Episode 558: Corny Just Wants To Have Fun

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Like the midnight and the rock and roll.

He's in a fight for wrestling soul.

Using a racket and some mind control.

He's Jim Cornette.

The keys to the future, held by the past.

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

He's Jim Cornette.

Well, he's never afraid of lony.

He never backs down from a fight.

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Cause his mama raised him right.

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Get the experience.

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

And folks, with so much of the bad news and the bad wrestling, we're going to cheer everybody up today.

It's a Corny Just Wants to Have Fun edition of the Jim Cornette Experience.

And joining me to have fun.

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

Co-host to you.

He has fun because he bops time after time.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again for an exciting day of fun and wrestling talk.

Are you going to show your true colors today?

What did you have?

A Cindy Lauper marathon last night with you?

Yeah, yeah, well, no, I just

was fitting with the flow,

but apparently, not with you.

But you know what they say?

Money changes everything.

How many more songs do you know?

Keep going.

No, now, now, see, now.

You only know the hits.

That's what you're saying.

None of the deaths.

You've written it for me.

None of the dealers.

You've written it for me.

You just do the rest of the bit on your own.

I'll just be over here.

I have seen Cindy Lauper live in concert performance.

Was it all through the night?

And it actually, it was.

It was a fine concert that took place after dark.

And

this was, oh, God, I can't remember what year it may have been because I've had so many years now in my life.

What color was her hair?

Oh, God damn it.

I don't remember at this point.

How do you not remember something like that?

She's so unusual.

Lopper's hair when I saw her 20 fucking years ago.

But the point is, I'm telling you something else I remembered that distracted me.

But see, now you're putting on the full court press the interrogation.

We're trying to remain silly here.

I'm trying to get this story out.

You're just blowing blowing me,

blowing me up.

That's exactly what I'm doing with this serious story you have about Cindy Wauffer and her

serious accident.

She had broken,

if I'm not mistaken, her ankle

or whatever the case, something in her leg.

I'm pretty sure it was a broken ankle.

Was it Moolah?

No, it wasn't Moolah.

Try to get even.

And Cindy knew to look for a double cross.

So she had trained with Gerald Briscoe anyway.

But the point is, she was performing anyway, but she had to come out on the, you know, the crutch, and she was hobbling somewhat.

Maybe she was a cane, whatever.

But they played

the violin part from young Frankenstein when she came hobbling out with the one leg.

And Stacey loves that.

that tune and that is that was played at our wedding.

So that was a memorable, a more memorable occurrence

than the color of her hair.

No, it's very memorable.

What year was it?

I don't remember the year.

Because it was a memorable concert.

Well,

again, it wasn't memorable because of the year.

It was memorable because of the event.

Did she sing The Goonies Are Good Enough?

That's my favorite song.

I don't remember The Goonies.

Well, they weren't good enough to make the set list that night.

She needs special effects for that and goonies

well i'm sure she could book corey feldman he's but she wasn't able to bop around for girls just want to have fun

uh you know one-legged as much as but she made up for it with flinging her hair whatever color it may have been of the rainbow around and everything you know the girls in the video like uh

after they do the stuff with her and her family in the house they have like her and just like a bunch of friends like you know moving their heads around to the music and shit yes yes those were the secretaries a bunch of them were the secretaries from epic Records.

Did they get royalties then from the record company or the producers or the artists or anybody?

Man, the artists were lucky to get royalties.

They didn't get no royalties.

They didn't get no stinking royalties.

Royalties.

You had Captain Lou Albano.

You had real life

record company secretaries.

She was just a wide range of...

If only people could be brought together in today's society, like Cindy Lauper brought them together from all spectrums and shapes of the rainbow.

As far as a gimmick, did you think that it was better when she was working the gimmick?

It was like, you know, she was so ditzy, like, I don't know.

And then, like, all of a sudden, she kind of had that voice, but it was like she was an intellectual all of a sudden.

Yes, well, they should have done really, think about this.

How much money could they have made with a reality series

of send Cindy Lauper to fucking finishing school.

And she starts out like she's ready for the goddamn cast of Jersey short, and she comes out

like goddamn Dame Edith Evans or something.

That's a Queen's accent.

Well, you got to know these things.

That's a Queen's accent.

A queen or a dame or a princess or whatever the

Queens County, New York.

That's right.

Queens Count in this thing.

Queens Count, Kings Count.

All right.

Should I get back to the racing sounds?

What are we?

Hold on.

Well, Dr.

We're having a fun show now.

And by the way, in keeping with the fun show,

if anybody's waiting to hear any

reaction to the election results, we have done that.

You've missed it.

If people only listen to this program and don't listen to the drive-through, and I can't imagine there'd be that many people with just that much of a mortal grudge against you.

But Brian's program, the drive-through, was the one we did after that.

And so we reacted there.

And instead of making everybody upset twice and upsetting me so we can't have a fun show, we ask you to refer back.

To what I said there because I haven't changed any of my opinions.

But there's plenty of time.

There's plenty of time.

We've got two months of normal life left.

So let's all enjoy wine, women, and song

until January when we have famine, pestilence, and misery.

So there's no reason to

just as long as everybody has their affairs in order, you can have

a good time for a couple months, right?

Brian,

we can do that.

We can make it like the people that are on death row and they get a set date they

they don't get the opportunity to just live their normal life and have a happy time until right up until a bitter end well i don't want to compare

i don't know if i feel like i'm living on death row i wouldn't say that that's a bit extreme but i think we'll be fine and we'll have good times and luckily no matter who the president is Tony Khan will be there to produce really wacky wrestling.

And I'll tell you what, it's going to be great.

Oh, I forgot that you had one of those too.

But anyway, well, let's, in the keep,

in the keeping.

In the keeping, yes.

In the interest of keeping

in the theme of having fun,

we're not going to talk about election results.

Let's speak about somebody that's gravely ill.

How's that for a transition there?

A segue, if you will, of a fade in.

I'm not certain.

Either really good or really bad.

Well, the subject would have thought it was hilarious

uh he's still alive by the way

well i say would have if he he's got better things to do than listen to this

show

so if he'd have heard it he would have thought it but he didn't hear it so if you always do what you always did then you always get what you always got always got and

We are talking about, we also on the drive-thru, we mentioned that Dutch Mantel has been having health issues and his wife, Kathy, as well.

And they've both been hospitalized Dutch for a couple of lengthy times with sepsis, which is no

joke, apparently, from everybody's feedback on that.

And his wife, Kathy, multiple times for lesser periods for the issues she may have had or has that may be worse than is.

A point being,

they had a GoFundMe.

We plugged the GoFundMe.

A number of

people in and around the wrestling business have contributed and

they've done, you know, I'm sure it's still open, and you can if you want to do that, we encourage it.

But we were trying to do something positive, and people are trying to do something positive

in the face of a not positive situation.

And there's there was, Brian, I think, on anybody's part, no reason to

take the piss out of it, as they say across the pond, right?

But here comes

Uncle Dave Beltzer, who has, I mean, this time, according to the feedback I get on the Twitter machine and people in their various ways trying to contact me,

Dave really shit to bed and fell back in it this time, as Mama Cornette would say, because everybody's like, what in the flying fuck is wrong with you?

And it, again, it's about

it's been going on for years now, and it seems to increase the ever

growing, ever-increasing,

for once, I don't know what word to use, fascination, obsession, compulsion,

unnatural grip on his relationship with Tony Khan,

and how that

it's not just enough to

report on what Tony does, not even bad, just good, but just bring him

into the universe of every conversation.

And when he does

Tony Khan being the he,

a minor thing in his universe, if it interacts with somebody else,

that becomes the most important thing about their story, too.

Do you see what I mean?

Can you word it any better as to what the fuck Dave's

literal obsession is with trying to babyface Tony Kahn

at every opportunity?

Well, look, you know, there's been a lot of fans since the beginning that have said things like, Dave Meltzer is being paid by Tony Khan, Dave Meltzer on the take.

I've never believed that.

I've never thought that was true.

But that doesn't mean that Dave doesn't have an investment in AEW mentally.

When Tony Kahn,

a professed lifelong observer reader, wanted to start AEW, who was the first person he called?

Who was the first person he hired?

The first person he hired was Chris Harrington.

Why did he hire him?

Because Dave Meltzer told him to.

That was the first person he called, was Dave.

And

Dave is now at a point where he acknowledges some of the bad stuff, but in the nicest possible way, but it's also months after all of us have said all these things.

And then he says everyone else is out of touch because we came came to the conclusions before he did.

But anyway,

I think Dave has a personal investment in AEW.

I think Dave has a business investment in the idea of there being competition and it being strong competition.

You know, TNA has never helped the observer grow their subscriber base, but AEW has.

And I think there's...

This is like when Apter used to put Mel Mascaris on the cover or Bruno or a superstar because they sold all the magazines.

The wrestlers that Dave anointed as

being the purveyors of the modern style that everyone else needs to adhere to were the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega.

And,

you know, here we are years later.

It's probably tough to realize that the Young Bucks don't mean a fucking thing.

They don't mean anything.

Do the Young Bucks mean more than the Viking Raiders right now?

And those were his guys.

And I think think when people have acknowledged I mean the thing that's always gotten me is that when anyone has had open and honest discussions about the problems with AEW Dave has never been in the conversation because Dave's never been willing to say the quiet part out loud which is Tony is the problem Tony is the solution and that he's funding it So you think Dave is projecting babyfacishness on Tony because Tony started to get heat from the fans for, hey, this actually kind of sucks these days.

I think anyone who has been paying attention and anyone who knows any of the players involved who doesn't think that Dave Meltzer has an emotional investment in Tony Conn and AEW, anyone who doesn't acknowledge that is ridiculous.

And Dave, I think, if you read some of the things he says, he thinks he's been hard on Tony lately.

And he doesn't realize to the rest of us, it's ridiculous.

He's, again, he comes to the conclusions that we all came to months after everyone else came to those conclusions.

And then he tells you the bad ratings are good.

He was the captain of the ship and it sank, but he was able to save the doughnuts from the commissary and feed two of the survivors for a week.

But listen, here's we've done bad radio here because a lot of the people who have real lives don't know exactly what we're referring to.

I'm going to read some of this shit here.

Because

Dave's words are much better than mine

in this particular situation.

What now?

I was going to say now, this is from the Wrestling Observer newsletter for November 11th, I believe.

Well, yeah, because people have tweeted this, they screenshotted it.

He wrote this in public, so it's not like he can duck it.

And everybody's been talking about it.

They were talking about it when we released a few days ago the clip where we were just talking about Dutch's GoFundMe, not connecting him to anything else like normal people would do, right?

Because this is serious enough.

But

this is Dave's reporting on Dutch's illness and his wife's illness.

Dutch Mantel is not doing well, nor is his wife, Kathy.

He's battled sepsis twice over the last year and both times nearly took his life.

He had a month-long stay in the hospital after the second time.

His wife also had both sepsis and diverticulitis to the point she's been hospitalized 11 times since May and just had emergency bowel surgery has lost 70 pounds

uh because of extended hospital stays their insurance and life savings are depleted and

and started a go fund me this is dave's words here

because both still need home care they had raised 64 200 and this was as of the press time which is what date is this

No, it wasn't as a press time because as a press time, I think it was over 80.

Well, this is, I guess, his press time.

He typed this part of the story.

Oh, he typed it as of this, as of his typing time.

But with most of the top donors being anonymous and the largest known donors were Tony Kahn at 5,000 and Chris Jericho at 1,500.

150, that'd have been great at 1,500.

Yeah, it's a name he conveniently left off that list.

Well, nevertheless.

So that is, I'm looking at this written down, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

That's about 10 lines for a guy that's been in the wrestling business over 50 years and has worked for all the major companies being in

bad health, right?

And needing help.

Yeah, meanwhile, he wrote the career biography of Tegan Knox and Indy Hartwell in this issue.

Well, but no way, we're continuing on with this story even.

Here's where the story goes from here, the most important part that we need to know.

He continues on, with Khan,

many have pointed out that Mantel as a podcaster, was brutal to Khan, even being critical of him when the promotion was at its popularity peak, and recently criticized him for the contract term Swerve Strickland got in his recent deal.

It is something when a former wrestler gets mad at a promoter who clearly can afford it for what he pays the top talent.

Let me hold on here.

I'm pretty sure Dutch probably wasn't mad

in shock, disbelief,

gobsmackedness as a veteran

promoter and/or matchmaker, booker, office personnel would be.

But I don't know if he was stomping up and down.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

No, I was just going to say it was a big topic when Swerve's contract and when Daniel Garcia's contracts were coming up or just being renewed.

The idea that Tony Khan was overpaying by multiples, WWE, is a big part of the story.

Yeah, well, anyway, and he continues.

It is something when former wrestler gets mad.

And he was doing it after he knew the new deal was put together that was going to make the company exceedingly profitable.

Wrestlers using the old school, he doesn't draw money, and not understanding that this isn't a mom-and-pop week-to-week business based on live event numbers, but one that, in a worst-case scenario, year would generate $250 million next year, and that most of that that revenue is guaranteed ahead of time.

Dot, dot, dot.

He went on a fucking rant

defending Tony Khan's business potential or ability or whatever.

Based on the numbers Tony Khan gave him.

Well, but also in a sense

and made it a longer paragraph than Dutch's entire wrestling career when he's very ill and needs people's help.

This was more important than, well, and Dutch Mantel's any, I don't know that Dutch ever said he wasn't taking in a lot of money.

Dutch Mantel's in the hospital.

Boy, I hate those hairy fucks.

I wish they would go shave off all their hair, freaks.

It's like it doesn't, what the fuck?

And again,

for all of us, all of us who have been calling attention to all these things going on, we're not saying that Tony Khan is not taking in quite as tidy some

from his TV rights and his fucking things, and he's spending a tidy sum as well.

But

the quality of the program is pretty much what is talked about.

And in that case, I'm sorry, no, but why is this a venue, a particular spot to say Dutchman Tell's ill and needs help?

And what a contribution he's made to the business for 50 years.

By the way, he's a complete dumb shit.

Who doesn't know what he's talking about?

And it's part of the story that Tony has to overpay guys to keep them.

It's not like, oh, he could pay anyone whatever he wants because money is, you know, woo, money.

You know, who cares?

No, he has to.

To keep them, he now has to overpay everyone.

That's the issue.

Because the other ones can look and say, well, look at so-and-so, and he's down here on fucking rampage, soon to be canceled.

And look at me, I'm up here on, how the fuck am I?

Oh, well, of course you're worth more now.

And it'll be a good little cycle, and they can afford it because that's another part.

And it's going to go up.

And it's going to, as Triple H and WWE cut off the Indy pipeline, it's going to go up.

These salaries are going to go sky high.

And at the same time,

for heaven's sake, for heaven's sake, yes, there's a reason why that they've got to a point where they can be guaranteed $100 and whatever million dollars a year from this thing because

nobody has ever been willing to spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars to get to that point, maybe.

And now we, again,

we will wait and see as to

whether it was sound strategy in terms of how long it takes them to make that money back or whatever.

But

think about it.

I was thinking about this the other day.

For

the money that they spent on the video game, AEW, right?

We get best guesstimate from everybody involved was this thing has to be a $50 million deal or more.

Correct?

I think the lowest number we heard was like 35, but I think it was much more than that.

Well, let's say $35 million.

With that amount of money, they could have flat, when he started AEW,

he could have flat out purchased every wrestling promotion in the country and actually probably in the world,

maybe with the exception of a couple of those in Japan or, well, in Mexico and one in Japan,

purchased every wrestling promotion that had talent under contract anywhere

and just assumed those fucking contracts

instead of paying guys three and four and five and six times what anybody else had ever paid them.

Or now, Hiletta, hold on.

Or now,

they could have taken that money this year

over the last year that they have run these NBA arenas.

and staffed them in some description, if not to just hire people.

And I've seen this happens, folks.

This is a thing that is done.

Part of the security staff in a big, mostly empty building goes to station places to not let people go into the fucking closed off part.

And they're sitting there all night going, don't go here, don't go here.

And you pay for that.

So at some point along the way here, how much money

could he have saved by just saying, fuck it, I'm just going to buy the company that has every wrestler except Vince under contract and start from here.

Or not run these giant arenas

and lose another $50 million five years after the fact.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Well, there's a few things there.

And of course, you look at all the money that Tony Khan has spent, and it's ridiculous to think that you couldn't go in there and be more efficient and spend a whole lot less while getting to exactly where they are today.

But the other thing is, Tony Khan

very generously donated $5,000 to Dutch Mantel.

Dave, in reporting that, it triggered this defense of AEW and Tony Khan.

Do you think Tony Khan wanted that?

Because I don't.

Probably not.

No.

I mean, even as

awkward as Tony is in various ways, he had to know that that was really out of place.

But once again, get well, Dutch Mantel.

Yeah,

Uncle Dave's pulling for you, Dutch.

Good lord.

Well,

you know,

I'll tell you who's feeling good, Brian.

Feeling good, feeling fine.

It's the customers of Cornett's Collectibles because hundreds of more packages have been put into the hands of Hotchkiss Featherbottom.

I went crazy over the last several days, got a bunch of stuff signed.

Things are flying out the door, and we are almost making our deadline or our self-imposed deadline, our goal in that everything that has been ordered through the November 1st, the date of November 1st when

the November weekly sales started.

We're about 50 packages short right now that I'm working on tomorrow.

And

if you ordered anything in October, By the time you hear this, it's going to be signed up, packed up, and shipped out.

And we're working on these November weekly sales because they've been a big hit, Brian.

Who would have thought

that if you take a piece of merchandise that's normally on sale for one price, and then when you, for a set period of time, reduce drastically that price, that you would sell more of those things?

That's another Hotchkiss feather-bottom innovation.

Oh, fuck that guy.

Stop it.

Oh, what's what's

you're just jealous.

You're jealous of his

efficiency and creativity and his business sense and his

and the fact that he can play a flute with his nose.

And I've, I've now, I'm telling you, I'm going to have video to prove it here pretty soon.

I'm going to get him over here with his flute and I'm going to shoot some video.

But anyway, and now, so anyway,

oh, where I was on the orders.

So feel free to order with impunity at jimcornet.com.

If you haven't already put your email in,

then you would be getting the email blast.

We encourage you to do that because that'll tell you what's on sale for each particular week in November.

Because I haven't been plugging it because by the time people would hear it,

for example, the week that behind the curtain, the graphic novel was on sale for half price.

But that's over now.

And people would go there and expect that and they'd be mad.

So I didn't want to do that.

That's why the emails are important.

But

in the interest of Thanksgiving, Brian, I'm going to stooge off the last week from Friday, November 22nd, all the way

through Thanksgiving weekend and Black Friday and Cyber Monday to Tuesday, December 3rd.

It's a 10-day week,

even better than the Beatles.

Eight days a week.

Eight days a week.

But anyway,

guess what's going to be on sale for 10 whole days through the Thanksgiving and et cetera weekends that I just mentioned?

Panties.

No,

I've told you before.

I have not

got a license for that in the state yet.

The Midnight Express Collector's Edition Four-pack action figure box set

that has been the hit of the toy world

is going to be on sale for that period of time forty dollars off the regular price.

40 bucks off.

That's the kind of discounts and sizable reductions that we're talking about in these sales.

And that's going to be the grand pappy of all of them.

And that's again, that's Friday, November 22nd till

at noon

until Tuesday, December 3rd.

It gets us past the Cyber Monday.

Because Hotchkiss says my website is part of the cyber network.

And by the way, even if you don't like Jim, we pay a fee.

Even if you don't like Jim, do it for Stan.

Well, and a lot of people love Stan.

As you well know, Elias Stan's loved a lot of people.

It's even more well documented.

And also for Dennis and Teresa.

That's right.

They're fine folks and Bobby Eaton's kids and grandkids.

Because as we've obviously all along,

the Midnight Express members and/or Bobby's kids and grandkids share equally in the proceeds from those action figures.

And the other ones that are on sale at least eight days a week at JimCornet.com.

And

if you buy one of those sets, you get, and actually, if you buy this set at $40 off, you will still get the deal

where you get the final variant Jim Cornette man-in-white action figure that the pictures are available on the website for half price, also.

So you can technically get the Midnight Express four-pack

and the white Jim Cornette variant and save $65.

What the fuck has Hotchkiss done to me?

Why did you tell me this was a good idea, Brian?

That rare white Jim Cornet variant.

Make sure you get that.

That's right.

I'm an albino.

It's Jimmy Winter.

No, it doesn't change the fact that Hotchkiss is a boob and you shouldn't be listening to him.

And we've had

nothing but communication issues ever since you've been working with this guy who, whatever you tell me, every time I need to deal with him, he's missing a finger.

He lost a toe.

His cousin ran away.

I don't know what's going on.

There's been problems in the family.

He's trying to overcome.

People deserve a second chance.

The Monroes don't like him either.

He can cross state lines now.

Well, that's commendable.

Well, anyway, have you finished slandering the man at this point now?

But that's all at jimcornet.com, folks.

All the things that I just said.

That's right.

Get your holiday needs at jimcornet.com.

Well, and

we don't have any type of Christmas ornaments except for the Santa Corny.

Many people

put that on their Christmas tree at the end of the year.

The Santik, Santa Corney action figure.

santy corny santi corna

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but now can we get to business now we said we were going to have some fun i got an email here business

that uh well we're going to have fun business we're going to have funny business i got an email here and it it came to the drive-through email and somehow also filtered its way through to me

from Adam in Edmonton.

And he said, dear Jim, I recently watched a clip of Renee Dupree

talking about his experiences working with you, Jim, saying they were all positive and that you had great passion for the business.

He also mentioned you had come up with his nickname, the French Phenom,

and that you had inspired the team name La Résistance

after writing a letter about him and signing it Viva La Résistance.

So more on that in a minute.

I know, but there's, see, there's something in everything now.

Hold on.

But he says, I had two questions for you.

Number one, what are your overall memories, experiences, and thoughts on Renee Dupree?

And number two, in the same interview, Rene also noted that South Park had come up with the same catchphrase in the movie.

Will you confirm or deny here

if the quote viva la resistance and the subsequent naming of the team was in fact an inside reference to the South Park movie.

And if so, what were your thoughts when WWE actually used it as their team name?

Thanks.

Well, thank you, Adam and Edmonton, for your missive here.

And there's some truth in all of it.

It's muddled, but would you like me to clarify, would you like me to peel away the layers of muddle until we get down to the meat of the matter, Brian?

Yeah, now that is a phrase from World War II, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

And that's where I got about South Park.

Well, no, but no, but they used it in the South Park movie.

And Google, you're better at it than I am.

Google, what year was the South Park movie?

Okay.

I can't remember what year it was anyway.

The point is, while you're doing that.

99.

Okay,

so it, yes, it predated

the application that we used it for, but I bet you, and you'll see here in a minute, that they stole it in the same place that I did.

And so, the first thing is, Renee Dupree

was sent to us down in OVW.

And I'm going to say this

without even checking my records, 2003.

It might have been four, it might have been two, I might be off a year, whatever the fuck, but it matters not for this.

But the point is, is that Renee Dupree, as you and I have talked about, was the son of Emile Dupree, the promoter up there in northeastern Canada.

What was his territory?

Brian, help me.

The brothers.

I'm sorry, what?

What?

You know, I always get them confused.

It's either the Maritimes or it's the,

well, not the prairies.

No, well, the Maritimes is up there, but there was Al Zink, there was Emile Dupree, there were promote in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Prince Edward Edward Island.

There was fuse.

I can't remember what the company was called, but Anne of Green Gables.

Anne of Green Gables Wrestling, yes.

So anyway, but Emile Dupree had been a wrestler.

He came from a family that was famous in the wrestling industry up in that part of the world, right?

In that part of Canada and points around there.

And he was also, when they sent him to us, he was 19 years old.

Now, at first, I heard they're sending the 19-year-old son of promoter Emile Dupree.

And I'm like, okay, that's not unusual.

But when he got here and I saw him,

first off, he was like six foot three.

And you remember what Renee, Renee, that

you remember what Rene Dupree looked like when he first came here.

He was 19 years old.

He's like jacked up like Luger, right?

For that.

Age of a kid, he had an amazing physique.

He'd already been bodybuilding for years.

Because he was so big, I never, until I found out how young he was, I didn't think he was as young as he was.

He looked a lot older because he was so big.

Yeah.

And it, you know, the Terry Gordy principle, maybe, except this day, he was a bodybuilder instead of just being a giant fucking country boy.

But

anyway, so the first thing,

because

he's French Canadian, right?

Renee Dupree.

And the first way he got heat was, this was in the day, I still have a landline, but this was when you actually got a long long-distance phone bill.

And I've told this story before:

is that

he calls me and leaves me a message with his phone number, and I call him back

before he gets here to OVW or right the week he's getting here, whatever.

And I talk to him for like an hour on he can do this or that, we do things this way, whatever the fuck it was.

I talked to him for an hour.

I get my phone bills, like $120

to talk to this goddamn,

you know, Prince Edward Island fucking Canada number.

Like three people call on that area code or whatever the fuck.

So I told him, I said, motherfucker, get a goddamn American phone, right?

That was our first thing.

He's like, oh, shit, now Cornet's mad at me.

Get an American fucking phone.

So then

I'm thinking,

well, how do we, you know, Renee Dupree

on a poster in Ulitic, Indiana,

or over here in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, they're going to think it's a girls' match, right?

And before he's, nobody's ever heard of him, he's just starting in a business.

So

the French phenom, you know how I like alliteration.

And we try to make something out of his name and his lineage in the wrestling industry because he did have an advantage in that, you know, his father had been a promoter.

And

at that age, at that time, his father must have had him late in life.

But

I wasn't even there at the time.

But so we've had the French French phenom, Rene Dupree.

And he, you know, he comes from the wrestling family.

And look at the body on this kid.

He's a superstar in the making.

And for his promos, I've mentioned that the

the French accent just gets heat down south, especially, but in most of the United States, because it's just something about

the way that it sounds, right?

It gets out of people's skin that speak English

with no accent like us for some reason.

And so I'm he's gonna be a heel, right?

Because this same Luger principle in that, well, this obnoxious overachiever that looks better and is bigger and the great body and whatever, and snotty, entitled

wrestling family guy

brian do you know where viva la resistance actually comes you have to know where that comes from from world war ii

but do you know where it comes from as applies to american television

where's that

hogan's heroes

The very first French accent that I ever heard in my life was when I was fucking four or five years old.

And I am listening to Corporal Lebeau, the famous character actor Robert Clary,

who was one of the inmates, one of the

prisoners in Stalag 13

on the television show Hogan's Heroes.

And he was a member of the French resistance, the underground, that was fighting the Nazis.

And oftentimes he would come, viva la resistance!

And I told him, I said, you're being an obnoxious French fuck.

And instead of a letter about him,

I've told you many times that with the OVW guys on television, I'd have the format, but I'd also have notes written out for the individual talent.

I would give them

their match or their finish or their interview or the the gist of what their segment was.

I would go over it with them verbally.

And because there wasn't 12 of me and I couldn't sit in a corner with each one of 25 people for half an hour, I would have what I told them verbally written down and I'd say, Here,

usually it's put it in your own words.

Other times, I might mention to him, You got to say this this way, or it won't make sense with what we're doing later on, and here's why.

And I just wrote one day, Viva Lettes is his dance at the end of his promo, right?

It'd be obnoxious French entitled fuck.

And he did it.

And

then at one point, he went up with, and

Sylvain

Grignet

came in.

Yeah.

Granier, Grunyon.

But he came in and he was French too.

And then poor Rob Conway, who was from the French section of fucking New Albany, Indiana.

He got in the team and they went up there.

And the next thing I know, they're on TV up there called La Resistance.

And this whole thing comes from Hogan's Heroes.

And I guarantee you that if you didn't make that connection, and they're still talking about it, and Rene Dupree didn't know what the fuck was going on, that the WWFE

named them La Résistance with no idea of how the genesis of that came from Hogan's Heroes.

I didn't think it was any goddamn, it was a, I thought it was a well-known secret.

Did you have Sylvain Grandier in OVW?

Yes.

What were you told about why he was hired?

Pat had seen him at a show in,

I assume, somewhere in the Montreal or Quebec environs and thought he had a lot of potential.

And

was that under the Jim Ross or the Johnny Ace

administration under talent relations?

If it was Jim Ross, it may have been the tail end of Jim Ross.

It may have been the tail end.

Now, you know, Jay.

That was unintentional.

Problems with his colon, don't

once they got once they got Sylphon Grenier dislodged from it.

But

I told you we're going to have some fun today.

But no, point is, that's what

he tried hard and he probably was impressive on

an independent level,

but I never

didn't see a lot of

just boy gee whiz can't miss stardom in him.

And yes, and he was down there for a while and then he was up there for a while and then he went away for, I guess, since then.

Did he ever continue wrestling now that we're down this rabbit hole?

Sly.

I couldn't tell you one way or another.

I actually don't know anything else about the post-WW post-resistance career.

And wasn't that the reason they brought Rob Conway into the group?

Because he could work and Grandier wasn't necessarily up to snuffer.

Am I remembering?

What are you talking about?

The Michael Hayes corollary?

Just wave a flag.

You're saying that Rob Conway became Buddy Roberts?

Yeah, pretty much.

Well, yes, pretty much.

And because Conway could work his ass off, and so he became a French sympathizer and went over to their

way of thinking over there in France.

And

also,

whereas Rene came in kind of like, you know, okay, he had some

element of, you know, I'm the, you know, promoter's father, wrestling family type of thing, but he also knew a little something about the business instead of starting from scratch.

Whereas Sly came in very convinced of his own capabilities and came off that way to other people and

had been nowhere and smoked nobody, as they used to say at Skynyrd concerts.

So he wasn't

one of the more popular fellows that we had down here with Sly.

You know, now that there's new ownership and that they're always making new content, hopefully we can really get a true OVW documentary, not just about like the big success stories, but about how Vince McMahon, WWE Creative, brought tons of guys from OVW that were working, that things were looking good up and then ruined them or took people that were not anywhere near ready and brought them up and, you know, ruined them too.

Well,

I'm surprised they're not working on that fucking documentary already.

That sounds like a can't miss.

There's plenty of fucking footage and material to work from.

But yeah, so that was that.

I'm just trying to check off things in this

email that did we answer.

What are you saying?

Oh, did we answer everything from the email?

That was my question.

Well, that's what I'm trying to look and see.

You keep fucking buttoning in like this is your show or something.

Was that how he got booked?

Was he buttoning?

I may need iron.

I'm getting like Harley.

I get Arn.

Arn.

I-R-O-N.

I may need iron.

I thought you said you need Arn.

Like, Oli.

No,

I may need iron because, like, Harley, I'm getting feisty and

growly because she was low on iron.

Yes, but that the French phenom, La Réstance,

thoughts and memories.

Memories

lack the corners of my mind.

But it didn't have anything to do with South Park.

That was where they got it too.

You know, old.

Oh, goddamn, Fubar, Makafaka Lube, and Slapco Fudd.

Who'd started South Park?

Matt and Trey and Matt.

Trey and Matt.

Matt Stark and Trey Parker.

Yes, they've had so many pop culture

references in their

canon of material that you know that they stole some shit from Hogan's Heroes.

Would there be any doubt there in your mind there, Brian Last?

No, I guess that is a possibility.

Also, the idea that it was in the air, the reason Hogan's Heroes used it was the reason that a lot of other people would know it.

Well, yes, because that way it was out there in the pop culture.

But I'm telling you what,

folks, let that be a lesson to you.

If you need to get the true story, send the questions here, because we're the only people that can give you the actual real scoop,

the straight-to-the-heart story.

You can bet on our information, Brian.

You can't wager on just everybody.

They may be leading you down the primrose path, but

you can lay money down on our word being correct, just like you can lay money down

with our friends at DraftKings on a variety of things.

See that rhymed.

I'm a poet and don't know it, but my feet show it because they're longfellas.

Brian, have you downloaded the DraftKings Sportsbook app this week yet?

Oh, I was just about to do it because if I had said to you before the show, what are the chances the fucking gardener and his fucking crew of morons would show up now to do the leaves until they said they were going to do it on Saturday.

So, oh no, I did not,

the app,

whatever I'm supposed to say, yes.

Well, you know, it's a thing you need to do every week.

Mark this down Monday mornings.

First thing when you get up out of bed, download the DraftKings Sportsbook app.

Now, you may say, well, once I download it once, do I need to do it again?

Just keep downloading this son of a bitch.

It might change.

You never know.

You need to stay in touch with these people.

This is the only way, folks, that we've got now to imagine that we're all going to retire safely and securely as if we bet money on various things at DraftKings and win.

So we got that to look forward to.

And folks, you know, on the drive-through, Brian, did I, I've, I mentioned the big fights coming up.

And I was conflicted because the way that it read, I thought that it was last week, but but it's this week, which now the people may not hear before this week, so it may be last week.

But if Friday night in Dallas, the baddest man on the planet, Mike Tyson, is fighting Jake Paul, the brother of that weirdo that currently is maybe a WWE superstar Logan Paul, and on Saturday night, if John Jones is putting up the UFC title on the line against our friend Steepe Miyokikik

from apparently somewhere other than Kansas,

then it's the right weekend.

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And new customers, if you bet $5, you're going to get $200

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How's them gardeners, Brian?

Charge.

We're DraftKings.

The crown is yours.

Tell them about it, Jim.

Well, no, I think that

Ola Chauncey is going to tell him about it, isn't he?

Oh, that's right.

Let's go to Chauncey right now.

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Boyd, and did you know also that he is the son of Zazu Pitts?

That's not true.

That's that's what it's on his resume.

Well, maybe not for him, but for you and everyone else, the crown is yours.

One more time.

What's that promo code, Jim?

JCE.

Well, all right, Brian, let's get back to the mailbag here.

And by the way, how are your leaf blowers over there?

Are they finished yet?

You've only got three or four acres there.

They're just getting started, and the guy in the back has like a chainsaw or something because he's cutting down some of the stuff for the end of the season.

So it's going to be very noisy.

I'm really not happy about this.

Cutting down stuff for the end of the season with a chainsaw?

Have you let things go that way?

Oh, like the tall grass and shit.

He's using a chainsaw on tall grass.

Do you know what a chainsaw is?

I think so.

I've seen movies.

I've never used one.

I've hired people that have used chainsaws.

I've seen chains.

I've seen saws.

Do they often use it on the grass?

The tall grass, not the regular grass.

Now you're making me sound like a lunatic.

The Bermuda grass.

That needs the chainsaw.

I don't know what they're chainsawing, but they had a chainsaw.

down there

you have anything buried back there we need to know about nothing you need to know about do these people have fbi on their landscaping trucks

all right you've you've flustered me now i was trying to bring up you're flustered i'm watching a tornado of leaves behind me

oh he stopped the engine What happened?

Did they realize they're fucking damp?

No, the Tasmanian devil showed up.

I'm I'm sorry.

Oh, they're doing damp leaves?

Well, that'll be even louder.

That's going to take much longer.

Back to you.

And by the way,

if I start talking where I don't sound like I'm making any goddamn good sense,

these headphones, I feel like my head is in a vice.

Every time I take it off, I look like Zippy the pinhead.

My ears are plastered to my skull.

I've got a point to the top of my head.

Are you sure this is not some plot that you have sent me these things so it'll contribute to my early demise?

You know, I'm starting to get a headache.

I thought the complications with working with you on fixing things was limited to technology.

I can't even talk you through fixing these.

They're perfectly fine headphones.

They're exceptional headphones that you can't loosen.

They squeeze me.

They're squeezing my head.

They know how to squeeze you.

Loving,

touching, squeezing another email.

Actually, I was quoting Slade, but go ahead.

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Well, this is from Dave Dynasty, our friend Dave Dynasty.

Ah, he's a historian.

Well, he's hysterical most of the time, but every once in a while they've slip him something.

It calms him down enough where he can have holiday dinners with the family.

Well, now I've got some.

Hold on.

Oh, good lord.

Well, what's happening there?

A giant truck is pulling up.

A giant truck?

A giant truck is pulling up.

It has a swoosh on the side of it.

Like Nike?

Yeah,

like one of them tennis shoes.

Is that same thing as the Amazon?

The Amazonians are here all the time.

I guess the Amazonians are there again.

Well, anyway, Dave Dynasty is not from the Amazon.

He's from up in Indiana.

And he's trying to make sense of the history of Dick the Bruiser's WWA, the World Wrestling Alliance that existed, as we've talked about many times back in the glory days.

And he wrote an email: Would you like to hear his question?

Yes, I'd like to hear anything other than everything I'm hearing now.

Well, I was just trying to bring you into the conversation, but I don't want people to think I'm steamrollering you.

You're sitting over there muting your microphone, hoping this will all go away.

Steamroller is less noisy.

But anyway, Dave Dynasty says, Corny, in the fall, winter of 1982, Memphis and Dick the Bruiser's WWA worked together.

This was shortly after you started managing.

Was there ever talk of having you work the WWA shows?

What are your memories of this brief collaboration?

Dave, there was not only talk, there was action.

Brian, do you know where I spent Thanksgiving night of 1982?

Indianapolis.

At At the Tyndall Armory in Indianapolis, Indiana.

And they didn't have Black Friday then, but it was a dark day for me.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, I was in Fort Wayne as a dream machine said, Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, ain't nothing plain about Fort Wayne.

And we've talked about the Bruisers promotion in Indiana and the war with the Chic in Michigan and

you know much about how that's all played out and there's going to be a

an episode of hopefully I'm not spilling any beans dark side of the ring on the upcoming new season

that talks about part of that promotional war equation

and

But at the same time, we've, you know, mentioned, well, and then the territory aged out and they, you know, they went out of business.

But we haven't spent a lot of time on the decline as we have on the glory years in Indy, Brian.

So this is,

I was definitely part of the decline.

As we all know from our previous programs, Indianapolis was in the late 1950s, early 60s, part of the hotbed Midwest promotion, the juggernaut that Jim Barnett and Johnny Doyle had put together.

Indianapolis was drawing 10 or 12,000 people for the big shows.

Cincinnati Cincinnati Gardens, 10,000 people.

Detroit was good.

Fucking,

you know,

all over the Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia,

and incillary parts of Kentucky.

You know, they were doing great business, right?

And then

when Barnett went to Australia,

Bruiser got Indiana, and the second half of the 60s,

Brewser more or less, you look at the cards, it was a smaller time operation.

They didn't have access to the world-class talent that Barnett had brought in for this giant territory, just for the state of Indiana.

So Brewser was still making shots all over the country anyway.

He was a big star, and he ran it more kind of like his hometown thing.

And

they didn't really run a full schedule as relates to the other territories.

Would you say that's a fair assessment?

Oh, great one.

Yes.

And again, at the peak of Indianapolis under Bruiser, he was also working.

He also owned the piece of Chicago.

So that was another priority.

Well, yeah, but at this time when he began and just had Indiana,

he could go to Chicago if he wanted, but there wasn't really all these alliances yet put together.

So the latter half of the 60s, it was more more of a local promotion.

Indianapolis wasn't a big money town necessarily.

That's where Louisville and Evansville, Indiana went dark and Lexington, Kentucky, because they weren't doing business.

They couldn't keep a steady TV.

But then in 19, go ahead.

I was going to say, and maybe this is what you were going to say too.

Didn't Bruiser demand money from Jarrett when he started up Louisville because he said he still owned it?

Well, we ain't got there yet.

And see, that's the thing.

A lot of things started happening in 1970

bruiser brought sam miniker in not only to be the tv announcer but to be the booker

and

he started it seems like as you go back in retrospect and look at the cards and then look at the way things progressed he started putting more money

such as it was at the time into

the territory at home.

And

for the day, Minneker was both a good announcer and a good booker.

And they started getting better talent and they started ramping up because they were going to go and invade.

In 71, they were going to go into Detroit and try to take that.

So, with all of that, and that's about the time I started watching, seeing this program progress,

they boosted the Indianapolis business.

But I think

in retrospect, they were probably pissed because Jarrett beat them to it.

Because at the same time, Evansville had been dark for the last half of the 60s, and Louisville had been dark for almost five years in 1970.

Ed Wright is Bruiser is ramping up in Indianapolis, and he's going north to expand against Sheik.

He probably thought

with a bigger crew and better talent, if he could go to, I'll go down and we'll get TV down there.

And we'll open those towns back up.

And Jared beat him to it.

but uh so anyway

from a variety of perspectives there was controversy over louisville and this whole expansion up here with evansville and lexington along the 64 interstate 64 corridor

when when jared first told nick that he wanted to try to get tv up here and open up

nick gulis didn't think he could make any money at it

And so, yeah, sure, boy, whatever.

You know, you get the TV, we'll give you a talent for the booking fee, 10%.

But then, when Jared actually did get TV

and actually did

open up the towns, and they actually, after a short period of time, started making money, Louisville in particular

was doing incredible business.

Then, all of a sudden, Nick's boy, those office towns.

And all of a sudden, Jared had figured if he gave 10% booking fee to the Gulis-Welch office, he and his mother were 50% owners in the company.

So, in effect, they would have 90%

of it.

Well, then, when Nick Strong armed him into being

50-50 owners or 50-50 parters, because it was technically an office town,

then he and his mother only had 50% of Louisville Wrestling Enterprises.

But then,

like you mentioned, Bruiser, when he saw Louisville was doing well and Evansville had opened up and was doing okay for Evansville, he came down one time, him and Snyder,

and they were, you're running our towns.

And Jared said,

you haven't run them in five fucking years, right?

But

Bruiser called Nick

and because they had the long time relationship and Nick kowtowed to it.

Because he would make Bruiser mad.

And so they got like 5% of Louisville and evansville

lexington was on and off and i don't think it was part of the deal

it for like until jarrett split off from nick and opened his own company like seven years

so that's what jarret said i thought i had fucking

you know like 45 of my own company it turned out i had like 20 3 percent

so what happened after that though real quick uh without all the noise bothering you too much in the background here you don't don't worry about it i'm sure we'll we'll be charitable to you this week.

Once the split happens, Gulis still ran Louisville too, didn't he?

So did

he?

He stopped right away.

So it was just immediately.

So

did Jarrett have a conversation with Bruiser?

Did Bruiser show up one day like, hey, I haven't received my money in a while?

No, well, here's what happened.

First of all, to answer your question, how

Nick did briefly run in

when the split happened between Jarrett and Gulis,

Jarrett,

Louisville Wrestling Enterprises had always had the contract for Louisville.

So that continued seamlessly with the Louisville Gardens, the same building, the television station.

That was Jerry and Christine Jarrett's company.

And they had signed everything and done everything in their name.

It was the exact opposite in Memphis in that

Memphis, the TV contract was Gulis-Welch Wrestling, the contract with the Mid-South Coliseum, Gulis-Welch Wrestling.

Jarrett had been the booker but he hadn't opened that town so that's why

he had to form his own company go to channel five and get a new tv

and for the six or seven weeks it took him to just kick the out of nick gulis's shows he had to go to the cook convention center

and then that that was what has so it was a what what happened if you don't mind me uh interrupting you again so what happened did the the contract run out and Nick decided not to continue or did Nick get out of the contract?

Did the Coliseum kick him out because he wasn't producing the

I mean, what happened there between that period of time?

All kind of all of those things because

within six weeks after the split, when Jarrett took Lawler and all of the wrestlers except for Fargo and Tojo over to the Cook Convention Center and over at Channel 5,

Channel 13 didn't want to get involved in this and dropped the TV show

and just didn't have wrestling.

And Nick was trying to run the Mid-South Coliseum anyway.

And that lasted like six shows.

And he was down to,

you know, bringing in the Sheikh's talent from Detroit, Crazy Luke Graham, and Ripper Collins and the Sheik himself and Abdullah the Butcher and et cetera.

And they got down to like 600 people in the Mid-South Coliseum.

And Nick, at that point, didn't want to keep spending the money in the Coliseum.

Was like, fuck, if this guy'd get out of the way, we'd have Jerry Jarrett come back.

So, boom, and there we go.

And then April 24, 1977, Jarrett has his first, the split happened like March 20th.

And there's 31 days in March.

And by April 24th, Jarrett had booked his first show in the Mid South Coliseum.

Double main event, Lawler versus Jack Briscoe, Rocky Johnson versus Harley Race, and drew like 9,000 people at jacked-up ticket prices.

But nevertheless, back to the subject of this.

Meanwhile,

so Bruiser had still strong-armed a piece of the Louisville operations and that in this area.

But then Indianapolis went into its boom period where they were drawing 10 or 12,000 people for the big shows again.

And

in 1974,

we've talked about Brewser and Sheik drew 16,600 people to Market Square Arena.

And that's where Bobby Heenan was in

the corner against Sheik and Bruiser's corner against Sheik and Creechman.

And

Bobby got stiffed on the payoff 600 bucks that he called Vern.

But Indianapolis was drawing these big, massive crowds that I would see on Brewser's TV late at night.

And, you know, the Mid-South Coliseum looked great on TV.

I hadn't, you know, with 10,000, 12,000 people.

I hadn't seen that live either, but I knew going to the Louisville Gardens, yeah, we're in like 5,000 people, but holy shit, Indianapolis, look at all them fucking people.

And it made it look like a big deal when you're a 12-year-old kid, right?

And so

Indianapolis was cooking,

But then, as we've talked about, they settled the war.

And Brewser pulled out of Detroit.

And

the top talent went away.

And Minneker stayed, but it became the,

you know, Bruiser's retirement home.

I mean, everybody kind of lived there.

Pepper Gomez lived there.

You know, Snyder moved

to Florida.

and just came back for the Indianapolis shows.

And by the end of the 70s, the territory, they said Steve Regal, who was Wilbur Snyder's son-in-law, came down to Memphis in 79 because he wanted to get out.

And he started going to Georgia and the Carolinas, places like that, because he was a real talent.

And he was the

only time they ever had anybody young come into the Indianapolis territory was when it was either Mike Snyder, Wilbur's son, for a little while, or Spike Huber, Brewser's son-in-law, Steve Regal, the winner of the bunch,

Wilbur's son-in-law.

Everybody else was still fucking Yukon Muscho, like they were 50-something years old, right?

So,

the same thing with the Sheikh by 1980, in that he was out of the Kobo arena, and he pretty much had lost his promotion, which led to Barnett being able to open up in the early 80s off the Georgia cable and et cetera.

by the fall and winter of 1982,

Bruiser was not able to run the Expo Center anymore.

I don't know what they were doing for television at that point, to be honest.

As I recall, Minneker had even moved.

He'd gone back to El Paso.

And

I know that Dave McClain did some TV for Bruiser for a while, but point being,

you know, he was on the verge of closing up.

And some way or another,

he and Jerry Jarrett got started talking.

Oh, and you asked earlier, that's what I couldn't remember.

When Jarrett stopped paying him, he did start booking him.

Because in 77, 78, 79,

you would see Brewser in Louisville every once in a while.

You'd see Brewser in Memphis had several matches against Lawler when Lawler was a heel, especially.

And he would book some of his guys.

And of course, he'd worked with him on Jimmy Valiant.

Jimmy Valiant, you know, ended up being one of the top stars in Memphis of that glory period.

And he got him because he was working in Indianapolis for Brewser, and it was close.

So he cut him off on a regular check, but there was still a relationship.

And as I mentioned, Steve Regal had come down.

Well, then in 1982,

you might remember in the summertime, Steve Regal and Spike Huber as a team show up.

And they also show up as

the WWA World Tag Team Champions.

Remember those fancy, the Southern tag team title belts look like shit.

And they come in with these big fancy belts.

That'll look like something, right?

And

that's because Bruiser knew Snyder had already retired, gone to Florida.

And Bruiser knew that, well, here's our son-in-laws, and we ain't going to be able to book them.

So he was trying to get them work, and

they were a good team.

But the point is,

at that period of time,

Jared started talking to Bruiser, and

there was a short-lived agreement that Indianapolis would become part of the Memphis Territory.

And I don't know if that actually, have we told that story or has that been brought up?

Because it was so short a period of time.

But at one point, Indianapolis was going to be part of the Memphis Territory.

We may have brought it up a while back because I remember talking about it, but it's certainly been a good while.

We have new listeners.

Well, and also, and we have new leaf blowers.

Hey, you mentioned Spike Huber.

Is your father-in-law getting fed up with you the quickest way out of wrestling?

Because it seems like everyone hangs around wrestling unless you're like John Ringley, you know, unless you're like Spike Huber.

Unless like you've really pissed off your fucking father-in-law or the family.

No, no, yeah, with Ringley, it was the brothers.

It was the family, yeah.

Yeah, it's the family.

Because the father didn't ever find out about it.

He was gone.

The in-laws, I guess I should say.

Yeah, poor Spike didn't,

he didn't let, but Steve Regal went on to prosper in the AWA and Crockett and etc.

He got along with his father-in-law.

And Wilbur, what a class guy, right?

Nevertheless.

Classic Midwest wrestler name Wilbur Snyder.

Wilbur Snyder.

From Woodland Hills, California.

You see, he was even

very suburban.

That was sounded like an exotic place when I was 12.

But what I'm trying to say is that I believe in maybe Dave Dynasty's research, because I know he's too young to have first-hand knowledge, probably.

But

I'm pretty sure that Jarrett sent the Memphis tape up there.

He was sending it.

We were doing promos.

I don't know what Bruiser was playing up there.

But see,

Indianapolis had had a situation for ever since Bruiser really had owned it a few years afterwards where the

big

every three-week event at the Expo Center or the big building, they'd do the TV underneath and have the guys, even the stars work twice, do job matches, and then the main events wouldn't be on television or the finish wouldn't be on TV.

And that's and then they did interviews.

And that's why they did their TV show.

In the 60s, 50s and 60s,

the building was the Fairgrounds Coliseum, and that held 12,000.

And Barnett had run that, and Bob Ellison Brewser was the big sellout, and blah, blah, blah.

And then

when Brewser first opened up, he was running for his house shows a place called the Northside Armory

that was, as you would imagine it, one of those old armories that seated several thousand people.

And he'd have a big show at the Coliseum.

And then as he got more entrenched, they moved to the air-conditioned expo center, as they called it,

to differentiate from the Coliseum where you're sweating your balls off.

And that was, like I've described it, the big Miami Beach Convention Center setup where they had a giant convention hall with movable bleachers that seated thousands.

So you could put eight or ten thousand people in the expo center.

And this was long before Market Square Arena became the big arena, the NBA building in town.

So anyway,

Bruiser,

the way that they did television,

if he didn't have Expo Center shows, he was immediately, he was off TV, right?

So Jared started sending the

Memphis tape up.

And that was the fall of 82.

They were just building to the start of the fabulous ones.

I was just starting with stuff we've talked about before.

And the first events, they were Bruiser.

Apparently, it was his idea.

Thanksgiving night of 1982, after they'd run the TV like, I don't know, 10 weeks or whatever it was.

We had done promos.

That's where Dream Machine, who was one of the New York dolls,

Dream Machine and Rick McGraw, who Jimmy Art had put together and dressed up in the top hats so that the fabulous ones could be born when Fargo got pissed.

Dream Machine's doing Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, ain't nothing playing about Fort Wayne.

Because we're going to

Indianapolis at the Tyndall Armory on Thanksgiving night and in Fort Wayne at the big building, the Memorial Coliseum,

the Friday night.

And the reason why I'm on the card, I'm with Jesse Barr.

I've just got Jesse Barr at that time, remember?

And I think we worked with Terry Taylor, and the New York Dolls had Spike Huber and Steve Regal and they're home for Thanksgiving.

And the main event was Kamala was just finishing up in the territory.

He had worked all year and had the big angle with Lawler and beaten everybody and been the Southern champion, but he's kind of on the way out.

And the main event was Kamala versus Dick the Bruiser.

And Brian, think about Bruiser's mobility in 1982.

and the fact that he never sold for anybody and never started.

And imagine what that match was like.

But that was, yeah, and then, you know, a couple other matches with the Memphis guys because in the real territory,

everybody was in Nashville that night.

Because then they could either just leave their house at 5:30 and go to the show and be home at 10 o'clock, or,

you know, Lawler was probably off.

Or elsewhere, he and Jimmy Hart could drive back to Memphis in three hours, whatever.

But the buttermilk run,

as dream machine would say we're up there

and i caught the worst cold it was so incredibly sick

and it was colder than a witch's tit

fucking brutally cold weather

and i would say i i mean this was before i had the status to ask about a house and i wasn't real good at eyeballing crowds on a financial basis at that point.

But if they had

more than 500 to 700 people in a Tyndall Armory on Thanksgiving night in Indianapolis, I would be stunned.

And when you think about it, here's a whole new group of talent that they've never seen before on this brand new TV show.

And plus, Dick the Bruiser, Spike, and Steve.

But, you know, and then Fort Wayne,

the Coliseum up there, remember, Brian, did I tell you this might have been before you joined the program,

but like almost 10 years ago, I did an appearance at a minor league basketball event where the minor league team in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they'd had a U of L player was on the team.

I was hoping to get to see him in

action and everything, and he got called up like two weeks beforehand.

But it was in the old Coliseum in Fort Wayne where they had the matches for years and years.

And this was in 200,

let's say, 15.

The record number in the biggest arena in Fort Wayne, Indiana, of people that they ever had in the building was for Dick the Bruiser and Baron von Raschke in 1971.

Still to that day.

So that's how hot Bruiser had been at one time.

And in 1974 at Indianapolis, like I said, 16,600 in Market Square Arena for Bruiser and the main event against the Chic.

Eight years later,

Bruiser is main eventing the Tyndall Armory in front of 500 fucking people in the same town.

And the next day we go to Fort Wayne,

there couldn't have been 500 hardy souls.

And that was the first time that I

learned

the definition of a piss hole in a snowbank.

And I don't think there were any other shows.

We may have done promos for some.

They may have happened.

I wasn't on them, or they may not have even happened and I wasn't booked on them to begin with.

But that was about the end of that.

And Bruiser is pretty much the WWA moved over to, as we talked a little bit about recently, moved over to Ohio.

And in the mid-80s, Jerry Graham Jr.

was involved, and Bruiser was mostly retired.

And

that's why that

the same thing as Detroit.

Detroit became,

went from being one of the market centers of wrestling in the United States for years to a dormant city in 1980 with no major arena having live wrestling.

And Indianapolis, another major market.

By 1982,

there was no regular local wrestling in any major arena.

And that's why Indianapolis took to the WWF expansion so much more quickly than even Louisville's 100 miles from Indianapolis.

But it took

they had no local promotion and they'd been dark for any kind of mainstream activity for two or three years.

And then all of a sudden they get named stars again.

Do you think that's what you needed to kind of get past Bruiser?

Because the company never got past Bruiser's earlier star power, and it never grew past that.

It was the next line.

Like Hulk Hogan was a star.

The stars of the WWF at that time, the national stars, were presented like that.

Yeah.

Well, and also you're going for

it for a few years, they didn't have anything, much less stars.

I mean, you know, even if the TV show.

If they were producing a local television show, if it was on the air in Indianapolis, that's somebody ought to research 82 through 85.

Was there any local TV on in Indianapolis?

Could anybody see it?

Was it cable access?

Was David McClain doing those stand-up interviews for Toledo?

It was such, I'm just saying, it was such a small presence that when all of a sudden Vince puts his TV on

and here's

they knew some of these names, a lot of those guys had worked for Bruiser in Indianapolis.

But here are those big arenas again and people in the stands again.

And they're coming to town live again.

Holy shit, we've missed this.

Boom.

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Has anyone ever actually figured out what statistics with the actual numbers, whatever we know of the

forget about the gates, really just the attendance in a lot of these cases.

You could try to figure out the gate from there.

Of how much damage it did when Bobby Heenan left?

If it did any at all?

Well, yeah, it did do, but see, things.

Did it take time for it to really sit in or did it happen right away?

Well, it took time because see, in those days, the way that

the way that the business was and the way that Bruiser booked and presented his shows, it was a while before you knew Bobby was gone.

Because, you know, if you had a show every three weeks and the TVs, a lot of times, you'd get two weeks of new shows and then a rerun.

But the rerun would have the main event featuring some guy that's going to challenge Bruiser at the next Expo Center show live looking good.

But people were used to reruns with new interviews in the show.

People were used to,

I mean, even if

Black Jack Mulligan was going to be back, they would show a three or four year old fucking tape with him on it.

So it took a while to, but

slowly through attrition, when the war ended, Bobby left and people didn't know he wasn't coming back, but they knew he wasn't around.

And who's this handsome Johnny Starr guy?

He's not as good as Bobby.

And then the rest of the talent aid, you know, 75 wasn't just a disaster,

but it wasn't as good as 74 and 76 wasn't as good as 75.

And really the last time,

this will show you, though, how over Bruiser was in just the idea of going to wrestling and watching television.

Because there still wasn't any other product in Indianapolis.

When Brewser made

Guy Mitchell, stomper Guy Mitchell for The Chic in Detroit, and Guy Mitchell was one of the assassins for Brewser in the mid-60s, and

Guy Mitchell and Roger Kirby were a tag team,

made Guy Mitchell the mask strangler.

And he had a red, white, and blue mask on.

And they brought him in, and this is either 78 and 79 or 79 and 80.

One of those, I think, 78, 79.

But they gave him a big push.

They put the belt on him.

He beat Pepper Gomez, for fuck's sake.

He beat Wilbur Snyder.

He beat everybody, every babyface that was not using a walker that had ever been over in Indianapolis and beat the bruiser

and had a long push.

And that got over to the point

where when they did the blow-off match and it was all kinds of stipulations.

The strangler, if he loses, he's got to unmask.

He's going to lose the WWA world title.

He's got to leave town for a year.

If Bruiser loses, he's got to leave town or retire or do something drastic.

The people, oh my God.

Basically, it was a guarantee we're finally going to see who this motherfucker is.

We're going to take this guy's mask off, and he's going to be gone.

And that's the last time Indianapolis drew 10,000 people.

And,

you know, that was like, if that was 79, if I'm right on that,

then it was another five or six years before Vince even showed up with a major event.

But, but they still that late because they got interest in that.

There were enough people watching TV, and Bruiser's name was strong enough because I was watching the TV.

These matches were fucking rotten, rotten, just horrible.

But they got behind.

We want to see who this one fucking guy is.

We want to see Bruiser unmask him and beat him.

But otherwise, it was dreariness.

Like a lot of the people that you look back fondly on now

at the time, were people groaning, like, oh, here's Moose Cholak again.

Yes.

Because

that's the thing.

Moose Cholak in,

you know, in 1963

in Chicago and a gimmick and the golden moose chola, whatever the fuck.

He was an amateur wrestler.

There was something to be had there.

But in 1978,

he was a guy, you know, living in Chicago.

Fucking,

I heard at one point he had a job driving a bus.

He may have owned a tavern.

He did commercials with Bob Luce for Al's number one Chicago Italian beef.

Nim, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.

But, I mean, it was Pepper Gomez had been the hottest baby face in the country in 1962, working with Ray Stevens.

But he was challenging for the world title in 1977.

He'd been in the business 25 years.

That type of thing.

It just, everybody was so old, and they'd been there so long.

or they'd seen them so long.

They'd come and go and come again.

And here's one more thing, and that's why I was thinking about this, and then we may have answered Dave's question.

But Bruiser was partners in Chicago with Vern.

And who else had a piece of Chicago?

Help me out.

Now, I've gone blank.

Wilbur Snyder, right?

Well, Wilbur and Bruiser and Vern and somebody, and Muchnik had had a piece, or somebody from the Central State's office.

Somebody else was involved.

Nevertheless,

Chicago was about to enter into a boom period because Vern was still

cooking in Minneapolis and the Twin Cities, and Hokamania was about to even start.

1983 would be a banner year, record year for the AWA.

But Vern didn't expand into Indiana and take Indianapolis, which had a potential to be a market where you could sell 10, 15,000 tickets, even though they'd been working together in Chicago for

15 or 20 years.

And

Barnett, who

went, and this was early because we've talked about the reason why that Barnett took the Georgia crew into Ohio and the auxiliary parts of West Virginia, in part was because Ohio and specifically Columbus, Ohio, was one of the first places to be wired for cable to enough extent that it made a difference where

They were seeing Georgia wrestling in a new area and Barnett was salivating to get his old territory back.

Well, Indiana, Indianapolis was his old territory.

But even he didn't try to get

the Georgia tape in there.

Well, maybe he couldn't.

I don't know.

But nobody tried to really take it until,

you know, Vince was just

did his expansion, and then Crockett,

and I think 86, 87, this happened a few times,

but they got paid 50 grand for paid shows at the Indianapolis State Fair, and we went and worked the old Fairgrounds Coliseum.

I think one of them was for Crockett, and then one of them later on was for WCW.

But

it was a major wrestling market that was dark to local live events.

One of the first cities to go dark of the entire territory wrestling wars and eventual demise.

Why would nobody else come and, if not help Bruiser out, take it the fuck away from him?

Well, it's hard to start up, I would imagine, especially if things are really dead.

Yeah, but look at Vern had said, well, goddamn, they got no wrestling in Salt Lake City.

I live in Minneapolis.

Let's just go open that son of a bitch up.

But now he's doing record business in Chicago and Minneapolis, and he doesn't want to get

into Indianapolis.

The more I think about it, it's odd that

Bruiser would be like to Jerry Jarrett would be the only one.

And the Memphis talent was all young guys, and nobody had ever been to fucking Indianapolis and been over.

It was complete, it could have taken, you know, Memphis was about to be on a boom period.

Maybe it might have gotten over, but it might have taken a lot more time than they wanted to spend.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I always get the knockoffs confused.

Was it Gary Lawler?

Wasn't there a fake Lawler in Indianapolis?

No, no, that was

much later on.

You know who I'm talking about?

I'm not talking about Steve Lawler.

I'm talking about a different.

No, there was a gorgeous Gary Lawler, and he had a goatee and parted his hair on the side and had one single.

He wore the trunks, the same outfit that Lawler wore.

But that was on such a low.

This was after everything else had already gone to hell and gone out of business.

And I think it's primarily the southern part of the state because Indianapolis TV, Lawler wouldn't mean anything, but Evansville TV,

which is on the Indiana-Kentucky border, that's where he came from.

But he was not,

the jig was already up as far as wrestling being seen on a major local TV show on a widespread audience by the time that he came around.

He wouldn't have had anything to do with Indianapolis in 1982.

But no, it just, nobody tried to take it.

And again,

you know, yes, Bruiser and Jarrett had been working together, but one would have thought that since Vern had

a laundry, unless there was heat between Bruiser and Vern, if Vern had a laundry list of guys that had drawn major money in Indianapolis working in his territory at that time, Bruiser says, Yeah, Jared, can you send me a TV?

And then Jerry Jarrett always said the reason why that it didn't last and he pulled out of the thing was because it's an oversimplification, but there's something to it.

It was the same thing as the Von Ericks

in you want me to run this thing that you've run into the ground, but now you put yourself on the cards back in the main event.

Because that night, he on Thanksgiving night, he beat Kamala, six foot six, 325 pounds, the Ugandan giant, but he went down to defeat at the hands of Dick the Bruiser, who was closing in on 60 that year.

And because

the budget for the show was so small, they didn't send a Friday

or anybody to handle Kamala's stuff.

They told me

I'd manage Jesse Barr, like I said.

And then Dream said, come out with us and try to help get us some heat with the

Regal and Huber because there's fucking nobody there.

And then they sent me out to take Kamala's ceremonial

headgear and all of his apparatus.

And I'm thinking, my God, eight years ago, I was watching Bruiser in front of 10,000 people in the Expo Center beat the shit out of Bobby Heenan.

And now

I'm in the ring taking the goddamn heels equipment in front of 500 people working with Dick the Bruiser.

It was, it was,

it was surreal, as the kids say.

But that's

Jared Puldez, you know,

he he didn't want to get off the top if wrestling was going to be run in Indianapolis, even on that low of a level.

You can't tell me that most of those people wouldn't have come anyway at that point, right?

But that's Bruiser.

Did it hurt Bruiser when he got a perm?

Boy, it sure didn't help.

Imagine he wanted to look younger.

More hip and with it.

He got a curly perm in 1981.

What would he have been?

He would have been because he started playing for the Packers in 53, so that means he'd graduated college.

So I think he was born in 29.

When he was 53 years old, he's got a fucking perm

and Dick the Bruiser with a perm to begin with.

It looked like Spike Huber could carry it off.

Bruiser didn't.

And I think that's when people just started realizing.

And

the no-selling thing also always worked for him when he was young and looked like Brock Lesnar.

And you could believe, oh, this guy will fucking kill you and eat your bones.

But when he was so old and he just really, you could kind of tell he couldn't move to begin with and he wasn't selling, then it just looked fake.

And it kind of killed the aura.

And then

in Chicago with Hawkin' Animals, slammed him and Crusher.

I've told that story, haven't I, or have I?

It's been a while, but yeah.

Well, but nevertheless,

in the ultimate clash of generations, Chicago was doing so well in the mid-80s.

It was fucking huge houses, and they had the classic tag team match, the Road Warriors, in like their second year in the business.

as the

most dominant tag team in wrestling at that point against Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher,

who for 20 years had been the epitome of kick-ass tag team and wrestling.

But now both those guys are

almost

crusher may have been 60.

Bruiser was close to it.

And the Road Wars didn't know shit from apple butter about who these guys had been or were supposed to be or what they did or didn't do.

And they got into a big four-way

and fuck it, they both went and scooped him up and slammed him.

And I talked to Animal, he's like,

whichever one said this, because Hawk had one and Animal had the other.

But what, either Bruiser or Crusher said, What the fuck are you doing?

And the guy said, Anything we want to do.

And Crusher was just God.

It must have been Bruiser.

What the fuck are you doing?

Because then Crusher was just, what the fuck is going on here?

He was amazed.

He couldn't speak.

And it was a complete clash of styles.

But,

but yeah, that's, you know,

that's what happened to the territory.

And that got me started thinking that that was a big, major market, that a lot of territories on all sides of it were doing

record business in 1981, 82, 83, Memphis, Chicago, Vern,

Barnett, and the Georgia tours in Ohio and West Virginia, Michigan,

and Indianapolis sat there like a turd in a punch bowl.

Thank you, Dave Dynasty, for your question.

Boy, I tell you, you know,

Brian, it's just, it's obvious, but it's more true now that we've.

It's very obvious.

Well, it's more true than ever before now that we've illustrated it with that little story there, that little moral to the story that everything dies sooner or later.

Everything and everybody.

I mean, you can be in the pip, in the chips,

you can be full of vim and vigor and piss and vinegar one day, and the next day, poof, you're gone.

It's all, it's a roll of the dice.

It's kismet, it's what it is.

It's karma.

It's kismet.

It's all a variety of ancient medical mysteries and Chinese secrets.

That's what it is.

But you know, you got to be prepared.

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That means somebody's keeping track of this fucking guy.

He's got a license.

There's a record on him.

He can be looked up, so you can trust him with any personal information he may ask.

I know that when my guy came over before I found SelectQuote, he was here for four or five hours getting information on me, asked me a variety of questions about German videos.

But anyway, a licensed insurance agent will call you right away with the right policy for your life and your budget.

And

obviously, the goal is for the end of your life because that's what's going to happen eventually.

And you need to get ready.

Select quote: They shop and you save.

That is your responsibility.

All you need to do in this relationship is save money.

They'll do all the shopping.

So, right now

and in the immediate future, you can get the right life insurance for you for less at selectquote.com slash JCE.

Selectquote.com slash JCE right now, this very moment, in a panic,

you get started right away, selectquote.com/slash JCE.

You never know, somebody, you know what, Brian, we've got such a big audience.

What are the chances that if somebody is listening to this program right now, they're going to have some kind of stroke, aneurysm, or projectile diarrhea, and just expire before they get to the end of it?

I don't know if we can quantify that.

I don't think we should either, but we could tell people to be prepared with SelectQuote one more time.

What's that promo code, Jim?

A slash JCE is the promo code at selectquote.com, but it's almost almost English.

Yeah.

So yes, selectquote.com slash JCE.

Has anybody ever just up and died while they were listening to our show before?

It has to have happened.

All the thousands of hours and the millions of listens.

Why were we not apprised of this?

Why hadn't somebody written us and said, you know what?

he was listening to your show he knew something was wrong and he wanted to get his head right

on his way out

nobody ever has said that well there's no insurance for dying on the air but select quote

well now it depends on if you're you're not dying on the air we we've died on the air many times i can chapter and verse you on those but people who have died while listening to us and wouldn't wouldn't it even blow your mind even more if they died while they were listening to us dying on the air?

How do we get out of this select quote?

Oh, you got to be kidding me.

All right, we are in the future.

What the hell?

Well, there's no con.

What?

What's your favorite?

That was even more sub-par time travel than the other sub-par time travel.

You know, this certain noise here.

I don't know.

There's not a lot to do with it.

Yeah, there's...

Your noises.

This is how the show will sound in the future.

Yeah, I'm not sure the show will have too big of a sound in the future if we keep doing that stuff.

We had to take a break because your people

got so loud and blowing the leaves about, and you had to do a microphone change anyway.

And then

we have reconvened to finish this program just as your people are gone, although there is noises in the air up there, as there usually is with you.

But now my people are here.

My leaf people got here,

and you may hear them.

They're in the back acre of the the property, but you'll probably hear everything.

But what method does your leaf removal crew use, Brian?

What meth do they use?

What method?

The blue one?

I don't know.

I don't even understand what that means.

What method?

What method of leaf removal do they use?

Oh, they pick up all the leaves and get rid of them.

What do your guys do?

Well, some fire.

Some people mulch the leaves, some people rake the leaves, some people blow the leaves, some people gather the leaves.

But out here, because where I've got all the trees so close together, the big trees, if you mulch the leaves, then it kills all the grass underneath because it's just a giant compost pile.

So we use the blow-it, bucket, and truck it method.

They blow all the leaves into piles.

They take big plastic garbage can buckets and put the leaves in that and take the buckets and dump it in the back of a big dump truck and take them off to the dump.

To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump.

I think that's probably the method most of us use.

And I think, and I think with certain neighbors, there's a split between them taking it away or then just bringing it into the woods and throwing it into the woods.

Oh, so they're just unauthorized dumping up there in your neighborhood.

I thought you lived in a better, around a better class of people.

Well, you know, you go a few acres down, you get rid of of it what do you want

well you you just you're see you're you're you're changing the not me the balance you're changing the balance of nature is what you're doing when you're taking a bunch of leaves from one place and putting them to another place you're taking the balance of nature the balance of nature what kind of like like making a creek of you know just because you want to No, what, what kind of, no, I didn't make a creek.

There was a spring there and a creek there.

I just decorated it.

What kind of, what kind of inhabitants of those leaves, the bugs and the pests, and/or the just the wild little woodland creatures are you taking and you're putting them in a new environment?

You may be overloading the whole place.

You could be taking pests into the forest, and all the trees will fall down on top of your house.

Got to be careful about these things.

This has been Happy Talk Part Two.

Take everything to an authorized leaf dump.

What the fuck is that?

Where is that?

That's where you take take the leaves to the leaf dump.

That's what the gardener does.

What do you mean?

Well, that's where they're taking them then.

If you just take them down the goddamn hill and just dump them in the forest, that's not an authorized leaf dump.

I guess there's no secondhand market.

There's no one I just

know, but if you take some trees out, you could sell the mulch.

You hear the wind?

Can you hear the wind over here?

No, I can't hear the wind blow.

And they call the wind Mariah.

All right.

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All right.

Well,

so this is, oh, it ain't your program, is it?

It's my show.

Yes, but you have, before we get to this SmackDown as our grand finale, you have a couple of things that are making the news

as we're sitting here speaking that we needed to discuss or talk about or...

acknowledge or whatever.

Is that correct?

Well, in the last day, because it started while we were recording yesterday,

we've just received a bunch of emails about three specific things, emails and tweets, about three specific things.

So I thought we should probably address them here.

Why wait until the drive-through?

Which is...

There's an outcry from the people, and we need to go ahead and get this done to get these people off our back.

That's right.

We want to get these people off our back.

So

go ahead and start unloading them.

What's first?

Well,

I don't know how much you saw of this, Jim.

Hopefully none.

But we were tagged in a bunch of stuff on Twitter, and then...

I don't look at it anymore.

Well, the Meltzer said what Twitter account tweeted out a couple of clips, and they're very interesting, and a lot of people find them quite humorous.

It is Brian Alvarez with Vinny, his friend and longtime co-host.

Not the one we're thinking of.

Which one are you thinking of?

Well, either McMahon or Shitstain.

Well, no, I said Vinny, not Vince's.

Well, they used to call

Vince McMahon Vinny back in the old days.

That's right.

And I don't trust anybody with named Vin.

So Vin Diesel's out of my fucking Christmas card list.

Vin,

Vincent, Vince, any kind of Vinny, any kind of variation of that.

All right.

Well, the Bride and Vinny show had a review of something from AEW that...

I'm going to guess is of a program we're unaware of.

And then after we hear some of that, we'll talk about that.

Also, Meltzer said, What tweeted out with this same clip here: audio of Brian Alvarez with Dave Meltzer talking about the exact same thing,

which is to something we talked about in part one of the show,

it's revealing about Dave's relationship with Tony Khan.

So, he comes out and talks about their relationship.

Who gave who the ring?

Well, that's not what they talk about here, but let's get to

this audio.

So, first, it's Vinny and Brian.

And Alvarez

has been somewhat verklimped in the past at Uncle Dave because he's having a harder and harder time trying to figure some of his stuff out.

And Dave just acts, well, you just don't get it.

Alvarez is in the unique position now of applying logic and thought,

not just emotion, to everything with AEW.

The big issue is still that he has friends there.

He has people that he knows and sources.

So,

you know, you have to balance what you see versus what people are fucking feeding you.

But let's go to this from the Brian and Vinny show, November 10th.

We'll stop this along the way and talk about what they're talking about.

Match wears on.

And every now and then, Beast is like, ah!

He puts his head in it.

He's just conflicted.

And I'm just like, fuck me, dude.

I hate the storyline.

Because

what the fuck do we know about this story?

As TV viewers, okay?

Not people going on social media, not people on Twitter.

What the fuck do we know as viewers about this storyline, okay?

We know that Roddy wants to recruit the beast, okay?

We do know that.

We've seen it.

Roddy keeps wanting to recruit the beast.

We know that he calls him Frank.

Thankfully he stopped doing that.

But as television viewers, we have no earthly idea why they keep calling the beast Mortos Frank.

Wait a minute.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Let me stop it here because we've not seen any of this on Dynamite at all.

Well, obviously it's Rampage or Collision or something, but the point is, they're calling Old Rigger Mortis Frank.

Wouldn't that be like if you called Abdullah the Butcher Larry?

Now, it said, Brian, Brian Alvarez said.

It said...

Brian Alvarez said that they're trying to recruit him, which I guess would mean into the Undisputed Kingdom.

But isn't he a member of the people that Jake

just got from, but but they were never with Callus, but then Callus signed them so he could sell them to Jake?

That's right.

With LFI.

Why are they together?

LFI know.

LFI know.

But let's go back to this audio here.

I know.

Okay.

I know that the Beast Mortos joined LFI.

But Dave tells me,

apparently getting this from Tony Khan,

that Beast is actually, he's not a full-fledged member, he's like a, he's some fucking.

I'm like, the fuck are you talking about?

Get this.

This doesn't count if Tony told you off air.

Like, we don't know.

He's in LFI, dude.

He's not a junior member.

He's not on fucking probation.

He's a fucking member of LFI.

So apparently he's conflicted.

So wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute again.

Wait, is so now

Dave is defending the Angles because Tony has explained it to him on the phone at some point, even though nobody said this on the actual television program where people would know.

Well, that's the other interesting thing.

If Dave Meltzer and Tony Kahn were talking, you think they'd be talking about what's going on with Moxley, MJF, Darby, the Bucks, Omega, anything with them.

Not...

Oh, let's talk about the Roddy Strong Beast Mortos thing.

They've gone deep enough in their conversations that it has gotten around to Roderick Strong and Rigger Mortis.

Well, let's go back to this riggering conversation.

Want to be an LFI?

I mean, he did the fist.

Does he want to be with Roddy?

Why would he want to be with

none of this?

None of this makes any sense whatsoever.

And the guy speaks no English, so like, how do they

beast?

It's just stupid.

He's big.

And like, Roddy's supposed to be a babyface, but he's being a dick to the beast.

But then, like, he wants.

I'm God, I hate this storyline.

So, here's the story.

Am I missing anything?

The story of this specific match, Edward.

I got one more thing.

So, because this is going back to the match, forget everything I just talked about.

Just what we saw on television.

So, Beast is conflicted throughout the match.

Ah,

okay.

Well, he's conflicted again at the end, and he gets hit with with a jumping knee and pin.

Well, that's the

first clip, and apparently this is some of the action we're missing on either collision or rampage.

I'm not certain.

Boy, it sounds so scintillating, but also now they've got

Alvarez about ready to jump off the fucking cliff.

They've about

run him crazy.

Trying to understand this shit.

By the way, I want to see that match where every time Roddy tries to do anything, the beast doesn't lock up.

He just goes,

all right well and by the way he did make a good point and hold on and then we'll get to the the rest of it but he did make a good point that

well taven and bennett never even speak and you never see them on the main television show except when they're standing around with the group and

so we don't know but roddy is the most dickish alleged now baby face that uh

along with adam cole who formerly the devil that all four of them want to get on mjf and just beat the piss out of him four-on-one.

What babyfaces they are.

Well, let's now go to another babyface, Dave Meltzer.

Speaking with Brian Alvarez on Wrestling Observer Radio the next day.

Now, Alvarez got a little

adamant about his displeasure with this thing.

Is he going to go full bore on with Dave Meltzer and tell him how he feels about this?

And again, it sounds like this had come up before somehow.

So here is Wrestling Observer Radio from the 11th of November.

So, so, so, we have another team that is teasing

a breakup, correct?

Yeah, yeah, correct.

We rush into Rush and Mordos teasing a breakup like later in the show.

Well, yes,

okay, now listen.

Hold on one second.

Yeah,

he was ready to, because as soon as he brought up Mordos, he's like, oh, I'm ready to jump on this shit.

I got infuriated the last time you tried to explain this to me.

Roderick Strong and the beast Mortos.

Mortos is, he's just stricken.

He's so sad.

He can't decide what he wants to do.

Roderick Strong says, Beast, we needed you.

Where were you when we needed you?

And this beast is conflicted.

I'm like, why is this beast conflicted?

He's with LFI.

Why would we care?

Like, why does he want to be with Roderick Strong?

We don't know.

It's never been explained.

They never even explained why he's called Frank.

They just call him Frank.

I'm just watching this thing.

And because the story is.

Well, well, everyone has a first name.

They just don't use it in wrestling.

Because this story is.

You know, he's a lawyer, too.

God help me.

You know, he's a lawyer, too.

I don't know he's a lawyer because they never told us that on television.

I'm watching this angle where they presume that I know that he's like...

What did you tell me that Tony said?

He's like, he's not officially an LFI.

He's a like a what?

He's still being recruited by Roderick Strong and the Undisputed Kingdom.

And he was.

He's in LFI.

They're telling him to forget about this guy.

So anyway, the beast is so like strange.

Let me stop it.

He's so fired up here.

Let me stop it for a moment.

He's going to hurt himself trying to.

What about Dave?

Well, his name is Frank.

What the fuck?

Everyone has a first name.

Go tell it to the crusher.

I mean, sometimes people don't have a first name.

Yeah, yeah.

Did anybody call the crusher Reggie?

Hey, Reggie over here.

The fuck.

And he's a lawyer.

There's another twist in a beast mortem that he's not picked up on on Dynamite that apparently he's not just a beast, he's also a beast attorney.

Mayha, do you think he's a

small-town Buffalo attorney?

Well, let's go back to this, the remaining seconds of this scintillating conversation.

They could have had a whole match is Beast going, oh, he can't decide what he wants to do.

I'm like, I know what I want you to do.

Beat this guy's ass, and then he'll make a big comeback.

He was beating his ass.

I mean, he was just going pretty hard on him, you know, which, to me, made no sense.

It's like, you know, like

you want to be in his group.

Why are you beating his ass so bad?

Yeah,

you want to be on our team, and then you have a, well, if you don't, you know, let's, let's have a match.

Like, wait, if you're recruiting him, why do you want to have a match with him?

I didn't like this match.

Too much, too much rigmarole.

I don't like the match.

I'm supposed to be in the middle of something with raw dress.

Well, that's the end of that there.

Yeah, what a way to get.

Hey, I'm going to kick the shit out of you until you agree to join our group.

What?

How does this come up in conversation between Dave and Tony?

You know, could it have been about three o'clock in the morning and they're still anxious to talk more wrestling?

And Dave said, you know, I was trying to explain to Brian Alvarez about this important angle you're doing with Rigger Mortis and Roddy Strong.

And Tony took about 45 minutes to fill him in.

Yeah, maybe that's it.

Or Dave's maybe contributing ideas to this wonderful program.

Who knows?

Well, he seems to understand it better than

not only the general population and all the viewers, but the reporters that are trying to cover it.

So he must have some input in that.

Maybe that's maybe Dave's book and Rampage.

You know, it's important to know, Rampage and Collision have seen their numbers crater.

We've heard multiple times in the last few months.

I mean, you tell me if I'm wrong, the lowest number in the show's history.

Yeah, I mean, we don't even, because, I mean, why?

We could, you know, cover Ragtown Championship Wrestling in Bay Point, Mississippi, but, you know, we have to stick to the main things that at least most of the people see.

But they're down in the 100 and something thousands in prime time on

poor old TBS or TNT, whichever one these fucking things are on.

Should MJF reach out to the beast Mortos?

Since he wants to be able to do that.

Well, it seems like everybody else is.

He's the most popular son of a bitch around.

Everybody wants him.

Where's Jake?

He got sold a bill of goods, didn't he?

What the hell was that?

What was that?

He got three wrestlers.

He's never been with ever again.

Well, but here's the thing.

We hadn't seen him in, what, two years on television.

He shows up as the manager of record of Lance Archer to

trade him to Don Callis in exchange for these three Mexican fellows that Don Callis never had anything to do with, right?

And then

we've seen the Mexican fellows, but we've never seen Jake again.

Well, we will stay up to date on this story and follow up with any appropriate measures or

call some kind of state home for these people.

I think that's the appropriate follow-up.

There's child protective services.

Is there a podcaster protective services that we could call for the way poor Brian Alvarez is being treated over there?

We said it a while back.

He was going to come to the dark side.

He was going to start saying the truth and realizing it, and he has.

A lot of that language sounds familiar.

Well, Jim, another story that a lot of the listeners have been sending over because it was in in the New York Post and the quotes have gone around.

I have the headline here.

Yeah, I don't want to read it on my computer and get froze up again for a half an hour.

Well, here's an article by Joseph Stasuski.

It's something along those lines.

I apologize, Joseph, if I've gotten that wrong.

The headline, and it is an exclusive.

Jon Moxley unplugged on the hard reset in AEW,

quote, most ambitious things I've ever attempted.

Oh, good lord.

And by the way, when you said Jon Moxley unplugged, I thought at first I didn't even know he was hooked up to a machine.

Jon Moxley calls it day zero.

That's the day he walked back into all-elite wrestling for dynamite on August 28th in Champaign, Illinois.

after a two-month hiatus to rehab a hip injury he has been wrestling with that made it difficult to walk.

For him, it's the day that began with what he called a hard reset and a complete restart of the five-year-old company.

Oh, good lord.

His new AEW is two months old.

His new AEW.

Everything that has happened up to this point doesn't matter.

This is day zero.

We begin from here.

And it might not look much different right now, but it will.

And things are accomplished by small incremental steps, doing little things consistently.

And that is how big changes are made over periods of time.

You know, he must read a lot.

You got to give him that.

He's got to read a lot of books.

Every single week, if you listen to what Moxley says just on TV, you can figure out what movie or what song he's listening to, what movie he's watching or song he's listening to.

Every single week.

But now,

I want to make a point here, and then we'll go into this because I'm anxious to hear about it because this is going to at least explain a few things.

But the stunning, baffling amount of shit that he's full of,

that he thinks that he is an attraction, a talent, a main event superstar that can carry the ragtag band of misfits he's got with him and the entire company on his

wide shoulders and carry them to the promised land by resetting every

the reset is as stinky as the nonsensical booking that has led up to it

but at least

another takeover angle in the year where they did a takeover angle yeah they've been they've been taking over more times than a goddamn you know banana republic in south america but here's what it at least this is an interview with the new york post it's going to delve deep into this whole plot or plan or brilliant idea, concept that he's come up with.

Finally, we're going to understand what he's talking about.

He's got the opportunity to explain exactly what's going on.

What is all this weird shit meant?

So we're going to now get some details, right?

And find out what's get to the bottom of this whole thing.

Right?

I mean, you can think so.

You can think so.

Well, Jim, going back to the article here, Moxley, 38, became AEW World Champion for a fourth time by ending Brian Danielson's full-time wrestling career and taking the title off him at WrestleDream October 12th.

Moxley called doing so to his friend and former Blackpool Combat Club stable mate the most beautiful funeral I've ever seen with my own two eyes

and that he didn't get too emotionally attached to it

or that he didn't get emotionally he didn't get too emotionally attached to.

Okay, that's a weird way to end that.

All right.

Isn't that dangling your participle?

During the lead up to the match, Moxley in storyline tried to suffocate Danielson by putting a plastic bag over his head.

I'm glad he mentioned it was in storyline.

And Yuda did the same during the post-match attack of the American Dragon at WrestleDream, which drew some fan criticism.

The whole presentation has been jarringly different and grittier than what fans might be used to in AEW.

But Moxley felt it needed to be that way.

There's just a lot of noise in the world, and sometimes you really got to do something drastic to really get everyone to stop doing.

I'm like in and out of the voice for now.

You really got to do something drastic to really get everybody to stop doing what they're doing and look in the direction to make a point.

And I'm absolutely not afraid to do that.

Behind the scenes for Moxley, the restart and his storyline are a chance to bring up as much of the other talent around him to build something even more sustainable for the company moving forward.

Is there a proofreader over there?

He wants AEW to be a place, quote, not just about putting on great wrestling shows,

but that makes great people.

wrestling gave me an opportunity to kind of become a functioning human and give me the path to walk in the world

well well jim that's uh that's some quotes there from moxley but we have we have audio too

that the new york post was kind enough to film and uh put up here uh but again he's just it's like he's the

male version of Mercedes Moon.

He thinks he's a big star.

He's drawing no money.

He's not adding to the ratings.

His matches are embarrassingly bad.

He

comes off like a fucking lunatic.

And all this meaningless drivel double talk

to make himself sound cool when

he's a fucking wannabe plumber from fucking Cincinnati.

You know, the Mercedes-Monet comparison is not as crazy or goofy as you think, because in terms of access to Tony and the ability to do just what you want, that may be the best comparison of anyone else in that company to Moxley.

Yeah,

there's nobody there telling him what the fuck are you doing.

Concentrate on making your work look a little better instead of fucking acting like you're a goddamn Bruce Lee and the incredible Hulk rolled into one and looking the way you do, you sad sack motherfucker.

Well, maybe we're missing something.

Again, like you said, there have been no tangible results when it comes to ratings or pay-per-view buys or

merchandise or tickets sold or seemingly anything having to do with the usual metrics that people look at to figure out if the business is healthy.

However, maybe his influence with Tony Khan is due to being able to clearly express himself, explain himself.

Maybe he could explain it to us.

In his own words, is what you're saying.

Something like that.

Let's go to this.

It's his interview with the New York Post with, I believe it's the writer of the article, Joe.

Seminar Manhattan.

Big old Joe, good old

Joe, good old Joe, cotton eyed Joe.

Let's go to this.

We'll stop it along the way to talk about what we're revealing.

This is a very different kind of story we're telling here in AEW.

Why did you feel like this was the time that the company kind of needed this shift, or as you probably said, this paradigm shift to happen?

I have a dream, a vision, something I can see

i see a world

where everyone

is successful

where everyone can be successful where

uh

the talents are

fostered and growth is fostered and

sounds like a commie well yeah i was going to say this is kind of like uh the the the

the the communist manifesto, right?

From each according to his need, each according to his wants or whatever the fuck.

Talents are set up for success and set up for growth to be

whatever it is they can be, where their strengths are brought to the forefront and utilized and we mine their value out of them.

You know, my goal is going.

Let me stop it there for a second because,

again, he didn't really say how any of this was going to happen, but he also didn't say anything that isn't the same thought that any booker has had about the talent they have.

How do we make everyone mean?

So how do we get the most out of people?

Well,

yes, but I mean, this is,

yeah, it's lovely.

And how do you solve world hunger, feed everyone?

But what this is not

at a point, how does this make him his top heel invading group taking over the company?

And

why also is he not only sitting there in a dirty, frumpy, wrinkled hockey sweatshirt, but the camera is positioned where you barely see his eyes and he has no top of his head.

And because he's not looking at the camera, his eyes are staring off into space at something on his wall while he's daydreaming all this word salad.

You're looking up his fucking two nostrils.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Well, let's go back to Mr.

Nostrils, John Moxley.

Going forward are, you know, probably

the most ambitious

things I've

ever attempted.

And,

you know, logically on paper, one would say they would probably be impossible.

But

we're going to do it.

Does this make it?

Let me stop it there for a second.

Again, he hasn't said anything.

We're going to do what?

what john what what are you going to do i have a dream of a wonderful place where everyone can have a chance and everyone what the is he talking about but let's go back another question from joe stasuski or something like that maybe a good time for it where the new tv deal starts where we're kind of at a point where you know ratings are kind of staying the same maybe the the ticket sales haven't been as great but it it may be that does that make it a time where hey let's take a look at everything before we

start this new TV there with where things are right now?

It's going to be whatever we make it.

You know, whatever we, you know, stand up and, you know,

take ownership of this opportunity, man.

You know, it can be whatever the we want it to be.

There's no rules.

There's no like any rules we have are, oh, we got to have,

you know, interviews on the set that look like this.

So we got to have this in this time, or we got to put this up or any kind of any kind of rules we have are just things we put on ourselves.

It's pro wrestling, man, and it's always evolving.

And you got to,

you got to stay evolving with it.

You get left behind.

Any rules, and he brings up formatting the TV show.

Any rules like fit your show into two hours?

Any rules?

We don't have to obey any rules.

Any rules like, will the people know who the fuck this guy is?

No, but it doesn't matter.

But also, again, is he going to say something

see all the ideas are in his head the problem is getting them out apparently but let's go back to they they appear to have plenty of room to rattle around he ought to be able to chuck one out his ear always learning and always growing you know the attitude that we're kind of building around the uh the attitude that you're feeling kind of the energy that you're feeling in the uh

you know, in the locker room, backstage, in the

arena, just everything surrounding AEW, you know, it's a different kind of attitude.

And like I said, it's very exciting.

And,

you know, there's be a lot of, you know, stuff that won't be a part of this AEW, you know.

For example, early in the year, I was having a conversation,

or, you know, I was around a conversation.

Early in the year, I heard somebody, you know, a backstage type person.

And, you know, talking about

interviews or pre-tapes or something.

And, you know, it was a situation where

talents were

not put in a position to succeed.

I swear to God, please make sense.

I think he's trying right now.

He heard a conversation about talents.

Well, let's go back to whatever he's saying.

Due to

lack of kind of preparation and framework and direction and things like that.

And

this individual said,

well, it's the bottom of the card.

It doesn't matter.

Wow, it's the bottom of the card.

It doesn't matter.

And

like,

can you imagine saying that?

No.

Like, you're fired.

Yeah.

You're fired.

Go work at Sunglass Hut.

You should be pistol whipped for saying that.

And let me stop it here.

Should a producer be pistol whipped, Jim, for saying that something doesn't matter because it's bottom of the card?

Well, no, I think boiled in oil and have their fat sold for soap would be a suitable punishment.

Of course, no, no producer should ever say it doesn't matter.

If it's on the fucking show, it's supposed to matter.

The problem is you can see

where,

since it apparently looks like from their program, the way it airs that the top of the card doesn't really matter

because they they just change or let everybody do what they want, or the things don't make sense, or whatever the fuck.

So, you can see why there might be

some element of consternation,

but Andor was the bottom of the card

telling him, Well, I ain't gonna do that shit, I want to do this shit,

which the bottom of the card shouldn't be able to do.

It was actually someone in the back saying, Hey, I think this Roddy Strong Beast Mordos thing needs more.

Yeah,

who gives a shit?

It's bottom of the card, bottom of the card, aka AKA Rampage.

We'll tell Meltzer.

He can spread it around.

But

again, you got to consider the source here.

Who is this fucking?

He's talking like he's Eddie Graham.

Think of the rottenness of Moxley matches.

His work is ridiculous if he's not doing

the garbage indie match.

He can't do a match at all.

This whole thing is not making any sense.

So for him to say, well, I'll just take matters in my own hands.

Holy shit, that's gall.

Gall for you, I say.

The gall of you, but go ahead.

I guess the scary thing is we have a little more audio.

The scary thing is the idea that Tony Khan's listening to him and putting so much behind his ideas.

But let's go back to the bit of audio we have left.

Like, for one, for one,

everybody that's on the top of the card was at one one time on the bottom of the card that's how it works you need to you climb the ladder and and how are these you know what are these

you know you see a lot of uh

kind of just uh frustration or confusion because

for from some of these

downloads because there's no ladder they don't know what to do that you know they're just kind of wandering in the desert right

so

uh so we're gonna grab them and hit our our pickup truck.

I'm going to grab them by the shoulder.

I want to walk them.

And that's the end of the audio portion here.

Boy, I'll tell you what, another example of clear frontier gibberish by old Gabby Moxley over there.

You know, if anyone backstage at AEW is complaining about there's no ladder, they're right.

Everyone's exactly where they were five years ago.

And that's not like something where we need a hero to stand up for everyone.

No, you need structure in a fucking company.

You need a booker who can say no and say yes when it's the right time to say yes.

You need all the things that any other wrestling company that's been successful has had.

And you don't, you don't do it on the air.

You do it backstage in the locker room and in the office.

You don't come out and say, well, now I'm doing an angle because the company's a shit.

So I'm going to put this fucking group of goofballs I've got together and we're not going to sell for anybody.

We're going to beat everybody up because the company sucks.

What the fuck is this?

And by the way, since that hard restart, the hard reset, whatever it was, what are the ratings?

What are the ratings?

You brought it up before.

It's not like this has moved anything up.

It's gone the opposite way.

And you see what's happening on their YouTube channel.

People don't care about this.

They cared about Lashley coming in.

So what are we talking about here?

Well, and here again, the hard reset.

If you're a big fan of Moxley, if you like everybody involved in this, if you're intrigued intrigued by whatever this is,

you still have to admit that, yes, they

hospitalized or injured or whatever they did to Brian Danielson.

Yeah, that's been done 50 fucking times since this program's been on the air.

People have been hurt for real.

People have been hurting angles.

You can't really tell the difference.

And

they've done everything you can do to a human being.

They set them on fire with flamethrowers.

They run them over with fucking vehicles.

They've thrown them off fucking cliffs.

They've tied them to the railroad tracks.

Help!

It tied me to the railroad track.

They've done everything.

So,

how does even this

self-absorbed

moron with this inflated sense of his own

propriety in the wrestling business, how does he think he's going to do anything that's going to get heat or make people notice and stop and turn their heads when it has been just a sea of chaos ever since it's been on the air, which is what we've been complaining about.

You know, there's a few more quotes here.

I'm going to read them in my aggregate voice.

I don't have to do the Moxley voice.

You've been ill.

For Moxley, this is not the time to rest on their laurels and believe success is just going to keep coming.

It should be seen as an opportunity for talent to take advantage of the deal.

and pull themselves up.

Here's the quote.

That's all great, but this isn't a time to celebrate.

You didn't just win the Super Bowl.

There's no time to go to fucking Disney World, you know?

I mean, this is an opportunity, right?

That's what not what this is.

That's what it says here.

That's what not what this is.

And what not.

Now we have work to do.

Here's what's possible.

By signing this deal, the TV deal, we made a commitment to do something and to attempt something, to create something, to be successful at something.

You know, this is not a time to celebrate.

Well, they're certainly doing something.

This is not a time to celebrate.

There is no time to do that.

This is a time to get to work.

What are we going to do with this opportunity?

That's what I'm worried about.

There's been a lot of, kind of in the previous AEW in the past, you know, there's been a lot of sitting around celebrating, just treating it like this stuff just happens.

Like, oh, it's just success.

You know,

he's just rambling.

It's hard to even read the transcription because just, you know, happens and this is the way it's supposed to be.

And it's not going to go anywhere.

Like, this could all go away tomorrow.

And then he just rambles on more from there.

So.

It could all go away tomorrow?

Well,

the sun will come out tomorrow.

Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow.

You know, we always

said that the problem was Tony Khan

and also the people who had influence with Tony Khan.

We've talked about Dave's influence earlier today, and then you hear Moxley, and obviously he has a ton of influence on that show.

These are the reasons why AEW can't get out of their own way.

They're caught in the bubble.

It's beyond the wrestling bubble.

It's the fucking markdown bubble.

Do you think when Moxley pitches

this thing or these ideas or whatever to Tony that he talks like that and Tony Tony has no idea what he's talking about and he's like embarrassed to admit that he can't understand him because he thinks Moxley's making sense and it's his fault.

So he just says, yeah, do it.

I think Tony is someone who doesn't like to say no to people, especially if they

know how to slightly intimidate Tony by insisting on their ideas.

If you hear...

Somebody speaking to you like he was just speaking and you know that it doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense.

how can you oh that would be a great thing to do on my television program all right john tell me this idea you have for a hard reset all right it's me claudio wheel or yuda and marina shafir and pack

but anyway well i'm glad that that finally moxley has cleared this whole thing up and we understand what's going on now and what his motivations are and what he's trying to do and who he's mad at and why he's doing this and the whole nine yards and it makes perfect sense it's going to draw a ton of money how can it not?

How can this fail with a man, the star power of

that guy has to think, motherfucker?

I was in a group with Rollins and Roman Reigns, and look at them, and look at the fuck at me.

But I couldn't follow their rules.

Why follow rules?

I make my own rules.

I just need to find a friendly billionaire.

He makes his own rules.

He makes his own rules, and he looks like a guy that makes his own meth.

You know, we always talk about the younger guys there who need to be produced.

It's guys like Moxley, too.

And the problem is they get to a point where they don't think they need to be produced, but they really do.

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

That was the update.

I'll say, just because we've gone a little longer than I thought we were going to, we'll discuss on the drive-through.

There's a bunch of stuff about Dwayne Johnson.

GQ

named him Celebrity of the Year.

And much like the male J-Lo that he is, he participated in the ultimate puff piece of stories in GQ,

which has led to some other things we could talk about.

At least he's not GQ ball.

Well, he's bald.

But he's not.

That will forever be Nikita Koloff.

You remember that, don't you?

It took me the way you said it, the way you phrased it there, I did not pick up on it right away.

Arn Anderson used to just belabor and beleaguer Nikita Koloff verbally on Crockett's plane.

And when Nikita first got the job, right, he'd been weightlifting in Minnesota and bouncing at the bar or whatever.

And

so he starts making three, four, five thousand dollars a week, whatever it was, in 1984.

He never cashed his fucking checks for like the first nine months he lived in Charlotte.

He was, who was he roommates with?

I can't remember.

Cat Collins was around too.

And they said finally they had to call him from the office and tell him, hey, cash your goddamn checks.

You're messing up our bookkeeping.

Because all he did was go to the gym and go to the towns and eat fucking tuna fish or whatever.

And then finally

something happened and maybe Flair may have set him down and said, look, you're going to be here for a while.

You can cash your fucking checks.

And he goes and buys a bunch of suits and fashionable clothes and all this stuff.

And he shows up and now

he's replaced replaced all the sweatsuits he had with these nice clothes, and he looks all tailored and everything.

And Arn Anderson started calling him GQ Ball.

And it was fucking hilarious.

Hey, Jim, one last thing, because I'm seeing a quote here on Twitter.

Dave Melcher on Observer Radio says, Jon Moxley is fully in charge of his new Death Riders gimmick.

There's a quote: Tony is letting him do what he wants.

Tony has to approve everything, but he's pretty much in charge of turning this place around with this gimmick.

Oh, good lord.

So, ladies and gentlemen, here's the guy that he has put in charge.

There's an analogy here between the United States as a country and AEW as a company.

And the people,

the grossly underqualified people have been put in charge to turn it around.

And by the way, here's the lineup for Dynamite tonight.

And this is a little out of date by the time this show comes out.

But the way it's listed here is the story: Dr.

Britt Baker versus Penelope Ford, Lance Archer versus Roderick Strong, Falls Count Anywhere.

Leo Rush versus Swerve Strickland.

We'll hear from Jamie Hayter.

We'll hear from Will Ospreay.

We'll hear from Bobby Lashley.

Jay White and Juice Robinson versus Hangman Adam Page and Christian Cage.

Adam Cole versus Konosuke Takeshta.

Oh, good lord.

FTR versus the House of Black.

And at the very top.

What is this?

A three-hour fucking show?

But go ahead.

At the top.

At the very top, Mox seizes the superstation.

Whatever the fuck that is.

So

they're advertising

that somebody's going to break in her house and steal her company.

Aren't these takeovers like that supposed to be kind of a surprise?

Are the criminals supposed to say, we'll be there about 9.15?

Take everything over or steal everything.

It's like an image of Moxley in front of a chainwink fence with, I don't know if it's the White House or there's just a house behind him.

So, yet.

Wait a minute.

Send me that graphic because

the old TBS.

facility on Techwood used to look like it had columns in the front.

It looked like an old Southern mansion.

They may have put an old picture of TBS in front of, or with Moxley in front of it.

He's going to take it over.

What do you think the goddamn WBD officials are going to?

Is he going to take over all the programs or just dynamite?

They may get pissed if he takes over the whole station 24 hours a day.

Yeah, what does that mean?

Mox seizes TBS until dynamite's over and then we go back to modern family.

No, actually, afterwards now,

at least as last week, was Invincible Fight Girl.

It's a Japanese anime cartoon about a small little girl that wants to be a professional wrestler.

I've been seeing the commercials for that, yeah.

Yes, and the little girl looks like Riho or any of the other little tiny, minute, sprite-like creatures.

So that's the audience they're shooting for now.

Let me tell you something.

If you ever have been worried about AEW, AEW under Jon Moxley's creative vision is going to be an epic disaster, I think.

This is going to be a problem.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Well, you know what?

How desperate is Tony that he's turned it over to Moxley?

Pretty daggum desperate.

But see, here's the thing.

Now, it may not be bad, Brian, because I have it on good authority.

that Moxley is using a booker's aid,

a booker's aid designed to help support his

focus and

his brain clarity and his lack of stress and his calmness.

Get him to get a good night's sleep so he can think clearly.

Moxley is on the stuff from CB Distillery

because they have the highest quality clean ingredients.

None of that stuff from underneath somebody's bathtub.

or medicine cabinet that Moxley's used to hanging out in the poor neighborhoods in Newport.

No, this is clean ingredients.

No fluff and no fillers from CB distillery folks, just pure, effective CBD solutions designed to help support your health.

And Brian,

we've mentioned these statistics.

81% of customers experienced more calm.

80% said CBD helped with pain after physical activity.

An impressive 90% said they slept better with CBD.

17% said they booked better wrestling programs

on CBD distillery products.

And 3% couldn't remember what their children looked like.

Again, these last few ones are not official statistics, but don't worry about it.

Well, they were non-clinical surveys.

Well, again, don't worry about all that, but if you need help, maybe a good night's sleep, maybe you feel the aches and pains of working out, working hard, CBD distillery is there for you.

Working out, working hard, like the Death Riders do.

They work out and work hard and walk into the arena from a far distance.

They need a good dose of CBD to keep the pains and the aches away.

See, they really do need a hard restart, but what it needs to be is the Death Riders all out there and the Rogue Warriors hit the ring and kill them.

Well, either that or they could have just said, you know, if you'd have given us our own dressing room at the start, none of this would have been necessary.

But we've had to walk in for two years and we're sick and tired of it.

But with over 2 million customers and a solid 100% money-back guarantee, folks, CB Distillery is the source to trust.

You can't trust the Death Riders.

You can't trust any of the groups in AEW except for the Hurt Syndicate.

But you can trust CB Distillery and you're going to get 20% off.

Now, Brian, does AEW give you 20% off?

Well, yeah, I guess they do when they discount those tickets and two for one.

Actually, they give you a real, if you wait long enough, you get a great deal for AEW.

You can get it.

Well, actually, sometimes now they're going to start paying over the last 24 hours to get people in the door.

But you can get 20% off on the CB Distillery products by going to cbdistillery.com and using the promo code JCE

for 20% off.

CBdistillery.com, promo code JCE.

Clear out your medicine cabinet.

Reset your health, not your wrestling promotion, but your your health your your bodily functions with cbd from steve see steb steb steb

from steebie

it's cbd from cb distillery yeah yeah is what it is and you're gonna love it yeah

and if you don't love it you're gonna learn to love it because it's the best thing going today

Well, no, the Woo is a trademark of someone else, so we will not be referring to Woo in any way with this, but CB.

Actually, Jimmy Valiant was wooing before Ric Flair was wooing.

Oh, and handsome Jimmy Valiant told me a long time ago that I could woo.

So I'm wooing.

Okay,

I didn't know that was the end of the story.

I thought you were going to say

he could say something about his wooing, not you doing it, but whatever.

CB Distillery.

Woo-wing?

Woo-wings?

Woo-wings?

CB Distillery and Woo-Wings are now teaming up to provide.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

CB Distillery has nothing nothing to do with any Ric Flair product that we know of, but they're there for you one more time.

What's that promo code, Jim?

JCE.

Woo, mercy.

All right.

Mercy indeed.

So what in the world is going on in the Arcadian Vanguard Network Pantheon of programs this fine week?

Oh, Mercy.

Let me tell you something.

Another fine week on the Arcadian Vanguard podcast.

You sound more like Dude Love than handsome Jimmy Vanguard.

Oh, don't insult me like that.

Come on.

Go on Twitter at Super Podcast or on Facebook, facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Of course, the wrestling news, each and every day, it is there for you with all the news.

No conjecture, no opinion, no paywall, just the wrestling news.

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

And of course, I want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, another few episodes talking about Gorilla Monsoon leading up to his book coming out very soon, the Gorilla Monsoon Biography, S-U-A-Wpod.com, or listen to Shut Up and Wrestle, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, The

Mothership!

Go through the archive today, 605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcasts, The Mothership.

That microphone you switched to has an automatic sound limiter because when you screamed that, it brought you all the way down and took you a while to come back up in

my ears here.

So, you're, you're, you're actually, your equipment is now mutinying against you.

The mothership.

Well, all right, it's finally the time that we've all been waiting for where we talk about some

modern wrestling.

Smackdown November the 8th, they were in Buffalo, New York.

Shuffle off to Buffalo, shuffle off to Buffalo.

000 people more than that in buffalo is what they said did was elio depaulo on the card to draw a house like that

i know he was catering that card that night you know i've got some of his marinara sauce in a bottle i got a couple glasses from his restaurant yeah well and you should take them back because they've been looking for you

Anyway, you know, they said when I was there, they said this fucking guy came in.

He stole two of our glasses.

Anyway, do you think they're going for the Emmy consideration again?

What do they call the Emmys they give the soap operas the best daytime drama?

Well, this would be the nighttime, I guess.

Best nighttime dramatic rendering by a Samoan?

Is that an Emmy award category?

It could be.

I mean, I think Heyman's definitely going for the writing, Emmy.

So, again, if you just got these pesky matches out of the way, this is a fantastic, you know, dramatic television program.

They started off with Roman Reigns and Jimmy Uso.

Here they come.

And

it's like they give the fans a cue sheet.

They chant OTC, they cheer in the right places.

As soon as Roman gets, he doesn't even have to speak.

He's about to speak and Jay's music plays.

And he comes down the aisle and

he's not yeeting.

He's being serious, right?

Probably needed some fucking wind this week.

But the people are still waving and yeeting and cheering.

It's like they give them a fucking cue sheet.

Okay, when this happens, chant this.

They have trained these people like Pavlov's poodle.

Even in the attitude era, the crowds...

were going bat shit crazy, but a lot of times they went into business for themselves or they were just just generally cheering at what was going on.

But now

these people can just walk out and look at each other,

and the people are going crazy.

What the fuck have they done here?

Is it in the water?

It's the anticipation.

The anticipation is sometimes better than the payoff.

Anticipation.

Stop it.

I got to stop saying words that there are songs.

Anticipation.

It's making me wait.

It's making me vomit.

It's keeping me

yeeting.

Yeeting?

Yeeting.

The anticipation is keeping me yeeting.

So Jay

asked Roman to hear Sammy out.

That was it.

He spoke about 10 seconds and Sammy's music plays.

And here now, the fans are singing and chanting Sammy Uso.

Sammy Uso, they're singing his song.

And Roman's standing there not looking happy.

And Sammy Uso chants go for a while.

And it is, it's 10 minutes into the fucking show

when Sammy starts talking.

And it's the first time that anybody has uttered more than one sentence.

And then he does the promo.

And again,

this was the mute

that I was tasked with booking, you know, not even 15 years ago.

And now he's goddamn

a monologuist on par with fucking

any of the great orators of history.

And he tells Roman that the

kick to the face was an accident, but I came there to Crown Jewel for Jay, not for you, because Jay was my guy.

He was always with me.

But tonight I came to say that when it was the four of us

side by side at Crown Jewel, it was special.

It was like family.

And there's a thin line between, no, it is there's a thin line between love and hate.

He said, people think the opposite of love is hate, but it's not.

It's indifference.

And

Sammy tells Romans, says, I think you want all of this back.

I think

you love me.

And now, and Roman's trying not to crack up at this.

And

Sammy makes the big pitch they could all get together again.

If Roman wants, then Sammy will leave and he'll never come back.

But if he wants to fight side by side with him, he'll do it.

Sammy just wants an apology.

And the fans start chanting, hug it out, hug it out.

And Roman's like, you want me to apologize to you?

And Sammy says, no, no, not me.

Apologize to Jay.

Oh,

and so Roman walks up to Jay

and he says, I'm sorry.

And there's a big pop.

And then Roman says, I'm sorry that I ever let you waste my time with this.

He's not family.

It's not.

This is not about him.

Basically, fuck this.

I told you it was a waste of time.

I want Solo.

Solo, get out here.

And Sammy walks back kind of dejected, but Solo doesn't come out.

Jacob pops up on the screen and cuts a great promo putting Solo over.

When I was saying

that they needed Jacob Fatu all that time before they got him, they got to have Jacob.

I didn't know he'd be the best promo in the group, too.

But anyway, so he puts solo over on the tape and or on the screen,

and Roman is pissed at this whole thing, and they leave the ring there,

and then they go to the break and all that stuff, and they come back, and Roman and Jay are in the back arguing about Sammy.

And then Roman gets snippy with Jimmy,

and this whole thing's falling apart.

Are these guys ever going to see eye to eye?

What in the world is going to happen

as the bloodline turns.

Now hit the organ, Brian.

Boom.

That's what we've been waiting on.

What'd you think?

Oh, if that's what you've been waiting on, I can give you some more.

We ain't been waiting that much.

What's that?

We ain't been waiting that much.

Oh.

Well, I thought the segment was good.

No, the segment was just fine.

And,

you know, if you look at it from Roman Reigns' point of view, all of these guys together cost him everything.

I don't know.

I think Roman Reigns may be too much of a nice guy.

I guess that's my point here.

You know what they need in these segments?

They need to figure out a way to do the special effects thing where the lightning and the thunder is crashing outside the arena.

You know, I don't like, I think they changed Roman's music when he came back as a babyface.

It's not as,

I don't know.

I mean, I guess with the other one, he was also walking out slowly with Heyman.

But it feels like they changed.

You're indicating they had to change the beat of the music because Heyman wasn't waddling along with him.

I think it was a little slower when Heyman was escorting him to the ring, is what I'm saying.

It could have been just the

one note at the end of a day in the life to get Heyman out to the ring.

But anyway, that was that.

We'll see more of them here later on here in a while.

But then Bailey wrestled Candy LaRue.

Did Candy get a job with some type of black male that they continue to put her on television?

Remember, her partner for, you know, she's going back to NXT was Indy Hartwell, and they just let her go.

Well, apparently she didn't have pictures like Candy's got pictures.

She didn't have a husband on the roster, too, is what she didn't have.

Although, I guess in Kayfame, she was married to Dexter Loomis, wasn't she?

Well, I thought she and Gargano were.

No, I'm saying Indy Hartwell was married to Dexter Loomis, not Candy LeRae.

Is that her name?

No, I thought Indy was with, wasn't it, they were doing a thing with

Austin Theory.

Austin Theory, yeah.

It was Austin Theory and Indy Hartwell, and then Gargano was with Candy, but yeah, Gargano and Candy were trying to keep an eye on Austin and

Indy so they didn't fuck.

And then suddenly Dexter Loomis came in and cock blocked Austin.

He was peeping Tom.

He was like a peeping Tom, just like pop up in the window, and and he was just staring at everyone like a killer and then she fell in love with him and then uh they both uh didn't make it to the main roster for a while do you think they let indie go for being loose no yeah i don't even think how many people was she involved with for heaven's sake in kayfabe that's one person

well yeah yeah theory and then and then loomis she wasn't involved with theory they were just kind of like junior cheerleaders that was one of the things that made the whole thing so stupid

i don't know because old Johnny had to dress up like a shark to make sure they didn't fuck on the beach.

I never thought we'd be reevaluating NXT of that dark, dark period as I hear.

Sorry, Jace, I'm wrestling my notes as we talk about this concept.

Because, see,

I was going to mention Sameface, old Johnny Sameface, Candy LaRue's husband.

is arguing now with Tommaso Ciampa because Sameface is friends with the Motor City machine guns and

Ciampa don't like that.

But then, as they were arguing,

what do you think of just that before you get to the next thing?

The idea that they're already teasing this dissension between Gargano and Chiampa, although Gargano is not really fighting him too hard about the idea that he's hanging out with the enemy.

I think that anything that gets Ciampa away from Gargano, I would love to watch.

I think Chiampa's work is impeccable.

I think he's in tremendous condition.

He looks believable.

He can be serious when you put him in something.

And he's been

neutered for the past, I don't know how many years with this fucking indie-faced nitwit.

He looks like a goddamn pixie you hang off a Christmas tree.

And he's constantly been partners with Champa.

You can't see Champa without seeing this fucking guy.

And break him up.

Get rid of him.

Throw it out.

Throw the baby out with the bathwater.

All right.

We get the idea.

We get the idea.

But then Orton walked through the shot and into the arena and they went to the break because he's got something to say.

And that's a good time for us to go to commercials.

And when they come back,

amazingly, he hadn't said it yet.

And he called Owens out.

And Owens came out, but the officials are out there and said, no, no, no.

And Owens says, fuck it.

And he runs to the ring and and he rolls in and they get in a fight.

And the agents are in, and the referees are in.

And Owens gets the advantage on Orton for a second and gives him a pile driver.

And to be completely honest, it was one of the worst pile drivers.

It was a sloppy pile driver.

His head came nowhere near the fucking mat.

And I think part of the problem may have been Owens used to do a package pile driver in Ring of Honor.

That was his finish, where he he would double under hook the guy's arms and pick him up that way and jump and drop.

But Orton is not only a grown man, he's overgrown.

And I think he was too big for Owens to do that to.

But he gave him a pile driver, but

Orton sold it and the announcers went ape shit.

And they said the pile driver's been banned.

And they called for the EMTs with a stretcher.

And they brought the backboard out and Orton's hand was shaking.

Like when you have a neck injury and Cody, Orton's friend, came to the ring and they stayed with this.

Orton got loaded onto the stretcher.

They were treating the whole thing seriously.

They got the pile driver over

in one segment when nobody's done one because of that.

We've talked about the goofiness where they eliminated the tombstones and the pile drivers and moves like that because people might get hurt and they still allow people to dive off the top to the floor and go through furniture.

But

in this case, because they haven't seen one for so long,

and then they did one and then they treated it seriously,

and the replays were from an angle where you couldn't fucking tell.

And the camera followed Orton all the way to the ambulance and the ambulance out the back door.

And the announcers, after the break, they came back, they were still selling it.

This is the way you do it.

And

it's a pile driver.

And when they find somebody besides Owens that can really give a good one,

then it'll be deadly because a big star sold it.

But then,

this is what I say when

I talk about about how AEW and these indie promotions do a disservice to the entire business as well as their own.

Because the fans who saw this and are now like, oh, shit, the pile driver, holy crap,

they'll

watch the AEW show next week and some

150-pound grade schooler.

will get spike pile driven on a fucking chair on a table

and he'll get right back up in 30 seconds no there were several videos that went around after this and everyone agreed that it was incredibly well done it was a really strong angle the comparisons between something in aew and this and there were multiple examples of just guys whether it's the canadian destroyer or just non-stop tombstone pile drivers

and they mean nothing nothing Nothing even means a pin.

Means nothing.

And here,

now you have lots of questions about what's going to happen next, and now it means something.

The next time someone even teases a pile driver, it'll be Owens.

The next time Owens teases a pile driver,

people will know how to react to it.

And that's it's the same thing we did in Smokey Mad Wrestling in 1992 when Paul Orndorf came in.

That was his finish, but the pile driver was illegal in Smokey Mad Wrestling because it was illegal

in Tennessee wrestling because actually Nick Gulis had

the Tennessee Athletic Commission back in the 60s make it a rule the pile driver was illegal.

So the announcers weren't lying.

And so we wouldn't let Orndorf use his finish.

And finally he went nuts and just said, fuck it, and pile drove five people in the same angle.

And everybody was laid out and goddamn, you know,

crying and whining and selling.

And it made it look like a fucking scene of chaos.

And that's the way you get any move over.

It's not that difficult.

It's elementary.

It's been done millions of fucking times in wrestling.

Except in

indie wrestling, where nothing matters.

And what if it did?

So, anyway, a great segment here.

And it's something that Orton can sell.

But anyway, that was SmackDown.

No, it wasn't.

Not yet.

Because then we went to Champa and same face against fucking Prince Elton John and his little dog Kit out of whatever Purely Dreary's names are.

And Champa went nuts and beat up both of them by himself and beat the blonde one in one minute.

So that's the right use of the heels there.

And also

putting some

attention on Champa, again, get him away from the fucking garden gnome.

Well, you have to think of definitely teasing the turn now.

I guess they get to do their match one time on the main roster at least.

So anyhow, at nine o'clock, we got Jade and Bianca against Fridge and Tiffany.

And finally, Candy came out and pushed Bianca off the top rope, and Tiffy told Candy to take a hike because nobody asked her to come out there.

But Naomi came out and jumped Candy, and everybody hit everybody, and Bianca hit her finish on tiffy one two three

did i encapsulate that correctly oh yeah

very good

so then remember they announced or advertised or whatever the waller effect with the motor city machine guns actually no i did not remember that last week Because then when this match came up, Waller in Theory versus the Motor City machine guns, the announcers actually mentioned that this was originally scheduled to be the Waller effect, but they changed it to a match.

And thank God,

because number one,

we didn't have to see the Waller effect.

Number two,

the machine guns don't, they don't get over by talking, they get over by working.

And at least we got to see theory in there.

His work is still great, but we've been ignoring him because he's been attached to Jason Waller, Grayson Waller.

The guns are, they're quick, they're precise, they're small but aggressive.

Their double teams are the equalizers for the handicap they have in size.

And they're a good tag team.

And the first move they made was a correct blind tag again

because they can tag hand to hand.

They learned tag team wrestling before all these indie outlaw goofs just totally prostituted everything.

So they know how to do it right.

Now, having said that,

at one point, Shelley did a dive to the floor and started selling his left knee and looked like

that it wasn't part of the part of the plan, Smithers.

And they got some heat on him, and then he was able to be, he was walking around, but it looked a little dodgy.

I hope he's okay because could you imagine that?

goddamn run of luck.

Oh, we just got to the WWE after 20 years and I just blew my knee.

But

Shelly hit a kind of a rushed cold tag to Saban.

Saban made a lightning comeback.

But then

there's a lot of problems with this.

They tagged Shelly back in and then they worked on Austin Theory, but then the heels cut Saban off and got on him.

Grayson Waller's punches are the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen.

It's like a 60-year-old retired housekeeping woman.

The babyface is tagged for a while.

A housekeeping woman or a housekeeper?

Housekeeping woman.

A housekeeper could be a male or female.

I wanted people to know that it was a housekeeping woman's punches.

And the babyface is tagged back and forth again.

The match just kind of turned into a mess.

I don't know whether they were rushing or whether.

Waller and Theory wanted input.

It didn't hold up to a lot of machine guns matches I've seen, but finally they hit their finish

one, two, three.

And I just noted that anything that Waller is in doesn't work.

And there you had that.

What do you think of the usage of the machine guns so far?

Well, again, they're doing great because

they've got somewhat of a following in that Shelly and Sabin have been a team and been working for

the secondary companies for years and years.

And so automatically, they had a little bit more interest than just somebody coming in from NXT.

And then the way they've been presented on WWE television for people who had never seen them.

Because let's face it again, as we talked about, that's the majority of this audience.

They have produced what, you know,

what you would expect winners or people at a high level to produce.

They came in, they won the belts the second week.

They got involved in the bloodline story.

They haven't been treated like flunkies that are winning completely as a fluke,

but they were able to weave in there and get that done.

And so, I think so far,

so good.

And I have to think

that they probably got an eye on Shelly and Sabin to do something

after an initial run in the ring and on screen as coaches or whatever at the performance center because they're

these the guys kind of like

I was looking for in Ring of Honor 15 years ago, that their late 30s, early 40s, they can still go in the ring, but they're also young enough that they can relate to the young guys, but they're old enough and experienced enough, they can teach the young guys.

That's a generation

in the

in the early 2000s,

that's a generation we missed because that's the time where the territories went away,

and the only guys that were left were going to the Indies from WCW or WWF in the 90s.

They'd already made a bunch of money.

They were big stars.

They

passed the point where they wanted to go around and do this type of thing.

And we missed that a whole generation in the death of the territories as the guys that were experienced veterans, but still working with and teaching the guys that were 10, 12 years younger.

But that was that.

And that was SmackDown.

No, it wasn't.

Because we've still got

the bloodline acknowledgement ceremony to go.

Because that's Solo's thing.

Solo and his bloodline had a special ceremony in a main event slot so everybody could acknowledge him.

And,

oh, by the way, Nick Aldous revealed there's a new WWE Women's United States title belt.

Oh, joy.

But then when Solo asked Buffalo to acknowledge him,

Roman's music played.

And here he came to the ring.

And Solo told Roman, you got to acknowledge me as the tribal chief.

And the fans chanted, fuck you, Solo.

And Roman says, Buffalo, do you acknowledge him?

And the fans said, no, no.

And Roman says, neither do I.

And I'm here to challenge you one-on-one,

where the winner is the only tribal chief.

And Solo laughed at him.

I'm already the tribal chief.

You can't be tribal chief because you ain't got no tribe.

So

this is where

I'm a little confused.

I'm not conflicted like the other guy was earlier, the beast Mortos.

I'm confused.

Solo challenged Roman to find four guys to team with him and they can go to war.

And Roman said,

you mean war games?

Well, I only see four of you, one, two, three, four.

And Solo said the fifth guy

is going to be Sammy Zane.

Now, we're going to get to this in a second because Sammy's coming out about now.

But if a war game's got to be five on five,

one side still only got four.

You know what I'm saying, Brian?

How's this going to work out?

They're going to add a fifth member to both teams.

Well, they're about to here in a second, maybe, kind of.

But Solo.

When Solo said the fifth man was Sami Zayn, that's when Sammy came out.

And the heels jumped on Roman.

And the Usos hit the ring and they fight the heels, but Jacob stops them.

And then Solo tells Sammy, get in the ring.

And they're holding Roman and they're giving Sammy the big chance to run and kick him again.

And Sammy runs and kicks Solo.

And then

Roman hits a Superman punch and a fucking kick on Jacob and then spears Solo.

And Roman sees Sammy, and they stare at each other, and the Usos put up the fingers,

and the fans chant Sammy Uso, Sammy Uso, and Sammy puts up his finger and gets a pop.

And then finally, Roman looks around,

sticks his finger up, and a place blows.

But now we got Roman, we got Sammy, we got Jay, and we got Jimmy, right?

And we've got

Solo and Tonga and Tonga and Jacob.

So it's going to have to be four on four, is it not?

It will be five on five with an additional person added to both teams.

It may not necessarily be someone.

I don't want to play spoiler or anything.

Are you on the goddamn creative team now?

How do you know this?

I am not.

I'm not an employee.

I've not accepted any sort of payment from WWE.

No.

Well, I'm just saying

it appears like they need to go four on four because they're each a guy short and they haven't got much time.

This is Survivor Series, right?

Yes, it is.

November 30th.

They've only got a couple weeks.

That's all they need.

How the hell are they going to do that?

Just shit another Samoan?

Maybe it won't be someone involved in this is what I'm saying.

Well, you're talking in circles like Moxley.

They're going to add Rollins and Bronson Reed is what I'm saying.

Well, why would they do that?

They just will.

So you're coming out and you're going out on a limb here and you're saying

Reed and Rollins will be added to this thing.

I think so.

Well, folks, mark it down in your little black books wherever you keep them.

That's pressure.

Don't do that.

Okay, in that case, just put it in pen or in pencil.

Don't put it in pen.

Put it in something that can be erased, but we'll see what happens.

Now that we've done that, maybe they'll change it.

Now that we've spilled the beans,

but that was SmackDown.

Yeah, it was.

And this is your show.

Well, and it's over, folks.

We'll be back soon with the drive-through.

Don't forget about the November sales going on at jimcornet.com.

And until we meet again, thank you.

Fuck you.

Bye-bye, everybody.

Get the experience,

get the experience of Jim Connest,

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