Episode 521: Jim Reviews WWE Elimination Chamber 2024

Transcript

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Speaker 36 Like a midnight and the rock and roller.

Speaker 37 He's in a fight for wrestling solar. Using a racket and some mind controller.

Speaker 36 He's Jim Cornette.

Speaker 37 The keys to the future, held by the past. And with tag team partner, Barion Last.

Speaker 36 He sends this message out by podcast.

Speaker 36 Jim Cornette!

Speaker 36 Well, he's never fake a phone phony.

Speaker 36 He never backs down from a fight.

Speaker 36 He never wins the pony. Cause his mama raised him right.

Speaker 36 It's time

Speaker 36 to prepare

Speaker 36 your mind.

Speaker 36 Get the experience.

Speaker 36 Get the experience of Jim Cordness.

Speaker 38 Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, the WWE printers and waste their pay-per-view in an offhand way. Folks, it's the time-stand still edition of the Jim Cordette Experience.

Speaker 38 And joining me. Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting lion, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.
Co-host of you. He may be a day late, but he's never a dollar short.
The great

Speaker 38 Brian Last, everybody.

Speaker 36 Aloha, Jim. A pleasure to be here once again.
As always, the great Brian Last appears, courtesy of the sponsorship of

Speaker 36 the future.

Speaker 38 What's it look like in the future? Are they going to pick this shit up a notch in the future, their great Brian Last, seer, soothsayer, prognosticator, and prognostician?

Speaker 38 And for we all know, practicing

Speaker 38 prevaricator.

Speaker 36 I don't know who made that the who you're talking about may be,

Speaker 36 but but I will say in terms of time travel, AEW Collision was very interesting this week because it started with, I guess, a modern, futuristic kind of car crash match, and it ended with wrestling before Sonnenberg.

Speaker 36 It's an amazing travel back in time in one two-hour episode.

Speaker 38 A lot of people were tripping at some point in that program, tripping and falling, tripping on something. We'll talk about that, you know, here as we get further into the program.

Speaker 38 but i was trying to form a cogent simile brian

Speaker 38 as to the diametrically opposed presentations of the two major wrestling groups

Speaker 38 and i figured it's kind of like this would you rather watch a

Speaker 38 two-hour compilation of highlights of interstate highway car crashes involving people you don't know in places you've never been

Speaker 38 or

Speaker 38 would you rather watch two hours of people you love and care about

Speaker 38 getting their hair cut and having a discussion with their barber?

Speaker 36 Who's the barber?

Speaker 38 Just some fucking guy.

Speaker 36 Not the regular barber?

Speaker 38 Not even the regular, just a new one. They got to start from scratch.
I like it a little bit above the ears.

Speaker 36 Well, a star is a star, and you always wonder if they have real hair or a wig. So I would probably go with that one.

Speaker 38 Well, that's what they're doing because that's the wwe approach and meanwhile over on the other side of the street they are trying to kill some motherfuckers with the most aggravated mayhem i've been charged with that before aggravated mayhem

Speaker 36 What other forms of mayhem can they charge you with?

Speaker 38 Well, there's mayhem and there's aggravated mayhem.

Speaker 36 And god damn it, then we can you be charged with just regular mayhem?

Speaker 38 Yeah,

Speaker 38 regular mayhem is a thing, and then there's aggravated mayhem, and then when you go all the way to fucking assault and mayhem with a deadly weapon, well, you've you're fucked then.

Speaker 36 One mayhem too far, yeah.

Speaker 38 One mayhem too far.

Speaker 38 But nevertheless,

Speaker 38 so that's what they're they're trying to do. And I'll tell you, before we talk about the wrestling, I...

Speaker 38 I have various things that I've written down. I got to bring up.
I got notes here. I want to keep people up to date on things.
One, I have to make

Speaker 38 a retraction or a correction. See, I do that.
We get on Uncle Dave and some of these other people if they don't do this. But so when I emit wrong information or give people

Speaker 38 an incorrect

Speaker 38 idea or try to lead them astray, I correct it as soon as I'm aware of this.

Speaker 38 So I'm making that statement right now. Remember here on your program a few days ago, the drive-through, I said, Brian, I'm watching this

Speaker 38 TV show on the Netflix called The Watcher. And boy, it's cool so far.
It's the people, the family buys a house with weird neighbors and spooky things ongoing and fucking creepy shit. And boy, howdy.

Speaker 38 And there's masked figures behind the fucking couch when they walk through the room, all this shit, right?

Speaker 38 Remember me telling you about this?

Speaker 36 Yeah, I had never heard of it before, and you surprisingly were introducing me to a Netflix show that I still haven't watched or probably won't be watching, but.

Speaker 38 Well, I was about to go into that. Remember I told people, oh, you ought to watch The Watcher? Don't fucking watch it.

Speaker 38 Do not fucking watch that show. Do not give it the time of your life.

Speaker 38 Seven hours of this fucking bullshit. These people, whoever is that Ryan Murphy motherfucker, he's on my shit list right now.
I liked American horror. Stevie Nicks was an American horror story.

Speaker 38 How could you not like it? And some of them other witches were in their own way appealing as well.

Speaker 36 But nevertheless, talking about what happened that turned you off to this show so much.

Speaker 38 Ryan fucking Murphy and everybody involved in this show. You know, the guy whose name I couldn't remember from goddamn Boardwalk Empire? He wasn't the star anyway.
Yeah.

Speaker 38 As a matter of fact, the show probably would have been better without him on that one either. Boardwalk Empire.
Fuck this guy.

Speaker 38 Fuck whoever this fucking actress is that plays his fucking fuck the what's his name?

Speaker 36 Do you ever

Speaker 38 know? I don't know. Look it up.
The Watcher on Netflix somewhere. Fuck Netflix for that matter.
These sus as Mama Cornette would say these sorry no-good son of a bitches.

Speaker 36 What happened?

Speaker 38 Remember I said I was just, I was about to start.

Speaker 36 Yeah, he was one of the stars of the last couple seasons of Boardwalk Empire. And he was yeah.
He was on vinyl.

Speaker 36 Remember, we talked about that awful show, vinyl, that lasted one season and HBO is like, never again.

Speaker 38 Yeah, well, fuck Bobby fucking Cardinal or whatever his goddamn name is.

Speaker 36 Canaval. There's no R.
Connaval.

Speaker 38 Well, he can kind of my val.

Speaker 38 So fuck him too. Point being,

Speaker 38 I'd watched the first four shows, I believe, when last we checked in.

Speaker 38 And I think it was maybe it was wrong about the fifth show that I was starting to go, you know, now wait a minute. Some of these people

Speaker 38 are not reacting in a logical fashion.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 I'm struggling with some, some of the plot developments here, but I'm sure that's just a momentary diversion.

Speaker 38 And they'll kick this thing into high gear because they got, I figure in six and seven, they got a lot of spleening to do. Because remember, I said.

Speaker 38 I'd be upset if it was some cliffhanger and goddamn, then the show didn't get renewed and you never found found out, right? I'm hoping this is a self-contained series. Well,

Speaker 38 I've watched all seven of them now, and I still don't fucking know.

Speaker 38 I don't know shit, I don't know shit from apple butter. I don't know whether this thing's going to continue.

Speaker 38 I don't know whether that was a cliffhanger, I don't know whether that was the end of the show and the series.

Speaker 38 I don't know who did what to who in what fashion and why

Speaker 38 and how

Speaker 38 they didn't explain shit.

Speaker 38 When six was over with, I said, okay, again, we got, is this a two-hour finale? What the fuck? How are they going to get to the bottom of this? They didn't get to the bottom of a dick.

Speaker 38 They didn't even fucking pop the top off the dick.

Speaker 38 They explain nothing. You don't know how or why any of this was done or by who.

Speaker 38 And some of the shit just doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense. And they just left it.
They just left it. They just fought off.

Speaker 36 I have Netflix here, and it says it's a 2022 series.

Speaker 36 It was premiered October 2022.

Speaker 38 It's old? I thought it was new. We just heard about it.

Speaker 36 It is loosely based on a 2018 article by Reeves Wiederman for New York Magazine's website, The Cut.

Speaker 38 I'll agree it was loosely based. It was so loose.
It was positively fucking flaccid, but go ahead.

Speaker 36 Despite being originally conceived as a mini-series, The Watcher was renewed for a second season in November 2022.

Speaker 38 And have they done it?

Speaker 36 I don't see anything here about the production of the second season.

Speaker 36 What the fuck?

Speaker 38 So if I'd have watched that thing when it first came out, it's two years later. I still would be as mad as I am now that I wasted my fucking seven hours of my life.
Stace was hot. Harley was pissed.

Speaker 38 She had to sit there in front of it, too.

Speaker 36 Well, she didn't have to sit there, but listen, you shouldn't force the dog to watch these things.

Speaker 36 The modern television show, This Happens, it really started with the Sopranos with giant gaps in between seasons. Years go by.
Game of Thrones, too.

Speaker 36 I guess maybe the watcher, they need a lot of time to produce the next seven episodes.

Speaker 38 a lot of time after that

Speaker 38 last episode

Speaker 38 i can't imagine anybody's going to give them any more time maybe they all quietly slunk off into the darkness

Speaker 38 over that

Speaker 36 well we have to find out does he find out that nora is watching

Speaker 36 hey

Speaker 38 how do you know i'm i got wikipedia right here oh god damn it i thought you said you hadn't watched it but you're you're cheating i haven't

Speaker 36 That's not cheating. You're just cheating.
I told you I had this before.

Speaker 38 You're just like that with the interwebs where you can just pull up information.

Speaker 36 Theodora, who names their child Theodora nowadays?

Speaker 38 Well, she's an older lady.

Speaker 36 Oh, that explains it. Yeah.
That explains it. Although a lot of the older names.

Speaker 38 Theodora was big in the 40s and 50s.

Speaker 36 And there's a Karen. I see there's a Karen.

Speaker 38 You have a Karen.

Speaker 38 Stiffler's mom is in it.

Speaker 36 Oh, is she Theodora?

Speaker 38 No, no.

Speaker 38 She was,

Speaker 38 oh, goddamn. What was her? The real estate agent.

Speaker 36 That woman can do anything she wants. She'll always be referred to as Stiffler's mom.

Speaker 36 Well, and she's still... She did that in 99.

Speaker 38 She's still a buxom older lady. But anyway, the whole thing, it just, it had a lot of potential.
So I don't know, they based it on a newspaper article.

Speaker 38 It sounds like they based it on something somebody scribbled on the stall wall at a truck stop when they were taking a shit.

Speaker 38 Because there was no, once they had the fucking spooky characters, there's no story, no substance whatsoever that has any kind of payoff.

Speaker 36 Hold on, I have an article here from thedirect.com.

Speaker 36 Those waiting for any sort of imminent release for the watcher season two on Netflix just got some bad news. Uh-huh.
Starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Conoval.

Speaker 36 This series was given a second season order by Netflix in November 2022, mere weeks after season one's premiere.

Speaker 36 Given the extended time since its...

Speaker 38 Before it had time to settle in with people just exactly how bad this thing stunk.

Speaker 36 Given the extended time since its announcement, some believe the show would be primed for a 2024 release as part of the streamer's tent poll lineup.

Speaker 36 According to a new report, The Watcher Season 2 has been pushed out of 2024. with a 2025 release more likely.

Speaker 36 The hit Netflix series appeared as part of a list of projects from the streamer that will skip 2024

Speaker 36 alongside

Speaker 36 Exo Kitty and the Recruit.

Speaker 36 As it stands, it is currently unknown.

Speaker 38 Wait a minute, Exo Kitty and the Recruit. Is that like a new Ant-Man and the Wasp?

Speaker 36 No, those are two separate shows. They are not combined as one

Speaker 36 super unit.

Speaker 38 I thought it was a buddy flick.

Speaker 36 I didn't. It may work better that way.
As it stands, it is currently unknown when The Watcher will go into production on its sophomore effort.

Speaker 36 Naomi Watts.

Speaker 38 I think this one that I just watched was a very sophomorish effort.

Speaker 36 Series star Naomi Watts revealed to Entertainment Weekly that she has not heard anything more about the show.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 36 Quote, I know they said yes to the next series, but I haven't heard anything more.

Speaker 36 All right.

Speaker 36 So maybe one day. This is the frustration with a lot of these shows.
And a lot of great shows go off the air to one season. Like Freaks and Geeks.

Speaker 38 The series ends. Come back to that again.
30 years. You have not lost your goddamn.

Speaker 36 It's the best show. It holds up.

Speaker 38 It's fascination.

Speaker 36 Well, the series ends with the girl running off with other teenagers that join the Grateful Dead on the Road.

Speaker 36 And that's the end of the series. You never get to find out what happens when her parents see her in a few weeks.

Speaker 38 Well,

Speaker 38 chances are they saw her again about seven years when they pulled her lifeless body out of a portico john

Speaker 38 in the goddamn parking lot somewhere.

Speaker 36 The grateful dead

Speaker 38 coliseum.

Speaker 36 Lifeless bodies. What are you talking about?

Speaker 38 Well, you know, these people

Speaker 38 were just infested with the drugs.

Speaker 36 The drugs.

Speaker 38 You know, here,

Speaker 38 I don't know that I have ever told you or put on the podcast because I just thought of it for the first time in 20 years, maybe,

Speaker 38 that I can recall a Vince McMahon quote.

Speaker 36 Oh, no.

Speaker 38 Which again

Speaker 38 shows how people can be

Speaker 38 so bizarre, bizarrely off-moral center in one area of their life while being so self-righteous about something else. Was that something that I uttered just now that you can understand?

Speaker 36 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 38 We are driving.

Speaker 38 Where was this? This was...

Speaker 38 Anaheim, WrestleMania 96, right?

Speaker 38 And we've got the rental Lincoln Continental,

Speaker 38 and it's Vince, Jim Ross, Bruce, and myself. And we are actually going to the building from our hotel.
We're going to the, what was it, the pond at Anaheim, right?

Speaker 38 And this was, remember, Louis Boccoli had been Rad Radford.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 I guess his run came to an unceremonious end sometime in, what, late 95.

Speaker 38 I can't recall the particulars now. I'm sure it's out there on YouTube or had been in somebody's shoot interview or whatever the case.

Speaker 38 But for the purposes of this, it was just a point that Louis was still friends with Candido and Tammy, but he was no longer with the company. But Louis also lived in Southern California.

Speaker 38 So he got together with Chris and Tammy is going to the show to see it and visit with them and probably try to

Speaker 38 politic to, you know, get his job back, right? For whatever it was, and I've there may have been substances related to whatever the cause was.

Speaker 38 But Vince is in the fucking front passenger seat, and me and Bruce are in the back. I think Jim Ross is driving.

Speaker 38 And I just remember passing them. I said, oh, there's, there's Chris and Tammy just idly.
And I saw Spokoli that was sitting in the seat, and Vince saw him at the same time. And Vince just said,

Speaker 38 Spokoli, that drug-infested son of a bitch.

Speaker 38 I'm like, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 36 Wow.

Speaker 38 You know, I can understand flunk at a fucking drug test, or if he had been the main event at a fucking pay-per-view and flunked a drug test and had to be taken off or in some way made headlines or whatever, right?

Speaker 38 But, you know, Spokoli, not the first one of the boys that made a mistake. And it was like he had been the drug pusher that OD'd Vince's grandchild or something.

Speaker 38 I'd hop back and look at Bruce and Bruce, of course, looks down at his notes, and we just drove on by.

Speaker 38 But that's when I knew chances are probably Spicoli wasn't going to get his job back. And I don't know what, because I wasn't in the office or in that car group or whatever to for that.

Speaker 36 It's about who was relaying stuff back to Vince because everyone was partying and there were plenty of guys getting fucked up on the same shit Louis Spicoli was, although he may have gone a little further than others.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 36 But who was telling Vince about it?

Speaker 38 Well, and that's, see, that's the thing. I was not privy to all the day-to-day drama at the point that was going on.

Speaker 38 I came in a couple months later and so all I was just like, holy, because I always like Spokoli.

Speaker 38 And I mean, yes, he, you know, made mistakes with what we were just talking about, but loved a business, good worker, had some personality.

Speaker 38 When I first, I, I first saw him in the locker room in Continental when we made,

Speaker 38 we had give our notice to WCW in 89, right?

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 when George Scott was Booker, and then, as we've told a million times, they fired him before we finished up. We took two months off.
We had already booked some dates, and then we came back.

Speaker 38 And a couple of them were in Continental Wrestling. Dundee was the booker.
And Spikoli, that was his first territory. And, you know,

Speaker 38 they were about to close down anyway, so he wouldn't be there long. But when we went in a locker room, I said, my God, you look like Bobby Eaton's little brother.
And that's when Bobby met him.

Speaker 38 We all met him for the first time.

Speaker 38 And that was,

Speaker 38 there was some germ of idea in my mind of a

Speaker 38 Smoky Mountain wrestling or a territory or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 38 And I said, you know, I would make you Bobby's little brother and nobody fucking knew it, right?

Speaker 38 And you had a different last name because Bobby's a star.

Speaker 38 But then, you know, the big fucking reveal happens when some fucking dastardly Hioka's Louis was a rookie then. He was a job guy, you know, level or opening match on house show level guy.

Speaker 38 But so you couldn't, you know,

Speaker 38 just be ridiculous with it.

Speaker 38 But some dastardly top heel fucking slayed little Louis Spokoli would come and find out he was little Louis Eaton from Huntsville, Alabama, and Bobby would come in to fucking

Speaker 38 get revenge for him or whatever. So I always, every time I saw Spokoli after that, I say, you're Bobby's little brother.

Speaker 38 But then I could, I could have got Bobby, or I could have got Bobby's little brother, but I didn't have Bobby.

Speaker 36 Did he work for you in Smoky Mountain?

Speaker 38 I'm trying to think if he can. No, because he still lived in California.
I mean,

Speaker 38 he was another guy. Candido, at least, could, you know,

Speaker 38 could drive down and both him and Tammy could make some money. But when Spokoli was really available, and plus he did a lot of stuff in Mexico at that period, in Japan, he was, he had

Speaker 38 jobs where he may have had to, you know, go out of the country to make the money, but he made more than I could have paid him. And it, you know,

Speaker 38 the angle wasn't there anymore.

Speaker 38 But anyway,

Speaker 38 so can I give you a television show that I'm sure that you will like because I've already watched all of them?

Speaker 36 No, this happened before. Can I give you a show that you watch?

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 38 Well, let me just tell you what it is, and then you judge me on that. I found instead a four-part James Brown documentary

Speaker 38 that is wonderful, and

Speaker 38 I think it's on Vice, as a matter of fact. And yeah, I checked to make sure they were still on the air because Dark Side of the Ring is coming up, and apparently they're still broadcasting.

Speaker 38 Now, I understand they've had some office furniture repossessed, but the broadcast tower and equipment's still operating.

Speaker 36 At any point, the signal may be taken over by All-American wrestling.

Speaker 38 Well, and either that or your Max Headroom fucking logo, but it's a four-part document, James Brown, Say It Loud. And they have tons of archival footage, as they say, and just amazing interview clips.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 I watched it on the on-demand gimmick.

Speaker 38 Stace has learned me all this newfangled technology, so that's why I'm shady now on the fucking network. But, well, you can't find anything else to watch on television these days.

Speaker 38 For fuck's sake, you gotta have a thousand channels, be able to fill four hours of viewing time per day.

Speaker 36 So, you're now more receptive to streaming, different services, the idea they have their own custom shows, they have shows as good as the network shows.

Speaker 38 Well, no, actually, well, Vice is on my cable, but I watched it on on-demand.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Well, again, you know, as long as they get the fucking 10 episodes of Darkseid, you know, out to the public, if they disseminate that, then they can,

Speaker 38 you know, whatever. I mean, K-Sara, Sarah.
But anyway, James Brown, say it loud, look it up, four-part documentary. You would love that as a music industry insider

Speaker 38 and critic and

Speaker 38 experienced reviewer. You would enjoy this, this television programming.

Speaker 36 No, I definitely want to see it. There was a really good James Brown documentary a few years ago.
I forget if it was HBO or Showtime, but it was tremendous.

Speaker 36 I want to say Mick Jagger may have been the producer, the executive producer of it.

Speaker 38 Well, yeah, and actually, they've got comments from Mick Jagger that they may have

Speaker 38 lifted via fair use from

Speaker 38 that project or who knows, whatever. But I saw that when you're talking about too, and I think it was HBO.

Speaker 38 And this is, they've got his daughters on this one, but they, you know, they've also got, oh, god damn it.

Speaker 36 Do they show the CNN thing where he was all fucked up on the air live? With

Speaker 36 who was it? I forget who the host was, but.

Speaker 38 Oh, well, there are clips of the dark period. They don't go into detail on that one, but I remember what you are talking about.
And who was his fucking, who was his partner in the band?

Speaker 38 Who was the guy that started the band? Bobby, Bobby Bird, right?

Speaker 38 Is that his name?

Speaker 36 I believe so.

Speaker 38 He's all over this.

Speaker 38 He's a feisty gentleman.

Speaker 38 you would enjoy the, or people out there, I'm trying to redeem myself. If anybody jumped on watching The Watcher before.

Speaker 36 If anyone started watching that show that's been out for a year and a half because of my recommendation.

Speaker 38 Well,

Speaker 38 I'd never heard of it.

Speaker 36 Soul Brother Number Two.

Speaker 38 With the magnitude of me, Brian, and the magnitude of the numbers of our audience, I probably just disseminated that pissy-ass putrid program to more people that had heard heard of it up until now.

Speaker 38 Hit Netflix series. What's that mean?

Speaker 38 Four fucking people with insomnia and two cat burglars sitting up watching this shit someday.

Speaker 36 Hey, now that you're streaming, do you have HBO Max? Well, now it's just Max. Max, do you have Max?

Speaker 38 I don't know. I just have whatever Stace puts on the television.
If it's not related to the cable, then I know how to work it.

Speaker 36 Because to me, the dream scenario, because I think it will go over amazingly, is you have to start watching Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Speaker 36 You've never seen an episode of it, and you love Seinfeld, and this takes it to a whole nother level, and it's kind of more in line with the Jim Cornett way of life than you probably realize.

Speaker 38 Well, all right, I'm going to write this down now. I'm going to curb your requests by

Speaker 38 watching some Curb Your Enthusiasm as soon as I have a chance when I get finished. Yeah, after the King of Kong with all the other things I have to do.

Speaker 36 Right after the King of Kong and Monster Squad.

Speaker 38 And I got to give another update because remember, well, you remember, obviously, we talk constantly, goddammit.

Speaker 38 But some of the folks out there, the people, the cult of cornet, may remember a few months ago or several months now.

Speaker 38 I've been talking about my cousin Larry, had health problems, got that pneumonia, lung infection, was in the hospital, in the rehab facility.

Speaker 38 Finally, went home before Christmas, thankfully, and has still been, you know, trying to doing physical therapy and trying to get feeling better.

Speaker 38 And he has been up and about more independently and feeling better. And he decides,

Speaker 38 it was last weekend now, or whenever this is

Speaker 38 seven to 10 days ago or so,

Speaker 38 he says to his wife, he said, I feel like, you know, going out and doing something. He has not been out of the house really, except for doctor's appointments since he got sick.
And it was summertime.

Speaker 38 It was six months.

Speaker 38 And so they get some friends of theirs, and they decide, well, we'll just go right down the road here, this restaurant we like, and we'll go eat dinner with them.

Speaker 38 And so he goes and has the first dinner in six months out, you know, with his friends and everything. And they were able to talk and all that stuff.
And he felt really good about,

Speaker 38 you know, being able to go out again and, you know, live somewhat of a normal life.

Speaker 38 That's what happened. That was on a Saturday night.

Speaker 38 And guess what happened on Monday morning?

Speaker 36 Oh, no. What happened?

Speaker 38 He tested positive for COVID with 102 degree fever.

Speaker 36 Oh, no.

Speaker 38 So that'll teach him to go out and I told him, I said, that'll teach you to go out in public. Going out in public is highly overrated.

Speaker 38 I mean, because his wife called me, she said, Larry's got COVID. I said, what did he get it from? The dog? Who's he been? How did he get COVID? We went out to dinner night before last.

Speaker 38 The first time he's been again in a public setting besides for a doctor's office where all the sick people are.

Speaker 38 He's been fine.

Speaker 38 He went to a restaurant. He got COVID.

Speaker 38 And he ain't back in the fucking bed.

Speaker 38 For all the people wondering if I will attend their wedding, bar mitzvah, or social function.

Speaker 38 And I'm sorry, I'm not doing the bake sales either. Although

Speaker 38 I may have to break down and do at least one fish fry during the season here. They keep plugging it on TV, but nevertheless.

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Speaker 27 Users must be 18 or older to play. Void work prohibited by law.

Speaker 38 You know, we got big television programs coming up that we told people to watch. And by the time they see this, the A ⁇ E

Speaker 38 WWE presentations will have begun. I guess we're going to talk about those at some point the next time we do a program, aren't we?

Speaker 36 Yay.

Speaker 38 Well, I think the first biography is Orton. Let's see how deep they get

Speaker 38 in his rookie year.

Speaker 36 If they get too deep, it may have to switch to a premium channel.

Speaker 38 Well, no,

Speaker 38 I'm talking about just his wrestling training and

Speaker 38 some of our footage when we were in a goddamn condemned warehouse.

Speaker 38 And again, I said the other week on a show, none of our, they killed all the careers of the guys we trained when we got our nice television-friendly facilities. And every time somebody sees OVW,

Speaker 38 it's in a brick fucking holding cell. It looks like it was from World War II.

Speaker 36 They never show Lashley when he was there. That was the first time I saw Lashley, Blaster Lashley in OVW.
Yeah.

Speaker 38 And well,

Speaker 38 he was green, but still, you would think they would, you know, he did some mighty impressive things.

Speaker 38 Can you?

Speaker 38 That has been 20 years ago. Can you imagine

Speaker 38 what he looks like now? And he's looked the same way for 20 years. He's a genetic marvel.

Speaker 38 Because, I mean,

Speaker 38 musculature,

Speaker 38 his physique, but his face, facially the same. He doesn't have a goddamn scar or a wrinkle that he didn't have fucking 20 years ago.
You can walk around. It's the same, take a picture of him.

Speaker 38 His driver's license picture is from 2004. It's the same fucking thing.

Speaker 36 I want what he's he's on.

Speaker 38 But you can't, there's no steroids for your fucking face.

Speaker 36 Who knows? You don't know that.

Speaker 36 You don't know that. You're not a dermatologist.
What do you know?

Speaker 38 I think probably somebody before Bobby Lashley would have found him and publicized. Steroids for your face.

Speaker 36 That would do the opposite. I don't think that's what he's using.
That would give him like muscular.

Speaker 38 Like big.

Speaker 38 What is he goddamn drinking? Jasha Gabor's blood? What are you inferring here?

Speaker 38 The adrenochrome straight from the Gabor sisters.

Speaker 36 So you're saying you thought the Gabor sisters looked very good later in life?

Speaker 38 Well, I've said they pretty much fucking got their face set for the last 40 years they lived, right?

Speaker 38 You couldn't, once they got everything all on there and together and the wigs and the harnesses and trusses and apparatuses, you couldn't tell them.

Speaker 36 You know, should Bobby start speaking in a Slovakian accent

Speaker 36 while doing promos?

Speaker 38 Don't let me tell you, darling.

Speaker 36 Darling, yes, everybody with darling.

Speaker 38 Let me tell you, darling.

Speaker 38 So the A ⁇ E programming will be coming up. And also, Dark Side of the Ring, our friends over there at the still operating Get It While It's On the Air Vice TV.

Speaker 38 The clock is now ticking. If it lasts 10 more weeks,

Speaker 38 we're going to get them all in. It's 10 episodes this season, and they start Tuesday night, March the 5th at

Speaker 38 what, it's 10 o'clock Eastern because this is late night adult subject matter. Viewer discretion is,

Speaker 38 if not demanded, then certainly advised.

Speaker 36 Can I say something that's probably not popular real quick and then we move on?

Speaker 38 Well, you do on a constant basis. Everything you say is not popular.

Speaker 36 I say the truth, though. It could not be popular.
That's fine. I say the truth.
Vice.

Speaker 36 is probably doing the right thing. I know it sounds crazy.

Speaker 36 They're going to stop publishing content on vice.com, but the idea that the business should be them producing content with the vice brand and their brand of news reporting and distributing it in different places,

Speaker 36 I think that probably makes more sense. So it sucks that everyone's losing their job, but it was a business that should have been kept small that got pumped up and got out of hand.

Speaker 36 And now look at the mess they're in.

Speaker 38 So wait, you're saying that Colin Thompson is a high-ranking executive in Vice 2?

Speaker 36 Oh, no, no, no, no, no. And if it happened, it would have to be like a secretive thing.

Speaker 38 Or did they just stole his business model?

Speaker 36 They may have stolen his business. I don't know.
The guy everyone remembers as the face of Vice when they had the show at HBO, Shane Smith,

Speaker 36 with all these announcements of all the layoffs and everything coming, not a peep from him.

Speaker 36 I even saw an article that said that he's nowhere to be found. What does that mean? You can't find him?

Speaker 36 So we'll see what happens. But yes, Dark Side of the Ring returns until black tuesday hits

Speaker 38 here's a question who's looking for him i guess the reporters were maybe well i but no but i mean how qualified are well how qualified are these have they how what kind of effort are they putting in when they said he can't be found well did they put the goddamn fbi on the case did they put mcgruff the crime dog is are there

Speaker 38 Are there fucking, you know, militias from the National Guard combing his known haunts. What kind of manhunt is underway for this guy, or is he just not answering the phone?

Speaker 38 And they say, oh, he can't be found.

Speaker 36 I don't know.

Speaker 38 I'd like to know what kind of effort's going into it.

Speaker 36 Well, I can't speak to the effort, but he was nowhere to be found. We'll see what happens, and we'll see what happens with Vice.
And, of course, that exciting Randy Orton biography.

Speaker 36 Now, I want the Bobby Lashley biography. They're not going to do, but it's your show.

Speaker 38 Well, yes, it is. And I'll tell you this, boy, howdy, I'm right where everybody can find me.

Speaker 38 I am right right here, visibly, well, not visibly, audibly, where everybody can hear me so that they know that I've not made off with their money.

Speaker 38 Because the fine folks out there who are listening to the sound of my voice that have sent in money for the Midnight Express and Heavenly Bodies tag team action figure sets are going to be pleased as punched to know that a mere two weeks after they've gone on sale, the first, I believe, 250 packages are going out in the mail.

Speaker 38 Well, by the time you hear this, because the week

Speaker 38 the week is starting in 12 hours or whatever,

Speaker 38 the first 250 packages, including the autographed photos and some of the books that were ordered in those packages and et cetera.

Speaker 38 And then by next week, an equivalent number will be going out because now me and the feather bottoms got this thing flying.

Speaker 38 And I would say by the time the third week rolls around, everyone's packages will be either delivered or in the mail.

Speaker 38 And we we will be caught up and still, of course, ready to service the ongoing public because you can order at any time with complete impunity right now at jimcornet.com, the Eaton and Condry action figure set, the Eaton and Lane action figure set, and the heavily bodies that's outpacing everybody because it's their first and last figure set

Speaker 38 and limited to 500 is. in the now in the last 200 left.
So none of these are going to be remade as we've talked about, or others done in the future, because I'm getting too old for this shit.

Speaker 38 But the final chapter of the Midnight Express 40th anniversary celebration is going out with a bang with these in the wonderful display boxes that look marvelous as they sit on your library shelf or

Speaker 38 whatever shelf you have in whatever room in your house that make a shrine, light some candles, maybe,

Speaker 38 I don't know, ground up a bird and a bird's bones and mix it with Eye of Newt and draw a pentagram in front of the action, and they'll come to life and begin speaking to you.

Speaker 36 They won't do that unless they're in the future. But only

Speaker 38 if you drink the tea

Speaker 38 containing the peyote that we

Speaker 38 give you if you order the deluxe pack.

Speaker 36 No, you're not sending peyote. First of all, no.

Speaker 38 And there is

Speaker 38 a recipe for the tea. Then you do the pentagram, then you set it on fire right there in your bedroom.

Speaker 38 And as the flames leap ever higher, the action figures come to life and put it out and save your ass.

Speaker 38 Right now at jimcornet.com.

Speaker 36 No.

Speaker 38 The figures.

Speaker 38 You can just read the information there on the website. It'll tell you basically everything you need to know.

Speaker 36 The figures are there. The fantasies of arson are in your own head, but go to Cornett's Collectibles at jimcornet.com.

Speaker 38 But the fantasies of arson, it's a carefully, it's a controlled burn.

Speaker 36 It's a fantasy of arson. that's what

Speaker 38 it's a controlled burn

Speaker 38 under strictly

Speaker 38 fucking uh you know scientific procedures you know witchcraft is a recognized science is it a coincidence that you're describing the uh plot to

Speaker 36 i what was it i was a teenage monster

Speaker 36 The end in color?

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 38 I could be stealing a bit.

Speaker 38 Well, and we want to thank our friends over at Me TV, including the incomparable Svinguli himself, the boss of the whole rat pack over there, and everybody, because they re-ran

Speaker 38 How to Make a Monster last night as we speak here and included with their bonus footage the footage of me at Lisa Marie Veron, Victoria's late lamented squared circle restaurant in Chicago.

Speaker 38 It's not there anymore, unfortunately. She moved back to California, but what a great place it was.
But I had a burger eating challenge with Svengoo up there, and it aired,

Speaker 38 that's probably been, what, seven years ago now?

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 they re-ran it for, you know, because now I guess it, if they only run it once every seven years, they get out of paying me any royalties.

Speaker 38 Or, you know, any kind of goddamn union scale or anything is probably why they're doing that. So look forward again in 2031 with Haley's Comet.

Speaker 36 Was she named after Lisa Marie Presley?

Speaker 36 Just because

Speaker 36 was Lisa Marie a common name before that point?

Speaker 38 Well, okay, that's the first time that anybody has ever asked me that question, and I'm trying to think.

Speaker 36 It's the first time I've ever thought of it.

Speaker 38 Of,

Speaker 38 well, no, I'm just, I was trying to think of Lisa Marie is the daughter, right?

Speaker 36 Every time you keep calling her Lisa Marie, I'm thinking of Elvis saying Lisa Marie. You know what I mean?

Speaker 38 Okay, but

Speaker 38 still, Lisa Marie Presley would be still older than Lisa Marie Varin, but no,

Speaker 38 there's all kinds of Lisa Maries down south.

Speaker 38 I don't know

Speaker 38 that she was from California. Well, Lisa Marie Presley wasn't the first Lisa Marie,

Speaker 38 like a Billy Joe, a Bobby Joe, and a Betty Joe.

Speaker 36 Of course.

Speaker 38 But I don't, you'd have to ask her parents. I'm not sure if they divulge that kind of information to somebody like you.

Speaker 36 Well, we will find out on a future episode. The investigation continues.

Speaker 38 Well, nevertheless, but anyway,

Speaker 38 finished thanking Sven Gooley, thank you, Sven, for showing that. It reminded me that I,

Speaker 38 unfortunately, I lost the challenge due to the last-minute commission ruling about the double order of fries. And I still say that I was, I was horn swoggled and bum-fuzzled.

Speaker 38 There were high jinks and hoodwinks going on.

Speaker 36 You know, I think it's time to mix up the lineup a little bit with sci-fi Saturday nights on me TV.

Speaker 36 I would think, I don't know, after a while, you got to give Colchack a rest because it's the same same episodes over and over.

Speaker 38 There's only one season.

Speaker 38 And as much as I am a Colchak and Darren McGavin Nightstalker fan, no, some of them weren't it, dog.

Speaker 36 So there has to be something else you can slide in there after, because it's perfect. It's like Svengooley, Batman, Star Trek.
So now we're just 1966 in color. It's great.
And then it goes to Colchak.

Speaker 38 Time Tunnel.

Speaker 36 Well, Time Tunnel, they can move up.

Speaker 36 Oh, my God.

Speaker 36 Lost in Space. I can't remember their names all of a sudden.
Lost in Space. They have other shows they can move up.

Speaker 38 Well, yeah, well, see, then

Speaker 38 here's the thing, because again, bless Colchak's little pee picking heart.

Speaker 38 But it's the same. What is there? I think there's 20.
Is there 20 episodes? But it was one season and it wasn't a full season.

Speaker 36 Plus the movies.

Speaker 38 Plus the movie. Well, but I'm talking about an hour, you know,

Speaker 38 to put in that hour time slot. You've already got Lost to Space.
They got Voyaged to the Bottom of the Sea, right? Put stick time tunnel in there.

Speaker 38 Get a fucking Erwin Allen block going on overnight, like Petticino used to do with Superstars of Wrestling. The super shows of Erwin Allen, the Invaders, even though that is not an Erwin Allen show,

Speaker 38 it, you know, it kind of fits that genre.

Speaker 38 You know, just a thought to our friends over there.

Speaker 36 Yeah, I'm with you. I like Cold Shack, but it's time for a break.

Speaker 36 And again, 1966, the first shows that were like network primetime in color, Batman, Star Trek, and then you go to the 70s and like the print of Coltrack sucks.

Speaker 36 So it's like blurry, not blurry, but like brainy, even though it's on HD TV. And then you go to Lost in Space and you're back to looking like beautiful TV, either black and white or 1966.

Speaker 38 But the pastels, the pastels.

Speaker 38 But also, you know, to be honest, though, the black and white Voyage to the bottom of the seas, I think, worked better because they were not only like the black and white Lost in Spaces, they were more serious.

Speaker 38 But also, you don't expect things to be colorful in a submarine with a bunch of soldiers.

Speaker 38 And it's going to be drab, right?

Speaker 36 All right. Well, this took a turn.

Speaker 38 Well, anyway, well, speaking of Kolchak, an aging, balding newsman

Speaker 38 who has lost his grip on the pulse of America and at the same time is rapidly being pushed down the list from major news service to minor news service.

Speaker 38 Let's talk about Uncle Dave.

Speaker 36 What now?

Speaker 38 Well, I understand that they gave out some awards of the year for wrestling over at the

Speaker 38 fine folks that observe all this stuff,

Speaker 38 the WON Awards,

Speaker 38 and some of them, I have understand, have given new meaning and new weight and new gravity to the word preposterous.

Speaker 36 Well, we can find that. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter 2023 awards were just published in the February 26, 2024 issue.
Here's what it says:

Speaker 36 The following are the results of the 43rd annual Wrestling Observer Newsletter Readership Awards, along with a listing of the previous winners in the various categories. On a worldwide basis,

Speaker 36 these are the most covered mainstream international pro wrestling awards.

Speaker 38 The awards are based on-get, isn't that really like being the nicest guy in prison?

Speaker 36 The awards are based on the timeframe from January 1st, 2023 through December 31st, 2023.

Speaker 36 And the readers are encouraged to send in their comments on the results.

Speaker 38 And the people that vote for these awards are the people that read

Speaker 38 Dave's publication, right?

Speaker 36 Well, not all of them. They are only open, I believe, to subscribers.
But for example, I am a subscriber. I've been getting it since 1993.
I may have voted in the year-end awards five times.

Speaker 38 Well, yes, but I'm saying you would, to vote in his awards, you would have to have knowledge of the awards and his publication and read it on, if not regularly, a somewhat regular basis to want to vote in the fucking thing to begin with, right?

Speaker 36 You would think so, yes.

Speaker 38 Okay, so the

Speaker 38 voting pool is somewhat colored by I would think more people

Speaker 38 read Uncle Dave's writing because they agree with him than the ones that disagree with him because all of us have thrown up our hands and just gone, I can't take it anymore.

Speaker 36 Well, these are the category A awards. They are determined by points on a five to three to two basis.

Speaker 38 Okay, and there has to be some kind of mathematical formula. This is like the Electoral College of Wrestling with Dave.

Speaker 38 Even if you get all the votes, you got to have the right kind of votes because some of them have more points than the other kind of votes.

Speaker 36 First place votes are in parentheses.

Speaker 38 Of course, they are.

Speaker 38 Second place votes are in brackets, and third-place votes are in quotation marks.

Speaker 36 The Luthes/slash Ric Flair Award

Speaker 36 for Wrestler of the Year,

Speaker 36 the winner with 302 first-place votes and a total of 1,814 points, points,

Speaker 36 Will Osprey.

Speaker 36 Coming in second place,

Speaker 36 119 first place votes with 1,330 total points, Cody Rhodes.

Speaker 38 Oh my, if only, if Cody puts his nose to the grindstone and he works real hard and he dedicates himself to that upward mobility, someday he can dream of having the career that Will Ostrich has

Speaker 36 in third place with 80 first place votes 927 total points MJF

Speaker 36 followed by Roman Reigns oh him he's still around well he has 106 first place votes but only a total of 904 points

Speaker 36 and then as a big drop off fifth place Brian Danielson 49 first place votes, but only 590 total points.

Speaker 36 I'll just go through the rest of the list here. Mystico,

Speaker 36 Seth Rollins, Mystico. He's the

Speaker 38 Mystico out points or out places or out ranks or

Speaker 38 shits on Seth Rollins in a wrestler of the year top 10.

Speaker 36 Well, Mystico got 30. Now I'm going to do the first place votes again.
34 first place votes to Seth Rollins is eight.

Speaker 38 Oh, well,

Speaker 38 there's it right there. Matt, you can't come back from that.

Speaker 36 No, look at the points here. 500 and or 458 to 227.
There's just no contest here. After Rollins, we have Kazushi.

Speaker 38 Once he lost Virginia, the tide had turned.

Speaker 36 We have Kazushka Okada in eighth place, followed by Kento Miyahura in ninth place. What?

Speaker 36 Eighth in ninth place. You have a problem with that?

Speaker 38 Who is Kento Yamahura? To begin with, even when we cover Dave's Drivel, I've never heard that name written out

Speaker 38 or spoken before. Have you?

Speaker 36 You know the O'Shea Jackson rule, O'Shea Jackson Jr., excuse me, you know, the rule. You're not allowed to ask who is this person when it comes to anyone that you don't know.

Speaker 36 Just accept that they are there and they are great, and you're not with it.

Speaker 38 One of the top 10 wrestlers of the year

Speaker 38 in the world, apparently.

Speaker 36 And we have a tie for 10th place with zero first place votes, but 123 total points, a tie between Tam Nakano and Jon Moxley

Speaker 36 with honorable mentions for Orange Cassidy, Kenny Omega, and CM CM Punk.

Speaker 38 CM Punk is an honorable mention,

Speaker 38 and he's in the also category. Somebody actually voted for Orange Cassidy.

Speaker 38 Or Wrestler of the Year wrote that unironically, do you think? Is somebody trolling

Speaker 38 Dave or Pockets or both of them by just said, well, let's just write down comedy shit and see if he takes it seriously?

Speaker 36 I don't think it's trolling. If there was ever an audience for him, it's the voting body of the Observer Awards, by and large, you would think.

Speaker 36 Not necessarily all the readership, but the people that are very involved in being involved.

Speaker 38 Yeah, because that body's in pretty bad shape and may need the fucking paddles. Claire?

Speaker 36 Well, here's what Dave wrote: Will Ospreay 30 ended up pretty clear-cut winner, especially as pertained to first-place votes and a race that

Speaker 38 is that one of those automatic translations on twitter where you say translate this

Speaker 36 well i actually took out a word because it just says pt

Speaker 36 it says ended up as a ended up a pretty clear cut winner especially as pt pertained to first place votes in a race that was hardest to call for wrestle of the year in many years

Speaker 36 Unlike with most years.

Speaker 38 He says like Nick Gulis every week. Louva wrestling fast Tuesday night you a storm, one of the biggest cards I've signed in many years.

Speaker 36 Unlike with most years, when it's usually obvious who is going to win the award, this year it was unclear with strong arguments for all of the top four.

Speaker 36 Many expected Roman Reigns as the top guy in WWE, you think, champion all year, and WWE setting business records and his part in major matches with Sami Zayn, Cody Rhodes, and Jey Uso,

Speaker 36 but he had a limited schedule. And part of this award is is having a lot of great matches during the year,

Speaker 36 as well as value to the box office and influence.

Speaker 38 Then why were Moxley and Pockets even on it? How were they in consideration when they don't have great matches at any point in the year and they have no value to the box office?

Speaker 36 Well, to be fair, they got no first place votes. So that means someone who voted, you're allowed to vote for three people.
They either got second place or third place votes.

Speaker 36 No one said that they are the very best, but it was like, yeah, I'll put them on my list.

Speaker 38 Oh, well, they got

Speaker 38 in a top 10 10 because they were third place on 17 people's list.

Speaker 36 Well, let's move on. There's a lot of awards here.

Speaker 38 I will say, yeah, I think you can skip a few of them.

Speaker 36 I'm going to skip the MMA ones for sure. Is that okay with you?

Speaker 38 Well, that's okay because I wouldn't really grasp the magnitude of the preposterosity of the UFC or MMA awards as we're not keeping close track.

Speaker 36 The most outstanding wrestler award in first place with 548 first place votes and a total of 3,086 points. Will Ospreay.

Speaker 38 Oh, good lord.

Speaker 36 So AEW has got a real winner now on their hands. Wrestler of the Year and Most Outstanding Wrestler.

Speaker 38 And it's so coincidental that he's the next wave of the guy that Uncle Dave has been screaming about. He's the greatest thing that's ever happened since Kenny.

Speaker 38 And now that Kenny

Speaker 38 has a problem with his guts and can't wrestle anymore, Uncle Dave has to have a new champion, a new hero, a new He-Man.

Speaker 38 You think he's got ostrich's poster?

Speaker 38 He unrolled it over the top of Kenny's and just thumb-tacked him right over on his wall across from the foot of his bed?

Speaker 36 I think that's a little crazy, but let's go through the rest of the most.

Speaker 38 Have you seen the pictures of his office?

Speaker 36 Maybe he's cleaned it. I haven't seen anything recent.
Those are all old photos. I'm sure things have changed.

Speaker 38 Well, they didn't have a lot of modern shit of Dahmer at first. You know, they had to go back and defile.

Speaker 36 Well, hold on. Dave's crazy a little bit.
Let's not compare him to Dahmer.

Speaker 38 Well, I'm just saying a lot of people don't take modern pictures, current pictures.

Speaker 36 The rest of the top 10 for most outstanding: number two, Brian Danielson, number three, Kenny Omega, number four, Zach Sabre Jr.

Speaker 36 Number five, Kento Miyahara,

Speaker 36 number six, Gunther,

Speaker 36 number seven, Kazushika Okada, number eight, Shingo Takagi. Oh, boy.
Number nine, Orange Cassidy.

Speaker 36 Number ten, Mike Bailey. Honorable mentions, Jon Moxley, MJF, Seth Rollins, and Eddie Kingston.

Speaker 38 Names, names, names running through my head. Who was the one shit on a shingle?

Speaker 36 What?

Speaker 38 Shingle.

Speaker 38 What happened?

Speaker 36 I don't know what just happened.

Speaker 38 Just rattled off a bunch of fucking alleged names.

Speaker 36 Oh, Shingo Takagi.

Speaker 36 Ah!

Speaker 36 One on shingle.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 so go down

Speaker 38 a little slower from the top

Speaker 38 down

Speaker 38 and let's see where these people's heads at.

Speaker 36 Once again, this is most outstanding. Will Ospreay.
Okay. Number two, Brian Danielson.
Yeah. Number three, Kenny Omega.
Yeah. Number four, Zach Sabre Jr.
Yeah. Number five, Kento Miyahara.

Speaker 38 I don't have any idea.

Speaker 36 We'll pass. Number six, Gunther.

Speaker 38 There you go. Stop there.
That's what

Speaker 38 Gunther, as most outstanding wrestler, not only is perfect at presenting himself, his matches are always exciting and believable. He's logical.
He knows how to put the thing together.

Speaker 38 He knows how to get himself over and knows how to put other guys' shit over too, even when he's dealing with smaller, greener, or fucking less accomplished individuals.

Speaker 38 You never see him have a stinker and he always gets the most out of everything and a fucking guy's over.

Speaker 38 And he looks like he could kick the shit out of all five of the fucking people in front of him at the same time. Sack Sabre Jr.
looks like a goddamn Q-tip.

Speaker 38 And fucking Danielson, bless him, he is an accomplished pro, one of the smoothest and the best in the in the world at one time. And he's about to retire And he hasn't had

Speaker 38 the greatest of matches over the last year because didn't he get hurt in two of like the four of them?

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 these, and again,

Speaker 38 the flippy fucking darling

Speaker 38 crash TV crowd or whatever that

Speaker 38 Gunther is more valuable

Speaker 38 than, you know,

Speaker 38 and I'm taking Danielson out of this. Gunther's more because of his name and his reputation, et cetera, even though he's doing some screwy things these days.

Speaker 38 But Gunther is more valuable than all those other guys ahead of him on the roster together as a name on your card to attract people or on your show to attract viewers. It's just goddamn business.

Speaker 38 And they can't.

Speaker 38 I don't understand.

Speaker 36 Well, let's go to Tag Team of the Year, something that Midnight Express have won in the past.

Speaker 36 Tag Team of the Year with 344 first place votes and 2,341 total points, FTR.

Speaker 38 And you can't argue with the fact, again, that FTR are the most accomplished tag team in the ring, in the business today.

Speaker 38 They've been presented like complete shit, and we'll talk about that later on.

Speaker 38 But I think

Speaker 38 even the

Speaker 38 even the AEW crowd has to begrudgingly admit, you know, that the guys that don't give them the flips in this case are still that good, but it doesn't help them be presented any better.

Speaker 38 But it's refreshing to see that even this audience not only recognizes that, but apparently the love affair with the Kookamongah kids is over with because

Speaker 38 they didn't make top five this year, did they?

Speaker 36 Well, I'll go through the list here and it really falls off quick and it shows the sad state of tag team wrestling, but the Bucks didn't do much this year, which makes it stand out even more that they're even on the list.

Speaker 36 One, FTR, two, Kevin Owens, and Sami Zayn.

Speaker 38 Three, they're broken up.

Speaker 36 Hiroki Godo and Yoshi Hashi.

Speaker 38 Okay.

Speaker 36 Four, Takuya Nomura.

Speaker 38 Oh, come on.

Speaker 36 And Fumanori

Speaker 36 Abe, I believe.

Speaker 38 Oh,

Speaker 36 followed by number five, the Young Bucks, 42 first place votes.

Speaker 38 42 first place votes. So it's still okay.

Speaker 38 Maybe I was willing to give these people too much benefit of the doubt.

Speaker 36 The rest of the top 10, Mark Davis and Kyle Fletcher at six.

Speaker 36 Number seven, Francesco,

Speaker 36 Francesco, Akira, and TJP.

Speaker 38 Who are these fucking people?

Speaker 36 Number eight, the Usos.

Speaker 36 Number nine, June and Ray Saito.

Speaker 36 And number 10, the acclaimed.

Speaker 36 With 11 first place.

Speaker 38 All right. Well, the only two

Speaker 38 out of the two out of the three, we've heard of the acclaimed, obviously.

Speaker 38 The other two tag teams in the top 10 that anybody ever fucking heard of, Sami Zadie, Kevin Owens, and the Usos have been broken up.

Speaker 38 No, there are no tag teams in any of these fucking companies that are over and worth a shit, which is,

Speaker 38 again, you know, more of the tragedy of FTR being the,

Speaker 38 you know,

Speaker 38 do they feel like the last unicorn? Is there any way for them to somehow inseminate somebody with the grasp of, of?

Speaker 38 And I mean, even they, they're trying so hard, but

Speaker 38 what the fuck is the rest of that, really? Seriously. And we ought to be all ashamed of ourselves as a collective wrestling industry that that's the state of tag team wrestling.

Speaker 36 Let's talk about the state of interviews. Best on interviews, an award you previously won four times or four times.

Speaker 38 Yeah, how come awards get named after Luthez, Ric Flair, Daddy Hodge, Koichi Yoshizawa,

Speaker 38 Bruiser Bruiser Brody, but I don't get this award named after me.

Speaker 38 Or either that or the non-wrestling personality. He renamed it from Manager of the Year.
I ought to have one of these awards named after me after I won 12 or 13 of them.

Speaker 36 Well, you are a five-time winner of Best on Interviews.

Speaker 36 I don't know if anyone else has wondered this, but I'm going to call it the Jim Cornett Memorial Best on Interviews.

Speaker 38 Well, wait, don't call it Memorial. Well, Dave killed you.
Maybe that's the loophole. I don't want it yet.

Speaker 36 Ah, okay.

Speaker 38 But if he'll do the non-wrestling personality/slash manager of the year for that, well, best on interviews with 199. Watch him be vindictive and name it after Heyman.

Speaker 36 199. Well, they're still friends.
199 first place votes. Eddie Kingston, also 1,483 points right on his tail.

Speaker 36 Second with 140 first-place votes and 1,441 total points. So just within, within reach, MJF.

Speaker 36 Number three, Christian Cage.

Speaker 36 Number four, John Moxley.

Speaker 36 Number five, Cody Rhodes.

Speaker 38 Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
You can find somebody standing on a wooden crate wearing a bathrobe in the middle of Central Park that speaks as coherently as Moxley does.

Speaker 36 And if Tony Kahn had a little bit of Jack Pfeffer in him, they would get him on the show and make him a star. But they they haven't.
Cody Rhodes at five, six, Brian Danielson, Will Ospreay at seven.

Speaker 38 Gotcha.

Speaker 36 CM Punk at eight, L.A. Knight at nine, and Don Callis, number ten.

Speaker 38 And who was top three again?

Speaker 36 Eddie Kingston, MJF, and Christian Cage.

Speaker 38 So you've got people, and again, this is not

Speaker 38 in any way detrimental or insulting trying to be to Eddie Kingston,

Speaker 38 who's good in short bursts with his passion and his fervor and whatever.

Speaker 38 But you can't in any universe explain to me how someone could consider anyone except potentially Cody Rhodes or CM Punk, depending on your tastes and preferences, as the equivalent of a verbal performer in wrestling or any other genre as MJF.

Speaker 38 It's just ridiculous. A bunch of Heddy's friends from the Indiependents and fans from the Independence banded together to do something nice for him, I think, here, because you can't objectively.

Speaker 38 And that's not, and that's no disrespect, Christian Cage. He's good.
He's not in the level of Cody or Punk or MJF, and nobody else on this list is either.

Speaker 36 You're not being objective. Yeah, he's got an incredibly lame, which is, oh, your father's dead, or oh, your wife's horrible, whatever the fuck he says.
Yeah.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 sooner or later, everybody's going to end up dead. So his gimmick is evergreen.

Speaker 38 Problem is, it's so green it stinks.

Speaker 39 My POV, veterans like me should join a company that has their back. That's why I joined Verizon.

Speaker 39 Here, exciting benefits like tuition assistance help me stay focused on my broad career, not stressing about the costs.

Speaker 39 Now I use my master's in global security for a role I love as an equipment engineer. That's life in the V-teen life.

Speaker 39 Head to mycareare.horizon.com to explore opportunities to join a team that supports your development.

Speaker 36 Well, let's go, Jim, now to promotion of the year.

Speaker 38 Uh-oh, wait a minute. Hold on here.

Speaker 36 With 400.

Speaker 38 That's another one of those things that Tony Khan is going to have to talk to his eventual therapist about.

Speaker 36 With 406 first-place votes and 2,359 total points, World Wrestling Entertainment

Speaker 36 in second place,

Speaker 36 All Elite Wrestling,

Speaker 36 who previously won, let's see, in 2020, 21, and 22, so previous three-time winner, dethroned. Here's what Dave wrote: Help me finish the top 10.

Speaker 36 New Japan Pro Wrestling in third, CMLL fourth, UFC five, All Japan six, stardom 7, Impact 8, and Dragon Gate number 9.

Speaker 38 God damn, Impact can't even beat Stardom.

Speaker 36 Impact is the only promotion on this list with no first place votes.

Speaker 38 Oh, that's just like.

Speaker 38 Oh.

Speaker 36 After a record-setting year when it came to big show viewership and gates,

Speaker 36 and being among the most consistent rating draws in television, the WWE captured this award over AEW, which had won it the past three years.

Speaker 38 You know, it kills him to be right in this.

Speaker 36 WWE's success with multiple stadium shows, creating major matches throughout the year, and pulling away from AEW after what at times was a very competitive race.

Speaker 36 It was the first time WWE had won this award since the Attitude Era.

Speaker 36 A combination of their turnaround and the struggles at the box office of AEW, New Japan, and Stardom.

Speaker 36 So I'll stop there, but

Speaker 38 well, even the choir that he's been preaching to

Speaker 38 for so long has figured out there ain't no invisible supreme being in the sky. It's just Tony and his disorganized, frazzled personality.

Speaker 36 Well, speaking of just Tony, let's go to Best Weekly TV Show first place with 430 total. Wait, I keep doing this.
With 430 votes and 2,707 points,

Speaker 36 AEW Dynamite,

Speaker 36 which has won it every year of its existence going back to 2019. In second place, AEW Collision.

Speaker 38 Wait, wait, wait, hold on, what?

Speaker 36 Followed by SmackDown. No.

Speaker 36 Followed by CMLL Super Vierna's or Vienna.

Speaker 36 What does this say?

Speaker 36 Vierna. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, the observer has small print.

Speaker 36 Followed by NXT, followed by RAW, followed by AEW Rampage, followed by New Japan on Axis, followed by Impact Wrestling with no first place votes once again. God damn poor impact.

Speaker 36 Followed by We Are Stardom.

Speaker 38 Christ.

Speaker 38 Oh,

Speaker 38 so

Speaker 38 I can understand

Speaker 38 they want their

Speaker 38 thing, this thing of theirs, to be in the first place. They vote for Dynamite, but they're trying to actually say with straight faces again that Collision is a better show than SmackDown.

Speaker 38 It's on network television doing two and a half million people.

Speaker 36 Well, Jim, the pro wrestling match of the year,

Speaker 36 previously known, I believe, as Match of the Year,

Speaker 36 the winner with 474 first place votes and 3,018 total points.

Speaker 38 Who did Will Ostrich wrestle?

Speaker 36 Will Osprey versus Kenny Omega, January 4th in the Tokyo Dome.

Speaker 38 The passing of Meltzer's Phallas.

Speaker 38 instead of a torch they cut a big dildo

Speaker 38 and they put or they wrote dave's name on the side of it and they could make they could only write dave they couldn't write meltzer because they didn't have enough room and they and and kenny handed it off to willie

Speaker 38 in second place they call it the hand jive willie and the hand jive in second place

Speaker 36 From June 25th in Toronto, Kenny Omega versus Will Osprey. God damn it.

Speaker 36 In third place, MJF versus Brian Daniels in San Francisco, March 5th.

Speaker 38 Oh, yeah, that couldn't possibly compare to the two leaping Andretti brothers.

Speaker 36 Followed in fourth place by Swerve Shricklin versus Adam Page, November 18th in Los Angeles.

Speaker 38 Oh, good lord. That was the garbage match spectacular, wasn't it?

Speaker 36 Followed by FTR versus White and Robinson.

Speaker 38 Oh, okay, the greatest tag team match of modern times and all of television history managed to come in number five behind the preening, prancing Prima Donna's.

Speaker 36 Followed by Brian Danielson versus Zach Sabre Jr.,

Speaker 36 followed by Ketsuhiku Nakajima versus Kento Miyahara. Fuck.
July 15th. Followed by Will Ospreay versus Tetsuya Naito.

Speaker 36 Followed by Queen's Quest versus Odo Tai. What? June 25th in Tokyo.

Speaker 38 Wait a minute. What number of match of the year is that on the list?

Speaker 36 That's number nine with 19 first place votes and 189 total points.

Speaker 38 How did fucking 19 people see that match? Who are those people?

Speaker 36 I couldn't tell you. My first guess would be we are stardom, but who knows? And finally, number 10 on the list, Gunther versus Seamus versus Drew McIntyre.

Speaker 38 Well, at least they squeaked in under the wire.

Speaker 36 We will now go to the category B awards. These are determined by first-place votes only.

Speaker 38 Ladies and gentlemen, these are even less important.

Speaker 36 Well, once again, these are determined by first-place votes only.

Speaker 36 And when you ask about who's voting on this, if Dave has a few thousand subscribers, let's say, you could tell based on the first-place votes, if you add them up, just a general idea of what a small percentage of his readership are actually voting on these things.

Speaker 36 But the United States and Canada MVP

Speaker 36 in first place, Cody Rhodes with 268 votes, followed by Brian Danielson, MJF, Roman Reigns, Jon Moxley, Orange Cassidy,

Speaker 36 Kenny Omega,

Speaker 36 CM Punk, Seth Rollins, and Sami Zayn with an honorable mention for Christian Cage.

Speaker 38 Oh,

Speaker 38 how honorable can you be when you can't even place in the top top 10 with that crew?

Speaker 36 What do you think, Cody Rhodes, a U.S. Canada MVP?

Speaker 38 I think that's fair to say. I think that's something that's so obvious that you can't really deny it, which is why he won this thing with this skewed voting base.

Speaker 38 And then they got to begrudgingly stick Roman Reigns in there because he's the, you know, on top of the biggest drawing shows in the world.

Speaker 38 But again,

Speaker 38 I think if they are actually making new fans that believe in some universe, that people like Pockets and these comedy figures that they place on these lists or these just obscure

Speaker 38 whoever's that they put on these lists are over,

Speaker 38 that's what's driving the longtime fans of wrestling away. We have to look at shit like this.
Can they really be important enough to these people? Or again, is this just trolling voting? Or

Speaker 38 what's the,

Speaker 38 as the kids say, the ironic voting?

Speaker 38 I can't see how anybody would put these people on in that company in a logical universe.

Speaker 36 Well, we now go to the Koichi Yoshizawa Award for Japanese MVP.

Speaker 36 Will Ospreay with 134 votes.

Speaker 38 Did anybody from Japan actually get to be an MVP in Japan or did Will sew all these up?

Speaker 36 No, he's the only one who's not Japanese, followed by Okada, Naito, Miyahara,

Speaker 36 A. Yagi,

Speaker 36 excuse me, I don't know the names.

Speaker 38 Ayo.

Speaker 36 Tam Nikano.

Speaker 38 Say hello to the goof guy.

Speaker 36 Julia, Sonata, Kino, and Maito. Kino?

Speaker 38 You can lose your ass playing that shit.

Speaker 36 The Mexico MVP, Jim Mystico.

Speaker 38 Mystico.

Speaker 36 Followed by El Hijo del Vikingo.

Speaker 36 Rocky Romero.

Speaker 38 Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
The state of wrestling in Mexico right now is so

Speaker 38 moribund and putrid and has the stench of grisly death upon it so badly that the second biggest star in Mexico is El Hijo del Vikingo.

Speaker 38 We've seen him. He is the shits.

Speaker 36 Well, he's not as bad as Commander, but rounding out the list, Rocky Romero, Volador Jr., and Pentagon Jr.

Speaker 36 The Europe MVP, Jim,

Speaker 36 Will Osprey with 754 votes.

Speaker 38 How does he have time? What is he on Hogan's airline where he can fly backwards around the world and turn back time?

Speaker 38 How can he possibly be the greatest wrestler on nine continents around the world all at the same time?

Speaker 36 The Hodge Award for non-heavyweight MVP.

Speaker 38 Will Osprey.

Speaker 36 The winner, El Hijo del Vikingo. Oh, God.
With 100 degrees. Oh, no, no.

Speaker 38 Oh, no. Those fighting words.

Speaker 36 Hey.

Speaker 36 Who you shooting up?

Speaker 38 Danny Hodge would have his handgun out at whoever compared him to El Gijo del Vikingo.

Speaker 38 Can you imagine a bigger insult?

Speaker 38 Danny Hodge was a national sports hero in the United States before he ever turned professional wrestler, and he was one of the most feared men ever to step foot in a wrestling ring.

Speaker 38 And the only reason people are afraid of Vikingo is they're afraid they're going to have to fucking watch him.

Speaker 36 Well, for the record, El Hijo de Vikingo won last year. This award was created in 2018.
The first two years the winner was Will Ospreay.

Speaker 36 And in between,

Speaker 36 Hiromu, Takahashi, and Darby Allen also won the award, but this year, the top 10 after Vikingo,

Speaker 36 Takahashi, Darby Allen, Orange Cassidy, Mystico, Titan, and El Desperado or Tide, followed by Mike Bailey, Brian Danielson, and Rocky Romero.

Speaker 36 The women's wrestling MVP, Rhea Ripley, with 359 first place votes.

Speaker 38 Well, and is that another one you just can't deny? Because it's... It would be ridiculous to think otherwise and

Speaker 38 they're not fucking trolling. I don't know, but who else is on the list? But I mean, is there anybody else deserving of being on the list?

Speaker 36 Well, this is our first time winning. Also, on the list are Julia, Athena, Tam Nakano, Becky Lynch, Tony Storm, Suzu Suzuki, Miyu Yamashita, Mayu Iwatani,

Speaker 36 Sayuri

Speaker 36 or Suri. I don't know exactly how you pronounce it.
S-Y-U-R-I. Sayuri.

Speaker 36 Suri.

Speaker 36 It's something in there.

Speaker 38 Say,

Speaker 36 sedai, you sedai.

Speaker 36 All right, Topo Jiju here on the show today.

Speaker 38 And now, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a really big show out here at Topo Gijo.

Speaker 36 And Siri.

Speaker 38 So basically, Becky Lynch and Rhea Ripley are

Speaker 38 pretty much the biggest wrestling, women's wrestling stars in the world, and they like Tony Storm because she's on their favorite little outlaw program. And I don't know who those fucking.

Speaker 36 Well, let's go to Feud of the Year. Again, this is another award that you and the Midnight Express previously won for your feud with the Fantastics.

Speaker 38 Do they have feuds anymore?

Speaker 36 Well, Feud of the Year, Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens versus the Bloodline, which you forget it's a while ago, but that was a pretty hot thing for the first quarter of last year.

Speaker 38 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 36 Followed by Adam Page versus Swerve Strickland, Kento Miyahara versus

Speaker 36 Katsuhiku Nakajima.

Speaker 36 Followed by Kenny Omega versus Will Ospreay. Followed by Adam Page vs.
Jon Moxley. Oh, good.
Followed by Elite versus BCC. Oh,

Speaker 36 followed by Rocky Romero versus Volvador Jr.

Speaker 36 Followed by Roman Reigns versus Jey Uso.

Speaker 36 Followed by Cody Rhodes versus Brock Lesnar. And coming in 10th, MJF versus the Devil.

Speaker 38 So I was right. They don't have feuds anymore.

Speaker 36 Abbot,

Speaker 38 what can you even say? God, that's embarrassing.

Speaker 36 Most improved with 117 votes. Julia Hart, most improved.

Speaker 38 I'd have to hear who she's rating over the top of before I could buy that statement.

Speaker 36 In second place, Dominic Mysterio.

Speaker 36 In third place, Mariah Mae tied with Shoda Umino.

Speaker 38 Wait a minute. How can Mariah Mae have improved? We never saw her till fucking six weeks ago.
And she wrestled more than once.

Speaker 36 The observer readers saw her in her most primitive of stages. And then, of course, she became a star in stardom.
And now she takes that stardom

Speaker 36 to America to be the backup of Tony Storm.

Speaker 38 Where she becomes a shooting star that turns into a comet and sooner or later craters out in New Mexico somewhere.

Speaker 36 Well, number five on the list, Swerve Strickland. Followed by Yoda Suji, followed by Trick Williams, followed by a tie with Big Bill and Hicculeo,

Speaker 36 followed by the Gun Brothers.

Speaker 38 I like the Gun Brothers. I can't really tell whether or not they've improved over the last year because they,

Speaker 38 you know, they're usually in something we either on something we don't watch or in something we don't want to see.

Speaker 38 And I don't know who most of the people on that list are, but I'll tell you what, I think of all the names you mentioned, i'd go with big bill

Speaker 38 he is worlds above speaking and in the ring

Speaker 38 what he looked like when we first saw him whether that was a year ago or a year and a half or however long it's been i'd go with big bill i don't notice a yeah noticeable difference in any of those other people if i could pick him out of a police lineup well dominic's gotten better at the art of being a heel.

Speaker 36 Swerve Strickland, I don't know if he's gotten better. He's just used better.

Speaker 36 They're just using him better. Yeah.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And, well, and I forgot about Dominic being on it when I zoned out with some of those names. But Dominic, just by virtue of having a year's more experience, is better.

Speaker 38 But I don't know if it's a drastic,

Speaker 38 you know, light bulb moment or whether he's just getting better and better, whatever. You know, I think Big Bill.

Speaker 38 When I first saw him, wasn't worth a shit.

Speaker 38 And it was like a year and a half ago. Dominic

Speaker 38 wasn't worth two shits as a babyface when we first saw him, but that was, what, about three years ago now or more.

Speaker 36 And for the record, you previously managed one of the winners of this award, Big Bubber Rogers, in 1987.

Speaker 36 The most charismatic, I'll go through this one quickly, the winner, MJF,

Speaker 36 followed by Roman Reigns, Kento Miyahara, Julia, Cody Rhodes, Eddie Kingston, Orange Cassidy, and CM Punker tied,

Speaker 36 Swirl Strickland,

Speaker 36 Swerve Strickland, LA Knight, and Dominic Mysterio rounding out the top 10.

Speaker 38 What the fuck? That's like

Speaker 38 from one extreme to the other. You have the punks and Roman Reigns and Cody's that have all of the personality and the magnetism and the charisma and the world.

Speaker 38 And then you go to the fucking goofiest preliminary bullshit you can find.

Speaker 38 I don't understand.

Speaker 36 Well, the Brian Danielson Award for best technical wrestler.

Speaker 38 There's another one's named. I'm telling you, I want the best non-wrestling performer award.

Speaker 36 Well, the Brian Danielson Award goes to Brian Danielson in first place

Speaker 36 with 549 votes, followed by only two other people got votes, Zach Saber Jr. with 427 votes and Josh Alexander with 17 votes.

Speaker 38 Well, really, how can you argue with that?

Speaker 38 Who else should win the Brian Danielson Award, but Brian Danielson?

Speaker 36 In the years that Brian Danielson didn't win when he was retired, Zach Saber Jr. won the award.
So the only two people to win it, since it was named after him, are him and Zack Saber Jr.

Speaker 36 The Bruiser Brody Memorial Award for Best Brawler. The winner with 383 votes, Jon Moxley.

Speaker 36 Followed by Tomo Hiroshi.

Speaker 38 Oh, no, I can't take it.

Speaker 36 Followed by Adam Page, Eddie Kingston, Gunther,

Speaker 36 Rush or Rush, Shingo Takagi, Julia,

Speaker 36 and then tied is Samoa Joe and Seamus with seven votes.

Speaker 36 The best.

Speaker 36 Oh, go ahead. Hold on, hold on.

Speaker 38 They don't even know what they're talking about

Speaker 38 or what the description of the category is, apparently, because Gunther is not only

Speaker 38 a wrestler, but a wrestling heel.

Speaker 38 He's not a brawler at all. That's his whole gimmick is that he's a physical, athletic wrestling heel, as they used to say in the old days

Speaker 38 and what they're looking for is apparently is people who do stupid garbage wrestling and they don't care whether it looks phony or not in that case

Speaker 38 there moxley's your man

Speaker 38 but but this is a whole audience where this stuff is not

Speaker 38 embarrassing to them and it is to

Speaker 38 People who have enjoyed wrestling for a long time and respected it, considered it an art rather than a place where people who bite the heads off chickens go to retire.

Speaker 38 You can still see the feathers coming out of Moxley's mouth.

Speaker 36 Well, Jim, we will go to Best Flying Wrestler, the winner with 595 votes: El Hijo del Vikingo,

Speaker 36 followed by Will Ospreay,

Speaker 36 Ray Phoenix, Mascara Dorada, Commander,

Speaker 36 Neon,

Speaker 36 Ninja Mac,

Speaker 36 Mystico, El Phantasmo, The Starlight Kid, and Titan.

Speaker 38 To show you

Speaker 38 just how

Speaker 38 badly the

Speaker 38 knowledge of wrestling of the observer readers has eroded in the last 30 or 35 years since it's been started being published,

Speaker 38 you know, Bobby Eaton won Best Flying Wrestler one year.

Speaker 38 And just like Bruiser Brody would be embarrassed to get in a ring with fucking Jon Moxley,

Speaker 38 Bobby would be embarrassed that these

Speaker 38 glorified fucking B-level flunk out fucking high school gymnasts would be

Speaker 38 in the running for any kind of award in the wrestling business. Their shit stinks.
It looks phony. It's contrived.
It's fake. It's horseshit.

Speaker 38 And it's all interchangeable.

Speaker 38 That's like picking the best fucking set of legs on a 20-girl chorus line. Who gives a shit? They're all fucking legs.
You can't tell them apart.

Speaker 38 It's the stars you're looking at.

Speaker 36 I thought he won that award, too. He didn't.
Bobby never won best flying wrestler.

Speaker 38 I'm sorry, he did place second. He won most underrated.

Speaker 36 Most underrated three times.

Speaker 36 Three separate times.

Speaker 38 Concurrently, once or twice when we were the world tag team champions.

Speaker 36 Well, we'll go to most underrated in a moment. Most overrated, number one, Sonata,

Speaker 36 followed by Roman Reigns, CM Punk,

Speaker 36 Tyrus,

Speaker 36 MJF, Austin Theory,

Speaker 36 Talia Jax, Chris Jericho, L.A. Knight, and Jake Lee.

Speaker 38 I can understand them taking their venting and frustration out on Punk because he's successful despite their best efforts. But why are these people mad at MJF now and think he's overrated?

Speaker 36 Well, he didn't have the best year, but a lot of people,

Speaker 36 a lot of that was because of what he was working, who he was working with in the feud and everything else. But most underrated, Chad Gable

Speaker 36 with 84 votes, followed by Konosuke Takesta, Daniel Garcia,

Speaker 36 Mike Bailey, Yoda Suji,

Speaker 36 Ricochet,

Speaker 36 Roosh,

Speaker 36 Commander, Britt Baker, and Adam Page.

Speaker 38 Where's gravity?

Speaker 36 He's not underrated. He's rated just right.

Speaker 36 Rookie of the Year, Jim. The winner, I'm sure you are already saying it in your head.
Yuma Anzai.

Speaker 36 Yuma Anzai, followed by Action Andretti.

Speaker 36 Well, that was number two. Number three, Megan Bain.

Speaker 36 Number four, Oleg Bolton.

Speaker 36 Number five, Kelani Jordan. Number six, Oba Femi.
Oh, who? What? Number seven, Billy Stark. I think of her.

Speaker 38 Oba Feminine.

Speaker 36 Oba Femi. Obi-A.

Speaker 36 And then the last name is F-E-M-I. Obi-Oba Femi.

Speaker 38 Obi-Femi. Oba Femi.

Speaker 36 I misspoke. Right before Oba is Oleg Bolton.
So Oleg Bolton, Lonnie Jordan, Oba Femi. Wait a minute.

Speaker 38 That means Michael Bolton and Oleg Takhtarov had a fucking kid?

Speaker 36 Oleg Taktarov. Very impressive that that'd be the person you mentioned.
I don't believe that this is the spawn of them.

Speaker 38 How about Oleg Cassini?

Speaker 36 I don't know why you think the spawn of them would just take each of their name and combine it together. Well, I don't rocky my via kind of situation going on.

Speaker 38 I don't know which one of them you think might have gotten pregnant if what I was saying had any basis in reality.

Speaker 36 Number seven, Billy Starks. Number eight, Santana Jackson tied with Futuro.

Speaker 36 That is how you say that. And number 10, Wakana Urihara for Rookie of the Year.
Best non-was Braun Breaker was last year, right? Braun Breaker won it last year.

Speaker 38 So we go from Braun Breaker to that fucking list. Is there a future for the wrestling business? A bunch of fucking nobodies.

Speaker 36 Here is the last five years. 2018, Rookie of the Year Ronda Rousey.
2019, Jungle Boy Jack Perry.

Speaker 36 2020, Pat McAfee.

Speaker 36 2021, Jade Cargill. And 2022, Braun Breaker.
That says a lot about Rookie of the Year because, I mean, Jade, it's almost like she's a rookie again, you know?

Speaker 38 But it's the same point, at least, you know, everybody there except for.

Speaker 38 The odd duck in the middle. Who was that middle one? Didn't fit?

Speaker 36 Scapegoat Jack Perry.

Speaker 38 Jack Perry, that didn't work out well.

Speaker 38 But, you know,

Speaker 38 you go from at least the potential of all those other names, whether in Cargill's case, it's been realized or not, to

Speaker 38 what the fuck, there's nobody there.

Speaker 38 A bad year for growing crops.

Speaker 36 Speaking of there's nobody there. Best non-wrestler.
Now, this used to be manager of the year.

Speaker 38 Yeah, count those coronets down there.

Speaker 38 That's why I'm lobbying to have this the Jim Cornett Award for Best Non-Wrestling Personality because I have won that award more times than anybody else has won any of these awards.

Speaker 36 Well, again, this recognizes Manager of the Year, which existed from 1983 to 1996. You won it one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, Shari Martell, eight.
nine, ten, eleven, twelve times.

Speaker 36 The only people who won it other than you.

Speaker 38 John, keep going further ahead. Didn't I pick up another one?

Speaker 36 Well, then it became best non-wrestler. You won again in 2006.

Speaker 36 Yeah. Best non-wrestler.

Speaker 38 And they took some years off. And by the way, Sherry won, and bless her, but that's the year that I was

Speaker 38 took off while I was starting Smoky Mountain Wrestling. So I was not in the running.

Speaker 36 Well, the winner this year with 266 votes, Don Callis,

Speaker 36 followed by Paul Heyman.

Speaker 38 Okay, all right.

Speaker 38 And without even being in any way

Speaker 38 less than complimentary to my old buddy Don,

Speaker 38 there's no way on earth where anybody could objectively look at that and say that Paul Heyman is being outperformed in his chosen profession by Don Callis or almost anybody else.

Speaker 38 It's just not possible to objectively say that.

Speaker 36 Well, let's go through the rest of the list. Paul Heyman, number two.
Number three, Prince Nana. Number four, Renee Paquette.

Speaker 38 Number five.

Speaker 38 Hold on, hold on a second.

Speaker 38 Now we've got where

Speaker 38 I used to have some stiff competition that I had to elbow out of the way on this son of a bitch.

Speaker 38 We are talking, think of all the the great managers that I had to contend with, the J.J.

Speaker 38 Dillons and the Gary Harts and the Oliver Humperdinks of the world and the Jimmy Harts, much less the Gary Harts. And

Speaker 38 Nana loves him to death, but he never speaks. He dances.
And Renee Moxley Good

Speaker 38 is a fucking interviewer

Speaker 38 and not even an interviewer that does anything different than all the other interviewers. She just has a bigger wardrobe.
So that's the top four non-wrestling personalities. And

Speaker 38 I mean, you know, maybe Marvez hadn't broken into his secret closet at home. He might have stuff that puts hers to shame, but.

Speaker 36 Well, number five on the list, RJ City ties with Nick Aldiss.

Speaker 36 Followed by Nigel McGinnis, followed by Samantha Irvin.

Speaker 36 So what was Manager of the Year now has interviewers and ring announcers on the list?

Speaker 38 Okay, and again, Nick Aldiss has been remarkable and is being used in a prominent position that he's done well at in a fucking major company on television. So is Adam Pierce.
He belongs on that list

Speaker 38 over one of their fucking ring announcers.

Speaker 38 How much ad living is the ring announcer allowed to do?

Speaker 38 How much, what are the skill level involved in being a fucking ring announcer, for God's sake?

Speaker 38 If you can speak in public and read the card and have any kind of personality.

Speaker 1 When you need a a break, skip the scrolling.

Speaker 1 When you you need a break, skip the scrolling.

Speaker 36 well speaking of personality best television announcer this is an esteemed award previously won by people like gordon solely lance russell jim ross and mike tanay joey styles had a little run there too

Speaker 36 the winner this year once again excalibur

Speaker 36 183 votes right behind him with 139 votes ian ricabani

Speaker 36 Followed by Kevin Kelly, Nigel McGinnis, Chris Charlton, Michael Cole, Tony Schiavani, Taz,

Speaker 36 Jim Ross, and Jay Church.

Speaker 38 Jay Church?

Speaker 36 I don't know who Jay may be.

Speaker 38 Well, going back to the top of that list, so

Speaker 38 I will admit that J.R.

Speaker 38 had more energy in his youth. And Michael Cole, even though he's professional and polished and on the big program, he's not the most wrestling fan-friendly announcer because of his...

Speaker 38 Vince and Kevin Dunn training.

Speaker 38 But what the fuck, again, is the matter with people that can't tell the difference difference between Ian Ricobani, who's

Speaker 38 a guy that's trying to do a professional fucking job and injects some personality into it from this basement, Pop-Tart-eating, fucking masked mark

Speaker 38 that is just screaming endless Japanese words and phrases to his fucking VHS trading buddies.

Speaker 38 from 25 years ago, even though he's a middle-aged man who, after I've seen a picture of him without that sock on his face, I understand why he wears it. He's an ugly, ugly man.

Speaker 38 He is not a good-looking man.

Speaker 38 There's a number of things wrong with his face that surgery would need to repair and implants.

Speaker 38 And sometimes something in parts of it, some stuff needs to be taken out as well as other parts needs to be put in.

Speaker 38 But what the fuck? Seriously.

Speaker 36 Well, the worst television announcer in first place was Booker T,

Speaker 36 followed by Kevin Kevin Patrick, the panting announcer,

Speaker 36 followed by Jim Ross, Michael Cole, Corey Graves, Kevin Kelly, Chris Jericho, Matt Stryker, Vic Joseph, and Tony Schiavone.

Speaker 38 I don't see why anybody would vote for Kevin Kelly as the worst over some of the rogues gallery of names that were just listed, and to vote.

Speaker 38 For Jim Ross being the worst announcer, but he's 72 years old and he's had fucking multiple surgeries and health issues. Just don't put his name down.

Speaker 38 Don't vote for him for anything out of a little common respect.

Speaker 36 And there are fans who voted for Shivani as one of the announcers of the year.

Speaker 36 So this is certainly just a whacked fan base who doesn't understand what professional wrestling commentary is supposed to do and how effective it should be. But Jim, the best major wrestling show.

Speaker 36 In first place,

Speaker 36 AEW Revolution. March 5th in San Francisco, 188 votes.
Followed by Forbidden Door in Toronto. AEW All-In in London, WrestleMania Night One, AEW All-Out Chicago, Stardom All-Star Queendom,

Speaker 36 New Japan Pro Wrestling Wrestle Kingdom, Ring of Honor, Kijimudo's Last Love,

Speaker 36 what? AEW WrestleMania.

Speaker 38 Wait, wait a minute. Kijimudo did a porn flick and Ring of Honor?

Speaker 36 Well, apparently the event at the Tokyo Dome. It says Ring of Honor.
Yeah, it was a Ring of Honor show? It says R-O-H, Kijimudo's Last Love.

Speaker 38 i think there's

Speaker 38 dave dave skips his medicine every once in a while because of his memory it's the thing is pressing on the prefrontal lobe well let's go to the worst major wrestling show wait that was just gibberish i don't remember what matches were on those

Speaker 38 shows no

Speaker 36 that's just gibberish i don't know what the fuck that was the worst major wrestling show wwe crown jewel november 4th in saudi arabia followed by nwa samane i think that's what the cocaine incident

Speaker 38 You know,

Speaker 38 the fact that nobody saw that thing and it still made such an impression indicates that it must have been fucking rotten.

Speaker 36 Followed by AEW World's End, December 30th in Uniondale.

Speaker 38 I remember that stunk.

Speaker 36 That was the worst AEW show, maybe, ever. Worst AEW pay-per-view.
Followed by WWE Fastlane, AAA Triple Mania.

Speaker 36 I was about to say eight and a half. That's eight.
It was on August 12th here. NWA 75th Anniversary Show,

Speaker 36 WWE WrestleMania Night 2. SummerSlam.
WWE Payback and NWA Nuff Said.

Speaker 36 NWA not really winning over fans, it seems like. The best wrestling maneuver, Jim.

Speaker 36 The Will Ospreay Hidden Blade.

Speaker 38 Is that that shitty looking fucking knee where the people are on their knees to begin with, and he hits them from behind, and they got no bump to take?

Speaker 36 I'm not actually sure, but we'll find out shortly.

Speaker 38 God, that's fucking rot.

Speaker 36 He's on TV. In second place is Will Ospreay with the Stormbreaker.

Speaker 36 Followed by the One-Winged Angel by Kenny Omega.

Speaker 38 Of course it is.

Speaker 36 The Eljijo del Vikingo's second rope step up 630.

Speaker 38 What the f?

Speaker 36 Followed by the Commander Rope Walk Shooting Star.

Speaker 36 Followed by the Adam Page Buckshot Lariat.

Speaker 36 Neon's ramp-run double springboard Fossbury.

Speaker 36 Ilya Dragonoff's

Speaker 36 H-bomb. Leon Slater's 450 Swanton.

Speaker 36 And Okada's Rainmaker.

Speaker 38 There you go. You know what? The best move in wrestling is the RKO because it's the only one that nobody kicks out of.

Speaker 36 Well, no one kicks out of the one-winged angel. I don't know if we can compare the RKO to the one-winged angel.

Speaker 38 But, okay, the only one that nobody kicks out of, and a man's actually delivering it.

Speaker 36 Let's now go to one of the most interesting ones every year. Most disgusting promotional tactic.

Speaker 36 I'm going to go to number one, but then when I do the top 10, see if one of them stands out to you as being, okay, that doesn't really seem disgusting in any way.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 36 Number one, WWE enabling Vince McMahon and him being back in power slash TKO keeping him in a position of power with 197 votes.

Speaker 36 Any problem with that being number one?

Speaker 38 That's been the big one. That's been the big one.
I think that would have had to have won.

Speaker 36 Number two, the WWE's continued relationship with Saudi Arabia. Number three, the NWA cocaine spot on pay-per-view.

Speaker 36 Number four,

Speaker 36 I can't even say this anymore without thinking of you saying it. Power slap.

Speaker 36 Continuing on TV after Dana Weiss slapped his wife.

Speaker 38 Come here, honey.

Speaker 38 Power slap.

Speaker 36 Number five, AEW signing Ric Flair. Number six, AEW Juice Robinson uses role of quarters after the Hamas terrorist attack and doing an anti-Semitic angle.

Speaker 36 Number seven, TKO ignoring Vince McMahon and Dana White's transgressions.

Speaker 36 Number eight, Colby Colvington using the death of Leon Edwards' father to promote a fight.

Speaker 36 Number nine, WWE hiring CM Punk.

Speaker 36 And number 10, Sean Strickland openly homophobic comments with no repercussions from UFC or TKO. With an honorable mention for Adam Page drinking Swarm Strickland's blood.

Speaker 38 And on

Speaker 38 that list of sexual perversion and blood drinking and violence and desecration of corpses is, and they gave punk a job.

Speaker 36 Hiring CM Punk is the most disgusting promotional tactic. Some not voted for that.
That's what's crazy.

Speaker 38 Again, does he have the list of winners in years past?

Speaker 36 Oh, yeah, there's a big one.

Speaker 38 Well, no, but think about this. We just had a list of, again,

Speaker 38 perversion and harassment and, you know, double dealing and just horrible activity all the way around from people, right?

Speaker 38 What was 19, was it 1981? Read 1981's winner for most disgusting promotional tactic.

Speaker 36 I'll do the first couple here. 1981, LaBelle promotion's usage of the monster, claiming he was built in a laboratory.

Speaker 38 Yes, the fans called that the most disgusting thing that had happened in any wrestling promotion all year because they actually said on TV that it wasn't a guy in a fucking monster costume, that it really was a fucking...

Speaker 38 monster built in a laboratory. They were about to go out of business, obviously.
But that was the worst thing that any promotion came up with to do that year that people could vote on.

Speaker 36 My favorite is 1982, the most disgusting promotional attack. Again, this year is Vince McMahon's involvement with the power of WWE and TKO.
1982, Bob Backlund is WWF champion.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 36 That was the most disgusting thing in wrestling that whole year.

Speaker 38 The smart fans hated Bob Backlund. The smart fans despised Bob Backlund.

Speaker 36 1983, WWF pretending Eddie Gilbert had re-broken his neck after an original legit injury in an auto accident. See, there's an interesting one.

Speaker 36 They try to use something legit in an angle, and the small amount of fans then in the know were offended that they would use the real thing in an angle? How does this work?

Speaker 38 Because, well,

Speaker 38 here's another thing, to be honest. Eddie was one of the first.

Speaker 38 guys to get in the business to recognize the the underground network of the newsletters and the sheets sheets and the traders and

Speaker 38 not only the tape traders, but the program traders, all that. They could support him and he was getting publicity.

Speaker 38 I remember he cooperated forever and ever with Terry Justice on the fan club and all that stuff. And so a lot of that

Speaker 38 community

Speaker 38 considered Eddie a friend. They'd known him since he was a teenager before he started wrestling when he was going to the fan club conventions and stuff and doing a photography.
So they were pissed off

Speaker 38 that how dare they try to. He broke his neck for real in that car wreck and it could have ended his career.
And now they're making

Speaker 38 light of it, I guess, on television. It just, it was, that was a weird thing with the fans then were so protective.

Speaker 38 The fans then were more, the smart fans were more protective of the integrity of the business than the goddamn promoters are now, or were then for that matter.

Speaker 36 Well, Jim, let's go now to worst television show in first place with 194 votes, NWA Power,

Speaker 36 followed by WWE Raw, NXT, Power Slap, Road to the Title,

Speaker 36 AEW Rampage, WWE SmackDown, AEW Dynamite, and Ring of Honor. This is worst television show.

Speaker 38 Well, almost every show is

Speaker 38 on that list.

Speaker 38 And almost every show at one point or another is rotten, so you can't really argue at this point. But, you know.

Speaker 36 And here are all the great awards that he got rid of over the years because they no longer have active uh winners favorite wrestler least favorite wrestler worst wrestler worst tag team worst non-wrestler worst manager aka the mr fuji the mr fuji award it was mr fuji every year except it was paul jones and then eventually sunny ono took over the award yeah worst match of the year

Speaker 36 Bray Wyatt versus LA Knight at the Royal Rumble.

Speaker 38 Well,

Speaker 38 I mean, I don't argue with the concept because it did stink, but there was obviously,

Speaker 38 and I know this audience sees everything.

Speaker 38 There was two guys in a fucking converted goddamn paint and body shop in front of 72 people that I'm sure had a worse match than that, but it didn't get any votes.

Speaker 38 Although some of these other people get votes doing the same thing, but I can, I can, I can agree with worst major show match of the year.

Speaker 36 Real quick, anything else stands out? Tyrus versus EC3,

Speaker 36 Shane McMahon and Snoop Dogg versus The Miz,

Speaker 36 Baron Corbin versus

Speaker 36 Gabeson, Gable Steveson or Gabe Sapolsky.

Speaker 38 I thought it was going to be some kind of goddamn showdown there.

Speaker 36 It'll be sold out at the curtain. That one.
Ronda Rousey versus Shana Baszler. Roman Reigns versus Jey Uso.
Adam Cole versus Chris Jericho. Jeff Jarrett versus Jeff Hardy.

Speaker 36 Julia Hart versus Abaddon. And Adam Cole versus MJF.

Speaker 36 Worst feud of the year.

Speaker 36 MJF versus the devil.

Speaker 36 167 votes. And there were a lot of bad ones, but I guess maybe because of the amount of time and the amount of

Speaker 36 just the amount of time they gave that thing.

Speaker 38 The time per show, the length of time that it stretched on and on, the people that were involved in it,

Speaker 38 the amount of letdown that happened with the whole thing, all of that, even the AEW faithful couldn't fucking disguise that.

Speaker 36 The rest of the top 10 for worst feud of the year, the Outcast versus AEW originals, Tyrus versus EC3.

Speaker 36 Oh, good lord. Ronda Rousey versus Shayna Baszler.

Speaker 38 Can't argue with that.

Speaker 36 Adam Cole versus Chris Jericho.

Speaker 38 Ooh.

Speaker 36 Keith Lee versus Swerve Strickland.

Speaker 38 Did they ever have a match or did they just talk nasty to each other once every few months?

Speaker 36 Is it worst feud because it never became a feud?

Speaker 36 Is that something that should make it worse feud? Because there should have been a feud and it just never was a feud.

Speaker 38 That should fucking land in the best and worst booker category.

Speaker 36 Number seven, Evil versus Sonata, tied with Bully Ray versus Scott DeMore.

Speaker 36 Here's one we missed. Number nine, Seth Rollins versus Shinsuke Nakamura.

Speaker 36 And number 10, another guy that, real quick, it turned into what happened to him? Where is he again? Miro versus CJ Perry

Speaker 38 versus his wife. Yeah, and they're gone again.
Yeah.

Speaker 38 She's hot, flexible, and missing.

Speaker 36 Worst promotion of the year.

Speaker 36 A runaway this year with 456 votes, the NWA.

Speaker 38 Good lord.

Speaker 36 What have they done?

Speaker 38 Billy Corgan better hire some private security with this amount of heat.

Speaker 36 Second place, AAA, followed by WWE. Control your narrative,

Speaker 36 MLW,

Speaker 36 GCW, ROH, Pro Wrestling NOAA, and finally, AEW.

Speaker 38 So even this audience obviously has to vote for everybody else before AEW in worst promotion.

Speaker 36 Best Booker. Now, this is another award that you previously won a couple times.
Yeah. Not actually three times now that I see it.
Yeah.

Speaker 38 Well, we know who was really accounting on this, who

Speaker 38 lives and breathes this type of thing.

Speaker 36 In first place with 360 votes, Paul Levesque.

Speaker 36 Followed in second place with 146 votes by the man who won the previous three years, Tony Kahn.

Speaker 36 Followed by Juan Manuel Marr,

Speaker 36 Shuji Ishika,

Speaker 36 Shuji Ishikawa, Rossi Ogawa, Ghetto, Sean Michaels,

Speaker 36 Andy Quindlen,

Speaker 36 or

Speaker 36 Quilden, whoever he may be, and Scott Damore

Speaker 36 with 16 votes. That big TNA voting block, 16 votes for Scott DeMore for best booker.

Speaker 38 You know, isn't it a shame there aren't but two bookers of any consequence anymore, and one of them is Tony Kahn?

Speaker 36 It always comes back to you. You get mad at the opportunity there was with AEW.
They should be further along now than they are. They've held themselves back.

Speaker 36 They had nothing but advantages from the moment they started. The excitement, the budget, the network.

Speaker 36 And this is the beginning of the squander, but let's go to the next one. This is interesting.

Speaker 38 Well, but let me, let's just, again, Tony, this means the world to him.

Speaker 38 Is there going to be some way, shape, or form that he's going to be able to spend this? It's great.

Speaker 36 Yeah, things are great. And now we've made some big changes.
We hired Jennifer Pepperduke and we hired um Rocky Romero and Kelly.

Speaker 36 Alexandra Pepperday, that was that, I forget what her name was, wasn't Jennifer

Speaker 38 Alexandra Pepperday.

Speaker 36 I can't even tell if you're really saying her name or if you just made up a name.

Speaker 38 That's that's the name that I'm saying.

Speaker 36 All right, well, Miss Pepperday and everyone else is there, so maybe things will change next year. Promoter of the year

Speaker 36 in first place with 371 votes, Nick Kahn. Oh,

Speaker 36 followed by Tony.

Speaker 38 A one-two punch to the gut. Poor Tony.

Speaker 38 He's going to call Cadbury and turn over his silver tray and stomp on some of his action figures who are probably going to have contusions.

Speaker 36 He lost to a different con. How bad do you think that hurts?

Speaker 38 But you know what? Some things don't change in 100 years. The two most powerful people in the wrestling business are cons.

Speaker 36 And they were 100 years ago. The promoters were all con artists.

Speaker 36 Jim, Bess Gimmick, there's only a couple more here.

Speaker 36 Tony Storm

Speaker 36 with 239 votes, followed by Christian Cage, Orange Cassidy, Bloodline,

Speaker 36 Brochachos.

Speaker 36 Brochachos. Was that just him and Adam Cole? Was that MJF and Adam Cole?

Speaker 38 That was MJF and Adam Cole.

Speaker 36 But that wasn't their name as a team, was it?

Speaker 38 They didn't actually ever. No, they had two tag team matches, didn't they? I I don't think it was.

Speaker 36 But it was better than you, babe. Well, not the Brochachos.

Speaker 38 Well, then maybe that's another outlaw team from somewhere in the hinterlands that we haven't heard of, like most of these fucking people.

Speaker 36 LA Knight, Dominic Mysterio, Swerve Strickland tied with Cody Rhodes and Katsuhiku Nakajima Roundout Best Gimmick. Worst gimmick, The Devil.

Speaker 36 Followed by QTV, Tony Storm,

Speaker 36 The House of Torture, The Outcasts, Abaddon, Roderick Strong, Wow, Seth Rollins,

Speaker 36 The Schism,

Speaker 36 and MJF.

Speaker 38 Well, I think it's ridiculous that, well, MJF is a babyface, maybe, because of what could be versus what was. I could see that'd be the worst gimmick he could possibly be doing.

Speaker 38 But I was just, I was all at Seth Franklin Rollins because AEW almost had a clean sweep there, didn't they?

Speaker 38 It's the place where bad gimmicks go to

Speaker 38 fester.

Speaker 36 Jim, the winner of Best Pro Wrestling Book, a book we talked about and promoted here on the show, and interviewed the author, our friend Tim Hornbaker, the last real world champion by Tim Hornbaker, book of the year.

Speaker 38 Well,

Speaker 38 hold on here one second. We got to go again with the I can't find it.
Where'd the goddamn hands go? There they are.

Speaker 38 Congratulations, Tim.

Speaker 38 Tip, tip, tittyo. Was there another book worth reading this past two?

Speaker 36 Yeah, number two on the list was Todd is God by Todd Gordon.

Speaker 36 Followed by Ringmaster by Abraham Josephine Reisman. Followed by The Kern Chronicles by Steve Kern and Ian Douglas.
I've heard good things about that, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

Speaker 36 Followed by The Wrestling Observer Complete Collection, 1989.

Speaker 36 Followed by Kayfabe. A mostly true history of pro-wrestling by Patrick Reed.

Speaker 36 Followed by.

Speaker 38 that was a big budget book.

Speaker 36 Followed by, There's Just One Problem by Brian Gewertz.

Speaker 36 And finally, Populism and Professional Wrestling in the Sunbelt South by Christopher Stacey. I don't know that book either.

Speaker 38 I don't know what the fuck that was, but

Speaker 38 I haven't read Gerwitz's book because I'm afraid I'll hate him more than I already do just on the concept of him because I don't think we've ever met. I'm just...

Speaker 36 You will.

Speaker 38 I will hate him even worse.

Speaker 36 Yeah, he's a little weasly fucking character. You You won't like him.
And finally, Jim, best pro wrestling documentary. The winner is Dark Side of the Rings episode on Chris and Tammy.

Speaker 38 Aw, well, good. I'm glad to see that people thought well of that episode.

Speaker 36 And those were the majority of the Wrestling Observer Awards. We went longer than we thought we would, but

Speaker 38 it did take a while, didn't it?

Speaker 36 It did, yes.

Speaker 38 I thought we started.

Speaker 38 Oh, boy.

Speaker 36 Promo code JCE.

Speaker 38 Yeah, he'll give you everything in the shop.

Speaker 38 Well, Brian, I guess we ought to get to the topic that everybody's talking about. What's going on in the WWE and the big elimination chamber?

Speaker 38 But before we do that, what in the wide world of sports is happening at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this fine week?

Speaker 36 Well, thank you for such a classy plug there or setup to the plug. Another fine week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network and information about all the shows on Twitter.

Speaker 36 at Super Podcast or on Facebook at facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard. A few notes.
Of course, so much is happening throughout the world of wrestling. Where do you get your news?

Speaker 36 Where can you trust to get your news? I'm throwing words in the air, hoping they come down together and making sense.

Speaker 36 Who can you trust and where do they live? That's the question I'm asking.

Speaker 36 Who do you know?

Speaker 36 And how much do they have, ladies and gentlemen?

Speaker 38 What did you know and when did you know it?

Speaker 36 Well, find out who knew what and when when and why you should check out what and where it is, and all the news with none of the opinion and none of this babble from the wrestling news every day directly from thewrestlingnews.com or wherever you find your favorite podcast, Arcadian Vanguards, the wrestling news.

Speaker 36 See, just your little noise got me there. I also want to make mention of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, a look back at the totality of 1984.

Speaker 36 If you were going to give 1984 wrestling awards, who would you you give them to? Check it out today at mcadampod.com.

Speaker 36 Go look for Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcasts. And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the

Speaker 36 Mothership.

Speaker 36 Go through the archive today. It's set.
Took a lot out of me at 605pod.com. Available wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Speaker 36 Let's see what happens. The mothership.

Speaker 38 I'd like to take a lot out of you. Well, before we

Speaker 38 talk about the elimination chamber, we've got to make mention of SmackDown. I had asked you earlier in the week, I don't know if it was on the air or not when I asked you, but

Speaker 38 how can they do SmackDown on Friday and anybody be in Australia,

Speaker 38 you know, three hours later or whatever?

Speaker 38 And apparently they taped this program. I don't know where they taped it or when.
Did they tape it with their last SmackDown a week ago?

Speaker 38 Have they kept this under there wasn't much to write home about on this show there's so much scandalous stuff happening in wrestling now that there are no spoilers somehow they had a tv taping and no one said anything yeah i just got a packed house no one said anything you couldn't really tell by what they uh they didn't say where they were so i think they were i think they taped this after the last week's smackdown but nothing really happened of note so nobody talked about it but there are a couple things i want to make mention of i mean we got live against

Speaker 38 Triffany. A live against Tiffany.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 there was a video of Ashante Adonis and his partner. What's his name? I can't remember his partner's name.

Speaker 36 Trick?

Speaker 38 No,

Speaker 38 he's partners with Carmelo, but they're on the outs.

Speaker 36 No, Carmelo.

Speaker 36 Wait.

Speaker 38 Ashante and the other guy were in with Flop Dollar, weren't they?

Speaker 36 No, Flop Dollar was the other guy.

Speaker 38 Well, then, all right. Well, one of these fucking.

Speaker 36 It was Ashante, Flop Dollar, Beef Av, and Swerve.

Speaker 36 Oh, he swerved.

Speaker 38 He swerved him, and he, yeah.

Speaker 36 He swerves when he drives.

Speaker 38 Well, Ashante's got a new partner, and they had a video of them trying on clothing.

Speaker 36 Is that Carmelo Hayes, the new partner?

Speaker 36 Are they going to feud with the other fashionable males in the company?

Speaker 38 But anyway, they had that, and they had some pre-tape stuff at the back with Jimmy and Roman and, you know, Paulie

Speaker 38 telling Grayson Waller to do something, dramatic foreshadowing for the pay-per-view.

Speaker 38 But did you see the Braun Breaker match?

Speaker 36 That was the only thing on the entire episode I actually really liked.

Speaker 38 That's one of the only things on the episode I want to talk about.

Speaker 38 He's the new Brock Lesnar with none of the problems.

Speaker 38 He's 20 years younger, and they don't have to worry about the lawsuits or whatever is going to be coming out in whatever fucking

Speaker 38 statement in Pissgate.

Speaker 38 He has got the same qualities. He obviously

Speaker 38 is not going to bother to or take the time to or go through and compete and win the UFC title, but he's got the same kind of

Speaker 38 aggression and intensity that Brock has and the power, and the speed,

Speaker 38 and or that Brock had, you know, 20 years ago. And he's a more natural worker.
I had Brock at this stage that Braun Breaker's at, or shortly before it.

Speaker 38 And Braun's been leaps and bounds ahead of what Brock was as far as a pro wrestling performer since we first saw him. But yeah, he's got every tool.

Speaker 38 And they say, and I believe it, he runs the ropes at 23 miles an hour. And he's got 20.
He hadn't got 20 feet because the ring is 20 feet from edge of apron to edge of apron.

Speaker 38 So inside the ropes, he's got 18 feet to get 23 miles an hour. The fuck.

Speaker 38 he hit the Dante Chin, whoever, nobody, makes no difference. It was a squash match and it was flawless.
And it's to build up a star

Speaker 38 and

Speaker 38 back the Brinks truck up to Braun Breaker's house because he'll be the WWE Universal or world or whatever champion, barring injury.

Speaker 38 In,

Speaker 38 I don't think it might not take him three years.

Speaker 36 Should he be the one to dethrone?

Speaker 36 I was going to say, I was about to say Walter. Should he be the one to dethrone Gunther?

Speaker 38 You know, that might not be a bad idea.

Speaker 38 And it shouldn't happen real anytime real quick. Just let Gunther keep doing what Gunther's doing and give Braun Breaker now

Speaker 38 six months or however many months, maybe a year on the main roster, maybe by next year's WrestleMania.

Speaker 38 That would be very interesting. There's no reason to hurry anything here, but just have him keep doing what he's fucking doing and talking like he talks.

Speaker 38 And of course, the Wrestling Observer. Newsletter readers would rather see Will Ostrich, but Braun Breaker is a

Speaker 38 multi-multi-million dollar fucking talent and is going to be, again, barring injury for

Speaker 38 however many years he wants to be, probably until he makes much money, just says, fuck it, and quits.

Speaker 38 I don't know how else to explain it.

Speaker 38 But otherwise, than that on this program, oh, I've got to mention.

Speaker 38 In the back, they had the Mexican heel group jump and beat up the Mexican babyface group and hold them down while Escobar talked mean to him. And the referees were running.

Speaker 38 The cameraman's right in their face while felonious assault is going on and the referees are waving their hands in the air. Oh, don't do that.

Speaker 38 But then we got to

Speaker 38 the tag team match with

Speaker 38 J.D. Funco and Dominic Mysterio against Tyler Bate and Pete Dunn.
And more on Bate and Pete when we talk about the elimination chamber.

Speaker 38 But that's, this is one of the times, again, Stace and Harley had come and sit down from going out to take a pee.

Speaker 38 Harley, not Stacey.

Speaker 38 And they sit down while I'm writing things, making these notes.

Speaker 38 And I said, look at the state of tag team wrestling.

Speaker 38 I said, those two guys are going for the tag team title on the pay-per-view this weekend. She said, Dominic and the other guy.
I said, no, the other two guys.

Speaker 38 And I wrote down her comments when she looked at Tyler Bate and Pete Dunn.

Speaker 38 What the fuck is this? Are they kidding? These aren't just job guys, they're signed.

Speaker 38 That one guy looks like a midget with Dennis Condry's head.

Speaker 38 It looks like he just rolled out of bed. The one guy looks like he's wearing underoos.

Speaker 38 They're the babyface challengers to the tag team title, and I'll get more into their

Speaker 38 unseemly look and ridiculous level of push on the pay-per-view, but what the fuck has gone on?

Speaker 38 We've gone from the Hart Foundation and the Rockers and the fucking British Bulldogs or the Rock and Roll Express and the Midnight Express and Tully and Arn and Demolition and the Steiner Brothers and the Road Warriors to fucking Tyler Bate and Pete Butch Dunn.

Speaker 36 Don't forget doom

Speaker 38 and doom.

Speaker 36 The team of doom.

Speaker 38 The Team of Doom.

Speaker 36 And the Legion of Doom.

Speaker 38 They were even bigger than a team. They were a Legion.

Speaker 36 And what about Olympia and Gene?

Speaker 38 Well, I mean, we could talk Bachwinkle and Stevens. I was making a point, but I'm done now.

Speaker 36 I just want to yell tag team names. It'll be more fun.
Yes.

Speaker 38 Street Profits and the AOP.

Speaker 38 That was the next match.

Speaker 38 And then Damage Control jumped Dakota Kai in the locker room and hurt her ankle, and Bailey was upset about it.

Speaker 38 And then L.A. Knight had a match with Drew McIntyre.
That was the main event with Logan Paul on color.

Speaker 38 And there wasn't anything wrong with it. Two pros here.
They kept it moving. The shit looked good.

Speaker 38 They had a nice TV match, and finally,

Speaker 38 as L.A. Knight made his big comeback and they went back and forth, they go to the floor in front of the desk, and Drew runs L.A.
Knight into

Speaker 38 fucking Kevin Owens, who's come out also, by the way, to do sit at the desk. And Owens then got on Drew and just the referee rang the bell.

Speaker 38 DQ, boom, so they had a big four-way, and then Lashley came in, and then everybody had a fight, and Drew was the last man standing, and they were playing the music, and then Orton came in out of nowhere with the RKO.

Speaker 38 So they just had a match until it was time to not have a match and then they rang the bell and then everybody hit a big move on everybody.

Speaker 38 That was the name of that tune.

Speaker 36 Well, an exciting episode of SmackDown, a taped episode. I want to say I saw the Fast Nationals and I'm trying to find them.
I can't find them, but it was another episode that...

Speaker 38 A taped episode of it was held together with Scotch tape, but people are watching it because they're interested in something there.

Speaker 36 Well, that was SmackDown. That was the quickest we've ever gotten through SmackDown.
Nine minutes to get through SmackDown there.

Speaker 38 There you go. But don't worry.
We're about to slow down.

Speaker 38 The elimination chamber on this was February 24th here in this country. What date was it over there down under in Australia? Was it the 23rd, the 25th?

Speaker 38 What day was it over there?

Speaker 36 I'm not certain.

Speaker 38 We have established it's a scientific fact that time moves more slowly in Australia

Speaker 38 because this was the slowest moving fucking show I have ever seen in my life.

Speaker 38 And,

Speaker 38 you know, again, what a stadium. What a set they had and the whole truss over the ring.

Speaker 38 They have an incredible, open, network quality television production. It's a big league show.

Speaker 38 You can tell the new guy has brought in more network sports type fucking presentation to the production of it.

Speaker 36 I mean, there's the production's looked incredible since Kevin Doll left. It's been great.
Yes.

Speaker 38 I mean, it's like the difference between looking at his fucking ugly kids and his family pictures and his wallet and watching high-definition color television.

Speaker 36 It makes the show so much more bearable. It's been been really good.

Speaker 38 And the new camera angles that they've got on the ring, and part of this may have been the way that they had to shoot the stadium because it's so big, but they

Speaker 38 it just it, you know, it looks great.

Speaker 38 Not much happens. It's a big league fucking production, though.

Speaker 38 But they opened this thing up, and obviously, you know, the

Speaker 38 I don't know what the live viewership was except for

Speaker 38 in Australia because it was five o'clock in the morning Eastern time in the United States but it's on peacock so people will catch it eventually but goddamn you know pack a lunch and prepare

Speaker 38 devote the whole day

Speaker 36 we had a lot of listeners in the cult of cornet groups we had a thread for people who were going to watch it to make comments and people hung themselves with it there were a lot of people up there were a lot of people apparently drinking

Speaker 36 still up and drinking from the night before. Their plan was to make it through the pay-per-view and they were hit with this.

Speaker 38 Boy, howdy, I don't know.

Speaker 36 You're making it sound a lot worse than it was.

Speaker 38 Well, no, if somebody was well-rested and in good health and not under the influence of any substances or chemicals and was trying to stay awake through this thing,

Speaker 38 if you were watching it live and you couldn't fast forward,

Speaker 38 that would be

Speaker 38 all right. Well, let's go through it.

Speaker 38 The first match was the Women's Elimination Chamber match. And that featured Bianca versus Raquel versus Tiffany versus Liv versus Naomi versus Becky.

Speaker 38 And Brian, let me ask you a question before we talk about this.

Speaker 36 Sounds like pop stars, yeah?

Speaker 38 You know, sometimes they have classic movies that are just great movies, four-star movies, and they're well thought of and they stand the test of time, right?

Speaker 38 And people watch them generation after generation.

Speaker 38 And sometimes

Speaker 38 they even remake those movies for a more modern audience. You've seen remakes before of classic movies.

Speaker 36 It's a hit or miss, but mostly miss.

Speaker 38 Well, would you watch a rotten remake of a classic movie before you watched the original for the first time?

Speaker 38 Or wouldn't that spoil the original for you because you'd seen the substandard version before you'd seen the real deal?

Speaker 38 Well, let me just say this.

Speaker 38 To avoid not enjoying the men's elimination chamber match with six of the biggest individual stars in the company battling for a chance to face one of the world champions on one of the main events of one of the nights of WrestleMania.

Speaker 38 I didn't want to watch the goddamn women do it first, two hours beforehand.

Speaker 38 because anything that liv morgan is in and emerges unharmed from cannot be dangerous in any way when did she become the one you hate the most this all of a sudden emerge that you just have a problem because it's the most preposterous it's the most preposterous that this little tiny minute microscopic girly little girl is doing all these fucking ridiculously dangerous, supposedly dangerous and deadly and body-breaking things and just walking right away from it.

Speaker 38 It exposes a whole goddamn deal for everybody.

Speaker 36 Farmer Burns was skinny.

Speaker 38 Yeah, Farmer Burns was skinny, but his weight was distributed a little differently than Liv Morgan's.

Speaker 36 So you didn't watch the women's elimination?

Speaker 38 No, I can't. No.

Speaker 36 It was better than the men's. It was better than the men's.

Speaker 38 But no, it can't be because that just means that they're doing obviously fake shit to each other in a more accomplished manner than the men.

Speaker 36 Well, yeah.

Speaker 38 I don't want to see fucking girls in cages and girls doing hardcore garbage matches and girls whacking each other with goddamn chairs and blunt instruments because that just calls attention to the fact it's phony when the guys do it.

Speaker 38 The guys are the ones drawing the fucking money.

Speaker 36 Well, the girls are the ones getting the moonsaults.

Speaker 38 Well, and they can keep those.

Speaker 38 I can buy that a young lady of these particular people's stature can do gymnastics, not fight with goddamn martial arts weapons until one's head should be caved in.

Speaker 36 Is part of the problem, though, even if you get past your issues in general with this match being there and why you didn't watch it, I watched it and I enjoyed it more than the men's match.

Speaker 36 Is that a separate problem altogether? The idea that your audience would watch that match and enjoy it more than the match that leads to. a main event match at WrestleMania?

Speaker 38 Yes.

Speaker 38 And that's why I don't enjoy it because I don't look at it from an audience standpoint. I look at it from a professional standpoint and from a promoter standpoint

Speaker 38 and from a guy's talent standpoint.

Speaker 38 If you have

Speaker 38 women, I'm sorry, young

Speaker 38 women of, in most cases, very frail body weight, Tiffany Stratton.

Speaker 36 Becky Lynch.

Speaker 38 Becky Lynch can, she's 140 pounds. Becky Lynch is 120 pounds.
She can talk,

Speaker 38 but you put them in cages and elimination chambers and furniture matches. It's ridiculous.
If it doesn't kill them, it's phony.

Speaker 38 And the guys have made sure to let everybody know that it's phony, too. They do too much of it, as we'll get to when we talk about AEW

Speaker 38 and those idiots and their suicidal tendencies.

Speaker 38 But again, no,

Speaker 38 you've got six of the top stars in the company going for a shot at the world title in the main event at WrestleMania. So you put their exact same gimmick match on earlier with girls.

Speaker 38 Sorry.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 I will say that one thing that it was proven,

Speaker 38 they are making new fans.

Speaker 38 Because if you gave a wrestling fan from 40 years ago or 30 years ago or 20 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, a 33-minute girls match when there's only four matches on the card, the the fans would have burned the arena to the ground.

Speaker 38 Would they not?

Speaker 36 Well, that's where we are today. We've evolved.
Now they could have the match, and fans will either enjoy it or sit there politely and not move.

Speaker 38 Yeah, or not walk or not throw shit at the ring. We're not set the seats on fire.

Speaker 36 They wouldn't have been blanket appears at times.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 basically, this match, the bell rang to start it 16 minutes into the show, and they were done at 49 minutes into the show.

Speaker 38 I started keeping track because the matches were longer than they have a roster of 100 fucking people

Speaker 38 and they have an unlimited amount of money not because Tony and his rich father, but because they're making billions and they're worth billions.

Speaker 38 Fly a few extra people to goddamn Australia. They had four matches on a card.
They were all half an hour long or close to or over.

Speaker 38 And then there'd be stretches of 20 and 30 minutes in between matches where you got Australian tourism videos and fucking packages and commercials and goddamn gaga and entrances and flashy drone shots.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 people are up at 6:30 in the morning trying to get through this live.

Speaker 38 Fucking hell.

Speaker 36 So, anyway, perhaps the alcohol helped.

Speaker 38 Oh, I can't see how at that time of day or morning or night or whatever that alcohol would help you stay awake.

Speaker 38 But that was the first match.

Speaker 36 Good match.

Speaker 38 And Becky won because we want to see Becky and Rhea. I want to see the top girls in major matches that can actually perform.
I don't want to see

Speaker 38 a fucking cast of goddamn chorus girls out there looking like deer on ice doing shit that guys ought to be doing.

Speaker 36 Well, good match. Timothy Stratton looked really good in there.

Speaker 36 In where?

Speaker 38 What are you insinuating?

Speaker 36 No, she was doing good. She did a moonsault at one point.

Speaker 36 Apparently, Raquel had some kind of flare-up of a skin condition. That's why she looked a little out of sorts.
But she, like a true professional, toughed it out and competed.

Speaker 36 And

Speaker 38 Naomi looked a little green around the gills, too.

Speaker 36 You know, it sucks when she can't do her glow-in-the-dark dancing.

Speaker 38 It was daylight.

Speaker 36 Trancing thing, yeah.

Speaker 36 Beautiful sunset during the next match, though.

Speaker 38 that's all I was watching during the next match was the sunset.

Speaker 36 I guess the question is,

Speaker 36 if you look at where things are and you have someone like Rhea Ripley, who is,

Speaker 36 in my eyes, for what I enjoy, the best there's ever been as far as a women's wrestler. She gets it.
And even some of the matches that aren't like classics, what she does in them draws you in.

Speaker 36 She's really good. At the same time, you have a lot of people that

Speaker 36 are okay.

Speaker 36 You have some that are over.

Speaker 36 But if there are matches where the crowd is silent, it's typically the women's matches for both companies.

Speaker 36 A whole different problem in AEW, but WWE has at least professional women, you know, and Maxine Dupree out there doing her thing.

Speaker 36 But it's almost like the Alundra Blaze versus Bull Nakano being the entire division for a year and a half or whatever. That's too small, but maybe everything else is too big.

Speaker 36 Like you, if you have the best, like Area Ripley, and you have a Bianca Belair, who in my eyes is right up there, just really, really great

Speaker 36 like you want them to have people to feud with but you don't need just tons of people running around if they're not over then you're trying to stack a division that isn't over but there are some people in it that are i don't know

Speaker 38 i wonder about these things yes it keeps you up at night i can tell

Speaker 38 well anyway so becky's on to wrestlemania to wrestle the The winner, wrestle at WrestleMania to wrestle the winner of the main event tonight with Rhea Ripley and Refrigerator Jax, which is going to go on last, and more on that later.

Speaker 38 Okay, the next match was the tag team title contest, and this was the quickest turnaround of the night.

Speaker 38 The bell for the tag team title match started only 14 minutes after the end of the previous match. So they really, they were moving there.

Speaker 38 I don't, I just noticed him and I couldn't take my eyes off him. I don't don't know if he always does this, if I don't pay attention, what show he's on or whatever, but the ring announcer.

Speaker 38 Rare WWE mistake. They let him dress like an indie clown and he's got the weird hair and he's got to be six foot five anyway.
So he looked like some kind of game show host

Speaker 38 out there doing a special ring announcer fucking spot. But does this fucking idiot dress like that all the time and I haven't noticed?

Speaker 36 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 38 Oh, Christ.

Speaker 38 All right. Well, anyway, I'd fire him.

Speaker 38 He's not a goddamn performer. He's a ring announcer.
He's not a person.

Speaker 36 Well, you can tell him to dress differently. You don't have to fire him.

Speaker 38 I'd fire him for not knowing his place and showing up like that. The fuck's the matter with you? You think you're the fucking star right here? Get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 38 Ring announcer should be heard and only seen to be heard.

Speaker 36 Should Howard Finkel have been allowed to express himself instead of just wearing a tuxedo?

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 38 Every once in a while, there has been a local personality that could get away, Boyd Pierce, because everybody knew him and everybody loved him and he was the folksy fella and he could get away with something like that.

Speaker 38 But you don't want just every generic fucking nitwit announcer that you've got dressing like a goddamn one of the boys.

Speaker 38 They're not gimmicks. They're fucking announcers.

Speaker 38 This guy's hair anyway. He ought to be fucking beaten about the head and face.
Anyway, so it was the WWE tag team title, Damian Priest and Finn Balor against Tyler Bate and Pete Dunn.

Speaker 38 And again, I honestly would have skipped this, but there's only four matches on the fucking show because apparently they didn't want to fly anybody over to Australia to fill this card out.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 I'll watch it for a tag team match just to see

Speaker 38 the performance because

Speaker 38 again i mentioned this before the heart foundation the rockers the bulldogs the steiners the road warriors the midnight express the rock and roll express tully blancher and darn anderson demolish on and on and on and on and on

Speaker 38 and there's tyler bate and pete dunn they

Speaker 38 they ruined pete dunn

Speaker 38 when Vince was still there and he went through his Charles Dickens fetish phase and made butch

Speaker 38 and I don't see how you recover from that And Tyler Bate, yeah, they were all working hard, and he's a wonderful young little athlete, but he looks like Fuzzy Cupid.

Speaker 38 He made Finn Balor look like a fucking giant. And

Speaker 38 the short legs and odd-shaped torso,

Speaker 38 these,

Speaker 38 Bate and Dunn, I'm sure they could do well on the UK independent scene. They could be probably great talents for an impact

Speaker 38 or, you know, high-level indie tag team because they do nice stuff, but look at them. They don't have a gimmick.
They don't have a look.

Speaker 38 As I said, Tyler Bate reaches up when he hits the ropes to get his arm over it.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 their name is the new Catch Republic. What the fuck is that? That sounds like a Czechoslovakian fucking political group.

Speaker 36 But you know, catch wrestling, right?

Speaker 38 No, nobody knows that.

Speaker 38 And what does that have to do with the Republic? And why are they new? Was there an old catch republic?

Speaker 38 No,

Speaker 38 they're microcasting to their indie-nich UK indie show fucking audience.

Speaker 38 And, you know, so that's...

Speaker 38 Anyway,

Speaker 38 Damian Priest looked like Andre in the middle of this. And it looked like a squash match where they forgot to tell the jobbers that they were getting squashed.

Speaker 38 And then at that point, it transitioned to a lot of action basically to prove that Finn and Priest can't beat preliminary guys.

Speaker 38 And then it just

Speaker 38 went false finish after false finish. They kicked out of more of the heel shit.
And

Speaker 38 finally,

Speaker 38 Priest and Finn were going to double team

Speaker 38 the guy where

Speaker 38 Priest had him up for a powerbomb, and Finn was going to come off the top rope or whatever and bait Hurricane Rana's priest toward the turnbuckle where Finn is on.

Speaker 38 And it's going to be like Priest head-butts Finn in the nuts and crotches him, but Priest stumbled because the guy went down with him.

Speaker 38 So he had to crawl on his hands and knees and then stand up under Finn Balor and nut him on purpose with his head

Speaker 38 because they were getting too complicated doing shit they can't do smoothly to try to get these guys over

Speaker 38 when it's a fucking lost cause, a moot point at a goddamn fool's errand.

Speaker 38 Because the only people that like Tyler Bate and Pete Dunn in this presentation are the fans that they've got from England that liked them when they were a big deal over there.

Speaker 38 They're not a big deal here.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 the state of tag team wrestling. Anyway, the babyfaces faces double teamed Priest to death in front of the referee.

Speaker 38 Finn disappeared for a good while, but then finally, Priest double choke slammed both of them. And Finn came off the top with the double stomp to Pete Dunn in 18 minutes.

Speaker 38 18 minutes of a glorified TV match. So

Speaker 38 I don't know what was worst about this show is that either the matches, once they ended, it took forever to get the next next one started, or once that match got started, it would never fucking end.

Speaker 38 Your thoughts?

Speaker 36 I can't add too much to that. The sunset was gorgeous during this match.
Whenever they had the wide shot and you got to see the sky, oh, it was just magical.

Speaker 36 And the match,

Speaker 36 I mean, they needed, they needed, they have a tag team division with very few main event kind of teams. You know, if you look at at the 80s, just WWF, not even talking about what you guys were doing.

Speaker 36 Harr Foundation,

Speaker 36 Demolition,

Speaker 36 Killer Bees,

Speaker 36 British Bulldogs,

Speaker 36 Islanders,

Speaker 36 fucking Conquistadors, anyone. Everyone was like a big-sized athlete.

Speaker 36 You know, it does stand out. You said what I thought at one point when Bate was there next to Finn Bauer, who is a smaller guy,

Speaker 36 he looks so much bigger than me. It's hard to even figure out how tall the guy must be.
Is he 5'4?

Speaker 36 I don't know, but

Speaker 38 Google Fuzzy Cupid, kids.

Speaker 36 I think a lot of the guys who have been in the NXT system for a while are getting their shot on the main roster, whether it's Gargano and Champa or these two guys. And

Speaker 36 I thought Butch was working pretty good, actually, for him.

Speaker 36 We'll see.

Speaker 38 Well, then they had a package of the Bloodline saga with the up-to-date, you know, business with the rock and what Cody's been involved in. And

Speaker 38 do you think it was after this segment, Brian? I think you mentioned something like this before we went on the air that the people realized that the Bloodline's not even in the fucking building?

Speaker 36 I heard from a few people there that there was an issue with that.

Speaker 36 There was also an issue where I guess the timers were going off on different sides of the building at different times during the illumination chamber so the countdown would happen and then nothing would happen, which caused

Speaker 36 yeah, which was weird. I mean, you heard it happen a few times on the show, but yeah, I think this was kind of around the time people realized, oh shit, we're not getting anything from the bloodline.

Speaker 36 Not that they were billed to be there, but.

Speaker 38 Well, but you know, goddamn, when you're in a fucking stadium and 50,000 people, one would think that they would have, anyway.

Speaker 38 We're an hour and a half into the pay-per-view, and we've seen two matches.

Speaker 38 And now Austin Theory is in the ring to do a quick promo where he knocks Vegemite and says he went out back for a bloomin' onion. And boy, that's making me hungry.

Speaker 38 And then he introduced Grayson Waller, who apparently Waller is from

Speaker 38 this country, if not Perth itself, somewhere in this Godforsaken land that birthed Grayson Waller and spawned him on us.

Speaker 38 So at this point, they're going to do the Grayson Waller effect. I fast-forwarded it until somebody else came out.

Speaker 38 And that was Seth Franklin Rollins.

Speaker 38 And here he comes. And by the time he gets there, he just sits down.
And then here comes Cody.

Speaker 38 And he gets the ring and he sits down.

Speaker 38 And, well, he didn't sit down at first. He asked the people, hey, Perth, what do you want to talk about?

Speaker 38 11 minutes into this segment before Cody said a fucking word. It was just

Speaker 38 theory introducing Waller, Waller mouthing off, and then the entrances.

Speaker 36 They need to bring back the ring cars if they're going to do stadiums like this to get people to the ring in 30 seconds or less.

Speaker 38 Yes, yes.

Speaker 38 Except Bobby Heenan hated that fucking WrestleMania 3 cart because he said that they were raised, they were elevated, it was only going like 10 miles an hour so the people could fucking catch him with all the stuff they were throwing.

Speaker 36 Yeah, if you watch, because Andre is a heel, he's the biggest heel in the company at that time, and he's waving. You're like, why is he waving to the fans?

Speaker 36 He's actually just trying to move his hand back and forth to block things being thrown at him.

Speaker 38 But anyway, so Cody cuts, oh, Seth first, he announced that he's days away from being medically cleared to wrestle.

Speaker 38 So good, since they've been advertising he was going to already defend his title on WrestleMania anyway.

Speaker 38 And then Cody kind of talked about the rock and, you know, got all the Cody crybabies there to cheer for him. And

Speaker 38 I just wrote, nothing is happening here. I've seen fossils form at a quicker pace.

Speaker 38 And then Cody told The Rock that he's wide open to WrestleMania and he wants a one-on-one match with The Rock anytime, anyplace, anywhere. And of course,

Speaker 38 they got to do that or something like it at some point.

Speaker 38 And then Seth tells Cody that there's no one-on-one with the bloodline involved. If Rock takes his challenge, then Cody, I just want you to know and everybody know you won't be alone.

Speaker 38 And people kind of cheer that.

Speaker 36 And we've established that, haven't we?

Speaker 38 We've established it. But not in Australia.
Because they're on, well, you've heard of Greenwich Mean Time. Yeah.
They're on Australia Pissy Time.

Speaker 38 So then Theory steps up and starts healing on Cody and Seth and starts doing the rocks mate. It doesn't matter what you think of blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 38 And then Cody and Seth just beat up Theory and give him their moves. And Waller

Speaker 38 stood back and let him do it. Obviously, like

Speaker 38 he shouldn't have spoken up, I guess.

Speaker 38 And that was the end of it in 20

Speaker 38 minutes.

Speaker 38 I mean, I've seen people have conversations on airplanes that was more exciting.

Speaker 38 What

Speaker 38 for a stadium for 50,000 people?

Speaker 38 That's all they got?

Speaker 36 It's amazing. It's also amazing.
I mean, until AJ Styles appears later on, it's amazing they flew these guys over just to do this at a stadium. But

Speaker 36 yeah, I mean, it's weird, the formula they have, and it's working.

Speaker 36 Give the people very little with the idea that maybe there'll be more next time.

Speaker 38 And then the next time there's even less.

Speaker 36 But there could be more the next time. And then it could be,

Speaker 38 then they've fallen into the hole, and then they're standing above it saying, it puts the lotion on the skin or else it gets the hose again.

Speaker 36 With such enthusiasm, I've never heard it.

Speaker 36 Well,

Speaker 38 you got to look over the edge there, you know.

Speaker 38 Anyway, so

Speaker 38 then the entrances began, ladies and gentlemen, for the dreaded dangerous, deadly elimination chamber.

Speaker 38 And And that match featured Kevin Owens versus Bobby Lashley versus Logan Paul versus Randy Orton versus Drew McIntyre versus L A Knight with everybody saying it.

Speaker 38 And I'll have you know, Brian,

Speaker 38 that I went back and checked, double-checked this. I wanted to make sure my figures.

Speaker 38 Match number three.

Speaker 38 began. The bell rang to start that match 54 minutes after the end of match number two.

Speaker 38 They had almost an hour in between

Speaker 38 the end of match number two and a start of match number three between the exits and the spots and the tourist videos and the goofiness and the

Speaker 38 interview segment and more entrances. It was literally a one-hour television program

Speaker 38 with no fucking wrestling in the middle of the pay-per-view.

Speaker 36 We always say imagine SmackDown without all those pesky commercials.

Speaker 38 No, we still got commercials.

Speaker 36 Well, not in the middle of the match. Not in the middle of the match.

Speaker 38 Well, pretty much goddamn everywhere else.

Speaker 38 So anyway.

Speaker 36 And by the way, how's that tourism thing going to work out? Who's going to go, you know what? We needed a place to go. That Australia looks great.
They sponsored wrestling. Let's go.

Speaker 38 Yeah, a guy in Champaign, Illinois sitting there thinking, you know,

Speaker 38 fuck goddamn Chicago. Let's just go over to Australia.

Speaker 38 Anyway, here's what happened in this match. And

Speaker 38 there was nothing,

Speaker 38 nobody's, these guys are all talents. Some great, some merely just okay, whatever.
But they're all talents. They're all stars.
They're all over.

Speaker 38 They weren't doing amateur shit and, you know, dropping and botching and falling all over each other.

Speaker 38 But there's no way to put a match like this together where it makes sense or it means anything from start to finish with the ebbs and the flows, the peaks and the valleys of an athletic contest where you're pulling for one side and not and cheering against the other.

Speaker 38 In this aspect, it's

Speaker 38 guys doing moves to each other until somebody wins, like all the multi-man matches. This one just has a bigger budget and a more elaborate set.

Speaker 38 But also it puts everybody in the modern wrestling position that guys in the territory days and throughout the history of wrestling would have never been caught dead being put in baby faces is that babyfaces have to fight babyfaces, but they treat them

Speaker 38 just like they're heels. And that makes the baby face that's doing that no better than a heel himself.
I will elaborate with some type of detail. So

Speaker 38 you might understand.

Speaker 38 In days gone by, if a baby face was to compete with another babyface in the ring in any kind of match,

Speaker 38 that

Speaker 38 and I've talked about this before. They wouldn't immediately start taking chairs and hitting each other over the head or punching each other in the face or

Speaker 38 trying to

Speaker 38 put each other through furniture and end their careers, or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 38 But today's modern babyfaces, when they're working with another babyface, they do the same shit to them as they do to heels, maybe heels they have an issue with, or heels that have done something to them in the past to illicit or is where fuck you, I'm going to kick you in the ball straight off.

Speaker 38 Do you see what I'm saying, Brian? And then

Speaker 38 when the fan likes both the baby faces,

Speaker 38 it disappoints him in one of them, does it not,

Speaker 38 That the other guy is

Speaker 38 acting that way. Why does he want to fucking kill goddamn Farquhar there? He's never done anything to him, but he's, you know, taking a turnbuckle hook and he's trying to pull his intestines out.

Speaker 38 Am I overthinking this?

Speaker 36 Maybe a tad. I mean, this is the illumination chamber.
You have to have baby faces and heels interact with each other like the Royal Rumble.

Speaker 36 And

Speaker 38 nobody has any goddamn psychology for it.

Speaker 36 The highlight of the match for me wasn't even something they showed on TV.

Speaker 36 You could see it in the background if you look for it after the fact. There's a video I saw.

Speaker 38 It must have been a Logan Paul drawing on the elimination chamber, fat pictures of Steen.

Speaker 36 The running commentary, and then they cut it. And the next thing you see is Steen slamming his head into the thing.
Yeah. That was the best thing in the whole match.
And it wasn't even WWE's.

Speaker 36 It was the way that was edited and how it was put together.

Speaker 38 It was great. Well, but also, Logan Paul is a fucking natural.
He's a goddamn, just a natural. But the way they did this, L.A.
Knight and Drew started.

Speaker 38 And good action. And there's an issue.
And L.A. Knight looks good.
And the way that they were shooting with the newish camera angles and because of the chamber and et cetera, a very big league look.

Speaker 38 And then Owens was next in, number three, and he makes a comeback and

Speaker 38 starts fucking with Logan Paul and the other pod. And that's where the interaction was going on.

Speaker 38 Basically,

Speaker 38 the only thing I want to see more out of this match is Logan Paul and Kevin Owens, because they were the interesting component of this.

Speaker 38 And as we just mentioned, Logan Paul someway got a black Sharpie or whatever, and he's drawing and writing backwards. Like Steen is, or Steen, Owens is fat, and pictures of.

Speaker 38 Owens with a fucking like one of the weebles that wobble, you fill with sand, but they won't fall over.

Speaker 38 And that was great stuff. And then number four was Lashley, and he comes in and beats up Drew.
But that's now we're starting the

Speaker 38 parts where two guys just have to just lay out forever. And because it's an elimination chamber and a cage, they can't even lay out on the floor under the apron or whatever.

Speaker 38 You see them just laying there forever while other guys are doing

Speaker 38 their predetermined, prearranged routines. And so you can't make notes on how this match went because it's guys doing moves to each other back and forth.
You can't follow a story.

Speaker 38 But when Orton came in, number five, business picked up because P's over. People want to see him.
He knows how to make a comeback.

Speaker 38 And then he DDT'd Owens on the platform and start and sold his back. And that was a story through the whole deal.
And I,

Speaker 38 at one point here, later on, I made note that Orton was the smartest guy in this match because he came in,

Speaker 38 all of his shit works. Nobody ever kicks out of the RKO.
He hurt himself doing his own move, but doing it on a hard surface.

Speaker 38 And everybody knows he's got a bad back, so he was able to sell that and do less in this match than anybody else, but get more response.

Speaker 38 He was and had a perfect out

Speaker 38 when he was eliminated. He was the smartest guy in the match.
If either they're taking care of him,

Speaker 38 which I know they are, they're taking care of him, but

Speaker 38 it has to be him also. Nobody's telling him all that stuff.
He picked up a lot of things in his 20 years in the business or whatever.

Speaker 38 And then number six was Logan Paul, and Owens gets right in front of the door. And now Logan Paul's looking like, uh-oh, and doesn't want the door to open and tries to close it when it does.
And

Speaker 38 Owens opens it, opened it up, and

Speaker 38 laid into him and closed the door behind him like they're having to fight in a phone booth and blah, blah, blah. And Owens was all over him.

Speaker 38 And then Logan Paul fought back, but everybody else was laying immobile.

Speaker 38 And then finally, Lashley comes back and spears Logan Paul through the door of the pod, which, again, looks good until they do that. probably another five times and then everybody will

Speaker 38 yawn about that one.

Speaker 38 And then finally, Lashley was about to fucking do something to somebody, I believe, and Drew hit the Claymore kick on him and beat Lashley one, two, three. So he's out.

Speaker 38 And as soon as that happens, L.A. Knight

Speaker 38 gets a flurry and hits his finish on Orton and then hits his finish on Drew and looks like he's going to cover somebody.

Speaker 38 And suddenly AJ Styles is standing there whacking L.A. Knight with a fucking chair.
And the announcer's like, where did he come from?

Speaker 38 You're at a fucking stadium. The ring is 500 feet away from the goddamn locker room.
You couldn't see him coming with spotlights.

Speaker 38 Goddamn Energy Power Company of Perth was strained to the gills with all those lights. And there was no place that you couldn't see somebody coming to the ring.
And AJ Styles. comes into the cage

Speaker 38 that they had the door open for Lashley

Speaker 38 and the announcers, well, we can't, the referees can't do anything. It's no disqualification.

Speaker 38 This is the

Speaker 38 living epitome and example of bullshit, the wrong kind of heat, the heat that goes on to promotion.

Speaker 38 I don't care if it's no DQ.

Speaker 38 And we're going to see some more of that here in a minute. You can't just blatantly, it kills the cage.
It kills the stipulation of the cage. It kills the goddamn credibility of the referees.

Speaker 38 It gets heat on the promotion. It's not in any way cleverly done.

Speaker 38 It's just, oh, a guy not in a match runs out in an impregnable cage, finds a way to get in, and beats L.A. Knight 10 times over the fucking back with a chair.

Speaker 38 And then Drew just hits him or gives him a styles clash on the chair.

Speaker 38 And then drew just covers him one two three

Speaker 38 that's where i said to myself this is getting burdensome to watch do you see what i'm saying about that one

Speaker 36 i agree with you

Speaker 38 i agree with you there's got to be a way to do it more artfully than that and just make everybody pissed off at the company instead of the heel that's perpetrating what should be a

Speaker 38 an evil, insidious, and creative

Speaker 38 attack. And instead, is just, oh, he just came in and beat him down in front of everybody.

Speaker 38 And then finally, Orton hit the RKO on Owens and pinned him one, two, three.

Speaker 38 And then Drew and Orton got in a fight, and then Orton and Logan Paul got in a fight.

Speaker 38 And then everybody was selling as we passed 30 minutes in this match.

Speaker 38 And then Logan Paul pulls out brass nucks, and the announcer is again, oh, no DQ. Then why didn't somebody bring a Smith Wesson?

Speaker 38 could have been over quicker and easier on everybody

Speaker 38 but logan paul pulls out the brass nucks and i know it's no dq but as he's holding them up showing them to everybody like as soon as i finish showing them to all of you i'm going to cheat and win the match orton rkos him out of nowhere one two three

Speaker 38 i know he's a heel

Speaker 38 But I just wish Logan didn't have to look that fucking well, I guess he's inexperienced too. So he's an inexperienced heel, so he can look stupid.

Speaker 36 And he's, no, it's not stupid. He's flashy.
He embraces being a heel in character, and he wants the audience to see exactly how heelish he is.

Speaker 38 Well, flashy is standing there for about five seconds, showing them the nucks, and then turning around and getting to business. Stupid is standing there for about 20 to 25 seconds

Speaker 38 before Orton comes and RKOs him.

Speaker 36 He's my favorite person in this match. He was great.

Speaker 38 Yes, Logan Paul, he may be one of my favorite people in a whole fucking roster.

Speaker 36 He definitely is one of my favorite people in the roster. I just want to see more of him in one-on-one stuff, promo-wise and match-wise.

Speaker 38 And stuff he can learn from instead of, you know, this type of. He's great, though.

Speaker 36 He's one of my very favorite in the whole business.

Speaker 38 But then we were left. Then there were two.

Speaker 38 Randy Orton and Drew McIntyre. And Orton's still selling his back.
And he's so good at it because he can sell it, but he can still do his stuff.

Speaker 38 But even when he's doing the stuff, you can tell he's still being hampered.

Speaker 38 And they go back and forth. And Drew's got him set up after a spine buster for the Claymore, but Orton can't get to his feet.

Speaker 38 And then Drew's stalking him and staring at him and standing there as Orton is struggling to his feet and pulling himself up by Drew's knee pad. And it looks like Orton's a goner.

Speaker 38 Drew's about to do something, and Orton jumps up and hits the RKO out of nowhere. Trademark.

Speaker 38 And he gets a big pop. And then

Speaker 38 Logan Paul is still in the cage.

Speaker 38 And I guess everybody in the stadium could see that, but they're disguising it with the camera angles when AJ came in and that Logan Paul was still there.

Speaker 38 So it's somewhat a surprise on camera, but it had to.

Speaker 38 It had to piss those stadium fans off that were seeing the whole picture because Logan Paul's still in the ring and he just takes the Nucks and knocks Orton out.

Speaker 38 And then he leaves, and

Speaker 38 Drew covers him,

Speaker 38 and the referee counts it.

Speaker 38 And the fans were pissed. Again, the wrong kind of heat done in front of the referee.
The heat goes on the referee, as the old timers used to say, but more

Speaker 38 now it goes on the promotion because it's lazy booking.

Speaker 38 And even

Speaker 38 again, if some way the referee couldn't have seen Logan Paul do it, but when the referee is standing there, the guy who's already been eliminated takes a foreign object, knocks their hero out, and then the referee counts it, people are, oh, bullshit.

Speaker 38 It's a wrong, people would not buy tickets to see next week's rematch if this was the territory days. Luckily,

Speaker 38 the WWE is now in position where they only have rematches in the same town maybe once a fucking year.

Speaker 38 But

Speaker 38 I just, a bullshit finish. 37 minutes of this match that we waited almost an hour to see the start of.

Speaker 38 And then

Speaker 38 the main players get taken out by either somebody that's not in the match at all or somebody that's not in the match anymore,

Speaker 38 blatantly in front of the referees with foreign fucking objects. And oh, you can't do anything because there's no DQ.

Speaker 38 Well, then they painted themselves in the wrong silo corner.

Speaker 36 Well, that really sums it up, doesn't it?

Speaker 38 Are you getting bored with me?

Speaker 36 Not with you, but with WWE.

Speaker 36 You know, when the stuff hits, it hits great, but a lot of stuff just feels like it's just holding everything in place. But like you said, it took a while to...

Speaker 36 WrestleMania 3

Speaker 36 was like three hours and it was like 13 matches. And I'm not saying...
We should go back to eight-minute matches or six-minute matches up and down the card, but

Speaker 36 they used to be a card.

Speaker 36 We're going back 100 years now where there were two, three matches on a show and an interview.

Speaker 38 Hey, well, and that's the thing is that again, we're not saying there should be 13 matches like in AEW.

Speaker 38 There's a big difference between four and 13, and everything takes and this is the simplest, most simplistic way outside. Yes, it's working for them, but

Speaker 38 good lord, it's a it's a chore for the discerning fan to muddle through.

Speaker 38 And we've got one more big event to go, and I'll explain why that was the main event in a moment. But first, Triple H was in the ring to announce the official attendance and thank everybody.

Speaker 38 52,590 people. And that's the point I was going to make that goes into what you just said.

Speaker 38 I can understand if it was just an in-your-house pay-per-view and what, 95 in Poughkeepsie, just to, you know,

Speaker 38 just to have the show, but a stadium in front of 50,000 people with all of the,

Speaker 38 and however much money they got paid by the Australian Tourism Commission.

Speaker 38 And they couldn't move anything along better or give them more variety than what happened here.

Speaker 38 That's my problem. So we get to the main event.
For the women's world title, Rhea Ripley versus Refrigerator Jax.

Speaker 38 And we all know why they put this match on last because Rhea Ripley is Australian. It's her home country.
Her whole family was in the front row.

Speaker 38 And normally, well, fuck your family and fuck your hometown if you're not over, but she's over. She's better over than any woman in the fucking company.

Speaker 38 So they put this match on last because it was her triumphant homecoming.

Speaker 38 However,

Speaker 38 the opponent, unfortunately,

Speaker 38 I felt so bad for Rhea Ripley.

Speaker 38 She gets to main event in a stadium in front of a crowd like that in her home country,

Speaker 38 but the other half of the Faustian bargain is that she has to have a match with an almost immobile, untalented, completely charismal-less performer who's going to botch it up right and left.

Speaker 38 And this, can you imagine if Charlotte was healthy, they would have set this stadium on, people would have been having heart attacks and babies in the audience, possibly at the same time.

Speaker 38 But this was like Ray Stevens versus Mabel, was it not?

Speaker 36 I don't think it was necessarily that bad.

Speaker 38 All right, it was like Sean Michaels versus Plowboy Frazier.

Speaker 36 Or Shawn Michaels versus Mabel, if you wanted to go to just a direct comparison to what you said before.

Speaker 36 I mean, what did you, I mean, it's Nia Jax. She doesn't do.

Speaker 36 She does her Nia. She wrestles like a big, you know, haystacks Calhoun type of thing.

Speaker 38 But no, I'm not, I'm not even taking

Speaker 38 if they had awesome Kong

Speaker 38 during her TNA years, in that part of her career versus Rhea Ripley,

Speaker 38 a malevolent, aggressive monster heel that could do shit and had personality. and had aggression, Rhea Ripley would have looked like Riggie Morton, right? That would have been great.

Speaker 38 I'm not just talking about Refrigerator Jax's excessive fucking

Speaker 38 resemblance to a goddamn barca lounger.

Speaker 38 I'm talking about there's nothing there. She can't talk with emotion.
She has that sable voice. Her work is blah.
She's not coordinated.

Speaker 38 She has no, she can't be a monster. She just drops her weight on people.

Speaker 38 And that, did you, the introductions, there were no weights announced. What else has she got?

Speaker 38 They should announce at 150 whatever pounds from Australia, Rhea Ripley, and at 336 pounds from wherever the fuck she's at.

Speaker 38 Refrigerator Jax. And then there's the verbal reinforcement that this goddamn huge giant monolith is so much bigger than our hero, Rhea.
But they don't announce their weights at all.

Speaker 38 What other attribute has Jax got besides that?

Speaker 38 Nothing.

Speaker 38 She looks like a recliner wrapped in pleather.

Speaker 36 Speaking of Mabel, the outfit of Mabel.

Speaker 38 And the yes, and when she missed the big sit-down butt drop, the fans were chanting My Hold because that's still a joke from her doing that a couple of years ago.

Speaker 38 And Rhea couldn't do her shit here because you can't do it to fucking Jax. It's not possible.

Speaker 38 And if she, if Rhea Ripley could not sell

Speaker 38 as wonderfully as she can, this would have been a total loss because that's what, you know,

Speaker 38 she had to sell, fight from underneath, make a little comeback and get shut down again.

Speaker 38 And she can't make a decent comeback because this girl can't fucking bump.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 then they went so long.

Speaker 38 You know, Nia hits the Samoan drop off the second rope and gets a two count. And then she goes for the bonsai, but

Speaker 38 Rhea comes up underneath her and shoulder rides her for a second, puts her into the turnbuckle, and in Frog Splasher, gets a two count. Okay, that's fine.
But then we go to the floor, and

Speaker 38 Nia is giving her the fucking drop on the desk and an elbow drop through the desk, even though

Speaker 38 did you see

Speaker 38 when Rhea's laying on the announce desk and Nia Jax gets up in one of the announce chairs that has wheels on it,

Speaker 38 and she's still only at the same level of the goddamn

Speaker 38 top of the announce desk, and she flies off of that with an elbow drop. And it looked like she actually

Speaker 38 was lower to the ground than when she jumped before she landed. She can't even get up off the fucking ground.

Speaker 36 And

Speaker 38 so finally,

Speaker 38 Jax goes to the top and Rhea catches her and gives her the shortest superplex in history because she can't fall. She can't push off the top and fall, can Nia Jax?

Speaker 38 And then Rhea gives her the kick to the head and the riptide. One, two, three.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 poor Rhea, they put her through 16 minutes of hell. Every unnaturally large, fat person cannot be a professional wrestler.

Speaker 38 We've talked about in the past many times Promoters have been able to steal a house out of a big schlub

Speaker 38 once or twice, but no,

Speaker 38 not on this level with this visibility.

Speaker 38 In Cleveland, if this had been the main event, people would have been leaving to beat the traffic. They prospered that it was Rhea's home country.
But,

Speaker 38 boy, I felt so bad for her. She can do so much more than this.
And just,

Speaker 38 if she was not a good worker, I'm talking about Jax.

Speaker 38 If she wasn't a good worker and had no more mobility, but she had menace and presence and was a big fucking malevolent heel, as I said, that'd be one thing. But just this plodding bleh, I just,

Speaker 38 eh.

Speaker 38 Plus, the show was three and a half hours long. We had an hour and 45 minutes of wrestling.

Speaker 36 I thought Rhea looked good. I thought she got the most out of Nia Jax as she could.
Had her family at ringside. They made a big deal of that.

Speaker 36 When she threw Rhea on the announce desk,

Speaker 36 I have to go back and see it. It was almost like because one of the monitors or iPads, whatever they use at this point, was standing up straight.
It looked like she landed right on top of it.

Speaker 38 And that's everybody does that now. There's no,

Speaker 38 it doesn't stand out. Nobody remembers it because, as we'll talk about when we we get to AEW, sometimes matches these days you see on TV have five or six tables in the same match.

Speaker 38 It's just useless, meaningless.

Speaker 38 But you can get hurt.

Speaker 36 And to the WWE's, I guess, credit, not really their credit, but the fans seem to leave happy.

Speaker 36 I mean, we could say whatever we want about how boring the event was or whatever you felt about it at home.

Speaker 36 The fans there seemed to be happy with Rhea Ripley being in the main event and getting the win.

Speaker 38 Well, of course. And because they,

Speaker 38 this is the first big show in Australia, in,

Speaker 38 well, the biggest show ever in Australia, probably, and the first big one in many of these people's memories as fans, right? They've been there before, but not on this stage.

Speaker 38 And they never get something like this. So they were jacked for it.
They were going to like it unless, you know, the fucking whole building blew up.

Speaker 38 And I don't blame them for being had and they got to go and see everybody in person and get the merchandise and experience the atmosphere, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 38 If you were in America and got to see, if you chose to, if you wanted to,

Speaker 38 multiple major shows a year near you,

Speaker 38 you might not have been as fucking thrilled. And that's only natural also.
But

Speaker 38 as a television

Speaker 38 broadcast, this was incredibly, incredibly slow to watch.

Speaker 38 We could agree on that, right?

Speaker 36 Yeah, we can. And it's incredible the idea that you could have a stadium show and draw 50,000 people with four matches, five matches, whatever it is in a giant interview segment.
That's all it takes.

Speaker 36 Yeah. Even Bill Watson, the Superdome for his biggest shows

Speaker 36 loaded with people being brought in. You know, Dusty Rhodes, Hogan and Andre were on the show with JYD and Michael Hayes.

Speaker 38 There were lots of attractions.

Speaker 36 It wasn't just like, all right, here's our four biggest matches from TV.

Speaker 38 Well, but here's the complete difference, because now the majority of the tickets for these big events are sold before the card or the people on it are even announced. Whereas in the territory days,

Speaker 38 even on a major show like the Superdome,

Speaker 38 your advance would maybe be 25% of the walk-up you would get between 4 and 8 o'clock that day.

Speaker 38 Maybe a little bit more

Speaker 38 even on a big show. On spot shows, it was a tenth of the crowd you'd end up with.

Speaker 38 Those Those people waited until they knew what the card was going to be. Do we want to see these matches?

Speaker 38 They would see the last week or two of go-home TVs, an angle would hit them, and they'd say, well, we're going to, it's not like the Superdome was going to sell out.

Speaker 38 And especially if people were an hour away or whatever, they'd say, well, we'll drive down here and see that show. We'll get there early so we can get a good seat.

Speaker 38 But now for Wimbley, AEW, they sold the tickets before they knew what they were going to see. And they've done it again.
Only half as many, but that's the same principle.

Speaker 38 And no matter what's on the card or added to the card, except if it's a rock level or Cena level type thing,

Speaker 38 nothing really picks up at the end anyway. It's just whether or not people are going to go out of their way to watch it on television or the cock or whatever.

Speaker 36 Yeah, we saw it a few years ago with Ring of Honor in New Japan when they ran the...

Speaker 36 garden and the tickets sold out before anything was announced and then a lot of the wrestlers that people assumed were going to be there the elite, for instance, weren't there.

Speaker 36 They were somewhere else. So you got a card.

Speaker 38 They weren't even there.

Speaker 36 So you bought tickets for a show thinking you were going to get something and you got none of that.

Speaker 38 Well, that's it.

Speaker 38 In these cases, in the case of Wimbley, in the case of Perth here, in a case of a first-time thing somewhere, they're just buying a ticket to be there for the first big thing.

Speaker 38 And they're hoping the card's going to be good.

Speaker 38 Again, in the territory days when wrestling was regular, live in every city in America on a regular basis,

Speaker 38 if people didn't like the matches, the lineup, the angles that were going on on TV, they didn't want to see the fucking who was going to win, they just wouldn't go.

Speaker 38 But you wouldn't know until the day of the show because under the best of circumstances,

Speaker 38 your day of show crowd was going to end up being three or four times what your advance was. That's no longer the case.

Speaker 36 All right. Yeah, the building, the building, the business is now all advance, pretty much.

Speaker 38 I'm saying the next thing is going to be they're going to start bringing the tickets back.

Speaker 38 They buy the tickets now when they don't know what they're going to see, and then they find out what the card is.

Speaker 38 The next step is they find out what the card is, they start getting refunds for the tickets.

Speaker 38 As soon as you tell them what they're going to see, the fucking ticket sales pretty much come to a grinding halt, don't they?

Speaker 36 Yeah, they announced Sting's retirement. No match.
It's sold out just on the strength or almost sold out on the strength of just Sting's retirement.

Speaker 38 Then they announced what the match was going to be, and everybody's been complaining about it since then.

Speaker 36 Well, they're stuck. They already got their ticket, and we were stuck, and that was WWE Elimination Chamber.
This is your show.

Speaker 38 Well, now, Brian, we have come to the part of the program where we can just sit back and remark: what in the wide, wide world of sports were they thinking? Because it's time to talk about AEW.

Speaker 38 And by the way, folks, this is

Speaker 38 the last week at at AEW, I mean, they're colder than a witch's tit, colder than a banker's heart, colder than a well digger's ass.

Speaker 38 Nobody has even asked, and we haven't bothered to offer that we haven't really talked about AEW since last week's dynamite, which is now,

Speaker 38 well, four or five days ago, I can't count anymore. And

Speaker 38 nobody's asked about it. Nobody gave a shit, particularly either way.

Speaker 38 And then they had a collision.

Speaker 38 The program on Saturday night was aptly named because of a wide variety of their roster had a headfirst collision with the fucking Canvas on Saturday night.

Speaker 38 And so just for the sake of being

Speaker 38 responsible journalists and commentators,

Speaker 38 we will just talk about and

Speaker 38 try to analyze again as briefly as possible, what do they think they're doing?

Speaker 38 They will not change the program for the better because I don't believe they know or realize

Speaker 38 that it's not good and it's getting funny not good

Speaker 38 where you just shake even the faithful are shaking their head at this is television.

Speaker 38 So

Speaker 38 you want to hit some high points from the last week at AEW just to show where they're at after the other folks have had 50,000 people at a fucking stadium to watch a goddamn glorified infomercial.

Speaker 36 Well, AEW had a red-hot dynamite episode on Wednesday. WWE may be in the stadium.
But Wembley.

Speaker 36 But Wembley. Well, it wasn't as big as Wembley, was it? It just wasn't as big as Wembley.
AEW is better, you see?

Speaker 38 Well, you got that. You got that.
Maybe they should run the fucking Coliseum in Greece.

Speaker 38 And then they'd be the biggest thing in the world. But this was AEW Dynamite from February 21st.
Oh, so long ago. We're just now catching up with this thing.
And

Speaker 38 I don't know. I think WWE may be in a stadium.
I think AEW should be in a state home.

Speaker 38 They were in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Speaker 36 Your old stomping grounds.

Speaker 38 Grand, glorious old wrestling

Speaker 38 city and territory there. And boy, howdy.

Speaker 38 We ran that town in 1984. I believe it was 21 shows Mid-South ran there,

Speaker 38 including setting the all-time city gate record and attendance record four times in that same year.

Speaker 38 And it ain't as hot down there as it used to be.

Speaker 38 So they opened up with, for whatever reason, that FTR is being punished, are they

Speaker 38 potentially the new lead characters in one of those Ryan Murphy, sorry, Sakai shit, creepy, scary programs programs that don't make any sense where they just can't get out of a

Speaker 38 horrible booking scenario wherever they go they move from place to place they're traveling gypsies and everywhere it's like how can we with these guys

Speaker 38 they were forced to compete against the plumber moxley and poor old claudio castignoli who at this point is

Speaker 38 Is he wallpaper or is he one of those garden statues that the bushes have grown up and you don't really notice it anymore?

Speaker 36 I think he's the same as he's always been, someone that a lot of people in the business really love his work, but he's, you know, he doesn't stand out.

Speaker 38 Well, I mean,

Speaker 38 he's been painted over, I think, in the corner. It's just stuck with this fucking goof and this nowhere gimmick.
And you never hear from it. They used to like when he did the swing.

Speaker 38 He doesn't do the swing. And Jerry, there's no swing.

Speaker 38 I'll say it briefly. Every time that Moxley is in with a real professional wrestler, it's aggravating to me because guys who have talent have to tolerate

Speaker 38 doing the shit that this bald, pale, broken-down trailer trash, acting like he's fucking a member of the Gracie family, likes to do

Speaker 38 to prove he's a badass when everybody with eyes is seeing a clumsy, awkward, fake-looking

Speaker 36 Moxley.

Speaker 38 He was the black sheep of the family. He was the son of Eleanor Gracie.

Speaker 38 Eleanor Gracie had the baby that would become the plumber one day. Hoyce went away.

Speaker 38 All right. So Moxley at one point

Speaker 38 tried to drop behind on a vertical suplex. I can't remember if it was Dax or Cash, but they were just like holding him there, waiting for him.
Please just drop on behind.

Speaker 38 They had him, and he just fell on his ass

Speaker 38 and he continues to work like your unemployed uncle that sells weed getting into a fight at a family picnic

Speaker 38 so

Speaker 36 well i mean if you sell weed technically you're self-employed i would imagine

Speaker 38 well you you i guess have an independent contractor classification in some states now Those are always the most pathetic people, the weed dealers who somehow don't make any money.

Speaker 36 Then you could say they're unemployed.

Speaker 38 they're just losers if if you're gonna be goddamn selling illegal illicit or otherwise substances that may get you time boarding with the warden on the bounty of the county of the league you could be living the high life over it driving to maserati and

Speaker 38 and and what but the being the playoff with the bitches and all of whatever

Speaker 38 whatever the young people do these days

Speaker 38 sit out there like a fucking weirdo sitting on the teeter totter with your teetering, but nobody's there to totter you.

Speaker 38 So Moxley gave a cold tag to Claudio, and Claudio made a comeback. I'm trying to, are the BBC the babyfaces, but FTR are not heels.
They're baby. Well, they've cooled off significantly.

Speaker 38 They were raving babyfaces before they were beaten like your fucking grandmother's rug.

Speaker 36 The BCC are definitely heels.

Speaker 38 Well, then they made a comeback and the fucking babyfaces fed and bumped for them.

Speaker 38 And then 15 minutes into the goddamn show, we go to break.

Speaker 38 And then they came back and then they did simultaneous cold tags and cash made a comeback. So they switched in mid-match.
And

Speaker 38 I figured out a gimmick for Moxley. Instead of the plumber or having a tool belt or whatever that would make up for his fucking...

Speaker 38 He's, you know, I've seen people with a sunken chest before, but he has a sunken fucking torso.

Speaker 38 Everything is sunken from his chest to his goddamn abdomen.

Speaker 38 Anyway, you put him in green scrubs, right?

Speaker 38 And one of those fucking green caps and everything,

Speaker 38 and put a fucking name tag bracelet on him, right? One of those white things has your information and make him a guy from a state home that walked away after getting too many shock treatments.

Speaker 38 And now he's come to the wrestling promotion and one of the managers snatches him up.

Speaker 36 I don't know if that would work in 2024. That might be a problem.

Speaker 36 Escape mental patience.

Speaker 38 Well, God damn it, maybe he's been gone for a while. See,

Speaker 38 time has passed him by.

Speaker 36 What if he did like a Sid Barrett? He shows up again in four years and he's fat and bald.

Speaker 38 How would you tell the difference?

Speaker 36 Well, he's not fat.

Speaker 38 Then he's bald enough to compensate for that. He looks fat, even though he's fucking emaciated, because what is there is not delineated in any way.

Speaker 38 Anyway, they did the call for five minutes remaining.

Speaker 38 And so now they're going to do this, the criticism that we levied apparently has been heard on this small thing and ignored on major points.

Speaker 38 But here is what the spot they did where Dax and Cash,

Speaker 38 they have a wonderful double team move where Dax does the superplex and Cash does the splash off the top and they land bang, bang, right?

Speaker 38 Very

Speaker 38 80s tag teamy, very Midnight Expressy, very heart foundation-y, very whatever the fuck.

Speaker 36 You're going with the superplex spot?

Speaker 38 The superplex spot.

Speaker 36 That's power and glory.

Speaker 36 That's power and glory. That was the

Speaker 38 movie. Well, there you go.
They did it too.

Speaker 38 But it's a very reminiscent of an 80s tag team, well, which they were, that, you know, the double team maneuvers that all the tag teams were noted for.

Speaker 38 And this fucking guy decides he's going to kill their fucking move because he's an idiot. Do you know what? Dax gave Moxley a superplex, right?

Speaker 38 And how many, how long is it usually after they land before Cash lands with the

Speaker 38 splash?

Speaker 36 It's usually pretty quick right after. They time it pretty well.

Speaker 38 Bam, bam, right?

Speaker 38 Okay,

Speaker 38 so think about this now that I'm breaking it down for you. Dax gives Moxley the superplex, and as soon as they land,

Speaker 38 Moxley raises his knees so that Cash lands on his fucking knees and Cash hurts himself.

Speaker 38 The guy that took was given a superplex off the top rope and was smashed down into the middle of the fucking ring off the top rope by this goddamn guy's superplex

Speaker 38 within less than one second was so unfazed by it, I'll just raise my knees and catch this other motherfucker. Boom.

Speaker 38 And then Tanya gets up and starts hitting him with phony elbows

Speaker 38 how much what where is the logic in that

Speaker 38 how could that be a thing that you would ever think and why did fdr tolerate it if it was called ahead of time which apparently it was or elsewhere cash would have squashed him well this whole match seemed to be like a battle between

Speaker 36 FDR trying to work a wrestling match and Moxley only wanting to work the Moxley match.

Speaker 38 Wanting to chew on somebody's face or kiss them.

Speaker 36 Sell nothing, you know, really do very little to sell anything or put anything over. And then Claudio gets into the mix and now he sells nothing too.

Speaker 38 Well, he can't let his fucking,

Speaker 38 emaciated little partner look better than he does with that body. So he's, you know, now it's a

Speaker 38 skyscraper's thing. Only one guy is not scraping the sky, he's scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Speaker 38 So it turned into a constant four-way. At one point, Dax and Claudio broke out into a girls' slap fight.

Speaker 38 And then

Speaker 38 FTR go for the shatter machine on

Speaker 38 Moxley, I believe it was, and the bell rings as they're about to give it. And so Dax holds up and they don't give it to him.
And it's a 20-minute draw.

Speaker 38 So now I guess what they're going to do is they're going to reinforce the idea. We talked about the criticism, but that you call it and then you end at 1930 or whatever.

Speaker 38 They're going to make sure everybody knows whatever they hear the time call. It's a draw.

Speaker 36 You had to say something, and now they're doing this non-stop.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 38 But anyway, everybody sat there for a while, and the fans were pissed, and then all four of them got in a sloppy fight. The security and the agents separated them, and they had to pull apart.
And,

Speaker 38 you know, we were almost half an hour into the show at this point. But that's, I just can't.
Moxley is unwatchable.

Speaker 38 And it's funny at this point if you didn't feel bad for some of his opponents on a professional level, which I do.

Speaker 36 I don't know how much I could add to that. I didn't like the match because it seemed like it was too much of a struggle between styles.

Speaker 36 You know, Moxley and Claudio could have been strong while working a match, but it's just, I don't know, they're too much in their own. Moxley's too much in his own head.
And,

Speaker 36 you know, physique-wise, because you brought it up earlier.

Speaker 36 Wanting to be a tough guy, actually being a tough guy, and looking like a tough guy are three different things.

Speaker 38 And you need to try to have two out of the three, don't you?

Speaker 36 You do.

Speaker 36 And

Speaker 36 I don't know. I don't see it.
And FTR always looks like shit.

Speaker 36 They make it so that a team that got itself over in spite of the bad booking, with a few changes like new Midnight Express music and getting rid of Tully Blanchard.

Speaker 36 and being used a little better,

Speaker 36 get themselves over to become the most popular tag team in the company over the evps

Speaker 36 which upset plenty of people

Speaker 36 they get a couple runs as tag team champions they hold multiple titles in other companies apparently too they re-signed their contract

Speaker 36 they had those classic matches with or that one specifically with juice and jay white Well, what they did with the Briscoes, just not the Briscoes, not in AEW, but in front of the world on, you know, the internet was.

Speaker 36 And then the House of Black started kicking the shit out out of them i never saw what resolution there was there they chased me off before i could see that on collision now they're on dynamite the bcc's kicking the shit out of them

Speaker 36 tully i mean i know they love tully and aren't tully and aren't never just got the shit kicked out of them

Speaker 36 like you know like the midnight express it happened to them once

Speaker 36 once when paulie and the midnight express came like it never it wasn't just like one program into another of laying there because you got your ass kicked i don't i don't understand why they book ftr like i don't understand any of this and i want to know what dax's singles record is they're big statist statisticians there in that company what is dax's singles record for the entire time that he's been in aew and what is cash's singles record and how come we don't see more of cash because

Speaker 36 Whenever you lose the thought that, you know, sometimes you could be like, man, Dax is really good. And then you start watching Cash, like, man, I think Cash might be even fucking better.

Speaker 38 That's what I'm saying. But it's Dax that is in all the singles matches and loses every single one of them.

Speaker 38 And you never see Cash and he's phenomenal as well.

Speaker 38 And I'm not,

Speaker 38 he's probably at home if he's listening to this now. Shut the fuck up.

Speaker 36 He's shooting his gun in the air. Pew, pew, pew.
Okay, I'll do it. I don't like this.
Pew.

Speaker 38 But that's the thing. Then if they do that, then they'll bring him in and beat him like a a goddamn drum, too.

Speaker 38 But

Speaker 36 Josh Mears in the house, duck.

Speaker 38 Hey, come on, hey, Pillman. Come on now.
Watch out.

Speaker 38 But you know what I mean? The only thing they split him up in singles, and Dax is always the one that does a job at every match.

Speaker 38 And then they get the shit kicked out of him as a tag team. most of the time.

Speaker 36 You could talk about whatever with AEW booking, specifically with tag teams. They don't know how to get over tag team feuds.
And they cut the Jay White Juice Robinson thing off at the knees.

Speaker 36 And now look at it. Juice Robinson's out.
Has Jay White done anything that matters since then?

Speaker 36 Not really.

Speaker 38 Well, he's in the Gang Bang Scissor clan.

Speaker 36 Well, more about them later. They had a wonderful weekend.
Oh, boy. All right.

Speaker 38 Well, let's move on from poor FTR because we got to go to poor Mike Bennett.

Speaker 38 And I don't, people didn't like Mike Bennett for the last few years. I haven't seen he's been in ring of, he was in Ring of Honor and the internet doesn't like him or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 38 I don't know what their problem is. But the Mike Bennett that I knew and the one that I still see when I see glimpses of him being able to have a wrestling match with one of these people, he can work.

Speaker 38 And when they came in new, he and Tavin

Speaker 38 athletic experienced guys, why wouldn't you give them a few wins as a tag team just to establish them with a beautiful Maria there instead of just starting them off as flunkies getting beat.

Speaker 38 But nevertheless,

Speaker 38 they put him in a singles match against the fucking mascot and gave it 10 minutes of national TV time.

Speaker 38 And a guy that had that kind of potential has to, again, stooge for the boss's pet.

Speaker 38 And then when Taven comes in and Roddy comes in strong and they beat up Pockets, then Jake Hager runs in and makes the save. He's still here.

Speaker 38 He is still

Speaker 38 getting paid by this company to do fucking what?

Speaker 36 Well, he's from Oklahoma, right? He's a local boy. Is he from Tulsa?

Speaker 38 I don't, they announce him from Oklahoma. I don't, I guess he is, but

Speaker 38 what did he just drop by and he couldn't contain himself and he went out there to fucking run him off?

Speaker 38 They're obviously still using him for some reason, which escapes me.

Speaker 36 And then Chris Jericho asked them to sign him early on.

Speaker 38 Well, listen to this now. As soon as he runs in the ring and runs the heels off or whatever, the announcers are screaming, well, Tony Khan has just informed us.

Speaker 38 It's 10 seconds that Strong versus Hager will be on Rampage on Friday.

Speaker 38 I'm glad Tony's Johnny on the spot with making these fucking matches in 10 seconds when he can't fucking

Speaker 38 write the ship of his company.

Speaker 36 Fans, don't worry. If this is something you don't want to see, the match will be on Rampage Friday.

Speaker 38 Tonight. There you have it.

Speaker 38 I guess they've been doing something on the internet or at some point or maybe in one of these backstage breaks that we don't need to pay any attention to.

Speaker 38 But old, the former Jericho jobber, cool hand Luke with the comb. He combs his hair.

Speaker 38 He's not Daddy. He's Daddy Mac's partner.
He's not Daddy Mac. He's Daddy Mac's skinny partner with the bland face.

Speaker 38 Face looks like fucking oatmeal with no sugar.

Speaker 38 He was in the back with Renee Moxley Good.

Speaker 38 And apparently he's all nervous because he's going on a date, the first date he's had with Ruby so-so.

Speaker 38 Are these people adults? What the fuck?

Speaker 38 Ruby looks about what, 30? This guy's got to be mid-20s.

Speaker 38 He's nervous because he's going on a date with what the

Speaker 36 who is the audience here is the audience going on a date i think not well this is a big deal the french canadian fonzie is gonna go out and try to strike it strike it rich strike it uh have a good time i don't know what he's gonna do

Speaker 38 he's gonna strike it rich he's gonna

Speaker 38 he's gonna score four touchdowns for monomi high when i see segments like this i'm happy they decided to hire a soap opera writer that'll certainly help steer the ship well at least maybe they'll be having fucking some kind of adult conversation, like he's nervous because the pregnancy test went the wrong way.

Speaker 36 These backstage segments, what Renee Moxley Good is like the

Speaker 36 jovial host of all these wacky characters, is not doing it.

Speaker 38 Well, speaking of her jovialness, herself, she was in the back with Ric Flair. And Ric Flair has come in,

Speaker 38 and his story is he's disappointed

Speaker 38 because he signed up to be part of Sting's retirement. And remember, he got that promo.
He said, I want to be with you every step of the way.

Speaker 38 We haven't seen you in a fucking month and a half or whatever, right?

Speaker 38 So he said, well, I signed up to be part of Sting's retirement. I wanted to be more involved.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 he's trying to tell this story. And it's kind of like they just told it to him right before they said, enroll him, because he's not really making as declarative statements as he normally does.

Speaker 38 So he said he's exploring his options and he goes and knocks on a fucking door, and the door opens, and it's the Buckaroos office. And they let him in and close the door.

Speaker 38 So now are we going to get Ric Flair at this stage of his career turning on Sting

Speaker 38 to favor the EVPs all because of the woo energy drink sponsorship. I don't know what the what is going on here now.

Speaker 36 Maybe they'll go the other way, and this will be the way they tease one week out that there's a relationship between Flair and the Bucks, and then Flair doesn't turn on Sting, double-crossing the Bucs,

Speaker 36 giving them a loss, and now they can feud with Ric Flair after Sting's gone. Okay, then what is it?

Speaker 38 Because if

Speaker 38 and if they're trying to be the heels against Sting, it's Greensboro. The only person that they would cheer probably over Sting would be Flair.

Speaker 36 You would think so, yeah.

Speaker 38 So what, I don't know what they're trying to tease here or not tease or what the goddamn.

Speaker 38 And I mean, and by the way, again,

Speaker 38 Maddie and Nikki.

Speaker 38 The kids there, they're getting paid to show up and open the fucking dressing room door for an appearance on television.

Speaker 38 So then

Speaker 38 Tony Schiavone was in the ring and introduced old Danny Garcia.

Speaker 38 And now we're going interview, interview, interview. We've had backstage, we've had in the ring.
And I'm thinking, it's the WWE formula they're trying to do. It's all talk, but there's no stars.

Speaker 36 No stars. That's the problem.

Speaker 38 There's no stars. It looks like they invited the parking attendant to come in and comment on the show with Tony bringing his guy in a ring.

Speaker 38 And at the pay-per-view, it's going going to be Garcia against Christian Cage for the TNT title.

Speaker 38 And they

Speaker 38 can they not elevate a young person with hair

Speaker 38 with hair and personality?

Speaker 36 He has hair. He just has a short haircut.
He has hair.

Speaker 38 No, I wouldn't. No, we don't want to see short-haired people that look like they work at Dunkin' Donuts.
We want to see rock stars, don't we? Every one of their interchangeable, bland,

Speaker 38 white fellows with fucking buzz cuts and black tights.

Speaker 36 Well, I don't know if he's a white guy. His last name is Garcia.
Maybe a Latino.

Speaker 38 Well, he's too light for me.

Speaker 36 Look on the bright side. At least it's not we or Yuda.

Speaker 38 Where the fuck did he go?

Speaker 36 Maybe he got sepsis.

Speaker 38 I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining, but maybe MRSA.

Speaker 36 Maybe MRSA.

Speaker 38 Merca Yuda. Woo, MRSA.

Speaker 36 Hepatitis.

Speaker 38 Did you catch what Danny Garcia

Speaker 38 said

Speaker 38 in his promo?

Speaker 38 The premise of his promo at the start?

Speaker 36 You know, I saw him at the media scrum one or two events ago. Maybe it was the last one.

Speaker 36 And seems like a very nice guy, and he was very grateful.

Speaker 36 And the whole thing just became about how he wants to make sure everyone knows how grateful he is.

Speaker 36 It was.

Speaker 38 Well, no, he wasn't grateful here. He was actually kind of ungrateful.

Speaker 36 It was very rah-rah. You know, I'm happy to be here.
Yeah.

Speaker 38 Well, this, this was, he started out

Speaker 38 this fucking mope faced, bland, he's got nothing going on, right? I don't know what I could have done with him in OVW past the middle of the card. He can function to do moves, but

Speaker 38 there's no gimmick. There's no personality, there's no look, there's no attire, whatever, physique.
But he starts out saying, you know, everybody always told me I was going to be great.

Speaker 38 What the fuck? Well, they were lying to you, pal. No, everybody always told me I was going to be great.
I would have people, guys in the back coming up to me, oh, you're going to be great.

Speaker 38 You're going to be the best. And this and that.

Speaker 38 And I'm like, but then he's, but I lost confidence in myself.

Speaker 38 And then he starts the dreariness. You know, I lost confidence.
Could I do it? Whatever. But the fans, you guys picked me up.

Speaker 38 And then he came out there and said, I know if last week my match against Edge had gone on longer, I would have made Edge tap out.

Speaker 38 Oh, God.

Speaker 38 And the next time that Edge sees me, I'm going to be the TNT champion. And now I'm thinking, who's the babyface? Now he's

Speaker 38 not, instead of saying, you know, something like, I was fortunate that I gave it everything I got last week and I was able to hang in the ring with a Hall of Fame talent like Edge and it could have gone either way, but I thought I had him or something to give some humility to the position he was obviously given that he's not ready for last.

Speaker 38 so he's cutting that fucking promo and then finally.

Speaker 38 Two minutes before nine o'clock, Christian Cage music with Nick Plain and Nick Plain's mom and Dino Dino Douche.

Speaker 38 And think about this, Brian. Picture them in your mind.

Speaker 38 Christian, Nick, Nick's mom, and Dino,

Speaker 38 Dollar Store Judgment Day.

Speaker 38 You see it now?

Speaker 36 I can kind of see it, yeah.

Speaker 38 I'm thinking they're getting a lot of inspiration.

Speaker 38 And Christian promos

Speaker 38 Garcia, he ain't ready. That went on forever.
And then he goes into the understand, Garcia, you had a tough childhood and your father is dead. More of this.

Speaker 36 This is the worst.

Speaker 38 And your father was a loser alcoholic. And I want to be your father.

Speaker 38 Remember at one point when Christian promos were the highlight or one of the highlights of the show? And now he's got these. the amateur hour with him and it's, you know, dead fathers.
And he's,

Speaker 38 I don't know. What are these thing is going sideways?

Speaker 36 here's the counter to all this you're in the ring and he says this awful thing about you just go you cheat on your wife that would come yeah that would throw him off base how are you gonna answer that I don't I really don't yeah what are you gonna say when did you quit I didn't when was the last time you beat up your wife when was the last time you did it I never have done that sound like a guilty man Christian but no everyone plays into his hands

Speaker 38 Well, speaking of playing into his hands,

Speaker 38 he sends Nick to the ring, but Garcia gets him in a sharpshooter, which is the first thing you do.

Speaker 38 You immobilize your, you tangle your legs in someone else and immobilize them and yourself while there's three other people that can fucking bombard you from behind.

Speaker 38 But Dino comes to the ring, and old Mac Daddy appears out of nowhere and hits Dino with the chair.

Speaker 38 And then he rolls in the ring and gives Garcia a chair, and they hold off Christian Cage and the entire company.

Speaker 38 There's Danny Garcia and one of the ex-Jericho jobbers now are being involved in Angles.

Speaker 38 I wrote, Good Lord.

Speaker 38 So that was that.

Speaker 36 You know, this is another AEW pay-per-view. This happened with the New Year's one.

Speaker 36 I mean, you have the Sting match, and really, Sting retiring is the event, but there's like nothing to look forward to on this card.

Speaker 38 Oh, we know, there's more. There's more to come.

Speaker 38 Tony Storm wrestled some girl that found a place to buy tights

Speaker 38 and did

Speaker 38 Tony won the match by doing Deanna Perazzo's move, right?

Speaker 38 So

Speaker 38 one would think that now the next match, because we got two girls' matches in a row in the death slot, Deanna Perazzo against Madison Rain.

Speaker 38 And one would think that, well, then maybe Deanna's going to do Tony's thing or something like that or whatever, but we don't know really what was going to exactly happen.

Speaker 36 Yeah, she showed Tony. She said, you want to do my thing? Look what I could do.

Speaker 36 Well, this is your future.

Speaker 38 This started, and it was, and we'd already had the, and the other girl, by the way, with Tony Storm.

Speaker 38 I mean, I know they can't just beat all their regular girls. They need to have some come in, but how in the world did this pass

Speaker 38 quality check? This girl looked like she was second week in wrestling school.

Speaker 36 So for the record, her name, Tony Storm's opponent, was Cindy Winnell.

Speaker 38 I'm betting she's going to change it if she spends any more time in this business.

Speaker 38 But anyway, now this, the second girls red, goes through the break.

Speaker 38 And when they came back from the break, I started watching because they were lost.

Speaker 38 And Madison Rain, you know, she was in TNA for a while when I was there with the beautiful people or whatever the case. She's been in the business for a while.

Speaker 38 I believe they've hired her as one of the trainers.

Speaker 36 A trainer, a coach, an agent, one of those.

Speaker 38 A coach, agent, whatever, for the young ladies. And she's been known to have good matches, nice matches.

Speaker 38 Deanna Perazo is well thought of from what we understand, having good matches.

Speaker 38 They were lost. They couldn't get it.
They had a double knockout and started talking to each other when they were down, trying to get it back together. But when they got up,

Speaker 38 I'm wondered if maybe somebody's bell hadn't got rung already because it was like they were someday. They were doing swing dancing in slow motion.

Speaker 38 And then finally,

Speaker 38 Deanna goes for,

Speaker 38 I don't know what they call it or, you know, whatever, where you grab the other person

Speaker 38 and you fall backward and face plant them.

Speaker 38 Or at least that's what it looked like she was trying to give Madison Rain because

Speaker 38 when that happened, Madison Rain somehow

Speaker 38 believed in her heart of hearts that whatever she was being given, she had to take a front flip for.

Speaker 38 And between one planning to plant her on her face and the other one thinking she's going to do a front flip and land on her back, she landed right on the top of her head.

Speaker 38 And the crowd went, ooh, and the referee instantly slid in there and

Speaker 38 the doctor got up and came to the ring like, you know, this is all happening very quickly. And there was some

Speaker 38 out of some communication passed. And suddenly Deanna Parazo just grabs Madison Rain's foot and puts an ankle lock on her and Madison Rain taps.

Speaker 38 And that was that.

Speaker 38 And I mean, it's not like that, that was an unfortunate accident on a match that was just going swimmingly because they were already having just

Speaker 38 not a good match.

Speaker 38 But that had to,

Speaker 38 if you played that tape and

Speaker 38 said, and unfortunately, Madison Rain never wrestled again, you would believe it, right?

Speaker 36 Yeah. And it was in front of a dead crowd.
The crowd doesn't react to these women segments. They may react to the pinfall finally, but they sit there and watch politely like it's Tokyo in 1972.

Speaker 36 And I always go on about the problems at AW's women's division, which is always awful.

Speaker 36 This is one of the leaders, you would think of it. They hired her when there were issues with the women's division.
Come in the back, help out. Be someone that could help with finishes or help with...

Speaker 36 moves or whatever.

Speaker 36 And she almost died in the ring. They dropped her on her head.

Speaker 36 Deanna Paraza is supposed to be one of the better ones. The match was terrible.
This whole division is terrible. And now they're going to double down on it, bringing in Mercedes Monet.

Speaker 36 We'll see. I mean, unless they could just change the division wholesale and

Speaker 36 make it a whole new thing.

Speaker 38 Well, now hold on a sec because they weren't even done here because after they got the spatula and removed poor Madison Rain,

Speaker 38 Tony Storm hit the ring because they still had an angle to do.

Speaker 38 And Tony Storm hits the ring and ankle locks Deanna Perazzo. And

Speaker 38 I'm thinking, my God, Punk versus MJF didn't get this kind of promotion on the television as this

Speaker 38 sudden blood feud between Tony Storm and Deanna Perazzo. And then they replayed the botch where Madison Rain was almost fucking decapitated as the sponsored move of the night.

Speaker 36 Did you see that? Yeah, no, I was grateful for that because I didn't have to rewind it in real time to see it because I had to see it again. So I was happy they did that.

Speaker 38 Who's going to sponsor that? The goddamn pain clinic? The fucking spinal fucking clinic that does the goddamn surgeries and fuses your spine to your goddamn sphincter?

Speaker 36 Here's the Chris Nowinsky move of the night.

Speaker 36 Don't worry. If you think he may be offended by that, don't worry.
We'll just give him money. That seems to placate him.

Speaker 38 Oh, that's now that's being slandered around about poor Nowinsky, for heaven's sake.

Speaker 36 What they don't know. He won't say boo about the people who pay him?

Speaker 38 That? We don't know the veracity of this yet.

Speaker 36 Oh, okay. No, we don't.

Speaker 38 Besides, what can you expect from a guy that got brain damage?

Speaker 36 It's just a rumor. I know that because I just started it.

Speaker 38 Well,

Speaker 38 so

Speaker 38 the one bright spot on this program, Sting, finally did a good interview. We've been waiting for it for so long.

Speaker 38 And obviously,

Speaker 38 I don't know whether everybody knows, but the news was released

Speaker 38 that Sting's father passed away, I guess, like last week, as we speak now, or whatever, a few days before this program. And so he wasn't there live,

Speaker 38 but Darby Allen went to his house and they recorded something.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 he, you know, he not only finally got around to mentioning, hey, you guys beat up my sons, right?

Speaker 38 They're finally acknowledging that they did that angle, but he referenced his father passing away and, you know, thinking about his own mortality and blah, blah, blah. And,

Speaker 38 this was great if he was talking about opponents that anybody cared about. I would think it would do

Speaker 38 land office business on pay-per-view. The building's already sold out just because they want to see his last match, but and the pay-per-view will do well for that.

Speaker 38 But, you know, what a letdown of a match. And hopefully hopefully we don't have, as we mentioned before,

Speaker 38 Flair

Speaker 38 doing what we're afraid he might do.

Speaker 36 No, I think it's going to go the other way because I don't, the more I think about it, the more I don't think they could end that night with Sting losing for his last match in Greensboro.

Speaker 38 One would think, but then what the, but then why are they the tag team champions? Why did they shoehorn the tag team title into this?

Speaker 38 So that the Buckaroos can win a tournament by beating FTR again along with others?

Speaker 36 Maybe the Young Bucks lose, and they're going to need someone to blame. And who could the EVPs blame but Tony Khan?

Speaker 36 And now he gets to be an on-air character, the babyface Tony Khan against the evil EVPs that are empowered by him and the contracts he gave them. Guaranteed by his father, so he can't do anything.

Speaker 36 And then you bring his dad out as the new heel manager of the Young Bucks. He towers over them, looks like the great Gama.
Scary looking man.

Speaker 36 And Tony has to put together a group of renegade New Japan pro wrestlers to go to battle with his dad over billions and a super yacht.

Speaker 36 I think it could work. I think it could work.

Speaker 38 Only if the television program takes place from the deck of the luxury super yacht where a ring has been placed and they just sail him around the world having matches.

Speaker 36 I mean, Jericho may sue over the concept, but just knock him out. Just knock him out.

Speaker 38 Just knock him out.

Speaker 38 Knock him out, John.

Speaker 38 All right. So Tony Schiavone was in the ring and introduced Wardlow, and Wardlow got in the ring and told Tony to fucking get lost and kicks the announcer out of the ring.

Speaker 36 This was the highlight of the whole episode for me.

Speaker 38 That here we have another shoot promo about how bad something has been on this television show by people on this television show.

Speaker 38 That

Speaker 38 he actually said two years ago, I had thousands of people chanting my name. I was the next big thing,

Speaker 38 blah, blah, blah. But the rocket on my back was placed upside down.

Speaker 38 And he did a promo about how badly he's been booked, how he never got a title shot, and there's people back there that need to be fired over it.

Speaker 38 Who are those people, Tony? Who's going to fire him? Hey, Shad.

Speaker 36 Who could he be talking about? Someone needs to be fired.

Speaker 38 Who? Tony Khan can make a match in 10 seconds when a guy runs in to make a fucking save, but Wardlow's been there for five years and he could just go, hey, Tony, I want a title match.

Speaker 38 And apparently he did. And apparently Tony said, fuck you.
And apparently that's why Tony needs to be fired, according to Wardlow. What the they don't, it's not explicable.
It's not logical.

Speaker 38 And he said, the best in the world, the real champion, right? Like he rolls his eye. Yeah, remind us, CM Punk never lost his fucking belt.

Speaker 38 So it's not even a goddamn real lineage that the current champion is on.

Speaker 38 He said, I beat him so bad, his body is still falling apart.

Speaker 38 And meanwhile, he's selling more t-shirts to make more money than you're making per year while his body is falling apart.

Speaker 38 And they can't get over punk. And then he mentioned that, you know what, Samoa Joe, I choked him out and beat him too

Speaker 38 when did he do that when they were not pushing joe before they decided oh he should be our world champion they feuded over the tnt title i think at one point well they poor pre-planning let's you know oh yeah

Speaker 38 but anyway

Speaker 38 He did a good emotional promo because we've said before, ooh, he just bland ass. So he was fired up here.
He was pissed off.

Speaker 38 He really was pissed off. That's the thing.
it was all about his bad booking and he meant everything he said

Speaker 38 he'd been booked into irrelevance when he was a fucking goldberg level for them

Speaker 38 and then tony didn't know what the fuck to do and then wardlow didn't know what the fuck to do because he'd never done it before and nobody fucking

Speaker 38 i guess bothered to tell him

Speaker 38 so

Speaker 36 go out there and let your frustration come out in a promo is one thing go out there and let everyone know how badly we have fucked up everything with you. Yes.
Is another.

Speaker 36 I don't know who worked with him on that promo, but someone should have been able to say, let your anger out. Don't bury the company.

Speaker 38 Well, anyway,

Speaker 38 and then is there going to be any follow-up to him doing this? Or is it going to be, well, into six weeks later, we'll see. Well, there's Wardlow.

Speaker 36 Yeah, by the way, this is still a weird promo because technically he's still a heel. I mean, this was like a babyface promo.
He's out there in front of the crowd

Speaker 36 getting them back behind him for the first time in forever. He's in the undisputed kingdom.

Speaker 38 Yes, he's a devil's henchman.

Speaker 38 He's as heel as they come. He works for Satan himself.
Old scratch. Mephistopheles.

Speaker 38 So then, did you notice that they had an interview with Fallus and Hobbs and our boy Take?

Speaker 38 And they're talking about the Take versus Will Ostrich match, and they still can't explain why they're having it.

Speaker 38 It's going to be a great match.

Speaker 36 Non-wrestler of the year.

Speaker 38 Well, I can't believe you got to give him the reason. I guess he doesn't know either.
How can he tell us when he don't know?

Speaker 38 And in the main event was a six-man tag team match with Hook and Rob Van Damme and Hangnail Page versus Brian Cage, Swerve Strickland, and Samoa Joe. So, yes, you are correct, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 38 The world champion and his top challenger team up with a preliminary jack off to face his the world champion's other challenger for this Sunday on pay-per-view, a preliminary guy and a legend in his 50s for no apparent reason.

Speaker 36 Big man event.

Speaker 38 And the entrances started about 25 minutes before 10 o'clock Eastern.

Speaker 38 The bell didn't ring for about eight eight minutes, but they had 17 minutes on the air and they still went overtime.

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 I didn't go over with them. What I miss.

Speaker 36 Not too much. I don't even remember what the finish was.

Speaker 36 I just care less and less once it goes into Overrun 2. It's almost like, come on, you know, my other shows are starting now.
It's 10 o'clock. The fuck.

Speaker 38 Well, I'm long past in slumber land at 10 o'clock at night Eastern time, but my DVR is awake and it would record record it if they would ever tell the cable companies what they plan on doing.

Speaker 36 See, to me, the stupidest thing about this whole thing was, again, crowd reactions. Adam Page is the heel, yet he's teaming with the babyfaces.
Yeah.

Speaker 36 And swerves over like a babyface, teaming with the top heel, as well as the other heel stable member in his own stable.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 36 Well, that was dynamite.

Speaker 38 Did anybody watch this fiasco this week?

Speaker 36 I believe some people did. Let me pull up the numbers here.

Speaker 38 We'll run through their numbers quickly and then just, again, they did have a collision. And we want to try to

Speaker 38 give you a couple of instances of what they did on national television on Saturday night

Speaker 38 and as their, I guess, answer to what the WWE did on Saturday morning, which was have a stadium show in front of 50,000 people. But go ahead.
We're still on the ratings for Wednesday.

Speaker 36 We are on the ratings. AEW Dynamite on TBS Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, 8 to 10.05 p.m.
These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Speaker 36 The overall number, Jim, 828,000 viewers on average.

Speaker 36 And

Speaker 36 it's up 2% from last week, which was 811,000.

Speaker 38 I was about to say,

Speaker 38 you know, they've made a...

Speaker 38 slight comeback from almost dropping below 800,000 last week, but we're still right in that pocket there, right in in that range.

Speaker 38 They better hope that all these people are in good health.

Speaker 36 Well, again, let's go to the quarterly breakdown because this tells the real story. And again, it's the same story every single week.
Quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m.

Speaker 36 FTR versus Claudio and Moxley, 996,000 viewers.

Speaker 38 And the Big Bang has been well under a million here the past few weeks. So this is a little bit of an increase they're getting handed as a gift.

Speaker 36 Well, the gift continues into quarter two, 8.15 to 8.30 p.m.

Speaker 36 The continuation of that big tag match with picture-in-picture ads and the post-match and the Orange Cassidy backstage angle, followed by another ad break, 870,000 viewers.

Speaker 38 Ouch.

Speaker 38 So

Speaker 38 126,000 automatically said we cannot watch the plumber.

Speaker 36 Well, quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m

Speaker 36 a recap of something it doesn't say what a recap

Speaker 36 uh ftr claudio and moxley backstage angle and orange cassidy versus mike bennett with picture and picture ads

Speaker 38 799 000 viewers good lord so they're below 800 000 it's only 45 minutes into the show

Speaker 38 I sense that by their average, they almost have to pull out of their normal tailspin pattern, pattern, but lead me on.

Speaker 36 We go to quarter four,

Speaker 36 8.45 to 9 p.m.,

Speaker 36 the post-match of Orange Cassidy versus Mike Bennett with the Undisputed Kingdom, and Jake Hager, the Ruby Soho Angelo Parker date setup, the biggest thing since Ralph Mouth went out with Leather Tuscadero.

Speaker 36 Ric Flair's backstage arrival, an ad break, Flair and the Bucs backstage angle, because part two of the arrival, and Daniel Garcia's live promo and confrontation with the Christian Cage bunch, 819,000 viewers.

Speaker 38 So, whatever that mess was that you just described got 20,000 back.

Speaker 36 Well, let's see where those people can go. 9 p.m., the big nine o'clock hour.

Speaker 38 We can tell them where to go, but uh,

Speaker 36 quarter five, nine to nine: 15 p.m.

Speaker 36 The continuation of the Garcia Christian Gang promo confrontation.

Speaker 36 Adam Page, Hook, and RVD's backstage promo. Tony Storm versus Sidney.

Speaker 36 Sidney Sydney. Yes, it is Sydney.
Sidney Winnelli, or not, not Winnelli, just Winnell.

Speaker 36 There's a semicolon there. I thought it was an I.
Sidney Winnell.

Speaker 36 And Madison Rain versus Deanna Perazo with Picture in Picture Ads.

Speaker 36 829,000 viewers.

Speaker 38 Good lord, they actually picked up 10,000. Was that just the top of the hour? Or was there anything in there that people might have wanted to see?

Speaker 36 That's a great question.

Speaker 36 Maybe the next quarter will answer part of it. 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.
quarter six.

Speaker 36 The continuation of Madison Rain versus Deanna Perazzo. Ouch.
Including post-match concussion, including post-match with Tony Storm.

Speaker 36 And the Darby Allen and Sting Tape promo, an ad break, and the Wardlow Live promo, promo, 789,000 viewers.

Speaker 38 Okay, I have a feeling it might be downhill from here, but there goes another

Speaker 38 40,000.

Speaker 36 We're going at a quarter 7, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

Speaker 36 The Bang Bang Scissor Gang backstage promo, an ad break, the Don Callis group backstage promo,

Speaker 36 and the start of Samoa Joe, Brian Cage, and Swerve Strickland versus Adam Page, Hook, and Rob Van Dam,

Speaker 36 777,000 viewers.

Speaker 38 Well, that's only another 12,000. It could be worse.
It could get worse.

Speaker 36 Well, we go to quarter eight. I remind you, there's a five-minute overrun.
Quarter eight, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

Speaker 36 The continuation of that big six-man match with picture-in-picture ads,

Speaker 36 756,000 viewers. Ouch.
Five-minute overrun, 805,000 viewers.

Speaker 38 Okay, yeah.

Speaker 38 Yeah, for that last five minutes on purpose,

Speaker 38 49,000 people are going to say, oh, we got to see the finish.

Speaker 38 So they started at 996,000 and they finished at 10 p.m. Eastern with 756,000.
That means they lost 240,000, which was 25%

Speaker 38 almost exactly of the audience they started with.

Speaker 36 Watch out, WWE.

Speaker 38 But, Brian, I'll have you know for some reason,

Speaker 38 they decided to do another television show. After that one, they should have just folded their tent, packed their bag.
But no, they did another one this past Saturday night on Collision.

Speaker 38 What was that? February 24th was Saturday, perhaps?

Speaker 36 Help me. I believe so.
That sounds correct.

Speaker 38 Well, there you go. Well, this was a red-letter day.

Speaker 38 Was this show taped or was it live?

Speaker 36 I believe it was live.

Speaker 38 It had to be. They would have had to have edited these things.

Speaker 38 Whatever poor people were subjected to this thing, I want to just briefly run over. The opening match was

Speaker 38 Sammy Guevara versus Powerhouse Hobbs.

Speaker 38 In,

Speaker 38 I don't know, was it a Texas death match? Was it a Anything goes? It was a lazy booking match, right? They opened a program with that, with this fucking

Speaker 38 massive,

Speaker 38 jacked-up beast and this skinny, fucking goofy Guevara. Goofy Guevara is what we ought to call him.
He always tells everybody he's crazy for taking all these bumps.

Speaker 38 As I've said, the crazy ones are the ones that are laying down there underneath him.

Speaker 38 But here's what they did in this match:

Speaker 38 Hobbs gave Guevara a spinebuster off the apron through two tables onto the floor as a break spot.

Speaker 38 But after the three-minute break, when they came back, Guevara, the guy that got spinebustered through the tables to the concrete floor by the 280-pound behemoth, was making a comeback.

Speaker 38 And he was getting two counts on Hobbes. And he takes the TV monitor in the ring and hits Hobbes over the head with it.

Speaker 38 And then then he pulls out another table.

Speaker 38 But

Speaker 38 Hobbes pulled out two more tables. So he won the table battle.
But before he could use them, Sammy Guevara broke two beer bottles over Hobbes' head, one right after the other.

Speaker 38 He did one and then to make sure people could see through it, he did another one.

Speaker 38 And then that caused Hobbes to be so disoriented by having two fucking bottles broken over his head that he laid down in the middle of the two tables that was set up on the floor,

Speaker 38 obviously to recover his senses from the bottle incident.

Speaker 36 Obviously. So,

Speaker 38 well, the bottles, yes.

Speaker 38 So, Guevara takes this opportunity to set a 12-foot ladder up in the ring.

Speaker 38 And then climb to almost the top of it, not quite,

Speaker 38 and do a swanton off of it and swanton Hobbs through the two tables to the floor.

Speaker 38 Within one minute,

Speaker 38 Powerhouse Hobbs was power slamming Sammy Guevara off the top rope through another table in the middle of the ring,

Speaker 38 whereupon he scored the pin one, two, three.

Speaker 38 What the fuck is the matter with the if even if even if you don't care whether you die or your opponent dies, what about the business? Why does the business have to die?

Speaker 38 The business was quietly minding its own business.

Speaker 38 And it's meaningless garbage,

Speaker 38 garbage, indie-minded idiots doing stupid things. But

Speaker 38 we know that's Sammy Guevara, and we know that Tony Kahn

Speaker 38 touches himself in sensitive places over this kind of stuff.

Speaker 38 But the problem is that Hobbes still has potential. He could be a star if he ever gets out of there and gets in the WWE Training Center and goes through that program.

Speaker 38 I believe there's something there.

Speaker 38 But they're teaching him that this shit is what he ought to be doing.

Speaker 38 Guevara has hit his ceiling and bounced back down. He's as over as he's going to be, and he's not as over as he was before.

Speaker 38 And people are eh about him.

Speaker 38 But Hobbes should not be involved in this shit because it

Speaker 38 just gives him bad habits that he's going to have to learn to break and fucks his mind up to the psychology of what the business is about.

Speaker 38 So that's my editorial for the fucking episode. The rest of it is pure comedy if you like to watch people fall down a lot.

Speaker 36 Well, let's get to that because there was a lot of that falling down and

Speaker 36 the banner episode of this show that started with CM Punk and FTR and big matches and big moments is now this.

Speaker 38 Well, speaking of FTR, they wrestled Shane Taylor and Lee Moriarty.

Speaker 38 And Shane Taylor has an ass the size of Pittsburgh. I don't know what the fuck,

Speaker 38 but he's out there doing his best. But it was another example

Speaker 38 of FTR trying to...

Speaker 38 On some level, I understand what they're doing and that they take pride in their work and they want to go out there and have the best match of the night or the best match they can, no matter who their opponents are and what the conditions are.

Speaker 38 But it was another case of them trying to have a Midnight Express rock and roll express match with two schlubs that can't keep up with them.

Speaker 38 And then it took everything that they could do to beat these guys.

Speaker 38 And they almost didn't beat them. They were trying to create doubt, and they did.
It was like, who are we pushing here?

Speaker 38 And

Speaker 38 at one point, I don't know exactly what they were going for, but Moriarty was trying to head scissor or go over Dax, I think, in some kind of way. And he just

Speaker 38 landed on Dax was bent over and the guy landed on top of him and started squirming around. It looked like he was trying to put the Antonio Noki octopus hold on him.
And they kind of fell over.

Speaker 38 And then Taylor,

Speaker 38 I don't know what

Speaker 38 why they thought that was a good idea to have this competitive of a match with a team that that we've never seen before and aren't ready to do anything near what they were trying to do.

Speaker 36 I got a little upset. I thought Shane Taylor was stealing my thing.
I thought he had Tally Ho on the side of his trunks. It said Taylor.
It said Taylor, but I thought it was Tally Hoe.

Speaker 38 I thought it was Tally Whacker.

Speaker 36 No, no, that's Mrs. Ballbreaker you're thinking of there.
Ah, FTR know how to have good matches.

Speaker 36 But a long competitive matches with a tag team that if they've ever been on TV, I haven't seen it. Maybe they've been on collision before.

Speaker 36 And we we watched collision because everyone said it's bacha mania over there.

Speaker 36 You know, FTR knows how to have good matches. FTR may have done their best promo in a long time afterwards.

Speaker 38 I really, I didn't even pay any attention at that point. I was just like, I got to, I got to get out of this.

Speaker 36 They challenged Moxa and Claudio to a match at the pay-per-view. Oh, good lord.
So that'll be the, or they accepted a challenge because...

Speaker 36 One way or another, these two teams are wrestling again at the pay-per-view.

Speaker 38 Oh, I can't wait. We only saw 25 minutes of it before.

Speaker 38 But anyway, the reason why,

Speaker 38 as you said, that I was watching, or didn't watch this whole show, but zip through to hit the high points, is because Sunday morning it was all over Twitter.

Speaker 38 And multiple people, thousands of people retweeting and tweeting these clips of people doing stupid things.

Speaker 38 But the biggest one was they had a six-man tag team match with three-fourths or four-sixths or however many there are of the Gang Bang Scissor gang.

Speaker 38 It was Billy Gunn and his sons

Speaker 38 against those three job guys that they've had on this show before. The two bear fellows.
I don't mean naked. I mean

Speaker 38 they used to be bear country.

Speaker 38 They need to go back to the country. The hairy fat fellows and this

Speaker 38 goofy bodybuilder guy that they've got tagging along with them now. They were the job guys, and

Speaker 38 this whole thing fell apart from the start.

Speaker 38 Castor comes out, the acclaimed, get the separate entrance from Jay White and his gunboys.

Speaker 38 And Castor comes out, he does the first line of his rap,

Speaker 38 and then the second line is something like, and you guys are red.

Speaker 38 And then he pauses, and you see on his face,

Speaker 38 If ever there has been

Speaker 38 a video on television of someone going blank, and you can read it on their face, this way, he just suddenly

Speaker 38 it shocked him that he realized he had no idea what to say next.

Speaker 38 And he stops, and the music keeps going.

Speaker 38 And where maybe he might have picked up on another line or whatever, then you see once he's done it, now he's mortified and he just shakes his head no and just gives up.

Speaker 38 Just and

Speaker 38 as he was walking to the ring, he's even giving him the cut like under the chin, like, I'm not doing this shit. Fuck it.

Speaker 38 I mean, there's a first time for everybody, but Brian, you've got a music industry background. You know what a lot of these performers do.

Speaker 38 Maybe sometimes they've sung the song a million times, but they're on some type of substance or, you know,

Speaker 38 things just don't always go according to plan. Couldn't he have just gone zabba dab dab,

Speaker 38 because I don't understand most rap music anyway.

Speaker 36 Well, most people do. Most people don't expect scat in the middle of their rap song.
I don't know if that's a problem. No, no, no.
I'm telling you. Hide the matter.
Oh, I forgot the lyrics.

Speaker 36 Let me go into scat.

Speaker 36 What the hell is that going on?

Speaker 38 Or then maybe he could have said, and I'll beat your cat and your dog too. And whatever.
And said English words, as long as they rhyme, you can't understand rap most of the time, anyway.

Speaker 36 Well, look, maybe we can go. He could have just

Speaker 38 bluffed through that. Yeah, hidden, hidden, hidden, hi, hidey, hoody, hoy.
He'd have got the whole crowd going, hidey, hidey, hidey, hide.

Speaker 36 You know what he should have done? He's walking out there with like 20 fucking people. He should have said, now you do it, and just hand the mic over to someone else and put them on the spot.

Speaker 38 Just everybody.

Speaker 36 And just point the microphone

Speaker 38 like Chick Donovan calling the spot that time. One tackle, drop down, you finish it.
Okay, he gives the first line of the rap and he holds the microphone up to the people.

Speaker 36 Well, it started off on a high point with that. And of course, Anthony Bowens just took the mic and did his usual yelling to the crowd.
And then Kevin Kelly never referenced Max Caster forget his rap.

Speaker 38 No, they went right on through, and then they had a match, allegedly. Apparently, that's what they referred to it as.
And

Speaker 38 I wouldn't go to do the whole blow by blow on this thing, but in the last minute of this, everything that everybody did looked like it could have hospitalized somebody.

Speaker 38 I mean, from Jay White almost fucking lost the goddamn guy on his finish because the jobbers were awful and it was off balance.

Speaker 38 And there were people just executing moves and they should have been executed. It was a mercy killing.
But the one

Speaker 38 that got retweeted and and trended on social media or whatever that everybody was going in what the actual fuck

Speaker 38 was they had one of the fat bear guys set up, bent over to where Billy Gunn was going to come and give him the fame asser, right?

Speaker 38 And everybody knows what Billy jumps up and drops his leg on the back of the guy's head. When the guy's bent over, it drives his face down into the mat, right?

Speaker 38 Well, that's what Billy did. He jumped up and he dropped the leg on the, and the guy went went flat down on his face, boom.

Speaker 38 And then for no apparent reason, but that they thought if they work real hard and take a lot of bumps, maybe they'll get a fucking job. This guy takes the face first bump, jumps up to his feet,

Speaker 38 runs backwards to the ropes and jumps backwards over the top rope,

Speaker 38 taking a bump to the floor to illustrate that he's a guy that big, but he can take that graceful bump over the top rope to the floor,

Speaker 38 disregarding the fact that it looked like he just jumped up, ran, and committed suicide over the top rope.

Speaker 38 The fuck?

Speaker 38 Anti-gravitational forces couldn't have moved him in that way, in that manner, in that direction, at that velocity.

Speaker 36 Earlier in the match, I believe the bear man that you're speaking of was the one that pulled down his straps to show his nipples and then said he was going to take, I think, Billy Gunn or one of the guns to Titty City.

Speaker 38 Oh, good lord. I didn't see that one.

Speaker 36 Yeah, no, this is the same guy that I forget who they were wrestling, and he said he wanted to eat ass on TV.

Speaker 36 So I don't know

Speaker 36 what exactly is going on with them. The gimmick change from bear country to iron savages may not have been going as smoothly as they would like.

Speaker 36 I don't know, but that bump was pretty embarrassing and everyone jumped on it.

Speaker 38 Oh my God.

Speaker 38 You couldn't not because it was so preposterous and it was the thing that caught everybody's eye and attention. You couldn't look away from it.

Speaker 38 I mean, in a normal world, the guy would have been, you know, told, thank you, your services are no longer required, but I bet you they pop up again on TV the next week.

Speaker 36 I'd like to see them against FTR.

Speaker 36 So they could work a 30-minute match.

Speaker 36 Really competitive.

Speaker 38 It would be wonderful. These guys are the living epitome of the old saying, when I got into business,

Speaker 38 guys would

Speaker 38 guys say that when the kids came up and asked their opinion and said, sir, did you see my last match you would go i certainly hope so son i certainly hope so you would almost think they were trying to show up or he was trying to show up billy gunner i mean these were like sean michaels against hulk hogan you know that's the kind of bump it was it was so ridiculous and over the top well but that's

Speaker 38 in this case i would imagine it's because that

Speaker 38 you know the

Speaker 38 The guys were trying to work real hard and take all these bumps and do all this shit that they ain't really capable of, but they wanted to show how hard they were working so that they'd get a job.

Speaker 38 And I think he genuinely thought Michaels knew what he was doing because he was a crafty, experienced veteran at screwing people over in the ring.

Speaker 38 But these guys are just fucking stupid and indie-minded. And they probably thought, oh, wow, look what I just did.
Yeah,

Speaker 38 look what you just did. If you'd have been working for me, you'd have just got fired.

Speaker 36 Well, lucky for them, they're not working for you. They're working for

Speaker 36 Richie Rich, so they'll never be fired.

Speaker 38 He's not good at firing, is he?

Speaker 36 He may hire their family.

Speaker 36 You guys did a horrible bump. Do you have any family member looking for work?

Speaker 38 Yeah, either that or do you know any do you know any personal writers we can bring in to script your matches?

Speaker 38 Well, are we done with the opposition promoting or opposition promotion here for this week?

Speaker 36 I think so. The main event was Brian Danielson versus June Akiyama.

Speaker 38 Oh, I forgot. I went to sleep as soon as it started because they weren't moving.
I figured, why should I?

Speaker 36 And that was another banner episode of AEW Coalition.

Speaker 38 How old is that fellow? June Akiyama.

Speaker 36 Akiyama, I got to say, he's probably in the range of the early 50s, if I had to guess. Top of my head.

Speaker 38 So he's one of the younger ones they bringing in.

Speaker 36 Yes. Well, this was a dream match for Brian Danielson as well as dozens of...

Speaker 38 Collision viewers. I wish if these are Brian Danielson's dream matches, I wish he'd eat blander food before he goes to bed.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 38 It would save us all a a lot of grief.

Speaker 36 You know, I miss the days where it was QT and Brandy and Kenny O'Mega and that crew booking the TV show. This is really bad.

Speaker 38 Oh,

Speaker 38 well, you know, that's how can we miss you if you won't go away? Well, now they all went away and it's come to this. We miss them.

Speaker 38 Are they going to miss us, you think, Brian? We're only going to be away a couple of days.

Speaker 36 Yeah, and someone will do something stupid, so there'll be plenty to listen to and think about. We'll be right back.
And there's a pay-per-view coming up.

Speaker 38 Oh, boy. There's an all-ride.

Speaker 36 WrestleMania is coming up. Dark side of the ring's back.
And

Speaker 36 biography.

Speaker 36 You were on a biography from what I understand this week.

Speaker 38 And we're going to talk about it on the drive-thru, aren't we?

Speaker 36 Yes, we are.

Speaker 38 Yes, we are. And folks, we're going to talk about all these things on the drive-thru in a couple of days and the next week's experience, just a couple of days after that.

Speaker 38 And if you can't get enough of us through that means, then go to the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel and put us on a loop until your tongue lolls out and your eyes roll back in your head.

Speaker 38 And until then, thank you. Fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.