Episode 521: Jim Reviews WWE Elimination Chamber 2024

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Like a midnight and the rock and roller.

He's in a fight for wrestling solar.

Using a racket and some mind controller.

He's Jim Cornette.

The keys to the future, held by the past.

And with tag team partner, Barion Last.

He sends this message out by podcast.

Jim Cornette!

Well, he's never fake a phone phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cordness.

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.

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

Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

As always, the great Brian Last appears, courtesy of the sponsorship of

the future.

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?

And for we all know, practicing

prevaricator.

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

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.

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

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.

but i was trying to form a cogent simile brian

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

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

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

or

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

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

Who's the barber?

Just some fucking guy.

Not the regular barber?

Not even the regular, just a new one.

They got to start from scratch.

I like it a little bit above the ears.

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.

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

What other forms of mayhem can they charge you with?

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

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

Yeah,

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.

One mayhem too far, yeah.

One mayhem too far.

But nevertheless,

so that's what they're they're trying to do.

And I'll tell you, before we talk about the wrestling, I...

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

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

an incorrect

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

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

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.

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

Remember me telling you about this?

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.

Well, I was about to go into that.

Remember I told people, oh, you ought to watch The Watcher?

Don't fucking watch it.

Do not fucking watch that show.

Do not give it the time of your life.

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.

How could you not like it?

And some of them other witches were in their own way appealing as well.

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

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.

As a matter of fact, the show probably would have been better without him on that one either.

Boardwalk Empire.

Fuck this guy.

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

Do you ever

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.

What happened?

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

Yeah, he was one of the stars of the last couple seasons of Boardwalk Empire.

And he was yeah.

He was on vinyl.

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

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

Canaval.

There's no R.

Connaval.

Well, he can kind of my val.

So fuck him too.

Point being,

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

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

are not reacting in a logical fashion.

And

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

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.

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,

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

I don't know shit, I don't know shit from apple butter.

I don't know whether this thing's going to continue.

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

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

and how

they didn't explain shit.

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.

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

They explain nothing.

You don't know how or why any of this was done or by who.

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.

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

It was premiered October 2022.

It's old?

I thought it was new.

We just heard about it.

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

I'll agree it was loosely based.

It was so loose.

It was positively fucking flaccid, but go ahead.

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

And have they done it?

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

What the fuck?

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.

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

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

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.

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

a lot of time after that

last episode

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

over that

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

hey

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

That's not cheating.

You're just cheating.

I told you I had this before.

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

Theodora, who names their child Theodora nowadays?

Well, she's an older lady.

Oh, that explains it.

Yeah.

That explains it.

Although a lot of the older names.

Theodora was big in the 40s and 50s.

And there's a Karen.

I see there's a Karen.

You have a Karen.

Stiffler's mom is in it.

Oh, is she Theodora?

No, no.

She was,

oh, goddamn.

What was her?

The real estate agent.

That woman can do anything she wants.

She'll always be referred to as Stiffler's mom.

Well, and she's still...

She did that in 99.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Given the extended time since its...

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

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.

According to a new report, The Watcher Season 2 has been pushed out of 2024.

with a 2025 release more likely.

What the fuck?

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

alongside

Exo Kitty and the Recruit.

As it stands, it is currently unknown.

Wait a minute, Exo Kitty and the Recruit.

Is that like a new Ant-Man and the Wasp?

No, those are two separate shows.

They are not combined as one

super unit.

I thought it was a buddy flick.

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.

Naomi Watts.

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

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

Yeah.

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

All right.

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.

The series ends.

Come back to that again.

30 years.

You have not lost your goddamn.

It's the best show.

It holds up.

It's fascination.

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

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.

Well,

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

in the goddamn parking lot somewhere.

The grateful dead

coliseum.

Lifeless bodies.

What are you talking about?

Well, you know, these people

were just infested with the drugs.

The drugs.

You know, here,

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,

that I can recall a Vince McMahon quote.

Oh, no.

Which again

shows how people can be

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?

Oh, absolutely.

We are driving.

Where was this?

This was...

Anaheim, WrestleMania 96, right?

And we've got the rental Lincoln Continental,

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?

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

Yeah.

And

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

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.

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.

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

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.

But Vince is in the fucking front passenger seat, and me and Bruce are in the back.

I think Jim Ross is driving.

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,

Spokoli, that drug-infested son of a bitch.

I'm like, Jesus Christ.

Wow.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

Yeah.

But who was telling Vince about it?

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.

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

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.

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

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

And

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.

And a couple of them were in Continental Wrestling.

Dundee was the booker.

And Spikoli, that was his first territory.

And, you know,

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.

We all met him for the first time.

And that was,

there was some germ of idea in my mind of a

Smoky Mountain wrestling or a territory or whatever the fuck.

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

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

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.

But so you couldn't, you know,

just be ridiculous with it.

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

get revenge for him or whatever.

So I always, every time I saw Spokoli after that, I say, you're Bobby's little brother.

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

Did he work for you in Smoky Mountain?

I'm trying to think if he can.

No, because he still lived in California.

I mean,

he was another guy.

Candido, at least, could, you know,

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

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,

the angle wasn't there anymore.

But anyway,

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

No, this happened before.

Can I give you a show that you watch?

No.

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

that is wonderful, and

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.

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

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

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.

And

I watched it on the on-demand gimmick.

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.

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

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.

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

Yeah.

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,

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

and critic and

experienced reviewer.

You would enjoy this, this television programming.

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.

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

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

lifted via fair use from

that project or who knows, whatever.

But I saw that when you're talking about too, and I think it was HBO.

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

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

With

who was it?

I forget who the host was, but.

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?

Who was the guy that started the band?

Bobby, Bobby Bird, right?

Is that his name?

I believe so.

He's all over this.

He's a feisty gentleman.

But anyway,

you would enjoy the, or people out there, I'm trying to redeem myself.

If anybody jumped on watching The Watcher before.

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

Well,

I'd never heard of it.

Soul Brother Number Two.

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.

Hit Netflix series.

What's that mean?

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

Hey, now that you're streaming, do you have HBO Max?

Well, now it's just Max.

Max, do you have Max?

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.

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

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.

Well, all right, I'm going to write this down now.

I'm going to curb your requests by

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.

Right after the King of Kong and Monster Squad.

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

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

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

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

And he has been up and about more independently and feeling better.

And he decides,

it was last weekend now, or whenever this is

seven to 10 days ago or so,

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.

It was six months.

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.

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,

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

That's what happened.

That was on a Saturday night.

And guess what happened on Monday morning?

Oh, no.

What happened?

He tested positive for COVID with 102 degree fever.

Oh, no.

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.

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.

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

He's been fine.

He went to a restaurant.

He got COVID.

And he ain't back in the fucking bed.

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

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

Although

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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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

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?

Yay.

Well, I think the first biography is Orton.

Let's see how deep they get

in his rookie year.

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

Well, no,

I'm talking about just his wrestling training and

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

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,

it's in a brick fucking holding cell.

It looks like it was from World War II.

They never show Lashley when he was there.

That was the first time I saw Lashley, Blaster Lashley in OVW.

Yeah.

And well,

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

Can you?

That has been 20 years ago.

Can you imagine

what he looks like now?

And he's looked the same way for 20 years.

He's a genetic marvel.

Because, I mean,

musculature,

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.

His driver's license picture is from 2004.

It's the same fucking thing.

I want what he's he's on.

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

Who knows?

You don't know that.

You don't know that.

You're not a dermatologist.

What do you know?

I think probably somebody before Bobby Lashley would have found him and publicized.

Steroids for your face.

That would do the opposite.

I don't think that's what he's using.

That would give him like muscular.

Like big.

What is he goddamn drinking?

Jasha Gabor's blood?

What are you inferring here?

The adrenochrome straight from the Gabor sisters.

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

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

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.

You know, should Bobby start speaking in a Slovakian accent

while doing promos?

Don't let me tell you, darling.

Darling, yes, everybody with darling.

Let me tell you, darling.

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.

The clock is now ticking.

If it lasts 10 more weeks,

we're going to get them all in.

It's 10 episodes this season, and they start Tuesday night, March the 5th at

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

Viewer discretion is,

if not demanded, then certainly advised.

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

Well, you do on a constant basis.

Everything you say is not popular.

I say the truth, though.

It could not be popular.

That's fine.

I say the truth.

Vice.

is probably doing the right thing.

I know it sounds crazy.

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,

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.

And now look at the mess they're in.

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

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

And if it happened, it would have to be like a secretive thing.

Or did they just stole his business model?

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,

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

I even saw an article that said that he's nowhere to be found.

What does that mean?

You can't find him?

So we'll see what happens.

But yes, Dark Side of the Ring returns until black tuesday hits

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

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?

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

I don't know.

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

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.

Now, I want the Bobby Lashley biography.

They're not going to do, but it's your show.

Well, yes, it is.

And I'll tell you this, boy, howdy, I'm right where everybody can find me.

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.

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.

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

the week is starting in 12 hours or whatever,

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

They won't do that unless they're in the future.

But only

if you drink the tea

containing the peyote that we

give you if you order the deluxe pack.

No, you're not sending peyote.

First of all, no.

And there is

a recipe for the tea.

Then you do the pentagram, then you set it on fire right there in your bedroom.

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

Right now at jimcornet.com.

No.

The figures.

You can just read the information there on the website.

It'll tell you basically everything you need to know.

The figures are there.

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

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

It's a fantasy of arson.

that's what

it's a controlled burn

under strictly

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

i what was it i was a teenage monster

The end in color?

Yeah.

I could be stealing a bit.

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

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.

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,

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

And

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.

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.

Was she named after Lisa Marie Presley?

Just because

was Lisa Marie a common name before that point?

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

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

Of,

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

Every time you keep calling her Lisa Marie, I'm thinking of Elvis saying Lisa Marie.

You know what I mean?

Okay, but

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

there's all kinds of Lisa Maries down south.

I don't know

that she was from California.

Well, Lisa Marie Presley wasn't the first Lisa Marie,

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

Of course.

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.

Well, we will find out on a future episode.

The investigation continues.

Well, nevertheless, but anyway,

finished thanking Sven Gooley, thank you, Sven, for showing that.

It reminded me that I,

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.

There were high jinks and hoodwinks going on.

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

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.

There's only one season.

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

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.

Time Tunnel.

Well, Time Tunnel, they can move up.

Oh, my God.

Lost in Space.

I can't remember their names all of a sudden.

Lost in Space.

They have other shows they can move up.

Well, yeah, well, see, then

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

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.

Plus the movies.

Plus the movie.

Well, but I'm talking about an hour, you know,

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.

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,

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

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

Yeah, I'm with you.

I like Cold Shack, but it's time for a break.

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.

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.

But the pastels, the pastels.

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.

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

And it's going to be drab, right?

All right.

Well, this took a turn.

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

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.

Let's talk about Uncle Dave.

What now?

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

fine folks that observe all this stuff,

the WON Awards,

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

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:

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,

these are the most covered mainstream international pro wrestling awards.

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

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

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

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

Dave's publication, right?

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.

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?

You would think so, yes.

Okay, so the

voting pool is somewhat colored by I would think more people

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.

Well, these are the category A awards.

They are determined by points on a five to three to two basis.

Okay, and there has to be some kind of mathematical formula.

This is like the Electoral College of Wrestling with Dave.

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.

First place votes are in parentheses.

Of course, they are.

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

The Luthes/slash Ric Flair Award

for Wrestler of the Year,

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

Will Osprey.

Coming in second place,

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

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

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

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

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

I'll just go through the rest of the list here.

Mystico,

Seth Rollins, Mystico.

He's the

Mystico out points or out places or out ranks or

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

Well, Mystico got 30.

Now I'm going to do the first place votes again.

34 first place votes to Seth Rollins is eight.

Oh, well,

there's it right there.

Matt, you can't come back from that.

No, look at the points here.

500 and or 458 to 227.

There's just no contest here.

After Rollins, we have Kazushi.

Once he lost Virginia, the tide had turned.

We have Kazushka Okada in eighth place, followed by Kento Miyahura in ninth place.

What?

Eighth in ninth place.

You have a problem with that?

Who is Kento Yamahura?

To begin with, even when we cover Dave's Drivel, I've never heard that name written out

or spoken before.

Have you?

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.

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

One of the top 10 wrestlers of the year

in the world, apparently.

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

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

CM Punk is an honorable mention,

and he's in the also category.

Somebody actually voted for Orange Cassidy.

Or Wrestler of the Year wrote that unironically, do you think?

Is somebody trolling

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?

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.

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

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

Claire?

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

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

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

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

Unlike with most years.

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.

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.

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,

but he had a limited schedule.

And part of this award is is having a lot of great matches during the year,

as well as value to the box office and influence.

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?

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.

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

Oh, well, they got

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

Well, let's move on.

There's a lot of awards here.

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

I'm going to skip the MMA ones for sure.

Is that okay with you?

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.

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

Will Ospreay.

Oh, good lord.

So AEW has got a real winner now on their hands.

Wrestler of the Year and Most Outstanding Wrestler.

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.

And now that Kenny

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.

You think he's got ostrich's poster?

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?

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

Have you seen the pictures of his office?

Maybe he's cleaned it.

I haven't seen anything recent.

Those are all old photos.

I'm sure things have changed.

Well, they didn't have a lot of modern shit of Dahmer at first.

You know, they had to go back and defile.

Well, hold on.

Dave's crazy a little bit.

Let's not compare him to Dahmer.

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

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

Number five, Kento Miyahara,

number six, Gunther,

number seven, Kazushika Okada, number eight, Shingo Takagi.

Oh, boy.

Number nine, Orange Cassidy.

Number ten, Mike Bailey.

Honorable mentions, Jon Moxley, MJF, Seth Rollins, and Eddie Kingston.

Names, names, names running through my head.

Who was the one shit on a shingle?

What?

What?

Shingle.

What happened?

I don't know what just happened.

Just rattled off a bunch of fucking alleged names.

Oh, Shingo Takagi.

Ah!

One on shingle.

And

so go down

a little slower from the top

down

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

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.

I don't have any idea.

We'll pass.

Number six, Gunther.

There you go.

Stop there.

That's what

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

And

these, and again,

the flippy fucking darling

crash TV crowd or whatever that

Gunther is more valuable

than, you know,

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.

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.

And they can't.

I don't understand.

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

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

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

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

But I think

even the

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.

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

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

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.

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

Three, they're broken up.

Hiroki Godo and Yoshi Hashi.

Okay.

Four, Takuya Nomura.

Oh, come on.

And Fumanori

Abe, I believe.

Oh,

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

42 first place votes.

So it's still okay.

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

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

Number seven, Francesco,

Francesco, Akira, and TJP.

Who are these fucking people?

Number eight, the Usos.

Number nine, June and Ray Saito.

And number 10, the acclaimed.

With 11 first place.

All right.

Well, the only two

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

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.

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

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

you know,

do they feel like the last unicorn?

Is there any way for them to somehow inseminate somebody with the grasp of, of?

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

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.

Let's talk about the state of interviews.

Best on interviews, an award you previously won four times or four times.

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

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

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.

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

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

Well, wait, don't call it Memorial.

Well, Dave killed you.

Maybe that's the loophole.

I don't want it yet.

Ah, okay.

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.

199.

Well, they're still friends.

199 first place votes.

Eddie Kingston, also 1,483 points right on his tail.

Second with 140 first-place votes and 1,441 total points.

So just within, within reach, MJF.

Number three, Christian Cage.

Number four, John Moxley.

Oh, good lord.

Number five, Cody Rhodes.

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.

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.

Gotcha.

CM Punk at eight, L.A.

Knight at nine, and Don Callis, number ten.

And who was top three again?

Eddie Kingston, MJF, and Christian Cage.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

And

sooner or later, everybody's going to end up dead.

So his gimmick is evergreen.

Problem is, it's so green it stinks.

My POV, veterans like me should join a company that has their back.

That's why I joined Verizon.

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

Uh-oh, wait a minute.

Hold on here.

With 400.

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

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

in second place,

All Elite Wrestling,

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.

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

God damn, Impact can't even beat Stardom.

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

Oh, that's just like.

Oh.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

So I'll stop there, but

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

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.

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,

AEW Dynamite,

which has won it every year of its existence going back to 2019.

In second place, AEW Collision.

Wait, wait, wait, hold on, what?

Followed by SmackDown.

No.

Followed by CMLL Super Vierna's or Vienna.

What does this say?

Vierna.

Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, the observer has small print.

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.

Followed by We Are Stardom.

Christ.

Oh,

so

I can understand

they want their

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.

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

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

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

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

Who did Will Ostrich wrestle?

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

The passing of Meltzer's Phallas.

instead of a torch they cut a big dildo

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

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

From June 25th in Toronto, Kenny Omega versus Will Osprey.

God damn it.

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

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

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

Oh, good lord.

That was the garbage match spectacular, wasn't it?

Followed by FTR versus White and Robinson.

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.

Followed by Brian Danielson versus Zach Sabre Jr.,

followed by Ketsuhiku Nakajima versus Kento Miyahara.

Fuck.

July 15th.

Followed by Will Ospreay versus Tetsuya Naito.

Followed by Queen's Quest versus Odo Tai.

What?

June 25th in Tokyo.

Wait a minute.

What number of match of the year is that on the list?

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

How did fucking 19 people see that match?

Who are those people?

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.

Well, at least they squeaked in under the wire.

We will now go to the category B awards.

These are determined by first-place votes only.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are even less important.

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

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.

But the United States and Canada MVP

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

Kenny Omega,

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

Oh,

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

What do you think, Cody Rhodes, a U.S.

Canada MVP?

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.

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.

But again,

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

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

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

what's the,

as the kids say, the ironic voting?

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

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

Will Ospreay with 134 votes.

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

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

A.

Yagi,

excuse me, I don't know the names.

Ayo.

Tam Nikano.

Say hello to the goof guy.

Julia, Sonata, Kino, and Maito.

Kino?

You can lose your ass playing that shit.

The Mexico MVP, Jim Mystico.

Mystico.

Followed by El Hijo del Vikingo.

Rocky Romero.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

The state of wrestling in Mexico right now is so

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.

We've seen him.

He is the shits.

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

The Europe MVP, Jim,

Will Osprey with 754 votes.

How does he have time?

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

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

The Hodge Award for non-heavyweight MVP.

Will Osprey.

The winner, El Hijo del Vikingo.

Oh, God.

With 100 degrees.

Oh, no, no.

Oh, no.

Those fighting words.

Hey.

Who you shooting up?

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

Can you imagine a bigger insult?

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.

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

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.

And in between,

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

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

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

Well, and is that another one you just can't deny?

Because it's...

It would be ridiculous to think otherwise and

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?

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,

Sayuri

or Suri.

I don't know exactly how you pronounce it.

S-Y-U-R-I.

Sayuri.

Suri.

It's something in there.

Say,

sedai, you sedai.

All right, Topo Jiju here on the show today.

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

And Siri.

So basically, Becky Lynch and Rhea Ripley are

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.

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.

Do they have feuds anymore?

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.

Yeah, yeah.

Followed by Adam Page versus Swerve Strickland, Kento Miyahara versus

Katsuhiku Nakajima.

Oh, come on.

Followed by Kenny Omega versus Will Ospreay.

Followed by Adam Page vs.

Jon Moxley.

Oh, good.

Followed by Elite versus BCC.

Oh,

followed by Rocky Romero versus Volvador Jr.

Followed by Roman Reigns versus Jey Uso.

Followed by Cody Rhodes versus Brock Lesnar.

And coming in 10th, MJF versus the Devil.

So I was right.

They don't have feuds anymore.

Abbot,

what can you even say?

God, that's embarrassing.

Most improved with 117 votes.

Julia Hart, most improved.

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

In second place, Dominic Mysterio.

In third place, Mariah Mae tied with Shoda Umino.

Wait a minute.

How can Mariah Mae have improved?

We never saw her till fucking six weeks ago.

And she wrestled more than once.

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

to America to be the backup of Tony Storm.

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

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,

followed by the Gun Brothers.

I like the Gun Brothers.

I can't really tell whether or not they've improved over the last year because they,

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

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

he is worlds above speaking and in the ring

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.

Swerve Strickland, I don't know if he's gotten better.

He's just used better.

They're just using him better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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.

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

you know, light bulb moment or whether he's just getting better and better, whatever.

You know, I think Big Bill.

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

And it was like a year and a half ago.

Dominic

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

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

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

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

Swirl Strickland,

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

What the fuck?

That's like

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.

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

I don't understand.

Well, the Brian Danielson Award for best technical wrestler.

There's another one's named.

I'm telling you, I want the best non-wrestling performer award.

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

with 549 votes, followed by only two other people got votes, Zach Saber Jr.

with 427 votes and Josh Alexander with 17 votes.

Well, really, how can you argue with that?

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

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.

The Bruiser Brody Memorial Award for Best Brawler.

The winner with 383 votes, Jon Moxley.

Oh, good lord.

Followed by Tomo Hiroshi.

Oh, no, I can't take it.

Followed by Adam Page, Eddie Kingston, Gunther,

Rush or Rush, Shingo Takagi, Julia,

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

The best.

Oh, go ahead.

Hold on, hold on.

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

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

a wrestler, but a wrestling heel.

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

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

there moxley's your man

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

embarrassing to them and it is to

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.

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

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

followed by Will Ospreay,

Ray Phoenix, Mascara Dorada, Commander,

Neon,

Ninja Mac,

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

To show you

just how

badly the

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

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

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

Bobby would be embarrassed that these

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

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.

And it's all interchangeable.

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.

It's the stars you're looking at.

I thought he won that award, too.

He didn't.

Bobby never won best flying wrestler.

I'm sorry, he did place second.

He won most underrated.

Most underrated three times.

Three separate times.

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

Well, we'll go to most underrated in a moment.

Most overrated, number one, Sonata,

followed by Roman Reigns, CM Punk,

Tyrus,

MJF, Austin Theory,

Talia Jax, Chris Jericho, L.A.

Knight, and Jake Lee.

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?

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

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

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

Mike Bailey, Yoda Suji,

Ricochet,

Roosh,

Commander, Britt Baker, and Adam Page.

Where's gravity?

He's not underrated.

He's rated just right.

Rookie of the Year, Jim.

The winner, I'm sure you are already saying it in your head.

Yuma Anzai.

Yuma Anzai, followed by Action Andretti.

Oh, come on.

Well, that was number two.

Number three, Megan Bain.

Number four, Oleg Bolton.

Number five, Kelani Jordan.

Number six, Oba Femi.

Oh, who?

What?

Number seven, Billy Stark.

I think of her.

Oba Feminine.

Oba Femi.

Obi-A.

And then the last name is F-E-M-I.

Obi-Oba Femi.

Obi-Femi.

Oba Femi.

I misspoke.

Right before Oba is Oleg Bolton.

So Oleg Bolton, Lonnie Jordan, Oba Femi.

Wait a minute.

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

Oleg Taktarov.

Very impressive that that'd be the person you mentioned.

I don't believe that this is the spawn of them.

How about Oleg Cassini?

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.

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

Number seven, Billy Starks.

Number eight, Santana Jackson tied with Futuro.

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.

So we go from Braun Breaker to that fucking list.

Is there a future for the wrestling business?

A bunch of fucking nobodies.

Here is the last five years.

2018, Rookie of the Year Ronda Rousey.

2019, Jungle Boy Jack Perry.

2020, Pat McAfee.

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?

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

The odd duck in the middle.

Who was that middle one?

Didn't fit?

Scapegoat Jack Perry.

Jack Perry, that didn't work out well.

But, you know,

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

what the fuck, there's nobody there.

A bad year for growing crops.

Speaking of there's nobody there.

Best non-wrestler.

Now, this used to be manager of the year.

Yeah, count those coronets down there.

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.

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.

The only people who won it other than you.

John, keep going further ahead.

Didn't I pick up another one?

Well, then it became best non-wrestler.

You won again in 2006.

Yeah.

Best non-wrestler.

And they took some years off.

And by the way, Sherry won, and bless her, but that's the year that I was

took off while I was starting Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

So I was not in the running.

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

followed by Paul Heyman.

Okay, all right.

And without even being in any way

less than complimentary to my old buddy Don,

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.

It's just not possible to objectively say that.

Well, let's go through the rest of the list.

Paul Heyman, number two.

Number three, Prince Nana.

Number four, Renee Paquette.

Number five.

Hold on, hold on a second.

Now we've got where

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

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

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

And

Nana loves him to death, but he never speaks.

He dances.

And Renee Moxley Good

is a fucking interviewer

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

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.

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

Followed by Nigel McGinnis, followed by Samantha Irvin.

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

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

over one of their fucking ring announcers.

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

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

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

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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

the winner this year once again excalibur

183 votes right behind him with 139 votes ian ricabani

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

Jim Ross, and Jay Church.

Jay Church?

I don't know who Jay may be.

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

I will admit that J.R.

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...

Vince and Kevin Dunn training.

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

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

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

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.

He is not a good-looking man.

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

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

But what the fuck?

Seriously.

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

followed by Kevin Kevin Patrick, the panting announcer,

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

In first place,

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,

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

what?

AEW WrestleMania.

Wait, wait a minute.

Kijimudo did a porn flick and Ring of Honor?

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.

i think there's

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

shows no

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

You know,

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

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

I remember that stunk.

That was the worst AEW show, maybe, ever.

Worst AEW pay-per-view.

Followed by WWE Fastlane, AAA Triple Mania.

I was about to say eight and a half.

That's eight.

It was on August 12th here.

NWA 75th Anniversary Show,

WWE WrestleMania Night 2.

SummerSlam.

WWE Payback and NWA Nuff Said.

NWA not really winning over fans, it seems like.

The best wrestling maneuver, Jim.

The Will Ospreay Hidden Blade.

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?

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

God, that's fucking rot.

He's on TV.

In second place is Will Ospreay with the Stormbreaker.

Followed by the One-Winged Angel by Kenny Omega.

Of course it is.

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

What the f?

Followed by the Commander Rope Walk Shooting Star.

Followed by the Adam Page Buckshot Lariat.

Neon's ramp-run double springboard Fossbury.

What the fuck?

Ilya Dragonoff's

H-bomb.

Leon Slater's 450 Swanton.

And Okada's Rainmaker.

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.

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.

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

Let's now go to one of the most interesting ones every year.

Most disgusting promotional tactic.

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.

Yeah.

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

Any problem with that being number one?

That's been the big one.

That's been the big one.

I think that would have had to have won.

Number two, the WWE's continued relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Number three, the NWA cocaine spot on pay-per-view.

Number four,

I can't even say this anymore without thinking of you saying it.

Power slap.

Continuing on TV after Dana Weiss slapped his wife.

Come here, honey.

Power slap.

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.

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

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

Number nine, WWE hiring CM Punk.

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.

And on

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

Hiring CM Punk is the most disgusting promotional tactic.

Some not voted for that.

That's what's crazy.

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

Oh, yeah, there's a big one.

Well, no, but think about this.

We just had a list of, again,

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

What was 19, was it 1981?

Read 1981's winner for most disgusting promotional tactic.

I'll do the first couple here.

1981, LaBelle promotion's usage of the monster, claiming he was built in a laboratory.

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...

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.

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.

Yeah.

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

The smart fans hated Bob Backlund.

The smart fans despised Bob Backlund.

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.

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?

Because, well,

here's another thing, to be honest.

Eddie was one of the first.

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

not only the tape traders, but the program traders, all that.

They could support him and he was getting publicity.

I remember he cooperated forever and ever with Terry Justice on the fan club and all that stuff.

And so a lot of that

community

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

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

light of it, I guess, on television.

It just, it was, that was a weird thing with the fans then were so protective.

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.

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

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

AEW Rampage, WWE SmackDown, AEW Dynamite, and Ring of Honor.

This is worst television show.

Well, almost every show is

on that list.

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

But, you know.

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

Bray Wyatt versus LA Knight at the Royal Rumble.

Well,

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

and I know this audience sees everything.

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.

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.

Real quick, anything else stands out?

Tyrus versus EC3,

Shane McMahon and Snoop Dogg versus The Miz,

Baron Corbin versus

Gabeson, Gable Steveson or Gabe Sapolsky.

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

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.

Julia Hart versus Abaddon.

And Adam Cole versus MJF.

Worst feud of the year.

MJF versus the devil.

167 votes.

And there were a lot of bad ones, but I guess maybe because of the amount of time and the amount of

just the amount of time they gave that thing.

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

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

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

Oh, good lord.

Ronda Rousey versus Shayna Baszler.

Can't argue with that.

Adam Cole versus Chris Jericho.

Ooh.

Keith Lee versus Swerve Strickland.

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

Is it worst feud because it never became a feud?

Is that something that should make it worse feud?

Because there should have been a feud and it just never was a feud.

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

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

Here's one we missed.

Number nine, Seth Rollins versus Shinsuke Nakamura.

And number 10, another guy that, real quick, it turned into what happened to him?

Where is he again?

Miro versus CJ Perry

versus his wife.

Yeah, and they're gone again.

Yeah.

She's hot, flexible, and missing.

Worst promotion of the year.

A runaway this year with 456 votes, the NWA.

Good lord.

What have they done?

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

Second place, AAA, followed by WWE.

Control your narrative,

MLW,

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

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

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.

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

lives and breathes this type of thing.

In first place with 360 votes, Paul Levesque.

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

Followed by Juan Manuel Marr,

Shuji Ishika,

Shuji Ishikawa, Rossi Ogawa, Ghetto, Sean Michaels,

Andy Quindlen,

or

Quilden, whoever he may be, and Scott Damore

with 16 votes.

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

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

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.

They had nothing but advantages from the moment they started.

The excitement, the budget, the network.

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

This is interesting.

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

Is there going to be some way, shape, or form that he's going to be able to spend this?

It's great.

Yeah, things are great.

And now we've made some big changes.

We hired Jennifer Pepperduke and we hired um Rocky Romero and Kelly.

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

Alexandra Pepperday.

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

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

All right, well, Miss Pepperday and everyone else is there, so maybe things will change next year.

Promoter of the year

in first place with 371 votes, Nick Kahn.

Oh,

followed by Tony.

A one-two punch to the gut.

Poor Tony.

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.

He lost to a different con.

How bad do you think that hurts?

But you know what?

Some things don't change in 100 years.

The two most powerful people in the wrestling business are cons.

And they were 100 years ago.

The promoters were all con artists.

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

Tony Storm

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

Brochachos.

Brochachos.

Was that just him and Adam Cole?

Was that MJF and Adam Cole?

That was MJF and Adam Cole.

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

They didn't actually ever.

No, they had two tag team matches, didn't they?

I I don't think it was.

But it was better than you, babe.

Well, not the Brochachos.

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.

LA Knight, Dominic Mysterio, Swerve Strickland tied with Cody Rhodes and Katsuhiku Nakajima Roundout Best Gimmick.

Worst gimmick, The Devil.

Followed by QTV, Tony Storm,

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

The Schism,

and MJF.

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.

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

It's the place where bad gimmicks go to

fester.

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.

Well,

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.

Congratulations, Tim.

All right.

Tip, tip, tittyo.

Was there another book worth reading this past two?

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

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.

Followed by The Wrestling Observer Complete Collection, 1989.

Followed by Kayfabe.

A mostly true history of pro-wrestling by Patrick Reed.

Followed by.

that was a big budget book.

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

And finally, Populism and Professional Wrestling in the Sunbelt South by Christopher Stacey.

I don't know that book either.

I don't know what the fuck that was, but

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...

You will.

I will hate him even worse.

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.

Aw, well, good.

I'm glad to see that people thought well of that episode.

And those were the majority of the Wrestling Observer Awards.

We went longer than we thought we would, but

it did take a while, didn't it?

It did, yes.

I thought we started.

Oh, boy.

Promo code JCE.

Yeah, he'll give you everything in the shop.

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?

But before we do that, what in the wide world of sports is happening at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this fine week?

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.

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?

Where can you trust to get your news?

I'm throwing words in the air, hoping they come down together and making sense.

Who can you trust and where do they live?

That's the question I'm asking.

Who do you know?

And how much do they have, ladies and gentlemen?

What did you know and when did you know it?

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.

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.

If you were going to give 1984 wrestling awards, who would you you give them to?

Check it out today at mcadampod.com.

Go look for Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the

Mothership.

Go through the archive today.

It's set.

Took a lot out of me at 605pod.com.

Available wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Let's see what happens.

The mothership.

I'd like to take a lot out of you.

Well, before we

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

how can they do SmackDown on Friday and anybody be in Australia,

you know, three hours later or whatever?

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?

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

Triffany.

A live against Tiffany.

And

there was a video of Ashante Adonis and his partner.

What's his name?

I can't remember his partner's name.

Trick?

No,

he's partners with Carmelo, but they're on the outs.

No, Carmelo.

Wait.

Ashante and the other guy were in with Flop Dollar, weren't they?

No, Flop Dollar was the other guy.

Well, then, all right.

Well, one of these fucking.

It was Ashante, Flop Dollar, Beef Av, and Swerve.

Oh, he swerved.

He swerved him, and he, yeah.

He swerves when he drives.

Well, Ashante's got a new partner, and they had a video of them trying on clothing.

Is that Carmelo Hayes, the new partner?

I don't know.

Are they going to feud with the other fashionable males in the company?

I don't know.

But anyway, they had that, and they had some pre-tape stuff at the back with Jimmy and Roman and, you know, Paulie

telling Grayson Waller to do something, dramatic foreshadowing for the pay-per-view.

But did you see the Braun Breaker match?

That was the only thing on the entire episode I actually really liked.

That's one of the only things on the episode I want to talk about.

He's the new Brock Lesnar with none of the problems.

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

statement in Pissgate.

He has got the same qualities.

He obviously

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

aggression and intensity that Brock has and the power, and the speed,

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.

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.

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.

So inside the ropes, he's got 18 feet to get 23 miles an hour.

The fuck.

But anyway,

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

and

back the Brinks truck up to Braun Breaker's house because he'll be the WWE Universal or world or whatever champion, barring injury.

In,

I don't think it might not take him three years.

Should he be the one to dethrone?

I was going to say, I was about to say Walter.

Should he be the one to dethrone Gunther?

You know, that might not be a bad idea.

And it shouldn't happen real anytime real quick.

Just let Gunther keep doing what Gunther's doing and give Braun Breaker now

six months or however many months, maybe a year on the main roster, maybe by next year's WrestleMania.

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.

And of course, the Wrestling Observer.

Newsletter readers would rather see Will Ostrich, but Braun Breaker is a

multi-multi-million dollar fucking talent and is going to be, again, barring injury for

however many years he wants to be, probably until he makes much money, just says, fuck it, and quits.

I don't know how else to explain it.

But otherwise, than that on this program, oh, I've got to mention.

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.

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.

But then we got to

the tag team match with

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.

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.

Harley, not Stacey.

And they sit down while I'm writing things, making these notes.

And I said, look at the state of tag team wrestling.

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.

And I wrote down her comments when she looked at Tyler Bate and Pete Dunn.

What the fuck is this?

Are they kidding?

These aren't just job guys, they're signed.

That one guy looks like a midget with Dennis Condry's head.

It looks like he just rolled out of bed.

The one guy looks like he's wearing underoos.

They're the babyface challengers to the tag team title, and I'll get more into their

unseemly look and ridiculous level of push on the pay-per-view, but what the fuck has gone on?

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.

Don't forget doom

and doom.

The team of doom.

The Team of Doom.

And the Legion of Doom.

They were even bigger than a team.

They were a Legion.

And what about Olympia and Gene?

Well, I mean, we could talk Bachwinkle and Stevens.

I was making a point, but I'm done now.

I just want to yell tag team names.

It'll be more fun.

Yes.

Street Profits and the AOP.

That was the next match.

And then Damage Control jumped Dakota Kai in the locker room and hurt her ankle, and Bailey was upset about it.

And then L.A.

Knight had a match with Drew McIntyre.

That was the main event with Logan Paul on color.

And there wasn't anything wrong with it.

Two pros here.

They kept it moving.

The shit looked good.

They had a nice TV match, and finally,

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

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.

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.

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.

That was the name of that tune.

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...

A taped episode of it was held together with Scotch tape, but people are watching it because they're interested in something there.

Well, that was SmackDown.

That was the quickest we've ever gotten through SmackDown.

Nine minutes to get through SmackDown there.

There you go.

But don't worry.

We're about to slow down.

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?

What day was it over there?

I'm not certain.

We have established it's a scientific fact that time moves more slowly in Australia

because this was the slowest moving fucking show I have ever seen in my life.

And,

you know, again, what a stadium.

What a set they had and the whole truss over the ring.

They have an incredible, open, network quality television production.

It's a big league show.

You can tell the new guy has brought in more network sports type fucking presentation to the production of it.

I mean, there's the production's looked incredible since Kevin Doll left.

It's been great.

Yes.

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.

It makes the show so much more bearable.

It's been been really good.

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

it just it, you know, it looks great.

Not much happens.

It's a big league fucking production, though.

But they opened this thing up, and obviously, you know, the

I don't know what the live viewership was except for

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

devote the whole day

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

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.

Boy, howdy, I don't know.

You're making it sound a lot worse than it was.

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,

if you were watching it live and you couldn't fast forward,

that would be

all right.

Well, let's go through it.

The first match was the Women's Elimination Chamber match.

And that featured Bianca versus Raquel versus Tiffany versus Liv versus Naomi versus Becky.

And Brian, let me ask you a question before we talk about this.

Sounds like pop stars, yeah?

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?

And people watch them generation after generation.

And sometimes

they even remake those movies for a more modern audience.

You've seen remakes before of classic movies.

It's a hit or miss, but mostly miss.

Well, would you watch a rotten remake of a classic movie before you watched the original for the first time?

Or wouldn't that spoil the original for you because you'd seen the substandard version before you'd seen the real deal?

Well, let me just say this.

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.

I didn't want to watch the goddamn women do it first, two hours beforehand.

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.

It exposes a whole goddamn deal for everybody.

Farmer Burns was skinny.

Yeah, Farmer Burns was skinny, but his weight was distributed a little differently than Liv Morgan's.

So you didn't watch the women's elimination?

No, I can't.

No.

It was better than the men's.

It was better than the men's.

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.

Well, yeah.

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.

The guys are the ones drawing the fucking money.

Well, the girls are the ones getting the moonsaults.

Well, and they can keep those.

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.

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.

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?

Yes.

Yes.

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

and from a guy's talent standpoint.

If you have

women, I'm sorry, young

women of, in most cases, very frail body weight, Tiffany Stratton.

Becky Lynch.

Becky Lynch can, she's 140 pounds.

Becky Lynch is 120 pounds.

She can talk,

but you put them in cages and elimination chambers and furniture matches.

It's ridiculous.

If it doesn't kill them, it's phony.

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

and those idiots and their suicidal tendencies.

But again, no,

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.

Sorry.

And

I will say that one thing that it was proven,

they are making new fans.

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.

Would they not?

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.

Yeah, or not walk or not throw shit at the ring.

We're not set the seats on fire.

They wouldn't have been blanket appears at times.

And

basically, this match, the bell rang to start it 16 minutes into the show, and they were done at 49 minutes into the show.

I started keeping track because the matches were longer than they have a roster of 100 fucking people

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.

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.

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.

And

people are up at 6:30 in the morning trying to get through this live.

Fucking hell.

So, anyway, perhaps the alcohol helped.

Oh, I can't see how at that time of day or morning or night or whatever that alcohol would help you stay awake.

But that was the first match.

Good match.

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

a fucking cast of goddamn chorus girls out there looking like deer on ice doing shit that guys ought to be doing.

Well, good match.

Timothy Stratton looked really good in there.

In where?

What are you insinuating?

No, she was doing good.

She did a moonsault at one point.

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.

And

Naomi looked a little green around the gills, too.

You know, it sucks when she can't do her glow-in-the-dark dancing.

It was daylight.

Trancing thing, yeah.

Beautiful sunset during the next match, though.

that's all I was watching during the next match was the sunset.

I guess the question is,

if you look at where things are and you have someone like Rhea Ripley, who is,

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.

She's really good.

At the same time, you have a lot of people that

are okay.

You have some that are over.

But if there are matches where the crowd is silent, it's typically the women's matches for both companies.

A whole different problem in AEW, but WWE has at least professional women, you know, and Maxine Dupree out there doing her thing.

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.

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

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

i wonder about these things yes it keeps you up at night i can tell

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.

Okay, the next match was the tag team title contest, and this was the quickest turnaround of the night.

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.

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.

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

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?

Yeah, I think so.

Oh, Christ.

All right.

Well, anyway, I'd fire him.

He's not a goddamn performer.

He's a ring announcer.

He's not a person.

Well, you can tell him to dress differently.

You don't have to fire him.

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.

Ring announcer should be heard and only seen to be heard.

Should Howard Finkel have been allowed to express himself instead of just wearing a tuxedo?

No.

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.

But you don't want just every generic fucking nitwit announcer that you've got dressing like a goddamn one of the boys.

They're not gimmicks.

They're fucking announcers.

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.

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.

And

I'll watch it for a tag team match just to see

the performance because

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

and there's tyler bate and pete dunn they

they ruined pete dunn

when Vince was still there and he went through his Charles Dickens fetish phase and made butch

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.

He made Finn Balor look like a fucking giant.

And

the short legs and odd-shaped torso,

these,

Bate and Dunn, I'm sure they could do well on the UK independent scene.

They could be probably great talents for an impact

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.

As I said, Tyler Bate reaches up when he hits the ropes to get his arm over it.

And

their name is the new Catch Republic.

What the fuck is that?

That sounds like a Czechoslovakian fucking political group.

But you know, catch wrestling, right?

No, nobody knows that.

And what does that have to do with the Republic?

And why are they new?

Was there an old catch republic?

No,

they're microcasting to their indie-nich UK indie show fucking audience.

And, you know, so that's...

Anyway,

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.

And then at that point, it transitioned to a lot of action basically to prove that Finn and Priest can't beat preliminary guys.

And then it just

went false finish after false finish.

They kicked out of more of the heel shit.

And

finally,

Priest and Finn were going to double team

the guy where

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.

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.

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

because they were getting too complicated doing shit they can't do smoothly to try to get these guys over

when it's a fucking lost cause, a moot point at a goddamn fool's errand.

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.

They're not a big deal here.

And

the state of tag team wrestling.

Anyway, the babyfaces faces double teamed Priest to death in front of the referee.

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.

18 minutes of a glorified TV match.

So

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.

Your thoughts?

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.

And the match,

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.

Harr Foundation,

Demolition,

Killer Bees,

British Bulldogs,

Islanders,

fucking Conquistadors, anyone.

Everyone was like a big-sized athlete.

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,

he looks so much bigger than me.

It's hard to even figure out how tall the guy must be.

Is he 5'4?

I don't know, but

Google Fuzzy Cupid, kids.

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

I thought Butch was working pretty good, actually, for him.

We'll see.

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

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?

I heard from a few people there that there was an issue with that.

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

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.

Not that they were billed to be there, but.

Well, but you know, goddamn, when you're in a fucking stadium and 50,000 people, one would think that they would have, anyway.

We're an hour and a half into the pay-per-view, and we've seen two matches.

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.

And then he introduced Grayson Waller, who apparently Waller is from

this country, if not Perth itself, somewhere in this Godforsaken land that birthed Grayson Waller and spawned him on us.

So at this point, they're going to do the Grayson Waller effect.

I fast-forwarded it until somebody else came out.

And that was Seth Franklin Rollins.

And here he comes.

And by the time he gets there, he just sits down.

And then here comes Cody.

And he gets the ring and he sits down.

And, well, he didn't sit down at first.

He asked the people, hey, Perth, what do you want to talk about?

11 minutes into this segment before Cody said a fucking word.

It was just

theory introducing Waller, Waller mouthing off, and then the entrances.

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.

Yes, yes.

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.

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?

He's actually just trying to move his hand back and forth to block things being thrown at him.

But anyway, so Cody cuts, oh, Seth first, he announced that he's days away from being medically cleared to wrestle.

So good, since they've been advertising he was going to already defend his title on WrestleMania anyway.

And then Cody kind of talked about the rock and, you know, got all the Cody crybabies there to cheer for him.

And

I just wrote, nothing is happening here.

I've seen fossils form at a quicker pace.

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,

they got to do that or something like it at some point.

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.

And people kind of cheer that.

And we've established that, haven't we?

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.

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.

And then Cody and Seth just beat up Theory and give him their moves.

And Waller

stood back and let him do it.

Obviously, like

he shouldn't have spoken up, I guess.

And that was the end of it in 20

minutes.

I mean, I've seen people have conversations on airplanes that was more exciting.

What

for a stadium for 50,000 people?

That's all they got?

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

yeah, I mean, it's weird, the formula they have, and it's working.

Give the people very little with the idea that maybe there'll be more next time.

And then the next time there's even less.

But there could be more the next time.

And then it could be,

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.

With such enthusiasm, I've never heard it.

Well,

you got to look over the edge there, you know.

Anyway, so

then the entrances began, ladies and gentlemen, for the dreaded dangerous, deadly elimination chamber.

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.

And I'll have you know, Brian,

that I went back and checked, double-checked this.

I wanted to make sure my figures.

Match number three.

began.

The bell rang to start that match 54 minutes after the end of match number two.

They had almost an hour in between

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

interview segment and more entrances.

It was literally a one-hour television program

with no fucking wrestling in the middle of the pay-per-view.

We always say imagine SmackDown without all those pesky commercials.

No, we still got commercials.

Well, not in the middle of the match.

Not in the middle of the match.

Well, pretty much goddamn everywhere else.

So anyway.

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.

Yeah, a guy in Champaign, Illinois sitting there thinking, you know,

fuck goddamn Chicago.

Let's just go over to Australia.

Anyway, here's what happened in this match.

And

there was nothing,

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.

They weren't doing amateur shit and, you know, dropping and botching and falling all over each other.

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.

In this aspect, it's

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.

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

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

you might understand.

In days gone by, if a baby face was to compete with another babyface in the ring in any kind of match,

that

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

trying to

put each other through furniture and end their careers, or whatever the fuck.

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.

Do you see what I'm saying, Brian?

And then

when the fan likes both the baby faces,

it disappoints him in one of them, does it not,

That the other guy is

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.

Am I overthinking this?

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.

And

nobody has any goddamn psychology for it.

The highlight of the match for me wasn't even something they showed on TV.

You could see it in the background if you look for it after the fact.

There's a video I saw.

It must have been a Logan Paul drawing on the elimination chamber, fat pictures of Steen.

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.

It was the way that was edited and how it was put together.

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.

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.

And then Owens was next in, number three, and he makes a comeback and

starts fucking with Logan Paul and the other pod.

And that's where the interaction was going on.

Basically,

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.

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.

Owens with a fucking like one of the weebles that wobble, you fill with sand, but they won't fall over.

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

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.

You see them just laying there forever while other guys are doing

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.

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.

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,

at one point here, later on, I made note that Orton was the smartest guy in this match because he came in,

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.

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.

He was and had a perfect out

when he was eliminated.

He was the smartest guy in the match.

If either they're taking care of him,

which I know they are, they're taking care of him, but

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.

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

Owens opens it, opened it up, and

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.

And then Logan Paul fought back, but everybody else was laying immobile.

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

yawn about that one.

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.

And as soon as that happens, L.A.

Knight

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.

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?

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.

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

that they had the door open for Lashley

and the announcers, well, we can't, the referees can't do anything.

It's no disqualification.

This is the

living epitome and example of bullshit, the wrong kind of heat, the heat that goes on to promotion.

I don't care if it's no DQ.

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.

It gets heat on the promotion.

It's not in any way cleverly done.

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.

And then Drew just hits him or gives him a styles clash on the chair.

And then drew just covers him one two three

that's where i said to myself this is getting burdensome to watch do you see what i'm saying about that one

i agree with you

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

an evil, insidious, and creative

attack.

And instead, is just, oh, he just came in and beat him down in front of everybody.

And then finally, Orton hit the RKO on Owens and pinned him one, two, three.

And then Drew and Orton got in a fight, and then Orton and Logan Paul got in a fight.

And then everybody was selling as we passed 30 minutes in this match.

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?

could have been over quicker and easier on everybody

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

i know he's a heel

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.

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.

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

before Orton comes and RKOs him.

He's my favorite person in this match.

He was great.

Yes, Logan Paul, he may be one of my favorite people in a whole fucking roster.

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.

And stuff he can learn from instead of, you know, this type of.

He's great, though.

He's one of my very favorite in the whole business.

But then we were left.

Then there were two.

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.

But even when he's doing the stuff, you can tell he's still being hampered.

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.

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.

Drew's about to do something, and Orton jumps up and hits the RKO out of nowhere.

Trademark.

And he gets a big pop.

And then

Logan Paul is still in the cage.

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.

So it's somewhat a surprise on camera, but it had to.

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.

And then he leaves, and

Drew covers him,

and the referee counts it.

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

now it goes on the promotion because it's lazy booking.

And even

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.

It's a wrong, people would not buy tickets to see next week's rematch if this was the territory days.

Luckily,

the WWE is now in position where they only have rematches in the same town maybe once a fucking year.

But

I just, a bullshit finish.

37 minutes of this match that we waited almost an hour to see the start of.

And then

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,

blatantly in front of the referees with foreign fucking objects.

And oh, you can't do anything because there's no DQ.

Well, then they painted themselves in the wrong silo corner.

Well, that really sums it up, doesn't it?

Are you getting bored with me?

Not with you, but with WWE.

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...

WrestleMania 3

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

they used to be a card.

We're going back 100 years now where there were two, three matches on a show and an interview.

Hey, well, and that's the thing is that again, we're not saying there should be 13 matches like in AEW.

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

good lord, it's a it's a chore for the discerning fan to muddle through.

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.

52,590 people.

And that's the point I was going to make that goes into what you just said.

I can understand if it was just an in-your-house pay-per-view and what, 95 in Poughkeepsie, just to, you know,

just to have the show, but a stadium in front of 50,000 people with all of the,

and however much money they got paid by the Australian Tourism Commission.

And they couldn't move anything along better or give them more variety than what happened here.

That's my problem.

So we get to the main event.

For the women's world title, Rhea Ripley versus Refrigerator Jax.

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.

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.

So they put this match on last because it was her triumphant homecoming.

However,

the opponent, unfortunately,

I felt so bad for Rhea Ripley.

She gets to main event in a stadium in front of a crowd like that in her home country,

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.

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.

But this was like Ray Stevens versus Mabel, was it not?

I don't think it was necessarily that bad.

All right, it was like Sean Michaels versus Plowboy Frazier.

Or Shawn Michaels versus Mabel, if you wanted to go to just a direct comparison to what you said before.

I mean, what did you, I mean, it's Nia Jax.

She doesn't do.

She does her Nia.

She wrestles like a big, you know, haystacks Calhoun type of thing.

But no, I'm not, I'm not even taking

if they had awesome Kong

during her TNA years, in that part of her career versus Rhea Ripley,

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.

I'm not just talking about Refrigerator Jax's excessive fucking

resemblance to a goddamn barca lounger.

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.

She has no, she can't be a monster.

She just drops her weight on people.

And that, did you, the introductions, there were no weights announced.

What else has she got?

They should announce at 150 whatever pounds from Australia, Rhea Ripley, and at 336 pounds from wherever the fuck she's at.

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.

What other attribute has Jax got besides that?

Nothing.

She looks like a recliner wrapped in pleather.

Speaking of Mabel, the outfit of Mabel.

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.

And Rhea couldn't do her shit here because you can't do it to fucking Jax.

It's not possible.

And if she, if Rhea Ripley could not sell

as wonderfully as she can, this would have been a total loss because that's what, you know,

she had to sell, fight from underneath, make a little comeback and get shut down again.

And she can't make a decent comeback because this girl can't fucking bump.

And

then they went so long.

You know, Nia hits the Samoan drop off the second rope and gets a two count.

And then she goes for the bonsai, but

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

Nia is giving her the fucking drop on the desk and an elbow drop through the desk, even though

did you see

when Rhea's laying on the announce desk and Nia Jax gets up in one of the announce chairs that has wheels on it,

and she's still only at the same level of the goddamn

top of the announce desk, and she flies off of that with an elbow drop.

And it looked like she actually

was lower to the ground than when she jumped before she landed.

She can't even get up off the fucking ground.

And

so finally,

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?

And then Rhea gives her the kick to the head and the riptide.

One, two, three.

And

poor Rhea, they put her through 16 minutes of hell.

Every unnaturally large, fat person cannot be a professional wrestler.

We've talked about in the past many times Promoters have been able to steal a house out of a big schlub

once or twice, but no,

not on this level with this visibility.

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,

boy, I felt so bad for her.

She can do so much more than this.

And just,

if she was not a good worker, I'm talking about Jax.

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,

eh.

Plus, the show was three and a half hours long.

We had an hour and 45 minutes of wrestling.

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.

When she threw Rhea on the announce desk,

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.

And that's everybody does that now.

There's no,

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.

It's just useless, meaningless.

But you can get hurt.

And to the WWE's, I guess, credit, not really their credit, but the fans seem to leave happy.

I mean, we could say whatever we want about how boring the event was or whatever you felt about it at home.

The fans there seemed to be happy with Rhea Ripley being in the main event and getting the win.

Well, of course.

And because they,

this is the first big show in Australia, in,

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.

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.

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.

If you were in America and got to see, if you chose to, if you wanted to,

multiple major shows a year near you,

you might not have been as fucking thrilled.

And that's only natural also.

But

as a television

broadcast, this was incredibly, incredibly slow to watch.

We could agree on that, right?

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.

Yeah.

Even Bill Watson, the Superdome for his biggest shows

loaded with people being brought in.

You know, Dusty Rhodes, Hogan and Andre were on the show with JYD and Michael Hayes.

There were lots of attractions.

It wasn't just like, all right, here's our four biggest matches from TV.

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,

even on a major show like the Superdome,

your advance would maybe be 25% of the walk-up you would get between 4 and 8 o'clock that day.

Maybe a little bit more

even on a big show.

On spot shows, it was a tenth of the crowd you'd end up with.

Those Those people waited until they knew what the card was going to be.

Do we want to see these matches?

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

Yeah, we saw it a few years ago with Ring of Honor in New Japan when they ran the...

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.

They were somewhere else.

So you got a card.

They weren't even there.

So you bought tickets for a show thinking you were going to get something and you got none of that.

Well, that's it.

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.

And they're hoping the card's going to be good.

Again, in the territory days when wrestling was regular, live in every city in America on a regular basis,

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.

But you wouldn't know until the day of the show because under the best of circumstances,

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.

All right.

Yeah, the building, the building, the business is now all advance, pretty much.

I'm saying the next thing is going to be they're going to start bringing the tickets back.

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.

The next step is they find out what the card is, they start getting refunds for the tickets.

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?

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.

Then they announced what the match was going to be, and everybody's been complaining about it since then.

Well, they're stuck.

They already got their ticket, and we were stuck, and that was WWE Elimination Chamber.

This is your show.

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.

And by the way, folks, this is

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.

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,

well, four or five days ago, I can't count anymore.

And

nobody's asked about it.

Nobody gave a shit, particularly either way.

And then they had a collision.

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.

And so just for the sake of being

responsible journalists and commentators,

we will just talk about and

try to analyze again as briefly as possible, what do they think they're doing?

They will not change the program for the better because I don't believe they know or realize

that it's not good and it's getting funny not good

where you just shake even the faithful are shaking their head at this is television.

So

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.

Well, AEW had a red-hot dynamite episode on Wednesday.

WWE may be in the stadium.

But Wembley.

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?

Well, you got that.

You got that.

Maybe they should run the fucking Coliseum in Greece.

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

I don't know.

I think WWE may be in a stadium.

I think AEW should be in a state home.

They were in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Your old stomping grounds.

Grand, glorious old wrestling

city and territory there.

And boy, howdy.

We ran that town in 1984.

I believe it was 21 shows Mid-South ran there,

including setting the all-time city gate record and attendance record four times in that same year.

And it ain't as hot down there as it used to be.

So they opened up with, for whatever reason, that FTR is being punished, are they

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

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

they were forced to compete against the plumber moxley and poor old claudio castignoli who at this point is

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?

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.

Well, I mean,

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.

He doesn't do the swing.

And Jerry, there's no swing.

But anyway,

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

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

to prove he's a badass when everybody with eyes is seeing a clumsy, awkward, fake-looking

Moxley.

He was the black sheep of the family.

He was the son of Eleanor Gracie.

Eleanor Gracie had the baby that would become the plumber one day.

Hoyce went away.

All right.

So Moxley at one point

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.

They had him, and he just fell on his ass

and he continues to work like your unemployed uncle that sells weed getting into a fight at a family picnic

so

well i mean if you sell weed technically you're self-employed i would imagine

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.

Yeah, yeah.

Then you could say they're unemployed.

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

and and what but the being the playoff with the bitches and all of whatever

whatever the young people do these days

sit out there like a fucking weirdo sitting on the teeter totter with your teetering, but nobody's there to totter you.

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.

They were raving babyfaces before they were beaten like your fucking grandmother's rug.

The BCC are definitely heels.

Well, then they made a comeback and the fucking babyfaces fed and bumped for them.

And then 15 minutes into the goddamn show, we go to break.

And then they came back and then they did simultaneous cold tags and cash made a comeback.

So they switched in mid-match.

And

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...

He's, you know, I've seen people with a sunken chest before, but he has a sunken fucking torso.

Everything is sunken from his chest to his goddamn abdomen.

Anyway, you put him in green scrubs, right?

And one of those fucking green caps and everything,

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.

And now he's come to the wrestling promotion and one of the managers snatches him up.

I don't know if that would work in 2024.

That might be a problem.

Escape mental patience.

Well, God damn it, maybe he's been gone for a while.

See,

time has passed him by.

What if he did like a Sid Barrett?

He shows up again in four years and he's fat and bald.

How would you tell the difference?

Well, he's not fat.

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.

Anyway, they did the call for five minutes remaining.

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.

But here is what the spot they did where Dax and Cash,

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?

Very

80s tag teamy, very Midnight Expressy, very heart foundation-y, very whatever the fuck.

You're going with the superplex spot?

The superplex spot.

That's power and glory.

That's power and glory.

That was the

movie.

Well, there you go.

They did it too.

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.

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?

And how many, how long is it usually after they land before Cash lands with the

splash?

It's usually pretty quick right after.

They time it pretty well.

Bam, bam, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay,

so think about this now that I'm breaking it down for you.

Dax gives Moxley the superplex, and as soon as they land,

Moxley raises his knees so that Cash lands on his fucking knees and Cash hurts himself.

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

within less than one second was so unfazed by it, I'll just raise my knees and catch this other motherfucker.

Boom.

And then Tanya gets up and starts hitting him with phony elbows

how much what where is the logic in that

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

FDR trying to work a wrestling match and Moxley only wanting to work the Moxley match.

Wanting to chew on somebody's face or kiss them.

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.

Well, he can't let his fucking,

you know,

emaciated little partner look better than he does with that body.

So he's, you know, now it's a

skyscraper's thing.

Only one guy is not scraping the sky, he's scraping the bottom of the barrel.

So it turned into a constant four-way.

At one point, Dax and Claudio broke out into a girls' slap fight.

And then

FTR go for the shatter machine on

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.

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.

They're going to make sure everybody knows whatever they hear the time call.

It's a draw.

You had to say something, and now they're doing this non-stop.

Yeah.

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,

you know, we were almost half an hour into the show at this point.

But that's, I just can't.

Moxley is unwatchable.

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.

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.

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,

you know, physique-wise, because you brought it up earlier.

Wanting to be a tough guy, actually being a tough guy, and looking like a tough guy are three different things.

And you need to try to have two out of the three, don't you?

You do.

And

I don't know.

I don't see it.

And FTR always looks like shit.

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.

and being used a little better,

get themselves over to become the most popular tag team in the company over the evps

which upset plenty of people

they get a couple runs as tag team champions they hold multiple titles in other companies apparently too they re-signed their contract

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.

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

tully i mean i know they love tully and aren't tully and aren't never just got the shit kicked out of them

like you know like the midnight express it happened to them once

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

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.

That's what I'm saying.

But it's Dax that is in all the singles matches and loses every single one of them.

And you never see Cash and he's phenomenal as well.

And I'm not,

he's probably at home if he's listening to this now.

Shut the fuck up.

He's shooting his gun in the air.

Pew, pew, pew.

Okay, I'll do it.

I don't like this.

Pew.

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.

But

Josh Mears in the house, duck.

Hey, come on, hey, Pillman.

Come on now.

Watch out.

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.

And then they get the shit kicked out of him as a tag team.

most of the time.

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.

And now look at it.

Juice Robinson's out.

Has Jay White done anything that matters since then?

Not really.

Well, he's in the Gang Bang Scissor clan.

Well, more about them later.

They had a wonderful weekend.

Oh, boy.

All right.

Well, let's move on from poor FTR because we got to go to poor Mike Bennett.

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.

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.

And when they came in new, he and Tavin

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.

But nevertheless,

they put him in a singles match against the fucking mascot and gave it 10 minutes of national TV time.

And a guy that had that kind of potential has to, again, stooge for the boss's pet.

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.

He is still

getting paid by this company to do fucking what?

Well, he's from Oklahoma, right?

He's a local boy.

Is he from Tulsa?

I don't, they announce him from Oklahoma.

I don't, I guess he is, but

what did he just drop by and he couldn't contain himself and he went out there to fucking run him off?

They're obviously still using him for some reason, which escapes me.

And then Chris Jericho asked them to sign him early on.

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.

It's 10 seconds that Strong versus Hager will be on Rampage on Friday.

I'm glad Tony's Johnny on the spot with making these fucking matches in 10 seconds when he can't fucking

write the ship of his company.

Fans, don't worry.

If this is something you don't want to see, the match will be on Rampage Friday.

Tonight.

There you have it.

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.

But old, the former Jericho jobber, cool hand Luke with the comb.

He combs his hair.

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.

Face looks like fucking oatmeal with no sugar.

He was in the back with Renee Moxley Good.

And apparently he's all nervous because he's going on a date, the first date he's had with Ruby so-so.

Are these people adults?

What the fuck?

Ruby looks about what, 30?

This guy's got to be mid-20s.

He's nervous because he's going on a date with what the

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

he's gonna strike it rich he's gonna

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.

These backstage segments, what Renee Moxley Good is like the

jovial host of all these wacky characters, is not doing it.

Well, speaking of her jovialness, herself, she was in the back with Ric Flair.

And Ric Flair has come in,

and his story is he's disappointed

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.

We haven't seen you in a fucking month and a half or whatever, right?

So he said, well, I signed up to be part of Sting's retirement.

I wanted to be more involved.

And

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.

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.

So now are we going to get Ric Flair at this stage of his career turning on Sting

to favor the EVPs all because of the woo energy drink sponsorship.

I don't know what the what is going on here now.

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,

giving them a loss, and now they can feud with Ric Flair after Sting's gone.

Okay, then what is it?

Because if

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.

You would think so, yeah.

So what, I don't know what they're trying to tease here or not tease or what the goddamn.

And I mean, and by the way, again,

Maddie and Nikki.

The kids there, they're getting paid to show up and open the fucking dressing room door for an appearance on television.

So then

Tony Schiavone was in the ring and introduced old Danny Garcia.

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.

No stars.

That's the problem.

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.

And at the pay-per-view, it's going going to be Garcia against Christian Cage for the TNT title.

And they

can they not elevate a young person with hair

with hair and personality?

He has hair.

He just has a short haircut.

He has hair.

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,

white fellows with fucking buzz cuts and black tights.

Well, I don't know if he's a white guy.

His last name is Garcia.

Maybe a Latino.

Well, he's too light for me.

Look on the bright side.

At least it's not we or Yuda.

Where the fuck did he go?

Maybe he got sepsis.

I'm not complaining.

I'm not complaining, but maybe MRSA.

Maybe MRSA.

Merca Yuda.

Woo, MRSA.

Hepatitis.

Did you catch what Danny Garcia

said

in his promo?

The premise of his promo at the start?

You know, I saw him at the media scrum one or two events ago.

Maybe it was the last one.

And seems like a very nice guy, and he was very grateful.

And the whole thing just became about how he wants to make sure everyone knows how grateful he is.

It was.

Well, no, he wasn't grateful here.

He was actually kind of ungrateful.

It was very rah-rah.

You know, I'm happy to be here.

Yeah.

Well, this, this was, he started out

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

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.

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.

You're going to be the best.

And this and that.

And I'm like, but then he's, but I lost confidence in myself.

And then he starts the dreariness.

You know, I lost confidence.

Could I do it?

Whatever.

But the fans, you guys picked me up.

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.

Oh, God.

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

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.

But anyway,

so he's cutting that fucking promo and then finally.

Two minutes before nine o'clock, Christian Cage music with Nick Plain and Nick Plain's mom and Dino Dino Douche.

And think about this, Brian.

Picture them in your mind.

Christian, Nick, Nick's mom, and Dino,

Dollar Store Judgment Day.

You see it now?

I can kind of see it, yeah.

I'm thinking they're getting a lot of inspiration.

And Christian promos

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.

This is the worst.

And your father was a loser alcoholic.

And I want to be your father.

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,

I don't know.

What are these thing is going sideways?

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

Well, speaking of playing into his hands,

he sends Nick to the ring, but Garcia gets him in a sharpshooter, which is the first thing you do.

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.

But Dino comes to the ring, and old Mac Daddy appears out of nowhere and hits Dino with the chair.

And then he rolls in the ring and gives Garcia a chair, and they hold off Christian Cage and the entire company.

There's Danny Garcia and one of the ex-Jericho jobbers now are being involved in Angles.

I wrote, Good Lord.

So that was that.

You know, this is another AEW pay-per-view.

This happened with the New Year's one.

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.

Oh, we know, there's more.

There's more to come.

Tony Storm wrestled some girl that found a place to buy tights

and did

Tony won the match by doing Deanna Perazzo's move, right?

So

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.

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.

Yeah, she showed Tony.

She said, you want to do my thing?

Look what I could do.

Well, this is your future.

This started, and it was, and we'd already had the, and the other girl, by the way, with Tony Storm.

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

quality check?

This girl looked like she was second week in wrestling school.

So for the record, her name, Tony Storm's opponent, was Cindy Winnell.

I'm betting she's going to change it if she spends any more time in this business.

But anyway, now this, the second girls red, goes through the break.

And when they came back from the break, I started watching because they were lost.

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.

I believe they've hired her as one of the trainers.

A trainer, a coach, an agent, one of those.

A coach, agent, whatever, for the young ladies.

And she's been known to have good matches, nice matches.

Deanna Perazo is well thought of from what we understand, having good matches.

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,

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.

And then finally,

Deanna goes for,

I don't know what they call it or, you know, whatever, where you grab the other person

and you fall backward and face plant them.

Or at least that's what it looked like she was trying to give Madison Rain because

when that happened, Madison Rain somehow

believed in her heart of hearts that whatever she was being given, she had to take a front flip for.

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.

And the crowd went, ooh, and the referee instantly slid in there and

the doctor got up and came to the ring like, you know, this is all happening very quickly.

And there was some

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.

And that was that.

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

not a good match.

But that had to,

if you played that tape and

said, and unfortunately, Madison Rain never wrestled again, you would believe it, right?

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.

And I always go on about the problems at AW's women's division, which is always awful.

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...

moves or whatever.

And she almost died in the ring.

They dropped her on her head.

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.

We'll see.

I mean, unless they could just change the division wholesale and

make it a whole new thing.

Well, now hold on a sec because they weren't even done here because after they got the spatula and removed poor Madison Rain,

Tony Storm hit the ring because they still had an angle to do.

And Tony Storm hits the ring and ankle locks Deanna Perazzo.

And

I'm thinking, my God, Punk versus MJF didn't get this kind of promotion on the television as this

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.

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.

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?

Here's the Chris Nowinsky move of the night.

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.

Oh, that's now that's being slandered around about poor Nowinsky, for heaven's sake.

What they don't know.

He won't say boo about the people who pay him?

That?

We don't know the veracity of this yet.

Oh, okay.

No, we don't.

Besides, what can you expect from a guy that got brain damage?

It's just a rumor.

I know that because I just started it.

Well,

so

the one bright spot on this program, Sting, finally did a good interview.

We've been waiting for it for so long.

And obviously,

I don't know whether everybody knows, but the news was released

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,

but Darby Allen went to his house and they recorded something.

And

he, you know, he not only finally got around to mentioning, hey, you guys beat up my sons, right?

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,

you know,

this was great if he was talking about opponents that anybody cared about.

I would think it would do

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.

But, you know, what a letdown of a match.

And hopefully hopefully we don't have, as we mentioned before,

Flair

doing what we're afraid he might do.

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.

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?

So that the Buckaroos can win a tournament by beating FTR again along with others?

Maybe the Young Bucks lose, and they're going to need someone to blame.

And who could the EVPs blame but Tony Khan?

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.

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.

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.

I think it could work.

I think it could work.

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.

I mean, Jericho may sue over the concept, but just knock him out.

Just knock him out.

Just knock him out.

Knock him out, John.

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.

This was the highlight of the whole episode for me.

That here we have another shoot promo about how bad something has been on this television show by people on this television show.

That

he actually said two years ago, I had thousands of people chanting my name.

I was the next big thing,

blah, blah, blah.

But the rocket on my back was placed upside down.

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.

Who are those people, Tony?

Who's going to fire him?

Hey, Shad.

Who could he be talking about?

Someone needs to be fired.

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.

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.

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.

So it's not even a goddamn real lineage that the current champion is on.

He said, I beat him so bad, his body is still falling apart.

And meanwhile, he's selling more t-shirts to make more money than you're making per year while his body is falling apart.

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

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

but anyway

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.

He really was pissed off.

That's the thing.

it was all about his bad booking and he meant everything he said

he'd been booked into irrelevance when he was a fucking goldberg level for them

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

i guess bothered to tell him

so

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.

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.

Well, anyway,

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.

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

getting them back behind him for the first time in forever.

He's in the undisputed kingdom.

Yes, he's a devil's henchman.

He's as heel as they come.

He works for Satan himself.

Old scratch.

Mephistopheles.

So then, did you notice that they had an interview with Fallus and Hobbs and our boy Take?

And they're talking about the Take versus Will Ostrich match, and they still can't explain why they're having it.

It's going to be a great match.

Non-wrestler of the year.

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?

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.

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.

Big man event.

And the entrances started about 25 minutes before 10 o'clock Eastern.

The bell didn't ring for about eight eight minutes, but they had 17 minutes on the air and they still went overtime.

And

I didn't go over with them.

What I miss.

Not too much.

I don't even remember what the finish was.

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.

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.

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.

And swerves over like a babyface, teaming with the top heel, as well as the other heel stable member in his own stable.

Yeah.

Well, that was dynamite.

Did anybody watch this fiasco this week?

I believe some people did.

Let me pull up the numbers here.

We'll run through their numbers quickly and then just, again, they did have a collision.

And we want to try to

give you a couple of instances of what they did on national television on Saturday night

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.

We are on the ratings.

AEW Dynamite on TBS Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, 8 to 10.05 p.m.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

The overall number, Jim, 828,000 viewers on average.

And

it's up 2% from last week, which was 811,000.

I was about to say,

you know, they've made a...

slight comeback from almost dropping below 800,000 last week, but we're still right in that pocket there, right in in that range.

They better hope that all these people are in good health.

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.

FTR versus Claudio and Moxley, 996,000 viewers.

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.

Well, the gift continues into quarter two, 8.15 to 8.30 p.m.

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.

Ouch.

So

126,000 automatically said we cannot watch the plumber.

Well, quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m

a recap of something it doesn't say what a recap

uh ftr claudio and moxley backstage angle and orange cassidy versus mike bennett with picture and picture ads

799 000 viewers good lord so they're below 800 000 it's only 45 minutes into the show

I sense that by their average, they almost have to pull out of their normal tailspin pattern, pattern, but lead me on.

We go to quarter four,

8.45 to 9 p.m.,

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.

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.

So, whatever that mess was that you just described got 20,000 back.

Well, let's see where those people can go.

9 p.m., the big nine o'clock hour.

We can tell them where to go, but uh,

quarter five, nine to nine: 15 p.m.

The continuation of the Garcia Christian Gang promo confrontation.

Adam Page, Hook, and RVD's backstage promo.

Tony Storm versus Sidney.

Sidney Sydney.

Yes, it is Sydney.

Sidney Winnelli, or not, not Winnelli, just Winnell.

There's a semicolon there.

I thought it was an I.

Sidney Winnell.

And Madison Rain versus Deanna Perazo with Picture in Picture Ads.

829,000 viewers.

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?

That's a great question.

Maybe the next quarter will answer part of it.

9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

quarter six.

The continuation of Madison Rain versus Deanna Perazzo.

Ouch.

Including post-match concussion, including post-match with Tony Storm.

And the Darby Allen and Sting Tape promo, an ad break, and the Wardlow Live promo, promo, 789,000 viewers.

Okay, I have a feeling it might be downhill from here, but there goes another

40,000.

We're going at a quarter 7, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The Bang Bang Scissor Gang backstage promo, an ad break, the Don Callis group backstage promo,

and the start of Samoa Joe, Brian Cage, and Swerve Strickland versus Adam Page, Hook, and Rob Van Dam,

777,000 viewers.

Well, that's only another 12,000.

It could be worse.

It could get worse.

Well, we go to quarter eight.

I remind you, there's a five-minute overrun.

Quarter eight, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

The continuation of that big six-man match with picture-in-picture ads,

756,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Five-minute overrun, 805,000 viewers.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, for that last five minutes on purpose,

49,000 people are going to say, oh, we got to see the finish.

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%

almost exactly of the audience they started with.

Watch out, WWE.

But, Brian, I'll have you know for some reason,

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.

What was that?

February 24th was Saturday, perhaps?

Help me.

I believe so.

That sounds correct.

Well, there you go.

Well, this was a red-letter day.

Was this show taped or was it live?

I believe it was live.

It had to be.

They would have had to have edited these things.

Whatever poor people were subjected to this thing, I want to just briefly run over.

The opening match was

Sammy Guevara versus Powerhouse Hobbs.

In,

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

massive,

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.

As I've said, the crazy ones are the ones that are laying down there underneath him.

But here's what they did in this match:

Hobbs gave Guevara a spinebuster off the apron through two tables onto the floor as a break spot.

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.

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.

And then then he pulls out another table.

But

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.

He did one and then to make sure people could see through it, he did another one.

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,

obviously to recover his senses from the bottle incident.

Obviously.

So,

well, the bottles, yes.

So, Guevara takes this opportunity to set a 12-foot ladder up in the ring.

And then climb to almost the top of it, not quite,

and do a swanton off of it and swanton Hobbs through the two tables to the floor.

Within one minute,

Powerhouse Hobbs was power slamming Sammy Guevara off the top rope through another table in the middle of the ring,

whereupon he scored the pin one, two, three.

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?

The business was quietly minding its own business.

And it's meaningless garbage,

garbage, indie-minded idiots doing stupid things.

But

we know that's Sammy Guevara, and we know that Tony Kahn

touches himself in sensitive places over this kind of stuff.

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.

I believe there's something there.

But they're teaching him that this shit is what he ought to be doing.

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.

And people are eh about him.

But Hobbes should not be involved in this shit because it

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.

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.

Well, let's get to that because there was a lot of that falling down and

the banner episode of this show that started with CM Punk and FTR and big matches and big moments is now this.

Well, speaking of FTR, they wrestled Shane Taylor and Lee Moriarty.

And Shane Taylor has an ass the size of Pittsburgh.

I don't know what the fuck,

but he's out there doing his best.

But it was another example

of FTR trying to...

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.

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.

And then it took everything that they could do to beat these guys.

And they almost didn't beat them.

They were trying to create doubt, and they did.

It was like, who are we pushing here?

And

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

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.

And then Taylor,

I don't know what

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.

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.

I thought it was Tally Whacker.

No, no, that's Mrs.

Ballbreaker you're thinking of there.

Ah, FTR know how to have good matches.

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.

And we we watched collision because everyone said it's bacha mania over there.

You know, FTR knows how to have good matches.

FTR may have done their best promo in a long time afterwards.

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.

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...

One way or another, these two teams are wrestling again at the pay-per-view.

Oh, I can't wait.

We only saw 25 minutes of it before.

But anyway, the reason why,

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.

And multiple people, thousands of people retweeting and tweeting these clips of people doing stupid things.

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.

It was Billy Gunn and his sons

against those three job guys that they've had on this show before.

The two bear fellows.

I don't mean naked.

I mean

they used to be bear country.

They need to go back to the country.

The hairy fat fellows and this

goofy bodybuilder guy that they've got tagging along with them now.

They were the job guys, and

this whole thing fell apart from the start.

Castor comes out, the acclaimed, get the separate entrance from Jay White and his gunboys.

And Castor comes out, he does the first line of his rap,

and then the second line is something like, and you guys are red.

And then he pauses, and you see on his face,

If ever there has been

a video on television of someone going blank, and you can read it on their face, this way, he just suddenly

it shocked him that he realized he had no idea what to say next.

And he stops, and the music keeps going.

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.

Just and

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.

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.

Maybe sometimes they've sung the song a million times, but they're on some type of substance or, you know,

things just don't always go according to plan.

Couldn't he have just gone zabba dab dab,

because I don't understand most rap music anyway.

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.

Let me go into scat.

What the hell is that going on?

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.

Well, look, maybe we can go.

He could have just

bluffed through that.

Yeah, hidden, hidden, hidden, hi, hidey, hoody, hoy.

He'd have got the whole crowd going, hidey, hidey, hidey, hide.

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.

Just everybody.

And just point the microphone

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.

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.

No, they went right on through, and then they had a match, allegedly.

Apparently, that's what they referred to it as.

And

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.

I mean, from Jay White almost fucking lost the goddamn guy on his finish because the jobbers were awful and it was off balance.

And there were people just executing moves and they should have been executed.

It was a mercy killing.

But the one

that got retweeted and and trended on social media or whatever that everybody was going in what the actual fuck

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?

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?

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.

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,

runs backwards to the ropes and jumps backwards over the top rope,

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,

disregarding the fact that it looked like he just jumped up, ran, and committed suicide over the top rope.

The fuck?

Anti-gravitational forces couldn't have moved him in that way, in that manner, in that direction, at that velocity.

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.

Oh, good lord.

I didn't see that one.

Yeah, no, this is the same guy that I forget who they were wrestling, and he said he wanted to eat ass on TV.

So I don't know

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.

I don't know, but that bump was pretty embarrassing and everyone jumped on it.

Oh my God.

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.

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.

I'd like to see them against FTR.

Oh, good lord.

So they could work a 30-minute match.

Really competitive.

It would be wonderful.

These guys are the living epitome of the old saying, when I got into business,

guys would

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

in this case i would imagine it's because that

you know the

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.

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.

But these guys are just fucking stupid and indie-minded.

And they probably thought, oh, wow, look what I just did.

Yeah,

look what you just did.

If you'd have been working for me, you'd have just got fired.

Well, lucky for them, they're not working for you.

They're working for

Richie Rich, so they'll never be fired.

He's not good at firing, is he?

He may hire their family.

You guys did a horrible bump.

Do you have any family member looking for work?

Yeah, either that or do you know any do you know any personal writers we can bring in to script your matches?

All right.

Well, are we done with the opposition promoting or opposition promotion here for this week?

I think so.

The main event was Brian Danielson versus June Akiyama.

Oh, I forgot.

I went to sleep as soon as it started because they weren't moving.

I figured, why should I?

And that was another banner episode of AEW Coalition.

How old is that fellow?

June Akiyama.

Akiyama, I got to say, he's probably in the range of the early 50s, if I had to guess.

Top of my head.

So he's one of the younger ones they bringing in.

Yes.

Well, this was a dream match for Brian Danielson as well as dozens of...

Collision viewers.

I wish if these are Brian Danielson's dream matches, I wish he'd eat blander food before he goes to bed.

Yeah.

It would save us all a a lot of grief.

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.

Oh,

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.

Are they going to miss us, you think, Brian?

We're only going to be away a couple of days.

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.

Oh, boy.

There's an all-ride.

WrestleMania is coming up.

Dark side of the ring's back.

And

biography.

You were on a biography from what I understand this week.

And we're going to talk about it on the drive-thru, aren't we?

Yes, we are.

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.

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.

And until then, thank you.

Fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.