Episode 549: Jim Reviews AEW All Out 2024

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Like a midnight tender, rock and roll.

He's in a fight for wrestling soul.

Using a racket and some mind control.

He's Jim Cornish.

The keys to the future held by the past and with tag team partner Barion last

he sends this message out by podcast Jim Cornet

Well he's never fake or lony

He never backs down from a fight

He never wins the pony Cause his mama raised him right

It's time

to perform

your mind

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Jim Cornet.

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

And today, a lawsuit has been filed against AEW, and AEW should be arrested for impersonating a wrestling promotion.

Plus, the WWE continues to print money hand over fist by doing absolutely nothing.

And joining me to talk about all these various things and more.

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

Co-Host to you.

He's the men's warehouse of podcasters.

You're going to like the way he sounds.

The great Brian last, everybody.

Probably now I'll take that intro back.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again for this all-out suffocating edition of The Experience.

George Zimmer was that man's name.

He founded the company men's warehouse.

Yes, and then they

returned his favor with scorn, or whatever that old quote is.

A soft word turneth away wrath.

I don't know.

They kicked him out.

I don't.

Yeah.

The hell's the matter with you?

What's the matter with you?

What's the matter with you, Gene?

That's what David Schultz said to Gene Ogerlund when he said he was in San Francisco looking for women, but he found only men that look like women.

My quotation dictionary, I'm going to find that quotation.

Well, I don't know what the subject was about.

I'll work on that later on.

The subject was Hulk Hogan, but yeah, we can move on.

No, no, I wasn't talking about your thing.

I was talking about my thing.

Well, I guess at least someone's talking about your thing.

Don't stir me up.

Now, I tried to relax yesterday.

It was Saturday, and it was the most beautiful day that you could ever think of for this time of year.

A little low humidity, high of like 72 degrees.

We hit a record low nearly, like three degrees off last night for this date in history.

And the Monroes were out working on a project, and I'm going to get out with the limlopper, and I'm picking some things.

There's still things blowing down from every tree from that last windstorm, but we're just

Harley's romping in the yard.

She's having a good day, feeling good.

Stacey is under her umbrella in the backyard there with her feet up.

And I said, I'm going to have a personal day.

What do the kids call it?

The mental health day, right?

Well, I don't know, but the kids, the mental professionals, maybe?

Is that what you're doing?

Well, yeah, all those young folks, they didn't have mental professionals back in my day.

Mental professionals like Dr.

Strange,

whoever else, a mental professional.

Well, the only professional mentalist I knew was the amazing Crescent when I was a kid.

But that's why I tweeted a picture.

I said, the kids call it a mental health day.

40 years ago, we called it, I'm going to go sit out in the yard before I choke a sonbitch day.

But I decided to spend the day with the family.

And which I don't get to do very often.

And then we ordered Freddie's steak burgers in and we watched Svengouli.

It was a wonderful Saturday.

Had some relaxation.

Did you have a relaxing Saturday?

I had a lot going on.

We had a function.

What was on Svenguli?

Yeah, we had a function.

We had a function.

That's all we get.

All right.

You had your function.

That's right.

I was over here at Malfunction Junction.

What was on Svengoul?

Killer Clowns from Outer Space, I'll let you know.

Get out of here.

Well, all right.

I'll see you later.

I just shocked Suzanne, showing her what I'll waste money on.

I got a Killer Clowns from Outer Space like gun recently, like the one they use in a movie, just so I can chase the kids around the house with it.

You're chasing your children around the house with a gun that is mimicking a space alien's weapon.

It's a popcorn-shooting gun of some sort.

Not like a gun that shoots bullets or even lasers.

Well, maybe it does in a movie.

I don't remember.

Well, you watched it.

What do you you mean, really?

Well, you got to watch out for the label.

I ain't going to tell you now.

Now you'll be every time you'll think, oh, shit, am I fucking the kids up for life?

I never think that.

And hopefully they don't think I'll punch them in the nose and everything will end.

And then you're trying to remind them of these horrible, awful clowns that they're going to be seeing in parties for the next 18 years or whatever.

See, I don't buy that.

I was never big on horror movies being scary.

Like, it never really affected me like that.

I don't think it's going to affect my kids like that either.

Just because you're fearless.

Just because you're devoid of any type of emotional response to these things.

See, part of it was my family in the 80s were doing the commercial printing for New Line Cinema.

So we had all the Freddy Krueger shit.

So it was hard to be scared of some guy that's just photos of in the office all over the place.

Always say you felt like you were a friend of Freddy's, friendly Freddy.

Well, no, and then they made him really friendly.

They started introducing my kids' toys and masks and gloves.

I mean, who are those for?

They're for the kids.

But I was never afraid of Freddy.

Do you remember the Freddy Krueger record?

I do not.

He put out a record.

Do you remember Freddy and the Dreamers?

Well, that was, well, of course, I remember Freddy and the Dreamers.

They had a few hits in like 64.

I'm telling you now, and the big one, Do the Freddy.

I'm telling you now.

Well, Do the Freddy was the big one, and it had a big dance that the lead singer, Freddie, would do, and it was ridiculous and very of itself.

I wonder how many of the young ladies were encouraged to do the Freddy.

Well, the Freddy Krueger version is a really awful 80s studio band doing that

with one change.

The real song goes, whatever,

do the Freddy.

His version goes,

do the Freddy.

That's it.

That's the total Freddy Krueger's involvement in that song.

And then he gives an opening.

He goes, I'm Freddy, and this is for you.

How are you supposed to be scared of that?

All right, maybe poor example

anyway well we we had a night and i also want to thank you because now see i've mentioned stacy's birthday was august 29th we talked about that a couple of weeks ago my birthday of course wink wink hint hint nod nod

hot rod running down the road if you're wondering what that noise was rodney esti uh no not esti a real hot hot rod

Well, a real hot rod car type of thing.

I guess there could be a rod that was hot that you could have shoved up your ass.

One of those red-hot poker type of things.

But a rod.

Yes.

But nevertheless, where was I going with this?

Oh.

Something up your ass?

No, no.

Oh, I don't think it was.

No, I was saying something and then the hot rod went down the road.

Yes.

Oh, the road.

The road, the highway.

I was going to thank Charlie from Starkville, wasn't I?

The birthdays.

My birthday is coming up.

September 17th is my birthday.

I was just wanting to get that out there,

in case anybody was wondering.

And Charlie from Starkville has split the difference, and I've got my present early, and Stacy's a week afterwards.

But

he sent us an Elvira Mistress of the Dark action figure for Stacy and a Batman

TV series remastered special edition dvd box set for me how about them apples you know i get asked sometimes because people do want to send you gifts do you have a blu-ray player

uh i do now actually the the new the brand new dvd because you know that's a new format they haven't had that out long so yeah so the new over 20 years yeah see it's it's a recent development so The newest DVD player we got in the house plays those.

Yes, it does.

So it's actually a Blu-ray player that plays DVDs is what you're saying?

Well, it plays everything.

Oh, shit.

Yeah,

you can stick all kinds of things in this thing.

It'll play it.

I mean, everything.

There's two options, DVD and Blu-ray.

Well, CDs.

Okay, it plays music too.

Play them too.

Well, right there you go.

See?

Think about that.

Proves my point.

What point?

The point I was making.

Thank you, Charlie.

That was the point?

That was the point.

Thank you, Charlie.

Well, you started talking about the Blu-rays or the Stingrays or whatever you were talking about.

At this point, I wish I was roommates with Bo-Ray.

Oh,

wait a minute.

I'll be here all week, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

My dark wrestling humor will be.

Oh, come on.

Oh, geez.

Let me get the taste of that one out of my mouth.

That was uncalled for.

I feel like Lance Russell now.

I already regret it.

Lawler, come on now.

You come out here.

You keep running the guy down.

Anyway, we got big news.

Big news across the cult of Cornet universe out there.

Do we, I guess we have a universe.

Or if WWE has the universe, can we have

well, can we just have a galaxy, the Cornet galaxy?

Would that be violating anybody's fucking trademark?

I don't think so, but

we could just stick to this planet.

We could stick to people.

Well, no, I've got other people.

I got people besides people, though.

I have species besides people.

The dogs love me.

I'm big with the deer.

Nevertheless, I got big news for all the people

that are going to try to buy a Christmas present this year because the holiday sale at JimCornet.com, as we have mentioned, starts Saturday, October 5th at noon Eastern time

with the final Jim Cornette action figure variant.

It's been a long road and everybody, I appreciate the support as we have done these various action figure variants.

This, as I've mentioned, what I was talking about at the beginning of the year, so

six or eight months ago, I guess.

This will be the last one because I don't want to beat it into powder.

And there's

some other projects, Brian, that I've been talking to you about that are going to involve more print and publication type of things.

So this will be the final variant.

We've gone through eight of them plus my figure in the Midnight Express 4 pack.

So get them all, kids.

That's a variant, too.

You've got to count that.

Well, yeah, that's why I said plus.

Yes.

It shouldn't be a plus one.

It should be part of the big number.

Well, but it's not available individually.

You can only get it in the Midnight Express four-pack.

But it itself is a variant.

So it has to be on the list of variants.

That's why I said eight of me plus the one of me in the four-pack.

So nine variants.

The ninth and final variant, ladies and gentlemen.

The man in white.

Let Jim Cornette be your white knight.

It's my all-white suit with the black shirt and the red tie that I always wore whenever I'd lost a bunch of weight.

I remember a picture of you in the office.

That's right.

Yes, because elsewhere I'd look like a drive-in movie screen.

So I wore it when I came to OVW, wore it in Ring of Honor, I believe, early on.

I wore it to be inducted in the Hall of Heroes in Charlotte when

unfortunately, me and Tammy were the youngest looking people

involved.

And I think I still weigh the same thing now now as I did then, and she's gained 80 pounds.

But nevertheless, not because this is going to serve several purposes, and

see where I'm going here with this.

Not only does white match everything, so if you've got a Midnight or a Heavenly Bodies tag team set that I'm not involved in, then you can stick me in the middle of them because it goes with the color scheme.

Or if you want me to manage any of your other

action figures, even if I did not manage them in real life to create a dream combination, have at it.

But

the customizers, Brian, and you know these people exist.

Do you care about that?

Yes, I do.

Yes,

that was a question for me, and I have an affirmative answer.

Yes.

Yes.

And therefore,

here is your blank canvas comes with matching white tennis racket, and you can customize this final variant to any color in my infamous rainbow wardrobe.

Because after all, we could, if I tried to duplicate every suit, every color combination,

then there'd be more action figures of me than there are people in the country of India.

So now you can make your own.

So not only do I go with everything else, but now you can make me go with whatever you like.

You got to sell some like a paints, like acrylic paints or.

Well, I was about to say, I don't know if that came out right.

Now you can make me go with everything you like.

You can make me go with everything.

Hey, did you see Jim Cornette going with that donkey?

Hey, now, wait, I see.

Hey, did you see Jim Cornette going with that squirrel in the backyard?

Well, now, hey, nobody's supposed to know about it.

Have you rung into my security cameras?

What the fuck?

But anyway,

here's the important part before we move on to the next item.

I told everybody that I appreciated that they've collected all these variants.

And all kidding aside,

I think it's cool when people show me the shelf where they've got one or more of the different variants autographed personally by me, which this one will be also.

But

I want to give them a break.

So as a Christmas present and thank you for your support,

If you get, because there still are some available, any of the Midnight Express or Heavenly Bodies tag team sets that I mentioned before that this figure would go with, you can get this figure still autographed, still personalized, half price, $24.95.

Remember I told you about this incredible concept that Hotchkiss had come up with for reducing the prices of items.

in specific periods of time in the year in order to generate bigger sales.

Well, now he's going to save people money with this incredible concept he's come up with.

He didn't come up with any concept.

What are you talking about?

Why do you keep giving this guy credit?

He doesn't come up with anything.

I've never lowered my prices before.

Who's ever heard of such a thing?

See, there's where the problem is.

It's about when you hear of it.

You thought he invented email a few months ago.

No, he invented the email blast where you send it out to everybody all at the same time.

I never said he invented email.

That would just be downright silly.

He in no way invented the email blast.

Well, or any other kind of blast or any other kind of email.

I'm just telling you that he's told me these things.

It's like a revelation when you hear this coming from him.

He's just boom, boom, boom.

He has all these concepts in.

in the back of his mind somewhere that he comes out with.

It's a revelation to you when he says these things.

You have a revelation from these comments that he's making?

Well, yeah, because it's just amazing these simple but effective concepts that he comes up with, like sending mass emails to people at the same time and calling it an email blast.

Simple but effective.

Or reducing the price of an item, especially like if you buy the Midnight or Heavenly Bodies tag team pack or the four-pack, a few still remain,

then you get the

new and final white variant for half price.

That's a that's a goddamn, and it's autographed.

That's a goddamn hell of a deal.

Whose autograph?

Mine, of course.

Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But maybe Hotchkiss's.

Well, he can sign it too if you put it on the personalization notes and have Hotchkiss sign also.

And he'll, as Joe LeDuc once said on TV, put that X right there.

And also, by the way, one of the long-awaited discontinued items, just because we've got two storage units now, folks, and I've got a garage and we still can't keep everything,

but they've been popular and people have been asking about them.

The thank you, fuck you, buy t-shirts are back for Christmas.

Because I figure at the holiday at the Thanksgiving and Christmas time, that's where you really,

really want to tell somebody, fuck you buy.

I don't know about thank you,

but those are available for the Christmas season for a limited time only.

So jump in and get them while they've been off sale for a couple of years now, but it's an iconic phrase.

I sign that constantly.

Do you think that would be the name of the Jim Cornette documentary if there was one?

You would, yes, but I'm afraid that it might have problems making it to certain suburban marquees on the theater.

You know,

the mothers in the suburbs might.

They saw that, they would flip out.

It has to be Thank You, Fuck You Buy, the story of a nameless wrestling manager.

No, I just meant the fuck part.

Oh.

They

put my name up in big letters on top, and that would draw the crowd.

Yes.

But it might have to be

Thank You Fu Buy.

It's what I was going for there.

Coming soon to the film forum.

The film forum.

That's right.

Well,

it might be a film forum or a film for somebody else, but one way or another, we're going to charge for tickets.

Anyway,

but that is the Christmas holiday sale information.

Is it?

Is it all of it?

The new variant.

Well, I'm trying to get out of this.

Are you going to customize one?

Are you going to customize one yourself?

Think about how much you can sell that one for, a Jim Cornette customized Jim Cornet.

That's like one of those DC Superman Infinity covers.

That's right.

That's exactly what it is.

And then what about if I put him in a position where he was customizing another Jim Cornette?

The fun could never end.

That's the move.

All right.

And then at Christmas 2025, I'm going to put the one I customize on sale for $5,000.

That sounds good.

Sounds like you're devaluing it.

I think we can get more than that.

Well, it's going to be a work of art, but I didn't want to just, you know, leave the regular Everyman out of it.

The regular Everyman with $5,000 for an action figure?

Sure.

And I think you think this, I think you and Tony Khan have the same idea of what the regular Everyday.

Oh, come on now.

That's just, you know, rent for three or four months for many people or maybe more.

And you never can tell where people are living these days.

I hear it's expensive in other places.

I'm just right over here.

But anyway, but yes, the Thank You Fuck You Buy t-shirt, the final action figure variant, as well as, of course,

all of our fine regular items that we will go into at a later time.

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

That's the big time, the big red letter day, and the big holiday sale begins.

And I'm not saying

you got to order in October, but God damn, with the way my life has been lately, if you don't get it in by the first part of November, you're pushing things for Christmas.

I'm just...

lobbying that out here for you

anyway all right what do you got there brian it's your show it's your show thankfully thankfully it's your show i had a function last night i'm a little off

you you had a sounds like you had a malfunction at the junction steve sack yes steve stack at the at the junction

the place was the junction in san antonio i never saw that place but

it didn't look like to me like it would uh

it would fit in your pantheon of great wrestling arenas you know it's one thing to call it the junction It's hard to like envision pulling up and seeing a sign that says the junction.

I think, was it a bar or of some description?

We're talking about where they used to do the wrestling TV show in San Antonio Southwest Wrestling, folks.

That was one of the first things when I started trading tapes in the early 90s.

I got some Southwest and it really fucked me up because it was the period of time where the Spanish announcer was right on top.

So they were literally next to each other doing commentary of two different feeds of the show.

And then they would only stop to interview the wrestlers.

And then it would pick back up.

But it was bleeding completely.

It wasn't even bleeding.

It was right next to him.

No, that's the thing.

And again, folks, the San Antonio show, that's a heavily Hispanic market in South Texas.

And they were bringing in names that the Lucha fans would know on the cards back then, especially in the late 70s, early 80s.

And what Brian is talking about,

a lot of people haven't seen studio television of any imagine in the tv studio kind of setting there are two men standing six feet apart from each other talking into a handheld microphone and they're both speaking two different languages

and it that's the thing is that because they had to have a soundtrack to send their show to the spanish station that they had wherever they had it.

And at the same time, the people in San Antonio that spoke English had to know what was going on.

But they,

it was so primitive, they couldn't even separate them.

And

then, remember, they'd stand on each side of the guy when he's doing the interview and hold the microphone to him.

Because that's when you'd be like, oh, I'm not crazy.

There is another guy there talking right there.

But it was distracting anyway.

Speaking of distracting audio, I got one email, and then we're going to talk about all kinds of fun stuff going on in the wrestling business.

But Matt from Kenosha, Wisconsin,

he didn't send this via normal channels, so you might not have seen this.

But

he says,

I recently listened to the episode of which you guys played the phone calls of the nut job who obviously didn't like being asked if you were available.

And, of course, talking about the old lady calls, and then we had been talking previously on a show about party lines that, you know, my like my Aunt Lola had back in the 60s and 70s, whatever.

And he says, Matt says, oddly enough, that brought up a strange memory from years ago.

I grew up in the small town of Hartford, Wisconsin.

My cousins and I were all within five years of each other.

Oftentimes in the summer, we would meet at grandma's house.

She lived across the street from me for lunch.

Grandma had a radio on her kitchen counter that was always tuned to WTKM from Hartford, Wisconsin, which was the local polka station.

Brian, I know

they're big on the polka music in Wisconsin, but I didn't know they actually had a polka station.

I guess it makes sense.

And also, this had to be WTKM AM radio.

One would think that would be on the AM dial, wouldn't you?

I guess so.

But anyway, so this is

this, we're we're talking 35 years ago, so this is late 80s,

as he'll get to later on in the email.

One afternoon after the station announced the local obituaries, I remember that from years gone by, grandma let us change the station.

My cousins and I found out that when tuned to the bottom of the dial, the radio would pick up on local telephone calls.

We assumed these people were using wireless home phones.

Now, here's the thing.

This is not as preposterous as it sounds, and help me with this.

You might know

in the, we're not talking cell phones, that's completely different

method of transmission and everything.

But in the early days of when you had a home landline, but you could get a cordless phone or a cordless handset

that I've got right now, like that,

that would come off.

You remember the telescoping antenna where you would pull up it looked like an old

you know desktop am radio antenna that you would pull up out of the phone and i believe those

handsets used radio signals to go to the

the handset to to go through your wired communication possibly it may still do that today in some fashion am i out of my mind here or do you concur with that i don't know too much about what you're talking about i'm learning here well you might not be learning.

I'm trying to ask you to validate this.

Maybe you can

Google fight by the time I get to the end of Matt's story.

But anyway, he says, it was an introduction into things that my 10-year-old brain couldn't fathom.

We were often entertained with bad phone sex, drug deals, and payment agreements gone bad.

There were also times we could only hear one side of the conversation.

So my cousins and I would fill in the opposite side, leading to all of us cracking up hysterically to the stupid story we had conceived.

Now, my cousins and I are all in our 40s, families of our own spread out across the country.

Grandma passed away a few years back with that same radio still on her kitchen table, tuned to WTKM.

And he says, Thank you to both yourself and Brian for triggering that memory and keeping me entertained with your podcasts.

Can you now.

You're welcome.

Send money.

Oh, quit now.

I don't believe Matt's full of shit.

I think that could have happened at that point in time with the early

cordless handset telephones with the fucking

telescoping antennas.

What kind of

waves were they on, if not radio waves?

I don't know.

I thought you were going to Google it.

What am I supposed to Google?

Can phone calls calls be heard on the radio at the end of the dial?

Okay, try that.

Can phone calls be heard on the radio?

I double-dog dare you.

Fucking make fun of Matt here.

I'm saving this, Matt.

This could be except A.

No answers here because everything's about what does the caller do at the end of a call?

Is there a way to hear past phone calls?

Is it possible to listen to phone calls?

Let's see this.

Someone could listen to your phone calls if they have the right tools and know how to use them.

That really is not what you're doing.

Okay,

history of cordless

telephones

in the house

in the 80s.

In the

1980s, history of cordless handsets, possibly, telephones.

Cordless phones first appeared around 1980.

There you go.

Keep going.

Keep going.

The earlier cordless phones

had a problem, which was limited range.

What exactly am I looking for?

What was the method of transmission here, Marconi?

Hold on.

How is it?

Was it on radio waves?

AM radio waves?

A cordless telephone differs functionally from a mobile telephone in its limited range and by depending on the base station of the subscriber premises.

Yeah, the handset.

Can't get too far away from it.

Current cordless telephone standards such as PHS and DECT,

have blurred the once-clear-cut line between cordless and mobile telephones by implementing sell handoff or handover.

Well, see, we don't want to know what they're doing now.

We want to know what they were doing in the 80s.

Were they listening to people having fucking nasty phone calls on their radio?

Radio telephony, is that a radio telephony?

I guess it would be.

I never really used that word.

I don't know.

How would you use that word, Jim?

Is Is that a goddamn word?

What are you trying to say?

Telephony?

Well, use it in a goddamn sentence.

Radio telephony predated cordless phones by at least two decades.

Radio telephony, I guess.

Well, that wouldn't make sense either.

But I'm not finding anything that answers your fucking question.

Well, somebody out there knows, so let us know.

Frequencies.

Frequence.

That's it.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

in the united states seven frequency bands have been allocated by the federal communications commission for uses that include cordless phones these are

1.7

uh narrow band fm

cordless phones manufactured after october 1st 1984 are not allowed to use this band.

Maybe this answers your question.

Okay, now we're see if you keep digging.

And were required to use newer or higher frequencies.

Although older telephones on the older frequency pairs could still be used.

So that was a narrow band FM.

Boom.

So it was an FM radio station.

And down at the bottom of the, what is the bottom of the FM dial?

80.

Probably something really good.

88.

Something from a really good college nearby.

Yeah, you know, it's all over the educational whatever, but maybe they were broadcasting on the on the narrow band there.

Also, citizens band radio service with some frequencies.

These were initially paired with other frequencies, so CB radio as well.

And then after that, looks like we answered your question.

That's it.

Well, there you go.

So, Matt's not full of shit, like you said.

I never said that.

You're the one who all of a sudden introduced that theory into this.

He said such nice things about us, and then there you are.

It's all bullshit.

That's fucking Matt's lying.

Yeah, I heard you do it.

Whole world heard you.

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Speaking of what the whole world has heard of, Brian, should we lead off with the, the well, I can't say the police blotter, but the the court report here on the Jim Cornette experience today, we can discuss the recent lawsuits that have been, well, lawsuit

with different counts.

I don't know, it could be plural, that have been filed and

our thoughts and impressions on saying.

Well, there's a lot going on and a lot broke this week about this.

And of course, because of it, you trended.

Now it's like whenever cornets,

lawnmowers have done something or whatever.

No, I'm so inextricably linked with the honorable Stephen P.

New, counselor at law.

But I trend when he makes news now, and he makes a lot of news.

Well, here's how it was reported by the Wrestling News who broke this.

Well,

hold on.

I think it's fair that before that you read the whys and wherefores of what has happened, that I preface this by saying

that first of all,

Stephen P.

New is your and mine's attorney, along with other people in the wrestling industry, as it had been known.

But attorney client privilege doesn't mean that if If this guy is your attorney, he can discuss all his clients with you, right?

It's specific to the client involved.

So what I'm trying to say is just because Stephen is our attorney and close personal friend,

he hasn't spilled his guts about what the fuck is going on here or told us details that are not available to the public.

We want to make that clear.

So we are going to talk about

and opine upon what's been reported and filed publicly and said by the participants out in the open.

But we will also preface this by saying Stephen P.

New,

at this point in his life, Brian, I think you can agree, does not need to take cases that he doesn't think that he can win and significantly make change in a field from

just for the fun of it, because he's very busy.

He makes a lot of money, and he doesn't have time like

the guy that tried to get everybody that ever worn a pair of boots to sue the WWE.

And his office was in a spare room in his house somewhere in fucking

suburban California.

So

we're going to dismiss the thought at the top of this that this is some kind of publicity stunt or as people might say, something frivolous.

He's past the point where he

has the time on his hands to take bullshit cases, just see his name in the news.

He's fucking with the governor in the state of West Virginia on a regular basis.

He gets in the newspaper a lot.

I wouldn't say he's fucking with the governor in the state.

Well, he's trying to keep him in line.

That's more like it, yeah.

Well,

that's fucking with the governor sometimes.

Trying to keep them on the straight and narrow depends on who they are.

But anyway, but read the

publicly issued details of the case so that we can go over it.

Well, again, these were broken by the wrestling news on Wednesday.

Three former talents terminated by AEW have brought a lawsuit against the company, among others.

The suit, brought by announcer Kevin Kelly and wrestlers Brandon and Brendan Tate,

was filed on August 30th in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Court of Common Pleas by attorneys Stephen P.

New and Benjamin Baer,

and is seeking to void the arbitration clause of their talent contracts, as well as requesting the court certify a class action suit against AEW over claims the company is misclassifying its wrestling talent as independent contractors rather than employees.

Let's stop there momentarily because that kind of explains a part of this.

Any initial thoughts?

Well, I'd like to jump on that one last.

Keep going.

In April, it was reported that the Tate Brothers, known professionally as the boys.

I'm sorry.

There's the boys.

Known professionally as the boys, were released from their Ring of Honor contracts due to budget cuts.

Ring Ring of Honor owner Tony Khan claimed during media events that their release was due to no showing several events, a claim the brothers deny.

That claim is now at the center of a defamation allegation against Khan by the Tate brothers.

You want me to go or stop this?

No, no, no.

There's what we can start with that because,

with all due respect to the boys,

this is the one that

personally, which whoever's right, and whichever way it goes, I don't give a shit, particularly.

Because I did say,

but it might go to more overall the broader case, as we will see here in a second.

I think for them to be on national television at that stage of the game in the wrestling business these days, as I think I mentioned on the show a while back, they should have ridden a bus, right, to get to wherever.

However,

other facts have emerged with these dueling stories.

And having been

a booker, promoter, producer, talent,

whatever the fuck, I've seen a lot of this bullshit that the point is the

overriding

thread of this whole suit is bad communication and bullshit communication and no communication and nobody settling issues.

So.

And defamation potentially.

Well, defamation potentially as a result of none of this being settled and this fucking thing being run, as Guy Coffee used to say, like a flea market.

So the bone of contention seems to be that the boys who live in Knoxville, Tennessee were flying out of Knoxville, Tennessee.

But then somehow...

They wanted them to fly to wherever it was.

I can't remember.

It might have been overseas or who the fuck knows.

Out of Nashville.

Maybe it was Canada.

Canada.

There's not a sea, but there's a border.

So it's three hours minimum from Knoxville to Nashville.

So it is a significant distance.

Well, they should have driven.

Except

now that we've sat back and said,

seen some of the other things going on, what kind of notice did they get on since they had been being flown out of Knoxville?

Then does their ticket just show up and nobody call their attention to it?

Or did they call them the week before

and say, hey, you got to fly out of Nashville?

Or did they look down

at, you know, with their paperwork or however these things are delivered these days and see suddenly there's a goddamn wrong airport and they're three hours away?

Holy shit.

What kind of communication was there between them and the office?

I assume, like all the kids, they text each other,

which is fucking problematic in a lot of cases because

nobody knows what the fuck people are talking about on a text anyway, most of the time.

But if the, did they say, hey, why this wrong airport?

Oh, well, Tony says you got to do that.

Did they say, well, we can't make it?

Or did they say we can't make it?

And then they said, Tony says you got to do that.

And then nothing, crickets.

Well, then as a booker or talent relations guy

or whatever, if you don't hear from the talent's mouth when there's a issue about whether they're going to make the show or not,

if you don't hear from their lips or their text,

okay, I'll be there,

and you just leave the conversation, then you've dropped the ball.

And but then if they say we can't make it, we can't get there,

we don't have a way to go, whatever the fuck.

Then you've left, then it's not a no-show if they ain't there.

Because the last thing they said to you was, we can't get there.

Here's another thing:

what stooge did they tell that all this was going on with when Tony Khan is at the show?

Did they want to tell Tony, well, here's this five-minute story about how we're fucking with their travel and get yelled at?

Or did Tony say, Where's the boys?

They didn't show up.

What the f- And you know, that is part of, I think, what AEW, from what I think I've seen, has argued, which is that this wasn't a single isolated incident.

There may have been other incidents where.

Okay, then that's AEW's fault if it was all over travel.

Because after the first time, when the boys ain't there, then you, why weren't you there?

You sent us tickets for an airport fucking three hours away from our goddamn homes, and then we got to fly or whatever the fuck.

Well, it was cheaper.

God damn it, whatever.

You don't, with all the other things

going on in this company, you don't say, okay, well, we're going to do the same thing again.

And then they say, well, we're going to do the same thing again because he was saying multiple shows.

So how does this, how does it not get resolved if they ain't going to do it, you don't book them again?

But again, too, the contradiction between announcing that they were fired due to budget cuts and then after they came out, I forget what exactly they said.

They were somewhat outspoken about some nature of this.

That's when Tony Kahn was asked about it at a press conference.

And he said they know shit.

Yeah, he was asked specifically about them, and he said it was because of issues with them showing up.

So AEW put out two different sides of the same story.

Well, and besides that, and then that's when they say, Well, you've defamed us because now people think, What the fuck?

Are we a couple of dickheads that ain't going to show up?

So, but like I said, I don't,

I don't care either way, but we're getting, we're getting to the better part.

But the other thing, too, in terms of the travel, just the specific example going from Knoxville to Nashville,

again, it goes to the argument about what is an independent contractor.

You know, if you're ordering them around and saying, you got to go here, you got to be,

are they an independent contractor or are they an employee?

Well, and also just,

I mean, we just saw him buy like 150 plane tickets to fucking England.

Right?

So he rents songs that he'll pay more than he'll pay the boys together over 10 years.

So yes.

So I think it might be hard for the boys to fucking.

And was this a thing that has happened to anyone else or no one else?

Were they the only ones who said, well, you're so fucking insignificant on this list of of insignificant people?

You see, that's one of the things if I was AEW,

just based on little things I know from communicating with people, I'd be worried about that.

Because if this ever got to discovery,

that shit comes out.

The disorganization, the confusion, people texting and not getting answers or emailing and not getting answers.

It brings the AEW office into focus.

But, you know, we'll see.

Well, but speaking of bringing more of AEW into focus, because they're still a little blurry,

then Kevin Kelly steps in.

Yeah, by the way, for the record, that was technically Ring of Honor.

That's Tony Khan, the owner of Ring of Honor.

They were Ring of Honor talent, right, when Tony bought Ring of Honor.

So now we're going to AEW.

Well, true, yes, because it's the right pocket and the left pocket.

Because Tony's always got his hands in his pockets because he likes to play pocket pool.

Well, just so people know, we were always told that Tony Khan bought Ring of Honor outright with his own money.

AEW is a joint venture between Tony and his dad and whatever share Warner Brothers has.

So it's two different things, but let's go to the next part of this.

Real name Kevin Foote.

Kevin Kelly is seeking monetary damages, claiming, among other things, that AEW breached his contract and interfered with his ability to find work elsewhere.

Also named in the lawsuit is AEW announcer Ian Ricobani, whom Kelly also seeks monetary damages from and claims to famed him by way of social media after accusing him of being a member of QAnon.

Kelly, who joined AEW in June of 2023 after working as the English-speaking commentator for New Japan, was fired from his position as an AEW play-by-play announcer in March, after he went public on his social media expressing his frustrations with the company and Ricobani.

And I have a comment here to close it out from Stephen, Stephen P.

New, of course.

I applaud the bravery of these plaintiffs in bringing this long overdue action, challenging the misclassification of pro-wrestlers as independent contractors instead of employees.

We know we are in for a long, hard fight, but in the end, I believe justice always prevails.

Well, now it gets a little curiouser and curiouser because, again, everybody knows I've known Kevin Kelly since 19, what, 95.

I was the reason why that he was the Ring of Honor announcer for so many years.

I'm pretty goddamn sure,

although I hate to make declarative statements anymore, Kevin's a religious guy.

He might even be a Republican.

I don't know because we don't talk about it because he knew what I would think straight off the bat.

I'm pretty sure he's not not engaging in any kind of goddamn organized QAnon lunacy or whatever the fuck.

And probably, I believe it was some type of

movie recommendation that he tweeted that led to Ian, who also met briefly and thought was a wonderful guy.

So I hate to see these two having issues.

Ian took exception to

and and talked about with people on the internet in what was supposed to be private.

I believe it was a Discord server, so it's a private server.

No, somebody was typing something to somebody on the internet and thought it was going to be private.

Seriously?

Especially around the wrestling business.

So then

the bigger issue from something

that ridiculous,

Kevin tweets about a movie.

Ian

can't resist commenting to someone on the internet instead of you got to fucking

say something in that situation.

Call somebody on a fucking phone.

And, but because of that,

there's now a lawsuit because they're in this goddamn

company that will not

address anything and take care of anything and let shit fester and boil and bubble

because think about this.

They fired Kevin Kelly.

Who else have they?

They haven't fired people have walked up and punched the fuck out of other employees and they didn't fire them.

Yeah, that's part of the story.

The fact that there's very few people, if you look at who's been fired, like Jimmy Havoc was fired.

after they found out that he was accused of some sort of sexual improvisation.

Who knows what the fuck it was, but it wasn't, and we haven't, nobody's seen him since, right?

That type of thing.

That's what you get fired for.

Like, there's very CM Punk got fired, and even that took forever.

For beating up the third motherfucker, right?

Right.

But you could argue that was an extension of a year earlier, where Tony couldn't pull the trigger and couldn't do anything.

He couldn't bring him back, and he couldn't fire him.

He just did nothing.

So, and again, the fucking who was the punched Sammy?

Andrade.

Andrade.

Andrade punched Sammy and fucking Tony sent him home and sent him a check for a fucking year or whatever it was.

The point, look at the bad feelings on Twitter amongst each other and the sniping and the fucking,

you know, I threw a chair in your face, gave you brain damage and all this other shit.

And these people had to be given a separate show so they could be kept apart and catered to.

But yet Kevin and Ian getting a goddamn beef over fucking

making snarky comments over the internet and they can't address this and when they finally do

they hired Kevin Kelly for three years allegedly at the start it was supposed to be to leave his job in New Japan

that he had there was a full-time fucking deal and come and do the fucking show

and he was there for like nine months and instead of say well

If you and Ian are going to have a goddamn knockdown drag out fight or something, go home.

We'll send you the check like we do everybody else.

They sent Miro a check in Bulgaria.

So what heinous.

CJ took it.

I'm looking for my money.

Yes.

And

what heinous

offense did Kevin Kelly went.

The story is there.

The point is, there's Kevin making.

Appointments with human resources or relations or whatever.

This is causing me trouble.

I want to address this.

People are razzing him on Twitter.

I don't know what the fuck's going on.

We have a problem with this guy.

They won't do anything about it.

And finally, they end up the thing they do about it is fire him again when

there have been people who have literally set fire to shit in that company.

They didn't fire them.

So,

what smells about this

is part of that.

And then

the overall theme,

the independent contractors.

And we've said

way before Stephen P.

New was involved in an issue like this.

And we blistered

that other lawyer for being an obvious moron,

I can't believe past the bar

and bringing a

lackluster suit that was never going to win because the merits of a real case were winnable.

And we've talked about the misclassification

umpteen times on this show going back years.

So, you know, if you're going to

engage these guys in a contract or a deal like this

that is not only incredibly one-sided and gives them no benefits and the whole nine yards, but is also restrictive on your side.

But then you can just, for apparently any reason,

say bye-bye,

then the whole foundation of the thing needs to be looked at.

And that, I believe,

I said at the start of this thing, Stephen P.

New does not take cases for

things that he doesn't believe in and things that he doesn't believe he can win in.

And this is an an

open and shut example

of something that with a legitimate case in a legitimate court with a legitimate attorney

could prove to be very fucking interesting for the entire wrestling industry.

You know, if you remember when AEW started in 2019, there were

people talking about it.

I want to say it was Cody, maybe even Tony,

that there was a chance that the wrestlers wouldn't be independent contractors.

There would be employees, that there'd be a union, that there'd be benefits.

A lot of things that EVPs got that wrestlers never got.

And nothing ever changed.

You know, Tony tries to act like he's the babyface and it's the big mean WWE.

He does the same things that they do.

It's just he looks like a puts doing it, so you don't take it seriously.

Yeah, well, and think about this now.

If this was supposed to be, and

without violating any NDAs, I think he said it in a number of places that it was going to be a very wrestler-friendly company.

And the boys were going to have a say in how things went, and the fans were going to

appreciate that.

And, you know, it was all, it was like that, like we said, this biggest crowdfunding effort in history.

But the wrestler-friendly company,

right, it became the

wrestlers that he was friendly with company, the EVPs got all that, you know, and then some of the family members got employment status.

But

you could have, if he had had any

fiscal responsibility, had a manageable talent roster of a legitimate size where that you weren't paying 170 guys or what and girls and

showing half of them on television on any kind of regular basis, if that.

If he wasn't paying a couple hundred thousand dollars for songs because he's a mark for the Ring of Honor tapes,

that type of thing,

you could have actually made these people employees and given them the benefits and

deducted the Social Security and paid the Social Security and do all the things with the taxes that the normal jobs do.

And it wouldn't have cost him anything more than what he's already lost.

But he's playing

fantasy promoter rather than running responsible business.

Yeah, and what's their argument?

I'm not asking this, like, you know, facetiously, like, what is their argument for firing Kevin Kelly?

Is it because of the QAnon thing?

Is that what they've said they fired him for?

Is it buyer's remorse?

What is it?

Is AEW firing someone for buyer's Buyer's Remorse?

Well, as soon as

he had this issue with Ian is when they stuck Tony

on Saturday nights and

in the lead chair that Kevin was supposed to occupy.

And then, remember, we started seeing it.

Well,

Kevin's over in a corner a lot of the night.

Yeah, but that's part of the thing, too.

Shiavani, who's the ultimate stoo for Tony Khan.

What happened when Jim Ross was introduced onto TBS in 1988?

Now they like to pretend they're buddies.

Yeah.

There were problems because Shiavani thought that he should be where Jim Ross was.

And Jim Ross at the time was the best there was in the business.

Shivani and Heenan in WCW

famously didn't get along.

And famously, a lot of it was Shiavani's attitude and being a kiss-ass stooge for the office.

And here he is

here.

And Kevin Kelly gets brought in to do collision from New Japan.

Right?

Was it immediately, was it him and Nigel?

I'm trying to remember what the original,

I forget who they paired him with now in Collision.

I believe it was Kevin and Nigel.

So they start doing it.

Remember the first few weeks with punk and those FTR matches.

We said Kevin Kelly was knocking it out of the park.

It seems at some point his confidence was knocked out.

And that happens when you shove Shivani in there, an unnecessary third person.

who then all of a sudden became the lead commentator on the show.

Well, and now we find out that probably that was done because Kevin was having some issue with the office in trying to resolve some of these things.

The office.

The office.

You know, you need an office for the office.

Or as the boys used to say, the orifice.

And the other thing is,

you can disagree with parts of this, I guess, as a fan from afar.

And realize there are other elements of this that, yeah, of course.

And it's not even an AEW thing.

Wrestlers are employees.

It's a WWE thing.

It's an AEW thing.

It's not an independent thing.

I'll let CMLL deal with their own situation.

But WWE

controls their wrestlers' lives.

AEW may not be as hands-on, but they're as restrictive as they want to be and has the same kind of restrictions as WWE whenever they want to be for any reason they want.

Well, it's the same kind of contracts they're signing.

It's just that Tony, because he owns the whole thing and answers to no one, can just say, oh, yeah, you can do that if you want to.

But the point is, they're not, you're not a true independent contractor

when you, let's say I'm a painter, Brian, and I paint your house.

And you say, wow, you did a great job.

And you tell your neighbor Fred,

Hey, yeah, this guy did a great job painting my house.

And Fred says, well, I'd like to call him and get him to paint my house.

And you say, oh, no,

I'll tell you whether he can paint your house or not.

And I have to go through you to paint his house.

Then, am I an independent contractor?

Am I pretty much working for you?

AEW.

And

here's the thing:

these are

the same type of contracts.

The numbers are bigger, and there's different

provisions for all the new types of media and the new things that have come up that have been thought of.

But it's the same kind of contracts

as they were signing in the 80s where no matter how

much more detailed they get you're still an independent contractor even though

in the 80s and 90s pretty much every one of the boys always thought you know what

if i sign this contract if i don't like it i'm just gonna quit and go home right it was that kind of thing

And they did.

I mean, that's why you hear about things like going to play softball.

Yeah.

Who does that with a contract?

All right, I'll just go home.

Yeah, but that's because it was, it was new in the business, and everybody was used to saying, if I don't like where I'm working, I'm just going to say, fuck you.

And actually, you did that too.

You did that in 1990.

You still had a contract when you walked out.

Yes, for till the following May, and that was the end of October.

But I was like, fuck you.

I'm going home.

I don't want to be here anymore.

But the point is

there was some element of you could always go.

So now there's literally nowhere else to go

to make anywhere near the level of money as you will earn in WWE or that Tony Kahn will pay you in AEW

slash ring of honor.

And even TNA has right of first refusal.

That means you can work outside dates as long as you call the TNA office and say, hey, Can I work for Brian and Jim on February 28th?

Then they say yes, and then you can do it.

Well, that's back to the painting story I just talked about.

So

all the companies where you will make any money control your goddamn career.

And if you, if Brian, tell me, I've never worked in the real world.

But if you work for a company, they can send you.

If you're an employee of a company, they can, any kind of company, a widget company, they can call you in the office and say, hey, the boss wants wants you to go to Acme Widgets in Cleveland and tell him how we do shit, right?

Yeah, if that was the case, the widget company would pay my airfare.

They'd put me up in a hotel.

They'd give me a per diem.

I'd be able to buy food.

I'd have everything taken care of, maybe even a car fee, because I'm an employee of the company.

I'm representing the company.

I'm doing business on behalf of the company that would benefit the company.

Yeah.

But what's the difference between that and ordering a wrestler to go to Cleveland to work a show?

Or you go to work for Joe in Cleveland.

He'll send you a plane ticket and he'll have some stooge pick you up in the back seat of his fucking stinky car

and they get a good rate at the hotel in town.

Or maybe the local guy will fucking, you know, put you up there.

The wrestlers get $20 off at dinner tonight.

Yeah, but only if you sign autographs for the staff.

So that

again,

you know, fuck if they want to be show biz instead of the fucking good old-fashioned goddamn carny bullshit we used to pull off and love it,

then they're going to have to play like big boys, aren't they?

If you make somebody an employee, it doesn't mean they have to be an employee for the rest of the goddamn life of the company.

But for the time that you're saying that you

want them to be there,

two years, three years, what year, whatever it is, they ought to be an employee.

employee.

And by the way, Tony Khan, someone who's constantly battling the perception of him that's created by his behavior

and cares a lot about what people say and what people think, and does these media scrums because he wants to be out there and he wants people to listen to him.

What would make him a bigger babyface ever than if he actually did it?

Because he can do it.

He could do it a lot easier than WWE and their bureaucracy over there.

Tony Khan could just say we're doing it.

Unless Chad says no.

But

he'd be the biggest babyface ever.

Again, like you said, it can't be the giant roster, and there's no reason they should have as many wrestlers as they do.

But hold on, hold on, stop, pause, hold that thought, because now they're going to say, oh, Cornette and Last said we ought to fire half the guys.

They don't want the boys to have jobs.

No, unless you're running a charitable foundation

that is subsidizing 150 or 75 people's fucking lives and families, then there's no reason to have a roster in one wrestling company of that many people.

But you could treat a smaller number, oh, say 80 or 100, much better and rotate those people around every few years so everybody gets a chance at it.

Well, the other thing too,

I guess there would be nothing to preclude you from having, let's say, just to throw a number out there, let's say you had 60 employees that were wrestlers.

You could still have 20 independent contractors on top of that if they are working in a different way than the employees that are told where to go and what to do and everything.

Yes, if you are booking them per date and paying them a flat fee per date and they continue to work for other people at other promotions around the world.

And

if they make your dates a preference, well, that's just peachy keen, but

they can't have a written agreement with you that you have first right of refusal.

Then you're an independent contractor and they could have those because

it would be cheaper for the company and it would be a better goddamn chance for some of the guys to come from the independents and at least

see if they might be translating before they goddamn buy them for three years.

And eh.

And again,

maybe people in other countries, because we do have the global audience, Brian, don't understand why it is more expensive for a company to make somebody an employee instead of an independent contractor, because then you pay into their Medicare and their federal, their taxes and the whole nine yards, and you have to have an insurance plan that they can be involved in, and you're paying for that.

And

we've always said that the territories, and it is still true, true, even Crockett promotions in his biggest year in the 80s

would not have been able to afford to make the wrestlers employees for all the different expenses it would incur.

But it's been bullshit since probably 1998 that Vince McMahon couldn't.

You were going to say something.

Yeah, if you look at wrestling, let's say in the late 80s, WWF,

I think if things were done right,

a Hulk Hogan would be an employee and the job guys on the taping would be independent contractors.

Yeah.

And it would be probably job guys, sorry, Dustin,

and undercard guys

and guys coming in for one shot here and there.

And that'd be it.

Everyone else would be a real employee.

You know, all the guys that were working regulars six, seven days a week, those were employees.

And you had to kind of also evaluate talent properly then, which is not something that's done these days because you know, somebody will say, Well, if they only paid so-and-so to come in from Mexico every once in a while per shot, then he might sign with the WWE.

Well, then good for him

because if I'm bringing a motherfucker in for a shot every once in a while,

I'm not going to really miss him if he's gone, am I?

But anyway,

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There's another part of this whole story, the AEW lawsuits, Jim.

We'll talk more about this as it transpires.

But

I guess as the news broke or shortly afterward, I think it was the same day, Jim Ross went on a podcast.

and dismissed the whole thing, called it frivolous, said that

hold on now.

Because Tony Khan has more money, that it's impossible to win against that.

Hold on now.

And yes, he did say that.

And

I dismissed the whole thing as a characterization.

But here the problem becomes.

I like Kevin Kelly.

Of course, I like Stephen P.

Newt.

I like Jim Ross, right?

Tates, I don't.

particularly don't care either way.

The boy.

I'm just being honest.

I've met him like once in my fucking life so i don't care

but again this is almost like the thing with kevin and ian

in that

everybody is being sensitive and i wish that they would not

feel the need to to comment as they do

you know in in public if you will

But JR basically, yes, he did say, and he equated this suit, which is why I disequated it,

with that thing from the other, the shyster, what the Greek lawyer, what is it called?

Constantine Kryos or Kairos?

Kairos.

It was definitely Constantine with a

his clients were crying afterwards because he didn't do shit.

He couldn't even write his,

he couldn't even write,

he couldn't write his writs properly.

And if you've read the writs that he's written, you'll know they were really ill-written writs.

But anyway, he equated it with that type of suit, like the suit before, and used the word frivolous.

And

unfortunately, he was being prodded for an answer on pending litigation against a company that he currently works for.

So what's he going to say?

He can't really tell the truth, but he shouldn't use the word frivolous because he ought to know that Stephen don't do frivolous.

So that provokes some ill feelings there is possibly where you were going.

Well, yeah, he made these comments.

Stephen P.

New heard the comments and responded.

I have his comments here.

Do you want to hear those?

I certainly do.

Here's what he had to say.

Because

it will help

when

we hear from the Peanut Gallery after that again.

Go ahead.

I need to make a response.

J.R.

Jim Ross called this lawsuit frivolous.

well let me tell you something boola bula this is not a frivolous lawsuit you're part of the problem

you jim ross are part of the problem because you fed the guys in wwe

as talent relations these crap contracts for a quarter of a century you told these guys that it was a take it or leave it deal and they needed to sign these crap contracts that were contracts of adhesion

that they should have never have signed, or they should have lined the arbitration provisions out of it.

I'm not shocked in the least that you go on a podcast and you say this is a frivolous lawsuit.

I might lose it, but by God,

it's not frivolous.

I can tell you that.

Tony Kahn's paid JR a lot of money to do nothing for about five years now.

And so, if I were Jim Ross and I were living at Jacksonville Beach and making a bunch of money to not do much at all, I'd probably come out and call Steven Pinu's lawsuit frivolous.

Also,

everybody's got a price.

And those were Stephen's comments.

Well, there was a prickly but understandable response to a major attorney being accused of filing a frivolous suit.

However, I will say

that

one of my new favorite sayings, Brian, both of these things can be true.

J.R.

was having all those people sign crap contracts because he was the head of talent relations in the WWF.

But J.R.

didn't write the crap contracts.

J.R.

was

the

messenger of death, but the crap contracts were written by

not even Vince McMahon, but at Vince McMahon's direction for the terms that he wanted to keep these independent contractors under control.

And it was, again, a take-it-or-leave-it proposition for almost everybody except Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin or maybe The Rock or whatever,

that you would either sign, once you had negotiated the terms you could negotiate, merchandising,

compensation, possibly time off.

Those type of things, what you couldn't negotiate your way out of was you're an independent contractor.

You have no employment rights.

You have no profit-sharing pension, 401k, health insurance benefits, all those things that we always heard in the wrestling business that people got when they had a job at Acme Widget or whatever.

I'm just saying that was true that J.R.

was saying take it or leave it because that was the conditions of the company that he also worked for as well.

So he never said,

and I mean, I've heard some of the negotiations and obviously been in some.

Nobody ever said, well, this is a wonderful thing for your retirement and your goddamn your health insurance and all that stuff.

It was, here's the way the deals work, but here's what you're going to get.

But, you know.

There weren't any other deals in the wrestling business, so that's why you couldn't get them.

So both of these things can be true.

JR did make people sign those crap contracts because they wanted to sign them because those are only kind of contracts they were going to get.

But what exactly does he think is frivolous?

Is what we don't know.

Does he think the defamation cases independently against Tony Kahn

by the Tates and against Ian Rickabani by Kevin Kelly, those are frivolous?

Or that the idea that wrestlers should be classified as independent contractors and that AEW is falsely misclassifying them as frivolous?

I think he is mischaracterizing this whole thing as being frivolous because other people have tried it and done a poor job of it and not been able to demonstrate their case or present their case well.

And we've said all along, this is the,

especially with the WWE, but now if Tony wants to play with the big boys, that this is the Achilles heel of the wrestling industry as an industry, is that the fucking wrestlers are still like when I used to call a guy up that lives six hours away and say, hey, can you make Marietta on Thursday the 20th be there at 7 o'clock?

Sure.

And there was the fucking contract.

Right?

It's, it's, so this is the Achilles heel.

And I think J.R.

just assumes, because he probably hadn't paid a lot of attention.

or

read much about this or probably give a shit, that this is another one of those deals.

And again, I can't speak for the Tates and defamation because I don't know what their character is to begin with.

But with Kevin Kelly, there's been goddamn,

you know, fucking violence, physical violence, verbal threatening, and fucking felons involved in some of the shit in AEW that he get fired.

So I'd like to hear more about what's up with that.

Well, again, with his thing with the defamation, it's specific against Ian Ricobani for labeling him as QAnon, which he is saying that he is not.

Well, and again, yes,

I was talking about the tates with the defamation for the fucking

no shows with Tony.

I'm just, I don't give a shit there.

I'd like to see, do we have pictures of Kevin at a QAnon fucking planning commission?

I'd like to see more of that.

But the thing that I'm really interested in is let's just open up these contracts where you can promise a guy, we'll leave your other job and we'll pay you for three years, except when we change our mind in nine months because of something that we couldn't take care of internally, we'll just fucking

fire you and what are you going to do about it?

And or

what working conditions are the people under that, well, exactly, Your Honor.

Why or Your Honor might say to counselor, why is it that

these guys are so desperate to work for you that they will fucking drive three hours, 200 miles down the road to an airport to fly to another country, to get in a fucking car, to drive over to a building and get thrown around and beat up by somebody and then repeat that fucking trip home?

And you can't even fly them out of their own fucking backyard or whatever.

That's the issue is, are we going to open up any of these contracts and see what they look like?

Don't you think?

Well, we shall see.

Again, Jim Ross pointed out Tony Connor has a lot of money and he can fight, you know, until everyone else runs out of money.

Well, but

that assumes

that

I don't want to reveal because I don't know for sure,

but I don't believe that Stephen P.

New is asking Kevin Kelly or

Huey and Dewey Tate, whatever their first names are,

to give them large upfront, give him large upfront fees.

Is there a nicer way of saying this?

He's not in this for the money.

He wants, I could tell you, knowing Stephen, he was always wanted to change the conditions in the wrestling business for the wrestlers so that it's better for them.

Yes,

I'm not thinking that Kevin Kelly and the Tates are going to spend an incredible amount of money on this, unless, of course, they win $6 billion or whatever.

And I bet it's going to cost him a pretty penny for Stephen's involvement.

But he doesn't need the money and he doesn't need the work.

He needs more time with his lovely daughter, Rebecca.

So I don't think he's doing this just as, oh, gosh, where's my rent next coming from next month?

I better retain another client.

That's what the so that, and that's another thing that J.R.

probably

does not know because he's not not close to the situation.

But that's the

point is that this is not

ambulance chasing as has been done in the past.

This is

going to be a legitimately run operation here.

But you see some of the chatter online, and it's ridiculous.

The idea that because he represents you, because he represents me, because he represented CM Punk or Ace Steele and various other people, people you don't even know about, I'm sure.

I don't even know about.

That because of that, that somehow this is like just a baseless attack on AEW, because that's what we do.

We go after them in the courts and try to beat them.

This is a real case.

This is a real case filed in a real court.

Hey, and let me say one thing.

I found out, remember years ago, before we even started doing this show, I was fighting against a

developer that was doing a subdivision across the road from me on the empty property over there.

And when the neighbors and I got together, we found out of all of the real estate lawyers, real estate attorneys in town, guess how many of those attorneys represented the homeowners instead of the developers?

How many?

One.

Wow.

One.

So

when you hear about any competent attorney that represents more than one person in the wrestling business, you have to kind of figure it's because most of the fucking people in the wrestling business that have attorneys are the goddamn ones with all the money, which is generally the fucking promoters.

And by the way, technically now he represents the entire roster of AEW because if this class action thing goes through, he represents everyone who's ever worked there and anyone who works there.

Whether they like it or not.

Jon Moxley, meet your new attorney, Steven P.

New.

Jim, before we wrap this up, Tony Kahn.

Well, that's why I was going to save in the best for last.

Tony Khan had to weigh in, and we just read

the statement that Stephen made to the statement that JR made.

And then Tony tweeted this, and I'll let you read the tweet.

From the night before the pay-per-view, by the way.

I've just read Stephen P.

News' comments about Jim Ross.

I'm shocked and appalled by these comments on legend Jim Ross, part of AEW's foundation, someone so important from the beginning of AEW

and still right now today.

AEW,

JR, and I reserve all rights.

See you tonight at AEW all out.

Oh, it was actually the day of.

Excuse me.

I was wrong.

Yeah, he was so appalled.

He still got the fucking see you tonight at the pay-per-view plug-in.

See, this is where it gets to be bullshit.

This is where he's pandering, trying to rally people online to get behind AEW the weekend of a pay-per-view.

Well, here's the thing, it almost worked with me

because I saw that before I actually heard what Steven had said about what J.R.

had said.

And I'm like, oh, my God.

Because here's the, I didn't realize again, but this is the equivalent of Tony fearing for his life again.

Remember, he cut to promo on TV when nobody had seen the footage, just heard the story that

I've never been

scared for my life at a wrestling event before.

But I was afraid for my life.

I reserve all rights.

All rights to his life.

But no, he said that after the all-in thing last year at Wembley.

And then by the time maybe

the

impact of that statement wore off by the time they actually marked themselves into play in the footage, where it showed that Tony

was

witness to a fucking front face lock at a scuffle and was yelled at for three seconds from somebody on the other side of a fucking table.

And then he got hit really hard because then his ratings went away.

Well, that's what he was scared.

He was scared for his ratings.

But that's the thing is, now he issues this tweet like the ultimate drama queen,

the tweeting equivalent of I was scared for my life.

And I see that and I thought, oh my God, has Stephen got out of his mind?

What is he saying about Jim Ross?

And then I read the quote.

I go, what the fuck?

Appalled?

Besides, what does Bulabula mean?

Maybe that's a West Virginia thing.

I'll look it up.

It's Boomer Sooner.

Is Bula Bula?

Bula Boola, Bula Bula.

That's some kind of collie.

Anyway, besides the football song of Yale University.

Okay, I'm not sure where that came in.

But nevertheless, unless that is some type of comment about Jim Ross's sainted mother,

then no, he said, Jim,

you pushed the crab contracts.

You know what's in them?

Because Jared does know what's in them.

He knows they're crab contracts.

Those were the only kind, as I mentioned before, that you could have in wrestling.

And he didn't write them.

But he didn't.

Stephen P.

New did not say anything appalling about Jim Ross

in that.

Did you see appalling?

See, this is where it's so stupid that Tony would do this.

You want to talk about people saying appalling things about Jim Ross?

Bring a lawsuit about this, you reserve all rights, because I could tell you firsthand some of the text messages and some of the things people at that company have been saying about him since the beginning.

I think he would probably be appalled by them.

I think most people were saying that.

It was when they all had a fucking uproar.

Remember, because this was years years ago when he had first started and he made the comment, I've told him they all roll out on the floor and

cluster up like quail and wait for some dumbass to dive and hit them.

And they got upset at him saying that on his podcast or wherever because he'd said it to them and they still fucking do it.

And they were saying worse things about Jim Ross, the talent in AEW

on Twitter was saying worse things about Jim Ross then than Stephen just said now.

So fuck, are you out of your mind?

And again, don't clutch your pearls with this kind of stuff because it's a, you won't win this one.

I mean, trust me.

Yeah, and I

stories that have been around about Jim Ross's AEW run, and I feel bad with some of them and some of them are self-induced, but give me a break.

Give me a break.

But I am not knocking Jim Ross here, and I'm not knocking Steven P.

Newt.

No, I'm knocking Tony Khan.

I'm knocking Tony Khan.

I'm not saying you jumped in front of me.

I'm knocking Tony Khan again for stirring shit up.

He doesn't help anything.

He stirs you know these shocking and appalling comments.

Yeah, about your shitty contracts, Tony, and your play company.

And

again, it's true.

JR said this was the biggest announcing contract he'd ever signed in the business.

And that pretty much means it's the biggest one ever.

And think about his running AEW.

He was the lead announcer.

Then they moved him from that to put Excalibur there.

Then eventually they just moved him off Wednesday nights altogether.

He's had a few health issues, obviously, several health issues.

We've seen photos of them.

And then now they just bring him back at random times.

He appeared randomly a couple of times doing interviews, like sit-down interviews in a hotel or something on TV.

When he was first there and he was healthy and he was there every week, they wouldn't fucking listen to him.

So what the fuck?

But the point is, yes, they have paid him a lot of money, so no, I don't expect him to say, ah, shit, Tony's fucked.

But I do wish that he had not used the word frivolous.

Frivolous to an attorney of stature is like a red flag in front of a bull, isn't it?

Or did we establish that the bulls are colorblind and they're going on the motion?

I don't know.

Frivolous is not a good word to use, a GERD word.

Frivolous is not a good word,

GERD, to use to

an attorney of note.

No, he'll use a GERD buster on it.

Yes, and then you'll get your GERD busted.

But we're going to keep people up to date on this whole situation, aren't we?

As it unfolds?

No, we certainly will because I'm very curious how this is going to turn out.

And again, Tony had a lot to say about Jim Ross, the appalling comments about him.

Nothing to say about wrestlers not being employees.

You know, even if you want to say he can't say anything about the defamation thing, come on.

I mean, Tony's a longtime fan.

He's been on message boards.

He may have even been one of the people complaining about the way WWE has treated wrestlers in the past.

He knows what he should do and he knows what he could do.

You know, honest to God, the way he treats the wrestlers now and with the perks like they let him fly around in their, in his private plane and shit, I'm not sure that it may not be cheaper for him to make them employees.

God damn.

That's true.

And, you know, it's almost, I'll say this and then I'll shut up about it and we'll move along.

But it's almost easier as a former talent who has seen all various sides of it, or maybe even just a current talent.

It's easier to take when the WWE

won't make you an employee.

You're an independent contractor.

You got to take care of this or do that or whatever the case, or we own your likenesses, or whatever their rules are.

It's easier to take it from them than it is from Tony because Tony is so goddamn

not only charitable and

giving, but also there's no fiscal responsibility.

It's not like there's a pressure to

hit a budget or nail a projection or make any fucking money around there.

And it's an endless, goddamn cornucopia horn of plenty for a lot of guys that on the indies weren't making,

you know, a tenth of what they're making now to just show up and sit in catering.

So

I think it's, it's more, I'm just saying the point is it's easier to get mad at the at the at Tony for not doing it than the WWE because at least they're trying to have a bottom line, even though it's huge.

You know, the other thing is, and we'll end with this, I guess, the media rights deal is coming up.

I'm of the belief that they've already got the deal done with Warner Brothers.

Again, Warner Brothers, from what we've always heard from people outside of wrestling, going back to the beginning, had a piece of everything.

So that'd be probably tough to untangle.

I think there's a deal already, and obviously they'll get an increase.

But here's the question.

For the people who think AEW will get a slight increase, to the people who think they'll get double what they're getting now, or for the people who crazily think they'll get more than that,

the idea that AEW will now be profitable because the investment will have paid off because of the rights increase.

Does anyone think that's going to mean Tony will spend less?

Oh man, we got all this money coming in now.

I should probably stop spending.

And wrestlers' contracts are coming up.

And you know, let me just bring this up because I just saw this earlier.

They were talking about Kevin Owens' contract.

I read something about this.

His last three years, I think he made a 2.5 million, 2.5 million, 3 million, something like that.

I think it was 2.5,

2.75 and 3 or something.

Some escalation of that.

Right.

So that was over three years.

And at that time, it was one of the higher contracts in WWE.

Now, Swerve has a better contract than that.

And AEW, I saw that Dave Meltzer reported.

So that's what we talk about, the money and the spending going forward.

The human pincushion has a better contract than that.

Hey, Kevin Owens is going to be a free agent at the end of the year.

Using him as an example, not even saying it has to be him.

I think Steen will end up in AEW.

I bet you.

Betcha, by golly, wow.

Because here's the thing.

If you stop and you think about it, where should I be for my career?

Where will I have less frustration?

Where will I make plenty of money and be on a big stage?

WWE is the answer, especially under Paul Evek.

It's the answer.

However, and this is where I think it's only going to get more crazy going forward, especially with a rights increase.

Tony Khan could say to a Kevin Owens or anyone in WWE that's a top star, I will triple your salary to come work here.

And all of a a sudden, I mean, he's already doing it.

You know, you saw that WWE apparently is not happy about the swerve contract and the Daniel Garcia negotiations.

He's already offering more money to guys that haven't really,

that may not be that level where they've done it for enough years where they would get that money traditionally, I guess.

So now we could really get into a new thing where if he's got the television deal.

and he's got more money, he could start throwing stupid money around to get talent.

Well, let me ask you, if they've got the deal done already, why don't they announce it?

I just saw somebody say, oh, we think within the next month, we'll announce it.

If it's already done,

why are they waiting?

What is

the upside of waiting?

I don't know.

I can't answer that.

And again, this is just my hunch.

This is just my hunch.

Well, is it maybe they didn't get double, but maybe they got a little bit more because they've done something with the pay-per-views or they've whatever.

See, that's the play.

And I said this to you months ago.

If they do a renewal renewal of Warner Brothers Discovery, it has to come with a Max or HBO Max.

It used to be a better name.

HBO is a better brand than Max.

No offense to MJF or anyone else.

But they need that because then you don't have to worry about people going to multiple places to buy pay-per-view.

Hopefully you'll be getting income to cover some of that pay-per-view revenue from the streaming partner.

Well, but nevertheless, they're fucking mad motherfuckers.

The archive.

No, then the archive has a place to go.

Right now, there's no home for the AEW Archive.

Whether we like them or not, they've got five years of not just dynamite, but all these bullshit shows that no one watches, the YouTube ones that used to exist and the current ones.

That's a lot of content.

There's nowhere that it's housed.

I'm saying all of these things, but the point I'm making is that unless they're still fine-tuning all this bullshit, I don't know why they would get more money for the television program alone that they're producing now that has all-time record low viewerships.

But if they've done a package that's a little bit more, but it's not stunningly more, or if you break it down, which you know, Thurston Howell III or a bunch of the people online are gonna, maybe it's not that thrilling.

It's just more money for more shit.

Is that why he's kind of peddling it out slowly?

Who the fuck knows?

But

like you said, it's not like he's gonna

stop spending money.

And how long, if

now he can run

at a a $50 million a year profit from this point onward, as soon as this deal kicks in,

still, how long is it going to take before he recoups the money that he's spent to this point in time and then stays ahead of the goddamn money?

Well, time will tell, but as we've always said, AEW is going nowhere.

Where it may be on TV, whether it is on TV or not, remains to be seen, but it's not going anywhere.

So that's, I think, they're going to to be the next big story after the TV deal: is how much money is Tony going to start throwing around at top-flight free agents whenever anyone comes up?

Because now we have a very limited pool of people who would ever come up that are really, you can't call anyone a game changer because once you get to AEW, you know, it's going to take a long rebuilding process for that to work.

But there's a lot of things.

Nobody.

I mean, right now, all of the stars in who is a star, a really name

attraction in the WWE

that is

almost over the hill.

That is pretty much, this is as popular and is over and as big as this guy's ever going to be.

He's been there for a while at that position.

He ain't getting any younger.

And

because L.A.

Knights knew.

Say Uso.

No, no, no, Carl.

Figure the Usos out of this equation because they're not going to break up the family with this bloodline being so hot.

Owens fits that category because he's been there a while.

Can you say that Kevin Owens is going to, in the future, be more over in the WWE and used better and more popular than he ever has been before?

No, I think the best case scenario is kind of stay in place.

Sami Zayn, whenever his deal may be up, could you say the same thing for him?

More than likely, yeah.

They like those guys.

They're personal friends.

But

on the other side, Cody Rhodes ain't going anywhere.

Roman Reigns ain't going anywhere.

Logan Paul ain't going anywhere.

L.A.

Knight ain't going to go anywhere.

I mean,

Randy Orton ain't going anywhere.

Rhea Ripley ain't going anywhere.

Sounds like the goddamn cast list of MGM, more stars than there are in the heavens.

The Damian Priest at this point wouldn't go anywhere.

All of those, I mean, look at, there's

all of their top guys are kind of fresh, younger top guys, except for an Orton who is finishing his career in the WWE.

So.

So he's going to throw a ton of money at Kevin Owens if he's, if his contract comes up and he doesn't sign a renewal, he'll get one of the biggest offers in wrestling history from Tony Khan, you would think.

Yeah, and

he'll go there.

And I bet you Sammy would too.

But the thing is,

Edge went there.

It didn't make a fucking difference.

They will be booked.

But that's the example of someone wrapping up their career in WWE that all of a sudden went to AEW.

I thought, you know, he had his little run here.

I wasn't crazy about it, but it's kind of winding down.

Then he went to AEW.

Yes.

And I'm just saying that no matter what the level of attraction.

that leaves WWE, nobody is going to make a significant difference for any length of time in AEW, no matter how good they are or not, because it just happens.

It's a hole that they fall into.

But nobody on the WWE roster that is in the really upper echelon and is on an upward trajectory

either is going to leave that or would leave it or is capable of leaving it.

I see Owens and Zane fitting the category.

I don't see anybody else fitting that would make any difference

in AEW's business whatsoever.

Well, this will be an interesting story going forward, especially with Tony making allegations about WWE tampering with contracts.

And again, this is one of those things where be careful because things can go both ways and things have.

So be careful.

Yeah, I've known a bunch of people that have gone both ways.

No, but didn't they even say at the beginning of AEW they tried to get AJ Styles and

Gallows and Anderson to jump?

Yeah, I believe they did.

That's why they gave Gallows and Anderson those big contracts.

Half million dollars or more.

No, 750,

750 a year.

And then

as soon as they saw what AEW was when it debuted on television, they fucking gave them their notice like three months later.

Yeah, so be careful because there's plenty of people in every company that talk to lots of people.

It may not always be Bruce Pritchard, but there's plenty of people in every company that talk to plenty of people.

But that's the AEW legal news update.

People, people who talk to people,

are the luckiest people

in the world.

All right.

Pleasant enough.

We're in the future.

All right, Quantum Leaper.

We didn't go that far.

We had to take

a short shutdown because you may hear now again,

especially with my new souped up internet, the lawnmowers are here at my residence now.

Don't blame Brian.

Oh, you're always making up these mystery noises in the background.

Oh, come on now.

Ridiculous.

You may hear lawnmowers.

It may be a helicopter.

I'm always making up the

noises.

I hear voices in my head.

I'm here again in stereo.

Because I got your...

I got your lawnmowers in the background there, and someone in the background here has gardeners somewhere.

So

it's everywhere.

Well, you need to hunt that person down and let them know to reschedule their shit.

Well, you know what I would do?

I would hunt that person down and I would say, hey, maybe you need a good healthy supplement right now.

Maybe you need some protein.

Maybe you need something inside you filled with chocolate and protein and low in calories.

And we know someone and someplace and a thing to send them to.

I got a feeling if you walk up to a guy mowing the lawn around there and say, you need something inside you, he's going to punch you in the fucking face before

you get any further down that pitch.

But I'll tell you one thing: we've got new friends, Brian.

It's always great to have new friends, especially you could replace the old friends that have stabbed you in the back by now with new friends.

Our friends over at Orgain.

Orgain, ladies and gentlemen, O-R-G-A-I-N.

We talked about them on the drive-thru just a few days ago, but they bear repeating because this stuff, you know, I said I got the

protein shakes and that healthy stuff were poisoned to me by Vince McMahon and all of the bodybuilders I was around 20 years ago dumping that chalky, nasty, dirty-looking powder in a thing and shaking it up, or the prepared things that they got tasted like and looked like somebody had strained the lumps out of the sewage from the slaughterhouse.

But now,

if you want to live a healthy lifestyle, if you want more protein in your life, and who doesn't, we can't do without the protein.

Well, then all you got to do is take a big old swig of a 30-gram protein shake from Organe, the chocolate fudge,

and I'm set.

See, it's substantial.

Did you hear that, Brian?

What is that?

Are you dropping it on your desk?

I'm setting it down, the carton.

Right here on my desk because I've got one with, so anytime I need the protein, anytime you need the energy to keep going, anytime you need the muscle support to be supported, anytime you need to manage, let's say you don't have time to go down to Freddy's Steak Burgers and get a triple cheese with bacon.

Drink a chocolate shake from organe and you can hold off for an hour or so.

And

then when you go to Freddy's, you might only get a single or a double instead of a triple because it promotes healthy weight management does organe in combination with diet and exercise

you love the organe i absolutely love the organe i do work out and of course after you work out you want something healthy inside of you and organe is the perfect solution for me 30 grams of protein 160 calories it's delicious it's really delicious sometimes i want two or three at a time but i stop myself because i need more for later well you can't be a pig about these things anything is bad if you you go to excessive.

And I'll say this.

You talked about your earlier experiences with Vince McMahon and his cronies.

This organe, this is no IcoPro.

This is the real deal.

This tastes good.

Just because there's not a banner hanging up in Vince's warehouse for it doesn't mean that it tastes like IcoPro.

I'll tell you another thing.

You talk about working out.

I was working out.

I was working and I was outdoors.

So I was working out over the weekend.

And boy, it says it helps you provide muscle support and recovery.

I swigged one of these things as soon as I got back in.

I still feel like I've been beat with a sack of wet hammers, but normally I'd be bedridden.

But I'll tell you, listen, read this information.

And do they have these in other flavors?

I'm thinking maybe

a strawberry or maybe a Twinkie flavor.

Do they have Twinkie?

Go to Roque.

Organe.

Roque?

Go to.

Who's Roque?

I was about to say, go to Reed.

Go to Organe.com and read on there.

It's O-R-G-A-I-N.

Read on there whether they got Twinkie flavor.

They do not.

I can certify this.

This tastes like the chocolate milkshakes that my parents used to get me from Jerry's restaurant, Jerry's Home of the J-Boy.

And they had the chocolate shakes.

That's where, boy, I tell you what.

And

not only is there 30 grams of protein in this bad boy, which is 60% of what you're supposed to have during the day, But there's only there is seven grams of carbs, but two grams of dietary fiber.

And if you're figuring out your carbs, then you deduct the fiber grams from the carb grams and get the net carbs.

So it's only five, because seven minus two is five, right?

Well, that's right.

I don't know about anything.

Well, you know this, Matthew.

Yo, you know this.

I know the math.

The math isn't the part that's in question right now.

No,

if something's got fiber, it cancels out the carbs.

So you deduct the fiber from the carbs to get your net carbs.

And this is low in net carbs and high in protein and 40% of your calcium.

And said, now you were, you were shitting all over me

when I said, well, these guys come in.

Come here, Jim.

No, come to my office.

Come to my office, Jim.

Not under the

glasses.

Not under the T-Rex skull, Vince.

But

you were scoffing at me because I said, well, we ought to take a big old quart of vanilla ice cream and put it in a bowl and pour one of these over the top.

And that way you could get your dairy and you'd be even more healthy.

But you said that wouldn't work.

It would be less healthy because you'd be adding all the ice cream to the mix.

And you don't like ice cream.

That's one of the great things about this.

It fills you up the way ice cream would.

And it leaves you with that taste and the aftertaste of chocolate ice cream.

It's delicious.

Well, but ice cream, I thought, was healthy too because it comes from cow's milk and

dairy and, you know, all the,

do, do, do, you know, the early in the morning when the roasters are crowing.

That's it.

What's the tune?

No idea.

No, the cartoon tune that they play early in the morning on the farm.

Oh, yeah, I do know that one.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, you get up and you take a cow's udder in your mouth and you shoot in some milk, but the organe now,

you don't even need to

go to a chocolate cow because it's already mixed here for you.

That is utterly ridiculous.

It's harder to find the chocolate cows these days, but I'll tell you something else.

This organe, it's for everybody, men and women, because you know, men have been drinking organe for years to help grow hair back.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That's rogaine.

This is not rogane.

This is organe.

Then it doesn't grow hair, too.

No, this will certainly not grow your hair.

This will age your body.

This will help with muscle growth because it's protein, but nothing about hair.

Well, then why have the backs of my knees and my palms been sprouting ever since I started drinking this?

You know, that hair club for men was everywhere.

It was all over TV for years.

That's how Cy Sperling became famous.

You know, I'm not just a president.

I'm also a client.

And then he did WrestleMania 10.

I never saw him again.

Right?

Like, the hair club for men went away all of a sudden.

They don't have commercials anymore.

Well, that's actually

remember it.

It used to be a goddamn ultimate embarrassment to be bald for a man.

And that's why hair matches came into.

I'm going to shave you to make you look like a bald-headed geek.

Nobody wanted to be bald.

Now they're just shaving their head on purpose, even when they've got hair.

I blame Steve Austin, Telly Savalas, and Isaac Hayes.

What about Bill Goldberg?

He came later.

But I'll tell you something else.

The founder of Orgain, not Rogaine, ladies and gentlemen, but Organe is Andrew Abraham MD.

He's a doctor, so he knows these things.

And right on the package, he says Organe's relentless pursuit of good, clean nutrition is based on my belief that real foods can make a difference.

Our goal is to help people live more vibrant lives.

He's a founder, a cancer survivor, and a food.

entrepreneur is Andrew Abraham M.D.

So I salute him.

What more do you need to know?

If this is good enough for him, it's good enough for me.

Well, that's right.

Because, God, if you want to lead a life of vibration

or a vibrant life, you're going to be vibrating all over the place when you drink this stuff, folks.

Right now,

organe 30-gram protein shakes are available at Costco

or at orgain.com.

Or if you want to get in on the delicious protein-packed nutrition today

and save money, you go to organe.com, O-R-G-A-I-N

dot com slash JCE

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

Organe.com slash JCE, 20% off

on these delectable.

You can stick one of these in your pocket too, if you got big enough pants.

And just carry it around with you.

Whenever you need a chocolate milkshake, boom, it's right there.

Or leave it in the fridge.

And you can just take it out of of there nice and chilled.

Whenever you want to.

Well, what if you don't, what if you're on the go and you don't have a fridge in your other back pocket?

You got to downsize when you're walking around, Brian.

But you can have one of these everywhere.

Have one in every refrigerator that you've got.

And also carry a cooler around because you never know when you're going to need a delicious.

Did you check and see, do they have Twinkie flavor yet?

There is no Twinkie flavor, nor will there be.

Well, you can't predict the future.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, I was kind of disheartened, but I'm like, like, you can't predict the future.

I mean, someday the people at Hostess and Dr.

Abraham might get together.

But until then, the chocolate fudge is darn good.

This is legitimately one of the greatest, if not the best-tasting protein shake I've ever had, one of the very best.

I'm really enjoying them.

Organe, get one today.

Jim, one more time.

What's that promo code?

That promo code is JCE for 20% off your order.

Are you down in one of these in the morning to wash down your French toast for breakfast?

I haven't had French toast in a little while.

I'm actually having one right now.

That may be why I sound a little off.

You're having French toast right now?

I'm having my 30 gram protein shake from Organe.

Oh.

The chocolate fudge flavor.

And everyone else can get one too.

And especially if you work out, I suggest you get one.

Get one.

Order a case.

Get one.

Yeah, no, just buy them one at a time.

Don't jump into anything with both feet or anything.

Use the promo code and buy a bunch of them.

Seriously, if you need a protein shake, if you want one that tastes good, this is really good.

What do you think if we dolloped a little whipped cream on top of this bad boy?

That would be good.

Why?

But why?

Well, I'm just, it's so good.

It's like real food.

It's not like healthy, even though it's healthy.

So it should be treated like real food instead of shit that you're just choking down at the thought that you might die if you don't.

Listen to the sound of those lawnmowers behind you.

I just took off my headphones to see if it was my side.

It's quite no, they're getting very close, but in another hour or so, they'll be away from the house.

So we'll try to struggle through.

Anyway,

speaking, this is my program, isn't it?

Can we do what I want here?

Relatively, yes.

I mean, depends on.

Well, I got the letter from Steven about the things that we can't do on the internet.

He sent that out some time back, but we can basically do what I want in the direction of the program.

Okay, well, we'll see where this goes.

All right, well, I'm just we'll go to SmackDown now and get that out of the way.

That's out of the question.

That's one of the things Stephen said we can't talk about.

It causes too many people to fall asleep.

Hey, if there was anything that a goddamn lawyer would have to adjudicate as to whether you could speak on, it would be this AEW pay-per-view we're about to talk about here shortly.

Well, this SmackDown is the final SmackDown on Fox.

Yes, it was.

And they said that.

And they said, we'll see you next week on the USA Network.

I didn't think.

I wonder if they just did that.

I'm surprised Fox didn't bleep them.

That used to be a no-no.

You'd have to say, check us out on another network or another channel.

The competition was never mentioned in the old days.

Remember when David O'Letterman left late night to become the host of the CBS, you know, the late show with David O'Letterman against the tonight show?

He said, I'll see you on September, whatever, september 9th at 11 30.

he couldn't even say what channel he was going to be on they wouldn't let you do that well apparently

fox is uh well

are the who are they still in business in some kind of way with anybody with everybody five people own everything in the world now so

maybe they're getting some favors are they in business with endeavor that's really what it is it's not just wwe it's ufc and anything else that endeavor owns a piece of yeah there you go.

And if Endeavor doesn't own part of it, then Fox owns part of it or WBD or

another one of the giant conglomerates.

You never know who to trust anymore.

I'll tell you who you can trust.

Cody Rhodes, the American nightmare.

That's who you can trust.

And I said this earlier.

This is the goddamn, it's like these,

they're in Edmonton, Alberta.

It's the biggest house I've ever seen in Edmonton, fucking Alberta, Canada.

Jesus Christ, but it's like the 10 or 12,000 people or however many thousands of people that are in these arenas are paid members of the studio audience.

Brian, can you remember?

Even in the attitude era, did the people react

to everybody

as wholeheartedly and as full-throatedly exactly as they're supposed to than these

than the WWE fans are doing right now.

Can you remember?

WWE is getting reactions right now that are akin to

like a bunch of bands touring together in the 60s.

Like the stars are coming to town for this one night.

We have to go see them and react to them like they're stars.

AEW, not to make this a comparison right now, but in terms of the fan base, we just saw them have a pretty nice house in Chicago.

Those fans didn't move.

They sat there.

And whenever you saw them, that's one of the things that really sticks out is the difference in reactions between those fans and WWE fans who are eating everything up like I've never seen before.

Well, and the AEW fans, they're down to the car wreck segment of the population.

They just come to,

if you pull out a table, they scream, one more table.

Or if you set somebody on fire, throw some more gas on him.

Or what?

They just want to see this bullshit, right?

They don't care about any of these people.

And nobody's a star.

They're going to see a bunch of fucking idiots kill each other.

But the WWE shows, they're

looking at the, and

now everybody said, oh, Cornet's a WWE, what do they call it, Stan?

The kids say Stan, or he's on the WWE side.

No, I'm saying this is ridiculous because they're doing

as little as possible.

that you possibly can do to get this.

This is not the best wrestling I've ever seen by any stretch of the imagination.

It is kind of boring in spots, but goddamn, these fans of this, many of them who have never lived through another era to seen it done any better,

are loving this shit.

And everybody's over.

And like I said, what a fucking house in Edmonton, Alberta.

We talk about they can't.

Still can't match the record set in the territory days.

Stu Hart didn't have a fucking building this size to begin with and never had that many people.

I wonder if any of the hearts were there

to see, like, what the fuck.

Remember that time I told you Lawler was in Evansville for Raw in like

98 or whatever, and they sold out the big building, 12,000 people.

Remember when he came out for commentary?

No.

They're doing raw, and it's the height of the Monday Night Wars, and they're at Roberts Stadium, not the old Evansville Coliseum.

We're on every Wednesday night, 52 weeks a year for years, the Memphis territory to have between 500 and 1,200 people in that building.

And that was the Wednesday night show, and it was what it was, right?

There's 12,000 at Roberts Stadium, and they introduce Lawler as the color guy with JR.

And he comes out on the stage and they fucking, because it's Lawler.

He was on TV there for 20 years.

And they give him a standing ovation.

And they're fucking screaming, yeah.

And he looked around from the stage at those 12,000 people and he said, Where were all you son of a bitches when I ran this town every Wednesday night?

That's funny.

But so

anyway,

it's got to be the same

thing up there with the Hart family.

But yeah, Bruce Hart usually shows up, but they turn him away.

And oh, God, come on.

That's what they mean by a turnaway crowd up there.

No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

But anyway, they

so they acknowledged, or Cody rather, came out

and, you know, he signs the kids' signs on the way, and he shakes hands, and he's smiling, and he brings everybody into the entrance, and they chant Cody, and they cheer, and et cetera.

And as I said, that's when he acknowledged Kevin Owens, the match with him, and he acknowledged Michael Cole, who's back on SmackDown now.

I guess they're switching announcers for

their various new networks.

And then all he had to do was say, well, basically, you know, I'm probably going to be interrupted pretty soon, so I'd like to send an invitation out to the bloodline, and they just play the music.

God damn it.

And the music plays, and Solo comes out with all three of his henchmen.

And Solo gets in the ring and has to face off with Cody.

The other three stay on the floor.

Tama Tonga, Tom Tonga Loa, and,

of course, the star of our show, Jacob Fatu.

And

as soon as Solo speaks, the people, we want Roman.

We want Roman.

And they're already calling the next goddamn big main event.

Solo asks if Cody's ready to defend against him.

And he had him beat at SummerSlam if it wasn't for Roman Reigns.

And they chanted again.

And

Cody said, well, we got a season premiere next week.

And

the fans are chanting, we want Roman.

And I saw somebody on Twitter going, oh,

you know,

they chanted for Roman over Cody.

Well,

it's not bad for Cody.

It's good for business.

Cody already beat Solo, right, on the pay-per-view.

But people want to see

Roman kick the shit out of Solo because that's the personal issue.

So it's not like Cody is not over, it's that that's and that's where they want the people's mind to go.

It's almost it's goddamn mass hypnosis.

And

Cody just continued because

he, at first, he teased he was offering a shot to Solo because he was putting him over.

Well, you've done this and you've done that.

Move over, Solo.

I'm not talking to you.

I'm talking to Jacob Fatu.

So he's trying to start the seeds of sowing dissension or whatever.

And also, it gets Jacob Fatu over because even Cody has to admit that this guy's been unstoppable.

But then Jacob steps up onto the Cody says, Why don't you step up?

And Jacob gets onto the ring apron, and the fans are chanting, step up, step up.

What the fuck?

It's like they're goddamn paid members of the cast.

And then Solo stares at Jacob,

and Jacob screams, I love you, you are my tribal chief.

And he gets down on the floor for now.

And then Cody cuts the promo to promote next week the debut of SmackDown on or on USA.

They're going to rematch the pay-per-view with Solo and Cody.

And it's, you know, that's for free television.

And, you know, then

Solo says, well, we don't need to wait till next week.

And as they're menacing Cody,

here comes the Street Profits, Champa, and Same Face.

Well, they had an eight-man tag to sell.

But Nick Aldous jumps in the middle of it and says, Slow down, everybody.

Tonight's tag team, or main event is going to be an eight-man tag team match.

And next week, it's going to be Cody and Solo in a cage.

And this was like 20 fucking minutes to say three minutes worth of shit.

And the people are screaming and yelling and jumping up and down and chanting for every future match they need to pay for.

It's brilliant.

It was also the last thing you needed to see on this episode.

Once those tag teams came out, that was a sign that, you know what, maybe I could leave before the main event.

I don't know what's going to happen.

Yeah.

And honestly, well, go ahead.

What were you going to say?

Well, two things.

One,

the reaction to Jacob Fatou and the way he was presented here very early on in his run with Cody Rhodes bypassing Solo to bring him up there just to create a little dissension, like you said, although eventually Jacob,

as always, acquiesced to what the tribal chief wants.

But the reaction and the fact that they teased this, are are they already teasing a future solo babyface run?

Not solo, excuse me, Jacob Fatu, babyface run.

Well, think about they're teasing a lot of stuff.

It could, depending on what happens from here, and it'll be way far down the line, but it could go either way.

But the point is, the people now know that there has been treachery in the bloodline before,

right?

Mary Babybo, we got a whole new bloodline now.

And

so

when a guy is as

impressive and makes an impression, makes an impact like Jacob Fatu, and by design they have allowed him to do that and is

because of the talent he has for doing that,

they're going to, they already,

the fans already want to see him.

in the ring probably more than the rest of them, even including Solo, because of the just, he's wild, right?

So they're eventually going to start liking him, except when he does shit to the people they really like and blah, blah, blah.

But if you can start dropping little hints now like that,

there's going to be jealousy in the bloodline again.

And then people start watching for that.

And then it can add intrigue.

So,

you know, eventually,

Solo doesn't have a lot of redeeming qualities because they put,

and I don't mean in real life, I mean as a heel.

They put him in a position where he's the, you know, the prick that

usurped Roman Reigns' throne, but he's also not a spectacular worker that the people want to cheer when he does a wild thing.

So

he would probably be the heel.

Jacob Fatu could potentially be a babyface, but that would be,

again, it'd be ridiculous to do that for a year or more

because you've already, you haven't even had the first match with Solo and the last guy he fucked around.

That's why I was surprised they did this here because I feel like it almost puts it in the fans' mind now that they should start getting behind Jacob Fatu a little bit.

Well, but it also puts Jacob Fatu over that Cody is willing to acknowledge that he has been

with what's in front of his eyes.

He's been impressive.

He's been awesome.

He's been dominant.

He's been the one that's been propping Solo up.

But if Jacob Fatu had jumped on the apron and immediately said, No, you know, my tribal chief, not me, or not even jumped on the apron, not moved, but he reacted to Cody, which sets up the, in my eyes, sets up the way a fan would think going forward.

Yes.

And like I said, it's early on in the run, and you're saying that they shouldn't do it for a while.

I was surprised that they did it here.

I like it because they don't have to do anything with it for a while, but there can always be the subtle undertones, is

basically what I'm saying.

And

And it helps get

Jacob Fatu over is because normally the top superstar baby faces

are talking about the henchmen like flunkies and like, you know, yeah, you got your back up there, but no, he's the guy that's being focused on.

It sets him apart.

And

as long as he stays healthy, he's going to be a big star in that fucking company for a while

because he has the element of danger that a lot of people are missing these days.

No, and I hate to compare him to a murderer, but it's reminiscent of Jimmy Snooka, who came in as a crazy heel.

Yeah.

And the fans couldn't help but start cheering for him.

And Snooka had a better body,

but was not...

I mean, for his time, he was incredible with what he could do, but Jacob Fatu is a better athlete than Jimmy Snooka was.

Snooka had the body.

And I mean, you know, I saw Snuka before the WWF.

I saw him, you know, for Crockett when they came to Cincinnati.

And

obviously video from the Carolinas, he moved at that size like a fucking cat.

He was amazing.

When they'd throw him out of the ring, he wouldn't even grab the ropes.

He'd just kind of...

And he was barefoot too, landing on concrete floors, but he'd turn and let both of his arms kind of break the

momentum a little bit as he went through the second and top rope and end up with his feet under him just enough.

And you go, shit.

But Jacob can do shit that Snooka couldn't dream of doing.

One more question before we move on.

And again, apologies for Jim's noise.

For my gardeners, my lawnmowers.

You brought up that Cody Rhodes signed a sign.

signed a sign.

He signed an autograph on a sign on the way out to the ring.

He's not the first guy to do this in recent weeks.

Not the first time he's done it.

I saw Randy Orton do it the other day of all people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is a new thing under the new management.

What do you think of?

What do you think of now in 2024 fans signing autographs or specifically one autograph to one fan on the way to the ring almost to just show that you're doing it, but you're showing that for a reason?

What do you think of it?

Well,

I don't, I never heard Vince say, god damn it,

Pat, or goddamn it, Lanza, whatever, you know, tell him to stop signing autographs on the way to the ring.

I just think that it's

who, if it wasn't Cody that started doing, who was the first one lately that started doing it, maybe they just saw, oh, that looks good.

Maybe some other guy said, I'll start doing it too.

I don't know that there was any edict banning it, but especially when they've got that long aisleway to walk down and all those people are happy and screaming and jumping up and down and taking pictures and shaking the signs.

If you go through all of them and ignore them, you're kind of a prick.

So

the baby faces that are really over have mastered the deal of, okay, I'm going to slap hands for 15 feet on this side, and then I'm going to go across and shake a couple.

There's a kid with a pin.

I'll grab it.

You're keeping it fresh instead of just a long walk where you're ignoring these people that love you.

And it brings everybody in.

And people that are watching on TV go, well, wow, if I went, maybe he'd sign my sign or whatever.

And the kids, like, yeah, daddy, take me.

It's

Jerry Jarrett had the fabulous ones, Stan and Steve,

do the old babyface deal that the babyfaces in the southern territories used to do,

you know, long ago,

is when they'd come out, instead of getting right in the ring, they'd go around the ring and shake hands with all the fans in the front row or kiss the girls or hug the babies or whatever the case may be.

And that started to be such a, remember, that was the fight between Steve Kern and Coco Ware

because then Coco started doing it because it got over so good.

And Kern said, hey, that's our fucking deal.

And, you know, gimmick infringement, right?

But,

you know, it just, it brings the people in more when you've got a guy and he's happy, he's doing whatever.

Now, when it's game face and he's coming out for a grudge match

you know then that's different it would be out of place but what do you think of the visual and again i don't know if you could do it today like they did in years past a different animal and you have security concerns and everything else different fan base but the visual of coming back from commercial they used to have an in the ring the heel would be in one corner the baby face in the other corner with fans all on the floor holding things up for them to sign yo yeah we haven't seen that in so many years visually how do you think that would work today

Well, you couldn't do it because of the ring layout and you'd have to let people around the barricade.

See, that was when I first started going to the Louisville Gardens in

1974.

They had a rope around the ring, right?

About three feet out past the apron.

That's where you're not supposed to go.

But everybody would stand there and take pictures as the baby face walked in, no music, and walked up the steps.

And then occasionally they'd reach for something or whatever.

And in some places that didn't even have a rope, that's where you see the old pictures of there's a hundred kids in the corner of the ring handing the babyface pictures or the program for him to sign with a pencil while he's waiting on the ring introductions.

But now, you know, you can't,

you can't just

suddenly say, okay, for the next three minutes, everybody.

that wants to can come inside the fucking barricade and there's insurance concerns and liability lawsuits.

And what if little Pismo slips and falls off the apron and fractures his skull?

He's four years old.

It'll never happen like that again.

But the old pictures are cool.

And again, different fan base.

And you said different layout of the ring, but back to SmackDown.

Do we have to?

No, well, real briefly, from here on out, Bailey wrestled Tiffy

and the Lucha Heels ate dinner.

And Leonardo da Vinci is back.

The old third wheel with

Gunther and Kaiser.

And now he's an egotistical rich guy.

And while he had his back turned, taking his jacket off, Apollo Crews rolled him up in three seconds.

One, two, three.

You know, it's one thing to repackage someone.

Especially someone who really didn't stand out in their role.

Like he never spoke and he never smiled, nothing.

He was just there.

But I think he left Imperium by getting his ass kicked, didn't he?

Like Kaiser turned on him and kicked the shit out of him.

Yeah, I believe he did.

They're in the same company, they just repackaged him and now he's smiling.

Nothing like that's where it's a little weird.

And he got a lot of money.

I guess so.

I guess so.

No, that's what it was.

While he's been gone, he sued that fucking Kaiser.

He called Steven P.

New, and that must be why he's got all this money because he got the big settlement from Stephen P.

New.

And then he gets beat on his re-debut in three seconds.

I thought,

But anyway, okay, some girls argued in the back.

They had a triple threat match with Theory

versus Waller versus Owens.

And, you know, one would think they're building the tension between Theory and Waller or whatever.

But this,

A, it's a three-way, and it's going to be rotten to begin with.

But at the bell, and this was the nine o'clock draw for the ratings.

Theory is standing there, and Owens runs and clotheslines Theory, and he takes a hell of a bump upside down over the top rope, right?

Fucking theory.

And then Waller is going to charge at Owens, and Owens is going to sidestep him and chuck him out of the ring, too.

And that fucking

Waller looks like a three-legged fucking duck with a hernia.

He comes running, bent over, and he just ran right past Owens.

All Owens had to do is just turn to wave his hand, and he just dove through the ropes on his own.

I'm like, fucking hell.

And within the first 30 seconds, they were on the floor pulling out a fucking table.

So I went to the finish, which was, again,

Owens beat Theory with a stunner, for which the bump he took was probably the highlight of the fucking match.

But then they turned around and laid Owens out, the two of them, because they're heels and they do things like that.

Should I keep moving and get to LA Night?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everybody's doing it with everybody saying it.

So L.A.

Knight was in the ring and he got a big entrance and he got the big L.A.

Night chance and he got a big pop on the let me talk to you.

And they did all that, yes.

in the right places.

And he cut a promo getting himself over or whatever.

And then music interrupts, and here comes Carmelo Hayes.

And the only good part of this was that when Hayes came out, he walked past a guy holding a sign and said, What would Mama Cornett say?

Did you see that sign?

Or that it was tweeted several times.

I did see that.

Mama Cornette's getting a lot of mentions on signs at wrestling shows lately, more than you.

Well, because she had more wisdom than I do.

See, it's like Walter Brennan and the guns of Will Sonnet.

She was the fastest one of the bunch of us.

And Carmelo wants to be next for the U.S.

title.

And he bored the people to tears.

And then LA Knight bit his head off and got people back a little bit.

And then they played Andre music.

And I'm saying, oh, Jesus, they are really trying to send this thing into the toilet.

They send L.A.

Knight out.

He's fucking over.

They send out Carmelo Hayes.

He drags it down.

L.A.

Knight tries to snatch it back up.

And here comes the promo killer.

He

had a microphone and tried to speak as slowly as he could,

and you still can't fucking understand.

And Hayes had to repeat it.

So, what you're saying to me that blah, blah, blah, right?

What the fuck?

And then Hayes, who they don't care about, and Andre, who they don't understand, got an argument over who should get the title match.

And it was like fantasy camp with a star doing a promo with a couple of fans who had paid to be there.

I get a kick out of Andrade.

I almost called him André because of you.

Andrade, Andrade, whatever his name is.

Well, that's the way you say it.

You know, potatoes and potatoes.

I could listen to him read a phone book and be happy.

I wouldn't have any idea what he's saying, but there's something very pleasant about the way he says these things.

Ah, dude.

I want a tado.

I don't know what he's saying, but I want to.

Well, he spoke some Spanish, and then he shoved Carmelo into L.A.

Knight, and L.A.

Knight

gave Andrade the BFT, and then he gave Hayes the BFT.

And the people liked that because not only did they like L.A.

Knight doing his big move, but also they were glad it was over.

And then Chelsea wrestled Mia Yim, and then we had the eight-man tag with the bloodline against the

B team.

And Jacob Fatu

beat up all four of them and tagged in Solo, who hit Ford with the spike,

I believe, a couple of times in one, two, three.

So basically, whenever they had filled the time in,

Jacob Fatu just beat the shit out of all four baby faces and set the guy up for him.

And boom, and there you go.

And Jacob then puts the ulafala

on Solo, and

off the air we go.

I'm just telling you, he's going to be a fucking star for a while.

The Samoan werewolf.

Werewolf?

Therewolf.

Well, that was SmackDown.

See if you can hear my notes hitting the floor.

I heard it.

There you go.

Rip them up like you used to.

Well, no, because then, goddamn it, I'm saving these in case I'm hauled into court for telling the truth about I'm starting a file now.

All right, that's a good idea.

I'm keeping all of my notes in case that, you know, because I understand that in some legal proceedings, a lot of documents get requested, and those documents have to be forked over.

Yes, that's true.

And then they're poured through with a fine-tooth comb, and then people read them after that.

It doesn't matter where you are.

St.

Louis, Beverly Hills, those documents get handed over, and we got to go through all of them.

Doesn't matter where you are.

There's a paper trail.

It takes a lot of time, but it's rewarding and fun.

Yes, it's good for you in some cases.

You'll learn a lot of things.

I wonder, yes, and we've learned so many things about

the various ways that these things work.

All right,

enough vague illusions, folks.

We'd love to tell you, and we're going to one of these times.

And we will, but just not.

We will be.

Oh, we will be.

But what do you think the odds are we're going to tell the people

should they bet on it i think it's a pretty good bet i think it's a safe bet and we don't know when but we do know if and yes that would be a safe bet and right now the real question is if you wanted to make a bet that wasn't safe will there also be a video component to what we release or what we oh well there you go because some video does exist of some interesting things there is some very interesting video that is uh ours We paid for it.

Yes, yes.

Quite a pretty penny, too.

But anyway, back to what we're getting paid for.

If you want to bet on something, the NFL, Brian, National Football League, the NFL, people have heard of it.

They play it with a ball known as a pigskin.

It's kind of elongated.

It looks like Stewie Griffin's head.

It's not what they call football.

Over across the pond.

It's American-style football.

And a lot of people bet bet on these things.

Brian, did you know this?

The football games from the NFL?

Oh, of course.

There's wagering going on.

I think it's probably the biggest thing, the biggest sport there is in America for people to wager on.

Well, and that some people may still be left out because they don't know what they don't know.

They don't know what they're doing.

They don't think they have the knowledge to.

crunch the intricate numbers.

But you know what?

Our friends over at DraftKings Sportsbook, they are an official sportsbook partner of the NFL.

Well, you can bet on simple stuff until you worm your way into

experience with these things.

You can bet on something simple like:

is little Joe from Kokomo going to score a touchdown in this game?

And if you bet on that and he scores a touchdown, boom goes the dynamite.

You win some money.

Now,

I don't know if perhaps Little Joe from Kokomo is going to score a touchdown that day or not.

You might lose, but

maybe you could find out where Little Joe from Kokomo is and go,

I don't know, detain a member of his family and say, hey, little Joe from Kokomo, you better score that touchdown or you're never going to see Aunt Gladys again.

Something like that, you know, you could play with the odds a little bit that way.

Brian, are you in favor of taking Aunt Gladys out behind the shed and tying her up a little bit until little Joe scores that touchdown?

Let's not talk about little Joe.

Little Joe giving it away.

No, let's talk about the NFL.

Let's talk about DraftKings.

Let's talk about wagering on the NFL with DraftKings.

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I caught you taking a big sip of sustenance there, didn't I?

It's delicious.

Well, you can score big with DraftKings Sportsbook because they're the number one place to bet on touchdowns.

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Now, I'm thinking, so $5

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Now, that's $255.

If you bet.

That would be 50.

You could bet on 51 different people

in the particular football game that they would make a touchdown and you'd pretty much have to win there, wouldn't you?

Because with $250, you can just go crazy mad and just do all kinds of things.

Well, as we always say, we can't give any suggestions or any thoughts about how people should wager.

We could just say that you can wager.

Yes.

Or friends at DraftKings where they have a crown and they say that it's yours.

Yes, the crown is yours as long as you're, you know, willing to fucking bet some money on it.

But that's the thing.

If you bet $5, get $250 in bonus bets, I'd spread that around over.

How many football players are there in the NFL?

Altogether?

I don't know.

Well, maybe you could just bet $1

on 255 different players

to

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And boy, sooner or later, some of those weasels is going to score a touchdown.

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Of course, if you're a new customer, if you're just bugging them all the time with your bullshit, well, they're not going to give you this deal.

Crown's yours, Brian.

Crown is yours.

That's right.

The crown is yours.

And we have a friend of ours who is just arriving right now.

He has something to say.

Let me let him in the door.

Hold on.

You have anything you want to say about this man before we

give him a chance to say something here?

Apparently, he's the guy with my weed eater because he's right under the window now.

Okay, sir, do you have something to say?

Well, hold on.

You said there's weed?

Let's go to this guy.

We'll talk about this in a second.

Weed eater, not dealer.

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Wow, that's a lot of information there.

And of course, we hope you all heard it.

And you can all use that information when you go to DraftKings.

The crown is yours.

And if you didn't retain all of it next week, have a pad and a pencil ready and take notes.

All right, what is going on?

Give them some information of your own, Brian.

What's going on at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week?

Another fantastic week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information about all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcast or on Facebook.

Facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

A few notes, of course, the wrestling news.

Each and every day, get your wrestling news for free from the wrestling news, wherever you find your favorite podcast or directly from thewrestlingnews.com.

No clickbait, no paywall, just the wrestling news.

If you're sick and tired of the conjecture and opinions, check it out.

A clear and concise reporting of the events happening in and around the world of professional wrestling.

Get it from the wrestling news.

Brian, I have to ask you, is there a paywall involved?

No paywall.

We think the news should be available for everyone for free.

And we're going to bring you more about that in the future.

From the wrestling news.

Want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, the latest episode?

One of my favorite guests on the 605 Super Podcast, one of the biggest celebrities I know, Dan Farron, is on the show.

Check this out.

Hear some great stories about Southern California, Lucha Libre, and so much more.

Dan Farron, of course, has one of my favorite stories because he was a regular on the Southern California indie scene, Lucha scene, whatever you want to say.

He was a referee.

He ended up promoting some shows.

There was a wrestler that appeared on a WWF taping in like 1993 as Dan Farron wearing a mask.

There's a masked wrestler named Dan Faron.

It's ridiculous, but the video's out there.

And check out Dan on this episode.

Shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcast, or of course, su awpod.com.

And don't forget about the 605 Super Podcast, the

mothership.

Suzanne's family, the older members, are downstairs.

They're going to wonder what's happening.

But I go through the archive, 605pod.com.

The yelling is over.

The mothership, 605pod.com, the mothership.

And enough of mothers, because now we've got to go to

all out of sellouts on September the 7th, the big pay-per-view following the last big pay-per-view a couple weeks ago.

And you said earlier, and by the way, I apologize again, the lawnmowers are on the other side of the house now if you're going to complain about my roaring in the background.

But

you said earlier they had a halfway decent house for once.

Well, for what they've been doing lately in this country domestically, it was, but still,

this was all out.

And I saw a graph showing their

gates in Chicago.

Have they killed Chicago with the punk debacle?

Because they didn't sell out a pay-per-view at the smaller building in Chicago, Illinois.

You know, it's interesting.

We always thought that was going to be the biggest direct hit was how Chicago would accept AEW and react to certain people like Jack Perry, the Young Bucks, et cetera.

But it turns out punk and the way everything went down, it really killed the company's overall interest.

And I mean, the ratings downfall since punk, and then a second time since the punk video,

that's the story.

And Chicago's probably held up pretty good, all things considered.

Not only the punk thing, but overrunning the market.

How many times are they in Chicago or Champaign or nearby or close

so and the final number by the way

according to wrestle ticks 8 660 tickets sold or tickets distributed last year 9 826

and they started out with the united center right so

anyway

Oh, that's right.

They were at the United Center last year.

This was at the Now Arena.

Well, yeah, but I mean, they started out long ago.

They sold out the United Center when they were starting to run Chicago.

That's right.

And,

you know,

the point is they're doubling down, and I mentioned it earlier in the program.

The people who are there, the fans of this, they don't care about the people.

They don't care about the individual talents.

They may cheer for a few more than most,

but they want to see chaos and carnage and the clown show wrestling where nothing beats anybody and it looks like a video game intermixed with the kind of shit that I would imagine if you're an insane clown posse fan, you like to see needles stuck in people's faces and,

you know, fucking everybody set on fire and that type of gaga.

And that has driven

either whatever you want to call them, the regular wrestling fan, the fan that wants to see stars and big names instead of bullshit, the fan that wants to see shit make sense.

They're doubling down on what keeps their audience small, and these small audiences are eating it the fuck up.

Are they?

That's the other thing.

Eating it the fuck up is the reactions AEW was getting five years ago.

This is a crowd that comes and they sit there.

Well, they sit there

except for when someone is nearly paralyzed and then they'll cheer for 10 seconds and and scream about that and then they don't care anymore no one stands up like they had several shots of the crowd when people were coming out and everyone was just sitting there politely

well because nobody can get killed on the entrance

right why why stand up wait till he gets out there where somebody's gonna fucking run him through with goddamn red hot poker.

You know, you have been very critical, as we all have, correctly so, about AEW's booking and creative since the beginning, Tony Khan's creative.

There's a term you've used and popularized, mark booking.

I would argue, especially the latter half of this card, this may be the single greatest example of mark booking in AEW history.

I think it was, because they have decided to double down on all the stupid, indie shit that has kept them from getting any bigger and indeed has has made them smaller.

People don't want to see that.

What the fuck are these?

When you are

trying to appeal to a small audience of people who like weird fucking things

and ignoring the fact that most people are just thinking, well, all these guys are stupid.

The babyfaces are stupid.

The heels are stupid.

They're all goddamn stupid.

You want people to dislike

the babyface's actions.

You want people or dislike the heels' actions, rather.

You want people to support the babyface and what they want to do, but you don't really

want them to think either side is just a bunch of fucking morons, do you?

You know, I could see, you know, again, it was a typical AEW show until the last two matches, really.

The last two matches are

what you look at, and it was an amazing one-upmanship between these competitors.

But we have a road to get there, I guess.

Yes, yeah.

All right.

Well, MJF, again, the smartest man in the room, he said, put me on first

because I'm not going to cut off any of my goddamn appendages, so I don't want to even go second because who knows what's going to happen with these people.

But he had to make something

out of an indie schlub that they are transfixed with pushing.

And

therefore, MJF's ability to contribute much to this show was neutralized.

By the way, speaking of contributing,

what did the eight announcers on a four-hour show contribute in terms of cohesiveness?

They started out with Sockface and Shivani and Nigel McGinnis

and Mac Daddy.

Mac Daddy Matt.

And his shtick of the nasty boys on meth

would kind of work if he was over as a talent, but everybody knows he's a job guy.

So it's shut the fuck up.

Who are you acting like this?

You're not a personality first.

And then they brought Taz in, and then they brought JR in by the end.

And

I'm trying to, was there another one in there in the middle somewhere?

We always talk about how bad the commentary is.

It was amazingly bad here.

And considering Jim Ross has been been in the news and Tony Khan made him an issue with the Stephen P.

New thing,

this was not a good Jim Ross performance.

Excalibur, it feels like I've never been a fan of his, and I think he's terrible at what he does.

But it feels like he's like melting down almost more and more.

Yes.

You know, it's just like he loses like the ability to get him.

I've got to get this out.

I've got to get this out.

I'm really, I'm scared.

I'm not going to get this out.

But you know what?

I'm not making any sense.

Well, I'm not getting this out.

Taz is stuck.

Taz can only do so much.

unfortunately the best stuff with taz is him fighting with shivani who is

unbearable he's unbearable by saying nothing everything is him complimenting one of the other good call good call just call the fucking match don't tell the commentator he's doing good calling it or or laughing at something

that's really ridiculous but he's laughing at it when it's violent because he's like well i just this is the greatest thing i've ever seen or he just lies to you like saying sasha Banks and Hikarashita are two of the greatest out there today, or whatever the fuck he was saying.

Or he just tells you how great everything is, or he just jumps in with nothing.

And then him and Excalibur together, I don't think AEW, because they're in their own bubble, recognize the damage those two do on commentary to anyone who wants to give them a chance.

Because we hear it from people, too.

Well, anyway, it was four hours of that type of thing.

Four hours of mute.

But

you know what?

They need a good mute wrestler.

Remember, Salento Rodriguez was over.

He just died recently.

I don't understand why Tony doesn't have a second English commentating team available on one of the other options, because it would only help your product.

It would make it better to have a second team there that doesn't suck.

That's not filled with all of this.

And just you jamming people into the...

I mean, like you said, Nigel was there, then he was gone.

Nigel probably would have done a better job calling some of the stuff he didn't call than the stuff he did call.

And they're making Nigel be so heelish.

He's not,

it's just ridiculous.

He's just there to be the heel and disagree with everything.

Nigel is a ring of honor color commentator as a former pro wrestler, but,

you know, now he's an announcer.

That was fine.

But he's just like, oh, this guy's a prick.

Anyway, speaking of pricks, you want to get back to Danny Garcia?

We can get back to Darcia.

So, Garcia out of nowhere jumpstarts it from behind when MJF is in the ring.

And

they go back and forth.

And really, the story

in this show is not even the matches or the flow or the quality or trying to critique.

You know, should they have hit that movement then or should they have gone to the whatever?

It's just

MJF tried.

He worked like a pure heel.

He was aggressive.

He cheated.

And he's a good athlete at the same time.

And Garcia can do the moves.

And,

you know, probably with enough work, so can a chimpanzee.

But just look at him.

Just look at him in the field today of major pro wrestling stars.

Look at the body, look at the face, look at the hair or lack thereof.

And

he's fired up to do promos here lately.

And

it sounds like the guy that's parking your car can cut a hell of a fucking promo.

He's just not going to draw any money in this day and age.

And MJF is trying to elevate him.

There was nothing wrong with the match per se,

considering

the bar that is being set by AEW.

This was a fine match, but it's fucking Garcia.

And there you've pigeonholed one of your top names in this fucking match to go 20 minutes with this fucking guy.

And, you know, there was,

here's another example of bad commentary.

MJF goes for a vertical suplex and does the deal where they go backwards and both of them go over the top to the floor and they took a great bump.

Yeah.

Right?

And Shivani immediately said, I'm surprised nobody is seriously injured.

And I think Sockface is the one as, well, it remains to be seen.

They just hit, right?

What the fuck?

They took a great fucking bump in Shivani.

Well, they're okay.

Jesus fucking Christ.

And

then

the crowd popped on moves, regardless of who did them.

Remember the money used to be in MJF getting his ass kicked.

The money used to be in the heel getting his ass kicked.

These fans don't care.

There are no stories.

They just want to see somebody take a dangerous bump.

And at one point also,

MJF, every time he gets in with one of these guys, he veers off into Indy Riffick.

He German suplex Garcia.

And Garcia stood up and did the same thing to MJF, German him, then clotheslined him, and then fell down and started selling.

They haven't been to wrestling school for three months, these fucking people.

Anyway, Garcia hit a leaping pile driver at one point, got a two-count.

Not that I'm advocating MJF should have done the job,

but good Lord, and it went so long.

And then finally,

MJF ducked behind the referee, hit Garcia with a fucking ball shot, and rolled him up one, two, three.

Which did that come as far out of nowhere for you as it did for me?

I think it would have made more sense if the match wasn't as long.

Well,

I mean, I wasn't arguing with it finally being over, and I hate to say that about an MJF match, but Garcia, and it was long,

but they just did shit and they did shit, and then MJF ducked behind a referee, boom, kicked him into balls or whatever, and it rolled him up.

I mean, that's a classic MJF finish, but it was after this whole match.

That's your point, correct?

Well, my point is they didn't build to the goddamn finish.

There was no element of we're getting the people more into it.

We're peaking their interest.

We're going back and forth.

It could be anybody's ballgame and it won't.

Instead, it was like, uh,

bam.

And then.

I'm sorry.

No, I was just going to say, MJF got the win, but that's not the end of the story here.

Well, no, because they laid on top of each other for a while.

And then they get up and MJF offers the handshake, like, okay, you know,

and Garcia takes it.

And of course, MJF tries to kick him in the nuts.

And he blocks the kick to the nuts and kicks MJF in the nuts.

Then look good, I gotta say.

Well, yes.

He'll say he kicked him right in the nuts.

And he probably did.

If it's anything like his punches.

But then he gave MJF a pile driver off the rope, off the ropes, the turnbuckles, whatever the fuck,

and then kissed him.

Of course, MJF had kissed him on the head before when he was cutting that fake promo on TV.

So

if MJF is not the top guy in the company that it's Osprey, they're neck and neck and everybody else is bleh,

their top guy was laid out and kissed by a guy that will not be drawing a house, a buy rate, or rating in the near future and possibly even in your lifetime.

And you're only a middle-aged man barely.

And we were a half an hour into the show

for this one fucking thing.

So now,

besides the fact that the fucking Garcia laid MJF out

with a pile driver off the ropes, and he should be paralyzed for life and then kissed him.

And then, well, there's another big star that's been damaged in this company.

Now we hear MJF's going to be taking time off.

He just got back.

But maybe they realize that he had a great first week and then they fucking sent him down to goddamn porcelain throne.

Well, that's the thing.

As much as they need him, the best thing for MJF is being off that TV for a while.

Yes.

And we said that six months ago, And then he came in now two months later.

And I think a lot of it's Tony Kahn's booking.

And I think MJF, you know, again, he needs to, when he comes back, interact with other main eventers.

Somehow between now and then, make main eventers create interest in anyone.

That's the problem.

You know, long match.

I thought it went too long considering the story they were telling.

It didn't need to go that long.

It could have been a really hot 12 minutes.

But it went a while.

And,

you know, Garcia, you know, you brought up his look.

There were several matches on this show.

This one, Jungle Boy versus Danielson.

Danielson's not a tall guy, but when you see Jungle Boy against him, you're like, is his waist a size 24?

Seriously, you're like, give me a waist.

Yeah, he's tiny.

You know, Wheeler Yuta.

He's veldt.

Zvelt.

You know, Wheeler Yuta is looking less ridiculous because of these guys, but he's another guy that despite whatever talent people who work there see in him and whatever he really has,

the look has been an issue.

And again, I think maybe he's ahead of Garcia now, but I was looking at Garcia's legs during this time.

I was just like, you know, again, I'm not saying me versus him in terms of who's, you know, spending more time on a leg day or anything.

Are you playing a professional athlete on television?

No.

Well, somebody else is.

And that's the point.

And MJF, you know, look at his, again, I don't know why I was focused.

I looked at his legs.

I'm like, he had thick legs and Garcia didn't.

And it was just,

you're elevating the wrong people.

I get it.

It's not just about that.

It's the overall aura and personality.

There's a reason why the Yudas and the Garcias and the

rest of the Kookamunga kids, the lollipop guild, the Hardley boys and their circle of friends, there's a reason why that they were big on the Indies

because it doesn't matter because most of the people on the Indies don't look like a goddamn star either.

But when you are on national television and you are expecting to attract a lot of people,

it's not just size, it's not just physique, it's not just looks, it's not just wrestling, it's not just personality, it's not just aura, how you carry yourself and whether you have any personal magnetism or not.

It's all of those things.

And some people have so much of one one or more that they can get away with having some less of one or more.

But these young men are not it,

so they can do the moves fine.

As we will find out later on in this show,

sometimes

people being able to do the moves well hurts the fucking business depending on who it is doing the fucking moves,

and sometimes it just looks like anybody can do this shit, and even the dangerous stuff

comes off as not dangerous because this fucking ordinary-looking schlub lived through it.

And that's something that they haven't figured out because nobody taught them this.

Because, A,

they've been on the indies all their life, and B, they don't fucking listen.

Because they think they're smart.

And the other thing, you know, I I always say this:

who's training everyone?

Like, MJF went to Pat Buck school.

Pat Buck went to OVW.

You can kind of trace a lineage there, a style.

You know, there are other Pat Buck students who have made it to the main roster of these companies.

Obviously, there's something there.

Not to take anything away from him because I don't know, but someone told me Daniel Garcia was trained by Brandon Thurston from WrestleNomics.

What?

No, self-ox.

This is what someone told me.

How would Brandon Thurston from WrestleNomics ever have learned how to wrestle?

Well, that's my point.

And this isn't to take anything away because I've never seen him wrestle, but who's

does he actually actively wrestle, Brandon Thurston, Howell III?

I believe he did.

I don't know if he still does, but he was an independent wrestler in upstate New York.

Good lord.

All right.

The more you learn, I guess.

But that's the thing.

You know, you talk about some of these things about match layout and.

Just basics.

It's about who's teaching who.

There aren't a lot of Jim Cornettes out there.

You know, there aren't any Jim Cornettes.

I didn't invent any of this shit.

I just paid attention when it was being told to me.

Why doesn't Tony Khan fund like Tom Pritchard's World Tour, where he just goes to wrestling students and teaches them?

Because then they wouldn't have as much fun.

Because it's not about drawing crowds, selling tickets, and appealing to crowds of people.

It's about as long as everybody has fun while they're making all of their money from Tony and nobody hurts their feelings.

That's what this is about.

Did you watch the Hardley Boys defend the world tag team title against Claudio and Wheeler useless?

I watched the beginning of it because I wanted to see what kind of reaction everyone was going to get.

Again, the young Bucks for top heels who beat up the owner of the company.

And I guess you can't even say it was like a hostile takeover.

They didn't really take over anything.

Then Tony Khan just pressed the button and all of a sudden he was in charge again.

They never really rectified any of that.

Now that I think about it, but the young bucks come out there and they have the history with CM Punk.

They got booze, but they got sitting booze.

You know, when I said before about the crowd, especially compared to some WWE shows we see,

people get up and move on WWE.

They got sitting booze.

People weren't even willing to stand up and yell, fuck you, I hate you.

No, it was was just, oh, boo.

Oh,

Jesus Christ.

We're going to have to sit here for another 20 minutes watching them.

They're not over at all.

And they come out there, and that's all I keep thinking.

Here they are.

They look like they're in the pantyweight division.

And they come out there, and the fans don't even react to them.

Think about how much money Tony's paying them.

What does Tony get back for it?

No, I thought when they came out, I thought they looked very professional for once.

They looked like the board of directors of a massage parlor.

In Miami.

In Miami.

I've got one good thing to say about this match.

It was under 20 minutes long.

And

I'll just give you the finish here.

Claudio superplexed little Matt, and then Wheeler went for the splash off the top, but Matt, who had just been superplexed by this giant fucking man,

raised his knees up so useless, landed on his knees, and then he pinned him one, two, three, while Nick grabbed a hold of Claudio and held his legs so he couldn't make the save.

So, not only

did this fucking moron, Maddie, just no-sell the goddamn superplex, but also the heels beat the babyfaces with a babyface finish.

This booking is so brilliant.

I'm astonished that they can figure out.

It's almost impossible to do on purpose the exact opposite thing that you should do in a logical wrestling match every time, but they do it.

It's an amazing accomplishment.

You know, I saw them get introduced, and then the next shot is, you know, Rick Knox in the ring.

I'm like, I'm not doing this again.

I know what this match is going to be.

Well, yeah, if you've seen one, that's what they got is one fucking match.

Basically, there's variations on a theme, but they do all their bucky stuff, and then

the finish is stupid.

And

then off they go.

They are literally the faces of AEW's stunted growth.

I hadn't thought of him in ages, Marco's stunted growth.

I just meant the stunted growth of AEW.

Oh, of the overall, not the little wart, but the overall.

Not the little warp.

No, that's right.

So we were an hour into all in, and we'd had two matches.

And I'm thinking, well, certainly something's going to come up here that might be palatable.

And we get the intercontinental title match between Pack and Will Osprey.

And I got to say, the people were up for this one.

They were standing up.

They were going bat shit.

They're the hardest of the hardcores.

And they wanted to see these two.

To the average person, again, here's Pack who's been here and gone

over and over for the past five years, right?

He's here, that he's gone for a year, that he's back, that he does this, he doesn't do that, whatever.

But this is the crowd, the traveling pay-per-view crowd, the big city crowd, the hardest of the die-hard

AEW folks that still think PA is worth a shit.

They can overlook his rotten basics and his incredible lack of any consistency in booking whatsoever.

And they wanted to see him and Osprey flip with each other.

Is that pretty much it?

Because why else would you want to see this match to that degree that they stood up and screamed and yelled for this one?

And they haven't buried Osprey yet.

And that does say something, that it seemed like the fans reacted more to this match than maybe anything else on the show other than reacting to Brian Danielson as a person.

Yeah.

They were more into this match.

And Osprey has been booked badly like Tony books everyone, but his booking, his bad booking hasn't been as bad as everyone else's.

And people do want to see him.

And there are still unique matches that people have not seen yet.

And obviously him and Ricochet is coming up, but him and Pack is one of those matches.

Pack is,

you know, one of the preeminent high flyers of

the class right before Osprey.

That's why every time he gets up on the top rope, it takes him 15 seconds to fucking stand there and get his balance.

If I was a manager against him, I would bring like anything, like nerf balls to throw at him when he was up there taking his time.

A gentle breeze might bring him down.

But anyway, that's what they wanted to see this because it was a video game.

They didn't care who won.

They didn't care whether anybody killed themselves or not.

They wanted to see everybody flip around.

That is this audience.

And this was the

flip match, so they wanted to see the flips.

And in the first minute, Pack had gone to the top and dove off to the floor with the corkscrew dive.

So then Osprey immediately did the same thing.

Threw him back out and dove on him.

And Tony Schivati says, what in the hell are we watching?

I was thinking the same thing, but not with the same emotion behind it.

But this is, remember, I loved Osprey at MJF.

There were a few things they went too far, but again, in the AEW field, that was one of my favorite matches.

Because MJF's going to wrestle and he's going to try to make shit make sense.

And that controls Osprey's worst instinct because

he's like a lot of these guys.

He needs to be produced.

He's not smart enough to know

when to not do something that he can do just because he can do it.

But these two, they bring out the worst in each other with the aggressive parkour

and the indie tropes, as the kids say.

So for a match, you know, no, it was garbage because, and I'll tell you why here in a minute, a few of these false finishes.

It's again, it's a gymnastics competition.

If wrestling was going to be in the Olympics like Ray Gunn and breakdancing, this kind of shit should be in it.

They're very athletic, but it's fucking stupid, phony.

And

they both work the same.

Neither one's really the babyface or the heel.

There's no continuity.

They're doing big moves to each other back and forth.

And

Uncle Dave will say, oh, but Osprey kept going back to selling his neck because that's the story.

Yeah, he'd sell his neck in between, goddamn, doing shit that no human being could possibly endure and popping up from it.

Packed German suplexed Osprey on his head on the ring apron.

Then he gave him a reverse hurricane rana on the ring apron on his head.

Then he rolled him in the ring and didn't cover him.

He grabbed a submission hold.

And then Osprey gets the ropes to break the submission hold.

What the fuck?

They have made this shit up themselves and they've never listened to or had the opportunity.

for anybody to teach them.

And now they think they know and they won't listen.

The very next thing, after they did what I was just talking about, Pack

took forever to balance on the top.

And then Osprey raised his knees.

And then Osprey was up running and flipping again like nothing was wrong.

After he'd been dropped on his head twice in a row on the hardest part of the fucking ring.

And then finally,

again,

after all of that, for 20 fucking minutes, again,

the weakest-looking move, the hidden blade, is what Osprey beat him with, one, two, three.

So you can be flung onto your fucking head from

six or eight feet in the air and just pop right back up from that.

But this fucking guy does an elbow over the top of your head from behind, and

you're fucking done.

You're finished.

I heard people say this was a good match.

I wasn't watching this live.

I saw everything the next day, but I saw a couple tweets while the show was going on, and a couple of them said this was an all-timer, an all-time classic.

Well, it is if you're wanting bad examples to show in wrestling school.

A positive is at least the fans reacted to this match.

Well, they did.

They did.

And unfortunately, that is the position that AEW has put themselves in.

This wasn't the main event.

It involved one of their main eventers, the only one that they're getting any goddamn

return on, Osprey.

The rest of them are deader than four o'clock.

But

how do you follow this?

What is more to, well, I know how they're going to follow it, but if you were trying to do a wrestling show,

Nothing works.

Nobody can be defeated.

It's just a video game that these fucking marks in the ring, Pac and Osprey, I'm sure they play plenty of video games.

That's where they get their moves from.

Instead of figuring out a way to draw money, Pac looks great.

Great body.

Got the fucking stringy hair.

He's got the menacing fucking voice.

If he'd had a booker for the past five years and producers to tell him what to do and him listen, and him be here continuously,

then you know, yeah, you could do something with this guy.

And the same thing with Osprey, despite the gravelly voice and the horrible accent and the fact that he's so.

Imagine him calling spots with that voice.

Oh, good lord.

They talked about being hard to understand Bobby Eaton.

But that's the thing.

He's got a lot of appeal and charisma and talent that you could use if it could be produced.

But this is just God, God, it's all the same.

People tune it out because it means nothing.

They're just there to see the flips.

And then,

what was the point of this match that people will remember after the rest of this show they see?

Well, I think it's two things.

One, for the fans there and the fans of this style, it was a classic to them.

But two, and maybe more importantly,

in some respects, this is a throwaway show after All In.

Like, I thought All In was a better card altogether.

I enjoyed it more, obviously.

But Osprey just had the big match there that he'd been building up to for a few months.

This was built up in two weeks, right?

A week?

Two weeks?

Yeah.

So it was just, let's give them a really hot match, and then everyone can move on and do other things.

So that's what I think this was.

Well, let's move on to the next match, which I

got about a minute in on this one.

A Chicago street fight between Chris Statlander and Willow Nightingale.

You go first because you told me that you thought that they had a wonderful effort here.

I think this was the match of the night.

I enjoyed this more than anything else on the entire show.

That surprised me.

I usually don't like these kind of matches.

I usually don't like these kind of matches with the women.

But Willow and Chris Statlander aren't like little waifs out there.

They got some size to them.

They look athletic.

They can move.

You believe they're women wrestlers.

And they went out there and did a lot of the garbage stuff that other people do.

And I think they did it better than some of the other people.

There's the problem.

You know, I'll put it this way.

They did a better job, I think, in execution than Swerve and Adam Page

doing all that crap later on.

Faint praise, but I thought this was the best match of the show.

The only surprise I thought Willow probably should have won just because it would have gotten a big pop on a show where the fans were getting more and more deflated as it went on and they would leave ultra deflated.

I thought Willow getting a win here would have been good.

They followed that Osprey match, which was the biggest match of the night, it seemed like for the fans there.

And

I thought I did a good job.

I really enjoyed it.

I was shocked that I enjoyed it as much as I did, but I did.

Both girls, girls, I sound like you.

Hey, both women are really good.

I wish they were somewhere else.

That's like the ultimate compliment.

I just wish they were somewhere else.

They're really good.

I will give them another compliment.

If this had been a match with these two, I would have watched it.

But I wasn't going to watch more garbage outlaw mud show wrestling now with women.

Because why?

Fucking why on this show with all the other garbage and all the other weapons and tables and chairs and lions and tigers and bears.

The opening was Statlander swinging a chair at Willow, and Willow ducked it.

And Statlander then put the chair down to turn around so Willow could shoulder tackle her.

And within the first minute, Willow had been powerbombed through the announce desk,

and Statlander had pulled a table out.

See, they didn't waste any time.

I appreciate this.

God damn.

And again,

as I was thinking, I would have watched a regular match with these two, but this is ridiculous.

And as I said that or wrote that,

Statlander did a cannonball off the top rope

where Willow was laying on a table on the floor, but Willow moved or tried to, and Statlander hit the table with her back and the back of Willow's head with her legs and nearly killed both of them.

That looked like it was very painful for Statlander's tailbone.

And it wasn't just a cannonball.

I mean, it was a flip.

And I mean, it could have given Nightingale a concussion with that speed and velocity.

But the point is, yes, they did all this garbage wrestling stuff even better than the guys do.

And that's the problem.

See what I said before

is that it depends on who's doing this shit as to whether they should even be doing it or not.

And you can't have girl, and they're bleeding.

Statlander's got color.

And here came thumbtacks.

The thumbtacks are ridiculous, regardless.

It's the stupidest thing ever.

And I would fire anybody that even suggested it to me if I was still in the fucking business.

What kind of fucking morons are you?

But

to have not only a garbage, fake, phony match,

but then to have the girls do it.

Where it looks better than to go, well, this shit doesn't hurt anybody.

No wonder these people are cheering for mayhem because they think it's all fake.

Have you seen the idiots on Twitter talking about the shaved-down chair again?

Oh, from later in the night.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like there's a thing called a shaved-down chair.

They shaved it down.

What?

You fucking mark idiots.

I think they gimmicked the goddamn screws on the side of the seat so that they would turn easier, so that the chair would flop around a little better.

But nobody makes tin chairs.

Somebody said Tony's a billionaire.

He could afford a tin chair, a folding chair made out of tin.

Tin chair factory he could afford.

That's what he'd have to afford because who makes folding chairs made out of fucking tin?

You fucking morons.

So when the girls do this shit and they survive, it's even worse than when the guys do it.

And it's garbage and it's overdone and it means nothing and it appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Because when we saw street fights in the territory days, nobody was smart.

So like, yeah, they're having a fucking fight.

Now it's like, wait a minute, they are legitimately taking barbed wire or broken light tubes or whatever the fuck they're doing.

and cutting each other up with it on purpose.

They're cooperating with that.

What kind of fucking morons are these?

That's where we're at these days.

Did you see the dive off the stage or the tackle off the stage?

I skipped that, thankfully.

That was one of the complaints I will make.

If you're going to ask the person you're working with, are you okay?

There's got to be a better way to disguise it as opposed to just leaning your head up, looking at them and saying, are you okay?

No.

It wasn't as overt as that, but I watched it and then I watched it again just to make sure.

But, you know, they're not used to diving off the stage into the black nothingness that is the weird area that has no explanation for existing.

But at least it covers up the fucking crash pad.

That's right.

Anyway, any further comments on the girls' garbage match?

Everyone should go out of their way to see it.

Best match of the night.

Okay, well, there you go.

And I actually might agree.

It might have been the best match of the night, but considering this night

for the Intercontinental title

or one of those titles, what title was the four-way for?

The other one was international.

This is, is it continental?

This is the continental.

I thought the international was the continental.

No, international became the American title for a few weeks, but before it was international, I think it was the all-atlantic.

But that comprised the continental title, too.

When they unified all those titles, before Kingston

broke his fucking clavicle or whatever he goddamn his

testes.

What did he break?

I don't know.

Maybe Tony broke his spirit.

I'm not exactly sure.

But again, Tony likes titles.

Tony likes titles.

There was a title up for grabs here between Pockets, take a shit, Mark Briscoe, and O Cody.

So think about this.

In one match, you have the most

embarrassing part of your company, the company mascot, Pockets.

the joke was never funny and now it's five years old.

And he's being treated as being competitive to poor Mark Briscoe, who could have been one of Tony's top gimmick babyfaces if he'd have struck Wally Iron is hot.

Take a shit, who actually could be the only Japanese guy they brought in that's worth a shit, that could be kind of a star if they'd have.

if they'd have let him, but now he's just one of the boys.

And O Cody, who they paid a million dollars to to come here and get chiropractic treatments.

Because I don't know what else he's fucking doing.

He's that poor man, he needs to be in a body cast the way he moves around.

He looks uncomfortable.

So

they've nullified everybody involved in this thing, including two guys that could have been stars for him and one guy he's paying millions of dollars to.

And

meaningless bumps and a joke wrestler.

What else is there to say?

This is the biggest budget indie show in history.

And

oh, Cody won, but at least he beat Pockets.

But then

does that hurt a guy

when you're beating somebody, but the somebody you're beating is a complete fucking joke and nobody takes it seriously?

Does it help you to beat that person or does it just make you part of the fucking joke?

you know i really couldn't say even though i did not watch this live and i watched it on my dvr i kind of let the dvr run and took a bathroom break during this match and i left the room for a little bit so i didn't see any of it well i hope that you watched the next match the other girls match at least they didn't have oh they didn't have

any weapons to uh

except wig glue no wig glue was allowed in this match there you go

i thought you i thought you were an eskimo suddenly but it not igloo but wig glue

mercedes moon versus hikaru sheetah

and you know boy i'll tell you something

when mercedes made her entrance they barred camille from ringside without camille

and without anybody giving a shit

And just with the piped-in CEO and the music.

She just walking out there and people are farting.

And the signs you could see across from the hard camera were CE Blows

and Mercedes Fonet.

He paid this goofy,

no,

not over,

wig-wearing son of a gun millions of dollars to come out there and stink up the joint.

And the first 30 seconds, this looked like a cell phone video on Twitter of two drunk chicks fighting at a Wawa.

What the?

You go.

To Wawa?

I'd love to.

No,

talk about this match.

I didn't notice.

To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention at first.

When did the wig problem start?

Because she was already tugging on it by the time I realized what was going on.

I'm not certain because I did not dare watch this a second time.

But I saw Hikar Roshida grab her by the hair, the wig at one point.

And I think that may have started it.

And then at one point, she had her by the wig and wouldn't let go and she was like hitting her.

Yes.

And I'm thinking either there was some kind of, well, no, she speaks perfect English, Hikar Roshida.

There was no translation issue.

Mercedes-Mode either didn't say, watch the wig.

No, no, there was a part where she was definitely said, well, no, I'll tell you, about 15 minutes in.

We have to explain what's happening.

I don't know if the people understand exactly.

Well, and remember, I said when she debuted, I said, God, I'll tell you one thing.

They did a great job of painting her hair when she had the dollar sign in it and she had words in it or AW or whatever.

Remember when she was going to be a babyface till people said, fuck, you suck.

And you said she's wearing a wig.

And I said, wait a minute, how the fuck?

Because I was like, that would be hard to paint hair like that.

Well, they can take the wig and move it around or whatever.

But I said, how the fuck

could you not only wrestle wearing a wig, but also if she had hair,

it seems like that you would be able to tell she had a hair under the unless she shaved her head completely bald and is wearing these wigs.

Who knows what the fuck these kids are doing these days?

But this is, she actually

she'd have suplexed her,

like doing the three amigos type of suplex, right?

And every time she'd suplex her, Mercedes kept pulling at her wig.

And one time

you could see when she pulled it, it shifted, her hairline shifted like two inches down on her forehead.

I'm like, what the fuck?

And then

Mercedes went to do the leg drag, right?

Whether the old leg lace, I don't know what they call it these days.

I'm sure they got a Japanese name for it.

But they both fucked that that up and fell in a heap.

And then Sheeta ran and hit another German suplex and hit her with a knee lift.

And right after she gets clocked with the knee lift, she's tugging on the wig.

And that's when one of the times I saw, Sheeta grabs her by the hair like she's going to pick her up.

And Mercedes goes from selling to, whoa, freaking out and grabbing the wig in her arm.

And Sheeta kicked her in the head and she grabbed the wig.

And And then Sheeta went to pick her up by the hair again.

And Mercedes grabbed her arm.

And you could see Mercedes talking to her, like, quit grabbing the wig.

And then when she got a knee to the head, Mercedes, she crumples while she's holding onto her hair so it doesn't fall off her head.

No, this match became the wig match.

This match was Bruno San Martino and Killer Kowalski's worst nightmare.

Because everything that happened for about,

if it wasn't 10 minutes, it felt like it was.

Everything that happened, whether she did something or something was done to her, no matter how devastating, she went right for the wig to hold it, to pull it back into place.

This match became about the wig.

And

again, I don't know how she's been

wrestling with a goddamn wig on to begin with, but maybe this was new glue or something.

You know, Arn Anderson's first match, he wore a toupee.

Yeah, I heard heard about that.

When he was Marty Lundy, and he found out that you can't wrestle wearing a fucking toupee.

But anyway, they did a tug-of-war with the kendo stick, and then Sheeta grabbed it and brought it in the ring, and Aubrey Ed just stood and stared at her while she's got a kendo stick.

Like, oh, you better not do anything with that.

What the fuck is the matter with these people?

And then here was another babyface that wouldn't hit the heel.

She was like, I could crack this woman.

And so she throws down the kendo stick that she brought in the ring to begin with.

And then they did more awkward back and forth.

And then Mercedes hit that sloppy finish, one, two, three, and

won it by a hair, Brian.

But I have a feeling pretty soon if the shows don't get better, Mercedes is really going to flip her wig about it.

You know, the wig is the story of the match.

And again, how are you supposed to take anything seriously if every time you sell, you sell your head?

No matter what happens to you, you sell your scalp.

They used to make fun of Baron Michel Siclina.

You would hit him, he would sell his ear.

No matter what you do to Mercedes-Marnet, she sells her scalp.

That's the story of the match.

The bigger story is she's not over in any way.

Oh, God.

And

she's not as over as any of the women that were already in AEW.

And she's also not wrestling at a high level.

We've been led to believe that she was a great in-ring worker.

People always say, Jim never gave her a fair chance.

He didn't review her and Charlotte or her and this person.

Well, we're watching this stuff, and there's a lot missing.

There's a lot missing.

She certainly is into the performance aspect of being the character of Mercedes Renet.

You can't take that away from her.

She's 100% all in on that character.

But no one else is.

No one else is.

She's less over.

On this show, they had Sky Blue come out on the pre-show I saw on the DVR and get attacked by Mariah May to be saved by Queen Aminata, or whatever her name is.

They were all more over than Sasha Banks was here.

Willow Nightingale and Chris Statlander, after the Will Ospreay match,

got the fans back into their match.

And Mercedes Monet, again, another pay-per-view where the performance, I don't know if lackluster is the word, but it's just not there.

This time there's a, I don't know if you call it a wardrobe malfunction.

Is a wig part of the wardrobe technique?

What would you say about that?

I don't know.

It's a tonsorial malfunction.

But she's getting a lot of money.

From what we heard, maybe as much as any woman in the history of wrestling or close to it.

Has she brought any new fans to AEW?

Has she caused any AEW fans to become more invested in her or the product overall?

Has she gotten big reactions?

Has she produced a rating?

Has anyone said, I can't wait for that Mercedes-Monet match?

Has any of the angles or interviews or backstage parties or promos, have any of them felt real or authentic or actually connected with anyone other than her?

The answer is no.

So, I mean, this match was astounding because of the wig.

Do you think one of the things that has hurt Mercedes with people being just like, fucking go away,

is that one thing about her is genuine.

One thing you can believe, it's a fact that you can look at.

You can tell that she honestly believes that she's a fucking star.

She is completely full of her.

Her own gravy.

So does that make people go, this fucking bitch?

Is that part of it?

That she's not good, but she is so obviously convinced that she's great.

You know, the other thing is her leaving WWE,

the way she did,

kind of caused a lot of fans to be on her side because no one walked out because they didn't like booking.

She did with Naomi.

Remember, Naomi walked out with her.

Where is Naomi?

She went back to WWE.

She's having a nice time.

But she went and she did New Japan.

And

the rumors were that she was going to sign with AEW, she got hurt.

When she was almost ready to wrestle again, she signed with AEW.

There was an opportunity to do something

different

and to recognize what connects with fans today.

This feels like it's tone deaf.

Everything she's doing is tone deaf for an audience of one.

And Jennifer Pepperday or whatever her name is.

But that's the problem.

You could argue about all the AEW stuff we don't like.

There are usually pockets of fans that like it.

I think the Young Bucks suck.

They have pockets of fans that like the Young Bucks.

There are pockets of fans that like pockets.

Are there any pockets of fans that are into Mercedes-Monet and AEW?

Is there anyone who likes this run or thinks this is any way good?

I'm sure Tony will defend it, but you know, that's what it is.

All righty, well, we got a double main event, Brian, and it starts, of course, with the AEW World title.

That can't go on last.

Fuck.

Don't want to cause chaos, but

Brian Danielson against the Billy Goat, Jack Perry.

I'm sorry, the scapegoat.

Again,

Danielson.

He's incredible with what he does.

The people are into him as a person, and he can build a match with anybody.

His friends, and some of the choices he makes about the wrestling he likes, we can take to issue, but he's a great performer.

And

then there's Jungle Jackoff.

And

you can't.

Brian Danielson is not the biggest guy in the world, but he could kick the shit out of this fucking clown in two seconds if he wanted to.

And,

you know,

they're playing the

final countdown again for Danielson on pay-per-view.

I guess there's another couple hundred grand.

And by the way, I appreciate also the

person who brought the sign that says, Mama Cornette says the White Sox are greater than Jack Perry.

The White Sox are having one of the all-time worst, if not the all-time worst seasons of any team in baseball history.

Well, but they're still better than Jack Perry.

That's what makes it amazing.

Two shows in a row, two different companies, Mama Cornette Sacks.

But the crowd yesed Brian Danielson all over the place, and they loved him.

And he's wrestling Jack Perry.

It's, you know, this is not really going to add anything to the bottom line.

Possibly we could have got MJF and Danielson rematched again, and that might have actually

been interesting.

But nevertheless, Danielson is at a level above everybody else that's pretty much been on the show, maybe except MJF, but even him with smoothness and the way that he moves and just connecting with the people personality-wise.

And

also, Danielson, for the most part, will call a wrestling match.

And it'll make sense, although he will take and

give bumps that shouldn't be taken or given.

But for the most part, it's a wrestling match.

So that meant that Jack Perry was

saved from worst instincts, like some of these other assholes need to be.

And, you know,

he is an obnoxious little fuck as a heel.

You want to slap that face.

His punches are the shits, but he can do some of the moves.

If he was working like, I'm talking about Perry now, if he was working like Dominic Mysterio, it would work as a heel.

The chicken shit, the fucking shit disturber,

is somewhat of a coward.

He doesn't go toe-to-toe with the big star baby faces, but he cheats and gets from behind or has help.

Perry could get heat that way,

but he's trying to be a badass.

Remember,

he's the one that didn't quit when they were going to fucking set him on fire.

One of the other lollipoppers quit for him.

One of the other heels.

Yes.

Yeah.

And in this match, he was trying to act like he was a badass at points.

And it's just ludicrous.

He's a child.

But they don't, we've said this a million times.

None of these guys, that California contingent, they've created in the, and Tony fits this as a booker, not a wrestler.

They've created personalities for themselves in their minds.

And that's who they want to be.

And they don't.

acknowledge that they don't look like that and they can't work like that and they don't come off like that, that they're just playing a part like that.

Not everybody can be the goddamn Rambo, right?

Somebody has to be Barney fucking Fife, but he made money too, but they can't accept

the reality and work like they come off.

So instead, they create this fantasy world for themselves.

And

some of these fucking

virgins that, you know, love the video game matches, they get into it.

but the average person is like who are these fucking children on my television

so anyway

danielson looks great

finally they're they're they're cooking

perry pulled at one point the referee

into danielson's drop kick and so the referee is down

And then that's when Maddie and Nikki hit the ring and they jump Danielson and they took their time

with some phony looking heat while the referee has to lay there with, did you see his head under his arm?

Again, when you, when you bump the referee, the clock is ticking.

This is what we used to teach in wrestling school and OVW.

The clock is ticking.

You get in, you do your damage and you get out because if it's real, you don't know how long the referee is going to be down.

You assume.

that he might get up and see you at any second.

So you get in and try to do what you're going to do as quick as possible and then bail, right?

But they're taking their time and they're hot dogging Maddie and Nikki

because they want to, they think that they're wrestlers and

they get some phony looking shit.

The most careful meltzer driver in the history of meltzer drivers.

Did you see that one?

Well, now they call it the TK driver.

Well, it ought to call the fan driver offer, but

they didn't want to hurt Danielson, so they were very careful with that.

And then Claudio and Useless come out and chase them off.

And then Perry hits a knee and gets a two count.

And I say, good Lord, we're 20 minutes in.

And

they do the interference in the middle of the match, and then they fucking go on and they lose all the momentum.

And

boom, they went back and forth for another 10 minutes minutes or whatever.

And then finally, as I mentioned, he thinks he's a badass of some kind, the scapegoat.

And his friends pump him up.

Yeah, you look tough, you little fucking midget.

You look like a goddamn emaciated amoeba.

Danielson

is stomping Perry over and over and gets set for the fucking knee finally.

And Perry sits up and just

dares Danielson to do his big knee.

So he does.

Boom.

One, two, three.

The fuck

is he supposed to be a tough guy in their minds because nobody's seeing that?

Because it's ridiculous.

And that was, you're trying to get heat as a little weasily heel.

But yet you're daring the fucking guy to hit you with the thing that ends up beating you.

So you're not only

a moron,

but also that's not a heelish thing to do.

You see what I'm saying?

Brian, what sense does this make?

It's just like the War Games match.

Is it a heel thing for one of them to be chained up and one of his friends says, please don't burn my friend.

And the guy's such a badass that he says, burn me.

I don't care.

I won't give up.

I'll be back bigger and better than ever after I get out of the burn unit.

Like you said, coming out of the punk stuff, if Jack Perry had come back as a chicken shithe with a valet,

he would have been better off than he is, whatever he's doing here that him and the Bucs think is good.

And that's only

go Hollywood, the son of a Hollywood star that has no talent on his own, but he's got money and fucking women want to be around him because he's on TV.

That kind of guy gets heat and he fits it.

She had a title match.

If he had that belt around his waist, it would fall down to his fucking feet.

Now, come on, that's a ridiculous exaggeration.

There's no way he could ever hold that belt up to get it around his waist.

Did you see the spot where there was a roll up and the referee was counting and before three, he actually pushed Jack Perry's foot?

Yes.

Was it Rensberg?

Yeah, I think it was.

And

I've never seen that before.

And I don't know if it was a

just a brain fart on behalf of the referee to just do something like that, or if if it was

he, the referee realized maybe as he was counting two that Perry might have thought it was one or didn't know,

or because I don't know what, but yeah, one, two, push the guy's leg to get him to kick out and then start and hold up the three.

What the?

I don't know.

I've never seen that one before.

Anyway, after about

what was it, about 30 minutes of this goddamn thing

and then Danielson is celebrating

and then suddenly here comes Dino Douche

into the ring and nails Danielson and

Dino and Perry look at each other and the the announcer is talking about oh they used to be the partners the Jurassic Express

and in Christian Cage's music plays and by the way that was an interesting moment there because the confrontation between the former jungle boy and luchasaurus and then Christian's music hits, and Jack Perry kind of flinches, you forget he was a babyface against Christian.

Yes.

So now the heel, who just acted like a babyface in so many ways, is going to leave before the bad heel gets there.

Well, it's like

the little heel's big brother, the even worse heel.

Cage came out with Nick Plain and Nick Plain's mom.

She is taller than the dinosaur.

Did you see that?

See, that's the problem when they got confronted.

I was like, man, she could take Moxley.

Well, and that's the thing.

She's the biggest person in the group, including Christian.

And when she was standing next to fucking Duno,

she's tall as he is.

But then,

Christian is coming out because he's going to cash in the contract that he won, whatever their rip-off is, generic version of money in the bank.

But suddenly, Moxley is in their way with his back to the ring.

And here comes Pack and Claudio and Useless.

And they join.

And Cage and crew then back off, like, okay, because now, you know, we'll pick a different time.

And then the plumber and all of his stooges get in the ring.

And Moxley hugs Danielson and kisses him.

There's a lot of male-to-male kissing

going on, much more than there is on the usual wrestling program.

I don't know why everyone is kissing everyone suddenly.

But then the other three

hold Danielson's arm up and celebrate with him.

And then Claudio hits Danielson with the European uppercut.

Oh, God.

At least that one looked like it almost hit because Claudio earlier in the Bucs match was basically just running around.

touching everyone's cheek on his breast.

It looks so weak and so awful.

And he's been doing that a lot lately, just these lazy, lazy garbage fucking Europeans.

He don't want to hurt any of these guys because they're his bosses.

They'll fire him for a potato in them.

And so

the BBC has acted like heels anyway.

Now, apparently, many of them are heels because

everybody goes, oh my God, why'd he do that?

And then

Pack is holding on to old Wheeler from helping because Wheeler is, well, you can see it on on his face.

He's like, why are you doing that?

And he's reaching out with one arm.

Pack is holding him.

Now, Wheeler is not saying,

you better let me go, you British motherfucker.

I'm going to kick you in the dick.

He's just reaching over him going, no, don't do it, while he makes absolutely no effort to get away from this fucking guy.

And Moxley pulls a plastic bag out.

And actually, it's kind of bad because it wasn't even one of the good,

like grocery store plastic bags that you can't tear those son of.

They ought to make airline fucking holes out of those things.

You can't tear them, but instead it's one of like those dry cleaner bags that you can just peel off with a finger.

And they put it over Danielson's head and he begins to suffocate.

And the fans start chanting, this is murder.

This is murder, because it's all a joke to them, because they don't believe anything, because it's all so preposterous.

But it's not like they were screaming.

That's the other thing.

I don't think the reaction was what they intended.

No, they weren't screaming at all.

They were just going, oh, it'd be funny if we chanted this is murder because last week it was this is arson.

At least they're going up.

They're going from arson to murder instead of backing up.

But it's, no, it means nothing.

They weren't worried about Danielson.

They were worried about coming up with a clever chant because it's all bullshit.

They know it.

They can tell.

So anyway, then Danielson passed out

and the heels left and Useless stayed to help the doctor give Danielson oxygen.

And then one of Excalibur's quotes was, well,

that ends the sanctioned part of our program.

And now the unsanctioned cage match is coming so the the attempted murder is part of the sanction programming but the cage match which will involve cinder blocks and potentially AIDS infected hypodermic needles

that's unsanctioned he had said they show the the desk and Excalibur says the AEW medical team the best in the business and then they shoot to them and they're dragging Brian Danielson out of the ring he's not on anything they're just holding him and like dragging him out of the ring while he's getting oxygen.

That's how the best medical team is prepared and what they do.

This guy almost died.

Drag him out.

Drag him out.

Yeah.

We're running long on time.

You know, and go ahead.

Well, I'm just going to, you know, we'll talk more about this, but you know, the one thing a lot of people are pointing to, something you were on the booking committee for, the Terry Funk Ric Flair plastic bag thing.

And before you comment anything about that, and obviously that was a step too far, certainly for 1989 and Turner Broadcasting.

The people who say you don't know, because I saw people arguing on the internet with people who said this was a step too far.

You go, well, Terry Funk did it.

You didn't have a problem.

No one complained about that.

That's what I saw someone say.

Terry Funk did it, and nobody complained about that.

Everybody complained.

Well, a lot of people complained about that, but one of the complaints came from Turner fucking broadcasting.

I reprinted the memo

in the Midnight Express scrapbook.

I was on the creative team at the time.

It was Clash of Champions.

It was, oh, goddammit.

I helped write the show and now I can't.

The match was Muta and Funk in a tag match against

Muda and Slater against Moa and Slater.

Yeah, and then Funk came in as a surprise.

That's right.

Mouda and Slater against Flair and

Sting.

And Sting, and then Funk came in as a surprise and put the plastic bag over Flair's head and tried to suffocate him.

That was not not original, by the way.

It's an old wrestling angle.

It was done in a variety of the territories.

So we're not claiming any origination here, but the point is that was a clash of champions that in the two and a half hour show, that was the end of the main event.

And that was the only angle that had been shot.

As I recall, on the program, they were matches that had been built up and had them, and some of the babyfaces won and some of the heels won, but nobody

else tried to commit attempted murder besides Funk on the program.

And that's what got all the attention.

And the people believed it because they not only weren't smart as they are now, but also because of Terry Funk and his aura and whatever.

And the

programming executives.

Hold on here one second.

I just happened to

grip a copy copy of the Midnight Express scrapbook, and I'm going to flip to the page in which I reprinted the letter.

It's my book, and I still can't remember what goddamn page it was on.

This

memo from SuperStation TBS from Bob Levi and Jeff Carr.

Jeff Carr was the programming guy, to Jack Petrick and Jim Hurd.

October 6, 1989, which was the day after I believe that incident happened, or two days after, whatever, TBS continues to maintain an all-family programming strategy.

This philosophy extends through all day parts and categories.

The TBS wrestling programs and promos must be consistent with our on-air standards.

Programs or promos which do not adhere to these standards must be edited or removed from the schedule,

which was their nice way of saying you want to to get fucking canceled.

And they own the goddamn thing.

So here were the guidelines.

No blood is to be allowed.

Any accidental bleeding that occurs in a live performance will be covered by wide shots and replays must be edited or removed from the program.

Gratuitously violent and sadistic acts to people and or animals.

are to be excluded from TBS broadcasts.

Examples include use of a plastic bag to smother a person, lighting someone on fire from Kevin Sullivan's fireballs,

not even actually lighting someone on fire, a blunt instrument being used repeatedly with the intent of breaking an arm, leg, etc.,

incessant kicking or beating of an individual.

Violent and sadistic verbal threats are unacceptable.

We do not allow use of profanity or religious slurs.

References made to drug and alcohol use are not allowed unless it is designed to educate and inform viewers in a positive manner.

And also, attire may be provocative and entertaining, but not be either lewd or abusive in design.

AEW has violated every single one of those.

Every goddamn one on the same network.

And the network puts up with it until they don't.

And then they don't.

And people changing their jobs and positions has effect on that

people are using the terry funk incident to justify it being done here what are your thoughts i didn't think this was a you know i guess it's supposed to make you uncomfortable but it was pretty uncomfortable and seemingly ridiculous no one ran out to help anyone well again see that's all the its context and the way it's done and the the venue in which it's done.

Back then, when they had that clash of champions was viewed

by what was what was the clash doing in those days 3 million 4 million people, you know,

and it was the only angle, so it got all the attention.

TBS was upset.

I loved it.

Flair loved it because it got heat on Terry Funk and people wanted to see the shit.

And that was where we, okay, we'll ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

But we weren't doing

shit like that every week.

People weren't bleeding every week.

People weren't being paralyzed and beaten and and mugged and thrown into wood chippers every fucking show multiple times.

And so there was a bigger element of belief to it.

And this,

and also, you already knew that Flair hated, or that Funk hated Flair.

And this was,

they come out and with no

public fucking word amongst them,

just Moxley starts coming out and even the announcers go we don't understand what the fuck's happened to Moxley and they just decide we're going to turn on Brian Danielson and try to kill him even though he was in our group until

a few weeks ago when he whatever

and then it was after this other the girls were giving each other goddamn concussions the fucking

The guys were goddamn trying to kill each other.

Everybody was going through fucking furniture.

And it's not even over yet.

And they do this.

It's just insane.

It gets lost.

It means nothing.

These fans are laughing at it because they don't buy any of this shit.

This is all the wrong reasons and all the wrong context and all the wrong times to do the wrong things.

And they're trying to get their goddamn deal renewed with the network.

Yes, this was pay-per-view.

They going to be able to show any of of this shit on television.

If you do something and you can't show it on TV, what the fuck good is it?

Yeah, imagine if a couple executives said, hey, let's check out the last couple matches at a pay-per-view before we sign this deal.

Which apparently they have a piece of, right?

We've deduced that from what Tony has said before.

So they, in effect, are financially connected.

to a pay-per-view that had not only attempted murder, but people shoving needles in each other's faces.

Well, on the bright side, Moxley looks like he's gotten gotten himself into pretty good shape with his time off.

And, you know, what's more badass than getting on the gas?

Well, they don't let a lot of those fucking calories and things, you know, go into those type of places.

They're on strict lockdown.

Well, I don't know about that, but he.

I thought he went to the fat farm.

He definitely, I don't think that's what it was, but he definitely looks like, at least in his arms and his shoulders and his back, he's changed his workout regimen.

Well, you know, he got a heavier fucking monkey wrench.

Now, whenever he's working on those pipes, he's lifting more weight.

You mentioned it before.

We heard MJF will be taking time off.

Swerve Strickland apparently taking time off.

Does this mean Danielson's taking time?

I mean, how long are you out after you were almost suffocated?

About 10 minutes.

Okay.

About 10 minutes.

Yeah, you wake up pretty much after that.

No,

we won't even talk about Swerve for a second, but

anyway, that was the Danielson angle.

It's a great angle if it's done by the right people at the right time to get people to want to see a match.

But what is the fucking match here?

Moxley and Danielson?

Okay, why did he do this?

We're going to need more explanation.

And

why is Moxley quoting

Nazis from a 30-year-old indie movie?

For the rumors about me having a skinhead group, it's not true.

Meet my new member, Claudio.

But winner, Claudio Swiss, he's neutral.

Nobody's, yeah, I'm just talking about his bald head.

No, it's,

you know, we'll see where it goes.

The Moxley Marina Shafir thing has been self-indulgent crap so far.

Just Moxley wanting to look like a badass while Marina Shafir beats up all the people that just run at her for no reason, like she's Bruce Lee.

And now he's going to have Claudio, who...

I'm sorry.

Claudio bores the shit out of me at this point in his career.

And Pac, who will be here until his fucking green card issues pop up again.

And now we're going to have MJF off TV and Swerve off TV.

Oh, boy.

We are a Will Osprey injury away from complete disaster.

They better wrap him in bubble wrap.

All right.

Well, it's time for the main event of the evening: the non-sanctioned, apparently cage match between

Swerve Strickland and Hangnail Page.

And

Swerve had something.

And we said that.

He's got something.

The people were starting to like him.

And then as soon as

they really liked him, they stuck Paige in this thing and delayed Swerve getting the belt until the people didn't like Swerve as much anymore.

And then

when they put the belt on him, they beat the fuck out of him and left him laying like the next three weeks in a row.

And then they stuck Paige back in this thing.

Paige is an albatross.

He is an anchor around everybody's neck.

If he's involved, it's going to be bad.

So now this is our main event.

And

as I said, Swerve had something.

Then, because they dropped the ball on it,

he switched him heel again.

He had something.

You know what he didn't have?

He didn't have anyone producing him.

well that's true and he also apparently didn't have a homeowner's insurance

or elsewhere i might have set fire to that fucking junk heap myself and collected the money well he just bought it he just bought the house Well, the point is, even if he had just bought it, he could have probably come out ahead.

You know, especially the yard looked like it needed a lot of work.

But anyways, Swerve, he had something.

The people were liking him.

They waited too long, put the belt on him.

They stuck Page in there to muddy things up.

Then they switched Swerve heel again because they've dropped the ball on him being a babyface.

But then he's against other people that are just as big, if not bigger, heels than he is.

So who the fuck knows what's going on?

And we get here to this thing

where

Swerve has purchased the home that he grew up in with his big new contract money.

And

Paige has burned it down on live television.

And of course, everybody knows not only you could tell it was special effects,

but you can't really burn a fucking house down on live TV if you mean it and get away with it.

You'd be in prison.

So this is garbage from the start that they are involving their top guys in, which is why nobody takes their top guys seriously.

Because they're always doing phony shit and saying stupid things.

So anyway, apparently now we know

that Swerve is as big of a fucking moron in real life as a person

than the rest of these fucking outlaw trashes

because this was

that if he wanted to outdo all the bad outlaw wrestling that's been on this program, he did.

But that just showed us again that a guy that people were starting to like, Swerve Strickland, what do you fans think of him?

Well, he's a fucking idiot.

He's really fucking stupid.

He's a goddamn goof, is what he is.

That's what they now think because they got to see it on live television.

They didn't fool anybody with this shit because it was both

incredibly phony and ridiculously dangerous at the same time.

And they don't understand that normal people and even the normal wrestling fans look at them and go, yeah, you two

are on purpose stapling each other with a staple gun.

How stupid are you?

You people on purpose are cooperating to power bomb each other on cinder blocks in the middle of the ring.

How fucking stupid are you?

Nobody cares who wins or loses because nobody knows who they're they're supposed to root for, because nobody knows who the baby face is.

There is really no wronged party because everybody's an asshole.

So they're just looking at bumps and they're looking at:

look at these two stupid motherfuckers taking these goddamn stupid fucking bumps to kill themselves in this phony fucking bullshit wrestling match.

What sense does that make?

The art of wrestling is to

simulate the violence and the aggression

and the danger as much as possible

and make it look dangerous and violent without actually being so.

Not really hurt yourself, but make it look like you're not so that the people think that not only is it bullshit in the way of a work,

but it's bullshit in the way of you're not even hurting yourself.

A guy gets powerbombed back first on a cinder block and gets up.

Remember what ended Rick Roode's wrestling career, how he collected on Lloyds of London and all that stuff?

Yeah, it was that move in Japan where his back, the small of his back, hit the edge of the stage they were on, right?

Yes, the ring was on a raised platform.

Sting cross-bodied him when they went down the edge of the platform, hit Roode's small of his back, and ended his career.

This stupid motherfucker, Swerve Strickland, got power bombed on a cinder block on the small of his back.

Here's another, and by the way, the reason why they had all this garbage in the ring was because before the cage lowered, they jump-started and got in a fight.

And Nana slid in a table and chairs and some kind of toolbox.

And all this other stuff before the cage lowered and the bell rang to start the match.

No disqualification.

Lazy, it's not lazy booking.

No booking.

Just let two idiots figure out what they want to do.

So

they pulled a staple gun out of the toolbox, hangnail did, and start staple and swerve.

And swerve laughs at him and stands there and lets him do it.

Okay, logically, number one, you couldn't beat anybody with a staple gun unless you used used it like brass knuckles and hit them in the face with it.

Right.

Why wouldn't you use it like that?

It's a metal thing.

It would really hurt someone.

Because

these fucking

never-been-fucked, virgin, neck-bearded, basement-dwelling, video game-playing, wrestling, indie outlaw fucking nerds think it's a show of toughness if you let somebody shoot you in the...

titty with a staple gun and and laugh at them.

No, it's an example of stupid.

You're a stupid, stupid, stupid person, is what you are.

And normal people see that.

I'll repeat what I said earlier.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I'm right up on the mic now, so you can hear me.

Stupid.

You're stupid.

You're stupid people.

So then

Swerve lets him staple him and then takes it away and staples

hangnail.

And they're real staples because you can see them.

So, anyway, again, you can't beat anybody in a fight that way, and nobody in a real fight's going to stand there and let you staple them because they're not fucking idiots.

They're wanting to kick the shit out of you.

So, then

swerve Staples' pictures of his family to Paige's face.

And this right here, and this kind of shit is why indie wrestling has killed the business.

And

the WWE may make money at it, but it's hard for anybody to take any of it seriously anymore after stupid shit.

Why would you want to watch this?

Why would you cheer for either the pitcher or the catcher in this situation?

Or pitcher or hitter, I think, would be.

I actually think this is one of the most unenjoyable matches I've ever seen.

But it's just so, it's the same thing as the thumbtacks.

How are you going to win a fight?

Or the Legos.

It's because these fucking goofs say, oh, it would hurt if you stepped on that barefoot.

Kind of fucking pussies are you?

Jesus Christ.

I'd rather see somebody attempt to murder somebody by suffocating them than staple them with a goddamn, because at least if you suffocate a motherfucker, he'll be out of your way.

If you staple him with a staple gun, what's that going to do?

And if a motherfucker staples me with a staple gun and I don't take a stick and beat his brains in,

then I'm mad at myself.

At one point, Tony Schiavone contributed by commentary by saying,

he burned down his house and it was a nice house, too.

The announcers were trying to sell the house burning with straight faces.

Now, while all this is happening, it's important to note the crowd wasn't really making a lot of noise.

Well, no,

only on the various murders or when the new object was revealed.

There was tons of silence in between, and then that carried over to the commentating, which was awful.

When the crowd would go silent, sometimes they ran out.

There are four of them there.

They ran out of something to say.

Yeah.

And then, or they'd do the golf thing.

We can't believe what we're seeing.

And they both got color, swerving page.

And then

the referee actually stopped Hangnail at one time from using a chair, and they booed booed

the referee for

stopping the heel from nominally bashing the brains in of the nominal babyface with the fucking chair.

And then they did more chair shots.

And then they the cinder block thing.

And

Swerve got a hit his double stomp finish on Paige through a table, got a two count.

Paige got a spike of burnt wood from Swerve's house and stabbed him in the face with it about five times.

Yeah, what the hell was that?

All of a sudden, I'm watching, and he pulls ahead and they go, that's from the house.

What?

Well, it had to be because it was a spike, a wooden spike

that had been partially burned.

So, where else?

That's the only burned piece of wood in the world is from Swerve's house.

This is so lame.

And when the power bomb on the cinder block came, I said they both deserve career-ending injuries.

Because why?

Why would you do?

Almost impossible to tolerate watching this, both ridiculously phony and really dangerous at the same time.

Hangnail gave Swerve a powerbomb off the top rope, followed by a dead eye for a two-count.

Paige hits Swerve with more chair shots.

Swerve started laughing at him.

And then Paige got him down

and pulled Swerve's false teeth out.

Apparently, I thought he had gotten gold crowns

because whenever he smiles, he's got the gold teeth, right?

They're fake fucking teeth.

He pulled them out and threw, I thought they were going to do the Eddie Graham Boris Malenko thing because you saw him laying on the goddamn mat.

I thought Paige was going to stomp him, right?

They sold out Florida for two years in the 60s when Graham stomped Malinko's fucking teeth.

But no, he took the teeth out

so that he could go back to the toolkit or wherever they were getting his shit.

And he got a hypodermic needle

and came and he's taken the top off.

And I'm thinking, my God,

the really basement-dwelling Ring of Honor fans back about 15 years ago got pissed at me when I had the Kings of Wrestling beat the Briscoe brothers with ether.

And now they pulled out the old hypodermic.

You know, they did that on ICW television one time.

The Jarretts used to hold that up as an example of when they really knew that the other guys were probably going to go out of business.

The heel hypodermic, the fucking baby face unconscious.

But anyway,

he didn't stick the hypodermic needle in his vein or in his arm because it didn't have anything in it they couldn't even come up with goddamn propofol

and shoot him up with the they just took the hypodermic needle and paige

grabbed swerve's face and stuck it in his mouth into his cheek from the inside of his mouth out

and then

There is Swerve on his knees.

He let him go and he's on his knees and he's got his eyes wide open.

And they got a close-up of him.

And he's got the goddamn hypodermic needle in his mouth sticking in his cheek.

And he's not trying to pull it out.

And then Paige takes a chair

and hammers him over.

And they missed the chair shot with the camera.

They went wide and it was in the cage.

You couldn't even see what he did.

But he fucking horse collars him with the chair over the top of the head.

That's why I said I believe they may have loosened up the screws on the seat so it would flop back and forth easier, but it's still a fucking chair.

And boom, his head goes through the chair and the referee calls for the bell.

Winner by knockout.

There have been people in these goddamn cage matches in this company that would be down selling for two fucking minutes.

But this guy gets hit over the head with a chair and a reverie.

Oh, fuck it.

But he did have a needle sticking in his face.

What the fuck?

That was the finish.

This kind of shit makes wrestling not only look phony and fake and stupid, but trashy and low class.

It makes it look like it appeals to the same kind of people, like I said, earlier, that like the fucking insane clown posse.

It runs off advertisers.

It potentially gets heat with TV partners.

Every normal fucking wrestling fan is like, what the fuck?

Yeah, see, there's the big thing, even beyond everything else that's significant, TV partners, advertisers.

I don't think this match is a turn on to fans.

No.

This match speaks to the smallest minority of fringe fans in wrestling and

this was one of the worst things i've ever this is one of the worst matches i've ever seen in my entire life this is like if you gave ian rotten a billion dollars some trashy motherfucker that exists on the periphery of trailer parks and trying to run carny bullshit hardcore shows in roller rinks and skirt the law and the authorities and put himself on top and cut his head in front of people to show how tough he is when he's a big fat bulbous fucking sack of shit that looks like one of those things they used to pour sand in the ass of so they teeter-totter

right that's the kind of fucking people that run the garbage hardcore wrestling shows the trash up in jersey whether it's combat zone or garbage championship wrestling These people,

you see, the owners of these companies, they should be on probation for something.

They should be on a goddamn government list of some kind to keep an eye on them or the blood-borne diseases they're spreading around.

They had a goddamn health advisory.

Remember a couple of years ago here in Kentucky, over in Indiana with no regulation.

They did another one of those fucking garbage hardcore shows.

And the health department said, if you went to this thing, you might ought to get tested.

Anybody, fans, get tested if you were at this place on this night.

This is what AEW is going for because that's the mentality.

These fucking wrestlers that Tony's got on this roster, 90% of them have never been in a fucking real competition of anything.

95% of them have never been in a fight with anybody.

And they fantasize themselves as being these tough guys because they're willing to either do shit to themselves or let another motherfucker do it.

That's not tough.

That's stupid if you're not doing it to make money.

If you're doing it so you can brag

to marks who don't know any better, well, I go to Japan.

That used to be Ian Rotten.

Would fucking buy tickets to the matches at the gardens when the Memphis office was still running with gig marks on his arms and sit in the cheap seats and tell the fans that he wrestled in Japan because that's where it was real.

And all that stuff was fake.

They have a desperate need to want to be someone.

They can't be happy with just being a normal fucking person.

You know what?

If I'd have never been on wrestling goddamn television, I would be perfectly happy sitting here right now reading a fucking book.

I don't need anybody to know that I'm around anymore.

I I just happen to do it to make money.

Lots of money, actually.

But they've got, I'm somebody.

Look at me.

I cut my head.

I had a needle stuck in my face.

Look how tough I am.

Fuck you.

I've known tough people.

You ain't tough people, especially Paige.

Swerve my can go a little bit.

Paige is a goddamn big pussy.

He is a gaping giant vagina.

Frothing?

Frothing.

Actually, no, he'd probably dry because he wouldn't even be pleasurable.

But it's just, it's, this is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous.

And it keeps the whole company from actually succeeding

instead of being funded by a billionaire as a fucking toy.

And you say it's like Ian Rotten or any of these guys got a million dollars.

It's like they got a million dollars and then we're told, take your time.

Because this took forever.

This was draining.

This was just,

this was a never-ending match that left you really feeling unfulfilled in the end.

And hey, again, I said I'm not going to take sides in JR and Stephen P.

New,

but to take a mark's money to impart Jim Ross's credibility to this horse shit is a shame.

And I think if...

I think he's JR has an incredible work ethic and he's got to be employed until he dies, even though he's got more money in the federal government.

But goddamn, if he should have walked out on this shit a long time ago, because it just drags him down.

It's embarrassing for him to be a part of this at this point.

At this point, he shows up once every six months.

Well, yeah, but boy, he could have showed up another night instead of this one because his voice will be on the tape of this

fiasco, this fucking abortion for forever.

See, I get the idea of wanting Jim Ross to do the big matches, but you can't tell me he wouldn't have been better served calling MJF's match

even Austin, because even though he can't do the moves, because you know, who can keep up with all these moves, just to add some storytelling or something there, they used him in those end matches.

And at the end of both matches, he was like disgusted.

He's like, That's the worst thing I've ever seen.

We shouldn't justify this.

You can't even tell what's real, what isn't.

He did it after the fucking Brian Danielson murder attempt, and then he did it again at the main event.

But anyway, I, you know, I applaud his work ethic but if he had

better principles he'd just fucking stand up and say you know what I'm going home you people all give me fucking gas this is the goddamn stupidest bunch of shit I've ever seen

because you know what I've done that a time or two and it's cathartic AEW was turned into everything that we didn't like on WWE TV and then the worst of everything we would hear about on the indies put together

yes because they have unlimited uh budget and they have hundreds of people willing to do this shit because

they think it's cool.

And most weeks they have hundreds of fans willing to pay for tickets.

They're driving away everyone.

They lost everything they had with punk in terms of the people that came to the table to check out the product.

They drove them away.

Then whoever was left after that, they drove a lot more of them away after they aired the video from London.

And look at who's filled up the TV time since then.

And now think of who's going to fill up the TV time without MJF and without Swerve.

With lots of badass Moxley all over the show.

Well, as we said earlier, but did we say it here in conjunction with this?

Now we hear Swerve is going to take time off, too.

Well,

the fuck.

Does anybody go to work there?

Well, to be fair, he has to rebuild a home that was burned down recently.

No, he just bought the guy.

He has another home

because he just bought that home.

He couldn't have moved from.

That's true.

Yeah.

But besides that, Jesus H.

Christ, he's going to take time off after a guy sticks a needle in him, crowns him with a chair, and he gets a, he gets beat.

The needle thing is one of the most disgusting and inappropriate things they've probably ever done and was completely unnecessary.

And again, I don't think they expected or may not even accept.

the negative response it's had from so many people.

But that's the thing.

It was another thing like the thumbtacks and all the other shit.

How were you?

Like Adam Page drinking Swerve's blood.

I mean, these same two guys.

But how were you going to beat anyone by doing that?

If they, like I said, if the needle had had the propofol in it and he'd have shot him up and he'd pass out, die, whatever.

Okay.

At least there was a goddamn reason for it.

But now you're just going to

Before they outlawed him, the circus sideshows that were so much fun where you had the three-legged cow and the bearded lady and the world's fattest man, and then there's the human pin cushion.

Watch me.

I'm a freak.

I'm a geek.

I'm the lowest part of human society.

I'm on the circus sideshow tent sticking needles in myself.

But look at me.

That's the only, there was no way to win by sticking the needle in.

It's just like, look, I'm going to do a freaky thing.

And where are the police?

And by the way, that's one of those logic things everyone always looked at.

There are certain things you could do on a wrestling show, but there are certain things that, yeah, if that happened in real life, the cops would be called.

Sometimes you get around it because Steve Austin's over, so yeah, he could drive a truck into whatever he wants.

But still, there's a logic hole there.

Moxley almost committed a murder.

Why weren't there police there at some point in the next 40 minutes after that match?

Taking statements.

And then Adam Page, I'm guessing, unless Britt Baker can lend her license, he doesn't have the ability to just...

inject people in their mouth without their consent.

Multiple crimes on multiple levels.

Plus, arson.

Plus, he's still on the streets after lighting the guy's house on fire.

That's why I said at the top, this show, specifically the last two matches, are the greatest examples of mark booking ever.

These are things I wouldn't have even done with my G.I.

Joe Wrestling Federation as a kid because it's ridiculous.

It's a step too far.

I'll burn your house down and then I'm going to inject you with a mystery object.

And crown you.

It'll be so bad the cameras won't show it.

AEW just keeps going down and they always want to pretend like everything's good and everything's on the way up

it just never gets better it gets worse and worse and worse and it's never going to get better because tony can't book

tony without

violating any nda clauses you want to know why i stopped answering the phone whenever you'd call me five years ago because i knew how this was going to end up because you're a mark and the people you employ are marks and the people you listen to are marks And I have been vindicated in my decision to quit speaking to you about this goddamn absurd bullshit.

That's why.

And I wish that more people in this business had a little goddamn principle to them and some backbone.

And if they'd have done the same thing, maybe you would have goddamn changed your mind and not done this and left it to the potential that somebody

with not only the money, but the goddamn knowledge and the willingness to try

to do a serious fucking job of this would have come along.

Because now AEW is it.

The only

competitor, the only challenger, the only even alternative to the WWE that most of us are going to get in our lifetimes is this fucking mess of bullshit because you didn't know what you were doing and you couldn't fund something

and get people who had experience to fucking run it, you had to take all this on yourself and your little lollipop guild of play friends.

And

I'm sorry to say I saw it when I talked to you.

I heard it when I talked to you.

Because he talked to me like he talks on goddamn the microphone at these media scrums.

Because he foolishly believes he understands wrestling.

He doesn't understand he's a fringe-minded fan from the message boards, still hiding on the message boards.

So, I mean, that's the reality of it.

You could be a big fan, but this is all as good as Shad Khan's money, and that's it.

And Tony can't book.

He's proven it time and time again.

He's incompetent as a booker, and everything's great.

Everything's great.

Everything they're doing is great.

Everyone who comes out of that company says the same thing.

Everyone who works in that company gets on the phone with people like me

say the same thing.

Tony's the problem.

Well, now, Tony was the problem, but now they've grown so many other problems that this, you can't turn this around.

They can't.

It would take years to

not only to retrain the audience to a sane, rational product, but to retrain the wrestlers to be able to perform it.

And do you ever get a second chance after people may have tried for the last five years to watch this shit

and laughed at it and turned back over to the other network?

That's why the WWE is announcing an all-time record something every time you turn around.

Anyway, are we done here today?

That was AEW all-out 2024.

We'll see what happens next year.

But Brian, you know what we're out of?

What's that?

Time and patience.

Do you have any closing thoughts?

This is one of the worst pay-per-view events I've ever seen.

There are people saying it's one of the best because they really like the Osprey match.

If you liked Jack Perry being 50-50 with Danielson for a long match and then the Moxley stuff, if you liked anything about the Swerve Strickland Adam Page Cage match, but specifically the grotesque shit they did at the end, if you liked that Sasha Banks match, if you thought the Young Bucks match was acceptable, if you think any of this stuff was good beyond the Osprey match, which was good but wasn't the all-time greatest, the MJF match, and I like Willow versus

Willow versus Statland.

That is who it was.

Yes.

This was an atrocious pay-per-view, a bad card, and really a scary, bad sign of things to come with the booking and creative in AEW.

They've lost the plot completely.

And this show was just world-class bad.

I'll just go with an embarrassment to the profession of wrestling, and I'm glad that I'm no longer involved in it.

If this is the kind of thing that passes for fucking wrestling in this day and age, and they can all kiss my fucking ass.

And by the way, Swerve, you are a complete fucking idiot.

and page you're a big gaping vagina do something about it and for everybody else thank you

and bye-bye everybody