Episode 546: From William Muldoon To Roman Reigns

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Like a midnight tender rock and roller.

He's in a fight for wrestling solar using a racket and some mind controller.

He's Jim Cornish.

Cornette.

The keys to the future held by the past.

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

Jim Cornet.

Well, he's never fake a phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind

to get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornet.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Jim Cornet Experience.

Today, we discuss everyone from William Muldoon to Roman Reigns.

And a few points in between.

And joining me to do all this and so much more.

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

Co-host to you.

He's the George Hackenschmidt to my Frank Gotch, the great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

Pleasure to be here once again.

You can call me Hack, and it's wonderful to be here.

He lived longer than Gotch, so I'll take it.

Well, actually, I did make myself the prick in that equation, didn't I?

You did.

The fucking shit.

You're a man when he's down, you fucking bitch.

Yeah,

the opportunist and the the

the asshole that he was and then died of some kind of piss poisoning at a young age so

hacking schmidt i guess lived but he never got that third third shot anyway i hope today brian are you are you rested are you relaxed are you kicked back in your house slippers and You got your feet up and everything, and you're just going to have a leisurely day today.

Is that where we're at?

No, I actually don't wear the slippers in the house.

What Jim is referencing is I had a meeting earlier today that Suzanne and I had to go to, and I ran out of the house in my slippers.

And we had to turn around after driving a good distance when I realized my feet were rather warm.

And we went home and I got my

flippers.

If you'd have gone in there, the people, they would have said, you know, she was very pleasant, but that guy, did he walk away from a state home?

What the fuck is he coming around in his fucking old man slippers?

I got a casual, cool thing going on, but that's a little too casual.

Well, I'm glad that you are at least relaxed, though, Brian, because if the people listen to the drive-through that we did a couple of days ago, they will know that you about gave me a nervous fucking breakdown.

And you have rendered me practically out of my mind, lunatic, bouncing off the walls, ready for a rubber room at the puzzle factory.

Loco,

cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, absolutely batshit over the

audio issues that I'm becoming ever increasingly convinced exist in your own warped mind

who said my mind was warped would you hear that

well I think I I can take a level to it and you're as as they used to say as my uncle Harold would say you were a half a bubble off plum I'm not crazy

No, you drove me out of my mind.

It's some kind of gaslighting.

The famous thing every crazy person says.

I'm not crazy.

I'm not crazy.

Joe LaDuke.

I'm not crazy.

No, I'm not crazy.

Jackie Fargo said about Roughhouse.

He's not crazy and he's got papers to prove it.

But no, you drove me out of my mind because of this incessant

problem that you have with the audio over here.

Oh, Jim, I can hear you pin clicking.

Oh, Jim, I can hear your teeth chattering.

Oh, Jim, I can hear your pulse.

Oh, Brian, why do you care so much about the fan experience?

Why do you care about those people?

You always put it back on trying to make me selfish.

Like, I don't care.

Of course, I care about the people.

I care about us not having to argue about this time and time again because of these things you're here.

But now you can't hear.

Did you hear that today?

I didn't hear anything, no.

What?

I'm doing my glass-breaking sound effect and it's loud in here.

And you're telling me, there it goes.

It's going.

Your glass-breaking sound effect is about as effective as Stone Cold Jim Cornette would be.

And a point I'm clapping.

I'm clapping my hands right in front of the microphone.

Do you tell me you don't hear me clapping?

I don't know what you did to this microphone.

So I can't do my wacky morning zoo radio fun and frolics over here, but every time I click my pen or my.

Lip smack, you're like, oh my God, you're deafening me.

How about this?

When you want a a sound effect say sound effect and I'll play one

no we have we have come to this that that something has happened I hear your glass breaking

and and

and your fanfare for the common man the trumpeting there I hear that I hear yours why can't you hear mine

Skype or this is

it should not be possible So to preserve my sanity, ladies and gentlemen, we have called in an expert.

I'll have you know that less than 24 hours from now, as I sit here and speak these words, Hotchkiss Featherbottom is going to be over here in front of my computer.

See, wah, wah, wah, wah is what I just played and you can't hear it.

I thought your line went dead.

No, that's what I'm saying to you.

I'm fucking

here.

What else can I do to make noise?

Look, I'm slapping the cover of a book.

Slapping.

Do you hear that?

No, try it on your face.

Slap your face.

I'm oh, goddamn it.

It's harder.

I can't hear it.

No, I hit my tooth.

Look here.

This is goddamn ridiculous.

So the point is, Hotchkiss is coming over here and figuring this shit out because we can't go on like this.

I've got to preserve my sanity.

And he's going to sit here and you're going to get on here with him.

And we're going to figure out if it's the microphone or the Skype or the goddamn inner webs or whatever the fuck is going on here

before I lose my fucking grip.

No, this will work good.

I understand Hotchkiss is a real expert.

He's once utilized a microphone.

Yes, yes, because he's played in the band

and he's used the microphone to sing into.

And I've told you about that punk rock cooking show he had on local cable access until he got too busy with Cornette's Collectibles, the Velvet Colander.

And,

you know, not only he does my website, and I've, I've mentioned the other projects that we're getting into.

We'll talk about that at some point.

But my photographic negatives from 40 years ago, we are checking into a variety of ways and plans that they can all be digitally reproduced for the modern era.

Since there's about 35 or 40,000 frames, it's going to be something that we're looking into professional help on.

That's a good sales pitch, though.

You think he's negative on wrestling now?

Look at all these negatives.

I've been negative for 50 years, baby.

And I'll tell you something I'm positive about.

It's talking about the feather bottoms that are coming over here to solve this.

I'm pounding on the desk now.

Do you hear that?

No, you did something.

You have.

Well,

I don't know.

I didn't do.

I didn't do nothing.

I'm innocent.

Your Honor, these two crooks here is innocent.

But the point is, he's also come up with a dynamic new plan.

I mentioned this on the drive-through, but it's your show, so I'm not sure if anybody heard it.

That the big

Christmas season holidays, we got Halloween, you got Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa Festivus, you got a variety of holidays last three months of the year.

The big sale at Cornett's Collectibles at jimcornet.com starts Saturday, October the 5th at noon Eastern,

featuring the very last, the final variant, the last Jim Cornette action figure

before we ride the,

whatever you, I guess, the action figure off into the sunset.

I should have come up with a goddamn better analogy.

I'll do better next time, but that's going to be the last one.

We got some surprises for that, as well as the return of an old favorite that has not been sold for the past three years or so.

And

we're going to have more details on that coming up.

Guess what he has come up with?

Remember when he came up with the

email blast?

Remember that?

I remember when he told you about the email blast, he came up with nothing.

Well, no, and he's come up with a number of dynamic new marketing concepts and ideas.

He's come up with a, I think this is his greatest idea yet, to be honest with you.

And he's a young man.

He's still got room to flower.

But

he has said, what about if we do this?

What about if for a temporary, limited period of time, we reduce the retail price of a particular piece of merchandise on the website around the holiday season, maybe around Thanksgiving or the Friday after.

And that way people can get the same

for less money than they would normally pay for it.

That's an incredible concept.

He just

rattled that off.

Just he's got all kinds of ideas like this.

How many other ideas does he have to cost you money?

Well, no, I'm telling you, it drives the revenue.

Drives it where, off a cliff?

No, it drives it right into the right into the fucking place he wants to put it.

Right there

in his revenue hole.

He figures that if you dig a big hole and you fill it with revenue,

then you can smooth it right over.

But he's a genius with coming up with these.

So stay tuned for that.

More details as they become available.

But the holiday season sale does start Saturday, October 5th at noon Eastern time.

But that's Eastern in the United States, not if you're in Eastern Wales or whatever.

All right.

Well, this is your show.

Well, no, I'm just saying.

You just scoff at all of Hotchkiss's brilliant ideas.

Well, we'll see how it goes tomorrow with the big audio challenge.

And then if he can handle some of that, well, a little bit of faith in him doing anything else ever.

Well,

come on now.

You know Hotchkiss.

Didn't you talk to him on the phone one time before when he was doing cold calls for a mortgage company?

No, that was not him.

That was not him doing that.

No, he, well, he was trying to, because you're thinking of Askiss, not Hotchkiss.

Oh, that's who it was.

Okay, I'm sorry.

The other, that's his cousin.

That's right.

We're not talking about him.

All right.

Let's go ahead.

We do have some more fun and frivolity on the program today and

some of the modern wrestling.

But

at the start, we want to make mention, obviously, of the passing of Affa Annawai, Affair the Wild Samoan,

just a couple of days ago as we speak.

And

I think he, I believe he was 81 years old, but

this is so, it's got to be murder for the family of what they've gone through over the past couple of months, but it's kind of,

I don't know,

apropos, not ironic,

but apropos in a positive way that Alpha and Sika went so close together when they were so

close and intertwined in all the fans' minds for, you know, so many years, inextricably linked.

But in, you know, Alpha had been battling some health issues for quite some time and had still, you know, been kicking out and everybody was you know, pulling for him.

But

obviously,

guess, I guess Dave Meltzer announced he had passed on Twitter about a day or two before he did.

We may mention that later on.

I'm not sure how much in advance it was, but it was definitely in advance.

It was, it was in advance.

Um,

but nevertheless, you know, everybody has,

you know, given the tributes and et cetera.

And we just

honestly not to try to shirk our duties.

But as a professional in his career in wrestling, we just talked about the Samoans when we talked about Sika.

So, you know, it might be redundant here.

But I think at this point,

we could focus more on Afa, the

after the wild Samoans, the trainer, the promoter,

which obviously he was well thought of.

And he had been to, what was it, Hazelton, Pennsylvania?

Is that his...

it's near Allen.

Is that where he was located?

I don't remember the exact town.

Well, I've been there because I worked for Offa.

That's the thing I mentioned when we talked about Sika, that,

you know, that I had not interacted with him nearly as much as Offa because Sika had lived for years

down in Pensacola, Florida, whereas Offa was in eastern Pennsylvania, and that's where his school was.

He ran.

shows around the area for so many years, and especially when I was in Stanford in the office,

you know, there was a lot of period of time when I was booking the guys for third-party promotions or worked for him myself in some cases.

You know, when I was on television managing somebody, whatever the case,

you know, he was much more

present around the office and around,

you know, a lot of the guys in the towns when they would do TV in the area.

And actually,

he was managing

Samu and Fatu

when we first got there in 93, me and the heavenly bodies, right?

Because we with Lou Albano eventually.

With Lou Albano, and they were

boy, that was the ugliest group of baby faces that I think I've ever seen.

I like you.

Lou Albano, it was Samu and Fatu and Affa together.

But it was, it

was what it was because of the booking at the time.

But we got to work with him.

So, but Alpha was a,

he was a great guy.

And, and,

you know, I've, I've heard so many people speak so well of him as a trainer.

I didn't, you know, I wasn't at his school and witnessed that, but at his shows,

you know, that's one of the, the, the people that you could book the WWF talent out who is a third party that you knew

they weren't going to be asked to do anything screwy or weren't going to be, there wasn't anything screwy going to be done on the show.

He ran professional, professional wrestling shows.

And somebody will probably come up with a videotape of, well, look, he did this, and some local manager is quacking like a duck or whatever.

But I'm talking about

the office knew they weren't going to get bad publicity, offensive wrestling staged here.

You know, guy pulls his fucking pecker out.

No, or nobody was going to be set on fire or, you know, plummeted through furniture.

But he ran shows in that area for, what, 20 years, I guess.

So you always got your money.

Everything was always.

I'm not saying they didn't run some local shows, but everything was professionally done within the parameters of the environment.

And I guess he's been doing the

still had the training school until, you know, obviously just his health took a turn recently, hadn't he?

I believe so.

And,

you know, it's interesting to think about the idea that if you were a fan 40 years ago,

there were two

or three

Samoan wrestlers that you knew.

It was Afan Sika, and then there was Samoan number three,

who eventually became Samu.

And you didn't know yet that he was Alpha's son.

Then eventually you had Tonga Kidd.

And then Fatu, and in WCW under Paul Heyman, actually, as the manager, and then Oliver Humperdig,

the three of them were together.

It's amazing because, like, in the 90s, when you were around, is kind of when everything expanded.

And they were a family in wrestling.

And then after a while, they were the biggest family in wrestling.

And Afo was one of the central figures behind the scenes because he always had a good relationship with Vince.

And, you know, that's the thing: there were other Samoans in the 70s.

Remember Tio and Reno and Tio and Tapu after Tapu took over from Reno.

And it was,

goddamn, I think Reno's last name was Tufili or whatever.

They were, I'm sure they were distant relations because Samoan people come from a fucking island.

So somehow distantly, one would think they're all related.

But the point is the The Anawahi and the Anawahi family overtook all of the other Samoan,

not that there were a a ton, but the other Samoan wrestlers in the business and the quasi

Samoans that tried to get by with being Samoans and pretty much their bloodline is now the only one existent in the business, isn't it?

I mean, it's the biggest on any kind of mainstream level.

I guess there's well, they're wait a minute, didn't AEW had some Samoan-looking fellows, didn't they?

The gates of agony.

Boy, they passed through them a long time ago to watch them, but nevertheless.

But anyway, we just wanted to

recognize Offa.

And

again, you know,

the tribute we did to Sika is available on the YouTube channel, which talks extensively about Offa as well and the Samoans as a team.

But

yeah, you know, you can't.

They have probably surpassed,

I guess, by now they have surpassed the Welches and Fullers in terms of just numerical

people.

Well, no, hold on now.

No doubt.

Have we got to like 35, 36, whatever.

If you don't count people who weren't actually related, like the Rock or Jimmy Snooka, like various people that they considered cousins or brought in, if you just count the actual real bloodline, Afa, Sika, Samu, Fatu, Tonga Kid.

Again, not counting Haku.

Rosie and Jamal.

Manu.

Alpha Jr.

was Manu right there.

Roman Reigns.

Are you doing this off the top of your head?

I am.

That's nine.

Usos.

I've worked with a lot of these people, and I can't fucking do it.

Usos, that's 11.

Solo Sokoa, that's 12.

I think it's another brother, but I'm not going to count him because I can't verify the other brother.

Did you say Jacob?

Jacob.

Oh, so there's 13.

So that's just who's on the main stage or has been that I could think of, let alone the other members who have worked in.

Yokozuna.

I didn't even think of him.

Yokozuna.

So that's 14 right there.

You know, again, with the Welches and Fullers, if you count the Fields family, that's what really...

gives

a boost, right?

Yes, but also that means you count in-laws, in which case

you've got the people that they married.

Oh, Naomi.

Naomi and the flying burrito brothers.

She lies in the dark.

She makes you just want to get up and move.

Just get up and go.

Yeah.

Anyway, Madonna,

we're trying to be serious here.

We've gone off on a tangent, but the point is,

probably,

I think without question, the

family dynasty in wrestling that has grossed the most money

would be the

Onawahis, which started with Afa and Sika.

So

I think that's a record without question.

How many other wrestling families go five people deep?

Like the Welchers and Fullers, obviously.

The Grahams and Kayfabe are certainly a big deal.

Well, no, but yeah, the Von Ericks.

The Von Ericks.

Gosh,

now you've...

The Hearts.

There were three Miller brothers.

Yes, definitely the Hearts.

The aforementioned Welch Fuller Fields-Hatfield

arrangement.

Five.

Well, you know what?

Five.

The Rock.

If you look at his extended family, technically, Peter Maivia,

Rocky Johnson, The Rock, Ricky Johnson.

So there's four members.

I don't know if Rock, any of Rocky Johnson's other kids ever did it.

I don't think any of them ever did.

So that's four, but five, five's the magic number.

So now people are screaming at the, at the, uh,

at whatever they're fucking listening to this on, right?

So what we're trying to say is if you work for AEW, now is the time to take time off and procreate.

Oh, good heavens.

No,

I don't think they're going to be around by the time that your progeny would be of legal contract signing age.

You know, I'm glad they did get that one thing, though, to wrap it up, talking about Alpha.

I guess it was four years ago, kind of when the bloodline angle story was really starting to take off.

They had the moment where Roman was there and he was presented with the red, whatever they call it, necklace of shells or whatever it is.

The Ula Ulafala, but I just feel like I'm mispronouncing it even when I'm not.

So I just call it the red leg.

Well, they give them that offensikadu at the entranceway.

And I thought that's a cool thing that they did that, that they got that moment, you know?

Yeah.

You kind of think if they were healthier and, you know, they weren't young guys, but they would have been somehow incorporated in everything happening.

But it's good that they were at the very beginning.

Well, yeah, because that, you know, and I'm sure that was a Heyman touch.

I'm not saying that anybody disagreed with it, but to have that,

the elders, you know, to

on video passing the blah, blah, blah, that was a big symbolic deal that people, you know, register on a subliminal basis.

It's, you know, I mean, some people see it as cool as it is, and others, just still, it's impressive rather than some wrestling bullshit.

So that was very good.

And I always cite it as a match I love.

Now's a great time to go back and watch it for anyone anyone who hasn't it was on the wwe network i believe it would still be on peacock under the wwe old school stuff madison square garden october 1984 baby face alpha versus dick murdock it is so much fun

you have to watch it so much fun well and you know they knew each other from mid-south also so

I'm sure, you know, they went back in a number of different territories.

So I'm sure that was fun for both of them.

Yeah, remember, they were managed by Ernie Ladd, and then all of a sudden they were with Ackbar.

And that's when Ernie Ladd said, nobody manages the Samoans but me.

And he goes to the raid and they turn on.

Yeah.

And Ernie, meanwhile, was dressed like fucking Richard Roundtree and Shaft goes to Africa.

And then here came the one-man gang.

One-man gang.

Who had just been managed by me as Crusher Broomfield in fucking Tennessee, making 350 bucks a week and suddenly goes to mid-South and becomes the one-man gang and splashed on a lad's leg and broke it.

How effective do you think he was before the look change?

Before, you know, he had the name when he went to mid-South.

Of course, that was Ronnie Garvin's nickname years earlier, but it was, I guess, world-class under Gary Hart where he changed the look and he got the mohawk and the tattoo on his head and the different outfit.

Do you think it was necessary?

Could he have worked as Crusher Broomfield?

No.

Or is the one-man gang looking like Crusher Broomfield?

Well,

if you went for the one-man gang, see, the Crusher Broomfield and the early one-man gang

was,

he was, for the people who are not picturing this,

go 1982 mid-South on YouTube, whatever, but

he was six feet, what, five or six and

weighed 350 pounds at least and could take bumps like crazy because he had he had broken in with the popos and icw and he was one of those big guys like crusher blackwell or like bronson reed now only taller where you would think holy shit this guy just did that right

but he was still wearing boots and long tights and the double strap over the shoulder singlet

and he had long hair and a beard

If he hadn't shaved the long hair and the beard, he had to change the fucking tights.

He had to get some kind of the one-man gang

with long hair.

Was he a fucking biker from West Virginia?

I don't, whatever the fuck.

If it had been a slight

change in

hairstyle, but a bigger change in

the way he dressed and the way he was presented,

I don't know if the hair was the deal breaker, but it just made him look different when,

and because

George is his name, is from the Carolinas and he talks as, you know, country as you would expect.

So he needed either

Gary Hart developed a lot of great talent and gave them backstories to their gimmicks and fleshed out little details.

And

so I think, you know, a gang needed that

to put the whole look and the attitude and the name and the way that he was presented together.

He got good real quick.

He broke in in like, what, 1980, 81.

And

by 83, 84, he's made a vent in Dallas.

The details Gary Hart threw in were that his name was Moon.

Yeah, Moon.

And that he called Gary Hart slick and they were friends from Chicago.

Yeah.

And with the head shaved and the head tattooed, you know, that's he had a completely different look and he was that fucking big, but he got a different

bodysuit thing to wear, all black and whatever.

And, you know, then you figured this guy can fucking fuck you up, which he could if he wanted to, but he's the nicest guy in the world.

It was the era if you wanted someone to be a badass in wrestling, you made them from Chicago.

The Road Warriors, one-man gang.

If you ever hear him talk, he sounds nothing like someone from Chicago.

Well, but you know, he could have moved at an early age.

But when he yelled, he made it work.

When he screamed, it is one man gang voice who worked.

But yeah, so, you know, but that was the thing.

He always had the talent.

And, you know, a guy with that striking of a look, you just need to accentuate it and present him the right way in the right packaging.

And

I think that was the, that was probably the best.

I know he did a lot of things in New York, but that was probably the best most seriously that he was ever presented, was in Dallas at that point with Gary.

You know, there's something about him in the Akeem outfit doing the splash.

It's, it's almost beautiful.

Just the way, like, he moves his, he's all in blue.

And he just moves, the way he, like, does his splash and moves his arms as he lands on the guy perfectly.

And it looks devastating and it isn't.

It's a thing of beauty, I think.

I like, yeah, the first time I saw him on ICW television.

They had a house show tape from

what were they?

I think they were running the

Lexington Catholic or Henry Clay High School Gym or something at that point in time in Lexington.

And they had the one camera thing.

And somebody shot him across the ring.

He took the turnbuckle belly first, went over the top rope, stood, did a headstand on the fucking apron/slash post and fucking took the bump over to the floor all in the same motion at six, whatever, and

350 or 75 pounds.

I was like, holy, and he's a rookie.

And I was like, you know, because normally

you would either see a guy that big would be practically immobile or could take the big bumps in the ring, but you didn't

run across that degree of nimbleness with other people.

How did we get started talking about this?

This has been Happy Talk.

I don't know what we're doing here.

Well,

I'm trying to convey

part of the show.

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I'm trying to real quickly.

I got an update on something that we talked about.

A while back, and then we'll move on.

Remember, we talked about the

fan that gave me or sent me, gave to me didn't charge me the cigarette cards from 1887 with the wrestlers on them yeah alan and gintner the allen and gintner card that's what that's the the names that were escaping me um

but oliver is the fellow's name we knew that much but i couldn't read his address well he heard because i wanted to send him something He heard us talking about it and talking about him sending the cards.

And guess what?

He sent me along with his address legibly this time

what

the william muldoon card what the yo oliver you need my po box no he don't know this is shit what the hell's going on your box is closed to him he is my benefactor so oliver you have a big box

what are you

Are you trying to extortion?

Speak to your benefactor.

I'm sorry.

Are you trying to extort this man for goods and services and merchandise?

No, Oliver has a package coming from me or from Hotchkiss

in the very near future because now I

can get his full address and I'm rewarding him for these wonderful cards that he sent.

And

he sent you nothing, but he did ask a question about you.

He wanted to know your and my origin story.

Which one of us is the super villain?

It was a dark and stormy night.

And all of a sudden, I was there.

And then there you were.

And you're over there now.

That's right.

No, we met at fan week, Smoky Mountain Wrestling Fan Week Night.

We have told these stories.

Oliver, if you got time to find these goddamn cards that I didn't even know existed on the face of the planet anymore, you got time to go to our YouTube channel.

But it was Smokey Mountain Wrestling at 94, was it not?

94.

19.

So,

August 94.

You know what?

Well, look at, I'm trying to lean over and see the small print on my computer screen.

It's August 2024.

What was Fan Week that year?

Fan Week that year was Night of Legends.

No, I'm at the dates.

Johnson City Death Bus?

You remember everything but the dates.

Yeah, the bus petered out.

Oh, I don't remember.

But you know what I do?

Because it was.

I think it was the 6th through the 13th.

No,

Night of Legends, August.

Hold on.

August 13th.

I remember being there August 13th.

It was August 5th through the 13th is what it was.

And it started in Knoxville and ended in Johnson City, did it not?

Or Morristown?

No, no.

Night one was Knoxville.

Night two was Johnson City.

And then the next weekend was Morristown.

Yeah, the last show was the Morristown show you did with Rob Moore's King of the Mountain gimmick.

Yes, where the son of a gun almost got me sued.

And Dave, you know what Dave Lane just posted,

who was also a fan league alumni, he, you know, later shot photos for the magazine, still does shoot photos.

That was the first time he ever shot Ringside.

He was a fan week participant, and you let him shoot Ringside in Morristown.

So he just

had a new anniversary as a photographer.

We wanted as many active shooters as possible at Ringside

to give us the coverage that

he always looked like one.

I'll tell you that, Dave.

Oh, you stopped.

That very nice guy.

Come on,

he's on a number of lists with the government.

He's on no list.

What kind of thing is that to say about another person?

They're keeping good track of his whereabouts.

This is someone you like.

This is someone you've always

seen.

Yes, that's why I wanted everybody to feel at ease about him because people are watching him.

So

you can intermingle with him knowing that he's being watched and that nothing will happen.

Why is this the road you went down?

But yes, this is our origin story, ladies and gentlemen.

So the point is, we missed our 30th anniversary.

Oh.

You and I.

You could have sent me a cake.

You could have sent me a cake.

You're the one who owes me.

You keep your calendar better than I do.

You should have

a little balloons and stuff.

I think you're the one that owes me the cake.

You were just a young fella back then.

I was.

Yeah, I took you under my wing and nurtured you and nursed you.

That's that smell.

And you were very succulent in your nursing.

But anyway, all right.

And also,

one more thank you, Oliver, again, and you got a box, you got a box coming your way.

Thanks and nothing, Oliver.

Well, at least

box of shit.

You're not allowed to ever use Box of Awesome ever again, Oliver.

I've given him a complimentary upgrade from Box of Awesome to Box of Bliss.

All right, we'll see how that goes.

And also, I want to say thank you to my friend from down in Tennessee.

No, from Nicholasville.

He's from Nicholasville.

I started to put him in Nashville.

But in Nicholasville, Kentucky, Michael Lynn Watkins sent me a recording, a vinyl.

It's not an LP, it's a 10-inch.

It's an EP, as the kids used to say.

A record

recorded by the,

well, guess what the name of this group is?

The Pussy Club?

No.

I'll tell you, because you're never going to guess.

The name of Johnny Fish and the speakers?

No.

Am I still just guessing?

It's Johnny Fish and the sinkers.

Trudy, just Trudy.

No, but I'm writing that down because we can use that later.

The name of the group is Tojo Yamamoto.

Oh.

The David, I'm reading the sticker.

There's a big picture of Tojo in color.

I think it's probably of Mike Shields hitting some heel with his wooden shoe

and the group named Tojo Yamamoto.

And the sticker says it's the debut EP

from noise rock

conceptualist Tojo Yamamoto.

So you're the music industry.

Is this a new trend noise rock

conceptualization?

I'm not sure.

I guess is what they're doing.

Yeah, I don't know what the hell's going on.

What year is this from?

Does it have a year on it?

Well, this is, I think it's new.

It's brand fucking new.

It's still in the goddamn wrapper.

Well, I had to slit the plastic because I'll tell you more.

It's not a, it's a limited edition in two-color vinyl.

It's red, smashed into smoky.

So it's kind of like around the label, it's like blood red, and then it kind of goes into a smoky clear vinyl.

It's very cool.

And

apparently,

it's on forbidden place records.

And

it was made in the Czech Republic.

That's written here.

When you realize forbidden planet's been taken, forbidden place records.

Well, forbidden place is down the road from parts unknown.

But

apparently there is a Lexington, you know, Nicholasville is right, is the suburb of Lexington.

They may not like me saying that, but apparently there's a Lexington connection to this because of not only Tojo's standing in the community around here, but also guess who plays on this?

Who is from Lexington, Kentucky?

Who plays on this?

Who's from Lanny Poffo?

No, you are incorrect.

Elwood Francis.

That was my next guess.

Were you going to guess Elwood Francis?

Who is this Elwood Francis you speak of?

Oh, come on now.

You're the big music industry mogul over there, the big business typhoon.

Elwood Francis is the guy who just took Dusty Hill's place in ZZ Top,

their longtime guitar tech.

And when Dusty passed away a couple of years ago, when they have done shows, he has played Dusty's part.

At

not behest of, but Dusty, before he passed, had said, yeah, I want Elwood to do it.

So Elwood Francis is now technically a member of ZZ Top,

their longtime guitar tech.

But

he also does he have a long beard.

He has an incredibly long beard.

Yes, he had fucking long hair, long beard.

He fits right in.

Yeah, but he's like Curly Joe.

It's like going to see the Stooges and it's Curly Joe.

It's not the real Curly.

Well, it's we they also understood, but they understood that because fucking Curly was dead.

Right.

Well, okay.

Like Joe Besser didn't work, but Joe Besser was at least a different thing.

They were just like, fuck, we just need a new Curly.

Now,

how about then,

if both Curly and Shemp had been the ones to say, we would like you to accept Curly Joe

playing our part?

Do you put something in there saying as long as his beard is at least a foot in length?

I don't think you have to, because there was a period of time, and I'm pretty sure quite a long period of time where Frank Beard,

the drummer, didn't have a beard.

That's right.

Does he have one now?

He might have one.

I haven't seen him lately.

Because that was always the thing.

They had beards he didn't, and his name was Beard.

Yes.

But you're indicating that maybe something has changed.

I don't know because I hadn't fucking seen him lately.

He might have a beard now and crossed me up.

I just, Elwood Francis has a fine beard and he's from Lexington and he not only plays in ZZ Top, but he plays in a band called Tojo Yamamoto.

How about that for

someone named Michael Watkins?

No, Michael, no, Michael Lynn Watkins does not play.

He lives in Nicholasville, Kentucky, which is down the road from Lexington.

And a friend of his, Jason Groves,

who is credited on this project with additional instruments.

Money Mark.

Money Mark.

No, additional instruments is usually either the oboe or the skin flute, right?

I don't know about that.

It could be the guy that brings the drugs to the studio.

But Elwood Francis gets top billing because, as I mentioned, he's in fucking ZZ top.

But Tojo Yamamoto is more famous in some places.

You know, we talked about the Four Tops a little while ago.

And like a lot of the pop culture references we make, the last surviving member died right afterwards.

Did you see that?

The last surviving member, the original Four Tops.

No.

Duke Fakir, he passed away.

What is it?

Every time that we talk about somebody, are we the nursing home cat of the podcasting?

In that case, I'd like to talk about this guy that we used to know who lived out in California.

He bops around a lot now because he's homeless.

You mean the St.

Louis kid?

The St.

Louis Cardinal, because he's turning red every time he hears Stephen P.

News' voice.

But back to what we were talking about.

Yes, of course.

Can you hear me now crumpling up my notes?

I heard a bit of it.

A bit of it?

A bit of it.

Well, if you heard a bit of it, that's better than

the fact that you couldn't hear a bit of it the other day.

I feel like I'm doing this all for naught.

I'm trying to make as much noise for you as possible.

You're not hearing anything.

Can I send thanks out to someone, a friend of mine who's a friend of yours too, Frank the Collector.

Yes.

He recently sent me a few additions to my wrestling vinyl collection, including this, sold exclusively for Fred Kohler on Lowery Records, The Wrestling Polka, The Wrestling Polka by The Satisfiers, again, sold exclusively by Fred Kohler.

You know, you would think if he'd had the Crusher come to the ring with that, then that would have been a great crossover.

The Crusher and the Satisfiers?

No, The Crusher and the fucking polka.

I don't know what...

Did the Satisfiers get satisfied?

Did they make it in the record business?

What do you think of the song The Crusher?

Which is basically fans of the Crusher imitating his voice.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think I have one in the vault, but I bet I hadn't played it since the year it came out.

All right.

Well, let's do the hammer lock and go to another

something.

All right, well, anyway, let's

talk about, hold on, where are we at here?

You've mentioned somebody to me,

and I need to find out more about it.

You said, well, I'll research the thing and I'll tell you when we talk on the experience.

Who is Ray Gun Gun and why did Ray Gun

become a thing that was being talked about?

Well, I didn't really follow the Olympics or watch too much of it.

I don't know if you did, but apparently this was the year they introduced breakdancing into the Olympics.

Did you know that?

Okay, this, I heard this.

You said, well, you know, in the breakdancing competition at the Olympics, I said, what?

How the fuck

can you get?

Isn't the Olympics supposed to be the most prestigious gathering of sporting events and athletes and pure athletic competition, the thrill of victory and the agony of the fucking feet that happens around the world every four years, like the Pinnacle, the Ultimate, the fucking the Matterhorn, whatever.

And how is breakdancing a fucking sport in the Olympics?

How is it a sport?

I guess the same way gymnastics is, I guess, in terms of scoring.

I don't know.

What do you think of when people, Jericho says it often, or at least I've seen some things recently, he said it.

The people who think wrestling should be in the Olympic, pro wrestling.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, if breakdancing is, then I'm softening up.

To me, it's always been, no, you can't have professional wrestling.

For one thing, you couldn't have professional wrestling in the Olympics as well as amateur wrestling in the old days because then people that were doing the reporting and or the announcing on a legitimate network of legitimate sporting activities would have called it fake as a fucking football bat.

And that would have killed the business back then.

So the idea was that the Olympic wrestlers then translate

or,

you know, open up their styles when they turn pro to the more liberal professional blah, blah, blah.

The paying kind of wrestling.

Yes, there you go.

Because there's nowhere to go in amateur wrestling.

If you get to the Olympics, that's the end.

There's nowhere to really make money unless you're going to be a coach who gets somehow magical mystery dollars.

Yes.

And

but I mean, the way that they were sold, the difference between amateur and professional by the promoters, so as not to say, yeah, our shit's the phony stuff.

They would say, well, the rules are more relaxed.

They can do more things.

They've got to fight fire with fire, whatever the fuck, right?

That was the cover story.

But

so if you had both of the styles side by side, it would have tended to fucking be a clash of styles, right?

But now, if you're going to have break dancing, which is a performance,

and so is gymnastics, as you said, but in that case, you are judging someone

doing

the same basic thing by their precision and whether they do it better than the other person.

There's still legitimate competition,

it's up to the judges and the eye of the beholder.

Yes, it's not like we beat them in basketball 66 to 58.

But then, if you're going into break dancing, which what the fuck is that?

Even

is there any

definition of it's not like the uneven parallel bars or just the floor exercise where you're doing these amazing

athletic feats of triple Lindys in the air and all that shit.

You're just spinning around on a fucking floor, give or take.

I mean, dancing.

I mean, that's the main thing.

Is dancing, should that be an Olympic sport?

How is that?

Well, and that's

well, there's very little actual dancing and break dancing in there

from what I've seen back when it was cool 30 years ago.

Is this still a thing that people do?

Well, there's still some b-boys out there on the street rocking the corner, you know, spinning around.

They go on their head and they spin around.

They go on their head and they spin around.

They rally up the people and they, you know.

Well, anyway, then you would have to judge

a pro wrestling match on their performance then.

And you'd be out there, you know, like American Idol, giving fucking,

you know, points for the precision of their backdrop, which then takes

the entire meaning of the business of did it sell any tickets?

Are the people that are doing these things incredibly popular?

It takes that out of the equation because how can you

quantify that in a set environment?

As part of the Olympics already draws, right?

But you can't have, okay, we're going to have this match in the fucking stadium, buy tickets just for that one, or this one's tomorrow, and who outdraws who?

No, then you're just doing

gymnastics performances in a wrestling ring, and then you're AEW.

Well, they had breakdancing in the Olympics this year, and apparently part of Team Australia was a performer named Raygun.

Her name was Rachel something, but it shortened to Raygun.

She was in her mid-30s, I believe.

What?

So not a young break dancer, maybe someone.

Actually, break dancing, I was like a kid when that was happening.

So she's no, no, but besides that, I mean, except for...

Do they still do rifle shooting or whatever in the Olympics?

An Olympic athlete is usually not in their 30s in any of the sports that they've had for however long.

Well, apparently her performance left a lot to be desired from what I have read and from photos I have seen and brief clips I have been able to briefly see.

Briefly see.

It appears that her performance was

someone not ready for

Olympic prime time.

And including the kangaroo hoping.

Including a kangaroo hop at one point?

Now, is the bar set so so high for break dancing in the Olympics that she just shit to bed?

Or was it just like, wait a minute, is this like,

what's the guy's name that, oh, shit.

The fucking guy that

impersonates

the fucking guy that does the thing in movies.

Yeah.

I mean, it could be him.

I mean, very likely

guy in the movie that winds people up, and he pretends to be people he's not.

Who is that?

What the fuck are you talking about?

Is he an Arab?

He did an Arab thing.

Who?

Oh, Borat.

You're talking about Borat Baron Cohn.

There you go.

Was this one of those deals where they just...

No,

no, this was not one of those deals.

And apparently, the reason I had so much trouble seeing it, I did not watch the live coverage of the breakdancing in the Olympics.

I heard about it after the fact.

She was so ridiculed for what people thought was a not up-to-snuff performance

that NBC has wiped the performance from the peacock version of the Olympics.

No.

You can't find it on YouTube.

You can't just find a video of her doing her 90 seconds.

I don't know how long it would have been.

It's impossible to find.

Because she got, according to her and everything, and I have no reason to doubt it, she got so badly harassed because people reacted to her performance

that she had to put up a video, like, you know, basically putting her heart out there and asking people to stop.

And they scrubbed it.

And they scrubbed the performance from the Olympics.

So, uh,

the scrub from they didn't scrub Hitler from the 36 Olympics.

They didn't.

How can you scrub someone from the Olympics?

The fuck?

It is a worldwide stage, good, bad, or indifferent.

Right?

But so please just erase my shit.

How is that even possible that it happens?

I'm looking at some of the headlines in different newspapers.

The BBC has Ray Gun Olympics, How Viral Breaker Made It to Paris and Divided the World.

We have

from the Austin American Statesman, the San Antonio Zoo Kangaroos honor Australian Olympian Raygun's breakdancing.

From the Washington Post, more serious from two days ago, viral Olympic B-girl Ray Gun says that the hate has been devastating.

And there's more heavy.

But

wouldn't it be...

Didn't she go about this the wrong way?

Shouldn't she have taken advantage of this?

And yes, show it everywhere.

And then my price to go on a talk show is x thousands of dollars and yeah see that's the thing you can bring me in for a signing at x thousands of dollars i will do this for you and whoever you pay to be in the room you know yes i i'll do that well now wait a minute now we're not talking apartment house wrestling here for sake but

but you'll do

apartment house

room

you know i can get once you get five or six people in a room brian that gets expensive i'm taking one night in chicago it costs well nevertheless the point is yes go out and make a fortune on this i'll come and do the routine on a tonight show

i'll oh my god look at haktua girl whatever we want to say she's still somehow out there she just threw out the opening pitch at the met game like she's i think she's made she's made more money in the last two months than she's made in her life she made more money than the guy that interviewed her That guy's like, what the fuck?

I thought this was my ticket.

Meanwhile, her and her friend from that video were the ones.

She threw threw out the opening pitch to her friend.

And she has an agent.

And she's getting gigs.

I mean,

that's what Ray Gunn should have done.

She should have embraced it.

And

oh, look at her.

She looks kind of like Thunder Rosa.

Look at this woman.

All right.

Well, so where do we see this routine?

And then here's like a do we have to go to the black market?

Do we have to go down in an alleyway somewhere and get it from under somebody's raincoat?

Here's a headline: Ray Gun's terrible Olympic breakdancing bordered on the disrespectful.

Okay, but now here's the thing.

Did she fuck up what she was trying to do, or did she do what she was trying to do, but she shouldn't have done it?

She may not have been at the Olympic level of breakdancing that

the Americans are accustomed to.

Okay, well then, or anybody else in the world, apparently, but

the point is, then,

what country was she from?

Australia.

Australia, okay, there's, and they speak English in Australia.

I've heard some of them.

It's a form of English.

People were communicating to her, yes, you need to go to the Olympics and do this.

Whoever did it.

They don't just wander in.

Hey, I'm from Australia.

I'll be on this team.

There's a goddamn

National Olympic Committee, and people are responsible for these teams and their travel and

somehow you get to the competition by winning other competitions.

So multiple people had to look at whatever the fuck it was she was doing

and bless it and say, oh, yeah, you need to go to the fucking Olympics.

So I think we need to haul them all into court.

Just a scorched earth policy, subpoena every one of them, haul them all into court and tell and find out why that they all thought that they should give the green light, the go-ahead, the A-O-K,

to Reagan there to go and kangaroo hop her way around the fucking Olympics.

The other question, I guess, is a bigger question.

If you're someone who goes into the public space like that, a live performance to be broadcast worldwide.

And it doesn't go the way you wanted it to.

And the reaction to it is

what in

the void

you could not think about the person actually doing it is the probably natural reaction to seeing something that's not that doesn't feel right.

Should you have to like suck it up to a certain point and deal with it just because you know, you can't go to the talent show and then erase what happened,

you know.

It's

well, as someone who has done a variety of live television,

yeah, if you're going to do something or in live events, live shows, if you're going to do anything in front of people,

not just be part of the crowd, but actually be part of the show or part of the sport or part of the whatever.

If you're going to come to terms with that, you're going to do something in front of a lot of fucking people, whether live or on television, and then you shit to bed and fall back in it.

then you've got to accept the fact that people are going to fucking laugh at you or get on your shit about it.

I mean, that's just whatever the fuck, anybody that fucks up or slips or falls down or whatever in public when the focus or attention is on them.

Now, in the old days, back before videotape and the internet and all this other stuff,

you could just go home and just fucking stay at a house for a couple months and nobody could ever watch it again unless they put it out on commercial.

Well, there was no home video.

People wouldn't see it again unless they did a network documentary on you up it was so goddamn spectacular right

so that you could get over it but now people can replay you tripping and falling and sliding under the ring or whatever the fuck you do

uh 24 hours a day so it's harder to go home and just stay home for a while and get over it but that's that's the risk you take

did you ever try to break dance

are you out of your mind watch the lockers on Soul Train and go, you know, I'd like to, you know, quietly try that away from anyone?

No, no, I watched Soul Train and I said, you know, well,

they're just dancing all their asses off there.

But I never

for one second contemplated that I should do any of the things that they were doing because it would have looked ridiculous.

It could have opened up your world.

I could have gone to the Olympics.

Really?

Eventually, you know what?

Maybe at your age, you could have still done it if Raygun could do it.

Apparently, while watching the Raygun performance, Tony Basil cut out her eyes.

Waiting for some confirmation on that.

But

it's so fine.

If anyone has the video of it, please send it because I'd like to see it.

And I'm sure Jim would at this point.

Well, yeah, you can't.

I mean, Jesus Christ.

Pamela Anderson was.

You know, fucking tooting on the fucking meat whistle all over the goddamn internet for 10 years after that tape came out.

And you mean to tell me that they do one shitty fucking routine in the Olympics and it's not even on Twitter?

They can't find it?

What the?

How the fuck is that even possible?

Well, you know, in the 90s, Tommy Lee's penis had good coverage.

Well, from what I understood, it blocked out a lot of the sun.

Talk about coverage, but

put your eye out with something like that.

All right.

Well, that was the Olympic update, ladies and gentlemen.

You know what that means.

Well, I'll tell you what one thing that it means, it means your phone is ringing.

Did you are we are you aware of that?

My phone is ringing.

I'm aware that it's not ringing.

I'm not sure.

Well, you know, you know, they got a thing these days where you can just, instead of going ring, ring, ring,

you can actually have musical tones and things on your phone as the ring.

Did you know that?

Have you heard about that?

It's a brand new development.

Ring tones?

That is not a new development.

That is a rather old development.

I can't even speak.

That is an old development, is what I'm trying to say.

Well, I just heard about it because I was talking.

I was actually talking to one of the fine members of the cult of Corne who came to my house to deliver a package.

And he also was telling me that he had the Mint Mobile

$15 a month plan that we've been talking about.

And he made

one of our podcast clips his ringtone so that we announce his phone calls.

He hears our voices.

Or I think my voice, but I was trying to include you because I didn't want you to feel left out.

I charge.

But that's the kind of thing you can do these days at $15 a month.

And plus, however, I think he said he had to take his phone to a guy in a public park.

He was sitting on a bench.

And, well, yeah, the guy advised.

No.

Loaded the clip onto his phone for him.

No, that's not no no and they met under the old oak tree but but otherwise the phone plan's only 15 though from mint mobile avoid the old park well you only have to go there to get the clip on the phone for the phone ring

see you can do it in your own home if you just want the mint mobile phone plan well you know that brian

you you shot down my

My big reveal last week or on the drive-through that Mint Mobile was branching out into a another company called Mobile Mint where they had a truck that would come around to your neighborhood and mint you coins for 50 cents on the dollar.

Once again, we agreed that this is something you concocted that is something they do not do.

There is no involvement between Mint Mobile and the Mobile Mint or Mobile Mobile.

Well,

there's been no official announcements, so I'm sorry I jumped the gun.

But right now, The Mint Mobile phone plan, it's saving people money where they don't even have to print it or mint it for you.

They can just save it for you.

So you never have to pull it out of your pocket to begin with.

If you save all the money between the $15 a month phone plan that Mint Mobile offers you and the high-priced phone plan that the other people offer you, and you keep it in your pocket, at the end of the year, you're going to need to fucking wash your pants because you've got a lot of dirty money stuck in there.

How often do you wash your pants, Brian?

My blue jeans, never.

Well, see, then right now you've got a lot of fucking Mint Mobile money stuck in your pocket.

So you need to start digging in there.

You know, again, I don't know if this is exactly how it works.

What we can agree on is you can get a good deal with Mint Mobile.

It is a fine deal, $15 a month, and you get all the data, all the phone.

You could just phone yourself non-stop.

Jim, more about this, the positive features of Mint Mobile.

Can you call yourself?

Of course I can.

Well, how do you do it?

Because, see, here's the thing.

I'm going to do it right now.

Hold on.

Let me see if I can call myself.

Because when I call my own number, it's just a busy signal because I'm using my number to call my number.

But then I saw on my caller ID one time that my own number was calling me.

And I figured it was somebody playing a prank on me unless I was calling myself from the future, in which case I was too scared to answer.

But folks, if you don't want somebody to you from the future, but you definitely want to save money in the present, that's what you need to do with Mint Mobile, the high-speed data, the unlimited talk.

You can talk all day long on this thing if you can find somebody to listen to you.

And you can text them too.

Whether they text you back or not is up to them.

And all you got to do is go to mintmobile.com slash JCE.

To get this new customer offer.

Now, you can't double dip.

If you're already with Mint Mobile, you know they're saving you a bunch of money but you get the three-month premium wireless plan for 15 a month which is a total of 45

if i'm doing my mathematics correctly

did you find what you were looking for hello can you hear me yes i'm on the phone

but how did you call yourself no

i left the show i left the show and i answered the phone you're on the show by yourself i'm on the phone but how the fuck did you call yourself on your own phone?

I can't.

I mean, I don't want to, you know, really blow your mind or anything, but I did it.

The point is, I did it.

And you could do lots of fantastic things too with Mint Mobile.

Our fine friends at Mint Mobile.

Tell them about those fine things, Jim.

MintMobile.com/slash JCE, three-month premium wireless plan, $15 a month, total of $45.

That's good math right there.

And you can cut your wireless bill to mere pennies, pennies, pennies.

And by the way, Brian, your audio, it sounds like shit.

Oh, what?

Come on.

How does this sound?

That sounds even shittier than it usually does because it sounds like you're piping through Cape Canaveral via the moon.

I got to get Mint Mobile.

That's my problem.

Well, see, I thought you already had the Mint, but the Mint Mobile, it ran off on you, didn't it?

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Okay.

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Well, yes, folks, and once again, details when they become available on the mobile mint.

But

now

we got to talk about some of the wrestling on the program, Brian.

And, you know, there's a lot of people saying you can't be closed-minded.

You can't be closed-minded.

If you don't listen to the other side, the people with other opinions or other thought processes

or other ways of presenting the pro wrestling, if you don't listen to what they have to say and try to decide for yourself,

maybe dispel some preconceived notions, try to understand how they think, to find the common ground and realize that maybe somebody might not be as batshit insane as you think they are.

They might not be in over their head, or that maybe dispel the notion that, in this case, a former Emmy Award-winning soap opera director may not realize what the hell they signed up for when they're trying to book the wrestling or write the wrestling or whatever it is that they call the wrestling.

And so, we heard that one of the

creative members of the think tank over at AEW,

Alexandra Pepperday, has done an interview out in the public for consumption of people.

And I got to admit that I've never met Alexandra Pepperday.

I've never seen her.

I haven't seen a picture of her.

And I've never heard her speak.

And so I thought, what better way to try to

listen,

to examine and review

in their own words, what a member of the opposition party, you might say,

has to say for themselves about what they're doing and then try to find the good in it and maybe dispel the notion that she's as lost as a rat trying to find a corner to silo.

So,

and Brian, you have not heard this podcast.

I've not heard this podcast.

I don't know how long this whole podcast was,

but we asked a minion

of the Arcadian Vanguard Network, J Shark Nado, to...

I wouldn't use the term minion.

Well, okay, slave.

No, again.

No, no.

Indentured servant.

Beloved employee.

Wonderful.

employee.

Yes,

yes.

Tremendous person.

she's got a great personality.

But we asked him to find some salient, pithy points, remarks, comments that were made on this program that would indicate that those folks over there have a grip on this thing and they know exactly what they're doing to producing the wrestling for the fans.

And we're going to try to listen to some of this and

see if they can sway our opinion.

Is that basically the gist of what we're trying to do here?

We're going into this with open minds.

We haven't heard anything, no preconceived notions.

We're listening to it now in front of the people.

Well, again, that's true.

We're hearing it for the first time.

I don't know what you're, I don't know what we're doing this for.

I'm curious to hear, you know, we have, we've heard of her.

And actually, as I'm looking at this,

turns out her name is Jennifer Pepperman.

That's what I said.

I thought her name is Alexandra Pepperday.

Well, she's pulling the old switcheroo, it appears, but she was on the AEW Unrestricted podcast.

That is an official AEW podcast.

They produce it.

It is hosted by Will Washington and Aubrey Edwards.

Dog,

have we ever heard Aubrey Ed

talk?

Or does she just say nay a lot?

I don't know.

We heard her talk.

That time she said, fuck you about you.

That was the only time.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, she got a potty mouth, that young lady.

You know, and that's a shame because the last time I heard her talk, I think she was sick because she was definitely a little hoarse.

But,

but anyway, and Will Washington,

he's another one of the

writers that they've hired, right?

What does his background come from?

Did he write harlequin romance novels?

Or well, he is someone whose name a lot of people just heard of recently, like me.

And he was, I think, doing positive AEW reviews for one of the websites.

It may have been frightful.

I'm not even sure.

And then he went to AEW because Tony Khan liked his positive reviews.

Also,

also, he's Swerve Strickland's cousin and he worked.

Oh, he's one of the people either responsible.

Well, no, he's responsible one way or the other.

One of the people responsible, either good or bad, for the entire Swerve Strickland arc.

Well, and he's

a podcast host.

A podcast host, apparently.

A swerve swerves when he drives.

What about when he's driving one of those big arcs down the fucking river?

with two animals of each and every all right.

Nevertheless, it's nice to be friends with Tony Khan if you need an army.

Lots of things, yeah.

But nevertheless, so Alexandra Pepperday was on this podcast, and we want to learn.

You should listen to the whole thing, folks, if you've got nothing else to do with your time.

We want to promote them right now, but we just want to hear the salient points of why that we should believe

that this young lady is qualified to write wrestling programming.

Well, it's beyond that, too.

Is she executive vice president or what is her role?

She has an actual role, right?

Well, now a title and a role may be two different things.

All right, well, let's go to this audio here.

This apparently is her talking about the difference between writing for soap operas and writing for wrestling.

What's the big difference jumping from soap operas to wrestling?

My awards actually in soap operas, which sometimes people don't actually know this.

They're actually for directing, not for writing.

Right.

So I didn't know when I first started in wrestling at WWE, I didn't know anything about wrestling.

I mean, I knew what it was.

You don't know anything about microphones either.

How the hell are you speaking on a can?

I hadn't, you know, been a fan.

I didn't have a background.

So I kind of really just got to be like a sponge and learn everything I could from like a lot of very different talented people.

And

I realized that professional wrestling is like this magical, beautiful art form.

And one of the things that I was really taken by was that the audience is actually like a character.

So after I'd been working for a couple of months, like I had this sort of aha moment.

And I was like, you know?

dramatically it's not that different than a soap opera except in professional wrestling you have a good guy and a bad guy in dramatic conflict but that conflict is solved by fighting in in a wrestling ring.

Whereas in a narrative drama, it's solved by, you know, someone gets shot, someone gets stabbed, people fall in love, people get divorced, someone's cheating on someone.

Like, you know, all of that happens in wrestling too, by the way.

It does.

Hopefully, not the shooting, but it does.

Yes.

The conflict is.

By the way, Will Washington sounds like Ed McMahon.

But didn't she just basically read every

person in college studying drama or writings paper that ever decided to write about wrestling?

She didn't know anything about it besides that it existed until she went to work for the WWE.

There's the first red flag

that her perception of the whole industry might be somewhat skewed

and then

proceeds to spout all of the same shit that everybody outside the business that knows all those words says about the business on a superficial level

or am i just over overstating that brian what do you think of her saying that the uh the aha moment for her was realizing that in this magical beautiful art form the fan the audience is a character oh boy and you know if you're doing theater in the round and everybody's going to come out and hold hands and take the big bow and you've got to

you know just wonderful love and air.

But no,

no.

It's another example of somebody on the periphery of celebrity show business thinking that they can apply

that to wrestling.

When if anything, the wrestling,

if you can get the wrestling and apply a little

entertainment, a little showmanship, then

you're you're kind of on the right track.

If you're coming from this and trying to apply it the other way around, oh, Jesus,

go ahead.

I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt here so far.

It's also important to note that it's not like soap operas are flourishing anymore.

There are very limited jobs.

There are very limited soap operas that are successful and that networks have stuck with.

It's a dying thing.

At one point, there were at least

three or four on every channel, right?

Oh, the edge of night, the secret storm, one life to live, general hospital.

I could go on and on.

Well, AEW and General Hospital will be an interesting crossover, but let's go to this next one here.

Speaking of going on and on, let's go back to this.

This is Jennifer Pepperman on the differences between AEW and WWE.

So one of the things that I was really,

so the structuring of the show is very different than how, you know, we would structure a show on WWE.

And I've been fascinated by that and the amount of storytelling within a match and the amount of like sort of pay-per-view matches we have on AEW is still continues to amaze me.

I'm also struck by the there's a freeness that really sparks creativity here.

So I think that's been a really cool thing.

And also I feel at AEW like everyone really gets to feel heard creatively.

And I think that's also really, really important.

And so that was sort of some of sort of the how the structure is different a more freeing process if that makes sense i i kind of love that uh observation about the story let me stop this let me stop

freeing freeing did they get her from the actor's studio is she uh does she look anything like james lipton if he shaved his beard off you know the other thing too is if you're advocating for

you know, how good things are and how great things are and what a wonderful experience it is to be around this, it's not working.

Like you're advocating for a system that is failing and the results are visible to everyone.

But it's,

she sounds like it's, hey, kids, let's put on a show.

And

she's applying the, she has very well spoken, knows a lot of them big words.

But what is she saying that has any substance to it in terms of specificity on what we're doing, what's going on here?

I'm sorry.

Continue on.

Well, here is Jennifer Pepperman on what does a show day look like?

So when they're going to do dynamite, what does that day look like?

So I know Will probably knows the answer to this question because you guys work together so closely, but I actually have no idea.

What does a show day look like for you?

A show day is a little bit different on a dynamite day when Mercedes is there than maybe a

collision day.

They're kind of on a dynamite day, you know.

Hold on, let me stop right there.

it's different on a dynamite day when Mercedes is there than on a collision day

apparently Mercedes to be singled out at the top of the the headline there is quite high maintenance oh I've pretty much you know discussed whatever segments Mercedes and I are working on and

I actually do you know sort of write out a segment for her so she can you know see it and I always find like with talent especially if they have a match

if they're going to cut a promo, it's easier for you to write some words down for them.

And it's easier to like look at that and be like, okay, well, I want to say this.

I don't want to say that.

I want to say this rather than just them starting from scratch.

I mean, that's just kind of like how I'm used to working.

So Mercedes and I would have probably like emailed back or texted back, you know, a segment.

And then if there's something that needs to be rehearsed, you know, we'll rehearse it.

But then it's basically just, you know, rehearsing the promo with her and, you know, making sure she feels really good about it.

Then if there's any other pre-tapes, you know, that I can jump in on and help on, you know, just sort of like lend a hand wherever I can sort of lend a hand.

First of all, from a business standpoint, so Tony Kahn

hired this woman to basically babysit Mercedes all day.

And if she has time to jump in on another pre-tape and she's making a full-time fucking salary of who knows how much.

And she's admitting

that Mercedes is not just kind of going out there and blurting some shit out.

They've actually thought about this and they've gone back and forth over this.

And Mercedes is prepared for this and we're seeing the end result of that rather than, ah, shit, just go out there and say something.

What do you think of the idea that it's easier, the way she put it, for talent to have a match.

to have the words written down for them.

No, I thought,

now, how did she say that again?

She She said it's easier for talent to have a match.

If they're going to cut a promo, it's easier to write the words down for them.

Okay, well, I didn't hear the match part.

I just heard that it was easier for talents to

again.

Here is the way it was done

pretty much in every wrestling promotion ever.

The booker or the booker's assistant or later on with the WWF and WCW and et cetera, some level of three or four different agents and ex-wrestlers, the Pat Pattersons or the Blackjack Lanzes,

would fucking call you in and sit down and say, here's your fucking matching.

Here's what you're talking about.

And then Vince, with the stuff that he really cared about in recent years of 20 or so, would really sit down with people and

fucking harangue it to the bone as far as what they were going to say and everything.

But

again, to have someone this much preparation for what we're seeing on screen, Brian, has anybody said, wow,

that Mercedes Moon, she tore it up on that promo.

I can't believe her interviews.

Did you hear what she said?

Or did, or for that matter, did you see what she did?

I know who you are, and I saw what you did.

So this woman is admitting that they think this shit's good somehow, and it takes that long to work out what we're seeing as a finished product.

And Tony Khan's paying her to do this.

And she didn't know what the fuck wrestling was until she started working for the WWE, where she was one of, I assume, a couple of dozen on the writing staff.

How do these people get these fucking jobs?

Does her salary go with the talent salaries?

Well, no, I mean, he, well, for one one thing, I don't know if you can call anybody on their writing staff talent, but nevertheless, no, if you're a writer, you're in office territory.

You would be paid by the office or paid as a member of the office staff, not a wrestler.

I don't know what kind of screwy shit they're doing over there, but.

Let's go to some more audio here to review.

This is Jennifer Pepperman

answering the question, is there anything that has changed her perception on creating segments for wrestling since working for WWE?

I will definitely say over the last year, I think it's really important to listen to the audience and listen to the fan reaction.

I mean, obviously, our fans are like our third character in the scene.

But I think

somehow real recently, I think it's really important to listen to the fans and really engage the fans.

And I think.

Wait, this is a recent development she's had, a recent thought that it's important to engage the fans?

Well, anybody in a wrestling business that uses the phrase third character in a scene ought to be strung up and have their entrails dropped over Cleveland.

But

no, it's not a fucking

newsworthy, nominal thing to engage with the fans.

But the fact that she said you have to listen to, has she been listening to people not chanting CEO?

has she been listening to the loud level of indifference when mercedes is moaning

well let's i go back to the am i am i am i am i saying things that have not been had she with no has she been tearing a house down

have people been standing and jumping up and down and setting the seats on fire and throwing babies in the air when mercedes like they do with others such as Rhea Ripley or even Britt Baker.

I think we could say that the feedback has kind of been universal.

People are disappointed with the run so far, but let's go back to this audio.

When you are a wrestling fan, there's so much fun in trying to figure out what's going to happen.

Like, oh, I know where they're going.

They're going this way.

And then there's an excitement of like, yes, I was right.

That's what they're doing.

And then there's an excitement of when you totally pivot and be like, oh, that's not what, oh, I thought they were going in a different direction.

I feel like really listening to the fan engagement and really listening to the fan.

I feel like, you know, AEW does that.

I feel like WWE really did that on the lead up to Mania, you know, where there was sort of a big 180.

And I think over time, you know, as everything evolves and changes, you know, our audiences are smarter.

And, you know, obviously people consume entertainment differently now even than they did 10 years ago.

You know, yeah, people consume AEW by turning off the TV.

Well, I was about to say they listen to the fan engagement of the WWE because it's so much easier to hear that people

but again this

this woman is very intelligent she knows a lot of big words i bet she went to college

but what is she saying of any substance about wrestling dissecting wrestling analyzing wrestling her experiences in wrestling

Have you ever come up with a finish, Miss Pepperday?

Well, let's keep going.

Again, there's a few more bits of audio here.

Maybe she talks about bits and pieces.

Maybe she answers it.

I i don't know i think storytelling is a little bit is a little bit different you know i just think you know as things change and this goes for the narrative world too you know dramas need to change with the times you know so it's very very interesting to me because whether you worked in professional wrestling or you work in a narrative drama or you're or I should say whether you're a fan of soaps or wrestling or sports, everything is very subjective.

In soaps, our audience was always very vocal about, you should do this or you should do this.

And same thing in wrestling, the audience is very vocal, which I think we all love.

But even in professional sports, it's like, can you believe, you know, the fourth quarter, time was running out and they ran the ball.

They should have thrown the ball.

Fan-wise, everything is very subjective.

I think it's very important to be in touch with what people like and what they don't like.

You're right.

She's saying nothing.

Well,

it's very important to be in touch with things that people like and things they don't like.

Then why don't you people get in touch with those things?

Again,

this is a lecture.

This is,

I can't say it's a college professor.

It's somebody that invited you to a restaurant to hear a presentation.

And they're speaking in generalities that sound good and

are applicable in concept and have nothing to do with any specificity about what's going on in the goddamn company, how I book, why I book, what I like about this shit, or whatever.

Yeah, it sounds like she'd be a really good person to sell the company to other people and the positives of it, not a person who should be consulting Tony on the creative.

I think you got something there.

I'd move her into sales.

Well, let's go to this.

This is,

it says here, Will Washington gives a long preamble leading up to the question.

Do you want to hear some of the preamble leading up to the question, or do you want to try to?

Well, I mean,

how can we lose the preamble and we won't understand the question?

I won't even say what the question is.

Let's see if we can figure it out.

One period of your career that I think it's a place where I think both AEW and WWE really found some new footing and got to thrive.

And I'm talking about the pandemic and specifically a time period where I think both companies really had to find new ways to storytell in a way where you don't necessarily think they did.

They did.

There was no fans.

They had no fans going to the the shows.

They built the whole fucking stadium of monitors.

There were no fans.

They had to come up with a whole new way to get wrestling to people at home.

Yes.

Let's go back to this.

Necessarily have that audience anymore.

And you have to engage the viewer at home without necessarily having the tool of having the fans in the arena and sort of that unpredictable element.

You know, you worked very closely with Mercedes in that time period.

You also worked very closely with Bailey in that time period.

And that's really where Bailey became who I think a lot of people didn't expect her to.

There was one role that people kind of knew she was for a very long time.

And then all of a sudden, here she is in this new role.

And then the pandemic really allowed her to grow.

And like I said, in kind of the same way that.

What is this?

What?

I don't know what these, you know what?

They like to sit around and talk about wrestling a lot in the abstract terms.

Let me kiss ass in a number of ways about a number of people.

The pandemic introduced AEW fans to guys like Ricky Starks, got got the See Sting

come in, and so much happened during that pandemic time period that really grew the product.

So, for you, I wanted to ask you, how much of your television background did you feel helped guide you in that era of not having the fans anymore?

I mean,

the pandemic era, looking back now,

it was really a very, very special time.

And Bailey and sasha you know we're nostalgic for the pandemic now after the first like 10 000 people died i was like you know something special is happening right now something special

thing happening now that we can look back it's been four years

i've got good god i got socks on that are older than the the pre-pandemic socks

all right

uh i will say 4w

really were like the mvps of the

of the pandemic They really did, they had all the gold.

They really did carry raw, you know, and SmackDown due to, you know, a lot of people, you know, not, you know, a lot of other people being out and not, you know, not us not having people.

But in terms of people being afraid they were going to die, so they didn't go to work.

Like getting to do the cinematic matches and stuff.

So at AEW, we have no invisible camera, and I definitely get that.

And that's a different, you know, that's something that I'm, you know, that I've had to learn and adjust to.

But I definitely have to.

No, but stop it here.

We have no invisible camera.

See, before we could just make this shit completely out and out phony, but now we got to make it only 96% phony.

We got to admit there's a camera there before we do shit that's blatantly phony.

You know, you could, when you do have the invisible camera, it allows you to do some sort of very subtle things.

And, you know, the camera can really help you tell story in a in a very different way like one kind of little tiny thing that we i don't know if people notice the camera helps me tell story in a very interesting way

it lets people see things but you know we were leading up to bailey turning on sasha and everyone thought it was going to be sasha turning on bailey and anytime we you know did a backstage pre-tape and this was you know before mercedes had you know won a title and stuff i always would have her holding bailey's title like holding it and looking at it, and then like maybe a little bit too long and giving to her.

But, you know, you could do something like start tight on a title, see someone's hands, pick it up, come to their face, you know, and then widen out Bailey's warming up.

And, you know, oh, here's, you know, here's your title, like, just sort of like, oh, good Lord.

Number one, nobody's ever thought of this before.

Oh,

somebody, somebody, you know,

should have come up with this before, like fucking people 50 years ago, Leo Garibaldi, for Christ's sake.

And besides that, like

she's overlooking the, yes, she's directing a nice little pre-tape.

If the people that are involved in this aren't over, it doesn't matter what they're doing.

So she's not, you know, she's not directing these two actors.

You got to have talent that's over doing the shit

instead of your direction is not going to get fucked.

Yeah, anyway.

Little sort of nuance things like that.

Like, I mean, one of the things I I love about being a director is, you know, you learn how to visually tell story when you do have freedom and to do things very differently.

I remember we did,

God, we did a backstage with Dolph and Sonia, you know, right after, you know, the big Mandy and Otis, you know, WrestleMania thing.

And just the way we shot that with her in the foreground and him behind her, you know, talking to her was very much like a two-shot and tightening in.

And so, and we were were limited because we were in this time.

Yeah, and that's why people still talk about the dolphin, whoever you mentioned feud or

whatever was going on.

Yeah, and no one remembers any of this.

Any warehouse.

So being able to have a lot of freedom with the camera, even in, you know, a minute 30 shot, it's a lot of fun to me because, like I said, you know, it's, it's fun.

And just doing very subtle things in camera movement can really help tell a story.

So that was really a lot of fun for me.

Hearing you describe that, it becomes very clear your directoral background because you're explaining, telling the story purely just with camera shots.

And it's like, oh, of course she has this incredible background.

And it's definitely influencing a lot of like the way that you create.

By the way, I've never seen a soap opera shot like Scorsese was making it or something.

Well, besides that, these people are so serious talking about this fucking elemental fucking shit going on.

Like nobody's ever thought of these things before.

And they're so proud of themselves that they're able to discuss this on this level on a sinking ship that they're on.

And apparently, after this was over with, they went around and sniffed each other's farts for a brunch.

What the fuck?

We have a bit more audio.

Are they convinced that they're experts or what?

Let's go back to this.

Maybe she'll explain.

All these segments and stuff.

And it's just absolutely fascinating.

When we did, when we would do, and even like a 15-second shot, like camera movement can really help.

So when I was working with Rhonda like Rhonda's a legit really fighter and she's really good at striking you know so I would be like to the guys can we you know can we start on this empty frame and let her punches in and then widen out and we see it's her widening out or can we start on the shadow of her doing it on the wall and then come to her you know and even though it's only like a you know 15 second shot it's to me it's very fun and very creative but I understand you know I understand why you know there's definitely different schools of thought thought and there's no right way to do something

let me stop it there.

There's no right way to do something.

What does that mean?

There's no right way to do something.

Well, you know, I mean, the wrong way is always acceptable.

Rhonda could punch to the right.

She could punch to the left.

She could punch backwards.

She could punch up.

She could punch down.

She can do all those punches.

Let me go to the last little bit here, Jim.

And this is...

What's the biggest piece of advice you would give someone who wants to write for wrestling?

So maybe this could be our foot in the door once we hear this.

I guess I would say,

I mean, this is just the way that I approach it because it's kind of the only way that it's just how my mind works.

I would say work backwards.

I would say when you're trying to write.

Yes, fall ass backwards into an industry that you were never involved in before.

Yeah, my mind does work backwards.

So that's how I did it.

Write a story.

Think of the end of the story and then go back to the beginning and figure out how you're going to get there.

But I I would say think about the dramatic conflict.

Think about what the good guy wants and what the bad guy wants.

Think about why these two characters are fighting.

And then overall, I would say to anyone who's getting into any career, you don't have to be the smartest.

You don't have to be the most talented.

but you can be the hardest worker.

And it matters if you try hard.

And it matters if you work hard.

And it matters if you don't give up.

She must have been been writing Cena stuff too.

No, I swear to God, I was going to say she was reading The Rock's Twitter.

So, if this is your dream to work in wrestling, write your own wrestling show, post it on Twitter.

Keep trying, keep trying.

And the other thing is, like, don't let anyone tell you no.

And, like I said, like, just try hard, just keep trying.

You know, it's kind of like in finding Nemo, like,

just keep swimming, swimming, just keep swimming.

If I would ever get like like down into the corner, like, I don't know what I'm doing.

Like, God, I don't know.

Is this any good?

I wrote this.

God, maybe this sucks.

What am I doing?

And I would just be like, just keep swimming, just keep

it really matters.

Like, everyone thinks it's like, I told my son this.

It's like, you know,

he was a big soccer player.

And I was like, you don't have to be the fastest.

You don't have to be the strongest.

You don't have to score the most goal, but you can outwork, out-hustle, out-last.

That's really the key.

All right.

we're going to cut it there.

Yeah.

Well,

I'd love to see any of the three of these people or all three of them dropped in the locker room of the fucking Kansas City Memorial Auditorium in about 1973

and just have to work for Bob Geigel

or just any territory of wrestling anywhere in the world and let them start talking like that.

And see how long it took before somebody kicked him out to the lobby.

You're hearing components of AEW's brain trust.

That's what's scary.

This isn't just like, hey, this is the AEW fan podcast.

No, it's Will Washington who writes for AEW, Tony Khan hired because he was saying positive things about Tony Khan's work as a wrestling booker.

Aubrey Edwards, who works, does who knows what.

Some people say she pulls down stuff on the internet and I don't even know.

And Pepperman, or Pepperday, whatever the fuck her name is.

Her real name is Pepperman.

Alexandra Pepperday.

You keep mispronouncing it.

Well, she's in the office, too.

So it's not like this is a fan show these are the actual people that are talking to tony and either agreeing with tony or giving tony bad advice that's

these reactions and these statements

were

literate

and

well versed equivalents of when vince russo told me that it was so cool how he had just done it on camera inside the railing because he had never been in the inside the railing while a match was going on before.

And this was when he was writing part of the show.

It's the same, you've you've got

fans learned in all these different types of dramatic endeavors now actually booking the fucking wrestling, which is why it looks so fake and phony and choreographed and soft

and childish and silly.

That is what the

business has been turned over to.

The inside the actor studio wannabes.

If you're listening to the fans, you would get rid of the women's division.

I hate to say it, and I've said it before, but what drags down the rating every single week?

What causes the fans to go silent in the building every single show, no matter where, no matter who's in it?

Give them a separate show.

Let them try to build something

long term with their own audience as opposed to shoving it in the middle of these shows.

The fact that the American wrestling promotions somehow got away from the fact that not all fans want to watch women's wrestling.

So now they give them an overdose of it.

And of course the fans of women's wrestling say, it's not enough.

It's too much.

It's way too much.

They could give them Rampage.

The ratings would almost have to go up.

But it would be a good thing, too.

If you're serious about wanting to have a women's division, give them their own show, treat it serious, and build something

as opposed to they get shoved into the show because they're being used like that.

It's like you want to give them a chance, but then you just shove them into the show, and then they cause the ratings to go down.

But uh, well, and some of them have their own writers who then, after they're taken care of, get to hop in on other pre-tapes and help where they can.

So, we talk about Mercedes' purported salary, you got to add Pepper Day on top of that because they came almost like a package deal,

joined at the hip or whatever bodily parts that they may be joined at.

Where

one goes, the other follows in some respect.

Let's stick with the hip or other.

Let's stick with the hip.

Let's be safe and stick with the hip.

Stick with the hip.

Well,

if you want to be the butt of a joke, go on a podcast and talk like a goddamn college professor about something you didn't even know existed until you got a job in it a few years ago.

My POV, Veterans like me should join a company that has their back.

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We are in the future, an exciting future.

Here we are.

Jimmy Christ.

You know, we had to do a little time travel because the old man's bladder ain't what it used to be.

But you know what you accidentally almost did there?

Completely unintentionally,

I think you hit like the first four of the five first notes of Midnight Rider by the Allman Brothers.

Now, see, you're way off now, but accidentally,

the first four notes,

you could have done that.

All right.

Well, this is the Almonds in the future.

Almonds 3000.

Well, what in the heck is going on?

Let's just get this done right now.

What in the heck is going on in the near future at the Arcadian Vanguard network this week?

The near future, the far future, it doesn't matter.

All the shows are available for free wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Of course, go on Twitter for more information at Super Podcasts or on Facebook, facebook.com/slash Arcadian Vanguard.

I want to make mention of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, the look at 1984, 40 years ago in the World Wrestling Federation as the national expansion takes hold.

The look continues on Stick to Wrestling, August 1984.

Who is coming in?

Who is going out?

Who is in the WWE, including the Freebirds, Hogan, Piper, Ventura, Kamala, Orndorf, Valentine, Orton Jr., and so many more.

Hear all about it at mcadampod.com or wherever you find your favorite podcast, look for Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam.

Of course, each and every day, get your wrestling news for free from the wrestling news.

From thewrestlingnews.com directly, or wherever you find your favorite podcast, look for Arcadian Vanguards, the wrestling News.

No paywall, no clickbait, just the wrestling news.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the

mothership.

Oh, goddamn you.

My sound effects don't work.

Oh, thank God.

Go through the archive, 605pod.com, some stuff coming, some stuff in the works.

605.

Some stuff coming, some stuff going.

Not your sound effects, though.

605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcast, the 605 Super Podcast, The Mothership.

Oh, they're coming.

I'm going to get the feather bottoms on this.

The sound effects shall return.

Oh, what the hell are they going to do?

Well, are they going to make your sound?

Are they going to sit there and like, you know, put their hands under their armpits and make your sound effects for you?

Wow, yeah, armpit farts?

Absolutely.

We're going to get some of those.

And besides that,

who has your keyboard ever beat?

Ah, you're fucking organ there.

It's a time machine.

What are you talking about, Jim?

Yeah.

Oh, sorry.

I didn't mean to expose your business there, Jack Pfeffer.

Anyway,

speaking of the wrestling news and getting the wrestling news correct and timely and fashionably, like you do at the wrestling news,

other people have been sending out wrestling news lately that may be

premature, incorrect, all of the forged even, forged even, Snagglepuss.

Poor old Uncle Dave had a rough weekend, didn't he?

He trended on the Twitter for, as they say, all the wrong reasons, because he keeps getting shit wrong.

And I'm just

do we need to do some kind of welfare examination on Dave to make sure that he's

He's all right.

He's just taking things and running with them these days, running like his head's on fire.

You know what I'm talking about.

You're probably, as we speak looking up these various items so that we can comment on them you know it's uh

it's sad actually what's been going on and you know there are different levels of people in this whole story

you know you and i was involved and i got to see things and that's why i think what i do you had your issues with dave

and then there are a lot of people who kind of manufactured issues with dave because it's a it's a business strategy And that got things going.

And he's been under the microscope.

And at the same time,

I don't know who advised him on this strategy of just being a condescending prick on Twitter, but he's like that to everyone.

If someone compliments him, he'll like, quote, tweet them back.

And they have to say, did he insult me?

Or is he agreeing with me?

I don't even know.

Imagine what he does when you don't agree with him to begin with.

You got to learn something.

People who learn things about the changing of the learning of the, he's insufferable.

Yeah.

And in the midst of all this,

if we're going to really be honest about it, his business model is dying.

The print observer is dead.

The subscription observer is all there is now.

By the time that comes out, the news stories are all out.

So then you're really talking about just wanting Dave's analysis and Dave's writing.

I will be very honest.

I'm someone who grew up reading The Observer, and there are a lot of things he wrote that I thought were great.

There may be some people that thought the Kevin Sullivan bio was good.

I thought it was a mess.

Not just because, for whatever reason, it seemed like he had a chip on his shoulder about Kevin.

He kept putting him down.

The only people that thought Kevin was creative were the people he charmed,

but it was all over the place.

It's incoherent.

I'm in agreement with you that the

sad to say, the obituaries of the

wrestling legends used to be

for a lot of people, people, the

not most enjoyment, but the most valuable observers because he did a good job encapsulating these people's careers with

not only the research he's done, but the network that he's got of people that do research that you could put together a really incredible timeline of a guy's career.

There's no timeline.

There's no line.

It's not linear anymore.

It's babbling as he thinks with no

thought to proofread a goddamn line before you just hit send, as the kids say.

Yeah, and I first noticed that got really bad a few years ago when Butch Reed died because I know my mid-south wrestling pretty good.

And I was reading that thing and it was bouncing from one year to another in the same paragraph.

You couldn't follow what he was trying to say.

And then sometimes you get the small things wrong, but that's, I guess, neither here nor there.

But it's gone from a kind of a tribute to a wrestling legend to a collection of rambling

thought processes that that tail off into tangents that aren't even related to the guy that just died he now denies or you know maybe he always has that he gives aew any favorable treatment or treats them any different or criticizes them any less not realizing did you well go ahead what did you did you see the factoid that they just brian danielson had never had a five-star match before he went to aew now he's got eight of them.

Every time he breaks his arm, it adds a star, I guess.

And again, to keep up with the times, the star rating system went from what Dave thought of a match, which is what it always was, which is why the Andre Hogan match was negative stars, which is why Rock Hogan was only three and a half stars.

It was what Dave thought.

It became, I rated it high because even though I hate the match, other people liked it.

It was perfect for another audience that I'm not a part of, but I'm going to try to understand by giving their matches high stars.

And look at the state of AEW, and you could look at the influence of Dave over AEW and over Tony, and you could wonder how big of a problem that is.

But again, going back to their business model, all of a sudden the Observer website raises their rates.

They had free shows, they had free podcasts that they had brought behind their paywall.

They have a message board, which,

I mean, everyone kind of knows is a shit show.

It's a complete shit show.

And that's where this story will eventually end up here today and take hold.

But in this whole climate,

Dave,

under the microscope, because of the way he's behaving and the way people have been looking at him, reported that Afa, the wild Samoan, or one of the wild Samoans, passed away, I believe, a day before he did.

He saw, I believe, he said that he saw other people's posts and ran with it without fact-checking it or going with it.

But he's again, he's a high-profile reporter

and he went with it and it was almost instantly proven wrong.

By the family.

By the family, yeah.

And

where they're going through enough at the time, right?

Without

people, somebody whose word that people are still taking,

you know, basically it kills off the family member early, and

they've got to hear this on social media when they know it's imminent, but it ain't happened yet.

And how do you,

if you are, I can understand some dip shit on

pro wrestling under the covers and in the dark under a manhole, whatever the fuck, dot com.

I have sources.

You know, I can, but when you're holding yourself up as, and some people still consider you, despite your, you know, strange fucking mental quirks over the last few years,

the preeminent journalist, don't you make sure from somebody who would fucking know?

And maybe even ask two people if you're going to report somebody's death.

And, you know, this goes back to the.

changing wrestling media business model, the dying wrestling media business model of old, I think right now,

for a lot of the people out there who are making their money on selling the news that is instantly available seconds after they have it behind their paywall, I think you kind of have a rush to jump on a story and be first

and a rush to be the first person to say something or the one to get the most retweets.

And I don't know if that was one of the things that drove Dave, but Dave, again, very consciously is very active on Twitter

and

very antagonistic.

Yeah.

Not even to people who are saying, well, fuck you, but just, you know, people, well, no, don't you think, Dave, that, well, fuck you, and here's why.

I don't even do that unless you're a Republican.

And by the way, for someone who spends so much time lecturing everyone on

their ability or inability to learn and how you always have to learn and he's just trying to teach and he knows all this because he's been paying attention for so long, and he's been covering it.

What about his business?

You know, he likes to talk about everyone else going with the pat hand.

How long did Dave go with the pat hand with the observer?

And now it's in a state that maybe he has to act like this to try to drum up attention.

But the office story happened, and Dave got killed for it.

The next one, I'll let you decide if he fairly got criticized for it.

It was, I believe, the day after or so.

He reported in The Observer:

here's a quote: the deal is they're trying to have Jacob Fatu completely avoid Roman Reigns because everyone has to sell for Reigns and they want to keep Jacob Fatu special by not bumping around for Reigns.

So he's going to be gone while Reigns is around until whenever the time is right to hook them up.

I can't say he's not hurt, but everything that's happening was planned to happen.

I can say that.

As far as avoiding these,

wait a minute.

That means if he really is hurt, that he intentionally said, I'm going to figure out some way to break my leg on purpose when I fucking.

All right, go ahead.

As far as I did, the spot where he went down and then Roman came out.

Yes.

You explained why that made sense and why it was necessary for him to sell, which is why you instantly thought he was selling, not that he was really hurt.

Yes.

I didn't think they were going to keep him apart for six fucking months if people recover from brain surgery in that length of time.

No, what?

And

maybe Dave heard our program and just misinterpreted,

you know, what I was saying, but

no,

and let me try to figure out how to,

even though Jacob Fatu

is

the attention getter right now, all of his athleticism and blah, blah, blah.

They've still put Solo in the spot.

Solo is not going to set Roman reins up for Jacob Fatu.

It's going to probably be the other way around eventually.

Or maybe they save

a specific match between Roman and Jacob for later or whatever.

But no, this was a way to reintroduce Roman, who couldn't get beat up on his return,

both on pay-per-view and then on television.

But now, as we've seen, and as we'll talk about when we get to SmackDown here in a minute,

no, it was just his debut, his return debuts that he needed to be strong.

Now they can

get heat on him to juice up the story.

So this was,

you know, going to be a short-term thing to give him his return pop.

And then

if you notice,

they dropped the

lines, well, and you got Jacob Fatu hurt.

I think Cody said that in one of the promos.

And

somebody else, one of the announcers, used the word oh, he's injured, but they didn't make a big deal out of it.

They didn't show his,

you know, broken leg fucking x-rays or whatever.

And obviously, he made a return the very same day that Dave

issued that missive, didn't he?

No, actually, let me correct that.

Apparently, this was in the Observer the week before because the tweet I'm looking at from WrestleTalk with this quote is from August 13th.

So that's before SmackDown, a couple days before it.

And I believe maybe before Alpha.

So.

Well, but the point is.

It's within the vortex, though.

And remember

Jacob was seen in a store or a hotel, wherever it was, with a walking boot on with another member of the bloodline.

It got taken pictures of by the fans.

Of course, they're going to see him.

Who looks like that?

You're going to recognize that motherfucker in the town the WWE just sold.

15,000 tickets in or whatever.

So,

yes, they were working that

to make sure that it looked legitimate because why wouldn't you?

But

the point, this was never to be like a six-month thing, and then

Roman Reigns is going to blow through Solo, and then he gets Jacob Fatu.

They've set Solo up as the guy in the part.

Even if

De Niro or Nicholson is playing the Jacob Fatu part, whoever is in the Solo part

is going to be the money match with Roman in the most immediate future.

Do you not agree?

I agree.

So it's not even knocking Jacob, but that's the way they've set it up.

So this is what is happening.

But

I don't know what Dave would have been thinking.

Like,

oh, we just, they've done this.

They've introduced this guy.

He's beaten up everybody.

He's no sold nothing.

And now we won't see him for six months?

How the fuck would you think that?

Yeah, and again, the finish of the match, like you said, he couldn't be,

he couldn't be walking around with Roman Reigns coming out.

He had to be on the ground, incapable of getting up.

But nobody could have done that to him.

He had to do it to himself because

if another person is going to incapacitate Jacob Fatu, it needs to be either Roman Reigns or Cody Rhodes, maybe.

Well, that was story two.

And then the big one, and this one is still an active story as we are recording recording because Dave has not commented again on it, and he's going to have to.

Meltzer said, What retweeted this?

This is from the Wrestling Observer newsletter figure four message board

in a thread about Warner Brothers Discovery's negotiations with AEW, AEW's next TV deal, whatever it may be.

Here is a post from Dave.

I saw an internal memo from Warner Brothers Discovery on the total value of AEW programming.

It was $288,265,720 per year and 14 cents based on ad revenue and 2% of TNT carriage rates, 2.5 of TNT.

Well, now hold on, hold on, don't blow past that for some of the

For some of the listeners, the carriage rate is basically what TNT gets from the cable companies

in order to be able to carry their network.

And then they're attributing 2%

of that to AEW's existence on the network, correct?

Correct.

And 2.5 of TBS's rates and 3.0 of True TV's carriage rates.

True TV?

What the fuck's even on True TV?

Well, that's where Impractical Jokers was and now they moved it to TBS.

So it's obviously part of the Warner Brothers Discovery family.

And also including purchasing of the pay-per-view franchise.

However, it was a pay-per-view model indicated as similar to UFC, still $50 per show.

It did list an ROH show as part of the value, a reality show, and Dynamite, Rampage, and Collision, and pay-per-views.

AA.

It looks like he just typed the word the letter A a couple times here.

So it's a lock.

Maybe he says he's got a notation on a meeting he needs to go to.

So it's a lock.

Ring of Honor has been talked about, and pay-per-view has been talked about.

Also, TBS is estimated to make $91 million this year in ad revenue for Dynamite.

This is all based on a rating estimate for Ring of Honor and quarter two ratings for the existing shows and 137,500 average pay-per-view buys in 2024.

So again, it started off with, I saw an internal memo from Warner Brothers Discovery on the value of AEW programming.

And then it goes through all those various numbers that you read off and confused most people with because it's just gibberish after a while, but very specific in

what Dave learned from this secret document.

Internal memo.

Internal memo that he was able to uncover.

And Brian, would you like to now tell the

cult of Cornet, the people out there,

where the internal was that this document came from?

Well, pretty soon after Dave posted that, someone on Twitter with the handle, let's get upset,

tweeted to Dave, hey, big Dave, if this is what you are referencing on the board with a copy of the graph, the image here, the chart with all the numbers,

Some guy who claims he works in advertising, excuse me, in an advertising adjacent field

made this up and posted it on a random Discord several months ago.

If you look at the math as well, you can see whoever originally made it just took the article about SmackDown's ad rates, excuse me, ad rates estimates, and then cut them for AEW's ratings.

No consideration for time slots, cable versus network, et cetera.

Just an absolute amateur job.

Basically, anyone who saw this months ago and believed it is extremely naive

and doesn't look into information at all.

It is all very recognizable from the get-go that it is suspect.

And it has it here, and the numbers match what Dave said pretty much to the T.

But it, I mean, there are things that would stand out about it.

Under

one of the columns here is estimated AEW percentage, and then in parentheses, it says guess.

Like, what the fuck?

Well, now, to be fair, I bet a lot of the real internal AEW documents talk about, well, we guess.

So, here's

Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics.

Apparently, discussed this.

This was sent to us.

Now, he gets along with Dave, obviously.

He's thanked every week in The Observer.

He does a lot of work, tries to be taken seriously.

Here's what he had to say about Dave's post: Gramming being $288,265,720 per year.

He goes into a lot of other details in this message board post that are

exactly similar to a really interesting estimate that a listener did and shared with me.

And I understand has shared it elsewhere.

And I think somehow,

just to correct, I think what's happening here, I think Dave has understood this estimate that

a listener, you know, that somebody did and did a good job of.

I think he's understanding this estimate to be an internal memo somehow.

All these details matching so exactly is pretty astronomical.

I have pointed this out to Dave as well.

The odds are astronomical.

Yeah, and Dave Meltzer has responded to all of this by on his message board.

I'm trying to see if

there's anything here posted that he actually has responded to this.

Do we know

because who brought this to?

Because if you just saw

somebody posted this on Twitter, would you think it was just automatically think it was an AEW internal document or posted on a message board or whatever?

Wouldn't someone

have to come to you if you were a level-headed person, someone that would have

access to an AEW internal document and say this is

the numbers that they're talking about?

Or

did he just, how did he find this and just automatically assume, oh shit, this is an unpublished Shakespeare manuscript?

The only thing Dave has said so far on his message board, the place where he actually posted this, after he started getting criticism from even those people, about the fact that he just

He did exactly what everyone's been accusing him of for a while, quite frankly, running with something that wasn't wasn't true without checking anything, just running with it.

And he posted, I'm taking this down for now.

And that's the last he has said about the issue.

Now, again, earlier this year,

he reported on something WWE was doing with The Rock and Triple H based off a video from 10 years ago.

He reported that Shabata had his brain removed from his body and inserted back in.

But we have not been able to disprove that that happened.

But he reported that.

I believe he got fooled by someone with phony Dragon Gate stories a year ago.

I could tell you from little tiny things I've been involved in, he reported part of things that were true and then got things wrong.

And again, this is part of an environment where the observer has competitors and all of their business models are dying.

And they all have to figure out how to adapt to the new world.

So

it's sad,

but Dave's kind of doing doing this to himself, and he needs to explain why he ran with this as an internal memo.

Who sent it to him?

Was it a source?

Was it a source who works for Warner Brothers Discovery?

Because it wouldn't be an AEW memo.

It would be their memo.

It would be Warner Brothers Discovery's memo.

So Dave has a lot of explaining to do, but

this is a really bad run at a time where he

causes people to not want to give him the benefit of the doubt because of his behavior.

And,

you know, he was so stubborn for so long about Jim Cornette said that AEW is going to go out of business.

He was wrong.

He needs to apologize.

We played the audio.

Dave needs to apologize.

Jim said if they don't change things up, they're going to have problems.

Then they change things up.

Tony took the book completely.

And then they got bigger problems.

Dave's been wrong about numerous things in every single promotion.

Here's another story.

I knew someone that in the past has had involvement with TNA and Impact

and doesn't anymore, but still has friends there.

And they couldn't believe how wrong Dave was after Damore got removed.

Remember, it was like Tommy Dreamers now running creative and then he had to walk that back.

No matter what the company is now, Dave's getting stuff wrong.

He's running with it.

And then on the other end, his historical features are now just rambling, incoherent messes.

And again, I'm just,

I point out that

years ago, he cared more,

I believe,

about

telling the truth or reporting the truth and would even say, When,

you know, this match kind of sucked when it sucked.

But over the past number of years, not only has he wanted to appeal to the niche audience that is the AEW faithful for that kind of goofy, silly, phony wrestling and champion that because that's people apparently that were still listening to him and paying him his money.

But at the same time, he's melted down mentally to where he just acts weird on to normal people on Twitter.

He's never been a heel fucking wrestling personality, but now he's playing one.

And at the same time, he can't get a grip on,

you know,

sometimes his predictions just aren't going to come true, but he won't admit it.

There's right now an article on Forbes by Alfred Kanua.

Dave Meltzer's internal memo gaff caps a week of faulty reporting.

Oh, good lord.

So there you go.

Whoever reads Forbes, that's what they're going to see.

And, you know, Dave has spent so much time since the beginning of AEW, slightly before that, when people criticized the people he was budding up to on the indies because he was hoping that they would help propel his business into the future.

He pointed the fingers at a lot of people.

This person's out of touch.

This person's a fraud.

This person's this.

Just look at the facts of what he has said that's been proven wrong since that time.

Because it seems like at some point,

some sort of weird midlife crisis hit and everything changed.

Because that is the way it seems.

And you got to also separate.

There are people

who...

have an agenda to attack Dave because it's a business model.

It's a podcast business model to attack Dave Meltzer.

You also have to look past the people that are just jealous of Dave.

Fucking Dave Shearer has been jealous of Dave Meltzer, insanely jealous since the summer of 95.

You have to look past some of these people and just look at Dave's actual behavior.

And

it's for people who are longtime supporters of The Observer and admirers of his work, it's a sad decline.

It really is.

But you know, sooner or later, Dave, everybody ends up out of touch.

You're out of touch.

You're out of time, time.

But you're out of your head because they took out your brain.

No, they didn't take out his brain.

He reported that

they took the other guy's brain.

All right, they took out his tongue.

Yeah,

unfortunately, they put it back in, but I think they stuck it back in backwards.

Anyway.

No, but seriously, you know what?

That is a big thing.

If you look at it seriously, it's the changing business model that's affecting everyone, affecting all media.

And it's affecting wrestling media a little differently because you have hardcore fans that will pay for access to something that will be up for free momentarily.

It's a changing model, and it's going to be tough for a lot of these people to adapt to it, I think.

But you know what?

Uncle Dave is my age.

Isn't he a year older than me, maybe?

I think he's older than you, yeah.

Somewhere around that.

Just put your feet up, baby.

Just kick your feet up.

Why does it, why does he why is he so grasping at the notoriety and fame and financial remuneration that is the wrestling observer empire?

You retire.

Put your feet up.

Sit a spell.

Take your shoes off.

Don't come over here now.

You hear?

Go book with Tony.

Go book with, there you go.

He can hire Dave to be the booker.

Would you like to talk a little SmackDown before we're done here today?

A little SmackDown, because that's about all that was worth watching.

Boy,

right when we get to the point where we're saying I Karamba and Bravo

and all these other things to the WWE.

Let's be real.

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Oh boy,

some of the things that I wrote were, are they serious?

For real?

Are you kidding me?

What the fuck?

I'm fucking done here.

I fucking give up.

And that was just the opening segment.

Well,

I wasn't writing much during the opening segment because

my jaw was hanging down to where it was weighing down my hands.

But

just when we had been complimenting them on, well, at least the WWE, now it's more for adults.

It's more, you know.

It's more logical.

It makes more sense.

They're not doing that fucking male model bullshit that Vince was fixated on and all that other silly nonsense.

They come up with a goddamn

all-star award-winning first segment for silly, fucking phony bad wrestling.

But they were in Orlando, by the way.

And they were sold for this show.

They were sold out $15,254 is what they said.

Are they lying or are they telling the truth?

Do we know if that, do we have that confirmed?

I can see what we can find out.

Well, get your hand off your organ and pull up your Google

and see if we can find out how close that is to true.

But they had a big fucking house in Orlando, Florida, which is actually figuring in

to something several months down the road.

Is it not?

Should we reveal that now?

We can reveal that now.

They announced that they're returning to Orlando for a big big show at the end of the year.

And it just turns out it'll be head-to-head with AEW's world's end pay-per-view event 20 minutes down the road.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

How do you see this?

For the people that think WWE is being petty by doing this?

For the people that think there's nothing wrong with it, what's your take on running direct opposition to the other company when they're doing a pay-per-view?

Well,

the conventional wisdom

for a while was for a lot of companies was don't run

the same night as

another show, a WWE show, because

it'll kill your fucking show, right?

When there were territories,

Vince was willing to lose money sometimes to just go in and run against the local

office, but unless it was an ongoing promotional war, most time you didn't want to run up.

But now they realize

we can just obliterate these fuckers.

We can just obliterate them.

And

at this point, you know, they're asking for it.

Old yeller is about to wander out behind the barn.

So

I'm not surprised, and they will obliterate AEW.

Go ahead.

And for the record, Jim, this show at the Kia Center, this WWE SmackDown, August 16th,

14,136 tickets distributed.

The previous time there, July 2023.

For SmackDown also, 12,287.

So the WWE owns Orlando, regardless of what anyone says, whether it's $14,000 or $15,000.

So they bumped it up about $1,100 just to get, I guess, all of the concession workers and the

ushers and everything.

Should Tony one-up them by booking a stadium in Orlando against them?

Oh, I'm sure they.

I bet the WWE would love Tony to book a stadium in Orlando, Florida.

Again, spend the money.

We know you have plenty, but spend it.

Just spend it.

Why doesn't, you know, he could do like his own WrestleMania 2, but instead of three locations, it could be like nine locations.

Nine stadiums one day.

No one's ever done it before.

Every match in a different place.

You'll see it all on a big screen.

Oh, God.

Anyway, back to SmackDown and the opening segment.

Tiffany Stratton

was in the ring with

Puny and Dull.

What are their names?

Elton, John, and

Sly Fox.

Until you said that, I forgot that one of them's named Elton.

But I just know them purely deadly, but I don't know their actual name.

Is it Elton and Foxy?

Well, regardless.

The other one's named Foxy or Fox or

Fucker, I don't know, meet the Fockers, whatever.

And it's fucking just horrible because it's one of their...

Somebody thought this was funny or would be funny.

Maybe then they don't want to admit that it didn't come come off afterwards.

Watching this, I thought Vince was in charge.

Well, that's that's the problem: it was like the worst events had come back

and they introduced the refrigerator.

And I wrote, oh, hell no.

And they, did you see they were trying to give the impression that they were carrying her out on a throne because she's the king of the or the queen, well, maybe both, the queen and king of the ring.

She's the queen of the ring,

she's She's the one.

And like they've carried Lawler out before, like they've carried.

Didn't they carry Owen Hart out like that one time?

Well, they used to do these coronations for everyone.

And

Haku had one on TV after he got the crown from Harley Race.

And then there was one for King Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

That was quite the show.

And then King, the Macho King, Randy Savage, had the genius read a poem.

And that was one of the rare appearances of the widowmaker, Barry Wyndham, one of the great gimmicks that never got fleshed out.

And then it went away, and then it became the king of the ring.

Whoever won the king of the ring, you remember Bret Hart got attacked by Lawler on the stage, like accepting the crown and the robe and the second.

Yeah, well, and remember one time they had

the guys carry Lawler out, and the one in front took a bump and he fell off the thing.

Yeah.

No, they used to carry out Randy Savage and Sherry.

I think that was the best usage ever of the throne.

But the point is, it was always like six job guys and dressed up and whatever carrying on their shoulders the sticks that the throne sits on and blah, blah, blah.

On this one, they just said, oh, fuck no, we're not even going to try.

They disguised the wheels underneath black curtains and had fake handles.

So these four fucking job guys are just rolling.

Because it would have been like the weight of the throne and the platform plus a refrigerator.

So they rolled her to the ring,

and it's a white throne.

She's wearing all white

and the white apparatus, the whole, it looked like an ice cream truck wearing a crown.

Come on.

And they get her in there.

Mr.

Softy?

I'm sorry?

Mr.

Softy?

Oh, no, Mr.

Miss Slurpee is.

And then I wrote, these two fucking guys need to go to AEW because they make Maddie and Nikki, the Hardley boys, look like hell's angels.

It's the same kind of acting.

I know that the young Bucks aren't like that kind of gimmick, but it's the same kind of acting.

It is the same silliness.

And

so then they do the thing where they sing a song.

to the refrigerator.

They're supposed to have a

Broadway musical or the purely deadly or pretty dreary or whatever, the musical.

And they put on

the wireless mics, the headset mics that, you know, like Madonna uses or whatever in concert.

And they're supposed to be singing badly.

That's part of the entertainment, right?

Problem is they're singing badly and it's not entertaining either.

Nobody wants to see this shit.

And then suddenly Mia Yim came in and beat everybody up with a kendo stick.

Biggest babyface pop she's ever had in WWE ending this.

Yes, just to get it fucking over with.

But

I can even understand them pushing

Jax

because she is big and massive and whatever the fuck and seriously,

presented seriously, you can believe that she's hurting people because she probably is.

But why did they, what audience wants to see these two

fucking smurfs in there yapping it up?

You know, this goes to those conversations I have about the bad women segments in AEW.

You know, the stuff with Rhea Ripley and Liv Morgan, I think people can kind of understand and relate to.

She stole her man.

They're different personalities.

You want to see them fight.

But when it's segments like this, when it's bad comedy,

you really have to ask yourself, who is this being written for?

Like, who do they think the audience for this is, other than the people being held captive in the arena waiting for the main eventers?

And

again, it was Vince style, old school Vince style, bad comedy, not worth it.

And with Tiffany, she's over the top trying to be.

She's annoying enough.

But

she's trying so hard.

But yes, but I mean, the home thing.

Man,

that's the problem.

They have her hamming that up all the way.

She's good in the ring.

If she toned that back to be a little more realistic, I would personally like it better.

But the whole thing with her and Naya, it's like a female division Miz and R-Truth.

It's just, you know, these two wacky buddies hanging out in the back.

What kind of misadventures are they going to have?

There's so many like bad buddy movies in WWE.

And this is one of them.

Wacky buddies.

And by the way, if you're purely deadly, what are you thinking about your career right now?

Yeah, you're working for WWE and you're making money, but

how are you going to recover from this when you're done the way they're treating you on there?

Now you're just taking bumps for Nia Jax after singing to her.

Hey, you know,

at least when you're the jizmopper at the porno theater, you're not on national television doing it.

You can maintain some kind of anonymity when you don't want people to know that you're a goddamn putz that gets made a fucking fool out of every week.

The one good thing is it's nice to see Meechin

get used well in a segment, as she was here.

That's the only thing that's...

Mia Yim.

Well, they call her Meechin.

That's her WWE name, Meechin.

That's just a nickname.

It's like she said her name to someone who couldn't hear.

What's your name?

Mia Yim.

Oh, Meechin.

All right, so you're blaming Vince again.

Meechin,

the egg.

You know, Fritz von Erich couldn't hear it thunder.

Fritz von Erich couldn't hear an egg.

He couldn't hear it thunder?

Is that what you said?

I said he couldn't hear it thunder.

That's a phrase, a figure of speech.

He had two big fat hearing aids behind each ear in 1985.

And he talked like this, hey.

And he talked like that.

Hey, come here, nerd.

Come here.

But

every once in a while, when he'd turn a certain way, they'd whine.

Maybe they were catching some kind of radio transmission.

Who had the worst cauliflower ears you ever saw in person?

Oh, good lord.

Like, how's Bruno versus Pat Malone?

How do they compare?

Well, I was going to, Pat Malone was pretty, pretty fucking cauliflowered.

Now, he wore the hat most of the time, so it didn't stand out, but yeah, Bruno still looked human.

One of Pat's ears was really bad.

And didn't Rick Steiner has a horrible-looking one, doesn't he?

You know, I have to pay attention.

I haven't paid attention.

Danny Hodge didn't have the most attractive ear.

And what about Paul Bosch?

Lou Thez?

Well, Paul Bosch had, I think Paul Bosch had big ears to begin with.

Yes, he did, and they hung down.

What about not Buzz Sawyer, but Terry Sawyer?

Remember the amateur Terry Sawyer that worked a lot with Thez in and he was he had a run here in Memphis in 78.

The problem wasn't here in the early days of tape trading, technically the late days of tape trading in the 90s, when some of that stuff from the late 70s in Memphis first started making its rounds around off the umatic reels or whatever they were, people thought Terry Sawyer was Buzz Sawyer.

Yeah, there was, other than the fact if you saw Buzz Sawyer in 79 and his hair and his body type, they didn't look alike, but you could see the late, the mid-80s, late 80s, Buzz Sawyer, if he was trimmer, kind of looked similar to Terry Sawyer.

It was kind of like you wouldn't believe that Ali Vaziri was the iron chic when you put pictures of them side by side.

that was the same thing with Terry Sawyer in 1978 and Buzz Sawyer in 1990.

Remember when everyone thought Haku everyone the people in the magazines and smart fans some smart fans some dumb fans thought Haku was Lenny Hearst?

Yes.

Who was, I believe, from Jamaica.

Right.

And he had wrestled whatever 15 years earlier.

And yeah, and Jamaica is a completely different ocean from fucking Samoa.

That's right.

Or Tonga.

Or Tonga.

Well, they're all, they're still different oceans.

And I get the Tonga just gets thrown in with Samoa, but there's also Fiji.

That's right.

So we got to narrow this down.

Folks, this is better than what was next on SmackDown.

Andre versus Carmelo Hayes.

I wrote, are they serious with this show?

I will admit

that after Hayes caught a quick one,

as Vince used to say, one, two, three, then they got in a fight fight and had a big pull apart.

And for about a minute and a half, that was fucking great.

And the people were going ape shit.

So they got that going for him.

But

the thing that they were milking, we'll get to in a minute all night, was the bloodline thing.

But we had a Naomi versus Blair Davenport.

I like Naomi.

She glows.

Makes you feel like you want to glow.

Just makes you feel like you have a special aura around you and you want to just get up and move and dance.

Well, I got up and changed the channel.

You see, you got up.

That's what you, I mean, you did the wrong thing in the end, but the whole point is to get you up and moving.

Well,

and then I moved out of my house to make sure I didn't watch the program accidentally anymore.

So then they're doing the thing with Waller in theory where,

you know,

Waller was talking about his match with Kevin Owens.

Why does Owens get a title shot when all he's done is lose for four years and he's running him down?

But Owens comes in and says, no, dude, you're right.

I don't deserve it.

I'm a loser.

I'm such an idiot.

Let's go prove you right.

I'm an easy win.

Come on.

I'm still thinking that Owens is probably not a fan of this creative.

And they go and have a fucking match.

And

basically, Owens beats him one, two, three.

And then he beat him up both some more until they posted him and got a couple of chairs.

And then Cody hits the ring.

And the babyfaces beat the heels up some more with chairs.

And Cody gets a huge pop and the Cody chance.

And

whatever they're doing here, Cody goes to pick up the title belt, but Owens grabs it and then hands it to Cody and gives him a pat on the back and walks off.

So I still think that

some way or another, they're switching Owens' heel because they got a ton of baby faces.

And

look at the state of him, he's still a fat, pudgy, ugly guy.

Plus, if the bloodline is primarily throughout the year, kind of

isolated, like they're feuding with each other, it's everyone there doing things with each other.

You kind of need other guys to slot in.

You got Orton and Gunther now, and you know, you have an Orton heel turn down the road, but you're not there yet.

And speaking of not being there, um

basically they also had la night did a promo which he always does well

and uh escobar and all the lucha heels had dinner at a restaurant

and piper and chelsea nattered at mia yim until the refrigerator came in and beat her up

And the Street Prophets

had a long match where they beat Champa in same face.

You know, I enjoyed this.

I enjoyed the match.

Why?

I thought it was good.

I thought it was good.

I'm glad the Street Profits actually got a win.

I thought they really needed it because they need to do something and they got B fab out there and they got the crowd really into it.

So I can.

What has she done to be fab?

Well, you see, she's fine.

And she knows she's fine.

And she knows she can get it.

And she uses that

at ringside.

I thought she was fab.

Now

you're saying saying she's fine.

She's too fab.

And,

you know, she's helped them get past the doldrums of being managed by Bobby Lashley.

Did you say doldrums?

That's right.

Doldrums.

Well, all right.

Anyway, the main event of the evening was a confrontation because all night long they had been milking.

Tomatonga is sucking up in the back to Solo,

and he's giving him the

Ulafala, the red lei.

And Solo is saying, Hey, if Roman Reigns wants this back,

then he's going to have to come and take it from me.

And he's going to have to acknowledge me.

And

everybody's going to acknowledge me

all night long in various little clips.

And then finally,

Solo and Tomat.

Where was Tongaloa?

Have they just now?

He went to the wrong building.

He went to the wrong building.

Okay.

He got lost.

But Solo and Tomatonga go to the ring.

Eddie tells Orlando to acknowledge him.

And of course, they boo.

And now they're chanting OTC.

I get original tribal chief, right?

That's easier to pick out the, what was it, MFT?

That didn't take off at all, did it?

Two weeks they gave up on that.

Because then people said, well, clearly he's saying my favorite tongue or whatever it was, but if he said my MFT, then it's my, my, so no.

And then it's my, my, unless you came from me lie.

And then they're still fighting over a lay.

My lay.

Well, let's continue with the

that is SmackDown.

So anyway, Solo

says, I know one man that needs to acknowledge me, Roman Reigns.

And if you want this, you come out and take it.

And Roman's music plays and the crowd fucking roars.

And Roman comes out game face on and he's not running.

He's walking slowly and purposely.

Slowly he turns, step by step, inch by inch.

And finally, they got the face off in the ring, and Solo hands the

lay to Tama and says, go stand in the corner.

And then they just start swinging.

And Roman starts kicking the shit out of him.

And he levels Solo and then Tama attacks.

And Roman shit cans Tama.

And Roman's clearing off the desk.

And he's going to

powerbomb Solo or whatever the fuck.

And Solo gets on Roman, but Roman ducks the spike and does the Superman punch and hits the big spear.

And then he sees the lay

and he picks it up and the crowd's going crazy and he puts it on and the place goes bat shit.

The next time the AEW World title changes hands and the new champion puts the belt on,

see if it gets this big a pop.

And then Roman's music starts playing, and there's Jacob Fatu

with a super kick.

And now, Brian, as I mentioned before,

I'm merely a small-town bird lawyer with only a passing knowledge of the human anatomy and medical fucking procedure,

but he don't look like he had a broken leg.

Well, he did have a walking boot on.

Well, he was doing fine with throwing super kicks.

He was throwing super kicks and moving around fine,

which again, if the walking boot is still selling the thing from the you know from the show and he can move around fine that tells you something

and there's Jacob Fatu now

kicks the shit out of Roman and posts him and gives him the running ass to the face and Roman

sells incredibly with the facial expressions where he looks out of it and he knows how to put shit over

and he's doing a tremendous job and then

they take him out on the floor and they pick him up and they give him the triple power bomb through the announce desk and roll him in the ring and stand over him with the one fingers in the air.

So Roman got his big return on pay-per-view and any guy's big return on national TV.

And now they got some heat on him.

And

son of a gun, they're moving right along here.

What do you think about the fact that two of the biggest programs in WWE are based around a necklace and a bracelet?

Well, that's the thing.

If you tell a story that connects with people

involving talent that the fans care about,

then you can do shit like that.

And I mean, think of

how many stupid things

in the past has

the babyface been attached to that the heel destroyed.

Remember the old deal when they brought

it with Bruno, right?

They brought a fucking cake from Bruno's fan club and the heel knocked it over in the 60s on TV.

Or the fabulous ones,

they had jackets presented to them by the fans and the goddamn heels came out and tore them up.

Or what it's every place in wrestling, if something means something to the babyface,

then then the heel needs to steal it or fuck it up.

It doesn't matter what it is as long as you can convince people that it's important to the guy that lost it, right?

Right.

Well, there you go.

Or there you go, SmackDown, and the bloodline continues.

The last 10 minutes was wonderful.

When do you get Heyman back involved?

Boy, that they don't even need him right now they're that's the great part about i mean i'm not

i'm not trying to slough paul off i'm saying that's the great thing is that they don't even need him now they can save it for whenever they want when they do yeah heyman brings back brock

there you go that's still there and you know i think heyman being with brock will help get Brock back into the thing without as much of a problem if he was by himself, considering everything that happened with Pisgate and everything.

Yes.

I thought it was piss flap.

There was a big flap over it.

Again, I don't know why.

I don't know why, but that was SmackDown, and this is your show.

Well, in that case, it's over with, folks, until a few days from now on the drive-through and next week on the experience and all points in between.

We'd like to wish you a hearty thank you.

Fuck you.

And bye-bye, everybody.

Experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Connest

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