Episode 539: Forbidden Door 2024

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APU built for the hustle.

Like the midnight and the rock and roll.

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 phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Hello and welcome to the Jim Cornette Experience, folks.

WCW's killer is still at large.

The forbidden door has become an open border.

And if you needed any proof that the WWE can do anything, they've made Paul Heyman a babyface.

All that and more, where today's question is, has the wrestling war turned into a squash match?

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

Co-host to you, like General MacArthur, he has returned, the great Brian Last, everybody.

Hello, Ha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Very nice quote.

And hello, and welcome to all the listeners joining us from all around the world.

Hello.

Hello.

Oh, boy.

I just.

You know, I find myself again in this position

where I just spoke to you a little over 48 hours ago.

And you know what?

What I've been doing is watering trees and signing action figures in that time

and catching up on a bit more of the grapes, as our friends across the pond say.

And then we're here to do this again.

And there's still so much going on.

I mean, and

to see

an Oscar-winning legend like Alfred Hitchcock physically abused in the world's most famous arena.

Amazing to think that we're going to talk about SmackDown.

We're going to talk about who killed W.C.

The fourth part, the final chapter, the last nitro, the,

they should have just called the episode kaput.

Yeah, when they're asking for programming, they're going to bring it back.

It's like, friend, in the 13th part four was supposed to be the last one, and then all of a sudden it came back.

Well, I think they still got to do some DNA evidence because they haven't really gotten to the,

unless, as I said at the start of the thing, it kind of fits that it would have been an Agatha Christie murder on the Orient Express type of thing where each one of the 12 people went in and stuck a little

big sticker in the old boy.

I have an idea for a new show they could do, fact-checking who killed WCW.

Just use the actual content of the show.

You can keep the executive producers in place and then get a fact-checker, like picture in picture, to say, no, that's wrong.

That's a lie.

That never happened.

That wasn't the reason.

Those weren't the ratings.

Those weren't the numbers.

I think that would be a valuable resource.

If Zane Breslov was still around.

Was his name mentioned once in Who Killed WCW?

No.

So, and.

Not that he killed WCW, by the way.

It was the opposite.

No, but

that he would know and.

That he would know and probably have been willing to spill his guts about exactly what went on there.

But we'll talk about that, all that good stuff.

And of course,

folks, it's again, it's one of those shows where we're starting the show because we want to get some things reported and get them in the pipeline.

And then we're going to take a break and watch the forbidden door.

And it's going to make Dan and

we're going to watch that and we're going to come back and finish the program with a

how can the door be forbidden when he's he's bought the fucking room on the other side of it?

Well, the other question is, is it still a forbidden door if WWE's working with other promotions like they are right now with TNA?

Well, then, well, no, they've it's like connecting doors now.

You know, like when you check into the holiday inn or whatever, you, you, you got your kids with you, and you want to, I want a connecting door.

I'll keep an eye on them, but I can shut the little bastards in, whatever the case.

It's now, it's a connecting door.

Because WWE has the suite,

and then TNA is over in the little the kids room

and over here AEW's got

I don't know maybe a hot tub at the Louisville Manor Motel

and the connecting connecting door opens up into the parking lot I guess the buildup is uh

you know forbidden ratings it's a problem every year

because they just stack the show with people from all over the place you've never seen on the show and they're having long competitive matches with everyone.

It's uh, it's well, it's it's funny.

I think it did serious damage this year.

I'll say that this year, it's we're forbidden to know who these people are.

You know, we previewed, and we're gonna review it later on, Forbidden Door, was it a week ago, maybe even a little bit more than that?

And I think there were nine matches at that point, and we said, wow, that's a lot of matches.

Yeah, I think it's now like 14 matches.

Yeah, I saw that the graphic looked like one of those old when they had the

fucking feature on the televisions when cable got big in the 90s, where it would show you a freeze frame from all the different cable channels.

Do you remember that?

You'd have like 96 little thumbnails on your screen.

You couldn't see shit.

That's what their fucking poster looks like.

Ah.

Ah.

You don't remember that?

I'll have you know that I had a Mitsubishi,

what was the model number I believe it was a U81 Super VHS machine that had a feature that if you plugged it into a cable fucking

television box with a converter that they had at the time

that you could actually fucking hit that on the remote you'd get a fucking thumbnail of every fucking channel at the time it was amazing piece of home electronics equipment what year was that

uh

i got, that is what I originally

watched the Mid-Atlantic films transfers on, I'm thinking now.

So 1990, 91, I already had it.

It was like a $2,000 machine in 35 years ago.

So,

but boy, it was, and you could do music videos, flying erase heads, editing features.

Tape was wonderful.

You were living in Charlotte.

Where did you buy it?

Yes.

I ordered it

from, oh, it wasn't BH is the company in New York that Hotchkiss gets a lot of his stuff.

I know you know them well.

Yeah, they're great.

But I don't think it was that at the time.

One of the major, because you got the video magazines, right?

Home video magazine, video review, whatever the fuck.

And the big electronics dealers would have the ads and they were writing up the top machines in the magazine.

Let's see.

They got one for fucking $2,200.

Boom.

Call them and give them your credit card over the phone.

It was an amazing

space age fucking deal back in those days.

Do you think that's part of the problem you have with the

Wyatt stuff, like I do?

Like, I've dubbed tapes.

I know how this works.

Like the whole, like, I dubbed a spooky tape.

I know I've done this.

I did this throughout my childhood.

I know how this works.

Yes.

And

count on people just not

knowing that.

But anyway, what are you taking over here for?

This is trying to.

I'm trying to help you.

This is a struggle so far today.

Well, no, I'm not.

I'm not in the zone.

I'm not even.

What are you talking about?

You're not in the zone.

I'm not even.

I'm telling you, I'm tired.

I've been watering trees and shit, but I was going to bring up something and you took me sideways in another direction.

You know what I like to watch on TV these days that's not the wrestling that you you can learn something from.

Porn.

On TV?

Well, you can stream.

I mean, streaming is TV now.

Well, you stream all of the porn or squirt it or do whatever you want to with it, but I'll be over here learning something.

You're learning something.

So that says it's one of the

one of those channels.

Well, it doesn't necessarily have

the dirt.

Secrets of the dirt?

They've done everything else.

I mean, they've got to

come up with new topics.

All right.

How about Dark Side of the Dirt then?

No.

Talk about me struggling.

Woody, you

need to take a swig of Pepto-Bismol over there.

Daddy's got to sour belches.

But no,

on PBS, yes, folks, it's come to this.

I'm old enough now that I watch public broadcasting.

But they do have, they actually have classic movies on the main PBS network.

I'm not talking about your little hinky-dinky hometown

public broadcasting.

But PBS is a national entity, they have classic movies, they have documentaries, and they are doing now, and I haven't seen the third part yet, I've seen the first two,

a documentary on the disco revolution

from the formative days.

And yes, they're talking about the George McCraes, but they go even further back to the fucking local DJs trying to figure all this shit out.

Blah, blah, blah.

Go ahead.

What do they credit as being the first disco song or one of the first ones?

Is it Rock the Boat?

Because a lot of people say that's the first one because it had the orchestration with the

beat, I guess you could say.

What did they say?

Oh, but and see, they're delving deep into what the beat is.

They have these musicians that not only that did this, but that are commenting on it, where they went back to 1970 to what is the goddamn

African,

was he African or European artist?

I'm a soon, I'm a soon, I'm a sum, I pop.

What the that fucking thing?

I can't do it.

No, you can't.

But no, this is deep shit.

And then they credit Rock the Boat and the Hughes Corporation, et cetera, with the first, I think it was top 40 or top 10, the disco single, but they're going back deep into the roots.

juxtaposing that with the cultural revolution in New York and the Stonewall Inn and the gay clubs merging with the disco to get people out to dance and the strife at the time.

And it's fascinating.

You actually get to learn something because nobody can write anything

that's really good anymore to put on fucking television these days.

So let's learn something.

These things are fascinating.

But that's on PBS.

Yeah, where you are.

I'd like to check that out.

Yeah.

And also, this brought up something else I've been watching on Sunday nights.

I'll tape the

multitude of wrestling biographies and watch them later on when I can zip through the commercials or whatever.

But if I'm wanting to watch something for entertainment these days, again,

the history channel, see, when I was in school, they didn't have history.

It was so long ago.

So I'm learning this stuff now.

But have you seen any of the,

it's a multiple series now, The So-and-so that built America?

Do you know what I'm talking about?

I think so.

I've heard about it.

I haven't seen it.

I think the first

iteration of this may have been four or five years, seasons ago or years ago,

with the men that built America, and they profiled Andrew Carnegie and Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, you know,

the big business typhoons that established the railroad and the oil company and blah, blah, blah.

And that was, and they reenact

these people's lives and or interactions with each other.

And then I guess that was a success for them.

And now there's everything.

There's the icons that built America, the brands that built America.

I love the food that built America was a series last couple of years.

And I mean,

Everything from profiling Colonel Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken to the dueling Pizza Hut Domino's thing, they've always got two of the companies that are kind of doing the same thing,

you know, coming up at the same time and buttonheads.

But it also reminded me when I was a kid,

how many things there are now to eat that we didn't have when I was a kid.

Because remember, I'm so old when I was a kid, people still saw in black and white.

I was 26 years old before I ever heard of a fucking buffalo wing.

Think about this now, Smithers.

Are you thinking?

Well, I mean, buffalo wings aren't a thing that we're around.

Chicken wings weren't a thing 40 years ago, 50 years ago.

That's what I'm saying.

And I, as a matter of fact, was reminded

that I was already a kid when they frosted the Pop-Tarts.

How about them apples?

I remember the commercials now with frosting or whatever the fuck.

But when they go back and show that, remind everybody

the whole fast casual dining, dining chain, Applebee's Ruby Tuesday,

TGI Friday, every other day of the fucking week.

It didn't exist in

the 60s, especially when I was a kid, and in the early 70s.

You either went to a local fucking restaurant,

this so-and-so restaurant,

or you were eating McDonald's, which had only been around at that point point in 10 fucking years or whatever.

And now we just take all this stuff for granted.

Yeah, see, McDonald's has been here my entire life.

It's hard to imagine like McDonald's not being here.

I think I said this the other day.

I was a teenager the first time I had any McDonald's.

But also, when I had Wendy's the first time, when I was, I think I was 12, I think we got it about the same time, but we didn't have a McDonald's out here, but we got a Wendy's closer.

I was like, oh shit, there's no fucking bun in the middle of the patties.

This is new

because he has.

What are your thoughts on that?

Do you like a Big Mac?

Well, no, because see, that then

I was used to, remember, this would have been 1972, whatever, I was used to the Jerry's J-Boy,

which was the

basically Louisville, Kentucky version of the Bob's Big Boy.

And it was

the same thing, thing, the sesame seed bun with the two thin patties and the fucking middle bun and the goddamn stuff on it, which

it was all the burgers that I had to eat before I was 10 years old because it was right down the road here and that was fast food.

So there you go.

What about Burger King?

When did that pull up?

What the f?

At some point.

Because everyone, I mean, I don't know if it's so much now, but it used to always be McDonald's versus Burger King.

And then all of a sudden,

you know, Wendy's got bigger, a lot of other chains started popping up.

But, you know, then all of a sudden, I started hearing Subway's the biggest chain in the world.

But for years, it was McDonald's versus Burger King.

Actually, there was not a Burger King out here close until I discovered.

Here's the thing: like I said, the J-Boys, when I'm

a kid, right?

And by the time I'm like 12-ish, 13-ish, I'd found the Wendy's because it was near the showcase cinemas, and we all went one time.

But

then we guess what we got here in my little fucking neck of the woods about two miles from the house?

We got a Judy's hamburgers.

Huh.

I never heard of Judy's.

Exactly.

Judy's hamburgers.

No, seriously, it ended in a lawsuit.

See, well, I'll start with that.

Judy's hamburgers had a mascot named Judy that was a cute little girl with pigtails.

And these fucking burgers were not round, they were square.

And you could get a single or a double or a triple.

And it was Wendy's in everything but name.

That's crazy.

It was insane.

And they were better than Wendy's.

That's a thing.

Boy, they got used to seeing me when I got my driver's license, especially, right?

I was over there all the time, and they would fix me up from about the years that I was, I would say, 13, maybe 14 to 17 before they were shut down.

That's the only place I'd fucking go, right?

And the fries were exactly the same.

And they had, I think they had some kind of at the time, Wendy's had the apple tartlet thing, and they had some kind of apple turnover thing.

Who owned it?

Was it like someone who had been a part of Wendy's who was trying to just stay in the business?

I can't remember.

God, years ago, I saw an article, article and and i can't remember all the specifics but they opened a few of them maybe this one and a couple of others and then

their expansion efforts were stymied by the fucking fact they were a goddamn blatant copyright infringement or some kind of trademark

bullshit and uh and yeah and and then it became a radiator place

the building that the Wendy's were, the Judy's was in.

Yeah, no, I found some little article from answers.com.

I don't know if this is AI generated or what.

Who owned Judy's hamburger chain?

Though many tount Wendy's Dave Thomas as the founder of the idea, history argues from a different point of view.

According to local lore, while Dave Thomas was managing and owning three or four places to eat that were failing, he turned them into KFCs.

While there, during the age of McDonald's and burger Wars, a guy working with him came up with a plan to market hamburgers without having to freeze the meat.

But this guy was penny wise and pound foolish.

He made a deal with Dave Thomas that gave the lion's share of all future locations to Dave.

Upon seeing the success of Wendy's chain and knowing that it was originally named Judy's

after a real name instead of the later adopted story of where Wendy's came from,

regret and greed set in, winding up,

excuse me, regret and greed set in for winding up with the short end of the stick.

Providing substantial proof it was his original idea and not telling the whole story to investors, Nashville's General Care Corp.

started doing a deal for Judy's locations and franchises.

Wendy's and Judy's looked exactly the same and sold the same menu items.

Yeah, that's so funny.

Except that Wendy's was red and Judy's was blue.

That's right.

On West End Boulevard by Vanderbilt.

I don't know where this article's from.

That's at Nashville, Tennessee.

They were actually not far from each other.

Even Pizza Hut and Pizza Inn were across the street from each other there.

However, General Care Corp, a Nashville entity, did not have the ability to influence the federal courts on the real contract dealings Dave Thomas made.

It appears to be a matter of fact, Dave Thomas bought and owned the entire Wendy's way of doing business.

See, part of this just seems like AI.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like the reporter, either that or the guy's drunk as he's ripeness.

Well, there it is.

The story of Judy's.

Judy, Judy, Judy.

Oh, when they closed that place, my heart sunk.

Oh, god damn it.

When I was a kid in Long Beach, we had McDonald's, you know, which had a Playland area, so that was a big deal.

Burger King, which I was pretty loyal to McDonald's, so I didn't give it a chance for many, many years.

And back then, my dad's favorite, which everyone in the family hated because he had to wait online the longest at the drive-thru, was Jack's, Jack-in-A-Box.

And he loved those burgers.

So I hated, as a kid, whenever we wanted to get McDonald's and he wanted Jack's, he had to wait in the pickup line for like 15 minutes for a burger because they made him fresh, apparently.

Well, it it sounds like steak and shake.

You'd love to have the food, but don't sit in the drive-through because it'll be forever.

But I had Jack in the Box because Stacey, being from California, said, oh, we saw one somewhere.

Oh, we got to go there.

And I'd never been to that before because they didn't have, they don't, at least now, I don't know what they got now.

I don't go out anymore, but they didn't have them back then.

until the last few years in this end of the country.

And by the way, I'm assuming it's Jack.

I mean, it was definitely Jack's, but I thought I was short for Jack in a Box, and maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe Jack's is a different thing.

I think it's either the same thing or an offshoot of the thing.

One or the other of those things.

What about White Castle?

You heathens up there?

Oh, no, we had White Castle over in Lynnbrook.

So especially once you got your driver's license, if you just wanted to really be filled with self-loathing,

you

drive over to White Castle and just buy a bunch of everything.

And by the time you were done eating it, you swore off White Castle for for the rest of your life.

Or until the next time, you were just like, until the next time.

I need to punish myself.

I know how this is going to go.

No, we have to say that.

I never got White Castle when I was, even though we had them here when I was a kid, because there wasn't one around, and my mom didn't crave them herself.

But whenever we would go visit Aunt Lola and Uncle Tommy, because there, and there's my cousin Larry and cousin Richard, and there's there's eight people there.

Uncle Tommy would come in with a whole sack of death burgers in a coffin, and we would go to town.

And then that would do me until the next time we visited Ain't Lola and Uncle Tommy.

Let me just tell you while we're recording, I'm probably now ordering burgers from someplace starving because of all this.

So thank you for that.

But we also, no, we had White Castle nearby.

Nathan's was in Oceanside.

That was actually the second ever Nathan's location.

And that was...

Nothing beats like real deal Nathan's, not truck stop Nathan's, but like a real Nathan's.

Tremendous.

So we had a lot of options.

And then Wendy's, I don't think Wendy's came until I was in high school.

And for a little while there, that was like the biggest thing that happened for a while for a lot of the kids there because the drive-through line was magnificent.

It was all the way through the Walbaums parking lot.

And then after a while, that was all gone.

Everyone had enough Frosties.

And, Ben, I've told you the story before of we didn't have.

Burger King.

Now, when you mentioned Burger King earlier, I've got off in a different direction.

We had Burger Queen.

Remember that queeny bee?

Oh, that's great.

And they changed the name to Druthers.

Like, I'd Drother go there.

And they expanded their, they had the driest fried chicken.

It was so fucking dry you had to eat it in the rain.

Horrible because they expanded their menu.

It was horrible.

And it's a Dairy Queen now.

So it's gone from Burger Queen.

to Drothers to Dairy Queen.

Not to get too far away from Burgers, but when did you first discover Domino's?

And what do you think of the noid?

Remember the noid, the character and all the commercials?

Oh, good lord.

Did you avoid the noid?

Yes.

Well, because that was when I was getting the dominoes

probably five times a fucking week in the 80s.

Think about how many hotel rooms we were in.

And again, there was no,

even if you had a, well, there was no smartphone.

I was going to say, even if you had a smartphone, there was no grub hub.

Well, there's no smartphone.

If you wanted food after 10 o'clock at night in any city in the country and didn't readily have a car because you either, there's three or four of you, somebody else got the car, or you're just too tired to go anywhere, or then it's 11 or 12 o'clock and there's nothing open to go to, you would call fucking dominoes.

And

so I got to be a fucking expert.

But no, the noise.

But when did you first,

I think of that as a late 80s thing, at least for me as a kid here in, well, Well, not here, but there in Long Island.

When did you first discover dominoes?

Well, that would work.

Is that what you appreciate?

Just the consistency of kind of knowing what you're going to get from Dominoes to Dominoes?

No, just knowing you're going to get something that was recently cooked and resembles food.

That's what I was going for at that point in time.

I mean, that's probably why I got fucking acid reflux so bad was all the goddamn tomato sauce I was eating.

But if you're, like I said, you're in the fucking hotel, room service is closed.

If you do have a car, there ain't hardly anything around or nothing to get, boom, call, get a fucking pizza.

And

that coincides with middle to late 80s because think,

I didn't start spending most time in the hotel room until several years after I got into business because we were always driving back.

We're hitting a...

goddamn drive-through or a gas station food counter.

So it was equally nutritious.

But

when I went to work for Crockett, we started flying places and staying over 85, 86-ish.

By then, if they didn't have dominoes, they had some type of local pizza something or whatever.

And

I've dumpster dived probably twice on a fucking pizza where it looked reasonably

intact on one side in a hotel hallway somewhere for lack of anything else to fucking eat.

That's awful.

Well, i mean you were fucking stuck in those days give me some goddamn food i'll gnaw a piece of your fucking arm off your bone so i'm not sure if jacks and jack in the box is the same thing i'm also not sure if the jacks we used to have and again they tore down years ago in long beach new york is the same as the jacks here the logo looks familiar but this is from well i did i did

is this a wendy judy judy judy judy windy windy windy judy judy judy no this is uh

this is

this is a Jack situation, not a Judy situation.

No, but this one services Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

So I'm guessing they didn't expand to just Long Beach.

I will find out more.

Well, that may be the one that we've been to

in Tennessee, in Nashville there.

But that's way...

The only way that I knew there was a fast food place called Jack in the Box

when I was a kid was because Johnny Carson would talk about it in his monologue on the tonight show.

And you order into the clown's mouth.

Because

I don't think we had drive-throughs

at that point.

There was no clown's mouth.

This place was busted.

Well, and the clown, they couldn't afford the clown.

They must be doing bad business.

But no, because we didn't have drive-throughs at the, you still, if it was a fast food place, you still went in and got your shit until I was a teenager again.

So ordering in the clown's mouth, that was like when I was eight.

That's, oh, that sounds cool.

Maybe it's an amusement park.

Man, my stomach was bothering me earlier.

Now I got to text Suzanne and say, hey, I'm going to get

hamburgers.

Do you want anything?

Yeah.

See, I told you I was going to get you out of that.

You were feeling queasy.

It was just because we had to talk about wrestling.

And I'll tell you, if you want to order into the clown's mouth, can I suggest something, folks?

Hop right now onto the internet and go to jimcornet.com and

you can send your money directly to the clown, mouth and all.

I, you know,

and put a note on there, whichever orifice you would like me to insert your money in, and I will do that.

But I will send you fine products in exchange, and I'll have you know that because of all of the goddamn action figures that I have signed and personally autographed to little farquhar on your bar mitzvah

and to little Cindy, sorry that your fucking

anal prolapse happened.

I don't know if anyone's asking you to write that, but of course you can get personal autographs from Jim Cornelius.

Yes, but

I've been doing it and I'm continuing to do it.

And I'll have you know that everything that's been ordered since we did this big sale the first weekend of June will be done and personalized and packed up and be shipping the week of July the 8th.

So you will be, everybody will be caught up to date on everything at that point in time.

And

so you can write now, because we're we're almost there, order with impunity.

Or if you're not feeling puny, if you're just feeling fine and fit, you can order too at jimcornet.com all of the various action figures and autographed photos and documents and reading material and viewing material and other fine things that we have on on sale there.

And soon some interesting things to, I'm going through the vault for the Christmas season gonna be selling some

either one of a kind or few of a kind dirty underwear item oh come on now

there's no way in the world I would sell my collection of dirty underwear do you know how long it took me to compile that

it's not mine it's other people's

but anyway jimcornet.com and if you're a customer and you got skin in the game your shit's coming if you if you don't already have it we're we we're just whipping through this stuff but

But that's what's going on there.

Man, I don't even know what to do.

First of all, just to give an update, we're not going to stay on this too long.

LPGA on CBS, so we're not going to talk too much about that.

I'll put the mech game on in the background.

I can understand the LPGA is an old and large and venerated organization.

I can understand them being on CBS television.

They're not in the middle of a field in Osbourne, Missouri with 200 people in the stands, are they?

No, no, no.

They're in the middle of a field somewhere else, but it's very well manicured.

And it's a greenfield.

That's right.

Greenfield is where they play golf, and they're going to bore us all to death.

Or just so, you know, here are my options at the moment based on what could deliver to me.

Burger King.

I won't count diners, but multiple diners.

Fudruckers.

Wendy.

Y'all still have Fudrucker.

I haven't seen a Fudruckers in a dog's age.

You know, sadly, I feel like it's one of those chains I always worry about going away because I feel like they've been diminishing since I first saw them in 1990 or whatever it was.

Yes, they started out big and

then they got little.

Oh, it used to be great because I used to, when I first got my license, there was one over by Nassau Community College and I would drive over there to watch the mech games with my friends.

And besides the fact they were serving us beer on their age, other than that,

they served you fries in an edible bowl.

They don't do that anymore.

There's no more edible bowl.

Well, I think they had some kind of health department fucking issues with that type of thing.

But also the whole

a lot of that food was right out there where people could just get to it.

Yes.

And,

you know, they had started trimming back on that most restaurants even before the pandemic.

I have five guys, burgers and fries available.

The burgers are fine, but those fries, I'm sorry.

And especially, they tell me where the potatoes came from, what state, what farm, what the parents' names were of these potatoes.

And they're limp as goddamn Heyman's power bomb form.

They have no crispiness to them.

I don't know why they're abusing those fine American potatoes.

Well, that's five guys.

I like their fries better than their burgers, to be honest with you.

Well, and maybe their burgers suck then, too.

Obviously, White Castle here on the list.

Oh, I don't know if you want to

go that far.

And various local entities I won't name, but they're all, every one of them is a risk of some sort.

I don't know what to do.

I'm starving now.

I'm looking at all these juicy fruits.

One of them is going to look just good when they arrive.

You're going to have to.

I'm sorry.

You're going to have to deprive yourself because we're going to be reporting on some fine quality wrestling programming as soon soon as we find some.

What's this place?

30 Burgers.

That's the name of the place.

30 burgers.

Do they actually have 30 burgers?

It's like Baskin-Robbins of Burgers.

What is this?

Oh, they do.

Wow.

The Krispy Chicken Burger.

The Classic Cheeseburger.

The Bacon Royale.

The Bacon Cheeseburger.

The Bullseye Barbecue.

The Turkey Royale.

The Philly Burger.

The Gyro Burger.

The Trenton Burger.

Oof.

The Mushroom Swiss Burger.

Wait, Trenton?

The Trenton Burger, grilled pork roll piled high with melted American cheese and ketchup on a fresh baked deli bun.

Good God,

I don't think I'd eat that.

The mushroom Swiss burger, the Athens Veggie Burger, the Chipotle Bison Burger, the El Paso burger, the spicy chili burger, the A1 Blue Burger,

the Black Bean Burger, the Chicken Club Burger, the spicy Baja chicken burger, the grilled tilapia burger.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Do you consider it a burger if it's not like

a hamburger if it's tilapia?

You know, in the shape of a burger?

Technically, it can't be a chicken burger.

A tilapia patty, but you don't think that's a good thing.

No, it can't be a fish burger or a chicken burger.

It can be a chicken sandwich or a fish sandwich.

But so they've just, they've really,

their concept is a bit thin, in my opinion.

The six alarm burger.

Fresh salsa, fresh jalapenos, hot peppers, chipotle sauce pepper jack cheese what lettuce tomato and chipotle mayo on a miami onion bun

is there any meat in there in the picture there is but it's not listed here with all the uh spicy

jesus christ it it it looks like a goddamn goat threw up doesn't it

what the what would that

why would you how would you even pick that up with your bare hands and try to delve into that?

Yeah, I don't know.

Then, oh, these people, they're way off, Jerry.

Way off.

All right, well, this is your show.

I'm a burger expert.

All right.

Chicken burger.

Tilapia burger.

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You know what?

What wasn't a nothing burger

was the

whole hoo-ha surrounding who killed WCW.

We thought we might get the answers here.

We thought we might have somebody.

They should have brought everybody in

and decided a goddamn loser.

And that person should have, their chair should have immediately been shot with 5 million volts of electricity.

That would have really been a cataclysmic ending to the program.

Don't you think?

Somebody should have been electrocuted just for the fuck of it, if nothing else.

I think anyone looking for a truthful, honest telling of the downfall of WCW would have could have used those electric vaults, probably.

Well, and we kind of got tipped off.

And

you know, I love our boys over at Dark Side of the Ring, Evan and Jason, and they, I'm sure, were doing the best they could, but the Rock's

company or his

in-laws or social circle or

quilting circle, whatever,

it was the executive producers.

Was this kind of like

when the executive producer of a Hollywood movie puts his bad acting girlfriend in the thing in one of the starring roles?

That The Rock wanted to

babyface Eric Bischoff?

Well, clearly that's what it was, yeah.

But no, but I think in general, there's a problem with, I mean, they've said it too in interviews, that their filmmaking style doesn't rely on on the truth.

Well, but here it's more about just let's get narratives and who cares if everyone's lying or if shit's being put out there that isn't true.

We just, you know, we need a book.

Here is where I believe, which, oh, come on now.

You know, they've been out of that cardboard box under the overpass for the last winter and I think the last fall.

But here's where I believe that our friend Darak made the mistake:

the premise of the program was who killed WCW?

Why did this once mighty company,

why did it meet its ultimate demise?

Who was truly responsible?

This four-part series is going to find out.

And regardless of whether you

agree that it was Eric Bischoff or it wasn't Eric Bischoff or Eric Bischoff had any degree of culpability along with others, whatever your stance is,

he was one of the main

suspects, right?

You've got, you can talk about

Turner management.

Most people,

they just say the boss, whether it was a Brad Siegel or that,

what was the other guy's name, Schuster?

Siegel and Schuster.

No, Siegel and Bill Bush, or

Turner Management, one of the suits.

Or was it Eric Bischoff or was it Vince Russo or was it Hulk Hogan?

Those are are generally the entities bandied about, right?

Loosely.

Yeah.

Yes.

So how do you have one of the executive producers of the program attempting to get to the bottom of this mystery come out in the last episode and say that one of them, one of the suspects, deserves to be on the

Mount Rushmore of wrestling promoters, Eric Bischoff?

Well, then that kind of tells us what fucking part to goddamn

or what direction the program or narrative the program was going to take from the beginning.

And again, we heard from people,

some who chose not to be a part of the process, that Eric Bischoff was actively recruiting people to be a part of this documentary series.

You don't do that.

If you think people are going to say, yeah, he fucked up everything.

He had no idea what he was doing.

He's the cause.

yeah

national television wants to do a piece on me let me call shitstain up to get his opinion on me for him uh but no that's

that's the thing is is that and i'm not saying that it was eric bischoff and these other people are blameless i'm saying that they pretty much put all of them are to blame and

Our boy Shitstain definitely got a lot of people

telling the truth about him.

And and Turner management comes off looking as either disinterested or clueless or know-nothing as you would think they would.

But the theme through the whole thing has kind of been to, well, Eric, he was a victim of swinkumstance.

And none of the

really funny stories or the really stupid money that he spent or the really stupid things that they did or that he did made the final cut as much as the stupid shit shit from all these other people.

Yeah, they never even brought up that he decided not to work with Mike Tyson right before Vince McMahon did, and that changed everything.

Well, I mean, just

there was no

Eric also, there was a couple of times where he got some

that was a fairly unsavory local publicity in the Atlanta papers while, you know,

a big wig on in a fucking Turner company there.

That was that concurrent with that time period was it not yeah big nba fans yeah yeah so i mean the point is none none of that well they're talking about everybody else doing these stupid things which they all did do

there was not as many of those

so anyway and yet certain guys like kevin nash will put bischoff over and why wouldn't they he gave them everything I can understand why Kevin Nash loves Eric Bischoff the way he does.

I really do.

But it doesn't mean everyone else should.

Well, they did who Nash at the end of the program, not to spoil anything, but he's like, oh, those guys that showed up for work were suckers.

I sat on my ass at my house and, you know, watched the Titanic sink on TV.

And that's kind of, he got,

he was paid more money than almost anybody.

If you take Bret Hart out of it or what, or Hogan, possibly, whatever the fuck those deals were, more money than anybody else in WCW.

And

who took probably, I would say, fewer per capita bumps.

And

it was like, ah, fuck it.

I'm over it.

While he's still getting paid for the next, however long.

But how many people in this?

I mean, I'm just saying

people were wonderful employees.

That isn't a normal thing in any business.

And it shouldn't be in the wrestling business.

And multiple people from Russo to Bischoff to Kevin Nash.

I mean, technically, you did it too in 1990.

Just, okay, I've just decided I'm going home.

Now, you didn't come back.

Everyone else came back and in some cases got raises.

But WCW is a book.

But no, but

here was the difference.

They weren't paying me.

They paid these people to just go home and not work.

They had failed in some way miserably, so they'd say, I'll go home.

Or they had said, fuck you, I don't like what's going on and went home.

Whether it be Russo, I don't want to be on a booking committee, but he signed a contract.

He got to get paid to these wrestlers.

They just go home and get paid.

They give a shit.

When I went home, I wasn't going to get paid after, I believe, the following two weeks, nor did I expect to, because I didn't want to be there.

I wasn't going to take their fucking money because I didn't want to be there.

I was going to do something else.

But they would all just, by this point,

that company run by

who

was paying people to just go home and sit on their fucking ass and twiddle their dick.

Does it sound familiar?

It sounds very familiar, and there's something to be said about that, but that's kind of the point that not enough people hammered home on this.

Yeah,

WCW ended because it got canceled and Eric Bischoff's team didn't buy it.

And WCW

became atrocious, and pay-per-views started dying under Russo.

Bischoff had the success,

but if the costs hadn't run out of control, if the losses hadn't grown to be out of control, it's a different conversation.

And

again, there wasn't much accountability or responsibility about just what that budget was.

When all of a sudden you're losing all that money every year, why would they keep it?

Or why would they keep it on the air?

Well, there wasn't a clear explanation either of how, you know, they talked about the shady

bookkeeping practices where Eric at one point even said,

well, we were getting a lot of the Turner expenses were put against WCW.

And I think I mentioned last week or two weeks ago, we talked about that show, it worked both ways because they never explained how.

The company went out of business and the

backstage footage they're showing is, you know, oh, I'm out of a job and my futures.

But some of these guys, and they didn't delineate who and why,

still got paid for a year, year and a half.

And that's why they didn't go and join the WWF.

Yeah, because it would have been a massive pay cut for the biggest stars there.

NWO, Goldberg, any of those.

Stan.

It would have been a pay cut to go work for WWE.

for a minimum guarantee because they were making stupid money from WCW for Turner Broadcasting.

Actually, WCW was done.

That's what I'm saying, but they didn't explain how the fuck that some of this worked.

Where didn't it benefit WCW that the highest paid guys are actually on the Turner broadcasting books rather than the WCW

was sold and they glossed over it with, but that didn't mean that all the contracts went with it.

And that was all the explanation.

Because

that had gone back years to where Turner Home Entertainment, I think,

if not

helping

some with, no, they didn't help Crockett, but there was talks of it, but then they bought the

company that there was talk in 1989

that Turner Home Entertainment might sweeten some of the wrestlers' contracts because of the VHS tapes at the time that they were releasing.

That because the only,

I mean, they had all these movies, movies, right?

But think about this:

how many VHS tapes is a classic movie going to sell when it's released?

Past

Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Children Classic from Disney, whatever, right?

They were selling shitloads of the wrestling VHSs.

A lot of the times back then, if you actually wanted to get a classic movie, it wasn't easy to find a cassette for sale.

Yeah.

The video store would have to order them sometimes to get them in.

Well, that because

there wasn't money in it in terms of quantity.

No, they weren't selling quantities of all

titles that were available.

Nevertheless, so it wasn't a new idea.

And the point is, what I'm making, finally, I'll beat around it till I hit it.

Is that wasn't that benefiting WCW if the biggest earning stars were being paid by another entity in TBS and wasn't on their fucking books somehow?

Weren't they?

Wasn't TBS just a shady place doing accounting overall?

And

that's where they started this with the AOL

Time Warner merger, which Ted Turner's son called a Ponzi scheme

and predicted it would all fall apart.

And that I loved hearing Ted Turner was done.

And this was, I know,

23 years ago or whatever, but Ted had never been online, didn't have a cell phone, my kind of guy, right

but then um

that's where they started it and the merger is i think with the ominous music especially you're led

in the in the direction of well these are going to be the heels for this show

but truman capote or brad segal i'm sorry

said that now he was the one trying to get WCW back on track.

And I had written down, what the fuck would he know?

And then later on in the program, he admits, but I didn't know what I was doing or how to do that.

And Medusa called it a shit show.

And Janie Engel said, Brad Siegel didn't know anything about wrestling.

And he said, I couldn't fix it.

But the statistic was stark.

And

again,

with this whole subject, we may be,

it was the,

was the past prologue?

Are we visiting this again in modern times?

Is this a cyclical or cyclical, depending on what pronunciation you enjoy, a situation where there's going to be another wrestling promotion that falls a fucking part

every 25 years now?

Well, the difference is WCW had to worry about who was funding it, and of course, where it was going to air.

Tony has to worry about where it's going to air, but streaming changes things, and he has no worries about who's funding it.

Well, but here is a statistic that we might need to start watching for here in the future.

In WCW, the uncensored pay-per-view from March of one year to March the next year, 1999 did 325,000 buys, and 2000 did 60,000.

That's fucking brutal.

So, I,

and obviously, they can't go from 325,000 to 60,000 because nobody gets 325,000 anymore.

But AEW has been doing pretty consistently on the pay-per-views that is their

most loyal, you know, fan, obviously,

is going to order the pay-per-view.

Let's see, you know, if this starts reflecting, because with WCW,

it was ratings kind of first, and then the bottom fell out of pay-per-view and houses.

With AEW, it's been houses, the attendance, then ratings.

Pay-per-view has started to slip from the reports we've seen.

And again, we don't have that.

It's not like there's a public forum for the real numbers out there.

You got to trust what you hear.

And some of that comes from AEW, unfortunately.

But they're increasing their pay-per-view schedule, remember.

They're going to pretty much go monthly.

So this is going to be a big test with decreasing popularity, decreasing interest in attending shows, now more shows, $50 a pop.

That still is tough for people to wrap their heads around.

Not everyone thinks $50 is a reasonable rate for pay-per-view.

Well,

WCW was monthly in 1999, 2000.

And

what were they charging?

But adjusted for in today's money, as the kids say, I I bet you it was $30.

So, is that pretty much the same thing, right?

Maybe.

After

25 years, nevertheless, did you catch the line from Bischoff when they talked about WCW ended up showing a loss of $62 million in the year 2000?

See, that's what I'm talking about: $62 million.

He said, there may be a grain of truth to that.

$62 million.

They lost.

That's with charging for tickets and charging for pay-per-views and taking in whatever money from merchant, et cetera.

And they still lost that.

And that was 25 years ago.

What's that in today's money?

A fuck ton.

Actually, it's a metric fuck ton.

We're on the fuck metric scale on the fuck tons in that.

And

so then they

portrayed it.

Eric said, A to Brad Siegel, do you want me to sell this company?

Oh,

we don't sell things.

We buy things.

I sound like I'm doing Barnett trying to do Truman Capote Siegel, but he didn't want him to.

I didn't want him to.

But then when the FCC approves the big merger

between AOL and Time Warner, and Brian, you know more

about this than I do because you have not only the geographic closeness to the big apple up there, but you're also the Wall Street wolf, the stock market maven.

That dot-com bubble kind of popped around about that time from what they were saying on the program.

And what kind of financial shape was AOL in all of a sudden at that point?

It was a shit show.

You know, there's a really good book.

I don't remember the exact name of it, it, but it's an oral history of HBO

because that's all in the middle of this.

And you get all the executives talking about what it was like.

There were people who realized that AOL is built on a house of cards and they still went with it.

And a lot of websites went away.

A lot of the dot-com businesses that people predicted were going to explode didn't.

And AOL,

it's crazy to think if you grow up now, you don't understand how for a few years there it was,

you know, internet was AOL for a lot of people.

And people, I know people still have AOL email addresses, crazy enough.

But AOL means nothing today.

And AOL was in charge.

Steve Case.

It was a disaster.

And

they had again,

Ted Turner's son said they.

They gave him a you know a seat at the table or whatever, but no control of anything.

And at that point, I think this Brad Siegel was probably trying to fucking help his own case or cover his own ass or whatever.

He's one of the things that he's been spending a lot of his time on is his fucking lunatic show over here.

WCW has gone through all these hirings and firings and lawsuits and bullshit because nobody can get their

shit together.

And so now he's like, yeah, let's get this fuck out of here.

And

did you also hear that apparently at this point in time, one or two of the boys at least were

apparently

buried in the bone with Brad Siegel's niece?

Have you heard about this?

Well, Scott Hall was famously seeing her.

I don't know about other boys.

Well,

I heard Raven's name bandied around by someone on the interwebs.

she must have been an interesting girl.

And he hates the resident.

He's like, they're all con artists and liars.

Yeah.

Yeah, because your niece was dating him, and you were trying to run the show for a while.

Interesting, interesting girl.

Anyway, so

that's when Bischoff goes and finds

fusion.

Fusion, have they fused one thing to another thing when they make the fusion?

Brian, is that where that comes from?

I don't know.

But nevertheless,

fusion.

Fusion.

I don't, whatever the, that's what I said.

Fusion.

Fusion.

Fusion.

It's a color in between lavender and purple.

Fusion.

Fusion.

And you know what?

I love, though, you can tell Eric Bischoff's face lights up.

He loves to bullshit through big deals like that when he said, and so I went to fucking,

you know, Spike Huber, the big Hollywood producer who put me onto this guy, who put me onto that, and we talked and had the, and made the pitch.

And he loves to do that.

He,

that would be my

seventh level of Dante's inferno, having to go to rooms and try to pitch ideas to people equally as full of bullshit as me over and over for the rest of my life.

His face lights up when he talks about it.

And he had put the thing together, and supposedly they actually had

$5 million and they had secured funding for $60 million or whatever.

But then Jamie Kellner gets the TBS job and

hated wrestling and sabotaged the deal in short version.

But

Stu Snyder finally pops up, who

at one one point was a Turner Home Entertainment guy in the 90s, who ended up becoming the COO of the WWE in the 2000s and 2010s or whatever.

The COO,

was he number two or number three under Vince?

COO is usually number two.

CEO, then COO.

Well, there you go.

And then

they're the show.

Yeah, and usually, I mean, if the CEO is the chairman of the board, it makes it easy, but sometimes there could be be a separate chairman and president, but usually CEO, COO.

So the point of all coincidences, of all things, this guy that in the

early 90s when WCW was

a guy in Turner Home Entertainment,

but now, you know, 10 years later, he's

the COO of the WWE.

And he knows all these people.

He knew Brad Siegel, and he's sitting there all smug.

Well, Well, I knew Brad well.

I call him, first of all, to check in.

We've known each other all our lives, right?

Well, we're so good.

You know, he saved me from drowning once, and he gave me the fucking CPR and he put his lips on mine.

He didn't say all those things, but

they knew each other.

And there, think about what Stu Snyder would have thought when he's now the number two guy behind Vince McMahon.

And

he knows the guy that's been,

by pure happenstance, before Snyder was ever in the wrestling business, they worked together, the guy that's been on and off for the past year, year and a half, trying to run WCW, running it in one direction or another, into a wall, into a tree, whatever.

So they had to know

more in Stanford, really now that this line is drawn, first of all, than almost anywhere else of what was going on when this thing became a lame duck, a red herring, an albatross, whatever

animal, vegetable, or mineral you want to compare it to.

And so Snyder has got to be thinking, I can get over with Vince McMahon by giving him a sweet deal on his only competition.

And Siegel was bound to think,

I've got a guy that will guaranteed get this fucking thing out of my way before they fire me down here.

Right?

Well, you know, it's one of those things that's always been floated out there.

And Dave Meltzer has reported that he was told in advance of the sale that word coming out of meetings at Titan Tower with Stu Snyder was that they're never going to sell it to Eric Bischoff.

It's not going to happen.

No matter what you hear, that's not going to be the buyer.

And Eric Bischoff offered, what was it, $63 million?

62, but who's counting?

But here's the thing.

Was it phrased like that?

Or did he say Bischoff's never going to get it?

Because here's what I'm saying.

A lot of other people didn't bring this up.

And of course, nobody was cross-examined under a hot fucking sunlamp on this program.

But

all these things could be true in conjunction with each other in that Siegel at first thought,

you know, at least we can get this thing away from me and they'll buy it.

And, you know, whatever, it could still have been a a program.

But when Kellner comes along

and says, fuck it, we don't want wrestling on

the network because the original idea that they both said that Siegel or that Snyder said was that,

yeah, we could have two separate brands and then we could do the, you know, big rivalry or whatever.

But they found out with the WWF

TV deals, they were exclusive.

Their existing networks, correct me if I'm wrong, Brian, but their existing networks wouldn't allow them to have a program from any company they owned, whether it's called Ding Bat Wrestling or not, on somebody else's air, correct?

I believe so.

So

they had an opening to just get rid of wrestling entirely, which is what the new corporate ownership wanted and the new blah, blah, blah.

They were trying to get rid of the company, and they ended up with a perfect way to get rid of everything.

And Snyder knew that he was always going to get something,

whether they were going to work out a deal to keep the separate company alive on their air, but they were going to have the sweet deal because they were best friends.

Fuck's sake.

You know, and the other thing is everyone wants to blame Jamie Kellner and he just passed away.

And certainly he's the one who made it.

And about time.

And he's the one who made the decision.

But what decision was he supposed to make?

He came into a company with all these different divisions and this one's losing 60 million a year

and every metric they have is going down.

You talked about the pay-per-view buys before, ratings, obviously, not to where we are now, but they were going down from where they had been.

Everything's on the way down.

It's disorganized.

Its reputation within Turner is awful.

There's no leadership.

And it's losing money hand over fist.

You can understand why, based on that, it's not like he took a company that was profitable and said, cancel it.

He took something that was a major drain, and there were no signs of plugging the drain.

Well, and also

they had made

such

asses of themselves because we're not even just talking about dramatic financial turnaround and major losses, but also

lawsuits and bad publicity and

just and doing the shit that Russo had them doing on television.

Couldn't have impressed anybody in terms of the lewdness and crudeness and whatever the fuck other terms they used last week.

So

that's the thing.

That's what I've always said in wrestling.

The old saying is the boys are their own worst enemy, but sometimes it's the business, the company, the promotion.

When you let

bad attention be called to yourself in the wrong venue, that's how you lose TV when a TV station general manager gets mad at something that one old lady in fucking, you know, Butchertown complained about,

or whether it's an arena because you had the hardcore match or the street fight and the fucking crutch broke and stabbed little, you know, tiny fucking Tim in the heart in the third row or whatever the fuck, right?

It can be this way too.

If they'd only been losing five or ten million dollars a year and goddamn, nobody had sued and it wasn't a shit show where everybody was being described as on stimulants of various kinds and all this other bullshit.

And it became embarrassing.

Again, what they said about when Russo came there and started introducing things, advertisers did not find the show friendly anymore.

Whatever limited advertisers found wrestling friendly before that.

So even that in the state farm.

Hey, as a matter of fact, State Farm told him to get a new neighbor.

So you see how that happens.

Apparently, you don't have State Farm.

I didn't expect a State Farm joke in the middle of this, of all the things.

That's what I'm saying is they were...

They were waving flags over their heads going, look at us.

We are going to embarrass you and cost you money somehow to

the new ownership.

And that is the result of the efforts of Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo.

And to some extent,

you know, equally shitty booging from Kevin Nash and equally egotistical behavior from Hulk Hogan and whatever the case, as well as a lack of support from the corporate end.

So the 60-something million that Eric and his group offered for WCW was for

all of the contracts that

he would have had the right to pay those contracts that Vince didn't pick up.

What exactly was he buying for 60-something million dollars?

Well, no, see, that's the thing

is that wasn't broken down.

We don't have it in detail, but one of the things, two of the things he was buying, he thought were the Monday and Thursday time slots.

And that was, that was, they said, guaranteed in for a couple of years.

That, as Eric said, the beachfront real estate would have been tied up for a couple of years.

So,

what did, and that figure also was the, was the loss.

Did he just say, hey, I'll give you for this thing what you lost last year on it

and just turn it all over to me.

And then, what happens to those contracts?

You know, but yeah, there's no detail gone into.

I'm sure he believed that he could,

you know, manipulate everybody to come and work for him or whatever.

And they didn't have at least.

I mean, they didn't really talk about it here.

He was preparing to come back.

He had Joey Stiles.

Yeah.

He had a whole crew of people that were going to be on the new WCW.

And it all just went away just like that.

I mean, a lot of people who were around it always said there was something fishy about everything with Stu Snyder and the way it went down.

Bob Ryder, as a matter of fact, said that.

And,

you know, Bob was all over the internet back in those days.

But Kevin Sullivan said he smelled shenanigans of some kind.

I can't remember how he phrased it.

But that was the low price is still not explained by

the lack of television time slot because they sold the WCW intellectual property,

all of the tape library.

the pay-per-views, the whole nine yards for $2.5 billion.

And then...

Plus advertising commitments well no i said and then they promised that they would spend about another what 1.7 million in advertising with turner so they just pre-sold advertising they probably would have sold anyway

so really two and a half million bucks they got all the video they just wanted rid of that shit

turner home entertainment if they couldn't have made two and a half million dollars on the library And

they had that library for years and did nothing with it.

Well, and but Jerry Jarrett also was involved a period of time trying to put something together to buy it, but nobody was going to get it except Brad's best friends, too.

So that's

he again, Snyder denied

any advanced knowledge of the deal going south with Bischoff, but he told people in January, as we mentioned, that

Bischoff ain't going to get it.

That was never said on this program.

And

other than Guy Evans, there were no voices that studied this or reported on it.

You know, he wrote the book after the fact, but

no matter what you think of Dave Meltzer or anyone, he was reporting on it.

Him, no one.

I mean, it was no one except Guy Evans.

He was the only one commenting other than the wrestlers and the staff.

And think about this with Snyder and The Rock, who was intimately involved in these negotiations.

No, Snyder said, oh, if TBS had gotten a $60 million deal, they would have taken it.

They would have kept it on TV.

Or they would have taken the deal, but

that would have kept it on TV.

If they had said they didn't want wrestling on the network to begin with, and they didn't want the headache of the company, so

They didn't take a $60 million deal because then they're stuck with wrestling for another however many years.

They just

got rid of the whole thing, and one old friend did another old friend.

Actually, both friends ended up with a favor.

As I said, because Siegel

got the favor that he didn't have that company driving him nuts and didn't have boys from that company fucking his niece.

And it looks good for the new corporate owners.

And Snyder looks good for getting

Vince the entire tape library of WCW for 15 years or whatever for less than he was spending to shoot a week of Raw.

And then Stu admitted

in the WWF, Vince ran the show.

And

from his experience at TBS, WCW would have failed

regardless without one of the bigwigs saying, no, this show has my blessing.

That's one of the interesting things about if Bischoff had been able to purchase it, and if they had a television home, it would have been the first time WCW, since Jim Crockett promotions, had one person in charge.

Who knows what Bischoff would have been like under those circumstances when he really had to care about the money?

Oh, well,

he may have had a bit more of a governor on him, as they say.

If it was, you know, if he was directly responsible for these two guys in Hollywood or whatever barking down his neck about their money.

But,

and that's speaking of money,

that's another reason why we still needed more detail on exactly what the deal was with the biggest guys' contracts because Booker

said he took half the money because they offered guys that had existing contracts that were going to get paid no matter what.

We'll pay you half and get you out of it, and you can come to work and we're we'll start paying you

and theoretically

if somebody had any confidence in themselves or wanted to actually work

if you could get half of your existing contract up front right now and then start working at another job wouldn't you technically still probably come out ahead

Especially if it's a WWF, but the bunch of guys wanted to sit home and just get the check for nothing for a year and a half or whatever.

And Booker took half his money and said, Well, let's fucking go to work.

But quite frankly, that's where Vince was wrong.

And it may have upset some of the guys in the locker room, but he should have made a deal

to those WCW guys.

It would have saved the invasion and it would have changed everything.

It would have been the biggest money pay-per-view that they had ever done,

no matter whether it was a WrestleMania or SummerSlam, no matter when they did it, if they'd had the names, but they didn't.

You know, because,

and again,

I know Nash is disgruntled about everything.

He might have figured, well,

because him and Hall, well, Hall was already gone by that point, wasn't he?

But Nash

was probably making twice as much as what he knew that Vince would ever, that he would make with Vince or that Vince would pay him, if not more than that.

So

he may have been on the

right end of it.

Ah, fuck it.

I'll just since

what when he finally came back, didn't he tear his quad

within a couple of weeks and then he came back for a match and tore his quad again?

Yeah, remember when the NWO came in, Hogan worked with Rock at WrestleMania, Steve Austin worked with Scott Hall.

Kevin Ash was just in Scott Hall's corner.

He didn't work.

So he may have had the math on his side.

He probably came out better sitting on his ass at home.

But everybody else, I thought, you know, if you really wanted to establish yourself as an icon in wrestling, go get on that goddamn invasion and make that fucking giant pay-per-view, big money, whatever.

But everybody sat it out.

So there you go.

But

again,

you know, and then the little

last few minutes, minutes, the little postscript of the thing was,

and then in 2002,

Vince calls Bischoff and Bischoff says, I knew this was my opportunity.

Your opportunity?

He's thrilled to get fucking jobs, isn't he?

He's thrilled when his phone rings.

He became the raw general.

Well, that's just an annoyance to me at this point.

It's like, why?

People leave me the fuck alone.

God damn it.

More shit I got to do.

But he becomes the raw general manager, and he was good at that.

He was a good television performer.

We've said that many times.

And,

but then

they finished him up and they wanted Cena to, see, I never saw this because that was, it was my non-WWF period.

But they wanted Cena to throw him in the back of a garbage truck, but he said, oh, I don't know.

And I thought, well, good, some backbonies.

I want Vince to do it.

So they had Vince beam,

they called him up to fire him.

And then they want to throw him in the back of a garbage truck.

I wouldn't even put a pumpkin on my head.

I would have, I'll show up and you can, somebody give me their finish, but you're not throwing me in the fucking garbage truck, but they threw him in a garbage truck.

So there you go.

And then that was the end of the, except Bischoff choked up when Nash verbally blew him

because they played that

clip for him.

I don't,

if they'd have played the rock, what he said about the Mount Rushmore thing, I think he might have broken down into sobbing tears, ugly crying, as the girls call it.

Yeah, corporate took most of the heat on this, but

I'm trying to think, did any of these people look good to the naked eye, to the untrained eye, to the lay person out there who wasn't following this in real time, who hasn't studied it since?

Did anybody in this program come off looking like they were innocent parties, or did they all look like they not knew what they were doing?

I think certain people came out looking good.

Book or T, I thought, looked really good in this thing.

Well, no, I'm talking about any of the suspects.

I'm talking about the people people that were being

said, Booker T killed.

No, no, no.

I think to the average person watching this, they probably think Eric Bischoff is,

they probably think based on this, that things were really unfair for Eric Bischoff and that he's a nice guy who was trying his hardest and had a plan to save it because that's what was presented here.

This was the Eric Bischoff story.

There were a few voices that said no by Bret Hart.

But this was the Eric Bischoff story of WCW.

See

where they were able to disguise some of that.

They never mentioned that Bischoff also went into partnership with Jason Hervey.

If they'd have mentioned that, then 90% of the audience would have immediately known, ah, fuck this guy then.

He's an idiot.

That would have been one of those triggers that the kids talk about, where instantly you know something and you boom, there it is.

Well, there it is, another honest,

thoughtful project from The Rock and Dark Side of the Ring.

An honest and thoughtful project from, you know, if he was to trademark that,

honest and thoughtful productions.

Yeah, Jericho's more likely to trademark something we say on the show than Dwayne Johnson is, to be fair.

Well, if I were you, I'd file the paperwork to make sure that we get the whole thing.

And because, you know, it's business, Brian.

And WCW, they didn't know how to run a business, but you know how to run a business.

So trademark

that phrase, and then we'll open up that site and we will use our friends at shopify and they'll make us a bunch of money off of another thoughtful and honest

whatever the it is you said you know write these things down yeah you may be on to something i like this idea of starting a store with shopify i've sat i was i don't know what i'm saying with shopify

Yes, as I was mentioning earlier, if you've got a great idea, folks, on how you'd like to make some money, a product you'd like to sell or a service that you would like to provide, or maybe you just like to talk people into sending you money and you need somebody really experienced as a con artist to help you.

Well, I don't know if Shopify is experienced as con artists.

They merely build and maintain these sites for fine, hardworking people all around the world.

That's right.

I see I'm doing your part now.

From the United States of America all the way to Lithuania.

And if you're a con artist, then you need to give them a special knock.

You just go

like that.

And then they'll let you in a separate room where you can talk under the cone of silence.

But Shopify

is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business, ladies and gentlemen.

When you've got that germ of an idea and you want that germ to multiply and modify

and

replicate until it grows and creeps over the land and takes over like the blob.

And your tentacles, your feelers of your business, your money-making apparatus have reached the far corners of the globe, trickling around like a thick syrup, enveloping all that it comes in contact with.

Well, Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, and they can do your trickling too.

And their extensive help resources are there to support your success every step of the way.

And you don't have to just sell your own stuff.

You can curate products to sell from the brands you love, just gathering things, just willy-nilly from everywhere and selling them to people.

with impunity.

Somehow, I don't know how they Shopify will tell you how.

And you can grow your average order value with the Shopify bundles app because you can not only create,

but you can also sell bundles.

I guess you got one guy with the rope or the tape or whatever bundling everything up, and the other one is the salesperson.

And Shopify is a no-excuses business partner.

You can sell without needing to code or design.

Just bring your ideas.

And Shopify will

drain your brain and use all of your ideas into something gorgeous for you and your various minions.

And right now,

Brian, I know this is the best part.

You can sign up for a $1 a month trial period if you go to shopify.com/slash JCE.

JCE all in lowercase, by the way.

Now, how

in the world can this not be worth a dollar a month?

I mean, it's almost ridiculous.

They're almost giving it it away because they are so convinced.

They are so confident that you're going to love that.

You're going to be hooked on this like crack.

You're going to be mainline in the Shopify, baby.

You got any of that Shopify around here?

I'm really needing some Shopify, and that's why they're starting you out dirt cheap.

And then you'll never be able to give this up because you will love it.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

That's not even how Shopify works.

You're not going to get addicted to Shopify.

You're going to enjoy using it it because it's going to help you and help your business.

Ignore everything else you have heard.

You're not going to be able to do without it.

You're not going to be able to do without it.

And that's where they got you.

And then you'll be with them forever because it's so good.

It's so good.

You're going to have Shopify on your back.

It's going to knock that monkey right off of there.

So if you'd like a big hit of Shopify right now for only $1 a month, go to shopify.com slash JCE

and you're going to get the dollar a month free trial, or not a dollar a month free, it's a dollar a month.

It can't be free.

The dollar a month trial period, which anybody can afford.

You walk through a homeless encampment, everybody's on Shopify, even they've got that much money.

As a matter of fact, Shopify made the homeless community what it is today.

So go to shopify.com slash JCE,

no matter what stage your business is in.

That's right.

Shopify, a great place to go if you need to facilitate sales for your business.

And of course, a business that seemingly doesn't need too much help with any sales right now, ticket sales or anything else, is WWE.

The biggest crowd I've seen in the garden in quite a while.

WWE SmackDown from Madison Square Garden.

June 28th was the date.

As you mentioned, the garden was the place.

And they had the small wraparound video screen they could put down at that in the lower bowl where

that's not even seats to begin with, I think.

That's just that entranceway to the back, right?

So they didn't cover up any seat.

19,701

is what they announced.

You would think

they were pretty close to it.

I don't know what their methodology is these days, but the fucking, it was sold out.

They couldn't sell you a ticket.

They were all gone.

Let me ask you a weird question, and it looked great.

It looked great.

But it also looked like any building, not just Madison Square Garden.

There was a pretty distinct look to wrestling from Madison Square Garden.

There was always a pretty short walkway from the back to the ring.

What did you think?

I have never seen a longer entranceway in Madison Square Garden than they had here for the show.

What did you think of the look of it?

Well,

see, normally they've got that big stage because even though they're in the garden, they're not using the whole thing.

So the entranceway is shorter because they're not walking.

The stage is on the end rather than the side.

But

I'm saying it was shorter.

It was shorter going back to when they started when they moved into the new garden.

Yeah, WrestleMania 10, house shows back in the day,

old-time television tapings, the way they used to do it.

You would come out the side entrance and it was just a very short walk to the ring.

That dated back to

where there was no TV from the garden.

They just did house shows and they wanted to get the heels back as quick, the shorter route as possible, so they can go through the people.

And that's the way it was always kept.

And

when you went through the short

or down the short aisle to the side and went through that entranceway through the the seats that everybody's seen on wrestlemania 10 or any of the 80s tapes you were immediately in the hallway where the locker rooms were

whereas coming from the end you got to go

all the way hell and around to get the goddamn down there to the gorilla position etc

and that's more the area where the that's why you saw them

walking straight from the SUV through to gorilla because that's where the ramp is, where when you pull in from the street, you can drive all the way up to the floor of Madison Square Garden, but it's at the end.

Does that answer any of your questions?

Some that I didn't ask was more just, what did you think of the web?

It didn't look like the classic, it didn't look like Madison Square Garden, just like SmackDown in a big building.

Well, but no, they've got Madison Square Garden written all over the goddamn building.

It's on the

apparatus, the screen and the light and everything thing at the top.

It's in the dome, right?

It's around the band of one of the seats.

So when they were taking those beauty shots, you could see it's Madison Square Garden, but they were more concerned about getting all these people in

because that's 19, 20,000 thereabouts is what a legitimate house show sellout that they used to do all the time was.

That's why all the figures of these house shows from the 70s and 80s have these bigger attendances than modern day sellouts because they didn't use that big ass stage and they opened everything up, but they still wanted,

there's no way they could come down the short side and have any kind of video screen or anything behind them like they wanted to do, unless they move some of those bleachers that pull out.

So they were maximizing their

revenue, which they seem to be doing a good job of these everywhere.

Yeah, no, but with the gardens specifically, because remember, they remodeled it a few years back, and it reduced the number of seats they had.

The fact that they got that many people in there, what was it, almost 18,000 people, they announced 19,000, I think.

That's remarkable.

And just in terms of the weekend in New York,

they drew a sellout at Madison Square Garden, let's say 18,000 people.

AEW is going to draw...

What, 10,000, 11,000 for Forbidden Door just a few miles away.

It's a pretty good weekend in the New York area.

Yeah, but I figured out one time if New York City did the per capita wrestling ticket sales that Memphis, Tennessee did in 1974, they'd have to run monthly and draw 80,000 people to every event.

That's what Vince Senior asked me to do.

I said, no, I need that most.

I said, no, no, give the belt to anyone else.

Anyone, anyone.

I don't care.

Backland, I don't care.

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But speaking of sellout streaks,

so this is this year in 2024: 32 television sellouts and 47

event sellouts altogether.

So, holy shit.

And they recapped the

bloodline business from last week, along with the debut

of the Samoan werewolf Jacob Fatu.

Aru

that is so pathetic.

That's what?

You just can't do it.

You're just not a good werewolf.

You sound too cute.

Like, I don't know what it is.

Are you clawing?

I howl at the moon.

I'm telling you.

That's going to be the greeting from all of us

in the Jacob Fatu fan club.

If you see another Jacob Fatu fan, you're supposed to give the greeting,

please do that.

Please, please, please do that.

And then the other guy back to you will go,

and then you do the fucking fish handshake.

Anyway, they recapped all of that is what they did, Brian.

And then,

coinka dinkily, as Mama Cornette used to say, an SUV pulled up in the back

and met Paul Heyman.

And that's, that's, by the way, that's where Vince's limo used to pull up.

If we rode in Vince's limo, we actually could get in in the building.

Otherwise, we had to fucking walk out through the goddamn people, go across the street, and hope the guy that we tipped $40 not to block our car in in the garage had done his job.

That was the best as a kid.

You knew where the wrestlers were going to enter.

So if you just walk out by that door at Madison Square Garden, you got to yell at the heels, you got to throw things at them, whatever you wanted to do.

Exactly.

Whatever the fuck you wanted to do, it was

just follow them, right?

I'll find out where they're driving.

This is amazing.

Let's go.

And yeah, it was great.

It was a fucking street riot.

The wonderful days of fandom.

One time we came out in Vince's limousine.

And the driver comes out of the garage door, you know what I'm talking about, and up that ramp to the sidewalk and where you turn left on whatever street that is.

And all the people are waiting, and the cops are keeping them back

from the Madison Square Garden private property once that we go through the garage door.

But that's only like 30 feet up that little ramp.

And then just on the street, it's just goddamn mayhem and a sidewalk.

And the limo driver gets goddamn stuck trying to turn left because there's oncoming traffic.

And the people are beating.

And this, Vince was was not a heel then

who evince me and yeah he was well just didn't know it yeah he was

in 1996 he wasn't publicly a heel and it's me and jim ross and bruce pritchard and the limo drive and the people are beating on the windows and they're bouncing the car around i'm what the

and then the this guy spread eagles on top of the goddamn hood of the limousine right as the limo driver turns left and guns it and the guy slid off the side and tore the fucking hood ornament off the limousine as he slid off.

And

what the Vince is looking at his goddamn booking book with his glasses down on his nose and his pencil.

And I'm like, does this not bother you?

That happens all the time, pal.

Well, some of the characters you'd meet around that door at Madison Square.

I remember one kid who wanted to sound smarter than he was.

I remember him chasing Mr.

Fuji into the garage yelling, Harry!

Harry!

It's like he'd be getting shopped in the throat.

Who would have cooked his dog?

But anyway, now at modern times, you just pull in unmolested.

And it's Solo and the Tongas in the SUV and they meet Paul Heyman

and he respectfully.

And Paul was great into, because I guess they said that he, did he stay up all night to prepare for this because his eyes were red and looked like two pissoles in a snowbank and he hadn't shaved in three days.

And

he's all unkempt.

Look, he is someone who has always played around with makeup and in terms of hair dye and the look that he has based on what his character is supposed to do.

Also,

if there was anyone on wrestling that you would tell me would not have a hard time staying up all night, it'd be Paul Heyman.

That's what

he did.

Yeah, and also, and to add to that, he wasn't wearing makeup, which gave his flesh even more of a deathly pallor and there's broken blood vessels and the puddling of the blood in the corners of his eyes and everything.

Very repulsive, but so it's all beautiful.

The stone.

I mean, everything, the red eyes, everything was perfect.

And that's just from him not shaving his fucking forehead.

Look, he had a big night.

He took his first bump of his life.

Oh, he had a big night.

He had a big night.

Why are you picking on him then?

No, I'm kidding.

But anyway,

he respectfully, he tremblingly says, I need to serve you as the wise man.

I have to ask you, where is Jacob Fatu?

Right?

And that,

or did he, no, did he, did he ask him then or he asked him later?

No, he asked him then, I think.

Yeah.

But nevertheless, you know, Jacob Fatu ain't there.

And

no, he asked where Jacob was, and that's when Solo didn't answer him.

He just walked through.

they walked straight through Gorilla and into the arena,

and they're coming out to the ring when all of a sudden, on a screen behind them,

another SUV pulls up in the back, and it's Cody, Orton, and Owens.

And they come the same way, and they get in a big fight in the entranceway and a big six-way, and boom, boom, boom.

And Owens Swantons, a Tonga.

I don't know which one threw a table.

I don't know which one.

A Tongin.

Well, no, it was either Toma Tonga or Tonga Loa.

So either way, it was a Tonga.

That's true.

I'm just not sure which.

And then Aldis and Security came out and the heels were backing out.

And they went to break.

And we were only nine minutes into the show, so we were moving.

It was cooking there, right?

Hot open.

Yeah.

And very hot and people are, you know, and that's the thing you can tell with these crowds now.

They know the words to the songs or the tune to the songs they got to sing.

They know the catchphrases they react to.

They're chanting for the people they're supposed to chant for.

It's like they've goddamn trained them.

I mean, written instructions would not do you any better if you passed them out to the crowd when they came in the door.

In a lot of ways, this is the ultimate manifestation of everything Vince was trying to train the audience to be.

And now with a booker doing hot stuff.

And this is what you got.

Yeah.

I mean, this is the way he trained the audience.

This is it.

And now they actually have a hot booker.

And now that they came back from the break, the babyfaces, Orton and

Cody and Owens are still in the ring, and Aldous is pleading with them.

And security, they're doing the

hands up, like, please, you have to go.

Don't do this.

And so the babyfaces then beat up 12 security guys.

That was ridiculous.

The blonde guy on the floor was making, he was just like talking to no one.

I'm like, this guy's going to do something.

Yeah.

You know, that's the thing with with extras like that, where it had to be indie wrestling school guys or whoever, because they're taking these, they were taking the bumps like their lives depended on it.

And the one guy that took the crossroads, goddamn, what a fucking bump that was.

Whoever you are, bravo, I applaud you.

But that's the problem.

I mean,

it's cool, but everyone moves and looks fake.

That's what more than anything.

No one seems like a real security guy.

They're all like the way they're moving their hands and the way they're just like, you know, stop, don't do that.

Whatever they're saying, they're saying nothing to Cody.

That's what you're doing, my material.

The way you move your hands, the way you shout it, nothing.

There you go.

No, that's the thing is that they're all obviously wrestlers because they're taking these bumps.

And at the same time, they're

wanting to put their all into it.

This is their big chance.

And invariably,

people overact in these, when they're put in these positions.

And too.

And over bump, and they're just flying because they're trying, right?

And it was exciting.

But at the same time,

and

you tell me

when they beat up the security guys, and then the babyfaces got microphones and did the promo on the bloodline, and Cody got the last word.

He got the longest promo because he was fired up and he delivered it, right?

But then Aldous brings out

uniformed cops, not security guys, but uniformed cops.

But I'm looking and I'm saying that, well, now those guys are fake because they still all look the same.

Goddamn,

most New York cops, at least used to be when I was around there, look like a 50-year-old fucking Italian guy.

Well, I wouldn't say that's most cops.

It's a younger police force now, but every one of those guys looks so clean and fake like the security guards.

And I was waiting for them to take bumps, and it never did.

Well, but see, here's the thing: the uniformed people, but they were holding their hands on their hips like they had guns, but they didn't have guns.

And I'm looking.

I didn't even notice that.

I'm seeing, yeah, it's like, it's like, you know, we'll give them the impression we're going to draw at any point.

Draw what?

Draw a picture with the pen in your pocket.

I don't.

But also,

they looked like they were wearing New York PD patches, but they didn't have like actual badges.

Yet when they went to the back,

because they're kicking the babyfaces out of the building, and then they go to the back after a break again, and it looked like they may have had a couple of real cops with a legitimate badge mixed in

that group.

But they all looked a little suspicious.

And the point I'm trying to make is,

apparently,

New York, the NYPD

restrictions, regulations, they apparently have cracked down on their cops doing shit because you remember

in the 60s, 70s, the 80s, it would be the real

uniformed cops that were doing security around ringside that occasionally, not often,

but occasionally would get in the ring and break guys up, right?

Remember?

Yeah, one of my favorite last examples of it happening in the garden, actually, same building, when Roddy Piper hit Lou Albano with the record while Dick Clark's standing there.

And then Cindy Lauper grabs his foot and he kicks and she goes with the foot.

A cop hits the ring.

This guy must have been 55 years old.

And he hits the ring, and he's just like, come on, I got to go.

Whenever he says, he doesn't do anything, but you could tell he's a real cop who knew, I can't let this stand.

And he hit the ring.

And then he didn't have anything.

He wasn't going to shoot Piper or anything.

Well, but now remember, you got that.

What was he going to do?

What was he?

Get out of here.

Let him go.

Now, think about this, though.

Now,

you never know about these reactions.

You said, what is he going to do?

Shoot him.

Remember that time in Louisville?

Oh, it's on his video time.

Yes, Christmas time of 79.

Lawler and Jimmy Hart are kicking a shit out of

God to Ken Lucas.

in the middle of the ring, and they've wiped the referee out.

And again,

this exists on video.

I've got it.

I'm the one that recorded it off the TV show the next week.

This guy rolls in, this fan, a Mark, rolls in and gets on Jimmy Hart and starts wailing on him.

And the cops, the real cops, hit the ring and pull that guy off and throw him over the fucking top rope on the other side of the ring, get him out of there.

When Jerry Jarrett slides in

from the other direction in street clothes to make the save that he's supposed to be making.

And one of the cops turns around and sees another guy in street clothes sliding in the ring and grabs his gun.

And you see him almost draw.

And then he's, oh, I see the blonde hair.

And he turns around and goes about his business, jacking this other guy.

And it's like, what the fuck?

But nevertheless, that didn't happen here.

But I was going to say, you remember the famous pictures in all the magazines when they had the Shea Stadium match with Bruno and Pedro Morales.

As an angle, that was a babyface match, but George the Animal Steel tried to run in because he was fucking with both of them and break it up or fuck it up or whatever.

And they actually have cops with guns, badges with the nightsticks around his neck dragging him off the fucking field.

And the picture was in all the magazines.

People who were there said that was the highlight of the match.

Exactly.

So anyway,

at some point, these cops have said, hey, we ain't going to work with you anymore.

This is hoo-ha.

But so now the top three babyfaces in the company are out of there: Orton and Rhodes and Owens, oh my, have been booted.

And then we got

Tiffany Stratton versus Candy LaRue versus Jane Cargill, or is it Jade?

I don't know.

She might be back to Jade.

Her name is Jade.

It is Jade.

Well, I gave her Jade when she started looking good, but I didn't.

I was curious about how she was going to do in a three-way

because they are

obviously over-choreographed usually and hard to execute if you're green.

And

she's been coming along there, but this was going to be a test.

And Tiffany is green.

Candy is the female equivalent of pockets.

She's just a mascot here.

She looks like Tiffany's Tiffany's delinquent sister in middle school or whatever.

But

I know

it was obviously worked out step by step, but they went through it kind of by rote.

Didn't they just

from one thing to another and however it was landing, they just move on?

Did you pay any attention?

Very little, just because that's not what SmackDown.

SmackDown's not for the matches, it's for the angles.

Well, yes, this was a little rough because they were doing the three-way stuff with a lot of greenhorns.

But

finally,

Jade took a bump to the floor, and Indy showed up and ran her into the post.

And then Bianca chased her off, and Tiffany moonsalted Candy 123.

And the refrigerator was watching and applauded.

So now we're up to date on all those people, right?

So then we were back in the back with Solo and Paul E.

And Paul, he tells Solo that all the,

you know, the baby faces have been kicked out.

And he says, please let me serve you as the wise man.

I need to know what are we doing tonight?

And where is Jacob Fatu?

And that's when Solo said, hey, I listen to you, wise man.

He's too dangerous.

Jacob's not here.

You're my wise man, and we're going to make it official tonight.

So this is all they need.

People are hanging on this, every goddamn word.

And then we had another Money in the Bank qualifying three-way

extravaganza.

A rare timing error to me.

They started this Escobar against L.A.

Knight, against Logan Paul.

They started it.

Started the guys coming to the ring at least

at about five minutes to nine, but they went to, they got the thing started and went to break at 9.01.

And I wouldn't have done that because, you know,

it's still only one minute late, for fuck's sake.

People might still be making their mind up.

But nevertheless, was your screen going to black at various points in this program?

We have brought this up in the past, but it really was annoying me this week where either the sound dropped out at different times or the screen just went to black or flashed black.

I'm not exactly sure what the issue is.

It must be Fox.

It is Fox because you can still see the live bug over the black screen.

So they're not losing a signal.

But the thing is,

I can understand when they were trying to audio mute shit out of holy shit or you fucked up.

And I can understand if they flashed on a sign that was inappropriate or somebody's given the double bird or whatever.

But these have begun to be long, not flashes of black, but longer stretches of black.

Sometimes when there's not an obvious chant going on.

And yeah, see, that's the thing.

In the past, you had good points.

You're like, oh, there was a sign.

Like, okay, it's happening now for no reason.

Well, there's some reason.

And is it Fox getting more

strict about what somebody's saying or what something looks like?

Or

and this is not the qr code for the wyatts or something intentional it's just ruining your train of thought when you're trying to follow a promo right

or some statement that's being made that you can't

so

i don't is it because they're lame ducks on fox now at this point and fox doesn't give a shit

But what we, but it doesn't answer what it is.

Like, what is causing this to happen?

Well, it's, it's got to be something that's either being said, shown, or done

in some fashion, doesn't it?

I thought that until this week's episode because it was so frequent that it seemed like it was,

you would think it was a technical problem, but it isn't.

It doesn't seem like it is.

Well, somebody out there needs to let us know what the fuck's going on so we can delay that information out to the people.

But nevertheless, it was especially noticeable in Logan Paul's entrance a couple or three three times, and he cut a promo and

part of it made air.

And then he brought out,

well, I'm just telling you.

You're right.

Yeah.

And then he brought out one of the Indiana Pacers, Tyrese Halliburton.

I've always enjoyed this guy's suitcases.

And that went black for a while.

And then

it was established, I guess, Tyrese was out there with him.

And then it was a three-way match, right?

But I'll tell you,

L.A.

Knight, instead of the deal where he leaps up and hooks the guy for the top rope superplex, he did it for a top rope belly to back with both, with Logan Paul sitting on the ropes and Escobar about to

give him a hurricane rana off of him.

L.A.

Knight got up there with both of them and did that fucking belly to back.

That was nice.

And then finally,

Logan Paul asked asked the Indiana Pacer for the Knucks, but another

basketball player from up in your neck of the woods, what was his name?

Jalen Brunson from the Knicks.

Well, you just like you guys are good friends.

You've known him for a long time.

He's a very good player.

You guys just like that, tit for tat?

Which one is that?

I'm commenting on our relationship.

I'm just saying he's a very good player.

Well, he stopped

Tyrese

Samsonite, what's it?

Halliburton Halliburton from.

He's with the Pacers.

You can make as much fun of his name as you want.

Well, I couldn't remember it for a second because I haven't followed the Pro Ball in quite a while now.

But anyway, the basketball players faced off, and Logan Paul was distracted, and

L.A.

Knight hit his finish on Escobar, and then Logan tried to roll up L.A.

Knight, but L.A.

Knight rolled through it one, two, three.

I think he had some tights, which would fit L.A.

Knight's personality.

So

again,

excellent because they kept this thing moving, except when the basketball players were trying, but they're not natural performers in that line of work with timing and et cetera.

But

L.A.

Knight beats Logan Paul, who is the U.S.

champion in his quest to be the U.S.

champion.

But it didn't really count because there was distractions.

Everybody had

Everybody that got beat or looked bad had an out.

And L.A.

Night prospered out of this.

So I like this piece of business.

What'd you think?

I thought it was all right.

And I thought the stuff with the

basketball players was good, too, because it was just something that happened in that building, those two teams playing in the playoffs.

And we'll see if it goes anywhere if it was a one-off.

Well, I have a feeling it was a one-off.

I don't know who's who got off, but one of them.

WWE is a big deal with Indianapolis.

That's the perfect time for the Knicks to attack.

Well, yeah, and McAfee

probably was a great way to get in with this guy from the Pacers because that's his hometown, et cetera, et cetera.

And then the basketballers backed up their respective boys and had an argument and the heels left.

So.

Again, LA Knight was over like crazy in front of that crowd, and they hate Logan Paul.

And Escobar,

thanks for coming.

But then did you notice,

and it was very well done,

what I'm about to talk about.

It was very well done

and very well edited.

The Sika video and certainly called for.

But I had the first reaction I had when it kept going was if the bloodline angle wasn't on top, would Sika have gotten a longer tribute video than Bruno San Martino or Roddy Piper?

Than anyone in the history of wrestling, I think.

Yes, because they gave him close to five minutes, which, and again, I'm not arguing, but considering their prior track record,

it was more lengthy than normal.

But they have a lot of the footage and obviously had comments in the can about a variety of their Hall of Famers from some of the top talents.

So they were able to put this together, but they went the whole way with it.

The marquee at the garden had the Sika tribute lit up when people are, you know, going through the

train station there with Penn Station

and this big long video and,

you know, a lot of acknowledgement of it in all of their social media.

So I think the bloodline angle certainly helped spark interest in

Alpha and Sika and the whole family at this point.

There's no other reason to think that they would have made such an effort to pay.

Such an effort.

But it was nice.

It was very nice.

I'm not saying it wasn't, but like you said, I can't think, you know, Randy Savage had a few minute long video.

Yeah.

And he was a main eventer.

You know, Sika got a bigger video than

he got the thing in front of Madison.

Than Piper, than Bruno, than, you know, I mean, anybody.

It stands out.

I'll just say that.

But anyway,

but that's a thing.

And,

you know, honestly, I had much more interaction personally with Offa

than I ever had with Sika because Offa at the time that I was,

you know, in the office up there and living up there, Offa was based out of

Allentown, or was it a small suburb, but near Allentown, Pennsylvania.

And whereas Sika had already moved back in the 80s to Pensacola.

So I had met Sika a few times, but again, Offa is the one I had more interaction with.

And

he's been in ill health

over the past few months, from what we've heard.

So, with back surgery and some other things, so I hope he's doing well.

But,

you know, the Wild Samoans for, what, 15 years were

one of the top teams across the country.

They went almost everywhere.

They didn't work for Vern.

They didn't work for

Jerry Jarrett in Tennessee.

I never got to see them in person during their day, but they were big on the West Coast, in San Francisco, obviously.

They were on top numerous times in New York.

They worked Georgia for a period of time.

They were mid-South.

Did they make Texas?

I can't remember.

Did they get to Dallas on that run?

Probably not.

And I think they did.

No, they didn't work for Crockett in the Carolinas because they worked for the IWA in the 70s, right?

The opposition group.

They were the Islanders, right?

Yes.

With,

I think for a while, Saul Weingroff, if I'm not mistaken.

Or was that the other team of Simone?

See, I'm confusing that was the other Islanders.

That was T.O.

and

which apparently there was some heat over

when they started using the similar names.

But anyway, they were a top tag team and drew a lot of money, especially in the Northeast.

And as we know from Young Rock, one of their big programs was with Rocky Johnson and Tony Atlas, right?

Was that their last run as tag team champions?

That was their last run as tag team champions.

I wouldn't say that was one of their biggest runs because Rocky and Tony Atlas, because they hated each other, didn't actually team up that much.

But they turned babyface after that.

They had a brief babyface run, including one of my favorite matches.

If anyone ever wants to see it, it's ridiculous, but I love it.

October 84, Offa versus Dick Murdoch at Madison Square Garden.

It's on their Peacock.

Well, I can imagine.

But then they left

and they worked

Pro Wrestling USA, I think it was, at the Meadowlands.

And then Sika came back.

And Sika had another run as a single as part of,

remember when King Curtis came in as a manager?

The Wizards?

Yes.

Well, he was part of that.

And he even had a main event match with Hulk Hogan.

And that was kind of the end of them.

But, you know, the Mid-South run, there's a lot of footage of, or at least there's some footage of.

The WWF run.

which is kind of a couple of runs starting in 1980, they have all that footage.

Well, and of course, the story how they got involved in the business is famous in that when Peter Myvilla got over in San Francisco and

to some degree because of the

I've been to the Cow Palace and

only as

a WWF performer when people had calmed down, but I can't imagine.

The thought of the Heels trying to leave that ring in the 60s on a sellout for Roy Shire with heat

and even with the whole San Francisco Police Department trying to get back to the locker room alive.

I can't, because it, it's a big building with a giant floor.

You got to walk a long way and you got to make some angle turns.

And that's all a recipe for fucking disaster.

So

the Samoan contingent that was going to the matches and the Cow Palace is not in downtown San Francisco.

Brian, is it Daly City?

I'm not sure.

That it's in.

At least when I was there in the 90s, I would hesitate, I guess, to say it was that way earlier.

Not the best neighborhood.

You're getting a rowdy crowd.

It was a promotion built around heat.

And there was a Samoan babyface.

So the story was that Afa and Sika

and a number of members of their family started going to the matches at the Cow Palace and rooting for my Via.

And in the process,

you know, either about to kill or beating the shit out of or whatever, all of Shire's top heels to the point where they said,

my Via, talk to these people, maybe fucking get them into business so we can smarten them up or whatever and

stop this.

And can you imagine

a young Afa and a young Sika?

Because what they looked like when they were in their 40s is bad, but a young offa and a young Sika.

Beating up an old Paul DeMarco.

Beating up an old Paul DeMarco, yes, or just coming at you as angry marks instead of working wrestlers.

Well, remember,

in terms of how frightening they were, the story was, I think it was Sika during the Vince McMahon 1994 steroid trial on Long Island.

Sika was admonished from the bench or he was kicked out of the room.

I don't remember what happened.

He started mouthing to the jury, not guilty.

Yeah, yeah.

Not imagine that face

with the wide-eyed, wild Samoan stare, right?

Not guilty, not guilty.

That was some hoodoo to voodoo shit.

Yeah,

and remember, Sika was the one also that when they were going to put the belt on Roman Reigns and what, New Orleans?

No, was it San Francisco?

Was it San Francisco?

Home base?

Yeah.

Maybe whatever WrestleMania that was, and they changed their mind and didn't do it.

There were reports that were tried to be downplayed later on that Sika was going to do something about that shit.

He thought somebody said they didn't want to do a job, whatever.

God damn it.

I think the original way we heard it, and I don't know if it's true or not, but the original way was Sika and other family members started to tear stuff up.

But anyway, so obviously, and Roman Reigns' father, for those who have not made the connection and we didn't mention it.

Yeah, if you see any of the pictures of him when they first started out before they had facial hair, again,

different body types.

It was a different world, but you could see the resemblance to Roman Reigns.

Yeah.

Well, and said, Roman has been

working out and

it's more modern times to begin with.

And I mean, these guys.

I'm not saying that they were some kind of lazy people.

The Affair and Sikah did not go to the gym to improve their they already looked like that when they got into business they just grew their hair longer that was pretty much all they needed there's a great picture that goes uh that i've seen going around uh not just now but in the past and it kind of encapsulates that era of wwf as things went national and it's like outside the tv taping in pennsylvania it's alpha and sika with no shirt on and Lou Albano with a shirt open and the biggest belly and the iron sheik cut all roided up, and they're barbecuing.

They're cooking like burgers.

And I'm like, that like sums up an era of WWF right there.

Lou Albano and the Samoans barbecuing.

And who knows who they were barbecuing?

But anyway, but no, we send our condolences out to the whole entire extended family.

up and down the line, wherever they may be.

And hopefully Alpha is, as we said, doing well.

He's been under the weather, so we send our best out to him, too.

Them with Captain Lou was a winning combination.

Captain Lou

actually,

body type resembled them, and he may have spoken English just almost as coherently as the wild Samoan savages.

See, that's a great era of Lou Albano, because if you watch when he, not watch, but if you see any photos or...

any video even of when he first started managing, he was kind of dressed respectfully.

By that point, he was such a slob, he could take on the personality of whoever he managed.

So he managed the moondogs, starts dressing like a moon dog.

He manages the Samoans, starts dressing like the Samoans.

He managed Fuji and Saido.

He starts coming out there with a headband on and a

jacket.

So it was a fun period for Lua Bano.

Him and the Samoans, though, on and off for, you know, four or five years there, were a big combination up here.

Yeah, but boy, when he started managing that girls' team, what he wore then.

Oh, my my gosh.

Anyway,

speaking of the girls, Indy Hartwell wrestled Naomi, wrestled Blair Davenport

in one of the women's who looked exactly like Jamie Hayter.

When she came out there, she had a hood on.

You just saw like the hair color, like the one, you know, light color and the one dark color, and you saw her face, and it looked like Jamie Hayter.

And then it wasn't.

And it made me go, whatever happened to Jamie Hayter.

Whatever happened to Randolph Scott riding the trail alone whatever happened to gene and tex and roy and rex and the durango kid

whatever whatever happened whatever happened to murray the k

murray the k

murray kaufman was it not very good wow very very good boom impress

i have his book me too

What is it?

What it is?

Is it a very thin white book?

The thin white book, just like the person himself.

He was the fifth Beatle.

You can't really speak disrespectfully about him like that.

Well,

being thin is not being disrespectful.

You ever see the movie?

It came out, I think, 79, 80, so it's right in your range of like when you would have been

hanging with it.

No,

I may not have been paying too much attention to the movies I was seeing back around 79 or 80.

I was just in the theater in the dark.

I want to hold your hand when they made the movie?

I was doing more than that.

They made the movie about the Beatles' first trip to America from the point of view of the fans trying to get into the Plaza Hotel.

Well,

I Want to Hold Your Hand was made in 1964.

No, not the song, the movie.

There was a movie documentary of I Want to Hold Your Hand called I Want to Hold Your Hand.

No, it's not a documentary.

It's a movie.

It's a Robert Zemekis film.

Oh,

so the Beatles weren't really in it?

No.

No, I never saw it.

You should see it.

You would like it.

Well, and if the Beatles aren't in it, why do I want to see it?

Their music is in it, and people

show up to their own movie.

People who resemble that.

Well, you could say that about AEW.

Their own movie.

It takes place in 1964.

The movie was made in 1979.

Well, they shouldn't have taken so long.

The Beatles had other shit to do by then.

Back to SmackDown.

See, you just just proved my point.

So we go back to SmackDown.

And again, here comes the bloodline and Paul E to the ring.

And it's blacking out again the picture.

Because Fox is mad at something.

I don't know.

And when it came back on, Paul had started, just started speaking.

But he barely got anything out when Solo...

holds his hand out for the microphone and Paul registers shock.

And the people, ooh,

and then they already start chanting, we want Roman.

We want Roman.

Oh, this thing is made already.

Roman Reigns has gotten over more than anybody in AEW

by just not being there.

It's like Sting.

He was never more interesting than when he didn't wrestle.

Well,

I don't know if I'd

phrase it that way in this

when he just stood around and watched like the rest of us.

He was never more interesting than that.

He was never more interesting.

You got me there.

But I think

Roman will pick things up.

But anyway,

Solo starts to talk and he gets booed big.

And he immediately introduces, what did we hear earlier?

Solo had told Paul that Jacob Fatu was not there.

Well, he introduces my enforcer.

So we got the right-hand man.

We got the

notorious, the infamous, the infamous, and we got the enforcer.

Jacob Fatu, and they have given him.

Did you see the difference in this entrance and maybe what we get for either one of the tongas?

He's got the ominous music.

He got pyro.

He's got a werewolf logo on the screen and a big entrance.

And down he comes.

And he has dropped all kinds of weight.

That may be why we haven't seen him yet.

He's in great shape.

Really made an effort.

I mean, from what I saw him five years ago, he's five years older now than he was when I met him at MLW and probably 40 pounds lighter, I bet you.

And

anyway, they went to break on his entrance.

And it will be right back.

Oh, my God.

And people are like, oh, shit, what's going to happen next on a fucking guy walk into the ring?

They have broken this down so simply.

So

when they came back, all of them are in the ring.

And Solo, it's the acknowledgement ceremony.

And Solo tells New York City, Madison Square Garden, acknowledge me.

And Heyman's over there just mortified.

And he's covered his face and he looks, as we said, like shit.

He's hair

disheveled and not dyed, and no makeup, and stubble on his face, and his eyes are red.

And

then

Solo has each one of them step up.

My right-hand man, Tomatonga, acknowledge me, and he does.

And then my infamous one, whatever, Tonga Lowe, acknowledge me, and he does.

And then my enforcer, Jacob Fatu.

And you can already, already, he's got the personality.

He came around and the most personality of the acknowledgement was Jacob Fatu.

He had the most fire to him.

I acknowledge you.

I love you.

I love you.

And then Solo turns to Paul and he tells him, this is your chance.

Don't blow this.

And they bring out the red lei, the tribal chief

ceremonial necklace that last we saw it

was involved with the rock and Roman, right?

You think of it, you think of Roman Reigns, and that's the big moment there where Haman starts screaming, No!

He looks at it, he's like, Oh my God, how can where'd you get that?

Where'd you get that?

And Solo hands it to

hands it to him and to Paul, and he says, acknowledge me as your tribal chief.

And he sticks his head out for Paul to put the deal over him.

And Paul now is he's crying and trembling and

again

masterful.

And he says, I acknowledge you.

And he knows what he's about to do.

are not my tribal chief and he throws the lay down

and the place blows

The biggest pop of the night.

They have made.

Biggest pop of his life.

And that's the thing.

That was the biggest pop of his life, yes.

But I mean, they have made Paul Heyman a babyface.

Paul Heyman, the most disreputable human being,

is now the sympathetic figure.

He's a genius.

I told him when we did our thing, I said, Paul,

you and Genghis Khan are the only ones going to turn me babyface.

And now

it's brilliant.

So anyway,

Solo spikes Paul.

And down he goes.

And then when he's laying there, that's when I saw that

his stomach was at least 18 inches above his chest.

Oh, stop it.

When he was laying flat on the ground.

18 inches.

Will you leave him alone?

At least a foot.

Can you say it wasn't?

It was less than a foot.

Come on.

I wasn't measuring and neither was anyone else.

All righty.

Well, anyway,

I'm just telling you, it was.

And then Jacob Fatu goes to the top and does the diving headbutt, and Paul sells it in a trembling fashion where he looked like Jerry Clower somehow and wretching.

Should it have been a splash?

I'm not a big fan of the diving headbutt.

Should it have been a splash?

Well, I can understand they didn't want to take any chances with Paul, and he is, you know, elderly.

And maybe

they wanted to save it for the next one.

I think a splash.

I would have not had a problem with Jacob Fatu splashing me.

Any of the other ones, I don't know.

But I'd have been okay with Jacob.

But they do the diving head, but and then they drag Paul by the foot.

He's just like a giant

mattress that they're dragging around at this point.

And they clear the desk off, and they're going to do the deal where all three of them, two of them, pick him up and hand him to the other guy, and they powerbomb him through the desk.

And I swear to you, I'm loving.

I mean, obviously, he's given it his all because believe me, folks, this was Paul's all physically.

This was Paul's all.

At his age, especially.

Well, at any time in his life, here's the thing: he had the verbal immediately from day one,

and he got the mental,

both the booking and the managing, fairly quickly.

He didn't have that all when

we did our shit in 89, but he got it fairly quickly.

Some people never get it.

He's had all of that for a long time.

The only thing he never got was the physical.

And from experience,

in a match, if you would lay your hand on him, it would be like he was a stone statue.

He was so tense.

And if I would draw back, much less anybody of some size and repute,

if I was drawing back to punch him, he would bend over, stick his chin out, throw his hands over to the sides, lean his neck back, and freeze immobile.

So there's no way it was a moving target.

You had to, you know, it was,

he was very nervous about these things.

So the thing is, they're trying to get up.

The two Samoans, the Tongas,

are trying to get up under him.

And he ain't giving them any help at all.

And they're trying to be easy with him, obviously.

But they get him up and they hand him to

brother there.

And

you see Paul's face.

Well, first of all, his giant, massive midsection is.

You got three fucking 200-something-pound Samoans trying to get under this goddamn weight.

It looked like,

I don't know, you know,

it looked like Paul was, some was shifting from side to side because, you know, fat is more malleable than

muscle.

But anyway, Paul's face looked like he was about to vomit.

He wasn't doing the big wide-eyed, oh my God, or he wasn't, you know, waving in the air, oh my God.

He was holding on and like, oh, please don't let them hurt me.

Oh, my God.

And then they powerbombed him through the thing and it and he went back over on the back of his head on the other side of the desk

so yes clearly

the the biggest but that is paul heyman's hell in a cell bump or scaffold match bump or whatever that's the the most important bump he will ever take

and people are going to remember that for a long time And for a kid who grew up going to the garden, getting access, shooting ringside of the garden as a teenager.

I can't think of a bigger moment than to get the biggest baby face pop in Madison Square Garden.

Yeah.

Be a part of this big angle.

Yes.

And

I can identify because mine wasn't Madison Square Garden.

Mine was the Mid South Coliseum.

When I was standing there in the ring,

you know, about to be pile-driven by Jerry Lawler, right?

Oh, shit.

But anyway, so they laid him out and they throw the fucking fingers up and Jacob puts the lay around Solo's neck and he is now

the tribal chief and the wise man has been excommunicated.

And again, you know, brilliant.

And

because now Paul is in

the position that I was in when we did our deal in WCW, in that

I may have been a prick, but I was their prick.

I'd been there, people were used to me.

But all of a sudden, this new prick,

an outsider prick, comes in from New York up there.

And so Paul, now he's been inducted in the Hall of Fame,

and

the people associate him with Roman Reigns, and they want Roman back to fuck with this solo.

And the way they've manipulated it,

it's perfect.

So

once again, bravo, but also

you can make anybody a babyface if you do it right.

Imagine that.

This was great wrestling TV.

This was a hot ending to this show.

Things keep heating up.

When does Roman come back?

It's amazing that he's going to come back to defend the honor of Paul Heyman.

And that's really what it is.

He has to come back because, you know, Paul got hurt.

The other other thing is,

you know, they made a thing of taking the other baby faces out earlier in the show.

Heyman had an interaction in the past with Cody, where they acknowledged, because of Dusty,

some sort of respect before he, you know, did his bloodline thing.

Right.

The other person who's out there, if someone was coming to defend the honor of Paul Heyman,

Brock Lesnar.

Ooh.

And it's about time

Brock's heat subsided, isn't it?

You would think if he was ever going to come back, it would be at some point in the near future, especially considering his age and everything else.

But you need people who are.

Well,

who else might at least be willing to hear Paul Heyman out if he needed a helping hand?

CM Punk.

Yeah, now the only thing that complicates that is he's in the middle of the stuff with Drew.

This is a long-term.

Yeah.

This ain't going to be over quick.

And they kind of showed that.

What, last week's SmackDown show opened with Punk, and then Heyman came out.

I'm begging you to get out of here.

The bloodline are coming.

And they revealed that he had had a deal.

Punk had had a deal, or not Punk, but Paul had had a deal with Roman Reigns that Punk was hands-off because he's personal to me.

They revealed that last week.

So

there's all kinds of different ways they can go, and there's so many stars.

And now they're making Jacob Fatu again.

Talk about, that's what I talk about when I say somebody comes out and makes an impact.

And we haven't even seen him wrestle yet.

That's going to really blow everyone's mind.

So

it's a really hot period.

I know a lot of people blame the downfall of AEW's popularity.

strictly on the rise of WWEs, but it's not that simple.

Who does that?

I've seen people say that a lot of it's a perception thing because WWE is so hot.

So it's easy to critique AEW and pick apart all these things that aren't there.

I mean, that's the thing.

You watch this SmackDown.

They've got hot angles.

They've got people

introduced who are instantly in the mix and people care about them.

Not just Jacob Thatu.

Tom Matonga.

It worked right away.

Right away.

They've introduced more people in the mix.

And Solo, I mean, really, if we want to talk about it, and we should address this here, I want to get your thoughts.

Solo was the enforcer for Roman Reigns.

He had come up from NXT.

His brothers are the Usos.

He was in that role for a while.

How do you think he's doing in this role?

He obviously has a lot of heat, it seems, for WWE.

How do you think he's doing?

Because this is clearly the elevation of Solo Sokoa.

I think he's doing great with the look.

I think he's doing great with the promos.

Remember the thing we've said is that his matches are kind of basic, but now that they're surrounding him with a group of these, you know, these other guys that are either more experienced than he is, better workers, or whatever, but he's got the

not only the cache of having been given the spot, but also

can probably do a leader of the group promo better than these other guys.

And

it looks like a Samoan mafia, doesn't it?

Kind of the gang

that he's put together, these

international gangsters from around the world wearing these black leather gloves.

I think he's doing great.

And we haven't even seen Hicculeo yet, who's the giant of the family.

And apparently there are a few other people signed or there's something going on.

I mean, it's an exciting time to watch WWE.

Who's going to be Solo's wise man?

Well, is he going to have one?

Does he need one or does he think he knows everything for himself?

We see people, that's a very good point because that's a way to play it that he thinks he's smarter than he is.

And that's what caused this whole problem.

A lot of people online think it should be you.

Well, and again, I have nothing against Solo.

You said the one person you would come back to manage would be Jacob Fatu.

I did say that, didn't I?

We have the tape.

Let's go to the tape.

Jason,

no, what I said was, I said, if I was going to come back to manage anybody, it would be Jacob Fatu, but I'm not going to come back to manage anybody.

But honestly, this would be managing a whole group.

And well, I'm old and my bedtime is earlier these days.

You get the promo against Heyman.

Well, we'll talk about it later.

I'd need to hear

the money and the

intellectual property rights clauses based on one one last thing on this based on the timing where we are now

do you see it as roman reigns has to come back for summer slam against solo or do you still think that there's time to play this out not have him come back so soon

i really don't

I'm not against, but we are now,

we're in July and SummerSlam is August.

I'm not against Roman Roman coming back,

but I don't know if it has to be that way.

Because here's the thing: if Paul hasn't talked to Roman,

that means for whatever reason that they're going to reveal or wherever he's been or whatever he's been doing, it's not like Paul can just now say, well,

boy, I've needed to talk to Roman for weeks, but I've been taking Solo's word for it, but now they've beat me up, so I'm going to call Roman.

No, it's the opposite.

See, I think that's what the play is.

Roman sees this independent of everyone that he's not talking to.

And Roman shows up to address this.

Probably not

attack these guys.

But the question is, Heyman just got attacked.

We saw Tony Kahn get attacked by his top heels with his dad looking on.

By the next week, it was forgotten.

It wasn't played upright or anything.

What I'm thinking is that Heyman tries to find someone else to just not go for revenge, but just keep an eye on him or whatever, because he can't get a hold of Roman.

But then Roman eventually shows.

I'm saying Brock.

Yeah.

SummerSlam wouldn't be bad, but they've still got other things they can do before Roman shows up, depending on what their story is going to be for where Roman has been and why.

If it's some personal fucking head thing he's been going through that he went to Tibet.

He didn't know what was happening.

I don't know.

Then you got all kinds of time to play with it.

You want to talk about good booking?

Everything makes sense with this, even if they don't know where exactly they're going at all times.

It all ends up making sense and it pays off.

You've been watching for a while.

We've been talking about the bloodline, you know, weekly for at least a year and a half, two years.

Yeah.

We're always guessing

where could they go?

It hasn't gotten boring yet.

It's like Jimmy Hart against Jerry Lawler.

It hasn't gotten boring at all yet.

And with adding all these new names that we had, what was it, six months ago, we didn't think, well, I'll just pick up Tama Tonga and Tongaloa and we'll love it all.

So with the, because remember, we were thinking, well, how many guys are going to be on this side?

Jacob Fatu, could he be with the,

you know, the Roman Reigns contingent, or where's the rock going to finally come back and land and all of this?

Well,

now they've got a brand new heel group with people that can get heel heat because they haven't been there so long that people started liking them because they're cool.

And they can wrestle a group of people who, when they return or get all together, the people like them because they're cool.

Imagine that.

Well, that was SmackDown.

And again, two weeks in a row, no Uncle Howdy nonsense on this show.

So it's a nice, you know, again, I didn't really care about the three-way matches.

I said it before, I'm sick of three-way matches.

It's lazy, but a nice break of pace from the spookiness on Ro.

You know what Paul Heyman wished that was laying on top of that announced desk when he got powerbombed on it by those vicious Samoans and or Tongans?

Pastrami.

A helix sleep mattress.

That was my second pick.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if you're a heel wrestling manager about to turn babyface and you're morbidly obese and elderly, and a group of angry, pissed-off Samoans are going to powerbomb you through the announced desk, put a helix sleep mattress on top of that bad boy, and and you will fall into dreamland while at the same time you are being powerbombed into oblivion.

Because the helix sleep mattress can make anything comfortable, it can cushion any blow.

Let's say that you're another hardcore garbage wrestler that wants to dive off the balcony and put some son of a bitch through a toilet seat headfirst the wrong way.

Well, if you put a helix sleep mattress down underneath all that stuff, you're just going to bounce right back to your feet feet like you, like you were bouncing on air, because that's the secret of the Helix sleep mattress.

Did you know, Brian, that most of the Helix sleep mattress is air?

Because air and oxygen are part of our daily life.

And so that's why you just fall asleep like you're floating on a cloud in any of the models of helix mattresses, the ones with memory foam labor, layers, labors.

Memory foam labor.

This is something I want to hear more about.

How does that work?

You can also go into labor on these mattresses.

Memory foam layers

provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side.

They've got a model with more responsive foam to cradle your body like a little baby with essential support in the stomach and back sleeping positions.

They've got cooling features.

They've got spinal features.

They can give you a spinal tap on a helix sleep mattress.

You'll never feel it.

Were you aware of that, Brian?

I don't think that's in any way a proven thing.

Now, again,

let's just make sure we differentiate between helix sleep mattresses and whatever would cause someone to need a spinal tap.

Well,

nothing to do with one another.

If you were sleeping on a helix sleep mattress your whole life, you wouldn't need those pesky spinal taps.

That's another thing you got going for you, nor anal probes, because helix sleep mattresses cradle you in such a position that you digest your food much more effectively.

And folks, they come with a 10 or 15-year warranty, depending on the model, and you can keep one of these bad boys in your home for a hundred nights and sleep on it or eat on it or do all the other things people do on a mattress on it.

And if you don't like it, they'll give you your money back and they'll sell it to somebody else who will appreciate it and give it a new home.

let's not say that because we don't know anything about what they do with any return mattresses we shouldn't even focus on return mattresses i can't even say it we shouldn't focus on return mattresses we should focus on good things like how comfortable these mattresses are how wonderful they are we have a few here in the house i know you had some over there everyone loves them here we love sleeping on them The big thing people think of with mattresses.

Harley loves them too.

All right.

Good for Harley.

Harley loves them.

She sleeps on her back and does the deadbug thing with her feet up in the air every time she gets on a Helix mattress.

Well, you know the reason

why you don't hear about any return mattresses that Helix then has to repurpose some.

That's because there are none.

Nobody in their right mind would send this back.

It's a bargain at twice the price.

And right now, ladies and gentlemen, our friends at Helix, and that's H-E-L-I-X, it's like Felix, but get the F out.

Helix is offering up to 30% off all mattress orders and two free pillows because you can't have a mattress without a pillow.

They go together like peanut butter and jelly.

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

That is helixleep.com slash JCE.

And you're going to get up to 30% off all the mattress orders and the two free pillows.

And potentially, you'll be able to cushion the blow should you get thrown out of your bed through the Spanish announce desk.

And Brian, I'll tell you, I think that that's the best deal they can give you.

Not only protecting your body from injury and giving you a good night's sleep, but up to 30% off and the pillows.

And you can put one behind your head and one between your legs, and then you'll be all curled up.

Imagine if Heyman had had a Helix sleep mattress the night before.

He looked like he didn't have any sleep.

If he had had some sleep on a Helix sleep mattress, maybe he would have had the energy to, you know, run and grab a hot to run away instead of staying in the middle.

To jump the rail, yeah, to turn into 1989, Paul dangerously all over again.

Jump the rail.

He couldn't have jumped that rail in 1989.

He'd have tripped and fallen.

But nevertheless,

that's a good point there.

If he had had a good night's sleep, or Maybe he had the two free pillows that Helix Sleep gives you, along with the up to 30% off the mattress orders, stuffed in the front of his pants, thinking that they were going to somehow give him a bump on his face and he was going to be padded and they went the other way.

And that's why his stomach was so large.

Did you ever think of that?

You can't get past the stomach.

I had 25 pounds on him 35 years ago, and now.

The worm has turned.

But anyway, your worm's going to turn.

Folks, if you've got worms, they enjoy sleeping on a Helix Sleep mattress.

So you'll please the whole family and all of your parasites.

HelixSleep.com slash JCE.

That's their best offer yet.

Don't expect it to last long.

So

they're our longest running sponsor.

We love them around here at Helix.

We think about them every night when we work.

Around here at Helix?

You said around here at Helix.

You worked there?

We love them around here, Helix Sleep is what I was saying.

We love them around here.

And then I named the people that we love, Helix Sleep.

We love them because we think about them every time we lay our little heads down for a good night's sleep.

And you should too.

I do.

Now I'm talking about the royal you, out the little listeners.

I am the royal you.

I'm a king.

I know what you're thinking about when you lay down and go to sleep.

You're thinking about getting up early the next morning and screwing somebody.

That's what you're doing.

Again, I don't know why you say some of these things that you say.

You're a capitalist pig.

No, I'm not.

Yes, you are.

You're all about making money.

You ought to join me down here in the fucking communist enclave I got going on here.

We're distributing all of our wealth to each other.

Harley's got something, she gives it to me.

I got something, I give it to Stacey.

Stacy got something, she gives it to Harley.

What about Hotchkiss?

Hotchkiss don't get shit.

Hotchkiss is one of the workers.

Isn't that how communism is supposed to work, Mr.

Marks?

You're supposed to give the money to the workers?

No, we're giving the money to each other.

We're sharing our wealth to each other.

So it's private communism.

Yes, it's private communism.

That's why it's an enclave around here.

But Hotchkiss don't get shit.

I don't leave him anything but alone.

All right, this is an awful transition to somehow get away from healing sleep.

One more thing.

Well, let's talk about the capitalism versus the communism and the money-making versus the fucking apparently expensive hobbies.

See, I was going into the finances because

we have heard that, and there is documentation out there that AEW is spending even more money than we thought they were.

And

you got to tell me exactly what this is because there's a lot of paperwork and I hate to go through this fine print, but I had seen this

on the internet several days ago, and I thought, well, somebody's made this up.

There's no way this is, this is bullshit.

Somebody's mocked this up and trying to get over and

be a hero on the internet.

And then

apparently, this is some goddamn official government paperwork that was filed.

And if somebody did mock this shit up, they're going to be in court getting mocked around.

And it has the expenses

that AEW had, the money they spent, the various things they did for the

television production and overall events that they did in Las Vegas at double or nothing, right?

That weekend, they were there doing whatever the fuck they did.

And

were they trying to get, because again, there's 15 pages of this shit, but state of Nevada, incentive calculation worksheet, budget breakdown,

lots of fucking things that have to be initialed and signed.

They were trying to get a tax credit.

That's right.

For the state of Nevada, because they were shooting

apparently

what they claimed was a big league television production.

We know what it really was, but

so they have to, you have to tell

the city or state authorities how much money you spend on everything

in order to get a tax credit of some

description.

Now help me say that in English.

Tell the people what the fuck this is.

In order to receive a tax credit, you have to file paperwork because actually the paperwork that we have that was going around that's on the official government website, it's not just AEW's application.

There's a second application for another production on here.

And

AEW is looking for a tax credit.

In order to get that, they have to supply information.

A lot of different states or different cities have incentive programs to try to get productions to,

you know, not just wrestling, obviously, but actually television and movies.

You know, you've seen a lot of things where Atlanta has been aggressive in getting a lot of stuff to be shot there.

There's a lot of different places.

And Nevada is trying to be competitive in a lot of different ways.

They have a tax credit program.

It's nothing unique.

And AEW broke down the costs for at least that weekend

for what everything was going to be.

Well, apparently, a collision and the pay-per-view is what they did.

Double or nothing.

That weekend.

Double or nothing and collision.

And there's, what is there?

25 fucking pages of this shit, but I'm trying to find the one that has the main thing.

There it may be.

Am I reading this right when they say that the total budget, and I may be leaning into the microphone here because the print is so fine on my computer screen.

But the total budget for the pay-per-view and the collision taping

is written down here that they gave to the state of Nevada $3.8 million.

That would be correct, yes.

And talent

is listed at $2 million of that.

So

let's just, let's look at this a little bit here.

Airfare, $150,000.

If I was Tony, I'd think about buying Greyhound.

It might be cheaper.

How much of that is private?

Are guys who fly private will have to turn in a receipt?

Are they renting planes to go to the goddamn shows now over there?

Fly private,

Catering, $50,000.

Good God, you could feed half of fucking Bangladesh.

Hold on, here's a good one.

Hotel.

Yeah.

$250,000

for hotels for two events.

In-house security, $60,000.

Are they really that convinced any of these fuckers are going to get enough heat to cause a riot?

Does that include Tony Kahn's like private security guard?

Well, if he is and he still fears for his life, then he's fucking hired the wrong guy.

LED screens, lighting, and rigging total $105,000.

Local management services, $100,000.

How you doing?

Who's the local management?

You're asking too many questions, partner.

Did they fucking rent out the bunny ranch for a fucking three-day wingding?

Operations and technical support crews, $400,000.

Well, it costs a lot of money to get it up for pay-per-view.

But get it up for pay-per-view?

Get it up

on the satellite.

But look, operational and technical support crews, $400,000.

Production consultants, 15 grand.

Local management services, 100 grand.

Lighting and rigging, 75 grand.

Conversion and electricity.

Oh, they don't have a line.

Rental cars, 30 grand.

Is that a lot?

Jesus Christ.

Okay,

what does a car cost per day these days, a rental car?

Because I haven't rented one in a while.

I don't know.

At least a few, I haven't either, but at least a few hundred dollars, I have to think think if you want something.

Well, if you want to get something to get out all crammed in and what, no, per a couple hundred bucks a day.

That was something nice.

You could get something from fucking enterprise or goddamn budget for $59 five years ago.

So

let's say it's $150.

And let's say 10 of them would be $1,500.

Let's say $100 of them would be $15,000.

And let's say $200 of of them would be $30,000.

But rigging and riggers, $66,000.

I was just going over all of the crew.

There's crew and crew and crew.

But then sound package, $40,000.

Stage hands,

$135,000.

It's a lot of hands.

All hands.

A lot of hands in a cookie jar.

Good God.

Let's say if a stage hand, a union stage hand in Las Vegas,

does he make $1,000 a day?

Then they need 135 of them.

Oh, you know what?

You are right, by the way.

I'm looking right now on Expedia.

If I wanted to rent a car in Vegas for a day,

I can get like a cheap one for $34, but

the nicest one on this page is a luxury Corvette, $120 a day.

So give me 50 of those.

Transportation of show goods.

Merch, right?

$50,000 to take the merch to the building?

Again, you know, I don't know what these costs should be.

It seems like a lot.

I've never, hey, I worked for the goddamn biggest wrestling promotion on the face of the earth.

And if you had handed Vince McMahon, at least back in those days,

something that looked like this for two days of fucking

a day of TV taping of the B show

and the

pay-per-view,

he would have lost his fucking mind.

But

you had someone there who, if you handed it to, they'd be able to know their money and say this is ridiculous versus who knows who's in charge of what that gets to Tony.

Cleanup, $14,000.

Ground transportation.

Oh, ground transportation, $2,000.

I guess they just called everybody a fucking yellow calf.

Well, they bought a rental car.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Miscellaneous show props, $7,500.

They spent as much on props as Jim Crockett used to fucking spend to do goddamn four hours of television.

In the music industry, if you wanted to get cocaine or something, you would put it in the expense report as party favor.

Well, they've smartened up to that.

Now it's show props.

Pyro services, $36,000.

Seems like you could set fire to all this money a whole lot cheaper than that.

Hey, Tony, that guy's at the door with the props.

Showing what I mean.

Now,

what building did they run in Las Vegas?

Hold on.

Is the name of that building?

We may have to scroll up for that.

Let's see.

Because apparently the rent is listed.

I guess they were there for two days, $110,000.

The MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Okay, well, it costs $55,000 a day, apparently.

Staging $10,000.

But anyway, and then down at the bottom,

just hiding there,

just like it's a regular fucking thing you would put on a sheet, talent, $2 million.

For two shows?

Because that's what they're applying here.

And some of the amateur mathematicians out in

the internet land have said, well, that means

that the AEW

talent cost is $104 million

a year because they take two times 52.

That's not exact.

You can't do that.

But no, because this is just for collision and pay-per-view.

It didn't even count dynamite that week, right?

And there were plenty of people not on those shows.

It's not like everyone's booked on every show.

Where was Kenny Omega?

He's injured.

If he was there, how much would that talent budget be?

But

is this a pro-rated amount?

Like we're just going to write that.

We pay $2 million a week for talent, so we're going to write that down.

Well, that's the thing.

It is a flat number.

It's a flat number.

Well, yeah, but is this a million dollars a fucking day?

Or is this, I mean, what is this?

So the point being, they have given these figures to the state government trying to get a tax credit.

And one would think that the tax credit they're going to get because they have to do this would be somehow tied to what they spend.

And if there's it's broken down into

Nevada expenditures, non-qualified expenditures,

total qualified, total non-qualified, blah, blah, blah, non-Nevada.

So you would think that they would take a dim view

over in Reno or wherever the, where's the state capital?

I don't know.

Is it Reno?

I believe it's Reno.

It's got to be Reno.

Hold on.

Bermuda, Jamaica.

Oh,

it's not part of Kokomo.

I know that.

Carson City.

Carson Center.

Well, down in Carson City, they're going to get fucking highly pissed if this is bullshit.

So we need to take this as

some level of legitimate, even if they've got a screwy way of keeping their books, and

they apparently don't give a fuck if they pay people thousands of dollars a day to fucking sweep up.

$2 million?

Again, you're dealing with someone who sees money and the realities of money hit him in a very different way than it would the average person.

And if you know that there's an endless budget and you can keep playing around with it, and to be quite honest, I know Shad Khan said in an earlier interview years ago that his attitude was, why not give Tony his inheritance now and let him have some fun?

While I'm still here to see him enjoy it.

While I'm still here to see him enjoy it, if he has spent a few hundred million dollars on AEW, that's still just

the tip of the iceberg.

That's nothing.

So it's ridiculous in terms of practicality of running a business, especially considering the results you get for the talent that apparently he's spending a million dollars a show on.

You're again, like you said, we don't know how to read that.

Is it a million dollars a show?

Is it two million dollars a week?

We don't know.

Does that count people who are not on the roster currently, but are still being paid?

There's a lot of people always injured, always.

But

AEW doesn't have to live with the realities that

Smokey Mountain Wrestling had to live with, Jim Crockett Promotions had to live with, Mid-South Wrestling had to live with, that the World Wrestling Federation for many years had to live with.

They don't have to be careful with a buck ever.

Okay, here's.

And because of that, unfortunately, and because there's no strong leadership, and this is where the two things come together, people just go crazy.

Because I'm sure if there was someone in there, and it doesn't need to be Bill Watson with a bat,

but if there was someone in there and they really looked at who's being paid and what's being spent, there's probably a lot of ways to cut down on money being spent, even more than they're trying to do now.

Well, and I'm going to, you made a point that I'm going to follow up on, but I've just noticed something else.

Total talent budget, $2 million.

Nevada residents, $25,000.

Non-Nevada residents, $1,975,000.

Who lives in Nevada?

That guy got $25,000.

Or did they use a few local guys, and that's $25,000 spread out amongst a few people?

But

here's what I was going to say.

You made a point about the WWF even for years didn't have to

or couldn't live in this alternate reality.

Even Uncle Dave has made a big deal out of the amount, the percentage of revenue that goes to the talent in the WWE, right?

And in UFC, because in pro sports,

you know, the boxers clean up and basketball and football, they're getting like half the money or whatever.

In the UFC, I think they figured it was, and that's why one of the fighter, one of these recent fighter lawsuits was about.

It's 20-something percent or whatever.

And I think Dave has pegged

the amount that the talent gets, at least as of a couple of years ago, they're spending some money up there now,

versus the overall revenue in the WWE is like 10% or less, right?

You've heard the same figures, right?

So that would mean that if Tony was paying $104 million

a year for his talent, and he was paying the same percentage of his revenue as the WWF does to talent, that AEW would have to be grossing,

what, $1.something billion dollars per year.

We knew he was spending a lot of money on these people because there's so many of them and they turn down

in some cases, sizable deals to go there.

You know what, Elson?

I don't know where

it would have to be buried in this, I would think.

I have to look closely.

This was the Anarchy in the Arena show where they had the Scorpion song, Final Countdown, that they later bragged was a wrestler's salary.

Right?

$200

was what we heard.

Wait a minute, hold on.

And when other songs licensed,

they had the Pixies license that night.

They've been using Jefferson Starship for a while,

but that was the night that they used that music.

That was Anarchy in the Arena.

That was Swer versus Christian.

Mercedes versus Willow, Adam Copeland breaking his leg.

I don't see anything here that

you could euphemistically

call a rights fee of some kind.

Would that have gone into talent?

I don't see how you would do that.

There's a lot of productions and producing things.

Broadcast venue productions, $150,000.

Nothing for the Teamsters.

Yo, watch out, Tony.

Well, no, hold on.

That might be...

No, seriously, there was a big

stage hands, $135,000.

That's Teamsters.

It says at the bottom, Teamsters payroll and benefits, zero.

Oh, oh, I see.

Teamsters payroll and benefit.

Maybe that's a line they have to put in there because of the state.

I don't know.

Put something.

Put something because of your life.

Put something.

Put what in the world?

Wait a minute.

Here's a page with crew counts.

Total Nevada labor, 33.

Total non-Nevada labor, 75.

Labor performed outside of Nevada, total 108.

But it has.

Wait, no, wait, wait, wait.

Hold on.

this is the talent.

Yeah, this is the talent.

This is the talent because it's the 2 million.

I thought they were labor like the stagehands, but no.

So, wait a minute.

That means that

there's three members of resident talent there, and they worked 48 hours.

That's what I thought, three people and got paid $10,000.

And 30 of the extras locally worked 240 hours, got paid $15,000.

And then the non-Nevada talent, there was 75 of the non-Nevada talent that worked, apparently from what they're putting down here, 1,200 hours and got $1,975,000.

30 people got $15,000, 75 people got $1.9.

That's crazy.

I mean, this is,

it's just, it's insane.

It has an hourly wage breakdown.

That's interesting, too.

And well, I get, I think because they have to fit whatever they're doing here to their forms, right?

Yeah, so there you go.

Projected incentive total $373,388.

So they're basically, they're going to save 10%.

They spent 3.8 million.

But if they get approved for all of this ca-ca and hoo-ha,

they'll get 373,000 back.

And then it says at the bottom, proof of funds amount production company must show obtained, which is 70% of the total budget,

$2,707,740.

No, I believe I know what that is, and I am more than willing to be corrected by members of our audience who may be in more of the show business these days.

But

before they will give a tax credit to a production company, the production company has to show that they've at least got most of the money that it's going to take to fucking actually do what they say they're going to do in this state.

And then, okay, if it's like, I can't go to fucking Pennsylvania and say, hey, I'm going to shoot a movie.

Okay.

I have to show, yes, I'm funded and I have, this is going to happen, things like that.

So they had to show him they got $2.7 million.

I don't think Tony had a problem with that.

Good night, nurse.

And it says on the last page here that they,

per correspondence with Kim Spurgeon, director of the Nevada Film Office, on April 1st, council has determined these production types will qualify.

for the Nevada Transferable Tax Credit Program.

Oh, wait a minute.

The economic impact of direct AEW spending will be approximately $3.9 million,

which mainly consists of the arena,

rent, labor, catering, rentals, local services, et cetera, per diems, and hotels for freelancers and staff,

aka wrestlers, related to the production.

Additional economic impact on the state will include restaurants, entertainment, parking, gas, additional hotel rooms, day visitors, et cetera, that cannot be quantified by AEW at this time.

Also, you're going to need more rental cars.

Yeah, call budget.

We're going to need a bigger fucking fleet.

Can you go back to page one?

Well, page one of, hold on, there's a cover letter.

So the first page of this form,

it says all elite wrestling, the address in Jacksonville.

What is this about?

It's AEW Collision and Double or Nothing.

Scripted episodic content is what they call the type of production.

The producer is Mike Manzouri,

and the director is Andrew Thomas.

And because this is normally movies and TV shows, right?

They have, Brian, are you looking at the next line below Andrew Thomas?

They have the names.

of the principal cast.

In other words, you know, okay, this is starring so-and-so.

Ladies and gentlemen, here are the names of the principal cast in the order in which they appear:

Aubrey Edwards, Chris Jericho, Justin Roberts, Maxwell Friedman, and others.

It was four people, including the ring announcer and a referee.

And she's first.

Because she probably filled out the form.

Well, no, wait a minute.

It says Chad Glenn filled as Chad Glenn, like Don Stevens, another name for Aubrey Ed.

Holy Christ on a cracker.

Well, there you go.

Apparently, this is,

I'm not going to say it's legitimate, but it's what they told the government.

So that'd be good enough to get somebody in trouble.

Son of a, wouldn't you know who bought the pony?

And I guess it's important to know they filed this sheet, the one that has the budgetary breakdown, on May 16th.

The event was on May 26th, so there was 10 days in between for more money to be spent.

Oh, wait, wait, wait.

There's another page with more detailed breakdowns.

Story slash writers, $22,530.

Producers, $197,844.

Direction, $20,000.

Where are you seeing this?

I'm seeing this down on just keep going down.

That's a different, that's a different project.

Oh, it is?

That's for the Memek or Mimek movie LLC

in Reno.

Okay, so wait a minute.

So

this is a goddamn actual production that's taking place.

Yeah, they're trying to make a movie.

It's going to cost less than a week.

Okay, I was about to say they're making a movie.

It's going to cost $872,000?

What the?

So, yeah,

they got no five-figure fucking or seven-figure talent involved in that thing.

I'm sorry, I went down to the bottom of scrolling.

Well, these prices look a lot more reasonable.

I got extra talent, $4,200.

Special effects, $4,600.

Production, film, and lab, $3,600.

Yeah, these people are fiscally responsible.

Contingency, five grand.

Well, see, they're prepared i hope they and again make it it's about

you know if you're going to go work on a project and you know it's someone who's really trying to make the project work and they're pinching their pennies and they're trying to just make everything fit

you'll go there and sometimes you'll work for almost nothing just to make it work and hope that things get better When you know it's someone who just spends frivolously,

you're not going to have that concern.

That's the problem.

If someone's making an indie film, no matter how good an actor they are, they're going to have to come down to earth.

If someone's working for Tony, they can ask for more and more and more

and get it and get a rental car and get a hotel and get everything.

But,

you know,

until his dad shuts off the checkbook or you know takes back the checkbook this is not going to change this is just going to continue this shouldn't shock anyone where else are they filing for tax credits

a hundred and thirty five thousand dollars for stage hands i have seen

gates in madison square garden just a a couple of thousand dollars above that here's a question for you it's a wrestling company filing paperwork Do stage hands mean stage hands or does it mean agents and producers?

No, this no, this means stage hands because

hold on, if we go up,

there's there's 15 grand for production consultants.

There's I don't know what they're actually calling producers, or maybe they can still consider their producers and agents' talent.

I mean, it's all a big happy family,

but uh no, stage hands, 135 grand.

Talent, as we said, two million.

there's also rigging and riggers

66 000

there's also electricians on here production consultants 15 000 electricians was in here somewhere lighting and rigging 75 grand the there those are all people doing those things in all of those categories

well that's the story they got more people on the crew than they got in the seats

maybe that's how they should best use the crew.

Fill out the crowd.

Well,

at the same point as all of this is going on with the financial expenditures and the fact that they ought to call Tony the Rainmaker instead of Ocody,

he's not just given the talent millions of dollars, he's giving them now,

you know, those two magic words, don't you, Brian?

That always leads to prosperity and success in the wrestling business?

Creative control.

Have we also heard now from

the very own lips of Mercedes Moon

that Tony has given her creative control, but at the same time, she works with Tony very well and listens to what he has to say.

Was that what I'm hearing?

We have official audio here.

This was from TMZ Sports.

Here's Mercedes Monet,

I believe, outside her hotel or outside someplace on the streets of Manhattan.

What?

She's been put out on the street?

Well, she's

walking into her car or something.

No one's saying it.

Oh, I thought you acted like she couldn't pay the fucking bill on the room and they kicked her out.

No, she's out.

It's a nice day in New York.

She's got her championship belt on her shoulder.

She's got a big Monet necklace.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

She's walking around on the streets of New York with the title belt on her shoulder?

Just like any fan would.

Let's go to this audio right now.

Mercedes Monet talking to TMZ.

I know that you are very creative.

You have so many ideas.

Do you feel like you're finally getting that creative control that you were looking for in the past, like now with AEW?

I feel like here at AEW, all of my dreams and opportunity is just endless.

So, of course, being the TBS champion and this Sunday at Forbidden Door, I'm about to be two-time champion.

I'm going to be the TBS champion and the new Champion Shong Shipping.

So yes, this little creativity that I have of taking all the belts and going global is beautiful.

Okay, but are you really?

Do you have more creative control than the Door drop too?

I mean, I mean, because

let me stop for a second because she did everything in character, and she, in character, is as disingenuous as you can be.

Well, yes, so that some other guy's just like, wait a minute, you know, let's get a real answer here.

Whoever that is.

That's what I was going to say.

Even on the street, she's doing these beauty pageant speeches to people.

And

is she convinced that she is really as over as she believes she is in her own mind?

Or is she overcompensating and trying too hard because she realizes that she's not?

She's over with the guy giving her millions of dollars in creative control.

I think that's what she's saying.

Hold on.

I need to hear her answer to that again because I'm going to say something in a second, but I want to hear what she says next.

Well, let's go to.

I don't believe I just said.

I want to hear what Mercedes Moon says next.

Let's go back to Miss Moon.

I got this.

I think just every single week you gotta watch.

Yes, I have creative control, but I work with Tony Khan very closely, so it's great.

It's a great combo.

So I gotta just put it out there.

And don't get mad at me, but you know, I'm gonna put it out there.

Bye.

No, no, no, no, no.

If you could have everything that you wanted, would you ever consider going back to WWE?

I know that that's the past, but we just want to put it out there.

I have everything I want right now, so.

I love that phrase.

I love that for you.

you.

Make sure everybody watch this Sunday.

All right, let's stop it right there.

And previously, when she was asked about WWE, she said that she's sure she will return there one day in the future.

That was right after she signed.

Oh, but I'm sure she does have everything she wants right now.

Her promos are the shit.

Her matches are the shits.

The people are booing her out of the building, even though she might supposed to be a babyface.

And she's making a shitload of money.

And Tony apparently hired her, her very own special writer, Alexandra Pepperday.

And

so, but

here's what I was going to say, because people said, oh,

now we know Mercedes has creative control.

I don't know if she knows that that's actually a thing you can put in somebody's contract.

I think she just said, oh,

they let me have creative control of all of my stories or whatever they fucking she's calling them.

And she's got her writer and they're just letting her do what she wants.

Or was this written in her contract like Hulk Hogan,

who was a lot smarter than Mercedes Moon?

I'm still not convinced.

I can't.

Well, I mean, I know Tony will do anything, apparently, but I would think that'd be the one thing he would stay away from because he's such a control freak that he won't let anybody that knows what the fuck they're doing take the book away from him.

So, why would he let her, of all

wouldn't, we haven't heard this about anybody else there, even though a lot of people do what they want, they don't have it written down.

So, I mean, what do you think?

Is this

does she just have the ability to do what she wants and she's just markish enough not to realize she's saying that?

Or does she mean it's it's contractual?

I didn't get the gist from what she said that it was contractual.

It almost seemed like she was reluctant to even answer the question.

And

I'm sure she could shoot down anything she wants with Tony.

And I'm sure she can insist on what she wants to do with Tony.

And that's creative.

And

if he bowed up at her, she could probably kick his ass too because she's bigger than him.

If he bowed up at her, I'm sure she could do what everyone else who's not happy creatively does.

Go home.

How many people were just like, I don't like what AEW is doing for me right now?

And then Miro went all the way to Bulgaria.

He vanished.

I think, you know, I've heard that he's in a monastery now because that fight with God, I think God won and sentenced him to Tibet.

You think he could pull off the monk gimmick, Miro the monk?

Boy, I'd like to see Jimmy Hart hit him in the fucking stomach with a baseball bat like he hit the original monk.

But anyway, this

so this woman, I don't know what the fuck.

She wants to be

in entertainment of some description somehow.

She got a lot of big plans.

I guess she was in that TV show about Star Wars or whatever the fuck was it?

Was it a movie, a TV show?

The Mandalorian.

It was a streaming show, yeah.

Okay.

Pretty big.

Was it big because of her?

Did she luck into a fucking spot?

It was big because of Star Wars, and it was the first, or one of the first of the Star Wars spin-offs, and it was pretty good compared to some of the recent ones.

And she was in that for a brief period of time.

So she's wanting to be singing and dancing and making major motion pictures and sitcoms.

But right now, Tony's the only billionaire that's actually

spending money on her, but she's free to do anything else she wants if anybody wants her to do something for them.

So I think she's probably pretty happy.

You know what?

When she does that little shimmy,

you know, I wish that she could shimmy like my sister Kate.

When she does that little shimmy, Brian, where she comes out on stage and she turns her jewelry that spells things out up on her fingers upside down and she does the shimmy and the only thing missing is the pole.

I'm thinking she's not even keeping time with her own music.

And I couldn't figure this out.

I'm like, she's got no rhythm.

She's not keeping time.

to her own music because this shimmy looks the same all the time and that idea.

And then I realized, realized, you know what I realized?

I'll tell you what I realized.

She's not listening to her own music,

just like none of the rest of us are.

She is listening to the Raycon

everyday wireless earbuds, just like all the rest of us are.

Because that way she doesn't have to listen to Sockface.

She doesn't have to listen to that rotten commentary.

She doesn't have to listen to all these stupid wrestlers cutting these goofy promos.

She can listen to professional musicians, entertainers, celebrities, people who know what the fuck they're doing.

And it's all on the everyday wireless here, but you have the world

at your feet.

Or actually, more specifically, you've got the world in your ears because you can listen to anything you want to.

They can be talking.

They can be singing.

They can be, you can listen to us and you never know what we're going to do.

And it's so convenient.

32-hour battery life.

And it's got a quick charge.

You can plug this in for 10 minutes.

It'll last for 90 minutes.

I wish I could say that about everything.

Everything else I try to charge takes forever.

The ergonomic design that fits right in.

And we talked about the widest range of ears that there is on the planet.

There's everyday earbuds.

These will fit.

So it doesn't matter how far apart your ears are.

And you know, Brian, whether you measure it around the nose to the front or whether you measure it around the back of the head, still

your ears can be different lengths apart, right?

We talked about the feather bottoms.

He measures his straight through ear to ear, and it's over 18 inches.

But they'll fit anything.

Have we talked about the ears enough?

Yes.

Let's move on.

Active noise cancellation, multi-point connectivity, awareness mode, weatherproof and sweat resistant.

I could go on listing the many accolades, but I will tell you instead, just go and check it out for yourself.

They offer a 30-day happiness guarantee.

As soon as you buy these things, the clock is ticking.

If you order these things and you can manage to stay happy for 30 days straight, they'll give you your money back.

That's the way the 30-day happiness guarantee goes, right?

If you're not happy within 30 days, you get your money back.

Well, no, you got to stay happy 24 hours a day for 30 days.

Or if not, you'll get your money back.

I don't think that's how it works at all.

But again, we're talking about it.

What if your wife pisses you off?

Again, none of this is how it works.

Raycon wouldn't have anything to do with that.

Nothing to do with it.

We're talking about things that Raycon has to do with

your ears and music and an enjoyable experience with the perfect fit with Raycon, right, Jim?

Yes, why should they be penalized?

Because somebody pissed you off on the 29th day

and you weren't able to fulfill your part of the bargain and you weren't happy for 30 days, they didn't send you your money back.

That's bullshit.

So, some way or another, we're going to work this out.

Go to buy Raycon, B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N, buyraycon.com

right now, and they'll tell you exactly the facts of the matter.

And if you go to buyraycon.com slash JCE,

then you're going to get 15% off your Raycon order, no matter what you buy.

Well, it's got to be on their website or one of their products, but otherwise than that, and free shipping, 15% off and free shipping at buyraycon.com slash JCE.

And I mean, you know, you're at least going to be happy for two weeks before somebody gets under your skin.

But you'll be happy with Raycon longer than that.

One more time.

What's that?

Oh, that's right.

But they don't get under your skin.

They get inside your ear canals.

And that way, as a matter of fact, you can turn these bad boys up the volume all the way.

And actually, if you just have one in your right ear, you can hear it through your brain into your left ear.

So, Matt, when you put the one in the left ear, that's when you get stereo.

But you can hear these things coming a mile away.

Buyraycon.com/slash JCE.

All right.

Well, what in the world

is going on?

Yeah, what do you want to know?

At the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week, you no-good, sorry, gum bumping sack of snake feces.

Another fine week of gun bumping on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast.

I just broke my fork in half.

On the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, get information on all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcast or on Facebook.

Facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Want to make mention, shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon.

Recent guest includes Vince Fahey, the founder of KayfabeMemories.com.

Of course, a part of the Arcadian Vanguard wrestling network.

His name is Fahey.

Fahey, that's right.

Fahey.

Oh, Fahey.

Well, here, the interview with him and Brian Solomon.

More conversation and interview, S-U-A-Wpod.com.

What happened when Buddy Rose decided to go on the message board and mess with people?

Hear about that at so much more, S-U-A-Wpod.com or Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

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Mothership!

That's right.

What was that?

What are you doing over there?

Oh, trying to get that out of my head.

My ears are still ringing.

Listen to the

listen to the two-part Scott Cornish tribute, 605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcast, The Mothership.

Oh, it's like gonna, oh, it's still going.

There we go.

All right, there it is.

A new sound and time travel.

We are in the future, a future that is so bright.

All the wrestling companies are working together.

The door is swung wide open.

We are to talk about AEW Forbidden Door 2024.

Send me back.

Send me back.

Did it work?

No, I've still seen it.

I meant before I watched the

forbidden door

should they should forbid these people to ever come through the door again.

I think the door should be walled up.

Think of a cask of a Montellado.

By the last breath of the four winds that blow, I'll have revenge upon Tony Kahn.

for subjecting me to this.

And hold on here one second.

i want to go to something here first because god damn this thing people have fucked and had babies in less time than this thing took to from start to finish you didn't think it was great

what

wait it did i didn't think it was what great

there it is yeah

no i'm i'm going to the uh

Hold on, I'm going to say, where's the goddamn list here I'm looking for?

There it is.

There it is.

There are three goddamns in a minute so far.

I don't know what's happening.

Well, I'm vamping there because the pre-show,

the pre-show, which once again, I was treated to this

anomaly.

No, no, no, no, no, I didn't.

I was treated to this anomaly of common sense called a pre-show when I started working with Ring of Honor.

That's what I started here, a pre-show.

And pre-shows for pay-per-views used to be, we're going to stand here and show you the clips of the angles, the way they were set up and sell you these matches.

It's on the Barker channel or the pay-per-view pregame or whatever.

And then boom.

They do pre-shows an hour and a half with goddamn match after match.

And a pre-show is like having dinner before you have dinner.

If it's on the show, in the ring, in the building, in front of the people that came to see the show, it's the show.

So here's what they started this goddamn

four-hour

marathon with: with another hour and a half of shit.

Serpentico versus Kyle Felcher.

The House of Black versus Tomohiro Ishii.

And Kyle O'Reilly versus Roderick Strong and Gabriel Kidd versus Private Party,

Chris Statlander

and Momo Wantanabe

versus Willow Nightingale and Tom Nakano.

Tam.

Huh?

Tim.

Tam what?

Tam Nakano.

Not Tom Nakano.

Tam Nakano.

Either one.

Tim.

And then Maria May

versus Soraya.

And then,

oh my God.

What was the talent budget on this show?

Yota Tasuji, Titan, and Hiromu Takahashi, who are the

lowest fuckers and goobers of Japan.

L-I-J.

Versus the Lucha Brothers and Mystico.

Oh, I did see this one.

I did actually see that match.

What was that like?

It was like exactly what you would expect.

Mystico, one of the biggest stars in the history of Lucha Libre at this point, you'd have to say, because of the success he's had there when he first started, and of course, in recent years.

So naturally, he was on the pre-show unannounced, or if he was announced, no one saw it or heard it

in a generic three-way, for AEW, a generic three-way,

three trios matches.

Six-man.

Trios.

We say trios here in the elite.

So that was before they started the goddamn show.

And then they got four hours to go, and they barely made the pay-per-view window, I think, by two minutes.

I was impressed anyway.

I was impressed they got it because we've seen them not get it.

Oh, they don't get it.

They don't get it.

All right.

But when it ended on time, I was shocked.

So anyway,

should we start at the beginning and go downhill from there, Brian?

That's usually the way it works.

Yes,

the beginning may have been the best parts of the show.

But that's why I said that because the beginning, the first match was the only match on the show that actually didn't offend me as a professional

in some way or another.

And imagine that it was MJF versus

okay, we established that

MJF is not only one of their biggest names and the only proven

ratings mover that they've got left after they've run the talent off.

And it's his hometown and it's a pay-per-view.

And

they book him against, as he said, a random unknown Mexican guy,

paraphrasing his promo, who is drawn like a badly drawn cartoon character or whatever.

And so they've wasted an opportunity to,

I don't know, sell some more tickets and get some interest on pay-per-view by having one of your biggest stars in his home arena in any kind of goddamn meaningful confrontation.

But

having said that,

this was the

only thing that

actually made sense and made a point and the right finish in the right right way.

And

MJF is brilliant because

either they said, Oh, we've got to give,

you know, the hometown crowd, the hometown boy on first to start hot, or he said,

Get me the fuck out of here before the rest of this thing goes to shit.

Because this was the first match.

So

he's always on.

He looks great physically, his facials, his body language.

he sells everything whether it's

offense physically or even whether it's just something that's happening with the appropriate animation

and

didn't fuck this up

he wasn't bad

he wasn't goofy his mask didn't fall off he didn't do you know 10,000 phony things and he apparently listened well mostly to MJF

because this was an MJF match, which it should have been.

And he gave the people what they wanted to see while at the same time

working with this guy to the guy's level, which is an unknown guy that can do some cool shit.

So I'm going to shine a bit,

then I'm going to let him get some heat.

So that then I can beat him.

And that's what happened.

And it was a perfect finish.

But anyway, MJF, he did his shit.

He got a big pop on a strut.

He got a big pop on a blatant eye poke.

It's just what he should have been doing.

Here, I'm going to give two.

See, I can actually critique something like this because it's a professional involved instead of just scoffing at the whole thing because there's no hope.

There's two things.

At one point,

Hetchicha

hid behind the referee.

Hetchichero.

All right, Hetchichero.

A wizard

reached behind, or he hid behind the referee, and then he reached around and grabbed MJF by the tights and shit canned him to the floor,

which is a way that a heel lulls a babyface and a boom.

But you should never outsmart the babyface devil because he needs to be the smartest cheater.

And you need to put

things in his way that could actually happen that don't make him look like he fell for something.

If the referee had jerked away from Hetchichichero

when he went behind him and accidentally give

MJF an elbow and a fucking short rib where MJF could go, oh, hey, what the fuck?

And look at the referee and then let the fucking guy do it.

It wasn't like he was suckered in by a heel, but he was caught unaware by the heel's action to someone else.

Subliminally,

it makes him look like he didn't fall for something.

You see what I'm saying?

But the heel still got what he was going for.

Yeah.

Am I being too minute here?

No, being minute.

People,

you know, this kind of wrestling logic isn't really out there too much.

No one breaks in a match like you, so do it.

Well, then, so then they go back, but MJF takes back over on the floor.

He runs the fellow into the rail a couple times, gives him the big boot over the rail, pulls him over, throws him back in the ring.

And then, as he gets up on the apron, he looks away to the fans because he's hot dogging.

And old Hatch

jerks his arm over the rope, gives him something to sell for the rest of the match during the heat.

Very good.

However, see previous comment.

If you don't want the heel to outsmart the babyface devil, you don't want the babyfaced devil to outsmart himself.

So again,

instead of

getting up on the ring and then looking at the people like, yeah, I'm so hot because then you kind of deserve it,

you do the deal where you fucking throw the guy in.

And as he again rolls past the referee, he grabs the game.

the guy's pant leg, which turns him as MJF is rolling in.

He stands up the referees in a way as he goes around the referee.

The guy can trap the arm and do the fucking deal.

He's just, he's taking advantage of positioning, but it wasn't MJF's

lack of paying attention to the fucking situation that got him fucked.

Anyway,

having said that,

Old Hetch moves well, and he had some different-looking shit that didn't look completely out of place, and there wasn't like a ton of cooperation.

And the best,

here's one more thing.

They both went and teased a pile driver, but Hedge stopped MJF with a big leaping knee in the corner, and bam.

And this one looked great and sounded great.

By the end of the night, everybody else's legs were probably black and blue from being slapped to fuck, but

boom.

And then Hetch turns around and does the strut and flips the people a double bird and got his most heat of the match.

And MJF was selling the knee in the corner, but he was in the same position, squatted down, arms hanging over the middle rope, selling

until Hetch came and got him.

And that kind of, then it was kind of by rote.

It took you, if, if while Hetch turned around and did the strut,

MJF could have dropped to his knees and started selling his jaw, but then he reaches up the ropes and he starts pulling himself up and And he's wobbly-legged at first, so he goes back down to one knee.

And as the guy comes, he fires a gut shot, boom, but the heel fucking cuts him off with the eyes and pulls him in for the next move.

That way, you're not taking attention away from the heel who's doing his strut and his fingering and everything, but you're still keeping moving slowly and selling appropriately.

And you've got some kind of life to you to complete the big picture of what the people in the cheap seats are seeing in the arena.

Because they're seeing the TV is tighter, but the people in the arena are seeing the heel strut, yes, and all that stuff, but they're also seeing the baby face motionless, just sitting waiting for him to come back and be got.

Does that make any sense?

It makes a lot of sense.

Okay.

So anyway, and then MJF fired up and hit the pile driver, but he was selling the left arm.

And Hatch again had some good shit to pop the people.

He even got kind of a sugar hold on him with his legs.

And MJF got a pop for the rope break

because they were, how are you going to get out of this?

He reached the ropes and there was tension to it and milking.

Double clothesline, both of them sold it.

And then MJF started his comeback, which was perfect.

At about five minutes of heat in about a 10 or 12-minute match, perfect.

Gave him the nine punches and the face bite.

The Long Island Sunrise picked him up, gave him a brain buster.

Boom, one, two, three.

Perfect finish.

The guy got some heat, but when MGF came back, he's a former world champion.

He's one of the biggest stars in the company.

He beat the guy.

He didn't make it look like it took everything he fucking had.

So

he went, he started out treating him like an underneath guy,

but then he got surprised with the arm and he had five minutes of trouble and then he came back and put him away succinctly without messing around because he had pissed him off and he realized he took him too lightly at the start.

But

you couldn't have put this together much better if you had to have it.

That's what I thought.

What did you think?

I have a equally

well thought out analysis.

I like that MJF wore the the Mets' colors.

I like that.

I guess you could also say Nick's colors, but I like that.

I think that's really good.

Traffic must have been a real bitch

because the Met game had a rain delay.

So, I don't know.

I got to figure out what happened around there.

But, no, I'm glad Hetchichero carried him to a really good match.

And I think

Hetchicharo has a very bright future with his, you know, Luchador early demolition look, whatever the hell's going on over there.

He's a wizard, after all.

We'll see if he sticks around.

Does he throw fire?

We will find out.

We will find out if Jericho allows that.

But no, this was a fun opener.

This is all you could ask for.

MJF, hometown guy, should have opened the show.

Considering what everything else was on the show, there was no other place to put this.

It had to open, and it was a good opener.

It was.

They passed the ball off well

to the next segment.

It was up to them to carry that ball and take it forward, but it was a good opener.

And if fumble,

fumble,

we'll get there.

Because before the next match was the

ridiculous video package that

all I'm thinking, can you imagine if

If a new viewer might ever actually

wander in somehow and say, I'll buy this wrestling pay-per-view.

And

they see something like this and they don't know how did they think, what the fuck?

They think, well, okay, is this serious or is it a parody show?

Because they do the

Buckaroos video with the voiceover guy reading it straight

while it's not even knocking the baby faces and putting the heels over, but in a tongue-in-cheek,

not funny funny, and at the same time, obviously, not serious way.

Whereas it's not funny, it's goofy.

But why is this again?

The giant hole in any of this logic is why does Tony Khan allow any of this?

A no-cut contract doesn't mean you can fucking super pile drive your boss.

or goddamn run other people over with vehicles or goddamn put on goofy videos on the show without the owner overruling you.

Does anybody ever ask him in the media scrums when he's out there taking credit for everything and he's doing the negotiations with the network and he's booking 18 shows a week and he's signing all these wrestlers?

Do they ever say, well, Tony, why do you let those bucks?

Get away with fucking around with your TV show.

That wasn't a rhetorical question.

No one asked that question.

I mean, I think a lot of the people there, you know, may root for the Bucks, but that question's never asked.

But I mean, in storyline, they're in their storyline.

They're in their storyline.

Well, why, Tony?

Why, explain, explain to me, oh, creative goddamn genius booker.

How in your storyline that they can do all this shit and you can't do anything about it.

Or Chris Daniels can't do anything about it.

If you appointed him, have we seen him since?

No, after that, like, ladies and gentlemen, I'm back.

I don't think he's been on TV or held up a microphone since.

What the hell was that?

I'm back.

Well, you're going right back out.

That's the part of the issue.

I mean, and the overall problem with AEW, the great example is the bloodline beating up Paul Heyman versus the elite these guys.

The EVPs, they should be the lead heels, you would think, just based on where they are.

Beating up the owner of the company, who's a babyface,

doesn't mean anything.

We're weeks later.

Does it mean anything?

Did it mean anything a week later after that happened?

It means nothing now.

Do these guys have any heat?

Do they have real heat?

People boo because they don't want them to succeed because they're sick of them, not because they're heels, that they want to see the babyface beat.

And

again, whether it was merch under the young bucks' wife,

whether it's everything the young bucks Bucks do creatively, whether it's the personnel decisions that were made in large part due to the Young Bucks,

the firings that were made due to the Young Bucks, just everything.

It's the law of diminishing returns.

They are not over and they seem more minor league than ever before.

And they've seen minor league in the past and often.

So this is

bad stuff.

And again, the decline in popularity amongst AEW's fans,

a lot of it could be pointed to everything with CM Punk that went down, and then the airing of that Jack Perry video and the Young Bucks rebranding as the EVPs, the heel goofs who dress goofy and act goofy.

It's all been downhill since then.

They've strapped themselves onto Okody because he's still popular.

They'll finish that off pretty quick because a lot more showings like this i don't know how even the faithful can you know excuse o cody but they've strapped themselves on to him to try to be artificially over

and what it's made out of him is is two strap-ons pretty much they're just hanging around him

and because the they walk out and people are

and then uh here comes oh cody hey we kind of still like you because of what you used to be able to do i don't fucking know

and that's the

right after the video was this match because I guess they figured if we know this thing's going to go four hours too, and we're smart like MJF, let's get the fuck out here

and

get out before the thing goes any further in the hole.

And you know, I always

skip the buckaroos matches these days, Brian, right?

Because it's the same thing.

But I thought, here's Okodi, the multi-million dollar man.

Here's Tanahashi, the president of New Japan.

I'm going to see what the fuck that they can come up with.

Right.

So I watched as much of this as I could stomach.

Do you blame me?

I was hoping you watched it because,

again, just like the MJF match, but for different reasons, I wanted you to break this one down.

That was fascinating.

You know, here's the thing.

And he acclaimed were over,

and they still like him.

And this was a very, this was the crowd.

If any of New York, AEW fans, if anybody's going to like any of this shit, it was them.

And they did like some shit here.

Best rap in a while.

Best Max Castor rap in a while.

Well, I was about to say, Castor, they gave him some extended time, and he fucking...

He ate him up and said bitch about 46 times making fun of

the only word O'Code he knows in English, apparently, is bitch.

But

they teased Ocody and Tanahashi starting.

And I'm thinking, okay, can either one of these guys please impress me?

And then Ocody tags out.

And,

you know, observations.

Bowens and Maddie,

they did the aggressive parkour, but Bowens looks sharp and athletic, and he has a physique.

And I think, well, Castor got the attention with the rap, and that is still, you know, his strong point.

I think Bowens is a heck of a worker

if, you know, if he was anywhere else but here.

Again, this is just, it's ridiculous.

It's a

it's an indie level.

I guess I've never seen a PWG match or show pro-wrestling gorilla.

Just because their breast smells like cheetahs ain't no sign that they're Tarzan.

But I assume this is what it's like it's non-stop goofy spots mixed with comedy that only a small audience cares enough to live their life around and understand

and they they do contrived so that the one guy can leg drop both of the buckaroos in their tiny little nuts

and castor must have nuclear heat because As soon as they got him in, he did it like a hip toss.

They cut him the fuck off.

And then Maddie put his headphones on and

oh cody's dancing around like an idiot uh thank you tony khan for a two million dollars that's probably just oh cody for a year

um it's amazing wwe wanted him and by all accounts and he chose and he chose this and it's not even just about money look at what he's doing and look at how he does it And if WWE wanted him, the only reason they wanted him was so Japan wouldn't have him.

So now they saved a lot of money and they got what they wanted.

Can you see?

Oh, no, so Tony wouldn't have him, not Japan.

Well,

if they want to fucking, no, I'm talking about if they wanted to fucking go to Japan,

I think if they were trying to sign him,

that's because they wanted to go to Japan.

Because

look at him right now as we both sit here and he stands here on this earth and tell me that a WWE match wouldn't break him in fucking half.

I'll say this because I watched a lot more of New Japan when Tanahashi and Okada were having classic matches than you did.

Although I think you may have seen one or two of them.

But it's been years, so I've put it out of my mind.

They were great matches, and those guys look great in them.

Okada was the younger guy.

To me, the story of this match is less Okada, or I'm not even saying the story of the match, but Tanahashi.

We're seeing all these guys from that era of New Japan.

Funny enough, with the exception of Shinsuke Nakamura.

And whenever these guys come over here, it just looks like they're broken down and they can't do anything.

It looks like they can't be hit hard.

It looks like what they're doing is going to be,

it's not even they're laying it in, it just looks weak.

I don't know how to explain it, but it was sad for me seeing Tanahashi.

Well, what was sad for me was seeing this was a phony Buckaroos match.

They run and they nail Tanahashi and Bowens off the apron of the ring with one punch each.

And then those guys sell on the floor for well over a minute, minute and a half, while the Buckaroos,

these are all supposed to be main event guys.

This is pay-per-view.

And they do a fucking comedy crisscross spot, ended up with kissing each other, the Jackson, but the Hardley boys,

in the middle of a pay-per-view match.

Why don't they just set fire to Tony Khan's money?

I wrote.

At one point, were the fans chanting CM Punk at the Buckaroos?

It sounded like it, yeah.

Now, of course, AEW prohibits CM Punk shirts, even AEW ones, apparently, and signs.

There's usually a CM Punk contingent at these shows, but they're kind of shut down before they even get in the building.

Well, and then they did a tag to Bowens, who made a comeback on the Buckaroos.

And see, now here's the thing.

At various points in these matches that they put together, people will just disappear for no good reason.

And you'll catch a stray camera shot of them kneeling down behind the apron of the ring, hiding, peeking up over the goddamn edge of the mat to see if it's time for them to get back in the ring.

What does that look like to the arena?

How unprofessional is that?

And they're not the only ones that do it.

It's a modern wrestling thing, but people just disappear out of sight.

Like, we're going to give you the stage now, fucking morons.

So

Bowens made a comeback on the Buckaroos.

Everybody else in the match was completely out of sight.

And then Castor appeared,

but the two Japanese guys were out taking a nap.

And you would see them kneeling on the floor in the corner of a camera shot.

And then they got simultaneous cold tags.

And Tanahashi made the comeback on Okody.

And I mean, compared to everybody else, again, on this show, whether they go work or not,

these guys are moving like they're 80.

And then the other four guys have disappeared and are laying on the floor for no reason.

You actually see Castor peek up over the apron.

And then see it's not time and duck back down.

Again, the front row is looking at you.

If you can't have a goddamn six-man tag team match where people don't have to roll out of the ring and just hide, then don't have one.

I've never seen shit like this before.

So then

they're destroying any illusion that people might want to have about any of this.

And then they all run in the ring and do shit to each other.

And then

somehow the buckaroos stopped the acclaimed on the floor, and Tanahashi splashed O Cody, but he raised his knees.

And then the buckaroos rolled in and played with their tennis shoes, and then super kick everybody

and dive on the acclaimed.

And then they're just out of the whole goddamn thing.

And O Cody slams Tanahashi, does the elbow off the top, flips the crowd the finger.

Tanahashi

small packages him two count who does these fucking finishes and then more shit happened and okody hit that shitty little short arm clothesline and beat tanahashi one two three

jesus mary and joseph

your thoughts in in closing

i don't even know what to say anymore i mean

I will say the acclaimed are a little more interesting today than they were yesterday.

And that's been the first time in a while I could could say that.

Max Caster killed it with that rap.

The Bucs have no heat.

The lead heels stable in the company have no heat.

No one takes them seriously.

And when you look at them in their role, they look ridiculous.

I'm sorry.

They do.

They don't look like top guys in any company.

And it shouldn't go based on looks.

Rey Mysterio doesn't look like a top guy in any company, but he was one.

The Bucs,

you know, I mean, at some point.

You know what?

You may not have to always look like one, but you got to act like one.

You could try to always got to act like one.

But if you think your own shit don't stink,

and if you think

your stuff's the only stuff that matters, this is what happens: no one gives a fuck about them, no one cares at all.

And

you really have to evaluate their story more and more.

And you realize their great success was being one of the very few India acts ever ever to really market themselves.

It wasn't about the event or the promotion.

It was about seeing them.

That's the smart way to do it.

More guys need to do that.

But that's what killed every company that they were associated with, killing the business until now

they're being able to kill the most well-funded one in history.

But they built up a wave of goodwill into the start of AEW, and that was it.

That was the peak.

It's been downhill since.

And there's going to be no increase.

They're not,

they're just not that good.

And I know people will flip out because they love the flips and the matches and Nick Jackson flying all over the place.

But these problems that you talked about were always there with people hiding and peeking up over the apron, waiting for their chance to run in, their time to run in, their spot.

They're cue.

They're cue to run in.

It always happens.

I mean, every one of these Bucs matches breaks down the same way.

And

the fans don't seem to give a shit.

Even with Okada there, it's dragged him down more than him pulling them up.

We don't care anymore.

We don't care what you say.

You never could work a goddamn lick anyway.

So don't be there anymore.

Get out of our way.

Because we got another match coming through, Brian.

This one,

I had absolutely no hopes for whatsoever because I forgot it was on the show until it popped up.

Brian Danielson versus Shingle Takagi.

Shingo.

And I've had those goddamn shingles, and I'll tell you what, they're painful as fuck.

So if he's, if he's, if that's his gimmick, is that he's as painful as a fucking skin rash.

That's not his gimmick.

His name is Shingo.

You had shingles?

I had shingles one time.

Yes.

I had the whole goddamn roof.

Right on my crotch, too.

Not the actual crotch, the fucking kind of northwest of the crotch,

but right where your leg folds there.

Let's get away from your crotch and back to Shingo and Danielson.

Well, my crotch looked better than they did, I'll tell you that.

And

they started, and I thought, here again, Brian Danielson, one of the most talented guys in the business.

And,

you know, even though he, as you've mentioned, is another one of these guys that probably needs to be produced because

his own instincts and what he enjoys may be a niche product at this point.

But

who gives a shit?

This is another one of these guys that he wanted to wrestle because it's on his bucket list.

But did anybody want to see this?

Who Who is this fucking guy?

Again, it just

Brian Danielson, one of the biggest names in AEW to the mainstream fan, wrestling somebody that they've never seen or heard of before.

And it was fairly dry.

I hope, I wrote, I hope Brian is having fun.

And

one thing did tickle me.

I don't know if it, did you know that when

Danielson finally,

after a lot of mat wrestling,

Danielson goes to dive out on the floor on Shingo, and Shingo catches him and picks him up and gives him some kind of suplex right on his head on the floor.

And they're teasing the count out.

And did you hear referee Aubrey Ed counting?

She sounded like Laverne DeFazio.

Three,

four,

it was, you could, It was cutting through the fucking night air like a knife, that fucking whine.

I made it eight minutes in and I said it's all pretty much going to look the same.

I'm going to fast forward this.

And after another nine minutes, I saw that Brian had finally got him, started chanting, yes, yes, yes.

And so I started looking again.

And he runs and he hits the fucking big knee.

Boom, and the place blows and he covers him.

One, two, that's it.

He kicked out.

I'm a what the fuck.

And then they did a few more things, and Danielson got an arm bar,

and the guy neither visibly quit nor tapped out.

The referee just rang the bell, and the announcer said, We think it was a verbal tap because you couldn't see his lips, even if he did say anything.

Why can they never hit the finish that the people will really pop on?

They got to hit four more.

I don't know.

Maybe this was a compromise with New Japan.

He'll lose, but he'll lose by not being skinned or submitted.

He'll lose, but he'll lose in a boring fashion.

You know, I know I've said it before, and it continues to be unpopular.

This match was fine if you like these Daniel Bryan, Daniel Bryan, Brian Danielson matches.

But I've become bored with his matches, and I don't particularly like them.

It's not to say they don't build up and have nice moments at the end, but you kind of know what the match is going to be.

You know, he's going to trade spots in the middle of the ring, or trade shots, I should say, with his opponent.

You know what the match is going to be.

You know what the pacing will be.

And I've gotten you know what?

The problem I have is he even he does that well.

He does that style very well.

If I'm going to watch it, I'll watch it from him.

But how long has it been since any of his matches had an issue, had an angle, had a goddamn

grudge, a legitimate personal issue, or

even hid in that goddamn

BBC bullshit where he does color on a lot of their crap.

When he does have a match, it's not against somebody on the regular roster with a long program accomplishing something between the two of them.

It's him having these random matches with these random people that he wants to wrestle because he enjoys it.

He's doing

his shit that

he probably wants to do in his retirement in his

gym or workout place at home and he gets a ring and he has these people come and they do the grappling.

He's doing it on pay-per-view.

Basically, all the guys he would work with for no money, he found someone who would give him lots of money to work with them no matter where they work.

Yeah,

Brian Danielson, again, maybe,

right, besides Chris Jericho, and I'm just talking about size of name and reputation, not size of ego or quality of work now.

But besides Jericho, Danielson may be the biggest name,

most widely known name, biggest reputation of anybody on the show.

And again, he's in a match with no fucking body for no reason.

But I guess that's part of the big issue with Forbidden Door.

And again, they announced during this pay-per-view that they're going to be running on pay-per-view with a second Tokyo Dome show.

Oh, good luck.

I zipped through that, apparently.

Oh, January 4th is the New Japan Tokyo Dome show.

And then January 5th is Wrestling Dynasty with all these friends, CMLL and Stardom and New Japan and Tony.

And the problem is, how does it help AEW?

If you're a fan, I could see, like a fan like Tony, I could see why you would like all this.

Does it benefit AEW to have one of their stars go a long time trying to defeat someone who's not coming back?

More than likely, he may make an appearance on Collision.

I don't know.

Random people pop up on these tapings.

They have a big budget from what we understand.

We've heard rumors.

But

how does it benefit AEW?

It feels like Tony's doing a lot of things that are almost to benefit another wrestling company, but in the end, they're not really going to benefit them either.

But nothing is really done to push what should be the AEW agenda.

He doesn't care if the deal benefits the company because he's so thrilled to make it.

And,

you know, again,

there you go.

Danielson wins in 20 minutes,

and

Shingles is sent back to the

drawing board there.

And talking about, when we get to the plumbers match, we'll talk about things that might or might not be good for AEW.

But next up on the list, you know, I've got a little faith back

now in AEW because of Tony Storm and Mitsu Arakawa's match.

Mina Shirakawa, can you give her some respect?

She's got a tremendous bosom.

Well, I'll tell you what, I'll give her the respect that she deserves for being a member of stardom.

So let me go ahead and give that respect to you.

I knew what sound you were going to play before you even reached for it.

But no, because at least now

with this match, I see that AEW are moving forward and evolving this the rotten women's situation that's existed in wrestling, this goofy women's revolution where now it has to be 50-50 and it's just like the men.

Now we're back to where we used to be, a background for boobs and butts butts with girl matches.

That's that's this is what we need to be doing.

It's more honest, you know what?

It's more honest with what

the fan base they're pitching it to.

Again, there's no female audience here, they're pitching it to

based on again.

When we talk about the ratings, the key demo

is like 300,000, maybe.

Let's use that as a number.

The rest of that number is mostly men over the age of 49.

This is for them.

If it is, why is it for them?

What are they supposed to be thinking about watching this shit?

But anyway.

Well, nevertheless, so

Tony won the match with the Powell Driver.

Now, Maria May had given both of them a bouquet of flowers before the bed, because she's been friends with both of them.

And then at the end, when Tony won, Maria was conflicted.

But then, and folks, I'm going to tell you,

if you ever want to see some really

high school drama class acting chops on display amongst the second stringers that didn't make the audition for the main parts in the play,

and maybe that's why they came up with the understudy gimmick to begin with,

Maria and Tony have a romantic moment, staring into each other's eyes.

And then Tony pulls old Mitsu up to her feet,

and then they,

yeah, her,

and they look at each other, and then they shake hands in a stagey way, and then they hug.

And then Maria comes over and starts pointing, like, ah, you know what you need to do.

And Mitsu,

I was waiting for it.

Are you there?

Mina!

Okay.

She makes all kinds of stagey faces,

and then they all three kiss each other.

But not even in an interesting way with tongues lolling around like anteaters, but just in a peckish kissing your aunt hello kind of way.

And that was that.

The word drivel.

is not used enough in today's society, I don't believe.

And I'd like to bring it back.

And I'd like to nominate this

as being fucking drivel.

So again, who is this lesbian love triad angle for?

But it's not, it's platonic lesbianism.

It's not even Showtime lesbianism.

It's like

I have two mommies lesbianism.

Who's that for?

I mean, that's the thing.

If you're not going to go all the way, I mean, if Tony wants a pay-per-view number, just have them fuck on pay-per-view.

But if you're not going to go all the way and do anything grotesque, and they probably shouldn't, I don't know why I say grotesque, if you're not going to do anything explicit, I guess.

I don't know.

I really don't know if it would be grotesque.

It would be a better

program.

Who is this for and why?

You know,

Orange Cassidy doesn't have a lot of the buzz he used to have amongst their fans.

And even the ones that like him, maybe like him a little differently today than they did a few years ago.

I feel like Tony Storm has taken over for the ironic wrestling fan.

So those AEW fans can watch this stuff and lose themselves in it and tell themselves it's a great story,

even though it's complete.

I mean, that's the thing.

It's like I'm a wrestling fan and I can appreciate good women's wrestling.

And I don't have any idea who this is for.

Because it's not for girls and it's not for adult men, I wouldn't think.

Suzanne sometimes comes in when this is on.

I just explained, like, this is on the show.

It's not like I'm,

you know, you don't hear me talking about this match in the kitchen.

Oh, oh, I can hear if this is on where Stacey can see it, I can hear her screaming, oh my God,

in the other room, she's offended as a former professional.

It's just, it's silly, it's stupid.

And the overriding

thing about AEW's pay-per-view here, especially, and most of the shit they do, is that it's fucking fake.

They're not trying.

It looks fake, it sounds fake, it fucking comes across as fake, and it comes across as they are

telling us that it's fake at the same time as they're doing a bad job of trying to perpetrate it.

And that's pretty much the goddamn cardinal rule of the wrestling business.

The first one you don't break is don't let this shit look fake.

And that's what they're doing

because they think it's cute somehow because they've all got their own heads up their own asses so far that they think they're goddamn stars because this fucking mark is paying them to be on a television program that cost about 2 million bucks a night.

Speaking of fake.

The next match was Q-tip saber against Pockets, and I went to take a shit and came back when it was over with.

What did I miss?

A lot of grappling.

A lot of the fans who are AEW fans who want to defend Pockets say that you have to see a match like this to really see what he could do.

I guess getting past the bad gimmick.

If he could do anything, why hadn't he done it in the last five years?

You know, it's the bad gimmick, and also that he's like Jack Perry-sized.

If we're really going to be honest, he's like just a small guy.

Well, it's not even size.

It's the look, the look of him, his fucking face.

He looks like a guy sitting at a bus stop.

He is not a star.

He's not a celebrity in any way.

He makes a joke out of wrestling.

He looks like a goddamn guy that changes your oil at Valvoline that might go to the gym once a week.

And he's completely silly, phony, and fake in every way.

Nobody should ever want to pay to see him.

He may be the poster boy for AEW's limit in a lot of ways of just how far they could go and how far they didn't go.

And, you know, I thought the end of the match was all right.

Built up to some interesting stuff on the mat with Zach Sabre Jr.

But the luster's gone with Orange Cassidy amongst those fans.

This is a weird night.

You would think AEW would have some excited fans.

The garden fans were really loud.

We heard that crowd was nuts all night.

This is miles down the road.

That notorious, subdued Long Island audience.

So, yeah,

not a hot crowd and a match that I didn't think you would watch.

And there's no reason for you to watch it.

Saber looks like if some of the

island natives that used to do the shrunken heads got a hold of Nigel McGinnis

and some way just

freeze-dried him or evaporated him or something.

And just, that's what's left.

They just shrunk his head, but left the rest of his body the same.

Well, no, they shrunk the whole body everything

just everything he's just he's a great value nigel mcginnis

nigel had some size and some oomph to him and a goddamn

ability to project some type of physicality whereas this fucking kid looks like a goddamn q-tip and he's pretending to be billy robinson every once in a while his gimmick is he's a he's the greatest matt wrestler alive oh god well that's the problem billy robinson is dead or elsewhere

he would use this guy as a suppository if he was constipated, just to be able to take a shit.

Anyway, speaking of taking a shit,

then we had the six-man tag between

Samoa Joe, Hook, and Shapupi

against Chris Jericho, Big Bill, and Jeff Cobb, who was stuck into the spot because Brian Keith got some kind of injury that I didn't hear explained.

And

before the bell, the fans were chanting, please retire at Jericho lightly.

They weren't even really,

they weren't even really adamant about that because they know it's fruitless.

It's hopeless to ask.

They're just,

we're not going to make noise.

And Jericho tried to get some heat off of that.

And then,

I got to be honest, it looked long on fast fast-forward.

I don't know.

By this point, I've just,

why?

Why?

Right?

Finally, Joe got sleeper on Cobb and Shapoopy got sleeper on Big Bill.

And Hook hit Jericho with his, with a Judas effect, his own move, and one, two, three.

So

that's Jericho's way of

paying back Tony Khan for all the TV time he's sucked up for the last little while with his learning tree bullshit.

Oh, but I'll put one of your young guys over, Tony.

And he did, just like he did Action Andretti.

Are we going to remember this two weeks from now?

And

the bigger question, Brian, is there eight more years of this left on that 10-year contract Jericho signed?

So he'll be making millions of dollars from Tony until he's in his early 60s?

Oh, I don't know if there's that many years still left.

I forget when he signed it, but his 60s.

There's got to be at least seven.

Got to be at least seven.

It's go-away heat like he's never had before.

And I know he thinks he's leaning into it and making it work for him.

I don't think he understands reality.

And

it takes over his matches.

Not heat because he's going to do something to his opponent.

Heat because he's still wrestling.

And your big bill is acting like a clown.

The only one I actually say I've kind of gotten a kick out of in this, or at least it's made me see him a little differently, it's the guy who can't wrestle, Brian Keith.

Is that his name?

Yes.

Yeah.

I don't know.

There's something about him walking out there with his hat on I like.

Well, and also he's like five foot two,

but he's got this mean face on like he's a badass.

And with the hat, yeah, I agree.

At least

you might want to look at him.

Poor Big Bill stuck in this thing, but that's the

again, that's the deal is that Jericho,

what you you said, he doesn't believe that he's leaning into it.

He is doing that so that he can tell Tony,

and that's really the only audience he needs to impress.

See, they're reacting to it.

Anyway,

who won?

Yes, that's right.

Hook won.

He beat Jericho with.

See, I've forgotten already.

With the Judas effect.

With the Judas effect.

Seven more years.

We just shaved one year off.

We're making progress.

Well, I said at least seven.

And then came the ladder match.

And

what was this?

This was for

the TNT TBF.

What title was this for?

The TNT Championship.

And, you know, when we talked the other day about the timeline in...

late 2019 of you talking about they better make changes or they're gonna lose their TV.

We also forgot it wasn't just Tony taking control of the book.

They got moved.

Oh, yeah, they did actually effectively lose their TV slot on the network they were on for another network.

Because the TNT title was originally created to be like the number two title.

Remember, Cody Rhodes had it early on.

Yeah.

And then they went to TBS.

And then they created a TBS championship for women, but this was for the TNT championship.

Oh, man.

At one time, the number two championship in AEW.

Amazing how these things work.

And this is the belt that they were trying to give to

who had to vacate it just now?

Did they get hurt?

Adam Copeland.

Oh, they showed the video.

I don't even know why they showed the video because when you watch it, you're like, what the fuck was he doing?

Yeah.

So he hurt himself, broke his leg, had to vacate this belt.

And the Hardley boys were going to give it to their friend Jungle Jack off.

And that's when,

was it Daniels?

That's what he actually did, wasn't it?

Was he no,

and we're going to have a ladder match.

And guess who won the ladder match?

Guess who won the pony?

Jungle Jack off.

The vision of him at the top of the ladder, reaching for the belt, and you're like, you see his midsection.

He's so skinny.

Like, it's unbelievable that he would be able to fight his way out of a wet paper bag,

let alone beat anyone in the ring.

When he's standing up on top of the ladder, you can't tell him from the ladder.

So, this was Mark Briscoe versus Take a Shit versus one of the Martin brothers versus El Fantasmo.

Who may sound like a masked Luchador, folks, but he wasn't.

No, he was a white guy, looked kind of like a discount Logan Paul.

They said he was from Canada.

Well, see, there's a lot of white people in Canada.

El Fantasmo from Canada.

Yeah,

right down the road from fucking Montreal.

And Leo Rush showed up,

and he got hurt.

I don't know how, but he showed up and then got hurt.

And Jungle Jackoff, that was who it was in the match.

And

on the fast forward, I saw three or four ladders in the ring, several chairs in the ring, probably half a dozen tables.

Some of them broke, some of them didn't.

And it went on and on and on.

The match don't stop until the break of of dawn.

And finally, Jungle Jackoff won to the shock and surprise of absolutely nobody.

Fill me in on the finer points of this thing.

There really is nothing to fill you in on.

It's not the kind of match you would like.

It looked dangerous.

Apparently, it was.

Leo Rush is hurt.

We don't know why.

I told you I really was happy he was back.

I'm so entertained by him whenever he's around and he always disappears right after he comes back.

We'll see.

And

they ought to make it revolving door instead of forbidden door.

You know, and it's not just those six-man matches that you were talking about earlier.

It's matches like this where guys just have to hide and wait for their spot.

You know, one-on-one ladder matches are one thing.

These multi-man ones, everyone has to wait for their spot.

Yeah.

And

they're going all the way, you know, for AEW with Jack Perry.

This hasn't resonated.

This hasn't worked.

It hasn't boosted interest or attention or anything.

It's gone the eye.

And again, if anyone says, why is he a scapegoat?

What's this about?

It all goes back to CM Punk slapped him around and got fired.

So it's so stupid, but they're going to keep trying.

We'll see how this works.

And how we wait, hold on here one second.

Hold on.

American Heritage Dictionary, third edition.

Scapegoat.

Let me see if scapegoat is listed there.

Does it say anything about a guy that makes smart ass comments comments and then gets his fucking neck choked and then

hold on here, scarce.

That fits the crowd.

Scapula, scapegoat, one bearing blame for others.

Who else should be blamed besides little jungle jackoff?

Who else was responsible for this?

Is he saying he's taking the blame for the guy who was fired?

Apparently, well, he should, because he's the one that started it.

But he was fired.

That means he took the blame, doesn't it?

I don't know.

They are

thinking on a deeper level.

I should say he got the blame.

Well, the point is, is that he's not

being blamed for actions of others.

He's being blamed for the shit he did.

He ran his little whiny-ass bitch pussy mouth to a tougher guy, and he got his neck cranked.

And he got, and then, and then he was let go.

It could have been worse.

So he's not being blamed for something somebody else did.

He was front-face locked for something he did.

So the scapegoat thing doesn't even work.

Anyway,

you know what else doesn't work?

Mercedes Moon.

Well, she worked.

She worked here on this show.

She ain't working no

stephanie vacker

okay before the tv started announcing that stephanie vacker was going to be on this show

i could have seen that she was arrested on the network news for terrorism

and oh wow they got some

yeah i wouldn't have had a fucking clue who this fucking woman was.

Why'd you bring up terrorism?

I'm just, I could have been told anything.

I see the name on the news.

Is she a terrorist?

I don't know.

You're talking about her name?

Just the name Stephanie Vakor?

No, I'm just talking about this name has never been heard before ever.

Have you ever heard of Stephanie Vaker?

It's Vakor,

and

I'm not a big fan of international women's wrestling currently, so I was not familiar with her name at all until she came.

The point is, this is the first time that she's ever been in front of these people, in front of this crowd.

Nobody's heard of her until six weeks ago.

And they're chanting for her because this fucking Mercedes moan is so goddamn annoying.

And the people don't like her.

They think she sucks that this unknown woman that could have been.

as i said anything if you heard the name you go she she's an accountant she's a terrorist She's a veterinarian.

We don't know who the fuck she is.

Again, why is terrorists throwing in there in the middle of accountant and veterinarian?

Why do you keep going back to terrorists?

Because that's the first thing I said, and I'm trying to tie it all together.

It was a poor analogy, and I was trying to find

the point

of a teacher, a serial killer.

They could be a candlemaker, a serial killer, a candle maker.

There's one.

But

they've spent millions of dollars for wrestlers to bring in, and nobody gives a shit about them.

And they've booked them into obscurity where even if they did give a shit about them, they don't after a few weeks.

And here this woman comes in just to do a goddamn job for Mercedes Moon, and the people are chanting for her.

Something's wrong here.

So.

Why would you cheer for Mercedes-Monet?

You wouldn't.

But apparently they they think somebody's supposed to yeah she that's the thing her whole gimmick is she thinks she's entitled to the cheers

but why would you cheer

no she they started out thinking that people were going that she was going to be a babyface you can tell they started out thinking she was going to pop a rating well you can tell and none of these things have happened

But that's again

the first move of the match right at the bell, right before the bell was Stephanie sucker head-butted her.

That's a heel move.

Oh, she had ding, ding, ding, and then she gets on her.

And they started working it like that Mercedes was going to be the babyface.

And I'm sorry, but between,

again, the stripper shimmy and the annoying fucking music with the annoying fucking CEO chant and the obnoxious but yet stagey and fake interviews,

People don't like her.

And

they tried, it looked to me like two cheerleaders at a Halloween party, trying to find, but neither one of them was a heel or a babyface in terms of work.

There was no way to tell who you were supposed to cheer and who you were supposed to boo, except that Mercedes is so fake and annoying in personality

that they got people chanting

for the unknown.

And

they hate Mercedes so bad, being from Boston, they were chanting, fuck the Celtics.

Did you hear that?

Oh, I heard that.

I like that.

Well, but

the fuck.

It'd be like if Lawler was introduced at the Louisville Gardens and being fuck Memphis State.

Well, to be fair, she was sitting courtside for the Celtics during the playoffs.

So

there is something to tie her there recently.

Anyway, this was so fucking long

that finally people amused themselves by cheering for Stephanie and anything she did.

And finally, Mercedes hit that shitty finish of hers that I don't know why somebody hadn't switched that thing out for her and then got a crossface and Stephanie tapped and the fans booed.

The fans booed the alleged babyface making the heel give up.

I was just going to say, Vickur actually looked all right in there.

She wasn't as bad as Mercedes.

Now, there are people who say Mercedes is maybe the greatest women's worker of all time.

Well, there's people that say Trump ought to be president again, even after the debate.

I'll still take senile over a criminal.

And speaking of criminal, then the booze got louder.

as Mercedes was doing her shimmy.

And then Britt Baker came out.

and the people pop that now they're gonna obviously mercedes is a heel now because there's britt baker and they stared at each other and then britt left but

apparently britt has been in the gym for adam cole she looked fantastic had a tan a whole nine yards

she looked like she could kick the shit out of adam as a matter of fact she was dressed for it too she was She was dressed like she was going to jump in the ring and

she turned and walked away.

And

just walk away, Bridbake.

Bridbake, that's how you save that.

Come on, walk away, Renee.

Walk away,

walk away, Bridbake.

It doesn't, it doesn't work.

Hey, don't

go complain to the fucking left bank.

No, that's not, no, that's the four tops.

No,

what?

Walk away, Renee, the left bank.

Google it.

Bet me $500 right now.

I'm not betting you money.

All right.

I don't play with money.

So then.

Walk away, Renee.

Hold on.

I'm going to the left bank.

Who wrote this song?

The left bank.

Oh, now you're going to get down in the minutia, huh?

Why am I thinking of the four tops?

I don't have any idea.

I was on their 1967 album, Reach Out.

Well, they stole it.

I like their version better.

What?

Oh, come on.

We can't play it on the air, so we can't have this discussion.

We just have to accept what I said.

No, I will not accept what you say.

Nobody did walk away Renee better than the Left Bank.

And that's a bank with an E on the end, I'll have you.

That shows they're classy.

You keep me hanging on.

Do you like the Supremes or Vanilla Fudge?

Well, the Supremes, because it's the classic, but at the same time, Vanilla Fudge didn't butcher it.

They did do an acceptable

heavy metal 60s version.

It's not like that goddamn who did turn the page just now and fucked it all up.

Or not just now, but after Bob Seeger.

And they play that on the classic rock station.

It's Metallica is who it is, I think.

Anybody that does turn the page besides Bob Seeger Seeger, ought to be horse whipped and flogged and anally protruded.

Speaking of being horse whipped, fogged, flogged, and anally protruded,

oh, god damn it.

I had to watch the plumber because

I wanted to see the IWGP title.

The world title of New Japan, the one that's been featured at the expense of the real AEW world title and its champion on their TV for the last couple of months, that the plumber won somewhere in San Bernardino, California, or something.

He didn't even go to Japan and he won it on an American show, right?

You're thinking.

Right.

Right.

Well,

actually, I'm not sure.

I think he won it in California on one of these New Japan Strong deals or whatever.

Point is

the plumber had to have the Japanese world title

and now he's defending against NAITO.

Not NATO,

but NAITO.

There's an I, or elsewhere it would be the North American Treaty Organization.

Yeah, you're right.

He won the title in April in Chicago.

Or Chicago, not San Bernardino.

So the New Japan World Championship was won in Chicago, lost in Elmont, New York.

But the problem is, is that

here again, Moxley, along with Danielson and Jericho, who are their top guys

and mainstream names.

Well, not a name, he had a different name, but you know what I'm saying, recognizable to the greater audience at large.

He wins the title on a new Japan show and then comes in on an AEW pay-per-view.

Another one of Tony's top guys just gets beat outright by this fucking unknown fucking guy.

You put MJF against a Mexican mid-card guy,

Danielson barely beats a Japanese senior citizen, and then another Japanese senior citizen kicks the shit out of one of your top guys and beats him on your own pay-per-view.

How is this benefiting Tony Khan's AEW?

Well, like we were talking about earlier, Forbidden Door and the lead-up to to it doesn't benefit AEW at all, especially if the buy rates are going down, not up.

The exposure he's giving other promotions talent,

especially the ones that he's not going to immediately turn around and try to sign, is admirable, but it doesn't help AEW.

WWE and NXT specifically just featured TNA talent on that show.

It benefited NXT.

It benefited TNA too.

And that's the real goal: a win-win.

But for AEW,

this is time they should be spending building their talent so that everyone's ready for something down the road soon or later.

And instead,

everyone just stands in place.

And part of the reason is the weeks at a time spent building up other companies' wrestling stars.

And it does nothing to advance AEW-centric programs.

Let me give you a little brief

dissertation on my impressions of this match, because

I said, okay, it's a world title match.

I'll let them see what they can do to impress me.

And they started trading fake forearms that nobody sold.

And then Mox did fake kicks that didn't connect.

And then he went out, he slid two chairs in.

But

Naito

whiffed a gut kick where he threw the gut kick and

it wasn't even anywhere near him.

And then they botched a spot where Moxley was charging in the corner and went for a clothesline, but

Naito went for the kick at the same time and they both fucking hit each other at the same time

and not meaning to.

And then they went to the floor forever and fought on the desk.

And Moxley gives the referee, who was a new Japan referee,

looked like he was four foot seven.

He gave the referee the finger.

And

now, I wrote, why is this no-class piece of shit allowed on television at this point?

He contributes nothing except his own delusional mental thought of what a supposed badass tough guy is.

And he ain't it.

And then Naito was beating on Moxley on the floor with a foam rubber tube.

And I fast-forwarded to about 15 minutes into this and found some more fake forearms.

I used to watch my stuff back.

on tape, the Midnight Express's stuff, whoever I was managing to see if, if there was anything we ought to do more of or less of or whatever.

How can not just fans, but how can these guys who attempt to call themselves professionals

look at the video of these fake forearms?

And

even if they looked good,

that the fact that everybody does it in every match would make me not do it.

But because they look like shit,

it's an expose

of the entire business to just watch it.

And then Moxley brought another chair in the ring and threatened the Japanese referee who ran from him, ducked in the corner, and hid his eyes.

Am I lying, or did you see that?

No, that's the popular referee.

They were chanting for him, Red Shoes.

So he took Red Shoes Dugan's fucking gimmick from Los Angeles in 72?

That's actually exactly what it is.

He wears red shoes and they call him red shoes because of the classic L.A.

referee.

So then the referee finally got up the gumption to pull the chair away from Moxley and began hugging it like it was a little baby.

Don't take my chair.

What the fuck is this?

So

then Moxley tried the double arm, but Naito blocked it and Moxley tried again and gave it to him halfway, and they kind of fell in a heap.

And then Naido popped back up, and Moxley was selling it.

And I wrote, imagine if I had paid attention to everything.

And then they danced around a little bit like two drunks at closing time.

And I'm trying to figure out what's going on because there was an obvious miscommunication a minute ago, and now they're

trying to do something.

And then

Naido dropped him on his fucking head and gave him another move of some kind and pinned him one, two, three.

And I think

that the move I just said of some kind was what they were trying to do

before because it's a, he would have been giving him.

He would have been giving Moxley his move after he foiled Moxley's.

I don't fucking know, but they fell down a couple of times.

Could you understand what was going on here?

Again, I'm going to reiterate what I always say.

Jon Moxley's one of the worst professional wrestlers going.

Don't say one of.

Well, he may be the single worst, but he's certainly in the list or in the top five or three or one.

But I can't stand his matches.

And at this point, I can't stand people who do.

It's beyond just me not liking his matches.

They're awful.

Every match is awful.

What is anybody seeing?

Are they overlooking the shit that don't land, the shit that don't connect, the shit he doesn't sell, the fucking horrible look of everything, the nonsensical.

They're overlooking all of that.

They like the personality and the attitude.

And they're

the attitude of a fucking drunk in a sewer with bad manners, and he probably smells like it, too.

So why would you like that attitude?

You have to ask those people.

I will say one thing.

I was watching him walk through the crowd, and I realized if I wrestled in AEW, I would want to do that too.

They should just have everyone do that.

Change the look completely, cut down on the cost of the stage.

Serious.

I mean, it's not, you don't have to be as like old school as, you know, you can't see anything because it's so dark, but have guys walk through the crowd.

It looks better.

You get some energy going, as opposed to the ramp and the stage, just because.

That's what the late 90s told us we're supposed to do.

I think actually these people aren't walking in through the crowd.

They're walking into the ring out of the crowd.

Just an open invitation.

Come on up.

You can work too.

Well, that was Moxley versus Naito.

I have to admit, I'm surprised you watched it.

I did not think you were going to watch that match.

Well, as I said, I fast-forwarded a lot of it because, Jesus Christ, but

I mean, I could spend a year picking his shit apart because none of it's any good.

Anyway, let's move on to the main event of the evening, shall we, for the AEW World Heavyweight Championship, Will Ostrich and Swerve Strickland.

And how the fucker, I'm thinking, are they going to get out of this?

Because they've,

again,

Ostrich is a high-priced acquisition that is a full-fledged babyface, but has been linked for whatever reason since he's been there with a heel manager, even though Don Fallus doesn't come out with him anymore.

There was never any goddamn announcement that he had pulled away, and we'll find out later on.

Don't still around.

And meanwhile, Swerve Strickland, the baby terrorizer with the

equally checkered past, is a huge baby face.

And Swerve just won the thing.

But why would you pull the trigger on this match this quickly?

And they've got in six weeks or whatever,

a show at Wimbley Stadium, Osprey's hometown.

One would think he would have gone in with a stellar record and be ready to challenge for something instead of already being turned away.

But they had a match here at Forbidden Door.

And, Brian,

I know the people aren't going to believe this, but they'll never guess how that they started it.

They started it in the middle of the ring

trading fake forearms, and neither one of them sold.

But then it became a kung fu movie, and the fans liked that.

At least these did.

They did athletic shit to each other

and they were serious in their own way.

It wasn't like they were laughing about their performance like some of these fucking amateur assholes do from Rosita or whatever.

But

again, the modern match, you know, drawbacks.

Who am I supposed to want to win?

And who am I supposed to lose or want to lose?

And why?

Who's the heel?

Who's the babyface?

Can anything stop anybody?

Or is this just a video game that's going to continue on because it's not real life and these aren't human beings?

All of these questions.

At first, for a while,

Ostrich was being a bit heelish, but I wonder, is it on purpose or is he just he's a dick and that comes off like that?

But then Swerve

was kind of a little heelish, and I'm like, well, maybe, maybe I'm changing my mind.

I watched wrestling for 40 years before they managed to fuck it all up.

And I don't ever remember seeing a crowd

change their mind back and forth in the middle of a match on who they ought to be cheering for

based on they couldn't tell from the way the guys were fucking working.

And it was so much modern wrestling without any actual pro-wrestling maneuvers in it.

Somebody take a fucking backdrop.

There was no thought to

is this cool move that I want to do so complicated that we can't execute it without really obvious cooperation and time that we're taking to get balanced and set and ready to do the cool move.

And maybe we shouldn't just do that if we can't.

If I see one more person

suddenly be fighting somebody and turn their back on him from a foot away and pose and then run to the opposite ropes,

I'll shoot myself in the fucking head.

I mean,

I know they're great athletes, and I know they're working hard and they're taking a lot of chances.

They couldn't have passed wrestling school

the first two weeks in 20 years ago because of the blatant disregard to trying to make anything look good

or legitimate or tell a story or get emotions from people besides holy shit.

They're not making them mad.

They're not making them sad.

They're not making them feel sympathy for a guy.

They're just, ooh, he hit him hard.

Ooh, he fell through something.

Ooh, he hit him again.

And then

finally, Swerve, the world champion, goes to the top to double stomp

Ostrich while he's on the apron of the ring, but Ostrich rolls off in front of the announce desk.

So Swerve

comes off the top rope and double stomps Ostrich.

over the top of the announce desk.

It looked beautiful.

It was an amazing fucking piece of timing and a bump.

And then Swerve started to roll him back in the ring and then pulled him back out and they went over.

Oh, God, the world champion has given this guy his finish off the top rope onto an announce desk.

But then he pulls him over and they get up and balance on the barricade, which is like a balance beam.

And the cooperation that takes so that Swerve can pile drive Willy Boy on the barricade

and then roll him into the ring and then don't cover him there,

pick him up and hit him with another move and then cover him to count.

And then within seconds, Ostrich had crotched Swerve on the top rope and climbed up there.

And then they stood and balanced gingerly.

Swerve knocks Ostrich down to the apron.

So

Will does a springboard vault to the top and does a Cody cutter

off the top rope onto Swerve.

After two hospitalization moves in the previous 60 seconds,

he's vaulting to the top rope and jerking the fucking world champion around by the neck.

Is this lost on everybody?

Rip Rogers would have kicked this motherfucker out of goddamn amateur class.

The fuck, the guys that started day one

used to have more sense than this.

What has happened?

These guys are trying to build up a story in a match that defies any sense.

Even when you have your opponent beat, do more.

And at this point, every time you have him beat, he's going to kick at anyway.

So why not?

So,

so anyway, two hospitalization moves in a course of 60 seconds.

Then he's back up at 100 miles an hour.

And

I start fast-forwarding because they went five more minutes.

And then

the referee's been wiped out.

And Don Fallus comes to Ringside and hands Will a screwdriver.

Remember when they were using the screwdriver thing for no apparent reason?

It's back.

With Omega, yeah.

Yeah.

And

so then

Winnie gives Will the screwdriver, Nana

gives fucking Don a bump, boom, but Ostrich grabs Nana and goes to stab him.

And I mean, draws back like I'm going to stab you, but then he looks and realizes, ah, and then he gets the dumbfounded face like, I'm conflicted.

Should I stab this son of a bitch or not?

There goes your work visa.

Waller's a goddamn tv camera on him should i stab this

with a screwdriver or not you idiots

and of course he's conflicted so finally he drops the screwdriver he doesn't want to win that way you fucking amateur goddamn morons

so then

as he slides in

Swerve kicks him in the head with that kick that he does and goes the top and gives him a double stomp and the place blows and he covers and they're counting one, two,

and he kicked out.

It was there, you fucking blithering simpletons.

It was there.

You had him despite this rotten fucking video game match and this bullshit, lousy overacting.

You fucking had him.

And then you two count kicked out.

It was there.

Then he kicked him in the head again and covered him in two count.

And then

Will makes a big, he's taking his elbow pad off weakly and he's staggering like a fucking idiot.

And they're saying, oh, he's going to try the hidden blade, that elbow that never lands, except if it's a potato that looks like shit.

He pulls the elbow pad off and goes for the elbow, and Swerve just catches him or catches it and pats him on the back

and kicks him in the head again,

and then does some other kind of fucked up move.

One, two, three.

And then they hugged and kissed each other.

That may have been the worst shit that I've ever seen.

But maybe just because it was after four hours of equally rotten drivel.

Drivel, my word again.

I believe it will make a comeback.

Beyond the wrestling, what did you think of the actual booking of having swerved?

Keep the belt.

Beat Osprey, Danielson watching, or not Danielson, Daniel Garcia, excuse me, watching from the bleachers or from a box.

That's where he should have been up in the bleachers.

Well, he was in a box, actually.

MJF backstage footage of him watching the monitor.

Osprey.

If Garcia was watching in a box, then

I rescind my previous statement that anybody that comes out of a box is over.

Well, what do you think?

Again, what do you think?

Swerve winning, Osprey losing.

They tease something with Osprey and a disappointed Kyle Fletcher.

I don't know if you would call that a tease, but I don't know what that was.

What do you think of all this, booking-wise?

I mean, obviously, it was too early for Swerve to lose the world title.

Because he just won it, and they delayed it.

If they hadn't had

Hangman Paige in that pay-per-view match, that three-way, and Swerve had just won the goddamn thing then, he would have been way more over.

But Paige gets in the way of everything.

He's useless.

Whatever his family emergency was, he's been gone for four months.

And it was just in the wrestling observer that it wasn't a serious issue.

The fuck?

People recover from fucking cancer surgery and brain surgery in four months.

But anyway,

it was too early for Swerve to lose the belt, but it was too early to have this fucking match.

But then again, nobody knows what the fuck is going on anyway, because

Osprey

was brought in at a high cost.

Everybody was thought he's the greatest wrestler in the world.

He signs with a heel stable and then announces, I'm going back home, but I'll be back when I'm finished with New Japan.

He comes back two months later, and he's still technically

in the heel stable managed by Don Fallus, right?

Because he's never quit.

He's never been fired.

Don Callis is the one who gave him the screwdriver here.

Don Callis one gave him the screwdriver.

Felcher in the group is in the group.

So was Hobbs until they hurt him.

Somehow he got injured.

And take a shit.

And

Will has beaten every single one of those guys in matches that weren't ever explained as to why Don would want his top guy to wrestle all of his other guys and cause ill will.

And then

now Don does not go to the ring with Ostrich anymore, but he comes out with moments like this.

What the fuck is happening?

The guy's a babyface.

Have him renounce the manager.

I made a mistake.

It's too late now because he's an idiot if he doesn't realize he's made a mistake by now.

But how they got

this booking is goddamn, is drill.

It's inexplicable.

You can't follow it.

You can't understand it.

It makes no sense.

And it buries everyone.

It just makes it

everyone sooner or later, no matter how big their name is, becomes part of meaningless sound and motion in this torrent of effluvia.

That's what I think about the fucking booking.

So MJF didn't get anything on him, and he was probably home in bed by the time his thing was halfway over with, and it went downhill from there.

Everything else sucked.

Well, that was Forbidden Door, or as Tony Khan called it, great.

And this is that was Forbidden Door, or as Tony Khan called it, a million dollars or so.

Well, it's New York, it may be more than that.

You know what?

I didn't take that into account.

Union, 1.5.

What's the tax credit up there?

When they fill that paperwork out, get back with me.

Anyway, this show is over with, and another show will be beginning much sooner than we would like.

Join us, folks, for all that and more.

We'll try to get through this together.

Until then, for Brian, I'm Jim, and Harley's over there.

Thank you.

Fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.