Episode 533: Bells & Whistles

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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, Bariah at last, he sends this message out by podcast.

He 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 again, everybody, and welcome today on the Jim Cornette Experience.

The birds in my garage are growing bigger every day.

The pay-per-views next weekend are for the birds, and the top golfer in the world becomes a bird that can't fly right here in Louisville, Kentucky, folks.

And now to join me in talking about all this and maybe even something else.

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

Co-host of you.

He's a lone eagle in a flock of podcasting turkeys.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Hello, Ha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again, soaring above the wrestling world with you to talk about all the nonsense that is.

Yeah, are you soaring above your open window there?

Are you going to fly out the window?

The window is open right now.

I apologize in advance, anyone.

If you hear lawnmowers or pool parties or crazy helicopters or hot rods or any kind of bird or a woodpecker, there could be so many things that happen.

I apologize in advance.

They might hear from a pecker or two today.

No, right before we went on the air, I said, oh, my.

My Skype reset or something.

You say, I have to turn you up.

I have to turn up the volume in my headphones.

She says, can you hear my background noise?

I said, I can't even hear you.

And

now it sounds like you're in a vacuum.

Are you in one of those sensory deprivation chambers?

We're not supposed to talk about that, but I cannot confirm or deny anything.

What sense are you supposed to be depriving this week?

Smell.

Well,

in that case, you picked a wrong day to be on a show with me there, pal.

All right.

Well, now everybody wants to know about the big news in Louisville, Kentucky this week.

I'm going to go straight to the headlines.

Brian, the birds in my garage are getting bigger.

And it's a.

You know, that may not be the news from Louisville.

No.

That's probably not.

It's probably not number one or number two.

That's the favorite thing that's happened in my life over this past week, I'll have you know, because I've got revelations.

I've made discoveries.

And to bring the people up to date, a bird built a nest on top of my garage door opener in my garage, and he was so industrious about it.

I hated to ruin his work.

And also, I thought he might be pregnant, which it turned out he was.

And she

had babies.

And at first, I thought there were two.

And then, Brian, you'll recall several days ago on the last program, I said there's three of them, Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Well, now I've discovered it's Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Irving.

There's four of them.

And the

mama bird, Ruth Bader Ginsbird, and the Papa Bird, Bertie Sanders.

Ridiculous.

They've been tag teaming bringing the worms.

What?

What are you talking about?

I'm not talking.

You're talking.

I'm listening about, not talking about.

It's a serious

issue here because it's the miracle of life.

Well, it sounds like everything that's serious took place.

Now it's just a fun, enjoying

standing there watching them phase.

Yes.

The birds are tag teaming.

bringing in the worms and every I'm sitting there in my chair watching them.

That's the highlight of my day.

You go out there and watch the birds for a few minutes because they do this just constantly.

One bird will fly in with the worm in its beak.

And as soon now, remember before I said you could barely see their little beaks and their fuzzy little cotton-like heads peeking out over the top of the nest.

And then I said, Well, these birds are getting bigger.

You can see their whole heads coming out, and

they're going crazy whenever the worm comes in.

Now you can hear them.

The highest pitched little

from all four of them: Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Irving, whenever the worms come in.

And it's, I think they've also, they've got to have a full finished basement in this, in this nest, because now there's four

of the baby birds that are growing every day.

And now they got feathers and they're hanging their heads over the side when they sleep.

So you can see all four of them.

And at the same time, The other birds are getting on top of this net.

It's a huge nest inside, really.

They do wonderful construction.

So now every day when I have to watch wrestling,

momentarily I can step outside and watch baby birds chirp while they're getting fed worms from.

And me and mama and daddy have got cool.

Now

if I'm standing in a driveway, they'll just fly right on in.

Or

we can.

coexist within five or six feet of each other, speak politely and go about our business.

You haven't been motivated at all to take out the camera and get some photography?

Well, yeah, I've taken, I have that new digital camera that one of these days I'm going to learn more than the automatic setting.

And I've taken because the babies, you can walk right up and just take close-ups now.

So, yes, I have some of those pigs.

But then there's no film in the camera, no way to get it developed.

So I'm taking pictures in the camera.

I might have Hotchkiss figure out how to make them real.

But anyway, that's the big news here.

I'll have you know they're they're squawking at feeding time and it's just it's one and also

the the cardinals are getting jealous.

There was also a rumble, a bird rumble in the driveway the other night because one of the cardinals wanted to fly in to see what was going on with all the birds that, you know, the traffic there.

And

Apparently, Papa Bird,

his voice sounded a little deeper.

He got down there in the driveway right in front of the garage, and he wasn't going to let that cardinal come in.

He was like, fuck you.

Can you deal with this?

And so he's another fucking person that beat the cards this year.

With your love of animals, why don't you write a kids book?

What does that have to do with

Animal Farm 2?

Animal Farm 2.

No,

I love the animals.

I don't necessarily love the kids.

Why am I entertaining random kids?

Because I love it.

I want to go out and pet the animals instead of fucking

some snot-nosed goddamn brat.

I'm going to say, read it.

I'm not going to read my hard work.

All right, well, why don't you write an animal book for the animals, son?

Because they can't read.

What do you think?

I'm a fucking idiot.

Read it to them.

Help them out.

You know what?

Now that's not a bad idea.

What about bedtime stories for the little baby birds?

what do you think

what would it be

well let's see

um

you know a lot of these goddamn nursery rhymes and bedtime stories that we tell to the kids involve murder and mayhem and people being drugged what nursery signs what nursery signs what nursery rhymes are you saying to the kids as you put it well you know the witch is always trying to put hansel and gretel in the oven

And was your mom telling you the story of Hansel and Gretel to get you to go to bed?

Well, no, I'm just in nursery rhymes in general.

Well, no, you know, bedtime stories were like, who's got my golden arm?

Who's got...

No, that was around the campfire.

We were roasting weenies.

But nevertheless.

It was you.

It was you.

Yes,

you've heard the story.

I've heard the story, yes.

Well, there you go.

I thought they invented it at Camp Kiyuma.

I had no idea that.

Oh, come on.

No, they did it at Camp Mountain Lake, too.

But back to the nursery rhymes that are committing May, there's always some kind of horrible evil.

The hero is going to be killed or eaten or, you know, drugged and put to sleep and can only be fucking woken up by a kiss from a frog.

Or whatever.

How did that go again?

Who was kissing who and turning who into what?

It's been a long time since I've heard these stuff, but you know what I'm saying.

Centuries.

Yeah, I don't know who was going.

I wasn't read that as a kid going to bed.

I'll just say that.

Well, see, you would have turned out better.

Hey,

I turned out just right.

Yeah.

Not too hot and not too cold.

Right down the middle.

Right down the middle.

Well, let's call it right down the middle of the fairway, Brian.

Now that we got the bird news out of the way, because

the big news here in Louisville, Kentucky, this past week,

they've they've had the

PGA,

the Professional Golfers

Association, Alliance.

Association.

Associated.

That'll work.

The big tournament, the annual.

This is not the Masters.

This is the PGA.

Who knows what the fuck these rich white fucks are doing with their goddamn little piddly-ass golf game?

But nevertheless, they're having it here.

And the eyes of the world, network, television, all this bullshit's on Louisville.

Hotel rooms are, you know, sky high, obviously.

And the locals are fed up by the way.

And this Valhalla golf club, course, whatever.

Valhalla is coming.

Valhalla is.

You know what?

Valhalla is here.

It's about not even five miles down the road from me, however far it is.

And the locals here have apparently already been fed up with the golfing people because

this affects me and none the least because I'm not going to get on the interstate or go more than two miles from the house in the course of the average week anyway, right?

But on Thursday morning, I went out to do my

weekly errands.

Remember, I told you last week, I did five things in a fucking hour and 15 minutes or whatever in a 4.8 mile round trip.

But I'm not going that far and I'm not going that many places.

And in the course of this, I go to the pharmacy where we get Harley's medication done.

And a nice lady there, right, is,

I just mentioned casually, well, at least it's not raining today.

You know, just, you know,

the conversation starter.

She says, yeah, maybe they can get finished with the golf quicker.

And she apparently.

The traffic, because it's the same road.

It's just under the interstate overpass and you go down there and you turn left and there's this golf facility.

So the traffic has been ridiculous in front of their business, and she's rolling her eyes at it.

So then

I'm driving down to the next place I'm going, Paul's Market, and I see the sign on.

Now,

this is a little business area.

on a pretty busy street in my little town,

but it's three, four miles at this point from the golf club, right?

And a sign in a liquor store parking lot, the LED sign says no PGA parking.

And I'm like, what?

Are these fucking people so desperate to see some dipshit play around to golf that they will park at the goddamn, you know, Cox's and walk four miles?

What the fuck is going on here, right?

And then I go to the bank drive-through and the nice lady, and they were amazed apparently in the United Kingdom and geographical points around that part of the world to find out that we have drive-through banking in the United States.

Did you hear this, Brian?

Yeah, of course we have drive-through banking.

But did you hear they were amazed that we do?

And that apparently means they don't.

And

ICE machines and drive-through banking.

Please, our friends crosspond, get with the fucking program.

But anyway, this, the lady at the bank drive-through, she is the nicest, friendliest, wouldn't say say boo to a goose, as Adrian Street would say, right?

Just has wonderful things to say about everybody.

And she said, are you going to the golf or whatever?

No, I won't be, won't be golfing or watching golfing.

And she rolled her eyes again.

And just, it's like they've had to run people out of their parking lot.

So this was just the local

response to this thing.

And then we find out on the news, or I find out,

they have parking for the

golf tournament at the Valahalla golf course out at the fairgrounds, 15 miles away

on two different interstates and a goddamn zigzag

where people are parking there because that's the biggest parking lot in goddamn town at the fairgrounds.

And they're getting on buses and they're busing that, which means they got to be there,

you know, however long till they can get another fucking fucking bus.

And it's like a 40-minute drive in daytime traffic, especially with all this going on, to get to this fucking thing, to watch these people play golf.

And that's they had to go to the goddamn fairgrounds from wherever the fuck they might be at.

And many of them are from out of town, thank God.

But anyway, so this is the prefacing this goddamn fiasco bunch of who shot John.

It goes on, what was that, Friday morning?

Hell, but the day's blur now.

Friday morning, correct.

Friday morning.

Okay.

Friday morning at 5 a.m.

before it's even light,

one of the shuttle buses from the fairgrounds, apparently, I guess they said shuttle bus

runs over and kills one of the security guards outside the golf course.

I don't know whether the

it still is yet to be determined because that that news was overshadowed by about an hour later.

But

whether the guy walked in front of the bus or ran in front of the bus or whether the but he was stationary and it was charging block, we don't know.

But there is a fatal accident out in front of the goddamn golf course.

So by six o'clock,

and it's still at six o'clock, it's still not daylight.

what is his name?

Scotty,

I keep wanting to say Scotty Sabre.

He worked for me in OVW.

Scotty Scheffler.

Scotty Scheffler,

who I personally have come to like over the past day or so, had never heard existed and drew a breath on the face of this planet Earth before.

But apparently he's the number one fucking golfer in the world.

He has won whatever

you have to win to be considered the number one golfer in the world, right?

And he's competing in this goddamn tournament.

Yeah, he's in the middle of the run too.

He's having a great run right now.

Yeah, and he's the, I think they said at one time he's the favorite.

I didn't make, hopefully by the time that we finish talking, it'll be over and all these people have left town if I mentioned that.

But anyway,

he is coming in because his tea time.

I mean, this is a sport.

They say he has to stretch and warm up and go out and swing and hit the balls do whatever they do to warm up right

so he's coming in at six o'clock he'd never been to this fucking place before maybe i don't know but he it's still dark and now the goddamn they've got

shelbyville road us 60 is the main road that runs past the golf course and they've got it closed down some kind of way because there's it's still a crime scene accident scene whatever kind of scene they consider

and he's and he's in a marked

he's driving a car but he's got like a pga thing on it right and he pulls up sees all the flashlights all his chaos traffic's fucking uh stopped and he talks to a cop on the scene and the cop tells him apparently the oh and i've i've gone through this a million times where you're a wrestler trying to get into a show and the people coming in the arena and you're stopping a cop and he's like, do this and do that and the other thing.

And you're, oh, God damn it.

What the fuck did he say?

But a cop tells him to go this way and do this thing,

which he, and he doesn't know what this shit is yet.

He doesn't know anybody's got run over.

He's just like, what the fuck?

They've got extra security.

I don't know what they thought.

So he does the thing, the first thing the cop tells him to do, and he's going to the left to go around whatever the fuck.

And suddenly, you know, 50 feet down the road, the other cop has the other idea.

And there's another cop apparently saying, stop, stop, but he doesn't register that it's him, or he doesn't realize that this guy is a cop or whatever the fuck.

But suddenly he sees somebody.

This cop latches himself apparently onto the side of the car, like, what the vibe?

And he's like, oh, shit.

I'm sorry, but this is a story that we're getting on the news.

And I'm seeing this happening at a goddamn wrestling show over the fucking years, right?

And he apparently dragged the cop with him some distance to where the cop has had

scraped.

It was either a scraped knee and a cut wrist or a scraped wrist and a cut knee.

And

then when

he he stops the car and he's like, what the, and then the guy pulls him out of the car and fucking turned, they turn him around and fucking handcuff him.

And he's, and then a reporter from ESPN with, well, obviously with a camera phone, everybody's got one.

He's shooting this and he's following.

And old Scotty boy.

is turned around looking over his shoulder.

Please help me.

To ESPN, who was right there on the scene because they were going to the tournament as well.

So that was an ESPN reporter who filmed that interaction.

Please help me.

And as the ESPN, they're walking him to the car.

The cops are walking Scotty to, he's doing the perp walk.

And the ESPN reporter is following with the phone and this other big.

And it's, it's, I'm sorry, Louisville Metro Police Department doesn't need any more PR disasters.

Over the past five, they've already been, they're under a consent decree from the Department of Justice.

They've been investigated by the FBI.

They've gone through about three different chiefs.

Well, they've shot a number of people, some fatally, some not.

Breonna Taylor.

She was the most famous name, but I don't even have time to get into the sub-shootings.

Can I say something?

Yes, go on.

I saw an interview with the mayor, I think it was, yesterday morning on ESPN, and he was saying that there's footage from, they think various cameras, but the cop that actually arrested him that got dragged apparently.

Yes.

No body cam footage.

No, no, wouldn't you know who won the body camera?

How does that happen?

The one guy.

The one

guy.

And that not only, by the way, we'll get back to the story in a second because I'm still laughing at Scotty and the ESPN guy.

Remind me where to start again.

But the ruling, the law is now apparently in some way propagated by all the other investigations and fumfers and bumblefucks they've been involved in is that not only do the cops have to wear body cameras and activate them whenever they begin an official whatever the fuck,

but they even have to wear them if they're working

third party, whatever they call it, off duty, but in uniform.

And it's got oh, he's oh, no, he don't have a, he doesn't have one.

You know,

you know, it's a big thing right now.

I don't know if you know, it's a big, you know, business right now on YouTube.

The people who get the videos from the police officers or the from the police department's video that the public's allowed to have access to, and they put it on YouTube, monetize it, and just say, here's what happened.

Officer Jones suspected this person was drinking.

And then you see that actually happened.

But all these body cam videos have now flooded YouTube.

Well, this one is going to be

the lost footage.

Maybe

Sid Caesar or Jackie Gleason will have it in his vault somewhere.

Poor Liv Morgan, the footage of her just got out.

The police officers actually went through her stuff, realized who she was, said, I know who she is, and then started reading her journal

in the middle of the body cam.

That guy probably should be fired, I would think, but we'll see what happens.

Is that

what if

she had,

you know, fucking said something unflattering about a family member or some shit?

Would that

they just read it out loud, like her career goals.

But meanwhile, all she did was have, I think, you know, the smell of weed.

But whatever.

Let's get back to Scotty.

Let's get back to Liv.

Liv can smell all she wants because Scotty needs help.

Please help me to the SPN guy.

He's following with the camera.

Another cop,

clearly very LMPD,

stands in front of the ESPN guy and says he's going to jail right now, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Smiling.

Smiling.

And the guy says, I'm a reporter.

He said, but you need to get over there.

And so from a distance, you still see them walking him away.

So

somehow they took him.

So from where that is to downtown to the jail, at that time of the morning, the traffic isn't bad.

And if you're in a police car, they'll probably put you over on, you know, fucking, letting you cut in.

But he still, they had to take him geographically almost 20 miles, book him,

process him, fingerprint, photo, whatever they are doing these days.

I haven't gone through the procedure in quite some time.

Yeah, he said they actually said to him, do you want the full experience?

And he's like, I don't know what that means.

Well, yeah, well, he said, you know.

I don't know

what is that?

And they said, well, you get a sandwich.

So

they gave him a sandwich and they put him in the cell while they could do whatever they, which it still has not been.

At last I saw, and we're on this.

It's a developing story, folks.

It's still the weekend.

He's still playing.

But I don't know in what manner he secured his release, but it was pretty fucking quick.

It was quicker than the average guy that would have been brought in.

It was as soon as the mayor called the police commissioner and said, What the fuck is going on?

Oh, no, no, hold on.

No, I don't know about that yet.

But wait, hold on.

But something happened to where he was still, he was warming up.

He was doing his stretching in the cell.

And he didn't know what time it was, but then he was wherever he was, they had CNN or news or channel of some description.

And he said, that's when he was able to see the time in the corner of the screen.

And he saw saw his picture.

Scotty Schiffler has been arrested.

And it's on the national news.

And he's stretching in his cell and

at least gets the news that they have delayed his tea because also it was

at that point.

They still had an active investigation on the hit and run.

No, well, it hit and run.

The bus didn't run anywhere, but the

fatality.

So they pushed the tea times back.

So they got him.

This was six o'clock in the morning.

They hauled him off pretty quick, but they got him 20 miles downtown, booked in a cell for a while, out of the cell, some way or another, back out to the fucking golf course by like 9:30.

And then I guess they played at 10 or something of that nature.

And

they were amazed amazed because he was doing very well.

Again, I ain't following the golf games.

No, he's number one.

He's really good.

But he was doing very well, even for, you know, people doing well.

And he just got out of fucking jail and had seen.

Because he's a goodie two shoes.

And I don't mean that in a bad way, but he knows this is bullshit.

He knows, like, I've never done anything wrong.

All of a sudden, they're arresting me.

You know, this will go away quick.

Everyone's embarrassed about it, it seems.

But no, because that's what I'm about to tell you.

At least as of the news that I saw yesterday, and I know it's a weekend, so these things move quickly, but

yesterday, at least, the cop went to the hospital.

They've still got charges against him, which is one of them is that, oh, goddamn.

You look it up.

Look, right now, Google charges against Scotty Schiffelberger or whatever the fuck.

And he's going to come, supposedly going to come back to court on like May 20-something.

So

they're not backing down on that.

I have an article here as of three hours ago from the New York Post.

Charges against Scotty Scheffler expected to be dropped after shocking arrest.

Jefferson County prosecutors are expected to drop the charges against number one ranked golfer Scottie Scheffler that stem from his Friday morning arrest while trying to enter the Valhalla Golf Club, according to no laying up.

What?

Whatever that may be.

Let me click on this.

It is a Twitter account.

Who is this?

This is the New York Post.

Who gives a shit what these hack reporters in New York say?

What does the Louisville Courier Journal have to say?

They're right on top of this fucking story.

Well, they're not right on top of the algorithm because they don't even come up in the top news stories, which is pretty pathetic for them.

But hold on.

Every headline, if you you go to news,

they're too busy out there breaking stories to be worried about publicity.

Yeah, everything this morning is charges expected to be dropped.

Yeah, well, he better never come back here again.

He may never want to come back there again.

Jeez.

Well, no, and see, and that's

another thing.

Either with a PGA.

Apparently, also, as a backstory to the backstory of this,

the PGA itself was part of an owner, because this is supposedly a spiffy

golf course for people who like that kind of thing.

That's the kind of thing those people like, right?

And the PGA was part owners of it, but they recently sold their interests.

Some local group has ownership of all of it now.

And they were

before any of this happened, before they even got to town this week, wondering, well, does that mean we're going to get more PGA tournaments or blah, blah, blah, are we still in the running?

And all of a sudden,

they have

a fucking fatal accident on their fucking front porch, and they goddamn arrest the number one golfer in the world and throw him in jail in front of the fucking global media universe.

Go ahead,

we'd love you guys to come back for more.

And it also depends on what route you take to get there.

Did you see the video this week?

I'm sure you did of the truck.

We We talked about it when it happened, the truck going over the bridge.

Well, yes.

Yes.

And

not only did they show,

and for those of you who haven't seen it, we will try to describe it, but you can also, it's all over social media now.

So it's your fault if you hadn't seen it.

But truck over bridge in Louisville.

I'm sure it'll come up.

But the unique thing was, it's not like.

security video of just here was this incident where you see the the bridge and there's the two vehicles.

And oh my gosh, it was actual the truck is, I guess, these new, newfangled space age technology-ridden

trucks and 18-wheelers and delivery vehicles, whatever have cameras all over the yin-yang.

And they did a split screen.

There was a dash cam looking out the windshield.

And then there was another one of the, like you see on Cash Cab of the driver who's driving, you know, driving down the road with the steering wheel.

You can see him on both sides.

And so you see

the fucking idiot little small car

that somehow had

thought they were going to do something they couldn't do and swerved into oncoming traffic in front of 18 Wheeler.

And it was enough at boom on the edge to flip this 18-wheeler's cab to the immediate left.

And instead of going, continuing, going down the bridge, she goes through the fucking side rail.

And you can not only see the camera, they go over, and there, you see the goddamn river over the hood of the fucking truck.

There's the water.

But at the same time,

you can see the driver.

who when the car hits her, oh shit, and oh shit, goes, die, and just turning to the side and screaming while in a driver's version of a fetal position, I guess.

I don't know.

And she's hanging there.

Good seatbelt.

The seatbelt was so good.

Did you hear this?

We've heard all the stories, but the cop, no, sorry, fire department guy.

So the fire department does the good stuff around here.

The fire department guy, they lowered that rescued her and brought her back up in the goddamn

sling and harness and lowered by a cherry picker, whatever the fuck's going on there.

If he hadn't accidentally, well, not accidentally, but if he hadn't happened to have had a pocket knife in his

hanging off his belt or in his pocket, he couldn't have got her out of the seat belt.

The fact that he had a knife in his pocket at that moment was the only way he was able to cut her out and get her the fuck out of there.

So it was close on a number of, but you see both things happen at the same time.

And fuck.

And that's one of the newer bridges.

They've got,

there's a, in Louisville, the 2nd Street Bridge is now the only one

going over to Indiana, I guess, that doesn't have a toll on it.

I haven't been across a fucking Sherman Minton in so long.

He was still alive.

But the 2nd Street Bridge is the only bridge that doesn't have a toll now.

And it's also, it was built during the Depression, for fuck's sake.

And it's literally two lanes each way, but with no shoulder whatsoever.

And

then there's the rail, right?

And you're on a fucking, it's like a slalom or a bobsled run.

And to save the goddamn toll,

these giant 18-wheelers are using that and feeding off the 2nd Street Bridge into downtown and clogging up all the downtown city streets.

And they're trying to ban the trucks,

which they should.

I don't see how one of those trucks can get through almost both of the lanes, much less one of them.

So it's insanity.

So welcome to Louisville, everybody.

This part of the program has been sponsored by the Louisville Tourism Commission.

Promo code JCE.

It just acts like, no, Arnold Finster said all those things.

I'm the guest host today, ladies and gentlemen, Arnold Finster.

Hopefully the mayor will get involved here and straighten this stuff out.

The mayor owns part of Ohio Valley Wrestling now.

Did you know this?

You knew this.

No, I didn't realize that.

Is that the same guy?

Yeah, yes.

Oh.

Well, no.

What same guy is what you're thinking?

Who are you thinking?

I just saw the mayor on TV today.

I didn't realize that's one of the idiots that own OVW.

Yeah, one of the many.

There are many of them now, but he apparently is one.

He also owns part of some of the big hotel development or whatever.

So he actually got money.

So the fix is in, that's what you're saying.

Well, no, he got money through honest means of some description.

And then apparently, like some of these other wealthy people lost his mind and

got some interest in a wrestling company.

But that's almost epidemic these days.

We might see if there's a vaccination for that.

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We got to recognize a few people.

And first of all, congratulations, Mason Bradshaw,

the son of stunning Steve Bradshaw,

my neighbor to the Southeast Quadrant,

who is Mason is graduating from Trinity High School this year, or actually this coming week.

But I mean, this is the year of his graduation.

How is that supposed to be phrased?

Not like

you've graduated from anything more recently than I have.

Is he matriculating?

You know, Steve told me one time that Mason was matriculating, but I thought he'd grow out of it.

He's advancing.

He's advancing on, moving on.

I'm moving up.

Anyway, Mason congratulates from Trinity High School.

Don't hold that against him.

Mason Bradshaw.

It's like he was named by NXT.

Well, no, I was thinking.

Sounds fake.

He would be mason jar bradshaw it and his finish would be the the jar instead of the stunner remember mason williams classical gas that's right

boy and i had some the other night but it it it actually wasn't classical it was more of the extra spicy variety when i was in junior high school like in seventh grade this kid showed up named mason He was like a foot taller than all of us, red long hair.

And when we had to run and track, he outran the entire school.

It was like nothing you'd ever seen.

He just, everyone's at one place on the track.

He was done with the track and already running around the field.

And then

he disappeared just for a few months there.

He was the fastest kid I've ever seen.

Wait a minute.

A kid shows up at a high school in Long Island and then just disappears.

Vegas, it was, you know, he pissed off the wrong people or I don't think it was him because again, we're talking junior high school, but in high school always there were the rumors that one of the kids in the class with me was a nark and you're always trying to figure out who is really you know who's doing the 21 jump street thing here who

would would he would he call attention to himself by being a freak athlete like Kurt Russell in a Disney movie no it wasn't him it wasn't uh this man here this was junior high school but in high school there was always the rumor there was a narc on the grounds

well but but fortunately you got out of there before anybody put the finger on you.

That's right.

No one figured out it was me.

But anyway, whether it's Mason Bradshaw or Mason Williams or even Mason Reese,

huh?

Huh?

Red hair.

Back to a Mason with red hair.

Google it, kids.

And the peanut butter.

But anyway, congratulations, all those people.

And happy birthday to John Fell.

Speaking of an awkward-looking, suspiciously colored-haired person.

Speaking of a very nice person who represents the best of all of us, happy birthday, John Fell.

And actually, you're not, by the time you people hear, you people, you people, by the time you people hear this, it will be after John's birthday, but we are we are stating that on his official birthday, which I'm...

I hope, unless I saw a tweet from yesterday, but it's only 12, I don't know, May 19th or thereabouts.

Well, happy birthday, John.

Remember, you're only 60 once.

His mother may remember exactly which day, although she's tried to put it out of her mind.

Oh, don't say it.

Really, the whole,

you know, people want to move past some of these things.

He's like the nicest guy.

Why do you have to put him down?

You're treating him like Paul Hammond.

You're saying awful things about him and his family.

What are you talking about?

I'm

trying to point out the uplifting part of.

You know, everybody wants to get over some of these sadder moments in their life.

Happy birthday, John Fell, one of the happy moments in your life.

Yes.

May you have many bells and whistles.

And

I didn't have a bell or a whistle handy, so I had to go with this.

You want a bell?

You want a whistle?

I dropped it.

I dropped the whistle.

I got a whistle.

Where have you been hiding that?

It's been right over over here.

I got all sorts of bells and whistles all over the place in here.

What about this one?

I don't know what that's supposed to do.

That's over here.

I'm moving some of my stuff.

What about this one?

I got all sorts of stuff.

Happy birthday, Jonfell.

And from all of us at Oingo Boingo.

Thank you, Mr.

Elfman.

Yes.

And

I guess he might not want it any other way, but I've just about hurt myself trying to restrain myself from laughing further because we actually should recognize someone else in a serious vein and send our condolences to our friend Kippelman, Lou Kippelman of the Arcadian Vanguard Network.

And now we've...

We've just done one of those Casey cases straight to him.

Do you think he will appreciate the irony or tell us all to piss up a rope?

Well, I think Lou knows that we're all thinking about him.

He recently had a loss in his family, and we're all thinking about Lou.

He's a great guy, one of the best guys out there.

And we wanted to make sure we said something here on the air.

And if anyone knows Lou, reach out to him.

The best guy.

It was just, it was unfortunately placed.

It's where we reached out.

He's listened before.

He knows what a train wreck is.

Yeah,

we don't.

Yeah.

Well,

he's been on here.

That's right.

Remember, he

was it here or there?

Was it the period where the the drive was the drive?

He was the drive-thru.

He was there, but nevertheless, he's been around.

He's been

around like

that.

He's been around.

He's been around.

I don't know if you heard about him.

He's been around.

He's been around like a carousel.

Well,

I was about to say happy birthday, Lou, but go back to you.

Go back to you.

I got a I got a book here.

What kind of book is it?

It's a book, fiction or non-fiction.

It's non-fiction.

all right,

so we have a we got a book in the mail, got a book in the mail from uh Charlie from Starkville, our friend from the drive-through.

Are you singing this?

What is going on?

We have never degenerated to not

I can't.

Oh,

you've.

But no, we have a very serious topic.

I understand Charlie has been interested.

Charlie's dead.

Charlie's dead.

Charlie died last week.

No.

Charlie from Starkville

has a.

I understand he has a book.

I understand it's a good book.

You should all check it out.

Wherever you find your favorite books,

stop it.

I just hate it.

We will be returning to the proceedings shortly, ladies and gentlemen.

At this time, we want to remind you: Cornet's collectibles at jimcornet.com.

I gotta do that later.

Help support this man.

He's obviously having problems.

Every little bit helps, ladies and gentlemen.

What you just

fit.

See, I.

All right.

Well, let's get back to the seriousness.

I'm just going to take a sip.

Take a sip.

Take two.

Don't forget to breathe.

They say breathing is the most important part.

I'm light-headed.

You're going to kill me.

All right, then.

I don't know whether we should jump back in because I don't know that you'll ever cut the tape off.

But just to have something fairly coherent to begin with, would you like me to talk about this book that I have here?

Oh, you have a book?

I would love to hear this book.

Yes.

Yes, I have a book.

It's called What Happened to Our Wrestling by Charlie from Starkville of Drive-Thru Fame.

And he sent it to both of us recently.

And

it's fascinating because

Charlie is not attempting to either be William Shakespeare here in terms of

his prose, nor is he trying to give a complete

Tim Hornbaker or, you know, someone of that nature level research job into the deep history of wrestling.

He compiled,

he

has conducted interviews with people at a variety of levels of fandom,

all the way from just being wrestling fans of some tenure through having been connected in some way as peripheral announcers or whatever, all the way through to some people who have been independent wrestlers.

But the common theme seems to be what happened to our wrestling?

What's wrong with it now that

you liked when you first became a fan?

And

spoiler alert, many people say sports entertainment and or

fake slash silly behavior.

But it's a,

how, is there a way for people to buy this thing?

The copy I have says not for resale.

Is he going to give them out for free?

What's happening with this book?

No, I got one of those too.

And actually, before I received the copy that Charlie sent, I didn't know he was going to send one.

I purchased a copy, so it's available at Amazon.

And the copy you get does not say not for resale.

What he sent you was a preview copy.

Okay, that's not for resale.

So does this make mine worth more?

Yes.

Well, goddamn right it does.

Is it signed by Charlie?

It certainly is.

It's worth even more now.

Well, there you go.

In that case, stay away from my book.

Did you get it authenticated?

I've seen his writing.

Believe me, nobody could.

It doesn't really sound like much of an authentication process right there.

Well, yeah,

nobody could do this on purpose.

You know, so it's...

You've been a wrestling fan a long time.

You've seen some funky handwriting.

Oh, my God.

You have seen some people who can't write because I know I have.

But you know what?

Who was the human?

I have never seen a human being.

And I don't know if you ever met him, but I'm sure you've seen his name in the old bulletins and newsletters.

Walt Wolansky.

Oh, yeah.

I actually have some of his old tapes.

He had the most meticulous

handprinting.

I mean, he could write cursive.

He had tiny, meticulous handwriting is what I'm explaining to you that you could not duplicate.

And I've never seen anything like like it.

And it was, and no matter how long a

letter or a manuscript or whatever the case that he would, it would not degenerate.

Amazing.

You know who had the worst handwriting or probably has the worst handwriting?

And this isn't meant to add on to what everyone else, including us, have said about recent things, but just an actual, factual statement, Dave Meltzer.

Oh, but you.

Did you ever get an observer back then when he had to write in your address and you're like, oh my God, that's, how did it even get to me?

He barely wrote out the words.

Well, because that was the opposite where it wasn't cursive.

It was small microscopic printing, but it was small microscopic sloppy printing to the point where you would almost have to be familiar with this individual to see which direction he's going in with this particular word type of thing.

But that's just me.

Yeah.

Just me.

Oh, yeah.

That's another book we get.

Did you get the telephone book from Mike Rogers, Brian?

Last?

Have you got this yet?

I thought you were talking about the new Pampero Furpo memoir.

Oh, yeah.

No, I got the new book from Mike Rogers.

Thank you very much to Mike Rogers for sending it.

Unlike that dastardly Frank Colbertson who keeps saying he's going to send stuff and sends nothing.

One day I'll catch up to you, Frank.

But no, seriously, thank you very much.

And I was shocked how big it was.

That's what he said.

Yes, we know, Brian.

But oh, yeah, the history of Hawaiian Wrestling by Mike Rogers with a D.

Rogers with a D, if you're going to look it up, R-O-D-G-E-R-S,

is the size of a telephone book.

And Mike has

enlicited the aid and the research of a lot of other historians, which he,

you know, thanks at the start of the book,

including Rock Rims, who we've talked about recently, but names going back to J.

Michael Kenyon.

And also, he's done personal interviews in the past because he's been doing Ring Around the Northeast or Northwest.

Northeast.

Northeast.

Yeah, fuck your part of the country.

He's been doing Ring Around the Northwest for 40 years or whatever.

He's done interviews that he's taken information from with Pampiro Furpo and Lord Blears and Ed Francis.

and just talked to a bunch of family members and et cetera.

And

so we have just gotten it and it's huge

so we haven't uh

really got a chance to get into it deep yet but the clippings and newspaper ads and articles going all the way back to the turn of the 20th century as well as results all through the years and etc it's it's an amazing compilation so far but i haven't had a chance to look through it yet it's so big Is there a section on the illustrious career of Leah Maivia as a promoter, a trailblazing promoter who set Hawaii on fire with her trailblazing brand of promotion, bland, her trailblazing, bland brand of promotion.

Well, I'll tell you, there is actually,

if you cheat a little bit and start about

three-quarters of the way in the back,

you will see articles in the newspaper.

contemporaneous articles about Leah Maivia taking over the promotion, facing trial, accused of extortion,

acquitted of extortion,

etc.

But you will also get letters from

Dave Cameron and Steve Ricard to each other.

Dave Cameron, who was a New Zealand wrestling historian and who we've mentioned might be the illegitimate father, perhaps, of Harley Cameron.

And

Steve Ricard was the promoter that

bought, or I've got to read this book because now they've got so many things called into question, but bought or thought he bought or kind of bought Hawaii in the middle of Ed Francis and Peter Maivia

and had bad dealings with the Maivia family.

These are actual letters.

that still exist in Dave Cameron's collection that he was able to furnish for this.

So

it's a fascinating story.

And you can get this thing if you if you have an at t landline they will send you the these once a year

hear that that is the book falling on my desk

oh my god my desk is broken well of course you can get this one too at amazon amazon.com look for oh yeah now o has uh multiple h's and yeah uh also has multiple h's has multiple h's how many h's are there one two triple h so look for o with triple h and yeah with triple H.

Because nothing says wrestling history like Triple H.

But Triple H ain't in the book.

Thank God, no.

All righty.

And you know who is in the book?

A lot of people have me in their date books.

Have you heard about this, Brian?

The big red letter day is getting closer.

Saturday, June the 1st at noon Eastern time.

A lot of people have jotted down by Jim Cornette action figures in their carefully planned calendars for that day.

And that's exactly what they ought to be doing.

Because as I mentioned last week, the figures toy company inventory for spring of 2024 yielded me the last

sold-out Jim Cornette action figures that exist in the world.

I have everything now.

And they consist of

the bloody variant from when Heyman clocked me over the fucking head with the phone.

And by the way, you can still feel that if you press real hard on my forehead with your index finger.

But that will cost extra, ladies and gentlemen.

That will be a special bonus for VIPs.

I don't let people do that anymore.

They got pissed off when I started asking them to wear a glove.

And also the raw debut variant figure of me, and believe me, it is a variant, almost a deviant, of me in pink and red as I was when I was embraced by the great Bobby the Brain Heenan on my Monday night raw debut in 1993.

And both of those

have been sold out for two years now or whatever and are going back on sale Saturday, June the 1st at noon Eastern while they last because I've got less than 200 of each of them.

And then they're gone forever.

Unless you try to track one down that someone has purchased and make some kind of individual under-the-table arrangement like you're trying to deal drugs.

Sometime, you know, I think these things might be better on the black market.

What about if I just got a panel van,

Brian, and opened the day and just dealt him out of the side of a panel van,

driving through the neighborhood.

I think it would be a little unfair if you did that because it would screw the rest of us on the black market.

I mean, the rest of the people who are on the black market selling Midnight Express figures.

You don't want to hurt the little man.

Is that what

that one guy in your little small hometown in New Jersey there keeps buying 25 copies of each of my figures?

Is that right?

That's really something, isn't it?

Well, in that case, I encourage you to do so because also

$10 from each of these action figures sold will go to this year's WHAS Crusade for Children, which also

the telethon is June 1st and June 2nd.

And

it's on TV here in Louisville.

But if you go to WHAS.com, I think you can watch it on the internet now.

I don't know how this shit works, but if anybody wants to check it out and see what

we've been talking about, right?

As far as the

classic example of local television and its best intention, but sometimes it's just great local television

Anyway, so and as I mentioned if they all sell out within one week, I'm gonna kick in an extra thousand dollars So

if we if we go clean as Ed Cohen used to say about the tickets Then that'd be five thousand dollars that week for the crusade for children.

So that ain't bad And Jeremy Bagley is kicking in five hundred dollars as we knew he probably would and

is going to buy a figure and pick out some random fan.

I don't know

what corner in New Jersey.

Oh, quit now.

No, he's picking.

I don't know whether it's the Instagrams or the Twitters or the, I've forgotten now, but he's going to pick a random fucking person.

Whether they want it or not, they're getting this fucking figure.

They don't even have to have anything to do with this conversation.

He's going to find somebody and make them take a figure.

That's how much he wants to raise money for this cause.

Well, you've mentioned John Fell and Jeremy Bagley.

It's a matter of time before Elite Petrie gets mentioned, I think.

Well, you know he's going to be involved in this.

I'm just waiting to see exactly what the form of his

constitution is in this thing.

And how is Rodney Estee?

Well,

have you heard from Hot Rod lately?

No.

Well, where in the hell's Hot Rod?

I don't know.

I'm just thinking of some of the classic fans of the classic coronet era.

Well, they all better be involved in this by a cracky.

They need to, as a matter of fact, get a bus

for all those guys.

They just make kind of a roundabout way to pick up all of them and bring them here to Louisville and they can help the fire departments do the roadblocks the week of the crusade.

There you go.

It could be your own crusade, the Cornet Crusade.

Well, they've got to be wearing the sashes and the beret.

We'll get Nick.

He's a sergeant-at-arms.

He's got to arrange for the bus.

And they got the sashes and the berets and the swords and the...

Did we settle on footwear?

No.

What do you think?

I don't like to wear footwear, so I'm the wrong person to ask.

Well, no, I'm thinking tap shoes.

Because that way.

That wasn't what I was thinking would be a good idea anyway.

No.

That's perfect because that way they'd be intimidating

when when you know sounding when you heard them coming in large numbers of people wearing tap shoes

oh that would unnerve people i don't know about that no one ever said you know that gregory hines is intimidating

well that's because there wasn't about 12 or 13 of those some bitch of gregory hines coming at you you think people would be intimidated by a gang of gregory hines I think people would be intimidated by a gang of 13 people individually.

They don't even have to be of the level of talent of gregory hines just tapping it at random actually be even better then there'd be no rhythm to it it would just be intimidating you are onto something because if you think about the visual becomes funnier imagine one day like in a dark dirty alley jon moxley like walks out the back door of some place feeling all moxley walking around tough all of a sudden a gang of tap dancers

start coming into the alley and he's cornered no one expects that you expect someone who's bad to try something like that not tap dancers.

It could throw someone off.

That's right.

And

just think about how much noise it would make.

My God, it would distract you from whatever you were doing.

The cops have a hunch.

They think they may know who it was.

The tap dancers.

There's these

moon-shaped marks all over the goddamn asphalt.

We may have a clue here.

You know, that's MFA.

You think they got odds on that kind of thing?

No, I absolutely do not think there are any odds on that.

Well, now they've got odds on other stuff, like the NBA

and the, you know, the playoffs and all the stuff they're doing.

If they have odds and they have statistics and everything, they ought to have it on that too.

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Brian, have I made that abundantly clear?

Abundantly.

Abundantly.

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They've got their ear to the ground and their rear in the air, waiting for you to...

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Well, Brian, on a much, much more serious note, we got to take a serious tone at this.

We got to get a little bit more somber.

Got to level us down a little bit because

there's unhappiness in the world.

And one of our favorite guys, one of the guys that we,

another of the guys that we predicted super stardom for as soon as they extricate themselves from the muck of the pit of incompetence known as AEW

is our boy Tegashet.

And out of the, what was it I said a week or two ago?

Of all of the talent

or sometimes talent and quotation marks that they have imported from Japan,

whether it be Japanese talent or they've just gotten from New Japan, Jay White can go in that mix.

But

all of the female roster,

definitely some of the female roster,

Okodi,

the whole talent rate raid of New Japan, because that became another thing that was dangled in front of Tony.

Well, other than Osprey, and again, Takeshita was a DDT wrestler more than New Japan, but Osprey's the one from New Japan, I think, is so far worked out.

But other than that, no way.

Okay, and I will put your asterisk next to Will.

I'm thinking of it as more of the fucking

the United Kingdom group, bro.

But Shibata, Ibushi, Shibupi, Ubuji, Ishi.

God damn it.

How did I set you up for that without knowing it?

And what happens if Shippoopi meets Ishi?

Shippoopi, Shippoopi, Ishi.

But

Take was the guy.

We said he's great.

He's got the size.

He's young.

He doesn't have.

Nobody knows who this guy is.

So you can make him who you want him to be, who his talent dictates, what his personality dictates, right?

And instead, he was here and he was gone, he's back and forth and

what the fuck, right?

And now he's just, he's hanging around, nothing to do but frown,

because Tony Khan's booking always gets him

down.

I hear now he's publicly expressing this.

That is indeed correct.

I have an article here.

This is translated, I believe, from ddtpro.com, DDT Pro Wrestling.

The headline,

dramatic dream column from world,

goddamn, can I even just take a drink?

Can't I just take a sip?

It's hard, dry, parching work being a podcaster.

Well, here's the headline.

This is the dramatic dream column of what?

Well, again, I don't know how this ties into the story here, but dramatic dream column from from the world.

It's hard sometimes.

You see words together.

You're like, I never said this before.

Dramatic dream column from the world to Osaka and back to the world, May 19th, Ref Matsui, 30th Anniversary Show by Sayoko Mita,

English.

Does that answer your question?

Keep going.

Here's a quote.

This is a quote from Konosuke Takeshta.

Since arriving in America, if you were to ask me what I've found enjoyable, there's been nothing.

In my heart, I've already thrown away the joys of wrestling.

Oh, my God.

Now, before we get going with this.

This is some shit you scribble down on hotel room stationery if the hotel room window opens.

Before we get going, we should note there are some people who are saying this is

a work.

This is part of some kind of angle, him complaining about the booking in AEW.

So just take that to heart, ladies and gentlemen, as you're hearing this.

There's a chance this is all just part of an elaborate work.

Okay.

So it's important to note that from his earliest days watching wrestling on TV as a child, through his time in wrestling classes under Osaka Pro Wrestling, to his debut at the prestigious Nippon Budokan after joining DDT as a high schooler.

It's been quite the journey.

It's been two years since he relocated to America.

It was disconcerting to hear Takesha, with a warm expression, admit to finding no joy in wrestling anymore.

He poured his heart and soul into the sport, striving to become the best he could be.

Konosuke Takesha, the man who believed that if he wasn't enjoying himself, the fans wouldn't enjoy it either.

Oh boy.

I'll stop there.

Any initial thoughts?

Well,

was he

used as a main event superstar in Japan on a regular basis?

Was he

the top guy in whatever company he was in?

Was he making a significant amount of Japanese currency?

Or was he just expecting

out of that?

He got signed by an American company.

He was going to be on national TV.

He had to assume that they knew what they were doing.

Well, the next quote here refers to what they're promoting, actually, with this article, which is this Ref Matsui retirement show or anniversary show.

What was it?

30th anniversary show.

Excuse me.

He's going to be wrestling Minoru Suzuki.

So here's a quote again.

Let's judge it on its face about Suzuki.

I've seen him wrestle in AEW in person, and I've learned lots at the many indie shows we shared locker rooms together.

Our styles and philosophies on wrestling differ, but our way of life as a wrestler, and it might not be the right way to phrase it, but his resilience in an unforgiving industry is amazing.

And I've come to understand how amazing that skill is in my current environment, seeing how often he is called over to shows, whether in Japan or America.

If you're promoting a match with a guy, it doesn't really sound like he's taking any shots at him or anything.

Is he running for office of some kind?

That was

a lot of words and little pith.

Did somebody take the pith out of him?

Well, let's see how much pith is here.

Here's some of the quotes that people are talking about.

I thought hard work could cover for everything else before getting there, to America.

If If I showed how good I am, I could get more airtime.

But there are other aspects that come to play when competing here.

Discrimination is not the word here, but unfortunately, there's a lack of space for Asian person to be on a TV show watched by Americans.

No matter how good my condition was, nor the amount of matches I was put in, or how many times they said my match was good, it felt like I couldn't make it to the starting lineup, to put it in baseball terms.

So let's stop there.

Well,

you sympathize with him.

And, you know,

I don't know, first of all, I don't know what his definition of having fun is.

And maybe

it's not what we would think at first blush.

Oh, he wants to have fun playing with his friends.

I mean, he came from DDT.

He came from DDT, so you do have to wonder.

What is that?

DDT, isn't that the company where the guys have, you know, guys have regular matches, but then also guys may wrestle.

I mean, where was the blow-up doll match?

Was it DDT?

Oh, good God.

Is that?

Well,

then I hate to defend anybody.

But having said that,

taking that statement that he just made on its face as a whole,

there shouldn't be.

There's not really been, if you think about it, either on AEW or in the WWE, an absence of talent from,

you know, the,

what is the proper terminology these days, from Japan or China or the, as Kevin Sullivan used to say, the Pacific Rem brother or whatever, probably more than

ever before as baby faces.

I can see where he could feel held back because he can't speak English, but instead of having,

you got shapoopy, he's the one doing the thing with the phone, right?

Where the phone translates things that you don't even see him say.

If they

put Takeshta

in what was at the time and supposed to be, and now I don't, I guess that's been forgotten.

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

The top heel

stable faction, the Don Callas family.

Yeah, that week they were the top heel faction.

Yeah, and then three weeks later, he, you know, he's on the side of a milk carton.

For you older fans out there, you'll get that.

It

so it's got to be frustrating to him because when he started out,

they brought him out.

He looked fucking good as a babyface.

Then he turns and he's in the top heel faction.

And then

he can't speak English, but he was supposed to have a fucking manager.

And he is has looked excellent.

He's looked the best of all,

except like you said, except for Will.

He's looked the best of all of them.

And I'm sure he's the cheapest.

I'm sure they didn't pay him what they paid all these other fucking guys.

And he's probably sitting there going, Well,

I'm younger.

I'm cheaper.

I work harder.

I look better.

And what the flying fuck,

regardless whether he wants to wrestle, fucking blow-up dolls or

goddamn German shepherds, whatever.

Well, let me go to the next quote and we'll keep talking about this.

Everyone felt like they're having fun wrestling here in Japan.

I didn't have any fun wrestling ever since I got to America.

The effort was bearing fruit, but I didn't feel the enjoyment.

It was the most mentally exhausting period in all 12 years of my wrestling career.

12 years?

He's 28 years old, by the way.

Oh, good lord.

However, when I stopped having fun, my matches were better received and I gained more recognition.

And it's not proportional.

What do you think of that?

Okay.

Maybe it's something to do with the automatic translation.

Do we have somebody that's a graduate of a major university signing off on these translations?

Just to find people at DDT Pro Wrestling.

Well,

let me ask you this.

If you were a young Japanese wrestler coming over to the States, wanting to feel happy with what you're doing and feel fulfillment in your work,

what do you think is the more fulfilling process, working for AEW or working in NXT?

What would I see?

You threw me for a loop saying NXT.

Well, because that's the reality.

More than likely, if

someone like Takesha, he wouldn't have been brought up right to the main roster.

He would have been in NXT, a part of that program,

training with those people, sitting there on draft night with everyone else.

What would be the more fulfilling program system

for someone wanting to break into wrestling in the States, NXT or AEW?

Okay, NXT, definitely.

The way that you've finished it up and put the period on the end of it with the more fulfilling program.

NXT, they would definitely learn something.

The problem, I think, is that Tony, being

Tony,

would probably offer just about anybody that, you know, is anybody more money at the start.

And I'm afraid maybe some of these people may not understand how this works over here in this weird country, except maybe now

Takeshta may be telling them, but I'm not sure.

Because this is what I was going to say about his fun comment.

It used to be when I got in the business and the old timers would tell you, and then you heard that for quite some time afterwards,

that

they would say, you're not going to fucking get better until you start having fun, until you slow down and start having fun.

Because at that point in time, if you were new,

and if If you were, as Frank Spaceman Hickey would say, greener than a pepper tree,

then you were tense and you were uptight and you were stiff and you were stiff to move around.

And as they used to say, you could shove a lump of coal up your ass, come up with a 10-carat diamond.

And then, because that was when you were greedy and you were scared, you were a fuck up, and you listened.

And night after night, as you got better, when you got smooth enough to relax and to slow down and to pay attention and start having fun,

that's when you were learning something.

So I don't,

and it was still kind of that way in OVW and Ring of Honor at the time that I was associated with them in any kind of training capacity.

So I don't know when

that at any kind of level,

the training gets less

or the business gets less fun as you.

as you get better at it.

Do you understand that comment or could that have been

misconstrued?

I understand the comment, but let me finish with Tekesta's comments.

It's been a few weeks since I got to be on air, and due to the nature of the live broadcast, my match was cut.

I was already waiting at the entrance gate with my gown on.

Waiting.

See, again, it would be a trainer.

He was waiting at the entrance gate.

With his gown.

And his trainer.

And the jockey was ready to bring the whip down.

I was already waiting at the entrance gate with my gown on when I was told so.

I carried all those frustrating emotions of that moment into one match in Budokan.

There was the feeling that I didn't want to lose to them either.

So, again, there's

something lost in the translation here, but it seems that the frustration

is apparent.

Well, and

I've never met Take,

so I don't know whether he's nuts or not, right?

But there's talent there.

And

a

good booker that is in charge and has hired producers that he has given authority to instead of potentially, you know, the power of suggestion.

Hey, why don't y'all do this?

And said, no, this is what you're going to fucking do.

Or don't do that.

Whatever.

A structure.

He could be a star on United States television, especially as a heel.

We've seen that attitude with that athleticism, that look, and a manager to group him with another

main event guy, not as a tag team, but just

somebody that's somewhat

J.J.

Dillon with Tully and Arne, even as individuals, not even as a tag team.

And then people will become to see him as a main event talent.

And then you could potentially go from there.

But

you've got to have a structured push behind him and a coherent vision of what you want him to do.

And whether it's fun for him or not, hopefully it would be.

But if it's not,

as long as it's good in terms of business and for him,

maybe he should learn not to have some fun.

But the problem is there's none of that structure is there so he's just twisting in the wind making his giant paycheck

and again there's no structure there's no system if he was in wwe he would be told what's going on at least it's not the vince era it's not like you know crazy booking right before things go down

here

you know it's aew

there's a vibe there that if you're a young wrestler looking to make it in the states it probably doesn't feel like you're making it

i think at some point

like you said in isn't that that the word's going to get back i can understand the initial rush like oh money you know round trip tickets whatever but

at some point you know they're they're going to be in in the the home country that tony has raided he's raided more people than fucking ginghis khan if tony's frustrating to deal with in english can you imagine if he don't speak the language oh well no if you don't speak the language at least that might even up the goddamn negotiations a little bit.

But can you imagine when they're saying in the home country, wherever it may be, Yugoslavia,

where'd so-and-so go?

Didn't he used to be in wrestling?

Oh, yeah, he's working for AEW.

When?

Oh, we haven't seen him in a while.

He's in there somewhere.

Since Tony got the new toy chest, he doesn't open that other one up as much.

But I agree, you know, booking can solve the problem.

A good booker, good booking, coherent storylines, as the kids say, some structure, logical progression of emotions amongst top-quality talent manipulated in such a way as to create maximum drama for potential ticket-selling purposes.

That's all they need.

There's got to be somebody, Brian.

Well, a lot of the listeners have sent this in, and I'm assuming this is what you're alluding to.

A tweet from Vince Russo

after the AEW ratings came out, a reminder they were the lowest they've been since the insurrection.

The insurrection.

Literally, the day of the insurrection.

They're the lowest they've been since that fucking alien invasion that year on the 4th of July.

I should be gloating over the lowest rating in AEW history this week, but I'm not.

Remember this,

and there's a quote here.

WCW had a hangnail when Vince Russo joined the company.

He proceeded to cut the entire arm off.

Tony Khan.

Remember that, Tony Khan?

I do.

I've never forgotten.

Not just anybody can be successful head writer-producer.

It actually does take more skill than booking fantasy wrestling at 12-year-olds.

You need help.

It's not even a question.

My consulting services are always available.

USA Network took advantage of them in the past.

You can too.

Smart men are humble men.

Oh my God.

So not only is he begging for a job again, but he's so fucking

touched in the head, as Aunt Lola would say,

that he's cutting a promo on the guy who wants to give him the job that doesn't want to fucking talk to him in the first place, which is why he's talking to him through Twitter,

and at the same time bragging about

being able to at one point con someone else into doing the same thing that he wants the guy to do that he's cussing out.

And it didn't work out for them either.

And they ended up fucking not utilizing dick all of shit that he provided them.

You're a fucking idiot.

And by the way, if you're hiring.

Yeah.

What the fuck is the matter with him?

He's lost the plot, as they say.

But

again,

we know

that Tony has issues, and we cover them them in granular detail, correct?

And we acknowledge that.

But at the same time,

I don't think, that's to say, if

Dr.

Christian Barnard had had a question about heart surgery, should he have called fucking Harpo Marks?

I don't think that would have helped the situation any.

So

we established this one time before, Brian.

And I guess the clip's on YouTube somewhere out there.

But

the point is, we established that

I technically never asked for a job in wrestling.

Of all the things I've ever done, I'd never asked for one of those jobs from the time that I broke in, they asked me.

And

we also established

that

to

Jerry Jarrett's definition of success in wrestling, it was longevity

in numerous places and/or at numerous things, in particular, possibly in one place.

And

I think that the ultimate revenge that I have

on old shitstain for fucking up so many of the goddamn principles of my beloved industry will at this point not even be the urination on his burial plot after he's put in it,

which I still obviously for the photo on the wall intend to accomplish.

But it will be the fact

that he's going out begging people for work for shit that he wasn't fucking suited for the first time he got it and accidentally got over with it.

Yeah, that is funny too.

You made fun of what I did in WCW.

Well, look at your company that's still in business.

Yes,

it's even worse than my shit.

Is that a ringing goddamn put on your resume, ladies and gentlemen?

Shit that other people do is even worse than my shit.

And that will get you the job every time.

When you are holding yourself and your own work up as the measuring stick of whether something sucks really bad or not,

I don't know that that's a goddamn full-throated endorsement coming from your own chicken lips.

And the arrogance, too, smart men are humble men.

If you can't admit, you need me, Tony.

You're not a smart.

Well, actually, that's, you know what?

That's the only truthful thing he said because that's not a humble tweet.

That tweets about his friggin' over-the-top, big-headed, obnoxious, assholish look at me, look at me as you can possibly get.

That's true.

He accidentally told the truth, but smart men are humble men.

But I'm a moron.

So here's what I think.

Complete fucking imbecile.

What a maroon.

Yeah, Sputnik stood up and said, hell, I'll tell you how how stupid people think.

Then he was smart enough to realize what he'd done.

He wouldn't have, if that was a tweet instead of a fucking statement in a locker room, he wouldn't have hit send on that motherfucker.

Man,

I kind of want Tony to take him up on the offer.

I kind of want to see what will happen.

I kind of do.

Well, that's the AEW booking update, ladies and gentlemen.

Back to you, Jim.

Well, I'll tell you, Brian, sometimes it's like it's on Wednesday nights when you tune into that television program.

You don't know what you're going to get, but usually it's not very good.

But see, that's the opposite of the formula that our friends over at Boxofawesome.com take.

We've been talking about them.

You just recently got some type of,

I don't know, paramilitary equipment from them.

Regular equipment for the woodsman, for the man who likes to go out and take care of business?

Yes, in the woods,

in the woods.

woods possibly in pnom pen or somewhere maybe by a lake ripping people apart for their intestines on a hook or some type of thing again i don't know what goes on in your little fantasy world over there but i'm talking about someone who just enjoys nature did you not get a gut hook knife to enjoy nature with

to enjoy nature nature with what whose guts are going to get hooked It doesn't have to be the guts of a living thing.

It could be the guts of a tree.

Well, the tree is a living thing.

Fuck.

Yeah.

Work on that and get back to me.

But the point is, when you get us something from the boxofawesome.com, folks, it's awesome and it's positive.

You might not know what's coming, but boom, when it hits you right in the, well, boy, when that delivery man winds up and throws that box and it hits you right in the face, boom, you're going to say that's awesome.

Because all you got to do is go to boxofawesome.com.

And you just take the quiz, a few simple answers to a few simple questions.

Now be truthful now because this could affect your future.

Because they want to know what you're interested in so they can pick the right upcoming boxes of awesomeness, sises,

which is plural on that.

Boxes of awesomeness or box of awesomeness.

Boxes of awesome.

Oh, shit.

Boxes.

Well, they want to find out what to send you in these cardboard packages of which we speak.

Awesome cardboard.

The cardboard is awesome.

The box is awesome.

It's just filled with awesomeness.

Well, sometimes the inner containers are quite awesome, but it's regular cardboard on the outside.

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Sometimes they'll tell your wife if you don't pay for this shit.

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They don't start talking to family members unless somehow they're your emergency contact.

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Why do you need an emergency contact?

You're going to get fall on the gut hook knife.

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Well, it's not a bone saw, just as many

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Yeah.

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Who?

No, that's not.

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Well,

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Exactly.

Alrighty.

Can we talk

a little bit of regular wrestling for a second?

The good old-fashioned wrestling.

Did you watch the Flare and Dusty AE

Rivals television program?

I'm trying to figure out what all these things are called and pull out my notepad at the same time.

That it's on the AE network.

It's WWE Rivals.

And

last weekend was on the rivalry between Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes, which happened obviously in the NWA and primarily Crockett promotions in the mid-80s is what they focused on.

Did you see the program?

I did see the program.

I was curious to hear what you were going to say about it.

Obviously, you lived through it both as a fan in the early days and then eventually as their colleague during the 1986 bash

and you know that was

that was part of the cool part about it is

seeing the again we always say with the old footage this time at least they we can say it's old footage to almost anybody because they went back to the stuff the the florida footage the from the florida video library probably goes back

as as far as any nwa territory went back in terms of the the early 70s stuff, and they even saved a few

black and white masterpieces that one of these days will surface.

And Dusty, we had early footage of Dusty also in the AWA because Vern saved a lot of his stuff.

And

so this was a chance to

see some of the stuff that hasn't been beaten to death from the Attitude Era again, as we always put it over.

But especially because that Florida footage was high quality.

Was that Dusty versus Race

title change in 1979 in Tampa?

That was Eric Soley doing the shooting on film at that time, wasn't it?

It was one of Gordon Soley's sons, and I always get a few of them confused.

It was Eric.

It was Eric then.

If it was.

Because what they were doing

was after everybody else had gone to videotape, which,

you know,

in terms of, yes, it lasted longer.

And

they were doing their TV show on videotape.

I'm not trying to say they're not.

But at the arena footage,

instead of just having a guy shooting with a video camera, Eric Soli was still shooting

film to where they could do kind of an NFL films presentation of a match or a training session.

They could do the really cool slow motion stuff that made,

if something looked real in slow motion, they would show it because that way to people, oh, shit, that looked real in slow motion.

I mean, it's fucking simple shit, right?

But it worked.

And I think that footage is so much cooler than a lot of the other territories at that time period that were in early videotape.

era mode.

Do you concur, Great Brian Last?

I think the film stuff all looks really cool.

I am a mark for like Madison Square Garden stuff from the 70s, just that arena feel.

And it's on video.

I'm okay with that.

Yeah.

But the mid-Atlantic stuff you have, the stuff I've seen out of Florida, I love the way that stuff looks.

More so than the VTR stuff they started doing in Atlanta when they started shooting video.

I think it was video.

The early days that I'm shooting video at the Omni, up high, it didn't look so good.

Yeah, and see, that's the thing is that

they got away with it.

We're going to get off on a tangent here, but what the fuck?

Like the whole goddamn show hadn't been.

In Memphis, the camera that far up in the stands as a one-camera shoot that could catch everything in the ring or around ringside, that's the

idea behind it.

If you've only got one camera, you want to be able to shoot everything so that they don't miss anything.

And that's why they'd always put that stationary camera up there, and it was easy in the old days, tripod, whatever.

In Memphis, it looks better because Memphis had that unique Coliseum lighting.

They didn't really have a set of ring lights, and

it was bizarre at the time for any of the major buildings in the territories to have that much light during the matches, but they made it work.

But

in some of the buildings, it was goddamn, you know, so far back and so dark, it was almost impossible to, you know, to get a good shot.

And so when,

and Memphis then did this when, when they switched to a two-camera, where they could edit tape fairly easily in some of the territories in the office, and you'd have, they did this in Memphis, one camera in the stands and the other one on the floor.

Then with a two-camera shoot, a lot of these territories realized they could almost do their own TV if it came to that.

But nevertheless, we digress.

The point is

they

gave the history of Flair training, you know,

briefly in the

AWA and having watched Dusty because he was already a star there

and wanting to be rambling Ricky Rhodes and driving Dusty and Murdoch around.

But, you know, the cool thing, you mentioned I started as a fan and then later on worked with him.

It was

what, uh, three years between the time that Flair was driving Dusty and Murdoch around in the AWA and the time that Flair was a main event guy in the Carolinas, co-main eventing and probably wrestling.

I don't know when their very first match was against Dusty for the U.S.

title or some major main event in the Carolinas.

From 73 to 76, they both got exponentially bigger as stars.

And then, you know, then they the rivalry starts really with

they didn't cover this.

They're mainly going with the world title changes and working off those into the

Crockett era.

But

what would you say?

Their first main event matches easily in the Carolinas by 76 or 77, Flair and Dusty, that drew money and they had more than just a passing,

you know, and

also in

Georgia.

Flair was in and out a lot at that point, and Dusty,

at that era, owned TBS, so I'm sure they had some interaction without even looking at record books.

They really had a program from

76 to

into 87, did they not?

I don't know how early you you could say it started because Dusty was he made appearances in certain towns in Mid-Atlantic in the 70s once he became a star out of Florida.

And 81 was the title change.

And Flair started going into Georgia

by 78, I think, right?

Maybe I'm wrong, 79, maybe 78.

So I don't know exactly how early or where it started.

It's an interesting question.

There used to be a Ric Flair record book, Steve Hellwagon.

Remember him?

Yes, I've got it somewhere, but it's longer than the cord to my headphones.

But the point is,

at least it's not on, and by the way, this show apparently did a really nice rating compared to some of the others they've been presenting.

But the point is that this wasn't

either one of these deals where they had an eight-year rivalry comprised of four matches, or

that this was a classic rivalry that lasted for, you nine months of a calendar year.

It was the two biggest names in

at least all of the NWA territories and what they eventually coalesced into,

fighting over most of the time either the world title or

the top belt that was available.

And people still remember it so well to this day that it's outrated

some of the rivalries from 10 years ago or 15 years ago when you would think a lot of these, more of these people would have been alive.

I find that heartwarming, don't you?

And the stuff holds up.

When you watch Flair and Dusty, just at least from the Crockett era on TBS,

it looks good still.

Even in that small studio, those promos look great.

And they sound great.

And it sounds better than everything now.

It's the emotion.

It feels natural.

Even if you think that

wrestling, if the guys sit at home and say, ah, wrestling's fake, but you don't think that anybody wrote that, that anybody told them to say that.

Even if you knew something's going on, you didn't know what and what the fuck.

At that point, you don't care because here's these guys.

Polar opposites of each other.

The nature boy in the tailor-made suits and the women and the hair.

And there's Dusty with the bandana and the gigs on his head, and the son of a plumber, and completely diametrically opposed.

And

most people, you know, identified with Dusty, especially through the territory days.

And then,

you know, the younger guys started thinking Flair was cool and emulating him, but still, it was everybody was involved.

It wasn't like like

these guys have been told what to say.

And truly with Dusty, nobody was.

He was telling other people what to say.

And then he wasn't telling Flair what to say, by the way, just what they were selling, but not what to say.

And you didn't feel like that people were telling them how to act and et cetera, et cetera.

It was more

organic, as the young folks say.

And that's why the footage holds up because there's still that level of emotion and passion or

whatever's in it they were all the way in it nobody was

neither dusty nor flair nor anybody else in this deal was winking at at people

over their you know level of dedication to what was going on were you surprised to hear that bash 86 sold out every night and are you wondering where your money is uh what i was still wondering where my money was when i already knew it didn't sell out every night

uh but

But it's the same.

In all fairness, where else could a young 24-year-old whipper snapper like myself make the modern equivalent of $60 something thousand dollars in today's money?

I'll get doing what I'm doing right now, I get.

But nevertheless,

that was the thing, being there for a lot of this.

And at least I was in the business.

Flare and Dusty in Kansas City was on my birthday in 1981 when I was still a photographer,

my 20th birthday.

And I'd forgot.

Well, go ahead.

I was just going to say,

I apologize, birthday boy, for interrupting you.

I was going to say, I do like that Flair is honest enough to say, yeah, it sucks that it was in Kansas City.

Well, that's what, and I'd forgotten because that is a match that nobody wants to ever go back and look at.

And I'd forgotten that Luthes was the referee.

But yeah, like Rick said,

it was terrible.

Kansas City, I mean, we've talked about the Kansas City territory, but that's kind of, you know, the

in every, you know, ribbing stereotype joking thing lies some element of truth.

Kansas City was deader than Kelsey's nuts even then.

And he said, Rick said Dusty didn't want to lose, and he probably didn't.

But at the same time, I don't think it in that

substandard ring with and poor Luthes, with all due respect

he was

wearing the same referee shirt for 20 years well yes that's one thing he he threw my my focus on my camera off at the omni when he wore that shirt but he was 65 65 i'm trying to do the math 65 years old and not

the greatest most experienced referee they had a shit ring

in a dead town

and that's and they because political reasons because

Harley was part owner of Kansas City and Bob Geigel,

they do the title change there, and it just,

you know, it would bleh, it would bleh, everything.

But then Dusty ends up a couple years later, he's going to the Carolinas and becomes the booker.

And the flair is still the top guy, and you got a classic

situation.

And it was the two,

you know, really, Harley was about to pass the torch.

And I was, by the way, that's one of the first things that I heard before I even got into business officially, but I was smart as a photographer.

That the story going around was they

the next champion was either going to be Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, or Ted DiBiase.

But the reason why Teddy never got it was because he's the one that leaked the story that the next champion was either going to be Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, or Ted DiBiazi.

I never heard that angle of it.

Really?

Yes, that's what the only, I mean, and I want to be fair to Ted.

You know, wrestlers say a lot of things about Tommy Rich and Barnett with the NWA title, but that was the

scuttlebutt at the time was, yeah, that was Ted D.P.S.

he told.

It's interesting, though, if you think about how the champion would have been picked in 81 and where the votes were coming from.

Dusty had Eddie Graham in the pocket.

You have to think he had Georgia, maybe.

Flair would have had Crockett.

Flair, maybe,

if Fritz wasn't voting for one of his kids, Flair probably, maybe had Fritz.

Who would DiBiase have other than maybe Sam Muschnick

in his final year as a full-time promoter?

Well, because

who went into Missouri and became the Missouri champion was always highly featured as a top babyface in those days.

Yeah, Dusty didn't go into St.

Louis, really, did he?

But Ted DiBiase did.

That's right.

He was

to Sam Muchnick, I'm sure he probably saw a modern Luthes at that point in Ted's career.

But nevertheless,

so,

but then they get to Crockett.

And

after Starcade 83, Flares got the belt, and now Dusty's the booker.

And then they had the classic,

you know, TBS promo clips and stuff.

And that's what I got a kick out of being there for so much of it because we we got there in you know summer of 85 so

for three years every Saturday you would get to hear fucking Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes cut sometimes multiple promos because we were doing most the time

not two shows in terms of two weeks of shows but at the start we would do every Saturday morning the Saturday night and Sunday night

studio shows on Saturday morning and then go somewhere that night and have the house show, but you would get to hear fucking

countless of these.

Ed, either right behind the curtain, watching the monitor in the little,

I can't call it a dressing room in the little storage/slash,

you know, fucking office area that they had us dress in,

or if you could sneak into the control room, or, you know, or you're involved in them.

And they were just,

that's the thing.

You can, you can see all these clips and say, oh, I remember that one.

I remember that one.

I remember that one.

And then you realize they were, Flair and Dusty were both doing shit every goddamn morning like that.

Hung over in many cases

that you still remember 40 years fucking later.

I was surprised if he had said it before, I just had never seen the quote.

But when Dusty said, I think the quote was, he made more for the payoff of Sarkade 83, where he was just an executive producer, really, than he ever had as a wrestler.

That was incredible to hear.

Yes.

And, but think about this.

And he wasn't on the show.

For anyone who doesn't know, Dusty didn't wrestle on Star Kid 83, I don't believe.

No.

But it was his

vision, his

idea.

He pushed to take that step and make them make that step.

And that became the thing.

As I've always said,

even your main event wrestler in a territory, in those days, the pay scale was not going to be that

your regular main event territory wrestler was going to make more than the booker, whether the booker was also wrestling or not.

That's why a lot of fucking promoters liked a booker that was also a top wrestler because

you didn't have to pay him double.

You see where I'm going with this?

Whatever you'd pay the main event wrestler, you could pay him another 500 a week, 1,000 a week out of 1500, whatever the fucking scale was, instead of having to pay completely double for a booker that you'd have to pay more than that wrestler.

Because if you took a job in those days as the booker and were making less than any of the wrestlers, except if a wrestler was an owner, you were a fucking idiot.

Did I get off on a tangent there?

It's a good tangent.

We've had some good tangents today.

Well, but so the point is, is that yes, Dusty was, that's what he

aspired to and wanted to do.

And now,

having said that,

with Ric Flair in the same company being the NWA World Champion,

that position there carried a level of status that at one time you had to be, you were mandated by the gate to make a certain amount of money.

And of course, that went away with some of the old conventions also.

But the point is, so you would have

a dick-swinging contest there between the world champion on 10% and the goddamn Booker who's orchestrating the whole show.

And that's what made this rivalry again

between Flair and Dusty so fucking good to people.

And they didn't even have to talk about the 100 or 150 house show matches, I'm sure, that they did between 84 and early 87

when Flair got branched off into other, you know, programs full-time.

And,

you know,

it just, that's the thing is that you see the

way that Dusty orchestrated the chase and then the final emotional payoff when he would capture it,

you can see that in Cody

in a modern presentation way.

But, you know, but they ended this show up with

the Great American Bash 86, where

that was the big selling point there that summer was Flair was going to defend the title at all 14 of the Great American Bashes.

And

the insinuation was

in the announcer's

verbiage in that, it was that it was all going to be against different people, right?

And they tried to do that

because Robert Gibson

challenged Ric Flair that year for the Great American Bash in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and did a $101,000 gate.

Wow.

They had never had

so many human beings in the,

goddamn, in Fayetteville.

What's the name of the building?

Son of a bitch.

I thought I'd never forget it.

But at the time, I don't know how many people the building held, but at those ticket prices, if it held 5,000 supposed to be, there was 6,500 in it.

The walls were sweating.

The humidity was so bad, and they were shooting for television.

People were passing out and people were standing

near like vultures near the older people that they thought might pass out so they could take their fucking seat.

But anyway, the point is, Riggie Morton in Charlotte at the stadium got the shot and he defended.

So Flair defended against all the top babyfaces, really every babyface on the card with some duplication.

And then finally, Dusty won

in Greensboro, which was the spiritual

home of not only of Starcade, but of him starting this

particular Odyssey almost three years before

of being the booker for Crockett Promotions.

And when Dusty did the formats for the

syndicated television, back when we were actually on real TV stations,

that they would shoot every Tuesday with the Nemo truck and blah, blah, blah.

Instead of the A show and the B show for

NWA Pro and Worldwide Wrestling,

it would be the A show and the G show on his formats because the G show

He wrote specially for Greensboro because it aired at a great time slot there.

And he would follow it if it aired in Philadelphia too, fine.

But he thought of Greensboro when he wrote that show because Greensboro had such potential to do such big money and did so often.

Anyway.

And then Flair and Dusty both instantly became mentors and coaches.

And it just skipped over the next fucking 25 years of their careers.

Skipped over all the stuff where they hated each other for real.

Well, you guys, you know, you're...

The real rivalry that was going on behind the scenes.

You got to really, Brian,

you got to get over these things.

You got to move on.

You got to have a happy life.

But

I guess that ultimately the lesson is learned again that

the older the rivals episode is, the better it's going to be because the footage stands up so much better because they weren't telling everybody what to fucking do all the time.

And the other thing is, the footage and the story of the footage and the story of Flair and Dusty is a whole lot better.

You didn't need, again, the panel that they keep going to in the mysterious, you know, Jesse Ventura spy room, whatever's happening over there.

It does look like there is some element of world takeover plottage going on in there, doesn't it?

Yeah.

But they didn't include the

promos with Flair and Dusty for the, oh, God, the Crockett Cup in a Superdome 86.

That was the best example of it.

And they could play those now and people would understand them.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

The Flare Dusty promos from the Crockett Cup?

I'm not sure.

On TBS,

at least

it popped all the boys.

And at the time, almost nobody else understood what the fuck was going on.

This was where the smart fandom was in its infancy.

But I'm trying to think which one sniped first.

I think it was Dusty.

He was wound up and he was cutting a promo on Flair because they were the main event for the NWA title on the nighttime

session of the Crockett Cup tag team tournament, first one ever at the New Orleans Superdome in April 1986.

And Dusty gets wound up and said, and just remember, baby, I don't do no jobs in front of 60,000 people.

And all the boys in the laundry room, oh shit, he said, I don't do no jobs.

And most people didn't know what's fucking, but then Flair came out a little bit later on and said, well, let me tell you something, Big Dust.

I don't do any jobs in front of 60,000 people either.

So where does that leave us?

God damn it.

What are we doing?

This was the modern equivalent of a fucking shoot promo.

What have we become here?

We're fucking using jobs on television.

and and it went by a lot of the do you remember that i do remember that now that you said that i didn't know exactly what you're referring to i remember reading about it in an old observer yeah and then i saw the promos too when i went through all the tbs episodes and crops yeah because i was i was even like i'm managing the fucking world tag team champions if i went out there and said we're not going to do a job they'd probably fire me But it's the goddamn Booker and the world champion.

And they really, I think they were still fucking discussing at that point exactly what the finish was going to be.

Apparently, he's a big influence on Shawn Michaels.

That's where he gave.

Well, he idolized Flair.

I don't do no jobs in front of 60,000 people, brother.

So where does that leave us?

Anyway, I understand that

the job guy or the piss boy or

whoever he may be, what position he's serving now for the rock, Brian Gerwitz has been doing promos or interviews or letting the cat out of the bag or things, apparently.

That's right.

We have something that a ton of listeners have sent us.

Of course, Brian Gewertz, former head writer for WWE, and then he left to work with the Rocks production company, where rumor has it he's been carrying buckets of piss ever since.

Well,

you know,

that's a step up from giving the writer's head.

I don't know anything about that, but Jim was.

You said he went from from head writer to fucking piss carrier.

Well, it's not exactly what I said, but he's not having to give the writer's head anymore.

He's just having to carry the star's piss.

Well, who knows who he has to give head to, but let's, I don't know where we're degenerating to.

Jim, let's go to this.

It is a quote from the Masked Man show.

I think that's that shoemaker guy that always gets everything wrong in the documentaries.

Oh, well, now, is this coming directly from Gerwitz's own chicken lips so we can trust that it's his own

wording of the story.

This is a quote from Brian Gillwurtz talking about Cody Rhodes and how he was supposed to react differently when giving up his WrestleMania 40 main event spot to The Rock.

This was tweeted out by WrestlePurists.

The idea was supposed to be, it's like the Nixon-Kennedy debate a little bit, where you read the transcript, you're like, Nixon kicked his ass.

If you watch the actual footage, oh, he was a sweaty, terrible mess.

Cody, it was supposed to be in some form.

Now, wait, now, wait, wait, wait.

Do you think,

has Brian Gerwitz ever actually sat down and watched the Lincoln, the Lincoln-Kennedy debate?

The Lincoln debate, really.

The, you know, the Kennedy-Nixon debates?

Or has he just heard that that is the basically the summation, the Reader's Digest version, the

you know, debates for dumbshits version of the story of how Kennedy won the debates?

But

is he just using this as some example that he's read in a book somewhere?

Has he ever actually watched those debates?

I wonder.

But go ahead.

It is an often cited thing.

You wonder how much is just him repeating what he's heard.

Cody, it was supposed to be in some forum.

Yeah, fucking A, go get him, Rock.

You're going to get your ass kicked, Roman.

Let's do this.

Oh, boy.

And this uplifting promo, instead, he looked like someone shot his dog in the face in the parking lot.

That, I don't think, helped matters.

It might not have changed or affected anything, certainly on paper.

And I don't blame Cody for that.

He's real and one of the realest people I've ever met.

So, yeah, well, what it affected was it prevented Cody from being buried and looking like a complete fucking dweeb and an imbecile and a fucking jock swinger

and putting The Rock over as the big star in the room

any more than what they started out to do and then quickly pivoted away from was already doing to begin with.

But at least Cody is smarter.

No, this is not going to

be the way I would handle this.

It would have killed him.

It would have killed them with those fans right away because no one wanted The Rock in that position except for The Rock and the 7 Bucks team, apparently.

Well, but even then,

if that's what they were going to do,

then Cody reacted the way that he would

have reacted with that news.

And if he was

to me, if he was even doing his part in the story,

he wouldn't be like, you know, yeah, right, right, now you're really going to get what's yours.

You know, it would have been the way that he did it with a little more trepidation, but, you know, I can't remember the exact verbiage now, but he was more serious and somber about the fucking thing, where at least you felt that he still got some kind of plan where he's going to get even with this fucking guy.

You know what I think?

If you saw Cody's face, remember they hugged, they embraced.

And you saw Cody's face, he didn't flinch.

He didn't flash a smile or anything that showed that he approved of this.

And they filmed it.

I don't think Cody was the only person in that company upset about what was happening.

No.

And thankfully it changed things.

Can you imagine if WrestleMania had not been Cody versus Roman?

If it instead had been The Rock versus Roman, The Rock is a babyface versus Roman?

A lot of their role would be significantly fucking slower right now.

Or maybe the dough wouldn't have quite all risen.

Or maybe it'd be flatter than a plate full of piss.

You know, Jim, there's more and more stories ever since I started talking about it on the show coming out about not just Dwayne Johnson, but his team and just whatever the hell's going on over there.

Apparently making up stories by going to In-N-Out Burger, saying it was his first time.

He went to three different times and tweeted it out or put it on Instagram.

My first time having it.

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know the lingo.

He didn't know the lingo.

Here's the lingo.

Can I have a milkshake?

Can I have a burger?

The lingo.

What the hell?

But wait a minute, was he getting free burgers, though, if he was tweeting it out that it's the first time he'd been?

Well, the story is going around now.

His nickname is Dwayne the Ad Johnson because every one of his posts is really just something to pitch something.

So people think.

Well, people think it may have been a paid sponsorship.

And a lot of people out there are catching it.

You're just jelly.

You're jelly.

Uh-huh.

Well, you admit it?

I was eating a piece of cantaloupe.

There was only so many sounds I could make while chewing, so it wouldn't sound like I was chewing.

Oh, so what you were actually saying was, I take umbrage, sir, to your suggestion that I am jealous.

No, I'm not jealous of the rock in any way.

Trust me, ladies and gentlemen, I have a fucking fantastic life.

But now, wouldn't you want that chiseled physique?

He looks like he's going to have a heart attack at any moment.

Are you kidding me?

There's a difference between being chiseled and putting on 100 pounds of fake muscle.

But wouldn't you want to have those big-time parts and all those Hollywood made-you-motham pictures and sitcoms?

I make tons of money.

I stay home and I get to do this.

No.

Why, wouldn't you want to captivate and electrify a WWE wrestling crowd in the palm of your hand?

No, not really.

If I did, I'd probably go there.

Well, in that case, Brian, I think the only thing left for you is just to visit our friends at CB Distillery and then just lay down.

You think that'll help?

You have no ambition.

Well, no, I wouldn't say that.

I have plenty of ambition.

You have no.

You didn't know.

Oh, all you're about is making money, making money, and working, working, working all for yourself.

You don't want to go out there and be a superstar for all the people out there.

Well, you're right.

I'd rather just work for myself.

You're right about that.

You don't want to go out there and you don't want to be a model of physical fitness and exercise like The Rock is to millions of people, motivating them to take better care of themselves.

You don't want to go out there and entertain the masses, being the star of motion pictures and television.

You don't want to go out there and be the big star in wrestling on TV that everybody tunes at.

You just want to do your own business and make your own money like some kind of selfish prick.

Well, I thought we were talking about CB Distillery and

we are because CB.

I'm selfish for not working for other people.

That's right.

You're very uncharitable.

CB Distillery would mellow you out.

You got it?

It will.

I'm going to tell you where to get some.

You'd like to hear it.

Here it goes.

I'd like to get some.

Well,

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So they must not be crooked because how could they have stayed in business long enough to fleece 2 million people?

They've got, it's no fluff, no fillers, just the pure, effective CBD solutions designed to help support health and welfare and

patriotism

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This isn't on the copy.

Well, patriotism and apple pie go along with health and welfare, don't they health and welfare or at least welfare welfare or wellness

or well it depends on what kind of test you can pass but they've had two non-clinical surveys about this whole thing so it's got to be right

so you've been if you've been in trying to avoid the clinic this is for you non-clinical well no there's no there's nothing clinical going on with these surveys i'll tell you that it's pure unadulterated street people that they're asking questions where you get the straight dope about the real shit.

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Well, and I'm going to prep everybody right now that the review of May 17th SmackDown episode will probably not take too long because this was an uneventful program, if ever

there was meaning to the word uneventful.

That's, I guess,

the tone of that word, basically, if you were looking for an event to happen,

this was not full of them.

Would that be a fair assessment, Brian?

I thought there was some good action.

I really enjoyed the opening match, actually.

Oh, I knew you would.

It was good.

You knew I would because it was good.

No, I knew you would because you had wood.

I didn't have any wood.

I was watching it as...

Someone who has no sexual desire whatsoever, just a casual wrestling fan who watches the grappling to to see the grappling.

So you had oatmeal with saltpeter sprinkled all over the top of it and were able to completely nullify

any desire you might have to interview Tiffany Stratton about her hoo-has.

You know, not really my style of woman, to be quite honest with you, but she's very good in the ring.

She's very good in the ring.

Or perhaps you might want to twirl around on Bianca's little pigtail air.

Again, for my personal taste, too athletic, but a fantastic wrestler.

I'm a big fan of hers.

I watch this as a fan of wrestling.

Not everyone's a dirty old pervert.

Like whatever's going on over there.

I'm not

purring about any of the birds.

I'm telling you.

Okay, pern.

Well, for people who like

the girl wrestling,

this was a wonderful thing, but

you know, maybe it was because it was so long.

We were 20 minutes into the show before it was over with.

Maybe it's that Bianca's skipping and twirling is so off-putting to me.

That's why I wish it with her and Jade as a team that they would both come out with the lighting and the effects and the poses.

And

it's just, it's skipping and twirling about.

As Norman Frederick Charles III said one time to a waitress, are you allowed to take tips?

She said, oh, yes.

Well, then take a tipple over there and get me a fresh glass of tea.

And obviously, it'll be filled with her spit after that.

Yeah, well, you know, he was so endearing when he said things like that.

And

a lot of people I saw on, well, I would say a lot of people, because a lot of my people that I follow on Twitter that comment to me don't necessarily fucking talk about these things.

But some people said that it was very physical and,

you know, what an athletic struggle.

This, to me, didn't look like

a match that was worked to be a contest as much as

a couple of people that were either on two different pages or not exactly cooperating.

It was stiff in that way.

It was like, oh, shit, they landed on each other.

Oh, shit, they're pulling her hair.

Oh, man, somebody's going to get hurt here, but only if you're looking at it as a work, right?

I thought Bianca may have broken a rib at one point.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

So, I mean, it depends on, you know, what you're looking for in

your female wrestling entertainment.

But Bianca won and then got interviewed in the ring afterward about her bad knee.

I think the knee is probably the only thing I didn't see get landed on for a shoot on her whole body.

But,

you know, at the same time.

It was a good match.

It was a good match.

It was good.

It was good.

It was good.

It was a good match.

Did you watch the match?

I watched much of the match.

Mucho Macho is what I, and it wasn't very macho.

But now, but I'm not going to downplay the business they're doing.

I also heard this was the biggest crowd for wrestling in Jacksonville, Florida since the 1986 Great American Bash we had at the Gator Bowl.

And there was rain that day, but still.

So anyway,

then we had a Cody and Logan package, more on them later when they come out live.

But then here's another thing that worries me:

is that they went to the back, and there's Jade Cargill, and she's doing a promo in the back now with Bianca.

And not only was it a lot of scripted, nonsensical banter and behavior that they probably,

if they wouldn't really do it, or if they would really do it, I wouldn't really want to hear it.

But are they already teasing tension?

For

is this just because of the tournament?

Or could they possibly be teasing something between the two of them already?

They've been partners for three weeks.

Help me.

Well, I guess the question becomes: when do you think they're going to pull it off?

Because at some point, illogically, they put together to break them up and do something.

How long do you want to?

Wait a minute.

You mean they're there to make up?

To break up?

That's all.

Oh, come on.

We do.

This song is not in your key this is not your key hate me it's a skeleton key

it fits anything baby my voice has no key it's the key of z

but anyway um

hey that that's that's the thing is i just hope that they're they're doing something more longer term here but nevertheless it was just it was bad bad banter

how long do you think they should be in a tag team bianca traditionally over the last few years has established herself.

Again, the rating, everything's gone up.

She's been part of the package, one of the top singles in the company for women.

That's what gives her,

if you run her in a top tag team for a year, then she can become a single when she breaks up with that partner again and a whole new fresh thing and let somebody else be on the top for once.

Well, the other question is who becomes the babyface?

Who becomes the heel?

Who turns on who?

Well, boy, Jade is a more natural heel, but Bianca is probably a more advanced talker.

If they

see, I don't, this is, this is all written.

It's all written.

You can't tell what they could really do.

She's been there a while and she's a babyface.

Every babyface wants to be a heel, especially if they've been a skipping, hopping, jumping, hopping.

Yeah, I guess that is what you say.

Hopping, jumping, hopping, skipping, jumping, frolicking, swirling, babyface.

Servishing.

I'm sure the idea of being a heel would be quite intriguing.

But who knows?

Or just dervishing.

Or dervishing, whatever that is.

Do you think that they're going to cuss out old Solo because he wore a red jacket?

Well, he looked like a Maitre D at the fucking Hassenauer's restaurant, but

the bloodline was in a locker room.

Solo was wearing a red jacket.

Tomatonga was making noises.

And Solo tells Paul Heyman that he's talking to Roman

all the time, baby, all the time.

And

then L.A.

Knight comes, he's in the back, and he's talking about tonight against Tommy Tonga.

His promos, again, fantastic,

but he's starting to get the stepping stone

level here at this point because,

and Carmelo Hayes comes in to give,

in his words, give L.A.

Knight the opportunity to welcome him.

And L.A.

Knight blows Hayes out of the water with his promo,

as most everybody else is blowing Hayes out of the water with their work.

So I'm not sure how this third-round draft pick is going to work out, but they do the king of the ring match with L.A.

Knight against Tommy Tonga.

And yes, Tonga has to win for the sake of the story that they're telling and the place that they put him in it.

But at the same time, L.A.

Knight's really over with the people.

And again, he's losing.

I fear Tomatonga

is too new

and he's not outstanding enough at first sight to get the push this quick.

Where you don't see

with Solo and the various Tongas,

Tama, and Loa,

I see three really major league henchmen,

but I don't see a leader.

I don't see

we got Mo, Larry, and Curly.

We don't have Ted Healey for all you pre-1933 Stooge fans out there.

He's at the bar.

Well, but still, he was still there spending the Stooges money.

It hadn't been long enough.

Solo has gotten over

because he was in the rub with all these major stars, right?

But still,

does he have enough rub on him?

And here comes Tomatonga, and he's here for a month.

And whether he's, you know, beating people or not,

he's in great shape.

His work is fine.

He's not

visually impressive in any fashion.

Oh, wow, my God, a big major star.

Second coming of Vader, whatever the fuck.

And then you've got another Tonga,

but Roman's gone.

And Paul's role in this is being minimalized.

And he's got to step back so that they can get over.

But in the meantime, L.A.

Knight just got beat real easily with a distraction and a kind of an average-looking finishing move by this guy that's only been on TV for a month.

Was it?

I thought it was okay as a match.

I think

two things at the same time.

One is L.A.

Knight's being screwed over by the booking right now because he's super over with the fans, and that's not going to last forever if the booking doesn't do something different.

Yeah.

On the other hand, I've got no problem with Tamatonga and giving him a push.

They're in front of sold-out crowds, and they're accepting of all this right now.

They're accepting of Solo in this role, knowing that there will be something

that happens from Roman Reigns.

Heyman's still involved, so that gives you that credibility.

Now introduced as Hall of Famer, Paul Heyman, by the way.

And I like Tamatonga's little noises, too.

It's a little thing like that that'll get his character over with those fans.

So I've got no problem with this knowing that this isn't the end.

It's not like Roman's never coming back and the bloodline's just going to be this going forward.

This is part of

another story.

And Heyman being there with Solo, I think, is making it work too.

Well, and I agree.

Again, I'm not saying they shouldn't push these people.

I'm saying that they may be

new to have this whole group suddenly, you know, look completely different.

We'll see how that plays out.

But in the meantime, yes, I also agree.

Could LA Knight, if he had to be in this, could he not have been made to look stupid in the finish where he

basically nails one of them

and throws Tommy back in and has a face-off with Solo and rolls back in the ring and

Tommy just jumps up and grabs him and jerks him down face first, one, two, three.

You see,

more impressive things happen on a regular basis.

And the babyface doesn't have to just walk right fucking into him.

But that was just me.

I'll keep my opinions to myself from now on.

No, share your opinions.

I don't have to.

Well, my opinion is your opinion sucks.

Hey, your opinion wasn't that great either.

Well, I'll tell you, my opinion was a lot better than your opinion.

That's not what they've been saying.

Don't get all dramatic with me.

I'm reading the instant feedback.

Cornette's off base.

Brian's right.

Who's listening to this?

Give Brian more money.

Brian's awesome.

This is, look at what's coming in.

Brian is so sexy.

Give him more.

Let him talk.

This is all coming in right now.

Where is this coming in from?

I don't see anything.

Who are you to deny the people?

Who are these people?

All right.

It was nine o'clock on SmackDown.

and I'll tell you who these people are.

They are the people that are signing a contract for the main event at the premium live event at the uneventful event that they're going to be having over in Saudi Arabia Event Land.

Cody Rhodes and Logan Paul, with his many stooges, signing the contract for their title match with Nick Aldiss, the orchestrator and perpetrator of the

brand there, the general manager.

And this was, to me, this was the highlight of the show.

This was the only thing that got me fired up to,

well, not fired up, and nothing could fire me up anymore.

Goddamn, put napalm on my balls.

It probably wouldn't fire me up anymore.

But pique some curiosity, tickle a bit of my taint.

In this show they got coming up, Cody Rhodes and Logan Paul.

That's going to be good.

And this was a heck of a promo and performance from both guys where Cody started out there at the table at everything.

And he mentions back 32 years ago to the day Jacksonville was War Games 92.

The Dangerous Alliance and the Stinger Squadron.

He didn't even have to say it was Dusty's match.

They all knew.

And he got the fans into it.

And he said, you know why they're into it?

You know why they're here?

Because like them, I'm a fan of pro wrestling too and logan paul you're not a fan you're a tourist and that's ah

i'm stealing that or appropriating or researching it

from now on instead of cosplayers i think we ought to call them tourists brian what do you think

that's pretty good because that's it's a great comparison and

Cody cuts the promo and vows to win the U.S.

title and be the Grand Slam champion.

And when Logan Paul tried to fire back, the heels are the heels, the fans are all over him.

And, you know, he's trying to heal them, but they won't let him speak and blah, blah, blah.

And

he's got the Stooges with him.

One of them is wearing a suit.

So, you know, it has to be an attorney.

But it looks like he's getting ready to sign a contract and then he tears it up.

And the fans have been chanting, you can't read, you can't read.

And he says, I can can read yeah yeah he argued with him about it yeah he's really good about not doing too much to play off the fans but making sure that he has the control he's logan paul is as perfect as someone who came into wrestling could ever be at doing this he's so good at this of not only physically but a personality more more than that because

It's almost easier to find somebody who can do

the job physically than the personality.

Well, it is easier.

I mean, he's high level at both, but he's anatural and he's natural at doing it.

Where is he from, Logan Paul?

Oh, hold on.

Let me check.

He seems like an Orlando kind of guy.

Hold me.

One second.

Because

as a natural heat-getting heel, if he'd been born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he'd be Buddy Landell.

He was born in Westlake, Ohio.

Well, there you go.

He's a Midwestern Buddy Landell.

He's just a fucking guy with the mouth on him.

Anyway,

so Logan Paul said, no, this contract,

I'm tearing this thing up.

It does not reflect my agreement to wrestle Cody

for the WWE title, not to put my USA title or USA, U.S.

title at stake.

And remember, we were just talking about that the way, and they led us to believe that so that he could get heat by pulling the swerve, but that way they didn't have to figure out how

to not have Cody end up with everything, like we were talking about on the drive-thru, I guess, right?

They had to find some kind of way to explain their way out of it because it didn't make any sense to do it.

Well, so now they're at least they're putting the heel heat on,

but that was kind of, I don't know why they really had to tease that to begin with, except, well, to do this.

So, nevertheless.

And Aldous gets pissed off.

That's not what we agreed to.

And Logan's Paul's lawyer.

Logan's Paul's lawyer.

The Logan, the lawyer that Logan

built

argued with Aldous.

Are you threatening my client?

And then Cody said, here, I'll relieve you, Nick.

Go ahead.

And Nick leaves the ring.

Cody says, don't worry, I got this.

And then Logan Paul cuts a promo on him further, but finally, Cody.

fucking fires back up with what you human hat rack

you know in in in eight days, a WWE Hall of Famer is going to knock your brother out.

And at the king of the ring, a future Hall of Famer is going to beat you.

And then they do the obligatory Cody ducks the swing, clotheslines Logan Paul out to the floor and power bombs a stooge through the table.

But that, this was the

midway point and the high point of the show, and everything else kind of

was filler around it.

This is what, you know, most people were wondering what was going to take place in.

I thought everyone involved did a great job.

I know some people were like down on the lawyer that he looked too cheap.

I thought he was just fine.

I've seen some cheap-ass lawyers, I'll tell you.

And Logan Paul nails everything.

In a way, he feels more natural talking than Cody does, but it works.

It works them interplaying off each other really well.

Nick Aldous, as always, was great here.

I don't know why he left the ring.

He's in charge.

Why the hell did he go?

Well, probably so that he wouldn't have to be there in the middle of all the violence.

See, plausible deniability.

I wasn't even there.

I am looking forward to the match.

And if they had Logan Paul featured on this show for a segment every single week, I would watch it.

He's that.

He's so good.

Here's a guy that needs the fucking talk show.

Can we get the Logan Paul effect instead of the Grayson Waller

effect?

Because the effect of that is for me not to watch it.

Great segment.

All righty then.

Well, they followed that up with a real winner.

Did you watch out of morbid curiosity?

I hope you did.

It wouldn't take long.

Refrigerator Jax versus Jade Cargill.

You know, I want to say I did because how could I not have, but I don't remember seeing it.

Well, you might have blinked because they

don't know why they did this.

They thought with smoke and mirrors and fighting on the floor and shortcuts

they could make it work.

And

maybe, again, the more forgiving modern eye, but to a veteran, for those of you out there who ever wondered what it would look like if Plowboy Frazier wrestled Sailor Art Thomas,

I've seen them both in their prime and this was it.

And the whole thing didn't go three minutes.

They

boom, boom, and some awkward jerking and moving about, and then they went to the floor.

And

finally, the

finish, I swear to God, Brian, because I mean, this was

Jade can't move the refrigerator around at will.

And she's not

experienced enough to be fluid in going with a lot of this flow because the fridge is a little jerky.

And I believe they had walked through some things, but in actuality of doing them, it was a little rough.

But then they gave him,

explain this finish to me.

They're on the floor fighting.

The referee is watching them.

The refrigerator grabs a chair and goes to hit Jade over the head, but Jade

blocks it, grabs it away, and hits the refrigerator.

And Jade is disqualified.

Does that make any sense anyway, even if they'd have done it right?

No, it doesn't.

Okay, well, and then imagine what happened when it was done like this.

So

the fridge is coming overhead with a double-hander with the chair, and Jade is supposed to block it and grab it away from her, right?

She missed the block, and it looked like and sounded like

that she just got hit over the head with that fucking chair,

or at least in the face or facial area, cranium region.

It was a missed block and a very sloppy fucking blah blah blah.

And then she grabs the chair and then hits the other girl, the refrigerator.

And it looks like half as fucking wicked as the one she just,

somebody told her, and in

inspiring young, not inspiring, but aspiring young wrestlers out there, if you're going to block anything flat,

a chair, a board,

garbage can lid, tennis racket being swung at your head flat,

a cookie sheet,

don't try to reach up and grab it by both edges

because invariably you will miss one or both, and it will hit you in the head, or

the person will hold up and look fake.

Go for your right hand blocks it flat with your palm,

and your left hand grabs the edge, and then you can still grab it away quick.

But god damn it, doesn't everybody know that?

This is not a revelation.

Apparently, it is.

Well, and it's John 3.16.

Thou shalt not miss the block.

All right.

So then after the disqualification, they did a horrible, sloppy pull apart.

And as I mentioned, the whole thing was over in about three minutes.

And, you know, past that, I mean, it was a Champa and same face against the Lucha Heels.

Poor Tommaso, but this team is

a dead end for him.

You got a guy in that kind of shape that looks like that, and his work, he can convince you and drag you in with his promos.

And he's teamed up with this fucking nerd, this aging nerd.

But anyway, we get to the main event.

Randy Orton versus Carmelo Hayes, the big old

number three draft round pick, draft pick round.

No, it was the first round.

He was the third pick in the first round.

Number three, first round.

He didn't need to go that high.

That's usually.

How high did he need to go?

Well, at least

he's already bumping his head on his ceiling, I'm afraid.

Randy Orton looked like Big John Studd next to Carmelo Hayes.

And he's Randy is what, 6'3, 275.

That's not, that's three inches taller and

45 pounds heavier than it used to be when you were, that was the cutoff for the junior heavyweight.

Fucking,

but anyway,

again, I'm not trying to slander Hayes,

but

to

give someone that high of a pick,

and then not only are you beating him constantly, but he's not that impressive.

I don't see it.

Orton led it, kept it interesting,

sold for him, did everything he could realistically do to get his shit over.

And

I mean, he does what he does.

And finally, he goes for one of the springboard cutter

type of, you know, deals that he does.

And Orton hits the RKO out of nowhere, one, two, three.

I think Carmelo Hayes would be a top guy in AEW because he does does all the same shit they do, but better.

But here, I don't know that he stands out.

What do you think?

I didn't see the match.

I gave them pretty much the first hour.

I gave them until the Cody thing, and then I had some stuff I had to do.

Oh, you son of a bitch, that's a flimsy excuse.

I like the first hour.

Hey, I like that.

Hey, that EMT crew would have taken your grandmother to the hospital to begin with.

You didn't need to go.

All right, listen to me here.

The opening match was really good.

The Bloodline locker room stuff was good.

Tamatanga L.A.

Knight was good, except for the fact that LA Knight's losing again.

And then the contract signing was awesome.

That's it.

I'm out.

I'm leaving on a high note.

And again, it was around 9 o'clock.

I had things going on.

Well, thank you, George Costanza.

Of course,

we know that your day gets busy at 9 p.m.

at night.

I mean, it starts.

You're welcome, Joe DiVola.

It starts snapping.

I mean it starts hopping.

You're out there, you're playing footsie with all the showgirls down at the diamond lounge.

That's not what I do.

Jet setting from one place to another.

Normal folks are in bed at that time of night, I'll have you know.

Normal

God-fearing folks.

And boy, the way they've set God up, who wouldn't be scared of him?

He kills people at random with thunderstorms and floods and all kinds of stuff.

But normal people, people that work with their hands, people down on the farm, the backbone of America, the tailbones of America, they're in bed at nine o'clock, not like you, Playboy.

And you know what they do when they do go to bed?

You know what kind of product that they lay their weary heads down on after they've spent a long day.

plowing the fields and working in a farm and pulling on the teats of the cows to produce the milk to stick down the necks of their children that they pop out out with regularity because they have no access to birth control out on the farm and all they have to use as an example is the pigs and the donkeys what is wrong with you and the other animals running around in the mud so they what is wrong with you stop they have all kinds of children but you know what you have all kinds of fantasies what is happening here you know what kind of product they lay their weary heads down on when they finished backboning America?

A helix sleep mattress, folks.

That's, I'm telling you, because that's the only time in their life.

They're out there, they're in the inclement weather.

The people that work hard, the responders, whether first or second or third, or the people that don't come at all,

the people that ignore you, but they're out there in the elements too, working hard at whatever they do.

And all the people out there that want to...

All they want after a hard day's work is a soft night's sleep or a firm night's sleep.

Hell, some of them like to be tied to a board.

Well, they've got one for you too, folks, because Helix sleep has a mattress for everybody.

And Brian, I'd like to also,

I'd like to admit to you that I was suitably chastened the other day.

You smartened me up to this.

The Helix kids mattress.

That when I thought it was designed for growing bodies, I thought that that meant that it enhanced the growth of the children that you put on it, that it made them grow bigger faster.

Then, and it's not, that's not the way that it's designed for growing bodies.

Instead, it's basically an expandable mattress, as I understand it, where you place the growing child on it.

And as the child grows, it'll stay about, what, three or four inches ahead of how long the kid is?

I don't think any of what you're saying is true.

What we want to remind everyone is that Helix Sleep have very good mattresses, the best, comfortable, soft firm whatever you need hey maybe you want to have some fun at home the plowing doesn't have to end on the field bring it into the bed with helix sleep oh fuck yeah don't be such a disgusting honory dirty old new jerseyite oh what are you talking about you for heaven's sake

crude We're talking about the award-winning Lux and Ultra Premium Elite collections of mattresses where they, like you said, they're built for everybody they're small they're large they're firm they're soft they're hard as a rock they're harder than Chinese arithmetic or they're softer than a box of fluffy ducks and like sleeping in a cloud wrapped in a warm puppy skin

so they got all kinds of models and all you got to do is go to helixsleep.com and you take the quiz of how you like to sleep in what position with what type of people file what type of people you like to sleep with with Helix.

And every time they get matches, they've got a whole nother dating section that they can smart you up to.

And then if they don't have a dating section, they will set you up with a mattress and that's it.

Well, wait till you see the people that deliver the mattress.

They're going to be tailored just for you.

And unlike other brands, Helix mattresses do not contain fiberglass, which I was shocked to find out can be harmful to your health.

Because I remember back when I was a a kid, we didn't know about things like that.

And Mama Cornette used to start my day off with a hearty bowl of fiberglass and some good whole vitamin D milk.

But there's no fiberglass in these mattresses, folks.

And you can thank the people at Helix for that because, well, they've got their own manufacturing facility.

And they manufacture their own filler.

and different items to put in there.

And none of it,

none of it violates any laws that have been passed as of this point in time now there's some

materials they are using safe materials in their fillers and other things as you say yes they they pass every statute that right now is in on the books so anyway go to helixleep.com and what are you going to get i'll tell you what you're going to get you're going to get save you money

if that sounds right because we're going to save you money by offering you up to 30

off all the mattress.

Yes, send the mattress money directly to us, me and Brian.

No, do not do that.

Go around.

And whatever mattress you want, you send us the money.

We'll make sure that you get the mattress

and you'll get the shaft too, the shaft the mattress is sent in.

We are not vendors, ladies and gentlemen.

Well, Helix is offering up to 30%

off all mattress orders and two free pillows for our listeners.

I thought if they sent us the money and we got it 30% off and then sent it to them, we'd be making 30%,

wouldn't we?

But, dad gum, it's going to be hard to get.

The money goes directly to Helix Sleep, once again, ladies and gentlemen, who you'll be dealing with and you'll be using our promo code.

Where can they go and what can they do?

Well, and the thing is, we can't even really save any money on the shipping because it comes in that box.

It's so amazing the way that they send it.

And one person can put it where it's supposed to go, and then you just open it up and boom.

Anyway, helixleep.com slash jce

that is helixleep.com slash jce

30 off all mattress orders and two free pillows but it won't last long before they run out and then you're going to be sleeping in a pile of gravel in a quarry somewhere

probably not but once again if you want a good night's sleep helix sleep What's that promo code, Jim?

JCE.

I just said that.

Didn't it?

Did they change it?

It's still the same.

Did you get a fucking memo in the last 45 seconds?

Oh, stop that old promo code.

All right.

Well, speaking of old things, before we preview next week's program, which we're going to be talking about, the

double header pay-per-view offerings from both AEW and the WWE in the same weekend on a holiday.

Have they no shame?

Have they no mercy?

Have they no prisons, no workhouses?

That's the wrong fucking play.

But they're going to bombard us next week with two pay-per-views, hours and hours and hours of enjoyment.

And we're going to preview that.

But before we get to next weekend, what the hell's going on in the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week?

Hey, another fine week of programming on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information about all the shows on Twitter, at Super Podcasts, or on Facebook at

slash Arcadian Vanguard.

A few notes.

Of course, every day, get your news from the Wrestling News for free.

Wherever you find your favorite podcast, Arcadian Vanguard's The Wrestling News.

No clickbait, no paywall, just the wrestling news every morning with the morning newscast from the wrestling news at thewrestlingnews.com or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

I heard somebody came in last week with a paywall and they were escorted out by the fucking security.

And we shot them in the head.

Of course, we also want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon.

This week, he goes through the archives, his interview with Rowdy Roddy Piper from 2006.

Hear Rowdy Roddy Piper himself, S-U-A-W-Pod.com, or for Shut Up and Wrestle, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

And of course,

the 605 Super Podcast, the

membership.

I swear to God, I'll get five minutes to work on an episode soon, ladies and gentlemen.

Go through the archives at 605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcast, the

Mothership.

You got a lot of archives, though, out there.

Oh, the archives are archived to the gills.

Valuable archives.

Very, very, very valuable.

Great programming.

Yes.

It's time-consuming also.

That's right.

We'll see you at NAPTY.

Well, speaking of consuming time,

the various major promotions are going to be consuming a lot of ours next weekend, Brian.

I'm not

happy about this.

A nice holiday weekend.

Weather's getting nice.

Might barbecue a few wieners outside, have some weenies and beanies, have a burger and...

and a fry or whatever the fuck you do outside.

And instead, we're going to be watching all the wrestling.

What is going?

Do we have firm cards yet for either one or both of these extravaganzas coming up?

I can't speak for AEW.

Tony's not really known for his firmness.

And usually they add a lot of matches like the day before the show.

That's true.

Most of his cards are flaccid, kind of works in progress.

But it's up to you.

We can start with WWE, the king and queen of the ring, or...

Okay, no, well,

let's start right there because hold on now.

i'm sorry i'm sorry but not only will it always and forever be king of the ring

but k-o-t-r

is a whole lot goddamn easier to write and look at than k-a-q-o-t-r

so it it it can be the king of the ring now with queens

Let's break that shit up a little bit.

Well, Jim, here are the matches as listed so far on Wikipedia.

The raw bracket winner versus the SmackDown bracket winner and the King of the Ring.

And of course, the Queen of the Ring matches.

Those are the first two matches listed.

All right, well, hold on here a second because

Gunther is still in play.

Jey Uso is still in play.

Orton is still in play.

And who's the other fellow over there at the other side?

It's interesting if you look at what could play out.

We could get Gunther versus Randy Orton.

We could get

Jey Uso versus Tamatanga.

That's right.

Tamatonga is still around.

Hey,

you know.

Does Gunther deserve something?

Not deserve, but should Gunther get something like this coming out of losing the belt?

Will it help Jey Uso, who's super over with their fans right now?

Would it do anything for Orton?

And would it play into the bloodline storyline with Tamatonga winning?

Wouldn't do anything for Orton at this point in his career.

and I don't think he needs it.

But it would help the heel to have a victory over him.

But I don't want to see Gunther lose again so quick.

But I'm afraid that they're going to try to give Jey Uso something else to

because right now he's riding a wave of

temporary insanity

to be over at this level with the performance at this point.

And I'm afraid they may be going to try to give him something to keep that

smoke and mirror elevation job going.

So I think

it's going to either be

Jey Uso

or potentially old Tamatonga.

Well, we shall see.

That means Gunther would lose to Jey Uso on SmackDown, which would be Gunther's first televised loss.

And that's what I'm...

If we can get,

but if Tonga can help

Gunther defeat, well, not even help Gunther, but just hurt Uso in some fashion, which would make sense, then

maybe they can go in that direction.

And if Gunther beat Orton,

that would be a valuable use of Randy Orton and a great fucking match.

Have we ever seen Gunther versus Randy Orton?

I don't think so.

I don't think no.

All right, so they placed it in Saudi Arabia.

That's a good idea.

Well, but at least they're letting us see it on the TV screen.

Beaming it back here on the closed-circuit telecast.

So who do you pick?

You have to pick someone?

Oh, God damn it.

Just all the things I just said.

I don't know what they're going to fucking do.

Well, the women's final will be determined after the two semifinal matches, which will be EO Sky versus Lyra or Lyra.

I'm not even sure.

I haven't been paying attention.

Lyra

Valkyrie.

Valkyrie.

I was going to say Valkyrie, but it's not Valkyrie.

Lyra Valkyria.

Valkyrie?

How do you pronounce her name?

I don't watch her stuff, really, so I can't.

Valerie, Valerie, Valerie, Valerie.

And in the other bracket, we have Nia Jax versus Bianca Bel Air.

I don't care about any of all of this shit.

So who will be queen of the ring?

None of the above.

I'm voting for a write in candidate.

Well, in a match for the Women's World Championship, the champion Becky Lynch versus Liv Morgan.

Oh, boy, Howdy.

Well, at least Becky will make Liv look competitive size-wise, since Becky is of slight build herself.

Yeah, I don't care about this either.

In a triple threat match for the Intercontinental Championship, Sami Zayn, the champion, defends against Chad Gable

and Bronson Reed.

Boy,

again,

if this was six months ago, I would say, oh, immediately

put that belt on Bronson Reed, and he's impressive and blah, blah, blah.

And he's been kind of,

even though they've done stuff with him,

I always compared him to Crusher Blackwell, right?

Well, Blackwell, he didn't go into a territory and hang out, kind of doing okay for six months, and then suddenly started getting used in a top spot.

That happens sometimes with some guys, with many guys, but it didn't happen with him because

the clock was ticking.

It was amazing every time you saw him that a guy that size could physically do that shit.

Right?

That's what got him over instantly on, you know, whenever he went somewhere.

But then, after a while, you had to keep using him because then the new would wear off because he could only do

certain fucking things.

And if you bring a guy like this in and he can do that splash off the top, and he looks so physically intimidating, but you put him in with either guys as big as he is, or taller, or strong, or a battle of the brutes type of thing.

Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost.

He was dressing in a suit.

He was, was he a

nice guy or a fucking mama's boy?

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

And now he still is impressive physically when he's against the right kind of guy, but he's not making a real first impression anymore.

And Gable is much more

intriguing.

His work is tremendous.

I still want to get him away from all those fucking goofballs in his group.

At least he's browbeating them.

Hopefully he'll soon be finding locations around the San Fernando Valley culvert system to bury them so the FBI can't find them.

Metaphorically speaking, ladies and gentlemen.

And in a non-coercive way.

But Gable's the one that should be winning this now.

And I would have said Bronson Reed six months ago, and Sammy

doesn't, Sammy's still over.

Sammy doesn't need it.

That's just my thought.

But I'm sure Sammy's probably going to fucking just win.

I'd like to see Gable.

And finally, Jim, the main event for the...

That's it?

For the undisputed WWE Championship, the champion Cody Rhodes versus Logan Paul.

Well, we know the Saudi Arabian people,

or maybe not the people, but

the royal family or whoever makes the decisions, they like Logan Paul.

Didn't he?

He worked with Roman in Saudi Arabia one time before, right?

Yeah.

So they probably, he's got all the social media.

They see that stuff.

They say, oh, wow, he's a big star.

So

in the process of selling them something that this isn't a major lineup, to be quite honest with you, but they got a blue million dollars for it.

Logan Paul to them is a big star, but at the same time, this is the match you want to see out of all the,

I guess the girl wrestling has its fans.

but besides for the king of the ring final and what that's going to entail this is the match and this is the most important match and

i'm anxious to see because logan paul can do the athletic stuff with ricochet

and you know he as we know from ronda rousey's sorry sour grapes ass

He gets plenty of time to rehearse his stuff.

So

with Cody,

it's going to be interesting to see him have more of a traditional wrestling match and still do the snazzy razzmataz that the

young kids like.

But we can see if he's picking up on his basics and if he can make the

simple stuff look as smooth as it's supposed to for a real professional.

And plus, he gets a ton of heat.

So I'm looking forward to that most of all.

Well, that will be the king and queen of the ring taking place

that will be king of the ring now with queens

in jeddah saudi arabia and that's coming up this weekend why don't they have a place somewhere in the world a city named general

so when you said well where is it happening you say well in general

all right well there's another event happening jim

a ew yeah that is their name a ew double or Nothing 2024.

AEWW or Nothing.

Are you excited for this event?

Oh, boy, howdy.

I literally can't keep myself

from fucking staying awake all night.

I'm hopping up and down.

My tits are bouncing and my buttholes quivering at the very thought of seeing this show.

May 26, 2024, the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Paradise, Nevada.

Here's the card, Jim.

Well, sit down and bow.

Now, basically,

that's a good sign already

because they said May 20.

Did you say May 27?

I said May 26.

Oh,

May 26, but they didn't say May 26 to 27.

So that means that they promise us they're going to get it done by midnight.

I don't know if there are any promises involved here, but here is the card as we are recording.

And again, these things can and usually do change or get added upon.

In a match for the AEW TBS Championship,

Willow Nightingale versus Mercedes Monet.

Alrighty then.

I mean,

I don't see how anybody can justify

the finish either way, to be honest with you, because for the money that they allegedly spent to sign Mercedes Moon

and for the level of star that she was presented to be, and the way that everybody just hopped up and down like schoolgirls with shiny new vibrators about signing her,

that the idea that she should lose her first match on paper, first match coming into the company is completely insane,

except for the fact that the fans so far in the last five or six weeks have said loudly, you know what, we don't fucking like this girl and we like Willow.

And for Willow

to lose at this point

with the performances that this other young lady has been turning in is crazy, but that's probably what's going to happen because how can you,

how can you beat Mercedes in her first,

you know, they've,

they've got to beat Willow, beat Willow, beat Willow.

Which sucks.

Let's hope she gets out of her contract at some point and goes to a real company.

Jim, also on the card, Chris Jericho

with Big Bill, the FTW champion,

versus the winner of an Eliminator match, which will be taking place on Dynamite this Wednesday between Hook, Katsuyuri Shibata,

and Brian Keith.

Okay, so this

is this an awkward

Mark Booker's way of getting Hook into the rematch with Jericho instead of just saying, hey, Hook's going to have a rematch with Jericho?

Does anybody either think

that Shapupi or Brian Keith would win that match or would want to see Shapupi or Brian Keith win the match?

I could see Tony going with Shapupi versus Jericho, but it should be Hook, so I'm going to go with Hook.

But then, so that means that instead of just advertising, yeah, we're going to have this rematch with Jericho and Hook, and there's ill will between them, we have to wait until when, the night before, to see the Eliminator match to determine that that match is going to happen.

My God, look at this lineup for Dynamite.

This is scary.

This is the story we should be talking about.

Well, I can't look at it because it's not in front of me.

Here's what's coming up

to tell me.

Here's what you have.

We'll get back to the double or nothing preview.

We're going to preview.

How will we even know the difference but go ahead orange cassidy and will osprey versus trent beretta and roderick strong oh you got to be kidding me

no

they said that this guy is the new top babyface in the company and supposedly by some people's metric the greatest wrestler in the world so they team him up with the mascot against two fucking underneath comedy heels

what what also do you you do you remember when Steve Austin used to team up with Kai and Ty to face off against Too Cool?

Also on the show, Jim, Konosuke Takesha versus Matt Seidal.

So they found a way to make him happy, give him a win on TV.

Oh boy.

Tony Storm and Mariah Mae versus Saraya and Harley Cameron

in what will be the bathroom break match.

Brian Danielson versus Satinam Singh.

What?

That's interesting.

You know what?

That's something I do want to see actually on this show.

Yeah,

I've got to see

what they're going to say for themselves on that myself.

And there's a little Sanjay Dutt image in the corner, but no Jeff Jarrett and

wife and everything else.

Also for Wednesday, Jon Moxley will be in the building.

IWTP World Heavyweight Champion.

He's in the building every week.

We see it.

He comes through the building.

Malachi Malachi Black versus Kyle O'Reilly.

Oh, poor Kyle.

There'll be lots of kicks, ladies and gentlemen.

Also,

the United World Trios champions, the Bang Bang Gang, will be at Dynamite.

Also,

there will be a preview of the TBS Championship match between Willow Nightingale and Mercedes Monet.

The aforementioned three-way match, Hook, Shibata, and Brian Keith.

Winner gets Jericho.

Losers laugh about the winner.

And finally, Swerve Strickland versus Nick Wayne.

Finally,

Swerve Strickland versus Nick Plain.

Is this the lineup to reverse the trend?

Are you kidding?

And now they've got to figure out how in the world are they going to get Nick Plain to figure out a way to lay Swerve out and leave him with his balls stuck in his own mouth.

Well, Jim, we go back to double or nothing.

I brought up Takesha before.

Have we got to nothing yet?

In an IWGP World Heavyweight Championship Eliminator match,

Jon Moxley versus Konosuke Takesha.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

So he gets a win on TV so that Moxley, the fucking plumber, can beat him on the pay-per-view.

In an eliminator match.

That way, New Japan doesn't say that he got a shot at the IWGP title, is what it is.

Who gives a shit?

New Japan.

Also, Jim, on this show,

Roderick Strong, the AEW International Champion versus Will Ospreay.

And, you know, again, this is going to be bell-to-bell, as they say, probably the show-stealing match, certainly athletically, and for

somewhat of a factor of the athletic work, maybe not the psychological aspect of the work.

But

it's obvious

this is another underneath title that they've created, so everybody has one.

And now Tony wants,

instead of Ostrich challenging for anything that they may have made meaningful out of an AEW World title or even a TNT title, He just wants him to have a belt, so he's going to put the belt that Roddy got from Pockets onto this fucking guy.

And probably

he was doing the old Stan Stasiak or Ivan Koloff thing.

He didn't want any babyface to beat his little puppy Pockets because he was worried that the sensitive fans would throw rocks at that guy.

Well, speaking of Pockets, Orange Cassidy versus Trent Beretta.

Oh, that hot.

You know, we talked about Flair and Dusty on the rivals program.

Can't you just now salivate thinking about the

Orange Cassidy versus Trent

special on their hot rivalry?

I just watched him after.

I just watched him with Dynamite.

He gave Orange Cassidy a pile driver on the steel steps, which he didn't sell.

Well, that's because

it was on his head.

There was nothing there to damage.

That's a good point.

I didn't think of that.

Very good point.

And we've got to think about poor old Muffin Top Taylor, having been injured so bad he can never wrestle again, as opposed to before when he just couldn't wrestle well.

Jim for the AEW World Women's Championship.

Of course, it is.

Time was Tony Storm the champion with Luther and Mariah May versus Serena Deeb.

Well, this is what they've been

pushing.

And of course, as we mentioned, it depends on the week as to whether Serena's a a babyface talking about nearly dying or Tony's a babyface because she's

weird and

who do you think will win

oh I don't care but Tony Storm's gonna win all right Jim in a barbed wire steel cage match

for the TNT championship the champion Adam Copeland versus Malachi Black

and they're both going to come into the ring wearing three hats on top of each other's heads.

Again, one would think that

all of this has been to potentially get some heat on Malachi Black.

That's why Edge has wrestled Brody King, and before that was Buddy Matthews.

But

have they had a match yet?

Edge and Malachi Black, or they've been building it up with him building, building.

You have to wait to fight me till you fight my guys, type of thing, right?

That's why he had Buddy, and that's why he had old Brody.

Yeah, I don't think he's wrestled Malachi yet, no.

So the first match is in a barbed wire steel cage.

Didn't we miss something?

Should the thing they've been building is they'll face each other, they'll fight each other.

So if it was the first match in the series, then you would imagine

that Malachi Black would win to establish him because in the wrestling pecking order, he's not as big a star as Edge.

But then they would have some other type of match with a more elevated stipulation and maybe he'd win again.

But then sooner or later, after he had beaten Edge a couple of times by nefarious means in these matches, then they would have some type of

blow-off where there would be no intervention from other people and there'd be no way for the heel to cheat.

And then Edge would win fair and square when it was all over with.

But how do you fucking progress from a barbed wire steel cage match for the title?

I assume that

since Edge is an old, old fellow and Malachi Black is a young fellow, that

they'll put the young fellow over the old fellow, and Edge can say he's being charitable.

But I don't see who's learning anything out of any of these teaching moments.

Jim, for the AEW World Heavyweight Championship, Swerve Strickland, the champion, versus Christian Cage.

And

again, unless they're completely insane, Swerve will beat Christian

because they're not going to switch the belt at this point to Christian at this time.

But,

and I mean, that's the right and proper thing.

And Swerve hopefully better gets some revenge for having his hair pulled out and his fucking,

you know,

pocket watch taken and shoved up his ass and smuggled from the Nazis.

Or what I don't know what all has been done to him.

But hope, but he's going to get even on a pay-per-view that's seen by 100 or 125,000 people,

You know, after he's been completely emasculated for his first month as champion on the show, that's seen by

500 or 600,000 people.

You know, you can do things like that to a babyface champion who has had some time to establish himself, but he's been an afterthought.

Where's his manager?

Could his manager keep track of,

you know, at least, well, no, I guess old Nick Plain's mom is the biggest one in the group besides the lizard, so I guess Nana wouldn't want to fight her.

She'd kick the shit out of him.

That's why I'm afraid they're going to turn Nana on Swerve, which would kill.

It would just be the stupidest thing ever.

Well, would just somebody tell us where he is?

Is he being held captive?

Was his parole revoked?

Is he in traction?

In an iron lung?

Where is he?

So many questions.

But Swerve is not going to lose the title, I do not believe.

And finally, Jim, Jim, one final match:

it is anarchy in the arena.

The elite

comprised of Kazushka Okada, Jack Perry, Matt Jackson, and Nick Jackson versus Team AEW,

Brian Danielson, Darby Allen, and FTR.

I again,

it would be insane to think that Team AEW would lose on an AEW pay-per-view

in what would have to be the ultimate blow-off match.

How are they going to come up with something?

What is their,

are they each going to be given poison and the antidote is on a poll?

Or how can you top this

stipulation, this match?

So

Team AEW has to win, but that means that

their new top heel faction, comprised of the,

you know, the Lollipop Guild and the

denizens of Lilliput

are going to lose their first major match as a group, which

kind of violates what major groups do since the days of the Four Horsemen and/or the NWO.

So

there is no sensible way to figure a finish to this match that makes booking sense, but

one would think that the babyfaces have to come out on top, or elsewhere they've just completely buried the company and Tony, right?

When they can't beat

these asshole rogue executives that hospitalize Tony?

Does Tony appear?

Does Tony turn?

Oh, boy.

No,

Tony ain't going to turn.

But if

Tony appears to trip somebody, to pull somebody's leg or to throw a foreign object or to distract or whatever,

that would be the ultimate, hey, let's get the fucking money mark involved in this all the way to make sure that he has a ball.

That would be the dream come true.

They'd have to shoot Tony.

on television from the waist up because of the reaction that he would have if he got to be involved in the finish.

And they'd probably be able to sell it to him on the idea.

We'll get some publicity, but boy, this has all been a misfire so far.

And we'll see how this pay-per-view does.

That's AEW double or nothing

from Las Vegas or Paradise, Nevada.

And that's another thing.

Where is Paradise?

I've heard of Paradise Valley, Arizona.

But I've been to Las Vegas.

Are they in Las Vegas or are they not in Las Vegas?

Where's Paradise?

It's adjacent to the city of Las Vegas.

So it's just, it's not as good as Las Vegas.

It's just next to it.

It's right.

I mean, this is a big arena.

They're trying to sidle up to it to get the rub off of Las Vegas.

How many gangsters started Paradise?

How many mob hits have they had there?

That's a true test of a credibility of a Las Vegas institution.

How many mobsters have been carried out of there with a sheet over the top of them?

That's all Howie would.

But ladies and gentlemen, this is a double or nothing.

And this is your show.

This is your show.

Well, and it's, you know what?

Instead of double, it's nothing.

We're done for the day.

But we'll be back on the drive-thru coming up very shortly, very, very shortly.

And then we, as we mentioned, next week will be a big multi-part, multi-hour Jim Cornette experience where we cover all of the various pay-per-view activity of both of these wretched companies.

Until then, Brian,

one last word from you.

Yes, sir.

For Brian, I'm Jim, and for Spike Jones and the City Slickers, folks, thank you, fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.