katsuyori Shibata

ended in a five-minute draw.

That sounds like the biggest rip-off of the fucking night.

We come out here and have a friendly shoot with ourselves for five minutes for your enjoyment.

In a winner-takes-all match.

Good lord.

For the strong women's championship and the undisputed British Women's Championship,

Mercedes-Monet

defeated Mina Shirakawa.

14 minutes, 6 seconds.

They are doing the same thing there that they've done here.

They're trying to appeal to the smallest group of niche, devoted, die-hard fans that would follow these.

I mean, again, the Tokyo Dome

shows for any company that's run them, as you said, over the last 30-something years.

It's been,

the big,

major crowds where they were actually using the whole building and putting people in most of it were Noki's retirement.

It was built more like a UFC event where you came to see the main event,

the ultimate matchup, or the

farewell to the legend, or some major milestone.

And it was about the personalities involved and the

issues behind these major stars that they had made.

And now it's a bunch of meaningless belt after belt after belt drivel

with

what the fuck there.

They don't have any stars, so they're going to make up for it by putting 10 times as many people on a fucking car.

It's the same thing as here.

Well, we go to our next match, Jim.

David Finley defeated Brody King, 12 minutes, 53 seconds,

followed by Shodo Umino defeating Claudio Castignoli, 14 minutes, 31 seconds.

He's settling a lot of these long-running blood feuds between these individuals.

In a match for the Never Open Weight Championship and the AEW International Championship, Konosuke Takesha defeated Tomohiro Ishii

13 minutes 30 seconds.

In a three-way tag team match for the vacant IWGP tag team championship, the Young Bucks defeated the United Empire of Great O'Kan and Jeff Cobb and Los Ingo Naborla Babas.

I can never get up there.

Which were comprised of Tetsuya Naito and Hiromu Takahashi.

13 minutes, 46 seconds.

And now, wait a minute.

A very important distinction here.

You said the tag team title, they never let them win anything but the junior heavyweight tag title in Japan before.

But now that their company has been decimated

by the company that the Young Bucks are EVPs of, they're trying to make nice by letting them win the grown-up adult that's exactly what it is.

That's the title version okay i got in its desperation because you know what when kenny omega was at his hottest over there there was not a japanese insider in japan that said the young bucks meant shit they were a part of the kenny omega package but they weren't necessary and their matches

they were the two little round things dangling off the sides of the kenny omega package seriously i used to talk to people about it nobody no no they didn't nobody gave a shit about them it was it was the same thing as in this country They put them in the opening matches to do the cartwheels and the train monkey match, the junior heavyweight tag team title.

When we then go to the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship, the champion Yodo Suji defeated Jack Perry 13 minutes, 12 seconds.

So apparently he's hailing hardy over there in the country of Japan is our boy Jungle Jack.

Kenny Omega returned and defeated Gabe Kidd in 31 minutes, 55 seconds.

I heard really good things about the match, which, again, makes you want to ask why the fuck did he return on a show that wasn't AEW?

He can come back and go 30 minutes in a match that's in any way well received and he returns 5,000, 10,000, however many thousand miles away from where the guy that's been paid him millions of dollars to go get his guts fixed

is still paid him millions of dollars.

Comes out on that TV and hands over a fucking belt and stares at a guy.

And by the way, nothing's been done, obviously, to build to him really coming back in America other than his appearance at the pay-per-view.

You have to think they were doing something over there to build to this match.

Kenny Omega was on the card in the main event or in main event positions when things were better years ago.

$16,000 for this card.

The last match for the IIWGP World Heavyweight Championship, the champion Zach Sabre Jr.

defeated Ricochet by submission

20 minutes, 57 seconds.

Well, it is.

Poor Zach Sabre Jr.,

he was in the main event of both shows.

And

I'm sorry, the Japanese people, it may not have been recently, but they were used to

not only the best in wrestling, but...

Athletes that looked like they could beat the shit out of you,

whether it be the days of Inoki and and Bruiser Brody or fucking Hansen or goddamn the Funks or Ashic and Abdullah or whoever the fuck or even their modern day crop, the Q-tip and the main event of two nights in the Tokyo Dome in a row?

What?

You know, when people talk about, you know, you guys in the territories and people older than you taking the business seriously.

Who protected their business better than they did over there for years?

And look at what happened.

What happened was the influence of American wrestling on the independents over there, like FMW, then Wing,

all these different things.

The rise of MMA, and all of a sudden, what has always been treated as a very serious sport

looked a little different to people.

And then it was almost like a merger of wrestling and MMA over there with Pride, with Anoki's involvement with all sorts of stuff.

And then New Japan, like they rebuilt themselves to a point with Okada and Tanahashi.

It's stale as could be.

And it feels like they're mirroring what

AEW is in America more than what traditionally would have worked for a Japanese audience.

And if it doesn't work, if this isn't working really well for a Japanese audience now, maybe you should do something different.

Well, but there's resistance to that on either side of the ocean.

But when you've got a dome

that at one point, the big crowds were what 60,000 60 or early 60s give or take yeah um

so when you've got a stadium that holds 60,000 people and you've got to cut it down to half and then you draw 24 on one night and 16 on the next night maybe don't run two nights anymore just because you used to do it do they think it's a

like a

embarrassment if oh there if we don't run two nights people will say we're washed up.

But what can 16,000 people look like in the Tokyo dome?

I think New Japan is a mess.

I think New Japan is a unmanaged or mismanaged mess right now.

And they've got

and if they get anybody over, then Tony will hire them away because, oh, well.

Yeah.

And then they'll come over here and not draw any money.

There's not one wrestler they can out-compete Tony on how much he'll offer them.

And if you have any dreams of going to the States, it's either that or WWE.

And with this, you'll get a whole bunch of money.

And Okada seems to be happy.

Wouldn't you be happy for millions of dollars where you barely have to leave your feet when you wrestle, and all you have to say in English is bitch?

That's the AEW way.

Well, that's the update on Japanese wrestling, the big January 4th and 5th Tokyo Dome Spectaculars.

Well, while we're on the subject of AEW, before we get to the big news again this week,

the first three-hour smackdown and the debut of raw on the netflix uh we didn't have the dynamite ratings last week for

what was that the holiday

new year new year's day all was quiet on new year's day

see i can hit that note too like

bono yeah like tiny tim

they're more like sunny bono but still bono

but uh we didn't have to after after he hit the tree.

Oh, come on now.

Sound horrible.

Well,

you would hurt Sher's feelings with something like that.

Do we have the ratings now on the program here as we speak?

We have the overall number.

I will double check.

I do not believe the quarterly hour breakdown has come in because...

These son of a bitch is almost a week now and they can't get their shit together.

Who's running Nielsen these days?

Mr.

Nielsen and his kids.

Or is it Russell Nomics?

Do we have to knock on Thurston Howell III's mansion door?

I'm not sure if it's a mansion, but overall, AEW Dynamite January 1st, Wednesday night, 8 to 10 p.m.

on TBS, 588,000 viewers on average, not counting max.

Well, now you would say normally, or normally up until a few months ago, that that sucks, but that's right about where they've been.

So

we asked the question a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about it.

Now that they're going to be on Macs, if you've got both cable and Macs in your house, which one would you watch on?

And it seems like from that that most people picked cable, doesn't it?

Because

It's kind of in the pocket of what they've been doing.

They're on a whole new platform.

Maybe we'll find out.

They don't have to tell us

but

we were thinking well will that affect the number it didn't at all do you think and here's something about

have you tried to find them i'll thank stacy for this because she did the research have you tried to look for aew on on max i have not no well i mean i went to them uh when uh when dynamite aired because i had it on one of the monitors in the office to see how it went but i think it popped right up on the screen in the home screen when i went

well I just looked at what she did.

And

this was

two days ago.

So Saturday, the day of the Tokyo Dome show, a couple days before Raw.

If you go to Netflix, there's the banner for Raw right up at the top.

New era begins, blah, blah, blah.

It's in their featured thing.

You know how the streaming TV is, where they tell you all the shit they want you to watch first, probably because they'll make more money out of it or they got more wrapped up in it.

And that's the first thing you see.

You can't get away from Raw debuting January 6th.

She went to Max

and flipped through all the suggestions and all the what's going on and all the fucking recommended and had to finally go to the search thing and type in AE

before you could find anything related to AEW on Macs.

So the question is:

did anybody anybody that wasn't already watching this show

bother to fucking watch it because it was on Macs?

Yeah, because I don't think anyone was just on Macs at 8 o'clock.

It's like, oh, what's this?

This is live.

It's wrestling.

I'll watch this.

I don't think that happened.

And if, and you had to seek this out.

Yeah, you, and you had to look for it.

If you went to Macs, you still wouldn't know that it was there instantly.

You would have to actually watch it on purpose.

So

i think they've just got the same ratings they've

got on

cable television and they're on a streaming service that

i mean really when you think about it people ain't gonna watch when you really think about it all they've been advertising is the show you're watching here will be available someplace else well if i'm watching it here already like netflix it's we're not gonna be here anymore we're gonna be there yeah with aew it's like we're still here But in case you want to see us there, we're there.

If you'd rather us be over here, we're over here now, but we're also still over there.

Over there, say a prayer,

because Tony can't get his wrestlers over there.

He can't get them over.

He can't get them over,

even if they've been over

everywhere.

Oh, come on.

I think Mox versus Cope is going to light things up.

Well, you'll have to cope with that.

But anyway, so 588,000 people for New Year's Day of the ratings of dynamite.

2% from last week.

Last week was 574, trailing four-week average.

It's down 1%.

That's 595.

So,

you know, to what you're saying, unless there was a big January 1st bump, and then part of that audience went to max, it appears to be the normal audience.

Oh, let me ask you this, Brian.

No.

Well, I'm going to do it anyway, and then you can decide whether or not you want to furnish the answer based on whether or not you know it.

If they're on

TBS and TNT

and they're also on Macs,

could they also broadcast independently on the Raycon everyday wireless earbuds?

I mean, you could listen to the broadcast on your Raycon earbuds.

I don't know about AEW just sending a direct signal to

your earbuds that they're broadcasting a closer.

Well, I think there should be a direct signal.

I think Raycon needs to get in on this platform

because they've got the everyday earbuds that are half the price, but just as good, if not better quality, as all the high-priced price gougers out there, and they've got all the features on them.

They ought to have some kind of thing where you can pick up the AEW broadcast.

Maybe they could pay a rights fee.

It would help AEW out.

And what you do is

every time that Dynamite or Collision or whatever they can sell on TV to get on with these sucker networks, they broadcast that to the Raycons.

You pull them out of your ears and stick them in your eyes, and you close your eyes real tight around them.

And you will be able to see

as well as, well, then

you're going to have to get two pairs.

You're not going to get an Oxfordshire.

You don't need no.

You don't need to do any of this, ladies and gentlemen.

You put them in your ears the normal, old-fashioned way, the normal, old-fashioned ears.

Yes, the ears that everybody's had for so long.

I've had my ears almost my whole life, but you put a pair in your ears and then you take another pair and you put them in your eyes and you smell.

You don't do that.

You don't do that.

Of course, and that way you'll be able to see what you're listening to.

That's not how it works.

That's ridiculous.

But what's not ridiculous is the sounds of today, the sounds of yesterday, the sounds of Detroit, whatever it is you want to hear on your Raycon earbuds.

The sounds of the mute button,

the sounds of silence, the sounds of Motown,

the sounds of all these things.

But also, I'm just thinking that's something they could look into because already they got the audio earbud market cornered.

They got the 32-hour battery life and the multi-point connectivity.

You know what?

So, your eyes are another point of connection.

Again, let's stay away from from the eyes.

Nothing to do with the eyes.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Just put one in.

Just do the Popeye thing.

No, do not do it.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, do not.

He was injured at sea.

Stop it.

No.

Listen.

Well, you know, that's what Stacey's been calling Harley poop deck puppy.

That's crazy.

You know, you can stick one in one eye and do the Popeye thing, and then have the other eye you can still see.

And that way, if you can't see.

You can end up like Alice the Goon if you listen to Jim Cornette, ladies and gentlemen.

And the everyday earbuds are available in a variety of vibrant colors for styles that complement yours.

For example, if you're a big fan of Purina Dog Chow, you can get a checkerboard pair.

But they've got all kinds of shades and nuances.

I like

the light teal myself.

It matches my skin tone when I don't get enough oxygen.

And we mentioned that they started just half the price as the other premium audio brands, and they're easy to return.

If you're some kind of prick that just likes to go around jacking everybody around by ordering stuff and then sending it back, they offer a 30-day happiness guarantee with no questions asked as long as you get back in 30 days.

Now, if it's 32 days, they're going to send some people over to ask you some pointed questions.

You better have your goddamn notes ready and possibly some paperwork to document and back up what you're saying.

No, you're not going to have to worry about any of that.

Well, then just get in under 30 days.

Yes.

Just get in under 30 days.

Just get in.

All you got to do is get it in.

And of course, we all want to get it in, and we got to get it in with Raycon.

Go get it, Jim.

You got to get it in and get it up and get them in your ears and your eyes.

And your, you know, if you could actually smell what people on TV look like if you stick these in your nose.

No, do not stick them anywhere but your ear.

You will not, they do not have smell

capabilities, smelling distribution capabilities.

No

tie string.

I don't know who has tie string.

I don't know who has the smelling medium rights.

No, tie string to them if you insert them anywhere just to make sure you can get them out.

But folks, you'll get them out.

You'll get 15% off site-wide if you go to buyraycon.com/slash JCE.

That's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N buyraycon.com slash JCE, you're going to get 15%

off of anything that they just charge normal price to any Tom, Dick, and Harry that just wanders by.

You use that slash JCE,

and that's going to make all the difference.

You're going to save 15%.

If you get 10 pair,

as we mentioned, that's 150%.

And boy, you know, you could make a tidy living if you just keep buying hundreds of pairs of these things every week.

And then potentially you could resell them.

Not at all.

No, again, again,

no, we can't encourage people to resell these.

You could put them in your ears and listen to music.

You got to go to a licensed flea market and have an umbrella over your table.

And then it's okay

if you resell these things, but mark them way up.

Again, they're quality merchandise.

You have no permission to mark anything up.

You have permission to buy Ray Khan's earbuds and insert them in your ear and listen to the most fabulous music or podcasts or audio books really you can listen to anything you can make your own noises and sounds and deliver them to yourself with raycon and we've said so much already why belabor the point what's that promo code and how do we wrap this up jim it's buyraycon.com slash jce and so you're saying it not for the eyes not for the nose just for the ears you just shove them right in the ears there

that's what you're saying

i wouldn't i wouldn't use shove i would say well so we just did okay so then folks, buyraycon.com slash JCE.

Get your earbuds and shove them.

That's right.

Right into your ears safely without a shove from Raycon.

And what's that promo code, Jim?

JCE!

Not to be confused with Ishii.

Hey, Jim, you know, I did want to mention something to you.

We were talking about the Tokyo Dome earlier.

Did you hear about the New Japan announcer Chris Charlton?

I didn't know.

What happened to him?

He's been placed on indefinite leave, apparently, during the matches at Wrestle Dynasty.

Hold on, I have a report here from post-wrestling, New Japan Pro Wrestling's Chris Charlton on hiatus following AEW comments.

New Japan Pro Wrestling commentator Chris Charlton, who I believe is the author of that book.

came out a few years back on the history of New Japan.

I believe you're correct.

I don't have it.

Nobody sent me a free one, but I remember seeing it publicized.

He's been placed on a definite hiatus following comments made during a recent broadcast.

Remarks made by Charlton during the New Japan AEW Wrestle Dynasty card, where he was critical of business and creative moves by AEW.

Oh!

Have resulted in him getting pulled from upcoming events per Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

Now, no, no, now, wait a minute.

I can understand that the Japanese announcers thinking they can slip some shit in there and who's going to know?

But this guy's speaking English, right?

I believe he's British.

Yes.

Well, so they almost speak English.

Charlton referred to AEW's Tony Khan as a money mark

who has taken away talent from New Japan Pro Wrestling at one point during last weekend's show.

He also criticized what some wrestlers have accomplished since crossing over to AEW,

specifically noting how Kazushika Okada has been treated since making the switch in early 2024.

I don't know if you can complain about how he's been treated.

He's been put over everybody, despite having all the flaws that we point out every week.

Well, we shall see.

Dave Meltzer.

So he's their own announcer over there.

Here's a quote from Dave Meltzer.

I heard from someone in Japan who was very close to everything and basically said there's stuff going on there and they're very unhappy about it.

But he was watching the Japanese version, so he had no idea what was on it.

Obviously, the guy's trying to sell an angle.

Wait a minute.

Hold on.

Hold.

Pump the brakes.

Bring this thing to a squeaching halt.

Dave Meltzer was watching the Tokyo Dome show, but he had an option.

No, not him.

The person he was speaking to from Japan.

Okay, I thought he was saying he was listening to the Japanese and not the English commentary of the show.

No, but he said that the guy's trying to sell an angle.

They think it may be tied into

Gabe Kidd has done promos really tearing into AEW, but then he goes to work with Kenny Omega and loses.

So it's obviously.

So who knows?

But that's coming out of the Tokyo Dome.

Big news there with AEW.

And

that's the last thing you want is like a fucking angle where people were making negative comments about AEW getting pulled off the air.

I mean, that's well, how does that help AEW?

That's the fucking thing.

And also, do you want them to make the negative comments that are so true and that the fans will, yeah, fuck these guys.

They fucking, they have spoiled our wrestling.

It was the same thing.

That's when the OVW fans, when the WWE started losing them, was when they'd leave OVW-TV, go to WWE-TV, and look like idiots.

And I could see the same thing with the New Japan fans.

Hey, where'd all our favorite wrestlers go?

Oh, they're over there now.

They look like shit.

Speaking of people that look like Kaka,

I understand that Uncle Dave,

our friend the wrestling guru, gave

quite benevolent ratings to the World's End pay-per-view that AEW did at the end of the year.

And as we mentioned, the matches were so great they should have wished it was the end of the world.

But Dave's gone off the deep end again, hadn't he?

Well, that's right.

And of course, the listeners always like hearing your thoughts because we review the shows and then sometimes sometimes Dave reviews a different show, but it just so happened to happen on the same night and on the same feed.

Well, this is AEW's, let's say, wrestle end, world's end.

It's the end of the world as they knew it.

Well, from the pre-show, Tony Storm defeated Layla Gray, six minutes, 54 seconds, a star and a half.

Did one of them actually bring out some kind of object and lop the other one's leg off accidentally to be afforded only a star and a half.

Also on the pre-show, Jeff Jarrett defeated QT Marshall nine minutes, 23 seconds, two and a quarter stars.

Well, now we know that Jeff Jarrett isn't as good as Big Boom AJ.

Brian Cage and Lance Archer and Action Andretti and Leo Rush.

Wait a minute.

I thought he used to be a babyface.

What happened to him?

They beat the Outrunners and top flight 10 minutes, 48 seconds, three-star match.

Of course, it was.

Then, in the opener of the pay-per-view, Will Osprey defeated Kyle Fletcher 16 minutes, 21 seconds,

five-star match.

Oh, go ahead.

Well, wait, no, I'm just gonna say, again, just

I guess if you want to judge the

trapeze act at the circus or the, you know, highly choreographed and worked out floor routine of a great Olympic gymnast, that is an accomplishment.

But when you try to act like that, that's acceptable in professional wrestling, which has not remotely

ever been supposed to resemble what they're trying to do.

It's the exact antithesis of what wrestling is, is what they do with it.

When it's just move and move and move back and forth with no consequences, no repercussions, no effects, no injury.

And then when they run out, they just finish.

Then maybe that's a five-star performance.

But I thought we were grading it on the genre of sports-entertainment that it's supposed to be

being presented in rather than what it actually looks like to the average viewer.

Well, I guess continue with this topic.

The second match on the pay-per-view: Kazushka Okada defeated Ricochet 12 minutes 54 seconds, four-star match.

Well, yeah, because it wasn't as good an exhibition of highly contrived and choreographed gymnastics with no repercussions and effects as the previous one was, because they started out with the best they could do and then tailed downward.

The next match?

In a Tijuana street fight, Mariah May defeated Thunder Rosa 13 minutes, 20 seconds, three and a quarter stars.

Well, you know, I would talk to them or to him about that if I were them because

they had at least enough thumbtacks to get three and three quarters, didn't they?

Because thumbtacks is an important part of your wrestling presentation.

MJF defeated Adam Cole

14 minutes, 36 seconds, three and a quarter stars.

And he's still feeling the need to be charitable, even though it's obvious that nobody gives a shit

about that match or anything involving Adam, and most things involving MJF, unfortunately, at this point.

And,

you know, there's something wrong with all of these matches.

And with that one, it was the fact that nobody gave a shit and nobody wanted to see it.

But with the other way, he's grading these things on

what I think I might have said this a couple of weeks ago or drawn some similar analogy.

If you go to see the Rolling Stones in concert

and

you go

the next day somewhere and a friend of yours says, hey, how was the Stones last night?

Oh, well, you know, Mick, during Jumpin' Jack Flash, he fucking forgot the words.

He tripped over the fucking monitor on the stage, and then he threw the fucking microphone out in the audience in frustration.

But he did a great version of Start Me Up.

Doesn't that count against the whole fucking presentation?

You know, it's

he's just, Dave is doing the same thing that all the rest of these guys do.

And there's just problem is there's not enough of them.

He's giving them a grade based on their fucking moves and not even taking into account whether whether they nail everything or not.

The more shit they try,

whether it either fails or it's completely preposterous, the more shit they get credit for.

Yeah, if the crowd pops, but nothing is close to it, they're just popping.

How does that count?

But anyway, let's get back to these star ratings.

Konosuke Takeshta defeated Powerhouse Hobbs, 15 minutes, 35 seconds, three and three-quarter stars.

And yeah, the burial of poor Hobbs.

Again, the difference, the different problem with that match wasn't they were doing video game shit or that nobody cared and didn't want to see it.

It was that they completely fucking left Hobbs out there to twist in the wind,

trying to do shit that he doesn't know how to do.

sell like a babyface that he is not

and fucking beat him again in a high-level situation when he's a star waiting to happen that has more upside, to be quite honest, than Take does, because Take can have some great matches and be in a good heel stable, but Hobbes can speak fucking English and looks like a superstar.

So there's booking malfeasance in that one, three and three-quarter stars.

Bleh.

The next match, Mercedes Monet defeated Chris Statlander 24 minutes, 35 seconds.

the longest match on the card and maybe the match that we've received the most criticism for people thought we didn't give it enough of a review four and a half stars

it I will you can apply this to Mercedes Moon

or you could apply this to where we're going to talk about Okada here in a second

I don't care if it's a great fucking match, if all the moves are technically orchestrated and done and performed well.

Of course, yes, if they're not, if they shit the bed or botch something up, that takes away also.

But if you've got just two

people who are not in the slightest over

having a technically perfect match,

you still ain't drawing any fucking money.

And with the performances that Mercedes has turned in, with her promos, her angles, her insufferable,

generally douchebaggy attitude that you can tell that she thinks she's a lot bigger star in real life, even

than she can ever hope to be.

I'm not going to sit there and watch her do shit with Chris Statlander for 25 fucking minutes when I don't care if she bursts into flames or turns blue.

And she ain't drawing any fucking money.

I'm fairly certain if she bursts into flames, you'd watch.

Well, you might have me there.

All right.

But she's not drawn any ratings and she's not drawing any money.

So they can all take their great matches and shove them up their ass.

Jim Kazushka Okada defeated Will Ospreay 19 minutes, 11 seconds,

five and a quarter stars.

It wasn't even as good as the other two because both of the other two in the first match can still move.

They're not crippled.

In the second match, Osprey had to work with a paraplegic fucking polio victim.

And I know that Dave and the rest of these Japanese fans have a soft spot for what he used to do.

But I'm sorry, I was a big fan of Jerry Lawler's, but I would not tell people to look at his matches in 2011 on Burt Prentiss promotions in Jackson, Tennessee, and expect the same thing as his matches in 1984 in the Mid-South Coliseum.

It's just preposterous.

So

you had two better video game wrestlers in the opening match, but this one gets a better rating because Okada

is, in Dave's mind, the Japanese legend that is still supposed to be as good as he ever was.

When everybody can see him taking bumps like the ring is a frying pan, and he's trying to protect himself at every opportunity.

And that face that either vacillates between bland confusion and an, oh my God, I've just seen a ghost face

with the haircut that looks like somebody held a Japanese certified public accountant down and bleached him blonde.

He is not going to sell a fucking ticket in the United States of America or mean a tenth of a ratings point

is Okada.

I'm sorry that I have to tell the truth and hurt people's feelings.

So

to take a guy who's not performing very well under anybody's standards or anywhere near the level he used to

and who doesn't mean anything for a ratings point or goddamn selling a ticket in

a match with one of your young guys that can still go and you're paying millions of dollars for and put him over that guy just because you're a fucking Japanese wrestling mark

is idiocy.

So, how does that get five and a quarter stars?

That should get, you've just wasted a lot of fucking money, moron.

And for the audience that thinks that type of thing is something that's just swell,

he gave away Okada and Osprey, which is a big Japanese wrestling dream rematch from eight years ago

on pay-per-view with no fucking promotion because it had to be that way.

Because he wanted to have a great tournament that nobody gave a shit about except him.

Nobody else could do that much high-level math.

High-level something.

But Jim, finally, Jon Moxley defeated Orange Cassidy, Jay White, and Adam Page.

15 minutes, 40 seconds, three and a half stars.

And

for the year 2024,

Will Osprey received 16 matches or 16 five-star or above matches

in 2024.

So,

I mean, he's good, but certain people certainly love him a whole lot.

And we should make note that nobody certainly of any renown in the wrestling business over the last 40 years has ever come close close to that.

Not your Kurt Angles's or your Shawn Michaels's or your Ric Flair's or your Steve Austin's or your

fuck, even

fucking Tony Falk never got 15 of those five-star matches.

Well, those are the match ratings for World's End.

Well, Brian, before we leave the land of Lala,

over there in

the

lollipop guild's domain where nothing makes sense, and it's strawberry fields.

Before we leave there to go to the land of money-making opportunities,

they've kidnapped

the Rock and Roll Express.

They didn't quite get away with it.

They weren't able to transport them

from the location in which they

apprehended them, but they did have them restrained in,

this was apparently this was on collision.

And they were in Charlotte, North Carolina.

At the, they call it the Bojangles Coliseum now, but affectionately, it was the old Charlotte Coliseum, the home of all of those

great matches and sellout crowds for Jim Crockett promotions.

They have Ricky and Robert, the Rock and Roll Express, come to

do an appearance, sign autographs, whatever, try to get somebody in that building.

I don't know if you've been Googled as to how many people were there, but the Charlotte Coliseum, even the old one,

receives 12,000 for wrestling

if there's that many interested to come.

And

while they were there,

And tell the people, I'm not lying, while they were there,

they thought it would be a good idea of the folks at AEW

to have Dick the Boozer, the world's most dangerous plumber, and his band of merry miscreants

kidnap Ricky and Robert and duct tape them with their hands behind their back to some

cage or barred apparatus in the back of the building and have duct tape over their mouths like they were shooting reservoir dogs.

And they're supposed to be immobile and they look like they were pretty immobile

and it just pops up on the screen while

what do they call cope and dax and cash they're rated ftr k o

what the fuck is their name

i think it's um

is it rated ftr is that it right rated ftr you know what someone wrote that stands for in the youtube comments i saw this was the most popular comment on that video find the remote remote.

Oh,

yeah.

I wish I could argue these days, but no.

Um,

but so rated FTR are wrestling.

Who the fuck were they wrestling?

Was it Jericho?

Jericho and his bunch.

That's right.

And on the screen pops up the plumber

doing a fucking promo in front of Ricky and Robert duct tape to this fucking apparatus.

And then, of course, and the babyfaces won the match over Jericho and his throng, but they see this and then they run to the back, and

they are able to

run the perpetrators off.

Well, after the outrunners attempted to run in, and

immediately got jumped from behind.

These two clowns waddle in from wherever the fuck they've come from, from and they're trying to get them and they get jumped and they get the shit kicked out of them.

By Yuda and Marina.

Yes.

Well, you know,

a jobber and a girl,

why wouldn't the baby faces have the shit kicked out of them?

And we don't really know who it was or how many that immobilized Ricky and Robert, do we?

No, we have no idea.

So

then the big baby faces get there and the other guys run off to the parking lot and

then they chase after them and they're able to get Ricky and Robert unductaped.

And Owen Moxley had pulled the tape off of Ricky's mouth one time and Ricky said, you don't have the balls to, buddy,

which I can hear Ricky saying in a real life situation.

And then he put the tape back on his mouth like that's going, okay,

you can't get that shit to stick.

A good kidnapping, you're going to use one strip of duct tape per mouth.

Once you tear it off, you can't get it to stick again.

Am I right, Brian?

I get it at the plumbing supply store.

It works underwater.

He took the duct tape off the senior citizen baby face who instead of saying, let me go or anything, said, you don't have the balls.

And he doesn't.

He didn't do anything.

He didn't do anything.

If I only had time.

If you're going to do a kidnapping angle, imagine how big a kidnapping angle with the Rock and Roll Express in Charlotte would have been in 1986.

But if you're going to do a kidnapping angle with them here now and just try to get good TV out of it at least.

First of all, forget about the idea that it's Moxley doing it or anything else.

But do you do any kind of big angle like this in the last minute of the show?

On the Saturday night on a show that nobody watches.

But it doesn't, because then this wasn't even really

an angle.

and it wasn't, like I said, it wasn't a kidnapping, it was attempted kidnapping.

They didn't get to transport them,

but they're in Charlotte, rock and roller have to be there, and they just tape them to a fucking wall.

There's no and the baby faces save them,

but it's not like

now they're coming up, they're going to Knoxville, and I guess Ricky and Robert are going to be there.

Maybe they're going to get even.

I don't know, but if they,

because also they've got the Knoxville Civic Coliseum, it seats 6,000 people set up for a third of the building they're only selling two thousand trying to sell 2,000 tickets

so now

they didn't even have a cliffhanger well Moxley stole the rock and roll and he's going to bring them back in Knoxville you got to come to see the rock and roll at Knoxville come back or are they going to come back or is he going to kill them Throw them off the Gay Street Bridge into the fucking Tennessee River.

There's not even anything to make the people of Knoxville, let's go see how this is going to come out.

I don't, and it was so phony.

What is their mentality over there that this would do any good for anything?

The problem is

between Tony Kahn

and Jon Moxley, who has say in his stuff,

and

rated FTR,

who all have a say in their stuff.

And FTR has been a big part of everything on Collision

for a long time.

I don't know if these people have shown that they necessarily have the right creative instincts beyond what they think would work and what they think is cool.

Sometimes you have to think beyond what you personally think would work.

And you have to,

I don't necessarily think we have any wrestling brainiacs in terms of logical wrestling booking or things that connect to an audience in that crew.

And I would have loved to have seen when they went to Ricky and Robert and said, well, after you guys finish signing autographs, you want to do a pre-tape?

Oh, sure.

Yeah, we're going to tape you to a fucking cage.

And

I.

But as I said, they didn't even make off with them.

There's no resolution to this.

It's over with.

But now they've announced that Ricky and Robert are going to be in Knoxville.

Maybe

they might be able to sell all of those

rest of those tickets that they need to sell if the Rock and Roll Express are in Knoxville.

But how this helped the issue, I have no idea.

Did they announce that, that they're going to be in Knoxville?

I saw it on Twitter.

Okay, I didn't see what, so I didn't know.

Well, somebody else was saying, well, they've kidnapped them, but they're going to be in Knoxville.

I don't know what the fuck they're doing over there.

Like you said, it was the last two minutes of the television broadcast, so,

but it's not that far from Charlotte to Knoxville.

They could make it by then.

January 4th, the Bojangles Coliseum, according to Russell Ticks, 2,941 tickets distributed.

Ouch.

The previous time Collision was there last year, January 6th, 2024, 3,802.

So it's down 23% from that.

Well, but that's fourth.

That's a third of a house.

It's down.

However many percentage from a third of a house.

SmackDown was there February 9th, 2024, 13,168.

And

I don't think they were at that building.

I think they were at the big place.

I guess this is just Charlotte overall.

Yeah, just Charlotte in general.

Yeah, they couldn't have got 13 grand in the.

Yeah, that's the Spectrum Center, excuse me.

There you go.

They built a new Charlotte Coliseum and opened it in 1988 that seated like 25,000 people for the NBA team that they got.

And we had the first wrestling show there in September of 88.

Midnight Tully and Arne and Flair and Luger, and we did 13,000 people.

And now they've already torn that new Coliseum down and leveled it and built a new one downtown.

But the old Coliseum is still operating.

Sounds like somebody wasted some fucking money.

See, that's the problem with AEW, just talking about this segment.

Like I said before, and it could be any segment on any one of these shows.

You have wrestlers with,

at times, to certain people, unlimited creative input.

At the same time, you have a boss who, when left to his own,

is not able to produce wrestling that connects with people.

He could produce matches

that fans of moves want to see guys wrestle.

But in terms of producing good, emotional American wrestling television, Tony Khan do it.

And he's the sounding board.

It's these guys coming to Tony saying, Here's what I want to do.

Okay, yeah, that sounds great.

Maybe we can incorporate the Pointer Sisters or something.

I don't know.

Like, that's what the fuck the meeting is.

So that's the problem with AEW when people are like, oh, why are you so negative on everything?

I give them credit when they deserve it, but you have to acknowledge the problem is that there is no creative backbone in the company.

And I don't know who that would be.

I don't know if there's like an option out there.

But the point is, it ain't Tony Kahn.

And it isn't a Jon Moxley or a Mercedes-Monet or a Young Bucks or any of these people who are booking their own thing because none of them seem to get it.

They all have, there's a proven track record now.

Years of television, years of television of guys doing what they wanted to do.

It hasn't helped the company.

It hasn't even helped the guys doing it.

I'll get off the podium now.

But I'll tell you what, these would be great indie shows if you saw it twice a year in your small

800-seat building.

It'd be just wonderful for the indie wrestling fans, but it don't play in Peoria

or anywhere else with any people in it for that matter.

But yeah,

they can't sell, Brian.

They cannot sell to people.

I'm not talking about selling moves.

I'm talking about selling tickets.

I'm talking about selling personalities.

I'm talking about selling stars.

They're in the star business and they can't sell no stars.

I think they need a new platform.

Don't you?

A new platform, not another platform like Mac's, but a new platform.

A new platform where they can sell off of, where they got people that are professionals that are selling whatever the hell it is they're trying to sell.

I'm talking about the experts over at Shopify

because that's what you hear Brian that's the sound you hear every time you're hooked up with Shopify they just come into your business or storefront or they come into your home if you work from home and they just knock you out of the chair virtually virtually and they sit down there and they get to work and they start strong-arming people to buy some merchandise from you and that's not how this works that's not how this works

they're bringing people in they got one stationed on the street corner and there he's the one that's that's bringing them in.

And once he brings them in under whatever pretense, then the guy sitting in your chair says, all right, rifle through his pocket, Sam.

You got any money there, pal?

How quick you want to go home?

And boom.

No.

No, boom.

No, there's no boom here, ladies and gentlemen.

What Jim is trying to explain, what he would be able to accurately explain a little bit better if he actually was someone who used a smartphone.

is Shopify is there for you.

They're for your storefront.

You can sell your merchandise.

They are a global storefront.

It's easy to buy the merchandise or whatever you want from people.

So it's easy to sell it, obviously.

And

there's no storefronts or no one's coming into your home.

What else do we expect?

You could have a storefront.

No one's mean.

You're allowed to have a storefront.

Well, you can, but Shopify,

as long as you keep on the good side of the Shopify people, you have a bunch of storefronts because they're going to make you all kinds of money

because nobody does selling better than Shopify.

They're the home of the number one checkout on the planet.

By the time they get finished with your customer, they can't wait to check out and get the hell out of there.

But they're going to leave behind some cash along with possibly some articles of their clothing that they've

managed to shift off in order to get away quicker.

Once again, this is not how this works.

It's a virtual

partnership with

everyone.

They come in there and without any actual interaction physically with a single other human being, they are there to help you.

Well, no,

we all need the common human touch, but I'll tell you what, you talk about interactions.

You're going to have, what do you do?

I mean, we all need that from time to time, and they're going to put the touch on your customers.

I'll tell you, way less carts will go abandoned.

If they see somebody trying to abandon a cart over there on the median in the side of the parking lot, they're going to go over there and they're going to grab that cart and that person and they're going to put some extra stuff in that cart to make sure that that person pays for it.

It will not go abandoned.

You know,

again, it's not even metaphorically, it starts metaphorically speaking, and then it just starts adding features that are not there.

They will not be adding anything that's not added by a person into their cart, but they're there to make sure that when they check out that cart, all the items are accounted for and you get your money.

Well, you're that's the Shopify way.

That's right.

Your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling.

Or possibly if they're fat enough, they might be rolling.

Whether it's on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between, from their feed to your store.

There's a lot of places in between to take and snatch these people and draw out some money.

Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify.

That's why you hear that type of thing.

And you can upgrade your business and get the same checkout as all these multinational conglomerates are using.

And some arms dealers on the dark web swear by this stuff.

No.

Sign up.

No, again, no.

We're talking about legitimate people, legitimate businesses, not anyone on the dark web or anyone selling anything that they're not supposed to sell without some sort of a treaty in place.

Tell them about Shopify.

Yes, there's certainly a variety of people that have honest, upright, and upstanding fronts.

But right now, you can sign up for a $1 a month trial period.

If you don't believe what I'm saying, and apparently Brian doesn't, then you can find out for yourself how Shopify can help you make money and be a service to you and your business and your entire community.

And it'll keep a lot of unsavory characters off the street.

They'll all be in your home working the phones to make you money.

Right now, sign up for your $1 a month trial period at shopify.com

slash JCE.

That's all in lowercase, that JCE.

Shopify.com/slash JCE.

You're going to get a $1 a month trial period for them to be able to show you that

there's no harm in what you're going to do.

People have the option of giving you money the easy way or the hard way.

They don't want to extract it the hard way.

They want to make you money over there at Shopify the easy way.

That's right.

They are there for you.

Shopify.

The common human touch.

Autocode JCE.

Yes, yes, it is.

All right.

Well, this is your show.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I neglected to think about that.

Well, now we got to talk about the business that's making money

in the wrestling business.

I wonder if they're hooked up some way with Shopify.

Can you buy a wrestling ticket for the WWE from Shopify?

I actually don't know.

Nothing I'm going to do.

Maybe

that may be something they've overlooked.

We might call somebody in the office up there in Stanford.

Get somebody on the phone.

We'll let them know what's going on.

But

should we talk about SmackDown first or should we talk about

how that apparently now these heathen billionaires that run this multi-megalopolis corporation have now taken one of our American traditions and they've sold it to the Saudi Arabians?

AKA, another reason to get mad at Tony Khan and what he's done with the opposition to that company.

Now, why don't we start with SmackDown?

Because that happened on Friday.

That was the first thing.

Oh, we're going to talk about the first thing before we talk about the second thing.

And there are a couple things on SmackDown, at least, to talk about here.

Well, we're going to establish some parameters going forward for this programming that we do here because now SmackDown is three hours.

And they...

They came out and said that Raw doesn't need to be any time.

They can take as much time as they need.

It was,

I believe, a little over, maybe a couple minutes over three hours.

We'll get to that on the debut, but this thing could be.

So the point is, instead of trying to

acknowledge in sometimes granular detail everything that happens on these programs

that are now six plus hours in total for the two of them, we're going to try to hit the points that people might be interested in and leave some of the rest of it lay.

That's another thing, is I think now

they're doing with SmackDown what they were doing with Raw,

where they've got

a really,

they got a nice little two-hour show there, be ashamed if anything happened to it, like they made it three hours and they had to stretch the same shit out.

There was some element of that.

And

at the same time, also, I know they're making a lot of money for this, but

you hear about viewer fatigue.

The

smaller promotions will obviously suffer at some point when even when wrestling's hot, if you're trying to watch six hours from the WWE plus pay-per-view, and

then AEW for the hardy faithful, there's four hours or whatever plus pay-per-view

or four hours a week plus pay-per-view once a month is what I'm saying.

And then somebody tries to watch TNA, or

homeless people, apparently with no jobs and nobody to speak to, also try to include Ring of Honor.

And at some point, you can't fucking do it, can you?

We can't hardly do this now.

And we're only really watching the shit that most people watch: the two WWE programs, which we

kind of gloss over some of the slow spots, and the flagship show

for AEW on the theory that it sucks so bad that if that's the best they can do for their highest rated show, why do we want to watch anything else?

Well, you know, the thing is, I don't know that WWE is going to be adding a lot to these shows, maybe a segment worth of stuff more, but it seems like it's just going to be ring introductions taking longer, being split up by commercials.

And I think a lot of other companies, maybe even Tony, but just in the past in wrestling, if they were told you had a third hour, you'd fill it up with stuff.

They don't need to do that.

And I don't know if necessarily they're going to be inclined to.

It may be filled up with lots of promotional videos

and backstage things,

but I think ring introductions are going to go from five minutes to 10 minutes.

And it's going to be a lot of people standing in the ring.

And then you get a commercial break, then you get a promo video.

And then the other person comes out and then you get another commercial break.

It's going to be a lot of that just drawing this stuff out endlessly.

Well, and the thing is, they don't need to do anything else.

They're fucking

again,

the all-time arena gate,

beating the record they set last week or whenever the fuck.

They don't, they're getting paid money.

They've got streaming and television, cable and broadcast covered.

They're making a fucking fortune in rights fees, all this shit.

That is the, this is the perfect time.

Otherwise, then

for the sake of people who try to watch everything and not fall asleep every once in a while, this is the opposite of the time where you hotshot.

The exact opposite.

When everything's doing it, just keep the stars on top,

drawing the houses, and it, and don't fuck anything up.

And that's what they're doing because they're smart.

But at the same time, we don't have lives enough or hours enough in our lives to

break down all of this.

So we're going to, that's my New Year's resolution

is once an hour or so, because that's the thing about the WWE programs.

You know, about once an hour or so, you're going to see some big stars do something important, and they're going to do it well.

On the other side of the street, you know that for two hours, you're going to be ducking monkeys flinging shit at you.

And again, if they had a third hour, if Dynamite was a third hour, I'm pretty sure you would see more Luchadors.

You would see more of the guys that you don't see on here that are on collision, more of the women.

If WWE and their, no, they have the third hour, they're not going to just fill it up with, all right, we need more people on the roster now.

I don't think that's what it's going to be.

No, it'll confuse the issue unless it's somebody that they have a plan for and want to

debut and you know send down this path or whatever.

But But anyway, having said that, SmackDown

on January the 3rd from Phoenix, Arizona,

they started out with a package on Owens and Cody,

where Owens has the winged eagle belt and he's claiming that he's the real champion.

If they had a referee that could do his job, he would have beat Cody, blah, blah, blah.

And Aldous, you know, was wanted back.

This was the

last week's recap.

And Owens wants a title match where the referee can't prevent him from winning.

And Cody's thing is, it's my responsibility to take that belt back.

And I want a match where the referee can't stop me.

And so they're going to have a ladder match at the Royal Rumble.

And it, again, it was put together great, and it all makes sense.

And

I don't know

again

how badly

was Vince McMahon holding them back the last few years when they're just fucking bing, bing, bing

with the creative.

And it's, it's easy, it's very intricate and it's complicated the way they put it together, but not to understand.

It's easy to understand.

It makes sense.

It's easy to digest.

You can follow it.

And you want to see more of these people do these

things.

It's not just the last few years.

It really makes you ask yourself how different things could have been at any point in the last 20 years if Vince and Kevin Dunn weren't in the picture producing the show.

Because look at Lee Fitting coming in there,

scandals aside,

the way he changed the look of that show fit with the times of it being so hot.

It just feels live and everything's happening.

Yeah.

And Kevin Dunn was never going to get there.

And as we've seen from, you know, Mike Mansuri and AEW,

Kevin Dunn's understudies aren't going to get there either.

And not just him.

I mean, TNA, that's the problem.

It was like a factory.

Whoever was Kevin Dunn's assistant, you can kind of get a job with any of the secondary wrestling companies.

And now that we got an outsider and we've seen a different look, it changes everything.

And with the creative,

you know, who knows when it clicked for Paul Levesque?

If 20 years ago he had taken over creative, if it would have been as stimulating as it is now.

But at any point, there's certainly a lot of points where it was clear that Vince lost his touch, but it was still WWE and they were still the biggest game in town and that would keep them going.

But creatively, there was a lot missing.

Well, then after that package, Cody comes out

and it's a big house and he's over and blah, blah, blah.

And the basic story is I'm not cleared to wrestle because of Kevin Owens, but the Royal Rumble's only a month away for this latter match.

And then boom, Drew's music plays.

And here comes Drew McIntyre.

And he comes in the ring and there's the uneasy face-off and then he hugs Cody.

And you see on Cody's face, he's like, what the fuck is this guy hugging me for?

And Drew's story is, I'm not here to, I can't do the accent.

I'm not here to hurt you.

I'm here to help you.

You're about to screw up your life's work.

The WWE is the best it's ever been, and you're the quarterback.

But this other guy is pretending to be the champion, so you need a friend to watch your back.

And Cody stopped him and

kind of put him over, Drew, over in the babyface, backhanded way.

But

Cody's like, I don't believe what you're saying.

I think this is the point where this is going to,

it's going to break down.

So what the fuck?

You want to fight here right now?

It escalated quickly.

Maybe they were running a little long on time.

But again, Drew did a great job.

And then Cody's like, well, you want to fight right now?

And the people are like, yeah, we want to see everybody fight.

And Drew said, no, I'm telling the truth.

I'm here to help you.

But I'll tell you one thing as he's leaving.

He says, you need to watch your back.

And instantly, Owens jumps Cody and starts kicking the shit out of him.

And Drew walks off and leaves it.

And Cody fights back, and then the agents and the referees come, and they have a big fucking pull apart.

And this is great because we want to see more of

Owens and Cody.

And now Drew,

you know, claiming to be, Drew's just great.

He's just a miserable prick and trying to fuck with everybody.

And in his own mind, he has the reasons.

I think he tweeted out he just wanted to see the tattoo of Close,

which is pretty funny, too.

Good pull-apart, also.

And the fans are really into it.

When Cody made his break and got the leap stinger splash kind of thing near the corner, people really popped.

And that's the thing.

The people want to see these people fight.

It's not like they're doing the endless chaos and pull aparts and run-ins and heat after and afterbursts and all the shit that they do in AEW constantly.

It's that these are the the people that are involved with each other, and that's who the fans want to see fight.

It's not that fucking difficult.

They've, you know, again, like I said before, they've made it very intricate, but at the root of it, it's just fucking common sense and knowing the wrestling business.

Even in the state it's in today.

But then

they had shaky Nakamura against Andre.

Were you a connoisseur of this match?

No, no disrespect to either, man, but there's only so much wrestling I was willing to watch this week, and this was one of those.

I'm going to take a break now before the main eventers come back out.

Shaky's new outfit makes him look like a Dominatrix with a bad hairdo.

What the fuck is he wearing now?

How many Dominatrix?

Dominatrix.

I can't speak.

How many Dominatrixes?

It's Dominatrii.

How many have good hairdos?

Well, it just depends on how much they're charging.

Is that an important part of the look, the feel, a good hairdo?

It depends on what you're paying for.

But anyway, Shaky won.

Does anyone pay for a bad hairdo?

Give me someone with a messy head of hair.

Is that what's happening?

I'll tell you what, there's a whole line of magazines devoted to that.

But LA Knight came out after Shakey won and got and he got a big pop and he beat Nakamura up and Nakamura rolled out and LA Knight cut a promo and

the fans are still with him.

But goddamn, you know, at least he got to run somebody off this time, but we've covered that.

It's like, you know,

not getting a lot of fucking

love

from the top.

And then Mia Yemen Piper,

Gloriosky.

So at nine o'clock,

Paul Heyman came to the ring.

And

I know it's the holidays, right?

But did he have to eat eat three turkeys for Christmas dinner?

He's bigger than ever.

Will you stop it?

I mean, sir,

it looks like he ate one of those fried turduckens.

Did he look that much bigger than that?

Where it's a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey.

Okay, I don't know if he was eating that, but did he look that much bigger than the last time you saw him?

Well, it's also because since he's clean-shaved, you can see more of his jowls, and he's got his hair,

you know, done black and slicked back and everything.

So,

you know, maybe it's just the appearance of him fleshing out even but i'm i'm sure it'll never be over it'll never be over once springtime comes and he can get out and jog a little bit i'm sure he'll the pounds will just melt off

but anyway he's setting the record straight monday night we're going to find out who the real tribal chief is

And the story is that, you know, I can't do Paul's promo.

He's fantastic.

It's great.

But they had trained Solo to be the next tribal chief in the future when Roman was ready to step down.

But, you know,

Solo seized the moment at WrestleMania and stole the ulafala

and put together a band of filthy animals, not even welcome in the United States.

I don't know if Tongaloa might even be welcome in Japan.

Maybe he just got in because he was part of the group.

But anyway, you know, he sold Monday night.

There has to be a winner,

and the loser,

you know,

or has to be a winner and a loser.

And he kind of promised Roman would win.

And

at that point, I was almost thinking, and then with what he said later on, I was almost thinking, are they going to swerve us?

And Paul's going to screw Roman, but we'll get there.

But Solo came out.

and confronted Paul who said, I'm 10 seconds away from pissing my pants right now.

And now they've got this issue over to the point where even Solo is not a fireball promo, but he's got heat and they chant Solo Sucks and fuck you, Solo, and all this stuff.

And

Solo basically says

that he wants a favor from Paul, that he needs somebody to hold the ulafala.

that's trustworthy, that loves my family, that won't disrespect us.

And that was when he said trustworthy, and he was talking about Paul.

I'm like, my God, you know this man.

But basically, they set up that if Roman wins, Paul would put the ulafala around his neck,

and I'll acknowledge him.

But if when I beat Roman, you put it around my neck, and I own this, and I own you, you're my wise man forever.

So let me ask you this, Brian.

If you're like a Samoan from Samoa, you can be won in a wrestling match and forced to be an indentured servant.

But if you're a son of an attorney and a Jewish guy from Scarsdale, you can't be won in a wrestling match, can you?

Yeah, I don't know how that stipulation.

Again, it's tribal combat rules, so I guess it depends on who the supervising body is.

Is it a non-sanctioned match?

Is it a non-sanctioned match that's only sanctioned by the tribal board?

And in which case, do they have Heyman's birth certificate?

What gives them the rights to deal in human labor?

And do we know that Heyman has a birth certificate?

Are we sure he was born or was he just spawned somehow?

You see, you can't spawn.

So anyway,

that set up Monday is what that did.

Yes, it did.

And then they had Gargano and Chiampa against the Motor City Machine Guns.

I'm sure it was a fine wrestling match because three of those four people are capable of having one.

But Purely Dreary came out and distracted, and the Lucha Faces tackled them.

And the Machine Guns got double STFs, but the other ones came in and there was a DQ and nothing happened.

And then.

I think the longest, or it seemed like it,

the longest women's title match

in the history of

WWE television, Naomi versus the refrigerator.

And Naomi had Bianca in her corner, and the refrigerator had Candy in her corner.

And this thing started like,

I don't know, with the package or whatever before the entrances, like 10 or 12 minutes to 10, and it went past 10 o'clock and threw two breaks.

And that's where I was thinking, thinking,

they must be so confident that their overall average, that people are just going to stay.

Was this a good match, Brian, or was this another one you were outside for?

I watched some of it.

It, you know, wasn't,

you know, these, if you remember the War Games match, the two that showed the least ability, at least in that match, were Naomi and Nia.

I believe it was Naomi who hit herself in the face

while hitting Nia with a kinder stick.

So, I mean, I was kind of keeping an eye on it.

Bianca was out there.

She's the main eventer, so something could happen.

I'm always expecting at some point Jade has to be reintroduced.

And I'm glad I watched it because

the finish and the moment got a much bigger reaction than I thought it would.

And I don't know if we've

realized just how over Tiffany Stratton has gotten with that crowd.

But that's the thing is,

the finish got over great, the whole aftermath situation, but I just wish they'd have shortened up the front and got to it quicker because I could have fast-forwarded even more quickly through this match.

But

they had a lot of show to fill.

They had a lot of show to fill.

Bianca beat up candy on the floor and the fridge stopped Bianca

and tried to slam Naomi off of the ropes, but Naomi rolled through and

somehow avoided killing both of them, slamming the fridge off the ropes.

And then here came Tiffy

because it was Tiffy time and she was dragging a referee with her.

And Tiffy tells the referee, I want to cash in.

And as soon as she does that,

he turns around and she grabs the referee and throws him over the fucking railing and grabs her case back and runs over and hits Naomi in the head with a fucking briefcase

to where Jax gives her the bonsai drop.

Boom, one, two, three.

And then suddenly there now the fridge and Candy and Tiffy are all celebrating.

It was all a ruse, a plot, a charade.

They've been bamboozled, hoodwinked, flim-flammed even.

And then

the fridge levels Bianca.

And is going to go to bonsai drop her.

And then Tiffany hits the fridge over the back with the case, and shit cans candy out of the ring.

Big pop for both of these things.

And yes, and now the people, oh shit,

who knew that they were dying for Tiffany Stratton to become a baby fake?

You know, it's that reaction that you, you know, when you get it, it's so special.

The, it's happening, it's really happening, it's happening now.

Like that kind of reaction.

It's finally here.

And, but at the same time,

while Tiffy is shit canning candy, Bianca has gotten up and there the fridge staggers into her and Bianca gives the fridge her finish.

And then Tiffy grabs Bianca and throws her over the announce desk.

And then she cashes in and jumps up and moonsaults the fridge.

Nearly bounced over the top rope when she landed on her.

One, two, three.

And Tiffany is the new women's champion.

And

these people were going out of their minds.

They were, again,

you don't see that in a lot of cases these days, except for Rhea Ripley

and a few assorted

instances of the top ladies, but

they love this shit.

Yeah, I was glad I watched this because the moment of Tiffany Stratton cashing in.

and everything around it, I couldn't believe how over that was in the room.

And then when I saw her we'll talk about Raw in a little while.

When they introduced her in the crowd on Raw, boom, she got one of the biggest reactions there.

So they've done something right with her.

Of course, now they were in Los Angeles on Raw, and she does look like one of the real housewives of shenanigans County.

Well, you stop it.

I don't think you watch that show.

Well, I actually, I was a consultant on the first season.

Anyway,

and then we started the main event, and I forgot to time it,

but I'm going to say,

from the time that they started the

package, and then

Solo and his bloodline doing the walk to the ring, and Jacob doing the promo, and he's great.

And then the babyfaces entering through the arena was like 10 minutes by itself, you know, with the Usos and Sammy and the yeeting and the waving.

And then

they started the six-man tag with a big six-way, but the heels bailed out of the ring and they went to a break.

By the time they came back and you actually saw people in the ring doing something, it had been 20 minutes since this, the build for this thing started.

So that's where you really see.

I mean, it's not like nothing's going on.

They're very good at hiding that nothing's going on.

And it's an amazing looking program, but nothing's going on, right?

You know, the other thing is, and I think it's become a little more apparent in the last several weeks, and again, we'll talk about Raw when we talk about Raw,

but you got Jacob and Tama and Solo, their leader, against the Usos

and Sami.

Now, you could argue Jey Uso right now is over more than even Roman,

but still he's not the leader.

And I feel like Jake, excuse me, Solo,

before this match with him and Roman is kind of getting slotted a little lower in the pecking order.

Because, again, Roman's not in this match.

Solo Sakoa is.

And that's.

I think, well, and also because they're one short on their

heel bloodline over there, poor old Loa.

But I think, you know, and we'll talk about Raw when we get there, as I said, or as you said, and I agree with you.

But

yeah, I don't know where they're going with the whole solo group now.

But anyway, this was a six-man tag.

It was a nice match.

There was nothing wrong with it.

There was no reason to write home about it, as Aunt Lola used to say.

They picked it up in the final minutes.

I mean, these guys are all pros, and it was a match to have on television.

And then they got...

They kicked it up a notch and they got some two counts and

people were into it.

And then

the Usos double super kicked Jacob and got a two count on him.

And here came Drew McIntyre.

And Jay hit the ropes and dove out on Drew.

And then when he got back in the ring, Jacob hit the Samoan drop on Jay and got a two count.

But he missed the dreaded ass to face.

And Jay kicked Solo and speared Jacob and splashed Jacob.

But Solo was the legal one, which they kept track of, and the announcers helped us.

And he spiked Jay

one, two, three.

And

that was fine.

And I see that, you know, you're putting Solo over because he's in the tribal combat match on Monday.

And this is not the match that I had.

have an issue with.

What I have an issue with is where

Solo's bloodline or Solo's group or whatever the the fuck it is is going after Raw.

But that was the down of Smack.

What did you think of this last one?

You know, I guess it says a lot about what you said leading into the match.

I kind of didn't care.

I didn't think anything major was going to happen in this match, despite the fact that it has six guys that are in the main event picture.

And I kind of didn't pay attention to it.

I paid attention once Drew came out.

Drew's the most intriguing guy there because you never know what the fuck he's going to do now.

It's great.

Yeah, and also, you know, it's going somewhere finally.

And that's the thing is,

I hate to say it, but for the, you know, we're the critical experts and the, you know, the jaded industry professionals.

For the average viewer, they're doing pretty much what they ought to be doing right now.

Maybe they could kick up, you know, kick it up a little bit every once in a while.

But also with the announcing, we'll get to it again on Raw, but just the way the announcers are clearly telling the people's, the talent's backgrounds, why they're mad at each other,

what title they cost the other guy, whatever the case,

they're opening up for a whole new audience and they don't want to run off and leave them.

But at the same time,

again, we might know all this shit and it might be kind of blasé for us, but for the average viewers,

They're obviously doing a show that the live crowd is jumping up and down for and that's holding up numbers

better than anything else on whatever form of television

the various programs are on.

So

they got that going for them.

Yes, they do.

That was SmackDown.

Well, before we get raw, Brian, you and I, we're going to get raw here.

But first, I think some other people may be raw coming up.

May feel like they got shafted a little bit.

Is this going to be

a Starcade moving out of Greensboro situation?

They are moving the all-American iconic Royal Rumble

over to Saudi Arabia in 2026.

They're going from Indianapolis this month to Saudi Arabia next year.

Is this going to piss people off or have they just got used to it now?

They don't care.

They're just watching these big shows.

But

I would assume no fans from the United States will be attending the Royal Rumble next year.

Can you just go to Saudi Arabia anytime you want to?

What's the travel like over there?

I mean, that's the funny thing.

The whole thing technically is about promoting tourism, but who the hell's saying, hey, you know, let's go to the Royal Rumble in Doha or wherever the fuck it's, not Doha, it's in Riyadh.

Riyadh.

I've never spoken to anyone in my life who said, yeah, I took a vacation to Saudi Arabia.

Yeah, I saw these great propaganda pieces hosted by Michael Cole, and I said, you know what?

I just got to go over there.

no no one said that well but I mean

is it a thing even do Americans often go to Saudi Arabia yeah or are they

secretly selling arms sure well no that's what I'm saying is that they're trying to what is the term sports wash

Saudi Arabia by bringing all these sporting events but do

Do average American people, maybe the golf fans or whatever, they got a lot of money, but do average American people, average American wrestling fans, is anybody in large numbers of any kind going to events in Saudi Arabia, or is this just to be broadcast from there to make them look good?

I think that's the primary focus.

And in terms of your first question, I think this pisses off anyone who pays attention, but not enough to not watch the free stream at one o'clock in the afternoon.

Well, there you go.

At least we won't have to stay up late next year.

This is WWE now.

This was WWE under the last few years' events.

Everything is for sale.

Everything.

Don't be surprised when WrestleMania ends up in Saudi Arabia.

Don't be surprised when anything ends up anywhere at this point.

So it sucks.

I mean, the other thing is, if you're really thinking about it, now they have this.

They have that show at the end of the year where the two world champions fight.

for a belt that gets left behind.

Does that mean that if there's ever someone who gets over beyond the biggest star they have, if right now there was a wrestler that emerged and quickly was over more than Cody and Roman and CM Punk,

could they ever get a push to the top if they have a problem with going to Saudi Arabia because of the behavior of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

I mean,

that's the interesting thing.

You're basically, if you're someone who has any problem with that now, if you want to get a push in WWE, you can't say it.

There was Sammy didn't go for a while.

There was a couple people that didn't go, but they weren't,

it wasn't a make or break, you know, oh, this is our main event.

And

that was a while back.

That was with Vince.

With these, but now here you mentioned something else too.

They can't have the show at the end of the year where they have champion versus champion if the Royal Rumble is going to be in January,

so what are they going to do with that?

But the point I was going to make

just

two months in a row, giant shows in Saudi Arabia.

Is that even hot shot in Saudi Arabia Arabia?

I mean, unlimited money.

Unlimited, you think Tony Connor's unlimited money.

This is oil money.

Well, yes, but still, whether it's greasy or not.

But

also, I was trying to go back to a point.

Now I fucking blanked on it again.

Oh, the thing is, they were paying $50 million, we are told, for these super shows in Saudi Arabia.

Do you think they paid more?

They almost certainly paid more for the Royal Rumble, didn't they?

If you were Nick Khan and you had an asset and you were selling it, you would certainly charge more for a Royal Rumble or a SummerSlam or a Survivor Series or a WrestleMania.

So to answer your question, maybe the guy who got over, who had a problem of going to Saudi Arabia, maybe they could just keep upping the offer until he said, well, fuck it.

I guess it wouldn't be so bad after all.

But

at some point, if they start exporting

all of the traditional big events that all the most devoted fans and the ones who spend the most money and travel the farthest and et cetera,

you know, start going to to places that they're not either going to want to go or be able to go.

I mean, you know, it could create one of those bad taste in the mouth backlashes.

But I mean, there's a lot of people that come from Australia to WrestleMania and fucking New Jersey or whatever.

They might be happier if they had WrestleMania closer to them.

But.

Whether it's Saudi Arabia or anything else, this is going to be the year that tests the patience of wrestling fans when it comes to the commercialization of WWE.

When it comes to advertisers on the ring mats,

commercials on Netflix, I mean, just all sorts of things, selling the Royal Rumble,

which means WrestleMania is next.

Royal Rumble's two to WrestleMania.

So that's the big one that'll be sold next.

I have a statement here from

it's nice of you to make a statement.

It's from he,

it just says H-E, both in caps.

Turkey

Al-A-Sheik,

who said Saudi Arabia's hosting of the Royal Rumble for the first time outside of North America reflects the General Entertainment Authority's ongoing commitment to bringing the world's largest and most important entertainment events to the kingdom.

Through this partnership with WWE,

we aim to enhance the entertainment sector and deliver a transformative experience that attracts a wide audience.

Yeah, if you don't like it, we'll chop your head off.

That'll transform you.

They said what it is right there out loud.

They're trying to buy everything they can get.

They're going to try to buy everything.

The Academy Awards, the Grammys,

anything you can think of, they're going to try to buy.

They've taken over golf.

You know,

they're going to do this with everything.

Have we got a contact over there in case they want to buy us?

I'm not going to sell to the Saudis.

Well, I don't know now.

If we could...

If we could find a nice one like Tony Khan, it would be our friend too.

Is there a Saudi Arabian Tony Khan?

I don't know.

Could we get a Saudi Arabian Tony Khan to start us a wrestling promotion?

Well, Ergo, I'm telling you, the people in Greensboro were not happy when they lost Star K to Chicago and then points all over the country.

And

this could be a bigger version of that if they go too far with it.

And I don't think, you know, going to Wimbley Stadium would be considered as an act of treason, but a lot of Saudi Arabia,

and we'll see what happens.

Who knows whether Saudi Arabia may own this country

since we're going to be for sale too starting January the 20th.

Oh, well, what have you got for sale over on the Arcadian Vanguard network this fine week, young man?

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Wait a minute, young wrestling memories?

I didn't know Gary Capetta was.

Well, it says Gary Capetta reminisces over being a young wrestling fan, and that was my way of rephrasing it.

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Come on, Mr.

Happy.

The mothership.

Okay, all right then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

The raw era began on Netflix on January the 6th.

It hadn't even been 12 hours ago now that all this happened, that we're talking about it.

And they debuted in front of a live audience of billions and billions of people.

You know, I have it on good authority.

9.7 billion people watched that stream live last night.

Did you hear this number?

No, because you just made it up.

Well,

what if I did?

Because that's what we're going to have to do now, isn't it?

Make them up.

How are we going to know?

You know what?

I think when it's impressive, we'll hear it.

I think if AEW had a million people streaming last week, we would have heard it already.

And I think with Netflix,

if it's a major number, if it's a massive number, we're going to hear it.

And if not, we're not going to hear anything.

But how do we know we believe it?

Well, they're a publicly traded company.

If they lie, they'd be in a lot of trouble.

Well,

these things have happened before.

See, I saw saw those Netflix executives in the front row, and I don't trust them.

They were having too much fun.

But anyway, let's...

Did they get to keep their seats?

I don't think so.

I think there was another one of those seats where, like, all of a sudden, all right, the match is over.

You guys move.

Let's get Coco Beware and Greg Valentine out here.

Well, that's the thing is that I was thinking as they showed like the fourth or fifth shot of celebrities and past wrestlers and current wrestlers and whatever.

I was saying, did they give away all the high-priced tickets?

How was this the goddamn biggest indoor arena gate of all time if they gave away all these comp tickets?

You think they were cycling the people into the same four seats?

That sounds more likely.

As much as, you know, the matches, some was good, some was okay.

But instead of going blow by blow on the matches, we've got to just talk about this show.

And I'm not, apparently, now I need to watch the Netflix on the TV in the bedroom, which has a remote that will enable me to fast forward or rewind.

All I could do was pause on my.

You can't use the cable box remote for the streaming, Brian.

Did you know that?

No, because I can.

I can't fast-forward when it's live, but I can rewind.

Well, I can't do shit.

We had to use the little TV remote that has like four buttons on it instead of all my multiple buttoned remotes.

And we can't figure out how to get the streaming sound

through the surround sound speakers

because my DVD player plays through the surround sound, and my cable box plays through the surround sound.

We can't get the streaming through the surround sound.

These are big problems we're going to have to work out.

But anyway,

the point is the show debuted and

production first.

Let's talk about that for a second and we're going to go into the cold open, which was production.

But

good God, this looks like the fucking Super Bowl.

This is, I used to say

the WWE had a network quality production studio, and

it looks like the networks need to step it up a notch now

because the lighting and the.

The way they had the entire arena lit with the colored lights where it wasn't obtrusive and you saw less people to distract from the ring action, but the building still looked bigger.

And

just

the incredible, the camera work, the and that's a live production, and I guarantee you that director is calling a

15-camera shoot live.

But just everything from the packages to the graphics to the

way that the announcers were prepared,

Cole and McAfee are telling

the stories of the backgrounds of the guys, who they're mad at and why, what's going on in the company with these people in a simple and easy-to-digest manner.

And

at the same time, it doesn't sound goofy to the

regular viewer because they're doing it in a professional announcer way.

I don't know.

It sounded goofy how much they were trying to put over like, we're on Netflix now.

This is the biggest thing since we landed on Mars.

Well, not

overboard.

I'm talking about

the stories of the talent and why they're mad and who they're involved with, that type of thing.

They did go overboard with the, yes, the Netflix stuff.

But that's the thing is this show, it just, it looked like.

It looked like Spielberg or somebody got a hold of this or some major Hollywood studio and said, let's just go all out.

And they started with the

Intuit Dome.

They were sold out, 17,000 plus people.

And they had drone shots of the press and the fans and the red carpet.

And the fans were popping on the walk-ins on the screen.

And then they went to the cold open.

And this was something, I've seen it on Twitter a bunch.

What's Cornette going to say about this?

Or what do you think about this?

This is something that I, in some parts, should have hated, but didn't.

Because

they didn't come out and expose the business as bad as what Vince has done sometimes in public statements 30 years ago.

But it was an inventive

and an artistic, even,

way of

coming out and saying, yeah,

we're kind of a work, but we may not be as much of a work as you think we are.

But it was the evolution of the wrestling business and how TV changed wrestling.

And then TV and wrestling changed the world.

And they used the phrase heroes and villains.

And that tell a story, the face and the heel.

They use that probably for the first time ever, maybe on the show.

And the shoot from the work.

But they would never say the word fake when they got to the real

from the unreal and showed The Undertaker.

And the whole overriding point of it was that they tell stories with their heroes and villains.

And every great story, and this is Triple H doing the voiceover, He's the Dana White now

of

the WWE.

He's the fucking fight promoter hype guy that's in charge of the whole thing.

But he said, every great story has that element of truth.

And this TV to streaming, America to the world, the all-real, ever-fantastic, never-to-end story of the WWE.

Production-wise, this was brilliance.

And I think writing-wise, this was the most

respectful way to talk about the business being a work that anybody's ever come up with.

It was so good, I couldn't not like it.

What'd you think?

I liked it.

I'm not a big fan of Triple H as a narrator.

I don't think that's his strength.

But I think also it was symbolic that he was doing it because he is their Daniel White now.

And I think that's the way they see it, except when The Rock's around.

And it had to come from him, too, because if just an unknown VO guy had done this, said some of these things, a wrestling fan would not have liked it.

This was clearly a video you would never have seen with Vince McMahon around.

So it's a clear breakaway from the previous era.

I thought they did a great job of filling that video with all sorts of clips and

wrestlers.

Sometimes I was surprised.

Oh, look who they included there.

Really well done.

Not one trace, by the way, of Mr.

McMahon.

No.

But I think when you watch that video, you kind of got pumped up.

Kind of made you proud to be a wrestling fan.

You know what I mean?

It was a really well done,

you know, yeah, we're here and we've impacted culture.

And look at the old footage we got.

Well, and as a matter of fact, you know, people were saying, well, it's like my childhood flashed before my eyes.

They went back to, who was the clip of the

pioneers from the 20s or 30s?

It was not long enough when I'm not good with the

operating the streaming television,

but it was like they went back to the Tutzmont era.

and the black and white stuff.

And it was just, you know,

this was a brilliant piece of work.

Television.

could you could see this

on a football broadcast or the nba or whatever that type of treatment of a of a sport so lee fitting

boy he knows his shit i'll tell you that and they have all kinds of money to spend now too

as long as he keeps it in his pants i think he'll do a good job what the money no no not the money the other oh the trouser trout you know what this was a really well-done video and also they released it in advance of Raw, which was an interesting move.

And it gave everyone a chance to see this and get pumped up.

And then on Raw,

they showed you a good portion of it as it played in the arena.

And there was no giant screen.

It was almost as if the ring was curtained off on all four sides, and it was projected onto it.

So I'm glad I saw the video earlier so I got to see it, you know, in HD.

Yeah, because that's the effect of broadcasting it on that screen to the

temporary screens, the sheets, more or less, to the crowd.

The shot of them doing that was impressive in itself.

It was like, wow, this is fucking great.

But for the people watching that, it did dilute the detail and the

technological brilliance of the thing.

They had a reveal spot to do

because when the video was over with, they dropped the sheets that served as the screens and there is Triple H standing in the ring.

And at that point, he was more over as a babyface than Vince ever was as a heel.

And

I don't mean to say I told you so a lot of times today,

but this is the major one.

What have I been saying for as long as I've been doing a podcast and for many years before that, whenever anybody would ask me,

yes, Vince was a once-in-a-lifetime

heel performer.

But after the

novelty wore off, or his ran ran run its course, his run ran its course,

don't make the company heels.

It will not end well.

No wrestling promotion has ever wanted to be the heel before, the actual company before Vince.

And,

you know, they ended up paying for it for several years.

That the fans were not,

that's the thing that gave rise to AEW.

The fans didn't like Vince because they thought he didn't like them and didn't care about them.

He's probably right.

But it was also, you know, Stephanie McMahon dressing down the wrestlers on wrong.

Yes.

Yes.

The evil empire.

As sooner or later, the people said, well, our favorites are never going to get a break, or we just really were sick and fed up with this fucking company, you know, fucking everybody around, wrestlers and us and everything.

It became

something that they wouldn't ever go to Vince and say, okay, we got to back up on this now.

Yes, Vince, you are an Oscar-winning performer.

You're the greatest heel ever.

But we can't go on like this forever.

And the rest of the family can't, somebody's got to rein you in so the fans don't start disliking our company and want to support an upstart alternative.

Because one of these days.

Okay, Shane, go home.

Yeah, well, one of these days,

some goofy other billionaire with a lot of money is going to come along and he's going to be nice to these people.

And it's going to work for a while until we course correct.

Anyway.

And Triple H welcomed them and gave them the Are You Ready?

And welcome to the Netflix era.

And then the lights went out and the music hit.

And here came The Rock.

And the place went batshit.

Now insert your vehemence here.

Oh, no, super over.

I mean, he's The Rock.

And he came out there.

They turned off all the lights.

Everyone kind of hushed, waiting to see which one of the big stars will be first.

Will it be Frank or Eliza or Julio?

It was The Rock.

As always, he showed you his goosebumps.

And then

a very interesting promo from the last time we saw him he was a heel yeah and then i guess he was kind of a heel again

well i don't i don't you could tell me what you thought of this of the rock blowing himself on raw but super over can't take that away from him and he came out wearing your glasses apparently

He came out and the, you know, he's shaking hands and he's smiling and there's Rocky chance and he's in Los Angeles and it's a he's a big star and even if he was a heel last year, they're going to be happy to see him.

If they were going somewhere with him still being a heel, that would be easily dealt with.

But I don't think they are

because

he did a promo thanking everybody.

They showed a...

VTR of him being named the high chief in Samoa by the other Samoan high chief.

And

everything

he did

got a positive pop from the people.

He cut a promo on the new era of watching TV, and he said it was the largest arena gate in WWE history, and they cheer.

They cheer when they're told that you people paid more money to see the same thing than any other fucking group of people ever.

And finally,

that's the real joke.

Half of them were comped.

Well, no,

you know, I don't know because they had the small stage and the small screen and everything.

I think they are squeezing this sponge for every drop.

But he sucked up to the Netflix executives and mentioned them.

And

he suddenly put Cody over.

And they get a shot of Cody standing in the crowd.

And he gets a big pop, but there's smiles with them.

And then

he plugged his cousin Roman Reigns, the original tribal chief, and he said, I'm going to be watching tribal combat or tribal conflict or whatever tonight.

And then he's, if you smell

and everybody, Rocky, Rocky, Rocky is cooking.

He hugged Cody on the way out.

And I got from this and other stuff that we'll talk about, I don't think he's working WrestleMania

because the two matches

that you would have promoted at WrestleMania with The Rock based on anything that's gone on up until last night would have been Rock versus Cody or Rock versus Roman.

Well, we've seen him hugging and kissing both of them.

And there wasn't even the

tongue-in-cheek, you know, I'm playing a heel because you know I'm good at it, but I'm really a movie star type of thing where

even though he was being popular and people were cheering him, he was leading in some direction.

There was no match teased here.

There was no, the matches were, the beefs were squashed.

Do you see any way that The Rock is working WrestleMania either night based on what they did here?

I'm not going to say no completely, but I could still see a path that's very, very clear for him against Roman.

I don't think that was put away necessarily even with a hug.

He slowly came out there.

It was very dramatic.

And again, The Rock is super over, especially in LA.

I mean, that's a fucking industry town.

But I just think that he's a natural heel right now.

And that although we got big pops there, I think people see through.

So even when he's hugging Cody, I don't think anyone's like, I believe that.

They're cool.

It's until The Rock says, now the People's Champion wants the World Championship.

It's that simple.

They have so many things potentially teased for Mania.

From Cena Cena

and Cody potentially,

to punk getting his favor potentially.

Who knows what they're going to do right now?

But The Rock, I would think, has at least one movie I know of that he's going to be ready to promote around that period of time, I think.

I don't know.

I don't think WrestleMania needs him to break all sorts of records, but I think him being there would be a big...

I think him not being there is a little bit disappointing based on what they teased last year.

Yeah.

Which was, I know he wrestled, but it was the tease of

one-on-one him and Roman and one-on-one him and Cody.

It was odd that they should also later on have backstage footage where they're all hugging.

Well, and he filmed that and released it himself.

He filmed it.

He had Gewerts following behind him filming this so they could release it to show the world.

Look at what kind of guy I am.

I hug people.

It's fucking ridiculous.

Yeah.

Well, they took a lot of luster off of it if they haven't.

You know where he didn't go?

You know where he didn't go after that show at L.A.?

In and Out Burger.

I heard he's never been there.

No, he's been there for the first time ever.

He's been there for the first time seven times.

That's right.

Anyway, so now we got them out of there because now

it's time for the first match.

Solo

and Roman in the tribal combat or conflict or whichever one.

Now I've second-guessed myself.

Tribal combat.

And again, I noticed the announcers explaining the stories, the angles, the background, the meaning of the ulafala.

And Roman and Paul came out and got a big pop.

And

okay, one thing I'm going to, the ring announcer's hair is way out of control.

What's her name?

I don't know, but so far I'm not really a fan.

Not only is the hair is out of control, but she was dressed like a fucking Star Trek crewman.

Or she may have been one of the fucking people from the purple planet that beams down for shore leave every now and then.

I don't know, but they need to rein that.

She's trying too hard to be our friend Samantha Irvin.

You know what this match reminded me of more than anything I've seen in a while?

A true ECW match from like the mid-90s, before things got really crazy.

Yes.

Because it was a match that...

There's a story there.

You understand it.

For me, at least, it sometimes feels like the matches are lacking.

But then a whole bunch of chaotic shit just happens at the end.

And it's non-stop pops, and you leave feeling good about it, waiting for more.

This was a classic Paul Heyman match.

Yeah.

And

he's there at Ringside, obviously, holding

the prize, the Ulafala.

And McAfee made mention of the fact they're chanting, fuck you, Solo.

Well, it's Netflix.

So now we can just get any kind of goddamn perverse perverse language, can't we?

Someone's got to just start like, pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy.

Can we have a wrestler with Tourette's now?

Piss!

Piss out my ass!

Only on Netflix.

He can't be on SmackDown.

Well, that's because they got split rosters.

They could have the Tourette's victims over on

Raw.

But anyway, we got the match started.

And the logos, the sponsor logos, all over the mat.

Vince McMahon

would have, he hated that.

He wanted a clean mat.

If there was a stain

as big as a golf ball, he could see it from the hard camera.

We'll talk about all the sponsors and who else they've got sponsored them here in a little while on one of the segments.

The people were into this.

I'm not going to, it was a long match, but it was a good match.

I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow or it would be ridiculous.

But

they did big moves to each other, as you would expect, but they allowed room to breathe in between and they sold

where appropriately for the most part.

And

Roman is an amazing babyface seller with his body language and the way that he gets shit over.

He was good as a heel, but it's unusual that a guy that size that looks that intimidating

can sell that well as a babyface.

Again, you know, they go back and forth, and then they,

as they get going

into their bigger moves and the two counts, Roman had powerbombed Solo through the fucking table

and got the one, two, and Tomatonga pulled the referee out.

And then that's what Jacob comes in

and punches and kicks and DDTs and moonsaults Roman.

And then Solo hits him with a spike and gets a two count.

Okay, again, like you said, it's Heyman style.

We're going to go for a while.

And then big moves, a bunch of twists.

Nobody expects it.

At least they're not,

you know, 160-pound high school freshmen taking all these things and kicking out.

So then Solo spiked the referee.

And here came Sammy and Jimmy, and they got in a fight on the floor.

And

we were kicking the shit out of Solo.

And then Roman hit a spear and covered him.

And the second referee came in and slid in.

One, two, kick out.

And we got the this is awesome.

And then all the stooges fought off.

But here came Kevin Owens and gave Roman Reigns a stunner.

And Solo covered two count.

And then Owens started in on Roman again, but here came Cody.

And they got in the hockey fight.

And Cody hit the Cody cutter, and they fought out in the crowd.

And at that point, your attention is back on the ring.

And Roman spears solo, boom,

and it hits him with another one, boom,

and one, two, three.

So it was a great

production, and they had the people going.

And then, of course, Paul comes in

and it started holding starting to hold the Ulafala out.

And then here comes the rock,

and he comes the ring, and Paul trepidaciously hands him the ulafala,

and he puts it on Roman reigns.

And you say, Okay, they're having a stare down.

There's going to be something go on.

And there was not only a handshake, but a hug,

and I love yous exchanged.

And then Roman put his finger in the the air.

If The Rock had made some,

you know, gesture or

if he had indicated somehow we're going to fight, then I would think, well, Rock's going to give Solo a little boost up here to recover him from this win.

They're going to be involved some kind of way.

But with The Rock and Roman going,

we love you, we love each other,

and Solo just got beat.

That's why I'm wondering what's going on with Solo and his group now.

Well, we shall see.

The Rock announced he'll be on NXT

because that's what we need.

And boy, that came out of nowhere, didn't it?

I'll be on NXT, the place where they gave my daughter a job for no good reason on TV.

The worst television performer ever.

But I mean, what do you think?

Because I mean, yeah, look, what you're saying is right.

I'm not saying that that's not what happened, but I don't know if that shuts the door.

The same way, I don't know if him coming out there and giving an acceptance speech on behalf of WWE

for this big thing of being on Netflix

is the same as

what he would have done if that wasn't the case tonight.

I don't know if he would have been there if that wasn't the case tonight.

So I don't know.

I don't know if it was a one-time thing.

He loves getting a spotlight.

We know that.

So you have two options.

He gave him the uli fali or whatever the fuck.

Now, don't be disrespectful.

To the gimmick?

We got a lot of fans and listeners over there in the island.

They don't follow the bloodline.

They're not like walking lockstep with the bloodline.

Well, over there, if you mispronounce the oola follow.

Is it follow or folly?

Falla.

Oh, okay.

It's funny if it's folly.

Fala la la la la la la la.

Well, the point is him putting it on the rock or him putting it on Roman.

That either means he's endorsing Roman and that's it.

It's over.

He's Roman's loyal servant

or it's just a temporary thing.

Again, they drew it out.

They made it as drama-filled as it could be.

The placing of a necklace.

I think they've made a big mistake and softened this thing up if they're still going to do something and everybody was so huggy and kissy and smoochy.

See, this is what I'm saying.

This is the problem though with the Rock's commitments.

It's like if you want to do something, there are two choices.

You need time for him to be able to do it and build up to it.

And then he either needs to win,

which in this case would make him a champ.

Well, actually, Roman's not the champion.

It wouldn't make him a champion.

But he either needs to win or he needs to put the person over and make them bigger.

That's the question.

Is the Rock going to put someone over?

Is The Rock willing to put Roman Reigns over now?

Because if it's the other way around,

not to say that he's Hulk Hogan and he'll just not do the job to Sean Michaels or anything, but The Rock gets busy.

I think you kind of have to look at him almost like a one-match person.

He's not John Cena giving you a year.

You have to hope you can get whatever you can get out of him.

Yeah.

And he needs to put one of these two guys over.

I think it would mean more to him to put Roman over, a member of the family of Reigns.

I would think so, yeah.

But we shall say, what do you think the odds are, Brian?

What do I think the odds are that The Rock will put over Roman Reigns or Cody Rhodes?

Yeah.

I think the odds are much better that it'll put over Roman Reigns.

Do I think it'll happen?

I guess maybe WrestleMania next year?

Maybe?

Do you think that The Rock will score a touchdown in the next NFL game?

Oh, no, no, no.

He's not an NFL football player.

He was a college football player.

Oh, but I thought he bought the NFL.

No, he bought the XFL.

And then I think that went bankrupt, too.

Do you think he's going to

score a touchdown in the next XFL game?

No, I don't think there is an XFL anymore.

The XFL had to merge with the USFL to create a new Football League of failed spring football.

Oh, well,

that's the UFL.

Do you think that he will score a touchdown in the next UFL game?

He's not going to score any touchdown.

I can't believe you're still hanging on to this.

There will be no touchdowns from The Rock.

You mean The Rock can't even score six points anymore?

Son of a gun.

Well, I'll tell you, folks, there's plenty of football players out there that can.

And you need to bet on some of them with our friends at DraftKings Sportsbook, because they are an official sports betting partner of the NFL.

I don't know.

They may do some kind of dealings with the UFL or the XFL or whatever under the table, but they're official with the NFL.

And you can bet on whether or not the players are going to score touchdowns or not.

Now, since this is a football game and that's the idea that people are trying to do that type of thing, score the touchdowns, it's not all that far-fetched to think that you might win.

And all they got to do is just score a touchdown.

Well, you have to bet on it, and then they got to do it.

And if you do your part and they do their part, you're going to win.

That's the way it goes, Brian.

There's pretty much no downside.

Again, there are no guarantees, I think, is actually what you're trying to say.

There are no guarantees.

You can try.

You can do your best.

And of course, if you want to do it, this is a place that can facilitate it for you with no guarantees.

I still think, well, you don't need a guarantee if you just bet every player on that team is going to score a touchdown and then go to the other team.

I bet every player on the team is going to score a touchdown.

One of those son of a bitches is going to get lucky.

That's a guarantee.

We can't say that.

What if it's a 0-0 tie?

Well, then they're all the shits and ought to be fired and replaced.

Well, that's a different thing altogether.

Well,

if you lose money at DraftKings Sportsbook on betting on one of these off-brand football teams and can't even score one goddamn touchdown amongst a bunch of them, I think you ought to write a nasty letter to whoever owns them.

But right now, folks, if you download the DraftKings Sportsbook app, if you're ready to place your first bet, try betting on something simple like the touchdowns or a player to score.

a certain amount of points or whatever.

You make your pick.

You put your money down and the DraftKings people scoop your money up, and they give you more of it.

Because if you bet $50 and you're a new customer, then you're going to get $200 in bonus bets instantly.

Ow!

I tried to snap my fingers instantly.

It hurts.

There we go.

Well, I got a little bursitis.

But right now, the DraftKings Sportsbook app, you download it, you use the code JCE.

That's how you get that bonus money.

New customers, you bet bet $5.

Use the code JCE.

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At $5 a piece, you can bet on, let's see, 10,

20, 34.

You can bet on 45 people to make a touchdown.

How many players on both teams in total?

That was a question to you, Brian.

That was a question to me.

Yes.

How many players in total on two football teams?

On both the football teams.

53 players on the active roster.

Well, but how many's in the game at one time?

105.

105?

Well, you're going to have to bet like $20 to get $800.

And then you bet $6 on each one of them, son of a bitches, and somebody's bound to trip and fall across the finish line.

If you know more than we do about football, you'll probably be better off.

There are 22 players on the field at any time.

Okay, well, at any time, well, 22.

Well, 205, you can bet on it.

Don't bet on the weasley-looking guy in the back.

Why not?

That may be the sleeper pick.

You could probably get good odds on that sucker.

No, they're going to kill him first thing out.

He's going to be the first one run over.

That's what you would think.

What if he's mighty?

What if he's like a mighty mite?

Well, in that case, he might

run off before he gets hurt.

But I would bet on the big guys that's going to trudge through that line.

Bet more on the guys that weigh 340 pounds and up.

But download the DraftKings Sportsbook app right now and use that code JCE,

and you're going to get $200 in bonus bets instantly when you bet $5 only on DraftKings Sportsbook.

Now, you can't go into like Target or Walmart or some shopping center and say, here, here's $5.

Give me $200.

They'll call the police on you.

But DraftKings, they're used to doing things that stretch the laws of credibility and civic governance in the states of the United States these days.

The crown is yours.

Indeed, it is.

And of course, unfortunately, we

do not have our friend here today.

Is he iced in still?

He's iced out.

The bad weather,

yeah, he's iced out and I'm thrown in.

Well, folks,

we have to make mention of the following.

Gambling problem?

Call 1-800-GAMBLER in New York.

Call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY-467-369.

In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling.

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

Please play responsibly.

On behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas.

21 plus age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction, void in Ontario.

Just get out of here with that stuff.

Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance.

And for additional terms and responsible gaming resources, you can see dkng.co/slash audio.

That's right.

The crown is yours.

Yeah, the crap is mine.

Back to Raw.

Well, now

here comes John Cena.

What, again,

we have we've opened with Triple H.

Then we got the rock.

We've had the fucking Roman Reigns and Solo fighting over the Ulafala.

Now we've got John Cena.

These people are going nuts.

And

the lighting drone display thing that they were doing in the sky over the arena.

Did you see that?

Oh, yeah, I saw when they were practicing over the skies in New Jersey.

Was that what those drones were all that time?

I'm starting to think so, yeah.

But I mean, this is insane where the whole sky is lit up with the logos of the talent with these trained drones.

And the people are chanting, Cena, Cena, and thank you, Cena.

And he did the promo, stirring the fans up about being seen all over the world.

And tonight starts the farewell tour.

Los Angeles is where the prototype was born, and I'm here one more time to say thank you.

And he's got them eaten out of his fucking hand.

And he's, you know, asking the questions: well, who are my opponents going to be?

And when will I become a 17-time champion?

And you deserve it.

But then he said, no, let's be real.

Come on.

It's been 2,400 and some days since I won my last match in the WWE.

And my time is up and theirs is now.

The 17th title reign, it's never going to happen.

Well, okay, they say never say never in the WWE, but it would take a miracle for it to happen.

Why, I'd have to win money in the bank or the elimination chamber or maybe even the Royal Rumble.

And these days are there getting big pops.

And he's like, hmm,

maybe I could win the Royal Rumble.

And he gets the fans to talk him into getting into the Royal Rumble.

And he says, and I'm going to win the Royal Rumble.

And you know what?

I don't know if we need to use DraftKings, but I bet you that he might just win the Royal Rumble, Brian.

What do you think?

I think it's one of those intriguing things.

You weren't really thinking about him winning it.

going into this promo and coming out of it.

It makes a lot of sense.

And it adds a lot of drama to the Royal Rumble on top of everyone else who's chasing after a title.

And besides that, just the way that he did this, where he doesn't come out and talk big, and he lets the fans talk him into talking big and telling him that he still deserves it and that he can still do these things

is a fucking brilliant shit.

And, you know, they've got him for, what, 30-something dates almost once a week for this year.

And it'll be his last time in every town.

And they're going to draw nothing but money with this fucking thing,

whichever way they go, wherever.

Just on a merch alone in every town having a t-shirt that says the last time he's in L.A., the last time he's here or there.

I got to see if they're going to Louisville this year.

For, you know, John Cena's last year, he should make an appearance there.

Well, only if he goes in for OVW.

See, otherwise, he'd be working opposition.

You remember Piper and Don Owens in Portland?

I guess so.

So what would you do with Cena?

Do you think he should get a title run this year?

Again, Cody's currently a champion.

Gunther's currently a champion.

No one's even talking about the idea of Gunther versus Cena.

That would show you his commitment to working a hard match on the way out.

I don't know if that's going to happen.

But what would you do without knowing what they're going to do?

Not even talking Royal Rumble specifically.

What would you do with John Cena if you had him for last year?

Well, I wouldn't put the belt on him because

this is one of those things where

the idea of him going for the record breaker or the last title run or whatever may be more attractive to people than him actually doing it because if he wins it then they know he's retiring at the end of the year to begin with and then

potentially either you know are they going to say well he'll stay until he loses the belt now well that kind of takes the piss out of it or they'll know well he's going to lose the belt by the the end of the year anyway.

Or it just,

I think the idea of him going for it and John with the never give up, never say die underdog babyface, he could still do something with, I gave it my all, but my time was up.

Their time is now.

We drew

$200 million at the gate and 97,000 people at the stadium, but I came up just that short.

It's time for me to hang up the boots.

You don't think you need it for the entire last year?

The idea he's chasing something?

No,

I don't know that you need it for the entire year because the year is kind of front-loaded in the first of April with WrestleMania.

I think the biggest match has to go there.

Unless he did win money in the bank, because then you hold on to that briefcase for the year.

Yeah, that's why I'm saying I think that he needs to win the Royal Rumble and just get it over with and get a title shot if they're going to do that.

Because if he had the briefcase,

you can't milk John Cena.

Is he going to cash in or is he not?

And by the nature of it, the money in the bank guy has to kind of take advantage of a person when he's down.

I just, I don't think he needs the belt.

I don't think he needs the win.

I think the money is in the idea that John Cena will get a big big match and go for that title again, but I don't think he needs to win it.

And then later on in the year, you've got personal issues.

And if he does

two jobs this year, that would probably be the maximum.

You want him to put one main person over, and you can maybe get a second one out of

whatever you're doing to get the main one over.

You know, until he said it, I hadn't even really thought about it, but Austin Theory, Bray Wyatt, every single person they brought him back to work with, he put them over.

Yeah.

And it's not that he won't do it, it's just that you don't want him to do it too much because it devalues.

If it only happens once or twice this year, it means a lot more than if it happens six or eight times.

I thought Cena connected more than The Rock did with the audience, just in terms of the kind of reactions he was getting and the excitement in the reactions he was getting.

He got those fans pumped up for him entering the Royal Rumble.

Yeah, well, and see, they like him as a person more than that.

The Rock is a star,

seen as a star too, but they kind of like him more as a person.

And then the ultimate example of that is Mick Foley, where the fans liked him more as a person than they did as a star.

But there's different ways that you can be over, and he's more of a personable,

I can connect with the people kind of guy instead of a guy coming out there, even if they love him, talking in third person and he's hot shit.

Do you think we have to see all of his matches, like all of his classic opponents this year, like him and Punk, him and Randy Orton, whoever else they can dig up?

Him and Carlito from when he was U.S.

champion?

I don't know about that one.

But that's the thing they've got in front of them is they can

have a list of people that he's had history with, and for pay-per-view events, they can manufacture reasons for each one individually or an overriding reason why he's going to wrestle these three or four people in this order, or whatever the case.

And it's not going to get old because it's not going to last that long.

What about Cena and Logan Paul?

Well, that's who came up next, as a matter of fact, on the program.

And they did a package on Logan Paul.

He looks like a fucking superstar, the way they portray him, and everybody knows who he is.

Having said that,

again, I don't know if it's stylistically,

if Logan Paul is not the dick that we think he probably is in real life and would listen to Cena and slow down, he could probably teach him a lot about psychology, but John is not going to be a guy that

the other fellow is going to be jumping off the top rope and doing coast-coast fucking brain busters or whatever to.

So I think if they could slow it down and work John's match, he could teach Logan Paul something.

And the promos would be great

because both those guys can talk.

And I think that's what they need to concentrate on also: is

they're going to talk him into building no matter what the match is, make the guys

that he faces in the key spots have more promo ability than maybe they got piss and vinegar for their matches.

But Logan Paul could be in there.

I concur with that.

The next matchup was the long-awaited, they were blowing off everything.

And that's why I'm thinking, boy, they must have some really good shit coming up at the Royal Rumble and Beyond because they're just blowing off everything they've had running.

But it was the women's title match with Liv and Rhea Ripley.

And they, of course, they've been breaking in between the matches or going to ringside with shots of the,

as we said, the legends.

X-Pac was there and some of the current talent to be there and also

celebrities.

And

this is where they showed Seth Green and Macaulay Culkin.

And those were the only two celebrities that I had a goddamn clue who they were, what they do, or why I should know them.

Did you know any of these other people?

You have to speak specifically about which celebrities here you're talking about.

I knew who

the majority of the people they had there, I knew who they were.

Yeah.

I had never seen these people.

I'd never heard their name.

I didn't know what they they did, but they were proud to introduce them.

But I knew Seth Green and Macaulay Culkin.

I did get a kick out of the fact that earlier the night The Rock said, finally, The Rock has returned to Netflix because they've never been on Netflix.

Although the last thing was the WWE documentary of Vince McMahon.

And then they have the producer, Bill Simmons.

They gave him a seat right behind the commentators all night.

Imagine what Vince is thinking.

There's the fucking guy that produced a documentary about him.

He's got ringside tickets behind the commentators.

He put the stake in my heart, and he's over Michael Cole's shoulder.

So we had Rhea and Liv for the women's title.

And

Rhea Ripley's outfit was lovely, by the way.

I highly endorse her

fashion sense.

And this, you know.

It's been the story.

Did we expect Liv Morgan and Rhea Ripley to be a great match?

Liv is not a great worker.

Liv,

you know, is she's a personality now, and the thing with her and Dominic is over, and the whole story with her and Rhea is over.

I'm not saying that, but we couldn't expect Rhea Ripley and Charlotte Flair here.

And there are some limitations with Liv being

vertically challenged and a little bottom-heavy, but the fans were into it.

And, you know, they didn't go too long.

Had a break in the middle.

But finally, Dominic drew the referee and Rochelle Rochelle distracted.

And

Liv hit her finish on Rhea.

And they landed on a chair that was laying there.

And that was a two-count.

And then Liv hit the three amigos and the frog splash.

And that was a two-count.

And then

Rhea was sagged in the ropes and Liv went to do her finish again, the oblivion.

And Rhea caught her and held on to her and held on to the ropes.

And then

they zoomed in on a close-up of Rhea's face looking at her, like, and the people realized in the building, she's got her and she ain't going anywhere.

And Rhea just slung her down and fucking picked her up and hit a riptide, boom, and picked her up and hit another riptide, boom,

and one, two, three.

And the new women's champion, no ifs, ands, or buts.

She beat her flat, and they have fucking settled that issue.

And then Dominic came in and was like, give me a hug, mommy.

And Rhea kicked him in the balls and gave him a riptide.

And then

for whatever reason, apparently just because he was there,

The Undertaker's music started, but didn't.

You heard bong, bong, but then it wasn't wasn't Undertaker.

It was

Mark Calloway, the American badass.

He came out riding a motorcycle, not in gimmick, went around the ring, fist-bumped Rhea Ripley, and

that was that.

Nobody said a word.

Yeah, that would have been the worst wrestling legend appearance on the night if other things hadn't happened.

If other things hadn't happened.

At this point, if you're going to give the people the Undertaker, doesn't it need to be the Undertaker?

Does anybody want to see him riding that fucking motorcycle?

I think when they hear the bongs, they expect him to slowly walk out and, in that case, probably endorse Rhea Ripley.

Instead,

he rode by her, so she had to awkwardly stand there and wait for him to come back.

And applaud the idea that he rode down to the ring.

They introduced The Undertaker's wife as one of the all-time legends of women's wrestling in the crowd.

It's become a bigger world of nepotism there now than it was under Vince McMahon.

Because now, basically, if you show up, you get to have your family members there as legends, too.

Well, with the whole motorcycle guy thing,

I appreciate that the American badass was an important place in Undertaker's career because

they had started maybe to just tire just a little bit of The Undertaker, and he became the American badass and took away all of the characteristics that everybody loved about the Undertaker and made people want to see The Undertaker again.

So finally, when he went back to being the Undertaker, they're like, oh, thank God.

But I think now, if they hear bong or they hear the idea that the Undertaker is in the building, they want to see the fucking Undertaker.

They don't want to see the goddamn right-wing Trump-supporting kid rock-listening fucking motorcycle guy.

But nevertheless,

so that was that new women's champion.

So

what's uh

that's pretty much over, right?

Unless Rhea is going to beat Dominic in a single match.

It appeared they blew off the whole thing.

I thought it was a really good match.

I thought Liv did great.

Her facial expressions, the way she sells everything are great.

Rhea looked incredible in there.

I mean, they haven't really done, I guess, technically Rhea and Raquel, but

if she blew past Liv here finally, it looked like, won the title back, got her revenge,

got to beat up Dominic.

They're not going to do a match.

You got to figure that out.

I was being a super.

No, I know, but I'm just saying.

I mean, you got to figure that's it.

I mean, you got to figure what else could they do.

I guess now we'll see them each go.

It's weird.

Rhea's been involved with Dominic for so long.

What's the last thing she did without Dominic?

Turn on edge?

I forgot about that.

Yeah, I mean, it's been a long time, so it'll be interesting.

Well, speaking of interesting,

boy howdy, there's got to be one in every crowd.

I hate that it was Drew McIntyre's match, but Jey Uso and Drew McIntyre, did you get warm, fuzzy feelings over this whole segment, or was it burdensome to watch after a while?

No, I really didn't like it.

I didn't think it was connecting, and the crowd turned into an AEW crowd.

They went dead silent.

And Drew McIntyre is over.

Jey Uso, I mean, his ring introduction, him coming out of the crowd

was a big thing, and everyone was going crazy.

But once the bell rang, and then the bell rang, it's like Chunkyard Dog.

I hate to say it because he's not in bad shape or anything, but

the gimmick's over.

The work isn't necessarily there to match the gimmick.

But no, but hold on.

I timed it.

I timed it.

Hold on here.

This thing was one of the shorter matches, if not the shortest match, because

at eight minutes in, I was going, oh, my God, we're only eight minutes in.

And at that point, they were going into their finish, but they started out with, again,

whoever the fucking rappers are, Travis Scott, whoever the fuck he may be.

Big star.

Well, that's what they said.

No,

he's a really, really big star.

I mean, I mean, it's a big coup for them to have him doing the raw entrance music as opposed to the Pointer Sisters.

Oh, was that his fault?

Also, the entrance music was his too?

Because that fucking sucks.

Well, again, it doesn't connect to you, but he's a big deal.

And again, that speaks to the difference in the companies.

Well, I don't care whether he's a big star or not.

He's standing, he's smoking a joint on live TV in the fucking building while he looks like he just got out on parole

from somewhere

and he didn't look to and he's holding a mark title belt.

I thought it was some guy that had gotten a goddamn camera shot.

Like, they're fixing to shoot the entrance.

And who they need to move this guy over.

I will say, for a big star, no charisma.

He stood there, he didn't move, and then Jey Uso came out, and there was the charisma.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Is some fucking guy that looks like he's in the goddamn county lockup, smoking a fucking joint, holding a mark belt.

And I know weed's legal in California, but is smoking indoors?

Did they have to get some kind of dispensation?

Is that part of his gimmick?

What is he?

Ripping off Snoop Dogg?

Anyway, they come down to the ring together, Jay and the felon.

And

that's where I realized it used to be that the boys were trying to get rubs from celebrities.

The wrestlers always wanted to be around a TV star, a movie star, or some rock star, a celebrity, get a rub, get a picture, get now

I know who all the wrestlers are, but I've never heard of any of the celebrities.

And all the celebrities want to stand next to the wrestlers on TV so people will fucking know who the fuck they are.

We have completely reversed our trajectory, Brian.

Anyway,

the match started, and thankfully, Travis Scott was not involved in it.

But this is the problem:

Drew's great.

Jay's over.

But as we said before, both the Usos, you don't look forward to any of the matches.

And there's

with a lot of guys and Jay Uso, I noticed there's a timing thing that doesn't click.

There's whatever the

pace is glacial, except when they're

kind of over rushing things.

They didn't tear the house down by any means.

It was kind of like

filling time.

At one point, in the middle of it, dueling chance started.

Drew was picking up some support.

Like, get this fucking thing over with.

And then finally,

Drew kicked the shit out of Jay.

Jay collapsed.

Drew waited until he got up so he could run and hit him with the claymore.

But when he went for the kick,

Jay dropped flat and Drew went over the top of him and Jay rolled him up one, two, three

and got the fight.

And you can't really

beat Jay because he's not a good enough worker to have the match where it wouldn't matter really if you beat him.

And you can't beat him or he won't stay over like this.

But goddamn, the Uso matches are just rotten.

I'm sorry.

They're very important parts of this deal, but the matches.

Tag teams, singles, I don't give a shit.

I haven't seen a fucking four-star match yet.

They're sloppy and they don't have good timing.

And with that said, I think with Drew,

with the right opponent, the matches are good, but we've seen him in there with the wrong guy, and he ends up, you know, it ends up being a boring match that stinks out the place.

So

that may not be the guy to book with Jey Uso.

Well, no, and Drew as a heel has been much more consistent as a babyface, but

it's just so hard for Drew or any

heel to stand there and weeble wobble for the yeet punches and the timing is off and maintain any kind of self-respect for themselves.

But

anywho,

after more celebrities that I've never heard of and Gabriel Iglesias, who I have heard of and just don't give a shit about,

then, and by the way, Heyman did a little thing backstage where he put Roman over,

and Roman said to him that January 27th was the date that he could do something.

But and because of the streaming TV and me not being able to figure out how to reverse this fucking thing, rewind it, back it up, whatever.

What is January 27th the date that he can do whatever?

We don't know exactly yet, but that is a Monday night.

Aha!

Well, that makes all the difference.

So, Paul has got him doing something on January 27th.

And then came the moment we've all been waiting for.

The music played,

and here came Hulk Hogan and Jimmy Hart.

He is a real American.

Americans hate him as only Americans.

This was the goddamnest thing I've ever seen.

You would think

in Los Angeles, maybe it's not like it's not New York or Philadelphia.

It's a crowd of Hollywood hipsters.

They want to see the stars.

It's a night of nostalgia.

And

also moving forward, it's Hulk Hogan.

He was the WWF in the 80s.

They wouldn't give a cripple crab a crutch, much less give Hulk Hogan a fucking break here.

They booed him out of the building as he was trying to do the promo where he put the WWE and the fans over

and talk about how great the fans are and how great tag team partners they've been.

They were hooting him out.

I think, you know, we were talking a little earlier about how well they really like

Mick Foley as a human being, right?

And they like The Rock as a star, but they kind of in the middle with Cena, they like him as a star, but

he's also a nice human being, whereas The Rock is just

on Mount Olympus.

But this was an example of,

we don't care whether you've been a star or not as a person,

we hate the fuck out of you.

Has he just lied and bullshitted?

And

I mean, we know about the video.

That was what, 10 years ago?

I think that's a big part of it.

I think the video is.

I think a video, the video is a major part of it.

Again, it's in Los Angeles.

But he's been back and not been, he's not been carried out of the building on their shoulders, but they haven't savaged him when he was there a couple of years ago making an appearance.

This was like, fuck you.

We just, we're sick the fuck of you.

No, they booed him from the second he came out.

You felt bad for Jimmy Hart because he's out there waving the American flag as best he can and they're just booing.

He put, he mentioned Andre the Giant and Randy Savage.

They booed.

They booed everybody.

They almost booed Andre's name, but they wouldn't even react to Randy Savage because Hogan is the one who said it.

And there's poor Jimmy, the nicest guy in the building, is back there waving that flag and he's 80.

And he was moving better than fucking Hogan was.

It's not easy just to wave a flag for two minutes straight.

That's

incredible.

Hogan looked crippled and his arms are gone.

Jimmy's 80 years old.

He's waving that flag.

And the poor guy, he has to get Hogan's residual booze.

But not just the video and just the general heat he had before, but this seemed like fresh.

We keep hearing you and we keep seeing you and you're full of shit every time we do.

And we don't want to hear no more of you.

This is a new day.

Stay out of our goddamn business.

I think the video is a big part of it.

I think the fact that his reputation over the last decade has grown as being just a liar.

You know, the video where we talk about all his lies, it's like 2 million people have watched that video.

And that's just our video.

I mean, his reputation has grown.

I do think for especially Los Angeles,

you know, politically leaning, not to make

it, I think that's a big part of it, too.

There's not much appealing about Hulk Hogan as a person.

Right now.

And again, he's coming out there.

He's crippled.

I mean, I've never seen him look that bad.

He couldn't have made it to the ring.

Like, they had to do this right where he took only like 10 steps and came out and waved.

And they're booing everything, his beer that no one wants.

That no one, I mean, oh, that's the other thing.

Like, Ric Flair had Woo Energy.

This is like that on a bigger scale.

They're now going to be sponsored.

Plus, kids are not going to be allowed to drink it.

But that's the thing: is that

he announced that, and

a great tag team partner is going to be the WWF or WWE and my real American beer and they hooted the shit out of the beer.

But doesn't Steve Austin have a beer?

Oh, he did have something.

I mean, it's been a while ago.

I hadn't even thought about that.

He did have something, yeah.

But how the fuck?

Because they want to make money, so they're not going to spend a bunch of money advertising on WWE.

But I'm just, I'm gobsmacked that

of all of the people that they've ever had on their roster, Hulk Hogan was say your prayers, take your vitamins.

He was the kid's hero in the 80s.

You're the all-American guy.

But if you think about drinking beer, you're thinking about Steve Austin.

And how they missed that, I don't know.

And why anybody would want to drink beer that Hulk Hogan, what does it turn you into a fucking liar?

You know, how it and him and Flair are very similar at this stage, right now.

In terms of just anyone who comes along with some money, hey, we want to slap your name on this product.

Sure, brother.

As long as you pay me my million, whatever.

But it's just, and

Hogan was never cool with the guys.

I mean, guys liked Hogan, especially in the 80s and the NWO in the 90s.

But was Hogan ever

cool like Nature Boy Ric Flair or cool like Holland Nash or a cool heel or a cool anything?

Or did he just hang around with the cool guys and he had more of a

WWF ice cream bar reputation?

I think Hulk Hogan was cool up until around 86, 87, when all of a sudden he switched to yellow.

But was he cool

to the adults?

I think he was cool up until that point.

Then he became kind of a character of himself as things became more successful and they kind of went down a different road.

It made him more kid-friendly.

This was his town.

You know, it's important to note he was a big draw in L.A.

God, that's right.

I mean, it's not like this is the middle of nowhere.

This is a town that he was a major star in.

Well, he can draw a crowd now.

They'll all have rocks in their hands to throw at him, but he can gather the folks.

This has to make you wonder if they're going to rethink him being on Saturday night's main event.

Well, they can't bring him back after that reception, can they?

I don't see how.

Because there's not one.

I can't think of a single legend that has ever been booed like that.

I've never seen Hogan booed like that.

Even when the NWO switch happened, that was in the middle of a heel turn, and he's doing a heel promo, and he calls the fans crap.

That makes sense.

They booed him from the second that music.

Pat McAfee was yelling like Jesus returned.

Oh my God, look at that!

And he was the only one.

Everyone else started booing immediately.

And it kept up for the whole thing.

Jimmy, it's just such a surreal sight.

He got up to boo Netflix.

He's out.

Netflix is our greatest tag team partner.

The fans booed that.

Netflix was in the building.

They saw that.

So if they ever thought about, hey, we should do a Hulk Hogan Hogan project,

maybe not.

He lost the fan.

He's lost the fans completely.

He has his fans, but in terms of...

They weren't there.

In terms of the wrestling fan base,

would it even pop a number right now if Hulk Hogan was announced in advance of being there?

I don't know.

I think you'd have more people on a picket line than you would buying tickets to see the show.

You brought up Steve Austin.

If Steve Austin was there, I think people would have reacted big.

Oh, they would have gone out of their minds.

It's a Hogan-specific thing.

And again, like Flair, who started showing up at AEW TV and it was not very good.

All of a sudden, his energy drink was all over the room.

We heard it was a multi-year thing.

That ended quick.

The Hogan beer.

You know, again, this is not Coors Light or Mickeloe or...

Anything you could think of that's a nationally recognized brand.

It's an upstart with Hulk Hogan as the spokesperson or icon icon or whatever the fuck it is.

Yeah, let's see how long this lasts.

This will be interesting.

That was the worst.

I mean, I can't think of a more counterproductive appearance for someone trying to promote their own product.

Yeah, no, and that's the thing.

I'm thinking, if there is a new audience, they're going to be, well, why?

We thought Hulk Hogan was a big hero.

These people want to lynch him.

What the fuck?

Should he come out as NWO Hogan at Saturday Night's Main event?

Now he's a heel yelling at them to take advantage of this.

No,

because that's the thing is that these people made it clear.

And if they speak for the rest of these high-ticket price paying WWE fans, it was like, no, we do not want to see you.

Boo.

We do not like you.

Go away from here.

We are not going to pay to see you, nor do we want to look at you now.

And that's, I just,

it wasn't even mixed, was it?

Were the people who wanted to cheer him, were they just afraid to open their mouths?

They might get shot?

See, that's the only thing.

It started out instantly with so many boos.

I guess the only case, the only thing you could think of is that someone would be standing there wanting to cheer him, like, oh, you know, I don't want to be seen as the only person in the section doing this.

And that was bad.

I mean, that was.

I never thought I'd seen a day where Hogan was booed like that in a WWE event.

I mean, they cheer everyone.

That's crazy.

But again, it's L.A.,

but we'll see what happens going forward.

They're meaner in New York and Philly than they are in LA.

Come on.

Even like him doing the cupping of the ear just didn't look good.

He couldn't move his shoulder like that, I guess.

I don't know what.

Just, it wasn't working.

Well, but besides that, he didn't need to cup his ear.

He could hear him booing the shit out of him to plainest day.

Can't imagine they start booing and he's cupping the ear and he's doing shit.

Oh,

what did they say to him when he went in the back?

Because there was no...

All right, we have like 30 seconds before he gets back here.

No, he was right there because he couldn't walk.

Yeah.

Oh, well, it worked in rehearsal.

But I don't see how because he mentioned the names of popular people who then the crowd turned against.

So

I don't see how they can bring him back.

What do they go out and say, look, we got three or four guys that's really over as big star as Hulk.

Please don't mention their name, please.

Just don't say anything about them because he even did like macho man.

Oh, yeah, and you just hear boo,

keep his name out of your whore mouth.

And they went to like the wide shot, so you just see people standing and yelling, boo.

Oh, amazing.

But what else could come then but the main event of the evening?

And they had plugged this one:

The biggest fight in the WWE possible was going to be Seth Rollins and CM Punk.

And

here it became

Seth Franklin Rollins out.

And was that the devil costume?

Was that the costume that Satan wore in the howling man episode of the Twilight Zone when he was released from the monastery?

I don't know.

Satan was just wearing red and yellow and plugging his beard.

Yeah, no, that was the guy that was really unpopular.

Satan was over in a corner taking notes.

But Seth came out and then on the Netflix debut,

Lac Mussolini.

He's getting streamy.

He's being streamed to every corner of the world.

Oh, boy.

Well, they streamed.

They streamed him.

They streamed.

I don't know what you did.

You streaked, screeched, street, street, scratched.

Scrot,

scratched my screech.

Well, they had a fight is what they had, as it was billed and intended to be.

But again,

they get in a fight and they go to the floor and they go into and over the rail.

And in AEW, the fans are just sitting there and staring and maybe holding their phone up and kind of giggling.

But these people are popping and chanting for name.

And the crowd was pro-punk because Seth has been leaning on the little

whiny heelishness a little bit.

So the crowd was pro-punk.

And Seth fell into it by getting heat on him and punk fighting back from underneath.

But

they had a heck of a fucking match, and the people were with everything.

Again, we don't need to

do the blow-by-blow,

But they told a story.

They had their fight.

They didn't do anything that either guy, you know, shouldn't do to destroy their aura or whatever.

But it's, you could believe they didn't like each other.

And when they did do big

moves, they would give each other room to breathe in between for the most part.

And,

you know, they traded two counts where the punk would

punk would do Seth shit.

Seth would do punk shit.

Seth hit a GTS, the go-to sleep out of nowhere, but Punk was able to take the bump and roll out to the floor so he couldn't be covered.

But then when Seth rolled him in, Punk hit the curb stomp and got a two count.

And then

a minute later, Seth foiled a GTS and hit a GTS and got another two count.

And then they did a bit on the desk where

Seth was going to go for what looked like maybe a pile driver.

Punk then picked him up for the go-to-sleep, but then Seth backed out of that and hit a pedigree

on the desk and rolled Punk in and hit a pedigree in the ring and got a two count.

Ah, goddammit.

Now everybody's blown up.

Then they got the dueling chance again, and then they get in a slug fest where

it looked like that they were attempting as best they could to say okay don't move but there's there's not going to be a lot of fucking room for error on this one with the punches

and then seth hit the buckle bomb the curb stomp cover one two punk gets his foot on the ropes and a huge pop for the foot on the ropes because the people understand

it

The other fucking channels got the guy being set on fire with a flamethrower.

They don't really get with that.

And the people are chanting, this is awesome.

And then

came the finish, and I'm going to bitch about it because I have to, if I'm fair to everybody.

Old Seth Franklin Rollins goes for the superplex off the top rope and hits it, and it looked great.

Boom.

But then they continued rolling through, and Punk popped up to his feet and got up under Seth and gave him the

go-to sleep after he'd just been superplexed.

And I bet you about that every time anybody does it.

And it's the same fucking thing as the falcon arrow.

Oh, I superplex a fucking guy, but now I'm going to roll through and I'm going to pick him up and give him a move that looks half as good and cover him on that one.

It's just goofy, but he picked him up, hit the GTS, and then

Punk staggered down.

Seth fell into the rope, staggered back, and fell over Punk's shoulders.

And Punk got up under him, struggled him up, and hit him with another one.

Boom, one, two, three.

If they could have done anything else besides Punk popping up after a superplex, I wouldn't have had

anything to gripe about.

But otherwise, boom,

the people liked it.

Both of them were selling the effects big.

Punk had to win because

I believe he'll probably be in a

fairly prominent position at WrestleMania.

And,

you know, they finished the show up with a bang.

That's what I thought.

But who am I to say?

What did you think?

You're an expert.

I'm an idiot.

I thought it was a good match.

I really liked it.

The fans got really into it.

I didn't know if they would after that Drew McIntyre match killed the audience.

Well, Well, now don't say the Jey Uso match killed the audience.

Well, the fans were really into it is the point, and I really liked it.

I agree with you, but the finish only because we had just talked about it.

So it was fresh in my mind.

I think it was the Will Ospreay Kyle Fletcher match.

Probably.

I think it was that match where it was something where they both landed in the ring and the other guy who had been getting killed popped right up.

Burst of energy hit something.

I don't even remember if it was the finish, but they did it and we talked about it.

Other than that, great match.

Punk goes over.

Makes you think it's not the end of this.

And good match.

Does Seth then, does he come out next week and

be contrite and say, well, I guess I was wrong all along and let me hug you now and say I love you?

Or does he come and attempt to harass Punk from behind somehow or in some more heelish way?

Is this

Is this the end for Seth Franklin as being a baby face?

Or

can he be redeemed yet?

I don't if they keep doing this thing with him and Punky and a babyface so I think he's a heel

well we will find out when the next chapter the next episode plays on the Netflix next week but otherwise that was the the debut of a new era a new time period

a new generation, all of those things on Netflix.

I hate the streaming television.

I want my cable remote

and my paws and my good operations.

But I guess I'll put up with this.

And you'll probably get there eventually with cable companies and Netflix working together on a remote or something.

But that was the beginning of the Netflix era.

Maybe they could take all these streaming services and all these different channels and bundle them up all together into a service called cable TV.

That'd be nice.

All righty.

Well, what would be nice is to let the people go now so that we can come back in a couple of days and talk their ear off again, wouldn't it?

We'll be back in a few days with the drive-thru, dynamite, and fun classic wrestling talk and questions and more.

And until then, folks, for the first Jim Cornette experience of 2025, it's in the books.

And now, thank you.

Fuck you.

Happy New Year.

Bye-bye, everybody.

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