Episode 531: Jim Reviews WWE Backlash In France

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Like a midnight and the rock and roller, he's in a fight for wrestling solar using a racket and some mind controller.

He's Jim Cornish!

The keys to the future, held by the past.

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

He's Jim Cornish.

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 Cornet.

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

The WWE just had backlash.

AEW is suffering from whiplash, and I've come within an eyelash of watching all the wrestling that I can watch.

It's the please God make it stop edition of the Jim Coronet Experience and joining me on this hysterical ride.

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

Co-host of you, the man who says about our recording schedule, it will never be over.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Thankfully, I'm a little, I don't know, I'm tired today, but it's your show, so I can just sit back and

enjoy the good times and laugh along with the listeners.

Yeah, if you try to sit back on this one, they'll be playing an organ over the top of you.

And it won't be at a ballpark either.

It'll be,

as Dream Machine used to say,

they'll be ready to lay you out and have some sad singing and slow walking done over you.

Oh, boy.

You know, I was telling you this yesterday because, ladies and gentlemen, members of the Cult of Cornet, listeners and concerned citizens out there everywhere.

Whatever time or day you are listening to this,

it could have been done almost 24 hours sooner had I had the goddamn will to go on.

And I said to you yesterday, I said,

we just recorded a show 36 hours ago.

There's been a SmackDown.

There's been a pay-per-view.

There's been things,

things going on.

But

how many times can we talk about these things in quick succession and

goddamn it, you know, we just need a break every once in a while.

I need to get my thoughts together because people have

real lives, and/or other people have real jobs instead of you and me.

But we've all got lives of some description.

And how much

wrestling can you watch?

And here is the

big, deep question in this, Brian.

Will the WWE benefit

from viewer fatigue?

Because when you don't have time for everything, you just kind of pick the,

you know, the, the, the, the top of the line stuff, right?

The number one show, the brand name.

How much more fucking wrestling can people

layer between AEW and WWE

just on television in a seven-day period every week, plus the programs that are about wrestling, whether it be the biographies, the treasures, the rivals with WWE and Darkseid,

there's 20 hours and a paper, throw a pay-per-view in there because there's one of those every two weeks, right?

WWE once a month, AEW is going once a month now.

That's 20 plus hours if you're just watching it.

That's half of people's work week.

So much less for us it all

blurring together and looking the same after a while.

How do people have the time to invest when they have a 40-hour work week and they might have a dog that needs to walk or a

sick Aunt Gladys that needs chicken soup or whatever?

Do you see what I'm saying here?

You know, I think people can get burned out on watching wrestling faster than they can get burned out on talking or thinking about wrestling.

And

I'm a baseball fan.

And primarily I like to watch my team.

And sometimes that's the only team's games, or at least in the past, that was the only team's games that were available to you, you know, before there were packages to get other out-of-town games.

And I would listen to sports radio all day

until the game.

I didn't get sick of it.

I didn't get sick of the conversation.

I didn't get sick of the callers.

I got sick of a few of the hosts.

Russ Salzberg sucked.

But he went away and the schmoozer stayed.

But

I think that's the point.

People can get sick of the content maybe or get disappointed with it and kind of hang on the periphery and just wait for things to get better.

But no one ever gets tired of thinking or talking or wanting to hear other people talk about wrestling.

Well,

and or whatever their interest is, because that's kind of two different sides of the potential coin there in that you never get tired of the concept of what you're interested in or

As you said, talking about it, which you can kind of control.

If you're talking about it with someone, you can end the conversation.

Or if you are listening to a program about it,

you can pick that time and you can more listen to a conversation rather than wrestling.

You have to put your eyes on it, right?

You have to see what's going on.

It's a more immersive experience.

And

unfortunately, today with the airwaves dominated

by even the top two companies, we're not trying to just say WWE, but Jesus.

Christ, they're everywhere.

Check your home movies, folks.

It starts to look the same.

And the fan of the territory days, but after video,

home video came in, VHS, whatever,

you could get the different tapes and

every promotion came from a different place with different announcers, a different crew of wrestlers,

the pro completely different presentations.

And

also, most of the shows were an hour.

Some were an hour and a half, Houston, Memphis,

TBS was two hours.

But you get the point is

you could watch it in smaller increments.

Everything looked different.

You didn't get tired of it because it's the concept of what you like.

But this is just fatigue at this point with being able to keep up with

different

programs containing the same general fucking look, people, and presentation

per each company.

I'm not saying AEW looks anything like WW in those categories, but

God almighty, G.

Minelli Shelly,

we need some

shoot up here amongst us because one of us needs some relief.

Can't do that without the noise.

Wait a minute.

Anyway, I just thought,

again, people have to go out there and pay their bills and nurse their children and wean their dogs and castrate their goats and things.

They have real lives.

They don't just have time to sit glued to the goddamn screen for the latest developments, do they?

For heaven's sake.

I'm just saying

it's, you know,

we're getting so much of this now

without an appreciable difference in

look

or talent that it just, you know, a few people stand out.

We'll talk about some of them later on.

Guess what I got?

Herpes.

Have you been in my medical file over at Arcadian Vanguard?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Forgive me.

This is the Terry Taylor file.

Let me put this.

Oh, ho!

I kid.

I don't know anything about anyone's medical records.

Bill Dundee, one time in 1982, said, fucking Terry Taylor.

I can't do the accent, but you know, fucking Terry Taylor, if you have cracked his head open, little pussies would fall out.

But anyway, so

do you know what I got?

Now, besides...

No, god damn it.

I don't even know that lady.

I got in a package in the mail, I'll have you.

Why are we, see, this is going to be the show?

Cause we're just, we're burnt.

We're burnt from this.

We're tired, folks.

We're burnt.

Please, please help us.

Start a GoFundMe to send us to fucking

a desert island somewhere with no wrestling.

But I got a package in the mail from a longtime listener, friend of mine, and a member of the cult, a friend of yours, too,

by association.

Owen Teehan

from Ireland, Dublin.

Oh, yeah, he's a nice guy.

Yeah, he's a nice guy.

Yes.

Well, I'm glad.

I approve of him.

He has my approval.

I'm glad he got your seal of, ow, and you can continue on now.

Don't make any mistakes.

Don't fuck up.

But anyway, he dropped me a quick line and a small token of appreciation.

I love the way they're so polite over there across the pond.

But as some Nando seasonings

where you just put the chicken breast in the bag of seasoning and shake it up and fold it up and put it in the oven, and there you go.

And also some some chips potato chips is what we call them over here i think they're crisps over there

but different flavors that we was of different mature cheese

and and and uh i think well goddamn i've i've forgotten the combinations now i wish i'd have kept the bags i ate them already but mature cheese and dill relish was one of them and i don't know That fucking cheese didn't look a day over goddamn 18 to me, but who am I to say?

But anyway, Owen, thank you.

There was seasoning.

It was a t-shirt,

some foodstuffs from over there,

and

a local Ireland seasoning

or local Ireland, a local Irish seasoning, I get.

Well,

I don't know if it's local or regional, McDonald's or something like that.

See, I don't have the bag in front of me.

We haven't tried that yet, but we're going to cook, but I don't know what

it says seasoning, but

that's the only clue I got.

There's no picture on it to give me an idea.

Nobody with a flame coming out of their mouth or anything.

All right.

Um,

here it was a uh, uh, got an email from Frank Culbertson.

And by the way, he's another good guy.

I prove it too.

Well, God, see, I'm on a roll here today.

Wait, will you hear the rest of these names?

We could vet this whole crowd.

Um, Frank, and also, I said him straight, I'll tell you here on the air on your post office box because

they have done

a, or are in the process of finishing up or about to print or wherever it is in this, a book on Hawaii.

What?

What are you laughing about?

I'll reveal the joke on the air.

It's not that bad.

Every time Frank puts out a book, I buy that book.

I'm not ashamed to say it.

And every time he puts out a book.

Right after I buy it, we get an email saying that a book's in the mail for you and Brian.

And I never get that book.

Well, he had your goddamn.

How long has it been since you've lived out in Long Branch or Long Whistle or out on Long Island?

It's been a long beach.

Where since I've been in Long Beach, New York, how the hell do you get that address?

There's a lot of books there waiting for you, pal.

Oh, my God.

That's what the problem has been.

Anyway, you got one coming now.

Hopefully, we'll see.

Well, it's going to be a big test.

It's a big one, 540 pages.

But he and Mike Rogers, who's amazing, they're the Portland historians, but they've hopped over.

It's not even trans-Pacific or whatever.

It's just out in the ocean there to Hawaii, and they have done a Hawaii history book that we're looking forward to getting, especially now that you don't live in Long Beach anymore and haven't for years and years and years.

I assume there'll be a large series of chapters on the amazing work of Leah Myvilla as a promoter in Hawaii.

I believe

that's going to be a post-it note in the middle of between chapters 10 and 11.

Yes, a mugshot bookmark

for the first 50 buyers.

Well, it worked for Mick Jagger and David Bowie and Johnny Cash.

Yeah, we've got that coaster set.

Have you seen that?

What, getting arrested?

Mugshot?

Yeah, no, no, no.

They're very marketable.

They've made a coaster set for your bar or rec room or whatever facility that you entertain in of drink coasters of all these people's mug shots over the years.

What about Sinatra?

Sinatra's on there.

You need that one.

That's a big one.

You got to have that.

Anyway, back to Frank.

Can we be frank about this?

Let's be frank about this, yes.

Well,

Frank wrote also an interesting antidote, as the kids say.

From a time that he, you know, he's done a lot of television interviews for the Portland and Northwest programs, and they were doing a Comcast, I believe, as he said, the Comcast Studios.

And this may have been a studio taping because Grappler had bled and he was all bandaged up, and they were going to do the promo

to talk about his opponent who was Moondog Moretti.

And, you know, I'm going to get even and blah, blah, blah.

And

they had to do the fucking

promo.

And they said, well, you could just, you know, because this is after the match has happened, apparently.

So they say, you could just put some shit on your mask or whatever, ketchup.

He's, ha, ha, ha.

He laughed.

He pulls the fucking bandaid off his forehead and he does the fucking knuckle deal that

sometimes works and sometimes is a rib on yourself.

Where if you got juiced the night before and you don't want to blade again, if you hit it the right way with the point of your fucking knuckle, it'll open up.

And the only time I ever tried to do it, it didn't work worth shit.

So it's about a 50-50 deal.

But he,

Lynn Denton, the grappler, he just took the fucking band-aid off and took his knuckle and bam and busted himself open again

and then put the goddamn mask on so he could bleed through the mask for the for the promo.

So that dedication.

to your goddamn profession because it it as I've said so many times it would have been an insult to most of the guys in the

in the in the back in the pioneer days if you insinuated the blood was fake or asked them to use fake blood because they would think people could see through it

just an amusing antidote there Brian have you ever had success with opening up an old gig mark with your fucking knuckle middle finger no

it's it's it's not easy it might just that's why a lot of guys look like they've been run through a fucking Gillette factory because it was just easier to do it that way.

Anyway, would you like to have an examination from a

proctologist?

No, definitely no.

Especially some random proctologist, not even my own.

No, you tickled me.

Jim's on mute.

I'm sorry, you tickled me there.

I was joking.

No, would you like to have an examination of

AEW attendance figures and or percentages from an actual data scientist is the question I was going to ask before you put your own period in on it and answered me too quickly.

Although, what type of examinations have you had?

Are you up to date on all your shots?

Based on OSHA rules, I don't think I have to answer that.

I don't think you're allowed to ask me that either.

Well, can I speak to your supervisor?

I have none.

That's why I turned out this way.

Oh, the lawsuit just got bigger.

Yeah, well, there you go.

And by the way, who's Osha?

I don't,

isn't he fucking Ice Cube's son?

She looks cute, but she just causes trouble.

Osha's son?

Osha is a girl's name, not a man's name.

Oh, I thought it was Osha Jackson.

Who?

Oshea.

Oshea Jackson.

Oh, where the hell is your mind guy?

You threw me off.

You You keep changing your stories.

Anyway, from James, I won't give his last name in case he wants to seek employment anywhere else in the future.

In case he has friends or family.

Family.

People he cares about.

But he did say hello to you and me.

He's a longtime listener, member of the cult.

And one of his favorite parts of the shows are the discussions around the viewership for and attendance of AEW programs

with the WrestleTicks quotes and reports, et cetera, because he's a data scientist and he has fun with numbers.

And he sent me a sheet, and goddamn it, I wish there's no way I could even read this and make sense.

It's just lines and lines of the shows and

how much the building holds, what they actually set it up for when AEW was there, how many tickets they distributed, how many empty seats they had, percentage of venue empty.

It's goddamn amazing.

You know, there's these people that have these ability to do these things with these numbers.

God damn, they ought to charge more money for their work.

I got this for free.

But anyway, there's four statistics I would like to bring up to you in this report that's been done here.

Would you like to hear them, Brian?

Yes, and again, we don't know.

If James, if we don't know if that's his real name, and we also don't know if he has any of the qualifications truly to be doing.

Well, no, no, this is he's just gone.

He's from public documentation, from wrestle techs, from things that we have read and have been reported in the buildings.

He's just he's done all the adding and the subtracting and the

gazentas.

You know, two guys,

two goes into six three times, two goes into eight four times.

And he's he's figured all these things up.

The average building capacity

of the arenas that AEW has run for dynamite in 2024, just since January 1st, is 12,680 seats.

That means that the arenas that they've done their dynamite tapings in,

if you open the full seating capacity of that arena for any event that fills it up,

and you average that out, 12,680.

That's some pretty big buildings.

You know, I actually thought it would have been bigger.

I actually thought they were running, on average, bigger buildings, but that's

not even as crazy as I thought it was going to be.

See,

now I will show you, for example, when they were at the Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto, it holds 7,700.

The Coca-Cola Coliseum?

And when they were in Daly's place in Jacksonville, that only holds $5,500 no matter what you do with it.

And there was the UNO Lakefront Arena in New Orleans, my old hometown, 8,700.

So while they were in the TD Garden in Boston at $19,580, or the Prudential Center at $16,000, or the Footprint Center in Phoenix at $18,000,

also the

Indiana Farmers Coliseum.

Remember, we talked about that, but they were in the 90-year-old ABA building.

That's $6,800.

Of course, now, honestly, these are the listed capacities for arenas.

But as you know,

if you put seats on the floor for wrestling, you can get more in.

So for wrestling, you could do over, and Bruiser used to over 8,000 for wrestling.

So this is even worse than we thought, but let's continue on.

The average building capacity, as I mentioned, 12,680 seats.

The average number of empty seats for AEW Dynamite so far in 2024,

based on the capacity of the arenas they have run,

average number of empty seats, 10,235 seats.

This translates to an average building being 72.47%

empty.

Now you say, well, how can that be?

Because it looks like there's people there.

Well,

if you opened up the entire building, that's what we're talking about.

But as we know, AEW shrinks it down a little bit to the sections that they can shoot that'll be on camera and they tarp off things and blah, blah, blah, right?

So the average setup, the average building capacity may be 12,680,

but the average setup for these buildings is 3,350.

That's what they're actually.

So

obviously they're setting up a 20,000-seat building for a little bit more.

But yes, that's the average setup, no matter what the size of the building.

And one more statistic, and then I will open the floor to your comments.

The average tickets distributed, which are sold or given away for promotion,

according to WrestleTicks,

is 2,445,

which means there's an average of 1,086 tickets left unsold per show,

even with the smaller setups.

So

that means basically the average then

down here on the chart here

of percent of venue empty is almost 80%.

And

the worst one, hold on, I'll give you one more, Brian, because this is fun.

When they went to the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I don't know who Bach is or what he had to do with it,

the building capacity was 19,199.

They distributed 1,593 tickets.

That means the building was 91.70%

empty.

Your thoughts?

You know, even if we ignore all the booking problems, and it's hard to completely ignore them because they're a big part of why people aren't coming out.

The problems with the way they've handled the scheduling of live events has been going back for a long time.

This was a Raphael Morphe era problem, where they would run non-stop in Texas, non-stop in California, non-stop in Canada, non-stop in the Northeast, and then burn out every market.

There are very few markets, if any,

that AEW returns to and the crowd goes up.

WWE right now is as hot as they get.

They're selling out shows with like no lineup.

You know, what are the matches on RAW?

You don't know.

You don't care.

They can't get people in the door.

The booking is one thing.

They burned out markets, I think, is another.

Well,

what are they coming back with that is in any way superior to whatever they would have presented a year or two years ago at a live event or a TV taping, whatever?

You see, they had the wrestlers they had, but they were also the fresh thing.

They were getting publicity for being the fresh thing.

If there was ever a time for someone to check out something different,

even if they didn't have issues with WWE, that was the time.

That was the publicity.

Now they are just there.

And

again, this is two weeks.

AEW has done

what for them are hot angles.

The attack of Tony Khan, the attack of Kenny Omega.

Is anyone talking about it?

Is anyone talking about it?

No, instead, we're talking about a B pay-per-view that took place in France before fans that like to sing.

Like, that's the story.

Not Kenny Omega potentially having his guts destroyed.

And the booking is a problem.

The live event strategy is a problem.

I almost think,

and there's no easy way to do it.

And I'm, again, not a producer for them at least.

But I almost feel like you show in really small places and make every place feel local so that you're watching.

You should make it almost like, you know, that was one of the things with Nitro that seems stupid but worked, like the nitro parties.

where everyone wanted to participate.

Make it more exclusive, make it smaller, make it feel like each town that you're in, and then grow again.

Because

instead, they're running these big buildings, just waiting to fill them up again, ever?

Well, I mean, I say again, they did.

I was about to say, hold on there, cowboy.

Yes, they drew 80,000 people at Wembley, or 70,000, or 85,000, or whatever the goddamn number is.

The term style count, you got to remember.

Well, you know,

and they're going to just do, geez, a little over half of that again this year.

And they've drawn some big crowds.

But let's face it, in the last year, right,

their business, their

live ticket sales have not dropped 75%

or even they're not doing a half of what they did.

They were in big buildings last year, a year before that were too big.

Because

Tony, I guess, is convinced and set down at the start that they were going to fill him up.

So

they just, you know, except for the pandemic, obviously, that's what they've been doing.

And they've been filling them up.

That's what, like you said, are they just wishing,

but you could have made a course correction from last year.

Arena's book in advance, but not that far that you can't fucking.

change something you're going to do a year from now.

And that's that they've had this warning for a a while and now they're pissoles in a snowbank.

So I don't know what the fuck they're thinking.

Or are they thinking?

I think they're thinking, but maybe it's the wrong thinkers.

Maybe it's the wrong thinkers.

You mean they're thinkers or stinkers?

The thinkers could be stinkers.

And they come up with clinkers?

And they come up with clinkers.

Well, like Claude Cooper.

Hey, don't you say a word about Claude Cooper because that goddamn cleaning woman, Clara Clifford, she's the one that started that whole thing making those accusations that kleptomaniac Claude Cooper from Cleveland is the one who copped the clean copper clappers kept in the closet.

See, that's something the listeners may not know.

It's kind of like if you say Beetlejuice, if you just say the name, and I won't say it again, Jim goes into the whole routine.

Well, I'll tell you one thing.

If I ever find kleptomaniac Claude Cooper from Cleveland and copped my clean copper clappers that were kept in the closet.

I'll clobber him.

Amazing.

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All right, another email.

Bonjour Jim and Monsieur Brian last.

Now, why are you laughing already?

You know, I have no good reason.

I think it was just the French.

I think it was the French.

Well, is it because this man's French?

Monsieur Brian, how come you're not Monsieur Jim?

Um,

Well, because I'm Bonjour Jim.

Bonjour Jim comes before Monsieur Brian last.

Isn't Bonjour hello?

Well.

Hello, Jim.

And what's Monsieur?

Is it Master or is it Monster?

Is it Mr.?

What is it?

I think you're his masseuse.

Oh, hello.

But you rubbed him the wrong way, so he had to fire you.

Anyway, nevertheless,

this gentleman whose name is Marty, so he sounds about as French as I do.

But maybe that's a fucking Americanization of his name.

But anyway, he does say, I am a fan from France and listened to the podcast for a couple of years now.

I write you today for your next review of SmackDown and Backlash France and give you

an unpetite resume.

of what the fuck the crowd in Lyon was saying.

Okay, remember they were singing and they were chanting.

We're going to get to it later on in the program when we talk about the shows, but

this is your Rosetta Stone here.

This is the key to the translation of, so now you'll be able to understand, right, Brian?

Are you going to follow along with this?

Well, you'll be able to understand too.

This will be your Rosetta Stone as well, wouldn't it?

Well,

I'm going to teachify to you and to all the listeners out there.

Teachify.

Okay.

Teachify.

And Marty, our Frenchman in residence, goes on to say after every count, like the referees count,

they were saying un

die

simplement due

which means one two only two or simply two.

It's a catchphrase used by Monsieur Philippe Chirot and Monsieur Christopher Aegis, the two French commentators.

Do you remember then they saw you they were at the French announce table.

They didn't have the Spanish announced table.

They had the French announced table, and those were the Monsieur Philippe and Monsieur Christopher.

Well, that's interesting.

So that crowd was actually chanting what the commentators say on their local feed of whatever they see.

Yeah, because

he goes on to say, Marty here,

they commentate everything WWE here in France for the past 25 years.

This chant was a big tribute

for them from the French fans because they barely get acknowledged by the office and the WWE for their work.

And if we, the French fans, are this passionate, it's because of them.

So apparently they're music teachers also.

But he says they do an amazing job to keep the fans interested even when it's boring.

And then there was a big chant for AJ.

And Corey, you know, but you're superheroing.

You probably just pick it right out of the air.

You know, Matt, I can't tell what they're saying when it's in English.

But apparently, said the second big chant for AJ was

illest Vremont, illest Vremont, illest Vremont, phenomenal, la la la la la la.

That sounds exactly like what it was, yeah.

Well, that means he truly is, he truly is, he truly is phenomenal, la la la la la la.

Apparently, la la la la la la

is the same in both languages.

Maybe it's an international or just a global language, the language of la la la la la la.

But you can't really translate la la la la la la

from French to English.

It sounds the same.

But did I pronounce all that right?

I mean, right enough.

Well, the backstory of this, apparently, according to Marty, is that it's an old song, a one-hit wonder in France back in summer of 1997.

That's an old song to Marty.

My socks are from 1997, I'm wearing right now.

Anyway, other chance.

When a heel was taking over, they would say

say it tight.

C apostrophe.

How do you do C apostrophe E with a drava over it?

I don't say a tite.

Se.

Say you say

is it just your say so?

Say, say, say.

Say, say, say what you want.

Go play games with my emotion.

Seatat michant,

which means it was mean,

or the variation

sayest pas gentle.

That was not nice, or that was nasty.

So, can you imagine people in English chanting?

That was not nice.

And the French are so much more musical because ours is just barked out like fucking marching orders, like we're a goddamn bunch of Gestapos.

But they're just singing, singing their way to work.

See, what scares me is wrestling fans sometimes copy other wrestling fans.

I kind of like when it's something unique to a specific area.

You know, when you go to France, the fans will be singing and dancing at the stand.

And, you know, when you go to England, they're going to all be chanting and, you know, have a beer in the other hand.

And, you know, if you go to America, they're going to sit there and intently watch.

Yes, and

take pictures and send notes with their phones.

And fuck you, JD apparently does not need a translation.

And then,

and then also, when the table was broken, they chanted Aegeus and Shirot for the French announcers.

And also for the street profits on SmackDown,

they chanted Alles Les Blues,

which apparently means let's go the blue ones.

Les Blues, that was Misty Blues Stables name in France.

The Les Blues, yes.

They had a big tour of all of the finer

fucking

video stores.

But apparently, that's a football reference.

Let's go the blue ones.

It's not racial against the blue people.

That's a football reference because the French team plays in blue.

So they say à les les blues.

Let's go the blues, the blue ones.

You know, there were certain people in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and East Tennessee at one time that their skin turned blue because of inbreeding over the generations.

One time in the locker room, I blew myself.

Thank you, Lanny, but we're not talking now about your skin tone.

I, the genius, so glory and renown.

Blow myself.

Quit it.

But anyway, those are the translations of some of these things that

on the shows we'll talk about later on.

Good heavens.

Did you ever take any French or give any French?

No, but my Spanish teacher for the two years before I dropped it in high school was a Frenchman.

Well, that doesn't seem like that would be allowed, allowed, does it?

Aren't they violating some kind of fucking gimmick infringement rules there?

I really didn't like him.

He was a bad teacher, and like, he, I don't know, he was hard to get along with.

And then, like, once I left his class, I really saw him as like the sympathetic, sad character, and I really started to feel bad for him.

Well, you're ashamed the way you treated him, huh?

I didn't treat him bad.

I laughed at the way other people did.

I laughed.

Well,

I got kicked out for laughing a few times.

There you go.

See, that's even worse, laughing at the other man's misfortune.

I'll tell you, I always gave my teachers respect.

And I'll have you know that every single one of my teachers all through school, they said it was amazing.

I was the only student they'd ever had.

They could not,

they could not teach me anything.

Did you take French?

Oh,

I've taken a little French anytime it was offered as part of a school curriculum.

Well, now it was in school, too.

It just depends.

Now, it wasn't official.

There was no paperwork on on this.

Maybe we better

change the subject entirely.

Have you been over to jimcornet.com lately, Brian, to see the plethora and the amazing array of fine collectibles and merchandise that we have for sale?

I always tell Suzanne, I'm like, you should go there and check it out.

It's just such a plethora.

It's the plethora.

It's all over the floor.

And I mean, there's action figures, not only of my own lovely and personal self, but also the Midnight Express, the four-pack, the individual Lane and Eaton and Lane and Condries, the heavenly bodies of Lane and Dr.

Tom Pritchard, as well as the Cornhead Face t-shirts, which are iconic.

You love that word, iconic.

Well, they're iconic, and they can be coming to you in an iconic fashion, the United States Postal Service.

If you purchase one right now, the cheapest dagger, I won't say cheap, that implies a level of fucking shoddy workmanship, inexpensive, affordable, quality merchandise, the DVDs, the books, the magazines, the fingerprints, so much more.

Go now to jimcornet.com and send some money, and you will be rewarded soon with things to hold and squeeze and call George.

However, I'm also going to have some big news next week on something that I've recently found out that is winging its way to me that's going to be offered to the fine folks

this summer for amazingly low prices.

More news on that next week.

Yeah, the bird flu.

Oh, come on now.

I'll have you know that my deal with Bernie Sanders is I've let him have that nest if he doesn't bother.

And he has not pooped on my desk or any of my shelves one time.

He's a very neat bird.

And for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I've had a bird move into a nest that it built on top of my garage door opener in the garage.

And I'm thinking, because now I just, I go out there and talk to it several times a day and we look each other in the eye.

I'm two feet from it, face to beak.

And

it doesn't bother him at all.

He knows he's cool here.

And we have a casual conversation.

And he's in there first thing in the morning.

And then I tell him good night.

Good night, Birdie.

Good night, Jim.

He talks back to me.

And I'm hoping that there's some eggs in the nest and we'll get the chirp, chirp, chirping, and I'll be able to up close.

And he doesn't seem to be picking at his seed.

I guess he's going out to get the worms.

We've had all the rain.

Would you think if you were a bird, you'd prefer dry seed or wet worms?

I think wet worms would be kind of a delicacy, right?

Well, and that's if, especially if he or she indeed is eating for two or three or four or however many there's going to be,

then maybe that's why they are going out for the birds or for the worms, for the birds.

Do they enjoy?

Do they have?

I don't know too much about birds, and I know you're a bird lawyer, so I'm asking you.

Do they really enjoy what they eat?

Do they enjoy taste?

They just like throw shit in their mouth and gulp it down.

Do they have taste buds?

Do they enjoy what they're ingesting?

Well, now, first of all, I just defend them.

I don't, you know, pass judgment on their eating habits.

So just because I'm a small-town bird lawyer doesn't mean that I'm a bird nutritionist.

However, I would assume that it's kind of a genetic thing that you would enjoy the thing that you need to

consume in order to remain alive, whatever that food is.

So they may not like cheeseburgers and Reese's peanut butter cups like normal humans do.

But at the same point, we wouldn't want to eat a worm.

But it works for them because they probably don't have the facilities, especially with all the modern building codes related to these nests, to put a full kitchen in where they can be frying burgers.

Or, you know, and

where would you toast the buns in a bird's nest?

Over a fire.

Well, then why are you

realize how much trouble that would cause if you set a fire in a bird's nest in order to toast the buns to go on their burgers that they don't don't eat because that's why they eat worms because they don't have a kitchen in their fucking nest

see why would you why would you want me to feed my bird a cheeseburger why would you even bring that up and suggest that I remind you we're talking about Jim Cornette.com

well we were but I was done till you oh

fucking insinuated that I would be sending people out bird feces somehow and the I did not insinuate that in any way And besides that, I'm just signing the stuff here.

The feather bottoms are the ones that's shipping it out.

There's no birds at the feather bottoms.

Amazingly enough.

Always passing blame.

Always passing gas.

Speaking of, see, folks, it's this kind of shit you're going to get when they work us too hard.

What was I going to, oh, I was going to mention a menching.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

It's time for Jim's menchings here on the show.

Well, I'm on a bench and I'm menching.

I was going to mention this past week's episode of Dark Side of the Ring featuring the Sandman.

Because I was going to bring up, because we, you know, last week, I believe it was, we talked about the episode on Sherry Martell, and they've done episodes on Harley Race this season, Chris Colt.

By the way, the season finale coming up

this week,

probably Tuesday night.

God damn, maybe tomorrow.

Maybe by the time you hear this, it will have aired.

It's going to be Black Saturday, but it's going to be rerun.

So jump in and catch it many times.

I'm on it.

Is that a one-part or a two-part episode?

That is, I believe it's just a one-part, unfortunately.

Oh, okay.

For some reason, I thought it was going to be a two-parter.

Well.

Don't take my word for it then.

Now you've made me doubt myself, as Mama Cornette would say.

But just continue.

Folks, continue watching Vice TV 10 o'clock Eastern Time every Tuesday night until the next season starts, just to make sure you don't miss anything.

But nevertheless, the point is that this last week was Sandman.

And

I'm going to, in interest of full disclosure, I have met Sandman, but do not know Sandman.

In all honesty,

I was in the locker room with him a few times when he worked for Dennis Coraluzzo in the early 90s, but when he was still with the surf board.

And then I've been in a couple of the same places, but we've never sat down and had any substantial conversation.

And

I obviously

would think it would be a secret to no one.

I've never been a fan of his work because

it was what it was.

I don't like that style of matches in general.

And I'm not going to come out here and fucking knock it out of this motherfucker because I'm not mad at him personally or anything.

But I think this

episode kind of illustrated

what I didn't like about ECW and what I thought was wrong with ECW.

And

not only from a business perspective of what they were showing

the fans and the

the product that they were presenting,

but what do the kids call it?

The culture?

The operation of the business and what was allowed, what was tolerated, what was encouraged, what was

that?

Then,

unfortunately, non-creative, copycat, weak-minded people would simulate and inseminate and copycat and

karaoke and tribute act to death to this day.

And I'm, you know,

I know a lot of people are going to, oh, Paul presented.

I'm not saying Paul Ian, a genius.

Look at that ragtag bunch of misfits that he mostly had to work with and that he made that much noise and didn't end up more broke at the end in bankruptcy court.

It was amazing.

And I've always said Paul's a genius at creative, getting most out of the least, verbal fucking,

you know, he's the fucking promo God right now.

But especially at that point in time when he was that much younger, he had no fucking restraint or patience.

It's why

complete dipshits like Russo, who couldn't swing on Paul's fucking chin, or either one of them,

but copied his shit because it appealed to shallow-minded people who wanted to see folks bashing each other with shopping carts.

Brian, is that an oversimplification or is that kind of actually what happened?

Every mark that got into business after Paul created this phenomenon for basically a specific Northeastern market,

they tried to copy it without understanding that they weren't as good as he was, and it didn't even work for him in the long run,

and they couldn't fucking get off of it.

Am I overstating that?

Well, for the record,

you've never been a big ECW fan, and I say that as the person who in the 90s was sending you ECW tapes.

You were never a big ECW fan, but you always tried to keep up with it so you understood what was happening.

And,

you know,

early on, it was a mesh of a lot of different stuff.

You had Terry Funk.

You had Shane Douglas, who when he first started doing those promos, people talked about him.

You had Sabu, who was, you know, the Superman of the Indies at that time.

Yeah.

And then you had different people that would come in for shows, but Paul started filling in with the locals and the guys that he previously worked with when he briefly worked with the Sevaldes, like Tommy Dreamer, like Taz, started getting these guys in there, figuring out a way to get them who will all be local, local-ish.

I mean, if you're from New York, I'm considering that local for Philadelphia.

Cheaper than other talent.

I mean, ECW at that time, under Eddie Gilbert, right before Paul took over, they were using.

And I'm nothing against these wrestlers, but just if you try to think about how much Todd Gordon was spending, if it's Tommy Dreamer, The Sandman,

Taz, Tommy Cairo, like guys like that, or Don Morocco, Tito Santana,

Jimmy Sukka, even guys that are going to work a half to 25% as hard for twice as much plus a plane ticket.

Plus a plane ticket.

And I'm not even going to get into the quality of the work, but it was definitely time to do something different.

And the Sandman was there, the surfer thing's lame.

And he was really the first one.

Him and Public Enemy, I would say, were the first two things under Paul Heyman that really took, that were his creations.

And see, you know, that's the thing is that people who

ECW obviously still has its fans, and I'm not saying that all of it was bad, and I'm saying that Paul did most of it better than anybody else could have.

What I am saying is that while the people who really want to defend it, well, well, Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio and Chris Benoit and Dean Balenke, yes, those were great talents.

And he brought those guys and exposed them to the modern audience or to the United States audience.

And

he used Terry Funk exceptionally well and understood how to make him a legend.

And

his work with that was impeccable.

But the problem is, is that dim-witted dipshits, superficial takeaway from this

one-of-a-kind promotion that couldn't work, couldn't have worked at that time anywhere else but Philadelphia, New York, the Northeast, and

actually couldn't work anywhere on a mainstream basis.

The takeaway from all of those people is furniture and chairs and violence and blood and barbed wire and broken glass and set shit on fire and cussing.

and pile driving women.

Yeah, it was the stuff that you would never have seen on any other wrestling show ever.

If you were trying to to sell ECW to someone, you're not going to show them respectfully.

You're probably not going to show them a Terry Funk match with Shane Douglas.

You're probably going to show them a brawl around the arena with tables and chairs and all sorts of stuff thrown in.

They're probably sabu, too, breaking tables.

Yes.

It was.

And that's why they couldn't get it on TV because the TV stations didn't want that shit.

Because it was not only low budget, but it was fucking iffy as far as are we going to get complaints or in trouble?

That's why they were on sports channel Philadelphia or whatever the fuck.

What Paul was doing was

he was,

yes, it was an underground thing and the grunge and the blah, blah, blah.

And

you got to admit, Paul 30 years ago was a little bit more excitable and less reliable in terms of his scheduling and where he was going to be at what time and when

than he is now.

But he was trying to smoke and mirror the thing until or if he could get either the big pay-per-view deal that they would take off from or whatever he was thinking.

But that's why he was paying six figures to wrestlers when his gate receipts for goddamn the month were six figures.

But the point is,

getting back to the point I was trying to make that Sandman's dark side of the ring drove home

was that that's what everybody's taken away from when they chant ECW.

It's because of tables, it's because of furniture, it's because of all that shit.

And the people

who

were fans of that type of thing in the 90s are unfortunately the ones that became wrestlers 10 and 15 years later.

and think that that's what the business has to have, which is why we've never been able to fucking get rid of it.

And I don't know now if we ever can get rid of it, and it will never mean anything ever again.

But at the same time, it won't go away.

And go ahead.

You know, another thing, too, is Paul Heyman.

I'm not taking anything away from him being a wrestling genius on multiple levels, he is.

But specifically during that period with ECW,

he had revolutionary ideas, not necessarily revolutionary arcs with conclusions.

And I think he's much

more of a genius now with what he's doing than he was then with ECW.

And that's not to take away from, again, revolutionary.

Well, yeah, but it was 30 years ago, and he's 30 years ago.

We were all smarter now.

I don't know about you.

Paul had great ideas, things that people would talk about, but there was never an ending.

There was never anything that was a reasonable conclusion to anything.

Well, plus, the thing is, with planning and/or and/or

execute,

it was all in his head.

And he still did this 20 years ago with OVW when they banished him and sent him down here after they banished me because I wanted to be here, so they didn't want me to be.

And he didn't want to be here, so they were trying to run him off.

But he drive Danny Davis crazy because he'd just come in with a...

a sheet with a list of the fucking matches and said, well, just shoot everything and we'll fucking put it together like he used to with ECW.

And he said, Motherfucker,

number one, we don't have that kind of fucking equipment.

Number two, I'm not going to stay here fucking seven o'clock.

He was, Danny Davis was staying till seven o'clock in the morning when I was booking.

We had a finished TV show at 10:45 p.m.

So there was no prep, if he had a good idea, oh yeah, do that, but there was no planning of it, so there was no

paperwork, and there was no plan of where to go from there, and the dates of when to meet such and such milestones and whatever.

But I guess that's the thing is that in trying to make this underground counterculture thing that could never be on mainstream TV,

then what you did was you inspired a bunch of Mara, or what Paul did was inspire a bunch of mark-minded dumbfucks, whether wrestlers or potential bookers, writers, whatever,

with half or less of his ability to think that, well, we'll just dumb this down and clean it up and put it on national TV, which is where we got the sanitized and homogenized WWF style hardcore.

And ECW fans didn't like that because they didn't go far enough, but it ruined the WWF fans' expectations because now they think you got to break a table in every big fucking match.

So it didn't.

It was something that with the stars and personalities involved in the bigger companies,

yes, there was some

Tazes and the

talent that could legitimately go somewhere else and did.

They were primarily the wrestling guys.

Sandman,

the WWF never wanted him except for the reunion, and he didn't fit there anyway, because that's another thing that this dark side made me

kind of squeamish about: it presented the idea that before

with Sherry, yes, she was on pain medication and had her demons and everybody else had their demons, but they were stars.

They were on national television.

They made money at one point, whatever they did with it, up to them.

They were someone.

Here you've got a guy that the whole show was basically,

well, this fucking drunk guy that wasn't very responsible in his private life decided he wanted to be a wrestler and he

ran into a goddamn promotion where the promoter would let him do any fucking thing he wanted.

And that's how he got over.

But he could never work anywhere else because

he wasn't really a fucking wrestler.

He had a great entrance, and he bashed people over the head with shit while he was drunk.

Was that the summation of this goddamn show in an hour?

In not as many words, but yes.

Yes.

And that,

you know, and

I'm just saying, doesn't that make the wrestling business look kind of

sketchy?

And Todd Gordon.

Well, it is dark side of the ring.

If there was ever a show to make wrestling look sketchy, this well, no, but I mean the whole

business, or at least these people's business.

That's what the whole ECW thing and the culture that it fostered or the backstage thing.

And Paul was not taking any of them bumps through the fucking furniture.

I've taken a few bumps through fucking furniture,

but only when necessary

and not off the the fucking roof.

And I tried to never ask anybody to do anything that I wouldn't do or wouldn't do if I could do it.

I can't do a standing dropkick.

Blow me.

But

he was telling these guys to fucking do this shit and the scaffolds and the barbed wire and the hanging shit.

And everybody in the locker room's on pain pills and everybody's on fucking drugs.

And Todd Gordon, the money man, the fat jowled senior citizen that he is now,

said, if you passed a piss test, you couldn't work for us because we were all doing it.

And that's, I didn't think that ECW was particularly that good for the fucking appearance of goddamn wrestling when it was happening because all this shit was happening.

And in hindsight, with all the people that have had body parts replaced or,

you know, need something replaced, or

they've had substance abuse issues of some kind, or their careers came to premature ends, or they

faded into obscurity because of cognitive issues, or combinations of all those things.

Was it fucking worth it for that?

What the fuck?

And everybody, when Smokey Bound Wrestling went out of business, I paid the boys.

stiffed a couple of radio stations and a TV station, and nobody had brain damage or a goddamn substance abuse issue that they didn't have when they started working there.

That's all I'm saying.

That is what you're saying.

This is the review of the Sam.

Any thoughts on his career?

Yes, any of these things.

No,

that's my thoughts on all.

I'm not anything personal with this guy, but he's fucking irresponsible, fucking drunk that got into wrestling business.

And Paul said, I don't give a fuck what you do.

And he gets over with a great entrance with music that they didn't pay for

by going out there drunk and bashing himself over the head with a garbage with a beer can until he bleeds and then having garbage indie matches, bashing people with shit and getting bashed with shit.

There's no talent to that, and that's what so many of these fucking dipshits have goddamn taken away that think that that's what wrestling is, that it insults me on a deeply personal basis.

So that's my view on the Sandman's career.

Wrestling is bad taste in good taste, and ECW was bad taste in bad taste.

Remember, you might have seen some of the OVW shows for about six months.

I had

between 2000 and 2001, I had an OVW

hardcore title because everybody else was doing it.

All right.

So we'll do that because Flash Flanagan.

He

was wonderful at those count of matches, and I was trying to give him something at first, and then later I'd BJ Payne a few guys.

But

to be honest, yes, you could flip the table in and we'd, you know, nobody was going crazy with barbed wire, and it was still Kentucky with the commission.

We couldn't do, you know, blood,

but we'd break a table every once in a while, or the guy'd get hit with a chair, we'd do the garbage can or whatever.

And they could do the fire extinguisher spot.

But then after a while, I was looking at the TV one night and there's garbage laying in the ring, like on every other one of these horseshit wrestling shows that were

on national television that I was trying to not be like.

And I say, you know what?

I don't want to see that picture of a bunch of garbage laying in my fucking ring on my TV.

And I sent out a memo to the boys saying, we're abolishing the hardcore title because I don't want to see a bunch of garbage laid in my ring on my TV.

So everybody's got to go back to learning how to not break the rules.

And every once in a while, we'd still book a gimmick match or whatever the fuck, but it just, it's too much.

It's too much.

Is that too much for you, Brian?

It's too much for me.

Maybe I should start a store.

You know, Brian, that is very true because if some of these hardcore wrestlers had just thought ahead, instead of damaging their skeletal structure and destroying their brain cells and breaking their body parts until they look like slinkies walking down the fucking stairs.

Instead, they should have opened a store.

They should have opened an online store.

As a matter of fact, back in 1993, if you had opened an online store, I bet you'd have made a lot of money by now.

But that's because Shopify wasn't around.

Now any jackleg can make money because Shopify will take you and hold you by the nose and lead you through this whole thing.

They're the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business.

Now, let's say you want to sell the purple widgets or the orange framostats or maybe even some blinker fluid, whatever you want to sell.

You just call up Shopify over there at shopify.com/slash JCE.

That's the code you got to use in lowercase, by the way.

And also, this is the secret knock.

So then you go to shopify.com and you say, I want to sell this stuff.

What can I do?

And they're going to just basically do the whole, they got experts.

They're going to help you turn the browsers into buyers.

They're going to lay out your store.

They're going to fucking take all your money.

They're going to leave you broke and disgusted in a ditch.

They're going to do everything for you from start to finish.

You'll go up and you'll go down.

Shopify will be the only constant there.

Well, for the record, they're not going to leave you broke and in a ditch and busted and dusted or whatever it is that you said they.

That's only when they're finished with you.

But if you've got an idea for they're not going to be finished with you, there's no finishing.

As long as you're still producing for the state, you know, they can help you launch your online store.

They can help you with your first real life store.

They can even do that.

They can go all the way to...

Did we just hit a million orders type of store?

Because they're big like that.

They help you grow.

They make you contagious.

So you spread everywhere.

And then they've got their hooks into a variety of people through you.

And then they're just selling stuff all over the place.

Every once in a while, some of this money is going to trickle back to you.

But make sure they don't catch you sticking it in your pocket or there'll be hell to pay because they have files on you.

But folks, also, you can sell more with less effort.

They don't have files on you.

Well, not that you know of.

Thanks to the Shopify Magic Department, which is powered by OW.

Oh, that's AI.

I'm sorry.

So they've seen they got their fingers in the, in the phony humans, too.

And Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States.

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Well, I didn't say you were fleeing from them, but if you think you're going to be somewhere and they don't know about it, well, you're sadly mistaken.

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How much should that cost?

A lot of money, right?

Right.

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All right.

Well, Brian, before we go any further, I know that you have been

on the social media and anti-social media beat for Arcadian Vanguard and the programs here.

We've got wrestling-related personalities in the news giving their views,

making some stirring comments about things.

Let's gather those up into one segment here.

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Well, let's talk about some of the things happening on social media because a lot of the listeners have been sending these in and of course trying to post them on the official Cult of Cornet Facebook page.

if we don't approve your post but the post is up that you wanted to talk about

don't argue about why we didn't approve your post

or i was there first we approved the one that covered the issue so that the conversation could start talk about it don't

start again right it's not about you that's that's the point but now a lot of people are going to say when are we going to get into the fucking facebook page we're still doing that right oh yeah a lot more people have gotten in We're now at 13.6,000 members and

how many's waiting?

Several, several tens of thousands?

Well, yeah, I mean,

but we're going through it and today could be your lucky day.

But Jim, on social media, things are happening.

People are letting us know about it.

I guess they're doing a match between Seamus and Gunther

coming up.

Have you seen this?

I'm looking forward to that.

That should be a banger or a burger or a burger

See, that way, Seamus is kind of meeting in the middle there because he was known for the bangers.

And then Drew said he was known for burgers.

And now he's fighting a man who in another life could have been a burgermeister.

Well, Seamus apparently tweeted out and then immediately, or I say immediately 10 minutes later or so, deleted it.

Uh-oh.

12:47 p.m.

on the 5th of May, 2024.

Sounds classy when you say it like that.

The 5th of May, 2024.

Seamus tweeted out at WWE Seamus.

Hmm.

An Austrian man with a funny haircut has a thing for military style coats, proclaims superiority over others,

hangs out with Germans, and betrays his Italian ally

with an emoji that's kind of disgruntled, one eyebrow up.

I don't know what you call it here, but.

Now, the real Gunther has not commented, although a fake fake Gunther Twitter account did comment.

Wait a minute, there's a fake Gunther?

Well, apparently, because a lot of people thought it was real, not realizing I'm not even going to say the name, but it's not the real Gunther.

But they replied, what the fuck?

So

an interesting tweet that was up and then down from Seamus.

What are your thoughts?

Yeah, well, I mean,

where is he?

He's from.

Is he Scottish or is he Irish?

Irish.

He's Irish.

Well, they've had their own

set-tos and conflicts or whatever over there.

He's not that old.

So maybe he doesn't realize that, you know, it's probably, I don't know, is it different when you compare people to Hitler in foreign countries than the way it's taken over here in the United States or potentially in Germany?

Well, let's not forget that when Gunther was first called up, when Walter was first called up to the main roster, the name Gunther was only part of it.

He was given the name of an actual U-boat captain or something.

Yeah, well, they gave him there was plausible deniability.

They gave him a real German-sounding name, and then some intrepid researcher found out that was the name of a legitimate real-life German Nazi U-boat captain.

But with Vince, you never know.

They gave him some name, and then they found out by coincidence.

It was Vince's favorite Nazi.

Yeah, that's the thing.

With Vince, you never know, know,

depending on what he's been watching on television.

So,

but again, I'm just trying to give this guy an old Seamus.

I'm trying to give him an out here.

Did Hitler not have as much heat in fucking Ireland?

I don't know.

But otherwise, that's probably something the office said.

Yeah, don't do this anymore.

And take that down right now, please.

See, I like the fake Gunther's reply because I think that's what the real Gunther would probably say to him.

What the fuck?

No,

he would have said, what the fica?

What the fica?

You're not helping either.

You see, you're not helping at all either.

Or is it fickish?

See, I guess it's in German I have an affinity for.

Are we going to see that other guy from Imperium again, you think?

I forget which one.

Vinci, I guess, the Italian one.

Leonardo da Vinci?

I mean, I think he still works there.

I would assume that he'll be doing a plethora of jobs on the way out.

He's never done a promo.

He just stands there when the other guy does a promo.

Now he's on his own.

Why was the Italian guy in the German group anyway?

Couldn't they have given him a German name and say, You're German now?

I can be German.

I can be Russian.

I can whatever.

I don't know.

Maybe Seamus has a point.

Is that what you're saying?

Well, if he combs his hair right, nobody will notice, but I'm just saying that he was probably ill-advised to tweet that.

But at the same time, you know, you've got the guy named Vinci in the crew with the Germans.

You would have to think it's sooner or later he was going to get turned on.

Well, there it is.

That's the social media activity of social studies major Seamus.

And then Fake Gunther, who says, what the fuck?

Jim, also on social media, right now, this is an interesting one.

Remember Harley Cameron from AEW, the blonde who was, well, I dropped my pen.

I don't know why.

The blonde who was a member of QTV?

Oh, the QTV girl that did nothing and stood around a lot.

Well, she posted a photo on social media, her in a very revealing

outfit, a very short tank top,

lots of under boob.

Wait a minute now.

Is that something you can just say just right right here on the on the broadcast without being censored under boob isn't that suggestive if she could show the under boob i could say the under boob but she tweeted out thinking about

how i'm actually the better representation for hashtag hot girl grapes simp for me mariah may

And a few emojis there.

So she sent this to Mariah May.

Okay,

maybe you're going to have to read it slower.

Maybe I need to be younger.

What the flying French fried titty fuck under boob is she talking about?

Thinking about how I'm the better representation for hot girl grabs.

That's a hashtag.

I guess maybe that was a movement for

hot girls who grapple.

I'm not exactly sure.

Shey.

That'd be my first guess.

Simp for me.

At Mariah Mae.

So she wants

either she's tagging Mariah Mae to simp for her or she's telling the fans to simp for her and wants Mariah Mae to see, or she's a fan of Mike Simper Vivi.

I don't know.

Well, or she got sympathy

one way or the other for the devil.

Well, Mariah Mae responded by retweeting.

Oh, Mariah actually understood that enough to where she could come back at it.

Mariah Mae responded to the tweet with the image saying that Harley Cameron is the better representation for hot girl grapes.

Says,

your look is more hot girl gapes

so the wrestling's on fire on social media jimmy ask if people ever get tired of wrestling with this kind of activity on social media

so

poor maria may wasn't uh playing around there with that so are we to be led to believe that it is a well-known situation in the locker room that if the Lincoln tunnel is ever be closed for repairs, they can use Harley as a replacement?

I don't know.

I mean, this is a very interesting way to build up to,

you know, what may one day be quarter four on Rampage.

I'm not exactly sure what they're working for here.

They can aspire to be

the main event on uh on friday night rampage well they're

they're gaping and they're grappling over there in the aew women's roster what else is going on

well jim there's a few other things going on also on social media we heard from powerhouse hobbs it says here the monster

powerhouse hobbs

at true willie hobbs on twitter okay there's a lot of branding going on all over the place.

We like Powerhouse Hobbs.

Yes.

That sounds good.

What about the Monster?

Instead of Monster, Monster.

Not sure about the Monster, Powerhouse Hobbs, because Powerhouse is already kind of a nom de plume.

So one would think that that might be putting a hat on a hat.

And then...

True Willie Hobbs.

Even Willie, his name is Willie Powerhouse Hobbs, but why does True?

Why does True have to be in there?

He's true to himself that's all it counts a lot of brandings like spandal ballet maybe that's well this thing is true

all right well here's what he uh tweeted out

not sure what to say injuries happen and we deal with them we recalibrate we rebuild we reinvent the real test is the comeback I've been told I'll come back like nothing ever happened.

So,

why do I feel so angry right now?

Why do I feel so disappointed?

Because I had to hurt myself in a match with a fucking balding, buggy whip armed, sunken chested, drunken white boy that couldn't fucking shine my shoes.

It's because that's all bullshit.

Nobody comes back the same after any injury.

The only choice is to come back better.

As I sit here on this island of darkness, I have thousands of questions running through my mind non-stop.

The doctors tell me not to worry.

Just heal and recover.

They have no idea that this is nothing compared to the hell I've been through.

Just rest assured when I come back

that I'm bringing hell with me.

Signed, Will Hobson.

Whatever now, he's got another name.

It's the fourth name.

That's the fourth name.

God damn it what's the

well you can call him will or you can call him bill

okay

i feel so bad that now he's hurt but i mean it's not like we're going to be deprived of a lot of great powerhouse hobbs matches because we never get to see him on tv

And when we do, he's getting the shit kicked out of him most of the time.

And he's one of the flunkies in his group instead of being featured but i hate that he's hurt but that's dramatic but he's psyching himself up

um

but remember back in the days when a guy got hurt and he just went home and had his surgery or recuperated got better and then came back and got a big introduction and

instead of the the cyanara scenario where you've got to make a statement about

well i'm hurt i don't know what do you think well i guess that's the question.

Is

do you have an issue with him doing it?

Again, different times, different technology and everything, but also the fact that other people do it, does that take away?

I guess it doesn't really, I mean, it's his real emotion, obviously, coming through here.

He signed his real name.

He had four options.

He chose this.

Again,

you know,

it depends on

what your spot is, how you're being used.

He probably wanted to say something because we don't hear anything about it on TV traditionally

in not only the territories, but in WWF and WWE in modern times.

If somebody that was being featured on a regular basis got hurt, you'd hear about it.

You would be informed of it on the television program.

Of course, since nobody is regularly featured in AEW and so many people get hurt, they'd have to have a goddamn, you know, 10-minute segment in the middle of the show to bring everybody up to date.

But

so I guess they have to make their statements now.

But

if I was a talent when wrestling made sense

and I got hurt,

before I said anything in public, I would talk to the booker and find out, A, you're going to bring me back when I'm ready.

B,

so-and-so, I may have been hurt in a match with them, but who do you want to blame?

Do we need to do an angle with somebody I might be able to draw money better with and blame them?

That type of thing.

And then, and then go from there and know what to say and know what we're going to do when we come back.

But that

doesn't happen these days because

nobody thinks that far ahead.

Nobody cares whether they can draw money with a different person because they're all getting paid guaranteed money.

And

the biggest problem of all is

You know, nobody's going to be able to figure out by the time you come back and you pass all the protocols and all the medical medical examinations and everything, it's twice as long as an injury recuperation used to be, unless they're rushing you back for the main event at WrestleMania.

So it's one of those things.

Well, get Will soon.

Powerhouse Hobbs, Will Hobbs, Monster.

He's true.

Will Hobson.

True Willie Hobbs.

We'll see what he comes back as and where.

Maybe they'll be on True TV when he comes back.

You never know.

Jim, a few more things happening.

Some WWE comings and goings that are being reported on social media.

This one's getting a lot of buzz to the point where Kevin Steen is trending.

WrestleTalk has a tweet here.

Kevin Owens has revealed he has nine months left on his current WWE contract, but has no plans to leave WWE on his own accord.

That's a quote.

Here's another one.

This has been my home for 10 years, and it's beyond the locker room.

There are some very, very, very special people that work behind the scenes that I've become close with, and I really can't imagine not seeing them as part of my life.

And I really can't imagine anywhere else in the world that would pay me even a remotely fraction of the money that they're paying me right now, besides AEW, wherein I might be able to play with more of my friends, but I would be at the mercy of the fucking lunatic running the asylum.

Well, it's interesting, too.

The first quote was, no plans to leave on my own accord.

Well, that's just a kind of a flowery way of saying, no, they're going to have to run me off or kick me out or whatever.

No, it's not like, I don't think they are trying to run him off, nor do I think that he would think about leaving to go anywhere with the position he's got in the biggest company in the world.

But I think that's just a matter of semantics.

I don't think he's trying to insinuate there's some kind of conspiracy theory to get him out of there.

And the other thing, too, is if he was going to jump to AEW, he would have done it a couple of years ago when Vince had to re-sign him.

And things were a lot more rosy in AEW then than they are now.

Yeah, and things were a lot more fucking prolapsed in the WWE than they are now.

If he re-signed to work for Vince McMahon, he'll, I'm sure, be happy to work for the variety of people that are there now.

Jim, this next one is getting a lot of buzz, and specifically listeners are asking for your thoughts on this because of the connection.

I have an article here in the New York Post by Ryan Glaspiegel.

Jerry the King Lawler out as WWE commentator after three decades.

Jerry the King Lawler's reign has come to an end.

What the fuck?

The Post has confirmed that WWE did not renew Lawler's broadcasting contract.

However, contrary to the tenor of reports in the wrestling space, a source said that Lawler, 74,

remains on a legends deal with the company.

Lawler first joined WWE as a color commentator on superstars in 1992

and would mostly remain in that role, working the flagship shows Raw or SmackDown, as well as pay-per-views, until 2016.

His partnership with play-by-play broadcaster Jim Ross during the fabled Attitude Era

formed the soundtrack of countless memorable moments in pro wrestling lore.

It goes into a little bit of his medical history there, but let me stop there and get your thoughts on this, Jim.

Well, it's insane that

like the end of an era.

I love Lawler.

I was a Lawler fan from the time I started watching wrestling.

I'm not saying anything detrimental to him,

but why are people thinking this is the end of it?

How long has it been since he regularly did color commentary on any of the major programs to begin with?

Do you know off the top of your head?

It says here in the article, he was away from the company for about nine months in 2001, of course, but he also returned for a stretch between 2019 and 2020, right before the pandemic.

Yeah, so that's been four years, and we're talking about a 74-year-old man, and I'm 62.

So I'm not like being ageist.

He's had a stroke.

He's recovering from that.

And I

read somewhere he just had, I think, a knee replacement.

So the point is he's still under a legends deal because he is a legend.

And also, you're not going to see Jerry Lawler.

on a dark side of the ring for lack of funds, for not saving his money.

He's got more money in the federal government.

He enjoys being Jerry Lawler and being a personality and being a wrestler and being an artist of whatever.

But at this point,

people are treating it like they've kicked him out in the street and he has no place to go and nobody to support him and help him.

What the fuck?

He's a

rich man in his middle 70s who, because of his health, has had to slow down.

So why would they re-sign him to another announcing deal

instead of, okay, Jerry, you're in a Legends deal.

They've done DVDs.

I'm sure he'll guessed on something,

you know, when he feels like at the time is right, he was back, I think, there live at least for the crowd the last time they were in Memphis.

So they've not like the new ownership has not said, well, let's get rid of this motherfucker, kick him out in the street.

We don't care.

He's got nowhere to go.

It's just you're not renewing a contract of a band that's as close to fucking 80 practically as he is to 70 and probably doesn't have any plans to do announcing in the near future.

How is that

newsworthy?

Well, again, people see it as Jerry Lauer fired or something, but again.

But that's not.

He can't do the modern commentary style.

Most people can't.

You have to yell a lot.

He's an older guy.

He may not have the vocal strength strength that he used to.

And if you're not going to use him in that role, then he's not a commentator.

If he's not a commentator, he doesn't need a commentator's contract.

Doesn't mean the relationship ends.

A Legends deal.

We hear different things about them.

What would that exactly include?

That means like they would make action figures or t-shirts with him?

Well, no, with

some guys, and I don't have one because I've.

never intended to sign one.

Remember, I've been on that no contract thing for about the last 10 years.

You would have lost money if you signed one.

Well, and that's another thing.

Because if guys are not set up to do their own merchandise,

exploit their own intellectual property, and they're retired, the Legends contracts, they are eligible to get action figures or have merchandise done or whatever.

With Lawler, I would think it might even be more extensive in terms of the

appearances if and when he does them or feels like it, or

some appearances on some of these pregame shows or whatever, or

I don't know.

But the point is, it's not like, and he's still going to have whatever royalties he's been receiving from what he's done in the past that's been eligible for royalties for.

So it's not like they're just cutting him off, firing him, kicking him out.

Fuck you, we don't want you around anymore.

But

there comes a point in everybody's, this is what I've been talking about with when I say I'm amazed that Paul Heyman wants to go to France and fucking Saudi Arabia and all this shit at his age, or anybody my age wants to go anywhere.

At some point,

any business is not going to renew even their CEO if he's fucking 74 and,

you know, he's on oatmeal or whatever.

I don't know.

So it's not like that this is a guy who was

just very recently on regularly featured on television, still intends to be in the business on a full or even part-time basis and needs it as a form of, to make a living.

You know, King deserves to put his feet up at this point and watch the Browns or whatever.

Would you hear this line in a classic newspaper?

Lawler made his bones as a wrestler in the Memphis territory.

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Well, that's the comings and goings news or whatever you want to call that.

But, Jim, there are a couple things here that a lot of listeners have been sending in, both having to deal with Ric Flair.

I don't know how much of this you've seen,

but

I got up this morning and I've been out twice before we started recording.

But in the middle of that, I saw that he's had an issue with pizza people.

That's pretty much what I know so far.

Well, Jim, yesterday as we are recording, May 5th, 2024, 4.43 p.m., Ric Flair tweeted out every word beginning with a capitalization.

Is that something you have to do on purpose to make it do that, or is that something that pops up accidentally?

Because it doesn't make sense that you would do that on purpose.

That is absolutely not the default.

You have to choose that.

See, I don't know how to text, but I wouldn't text like that.

Why is that done?

Does that have some meaning with the young folks?

I'm not sure why it's done.

And, well, maybe this will explain some of it.

Let's go to this tweet here from Ric Flair at Ric FlairN A T R Boy

on Twitter.

I spent $1,500 at Paisano's.

Wow.

What is that?

Pizza with goddamn filet mignon topping?

How much pizza?

Hold on.

I eat a lot of pizza.

How do you spend $1,500 at the pizza place?

That's a shitload of pizza.

I don't know if me, Joey Chestnut, and fucking

you both, all three of us could eat that much pizza.

I spent $1,500 at Paisano's to be disrespected more than I ever have in my entire life.

Jesus Christ.

After taking 20 pictures with customers and staff, I was asked to leave because of an issue I had.

What?

Wait, what?

Hold on.

Wait a minute.

20 people came up and said, please take your picture with us, please.

And then they said, now please get the fuck out of here.

What are you...

I just find it so funny.

I was asked to leave.

Because of an issue I had with the kitchen manager taking too long in the bathroom.

Wait, taking too long in the bathroom.

I was laughing at taking too long with his order, but taking too long in the bathroom.

What?

It's a one-holer over there at Paisano's?

He couldn't get because the kitchen manager, what was he?

Fucking shooting up in the goddamn stall and he couldn't get in any bathroom.

The whole lot is another way to read that.

I was asked to leave because of an issue I had with the kitchen manager taking too long in the bathroom.

Maybe he left out a word or two.

It's Twitter.

Was Rick taking too long in the bathroom?

And the kitchen manager's like, yo, come on already.

Get out of there.

It seems like that the kitchen manager would have access to his own bathroom.

He wouldn't have to go out there and clog it up where the customers couldn't get in.

So

I don't know if you're correct there.

But well, then what?

What's the kitchen manager coming to get the guy out of the bathroom for?

Come out of the closet.

Why is that the kitchen manager's job?

Wouldn't that be the Maitre D?

Or do they have a Maitre D at Paisano's?

So then then ric flair was upset that the kitchen manager was taking too long in the bathroom

it sounds like it to me but it sounds preposterous but it sounds let me finish this yeah i would highly recommend that anyone who wants to enjoy a relaxing time in gainesville at a nice restaurant to never visit this place

I would like to recommend that anyone who wants to take a relaxing dump in the Gainesville area, they'll rush you after you've been in there two minutes.

They'll be shoving toilet paper under the fucking stall door.

Say, get the fuck out of here.

Well, Jim,

we have an article.

Brick Floyd just can't, you can't take him anywhere.

Even if he's spending all this money in a pizza place, by the way, that's just stupid money in a pizza place.

I've always heard Brick Floyd's loose with his money.

Now I get it.

He's just going crazy at Chuck E.

Cheese.

Just throwing it.

What is the goddamn most expensive pizza that you can buy?

Is there a $50 fucking pizza?

And that would be 10, 20, 30 of them.

What's your most expensive pizza?

It's like $12.

I'll take 10,000 of them right now.

Do you deliver?

Do they have the capacity to make $1,500 worth of pizza in such a short period of time?

But we have an article here, Jim,

from the Gainesville Sun.

This is a serious matter.

From the Gainesville Sun.

By Alan Festo.

Alan Festo.

Paisano's owner says, and there's a quote, evidence clear.

After Ric Flair asked to leave Gainesville restaurant,

WWE legend and Hall of Famer Ric Flair created quite a stir on social media over the weekend.

Okay, now, and also, wait a minute, how much stir do you have to make?

to get in the newspaper over a fucking disagreement at a pizza place.

The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure with all of these stories, it always starts off great.

Hey, Ric Flair's here.

He's awesome.

He's taking pictures of everyone.

I love this guy.

Hey, who's knocking on the bathroom door?

Get out of the bathroom.

Woo!

Out of the bathroom.

All of a sudden, he's there trying to get him out of the bathroom.

So, what did they say in the newspaper?

He bashed a Gainesville restaurant while in town to attend a University of Florida graduation ceremony.

Flair, 75, and family members were dining at the Paisano Stone-Fired Pizza Restaurant, 1250 West University Avenue.

Flair must have a big family by that.

I didn't know he was a Mormon.

When the professional wrestler apparently was asked to leave, he advised his more than 2 million followers to avoid the restaurant on their next visit to Gainesville.

They have the tweet here.

Paisano's co-owner, Jerry Roberts, When reached Monday by the sun, said

the evidence was clear, but declined to offer an explanation as to why Flair was asked to leave the restaurant.

The evidence of what was clear to who.

He then sent a prepared statement via text message, and here's the statement:

We have reviewed video of the incident that took place recently at our restaurant.

It is clear our team worked in a professional manner to ensure the safety of guests and staff.

What the fuck happened here?

We have thanked.

What?

We

We have thanked our team for their professionalism.

We are proud of how they responded to the situation

using and displaying our team values.

What was the situation?

What are your values as applies to this situation?

Robert says they have no intention on releasing the video.

I don't even need to see the video.

I'd just like some motherfucker to tell me what the fuck happened.

Who was locked in the bathroom?

Who wouldn't come out of the closet?

How is it $1,500 worth of pizzas can be consumed by one family?

And how did taking pictures and signing autographs go to you must leave the premises and never return?

There's all kinds of story here that's being left out.

Yeah, there's something going on, and I'm not exactly sure what.

Again, $1,500 at a pizza place.

I've never goddamn made the news for being asked to leave a restaurant or establishment such as that.

And one would think that I'm one of the more disagreeable people if you listen to the rumors and the casual conversation.

But I don't make the news for these things.

You don't make the news for these things.

And by the way, no one wants to kick out the guy spending all the money.

That's no restaurant's business model is like, hey, we're having a problem.

Like, we're too busy.

We got to get get rid of the guy spending all the money over there.

Leave the guy that stiffs the servers on their tip and get rid of that guy that's throwing hundreds around.

How can that go so far south so quickly, I wonder?

And his family's there?

And

we need, you know what?

Bar Rescue, John Taffer, needs to get in on this.

He needs to follow Flair around to different bars and call it Flair's Rescue from Bars.

And we'll get to it's a one-hour television program.

Wouldn't it be funny if it was Austin Idols Pizza Place?

Fantastic.

Hey,

I think you could live there for a year and a half and not spend $1,500.

Well, there's the Ric Flair story.

There's a rumor about another

part of the story, but it's unconfirmed as of this moment.

Are we allowed to spread

clearly labeled as such unconfirmed rumors?

Well, Jim, there was another part of the story that's kind of unconfirmed, but if in any way true, it paints a very interesting picture of these proceedings.

There's a tweet that was sent out.

The name seems odd.

Freddie Schnertz

is the act at Freddie Schnertz.

Frederisch von Schnertz is his name on here.

Again, I don't know.

People do.

Well, how in the world do you expect a guy named Schnertz to be a liar?

I'm the manager of Paisano's sister location off Archer.

Mr.

Flair was being drunk and disorderly.

He wooed directly into a blind grandmother's face.

Let me try that again.

Wait.

He wooed directly into a blind grandmother's face.

After being confronted, he picked up furniture and swung it menacingly.

What?

We love Rick, but he was boogered.

He wooed into a blind grandmother's face?

Maybe she wanted a picture.

But

how would that do her any good if she got a picture?

How would she have known to ask?

Maybe she said, I've never been able to see you.

Can I at least feel your breath?

Can you, well,

no wonder she's probably snookered now, but can you imagine

if you were some blind person and suddenly, without warning, Ric Flair wooed an inch from your face?

Well, again, this may or may not have happened, but something happened to Paisanos that was so bad they won't release the video, but they're proud of their team for standing up for themselves.

How can you dispute the word of Frederick von Schnickelgruber?

You can't take Flair anywhere.

Well, that's the first Ric Flair story.

The second one, and there's more?

I'm just seeing this a little while ago, but I've not read it yet.

Ric Flair appeared on

the Jackson podcast, if that's how you say it, J-A-X-X-O-N.

and Flair during that interview said that doctors informed him in late 2023 that he had a heart attack at some point within the last two years.

What?

And he believes it happened during his last match.

Oh, for God's sake.

Here's a quote.

I went to get what's called a calcium scan, which I've never had before, because a couple of guys died in our business of heart issues, so it kind of scared me.

They give you the nuclear stress test, shoot you up with the die, put you on the treadmill, treadmill, everything.

It's two days of three hours of tests.

Holy shit.

This is six months ago.

The guy takes me in, and if you look at your heart like a round pie, there's a piece of my heart right here, this big.

It's black.

It's gone.

The guy said, you've had a heart attack in the last two years.

He said, have you passed out in the last two years?

And during my last match, I passed out three times.

Oh, Christ.

And I thought it was because I was dehydrated.

Oh, well, that happens to me all the time.

So I went into the locker room with Kid Rock and Taker and

just drank two bottles of Gatorade and went back out to Kid Rock's place all night long.

But I had a heart attack.

Which really makes what was a pathetic and awful idea and event look even worse in retrospect.

Well, and everybody thought when they were looking at it that they were watching him have some type of attack attack and/or die.

And

that's why, remember, we chose not to talk about that event because,

you know, I did not want to have to look at that and give my honest opinion on someone that I cared about.

But

everybody has to quit doing pretty much everything at some point, including breathing.

Why rush the shit, right?

Quit doing some of the superficial shit so you can just stick to contributing your energy to the more important shit, like breathing.

I mean,

if part of his heart is black, that

kind of indicates that his heart's not doing as well as it could be doing at this current time, even though he didn't die of the heart attack, doesn't it?

Maybe this is some kind of new way to promote Woo energy.

Oh, come on.

You mean to say?

Well, no, Woo Energy will bring your heart back from the dark side.

Bring your heart back from black.

Woo!

It could get Flair, Amy Winehouse, and

well, you never know.

And

fucking ACDC.

They could be back from black in red from the black of the back.

All right, well, that's the Ric Flair heart attack news.

So turns out we almost did see him die.

And again, with the same comment I made with the

Lawler news is that I thought everybody was making a big deal over, you know, not renewing an announcer contract for who is, in effect, a retired announcer.

But at the same point, you know, maybe with

at some point, people are going to have to refuse to

let Rick damage himself on their dime.

I'm not talking about appearances or, you know, he can pitch wings or drinks or whatever, but he can pitch a little woo, whatever, but not get in the ring, not be physical, not have another fucking heart attack.

Or

somebody's got to pry him out of the bathroom sooner or later.

Well, maybe it was the kitchen manager.

Where was the other?

Where's the house manager?

It was the kitchen manager.

Yeah, where's the Maitre D at a prestigious place like Paisano's?

Where is the

all the other people besides the kitchen manager that ought to be dragging somebody out of the bathroom?

See, we don't even know.

See, that's the thing.

That's unwieldily worded.

That's the thing.

It's either Flair locked himself in the bathroom and they couldn't get him out and it became an issue.

Or...

The manager was in the bathroom too long and Flair was either waiting to use the bathroom or was so offended by this while sitting down that he got up and said hey I spent fifteen hundred dollars here not for you to use the shitter

get out

I believe that more than I do because Flair's not going to lock himself in the bathroom because he's he's that would be away from the bar he's not doing fucking heroin in there he's fucking drinking so why would he lock himself away from the bar

but why would the kitchen manager go in the only receptacle that's available to the fucking

and then why is the manager of the place in the official statement proud of his team and the way they handled something that could have been dangerous to the safety of themselves?

Flair knocked over monitors, screamed, you're a clown.

This place is a joke, and I quit.

And the people were scared for their lives.

That's the only thing I can figure.

You know what causes this whole thing, don't you, Brian?

Vodka and cranberry sauce.

Well, no, well, that could have a contributory effect.

He's a sick man.

It's a super duper jello shot, folks, especially around Thanksgiving.

You're going to love

the vodka and cranberry sauce.

But

anyway,

what the cause of the whole thing is, is that people don't understand each other.

People don't communicate anymore.

People don't listen.

You know what you need to?

You need to listen.

You need to listen when you need to listen, and then you need to hear when you need to hear, and you need to understand when you need to understand.

And all that comes from what's in your ears, Brian.

And that's the Raycon Everyday Wireless Earbuds.

If Ric Flair had been sitting right there listening to some classic tunes or maybe even our podcast, he wouldn't have gotten mad that guy was taking so long in the shitter.

Or perhaps that may be what the problem was in reverse, that Rick had gone to the bathroom, was listening to our podcast on his everyday wireless earbuds from Raycon and lost track of time.

And the kitchen manager was trying to batter the door down with a battering ram to get him out of there before he had wiped properly up, down, sideways and in a vertical fashion.

You never know about these things.

Is that a good enough reason to start talking about these great earbuds?

They're not great earbuds, they're the best earbuds.

Well, they're best-selling.

We know that for a fact because it says it right here on the goddamn copy.

And besides that, the folks at Raycon have just launched their upgraded model of the best-selling everyday earbuds.

So now you also get, in addition to all the shit that you used to get, you get more shit.

Active noise cancellation.

That means it's active all the time.

It's just happening.

You walk down the street, everything you walk past falls silent.

Everybody that you walk past becomes a mute.

They can't speak.

Active noise cancellation.

It's canceling noise around you wherever you go.

Works up to about 200 feet.

Then people start getting loud again.

Also, they've got an ergonomic design.

Now, Brian, you know what that means, don't you?

Ergonomic design.

Of course.

Well, then why don't you explain it to our listeners?

That means that they are ergonomically correct.

They will ergonomically fit in your ear the proper way using

ergonomics.

Ergonomics, because that's where your ear is over there in the

in the start of the ergonomics.

That's where Brandon Thurston works, I believe.

Yes.

Ergonomics.

And it's designed to go right in your ear.

And boy, I'll tell tell you what.

Also, if you grab the tip of them and you pull them in and push them or pull them out and push them in, pull them out and push them in, do that about 100 times.

Holy mackerel, you'll wet your pants.

And they've got multi-point connectivity that lets you pair with two devices at once.

You know, we don't judge.

If you're free and easy in your private life and you want to pair with two devices at once, one in the front, one in the rear, both up tie, it makes no difference to us.

And you can do it now.

Because ergonomically ready for your ear for the record.

Yes.

Well, your ears, two ears.

You know, that's where you hear, but I mean, you could really willy-nilly insert them.

They're insertable because they're ergonomic.

So you could put them wherever you want.

But you're not going to get a lot of fulfillment because they're so small because of the Space Age technology.

And they're now available in a variety of vibrant new colors to complement any and all skin tones.

So you've got that going for you.

It says, please mention your favorite color.

My favorite color is fuchsia chartreuse.

What about you, Brian?

Titanium white.

Well, they got them for you no matter what you want.

Actually, they don't have either of those colors, but they have some that are confusingly similar.

But again, remember, folks, optimize gel tips, ergonomic earbud shape to fit the widest range of ears.

It doesn't matter if you've got little bitty tiny flower ears or big old satchel ears.

If you've got a Lincoln tunnel canal or if you've got a little bitty pinhole, it's ergonomic.

That means if it won't fit at first, you just keep shoving, it'll go eventually.

Three customizable sound styles and the awareness mode.

It will give you the most incredible awareness of the meaning of life.

Just hit the button and suddenly you'll be transported to a higher plane.

Active noise cancellation, quick charge function multi-point connectivity connectivity connectivity and it's weatherproof and or sweat resistant

and and that could be you know two different things because you don't want to stand out in the rain but also if you're going to wear them in the sauna you got to do something about the sweat and the it doesn't do anything about the stank but it does something to resist the sweat But nothing about the stank.

Nothing about the stank.

If you're sweating like that, that it might even potentially damage cheap earbuds, then you need to take a fucking shower.

But anyway, if you've been wanting to check out the Raycons, there's truly no better time than right now, unless it was yesterday, but you already missed that.

So fuck you.

You're out of luck.

Their upgraded model is going to blow you away, ladies and gentlemen, from the grassy knoll.

You're going to ask yourself, why didn't I do this sooner?

Why did I not get these earbuds sooner?

I have shortchanged myself.

I have wronged myself.

I must pay penance to myself.

Well, get them right now.

And they've got the 30-day happiness guarantee.

When you get these, you're going to be happy for 30 days afterwards.

Then things fall to shit pretty quickly after that.

After the 30 days, you're going to be sour as a goddamn sour apple pie.

Go to buyraycon.com.

You'll continue to be happy with Raycon.

Well, you'll like the earbuds, but you know, things in your private life that they can't control after the 30 days may weigh on your fucking consciousness.

You may not be happy all the way around.

They can't give you more than a month.

That's just the way it is.

Go to buyraycon.com right now.

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20 minutes or less.

20 minutes or less.

It'll be right there because they're just across town.

For the record, we can't guarantee that.

They don't guarantee that either.

So it was a joke.

Don't sue.

Oh, well,

don't be starting to tell these people anything that's not true, Brian.

Stick to the goddamn facts like I do.

I will stick to the facts, and that's Stank Bud with Raycon.

One more time, what's that promo code, Jim?

JCE.

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Well, that's JCE

over to the next

island or wherever we're going.

Why are you taking us there?

I'm the captain of this ship.

I'll just sit in the back.

Let's talk about for briefly, and then we'll get to the big pay-per-view, the big French fry over there.

But let's talk real quick about SmackDown.

This past Friday night, May the 3rd, it was also from Lyon, France.

And

I guess the building is 11,000-something capacity.

They sold out both nights, but

besides the fact that you noticed

immediately on television, they had the small setup because they've got more seats, because all these people are in these seats.

But they said this was the highest-grossing SmackDown in history.

And they've had SmackDowns with twice as many people.

So what the fuck were those tickets over there?

How's the French economy these days?

Apparently, they're doing quite well with the sauces and the Pepe Le Pews.

And you know, Pepe Le Pew figures are the seventh largest grossing domestic export from France.

That is not true.

Of course it's not.

You know, they said that here the next night.

They said that it was the highest-grossing arena event in WWE history.

And when you hear it like that, the phrase like that, arena event, you stop and you're like, what does that mean?

I mean, they run a lot of arenas.

But that means anything that's not a stadium.

And they have run arenas with, you know, capacities up to 22,000.

So

these were some expensive fucking tickets, is what I'm saying to you.

And

this,

I was going to say this on the pay-per-view review, but

I won't save it.

I'll say it now.

This really makes,

remember that old tagline that Vince had years ago?

The

World Wrestling Federation, the global leader in sports entertainment.

They really are now.

They have these international markets that have never had shows like this before.

For one reason, Vince didn't want to do pay-per-views,

the big show, whether premium live event or whatever, anywhere outside of the continental United States because the time zone difference would affect the buys.

And the buys were where all the money came in.

And now that

not only have they got the Peacock deal or the Netflix deal coming up or where

they don't have to live and die on the

sales of the pay-per-view.

They're able to jack the tickets up individually so much now that they can gross as much on a goddamn live gate as they used to after their pay-per-view split was taken out with the cable company.

So this is,

and again, these fans were amped up for anything because it hadn't been done to death over there.

It isn't old news.

It isn't their third time there in the last 14 months or whatever.

It's a big show that they've been hearing talked about on the television that's promoted around the world and they get to be a part of it.

And now the new ownership has said, oh, yeah, we're going to keep the big five here in the United States, WrestleMania, Royal Rumble,

whatever.

We'll do the other seven.

In these international markets, the next one's Saudi Arabia or wherever, right?

They're going to get $50 million

And then, can you imagine when they do WrestleMania in London?

Because the mayor just invited them.

It's going to be goddamn.

Anywhere that they go now

with this infrastructure and the UFC

manner of worldwide touring.

These crowds are going to be bat shit insane.

And it makes it to the American fan who's seen such blaséness over here for so long because we're used to it.

It makes them think, oh, shit, this shit's more over than I thought they were, doesn't it?

When you see a crowd like that, you think, what, what the fuck did I miss?

These people are going crazy.

Anytime they're going to go into a new market in Europe, they're going to see fans go this crazy.

And a lot of the fans may retain that energy, but specifically for these first two shows, it was...

Like nothing I've ever seen.

Yeah, and when Vince did do the international tours,

when he started that in the 80s, and then more so in the 90s when business domestically was down,

it was still a thing where go and do the house show, boom, and on to the next town, and let's run it.

And guys were in Germany for fucking two weeks or whatever.

But this, they go over, they do tons of publicity.

It's the boom, get in and get out in a weekend and mega fucking gross.

And

the people are amped up for it because they know it's unique or very rare and unusual.

And

with this fucking SmackDown,

what they presented, the viewer here, the crowd saved it for the most part, didn't they?

Because

there was not, I mean, they could go out there and just fart at these people and they would have loved it.

So it wasn't really for the

you know, for the fans there that they had to do anything, but it was the show was what it was.

Just at one point, I wrote, is this rampage?

because it you know it was what it was the

the crowd was the story they had the the eight-man tag with Bailey and Naomi and Bianca and Jade against Oscar and Carrie and Dakota and Tiffany

and that was 20 minutes and

you know that Tyler Bate and Pete Dunn against the AOP

with their whole band of black holes of charisma.

Very little storyline advancement for anything much because they're already in France.

The pay-per-view's in fucking 12 hours or whatever.

So what are they really selling?

But I did like Paul E and Nick Aldous.

Did you see Paul had the hair completely dark and he had full Morticians makeup on?

And he was looking spiffy.

And he's trying to tell Aldiss

that whatever happens if you don't pull Owens and Orton off the pay-per-view, it's going to be on your conscience.

And then Aldous gives it back to him.

So, well, you're supposed to be in charge, right?

You know, all the communication of the bloodline has to go through you.

And Paul E let it slip that he hadn't talked to Roman Reigns since WrestleMania.

And then his face, wow.

So Aldous says, so you be when Roman Reigns pulled out of of the draft,

Paul says, yeah, I pulled Roman Reigns out of the draft.

I can't subject Roman Reigns to bloodline chaos right now.

And so Aldous told Paul if he could pull Roman Reigns out, well, then try to pull Owens and Orton out of the tag team match.

But now, Brian, this is where I was going with this.

Roman Reigns didn't call his own shot.

Roman is ignoring Paul, and Paul pulled him out of the draft, hoping that no one would notice.

And this can't be good for the future relationship between Roman Reigns and Paul, can it?

And that makes sense.

No one would notice that.

You know, I love this segment.

Aldis is so great.

And it began, what was the first thing he said?

Like, permission denied.

He just yelled at him.

Request denied.

Whatever he said to him.

And it started with that tension.

And then the revelation.

And both guys were so good here that he hasn't talked to Roman since WrestleMania.

The bloodline stuff remains the only thing on SmackDown worth watching right now.

Not to take anything away from L.A.

Night.

But an ongoing issue amongst opposing sides of people and et cetera, and what's going to happen.

Yeah.

But then we flowed into, continuing with Paul Lee and Orton and Owens, we flowed into the RKO show at the top of the 9 o'clock hour.

And at least Owens came in and handy over there because he can speak French to them.

All the vouly-vu parlays and wee-wee's and things and such of that nature.

And

Owens says that he got a call from Paul E.

He's got something very important to tell him.

And of course, Paul interrupts and comes out, you know, before they're ready for him.

And he said some French words, too.

I don't know if he used them in the right fashion.

And basically, the fans are already chanting, We Want Roman, because this fan base, we'll talk about it more on

the pay-per-view review, but not the fan base, but this collection of fans in France, they were singing, chanting fools, boy.

They love to sing and chant.

They love to sing about the moon and the June and the Springer.

So Paul E does the brilliant Paul E promo

about the Bloodline saga and the match at the pay-per-view.

He begs them to back out of the match.

You don't really know what's going to happen to you.

And

Orton says, who is the real tribal chief?

And Paulie's kind of hamina, hamina, hamina.

There's only one tribal chief.

But before he can say anything else,

Solo and Tomatonga

attack the fucking babyfaces from behind, and babyfaces fight back.

And here comes the agents and the security.

And the heels are kind of powdering out.

But we didn't get to pin Mr.

Heyman down on that answer of who is the real tribal chief, did we now, Brian?

No, or if there's more than one.

Well, he said there's only one tribal chief.

We'll know the answer when Heyman shows up with a Voss piss bottle on SmackDown.

Well, now that's what I'm thinking.

There's only one tribal chief, but he has not acknowledged exactly who it is right now.

Now, could it be the rock,

or could it be that Solo was attempting to ascend to the throne before his time?

And

Roman Reigns is out trying to rediscover his motivation or whatever the story they're going to have for him when he comes back, and blah, blah, blah.

And where is Jacob Fatu?

That's what I want to know.

And then we had LA Knight against Angel with Escobar and etc.

And that's where I wrote his rampage.

And LA Knight won.

And cut a promo, and he's officially entered the King of the Ring.

And that's about all that happened there.

And then, well, Escobar said he's going to win the King of the Ring, and LA said, No, you're not.

And then Carlito admitted in the back that he attacked Dragon Lee because they picked a flunky like him for WrestleMania

instead of me, Carlito.

And then Dragon Lee came in and they got in a fight.

Can we, shouldn't we have

out of security, it's a farce now anyway, shouldn't we have everybody on the roster handcuffed to a goddamn post in the back before they're allowed to go out?

You only handcuff whoever can go out to the ring at a time.

15 fucking backroom brawls in the same wrestling program every fucking week from every company.

Why are we doing this still?

That's not rhetorical.

I'm asking you.

I demand an answer.

I'm okay with not.

I mean, we're not even reviewing this stuff.

We're just talking about why we're not reviewing it because it's not there, why we're watching it.

No, why are they doing the backstage

every week?

Yes.

I don't know.

Every week, all the time.

Street Prophets wrestled Waller and Theory.

Oh, joy, oh, bliss.

They've ruined theory for me.

The Heels won, by the way, at least.

King of the Rings in Saudi Arabia, I wrote that down.

I used to get pissed off when the pay-per-views were on the West Coast.

I mean, they they are four hours, five hours in a fucking plane.

And these fuckers are going to France and Saudi Arabia.

I'm glad

that I got in the wrestling business in the territory days because otherwise I would have never gotten a wrestling business.

Because it was conceivable.

That you could be in the wrestling business and work full-time every day of the week and still only be away from home in some territories a couple of nights

and

see an airplane.

But boy, howdy, has that changed?

Alrighty.

So then finally, the big main event segment was up, Brian.

AJ Styles and Cody Rhodes in the ring face-to-face.

Did they ever tell us what the reason was?

We know the match is happening.

Because they're Georgia boys.

Well, they just had to have a good old-fashioned Georgia shootout, right?

So, but lucky no one whipped out the famous Bagwell slap.

Well, hey, that'd cross your eyes and dot your T's.

But this was just so the people could see him that night.

And, you know, a little promo for the television viewers for the pay-per-view the next afternoon at one o'clock.

But when you watch Cody walk to the ring, he's a star.

Because he's got the running for office fucking glad handing, the smile.

He looks great, the suit.

There were so many chants at the beginning, they wouldn't even let him start talking.

And then he says, What do you want to talk about in French?

And I mean, you know, love is in the room.

And whenever A.J.

would try to speak, the fans, at this point, they were screaming and waving and jumping up and down.

And finally, they got to speak to each other, and they didn't really need to do much, but

they would make a comment back and forth, You know,

everybody, AJ's story is everybody wanted Dusty's son, but I had to prove myself, that type of thing.

But I mean, if they had just gone out there and said, blow me, blow me, fuck you, these people were chanting and they were lunatics.

But anyway, AJ did a good promo, which is not always his strong point, but it was good.

Cody had Hall of Famers watching his back, but AJ's beating all of them and he's going to beat Cody.

And that's when I think the fans were

singing, what was that that the fella said?

It was Lise Avouraste Phenomenal or La La La La La.

La la la la la.

La la la la la la la la la.

Tis the season for Tony's Folly.

All right.

Anyway, and then Cody,

you know, responded and says, don't tear me down to build yourself up.

And

may the best man win type of stuff.

And Cody says, AJ, you're going to be my first.

And that's too sweet.

And then they go to finger bump the too sweet thing.

And AJ slaps Cody and leaves the ring.

And suddenly in the back, Orton and Owens were having a pull apart with the bloodline, and we went off the air.

So that was

number two or number three fight in the back in fucking an hour and 55 minutes.

But that was the whole show, wasn't it?

That was SmackDown.

Oh boy.

Hey, you know, but

I'll make this comment and then we'll

move on

that

they don't need to do anything.

I said this the other day.

Right now, the WWE doesn't need to do anything

except don't do anything stupid.

And Tony Kahn is in a position where he needs desperately to do something,

but everything he does is stupid.

So they've continued to run away with this thing.

And

you see more than ever after this weekend, my God,

I don't know if I'll still be living

by the time that the goddamn international market wears off for them.

They could run on this for five years minimum without having to fucking worry a day about, you know, drawing a house domestically.

It's very disheartening for people who were

thinking that there would be an alternative that actually had any

chance.

What chance have they got over at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week, Brian?

There's a chance for great programs, as always, from the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information on all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcast or on Facebook.

Facebook.com/slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Of course, each and every day, wake up to the wrestling news for free.

Get your wrestling news.

No paywall, no clickbait, just the wrestling news.

Get it from thewrestlingnews.com directly or wherever you find your favorite podcasts, get the wrestling news morning newscast every single day.

Want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon.

He's had a slew of great episodes.

The most recent one, Lou Kippleman, is his guest here

today.

Here Kippleman at suawpod.com.

I look for Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

And of course, the 605 super podcast,

the

mothership.

It's late in the day.

Go through the archive, 605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

The Mothership.

All right.

Well, now, without further ado, we got to get to the main event, Brian, because all of that was the SmackDown and everything was merely the appetizer, the soup zone, because the big meal was the following night backlash.

And these people,

the crowd was the, was,

no, the matches were very good, but the crowd made it.

Most of the matches were very good, but the crowd made it.

because it was,

they were just having the time of their life.

You could tell they were going bat shit insane to be there no matter what was going on.

And that's the kind of

that's the kind of crowds that they need to be telecasting from around the world back to the people here to

make themselves look like something.

Make them competitive.

Yeah, well, the fans.

You know, yeah, because they're going to teach them something.

Oh, we got to do this shit too, because they look like nattering nabobs of negativity compared to these people.

I mean, you know, you go back and you look at the footage from the 70s and 80s and people are going bat shit in a completely different way.

But there was always noise.

There was always something going on.

Well, that's, you know, what these people are because it's, as they used to call in the business, virgin territory.

When you opened up.

a market that hadn't had live wrestling in years.

It was virgin territory and the people would start reacting again like that because they were starved.

And anyway, what was Cincinnati like when Mid-Atlantic opened up?

Well,

they didn't sing and I would have hated to hurt if they'd have tried.

And there wasn't chants going on,

you know, back in those days, except if the babyface, if Ricky Steamboat was down, you go, Ricky, go, that type of chant.

But they were...

On lockups, they were cheering, and the heel could fucking tease pulling hair, and it would sound like he just pulled out a goddamn blackjack

because they

hadn't been spoiled and they hadn't been numbed to things by seeing it over and over again.

And again, this crowd, they said, was 11,682,

but it was the all-time arena gate record.

So

they paid money to be there.

And

they had a nice little cold open with the geography lesson on France and Lyon.

And they said it was the third largest city in France with 500,000 people.

So that, to me, the crowd is that much more impressive because would that make top 35 cities in this country?

500,000 people?

I don't know.

Well, I thought you knew everything.

I don't know that.

That's a good question.

Well, I know everything for money, but I don't know that.

So the point is, they had

a lot of people for the market paying extraordinary prices, and they wanted to have fun and be there.

And they knew everybody's shit.

They, that's what you heard about,

you know, the guys from the 90s overseas tours in the WWF talking about how, yeah, they were up on everything.

They knew the programs, yeah, they knew the words to the theme songs in a foreign language.

So, that's dedication

anyway, used to hear that about Germany, the German fans.

That they were dedicated or that they knew all the words to the theme songs in English.

Well, just when WWF started going over there, they were just incredibly dedicated fans.

But they still didn't learn a second language to be able to sing in it.

Well, a lot of the guys didn't have lyrics to their songs back then.

They just came out to like whatever Jim Johnston.

And I like Jim Johnston as a person, but that's what some of them sounded like, too.

Oh, goddamn.

Even fucking Rogers and Hammerstein didn't write 700 hits.

So, anyway.

There are people that talk about Jim Johnston like every song was a hit.

Like, every one was perfect.

Not that, like, some were really fucking cheesy.

No, and some of them we just kept.

And when somebody didn't have music, have we played that one lately?

Yeah, the Heavenly Bodies had like Jim the Anvil Neidharts music or something.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And that's not even a slight at Jim Johnston, but again, fucking Lennon and McCartney didn't fucking compose over 15 or 20 years.

How many wrestlers came through there?

So anyhow.

These fans are great.

Yes, these fans are great.

And speaking of wrestlers coming through there, Kevin Owens comes out.

and stops halfway down the entranceway.

And I think, oh, he's milking it, the crowd reaction, the music and everything.

He waited forever.

And then

he just stood there and waited for Orton.

Was he overcome with emotion from his French ancestors?

Or what was the

it?

It wasn't as

pretentious an entrance as I would think Owens would be doing.

He was just kind of standing there.

He wasn't firing them up or anything.

He was taking in the moment, I guess.

Do the French consider the French Canadians to just be,

you know, like their cousins?

Like,

it is another country.

It's another land.

They speak the same language, but.

Well, maybe is it like one of those.

There are plenty of jerks that speak English.

Well, yeah, that's why is it one of those deals?

Like, we don't want to be associated with those fucking French-Canadian motherfuckers.

They're fake French.

We don't know.

We don't know.

I'll tell you what, they don't put much fucking ice in the drinks up there.

I'll tell you that.

And then here came Orton, and the people sang his song in English.

And they actually were able to carry a tune.

He was a megastar to them.

I mean, it was just, it started out that way.

And then here comes Solo and Tamatonga,

and they're going to have the tag team match.

And they just jump into a four-way and go to the floor and get a fight.

And here come the referees and the agents and chaos and security.

And

the people were loving this because they don't see shit.

Now they got the chaos, right?

They were going nuts.

Yes.

And Aldous comes out and says, if you can't obey the rules, then it's a disqualification street fight.

But it wasn't lazy booking

because that got an incredible pop.

And

in a situation, this is where you give it to them.

You got the biggest house you've ever drawn.

You've got a big show on

television, pay-per-view, streaming, whatever.

You got a hot crowd.

Drop the cow.

Give them the fucking show, right?

Can you imagine, not only for the people in France, but how could the people here would have taken this match if they didn't see something like it

not done as well?

This was very good.

They kept up the idea of a fight.

Their shit was stiff.

It wasn't silly.

It wasn't stupid, dangerous.

But they still did the goddamn,

you know, furniture fight and everything just at a higher level.

And it not only would have torn the house down in France, which it did, but it also would have had more meaning to the viewers here in the United States, at least, maybe Canada, whatever, if they didn't see shit like this constantly done

not as well, less good, whatever the metric is.

Does that make any sense?

It makes sense.

Again, Virgin Territory.

They don't have AEW going to be there next week or something.

But there's also the difference between Virgin Territory and the horror of Babylon.

So

there's a big difference between the Virgin Territory and the Horror of Babylon.

Yes, can we?

There's a lot of branches of the Long Island Railroad in between those two stuff.

Boy, howdy, I'll tell you what, train after train has gone through that tunnel.

Ron Conkama.

You can't go once a year with a street fight, but you can't.

like the same thing with the backstage assaults.

You can't have three in a show or four a week or whatever.

It just diminishes what the people who have

this called for it.

There was an issue.

There was a crowd.

There was a gate.

There was remuneration.

You're not building Leon, France a return house next month.

Give them the blow off, right?

This is where it works.

And it would have worked on television even better if we didn't see so much like it done more poorly.

But, you know, they did do the furniture, but not to a ridiculous degree.

But people people had to fall through the tables.

They got good heat on Owens at one point.

Then Orton had a big comeback.

Then they stopped him, but he hit the RKO out of nowhere on the desk.

And they, at one point, you can't,

you can't control Owens from his

demons.

So at one point, he hit

Tomatonga with four chairs, a total of six times, and then set up the chairs.

So he ended up brainbustering him through the chairs.

That,

you know, was needless in my opinion because somebody would be fucked up.

But the place went batshit.

And Owens covers him and the referee gets pulled out by another guy.

And it's Tama Tonga's brother, Tonga Loa.

Now, if it's Tama Tonga's brother, shouldn't his last name be Tonga and his first name be Loa?

Or is he a Loa Tonga and the other one's a higher Tonga?

Well, the other interesting thing is when Haku was in the Islanders, his tag team partner, the Tonga kid's name, was Tama.

So are you in the

real life, that's what Fatu?

One of the fatus.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Are you trying to say that Haku's children are illegitimate?

That's not what I'm saying in any way.

Well, that sounds like it.

What I'm saying is you're blaming the Tonga kid.

I'm not blaming

the Tonga of the lower.

I applied no blame for any reason.

There's no reason for blame.

I'm simply playing the name game, not the blame game.

Surely.

Shirley, Shirley, Boo Burly,

Chuck.

Chuck, Chuck, Bobuck, Banana, Fanna.

Let's do Stan.

Okay, so anyway, Paul E was shocked and amazed by that the brother came in

and the new guy

hit Randy Orton with the stairs and

solo spiked Owens and pinned him one, two, three.

And again, I said, great fight and the right place to do it, and they kept it serious, et cetera, et cetera.

But where's Jacob Fatu?

Can you imagine the day?

Because,

I mean, Tomatonga, he looks good.

He's in good shape.

This guy, okay, but this is like giving us the garnish and the parsley, and we need the fucking sizzle and the steak.

Well, two things.

One,

so far we were hit with two surprises expecting Jacob Fatu.

Tamatonga and Tongoloa.

By the way, both guys, specifically Tamatonga, because he's been there longer,

were kind of not thought of as highly as some of the other guys in New Japan.

Look at how well he's been used since he got to WWE.

Who's a bigger star now?

Well, and the thing also is Tamatonga helps Solo because Solo's still green.

And you can tell that...

Tamatonga

is more experienced and a little more smooth and can maybe help him along.

But go ahead.

And I like the energy he's giving off where he's just like this crazy guy that, you know, he rams cars into Kevin Owens' car and he, you know, is out there just starting fights.

We don't know when they're going to do Jacob Fatu, but the other thing is, we also don't know if Jacob Fatu's past may prohibit him from traveling overseas.

Ah,

yes.

Well, no, but France, they'll take anybody, won't they?

But now everyone's sitting here waiting for Jacob Fatu.

I mean, now it's kind of a...

Well, but actually, no, we are and people in the know are, but the wider general audience hadn't waiting for him because they don't have a fucking clue that he's there.

He's coming.

And again, Roman has to come back somehow.

And if we're led to believe he's coming back as a babyface,

or even if he's coming back as a heel and they're doing some weird heel versus heel bloodline feud,

he's going to need people on his side too.

It would be a little weird if it's the Usos right away, just because of everything that's happened.

Yeah, but at the same time, Jacob Fatu is the meanest, wildest looking, dirtiest, fucking, craziest, most impressive one.

All these other guys are clean as shit, right?

And

they're groomed and they don't scare people.

Jacob Fatu's scary.

What would worry me is this.

Right now it's working.

And Heyman's playing his role really well.

But if you add another guy that that that audience has never seen before, all of a sudden you have a stable of four,

three relative unknowns to that audience, and one guy has only been there a little while.

Yes.

You know, I almost feel like Jacob Fatu could get lost in that a little more than he could if he was just there with someone who had a little more.

Well, that's why I'm saying he should have already been introduced in this mix rather than these other two guys.

I don't know.

We'll see where it goes.

But I would have, I would have, I would have shown him the most impressive Samoan first.

And nobody has

raised the opinion that Tama Tonga or Tonga Loa or Solo,

either one, is more impressive, especially on first look when you don't know what to expect than Jacob Fatu.

And again, now we have two of Haku's sons

as part of the bloodline that makes you think maybe there's a chance Haku will be involved in some way.

Not that he's going to wrestle, but just as a character in the overall arc.

Well, we'll know if people start walking around with missing noses.

That must mean Haku's close.

That was Jim that said that, Haku, if you're listening.

Oh, we love each other.

All right.

The next match that was going to try to follow this chaos, well, that's where they stuck the women's three-way.

And everybody, I don't like the three-ways most of the time, whether it's men or women.

They did one right the other day.

And otherwise, eh, I like Bayley.

I'd like to see her against Tiffany one-on-one, maybe.

I'm willing to give Tiffany a chance.

I'm not sold on the glow worm here.

But,

you know, but basically that's what happened is that

Bailey and Naomi eliminated.

Tiffany from competition with a double team move.

And then Bailey and Naomi got in a fight for 15 seconds and Bailey hooked her one, two, three.

But I will say, coming good out of this match, Brian, and maybe this is something we can discuss, Samantha Irvin has sold me or won me or bought me or

she's got me in her cap.

She ain't buying you, I'll tell you what.

Well, whatever the term is,

I'm a Samantha Irvin fan now.

The inflections, the facials, she's standing up.

She's doing a good job.

I wanted to praise her there.

They're presenting her really well.

They're making her almost an attraction.

And also, from what I understand,

I guess the previous regime had her tone down a lot of her, I don't know what you want to call it, exuberance,

her personality as a ring announcer, whatever you want to call it.

They had her tone it down.

Now they're letting her get into it.

And the other thing I told you before, apparently she doesn't know the results to any match.

So when she's sitting at ringside, she gets invested in this stuff because she doesn't know what's going to happen.

She wants it that way.

Yeah.

She's great.

And she's got the Beatles tattooed on her arm.

She's great.

They're crazy if they were trying to tell her to tone it down because

she comes off doing this more like the...

the Bruce Buffer, the good buffer in the family, the Bruce Buffer type of introduction,

etc.

But anyway, I got that out of the the women's three-way.

What else did I miss?

Uh, you know, I know there was a women's tag match because I wanted to talk to you about that.

I don't even remember there was a three-way, I think I skipped this one.

Well, there you go,

because the world title was on the line next with uh

Damien Priest defending this prestigious and

title with this long history against Jey Uso.

And

again,

they lucked into into something here with this crowd.

I don't care whether anybody ever watches this match again.

This was

incredible footage that you could not buy or pay for or manufacture for every Jey Uso package they do until the end of time.

The entrance was amazing.

Were those all cell phone lights

that they were bobbing up and down, the lights on their cell phones.

I would think so, yeah.

If you didn't see this, folks, the whole building turned their cell phone lights on.

They're playing Jay's,

you know, music, rap, music, whatever the fuck, but they're bobbing up and down

with the cell phone lights and the people waving their arms and they're yeeting.

And Jay comes down all the way from the cheap seats up at the top, all the way through the crowd.

And the people are loving him, him, and the hands are the whole place is shaking.

The goddamn, the hard camera up in the stands is shaking with this reaction going on.

And that's why I'm saying

whatever else that happened from this match, they got footage that they couldn't have gotten under any other circumstance that makes him look like the biggest star in a fucking business.

That entrance was,

you couldn't replicate that if you tried, could you?

No.

And again, it's one of those things.

We're not big fans of him in the ring,

but he's super over with them, his catchphrases, and again, a special crowd.

But that was a really special entrance.

And then the bell rang.

It wasn't as bad as WrestleMania because you didn't have...

You didn't have Uso opposing Uso where two guys

who work very similarly and both of them are kind of sloppy were opposing each other.

Priest is good, and Priest looks great.

He's tanning.

He's being aggressive.

You can tell he really wants this to work, the world title of blah, blah, blah.

He might be trying to stop and lead the people a little bit too often.

And by lead the people, I mean, when you stop and you give them the dirty look, or you stop and you give them the gesture, or you stop and you do whatever.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do it.

He did a plethora.

That's our word of the day of those.

But it's nowhere near.

Jey Uso has gotten both too hot doggy and too sloppy at the same time.

He's like

one of these skateboard guys that only hits half of his tricks and then takes a bow after all of them.

Do you know what I mean?

His work is not

amazing enough that he can do all all this hot dogging bullshit and get away with it, in my opinion, for long.

It worked in Leon, but I'm not sure that it won't wear thin on people.

That's what I'm saying.

I don't know.

To me, the other problem is,

and I've always liked him, but specifically here, whether it was just the whole presentation, the outfit, and whether it was the match, whatever it was.

Damian Priest doesn't feel like a world champion to me yet.

Well, that's the problem.

You can tell he's trying.

He's putting everything into it, but

I mean, you know, again,

they made the belt up for Seth.

And then Seth gets beat by Drew, but here this guy cashes in.

Remember, who was, there's been some famous cash-ins from people that you would have never believed would have been the world champion, and they weren't for very long.

So this is not like

he didn't culminate culminate a long quest by winning this thing fair and square in a big advertised match.

It's not conducive to making people think that he's the world champion.

But he's trying.

You brought up Seth.

Did you see Seth and Becky were at the Kentucky Derby?

Yes, and somebody on social media said, and I agree as a Louisville native, It's an amazing accomplishment when you can say that Becky Lynch had the ugliest outfit at the Kentucky Derby.

She looked like she was in a fucking can of biscuits that had popped in half.

Well, everyone was talking about it, but also Seth Rollins shaved.

Who knew he looked like Ed Norton?

No, not that Ed Norton, the other Ed Norton.

But nobody, I didn't see any clip of him walking.

So we can't tell how good he was walking.

I just saw the clip of them standing there.

Did anybody get a walking appraisal?

No.

Unless they had a cart, he did some fucking walking.

Churchill Downs is goddamn huge.

And I know they were guests.

They probably got driven in.

But you know,

the neighborhood around Churchill Downs is not what you would call posh, to say the least.

And some of those people that have houses and little yards there make as much money Derby weekend as they do all year by charging people a hundred bucks a car to park in their fucking yard.

It's an amazing goddamn

layout to see.

There's cars in every alley, yard, patch of grass, nook, and cranny, whatever.

They take it quite seriously out there.

Maybe they ought to do WrestleMania at Churchill Downs some year.

They had $156,000 for a horse race.

With the infield with chairs, they could do

North Korea levels, $180,000, 180,000, 190,000.

Not enough parking.

I'll open up the castle.

Castle grounds, parking, $5,000 a car.

We got three acres.

Take your pick.

Get here early to be close to the gate.

Is that the end of this match?

Yes,

what was it?

No, no, it's not.

They did a bunch of stuff.

What they did was they did a bunch of stuff, and J.D.

McDonough got involved, and Priest ain't happy about that.

You know, he wants to handle his own business.

But anyway, J.D.

put Priest's foot on the ropes, and then Uso dove on JD and speared Finn, but Priest crotched Jay on the top rope and chokeslammed him off the top one, two, three.

And then Finn and J.D.

got back on Jay, but Priest pushed him off and bitched him out and said,

There will be none of this because it's not fair.

It's not, I don't need your help.

That's what what he was saying.

Whether or not it happens, do you think he needs to be a babyface right now?

Considering the role?

No, actually, I would hope

they would have been putting more heel heat on him a little bit instead of having him still play with the children since Rhea is gone and Dominic is gone.

Why not let Finn and JD do whatever they need to do and let Damian Priest be a single top heel champion

before we go turning him.

Because he,

the problem, the more over you are as a heel, the more over you are when you become a babyface or vice versa.

And I think he had been kind of minimized or subliminalized over the past few months with all the other bigger stars and more exciting things that were going on and the dilution of the Judgment Day to a goddamn social club with spooky lighting.

And they ought to concentrate more on letting him run with his title before they switch him out.

Well, now we want people to like him.

He stands up for himself.

Whatever.

I don't know.

What do you think the odds are he's going to be an official full-fledged babyface sooner or later?

What's the over under?

I think it will be over

if they do it right, and it'll be under if Tony Kahn books it.

So over if they do it right, and under if they do it wrong.

Well, you know, Brian, you can make money with that prediction.

Just right there, you can make money with that because you can go right now and you know how to download those fancy new apps they got these days, right?

I could do that.

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And the NBA playoffs, I guess, are going, what they're going to be going on for the next, what, three, four months now?

Well, not that long, but the Knicks start tonight.

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Well, they could nick one.

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You know, it's a great selling point to have for people in New Jersey.

Well, for people people in New York and Connecticut to get them to New Jersey because it's not available there, according to Fred's announcement.

You know, is that a real motherfucker?

Fred?

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's got to be.

He's an owl voice, artificially intelligenced voice.

He doesn't have any human emotion in that voice.

There's no gravel in that.

There's no sorrow.

There's no heartache.

He's never experienced love and anger and fear.

You can tell in the voice that he doesn't have there.

That's a fake voice.

Well, he, whether real or fake, is concerned for you, the struggling gambler.

He's not concerned for me.

He doesn't give a shit about me.

Hi, you, the struggling gambler out there.

Well, if he doesn't give a shit about me, why should he give a shit about them?

All right, well.

You know what else I gave a shit about?

The next match.

Because the next match was for the women's tag team title with Oscar and Carrie against Jade and Bianca.

And

I am fascinated with how that they are pushing Jade Cargill, how that they're getting her over, how they're hiding the weaknesses, accentuating the strengths, et cetera.

And I wanted to see the next chapter in that.

So I did.

Pay 80% of attention to this match.

Did you watch this match?

I certainly did.

I wanted to see how Jade was going to do in there.

I'm a fan of Bianca's.

I'm a big fan of the Kabuki Warriors.

They're so committed to their act, and I call it that because it's an act for them, that they never break.

And in this specific match, I thought Kyrie Sane was going to break in half a few times.

Well,

and that's, I think that's why they

gave them to Jade for opponents because they're so small, she can just pick them up and just throw them away.

Well, that finish.

I'll want you talk about the finish wow well that's a but here they've got something with jade cargill and bianca bel air are they

what we have never had in women's wrestling are they the road warriors of women's tag teams

they look

great

They've got, they're wearing matching colors, even though the outfits are different, but they're wearing matching colors.

They look great together.

Between Bianca being jacked up through the arms and Jade being bigger than everybody,

they can throw these girls around.

They can be physically dominant.

And

I think I like Bianca better when she's with Jade because I've told you her entrance.

The skipping and the twirling the hair and the smiling and the, it's off-putting to me.

I hate the music, the whole, I hate Bianca Belair's entrance.

I love

Jade Cargill's entrance.

She looks like a superhero.

She looks like a fucking star.

The camera angles, the pose, the whole nine yards, the magicry of the thing, the music.

Yeah, great music.

And now they look good together because they're wearing the matching colors and they've got kind of a team motif going on.

And Bianca's work in the ring is definitely better than Jade's.

So

Jade helps me like the look of the team, and Bianca helps me like the work of the team.

And so I think the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

Or we're not talking about Nia Jax now, though, but so we'll leave the whole alone.

And they had a tag match where they got a long heat on Bianca, but she was fighting for the tag, selling big, fighting for the tag,

and finally

hit it.

And then Jade comes in, and

you can tell that they have, again,

carefully chosen and/or prepped what Jade is going to do.

And she nailed

a number of things, and then the heels got on her and started double-teaming the shit out of her with kicks.

And that's where I thought that

Either the participants or even the producer, whoever laid this out,

Jade is not smooth enough as a worker that she needs to be taking these multiple kicks where, oh, I kick you here, and you bend over, and I kick you in the face, you stand up straight, and I kick you here, and you jump down and turn around.

You know what I'm saying?

Putting yourself in position accidentally by being kicked back and forth looked a little awkward, and then they got lost.

And you could, it was Jade that was lost, and you could tell,

But finally, the heels got it back because they're the

experienced veteran in the veterans in this.

And they got the double arm bars so that the baby faces could do the double modified gotch lifts, which you don't see a lot of the women doing.

And anyway, then, boom, boom, boom,

Jade gave Carrie

her finish,

which was,

I don't even, I can't remember the exact chain of events, but she lifted her up upside down,

threw her up on her shoulder, spun her around,

threw her up in the air, caught her by the arms, and then gave her the fucking face plant like Beth Phoenix used to use.

Boom.

And that was, you know,

The poor girl only weighed 100 pounds, but still that was some coordination.

And then Bianca hit her finish on the other girl on top of the first girl and one, two, three.

And we got new champions.

And they need to be the champions.

They need to have the belts.

They need to keep coming out and looking like the super team.

And

except for, you know, what was it, a minute there when they got lost and Jade wasn't sure.

what to do and you could kind of tell if you were looking,

they've still, they've made her look like a million dollars the past couple couple months, whereas she was in AEW for two years and it's kind of like the rib, like, oh, here comes Jane again.

Not to compare Bianca Belair to Barry Wyndham, but just using her as an example or using him as an example here.

And I think Bianca Belair is fantastic.

But I think that's a better comparison.

Not the Road Warriors, but Luger and Wyndham.

Okay,

okay.

You know, Jade's more like early Luger.

You put her with these people, hope she learns something, hope she learns how to do a match, how to think about a match.

But you put her in there with someone who could work, someone who could really work, work circles around most of the women on the roster.

So I think that's more the way I see it than the Road Warriors.

Well, I was looking for the big dominant.

All they need is some spiked shoulder pads.

And maybe who's going to have the Mohawk, Bianca or Jade?

No takers, eh?

No takers, no takers.

Well, and we're not even talking about him.

But yeah, so I like that team.

I'm interested to see what's going on there.

And then

we came to the main event of the evening for the WWE.

What is the

title now?

The Undisputed.

Is it the Undisputed WWE Champion or the Undisputed World?

No, the other guy's the world champion.

Let me ask you this.

If Damian Priest says he's the world champion, doesn't that mean he's disputing that Cody is the fucking undisputed champion?

Cody

was the universal champion.

But they quit saying that.

Right.

Who's WWE?

Which one of them is just not world, no actual body, just WWE?

Well, it's Cody.

Because the world title is the one that...

Damian Priest won from Drew McIntyre after he beat Seth and only held it five minutes and 46 seconds.

But the point

that we've been trying to drive home about, goddamn, just have one champion.

Here's another illustration: What do you call the undisputed champion?

Well, because what do you mean?

What do you call the undisputed champion?

We call him the world champion.

Well, the other guy's the world champion.

Isn't that guy disputing the fucking other guy being the undisputed champion?

Who's disputing who here?

All right.

After

AJ entered the ring before Cody even started, the fans were just singing at the top of their lungs.

And dancing.

Their hands were going.

I mean, it was a lot of movement.

It was like goddamn jazz hands.

And the fucking in the funhouse mirror, everything was shaking and the building was shaking.

They were shaking, snapping their fingers.

They were moving round and and round.

And they were singing.

And then when Cody,

when his music hits and he makes his entrance, they're singing his song in the English words, right?

And that's where I realized at that point,

if the WWE says, fuck it, we're going to do half of our pay-per-views now that it doesn't matter what time zone they air live in anymore.

We're going to do a half our pay-per-views around the world for crowds like this.

It'll pay premium fucking money and be thankful for the experience.

Wow, that sounds swell.

So, I mean, the whole

this match was excellent.

It's two wrestlers, veterans.

They're smooth.

They can work.

They're not going to do anything stupid.

They're not going to do anything

unnecessarily dangerous.

Everything's dangerous and there's risk, but they're professionals and they're not going to do stupid shit.

But the crowd also helped put the batch over the top two because they were bat shit.

But with Cody and AJ, and it's a,

it's,

I'm not trying to be detrimental to AJ's talents when I've said that nobody really wanted to see this match as a big match to pay to see because everybody knows that Cody's not going to lose it after he just won it, now that everybody's smart.

That's something that the guys in the days gone by didn't have to put up with.

You could have a challenger the next month and people, oh shit, they'd get worried.

Oh my gosh, this guy looks tough.

Now everybody's smart.

Okay, they're not going to change it that quick.

But I can't think of too many people on the roster that Cody could have a better match with and just

a good world title defense against a guy that's had a name and has been there and et cetera.

And they're pros and they know what they're doing.

And plus, I actually got to see somebody take a backdrop.

Good God.

Last week in a five-minute segment, I saw motherfuckers chop 62 times.

This is the first backdrop I've seen in a month and a half in a wrestling show.

Anyway, they built it from the start.

So they did wrestling first, and they got rougher.

They did some running spots and then they pulled out bigger bumps.

And,

you know, again, you can't fault

anybody's effort in it.

And the people in France loved it because it was a great match and they were loving it because they were there, as we've mentioned many times.

At one point, they started chanting fight forever.

Do you think Tony Khan is going to take out an ad in French magazines with a discount video game for him?

I don't think there's much that could be done to sell that game.

If only some people had known well, well beforehand that that game was going to be a bomb.

Way beforehand

and gone on tape and on record with it.

But nevertheless,

they went back and forth, boom, boom, boom.

And finally, Cody hit a super Cody cutter from the top rope and then hit the crossroads one, two, three.

Again, great match.

It was a contest.

No silliness.

No burying the referee.

Not

extensive furniture moving.

They weren't on the floor for five-minute stretches.

Because they're professionals and they have talent, they can do this.

They don't have to use the smoke and mirrors so people won't know that they're the shits.

And the best part about it, at least in this, in my estimation, the whole pay-per-view was over in two hours and 50 minutes.

Brian, what were your main event thoughts?

Yeah, the timing was good.

I mean, it was only a few matches.

I thought it was a really good main event.

And to me,

I have a difficult time with matches where you know what the outcome is going to be.

You knew Cody was going to win.

There's no way AJ was going to win the title.

You need something to pull you into it.

And the fans singing for AJ every time he had any offense

was incredible.

It almost got me to think they could do it.

Could be one of those Ron Garvin in Detroit moments where all of a sudden the fans can't believe it.

It's happened for them.

Despite any logic or reason to the contrary, that's exactly what happened in front of us right here for no good reason uh maybe they have a show coming up in chicago that they could follow up on but a really good match really really good match and the crowd was the story the crowd made the whole event incredible and

you know i don't like the saudi arabia show so much in the middle of the day uh beyond any geopolitical reasons I don't know the crowd, you know, the crowd being, not that they're dead, because they'll probably be dead if they don't cheer and boo uh but not that they're dead but when there's probably a more reserved culture that is not used to whooping it up out in public over there but when you see this show in france and again it's in the middle of the day it aired here it aired at 12 30 or 1 30 whatever it was

you know in the middle of the day that's the kind of wrestling i can watch live in the middle of the day something that lively it really pulls you into it Well, and remember, regardless of the time zone, the Puerto Rico show, because they were so fucking into it, because they hadn't gotten a big show.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's where they, that was the first time we remember they had to use the small stage and entrance setup to get more people in there.

And obviously, the

Vince loved the pageantry.

And there were points in time

where

you needed to have the big entrance and block some seats off because they weren't selling anyway.

But Vince would have taken the pageantry over the fucking

profit.

I think the new owners are like, we're maximizing revenue.

And it looks

to me i agree with them because it looks like the company is a bigger deal when every seat in this entire giant arena is full with a little stage to walk out rather than

well i see 10 000 people but the stage cut half the fucking building off you know now instead they could return to each one of these places once a year and break the record they set the year before

but that's you know they they've got they've got england they got ireland they got scotland they got germany they got france they got all the other other countries that I'm not good enough with geography to list off.

But, you know,

the Saudi Arabia thing, we know all the various reasons with the politics and et cetera.

And also,

you know, they just don't seem like when you look at the crowds, they're cheering, they're enjoying things, but they don't seem like

the kind of smart crowd that follows everything

and knows the songs, the words, the

backstories to all the guys, why they're mad at everybody, like the European fans do.

And I think that's,

you know, they're going to be able to make a lot of fucking

highlight videos off shit they're going to do internationally over the next little while.

Well, you know, the fans keep cheering when their favorite soccer players aren't yanked off the field and shot in the head.

It usually helps that fan base continue with their jovial cheers and songs and chants.

But that was AJ versus Cody, and that was Backlash.

Yes, and this has been the Jim Cornette experience.

And we're coming back to do more of these programs on different topics in a few days with the drive-thru, aren't we?

That's right.

And Ric Flair's on the loose.

Vince McMahon's up to his dirty tricks.

Tony Kahn

still

scared for his life, probably.

He can't take this lightly.

He needs some attention.

I'm sure he'll do something.

Well, I'll tell you one thing.

I've got to get off here now because I got to call and order me a Paisano's pie direct from the bathroom in Gainesville.

Paisanos?

Can you imagine like a family pizza place?

He's in there where Flair's causing problems.

And if the story's true about the old woman in the wheelchair was blind

and he's eating

wooing at people, there's going to be somebody saying that fat bo

wasn't blind.

I saw her waving a cab down out of her chair out front.

Yeah, she.

You know what?

The woo is the least problematic part of it.

She didn't get to see what he whipped out.

Hey, the biggest problem was they wouldn't stock the wings

and

the energy drink at the bar.

I wonder if Paisano's has a liquor license?

Or is this like where you get tokens for the fucking to shoot the water in the clown's mouth type of pizza place?

If you're in the area, don't go here.

Don't go there.

Whatever you do for

a relaxing dining experience, go over to Chuck E.

Cheese instead.

It's much quieter over there.

Are we done here?

Hey, Derek.

Woo!

Yes, we're done.

Quit knocking the nature, boy.

I was trying to give you a nice little graceful way to say goodnight, Gracie.

Okay, hold on.

Good night, Gracie.

Good night, everybody, and until we see you next time, thank you, fuck you, and bye-bye.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cognet.

Of Jim Connet

of Jim Connect.

You know what?

You had to go with Paisanos and bring that back into my fucking house.

Paisanos.

His fucking family's in there with chairs causing an incident.

And then you know, like, he didn't go easily.

That's the problem.

It wasn't like, sir, you have to leave.

Okay, fine.

I'll just go tweet something.

Yeah.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

But one would have thought somebody and his family could have maybe de-escalated it before it got to that point.

Yeah, I mean, they were all in town.

They were all in town, and there was a lot of pizza.

Just a lot of pizza.

Maybe it was a fight over the leftovers.

Like, who's taking what?

You could have six pies and you could have ten.

And that's why I was starting to think, have you ever seen a $50 pizza?

Is there a $50 pizza?

No, look, there are like gourmet restaurants in Manhattan where this

pizza's got hundreds of dollars, but like, that's like a single pie.

And again, it's a gourmet restaurant.

You'd really have to, it's not easy to just get in there.

At Paisana, I mean, again, if the average pie, let's just say it's New York prices.

Well, hold on.

We've got to Google Machine, don't we?

Yeah.

Oh, hold on.

We should still be recording.

Well, hold on.

You know what?

Turn the tape on and we'll put an extra.

Oh, you know what?

I never stopped the tape, so we still have all this.

Okay.

Look at here.

Goddamn it.

Okay.

Brian, I know the show is over with, but how much these goddamn pizzas go at Paisana?

Can you, I'm typing this in.

And it's P-I-E.

I got it.

Well, I got locations and hours, menu, order.

I get order from Paisano's.

Yeah, University Avenue.

I guess this would be the one.

You could build your own pizza, cheese pizza, classic cheese, or create your own pizza starting at $8.49.

The cauliflower crust pizza is $14.49.

Well, now look, they're in a nice little strip mall.

I see the picture of the place.

They have, hold on, they have entrees, appetizers, pizzas, calzone, specialty pastas, subs.

The average

average price appears to be $18.99 or less.

Well, now also, wait a minute.

Instead of just pizza, now they have

rigatoni a la vodka.

Maybe that was a problem.

Well, hold on.

Much vodka in the rigatoni.

They do have catering packages.

Maybe Flair went crazy and was like, a package five, six, seven, and eight.

Woo!

Woo!

They're expensive, $200

for one, $155 for another.

Well, how much does the $200 fucking buy you?

Because

they had to got eight of those.

$200, for instance, would be package seven, full blackened chicken pasta

with house or Caesar salad, and 40 rolls.

40 rolls?

Also, for $200.

You could get a full chicken carbonera,

a full house or Caesar salad, and 40 rolls.

What is a full chicken?

It means like you get the whole chicken, but you get 40 rolls to eat with one fucking chicken.

What is this guy?

It says that for everything.

Like package three, which is $209.

This one's expensive.

Full lasagna, house or

cheese.

House or Caesar salad, 40 rolls.

The only one that's different, actually, is for $155, the full chicken Parmesan served over spaghetti, full House or Caesar salad, 20 rolls.

Oh, only 20 rolls.

That's why it's less.

Apparently, they ought to call it Carbzanos.

All right.

That's why Florida stuff in the bathroom.

He had to.

Jesus.

His colon wasn't ready for all this.

I'll show you how much pizza I can eat.

Woo!

You're rolling my colon.

Do you have any Sicilian?

All right.

Apparently they're open from 11 to 10, folks, 11 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

Down there in Gainesville, Florida.

Paisanos.

The bathroom's closed, though.

It's a crime scene now.

Yes.

Taped off.

Wait a minute.

Hold on here.

It's like...

The tape says sanitized for your protection from the Gainesville Sun.

Oh.

Everything you need to know about the Gainesville restaurant that kicked out Ric Flair.

Oh, what's this?

Yeah, well, it just tells the story.

Apparently,

the owner and his wife opened a small walk-up pizza spot in 2000.

In 2009, they joined forces with other people to open Pisanos.

They added more people to the team, and now they've got four locations.

One-ups, one's one-ups, one's up in Ocala.

They got the specialty stone-fired pizzas, calzone, sandwiches, wings, more.

Oh, so this is actually just an article about the restaurant that booted Ric Flair out.

You think this is bad?

The one in Ocala has Marty Funk banned for life.

Oh, come on now.

You mean to tell me she wouldn't come out of the bathroom either?

Now there's an article here.

Where are all these articles popping up from?

This is Gainesville.com.

Who is Ric Flair, the person who got booted out of Paisanos?

And it again replicates all the stuff that

we've written or that we've already talked about happening.

Somebody on Twitter said, imagine you finally get a minute to use the bathroom at work and Ric Flair starts cutting a promo outside the stall and yelling about

too long.

You finally get in the bathroom and all of a sudden it's like someone's banging on the door.

Who is it?

It's the nature boy.

Another one said, imagine having irritable bowel syndrome and Ric Flair yelling at you.

See, again, the way it's written, it could be the other way.

The guy was mad at Rick for spending too much time in the bathroom.

See,

I don't know.

Apparently, now that the picture was posted of Flair earlier that day with his wife, Wendy Kidder.

Wendy Kidder.

I've not heard that last name for her.

I thought her name was Wendy Barlow.

What happened was Margot Kidder died, so she took her last name.

Son of a gun.

That must have been it.

It's hers now.

And they are dressed in blue and announced they were heading to Gainesville.

Styling and profiling in Gator blue as only we can look.

And then we'll be at Paisano's to take a big dump.

And then I'll put on the color of whoever else will talk to me.

Woo!

Oh, come on now.

He's feeling mighty blue after Paisanos.

Wait, was

he rewarded his kindness with scorn?

Was Paisanos before or after the game?

That was apparently after the graduation, whatever it was.

Game graduation.

It's a graduation.

Drive-by.

Well,

you wouldn't go and stuff yourself before an event like that.

You'd go there and stuff yourself after an event.

So this was the graduation party.

Rick Floyd got kicked out of his own graduation party for whoever it was.

We're still developing items still coming in.

Ric Flair recently expressed his frustration that he was not asked to be a part of the Who Killed WCW docuseries.

I don't know if anybody should ask to be a part of that.

Yeah, I helped kill it.

No, yeah, still no plans to release this security video unless

again Tony Khan thinks that it might draw some money.

Why not?

Because

they're still a sponsor of the Ric Flair Woo Energy drink, right?

Well, Ric Flair Woo Energy sponsors AEW Dynamite.

Well, that's what I'm trying to say.

So basically,

they could use this video because they're connected.

Their sponsor is part of this.

See, there's a way to own this and make it work.

Rick Flair just started a new series where he gets kicked out of different places every week.

Just goes to a place, and every week it starts off really well.

Holy shit, it's Ric Flair.

How are you doing, buddy?

Nice to see you, sir.

Hello, sir.

Does the whole nice Ric Flair act.

And then, like, a few drinks in, a few pizzas in.

He just all of a sudden starts losing it.

And next thing you know, he locks himself in the bathroom.

At that point then, you know,

we would download the DraftKings fantasy tick six app

because at the start of the program, it's not obvious why he's going to get kicked out.

But whoever is the first one to determine why by the end of the program he will be kicked out and state that on DraftKings wins huge cash prizes.

And the weird statement from like the place was like, it is clear what has happened.

Nothing's clear.

What happened?

Well, I hit that Gainesville son.

Paisano's owner says evidence clear.

After Ric Flair asked to leave,

we worked in a professional manner to ensure the safety of guests and staff.

Everybody was in danger.

It sounds like there was a shooter on site.

Well, he had a goddamn, apparently it was a hand grenade that was being used as a medallion around his neck, and he threatened to pull the pin.

I can't tell what it is.

He's helicoptering something around his head.

Oh, now come on.

I don't know what it is.

You could put somebody's eye out with a thing like that

with the sharp point.

All right.

Are we still in the show?

We ended the show.

We ended the show, and then we got the idea that we should go look up and see how much they charge for these fucking pizzas.

Well,

it's Pizza Night in America now, ladies and gentlemen.

We'll wrap it up once.

Once your show, I'll let you wrap it up once again.

Okay, bye.