Episode 562: One Of Those Moods

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Like the midnight and the rock and roll.

He's Jim Cornish!

The keys to the future, held by the past.

And with tag team 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 because his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornet.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the Jim Cornet Experience.

I'm in one of those moods today, so we're going to talk a little new wrestling, a little old wrestling, and some general tomfoolery around the edges.

And joining me for all that and more, Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting lion, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-host to you.

He's never too moody to do his duty.

The great Brian last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again for whatever we're going to talk about here today.

I forgot we forgot to talk about that ahead of time, Dan.

Well, we'll do it as we go along.

Look here.

I swear to God.

What are you doing?

It looks like I'm Paul Heyman writing my television formats.

I've got scraps of napkins and paper plates.

I've got notes on.

And

we just convened here.

Ferny prescription pad.

Oh, yeah, there's one of those for this general tomfoolery.

That ought to be a military gimmick.

General Tom Tomfoolery and private fucking penis.

I don't know.

Let me ask you a question first of all.

And this involves the weather around here.

Now, for days here in Louisville, it was in the 20s and 30s in the daytime and

an ill wind blowing.

And then it warmed up one day to like 50-something degrees, almost 60 degrees.

So then a fucking deluge of rain came overnight.

And now for a brief period of time, it's still in the 50s, but then it's going to plummet again once it dries out.

But now it's wet and it's dark and it's dank

and it's cold and it's clammy.

And but here's the deal.

I put my thermostat on in the office at 65 degrees because as you know, I'm a heat miser and I hate to admit defeat and just make it

goddamn warm up here because it's a big room and I'm not going to be up here long.

Only a few hours with you and me together.

But I put it on 65, and when the heat is blowing, when it's 30-something degrees outside,

and the heat's blowing, and it's 65, it starts to get stuffy in here.

But yet, today

the thermostat's on 65, but the heat is not blowing

because it's 50-something degrees outside, even though the sun ain't shining.

And it's bone-chillingly cold in here.

So, how can 65 degrees be

at different times both stuffy and bone chillingly cold

maybe got mold

would you care to elaborate on that how is i i don't know i was trying to cheer you up what to cheer me up with black mold it's gonna

I say I hit the button.

What is going on?

Goddamn, I've hit the wrong button.

I'm going to kill me of a goddamn fungal infection.

That's going to cheer me up.

What's the matter with you?

It could have been the happy mold, the good mold.

The Bob Mold?

Yes.

I heard he was a happy guy.

You like Hoosker do?

I Hoosker do or Hoosker don't.

It doesn't matter to me, but he should have been the Booker.

That's what I hear.

But nevertheless, no, I'm asking you a question.

Who'd you hear that from?

From Uncle Dave and all the fucking...

No, that was, that was, that was gutless Gary Jester, wasn't it?

He should have been the booker.

Red Bob Mole.

He's a good musician.

But anyway, many people are, and many more people aren't.

But anyway, where was I going with that?

Oh, why will you explain?

Why won't you explain to me

what's going on here in my office with the temperature?

How the hell am I supposed to know?

Let me start with that.

Secondly.

You're an educated man, a graduate of a major university.

I don't know.

Is there maybe a problem with one of the windows that you don't see?

That some air is coming in that you don't expect, and it's mixing with those fine classic wrestling memorabilia items.

You think I've just got a goddamn window cranked open?

No, what if it's a little bit aware of it?

What if it's something from above?

So, what do you mean, divine intervention?

What are you talking about?

A crack in the roof.

What if air is coming in?

I could see the goddamn daylight coming through, wouldn't I?

You wear glasses.

I wear glasses.

You may not see everything.

You may not see.

What you see may not be what it

appears what you see.

A lot of people don't think it'd be like it is, but it do.

But I'll tell you, all right, let's get to work.

You know,

that's another thing.

I feel like I'm turning into Bill Bailey.

As I get older and we do more radio here, broadcasting.

I'm turning into a Bill Bailey subconsciously.

I've listened to him when I was a kid.

We've talked about it.

Remember the morning guy on wacky radio in Louisville in the 60s and 70s, the Duke of Louisville.

I remember the name of the Duke of Louisville, and you've mentioned wacky a whole bunch of times.

And

he was often allegedly inebriated, and he was a old.

He was like, this is a top 40 wacky radio, W-A-K-Y, right?

You know, kids listen to it, and he's the hottest morning guy in town.

He's in his 50s then, or he looked it.

And he's sometimes, you know, imbibing, and he was always late

and uh but he was a great radio and he had reed yaden was his news guy that was

the straight man and then they you know he just did whatever the fuck whatever the fuck i do yes we're going to do this again today folks we have not learned our lesson we're going to do another show for the north carolina radio fans and well you've heard of john boy and billy they went national right now we didn't really listen to uh john boy and billy up here in the northeast Well, I'm not saying that you listened to them or that they were in your particular market.

I'm saying you, as a connoisseur of talk radio and morning radio and radio personalities, would have heard of the John Boy and Billy show that did get syndicated widely.

No, I don't know them.

And, you know, I'm of the belief that 95%, if not more, of all radio is bad.

Well, no, okay.

Well, I was without knowing about Billy Bob and Roy or whatever the show is.

Well, I was about to talk about some of that radio i was on motherfucker oh i'm sure it was great it was yeah see now you change your story no the and the google john boy and billy and is some of it's interesting anyway we might learn some things on the air out of that but and also they're responsible for the funniest radio clip in the history of goddamn radio

But

you've heard the Armageddon clip.

Oh, one of them is Earl Weaver?

No, which is what's the Earl?

What's the Armageddon clip?

No.

Earl Weaver.

No.

Okay.

Well, first of all, then, John Boy and Billy out of Charlotte were morning radio guys, and they syndicated their show in later years to some extent.

But when I was doing it, they were in like a fucking trailer in Cannapolis.

And let me stop you.

You're talking in the past tense.

Apparently, they still are.

No, well, I was saying this was then, but no, you've heard of their radio show because they continue to fucking do it is what I was thinking you might have heard of them for.

That's what I was saying.

Am I getting just testy with you now?

I mean, it's fine.

I mean,

if this is your hill, the John Boy Hill?

Well,

that's fine with me.

But anyway,

I used to say they were big wrestling fans and I'd go up there and do the morning red.

They were very popular in the Charlotte market, right?

And they had a news guy.

It was the same principle as Reed Yaden was here in Louisville.

He was a very straight lace.

He was even more straight lace, whereas Reed was younger.

Robert D.

Rayford

was like an older guy with a stentorian voice.

And

he was at the mercy of the bits that they were, you can imagine,

you know, the Southern Stern Show or whatever.

They were doing bits.

And then, you know, but he would come in and the news was sacrosanct.

And every once in a while, they'd jab him and it was humorous.

But

the Armageddon clip is the fucking funniest thing in the goddamn history history of radio.

And

I have it here because Stephen P.

New sent it to me and I pinned it on the fucking email.

Oh, shit, which I've now apparently signed out.

Noted comedy expert Stephen P.

New.

Well, no, I'm telling you, hold on now.

Let me get the email back, or we won't be able to do the sponsors anyway.

So

as I'm getting this email back,

I will say that,

yes, have you Googled John Boy and Billy to find out

what?

They are very popular radio individuals.

Is that what I was looking to find out?

When you said Google them, just that they were popular?

Well, Google about them and

the things they do.

Oh, man, you know what their website is?

I don't know.

Thebigshow.com.

Well, they, because it's John Boy and Billy's big show.

Well,

that's not the big show.

I thought it was.

They were calling it that in the fucking 80s also, so they had precedence on that one.

John Isley, born August 15th, 1956,

and Billy James, born August 31st, 1957, are an American radio,

there was no N, are American radio hosts based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Their comedic morning program, The John Boy and Billy Big Show, broadcasts from 6 a.m.

to 10 a.m.

Eastern Time in several southern and Midwestern states via syndication blah blah blah.

And our boy was a pain in the ass to get to fucking Kannapolis at six o'clock in the morning, too.

Back in the days.

For more than five years, John Boy and Billy hosted the morning show at Top 40 WBCY

107.9 in Charlotte.

Their comedic talents made them number one with the station's 18 to 34 listeners.

Said the demo.

But John Boy quit in February 1986, while Billy stayed for a month and a half, partnering unsuccessfully with bob lacey and jim catfish pruitt

yeah it didn't work out competing and by the way by the way that the radio station they left was the one that i later did did uh fill in on the morning that we've talked about before in some spots on wbc why that

that the lisa manning was a dj they she somehow

got fired for they they answered a call at the radio station the morning team did

for somebody that was calling another fucking radio station trying to win a car, but it wasn't even their station.

They said, Yeah, you won the car.

Go on down and get it to the other fucking radio station, right?

And management fired them over it because the people went down there demanding their fucking car.

But go ahead.

Oh, yeah.

Let me stop.

I just noticed you sent me an email with Arn McGuinness.

That was quick.

I've never seen you use a computer so successfully.

Well, see, I've got it pinned, as the kids say.

And I don't, can we, I don't know if we can play that or not.

Yeah, that may be a copyright issue, but let me finish reading whatever the hell I'm reading.

Yes, whatever the hell you're reading there.

Competing station WRFX 997FM

changed to album rock the same year and needed a morning show.

They signed John Boy and Billy to be the station's wake-up hosts, but they could not start their new show until November due to a non-compete clause.

A $250,000 billboard and television campaign in which they had bags over their heads preceded their return.

Good idea.

On November 8th at 9 a.m.

W.

And by the way, think about 40 years ago, how much $250,000 in billboards and radio and TV spots would get you in Charlotte.

I know what it's like to drive up and down on 95 and all the billboards you see.

Beyond 95, are there billboards everywhere?

Oh, good Lord.

You got to drive through North and South Carolina.

People got a billboard to show you pictures of their kids.

There's goddamn billboards.

Go to South of the Border on 95.

I know South of the Border, of course.

No, on, on, no, it's, oh, goddamn it.

Sidebar.

Interstate 95, when you're going from

North Carolina to South Carolina, it's the Mexican place.

Well, they pretend.

They pretend to be a Mexican place.

Well, I've seen Mexican people there, but it's a tourist trap/slash attraction.

It's been there for years and years with the gift shops and the games and

the live bears.

The most popular bumper sticker on the East Coast, I would say.

You would see that bumper sticker everywhere.

There you go.

But yeah, there's billboards all over the place.

But go ahead.

Back to this.

I'll finish this out right now.

On November 8th, at 9 a.m.,

WRFX announced they're back.

And played The Boys Are Back in Town by Finn Wizzy.

One difference on the new station, said John Boy,

was we'll actually listen to the music.

We're rock and roll guys.

What was the previous station?

Top 40.

Yeah.

All right.

So John Boy was arrested at a nightclub October 21st, 1990, and charged with felony possession of marijuana.

That made the news.

But the charge was later reduced to a misdemeanor because it's marijuana.

No, I'm mad at that.

Just give him a break.

What the fuck?

And then it goes through the rest of the story.

I think he was outside of Plum Crazy.

That was the bar that Flair always was wanting to buy.

It was a bar shaped like a giant purple,

painted like a purple and shaped like a giant plum, plum crazy.

And I think Flair ended up paying for it without actually buying it because I think he spent the equivalent of what the property was worth in money at the establishment.

Well, here's the last thing I'll say.

After 38 years,

the show will no longer be heard on WRFX as of of November 15th, 2024,

but it will continue to be syndicated by iHeart's Premier Networks.

Holy mackerel, off the air on the fox.

I wonder what in the world has precipitated that movement.

Well, you know what?

The biggest problem is the problem with radio.

The problem is radio stations do a bad job, so it's all on the host.

The problem is getting the advertising dollars in there now where no young people are listening to radio.

It's kind of, you have to, it has to be baked in it has to be something you experienced when you were younger that you still do but kids today don't listen to the radio it's a changing

they should just put all of us podcasts on the radio that'd be the smartest thing well there you and then they could tie them all together and have something called cable television or whatever but hold on armageddon now you click on this can can we is this i don't know what this is on this is something from youtube is it their official thing is this something that was bandied about by other people is this copyrighted this is the, I would love for you to hear the funniest bit in history of radio.

Well, yeah, I have whatever you sent me here.

I don't know if we'll be able to play it on YouTube, so this may be a YouTube edit, but let's go to whatever this is.

Here's a fact from Cooter in Orlando, who sends me a copy of a story that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, he says, a

prestigious newspaper, not the off-maligned weekly world news.

Quoting the story, in retrospect lighting the match was my big mistake but i was only trying to retrieve the gerbil eric tomaszewski told bemused doctors in the severe burns unit of salt lake city hospital tomaszewski and his homosexual partner andrew kinky farnham had been admitted for emergency treatment after a felching session had gone seriously wrong I

pushed a cardboard tube up his rectum and slipped Ragged our gerbil in, he explained.

As usual, Kiki shouted out, I'm again,

like you, that he'd had enough.

I tried to retrieve Ragged, but he wouldn't come out again, so I peered into the tube and struck a match, thinking the light might attract him.

At a hushed press conference, the hospital spokesman described what happened next.

The match ignited a pocket of intestinal gas and flame shot out the tube,

igniting Mr.

Tomachevsky's hair and severely burning his face.

It also set fire to the gerbil's fur and whiskers, which in turn ignited a larger pocket of gas further up the intestine, propelling the rodent out like a cannonball.

Tomaszewski suffered second-degree burns and a broken nose from the impact of the gerbil.

While Furnum suffered first and second-degree burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract.

I'm again.

Peered into the tube and struck a match, thinking the light might make the turbo come out.

So that's what felching is all about.

I'm again.

Who says that I didn't?

Robert D.

Raven on the John Bourne Village Show.

All right, so did Daryl Van Horn get felching from that, or did he write that letter?

or a story as I was explaining, but I'm sorry, it makes me cry every time I hear it.

This fucking guy on the radio, Robert D.

Rayford, sounded like Edward R.

Murrow from London, right?

Nothing could break.

He reported the news and he was on

John Boy and Billy, who were the goddamn, you know, like the Southern Stern or how whatever.

They were the morning fucking lunatics.

And

the dichotomy, if you will, or the the paradox was amusing enough, but they slipped that in to see if they could get.

He didn't know it was a rib.

He didn't know that was part of his newscast.

And then he's starting to read the fucking thing, and they're starting to laugh.

And he was trying to

do what he always did, and he couldn't.

Anyway, radio.

It's a wonderful thing, right?

That's right.

You can hear it on your favorite streaming service.

Yes.

Okay.

So I got to make some thank yous because it's getting to be the holiday season and members of the cult

send me

with things.

Well, no, quit now.

Don't turn this into some type of political aspiration amongst the people wanting to get in the cult even bigger and be like Nick Barrett, you know, a sergeant-at-arms.

They're being generous.

They send me what some people might consider oddball things,

but, but you know, but there's something that they know that myself or Stacy or Harley Quinn, one of us here at Castle Cornette, would appreciate.

And Charlie from Starkville, who you made famous, your good friend also,

I'll have you know he remembered me with seasons one through 20

of South Park on DVD.

I mean, that's literally years

extra of my life I'll have to live to watch.

But it no, and then since Stacy

figures of the

Frankenstein and the bride of the Frankenstein monster and the bride of Frankenstein.

Which figures?

Well, I goddamn didn't examine them and copy down the size of it.

Oh, the only thing I'd have to measure is see is my, well, no, I won't measure it against that.

They look taller than that.

I did it about eight inches, nine inches, whatever.

It's a nine-inch figure of Frankenstein?

well from my eye a whole new scale of figures when she held them up and said oh look how nice these are and i said well they are pleasing to the eye and will look wonderful in the tv room i didn't goddamn i thought maybe you would know what toy company made them that's all

the special nine inch frankensteins and i didn't see the bride of frankenstein maybe the box is nine maybe the fucking bride is eight inches and frankenstein frankenstein was eight inches the bride would have been happy the bride of frankenstein How long did that marriage last?

Here's your husband.

She did.

But

she seemed to be quite a hisser off the bat, though.

You think even when those sudden, rapid neck movements, would you want to see her twitching around with that Bouffon?

Speaking of Bouffon's boo from Altoona.

See how that see I wasn't even a written segue because as you can tell folks, we got notes, but we got no fucking material here.

Send me an Adam West Batman figure, and I don't know how tall he is.

Is it from McFarlane?

Who made the toys?

Actually, I did notice that.

I did notice that.

So it's a McFarlane West,

if you care to know.

And I want to thank Mike.

from Grizzly Pulp Press who sent a chewy gift card for Harley.

And that was awful nice of you.

What's the name of the book company?

Grizzly Pulp Press out in California.

They actually, no, they're not a book company.

They actually

pulp.

Well, they take dead grizzly bears and turn them into pulp by way of a pressing mechanism, and then they fucking sell them grizzly bear pulp to various health food organizations.

For what?

For fucking health.

there's a big market in it are you tired of your usual grizzly pulp yeah

get our whole natural grizzly pulp we press it ourselves

see that so you never know what people are going to find to make an occupation but thank you look up grizzly pulp press in california everybody i'm sure they'll enjoy hearing from you and also zach from Pocatello.

Is a Lego maniac.

Yes.

No,

it's Pocatello, Idaho, and his name is Zach.

And he's, I'm going to tell you what he sent me in a second, but he,

in big letters, on the letter that he

included, he's, what is Jim's beef with Pocatello?

Because I've mentioned it a number of times on here on this program and your show, The Drive-Thru.

And I just think Pocatello has a wonderfully

Nowhere'sville name to it, doesn't it?

It's like, you know, will it play in Peoria?

You know, will they pick it in Pocatello?

It's a good last name for your science teacher.

Joe Pocatello.

Mr.

Pocatello.

Mr.

Pocatello.

See, down, but that's only in your experience up there.

Down where I come from, they'd be Mr.

Pocatello.

Oh, Mr.

Pocatella.

But anyway, guess what he sent me?

It's where I'm issuing this

quit now.

Would you stop it?

Uh, I'm pulling it out of a sleeve as I get it right spaghetti

out of a sleeve.

You can call it

you can call it whatever you want.

I don't know what it would be in.

Well, you would get spaghetti out of if it was raw out of a box.

If it was, it was from the store, unless Mr.

Pocatello is making it himself.

Well,

how do you know Pocatello is an Italian name?

I don't.

I just guessed spaghetti, and then you started quizzing me about the logistics of the spaghetti delivery well i'll tell you what he sent me he sent me a genuine 45 rpm record look it up kids on the google if you're not sure what that is but the the the adults out there will understand

a 45 rpm record from japan of abdullah the butcher's music oh my god Is that the way where he actually sings the lyrics, where he yells the words or whatever?

Well, yeah, hold on, hold on, cowboy.

Because it's not only, it's got,

it's in a regular like 45 sleeve, and it's got a caricature of Abby and everything, and the entire label is in Japanese, and it's even got one of the

little inserts, you know, the 45 insert that you used to be able to stick in there to,

you know what I'm saying to you, the little thing in the middle of the big hole.

That's what she said.

But it also has

a picture sleeve that wraps around, and there's a wrestling picture of Abby on the front in the ring for New Japan and on the back is

caricatures of him and

more writing in Japanese but when you open it up the inside of this wraparound

most everything again is in Japanese the writing except it is the lyrics

that he sang to his song, Brian.

Oh no.

Do you have this in your archive?

I may have the record because I seem to remember having a 45 with Abdul the Butcher, but I don't think I have the lyrics.

Well, this is a color on the outside, on front and back, and on the inside is black and white with his lyrics, and then the rest of it, a page and a half, is in Japanese, but never.

Would you like to hear the lyrics?

Oh, please.

Yeah.

I can't do his voice, so I'm not going to try.

But,

and remember, this is apparently translated into

the American by the, because this was sold in Japan.

This was for the Japanese market.

So

when we sometimes take to task the translation, when somebody in Japan says something and then you read the

translation and it sounds like they're lunatics, that may apply the opposite way, right?

Just, I'm, I'm, it could go either way.

Abby Castille could be a lunatic, but.

That's right.

And Koda Abushi is not a woman working on the show, as we learned.

Yes.

But anyway, here there are the words to the Abdullah the Butcher single.

My name is Abdullah the Butcher.

Ha!

I'm the champ.

I'm the king of the ring.

Ha!

And then there's in parentheses,

this may be a chorus.

I feel good condition now.

You feel good condition.

Back to Abby.

You know you don't do when I kick you like the butcher backed time again.

Yeah.

I want to kick you.

I want to stop you.

I want to slam you.

I want to throw you over the top rope.

I want to do all these crazy things to you.

My own family hates me because I'm too vicious.

Get out.

And in parentheses, I feel good condition now.

Good condition.

What the hell?

Back to Abby.

My mother and father told me, son, get out on the ring.

You're too crazy.

I look like my father a lot when I say, I'm the king, Ma.

I'm the king.

I'm the king of this first record.

Ha!

I'm going to beat.

I'm going to stomp you on the ground.

I'm going to let the world know who the butcher is.

I'm the king.

I'm going to fight you.

I'm going to strangler you.

I'm going to kick you.

I'm going to do everything I can do to

I'm coming to get you.

Nobody can stop me, all of the world.

Ha!

Can you imagine Baba was shaking in his boots when he heard this song?

Oh my God, he must be talking to me.

Yeah, so

I have not had a chance to put this on the turntable as of yet.

It just arrived, but I've got it laid out here on my desk as you know the feeling, Brian, to

examine this further.

But thank you, Zach and Pocatello.

And I don't have anything against your

town, but your fucking state sucks.

It's interesting that nowadays you have so many wrestlers who want to be musicians or hang around musicians and they really want to be musicians.

And back then in Japan, these guys were all such big stars that it seemed like anyone who said yes could get a record.

Terry Funk had a record singing We Hate School.

Yeah,

written by Jimmy Hart, who did a, I've got his rousing rendition on 45, but I mean.

That music video from Memphis TV with Coco on guitar.

That's the best thing ever.

Shot

with a budget of $20 for the blank tape.

But they played that on the radio in Memphis, by the way.

And it was requested.

It was,

what was the name?

Was it FM100?

I think, or

one of the stations, because at one point, Jimmy Valliot would go wrestle on Memphis TV with FM100 means music on the ass of his tights because they were playing his fucking record constantly.

Anyway,

speaking of merchandise of various kinds,

if you want some from Cornet's Collectibles, we would love to serve you if you expect to get it by Christmas.

Ha!

Ha!

I scoff in your general direction.

I explained on the last program, I'm not trying to

sour anyone on the process of buying from the website jimcornet.com.

Although, after this weekend of catching up again, I'm so

so

tired,

tired of citing my name.

But nevertheless, if you've ordered after December the 11th,

then by the time that I,

on the 11th, I process them on the 12th and hand them to the feather bottoms on the 13th so that they can put labels on them on the 14th and 15th to mail them on the 16th, which is the day before the recommended daily mailing day.

You see where this is going.

We will still take your order, but think of it as a wonderful way to start the new year at this point.

Is that a cheerful way of saying you're going to have to wait a couple of weeks probably by now?

That's a very nice way of saying it.

Well, I try to be cheerful.

JimCornet.com,

and we thank you for your support over the past,

well, many years, but specifically this last year.

Hey, Jim, here's some breaking news that ties to you, so it's a little interesting.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what did I do now?

Well, you didn't do anything.

They have arrested.

Have they arrested him or is he just in custody?

No, he's arrested.

A strong person of interest for the CEO shooting in New York of one of the healthcare CEOs.

His name, Luigi Mangone.

He was arrested, if that is how you pronounce his last name.

He was arrested, Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Whoa!

boy i tell you know what a lot of big things happen in altoona

and i saw that footage and did you see that nobody has that i have seen talking about this matter has talked about

the motherfucker in the in the in the frame in the video did you see the guy on the right or whoever it was the guy who starts running when it happens yes he's just standing there almost daylight in New York City, minding his own business, probably pissing in a corner on the side of the street.

And this guy walks by him, and this other guy walks up and shoots a fucking guy.

He's like, oh, shit.

He just takes off.

Why didn't they?

Somebody should have had him on talking about this.

Well, we will stay up to date with this.

This is the boy, that guy got a lot of sympathy, didn't he?

Well, you know,

that's the thing.

There's a lot of people rooting for him because they hate the healthcare industry.

So, irrespective of whoever the CEO was or whatever kind of person he was, he is the CEO of a healthcare company.

So a lot of people just think they deserve to die.

It's right.

Apparently, United Healthcare engenders great support amongst its customers that people, when the fucking head of the thing gets gunned down on the street by an unknown assailant, people are, well,

one guy said,

just because I

wouldn't wish death on anyone doesn't mean that I can't read some obituaries with pleasure, which I think is a great way to fucking put it.

Yeah, they got this guy today.

This guy shot the other guy point blank on the street and then went for a bike ride through Central Park.

Yes, he wrote a B escaped on a fucking bicycle through Central Park.

If they did that in a Bruce Willis movie, nobody would believe it.

Oh, yeah, now they think we're going to believe Bruce Willis could get away from a fucking cop on a fucking bike.

Well,

but that's, and by the way, for the people around the world, that's our healthcare system is, you know, once again, something that the people of the country just love.

You guys have free health care.

We have healthcare officials freely shot on the street

while people root for the killer.

And he wrote words,

delay,

deny,

and defend or depose one or the other on the shell casings.

And apparently he had a two-page,

again, this is happening, so I'm not hearing everything.

I'm just reading things, a two-page manifesto railing against the healthcare industry.

So they may have found their man, I think.

But there it is, the biggest thing to hit Altoona since Jim Cornette in 1990.

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Well, and also, wait a minute, speaking of places that nobody wants to go to like Altoona, oh, I got

a letter.

I won't reveal this person's name because I'm trying to figure out because I haven't edited it for not getting heat on this person.

But remember the whole

FE statement of, well, AEW is jumping in front of us in our building and blah, blah, blah.

He was offended by that type of thing and set off a firestorm, right?

And GCW was supposed to be kind of viewed as the baby face to some people.

You remember this story?

Well, I mean, I remember the story.

It just happened like a week ago or whatever it was.

Yes.

Well, I don't know.

Your short-term memory may be shot with all the fucking substances you abuse.

I know you've been taking them marijuana pills again.

What have you heard?

Well, Nick told me, but apparently there was a while back,

Ricky and Robert, the Rock and Roll Express, were doing the Rock and Roll Express farewell tour because Ricky, I think, still wrestles on occasion.

I think Robert decided to retire, I believe.

Nevertheless, don't put a lie detector on me for that, but I believe that's why they were doing the farewell tour the last time they would team up together.

At least that's what it was.

So apparently, GCW

booked a show at the Evansville Coliseum in Evansville, Indiana, and booked Ricky and Robert on it because that's a Memphis market, right?

Rock and Roll Express would be over in that building.

But apparently, and I guess they streamed the pay-per-view on fight or whatever it was at that point in time.

This is a while back.

And

there is apparently a local promotion that had been running the building regularly.

And they weren't

not only consulted, nobody from that company was booked.

And basically, the story that came out later on is that the person who booked the date with the building for GCW

didn't tell them that it was wrestling, just booked the building for a date for something.

I don't know how they did that.

Yeah, how do you do that?

Well, but it's the Evansville Coliseum, Brian.

I mean,

there'd be more expensive fucking

banquet halls at a holiday and express.

It's the Evansville Coliseum.

They're not turning down the fucking stones.

But they signed a contract and put the deposit down.

And then, so

basically, they came in on top of another local company on a again smaller basis.

This time they were the AEW

and they came in on these little piss ants that run the Evansville Coliseum all the time.

But the pot and the kettle is what I'm saying.

You got to be careful when you live in glass houses.

You don't throw stones at the Evansville Coliseum.

You live in glass houses, don't throw stones at tin sheds.

Well, actually, a tin shed might be more up to date.

It would have to be up to some kind of building code.

The Evansville Coliseum, bless it.

I think they said they weren't going to restore the pipe organ because it would cost like a couple million bucks or whatever.

Anyway, I got one more thing for you here.

And then

we'll talk about something else after this thing.

I got a letter from

Jodi Arius, as you like to call her.

She's not a murderous Joni Aries out in the Pacific Northwest,

right next to the Pacific Ocean.

And this, I've actually, I've had this for a while, and it's my fault that I had it on my desk, but I wanted to bring it up since AEW is doing domes and stadiums and things has been in the news lately.

There is some kind of, remember when they were in the Tacoma Dome?

They're in Tacoma, Washington, Brian.

Yes, I do.

And we said, what kind of fucking

you think Super Dome or Astro Dome,

they got delusions of grandeur, this building, that I think I even had you look up

to seated 8,000 or whatever it was.

I said, that's a dome,

kind of, you know, glorifying the thing, right?

We'll come to find out

that it was

until 1991, but when it was built and for some time afterwards,

it was the largest wooden dome in the world.

This thing is built, the dome is wooden.

It was,

I guess they, they opened it in, opened it in April 1983, David Bowie, the Serious Moonlight Tour.

But

this thing,

there's a picture of it here, which is insane.

But the structure is made up of 1,982

glulem beams and purlins

held together by 18,798 bolts.

The roof is made of 28,512 two by eight boards.

This thing is like the goddamn

a wooden structure

that covers six acres.

And it took 323,150 nails to hold down all those boards.

And each one of them was hammered in by hand by a crew of only 20 men and women.

So

this fucking place.

On six acres, they had 20 men and women take 28,000 fucking boards and a couple thousand beams, 20,000 bolts and 300,000 nails,

and said, build this roof so it won't fall in for the next 40 years.

Are you sitting in that motherfucker?

No.

And in April 1982, the citizens of Tacoma

were given an opportunity to write their names on the last 5,000 pound section of beams before it was being installed.

The names are still visible.

So

they haven't painted this fucking thing in 40 years.

What kind of goddamn dog and pony show?

Wouldn't you think it's all wood and out in the Pacific Northwest weather?

I mean, I know it's got a roof on it,

but with this wooden structure over six acres for 40 fucking years

with all kinds of humidity going on,

I don't know.

I think

I'll stick with the fucking concrete and

what are the other kinds of hard materials they build with?

Steel, things like that.

Are you still there?

You're putting me to sleep.

No, I agree.

What the fuck?

I thought that was some nice, interesting factoids about this goddamn odd building in Tacoma, Washington that people should avoid for their health and safety, I think.

If you remember when they ran it, they kept saying like, we're in the shadow of Seattle.

Seattle, Seattle.

They kept trying to say Seattle instead of Tacoma.

They were ashamed of Tacoma.

They were ashamed of Tacoma.

All right.

Well, this conversation's putting me in Tacoma.

All right.

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Boy, I wonder if he'd be that way at parties.

Anyway, someone else.

Not in Ontario.

Not in Ontario.

It'd be a void someone else would have to fill.

But now let's let you make the show better, at least in your mind, Brian, because there's some things that you need to bring me up to date on that either following the things that we've talked about or some new things that people have done.

And basically, well, we'll call it breaking with Brian.

We've got breaking news here.

Fill me in.

I've been in the Cornets Collectibles action figure minds all weekend.

But I understand that do they still have drones in New Jersey?

Oh, yeah.

You haven't seen anything about this yet on the news or anything?

No, well,

I haven't even watched a lot of news.

I haven't watched a lot of anything.

Some me TV when I fell asleep.

But I would think, once again, this would be on the emergency broadcast system or something.

Now they're saying things like the governor has met with local officials and there is no public safety issue, but they don't know what it is, who's sending it out or anything.

So how can you say there's no public safety issue?

You have no idea what the fuck it is or if it's the Russians or whoever.

You know what I mean?

Like no one knows anything.

Could be Amazon.

But here's the thing:

again, to bring it up to date, folks, if you didn't hear the previous program, they're apparently, what was the car size that they were being compared to?

Was it some kind of Toyota?

An SUV.

An SUV now.

So

what now?

Was it a full size like a Ford Expedition or the little soccer mom kind of thing?

No one's sure.

Again, this is the thing.

They come at at night.

I feel safe right now.

I can go outside and I can do whatever I want.

At night, all of a sudden they're around and someone from down the street posted a photo and then a video.

And then there it was over here flying by.

But there are these vehicle-sized drones over New Jersey and as many as, what, 50 of them have been seen in the same place or the same area.

And so it's not just one zipping back and forth.

The government,

the official statements from the authorities that would have jurisdiction over this matter, Brad, is still,

we don't really know what it is, but it's not a danger to the public.

That is what they're telling people.

And if it's the government, we have a right to know.

Is this some kind of big brother thing, monitor where everyone is?

Again, Donald Trump's golf course is right over here.

So you would think if it was a nefarious thing, it would become a priority pretty quickly.

Well, but there, and there's also a military base there, as you said, that's, you know, could they be, you know, testing out flying kites?

I mean, what,

but here's the thing: if

they've got to, they've either got to know what it is or they've got to know to know that there's no danger to the public, they need to know what it is.

But you can't tell me

when they were asking the public, like, well, if you have any information,

this falls under somebody's jurisdiction, the FAA,

the goddamn Homeland Security, the fucking Air Force, whatever,

We have the best funded and best equipped military forces in the fucking world.

They have state-of-the-art everything,

sensors and fucking heat-seeking things, and blah, blah, blah, space age bullshit.

They don't have a plane that can just fly up there and throw a net over one of these motherfuckers or suck it into the cargo hold.

I'm not asking for a fucking tractor beam,

but they can

throw a, I've seen the plane refill the other plane in the midair.

How can they not just throw a goddamn lasso over this son bitch, drag it out over the Atlantic?

What, and just, and just check it out, just rope it down, whatever the fuck.

I know this is dumbing down the process, but how is it not possible?

For the United States government, if they wanted to, not to just go up there and get one of these fucking things.

Unless they were afraid to.

Here's an article that was just published by the AP 25 minutes ago.

Princeton, New Jersey.

Numerous drone sightings in New Jersey frustrating, but don't pose safety concern, Governor says.

Dozens of drones have been spotted across New Jersey in recent weeks, including near sensitive sites

such as a military research facility, which can be frustrating, but don't appear to pose a public safety concern, Governor Phil Murphy Murphy stressed Monday.

The FBI has been investigating reports about several mysterious nighttime drone flights that started occurring last month across central Jersey and has asked the public for help.

Since then, residents have reported seeing drones.

Isn't that like your heart surgeon saying, hey, see if somebody, the commissary, can fucking come up here and help me out?

Ask the government, ask the public for help?

Since then, residents have reported seeing drones in other areas.

While speaking at an unrelated bill signing event in Princeton, Murphy noted there were 49 reports of drones on Sunday, mostly in Hunterden County.

The Democratic governor said those numbers included possible sightings and potentially the same drone being reported more than once.

Here's a quote.

This is something we're taking deadly seriously.

I don't blame people for being frustrated.

What about worried?

You're taking it deadly seriously.

But don't be frustrated, but we're taking it as serious as we can.

It's unclear who is piloting the drones and why,

but federal and state officials have repeatedly stressed there is no known threat to public safety.

Known.

Drones are legal in New Jersey for recreational and commercial use.

What, the size of a goddamn Chevy suburban?

But they are subject to local and federal aviation administration regulations and flight restrictions.

Drone operations also must be FAA certified.

Most, but not all, of the drones spotted in New Jersey were larger than those typically used by hobbyists.

Most hobbyists don't have a fucking drone the size of an SUV.

The flights initially raised concerns, in part because they took place near the Picatini Arsenal, a U.S.

military research and manufacturing facility, and over President-elect President-elect Donald Trump's golf course in Bedminster.

Most of the drones have been spotted along coastal areas, and some of the devices were recently spotted over a large reservoir in Clinton.

The FBI asked that residents share any videos or photos they may have.

Oh, for Christ!

How does that make you feel?

It makes you feel like they don't know what the fuck's going on.

They can't explain it.

They're asking me for help.

What?

Please, can you just describe what these fucking things look like?

And now the other thing is, every time I'm out there, I'm fucking paranoid because it's dark.

These things come out at night.

And everything over your head, you're like, is that a plane?

Or is it a drone?

I can't tell exactly how high it is.

Are those the same flashing lights that would be on a plane?

Or is it a drone?

Plane?

Drone.

No, so I got a

flight tracker app now.

So I got.

Oh, good lord.

I can track you.

No, I need to know what are planes going over my house and what is a fucking potentially lethal drone

you know although there's no nothing for the public uh to be afraid of what if one of them lands and michael rinney steps out

and this is the start of the okay you guys are just way out of hand and we're giving you one last chance moment i saw someone post a video yesterday of something yesterday in Morristown, New Jersey, which is right over here.

And it goes, there they are.

There are the drones.

There they are.

There's one, two, three.

And then he goes, whoa, and there goes an F-16.

So,

I mean, they're monitoring something.

Something's going on in New Jersey.

And it's not the smell on the turnpike, ladies and gentlemen.

There's something else happening here in the Garden State.

All right.

Well, we'll keep it.

How are you supposed to be calm?

If every night these things come out, the governments tell you, don't worry.

There's no known problems.

Also, we have no idea who's doing it.

And if you you know anything, please call us, please.

And send us video.

Yeah, if you have any video, send it, please.

You know how hard it is to film things flying in the sky at night?

It's not an easy video to get.

But never during the day, huh?

I have not seen a single clear photo or video.

And I tried to take a video the other day and it couldn't come out clear.

Something's happening, man.

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

If you can, you know, be the reporter on the front there, because obviously they're just like Orson Welles predicted, they're landing in New Jersey first before they go to the U.N.

And speaking of people, the United Nations, people uniting in a cause, did you have the Justice for Leroy sign got confiscated at SmackDown?

I don't know anything about this.

No.

He tweeted me.

a picture and god damn it and i i lost the i didn't lose the tweet i lost track of the tweet on the screen of the thing and i couldn't write but you know who you are nobody else does you probably need to keep it that way but a guy took

a justice for leroy said i took a picture of it and then reported back that it was

it was not allowed i don't know if confiscated is the right word that apparently i don't know what they thought it might have been they might have thought it might have been justice for the real name of one of their favorite wrestlers that's been fucking listen to the show they know exactly what it is.

Well, no, I mean, the guard at fucking, you know, the

arena in Pocatello.

I don't know if they would be that minute to where, you know, somebody would immediately have sent out a bullet and don't let Justice for Leroy signs up.

You never know.

If it's the week that Jim Cornell on his podcast says, I expect to see these signs, that was probably the week you'd put it on the list.

Look out for

anything that says Kylie Ray or NDA or Leroy.

Or Leroy.

Well, you may be right there, I guess, because what would you have otherwise have

said, no, you can't say justice for Leroy?

Because now that I think about it, I don't think any of the wrestlers' real names are Leroy.

So it wouldn't have applied really to anything unless they were looking for it, would it?

No.

Well, anyway, do we know any more about Leroy?

Leroy was popular on the Twitter

with the news articles and people retweeted clips on television and things and say he's become quite a topic of conversation.

And once these articles started being found by people, and I couldn't believe how many people found things quickly, and then some people found the wrong Leroy.

They're like, hey, look, I found Leroy.

It's like, that's some other guy.

I don't know who the fuck is that.

Did we slander an innocent Leroy?

No, it was some, it was just some

generic Leroy, not the Leroy in Club.

Just regular Leroy.

Regular Leroy.

So it was February 1990, and I brought back another few memories of this trip.

February 1990, February break from school.

Apparently,

someone knew that Leroy did it, and he passed away.

Well, now, I guess we should bring again the for these slackers who have not been keeping up with the programming, Leroy was a gentleman that Brian knew as a young man in New York that gave him a very beloved floppy hat that was a noted floppy hat wearer.

He was the freight elevator operator in my family's office building, in the building where everything was.

And he was the nicest, coolest guy.

Whenever you're riding a freight elevator, and that's what you do when you're cool and you're a kid, whenever you're riding a freight elevator, Leroy was the coolest guy.

Yeah.

Come to find out years and years earlier, he had murdered somebody.

But so now you can pick it up from there with the news story.

Yeah, in 1946, because the way I, for those who missed the story, My father said goodnight to Leroy, flew down to Florida to join us on vacation.

The front page of the paper in Florida the next day was Leroy being arrested.

He shot a cop, the first ever African-American police officer in Miami.

Leroy shot him, saying apparently he was trying to scare him and shoot over him, but it happened.

He ran.

People in the community knew it was Leroy.

He had a glass eye, I believe.

So when people said he had a wandering eye, I mean, everyone knew who it was.

And he came up to New York, moved in with his father, never changed his name, never

got married, was I mean, just did everything like you could do that in those days before the computer.

Just move.

You could move on lawsuits.

You could move on anything.

So one of the people who knew who he was and saw it happen passed away.

And when he did, his widow said, I no longer have the obligation to keep this secret.

Oh, this, this, no good, bitch, what?

And she called it into a tip line and said that it was Leroy.

And cops from Miami, who didn't have jurisdiction to arrest them.

See, I didn't know this part until I read the article, came up to New York in January of 90

to

talk to him about it.

And he did not hide who he was.

Like he completely admitted who he was.

And then when they arrested him, I think he had some cash and some blank checks in his pocket.

He was going to go.

But in February, they arrested him.

And then there was a one-year battle over extradition to Florida.

And his attorney was William Kunstler.

I never knew any of this.

And eventually they let him go with time serve for the one year because it happened so many years earlier.

And even the officer's family.

What was the year?

Was it 1940 something?

1946.

And this is 1990.

I mean, it's a different world at that point.

It's not even just, you know, the years.

It's a different world.

And the officer's family forgave him.

And they realized this is a guy who, again, he was a sweet guy.

He could say that about anybody, but.

was a church-going guy, was a family guy, hard-working guy.

And

I don't know anything past that point, but it's incredible.

And the other thing I remember about this trip, and again, it was always February, it was February 87, I think, when Andy Warhol died.

And that was a crazy thing.

Oh, well, everybody, everybody remembers that.

That was a crazy thing for that vacation for me.

But this trip in 1990, on the way back, we hit really bad weather.

And my father had come back a day early to get things going.

He had to go home.

He was waiting at the airport.

We never arrived.

We had to land in like Michigan.

And then we had to fly back again.

We landed in Newark, got into the smelliest cab of all time.

For the rest of my life, every cab I got into, I expected the smell.

And the cab had to take me, my mom, my sister, and three other women all stuffed into this smelly fucking cab.

Oh my God.

Well, now, wait a minute.

Do you know it was the cab or were they just these strange women?

Oh, I promise you it was the cab.

This was the worst cab of all time.

And he had to take us to JFK where my dad finally met us, took us home.

That was the night of Savage versus Hogan, the main event.

It was supposed to be Mike Tyson as the referee.

Instead, it was Buster Douglas.

Yeah.

So that was the, that was, those are the bookends of my trip.

Leroy getting arrested and Buster Douglas and Hulk Hogan celebrating the defeat of Randy Savage.

I just watched a 30, was it 3430 or 3530?

3430.

30.

Or something like that.

Well, you never know on Buster Douglas.

Oh.

And that whole, but his life and et cetera, he's still around.

He said, boxing, but better, very good to have.

Now, anyway,

well, it's nice to know that Leroy now is getting a

vindication for, you know,

laboring in anonymity all those years.

You know, personally, it's just crazy when we talked about this and someone found.

a bunch of the articles and there was a picture of him.

It's like, holy shit, I haven't seen a picture of him since then, since I was 10 years old.

So it was really wild to see this.

Well, now I can.

More of the adventures of the great Brian last in the future.

Well, thanks for the warning.

You're not exactly Tom Sawyer.

Hey.

Maybe.

I'm more of a Huck Finn.

You're right.

Maybe a Huck fan.

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Anyway,

Mark Twain,

let's move over to, well, let's move over to the fucking

AEW side of the fence so we can find that leaping frog from calabasas county uh i don't know where to start

i was directed by everybody in the world on twitter and

smoke signals everything to look at something from aew collision this past week oh did you see oh i think i know what you're talking about okay yeah well i was just gonna say there's a couple of things that have been making the news over there but i got to start with this

You've seen the clip, right, of FTR is doing an interview, and then things

transpire.

You've seen this also.

This was just a

it was on the Saturday Night Collision show, just a backstage

interview with FTR that was going on, right?

And also, when you first start listening to it,

it sounded like the microphone audio was not feeding to the air and they had cranked up the

arena audio, so you're hearing it over the PA system.

Did you get that effect?

Or was it just?

No, it's the same thing I heard.

And I mean, AEW has sound problems all the time.

Well, but they're doing their promo and, you know,

the fight for the Fallins in Asheville coming up in January.

And those guys live in Asheville.

It is a very heartfelt interview.

And suddenly, if you could hear it,

and suddenly you hear clang, lang, lang, lang, lang, and some just random guy, security or production guy, runs past the camera, and the camera pans, and the guy's running, and there, Marina Schaefer stops him, boom, hits him, and hip-tosses him over an equipment case, and the camera

zooms into where you see over by the back door

Moxley, the plumber and his crew, minus Claudio.

Claudio's not even there.

He wasn't even there.

They're holding

our little dog Pockets, the company mascot, Orange Cassidy.

They're holding him down on his knees with his arms outstretched.

And

Marina Schaefer runs around behind him and holds his mouth open by fish hooking him

with both hands from behind.

And now, Brian, you saw the way this was shot.

The camera runs up on this scene, right?

But they don't just stop running up on the scene when they get to the scene.

They got in the scene.

The camera.

And no, am I lying?

The camera was in this group of the guys beating this guy up as close as the guys were beating him up.

It was a, it was like in all good aggravated assaults, the cameraman is going to get into the middle of it.

It was ridiculous.

and then moxley there's he hands over to moxley and he's taken the top off of a spray bottle i mean it was blue liquid so you got the windex

vibe out of it but it could have also you know

been i don't know answering

or whatever it's lister you know the is it the cool fresh burst or the cool mint that's blue But they've established previously, I can't even believe I'm saying this, that this is the,

they said it was the

substance that they used to clean the mat off.

I don't know if they ever clean his fucking mat,

but it's supposed to be a disinfectant, some kind of, for lack of a better term, a bleach.

And he's taking the top of it off.

And

he's taking his time because, you know, he's the badass guy that's got to milk this.

And there's not even really any

informative trash talking or verbiage going on, just kind of, oh, yeah, I'm going to do this.

And then, who was it?

Was it Wheeler useless that had the funnel?

It wasn't bad enough.

There's the girl.

She's got her fucking, she's got him fish hooked from either side, which is goddamn, obviously, a legitimate, no-holes-barred grappling type of move to fish hook a motherfucker.

But yeah, they got a funnel, a big plastic funnel, and stuck it in his goddamn mouth.

And I'll

drink this poison.

I think I saw this same scene on Saved by the Belle, but it was screeched down on his knees with the funnel.

And suddenly in the middle of this, FTR is there.

And by the way, they were only 25, 30 feet away.

They could have been there about 30 seconds ago if they were that fucking motivated, right?

Maybe they...

They had to stand there and contemplate for a minute.

Should we let them pour this bleach down that skinny little motherfucker?

That That way, we get rid of him once and for all.

The fans didn't kill him, maybe they will.

But FTR comes in and slaps the bottle away from him, and Cash is holding a five-foot

fucking metal bar that is used to hold the pipe and drape up or whatever.

He's got a goddamn weapon, and the heels stood their ground.

Moxley and Pack and

Wheeler and

Marina was in front.

And instead of backing up somehow,

the heels stood their ground.

And Moxley was laughing and kind of had his arm across Schaefer like holding her back from Cash Wheeler with a lead pipe.

Claudio wasn't there, so Cash could have taken all of them barehanded to begin with, much less with a weapon.

And nobody did anything.

And then

Moxley smirked at him and started nodding.

And in a kind of a lackadaisical fashion, walked away pretty much totally unintimidated and instead of don't hit him again.

What the fuck was this?

How many times is he going to attempt to murder people before Moxley goes in front of the disciplinary committee?

Punk was so much more of a man

that a goddamn simple little front face lock on a little weasel was worthy of the disciplinary committee, but pouring bleach down another weasel's neck is okay.

All right, listen, you already tried to suffocate Danielson twice with a plastic bag, and you one time tried to pour this Dreno down someone's throat.

But this, this is the final warning: don't do this again.

Do not bleach the fucking help.

The funnel.

Why do you have a difficulty?

The funnel.

Funnel.

Here, so we don't spill any.

Careful of the carpet.

Careful of the carpet.

I'm not going to have you guys back if you stay in my carpet.

Yeah, I mean, this is AEW collision.

So it's basically what you see on Dynamite plus FTR.

Who are now going to be drawn into the fucking Moxley vortex.

And

I'm sure they've wanted to tag up with Orange Cassidy for a long time.

They'll finally do that.

And

it's so bad what all of this is right now.

That's a good slogan.

Same old shit now with FTR.

And also at the same time now, there's some unrest,

I understand, from

some more of the talent that are.

He's not coming out and openly naming names and pointing fingers in an exact direction like some people have.

But

is Ray Phoenix, he's unhappy with

his Uncle Tony.

Yeah, we mentioned this, I think, briefly in one of the clips last week.

What did he, he tweeted out something,

do you remember what he tweeted out?

Because I don't have the first tweet in front of me, but it was something that he tweeted out.

Well, there was, I don't remember if this was the first one, but people are talking about these, well, the inhumane treatment tweet.

Right, that wasn't the first one.

Ray Phoenix tweeted out something last week.

Let me see if I can find anything.

Ray Ray Phoenix tweet.

Of course, everything's now about the latest batch of the new tweet rather than the old tweet.

But here we go.

If we go to Ray Phoenix.

Now, he's the fellow that they're going to extend his contract because he was hurt.

He got chokeslammed off the apron of the ring through a table or off a table or maybe past a table.

I can't remember because what happened and broke his arm, right?

Isn't he the one that did that?

That is indeed him.

That was several years ago, and it happened on live TV.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So now they paid him while he was out, yes.

But

I, you know,

normally I say, well, if you pay a motherfucker to sit at home on his ass,

you know, for months and months, and then he comes back, well, maybe there's, but boy, at the same point, when you had him do something stupid on your television and he broke his fucking arm in half, because that was pretty gruesome, I might have sympathy here.

Well, Ray Phoenix tweeted out on December 7th,

no one stays in a place where they received inhumane treatment.

So again, he's not been on TV for a long time.

We had heard that there was a rumor that Ray Phoenix and his brother, the Lucha brothers, are going to WWE.

Penta had, I think, a month added to his contract.

Ray Phoenix then had nine months added to his contract.

Then also, six hours ago, as we are recording, Ray Phoenix tweeted out, I needed a doctor and you ignored me for months.

Oh.

Now that

may remind you of something.

That's what CM Punk said about things when he was on Ariel Hawani, remember?

That when he was out after he got hurt, he never heard from anyone in the company.

He did all of his own shit.

Yeah.

So here's Ray Phoenix.

And again, we don't know if it's about the arm, which was several years ago, or something more recent.

I needed a doctor and you ignored me for months.

Now,

again, it's all kind of a riddle.

Someone, and I don't know who this is,

Dr.

Chris Featherstone, Ph.D..

That can't be.

Wait a minute, Dr.

Chris Featherstone, Ph.D., that's got to be some kind of gimmick.

Like, wasn't Tommaso Ciampa like Thomas Pinmanship at one point?

Well, here's what he tweeted out, and I'll give you the response.

Wait a minute, I think it's a Hotchkiss Featherbottom wannabe, but go ahead.

I received information from an AEW source on November 20th regarding the Lucha Brothers status, but did not report it it as I was waiting for one of them to begin speaking their mind about the situation.

I was told that was coming.

I was also told that day that Penta's contract was ending soon with AEW.

Ray Phoenix did just that, in parentheses, spoke his mind.

So here is some intel I received.

The alleged excuse that Tony Khan found out about the Lucha Brothers being in talks with WWE is fake news, and the real reason will be revealed.

revealed.

There is a real story behind the situation with Ray Phoenix, which is a huge injustice.

Well, wait, but hold on, pause now.

So he's saying the story will be revealed, but he ain't gonna reveal it here.

That's right.

Okay, so yet to be to be determined.

Okay.

Expect the Lucha brothers to go more in-depth about their time in AEW when they are free and clear to do so.

And when they do, it is going to be ugly.

Ray Phoenix responded: so far the most accurate comment.

And then the next thing said, unfortunately, due to contractual issues, I cannot speak now, but I will have my time.

It sounds like he's got a song he needs to sing, and he's going to sing it sooner or later.

Now, this comes on the heels of a number of things with all different levels of talent, from everything with Kevin Kelly and the Tate twins, which we've talked about,

to

Jake Hager,

his, was it Halloween or was it election?

It was election night.

He had an election night flip out about the election.

And I mean, even I don't believe Tony Kahn's a communist, for heaven's sake.

But it sounded like there may have been bigger issues with him and the company.

We don't know.

This comes

a lot of people not happy.

Ricky Starks.

Yeah.

Everything with Ricky Starks and the way this has been conducted.

This comes on the heels of hearing about wrestlers, you know, again, going back to Jelly Nutella, who were ghosted ghosted by the office.

They went home and they were home and that was it.

They never heard from again.

So there are all these variety of issues, everything being blamed.

And by the way, I don't know.

Brian Nemeth.

There you go.

Having a complaint about a fucking complaint about a complaint.

But a lot of people are going to say, oh, he didn't get a doctor.

I thought Tony pays for everything.

Paying for and getting a doctor.

are two different things.

They can say, well, we either paid or reimbursed or did whatever.

I don't think anybody's suing the company for unpaid medical bills.

But here, the thing is,

obviously, a

big-time TV wrestling company and an organization owned by a billionaire such as

the WWE,

you would imagine would have access to the better doctors and the more

experienced sports professional, orthopedic people, and blah, blah, blah, like Dr.

Jim Andrews in Birmingham that a lot of the guys went to for so long.

And the state of the art guys,

instead of, to be honest, some fucking random guy living in Mexico or does he live in California?

Almost the same thing with the healthcare system.

We've got 40 million fucking people.

He doesn't want to just go see somebody that does,

you know, when somebody falls off a roof, I got to fix his fucking arm or his leg or whatever.

He's a professional athlete, but you need

a company, an organization, a structure behind you to find you these people and these rehab people.

And that's what Punk was talking about.

He handled everything himself.

He lives in Chicago.

He's been through that.

He had contacts, but a lot of these guys get left up to,

well, let us know how much it costs, it sounds like.

Yeah, Ray Phoenix, hold on to your receipts and lay out all the money, and we'll be in touch.

And that has happened before, in not only possibly in this company i've heard of that happening before not not in the wwe but in a variety of places this idea and we've talked about in the past with people who weren't tweeting out stuff like this like with miro oh miro tweeted out stuff too now that i think about it oh yeah well there's been a lot of tweeters at various points that were upset people that are

sometimes either still there or not there anymore or whatever.

Yeah, I mean, Ray Phoenix wants to do something else, obviously.

At this point, why would you even want him?

When it becomes this public, you know, everyone always says, well, this is what WWE does.

They don't just let guys go.

Yeah, well, Brian Danielson wasn't on Twitter for years saying, use me or your inhumane treatment will be known to the public.

Like, that wasn't happening.

Free me from the chains of bondage.

Yeah, that wasn't happening.

It's happening here specifically with AEW over and over and over and over again.

And also, I mean, let's be very honest, and we don't know what Ray Phoenix is trying to do.

But Tony is the guy who will pay a lot of money to get you in an NDA to shut up if he thinks you're going to say something.

They tried to get Ryan Nemethett a three-year end.

They tried to give him a three-year severance package to sign an NDA when they still have a bunch of people.

But wait a minute, they said three years salary and he was on a per-night deal.

So how the fuck does that you'd even do that?

Okay.

I would have booked you 12 times over the next year.

What?

I don't.

So what do you do?

Because again, you don't want to, if you're a wrestling promoter, you don't want to just release talent who declare,

I want to go to WWE, so I'll punch Sammy in the face.

Again, this is not a new problem.

But

this Ray Phoenix thing has been bubbling for a while.

Now he's starting to vaguely tweet things out.

Now people who may have heard the story from a source are starting to sprinkle in some information around that.

What do you do if you're Tony Khan?

Do you just release him?

What do you do, I guess?

I'll just leave it at that.

Well, what what the

real problem here is, is that they obviously want to go

to the WWE together, the Lucha brothers, but one's got one month and the other one has nine months.

And

that's, you know, that's awkward.

And,

you know,

if the one guy says, well, I'm not going to sign until my brother can sign.

Well, then they might not be ready to sign by the time that that happens.

Maybe they both lose out.

Conversely, if

he signs, and then even if they do sign his brother in however many months with a non-compete, then they're always uneven on their contracts.

They want to be a unit.

They want to be a pair.

They want to negotiate together.

So this is affecting them

years on down the line in their career if they just can't even get this opportunity when they're both free together.

So this is even more

convoluted and potentially something that might play on people's heartstrings than just one guy.

And, yeah, but at least he's getting paid.

You know, whatever.

It's, you know, the one guy affecting the other guy.

And no one's thrown out the word inhumane.

But I mean, but that's, well, maybe that's another one of those translations.

What does that mean?

Tony kept me chained to the dog in the cellar.

Like, what the fuck?

He's been whipping me with a fucking extension cord.

And

the whole locker room is filled with wire hangers.

Meanwhile, by the way, Penta, if he has not signed with WWE, I believe it's imminent.

He gave a farewell speech.

I want to say it was a Triple A show I saw a video of saying goodbye to Mexico for now.

You know, again, it's a, it's a rip.

The problem is, these are messy situations that are now always spilling out into the public space.

Well, yeah, and where I was going with that short version, real quick, is,

yes, in most cases, i'm for a

promoter being able to extend a contract if he's been paying the guy

but this was an egregious injury on something that you know they just do so much stupid shit assuming it's that injury though again we well we don't know what because that was a while ago and he's been out you know before they had this problem he was out wasn't he i mean well we haven't seen him in ages but a lot of time people just come and go to the point where you know I got to be sympathetic with talent here, even though I don't like them.

I think they're the shits and their matches are all the same.

But,

you know, I'm sympathetic to the talent in this instance that he fucking vanished them a long time ago and they were in and out after for a period of time we couldn't get rid of them.

And just there's, they're not that valuable to him anymore to begin with.

So why not let them fucking go?

And you're still not setting a precedent that's set in stone because the fact that it is two of them and you're trying to work with brother.

I think they really are brothers to

facilitate the next stage of their career.

But that doesn't mean you have to let every Tom, Dick, and Harry out of their contract just because they don't want to be in it.

But he hadn't used them in fucking.

How long has it been?

Has it been a year since we've seen these fucking people?

It's been a long time.

And here's a weird question.

And I think I already know the answer.

But is there anything to the point here in this day and age where

you could sell the contract?

You could be, well, I shouldn't say sell the contract necessarily, but you know, buy me out.

You want to get out of your contract right now?

Buy me out.

I know it's not really that much money in the general scheme of things, but otherwise you're just paying someone to sit home while you keep extending them.

Well, Vince had

in 19, what was it, 97?

I think Davey Boy did that.

He said, if Davey Boy wanted to go to the WCW, I sound like like Brett now, but to WCW,

I think he had to buy for some six-figure sum, buy out the rest of his deal.

And then, you know, I'm sure he made a deal with Bischoff that covered it or whatever, but that's not unheard of.

And conversely, that's what I pitched to in the opposite.

I pitched to Heard in 1990:

hey, just you owe

whatever the total of all three of our contracts was.

Just pay us half and we'll go away right now and you won't have to fly us around or whatever.

I don't want to set that precedent.

And then, like a year later, he bought Jimmy Garvin out in two years at $150,000 a year.

He gave him $180,000 just to go away, saved him $120,000.

I'm like, God damn.

It would have cost him that much to set the precedent with us.

He was just too stubborn.

But yeah, that's, you know, for a while there, you could actually

get a promoter to pay you to go home.

Anyway,

we wish the best to Ray Phoenix and his future endeavors, don't we, Brian?

We do, and I'm trying to see right now if the Ray Phoenix story is what triggered this next thing, because I have a couple of things that I know you're aware of one of them,

but a couple of Dave Melcher tweets that we've been inundated with.

Oh, boy.

Well, that's why I figured you were going to bring that up.

And again, it's important to note that Dave years ago talked about the fact that his behavior on social media was a business strategy to drive attention to the observer.

I don't know how it's working now.

I mean, they keep putting other things behind their paywall.

But what, why?

Well, no, you tell me because you know the

social media and the young folks and everything.

How was sounding like an anally retentive, fucking obnoxious obnoxious prick

a positive business strategy when you're talking to the people that are listening to your fucking

show or reading your newsletter?

How,

why was that a strategy that was going to have a positive effect of some kind is what I'm trying to say.

Well,

I think maybe the lack of self-awareness and

he's not even a gimmick.

He's not a performer.

He's not a heel or a babyface or a fucking noted controversial spokesperson for fucking shop at home.

He's supposed to be a reporter.

So, how is that a positive?

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Well, let me give you this first tweet.

And again, I'm trying to see where it originated from.

I think it was arguing over Ray Phoenix.

If not, it was over Ricky Starks, but that'll kind of give you the idea about releasing people from their contract who aren't being used.

Dave retweeted someone and wrote,

if WWE starts releasing anyone who asks, then the game will have changed.

When the game changes, Tony should change as well.

Until that happens, if he does so and WWE doesn't, WWE will very aggressively try and make offers for people to leave, even if under contract, and AEW will also end up doing the same.

Any thoughts on that?

Boy, he will kick the shit out of Grammar, won't he?

Just fucking grind it into dust.

So,

what he's saying is: if WWE starts releasing people, then Tony should too.

But until they do, Tony shouldn't.

That's one of the first point he's making, right?

I believe so, yes.

Which is actually

it sounds, you know, like you wouldn't be able to shoot holes into it until you realize that every situation is different.

And whether or not

WWE releases somebody on their side should have nothing nothing to do

with whether Tony releases somebody on his side because it's all completely different circumstances.

However,

Uncle Dave is also in the heretofores and

dangling participles.

He's got to realize

that in

it's not going to,

how can I phrase this?

There's not going to be the same

level playing field in WWE and AEW ever

because WWE is not going to

be a place where people are just stomping, kicking, and screaming for the most part to get away from, to get out of, to escape these days.

You don't see this level of,

I'm chained to my contract on Twitter and on,

you know, videos shot from their car that you, from the WWE talent that you do from the AEW talent, as you mentioned

before.

And

they're going to handle it more professionally with the WWE guys, whether they would be like a, you get a stray ricochet.

See, I made a pun there.

You get a stray ricochet every now and then where he's happier.

playing with the other guys than he is, you know, working for the big company.

But for the most part,

these guys are going to want to handle that more professionally because they're young enough to know they're going to go back to the WWE or they're going to go back hat in hand at some point to the WWE, whether they go back employment-wise or not.

And they don't want to burn that bridge.

But nobody's going to have a run with AEW and then leave it and think, oh, if I could only get back to AEW.

Can we agree on that, Brian?

I think so, yeah.

So it's a completely different.

And if the WWE tells some guy on the roster, look, you're under contract, so let us know when you're done,

if that person goes and starts punching people in the hallway or trying to get fired,

the WWE is not going to say to a talent, go commit an offense heinous enough to make Tony fire you.

They're not going to say that.

And then it becomes up to the talent, and then it becomes up to the fact that Tony runs a fucking lunatic asylum, right?

Yeah.

I mean, that's the problem.

I mean, from day one, even before AEW, we were talking about the lack of management, the lack of serious people in charge.

And that was before we really got to see Tony on full display.

Now we've seen him in action.

We realize it's even worse than what everyone thought in terms of just.

The lack of a backbone, the lack of a management, the lack of a CEO.

I mean, everything.

But you know what?

And here's the thing.

There's some people in there, but

can anybody be taken seriously as an authority figure when everybody knows that Tony is telling any of the other office personnel what to do?

So Tony's the boss.

And,

you know, so

there's no leadership.

You ever hear that story?

Mike Eisner, when he was running Disney, hired Michael Ovetz, the most successful Hollywood agent up until that point in time in the business, to be the number two, his number two at Disney.

And Mike Ovetz feared that, you know, this may be a problem because I've had a really bad relationship with a lot of your top executives.

And the first meeting where Michael Eisner says to Mike Ovets, you know, meet, you know, these two guys, these two guys meet him, they both stand up and say, I'll never report to you.

And the other guy said the same thing.

And Michael Eisner did not back up Mike Ovets.

And that right away cut out his nuts and that killed his tenure right there, right from the start.

And that's the problem with AEW.

He could hire Shane McMahon.

He could bring in Paul Heyman, whatever fantasy person anyone wants to think about.

They could try to do anything.

At the end of the day, a Jon Moxley could circumvent anyone and go right to Tony.

And so can anyone who's not even a main eventer.

Or maybe you could party with them.

Or maybe you could just text with them.

And there's way too many people who have no knowledge about what they're doing or how to book or how to do things for.

the

best of the company now and in the long term.

There's none of these guys talking to Tony.

So he's just being fed a lot of self-serving shit from everyone.

And he, well, again, I don't mean to go off on Tony.

With a funnel.

With a funnel.

Well, he's being fed.

But anyway, back to this.

That previous tweet from Dave, someone named Air at Air Gold on Twitter.

Someone named Air responded: Why is Tony waiting for WWE to change?

Is he not supposed to be an alternative?

Shouldn't he be the trendsetter in this regard rather than a follower?

Dave responded, because he and I and Nick Khan and Paul Leveck

all know where this leads.

Is that like what it was?

Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo?

Because he and I, Tony Khan and him, and Nick Khan and Paul Leveck,

all know where this leads.

Either you play by the same rules or you get eaten alive by the side not playing by those rules.

If you are in a fist fight and you say, I'm going to be nice, I won't punch you in the face, and the other guy laughs at you and punches you in the face, you are creating a huge disadvantage for yourself.

That's living in reality.

So, again, there's a lot there, but the main thing that people lost their minds is.

With the release, there's a lot of context to that.

And again, sometimes on either side of the fence, it may be possible that a guy might be enough of an annoyance that you don't mind letting him go somewhere.

That happens sometimes too.

But Dave said the quiet part out loud because he and I, because Tony Khan and I,

and Nick Khan and Paul Levesque.

Like those are the two booking teams.

The two captains of industry on either side that are running the companies.

Yes.

Again, that is a question that we've never received an accurate, we never will either.

But how much is Dave advising Tony?

Because we know of several things.

We know specifics of several things where Tony immediately reached out to Dave and sought Dave's advice, sought Dave's words, whatever they may be.

So when he says he and I and Nick Conn and Paul Laveck all know this, it makes you feel like Tony and Dave may be.

Tony may be getting advice from Dave, who's in the wrestling bubble with a lot of bad hair dye.

So I don't know what to think of all this.

What do you think?

Well, now, I'm just trying to, what order do you put him in?

He and I and Triple H and Nick Kahn.

So

is Dave the Nick Khan or the, which came first?

Dave's the Triple H?

He and I

and Nick Kahn and Paul Levesque.

Okay, so it's Dave and Triple H are on equal.

They're the creative geniuses, and then Tony Khan and Nick Kahn are the business masterminds.

Who's going to win that fight?

You want to talk about a fist fight?

Who's going to win that fight right there?

That's living in reality.

I think Nick Con could take both of them at this point.

Jesus, that's living in reality.

But again, this goes to the.

Does he see himself in that role, or is it actually official that Tony is now said, well, Dave, what should I do?

And Dave's sending him fucking notes.

Well, we'll discuss that with our last story in a moment about Dave and Tony.

But any final thoughts on this?

Again, tying back to,

you know, the releasing of wrestlers, you can't do it if WWE

doesn't do it because you'll be eaten alive by WWE.

Should AEW really be considering, I mean, I know they got Tony's money, but,

you know, AEW should be looking at themselves more like a TNA than a WWE maybe right now.

Well, but no, but also, again,

I've spoken out in the past for standing up for

your rights when you're a promoter, promoter, you got a contract on a guy, but every

case is different to some or you know, if the guy's trying to fuck you around or whatever, blah, blah, blah.

But this is a little more sympathetic, it's got the extra brother in there.

And also,

you got to take it just because one company does or doesn't do something, as I said before, the context is different.

How many people are really wanting to get the fuck out of WWE these days

versus

especially four or five, five years ago with this thing,

they knew it was going to happen, but they didn't know what it was going to be like.

There was a lot of people wanting to leave, right?

That talk has quieted down on

besides ricochet and or

let's face it, people who are possibly in the

In the sunset of their lives.

Nobody's really wanting to get out of there now, but you've got a lot of people making a stake in AEW.

I don't think Tony Khan can just afford to willy-nilly release everybody that doesn't want to be there without having them

at least bring them back and do something with them to help someone else get over, utilize their goddamn

perceived value while you've got them and then get the fuck rid of them because they don't want to be there.

But I don't know why he just can't.

That's probably he can't confront people.

He can't fire people.

He can't suspend people.

He can't discipline people.

He can't make people come back to work.

If he doesn't have something for somebody, he doesn't have the guts to tell them.

So they go home and they get a check, and that way he doesn't feel bad.

There's just, there's no

having his hands on everything.

Well, Jim, one last thing on this topic.

a dave melter tweet last week got a ton of attention and people sent it to us in droves

someone named d-train

on twitter wrote wcw would have never went out of business if tony khan was running it

dave melter retweeted this and wrote i've never thought about this but it is probably true I mean, we'll never know.

We don't know if it would have had the assent, but if he opened the checkbook and signed the top guys and treated them well,

well, maybe

would have or treated them well, maybe would have.

Excuse me, it's a Twitter.

It's Dave.

He could copy New Japan Pro Wrestling as well, and maybe more than just one angle because he'd study.

For sure, they'd have never had the 2000 descent, but maybe he'd have never lost Austin and pushed him and more aggressively pursued Dwayne.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Too many factors we don't know.

More aggressively pursued Dwayne like there was a bidding war.

Nobody knew Rocky Johnson's son wouldn't be a wrestler until he decided with Vince.

Right, didn't they go through Pat Patterson?

Like, hey.

Yes.

Pat did Rocky a personal favor to bring.

Dwayne to Vince's attention and get him up to Stanford and have Tom Pritchard work out with him and have him have the dark match with the Brooklyn brawler and et cetera.

Because Pat had seen him and talked to him and believed in him because of his personality, his look, etc., etc.

But yeah, it's not like that

he was shopping himself around or that other companies were bidding for him or whatever.

It was, you know,

Rocky Johnson called in a favor and it turned out to be, you know, splendiferous for everybody.

But to not even get fixated on that, but it's just,

well, were you finished with his statement?

Yeah, I mean, that's too many factors.

We don't know.

Well, there certainly are.

First of all.

You really have to be on Tony Khan's dick to say that he would have saved WCW, but go ahead.

Well, but no,

actually, I may agree with at least the basic answer to the question.

Would WCW still be in business?

Because

we've never said now at this point, we think we've established Tony Khan can spend any amount of money to stay in business.

So they might still be in.

He might have spent $5 billion.

But again, that's assuming he owned it.

We're just saying if Tony Khan ran it as an executive, not if he funded it.

Oh, okay.

Well, see, now that would be a horse of a different animal.

That would be what that's that would be insane because now you're talking about if Tony's not putting the money in to keep it around and Tony, it's not Tony's pet to do with as he wants and do everything he does in AEW with, and he just came in to run the fucking thing.

Are you out of your fucking mind?

As much as I have excorciated him for some things in the past, so

Tony would be better at navigating the egos in WCW, like Hall and Nash and Hogan and fucking Savage and Piper and

all these people at various times than Eric Bischoff was

Tony, the noted schmoozer, the noted confrontationalist, the noted fucking whatever.

That also, you mean to tell me that all the people, Ric Flair, Kevin Sullivan, the fucking

I'm not even going to talk about shit stain because, you know, that might even be a toss-up as far as the booking champion between Tony Khan and Vince Russo,

But all the legendary wrestling minds that had a crack at that, Tony Khan could have done better than all of them.

Tony Khan could have defeated the,

at the time, Turner Broadcasting System corporate structure that we've all talked about.

Tony Khan couldn't handle.

A fucking disagreement between CM Punk and two fucking midgets from Kookamunga.

Or CM Punk and job guys.

And he was going to be in there with fucking wading deep into the goddamn trenches when it was all going to hell in

WCW

between all these fucking guys.

You thought Turner paid people to go away.

Tony Khan ran that.

Boy, howdy.

So, but no, not on any level.

And what television visionary

was Tony Khan going going to be that he was going to produce better television than the shows that right up until the end were drawing 10 times the viewership and more potentially, according to my math,

than the shows that he's doing right now.

And again,

one of Dave's little stupid things,

he'd study.

So it wouldn't just be he'd steal the NWO from Japan.

He may steal other things from New Japan because he studies.

Yes.

So what it well, as I've said a million times.

If you steal from one person, it's plagiarism.

If you steal from many, it's research.

Another way of saying research is study.

Tony would have fucking plagiarized a whole bunch more of somebody else's material if he'd had a chance.

By the way, what's he studying now?

California Championship Wrestling?

What's he studying closely with his booking?

Yes, what is this emulating that we have ever seen before?

I'd like to know.

But that's, again, Dave can't.

Pretty soon it's going to be, you know, if only Tony had been there alongside Dr.

Christian Bernard for that info, then everybody would have an artificial heart and they'd like it.

But that's the disconnect.

You could like Tony as a person.

You could root for Tony.

You can try to help Tony.

But when you

lie and pretend that Tony could have somehow run the business, the organization, the booking, anything better than what Bischoff did at his best.

And again, Bischoff has a lot of faults, but you can't take away all the positives.

Kevin Sullivan was booking.

Kevin Sullivan's a better booker than Tony Kahn.

So what exactly would Tony have done differently?

And again, if we're saying that Tony could have saved WCW with his booking, how come he can't save AEW with his booking?

When's that going to start?

But that's the problem.

Dave comes up with excuses.

Dave doesn't admit that Tony, that the only reason Tony's here is his dad threw a bunch of money at him.

Tony's not a seasoned executive.

He's not a talented executive.

He doesn't have a business background.

It all becomes, well, no, Tony ran an analytics company and Tony was an executive with the NFL team and Tony was a billionaire on his own.

I read that Dave wrote.

Oh, God.

So there's a series of just bullshit being put out there.

But when you say that WCW would have never went out of business if Tony was running it, they would have never went out of business if Tony was funding it.

Well, but now

we said earlier in one of our previous discussions here a little while ago that Uncle Dave had adopted this being a fucking just anal asshole on Twitter as a

what it not a marketing tool, but a engagement thing or how did he phrase it?

It was something to make him more popular or to help the observer or whatever.

Actually, I have a tweet.

The Melcher Says What account had some tweets or some no, this is from Dave's message board.

September 2019.

So this is five years ago.

Business has grown considerably.

As someone who is obsessed with studying business, to the point I compiled the correct about,

I think he means amount, the correct amount of stories to post for maximum subscriptions.

If Twitter wasn't a strong positive, I wouldn't be on it.

I think that would be a good idea.

Can he be obsessed with grammar as much as he is with studying and learning?

Who taught Dave?

I want to know if Dave even knows what studying is.

Who taught Dave?

This is how you study.

Now tell everyone you're studying.

Recommend they study.

Show them how to study.

Tell them what to study.

So they can learn.

Do you think it's part of the decline that he's losing grip on how to apply certain words in the English language?

That, you know, as we get this thing from time to time when suffering a cognitive

issue.

But nevertheless, the point I was going to make is

he's being a prick on Twitter as a marketing strategy.

But does he not realize that when he continues to just lick Tony's balls as he is and he hung the sun and the moon?

And,

you know, I love to stand with him looking over the stars at the poncher train.

He's getting heat on Tony, even with the people that kind of like Tony or liked AEW.

they're starting to go, God damn, this is uncomfortable with this fucking

way that Dave talks about Tony Khan and

pedestals him and worships him and idolizes him and can't acknowledge, or if he does acknowledge any defect, then he soft pedals it and backs up with more compliments.

And he could have

kept, you know, the Edsel would have been the most popular model car in America.

If Tony Khan,

it's getting heat on Tony Khan from even people who liked him because it's so blatantly over the top, isn't it?

Is that what I'm starting to see?

It's completely over the top.

And again, Dave never just says that Tony can't do it.

It's always about, well, look at these other positives here or WWE is so hot or, you know, Tony's done this and Tony's done that plus 550 million plus Wembley.

But the truth of the matter is, and everyone knows it.

Everyone's known it for a long time.

More people know it today than they did a few years ago.

Tony Khan cannot do it.

He cannot book.

He cannot run a wrestling company.

He cannot be an effective manager.

At this point, you have to question anything he's done with the Jaguars, too, based on everything we've read about them.

We've been, you know, I don't give a shit about the Jaguars over the last five years because of AEW.

We've had to kind of pay attention to them a little bit because people send us a story.

There's more feedback on football because of the Jaguars than anybody.

And they're always saying, my God, this is a fucking cluster fuck of a team.

Yeah, always.

So that's the problem.

Dave never just comes out and says the truth.

And remember when they said they couldn't find a fucking cart to the, so they just had to hobble the player off with his arms around the other guy's shoulder off the field?

I believe that was their star quarterback, but I couldn't be mistaken.

Yeah, yeah.

But I believe that was the situation.

Get him out of here.

We got a game to play.

Haul that son of a bitch off of here.

But I think that's the issue right there.

And maybe that would be the end of Dave and Tony if Dave came out and said, or the other side of it is maybe Dave is so out of touch, he doesn't really understand it, grasp it, or see it with AEW and Tony Khan.

He doesn't, you know, everything is about blaming everything else except Tony Khan.

But it's Tony Khan.

And it's also the people that Tony's been listening to, Dave.

But it's Tony Khan.

And this has been a great exposure of message board smartdom

and why having opinions and going back and forth with people on message boards is not the same as actually putting together a show that people want to see.

That's good.

You would think that somebody who studies and learns would figure out what's going on.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot.

You like my higher-pitched voice.

What's going on?

Oh, that was good.

That was good.

That was good.

The subdued one was better, I think.

Oh, oh, what's going on?

Yeah.

Yeah, what's going on?

All right.

Well, you know what's going on, Brian?

By the way, this has been breaking with Brian, ladies and gentlemen, where we come to come to.

There was no reason, no reason for the musical

interlude on the interweb there.

We could have just verbally pitched right out into another thing and

been right as rain.

Well, folks, if you hear that music playing in your head,

it's probably you need some kind of nourishment of some kind.

Either if you're diabetic, you might need some some sugar or too much sugar.

I don't know what's going on.

Yeah, I don't know either.

But I'll tell you,

if you're just looking for some way to get away from that horrible organ music and you want to use I'm hungry as an excuse, you know what?

You don't even have to go to a snack bar and order, say, a Philly cheesesteak sandwich.

You can just, you can load up on the protein.

with something you can carry in your pocket.

Well, not for too long.

If it's real cold, it'll probably give you blue balls, but the organe 30 gram protein shakes is what I'm talking about.

See, these things manage hunger also.

Satisfy your cravings.

Let's say you want an ice cream cone.

Well, that's bad for you.

You don't want to do that.

You suck down one of these chocolate milkshake organe 30 gram protein shakes.

Drink it responsibly, yes.

Well, you...

You can't drink these irresponsibly.

There's no alcohol in them.

There's not a order on them it says you can't operate heavy machinery well you can't just chug i wouldn't just go right for the chug you don't know how it'll be you gotta what the

you gotta sip it so that you don't fill up your whole mouth and choke and puke it out or anything

choke and puke look what are you if you're an organe virgin the first test what

If you're an organe virgin and you have never drunk an organe 30 gram protein shake before, then maybe you ought to take a reasonable adult-sized drink and swallow it and evaluate it.

You're going to love it.

It tastes like a chocolate milkshake.

I love it.

And I don't like anything that's in any way good for me at all.

But otherwise, you can just take it.

You can take a big swig and you can drink,

I didn't drink 12 or 14 at a time.

Again, no, but why don't you talk about the new promotion?

Well,

it's not going to hurt you, except it depends on your tolerance to fucking chocolate, maybe.

Responsibly, again, don't drink more than your

dairy.

Well, lady, your daily caloric intake.

And of course, their new promotion, Organ for Organe.

The more you drink, the more I play.

No, no, the more you drink, the less he plays, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm telling you what, these organe 30-gram protein shakes give you energy to keep you going, provide muscle support and recovery, help maintain a healthy lifestyle, manage hunger, and promotes healthy weight management in combination with diet and exercise.

So let's say you want to lose 30 pounds.

If you have organe, you have diet, and you have exercise.

Well, that's three things.

You divide 30 by three.

That's 10 pounds.

Start drinking the organe.

You don't have to diet and exercise.

You'll just lose 10 pounds and call it quits.

Again, no, that's not how any of that works, whether it is math or whether it's how you register nutrition.

Drink or gain and of course exercise, be healthy.

Don't rely on the words of Jim Cornette here.

Be well, be well.

Well, you will love, they can believe that you will love the taste of these things and it's 30 grams of protein.

And you need stuff like that in today's hurry-scurry, hustle-bustle world.

And it's protein packed with all nine essential amino acids.

So they got that going for them, too.

And right now they're available, these 30-gram protein shakes are at Organe,

O-R-G-A-I-N, organe.com.

Did I mention only one gram of sugar per serving?

That's why

they're not bad for the keto diets and things.

There's hardly any sugar in this whole keybob.

If you want to get in on the delicious protein-packed nutrition today,

and why do I sound like Paul Lind?

Head to organe.com slash JCE

and use the code JCE for 20% off your order.

Once again, that is organe.com slash JCE, 20% off

with the promo code JCE.

So that means if you buy 10, it's only like you're only paying for eight.

Buy 20, it's only like you're paying for 16.

So if you buy 200,

well, you can, you can give them to all the kids in the neighborhood and it won't cost you a dime.

Once again, buy for yourself, buy for your family, let other people make their own decisions.

But Organe is delicious.

It is a wonderful deal and nutritious.

And we're trying to stop the cornet commentary right now.

You have to push some people.

Tough love.

Some people need a good throttling.

Get a funnel.

Get a couple of people on the son of a bitch down.

No, no funnels needed with Organe.

Pour one of these down his goozle pipe one time, and he'll go back to it after that.

But get the funnel, the funnel.

Oh, you're going to like Organe so much, you're going to throw your funnel away, and you're going to go right to the packaging.

Organe, what's that promo code?

How can people get it?

Where are people going, Jim?

Organe.com, promo code JCE, 20%

off.

That's right, Organe.

Yes, that's the name of the sponsor's product.

Did I tell you that they changed the name of River City Flooring?

No, I have not heard this big news.

No, my favorite advertising jingle, River City Flooring, it's River City Flooring.

Beautiful, stylish flooring.

Now they changed it to like the flooring depot or something.

And I just did it.

Oh.

Yeah, whatever the fuck.

They just did that here.

There was this community bank in New York, the New York Community Bank, that I don't know how much they spent on advertising, but for a while it seemed like a lot.

And, you know, the bank wasn't necessarily doing that great.

They just changed their name, but they had the best jingle.

New York Community Bank.

You never hear that ever again.

It's gone.

I hope I don't ever hear that again.

You got the nerve to talk about my singing.

I wasn't doing my real voice.

I was copying a different voice.

Oh, yeah.

It was

using my mimicry.

I was using my mimicking skills.

Your incredible million-dollar mimicry skills to tell us how bad it was.

That's right.

Because you can replicate any bad singing, no matter where it comes from or what it is.

So what are you replicating over at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this fine week?

Another fine week of programming that we will be replicating to you via your favorite podcast platforms, wherever you find your favorite podcasts, get information about all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcasts or on Facebook.

Facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Of course, each and every day, the wrestling news.

Get your wrestling news from the wrestling news directly from thewrestlingnews.com.

Wherever you find your favorite podcast, look for Arcadian Vanguard.

No middleman.

No middleman.

But look for Arcadian Vanguards, The Wrestling News, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

No clickbait, no paywall, just the wrestling news.

Also, want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon.

The latest episode features Jeff Bowdron from Breaking Kay Fabe with Bowdrin and Barry.

Check that out.

Do they?

They do.

Do they shut up and wrestle?

Oh, they do that and then they break Kayfabe.

Yes, they do.

But

S-U-A-W-Pod.com.

I'm screaming this whole time, and I don't know why.

S-U-A-WPod.com.

Available wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast.

The

Mothership!

That's a little too close to home with all these drones going around, but go through the archive, 605pod.com, wherever you find your favorite podcast, the 605 Super Podcast, The Mothership.

If only you had a skylight in your bathroom, you could sit on the throne and watch your drone.

Never thought about that, did you?

No, that's a new one.

That's all I want.

Think about that.

You know, with all the rappers going down for heinous sex crimes, maybe you could take over the rap charts.

Kind of like

when Elvis went in the army and Buddy Holly and Richie Vallins died and Chuck Berry was a pervert and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Pat Boone.

And yeah, Jerry Lee Lewis got busted.

Here's Pat Boone.

Here's Frankie Avalon.

Here's Fabian.

That's what I'm talking about.

Pat Boone covered Toottie Fruity.

All righty, speaking of covering Toottie Fruity, it's time for us to cover the Toottie Fruity activities on SmackDown on December the 6th.

They're all just nuts over there.

They're all just lunatics.

They were in Minneapolis at the Target Center.

Great-looking crowd.

I do not remember if I heard the attendance called, but it looked nice on television.

But

again, this is a show where not a lot happened that was of any

great interest, you know.

And then you got the high points.

It'll do you for 45 minutes or so.

But the start of the program was the Survivor Series recap, and then they did an injury update.

They should have called it the body count

on

the men's war games match.

Three guys out of the ten guys in a match are injured and out indefinitely.

Bronson Reed,

Tonga Loa, and Jimmy Uso.

And for three different reasons, but

again, Brian, If only there was someone perceptive enough to say, you know, Bronson Reed is a great talent, They're really getting him over.

But a guy that size, that weight, you got to watch the stuff that he does because it will take a toll on your joints.

If only someone might have uttered those exact words.

What about a week ago on this program?

And now they played the footage when he came off the top of the cage and splashed.

Who's he, what's he threw the table?

He broke.

Well, they said at various points, broken foot and ankle injury.

It may be both.

Because did you see the video they slow-moed and put...

Yeah, I wish they didn't show that.

Wow.

Oh, yeah, well.

Hey.

The x-ray was enough.

That's approximately what...

Stacey had an ankle injury.

However many years ago, I don't want to reveal a woman's age.

It was a long time ago at the

independent wrestling show where her ankles turned sideways like that it was hers was actually a little more sideways but point is she's got like five pins in the

thing

they said he's out indefinitely and is going to undergo surgery or maybe already has undergone

but boy

he didn't need to come off the top of the cage at 400 pounds or whatever he is Did he hit anyone or was that when someone got off the table?

No, no, no.

He splashed whoever he was supposed to take out i think he splashed him through the table didn't he you know as we're talking about

we're thinking of we're thinking of when punk saved yeah yeah open

people but who was that

was that bronson it may have been i don't

know

point is because so many people and two girls came off the top of the cage before this happened

and then jimmy uso

has a broken toe from coming off the top of the cage with a splash.

Because Because where do you land when you're splashing?

Your toes are going to hit.

Even if you're trying to shoot, splash all your weight on a guy, your toes are going to hit the ground.

And that happens

on these high altitude splashes, you know, more than sometimes you hear about.

Oh, my fucking toe.

But it's not as bad.

The broken toe is not as bad as Bronson Reed's.

And with that,

the one good thing they did on these, we're going to get to Tongaloa in a minute, they showed the x-rays.

They highlighted, they showed where the injury took place and, or I think in Tongaloa's case, where they wanted you to think, but they showed the x-rays and the injuries.

It's good for the business, makes it look dangerous.

It's, you know,

not good for the talent.

But that's the point is they've spent all this time and effort and it has worked worked in getting Bronson Reed over.

He's a bigger star than he's ever been.

They got the splash off the top rope over as death.

Why did he need to come off the top of the cage?

You remember, I've told you a story when the summer of 88 Bash's Dusty was going to book Warlord and Barbarian against the Road Warriors in scaffold matches.

Oh, yeah.

That's when they left and went to the WWF to become baby chasers.

Yes.

And if you think that the timing was a coincidence, I'm sorry because I was in a locker room and it's not.

They heard what?

They were both 300 fucking pounds.

And I mean, barbarian,

I think you think in his day, in his prime, you would think a barbarian, he could do anything athletic.

He probably could have done it.

Those legs were tree trunks.

But Warlord was 320 at that point.

And

they thought,

we ain't going to beat the Road Warriors in a scaffold match.

Plus, the Road Warriors are like, well, we're not doing a job in the scaffold match.

We'll have one.

But we're 300 pounds.

We can't take that bump.

Can't drop that far on your feet.

Insert joke about what happened to me.

You know, but think if I'd have weighed another hundred and something pounds at the time.

So

they said, fuck it, and made the call to Vince.

And

guess who ended up on the scaffold in the Bash's 88, the Midnight Express, the Fantastics?

But that's it.

He didn't need to do it.

And I hate to see

for both sides.

I see the business side of the disappointment that you feel when you're in the office, when you're a creative team, whatever.

And a guy's gotten over, and then all of a sudden something like that happens.

And for the talent, I know that feeling too.

So,

but this was,

they would have taken it off the top rope,

is all I'm saying.

And remember earlier in the night,

here's this big giant that hurt himself, Eo Skye, wasn't it, with the can on her head?

Backwards with a garbage can on her head.

But now it was, okay.

Covering half her body, on her head, covering half her body.

Well, it was a bright purple

can.

I'm sure it was probably custom-made.

It didn't look like they just painted a regular garbage can.

They probably padded the inside.

Maybe they had handles for her to hold on to so it didn't move around anywhere.

An apparatus to put her head into.

I don't know.

Maybe the outside of it was made of unborn virgin goat's milk

and wouldn't hurt the fucking girls that were catching her when she came from 15 feet in the air, flipping.

But still,

what the f why?

Why did she have a TV monitor in there so

she could know where she was jumping?

Would anybody have been disappointed

with that show if you'd have taken out E.O.

Skye with the garbage can and

Bronson Reed had come off the top rope and gone through the table instead of coming off top of the cage?

Would anybody have asked for a refund?

And remember, Tiffany Stratton did a swanton dive off the top of the cage at the same point you did the garbage can jump, E.O.

Sky.

Yes, and they had to do it at the same time, so it came off looking fake anyway while everybody was standing there while Can Girl got her fucking can in the right place.

You know, it's the one-upsmanship, where every time there's another one of these matches, someone has to do something to one-up whatever was in the previous one.

But no, but in that company, they're being allowed to.

They didn't just set that.

She didn't bring her own fucking can.

That was an approved can bump.

What I'm saying is, can we goddamn

say no to the talent if they're coming up with this?

And can we

exhibit a little bit more thought?

I've told a story when

in Milwaukee for Ring of Honor, Steen, Kevin Owens wanted fucking Mark Briscoe

to splash him through a table off the balcony.

And I was like,

the Briscoe's are booked in a goddamn pay-per-view in New York in a couple of weeks.

So are you, as a matter of fact, you fat bastard.

What do you want to do this in Milwaukee for us 672 people?

It just.

So now Bronson Reed

has broken bones in

his ankle and foot two months before the Royal Rumble and four months for WrestleMania.

So that ain't good for business.

And then,

final comments on this injury

plague that we've got.

Oh, oh, and Tongaloa.

I'm sorry, I forgot, forgot.

Torn bicep.

He's going to have surgery.

He's had to have surgery, but he could have torn the bicep anywhere.

They showed punk hitting him with the garbage or the garbage can,

the toolbox.

But

a torn bicep is often not a visual injury where it looks good.

I think that was more visual.

I don't know whether that's what did it.

I would doubt it.

What do you think?

What about the torn bicep?

Ouch.

Was Was he

well, I mean, did he take some screwy bump that I didn't fucking pay attention to?

I don't know.

It's Tongaloa.

Maybe he was walking.

We've seen this guy do some funny things.

I like him.

He always seems like such a nice guy who's mixed up with the wrong crowd.

Hopefully he gets better soon.

Hopefully all these guys do.

Yes.

Can you imagine you're in the back though?

It's like, oh, I think I broke my entire foot.

Oh, I tore my bicep.

Yeah, man, my toe.

Yeah, my toe.

Oh, God.

It's the pinky toe.

Hey, you know the one they asked you before when you brought up that a lot of guys have hurt their toes?

I never thought of this question before, but I know it used to happen to me playing basketball a lot.

Were there a lot of jammed fingers?

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Well, that's.

I've mentioned before when you shook hands with Lou Thes,

it was like you were putting your hand inside a catcher's mitt where every joint was a big giant ball bearing because he'd had every every joint of his fingers broken so many times.

They were just big and hard.

And

yeah, you know, a lot of times you'd see guys with the finger, the finger on the tape.

They put the finger on the tape.

The tape on the fingers was often not to hide a blade.

It was because you had a broken finger or a finger that you

figured might be broken that you just taped to the next one so it wouldn't bend too fucking far.

So that was common.

I mean, now, you know, they have people to check it out and everything, but in those days, a finger or a toe, you just taped it to the next one and didn't really

say too much about it.

But it would hamper the

guys that wanted to, Flair had a bad finger one time and he couldn't fucking chop it.

It was driving him crazy.

But anyway, speaking of a bad finger, they gave us the finger with the first talking segment because it was Cody

plugging Saturday night's main event against Kevin Owens, and then Chad Gable interrupted.

And

remember when we thought that they were turning him, getting him away from Otis and Tozawa and Model Girl, and he may be going to be a serious, you know, upper level type fucking guy because he can work his ass off.

What an athlete.

And now he's got

two more useless guys and another fucking bland girl,

and they're back in the upper middle.

I know that

they wanted a TV match so Cody could get a good win, and this guy is, you know, an excellent worker.

But I fast-forwarded through this whole deal because I just didn't care.

And by the time it was over, we were 18 minutes in the fucking show.

But he dumped two rotten guys and a rotten girl and got two two more rotten guys and a rotten girl.

It's in the same fucking place.

And they were there because of some kind of was it a transfer period or a show swap, whatever it was, they were there from Raw.

And as soon as you saw Gable come out, you kind of knew what it was going to be.

So I paid attention, but it seemed like it was going to be a throwaway episode.

Well, I didn't throw it away because I, you know, I wanted to keep my television.

I just didn't enjoy what I was watching on it.

But anyway, real briefly, we'll get to the

meat of the matter.

Chelsea and Piper beat Bianca up in the back.

That was terrible.

And then we had a women's triple threat U.S.

title match where Tiffy

wrestled Carmen Electra, who all wrestled Naomi, and Tiffy won, and we were 30 minutes into the fucking show.

And then we come.

To another one of the

in the back.

what were we just saying last week?

Goddamn, everybody is attacked in the back, and it was with the hurt syndicate said at least their shit looked

looked good, right?

It looked intimidating, and

you know, and it

didn't look fake or anything, but still, it was the same shit everybody does.

Another day, coming through security, solo and

Fatu and whoever the fuck beat up people at security.

So there's constant angles in the back.

Well, in this point,

the street prophets had been attacked,

and Nick Aldous is there, the general manager of this

fucking Kmart.

And he sees that these two guys have been beat up and they're down and they're moaning and there's people checking on them.

And he says they need medical attention.

They're hurt badly.

So then Aldous walks completely away from them and fucking the camera follows him and you never see him a goddamn again.

Did you notice that?

I did.

And the camera follows him as he

as he sees, I'm sorry, as he sees the motor city machine gun, Shelly and Sabin and old Johnny Sameface, Gargano.

He's they're standing there talking to each other and he sees them.

Well, the prophets can't wrestle and Gargano says, well, we could we could step in.

And so I guess Aldous is thinking, Well, you can't grieve forever, these guys may be permanently paralyzed, but we got to have a fucking match, okay?

So, he

again, the camera leaves, it gets so commonplace.

I guess even the cameraman is bored by people being attacked in the back.

But these guys are down with potentially career-ending injuries.

We don't know.

They got a goddamn hot sauce suppository, whatever the fuck.

But the camera follows Aldous 20 feet down the

hallway so he can give their match away in the next 45 seconds.

I just found that funny.

Please don't penalize me for that.

No, no, no.

I think it is funny.

I think Aldous does a good job in all these situations, too.

As funny as that sounds.

Well, yeah, he doesn't give a shit.

He's like, oh, two more of these fucking clowns that got jumped in the back.

Hey, pause the TV in the background on the news.

The headline?

Drones?

Ray Gunn the Musical pulled after Breakdancer calls in lawyers.

Oh, I saw this.

So apparently there's something going on I have to follow up with.

They were going to make a musical about the whole Ray Gun experience, her dancing in the Olympics and the controversy or whatever.

And

her lawyers

have put the kibosh on that.

And

apparently they've got some kind of babyface, you know, reasoning like, well, we don't want other people subjected to potential mockery and whatever.

But

it's always accompanied by the picture of her doing the kangaroo thing.

Yeah, I mean, how could that not be mocked everywhere?

I mean, we'll see what happens.

Ray Gun, maybe that they change it, you know, Bay Gun, the musical.

Do you think, I know we talked about this before, but what every time I see any clip from that routine,

when she was doing it,

because she was

she was serious about it.

i mean it was like she was doing the shit for real did she really think she was doing well or was she just putting up the front and going hey i'm doing this in the olympics so i got to carry it off we'll never did she believe you know how could you

well

shit stain thinks he's a writer

Anyway, back to the people who wrote this show.

Bianca wrestled Piper

and she won.

Bianca, that is.

We were 50 minutes in.

What is this?

Glow at this point.

And then they recapped the women's war games.

And then Bianca and Naomi did some more girl talk in the back.

And then it was 9 o'clock, Brian, halfway through.

And here came Shaky Nakamura.

But before we saw too much of him, here came LA Night.

Yeah.

Yeah, and well, and here's another observation.

The people are still popping for him, but it's drooping.

And

it won't last forever when he comes out and talks big

and works with and loses to middle card guys.

And he's been working with them for some time now.

We've been talking about that.

Now he lost the belt to Nakamura.

And Andre is still here in a minute.

in the middle of this thing.

Is this dragging him down?

Are we at a tipping point here?

Where, because

they want to hear his trash talk, but when he says he's going to kick the shit out of everybody, he never gets, he never kicks the shit out of anybody.

Well, that's the thing.

I think we need like an action moment.

We need something where he gets in there and does something so

that you're not left feeling deflated.

It feels like too often he comes out there, still does this good promo, but he never comes out.

He's starting to not come out of it for the better, all these guys that he's working with.

Yes.

But he's got to do something.

They got to give him something with action.

At least in this segment, he didn't end up laying flat of his face in the ring on television for an inordinately long period of time, immobile down like a feckless fucking.

Oh, I forgot.

Yes, he did.

Because LA Knight came out and wanted a rematch right now.

Yeah.

And he put on his sunglasses as the mist blockers, which was very

clever.

And then as soon as he in the ring, here comes Andre's music.

And I'm like, ah, Christ.

And he came out and he wanted Nakamura too.

And then suddenly,

Tomatonga attacks Andre and Fatu leveled L.A.

Knight and got heat on both of them.

And at Solo's direction, and then Nakamura started to mist,

or he was grabbing his throat like he was going to mist that was good.

You know, the bloodline, but instead he kind of dribbled and he backed out.

That was good.

Yeah, I like that.

Yeah.

It's the two heels coming at.

They're not friends, but it was, he's there.

We got to do something to him.

You know what I'll do?

That shit was just dripping out there.

All right, you can leave on your own.

Yes.

Nakamura got it out.

LA Knight got his shit kicked out of him.

And then Solo spiked him.

And they did the promo,

you know, about the bloodline, getting the bloodline up, but it was a long promo and both L.A.

Knight and Andre had to just lay there.

And

not only does it make you look like just shit when you have to lay there and nobody's doing anything to you, and you're selling and selling when there's a promo going on, even if you got if you got pile driven or damaged in such a way that it's that serious that you can't get up that long, somebody should have come and got you.

and and also i think in some cases it lends

a visual comedy

when you get the wide shot of somebody even if they're doing a really good serious promo when a guy's just laying over there right and you can see it in the same shot why can't the medical staff

come and grab you know it

I can understand in some cases you want the challenger standing over the downed champion, holding his belt up and putting it over him and say, yes, that's dramatic, but when it's just going on and on,

you need the medical staff to come in, pull the guy away, stick some oxygen on him,

stick him on a backboard, whatever you need to do to him while the people are talking to give that guy an out to get out of there and not just, because people are otherwise thinking, well, fucking get up and start fighting you, fucking pussy.

That's so

Nakamura got to graceful exit, and LA Knight's laying there flat on his face.

Anyway,

did you like where Kevin Owens

invited Michael Cole out to come and interview him in his car?

Thought it was all right.

Again, does the camera only work in his car?

This time, the premise was he keeps coming to the building and they won't let him in.

So now he's not even going to try to come in.

Well, in that case, why couldn't he be in his hotel room on his live telephone fucking video hookup?

Is he driving from town to town in the same car?

Well, no, because he made mention, because you know he's got to always throw the line in when he kicked Cole out and get out of my rental vehicle.

Wow.

But anyway, he invited him, and Michael didn't want to go, but the tag team title was on the line, so they stayed there for this.

And

I don't know how I felt about this angle coming up because

I think they just did it, didn't they?

But

nevertheless, the Motor City Machine Guns are now going to wrestle Champa and Johnny Sameface for the tag team title because somebody

beat up the private profits and in the back and we don't know who.

And

Gargano's friends with the Motor City machine guns from way back, but Ciampa has been mad at Gargano because he don't give a fuck that he wants the belts and he's not their friends

or their friend, plural, whatever the fuck.

So that's where we're at so far, right?

So now they're going to have this match.

And again, I like the machine guns and I like Champa, but it's almost against my religion to watch the garden gnome.

And, you know, the tag team division, they have just

there's talented guys in it, but the way that it's been presented for so long, it's just so mid-card now.

But nevertheless,

what they did during this was Champa and

Gargano would continue to argue with each other on occasion about what they were doing or whether they were playing nice or not.

But then the referees with Chiampa and Gargano out of nowhere nut shots Sabin.

And Shelly is up on the top rope.

He was about to jump off and he's like,

he jumps down.

He goes, why?

And he super kicks fucking Shelly.

And then Gargano smiles at Champa and tags him, and they double-somethinged.

Sabin,

one, two, three, They're the new champions.

They turn Gargano turned heel on his friends, but he'd been arguing with his partner.

Okay, I didn't see this one coming, but didn't they just do that with a new day last week?

Yes.

I mean, not the same way, but the same thing where they were teasing a long time split, and it turned out they both won heel.

Yeah, so this was almost

AEW-like, it's like, can't you at least, you know,

what is the proper waiting period after a man turns on his,

you know, fucking opponent before you're allowed to do that again on top?

I don't know, but it was the same fucking week, almost the same thing in concept.

But now,

now, remember I was saying, well, at least they're going to break up, and then you said, oh, but Champa will be working with Gargano.

And I'm like, oh, God, now we don't get them to see them broken up.

But they're still going to be fucking a team and they're going to be heels.

But I'm still going to have to look at fucking same face.

And I'm sure when the street profits get up, they're going to want some revenge.

That would have been a good segue to a spot if we had a sponsor that sold revenge.

Well, how much left was SmackDown?

How much was there left, mister, on the SmackDown?

Well, we have to set up the main event here.

So Michael Cole and Kevin Owens were in his car in the parking lot, and Owens has a meltdown.

He's tired of being told not to come in, so he's not going going to go in.

He calls Cole the number one Cody Rhodes fanboy.

And he's bitching about Roman and Cody.

And he has the meltdown about everybody choose to be Roman's pawns.

Cody was my friend, and he stabbed me in the back.

And he teamed with Roman.

And Michael Cole then got the tough love

tone in his voice and said, it's all you.

You're the problem.

You know, the way you're taking this, you're being so petty.

You want to, oh, in that case, leave my rental vehicle right now.

And Cole gets out of the car and he rolls the window up on him and he pulls out, right?

So we're, Kevin Owens has pulled out of the parking lot.

And now we've got the main event is Cody versus Chad Gable.

And

that's a

This is honestly, I mean, they're both professionals.

Gable's a great worker, but Ric Flair versus George South for 15 minutes would have been good too on TBS, but they never did that.

Because Gable's been presented as

they tried for a minute to make him serious, and he's been back in the goof category.

But they're so hot now, they don't need to do anything else.

So

we got a wonderful match between Cody and Gable for 15 minutes, and Cody won with the crossroads one, two, three.

Wonderful bump by Gable.

But in the process, Cody is selling his ankle.

And as with Cody, again, he not only sells with his body, he sells with his face, with the vacant stare.

Sometimes he looks like he's out of it.

But he's selling his ankle.

Gable had taken his boot off and ankle locked him and blah, blah, blah.

And as he's sitting there, he's the victor, but he's still down.

Owens is in the ring all of a sudden and he starts getting heat on the ankle.

And he's stomping it and he's kicking it.

Here come the referees and the agents, and they're trying to hold him back.

And then Cody gets back up, and we get a big fight with them.

So basically, we get, you know, in this two-hour show, about every 30 or 40 minutes, we get a couple of minutes.

Oh, shit, look at what's going on.

And then

it settles back down.

But that's the way they went off the air.

And

Cody and Owens for a Saturday night's main event match, match, I think, is going to do well.

And I think people are going to watch it.

Let's hope Jesse Ventura shares his real thoughts.

Oh, good lord.

How old is Jesse Ventura now?

He's got to be in his mid-70s.

Hold on.

Is he still quick or is father time slowing him up a bit?

73.

He's not as old as the way he's only 10 years older than me.

Look at the fuck him.

He's not who he was then, you know, 40 years ago but i think he's still relatively quick the problem is is he up to date on any of the storylines and how much has he been able to really get close oh no they'll they'll they'll have a they'll have some notes for him and a little brief production

prep session just for him i'm sure to me here jesse here's what we wrote for you to make you

happy and look good but he looks

The last time I saw a clip of him, he looks fucking old.

Like older than 73 old.

Was that just a bad day?

Well, you know, he's got a look, but,

you know, he's 73.

He's a governor, and he's returning to Saturday night's main event.

Move over, Dick Ebersole.

It's Cody versus Owens.

Did you see on Twitter somebody tweeted a recent clip of Iggy Pop shirtless on stage with the caption Jericho's just got to quit?

Oh, that's not fair.

I like Iggy Pop.

Don't do that.

Oh, boy, but have you seen?

He looks like he's about to pop.

How old is he?

I don't know.

Does medical science know how old Iggy Pop is?

Iggy's got to be around Jesse Ventura's age.

Iggy.

Oh, he's got to be older than that.

77.

I was going to say.

And having lived a hard life and with no shirt on and can't stand up straight with a pot belly and skinny at the same time.

You know what?

You're lucky it's just the shirt.

A few years back, it would have still been the pants to it at some point in the show.

Well, it may be about time for us now to take a short break.

Yeah, raw power.

What?

All right.

All right.

The sound of

time going by on a bumpy road here.

This is your show.

Why am I saying anything?

Well, yeah, because you had to time travel, and it's taken, starting to take as long for you to play the music as we're traveling through time.

I wanted to refresh my notes and get a new sprite, and we time traveled

with you.

If it's not the way back machine, because we're going forward, is it the way forward machine?

Well, in this case, we're going back.

We're going to talk about something in your past.

Ah, good, good segue there.

See, because

to give some context to the rest of the show, now that we've covered all the TV we're going to cover for today,

we're going back and we're revisiting a project that we have left sadly limping along here.

In 2024, we started

and we have got mostly through the middle of March.

Going through my schedule for 40 years ago, the first year in Mid-South.

Actually,

on the YouTube channel, we did this for 1983, and that's up there.

And these previous Mid-South 1984s are up there if you want to catch up on it.

How are they labeled?

Great Brian Last.

Jim Cornette bores the listeners, volume one through six.

God damn you now.

Fie upon you.

I'm trying to be a responsible broadcaster here and not leave the listeners in the dark.

And you're just.

I believe it would be Jim Cornette looks at his schedule,

for instance, October 1983, November 1983, so on and so forth.

Jolly Joker.

So anyway, people could catch up.

But we left off at

around about WrestleMania time this year.

All these stupid, crazy things started happening.

And we've been busier.

If we did the Mid-South stuff too, the podcast would be six hours long every week.

instead of most weeks.

But we're going to finish up March here for you because we wanted to talk about some old wrestling.

And

again, if you'll recall the last segment that we did on March 14th

at the Shreveport, Louisiana Mid-South Wrestling TV tapings, we had shot the angle with Bill Watts for the last stampede.

But as you will recall also from hearing these segments earlier, because of the nature of the television show, the way it was bicycled around the territory, we would tape

two episodes, two weeks' worth of TV on a Wednesday night every other week in the month.

And the first show that we taped that night would air the following Saturday in Shreveport because it was done by the local TV station.

But then it would start going around and

maybe four or five or six markets like New Orleans and Baton Rouge and that end would get it the following Saturday.

And then

the next round, maybe up in Mississippi and down in southern Louisiana, Lafayette and Lake Charles, they would get it the next week.

And it would be in Houston pretty quick, too, usually about like with New Orleans.

And it would take five weeks to get all the way to Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

So for the

remainder remainder of the last half of March, even though we had shot the angle with Watts,

most people had not seen it on television yet, only the live crowd that was at the boys' club.

So we were still finishing up other business and also

we were starting to

stick our toe in the water with the Rock and Roll Express because that was the program that Dundee was

looking forward to after the last stampede, which was going to be one main event match in each regular town in the territory.

But we were working every night of the week, so we had to have opponents in the other towns and after the last stampede.

Have I

set the scene for that?

fairly succinctly and clearly, Brian?

You have.

I guess my only question would be if Bill Watts, because I think you've said in the past, Bill Watts kind of thought after the last stampede

he would have to finish you up because he got all your heat.

And yes.

So when did he just, you know, when did he know that wasn't the case, I guess?

Well, see, Dundee was booking.

If Dundee was booking you guys into Rock and Roll in Advance.

But and here's the thing: Watts wanted the Rock and Roll Express to get over.

So, you know,

the brilliance of the way that it was done

with the angle involved the Rock and Roll Express.

And then people kind of,

even though they didn't lose track of it, but they were directed in another direction immediately by the thing with Watts following it up.

And people may have seen the clip on Twitter or whatever, or, you know, watching back in the old days.

But we win the Mid-South tag team title.

from Wrestling 2 and Magnum TA.

The very next day on television, we have the celebratory party with the cake and the party hats where the Rock and Roll Express came out and smashed my face in a cake.

And the people went crazy.

And if we left it there,

then that would have demanded that we start working with the Rock and Roll Express immediately.

And that's what people would have been focused on, right?

But then

in the same program,

Bill Watts decides it was so funny because Ricky and Robert finally humiliated and embarrassed that fucking wimp that I want to show it again.

And they showed it again, the replay.

And then I come out and cut the promo on Watts.

And I've still got the cake all over me and I'm fucking red face.

And that's where I put my finger at his face and that's where he slapped me into the stratosphere and my head looked like Linda Blair and the Exorcist.

And now, holy shit,

what's going to happen next?

Well, what happened the following week was they showed a pre-tape

where Watts had been interviewing Butch Reed

when suddenly I came out to interrupt it.

And the Midnight Express jumped Watts from behind with a blackjack and busted him open and left him laying there.

We kicked the shit out of him.

And now that's when Watts announced that he was going to come out of retirement

one time

and one time only, the last stampede.

so that

the immediacy of that took precedence over the rock and roll express but the people still wanted to see the midnight and the rock and roll

watts believed that he would take all the heat off of us

and you know then i'm sure he would have said okay dundee go ahead and have the rock and roll express beat to midnight express or whatever

But Dundee knew

that we could pick up after that deal because Bobby and Dennis were the kind of heels that could get beat and then I could get on TV and talk their heat back.

So he had confidence that we were going to go along as normal as he thought.

So that's why he did it that way.

So we had two programs, one for the last stampede and one to start the deal with the rock and rolling midnight.

Which made perfect sense.

And if Dream Machine hadn't been hurt,

how would that have changed things?

Well, as you will see in a couple of these matches, because we're coming up on that point also,

Dundee had high hopes that the Bruise Brothers were going to get over as big babyfaces in that territory.

And that way, as mid-South tag team champions, we could have worked with the Rock and Roll Express and the Bruise Brothers

because also there was still,

they had kind of promised, and remember they would go.

The Rock and Roll Express would come back to Memphis.

They weren't going for the rest of their lives, right?

And they finally had to give them back.

In what was it, July, we did something where it was a 90-day deal.

So

he was building teams.

But you'll see in a couple of these results.

Even though we had just shot the angle with Watts and with the Rock and Roll, and we were the tag team champions, the first time that we worked in a a couple of these towns with Pork Chop and Troy before he got hurt, we didn't beat them.

They did

DQs or whatever the fuck, right?

So it wasn't like he was just bringing them down for shots from Memphis.

He was going to bring them in.

But anyway,

would you like to open the book and see what was going on?

Yes.

And yeah,

that was the most enthusiastic yes I've ever heard.

I need you to beg.

No.

We also, we got to remind the kids that $1 in 1984 is $3 today, right?

On the inflation calculator.

That was the mathematics that we were doing, correct?

Because that way,

if we did...

Except in comic books, yes.

Well, no, comic books appreciated a much greater

percentage, yes.

$1 then ain't $3 today.

$10

today.

Yes, because comic books are valuable, whereas

actual money currency just, you know, limps along.

But anyhow,

we finished up with Sunday night, March 18th, on our last segment of this.

And where do you go in Mid-South Wrestling in 1984 on a Monday?

But back to New Orleans.

But this time we were at the Lakefront Arena.

And was that the

first time at the Lakefront Arena?

I thought it was later in the year.

But son of a gun, we only did $14,400.

And I think since it was a regular house show, remember again, fans,

tickets were like $10,000, $7, and $4,

that is.

So that was probably about 2,000 people.

And we...

And how many of the regulars from downtown were actually there at the Lakefront Arena?

It was almost a completely different crowd, but you had,

you know, die-hard fans that would be, you know, wherever.

But almost a completely different crowd from the downtown auditorium in the Lakefront Arena, which, as I've mentioned before, is almost

a completely different crowd except for the diehards when they would go out to the St.

Bernard Civic Center.

It was weird about New Orleans that you had, and then everybody would go to the Superdome.

That was what they could all agree on, but you had, it depended on a neighborhood you were in.

And then when the dog left, then that kind of put the nail in the downtown auditorium's coffin because it was,

you know,

it was just, it was dreary at the end there, the downtown auditorium, because it was so old.

And

the curtain they had down the middle of the arena,

geez, you could smell the mildew 20 feet away, right?

When they would,

we've talked about those old auditoriums.

The Keel Auditorium was like that and Ellis Auditorium in Memphis.

They had a curtain that you could cut the building in half, or you could open it up for the big concerts and the big political rallies and shit they had.

But after a while, those fucking curtains, when they were never taken down for years and years, and all the sweat of the boxing and the wrestling and the fucking people

screaming for Elvis and the humidity in those buildings.

It was like hanging a wet kitchen sponge 100 feet tall and 100 feet wide in front of your nose.

Anyway, we had a match with the Rock and Roll Express, not for the tag team title, just one of those feelers out where they hadn't even seen the cake angle yet.

But since New Orleans was a weekly town, and he said, All right, let's see how they buy this.

And we did a fucking match where

they slipped over one, two, three, and then we kicked the shit out of them afterwards and left them laying in the ring.

So nothing was settled.

And then the following day,

Tuesday, March 20th, we were in Beaumont, Texas.

This was scheduled to be

Magnum TA in Wrestling

no disqualification, and a loser gets lashes.

But because

two had walked out on TA the previous week, that's one that Watts would do the same matches in a lot of towns.

You know, obviously, there's only so many matches you can put together when the TV points to, we want to see this guy against this guy, you know, okay.

But he wouldn't do turns or title changes more than once in the territory.

So.

In Memphis, they did it in each town, right?

Oh, yes.

And I mean, before the internet and the TV markets didn't really overlap,

you know, you could kind of get away with it.

But

why would...

See, I know it's hard for today's fans to get this, but if the average wrestling fan in Louisville, Kentucky,

knew that he could go downtown to the Louisville Gardens on Tuesday night every week of the and see the matches.

Even if he knew they might be wrestling in Evansville every Wednesday night, he didn't give a shit to go.

It's a hundred fucking miles, right?

Who knows what happens in fucking Evansville?

That type of thing.

But

a lot of places would do it, but Watts wouldn't do that because,

you know, people are going to figure it out and he was too much of a stickler.

So anyway, this night we had Magnum, and I didn't write down who,

but we beat him.

The house was $9,600.

We got paid $120.

Have I mentioned that I hated Beaumont, Texas?

He never drew a house in Beaumont.

You gave it a nickname yesterday off air when we were talking about it.

Blowsnot, Texas.

Every time we'd get in the car, here we go to Blowsnot.

I don't know what it was the Beaumont Civic Center, nice building.

It seemed to be a

relatively nice town, not that big, 60 miles from Houston or whatever.

And Houston would be doing God, the biggest business in the territory.

And you go to Beaumont, you'd have, again, $9,600 was probably 1,300, 1,400 fucking people in those.

Bleh.

Because then

we had to go.

160 miles back to Alexandria.

Now, New Orleans, by the way, I forgot the travel details.

New Orleans, as we know, 400-mile-round trip from Alexandria.

So 400-mile-round trip on a lot of two-lane road, plus work in the main event match.

You're in late.

Following day, we go to Beaumont.

That's 160 miles, a lot of Tulane, and back.

So we were back at fucking 12:30, one o'clock in the morning.

I got to get up and be in the car

by 6:45 to go to Shreveport, 130 miles of Tulane, to do the local promos at Channel 3 that we did every Wednesday morning from, well, every Wednesday from 9 a.m.

to 3 p.m.

So you drove yourself because the other guys didn't have to go?

Yes.

So

it was a quick turnaround.

And then, you know, I'm trying not to go to sleep and trying to think of all the fucking things I can say on promos while I'm in the car on the way to fucking Shreveport

from 6:45 to fucking 8:45 in the morning.

And that was actually cutting it close, to be honest with you.

So then, at least that night,

we had a Shreveport house show,

and

that way we could, you know, take a couple hours in between promos and the show to,

you know, go get a pizza or fucking something, right?

Some element of mental decompression.

And then we're at the the Shreveport Memorial Auditorium.

And now they,

the Shreveport area knows because we did the TV the previous week

that the Rock and Roll Express has smashed my face in a cake,

but they haven't, I think, wait a minute.

Yes, they would have just seen Watts slap me too.

So we wrestled the Rock and Roll Express.

And this time it was a non-title match, but we fucked them

because Buddy Landell ran in when there was a big four-way going on.

The referee was distracted,

and he ran Riggie Morton into the ring post, and then Bobby pinned him.

And why do you, where the fuck did Buddy Landell come into this, you say?

Well,

as they say on the Iron Chef, if memory serves,

the next time in Shreveport, we were going to have the big match with Watts.

And the Rock and Roll Express was going to need somebody to work with.

So they were going to be working with Buddy Landell, and I can't remember who the fuck else.

Maybe we'll see it here later on.

Point being, he did something to necessitate that match because we were going to be busy.

And that's kind of thing,

it would add extra meaning to the matches, but it would make sense if the Rock and Roll was wrestling this fucking guy later on.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So

for that first little drive run with the Rock and Roll, we did $11,100, which was up for Shreveport.

As I mentioned, the old building Elvis fucking played there.

And we made $150,

which would be $450 today on a $33,000 house.

It wasn't great, but it was coming along.

And then...

After Shreveport, by the time we got back to Alex,

it would have been about one o'clock in the morning.

So we could sleep all the way until

noon or so before we had to get in the fucking car and go to Biloxi, Mississippi on March 22nd.

Again, 250 fucking miles in the opposite direction.

Go ahead.

Were you always able to sleep when you needed to?

Or were there times where it's like, God damn, I need sleep, but I'm so amped up for whatever it is that you couldn't get to sleep?

No.

Well,

here's the thing.

Because it sounds like sleep was, for the entire run of your stay in Mid-South Wrestling, sleep was a luxury.

Well,

here was the, my issue

was the early mornings instead of the late nights, because since I had, even when I was a kid, my mom, it drove her crazy, because if I could draw my own schedule, I'd be up all night, sleep all day.

She said, from the time I was a baby.

And

being in the business, around the business, the photographer, going to the towns and the shows, et cetera, I had developed a natural pattern where I could stay up until four or five o'clock in the morning and be productive.

And but then I needed to sleep as late as I could till I needed to do something.

You know, that I'm talking, you know, 11 noon, whatever, eight hours, six hours, whatever.

I needed the right amount of sleep, but I was already kind of programmed for the wrestling business.

So my deal with Bobby and Dennis at the start was that since they both wanted to drink after the show, and I was fucking

not only was I naturally up at night, but now I've had people literally trying to fucking kill me, right?

And also, we've had a fucking show, and was the town good, or was the match good, or was it bad?

We got to talk about it, right?

So, yes, I'll drive back from Tulsa and get in at daylight.

You guys sit in the back and drink.

But during the day, I swear they had to drive me because if I'd meet them at noon, I was fucking bleary-eyed and I was in a backseat with a 20-piece nugget from KFC or something

and would often sleep on the way to like Houston or Biloxi while Bobby or Dennis drove because I didn't really

come around until we got to the fucking show.

Were they both okay with daytime driving or did one of them want to drive at night?

No, they liked that better.

And then yes, Courtney, you can drive through the goddamn, down down the Indian Nation Turnpike in Oklahoma at four o'clock in the fucking morning.

And we'll drink beer and eat ribs.

So it worked out, you know, and again, except when poor, bless him, Buddy Landell was in the mix and threw everything off because we gradually, we at different times realized that we could not risk our

life and safety by riding in a car with him.

So, okay, and then I would be off on my own doing the TV promo segments and et cetera, anyway.

So there was sometimes that, you know, what was the question?

I don't know what the answer was.

Well, there you go.

You proved my point.

See, it's only information like that you get on a show like this.

Oh, we were going to Biloxi, weren't we?

I think it was March

20th, 21st.

March 22nd.

22nd.

Yes, a red-letter day in Biloxi, Mississippi.

And remember, I've said the Gulf Coast Coliseum, that huge fucking building.

I mean, the WWF ran a pay-per-view there in,

God, some fucking time.

I think it was 96, 97.

But it didn't do that well for wrestling no matter what.

I mean, as we'll see later on, even the last stampede was not a...

you know, a fucking huge crowd in that giant building, and they would only use half of it.

And it was dark, and we had had riots there because it was in pitch black.

It was like trying to get past people who were trying to knife you in a crowded fucking dark theater.

But we had another match, a triad match with not trial match, but a little testing the waters match with the Rock and Roll Express.

And Buddy Landell came in, did the same thing as we did the previous night, fucking 400 miles away.

And

we won the match, but now that set the rock and roll up for buddy and et cetera.

But we did $21,000, which wasn't bad for Biloxi.

I would say that would be

going on 2,700, 2,800 people, which was not bad for Biloxi.

And then we had to go all the way fucking back home, 250 miles, much of it two lane to get back.

And I swear to God, we get back from Biloxi at 3 o'clock in the morning.

And then on the next day, Friday, March 23rd, they had booked Houston, Texas.

So we were going to go 250 miles in the exact opposite direction, much of it two-lane.

So for Houston,

you would have to leave

counting the traffic and et cetera, if you want to get something to eat by 1.30.

We were out of the car about, what, 10 hours.

And we're traveling the same distance in the opposite direction.

And though that's what the question you asked, was I always

could I sleep when I wanted

is when we got started talking about the travel schedule.

Yeah, like you said, you slept till noon.

Even when I'd like to sleep late, I can't.

I'm wired to wake up early.

So even when I'm really tired, I'm like, oh, I'd like to sleep till noon.

Maybe I'll get to 9 a.m.

and then I'll wake up.

So in mid-South, they're having that.

No, see, see, in my younger days, I could sleep until I set the goddamn alarm.

Once I went to sleep, I was not going to

be woken up in some cases, the telephone, goddamn sleep through.

Fucking, I slept through fire alarms in hotels.

But that's I always carried a portable alarm clock with me

because if I went to sleep in a hotel room, I was going to be in, and I couldn't count on wake-up calls, that Seinfeld rib, right?

So I always had a clock with me because I would sleep through any fucking thing.

And

at this point in my life through this whole year, I was always so tired that I never had a problem falling asleep if I had the opportunity.

But getting up would be that, and that's why

at one point in Charlotte, it was worse when we were doing the promos,

you know, with the Crockett office and Gene Anderson was the one to call you at your house because there were no cell phones.

If you weren't there at nine o'clock, and god damn it, we'd always been done a TV taping the night before and I wouldn't be asleep until fucking three o'clock.

And just by having to do TV and then get in and then eat and read the mail, right?

And then

in Charlotte traffic to be in the car at 8.15 or whatever.

I was always late to interviews, but he couldn't, he couldn't disprove that I wasn't there, right?

Because there was no cell phone.

He'd call the house and my wife would say, oh, he left some time ago.

And I said, traffic.

But yeah, you know, my sleep schedule.

And now I'm like you in my old age and that for the first time in my life over the past few years, as I've said, I've actually had a normal

schedule.

I wake up every morning at seven o'clock, you know, give or take an hour.

And I'm in bed at, you know, nine.

Mom, I'm going to bed.

That type of thing.

And I sleep even better than I did then because I was always in, you were binge sleep.

I was binge sleeping or binge eating or whatever, because, you know, for years, there was no time to do anything else.

You're doing this shit, right?

But anyway,

that's where we have left off as we were going to Houston.

And folks, if you want to follow along geographically with this, just to get an idea, and even now the Atlas Atlas is, we're talking 40 years ago, there were no north and south interstates, but get a map on your Google machine and just look geographically,

no matter how the highways are,

at the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma.

and then the metropolitan area of Houston, Texas that adjoins Louisiana.

And Bixby, Oklahoma, where Bill Watts was sitting on his fat-ass walk.

Yes,

just

moving that pencil around there, Mr.

Promoter,

while everybody was bouncing back and forth like a goddamn pinball machine ball.

So we go to Houston, and here's an interesting booking and talent thing.

And also, we've talked in previous segments on...

that we've done on stuff like this.

Brian, when did we know that we were going to really get over?

When did I get confident with this?

We had been to Houston two weeks previously on March the 9th.

Midnight Express had been in the main event against Wrestling 2 and Magnum TA, the title and mask versus the,

you know, fucking blah, blah, blah.

And that was the hot angle on TV.

And as I made we did $54,000 at the gate.

And we made $600 apiece.

So that's like $150 something, $160,000 and $18,000 in today's money.

But then we come back to, and also that night we had done a run-in

on the match that Gordman and Goliath had with Hector Guerrero and El Bracero Jose Martinez.

And then we come back two weeks later, but now we're not in the main event.

See,

this Houston show was the last one before they were coming back with the big

last stampede main event on a Sunday.

And so

Dundee booked the Rock and Roll Express and Terry Taylor, the top babyfaces, against Butch Reed, Crusher Khrushchev, Crusher Darso.

Crusher Darso would become Crusher Khrushchev, that would later on become a member of our beloved friends, the demolition team.

Thank you.

And Nikolai Volkov.

So that was the main event.

And then Magnum TA was against Mr.

Wrestling 2 and their grudge from the breakup of their team that had just aired on TV

the previous weekend.

And we were in a mid-card match with Hector Guerrero and El Bracero off of that issue.

And there were four, you know, preliminary matches.

The house was 43 grand.

It went down when they took us out of the main event.

And so, and, you know, we beat Hector and Rossero

because obviously we're coming back with the big last stampede show.

But Dennis made the point to us, to me and Bobby,

they're going to notice this too.

The houses were up in Houston until they take the Midnight Express out of the main event.

And son of a bitch,

that's kind of the way they thought back then.

And we were to find that out.

But that's what guys don't understand.

They would go by

oh my god we had a great match well we we we wanted to have good matches and tear the house down with these people so that the fans would buy more tickets and come back see us do it again

but the object was

the sole object was not to have a good match if if the business wasn't coming up or we weren't

kind of being able to be figured as being responsible for it.

Does that make sense?

It does.

And a lot has been said over the years about the Rock and Roll Express,

you know, being red hot in Houston.

But because you guys are heels, no one looks at it the same way.

But all that footage is out there of you guys in 84, a lot of it without commentary.

So it's just the fan reaction.

And it takes two to tango.

You guys had so much heat.

That definitely helped the rock and roll expression.

Ricky Morton had just been there.

It wasn't like the rock and roll.

I mean, they, as a concept, were brand new.

That's one of the things I always find amazing.

A year and a half earlier, Ricky Morton's in the main event event against like Nick Bockwinkle in Houston.

And it was almost like a whole brand new thing.

And we should mention that's when Paul Bosch was getting talent from the San Antonio office and Joe Blanchard and Ricky was working there.

Teaming with Ken Lucas.

Teaming with Ken Lucas.

And then by now, Bosch had gone with Watts, and Houston had become part of the Mid-South.

territory but Ricky and

Ricky had gone from San Antonio back to Memphis where they had teamed him up with Robert, and that's where the rock and roller got started.

And then now Ricky had never worked the Mid-South Territory, but he had been to Houston when it was part of a different company.

We don't want to lose people.

But yes, you make a good point.

And

Houston

was a really

strong, classic, old

school wrestling town because of Paul Bosch, like a St.

Louis with Sam Muchnik, a promoter who had been there and preserved the integrity of the business.

People didn't believe his company was horseshit.

He didn't have no shows.

He didn't false advertise.

He didn't lie to people on television.

It was a straight arrow place.

And the fans reacted to shit because you had to work in the ring.

You could actually have a better match in Houston if you had the same match in some of the other towns because the fans understood so much more about the subtleties of wrestling from the old days.

You could work the fucking arm and do the heel shit behind a referee's back, and they were clawing to come over the rail.

And then in comes the Midnight Express, you know, taking the fucking bumps when it's time, but getting the fucking heat and me mouthing off when they'd been used to,

you know, nobody, they may have hated Gary Hart and Skandor Akbar, but not a lot of them thought they could fucking take them.

These people, well, we can kill him.

If we just get our hands on him, we can kill him.

They probably wouldn't even arrest us for it.

So Houston was fucking tremendous, great crowd to work for.

Anyway.

On that night, it was a great $43,000 house to work for.

We got $350 because we weren't in the main event like we were the previous two weeks ago when we had got $600 or whatever.

But we made a little point there that needs to put us back on top.

So we'll see what happens next time.

And then Saturday, March 24th,

this is so.

What we have been doing literally is traveling in an X pattern all week.

On Monday, we left our home base of Alexandria and we went

southeast to New Orleans and then back northeast back to Alexandria.

Then

on Tuesday we went southwest to Beaumont and southeast back to Alexandria.

Then

on Wednesday to Shreveport, we went northwest

and back

to goddamn Alexandria, north, no, southwest, southeast.

And then on Thursday, we went southeast further in the same fucking way we just to New Orleans and past that to Biloxi.

And then back the same way we came.

And then back.

Houston goes through Beaumont to get to Houston.

And then we went back home.

And then Saturday, we went back to Baton Rouge, which you have to go to Baton Rouge to get to New Orleans.

You have to go to Baton Rouge to get to biloxy do you see what i'm saying here yeah

it would drive you out of your

mind

and we wrestled i'm sorry did anyone ever bring up anything to watch just

is there any way i mean i don't even know who could have done it is there any way we could change the schedule around move some days around so that This is a little better on the wrestlers, a little easier on them?

Well,

you couldn't move the schedule around because a lot of these towns, you had to run them on specific days and times.

They had found to be,

you know, I mean, some of them, you know, they bounced around on different days, but the major towns at Houston on Friday night or a Sunday afternoon for major shows, that type of thing.

What he could have instituted was a way that

everybody only had to work five fucking days somehow, right?

Instead of seven and double shots on Sunday and some Saturdays.

That would have preserved some more people's sanity.

But

especially when the territory got hot, you were like, not only did he expect all the talent to work every goddamn show,

but you were like, fuck.

You know, I'm making so much money.

I don't want to ask for time off.

And remember, I've said before, and we'll get there later on this year, we finally cracked.

I think it's by August or September.

We said, We got to please.

We asked Dundee, please just give us some days off.

We just, we can't.

Remember, I had a hundred and three-day fucking in a row streak.

And we said, Please give us days off.

And we got Oklahoma City off, and Tulsa off and Houston off, the big payoffs.

And we were still in fucking,

you know, Hoo-Ha, Arkansas.

So we stopped asking for days off.

But we were back in Baton Rouge on Saturday March 24th where we wrestled the rock and roll express in the main event and Baton Rouge was up $22,000

which wasn't bad again

really no I think they've seen the cake in my face now right so

big whoop a lot of stuff yet to come

but

again there's life in it and we're being put on top positions and the houses are either up or better or whatever the case.

But then, this is one of the early times, Brian.

Before we figured out,

goddammit, we ended up spending

a lot longer away from home and going through a lot more bullshit to do it.

We stayed in Baton Rouge and bought a plane ticket and flew to the Oklahoma towns the next day.

How much was it?

Well,

the plane ticket was $145.

How much was it?

We got a payday.

Well, no, hold on here a second.

That was the only time because I've got down here airplane ticket $145.

But wait a minute.

Is that just the two?

Because then,

oh, the return, the return.

I was, I broke it up.

Well, the point being, I've explained this before,

but what would happen?

Oklahoma City and Tulsa were the only towns in Oklahoma that Watts really ran.

They're the only towns in Oklahoma 40 years ago, practically, except some that border on Texas that Fritz was running.

And

it was a long way from everything else.

And so he would give you a trans allowance on your check.

You'd get $125 extra if you were booked in Oklahoma.

and get there however you fucking want, right?

So

a lot of the guys

would you know three and four guys in a car pay in trance which is what

guys used to do in the business in every territory if if it was five cents a mile when i got started

if you rode it with a guy in his car he drove his car he got the gas and everything

And you rode with him for 200 miles, you'd give him 10 bucks, five cents a mile, right?

And

is that the math?

I haven't done it in 40 years.

I trust your math.

But it was five cents a mile for however long you were in the car with the fucking guy.

And it became 10 cents.

But that way, if a guy took three people in his car and it was a fairly long trip,

he might make as much money on trans as he did on his fucking payoff, right?

But me and Bobby and Dennis were mostly splitting it and the aforementioned buddy Landell.

But it was so long, they said some of the guys said, oh, fly, fly.

Well, then that opened up a whole other canopies because

the plane ticket would be 200 and something, almost $300,

but you only got $125 transit.

People said, but you saved the long trip.

But Baton Rouge was the closest town to Alexandria.

that had legitimate jet service.

We're talking from Alexandria, it was prop jet, commuter plane,

American Eagle fucking bullshit, right?

And then you had to,

you had to go to Baton Rouge, which we were there for the show, but otherwise you'd have to drive there and stay over and then fly at the first thing in the morning.

Then you got to rent a car or

have somebody fucking drive you, pick you up, or whatever at the other side.

Then you're at the mercy.

Watts had a guy

that he would rent a heel van and a babyface van for the Oklahoma City and Tulsa trip.

And the heels, if they wanted to, could ride in the heel van, babyface, obviously babyface van.

But nobody could drive.

He had designated, he'd hired these drivers.

And this motherfucker, I can't remember his name.

And it's not that he was a fucking bad human being,

but.

But I hated him.

But I hated him.

We despised him.

Because here's the thing.

From Oklahoma City, the Myriad Show in the afternoon,

to the Tulsa show that night,

it's 100, 110 miles, whatever it was, from building to building.

And

Oklahoma City started at 2 o'clock.

The show would be over at 4, 4.30.

Tulsa

would start at 7.30.

You're supposed to be in a locker room at 6.30.

It's a two-hour fucking drive.

So, you see, time is of the essence.

So, if you had your own car or if you'd driven, you could get out early if you were on the undercard

and you could maybe stop and get something to eat along the way, or at least you could goddamn hurry up and get to where you were going, whatever.

You had some freedom.

But if you had to ride in a van with this fucking guy driving, they stopped at a loves travel store,

and you could get, and this was when the only loves travel stores in the world, I think, were in Oklahoma.

Now they're everywhere.

But you get the fucking deli sandwiches and goddamn some microwave shit and some soft drinks and chips and hop back in the fucking van.

And I swear to God, I don't know if there's much difference in the scenery between Oak City and Tulsa as there is in the fucking Mojave Desert.

There ain't nothing in between those two towns and this

four-lane highway.

And here the motherfucker drove 55.

The speed limit was 55.

I don't know why.

You couldn't have, goddamn, if you were in a rocket car.

You couldn't have hit a living creature if you'd have gone out of control.

And he would not, we offered to give him money.

And can you imagine me, Bobby Eaton, Dennis Condry, Hacksaw Butch Reed, Nikolai Volkov, Krusher Khrushchev, Ernie fucking Ladd,

Hercules Hernandez at various times, these fucking heels in his van wanted to kill us, motherfucker.

He's going 55.

We had guys in the van that could fucking jog alongside and beat us.

And he wouldn't fucking go any faster.

So we ended up started not having to, we just didn't change, you know, most everybody from put sweats over the tights and just so we could have more time to get a sandwich.

Am I boring you?

Not at all.

I mean,

it was boring us.

And think about the sandwich talk, maybe.

Maybe the sandwich talks.

But we're all in this fucking van.

And it's a goddamn rental van or whatever.

It's got an AM FM radio with speakers in the fucking front of it.

There are no cell phones.

There's no fucking internet.

There's no goddamn portable television.

We're talking to each other.

Or

bless it, Butch Reed would sit in the back so he could somehow insert cocaine into regular cigarettes and fucking blow it out the window.

And I'm sure this fucking 55-year-old Oklahoma farmer driving had no idea what he was doing.

Ernie Ladd was on the fucking next seat to him one time

during Ernie's religious phase, much after the shaft days were over with.

And Ernie had his fucking collar of his shirt up over his nose so he wouldn't inhale any secondhand

substances.

But anyway, so we're going to Oklahoma

on Sunday, March 25th, Brian, and I know you will.

find this hard to believe,

but it's just like I said, we did the Oklahoma City show at 2 o'clock o'clock at the Myriad against the Bruise Brothers,

and then the Tulsa show that night against the Bruise Brothers again.

But the houses,

Oklahoma City was $49,000.

That sounds great, except we'll see it had a ton of potential.

And Tulsa was $31,000.

So the company grossed

$80,000 in today's money.

That would be $240,000 on one Sunday on ticket sales alone.

And they said the territory wrestling wasn't profitable.

And we made for the two matches, $355,000, $50,000, $5,75, $6,750.

For the two matches that are on the card, not the main events, and the trans allowance, $650, which would account for

$19.50 in today's money.

But here's the fun part.

We were going to talk about the Bruce Brothers a minute ago.

Here's the card for Oklahoma City, so you could get an idea.

Again, this was the in-between

before the midnight and the last stampede with Watts and the rock and roll midnight program starts.

And, you know, we had already finished up with Magnum and Wrestling 2 and had done well up there.

So

there's some preliminaries.

El Bracero beat John King.

Lanny Paffo beat Jerry Gray.

Terry Gordy beat George Weingeroff.

In Oklahoma, remember, Fritz had a small interest, and because his television was on up there, Watts would book

world-class talent.

on a fairly regular basis on the cards.

And then our match with the Bruce Brothers and Pork Chop and Dream Machine, they beat us by disqualification.

And that was the

thing is that there's no way that if Dundee didn't plan to use them prominently and didn't plan to bring them back regularly,

We're just going into a series of main events with the owner of the fucking company.

And we've already shot an angle with the team that he knows is going to be the top babyface tag team.

And this is one of the biggest grossing towns in the territory.

Wouldn't we just beat those guys, right?

You would think.

So you can reflect on it now and say, holy shit, he was going to do something.

And the response they got, especially down in New Orleans, but

on these towns also and Houston.

If they'd only had a chance, right?

I just hate hate that Troy got hurt right then, and that was the end of that.

And he never really got another opportunity.

What did you think of that music video they had that they made in Memphis of them walking into the pool hall?

Yes, no, it was great.

It was great because it was, it was I'm a soul man,

which was hot because of the Blues Brothers movie, but also Sam and Dave.

Memphis, it was hot originally, right?

Stacks records.

And

Jimmy Hart helped them.

They took Randy West with the camera and they went around to a lot of the places in Memphis that, you know, were recognized as part of that fucking scene.

And I was educated at Woodstock, they're out in front of Woodstock High School or whatever the fuck.

And

it clicked, but that was also, they were heels at the time, but they started, people started liking them.

And that's what Dundee saw and wanted to bring to Mid-South.

But there was an uproar uproar because when they walked into one of the bars, Dreams got the fucking sunglasses on and he puts the glasses down on the end of his nose and he looks over the top of them at this.

And let's face, she was kind of a plain, ordinary African-American young lady, right?

About 20 years old or whatever.

He looks over the top of the glasses and puts his hand on the back of her head and gives her a big kiss.

I'm a soul man.

And people called Channel 5 and complained about that.

Wow, really?

In 1983, 1984,

wow.

Well, remember, it was 1983.

No, late 82, when

Adrian Street caused him to call because he kissed a black man.

Ira Reese, the kiss finished.

He jumped up in his arms and kissed him.

And Ira Reese, well, what the fuck?

And he rolled him up and pinned him.

And they go, there's a black, this man kissing a black man on TV.

Anyway, back to Oklahoma City.

So, yes, us and the Bruce brothers and a co-featurer, Jimmy Garvin, beat Chris Adams, a world-class match from Dallas.

Did the Dallas guys like being sent to work for Watts or did they not like fucking with their pretty easy schedule in Dallas?

Well, no, because here's the thing.

It was easier for them to live in Dallas and make Oak City and Tulsa than it was for us.

Dallas straight up to, it was 210 210 miles to Oklahoma City, all interstate.

It took three and a half hours.

It took us three and a half hours from where we lived just to get past Shreveport on the way to Dallas.

So

and also, as we would find out a year later, when we were in Dallas

and would work shots at Mid-South,

We would make as much money on a day in Oak City and Tulsa as we did in three three or four days in Dallas.

Watts' payoffs were better.

We were higher on the card.

If the show in Oak City,

Tulsa was a worse payoff because he took the office expenses.

Tulsa was next to Bixby.

But if your Oklahoma City payoff

during the times that we worked there would have been better than any payoff you would make, except if you were featured in Dallas at one of the big shows or the main event on the sportatorium.

And maybe even then, if it didn't draw a hell of a house.

So I can't imagine they didn't like it.

And I have little sympathy for them with the schedule.

They were working otherwise if they didn't like it.

And then Terry Taylor, Rock and Roll Express, beat Buddy Landell, Nikolai Volkov, and Crusher Darso.

So Buddy's being

worked in because he just got there from Memphis, but he's being worked in as the Weasley heel stooge to later on for Butch Reed, but the guy that will come in and cause trouble.

And

that way, that's gotten him involved with these top baby faces.

So that was the week, and we ended up,

I didn't count the goddamn miles, but we cheated and flew.

But we made $1,925 that week for working

one, two, three,

four, five,

six, seven, eight matches at a six-hour set of interviews, but that's the equivalent of almost $6,000 in today's money.

And

I've been in business a year and a half, and I'm still happy to be there and lucky to be there at this point, right?

Well, this is the end of what we're going to talk about here today and almost the end of the month.

What are you thinking at that time?

Are you thinking I have months left here in Mid-South?

Are you guys thinking we better start looking for another place to go?

go?

I mean, any thoughts about your future at this point?

No, because, well, I was,

I've always had thoughts about my future at this point, but no,

Dennis is telling me and Bobby, and also Dundee is fairly confident in what's going on.

And we see we've got the Rock and Roll Express.

Here come the Bruise Brothers.

We could do business with them.

We've just shot this angle with Watts.

We haven't even had these matches yet.

And we had, we knew that that was a big deal,

that we're working with the owner of the company, but we had no idea even yet that we were going to draw record houses.

And that's, that's the thing,

you know, a lot of people say,

well, in my career, I can point to one specific thing.

Well, you can when you look back, right?

But at the time, you don't know

when you do something, you know, if it got over, if it got a reaction, if people are in or out of the business saying, wow, whatever, but you don't know that that's going to be a turning point in your life until you've had the life turn as a result of that and look back on it, right?

But when we did that angle with Bill Watts, we went from, we had already had good matches, proved we could get over and draw some houses with Wrestling 2 and Magnum, and we'd have been a good territory team.

I bet off that we could have got booked in Kansas City or maybe at some point, you know, Crockett would have seen us anyway, and they might wanted wanted us underneath at the first to start out

but by the time we did this deal with watts

from that point on whether flair and dusty had come in and seen us

or not we could start picking spots to go because

nobody was doing that kind of fucking business at a territory that size that

I say nobody, I'm talking, nobody that you had never fucking heard of, right?

People had overall never heard of us.

But when the the last stampede,

there were nine sellouts, there were 11 record gates.

The second biggest dome, we missed it by six grand.

They sold over 100,000 tickets.

There were 16 of the last stampede dates.

But over the whole five-week period, because he ran every other night of the week, that territory grossed $1.2 million in ticket sales when the tickets were

15, 12, 10, 7, and 4.

And that for a territory even that size to do that kind of gross, it was the biggest month in business Bill Watts ever had.

After that, we've and now we got the rock and roll to work with.

We're like, okay,

now we started getting a little goddamn picky when over the summertime, the rock and roll was gone and they brought in this team or that team.

Or you remember when they tried to have Master G

replace Junkyard Dog and there's a match out there with him and Brickhouse Brown against the Midnight Express.

And goddamn, we started to get hot.

Like, hey, y'all are booking us against these fucking morons.

Going to fuck up a good thing here.

So we weren't to that point yet in our confidence, but we saw it, you know, it's starting to work.

But right then, in between the angle on TV and the

we knew the first night, the first one was in Shreveport, April 3rd, with Watts.

And we knew there when it was an all-time fucking record gate in the building that he'd been running for years.

Okay, we look like we're good.

But then as it got bigger, we were fine from there.

But now we didn't have any idea that this was going to make our career.

From then on,

we can do what we want to do.

But that's old-time wrestling.

You can't do that anymore.

You got to have the right fucking talent agent with the

Endeavor Agency or what's their talent now?

The Paradigm People who

IMG and that.

Well, no, they're signing with some particular arm of a talent agency to to represent them in the movies.

Now, all the boys and girls up there.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, whoever they are.

I think Harold Hecuba,

I think he wants to do some business with some of the talent.

Anyway, we've done some business here, but what we're going to do is next week on the experience, after we finish with the rest of the fall derall, we're going to finish the last week of the month of March and get ready to talk about the last stampede.

Maybe

sometime after the the new year when we get a chance to because I don't know if I've mentioned to you Brian or the fans how much I'm enjoying the idea of our little holiday break that we take every year for when like for 10 days we don't have fucking

talk about shit that

we have to watch every goddamn day We get a little break to recharge our batteries and think of new and exciting topics to discuss here on the program.

Everything's going to be the same.

I don't know what new and exciting topics you're going to be thinking about over your 10-day break.

Well,

then I'll just get the enthusiasm to talk about the same old shit.

How about that?

If it's going to be the same stupid people doing the same stupid things, then that's fine, but I'll have more enthusiasm if I stop talking about it for about 10 days or so.

I have a new concept, fish wrestling.

Let's talk about it here on the show.

I have a new concept.

Fuck them and feed them fish heads.

How's that?

That sounds like a hell of a way to end the show.

Who was goddamn it?

Was it?

I'm trying to,

it wasn't Bobby,

but

somebody called and had an announcement at the DFW airport because that was Dennis Condry's favorite expression.

Fuck them and feed them fish heads, right?

So

somebody, I can't remember who, had a goddamn,

when you used to, at the airport, you could call and they'd page people, right?

Or they'd make an announcement for just a pad.

I'm looking for my son Ben at gate 14 or whatever.

So you had,

Mr.

Eaton, would you pick up your order of fish heads at gate 42?

Mr.

Eaton, order of gate fish heads at

order of fish heads at gate 42.

You had to be there, I guess.

All right.

Well, this is is your security.

Have you ever gotten a fucking large order of fish heads at gate 42?

No, I can't even believe that someone will make that announcement.

It would just seem to be preposterous.

Well, okay.

I've told you about this.

I heard this one, too.

Uh-oh.

When, no, when before all of the security things happened, when you could just fly under a plane ticket that you just booked under a goddamn gimmick name or you could give them away.

Crockett, the office, if they bought a ticket for somebody, that person wasn't going to the show, they'd give it to somebody else.

I flew one time as Ole Anderson to Baltimore,

just handed it to, they didn't check, right?

They made out barbarians tickets under the name

barbarian slash A

instead of like Smith slash John, barbarian slash a.

So when they had a gate change, they had to inform passengers of, I heard them, them

page, is a barbarian at gate 10, is a barbarian at gate 10.

And this was the kind of airport security that we had in the 1980s, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, fuck, what time?

We're at the Huntington, West Virginia airport.

And like after a show at Civic Center, we're waiting on the last flight to Charlotte.

Sounds like a monkey song.

It's 10 o'clock.

It's going to leave at 10:20 or whatever.

There's six people in this place.

And the gate agent turned around and walked away.

All the doors were open to the breeway.

They hadn't done anything yet.

And

Stan, because we had been joking about this giant metropolitan airport we were in.

So for the benefit of like the six or eight straggling people that were milling about, Stan got on the goddamn PA system at the gate.

Lufthansa Airlines Flight 462 landing at gate 18, Lufthansa Airlines from Berlin.

You could do anything you want in these fucking places.

I think this is a good topic for the new year.

Airplane, airplane, airport stories.

Well,

there's...

It was a different world back then, ladies and gentlemen.

I've seen things.

But in the meantime, we've ended the show, haven't we?

We have more of the Ionosphere Club in the future.

Yes, and we'll get you high and then get you back down again.

And in parting, we'd like to wish you love, peace, and soul.

So tune in next week for more of that.

And Saturday night's main event.

We're going to talk about that.

And

on your show, Brian, we'll do something.

So thank you.

Fuck you.

Bye-bye, everybody.

The experience.

of Jim Cornette

of Jim Connet