Episode 530: For The Birds

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Like a midnight tender, rock and and roll.

He's in a fight for wrestling soul.

Using a racket and some mind control.

He's Jim Cornette.

The keys to the future, held by the past.

And with tag team partner for Ryan Last, he sends this message out by podcast.

He's Jim Cornette.

Well, he's never fake a phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right

It's time

to prepare

your mind

Hello again everybody and welcome to a Farmer Birds edition of the Jim Cornet Experience.

We're just not not giving a crap today ladies and gentlemen and joining me for all this and so much more hoi and brian the podcasting lion the king of the arcadian vanguard podcast network mr co-host to you a bird of my feather so we flock together the great brian last everybody aloha jim

and a pleasure to be here once again

It's your show, so I got the window open.

I'm going to be laid back and easy.

Yeah, see, see what, do you see what I did for you?

I didn't say fuck in the first 30 seconds.

So you don't have to put that annoying bleep in on YouTube.

I said crap.

Well, crap is questionable.

I mean, again, it's the standards of YouTube.

It's not even the standards of society or your society or whatever's happening over there.

I have no standards, I'll have you know.

You also have no society.

And I want to keep it that way.

Well, you just may do so.

Congratulations, sir.

Well, I'll tell you, yeah, I don't want to be a professional malcontent today, but I got a lot of problems with you people going on.

Let's just vent some of these.

For one thing,

it's peak pollen season, and I'm sniffly and I'm gargly, and I may, over the course of the program, sound like George Foghorn Winslow.

Google it, kids.

It'll be hilarious.

It might inspire Travis Heckle to do another brilliant piece of artwork like he's done lately.

Also, I found out

another, oh shit, was called, the update on my dishwasher, just real briefly.

On the drive-thru, I mentioned how we had to have the power box taken off the floor so we could change the dishwasher out, blah, blah, blah.

Go back to the drive-thru, folks, if you want to know what's going on.

And now the electrician came, and he was going to hook up

the dishwasher, also do the plumbing aspect of it after he changed the box out because he saw that's no problem.

And he went to do that.

He's running the wire and he's changing the power box and everything.

He said, Well, wait a minute.

Why the fuck did they do this this way?

And so we may have to have a FaceTime with the plumber.

This is an ongoing situation going on downstairs.

Not my

time.

I'm not letting Moxley put my dishwasher in.

He'll get blood all over my brand new dishwasher.

Dope washer.

So we got that going on.

And then

I trouble.

I got trouble right here in River City, trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with B, and that stands for bird.

I got bird trouble.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

I got trouble with the birds.

I mean, I understand you're saying that, but I don't know what that could mean.

Well, what the hell does that mean?

You're trouble with the birds.

Several days ago, I noticed that a bird was trying to build a nest in my garage on top of my garage door opener.

And I don't want to discourage that.

I love the birdies, but I didn't want to

encourage that behavior because

if they build the nest in a garage, then I worry, well, I've got the garage door closed.

They can't get home out of the inclement weather.

What if there's egg babies are born?

They need water, sustenance.

Well, it's just, so I don't encourage them to build the nests inside the garage.

So I take it.

It's just a few

twigs and stems and grass blades at that point.

So I knock it off and I go, go outside, Bertie.

There's a tree right there.

And he comes back and I'm watching him do it.

He's bringing in,

it's a fascinating procedure to watch them build the nest.

They have the, like the long wild green onions they use for like studs to keep to tie around and keep the

insulation in order.

And then the furry things and the pollen, they pack in the bike.

It's amazing.

But I don't want him to be stuck in the garage.

So I knock the few things down again.

I say, go go away, Bertie.

Well, then I turned my back for a whole afternoon.

And in one afternoon, this industrious motherfucker built his whole goddamn nest and is sitting in the nest on top of my garage door opener in my garage.

And I thought, well, God, now

I can't destroy his work.

I think he's a descendant of Bertie Sanders, the bird that visited me several years ago.

And I don't want him to be without.

And now I'm wondering, is it a him or is is it a her?

Because I don't really know how to tell, but it does seem to be a fat bird.

I'm wondering if the bird is expecting, here, my father was the president of the Louisville Audubon Society at one point.

I don't know how to tell a male bird from a female bird.

But the point is now,

I like the bird.

The bird and I are getting along.

I go out there several times a day and just sit in my chair and the bird sits on the nest and just looks at me or just goes about its business.

And I can walk back and I can walk within two feet of the bird and just look up at the bird in his face.

And the bird says, Hello, Jim.

And I say, Hello, birdie.

So now I've got to leave the goddamn garage door opener or garage door open for the next fucking two months.

Let me know when those chicks hatch.

I have a friend looking for some birds.

Oh, come on.

Do not defile my

bird family.

He's not going to rehome my birds.

But anyway, so, and that's, I told Stacey, I said, don't close the garage door.

And so now we have to leave the garage door open so the bird can have free access in and out because now I'm afraid it's eating and foraging for

however many eggs they have for a group.

But I'll keep everybody apprised of the developments in that.

After we talked about him returning in a private plane with animals from Turks and Caicos,

like two or three different people got busted this week.

Americans,

I think, entering Turks and Caicos with things they weren't supposed to have.

I think one guy may have had a bullet and someone had something else.

Oh, wait a minute.

I saw this.

I saw the, I didn't actually even register with the Turks and Caicos because I was thinking with Vince of the Puppies and the Kittens.

But yes, he had.

accidentally brought hunting ammunition with him in his bag too because everybody has a few shotgun shells in their fucking carry-ons.

I don't know what the fuck.

But yeah,

apparently

you go there to get kittens and puppies, but don't take ammunition.

Sounds like a nice place.

Everyone else is getting busted.

Vince is on a private plane.

Handfuls of cats or kittens and a dog.

The chef.

You know, well, now leave the chef alone.

We don't know anything about the chef or what he's been cooking up.

Twisted Dr.

Doolittle shit that Vince is now on.

What the heck?

Well, that's the thing is that you're not supposed to.

When I tried to go to fucking Canada, they asked me if I had any food or fucking live plants or whatever.

Are you supposed to take animals from one place to another without clearing them through some kind of quarantine?

situation isn't that how we you know that's how we killed the all the goddamn Indians all the white people brought our filthy nasty fucking germs from Europe and killed everybody because they had no immunity for it.

Private plane.

What else is he bringing over here?

Is he bringing some kind of goddamn giant sunflowers that will spread and take over Manhattan?

I'm bringing my personal trainer and my physical therapist and the chef.

And we're going to tear it up.

Looking for animals to save.

Well, what should I do about my bird?

Coco, that was

Coco Coco.

I don't know.

You let it get too far.

See, it's your fault.

Well, I was trying.

You let it get so far that now you can't go back.

What was I supposed to do?

Sit there with a fucking broom over my goddamn lap, and every time he brought up a blade of grass, I'd knock it back down.

Then I'm just tormenting the bird.

How often is your garage open that he's able to do this?

Well, usually all day, every day.

You just leave it open all day?

Well, I usually go out and take Harley out that way, and I'm always...

It gets hot in there.

So

like the fresh air to come in.

And

what's the, why can't I goddamn leave my garage door open?

Because birds are going to make nests in there, clearly.

Well, well, has this happened multiple times?

You've had multiple birds living in your garage.

Well, but I like them to feel protected and comforted and comfortable to be, you know, come on.

To be able to come here, it is a wildlife preserve.

I just discourage the humans, but there's no reason I, you know, I can't, I can't just live like a hermit and leave my garage door closed.

Then Harley will be upset.

We haven't had.

Doesn't Harley have any brothers or sisters?

Oh, come on now.

Play for a billionaire friend.

No, my puppy would not have any descendants adopted into the McMahon family.

Anyway, all right.

An egg.

What are we supposed to be?

Is that why he was so wrapped up on the eggs?

Remember that?

I mean, that was really when we first got introduced to, oh my God, he can't talk or breathe or something's really fucked up with fitness and it was all about having the rock's egg and wanting to share it with austin theory

there there are so many different meanings and lights that we could look in that now uh have you seen the latest rock news I have not seen the latest rock news.

I saw two videos this week, coincidentally enough, shot by Dwayne Johnson's crew of Dwayne giving someone a truck and having the man break down in tears about how wonderful Dwayne is.

And then Dwayne cried too because the man reminded him of his dad.

I'll reserve comment for later about that.

And then the second video was: Drew McIntyre re-signed.

New contract.

And I guess while he was at dinner with Nick Kahn, The Rock had it filmed where a sword was presented to him on behalf of The Rock.

Oh, I was going to say, did Drew need a truck?

But he got a sword.

A sword.

Does The The Rock ever give like some old lady in Pasadena a fucking...

What is she supposed to drive a Ford F-150?

Can't see over the steering wheel.

Can't she get a goddamn Honda?

If it was going to be filmed, I'm sure she could.

See, I think there's a class of celebrities and business people, and Stephanie McMahon kind of said it out loud several years back when she still had a role.

that are treating charity

as if it's just for public relations.

And they're doing it in new ways and ways that people have never done it before.

And

again, that's what we see here with The Rock.

Every time he does something nice, he has to make sure there's like multiple people filming it now.

But I'm not writing.

I'm not disputing that.

I'm not disputing that.

You've got to push the boots to the poor old rock.

Poor old pitiful rock.

But I'm saying, why does it have to be a truck?

Does he have a goddamn sponsorship agreement?

Probably.

Well, you know, it's tax deductible if it weighs over a certain amount for your business.

Maybe he's buying it from his seven bucks business and giving it to these people.

So he just writes it off.

Just write it off.

What difference would it make how much it weighs then if he's giving it to a charitable goddamn cause?

Why does there have to be a weight limit on it?

You're thinking of a business deduction, depreciation, allocation, and fornication.

See, I know all those words.

I never got a truck.

Well,

I gotta use a truck full of kittens.

He may not have got a truck, but he might have got a Hemi.

But nevertheless.

Oh.

I just thought I'd bring.

Never mind.

Anyway, so.

Oh.

Did you get the picture of my breakfast on Twitter, Brian, that I sent you specifically a couple days ago?

It was actually from several days ago, but I forgot to send the picture then.

You sent the picture last night, blew up my fucking Twitter feed.

Yeah.

Because people are trying to tell you what a goddamn real breakfast looks like.

I don't give a fuck what anyone has to say.

That was slop, and it doesn't even compare to French toast.

How dare you?

French toast is the king of breakfast.

Yo, come on, what was slop on that plate there?

What do you consider slop?

It just looked like a big mess

that sends you right to the toilet.

Awful.

Big plate of good breakfast.

It'll send you off out to the fields to work hard and plow and dig and plant and plant it on the toilet.

The code of America.

We'll be plowing and planting on the toilet, I think.

What that was, I'll tell you exactly what that was.

That was my favorite breakfast from Zags over here.

And what it was, they take one of their beautiful in-house scratch-made biscuits and they bust that big old boy open.

And they deposit on it a succulent and crispy fried chicken breast.

And then they goddamn pour the

old sausage gravy right over the top of that.

And then they fry you two eggs any style, but they got to be over easy.

And they put them over the top of that.

And then you got about six, eight strips of bacon on the side there to give you some meaty pork crunch.

And on the other side of that plate is the hash brown casserole.

And well, you're just you're you're just farting through silk at that point.

You're just having a wonderful breakfast.

That's the way to start the day.

And you're French to bread and syrup.

And sugar.

Sugar.

You ought to be sweeter than eaten sugar.

That sounds fantastic.

And French fries.

Don't forget French fries.

French fries with your French toast.

Good ketchup.

You'd like to French kiss French toast, wouldn't you?

In a non-sexual way, if we could just be friends, but yeah, maybe.

Well, how many friends of yours do you...

All right, never mind.

Well, listen, it's this kind of stuff you can find out and more at the French Toast Chateau.

Come by.

We're closed on Mondays, but we have breakfast, breakfast, and breakfast.

The picture of my breakfast got 3,000 likes.

Send out a picture of your French toast and see how many likes you're going to get.

After Passover, when I decide to get French toast, now the pressure's on.

I got to pick the right place because I have to plate it.

I have to make it look nice.

I have to make it look delectable.

You just threw a bunch of shit on a plate.

It looked like...

No, I didn't.

Here's this.

Like a frisbee you were throwing it on there.

Oh, come on it was a was a big old a big old metal hubcap is what it is

but yeah that's a breakfast down in kentucky that's that's why we got hair on our chest down here and you ought to see the men

but i'll tell you

i mentioned it got 3 000 likes on twitter that's because everybody loves me on twitter brian because i've been trending again i was trending

I'll have you know,

yesterday evening while I was, I believe I was outside with Harley Quinn giving her a vigorous belly rub and awaiting the start of Sven Gooly.

And I was trended on Twitter and didn't even know it.

But that's because I'm Trendy McTrenderson and people just love me and can't stop talking about me.

And

I know you know, but maybe some of the folks don't know.

This time I trended on Twitter.

Because when you and I had a discussion, Brian, here real recently, as it a couple days ago,

about how stupid it was

for Tony Khan to present Swerve Strickland, his brand new world champion,

the fucking supposed top guy in the company, not only

present that title as subordinate to the New Japan Pro Wrestling IWGPURSE title.

And Jon Moxley, and not give Swerve a promo, and not give Swerve any kind of Willow at a celebration here lately,

but Swerve didn't.

And not only that, but

he went out there and it took him 15 or 20 minutes to beat a human Q-tip in old Kyle Felcher.

I said,

Kyle may be a wonderful young man and he can do all the moves, but you could teach Mighty Joe Young or Cheetah to do the wrestling moves,

but that doesn't mean that they need to be doing them against your world champion.

Why the fuck is Tony Kahn

not treating Swerve Strickland any better?

And when our clip went out on YouTube,

Travis Hackle did another brilliant piece of art.

He should be hanging in the Louvre on a daily basis.

That's what everybody says about Travis.

Actually, I think they're talking about his art, but that's the way they say it.

Nevertheless,

he depicted

old Kyle Felcher as a Q-tip

and me

as mighty Joe Young

and Swerve Strickland as I know this is a stretch, Swerve Strickland.

And people saw the artwork, oh my God, Cordette is so racist.

Cornette is a racist proof of Cordette, and he's got to be canceled.

He's got to be run out of.

One person said

Jim Cornette should be escorted out of the wrestling community

forever.

Let's go, buddy.

You're out of here.

Let's go.

I suggest that that person that said that on Twitter, come on over.

My garage door is always open to you.

If you can hike 200 feet up the driveway and smile and say hello to the cameras that are hooked up to Stacy's phone and

hop the fence before you do that and blah, blah, blah.

But come on up and escort me out of the wrestling community.

The wrestling community.

If there is a wrestling community, Turd Blossom, you ain't in it either.

So nevertheless, because I was the gorilla,

I'm racist.

Because I

said, why does Tony Khan want to treat Swerve Strickland that way?

I'm obviously a racist because

Kyle Felcher looks like a Q-tip.

I don't know what

I think any race can stick a Q-tip in their ear or up their nose or wherever orifice they need a quick clean out.

So maybe he's neutral.

But

so with these fucking,

they trend us on Twitter

for making me look silly in our artwork.

And again.

Yeah, Cornette should have known better.

Yeah, because I'm sitting here drawing all these goddamn things in my spare time, dip shit.

And by the way, again, bravo, Travis, you're a prince, a prince among men.

We haven't really talked about that much, but you see, Jim was such a fan of Jerry Lawler that he learned how to draw.

Yeah.

And he's been the one secretly.

Travis Eckle's a made-up name.

It's not a real thing.

He is Travis Eckle.

I am Heckle.

I am Heckle, and you are Heckle, and we are all heckling together.

But it, what the

do these people exist in the same

world of reality that the rest of us do, that they just lose their fucking minds?

Again, folks, I remind you, there are serious issues that you could use some of this energy.

There are wars going on in the world.

There are hungry children and abused animals.

A goddamn criminal pig could be elected president again.

And your minds are blowing up on your Twitter machines where you're actually able to say things to people and about people without repercussions because they drew a picture of me as a gorilla in the same fucking frame as the black man that I was advocating for, as Paul Heyman says, to be presented in a better light.

I got news for all of you.

Take my penis in your mouth and suck it.

But in a non-coercive way.

Yeah,

that makes it better.

Yeah, that makes it better.

There's no coercion at all.

I'm just telling you, do this.

I'm not going to make you physically.

You can slink on off with your tail between your legs, but if you remain here, you need to take my penis in your mouth and suck it.

You can all stay away from my penis for the record.

Well, that's they don't want to break normal tradition, Brian.

People have been doing that for years.

So,

you know, it's anyway.

It's it's crazy.

Now, there are certainly people that are predisposed to not liking you because you make fun of their favorite wrestlers and succeed and haven't failed.

And to be to be fair, if I met these people that you mentioned and knew them personally, I would be making fun of them too.

So, there's that.

They know that.

So, they can kind of assume that, well, Cornad would rip the shit out of me if he ever fucking saw the state of me.

So, I probably wouldn't like him anyway.

But let's just say this and again you don't draw the art you simply talked about the content that led to the art travis bases every piece of art off things that jim says usually there's something you have to listen deep into the clip to realize what exactly is referenced in the art it's part of the fun but the key words were you have to listen to it

right and in this artwork swarp stricklands Portrayed as why am I with these two idiots?

And as in all the arts, Travis is portraying Jim Cornette in a fun, silly manner.

He mentioned Mighty Joe Young.

He's Mighty Joe Young.

But these people don't like fun, Brian, unless it's silly, stupid wrestling done by children.

Otherwise, fun is outlawed.

But let me just say this too.

Race had nothing to do with the clip in question.

Race had nothing to do with the artwork.

At no point did any of us think it did.

And if you looked at this,

And your first thought was that's racist because Jim Cornet,

who last I checked was notoriously white,

is portrayed as infamously portrayed as mighty Joe Young.

If you saw that and said there's a race issue there, because he's portrayed as an animal, a gorilla,

maybe you have the problem with race,

not everyone else.

There's a lot of people who want to point fingers at everyone for everything.

This is this, this is that.

This had nothing to do with any of that.

Race never came into any of this.

And then all of a sudden, people want to yell about this artwork.

It doesn't matter because it makes them mad and I love it.

Because

here's the thing, you little fucking dipshits.

Anybody that gets mad about that, again, you can fuck off or blow me.

It's your choice, but you can't cancel me because I don't work for anyone.

I don't care whether anybody listens to this fucking show or not, to be honest with you.

To be quite perfectly honest with you, I love the people that love me,

but I'd a whole lot rather right now be out in the backyard rubbing Harley Quinn's belly.

So

we do our own thing, Brian.

People have the choice of whether to listen.

If they don't want to listen, they don't have to.

But you can't fire me because I don't quit.

As long as I don't quit, I can just do this whenever the fuck I want to.

And we don't have to make anybody fucking happy.

Except the people who are listening to us in record numbers because we don't put up with bullshit like this and we don't apologize for silly ass shit that other people make up.

And we're not lobbying for a job.

So we don't have to tell people that this goddamn fiasco of a fucking Chinese fire drill that you see on these wrestling programs actually makes any goddamn sense.

We don't have to say that because we don't care whether they don't like us or not.

I'm lobbying for a job for the record.

Well, and you're going to get one in the fucking lobby of the theater, tearing those tickets and showing people their seat.

I'd like to run channel 9 or channel 11 in New York and revitalize things.

You could add them up and make channel 20.

It's not bad.

See there, already the marketing is,

but that's the point is

cancel all you want

because we don't do this on purpose to shock people.

We're not even doing this to make fucking money on purpose.

That just accidentally happened.

We're doing this because this is what we decided we were going to do.

And everybody that can't take a little goddamn honesty along with their entertainment amuses me.

For fuck's sake, you're so used to people being mealy-mouthed and beating around a bush and trying not to fucking call

shit shite

that

they just don't know what to think.

We're still talking about

bad wrestling poorly done or the occasional good wrestling done well.

But I don't think there's a

you know, could we be like Blassey, Brian?

When he first went to Japan, got on TV, people couldn't handle it.

They had three or four heart attacks.

Can we give somebody a brain aneurysm on Twitter?

That's probably not a good idea for, you know, not all promotion is good promotion.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I think if the this this person from

piss on fucking Donald in England, you know, Stratford on Avon, piss on Donald.

That ought to be a place.

It's just a lot of ignorant people.

He had a fucking aneurysm because of something he read on Twitter and dropped dead there straight away with blood coming out of his nose.

There's just ignorant people out there.

There are people who just want a reason to not like you.

There are people who I saw, I don't need to listen to it to know it's racist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, it's obvious what they're, we don't need to listen to that because you might learn something.

Heaven knows you don't want to learn anything.

I'll tell you, there's too many people wagging their fingers, and too many people who are, you know, allegedly all the way on the left, who are pushing a lot of people far away.

I think we ought to keep everybody's finger firmly in the middle.

Stick it up your ass.

That's what I say.

Well, that's generally in the middle.

Where is yours located?

Mine's in the middle.

That's the middle.

That's right there in the middle.

Arkansas is for explorers, seekers, and trailblazers.

So come hike a trail.

Get on a bike, hop in a kayak, or just pack a bag and see where the road takes you in the natural state.

Plan your adventure at Arkansas.com.

Uh, speaking of stupid people, Darby Allen got hit by a bus.

Did you see this?

I woke up to this news and a photo of his busted face.

How does a bus hit you in the face?

What the?

How does a bus hit you?

I mean, I know these goddamn

you know better than anybody because you've inhabited that part of the world.

He fucking people in New York are idiots.

They will walk out in front of moving traffic at the blink of an eye and they just think people are just going to slam on their brakes.

I've never seen anything like it anywhere else in the United States of America.

But how do you

get in a position where you are where a bus, a giant city bus, can hit you in the face and apparently run over you in some description?

How does this happen up there?

Brian, you're the New York expert.

Well, I don't know if you know this.

They've done a good job of hiding it.

Darby Allen's deaf.

What?

No, I'm kidding.

He didn't hear the bus coming.

Now, I have an article here from.

Well, let's say, in all fairness, it's so loud up there, you can't hear shit.

I have an article.

But still,

the article here is pushing to Darby's Instagram.

The awkward moment when you're crossing the street in New York with a broken foot and get hit by a bus.

At least I could have a good time with Raymond Pettabon and catch a Broadway show.

That's Greg Ginn's brother, the guy who did a lot of the great artwork.

Well, not stuff you would like.

Who?

What?

You don't know.

It's not.

Who are these names that you utter?

The point is he has a broken foot.

Well, we knew that.

Which is why he had to to not go to Mount Everest, although I saw a video of him jumping his house in a car after that.

I think it's a new video, too.

He was in New York City taking in a Broadway play.

And he got hit by a bus in the face.

Hey.

I do it.

Was he trying to jump the bus?

Or did he just decide on the streets of New York?

Hey, I bet I could clear that son of a bitch.

How are you ever going to get this guy guy back on TV if he can't walk the streets?

Well, again, like I said, I've noticed that people will just walk out in front of moving traffic up there all the time.

And God forbid you're turning right on red.

They don't fucking even recognize like that could be a thing going on.

Right.

And

everywhere, Mama Cornette raised me.

That before you cross the street, you look both ways.

And if there's traffic coming, you don't fucking step out there.

And when the red light turns red, you wait until everything stops and then you go because you're in the street where the cars have the right-of-way.

In New York, they just step off the curb going willy-nilly anyway.

Do you think he's got the broken foot?

He's acting like a New Yorker.

He just steps up, but he's hobbling.

He was with a friend.

Couldn't the friend carry him?

He only weighs 130 pounds.

Who's this Raymond Pettigohn?

Maybe he said, throw me.

Toss him.

Throw the bus.

There you go.

He tossed him under the bus.

No, into the bus, face first.

Oh, I thought you meant he threw him under the bus.

Like a missile.

Just face first.

So he's got, is he got nobody to help him across that?

And so now you've got a crippled fucking 130-pound fucking,

well, from a bus from that far off, you'd think it was a child, the size of him, who's hobbling across a city street in New York, and the bus just says, fuck it, the light changed.

I'm going.

How do you,

why did the bus have enough velocity to where it was an issue that could injure goddamn Darby Allen of all people if if if he saw if the bus driver saw a person hobbling?

Call Steven P.

New,

87750 Steve.

Because if a bus driver sees a fucking hobbling child limping across a city street, the first thing he does is hit the fucking accelerator.

That man owes you some money.

Maybe he was a fan who just got overexcited.

He's like, oh my God, it's Darby Allen.

Darby Allen.

Oh my God, my foot's off off again.

Maybe he was a fan.

He just said, fuck this.

I was in a car once that almost ran over Antonio Banderas in Manhattan on 23rd Street.

No, he was just, he was jaywalking and we were driving downtown.

And it's like, this motherfucker's, that's Antonio Banderas.

He hopped onto the curb, but we almost hit him.

Fucking ponytail and everything.

See, if you'd have been going a little faster, you could have saved everybody a lot of trouble.

Well, he's a good actor.

You don't like Antonio Banderas?

I've seen a picture of him before.

I couldn't call anything he's been in if he held a gun to me.

That's what would happen in one of the movies.

That's exactly what would happen in one of those movies, actually.

They would hold a gun to you.

What would happen?

They would hold a gun to you.

And ask me who he was and what he'd been in.

Who's this Gringo?

I could just see it right now.

Well, anyway, so did are you saying that Antonio Banderis hit Darby Allen in the bus, or what are you saying here?

No, I'm saying there are a lot of questions that are unanswered right now.

Yes.

Did the bus stop?

Was it a hit-and-run bus

accident?

Did the bus driver get out and check on the man whose face is all busted up?

Oh my God, did I do that to your foot?

No, I did that separately.

That was a completely different.

This is a separate incident.

We're just focusing on the face right now, pal.

But how can you be a hit and run in New York City?

There's no way to run except the next block.

You're going to have to stop for a light.

Nothing moves at any kind of pace up there.

Depends on the time of day.

Except apparently a bus running into darby allen

so do you think

was he just standing there like some kind of broke-footed moop and the bus came by and the rearview mirror whacked him in the face maybe

could that did he walk into a bus that was parked and he doesn't want to say that i mean that's why his face is all busted No, because he said to hit by a bus.

If that had happened, he would have said, well, I was walking in New York and I hit a bus.

Is there police body cam footage?

Is there a police report?

Is there a hospital?

If something did that much damage to my face, you would think that the fucking police would be called into question.

Should he have admitted that he was hit by a bus or should they have tried to make this an angle and say, look what the elite did.

They showed up in New York and beat him up because they know Tony loves him.

Well, but then if he'd have done that and it come to find out that he's going to retire from wrestling because he's suing the goddamn bus company and going to get $15 million or whatever, then that might have blown that whole deal and they wouldn't want to expose their business.

You know what?

I bet if somebody said to him, don't get in a wrestling ring again, no matter what your condition is, good or bad, because I can get you $20 million from that fucking bus company and put an end to your wrestling career, I bet you the idiot would say, oh, fuck that.

I'm going to do the pay-per-view next month.

You think this is all a plot to get Sting out of retirement?

He's got to come back and get even.

Well, they need to know the big pay-per-view.

Sting versus

what's the transit company up there?

The MTA, going your way.

MTA.

Like in Atlanta, it's MARTA,

Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, or something like that.

But just MTA up there.

Working for MTA.

There was a song about them.

You remember that.

I don't remember that, no.

It was Leonard Skinnyard working for MTA.

Oh, maybe that was MCA.

MCA records.

MCA records.

That could have been.

But nevertheless, so Darby Allen struck down in the prime of his life by a New York City bus.

I think AEW wrestlers have the most creative ways of getting paid to stay home and run out their contract.

of anyone in the history of wrestling.

No, I can't.

I'm sure he's very happy.

Oh, what?

I'm sure he's very happy.

He's diving in the buses.

Well, that's it.

He didn't show like his foot.

He didn't show his arm.

He showed his face.

There's irony in this also because nothing in a wrestling ring can hurt him.

He gets right back up.

And he can jump.

moving vehicles over inanimate objects at high heights and rates of speed and just he just thinks he's swell and he tries to walk across the street and he gets mowed down by a bus.

That's karma's way of saying, fuck you, you fucking little artful dodger.

I'm going to get you one way or the goddamn other.

It's sooner or later it comes for us all, Darby.

All right.

What else do you want to talk about?

I've heard that.

So what do you want to talk about?

Oh, God.

Yeah, I didn't even mean.

I've been watching too many Cody promos.

I have heard that Tony Kahn

has protected the wrestling business by making sure that he, when he went out in public 12 hours after being spike leaping pile driven,

he was he was he was wearing a goddamn Walgreens drugstore neck brace, which covered the whole thing and made quite a stir amongst not only the wrestling community, but the NFLers of the the world.

What the fuck?

Did we not joke about that?

Well, I wore the neck brace on Regis and Kathy Lee.

We were talking about he's got to do something, but

Regis and Kathy Lee was like two weeks after

the goddamn match I was carried out of the rig and sent to the hospital in in Knoxville.

This was 12 hours later and 30 years later and a whole different world.

He didn't come off good on either side of the fence, did he?

So, Wednesday night, they do the big angle, and AEW fans really loved it, and other people were laughing about it, making a joke about it, the way Tony Khan took the punch, the way he sold, the fact that these are the guys that he's doing this for.

But the NFL draft was the next day, and Tony Kahn,

wearing a neck brace, a la Andy Kaufman or Vince McMahon at trial,

was in the conference room.

His father in some sort of green jacket behind him.

Other members of the Jacksonville Jaguars administration are in the room.

But let's go now.

How it was first heard on the NFL network.

I think this is Rich Eisen, but I'm not sure.

Let's go to this audio.

As Tony Kahn becomes the first ever NFL executive in a draft room, shaking off the effects of a pile driver he received on national television in a wrestling ring the night before.

And there it is, Jim.

The audio of the introduction.

Tony's drinking coffee.

Other than wearing the neck brace, nothing seems to be really inhibiting his movement or anything.

But on that note, before we talk about this, the Pat McAfee show, I guess, was airing live on ESPN, and this was their coverage of Tony Khan.

Last thing we need is for him to look like Tony Khan, who took a Melcher driver

just the other day.

Yeah.

Wednesday night, he took a Melcher driver, I do believe.

That's right.

Guy's got a broken neck, and he's battling through so he can pick up Brian Thomas Jr.

And that mustache is never not going to be sweet.

And Doug Peterson's three seats away going, what the fuck is going on?

Back to Trevor Lawrence, though.

Go ahead, Matt Bell.

Well, I was just going to say, I understand.

You'll keep it up with the gimmick.

Someone should tell Tony Khan, hey, if you have a neck brace on, don't fucking move around like nothing's wrong.

You know, you stick with the gimmick and look straight ahead like your neck's broken.

Okay, what are we doing here?

Thank you.

There's the crew of of Pat McAfee's football podcast critiquing Tony Khan's selling of his neck injury.

But Jim, here's some audio.

What do you think about Tony Khan going this far, going to these extents with the gimmick on national TV?

Well,

they're laughing at him.

And again,

people are going to say, oh, if anybody else did it, he even did it.

Cornette did it.

But now he's laughing at Tony Khan for wearing a neck brace or selling a neck.

It's the place and the time and the

NFL doesn't have to work with you, Tony, just because your dad owns one of the teams, they don't have to come out there and give the

grave announcer voiced, well, our best wishes to Tony Khan.

He's, you know, under this bad circumstance of this injury or whatever.

No, they're laughing at you because they know it's all bullshit.

And they apparently,

from dealing with you or you being in their world know that you're goofy over there as you apparently come off over here in ours

and they're wanting to laugh at you because it's preposterous to them it was preposterous that you did the angle tony because you're not a television performer nor a worker nor an athlete And they're laughing at you because of who you did it with, because your smarmy little buddies, bosom buddies from Kookamunga, are ratings poison and nobody wants to see them because they're annoying.

And you've wasted your money on a defective piece of Japanese merchandise.

And

your jungle boy that's one of your pillars turned out to be a fucking rock.

That's how smart he is.

And the only reason he's got a job is because you're a sucker.

And you're now doing this because a documentary is following you around.

And you actually got to be on television in another world, the football world,

because of the fucking draft that your father

is figured into quite prominently since he's the rich guy.

So you get to take a bump on TV and wear a neck brace like a fucking mark at the NFL draft the next day.

You couldn't wait.

to take the goddamn bump next week after the draft was over because that way people from that world that think it's all hogwash anyway wouldn't have an excuse to laugh at you and laugh at our business at the same time.

But because you're a mark

and you were either talked into this or came up with this idea, who knows?

You do it then and you get laughed at not only in our business, but also in theirs.

And when you do an angle like this and you

sell it by wearing a neck brace,

in normal terms, whoever, even Kaufman,

he sold it like it was real.

And people had no choice but to believe it because why

it defied all logic that he would carry it on that long, right?

And more, and people weren't as smart then to every detail.

But he worked it to where people believed it.

You, 12 hours later, have people laughing at you and how ridiculous you look and by extension, how stupid that wrestling business must be.

It's some fucking plaything that he's got.

It's not serious business like us over here in a football business.

That's the way it's coming off.

So you make your own fans, many of them laugh at you for your poor performance as relates to the wrestling side of it.

And then you make the people you do business with in a football world laugh at you because look at you, you look ridiculous,

and you shouldn't be being pile-driven on television because you shouldn't be on TV.

So, what the what positive

is any of this except Tony gets to fucking fulfill another one of his fantasies from the message board days?

It's ridiculous.

Nobody that's had any

experience

in the business, either in promotion, in matchmaking, or in performing,

would have thought that it was a good idea to do that, not only because of the way it was going to fucking look,

but because of the way that this fucking guy is incapable of carrying it off.

Because everything he does looks fucking goofy.

Stop me when I tell a lie.

Again, if you're going to sell it, sell it.

That's the problem.

It can't just be, I put on a neck brace and I'm going to just act the way I normally do and say things the way I normally do and be my normal self.

It should be, if you want to be in that room, he should be in a bed laying there while his father does it.

If you really want to go all the way.

Or he could have just waited and he would only look ridiculous in wrestling instead of in football, too.

He could have waited six days or whatever.

Well, Jim, on this topic of Tony Kahn and his selling of the injury at the hands of the Young Bucks and Jack Perry, and Okada too, I guess.

He's the biggest guy, but he just kind of let them do all the dirty work.

He was on the NFL network draft day, or the day two of the draft, I guess it is.

And some of his comments have gotten a lot of attention.

Talks about the WWE and their battle with AEW.

I'm going to play the full clip.

Stop me.

Let's break it up.

Let's review this.

But instead of just playing the small snippet, I thought for

the proper context, let's play the full clip.

Yes, this program actually gives some context to things.

Everybody else went for the 30 seconds of, oh, my God.

We like to see how the people got to the cliff before they fall off.

Well, here's Tony Khan on the NFL network.

Because of that devastating Meltzer driver, which has been rebranded.

Honestly, guys,

they changed the name a couple months ago to the Tony Khan driver.

Maybe I should have seen it coming in hindsight.

Wait, wait, you knew they took it.

You changed it a couple months ago?

I mean, they couldn't.

Wait, wait, wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Brian.

Brian.

Brian.

Is that Tony Khan reminding whoever this person is that, oh no, they changed the name to the Tony Khan driver?

That's Tony Khan reminding this guy of that.

Yeah, Tony Khan said the words Tony Khan driver, yes.

So he couldn't even fucking let the guy get the question out before he had to remember.

No, it's named after me now.

Even though they gave it to me.

All right.

I just wanted to clarify.

Now we know what what Tony's voice sounds like in this context.

He may have changed his goddamn mixture that day.

He sounded a little more adult.

They called it the Tony Condriver.

You know, I have a complicated relationship with Matt and Nick and Jack.

Jack had been out of AEW for a while.

I had sent him on an excursion to our partner in Japan where he did great things.

An excursion, like it's a cruise line.

It's like, all right, why don't you go to the volcano today?

He also, he suspended him six or eight months ago for causing his, him to have to, well, causing him to have to, for causing his biggest star to fucking leave the company.

However, it happened, he suspended him and he let him go to Japan while still paying him so he wouldn't have to fucking talk to him, apparently.

But now that the kids from Kookamunga want him back, suddenly they're good friends and Tony had sent him on the goddamn Carnival Cruise Line.

Reinstated him Wednesday night on TBS by his own request.

He repaid me by hitting me in the stomach with a microphone.

And then Matt Nick pulled me up and gave me the Tony Condriver, which is really a spike pile driver.

Oh my god, one of the deadliest moves in pro wrestling.

Oh, my God.

In a lot of states, it's illegal in the state.

It's right.

It's been banned in a lot of states.

He's doing

the shit that they write on the, or that I assume they wrote on the message fan boards in their fantasy booking things.

When that he's talking about it like it's the announcer saying it on a wrestling show,

and he's expecting this.

Who is this person interviewing him?

It's a couple guys on the NFL network kind of watching.

Real world people,

real world people are expected to go.

He's

can you tell now?

This is his fantasy.

He's always wanted to do this.

It doesn't matter what it looks like.

He's getting to fulfill his dreams.

Go ahead.

And his dreams, actually, in a lot of ways, are more about just being able to talk wrestling all day than even working it.

But let's go back to this.

Which is really a spike pile driver.

It's one of the deadliest moves in pro wrestling.

It's been banned in a lot of states.

It's illegal in the state of Tennessee.

And for them to do that to me in front of millions of people around the world and a great audience live Wednesday night on TBS, it scared me.

Millions of people around the world.

And by the way, here's a factoid.

Actually, technically, the pile driver was illegal according to state law in the state of Tennessee.

When Tennessee had an athletic commission,

Roy Welch decided that the pile driver was going to be their banned move because this goes back to the fucking 50s or maybe before.

And to make it legitimate, they had the Athletic Commission make it illegal.

So you could really say that.

And then, of course, when the guys did it behind the referees back, nothing happened bad to him from the commission.

But that's a trivial factoid that fucking Tony has run into

on the internet.

And now he's trying to,

I don't think they were thinking of leaping flip assisted tombstone pile drivers back in the 40s when roy welch gimmicked the athletic commission

but he's he's like a fucking

wrestling rain man

putting this thing over in a real-world situation and he's coming off like goddamn teenager isn't he

wants to go back to tony con

and it scared my family and i just feel really lucky that i'm here at the nfl draft and with the Jaguars and able to still be working at the Jaguars and AEW right now.

Yeah.

Two days after this happened, by the way.

Yeah.

Two days after he had his neck broken.

Devastating injury.

Why, you know,

when I called my fucking personal injury attorney, trickle down and drip and told them.

Oh, I got a guy.

Yeah, this is Tony Khan performing and it's not good.

But again, there's more.

Let's go back to this.

And you could hear the folks who came to your assistance yelling, what the hell are you doing?

This is a billionaire.

You got to be careful.

His father, Shad, came into the ring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shad tell you, like, you got to stay out of the ring.

Like, is he concerned for your well-being here?

No, he was very angry at the people that assaulted me.

My dad loves AEW and he's a big fan of what we do.

Wednesdays on TBS and Saturdays.

Just tomorrow night here in Jacksonville on TNT every week.

He watches every.

He's so badly hurt that he's plugging the show.

He's so badly hurt that he's plugging the schedule.

And also,

that wasn't even the question.

The question is, is Shad telling you to stay out of the ring, not get out of the wrestling business, which is the advice that should be proffered at this point.

But he said, stay out of it.

Oh, no, he loves what we do.

He's mad at the people that did it to me.

That's not even the, but plug, plug, plug.

For sure.

And one more time

when Punk yelled at him and called him a clown and said, I quit, he was in fear of his life.

But now, not only was he, is he not saying,

I'm not going to fire these guys, I was not in fear of my life, but he, but,

oh, Shad was so upset at these people that did this to me, then fire them.

They actually hurt you, not yelled at you.

There's no logic to any of this.

Yeah, again, the thing when Punk got fired, they did that on TV.

He made that announcement on TV.

Yes.

There was no reason to do that.

That's the only time they've mentioned any of this on television.

On television, Jungle Jack Off was never suspended.

On television, none of the Buckaroos, Punk, nobody was suspended for their altercation.

They were stripped of the titles, and we were never told why.

Then

maybe a suspension here and there might have dribbled out accidentally over the next several months.

But if you just watch TV, you don't know what the fuck was going on with any of this, except tony khan fired cm punk

about six months ago and everybody was like why i was scared for my life

and then they show the footage and nobody would be scared for their life and then people actually assault the same motherfucker and goddamn put him in a goddamn neck brace and he wasn't scared for his life

Is there more?

There's more.

Oh, there's more.

And he never expected something like that.

It's never happened before.

You know, AEW, we've been doing this for five years.

We are the most successful sports startup since the AFL pre-merger.

Hold on.

The most successful sports startup since the...

What about the UFC?

Well,

I mean, we don't know what...

parameters to meet that criteria are going on in Tony's tortured mind that has no speed limit in it.

Fan appeal and revenue.

I find that hard to believe.

Hard to believe.

Somebody needs to do some research if we could get some parameters on how he's making that statement.

Is AEW more popular than the original run-of-the-

USFL?

I guess maybe so.

Only in certain towns that it really have a big audience.

But let's go back to this, Mr.

Startup himself, the bootstrapping Tony Khan.

There has not been a Challenger brand that has gained as much market share as AEW

in many, many, many years.

We are like the Pepsi of Pro Wrestling, and we're up against a really evil juggernaut.

WWE is

our competitor.

That's who we're facing.

AEW, like the Pepsi of Pro Wrestling.

WWE is like the Harvey Weinstein of Pro Wrestling.

All right, all right, all right.

By the way, they have him so frazzled he can't form a cogent simile.

What does Harvey Weinstein have to do with Pepsi?

That wasn't really even a fucking statement that makes any kind of goddamn sense, was it?

Well, first of all, it's obviously something he practiced and rehearsed because he tried to set it up with the earlier comic.

He mentioned a Pepsi thing twice.

Yeah.

Obviously, Pepsi is CM Punk's favorite soda, I guess, famously, or at least he has to figure out.

Well, yeah,

he had the germ of something in there, and he might have practiced it, but he couldn't get it out.

Punk's favorite drink is Pepsi.

Goddamn,

Harvey Weinstein came in here somewhere because of Vince McMahon's

sexual crisis management.

He has a crisis management PR firm, something the AEW may want to look into at some point instead of doing their own fucking PR.

But no, Vince hired Harvey Weinstein's crisis management guy, I believe.

And also in the news, Harvey Weinstein, shockingly, he's about to get a new trial in New York State.

Well,

and good for Harvey.

He should go on trial across the country.

I'm sure it would draw big crowds.

But nevertheless,

that statement was, it's supposed to be,

he's talking about a market share competitor.

We're the Pepsi, they're the Coke.

Or we're the Puffs, they're the Kleenex.

Or whatever the case may be for the major well-known brand.

But instead, he's trying to knock people with some kind of cute little line here that has all these double meanings and it doesn't have the original goddamn meaning.

So it's just

saying something for saying something's sake.

No, AEW is not Pepsi because Pepsi was still a lot more goddamn popular than you were, even when Coke was more popular.

And secondly,

he's late on the Harvey Weinstein, isn't he?

Because

that's the WWE, the reason why that they're another of the reasons why they're taken off, because they're Vinceless.

They're a new company.

You can't fucking hit them with that anymore.

That hurts them.

You know, that's one of the things that AEW had going to their benefit was that Vince was there.

And now that Vince is gone, the boogeyman is gone.

You know, Tony doesn't have that anymore.

So now it's Tony Khan against Triple H, and people don't have the animosity towards Triple H that they do towards Vince McMahon.

Yeah, so he's saying this evil corporation.

No, they're not, actually.

No, not anymore, apparently.

And

the idea

that he's comparing, that's like saying, well, you know, Vince McMahon used to work there.

Yeah, but he don't anymore.

Well, but he did.

He built the company.

Well, but he's gone.

We're kind of not talking about him anymore.

That's the thing.

They're not the evil empire anymore.

It's a new day, and people like Triple H, they finally decided not to make the company the heels over there at the exact point that this fucking genius, this goddamn Rhodes Scholar, is making his company the heels.

Because now

he's the evil billionaire,

right?

Because he's got these fucking pricks working for him as EVPs.

It's the same thing all over again, deja vu all over again with poor performers performers and smaller-time fucking players.

So, what is he fucking trying to pull here?

As he comes off to all these people looking like a goddamn mark with a neck brace, thrilled at his participation in a fucking angle, and people in two different sports are laughing at him.

I always say we're just going to see more of this.

It's not going to get better.

It's only going to get worse.

He,

you know, look at the radical transformation of Tony Connor from the beginning of AEW to now.

And now,

you know, desperate times call for a desperate man.

And he's seemingly acting desperate.

He's got all the money in the world.

The pay-per-view apparently was down, but still apparently was in the range of 100,000 buys or something.

Ratings are going down.

People keep trying to spin it.

Interest is going down.

Ratings are going down.

Crowd attendance going down.

Overall feeling about the product cold as ice.

They just had a pay-per-view, new world champion, who the fans chose.

The fans chose Swerve.

He was a heel.

They started liking him.

Finally got his moment, even after the booking cooled him down, got his moment.

They didn't treat that in any respectable way on that show.

The IWGP world champion was on that show a couple times, not the AEW world champion.

So no one was talking about that.

Everyone's talking about the angle.

A lot of people were laughing about that because of the nature of it and who was involved in it.

And then the rest of the week, Tony does the NFL draft in the neck brace.

Some people think he's doing a good job.

A lot of people think he's looking like Tony Klown.

And then he makes these comments, and this overwhelms everything else.

Is anyone talking about collision or rampage?

Are they talking about Tony Khan comparing WWE to Harvey Weinstein?

They put their foot in.

It's not even their foot in their own mouth.

They trip themselves.

They constantly booby trap themselves.

AEW is so much more interesting because of the personalities working there than anything they're putting on TV because of this kind of shit.

Well, yeah,

again, like you said, they're talking about most of the headlines that

came out about the company for the last couple of days is the whole thing is the WWE's Harvey Weinstein instead of any positive news about anything that's going on on their program that might be related to everything is about.

Look at these stupid people and the stupid things they do.

And that's really the story there, Jim.

Another week, AEW, pay-per-view, dynamite.

We're talking about the drama behind the scenes and the characters that cause the drama.

And it's always the same central character.

It's Tony Khan.

More people need to say it.

The problem is Tony Khan.

This is his project.

It wouldn't exist without him.

He's standing in the way of it becoming truly successful.

Not like I'll throw hundreds of millions of my dad's money at it successful, but like a business successful.

Well, now, but I have to take issue with that because there's somebody else, Brian, that may be promoting the ideas or the concepts or whatever that makes this company truly suck as bad as it does.

And you can't overlook Uncle Dave's influence because,

you know, Uncle Dave of the, well, this was the least good match, or Uncle Dave of the,

well, you have to understand that when you wrestle with the Bucks, it's like wrestling with Ric Flair.

You're always going to look better.

Or

the 17 stars for, you know, the greatest match ever held since David defeated Goliath.

Uncle Dave has been backing

Tony's vision of bizarre vision of wrestling for quite a while.

And maybe Tony just listens to Uncle Dave instead of every other human being on the face of the planet that is presenting the opposing viewpoint.

Didn't Uncle Dave give a bunch of stars to the latest pay-per-view that underperformed the World's End pay-per-view because they had a lot of great wrestling on it, but not a lot of big stars or hot matches?

Or,

you know, didn't he give a bunch of big stars and

praise to all of the various long,

repetitive matches they had on that program?

Shouldn't that mean that all the business is okay and everything's fine and Tony can look like an idiot in front of multiple journalistic pools and nothing's wrong?

I don't know what that question was or when it started or ended, but in the new issue of the Wrestling Observer,

I'm saying, as long as Uncle Dave keeps giving Tony, Tony Khan all these stars and praising how great their fucking matches are, is Tony going to understand that all this shit's sinking into the toilet.

And by the way, I just want to say this for all the people that think Dave Meltzer is on the take, that he's getting paid by Tony Khan,

that's, I don't think that's it at all.

No, nobody's that good an actor.

I just think Dave likes giving his advice, and Tony likes getting Dave's advice.

And because of that, no money needs to change hands.

Don't forget, the first person Tony hired, what was his name, Chris Harrington?

Dave Melcher was one who recommended him.

So, I mean, he's been talking to Dave about ideas for how to staff this thing since the very beginning.

Well, see, that's the thing is because Dave was telling him this fucking hogwash with all these outlaw indie bullshit guys would just be swell if it was on TV with a national audience.

And it ain't.

And it ain't been.

And Tony ain't capable of making it that way.

Well, the new issue of the Wrestling Observer, Jim, has the star star ratings.

Let's go through these real quickly.

Oh, boy.

A dark match you didn't see.

Trent Peretta beat Matt Seidel, eight minutes and 11 seconds, three and a quarter stars.

Again, up until, what, about 10 years ago, that would have been main event level on a WWF or WCW pay-per-view.

If it was that good, three and a half stars.

Now, the opening match on the pre-show with Trent.

The second match on the pre-show, Orange Cassidy and Katsuyori Shibata

beat Shane Taylor and Lee Moriarty 12 minutes and 43 seconds, three and a quarter stars.

Oh, they weren't quite as good as Trent.

No, I think it was the same rating.

I thought it was three and a half was the earlier rating.

No, three and a quarter for both.

Oh, three and a quarter.

Oh, well, well, there you go.

Well,

they've hit a pattern there.

And finally, for the pre-show, the Ring of Honor tag team champions Jay White and the Guns beat the AEW tag champions, the acclaimed, and Billy Gunn to unify the titles and suspend Max Caster in 14 minutes and 43 seconds.

Two and three-quarter stars.

Boy, he must have got his panties in a bunch about whatever Caster said, too.

The opening of the pay-per-view: Kazushka Okada defeating Pack.

21 minutes, 55 seconds.

At least.

It was at least that long.

I just want to make sure I got this right.

Yep, four and three-quarter stars.

What?

That's as good as five stars, according to some people.

Well, was he talking about PAC's performance and getting over despite not being the guy that was supposed to be being pushed?

Or is he talking about the match that we saw?

Because

I don't know how you can have a four and three-quarter star match with a goddamn...

broomstick, which is what Pack was having to work with there.

Buddy Buddy Matthews, Brody King, and Malachi Black, the house of black, defeated Eddie Kingston, Adam Copeland, and Mark Briscoe in 17 minutes, 56 seconds.

Four and a quarter stars.

Move over, Flare and Steamboat.

Damn you, Kurt Angle, get out of the way.

We got some big stars coming through here.

Ford, okay.

Willow.

Is he now just afraid of hurting these guys' feelings when he has to see them in person?

Unless they get at least three and a half, and you know, if if

necessary, four, four and a half, just to make it fair?

Oh, waiting to hear the spin over the Jericho match.

Hold on.

Willow Nightingale pinned Julia Hart to win the TBS title six minutes, one second, two stars.

Well, now, that's in all honesty, not knocking because Julia was hurt and Willow,

you know, was fine.

But two stars is about what the average fucking match used to be pretty much all the goddamn time, wasn't it?

I don't know about average, but in that range, based on, again, Dave's star range.

In an average girls match.

You know,

up until the explosion of his stars based on how many free tickets he got to the Tokyo Dome.

Go ahead.

Roderick Strong defeated Kyle O'Reilly, 17 minutes, 18 seconds, four stars.

Yet again, I liked Roddy and Kyle, but I don't see see them as Flare and Steamboat or Michaels and Undertaker either.

Chris Jericho defeated Hook to win the FTW title.

Dave, for some reason, did not list the time for this match.

Three and a quarter stars.

Oh, boy.

For the people chanting, please don't do this anymore?

What the fuck?

Let me get Dave's actual comments here.

Chris Jericho beat Hook to win the FTW title in a polarizing match.

A lot of people hated it, but the match had all kinds of heat.

There were negative chants at Jericho, including please retire.

Some tried to say the heat was not a positive in the sense that there was a vocal part of the audience that didn't want Jericho around.

And some explained that the heat shouldn't count because it wasn't a positive, but a negative.

It's hard to say because at the end, The reactions were to the match and people hating the idea that Jericho could win, And then he won.

But it was personality and match heat.

What the fuck is he doing?

And then, hold on.

Let me go here.

And let me hold on.

Hold on a second.

Okay.

Well, go ahead.

Go ahead and finish his dribble.

If the program was to continue, and that appears to be the plan.

Jericho did have to cheat to win here.

The turn felt way rushed.

Like we started at A, and instead of going to B next, we were already at M and then Z.

But the crowd also seemed to force a rush of the turn.

That's everything in AEW.

It goes from one thing to another with all the middle pieces missing.

He's just noticing it now.

Many consider this the worst match of the show.

The crowd rushed the turn also because they were booing Jericho already because they didn't want to see him and they didn't want to hear him saying the things he was saying.

Nobody considered it the best match, but on this show, that would have been impossible.

But many also listed it in responses as a four-star match.

Oh, good lord.

A few even higher.

Whoa.

If you have people voting for the show and they give that match more than four stars, they shouldn't be voting for anything.

I think it comes down to the interpretation of the loud crowd reactions.

Obviously, the key is Jericho.

And the company's ability to turn that please retire into a strong heel act while monitoring the reaction.

There is bad heat.

It does exist.

If Orson Welles was in a low-budget porn flick, could you give it four stars?

Or

Hook is green.

People like him, but he's learning.

He wasn't four stars and Jericho Way wasn't four stars.

And that's if you have

a football game

where not only do you not particularly like either team, you're just watching because you're a football fan in general, and then

they're fumbling the ball and nobody's fucking making any good plays and everybody's got their goddamn heads up their ass and you're throwing tomatoes at it.

Does that mean that that's good heat?

Because you really want to come back and see the rematch and hope the other team wins?

No, that's just.

Get away from me.

This is boo rotten tomatoes at the movie screen.

This is, boo, I spent money on this shit.

That's the kind of fucking response.

And you know what?

We always talk about the fact that the observer is a safe landing for Chris Jericho.

A lot of his viewpoints somehow end up in there.

A lot of his matches get rated higher than they seem that they should.

His bad stuff never gets called out.

In reaction to giving him a three and a quarter star match, he had to point out that other people ranked it a lot higher.

In case Chris would get mad about the rating.

Had to go on a mitigation routine of several paragraphs to say, well, now you also could look at this fucking stinker like it didn't suck.

And here's why.

Well, let's stay in the women's division.

Tony Storm pinned Thunder Rosa

in 15 minutes and eight seconds, four and a quarter stars.

Oh, come on.

What in the flying fuck are we even talking about this for at this point?

This is ridiculous.

I don't care.

I did enjoy the match.

I will say, but I wouldn't have gone that high.

But he's giving this the same.

Gone with the Wind was a four-star movie when they started giving stars to movies, right?

And it today is also a four-star movie.

They haven't bumped it up to seven.

The movie hasn't changed and our fucking...

Standards haven't really changed.

We can tell good from bad in some kind of quantitative effort.

And so now you are telling me that Tony Storm and Deanna Perazzo

Thunder Rosa

score the same or higher

as Terry Funk and Ric Flair,

as goddamn as

major Tiger Mass Dynamite Kid matches.

Blow me.

It's ridiculous now he's doing this just for these people

to make them feel good because he has to fucking see him in person when he goes on his mark fucking fests and goes and

goddamn sticks his tongue out of people at live shows.

Jim, Will Ospreay defeated Brian Danielson 32 minutes, 41 seconds.

Oh, I thought you were going to say 32 stars.

Hold on, I'm counting him here.

Six and a half stars.

Oh,

all right.

And I believe I heard that it was called by, I think it may have been Dave, the great, let me see if it actually says it here.

I don't see the line here, but maybe the greatest match on American soil ever.

That would also indicate where Dave's head's at, that he thinks that the greatest wrestling match ever didn't occur in America.

And

it had to be in Japan because we all know what he thought about Big Daddy.

But what the

seriously, in all fucking seriousness,

no.

Maybe I'd go for Canada.

But

if whatever the greatest wrestling match was that ever was held,

because of the fact that predominantly 80 to 90% of the great wrestling matches and or the wrestling matches in general over the last hundred years have been held in the United States and Canada, And there have been periods all over the world where wrestling was popular at various points in time.

But if you look, match quality was probably not

uppermost in fucking Otto Vonza's promotion or whatever.

But yes, there have been great wrestling matches in Japan.

But the idea that somehow the greatest one ever that is yet to be determined or identified or voted upon had to be in Japan is why Dave continues to have his head up his ass, and why not only all the marks in the seats that read his publication, but the marks in the locker room that read it

think they do, oh, Japan, Japan, and try to

act like the goddamn Japanese wrestlers from 20 years ago or whatever that they see on the videotapes instead of, I don't know, doing it well.

And so that's,

I remember this was,

oh my God, 10, 12, 15 years ago, maybe now.

I heard from

an independent guy at maybe a fan fest or whatever.

Well, I'm going to get to go to Japan, you know, for three weeks or next month or whatever.

I said, oh, who for?

Blah, blah, blah.

And he told me, I said, I've never heard.

Oh, well, they're local here, but.

They were running somehow shows in Japan.

They were running them themselves.

And

basically, the boys were flying over.

They got their plane tickets and they got put up in some fashion and they got fed.

And that's, and they didn't really get any money for it, but they got to work in Japan.

What the fuck?

And

another guy

told me flat out

that

the whole idea

in their minds, they have the fantasies that, you know, somehow if they could get over in Japan, they wouldn't have to go to work for the evil empire of the WD.

Well, if you were Stan Hansen at work years ago, right?

But right now,

if you're shooting for being a goddamn American and working full-time in Japan, you might as well audition for being the next goddamn,

you know, front man for the Rolling Stones when Mick retires.

Because they only pick a couple of those, and otherwise the money is not comparable to if you had a

prominent position of any kind with the WWE.

Or am I missing something, Brian, with the comparable fucking finances of the two countries?

Right now, no,

there's nothing to talk about.

But they, but, yeah, but, oh, I could just go to Japan.

Well, yeah.

And wash some dishes while you're over there.

And I bet you it'll get fucking tiring when you're over there for fucking six weeks weeks or whatever.

Hey, I just saw the guy who runs New Japan do an interview, and it was translated as saying the problem is Japanese wrestling has become a feeder system for the United States.

So that should tell you a little bit about the money over there and the economics.

Well, yeah, and who's feeding them where?

Nakamura's been in the WWE for fucking years, and they got a few of the girls from the various promotions in WWE, but Tony's the one signing them all up.

Whether it's the native Japanese talent or light switch white or whatever, because he's a goddamn Japanese wrestling mark.

He's signing up all the Japanese wrestlers, which is really not fair to them either, except they may get paid guaranteed money, but they could actually draw and progress their talents and learn over there and be

responsible for a business doing semi-well, or they come over here and get buried in the middle of this fiasco and just collect their check.

Well, we still have a couple more matches.

Let me get back to this.

Oh, I'm sorry.

The Young Bucks defeated FTR in a ladder match to win the AEW Tag Team Championship.

Well, they had to have at least six stars because if he didn't give them six and he gave fucking Danielson six and Osprey six and a half, I know he wants to kiss Will on the mouth now.

They say that on Twitter.

But I would think he would at least want to give the Bucs warm hugs and

Buttocks fucking grasps.

Four and a half stars.

Oh,

you think the Buckaroos are going to talk to him after that?

I think even they probably would be able to acknowledge that the match wasn't as good as their earlier matches at FTR.

There was no heat for the match.

There was no heat for the feud.

The only thing people cared about was Jack Perry reappearing.

So that's why it only got a half star more than gone with the win.

That's right.

Okay.

And finally, Jim, Swerve Strickland defeated Samoa Joe to win the AEW Championship.

18 minutes, four and a quarter stars.

I mean, you know, obviously, the same thing.

Yeah, we like Joe, we like Swerve, but that was not flaring steamboat in a Superdome or whatever,

just as a match, regardless of what you think of everybody individually.

But this is,

I don't know,

I don't know how to explain it otherwise than he's just decided that he has to give these inflated numbers because these guys,

the fans all kind of take the piss out of him now for it.

But it means something to these fucking wrestlers and they'll get mad at him if he doesn't do this because why else would you do that?

Just invent whole new scales for matches that aren't as good as shit that you used to rate less highly.

You know, sometimes when people are trying to fit in with a crowd, they do what they can.

I think it's important to note that I believe AEW Revolution, with Sting's retirement did a big number, but the pay-per-views have finally started going down for AEW.

According to the numbers, people like Dave are talking about, again, it's a private company.

These are not public numbers.

You'd have to rely on information you're getting from AEW or from in-demand or from people working in pay-per-view and streaming.

But the word is the numbers are down.

Not as bad as TNA.

Apparently, their last pay-per-view.

Did you see the number that did?

I did not.

TNA's last pay-per-view did, let me get the exact number to make sure I'm not messing up here.

With the debut of Matt Hardy or the return of Matt Hardy.

So a big show.

500 pay-per-view buyers.

So what?

Down 83.9% from Hard to Kill.

Oh, apparently not impossible, though.

It may have been hard, but they did it.

People wonder why I never treat TNA or Impact seriously.

500 viewers, what are they doing?

But there has to be something wrong with that because

why would they even do it for that?

Down 80%, what would be

80% up from that?

That would

still be 5,000, would it be 4,000?

I don't know how he's doing his percentages.

We don't know how Dave does his math at all.

But the point is,

even in the days with Shit Stain booking,

they were doing 15 or 20,000 pay-per-views.

Oh, my God.

We could do a pay-per-view, you and me, couldn't we, and get more than 500 people?

We could, but I wouldn't.

Well, I'm not saying book it right now and let's talk over the goddamn finances.

I'm just saying we technically probably could.

Oh, yeah.

And we would get more than 500 people.

I mean, again, I joke about them so people may not realize that it's beyond joking.

Do you know how much bigger the audience for this show is than TNA Impact?

It's not even in the same league.

Well, we know that.

It's not even in the same universe.

I mean, I'm not even trying to be funny, but they don't have a fan base and an audience.

It's not even in the same tier as we are.

Well, but I wasn't trying to blow our situation.

There's only a couple of wrestling companies that are, to be honest with you.

I know that we

probably what the second or third largest wrestling company in the world, if you want to talk about numbers of reach and audience, and etc.

But nevertheless,

I'm just saying, what the fuck?

There has to be something wrong with that.

Was there a

reporting error somewhere, or did some mainframe go down?

They have to reload the upload of the download of the data?

Did they actually do a pay-per-view that only 500 people people in the entire world bought?

From what I understand, the fans decided to stand with Scott DeMoore and say, we're not going to give any more money to these TNA people.

Son of a get-if Damore offered to buy that company and they turned him down, I bet they're fucking pissed now at themselves.

Shit, we could have got rid of this fucking thing.

Hey, he should be happy because based on the numbers we saw he was offering, he was going to overpay a lot for nothing.

Well, we don't want to pay a lot for our goddamn

insurance.

No, we don't.

And speaking of that, we want to tell you about our fine friends at All State.

Actually, did they sign up yet?

I thought we were still dickering with them.

No, I was giving them a free plug.

Okay, take it back.

They're not our friends.

Well, you know.

There has to be an exchange of money to be our friends.

Actually,

I used to have State Farm, but they told me to get a new neighbor.

Well, Brian, I've got a couple of updates I got to get in.

Now that we're halfway into the program, I was going to do this.

You distracted me at the top of the program.

I was going to be professional today.

I didn't do anything.

Exactly.

You always have to blame someone.

I didn't do anything.

I'm just sitting here minding my own business.

Quit doing anything.

Quit not doing anything.

You distracted me.

Don't ask me questions.

Like Gordon Soley.

We got an email from Danielle.

Hi, Jim and Brian.

I wanted to send this message to say thank you because I've been going through a tough time with work and parenting my little one all on my own.

And your podcast gets me through it.

The episode with Shitstain's Women's Wrestling Company, which went, by the way, for those of you who didn't hear it, our friend

Shitstain

attempted to write a book.

I don't know if it actually was published.

I guess it was.

We saw some excerpts and

talking about a wrestling company featuring only women that he had brainstormed workshopped ideas from, and they were so.

Bitch slap.

Bitch slap was the name of the promotion.

Because that would have gone over real well on TV.

When everybody knows it had to be Power Schlap.

But nevertheless, anyway, Danielle got a kick out of that.

It was truthfully the only time I laughed that week.

I listen to you two all day when I'm working from home, and it makes me feel less isolated and a lot more distracted.

Now, we can distract people.

We're good at that, aren't we, Brian?

I guess so.

You're good at distracting me.

You blame me for distracting you.

You blame me for the whole show so far.

What?

I didn't blame you for the whole show.

I've been on some of it.

I can't blame myself.

It was the path.

You blame me for the path.

Anyone could be on the path.

You blame me for...

I guess starting the path.

Well, anyway, there's enough blame to go around.

But Danielle, we appreciate that you like the show and keep listening and we'll distract you.

But do you want to talk about people being blamed?

I got a document right here on where we can place some blame, Brian.

Would you like to hear this?

I'm curious about what this is.

Sure.

We talked about the Billy Joel special,

how that I tried to record it,

and

apparently they had golf.

is what the the live sporting event that caused the Billy Joel special to run long.

And then I had said, because I really wanted to see it and and I didn't know whether it was going to be live or not, I recorded the program after me.

It's only when it's AEW,

and I don't really care whether I see it that I don't do that.

So I got everything but the last two minutes.

And you said, well, there was a big news story that they cut off the last two minutes and they had to do a replay, a repeat, a make-good.

Right.

Well, we got to scoop here.

This is, I'm not allowed to read this person's name.

It says, please don't use my name if you read this on the air in capital letters, emboldened and underlined.

You have our word, Mr.

Eversall.

Exactly, Dick.

There's no way we're going to talk about you.

Anyway, this unnamed person said, I'm one of the guys that works Master Control in a hub for CBS, and we run the broadcast feeds for several CBS affiliate stations from New York to L.A.

The article you read on the podcast is partially correct.

Yes, the show's start time was shuffled back because the Masters Golf that aired earlier in the day.

However, when we have live events such as that, we get conditions on what to do with the remainder of the playlist to accommodate the timing.

The concert was not cut because the stations decided to go abruptly to local news, regardless of whether it was still airing or not.

What was supposed to happen was the news would begin a few minutes late, and we would adjust the time to get the playlist back on track during the 3 a.m.

to 4 a.m.

hour by trimming one of those programs that air in that time frame.

Nobody's watching at 3.30, right?

They can get away with it.

So.

Yeah, especially if it's like comics uncensored.

You ever see that shit?

No, because it's probably on at 3.30 in the morning.

Yeah.

So what went wrong was this.

We are supplied the times for pre-recorded shows and events such as Billy Joel's concert or the late show, blah, blah, as as it's already edited and segmented, much like you would have done for OVW or SMW.

Yes, segments and run times.

You got a run sheet.

Based on that information, where the commercials are to be placed and when the show should end is calculated.

That's true, down to the second.

We've talked about formats before.

But those calculations, which came from the top, were all correct except for the last break.

It was figured wrong with two minutes shaved off.

The system is also automated, so it went to the next program based on the times entered.

And that was the on time that all CBS stations were given as well.

So they went live as they assumed they were supposed to.

Only the West Coast were able to adjust because they had time to fix it.

So it a network TV, some moron somewhere, can still do math wrong and knock two minutes of network TV off the air.

It's refreshing.

Still has that human touch.

In this day and age.

What are your thoughts on getting rid of umpires and just having

a computer be the umpire of baseball games?

Well, no, but how are you going to kick dirt on a fucking umpire's shoes?

That's the best part, right?

And then when the umpire throws the coach out of the game,

you're out of here.

And somebody's got to throw their hat down.

Does a computer wear a hat?

You can't be just giving these jobs away willy-nilly, dirt kickers and hat throwers and throw-outers, not to mention tobacco spitters.

Well, thank you, Billy Joel.

But Eh, but that's what happened.

I had one of my Smokey Mountain Wrestling TV shows.

I had given them log notes with the times, and I said, you know, because

this was such a shoestring operation, they didn't even have time to give me a window dub with the time code burnt into the tape where I could write down the legitimate time code numbers.

So I gave them the verbal out.

I said after the match, when the announcer says, whatever the fuck, this line, that's the out, back time two minutes.

Well, some way or another,

the goddamn guy found him saying the same thing.

But two minutes before that and cut out before the match was over.

I'm watching TV in Knoxville.

And I'm like, fuck, it's two minutes to fucking noon, and we've still got four minutes to show.

And there we just went to black in the middle.

I'm like, motherfucker.

But

that was low-budget independent wrestling, not CBS television network.

So anyway.

Yeah, they didn't give you a free Friday night primetime replay.

No, they didn't.

As a matter of fact, as I recall, they didn't even hold the fucking guy as I suggested that they do while I punched him in a fucking face.

But anyway, that was Billy

and Jimmy.

And Jimmy.

Every now and then I rinse it out.

And I need to be rinse tonight.

And I need it more.

I came with the bed and the smell of the leaves.

I don't know what to do.

I'm I'm always in the dark.

The swagger dance shore smells like a dark car.

Downy rinse fights stubborn odors in just one wash.

When impossible odors get stuck in.

Would you like

would you like to talk about Cody?

Now that we talked about Billy.

Oh, no.

What did he do?

Well, no, I mentioned last week or on one of these programs we did recently.

I said off, you know, the most wanted treasures, treasures,

the most wanted treasures episodes, shows on the AE network have devolved now into just going to a guy's house and looking through boxes of his tights, right?

There's not the and then haggling over them for price.

I'll give you $15.

Yes, and they either grossly inflate the value, or the other day, as I'm going to tell you, they valued something at about a third of what I would have paid for it if it was for sale.

But

yeah, I know that every show can't be like you and I would enjoy if they found Frank Gotch's boots in a barn in Iowa or Toots Mont's booking book or goddamn Jack Pfeffer's fucking

fingernail that he used to stab the pickle jar with or whatever.

I'd buy the second thing, maybe the first thing too.

Yeah, man, maybe the third thing you could you could put Pfeffer's fingernail in a window box or a shadow box rather and display it.

But I know that that's kind of, you know, us being the

real historians that we are, you can't go that deep.

But it's just tights and boots now, just tights and boots.

But

they did one this past weekend on Dusty Roads.

And yes, they did go for the

the

they went for the polka dots and they went for a pair of his cowboy boots.

But the last segment was Cody at home and he pulls out the box and he's with Mick Foley

and they're talking about Dusty's booking books.

And you get to see some of them.

And he used the Red Daily Reminders, right?

But it reminded me, I've seen those books.

When we were on Crockett's plane, he would have that, he'd have his briefcase with him all the time.

And he'd have his, but he wasn't working like Vince all the time on Crockett's plane.

He's talking to the boys.

He's watching the volunteer jam videotape.

He's fucking, you know, drinking beer, whatever.

But at some points,

somebody would ask a question.

He would get out his book.

Or that was the thing that

bookers used to do when there was

an out of the territory star.

Right.

They was in the locker room.

Hey, you got your book?

Yeah, you got your book.

Let's work out some dates.

Everybody that was in business seriously had a book for themselves, but the booker had the book for everybody.

And Cody has all of Dusty's books.

You saw this segment, right?

I actually have not seen this yet.

No.

Well, you son of a gun, you should have.

But basically, they sit down and they go through some of them.

And

I can't remember what they call it.

They called them Dusty's booking journals.

And I guess that's, but really all that you always just called it, your book.

Do you have your book?

And they showed some of the pages.

They had the page of the War Games, the first War Games at Atlanta, July 4th, 1987.

And you and I have talked about

booking books on the show here in the past.

And

his look just like mine, well, I'll say that differently.

Mine look a lot like Dusty's because he influenced me.

But I've mentioned that Dusty would go to, he had almost like his code where everybody was either a nickname or initials.

And,

you know, Kevin Sullivan was Sully

or Dennis Condry and Bobby Eaton were DC and usually B-L-E for Bobby Lee Eaton.

And he would put down either the, you know,

the nickname or the initials.

And that way, if he wrote out the card for the night at a house show and stuck it up on the wall,

if somebody forgot to take it down when we left, it was just goddamn gibberish to a janitor anyway, right?

They wouldn't know, what the fuck is this?

But the one of the pages they showed

was from

the day that I main evented my only main event in Charlotte as a wrestler

when I had the match with Ronnie Garvin.

We drew 7,000 people, by the way.

Dusty wasn't even there, nor were the Road Warriors.

I don't think Flair was on the card.

But by God, me and Ronnie Garvin were.

But it's in a cage, JC versus RG.

And I, you know, I was freeze framing these because I remember seeing the pages of some of these books.

But if anybody wants to look and see

what a Booker's book looked like,

you can see some of the pages here.

And,

you know, whether it was one of the at a glances or daily reminder or,

you know, all the top guys had a book.

And then the Bookers, you know, obviously had the main book.

And

yeah, if you were a job guy in those days or you just flake and didn't give a shit about the business, you'd take your booking sheet and just fold it up and stick it in your bag.

But anybody that cared about what they were doing kept their own date book.

So you could tell Dusty did that

even when he wasn't booking.

Once you get in the habit,

then you're doing it for yourself anyway.

You know, because I saw dates there from 1980 through like 2014.

And so

they valued those, there had to be 20 or 30 of them.

They valued those at $5,000 to $8,000.

What?

Yes.

I would have paid a whole lot more.

Well, yes, of course I would too.

I'd outbid you no matter what it was.

But Cody ain't going to sell them.

He put some on loan for the

you know,

exhibit for whatever they're going to do at the next next WrestleMania or whatever.

But Cody's not going to sell those things.

That's history.

At the highest level, the 86 book was Starcade and all of his dad's ideas.

But anyway, you go back and you look at.

When he was born, wasn't there something in there like the day he was born, Dusty Market in the book?

Well, yeah, because you've got in the habit of putting down all the important shit, right?

But you can see that the cards were written down, the advances.

or the final gate.

They didn't zoom in on several pages and close up where you could really read everything, but you can get kind of an idea

that the important stuff that the booker needed to know was down in those books.

And then, of course,

as he did with everything else, Vince McMahon wrung all the fun out of it when he made everybody use the exact same kind of book, the exact same kind of pencils with the exact same erasers, laid out the same way.

with the same information in the same manner so that everybody had the same thing, right?

But it took all all the individuality away of when here's the guy, whether it's Dusty Rhodes or it's Eddie Graham or it's, you know, Bill Watts or it's Bill Dundee or whoever the fuck it is, Kevin Sullivan, writing all this shit down themselves, scratching shit out, making notes.

And then you see what the house did and et cetera.

That's the fascinating part to me.

I've seen a picture of Fritz von Ehrich's book in the past.

I want to say Missy Hyatt may have been the owner.

I've got one of them.

I got 1977.

For whatever reason, I thought Missy Hyatt may have had one of his booking books.

Well, she may also have, I don't know.

A guy that bought it in some kind of online sale contacted me about it and I got it from him.

I don't know whether somebody was cleaning out the sportatorium, maybe what, maybe Kevin, maybe the family.

I don't know.

And sold some of the books.

But these things pop up from time to time, but a lot of them either got tossed when the guy got out of of the business or, you know, maybe family, as in Cody, still has them.

But

every once in a while, something like that pops up, and you can see,

you know, an insight into that procedure at that point in time.

You didn't have to go through a writer, a producer, committee, team,

head of creative, whatever.

You were the booker.

You wrote down everything and it was done the way that you wanted it done.

End of story.

And that's when wrestling was good.

Imagine that.

Well, Jim, before we go too much further, I pulled up the card, May 9th, 1987, Charlotte at the Coliseum.

Here's the card.

It says here, 9,000 plus, as the crowd.

Well, I wish it was.

We did.

I don't have the Midnight Book where I can reach it.

I think it was $68,000.

It was about $70,000, which was back in those days with the ticket prices, around 7,7500 people.

Well, here's the card.

Ivan Koloff defeated Todd Champion.

Chris Champion, no relation, and Sean Royal defeated Rocky King and the Italian stallion.

Baron von Raschke defeated Thunderfoot.

Lasertron defeated Nelson Royal.

The NWA TV champion Tully Blanchard defeated Ole Anderson.

The NWA United States champion Nikita Kolov defeated Alex Luger via disqualification.

Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson, the Rock and Roll Express, defeated Vladimir Pyetrov and Dick Murdoch.

That was a combination, too, boy.

And finally, in the main event, Ron Garvin defeated Jim Cornette in a steel cage match after both Ricky and Robert and Bobby and Stan interfered.

And

obviously, again, no flare, no dusty, no Road Warriors.

And the story behind that, and I believe it was an afternoon show, too, a Sunday afternoon.

And there was an all-night gas station.

Oh, now.

When we had done the thing on Valentine's Day, where I threw the fireball in Garvin's face and burned him, and I was suspended so I could go on my honeymoon to Hawaii.

And

then when we came back, I was working to pro we were working the tag team program for the U.S.

tag tag team title with the midnight against Ronnie Garvin and Barry Wyndham.

And that's also then that

Jimmy had switched babyface because of what we did.

So we started working with the Garvin brothers, where Ronnie and Jimmy were our opponents the month before at the Crockett Cup in Baltimore.

But anyway, then Dusty got the idea.

Well,

I can steal a couple of houses.

I'll put Cornette in a cage with Ronnie Garvin.

And we did it not only in Charlotte, we did it in in Norfolk, Virginia.

I think we may have done it in Richmond, too, and one other place, but Charlotte was the biggest one.

But not only was I a little trepidatious because, you know, Ronnie was a great worker, but I'm, oh, fuck.

And I was afraid more that it was going to suck or whatever.

I'm like, how are we going to get by with this?

But we did the old deal and Ronnie was tremendous with it.

Where I come out with my arm in a sling and a note from my mother and I want to substitute Bobby, but the baby faces come and throw me in the cage, and he starts beating me up.

But then I blind him with the powder, and I try to get out of the cage, but he rips my pants off.

But I take the nucks out of my goddamn sock, and I hit him.

He got color for me.

He's bleeding now.

And it didn't have to go, but four or five minutes, but everything that I could possibly do to try, because I was overmatched physically, to cheat, to get an advantage, try to get out of there.

And momentarily, it would work so that he could shrug it off.

And then finally, he makes the big comeback.

I'm pantsless.

He's fucking on top of me, hammers me a few times, and then gets a double-handed choke on me.

And as he's throttling me, trying to kill me, my shoulders are down.

So the referee counts it.

And then the Midnight Express are able to hit the ring because the door opens when the match is over and they get him off of me and they drag me the fuck out of there and I live for another day.

He didn't quite kill me.

And Dusty, as I said, knew he could steal a few houses off of that because I can't remember where they were that day or that point in time.

Do you have that?

I have that here.

Okay.

May 9th, 1987, St.

Petersburg at the Bayfront Center.

There you go.

Jimmy Valiant defeated Colt Steele.

This is the Eddie Graham Memorial, apparently.

Jimmy Valiant defeated Colt Steele.

Bob and Brad Armstrong defeated the Mod Squad.

Mike Graham defeated Dory Funk Jr.

The Florida Heavyweight Champion Mike Rotundo defeated Kevin Sullivan.

Jimmy Garvin defeated T.

Joe Kahn.

The Florida tag team champion Steve Kern and Stan Lane defeated the Mod Squad.

Barry Wyndham and Ed Gantner defeated

defeated Dory Funk Jr.

and the Tahitian Prince.

The Road Warriors with Paul Ellering fought NWA tag team champions Rick Roode and Manny Fernandez with Paul Jones to a double disqualification.

And Dusty Rhodes defeated world champion Ric Flair via disqualification.

What was the crowd?

Does it have it?

I don't have it.

I don't have it.

I bet we beat him.

St.

Petersburg in 1987.

Florida was not

healthy at that point in time.

But the point is, that's when I saw the card because at interviews, we would see and they would take

they would make Xerox copies of Dusty's book to give to Gene Anderson.

So we'd see what the cards were for the fucking promos, right?

And I saw that card, oh, shit.

Now I'm scared it's going to suck, and I'm also scared we're not going to draw, it's going to die.

So I went on a campaign by myself.

I called all my friends at radio stations.

I think Cat Collins was still in Charlotte then.

And I got on Morning Radio.

And I got with Tom Sorensen that did the

wrestling column at the Charlotte Observer.

And I got, I've got a framed copy of this on my wall because I promoed it to him to the point where I got equal billing over the top of the masthead of the Charlotte Observer was Neil Diamond Comes to Town Tonight and Cornette Cries Cagegate and Steel Cage Rendezvous.

Those are the two leads over the fucking masthead

of the Charlotte Observer.

Cornette cries Cagegate.

It's a conspiracy.

Right?

And I fucking promoed this son of a bitch everywhere I could around town for three weeks until, and we did over 7,000 fucking people to see me and Ronnie Garvin in a fucking cage in the main event.

But anyway, I was proud of that one.

I got equal billing with Neil Diamond at the time in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Why were we talking about that?

Should Dusty have exploited that a little bit more?

I mean, maybe not just with you in the main event, but just the idea of kind of splitting up some of the main guys at that point, but really trying to draw a house with it.

Well, remember they did the same thing in February of 86.

Remember that day that the

superstars on the superstation?

Atlanta, we were taping the first ever primetime

special

in the Omni on a Sunday night.

And on Sunday afternoon, not only were we, our first match with the Rock and Roll Express in Charlotte was in the Charlotte Coliseum at 2 o'clock that day, but Dusty Flair, the Road Warriors, and a couple of the other major stars were in Hamilton, Ontario for that goddamn Moscomania deal that did $100,000.

Moscomania, yeah.

Yes.

And then they took the private plane and we drove to Atlanta to do the prime time special that would air.

That was a Sunday.

It aired the following Friday.

Nobody got there before 7:15.

The people were in the building before the wrestlers got there for that fucking special TV program.

And just say, okay, you got to do what you did in Charlotte.

You guys do what you did in fucking Greensboro.

You guys do what you did in Richmond.

Here we go, baby.

Well, near.

But anyway, that was the old days of making very tight connections with not a lot of time to spare.

In terms of storage, would you keep anything with your book, like any of the TV formats or anything?

Oh, yeah.

And I know this will piss a lot of people off, but

I only kept the TNA TV formats that really illustrated Shit Stain at his most non-lucid.

The rest of them I balled up and threw away because I didn't have anything to do with the writing of the show, and I didn't like the way most shows came off.

And if I'd kept every piece of paper I've ever had in the wrestling business, I'd have to have another house this size just to hold that.

And I kept all the stuff that I was responsible for, all of the WCW TV formats when I was on the booking team that I had a hand in writing, all the Smoky Mountain stuff, all the OVW stuff,

all the Ring of Honor stuff, most of the WWF stuff.

If I didn't write it, I didn't really have a God, it wasn't mine.

I didn't really have a goddamn

sympathetic feeling for it.

It wasn't.

you know, it wasn't my work.

It was a show I worked on.

So I had to dump a lot of that 20 years ago.

But if I, if it, well, with Dusty's books, Dusty kept his books because that was his.

I bet he probably, you know, didn't keep the format from when he went out on an episode of Raw and fucking did something that somebody else wanted him to do.

All right.

Well, that was WWE's Hidden Treasures.

Out in the open.

Out in the open.

Somehow they may be hidden, but they know exactly where to go to get them.

I'll be out in the open.

If anyone has anything pre-35, let me know.

And that's not pre-35.

That's pre-1935.

Pre-1935.

That's right.

I'll take anything before 1893.

Oh, you bastard.

Well, we got to talk about the Dark Side of the Ring episode with our old friend, my old friend and protege,

Sherry Martell, sister Sherry, sensational Sherry.

Scary Sherry.

Scary Sherry.

My dad called her that always.

I guess it was.

That was the period that he first became cognizant of her.

Yeah, he didn't know who she was.

And all of a sudden, Brutus Beefcake was on Brother Love Show yelling about how she's scary Sherry.

And my dad, who didn't like wrestling, thought it was funny.

And that name stuck with him, Scary.

He would always go, whatever happened to Scary Sherry.

But I'll tell you what, these programs, I've mentioned it before, the A ⁇ E stuff and the WWE endorsed official

products, they're telling too many of the same stories.

They're cross-pollinating with talking heads.

We're going into everybody's biography that we've just seen in order to hear about the rivalry between the two people.

We just saw the biography of.

We're seeing the same shit over and over.

It's always nice to see the older stuff because it looks so much better, but I'm getting a little tired of some of the same people talking about the same things.

With Darkseid, they've been able to break that trend over the past few weeks with Chris Adams, with Chris Colt.

Now, with Sherry, even though Sherry was such a big part of the WWF for so long,

when you see a lot of these clips, now you realize when you go back,

they're not only not featuring Sherry, who was one of their, if not their first, major female heel, definitely.

Elizabeth came a little bit beforehand as

a personality, but they sometimes they trim her out of shit, like they trim her out of a lot of Michael's stuff.

I don't mean like excise every bit and blur her face like she's goddamn Vince, but

you know, but they don't dwell on any of it.

So a lot of this stuff was stuff that you haven't seen in quite some time.

Also, do you get what I mean?

They're not even exploiting her intellectual property.

No, they do nothing with her.

And, you know, I thought they did a pretty good job with this documentary.

There were a few things, you know, in terms of the clips they played versus what they were talking about that were out of order.

She really got elevated to the big time with Randy Savage.

You know, they kind of made it seem like it was Ted DiBiase in this thing with the clips.

But for a few years there,

Randy Savage.

Ted DiBiase, who was still, you know, right up there near the top.

And then she was used to help get Shawn Michaels to the next place because he had just become a single.

He was a heel,

but he didn't really show all the

personality down yet in front of the camera.

Right.

And well, and that's an idea for the people today who maybe weren't around then and don't have the context of the thing in real time.

Sherry was a name that was used to help elevate Sean Michaels.

So Sean Michaels, also, I mean, it's a different scale.

She was used to elevate Shane Douglas in ECW.

Yeah.

That was one of the things, too.

And then they didn't even really mention this in there,

but she was put with Flair opposite Hogan when Hogan came in.

Yeah, well, and I'm sure I know that Rick was over the moon about Sherry and how great she was and the jobs she did.

And I think Hogan also knew that it was going to be even easier if he had somebody like that in the corner.

So that's probably one of the rare times where you have both sides of a major program wanting somebody else to be added to it.

And that's

she, she knew the business and she worked hard and she had personality and she

got what to do.

And that's a common statement throughout this program that everybody said that.

And the bumps she took to get things over, which were

obviously what led to,

you know, her problems later on, her physical problems and her, you know, issues.

But she wanted to do this.

I didn't even know that she'd wanted to do this for so fucking long

to the point where, you know, she was a fan that went to the matches.

And I think they said she went with her mom in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, but she was going

Again, they moved to Louisiana.

She was going to the matches in Mid-South before Mid-South was even Mid-South wrestling, back when it was still Leroy McGurk's territory.

And I had never seen, seen a picture of, or heard talk.

I had heard of him.

Obviously, I knew she had been married beforehand, but her first husband, he didn't have any Cajun in him, did he?

I hadn't heard an accent like that since 1984.

But I don't know how these two star-crossed lovers

didn't hit it off and live a happy life.

Brian,

let me recap this.

He meets her.

She's working in a strip club in New Orleans and swept him off his feet and moved into his trailer

and then married him.

And then they had a baby.

But that's where the biggest shocking thing was

that we heard from

the program was that when her son was like three months old, that's when she left and said, I'm going to go be a wrestler.

And everybody's like, How could you do that?

They ignored

this fucking guy lived in a trailer.

Oh, he seemed like a nice guy.

But I'm sorry.

She's working.

Hard-working guy.

She's working in a strip club.

And she sweeps him off his feet.

And he's living in a trailer.

And they get married.

Now she's got a a baby.

She's probably,

my God, I was going to be a wrestler and be on TV and now I've married Cajun Pete over here and I've got a baby and I'm living in a fucking trailer.

She was also better than this.

That's the other thing.

She was also young.

She was still a teenager.

And she, yeah, she was, well, I think she was 20 at that point.

She would have been 20 years old at that point by the time, you know.

And she gets trained by the outlaw guy.

That guy in Memphis was so outlawed that I'd never heard of him before.

No, seriously, it wasn't even like Aubrey Griffith that had been around in West Memphis and got Lawler started or whatever.

But

the horrible thing was when they said, and this was true,

when they had taken an interview of Sherry's, one of the shoot interviews she'd done before she passed away and said, well,

She went in when she was 16 years old and talked to Grizzly Smith that I want to be a wrestler.

And that was true because Grizz filled the same position for Leroy McGurk

that he did later on for Watts.

He was the agent, the

matchmaker, whatever, at that point in time after he'd retired from the ring in, what, early, mid-70s.

And

he told her, come back when you're 21.

And now in hindsight,

the comments that she made, and that was what he told her, you know, that was from 15 years ago, 20 years ago, or whatever, but it's aged

differently since then.

He may be the only person she ever, that he ever told to come back when you're 21.

Was she already dating Jake or fooling around with Jake?

Whatever their relationship was, it wasn't.

Well, yes, but well, here's the thing.

She's 17 years old.

She's going to the matches.

He's 18 years old and he's a referee.

She wants to be a wrestler.

That's not hard to figure out.

That's the way it worked in those days.

But I don't want to

sully Sherry's memory by having people go, oh, he's saying she was a rat, but she was a rat.

Okay.

And that's, and she would have probably said yes.

That's what I was doing at the time.

Because

it would have been far from uncommon if a 17-year-old girl going to the wrestling matches in those days wasn't trying to mess around with one of the boys.

It was almost unheard of for that, unless you were a member of one of those large Catholic families that fucking kept a fucking fucking string on everybody.

But anyway,

and that's, you know, that was the thing is she ended up

moving to Memphis and getting trained by an outlaw group, but she still wasn't really in the business.

And when you, she went back to Grizzly, she's 21 and she's been trained kind of.

And she got a license, which you could back in those days with the Athletic Commission.

So that's when they sent her, if you're going to do this, oh, Moolah,

here, you know, we got a girl.

But then, and the show may have been worth it only for the pictures of Moolah Mansion on Moolah Drive.

Did you get a kick out of seeing the compound there?

You know, you hear so much about it.

There are so many stories.

I don't know if I had ever seen extensively what it looked like until this.

And it was just, she had.

Had you ever seen it before?

Yeah, I saw it a couple of times.

I've never been inside, but I'd seen pictures and I'd seen the entranceway.

We'd driven past it in Columbia one time.

But it was Mula Drive.

She had, I think, between 10 and 20 acres.

And not only was there the big main house with all kinds of a big wing, but there were outbuildings where, you know, a lot of the girls would

live while they were training there.

And then the barn they had the ring in.

But

the Mula Drive sign doesn't look like it's being kept up by the city, but I think that's the actual legitimate post office address.

She got her own road.

But anyway, that was, Sherry didn't last long there because

Moolah couldn't control her.

And

that was the story she told.

I couldn't keep to the curfew.

She was going out and fucking doing whatever, and she wasn't going to do

whatever the fuck Moolah told her to do unless it was involving wrestling.

So she got booted from the camp.

And

did you like the part about her ex-husband saying he hired a private investigator to follow her?

And then three guys showed up and

told him to leave her alone.

She belongs to us now.

Yes.

Who's that?

Well, it was nobody.

Either that or Sherry may have told some of the boys, hey, can you go see this guy and fucking scare him or whatever?

I think it may have been that, if I had to guess.

but they wouldn't say she belongs to us now.

He was making it sound like it was the mafia,

you know.

Anyway, um,

so

I can't say I have any sympathy for the ex-husband, uh, but the sympathy that everybody had was for the son.

And I,

I'd never met her son before.

I guess she used to take him some when she was on that WWF run.

And that was, obviously, we met early.

They had the clip of me, the one week on TV where I managed her.

And,

you know, then I didn't see her again for probably almost another 10 years.

And then during that period of time, I'd been

the hottest manager in Crockett.

And she had been the hottest manager in the WWF, all things considered, for some of that run.

And then she's the one that beat me for manager of the year that year in The Observer.

But then

when I went back to the WWE, that's when she was about done there.

But we got back, we're like 10 years later, we're like, who the fuck would have thought this?

She was scared shitless to be on TV because that was one of her earlier TV appearances, that show in Memphis.

And I was scared shitless because I had not managed anybody and didn't yet know what the fuck I was doing.

But then when we got back together 10 years later, we're both in the WWF on top.

So that, but anyway, the point is, she took her son

on they had pictures of him and Hulk and him and a lot of the boys, and

she took him on the road with him some.

But you saw from the

older pictures, he was a bigger kid and maybe heavy set.

But now

they said apparently he'd had cancer, lost part of his tongue.

He was having problems talking and had lost a lot of weight.

And

that's where I think a lot of people had the sympathy and they were shocked about Sherry leaving her son and blah, blah, blah.

But he said

that Sherry made the best decision.

And you have to think about it.

I don't know that Sherry Martell would have been happy living in a fucking trailer in Louisiana.

So

him being raised by his stepmother.

And then finding out that his real mother is a legend,

he wished he'd had more time with her, but he didn't harbor any ill will.

And that maybe, you know, things may have worked out better for him and her in the long run that things happened the way they did.

But it was shocking to see,

because even though Sherry was a couple of years older than me, I guess by the time that

the 90s rolled around, well, they showed a clip where she came in when she had been let go from the WWF for the drug test.

I brought her to Smoky Mountain to do a weekend of shows and work against Tammy.

And

I was about to say, I considered her like one of the kids even then, you know, or by contemporary at least,

you know.

But she was a couple of years older.

So he is now

her son,

God, mid to late 40s.

And, but, you know, he's had obviously health decisions, and that was heart, health, health, health decisions, health

problems

in,

you know, in his life, and that was hard to see.

But

it

the problem again becomes, you know, they go through her whole career, but

by then it's as a main eventer, she's taking more bumps, and then she's taking more pills.

And Sherry,

you know, recreationally would take a few things to begin with, but when it became necessity and when it was for treating shit, and

she couldn't fucking

afford to, at the end, to get her back fixed, couldn't afford the surgery.

As Medusa Michelle, who looked great,

said that it should have happened to several of the guys, too, that get fired for flunking the drug test, but it happened to her.

But that was, again, it's the same story that we've been hearing too often on these shows lately, that

the substances lead to a, you know, an unhappy end.

But the talking heads were better also.

Kathy Fitzpatrick, or as I used to refer to her, Kathy Farquhar,

and Medusa and Rock and Robin and...

Jake and Bischoff were integral in this one, but we saw a few different talking heads

on this show as well.

And at least we got to see her induction in the Hall of Fame, which almost

would have come too late because she died like, what, two months later?

Yeah, nice to see Kathy Fitzpatrick in this one.

I used to go down to Dennis Carluszo show.

She was the nicest person in the whole world.

She helped me out a lot.

Sometimes when I took the train down there, she'd pick me up at the train station.

Really, really nice person.

You know, and I got to say this.

Kathy, I love you.

I'm sorry I got bad information, but when the dark side guys came down here, this was, we shot the footage for this like

year before last.

And I had a picture of me and Sherry and Paul Bear

and Kathy Fitzpatrick was in it at one of the fan fests.

I said, well, everybody's dead now except me because I'd heard.

I could have sworn if you'd have held a gun to me.

Somebody had told me a couple of years ago that Kathy Fitzpatrick got sick and died.

And I swear I believed that.

And I told him, and then Evan called me like a week later and said, Well, we talked to Kathy Fitzpatrick.

I said, I thought she was dead.

And he said, Yeah, she's very upset at you for thinking that.

So I apologize for killing you, Kathy.

No, she

told him Mike Lano.

Mike Lano announced Dan Farron died twice on the radio.

Well, but he was talking about performance-wise.

But

Kathy used to take me down to do Joel Goodhart's radio spots when Joel was running.

And I would go and do radio plugs for his shows and all that stuff.

She'd drive me around there.

And she was also in the ECW original.

She was the original ticket taker, I believe, for ECW.

Yes.

But anyway,

bravo, another heart-rendering episode of Dark Side of the Ring on Sherry Martell.

And I loved Sherry.

I

appreciated what she did for me when she came to work for me in Smokey Mountain Wrestling.

Because again,

that was getting Tammy over because Sherry was one of the probably the biggest female name to the most amount of fans in the wrestling business in 1993.

And she's coming on.

No, without question, absolutely.

Yeah.

And she's coming down and working my shows in Barberville, Kentucky, Knoxville, Tennessee, Johnson City, Tennessee.

And where the fuck else did we send her?

And she was happy to do it and gave Tammy some

on-a-job training and some lessons while she was there, advice, whatever you want to call them.

So,

you know, I really enjoyed being able to have her there at that time.

All right.

And I'm sure you'll feel the same way about the next Dark Side episode.

Is it the Sandman?

I will probably not feel the same way.

I never booked the Sandman nor attempted to book the Sandman, nor actually,

I will say, I will admit that while The Sandman to me represented all the things about ECW that I thought were bad for the wrestling business, that was the greatest entrance

that you could ever see.

If he could have just done that and then not wrestled, it'd have been great.

But Paul was a genius with doing things with things that you couldn't imagine could be done things with,

if that makes any sense.

Well, it helps having a susceptible crowd.

Well, you mean the Kool-Aid drinkers.

That's right.

No, no.

But Paul manipulated them into liking the taste of that Kool-Aid.

And then he was able to,

through

smoke and, and I'm not saying this in a derogatory way, through smoke and mirrors and

a convoluted line of thinking, he was able to disguise people's weaknesses and give them strengths that they may not have even known known they had

and exploit them.

But

the problem was he had to create the environment, and a lot of that stuff didn't translate to any other solar system.

But he was great at what he did.

He just concentrated a lot on the caca part of wrestling instead of the good part of wrestling because the caca was easier to sell to those people at that time.

kind of a mellow but trippy way to get here, but here we are, ladies and gentlemen.

The future's so bright that we have to travel to it once again.

Well, the future is so bright now that we've taken a break to take a piss and gather our thoughts from the never-ending panorama of the wrestling.

But now we are going to finish the program with, we left left off with some

cocka at that time.

Now we're going to enter into caca that happened at another time.

And you may hear, Brian,

I know you're going to.

Nobody else probably will.

I have lawnmowers in my periphery now.

They've just showed up.

We tried to gather some time for ourselves.

And suddenly, here come the lawnmowers.

Hopefully the people won't riot.

You're not going to turn to violence over this, are you?

Can you hear them, Brian?

I can hear them a little bit.

I'm more concerned about your modulation.

It sounds like you really are traveling through time or into space or there's some sort of radio activity that's interfering with your signal.

Well, that's because of that nuclear heat that I got.

But you shouldn't have slingshotted us so quick through the space-time continuum.

Well, again, there's a lot happening.

There's no time to waste.

And I just knew that in the past.

So I slingshot us, slingshot us.

I slung us into the future.

Isn't it slang?

Would it be a slang us into the future?

Remember, Hulk Hogan used to say he was hanging and banging to people, and then eventually it became, I hung and bung with this person.

What the fuck does bung mean?

I bung with this person.

Never heard that before.

Well, you don't hang around in the right places.

Well, Jim, whether it's bung or bung, let's talk about one last AEW story here this week.

Oh boy, you're springing one on me.

I'm springing one on you.

If Jerry Springer was still alive, maybe you could do some kind of intervention to help AEW.

But there's a pair of stories here and and they're tied together.

I have something here that popped up from Microsoft story by Thomas Lawson.

DeZone

drops AEW content one year in the multi-year deal due to underperforming shows.

Oh.

Have you seen this?

I have not.

Sports streaming service Dazone has nixed its contract.

with all elite wrestling just one year

after just i can't read ladies and gentlemen after just one year over what they deemed to be underperforming numbers.

The two sides agreed on a multi-year deal in early 2023 that would see AEW be broadcast in 42 markets across Europe and Asia.

The initial deal included AEW Dynamite, Rampage, Dark, Dark Elevation, Battle of the Belts, and four pay-per-views a year.

They don't do a couple of shows anymore, do they?

They don't do dark or dark elevation, and even when they did, it was on YouTube.

It wasn't a televised show that they would be distributing.

They don't do dark, and even when they do,

it's not dark enough.

Now, this deal is a thing of the past.

Speculation grew at AEW's Future on DeZone early into 2024 after fans noticed that all elite content had been quietly removed from the platform.

At the time, no confirmation was given publicly as to the reason behind the removal.

Steve Muhlhausen,

Muhlhausen, is he back again?

Who ran the wrestling social media side of things for Dazone, has now confirmed that the deal is over just one year after being announced.

The decision to drop AEW content was made on December 31st, 2023, and was made after a string of broadcasts falling below expectations.

Let's stop right there.

I guess that would be viewership expectations, correct?

Well, and this Dazone is the, remember, we've talked about this in the past.

It's spelled D-A-Z-N.

And before we heard anybody say it, we were like, what is it, Daisen?

What the fuck?

Dazed and confused?

What's going on here?

But apparently, they're the big

sports distributors of these things in...

All these foreign markets, right?

It's a fairly big fucking day.

They don't just do wrestling.

It's not just like, you know, high spot wrestling network or whatever.

They do professional sports of various stripes and kinds and genres.

Combat sports.

A lot of big boxing events, I believe.

Yeah.

So,

but these,

what is their method of distribution in these markets?

Do, do you have to subscribe to them?

Or do you buy the individual events?

Or do you, is it on cable?

And then you watch the various shows, something that we would see here, they would have, or is something like that we would do here where they would have ratings for these things

how do they know it's a streaming service it's a streaming service uh you know it's not on cable or anything so they know how many streams they're streaming correct and ain't nobody streaming this stuff apparently connect how much were they paying for these the rights to stream this stream uh I do not see anything here with a number, but I have another article tying into this.

Let me go to this.

And this is from the Wrestling Observer newsletter site by Josh Nason.

AEW no longer available on Televisa Univisions.

I guess it would be 14 platform VIX.

No, that's not 14.

That's

6.

VIX.

No,

wait a minute.

Hold on.

You wouldn't know.

You wouldn't write Roman numerals that way.

That just must be VIX.

I guess it's VIX.

I've never heard of it.

Andrew, why would they be writing Roman numerals?

I was losing my mind looking at this.

I thought I was adamant.

Imbecile.

imbecile you are i say all right well listen aew had announced a multi-year deal with them in 2023 this company less than a year after signing a multi-year streaming deal with televisa univision aew is no longer available on the company's vix platform the second such international broadcast deal that has quietly gone away

While a formal announcement is yet to be made by either party, a support page revealed the news.

Hold on, there's a link here.

What does this mean?

Let's click this link, a support page.

How can I, here's on the VIX website, how can I view all elite wrestling events in VIX?

Effective immediately, AEW events will no longer be broadcast.

Be viewed in VIX.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and assure you.

that alternative entertainment options will be provided.

Whatever the hell that means.

Hello, Court Court Bauer.

What does that mean?

Well, alternative entertainment options, they could be replacing it with Mighty Mouse cartoons.

And that's

with both of these things.

That's why I asked, is there a dollar amount tied to this thing?

Well, go ahead.

Well, here's one dollar amount.

That's what made me look here.

And actually, there's two dollar amounts.

Let me go on.

Announced in July 2023, the deal was set to bring AEW's weekly TV programming and other content to the premium tier of the VIX streaming service available throughout Mexico and some Latin America and Caribbean countries.

WrestleNomics's Brandon Thurston had recently estimated the deal was worth $150,000 annually,

but it had never been announced publicly by either side.

And then again, going to the DAZON one, Thurston estimated the deal to be worth as much as $250,000 a year.

Also never confirmed, but.

Okay, well, that eliminates one of my two thoughts on the matter because

it I was going to say it might not be just horrible doom and gloom.

Maybe that these companies were feeling that they had overpaid if this was, you know, several millions of dollars or whatever.

And they were like, eh, it's okay, but not for what we're, they would cut it, right?

But now it's like...

150 grand?

250 grand?

They can't get that much out of this shit in however many markets?

They couldn't get enough views to make that worth it.

Jesus Christ.

And they are fucking, I could almost sold the time on OVW and got that.

How is that not?

I mean, the conspiracy theorist or the person trying to think this through from the other side in my head, the only thing I could think of,

Although the one company

did say it was because of underperformance, but if Tony wanted to get out of these deals because he was going to have a

streaming deal that would be worldwide, and obviously having market by market would interfere with that.

Well,

but again, the guy said they got rid of AEW, not the other way around.

Yeah, the

underperformance, apparently,

you would need a streaming deal all over the world to add up to anything here.

Now,

you wouldn't,

I don't think that in any world, world, Tony Khan would end shit like that, where people are going to go, you ain't going to see any more of this shit with any of these broadcast partners for a potential streaming deal that he's going to announce at some point down the road.

We'll see how long or if that announcement ever comes.

But that's

with underperformance and no, we're done.

It sounds like this shit just ain't worth it.

And I don't know how it couldn't be worth it.

That low of an amount.

And again, none of these guys on this television, except for

Jericho, I guess, is any kind of

name presence in international markets because they've never been on WWE.

And that.

And even Moxley was a different name.

Moxley was a different name and he had hair.

He looked like a different human.

It looked like before he fell in the fucking river.

So,

you know,

they really don't have any reason to appeal to international markets whether it be cambodia or guatemala or wherever the zone is is zoned in at

well and apparently here's the next one we should watch in the recent past the company also announced a deal with espn for broadcast in australia new zealand and the pacific islands

i guess that's the next one to fall it's like a war that's the next area to fall

We're going to be fighting now over Saipan.

Well, I'm telling you, set up a base now at the Howland Islands.

Did you see the thing in the news they think they found via sonar, Amelia Earhart's plane?

I mean, a company that found the thing thinks it is?

Yes.

And I'm waiting for them to finally, you know, get to the bottom of this and bring this thing up.

Yeah, I don't know if that would work that way.

Again, it's deeper than the Titanic and based on just due to pressure, they couldn't just raise it up out of the water like that.

I'm willing to devote 10 seasons to the reality show, just like I've done for The Curse of Oak Island.

They've come up with four rusty hinges and a goddamn button off somebody's crotch.

But it's fascinating to watch them do it.

It's going to suck when it's someone else's plane.

Who's this?

Yeah, we didn't even know he was missing.

Son of a bitch.

It's Jimmy Hoffa.

It's Hoffa.

He threw everyone off.

He flew to the Howland Islands.

What a mastermind this guy is.

Anyway, and by the way, nobody talks about poor Fred Noonan.

He was in the plane, too.

That's right.

It's all about Amelia.

The women get all the attention.

Well, that was the story, a woman flying around the world, not Fred Noonan and

the woman doing all the work.

1937, most goddamn people, male or female, hadn't flown around the goddamn world.

So Fred should have gotten more credit.

Let me just say one thing, though.

You are citing the numbers that I just read to you, obviously.

Brandon Thurston's estimating that.

WWE is a publicly traded company.

It has been.

It still is under the new ownership structure.

Right.

So every now and then, you're like, where did this money come from?

And then, like, months later, you're like, oh, it came from the Saudis because they have to file that.

AEW is private.

We don't know anything.

All we know is what Tony reveals and what anyone hears from sources that are dealing with aspects of the business.

So when we hear that the pay-per-view numbers are going down, it's important to realize these aren't public numbers.

The numbers you're getting are from the pay-per-view services or the streaming services or AEW themselves, who you can't trust for any of these numbers.

And now you hear about these deals.

We don't know what the number really is.

It says 250 for one, 150 for the other.

Tony's not going to tell us, and it's not going to be public information.

So it could be a whole lot more, it could be less.

Well, and that then may play into buyer's remorse that I was originally thinking.

They somehow got hornswoggled into paying too much

for what they're getting and said, well, we got an out.

Let's exercise it.

But

again, it seems like they crow a lot about, oh, the big numbers, but the small numbers, nobody would want that public, that you sold your rights in 18 fucking international markets for 150 grand or whatever it was.

So

we shall see.

I wonder if there, if there's going to be a hue and cry and outburst from all the fans now that they're deprived of this programming in those areas.

I don't know.

There may be a hugh cronin.

I'm not sure about that.

But listen, I hear something in the background.

I apologize for any noise, ladies.

That is the goddamn my gardeners.

You don't think goddamn them.

Well,

I'll motherfuck them if you'd like.

It's the motherfucking gardeners.

Earl and Stanley.

Earl and Stanley.

Let me ask something of Jim and Jim.

Again, it all comes back to they've been building up for the entire run of AEW to the television rights renewal.

They got their first one right away, a very friendly one, but it kept them going during the pandemic.

The timing was perfect.

The next one's coming up.

They put their cards on the table.

For AEW to be a profitable business, they need a rights deal with a significant increase.

At the same time, the ratings are going down.

Sorry for people that want to deny that.

The ratings are going down.

There's less interest.

There's less viewers.

Reports now coming out that the pay-per-views are down.

So that means AEW can't even deny that.

And now we're hearing that they're losing international deals due to lack of interest.

There's no viewership.

That's lack of interest.

Altogether, it's not a pretty picture.

And again, if Tony may be able to get it, but if he doesn't get a major increase in rights,

everything CM Punk said is true.

And other people have said it too, but he most recently and most public, it's not a real business.

Because

again,

they're losing a television deal or losing streaming deals.

But that's the problem is that Tony has been so convinced.

And I've said this before, and I don't think this can be covered by a non-disclosure agreement,

a feeling that you get from speaking to someone.

First time I ever talked to him,

there was no doubt in his mind that this was going to be a booming success.

There was no doubt in his mind that he could

effectively blow the WWE out of the water.

He could have the greatest wrestling promotion and the greatest talent and the greatest wrestling.

And for the fans, this was, it was a foregone conclusion.

There was no,

and I'm not talking about you can't go into something being scared to death.

Oh, fuck, this ain't going to work.

You have to have both confidence, but a realistic,

you know, feeling an opinion of where your

place may be.

And

running a viable wrestling promotion and getting on TV and kicking Vince's ass and having a better just, oh, that's just what we're going to do.

Those are two different things and two different aspirations.

And

especially when you consider that he was thinking of doing this with himself as the booker who had never done this ever before, ever, anywhere for real.

And hiring a bunch of people.

who had done this on the, hey, kids, let's put on a show level in the barn with mickey rooney and judy garland

and that it was good and that's why i i knew this was instantly this would be chaos and confusion and heartache by the numbers but the point is

he has spent money and signed talent and

shot television and done all the things that he has done from the start

like that he was already making fucking hundreds of millions of dollars a year that he was convinced that this was going to make.

And so, and now that he's put the carrot out at the end of the longest stick, being the TV, well, the TB rights deal, we blow the lid off of that.

Well, we're going to be farting through silk.

It's the same thing.

He's never considered the fact that they might not want to pay what they're paying now.

It's a new guy.

Our numbers are down.

Instead of,

this has almost been like a five-year exercise in the logic that shitstain was using in his demented mind

when he said, well, if we do our jobs right, business will never go down.

No, it's always going to go down no matter what the fuck you do.

So

this whole thing has been, well, I'll just spend all this fucking money because it doesn't matter.

And then I'll get the rights fee and then I'll be making money.

But it doesn't matter whether he loses money or makes money because he's got plenty of money.

But that's it.

It's all,

he's been presuming that all these things would be successful, that he would be a good booker, that this would be a great wrestling promotion, that they would beat the WWE because the fans didn't like him, didn't like Vince, were mad at the company, that all the wrestlers would want to come here.

And one by one,

these things have proven to be not quite as easy to accomplish as he thought originally.

And this is going to be the big one.

I'm not saying he's not going to get a deal.

He might get the same deal he's got already.

But why would anybody increase this when all the other metrics that he's got are going down and there's not that many people, big TV networks, interested in the goddamn wrestling business to begin with, unless it's WWE.

And we've already established who those people are.

And few of them probably wouldn't be interested in Tony and his

little play project there.

So

he thought all these things and all these things didn't happen.

And now he's thinking this thing and this thing probably ain't going to happen.

Does that make sense to anybody?

The gardener behind you.

Yes,

he already knows.

He won't talk to Tony, take his calls either.

Well, we will stay on top of this.

Apparently, AEW has also just hired a new senior marketing director of live events.

His name is Jeremy Flynn from the Professional Bull Riders Circuit.

The what?

Hired by Kosher Irby, the new senior marketing director of live events.

And he's been the under professional bull riding beat.

That's right.

The under assistant West Coast promo man

has joined AEW.

But hey, who knows?

You know what?

Lee Fitting, who knew that an outsider would come in,

and it's not even just about professionalism.

It's just about revitalizing things with a look.

You never know.

Maybe one of these outsiders that AEW hires will be the one to turn things around.

Well, they can't do anything.

They can't do anything about the booking, so I guess they can't do anything to turn it around.

Yeah, in fairness to Lee Fitting, he wasn't an outside.

He was coming from doing sports television broadcasting.

If you're a professional at doing that,

then you should be able to adapt.

And he has, but he's not really an outsider because he wasn't asked to come in and book.

He's asked to come in and shoot and figure out

different and intriguing ways to showcase the product that the company is producing, the other departments.

And I.

I'm not knocking

the bull riders or whatever, but I'm not sure there's a crossover audience

with the marketing of the bull riding and the wrestling.

Now, maybe back in the 70s,

the bull riding and the wrestling audience would have gone hand in hand, but I think they probably split somewhere over the last 20 years.

It's promoting stars, or I mean, I guess maybe tag team stars.

You know, it's Big Bill with the stallion.

I don't know how they do it.

Well, wait, now you sound like Vince now going through his toy chat.

Oh, I need a stallion.

I need more animals.

Do they have star bull riders?

And puppies.

Now, come on now.

Don't let the puppies are too young to be exposed to the bull riding.

But are there like celebrity bull riders that are known to the average bull riding aficionado?

Just type in.

I'm looking up their website.

I'm ahead of you.

I am ahead of you.

Well, just type in stars of bull riding.

Here's their website, pbr.com, not the beer.

Here's a man holding a big check with two fine-looking women on either side of him.

Casio Diaz concludes the 2024 Unleash the Beast regular season in Louisville.

What?

With seventh event victory.

You weren't following this?

It just happened on the 27th in your hometown.

Apparently, this is going to, were they over at Broadband Arena?

Remember, I said that place always smells like cow shit?

Uh, as the regular season ended in Louisville, Brazilian phenom Casio Diaz, His rookie season.

Well, he's a rookie.

He's like the Luthes of Bullriding.

Does it say where it is?

His momentum, however, came to an end when he was tossed by Smooth Steel in 3.79.

So here are the names of some of the Bulls.

There's Let's Roll, Smooth Steel, Do Dat Eddie,

Renegade, Johnny Walker Red,

Doze You down.

Eduardo.

No, this is one of the other bull riders.

Excuse me.

Oh, I was going to say,

who's going to name a bull Eduardo?

No, Diaz is number one.

Some guy, Crimber is number two.

And then Eduardo.

Is it Eduardo who's number three from Brazil?

And Dalton Castle?

What?

No, bullshit.

What?

Is that a.

Dalton Castle is not riding bulls now, is he?

It's spelled differently, but it's Dalton K-A-S-E-L.

Well, there you go.

Dalton Castle.

As well as Alan D'Souza.

Now, who's riding Alan D'Souza?

Or is he the

bull of the woods?

Or is he the

rider or the ride-e?

I don't know.

There was also Peter Built.

That's a horse, one word.

Peter Built.

Always been crazy.

Tick.

The crazy tick.

Tick.

Also, hunting trip, Jersey Mike, and top dollar.

I knew he'd find more.

I knew he'd find more.

And that's perfect for him.

But how do they get to saddle on him so the cowboy could try to ride him?

Also on the show, apparently, the agenda.

Mr.

Nightlinger.

Norse God.

The Intimidator.

Manhater.

Fast Flow.

Airtime.

Wait a minute.

Is Fast Flow?

Wasn't that on Family Guy?

She was the women's wrestling champion.

No, I was heavy flow.

Dalton Castle came in second

at the

Yum Center.

It says it here.

They had bullshit in the Yum Center.

Well, bull riding.

Well, you think those bulls didn't shit in that building?

Try getting some 200-pound motherfucker on your back and see if you don't let a shit or two

inadvertently try while trying to get him off.

But

they bring those dirty, filthy animals,

plus the bulls, not even talking about the bull riders, into the Yum Center where they have concerts and banquets and

bar mitzvahs.

And it's a 22,000-seat building.

How many people are going to go to see a motherfucker try to ride a bull?

Here's my favorite name of one of the competitors.

This is not a bull.

This is one of the actual riders cody jesus

all right

well we will stay on top of this story with the aew bull riding and uh so much more

because they've they've already proven to be champions at dick riding so there's no reason why they shouldn't bring the bull in

well there's one more bull big bull left to discuss here this week it's your show by the way i don't know why i'm leading things i don't know well we don't really keep track anyway anyway.

SmackDown for April 26th

featured the first night of the big WWE draft.

It was in Cincinnati.

Plumber Moxley's hometown, by the way, last time Moxley and AEW was in Cincinnati.

I think at that time that was their lowest ticket sales ever for a TV taping in the guy's hometown.

They're trying to tell him something there.

Yeah.

Wait, what?

What was the crowd here, Brian?

Did you get a ticket figure?

Because it looked to be tens of thousands of people again.

There was a lot of people there.

I'll look and see if we can get an attendance figure.

And while you do that, I'm going to lean heavily on, Brian, on your

sports fanocity.

Your fanaticism with the sports.

You know the baseball.

You know the football.

You know the cricket, the rugby, the lacrosse, these things.

And I don't follow the football.

And I've never seen the NFL draft.

I don't know what the particulars are, what the

detail, how they go about the thing, and, you know, et cetera, right?

But I would probably, if I had to make a guess about one thing, and you can tell me whether I'm right or wrong or not,

the one thing I do know about the NFL draft, it's probably a shoot, isn't it?

Is it a shoot?

I mean, it's a real draft.

I don't know what else you could be referring to.

Well, I mean,

the teams don't.

There aren't any turns.

Well, no, the teams don't get together and make up the lists beforehand and say, okay, you announce this guy and I'll announce that guy, and it's all a work.

And they do it, and then they just go out and read it, right?

No, they're actually, when they're picking, they're picking.

That's right.

A lot of times teams get crossed up because they expect a team before them to do one thing and then they do something else and you have to quickly on the fly change your strategy.

And boom, wild card, bitches.

Right?

So, So this is a shoot.

They're picking.

And I would assume that since they're picking like that,

that they're trying to pick the best players

early on rather than wait until later.

Hence, why that it's always a praise of someone when they say, well, you're a first-round draft pick.

Because that's where

the big stars go in a first round.

Number one overall is the biggest thing.

And then after that, just being in the first round is a pretty significant thing.

Yeah,

you're going for the best folks there, right?

And then down to the fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth round, then you're getting the people that walked on with a goddamn dirty jock and just won a chance.

Well, don't say that.

There are still plenty of really good.

I mean, there are some people that have gone really late in the draft.

There are rounds into like the 90s sometimes.

Well, but you're still, it's diminishing returns at that point.

So the point is,

how

I understand

if that's a system the NFL uses, then that's fine.

But why

are they still doing this in the WWE when they can't do it where it makes fucking sense because of the nature of wrestling?

You can't just draft people.

It violates even the logic on their programs when we've seen Aldiss and Pierce, the general managers,

you know, trying to sway the talent, talk this guy to signing a contract.

No, let me tell you the deal I've got.

Well, what if they've signed one of these big deals and made this big fucking thing, and the draft comes up two weeks later, and everybody says, I want him.

What?

The guy doesn't have any say in it?

Then why did he have so much say when they were fucking fighting over him and arguing over him and trying to get him to sign?

the contract with their brand if he could be taken away willy-nilly in the twinkling of an eye.

Do you see where I'm going with all of this?

Roman Reigns.

Well, he's not in it.

Exactly.

He chose.

He just decided he didn't want to be in it.

Yes, you can just say, no, I'm not in it.

I won't be there.

Don't RSVP me.

And so he's not in it.

And then the champions,

previously, they've had, well, the guy's got a belt on Raw and the SmackDown drafts him, so he has to fucking...

I think, didn't they actually have

one of the sets of tag teams just hand each other the belts one time?

I think so.

And then also, they've had like the U.S.

and International and Intercontinental Belt switch shows various times where one gets drafted to one show, and then, what do you know?

It, a few rounds later, the other one gets drafted to the other show.

Wouldn't you know who won the pony?

But this time, the champions are ineligible to be drafted, so they're staying with their brand.

So

if people can just pull out of it, and/or people who have signed big time,

highly negotiated contracts with one show could just be drafted the other show.

Oh, you're over here now.

You're over here now.

Then, and some people, if you're a champion, you're in all this, why the fuck are they doing this?

It makes no sense.

They're just copying.

The NFL and same week they do it.

Is that basically what we're down to now?

We're down to something that would pop a rating in the past, so it's become an annual tradition.

But the biggest problem was no one got, it felt like no one got drafted anywhere.

Everyone stayed the same except NXT people.

Well, and that's another thing we'll talk about.

We'll go through all of these because there was some other things on the program, but intermittently through

SmackDown, they would have

two people with some

loose potential connection to fucking what they're doing come out and announce

the draft picks.

And

the first two were Cody and Triple H, right?

And so they obviously have plenty to do.

Triple H as the

CCO, chief content officer, and Cody, the world champion.

So they're going to announce the first round pick

or picks.

They do four at a time.

Going to SmackDown

Bianca Belair.

She's already on SmackDown, so she stays there.

Going to Raw,

number two, Jey Uso.

He's already on Raw.

He stays there.

And again,

all due respect to Bianca Belair and Jey Uso.

But Jesus H.

Christ, when there's the Seth Rollins's, the Randy Ortons, the Drew McIntyre's, the goddamn,

there's a lot of people

that one would think would be the first-round draft pick if you're going for the biggest star and the biggest business mover.

Before that, even if Roman Reigns had dropped out.

And then number three, going to SmackDown from NXT,

Carmelo Hayes, and number four, Raw,

Seth freaking Rollins, who stays there because he's already been there.

So out of four picks, three people stay where they're at, and we get Carmelo Hayes from NXT.

And

while more on that later, because Carmelo comes out and does a promo and challenges Cody and they have a match,

is anybody seriously thinking that Carmelo Hayes

is the number three most important

person on the WWE roster that should be picked that is not either a champion or Roman Reigns?

He is a very talented guy who a lot of people are high on, but it's kind of crazy that he would, again, you know, the whole thing is a bullshit draft, but he probably wouldn't be a number three pick in an overall draft if it was legit.

well and that's why i'm saying if they're gonna do it why don't they make it where people won't say horse in the first round and go what the photo broadbreakers over there

or what you know and they did nothing to cause anyone to pop so the fans are like reacting like it's the academy awards not like oh he's going to that show no reaction to anything

because it doesn't make any difference to them they're sitting there right then

They just, they would like to see these people instead of hearing them talked about going to another program.

Hey, on that topic, Jim, you asked before, SmackDown, Heritage Bank Center, Cincinnati, as of the morning of the show,

it was 47 tickets shy of sellout.

I believe they sold out.

Tickets distributed, 12,677.

And

according to WrestleTicks.

This is the first sold-out show I've ever tracked for them in the building, which has been a challenging market to draw well in.

And previously, they did a super show there.

It's a house show in June of last year, 6,200 people.

Raw in January of last year, 7,600 people.

When Cincinnati gets hot, it gets hot.

When it cools off, it cools off.

And sometimes that doesn't follow the rest of the pattern.

1986,

Midnight Rock and Roll, Dusty and Flair

sold out the Cincinnati Gardens.

What is that?

10,600 people or thereabouts, I believe.

And the same night, 10 miles away, Hulk Hogan and the WWF at Riverfront Coliseum did 6,000 people.

So the point is, there was like 16, 17,000 people went to wrestling in the same city in the same night, two different shows.

And we never did that again.

I don't think Crockett ever sold out Cincinnati again when they weren't running opposite us.

It was just, it was a big fucking big night, a big night.

Back to the draft.

Back to the big draft.

Should have closed the window.

Wouldn't have had that problem.

So for whatever reason, I have no fucking earthly idea why Michelle McCool and Tori Wilson came out to announce the second round draft picks.

I know that they have previously appeared for the WWF or WWE and passed that.

What the fuck?

Are they germane to anything here in this?

She's germane because she's the Undertaker's wife, so we have to pretend she's a legend.

And then Tori Wilson, I guess, was maybe just friendly with the new management in ways that cause her to be involved.

I don't know.

Oh, come on.

I'm not even saying anything sexual, but I'm just someone in the management now said, Hey, how about Tori Wilson?

And

she had no plans that night, so she came.

There's no sinister thing there.

All righty.

Well, number five.

Weirdo.

Staying with SmackDown.

The man that also hears voices in his head, Randy Orton.

So he's not going anywhere.

But Randy Orton coming two picks after Carmelo Hayes, and

I don't.

And then number six is Braun Breaker,

who is going to Raw.

And I missed, hasn't he?

He's made a couple of appearances already, but I think he's been on SmackDown, correct?

He was brought to SmackDown by Nick Aldous, wasn't he?

But is he one of the guys that took the big deal?

Because it's only been a few weeks.

Yeah, so now he's okay.

Well, those deals apparently aren't worth the goddamn paper they're not printed on.

Why wasn't he excluded like Roman Reigns?

Because he forgot to fucking say, hey, I don't want to play.

So then, number seven,

refrigerator Jacks going over to the SmackDown.

Why again,

Jax, the number seven,

most important talent on the Raw.

And number eight, Liv Morgan.

Why, why?

Goes to Raw.

And I mean, we've still, we haven't talked about it.

Wasn't Sean Raw?

Well, yeah, then she stays there.

Drew McIntyre is still out there.

Apparently, he's in the draft for Monday.

See, that's another thing.

If they didn't save some people for fucking Monday, Monday would get all the scrubs.

But if this was a real draft, Drew McIntyre wouldn't be still out there available on Monday, would he?

And there's more people available Monday, too, because it's a three-hour show.

So you saw the picture of all the different faces.

It was much more than SmackDown.

Some of those faces you could even identify if given a moment to dwell on it.

Hey, did you see they released Cameron Grimes?

Yes.

That's probably the best thing for him because

they were just going to just make him completely meaningless and beat him into powder and probably kill his love for the wrestling business.

At least now he can try to do something different and,

you know, reinvent, change the gimmick, whatever.

Maybe they will see him differently in the future somehow.

Yeah, so they put up an emotional video talking about he just got the call that he got is released.

I definitely hope hope he I'm sure it'll be AEW just based on a number of things, but I hope he does something.

He was really good, and he was misused once he got to the main roster.

The other day, they wouldn't let him grow his fucking hair.

That was the best part of him.

His chest hair or his hair hair?

All of his hair.

Just hair.

He had hair on his goddamn eyelids.

Grow that motherfucker, make him goddamn JoJo the dog-faced boy.

I don't, whatever the fuck, but let him be natural.

Don't you like it, like it when people have their natural hair all over them, Brian?

I've never thought about this.

I've never thought about this ever.

I don't know what you see.

We don't even have a manscape spot today.

Yeah, you're transitioning to nothing.

Well, but see, here's the thing: if you want to be goddamn different and be on television, then you got to let a lot of shit grow.

So, round number three was announced by Bubba Ray and Devon Dudley.

And

they're closer, more closely involved than potentially Michelle McCool and

Tori Wilson.

But nevertheless, number nine,

staying with SmackDown LA Night.

Number nine, number nine.

Yeah, number nine.

Number nine.

And here's a revolution for you.

They turned one complete revolution and made a backward step.

Number 10 is Ricochet.

Wonderful for the kids.

But again, Drew McIntyre and the other big stars, they're shooting themselves themselves in the foot with this.

Then number 11,

SmackDown,

which they've been on anyway, but the bloodline, Solo, Tonga, and Paul, all three of them.

Remember last year when I said they drafted five people at one pick, got five different people?

I said, shouldn't you limit it till you get one

heartbeat per one pick?

So the bloodline goes to SmackDown.

And in number 12, Raw gets Seamus.

Seamus.

Whichever.

And he's just come back, so we didn't really know where he was at anyway.

He was on Raw.

He was on Raw with Drew McIntyre.

Well, he just came back.

He came out to fucking interrupt Drew because Drew was on Raw.

This is the stupidest draft they've ever done.

Nothing happened.

Well, and in round number four, my favorite one, because it was Theodore Long and Bradshaw making the announcements.

Number 13, A.J.

Styles is with SmackDown.

Where he was?

Where he was.

Number 14,

Chad Gable, Fat Otis, Tozawa, and Model Girl are all

four still going to be on Raw.

Exactly where they were.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All four of them.

And then Andre goes to SmackDown.

Where's he been?

Well, he's kind of been on both shows because he was in the stuff of the Judgment Day, but also he was mixed up with the LWO a little bit.

Yes, so he's just wandering.

Now he's going to SmackDown.

And then Raw

gets Kiana James.

And

again.

She's apparently a young lady in NXT, and they did a little package on her and then interviewed her.

And I didn't see particularly anything to look forward to because

she's got a corporate gimmick because she wears glasses and carries a briefcase with her stripper outfit.

And the gimmick seems heel,

but she did a giggly babyface promo on how happy she was to be chosen for this great honor.

And there's still a ton of major name fucking talent out there still unpicked, but Kiana James was indispensable for the Raw brand.

I don't even know who she is, so I can't say anything.

There you go.

So

the only other things on this program

were just kind of, you know, placeholding stuff and some matches and the thing to introduce Carmelo, which we'll get to it in a minute.

But

if they're going to do the draft, I say they ought to make the draft like a shoot

to the best of, in the fans' eyes, to the best of their ability, and go for the fucking heavy hitters and the big stars.

And you could, you can put a brawn breaker in a top

four picks and make it mean something if the fans can see that there's a clear pecking order from the top down, that people are going for the big names first.

A first-round draft pick in that means something.

But it doesn't if

Kiana James, somehow in this fucking system is more valuable than the aforementioned Drew McIntyre.

And if anybody thinks that the one person that has come from NXT

over the last couple of months or to now that is not going to be the biggest star in the fucking wrestling business is not Braun Breaker, you're crazy.

Now, I probably put a couple of double negatives in on that, but point is he's so far ahead of the pack, nobody else should be really looking for another goddamn option at this point.

Just go with Mother Nature.

Anywho, your final draft comments.

I agree with your thoughts about Bron Baker, but I put Logan Paul in that mix, too.

If he goes more full-time with wrestling and does more stuff,

I'm a major fan of everything he's done from the promos to the matches.

So, well,

and I agree with any here.

Is Logan Paul eligible?

He's a champion.

He's a champion.

Then he ain't eligible for the draft.

That's right.

But

and well, he's already a champion.

The only reason Braun isn't is because he just got here.

Logan Paul kind of backdoored his way in.

But I see what you're saying there.

But I'm talking about a full-time guy with his entire career in front of him and that

level of talent already.

Because let's face it, with Logan, it's still going to be

a learning experience on how to call it in the ring and do it naturally on your own, whereas Braun

apparently has that because he just has the instinct.

But we'll see.

Anywho, they did a contract signing with Cody and AJ.

And just a couple of comments on this match.

AJ gets the title shot because it's in France, 12.30 in the afternoon on Saturday.

I think that's pretty much it, right?

Because

does anybody believe there's there's a chance in Hades that the belt will change hands?

Does anybody really want to buy a ticket to see this match?

It's not even AJ's fault.

It's just the position this is in.

You know, does anybody give a shit except the people in France and Peacock's paying for it anyway?

Is it that type of pay-per-view main event?

Sadly, yeah.

I think it'll be a good match, but you're watching a match, you know Cody's going to win.

So,

you know, unfortunately, that's the nature of the booking right now.

And I mean, if it was a big grudge match that you wanted to see and you knew he was going to win, that wouldn't even matter.

But this is neither a big grudge match you want to see him win, nor a match that you question he's going to lose.

So, eh, eh.

Anyhow,

they basically did that.

And then, as I mentioned,

Cody had a match with Carmelo Hayes, who came out and challenged him.

And

I got a,

I watched this because I said, all right, if they're putting this much confidence in this guy or, you know,

number three draft pick,

let's see.

And

I was, I knew that Cody was going to have a match to try to make the guy,

you know, look like a main event potential level talent.

And I didn't think that it was going to be, and it wasn't one of those deals like on AEW where they go 20 fucking minutes, it takes Cody everything he knows to beat the guy.

So I was trying to be open-minded because we've seen Carmelo a few years ago, maybe kind of when we were watching NXT for a while, but

I can't remember it.

Also, I'm sure he's gotten better.

Having said that, he's athletic.

He can take great bumps.

He can do springboards off the ropes, all kind of the cutters and the springboards and the springing DDTs.

You're talking about Cody or Carmelo?

No, Carmelo.

Talking about Carmelo.

And, you know, he's very,

very good athletically,

but,

you know,

the promo earlier is okay.

He didn't have to talk long and he had something to say and he got it out.

And the match here, maybe his nerves.

He

He does spots like a baby face, but he kind of had

the

pie-faced Cody at one point.

He started what kind of looked like heat on him at another point, but then Cody fought back.

I don't know how they've been portraying him in NXT, face or heel, or how they're going to do it here, but

right now I'm seeing he's a very talented mid-card guy that does good athletic things.

Neither the size nor the promo

is outstanding or eye-catching or ear-catching in any specific way.

And,

you know, he

looks like he'd be one of the most talented guys on AEW television

because he's kind of the same size there and does all the springy things.

But I didn't see,

you know, at one point, he, he,

Carmelo did the springboard DDT.

Well, wow, boy, that looked great.

Got a two count, and then he got lost.

And he

bent over and got something on Cody that wasn't a fucking hold.

He didn't have a hold of himself, much less Cody.

And then, because Cody's calling the match, and I know Carmelo is trying to listen, but then Cody had to turn into it to put himself in a front facelock and then get him back on the

nerves again.

But I don't see a future WWE champion, which is what the number three draft pick ought to be.

I see a talented athletic guy that will probably

have good matches on the roster and maybe get a little more room for his promos one of these days.

What, am I being too critical or just

seeing what's going on in front of me?

I think he's...

From what I've seen, because he's been on SmackDown, I think, before just recently, and we've seen him a little bit in NXT.

He's good.

I know a lot of fans have been raving about some of his stuff in NXT.

The matches, he's good.

He had a good match against Cody, but it wasn't any different than anyone else's match.

To me, it didn't feel like that.

And then he lost.

So let's see what they do.

Nothing against him.

He seems like he's, like you said, maybe he'll become something.

They're high on him.

There are people there specifically high on him.

As opposed over in AEW, where they're mostly just high.

That's right.

But and that was basically, well, they had

the bloodline showed up and scared Paul again.

Solo and MFT Tonga

because they hadn't got drafted.

And Paul's like, well, no, Roman withdrew from the draft and you're adding new members and nobody knows what they're going to get.

And

right as they were probably going to get ANSI with Paul, then Owens jumped them and they got in a big fight and they fought to the ring and Orton saved.

And now we get Orton and Owens versus the bloodline in France.

And the heel luches, ooh la la,

the heel luches wrestled the face luches in part of this 14-person goddamn civil war amongst the Latin American countries.

And we got the, we found out.

Escobar came out and he said he proved that Dragon Lee didn't attack, or no, he didn't attack Dragon Lee before WrestleMania.

He got the security footage of who did it, and

it was video of Carlito attacking the fucking guy, beating the shit out of him, then going back out the door, then coming back in and being, oh, my God, you're hurt.

And then Carlito fucking jumps Dragon Lee and

lays him out and then runs off out through the crowd.

So

there's all kinds of trouble there.

But I mean, you know, it was,

here's the thing, Brian.

We'll close the discussion.

We got a little spoiled because they were peaking everything for WrestleMania.

All the stars were out in the night sky.

Everything was cooking.

And these shows got a lot more fun to watch for the most part for a couple months.

But now The Rock has gone back to Hollywood and Roman's gone to the island of relevancy and

Logan Paul pops in every once in a while.

And

there ain't as many stars on the program.

It's not that

the wrestling necessarily ever got any better or worse.

It's just that we couldn't wait to see what fucking major goddamn superstar was going to come out and talk to us.

And now that a few of those have taken the season off,

the programs are a little more blasé because we get more of the people that we don't really particularly give a shit about wrestling and a few more of the people that we don't particularly give a shit about talking.

This is why they should have put punk on commentary.

Well, I'm sure they're still going to, but I don't think they ought to do it

far enough from his return that we get used to him being around.

It needs to be still special.

Well, this is another special episode of your show.

Well, another special episode of my show has come to an end.

And folks, we will encourage you then to tune in to Brian's show, the drive-through, and or my show next week, which we'll do another.

We do one of these every week, one of each, yours and mine, mine and yours, yours, mine, and ours.

Just listen to all of them.

It can't hurt you.

It might help you.

It might learn you something.

Anyway, for Brian.

And all the rest of you whiny little crybabies out there that get mad at me,

I'm Jim Cornette.

Thank you.

Fucking you.

Bye-bye.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette

of Jim Cornette.