Episode 542: Now & Then

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He's in a fight for wrestling soul.

Using a racket and some mind control.

He's Jim Cornette.

The keys to the future, held by the past.

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

He's Jim Cornet.

Well, he's never fake a phone phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Because his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

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

It's been a boring few days in modern wrestling.

We're going to bring you up to date on all of that excitement and talk classic Mid-South wrestling from 1984 to show you what it's supposed to be like.

And joining me in this endeavor, Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting lion, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-host to you, the George Orwell of Podcasting.

And he doesn't even have a big brother, the great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again for a fun show filled with who knows what and so much more.

Well, then, and some who shot John.

We got some of that

story as well.

What?

Oswald.

No, who shot John?

You know, certainly they use that phrase up in New Jersey.

No, you do, certainly.

You know, just real quick, because I saw a video for whatever reason popped up in my Twitter feed earlier, the Kennedy assassination.

Do you think it's just Oswald?

Oh, for heaven's sake.

Now we're going to re-litigate this at the top of what I was hoping to be a restful program, just something trivial like the Kennedy assassination.

Mr.

Cornette, just answer the question.

Just answer the question, please.

Senator Warren.

Let me just say this about that, or Justice Warren, whatever he was back then.

You know, I think at this point, it almost has to be because as we've seen, it's almost impossible to keep any other secret for any amount of time than a federal government.

People think they've kept some secrets.

I think some of those people ought to be kept secret.

But no, you know, I don't think I mean the

who was responsible may still be a gray area,

but I think it was some dip shit.

It's like recently that, you know,

got lucky or semi-lucky or got somewhere he shouldn't be and got a chance to do something.

And

one worked and one didn't.

But, you know, this wasn't like, it wasn't like

if this is, if it had been a movie, then you would have seen the helicopters flying out of Dealey Plaza from the Russian equivalent of SEAL Team 6 or whatever while everybody was distracted.

But no,

it's too simple not to be true.

See, kids, this is the story you should hear in school: the origins of the great American patriot Jack Ruby.

Well, and again, there you go.

Was it

the mob or just some dip shit or somebody that thought that he was going to get a payoff from

who was the gangster down there, Carlos Capistrano?

My God, I'm I'm unprepared on this topic.

But to point again, this fucking guy,

he can get in there because he's in there because this was chaos

in a time where they didn't have this ridiculous amount of security.

When you look at the footage of Ruby shooting Oswald, look at that big, fat, red-necked fucking hillbilly sheriff deputy.

standing there with his thumb up his ass.

There was the state of the art of the goddamn security back in those days when something like this happened.

Well, something like this will be happening.

Bill Mercer was there.

Bill Mercer was there.

That's right.

Carl Cox was in, wasn't he in JFK, Oliver Stone's film?

In that scene, he played the cop holding the gun over his head.

My God, you know what?

He fucking looks like him.

I hadn't thought about that until now.

Somebody,

I don't remember actually.

But he should have been been if he wasn't.

You know what my favorite wrestler cameo in a film was?

You ever see the movie Problem Child?

The tale of young red-headed junior causing chaos and problems everywhere he goes.

Who was in it?

John Ritter.

Yes, yes, I remember that.

Jack Warden.

Jack Warden was great in it.

But in that movie, the bow tie killer, Michael Richards, is in prison.

And as he's in prison, you see the other prisoners in there.

One of them comes up next to him.

His hair is kind of slicked back, jacked, swastika on his arm.

It's Kerry von Erich.

Which is funny too, considering his dad was a Nazi character, and here he is in his film debut playing a Nazi in prison.

But you never hear anyone say, oh, yeah, Kerry von Eric and Problem Child because it was such a brief, nothing thing.

It makes you wonder how it even happened.

So you're saying you don't hear the phrase or the movie title Problem Child associated with Kerry von Erich.

One, maybe, but not the other.

I went to see that on a rain day in camp.

I was in summer camp, and it rained, so they had to take us somewhere indoors, like the movie theater.

Wait a minute, what the fuck?

What kind of fucking fancy-ass summer camp?

We went out in the rain and liked it, or we sat in a fucking cabin and jacked off.

Well, it's day camp in the suburbs.

It's a little different.

Oh, day camp.

No, we were up on a goddamn mountain for a month, motherfucker.

That was some naked and afraid shit when I was nine, but go ahead.

You went there alone for a month?

When you were nine?

No, I wasn't completely fucking alone.

There was a million people there.

But without your parents, I'm saying.

Like you went there?

Yes,

it was a camp with kids and instructors and

various administrative people.

Wow.

Coaches.

How did you do in that kind of setting?

It was fun.

I liked it.

The first year was better than the second year because the second year I got one of the cabins where you had to walk down the hill to go to the outhouse.

And at night, I was not a fan.

I was a particular child even as a youngster.

But when we had the indoor bathroom, it was okay.

Of course, with the cabin, there was cracks in the wall about a half inch fucking thick leading to the outside.

It was again.

I still had my issue with bugs that I have had all my life.

I had a little fucking can of raid that I would take in there with me just to make sure while I was sitting there vulnerable.

I went prepared.

I had a whole foot locker with a Mama Cornette made a manifest of all the clothes and things that I would need for my time there.

See, my dad went to sleep away camp.

He went to Camp Kiyuma.

I never went to sleepaway camp.

I went to day camp or travel camp eventually, and every night I would return home, except if there was a long trip once or twice the summer.

So that's why they just wouldn't even let you people out in the rain.

They would let us out in the rain.

They They figured it would be better to go indoors.

So we see Problem Child there.

I don't think the camp counselors knew exactly what kind of movie it was because the moment that Junior says to Gilbert Godfrey, you, you stupid dick, like all the counselors are horrified and all the kids lost it.

It was great.

Problem Child, one of the great John Ritter movies.

One of the only John Ritter movies.

Do you know what kind of movies we got at Camp Mountain Lake?

Up there right between Mon Eagle and fucking Chattanooga, Tennessee?

Deliverance?

They would know that, oh, oh, it wasn't out yet.

They would, they gathered us into

the one of the buildings where they could put the rows of chairs and everything, and you know,

where they could get everybody in.

And we all got to go to the PX and get our bottle of RC cola and potentially a moon pie.

And then we would sit down and they fucking had a project 16 millimeter movie movie projector that projected.

Um, oh my God, what was that Bella Lugosi flick that where

Bella Gossi meets a Brooklyn gorilla?

No, no, no.

Old Mother Something meets the vampire.

And the horror movie Buffs out there, it was like when he was on morphine right before the end, it was made in 1954, as being shown in a fucking

goddamn barn on a 16-millimeter projector in front of a bunch of kids in 1971 or whatever, and we liked it.

And then we all had to go to bed, and they played fucking taps on the goddamn PA system, and you have to go to sleep.

What kind of camp is this?

It was a game.

It was a, well, you know, you should.

Horror movies over.

Let's play taps.

Put everyone to bed.

You should have seen the drills that we went through, boy.

And

they had cute little uniforms for us to wear.

Dracula was on Svenguli last night, speaking of Bella Lugosi.

I saw that.

It's part of it, at least.

It's still such a stunning visual movie.

It looks so good, especially nowadays on a nice TV.

Considering it's almost 100 years old, 1931 or whatever, it looks incredible.

They had sets in those days, sets and faces and content.

And paintings.

And paintings.

And

people had conversation, Brian, before all this mass media hit.

And now we're having a conversation.

People are listening to it on mass media.

We've had more conversations about nothing on mass media lately than anyone.

And I think, you know, as a matter of fact, much like the Midnight Express won more wrestling matches than Elvis and the Beatles combined, I believe you've just hit on another statistic there.

Something that nobody else was really going for in that particular.

Do you have an underdog super energy pill for me, sweet Polly Purebread?

Oh, I wish I did.

My son is obsessed with underdog right now.

He thinks he is underdog.

So I got him.

Well, I got him an underdog t-shirt, but it's too big.

It's a small.

That was the smallest one I can get, but it's still too big on him.

He's about to turn three.

He started getting that idea when you trained him how to go on that puppy pad.

Oh, were you stuck?

And ever since then.

I can't even train the puppy to go on the puppy pad.

Well, see, that's your private.

Harley does her business where appropriate.

I'll have you, except when she's puny.

Except when she's in the office, and then all of a sudden, oh, there's a little, but you always try to make it sound good.

Oh, there's a cute little poop right over here.

Well, you guys ever know every once in a while.

That hasn't happened in ages.

You may have heard that.

That was Harley puking all over my carpet.

You may have heard that.

Well, now that happened yesterday.

But no, she's had a puny time.

And that's why if I'm a little dreary today, folks, and I apologize,

my normal schedule is, sleep schedule has been a little shortened because I remain the only member of my immediate family who is not undergoing some type of medical treatment or has medical appointments with medical professionals scheduled coming up, including Harley Quinn.

She's feeling better, but her tummy's still puny.

And I know that that news is going to really bum out some of the detractors out there, but I'm in fine health,

fighting fit, as Bobby Fulton would say, fighting for air and fit for nothing.

But so if I'm

a little dreary today, I'm going to try to, here's another thing.

Don't watch the wrestling programs

if you need energized, though they are not underdog super energy pills either.

You know, 1984, as we're going to talk about later on, that golden year,

is that when it all started downhill?

For wrestling or society?

What are you asking exactly?

Well, it might be both.

Because 1984 was the pivotal point in the wrestling business where we all got too big for our britches and started drawing too much money and attracted the attention of too many fucking outside interests.

And

boom, things take off for a while and then it all goes goes to hell.

And

now,

honestly, I got to say, the WWE,

the big story here is not a wrestling war anymore.

It's how much bigger are they going to get?

And with AEW, it's how much lower are they going to go?

Well, we'll find out when we.

Do you have any measurement of the metric of those things?

Of the limbo rate for AEW and WWE.

Limbo, limbo.

Yeah, hello, can you go, baby?

I guess the other question is:

in a perfect world where AEW figured things out,

where Tony Khan either figured it out somehow miraculously now,

or someone was put in place that could figure it out.

And it took a little while, but you turn things around.

How big could AEW be?

Like, what's their limitation on

how big they could be?

Who else is left a sign?

You could buy TNA or...

Who they got that's the game changer, as the kids say these days?

Who they got over there?

Well, I mean, they got people.

The people they got that are good are now appearing on NXT.

Well, but

the point is,

right now, Ed, we can talk about this.

The WWE, when we talk about SmackDown here, little boy, they're getting the most out of the least because I had to prop my eyeballs up with toothpicks for most of that program.

I don't know.

Was it thrilling to you?

Did it tickle your taint in a way the classic episode of goddamn wrestling should tickle your various orifices?

Yeah, I don't know if that's how wrestling hits me, but no, I moved it from the big TV to the small monitor in the corner just because I realized I just couldn't monitor this.

I don't give a fuck.

You made them go sit in the corner.

I put them in the corner.

I put the met game on TV.

You gave them a timeout for being.

But meanwhile, they're making more money than the federal government.

They're printing the money.

And they don't have to do shit.

But, you know, that's makes stars.

But that's like WWF in the late 80s when everyone criticized it because of the slow pace of a lot of the matches.

And again, those guys were.

taking every kind of drug and they were on the road more than these guys today could ever dream of.

And back then, the schedule was crazy, too.

It wasn't like, all right, it'll be the Northeast for the next six weeks.

It was like Chicago, then LA, then Minnesota, then Texas, and then back to New York.

It was just all over the place.

There was no rhyme or reason to the schedule at that time.

And

WWE was doing great business.

You could always find something to say they could have done more, but in the late 80s, they were doing great business, presenting a style that to a lot of longtime fans, especially fans before the industry completely changed in 1984, give or take.

It was somewhat boring.

There weren't a lot of angles on TV.

Every year for sweeps, you got some main event matches.

Saturday night's main event was good whenever that would pop up, but

it was a fairly slow pace to get what you wanted, what you knew you were going to get.

It felt like forever.

for the Ultimate Warrior to get his hands on Rick Rude and Bobby Heenan.

And it was WrestleMania to SummerSlam.

That wasn't really that long at all.

They built it up so perfectly that it really meant a lot.

Today, you watch WWE TV, specifically SmackDown,

even Raw, but it's three hours.

But SmackDown, they give you very, very little.

A lot of matches that no one seems to be invested in with guys who are fine.

It's just no one's invested in them or their characters, maybe even less so than a lot of those mid-card guys in the late 80s.

But they give you enough that everyone seems to be leaving happy.

So maybe

that is the right method.

As a businessman, as a promoter, why give more than you have to when if you keep going at this pace, you'll be able to keep doing this for a long time.

Exactly.

And

what they've perfected is instead of in the old days when they didn't have this much television, when it was only an hour show on syndication or, you know, whatever the case.

They perfected now, they give you a bunch of shit in the middle of what you would have seen then anyway, that you thought was slow-paced.

But now they talk about everything and react to everything a lot more in the middle.

They're still doing nothing, but they're giving people a lot to say.

And then eventually something happens.

But that's

again, you know, we talked about it the other day.

They're doing fine on

stars, and stars they can pull out and stars they can have returned.

But with

AEW, who is left to sign?

The question I said or asked was

in terms of anybody that

every time they sign somebody that is supposed to be the game changer and supposed, oh my God, this is going to be a mega

within three weeks is a eh.

And the more money he spends, it seems like the less time they stay over, except for Will Osprey.

But that, again,

doing well.

No matter what you think of any of the talent that you're referencing, that's not on the the talent.

That's on the booker.

That's on Tony.

Well, exactly.

That's what I'm saying.

So now that there are not these names, these internet darlings, these potential

superstars, these,

do you know of anybody they could possibly steal legitimately, realistically, credibly, from the WWE?

I don't know.

No, because steal is an interesting word.

Well, I mean steal in terms of their their contract stuff that they take them instead of this re-signing.

Basically, someone who's going to turn down WWE.

Not someone WWE doesn't want, but you're saying someone who would turn down WWE, which they would only do if Tony threw stupid money at them.

Is there anyone that would make a big difference for?

And is there anybody coming up in the near future that anybody's talked about?

And the reality is that

industry-wide, in the biggest locker room.

in the world, people talk about Tony.

They talk about his behavior.

They talk about what that company's like.

They talk about the chaos.

Everyone who comes out of that company, even people who have no problem with Tony or management, say that it was chaotic.

It was unorganized.

There was a lot of frustration.

Like to the man, every single person.

There's a reason for that.

And unless they're going to ever get structure, it's not going to change.

And they're never going to get structure because Tony's not going to let go of this thing.

That's the only reason it's here is for Tony to hold on to it and jerk it off.

Hey, come on now.

That was a bugle show.

Back to my original point or my original question for you.

How big could AEW be?

WWE is doing it this way.

AEW's business model or AEW's formatting seems to be give people lots of matches.

They can go long, just people in matches.

AEW does what they think

and what some wrestling journalists, for some reason, back up.

that they're doing effective angles, effective storylines.

A lot of us think that maybe it's the exact opposite.

But

if that changed and you're able to change the creativity from the top, and again, your personal feelings about people aside.

Yes, yes, I'll be serious.

Kenny Omega is coming back.

At some point, you would think, unless he's just never going to wrestle again.

That's a guy who's been a main of NRNAW, someone who has made a difference in the past.

He's been gone a while.

He's been gone a long time.

So there's a...

Chance you could do something fresh with him, although more than likely he's just going to want to work with his friends.

And everyone knows that.

But you have him, you still have MJF and he's still young.

You have Will Ospreay, who hasn't been there long enough for them to fuck him up.

There are other people who have been off TV, like a Wardlow, who could be off TV, like whoever you want there.

So you can repair them.

The issue isn't just having stars and then putting them into AEW.

It's the TV.

Again, it doesn't have to be WWE.

WWE.

is doing shows that are centered around these big angles and these big storylines that start at the the beginning, there's a point in the middle where everyone pops up and you know that they're in the back.

And then at the end, you get the big crescendo.

AEW doesn't have that.

That's the thing that has to change.

I said it about Will Ospreay the other day during the match review.

Will Ospreay is a great wrestler.

He's never been produced either as a wrestler, but more importantly, as a character in a promo for American wrestling television.

AEW, They really want to try to turn things around.

It can't be, let's double down on being,

we're the best wrestle.

It has to be to be a better version of American wrestling TV with people and characters and storylines people care about.

The wrestling on TV has to be secondary.

The wrestling on pay-per-view is what you build up to.

Here, I think, is the problem that they've got,

which is

which is always the problem when you try to take, and I did it with Ring of Honor, when you try to take a promising indie promotion

and try to

get it over to a bigger audience on widespread television in whatever form or fashion that takes,

to make it in any way more palatable for a bigger audience, you have to,

for lack of a better term,

turn down the fucking

indie level

and turn up the logic level.

You have to slow down and explain things to people.

You have to build angles that indie shows were all about having the greatest match in the world, tearing the fucking house down.

And wow, I wonder what they're going to do next time they come whenever.

But a major league level is having a good show, giving everybody their money's worth and leaving the people walking out, figuring, yes, I want to see this next time because you've led to something.

The indies don't do that.

So you alienate the audience that's part of a private club that knows everything about these people because they've seen them in,

you know, dandelion wrestling in Japan.

And they've read about them on the internet.

And you're trying to sell these people to an audience from scratch that just wants to know the basics.

Do I like this guy, or do I not like him?

Who's he mad at?

Whose side is he on?

Why are these people fighting?

The normal people that will enable you to get a national television audience.

And this is, it's just, it's,

I don't know to answer your question,

whether you can take AEW with the platform that it's built itself on and make it

in any way mainstream to where that regular fans are, you know, because you can't follow it.

There are no stories.

You can't trust anybody.

They all fight each other.

Everybody hurts everybody, real or imagined.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I've been saying it for a while pretty vociferously.

I wonder if you agree.

I say that the commentating team on dynamite is a major barrier of entry for a lot of people.

And to what you said before about inserting more logic in, explain things better, you need someone to do the explaining.

Yes.

Do you think I'm being over, am I over the top when I say that the commentating team hurts the show and they need something better for that specific reason, or do you agree?

No, I agree because

the same thing we were saying five years ago.

I mean, they had Jim Ross at one point, but the three-man deal that Tony insists on is cluttered.

Tony right now just sits there and I guess takes notes to stooge on other people.

Taz

seems disinterested because if he can get something going, he's got to work it in with a shoehorn and Vaseline.

But the problem is the clown in the fucking main chair.

He

pretended to be a pro wrestler on his own fucking shows.

20 years ago, and now he's on national television and apparently is a very ugly man, a very ugly man, because he won't take that fucking mask off.

And it looks like a clown that nobody's ever heard of, because that's what it is.

And he did

mark commentary

on VHSs in his basement for other marks when they had their tape trading out of Rosita or wherever.

And it's just ridiculous.

And that's the, he couldn't sell pussy on a troop train, much less

get these guys over when the booking

is in a state it's in to begin with.

You need strength in your lead commentator.

We've seen various different versions of it.

Bill Watts, Vince McMahon, Lance Russell, Jim Ross, Gordon Soley, very different, every one of them.

But you need.

Authoritative.

Authoritative, but just some kind of strength, not someone who fumbles over everything they say and who sounds like a joke and who talks in a way that no one else really really would talk about.

No one talks like that, no one wants to hear anyone talk like that.

And you need your wrestling commentator to really hammer the point home.

I said it during that MJF Osprey review.

Imagine if that match had had Jim Ross at his peak doing it, or anyone else.

It would have elevated the match.

The commentators hurt the match, they didn't elevate it.

And the lead commentator is the main culprit.

Well, and Ian Rick Vonnie, where'd he go?

And

there's a few other people out there that might could

have a halfway decent swing at trying to announce that program, but no, the best friend of the fucking,

the guy,

the best friend who pretends to be an announcer of the EVPs who pretend to be wrestlers

is the guy that's immovable from that.

Do you think if he ever got like a severe case of projectile diarrhea or something that they would actually let somebody else do the show or would they cancel it and just air mighty mouse reruns they'd put shivani in the lead chair it'd be the worst option of all well whatever yeah because that's on saturday night and that's working out for him aew has been the biggest exposure that pro wrestling gorillas style was not sustainable for a large audience.

It was fine for an audience that wanted to buy DVDs still and pack into a tiny room in California.

There's nothing the matter with DVDs.

No, that's fine, but it drove away viewers.

The Young Bucks drive away viewers.

It was like some comedy club that had a hot run out there, right?

Where they have all the

finest stand-ups come in and fucking do a show for 400 people, but you try to take the individual sum of the parts out on the road and they don't fucking play.

It's like Dane Cook.

There was a minute where every girl I knew thought Dane Cook was the funniest comedian of all time.

And I'm like, really?

Have you seen any other comedian ever?

Because he's not even in the top 100.

And I'd watch his stuff thinking, all right, the kids think this is funny.

Let me see it.

And it was garbage.

And pretty soon the world caught up to that.

And that's what it was with the Young Bucks.

They had a moment.

They blew up amongst.

Not the women, but the men who were like women, I guess.

I don't know who they blew up amongst the most, but it wasn't sustainable because they weren't smart enough to understand how to propel themselves to the next level.

They only understood how to propel them.

No, no, no, no.

I disagree with you there.

They were smart enough to figure out how to propel themselves to the next level.

They just knew they couldn't fucking do it because they had neither the size, the fucking talent, the

intelligence or whatever.

So they instead figured out how to propel themselves to the next level of Tony Khan's checkbook.

But that leads me is what I was going to say.

Would you like to just go ahead since we're talking about this subject?

Just a couple of thoughts I have on their new

Las Vegas residency in Arlington.

Is that what we're going to call it?

Well, it's a residency in Arlington, Texas at the esports arena, I believe is the name.

Yeah, that's another thing.

It's a fucking airplane hanger.

Either that or they store giant industrial fucking HVAC systems in this building.

How is this an arena?

I thought when they said

it was like a 2,500-seat arena or esports arena,

okay, they've built a small arena for

mid-sized or smaller events that draw a couple thousand people.

That's a brilliant idea today.

If you're trying to do something to draw a steady crowd of a couple thousand people, you don't have a lot of place to choose from, right?

It's not an it's it's the same thing as

Ring of Honor did

in 15 years ago, and all the indies do.

It's a big empty room with seats on the floor.

I don't call that an arena.

Do you see what

there are no bleachers?

There are no stands.

There are no goddamn risers.

There's big, empty fucking walls.

Do you see what I'm saying to you?

It reminds me of Ring of Honor and the ECW Arena on HDNet.

Yes.

And that was the biggest thing with trying to

find places to do television that looked like an arena instead of an indie show, which is in a big, empty building and they wheel fucking, or they wheel.

Who do they wheel?

Well, they wheel dollies of seats in and just set up chairs on the floor, is what I'm trying to say.

They don't have stands.

It's not an arena setting.

And that's

it's so hard to shoot for television because,

you know, except for that floating jib shot where they, you know, they're they're panning the crowd from above because all the crowd is on the floor.

But it's you can't stay, you know, on that shot all the time or shoot all the wrestling from above, which would be very disorienting.

So

when they've got a level shot, you've got a blank wall in the back of you, no matter what you're doing.

And at least they can shoot both sides of the arena now.

Well, but they still,

the stage is across and the screen is across one end.

So instead of four sides, you've now got three sides.

And they don't have a lot of

background on the one side there where the jib is flying by under it.

So we don't know.

But the point is, it's going to make that hard

to look good if they've only got five or six hundred people in there.

Because they had, they've, they've set the precedent now where they've got all those people on the floor and it looked pretty good on those sides.

But the advances, because they're going to be there, what, a dozen times in the next two months?

I mean, at least I'm wondering if it's more than that, because aren't they going to add Ring of Honor stuff to it, or is that on top of the addition?

Well, I think, you know, between Ring of Honor and AEW,

they're going to so,

but you see what?

It was well lit.

It was the great lighting, the colors pop, except for the black walls all around them.

And, you know, that's it.

So it kind of.

tony was a big fan of global in 1993

when the sportatorium was empty and it was just a

giant walls everywhere.

But that's the thing.

It

instead of having a

look where

well you're you've seen

some of the Smoky Mountain shows, the Bluegrass Brawl we did in Pikeville,

where you could legitimately had 2,000 people in an arena-like setting, a basketball gym,

or, you know, the territory days footage of anywhere like that,

you can make that look like an arena and the excitement is there, and you can see all those people.

But here, you've got a choice of either seeing the people or seeing the wrestling.

And so it looks kind of like a smaller version of the

bigger arenas that they've been running with 3,000 people in it.

Now they're running a smaller arena, but it's only got a thousand people.

You can't see most of of them.

I'm willing to give that part a little bit of a chance, even though I don't disagree with anything you're saying, just because I'm happy it's a different look than dynamite.

But why not?

If they're going to,

he has a hundred million dollar a year talent budget.

I guarantee you, if he went in there to this place, said, look, we're renting you this X amount of times.

But what we're going to do is we're also going to spend money.

We're going to have some customizable rollaway collapsible bleachers brought in here.

And we're going to, we're going to, across from our hard camera, we're going to have those people going all the way up to the ceiling, all the way up to the ceiling.

And then we're going to spend $5,000 at a goddamn local printing place and have giant fucking banners to hang on the sides of those to soften up those black corners.

And then do the same thing you're doing with the arenas.

If there's nobody on the hard, behind the hard camera side,

at least we won't know at home and make you a bowl.

See what I'm saying?

Yeah, it's a very interesting thing you're saying.

Do you think it's actually, if you were promoter, if you were Tony, is that a good investment, not even just for here, just to have it?

Your own customized rollaway bleachers that you could go into other smaller rooms with and do something that looks like you.

Yes.

And, you know,

it depends on the size of of the promotion.

The reason why we,

in Ohio Valley Wrestling, created our own arena from a warehouse, but we customized it and it became an arena.

That's what we, the size we could fill up.

It could look good on television, blah, blah, blah.

And then you paint everything black you don't want people to see, but you don't want the predominant fucking background of your show to be black.

And so you have to have people raised.

If you don't run shows that draw enough people or have a need to look fabulous on television, that's a really expensive proposition that

many promotions wouldn't, it wouldn't make sense for them.

But

explain to me how the goddamn, don't fucking spend $13 million and 47 cents on Mercedes Moon or whatever

and get you a set of fucking $50,000 bleachers that'll hold 750 people.

Jesus Christ.

I don't know.

I haven't priced bleachers these days.

But you see what, in relation,

if you're going to do something like this, customize the fucking building.

Elsewise, you are literally shooting TV in an airplane hangar with a nice entrance.

So.

How much of a collision did you actually watch?

I zipped through some things.

I'm not going to.

I wasn't trying to critique anybody's matches.

And probably a good thing for all of them that I wasn't.

And this is all the people that don't make dynamite anymore.

This is where they've gone to,

you know, engage in some type of wrestling somewhere.

But they've got a little run going.

I wanted to see the look of the show.

And I wanted to see,

you know, what the ambiance was there.

The people seemed to be excited.

We'll see if these people,

many of whom I'm sure will come back every time they can,

will be as thrilled after they've seen this 12 times in the next eight weeks.

We'll see what happens.

But I got to mention that they're on a run.

Brian, they've got a little streak going on collision.

Do you know what it is?

No, I don't know.

I don't watch collision that much.

Two injuries in two weeks in a row.

Who was last week?

Apparently, last week, they knocked Dalton Castle out.

Oh, I just heard he's out for the rest of the year.

Yeah, apparently they brought Mike Tyson in to pummel him about the head and face.

It was Roddy Strong.

Well, God damn.

Roddy, I'm sorry for everything bad I ever may have said about you.

Please don't hurt me.

What the fuck did he do to him?

Hit him with a sledgehammer?

Let me see if I can find out.

I'll look it up right now.

But yeah, because I just saw the news that he is out the rest of

2024 from being knocked out legitimately, as the

news sites report it these days,

in a match with Roddy Strong.

And

I mean,

was this a dive gone awry?

I'm sure Roddy didn't just draw back and maybe a kick.

I can't imagine he just drew back and punched him in a fucking jaw.

Flying knee to the head.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

That sounds

bad.

That sounds really bad.

A flying knee to the head.

Maybe he needs to get some advice from Brutus Beefcake on.

This is why Wrestling 2 was so dangerous.

Well, there you go.

And the million-dollar knee lift.

And apparently this is going to be renamed the six-month knee lift because it'll knock you out of the business for six months.

Well, I didn't see that, but I did see.

I wanted to see the Look of Collision 2, and I forgot it was on.

So I tuned in, whatever, 15, 20 minutes into the show.

Literally, if you want to figure out when I tuned in, it was the five seconds before Sky Blue got hurt.

Well, wouldn't you know who won the pony?

That's the first thing I saw in the show.

No, no, wait, no, wait, no, hold on.

Oh, just pump the brakes there, young man.

You are a young man and still have the fruit of your vigor in your loins and all that type of thing.

You mean to tell me, with all of the things that you say about Sky Blue, that just happened to be when you tuned in, was when Sky Blue was on the screen.

Just complete coincidence.

Yeah, I don't think I say that much about Sky Blue.

I don't think I say that much about Sky Blue.

Also, I didn't know the rundown of the show, what was going to be on.

I was watching the Mets.

Watching the Mets.

No, the Mets Rover.

I was watching Sven Gooly, Dracula.

Was Mrs.

Met?

No.

At the game?

No, but a lot of people did a Google search for Mrs.

Met after we talked about her during the Naomi review, and they understand.

And

did she ever get custody of all the little ball boys?

No.

The ball boys and ball girls?

No, I don't think there's a custody issue.

I think there's an amicability between

Mr.

and Mrs.

Mett.

You're always talking about Sky Blue and her various assets.

It sounds like you're the one talking about it.

I barely ever mentioned Sky Blue.

I remember you.

Who is it that you're talking about all the time and describing their various attributes?

Tell me, I'd like to know.

Well, I thought it was, I'm sure some of the readers, readers, some of the listeners,

oh boy, some of the listeners will quote us chapter and verse on which programs you've talked about.

Anna Jay and Sky Blue.

Anna Jay, I'm talking.

Listen, I've talked about Anna Jay without anything.

I thought you were talking about Sky Blue.

Well, Sky Blue got hurt.

What the fuck?

They just stopped the match.

It blew.

Well, she blew out her ankle, apparently.

Because

what's her name?

Shekaru Sheeta

dove

over the top rope and just kind of went straight down.

And instead of Sky Blue looked like she was going to catch her like for a crossbody, but it was more like a fucking underhanded catch of a goddamn sack of wheat.

And she just crumpled right on her legs or landed on her legs and and sky blue crumpled underneath her and you knew she was hurt because the camera panned all the way back so you could see the entire building looking up to see what's going on yes they were looking up to see if you were looking up to see if i was looking up to see if you were looking up at me

did you see and she they called the match did you see like how they handled it well yeah that's the thing is they got that was the break spot now here's the thing god damn it i swear to Christ.

So what is unfolded on the screen here

is that the break spot is supposed to be the dive over the top rope.

Like, you know, they never go to break on any of the wrestling programs on a dive over the top.

So this is uncharted territory.

But when they land, boom.

You can kind of tell it looks kind of awkward.

And the referee goes down there and is checking instantly.

And

Old Sky Blue is obviously selling in a way that it doesn't look like she's going to get up here for a second.

And a referee goes to

Sheeta and kind of gives her the Iggy.

Nobody in the truck, nobody at Gorilla.

Who would be at Gorilla to make that call?

Is Tony there on Saturday nights?

Or when did they, did they tape this on Tuesday afternoon at 3:30?

But nobody would, instead of saying, go to break, said, wait a minute,

she might be hurt we might not need a break because they had

10 15 seconds there to visualize what i just described to you and they go to the break so in the break

the referee picture in picture

picture in picture

this so you're seeing it next to the goddamn pimple cream commercial

The referee obviously calls.

Here comes the doctor and Sheetah is walking around and parading around.

And I don't even know if anybody's talking to her for a while.

And you know, Sky Blue's not getting up.

And they call it off.

And Sheeta walks to the back.

They shoot her in picture and picture is walking

like she's going to catch a cab.

And

was it it?

It was in picture and picture.

They helped Sky Blue out still.

Sky blew out.

Sky blew out her ankle.

They helped Sky Blue out.

Did they not in the picture in picture?

Was she still there when they came back?

No, she was gone, I think, by the time they came back.

And then the next thing we saw was the stage.

Well, yes.

And then when they come back from the break,

so the referee has run up there and told fucking Sheeta, come back out.

And I think they had a wide shot for a little while.

And then Sheena comes back out on the stage so the referee can raise her hand.

And they tell people then, including us on in television land,

that yeah, the match was stopped, sky blue was hurt, so she does the win.

Then she turns around and walks back through the thing.

What the fuck?

They could have goddamn stuck with the shot they had for a fucking minute, registered the whole thing with her being hurt and gone to their break and come back on the other side without that bit of

frivolity and gone on with their program.

But it just, oh my God.

Hey, let me ask you a question that came to me watching this, and then I noticed it again or thought about it again later in the show when I had it on.

I just looked up and it was another moment like this.

Not like this, not an injury.

Lately, we see a lot in both companies of referees clearly leaning over to a wrestler, asking them if they're okay, then hitting the button and talking back to the back and letting them know the wrestler is okay.

Yes.

Is there a way to do that so it's it's not so obvious that the wrestler is checking to see if the professional wrestler is okay

for clearance?

It's just, there's something about it that takes me out of things.

When all of a sudden you see the referee clearly communicating to other people and clearly checking to see if the hurt wrestler is really hurt or working.

Like, it's just, yeah.

And well, and

I don't know.

I think part of it comes from, I don't know how much money they're spending over there.

I don't know if you see it as much in the WWE with the referee talking back, do you?

Or do you, you know that they're able to talk to the referee?

Do we see the referee talking back or is this an AEW thing?

It's a WWE thing too.

Anytime you see somebody.

Okay.

If you see the girls do a dive and they're on the floor, as soon as everyone lands, the referees just run over to everyone's face to communicate with them.

So then we

can't even sell that they're like, you know, dazed or anything because you immediately have to see them talk back to the referee.

I notice it all the time.

Yeah, that where I was going with that was now that they got more money to spend, see, back in my day, kid,

and I mean, even, you know, 10, 15 years ago, most of the time the referee did not have the ability to talk back.

They could hear, they could not communicate back.

So we didn't have a problem with them hitting a goddamn button on their hip, right?

And that needs is something that needs to be addressed.

But at the same time,

you know, again, this is all sleight of hand.

If you could only talk to the referee,

then what I would do when I was producing in a truck, once I've established he can hear me at the top of the segment, hey, Earl Hebner, if you can hear me, rub your stomach.

And he'd rub his stomach and we'd see it on the hard camera, right?

Nobody's looking.

So in that way, we know.

And then you've got signs, either,

you know, depending on the referee or what the situation is, if you tell him to do something, a guy's going to, he's going to work his fucking right arm like he just sprained his fucking shoulder on that last count,

or he's going to pat his knee, or he's going to bend over in a crouch at, you know, at the whatever the fuck.

You have a visual read on the referee that you can get because you've always got the hard camera.

up in the truck, regardless of whether they've taken it on the program video feed or not.

And so you're talking to him and telling him to tell him two minutes left and then he'll make your motion.

So you know that he did that.

And that and nobody saw through that shit, but as they get a bigger budget and fancier equipment, now

I'm surprised they don't look like they're at a goddamn Wendy's drive-through.

Anyway, pull forward, please, for your high spot.

Hey, by the way, you missed an injury.

You said that last week Dalton Castle got injured the week before Rio broke her arm.

Oh, shit.

Well, okay, it's a three-peat.

Then I forgot about that.

Also, that's so that was on collision.

So,

and then Dalton Castle.

And now, Sky.

Do you think they'll have a rehabilitation sweepstakes where the one that can get out of rehab and get back in the ring the quickest is the goddamn winner?

Maybe they could do like some kind of WWE-type supernatural thing, like a Wyatt 6-type group that's injuring anyone who appears on collision.

Pretty soon there'll be no one left.

What they ought to do is everybody that has been injured, they ought to come out with a goddamn artificial body part, whatever was injured.

One guy comes out with a fucking titanium steel leg.

One guy comes out with a fucking super arm.

How about an intergender all-injury battle royal?

But

the only thing is you have to be thrown over the bottom rope because nobody's ambulatory enough enough to get anybody over the top rope.

And they could all be wheeled in on a gurney.

Well, I mean, that part may be the wheeling in part, but I think, you know, if you're not going to go over the top rope, you're kind of going against the whole idea of a battle royal.

Even a middle rope, the bottom rope, there's no point to it.

Well,

they used to, when they would have a midget battle royal, when they'd have all the midgets booked on a show, they would make it over the second rope was the elimination.

If you're going to do an injury battle royal and you got some real talent in there, Jamie Hayter, Riho,

Sky Blue, Dalton Castle, all the girls.

No, you got a lot of talent in there.

If you're going to do this injury battle royal,

I had some sort of stupid question I was going to ask that I already forgot about.

If you're going to do an injury battle royal,

yeah, why not?

I mean, you can get the legless guy back.

And by the way, are you allowed to be in the injury battle royal?

If you have,

if you say you're not injured, but AEW says you are.

Well,

you know, that's another thing that's changed.

Because back in my day, kids, when I was working in the offices,

we had to monitor these wrestlers because if they were on guarantees, they would say they were hurt and get their money, and we'd never see them, and they really wouldn't be hurt.

But now it's the opposite.

They're getting their money, but they're saying they're not hurt.

when they're actually hurt.

One last thing on this.

One last thing on on this an injury like this happens the sky blue injury it happens to any wrestler in a match 35 years ago the referee does not have a headset

what happens what would be the difference how would it take place what would happen

well part of it is i mean it's obviously it's the talent and let's face it This was not an important match in the overall scheme of things.

It was not for the AEW World Heavyweight title.

It was not a big angle on national television.

It was going to lead to,

you know, WrestleMania, whatever the fuck.

It was a TV match.

It would probably,

in those days, have happened at a house show event.

And if a guy or girl in that position

went down and said, I'm fucked and I can't do this, and they're on the floor.

The referee would told the other person, roll in and I'll count him out because there's nothing else to fucking do.

He can't get back in.

You didn't see,

you didn't see that many injuries again, to be honest with you, that somebody was so

debilitated that they couldn't finish the match.

They would gut it out to whatever level they needed to.

Again, if it was a preliminary match, just fucking sunset flip me, something, just small package me.

Got to go.

I'm hurt.

That type of thing.

If it was a territory main event, they would try to get whatever the point of the finish was across that would lead to whatever that was called and then you know get back and reevaluate from there

but with a lot of these guys and girls they just think they're supposed to just at any point get in there and fuck it it's just a flesh wound

and you know

go a soldier on no matter how badly they're hurt and no matter how unimportant their match so

that's kind of what would have gone on then.

But now they've got a different mindset, and the referees and people have to protect them from themselves.

But I've mentioned it before, but I saw the guy in Louisville Gardens.

It's a guy named John Rogers.

He never went anywhere.

I don't even know if you could Wikipedia him.

But he was crazy Luke Graham's tag team partner against, goddamn,

Tommy Gilbert and Ray Candy, I believe.

And Tommy Gilbert suplexed Rogers, and it broke.

His leg folded up underneath him when he landed instead of taking a flat back bump.

And he broke his fucking lower leg, whatever bone that is, in between your knee and your ankle.

And he couldn't get up.

It was flopping from side to side, boy.

But they were supposed to win the match.

Because they were coming back, was supposed to come back with a return or whatever the fuck.

It was a Tommy Gilbert and Luke Graham was where they were going and they were trying to get there.

And so they fiddle fucked around for a minute talking to the referee, and Ray Candy came in and drew him.

And Luke Graham used his tape thumb and

jabbed Tommy Gilbert in the fucking throat.

And he fell backwards over Rogers, who hooked his leg one, two, three, and they carried Rogers out of the fucking ring.

I don't think he was going to get up and fucking soldier on for the good of the game any further than that.

All right.

Well, that was a AEW collision.

No, it wasn't.

Did you see the other thing?

No, that was not the first thing, but the other thing.

No, the big debut, Brian.

The big debut of Tony Khan's new spectacular gimmick.

Okay, now I think I may have an idea what you're talking about.

I did not see it, but.

Earlier in the day, people were tweeting us, and I thought it was just some kind of joke.

Are you going to watch Tony Khan's hologram wrestler?

Is that what you're talking about?

Yes.

Hola Gram.

I don't want you.

Hologram.

I don't need you.

Hologram because all you are is another

small person trying to wrestle.

What was it exactly?

Well, he is a masked Mexican middle schooler doing gymnastics.

And he does a maruga.

He can jump up and stand on the guy's shoulder and back flip and land on his feet and jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton and all that stuff.

It's amazing.

At one point,

his opponent grabbed the guy's wrist, old hologram, and hologram just took off running to the ropes on his own.

He wasn't whipped.

He just touched the man.

Whoosh!

Off he goes.

And he's,

you know, I mean, Sammy Guevara standing next to him would kind of look like Lex Luger next to fucking George South

in terms of he's he's small,

he's got a mask on, and apparently they're saying that Tony came up with this gimmick, but also, and he, oh, and he glows.

So he wears some shit that glows when he comes out to the ring.

But apparently he signed this guy

a couple years ago or some length.

And I'm willing to be corrected, but I saw some banter on Twitter that he signed this guy some length of time ago with the, oh, this is going to be the greatest gimmick ever.

And

boom, and there you go.

And so it's a real person.

It's not actually a wrestling hologram in any way.

No, but he is hologram.

That is him.

Why do you keep saying hologram?

Because it's H-O-L-O-G-R-A-M, the way that I've looked it up is how you spell hologram.

Not hologram?

Well, that would be H-O-L-L-O-W G-R-A-M.

Hologram.

Like sleepy hollow or down in the hollow.

Down in the valley, valley.

Come on, don't hurt people.

Well, you know, I'm trying not to.

Are you insinuating that the women would fall in love with my voice because I'm such a romantic crooner hold on i'm pulling up the debut of oh this is hologram

this guy over here well no i mean i just saw him standing on the ropes he's not in like a spectacular shape or anything and this is going to be tony's blood runs cold gimmick i didn't think of it that way but yeah i bet you there you go

i don't know i yeah i don't know i don't know whose opponent it is now see people have have derided me for some of my gimmicks

some of mine turned out okay the the thought of lance storm and Chris Jericho as a tag team didn't do too bad for a while.

You had

you had the Batistas of the world that prospered somewhat, but nevertheless.

Wow, this guy really flies around.

He certainly does, doesn't he?

And he's built like the original El Santo, like when he was 65, when he retired.

You ever see that retirement footage from like 1982 or whatever?

Yeah, no, they almost wrapped him in bubble wrap.

But no, this is a young man.

He just, he's being

he's being careful in some things and reckless in others.

It was an odd,

it looked like he didn't want to hit the ropes too hard.

It was like a cheese grater, but then he'd just fucking fly everywhere.

He's kind of like a Lucha Libre greatest hits.

I'm watching this guy.

He's doing everyone's stuff.

Oh, he's spinning and twirling.

Who's he wrestling?

Who's the opponent here?

Who is this guy?

Actually, El Gringo Loco.

He actually, I called some of his matches in MLW.

And for a pudgy white guy.

You're being serious.

Yes.

No, for a pudgy white guy, I remarked to him that he doesn't look bodily like he ought to be able to do all that flipping about, but he was flipping too.

And then you got the other guy flipping and him flipping, and it's flipping fucking repetitive.

But they were trying to pay tribute to authentic Lucha.

Is this guy exclusive to Collision?

I hope he's exclusive to Collision on July the 20th.

See, he just went down.

See, that's what I'm talking about.

He just went down in the corner and he's on the ground adjusting his

knee pad

and the referee comes over and starts whispering to him.

Well, in this case, I think they just made his outfit and he couldn't get that fucking knee pad unfucking twisted for anything in the world.

And by the way, I've never seen this referee before.

Is this someone who speaks Spanish?

Is that why he's here for this match?

I didn't think about that.

Yeah, I don't know who this referee is.

Whoa, Gringo Loco, standing moonsalt.

Wow.

Yeah.

And he's a fat, pudgy white guy.

He's loco.

See, now, that's the, if you had Elgringo Loco

on a wrestling promotion of primarily

American or North American style pro wrestlers.

And he did that shit, being a guy that can speak English and doesn't, and looks like a fucking baked potato with arms, legs, and a beard, and doesn't look like he ought to be able to do some of that stuff.

You could make that his gimmick, and you could get a guy like that over.

He's adjusting the knee pad again.

Yo, this guy could be clearly the Gringo Jacob Fatu.

Well,

I've never thought of it that way.

But if, you know, but I mean, give him a fucking gimmick.

He's from a goddamn,

you know, I don't know, the hills of Missouri or some trailer park in Arkansas.

I don't fucking know.

And then he uncorks uncorks that shit, and he's just the underdog baby fuck.

He just did a moonsault off the rope, but he landed on the ground and I turned it into a body slam or something.

They fucked up something and tried to make it work, and it looked very interesting.

Yeah, they almost were going for four on that injury list on that one.

I remember that one too.

Who is this guy?

This is something.

The

oh my god, they gave his name on.

Is there a lucha star, young lucha star named Aramis?

Would he be one of the three musketeers?

Is this

where are you getting your lucha news from?

Well, I seem to remember,

I seem to remember the name Aramis, and I'm just trying to go from there.

Uh,

I'm not sure.

Well, that's uh, the debut of Holly.

He's got him in the torture rack, he's spinning, and then I turned it into a power bomb.

Yes, And that's the finish.

Oh, wow.

There you go.

And the crowd is all clapping.

No one's standing, but they're clapping.

So that's a positive sign.

Well,

they're actually, there's a lot of fleas, fleas in the air in Dallas at this time of night.

If they take your advice, if they can, and add those bleachers and everything, I actually think it's a pretty cool-looking, unique venue.

I mean, the screen behind them, I'm not a big fan of the screens or the stages, but it looks different.

It looks all right.

Well, that's what I'm saying: is they need to do something with it instead of it not being an empty building.

And

I'd rather see the fans

in the camera shot than the goddamn giant stage and Tron.

I mean, you can have both, but out of the two, I think the fans are more important.

Make it a bowl.

Make it

up close to where, you know, this is, again, if they're going to do this,

instead of trying to to look like they're just in a,

you know, the same kind of building with a smaller crowd,

you know, make it something that's intimate, that the old center stage look even, where the people are up on everything, except you give them room to do their bullshit outside on one side or whatever the fuck,

the, the, the diving pit.

And then, you know,

bring the people up close where you can see the fans and see them hopefully reacting and make it look cooler and more intense and more up close on television, shot with a different style instead of just being,

oh, there's that wrestling in the big empty building.

And you can do wonders with giant, again, nothing.

He's spending more money for the goddamn giant video screen than he would for fucking bleachers to put to people up where they

can see also, because it's a rotten live event experience.

If there's 15 rows on the floor and you're in row 14, you ain't going to see dick.

Do we know for sure that he's bringing them in, the video screens?

Because again, it's the esports arena.

You got to figure this is what they primarily do is have people sit there and watch screens.

Well, no, the big stage that they've got, I would say he brought it into Las Vegas.

We hit a line item for goddamn staging.

It's a television production.

So yes, I understand why they have the screen and the stage or the entranceway or whatever the fuck.

But if you're going to,

if he's going to in any way spend money on that, if he ain't spending money on it, then why ain't he spending money on it?

Rather than some of the other things he's spending money on.

But that's what I'm saying.

Riser seating.

A shape to the thing.

Make it look like a goddamn

fight pit with a thousand people in it.

Or maybe 750 as it goes on.

I think the advance on one of their shows is 400 for a few weeks from now.

But make it a fight pit with the cool screens and the way they come.

Should the wrestlers come down to the ring?

Would that be just something to make it different?

That's one of my things.

I've said it before that I love when a wrestler, when you say come through the crowd, when the entranceway was kind of, they had to walk through the area with fans the fans were close to them there's security around them to me that stood out more but also the dallas sportatorium remember because the floor of the sportatorium was a pit with seats all around except for that blank wall where the fire had happened in the 50s

and the the locker room level was above

It was on the level of the top seating, and you would come down that entranceway.

That's all the cool shots of the Von Ericks coming down through the crowd as they're.

It's the same thing now with Jey Uso.

When he starts the breezeway, he comes down.

So build you

a goddamn bowl and let it be an entrance tube at the top and let them come down through the pan.

And you see all the people, they can interact with them.

And again, you've got, you could do a 360-degree pan

around your ring if you built a bowl that held six, 700 fucking people.

You could fill it up no matter what.

You could go 360 degrees around.

You'd see nothing but people around the ring.

Let them do their shit there.

Because they're the pits anyway.

See, I just had a free idea for them.

All right.

Well, that was AEW Collision.

What a debut.

Alrighty.

A debut in a new building, I should say.

What a debut for a new concept.

They got to try these things, but they need to to dress it up a little.

It's like they just moved into the apartment.

Okay.

You know, that's what when you're just eating frozen pizza, you don't really have time to put your knickknacks out.

All right.

I want to

read a bit of an email

that I actually will start reading my own emails one of these weeks coming up.

I haven't done that in a while, but you forwarded me this one because he went through the proper channels

at the drive-through email account.

And it's long and it's heartfelt.

And I've also hit a button somehow that's wrong where that now every email I print out has microscopic print.

But it's from Sean,

who donated $1,000 to the WHAS Crusade for Children in honor of our podcast.

Brian, you and I, the drive-through and the experience.

Because we helped him through a tough time with his family that he could

kind of relate that to.

He was a wrestling fan with his dad.

They went to, they were at the War Games at Nassau Coliseum,

Steamboat Flare at the Meadowlands.

And,

you know, so then he passed that on

to his son.

But they were going on a vacation last year to Colorado, and suddenly

his oldest son had a seizure and

I mean, it was shaking violently and turning blue and foaming at the mouth.

And they obviously rushed him to the hospital.

He had more seizures, and they

diagnosed that he was epileptic and probably had been his whole life, and it just had come out.

And again, that's a very long and personal email, but the gist of things

is that when he and his wife were trying to take care of all their kids, and he would spend the night in the hospital with his son.

He had caught up on our programs, and we gave him a couple of giggles and helped take his mind off things.

But

the

bottom line, as Stone Cold would say,

is that his son's been doing great

and he is doing amazing, he says.

And

after the third seizure that he had, Sean told him, we're going to do whatever you want.

And he said, I want to go to WrestleMania.

And so this year they went to WrestleMania 40.

And he actually even included a picture, which we cannot include here in audio fashion, but I guess we could give you a description of both of them, but that would take a while.

But anyway, Sean, congratulations.

And

the only thing I don't know is if you gave your son's name in this whole email, I can't find it.

But congratulations to your son and the whole rest of the family, too.

That's right.

I agree.

Well, I'm glad you agree with that.

Well, there's nothing else for me to really say.

Of course, that's what I say.

Well, you could give a heartfelt, full-throated endorsement like, yes, as a matter of fact, Sean, we want you to know how much that we're thinking about you

in your times of struggle and triumph.

Something like that.

There's no one like Sean.

What do you mean, nobody likes Sean?

He's got all kinds of friends.

No, I'm saying, and not that people don't like him.

There's nobody quite like that Sean.

Nobody quite likes that Sean.

No, somebody, I mean, I'm sure somebody, I mean, he has a child.

Somebody liked him, at least at some point.

You don't know it could have been a business arrangement.

Oh, well, you stop it.

You see,

now you have to go too far and insult this very, very nice man.

who I'm very supportive of, Sean, and his entire family.

Well, I'll tell you what.

And that just goes to show you, Brian, that you need to take care of your health.

You need to take care of your health because bad health can happen to good people at any time.

And sometimes good health can happen to bad people.

And that's even more perplexing and vexing.

But when good health...

doesn't happen to good people, you know what?

Other good people step in to try to give good people good health, Brian.

You've heard this many times.

The story of all the people try to pass out good health on the streets these days.

Yeah, I don't know if that's what people are trying to pass out on the streets these days.

Well, they say it'll make you feel better, but I'll tell you what, one thing will make you feel better, folks, and it's clinically proven in non-clinical surveys.

And that is our friends,

our friends at CB Distillery will make you feel groovy and groovy.

There you go.

Hey, boy, what you're whistling and just accompany me.

Oh, I thought you were going to sing.

What happened?

Oh, that's amazing.

I thought it was the instrumental break.

Anyway, CB distilleries, targeted formulations

are made from the highest quality, clean ingredients, folks.

No fluff and no fillers.

Pure, effective CBD solutions, which are designed to help support your health in a variety of ways.

Brian, we have talked about this many times.

They are not going to the clinics with all the sick people and the malingerers and the people that's got things wrong with them.

They're doing non-clinical surveys.

They're out there amongst the average population.

Because you can tell anytime you're walking down the street in public these days in the United States and you look at the people around you, you can tell there's nothing wrong with them.

And 81% of the customers in these surveys experienced more calm with CBD.

80% said CBD helped with pain after physical activity or potentially being mugged.

It helped with that too.

And an impressive 90% said they slept better with CBD.

And most of those

reported waking up afterwards.

And 1.3%

claimed that the moon landing was shot in a TV studio in Burbank.

But again, we believe that may be an outlier.

But again, that wasn't in the copy.

And again, that is not something you need to worry about or think about or even trust as a statistic.

But

you can't change those people's minds.

So you can't worry about them.

What you just said is both clinical and not clinical at all.

Exactly.

So folks, if you want to get clinical with non-clinical

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And right now, you can get a 20% discount to get you started if you go to cbdistillery.com and use the promo code JCE.

And Brian, I'm just thinking, is distillery a word that most people know how to spell?

Because I could just rattle that off.

It's CBD

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And I'm sure that everybody listens to this program with a pencil and a piece of paper in front of them.

So they've made that notation.

CBdistillery.com, the promo code JCE.

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What's that promo code, Jim?

JCE.

All right, let's get

clinical, clinical.

Oh, let me hear your wrestling talk.

Well, Brian, I almost hesitate to gravitate over to talking about SmackDown for a minute.

It ain't going to take too much longer than that.

But

people are starting to think that we're shilling for the WWE just because we tell them basically every time they pat a goose on the head, it shits a golden egg.

But

we must acknowledge their failures as well.

Should we tell the people, do you even know why that we did not review an A and E,

see how I didn't do it?

An A and E biography episode this past week?

I have a hunch.

Was that because they decided to do one on The Miz?

You are correct, sir.

Yes, sir.

That is it, sir.

What do I win?

You win a hearty hand clasp.

Not a cupie though.

Well, also, apparently others felt the same way that I did because did you hear that it

the viewership of the biography on The Miz

160,000 viewers.

Oh, my God.

I've seen the chart, and obviously they've been going down.

They've done four or five seasons now, and there's not that many Stone Cold Steve Austins left to do or whatever.

I'm sure it did great in the key demo, though.

What is his key demo?

I don't know.

But

I saw the point is, I saw the list of the ratings, is what I'm trying to communicate to you here.

And it was the only one I saw that they've ever done.

It was under 200,000.

So apparently, the time was not right.

for a Miz biography for two hours.

Jerry Lawler got an hour with a fucking 60-year career

and Miz got two hours.

So we didn't talk about it, but next week's or this week or whatever, the one coming up most prominently as we sit here and speak is Mark Henry.

So that

we'll probably talk about that.

That'll have some OVW footage, I'm sure.

It might even have me on it.

You know,

how long did I talk to those people in 2017?

It was like a day at least.

I mean, well, at your place,

of course, you talked to them more in Orlando, right?

Well, but it's all from my place now, the odds and ends subjects that we talked about.

And they're still, people are going to think I only have the one shirt.

But at least my hair was a little bit less gray.

At least it's a nice shirt.

You dressed up.

It is a nice shirt.

But my hair was less gray.

That's why people think I never aged.

They keep showing the footage from seven years ago.

But anyway,

let's go to Omaha.

Mutual of Omaha brings you SmackDown.

That would have been perfect.

Is Mutual still in Omaha?

Do they still have...

Is Mutual of Omaha still in business?

Do they do anything anymore?

Mutual of New York used to be their Money Moni.

That's where that song came from.

Well, no, but I'm talking about Mutual of Omaha.

I don't care what happened to Omaha.

I live over here now.

The point, they were a national concern.

They sponsored Wild Kingdom.

They gave Marlon Perkins all kinds of money to send Jim Fowler out there to brave the wilds and get bitten the ass by a fucking ocelot.

Anyway, they're in Omaha, Nebraska.

And back in the old days, kids, the Omaha

arena there, what was the, was it the,

oh, goddamn, was it the Civic Auditorium where the Omaha territory, the Dusix ran out of, and Mad Dog Vashon was the world champion at one point, all that good stuff?

Was that, was that what the building was?

I've been there.

I've worked that location.

You may be right.

I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you're looking for.

But the point, they had a hotel next door.

Room service was fantastic, but goddamn, order the lobster bisque.

I can't remember

what the name of the hotel was, but I remember the lobster bisque.

April of 1996, we did the pay-per-view there.

Anyway, this ain't that building.

How big is this building, Brian?

And how many people did they have there?

Do you have any idea on the SmackDown for July 19?

Yeah, give me a moment.

I'll give you a moment.

We'll have a moment here.

But the point is, they started out SmackDown

with Cody Rhodes, the big entrance, the Cody chance, the great response.

They've got crowd shots out the wazoo.

And by the way, that's Tony Kahn's next signing, the great wazoo.

And, you know, it's just, it looks so,

everybody on this program, all the people that are supposed to be over are over.

And Cody did the promo where he

specifically expressed gratitude to Randy Orton, his friend, his mentor, his confidante, his bon vivant, whatever.

And the fan star Chen Randy, Randy.

And then Cody said he feels guilt that he had to watch Randy Orton get beat up by the bloodline because Randy is his family, is his brother.

So this is incredible footage with his...

when his brother pulls the Kane and Abel business.

And we get Orton and Cody at some goddamn

giant stadium in fucking Greece or something.

Do you have a crowd for Omaha yet?

I do.

They ran the

Chai or CHI Health Center in Omaha

the morning of

there were 8,900 tickets distributed for a setup of 9,400 with 472 tickets available.

The building,

according to Wikipedia, holds 17,560 people.

So they had about 9,500 in a 17,000-seat building.

The old building, I think, maxed out at 8,000 people.

So they would have turned them away from that.

And,

you know, that's why they went to the bigger building.

But you could see the people.

So anyway,

Cody continued talking to Solo directly because solo cost him the title at wrestlemania 39 but now he's champion and and solo like i said about you then you're still not ready

and just then you're thinking well the bloodline's gonna do something about this here comes waller and theory

and

Waller dresses

like a,

I don't know how to describe it.

He had on a leopard print shirt, women's jeans with holes in the knee.

That was fashionable with the young ladies about 40 years ago, as I recall.

He's got slip-on shoes.

I don't know what the fuck is going on with this.

But anyway, you can tell.

I just, I'm wallered out.

I'm wallard out of him.

But there's trying to set up something for later on, the main event.

So Cody just starts beating him up, and then they get on him

and then who was the celebrity

and i use the quotation marks in the front row terrence crawford

is he a famous omahonian i believe he's a boxer they were promoting some kind of fight or something weren't they by apples or oranges he's a boxer fists fists fists fisticuffs the pugilism that's right

the noble manly art of self-defense well he picked up a chair and gave it to Cody.

And Cody sent him running.

And in the back, Aldous said, okay, Cody, you can have a match with Theory and Waller if you get a partner.

I'm not giving you a handicap match.

You're too valuable

to be involved in something such as that.

So that's obviously what our main event's going to be.

Do you have any comments on this particular performance?

No.

I mean, again, it ties in with the promo at the end, or not the the promo, but the angle at the end of the show in terms of Cody,

you know, he's doing the Randy Got Hurt promo.

And,

you know, again, it obviously all ties together, but it was fun.

And the people love it.

People are eating it up.

And well,

it sets up this thing with Waller and Theory.

So it was a show-long angle in the middle of the bigger overarching angle.

It was all right.

It was an angle in the middle of an angle.

If they ate it up, I hope they got full because it's going to be a while before they eat again.

At least

I didn't want any of the poo-poo platter they presented next.

Carmelo Hayes versus Andre.

And Andre won with his finish.

Boom, one, two, three.

Do you think that high draft pick maybe is being rethought

for young Mr.

Hayes?

I think I need to give him more promo time.

He cracks me up.

Hey.

Did you like the split-screen interview?

Speaking of promo time.

Oh, did you you see this?

No, I can't.

Oh, my God.

It went on and on.

Bailey was like, it was like she was quoting you.

She called her fat, clumsy, and whatever she said to her.

It was incredible.

Bailey was great here.

Oh, you got to see this.

Well, I'm not picking at Bailey, but is the refrigerator.

Somebody transplanted Sable's voice and brain into her body.

And it's just,

they try to

make her look like J-Lo, but she looks more like Happy Humphrey.

You say somebody, like there's a mad scientist out there.

Well, somebody, I'm looking for that son of a bitch, too.

I'm going to, but yeah,

you know, yeah.

This was really good.

I thought this was really good.

It got me interested in it.

And I thought Bailey was great here.

Oh, she was great here.

Well, if she's channeling me, maybe I'll have to give her another chance.

But she said clumsy, I was like, oh,

yeah, but I'll tell you what, I would,

if I'm going to have to work with the fucking giant water bed, I don't want to piss her off.

Fall on me.

Well, she'll probably do that by accident anyway.

Well, that's kind of what she made the thing about.

What was the exact quote here?

It is, hold on, let me click on this real quick.

You are big, clumsy, and you're reckless.

You don't hear that from a lot of baby faces to heels in a pronoun.

No, not male or female.

No.

Big, clumsy, and reckless.

Well, those are your good points, too.

Yeah, no, Bailey was great here.

This was great.

Well, then we

basically turned into another episode of Glow because after we get done with that, then we go with Jade and Bianca arguing about stuff with Piper and Chelsea over who talks to Nick Aldous first.

And then we had Bianca and Chelsea have a match to

fucking do whatever.

And then more girls popped up on the screen to promo

Bianca.

Are you ready to move on?

What a time to be single and a writer.

Well, you're not suggesting that there should be some kind of inner office hanky-pankiness going on.

No, I'm not suggesting it.

I'm just saying there's just women all over this show non-stop.

It's incredible.

It's incredible.

It certainly is.

And people date.

People date in the workplace.

How many women are going out?

How many men and women wrestlers are dating each other, married to each other, or just fornicating in the hotel?

What is that a direct question to me, or are you just throwing it out there for some enterprising sleuth in the audience?

That was a question for all Americans to keep on their mind.

I'm Brian last.

Thank you.

And it's the nine o'clock hour.

Almost.

They got him in the ring first.

But Nick Aldiss was in there with the contract for Logan Paul and L.A.

Knight for SummerSlam, United States heavyweight title match.

Called out L.A.

Knight, called out Logan Paul.

And again, the people are chanting L.A.

Night.

And it's Omaha.

If they've got it there, they've got it everywhere.

And Logan Paul again gets booed like crazy.

And that's what they need to do with L.A.

Knight.

They just let him talk.

He cut a hell of a promo on the history between them in his fashion, where you can tell, even if they're

providing him with, you know, subject matter, he's saying it like he says it.

And that's, and people can get with it, where they get his cadence and they can do the yeah, and blah, blah, blah.

And Logan Paul fired back and called him Sean,

which is his real name.

I'm a surprise.

It's not L.A.

Knights.

It's not L.A.

No, it's not.

It was.

See, people thought that he was named Lawrence Antonio because his grandfather was half Italian and the other half was from Arabia.

I don't fucking know.

But

nobody, they kind of, ooh, some of them, but nobody has established what his real name is.

That's some internet shit.

And I think Logan may be,

because he's an internet person to begin with, he may be trying to

put too much stock in something like that.

But he did a great heel promo, as he always does.

And then finally, L.A.

Niger said, hey, is talking about his

brother, what's his brother's name, Logan Paul's brother?

Jack Jake

said he was going to fight Mike Tyson, but,

you know, apparently balls don't, you

don't have his balls.

Apparently balls don't run in your family.

And Logan, Paul, they got hot and signed the contract, and then they began shoving each other.

And Logan did the fake walkout and turned around and charged him, and L.A.

foiled his attempts and ran him off.

And there was our top of the hour

star sighting where big names came out to speak to us.

But it was good.

It was good.

He really cut down L.A.

Knight.

And L.A.

Knight's had a few different times where the guy, the heel he's up against, takes a lot of, not necessarily personal, but just deep shots at the other wrestler.

And he has to stand there, kind of sell it with his face that he's not really bothered by it, and then quickly hit back.

And he does well with that every single time.

Yeah.

And

what did Logan Paul say about Eview?

He hit him with three different pop culture references, like you bodybuilder, Aladdin-looking fucking stone cold.

I don't know what the fuck.

Is L.A.

Knight dead if he doesn't win the U.S.

title at SummerSlam after the way he's been booked for the last six months?

Actually, the whole year so far, he's over, but they kind of stopped doing anything special with him after, you know, the end of last year with him and Roman.

I think he needs to win this.

And if they want Logan Paul to go in a different direction, maybe even somebody else could, you know, assist in him losing that by, you know, clocking him in the head or something.

If they, I don't know, but L.A.

Knight needs to come out of this somehow with the belt and at least pinning him,

you know, for the thing.

Hey, can I play you some audio of the Bailey Nia Jax thing?

Okay, go ahead.

Look at me and look at Bailey.

Start feeling sorry for Bailey right now.

Because at SummerSlam,

I'm going to beat her.

I'm going to take her title.

And I'm going to put her down like an old, sick dog.

Can you stop it there one second?

I've never actually personally been hypnotized, but I've watched it done on television.

And isn't that kind of the tone that the hypnotist, your eyes are getting heavy.

Isn't that kind of the delivery there?

It is a very interesting delivery.

You know, kind of like Jake Roberts.

She doesn't really get too fired up.

No, Jake Roberts wouldn't put you to sleep.

He might give you some fucking suggestions on weird ways to act when you're under the influence of something.

He might tell you what to take to go to sleep.

Well, there you go.

Well, let's go back to this promo, Bailey and Nia Jax.

Split screen on SmackDown.

I'm going to put her out of my misery.

Man, Nia,

you haven't changed in these 10 years that we've known each other.

Not one bit.

Bailey, I have changed, okay?

Before you go on too little long, I am your queen of the ring, and you should address me as Queen Naya.

Oh, I'm gonna address you how I want to address you, okay?

And you know what I meant, Naya.

You're the same heartless woman you were since day one.

You got the same big mouth,

and you just walk around like you own the place.

You're the same Naya that in 2017 took me out of my SummerSlam match.

Oh, we're gonna go there.

Yeah, we're going there, and I'm gonna finish what I'm saying.

You took me out of my SummerSlam match, and that changed the trajectory of my whole career.

But you didn't hurt me because you're so big and you're so much stronger than me, or that you're so vicious.

You hurt me because you're big,

you're clumsy,

and you're reckless.

Let me stop it there for a second because they give it the moment where you see Naya selling it with her face and Bailey same thing.

Like, come on, bitch, I said it.

What are you going to do about it?

What do you think of that?

I have a hard time believing that

the refrigerator didn't know it was coming, but she probably didn't like it.

anymore,

whether she knew about it or not.

But that's...

Do you sell something to someone sometimes where you're going to, hey, I want to say this about you on TV?

Is it okay?

But it's actually a real thing, but they don't realize that that's why you're doing it or that you're saying it, but it's real?

It depends.

Well,

and that's another way to look at it.

It depends on what the situation is, who the people are.

Sometimes you've got to just come out and zing somebody on the fly if they're, especially if they zing you first.

A zinger deserves a zingy.

Like you and sunshine.

There you go.

And it's all usually in good spirits.

Of course, then sometimes it gets in mean spirits with like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels type of things on Raw, which were fascinating to watch in a different way.

Sometimes on the,

you know,

as the production staff, we'd be back there like the fucking playwright at the Marx Brothers play on Broadway.

Gosh,

I think I heard one of the original lines.

You know, but it was captivating nonetheless.

But a lot of times, if you're wanting to draw money with somebody and you have a good relationship with them

and you have ideas for stuff you could say about them or they could say about you,

you get together and

spitball, workshop those type of things.

You wouldn't just come out and say, by the way, I heard you,

you know, were in rehab for six months and got divorced for fucking around on your second wife without, you know, clearing some of that shit.

But go ahead.

Do carry on.

All right, another little bit here left.

Let's go back to Bailey and Nijax.

You know what?

Honestly, Bailey,

I'm pretty content being your queen of the ring.

I am the queen of this division.

I'm on top.

I'm coming for that title

because I get to take it.

Yeah, as soon as she said I'm on top, Bailey turns and looks at her belt.

Off of you.

All right, Nio.

Well, I have some bad news for you, okay?

And I don't want you to listen to what all these people are saying, you know, that you're so much bigger and you're going to mop the floor with me.

No.

I want you to look at me right now.

And if you're telling me that you've changed so much since 2017, then believe me that I have to, okay?

And I'm walking in to SummerSlam with this WWE Women's Championship.

and I'm walking out of SummerSlam with this WWE Women's Championship, and there's not a damn thing that you can do to stop me.

Yeah.

Well, there's the promo.

What do you think?

Well, Bayley can talk.

Bayley is very good.

Again, the other one.

You know, geez, just the monotone.

Just, I mean, it's, it's sable all over again, except now you've got, you know, 400 pounds behind that that could actually hurt people on a whim.

And

bleh.

And Lawler could book Plowboy Frazier where he could get something out of him.

Lawler's one of the few baby faces I think I could ever think of actually, you know, saying to the heel that you're clumsy.

I don't really hear that ever.

You're clumsy, awkward, and reckless.

Well, they're trying to go for a shoot.

Back to SmackDown.

Well, we're on SmackDown.

Staying with SmackDown.

Staying with SmackDown.

We had a Tiffany video, and then Tiffany wrestled Mia Yim with the refrigerator in Tiffany's corner.

And that's what happened there.

And then,

where is the Bloodlines darkened room, do you think?

Because it has a different wall than all the other places in the arena.

Do you think they bring their own brick wall in?

I think they bring lots of walls wherever they go.

Well, they were in their dark room, and

the bone of contention with Solo tonight is that if somebody teams up with Cody, they're going to be disrespecting the tribal chief tonight.

And in that case, somebody's going to pay the price.

But we don't have to wait too long to find out who that's going to be because we're in the back, and there is as Cody is walking, Kevin Owens walks up to him rapping his fists.

So

he's the partner, and there we go.

Cody and Owens versus Waller and Theory.

But you know that the bloodline is just going to have to do something about this.

That's, you know, hopefully why you're sticking around.

And

it was a regular tag team match.

Nothing was wrong with it besides, to me, Grayson Waller.

You know, Waller and Theory remind me of a great tag team for the past.

Do you know who?

No.

George Gulis and Bobby Eaton.

Why did I think you were going to say George Gulis?

Think about George Gulis and Bobby Eaton because George had no physique.

He had awkward body movements.

He couldn't work.

His promos were annoying.

And Nick teamed him up with the best in-ring performer in the company to

sell for the heels and give him the tag.

George Gulis and Bobby Eaton, Waller and Theory.

Same principle.

So, anyway,

they built for the heat on Owens for a hot tag to Cody.

And then, again, I don't know if they're just not teaching it these days or if the heels drop the ball or whatever.

But

they set up a hot tag for Cody, but they do simultaneous tags from Waller to Theory and

Owens to Cody at the same time.

En ble.

And Waller rolls out and Cody makes comeback on theory by himself.

And

yes, it may fit into that, the story that Waller is using theory, but get some excitement for your babyface's comeback and double feed him.

Good lord.

Anyway,

Cody did a good comeback.

They blind tagged and stopped Cody.

And then they got in a four-way and Waller bumped to the floor and Cody pinned theory.

Boom.

Went to crossroads.

And then here comes the bloodline music.

This is what we've been waiting for.

And out comes Solo and both of the Tongas,

Tama and Loa.

And they get in a fight, and the baby faces were about to powerbomb Solo through the announce desk.

And here came the Samoan werewolf.

Oh, come on, stop that.

You make it like you're Ichi-E.

See, I'm an affectionate werewolf.

All right.

No one needs to hear Jim Cornette animal noises.

Anyway.

We can all agree on that.

Well, it just depends on what kind of animal you are.

So Jacob Phatu stops all of them, and he starts, he puts Owens in a corner and starts giving him the multiple running asses to the face and head while they make Cody watch again, like they did with Thornton and blah, blah, blah.

And then Jacob gives him the diamond headbutt, and then they go out and they triple powerbomb Cody through the announced desk and then put a chair around Owens's neck and run him into the post and

decapitate him and we're off the air.

So we started good.

We had something in the middle and we finished good.

And the intervening hour and 45 minutes in between all of that stuff was kind of.

You happy with the way Jacob Fattu is being used?

Well, I mean, by God, the only other thing he could do is go out there and fucking lay waste to the entire audience.

He's beaten up every babyface he's come in contact with.

So, yes, I mean,

this is the way you make somebody dangerous and a star.

And

it seems like now

they're settling into where

old tongaloa

doesn't wrestle and he's just kind of there to take some bumps and tomatonga

is kind of a utility guy in the middle and jacob is the the badass which is kind of about what it ought to be

so i believe they've they've got their formula there and of course solo is the uh

the tribal chief

I can't stop watching Tongaloa now.

I'm waiting for him to fuck something up.

Ever since we saw those videos from New Japan and then he blew the nutshot the other day.

I think that's why they're probably keeping things to a minimum with old Loa.

How much Loa can you go up?

So in terms of the booking here, Cody's wrestling solo at SummerSlam.

The Bloodline have taken out Orton.

Now they've taken out Owens.

Roman Reigns.

We just brought up recently the idea of what if Roman teams up with Cody before we eventually get Roman and Cody ever again.

At some point, Roman has to come back.

The other thought I had, tell me if it's crazy, Cody's going to need someone to help him against the bloodline, against a maniac like Jacob Fatu.

Who did Cody have a feud with after WrestleMania last year that ended with mutual respect, a handshake?

Brock Lesnar.

Brock Lesnar.

Who Paul Heyman could get on the phone and send to help defeat the new bloodline?

I think it's early for that right now, if only because the bloodline, all of the new guys need to be established more before they get in a ring with Brock.

Imagine the next time that music hits.

We haven't heard Brock's music hit in forever.

He's going to get the biggest babyface pop of all time.

Well, one of them.

Well, not of all time, but of recent days.

Of recent memory of young people who...

might potentially do a lot of fucking weed and don't have good short-term memories.

Go ahead.

If Brock Lesnar, if that music hit to save Cody Rhodes, it would be massive.

Yeah, I agree with that.

And again, the Heyman involvement is out there with, it can be with several people now.

It can be with Brock, can be with Punk.

Like, if you want to bring Brock in, it's been a long time now, and you're trying to get it past everything that happened, obviously, for WWE.

What better way to do it than that?

And again, it makes sense not just with the Heyman end, but when he feuded with Cody, they ended with mutual respect.

Brock accepted him.

You would have to think that's the kind of person Brock would work with.

I want to say work with, and Kayfabe would come back and team with and help.

Because he was sitting up there in Saskatoon and he saw on television that the man needed a hand.

And he doesn't like the bloodline.

He doesn't like any version of the bloodline.

But we'll see.

He doesn't even like blood tests.

I guess that's the point.

We've been doing this now for a couple of years where you try to fantasy book where they're going to go with the bloodline.

You may get elements of it right, but there's always so many things they can do and so many ways they do take it.

It's still the most interesting and compelling angle in professional wrestling.

Well, there you have it.

And that's the way they closed up SmackDown.

And I'm telling you what, Brian, again, this week, when the show is over, the big contract signing for SummerSlam, LA Night, Logan Paul, all these other things happening going on, the girls arguing with each other.

You needed to get on your telephone and call somebody and tell them all about it, didn't you?

That's the first thing you did.

You got on your phone and you called a close personal acquaintance and told them what had happened with Grayson Waller.

No, not right away.

You know, 10 o'clock is when Bill Maher starts on Friday.

So I usually go right from this to...

to that so I could at least try to catch some of that before I fall asleep.

But if I was awake, I'm sure I would have been calling everybody.

Well, yeah, you would have just been calling and you'd have been sending pictures and you'd have been texting and you would have been up all night because it wouldn't cost you a penny extra if you have the deal, the big plan, the big plot, the phone plot from Mint Mobile.

Because then you're paying $15 a month.

You get everything.

You get the unlimited talk.

You get the unlimited text.

You get the high-speed data.

And that's data that moves at even faster speeds than the

low speed data.

Some people have that.

They're trying to save money.

You can't save any more money with Mint Mobile because it wouldn't be any cheaper if they gave it to you.

$15 a month.

That is.

Carry the two

divided by four.

That's 50 cents a day.

And now imagine just one phone call, Brian, could change your life.

One text could change your life.

One picture that you might send to somebody could change your life, whether positively or negatively.

It all depends.

And isn't that worth 50 cents a day?

For only 50 cents a day, you

can help yourself to a good mobile blend.

Yes.

Heaven knows that the Lord helps those who help themselves.

That's been said many times in many ways.

So help yourself to a Mint Mobile phone plan for $15 a month.

And right now you can go to mintmobile.com slash JCE.

The slash JCE is where you get in on this thing.

And if you're a new customer, now you can't just double dip.

If you're an old customer, they've already given you a goddamn hell of a deal.

So just get your hand out of their pocket.

Why don't you?

Fucking mooches?

We're talking about new customers, three-month premium wireless plan, $15 a month, $45 total, no loopholes or gimmicks or extra added fees involved, except for the additional taxes, fees, and restrictions that may or may not apply.

But you got to check it out to see, but you're still saving money.

Do you realize, Brian, that even if you paid 60 cents a day,

it would still be cheaper than if you were paying 75 cents a day, but you're only paying 50 cents a day.

I never thought of that before.

Well, it's simple mathematics.

So, right now, mintmobile.com/slash JCE, get this plan where you can do all of your telephone business one place as much as you want.

And, you know, some of you are being real assholes.

I understand that a lot of people are just texting people at random for no reason just because they can do it at no extra charge with Mint Mobile.

And that's ridiculous.

I haven't heard about that, but you can do what you want with Mint Mobile and your own phone.

What's that?

They had it on the TV news.

This one woman in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The TV news.

She was complaining that she was getting text from just all kinds of people in Duplain, Illinois through Mint Mobile.

They're harassing her because they say it's totally free.

They can text her as many times as they want.

It doesn't cost them another penny.

Gladys Frumpwater.

All right.

Well, a penny saved is a penny earned, and you could

earn anything, but you can

save money with Mint Mobile today.

A great plan is ready for you.

What's that promo code?

You can earn a healthy respect, earn a healthy respect for the people at Mint Mobile.

Well, who cares about the respect from them?

I mean, no one's going to

do business with them for the rest of your life now because

respected in the community.

Medmobile.com/slash JCE, 15 bucks a month, three months, $45.

You figure it out.

It's just, it's swell.

All right.

What in the world is going on over there at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week?

And since there's nothing going on in wrestling for the past three days, another action pack week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

No matter what's happening, you can find out about it each and every day from the Wrestling News, wherever you find your favorite podcast, or go directly to thewrestlingnews.com for your free daily wrestling morning newscast.

Get all the news.

No clickbait, no paywall, just the wrestling news.

And you don't have to listen to it in the morning either.

You could listen to it in the afternoon if you don't get up until then.

That's exactly right.

And of course, there are different time zones.

And no matter what time zone you are in, get information about all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcast or on Facebook at facebook.com/slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Want to to make mention of something.

Speaking of Facebook, the Cult of Cornet Facebook group, we're going to be doing a little bit of a contest there soon.

Thanks to our friend Sean Ng from KWK.

I got one of these here.

By the way, have we got everybody in there yet or are they still waiting in line?

There's still a lot of people waiting in line, but I think we're over 14,000 that we've reviewed and let in so far.

But thanks to Sean Ng from KWK, we have a couple, two different variants here of the new PN News action figure for all those big PN News fans.

So we're going to do a contest.

Whoever can write the best rap for the show, you'll win one of these PN News action figures.

So Culture Corner.

Does Heyman's count?

Does Heyman's what?

Heyman's rap.

No, it has to be an original.

It can't be someone else's rap.

His name is PN News, and he raps all the time.

But the funny thing about him is his raps don't rhyme.

We know that he can sing and we know that he can dance, but with a belly that size, how do he make romance?

Well, that's the official Culture Cornet Facebook group.

Want to make mention also of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, another fine episode.

Listener questions looking at a lot of questions from 1985, and of course, the overarching look at the WWF's national expansion in 1984, McAdamPod.com, or Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the

mothership.

Not going to go full throat right now now because I may burn myself out, but go through the archives, 605pod.com.

Part one of the Scott Cornish tribute is up right now.

It looks like we may actually have to make this a three-parter.

So stay tuned.

We're going to try to get part two up this week, but go through the archives and listen to part one, 605pod.com or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

The mothership.

I was quite a bit younger 40 years ago, Brian, and that's what we've been discussing.

All the kids know out there that listen to the program on a regular basis that on and off we we have been discussing my schedule 40 years ago at a particular date and we've been trying to stay up with this so many other things happened but we left off and by the way again

you can go to the official jim cornet youtube channel and look these up it's Jim Cornette on his mid-south wrestling schedule for what, first half of January, second half of January, first half of February, second half of February.

And if you want to go back a little further further and get the lead into it, we even go back to Memphis in 1983.

We do that too.

So you can play along at home, kids, but you can hear these, but we've been basically going day by day with some information.

And everybody talks about, oh, it's such a grind, the schedule.

Well, we've been talking about some of those too.

But I believe we left off

on Sunday, February 26th in Homa, Louisiana.

What a horrible, disheartening place to leave off at.

But things take

a nip upward the next day where we start on Monday, February 27th.

As we mentioned, the Midnight Express had come into Mid-South Wrestling.

We were working in angle with Magnum TA and Wrestling 2, who were the Mid-South tag team champions.

And we were...

beating them most of most places throughout the territory in non-title matches with stipulations, but

we had not captured the belts as of yet.

And some of the stipulations were that the losing team, each man, would get five lashes.

And you'll see here

on a couple of them, they changed it up over the course of the territory where

some of them would be

the lashes on the Midnight Express versus Wrestling 2's mask.

If they lost, he had done mask.

So

again,

the the houses were starting to come up.

People were into the angle.

And we were still getting into,

you know, the tag team title scheme of things to where in a few weeks, the

plan was that 2 would turn on his protege, Magnum TA, and start

an individual singles feud between those guys, and we would be the champions.

Were you told that at the start?

Or were you told anything about what was going to happen with TA and 2?

Well, as we got into it first, it was, you know, just that we were going to work a program with them for the belts.

And we obviously

knew or figured that we'd be winning the belts pretty soon because we're the new top heel team and we knew the Rock and Roll Express was coming in.

And then,

you know, I can't remember exactly what timeframe it was, but then Dundee had told us, yeah, we're going to.

We're going to switch two on TA because at the time we've talked about it, Wrestling 2

near the end of his career.

He was in his 50s.

He was grumpy.

He wasn't a fan of the schedule anymore, like any of us, but he'd been doing his shit for 30-something years.

And so that was going to be a way to finish him up in the territory of switch him heel and have him run the deal they did with JYD for the North American title before he left.

Anyway,

I mean, you would hear,

you know, stuff like that.

They wouldn't sit us down and lay out everybody's goddamn angle, but since Dundee was the booker and he was Bobby's father-in-law and we talked to him at every show and we were involved in some of these things, he would tell us

where guys were going so we would know what to fucking do with it in the matches.

So, anywho, are you ready for February 27th?

I'm ready to get Atahoma.

And whoa, let's do that.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

against Magnum TA in Wrestling 2 with the lashes on the line, and we whipped them.

That's another thing.

We were whipping the babyfaces every night.

And

Magnum was happy to be there and

giving his all.

And 2 was getting fucking tired of it because he had no idea he was going to be involved in matches where he got whipped when the new booker came in.

The house was $10,600 in the Baton Rouge Centriplex, and that was

the local promoter was Jimmy Kilshaw.

And he had this giant red, I guess they used to call it a carbuncle, the kind of a blood blister on his neck.

And

no matter it seemed like what the house was, the boys would rib, he would always say at 10, 10, 6,

$10,600.

And you would get paid on whatever he reported.

I don't honestly know

if that was tolerated by the office or suspected by the office or, you know, whatever, but it seemed like that,

as we mentioned in some of these earlier segments, where there was still a local promoter involved that had been since the old days, the 60s and before Watts and had been,

you know, it was in some way politically connected,

there was shenanigans going on.

Anyway, good thing about Baton Rouge, that was only a 220-mile round trip.

We were back home that night, and the following day, Tuesday, February 28th, we were in Alexandria, Louisiana at the Rapides Parish Coliseum, did the same match as we did the previous night, $14,000.

Alexandria was pulling ahead of Baton Rouge, even though the size disparity in the two towns was significant.

And who's telling you the gates?

Well, you ask every day, whoever the the guy was,

if it was Jack Curtis that was checking up for the office,

if it was Dundee, the booker, they had to tell the booker.

And

if you were like,

I'm looking, who was in an opening match?

If you were Joseph Oldie or John King

or

Tom Lentz at the time, and you were just in the preliminaries.

And no, if you asked what the house was, they'd have probably said, none of your fucking business.

But the main event guys that know that they're allegedly getting paid on the house and

we're keeping track of how this is doing because

we're causing it.

We're trying to get it up.

We need to know where it is.

They kind of had to tell you.

And that was the thing back then.

The question was,

now

over the last 20 years,

all the guys asked, How many people out there?

How many people do we draw?

We didn't care how many people were out there.

Sometimes, because I was a

recording nerd, I had to record everything, jot it down.

I would ask that, or I'd just hear it.

But the idea was the money.

What was the house?

How much was the gate?

That's what every main event guy or every guy that's on some semblance of the top of the card wanted to know about.

Because that's how they could figure, well,

the house was up, so my fucking payoff ought to be up.

And if it ain't up, then why wasn't it up?

And then you have those talks.

Does that answer your question?

It does.

So now here's the problem.

We were in Alexandria on Tuesday, night the 28th, right?

Here's the, but now Shreveport on Wednesday, February 29, it was leap year.

That's a long day because we get up.

I get up and leave at 6.30 in the morning because we got to do interviews at KTBS, the local promos, 9 o'clock until 3 in the afternoon.

And then you've got

like two hours to go and find something to eat and get over to the Irish McNeil and Boys Club and at the fairgrounds and we've got the TV taping.

And February 29th, 1984 is the answer to the trivia question, when was the first ever Midnight Express versus Rock and Roll Express match?

We did it on,

well, the first tape we did that night, because we did two weeks of TV.

I'm insulting Bill Watts about defending Magnum TA and, you know, taking up for them.

So I'm already peppering Watts even more than I have been.

And then we shoot a little deal with Wrestling 2,

taking one of the job guys's place against us, blah, blah, blah.

And we get heat on two, and then TA comes out to save him.

But then the following tape,

Cole, they just advertised the Midnight versus the Rock and Roll because the Rock and Roll were new.

They'd only been in, what, we said, one or two TV tapings.

But people already, the Express, it was natural.

We had come in first.

People hate the Midnight Express.

Then A team comes in called the Rock and Roll Express, and it's Ricky and Robert, and the girls love them.

So then become the Battle of the Express or the Express Showdown.

Who should be called the real Express in wrestling?

That type of thing.

So Dunde put this in

in a TV taping just to give the people a taste of it.

The Rock and Roll were working with Nikolai Volkov and Krusher Khrushchev in a regular tag team program while we were doing a deal for the belts with TA and 2.

But in this match, we just gave them five or six minutes of the stuff that Bobby and Dennis did with Ricky and Robert.

And then the Russians run in and jump the Rock and Roll Express, take scissors out, and cut Ricky Morton's hair.

And it keeps the heat on their program, but the people then were like, well, holy shit, for six minutes, this was some shit they hadn't seen before, and they liked it.

So that was a little tease as to, and Dundee was,

by this point, he knew the thing was was coming up with Watts, the last stampede.

But he also knew that he was going to get the belts on us.

And he also knew that Watts and JYD and the last stampede, the belts didn't have to be involved.

And Watts was, you know, he was saying, I'm coming out of retirement once.

It wouldn't make sense if they were.

So he was setting us up for the Rock and Roll Express after

the last stampede to be our challengers for the tag team belts.

So all this was going on at the same time.

And honestly,

Watts was not convinced that after he and Dog beat us in every town in the territory and humiliated me,

that we would even have that much heat, that we would probably just drop the belts and be the transitional champions to the rock and roll.

And that's where Dundee's like, well, just wait and see.

We can do all this.

Why did the rock and roll always have to go through Russians to get to the Midnight Express?

It worked out that way.

It just, and see, that's the thing.

One of the Russians was even the same Russian.

Very dark true.

Prussia cruise shift.

Yeah.

It just swapped Nikolai Volkov for Ivankolov.

But anyway, so that was a long day there.

And we got back home about,

you know, probably about one in the morning.

So, you know, 18 hours, but at least it wasn't a long trip, which we saved for the next day.

Now we're in March, March the 1st.

We're in Biloxi, Mississippi, which is, I mentioned, a 500-mile-round trip.

And we did 15 grand there.

And by the way, for those of you new to

the segments here, every time I mention money in today's money,

$3 is, or a dollar is equal to $3 today.

So we're tripling everything.

So Biloxi, again, I've said it's one of the meh towns in the territory.

It did 15 grand, which would be like 45.

We made 250 bucks.

It'd be like 750.

And that's where

we did.

And Brian, you've seen this going back to Georgia Wrestling.

It was one of Wrestling 2's deals.

That's why they did it.

Is that the mask was at stake against Whipping the Midnight Express.

So we beat them.

But because Wrestling 2 was a babyface, when he takes the mask off in the middle of the ring, he's got another one on underneath it.

And the fans all pop and cheer because they know we've been horn swoggled.

We said he had to take the mask off.

We didn't say what he had to have on under the mask.

People understood that shit in those days because they didn't want to see the babyface fucked around.

Now people had set seats on fire.

God damn it, he's supposed to take his mask off.

I threw a tantrum about it, and the people loved it more.

So anyway,

who did that

in a famous Omni tape from long ago in Atlanta

with Wrestling 2?

Who was the heel?

Oh, I don't know.

I don't know.

God damn it, it was a big fucking deal at the Omni one night, and so he started doing that because it got over so good.

He would do it wherever he needed to lose the mask without losing the mask.

Anyway, speaking of which, the following night,

Friday, March 2nd, we're in Hammond, Louisiana, and we do the same thing again.

And we talked about this recently, Brian, when somebody asked if they were from Hammond, Louisiana, had gone to some of the shows.

We mentioned some of them.

This is the night.

At the local college, we did a $37,000 house.

At ticket prices of those days,

that's

for a regular show at a college gym, probably around 5,000 people.

And that was in between Baton Rouge and

New Orleans, Hammond, kind of in between, and not that far from Biloxi.

So we had done 10 grand on Monday night in Baton Rouge.

We did 15 grand on Thursday night in Biloxi

and did $37,000 on Friday night in Hammond.

And those towns from one end to the other is like 100 miles.

So they were all local people coming from the market.

It wasn't like they were driving back and forth to go to all these fucking shows that most of the people didn't even know were happening, except in their town.

So, and we got

the payoff for Hammond was $500.

We go to Biloxi, we get $250,000.

We go to Baton Rouge, we get $150.

We go to Alexandria, we get $225.

We're in Hammond, Louisiana,

that's like $1,500 a piece.

So I loved some of those spot shows.

And then

we continue on to Jackson, Mississippi on March the 3rd, another 200 mile.

No, I'm sorry, a 200 miles one way because then we're going to go on to Oklahoma.

And we sold out the armory at the fairgrounds, did $11,000 and

turned some people away and made a whopping $150 because it wasn't a very big building.

But that was, I'm starting to notate now because we're starting to main event.

Before, sometimes it would be

JYD and Nikolai Volkov or Terry Taylor and Nikolai Volkoff or whatever, but now the midnight

are in main events on most of these cards.

And at any rate, we finish up the week before, and then I'll ask you, I'll open the floor to questions.

But March the 4th, we had to go from Jackson, Mississippi to Oklahoma City, which was 400 miles,

and have the same match we've been having all week with Magnum and 2.

But

this, instead of being at the Myriad,

was at the oldgrounds build, the Fairgrounds Coliseum in Oak City.

When they couldn't get the Myriad,

they would do the Fairgrounds.

And it was a deal because the Myriad was downtown.

It was a new, bigger building, rent was higher.

They charged more for tickets.

And also, people had to go downtown and park and do all that bullshit.

It was more money.

At the fairgrounds, they still had the old ticket prices.

I think it may be at 10, 7, and 4 or something like that.

And the parking, if I'm not mistaken, was either free or like a dollar.

So we did 10,125 people at the Fairgrounds Coliseum, a sellout with about 800 turned away.

The house was only $51,000, but still

our first main event in Oklahoma City,

and we turned people away from the building that they ran there for years and years before the Myriad opened.

And we haven't even got to the Rock and Roll Express yet.

And our angle with Bill Watts is about to come up next week.

So, you always asking, when did we know things were clicking?

When did we know blah, blah, blah?

That was a real good fucking sign.

How different is it the way you process what's happening?

What's happening being anything from how you're getting over, how the audience is reacting, how things are going?

How different is the process, or how different is it to process it when you're working every day and you're non-stop on the run?

No planes, just car rides non-stop, versus today where you may work a couple of days a week at most and you're flying in and out of a town.

In terms of processing what you did, did you have enough time to process it?

Well,

because I was writing all this down, I would go back and look at it in terms of, you know, what did the last show here in this town do?

Are we up?

Are we down?

Where were we on the card?

Whatever.

Most of the guys didn't honestly take that much detail to it.

But even then, when it's happening and you're just in the car

all the time and in the towns all the time and in the locker room all the time,

you can process

when you know shit is getting over, when you're seeing the crowds are getting bigger or you're seeing the reaction is better or you're moving up the card.

That's obvious.

But later on, when you go back and kind of look over a couple of months or whatever, if you do that, then you realize, holy shit, this was slowly building and you can see where the

momentum changers were, the turning points were.

When

because, see, that's the thing, because of the staggered nature of the television that we've talked about, that's how I learned to be so anal on the local promos because you would have formats.

If you were doing a promo for Little Rock, you could only talk about what had happened up through show number 235, segment four.

But you may have already taped show 230 fucking nine.

And so you've got to remember it.

You got to, they have, they would have formats there so you could read it, but you had to remember what had been done and what had been said.

And

when you go back and look at the gates in those markets after a particular TV aired, like the angle with Bill Watts, with the next time we were in such and such or whatever,

and you see there was a jump, that's where you are able to historically say, okay, as soon as this played in New Orleans, fucking business went through the roof or whatever.

So that's kind of both the ways you process it.

It was easier every night when you were in front of people to know when you were getting over

because you had that response every night or your angle was getting over or

if I teased using the tennis racket, if they just sat there, we hadn't got the racket over.

But if I teased using the racket and the people start screaming, the racket's over.

That type of thing.

You know, it's a different business.

And obviously one of the reasons the

weekly territory model or whatever you want to call mid-South, especially with the bicycle of the tape going around, the TV show,

the nature of today, everything's filmed.

A wrestler comes up today, every match they have, more than likely there'll be footage of in one form or another.

You didn't have that back then.

It would have destroyed a lot of what you're talking about week by week in different towns because everyone would have seen everything.

But

you never thought about having someone film the matches just for your own, like knowing how you are and how you always want to improve.

No, really, like just so you could watch after the fact.

They filmed some stuff, but you never thought about having someone?

Who would that person be?

Hildebrand.

Well, God, even poor Brian Hildebrand, and he was still, I think he was still in college at this point because he came down for a a couple of loops with us where he took pictures for the magazines.

But think about this, to have anybody do that schedule.

It would have been ridiculous for me to just have it for, you know,

I talked to Bruce Pritchard when he was still in the Houston office.

So he would send me the stuff from Houston that.

that Paul always taped because he had a camera there all the time.

And Joel Watts would send me the stuff they shot in Oak City and Tulsa because that was close to the office.

And they would take the camera and shoot raw footage for action stuff.

And

occasionally, they would take the camera to New Orleans or to

one of the other towns.

We're fixing to win the belts in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The only time they ever took a camera there in the year I was there was for that.

But most of these house shows, no, there was.

And I mean, even back then, if they'd have given a shit, they could have just put a VHS camera in the stands and locked it down and left it running.

But they didn't give a shit unless it was something they were going to use on television.

And as you mentioned, it would have revealed, had anybody seen it in its totality,

that even though the match in Biloxi and the match in Baton Rouge, one of them may be 10 minutes longer than the other if the house is bigger, and we may do some different stuff in the body of it, is the same finish.

And that we had,

you know, two or three or four set finishes we would do.

Dundee could say, do the one you did in Baton Rouge.

I'd look in my book.

Do the one you did in Jackson, Mississippi.

I'd look in my book.

But

the match was still called in the ring, but so they had favorite spots they did.

And Bobby and Dennis always tried to figure out what the baby faces did well and that got over the best with the fans.

And they would call that.

But it would be in different order or something would be left out or something new would come up on the spur of the moment, whatever.

So there were different matches, mostly same finish.

But yeah, if there was a complete library, think about this.

He was running a show every goddamn night of the week, every month,

and

there were five, six, seven, eight matches per show.

They would have had thousands of matches that never saw the light of day on VHS or whatever.

I'm just talking about even just you personally.

Well, that's what that's what I'm saying.

Like buying a camcorder and having someone in every town that could film it.

And boy, I would have lost a lot of camcorders that way, too.

Remember, I was not the most, I wasn't the belle of the ball then.

I wasn't the most popular motherfucker.

There wasn't a ton of smart fans back then.

You know, if there was a few young ladies in the different towns that would do me favors, but I wasn't about to spend them on camcorder in the matches.

So it, you know, and you you had no time.

For a while, I had to carry, or we had to carry, wherever we went, we had to carry our own boom box in the trunk to play our music in case we went to a building with no tape player for the sound system, where the ring announcer would just hold the microphone up to one of the speakers on the tape player.

How many cassures did you go through?

Oh, many, many, many.

If you gave them to a building, you'd never get them back.

So I always had five in my bag at all times.

But anyway, so that was that week there.

And

let me do a little math: 220,

480,

980, 1280,

1480,

son of a gun, 1680.

And after Oak City on the Monday, we were in Tulsa.

So we only did 1,800 miles that week,

somehow

and made $1,950 a piece, which as the formula goes is about,

I made six grand that week in today's money.

I'm not 23 yet,

and fucking good stuff is about to come up.

How much?

What the fuck?

Are you writing down how much is spent on gas or that's not the thing you're doing?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, no.

Hold on here.

On the Jackson, Mississippi, Oklahoma loop, I'm pretty sure we rode with Dennis because I was paying trance.

So it was $20 trance on Saturday and $20 trance on Sunday.

The motel in Jackson, Mississippi was $31, including tax, but we had a deal in Oak City, the La Quinta Motor Inn, $26.

Spent $7 on food.

I believe I went to Wendy's.

Oh, $9 in Jackson.

That was a Domino's pizza back then, by the way.

$9.

So, yeah.

And

then, you know, various other expenses I would record.

I bought a new tennis racket on March 9th for $15.

That's a business expense.

But beyond trans, the actual price of gas, I meant.

Well, when I was like

on March the 7th, I went to Lake Charles.

I drove.

I spent 26 bucks on gas.

And

it was only a

fucking,

well, no, I'll tell you, Shreveport.

On March the 7th, well, I'm getting ahead of myself, but I will go over this in a second.

But on the days where I bought the gas because I was driving, I wrote down how much gas I bought.

But on the days where I was riding, so you paid Trance five cents a mile.

If you went 400 miles in a guy's car, you gave him 20 bucks.

I'm just more curious how much the cost was for gas for anyone driving this loop.

We'll figure, you know, most of the guys had big cars, 20, 25 miles a gallon tops.

If you're in the car 2,000 miles a week by yourself, there's

what, 100,

no, 10, yeah, a little over 100 gallons of gas.

It was probably $1-something back then.

So it's a lot of gas.

Anyway,

let me give you this week and we'll figure this out.

Because Monday, March the 5th, we were in Tulsa on a rare Monday night.

Usually it was the Sunday double shot, right?

Where we do Oak City in the afternoon and then Tulsa that night.

But since they couldn't get the Myriad, they got the Fairgrounds the night before on an evening show.

So

Tulsa is on Monday night.

And Tulsa with Magnum TA and Wrestling 2.

And we,

you know, fuck them and beat them one, two, three and give them lashes.

We did $32,000 and got a $250 payoff because then we had started learning that Tulsa, being closest to Bixby, where Watts' office was,

somewhere or another, the payoffs were never as good in Tulsa as they were in the rest of the towns.

And then we were told it's because he took the office expenses out of Tulsa before he did anything else.

Now, it may or may not have been true,

but

then we had a 500-mile drive back to Alexandria

where we were leaving Tulsa at probably about 10:30 that night.

And a lot of it was state highway.

What time did you get into Alexandria?

We would usually get in about six o'clock in the morning.

And so, if you take the weekend in totality,

on Saturday, we drove 200 miles to Jackson, Mississippi, worked a show, stayed in a hotel,

got up the next morning early,

drove 400 miles to Oklahoma City, worked a show that night,

stayed in a hotel there, and the next day drove to Tulsa, 120 miles across the state.

worked a show there, and then drove 500 miles back to Alexandria.

So

in a 48-hour period, we we did two, six,

seven, we did 1,220 miles, worked three times, and made, and accounting the trans money we got for going to Oklahoma, 67,775,

we made about

$1,025, which would be around $3,000 in today's money.

Wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as it would get.

But that was the, you know, that was,

you're driving through the middle of goddamn Oklahoma at 3.30 in the morning on the Indian Nation Turnpike or whatever, going, what the fuck are we ever going to get out of here?

And there's nobody and there's nothing.

See, it's plenty of time.

Talk about your finishes.

Anyway, March the 6th, we were off and we were home.

God bless America.

And then on Wednesday, March the 7th, we do another deal where I got to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, leave at 6:30 or 7, drive 130 miles, do the interviews in Shreveport at Channel 3.

And then, because there's a house show that night, we drive 180 miles due south to Lake Charles, Louisiana, in between 3 o'clock and 6:30,

so that we can wrestle Magnum TA and Wrestling 2 and then go back to Alexandria, which is 100 miles in the other direction.

So that day started at 7 o'clock, ended up around 12.30 at night, and encompassed 410 miles along with six hours of interviews and a fucking house show.

And then

I'm going to get to the end of this week, and then we'll, again, we'll stop and evaluate things.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on March the 8th.

Guess what the house was, Brian?

In Baton Rouge?

In Baton Rouge.

16,000.

10,6.

The same thing.

The same fucking thing.

He turned.

It was a rib.

What was the house?

10,600.

Didn't look anything alike, but nevertheless, we beat.

No, I'm sorry.

We didn't beat, but we got beat by Wrestling 2 and Magnum TA that night.

And then

the next night we returned to Houston.

And Houston, the last time we were there was on our previous clip.

We were there on February 24th against Magnum and TN2 with the lash stipulation.

This time we did the mask versus title stipulation or mask and title stipulation.

And we did basically, we put them over.

But the house was, again, another strong one, $54,000, and we made $600,

which

was, you know, $100 less than we did last time because the house was $4,000 down.

But you can see when Watts took over the payoffs, these were the small ones.

If Bosch had still been doing them, we'd have probably made $1,500 a piece.

But Houston was the fucking town.

These are,

again, in today's money, We're going there every two weeks doing houses that equal $150,000

and getting payoffs close to $2,000 in today's money adjusted for inflation.

So I loved Me Some Houston.

And then we finished the weekend, March the 10th.

We were in Alexandria again

and

not very well attended.

We made $150.

And then we had a double shot on Sunday, March 11th.

Laranja, Louisiana, at 3 o'clock, which was a political favor for the people people down in fucking Baton Rouge, and then Homa, Louisiana,

which I think was a political favor for Satan himself,

and for risking our lives and limbs in both of those goddamn miserable locations.

We made $180 in the day for both of them.

So it could be.

$180?

$100 in Houma and $80 in Laranja.

$5,400 house in the afternoon, $6,900 $6,900 in the evening.

Sometimes it was the penthouse and sometimes it was the outhouse.

But with a day off that week,

one, two, three, four, five, six, with a day off that week on Tuesday.

So we only had seven house shows and a six-hour stretch of interviews.

It was a light week.

What do you think, Brian?

You know, it's a crazy schedule.

It's almost impossible to just just imagine working that schedule for a long time, and there are guys that did it.

It's unreal.

It's unrelenting.

And in the middle of all that, Watts demanded, and as anyone should, the highest quality wrestling in the ring.

No one could loaf it.

What

is Dennis saying about all this?

What is Bobby saying about all this?

Well, you know, Bobby's happy to be there, except, but boy, you know,

the roads, the trips, the miles, the fans, whatever.

But Bobby didn't complain about anything.

Dennis was loving it because

he had waited, you know, all of his life for a big break in a major territory.

And not only here it is, but also

it's working.

So, I mean, yes, we would all bitch amongst ourselves in the car and complain.

Oh, my God, these fucking trips, these people, these buildings, whatever.

But Jesus Christ, again, the money and the

idea that we are doing this.

I mean,

the rock and roll was starting to be a part of it, and they would be later on.

And JYD was still over.

And Terry Taylor was starting to get over as a babyface.

Magnum would be big as a single later on in the year.

But this early boom in the territory was mostly being carried by the Midnight in our program.

So...

And it was different than anything in Mid-South, really, before that.

I mean, other than you know, the Freebirds, there really wasn't a tag team that was a committed tag team on top.

And the Midnight Express were getting to that point.

Yeah, and we were kind of being compared to the Freebirds because that had been the previous big money run that somebody had had here.

And that's why every time

that we set some kind of gate record in a town, I would definitely notate that.

Okay.

And the Freebirds did have the

handicap that when they were there, it wasn't the whole territory.

They didn't have Houston and they didn't have Oklahoma.

But still, you know.

They had the dog.

They had the dog.

And speaking of the dog, I'm going to give you one more week because you want to look at fucking trips and busy.

And this also gets to the start of the last stampede.

March the 12th, 12th, we're back in New Orleans at the downtown municipal auditorium

and that

I believe was where Wrestling 2

beat Dog to win the Mid-South North American title.

And on the

undercard of that, that's where the Bruise brothers came in from Pork Chop Cash and Dream Machine.

Troy Graham

came in first from Memphis because Dundee had worked out a deal.

He wanted other teams to be able to put us over

kind of

right before and concurrently with the last stampede.

So we're not just getting beat everywhere.

We're beating somebody else.

And he had arranged to bring the Bruce Brothers in and had dates booked on them.

And that's when, unfortunately, Troy had broken his ankle in a match in Nashville in the Memphis territory.

And

that didn't come to fruition.

And I always hated that because,

I mean, they made the first initial matches, but they were going to get over in that territory.

Pork chop,

the black fans loved him.

Dream, he could talk the bullshit like Dusty.

They would have been huge baby faces.

But

anyway.

What would that have replaced?

Would that have replaced you guys in the Fantastics?

Well, I don't know if it would have replaced anything necessarily because nobody had even thought of the Fantastics at this point because we hadn't even done the rock and roll yet.

But if you had another babyface team over in the territory, we could have worked with them easily.

And this anyway, March the 12th in New Orleans, that's the point I was going to make is that we do the deal.

And the way that this happened, and I can't even, maybe you remember better, how did they sign that match with Two and Dog?

Because since it wasn't our specific issue, because Two wouldn't actually turn full-fledged heel

until the next night in Lafayette on the 13th, where we switched the belt.

So how did they advertise and set up Two versus Dog for the North American title?

I don't remember the actual setup right now offhand, but

that was the match.

in New Orleans that a lot of people today point to as being a match that killed New Orleans or killed the aura of the dog in New Orleans.

How do you see that?

Yeah, well, it was.

And to make matters worse, it was a complete sellout of both sides of the downtown auditorium.

The only time the year that we were there that we saw the whole, it was a $36,000 house.

And I believe at the time

they had either $4 or $5 general admission tickets at the downtown building.

So.

See, remember, I've told you it's like the old Ellis Auditorium in Memphis or some of these other

old-time downtown auditoriums for various concerts, political speeches, whatever.

They could put a curtain across the middle of the building and seat like

3,000 people, or they could draw the curtain back, open up the whole building.

It was like a complete another half of it, and it would seat almost 6,000.

And they did that this night because of dog and wrestling too.

They'd never seen that match, North American title.

We We were on the underneath with the Bruce Brothers.

And

again, it was sold out.

And all the

biggest crowd that the downtown auditorium would have that year saw

the dog go down to the shittiest knee lift ever perpetrated.

And it was supposed to be a loaded knee lift, but two was just becoming a heel.

And some people, I think, saw it and some didn't.

But when he loaded the knee pad, he runs over.

And Dog was in the worst of his

bad habits at this point.

And it was way out of shape.

And I don't know what happened.

But instead of taking a big bump for this loaded million-dollar knee lift, Dog just stiffened up like a fucking tree.

And then just timber just fell in kind of the fakest way you've ever seen.

But that was his thing.

I mean, that's the, I mean, again, here it was really bad because it barely looked like the knee got him good.

Yeah.

But whenever the dog would get beat bad on mid-south TV, that was his move.

He would just stiffen up and take the timber bump.

Well,

somebody needed to hit him with something first because this didn't.

And people farted at it.

They didn't believe it.

They, whether, whatever their

conception of it was, junk our dog took a dive, or that was phony.

or what it just looked like shit.

And

whether it was beating the dog in New Orleans in that way, or whether it was the shitty way that it looked, or, you know, whatever,

that building never recovered.

They farted at it.

So thank goodness the UNO Lakefront Arena was about to get introduced to wrestling.

It was like two couldn't get up too high and dog couldn't bend over enough.

Something like the out.

It just,

what just happened?

Why Why is he selling that?

The only other time they opened up both sides of the downtown building that year was when, in, I think in September, when they shaved my head, but put my hair on the line,

and we didn't draw $36,000.

It didn't work.

And you didn't do the scaffold there.

You did it at the Superdome, right?

Exactly.

But anyway, that was March the 12th.

And then March the 13th was a Tuesday night in Lafayette, Louisiana.

And we were on a little string there because Lafayette's, what,

150 miles directly west of New Orleans.

We sold out New Orleans on Monday and we sold out Lafayette on Tuesday.

And this was the start of

a number of shows in Lafayette.

It's again the auditorium.

where the ring was on a stage and all the, it was like you could watch a play in this, that's That's probably what it was primarily used for.

There was a stage and then theater seating, right?

So

the ring was on the stage with ringside seats on the left side and the right side.

And then all the people were in the,

you know, the theater audience type of thing.

And they couldn't get any more people in the building.

So every time we started going back, they would start increasing the ticket prices slightly.

And

I think we had four sellouts.

When we get finished with this, we'll find out.

We had four sellouts in Lafayette at four different fucking gates.

It kept going up, and we kept setting a record.

But this was $13,600, probably

close to 2,000 people.

And that's where we win the belts from 2 and TA.

The stipulation was the belts were on the line, and

whatever team loses will get the lashes.

So

a couple of spots during the match, I was harassing Wrestling 2, and I would draw him from the corner to where Magnum would get to the corner and be able to tag, but there's nobody there to tag.

And then finally,

you know, the two would get back in the corner and he'd be yelling at Magnum, like, get up, come on, tag me, like it was his fault, right?

And finally, we beat up Magnum and he takes a big bump, and Wrestling 2 just jumps off the ring kind of in disgust.

And as the referee's arguing with him, Magnum got an abdominal stretch on Bobby and I throw the racket into Dennis and he hits Magnum

and knocks him over the head.

And

as that was the, that also was the

part where when...

Wrestling 2 turned to walk away from the referee on the cover.

Magnum TA got his foot on the ropes, but as Tu walks past him, he accidentally knocks his foot off the ropes.

And one, two, three, we win.

We win the belts.

They're supposed to get whipped, but because Tu is so disgusted,

he walks out on Magnum and leaves Magnum to take the 10 lashes, but Terry Taylor

to get over as a babyface, runs out after we've whipped Magnum five times and his back is all chewed up.

And Taylor offers to take the other five lashes to even put more heat on that no-good piece of shit, Wrestling 2 for walking out.

So that was

a multiple-angle thing

that got Wrestling 2 out of the team with Magnum.

It put the belts on us.

It set Terry Taylor up as a bigger babyface than he was before.

And it opened up Wrestling 2 versus Magnum.

And also, as we know, the deal with Dog was going to be 2 with the North American title.

And Dog was going to the Carolinas and be out for a while.

So that tied all that stuff up in the happenings in two days.

And they did take a camera to Lafayette to shoot that because it had to go on Mid-South television.

Yeah, I never really liked the way it looked on TV.

I guess just the arena, how lit it was.

And well, that's

that's how it had to be.

We were on the stage.

They had the only place,

the only other place to put the camera would have been directly behind the ring, behind the curtain, looking out at the people.

But then you could only get like 10 feet from the ring.

But you have no gauge of how many people are there with the footage.

Oh, yeah, no, you can't see it.

And see, that's what these buildings weren't meant to shoot TV in.

They just wanted to do that title change

at the very last possible moment before the March 14 TV taping the next day.

Because that's when

everything fucking happens to set up the Superdome.

So they had to get it in and they picked Lafayette.

But yeah,

the curtain that closed behind the ring was just in front of a brick wall and you could walk out on the stage and peek out through the curtain and watch the matches from like 10 feet from the ring, right?

And that's where Grizzly Smith would stand there and watch what people, the fans couldn't see him, but he'd watch the matches, make sure everything was going okay.

And I walked past there one night, and as I walked behind him, because everybody, it was a $50 fine at one time in Mid-South Wrestling to goose Grizzly because he was jumpy.

And one night he was talking to Watts and somebody gave him the thumb up the ass and he slapped the shit out of Watts.

So

I said, fuck it.

I'm going to, this is too good.

It's set up.

As Grizzly's peeking through that curtain, I walked behind him and gave him the thumb up the ass.

And suddenly all those people watching that preliminary match in the building saw this giant seven-foot 400-pound motherfucker throw the curtains apart and scream, whoa, as he jumped almost to the ring.

And then I was gone by the time he turned around and got back there.

So you have Grizzly Smith who's on the road and goes to every single show.

And that's the thing.

You want to know what can take a mental toll on a motherfucker.

He did that for years.

He not like the boys who would come in and come out.

Well, it turned out he was a dirty pervert.

So maybe you don't know what to do.

Well, no, but

you know what?

Sometimes you didn't even have time to be perverted.

But no, he had to be completely out of his fucking mind because it would do that to you.

I'm talking probably seven, eight years, Grizzly Smith never missed a show and never got in an airplane.

He would spend sometimes three days straight in his car with some underneath babyface or heel that needed the money, would drive, would drive Grizzly around in Grizzly's car and wouldn't have to pay trance just so he'd do the driving because Grizzly wouldn't get since the deal in Puerto Rico where they had to foam the runway.

He never got on a plane again.

Never changed his outfit again either.

Well, the same thing

on TV.

Oh, my god, no.

Same fucking clothes.

You should have seen the inside of his car.

It looked like an episode of Hoarders.

Again, dirty pervert, but my point was going to be: you have Grizzly Smith on the road with you every day.

He is Watts's eyes and ears.

Yes.

Obviously, there are local promoters, but that's a different thing.

Nowadays, we all talk about agents, producers.

Who is the agent for this match?

Who produced it?

You didn't have any of that back then.

Why is it so necessary today?

Why was it so unnecessary there?

Without trying to insult a lot of the current talent,

and there is a caveat, you got to have an experienced producer today because a lot of these guys don't know how to work on television or don't know how to execute a finish or don't know the timing or whatever.

And also because now everything is so controlled in the way it's shot for television, the talent has to relay to the producer what they're going to do if it's something odd.

Like, you know, how many times do you see a guy run and dive out of the ring and the camera misses it on a live show?

Because the guy just decided to do that didn't tell anybody about it.

How's the director supposed to know?

The producer is the conduit there now.

In those days, especially in a house show match,

the booker gave you, or the booker's representative gave you the finish verbally in the locker room.

And you pretty much saw it in your head what you needed to do.

And you kind of hoped that the other guys were going to be in the same

general mind frame on where they're going to be and how they're going to take something.

Because you might not be able to talk to your opponents until you're doing it in the ring.

So

that's why the matches were called in the ring.

And then you did the finish you were given ahead of time.

And

when you knew what the finish was, sometimes you'd throw in little things that would tease or tease the finish or make sense when you did it at the end of the match.

If you could talk to your opponents, sometimes that was a plus.

But then again, nobody was sitting down for an hour.

You know, Flair's finished meetings with most of his opponents.

If he won an hour, it would be five minutes.

And you wouldn't understand most of the words.

Yeah, you give me the deal.

Come on, bing, bang, boom.

Okay, well, over the 10, we're done.

Like that.

Kind of, okay.

And he'd be moving his arms in the air.

Dundee would act out finishes.

He'd be pulling a guy's fucking hair, pulling him down and pulling the gimmick out and fucking punching his own hand.

He'd blow himself up acting out the finish.

But like in WWF, in the late 80s, early 90s,

Gorea, Rene Goulet, these were the guys in the role of of a Grizzly Smith there.

Again, there wasn't an agent for every man.

They have like a team of agents.

Yeah, no, yeah.

It's like a whole crew.

It's a roster of agents.

Most territories had one guy that was the office representative.

Well, most of them had two.

You needed one guy out front in the box office.

You needed one guy in the locker room.

So the booker was in the locker room or the booker's representative.

If the booker wasn't there, he'd send the finishes with one of the referees.

And then you had a guy, whether it was Jack Curtis in Mid-South in some of the towns, or whether it was Eddie Marlin in the Tennessee Territory, or whether it was one of the Elliott or Carl Murnick in the Carolinas, or whoever the local promoter was, they're in the, and that's a lot of what Garia you mentioned and Renee Goulet.

They wouldn't be agenting the locker room.

They'd be the ones checking up at the box office, taking the report, the ticket sales, the check, or the settlement

back back to the office, giving the agent report on

the house and did the fans like it and was the building easy to deal with.

See, but as long as you got one guy in the front and one guy in the back, the boys knew their fucking business.

They knew how to have a match.

And that you'd say, how much time do you need?

Give me 20.

Okay.

Or get it right.

Which means however long you go, when the time is there and the people are ready for it, go home.

And so you got to finish an approximate time frame, and

you might ask which one of us is going out first when music became a thing,

just so we'd make sure we got all our boots tied and everything.

And that was the

level of instruction you got on the actual matches.

And you knew what the stipulation was, and it was figured in the finish.

Like, when was the first time you heard someone say, who produced that match?

Oh, God, in the WWF in the 90s, I guess.

Probably.

Later, maybe.

Because really, you know, before the producers in the 90s were like Pat Patterson and Jack Lanza, where the guys knew what they were doing anyway.

It's just that Pat and Jack or the, or whoever it may have been, me in some cases, were the liaison between the creative team and the talent, and then back to the truck.

Wasn't like we were, okay, let's

start out and write this shit down.

You headlock, and we go through a foot.

No, I mean, that's a foot.

That's what's crazy.

If one of these promotions existed today, you would need at least five or six veterans to be agents at all times.

That's the model that exists today.

It's insane.

Yeah, no,

that didn't happen.

It would have been too expensive.

Watts would have, he would have fired all of his wrestlers and got wrestlers that didn't need agents.

Anyway,

we go to March 14th, Shreveport, TV taping.

We do interviews all day.

And then that night, think about this.

Wrestling 2 has just won the North American title from the Junkyard Dog.

Wrestling 2 has turned on Magnum TA, the Midnight Express, or the new Mid-South tag team champions.

There's all kinds of stuff going on, and we know

that the Superdome is coming up on April the 7th because it's less than a month away, right?

So

things start happening.

And this is the TV taping.

They played the tape of us winning the belts from 2 and TA.

And I have the victory celebration

with the cake and the noisemakers and the hats and the whole nine yards.

celebrating the Midnight Express becoming the tag team champions.

And everybody's seen it.

The Rock and Roll Express come out and smash my face in a cake.

And the people love it.

And

Bill Watts gets such a kick out of it that when they just happen to have some time left on the show, he wants to see it again.

And they show it again.

And then I come out and now I get in Bill Watts' face.

What the face is bad enough they did this to me one time you want to show it again?

And Brian, you've seen this a million times and they've tweeted it and we've retweeted it first of all

sissy.

Yeah,

but when we went over this earlier in the day, I knew I had

a limited amount of time to say everything

derogatory about Bill Watts and his family that I could possibly say on the TV standards of the time and get that in

before he potentially gave me brain damage.

And if you go back and look at it, you see that he, he was afraid that I was going over time and he was about to cut me off and I stopped him.

I said, don't interrupt me when I'm talking.

You got a mouth full of memories.

You can't back them up anymore.

And it caught him off guard to the point where he backed up.

He said, I'm going to let the kid go a little longer.

My favorite thing, too, is when you really fire up at him, he turns to Jim Ross, and Jim Ross, who's holding the microphone in the middle, just goes, ooh,

yeah, just like, I'm not involved in this, and I don't know what in the world he thinks he's doing.

Sorry, boss.

Yeah.

And I was able to cut him off and get the point in about I'm going to have your stupid-looking son, Joel Watts, selling Midnight Express t-shirts and swabbing out toilets and blah, blah, blah, or whatever the fuck.

And that's where, you know, the slap.

And so we had been going over it during the day.

And obviously, Dundee had already told me, I bring the cake, I bring the party favors.

That was my dad done it before.

They knew they could just, here's what we're doing on TV.

I would have all the shit, right?

So not only have I known that ahead of time, but then we go over it during the day where

Watts,

again, he followed what Dennis Condry always said.

The best way to get heat with our style was to make them laugh and then make them mad because we made them quit laughing.

So now we've gotten heat.

We've won the tag team belts, but we have this big celebration and I'm all so,

you know, happy about everything.

And then they humiliate me by shoving my face in the cake and everybody's laughing.

And then I come out and I cut a serious promo on Bill Watts where he then says, I'm going to walk away from you.

I'm going to give you one more chance because I'm not going to argue with a sissy like you.

I settle things with physicality and you're not equipped for it.

I run out of words and my fists do the talking.

Yeah.

Well, I knew that there was some potential that he was going to knock me into fucking next week, but I figured, God damn it, this is the,

if any was the time, now is the time.

So we had worked out the deal.

He said, I'm going to give you one more chance.

I'm going to turn and walk away.

And when he turns, I grabbed his shoulder and stuck the fucking chin out.

Bam!

And I saw some sparkly things, but he didn't hit me in the ear.

It was right on the neck and the chin bone where you could make a noise, but it was safe.

And boom, I take the bump and I sell it all the way back to the locker room on my hands and knees and staggering or whatever.

And that was the end of that show.

But then the following show that we did the same night,

again, he's okay now.

Everybody, again, they

got mad.

Then they laughed.

Then I got what was coming to me.

But now it's our turn.

Me and the Midnight Express.

So

following up on that, but to not make it look so

formulaic.

It was on a pre-taped interview where they could pitch, ladies and gentlemen, a shocking incident took place earlier today.

Bill Watts was pre-taping interviews with, and I think it was Butch Reed and

Terry Taylor.

We're going to be wrestling that night in the Mid-South TV title tournament.

So he's out there interviewing Butch Reed when I come out and interrupt it.

And I start yelling at him from a little ways away, right, where he can't reach me.

And they wanted to make the

point that Butch had nothing to do with this, and he was so shocked by what was happening that even Hacksaw Butch Reed wouldn't get involved.

I'm out there yelling at Watts.

I'm interrupting the interview.

Watts saying, somebody get this sissy out of here.

Reed's standing there.

The Midnight Express come from the back door and jump Watts from behind.

And that's where I learned how to make a blackjack.

Because Watts didn't, the tennis racket at that point was not over.

I'd been carrying it.

We'd been using it for the past, you know, few weeks in the house show matches, but it wasn't like it had been a devastating thing.

And Watts wanted to, I think in hindsight, if he'd have known the way it was going to turn out, he would have used the racket

because the racket ended up getting a ton of heat in that territory.

But he wanted to make it real and something he could sell.

So we hit him over the head with a blackjack.

And he got fucking color.

And now

he's been retired at that point, what, two or three years?

And the people are screaming because they're watching these heels.

He hadn't done angles.

He hadn't done physical shit.

And these heels have got Bill Watts down,

beaten the shit out of him.

busted him open, and even Butch Reed puts his hands up and walks away like, I don't want any part of this.

And so then all the baby faces come out and save him, blah, blah, blah.

And that was the instigation for the last stampede.

So on this TV taping,

they did everything that not only would set up the big April 7th Superdome show, the main events, but

that would be headlining all the towns in the territory all the way until the middle of May.

And this was the most important

television taping I'd ever done to that point.

Maybe the most most important one I ever did,

because this was

what led to us directly setting all those records and

getting enough attention to where everybody wanted in wrestling wanted to book Jim Cornette and Midnight Express.

And we got paid 40 bucks for TV.

That was the interviews were free and we got $40 expense money for television tapings.

I would do it again and even give them the 40 bucks back.

Well, there it is.

And, you know, I always say it, the big follow-up people forget is they had you in the second chair on Mid-South TV the next week.

Oh, yes.

I did guest commentary on, I think, three, yeah, I wrote down three matches.

Yeah, you and Boyd.

And again, Watts is usually there.

Jim Ross is just starting to get, just starting to be the regular, but it's always Watts and Boyd Pierce.

So for it to be Boyd and the guy who took down Bill Watts, who's all smug, that's heat.

And anyway, we talked about schedule.

I'll finish this week up real quick and we'll be done.

The next day was Little Rock, Arkansas.

So we stayed in Shreveport that night, went over to Little Rock, which was only 200 miles, and then

270 back home to Alexandria that night.

They were behind on the

on the TVs, so we were still doing the lash deal with 2 and TA

because nobody knew what had happened two or three days earlier, fucking 300 miles away.

And then we started running in on the rock and roll expresses matches at this time, also,

starting to get heat on them.

So Little Rock that night did $27,600.

Remember when back on,

where was it?

I'll turn back here.

On January,

I can't turn the page.

It's stuck together.

On January 1st, we we were in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The house was $10,000.

We made $100.

On March 15th, the house was $27,600.

We made $500 a piece.

And Little Rock would go on to be a very strong town the rest of the year.

Then Friday, March 16th, in Monroe, Louisiana, again with two and TA.

We're finishing up there.

And then Saturday, March 17th,

Greenwood, Mississippi, Brian.

That was one of the

George C.

Culkin towns, the old Curtis family towns.

And when they had been independent from Watts, they had run Greenwood and Greenville, Mississippi, Jackson, Biloxi, and Vicksburg as their main towns, right?

And again,

that wasn't a big money territory.

But it was steady and it was consistent.

They'd been running these buildings and these towns for years.

We go to Greenwood.

It was advertised Wrestling 2 and Magnum TA.

But I don't remember exactly what the reason for the switch was for,

but it ended up being Wrestling 2 and Bill Dundee filling in since Greenwood was close to Memphis.

They knew who he was.

But we did an $11,600 house.

It was a sellout.

of the building in a record house for Greenwood, Mississippi, with like a five-match card.

And, you know, in that match on top, this again was a great sign because it was, even though it wasn't a lot of money, it was a building they've been running for 30 years and it was a record crowd.

And we've been there three months.

So take that, right?

And then

Sunday, March 18th, was Alexandria in the afternoon in Lake Charles, Louisiana that night.

And we finished up on March 18th with the whole thing with,

I I believe, finished up, yes, with Wrestling 2 and George Weingeroff as his partner.

And then that night, March 18th in Lake Charles, was our first Mid-South house show match with the Rock and Roll Express.

And we did a DQ.

The house was $11,000.

We were the main event, but we'd done no angle.

But that was, again,

a harbinger of things to come.

So

the tally.

You talked about the schedule.

I'll open it up to your questions and we'll be out of here.

We worked seven days that week.

We worked eight shows in seven days and did

a six-hour stretch of interviews

and traveled, hold on, 400, 600.

There'd be 730

and 860, 1060, 1260,

1760,

and

traveled only 2,000 miles.

So eight house shows

in seven days,

including the TV taping, a six-hour stretch of interviews, 2,000 miles, and we made $1,800 a piece for the week, which is around $5,500 today.

That kind of shit

is not sustainable for people's good mental health.

I will tell you that right now, because it was starting to be a bit burdensome, even though we were still just getting into the beginning of it.

But you knew you had the big angle coming up, so I guess that's the payoff for all these, yeah, all these miles on the road.

Well, and then the payoff after that for all the miles on the road was the next big angle that we, because then

it was addictive once that you had done something like that, and once you

draw a record crowd in this building, or once you main invent the super dome or whatever, you want to do it more.

And there's always the possibility that you can follow it up with something even bigger.

We followed up,

we followed up everything that we did in Mid-South with something bigger, except for the last stampede.

You couldn't really hardly get any bigger.

But I'll take the records on that that exist.

But that's the thing is that we knew that as long as we could keep up this pace, we had so many different things to do and so many different places to go that

fuck.

How could you not do tremendous business with a cast of characters like this and the TV that was so strong in every town?

Because that's even when Watts'

house show business was down,

everybody still watched the television.

He had the people watching.

You just needed to reach him with something they wanted to pay to see.

And every once in a while, you need to shake things up and change the talent around.

And that's what he did.

Comments and suggestions?

Well, no suggestions, but I think that's a good place to end for this week.

Our look at Mid-South.

We went into early March 1984, and things are only going to pick up from here.

And things will pick up on your program, which is the drive-through in a few days, and this program again next week, which is the experience, and maybe they'll even do something exciting on television this week so we can talk about it.

We can always hope.

Yeah, punk has to reappear at some point.

Sooner or later, sooner or later, our punk will arrive.

And until then, we're going to leave.

And in parting, we'd like to wish you love, peace, soul, thank you, fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.