Episode 563: Saturday Night's Main Event

Like a midnight and the rock and roller.

He's in a fight for wrestling solar.

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

The keys to the future, held by the past.

And with Tag 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 Cornet.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the last Jim Cornette Experience Before Christmas.

And in anticipation of our holiday break, I have done no preparation whatsoever for this show today.

So we're going to go where we want to go.

Do what we want to do.

And here he is to join us, Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting lion, the king, and the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-host to you.

He's overprepared and underappreciated.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

I would like to thank the orchestra for greeting me with the theme to the great Brian Last.

It's wonderful to be here.

I'm so happy it's your show today.

I'm happy it's your show.

Well,

you can't go into things like that.

Because, you know, I'm looking forward.

I'm looking forward to a few days off also, to be quite honest, whether it's a Christmas break, Hanukkah break, winter solstice,

Kwanzaa,

what do they celebrate in Satanism?

Whatever, it's a chance for us to take a couple of days off at this point.

Does Satan have a birthday?

You know, that's a good question.

Well, I mean, everybody has one.

I never thought of the question before.

I think you never hear like, well, they're celebrating the birth of Satan today.

Like, you never hear that.

No.

It seems like that side of the population is getting shortchanged, come to think of it.

Unless Satan's a Jehovah's Witness or something.

Well, in that case, he deserves it.

He deserves what?

Being Satan.

Well, being dirty in hell.

I don't know.

I chased a couple of those son of a bitches off my porch naked one morning.

They were naked.

I never told you this story.

No, I was.

Oh, no, I don't think I know this story.

No.

This was, my God, it was almost 20 years ago.

We hadn't been living here back here very long.

And

I can't remember what we, it was the OVW days.

I'd probably, I think maybe a TV the night before, up late, editing, whatever.

It's like eight o'clock in the morning and it's cold weather and somebody, boom, boom, boom, before we had the gate.

That's the reason why we got the gate, knocking on the front door and I'm in bed and stays in bed and we didn't even have Harley then.

And I'm like, what the fuck?

What could be going on?

And I crept down the stairs because I had no clothes on, but I wanted to see who was on my front porch and peeked out.

And there's this man and this woman

standing there.

And I'm like, what can this be?

And I cracked the door open.

And I said, can I help you?

And whatever their

however they opened their spiel

and they had some material in their hand, written material, whatever,

and

they identified themselves in some way or another as Jehovah's Witnesses to speak to me.

I said, are you completely fucking out of your mind?

It is just minutes past eight o' fucking clock in the morning.

I've had no fucking sleep.

I'm a goddamn atheist to begin with, and I will kill you people.

Jesus Christ.

If you don't get the fuck off my porch, you have woke, you son of a bitches.

And they

began backing up like in disbelief, but not going.

And I flung the door open.

I was naked.

And I said, get the fuck out of here.

It is 35 degrees.

And then they started running.

And I changed.

I said, get the fuck out.

You wake me up out of a self-sleep with this bullshit.

Fuck you.

Did they leave a pamphlet?

Yeah, they left a few

floating in the breeze behind them as they scurried on.

And they parked at the road and walked all the way up here in their car.

Or not in their parked their car and walked all the way up here in that cold weather.

And they were over the road again down to the

look at that nice old house.

I'm sure it's a very lovely family that lives there.

Let's go sail.

Nobody's lovely at 8:15 in the morning after doing a TV taping when you're the booker.

So there you go.

Well, forget about that.

In life in general, that's too early.

Anything before 9 a.m.

is too early.

Well, no, in those days, anything of that nature come knocking on my door before fucking noon.

And even then, you wouldn't have got a warm response, but I'd have been dressed.

Do you think there should be enforceable no-solicitation lists?

Like, I don't know who you'd register with, the local authorities, where it's against the law to solicit on certain properties if they deem themselves.

Well, who the these people believe in whatever the fuck it is they believe in, which is even an off-brand offshoot of the bullshit that everybody else believes in.

You think they're going to be checking local fucking lists?

They think they have the approval of, is Jehovah God for them?

I'm not exactly sure, but I know they don't celebrate their birthdays.

That's the part I would have loved to have heard them try to sell you on.

The idea you would be dropping your birthday as a celebratory event.

What the fuck has that got to do with anything?

Why don't they like birthdays?

I think you're only supposed to celebrate Jehovah, not yourself.

Well,

Jehovah can go to fuck himself.

Who the fuck is Jehovah anyway?

Well, hold on, let's find out.

Can you Google Jehovah?

I was going to, I was going to, while you're Googling Jehovah, let me just mention

that I have a bunch of notes here for things that we're going to talk about.

And no particular order for things.

So we're just going to do this until it comes out of our crotch and we're done with it.

And we're going to talk about Saturday night's main event.

I know that.

And we promised the people some Mid-South wrestling.

So what's going on with Jehovah?

All right, a little bit of information from Wikipedia because they always get everything right.

Jehovah's Witnesses are a religious group that grew out of the Bible study movement founded by Charles Taze Russell in the 19th century.

Taze?

Was that in quotation marks, like a fucking nickname, or is that his middle name?

Russell co-founded Zion Watchtower Tract Society in 1881 to organize and print the movement's publications.

A leadership dispute after Russell's death resulted in several groups breaking away with Joseph Franklin Rutherford,

all these names, retaining, everyone has their middle name, retaining control of the Watchtower Society and its properties.

Rutherford made significant organizational and doctrinal changes, including adoption of the name Jehovah's Witnesses in 1931 to distinguish the group from other Bible study groups and symbolize a break with the legacy of Russell's traditions.

Jehovah's Witnesses are.

So, this is all just a bunch of people for 2,000 years getting mad at the other guy and making up their own shit.

Jehovah's Witnesses are considered to be, all right, this may take a second, are considered to be non-Trinitarian,

millenarian,

restorationist christian denomination

say that quickly in 2023 the group reported approximately 8.6 million members

they consider the use of god's name vital for process process for proper worship they do not observe christmas easter birthdays or other holidays or customs they consider to have pagan origins incompatible with christianity

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Pagan origins.

I mean, I know that, you know, Halloween, you might be able to make a case, but

what are they mad at Thanksgiving for?

We know that started with the

dumb white people that came over here and stole the Indians' property.

But at least they fed them once.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the destruction of the present world system at Armageddon is imminent, and the establishment of God's kingdom kingdom over earth is the only solution to all of humanity's problems.

So, these are the people that go around knocking on your door at eight o'clock in the morning.

They're always pleasant, I'll say that.

Well, yeah, why would they be in a good mood?

They think the world is coming to a fucking end, and they've got to personally go out and goddamn round up people to fucking stop it.

But isn't that the thing sometimes like when you see with some of these cults where, what was the one where the guy was going to go on the comet?

Haley Bopp.

Was that it?

Remember what I'm talking about?

The guy and like all of his cult, they all killed themselves very happily thinking they were going to just ride this comet through time.

I must have missed that one.

Well, all right.

Well, was that the Kool-Aid guy, or was that the

fucking?

No, no, no, not him.

Not that.

Oh, Heyman found work and

put an end to that plot.

But well, anyway, how did we get started talking?

You were talking about chasing Jehovah's Witnesses naked.

Well, you brought it up.

So

this is my show.

Quit trying to steer the conversation.

See, you know, it would be a great documentary if you found all these different people and interviewed them without any of them knowing they're talking about the same person, like the cop from Mustang Hill and the Jehovah's Witness person who ran from the crazed naked man and the guy from Virginia Beach.

Yeah, what if you put them all in a room, they all tell the story, and then the big reveal is it's one man, and here he is.

That kind of, it'd be like the testimony in the last episode of Seinfeld, where everybody that they'd interacted with came together to say what a.

Anyway, what's your take on?

Hey, I don't think I've ever asked you that.

What's your take on the Seinfeld finale?

A lot of people like myself at the time were disappointed in it.

Not to say it's not a funny episode, but...

It was the final episode, and it was a little different than a lot of the other episodes.

What are your thoughts?

Well, I liked that they brought everybody back.

They had the guest stars.

You know, and

it did have its moments, but

I didn't want to see them end up in the fucking jail cell.

There should have been, it was a flat ending to

they built and built, and it was a two-parter, was it not?

It was.

So they built over two weeks, and they had all the...

Had all the talent on a card.

It was like the Cleveland Super Bowl of Wrestling, but in the end, the finish was kind of flat.

I think it became a two-parter in syndication.

Originally, I don't think it was a two-parter.

Well, yeah, there you go.

Yes, they wouldn't have

broken up the big main event on network first run, but yeah, but it became a two-parter in syndication.

But yeah, flat finish.

They put too much time and effort into getting all of the co-stars in instead of maybe

coming up with

some kind of funny fuck finish.

See, I complain about finishes all the time.

It needed to be funny in a funny type of way.

Oh, Larry David made up for it with Kirby's enthusiasm.

Well, yeah, but it eventually, but it took all those years to get them all back.

They should have only been in jail if they were going to do a fucking two-hour special the next year where they got out of jail.

Yeah, how did Elaine get to share the same cell with the boys?

Well, see, that's a loophole also.

But it was a small town.

So maybe they had the sheep in the other cell.

I got notes here.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

See, I like that.

That's a comforting sound to me, the sound of paper.

I want to thank John Fell in Baltimore.

The sound of paper.

The sound of paper.

John Fell in Baltimore sent me a bunch of it.

The mighty Marvel calendar book as a Christmas gift.

And it is a 12-inch by 12-inch hardbound heavy.

It's a hold on I'm trying.

Oh, it's a heavy tome.

I would say this thing weighs in the area of five to seven pounds.

Wow.

And it's full color and slick paper, as they say in the advertising.

And

it is full reprints with the story and et cetera, and peripheral information on the annual wall calendars that Marvel used to do from about 1975 to 87, I think, or thereabouts.

Full reprints of the with the

they did

all the top artists at the time did special art just for these calendars and then the the actual calendar has

various important dates in Marvel history or characters or whatever.

And it's like the wall calendars were like instead of the pictures of the sexy firemen or the kittens climbing a tree, you had the Hulk versus Spider-Man.

So he sent me one of these.

Oh, I've just hurt my back trying to pick the thing up.

It's so,

it's so,

it's so heavy.

Oh, God.

I got to clear my throat because I'm going to sing, ladies and gentlemen.

No, You know what?

Let your throat get bad.

Just let it.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, while he's doing that,

you're not getting out of there because this is starting to be an annual tradition since this will be the second year.

But I was straightening up the office here.

The shelves on the

periphery of my desk here have gotten clogged up with program notes and

magazines and things and such that we have done research with and everything about the podcast.

And this is something I found in this stack of stuff from last year's Christmas show.

Can you hear it?

Last year's Christmas show was a mess.

Of course, you remember, ladies and gentlemen, Hotchkiss drank too much of the punch.

Oh, come on.

That was the Christmas party, not the Christmas show.

I don't remember the Christmas show.

I don't even remember the Christmas show.

Well, that's because you got into too much of the punch, the

Maui Wowie punch.

But

no,

this was a fan submission, and it is not.

I don't remember if I read who sent it or put it out there or whatever last year because there's no name on this, but I'd printed it out off of the interwebs

because I wanted to save it.

So I thought I would just make it my annual rendition.

You remember Brian Tony the snowman, don't you?

I do.

I do remember Tony the Snow.

Was that one year ago?

I believe it, I thought it was.

It might have been a couple of years ago.

I don't know how long this stack of shit's been sitting here.

That's no way to talk about Tony.

No, I'm not talking about the

high.

But, ladies and gentlemen, just for the sake of the holidays, my rendition of Tony the Snowman, uncredited author.

Tony the snowman has a holly jolly soul with a rolled up bill and a real red nose and pupils like black holes.

Tony the snowman dreams a fairy tale today.

His booking's bad and the contents sad, but they'll beat WWE one day.

He thinks there is some magic when the snow goes up his nose, for when he takes a little sniff, he thinks he books like Rhodes oh Tony the snowman he's alive as he could be he jumps and shouts and stomps around hugging talent awkwardly

Merry Christmas Tony from us and whoever wrote that yeah that's a shame you don't remember who wrote it well that's not that I don't remember I don't think I ever knew it was

like one of those songs you never know where it came from well there's no byline here see

there's no byline.

It was just out there on the interweb.

Anyway, what?

Ah, we don't have time for that today.

What is going on over here?

I'm out looking through my notes.

What's the matter with you, August?

What's the matter with you?

What?

Try to be professional over here.

Let's dig out of the snow.

I got another email.

Um,

and uh, this is actually,

we want to send good holiday wishes, greetings, however they say it in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland.

Belfast, Northern Ireland, do they say Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas?

Because they say Happy Christmas over in England.

Do they say happy holidays?

Cheers, or does that work or whatever?

But Phil from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

They say, buy me a pint.

Well, and

how much does that cost?

I don't want to commit to anything before I, but nevertheless, Phil sent us an email, both you and I.

And I'm not going to go through, he's had a lot of health issues with folks in his family,

especially his grandmother and his father.

And so he's been, as the quote goes, going through a lot right now, but he's escaping with our podcast and getting a tickle about hearing about

Plumber Moxley, who's recently been renamed Dick the Boozer, the world's most dangerous plumber,

Tony Kahn, Uncle Dave, Pockets, and the whole gang.

But Phil, we hope that 2025 treats you better.

Don't you, Brian?

Without knowing anything about Phil's character, yes, I do.

Well, God damn it.

Someone buy him a pipe.

I don't know.

I don't know if that's a problem.

He said bad things happen.

Are you saying he's trying to bring this this on himself because of his bad character and conduct?

A lot of people say Phil is the problem.

Well,

and it depends on what Phil you're talking about.

There's a lot of people blaming Phil.

You talking about one Bill Phil or Phil McCracken?

I'm talking about Phil, one pint Phil over in Ireland.

That's who I'm talking about.

Anyhow.

Get well soon, Phil.

No, he's not sick.

Assuming you're a good person.

No, he's not sick.

He's down in the dumps because everybody else has been sick.

Oh, Phil, it's going to get better.

And at least you got your health.

Well, that's a way to look at it.

Thank you for contributing something positive.

So I got another email from a friend of yours also, Brian, Dolph Ramzer.

Did you get this?

He sent me one.

He's a great guy.

Yes, I probably did.

I don't know what it is.

Is it money?

No, it's an email.

Oh, oh, yeah.

But

you've had things going on.

You're behind on your paperwork.

But, and Dolph, of course, the head of Ramzer Records and represents many fine musical artists in the musical world, including the Avet brothers.

He got me in for free to see several years ago.

They're still sending me bills for those tickets.

But anyway,

he heard

the other week on the the drive-thru.

What episode are we on now of the drive-thru?

What number?

Do you have any idea?

As of present, 372.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Well, he said on episode 270, either he made a mistake and it's 370 or elsewhere we did this about 100 weeks ago.

Well, we're backed up on email.

Well, no, it's a new email.

It just came in fucking last week.

But the episode might be old.

Anyway, I serenaded the folks with a line from Arthur Conley's Sweet Soul Music.

Do you like good music?

Sweet, et cetera, et cetera.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, no.

I mean, I like his version.

His version I like.

Well, whose version?

Arthur Conley's version, not Jimmy.

I thought you meant

you thought Dolph did it.

But no, he says, Dolph says,

because he knows his music.

You're tickling me now.

That song was written by Otis Redding and Arthur Conley together.

They actually took a Sam Cook song and reimagined it.

Otis was a mentor to Conley.

And after Otis died in a plane crash, Conley never was able to get his career back on track.

He was gay and had kept it a secret all of his life.

And he moved to Europe.

changed his name to Lee Roberts and died in obscurity.

Arthur Conley.

Google that.

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm a big Stacks Records fan.

When you really think about it, he just drops off the map pretty quickly when a lot of those, I mean, the backing band he had kept going.

That was Booker T and the MGs backing him, I believe.

Yeah.

Well,

Europe is still on the map, but he dropped out of sight, changed his name, and died in obscurity.

Did you ever see the video?

I want to say it's.

Because Otis Redding dies in 67.

It may have been early 67 or late 66.

The Stacks Records goes to Europe concert.

Yes.

Oh, it's incredible.

Incredible.

And is that available on DVD now that you bring it up?

It was on DVD.

I just don't know if it's on anything since then.

I don't know if it's available on streaming, probably not because of Brian.

Well, no, I want the DVD.

I don't want this streaming nonsense.

Yeah, I think maybe Shout Factory put it out.

I don't remember.

And Dolph Ramsoar, I will get back to you.

Thank you for your interest in distributing Arcadian Vanguard records based on the success of the theme of the Great Brian Last.

Yeah, well, he's done.

We look forward to the vinyl release.

He's not done yet before you make your pitch for him to make you a fucking Grammy Award-winning artist there.

Don't call us, we'll call you.

Sugarloaf.

Remember those lyrics?

But he continues.

Recently, I had the great fortune of meeting the booking agent for Otis Redding.

His name is Alex Hodges.

He's 83 years old, and he first met Otis in Macon, Georgia, in 1959, and booked him until his death in 1967.

And he actually quit the music business for two years afterward, as he was so distraught after the plane crash.

But listen to this now about how things could have been different.

A few days before his death, Otis came to see Alex and played him two versions of sitting on the dock of the bay.

Otis said that the guys in the studio were making fun of the whistle at the end of the tune.

So he had a version without the whistle.

Alex told him you have to keep the whistle in there.

And as you know, Brian, and everybody, that turned out to be Otis Redding's only number one hit posthumously.

Yeah, and that whistle ended up being used later on a lot in various hip-hop samples.

Yeah, so the thing is,

if he'd have listened to the fucking guys in the studio,

sometimes they'll wring the fucking uniqueness out of something but thank goodness he had

old alex hodges there can you imagine without the whistle but anyway now now sell your fucking music to dolph can you imagine you talk about what ifs what if otis redding hadn't died in 67 because i mean things were really just beginning to take off and things were starting to get more experimental and you know there were more doors opening for soul music oh but just the career he would have had from 67 to 75 would have been insane.

As a songwriter, I mean, who knows who would have been performing his songs?

And of course, as a performer, because you see everything with him at Monterey Pop and

the Europe video, too.

He's explosive.

He's incredible.

Especially with that band.

I mean, he had the greatest band behind him.

And

again, you know, the whole

funk music movement of the early 70s, he would have fit right in.

So, yeah.

But, well, now, why are you bumming me out?

I was trying to end it on a positive note about Alex Hodges keeping the whistle.

I enjoy talking music.

It's more fun than talking AEW.

Well,

talking about your goddamn colonoscopy is more fun than talking about.

There's your whistle.

Anyway,

you know what else is happening?

No.

The Jim Londos book has been released.

Steve Johnson has we've talked about it here on the program, I think, before.

It's been,

I remember talking about more of it than you do, but

Steve Johnson has authored the definitive biography of Jim Londos called Jim Londos, The Golden Greek of Professional Wrestling.

It's on McFarland,

M-C-F-A-R-L-A-N-D, McFarland Books,

and they are now taking orders.

Apparently, it may have been delayed somewhat because I think a printing factory or something in the chain.

Well, the McFarland Books is located in Western North Carolina.

So they had weather issues that everybody's aware of.

But finally,

things are on track and they're taking orders.

And

I'm just, you're a big Londos collector.

Did they send you one of these, Brian?

He sent me one.

I've known Steve for years.

No, I have not received one.

I have a pre-order in.

So when it finally comes out, I've received several Amazon updates saying it was delayed.

It was delayed.

It was delayed.

But I guess now it's finally coming out.

I'll finally get to read it.

See, I got mine from the author, but you know,

he's an elderly man like I am.

So he probably forgets about the whipper snappers like you that just come along the scene the last 20 or 30 years.

He probably doesn't know who I am.

I'm just one of the biggest Londos collectors out there.

Well,

you know,

did you tell the people about how you actually won the auction and got Jim Londis' jock strap that he used in 1934 in the match with Lewis?

That's not true.

That's not true.

I lost out to John Pantosi on that auction, as everyone knows.

But hey, John Pantozzi may sniff jocks, but they're the goddamn finest, rarest jocks in the world.

That's not what I said either.

But yeah, Jim Londis, this should be interesting because

You know, you always have him in the argument, who's the biggest star in the history of wrestling.

Now there'll finally be

a definitive, I would assume, a definitive biography to kind of wrap up the argument.

Well, see, and I read the

manuscript, but the book has pictures, so it's even better.

But no, this is an amazing story.

Londos is the

biggest mainstream name in the history of...

professional wrestling in the United States.

And yes, I am including Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin and The Rock and et cetera, because of his era.

Until you read the book, well, we've known because, you know, we look into these things, but when you read this book, you will understand

that he was one of the

most famous celebrities in not only the United States, but in

Europe and Greece and around the world because of the newspaper coverage of wrestling at that time, when everybody everywhere read the newspaper and and newsreels and things of, you know, it was a, it was a big deal when Jim Londos came into town on the train.

So

he also transformed the wrestling business with really being the first big major drawing card champion that was the worker that would sell and get sympathy and bring emotion from the people.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Well, two things on Londos.

One, I don't have it here because it wasn't something I was going to keep in here for guests of program because of the nature of it, but I have, I recently purchased just someone, and I forget even the town, actually.

It's in the other room.

They cut out everything that was in the newspaper about Londis coming to town, and then they got a press pass to go to the event.

So it was everything about the coverage and about how radio was going to cover it in 1935, I want to say.

And it had the press pass there.

It was pretty cool.

I'll grab that during our next break and tell you about it.

But also, due to the interest in Jim Londis right now, I'm going to probably reissue that Tijuana Bible I have.

Jim Londis, which is the filthiest fucking thing you've ever seen.

That was obviously not an authorized product of the Golden Greek.

Yeah, for anyone who thinks like pornography just started with Larry Flint and Hugh Hefner,

they are making the filthiest cartoons with all your favorite cartoon characters and apparently professional athletes just fucking and sucking and doing all sorts of shit.

But stay tuned.

Coming out from Not McFarlane Press.

Very soon.

Well, yeah, I was about to say we've gone to Tijuana Bibles from this wonderful new book.

Again, Jim Landos, The Golden Greek of Professional Wrestling, which is available at McFarlandBooks.com.

But

again, another one of these great looks like we've talked with Tim Hornbaker about and talked with Brian Solomon about, about the

early days of wrestling, the history of wrestling, the pioneers of wrestling, the people who established it and transformed it over the years.

And this is a big piece that has,

I mean, just,

I'm surprised because of the level of his celebrity when he was literally,

you know, along with the world heavyweight boxing champion, the most famous professional athlete in the country in the 1930s.

I'm surprised somebody hadn't done a book before,

not even from the wrestling world, but from the general sports world, because of,

you know, how fucking mainstream Londos was.

You know what, though, you always have to be careful of those because if it's someone coming into it looking to do a biography of a figure without any understanding of wrestling, they're going to fuck up a lot of stuff.

Yeah, you're right.

It's impossible to wrap your head around it unless it's, you know, something you've been trying to wrap your head around for years and years and years.

But fortunately,

Steve Johnson has a warped head because he's been wrapped wrapped around wrestling for I don't know how long now.

Uh, but anyway, so and we uh encourage everybody to read this thing because it's just swell.

Um,

what else have we got going on here?

You know what?

What?

And what wasn't swell, in my opinion, was SmackDown on Friday the 13th.

But then I think, you know, I've got to hold on here.

I get it.

They've got this fucking thing so wrapped up.

This is like,

goddamn, one of those Abbott and Costello movies where Costello is wrestling the fucking world champion and he's just tying him up in a knot.

And then the champion or the big, maybe the big boxer has his hand on Costello's head while Costello's just windmilling around, can't hit anything.

There is no wrestling war, Brian.

They put SmackDown

on Friday night before the big Saturday night's main event on NBC.

And it's a two-hour infomercial with some wrestling matches thrown in.

There's no contest.

They're going to get one point, what, three or four or five million viewers for that.

Saturday night's main event will be, I would assume, more than that.

And they're not

because there's nothing happening on this show, but I applaud them because they are in such a position that they're drawing fucking big crowds.

They're selling pay-per-view.

Well, not even selling pay-per-view, they're big premium live events.

They're on the cock.

They're setting gate records everywhere, sponsorship, TV rights.

What the fuck?

It's the U.S.

Mint over there.

And they can afford to, whenever they feel like it, just say, ah, fuck it.

We'll just fill the time.

It ain't going to hurt.

You see where I'm going with this?

Yeah, SmackDown kind of sucks.

And I didn't really give a shit about it.

But it's amazing that they're in.

But it doesn't matter.

That's the point.

It doesn't matter.

Again,

when I was sitting across the table from Vince McMahon,

If you'd have said, let's have

Jimmy Uso do a promo for 10 minutes and then Drew McIntyre McIntyre is going to beat him up.

We'll have a girls match for about 20 minutes.

We'll have a VTR with our top guy and his manager talking.

We'll continue to bury LA Knight for about 15 minutes.

We'll have another girls match

and then Cody come out and do a promo

so that Owens can jump him and they get in a pull apart in 280.

So what the fuck is the matter with you?

Every minute there needed to be something going on, or there used to be something, or some of

who?

I mean, it's a well-done program.

It's just beautiful.

It's the building is full.

What did they come to see?

Did they get a goddamn hour Broadway between flare and steamboat afterwards?

The people in the arena to sit through this fucking thing?

Did they get anything else?

Well, I think they do get dark matches.

Of

any caliber?

I'm sure they do.

They have the stars there.

It's just they don't wrestle on TV.

Why waste them in TV matches when you can have them wrestle for the house, have the house leave happy?

I don't hear anymore about, you know, that we used to actually book and advertise the main event stars in dark matches to allegedly draw the house.

I don't know what they're.

Are they just saying good night after

the closing promo segment?

Thank you for coming.

They've had four matches.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Anyway, the things that I liked about it, after

Jimmy Uso came out on a crutch with a broken toe, at least he can still walk.

Bronson Reed will apparently be out until after WrestleMania.

For those of us who were all becoming big fans of his, until he decided that it was a good idea for him to jump off the top of the cage.

And,

well, Tongaloa, take all the time you need, brother.

We want you to make sure you're healthy.

But Jimmy

has a broken toe, and

he spent 10 minutes talking about how proud he was of his family.

And what's he going to do?

Well, I don't know, but it'll be a big year

until Drew McIntyre showed up and leveled him with the fucking Claymore kick and bam and got some heat on him.

And

Aldous and all the agents came out, and Drew left smiling.

And

again,

where was this guy hiding all our lives?

Drew McIntyre has become

ever since Vince McMahon left, the greatest wrestler in the world, hadn't he?

He's fucking fabulous.

And what do you think about what he's doing here?

It seems that he's now kind of the OG bloodline hunter.

Well, yeah.

Kind of like Kevin Owens.

A lot of these guys, when the roles were reversed and Roman was the heel and they were the babyface, obviously had problems with the bloodline.

And now they still have a problem with it, but Roman's the babyface.

And now we got to wait for it to see if Drew's going to get the Roman.

And there is some overlap between Owens being a guy that won't let shit go and is whining about being screwed.

And Drew, that's what he was a master at that.

But because they're

obviously back and forth on mostly different shows and or they're so different, nobody's going to mistake Kevin Owens for Drew McIntyre

or vice versa.

You know, it works, but I just,

McIntyre is fucking great.

And just his delivery and his facials and his whole personality and the shit that he's, you know,

and his matches, but that, again.

That's who Damian Pree should look to for someone who seemed like he was dead in the water and cold and there was no fire there.

And look at him now.

He's got to find the, you know, and they got to let him find it.

But anyway, we got that.

And then we got Tiffany against Mia Yim and the U.S.

title women's thing or Mababi or other.

But then

we got Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman going not only now for

an Emmy, but also potentially an award in cinematography.

Paul looks better in soft focus, doesn't he?

You just kind of know that that

obscene, obese blob with the glowing

light cranium in the back of the shot is Paul, but you don't have to zero in to see every

disfigurement on him, pockmark on his face.

And you actually like his work now.

And I think he's brilliant.

But no, that Roma, were they in a boat?

Were they in a gondola in Venice?

Where were they?

They were somewhere by waterside, seaside.

That's right.

Aaron's, she was selling

Ulafalas by the seashore.

But Roman talked about his rough year and spring and summer.

It all fell apart.

He lost the Ulafala,

which he didn't take.

He earned.

And apparently,

they're going to hot shot January 6th.

And what a day it happens to fall on.

They should have fucking done the raw Netflix debut from

the lawn the at the Capitol.

But they're hot shotting January 6th.

Cena's coming back, all this other stuff.

And now it's going to be Roman versus Solo in a tribal combat match, which

no DQ

with the tribes on the side of things one-on-one.

And Roman says he's going to take it all back.

So they're hot shotting this thing.

And Solo just lost at the end of War Games.

Again, he got every single babyface's finisher.

It wasn't just one guy beating him, but he just took the pinfall or lost the end of that match.

What do they have to do here?

Well, I think Roman's got to win, but also it ain't going to be the end of the story.

And they are a man down, but they have a, don't they have a giant Samoan somewhere?

Hiccule.

That's Hickel.

That almost sounds like redundant, like jumbo, or

fucking

not a redundancy but it it a giant some samoans are always giant in terms of height in terms of height he's a giant hikaloo yeah

maybe i don't know i haven't seen him so i don't know

you could have you know he's ready yet or not you could have him pop up through the ring because he's a giant and then you could say he's the brother of tongolo and he runs the wrong direction

All right, I don't think they're going to do that.

That's probably not a thing they're going to do.

But anyway,

you know, but hey, they've been fooling us for about three years now.

So maybe Roman gets beat on this one.

But maybe he gets beat in such a way that

if he wins, Solo's dead.

It would be hard to figure out a way to keep

Solo scary

if he just got beat at Survivor Series and now he gets beat on this widely watched special.

Because then if you do the heat afterwards, you're just doing the same thing.

And again, it's Royal Rumble season, which is the lead into WrestleMania.

And it's the Netflix debut, if you're going to start doing stuff,

including not just going with a finish, but going with some kind of big, spectacular thing to lead to other things, now's the time.

Potentially,

is there someone else that gets involved in

Roman's business that pisses off one of these two disgruntled Owens or whatever, Cody could be involved.

We don't know what the fuck they're going to do.

Brock?

Is that that's almost

right now?

I think that's almost overkill, isn't it?

What if he was on, we're assuming he comes in with Heyman to join the Roman Reigns side?

What if he didn't?

Well, then, boy, Paul would be in a pickle because he's already used his favor with Punk, and now Punk, he owes Punk a favor.

But where will that favor figure in?

This is good booking, in a sense.

We have no idea where anything's going.

I'm intrigued to see what happens.

But yeah, now, of course, now on the other side of the street, they don't know where anything's going over there either.

But we don't care because we don't understand it to this point.

Over here, we've got a bunch of options, and we're asking questions.

No one's saying, where are they going with that Death Rider stuff?

I hear they they have a giant plumber in development.

They call him Monkey Wrench.

All right.

And that was, and Carmelo Hayes got beat in very quick fashion by Brown Strongman.

Have they given up on Carmelo Hayes?

And why did they ever have the confidence they apparently had to begin with?

I don't know if they've given up.

I wouldn't say that.

But obviously, this was Brown Strowman's big return from tearing whatever his groin or his.

He tore something in that match with Bronson Reed on Raw that prevented him from running.

I don't remember what it was, though.

I thought it may have been his groin.

He shows up every now and then, and

at least it was over quickly.

So it was merciful.

You know what, though?

The fans, I was surprised how into it they were.

Like, they were really happy.

It seemed like that Braun Strowman came out.

I'm like, wow,

everything's over right now.

Except for some of the women's matches.

But here's the thing.

For the past 45 minutes, they'd had Drew McIntyre kick the shit out of one of the babyfaces at a girls' match.

And that's pretty much all they had seen till this came on.

And then

L.A.

Night.

L.A.

Night.

He does a promo about Solo because he's about to wrestle Solo.

And he did a good promo as he always does.

But now it's got to the point where I wrote,

I don't believe any of this.

I don't believe he's going to beat Solo because he never wins.

And

they went out there and he didn't fucking win.

I mean,

it was a good match.

He got offense.

You know, he got to backdrop Jacob over the announced desk.

He did his elbow off the top.

And

then Fatu came back over the desk and jumped on L.A.

Knight.

And, well, they got disqualified.

So he won by disqualification until they beat him up and spiked him.

And then Andre and Apollo Crews came in and they beat them up too and left him laying.

So L.A.

Knight is in a heap with other middle-card talent.

And the people

continue to, yeah, and continue to like him, but I don't, I'm not seeing it as

enthusiastic as it was several months ago are you no it definitely isn't and how could it be i was at the point where i'm thinking now they should turn him heel just so at least he

if he's a baby face they don't want to do it they don't want to they don't they don't want to do the stuff and you know

that defeats purpose i don't know this ain't working right now

bummer man

So then Bailey wrestled Chelsea and I zoned out.

And And they had a Nakamura video with subtitles that I didn't care to sit there and read.

And then

it was time for Michael Cole to introduce Cody because it had been a two-hour show and there were two men's matches and one of them was under five minutes.

And Cody came out

and called Kevin Owens out so that he could tell him off and there was no Owens, no music, no nothing.

So Cody started doing the promo.

And then Owens interrupted from his car on the screen

and,

you know, told Cody that he was way more interesting as Stardust.

And, you know, how can, how, Cody, how can you be okay with using your friends to finish your stupid story?

And so Cody says, well, I'm just going to go back there right now and get him.

And Cody leaves and goes to the back.

And of course, when he gets to the back, Owens jumps him from behind and they have a fight.

And they fight through Gorilla back into the arena and go to the ring so security and the agents can get in a big pull apart with him.

And Owens knocked Cody out with the title belt.

So the last five minutes were wonderful.

But it took a long time to get there.

And that obviously was to lead to

their big confrontation the following night on the return of Saturday night's main event.

But

if I was Cody,

when they walked through it, I'd have said, fuck,

why do I have to blow myself up, go all the way back there for him to fight me all the way out of here?

Just have him jump me from the desk.

I didn't really take it too seriously, Brian.

No, I don't take the.

I've learned not to take SmackDown too seriously for the most part the day before a pay-per-view, or in this case, Saturday night's main event.

Because by then, the cake is already baked.

It's almost always a throwaway show.

I figure you're trying to transition to something, and I'm not exactly sure what, but I'm trying to get away from the case.

Well, no, I'm not

saying that the cake is already baked.

That's right.

It's a mighty good cake.

And when it comes to cakes, Jim, we know where people can get a cake.

Well, no,

it's not a transition.

I was just using a phrase of

a figure of speech.

The cake is already baked.

There's nothing more they can do.

Nothing more you need to do.

The cake is baked.

It's as everything is.

That's right.

So you might as well go to bed.

That's right.

Go to bed.

That's what you got to do.

And wake up and not have to worry about that cake.

What's the promo code, Jim?

Well, because

is it time for a commercial here?

I'll tell you what, friends,

are you feeling listless?

Do you poop out at parties?

Do you stoop and strain?

Well, try a bottle of Dr.

Proctor's Red Rectum Rockers.

They're good.

That's a Boyd Pierce radio read.

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Jim.

What if it's the other way around?

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You could have one for your master, too.

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What more do the folks need to know, Brian?

What more do they need to know about this?

That they will have a good, comfortable night's sleep, and apparently some pillows are going to be thrown your way.

Throw them out of your way.

It's not a pillow fight.

They're not throwing them.

They'll be shipped normally.

Now you sound like me.

They'll be shipped normally, ladies and gentlemen.

You have no reason to fear any type of

brain injury from having pillows flung in your direction.

They're going to be thrown right into your lap in terms of a wonderful deal.

Well, now you're saying they're going to hit you in the crotch with something.

No, nobody's going to hit your nads.

They're not going to be beating Mr.

Johnson and the twins or kicking you in between the goalposts, ladies and gentlemen, with these things.

They're not just going to bring it up on your porch.

and shove it right into your fucking groin.

Ladies and gentlemen, Helix Sleep is a fine mattress.

It's a mattress for me here at the house.

The kids love them, and it's the mattress for you.

One final time.

You can put these pillows in between your legs up in your crotch yourself, and that's a way you can actually sleep and support your hip bones and joints and sockets.

But don't hit anybody in the nuts with anything.

That's

not recommended.

Think it's on the, you know, that tag that you're not supposed to tear off of mattresses?

That's one of the things it says.

Do not hit anyone in the nuts with the mattress or the pillows.

With the mattress, not just the pillow, but with the mattress.

Yes, well, you shouldn't.

Oh, it's even worse.

Hit somebody to nuts with a fucking mattress.

Well, how the hell is that going to happen?

Someone's going to pick up a mattress and throw it?

Yeah, that big motherfucker that's swinging it's going to be a problem too, even if he puts it down.

Someone's wait.

So there's a big motherfucker swinging the mattress around?

Swinging that.

If a motherfucker is big enough, swing a mattress and hit you in the nuts with it, you don't need to fuck with him anyway.

I have never seen this.

What's the matter with you?

I've never seen this in a wrestling area.

We need to get a big, strong wrestler that can get a mattress in there just to swing it around.

But you could swing it around yourself.

Wait a minute.

That happens every time somebody wrestles refrigerator jacks.

All right.

All right.

Well, let's let's once again let's wrap it up.

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with Helix Sleep, the final time.

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That's right, Helix Sleep.

But, Jim, it's time to wake up.

And before we get to the next thing, if you don't mind, I know it's your show, but can I interrupt with something to follow up on?

Good heavens.

I'm following up.

I'm just following up.

All right, a redirect.

Redirect, ladies and gentlemen.

I grabbed this.

This is the thing I was telling you about earlier with Jim Londis.

Oh, yes.

The date of the the show, the press pass for the wrestling show, Lee Darst, promoter,

is February 6th, 1935.

It appears to be Rockford, Illinois.

To broadcast Londisbout, Brisk Advance Sale is reported for Matt Show.

The championship wrestling match between Jim Londis, World Heavyweight Champion, and Ole Olson, the Milwaukee Swedish Heavyweight, at the Shrine Temple on Thursday evening will be broadcast over WROK

with Brant Bloomquist at the Mike.

Mike in quotes, M-I-K-E.

The Londis-Olsen bout will be the only one broadcast.

Meanwhile, the advanced sale of tickets continue to be brisk, and promoter Lee Darst is confident that the shrine will be packed to capacity when Londis and Olsen crawl through the ropes.

Monday, the first day that general mission were placed on sale at the cigar counter at the Nelson Hotel.

I thought that.

Again, that's so great.

In the 30s and 40s and 50s, and even later in some places, remember the Holland Hotel in Manhattan was the booking office for the WWWF.

They would have the wrestling office at a hotel,

and you would go and you would get the tickets there at a window for it.

Well, in this case, it was at the cigar stand, the cigar counter at the Nelson Hotel, and that saw over half of the pasteboards grabbed up, while yesterday's demand was almost as great.

Reserve seats are on sale

at the State and Madison and Grand Recreations,

Henry White's Arcade, the Westside Smoke Shop,

and this one's a little hard to read,

Kitterhan and Snyder.

Londis tossed Jack Smith, who appears in the semi-windup here Thursday night against Hans Bauer in a little over 44 minutes in their title match in Chicago Monday night, using a body slam to gain the fall after a whirl in Londis' famous airplane spin, had Smith Groggy.

Pat Mulligan, a light heavyweight champion who mingles with Rudy Hoffman on the Shrine card, had an easy time defending his title on the same card when he pinned Gus Clem.

It's what a name.

It's 17 minutes and 3 seconds.

There's also something here, again, another thing announcing it'll be heard on the radio WROK.

Wrestlers to weigh in at WROK Studio.

Something new in the weighing in ceremonies for a wrestling show will be tried this evening at 7.45 p.m.

when the eight big boys on tonight's card at the Coliseum will be given the once-over by the examining physician and commissioner

before the mic, again in quotes, in the WROK studio.

Each wrestler, as he is weighed and examined, will speak a few words, as will the physician and the commissioner.

Good way to get points there.

Following the weigh-in, the wrestlers will be rushed to the Coliseum in cars.

Brant Bloomquist will conduct the broadcast.

You know, so they mentioned the Monday night match in Chicago.

At this time, Landos was by far the biggest draw in wrestling.

And I know it doesn't sound like it, but Ole Olson was a name at that point, also.

That, you know, he was a main event guy in a variety of places.

But

since he was in Chicago, this is Rockford, Illinois, not exactly, you know, a major market, especially in 1935.

But the promoter would book Londos out for these spot shows when he was in the main town, and people would go crazy because it was the equivalent of the rock or Austin coming.

And they would do the radio remote, and they'd do the, I'm sure the

Arena did sell out in Rockford for Londos when he's drawing, you know,

tens of thousands of people in Chicago.

But that's an example of a 1930s style spot show.

And that promoter was probably the promoter in Rockford and maybe another town or two.

But they were, who was,

who was promoting Chicago at that point?

Was it

Coleridge?

Coler was still whistling.

Was it Ed White?

Was he before?

I'm trying to, why does that name pop up?

I'm not sure.

I want to look in.

I mean, you know, you know, it's interesting, too, what else is on here.

The Jack Dempsey Luis Furpo heavyweight championship bout in New York several years ago, labeled the most exciting and thrilling heavyweight bouts in the history of the boxing game, will be broadcast over WROK tonight.

Brant Blumquist, WROK's sports announcer, will give a blow-by-blow account of the historic ring battle.

with all the sidelights that surrounded a championship scrap.

He will go on the air at 10.30 p.m.

Well, that's crazy.

That's just a recreation of the fight.

Yes.

Lance Russell used to do those.

As he said, when he started on television, it was called radio.

He would do recreations of like football games or boxing, you know, matches or whatever based on the wire service reports before there was.

you know, just instant communication everywhere.

And that's how he was able to, when they did the WCW hotline,

you could call up and you could hear Lance Russell calling the action for house shows, right?

But the problem was he realized that they were cookie-cuttering

the house shows and the lineups were all the same.

So he would, he'd sit at ringside

and he would call the match with different people in it than were actually having it and use the ring noise.

And he'd just call a match in his head, but you heard it happening in the ring.

You know, this is uh, there's a lot of mentions on both sides of this of Brand Bloomquist.

So, this is either a big fan of his, or considering the press pass here, maybe

it's from his estate.

One last one.

I think it might be him, yeah.

One last one here: wrestling promoter to broadcast today.

Lee Darst, promoter of the heavyweight wrestling show at the Coliseum Wednesday, will be introduced to sports fans of Rockford this afternoon in a radio interview over WROK at 5:45 p.m.

Brant Blumquist,

sports announcer for the local station, will present the likable newcomer from St.

Louis, who established residence in Rockford three weeks ago and plans to make the Fara City his home.

Darst, a product of St.

Louis, will discuss the highlights of Rockford's first big wrestling show, which offers the following high class card.

Hans Bauer, two hundred and twelve, Germany, vs.

Jack Smith, two hundred and ten, Chicago.

Lou Plummer, two hundred and thirty, Waukegan,

vs.

Jack

Zarowich,

or Zarovich, two hundred and fifteen, Russia, Holy Olson, two hundred and thirty, Milwaukee, versus Harold Methany, two hundred and ten, Wood River, Illinois, And finally, Jim McMillan, 220.

Is it Antok, Illinois?

Something like that, versus George Mack, 205 out of Chicago.

So I guess this was the start of Wrestling and Rock where they got Jim Londis early on.

Well, what a way to kick it off.

They should have got Londis for, you know,

Saturday night's main event.

Maybe they'd have had a big crowd.

Well, Saturday night's main event, I think, this past week was a resounding success

any way you look at it i saw someone post i'm being a smart ass it may have been uh king sheebas i saw someone post this where they said i can't believe they got whatever it was like 15 000 people in the nassaw coliseum

i used to go sit ringside at those shows when there was no one there and it was loaded with stars So it's pretty incredible.

Well, that's the thing also.

Remember, I've talked about this.

The Nassau Coliseum was noteworthy in the industry for having a hard crowd if there was people there to begin with.

And

I mean, whether it was the bunkhouse stampede that Crockett tried to do in 88 or WWF shows in the 90s,

you know, whatever would have them setting the seats on fire in other places, they'd give you a polite nod and a wink in the Nassau Coliseum.

And these people

were fucking lit up to see that it,

it, it's the nostalgia factor and the network TV, the return of an old institution, whatever.

They're your people up there.

The New York Yankee son of a bitches.

Well, you explain them.

Explain the people on Long Island?

Yeah.

They expect things to be good, and very often it felt like MSG would get the really good shit, and Nassau Coliseum would get just kind of the other show.

Ah, so Nassau Coliseum people felt like Winston-Salem people.

The garden,

anyone can get to.

You could take a train right to it.

If you live in New York City itself, it's pretty easy to get to.

Nassau Coliseum, you know, you're driving there.

No one's taking the bus.

I mean, I'm sure there's a few people, but no one's taking the fucking bus or the train to East Meadow or whatever.

However that would work.

However it would work.

Yeah, no.

So, I mean...

You're getting a driving crowd from Long Island.

And in a lot of ways, that's the barometer of how hot things are or aren't, is how many people you can get.

Because Long Island

is a hotbed of wrestling fandom.

But a lot of those wrestling fans.

So it's also rotten traffic.

But a lot of those wrestling fans are willing to stay home.

That's the point.

Yeah.

You got to give them something where they're going to want to be a part of it.

And they did it here.

Boy, did they do it here?

Well, can I go on an editorial rant here before we talk about the actual content of the program for Saturday night's main event, which was on December 14th on NBC, did we identify that?

Two things.

Number one, in the 80s, it was on at 11.30 p.m.

in the Saturday Night Live time slot

and did better numbers than Saturday Night Live.

In the 80s, at 11.30,

on Saturday night, they had between 15 and 17 million people.

And remember, they did the one in primetime, the Hogan and Andre rematch, and that match peaked at 32 million viewers.

That's the most watched match in history, isn't it?

Yeah, because

the NBC was a game changer.

They throw that word around a lot lately, but it was a game changer for WWE because even

the first clash of champions on TBS with the Flare versus Sting match only got to 9 million

because at that point,

the difference in availability between NBC and TBS was like two or three to one, right?

Right, but just to clarify what you're saying, at that point, that match, that 9 million was the most watched match in the history of cable television, correct?

Yes, but you couldn't compete with network television even Saturday night, late night in those days.

So

the point is,

the old Saturday nights main events did 15, 16, 17, 18 million people.

When they were on at 8 o'clock, they did 32 million people.

And this one, I bet you they're going to be turning cartwheels.

And what do you think?

Is it?

Because it's just happened over the weekend.

There's no numbers yet.

But you think they're going to be pissed themselves happy with 2.5 million or 3 million?

Or what's the standard these days for NBC?

I would almost wonder if it's a whole lot less than that.

I mean, would they be thrilled at 1.5?

I'm not sure.

I mean, again, it's prime time NBC Saturday.

Well, goddamn, they were doing better on Fox on Friday than 1.5.

Well, we'll see.

I mean, it's going to be very interesting.

They did a really good job of hyping it up.

And

in a lot of ways, they did a great job of making it so that if you're someone who was checking out the product because it was on, or you remember the old Saturday night's main event,

they kind of made it so that it felt right.

They probably could have leaned into that a little bit more with a few things to really nail that.

I think they did a good job.

I mean, the reality of where people are, and

there were fewer channels, there were fewer options.

There were still plenty of people who didn't have cable

in 1986.

Plus, you had Lauren Michaels returning to SNL after the Eversol years.

And, you know, people look back on a lot of that stuff fondly, and there's good stuff.

But the first year was fucking awful.

And then after that, a lot of these guys like Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman kind of started getting their stuff over, but it took a little while.

And that's when WWE was outperforming Saturday Night Live.

Well, and to be honest also,

in a lot of cases, there was a different audience that

Vince is the one who brought the Saturday Night Live audience and the wrestling audience together because in Dallas,

world-class wrestling on KTVT from Fort Worth, the Monday night show that was taped and broadcast the following Saturday, was

doing better in the first half hour.

No, I tell a lie, it was doing better than all of Saturday Night Live.

Central time,

it was on 10 to midnight, but that was a completely different audience watching wrestling in Texas and watching Saturday Night Live at that point in time.

Vince is the one that got them together because of that fucking deal.

But nevertheless, let me editorialize about one more thing.

The retro look,

and they did a good job, as you mentioned.

And,

you know, we'll talk about the theme music and all that stuff, but

you love it.

I like the look of it, but I didn't like experiencing it.

But the aisleway,

they brought back the goddamn,

the old aisleway, the bicycle racks, and it's six feet wide.

And the people on either side all the way down can reach out and touch somebody.

It makes the guys look like bigger stars.

It really does.

And between that, I love the aisle like that.

I think that's the way it should be.

And by the way, it cuts down on your costs if you don't have to lug around that big fucking stage.

If all you need is that, and you're going to have people just by being fans, giving you the appearance you want, where everyone looks like a star with people reaching for them,

they should do that.

I also like the red, white, and blue ring ropes.

But hold before we talk about the color scheme, let me just remind you of this, though.

Would you say that right now,

probably in all of the history of professional wrestling, right now,

there is the least chance that

any of the talent, any of the heels are going to be attacked by fans who are mad at what they have done in the context of the wrestling business in their match or their promo or what they did last show or whatever.

Has there ever been any a time

where there's been less chance?

There's always a random nut, a John Lennon, right?

There's always some guy tackled Bret Hart at the Hall of Fame.

But on a realistic level, has there been any less chance of heels being punched, assaulted, stabbed, cut, or otherwise maligned by a fan than any time in history right now?

No.

And again, it's easy for me as the fan to say I love that look.

Now, also, if you notice,

there were two security guards behind everyone.

It wasn't like they were next to them.

Sometimes you would see wrestlers come out at the garden.

I know who the head of security was.

He was the head of security at Long Beach High School, Teddy Suba.

And they would come out there.

They wanted to swarm the wrestlers and walk them into the ring.

You didn't have that probably because they didn't want the visual of it.

But you'd have to do that.

You would have to do that.

And even then, sometimes it didn't work.

And that's the thing.

The business has evolved to where now

none of the fans are going to fuck with any of these guys.

They don't believe anything.

The heels don't have any legitimate heat.

The booing while you're smiling about booing is not heat.

And they've got 15-foot-wide allways and these goddamn custom-built barricades and everything.

You can't get within binocular distance of these motherfuckers in any setup today.

But in the territory days when we stood a legitimate chance of getting punched or kicked or stabbed or fucking shit flung in our eyes or whatever,

that's what the goddamn highways looked like.

And it didn't make any sense, except the promoters wanted to sell as many tickets as they possibly could.

And the most expensive ones were on the floor where you had to walk through.

So

sometimes they would make a change in a town.

because you'd had lawsuits or police trouble, or sometimes the building would make you.

That New Orleans police barricade you saw at the downtown auditorium in New Orleans was

instigated by the police because they were sick of the fucking issues.

But

we used to take a fucking pummeling just to get to the ring.

And now nobody wants to fucking hit anybody.

And they've got a bobsled run.

It just, it drives me out of my mind.

But that's the other thing.

If they reintroduce barricades, maybe not as tight as they were here, maybe a little bit in between somewhere.

You know, there is going to be some crazy fan that feels encouraged to grab one of the girls by the hair or something.

You would think, because once you start making it a little looser, a little easier to get them,

you know, they're still crazy.

They may be crazier fans today, but just more like in the perverted sense, not in the dangerous sense.

They're crazier.

They're just not as pissed off.

Right.

They don't get laid.

Imagine a crazy people back then who didn't get laid.

But yeah, what the hell are we talking about?

The way to the ring, yes.

The irony of and the retro.

So that kids, young, young people out there,

that's what it looked like if they had those side railings.

Sometimes we were in buildings where you just had the fucking cops, however many of them there was, to get on either side of you and hope that there was enough because there was three of us and I was always in the middle, but you would hope.

But that's what you would, you would get beat up more on the way to and from the ring than you would actually performing the match.

So nevertheless, um but yeah, I mean, I saw Piper, you know, I think there's probably footage of Piper in that very same building walking to the back with security on both sides of him while people are throwing shit at him and people are trying to get to him.

I mean,

it's a different animal.

Oh, Cincinnati Gardens didn't have, I saw this in person.

They didn't have any railings.

They had the cops walk you down the fucking crooked aisle in Ringside, right?

On facing a corner post.

And this guy, on the way to the match, this guy took a swing at Piper and Piper dropped him and got on him.

And I've never seen punches thrown so quick.

I was looking down the aisleway

and all you saw was his hand or his elbow go up in the air and his fist come down about five times in two seconds.

And then he got up and walked to the ring and the fucking cops tried to pick this guy up that had jumped him and they quit trying to pick him up and just drug him because he was twitching.

But it was always fun.

What did you think of the ring ropes?

Well, again, yeah, you know,

they still did the fancy railing around the ring, the barricade there with the padding and everything, but they did the old-time color scheme.

The referees had

the blue shirts with the bow ties on, like the 80s, and they brought the graphics back.

And it looks right.

You know, the obsession for the theme says, You're my obsession.

And they mixed it.

They did an open where they mixed the retro clips of the old show on a TV screen.

Kind of corny.

But then they went into the new footage, which looks so much better because it's,

you know, 40 years newer and it's high def.

But, and then they did the old-style pyro also.

They did a professional job of making it look like

it did in the old days while at the same time

not making it look as cheap as it may have looked in the old days.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, although I actually thought it was a missed opportunity to begin the show with the promos, the style they used to do it, especially in the later half of the Run of Saturday Night's Main event, where you kind of had like fast-paced music going on and everyone stood in front of their logo and had like 30 seconds to tell you why they were going to kick the shit out of the brain busters or whatever it was.

That was kind of the intro.

I thought they should have done that.

I thought it really would have worked too, especially considering, you know, you had Sammy, you had Drew, you had Cody, you had Owens.

It would have been a good introduction.

Well, but I think,

because from what they did here, and I jotted down a note to remind myself to look for this, and they did.

It was the Vince approach

that he always used, which this wasn't bad.

This was when he, you know, was reasonably only partially insane.

If he went to a new network or even on a new night or a new program or something

where you could construe that you may pick up new viewers, he would

do the show for the fans, but he would gear it more in terms of

the announcing, in terms of the packages.

he's appealing to a new audience.

There's another level of explanation

in the announcing.

There's the packages.

Anything is geared to making sure that you don't leave anybody behind that doesn't know who these people are or why they're mad, which again,

when

old Joe Tesatore,

I don't think his voiceover opens have the urgency of Jim Ross's voice,

but he's doing a great job of explaining things.

And when you would see

somebody walk in,

here's Joe.

He just won the title from Tom by fucking him with a red hot poker.

There was, it wasn't like Sockface does over in AEW, where

it's just a rapid-fired gibberish.

delivery of Japanese names and moves that you've never heard of and tournaments and indie promotions.

It's basic shit.

This guy fucked this guy out of this because of this reason.

And this guy wants to get even with this guy because he did this.

That's what you saw because they're wanting to pick up an appeal to a new audience Saturday night, NBC television, eight o'clock, that might not normally be watching.

And they want them to understand what's going on,

which makes so much fucking sense.

I can't believe I'm having to explain it.

Speaking of Joe Tessatori, did you see his introduction with Jesse Ventura?

Well, when he mentioned he was wearing his red bow tie in honor of Mean Gene Oakerland, because Mean Gene wore one.

Brian Solomon tweeted it out.

That wasn't Mean Gene Oakerland that Jesse Ventura used to stand next to at Saturday Night's Main Event.

It was someone else.

Can't quite place the name.

So many names running through my head right now.

Something Irish, I think.

But yeah, I mean, there were a couple of people not mentioned.

A lot of people thought it was disrespectful, whatever you think of this, that there wasn't anything about Hogan.

But specifically, obviously, no mention or reference.

to Vince McMahon at all.

Even the classic clips they showed, it was with Jesse's voice.

Yeah, well, and I didn't expect any, I didn't expect any reference to Vince, and they shouldn't have.

I didn't really, I didn't notice that they didn't have any reference to Hogan.

You could make a case either way.

It could be called for.

It could not be called for.

But there was other things going on on this program.

But Jesse, since you

since you mentioned it, besides the, you know, the announcers being telling the basic story, everybody has a reason, everybody has a goal.

But then Joe introduces Jesse.

And people love seeing him again.

He comes back.

He hobbled.

How old is Jesse Ventura?

Oh, we just did this.

Hold on.

Because I don't remember.

Did we just do it about Jesse?

73.

God damn it.

Is that what I got to look forward to in 10 years?

Because no, you were never a Navy SEAL or a bodybuilder or anything.

Well, what about his mind?

What about his delivery?

That's

a bully.

You are a bully.

No, I'm just saying sometimes that's why people need to retire or come out and wave.

And because he hobbled to the podium, where then

they have him and Joe Tesatore set up at a podium in the back of the arena.

with the camera shot shooting the crowd in behind them.

That's the way they used to do it, which looks like.

Which they used to do

at the time that he was there.

And then they had Michael Cole and

his cohort, which we'll get to in a minute, down at Ringside to do the actual play-by-play and color of the show.

But Jesse kept turning his back to the camera to address the people

behind him, and they had no shot.

He was so happy.

He had a hard camera to fucking shoot.

It was a rotten shot.

He was the happiest man in pro wrestling on that day.

He was so happy.

He just wanted to feel the energy of the fans.

He kept turning around on the camera.

But goddamn.

The show tried to guide him back a couple of times.

Yes, he redirected him.

And well, let's work this way and let's talk about Cody.

And then Jesse made the jokes that didn't get over.

He must have insisted on saying his own shit.

Nobody wrote that for him.

Or if they did, they ought to be fired.

But

goddamn.

I mean, I'm not trying to.

He was quick.

He invented the heel color

commentator business.

Oh, he's the best ever.

When he was on, he was the best.

But would we say the same thing about Babe Ruth if he was trying to hit a home run right now at the age of 126?

Again, being on the mic is a little bit of a different thing.

Even some of the best slip.

Yes.

Even some of the best who work regularly.

Very few didn't.

Lance Russell didn't.

Everyone else I could think of did.

Well, anyway, so it was brief.

It was brief with Jesse.

And then he'll be back.

But then they pitched to Michael Cole ringside and they played the music and they brought Pat McAfee back.

And again, this is brilliant because this will be the team on January 6th when they premiere on Netflix.

And they're putting them on network TV so that, yeah,

and live from New York, it's Saturday night's main event

so the again they set this thing up perfectly and they're gearing it to a potential new audience and they're promoting the they've got coming up and they've got

a jam-packed crowd in the nassau coliseum and it looks fantastic and you can see people everywhere

and then here comes drew mcintyre

And again, as we said earlier in the show, he's one of the top superstars in the business these days.

And, you know, again, everybody's over.

And he gets in a ring, and then Sammy makes his entrance.

And then Sammy jumps, starts it, and off we go with Sammy and Drew.

And

again,

the formula that Sammy has that works is he fights from underneath.

He uses the speed.

he'll catch a dive every now and then, and he sells his ass off in that ragdoll body language.

And it's perfect because Drew's such a big bully.

And the people are, but there was a huge Sammy Uso chant.

And that's where I jotted down that the crowd was the livest ever in the Nassau Coliseum.

And this match got over better than any of them, didn't it?

Was it just because it's the first one they saw, or were they just, this was a good fucking match and they kept it moving?

I think a mix of both.

But being on first and having a hot match in front of a Long Island crowd significantly helps.

Well, and you could tell also

that they were at a different level of pacing here than on

a long raw or a SmackDown match.

They kept it moving.

It looked like one of the old Saturday nights main event matches or one of the pay-per-view matches back when you actually had to get in there and work your ass off rather than,

yeah, we're getting paid the same regardless.

So they were just up and they boom, boom, boom.

And they had the chops were stiff, the pace was quick, the work was serious, the crowd was with everything.

You know, again, and I'm sorry.

I got to apologize that when we did the question on your show a couple of days ago, What five wrestlers would I pick?

Did I mention Drew McIntyre?

Did we

lose over him?

You may not have.

I'm not sure.

You know, because he, well, he's been gone for a couple months and he had just come back.

So

regardless, again, he's a guy that has just transformed himself.

So,

boom, and the announcers are telling the stories.

And by the time that Sammy turned his Drew's finish off the ropes into a power bomb and got a two count.

The crowd was going crazy.

And then Sammy hit the blue thunder bomb, two count, got a big pop.

And

this is awesome.

And they just had him jumping up and down.

And then McIntyre rolled out of the ring.

Sammy rolls out to get him.

Drew rolls back in.

Sammy goes back to fucking try to get him.

McIntyre hits him with a claymore.

Boom.

Knocked his head off one, two, three.

And, you know, Drew had to win, but Sammy can lose without it hurting him because of the way, not only the way that it's done,

but also because the way that he just, the way he works and his gimmick.

They like him and his

never-ending underdog quest.

It always works.

Sammy could lose to anyone.

And Drew is, Drew's really good.

And now I'm intrigued by where they're going with Drew.

Once again, complete recovery from how boring he was at the end of the the McMahon booking run.

Good heavens.

Was Austin Theory the only one that prospered by Vince and last Lacey Evans.

Whoa, I forgot about where is she?

Talk about disappearing off the face of the earth.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Well,

I have an answer for you.

It took me longer to mute myself and open my Sprite Zero than I thought it was going to.

So I left you hanging there.

Well, you know, maybe we need to start some kind of campaign, Brian.

Campaign?

To find Lacey.

Lacey Evans is obviously missing.

Maybe she's been abducted.

Maybe, you know, could she be in danger?

She's in a national park somewhere.

Maybe she's stuck in a ravine.

Maybe Turks and Kekos.

Oh, maybe she's one of the kittens.

Oh.

That got brought back and adopted.

But you're looking for a kitten.

I'm wondering.

Oh, maybe.

maybe.

I'm wondering is there such thing,

is there such thing as a real pussy hound?

Maybe he found one of those, but I'll tell you, folks, we need to find Lacey.

You know what we need to do, Brian?

We need to start a campaign of text messaging.

Get the word out there

on the 5G network that's the largest in the world.

We need to get the word out.

Everybody, text everybody.

You know, we got to find Lacey Evans.

Send pictures.

Paste them on the side of a milk.

You know, this is taking a dangerous turn.

Everyone, leave her alone.

She's heard from me.

No, I'm not saying text her.

We don't know where she is.

We need to text everyone.

Someone does it.

We don't know because we haven't cared until this very moment.

They can't say that really announcement.

We can't waste any more time.

We're still preaching.

Just

lay around inactive with an ever-developing situation like this.

Folks, if you want to have the capability to find Lacey Evans, then you need to be hooked up

with your telephone.

And to be locked up.

You need to be hooked up with your telephone to the nation's largest 5G network.

And we're not asking you to spend a lot of money to do this.

You can help your fellow woman.

And at the same time, you don't have to spend a lot of money because if you go to Mint Mobile, you're going to get unlimited talk and text and high-speed data

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So,

and let's say that you know 10 people and those 10 people each know 10 people.

Well, if everybody texts, hey, where the fuck is Lacey Evans?

Have you seen this woman?

And then everybody texts everybody else.

Well, that's a lot of people.

It'll just keep multiplying until I can't do the math.

And sooner or later, somebody will find her and bring her to safety.

Well, again, I don't know how this has anything to do with Mint Mobile, who is a fine, fine supplier.

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And then you can say, hey, where the fuck is Lacey?

So, right at $15 a month, I mean, that's alone right there.

That ought to sell you.

Then you can find a missing person and you can call and text everybody you want to for $15 a month.

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That's $45 over one quarter, 25% of the year.

You're only going to spend $45

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Right there, those two things alone are worth $45, aren't they, Brian?

I believe Lacey or any other person you've seen on TV who has no connection to you alone and call your mother more often.

Let's try that.

Same

difference with me.

Well, it's completely different, but it's the same.

It's the same difference.

Well, it's different in the same way.

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Well, let's get back to Saturday night.

Yeah, let's get details.

Details on Saturday night.

There were 14,186

fans there in the Nassau Coliseum.

I thought it held 16,000.

I've been wrong all these years.

Well, they redid the building a few years ago because it was such a dump.

Ah, so many years.

So now it's a cleaned-up dump.

Well, and that they, you know what?

That does happen where if they renovate one of the older buildings, they find that

codes or restrictions that have been grandfathered in, if you do a rehab or a remodel, you have to follow current codes.

I bet you that if they made it wheelchair accessible and everything else, that they had to take

seats at.

They did that with the Louisville Gardens when they renovated it in 64 and made it the convention center.

It was originally the armory.

And we've seen old pictures now from the 40s and 50s with basketball games and everything where they could get 9,000 people in there for wrestling.

But they put a drop ceiling and sky boxes in and reconfigured everything with a stage for concerts and

fucking graduations, political conferences, that type of thing.

So these things happen.

Did the show still happen?

Yeah, I mean, you watched it.

We started reviewing it.

We should talk about the show.

We've been talking about it.

Well, we should talk more about it instead of my renovation tips.

Tito Santana and Jimmy Hart were at Ringside and Rich Herring.

Rich Herring is a heck of a guy.

I haven't seen him in ages, but he was one of the saner individuals that I had a chance to speak to working in that company.

But they were at Ringside to see the women's title match between E.O.

Skye and Liv Morgan.

And at least they gave this one the one minute to break treatment.

Hey, let me tell you something.

Liv Morgan coming down that small aisle, whipping her hair around, being a heel, that was something to watch.

You waited for someone to just grip.

Everyone was so close and she was so close to everyone's hands.

I enjoyed seeing that.

Just, you know, you never get to see the heels that close to fans.

Well, and like you said earlier, also, the people, if they'd have had time to realize, hey, we could fucking pull some shenanigans,

they probably won't do it again.

And maybe, do you think the next Saturday night's main event will be retro?

And when is going to be the first time they have an incident?

I kind of think you have to keep all of them this way.

Well, in that case, sooner or later, the people are going to figure out, hey, we're way too fucking close.

But anyway, Liv won this one in under 10 minutes, so it didn't,

again, you know, get too burdensome.

But did you see the slow-mo of the knee-lift?

To the nose, yes.

Yes.

I thought you've been telling me, oh, EOS guy is so good.

She's such a good worker.

She's good.

She has good matches.

She's the genius of the sky.

The land is the problem.

Well,

I don't know.

Her surf and turf ended up fucking

blistering.

She knee-lifted Liv Morgan right in the face and nose, the face-hole, nose-hole area for no reason.

Liv was on her knees.

She wasn't moving.

And EOS guy just grabs her arm and just knee-lifted her right in the fucking face, just careless.

It's one of those classic baby face moves.

Let me break your nose.

Well, yeah.

See, in the old days, there would have been more discussion about that in the locker room because that was so blatant, blatantly unnecessary.

What did you think of Liv Morgan, considering the fact she broke her nose or whatever that was?

It looks like it was a broken nose, and she continued on.

Well, yes.

I mean, you know, and that's what it's on network television.

You know, you got to, I mean, if she'd have broken her leg in half, I wouldn't expect her to hop on one leg like goddamn Zach Gowen, but,

you know, well, I'm just saying there's limits to this, but no,

fucking potato in the nose, you soldier on.

I had to work with Paul E with a fucking

torn cartilage in my knee, so these things happen.

But goddamn, I was just like, what the fuck?

What could have possessed this girl to just knee-lift her right in a fucking face?

I don't know what's going on.

Anyway.

Would you like to move on to the next contest?

Yes.

Well, Well, it was a triple threat match for the world title between Finn Balor, Damian Priest, and Gunther.

And this is,

it's starting to get embarrassing because this is kind of two three ways in the last, what, two or three weeks that they've had that I kind of liked.

And also, Gunther's getting over as a babyface.

Well, yes, he's, you know, again, tremendous.

And the background they gave on him.

Brief factoids that you can understand.

Gunther has been a champion for 80% of his time in the WWE.

Gunther has been pinned twice in the last three years.

And, you know, again,

they had a quick pace to this.

But it wasn't gymnastics.

It was just fighting and a back and forth struggle.

They weren't,

okay, I'll grab your foot and spin you around.

You kick the other guy in the head and he'll fall into my arms where I DD team and round and round.

Dosie Doe, spin your partner.

It wasn't bullshit.

And each one of them are doing their stuff.

Obviously, Finn is trying to do the

quick things that he does so well.

And Priest is a kick-ass, and Gunther is the Dering General.

But again, you know, I love Gunther.

Finn is a great worker.

I just, he's been there a long time and they used him

for so long.

And the Judgment Day thing and his whiny voice.

You know, maybe he'll revitalize himself, but

he was good.

Gunther was great.

Priest, again, had a chance to kind of keep up and shine here.

And I don't know if it's coming across.

And

he doesn't need to do flip dives over the top rope.

Can we establish that now?

Talking about Priest.

Did you see that one?

I did.

And a lot of big guys like to show that they could do some of the stuff that the slider guys can do.

Well, then they need to do it.

When he pushed off, it looked like he pushed off at a bit of quicksand.

Folks, for those of you who did not see this,

I mean, it was like he's running.

Agunther is on the floor, and Priest turns his back and runs all the way to the other side of the ring.

So he gets ahead of steam so he can run all the way across the ring.

And when he pushed off to dive over the top, it looked like just a flat tire happened.

And he barely, cannonballing over the top rope, barely cleared the top rope and

landed in front of Gunther.

Gunther bent forward, trying to get under him, and all it ended up doing for Gunther was Priest.

When he landed in front of Gunther, he kicked Gunther in the back of the head on the way down.

And it was like Priest just gave himself a backdrop over the top rope into a flat back bump on the floor.

And I've,

again,

anybody in the business, when I got in the business, if you said, just take a backdrop

over the top rope, flat back to the floor, they'd have you, I quit.

He did it to himself on purpose.

But on a more positive note, it wasn't over-choreographed

and they kept a good pace up.

And you really couldn't keep up with

a play-by-play of it, like so-and-so did this and that.

But they went back and forth, and you got a lot of two counts.

And they nailed it after that.

There was not,

I make fun of poor old priest, but

he just, he's too big of a guy to be doing shit like that.

But

they nailed the rest of it, and they got the this is awesome chance.

And then

Gunther ended up power bombing priest on the stairs to take him out of the thing, and then drop kicked and power bombed Finn and pinned him one, two, three, which was a perfect finish because they they're saving priest.

Gunther had to go over,

and Finn can drop the fall because he's the worker.

That's the

kind of the uh the rule of thumb that they use.

So I liked it.

A triple threat match.

Are you going to make mockery of me now, Brian?

No.

It was Gunther.

He's one of your guys.

You give him a pass.

Oh, come on.

No,

it was fine.

It was fine.

I like Balor.

Balor has been doing it for me a whole lot more than Priest has in terms of,

you know, he gets the fans into his stuff.

And

there's something...

I compared it really to Drew McIntyre.

There's something with Priest.

They made him the world champion.

And I don't know.

Are there any fans clamoring for Damian Priest?

Of all the things happening in WWE,

I don't know if anyone cares right now without Rhea or Dominic involved.

There needs to be something going on there.

It needs to come out of him like it came out of Drew.

Or maybe he could just be a white meat babyface and they could have all the

little kid.

You know, the Hulk had the Hulksters

and Macho Man had the Macho Maniacs.

Maybe Damian Priest could have the little kids in the priesthood.

That may not be,

that probably will not fly.

Think we need to workshop that one.

That one may be a tough sell.

I don't know.

If Vince was there, you'd have a shot.

They could come in and get communion from him at his knee.

That may cause a problem.

So on NBC, NBC, you think?

On NBC and on Netflix, yes.

And with society as a whole.

Well, then we move on.

Yeah, unfortunately, we're stuck with this.

No priesthood for Damian Priest.

Did you hear about the priest that got collared down the street?

All right.

Anyway.

So then they went back to the podium with Joe Tessatori and Jesse Ventura,

and Jesse Ventura turned to the crowd again

and fucked their shot up while he was talking to the fans.

And they pitched back to the ring.

And

I'm looking at,

oh, and then, yeah, and then basically it's not until the main event that we see Jesse again.

So he got two minutes.

In the first hour and 45 minutes, and then they brought him out there and set him in between

two guys with a breath still left in their body and some type of energy.

They used him right.

I've not heard anyone other than you.

And I can understand what you're saying.

I haven't heard too many complaints about Jesse's.

I'm not blistering Jesse.

I'm just, it's father time waits for no man.

But no, they.

What was Vince thinking?

What was Vince thinking at home watching this?

Okay, he was thinking, I should be there.

I could control him.

Is Joe Tessatori dressed like him?

And is Jesse Ventura returning, celebrating, turning around like 40 years?

I'm back.

Well, but besides that, then they had a clip of him from a Saturday night's main event in 1988.

So is it also Alzheimer's?

You know, probably it can't.

I think he meant it was 40 years from when he first came into WWE.

No, he said it's 40 years since I've been here.

That's what he said.

So that's what I'm saying.

I'm thinking they used him right.

They may have could have used him a little less.

I hope next time when they bring out the legends, they get ivan putsky just so we can hear ventura call him ivan paduski

boy have you seen ivan putsky in the last two years

no

well i have

and i didn't even know it

and

was he a ghost

no

there was a a wrestling store up in allentown pennsylvania at one of the the malls there bud carson was the guy that ran it he closed it up since then but there almost 10 years ago i was on my way back from a convention or something up in new jersey and stopped by there and did an autograph thing and ivan putsky was there and you know he was so jacked during his career and so muscular and and

you you didn't notice that he was only five foot six right

well now i don't know how i think everyone noticed i think everyone would have guessed five five well but you know, it

wasn't as striking because he was 250 pounds or whatever and all muscle and had the physique, right?

Even though he's very, very short.

But boy, when he's,

goddamn, 80 years old, what would he have been 10 years, not even 10 years ago?

Would he have been 75 and he weighs about half of what he used to weigh?

I didn't know it was him.

And they had to tell me.

And then I felt bad.

I went home and said, hello, Mr.

Putsky.

Now, because I never met him.

83.

Okay, well, then he was in his mid to late 70s when I saw him.

And he's very,

he's not as muscular as he used to be.

Thank goodness for his health.

But

yeah, if he turned sideways, stuck his tongue out, he'd look like a zipper.

Chico Santana.

Well, we didn't get to hear any of his famous insults.

Well, Tino was there at ringside.

I know.

Put his camera shot in the main event.

That's right.

Greg Valentine.

Did you see Greg Valentine when they showed him?

He was so happy to be there.

It's the only time I've ever seen him smile.

I've never seen him that happy ever.

I've never seen him happy ever.

I mean, there's

various stages of morose, usually, with

a, you know, a resting, uninterested face.

But

anyway, they had the U.S.

title match, but not tweeting the men, tweeting the women, Chelsea Green and Mia Yim

on NBC.

They went one minute to the break, and then Chelsea Green came back and hit some kind of finish or other after Piper did the distraction.

It was such an easy crowd.

There was a big pop for this even.

No, the fans were into it.

They were into the idea of Chelsea Green winning the title, and they got what they wanted.

And Mee Chin, not Mia Yim.

I thought Chelsea Green was a heel.

Boy, she sure acts like one.

She's a heel, but she's a lovable heel.

Like the kind of way she's a heel, but she'll walk into a puddle.

Like she's a heel, but she'll slip on a banana peel.

A heel that'll slip on a peel.

That's right.

I know plenty of heels that have been on a peel.

Has a peel.

But this is a new one.

Well, maybe just because all the people on Long Island are assholes.

They like this smart ass show off here.

Maybe.

Well, and by the way, it's

speaking of stepping and things, if you hear the rain, it's raining outside, raining cats and dogs.

I know, because earlier I stepped in a poodle and you might hear that.

So then Greg Valentine and Coco Ware was at Ringside also, just as happy as Greg Valentine was.

So that's interesting.

I mean, like, you know, Greg Valentine doesn't live in New York.

Coco doesn't live in New York.

They actually brought these guys in, like they sought them out and brought them in for this.

Yes.

Tito's in New Jersey, so that's easy.

Well, but you know,

again, maybe they had them do a sit-down and do a video shoot or do an autograph thing or some kind of legends,

you know, round table or,

you know, whatever.

But if I was any of these guys and they said, well,

We want to bring you to Nassau Coliseum for Saturday night's main event.

What would you like me to do?

We want you to sit in the crowd and we're going to give you it on camera.

That's it.

I'm going to get on a goddamn airplane.

I'm going to fly from wherever to fucking New York.

I'm going to stay at a hotel.

I'm going to endure that traffic.

I'm going to sit in a seat at Ringside and you're going to shoot me waving on camera.

Yes,

and then we're going to ask you to get up.

We're going to get a seat filler and Jimmy Hart's going to take your place.

Then in that case, I say, here, I will send you an 11 by 14

high-resolution photo of me.

Stick that thing in the fucking chair.

I mean, what the, but anyway, but it was nice to see those guys, but

I didn't have to work to see those guys.

I just had to turn on the TV.

They had to take two days out of their fucking lives to go sit in a fucking chair.

Well, I'm serious.

Fucking grub.

What are you going to do?

Why would you do that?

Why would you do that?

I would have traveled 2,000 miles to sit in a chair so you can play a tape of me.

They'll remember what I looked like.

Why do I need to be there?

I mean, it's just.

Anyway,

and then Jesse joined Cole and McAfee.

at Ringside.

And so McAfee could do the Telestrator bit with Jesse.

And they played a package on Kevin Owens so the audience, potentially new,

could understand the issue that he's in with Cody

and why he feels the way he does.

And it's a refresher for the regular audience, so it wasn't offensive to either one.

And then

how do you feel about this that you're the president of the Jesse Ventura?

Oh, are you going to rip on him again?

Well, no, I started to say Jesse Owens, but I guess that's conflating the two.

But

the Jesse Ventura fan club, you're the head of the chapter.

I think you're a commie.

He was taking Owens' side

as the heel as he would have in the old days.

But since everybody was so happy to see him back because it's nostalgia now, should he have been a babyface to somewhat degree or should he have just done straight old-fashioned...

This was the best stuff he did because they played off him well.

That was what killed him in WCW.

No one knew how to play off him like Vince McMahon or Gorilla Monsoon or anyone in WWF did.

They played off him.

And

he was always good

at supporting the heels and pointing out the bullshit in the babyface side.

So that even if you're rooted for the babyface, you kind of knew, well, he's not wrong.

He's telling the truth.

And then he would point out like...

That was not popular with the babyfaces, by the way.

Yeah.

And then with the heels, he saw the heels side.

He presented their point of view, and he did it better than anyone else.

He was as shticky as he kind of seems, he was less shticky than everyone else doing it.

He was less shticky.

You believed he was, you know,

that guy.

He was, I'm a Jesse Ventura Mark, and I thought he did really good during the main event here.

And if he had all of a sudden started rooting for Cody,

that would have been the kiss of death.

He had to.

Yeah.

That wouldn't have been right.

And anyway, they brought the main event out.

Owens made his entrance.

Cody made his entrance.

And

I think they revealed this on social media and they referred to it

or hinted at it, at least on social media, referred to it without saying what it was on

the show the other night.

But Cody came out wearing the old winged eagle belt, which ran from 88 to 98, the Reggie Parks belt.

Still the best.

That's still the best belt they ever had for the world title.

And it was nice to hear Reggie Parks get a plug, too.

Bless him, may he rest in peace.

But I've had that belt on numerous occasions in my car, taking it from one place to another.

I never actually won it in the ring.

Right.

That's the belt that Yokozuna had.

Yes.

But anyway, then it was time for the WWE title match between Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens.

And

they started.

Owens was rolling out and stalling and getting on the bicycle.

He did it twice and Cody then said, fuck it.

He rolled out on the floor, went after him, then did a big dive and started selling his ankle from the Gable ankle lock the other night on Raw.

And again, that's brilliant because

I don't know that anybody was expecting

the title to change hands on this show, right?

Even the devoted fans, whatever.

Not that you want to see the heel beat Cody in theory and in psychology, but a title change is a big deal.

And this is right a page out of Dusty's book.

Cody seemed to be the dominant guy from the way that they've been presented.

So you give the dominant babyface a fucking weakness.

that the heel can work on.

And oh my gosh.

And then the people start thinking, well, is this his out?

Are they going to explain that he lost because of this?

And you're just creating a little doubt as the match goes on.

And

as annoying as the fucking fat son of a bitch is,

Owens can work when he wants to.

And they kept, they kept this thing going.

This was like a 90s television show match rather than on the raw Monday Night Wars rather than

the pace you see today.

And they were cooking.

And

I'm not going to give you the blow by blow, but they

did a great job of going back and forth, getting a big move and a two count, and then letting it breathe, and then another false finish.

And it just, I thought it was a good match overall.

And they didn't have to go too long.

They didn't ring the bell to like 15 minutes on the air.

And then finally,

Owens shoved Cody into

Lil Nate referee Charles Robinson.

Boom.

And Charles goes down and rolls out on the floor.

And then Owens hits a stunner and has the cover, but there's no referee.

And he's got him.

There's no referee.

And finally, the second referee runs in, starts the count.

One, two, and he kicks.

And fucking Owens is hot.

Like, goddammit.

And goddammit.

Coxaker.

Sound like Brute Bernard now.

So Cody went for the cutter

and wiped out referee number two

when Owens moved out of the way.

And then Owens posted Cody and went, got a chair and swung at him.

But Cody ducked it and hit him with a cutter

and then grabs him.

for the crossroads and looks down and sees the chair there.

And I mean, they even put the gimmicks in the perfect places.

And he gives him the crossroads on the chair.

Boom.

And cover.

And Charles Robinson is back up by that point.

One, two, three.

From the floor.

Charles Robinson's on the floor counting the ring.

Well, yes, but he was back up on his feet is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah.

But he saw they were right next to the ropes and there he saw it.

It was in front of him.

Boom.

Again, the positioning.

Everything they did, and they had to wipe out two referees, but they didn't botch any of that.

Everybody was in the right place.

And then when they worked their last spot, the chair ends up right there, and he planted him on it perfect.

And then they're right in front of Robinson on the floor where he can just stand up and count: bing, bing, bing.

The babyface had a weakness to create doubt, but they did a roller coaster with false finishes.

And then

back and forth with the referees.

Oh my God, there's a second round.

Oh, he's down.

The first one's back.

And the babyface won, but the heel has a bitch.

He had an out.

So I love this one too.

Before we talk about what happened off the air, what did you think of what happened on the air?

I enjoyed it.

Good main event.

I enjoyed the commentary with Jesse Ventura there.

I enjoyed the look and feel of it.

It felt different than Ron SmackDown, and that's what it needed to do.

Very much enjoyed it.

Okay, now.

Good match.

Did they run long on time time or did they mean to do what they did after the show went off the air?

Well, you know, they've been lately doing stuff where there are things happening after the pay-per-view, after the event, off air.

They did it with Owens and Cody Rhodes in the parking lot, Owens and Randy Orton.

So, I mean, with these specific guys, they've been doing it.

Well, it was tremendous, and we'll find out on Raw, and obviously they're going to show,

you know, footage of what happened, et cetera.

But after

Saturday night's main event went off the air in some fashion, Owens got back on Cody

and ended up giving him a packaged pile driver, which was fucking perfect.

There's not only the WWE's released a clip on,

I guess, their social media, but there's a fan cam of it, and it was fucking perfect.

And they

taped Cody to the backboard and stretchered him out.

And then Owens got in a shoving match with Triple H in the aisleway, and they were cussing at each other.

But somebody on Twitter had a slow-mo

of the pile driver.

And

I hate, as somebody said to Cornette, what do you think about this?

They tweeted it to me.

And I hate to ruin the magic and explain why it wasn't dangerous, but it wasn't dangerous, but you couldn't see through it.

It was beautiful.

It was perfect.

So.

Because of his belly.

He was able.

I mean, I'm not even joking.

He was able to use his belly to rest Cody's head and shoulders as he took him down.

Well, actually, then, if you're going to spoil it that far, I'll say also his fat ass had a lot to do with it, too.

But,

you know, sometimes you need some cushion.

But, but, yeah, so this will continue with

Owens and what's going on there,

apparently.

And I don't mind it.

They had a great match and

they've got me into this.

And Orton saw us to come back.

Yes.

And again,

the pile driver, these idiots over on the other channel are killing themselves.

on a weekly basis and not selling anything and nothing means anything and everybody expects them to get up and just do some more of it.

And over here, I would have taken that pile driver

and they carted him off on a stretcher and people are fucking going crazy about it.

But one side's playing chess and one side's playing checkers.

And did you hear that, Steen?

He'll take the pile driver.

I would have taken that particular one.

I might not take the one he'd give me,

but I'd take the one he gave Cody now.

See, you got to remember whose head's stuck between whose legs.

Well, that was Saturday.

I had my head stuck between Kevin Steen's legs one time.

Oh?

He was milking.

He was

at the Hammerstein ballroom, a ring of honor show.

He was milking, going to give me the package pile driver when somebody was going to stop him in some fashion.

But, goddamn,

at that time, I was 250 pounds, even though this was 10 years ago.

But I also,

that's when I was about to have physical therapy on my bad hip.

And when he bent me over and drew my fucking arms back while my head was down that low, and I hadn't been over that far in a long time, I thought he'd killed me just grabbing me in position.

I was, oh, fuck, he just cracked everything in my goddamn body.

But I'm more flexible now.

But you know what, Brian?

The pile driver can be dangerous.

Yes.

It can be deadly.

It can be injurious to your health.

And you know what?

It could also injure.

It could injure your bank account if you don't have insurance.

Let's say you go to the hospital from a pile driver and you want to sell the angle.

So you get the whole works done, the x-rays, the backboard, the fucking MRIs, the whole nine yards.

Who's going to pay for that shit?

The wrestling promoter isn't, I'll have you know.

So you're going to have to have insurance.

And

this is the time of the year, Brian, for the folks around the world.

The United States of America in December gets to pick what insurance they're going to pay for for the following year.

Only one month.

You only get one month.

Then, if you don't have it, well, fuck you.

So that's why everybody needs to get a hold of SelectQuote

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You can be here today, Brian, and gone tomorrow.

And then who will carry on and how will they afford to?

You know, it'll probably cost a lot of money by the time you go for a human being to be buried because there will be no

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See, I'm going to get in in the nick of time and I've already purchased my real estate.

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I want to be shot into outer space.

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Well, Brian, we have done it.

We have diddled around and malingered until the ratings for the WWE Saturday night's main event on NBC have come in.

The overall number

is in our hands.

We don't have the quarter hours yet, but I am

not disappointed because I didn't have,

you know, a dog in the fight.

I was just holding its head, but 1,590,000 viewers.

That

seems low to me for something of this magnitude, of this nature.

They were doing more than that on Monday Night Raw in USA.

What's happened to the NBC network?

Where's Seinfeld when you need him?

Well, again, Tua, that's about what I said I thought they would do as a number.

No, yeah, Mr.

Smarty Pants.

Well, the point is,

you know, the idea that they were going to pop a huge number,

it's on traditional television.

That's the other thing.

It's like, because of the state of fandom now and the ages of a lot of the fans, if you go backwards and everything's just broadcast, I would love to know what the streaming numbers for any of this was.

Because WWE's moving one way, and then all of a sudden,

what was once a big deal, prime time, it was 8 o'clock.

It wasn't even 11.30.

Primetime network television on Saturday.

And you got your wrestling audience.

You didn't get too many people outside of your usual wrestling audience, the people you were promoting the show to.

And it's come to this that

mighty Peacock Network is happy with 1.6 million people in prime time.

Did they do anything on NBC to cross-promote?

Like was like on the Today Show or anything.

Did they have anything about this?

I don't know.

But I would say, even if the kids are streaming stuff, who doesn't have a television in their home?

What kind of weirdo from Mars would that be?

A lot of people.

If you seriously, oh my god, yeah.

Maybe a monitor.

At best, a monitor.

No wonder the country's in the sad state it's in.

Fucking hell.

But

in other prime time broadcasts, we are told the Heisman Trophy presentation on ESPN averaged 2,251,000 viewers.

So ESPN was the

good heaven.

And the NBA Cup semifinal game on ABC got 1,890,000.

That's pretty sad.

That's pretty fucking sad.

There was other competition that you did not list.

Again, it's cable, not network TV, but it was on at the same time.

AEW Collision.

Okay.

Well, well, their normal time slot, their normal time slot, of course, 8 to 10 p.m.

They were being invaded by Saturday Night's Main Event and Jesse Ventura.

Yeah, so that's why Saturday Night's Main Event didn't perform to my expectations because they were bucking the established show on Saturday night, its normal time slot on

cable.

What did they do there,

Brian?

AEW Collision on TNT, Saturday, December 14th, 8 to 10 p.m.

According to WrestleNomics, on average, 246,000 viewers.

That's minus 12% from last week, which was 278.

It's minus 22% off the trailing four-week average of 317.

Last year, same period of time,

it would have done approximately 442,000 viewers.

And it's all just dropping and dropping and dropping.

And the other thing is, you know, it's interesting how quickly they announced the second Saturday night's main event, isn't it?

They didn't give the first one any time to breathe.

They're already like announcing the second one.

Well, I think they've got a set number they're going to do once a quarter or whatever next year, right?

Well, in this case, it's going to be once a month.

It's going to be December and then January.

Well, no, but it's not going to be once.

It's going to be one

once a month for a two-month period.

But what they're doing is they're doing January, then they're doing the second quarter, then the third quarter, et cetera, next year, right?

This deal has

come together, and they probably wanted to kick this off

two weeks before, three weeks, whatever it is, before they start on Netflix because

they're all in the same pocket now.

And they're loading that show up, too.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, so they got NBC Television Network to promote not only, you know, the

NBC Universal family is still with fucking USA Network, but also the Netflix and all that other shit.

Everybody owns every goddamn thing, don't they?

Who owns what now?

That's a big question.

I don't know how to answer that.

The point is they promoted the fuck out of on network television outside their normal cable spaces.

They promoted the fuck out of their Netflix shit, too.

And so, I mean, they're just they're going to be on every, they're going to be beaming in on the fillings in people's teeth by next year.

So, I don't think

that to answer your question that

they're going to do once a month, or they're trying to, you know, they, they just, that's the way it worked out.

They figured, okay, we'll get a special to kick off this series on NBC.

It'll promote the Netflix

debut in January.

You know, we've got the property on SmackDown on USA on Friday nights.

Everybody's happy.

You know, bringing Jesse Ventura back is a big F you to Vince.

They should go all the way.

Bring back David Schultz

and apologize to him on air for the way he was treated.

I don't know.

Maybe you could book Stossel.

Stossel's not really doing that great career-wise right now.

Fuck Stossel.

Let him be in a goddamn subway station selling apples with worms in them.

But I don't know if the combined forces of Nick Kahn, Dana White,

Mark Shapiro,

and,

you know, fucking Big New Brzezinski could possibly fucking control David Schultz to put him on any kind of national television.

So I think we better let that one lay still.

Well, that was Saturday night's main event to return.

One more Saturday night coming up, but this is your show.

But but what is going on with your shows?

That's what the viewing population is wanting to know.

It's almost holiday time.

How are we making merry on the Arcadian Vanguard network this week?

There will be merry,

I don't know what I'm saying.

This is going to be a good time.

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Want to make mention, shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon.

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All right.

Well, we promised the people something last week, Brian.

And one thing, well,

we never go back on our word except when we say it's going to be a great show.

Sometimes then

you never know, but

we're going to wind the program up.

It's headed into the holidays.

This is the last experience

before Christmas and our little break.

And as I said earlier at the top of the program, I've been looking forward to taking a few days off, but I don't want people to think that we don't like talking to them because we both.

Probably the most fun that you and I have at this stage of our lives is when we're actually,

you know, jacking up the jocularity here on the program.

But I found last year that when we didn't do something every two fucking days,

that after about a week or so, I said, you know, I can't wait to talk about this thing.

Or

I've got to bring that thing up.

It recharges your battery.

I think back because we're going to go to Mid-South Wrestling as we promised last week.

I think back to the words of the big cat Ernie lad

who said, your brain is like a sponge.

And when it has absorbed all the knowledge it can, you must take the time to wring it out.

That's what he told us when he was leaving Louisiana, where he'd been booking, and Dundee was taking over.

And I think Ernie went to work for Crockett for a little while.

He was winding up his career that year because, you know, he was about ready to retire.

But, you know, that was his, after you've been a booker, you've got to wring your fucking brain out.

Ernie, were you fired?

No, no, I just got to wring my brain out.

That's all.

Well, no, he wasn't really fired.

You know, what's it out, Ernie?

We need to change things up a little bit.

But yeah, he said, what the fuck are you doing, Ernie?

I got to get someone else.

But I always thought, actually,

instead of wringing your brain, when you've been a booker, it felt like somebody has wrung your neck.

That's more what it feels like.

But anyway, we're going back to 1984 to finish my schedule in Mid-South Wrestling with the Midnight Express and our various antics.

For the last week of March of 1984, we did the previous week, last week on the program.

You can catch up on the YouTube channel with all of the

various episodes that have brought us up to this point chronologically.

And this is the last week before the start of the last stampede matches, which would change

everybody's finances for the better.

And your life, actually, if you really think about it.

Yes.

And, you know, again, as we talked about before, without that,

you know, we probably, if we had not done the deal with Watts, we still would have made money with the Rock and Roll Express, and we still would have

had a good run there, but it might not have lasted so long.

And it might not have been where.

you know, Flair and Dusty are,

you know, shaking hands, patting us on the back, you got to come to the Carolinas and that type of thing.

Because it was

this thing, you know, we had already drawn some money with Wrestling 2 and Magnum TA, as we've gone over,

and it was working, but it wasn't,

you know, it started off here with the last stampede, was the big bang,

was the big,

holy shit

that ever, you know, not just wrestling fans when they heard about it in the magazines or whatever, but people in the business started the Midnight Express.

What the, who the fuck are they?

How did they just put 23,000 people in a fucking superdome?

And that's always good.

You know, we did the same thing a few years before with the Freebirds and with JYD.

where other people in the territories, big promoters, bookers, whatever,

would all of a sudden, hey, Watts just fucking did this giant house, and who was on top?

We don't fucking know.

We never heard of this guy.

How'd he do that?

That's the

way you wanted your name around in the wrestling business in those days.

Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense.

And again, it all happened so quickly for you.

This is,

is it two years or is it a little less than two years?

When did you start managing in 82?

No, my first day on TV to announce that I wanted to be a manager and begin that weekly journey of

goddamn embarrassment and heartache.

That wasn't until the end of August 82.

So this is less than two years into your career.

18 months.

Yeah.

And that's incredible.

And

beyond you not being proven as a draw or as someone who could cause a combustion like this,

Dennis.

Although he had done stuff with Hickerson and Jackie Fargo, for the most part, Dennis was kind of an unknown entity.

And Bobby Eaton,

you know, I'm sure there were plenty of people who didn't know who Bobby Eaton was in the business.

Yes.

So you guys took everyone by surprise.

Well, and

again, Dennis had been in the business longer and he had been used on top very early.

From 75 to 78, he and Phil Hickerson were the main event heel team, either for Nick Gulis or in Nashville, Ron Fuller in Knoxville, or Jared in Memphis.

And they would rotate between those three territories.

Scott Teal told me that was the hottest thing he remembers from his years of shooting photos in Nashville was Jackie Fargo against Hickerson and Condry in 76.

Yes.

And, you know, they drew sellouts in Nashville at the Fairgrounds or at Chattanooga or whatever.

But

think about this, that was 1976, 77, 78, whereas we're talking about 1984, where $1.84 equals $3 today.

So if you made $100 in, it's like making $300 a day.

That was almost 10 years before.

So Dennis's big weeks in the business in the 70s, a top heel team even selling out with the Fargo's, $1,000 in that territory, maybe.

Big week, but that would be like...

$4,000 a day, but Nick was not a notoriously great payoff guy.

And where Dennis had been with Norvell or Randy Rose in the Memphis territory before in the early 80s, they were probably making $800, $900 a week, $1,000.

Again, like three grand,

whatever today.

But

that's why I said earlier in this series we started when we jumped into Mid-South and on the underneath matches just to get over.

We're making better than $1,000 a week.

It was okay.

And the same thing for bobby and you know it was a

it was kind of a thing where in the early 80s when

when he was working for nick in the 70s late 70s

he didn't get a chance to work with that many different people the people who came through and worked for nick at that point knew about bobby eaten but a lot bigger names and a lot more people came through working for jarrett in 81 82 83 and that became the thing

where the fuck has this guy been You know, everybody would come into territory and be like, how the, what the fuck?

He's the best worker we've ever seen.

He's fucking, you know, in the third match or whatever.

But then, you know, nobody had a track record past of drawing money past Dennis really in the Tennessee territory a generation before.

And

they hadn't been used on top in the Memphis Territory in a while at that point.

So it was, and,

and who the fuck was I?

right?

They'd never even seen me before, anybody in the business.

Anyway,

but that's one of the reasons it worked too.

You weren't the same tired old manager.

No, I was a tired young manager.

We weren't getting a lot of sleep, but no, I mean, the people in Mid-South had Saskandor Akbar,

who was an ex-wrestler and

who they knew who was a,

he had heat and he was an oil chic or whatever the fuck.

And yes, yes, they hated him, but they didn't think they could whip him because they'd seen him.

He was a wrestler and a kick-ass badass.

Before that, what?

Rock Hunter?

Rock Hunter had been there.

And

same thing with that craggly fucking face.

They had not, and they hadn't had a ton.

I mean, Ken Raimi in the seven early 70s for McGurk,

but that was before Louisiana,

you know, was really

big money territory.

And they hadn't seen a lot of, you know, the Bobby Davis, Bobby Heenan, Jimmy Hart, Jim Cornette lineage type of manager down there who they thought they could fucking assassinate with no problem.

So

it was working.

And as we've said, we had shot the angle with Watts.

on TV in mid-March, but they did it so that we had an issue with the Rock and Roll Express also because they had smashed my face in our celebratory cake when I had the party for us winning the tag team title.

So now a couple weeks later, the people have

started seeing

that,

you know, that program around some of the towns because the tape was on a bicycle.

But we also had

not only the issue with Watts percolating, he was about to announce

his return from retirement and the last stampede.

We also had an issue with the Rock and Roll Express that was just starting.

And the Bruise Brothers, Pork Chop Cash and Dream Machine Troy Graham, Dundee had brought them in from Memphis and was trying to establish them as a babyface team also.

So we had a lot of things going on.

And you've asked before about what would have been the, how would the Bruce Brothers have been used with the rock and and roll there and what were the plans for them.

Here, our last match with them shows you what Dundee was thinking and what,

you know, what confidence he had in them.

We've already shot the angle with Watts, right?

And the next show in New Orleans is going to be the Superdome.

And on Monday, March 26th, we're in New Orleans at the downtown auditorium

and we're booked in the main event against the Bruise Brothers in a non-title match because they hadn't established themselves yet.

They just got there, so they're not going to get a title match, blah, blah, blah.

But Dundee thought this is, they're perfect not only for

the Louisiana Territory, but for New Orleans.

It's like a tag team version of JYD.

And this was before Dog had left.

They didn't know he was going to leave, right?

But a tag team version of JYD.

Pork Chop's work was fucking fantastic.

The big bumps he took and his body looked great and he had that fucking face expressive.

And Dreams promos and

you know Dream used to call himself the blackest white man in the business.

It was tailor-made for the black audience in New Orleans, the Bruise Brothers with the fucking whole gimmick and the videos and the music.

And they would have gotten over like crazy, right?

So we worked with them,

cold match, no angle, but booked in the main event and did $18,000,

which at the downtown auditorium with prices not regular prices, that was

more than a couple thousand people.

And we got the heat on Dream, and then Porkshop made the comeback, and they got in a four-way.

And Dream and Dennis had a double knockout.

But when Dream flew back off of Dennis, he took Carl Fergie, the referee, out.

And Dennis fell on top of the Dream.

Well, Bobby grabs Porkchop

and held him.

But when I swung the racket, he ducked and I hit Bobby.

And Porkchop blistered me and covered Bobby.

And Fergie rolled over, not having seen all of this, and counted with Dennis on top of Dream Machine and Porkchop on top of Bobby, counted a three count and raised their hand.

They won the match.

And at that point, we jumped them and kicked the shit out of them and got our heat back.

But that he put the Bruise Brothers over the top heel team in the territory that was about to work with the owner in the Superdome.

because he wanted to establish them and it worked.

The people fucking loved it.

They went crazy and then we kicked shit out of them.

People wanted to fucking knife us.

But that's where he was going with them.

And that was the last match they wrestled in Mid-South Wrestling.

They were booked back with us the following Saturday, and they went back to Memphis.

And I think it was in Evansville, which would have been on Wednesday night, is where Dream broke his ankle and

fucked his entire career up, not only in terms of ending it, but

also the biggest break he'd ever had.

Listening to you describe it, you know, Porkchop did this, Dennis fell on the dream.

It's like S.E.

Hinton wrote the description of this match.

Well, you know, it's.

And then Ponyboy, and then Ponyboy rode off into the distance.

Well, I've got the notes, but it's in shorthand, you know.

But that's, you know, I kept track of all of our finishes so that we wouldn't redo the same thing in the same town or whatever.

When Dream Machine gets hurt, does Porkchop Cash just groan and go, ah, I guess I got to call Boyd?

Like, what happens next?

I mean, you talk about it, ruined his big break.

Pork Chop goes in a year later.

He goes in a year later with Mad Dog Boyd.

He'd been wrestling a long time.

Who knows what would have happened if he had gone in at that point in 84?

Well, and that's the thing.

And bless him.

Mad Dog Boyd was not the Dream Machine.

He

physically, you couldn't find anybody that really looked worse and he couldn't talk and his work was, I mean, it just, he was a nice guy.

Bless him.

Bless his little Pete Piggin heart.

But,

but yeah, it fucked Porkchop too because that would, I mean, Porkchop, he had been the Americas champion in Los Angeles back in the early 70s when it was a...

kind of a big deal instead of what it later became.

He had worked in a variety of places all over the world, but this was going to be and would have been his last big run and they would have got over.

So

even though he survived to wrestle another day and like you said, they came in like a year later because

Porchop went back to Memphis.

I think

I don't know if he stayed there for a year, but

Mad Dog Boyd had been

one of the original Bruce Brothers because

I've told the story before, but I will segue slightly.

It's been a long time,

and you don't need it anymore.

So it's been a long time and is a recent occurrence.

Whatever you just said, Pork Chop Cash and Iceman King Parsons were supposed to come into Memphis as the Bruise Brothers with the black suits and the hats and the sunglasses and the briefcases full of blues

in the spring of 1983.

But that was when, or maybe late winter, whatever the case, that was when

Parsons, I guess, either got the deal to go to Dallas, where he got over and became a big deal in world class for a couple of years there.

You remember that?

So he didn't show up.

Pork Chop was there.

And they said, well, we got two fucking suits and we got two fucking hats.

And there was a guy named Mad Dog Boyd that was working like an outlaw group in Mississippi or whatever that would

that would come to Channel 5 and sit in the parking lot and try to talk to the boys and talk to anybody he could to get booked whenever they'd come into TV station for the tapings every Saturday morning.

Did you know him already?

No.

You know,

the first I heard of it was when Lawler,

it was Jimmy Hart.

that was scurrying around.

Lawler had told Jimmy Hart and said, go out there and get that mad dog boy guy and see if the fucking jacket fits.

And Jimmy was scurrying around with the goddamn Bruise Brothers jacket.

I had been alerted that Parsons was not there.

That's all I knew about what was going on, right?

And he actually sent him out in the parking lot.

And if the jacket had not fit,

then they would not have acquit.

They would have said, fuck it.

It would just won't do the gimmick.

But he barely

got himself into that fucking jacket and got the job as one of the Bruise Brothers.

And as a result,

within a month, Mad Dog Boyd was in the ring with Andre the Giant.

It was because it was all of a sudden he's in Jimmy Hart's family and all this other stuff.

And

as I said, bless him, he just couldn't, he couldn't really hold up

work-wise, you know, that standard.

And they switched him babyface because I think Jimmy kicked him out or whatever.

And

I don't know, but somehow he was still in the parking lot, I guess, at Channel 5 when Pork Shop said, hey, you want to be my partner now as the Bruce Brothers, and we'll go to Louisiana.

And it didn't work out.

They did the big gimmick where they stole Eddie Gilbert's portrait.

I remember that.

That was their big angle.

And probably that was Eddie might have asked Pork Shop, hey, you got Mad Dog's number.

But anyway, but that was New Orleans that night.

And like I said, said,

you know, a nice house for the weekly Monday night of the previous week with us against the Rock and Roll Express at the lakefront had been $14,400.

This did $18,000.

Now, the previous week, March the 12th,

when we were on the card with

the Bruce Brothers, but that was the, oh, God damn, what was the main event that night?

March the 12th at the downtown auditorium.

Was that the Dog and Wrestling 2?

Or?

Yes,

2 beat dog to win the mid-south North American tag team title.

And that was a singles title, not tag team title.

Or North American heavyweight title.

I'm sorry.

That was a sellout, 36 grand.

So they opened up both sides of the building.

So

to deflate everyone with that finish, the idea of it, and then the way it was executed.

For us to come back and draw 18 grand after that fucking thing.

Anyway.

You know, I always ask you about all the time you guys spent on the road.

Is that the reason why Jim Duggan had such a long beard and why Dr.

Death's beard got longer and Dennis Condry had a long, thick beard?

Was it you guys didn't have time to go home and shave?

Exactly.

That was, you know, the time was valuable, Brian.

And we couldn't just do frivolous things like personal grooming in the...

very few minutes that we had to spend in the house, but it was so much harder then.

It was so much harder than to get a good shave because you had to an Italian guy with a straight razor that could sing opera to you while he was strapping that strop and lathering you up and then

giving you the al Capone job in the barber chair.

It was like an old day thing for men to shave back in the 80s.

But now it's a boom.

It's as easy as going to Harry's

because then you won't be Harry because Harry's.com, not only, and no apostrophe, by the way, just H-A-R-R-Y-S.

Harry's makes it easy for you to get a nice, clean, close shave, Brian.

Even you, a man who has no free time whatsoever, you can just go into your bathroom, grab that ergonomically designed handle, put on some of those German-engineered blades and the cartridge on the top of it, slather on some of that ooh, so soft shave gel or shave cream, and

like Zorro, you can

the whiskers right off your face, cutting them like Jack the Ripper, but with no damage to your own skin.

And right now, our friends at Harry's have a Haraday, have a Haradays.

That's what they call their breaks for the employees.

It's another Harry Day here.

Harry Haridays.

Happy Hariday.

Happy Hariday to all.

You see what it is?

is the Harry's Holiday Craft Set.

I defy anybody to say that three times fast, the Harry's Holiday Craft Set, but

it's custom value for you here for the holidays.

It's a custom green gift box, and it contains the weighted razor handle that can be engraved.

for free

and it includes the blades and the gel or the shave cream.

What are you laughing at?

Oh, it includes all of that.

That is true.

I'm laughing at the honesty.

You're laughing at

my goddamn flummoxness.

And no gift wrapping is required because, did I mention it comes in a rich, sleek green gift box that'll stand out, and you can personalize it with the available engraving options if you go to Harry's.com

slash JCE.

Harry's.com slash JCE and then give them this wonderful holiday package of goodness.

And it's a way to tell somebody, hey, spruce up your fucking look, you haggardy bastard, without actually coming out and saying it.

It's a way of taking care of yourself and making sure you look good for yourself and as well as for others, as well as not embarrassing the people who care about you by looking like a slob with Harry's.

Yes, you know, you won't look like Howard Hughes in the penthouse in the casino in Vegas with the, I don't know what they can do at Harry's about your fingernails, but your face will look clean.

And after all,

that's the thing that most people are looking at.

So if you've got a cubby of quail nesting in your chin whiskers, flush them out and shave them off with the holiday craft set from Harry's in the custom green gift box, hairys.com slash JCE.

And again,

Engrave that thing personally for no extra charge.

The handle engraving, it's incredible.

I told you, I got one of the statues on Easter Island.

That's my personalized engraving.

Of course, it's goddamn 20 feet tall.

It's hard to lift to get it to my face.

Yeah, I'm not sure how this works, but you could do you or you could do

you with Harry's one more time, harry's.com slash JCE.

But Jim, just like Mid-South Wrestling, not a lot of time to stop and shave.

Let's get back on the road.

But now, here's the thing.

We had been in Oklahoma, right?

On Sunday, we ended up on Sunday, the previous segment.

So we had flown

from

Tulsa to Dallas because you had to connect through Dallas

and then Dallas to Alexandria on, as I've mentioned before, the

the commuter plane business there, the American Eagle, the prop jet thing that they had going because Alexandria didn't have jet service.

And I think we were going to do that one more time and then remind me to tell you what made me decide never to get on a goddamn commuter plane again at that point.

But we did.

We flew Tulsa to Dallas, Dallas to Alexandria, and then got in our cars and drove to New Orleans, which was 200 miles.

Only half of it was interstate.

And we had the match with the Bruce Brothers.

Then we went back to Alexandria, back home, which was another 200 miles.

The The following day,

Tuesday, March 27th, we were in Little Rock, Arkansas.

And I believe I've mentioned of all of the trips, even the Oklahoma trips that were twice as far.

Little Rock was without doubt the most burdensome.

It was a two-lane state highway

from Alexandria

directly north all the way to Little 270 miles through every

podunk town and fucking you would be behind cattle trucks and horse-drawn vehicles and

crop dusters were trying to land on this road.

I mean, it was just ridiculous.

And it was literally, even though it was 270 miles,

it was between a six and seven hour drive, right?

So

We got back from New Orleans,

charitably, let's say

1:30, 2 o'clock in the morning.

We got to be back in the car between noon and 12:30

to head north to go to Little Rock

at the wonderful Barton Coliseum at the Little Rock State Fairgrounds, where we had a match with the Rock and Roll Express.

Now,

Little Rock had not even seen them smash my face in the cake yet.

This was just based on,

remember, Brian, we talked about it in an earlier segment.

We'd had a cold match with him on TV just to show the people what it might look like.

And then the Russians ran in after six minutes, right?

But the people

already,

when we were wrestling Mr.

Wrestling 2 and Magnum TA and the tail end of that program,

or when we'd have TV matches, the people were chanting Rock and Roll Express during our matches.

Rock and roll, rock and roll, rock and roll to get, and of course, I'm selling it.

So we've been promoting the match

organically, as the kids say, because the fans wanted to see it.

And,

you know, now we're starting to get into it.

So that night we got the Rock and Roll Express.

When we first started going to Little Rock, remember on New Year's, Little Rock, the house was $10,000.

And I think the next time we were there, it was like $14,000 or $18,000 or or something like that.

This night, we did $25,000 with a cold non-title match with the rock and roll.

The only house the entire year so far in Little Rock that was bigger was us in the main event against 2 and TA with the loser against the lashes with the leather strap and all that stuff had beat this by like $2,500.

So Little Rock was not only responding to us, but it was starting to respond to the rock and roll, and that would end up being one of their most popular towns.

And it makes sense because Little Rock

was only 140 miles from Memphis.

And people who lived, let's say,

40 miles, 50 miles on the northeast side of Little Rock could get that strong-ass Channel 5 Memphis TV signal.

So they

kind of knew some of us,

that was kind of the line of demarcation between the Mid-South Territory and the Memphis Territory.

It was right up above Little Rock.

Anyway, on this one,

we did the old powder finish.

Ricky Morton and Bobby Eaton had a double knockout, and I bust a bag of powder and put it in Bobby's hand so he can throw it in Ricky's eyes.

But when he stands up, Ricky kicks it.

And the powder goes in Bobby's eyes, and the referee sees it and disqualifies us.

And then,

boom, boom, boom, we get some heat on them

with the racket and the baby faces make the save.

Because there's no reason to resolve anything because we haven't started it yet.

But

starting with Monday morning, we've been on two airplanes, a 200-mile drive.

We worked the main event in New Orleans.

We drove 200 miles home.

We made the worst 270-mile drive in the territory.

We worked the main event.

And now we got to go not home, but to Shreveport because there's no physical way

to return to our homes from Little Rock and have time to then go to Shreveport for interviews the next morning.

So we had to go to the.

What we needed to do the next day, we had to go that night.

All three of you went for interviews?

Well, because it was TV the next day.

So even though Bobby, and that was another thing,

boy, when the heels knew that Bobby and Dennis were in town and asleep in their beds because they didn't have to do interviews when they were at Channel 3 on Wednesday morning at nine o'clock,

that was fucking heat.

They were like,

nobody was mad, like going to shit in their bag or fucking try to get them fired.

But it's like, you mother, butchery, you motherfuckers, you dirty motherfuckers, you get to sleep all goddamn day we out there you you dirty motherfucker

anyway

so

we go shreveport from little rock that's 200 fucking miles

and then we get in uh

you know wednesday morning We get in probably around two o'clock, and we had to be at channel three for interviews that we've talked about that we would do every Wednesday, the local promos for all the markets and all the towns on the shows.

And we do that from 9 o'clock until 3 o'clock.

And then we've got two whole hours to kill before we go to the Irish McDeal Boys Club.

They're at the fairgrounds in Shreveport and take two hours of mid-South television.

And

the first

show that they taped that night

was where I opened the show.

You remember seeing this.

I opened the show with Jim Ross, and they do the recap of the happenings between us and Bill Watts, where we'd had snide words before, and then finally the thing with the party and the slapping me, and us beating him up with the black jack.

And then they plug in the interview with Watts where he lays out the deal for the last stampede.

Not only does he announce he's cut as a man.

He can't be treated like that.

He's coming back one time and one time only, not for a long campaign,

but one time only in every town in the territory.

But he didn't say that part out loud.

One time only, the last stampede.

No titles on the line, because we're the Mid-South tag team champions.

People,

if the title had been on the line and he'd won it, what the fuck?

Then he'd have to defend it.

He said, no titles.

This is personal.

And he did the, you remember the interview, Brian, with the dress and the diaper.

That was the stipulations

because they couldn't, we couldn't start with a match and then bring it back with no disqualification and then, or two out of three falls, and then, well,

special stipulation, you've got to do this because it was one time.

It was a self-contained blow-off.

So they worked it to where they wouldn't overlap stipulations when the towns were too close.

But he was going to humiliate me for talking about his family and saying that I was going to have his no-good son, Joel, selling Midnight Express t-shirts and swabbing out toilets and all that other shit.

And they were either going to put me in my mother's frilly dress and they held up this moo moo, this pink and fucking flowery moo moo,

or they were gonna strip me down and put me in a

fucking baby diaper and feed me milk out of a baby bottle

folks if you pay for a ticket this is what i'm telling you i'm gonna do that fucking cornet

and this was memphis tv all the way but it never had a delivery memphis memphis angles never had a delivery by bill watts Can you vouch for me that he made even this sound like something that he wanted to do?

Yeah, because they gave him, I mean, it's him, it's his show.

Yeah.

He had enough time to stand there and explain every single thing to the point where you couldn't believe that he was actually going to do these things.

You had to see it.

And then.

When did you find out these were the stipulations?

Maybe when I got there to TV that night, I don't really remember.

I think,

you know, Dundee may have said, yeah, we're going to put you in a diaper in the superdome.

But I don't, you know,

I don't remember getting the whole fucking layout with the, you know, all the stipulations and everything way in advance.

Remember, we talked about, we knew we were going to do the thing with Watts maybe the week before or whatever it was as we were going through the book.

I said, yeah, yeah, we had to know.

But you didn't,

you didn't.

They didn't hand out all this information to every fucking body at that point.

And

Dundee knew, well, they can do it and they will do it and they'll be happy to do it.

That's all he needed to know.

It's not like he's going to have to talk us into anything.

So

there you go.

And then right after that same show, this was half an hour of the program.

They did the deal where they went on the search for Stagger Lee.

In the fucking wind with no windscreen on the goddamn microphone and Jim Ross's hair, it looked like about to blow off his head.

But so

the only thing that they regretted in hindsight

was that somehow, because remember, Dundee was still new to the tape bicycle thing.

And

even you had, like I've got right here, Wednesday, March 28th, we're doing tapes 238 and 239.

And then if you go to April 7,

the night of the Superdome, Superdome, I've got noted tape 238 plays tonight.

Because

the time slot

of

the program in New Orleans was 6 o'clock on Saturday.

So he mistimed it.

He should have done

everything he did on 238 on 237.

See what I'm saying?

Because they only had an hour before the show was starting at the Superdome before they saw the last week of the goddamn promotionist where they found Stagger Lee.

And we still did 23,000 people.

I guess that's the big mystery.

How much bigger could it have been if you had another week or two?

Or was this what it would have been?

I think the dome would have been,

everything else pretty much was what it would have been.

The dome would have been bigger.

And even if it had been 11 o'clock that morning, I think people would have had time.

I mean, are we talking, it's not, it wasn't going to be 30,000 people, might have been 25.

We would have, we would have done that extra six grand and beat Michael Hayes and JYD in the dog collar match, goddamn it.

But nevertheless, so we did that that night in Shreveport, and then the following tape,

The Midnight gets a win over Mike Jackson and a kid named Jeff Young.

And then I did the deal.

We're on the Rock and Roll Expresses match.

I was out taking notes on them at Ringside as potential future challengers.

And when Robert Gibson's about to hit the ropes, the referees misdirected, I jump up and pull the rope down, and he takes

that fantastic backwards over-the-top rope spinning thing he used to take, which might be why he has a bad back today,

and caused them to lose the match and,

you know, just kind of continue our little thing.

And by the way,

I've told the folks what you got paid for Mid-South TV, haven't I?

But I'll tell them again: we got $40

for it because for Mid-South television, the job guys got more than the top guys.

The top guys got $40 basically to pay for their room at the Alamo Plaza.

And otherwise, television, most of the in those days, in almost every territory, was considered your promotional vehicle for you.

So

Flair

and those guys in the Carolinas work TV for $60.

Anyway,

but it was shaping up to be a busy week.

And then we left Shreveport and went back home to Alexandria, which was 130 miles, and got back probably about

one o'clock in the morning.

But then, March 29th,

was Greenville, Mississippi.

Brian, have you ever been to Greenville, Mississippi?

No.

Don't go.

No, okay.

We love our fans in Greenville.

But Greenville was again in the state of Mississippi.

It's only like 100 miles from Memphis.

It's closer to the Memphis territory than it is to the Mid-South Territory.

But somewhere, because of the

Culkin/slash Curtis promotional family,

Greenville was a Mid-South town.

So on that Thursday, we were a 450-mile round trip to go to Greenville, Mississippi for an $8,000 house, which was

probably about 1,200 people.

You know,

ticket prices, I think, probably were

10,000, 7,000, and 4,000.

Maybe, maybe not, because it was Greenville, because it was a Mississippi.

But nevertheless, The Rock and Roll Express in the main event with Bill Dundee in their corner because Memphis TV, right?

Dundee was probably a bigger name at that point in Greenville than any of us.

And we got disqualified and made 100 bucks.

And again,

225 miles up there and 225 miles back.

That was a dreary fucking trip.

But in case you're keeping track,

Monday, New Orleans, two flights and 400 miles around trip in a main event.

Then Tuesday was

470 miles, brutal miles, and a main event.

Wednesday was a six-hour promo session and two TV shows and another 130 miles.

And then Thursday was 450 miles for that aforementioned $100.

It was a busy week.

What about Friday, you say, Brian?

Did you say that?

What about Friday, I say, Brian, me.

Marksville, Louisiana.

Hey, what are you talking about?

We were happy to be there.

From Alexandria, this little spot show was a 75-mile round trip.

That was the only fucking good thing about it.

We got another $100

for doing a DQ against Terry Taylor and Magnum TA,

but it was a spot show right next to Alexandria.

So

we were home for a day.

Thank fucking God, right?

But then the weekend.

Isn't that a tweet meme?

And now the weekend.

Remember how everybody says, all the,

you know, the old timers, well, we used to work seven days a week and twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday.

You've heard that, right?

It used to be twice on Sunday, then it became twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday, yeah.

Well, I've got proof.

This was twice on Wednesday, twice on Saturday, and twice on Sunday.

In this fucking town or his fucking company,

on Saturday, March 31st, they booked a spot show at 2.30 in the afternoon in Jenna, Louisiana.

And it was 45 miles away.

from Alexandria, but it was on the way to the town that night that we were going to.

So they,

again, the Rock and Roll Express, disqualification, $4,000 house.

So at ticket prices of the day,

they had at least six, 700 people in Jenna, Louisiana at 2.30 on a Saturday.

And we picked up $100 on the way to Monroe, Louisiana, which was another 70 miles.

And that's where we were booked with the Bruise brothers.

And that's where it was pork shop and Bill Dundee.

Dundee filled in because they just heard about it two days beforehand, and

they didn't have any fucking standby wrestlers, you know, for real in those days going to the house shows.

So Dundee, I think, filled in for the next week or 10 days or whatever.

But that was, you know,

that was the end of that.

Now we're just, you know, we're beating them.

And we're beating Pork Shop because Dundee's the booker.

And goddamn, you know, he's going to be there that Watts may want to let him wrestle one day, which later on in the year happens.

So, and they knew they weren't going to keep pork chop.

So now we're beating poor pork chop.

Did Bill Dundee seem happy as just being the booker?

Did you see that he had the itch to get back in the ring and do stuff?

Oh, he, oh, Dundee loved to fucking wrestle.

And

he didn't even, it wasn't like he wanted to book himself in the main event and put himself over.

Now, he did

plenty of occasions in Memphis, but he should have gone over because besides Lawler, he was the fucking guy.

But no, when finally later on in the year,

he talked Watts into letting him bring Adrian Street in.

And Watts saw the potential in Adrian's gimmick, but nobody knew how to work with Adrian except Dundee, not only because of the

international background, but also they'd had the program in Memphis.

And

so he let Dundee work with Adrian and it wasn't main event stuff, but I know a lot of people, oh, that goddamn Dundee is fucking ego.

If you put him at a spot show in fucking Jenna, Louisiana,

he'd go fucking 30 minutes not taking stupid bumps, but doing spot show shit and having the time of his life and taking the piss out of the heels and making the kids laugh and sitting in the old granny's lap in the front row.

He loved that shit.

He was a, everybody was a glory hound in those days if you were a babyface.

But he didn't want to abuse it, is what I'm saying.

He wasn't going to work the main event at the Superdome.

So, but

under this circumstance,

he'd have rather not have been fucking wrestling because you know, there was obviously he,

you know, one of his plans had gone awry, and there's poor Dream sitting there with a broken ankle in fucking Memphis.

But nevertheless,

by the way, Monroe, Louisiana was $19,500.

Probably would not have been if they'd advertised pork chop cash and Bill Dundee.

And then the next day, April Fool, Sunday, April 1st,

after Monroe that night, Saturday night, we'd gone back to Alexandria, which was 100 miles due south of Monroe, right?

We had basically gone 100 miles north and 100 miles south and worked two shows in between.

The next day at 2:30 in the afternoon, we're in the main event in Port Arthur, Texas,

which is 170 miles in the complete opposite direction as to where we were heading the previous night.

So, again, the main event with supposed to be the Bruise Brothers, but his pork shop in Dundee.

And Port Arthur was run

off of the Beaumont Texas TV that Paul Bosch had,

which was

obviously the next TV market over from Houston.

Beaumont and Houston are about 60 miles apart.

Port Arthur was near Beaumont.

What famous rock and roll star is from Port Arthur, Texas, Brian?

Janice Choplin.

You are correct.

She didn't come to our matches, but do you know who she dated?

Well, allegedly, she she lost her virginity to Paul Jones.

Well, I didn't hear it.

He may have changed his story after I heard it.

I just heard he went out with her.

They went to the same high school.

So, but nevertheless,

yeah, Janice wasn't there.

So we did Port Arthur on Sunday at 2.30, and then we backtrack back on the way back home to Lafayette, Louisiana.

which is actually somewhat out of our way, but is 130 miles across the interstate, across I-10, and had another match with the Rock and Roll Express where we got disqualified.

But Lafayette

is going to be a town we're going to talk a little bit more about in the coming several segments.

Lafayette was the municipal auditorium, and

it was an auditorium.

Imagine if you're seeing,

you know, one of the old-time movie theaters, or you're at a big school play, and there's a stage with a curtain, and all the seats are like auditorium seats going up, like a theater, right?

And what they would do is the stage was big enough that they would put

ringside seats, like three or four rows of ringside,

on the, if you were sitting out in the in the audience seating and you're looking at the ring on the stage, there'd be three or four rows on the left of the ring and three or four rows on the right.

There wouldn't wouldn't be any on the far side.

There's the curtain.

And there wouldn't be any on the near side because there wouldn't be room.

It'd fall backwards into the fucking orchestra pit.

So Lafayette only seated

a couple thousand, was it 2,000, 2,200, somewhere around in there, right?

So on this night with the Rock and Roll Express,

we set the all-time record house in this building that they had been running for fucking years, $18,500.

And

that kind of came out of nowhere also, because think about how long

they had been running the town of Lafayette, Louisiana.

And the old building, I think, was smaller or whatever.

But that's still, it's 2,200 people or whatever the fuck it was.

But the fact that we drew a record house,

you know, was gratifying.

And also it led to a deal where we did the last stampede in Lafayette.

We did a scaffold match.

They would start raising the ticket prices.

And we'll see as we go through.

But I think we did like four records in a row

because they kept raising the ticket prices and we'd sell out again.

So that town just out of the blue got

hot quick.

But nevertheless.

I know you don't see Bill Watts much, and you're about to work with him and he gets injured pretty quickly.

And beyond that, you're not really seeing him much except for TV, I would guess.

But the way he treats you and the Express, does it change at all?

Not that he treated you bad, but once you guys are starting to have record business, And it starts early, does he start treating you any different?

Or differently, I guess would be the the word.

No, not on a personal basis or how we interacted or, you know,

when he's giving us finishes or whatever.

But

maybe every once there was an aside like, well, you guys do that thing or whatever.

You know, he started to know what we did or what we said or, you know, Cornette's got that type of thing.

The condom.

He would express confidence, right?

But

always in our interactions, if we were talking about either going over a finish or an angle or something he wanted to accomplish or whatever, it would be definitely a professorial or an instructorial role or whatever that he would take.

And everybody was gathered around it, whether it was the football team listening to the coach or the students listening to the teacher or whatever.

But

he did.

kid around a lot more with Bobby and Dennis after the matches because he knew he had just beat the complete shit out of him.

Everything was a potato when he tore his,

the way he tore his

running into his fist at that point.

Well, yeah, and that was the rib also was

there was a story.

There was a story.

I'm trying to think who he was working with.

But some way or another, the guy was called something to be a smartass.

No, he called for Watts to hit him with a drop kick.

So fucking Watts said, i'll hit you with a drop kick mother but he hauled off and punched him right in the face

so that's what he started doing to bobby and dennis is he'd shoot him off he'd call drop kick and then oh

he'd get punched right in the face that was what he called for the for the punch uh but he tore his

what what is the muscle the muscle in his leg that he tore was it his quad is now he didn't tear his quad he wouldn't have been able to walk his uh i thought it may have been his quad actually but if it wasn't is there a was it his calf?

Oh, goddamn.

A lot of athletes and anatomically knowledgeable people are screaming.

Was it his hand right now?

Was it his calf?

Hamstring.

There you go.

There you go.

His hammy, his moons over my hammy.

He tore his hamstring, kicking Dennis Condry in the face.

Because that'll teach him.

Well, no, but that's it.

He came up with his spot, right?

He said, I can do this, Dennis.

Now, just trust me.

Because Dennis, he knew how to do a spot where you gouged the guy's eyes.

And Dennis had done this on TVS-TV a lot.

You can find tape of it out there.

You'd gouge a guy's eyes.

And when the guy bent over to sell his eyes and reached up and grabbed his face, like, oh, my God.

If he stiffened up his hands and made a little cage over his face, then Dennis was so good with his aim that he could basically just football punt the guy in what looked like his face.

The hand served as a guard, and the guy sold it.

It was great, right?

Well, what fucking Watts was doing was he said, now you get down on your hands and knees.

This is the way you can get your juice.

You get down on your hands and knees after that slam or whatever, like you're trying to get up, and I'll come along and I'll kick you in the forehead.

And you get your color that way.

Well, fuck, that's it.

He not only got his color that way, but he also fucking tore his hamstring and kicked him in the head so hard.

So then for the rest of the matches, there was no thought of Watts not working or substitution or whatever.

They would have burned the buildings down.

They were having, they locked the front gates of the Barton Coliseum at half an hour before bell time because so many people were trying to get in.

What if they'd have said, well, Watts is fucked.

So

fuck you.

He had one leg.

He couldn't move.

And he was the worker of the team.

Yeah, yes, because dog was in his

elements.

Substances.

Sagger Lee was substantial.

We have no proof that was the dog.

Well, you know what?

That was his excuse.

It wasn't me.

I wasn't even there.

But yeah, so that's, you know, Watts was,

to answer your question again.

He was a little kindlier to him at that point because he had, you know, beaten a shit out of them, potatoed them, and then they had carried him through being a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

But I can't imagine what would have happened if he had not made any of those matches.

I mean, it would have killed whatever town that it happened in.

You could have gone on TV, though.

Who's the sissy now?

Who's the sissy now?

Yeah,

where's Joel in those Midnight Express t-shirts?

I have a feeling

you would be doing a memorial podcast about me now if I had done that, the heat that I had after we got the shit kicked out of us by.

I guess I'm always just amazed, and I know people have to cycle in and out.

You don't want to burn people out.

Nowadays, everyone's around forever.

But considering this, and we're months away,

the idea that Watts...

It was never, I need to hold on to these guys as long as I can.

It was, all right, I got to send them to Fritz.

I have this deal with Fritz.

Of all the talent I'm going to send Fritz, it's going to be the Express and Jim Cornette.

Well, but think about this.

What else could we do?

With the Rock and Roll had to win in the end, right?

The overriding program, we came in and we beat two and TA to get over.

And then we had the last Stampede series, but that led into the first round with the Rock and Roll Express.

It lasted April, May,

June.

Then

we beat them in a loser-leave town match, and they had to go back to the Memphis territory for 90 days.

Whereupon then we worked with the Fantastics and we worked with PYT.

PYT, Norvell Austin, and Coco Ware.

And, you know,

miscellaneous teams here and there.

And then the rock and roll came back in another program that climaxed in the scaffold matches where they had to.

emerge victorious.

Well, then, you know, now he's got Dr.

Death and Hercules Hernandez,

or was it

Doc and Herc?

Yes, at that point.

And then later on, the DBase would be in the mix to work with the Rock and Roll Express.

But

then we would have had to be, if we were hanging around, a secondary

heel team, secondary manager.

And what we've been there for a year.

People are going to get used to us.

And then, you know, because, well, here, and then I'll, I'll finish it up.

The thought was

that, because we were going to go work for Crockett, as we've told the story a million times, because they said we're going to finish you up in December.

Okay, well, we've, I called and got us booked.

But then

that's when Dundee said, no, Watts wants you to go to work for Fritz so he can bring you back.

Because the thought was

they'll be in another territory.

They'll be on the world-class TV, which shows in Oak City and in Tulsa, I believe in New Orleans.

And I can bring them back for major shows, which he did to some extent.

And at the same time, they can go and they can work there and be available to me, but I don't have to have them on the card every night and beat them or do whatever the fuck.

They can be over there.

There was a spirit, though.

I mean, 85, it's interesting how quickly things revert back to

pre-Dundee, pre-Midnight Express, and Jim Cornette.

Akbar comes back.

That's before you leave.

Akbar comes back.

And then

as the rock and roll, who end up working a program with Los Guerreros.

And

then after the rock and roll, leave and go to Crockett.

Wendell Cooley and Al Perez become the top babyface tag team.

And Bob Sweetan and just big guys all of a sudden start filling up.

And it loses all the spark.

Not all of it, but...

And it's still a great wrestling show.

It did go back to a more previous era Louisiana flavor.

It did.

and they still had hot angles and they still had some great action.

But 84 is really the magic year.

And, you know, so much of it's centered around you guys.

And that's why Crockett, by the time you get to 86, look at how many of the team for Crockett in 86 came from Mid-South in 84.

Well, yeah, because Fritz and Watts both made the mistake of booking either Flair or

in Watts' case, Flare and Dusty.

And in Fritz's case, Flair into their territories when they were hot.

so they saw all the talent that they wanted to fucking bring in the Carolinas.

But anyway, so yeah, that week we only made $1,325 for all of that shit because it was the end of the month.

There's some off towns.

That's still four grand in today's money, but that is not only, as you saw, you know, literally

working 10 times in seven days,

but the mileage was ridiculous.

I haven't even totaled it, but well, Hunter, 230, 390.

How fast can I do math?

435, 5046.

There's 7,

1150,

1280.

Holy shit.

1480, 1780.

Good night.

That was

about 2,100 miles, 2,200 miles, along with the two plane flights and the 10 work sessions.

But

the following week, and I'll tease it and then I'll let you ask your question.

As I was going to finish my statement, we made $1,325 that week, right?

Would you like to know what we made in the next seven days?

Yeah.

$4,225 a piece.

Wow.

A piece.

That's a piece.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

These are all individual figures.

That's like $4,8,000, $12,000.

That's $13,000 in today's money.

And I've been into business 18 months and I'm 22 years old.

What the fuck is going on here?

My question was going to be, and we could wrap up with this if you want.

You mentioned that there was a reason that you would talk about later about why you stopped wanting to fly commercial early on.

No, not commercial, commuter.

Commuter, excuse me.

Commuter.

No, unfortunately,

I was stuck with flying commercial there, but the commuter play.

No,

we'll get to it.

Well, I'll tell it now.

Fuck, because I don't know.

I might forget by the time we get to it.

We had done that.

I think this was the second time we did it.

Because the boys said, yeah,

if you fly from Alexandria.

then you got to go through Dallas and it's a commuter deal and whatever, but you'll save on the wear and tear on your body to go to the Oklahoma loop, right?

Okay, so we had tried it.

And then the next time, which is coming up in the following segment that we do on this thing, we drove, which was a fucking nightmare because from New Orleans to Oklahoma City, if you care to know, is 725 miles.

And in the rain.

From a night show in the main event at the Superdome to a goddamn afternoon show the next day,

we actually pulled up in time to change clothes.

We never stopped overnight, is what I'm saying to you.

But the point is, what was the point?

Oh, the following time, we just, okay, we've got to fly, right?

And so I'm on this commuter plane, and this is 40 years ago.

I don't know what they look like now, but it didn't look too, it looked like a goddamn 15-year-old model in 1984.

And

if it seated 18 people, 20 people,

the American Eagle, the franchise of American Airlines,

they'll pick you up at a goddamn goat pasture in Mississippi and take you to Dallas.

I'm sitting in the front.

I can't say it's a row because there's one seat on one side and one seat on the other side, right?

But I guess that's a row.

And I'm in the very front where the pilot's door

is,

I can lean up and touch it, right?

And the stewardess, there's one,

is sitting in the backward seat on the right side of me in front of the person on the other side of this aisle.

So it's that close, I can reach up and touch the pilot's door and knock on it if I lean forward.

I'm against the goddamn window on the left-hand side.

You know how I'm about flying.

I wasn't as bad then because I hadn't done it as much.

And then

I hadn't had time to think,

well, goddamn, you know, the odds are against me now.

I've done this for years.

Back then, it was like, ah, what the fuck?

I've only done this four times.

What are the chances?

So we're flying along in this goddamn

can opener with wings.

And all of a sudden, see, I was not aware that this could happen because it was the first time that this happened.

You know, when you hit the air pocket and you drop suddenly?

Oh, yeah.

Well, I had never had that happen before because I've been on, at this point, what, three or four or five airplanes in my fucking life, right?

We're flying this goddamn toy airplane thing,

and suddenly,

it goes way down quick.

And I, at the same time, screamed at the top of my lungs, ah!

And I fucking threw my feet forward and kicked the pilot's door or the cockpit hard enough that they were convinced that some passenger was trying to possibly ji-hod, although now they didn't know the word back then.

It sounded like somebody was screaming, trying to kick the fucking door in.

And immediately, ding, right behind the fucking stewardess, and she has that.

No, it's a passenger.

He says,

Nothing to be.

What the fuck just happened?

Well, when you hit an air pocket,

you know, that can happen.

And it

fuck that.

So that's the last time that I did

the Oklahoma trip

from Alexandria.

The boys were just as happy to drive and save the money and we'd all be by ourselves.

And at the same point, when they did want to fly a couple of times further,

I went from Alexandria to Baton Rouge, where they had jet service and took a goddamn jet to goddamn Oklahoma before I would get on a

computer plane.

A commuter plane.

And that

pretty much is the last time I've taken commuter planes.

It was a couple of times I had to do the fucking deal with

Crockett and Dusty and the private plane.

And then the plane that Crockett bought was a

customized commuter plane, but I never took a commercial commuter flight again.

Fuck that.

I'm going to beat a bigger fucking plane if I hit a mountain or goddamn fall into a cornfield.

There's going to be a lot more,

it's going to make a bigger hole.

It's going to make bigger headlines.

There'll be a lot more wreckage around.

People are going to hear about this fucking thing.

I'm not going to

into a fucking mud hole with 16 people.

What do you want?

What do I want?

It's your show.

What do you want?

I don't know.

But that was the week.

It was a very trying week in Mid-South history, March, the last week of March of 1984 for me and the Midnight Express.

The next show will start the last stampede.

What a fun time we'll have.

All right.

Well, this is the last stampede for today, I believe.

This is the last stampede.

We're going to now, we're going to raise our hooves and bid everyone for, now we'll be back on your show

one more time before the Christmas break, but, but on.

And any big news?

And, well, and any big news, but I mean, we'll be back imminently before Christmas on your show, but this is the last experience per se

until the new year.

So we want to wish everybody a jovial and jocular holiday season, don't we?

From From me and even you to all of them out there.

Well, that's right.

And of course, we'll be back with the drive-thru and more surprise content probably on the YouTube channel and who knows where else.

But

from at least me, you can speak for yourself.

Merry Christmas.

Happy Hanukkah.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.

And I echo those emotions.

Happy holidays, everybody.

Ho, ho, ho.

May your hoes be merry

and all of your Merry Christmases be

hoes or something like that.

Thank you.

Fuck you.

And bye-bye, everybody.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Connet

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