Episode 550: Ratings, Rankings, and Rantings

Like the midnight and the rock'n'roller He's in a fight for wrestling solar Using a racket and some mind controller He's Jim Cornet

The keys to the future held by the past And with Tag T partner Bariah at last He sends this message out by podcast He's Jim Cornet

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the show.

Today, we've got ratings, we've got rankings, and we've got rantings and ravings.

And Ray Gunn, it's a rousing edition of the Jim Cornette Experience, and joining me to rouse the rabble.

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

Co-host to you, he's the royal rascal himself, the great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

The last beautiful weekend of the year, maybe.

80 degrees up here.

How are you?

They're eating the dogs, Brian.

They're eating the dogs.

Who is?

Nobody knows, except one demented moron.

I just had to say those words out in public.

I won't even go into a thing here.

I enjoyed watching Kamala Harris roast the repugnant pig in Philly the other night.

But even if he had been debating a goddamn drugstore mannequin,

how can anybody seriously?

I know they still do because

they're under the spell,

but this guy wants to be the leader of the free world.

He thinks they're eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio, because some ding bat told him that.

This is how easily you don't think Putin would have any problem bending Trump's ear a little bit and swaying him when he believes shit like this and says it out in public

they need to put him somewhere where the door is locked from the inside

do you think you know Kamala Kamala now I'm calling him that yeah that was his name Kamala

Yes,

there was the accent drava over the other syllable there in Kamala, the Ugandan giant's name.

The Ugandan giant Kamala, James Harris.

Yes.

Kamala Harris, in a sense, passed away several years ago.

If he was alive, would he be able to capitalize on this in any way?

On her running for president?

You know, that's it.

It would either be a positive or a negative, wouldn't it?

Right.

Someone can announce: I have an interview on TV tonight with Kamala Harris, and all of a sudden he shows up slapping his belly.

He might get booked more, but he might also become one of those right-wing memes.

You never know.

But anyway, nobody's eating Harley over here.

She's just fine.

She's frisky and full of vim and vigor.

But I've got a lot of notes.

We've got all kinds of stuff to talk about here today.

Can you hear my notes from there?

Hey, there's something going on over there.

Well, it's notes.

I've got to say thank you to some people

because, as you know, it is well.

By the time the people hear this, my birthday may be upon us or even past us, September 17th.

But some of the people knew, of course, in advance, and several people have sent me things.

I've got a short list of thank yous here,

starting with my old friend Stuart Busby

from across the pond over in the UK.

Guess what he sent me?

Is that the weatherman in Louisville you always talk about?

What?

No,

no, that's Mark Weinberg.

Oh, why would I get those confused?

I don't have any idea.

No, Stuart Buzzbee.

I've thanked him.

Did he send you honey?

Bees buzz.

I thought you were thinking of Stuart Little, but he wouldn't do honey either.

That was Winnie the Pooh.

Stuart Little was, wasn't he, a mouse?

I believe so.

Well, you're the one with the kids.

Why aren't you on top of this shit?

They're not really watching Stuart Little.

They watch Paw Patrol.

Well,

they get into the Winnie the Pooh world, don't they?

Children with the Christopher Robin and

the gentle creatures in the forest.

No, they haven't really experienced Winnie the Pooh yet.

There's a Winnie the Pooh Lego that we have downstairs.

They've seen that.

Oh, good Lord.

Anyway, what are the kids into these days if not reading Winnie the Pooh books and then going out in the yard and playing with sticks?

There's lots of stuff on YouTube they like.

Oh, boy.

No wonder the children are in the state they're in these days.

Not enough Winnie the Pooh.

Anyway, Stuart Busby

from over across the pond sent me a box of Nando seasonings,

which are always welcome here.

But also,

since mine and Stacy's birthday was close together, he sent me a Rhea Ripley coin

that has been minted by the WWE or some

contractor.

Maybe

the San Francisco Mint did some stuff for the WWE on the side.

I don't know.

And also sent Stacey a Harley Quinn medallion,

which is very cool, a limited edition

medallion there in a fine display box.

Are you going to comment on any of these things?

Like, ooh.

What do you do with this medallion?

Well, you display it.

Where?

In your Harley Quinn collection.

How do you display it?

Oh, for God's sake.

Does it have a little box out with a medallion?

It's a fine box, and it's got a medallion in it.

You could display it.

He sent you the box, too, or you have your own box?

No, it's the box it came in.

The medallion came in a box.

The medallion came in a box.

This is a fascinating signal.

What's it supposed to come in?

A goddamn...

Chewing tobacco pouch?

Technically, you could just send the medallion in an envelope, I would imagine.

How did the Mid-South television title show up at the offices in Bixby, Oklahoma?

C-O-D, from what I remember.

But anyway, thank you, Stuart.

And Max, Max from Madison, Wisconsin,

whose mother Lori is a huge fan also.

Happy birthday, Lori.

At least Max said it was your birthday.

It's very close to mine.

But he sent me a, you know,

we talk glowingly about punk's work these days but he sent me a dvd that the wwe had previously released or a dvd set

of punk stuff from like 2009 10 11.

and then and and that's way when i was not watching wwe

so i this is all new to me and A Culver's gift card.

The butterburgers are on Macs from Madison.

You have culvers up there, or are you still deprived in a food wasteland in New Jersey?

I think there's one actually that did open up over by Parsippany, maybe, but what's a butterburger?

The Wisconsin butterburgers.

They butter the bun when they toast it.

So it's a buttered bun, not a buttered burger.

Well, they call them Wisconsin butterburgers, and they have the Wisconsin cheese.

When you go to Wisconsin, you'll see, you'll notice that they love their cheese up there.

Every time you enter the state of Wisconsin, you can smell that dairy air.

And so they have Wisconsin cheese and butter on the buns.

That's right.

And the state song is The Crusher by the Novas.

That due to Crusher.

And finally,

I would like to thank,

he said I couldn't pronounce his real name, so he said, just call me Brown Mark.

Yeah, but that may not be a good name to call someone.

What the hell kind of suggestion is that from this guy?

Well, that's what he said.

So, you know, maybe it's Brown, comma, Mark, like Mark Brown, but you put the,

I don't know.

He said, don't confuse him with shit stain, though, just because he's Brown Mark.

But he sent me a fine, high-quality volume, a book, a tome, if you will.

My God, it weighs 20 pounds.

It's beautifully illustrated on the early days of the movies, Bronco Billy, and the SNA Film Company.

The very first Western hero.

Well, this is a subject I'm not too familiar with.

How much do you know about this?

Well, I'll tell you, sir, how much I know about this title.

No,

Bronco Billy Anderson.

And remember, we talked about Bill Anderson, the Arizona wrestling personality here not long ago.

And I see he was named after the Western star, Bronco Billy Anderson.

And you just acted like you understood what I was saying.

He was like the first Western movie star in the early 1900s, but he also behind the scenes with a partner formed the SNA

ESSANEY

Film Company, S for his partner's last name and A for Anderson.

And they produced like some of the first major motion pictures that were made made in the history of the motion picture business because it had just started.

But I don't know a whole book's worth of stuff about it.

So I'm looking forward to hopping into that.

But thank you, everybody, for recognizing my birthday.

What are you being all sullen over there for?

People didn't send you cool stuff like that?

No, I'm okay with people not sending me stuff.

Well,

with an attitude like that, I'm not surprised you don't get anything.

Anyway,

and I was going to have,

I've had a week, folks.

I've had another one of those weeks and

problems.

But I was going to have some emails.

We've started to get some emails of people trying to explain.

I haven't seen anybody defending,

but explaining the forearm exchange thing that every indie idiot is doing now, where they just stand there and just act like they're hitting each other with no

contact in front of people over and over.

But I couldn't print them out so that I could shuffle through them and read the

pithy excerpts from the, you know, the various emails because my printer ain't goddamn working.

We had a transformer apparently down the road somewhere.

I heard it the other morning.

I was in the garage with Harley and bam.

And immediately I noticed the

laundry room in the garage, the light was out, and then it was on.

And I thought, well, what the fuck happened there?

And come to find out the power went off for just a few seconds or whatever, but something blew down the road.

And the electric company people have told me, Brian, I don't know if you're aware of this, that when you hear that bam,

the transformer somewhere blows and your power,

you know how when it blinks sometimes?

That's a transformer farther away from you having some issue and the backup comes in.

And if it's somewhere close to you, then your power goes off for a second, but then the backup or whatever, and it comes back on.

But if you're,

if your main transformer was the one that blew, that's when you're standing there in the dark.

Have you ever heard this?

I've never heard that.

No.

I've seen transformers blow when I stayed in Long Beach during Hurricane Sandy or Superstorm Sandy.

I saw Transformers go.

It was crazy.

Well,

in that case, everything's going out, but this is just one of those goddamn deals.

But the point is,

everything came back on, but my printer is no longer connected.

And Stace is the one who fixed it the other day, put it back online, as the kids say, when we had our internet worked on.

So I asked her, and she was up here for 30 minutes.

She said, I don't know what's the matter with this thing.

It's stuck in deep sleep, and it will not

align itself with the computer or whatever.

So I can't print the email.

So Hotchkiss is coming over in a few days to try to address this problem.

Yeah, things will go from bad to worse now.

Oh, come on.

He has no idea what he's doing.

He always takes a screwdriver to your stuff.

No, but it works that way.

And plus, I can dust the inside of the units easier with the back off of them.

Better watch out for this guy.

I'm telling you, he's he's bad news.

He came up with that brilliant plan about.

He didn't come up with anything.

He came up with the brilliant plan about sales on merchandise at below their normal regular price.

We'll talk more about that in a minute.

But anyway, thank you to everybody there.

The emails we'll have next week.

What is this that we've got to update of a personality in the world that has become popular on the show?

Ray Gunn, old Rachel Gunn,

apparently the illegitimate daughter of Johnny Gunn.

She is now

rated the number one

breakdancer in the world by what

governing body is this another fucking fecal standards company in Zurich, Switzerland?

What's going on here?

You're keeping up with the pop culture news this week, aren't you?

I saw this article pop up in the New York Post the other day, and I was thinking maybe it was a joke article, but then I remembered the post isn't exactly the onion, and this was real.

The Rachel Ray gun gun

drama.

Rachel Ray Gun Gun.

The Rachel Ray Gun gun.

Now, wait a minute.

Is that why she couldn't break dance?

Because that's the girl that used to be on the Food Network, Rachel Ray?

No, it's not the same person.

She's still out there, from what I understand.

The Rachel Ray Gun gun drama has taken arguably its biggest twist yet after the Australian breakdancer returned home.

The 37-year-old touchdown in Sydney on the same day she was revealed as the new world number one breaker.

Gunn made worldwide headlines following her divisive performances during the Paris Olympics, which saw her finish second to last.

Ahead of only one disqualified athlete.

So they never even got out there.

They were disqualified.

Okay,

let's stop there.

I know there may be more to this, but let's stop there for a second.

Who was it divisive with?

Didn't pretty much everybody agree that it sucked Dalmatian balls?

I guess maybe it was divisive with

the people who felt bad for her because of the public ridicule.

That could be the only thing, right?

No one said, wow, this is great.

Yeah, no, there wasn't two different art critics looking at this thing and having the, you know, polar opposite viewpoints.

And the judges gave her a score of zero, didn't they?

But anyway, go ahead.

Let me go back to this article.

And as you were talking, I was pulling up more articles just to see what everyone's saying.

Despite those displays, which resulted in her failing to register a single point,

the World Dance Sport Federation released the latest rankings with the Aussie sitting atop the list.

Raygun was catapulted into the world number one ranking thanks to the 1,000 point she claimed winning the WDSF Oceana Championship, which booked her a spot in the Olympics.

Four Aussies find themselves inside the top eight on the list with Holly Molly, Hannah, and G-Clef

joining Raygun.

No, Holly Molly, the opposite.

Well,

there's some some kind of gimmick infringement in there.

I guess actually it could be Holy Molly.

Holy Molly.

Holy Moly.

But look here, bud, back up a second.

What competition did she win?

Was it

a Paralympic

type of thing where she was the only able-bodied person?

Once again, she won 1,000 points in the World Dance Sport Federation's Oceana Championship, which used to be the All-Atlantic Championship, from what I understand.

But then they changed it to international, didn't they?

I think so.

And that's where we are now.

Where is, wait a minute, where is Oceana?

Where is Oceana?

Isn't that like in Iceland or something somewhere?

Well, here's an article.

Actually, let's go to something maybe.

No, no, no, for best, answer my question.

Google me some fucking Oceana.

Where did this competition take place?

Was this at an Arctic

outpost?

It is a geographical region including Australasia,

Melanesia,

micronesia and polynesia

oceana is generally considered a continent while australia is regarded as an island or a continental landmass within that continent

does that make any sense well is there a lot of break dancers in micronesia because how the did this girl win any uh woman i should say she's nearly 40.

australasia is that what you say aust australasia build George Barnes and Bill Dundee came to Tennessee in 1975 as the Australasian tag team champions.

But nevertheless, how did she win anything in front of anybody in public?

If anybody else was competing?

Why isn't New Guinea protesting this?

But I have an article here, Jim.

They're being used as guinea pigs.

The New York Times, again, a little more prestigious than the New York Post.

You think they would have probably a more thorough recording.

Let's see.

The number one breaker in the world is Raygun?

The Australian breaker who was mocked at the Olympics for her kangaroo hopping routine is now atop the official world rankings.

Here's how it happened.

By Victor Mather.

The breaker known as Raygun did terribly at the Olympics, losing all three of her head-to-head battles, each by scores of 18 to nothing.

Can you just imagine getting the Olympics and this is what happens?

I didn't know they could even give you zero in the Olympics.

It's never happened before, has it?

Her unusual routines also made her an unexpected face of the Paris Games and earned her mockery worldwide.

But she did receive one accolade this week.

Somehow, improbably,

B-Girl Ray Gun, yes, the same Ray Gun who hopped like a kangaroo in her Olympic routines.

is now the number one ranked women's breaker in the world.

Goes into a little bit of her history here.

Fancy.

I was just going to say,

we've got to remember here that people were saying that

somehow her husband was involved in judging at some point.

There was a whole backstory on did they create their own dance federation or whatever.

But I mean, at this point,

does she have pictures of Denny Terio with a goat or what?

How the fuck is she doing this?

I'm looking down.

I mean, there's a lot here, apparently.

Fans around the world, many being exposed to breaking competition for the first time as the sport made its Olympic debut, were baffled, amused, and in some cases, outraged.

Raygun's total score of zero points put her in last place amongst the 16 breakers in the main Olympic competition.

In the latest world rankings, how could Raygun be the number one be in the number one spot?

Yeah.

After receiving a barrage of questions, the World Dance Sport Federation, which oversees the sport internationally, released a statement Tuesday explaining the seeming incongruity.

The ranking is based on events over the past year, the Federation explained.

During that time, the majority of Breakers were focused on qualifying for the Olympics.

But because they have limited fields with a small number of competitors, Olympic qualifying events and the Olympics themselves do not count towards the world rankings.

Therefore, Raygun's low scoring performance at the Games did not hurt her ranking at all.

Further complicating the rankings, there were hardly any events in the last 52 weeks that weren't Olympic qualifiers.

The Federation said that no official breaking events were held in 2024 before the Olympics to

allow athletes to focus solely on the last part of their Olympic qualification without the added pressure of additional ranking events.

For Raygun, her only ranked competition in that time period was the Oceanic Continental Championships in Sydney, October 2023.

She won that event, which was hardly of international importance.

Of the top 15 finishers, 13 were from Australia and two were from New Zealand.

It was not a strong field.

Raygun, the winner.

The sun was in their eyes.

Raygun, the winner, had finished 64th in the World Championship

the month prior.

Excuse me.

Good lord.

In fact, the Oceana event caused a stir after Ray Gunn's performance at the Olympics.

The Australian Federation released a statement after the games saying to respond to speculation about her win at the event, contrary to circulating misinformation,

Dr.

Gunn's husband, Ray Gunn's coach,

oh boy, was not a member of the selection panel or judging committee.

This would have constituted a conflict of interest.

Dr.

Gunn.

Dr.

Gunn is a lecturer at

Macquarie University in Sydney, where her research interests include breaking, street dance, and hip-hop culture, and the politics of gender and gender performance.

The politics of dancing?

After the Olympics, she received a deluge of criticism with her dancing style and even her uniform, green track pants and a polo shirt being mocked.

Ray Gunn seemed to be bouncing back.

Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Hold on.

Before you go any further here, I think now, now that we know that this is her background, also, I think some of the American colleges should invite this

fishy white Australian woman to speak on street culture and break dancing at all the major American universities.

I think that would be popular Yes.

For her.

And then, boy, howdy, she can finish it off with a combination break dancing and rap performance that I bet would leave them standing in the aisles.

See, this is why people complain about universities.

Anyone could be a professor.

You just got to go to school for a while and pay a bunch of money.

But anyone could be a professor.

Sometimes you can even create your own course.

Ray Gunn seems to be bouncing back from the hate, posting photos of herself smiling and laughing with Richard Branson and Boy George.

So she break right back into 1985.

She time traveled on us.

At least we always go forward.

We don't go back.

Noted breakdancing lover Boy George.

What does he have to do with breakdancing?

Different kind of music altogether.

But that's the story.

Ray Gun number one, apparently because no one else was competing, it seems like.

Well, something's going on there.

And again, you know, she gets out there.

She looks like she's playing a game of solitaire twister.

Whenever she, there's no performance to this.

It's just awkward.

It's like, oh, look at that poor woman.

I wish medical science could help her out.

But anyway,

that's what they break dance like down in Sydney, apparently.

What's going on?

What kind of scene?

I mean, AEW is about to head down there, so we'll find out what kind of scene they got.

I want to know who outdraws each other aew of the world dance sport federation wait a minute wait a minute i've got the natural goddamn program what are they calling it over there grand slam aew in australia that's right the grand slam

what'd you just say old rachel ray gunn's guns profession was

she's a professor Well, she's a doctor.

Dr.

Gunn.

Dr.

Gunn.

That's right.

Dr.

Ray Gunn versus Dr.

Britt Baker.

Oh, shit.

There you go.

You got to get her involved, you would think.

And it's not like that she'd be any worse than some of the other girls they put Britt Baker in a ring with.

And

there you go.

My God, they can promote that all over the country, and they can draw the crowd from Micronesia.

You know, we won't even get into the discussion of where did Britt Baker disappear to after the pay-per-view.

Because we haven't seen her again since.

But you're maybe on to something.

Tony needs publicity, and he has shown that he's willing to spend the money and do anything he'll burn a house kidnappings anything that's unrealistic he'll do

why not just spend that money and hire the biggest pseudo celebrities of the moment like why not hawk to a girl versus ray gun who cares that they can't work nobody can just put them in there let them run around the ropes like idiots and laugh at them well no i think you've got to mix your top talent in with the celebrities so they get the rub.

I think they've got to have Hoctua Girl against one of the AEW girls.

Maybe they

have some kind of competition to figure out who should be the best one to face Hawk Tua Girl.

But I think you got a natural doctor-doctor rivalry there with Baker.

Or

you could have MJF and Dr.

Gunn.

against Britt Baker and

one of the other guys, because then MJF and Dr.

Gunn could both do the kangaroo kick.

What about a team of Ray Gunn and Helico?

Remember, he used to come out there and do his own dance.

He's kind of doing his own thing.

If you've got two people dancing independent of each other, but somehow making their way to the ring, that may work.

It could elevate him.

It almost, I'm afraid it almost might look like, well, here comes these poor people are epileptic.

They're having some kind of seizure on the way to the ring.

And then

would you have a doctor manage them?

Because

we're trying to help these people.

They can't help these spastic movements.

There was a woman.

Oh, no.

No, there was a woman that worked at the goddamn deli counter at Kroger some years ago.

I haven't seen her in a while.

But she had some kind of,

what is they call it, TARDIF dyskinesia on the fucking TV commercials, involuntary spasmic movements

and

i didn't know this the first time that i saw her i went in there and at the deli i said could i get a pound of the black forest ham thin slice please and i'm watching this woman behind the counter or behind the slicer and she's got the thing and she's putting it up there and all of a sudden she go oh like that and kind of let out a little a little oh

but mostly just her arms that went everywhere and her head shook.

You can't say there's no video to this, but imagine me going, whoa!

And then she, I thought she had almost dropped the thing or she'd cut her finger or whatever.

But no, then she went right back to the task at hand.

And

I started counting because when she did it the second time, I said, How long is it?

It was about every

45 seconds to a minute, she'd just do a fucking double take start.

Whoa, and

you'd think, my God, she's seen a robber coming in or something.

And then she'd just go about her business.

And I thought, why did they put her in the deli to operate to slicer?

That just seems like that's a recipe for destruction.

There used to be a great coffee shop in Long Beach where I grew up called the Cozy Nook.

For people in the East End, you can get every magazine there as a kid.

You can get any comic book, magazine, baseball cards, bubblegum, and it was a diner.

It was just tremendous.

The guy who owned it was named Marv.

Marv Nook?

He would not be, sometimes he would go cook some stuff if the chef was off, but he would be like behind the little area where the register and he would have like the baseball cards near him and stuff.

But he had an issue where he would just constantly go, ah,

so it was like kind of weird that he would want to open a restaurant, you know, just trying to eat.

He's like, ah,

like non-stop.

So every now and then when the chef wasn't there, and it was always the same guy, when the chef wasn't there, he would have to go prepare something.

He'd be cooking the the food doing it and you don't want to hear that you know just

what what is that condition i don't know but it was it was so loud and was so constant but nice guy and i missed that place great great place would that be a form of tourettes i wonder or some

some

piss piss out my ass see the first time you see it or hear it you think he's clearing his throat and then you're like this man has a lot of phlegm and then you're like the phlegm ain't stopping there's something else going on.

It's like that Kirby Enthusiasm episode where they hire a chef with Tourette's, but he's a Frenchman, but he just curses out in English, shit, motherfucker, goddamn.

And then everyone starts doing it.

Great episode.

Well, you know, that way he doesn't feel,

you know, like he's the center of attention there.

The spotlight is on him.

If everybody's doing it, it's somewhat normalized.

And he doesn't have to feel like the odd duck.

Well, speaking of the odd duck, that was the Ray Gun story.

Yes.

Well, would you like to know?

Well, you're going to have to duck coming up.

I'll tell you why.

Because on Saturday, October 5th at noon Eastern, so many people are going to be reaching for their computers and telephones and interwebbish devices to take advantage of the big holiday merchandise sale that's starting at JimCornet.com that you're going to have to duck or people might knock you down.

They're going to be lurching, grabbing, diving toward their various equipment so they're not left out of all the wonderful things and deals.

Because, as I said, Hotchkiss has invented a process known as a sale, where you lower the price of an item,

either for a limited period of time or if they buy another item.

And you advertise that fact.

It's going to take the retail world by storm, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, the biggest news is the final Jim Cornette action figure variant is going on sale.

No more will be made.

No more will be produced in the future.

I'm too old to take on these projects that take two or three years from

behind the Great Wall of China.

Brian, I'm simplifying my life.

I'm starting to

wind these things down.

So imagine how much money these things are going to be worth when I'm dead.

See, I got that to look forward to.

No, you don't have that to look forward to.

Let's not look forward to that.

That's a pretty morbid thought.

Well, it just, and they'll be antiques by then, too.

But anyway, the final action figure variant, Jim Cornette, the man in white, my favorite suit and Stacey's favorite suit of mine that I always wear whenever I've lost a significant amount of weight and want to show off, as well

as the fact that it matches everything, my white jacket, white pants, along with the black shirt and the red tie, and matching white tennis racket.

You can have me manage your other favorite action figures, or for the customizers out there.

And that's how

the bloody variant came into being, actually, because somebody

had made one, had painted one from one of my other variants, and

it was very cool.

And the toy company and I got together and said, we got to do one of these.

But anyway,

you can customize this any color in my various catalog, as they say, my infamous rainbow collection.

Or

the best thing of all, this is where Hotchkiss's brilliance and the computerization he's done of my website come into play.

If you buy

a Midnight Express or Heavenly Bodies Tag Team set or four-pack of any kind, kind,

you get the white variant for half price, $24.95.

And that is a Christmas present to everybody who's supported all the previous deviants or variants, I should say, of me.

So you're getting a deal on this, and

also the tag team sets as well that you can stick me in the middle there and I can manage.

And the white variant, as always,

can be personally autographed if you fill in the

various information in the personalization box.

So that's Saturday, October 5th at noon Eastern.

And also,

for those of you who have been asking, now that they can say fuck on television, they do it all the time,

the thank you fuck you buy t-shirts are coming back on sale for the holidays.

after what it's been a couple years now.

So, you know,

they might as well wear them to church or to your kids' elementary school to pick up the small children or whatever, because they're saying fuck on the wrestling shows, so I guess it's okay now.

Thank you, fuck you, buy t-shirts back on sale Saturday, October 5th at noon at jimcornet.com.

Brian, it's going to be a Merry Christmas with all these big things going on and saving people all this money.

That sounds like it'll be a Merry Christmas for you and, of course, the people who receive these wonderful items.

Yes.

These wonderful items will make anyone ha.

And you can,

you know, if you're, I guess, if your wife or mother is a little on the portly side, you can have this action figure as a stocking stuffer.

Either that or you're going to stretch your stockings out a little bit.

See, I like the idea that you can customize it.

You could get a black Sharpie and like draw a dick on the suit pointing to your face.

Oh, no, come, come, come, no.

Hit your knee on the back.

Yo, these are great ideas.

We're not talking about that.

We're talking about taking, you know, model paint and a fine-point brush and

better.

And

carefully and with loving care.

You could draw a dick like Rick Drude's artist used to draw him on his tights.

No, I'm talking about customizing the color of the suit and the tie and the pants or whatever to matte and the racket to match the various

You know, other figures you might have or other things you want to see me wear rather than drawing drawing phallic symbols on me and

inviting people, inciting violence against me as my figure walks by the other figures with a kick-by sign on the back.

I'll be, I won't be the man in white, I'll be black and blue.

You know, maybe I'm going to get a few of these.

This sounds like fun.

Oh, god damn it.

I know.

I'll pay all sorts of shit on these

and then sell them.

Limited edition.

Dickhead cornet version figures.

I just, no, I just want to say one thing now.

I want to put this warning out right now to everybody: that there is, no, I am not going to accept people

buying these figures and drawing all kinds of dicks on me and saying all kinds of horrible things.

All these people that don't like me, the AEW fans, and all the ninnies and nincompoops and nattering nabobs of negativity out there on the internets.

I don't want them buying these figures and drawing horrible, embarrassing things and saying things and taking pictures of it and putting it on Twitter.

That would embarrass me.

It would hurt my feelings.

I heart the bucks.

No, no, no, no, no.

69 me, Kenny.

Oh, if they did that, if they bought my figures starting Saturday, October 5th at noon Eastern and wrote those horrible things and said those horrible things and took pictures of them and put them out on Twitter where more people would do that.

Oh, god damn it, I'd be, I would, every day I'd get up mad and I'd kick things and break my toe.

I I killed George the Rat.

Oh, now you've gone too far.

No, no, no.

It's not Spectrum, it's me.

No!

Well, again, lots of ideas.

Anyway, lots of Sharpies.

Have fun, everyone.

And of course, your fine acrylic paints, whatever it may be.

Fine quality acrylic paints from Jerry's Artorama.

But yeah, that's what's happening.

So that's what's happening over in my world for the holidays.

Are the holidays going to be happy for Mark Henry and Bryce Rimsburg?

Have they had a dust up on the internet recently?

You were telling me something about it before we came on the air.

Well, apparently they may have made up already, but it was an interesting story for a day or so because it was somewhat unnecessary, it seemed like.

Remember we talked about during the review of, I guess it was MJF versus Daniel Garcia.

There was a moment where there was a roll-up, and seemingly, based on the video that we were watching live or on tape, Bryce Remsburg, the referee, counted one, two, and then pushed the leg to break the count.

Yeah, yes.

Like

the motion he made in between the two count and what potentially would have been three was to reach up and kind of shove the.

The knee of the guy that was in the small package or jackknife or whatever it was.

Like, hey, kick out, motherfucker.

And then went to count again, but it was too late.

He'd already kicked out.

And by the way, I was wrong.

It was Danielson versus Jack Perry.

He pushed Jack.

I'm watching a video right now.

He pushed Jack Perry's leg, it appears.

Oh, well,

but the point is, same thing, just different person.

But, and we said at the time,

because I said,

I've never seen anybody, any referee actually do that specific thing before.

And I speculated, did he,

was it like a nervous tick?

You just do something without thinking about it?

Like we were just talking about the woman at the deli and the guy in the kitchen with him, eh, or whatever.

Or did he think that somehow

that Perry, the guy that was dead,

he didn't see the first count or he didn't know that he had already counted one.

So he thought two was one and he wasn't going to kick out on the right one.

I got to do something.

And he just had a brain fart and said, I'll just shove his leg instead of saying kick out.

Or

what could have been the explanation of this?

That's what we were discussing.

Perhaps he saw a foreign object in Jack Perry's boots.

Well, in that case, then he would have grabbed his fucking foot.

Well, apparently, the video, the

video of just this specific moment, was going around on Twitter.

Someone named Vic posted it and wrote, WTF,

I've never seen a referee do this before.

To which Mark Henry replied, I'm not commenting.

I'll be called a hater.

Now, I believe Mark Henry has done some interviews and made some appearances since he left AEW, and he's let it be known that perhaps he wasn't listened to, that he didn't do as much as he would have liked to have done, and that maybe a lot of people,

you know, do their own thing there, I guess you could say.

Well, Bryce Remsberg, in a now-deleted tweet.

Oh,

that's where you know that there was some second thoughts when they delete to stuff.

He tweeted out, hey, Mark, this angle doesn't show exactly what happened.

You were always so nice to me backstage at AEW, and I constantly helped you with your travel whenever I could.

If you think something is wonky, feel free to reach out directly whenever.

So let's stop there.

Any thoughts on that?

Well, that was about as inoffensive a statement as you could make.

Some people may say, well, why didn't he just privately email or call Mark Henry?

If he's helped him with his travel, he probably knows where he lives.

And say that personally.

But that was such a milquetoast comment besides wanting to remind Mark that, hey, I used to

help you.

Is that influencing?

I never left you at the airport like punk.

Why are you doing this to me now?

Yeah, yeah.

He always got you a car when we went to Wimbley.

I never treated you like Stephanie Vakor.

Never stranded you in a foreign country.

But that's not inflammatory.

Where does it kick up a notch?

Where can we get some emeralds on this?

Well, it kind of doesn't really kick up a notch.

It stays at this point.

A lot of people were jumping on it because, again, it's public.

Killing each other with kindness.

And then Taz jumped in, retweeting the now-deleted tweet from Bryce Remsburg, I believe.

Hey, brother, you do not need to explain yourself or apologize for anything to anybody.

That's the AEW motto.

As you know,

as you know, shit happens out there in a ring, and talent aren't robots.

They are human, and no one is perfect.

You are the best in the biz, in my opinion.

Fuck all that noise.

Keep being great.

And there's a little fist emoji there.

Was it was the fist?

Did it have a finger sticking out of it?

Or was it like swinging at your face?

Or was it like a right-on type of thing?

Or?

Yeah, just kind of, I guess, like, you know, brotherhood, right-on, fist bump.

I don't know what the fuck it is.

I don't use emojis.

I'm a man.

It's a 68 Mexico City Olympics.

It's got a black glove on it.

It could mean all kinds of things.

So again, in terms of what people were seeing and why people were sending it to us.

It was really more people saw Bryce Remsburg's comment to Mark Henry's than Mark Henry's.

And then they see Taz jumping in to immediately defend Bryce Remsburg.

Any thoughts on this?

Yes, why don't they all just goddamn talk personally?

Unless they're going to come out and say, look here, motherfucker, and then we're interested, and then we'll get to popcorn.

But if they're going to be either non-committal, uncommenting, or unfailingly polite and possibly a little snarky in a passive-aggressive way, this is not really a conflict that I have time for.

Yeah, and don't be surprised when people who left AEW can finally say what they haven't been able to say out loud for the entire time they were with AEW about the sloppiness and things that shouldn't be on TV and things that should be done better.

But let's go back to this.

Yes.

Bryce Remsberg, another tweet.

Jesus Christ.

Good morning.

Mark Henry called me this morning, and we had a mature, considerate discussion.

We understand each other's perspective better.

I regret the reaction and negativity I helped to create.

Support each other and support support pro wrestling.

Onward, upward.

Oh, no, he didn't say that.

Yes, he did.

Onward, exclamation point, upward, exclamation point.

Excelsior!

Excelsior and beyond.

Kumbaya, my lord.

Kumbaya.

Why was that?

That sounds like

after

the International Peace Accord has taken place, somebody has prepared that statement so that you'll know that Micronesia and Lithuania are not going to be engaged in all-out war and have come to an agreement.

Nobody said Mark Henry didn't even say anything about it.

If I just said what, I think I'll be a hater.

Why was there needed to be a reply to that?

He didn't say anything.

That's what I said.

It's a non-story that became a story because of the need to publicly respond.

You could have just called Mark Henry at that point.

And again, he says,

you don't know what what happened the angle doesn't show it and then taz is like shit happens in the ring you don't have to defend yourself

because people were coming down the street with pitchforks and and torches and ready to you know string him up from the castle frankenstein

It's like it fucking moron a few weeks ago threatened to sue me for shit that I didn't say.

I let you say it.

So he's going to sue me.

I'm like, you stupid motherfucker.

There's nothing there.

I think people are just disappointed because he's one of the only good referees typically in AEW and it was an unexplained.

You know, we've seen things before where the referees stop before three and it becomes awkward.

This was right on camera.

And unless there's another angle that shows that his hand did not push the foot.

Okay, but think about it.

See, I don't.

Again, sometimes there are

cases where you have a brain fart and you go, why did I fucking do that?

Or maybe he does have some budding form of Tourette's.

Maybe he needs to get a CAT scan.

But if you're down counting and a motherfucker's rolled up, wouldn't you just, instead of visually

shoving him or even giving him an Iggy in that obvious of a way where you're reaching up with his leg or reaching up to grab his leg, you're down there, wouldn't you say, Jack, kick out.

This is three.

I don't know why this display of something would have needed to be done.

I don't know what it was, but regardless, nobody said what it was.

And Mark Henry didn't say what he wanted to say.

And then Bryce Remsburg said to Mark what he wanted to say about what Mark didn't say out in front of everybody,

which necessitated everybody else having an opinion on it.

And then,

yeah.

If I comment on something on Twitter or out in public, you'll definitely know what I think about it, or elsewhere it's not

fucking germane to anything, isn't it?

Or is it?

Imagine if Mark Henry actually said something.

Like, this is bullshit.

This is sloppy.

This needs to be done better.

He didn't say anything.

And usually Mark do go on quite at length

about anything.

But nevertheless.

I hate to hear that these people are having this horrible exchange of compliments and kindness.

I'm glad they got it all worked out.

According to the article I'm looking at here, it says that Mark Henry confirmed on May 27th that his AEW deal would be up on May 28th.

He was not seeking renewal, and he is now working as the booker for all Caribbean wrestling.

What?

Whatever that may be.

All righty then.

Well, if you want to go to the Caribbean,

folks or young wrestlers, call Mark Henry.

Am I now to assume by what you've told me before we went on the air, Brian,

that they have made another list of 500 fucking alleged professional wrestlers

in the industry today around the world?

They've found 500 that they believe need to be recognized as professionals over at Pro Wrestling Illustrated, and they have put out this list again this year.

It is the annual.

It is, how many years have they been doing it?

It doesn't say 34th annual PWI 500.

We talk about it every year.

And back in 1990, you may have been pressed to find 500 legitimate pro wrestlers, but if you included Japan and Mexico, you could probably do it.

But I am astonished that they can still claim that they are doing this.

Well, look at this.

It's a picture of Cody Rhodes holding a PWI shirt.

Is this current or is this from when he was in AEW?

Does WWE allow this?

Oh, no, copyright WWE.

They did allow this.

Uh-huh.

Wow, interesting.

Well, next thing you know, Bill Apter is going to be on Raw giving out the awards.

Which awards?

The Jerry Lewis Awards?

No, the PWI Awards.

Oh, oh.

Well, he's not with PWI anymore.

Well, they can't have anybody but Bill do that on a big-time television.

Well, let's go to this list.

The PWI 500.

Like Dick Clark, when he, after the stroke, he was still doing the New Year's Rock and Eve.

The primary.

And everybody was drunk about 10 minutes to goddamn midnight on New Year's Eve.

And there comes Dick Clark in that condition.

And it actually raised the suicide rate on New Year's Eve up 22%.

Oh, you stopped.

Dick Clark.

Leave him alone.

He was the world's oldest teenager.

Boy.

And then he was the world's youngest fucking

vegetable.

He was your world's oldest teenager until Dave Meltzer took that title.

Jim, the primary criteria for the PWI 500 is in-ring achievement, the win-loss records, the championships, the tournaments, influence, which is visibility and prestige within a promotion and/or the industry, technical ability, the quality of moves, matches, and in-ring storytelling, competition, success against the most varied and high-quality opponents, and finally, activity: a minimum of 10 singles, non-tag,

10 singles matches total, or, barring this, six such matches in separate months.

What?

Huh?

What are you saying?

What's happening there?

To be considered, you need to have a minimum of 10 singles matches or

six singles matches in separate months.

You have to be active in six different months, or you have to have at least 10 matches.

Jesus Christ.

Well, what, 10 singles matches?

But

so does that mean that Hawk and Animal at one point would not have been considered for this list because they didn't have singles, they only wrestle tags?

Or

that means that you have to wrestle at least in half of the month, one time in half of the months of the year

to be,

Jesus Christ,

I could be considered a goddamn

professional international traveler because 10 years ago I went to the UK.

All right, so yeah, you got to wrestle half a dozen times a year and have some singles matches.

And

they're legitimately going to try to pass 500 full-time,

heard-of, legitimate professional wrestlers by us here on this list.

All right.

Matt is right.

Well, let's get going.

We have a long way to go.

Let's get going.

And a short time to get there.

Jim, number one on the list.

No, we're not going to read to all 500 of these fucking things.

Not if you keep stalling.

Number one on the list.

No, not at all.

Come on, we got to get going.

It's a big list here.

Who do you think's number one?

Any prediction?

If you had to pick who's the number one wrestler in the industry today, who would you pick?

I would think it would come down depending on when their press deadline was: Cody Rhodes or Roman Reigns.

At number one,

Cody Rhodes.

Boom.

18 years pro.

His path to number one.

in 2007, he debuted at number 172 on the list.

Last year, he was number 10.

His previous highest amount was in 2022.

He was number six.

Who do you think is number two on the list?

Roman Reigns?

Swerve Strickland.

Oh, goddammit.

15 years pro.

Wow, really?

I had no idea.

15 years pro.

Last year, he was ranked 112.

Any thoughts thoughts on him being number two?

I mean,

it's not even knocking him to say by

what in the world, how can you be the number two

star in the entire industry when you're not even the top guy in your own promotion that is

outsized and out

overshadowed by the WWE to a ridiculous degree?

Who do you think is number three?

If Cody is number one and Swerve's number two, who's number three?

Well, okay, then I'm going to say MJF.

Number three, Will Ospreay.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

12 years pro.

Last year, he was number 17 on the list.

So did they

kind of work because it's a work anyway, right?

But

their

board of editors or whatever, considering all these

goddamn different facets of people's careers, it's a fucking work, try to sell magazines.

So did they make the deal that, well, we've got to give the number one spot to a WWE guy because then it would really be ridiculous if we didn't.

But we don't want to piss AEW off because their fans are probably even more the ones motivated by all the magazines.

So we'll give them the number two and number three spot, even though nobody in AEW has the

drawing power or is the goddamn in-ring or television performer that the top six or eight guys in the WWE are right now.

Well, it says here his decision to sign with AEW has been second-guessed by some, but the criticism has only motivated Osprey to prove his work ethic is second to none.

A true artist in the ring, he's competed in eight matches this year alone, earning five stars or more from the Wrestling Observer newsletter, Dave Meltzer,

including bouts with Kazushka Okada, Josh Alexander, MJF, and Michael Oku.

That's number three.

Will Ospreay.

Who do you think is number four?

Oh, God damn it.

Cody?

Swear.

Where would Roman Reigns be at this point?

I don't know.

Is he even on the list?

Has he wrestled in six different months or had 10 matches?

If that's the criteria, he may not be on the list.

Good lord.

So

one of the biggest stars of modern times who has set gate record after gate record might not be on this list because,

oh, geez.

All right.

Well, then Brock Lesnar wouldn't be around at all, would he?

Then let's go with Gunther.

Number four, Seth Rollins.

Last year, he was number one, 16 years pro.

He's a visionary.

Every bit of it.

Number five, any predictions for number five considering that we're on.

Gunther, good pick.

Number five, Tetsuya Naito.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

19 pro he was not ranked last year who do you think is number six well i was gonna orton just came back recently from a back injury again i don't know when their uh

printing deadline was but is randy orton going to be in here is laid gonna be in here is logan paul gonna be in here is is who of the top people that i'm forgetting about in the wwe they've got so many states rhea ripley or is this only guys

i believe this is only guys

Okay, then

in that case, why can't they put in where.

And here's the cutoff line where Rhea Ripley could kick the shit out of all the rest of the guys on the list.

Let's say

now you've thrown me off.

I'm still pulling for Gunther.

At number six

from the Bronx,

Damian Priest.

Last year he was number 71.

Well, that was when they were pushing him with the world title belt, but

you know,

all those people that I just mentioned are bigger stars than Damian Priest is.

Who do you think is number 77?

Number seven.

Gunther.

MJF.

Okay, now they finally remember to go back the other side of the street.

Nine years pro.

Last year he was number six, so he drops a spot.

Number eight.

Any prediction for number eight?

Gunther.

John Moxley.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Last year he was number three, and he's 20 years pro.

Wow, really?

Yeah,

and every single bit of it shows on his fucking face and his stoop-shouldered, awkward,

disconnected bucket of body parts physique.

Who do you think is number nine?

Gunther.

Number nine?

Gunther.

Last year he was number four.

He's 18 years pro.

That's amazing, but at least, you know, if he had come to the United States before the last few years when the administration came in, it would appreciate him.

We probably wouldn't be talking about him now because they'd have ruined him and he'd have gone home in misery.

So I'm glad that he

stayed hid over there from the mainstream television over here for that long until he got really fucking good.

You kind of just described what happened in the past to number 10.

Who do you think is number 10 on the list?

Oh,

now you now you've baffled me.

I got nobody else.

Gunther.

Number 10, Mystico.

26 years pro.

Last year he was number 46.

And now we'll go through some of the other ones.

Number 11, Samoa Joe.

12, Sami Zayn.

13, Drew McIntyre.

14.

We forgot about Drew McIntyre.

My God, how is he not top five?

14, Brian Danielson, 15 Moose,

16 Sonata.

Who?

From New Japan.

Affiliation, he's with the group Just Five Guys.

No, he's doing burgers.

No, not five guys burgers.

He's just five guys.

It's kind of like Ray's Pizza versus Famous Rays versus Ray's Famous.

You know?

So, so what do they do?

A bun with no burger or a burger with no bun?

Well, I don't know it doesn't say here, but number 17 is Jey Uso.

What do you think of that?

Ooh, um,

you know what?

It's a shame.

We talked about all the stars that are over.

He's over like crazy, but goddamn, his work.

It's like it regressed when he became the hot-dogging babyface, and it's just so

phony looking.

Am I overstating this?

He's not a favorite of mine in the ring.

Number 18, El Hijo del Vikingo.

Oh, for Christ's sake.

19, Mustafa Ali.

Wait a minute, back up.

Vikingo, number 18 in the world of professional wrestling.

And we have not got CM Punk in there yet.

Well, it says he's been out of action since the spring, but he continued his unreal crash and burn performances for half of the evaluation period.

He defended the mega championship in the U.S.

Mexico and Australia via Ring of Honor, AAA, and Game Changer Wrestling.

Did you realize I just said we ain't got punk in there yet?

And they're almost at 20 and they're talking about Vikingo?

Number 20, Eddie Kingston.

Oh, Christ on a cracker.

21, Kazushka Okada.

22, Nick Nemeth.

What do you think of that?

One of your former students.

He can outwork half of the guys on

or more on the top 20 that you've just read off.

But at the same time, again, you know,

where is he currently making a massive,

you know, difference in something as related to the people that we're talking about that they haven't put on this list yet?

Well, let's go back to this list.

Number 23, Alex Shelley.

Number 24, Orange Cassidy.

Jesus.

Number 25, Alex Kane.

What?

He is the suplex assassin.

He entered the evaluation period as the MLW World Heavyweight Champion.

I've never even heard of him.

Huh?

Well, we'll find out more about him in the future when he goes to another company.

26, Adam Copeland.

27, L.A.

Knight.

I'll stop there for a moment.

Oh, Jesus.

Again, L.A.

Knight, they're chanting on network television.

LA Knight, yeah.

But he's below Viking O, and who O is that O?

And he's right next to number 28, Trick Williams.

29, Christian Cage.

30, Ilya Draganoff.

You know, this really points out why they should do a PWI, it couldn't be 500, maybe PWI 50, the best part-timers in wrestling, because all the main eventers are part-timers.

Roman, Brock, Punk.

If Punk didn't qualify for the list, put Punk on there, too.

Number 31, Mark Briscoe.

Number 32, Katsuhiko Nakajima.

Oh, you're just making that up.

Number 33, Zach Sabre Jr.

Number 34, Mike Speedball Bailey.

Number 35,

Kenno

or Keno.

I don't know.

It could be Kino.

Kenno.

How many N's is there?

There's one N.

Is there a drava over the E?

No, just K-E-N-O-H.

Oh, there's an H.

Then Then

I think it's got to be Kenno.

Number 36, Mascara Dorada 2.0.

Number 37, Logan Paul.

Number 38, Michael Oku.

Number 39.

Ohu, ohu.

Number 39, Kruel.

K-R-U-L-E, by the way, not even C-R-U-E-L.

Number 40, EC3.

EC3, number 40 on the list.

Where's he been lately?

You never hear of him anymore.

He's the NWA World Champion, according to this.

I got you.

And been keeping up.

I'm sorry.

What do you do if you want to disappear?

You win the NWA World title.

That's what you do.

Number 41, Yuma Anzai.

Number 42, Adam Page.

43, Josh Alexander.

44, Satoshi Kajima.

45, Ray Mysterio.

Oh, Christ.

Behind.

All right.

Yeah, this list is getting.

I'm trying to see.

It's just falling off.

Number 55, Randy Orton.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Number 52, Braun.

Randy Orton, number 55.

52, Braun Breaker.

And behind these names that you've been rattling off.

Well, let me go back to the list here.

51, Joe Hendry, 52, Braun Breaker.

53, Oba Femi.

And if you haven't seen him yet, you probably do need to in NXT.

He is impressive.

I thought it was one of the girls from the name.

No, he's a rookie wrestler in NXT.

You have to see him.

He's got a look.

He's got size.

He can move.

And there may be something there.

Well, you'll see him when NXT debuts on

the WB.

What is it?

The CW.

What is it?

I can't remember.

CW.

Oh, CW.

No.

Dumont.

But Oba Femi.

Number 54, Max.

Grabs a Hemi.

Number 50.

No, Vince does.

Number 54, Max the Impaler.

Number 55, Randy Orton.

Number 56, AJ Styles.

57, Claudio Castagnoli.

58, Kevin Owens.

59, Jack Perry.

60, L.

Desperado.

61, Atlantis Jr.

All right, how far are you going?

62, Rocky Romero.

63, Ricochet.

You can get millions of dollars, even if you're 63.

64, Blake Christian.

65, Kyle Fletcher.

66, Solo Sokoa.

67, Konosuke Takesha.

68, Finn Bauer.

69, Dominic Mysterio.

70, Chris Sabin.

And now it's about to really fall off here because now, yeah.

All right, we could stop sooner.

Who's number 500?

Hold on.

I'm going through this.

Let's see if there's any puzzling names at the end.

Let's go towards the end.

There's all sorts of pictures and names.

I don't know who any of these people are.

Number 491, Lucas DeSangro,

nicknamed Twitch.

Number 492, Isaiah Wolf, trained by Johnny Rods.

Number 493, Rohan Raja.

His signature move is a modified jumping flatliner.

494, Chris Stara out of Montreal.

495

Chris Stara?

Chris Stara.

One word.

I'd share.

Chris Stara by Christophe.

Chris Stara.

495, TJ Sykes, the Red Prince.

496, Smiley.

His secret weapon is derangement.

Wait, what?

Smiley?

That's right.

Is there a photo of Smiley?

There is no photo, but he has held multiple titles in New Jersey's Pro Wrestling Magic, whatever that is.

I live in New Jersey and I don't know anything about Pro Wrestling Magic.

Number 497, Anakin Murphy.

498, Santana Jackson.

His signature move is the Moonwalk DDT.

Is that the Michael Jackson impersonator?

I bet you it is.

499, Travis Lee.

His home promotion is the ECWA.

And finally, number 500,

memes,

aka Blue Pain, aka Blue Kane.

Have you ever seen a person dressed like Kane, but blue, not red?

No, what?

That's Blue Kane.

He's number 500.

What is his size?

What are his dimensions?

It doesn't say here.

Social media sensation gained a lot of buzz this year, but also had a lot of wins.

Held

multiple championships in his native UK.

He bested Charles Crowley in a buried alive match and became the obsession and briefly the arch nemesis of Matt Cardona.

So he's reached the pinnacle of indie wrestling, I guess.

But what I'm saying is, is this just some normal-looking schlub dressed up as a blue cane, or is he really seven feet tall and 300 pounds or whatever the fuck?

See, now I'm confused.

I'm going to go through a few more here.

451, Austin Luke, Prince Harming.

452, Tony Depin, or Deepin.

Depin, I think.

453, Baron Corbin.

454, Lucky.

Oh, excuse me.

Laney Luck.

Nickname Lucha Laney.

455, Ellie Everfly, or Eli Everfly, I guess.

Here's where I'm confused.

456, Maki Ito.

Secret weapon.

Obscene finger gestures.

Why is a woman in here if...

See, that's...

I don't understand.

And what does that say for Blue Kane when she's 50 points ahead?

Yeah, I don't know.

Here's another woman, Sawyer Reck.

Who's this?

Ring style hardcore.

Impressive team 3D Academy grad missed some ring time due to injury.

Defeated Milo for the hood slam best athlete in the East Bay title.

Retained against Rob Hands.

Picked up multiple wins against Jimmy Lloyd, and beat Billy Dixon in a falls count anywhere match.

And you should have seen that goddamn knockdown drag out she had with Arnold Finster.

And Tips McGee was the referee.

Here's an interesting one.

They had a big crowd on the street corner.

At 396 is Microman,

build height 3'3.

Popular young wrestler is great at beating opponents who underestimate him.

Biggest win this year, arguably, was Joey Janella's cluster fuck battle royal during WrestleMania weekend.

He defeated Dan Hausen, Brandon Kirk, and Dark Sheik, amongst others, and challenged Joey Janella for the extreme title.

Microman, three feet.

So now we have women and midgets, or little people.

They used to be called midgets.

In here.

Dwarves are actually the real term.

All the wrestlers who were advertised in wrestling as midget wrestlers were actually dwarves.

Ricky Morton's son, Carrie Morton, number 354.

It's a picture of him here.

But

he's neither a midget nor a dwarf.

I don't know why this just hit me looking through this.

I guess because I saw a picture of a hairy wrestler.

What happened to Cameron Grimes?

We heard he left WWE, but that was it.

We haven't heard anything else.

I assume he's going back to his previous name and personality and

attempting to further himself.

You would have thought AEW would have jumped all over someone like that.

Well, no, he can work.

Okay, you have a good point.

Maybe they wouldn't jump all over that.

All right.

Well, this is the PWI 500.

It certainly was.

On newsstands, wherever you find

wrestling magazines in 2020, go to Barnes and Noble.

Well, yes,

where can you find a magazine these days?

That's why people are so stupid.

Nobody's reading anymore.

All they do with their lives is get on their telephones and then go to sleep at night, Brian.

And I only agree with one of those things.

I feel like you got to go to sleep.

And you got to have a good night's sleep.

It's part of a healthy routine if you sleep for some period of time once a day.

Can you agree with me on this?

I'm a big fan of sleeping.

I'm a big fan of napping when I get a chance.

It's always good to have a nice little nap in the middle of the day.

Sometimes that's like a trailer or a teaser for sleep.

well i'll nap and then that way later on i can look forward to sleeping but you can do all of those things and even more

on a helix sleep mattress they you know helix they've been our friends for so long now

you can sleep on a helix sleep mattress you can nap on a helix sleep mattress you can watch tv on a helix sleep mattress you can you can eat your dinner if you got a nice bed tray

like uh you know

Betty Davis and whatever happened to baby Jane, or whatever the fuck.

Or there's other things you can do on mattresses that I've been told, but that's up to the individual.

But they got the best dagum mattresses of any mattress people that you're going to come into contact with, and

you don't have to go to them because they will come to you.

Brian, no more do the people have to go out to these shady mattress stores in these back alleys and get the, you know, the black market mattress, the epidemic of those back in the 70s was what

led to most of the, you know, socially transmitted diseases.

I've never heard that.

It's true.

Before mattress delivery to your home in a box was legalized, you had to go out to a mattress store in a back alley and do it in a shady way

where you actually had to lay on a mattress that other people were laying on to see whether you liked it or not.

And that's what led to the great plague of 1987.

Almost a quarter of the populace

didn't make it through that because they had been laying on tester mattresses.

And it was kind of like the green stuff that grew on Stephen King and Creep Show.

But you don't have to do that anymore because Helix has streamlined the process.

You just go

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That's where you're going to find them.

And then you take the quiz

and you tell them what kind of

or do you sweat when you sleep?

Probably because you're fretting over all the evil things you've done to people.

Or do you like sleep on your side or your back?

You want to be cooled down, heated up, flipped over, whatever the case.

And they will pinpoint the mattress that they have that you want, and they will send it to your door.

And you just take the box into the bedroom or wherever you have your mattress and unbox it, and poof, there it is.

Remember that song, Poof, there it is.

Poof, there it is.

No, that's not it.

It was woomp, there it is.

Well, there is no word named womp.

That's the problem.

When I first started hearing it, before it was a hit song, I would hear it at center stage watching WCW Saturday Night.

I couldn't tell what the fans were chanting.

I'm like, what are they saying exactly?

And then the song hit.

No, there, well, there's, there's, there's only Helix only deals in real words.

Poof, there it is, right there on your bed.

And you've got,

oh, a long time.

I can't even find the line to tell me how long you have to try it out in your home before you can still get your money back if you don't like it.

But what kind of asshole would you be if you didn't like these Helix sleep mattresses?

And they've got 10 to 15-year warranties, the hundred-night trial offer

stands in effect, and there's no fiberglass.

There's not going to be any kind of fiberglass wrapped up in these mattresses.

Some of these other mattress companies are actually grinding up returned Coca-Cola bottles and making mattresses out of the fine powder.

Have you heard this on the news?

I have not heard it.

You have not heard it.

There's no evidence of this.

You don't have to worry about this with the fine mattresses from Helix Sleep.

I know for a fact that they were doing this because it was on the news when a person in Springfield, Ohio ate a dog that had been chewing on the mattress made out of the ground Coca-Cola glass.

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Just pure mattress technology, folks.

And right now,

I can't believe I'm about to tell you this.

It's coming up on Christmas.

Well, you know, all days of the year, you need a place to sleep or

just at least a place to do those other mattressy things

but right now they're offering 25 percent off all mattress orders if you get five mattresses that would still count you could get my god you could save more than one of the mattresses cost you so get five you'll need them eventually If you're a 20, 30 year old person, you're going to go through another four or five mattresses.

Anyway, 25% off and two free pillows.

If right now you go to helixleep.com slash JCE,

that's H-E-L-I-Xsleep.com

slash JCE, 25% off all mattress orders and two free pillows.

And that's not even talking about the kids' mattresses and the fat people.

If you are a giant, corpulent, fat, obese, morbidly goddamn explosive, diarrhea-ridden whale,

they've still got a mattress that won't just completely pop underneath you.

Especially, it's actually reinforced with rebar and tuba fours, but it'll hold your ass up.

Wait, what will?

What are you saying?

The big fat person mattress they got.

You don't have that.

I turn for a second to look at my email and you make up some, the worst story yet.

There are no mattresses on that.

Slowly, you can turn to the Helix Sleep website and see the fine mattresses for you and your family and your friends and whoever else you want to make sure has a good night's sleep.

It's the Helix Plus, the mattress designed for the big and tall sleepers and also the ones that are so fucking fat that their bathtub has stretch marks.

And that, you know, when they were hit by a car, the police asked the driver, said, Why'd you run into the guy?

He said, I didn't have enough gas to go around him.

All right, all right.

Let's get back to talking, everyone, about a great mattress, a great way to sleep, Helix Sleep.

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Well, Jim, I know we just reviewed AEW all-out 2024, but Dave Melcher's star ratings are now out and people have.

Well, now wait a minute.

You misspoke.

We didn't just review it.

We reviewed it before, but it's not what we just did.

Well, I mean, we just did it on the most recent episode.

Yeah, but we didn't just do it right now with what we were just saying just beforehand.

See, that's like, let me ask you a question.

The day of the, if you are on a Monday, right?

Yes, the horse's name was Friday.

No.

If it's Monday, as we're standing here, just as an example, if it's Monday,

the upcoming Saturday, is it this Saturday or is it next Saturday?

The upcoming Saturday on a Monday?

Yeah.

This coming Saturday.

Yeah, but the thing is, that's also the next Saturday that you come to.

That's why I said it's this coming Saturday.

No, no, no, because it's this Saturday, but it could also be next Saturday.

Both of those things are correct.

That's why we've got numbers on the day.

Well, it can't be this Saturday if it already passed.

Now it can be Saturday after next.

See, see what I'm saying?

But nobody says that anymore.

Clearly, Saturday after next.

I was out next Saturday.

And people show up on the wrong fucking day, and they go, Where were you?

Well, you said next Saturday.

Well, this was the next Saturday after you said that.

Who does this happen to?

Many people, you see it on the news.

You see it on the news all the time.

People are there, they're showing up to eat dogs and they show up on the wrong day.

I saw it on television.

Yeah, I mean, I've seen this story, but maybe it's only in

the Louisville metropolitan area.

I think, and it was Canton, Canton, Ohio, is where it was.

Well, anyway,

what did you say?

I said, well,

and then you said, what did you say?

No, no.

What were you saying before you said that?

Oh,

back to the action.

The star ratings, Dave, those are star ratings in the rest of the Observer newsletter.

Folks, the entertainment value is going down from here.

Now we got to go to fucking Uncle Dave's babblings.

There's always a chance that this could be where he shows you that you and him think alike.

He could surprise you with a star rating here and you go, you know, that's not unfair.

He is flattering these fucking people like a drunken sailor sucking up to a New Orleans whore.

So I expect everything from five to 7.5 stars.

Every time they go out there with Uncle Dave watching, they know they stand to make between five and seven stars.

The hard way.

The hard way.

Well, Jim, we did not see the pre-show.

On the pre-show, the acclaim beat the Iron Savages eight minutes, eight seconds,

a star and a quarter.

Wait, whoa!

What the?

Did someone have a fucking bout of explosive diarrhea in the middle of a hip toss?

According to Dave Meltzer, this was the weakest AEW match on a pay-per-view show in recent memory.

Good.

Do go on.

Tell me more about this.

It was almost like God was punishing Max Caster for claiming he's the best wrestler alive because of how messed up stuff was here.

But Lord.

Wow, I guess we know who Dave doesn't like.

Jeez.

Fuck it.

Hell, but think about

how bad it had to be.

Did he give any specifics or is that just the overall

impression?

Again, I'll go through what it says here.

Jack Jameson,

whoever that that may be, challenged Billy Gunn.

Castor did a brutal-looking Hurricane Rana attempt on Boulder.

Attempt?

The MXM collection.

Those are the former models who, I guess, WWE is not fighting them on that intellectual program.

Yeah, God, no.

I'm sure they're sending them some more.

Here, take some more of that shit.

They were watching because they're building to something with them versus the acclaimed, according to Dave.

Oh,

that'll put asses in seats.

Now I wish I would have watched this.

Castor botched the Ray Stevens.

Ric Flair flip into a buckle spot.

Oh, Jesus.

Bronson did a topay on Bowens.

Giant Boulder did a moonsault on Caster for a near fall.

Giant Boulder did a moonsault on someone for a near fall.

Bronson did a splash and landed on his shoulder.

Ugly.

Boulder power slammed both acclaim members at the same time.

Jameson tried to interfere.

Well, I'm sure that felt good too, by the way.

One of these big, stiff, fucking green indie motherfuckers power slamming two guys on top of themselves.

Gunn pulled Jameson off the apron and punched him.

The match story was that Caster kept trying to pick up Boulder and collapsing to build to the spot at the finish, where he finally got him up for the Death Valley bomb.

Then they did the arrival and the mic drop on Bronson.

Oh boy.

All right.

Well, you know, now that may have been the match I might have enjoyed more

if that had set the tone for the evening.

But I knew we were in for four hours, so I didn't really dive into it an hour and a half early.

The next match we didn't watch, Dustin Rhodes and Sammy Guevara and Hologram

defeating Tony Neese and Arya Davari and Josh Woods, nine minutes and 50 seconds, two and three-quarter stars.

Well, things are looking up now from the one and a half or whatever we got beforehand.

Another match you did not watch.

Juice Robinson and Austin and Colton Gunn defeated Josh Hilt.

Josh, John Silver, and Alex Reynolds and Evil Uno.

Oh, Christ.

Seven minutes, 33 seconds.

So they're still indulging that fat pleather clad fuck that he's a wrestler to where he can at least, you know, work on, oh, send him out on the pre-show.

We don't want to hurt his feelings.

What the fuck?

Two and three-quarter stars.

He must have not been in much.

Then came the angle where Sky Blue came out on crutches and Mariah May went after her to be saved by Queen Amanata.

Sky Blue was a baby.

I believe she was a heel when she got hurt, so I guess they're bringing her back as a babyface, or maybe just because it was her hometown.

No stars applied to this.

I think the final match we did not watch, Mike Bennett and Matt Tavin and Roderick strong won a three-team match over dante and darius martin and action andretti and beast mortos and shane taylor and lee mariarti

three and a half stars

all right so that uh

that was the pre-show show

Which had to go, what, about an hour and a half?

We now go to the main card, Jim.

MJF defeated Daniel Garcia, 23 minutes, 41 seconds,

four and a half stars.

I mean, again, you know, it was the,

how would we boil down our critique of it?

It was the best of a bad lot.

You know, that type of praise.

This was not the best

MJF match ever.

They didn't,

you know, nobody just fucking broke their own goddamn leg or, you know, tore their quads and was left crawling on their bellies like a reptile in the middle of the ring.

It didn't suck.

Nobody had the explosive diarrhea or projectile vomiting.

But again, it was Garcia.

You know, so it was a

nice MJF match that he

participated in and then, you know, was made somewhat of a fucking goof out of at the end because I guess

he's gone away.

But is that

Steamboat Flare

ranking quality?

Four and a half stars?

I don't think it's MJF Darby Allen.

What was it?

Full gear?

It was one of those pay-per-views that was the opening match on the pay-per-view.

It was the best match on the pay-per-view, and I think it was like four and a half stars.

But that match was better than this match.

Well, yeah, because at least Darby Allen has some

element of weird charisma

rather than a lot of elements of no charisma.

Well, the next match, Jim,

the No Charisma Express, Claudio Castignoli and Wheeler Yuda

lost to the Young Bucks 15 minutes, 43 seconds,

four stars.

I wonder if Wheeler Yuda had to butter up his mother to have her vote for him in the beautiful baby contest.

He's just fucking there, isn't he?

He's just there.

And four stars is just there.

I mean, it kind of of says a lot that this Young Bucks match, which was a nothing happening match no one cared about, gets four stars when it was middle of the road.

I wish that was a star rating you can get middle of the road.

Again, if you're even grading on his scale, whatever that may be, with MJF and Garcia, you had something that made some sense, that had some build.

And for the kind of people that like that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing those people like.

Garcia does have his fanciers in the crowd in AEW.

But this match, the tag team match,

who gave a fuck about that?

How was it pushed in any way?

Was it

a

contribution to the evening's festivities?

And how was it executed almost flawlessly where it could be a four-star endeavor?

What the fuck?

Well, do you have the next match?

Will Osprey defeated PAC 20 minutes, 35 seconds.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Let me guess.

It's either

six or six and a quarter.

Five and a half stars.

Oh, okay.

He's getting more conservative in his old age, is Uncle Dave.

It really is crazy when you think about it because the only way it works is if there's a limit.

If the idea is the best of the ranking system could be this, even if you later expand it from four to five stars, for instance, or for even five to six stars.

That means six stars has to be the limit.

I've heard Dave say that the limit is infinity.

What does that mean?

Like, if you are a wrestling fan and you're still at this in like 200 years, you'll have like 135-star matches just because time has gone by.

So you have to keep expanding the system.

It doesn't make any sense, but five and a half stars for Osprey versus PAC.

Well, I mean, it,

again, I hate to repeat myself, but for the kind of people who like that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing those people like.

You know, they did all of the

athletics and the gymnastics and the aggressive parkour, and they do it better than anybody else does.

They're very sharp with it, that type of thing.

But it got, as we mentioned, just ridiculous.

It's not.

a contest anymore.

It's live-action kung fu movies and video games.

Yeah, no kidding.

You know, I've been going back through my old Shaw Brothers films because I have like the box sets now on Blu-rays.

I've been able to watch all these movies I haven't watched in years.

That is what it is.

This is like the crouching tiger, hidden dragon era of high flyers, and it's not enjoyable all the time.

And, you know,

besides that, my God, when you're five and a half stars, so we've surpassed anything

in modern wrestling up until, you know, 10 years ago in the Tokyo Dome or whatever with all the great stars and the best workers there's ever been.

But still, was this a goddamn big money fucking match?

Was this a culmination of a major fucking angle or program or feud or whatever?

Was this, or are you just grating on

they didn't slip and fall on any of their big flips?

See, the one thing they have going for them is the crowd was really into that match more than anything else on the show.

It hurt the rest of the show, besides the booking.

The crowd was into that match.

What else was left to do?

Well, the next match, Jim, Chris Statlander defeated Willow Nightingale in a Chicago street fight, 14 minutes, 58 seconds,

four and three-quarter stars.

Oh,

thanks for coming, Kurt Angle.

Oh, you know, if he got Stokely to manage him, maybe it would help.

He never got.

He never got five.

I don't know if he got four and three quarters, but he never got five.

And you know, read, because I've seen bits and pieces of the recaps on the that people have tweeted, but didn't he go on and on about the thumbtacks and the barbed wire and the garbage cans and so-and-so

took a muffler off a 67 Chevy and shoved it up the other lady's fucking uterus until it came out her throat and she was whistling Dixie every time she breathed.

That wasn't this match.

Maybe you're thinking of a Japanese match.

But

how is that?

Do you, you, you,

you took a wonderful shit.

We've got to really, or

see, that's why,

you know, you...

You infected more people with that virus than anybody else in town.

We're going to award you a speech.

What the fuck?

Well, you've kind of hit on another thing, not to say that this match was a virus or these women have one.

I thought this was the most enjoyable match on the show, and I said it before,

but Dave has also graded on this curve of, I personally don't like it.

I don't enjoy it.

You know, four and a half stars.

So now you're trying to think the way other people think, but you don't think?

Like, there's no sense to that.

Yes, no, there's no logic there whatsoever.

Otherwise, now he's ready for, if you like this kind of thing, then this is the kind of stars you would give it.

But I don't like this kind of thing.

But the reason why I don't like this kind of thing is because it's girls

bleeding and fucking hitting each other with goddamn blunt instruments.

Sounded like the beastie buns for a second there.

And going through tables.

Girls, girls, girls, girls.

And going through tables and doing all this other goddamn garbage and the thumbtacks and the fucking hypodermic needles and the fucking, goddamn it, your plutonium

radioactive fission material.

What the fuck?

How hard do they need to make it on themselves?

Everybody's already having surgery.

Everybody's already hurt and banged up.

Are we going to go through another pain pill era?

Or straight to, you know, goddamn, let's just sign twice as many wrestlers as we need because half of them are always going to be hurt.

So they can keep doing this fucking garbage indie bullshit and get five stars from Dave Meltzer.

It's amazing.

All the stuff in the 90s in Japan that was like underground and dark, and you know, Corrick and Hall wasn't sold out.

That's the style that a lot of these people have accepted here in America all these years later.

But Jim, the next match, Kazushka Okada

retained the continental title in a four-way over Konosuke Takeshita, Iron Cassidy, and Mark Briscoe,

15 minutes, six seconds,

four and a quarter stars.

Just keep moving.

Just keep moving because what the fuck?

He gave one star for every person in the match, and an extra quarter is a tip.

That's 25%.

Well, this next one I'm interested in, Mercedes Monet

retained the TBS title over Hikaru Sheeta, 16 minutes, 32 seconds.

Did he?

And that was the longest goddamn match of

the previous several.

And it seemed like every bit of it, did he mention the wig?

No.

What?

How does he not mention this?

Maybe I must be missing.

Let me just tell you, two and three-quarter stars.

Two and three-quarter stars is the star rating.

The crowd is really loud, early, so it was nothing like the Wembley match.

The crowd was really loud, really?

What?

The crowd was dead, but these two just weren't close to the rest of the matches on the main card.

Sheeta did four dropkicks.

Looked like Stan Lane taught her how to do them.

And the horse collar, but Monet made the ropes.

There was some sloppy stuff.

Sheeta did a nice Frankensteiner.

One person almost scalped herself.

Sheeta did a nice Frankensteiner, but missed a dropkick.

Monet did the old bank statement, but Sheeta made the ropes.

Monet did a sunset flip power bomb and double knees for the near fall.

Monet came off the top.

Monet bent over and her hair fell off.

Monet came off the top rope, but Sheeta got her knees up.

Sheeta hit three falcon arrows for a near fall.

She'd have hit the katana, but Monet kicked out at one.

Both ended up in a tug of war over a kendo stick.

No mention of the wig.

That was another tug of war.

And here's the thing.

We spent a lot of time on the last few minutes of that match.

Can you imagine if we had picked it apart minute by minute like he is?

How the fuck could Dave not mention that the final several minutes of the match were her holding her wig in place, selling her scalp?

No matter what she did or what was done to her, she adjusted her wig.

That was the story of the match.

He loved

the review.

You know what she should have done?

She should have done the old inner ear injury and come in with a fucking amateur wrestling headgear.

And that, and don't that would encourage the people to make noise.

Like when Stan Lane got the artificial hair for that brief period of time, he did the old Mongolian stomper thing where you got a bad inner ear fucking problem.

And if the fans make noise,

it's going to be painful and you get these things to cover you up.

And that way it holds your wig on.

And at the same time, the fans are encouraged to scream at you so you can say, stop it, stop it.

And they need to have some encouragement to make any noise except farting in her general direction whenever Mercedes comes out.

You know, with the idea that I, and I'm assuming you have no idea how painful it is for the remainder of the wig and whatever glue holds it in place to come ripping off, we don't know.

If it rips up scalp, we don't know.

But if you had this happen and you were the promoter, the booker,

would you almost think of it as

a good thing that you could play into, to do something with, to make the match come alive?

And then, again, even if you didn't do the headgear thing, just something the fans now have that they could yell at her and get excited about, teasing her over.

It would just lead to something as opposed to selling your scalp the entire second half of the match.

If I was the promoter, what I would do is check with my attorney.

And of course, my attorney would be Stephen P.

New.

So he would know right off if there was a hair clause in the contract.

And then I would go back, I would say, look here, I'm paying you allegedly millions of dollars a year.

You didn't disclose to me that you were as bald as a peeled egg.

You didn't disclose to me when I purchased you for all these millions of dollars that you were balder than a cue ball.

And now

I want to nullify this contract because I did not buy for millions of dollars of a wrestler that's going to be tugging at their wig all the time.

Until you can grow some hair, I want my money back.

If you're, again, we don't know if she's bald.

I think she may just have real hair that's taped down so they could put the color.

Maybe she's got the, maybe she's got the heartbreak of psoriasis or whatever caused her hair to fall out or whatever.

If you're Tony Khan, do you insist that she fires whoever her gluer is?

Whoever did the glue job?

You're blaming the gluer?

Who else would you blame?

That glue did not mix good with sweat, maybe.

I don't know.

Maybe the gluey.

Maybe she did something.

Maybe she was monkeying with it.

Maybe she was, you know, trying to fiddle around and fix it after it was glued.

I think that the gluer

should be at least brought in for a deposition, but you can't just blame the gluer ahead of time.

Maybe the wig manufacturer.

You know, maybe they didn't manufacture the wig properly to be glued onto someone's sweaty head, as you mentioned.

Well, let's move on here.

It makes me wish I was still doing a show at Ron Four.

I could have asked an expert in wiggle.

But let's go to the next match here: Brian Danielson.

Excuse me, ma'am.

Brian Danielson retained the AEW title over Jack Perry 27 minutes, 53 seconds.

Oh, my God.

Four and three-quarter stars.

Okay, wait a minute.

What did he give Pack and Osprey?

Let me scroll up.

I think it was

five and a half stars.

Okay, Jesus.

If you're rating the art form of wrestling rather than the video game form of wrestling,

whether you love him or not,

Danielson and Perry had the people more.

It was more dramatic.

It was more

of everything.

So if that wasn't on this scale, considering the opposition, and if that wasn't five stars, I don't know what the fuck he's looking at.

What do you think?

I didn't think the match itself was all that great.

And again, part of it was it's just hard for me to lose myself in seeing Jungle Boy as someone who could be a serious competitor against someone who's an athlete or someone who has experience.

Brian Danielson's supposed to be the best mat wrestler.

Well, yeah,

we reviewed it, but in this field, trying to make some sense of the gradation of his degradation, how was that not

comparable to and greater than some of the other fucking things going on?

Well, you know, Osprey and Pat kicked out of more cool stuff.

I think that's really what it counts.

But let's go now, Jim, to the final match of the double main event.

Adam Page

defeated Swerve Strickland in a lights-out cage match, 31 minutes, 21 seconds.

Good God on that last hour was two matches.

Oh, boy.

Four and a half stars.

Four and a half stars because unfortunately the plan

was for Hangnail to rip off Swerve's pants and pull out his massive throbbing dong

and circumcise him with a rusty fishing knife.

But they ran out of time on the pay-per-view window and they had to drop that spot.

They had to cut that spot.

And they had even consulted with a moil.

Bet you didn't know I knew that word, did you?

I was shocked to hear you say that.

I don't know who would have done the consultation.

Tony Conn ain't consulted with a moil, I'll tell you that.

My favorite episode of Seinfeld.

The moil?

The moil.

And I could have been drunk and laying in the gutter, a piece of garbage, and people stepping over me.

That episode aired recently, within the last few months, and I watched it.

And I always hated that actor.

And it finally hit me.

He did a really good job in that role.

Yes, because he was so obnoxious that you didn't even like him when he was being brilliant.

Yeah.

Nevertheless, speaking of being so obnoxious that you didn't like him, but neither one of these fucking assholes were brilliant,

did he have anything to say for the

stabbing of the needles through the face?

Has anybody

come out and said, okay, yeah, he did, he did, gave him Novocaine and made his fucking brain numb.

Or

what was that for?

What was the

concept of that otherwise than to be fucking weird?

Weird.

You know, there's nothing in the match review.

So let me just go up a little bit to what Dave wrote about the overall pay-per-view.

Maybe he mentioned the wig here.

I don't see anything here either.

But he's not, he's just, oh, four and a half stars because they just did all these things to each other and didn't have any controversial opinions about the

chair shots.

Was the chair sanded down?

Actually, let's hear what Dave says here.

The performance by both men was great.

The match included both men taking bumps on a cinder block, using a burned wood spike, supposedly taken from the house, burned down,

multiple staples all over each other's body, with blood coming from chests, backs, and cheeks.

The finish saw page use a hypodermic needle and shot strickland in the mouth and through the cheek he is just again he's just recounting this like this is something can you imagine if a football writer

it was supposed to be writing about reviewing a football game and he said then The quarterback pulled out a giant hypodermic needle and shoved it in the face of the fucking opposing goddamn guard.

Well, there's a little more here.

Let's see.

Just try and just, as matter of fact.

The cinder block stuff was dangerous enough that Paige's back was ripped open by it.

The needle was gross, a turn off to many, but not super dangerous.

Oh,

the chair shot is a different issue.

I think one of the things that has happened is that with the current people involved in wrestling mostly becoming fans in the late 80s and 90s, there is no personal frame of reference to so many 1970s stars having dementia later in life and probably won't until the era stars they relate to get into their late 70s or 80s.

To me, seeing the heartbreak of once brilliant guys not be able to remember a thing, far more than my parents' friends at a similar age, something you start to see when you are in your own 50s and those people are in their 70s.

AEW will argue that the chairs they use are gimmicked and thus safe.

It's hard to convince me of that.

But But given AEW has now done this twice in the last three pay-per-views, it looks like it's going to be a thing.

And we are 17 years past Chris Benoit, and the mentality towards wrestlers from far too many fans is that they are cattle who should be there for our entertainment.

And it's up to them to decide if they are fine with it.

And we don't care.

Anyway, I left the show with a very negative feeling.

Five stars.

Yeah, he gave those matches like four and and a half, like right under five stars.

What's he talking about?

All right.

And

we can come back to his foolishness if you want, but that brings something up.

And can I address something real quick that nobody is getting the fucking point of about the

70s stars having dementia later in life and the chair shots and blah, blah, blah?

May I?

Yes, please.

Because as you're saying that, I'm thinking, how many of those, how much of that was caused by chair shots?

Yes.

How many times did Nick Bockwinkle let Dick the Bruiser draw back and full, just full on, hit him as hard as he could over the head with the fucking chair without blocking it?

Exactly zero in his fucking career, right?

I watched the guys in the 70s.

I worked with the guys in the 80s.

Every once in a while for the angle, for the big shocking thing on television.

Then there'd be

the Midnight Express, the Fantastics did it twice.

WCWN.

That's the earliest example I could think of of really hard chair shots, 84.

Well, because a lot of the other stuff was done in the territories in the 70s.

It doesn't exist, but it wasn't done.

It was done very rarely.

And it's done for the fucking angle.

And it was done for the maximum amount of people to see it.

And there was some agreement beforehand.

Everybody knew it was coming.

And.

Those guys still had ways to fucking block some of the goddamn thing.

And the guys swinging knew how to swing, and the guys catching knew how to catch, right?

It's still hard, but nevertheless,

then suddenly in the 90s, everyone had Balls Mahoney, Boo Bradley, bless him.

You know, but stuff like that going on.

That was a completely different animal, and that's what these people's frame of reference is: gimmick chair or not, but

it's not the chair shots

in

probably the majority of cases that are going to get you.

Because again, as we said,

the 70s guys weren't taking share shots like that,

but they were taking bumps over and over.

And they weren't taking bumps through furniture for the most part.

And nobody was jumping off the top rope to the concrete floor for the most part.

You can find an example of anything from somewhere.

But it was the repetition, which is what these guys are still going to have to contend with because the guys in the 70s took

a fraction of the amount of bumps in a match.

How much harder were those rings?

The rings were a lot harder,

but that's counteracted by the biggest bumps these guys take are out on a fucking floor.

And even with a pad, there's no give.

So you've got

an acceleration of

what was the chiropractor or was it Dr.

Francois and the W.

Francois Petit?

Yes, Francois Petit.

He said

a flat back bump like a body slam, right?

If a guy picks you up and gives you a body slam, that's the equivalent of a 30 mile an hour rear end collision in a car.

And, you know, so

drop down, one tackle, hip toss, scoop, slam, fucking whatever, That spot, that was called millions of times in those old shitty rings.

But think what's being called now.

We're coming off the top with a back-flipping Spanish fucking fly.

If the ring is better, we'll just come from eight feet farther up.

That's what I'm saying.

That's what's going to affect everybody, whether you're hitting somebody over the head with a chair or not.

The chair can be, the chairs can be done with sensible fucking application

by professionals who are told the way they're going to do it, regardless of how they want to do it.

Oh, just hit me.

I'll take it.

Well, no, he won't hit you.

We're going to do this.

I did that in OVW and Ring of Honor.

And nobody ever got concussion.

A lot of people got hit with chairs the right way.

It did not be stupid.

Yeah, I don't think it was chair shots that led to Vern Gagne or Red Gasteen getting dementia.

How many fucking times do you think Vern Kanye ever let anybody hit him with a fucking chair?

Have you ever seen documentary evidence, photo, video that anybody was ever allowed to hit Vern Gagne with a fucking chair?

I think Eddie Sharkey may have tried once.

Well,

again.

I'm just telling.

But nevertheless, that's so they're all fucking digging in the wrong well.

It's just be sensible about how much punishment you put your head through,

regardless of what the movement is.

And these guys flipping over the table.

In that match the other day that we were talking about, the girls on AEW of it, she flipped off the fucking apron, go through the table, and caught

Willow in the back of the head with her legs and like to knock her face into the fucking concrete.

They're just goddamn human pinballs, and it's gonna catch up with them.

Yeah, I always think that whenever someone does the dive that they set up and ends up like there's eight guys on the floor waiting to catch the person,

and the person's diving on them, the idea is that it's gonna be a safe landing for them, but everyone underneath there has to be one of those guys that everything's just landing right on his head or somebody gets the knee, yeah, somebody gets the elbow, and you need reconstructive surgery on your face.

It just, it's a matter of time.

It's fucking ridiculous.

That's why I've said,

I would rather let,

and they have all done this to me: Jerry Lawler, Paul Orndorf, pile drive me a hundred times in a row

than be in the middle of those people to catch one of those stupid fuckers coming one time

with his boot heels or his elbows or

fucking knees or the back of his head going to cave my face in

because he has no idea where he's landing.

Well, that was the AEW all-out star ratings by Dave Meltzer, the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

No mention of the wig.

We need to get to the bottom of this.

You know what?

It's a cover-up.

Jim, any thoughts on the passing of Kuniyaki Kobayashi?

Yeah, I'm surprised to hear it.

I have no idea that this happened.

When did this happen?

It happened this past week.

Well, nobody told me.

I didn't get a heads up on it.

You know what?

He was a fucking badass in his day, wasn't he?

You know what?

He looked more like Bruce Lee than anyone else.

So when I first started getting Japanese tapes, I was a big mark for him.

The hair.

Where did he fall in terms of in-between what rivalry of Tiger Mass?

What year would I have seen him?

Was that 82-ish?

82, 83, because I think he was after...

He was after Dynamite.

I think he may have been really the last great Tiger Mass feud before Sayama quit New Japan and started UWF with Maita and Shima.

And they called him Kid Kobe, did they not?

Oh, I don't know.

I've seen some

or I saw some magazines of the time period with the, you know, with the fucking karate stuff and everything.

It was kind of, he was very cool, as you mentioned.

Yeah, I always liked those matches just as, I mean, the dynamite matches are incredible and they are the historic ones, but.

As far as actual matches go, like if you want to rate PAC versus Osprey ahead of like Osprey versus whoever he's been feuding with for two years, the matches may have been better.

Kobayashi and Tiger Mask.

Oh, yeah.

Well, because

they were doing

some of these things,

but they had still been trained by people that had the contest came first.

They didn't lose the thread of the contest

and the aggression and the emotion was there.

And even though Japanese wrestling logic has always been different,

you didn't get the idea that it just, here, let's stand here and let each other hit each other, or let's cooperate in this extended series of gymnastic stalemates that go nowhere and then shake hands.

It was

quicker movement, if that's possible, and more,

it looked more impromptu, more.

you know, like some

legitimate escapes when a guy cartwheeled out of something and landed on his feet.

You were like, oh, shit.

He almost got him with that one instead of, oh, that was pretty.

Like the people imitating

Billy Robinson and Tony Charles only not being

salty old fucking middle-aged 40-year-old fuckers that really knew how to shoot, but guys doing homages.

Some of the video game wrestlers look like an homage to the type of things that they were doing in the early 80s,

you know, junior heavyweight, light heavyweight division in New Japan.

I prefer that to the guys copying Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko.

Endlessly.

Endlessly.

Well, Kuniaki Kobayashi, there it is.

Check out his stuff if you have never seen him.

Kuniyaki Kobayashi versus Tiger Mask and his red trunks.

Check it out.

That would have to be on YouTube, right?

That would still, because I mean, we just, because you and I have the mammoth tape collections and or, you know, we've been watching this shit for so long, we just assume, well, yeah, you know, pop one of those VHSs in

the machine and check him out.

Can they get it on the YouTube?

It's definitely on New Japan World, obviously, but I think there has to be some stuff on YouTube or Daily Motion.

So Kuniyaki Kobayashi.

Hey, Jim, one other thing that a lot of the listeners have been sending in.

Batista is on a press tour for his new movie, Killer's Game, or The Killer's Game, according to this poster here.

And he sat down for an interview with, I always get this either right or wrong, Chris Van Vliet, I think.

But we have this.

Our friend Chris.

You know him.

Well, I've never met him, but

you've never met a lot of the people you call our friends every time you open a show.

The listeners are my friends.

Well, I'm sure Chris Van Dulill is a listener.

I don't know about that.

But let's see.

I think he's going to be smart.

He is, but go ahead.

This is from the YouTube page, CVV Clips.

This is Batista on Jim Cornette.

Let's go to

2002 is talked about all the time.

It's legendary, right?

Did that help you or hurt you?

Like help you in the fact that you're learning and growing with Randy Orton and John Cena and Brock Lesnar and Shelton Benjamin?

Or does it hurt you that now you need to do that much more to be better than them?

It didn't hurt me as far as they went.

They only helped me.

They only drove me.

Like when you are surrounded by greatness, it brings out the best in you.

And these guys, to say they were competitive, was would be a massive understatement.

I mean, it was a class full of studs, man.

These guys were athletes.

Let me stop it there for a second.

Any problem with what he's saying?

No, I agree with him.

And it's pretty much the consensus from everybody else that was named there that they all kind of felt.

Feeled.

They all kind of felt that way.

Let's go back to Batista.

See how he felt.

So I was good there.

I needed them.

I, you know, thank God they were there.

What hurt me was my character that I had in OVW because I really had,

and I always get grief about this because people think that I don't respect Jim Cornette, you know, and I, and I really do.

And the reason I do is because Jim Cornett taught us so much about the history of wrestling.

He taught us so much about the traditions of wrestling.

But I won't back down when I say that career, that character, it stunted my growth in OVW because I had nothing but squash matches.

That's what I did.

Leviathan?

Leviathan.

I went out in two, three moves, and my matches were over.

I had Goldberg matches.

Let me stop it here for a moment.

There's a little bit more, but Henry, what's your thoughts on this?

Well, here's the problem.

Yes, on TV,

he had squash matches.

And when we introduced him, he had some in-house shows also.

But, Brian.

You've seen some of the programs and some of the videotapes.

Who did he wrestle at the big matches at the Louisville Gardens?

The big show, Paul White, that one, The Big Show.

Yeah.

He also wrestled Kane,

Glenn Jacobs Kane.

He was the guy to wrestle the giant muscular wrestlers.

Yes, he also, when he lost, because he was going to the WWF or WWE,

he lost to the guy named the prototype, who was John Cena.

And I think the match went fucking 14, 15 minutes, whatever.

And then there was the problem of the classes.

We didn't fucking say, goddamn, don't come to class.

We didn't say, I'm not saying he didn't come, but I'm saying we didn't say don't come to class, just do TV squash matches.

He was in the classes, except when he was injured.

And he was doing everything everybody else was because it didn't matter what your gimmick was in class.

And Rip Rogers was teaching the same things verbally to everybody that was there

that, you know, regardless of what their gimmick on television was.

And I, you know,

Dave at that time, I've said he was very meek and very, and I appreciate the nice things he said about me.

And I'm not saying anything bad about him, except he was very meek and he seemed very unmotivated a lot of times because I don't think he was comfortable with the gimmick because,

Brian, let me ask you a question.

You loved horror movies when you were a kid, like all fucking young boys.

We like to watch the creature features, right?

Well, like, you know, my era was Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street and yes, but

this was a great series of movies, yeah.

The scary movies, right?

Yeah, lots of fun.

And, and boy, and Michael Myers, a cool motherfucker, right?

And Jason.

Never got into Halloween.

Well, okay, but I'm saying the stars of these movies,

whether it's Frankenstein because you're 100 years old, you're as old as Carl Limley like me,

or whether it's goddamn.

Reference, what you win today, you're the winner.

But the point is,

here's this guy who looks like that.

Why have you shaved your head and fucking jacked yourself up to weigh 340 pounds at six foot fucking five and you got these tattoos if you don't want to, and somebody gives you the opportunity to play a fucking monster in a horror movie and you're not having fun with it you wanted to instead

Batista the whatever the what he was dressing like James Bond and sunglasses and he was a ladies' man well the other thing is

you and anyone else who knew anything about wrestling you wouldn't have thought more than likely that they're going to bring up someone who looks like that and at the time moved like that and have him wrestle classics that would have been an unreasonable thought to train him towards that, wouldn't it?

Well, and also, like when Big Show came in, he understood, right?

I said, we're building this guy.

He's the monster.

You're coming in as the irresistible force for the immovable object.

And he was calling shit where Dave would spear him out of his fucking boots.

And Dave would give him the big, you know, belly-to-back, you know, whatever the fuck, and do all of his shit so he could help get this guy over.

So it wasn't like squash matches when he's wrestling and Glenn did the same thing.

And as a matter of fact, the way that we beat him against Kane

was that Steve Austin rolled in.

Remember at the big Christmas Chaos show?

Steve Austin rolled in and gave Batista Leviathan a stone cold stunner, and then Kane chokeslammed him or whatever the fuck.

We protected him.

He was never beaten because

he wasn't a good enough worker back then to get beat looking like that and still not kill himself.

That's well, no,

that's industry terminology.

I don't mean he would commit suicide.

I mean when

a guy was green and looked like that in the territory days, unless you beat him in certain ways to protect him and you just, he didn't know any better than to just let somebody fucking beat him.

then it would kill him.

It would kill him off.

It would bury him, as they say.

So

that was the strategy, and that's what he got over

to our audience more than almost any,

whether it be Cena or Lesnar or whatever, as the personality that he had here.

The people turned him babyface

because it was so fucking, it was something they enjoyed, right?

But it would point is, I said it a different way rather than, yes, we were pointing pointing him to, I figured I can train him for pay-per-view matches and runs and rivalries with The Undertaker, with Big Show, with Kane, with some of the, go back and look at the roster in 2001, 2003, there was a few more there, Mark Henry, who was training with him down here a lot at the same time.

But also the way I told him, I said, you can't go out there and start taking arm drags in a second match.

Your look is also a handicap.

And I mean, I've seen pictures of him lately.

He's dropped a lot of weight.

I hope everything's all right.

But

everybody go back to a picture of him.

At one point, right before he got here, he weighed 375 pounds.

Wow, he was that big?

He was when he was training, I believe, with Affair.

I think when he started.

Wow.

And it's not like he was a fat fucking guy, right?

But when we got him, I'm going to say he was between 335, 345.

And then he got a little leaner because, as I've mentioned, when he started in OVW, he'd only made a few weeks of classes, tore

either a bicep or a tricep, something involving his arm.

It's been 25 years, pardon me,

where he had to get surgery and he had to sit out for a few months.

And he was observing classes and he dropped some weight.

But point is,

how the fuck is he going to go through developmental and him show up as an un, you know, unknown fucking guy to do a local dark match?

You know, you, you couldn't, no, you can't be taking arm drags in a second match.

You have to be a main event guy the way that you look or be used somehow in the periphery of a fucking top spot or elsewhere is fucking ridiculous.

And that's, you you know that's what we were doing well let's go back to this audio once again oh there's more from the CVV clips site on or a page on YouTube here's Batista promoting the killer's game

didn't I didn't

I didn't progress like the rest of the guys I didn't progress like Brock Lesnar or Randy Orton you know even those guys are incredible athletes and you know obviously with Randy being a legacy you know I think he was born and bred into this business but I was just stunted a little bit I never got to speak on the mic I spoke on the mic a few few times and it was was me screaming into the mic, but I just,

I think my growth there was a little bit stunted.

And I went into the WWE completely unprepared.

And it was like a whole new learning curve.

And I, and I remember it, and I will say it over and over, that Fit Finley in a day changed my life.

You know, I went and that was kind of a last stitch effort.

You know, John Laurence sent me down to work with Fit

and Steve Regal, Dave Taylor.

And Fit just took me aside and just started talking to me.

Well, there it is.

That's the end of the clip.

Well, and there was a last-ditch effort because here's another of the problems.

I don't want to say he wasn't motivated, but Dave was not a per.

He was a very meek giant.

He didn't speak.

He just sat around waiting for things to be told to him a lot in those days.

I remember Mosley sitting in the corner with his hoodie.

We didn't just fucking burst out and tell Brock Lester, hey, do a shooting star press at this show at the Gardens.

You know why

we knew he could do it?

Because he's in practice.

He was like, hey, let me do this.

Let me try this.

He got the crash pads out.

Everybody was trying to do shit.

When a guy that's 300 pounds says to me, I'm going to do the shooting star press.

Okay.

And I asked Danny Davis, can he do it?

Oh, yeah, he did it.

All right.

But I'll give you an example.

It was the Rising Sun Indiana event.

Les Thatcher, the HWA, he was working with him also, the WWE Developmental.

And he gets a sold casino show.

There's a casino up there, right?

And it was quite a bit of a money deal for

his promotions.

So he got one of the bigger WWE stars at the time, who was Kane,

to come down and appear because Glenn knew Les from Smoky Mountain, etc.

And I brought Leviathan up to wrestle him in the main event because then we could put on the pictures of Leviathan on the posters.

Hey, kids, make your parents bring you to the casino.

Look at these two motherfuckers, right?

And it was also because that was part of the program.

Again, as I mentioned, Dave was in all the classes with all the other guys that he could do anything he wanted fucking do if he asserted himself.

And everybody was getting taught the same things.

So

I was teaching him how to work a gimmick that might lead him, same way I did Glenn, to a multi-year program with the Undertaker for pay-per-view.

I didn't think that Dave Batista was going to be in the third match on a pay-per-view in a clinical classic.

But anyway, so we get.

Dave and Glenn sat down in the locker room at the casino show, and Glenn knew the the drill.

He knew what I was trying to do.

And he asked David, what do you do?

Dave said, oh, whatever you want.

No, what do you do?

I had to sit there and say, look, he does the spear.

He does the spinebuster.

Because Dave is just like, oh, whatever you want to do.

He was just.

So we were giving him these opportunities.

I don't know what Fitz said that made the bell ring.

Maybe it was that they had sent him down there there as the last gasp.

Maybe the last gasp made the bell ring.

The next person that talked to him gave him a good idea, but

I don't know.

Maybe he just needed more personal

reassurance and petting because everybody else would just say, hey,

do your shit.

Well, there it is.

The comments of Batista promoting his new film about Jim.

No, no, wait a minute.

We won that suit.

He cannot make a new film about me.

No, that's not what I was saying.

That's not what I was saying.

You said he was promoting his new film about Jim.

We got the script squashed.

As a matter of fact, it's stamped confidential.

What do you think when you hear him say that he respects you?

That people are wrong when they say he doesn't, that he really does.

Well,

he's probably, it's nice that he's clarified things because originally the bone of contention was from what I recall again after the years have gone by, his blanket statement in his book was, I didn't learn anything in OVW.

And I'm like, really?

You didn't learn anything from Danny Davis, from Rip Rogers, from all of the WWE affiliated trainers and coaches and producers that came down, from Tom Britchard to Al Snow.

I can't remember who was going through at his specific time period.

From all of those classes with all of those other guys that said they learned so much.

How did all this escape you just because

we didn't have anybody else that was capable of going 15 believable minutes with your giant freakish fucking ass?

You mean that in a good way?

In a good way.

Yes.

It violates every rule of fucking wrestling not to put that guy on television again.

I dare anybody go back and look at a picture from 2001 of Leviathan in OVW

and tell me that you would have this guy get on TV and not just beat up two or three people at a time in about a minute to promote having to buy a ticket to see him against Kane or against the big show or against the OVW champion, whoever that may be at the time.

That ain't going to be on TV.

That's why you got to pay to see it.

Motherfucker, this is goddamn wrestling.

If you can't learn how to think about the business rather than just be a monkey and do moves from that concept, I don't know what to tell you.

Well, you know, Jim, one thing Batista can do is call somebody

and say that he needs a good phone plan.

Or possibly to gain some weight, drink a milkshake.

But, you know, our friends at Mint Mobile don't make milkshakes, but they do make wonderful phone plans.

And Brian, they send us

some

PR information,

some advertising info so we can pitch these things.

And it says, you know, when you discover a song that you bump on repeat and have to share it with your friends so they can experience just how awesome it is?

I don't think that really takes into account how awesome it is when you find out what kind of phone plan you can get from Mint Mobile.

I think it's more like when you go to court and they let you leave, or when you get out of jail, that type of relief, or when you've come back from taking the test and they said it's negative.

Who's gone to court power and been allowed to leave?

I'm not talking about that kind of court.

I'm talking about the kind where sometimes they they keep you for a while.

That type of relief and exhilaration and relaxation comes when you find out out that you can get a cell phone plan from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month.

It's a three-month plan.

That's $45 altogether.

You see the math there.

And

you get the unlimited high-speed data and the talk and the text that all the other big, high-priced phone plans have.

And you don't pay that much money.

Now, occasionally, there is a party line aspect to it where you're not paying much money.

so you might have to wait until Gertrude hangs up with Eloise talking about their rheumatism.

But otherwise, than that is the same as all the other phone plans.

There's no party line aspect to this.

This is a real phone plan just for you and just for all your phone needs.

It's just like everything else, but cheaper.

Well, imagine if you got on a party line with somebody that was engaging in some type of erotica via the telephone where you could listen in.

I wonder if they did that back in the 30s, back in Salina, Kansas.

Do you think in the 30s when they had the party lines?

Well, or any rural area of the country, do you think that some night there,

old Eloise was talking to Clem, the farmer, about the various diddle hopping they could do?

And then suddenly somebody else was listening in.

You fuck son of a bitch, you, I hope you die in the next 30 minutes, you motherfucking bastard you.

Yeah, see, that's the kind of stuff they might have been listening to.

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I think it's a great deal.

How many people do you know?

I know a lot of people.

How many people can get me on the phone?

That's another story.

Well, but no, but they don't have to get you on the phone.

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And it's all the same price.

I leave everyone alone.

Well, nobody else with a cell phone does.

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Texting is different than telegraph.

Well, it's still a written fucking method of communication.

Well, that's true, but it's not a telegraph.

And the phone can be your Pony Express.

See, think about it that way.

I have to say, there is something missing.

Like, there's one thing about getting a congratulatory text, but it was always a big deal.

Like, we have a telegram that just came in.

Hell, this is the colonel.

I want to congratulate the Beatles on coming to America.

And they would hunt you down in the hotel lobbies and various places to give you that telegram.

How many telegram servers or whatever, deliverers got punched out because people thought they were being served with papers?

Oh, no, because they were wearing the little, like the organ grinder and the monkey outfit.

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And now we're praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive.

Because if I got to spend another minute with you, Brian, I don't think I can barely survive.

But we're going to AEW.

That's right.

Where Tony Kahn can afford an AI Phil Rosuto if you want to won.

Oh,

boy, they need some AI.

They need to do the Thunderdome thing, don't they?

And in AEW now?

Where they just put a screen on the chairs, the empty chairs in the arena, and put up somebody's face.

But it'd be the same four faces.

What would it be like if you had seats with screens on them and they were empty?

There's no, no people showed up to be on screen.

They would call it collision.

AEW on September 11th, and there's some...

There's a line there on that date that this television program occurred, but I don't want to cross any lines in delivering it, so I'll let you all do your own in your head.

But the scene of the disaster was Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, about 65 miles down the road from me.

And

I mean, we're going to talk about some of the things that went on on the television program, but basically to ask questions about what the fuck is going on.

And then we'll talk about the fact that there was nobody there, and then we'll discover whether anybody watched or not with the ratings.

But this was one of the most bizarre

television shows I've ever seen.

It's like they just said, everybody just go out there and come up with something to do on your own and do it.

Because the shit didn't even match what was going on beforehand.

What

are they serious with this?

They being he, yes.

They being he.

he

well let's sit down and and recoup the uh recoup the

various recap maybe recoup i should how do we recoup i'd like to how do we recoup our time for watching this thing

so

they use the parking lot a lot

the parking garage they got there at rep arena it's a beautiful more people there were more people at the parking lot yeah there because they're the attendants were back there.

And

the cold open of this thing was the plumber speaking in riddles while spooky music was playing in the background.

And he was, egos are out of control.

I can't take it anymore.

And he's talking about his lordship.

He's referring to Regal, who's not there anymore, but my mentor.

But also, he said, I am the one true king of these lands.

Diplomacy has failed.

I choose war.

Are we going to have to watch this fucking movie that he's ripping off so that we know what in the hell this gibberish is?

He may be ripping off more than one movie at the same time at this point.

It seems like John...

I think what happened is Brian Danielson decided to give Jon Moxley a copy of War and Peace.

And now Moxley is just ripping off dialogue right from it.

Because if he's a badass, he shouldn't be be talking this way.

Where it's like, I'm going to convince you I know big words that I heard Danielson say in the car.

Well, we went from that as the cold open, and the plumber will be back later on in this program, to seeing Darby Allen skateboard into the garage.

And then

we had Tony Schiavone in the ring with Christian Cage and his various ephemera, Nick Plain, Nick Plain's mom, and the lizard.

And Tony Schiavati, this was a night of mistakes, and fuck-ups, and brain farts, and

delirium, where you imagine that some of these people may have a high fever.

Tony Schiavone says that Christian Cage has a contract to get a world heavyweight title match whenever and whenever he wants.

All you got to do is stand there and just pitch it to him, Tony.

My God.

And but then Christian Cage catches it

and drops it on the ground.

He's trying to paint the picture that he

finally made the Dino douche there get aggressive and be a monster on purpose when in the

big multi-person, whatever the fuck they call it match they had.

When Lucha, when Kill Switch grabbed me for the choke slam, I looked in his eyes and then Christian said, and the light bulb finally went off.

Not the light bulb finally went on.

The light bulb finally went off.

I didn't even pick up on that.

That's exactly what he said.

The light bulb finally went off.

Yes, he went from having some semblance of thought in his head to being completely blank and vacant.

And then, so now he's a monster and a killer because his light bulb went off.

And

they did small whats from the small crowd, but they kind of started chanting Lucha Sars a little bit.

But Cage wants to take the world title from Brian Danielson.

And,

you know, he's like, as you've said before, a Bond villain, but it was a good heel promo, especially in this,

judging in this atmosphere.

But if a...

If a good promo falls in an empty forest, does it draw any money?

Did I miss any of the nuances of this thing?

Probably not.

I've said it before.

I'll say it again.

I like Nick Wayne in this role.

As far as all the young, skinny guys on the roster, I think he's the least offensive because you buy him as a young punk.

I shouldn't say punk.

You buy him as a young

punk?

Punk or someone who just doesn't do right or someone who makes bad decisions and they have a mom leading him along the way.

You buy him in that role.

He works.

You buy him as a juvenile delinquent.

You know, I hate to put it that way, but yes, they should have him flattening tires and like keying doors in the parking lot

and

smoking behind the barn.

When you were in high school, there were certain kids you always went to school with, and then one day they were gone.

And you're like, oh, did they leave school?

Oh, no, they got sent to Nike.

What's Nike?

That's where they send the bad kids.

Oh, okay.

Is that so?

Is that how they make those shoes?

I don't think that's the same sweatshop.

No.

Anyway, so

Renee Moxley Good was in the back with Don Fallus and Kyle Felcher and Take a Shit and Osprey.

And now, and

again, help me try to, what the fuck, Don wants Osprey to team with Kyle

tonight in the gauntlet

match for the World Tag Team title shot.

Osprey is already the,

not the intercontinental, international champion.

And he's a singles, and he's a babyface, but

Kyle is a heel, except he's friends with Osprey.

But Don is still allegedly a heel manager, isn't he?

Because these are all the people he supposedly manages.

And then he's trying to call in a favor from Osprey that Osprey allegedly owes Don.

But then Kyle pleads with him in

a voice I can only describe as a Dickens urchin begging for more gruel.

You're my friend, be my partner.

Yes, and please, may I have some more?

And so Osprey agrees, and then everybody hugs him, including the heel manager, except for Take a shit, who is not happy and stares at him instead of giving him a hug.

Who's the fucking baby faces here?

Help me.

Again, the booking is completely ass backwards and wrong, but there are individual good performances within that.

I think Tequesta is perfect in that role.

It's just that.

Of not saying anything and having a sour look on his face.

I agree with you.

I've been thinking for a while they're going to set up something where Callus and Fletcher turn on Osprey, and it'll probably happen in that Bucs match, you would think.

And then they'll be more clearly defined as heels, you would imagine.

But for right now and for the last several months, they're tweeners.

They just, they're there, and he's a heel manager.

And there's no redeeming value to him, but he's also friends with the good guys.

And he's benevolent to the people in his chart.

Like when Gary Hart returned to world-class in 84 and he wasn't exactly a heel manager, but the fans didn't accept him, so they didn't cheer him.

And then he became a heel manager again.

And then he sliced open the missing link.

Anyway,

they had a TNT title match.

Now, Jungle Jack off.

Old Mr.

Perry is

he has to pull into the garage or the parking lot or wherever, I guess, of the arena in his dingy black scapegoat van.

So somehow, apparently,

instead of being a celebrity who flies first class or at least business across the country to wrestle on this national television promotion, he's driving this goddamn Chester the Molester van.

across the country in the highways and byways to get to the shows.

And again, it's one thing if they show a van like that pulling up to the show and a Nick Camarado or something gets out of it.

It's Jack Perry.

He's a little kid.

He looks ridiculous.

And then there's the match.

Well, and then the spooky metal music, though, where he walks out and it's very ominous and

there's 2,700.

Well, no, I think, what it was it, 2,700 tickets distributed.

Who knows how many

tug them up on it, but there's in a building that seats 23,000 people for basketball, and he's walking out there, and there's murmuring.

How the fuck?

And the guy holds the sign up that we would see a lot over the course of the night.

Jim's not going to like this across from the hard camera.

And they were very

perceptive on their timing on when I would and wouldn't like something.

And it's Jack Perry against Leo Rush.

Wasn't Leo Rush a fucking heel?

Or was that one of the jobs he had that he quit or got fired from or retired from the business from beforehand?

I think he was a heel, but he was also kind of buddying up to, at the time, way back like Top Flight or something.

He was acting like a baby force to lull them into.

I don't know what happened.

He got fired.

And now he's back.

And I thought he was a heel again, but Jack Perry's a heel.

Well, anyway, Perry jump started it, and they went right to the break.

They must have been running long after that dissertation earlier.

And when they came back from the break, you know, boom, boom, boom.

And

I'm just listening.

Perry gives Rush the Snapdragon suplex, and there's silence.

And

then

Rush runs to the ropes and jumps, and he does these unorthodox moves, taking advantage of his microscopic size and his quickness.

And he's going to do some kind of ass-first bounce off the bottom rope and bounce backwards into giving Jungle Jack off a flying stunner.

And he stumbled and fell on his ass, but the counter to the flying stunner was going to be that Jungle Jack was going to

run and give him the knee, right, coming off for the stunner.

But since he stumbled and fell on his ass, Jack went over the top of him and fell on top of him.

And then he jumped up and hit him with another knee, one, two, three.

And then,

was it because he had completely missed his goddamn first attempt because the guy stumbled, or is this part of his character that Perry just then, as soon as one, two, three, he rolled out and walked out to no response, didn't look back, didn't milk the camera,

whatever the fuck, just like, ah, fuck.

And boom.

And then I guess

they may have wanted to address that or whatever the fuck.

Marvez, Barbrady, was in the back where Perry walks up and says, People like me are crucified in this life so we can be worshipped in the next.

What?

No, yes, that's what he.

Yeah, no, I know that's what he said.

That was my reaction.

What?

Yeah.

You?

People like you are parking attendants in this life.

What does he mean?

Skinny people that grow their hair long and grow beards?

I don't know.

I don't know.

The children of rich, successful celebrities?

We will always be crucified.

We're not Nepo babies.

We're scapegoats.

Maybe that's really what he's talking about, the whole scapegoat thing.

He's rejecting being a Nepo baby, gets the worst-looking, like you said, Chester the Molester van, paints it all black,

drives it to the parking lot, jumps out with his belt, jumps back in.

Maybe that's what it is.

I'm still thinking that somebody needs to ask the local authorities to look in the back of that van.

Anyway, speaking of imitation badassery, Renee Moxley Good was in the back with Hangnail Adam Page.

And he does some more dramatic acting.

And then

just because

obviously it called for it, even though they don't usually do this, after his interview, he walks off and they just follow him with the camera.

And he walks past a bunch of random job guys.

And he's giving out the intimidating looks.

And then suddenly he comes face to face with Jeff Jarrett.

And Jeff Jarrett

cuts a promo where he basically psychoanalyzes him and tells him what's wrong with him and that his toughest opponent is going to be the man in the mirror.

And then Paige punches him and tosses him over some chairs.

And Karen and the jobbers all come in and Paige walks away.

But regardless of whether

Paige's acting is bad or this the whole thing is preposterous or what, it's kind of a moot point.

Again, this show,

everybody's brain farts, everybody's quality control.

I'm surprised there wasn't another fake drywall wall in this.

If you watch this segment,

in the back of this, there are like five or six

building employees, like the

concession people or somebody in fucking, you know, maintenance, whatever.

They're sitting in a row of seats against the wall and they're they're just watching this.

And Brian, what happens if you're, if you are an employee of an arena

backstage, or if you're an employee of any company anywhere,

and within 20 or 30 feet of you, two guys suddenly start fucking wailing away at each other in a big fight.

You don't necessarily break it up, but don't you stand up and assess whether you need to get further the fuck away?

Yes,

absolutely.

No, they're just sitting there.

You see, well, guys, legs crossed.

They're sitting there watching this shit right on.

They couldn't say, hey, can you please get out of the way of our shot?

Well, maybe it's because if you're in the AEW backstage area, you're used to seeing these kind of skirmishes break out.

It's not a big deal.

It's just, what the fuck?

They can't even look through the viewfinder of the camera and think, oh, if those six people are sitting there while this big fight's going on, all these people are running up yelling, and they're sitting there like they're watching a movie,

maybe we should ask them to goddamn move over or change our camera angle.

Hmm.

Did you watch

the.

Are you excited for the Jeff Jarrett Adam Page thing that they're, for some reason, kind of building up?

It's not just this thing, it's been several incidents now.

I don't know what they're doing.

And Jeff was

they did a great promo one week and it got him over as a babyface.

And then

they've been beating him up ever since.

I don't know where that's supposed to fucking go.

Well, to be fair, he also co-hosts the pre-show with Renee and RJ.

Renee and RJ.

And Double J.

And Double J

And OJ.

All right.

Anyway, Private Party and Commander with Alex.

Did you watch the breakdancing entrance by the babyfaces?

Yeah, I guess they needed to have something new for Alex to do since the Lucha brothers are going to WWE and they didn't take him.

And

now he's with these guys, and you say their breakdancing was his that really stood out.

Well, he made old Ray Gun look good.

And, but, anyways, but here's private party again.

It's just

silliness and commander there for whatever that's worth.

And Alex is dancing like a fucking fool.

And they're in an empty building, and people are in the eh.

And there, there's three opponents in the ring.

And suddenly, the plumber and Marina Schaefer and Pac and Claudio come in and beat up all six of them.

The job guys in the ring, and the fucking three baby faces, and I guess the manager, and I don't,

and then they just were gone.

They just left.

They took their ass whipping and departed.

And then they start doing the

I can't even call it a promo because it's just nonsensical.

PAC is saying,

This company is broken.

No response from the people.

We are inevitable.

Silence.

Diplomacy has failed.

This company is ours.

And people are, what the fuck?

What diplomacy?

What the fuck are you talking about?

Kissinger?

No, it's goddamn

Berzinski.

He took over for him.

Or Neville Chamberlain.

I'm not sure who he is.

And then Pack left, and the plumber wandered around, kind of, and then he left.

And there was the sign, Jim's not going to like this.

And

the people are like,

anyway, should we move along?

Well, what do you think?

Again, this has been playing at now.

Jon Moxley invading the show, even though he's one of their wrestlers and beating everyone up and saying that it's not their company anymore.

And he wants to speak to Darby Allen.

And again, PAC now gets on the mic, and there will be no diplomacy, be no embassy, there will be no ambassador.

I don't know what's happening here.

Whatever direction they're going to go, and we don't know yet.

There's still people that think Shane McMahon will be tied to this.

Yeah, well, and there's still more shit going on with Moxley and Darby on this program.

But go ahead.

But just what do you think of this tone?

Because, like you said, and it's not just this, so this isn't really singled out.

The crowd's dead.

The crowd's not reacting.

And it seems like these guys, specifically Moxley, is performing for himself.

Yeah.

They're auditioning for

poetry.

Whatever he's saying.

Yeah, they're auditioning for things they'd like to do in the future whenever the billionaire finally gets tired of paying them.

You know, we've seen the WWE create intrigue.

Who's going to turn in the bloodline?

Which way is that going to go?

But this is

speaking in riddles when people don't even understand the particular riddle game they're playing or where any of this is coming from, so that you can explain it to them afterwards, maybe

whenever whatever needs to be revealed is revealed, and then there's an aha moment.

Oh, now we understand all of this.

Except, are we even going to ever get that moment?

Or is this just

they're being overly dramatic because they think it's cool?

They're all getting a chance to be creative.

But no.

The people were sitting there going, What the fuck is going on here?

We don't understand this.

We can't even hear Wild Pang anymore.

Yeah, by the way, it seems like security would have a pretty good idea of where he is.

He just walks through the crowd from the same place.

If you had to stop him from attacking people, it wouldn't be that hard.

But then we wouldn't be able to figure out what what is going on here and whose company it is.

But they better hope they got Shane McMahon

to make them forget how this whole thing started.

Whenever they,

I don't know whether they'll ever tell us or whether he'll just keep going on acting like this and they'll never make it clear.

Well, what was next on this show?

Well, I'll tell you that Chris Jericho wants the $7,000

for his jacket that

Orange Cassidy

dumped on him four years ago.

Four years ago.

Why is this a thing now?

Because

he wants the money.

He's hard up.

I want the $7,000 from four years ago now?

Jesus.

Yeah.

The lack of creativity in some of this stuff is amazing.

Well, we'll hear more about that later on because it was this another this show was just the same people over and over with same grievances.

Ricochet

got a big singles match with Sammy Guevara.

Brian, remember when Sammy Guevara was over?

I do.

I remember when we thought he was going to be one of the breakout stars.

You remember when they were standing up and down screaming?

until they got to know him personally and and he kept continuing to be a dipshit over and over

they have all successfully teamed up to

negate sammy guevara he came out and they're like eh

nothing

and he they have the match the video game match sammy backflipped what did you even say who he's wrestling

Ricochet Ricochet and Sammy Guevara.

Okay, I didn't know if you said Ricochet.

Well, yes.

I think I said it.

Well, goddamn it.

I'll say it again.

Ricochet and Sammy Guevara.

And again, they have the video game match.

Did you see Sammy backflip off the entranceway and almost break his own leg?

Yes.

He's loco.

Oh, and he made sure to show us at first, but, and again, people used to love that, right?

They popped on a guy diving off the goddamn balcony, but

then they didn't care.

And I guess, did he finally get enough heat on himself that they just said, fuck it, we're giving up on Sammy?

I don't know, but I think a lot of the problem beyond personal things or behavioral things was they tied him to Jericho for too long.

And they broke him away once, and then they brought him back to being Jericho's lackey.

Yeah.

And unfortunately, One of the only things left to do is have him do a feud with Jericho and beat him.

And the last thing anyone wants to see is him feud with Chris Jericho.

So it creates a real problem.

Well, and also Ricochet, the new high-priced, high-flyer,

he won the match with two kicks to the head and some kind of suplex.

He does all the dives and all the flips, and in his finish, I'm going to kick him in the head and suplex him.

And he just kind of beat him flat, but then Rigger Mortis came in and speared Ricochet.

So this

again, he's one of the new masked luchadors, but he's the big, the big one,

the fairly thick fellow.

And when he spears Ricochet, Ricochet sells that like grim death.

And Sammy comes back in with a chair and saves the guy that he just got beat by.

And then Mortis leaves, and

Sammy and Ricochet shook hands.

So,

what the fuck?

Does Ricochet seem special or just like one of the guys there already?

He's one of the guys.

Have we heard him speak yet?

We've seen him stare at a TV monitor.

And they're going to do him an Osprey.

That's one of the big matches that they're excited about.

I mean, we've heard him speak in the WWF, so I'm not excited to hear him speak, but he's in a new company, and

he's already going 15 minutes with middle card or unimportant people and,

you know, and he stands around and watches TV every once in a while.

And gets speared by a fucking miscellaneous mass Mexican guy.

So then Renee Moxley Good

was in the back with Ocody.

who was trying to emote himself.

Now they've got him trying to act.

And he was fake, almost crying because of how, you know, he

it was a tough fight, but he managed to win.

And then he, you know, laughed about it.

And then

Don comes in.

He's a heel manager.

He's got his boy Take with him

and says, hey, you didn't beat my guy.

And O'Cody calls Don a bitch.

And then Take steps up in O'Cody's face.

And who's the baby face here that we're supposed to be pulling for, rooting for?

The heel that's lined up with the heel

EVPs, or the goddamn

heel that's lined up with the bald-headed evil heel manager of the Phallas family.

Any ideas?

No.

And then we were at nine o'clock, and here came Darby Allen

wandering to the ring, just le ble.

And of course, Moxley has been referring to him and said he needed to talk to him over the past week or two.

So Darby says,

somebody's been looking for me while I'm right here.

That is the extent of everything he said when he came out.

And he didn't even say that with as much enthusiasm as I just had.

And in Moxley's new music plays, and here he comes with Marina Schaefer wandering through the arena.

And Schaefer goes face to face with Darby.

She's got bigger arms than he did, and he was wearing a big pink bushy hoodie.

And then,

Brian, is this another,

is it so smart, so inside that I don't even understand it, much less the average wrestling fan,

where they talk about how nothing is, Moxley says nothing has changed between me and you.

Any kind of half-ass has been putting him over, but whatever the fuck.

But then Darby cut him off, and he used to be a homeless dishwasher.

And AEW gave me everything.

And

you were my hero because you wouldn't change for anybody.

You still do indies.

Oh, joy.

But

then he bitches him out about what he did to Brian.

But you used to be my hero.

Don't we hear that all the time now?

And or I used to be a homeless dishwasher.

We just heard the hero thing or the I look up to you thing from Britt Baker in the Mercedes-Monet contract signing a few weeks ago.

But I mean,

again,

most people would go, what the fuck?

You still do indies.

You're on national television.

You're supposed to be a big star.

What are you, a fucking idiot?

But it's a hero type of thing, a noble thing for them because he used to be a homeless dishwasher.

So, what do you want, Moxley, is what he's saying.

So, Moxley then, and Brian, this is where we got it.

You got to help me, and we got to help the viewers or the listeners, or everybody.

Everybody needs help.

Moxley then says that Darby Allen was going to wrestle Brian Danielson for the AEW title at Grand Slam,

which is the dynamite episode from the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

But since Danielson

is indisposed

because of the plastic bag that was put over his head, apparently he's.

He's tried to murder him.

Yeah, I tried to murder him.

They didn't try to injure him.

They tried to murder him.

Yeah.

So, and hey, Darby, you weren't ready to be the world champion anyway.

So, Moxley wants Darby to hand over his title shot that he earned with Brian Danielson to him.

But Darby says, well, I'm not just going to hand it to you.

You got to do something about it.

And Moxley says, okay, then, in New York City on

September the 25th,

the title shot, they're going to fight for the title shot.

The winner gets the title shot.

And then Moxley talked in some more riddles and kept saying, I don't have time to explain to you now.

I wish you had time to explain this to us.

But he goes, I don't have time to explain, but this is the way it's going to be.

Why don't you have time?

What else are you doing?

What else are you doing?

Wander around.

Come out the entranceway instead of through the crowd and save you five minutes a night.

But anyway, so now we've established

that Brian Danielson, the world champion, can't wrestle Darby Allen at Grand Slam because he's been bagged.

So Darby is going to wrestle Moxley with the title shot against Danielson on the line.

That's where we've got so far in this thing, right?

Well, technically, the title shot is on the line, but yes, against Danielson, it would appear.

Yes, they're going to wrestle for the title shot.

I can't explain anything else.

I got to go.

I got a cab waiting for me.

I have to go.

But just remember that's where we've left it.

Yes.

Brian Danielson cannot wrestle on Grand Slam, so we're going to get Darby Allin versus Moxley.

And you know what?

For AEW, that's a pretty big match.

That's the match at Grand Slam because there's no Brian Danielson.

For the kind of people that like that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing those people like.

Yeah.

So then

we see.

dramatic foreshadowing in the back.

Christopher Daniels is about to say something and Nigel McGinnis comes in and he said, I've got to talk to Tony Khan.

And then we have to set through Mariah May versus whoever

and the Buckaroos, Maddie and Nikki in the back with more of their blathering where they never

really do anything anymore.

And not that anybody's clamoring to see them do anything.

But then

we get

again this show,

the disastrous everything, everybody's brain farting, everybody's fucking up, everybody's missing shit or saying something wrong, or there's no people in the building.

There's another Jericho promo about his jacket

that, you know, he wants the $7,000 for that Pockets poured the orange juice on him.

And he's stolen Pockets' backpack.

And he showed a picture.

In this guy's backpack, we're alleged to believe that he carries around an 8x10 framed picture of him with his former best friends remember chuckle fuck taylor and trent

and then he's jericho is saying that statlander and statlander and statlander forgot yes

i bet she'd like to forget she was in the photo

and then

As Jericho is knocking,

you know, there are no real friendships in pro wrestling.

Everybody's going to use everybody, blah, blah, blah.

Then there's Big Bill looking sideways at him, right?

Like the light bulb went off.

And he starts, so that's dramatic foreshadowing.

But Jericho screaming, I demand the cash.

I want the cash.

I want the money for my jacket.

So then suddenly Pockets pops up on the screen.

And he's like, well, you know, I don't have it on me,

but my friends are bringing it.

I got the cash.

And then here comes Kyle O'Reilly and Mark Briscoe

on

what is the technical term for that thing?

The big,

not a bulldozer, but the big machine with the big scoop on the front of it that you scoop up the dirt or stuff.

And it's not a tractor.

They're not mowing anything or pulling anything.

It's a self-propelled machine that has a scoop on the front, an earth mover type of thing, whatever the fuck.

But it's got the big scoop.

And in the big scoop is allegedly the $7,000 that

Jericho wants for his jacket in coins, in quarters.

And they dump it.

onto Jericho's fancy dan brand new Bentley that they've established that he pulled up in in earlier in the program.

That he drove to Lexington in.

Well,

it had Kentucky plates.

It had Kentucky plates on it and a vanity plate that said, hi, guys, but it was G-U-Y-5.

So I don't know where they

is a gimmick plate, it has to be.

But also where they got, but the point is they were trying to recreate

Mr.

McMahon's Corvette and Austin dumping cement in it, right?

Same flavor of thing.

That was supposed to be.

But when they dumped the quarters into the car,

nothing fucking happened to the car.

It's a converter.

They just went into the seats.

It may have scratched the paint.

We couldn't tell.

But it's not like the car exploded.

They dumped.

If that was $7,000 in quarters, that ain't a lot of goddamn quarters.

Yeah, Jericho had to sell the hassle of cleaning it.

Yes.

How long is it going to take me to get this detailed?

What the fuck?

They dumped a load of quarters into a convertible and nothing happened to the fucking car.

And the people, you can hear the people are like, ah.

It didn't fill up anything.

It was just on the floor.

No, it was on the floorboards were horribly messy and there was stuff in the bucket seats.

The fuck.

If it had been comically overdone and they'd let loose an avalanche of coins that would completely fucking cover the whole car, that would have been a big fucking pop, right?

But it was like, oh, we're going to fucking spill you these in your floorboard.

And boy, this comedy troop of Orange Cassidy, Mark Briscoe, and Kyle O'Reilly.

It's a shame what they're doing to Mark Briscoe, but at least they're tying Jericho into this and get all the joke people in one angle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaking of,

well, it's not a joke because a joke has a punchline and you either get it or you don't, but this is still up in the air.

Here's the second half of the conundrum we had earlier.

Nigel McGinnis is in the ring,

and he announces that since Darby Allen

is now putting the shot he has at the world title on the line against Moxley,

there's going to be no world title match.

Well, there was supposed to be no world title match because Danielson just got a plastic bag put over his head and was the victim of attempted murder, which is why Darby put the title shot on the line against Moxley loosely.

But now he's put the card before the horse.

So

since Darby's wrestling Moxley, there's going to be no world title match.

And then he said, and Danielson's probably in an iron lung anyway,

but the world champion should at least compete on the big grand slam.

And then he keeps talking about Brian Danielson's success should have been mine.

And he's been making comments on the secondary television programs because Danielson and Nigel had a big

rivalry

in like 2009 and 10 in Ring of Honor.

And they are playing off that, and Nigel's the over-the-top heel now.

And so they've been talking about that on the shows that Nigel is on.

But does anybody, Brian, on Wednesday night, know why that,

or even if they've been watching these other shows, have they made it clear why Nigel McGinnis thinks that Brian Danielson's success should have been his?

But instead, Danielson went on to greatness and Nigel had his career pulled out from under him because of a hepatitis diagnosis with the WWE rescinding his contract.

I'll go a little further.

Unless you were following Ring of Honor then, you may not even know he was a wrestler.

Because other than his run as what, Desmond Wolf and TNA,

he has only been used as a commentator on NXT and now here.

And he's not even on the main show.

He's on the Saturday show or one of the weekend shows and maybe a few matches during the pay-per-view.

That's it.

So all of a sudden he's out there.

They haven't done any video packages.

And he used to look different with the hair, obviously.

He was blonde, that's dark.

But the spiky hair, too.

Well, yes.

But there's a chance that they may be overthinking the amount of people that understand who he is and what his history is.

They are preaching to the choir without bothering to convert any of the heathens, is what you're saying.

There's a lot of heathens.

A lot of heathens out there.

So there's this guy that's never even on Wednesday night saying Brian Danielson, the world champion, is afraid of me.

But Tony Kahn isn't afraid.

And Nigel

shows a contract.

I've got this from Tony Khan at Grand Slam.

It's going to be Brian Danielson versus Nigel McGinnis.

Now,

and then they have since

either put up a graphic or a tweet or whatever.

Well, if Brian Danielson is able to

show up or wrestle or however they phrased it, but wait.

So Danielson was going to defend the world title against Darby Allen, but then in the angle, Danielson is bagged and injured.

So Moxley goes to Darby and says,

since the world champion is indisposed, you can't wrestle him.

How about

we wrestle for the title shot against the world champion?

And Darby agrees.

But then Nigel comes out and says, well, the world champion should at least compete, even if he's not defending the title.

How can you be cleared?

Well, as long as you're not defending the title, go ahead on out there with that broken leg.

You'll be fine.

What?

How?

And again, what was achieved with the Moxley turn or the Moxley attack on Danielson?

They hit the ring, beat him to the point where he was just carried out of the ring by the team.

with an oxygen mask.

They tried to suffocate him.

Yes.

If you want to beat him and get the match in a couple of weeks, why would you do that?

And then he does this whole thing with Darby.

He must feel like the biggest idiot of all.

All of a sudden, Nigel got the title match.

Well, but also, and somebody that

wasn't even there when all that happened to him is the one who gets a match with him on the big show while the other fucking

so anyway.

You know, it's interesting.

I mean, the idea of Nigel returning, I know he did the match at Wembley, but him against Danielson, not only is that the storied match, but that was a pretty physical feud.

I mean, it was at times uncomfortable with some of the headbutts and stuff.

Yeah.

What are they going to do?

Danielson's not what he was then, and he has to worry about all sorts of issues health-wise.

And Nigel,

I know he's had a lot of time off, but there's good and bad to that.

Well,

and then we were at our main event,

which was a tag team casino gauntlet match to determine who gets a title shot with the Hardley Boys.

And

at that point, I realized that this is going to go a while.

And also, I had forgotten when I'm watching this on DVR, I had forgotten to DVR the modern family that followed it.

So I knew I wasn't going to see the finish.

And I said, you know what?

I just, I just can't.

I just can't.

So, Brian, it's your duty to now tell me what happened in the tag team casino gauntlet match for the tag team title match with the Kookamunga kids.

At Grand Slam.

At Grand Slam.

What happened was exactly what you thought would happen.

What they telegraphed earlier in the show, because it sets up the Fletcher Osprey angle.

They won the gauntlet.

Here's the order of the tag teams that came in.

Number one, FTR.

Number two, Osprey and Fletcher.

Number three, the righteous.

Number four, the undisputed kingdom of Tavin and Bennett.

Number five, the acclaimed.

Number six, the MXM Collection.

Those are the former models.

Oh, boy.

Number seven, Top Flight.

Number eight, the Outrunners.

And number nine, the Grizzled Young Veterans who immediately brawled on the stage with FTR, who eliminated themselves fighting with the grizzled young veterans.

Osprey and Fletcher versus the Bucs, that grand slam.

Is that when you pull the trigger on Callus and Fletcher turning on Osprey?

Well, one would imagine

why would you go?

But then.

Again, you've got Osprey that you've just spent millions of dollars on

trying to elevate instead of people still need to be elevating him.

He's only been there, what, full time, six months, or has it been?

I don't know.

What the fuck?

He hasn't drawn a dime yet.

At least he's the most likely to of any of Tony's recent signings between Ocody and Mercedes and Ricochet.

They still, Osprey has something, but goddamn, now he's going to be working with underneath guys that have suddenly got a tan and a new haircut.

And yes, Felcher is just all kinds of athletic, but who the fuck is he?

We're not talking about Randy Orton here.

So I,

and meanwhile, MJF is working with Garcia.

And nobody would care about if they fucking lit him on fire in the town square.

No, he's not.

MJF is gone.

I don't know who Garcia.

Well, no, I'm saying MJF working with he just did it.

I'm saying you've got Osprey working with underneath guys.

You got MJF working with underneath guys.

You got everybody that they have that has half a name is working with underneath guys.

And again, in terms of follow-up, where was Garcia?

MJF's out of action.

Garcia got what Wardlow never got, which was a definitive destruction of MJF, and he's gone.

No, remember, Wardlow got the

diminutive.

The diminutive.

It was diminutive.

That's right.

Yes.

He powerbombed him, pinned him one, two, three.

And then by the time that MJF came back from whatever that hiatus was for, he was a top guy and Wardlow was gone.

So you got that going on, the Fletcher Osprey thing.

The Bucks, you talked earlier about the crowd not reacting to stuff.

The Bucs are the lead heel tag team who,

I mean, how do you build up someone stronger than saying they're EVPs of the company?

They could do whatever they want.

They beat up the boss of the company.

They take over the show.

They tried to put old Kenny Olivier out of commission permanently, remember?

The crowd sits there and doesn't react.

And it's a harsh reality about the reality of the Young Bucks and their appeal and lack thereof to a lot of people.

Their bad booking, their tiresome matches that we've all seen over and over and over again.

And

the excited young fan of 10 years ago who liked them on the indies,

they've got other things to do with their life now.

And it's not the Young Bucks.

And they've they've got a better wrestling promotion now to serve as an alternative instead of the shit show run by the evil billionaire that everybody hated.

I wonder if WWE is going to do anything different now with their tag team division.

If the rumors are true and they got the Lucha Brothers and the Motor City Machine Guns, even though I'm not a big Lucha Brothers style fan, that's still pretty big to have those two tag teams.

When you think of the limited amount of tag teams that have been pushed anywhere over the last 10 years,

those are two of them.

And WWE is a chance to remake their tag team division, starting now,

better than the AEW one.

They just added the grizzled young veterans who are off NXT.

FTR are dead in the water.

The Bucs are dead, completely dead.

Osprey and Fletcher is a thing that's about to end, so it's not a thing.

And then you have a bunch of tag teams, the acclaimed are.

You know,

boy, they've even lost Uncle Dave.

As they said about Walter Cronkite, when you've lost Uncle Dave, you've lost Middle America.

And then you had a couple other teams like the Outrunners who were only on the B shows.

They have no tanking division.

It's awful.

Tavin and Bennett, does anyone want to see Tavin and Bennett?

Not anymore.

Well, that was Dynamite.

Well, before we talk about, because I want to talk about Rupp Arena, a place near and dear to my heart.

But before we do that, what were the ratings on this fiasco for the national audience before we examine how many people in Lexington didn't want to see it?

AEW Dynamite on September 11th on TBS, 8 to 10.08 p.m.,

on average, watched by 716,000 viewers.

Holy shit, they're back over 700,000.

Hooray, hooray.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

According to WrestleNomics, Dynamite was outranked in the key demo among cable originals in prime time only by MTV's Video Music Awards.

So, and they did a 728,000 viewer average.

Although you have to think a lot of that, if not the majority, skews young.

Skew,

it positively stops young.

I can't imagine anybody over the age of 30 watching anything.

I saw highlights on the news is what I did.

Well, let's go to the quarterly hours and see how they compare to previous weeks.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m.

The Moxley Tape promo, the Christian Cage Live promo, the Don Callis, Will Ospreay and Family Backstage promo, and the start of Jack Perry versus Leo Rush.

888,000 viewers.

Oh,

okay.

That is the high point for the episode, in case you didn't know.

I was figuring it was going to be.

That is way better than they've normally been doing at the top of the hour.

So I assume they got handed a nice little audience.

And also, from their average, I can see that it's going to start plummeting like a turd.

Well, the turd continues in quarter two: 8:15, 8:30 p.m.

The continuation of Perry versus Rush with picture-in-picture, the Adam Page Jeff Jarrett backstage angle,

704,000 viewers.

Oh, good lord.

So 184,000 people in 15 minutes.

Well, we go to quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

The Private Party, Commander, Moxley, Marina Shafir, Claudio Castignoli, Pack Live Angle,

an ad break, the Learning Trees backstage promo, and the start of Ricochet versus Sammy Guevaro, a picture-in-picture.

685,000 viewers.

Oh, good lord.

Okay, now they're down over 200,000 in 45 minutes, and they've almost got to go up.

They have to go up at some point just to make their average now.

Well, we go to quarter four,

8.45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of Ricochet versus Guevara, a recap of all in, an ad break, the Okada-Takesha backstage angle, and the start of Darby Allen's Live promo,

691,000 viewers.

Well, that's up, but not very far.

Maybe I'm wrong.

That 888 for 15 minutes at the top will artificially inflate their average a good bit.

That 888 for one minute while the Big Bang Theory is still on is what it is.

We go now to the big nine o'clock hour, 9 to 9.15 p.m.

quarter five.

Darby Allen and Jon Moxley's live promo, Christopher Daniels and Nigel McGinnis backstage,

and the start of Mariah Mae versus Queen Amanata with picture-in-picture and full-screen ads,

720,000 viewers.

Okay, so they picked up 29,000 people at the top of the hour to bring them to the

second highest quarter of the show so far at 720,000.

Well, we continue that into quarter six, 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

The continuation of Queen Amanata versus Mariah May,

the post-match,

the Young Bucks Backstage promo, an ad break, and the Learning Tree versus the Iron Savages.

Oh, boy.

680,000 viewers.

Wow.

And the low point in the key demo, it ties with another segment, but 251,000.

Well, that also, that's the low point for the show so far.

And they lost the 29,000 that they got back at the top of the hour, plus another 11,000 in that 15-minute segment.

Well, we go to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The Learning Tree Conglomeration live angle with coins in the car,

an ad break, Nigel McGinnis's live promo, and Hook's promo on the street.

697,000 viewers.

And quarter eight?

Quarter eight, I remind you, we have an eight-minute overrun.

Quarter eight, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

The World Tag Team Title Contendership Casino Gauntlet match with picture and picture ads twice,

687,000 viewers.

Eight-minute overrun, match continues.

679,000.

Wow, so the overrun narrowly beat out quarter six for the lowest rating of the entire process there.

They went from

888 to 679

over the course of the festivities.

And the key demo, the trend line, it's below the trend line.

It really takes off below the trend line in the second hour.

And a lot of that, you have to think is because of the MTV awards.

Because if you have to choose between that and this, you're going to go with that.

But more importantly,

Rupp Arena and the

crowd or lack thereof in that giant building.

And we've talked about, I mean, they did 3,000, a little less than 4,000 last time, but this is now less than 3,000.

And that's tickets distributed.

Who knows how many were paid for and who

radio giveaways?

Please announce us.

Get somebody to come down, whatever.

I mean, 23,000 for basketball in Rupp Arena, and they've got a national television set up with 2,700 people in the building.

Don't run Lexington

if there's no other building.

And it's not like that Lexington is a bad town.

The WWE

in the day when they would do pay-per-views or big events there have sold out Rupp Arena.

And they have been there in more modern times where they do very respectably.

I have some recent numbers if you want them, real quick, for this.

Go ahead.

So we can go back to 2021, October 2021, WWE Super Show.

That's a house show in Lexington.

3,470 people.

Or tickets distributed, I assume.

And that's horrible, too.

Then we go to January 25th, 2023, AEW Dynamite.

So same event.

And these are from WrestleTicks, by the way.

5,494

tickets distributed.

We now go to June 16th, 2023, SmackDown,

9,841.

That sounds better.

We now go to August 19th, 2023, as you mentioned before.

Collision,

3,228.

And finally,

February of this year,

WWE Raw, 10,108.

That shows you how they got hot.

Well, and as a matter of fact, when they were hot in the early 2000s,

they were still hot at the house shows, even when the wrestling war had run its course.

And they did the all-time record gate in the state of Kentucky in Rough Arena in Lexington.

It did 20,000 people or whatever it was.

And Lexington has always been a great market.

And I've talked about when Jared opened it up.

And the thing is,

there was some element of, even though Lexington became a great market for the Memphis Territory, as I'll tell you in a second, there was still some element of, boy, this is a big building

that kind of held the atmosphere down when there were 7,000 or 8,000 people in the place because it's so big.

But

we've told the story before, Lance Russell knew the guy who had become the program director at WLEX 18 in Lexington, the NBC affiliate, because the guy had come from Memphis.

And

Lance sold him on the idea, well, at Channel 5 in Memphis, WMC.

We're doing these gigantic ratings Saturday morning at 11 o'clock.

Over in Louisville, WAVE, Channel 3, the NBC affiliates, Saturday at noon, it's the most watched program in the time slot, Memphis Wrestling, put it on here and they did.

And the thing at Rupp Arena

was

motivated to find

events to put in there because it had just opened, I think, what was it, 75, 76, maybe whatever.

And the reason why 50 years ago, there was a 23,000 seat arena in the state of Kentucky in a town of 160 or 70,000 people was because the University of Kentucky, the basketball team would fill it.

People would fight over tickets still with that big of a building, but they couldn't get anything else.

You know, and UK still had a...

The old Memorial Coliseum seated 10 or 12,000 or whatever, but wrestling had always traditionally been to one of the high school gyms in Lexington when they could get a spot.

So Jarrett went to Rupp Arena

and they cut him a deal for Thursday nights once a month.

They would put this giant, heavy, black stage curtain down the middle of the building, and they'd rent him half of it.

And the ringside and lower bowl just on half the building would seat 6,000 people.

And if you had to open up the upper deck, then you knew you had a really strong house, right?

And then they could put however many more thousands in the upper deck, it was ridiculous.

So

Rupp Arena prospered because they had people paying for parking and they had thousands of people buying hot dogs and drinks and beer or whatever.

And

their usher services and their building people and their concessions, they all had an extra night's work a month.

So they didn't expect to rent the whole goddamn building every night of the week.

And they still, it still takes a pretty big event to fucking justify Rep Arena, right?

But anyway,

when they got the TV

and then they went to Rep Arena and said, we're on WLEX.

There were three TV stations in Lexington at the time.

And we'll come there once a month.

They started building and they always went up.

The first show, well, the first show was 1,500 people.

A second was like 1,350.

And then it went to 2,600 people and then 4,000 people and then 5,000 people.

And they started in spring of 78 by the early 80s, 81, 82, 83.

The gates were bigger than they were in the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.

They ran Memphis every week.

They ran Lexington once a month, but Lexington,

an average card would do 30 grand, and the big ones would do 40.

And that's when the tickets were $5 and $6 a piece.

Because in Memphis, they still had the $3,000 or the $3

general admissions.

So if you had an 11,000-person sellout in the Mid-South Coliseum, the gate was $46,000.

You could do $40,000 in Lexington with 8,000 people.

Having said that,

from 1982 until today, a dollar then is worth $3 now.

So you're talking about once a month, they would do an arena show where their gate was between $90,000 and $120,000.

So you do that

12 times a year.

And that's why Lexington was such an important town in the Memphis Territory, and they didn't stop running it until they lost the TV in the late 80s.

But you can't go in there,

and that's another thing.

Think about this, Brian.

What was Jerry Jarrett's talent

payroll on a show that would do the equivalent of a $120,000 house?

Here, Tony has

these multi-million-dollar dollar talents and these national television stars and these widely known names and didn't sell 3,000 tickets.

And Jarrett

would draw crowds of up to 8,000 people.

I guarantee you, he didn't spend more than 12 grand on the entire talent roster, including the referee and the goddamn guy all in a ring.

Help me try to understand the economics of all of this.

I can't help you explain the economics of Tony Khan running the the rup arena again there isn't a market i could think of for dynamite or you know even collision or rampage

where they've gone up

everything is

whenever we have the information the previous time there there was 500 a thousand more people before that 1500 2000 more than that like it's the same scale it's it's going down Meanwhile, WWE,

even when they don't sell out, when they hit a market now, it's a big deal.

The AEW,

I think they've killed a lot of these places they've run,

smugly thinking they were doing good shows when they were doing market-killing shows.

When is the last time they sold out a building that they ran, the actual building, not the setup they had, like a 12,000-seat building, we got got it set up for 3,800.

When is the last time they filled the building they were in

if the building they were in was filled?

I don't don't know for certain.

It probably would have been one of the pay-per-view events either in Toronto or

maybe California or Smell, probably Toronto.

I don't know.

Did you see on Twitter one of the excuses why the AEW apologists were saying the Rep Arena live crowd was down?

No.

The killer on the loose theory.

Oh, yeah, I meant to ask you about that because that's a big story in Kentucky right now, isn't it?

Well, yes, he's dead in the forest.

He shot himself or done something to himself.

For those of you who don't know what's happening, since this is the United States of America, some nut went out and bought an assault rifle, an AR-15 or whatever,

and perched himself on the side of Interstate 75 down in Laurel County around London, Kentucky, and was shooting at people as they went by

and apparently hit five or six of them, whatever.

And they found out who he was.

He took off.

He left behind his car

and at least one gun.

But he took off, but they know who he is, they're looking for him.

But he's in the Daniel Boone National Forest,

and

so they're having to go heat-sensing things, and they're going with machetes through the guy.

It's, I forget, is like 200,000 acres of just

it's the Daniel Boone forest man.

So they're pretty confident that he hasn't come out,

but he's been, it's been a a week now.

And I don't care if you were fucking Rambo, you're not going to live for a week in the national, in the Daniel Boone forest with no,

they have no knowledge he had any kind of food prepared or whatever.

And he's on foot.

I think he probably killed himself.

And they can't find him because he's under a log somewhere.

But nevertheless,

that's 60 miles from Lexington.

And

they canceled high school football games in London and the surrounding area.

But Lexington life is continuing on.

And I don't know that he would have been

a threat to if the place had been sold out for wrestling.

What's he going to do?

Come and try to lose himself in the crowd.

But they said, well, there's a killer on the loose.

No wonder nobody went.

They can't just come out and admit they can't sell out a men's room with free condoms.

Well, what match on this show was the match that was supposed to draw someone?

The tag team and Gauntlet?

Ricochet versus Sammy?

Jericho and his team against the Iron Savage?

What match was the draw?

Was any of that even advertised?

Certainly not, because they didn't know they were going to have it a week or two ahead of time.

Now, if you are a hardcore AEW fan, you probably know there's going to be no MJF and no Swerve.

You probably assume no Danielson.

So then you're left with who's the top top draw on the show?

Is it Moxley?

Is it Darby?

Darby gets a great reaction.

I don't know what they said.

Is it one of those?

Darby will be here and he's speak.

But what are you actually billing them to the local?

I don't know what their local promotion is because we do hear from people who say they do a shitty job promoting locally.

I've seen some good jobs of it in New York.

I've seen MJF all over TV in New York in the past.

But what are they doing in these markets?

And what are you giving people?

With WWE, you're going to see the stars.

See, that's the thing.

You know the stars will be there.

With AEW, who's going to be there?

What's the match?

What's the match and the feud and the angle that's causing people to want to attend?

There isn't.

You're getting closer and closer to late 90s indie-sized crowds to sit there and just watch the show.

And before they start moving everyone around to be

all huddled together, so it looks like you have a crowd.

You see photos, just person here, person there.

It looks like it would be fun to just have your own section and just chill out.

Seriously, I'd love to do that.

But they can't draw.

And they're chasing away their viewers.

And we're supposed to believe that everything's good.

But nothing improves.

Nothing is ever an improvement.

And I said it before.

Everyone's saying, oh, they'll get the TV rights deal.

And then it's all profitable all of a sudden.

That's not going to stop Tony spending.

That's going to increase it.

He's going to do more stupid things.

More songs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They basically just teased the final countdown again

for Arthur Ashe.

You mean to tell me that they're going to book Arthur Ashe and have him come out to the song The Final Countdown?

Unfortunately, that's not possible, but any other rough arena.

That's right.

He's got some backbone and some principles.

Arthur Ashe is not going to lower himself to wrestling for AEW.

Well, I'll tell you what, you know,

I felt at one point during that program, Brian, like I ought to cut my throat.

But you know what stopped me?

I don't know.

No.

What stopped me was I've got the sharpest razor blades in the world, but they are German engineered into a beautiful non-cutting head, courtesy of our friends at Harry's.

The safety razor, the five-blade cartridge, you can't cut your throat with that.

It will not allow you to sever your carotid artery or any of the valuable tendons and ligaments you have in your various orifices and or appendages.

You can only have a close, comfortable shave with no nicking and irritation and aggravation.

So I was unable to put myself out of my own misery with my beautiful five-blade ergonomically designed handled razor from Harry's.

Wasn't that a bummer?

What?

I'm telling you, that's the only thing that perked me back up was how

soft and ebullient my face looked and felt after I shaved with my Harry's.

And immediately I got in a better frame of mind, but it was touch and go there for a while.

But folks, I'll tell you what, the blades are sharp, and the handle is ergonomic, and the foaming shaved gel is not only aromatic, but slicker than whale shit in an ice flow.

And that razor just glides across your face.

Well, now, Brian,

you've been going for the grizzly atoms look.

I understand you've been.

growing all of your facial nose and ear hairs since 2017.

Is that true?

That is not true.

I'm very, very, even when I have a beard, I look kind of neat and nice, I think.

Well, I remember you used to have the edges, kind of like the old cartoons of the devil, where you would

have that beard, but the edges would be kind of closely groomed there, and it would come down into a point.

Why don't we talk about that mustache you had in 91 that people love so much?

Well, that's that variant.

I'm going to mark up my new Jim Cornette figure with the Sharpie.

I'm going to put a mustache on it.

It was just a rib on me, actually.

I had a rash is what it was.

But anyway, folks, we've talked about our friends at Harry's so many times.

You want to look nice.

You want to feel good.

You want a slick face.

You want to be able to not only have good smelling deodorant and lotion and body wash and hair gel, but you want to feel like you're somebody.

Well, Harry's is going to fix you right up at an unbelievable value.

You know, when you go into stores, you get these cartridges these days.

They got the thing, the ball and chain connected to them.

They got to disable it at the checkout counter.

Sometimes, if you try to walk out of the building with the

cartridges, you're instantly electrocuted.

People have been doing that at Kroger, getting electrocuted, trying to steal those things

because they've got the sensor in them.

Well, you don't have to worry about that now.

You just go to Harry's.com.

By the way, there's no apostrophe.

It's just H-A-R-R-Y-S, no apostrophe, Harry's.com.

And you can get a five-blade razor, a weighted handle, the foaming shave gel, and a travel cover all in their trial kit for just $3 when you go to Harry's.com and use the slash JCE.

I guess that's a promo code too, right?

Yes.

Well, I guess the

slash a promo code?

No, that is a promo link.

The code would be an independent JCE.

Oh, well, it doesn't say independent JCE.

It just says JCE.

That's it.

So it's a slash.

So Harry's.com, which is funny when you think about it, slash JCE, and it's a razor company.

They're slashers.

But nevertheless, Harry's.com slash JCE.

You get the trowel kit for $3.

It's regular $13.

Well, everybody knows how much these razors cost in a store.

It's like they're made out of platinum.

And this is not the old-fashioned straight razor that they used to use in the Western saloons, folks.

You can be drunk and use this, and you can't hurt yourself.

Just

keep it away from your eyes.

Do not try to shave your eyelashes, ladies and gentlemen.

Let's just focus on the areas of your face with beards and mustaches and sideburns and how these can take care of all that in a comfortable and fashionable way.

Yeah, you're not talking.

You're talking about in front of your ears there, down under your neck, round to the other side.

And people occasionally, the backs of their knuckles need to shave, but don't try to shave your eyelashes.

Again, folks, and then...

If you love the trial kit, you know you're going to for only $3, you can shave yourself multiple times with this thing.

It's pennies on the shave.

And then you can sign up with the convenient subscription option that you can cancel at any time.

And they'll send this to you regularly so you don't run out.

And then until you stop growing facial hair, if that happens, then you can cancel.

But then, if I were you, I'd go to the doctor.

And they've got other things like the body wash and the scents of redwood and wildlands and stone

and moss and tree

and rock and otter.

Smells just like an otter's ass.

And the extra quality, amazing smelling deodorant for just $5

so you can not smell offensive and at the same time save money.

It's all about multi-purposing here.

You want to look good, you want to smell good, but you also want to look and smell like you don't spend a lot of money to make yourself look and smell good.

Like it's just natural.

If you want people to look at you and say, I bet that motherfucker doesn't spend 50 cents on looking good,

that's the look you're going for, right?

Where it's just natural to, it comes natural.

You're not even artificially trying to look or smell good.

Harry's.com slash JCE

right now, $3 for all that stuff you need.

What do you need at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week?

A fucking straitjacket, a psychiatrist?

No, we have a good time.

We have a good team.

We're always looking for more people for the team.

But no, we just want to continue doing what we're doing, which is producing the best wrestling content available for free wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Of course, information about all the shows on Twitter, at SuperPodcasts, or on Facebook.

Facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

How fast can I do all this?

The wrestling news!

Every day, get your wrestling news for free from the wrestling news.

No paywall, no clickbait, just the wrestling news.

Get rid of the opinions and the star ratings.

Get just the facts, ma'am.

Go to thewrestlingnews.com directly or wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Of course, stick to wrestling with John McAdam.

Another fine look at 1984, what was happening 40 years ago.

Hear it today.

McAdamPod.com, or wherever you find your favorite podcast, Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the

membership.

Go through the archives, 605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcast, The Mothership.

Trying to work on some stuff, but we're also trying to get some sleep.

More to come from Arcadia Vanguard and the 605 Super Podcast.

You know, if you're trying to get sleep, I can recommend the Helix Sleep Mattress.

Now you go to helixsleep.com.

What's the promo code?

JCE.

Okey-dokie.

Well, the moment we've been waiting for has finally come.

The debut

of SmackDown on the USA Network, the first, the, what did they call it, the

season premiere.

At first, Michael Cole said series premiere and then season premiere.

Yeah, I wasn't sure if that was intentional, though, that he did both, series premiere and then season premiere because he didn't cut himself off.

He just did them both as separate sentences.

I think he realized, ah, it's not the series premiere.

The series has been on, as we're going to talk about, for 25 years.

But anyway,

I never listened to the theme theme music.

And I accidentally did this time.

So I don't know if it's new or not, but this is the worst theme music for any TV show of any kind ever.

Now go back and listen to it next week.

Holy shit.

But

this was on Friday the 13th that this show happened.

And it was more fitting if it had been the AEW show from Wednesday that was on Friday the 13th, because where everything went wrong for them,

2,500 people in a 25,000 seat building, people misspeaking, shit didn't make any sense, people botching moves.

It was a goddamn,

it was a rib.

This show was one of the better ones they've done, if only for the first 40 minutes.

That alone,

they did everything right, even though

one would think that the vast majority of people that watched the program watched it when it was on Fox or watch Raw or watch

the WWE in general, they treated this like we're going in to get some new viewers.

We're going to get people that maybe watch USA on Friday nights that tune in and don't know we're going to be on, but we're going to hook them, we're going to explain shit to them.

It's going to make sense to a new viewer.

And I mean, this is Television 101, but Vince used to be big on that.

Makes sense to the new viewer, but it works in everything.

And

as soon as they came on, here comes Triple H.

Huge pop, big cheers.

Michael Cole is plugging the

Paul

Triple H Levesquera to explain that he's the chief content officer.

And this EVP is actually over.

The Triple H chance wouldn't hardly let him speak.

And then he introde the WWE title match and revved the people up and welcomed them to SmackDown.

And we had the Pyro is back for the big event.

And they were lowering the cage, and they announced it's going to be the first 30 minutes commercial-free for the world title, pin submission, or escape the cage, hate the escape part.

And they went to a history package to explain Solo and Cody

and how this match came about.

And I mean, so far, again, it's like when

a show I love, the UFC did when they debuted on Fox like, what, 15 years ago.

For a new viewer,

they explained everything while at the same time, it was a good show for the

person that watches every week.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, and I don't know how many new viewers they would have, but for a new channel,

you know, there was nothing about it that felt like, oh, they're talking down to me to explain stuff I already know.

I thought they did a good job explaining all the things that are happening, but it wasn't too much different than a normal SmackDown.

No, but they know how to format a fucking show.

And it just kept, boom, it looks big, and they've got 15,000 people in the building in Seattle.

And

everything is making sense, and it looks important.

It was just refreshing.

What did you think of going with Cody Solo to start the show?

And also, what did you think of the commercial-free aspect?

Well, it was perfect because breaks would have hurt this match because they had such a good match.

They did such a good job with everything.

And if they'd have broken like normal, they would have hurt it because you get distracted.

But this is some, instead of just having a normal show and going commercial-free for an hour, half an hour, whatever.

If it's a big match, they hook the people.

And, you know, it's the weekend, so the numbers aren't out yet, but we ought to do the ratings next week just to see what the fuck, because I can't believe they would have certainly not lost anybody.

And they probably gained people over the course of the first two or three quarters.

I'm writing down now to do the ratings next week.

All right.

But anyway,

as Solo and Cody and Cody, huge pop, they sang his song.

Whoa,

the whole nine yards.

They did the big match in-ring introductions.

Alicia Taylor is not Samantha Irvin, is she?

She looks like she stuck her finger in a light socket.

Is that a choice or was she scared by something?

Well, that's her look.

I want to leave her alone.

She hasn't done anything wrong to you yet.

Well, yet.

See, you could always expect it.

And then they had a good match.

And the thing is, instead of going back and forth or play by play on,

you know, what the match was,

it just observations, besides the fact they're doing long audio mutes.

I have a feeling people are chanting you fucked up or holy shit or whatever.

I don't know about that.

That's what I was wondering because they were really long, longer than usual on Fox, but there also wasn't any chant that you heard going into it or coming out of it that would have, that, you know, you didn't hear the word fuck at all or anything.

You think it's a new person on the button that's not used to wrestling?

I don't know.

But it happened twice, I think, on this show, right?

I said, no, several times.

Oh, okay.

More than twice.

But anyway, the match, it was good because Cody is a genius at selling and the pained expression and the gasping.

And then he'll fire up and do his shit and give the people hope and then he'll get cut off again.

And that was the story through the match as they built to the

The big things every once in a while.

Cody hit a cutter off a cage and got a two count,

that type of thing.

But they would sell these things in between

and they would react to things.

And it was somewhat logical.

Either, okay, now they're trying to escape and climb out, or now they're trying to go through the door, or whatever the case.

And Solo would stay on him long enough that he had to fight from underneath.

And they kept it fresh.

They still did the big stuff,

you know, off the top or off the.

At one point,

remember we were talking about Bryce Remsburg and the count on the AEW show.

Here was an example.

Cody went to the top of the cage and did a crossbody

on Solo.

And when

Solo caught him right,

but he was coming from such a height, the momentum, when they went down, Solo's head bounced off the fucking mat.

And he grabbed the back of it, and you could tell he rung his bell.

And that was a cover, and the referee won two, and

Solo didn't kick out, but he raised his arm enough.

And it was like, oh, shit.

You know, that's one of those things.

If, you know, if you get your bell rung like that, you can't keep track of a count in an arena, 15,000 people screaming.

So that was a close one.

But, you know, they did that, and Cody bled just enough, not like a stuck hog.

And finally, you know,

they built up to it.

Cody was crawling for the door.

Solo slammed the door on his head, went for the spike, but Cody foiled that and hit the crossroads one, two, three.

And that was a great cage match right there.

But then they're going to the angle.

But...

Well, your thoughts on the match first, because I want to say something about Solo in a second.

I thought the match was really good.

I think the things that they did, you mentioned the one, there was another one where Cody landed like the top of his shoulders/slash neck.

Yes.

And it just, ooh, like, you know, because of anything you do in the cage or off the cage,

it's not like doing it off the top rope.

The height changes the trajectory and it changes the way you have to land.

It's almost like if someone dives on you, you have to jump out just to be able to take a flatback bump

when you catch them.

And that's why it ain't that easy.

And the thing with Solo is, as you'll know when we talk about the angle here in a second,

Solo is not a cool heel.

Because Solo is...

I hate to say this.

It's going to sound like I'm knocking him.

Solo's not an impressive enough worker to be a cool heel.

But Solo has gotten good enough for this spot.

Because

the people,

they put him in a spot where he's tried to take Roman Reigns' place, and the people, he has heat because of that with the fans.

If he was doing the Jacob Fatu stuff,

it would be too much.

Solo can get by, and he can be a heel, but he's not so impressive that you start falling in love with him.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

And the thing with Jacob is you need somebody that does all that impressive shit,

but he's the enforcer.

He's the guy that's under Solo's thumb, so to speak.

And that way, he can do all that shit.

You can put his shit over like a million dollars.

Because at some point, as we've talked about,

Jacob will look at Solo and say, No.

And then you got something there, but Solo to carry the heat as the top guy, he shouldn't be too good.

And it's perfect.

But anyway, at that point, here came the Tonga twins

and Fatu, and they climbed the cage.

And as Cody's waiting on him, Solo comes up and spikes Cody.

And then they get heat on Cody, and they're beating him up, and they set him up for Jacob, who does that triple jump moonsault flawlessly.

And then he's going to the top of the cage, and suddenly music hits, and it's Roman Reigns, and the people go bat shit.

And Roman comes down to the cage, all

meaningful and menacing.

And he gets in and pulls the door shut, and the people pop because he's closing himself up with the whole bloodline.

But did you notice?

When Jacob was on the top of the cage and Roman got in, apparently Jacob got to the floor because Jacob was not in the cage when Roman was in the cage.

Yeah, they never show you him climb down.

And I did have a second before Roman came out.

I'm like, oh my God, are they going to already have Jacob Fatu do a move off the top of the cage?

Because he'll do it.

He's crazy.

But is now the time?

And then Roman came out at the perfect time, but you needed some sort of explanation for Jacob not being on top of the cage anymore.

Well, and the thing is, Jacob did not confront Roman physically.

Roman gets in the cage, closes the door.

Solo runs into the

or he starts kicking ass on the tongas first, right

and then solo stopped him a bit but then solo was running at him and ran into a superman punch and jacob's on the floor and as roman and solo are

looks like roman's go to get him jacob jerks solo's feet out from under him and pulls him out the door

So as the enforcer, he's also the bodyguard.

He went down to the floor so that he could get Solo out of harm's way.

But then Roman

calls Jacob Fatu in, just like motions, like, come on.

And they do a face-off.

And that's another one of the long audio mutes.

I don't know what the fuck.

But then Solo jerks Jacob by the feet and pulls him out the goddamn door.

And the Tongas jump on Roman.

And they start getting heat on him, but Cody comes up and saves Roman.

And then Roman and Cody turn to each other with tense looks, you know, and

no affection or handshaking or whatever, just looking at each other.

And I'm like, what a fucking angle.

And we were 37 minutes in the show and you didn't get tired of it.

Because there was something going on with no commercials.

So I mean, I just loved, I loved the first segment here.

I love that Jacob and Roman did the exact same thing.

They got in the cage and they closed the door right behind them with their one hand.

Yeah.

And then you never got it and you still want it.

And this set up the rest of the show, everything with Cody and Roman, but good, I mean, great opening to the show.

I mean, how could you open any hotter?

And if it had been the other guys, they would have given you so much of it, you never wanted to see it again.

Anyway, I was afraid Cody was going for that moonsault off the top of the cage again, like he did in AEW.

So when he was climbing that one time, I thought, yeah, and boy, but see, that's a risk that they can't afford to take.

Imagine how much money would be lost if Cody hurt himself doing something like that.

That's what I was afraid of with a lot of the stuff in this match because of the height of the cage, especially.

I mean, if you think about that blue cage, I know it was a pain to work with, but the height was perfect in a lot of ways.

Big Boss Man took the superplex off the top of that thing.

This thing's so big.

And again, there's little room for error.

And Cody right now cannot go down.

I was surprised they did some of the stuff they did.

Bubba had called me after that.

It was Saturday night's main event, right?

Bubba and Bossman, or Bubba and Bossman, Bossman and Hogan.

They did house shows, and then it ended with the Saturday night's main event match.

Well, he called me after that one because he said, You see, the superplex?

They had been doing that in most of the house shows.

He talked Hogan into it, but the thing is,

he was most proud of it because he was making $12,000 a week going around the loop with Hogan.

So he was happy to take that one superplex off the, even on those old hard rings but what

so

that was 1988 we just talked about 1989 may of 89 may of 89 sorry sorry there

creskin the amazing crescent

uh but three dollars to a dollar for 1983 so almost three so he was making like $30 something thousand dollars a week, the equivalent of today, going around with Hogan at those house shows.

And if you remember, I mean, it it says a lot about how the boss man was used and how well he did in his role.

That was like one of the better performing Hogan house show runs, surprisingly, him and the bossman.

Yeah.

Well, because Bubba could work and he was big enough that he could be believable against Hogan, and he

actually got Hogan to get up off his ass every once in a while because he could take such bumps.

Hogan loved to give them to him.

Anyhow,

after the first

segment, the world title match, I'd like to say everything was that good on SmackDown.

We got Piper versus, and I'm not talking about Roddy Piper, Piper, Niven, and Mia.

And, okay,

we've got to acknowledge, even though they had very little to do with it, Waller in theory

had a tag team match that I had to watch

because it was supposed to be against Owens.

And

he just said when he came out, his real partner had travel issues.

So he got

a partner on the, on the fly, and he introduced a guy named Ricky.

And out came some job guy you've never seen before, apparently named Ricky.

Well, like he was going to be Owens's partner.

Go ahead.

We didn't get his name yet.

He said, you know, here's the partner that they have for him.

And out comes this guy.

The back of his trunks, I think, said Midnight Heat.

And then he gets in the ring and it's got some fur on him.

And you're thinking, okay, this is interesting.

I don't recognize this guy from developmental.

I don't know who this is.

And he said, What's your name?

And then he whispers it to Owens.

Then he goes, Ricky.

That's all you got.

Yeah.

The fans ran with it from there for a minute.

The fans started chanting, Ricky, Ricky.

And that's what I think it's.

They have gotten these people to enjoy this shit so much, they will chant the names of

random job guys that they've never seen before.

And meanwhile, you know what's going on on the other side.

So suddenly, when they've established it's going to be Waller and Theory against Owens and Ricky,

then a production assistant calls Owens over and says, He's here, he's here.

And Owens says, Oh, okay, and turns around and gives Ricky the stunner,

and he bounces away, never to be seen again.

And they play Randy Orton's music.

And here comes Orton,

and he's over.

And right as he gets in the ring, it's right about

coming up on nine o'clock, and immediately they start a fight, and it's on the floor, and they're blah, blah, blah.

But the only thing I was surprised, they went to break at 9.01.

And they're doing picture in picture, but still,

they got this thing in the ring and ready to go at 9 o'clock.

They went to break at 9.01.

I don't know what happened there.

But I liked this match because it wasn't anything

majorly different in terms of performance than what everybody usually does, except they had a long set where they made Owens fight for the tag.

And they milked it like crazy that he couldn't get the tag and couldn't get the tag.

And finally,

they did a spot where everybody was down, and Owens rolled out on the floor, ran around the ring post, rolled back in the ring right in front of Orton, and hot-tagged him there.

And that was a great spot and got a big pop.

And Orton made the comeback and bounced both of them off the desk.

And they did the stereo draping DDTs.

And then a stunner and an RKO, and Orton pinned Waller.

And the crowd loved it.

And

it was different.

They actually did something different for once that half-assed made sense.

But what did you think of the match here?

I'm disappointed.

I really wanted to see Owens and Ricky.

I wanted to see what was going to happen.

I wanted to see what Ricky could do in there.

Now they got to bring back Ricky at some point, don't you think?

Well, I think Ricky's got a lot of splitting to do.

That was great because you've seen them try to do, not them, but you've seen stuff like that tried in the past in other places.

And even with WWE, where the fans just don't react because they don't care.

They care about everything so much, they started chanting for Ricky

and he fed into it.

He raised his hand in the air.

That was his moment.

This guy, whoever that guy was, that was his moment as a wrestler, being Ricky.

Well, anyway,

but it's going to be Rocky from here on out, a Rocky Road

because now Aldous said that Solo

has made a challenge for bad blood.

It's going to be the next big pay-per-view.

Solo and Jacob Fatu want to fight Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns.

And there you go.

Now we're going to have to see Fatu and Roman, right?

Except

Cody came in and said, I'm done with the bloodline.

They're Roman Reigns' problem.

Hang on,

so Cody will not sign the contract.

And Aldous was somewhat

off-put by this.

But he ain't got it.

And that's, again,

it makes sense after all they've been through.

What's in it for Cody to want to team up with this fucking guy, right?

He just fits.

Anyway, did you see the refrigerator's promo in the ring?

I did.

Where she sounds like a soccer mom and looks like a soccer field?

And the crowd was whatner.

And Bailey came out.

What are you laughing about?

I had not heard that one before.

Every now and then, you still get me with what I've never heard before.

Bailey came out, and Tiffy came out, and Naomi came out.

And Naomi hit Tiffy in the face with her ass.

And that was a big deal there.

Carmelo

wrestled wrestled Andre again, and I said, oh, hell no.

But Andre won, and then L.A.

Night Out, LA Night Out, LA Night came out because they were fighting over a shot at the U.S.

title.

And everything that he says is over, and they love it, and they, yeah, and they LA Knight.

But he's still, why the fuck is it just they've got so many stars they don't have room to put him against someone important?

but Carmelo Hayes I'd like to remind you number three draft pick above brawn breaker

hello

so Andre is going to get the U.S.

title shot next week and there you go

are you ready for the main event Brian yeah

Because now Nick Alda still has to talk to Roman Reigns.

And he gets Roman to come out to the ring and Roman basks in the adulation that he's getting.

And of course, now he's over, and they're chanting OTC

and the whole nine yards.

And

Aldous starts talking, and Roman holds his hand out.

And he's obviously going for the microphone.

Aldous gives him the contract, and the way Roman reacted, he's like, You got to be kidding me with the facial expression, the whole thing.

And

drops it down, holds his hand out, and the people pop.

They picked up on it.

He didn't say a word.

He just reacted and

they popped like crazy.

And so Aldous gave him the microphone and he cut the promo.

The only thing, hey, some things change, but not me.

I don't need partners.

I don't need Cody.

Whether I have the Ulafala or not, I am the only tribal chief.

This is my ring.

This is my show.

This is my WWE.

And then suddenly suddenly Cody's music plays and out come Cody,

kind of

stove up a little bit from wrestling in his street clothes, not a suit, but just warm-ups.

He's got the belt.

And my DVR froze.

What a fucking rip.

Did they do an overrun on this?

Yeah.

Well, they, goddamn, they're doing the same thing as AEW did, and they got to tell us.

So what the fuck said

not much was said cody reached out and to a major pop because the fans started booing they were disappointed when cody didn't sign the contract earlier he signed the contract so now we're

we're gonna get roman and cody

against solo and jacob fatu at bad blood i believe is the pay-per-view not good blood but bad blood

Do you think they have to pay Neil Sadaka?

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

But I almost feel weird saying this out loud, but I said it before,

and that was before they did all this stuff the last few weeks.

It's very reminiscent of something with Dusty.

It's very reminiscent of like Ole Anderson

getting Dusty to beg him to be his partner.

But we'll see where it goes.

But

I don't know.

I've had that, you know, that's one thing about Cody.

There's always

little homages to Dusty in the booking, whether it's from him or from above, you know, from Triple H, whoever.

You know, the idea of Dusty, everyone turned on Dusty.

Everyone, no matter what friend he had, other than Magnum,

because his career ended.

Everyone turned on Dusty.

So that's the only thing I'm thinking.

Get them locked in.

Yeah, but it's too early.

No, it's too early.

I agree with that.

I agree with that.

I agree.

It's too early, but I'm happy to do that.

That would piss people off in the wrong way.

But it might very well happen with Orton

because you could never trust a snake.

If they're doing that match of bad blood, at what point do you think Heyman returns?

And should Heyman be with the two of them?

I don't think we've seen the incident

that would happen yet to bring Heyman back.

I think, you know, we're going to have to be,

it's probably going to have to be rumblish building for mania, whatever they're going to do there with the various players in this game to determine where Heyman would make the biggest impact.

So I would think it's going to be till then.

We're still seeing Roman Reigns going after Solo and his people.

We're not seeing Roman Reigns trying to put together his bloodline again.

That's what we haven't seen yet.

Well, it's going to take some time.

And why rush it?

All he has to do now is walk out to the ring and the people are screaming.

Imagine when he actually does something.

Well, that's the key to wrestling, isn't it?

And that was SmackDown.

And since we've stopped there at Friday the 13th, which was a very lucky day for the WWE, then let's stop here.

And it's a lucky day for the listeners.

And we'll come back in a few days with another program when they're all ready for something again.

How's that sound?

That sounds good.

And I think we'll have a lot more action.

And of course, omnibuses of plenty.

Check out your podcast feeds and the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Omnibi aplenty.

And otherwise, and

Harley's right behind my my chair and scratching and wanting to go outside.

So it's a good time for us all to go out and take a piss in the yard, folks.

Thank you.

Fuck you.

And bye-bye, everybody.