Episode 545: Jim Remembers Kevin Sullivan

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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 Cornette.

The keys to the future held by the past.

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

He's Jim Cornette.

Well, he's never 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.

I can get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

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

Today, we're going to talk about SmackDown.

We're going to talk about the new documentary out on Dorton Arena and its place in the world of professional wrestling and some more things.

But

obviously, we're going to talk about

Kevin Sullivan, who passed away a couple of days ago as we record this.

Some more things about his career and our interaction with him that we didn't cover a month or so ago.

And

that's going to be a lot of the program.

Joining me, as usual, you guys all know his allocades, but most importantly, Germaine, to this program, he was a friend and a fan of Kevin Sullivan's.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

And we'll have another good conversation about Kevin.

We just talked about him.

And of course, we have the sad news, but there's a lot to remember and a lot to talk about.

Well, and you know, already

this happened as as as we said 48 hours ago i guess was we got the word and

you know

even if we had been ready to sit down and record this program and it just happened we wouldn't have talked about it because

i didn't want to today um

But we took a little time to think and actually I took a little time not to think about it because that's what I've done for the past day and a half or so is just not think about it.

And then I realized as we were about to record this, that this is another one of those shows.

I love doing the show for the people.

But this is another one of those that

I wish that we could just not do and say we did, and pick up with the drive-through and act like

we did it and got it over with.

But that would not be fair to

people who want to hear what we have to say.

Am I rambling here today on the program?

The problem is, is that it's like, and Brian, I was telling you, and you tweeted out some pictures from the files of Kevin, including some things you didn't know you had until you went looking.

And I don't tweet about people

dying anymore.

I haven't in quite some time because

besides the fact that it was becoming way too regular an occurrence,

it seems a little frivolous for this

situation.

But I'm starting to think maybe we ought not talk about it either, because what the fuck?

It just, it, it,

everybody gets older.

I think that's Stevie Nix wrote that, didn't she?

Oh, I don't know the uh, Stevie Nicks.

It's, it's sound, you don't know the whole canon, yeah.

But, um,

but anyway, we're gonna, we're gonna forge ahead and do this here today.

And

hopefully, because you did halfway tickle me right before we started recording, with

you said, hey, do you think that the people remember that Kevin Sullivan was partners with Whitey Caldwell?

And I said, that's the first fucking story I was going to tell because it's still

one of my favorites that Kevin ever told me.

And

let's get this out real quick.

Folks, we still don't know, you know, exactly.

I believe that the sepsis that

he got from the surgery from a couple months ago, and we talked about it on the,

about a month ago on a show, and you can find it on YouTube

when we found out that he was, had been hospitalized and had an emergency surgery that led to

complications.

And

that's the underlying cause of this whole thing.

But

the last update that we had gotten was that he was

doing physical therapy.

And

I know some people think, oh, he was in the gym or whatever.

No, I know from my cousin,

physical therapy at some level, depending on your condition, is teaching you how to swallow water again.

without fucking it going down in your lungs and giving you goddamn infection.

So, but he, the, it was positive.

At last, we heard, but then this was apparently the underlying cause was the infection that he'd had.

But anyway,

the Whitey Caldwell thing, because Brian, you found some of his rookie pictures in your wrestling news files, or not even rookie pictures, but when he was still in wrestling school, the first pictures he had taken.

And

that was what, 19, maybe 69, 70-ish, 70-ish,

that part of

time,

because

initially after he wrestled some, and he was obviously from Massachusetts, legitimately, and wrestled some in New England.

And I think he got a few Canadian dates, small shows, whatever.

But his first territory

was he was in East Tennessee for

Knoxville was John Kazana promoting and then the Tri-Cities, Kingsport, John City, Bristol.

By that point, Ron Wright was running it behind the scenes, but nobody knew he was the top heel.

Nobody knew that publicly.

But what they would do

is after

Ron Wright and Whitey Caldwell, who as we've talked about before and the Smogie Mountain fans know, was the all-time top babyface in the territory.

Well, Ron and Whitey had been working a program with each other on and off for 10 years, right?

The chain matches and all that shit.

And since Ron's partner, Don Wright, was a wrestler also, and the Wright brothers were a big heel team,

they would give Whitey different babyface partners through the years so that he could face the Wright brothers in tag matches and freshen it up.

And Les Thatcher did that in, I think,

was it 72, 73?

He might have followed Kevin Sullivan.

Was it that late that Les Thatcher was there?

Or was he there before Kevin?

Was it late 60s?

That's what I thought.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Well, you know what?

I'm probably wrong, too.

But nevertheless,

yes, ladies and gentlemen, Les Thatcher was a young

spry white meat babyface at one point in time, back when people still saw in black and white.

It probably was the late 60s now that I think about it, because he was there at the same time as Don and Al Green, and that was late 60s.

Nevertheless, it was like 1971.

Kevin Sullivan gets booked his very first territory in the wrestling business.

He's never been out of New England.

He's as Boston as you can get.

And he ends up in the hills of East Tennessee being Whitey Caldwell's partner against the Wright brothers.

And

the deal was the young babyface would sell and the Wrights would get the heat on him.

whatever, and then he'd make the tag to Whitey, who people thought was the toughest man in the world, and he'd clean house.

And so anyway,

Kevin told me a story years ago, and I can't tell it as good as he told it, and also the accent.

But

he said the first week they have a tag match and they get wild and everything.

And maybe it's a disqualification or whatever.

And the second week, they have no disqualification match and all kinds of shit happens, whatever.

And so they come back the third week in a cage.

And even back then, in those days, I don't know what kind of cage they may have had.

It was probably in Kingsport.

It might have been chicken wire because they were still using that in Tennessee in the 70s.

They just bring out a roll of chicken wire.

When a guy's got in the ring, they'd wrap it around the fucking ring post.

But it's a cage match, and they go to him ahead of time and say, Kid, we're going to need you to get a little color tonight.

And, you know, at this time, he's never done that before, right?

He's like, okay.

And

I can't remember whether it's Ron or Don.

I think it may have been Donnie.

Said, oh, don't worry, kid.

We'll handle it for you.

And he's like, what the fuck?

So they get in the match.

And obviously, besides, it's a cage match.

Everybody's got a chain in their pocket or a fucking roll of quarters or some kind of Tennessee gimmick.

And they're going to have this wild match.

And when it came time for Kevin to get to color, this is when he found out about the chisel.

The wedge that, and Bo James still has one of these, an actual legitimate Wright brothers fucking chisel that he has tweeted out pictures of at King of Kingsport.

You can find him.

But for the people who haven't heard the story,

the Wright brothers

and Ron specifically didn't want people

smart to the wrestling business.

And

if they saw somebody blading,

they get smart to the wrestling business.

So Ron invented a shortcut.

He went to a machinist shop and he had a piece of flat metal.

He had the tip of a chisel

sharpened down and put on the goddamn piece of flat metal.

that was high enough to go in your skin, but not deep enough to goddamn

fracture your skull.

And then they put tape around it so that the chisel part was sticking out and they made it a set of brass nuts, kind of for real.

But the tape cushioned the blow of the metal, but they would draw back and pop you on the forehead and you would get color without having a blade.

So

the way Kevin told the story, he's like, and we're fighting and it's getting crazy.

And then fucking, he said, yes, he said, it's Donnie.

He said, Donnie grabbed him by the hair with the left hand and he said, okay, kid, here comes your color.

And he drew back and he said, Kevin said, we looked at his fist.

It looked like he had a double-bladed axe on a goddamn, in the end of his fucking fist.

And he punched him with it.

Boom.

And he goes down and he's bleeding.

And at this point, Kevin says, fuck these fucking hillbillies.

It's all been a plot.

They've got me down here.

They're going to fucking kill me.

This is a double cross.

I've got to defend myself.

And he pulls his chain out of his fucking tights and wraps it around his fist and gets back up and punches Donnie in the face as hard as he can and busts his fucking cheek open.

And down goes Donnie.

And Kevin gets on top of him.

He's going to beat him to death.

And Donnie looked up at him and said, out of the way, kid, lay it in.

That's the way we like it down here.

And he's a fuck.

And he dropped, he just started freaking out.

What do I fucking do?

He dropped the chain and everything.

He was thinking about climbing out, and they fucking grabbed him and started working with him.

That was his introduction to Tennessee Wrestling.

And not the end of his relationship with Tennessee Wrestling.

Again, that's the early 70s.

He would end up there again in the early 80s.

That's, I guess, where you would first get to know him or get to know him.

Well, hold on.

No, he went to Memphis from there.

Kevin Sullivan, as a young babyface, was

worked for Goolis from the time that he left Knoxville after that run was over with through

sometime in 1972.

I'd have to go back and look at Tuesday Night at the Gardens, the wonderful book on that era.

But he had worked this territory in

the early 70s, the Memphis territory as well.

And

then I think from there,

did he not,

he had an early run in Georgia also, did he not?

But nevertheless, maybe I'm thinking wrong.

But he started going to some of the major territories.

Everybody that's been talking about his career and all of the

tributes that have come out have focused on,

well, you know, they kind of start with a varsity club and,

you know, there's the 90s WCW and everything.

But he had been a star in almost every territory he worked in.

And the Florida stuff.

I feel like the,

again, it's not Satan.

It's not, he's not the devil.

But

the dark side Kevin Sullivan kind of not overwhelmed, but it's kind of the thing people most think about.

Because in one way or another, even with the varsity club, he kind of still held on to that persona.

Yeah, well, that's why the clips are easier to find.

And everybody has seen, you know, more of that that was on TBS, et cetera.

But he didn't start the

Sullivan's Army of Darkness, the whole nine yards, until, what, 82?

Right after he left Memphis.

Remember that?

That's right.

He left Memphis because there was a thing on TV when he returned.

And I want to say it was Lance Russell interviewing Steve Kern as like a warning to the fans of Florida, the promoters of Florida.

He's a different guy.

He's not the Kevin Sullivan, the friendly, I'm going to tag up with Mike Graham, Kevin Sullivan.

That guy's gone.

There's something different about this guy.

And now Silver's return.

And then, of course, that's when the whole gimmick change happened.

So that was 1982.

He's 12 years into his career.

And the early Florida run.

where he was the partner of Mike Graham and one of the top babyfaces in the state, gets overlooked because that was really the pre-home video era for any but the most fanatical.

But Kevin, again, you know, when I did a Back to the Territories interview with him, we talked extensively about that period because he looked like Mike Graham.

They were about the same height.

Mike Graham in those days, not the thin,

you know,

late 80s wrestler or WCW executive.

He was a power lifter.

So he was bulky.

And Kevin, even though he was short, he was bulky because in those early years, he was more into powerlifting and, you know, strength.

And

when they grew a mustache, they looked like brothers.

So it was almost like he had a Graham brothers.

That's the way Eddie Graham used him.

Mike Graham and Kevin Sullivan

for some period of time were joined at the hip, indistinguishable in Florida wrestling.

Actually, for a time, Eddie Graham was closer with Kevin than he was his own son, apparently.

Well, yeah, that's another issue is that Eddie and Mike had

the Graham family, and we won't get into a sub-reference here, but the Graham family dynamics at various points in time, people were on the outs, and Eddie

had taken Kevin more as more of a sonny.

He was out in a fishing boat, and he was confiding things in him

more than Mike at one point.

And that's another reason why that,

I mean, you know, when everybody says, oh, what a great mind, what a great mind.

A lot of the fans say, well, he, you know, he was a booker, but they don't understand that he got to actually sit in the fucking boat with Eddie Graham and have a personal relationship with him and learn all of that shit.

So he not only

He could book or he could call a finish or he could just,

you know, look at a guy and say, you ought to do this or you ought to do more of that or less of that or whatever.

And it

was carrying that, you know, that business on when

Flair was the booker in WCW, Kevin was his assistant, but Kevin was the only one who had booked.

Between me and

Rick and Kevin, he's the only one that had actually been a booker.

So he was kind of like showing everybody.

Flair, as we've talked about, had the time ideas and the major programs

and made the major decisions.

But it was like,

you know, Kevin knew how to put it together.

That's how I was able to learn something about it.

He was assisting or involved with

a lot more people who were booking at the time when they were successful.

Did I make

sense of that statement?

Even if he wasn't official, he had a hand in things.

You know, when you think of his run in Georgia, I always love that match, him and Tony Atlas against Alexis Smirnoff and Ivan Koloff, where they use the ether, and then they interview the fans who, I'm a nurse, and that was ether.

Like, yes, it gets it over so good.

But he was great as a babyface there, and who's in charge?

That was Bill Watts as one of the co-owners.

That may have been at that point Ollie and Bill Watts booking or Bill Watts alone booking, but he was there in Georgia under people that he didn't have the same relationship with that he did did Eddie Graham.

But again, he was exposed to a lot of the top minds.

Well, and they did show some

footage or a couple of clips on the tribute that the WWE did.

And we got to

recognize them because we said, oh, Sika got two minutes

because The Rock's on the board of directors.

But Kevin got two minutes and he never even worked there.

So it's just, it's the new regime.

So we got to.

He worked for

him for wrestling, though.

Oh, come on.

Kendan Mark Lewin and the Fallen Angel.

Well, yes, they did, but still, I don't think we're going that far.

And by the way, if we do make a couple of wise cracks during the course of this, Kevin would be, it would be a jamming, Brian.

I can't do the fucking accent.

I sound like Jericho, but Derek, but you know, make some jokes.

What is this?

A fucking funeral?

He used to, every now and then, I never knew what it was sometimes that triggered him to text me or leave me a voicemail.

And it would just be like, Brian, you're a great therapist.

Okay.

But, you know, I liked it.

I would hear feedback from him.

And sometimes he would be listening to something that I had recorded a while back.

And I would get like recently, or the most recent text I got from him was out of nowhere.

Great job on the Atlanta War.

podcasts.

I'm like, wow, that was a long time ago.

He was just listening to it.

He just found it.

But I've got a couple of voicemails that I've saved and recorded for posterity for myself.

That I probably,

if I played them from Kevin, it would hurt the feelings of some people who may love him.

But

he'd be like, you're completely right.

He's a fucking idiot.

What the fuck are they doing?

I've got a few of those two, but probably not as good as yours.

But anyway, where were we going with that?

Oh, so they showed some clips.

He worked.

He had a run in the WWWF as a babyface, Kevin Sullivan.

What was that in 1976?

Because of

the relationship that Eddie Graham had with Vince Sr.

and the Florida and New York pipeline.

So he had already worked for Vince Sr.

by the mid-70s.

They add that to Watts and Ole and Eddie Graham.

And then

Knoxville, Kevin was not before he was

a heel in the, you know, in the 80s.

And, you know, we talked about that at one point, one of the TV stations had him just introducing clips of other wrestling promotions when there was no local promotion in town because they wanted wrestling.

And he was the guy that they had hosted.

But

when Ron Fuller was running Southeastern the first time around, by what was it, 77, 78, Kevin was a huge fucking babyface there for a couple of years.

He was a babyface there during the 1979 WFA, no, 78 WFIA convention.

And that was coming off his run, the last big babyface star in San Francisco, him and Bob Rup.

That was right before that.

Yeah, where they

revitalized the business for Roy Shire, and then Rupe tried to steal the territory and killed it again.

And then Kevin ended up in Knoxville to watch Rupe tried to do that exactly.

Yes, and then here comes Rupins and kills the goddamn territory again.

Jesus Christ.

But fortunately, by then, Kevin went to fucking Georgia, did he not?

Yeah, that's right.

Again, he's on TBS or he's in the middle of a hot territory or he's revitalizing something or he's working for these,

you know, smart fucking people.

And then the reason why that I was excited to see see him

before he even came to Memphis, his first Tennessee run, 1971, or what it was right before me.

So I'd seen the name in the newspaper ads, but I'd, you know, until cable became a thing and we'd seen him on TBS and heard his reputation from Florida.

You know, but at that point in time,

the Tennessee Territory, it was still a big deal when a major name from national television came in as a regular.

Not necessarily

to make Memphis shots or to fight Lawler or whatever, but as a regular on the card.

And Kevin was a big name at that time.

So when he came in here and they instantly, you know, aligned him with Jimmy Hart, the top heel faction, he and Wayne Ferris, Danny Davis, and

a rotating cast as the second nightmare when

David Oswald quit the business and Ted Allen dumbed himself out of position.

But, you know, he could talk then.

And as a heel, it was different because he had been a babyface most of the time that you'd seen or heard of him.

But also,

well, you seen the pictures just yesterday.

At that point, all of a sudden, Kevin Sullivan, that had been a big barrel-chested powerlifter, he was fucking ripped.

He had gotten into bodybuilding, and I think at one point he dieted down to like 188 pounds.

He had fucking eight abs.

The goddamn definition was insane.

And that's when,

didn't he do a bodybuilding contest at that point with somebody?

They put a footage of it on Georgia TV.

I want to say it was Tony Atlas.

Yes.

But I'm not certain, but I think it was Tony Atlas.

But anyway, he goes from like, you you know

5'8 270 to 5'8 188

and 2 body fat and

you know then that was a real good run as a heel for him here

even though he was still doing

he was kevin sullivan a regular person right

But then, as you said, by the time that he finished the run here in Memphis and went back to Florida, he was fixing to go the whole heel route.

And this was kind of a dry run for at least working in the ring.

Well, he was in the first family with Jimmy Hart, and that's a great period for the first family.

But, you know, Kevin, and I haven't listened to it in a while, but in the many conversations I had with him, I want to say he indicated that before he went back to Florida, he either thought he was going to be or he was led to believe that he may be one of the bookers or get a chance to book.

Do you remember anything about that?

In Memphis?

Well, see, that was when I was still a photographer.

So I would not have been sitting around in a locker room listening to people complain because I wasn't in there yet.

But

I can believe he was led to believe that

by somebody, not saying who, could have been one of several people, but I can't see it ever actually happening because

not because he couldn't or because you know he wouldn't do a good job, but because Jarrett he owned the company.

He was Lawler was not a 50% partner in 1981, but still he had a percentage of Memphis.

And if Lawler wasn't the booker,

Dundee was going to be.

Except, and

the one time they went outside the circle was Robert Fuller, and that didn't end well.

So

I don't know

unless Jim Barnett or Eddie Graham were telling Jerry Jarrett, oh, you've got to do this, I don't think he would have done it just because Kevin was not a homesteader.

And they tried to keep it in a circle.

And again, he returns to Florida, and this is really the.

And

let me make this point.

And then if Eddie Graham or Jim Barnett was telling Jerry Jarrett, you ought to do this, and he was thinking about it, then Lawler was figuring out a way to say, oh,

and maybe

Dundee would have been fine with what Little Man wanted to do.

But I think Lawler would be, wait a minute.

Well, he would return to Florida, and this is really where we would see his creativity come out for the first time.

At first, it's him and Jake Roberts, and then slowly they add people.

Everyone remembers Mark Lewin walking out of the water, the purple haze emerging from the sea.

But this is really kind of Kevin.

Kevin's creativity unleashed, both with Dusty there at the beginning in 83, and then after Dusty leaves Florida, the show kind of becomes all about Kevin Sullivan and his stable.

And by the way, that's where I researched bringing Leviathan up out of the Ohio River was the Purple Haze deal.

And Kevin, at that point,

I think Florida was a perfect territory for that because they were,

they weren't going to get heat with the TV station because Eddie Graham had such wonderful,

you know, goodwill and was involved in every civic organization in the goddamn state, right?

And always getting awards.

So they were pretty safe with the TV.

But also,

what made it,

I've talked to Kevin a couple of times about this also, was he had massive heat and his group had massive heat with.

much of the fan population, but there was that 10 or 15 percent in Florida of those weirdos

that started either not only coming to support him, bringing him snakes, traveling around to see him.

Remember

the

Kevin Sullivan fans van is the one that got burned in the parking lot that time.

Do you remember that story?

No.

They had

some group of, you know, several,

you know,

alternatively thinking individuals who were into whatever they thought Kevin's group was, right?

For Rio and the snakes and the fucking,

they were driving around following him at the town and they got so much heat with the other fans because they were trying to support Kevin Sullivan and his group that the other fans set fire to their goddamn devil van that these fans were driving around in in the parking lot of the wrestling matches.

And if they, because

everybody believed it either one way or another, right?

It was like 90 against, but 10 for, for, and that made it really fucking

intense for people.

And they could get away with doing wacky things because they believed that Kevin was off his fucking rocker.

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Authors are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

And Kevin took it really far.

At times, maybe even too far, but he took it really far.

But there were lengths he didn't want to go.

Didn't he get, I don't know if mad's the right word, but upset.

when the After Mags had a quote attributed to him that was made up, like, I am the devil, or I worship the devil.

Oh, yeah, yes.

See, that's the thing he never said satan

he never said the devil

it was it it it was it was non-denominational

devil worthip if you will it was just a a cult or a group or a band of wild weird wacky personalities and he'd let people's imagination take it into, well,

people would have sworn that he was slaughtering goats in praise of Satan and drinking blood in the moonlight he didn't do any of that shit never said devil never

now dusty

dusty would say that Kevin Sullivan you little devil shit like that but no he never said satan never said devil never mentioned God

but it was just it was what people

imagined it to be.

But the things he did talk about, you remember, Abudadin, the tree of woe.

These were the things we heard about i have taken the beetle nut him and mark lewin were taking some betel nuts on planes over to the fucking pacific rim they were always wearing steve ricard over there different shows

king king curtis is the purple haze the most successful wrestler named after a strain of weed

well either that or a hendrix song uh one or the other same thing and uh and and there's a little lsd involved in there also which is where king curtis came in handy.

But where were we going with this?

Now you've thrown me off.

And it's interesting, too, if you look at the people Kevin would end up not only surrounding himself with, but getting along with and being a liaison, maybe the last connection in some ways they have to the wrestling world.

Mark Lewin, King Curtis, the Chic.

It's interesting the people that he forged relationships with.

Kevin is the one who set up

or helped facilitate the chic to come back to Crockett for the summer of 88 Great American Bash in Detroit, that the most successful show Crockett ever ran there because Sheik was in the main event.

And

also, Kevin would facilitate, as we talked about, the international shit.

And that went back before the 90s and/or.

You know, Victor Quinones in Florida going to Japan with his group or

Steve Ricard doing something,

you know, in Singapore, or

the Polynesian pro wrestling bringing in guys from Japan, and then Kevin getting

on one Smoky Mountain Wrestling TV taping.

I had Miguel Perez Jr.,

Bill Damott, who at the time was Crash the Terminator.

Crash the Terminator.

What a cool thing.

Kanamura, the Japanese guy, bless his little pee piggot heart.

Yukiro Kanamura, later Wing Kanamura.

And

somebody, and Taz, and Taz, I think, was on that same taping.

And,

you know, he was always keeping track of

who and what was going on in wrestling outside of the big companies if he wasn't in a big company and was, you know, working on deals for everybody.

And side note, he's the one, Kevin.

God damn it.

I've told you this in person.

He was the one that told me, oh, this guy gigs his arm.

Like, what the fuck?

For those of you, and I will, I will now blame Kevin.

For those of you who know, you know, but for those of you who don't know.

Most gruesome match in American wrestling television history.

So Kevin

is a heel in Smokey Mountain Wrestling.

He has been the one.

Brian Lee, primetime Brian Lee, was the top babyface at the time.

Edward, yes, we were struggling, ladies and gentlemen.

But suddenly, these weirdos and these creeps and these monsters start attacking him from out of nowhere.

You had this big Mongolian guy, the Mongolian Mauler.

He just passed away not long ago.

Mr.

Peter R.

Miller.

One of the weirdest fucking people in a nice way, weirdest fucking people I ever met in a business of weird people.

Oh, goddamn.

The night we had him hide under the ring at the TV taping to fucking come out and goddamn attack Brian Lee, right?

As another emissary said by this mysterious force, he's under the ring when the people come in the door.

And it's on the second taping.

So he's got to be under there for like two hours, 15 minutes.

And in the first taping, it's Robert Fuller and Jimmy Gold in the stud stable.

And they're beating up whoever they're working with.

And it's getting wild.

And Jimmy Golden goes and he's going to look under the ring, see if he can pull out a chair.

And

he fucking flips the apron skirt back and he comes face to face with the Mongolian Mauler who he doesn't know is under the ring.

It scared the shit out of him.

Oh, he had those contact lenses too, remember?

Yes.

He had contact lenses that Mongolian did.

It made his fucking eyes all black and a goddamn giant fucking bulbous bald head with a fucking little thing of hair sticking out on top.

And Jimmy Golden was looking at him nose to nose when he was looking for a chair under the ring.

Oh, goddamn.

He's

and he throws the fucking flap back.

And anyway,

how did you signal him that it was time for him to do his thing?

Hildebrand,

I think, somehow bammed four times on the fucking mat or whatever, I believe.

You know, I mean, this is low budget.

But anyway, not Germain.

There had been Adam Bomb, Brian Clark, the Night Stalker.

He did something.

And

Kevin finally is revealed as the master, the secret fucking manipulator behind all of this band of weirdos when he came in the ring and he stabbed Brian Lee in the head with the golden spike

like fucking, I don't know, 25 times or whatever.

And Brian bled like you'd run him through a razor blade factory.

And we instituted

the goddamn red X up over the screen like they did in the 70s in the WWWF so that we wouldn't get kicked off television showing all this blood and it made it even oh my god

so now Kevin says Jimmy Jimmy I can't do the accent we can get the spike over

he's these guys from that Victor was booking in Japan Miguel and DeMott and also Kanamura with the wing promotion, I guess, or whatever they were doing over there.

Well, can they come and be on the American television And the Japanese photographers will be there.

Got a big spread on Smoky Mountain in the Japanese papers.

And he said, and can Amura who get to spike over?

He blades his arm.

And at the time,

you know, every once in a while, Dusty had done it and the sheikh had done it when the doctor told him he couldn't fucking cut his head anymore.

It wouldn't bleed.

He'd cut his head and fucking sand would come out.

So

I said, are you sure?

Yeah, okay.

Oh, yeah, he does it over there.

All right.

You know, there's no athletic commission in Tennessee.

I'm not going to get my promoter's license booted.

He'll get a little color from the arm, you know, like Dusty has done or the Sheikh's done or whatever.

And so they have the match.

And finally, Kevin pulls out the fucking golden spike and he fucking stabs him in the arm with it.

And I see the guy go down and he made a little swipe and then I didn't see anything.

And

then I see him doing something else.

I'm like, what the fuck?

I guess it just ain't going to work.

Right.

And then I see him do something else.

And then you see, Brian, you remember the foot, you remember Brian Hildebrand, Mark Curtis, when he walks over to look because now Kevin's trying to work on him with the spike and they're doing whatever they're doing.

And you don't see really any blood, but then all of a sudden Brian Hildebrand walks over and looks out and just gets that look on his face that Brian used to get when he was seeing something he shouldn't see.

And he just kind of turns around and walks off.

And he told me later on

it was the sickest thing.

This guy had cut down the side of his arm, the bicep level,

big enough it looked like you could lay his fucking fingers in,

but it wasn't bleeding.

And then all of a sudden, it started bleeding.

And I, so, anyway,

it, it, it, it still didn't.

Brian Lee, by drinking two beers and taking a couple of aspirins, bled more from a fucking inch and a half blade job to the head than this fucking guy did.

When he just about

dismembered or decapitated, what's the word, amputated his fucking arm.

Yeah, it was really gruesome, really disgusting.

And well, and I don't think Kevin assumed he was going to be doing that either, but whatever the guy did, he cut it somewhere where this expert at arm blading cut it where you wouldn't bleed anyway until you got down to the goddamn bone or whatever.

And let me put the period on the end of the goddamn story and

remember where you were going.

So we're back into back.

They're wrapping this guy's arm up.

They've called an ambulance.

They say, what the fuck is he going?

Why did he do that?

I don't know, Jimmy.

It worked before or whatever, but they take the guy.

Now, think about this.

We are, you know, where Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is, don't you?

I do.

Well, we are in Sevierville, which is legitimately the next.

Sevierville was actually a town when Pigeon Forge was just a wide spot in the road, but now Pigeon Forge is a tourist attraction.

This small fucking PO Dunk

town at the

high school gym,

and

I think the fire department took him to the goddamn hospital.

He's a Japanese guy still dressed in his wrestling outfit with what looks to be a severe fucking knife wound running down his goddamn arm.

Doesn't speak a lick of English.

And he comes in at 11 o'clock on a Monday night.

Everybody in fucking town heard about this fucking guy.

It didn't draw us a dime, but it was the goddamn biggest story in history in fucking Sevierville, Tennessee to ever happen on a Monday night, at least.

They had never seen anything like it.

But Kevin's run in Smokey Madden overall, I think, is pretty underrated.

It's one of the runs I enjoy.

It was the first and maybe the only time I ever enjoyed the Night Stalker.

Because remember, he had that match with Sid Vicious at the Clash of Champions.

Yes.

That everyone said at that point.

Things have been a lot worse since.

But people said that was the worst match ever.

And then he really didn't do much.

He had Ox Baker guiding his career.

And then he ended up there with Kevin.

The worst manager ever.

But when he ended up with Kevin, it worked.

Like, that was the perfect guy to stand behind Kevin.

But here was the thing.

I had booked Brian Clark Nightstalker independently of Kevin.

You know why?

Paul Orndorff.

He lived in Atlanta and he was driving Paul Orndorff.

And Paul said, would you do me a favor?

Because when he said, would you do me a favor and book this guy that's going to drive me?

I said, What's his name?

The Night Stalker.

I was like, Oh, Jesus Christ, because I'd seen the match, right, with Sid.

But he said, No, I'm working with him.

So Paul had been working with him a little bit.

And then

once that Kevin saw him, he said, He's perfect because the Night Stalker, right?

Why wouldn't he be perfect for Kevin Sullivan?

And that's what Kevin was able to take him.

And

as part of that,

the angle that Kevin was doing, where he led the group, which then we tailored down to the Night Stalker for budget reasons.

But the group, and he was a heel, and he was involved in things without the pressure of being a single main event guy as green as he was being on Brian Clark.

You know, the other thing I think about with Smokey Mountain is I didn't get to go to the first fan week in 93.

I went in 94 and 95.

But Scott Cornish, the late Scott Cornish, the noted wrestling humorist, always talked about the the biggest like welcome to Smoky Mountain moment for those fans in 93 was that first show, Kevin Sullivan versus the Mongolian Stomper.

I want to say it was Morristown, maybe.

And they wrestled in and out of the building.

And again, the Mongolian Stomper hadn't really been doing much.

So it was just this wild brawl.

And now we're all used to them.

They're everywhere.

But not everyone was doing that then.

Kevin was one of the pioneers, I hate to say it in some ways, of that brawl around the building, but it worked and again it was one of those memorable matches that people still talked about yeah and and he took it because they were doing it in japan

brody and and those guys were doing it in japan and

it was easier to get away with because the japanese people wouldn't sue you right

but like you said it people weren't seeing that every match, every show on a regular basis.

And I let the people do it that I could trust.

And you trust Kevin, not going to get in trouble, not going to fucking be reckless with some gimmick and decapitate some kid.

But also, Kevin understood from his previous run in Knoxville in 78 who the stomper was.

So

he was a big star that would come in and work at that time with Archie, who had

the Mongolian stomper had respect amongst a certain era of the boys because, well, Bret Hart said the greatest heel in the history of Stampede Wrestling.

And

I think he may have said the greatest heel in the history of Canada wrestling.

Well, the history of, and it probably still will, Joe LaDuke might want a word, but, well, no, LaDuke was a babyface up there.

So, nevertheless, but also with Archie in Knoxville, because Kevin had been there in 78, he was the hottest heel.

in the history of that town.

And Archie had been retired for like five years at that point.

He was working for the Sheriff's Department, but he still kept, he rode his bicycle.

What was he?

56, maybe when he started working for me, he rode his bicycle every day to work at the sheriff's department, seven miles each way.

And he looked fucking great.

So

he became

our go-to babyface monster.

They weren't going to boo him anymore.

He wasn't in the business of getting heat full-time anymore, but he was such a name there that if

you brought him in and made him the monster, he didn't have to speak.

He was the goddamn

equalizer or a special tag partner, whatever the case, the people loved it.

And Kevin knew how to work with him.

So,

and you set the tone from the start.

As soon as the people heard, I played the theme from Halloween for him.

Dean, doon, do, dean, doon, doon, dean, doo.

And here comes fucking Archie.

He hits the ring they fight they go everywhere in and out whatever the it's crazy

so the boot comes into play something happens and whether it's a dq or the heel gets beat you don't beat the stomper

and it worked for three years a couple times a year like rough fouls fargo we could bring archie back and but it started with kevin too because remember at the yeah christmas chaos 92 i think when brian lee was hurt someone had to come and defend I guess Brian Lee it was my mom stopper the the honor of him what honor you say no but but yeah and and then oh one of the greatest ones we did was after

I think he had Archie had worked probably with Kevin in Johnson City at Freedom Hall and we're doing a backstage interview

with somebody else, right, in the locker room.

The announcer is standing there and he's interviewing whoever this is.

And all of a sudden you hear bam, boom from the next room.

And then a door flies open and somebody, I think it might have been Brian Hildebrand, Mark Curtis, runs out and says, he's loose.

He's loose.

Run.

And then somebody else flies out of the room.

And then there comes the fucking stomper around the corner with his boot in his hand.

And he charges down the hall and people are screaming, get out of the way.

And he goes across and he

knocks down the heel door and fucking gets on Kevin.

And you see the boot flying and everything.

People love shit like that.

We treated him like the Frankenstein monster and Kevin was the perfect opponent for him because he knew how to fucking heal him down or use an object to get an advantage or, you know, not when to not beat up the monster.

Because to a lot of guys that had names at that point, Archie would have looked like a

well-conditioned man in his 60s and probably not given him the deference that he deserved.

Where were we going with that?

We were just talking about Kevin and Smoky Mountain and the various places Kevin was and ended up and the people he worked with.

Well, and going back also,

one thing, the Triple Tower of Doom, do you remember that?

Yeah, unfortunately, 88.

Bad.

88.

But here's the thing.

And the whole thing leading up to that and the execution of that and the story behind that.

Kevin sat down with me on Crockett's plane one night before that whole thing unfolded and explained it to me.

And I thought it was the greatest goddamn thing I'd ever heard of in the history of wrestling.

The problem became in actual

execution.

Other people had to do it and you had to see it and you had to put it on television.

And you needed Kevin Sullivan talking to you for an hour and a half.

And then it would have been the greatest thing you'd ever seen.

As long as you didn't see it, you just heard Kevin tell you about it.

He could make even those ideas.

It was very intricate, as I recall.

It's so much so that I can't remember what any of the details were, but I was fucking captivated.

As a fan, you were captivated until you saw it.

And And then you're like, this, this is not good.

I hope they never bring it back.

And then they brought it back for Hogan, remember?

Well, but if you got to bring something stinky back, bring it back for Hulk.

They brought it back so Hogan could beat like nine heels in one night or whatever it was,

including the returning Zeus and Jeep Swenson.

Yeah, there's a...

There's a couple of names out of the distant past.

But yeah, well, and that was Kevin having to work, unfortunately, with, you know, the largest ego in the business, but he was trying to

make things happen.

He made it work, though.

I mean, he, again, he kind of always put it so that he had to, or the way he saw it was he had to gain Hogan's trust as a booker.

Yeah.

And he did it.

Unfortunately, he had to do a lot of stuff that catered more to Hogan than.

the fans at different times.

But at the end of the day, you know, we said it the other day when who killed WCW?

If you look at who built WCW,

Kevin's responsible

for a lot of the good things that happened, and he has almost no responsibility for the fall of WCW.

Yeah.

He's certainly one of the heroes of the WCW story.

And as we mentioned also when we talked about the first time

they killed WCW,

Kevin was

not only part of, but pretty much the experienced,

steady hand in the room behind the only successful period that they had from 1988 to fucking 1996.

And that was

when Flair was Booker, but Kevin was the, you know, the only guy that had ever done that before.

And then, yes, and there was Jim Hurd was on the committee.

And Jim Barnett, who,

as we've talked about, was not there to contribute ideas on paper for matches or finishes.

Jody Hamilton, who was snoring quite a bit and not given a lot of responsibility.

Jim Ross, who was the beleaguered announcer who had to call whatever fucking came up.

Myself, who had been booking for a grand total of one day the first day that I was on the fucking job.

So, you know, Kevin structured the fucking thing just by lack of, you know, guidance elsewhere.

What was the quote that was always attributed to him when Heard wanted to cut Flair's hair or something?

And he said, Would you change Mickey Mantle's number?

No, I think it was Babe Ruth.

Babe Ruth?

I think it changed Babe Ruth's number.

You know,

that's the whole thing.

He had to suffer through the Spartacus and

Jim Heard, the ding-dongs, and the hunchback.

He was there for the hunchbacks.

Kevin was in the room

for the hunchback pitch and an oldie shutdown.

Everybody's heard that story.

Am I repeating myself?

It's been a while and there are a lot of fans who may not know the legacy of Jim Hurd's creative ideas.

Well, the ding-dongs were such a major success.

Ding-dong.

That Heard pitched the idea of the hunchbacks.

They were a tag team of hunchbacks, and the idea was that they were unbeatable because you couldn't pin them since they were hunchbacks.

You couldn't get both shoulders on the goddamn mat at the same time.

And he pitched this in front of me and Ric Flair and Kevin Sullivan and Jim Ross.

And Ole Anderson was in the room at that point in time and a few others.

And

we all suffered through it.

And then Ole being the fucking one that you would think he would.

be the one said, all right, Jim, then book me and Arn against the fucking hunchbacks and i'll slap a fucking submission hold on them and make him give up and beat him in 30 seconds

well god damn it only you know what i'm talking about

you know it's interesting too in between wcw

because he was there i want to say he left by 91 and then he returned in 94.

in that period in between

you know he had to make a living He worked in these like everyone does.

And he did some overseas tours and he did various various things.

But,

you know, he stayed relevant with the relevant things happening on what was then the independent scene, whether it was Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

I don't know if you consider yourself an independent, but, or ECW.

After Eddie Gilbert left,

one of the first people Paul Lee brought in was Kevin Sullivan.

I don't think him and Eddie Gilbert may have coexisted well together at that point.

After Eddie was gone, one of the many changes came out.

Eddie would have shit himself if Kevin had come in because, you know, Eddie was about being the booker and Kevin had been a booker, whereas Paul was about being a booker with smart people to help him be a booker.

And Kevin Sullivan was teaming up with Taz.

And that was one of the first things that really elevated Taz from just being the guy that you used to see on ICW-TV or IW-CCW

against Ray Odyssey or Tommy Dreamer.

to seeing him as being an emerging talent.

The Tazmaniac.

Yeah, well, the Tasmaniac.

A lot of that's Paul E, the way he used them, but a lot of that was the credibility of Kevin Sullivan teaming with him.

Well, and that's the thing is that

Kevin got Taz down for the volunteer slam that year.

We did the Rage in the Cage.

That's why Taz was in it.

Now that I think of it, it was Kevin had got Taz because I needed an extra fucking heel.

That's why he was working Knoxville.

That's why he was working ECW.

As you said, he also did the international dates.

And he was still living in Florida, but he was trying to make sure that he knew what was going on and had a, you know, had spots in various places.

And,

you know, as you said, stayed because there was no such thing as independent wrestling and internet publicity at that time.

time in those days.

It was all the magazines and

regional television can add up if it's seen in the right places.

And as long as he's got his finger in four or five different things going on, he's always got something going on.

Because Kevin was smart to how the business worked.

And when he saw most of the territories going away, he knew he just needed to expand and concentrate.

And you and Paulie both knew that you would be willing to accept promos from him on the beach.

Yes.

But no, but that's the thing.

Well, like I said when we were talking last month about him, he would do, he would go above and beyond instead of standing in front of a brick wall.

You know, he would find a place that looked good.

He did one of the promos that he sent in, was he was reenacting the fucking bar scene with the bartender from The Shining.

And you got the extra, you know, bonus of Nancy's arm or hand reaching into the...

scene every once in a while to hand him a drink or to be an off-camera, you know, fucking personality of some kind.

And he would put everything into it.

It wouldn't be like, just damn coming.

You know, he would think about it.

And we'd talk on the phone about what, you know, what you want to do in the finish.

What can we come back with?

You know, I wasn't just booking him for dates.

It was, okay, here's what we'll do.

And here's who you're working with and blah, blah, blah.

And he always obviously had great ideas on what to do with it.

Was it Smokey Man or ECW?

There was one promo I remember he did on the beach where he starts like at a distance and he doesn't say anything.

And it starts with him just walking fast right towards the camera.

And it was intimidating.

It was like, oh my God, what's he going to do?

But he would return to WCW as a babyface, team with Cactus Jack against the Nasty Boys, a memorable match in Philadelphia at Slamboree.

And then, of course, and I guess we should send our sympathies to his brother, Dave.

Evad Sullivan.

Oh, good lord.

Remember, they brought him and they gave him a goofy brother.

That was

Kevin Sullivan back to WCW.

Yes, and he was dyslexic, so his name wasn't Dave.

It was Evad.

And he was a hulkomaniac.

What was his name?

He was a fairly nice guy.

I think I met him a time or two.

He had been wrestling as the equalizer.

I can't remember his real name.

It has to be Dave something, because why else would you just assert Dave there?

Where is his name?

Dave Sullivan.

I can't, well, that's a fine Irish name now, goddamn it.

But yeah,

see, even the great ones are sometimes saddled with questionable creative.

But,

you know, everybody just thought, well, if it's weird, Kevin can make it work, because he usually does.

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You know, I guess we should talk a little bit about everything in WCW with him and

Nancy and Chris Benoit and everything afterwards.

I've always had a problem with people who,

you know, it cost Kevin a lot of his good name.

Yeah.

Because a lot of people, first people who were friends with Chris Benoit, who had become friends with Nancy,

just were insistent that Kevin was this awful, awful guy.

I think it was revealed when we had him on the show four years ago

that Nancy had been arrested for abuse on Kevin, not the other way around.

And

oh, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say, and by the way, what we're referencing, folks,

four years ago, a Dark Side of the Ring episode aired on

the

Benoit and Nancy

Benoit

tragedy.

And Kevin was not on the program.

And so therefore, even though

You know, other people may have tried to a bit, his story, his side was not represented well in the episode.

And

we had

Brian and I had him on the show here, which you can find it on the YouTube channel.

Official Jim Cornette is what I'm talking about.

I'm not trying to be commercial, but everybody should hear that because he was not on the show because he turned down the request to be on the show because of promise he had made to Nancy's parents.

Yeah, he was waiting for permission from them.

He said that was the only thing that would hold him up from talking about it.

He wanted her parents to give him permission.

Darkseid put up,

you know, some texts on the screen saying that he declined to be interviewed, but that was kind of not the whole story.

And we had Kevin on to tell the story.

And

to be honest, Nancy's sister, not a fan of Kevin's,

which has colored some

viewpoints on the situation, but I Nancy was a handful.

And everybody has issues with their personal lives.

But what really

just

disgusted me

was these stupid people because the people, oh, Kevin Sullivan had something to do with it.

It wasn't Chris Ben, that whole bunch of bullshit.

You'd have to be a complete fucking imbecile on the verge of being locked up for your own safety rather than being out in public to believe that Kevin had something to do with any of their deaths.

So what it amounted to was a bunch of fucking assholes acting like assholes, trying to be assholes,

and malign and slander somebody that was more successful than they would ever be at anything.

And that's what makes me mad because it's not like

a great amount of people believed it.

You couldn't.

It's fucking stupid.

But a great amount of people would say it because they thought that that made them special in some way.

Yeah, and Kevin took a lot of hits and he was quiet.

He didn't say anything.

And he took a lot of hits.

And as time has gone by and different things have come out, I think you could say Kevin was really treated horribly by a lot of people.

And that Chris Benoit was always the bad guy.

You know, he was abusive, not just at the end, but he was abusive.

He was hooked on drugs, loaded to the tits on steroids.

And it was easy for everyone to point the finger at Kevin as being the problem.

But Kevin, you know, like I said, he took a lot of hits.

Triple H had very nice words to say about him in that tribute video on SmackDown, and they did a very nice job with that.

Next time you're going to use any of my images, ask for permission.

But.

You know, it's like he said all these nice things.

What a great mind he was.

And he was.

You know, we were talking to him in recent years.

He was.

Why not give him a job at some point?

You know, why not bring him in and use that mind?

And Kevin, there are a lot of very small independent promotions and some medium-sized ones that benefited over the last 15, 20 years from Kevin's availability and his ability to go someplace and treat something seriously.

And even if it's for one night, if he was going to be booking or helping with creative ideas, he took it very seriously.

He was still trying to help wrestlers and promoters.

You know what?

Here's the,

well, I would say sad thing.

I mean, my God, you know, he's been retired for a while now.

But if this was, if the Triple H regime, the Paul Levesque regime,

the Vince's absence, if that had happened 15 years ago,

you may very well have seen that because

I think this was another example of Vince's, he's a wrestling guy,

or you know,

you know, he doesn't understand what we do, something like that.

It is always been the problem with getting certain people that Vince didn't grow up with, grow up around,

didn't serve him well for long periods of time, didn't work in his specific company.

Success outside, as

he was very lackadaisical in recognizing.

And it wasn't like Kevin Dunn was going, oh, you know, we ought to get this

Kevin Sullivan in here.

He was, you know, he's a wrestling guy, Vince, whatever.

I think if now was 15 years ago and

Triple H was in charge, I have a feeling that Kevin would have been being consulted on a variety of things.

Yeah, I mean, so many of the people who were involved with the failures of WCW, including the death death of it,

all were able to maintain employment in wrestling, whether it's in WWE or TNA.

But Kevin, again, booker for the most successful periods,

never got that chance.

And a lot of it was because,

you know, the Benoits and that crew putting the mouth on him.

They made him the bad guy, not just to...

you know, not to the promotion necessarily, but to fans.

Once you heard that all these guys hated Kevin Sullivan, it made a lot of fans hate Kevin Sullivan.

I think a lot of people for a very long time looked unfairly at Kevin, who, you know, again, from my experience, the nicest possible guy and so giving with his time and his information and his knowledge.

And I think his reputation, I think he's getting it back a lot now,

but for years, it took a really unfair hit.

Well, and also think about this:

were they going to pick Kevin up

in in the WWE

when Benoit and his guys had just gone there before WCW goes out of business?

That was not an opportune time.

But,

you know, that is, as you said, not only with the fans, but also with some of the boys.

I can see where these guys would have gone.

And if he hadn't worked with Kevin, oh, this fucking guy.

Yeah, I mean, you can't say, like he put, the famous story is, you know, they didn't want to work with him.

He put the belt on Benoit.

And then Benoit left.

But you can't say Kevin wasn't a guy who put over or helped young wrestlers.

He always did.

Always.

He helped make careers.

Would Rick Steiner have become Rick Steiner without Kevin Sullivan?

Would Mike Rotunda have ever been watchable

without Kevin Sullivan?

Mick Foley, would he have ever gotten a chance on national TV?

I actually have a promo here a bunch of people have sent.

Maybe I'll play you audio in a moment.

Without Kevin Sullivan,

the list goes on and on.

And when you look at WCW, again, he was the booker.

If there was a time where you enjoyed Nitro, 96, 97,

he was the booker.

So if there's stuff you enjoyed, make sure you give him some credit for it.

And I'll tell you one thing, though.

We talk about getting people booked and spots and, you know, working with promoters and everything.

This was about, goddamn, seven or eight years ago.

Kevin, I'm talking to him on the phone.

He says, Jimmy,

there's this guy, and I'm not going to call the guy's name, but there's this guy in West Virginia.

He runs shows.

He's great.

He's got the money.

The shows are great.

The whole thing.

He'd love to talk to you.

Well, Kevin, if you say he's okay, all right.

You know, it's not that far down the road for me from West Virginia.

So I call a guy.

I get booked on his show.

He's okay.

It's at such and such gym in, god damn it was it

may have been parkersburg west virginia i can't remember now

parkersburg clarksburg somewhere in that area but yeah there's a big festival in town there's gonna be thousands of people in town

and we're gonna have this big wrestling show and the rock and roll express are gonna be there and warlords are gonna be the barbarian's gonna be there and Some other people.

Okay, goddamn.

All right, I'll do it.

And it's in the middle of the summer, Brian.

And when I get there,

they had not lied.

They were exactly right.

There was a big festival in town.

There were thousands of people in town.

Guess where the wrestling show was?

Where?

Not in fucking town.

Where was it?

It was down the road from it was like five.

I said, where is this goddamn festival?

Because I show up at the building.

There's an empty, it's like in a residential neighborhood.

There's an empty goddamn parking lot for about a hundred cars and and there's two in it mine being one of them and a trailer pulled up to this building i said

where's the festival oh it's in town where's that about five miles down this road you go and you'll get right into god damn it

so it was like

Yes, there was a festival there, but you couldn't see the goddamn wrestling from the festival.

And

get in this building.

It's 90 something degrees.

And by the way, Kevin is not there.

Kevin's not booked on this show.

Kevin,

the jolly joker that he is, he said, oh yeah, the guy's, he, I got my money, but oh yeah, the guy runs great shows.

And he's off home in fucking whether I think he'd moved to Washington by then.

But nevertheless, I get in this building.

If it's 97 degrees in the parking lot, it's 127

in this building because there's absolutely no air conditioning whatsoever.

And it's one of the old gyms where the only windows are right up at the bottom, the top of the general admission seats, right?

And they can just open them like a foot.

And that's supposed to cause some kind of,

it looks like a fucking basketball gym from Hoosiers, right, in the 50s.

And then I go to the locker rooms, and they're even hotter.

And then I see them

carton out this giant fan,

and it's about five feet across.

And they go to the concession stand, and they get a bucket of ice, and they put a bucket of ice in front of this big fan

and let it blow into the building.

And I go and goddamn get a fucking chair and sit right in front of it.

If you are less than 18 inches from this thing, it's actually comfortable.

But more than that, and you're like at a sauna.

And then, as soon as I had to take a piss and I get up out of my seat, the goddamn rock and roll comes in and sits there.

So I have to goddamn cafe.

But anyway, I then go downstairs because

I feel cool air coming from the basement, the stairs down to the basement.

And if you walk down there, it was 20 degrees cooler because it was a natural fucking limestone cave with water dripping and the smell of mildew would make your eyes water.

So after the show, when I got home, I called Kevin.

I said, Kevin, don't recommend any promoters to me anymore.

I can't take it.

My allergies won't put up with it.

I just got sidetracked telling that story, didn't I?

No, but it's good.

I mean, these are the kind of stories we want to get on here.

Not just the ones people know, but.

Not just the ones people want to hear, but the ones they need to hear.

Let me play you some audio because I'd like to get your your impression.

Because this is a period of time where I think you were still on the booking committee, and it's maybe the longest bleep in terms of wrestling ever on TBS.

Kevin Sullivan with Buzz Sawyer and Cactus Jack.

Let me go to this.

Kevin, this guy's got to have a little help.

He got a lot of help.

He's got me.

Let me tell you something.

It ain't the dog's fault.

When his mother was carrying him and she's walking through the desert because she was a no man,

she couldn't hold it any longer.

She stopped

and left him there to die.

Well,

the dog didn't die.

By the way, while this is happening, he has Buzz Sawyer who's on the ground, a chain around his neck, and Kevin's just holding it there while he's choking himself, Buzz Sawyer.

Yes, mad dog Buzz Sawyer, big log and chain around his neck.

Cactus Jack, who's from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and obviously deranged, and in Kevin Sullivan talking about JYD's mother, who was a Nubian.

And as I remember it from the taping, there was something about squatting down and fucking delivering the

infant right there where.

You can read his lips something about squatting and the cord.

And Mick Foley.

Cactus Jack is.

Oh, that's right.

And she chewed the cord.

And Mick Foley's the most normal person involved in this whole thing, but let's go back this.

Because

from the fetal position, he crawled the heart-burning sands.

It's me.

He crawled the heart-burning sands.

It's me.

It's me.

Got

me.

He crawled the heart-burning sands.

And when he was burning up and withering,

the she-wolf came.

The bad dog looked up and he was given the breath of life.

It's not the dog's fault.

He's just a part of the environment.

He'll be okay.

You see?

Because the dog has me.

The dog finally, it's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

The dog has me.

The dog.

Has finally found peace in his life.

You see, all he is is misunderstood.

We'll be back right after this.

And did I say J-Y-D?

I said mad dog.

Whatever the fuck.

But yes, and it also, what that one was,

didn't the she-wolf

kiss the

dogs and give him the breath of the.

I don't know what the

second bleak was.

But he's smacking Buzz Sawyer as as hard as he can write in a funny yeah that's what he kept when he kept stopping that one sentence he's just slapping the shit out of his because buzz loved that kind of shit anyway yeah hit me

and he's slapping the shit out of him like he's you know training a goddamn wild horse

what do you think of him and dusty together you got to see them behind the scenes so what do you think of their feud and their long-running thing in florida and then of course for crockett but Behind the scenes, what was their relationship like?

Well, they worked great together because they had known each other so long.

And they'd been, by the time that I was together with them, they had been,

you know, they'd drawn so much money with each other and been such great opponents.

And that whole thing ran for two years in Florida till

Dusty came to the Carolinas.

And

then Kevin, as you said earlier, took over the book down there when Dusty got the book for Crockett.

But that's it.

You know, Kevin,

as a performer, he knew

what he needed to do.

And he was also with the guys in his group.

He wanted to flesh that out.

He wasn't going to overstep his bounds.

But if Dusty came to him, Dusty knew that Kevin can either give good ideas or help flesh it out or understand what he's, what Dusty is looking for because.

They've worked together for so long.

So

that's the thing is that, you know, Dusty loved having Kevin working there on the card because he didn't have to fucking micromanage him.

He could just give him shit and let him run with it.

And he could make something out of it.

Kevin and J.J.

JJ Dylan got along really great, too.

Well, yes.

And

same thing.

They'd both been in the business for a

long period of time in a variety of roles and were not assholes or power mad, you know, social climbers and understood how to do their thing.

And it it was easy to work with both of them.

What's the secret to the stomp that Kevin used to do where he would stomp on the guy's belly?

Well, I don't, I say the same thing with Finn Balor.

I've had people say, oh, no, they say you don't feel it.

I don't know how.

With Kevin,

there wasn't as much of a secret as much as at least he wasn't getting that much height.

He wasn't getting that much air.

He made it work, though.

You know what?

And again, his earliest wrestling photos, they said probably to help him that he was 5'11.

I think legitimately he was 5'7.

And

he made his size work with the style he worked in the ring.

Yes, as a babyface, you know, he was powerful because, like I said, in the

younger years, he was a powerlifter, stocky body type and had a lot of weight and a lot of strength.

People could see it,

even though he was vertically challenged.

But then, as a heel, because he was

constant motion and he was aggressive, and he had that level of crazy by that point.

And, you know, he, that's why he was close with the sheik, because he was a big, he understood what the sheik did to be special and unique.

And

that, you know, that kind of thing works when you're a heel and you're crazy.

And he, but he could make it work with the sense of danger and urgency instead of just the

walk fighting around.

So even though he, again, wasn't that tall, he was always at

in Memphis when he had been doing the bodybuilding.

He wasn't that tall, but he was goddamn shredded.

And it actually made him look taller.

And then in the other eras, he wasn't that tall.

but he was 250 fucking pounds or whatever.

And you could tell that he had some oomph to him.

And the, like you said, the style he worked

as a younger babyface, he could still sell.

He could still bleed, make a comeback or whatever.

But as a heel,

he really fell into that pattern of just trying to be dangerous instead of going for arm drags.

But then,

and as you said earlier, though, you didn't see the goddamn fight in the arena four matches out of seven.

Right.

It was unique.

He was one of the few guys that you knew you would get a wild match out of.

And also, and when Smokey Mountain, the next year, I think it was, it was at

it was the next year after the stomper, he had the fucking arena fight with the big boss man, Bubba.

Came back and did it one year later.

I've got pictures of them up in the balcony.

I think that was

whenever the fuck.

I think that was 93.

No, that was 93 because it was the same week.

He just did it with Stomper in fucking one town and Bubba in the other town.

But nevertheless, where was I going with that?

The wild matches and that you didn't see them all over the card back then.

Oh, you didn't see them all over the card back then.

And also,

the fact that Kevin could make you believe that there was something

going on with him mentally and that he was way too

into this to just be playing a part.

So there was some element of legitimacy to it.

That helped him do things that it would be bullshit if other people did them because you could see through them.

And he could go farther over that.

We talked about Stone Cold Steve Austin stomping a mud hole in somebody, but he was over like God, so he could not even connect and the people didn't care.

They didn't see it.

They overlooked it.

Didn't compute.

Kevin in Florida had that reputation to point where one of the,

and now some asshole on an outlaw show is going to do this it's going to fall like a fart in church but the thing that Kevin did with blackjack mulligan and the people believed in blackjack too all the the rednecks and the country people down in Florida the you know the redneck Riviera over there in Pensacola whatever

they were at the Orlando Eddie Graham Sports Stadium which was a big tin building.

It seated like 5,000 people out in the middle of a fucking field.

And they made a fortune for years

and Kevin and Blackjack they have double DQ they spill out of the fucking ring

they fight out the back door out into the parking lot and and off into the darkness they didn't even have fucking lights out there they just they're they're gone the people are running where the fuck they go

and then the next goddamn week on the same night, they have wrestling once a week.

They ring the bell for the first match.

The first match gets going.

They've been going about five minutes and suddenly through the front door of the arena,

wearing the same shit that they had been wearing the week before and still bleeding, bust Kevin Sullivan and Black Jack Bulligan.

And they fight into the fucking ran and the place goes out of their fucking minds.

They didn't stop to think, how could this be?

They just, oh my God,

that's the kind of shit he could get away with.

That was one of the great spots I've ever heard of of all time.

You know, I got to talk a lot of baseball with him.

That was one of his big loves: baseball.

When the 86 Mets beat the Red Sox in a World Series, he was working in Continental.

He had to watch it backstage, he said.

A heartbreaking loss for him.

But a few years ago, I'm looking at some of the text messages here.

I wished him a happy birthday in October.

And he wrote back, Fuck LA and Mookie.

Although he's going to be a Hall of Famer, he better go in as a Red Sox.

So loved his baseball.

Did you see Fenway Park put him up on the screen, the scoreboard?

That would have meant the world to him.

That would have meant the world to him.

And

yeah, again, from my experience, and I met him when I was a kid, and that was an intimidating thing, even though it wasn't really supposed to be.

It was just an autograph signing.

But that accent, you know, nothing he could say when you're a kid sounded nice.

I was wearing a Knicks shirt.

He's like,

How do you think the Knicks are going to do?

I'm like,

I think they're going to win.

Who do you think is going to win?

No, it's going to be Chicago.

Whatever.

He yelled it at me.

But, you know, getting to know him the last several years, he was such a nice guy.

Like I said, always very giving with his time.

He recorded a ton of segments with me.

And

he always just gave me unsolicited feedback, which from Kevin Sullivan, I liked.

I like when top minds give me feedback as opposed to, you know, jerk-offs.

Yeah, the unsolicited part is sometimes the rub, but with Kevin, you didn't mind.

But with Kevin, I appreciated where it was coming from.

So from my personal experience, just a tremendous guy, a really nice guy.

And I wish he was still here.

A really, really nice guy.

Well, everybody,

everybody heard what I had to say about how he helped me

in WCW, not only my first booking spot, but in Smoky Mountain and trying to help because he knew what I was going through and

what I owed to him for that.

I'm not going to go through it again because then I'd just be repeating myself and

rambling.

But

a lot of people will remember him for a lot of good things.

And

who else can you think of?

54 years after they started in the business, their

passing makes the kind of news his did, not only in a mainstream level, but also amongst the fans and the boys.

Made the New York Times.

Made the New York Times and the scoreboard in Fenway Park.

And,

you know, for that long, I mean, he was literally

still working in the business as far as autographs and et cetera, and had wrestled up until just a few years ago on an intermittent basis.

So

I don't know.

A lot of people,

whatever era it may be, a lot of people have never come close to that level of involvement or longevity in this business.

And I think we should all be

proud of him for that.

Absolutely.

And of course, if you're a listener who wants to hear Kevin in his own words, go back through the archives.

We've had many appearances with Kevin, of course, here with Jim.

on the 605 Super Podcast, telling his own story in his own words.

But Jim, with that, let's take a short time out.

We'll be right back after this.

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All right, we are back folks and this is your show.

I don't know why.

Yes, I don't know why you welcome the folks back when it's my program.

And I was going to say that welcome back.

Maybe they're not all welcome.

Maybe some of them didn't come back after that musical interlude.

This program brought to you in part by the International Ballpark Organists Association,

the

Abua.

We got to do a couple of things here on the program now of an entertaining fashion.

But first,

a correction.

Oh.

A correction.

Not us.

Somebody else.

Somebody else has said something incorrect, and we're going to correct them.

Can we do that now?

Sure.

I don't know exactly what this is, but let's see where this goes.

Well, Uncle Dave.

Uncle Dave proved he may be a small-town bird journalist, but he is not an orthopedic surgeon.

Because this was brought to my attention, and I looked it up, and sure enough, there it was in this

recent Wrestling Observer newsletter that he printed

recapping SummerSlam.

He said some people were upset because for those who watch Great for Great Matches, it really didn't deliver that.

No, it just delivered boatloads of fucking money and sold tens of thousands of tickets.

But

he was talking about, well, some of the matches, because they didn't really deliver with the matches.

Well, some of that, and this is a quote,

some of that

may be related to talent, not at 100%.

Rhea Ripley was kept from any significant physical activity in angles leading up to the match, and the match was built around her selling her shoulder, which still had a noticeable bump and clearly wasn't healed.

Brian, I'm sorry I'd like to be the one to tell Uncle Dave that once you separate your shoulder,

that bump doesn't go away.

It can be as healed as it's ever going to be.

Depending on the person, sometimes it's more pronounced, sometimes it's less pronounced.

but the bump exists for the rest of your fucking life.

And I'm sorry, I know that Rhea's a star and it was an important match, but do you think that even for SummerSlam

that they would let this woman that they have got a fortune invested in

if she wasn't meditated?

That's what the meaning of medically cleared is.

They used to, it was like, hey, Brett, can you go after surgery?

Sure, Vince, I'll be there.

But now they have medical protocols and you have to

pass certain parameters of range of motion or strength, gripping, or depending on what the energy injury is.

You've got to goddamn go through some shit to show them.

that you're ready to get back in the ring.

Is it as good

as it's ever going to get?

Probably not, maybe not.

But it's not like she's not healed at all and there's still some major visible damage.

That's not what

the shoulder separation bump is all about.

It doesn't go away when you get healed.

It's yours.

You can keep it.

You would think he would know that, being

Mr.

bodybuilding and all that stuff all his life.

He looks like he's lifted the whole fucking planet.

Well, I don't know about that.

And he does like lifting weights.

He looks like he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Well, maybe he hasn't had any sports-related injuries due to that.

I thought you were going to say he looks so miserable because he hasn't had any, but you thought that's what I was going to say.

Well, it was leading in that direction, and then you took a turn on me.

But anyway, just

I mean, it's just again

because his friend's company is struggling at every metric and every parameter,

and the opposition that he was rooting against all this time

is now

leaving everybody in the fucking dust and drawing billions and billions of dollars.

He's like, well, yeah, disappointed people who were looking for great matches.

Well, apparently there's more people who are looking for fucking logical, sensible shit performed by stars than his version of great matches.

So he's got to fucking take this apart now.

I just get cranky.

No, and you should probably break that down more.

What is a great match?

You know, Dave's star rating system is based on what Dave thinks.

He could now say that sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.

And I think the star limit is infinity, he said.

So that means, you know, seven and a half stars really ain't that impressive when you think about it.

To infinity and beyond and a half.

But those are his sensibilities.

Those are what he thinks are great matches.

When you and Norman Dooley were doing it, it was what you guys thought were great matches.

What smart fans today or work rate driven fans think are great matches may be different than the people sitting in the building because

the average person who's not keeping up with all of this, with this, with all of this,

do you think they're sitting there going, yeah, this match just isn't that good?

Or did they go, oh, that was great.

Did you see what happened?

That was great.

So I think you have to really separate and with AEW's

issues beyond even Tony's booking with just the fan base they're catering to and the exposure of just how small and smaller it gets, but how small it is.

You know, you really have to think about what is a great match.

And

I'm not saying Live versus Rhea was the greatest thing ever, but to the fans that are, I mean, that's always the thing we say, like, yeah, you know, this, this about a WWE thing, but the fans are eating it up.

And that is kind of what matters.

And it goes back to that whole Hogan versus Andre debate.

Was there a long bear hug?

Yeah.

Could Andre do nothing?

Oh, almost nothing.

Almost nothing.

But the fans there were going nuts.

They loved it.

So what's a great match?

It's all in the eye of the observer, I guess.

Well, but

there are different kinds of great matches for different people, but the problem that I have with

what they think are great matches, maybe it's the same thing as if you're drunk in a bar and the fucking local band playing on stage,

you know a couple of people in the band and your friends are all there and you're having a great time.

And boy, that fucking guy, he can sing.

He ought to be on goddamn television.

He'd win a goddamn Grammy.

But if a professional singer that had won a Grammy and was talented and experienced in that genre of entertainment was in that crowd, he'd think, what the fuck with this drunk fuck who's missing half the goddamn notes.

And what I see, unfortunately,

is Uncle Dave and the people of his ilk overlook all the sloppiness, overlook all the amateurishness, overlook all the nonsensibility.

They want to see people flipping and flying and hitting and crashing and breaking furniture and doing the same shit everybody else does.

And if they get 10 big holy shit spots

in the goddamn course of the match, they will call it a great match despite the fact that half of the thing looked phony as a football bat because they weren't really hitting each other and nobody knows how to grab a goddamn hold.

So,

I don't know

how you can call something great when they haven't mastered

the primary

qualification of a pro wrestler is that you're simulating combat, make it look good.

They make it look like shit, and it's obviously phony, and people laugh at it.

And then they start breaking furniture over each other's heads, and it becomes a great match.

That don't work for me, bro.

And again, you look at the runaway success of WWE right now.

It's a formula.

It's a formula that works and it's a formula that works without giving away too much.

And

you're not hearing about fans coming away unhappy.

It's such an interesting time.

With AEW, they don't have that.

There is no formula that works right now.

There's nothing working.

And, well, let's not go into that right now.

Let's just finish what we were talking about with the shoulders.

I just want to clarify what you're saying because I'll be honest, I didn't really know this.

But then again, I wasn't reporting on it and saying clearly, I think you're right.

That was what he said.

Clearly he was hurt.

Clearly has not healed.

Because Rhea Ripley, twice in that match, did the spot where she

put her shoulder back into place.

And I remember that because I thought the second time was too much.

Yeah, second time was extraneous.

But she did that spot twice.

You're saying the bump she had had nothing to do with any of that.

It was a real bump from a real shoulder separation.

Yes.

That's always going to be there, even if the shoulder is 100% healed in some form.

Yes, when the angle that they did, what, two months ago, or however long it's been with her and Liv, where...

Liv ran her into the wall and basically Rhea was apparently either over-exuberant or just hit it on the point or hit it the right way

and separated her shoulder.

And that bump is indicative of the separation and will be there

from now on.

The shoulder will heal, but the bump is not going to go away.

So I don't know what Dave's looking at.

Oh, my God, look at her shoulder.

Well, I mean, you know, maybe I've just stewed something off that they could have used for an angle.

People would have believed it.

But no, that's the way that that happens.

Hey, you know what episode of the Beverly Hillbillies is on me TV right now as we're recording the Wrestling Clampetts.

Oh, with Mike Mazurki.

Gene LaBelle is the referee.

And Rebecca of Donny Brook Farm.

She's coming down the aisle right now

as you say that.

Sprinkling her flowers into the crowd.

Granny loves her wrestling.

Speaking of people in pigtails coming down, sprinkling their flower petals into the crowd, we also got to talk about some more of Tony Khan's AEW soldiers.

Apparently, they have gone AWOL.

What is this I hear about?

The Buckaroos ain't around much right now because they have a contract with limited dates.

Well, this is something that started going around, and a bunch of people started emailing it to us, cornydrivethruhgmail.com.

And I went and looked, and I have the quote here.

Now, for the record, before we say this,

while they are EVPs, while they are the person

the persons the people who brought the elite name the people they brought the elite name to all elite

so you would think they're not just the average wrestler but it's important to note that a lot of the average wrestlers in aw or a lot of wrestlers in aw have limited date deals but here's a quote from brian alvarez

who uh very often seems to have the

side of uh well them uh so let's hear what this is well he is one of the house organs

for

their vanity project.

Here's the quote.

I got to say this because people have taken this out on the Bucks.

Listen, everybody, if you think that the Young Bucks book their own stuff, they don't.

If you are upset about the Young Bucks not being on TV,

if you are upset about the Bucs not defending their tag team titles, there is one person you could be upset at, and that is Tony Kahn.

Oh!

Because whatever contract they signed, it was for X number of dates, and he has not wanted to pay them.

Maybe he's got some plans for the end of the year.

And wait, wait, wait a minute.

Hold on here.

And hey, he has not wanted to pay this.

So

that sounds to me like, and I've heard about arrangements of this nature, where they have a set number of dates for the exorbitant salary that they are getting, which they've reported from their own chicken lips, says that we're the highest paid tag team ever in wrestling.

But if they want, if Tony wants dates over and above that number of dates, he has to pay him even more per date

if you prorated it than what they're already making.

He don't want to pay them the extra money on the extra dates, apparently.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to jump in.

And by the way, the problem isn't them wanting to work with their friends or them only being able to work one style of stuff and them doing really bad segments.

It's Tony's booking.

But let's get back to this.

Maybe he's got some plans for the end of the year, or they used numbers of dates beginning of the year, or they used numbers, that's what it says.

I don't know what it is, but it isn't the Young Bucks deciding, hey, we're going to take the summer off and not defend our tag team titles.

It is like Brock Lesnar.

Remember people getting mad at Brock for never showing up?

For somehow, Brock was calling the shots.

It's like he had X number of dates.

They They did not want to pay him for extended periods of time, so they told him to stay home and he farmed and he drank whole milk.

And when they wanted, they called him.

Is this a real quote?

This is what it says here.

And when they wanted, they called him back to work.

And that is exactly

that whole milk.

And that is exactly what the Bucks will do when they get the call.

And as we are recording, I've heard they will be on dynamite this week against the acclaimed.

Oh, good lord.

So that's a part of a wonderful build to Wembley for that three-way match.

But

again, the Young Bucks have never meant less.

You know, when he says you could be mad that they're not on the show or this or that, them being on the show is one of the things that hurt the show.

Yeah.

It's not just Tony's booking of everything with this awful feud with the evil executive vice presidents against the head of the company who has the power to overrule anything at any time but doesn't.

And just

did, just did.

He just overruled shit last week, but only some shit.

But they don't think they deserve any of the blame for how awful and how just the wrestling public at large is not accepting of them because it's not very good.

It's the same match over and over.

Bad characters.

Doesn't feel genuine.

Matt Jackson is world-class awful as a professional wrestling talking character.

It's the kind of heat that makes you turn off the TV.

But

let's think about this now now for a second with the other stuff that Tony puts on television.

Then he said, oh, go home.

I need to.

It's like when Grizzly Smith wanted to quit his booker for the Kalkins and come back to work for Watts.

Watts said, no, I'll pay you to stay there and keep booking because you're lousy.

Seriously, on any side of this, how did he sign them for a contract for that much money?

And has used all of their dates by August?

Or enough of them that he's got to be stingy with them.

Do you you want me to answer that question?

The real answer I would give you if you asked me that?

Yes.

Their agent is Barry Bloom.

He got them a fucking world-class deal.

And Tony was afraid they would go to WWE, so he gave them whatever they wanted.

That would be my guess.

He not only gave him all that money, but now he's out of dates on him by August when we hardly ever saw him to begin with.

Except maybe they were in ring of honor.

I don't fucking know.

Well, not out of dates, conserving his dates.

Well, conserving

close enough that you need to fucking break that pill in half, grandma, and stretch out your blood pressure medicine or whatever.

But also,

they're not only making that much money, they not only have a job where when they do show up, half the day.

I wonder do the pre-tapes in the back

where they're wearing the headset and telling people what to do.

Does that count as a date?

Are they getting paid for that?

They had to go there.

So, point being,

he gave them a screwy deal.

They've got all that money and limited dates, but they started the fucking thing.

They wanted to change the world, the elite in all elite wrestling.

They wanted to change the world.

They're executive vice presidents.

Guess what?

If you're a fucking executive vice president or any kind of goddamn wrestling booker or promoter in a real company, you don't get days off at all.

Forget that shit.

When everybody else is off, you're on.

Like Ole Anderson used to say, I'm a, you know, the wrestlers, if you book them, they show up, they wrestle.

If you don't book them, they're off.

I'm a booker.

I think for a living.

What am I going to do?

Get up one day and say, I'm not going to think today.

Well, some of these people I think do that.

But these two pygmies

that get everything

handed to them,

and he was scared they were going to go to the WWE boy.

He should have let them

because then he would have removed a drag on his ratings and all those crummy TV segments, and they would have been exposed for what they are.

A couple of cosplaying kids that don't have any idea how far over their heads they were getting until they got there.

And now they're getting paid and they don't have to work.

But that just means that no people are calling for them to work less.

Nobody is aware of the bucks.

We want them back.

Only the guy paying them millions of dollars.

It's not about where are they.

It's why are they the tag team champions if they're not going to be there?

Not, hey, let's get them back.

That's what the conversation is.

But the tag titles, like every other title there, means nothing.

No wonder Cody couldn't wait to get out a bunch of unmotivated, lazy, entitled fucking children.

They started the thing and they don't want to be there every week at the national TV show for the company that they started and their EVPs in.

Yeah, one day the real story, let's see if anyone has the guts to tell it.

Cody and Tony, Brandy.

Let's see if someone has the guts to tell the story or they're going to hide behind these NDAs forever.

Cody and Tony and Brandy and Britt and the whole heehaw gang.

And

the Bucks.

Don't forget those Bucks.

While Kenny Omega is at home playing video games.

But the idea that the Young Bucks have

the most lucrative contract ever for a tag team, work the least amount of dates ever for a meaningful tag team.

I mean, every tag team that made a lot of money worked a lot of dates, right?

Would you say that?

Well, yes.

Yeah.

Because they drew houses.

That's how they made the fucking money.

Yes.

They drew house.

Let me go back to that.

No one draws.

They have a dynamite coming up.

I think there's 2,400 tickets sold.

You know, they're expecting maybe another thousand if everything goes well.

So, and that's with the Bucks on the show, apparently.

Being added back to it after weeks off TV where no one was asking for them, you almost feel sometimes like AEW, and it's hard with the Bucs because they are the elite

and

they're more of a tie to the company at this point than Cody, obviously, and Omega's MIA.

You know, Vince McMahon flushed his company of the talent he didn't need.

And slowly but surely, the people in NXT

who got beat by AEW all ended up in AEW.

Everyone that was in the, other names like Harrion Cross and Timothy Thatcher, everyone who was in the top picture ended up in AEW, who was getting beat by AEW.

AEW should look at some of their people who underperform

and do the same thing Vince did.

You know, say, okay, c'est la vie, you know, we wish you the best, but you kind of hope WWE gobbles them up and they eat up their roster and their locker room and give fans at home a sense of sameness that is not good.

But the Bucks are a big part of the problem in AEW.

And, you know, you're starting to see slowly but surely a lot of AEW fans, a lot of longtime AEW fans,

they're now all of a sudden

realizing the shape of things.

And a lot of people who complained about things that we were saying, sometimes with humor, sometimes flat out saying it, that were all true.

Every word of it.

Everything was true.

We told everyone, you told everyone, what was going to happen and the road to get to the state of things today.

There are a lot of people that just all of a sudden got off the bus, like, oh my God, I can't believe this dystopia.

Where am I?

What's going on here?

But we watched it happen, called it out.

It's not a surprise to us to a lot of people.

It seems to be a real surprise that AEW is a complete shit show

and there's no end to that shit show in sight

because the talent's going to be an issue, but Tony's got money and Tony doesn't want to give up a piece of anything.

So you got a problem.

Well, here's what they've also real quick and we'll move on, but they're working in reverse with what they were trying to do, which

it's good to have competition.

It'll drive up the boys' salaries.

They'll be, well,

the problem is now,

when was

WWE's on such a scale they can offer more money than ever before, but when were they offering the most money to people that,

yeah, maybe they wanted, maybe they didn't, before AEW

was instituted, when they a billionaire is going to start a company, but we don't know what it's going to look like, but we might be worried.

Okay, obviously,

if the WWE was even interested as much as people say

in Will Osprey and or Okada, and Osprey, I can kind of see, Okada, I don't know what the fuck, unless they just wanted to go to Japan and weren't even going to use him in the United States.

But the Bucs, if they had any opportunity, to ever get a WWE offer of any kind of legitimate scope, that's gone because the WWE now has seen

they wouldn't be an acquisition to the WWE, which they probably never would have been to begin with, but they may have harmed AEW critically.

That may have been something they were considering in the WWE office.

But if the buckaroos disappeared now off the face of the planet,

the difference at AEW would be negligible.

It's not like they're contributing behind the scenes, obviously, if they don't even want to come to work to wrestle in their own company they started.

So why would the WWE ever offer anything to them?

It wouldn't be a boon to their business.

It wouldn't be a blow to AEW's business if they left.

And they probably thinking, well, yeah, let Tony spend some more of his money on more of these fucking guys that don't mean anything for him.

And so they're going to...

They're going to do the opposite of driving the salaries up is they're going to start driving the salaries down.

Tony overpays for everybody anyway.

Why the fuck are we trying to bid on these motherfuckers?

Let him spend himself instead of rope a dope, spend a friend, let him spend money on all these friends he's buying.

I think they're all insane.

Well, the other interesting thing about this story is

it's not the young bucks' fault that they're not there.

That's Tony.

So now you're overtly starting to see or hear from

young Buck sympathizers.

You're starting to hear the blame going to Tony outwardly for the first time.

This is

been a reality for a long time that people denied.

We always said more people got to come out and admit it.

You're now starting to see it.

Well, yeah, because you know who Alvarez talks to to get his

slant on things.

And that means that Tony's the bad guy, according to the Buckaroos.

He's the one that's making us do all this stupid shit.

And he's the one to sign us to a stupid deal.

And he's the one that don't want to pay us for to come back and have more stupid matches.

It's all his fault.

So everything's fine over there in AEW land.

They're just, they're like a box of fluffy ducks over in AEW.

I don't know where that expression comes.

I used to hear Piper say it.

I was like, where did he get that from?

Well, I'll tell you.

I'll tell you where I got it from.

I got it from Bruce Pritchard.

You know who Bruce Pritchard got it from?

Roddy Piper.

Exactly.

He gets a fear of pickles from The Undertaker and phrases of speech from Roddy Piper.

The Undertaker's afraid of pickles?

Well, cucumbers.

He's afraid of cucumbers?

And the associate.

Well, you know this.

I do not know about the Undertaker's weird fears.

No, I do not.

I went out to dinner or lunch or some meal of the day with Bruce Pritchard.

When I first moved up to Connecticut, I'd known him since 84, but this particular thing hadn't happened until we're ordering the food and he gets the burger, whatever.

He says, no pickles.

Don't want a pickle on the burger.

Don't want a pickle on the plate.

Don't want a pickle touching my food.

And I said,

the fuck's with you and pickles.

I don't want, I don't want to be around pickles.

Well, then later on, it mystified me until after more information came to light, the undertaker has an aversion to cucumbers/slash pickles.

Because when he was a kid,

apparently

his mother, grandmother, somebody made a big old batch of cucumbers and he ate them till he got sick.

My cousin Larry did the same thing on tartar sauce.

Couldn't ever eat tartar sauce again.

But because Bruce,

like osmosis or

whatever,

absorbs characteristics of those he is around.

Bruce

then developed an unnatural and lengthy and strengthy, strong aversion

to pickles slash cucumbers.

And it just becomes a thing.

Man, that was like such a missed opportunity for someone to end the streak like covered in pickles.

Well, that would have done.

It's Pickleman, the Undertaker versus Pickleman.

The Undertaker's never cowered in fear like he is today.

If Pickleman and his sidekick, the cucumber kid, had come into the ring at WrestleMania, Undertaker would have dove over the top rope and run screaming into the stands.

So you hear that, folks.

Anyone wanting to kiss some ass and get some work from WWE, send Bruce Pritchard a basket of pickles.

A big basket of Aunt B's pickles, the kerosene kind.

What the hell is that?

I don't even know what that means.

Aunt B's, but you never saw the Aunt B pickle episode of Andy Griffith?

No.

Aunt B made pickles to enter.

Well, she just made pickles for the family.

She did it about once a year.

And then Andy and Barney and Opie would have to eat the pickles.

They tasted like kerosene.

And so to make her feel good one year, they behind her back, they gave them away to travelers that were on their way out of town.

Here's your free pickles.

Thanks for stopping in a Mayberry.

And

they got rid of all of them.

And that made Aunt B realize they were so good that she made another batch, and she's going to enter them into the goddamn county fair where old Clara Edwards wins every year.

But then, when she did that,

Barney and Andy found out that Clara Edwards, it means everything to her to win that county fair blue ribbon on those pickles every year because it reminds her of her husband who died to love those pickles.

And so, Andy and Barney had to eat all those pickles again, so So they'd be completely gone before the fair came about.

Whatever.

But nevertheless, Ain't B's pickles.

Send them to Bruce Pritchard.

Send him to the Undertaker, too, if you really don't like him.

Well, no, because Undertaker is liable to get physical.

Let him get physical.

I'll throw pickles at him.

Come get me.

I got barrels of pickles.

You want half sour or do you want sour?

What do you want, Undertaker?

He wants sweet instead of dill, but you, you no good pickle tosser, you I will get a fucking super soaker and load that thing with pickle juice and just fucking shoot the undertaker right in his face.

Oh my god, and then you'll see he'll melt like the phantom of the opera His face will become a skull.

The skin will drip off.

See, I want to do it because I think via osmosis, that same thing may happen to Bruce.

He'll just melt away.

Oh, Bruce melted a long time ago.

Into a puddle of his own goo.

You know,

that's why he's been inflated with air for the past 30 years

that's why after he melted they had to pump him back up that air came out of vince's ass

oh the the flatulent air of the mcmahon family you know what maybe they could put all of these things maybe they could put pickle juice maybe they could put flatulent air of vince mcmahon maybe they could put fluffy ducks all in a box of awesome

do you think that would be possible i think uh no i don't think uh Well, who will be doing this?

I mean, it's possible for someone to do it, but not a reputable company like our friends have bought

awesome.

Yeah, that's where you may be wrong there, Pismo.

What?

Because did you know I was in the post office one time and I heard cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap?

And they weren't just talking about me being cheap.

You can mail baby chickens, baby chicks.

You can, the United States Postal Service will mail, will transport live baby chicks They're in a box with holes in it for for air hair for air

and They make all kinds of noise and they transport these and it's a quick transport They're not it's not like parcel post where it takes forever media mail whatever

But you can mail so folks if you well hold finish your story.

How far can you mail them across the country?

Well,

there's no limit on the distance.

You can mail them as far as your fucking pocketbook will pay for them to go.

What do you ask for?

Do you ask?

I mean, it's not like first-class mail.

You ask for a chick rate.

Do a chick raise a bike.

I don't know what the postage classification is called for it, but they will transport these baby chicks.

I've seen them with boxes of chicks in the, in the post office facility.

And now think about that.

If you go right now to boxofawesome.com

and you take the quiz there where they ask you different questions about what you like, what you're interested in, what type of products that you would enjoy having in your home.

And you say, I love chickens.

Then it very well may be that they could send you a box of fluffy fucking chickens.

I don't think that's one of the things on their menu.

However, they can send you some of the things you'll need to kill that chicken and eat it.

Oh, come on.

Out in the woods.

You will get a wonderful knife or maybe something to start a fire.

Maybe some camping equipment.

You never know with Box of Awesome, except there will be no living,

breathing animals, no livestock, nothing like that.

Everything will be a solid stationary dead piece of equipment.

No, you don't know whether these things will come dead or alive because it could, if you enjoy, now I don't know whether they can ship ducks.

So it might not be a box of fluffy ducks, but we know they can ship chickens.

And if you say, hey, I like eggs, I would like to grow my own eggs.

What are they going to send you?

They're going to send you a fucking chicken.

They better send you a rooster, too, the way these things work.

But it just depends on what you're interested in, Brian, and what kind of things you like.

And they release boxes every month across a ton of different categories.

Now,

if you like to go fishing, Maybe they'll send you some worms.

You can choose from a standard or a premium box.

So the worms come in the standard box, but the premium box, you may get a nice tackle box to put all your worms in when you go fishing.

But when you become a member of the Box of Awesome family and we feel like it is a family, that's why things get passed around from member to member, just willy-nilly, because we're all a big family.

You're going to have access to discounts across a plethora of products, up to 30% off or more sometimes.

And, of course, the box of awesome folks have a reputation for only finding the finest products made from the small businesses around the world.

They're now concentrating on the

island of Kryptonia out in the South Pacific.

All the items this month come from small

mom and pop businesses on that remote

South Pacific island.

There is no island that you speak of.

This will be coming from mom and pop all across America.

Lots of moms and pops and maybe sons and daughters.

We are all one, ladies and gentlemen, one love.

We are all

father is the child of man.

It looks like mom got around if she's all over the country with various pops.

Hey, leave her alone.

Well, she's certainly got experience at this type of thing.

But nevertheless, if

you want experience with what Box of Awesome will send you every month, that it will show up on your front porch, on your doorstep, maybe on your back porch.

It depends on whether the mailman is used to you being at work and comes in the back door on a regular basis or not.

But wherever it arrives, you're going to open it up and it's going to be awesome.

Whether it's ducks or chickens or geese or potentially everywhere, you know, have you ever seen the wild ostrich egg that you can make that into a variety of egg dishes?

You got the omelets, you got the fucking fried ostrich eggs.

They'll give you a special ostrich egg pan also in the ostrich egg kit.

There's no ostrich egg kit.

They don't have to be afraid of the corner.

Well, yeah, the pan is two and a half feet across because those fucking giant ostrich eggs.

There will be no pan.

There will be no egg.

There will be no kit, but there'll be boxes of awesome.

Where can you get them, Jim?

Well, and also order them over easy.

Do not do sunny side up because ostriches also secrete some of their bodily waste inside the yolk.

They have ostrich burgers at fudruckers well yeah but they they milk them for all the eggs first

before they die and cook them they milk yes yeah they they get all the eggs out first

because

because the thing is it's like de-veining the shrimp you know what that vein is on the shrimp that's its poop chute

And if you ever get like a Chinese restaurant that's not looking real close, they're just kind of throwing things in there.

If you see a dark line on the back of the shrimp running down from

the handle to the head, that's its poop chute.

They actually have a Box of Awesome that comes with a shrimp deep pooper.

They do not.

They should.

That's a wonderful idea, actually, but they do not have that currently.

Well, then I must have just gotten a stray delivery meant for somebody else when I got my deep pooper.

But anyway, right now, folks, go to boxofawesome.com,

enter the code jce at checkout and you're going to get 15 off your first box that's just for you just because we like you whether you want to de-poop that shrimp whether you want to just mash on that box of fluffy ducks whatever you want to do boxofawesome.com promo code jce 15

off your first box of awesome at boxofawesome.com

that's right box of awesome our good friends with wonderful, fine items that will not be breathing when they arrive.

But, Jim.

Well, and remember, ladies and gentlemen, make sure your shrimp is de-pooped.

Many people are sickened every year from non-de-pooped shrimp.

All right.

I'll make sure to stay on top of that or strip it of that or whatever it may be.

Well, whatever you do, stay on top of it.

Don't stay underneath it.

That's the last place you want to be when something's still pooping.

Hold on, maybe this will help.

How do we move on?

Where are we going?

That was definitely the shits.

Let's talk about SmackDown.

The echo is back.

Yes, let's talk about SmackDown.

SmackDown, we're smacking down.

They were in Tulsa, Oklahoma for SmackDown on August the 9th at the BOK Center.

Is this a new building out there, Brian?

When's the last time you were in Tulsa?

I've flown over Tulsa.

I've never stopped in the wonderful town of Tulsa.

You didn't even get the urge to fucking get a rope and just hang down and get a better view of it on your way across?

No, no, not really.

Well, then.

And every time I pass over Oklahoma, I always think,

where was Bill Watts hanging out?

That's what I always think.

Well, out by a swimming pool where he had a big tall fence so you couldn't see him.

That's how he was able to hang out without being arrested.

But apparently it's a new building.

They had 11,098 fans in this building.

The assembly center and the fairgrounds Coliseum back in the Mid-South days maxed out at about 7,500, 8,000-ish.

So they couldn't have got this many people in the building back then.

And you don't usually see that in Oklahoma anymore.

These giant wrestling crowds.

Apparently,

they can draw money anywhere.

Just give them paper and a green crayon.

So Cody made his entrance,

and there was the hugs and the autographs and the whoa

and the Cody chants and the cheers.

It's gotten to the point now.

It was like these people

had just been paroled from fucking Sing Sing and they hadn't seen the outdoors when he just started.

He said, Tulsa,

they wouldn't let him speak.

They were cheering so loud.

And then all he has to do is say, well,

what's next?

Who will I defend against

at bash in Berlin?

And boom, here comes Solo's music.

So

it's to the point now where the babyface doesn't even really need to come out and cut a promo to get himself over.

They're already goddamn creaming themselves that he's there to begin with.

So he can just

set the premise up with one sentence, and here comes the heel.

And off we go on our dramatic

monologue for the evening.

And Solo came out with the tongue.

Okay, now, Brian, are they fucking with us?

What is it now?

Do you think, is Fatu injured, not injured?

They're taking advantage of this.

It's really a shoot.

Which of these answers are we going with this week?

I don't know.

I mean, I thought he was hurt.

I saw him in the walking boot.

You thought, and you're right.

It made sense for the match for him to get hurt when he did.

So that makes you think that's a sell.

And it also made sense for him to wear some type of support

afterward instead of just walking around 7-Eleven in front of the fans like a goddamn Olympic sprinter.

It also made sense in that it makes him, it makes it so that he's not there when Roman returns and gets his hands on the people who were there.

So he doesn't get his hands on Jacob Fatu.

But we've also heard reports that much of the WWE locker room is now convinced that he's hurt.

So even the boys don't know for sure.

But the

it boy, it's going to suck if he is, but I still,

it was too convenient.

And he here's another thing that made me think he's not because he sold it too overtly.

And if you go back and look when Most of the time, unless something breaks instantly and you drop like a fucking stone in a pond,

When people do hurt something, they do everything they can

not to show it if it's not supposed to be sold.

And he was selling instantly to the point where

that guy, if he was hurt and sold that big, that instantly, then he wouldn't have been in a walking boot.

He'd have been in a goddamn wheelchair later on.

So we'll see what happens.

But it also worked here for this night that Jacob Fatu was not in the building because

what would have happened if he had been?

How could what happened have happened if it had happened that Jacob Fatu would have happened by?

And the other thing is when he's not there and Solo comes out with the two tongas, you're looking for Jacob Fatu because he's established.

He comes out of the crowd.

He comes out of a corner, wherever he may be.

So you don't know where he's coming from.

Well, we know where Solo's coming from.

He's coming coming from a position that he wants a rematch.

He is pissed about SummerSlam.

If it hadn't been for Roman Reigns, he would have been the champion.

And he wants another chance.

And Cody fired up on him and said,

you lost the match.

You caused Jacob Fatu to get hurt.

And you're delusional if you think that you deserve a rematch.

And at that point, of course, the bloodline then begins to step into the ring in a menacing fashion when here comes Kevin Owens from the back door,

slides in with two chairs, and they hold the bloodline off at bay.

And Solo's like, well, I'm going to deal with you later after I find Roman Reigns.

And you think that the Bloodline leaves, music starts playing, you think that's it.

And then

they bring the music down.

Because then Cody says, and I'm trying,

I'll tell you what I think in a second, but I'm liking this.

Cody pitches to Kevin Owens, Kevin, I want to talk to you.

And he pitches the idea that he wants to defend the title against Kevin Owens in Berlin.

Because he's been there, he's had his back, he's blah, blah, blah.

He deserves it.

And Owens says, I don't, and boy, I bet they had to twist his arm to tell him the

value in this storyline approach.

But Owens says, I don't deserve a title match.

I haven't earned it.

Look at my win-loss record.

And then the fans are like, You deserve it.

And Cody wants to reward Owens for having his back.

And he pumped him up and told him how great he was.

And he said, I'm going back there now to tell Nick Aldiss

that I want this match, and I'm not going to let you say no.

I will see you at the bash in Berlin.

And Owens was left looking fairly put off by the whole thing.

What do you think, Brian?

What do I think about what?

Well, what do you think about this development where all of a sudden we've been talking about Cody can defend against this guy and that guy and the other guy, Kevin Owens.

His name didn't come up.

Kevin Owens and Cody for the title in Berlin out of nowhere.

What the fuck is going on?

I'm not crazy about it.

And I mean, I guess that it's going to be part of a bigger thing.

Because, again, the babyface world champion is saying that he wants to just give a world title shot.

Usually it would be the babyface friend wants a world title shot and it leads to something.

This is going in the other direction.

The babyface world champion wants to gift his friend, who hasn't won matches lately, a world title match,

risking that he could lose the title to his friend.

Wow card, bitches.

I I don't know.

I mean, we'll see where they go.

I wasn't, I didn't like the execution of it.

You know, again, when Kevin Owens all of a sudden is the bashful, oh, I don't deserve it.

Get out of here.

I didn't like the setup for it very well.

And, you know, Cody was very much into his Shakespearean dusty persona here in the cadence and the way he lays things.

Just, I couldn't deal with it.

In the pronunciation.

Yeah, I wasn't.

Well, again, we'll see where they go, but I didn't like the buildup of it.

Just the idea that Owens doesn't even want the match.

Cody's giving him the match because he thinks he deserves it, which means that Cody thinks he could risk losing the title to his friend.

I mean, I don't know.

Well, either that or maybe Cody says, fuck, he can't whip cream with an outboard motor.

I got to have a night off wrestling him.

You're what my brother wouldn't call a jopper.

But.

That wasn't quite it because then they go and have another one of those pesky matches with some people.

And then

they're in the back, and

Cody is with Aldous, but Owens is there.

I don't deserve a match.

I haven't earned it.

And Aldous said, Well, it's a moot point because I'm going to go talk to Roman Reigns now about a title match.

And then Owens, what?

Roman Reigns.

Well, he.

He did this and he did that.

And sure, he had the title for all this time, but that was because he had everybody else helping him, blah, blah, blah.

And Owens works himself up

talking about all these these reasons why Roman Reigns shouldn't get a title match.

And then Aldous says, well, fine, then it'll be you versus Cody.

And they're right back where they were.

And

I'm wondering

if this might here, the only thing is, Orton's going to turn on Cody eventually for a big, that's either a Rumble, a Survivor Series, a WrestleMania.

After Mania, man.

After Mania, but

it's one of the big three, I would think.

I think

it's a big Cody feud, yeah.

Yeah.

So

is this an

offbeat way to start Owens'

heel turn?

Because

now we're looking at the number of baby faces they have that are fucking stars that are over.

Should Owens...

What if Owens gets taken out?

Cody's gifting his friend a title match, and then between now and then, the Bloodline take out Owens.

Okay, the only thing that makes me think that, I mean, that could still happen, but I wasn't leaning that way because of the fact that Owens was trying to talk him out of it and was reacting the way he was,

which was a little, that's why I said they may have to twist Owens's arm on the creative, because he could have said, oh, you know, I appreciate it, Cody, but...

You know, I haven't been focusing on the world title and I don't, you know, soften the

soften himself somewhat.

Like, I haven't been working single or wrestling singles matches, haven't got the one loss record, whatever, but I don't deserve it.

I haven't beat anybody, but that

I don't know, but something is up.

And

I don't know what, how Owens place is in the top babyface hierarchy anymore when

it's been, what, several years now that he's been featured, and

they got a bunch more baby faces that are more over now than he is.

But he can be an annoying fucking heel.

We know that much is true.

But again, there's a weird way to start that off.

This isn't him asking for a shot, this is him being given the gift of a shot.

I guess we'll see where they go with it.

Well, speaking of gifts, I wish somebody would give me a gift and take the putrid dullards off television.

It's AEW level phony.

Nobody believes their fucking goofy outfits, their prissy way of talking, their stupid flyers for their musical.

It's ridiculous.

This is the kind of shit that Vince was shoving at us, wasn't it?

Yeah, I don't like this at all.

I don't watch it, so I don't like it.

Yeah.

Well, and also,

Jade Cargill beat Alba Fire,

but then Blair Davenport,

followed by Mrs.

Garrett, I believe,

hit the ring and they got some sloppy heat and Isla Dawn was involved and Bianca was in there and then Naomi hit the ring and the baby faces beat the heels up.

It was a stirring, stirring moment when they stood tall in the ring.

Yeah, I got part two.

I got Granny wrestling right now with

this is the main event for the well,

the finish is the big giant swing, right?

That's right.

Well, I haven't gotten there yet, but I believe.

Yeah, the finish.

He puts the big giant swing on Mike Berserky and throws him all the way over the top rope.

But back to SmackDown.

Not anything as stirring in the wrestling space as

the Clampets versus.

Oh, God, what was the Heel Girl's name?

I don't know.

I have an idea.

Oh, the heel girl wrestler's name was,

oh, good Lord.

The Boston Strong Girl.

The Boston Strong Girl.

There you have it.

And her family.

All right.

At the 9 o'clock hour on SmackDown, now we're leaving the Beverly Hillbillies behind.

Out comes the new U.S.

champion, Logan.

Logan Paul.

The new U.S.

champion, L.A.

Knight, after he beat Logan Paul at SummerSlam to do an in-ring promo.

He gets the big ovation.

He gets the LA Night chance.

Lou Farigno

was in the front row.

Did you see that?

I did.

What the fuck was Lou Farigno doing in Tulsa, Oklahoma?

Showing everyone that you shouldn't be scared of steroids.

Clearly, you can live.

They said everyone was going to die at the age of 40, and they're going to get giant tumors.

It was all a lie.

Let's all get juiced up now.

You think that lump in between his shoulders on top of his neck there wasn't tumorous?

That was his head, Jim.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Well, anyway, Lou Farigno has been apparently sentenced to work release in Tulsa or something.

And L.A.

Knight does the promo about beating Logan Paul for the U.S.

title, and the fans chant, you deserve it.

Bunch of deserving people on the wrestling program these days.

And as soon as L.A.

Knight starts bragging about the win, here comes the music of Pablo Escobar with the lucha heels and Carmen J-Lo, whatever her fucking name is.

And I'm, oh, Christ on a cracker.

Is this going to be a program or was this just for him to come out?

And,

well, yes, because he won the match for the U.S.

So the point is we're going to have to suffer through L.A.

Knight and Escobar.

Now that L.A.

Knights won the title, we thought, boy, he really needs to produce.

And he did at SummerSlam.

And Escobar?

Did he always speak perfect English?

Yeah, you're thinking of Andre.

No, no, no.

I know.

No, Andre's a complete mumble mouth in whatever language.

But Escobar, he spoke.

He did a promo.

It was perfect English.

I didn't remember he spoke like that.

It was.

I wasn't expecting it.

Yeah, I mean, it's not going to be exciting, but we'll see.

Maybe it will be.

Maybe LA Knight will turn it into something.

We will see, but I skipped, I skipped the Andre match against Escobar.

Yeah, well, Escobar may have spoke perfect English, but it wasn't a perfect promo because he brought the energy way down.

And LA Knight fired it back up and said, Well, you need to qualify, and you're not good enough to beat me.

And then LA Knight just left, and Escobar wrestled Andre for about 17 fucking minutes

until Escobar won with a schoolboy and pulled the trunks.

And then, and we had the aforementioned Kevin Sullivan video that we discussed earlier, which was very well done and nice.

But then we got Champa and Gargano against Pissy and Dookie.

So they're actually letting them wrestle on television now, too.

I skipped that.

And then we get to the main event, which as always is not a wrestling match, but an interview.

The Tongas were in the back telling Solo, we can't find Roman Reigns.

He's not here.

And Solo says, oh, he'll be here.

And then they go to the ring, and we go to the break.

And when we come back in the ring,

son of a bitch, wouldn't you know?

They couldn't find Roman Reigns in that building, but as soon as the bloodline gets in the ring, the music guy's got his cue, the lighting guy's got his cue.

Everybody's all set.

And

basically, Solo says, Roman, I'm the tribal chief.

Now, if you call yourself tribal chief and you want the lay, what do they call it?

The umlau or the

umma gumma?

The red lay.

The red lay.

That actually used to be a transmitted disease, but they came up with a vaccination.

The red lay is, oh boy, I tell you what, it itched too.

But if you want this, come and get it.

And music, and here comes Roman.

Did you see the way Tongaloa was holding the belt?

Yeah, it was awkward and potentially upside down.

Every segment with him, there's something that goes awry.

I've never seen anyone hold the belt like this.

Everyone usually, when you hold the belt over your head,

You know, the center plate is usually over your head and you have a little bit of the strap in each hand.

He had like right next to the center plate in one hand and the strap in the other.

So it was a way that no one has ever held.

Yes, it was like, here's half of this belt, and now I'll turn it around and show you the other half.

Well, he's, he's got, he's, he's inexperienced yet.

He's my favorite member of the bloodline.

You ought to see him try to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Fuck.

Anyway,

the people went crazy over Roman, and one finger is up everywhere, and the Tongas bail out on the floor to meet him, and he levels them and hits them with the stairs, and didn't look like he was necessarily taking every precaution

for their safety with those fucking stairs.

And then Roman and Solo stare at each other.

He gets in the ring.

They have the face off, and then they have the fight.

And he's Superman punches Solo and he goes for the spear, but old Tonga Loa

pulls Solo out

and Enroman sees the lay and picks it up.

And all the day, you'll have good luck.

Think about this.

Somebody was talking about this on

Twitter the other day.

The WWE has gotten a fake Hawaiian airport souvenir.

and a homemade bracelet of CM Punks more over than any championship belt in AEW

because they've put importance in these things.

And then when they come into play, people are like, ooh,

instead of, oh, there's 14 of those, why do we care?

So Roman picks the red lay up and puts and starts to put it on.

And there's Tamatonga from behind.

And they get on Roman.

And Solo grabs the lay and leaves.

And then Roman makes the comeback and

spears Tongaloa and

spears Tomatonga through the barricade and then hammers Tongaloa about seven times with the chair and then took a break and it hit him about five more

while Solo was trash talking to him from the entranceway.

And I bet

Tongaloa is probably like, motherfucker.

Why do I have to be the fucking flunky?

But now Roman reigns is a mega baby face roman short term will be hotter than cody

and you've got still got la knight and randy orton and fucking this guy and that guy and the other fucking guy and jacob fatu not being there means he didn't have to take a bump for roman yeah how would you couldn't have done this with jacob fatu in the building and kept Jacob Fatu's aura that they've spent the past month building up.

He would have had to have done something.

And then

the first time that Roman Reigns

physically interacts with Jacob Fatu

really needs to be Jacob Fatu coming out on

the head of it, on the top of it, because they know that Roman's over.

But if the first time that

Roman and Fatu were to lock up that Roman beat him up too, then he's just another one of the flunkies and the bloom is off the rose.

But it would not hurt Roman in the least for Jacob Fatu, who has already no-sold Randy Orton shit and done other stuff, to get one over on him, especially in a numbers situation in a heelish way.

But Roman couldn't be taking bumps on his

a lot of bumps on his goddamn

you know, big comebacks of network television.

Yeah.

And it was their biggest ratings, I think, in a while too.

I'll pull them up if uh I have not seen those.

If you would uh pull those up from where have you got them down low?

Are you going to pull them up?

Oh, I saw it somewhere and I don't see it here now.

But I, from what I understand, SmackDown had their best ratings in a while.

Oh, so you're just repeating rumors now, just hearsay.

That's right.

You know, Stephen P.

New would object to something like that in a court of law if you tried to get away with it.

He's on my side.

Well, that's why you're not trying to get away with it there.

Or here.

Where are we?

See?

I don't know.

Where are we?

See, that was the wrong note.

There's an echo.

There's this weird echo.

Well, that was the end of SmackDown.

Not for good.

They're going to come back and do another one next week, but just that particular program.

Do you have any closing thoughts on SmackDown?

Or potentially, if you don't, are there any persons?

Or persons unknown on the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week that are going to be talking about Smacking Down?

Oh, well, in that case, fuck SmackDown.

The Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, get information about all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcast or on Arcadia or an Arcadia Vanguard or on Facebook at facebook.com slash Arcadia Vanguard.

A few notes, of course.

The wrestling news each and every day, wherever you find your favorite podcast or download it directly from thewrestlingnews.com, your free daily wrestling newscast.

When other websites are raising their prices for you to get access to news that will be publicly available in seconds, we give it to you for free in seconds or minutes, it may be.

The WrestlingNews.com, once again, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Want to make mention of the latest episode or two, actually, of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon.

Some interesting episodes.

Mike Clark, formerly of the Jack Tunney Toronto office, returns to the show.

Also, recent episode with Sam Adonis.

Here, what it's like being a top heel in Mexico, but appreciating the past.

S-U-A-WPod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast.

The

Mothership!

Oh, you see that?

You're failing us left and right.

But we never fail you.

Go through the archive, 605pod.com.

You've gone silent.

You embarrassed?

What's going on over there?

What are they?

What are you?

I don't know who you're talking to.

You're saying.

You failed us.

How did I fail you?

We only got half the sound that you played.

Let me hear it.

Hold on.

Yeah, what is that?

That's it.

That wasn't it.

Hold on.

I have the same...

That's it.

Let me hear yours.

It's the same goddamn thing.

I'm not hearing it at all.

Hit it again into the microphone.

Yours seems a bit abrupt, but...

Oh, for God's sake.

How about this?

I don't even hear that.

Can you hear that?

How are you not hearing that?

I'm not hearing that.

It's right up here in the goddamn microphone.

Here, how can you hear that now?

I hear you.

I have no idea.

What the hell is the matter with now?

You made me think.

What is the microphone's broken or something?

Maybe so.

But I definitely didn't hear your spring.

But I could hear my full spring right here.

Here is my spring.

Yeah, it's

yours does too.

605pod.com.

The mothership.

Yeah, mother is right.

Well, that goes a long time, that one.

Thank you, doctor.

Yeah, she did go on quite a long time.

Should have seen the marks she left.

Anyway,

all righty.

Well, no sound effects were needed in the program.

We're going to talk about now.

A little classic wrestling content.

We've heard about this documentary being worked on and was scheduled for release.

It is out now.

It has escaped.

And I was afraid because this was done by the PBS station out in North Carolina.

I was afraid I was going to have to learn how to use some kind of app or whatever.

And then one of the listeners was kind enough to send me a link, but come to find out,

any mark can just go to pbs.org

and look up when giants walked here, and you can watch the whole documentary on their website.

So I guess I thought I was being given preferential treatment by this fellow, and he just sent me a link to something anybody, even you, could see it, Brian.

I did see it.

I saw most of it.

Even you.

Even me.

Even you.

Anyway, this is a

documentary on Dorton Arena in Raleigh, which may sound a little dry,

until we say that it focuses primarily on

wrestling was the

top attraction at Dorton Arena for the first almost 30 years of its existence.

Dorton Arena in Raleigh is also on the Register of Historic Places Nationally.

It's a worldwide,

world-known architectural phenomenon because of the way it's built.

It's in that parabolic curve.

Brian, you know what other famous product is built just like the Dorton Arena where the shape helps support itself from falling in in a parabolic manner?

What's that?

Pringles potato chips.

Think about them.

Pringles in the can.

When you pull them out, that's the same thing that they did to the Pringles to keep them from breaking because it makes the structure more sturdy when they got the fucking sides up like that.

I saw that on

how the food built America.

How the food built America.

On the food that built America.

On the backs of food.

That's how it works.

On the backs of food.

Yes.

Hey, you know, I thought that was actually some of the most interesting stuff was although the historian or expert, whatever he was, may have been a bit dry.

The stuff about the architecture and the history of why it was built and how it was built, I thought that was great.

Yeah.

And I didn't know a lot of these things, you know, about the building itself, but apparently, and this took quite a while after the

or during the post-World War II boom,

North Carolina wanted to pave more of their roads.

I can imagine what the roads looked like in the late 40s out there.

And they wanted to build new buildings.

And

J.S.

Dorton was the director of the fairgrounds, and he led the development of the arena.

And they had the original plans and drawings and different sketches on what it might look like.

And

the architect that built it was a famous Polish architect.

He settled in Raleigh and he worked on the project that took years between the Korean War, delaying it and all that stuff.

And then before they built the thing, he died in a plane crash, the architect.

So the city rallied because he was a popular guy and completed the arena.

In,

I think, the early 60s is when they opened it up, or at least when wrestling got there.

But

they had not only

some of the wrestlers' talking heads, we'll talk about George South and Jimmy Valiant, but also some of the famous fans from the area.

Brad Stutz, Stutz, he was on there.

John Hitchcock from Parts Unknown.

Tom Sorensen was the guy that did the wrestling column in the Charlotte Observer

and did a number of pieces on me and everybody in Crockett Promotions in the 80s.

And Bruce Mitchell,

good to see he's still fighting, man.

Well, no, leprosy is a hell of a disease.

And to see, you know, he.

He made it to the sit-down and only lost a couple of fingers.

You know, anyway, it's good to see, even in that kind of

desiccated condition.

The last time you ever

mentioned him on the show, you said he looked like he was decomposing.

Well, that's why I'm saying, you know, they've apparently that spirit gum that they got to hold his facial skin on

is working.

But

anyway,

nice to see a picture recognition of Joe Mernick, Carl and Elliot Murnick's father.

Carl and Elliott were brothers, obviously, and they were

major local promoters for Jim Crockett when I was there, but their father, Joe Mernick, was partners with Jim Crockett Sr.

and started the Mernicks

ran everything at one point

in the eastern half of North Carolina and some of the Virginia spot shows.

But

the thing about Dorton Arena, David Crockett was on and mentioned it.

It was the biggest arena in those days in eastern North Carolina because all of the major population centers, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Asheville,

they're all on the western part of the state.

Out east

toward the coast,

Wilmington

didn't have

Wilmington didn't have any major arena indoors.

The big shows there, wrestling shows that would draw 4,000 or 5,000 people, were outdoors in the summer at Legion Stadium.

That's where Flair and Valentine and those guys were going when the plane crashed.

And Greenville, North Carolina didn't have a big building.

Fayetteville, the Cumberland County Memorial Arena, seated like 4,000.

So Dorton Arena

in Raleigh, and Raleigh is still one of those other tri-cities operations over there next to Durham.

And

that was the big place in eastern North Carolina.

And that's why, you know, a lot of the the guys that grew up there that got in the business always wanted to work there

because it was kind of like their Mid-South Coliseum or their Omni or their Madison Square Garden.

But

originally,

and I think probably throughout the 60s and 70s, Raleigh was a more important market for Crockett promotions than it became in the 80s because that's when they were still running exclusively North and South Carolina and Virginia.

By the time I got there,

Raleigh had switched from Tuesday night to Wednesdays, and it was starting to be

every week they didn't get the big card because Crockett was expanding.

But for years, the Tuesday night matches were because they did TV

at WRAL, which was at one time along with, I think, WBT in Charlotte, the biggest television station in the state.

And they did their studio show there on Wednesdays.

So they do Tuesday night house show, Wednesday during the day interviews, and Wednesday night TV taping.

But they switched Raleigh to Wednesday in the 80s when they bought the Nemo truck and started doing on-location tapings on Tuesday nights for their syndicated TV.

But nevertheless, what a building to look at.

And it is architecturally resplendent.

But a couple of the guys mentioned it.

And

if you were working that fucking building,

there were some conditions you needed to know about.

There's no air conditioning, never was and still is not.

So in the summertime, and Brian, you saw the thing that makes it such a striking visual is all the windows.

It's not like a regular arena.

Everywhere they're above the seats, all the way around is glass, is windows.

And they didn't fucking make the high-energy efficient windows back in the 50s.

You can imagine when you'd start a show at eight o'clock in the summertime, the sun was still shining

and it was fucking burning hot in that building.

But by the same token, in the wintertime, I don't know if that heat either.

There was some in the locker rooms, it was steam heat, so you'd sweat in the locker room regardless.

But in the wintertime, that building, same thing, now it's dark and it's fucking 35 degrees outside.

You needed a fucking parka.

I was wearing a suit sometimes.

I was freezing to death.

And

it was a great building when it was full or when there was a big crowd.

But if you got there and there was 1,200 people because it was just a black card,

the goddamn atmosphere was death.

Because it was such, not only was it a bigger building, but the floor area was enormous.

And

we were on a, we had a cold World Tag title match one night with Wahoo McDaniel and Ronnie Garvin.

One fall 60-minute time limit.

Tommy Young brings the finish over.

This was early in 86, right?

And it wasn't a big card and there wasn't a lot of people there.

He said, they won an hour Broadway.

Well, what?

An hour Broadway.

I swear to God, I was there at that ringside for three days.

And at one point, they actually had to chase the one of the babyfaces, I'm pretty sure it was Garvin, Wahoo wouldn't have run that far,

had to chase me to the back so I could piss

out there a fucking hour, not able to sweat because it's 40 fucking degrees.

Man.

They told the story about the locker rooms were being separate.

You never saw the baby.

The babyfaces never saw the heels.

The heels never saw the babyfaces.

Not only were the locker rooms separate, but they were at opposite ends of that building.

And so the referees would go go back and forth with finishes and spots and fucking things, and they'd be blown up by the time the show started because it was easily five, six hundred feet in between fucking locker rooms by the time you came up the stairs, through the building, back down the stairs.

And it was multiple times per night before the show even started.

What other buildings in the Carolinas and Virginia, the whole territory,

what other buildings had separate heel and babyface?

What buildings didn't have separate heel and babyface dressing rooms?

The bigger buildings, like Greensboro and Charlotte, you could get back and forth behind the scenes, but it wasn't encouraged because building people were wandering around.

In Greensboro, it was easy because it was all closed off and,

you know, et cetera.

Richmond Coliseum, the bigger arenas, you could get back and forth if you needed to.

It was the smaller places.

It was the Fayettevilles.

It was the Columbia, South Carolina.

It was the Asheville Civic Center.

You know,

you could go through the catacombs of the building if you had to talk to somebody, but it generally wasn't done.

So a lot of the smaller buildings were where there was probably as many or more where you could not talk to the other side as there were that you could.

But we were,

there wasn't a lot of conferences going on anyway about the match, even if you were together because you were working with these people every night, or you were calling it in the ring, or you had your finish.

What more do you need?

Every once in a while, for TV,

if you were taping TV in a building and there had to be some

conversation about positioning or whatever,

there would be some neutral,

neutral ground outside where each side could sneak to and be unmolested for a little while.

The good thing about Dorton Arena was because it was on the fairgrounds, all around the arena in the parking lot area were these little ticket booths.

And it was like,

I didn't care about talking to the fucking opponents, but it was like the building, the arena, was ringed by a series of small little hotel rooms.

And once the matches started and all the fans were in their seats, if you needed to meet someone

to have a private discussion of

non-wrestling events, these fucking little ticket booths were perfect.

It was like a little roadside motel room and a boom.

And there you go.

Did that answer your question?

What was my question?

About people getting together to talk.

Oh, yes, yes.

People got together in those things, but no, there wasn't a lot of talking going on.

But Earl Hebner and Jimmy Valiant, Bobby Fulton,

some of those guys are quoted in this piece.

That was Dorton Arena was the building, nobody mentioned this, where Piper got stabbed.

And that's what

predicated his babyface switch at the Carolinas when he got stabbed by the guy in the fucking hallway in Raleigh at Dorton Arena.

That was the building that, and they showed the clip of it.

Baby doll knocked me out with the punch to the base of the skull that night.

When she was late, because it was so far coming from the locker room to the ring, I had to run two laps around a fucking ring.

Because she hated you, and she wanted to punch you as hard as she could after you were blown up, is what it was.

Well, it certainly felt like it.

The crowd going crazy.

I mean, that's a great shot, too, because it's from Ringside, and people go nuts when she hits you.

And that was...

You fall the Bubba's feet.

Yes, in a very convincing fashion.

But that was the biggest crowd or the biggest gate, I should say, in the history of Raleigh.

But they did highlight, and I got to bring something up here.

And everybody knows I love Buddy Landell.

Bless his little Pete Pickin' heart.

But when they brought Buddy in to be Nature Boy Buddy Landell, put him with J.J.

Dillon in the Carolinas, that's when Flair to the hometown.

to the home territory people was a babyface.

Flair was still, as world champion, a heel everywhere else, but he had become a babyface to Carolinas.

And so Landell comes in and they have the Battle of the Nature Boys.

And that was,

again,

you know, what Buddy was proud of to his dying day and was a big story.

They sold out Dorton Arena in July of 85 for Flair versus Landell in a Battle of the Nature Boys in a thunderstorm.

That's how much interest was in.

They had had a match in Greensboro and they were going to do,

you know,

more in the future.

But then when George South told the story, and I'm not blaming George South

because

Buddy Landell told him this story, and Buddy could tell a very convincing story.

But Buddy

told George, and George said, well, Flair was tired.

He needed to spend more time with his family.

He was going to take time off.

Buddy was going to get the belt and run for, I think it's a couple of years.

But it didn't happen because then, and then poor Brad Stuttz said the next TV taping after this sellout was when Buddy overslept in Atlanta.

Yeah, it was about four or five months later.

Oh, my favorite is Jimmy Valiant.

Like, oh, no, buddy.

No, I knew what he was going to do.

What was he going to do?

He's going to party like everyone else does.

Yes, yes.

You didn't know he was going to oversleep.

Stay with me, brother.

I got an extra.

No, Buddy was riding with Joel Deaton, Thunderfoot, Joel Deaton of the Wild Bunch in Japan, in all Japan years ago.

And Joel went to bed and Buddy went out.

And

Buddy came back in while Joel was asleep.

And Joel got up to go to TV.

And Buddy, get up.

And then the phone calls came from TBS, from JJ and whatever the fuck.

And finally, Buddy Buddy draggled in about noon and got himself fired.

But the point is,

no, Buddy was never going to be the NWA World Champion at that juncture.

I'm not saying it went,

there wasn't much more NWA World Champion to be had in 1985.

By

89, 90, it was over with.

But

that wasn't the time.

Can you imagine?

If Buddy Landell had been the NWA World Champion from fall 85 for a couple years till maybe fall 87, well, nothing really historic in wrestling went on between 1985 and 87 that Flair needed to be around for.

Yeah, the idea that Flair would want off in the middle of the wrestling war with Vince.

Yes, and 1986 would be the biggest year of business that Jim Crockett Promotions ever did.

There were two faces of wrestling, Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan.

Yeah.

And Flair wanted to go spend more time with his family.

So Buddy was going to get the world title and have it for a few years, which means he would have turned back Magnum TA,

maybe Barry Wyndham if things still happen and he comes in.

Nikita Koloff.

It would have been Buddy with JJ instead of Flare with JJ.

Buddy was with JJ.

Different horsemen altogether.

That's that's a.

You want to talk about the horseman getting into trouble?

There's a horseman that will get in trouble, the Buddy Landell, that horseman.

Boy, howdy.

The thing is, JJ was with Buddy, and the whole thing with JJ and Tully came after Buddy overslept.

So part of that possibly would have happened.

But anyway,

again, not knocking George South.

He told a story.

Buddy told it to him.

It's a good story.

Doesn't stand up to independent scrutiny.

But anyway, when...

When Crockett expanded, he's running more shows.

He's running more towns.

They started neglecting the Carolinas somewhat.

As I said, like by 1986, you could tell there were starting to be some chips because

we, again, not only did Buddy and Rick sell the place out in 85, but when we did that big TV taping with the Midnight and the Warriors, and I think it was Flare and the Horseman against Dusty and the superpowers or the Road Warriors or whatever on top, that was $74,000

and sold out in 1986.

That would be

the equivalent of what, a $200 and almost a quarter of a million dollar house in today's money.

And that wasn't even a great American bash date.

That was just a loaded card in Raleigh at that point.

But on some of the other weeks, you'd have the Midnight versus Wahoo and Ronnie in a cold match for the title, and you'd have 1,200 people.

And that was the year they started

kind of neglecting Greenville, South Carolina, that had been one of their major markets.

In 1986, Greenville, for 40 wrestling events, grossed $600,000.

By 1988, you could barely get 1,000 people in a fucking building.

So, and by the way, 600 grand,

almost 40 years later, that Greenville, South Carolina, was the equivalent of a $2 million a year town for Crockett, and it was one of his B towns.

So that was, anyway, that was

what started the chink in the armor.

And then when Turner Broadcasting bought the thing in 88,

most of the Carolinas towns went dark.

And the fans got pissed.

They wanted to run the big cities.

They wanted to run Los Angeles and Dallas and this and that.

And the big cities didn't draw what the Carolinas towns did.

Then when they tried to go back to the Carolinas towns, the fans were like, oh, fuck you.

Now you need us.

This was ours.

You took it away from us.

Remember, I told a story when I said, Why did you book Greensboro

on a Wednesday night?

I was at a production meeting.

I was asking Petacino, who's working in the office then.

He said, Well, they

wanted to save

Saturday nights for the big markets.

I said, What

is bigger than Greensboro?

And I got my books out and I showed him how Greensboro over the last year

had outdrawn St.

Louis and Chicago and this town and that town.

And then he said, whoa, I didn't realize that.

I said,

you people are working in a fucking office.

I'm digging in my wrestling bag.

I've got access to records you don't fucking have.

Am I getting off on a tangent here?

No, it's part of the story.

So, but that's, that's what they did.

Because we've learned that, because we've heard that obviously a lot.

Mostly you hear about it from

fans that used to go to shows in Greensboro that they felt ripped off.

Star K got ripped away from them and

booking issues.

And next thing you know, what was the strongest market, Greensboro is gone.

Well, Raleigh, think about Raleigh in 1977.

They're seeing Ric Flair and Greg Valentine versus the Anderson brothers, plus Piper and Andre and Snooka and Steamboat.

And in 1987, they're seeing the cruel connection in the semifinal match or whatever.

They did the same thing with all the Carolinas towns that per capita drew more than most other wrestling markets in the country because they thought they wanted to go to the big towns.

So then they had a picture.

1985

sold out.

1993, there's not a thousand people in there.

It was WCW's last show in the building.

You know, there's been footage over the years of Ric Flair, you know, not too long ago, saying things like,

if Crockett promotions had just stayed in the Carolinas, they never would have gone out of business.

It's not necessarily that simple, but were there people at the time, as it was happening, advocating for not traveling to Chicago, L.A.,

St.

Louis?

Like, as it was happening in real time, were there people saying, why don't we just stay here in these towns?

Yeah, a couple of them were named crockett

um

david you know david tried to talk jimmy out of selling when the business started resurging and coming back in 88

and and david admitted in this well we thought we were invincible and

you know we got a little too big for our britches paraphrasing

but

It would have been very difficult for Jim Crockett promotions had they stayed in the Carolinas and on the eastern seaboard where they were established and could draw from Chicago over to Baltimore and Philadelphia and the Carolinas and the southeast and add Georgia to that.

They wouldn't have been,

they had the national television, so they would have been a presence.

They wouldn't have been

as competitive with Vince for the

84 to 87 period that they were,

but they would have been healthier financially by not spending the money to expand the TV network and expand the live events and absorb all those promotions that they, Kansas City, Florida, Mid-South, UWF, whatever.

So eventually,

Vince may have still taken over

the entire country for wrestling, but

it would be hard to figure how how that Jim Crockett promotions and wrestling in the Carolinas couldn't exist in some form,

regardless of what.

Maybe they wouldn't have kept Ric Flair,

but maybe Flair would have run with Vince and then come back because he didn't want to move out of the fucking Carolinas.

If Vince didn't

eat up every single piece of talent that would have supplied a secondary promotion with a lot of good talent from 88 to 98.

Company under TBS was being run

and the fact that TBS eliminated all of the

markets that their wrestling show could go to, that it was proven, that it was popular, that it was more over

than anything else.

They either didn't run them or they watered the product down so bad to look like Vince's that the people in those markets didn't want to go see it anymore.

That's the problem.

Eventually, everything was chasing Vince.

Yes.

And,

you know, so you did something that somebody else is doing, but not as good instead of doing something completely different than anybody else was doing that was already successful.

So that mismanagement on different

mismanagement on different levels.

Crockett just got too big too fast and took bad advice.

TBS

disrupted and dismembered the whole goddamn thing and made it something completely different that nobody wanted to see for years and years.

But there you have it.

And then

finally, in 2016, big-time wrestling ran.

I was on that show.

They ran Spartanburg the night before.

Baby Doll beat me up.

And then that night in Raleigh, Jimmy Valiant spanked me with my tennis racket.

But

it was fun to go back.

But

I've done that now.

I don't need to go back anymore.

I just love Jimmy Valiant retelling the story of trying to beg Buddy Landell to

go out.

And now here's the thing.

Imagine Jimmy in his day was not the best influence on anybody, but he would have been a better influence than probably most of the people at Buddy Landell were hanging around with.

Oh, brother, stay in.

Get a glass table.

Oh, maybe that's not a good idea for you.

Get a table.

See, that was Klondike Bill's gimmick.

And somehow it got hung on Jimmy Valiant.

I don't know how.

You know, someone recently emailed us about that story.

And they said they asked him about it.

I don't know how it comes up at a convention, probably because Jimmy's trying to sell something.

And Jimmy was like, No, man, it's not true at all.

It's not true at all.

It was the Midnight Express.

Hey, no, come on now.

Not the rock and roll, but the Midnight Express.

No,

I'll tell you what, though, Klondike Bill, and he's gone now, and he had a lovely wife, and I'm sure she would have to be 120 years old right now.

But Klondike Bill was known in the business even after his wrestling days were over with, and he got into his ring-hauling days.

Not only was he the undisputed NWA World Pussy Eating Champion, but he had a record going that he had scored with more hotel maids in the Carolinas than any other living human.

And those glass-top coffee tables would come into play that they had in those roadside motels back in those days.

And somehow.

That's all I can say.

And you're saying somehow that got attributed to Jimmy Valiant?

Well,

I heard it from Klondike Bill's own lips, but I never even suspectified it about handsome Jimmy.

And suddenly, you know, it seems like it's just too similar a story.

By the way, is the story that Big Mama's doing it or just that it's a generic woman?

No, it's just a generic one of the.

Well, it depends on whether it's number one or number two, depending on the story.

It was shit.

I'm pretty sure the story was shit.

Well, it started out with the P.

I don't know.

But P rhymes with

capital P, which rhymes with T, and that stands for trouble.

We're getting details I've never heard before here now.

Well, no, that's the way the story was told to me by Klondike Bill, that you could lay under the table and if she peed on the table it made interesting geometric designs

ah just like the uh dorton arena yes yeah like it's parabolic you know they wanted it to be this state-of-the-art arena why didn't you put it in air conditioner that would have been state-of-the-art

well now but we're talking we're talking about mid-50s when they were putting this thing together man

air conditioning wasn't Widespread at that point some places down south.

In state-of-the-art buildings from the architect who designed the United Nations, I think they would know a little bit about it.

Well, he was Polish, too, now,

right?

Well, you never know about them Polish.

Stop.

You see, you can't do that.

That's not nice.

We can't tell jokes about them anymore either.

No, all jokes are out.

All jokes have to be about objects.

Like, hey, look at this frying pan.

Hey, look at this.

I have a bottle on my desk.

Like, that's the kind of thing.

How many frying pans does it take to change a light bulb in Dorton Arena?

How many?

Three glass tables.

How many union guys does it take to change a light bulb at Madison Square Garden?

I don't think they've hired them all yet.

25.

You got a problem?

You know, I was in goddamn,

I was in, where was it?

It was, we were in Atlantic City.

That big convention building, right, for a WWF taping.

For the raw.

Yeah, they did a raw there one time, right?

And we go up and the place was built in the goddamn Ulysses Grant administration, it looks like.

And we go up to this big room that we're going to have this production meeting in and there aren't enough chairs.

So

I think I told Jerry Briscoe, I said, I'll go down and get us a couple of chairs.

So I'm walking down, a guy said, oh, you can't do that.

It's a union building.

I said, what do you mean?

He said, you got to have

the union people bring the chair.

I said, a chair for me and my friend to sit in.

No, they got to be the one carrying the chairs.

I said, well, tell them to get their fucking ass up here with some chairs because I'm tired.

Well, I stood there for about five or six minutes and no chairs materialized.

So I walked my goddamn ambulatory, able-bodied ass down the stairs and picked up three fucking chairs.

One for me, one for Jerry Briscoe, and an extra one just to be neighborly.

And I walked right past that fucking guy on the way up when I was carrying them.

And I said, your union guys ain't quick enough

and they went and complained there was a guy carrying chairs over there and somebody had probably jim ross came were you carrying chairs i said yes and i'm sitting in the chair i was carrying and jerry's sitting in the other one and if that guy don't like it i'm willing to go home right now and forget this whole

show

And then we had our meeting and went, I don't know what happened to the guy with the fucking chair fetish.

Was that the trip to Atlantic City where they destroyed your, what was was atlantic city where they destroyed your windshield

no that was yes wait a minute now

god damn it is there another resort type

place with a big building in new jersey

resort at that well you know you know what i'm saying on the beach or with things going on i mean wildwood but i don't think they were running raw

yeah yeah well you know what yeah that as a matter of fact then yes raw in atlantic city the big old building that was the same night that broke my fucking windshield.

There it is.

That was the barter to get the union not to kill you.

They let it then destroy your car.

You know, that might be a good time to close the program, Brian.

Well, death usually is a good way to end the show.

Swami's barking.

But

overall, what did you think of the Dorton Arena?

Like, how would you grade it?

No, it was good.

It's nice to see,

again,

a documentary on something, the old days that doesn't come with an agenda, not history written by the winner.

The WWF has to make a

snide remark

or,

you know, just the old plethora of blah, blah, that we've seen before.

This is very different.

So I enjoyed it.

PBS.org, When Giants Walked Here

about the love affair, and it was a love affair that fans in Eastern North Carolina had with wrestling for so many years until the wrestling people screwed it all up.

Well, this is your show.

That's your show.

So you're the wrestling persons that could only screw this show up.

Well, that's a deep subject, as Mama Cornette used to say.

So I tell you what, we're going to close on that one.

We've got through with this one, and now we're going to come back refreshed, re-energized, and...

recharged and ready to talk about more stupid things that people do and say on the drive-thru this week, your program.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Well, until then, for Brian and everybody else that we've talked about, thank you, must you, bye-bye, everybody.

Get the experience, get the experience of Jim Connest

of Jim Connest,

of Jim Connet.