Episode 520: The Eye Doctor
This week on the Experience, Jim talks about Dave Meltzer's false reporting, the return of Dark Side Of The Ring & WWE Biography, ratings and much more! Plus Jim reviews AEW Dynamite & WWE Smackdown!
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Transcript
Like the midnight and the rock'n'roller He's in a fight for wrestling solar Using a racket and some mind controller He's Jim Cornet
The keys to the future held by the past And with Tag T partner Bariah at last He sends this message out by podcast He's Jim Cornet
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.
I can get the experience.
Get the experience.
Get the experience of Jim Cornette.
Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the Jim Cornette Experience.
The WWE is on the road to WrestleMania.
AEW is on the road to ruin.
And after watching these programs, I feel like Roadkill.
And joining me to talk about all this and so much more.
You know him well, folks.
Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting lion, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.
Co-host to you.
He swerves when he drives and he does donuts around the other podcasters.
The great Brian Last, everybody.
Aloha, Jim.
A pleasure to be here once again.
I think if I had a rap song entrance, it would be, I drive fast and straight.
Fast and straight.
I'm going to crash right into you, get what I need to get done, done, and go back home.
You never do anything straight.
What the hell do you think?
Well, you just read into that what you want.
What are you trying to say there, sir?
Hold on here.
Let me just do this at the top of the program.
It's one of those weeks.
No, I'm telling you,
it was 60-something degrees here this past week.
It rained and then snowed on Friday.
It was 19 degrees this morning when I took Harley out to take her morning Russo.
You know, that stage you get in where you think you might be coming down with a cold, but
you don't feel exactly right, but at the same time, you're not fully sick.
You're sniffling and you're coughing and things.
Stace has been going through this for the past couple of weeks because, again, it goes 60 and then it goes to the teens and then whatever the fuck happens and the snow and the rain and the wetness.
And you don't know whether it's allergy or just general weather crud or whether you have some growing space age biological illness inside your goddamn organs.
So I might be a little.
It could go either way.
It could go either way here.
Folks, you might hear me flatline on the program today.
And that's, you know, that's another thing.
Which will be followed by the Jim Cornette auction right here on the same program.
Well, if you can.
We've got a fine set of programs here from St.
Louis.
But anyway,
so this is going to be one of those shows because I just spoke to you a couple days ago.
We never
end these ongoing programs because there's so much going on.
And I don't have an order of events.
I have a million things jotted down here on these various pieces of paper that we need to discuss or that I want to bring up or recognize with people.
But
since I spoke to you in the world of wrestling, has there been any murders, any sexual assaults, any gun shots, any
lawsuits that we're aware of that have happened in the last 48 hours or so?
That we're aware of.
I don't think so.
Well, thank holy fucking Jesus and Nazareth for that then.
Although, thank you, nails, is now trending.
No, my kid, my kid.
Maybe, you know, he was patient zero.
Maybe we'll come to find out.
He was right all along.
See, the problem was like all the wrestlers that came at it in 92, 93, and spoke out against Vince.
For one reason or another, there was enough to point at them and say they're crazy.
Yeah.
Like Billy Graham, Billy Jack Haynes.
You know, David Schultz, if you don't agree with him, you think he's completely fucking crazy.
David Schultz, for a person who has not been around the wrestling industry and the colorful characters in it, David Schultz can be a harsh
entrance to that world.
You get a strong opinion of whether you want to talk to him or not real quick, or whether he wants to talk to you real quick or not.
But yeah, for various reasons, as you said, one or another,
I mean, Captain Lou, bless him, but my god
you know he didn't come off as the soul of probity
but nails you know kevin kelly kevin walcox whatever his real name is he was always considered i don't think i don't think it's any of those actually i think you butchered the pronunciation of his last name but it's not kevin kelly of the kevin kelly announcer kevin kelly
so his real name isn't kevin kelly either he's had to change it because of that situation down in pittsburgh well whatever that was uh, funny enough, Kevin Kelly's real name is Michael Cole, but
uh, you now look at that story a little differently.
I thought it was Richard Blood, he went in.
That's Tito Santana you're thinking of, sir.
He went in there looking for one into Vince's office looking to, I guess, bring up an issue with Pey.
And Vince, his story was like Vince tried to fondle him or something, so he choked him out,
and then Vince was never in a meeting alone with anyone ever again.
And then Vince's story was he just came in and started attacking me for no reason.
Yes.
Well, somewhere in between lies the truth that I
can imagine the
I can imagine the snatching of Vince more than I can imagine Vince going for the fondling of a
large angry wrestler mad about his pay.
Even if you might think that Vince might be predisposed to fondle anyone of any description.
Maybe he was turned down by the idea the guy was a prisoner, that the guy was like under control.
Vince is a weirdo.
He's a sicko.
Who knows what turns him on?
It probably wouldn't have been fucking nails even back then.
He was never a Hollywood fucking poster boy.
It's like going to the warden, right?
Where's the big boss man?
We don't need him right now.
It's just me and you, Nails.
But they could have had a whole prison hierarchy there if everybody had lasted.
Vince could have been the warden.
Bossman could have been the guard.
Nails could have been the convict.
Could have been a whole thing.
But nevertheless, you know, that's
I
appreciate again, people on Twitter this past week.
My friend Kenny McIntosh
somehow put out a clip or something that we said, and that started his fans over there of the Inside the Ropes tours going, well, when are you going to bring Cornette back?
And I appreciate the people who want to see me again.
And I have nothing against Kenny.
And he hadn't been involved in any of that stuff with Vince.
He wasn't even that.
He's probably Inside the Ropes and probably the only scandal-free wrestling organization of any size in the world today.
This is the weirdest transition to a conversation.
What do you mean?
Well, no, but I'm just saying, I appreciate that's what I was trying to say.
I know we were talking about a pervert, but let me tell you about my friend Kenny Maxwell.
No, no, because I'm going a bunch of his fans when he tweeted this,
however it came up, were said, hey, I was there and they tweeted a picture.
One guy said, I lost my virginity the night of the cornet show.
And not with me, though.
I don't recall meeting the gentleman.
It was a VIP package.
But anyway, they were wanting me to come back over.
I want Kenny to get me back over there.
And he does every once in a while, in a gentle way, try to, you know, bring the subject up.
But where I was leading with this was for the people who still want me to somehow be involved in wrestling in some description, what promotion
do you think right now, Brian, on the face of the planet
that I could work for on whether it be a daily or a weekly basis, whatever the parameters would be,
and last
three months without waking up in a hotel room one morning, throwing my bag through the fucking window without opening it, jumping out after it, it.
And if I lived, getting in my fucking truck and heading home.
Maybe STW?
Who?
What?
Scott DeMoore Wrestling?
That new program?
Oh, I didn't know.
Well, if they haven't started up yet, so I said, see, existing today.
Now, I'd be glad to bop up to Windsor.
But
no, come on.
Gee, Money, Christmas.
No, big
Dragon Gate.
Well, that might be.
Maybe, hey, Lano.
Maybe you can get me the job as booker over there like you tried to in 1990 or whatever the fuck it was.
But I just,
the chaos and the constant drama and the, it's not in the ring.
I got in a business when the wrestling business was the wrestling business.
Whether it was good wrestling or bad wrestling, whether it drew or it didn't draw, and who was going to, what promoter was going to stab the other one in the back over fucking Cleveland?
You know, simple shit.
There weren't goddamn major fucking lawsuits and front-page headlines of people slandering each other and fucking killing each other and goddamn attacking and assaulting each other and running goddamn.
I mean, the only thing apparently that was missing at Titan Tower over the last few years, we've come to find out, was Ron Jeremy
and the
constant
sword of Damocles.
Well, you know, the guy that's running the company this week may not be the guy that's running the company next week.
What the fuck?
I can't imagine being involved in this.
As I sat back and looked just the other day at the scope and the magnitude of me and the magnitude of the things that have gone on here over the past few years in the wrestling business, not to mention...
the hokey horseshit and the goddamn trampoline cowboys.
But I'm just talking about what the fuck?
i can you think of one wrestling promotion that has not changed ownership fired its head its head has lost power potentially over its head's dick uh or that has not sued or been sued
sued another promotion or been sued by another promotion over the last 12 months the problem too is look at it the other way try to look at the positives try to look for the positives what promoter, and take WWE out of this, beyond their scandals, they do have competent leadership at least.
Beyond turning a blind eye to all the scandals, I guess.
But who out there, from Tony Khan on down, all across the world right now, instills confidence in you as a boss, as a promoter, as a booker?
So that you would say, you know what, it may be rough right now, but we could fix this.
Competent leadership.
Not going to have to worry about any bullshit there.
Whatever else happens in wrestling.
At least I'll have a Danny Davis I'm working with.
Who is out there like that?
Someone you said, you know what?
OVW may not be an easy thing, but I'll be working with someone I know I could deal with and trust.
So it'll be all right.
There aren't too many examples of that.
That's the problem, too.
If I tried to shoehorn Danny Davis out of the Florida panhandle to do anything, that would be probably right now, you know.
But that's not what I'm saying.
I'm not saying get away with that.
That would be the person.
I would say, okay, you know, I need to deal with someone I can trust and knows what the fuck they're doing, Danny.
But otherwise, no, it just, and again, you know, we're not saying the WWE is doing fabulous as a business, despite the funny business.
But God,
that's another thing.
I never aspired to be a large cog executive in a multi-billion dollar global conglomerate.
I wanted to cut some promos, sell some tickets, run some shows, and have some fucking wrestling, right?
And I admire the few contemporaries of my age group that still have, as I've mentioned, with old Happy Heyman, especially with the fucking state of his physical health and just the obvious
you know, morbidity that's taking place before our eyes, that he's still got the fucking drive to actually do this on a regular basis.
Well, anyway, regardless of whether I want to travel the globe with any,
you know, major scandal-ridden wrestling promotions or not, I can't leave the house anymore.
Because if I try to do something and I carefully plan it, something will go awry.
I tried to go to the eye doctor day before yesterday.
I've been needing to do this for about 15 years, get a new pair of glasses.
I'm seriously, the glasses I'm wearing now I've had for almost 15 years.
And one of the earpieces broken, and I got one of the nose pieces I glued on with wood glue because it's what I had available.
And I don't like that process.
Have we spoken about this?
You and I?
We've spoken that you have like a thing where you can't deal with eye drops or anyone touching or maybe even looking at your eye or breathing near your eyes.
Don't you not look me in the eye?
No, I can't can't have water in my eye, eye drops.
You know, the idea of someone touching my eye for the people, if I watch somebody put contact lenses in their own eyes, it will make me want to throw up because it's just revulsion to me.
So it's not a procedure I like to undergo a lot.
And
I
had just talked myself into doing it.
and get a new pair of glasses and the pandemic hits.
And then I went, well, I'm not going to have anybody up in my fucking face, right?
And then, you know,
I can't be just willy-nilly going down there and just taking my potluck.
I don't have time.
We've got to be doing these podcasts.
So finally, I've decided I'm going to do it again.
I asked Stacey, I said, where's that flyer we got or the coupon in the mail from the Vision Works people?
I said, it's right down the road.
I said, do they take appointments?
She said, oh, I went down there last year.
You just walk right in.
It's a ghost town.
There's nobody ever in there.
I was in and out an hour, blah, blah, blah.
I said, well, I'll still be unlucky.
So see if you can make me an appointment for like, you know, Tuesday or whatever it was time.
And she tries, and you can't just call these people on the phone and say, hey, can I come in Tuesday at two o'clock?
You got to go online and do something.
And she couldn't figure it out.
And then you couldn't get it to do what she wanted it to do.
And I said, never fun of mine.
And I put it off another couple of months.
And then finally, I said, all right, I'll go in there early in the morning.
I like to get in and get out early in the morning so I can get back home before people get too fucking drunk and crazy.
I'll go in there.
If it's a ghost town, boom, I'll do the whole thing.
So I went in there 9.15 in the morning.
There is literally two people in there, two customers.
One,
obviously, the guy is looking around for the glasses and the woman is sitting there playing with her phone waiting waiting for him.
So, there's one customer, right?
And there are two people working.
It's a big fucking place.
And I said, Good morning.
They said, How can we help you?
I said, I would like to get an eye exam and get some new eyeglasses.
And they said, Do you have an appointment?
I said, No.
I said, My wife tried to make one a while back, but she couldn't figure out the thing.
Oh, our system is horrible.
I said, But it doesn't seem like it'd be too long of a wait.
Oh, we don't have anything now.
And I'm looking around.
I'm like,
what the fuck else is going on here?
And I said, they said, we have today at 5:30.
I would know.
I said, what about tomorrow?
Oh, tomorrow we're completely booked up.
I'm looking around.
There's tumbleweeds blowing through this fucking lobby, right?
And these are the two people working the desk.
I assume there's doctors and fucking clinicians and technicians and experts and people at oculus and optometrists
that are doing this shit, right?
It's not these two fucking 22-year-old fucking airheads that are goddamn going to be prescribing my glasses.
So there's more people in this place.
There's not a car in the parking lot.
So if I said, well, and I had already, not only had I taken a shower and shaved for this occasion because somebody was going to be up in my face, but also I had a breath lodge, Lazen Gen.
All right, so finally, I've got an appointment now for whatever today, two more days from now.
I'll have an appointment, and I'm going to see what this procedure is like.
But
do you encounter this type of thing up there in New Jersey?
I mean, you can't just show up at a doctor's office with no appointment.
No, there's a, no, it's not a doc.
That's the thing.
That's what I'm already upset about.
That's why I don't go to these places very often.
It's not an eye doctor's office anymore.
Like when I was a kid, you'd want to see Dr.
So-and-so, the eye doctor, and he'd scare the shit out of you.
And he'd look all mean and menacing.
And it was him that determined whether you were going to go blind or not.
See, I've worn these glasses since I was in third grade, second grade.
Anyway.
That I could believe he was a real doctor, but I walk in this shopping mall bullshit they've got these days, and their flyer says we take walk-ins.
And Stacey walked in
the same fucking place.
Says, oh, come right in, friend.
Me, I'm standing there in a fucking empty goddamn warehouse, and they booted me out.
I took it personally.
Are you there?
Yeah, my eyes are fine, so I don't really relate to the story.
Have you never had, you've never been to the eye doctor?
I have not had a reason to go, no.
Well, no, the reason you could have some kind of goddamn glaucoma
that would affect you, even if your eyesight is, you think, in good shape.
See, for somebody who scans the rest of their body.
This is something you're fucking dropping a ball on here.
What are you laughing at?
I guess so.
I guess I'll have my eyes scanned.
Hey, that glaucoma will just close in on you.
And pretty soon your eyes will look like the fucking master in fucking kung fu.
All right.
Well, this is
your show.
Thank God.
Well, anyway, real quick,
this is serious, honestly.
We do, before we go any further, we want to send our condolences out to Jeremy Bagley, who is, obviously, we've talked about him a bunch of times, jacked up Jeremy.
He's a member of the Cult of Cornet.
He's done so much.
Not only has he contributed thousands of dollars to the various charity organizations that we've done fundraisers for or whatever but also he's organized and raised thousands of dollars for the american cancer society a few years ago in honor of dennis condry and just he's a great guy does things for people all over the place and other members of the cult and his father just passed away um
got yesterday as we're speaking right now.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
I had not heard that.
And he had had,
I don't know whether it was Alzheimer specifically, but had had some dementia here recently and had taken, he'd had
great success with a number of health issues, but it took a turn for the worse recently.
But I believe he was over 80.
I hope I'm saying that correctly.
But anyway,
you know, we just wanted to send our thoughts to Jeremy and his mom and the rest of the family.
And, you know, we were sorry to hear that, but Jeremy is taking a positive tone on the thing.
He tweeted a heck of a tweet of collage of pictures of his dad who had
lived an amazing life.
So he's, he's taking a positive thought.
And a bunch of people tweeted him that they were thinking about him, but we, we did want to mention that.
And also, and Charlie from Starkville, who is a
frequent, well, when we used to be able to answer questions back before people were being kidnapped in goddamn offices and shit,
Charlie from Starkville,
his mom on the positive side is cancer-free after two years.
She just got that news, and she's a champion.
But his father has recently been diagnosed with a form of cancer, and they're checking that out further.
But we wanted to acknowledge him.
And also, while we're on a subject,
Hotchkiss Featherbottom, the young man who the world knows as Hotchkiss Featherbottom, even though he has a variety of off-brand relatives that we've talked about, he's got a wonderful mother and she's been sick with pneumonia.
And she has
had some other health issues they're checking out, but we want her to get well quick.
She's 85.
And I know what people are thinking, what is fucking Hotchkiss 70?
No, Hotchkiss was, as we say down south, the runt of the litter.
He came later in life.
But anyway, we wanted to send our thoughts out to her as well.
And is there anybody, how's your family doing?
I'm just thinking about the ages of the Featherbottom family.
That's a little fascinating.
They are spread out all across the spectrum there.
While I'm doing it, I said there was no order to this, but let's bring things back to the positive.
I want to send a thank you to James, who did not include his mailing address.
And I'm going to try to, he gave me the email.
You know how I am with those, but I'm going to poke into this further.
But James from Jimmy Joseph Ware LLC in New Jersey,
who apparently does screen printing, he sent me a beautiful Windbreaker type jacket with the Smoky Mountain Wrestling logo on it.
And I wanted to thank him for that.
And your friend and mine, Frank the Collector,
sent me, and we trade things back and forth,
a scrapbook of clippings from the Ray Eckert estate sale.
And I'd gotten some programs from Memphis that he had had in that collection.
But this is a variety of newspaper clippings and this nice scrapbook from
the ranged from the late 30s to the early 50s.
And I appreciate, and of course,
the cake lady, as she's known around the house here, Joni Aries,
sent me, Brian, and I'm sorry, you just, you don't qualify.
Joni and I go way back.
You're just a fresh-faced pup in this relationship.
That's why you don't get it.
Yeah, off Aries says your stuff tastes like shit.
Oh, come on.
That's why I asked you.
She sent me a congratulatory, celebratory cake for our 400,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Oh, you should get it tested first before you.
dive in.
Hey, the cake.
And you know what?
She also, she sends the cake and the icing separate and puts the icing in a bag because she knows I like to
overdo it.
Oh, come on.
It looks like one of those fucking arts and crafts things.
She's a professional at this type of thing.
She works in the industry.
Well, and also, I want to thank Frank the collector.
He just sent me a record for my wrestling vinyl collection.
It is Big Daddy's single from England.
Big Daddy and the Titanic Survivors.
We shall not be moved.
That's right.
You don't have that?
You have not had that before.
I've had that since 1978.
I did not have that one in my collection, no.
I believe it's 1978.
It might not have come out in 1978.
It had to be out by 1980.
How did you get it?
I got it from,
my God.
Oh, my God.
What was his name?
There was a guy, was it Evan Treharn?
In the 70s, that when I traded, you know, pictures and programs and stuff with anybody whose address was in the magazine so I could get shit.
I've got 70s independent
UK wrestling posters with Adrian Street on them.
I got the Big Daddy record.
I got
some Mark Rocco stuff, a variety of that mid-late 70s British world of sport scene
when I was trading shit back and forth.
I can't remember the guy's name for sure now.
But yes,
it's a, you know what it's it's probably the best record ever by a 400 plus pound wrestler because i've heard plowboy frasier's and it's it's better than his
i think giant haystacks was on young strong and healthy by uh vons and the crew what well you know then in that case now if otto vons had a singing career we might uh
We might have to
remodel that fucking listing.
Anyway, have you heard about this?
do you know what has happened now on comedy central that's worth watching for once
uh reruns of the office
jon stewart is back on the daily show monday nights only but he's back his first monday was this past monday
you have said nothing you are complete do you not consider jon stewart the funniest man on television i do not no Why?
Well, I mean, I think he's funny and I like his stuff, but he's not the funniest man on television.
Let me tell you, I watched the, when he hosted the daily show.
Funniest man on television.
I watched that show religiously or atheistically, since it's me.
If I couldn't be home, if we were still doing shows or whatever, I would record it.
I would watch it as soon as I got home.
I love that show.
Jon Stewart is not only hilarious, but he's fucking brilliant.
And he's witty and he's quick and boom, boom, boom.
If he was a wrestler, he'd be my favorite.
And then he left the
fucking.
I'm just telling you.
What's the word thing to throw in there at the end?
He's got all the tools.
I'm telling you.
And then he leaves the show and it went to complete shit.
And I haven't watched it since.
He didn't like Trevor Noah?
Oh, fuck.
Come on.
I don't know how that guy got a job parking cars.
I don't know.
I've never seen it.
I've never got it.
I don't know what the fuck that anybody would watch that show for.
But now Jon Stewart is back on Mondays.
Are you going to be watching Tuesdays?
That's hilarious.
Are you going to be watching on Tuesdays?
No, because he's not on on Tuesdays.
He's on on Mondays.
I'm watching the daily show with Jon Stewart.
Give me the daily show with Jon Stewart daily.
Every day, Monday through Sunday, I'll watch it.
But if it's the daily show, but not with Jon Stewart, fuck your daily show.
Should they give Craig Kilborn a night?
I don't give a fuck.
He was the original host.
I don't care
because it's not the daily show with John Stewart.
I don't care what he fucking does.
Do you like John Oliver?
You see, he just did a big segment about Chuck E.
Cheese?
Yeah, I must admit.
I like John Oliver.
I like John Oliver's segments on the Daily Show.
I like John Oliver in segments.
I'm not sure I can do John Oliver for the whole show, but he only does 30 minutes, so it's not fucking...
But it's a lot of John Oliver, yeah.
But that's still a lot of John Oliver.
All right.
Not a big Jon Stewart fan, huh?
No, I like him.
I think he's great.
I'm not that excited yet.
We'll see.
I mean, it's always weird when someone leaves a job and they come back years later and they're going to do it for one night a week.
I mean, this is like a Jay Leno kind of thing almost.
Well, it's a goddamn, obviously, a ratings ploy by the floundering comedy center.
I think it's good for him.
I mean, he just lost that Apple deal where he walked away from that Apple deal because they didn't want him to do stories about like China and stuff because it would screw up their relationship with China.
So now,
of all the things that he ever did, this was the thing that he did best.
I don't want the Daily Show with China.
I want the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Did you ever watch the Larry Sanders show episodes with Jon Stewart where he was going to take over the show?
I didn't know.
Last season.
I didn't know about those.
All right.
You didn't know about that.
It wasn't the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
No, it wasn't even invented yet.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but it's one of the best shows in the history of television.
That's why I wasn't looking for fucking Jon Stewart.
All right.
But nevertheless, the point that I was trying to make to you is before you obscured it and obfuscated the issue with all of that falder all
was that he doesn't need to come back and work five days a week because he's probably my age, I would imagine, and he probably feels the same way.
He'd rather, I envision a future here where I sit at home and have more puppies.
And Stacey and I work on planning the landscaping, not goddamn what TV show I'm going to host next.
So I would assume that they have offered him a sweet proposition to come back on Mondays as a way to kickstart their week of substandard hosts from there on out as a ratings ploy, which I think is wonderful business.
business what else would you do to fix comedy central
um well actually you don't need to
it there's nothing there anymore they have no original programming they're just
do they
am i missing it
i haven't seen anything original in a while it's all reruns
of everything
and maybe that's a indictment of comedy too not only television but
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Okay, well, speaking of television of things that is going to return to television, we got the heads up now.
The
information is coming out, the press releases, et cetera.
And also, we're probably behind on this because we're too busy covering fucking insanity.
But there are several television programs returning to the air in what,
I think, late February and or early March.
You maybe got the details.
Our friends at Dark Side of the Ring.
are going to be back on Vice.
And
this is not going to be a season where they have a show on Vince McMahon.
That will be season six, and it'll be a 10-part miniseries.
But season five is going to have some interesting characters on it, as well as some feedback or input from your humble servant, myself.
And then the shows as well on A ⁇ E are coming back to...
Give us more biographies and more rivalries.
So we got that to look forward to, along with the leaves on trees in the spring.
But first things first, let's talk about Dark Side of the Ring on Vice TV.
It's season five, and there's a couple of interesting ones this year, and
one that I know I'm especially involved in.
But do you have the list in front of you, Brian?
I do have the list here, and one that I can't figure out exactly what the dark side will be.
We'll get to that in a moment.
But season five of Dark Side of the Ring premieres Tuesday, March 5th, 10 10 p.m.
Eastern Time on
Vice TV is the official name of this channel now.
Yes.
Here are the episodes.
But that's what it was always the name of it.
Didn't it originally have a different name?
I've been calling it Vice TV.
Maybe they're just catching up to me now.
I don't know.
Well, it doesn't matter.
No one watches it.
Other than this show, of course, because Jim's on it.
Well, there you go.
Here's the lineup, and you could, I guess, stop after each name and tell me what you think.
Chris Adams.
Well, this one is going to be interesting.
I am not involved in this.
I knew, obviously, Chris from Dallas.
We were there for six months, but otherwise,
you know, we didn't coexist.
But
I understand from the preview, from the clip, they have the
guy that shot him, right?
Do you remember his name?
I'll never forget the guy's name.
No, I can't.
Because there was a Gary Hart interview talking about it, and Gary Hart was very upset.
He was close to Chris Adams.
So it's weird you're seeing a grown man talk about it.
He's like, and then Bo Ray shot him.
And Bo-Ray.
Bo-ray, who the fuck is this guy?
Well, that was,
it was in Texas.
So these things happen down there.
But anyway,
you know, that's the thing with Adams.
He
made an impression in a short period of time.
in this country in the wrestling business because people forget he
he wasn't really here and in a spot on any kind of national television for more than like six years from the time that he came from England, right, until
he was off TV for the most part.
And I know some people are going to say, well, he was on W.
Everybody was on WCW in the 90s.
But I'm telling you, me, in a meaningful spot, but he made an impression, the super kick, which was,
you know, it was a best.
Yeah, he did it best, and he looked like a guy that could do with those long legs, and he still had the size and blah, blah blah and he it looked good and it wasn't
you know just prostituted to shit to where people just did it over and over and got up from it etc etc but that was a variation as simple as it is on anything that had been done in a way of kicks at that point
and you know he was a legitimate uh judo practitioner and an amateur in England and his i guess his brother was way far ahead of him was like nationally or internationally ranked.
But Chris was a good worker, and he was, I think, as a heel, a better talker.
He was so, as a babyface, he was so cheery, smiley, white meat,
you know, early 80s kind of thing that I don't think that would have gotten over as the 80s progressed.
But he was a,
with that accent and that cockiness, he was a good promo.
I don't know that,
you know, he was, he was not going to be the main event guy either way in Crockett promotions or in the WWF at the time.
He was not going to be the guy, but he was capable of being on the card anywhere.
But he was, again,
I never saw that part because I was not, you know, socializing with him and Gino in Highland Park or whatever while we were there.
Apparently, he was the nicest, you know, guy in the world to your face, at least, and, you know, in the locker room or whatever.
And then he would, yeah, he drank and he was a fucking lunatic.
Didn't he like super kick a flight attendant?
Remember, he got arrested.
He went to jail
in the middle of a plane, he just gave her a super kick right in the aisle.
No, no, he head-butted her.
Come on, don't take it away from me.
He gave her a super.
And that's why his legs were so long, he got over the fucking drink cart.
Bam!
Holy shit did you see that you never saw it coming he went right over the fucking aelates
uh
no he head-butted that that wouldn't serve him any more drinks he allegedly and i think it was proven in a court of law head-butted the flight attendant i don't now that i think about i don't know whether it was a male or female flight attendant now we've created a
probably some type of false narrative there.
It was a female flight attendant.
Well, I mean, I'm open to fucking either one.
I'm just saying, we got to leave all these things open unless you.
I mean, it's on the goddamn internet, so anybody wants to fucking check it out.
It's about to be on dark side of the floor.
Oh, please do a redactim super kicking a female flight attendant over the tray of drinks.
That's amazing.
Would Kevin Roderick trying to pull him back?
Right, wasn't Kevin on the flight with him?
Am I thinking of that right?
Uh, I well, see, that's the thing is that I'm trying to remember: was this in the dying days of world class or was this in the early 90s?
I think it was the dying days of world class.
It was even before the dying days.
It was because he went to jail for it in 86.
Oh, shit.
After he had turned babyface, because then after that, he jumped a watts with everyone else from world class, and they made it a thing where Iceman Parsons turned heel and was calling Chris Adams a jailbird.
Well, okay, well, then in that case, yeah, I'm pretty sure everybody, see, in those days, I've mentioned we would fly Southwest Airlines.
It was like $39 from Dallas anywhere, Love Field, to anywhere in Texas.
And they had late night flights that leave at like 10.50 or whatever, so you could actually get back by midnight.
So all the guys would take those flights.
So if there was a goddamn incident on a flight in the Dallas crew, most times, most of the guys were fucking on it.
And then I guess also you got to bring up, he trained Steve Austin.
Steve Austin ends up falling in love and marrying Chris Adams' ex-girlfriend.
They were never married, although people thought they were.
And then Steve Austin
never wanted to be around Chris Adams again, ever.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, there's something there, too.
Because he had the inside scoop on exactly, you know, Chris Adams, which you'll learn on Dark Side of the Ring this coming season, March 5th and beyond.
All right, we've gotten one episode in so far.
Jim, another episode.
How many are there?
There's 10, and here's episode two, as it's listed here.
Sensational Sherry.
And I will be involved in this one.
And
this is one that, you know, obviously
it hurts to
hear the story that, you know, Sherry, everybody loved Sherry and she was so talented.
You know, there was several issues and she was gone too soon.
So this one will be one that
I'm looking forward to just to get her story told and get some of the footage.
If people are watching wrestling footage of Sherry Martell
with modern eyes now, she would be by far, along with Rhea Ripley.
I mean, you could main event Rhea Ripley and Sherry Martell at WrestleMania compared to the
rest of the female roster these days,
the intensity and the fucking,
you know, she was always presented strong.
Yeah.
Even though she was aligned with guys like Brandy Savage, D.B.
Aussie, Shawn Michaels, until maybe Sean Michaels, she was always presented as being strong and dominant.
And that's, you know, and that's the thing is that,
and I know somebody's going to see, you know,
one of her matches on YouTube with Candy Devine in a fucking blase AWA match and think, what?
But no, when she was on the stage and being presented and there was a fucking,
she fit right in with all of the fucking stars.
And she had an oomph and an intensity and a believability, especially speaking
that, you know,
they could use today instead of this fucking
chatter amongst many of the girls.
Think of the chance she got.
It really is amazing.
When Hogan and Savage break up and Elizabeth goes with Hogan, but she's not really going on the road or anything.
She makes a few appearances with the babyfaces, but she's not with Randy Savage anymore.
Sherry gets that spot: heel Randy Savage, and eventually King Randy Savage, Macho King, yeah, and Queen Sherry, and she excelled in that role.
That's a tough role to, you know, you're not really replacing Elizabeth because it's a different kind of personality altogether, but you're replacing her in terms of being a valet with Randy Savage, who just had an iconic relationship on this wrestling show with Elizabeth, and it worked.
Well, because you actually finally got to see the
the female part of the equation do something.
For one thing, I know everybody loved Elizabeth.
I never got it.
I'm not saying anything about her.
I met her like twice in person.
Not saying anything bad about her as a person.
But the whole fucking just stand there with the dough eyes and stare.
It was the damsel in distress.
Everyone could have picture themselves saving her from that mean Randy Savage like George Steele tried to do.
I wouldn't have risked my fucking neck.
Now, if Sherry was in trouble, I'll help her.
But
anyway, who's next?
Next on the list here, Terry Gordy.
And hopefully I will be on this one.
And I
also, as I recall, tried to, not tried to, did,
give them some pictures and some footage and things that.
You know, again, another
brilliant talent and who would be in
otherworldly today with his talent and ability and natural oomph in his day and the shit that he could do.
You know, and unfortunately, again, gone too soon.
And he just as
age-wise, chronologically,
he would have been in his late 30s when the attitude era took off.
And well, he was in his late 30s when the attitude era took off.
And if he'd have been in
the condition he should have been in, chronologically,
he could have made a fucking fortune more than the Freebirds did in their whole run in a couple years.
And he just missed it.
And I mean, he still did wonderful in Japan, but
you know, to be able to,
after all those years,
stay home for a couple years and make,
who knows, several hundred thousand dollars to whatever a year.
Do you still have, because it was
obviously edited severely,
and even in that form, it was alarming at the time.
But after Terry Gordy had the incident where he passed out on a plane, he went into a coma and he came out of it.
He returned to wrestling.
He did some stuff in Dallas with Michael Hayes for the GWF.
And then you brought him in to the Knight of Legends in 94 against Tony Anthony.
Yeah.
And you had a promo you played on TV.
And obviously, like I said, it was clipped.
Do you have like the unedited promo of that still?
I mean, what did you think when you got that tape?
I've got a lot of, you know, work tapes and stuff.
I can't tell you off the top of my head if I have that one specific raw footage of, you know, the interview.
It was, it was like a science fiction movie in that the voice was basically the same and it was coming out of the same human being,
but all of the emotion was gone.
And he,
because of whatever, you know,
it was a brain injury that
ended up being the result of the coma and everything.
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, whatever oxygen was deprived, whatever part of the brain, I don't, I'm not a, I'm not a brain surgeon, I'm a small-town bird lawyer.
Whatever part of the brain that would lack of oxygen or coma or whatever affects it took his
he, I think he was maybe still even the same person inside behind the eyes.
But I've mentioned when if you'd be talking to somebody in a locker room, instead of being Terry Gordy and him just coming, hey, you know, and ask a question or slap you on the back or whatever,
you would notice that out of the corner of your eye, he's just standing there staring.
And you'd turn around and he'd be letting you say, oh, Terry, can I help you?
Well, yeah, Jim, I was just wondering.
And
he'd ask the question and then, you know, whatever.
And in the ring, he could still run the ropes.
He could still do the moves.
He didn't hurt anybody.
But the life was gone.
The personality,
what made him Bam Bam.
You know, the.
You just said he could run the ropes still because in Knoxville for the Night of Legends, again, I was there.
The music hit.
Leonard Skynard Freebird.
And he came out out and he got in the ring and he started running the ropes.
And for a second, you thought, oh my God, the old Terry Gordy's here.
I mean, it wasn't even that long a period of time.
It had been a year.
Oh, my God, here he is.
And then, as soon as the match started,
it just wasn't, it wasn't connecting.
Not only was it not connecting in the ring, you could tell it wasn't connecting from his brain to his body.
He couldn't make it work.
And
we'll see.
I mean, obviously, a very interesting episode there.
When he was,
let's see,
61.
When he was 18 years old and Bobby Eaton was 20 years old, they were both working for Nick Gulis, and they were probably
better at that point than half the guys working for Jim Crockett or Vince McMahon.
And just nobody knew it yet.
And then suddenly.
Gordy finally gets to
here in Memphis, you could see it.
More people saw it, but then you got to Louisiana.
And it's like, here he's a teenager.
He's the main event in fucking Superdome.
And Bobby took a little bit longer because he didn't have the
honestly.
Well, he didn't have the size and the promo, and he didn't have the tag team partner, the mouth, you know.
The mouth more than a tag team partner because the first thing Watts did was say, I'm getting this guy out of the ring.
I'm getting Buddy Roberts.
Yeah.
But
anyway, but that's, you know, so I'll look forward to seeing that one on Terry.
You mentioned that there would be no Vince McMahon on this season of Dark Side of the Ring.
Technically, I guess it would be here, an episode on Black Saturday, when Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation Titans Sports purchased Georgia Championship Wrestling and the TBS time slot in 1984.
Yes, Black Saturday was before at the condo, they had Brown Tuesday, I guess.
Too soon?
I'll stay away from it.
Too soon.
But Black Saturday, obviously, as you just mentioned, that was
the first real shockwave in the War of 84 that everybody's, oh, holy shit, when Vince took over the TBS time slot by buying out the Briscoes, the other shareholders, and, you know, everybody but Ole, who suddenly became without a wrestling promotion in Georgia.
And the story behind that, that it, you know, a short version, we've talked about it.
The show was a flop.
The people wanted their Gordon Soley wrestling back.
But since there was a contract and blah, blah, blah, Turner almost got into partnership with Bill Watts to get Mid-South Wrestling onto TBS.
Well, no, it was on TBS.
It was to buy into the company and continue on TBS.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I did misstate, and you are correct.
Don't rub it in.
But to become
more of a partner and a supporter of Mid-South Wrestling, when Jim Crockett ended up paying $1 million to Vince McMahon and buying the time slot, saving Turner
the money and the effort and putting NWA Wrestling back on TBS.
But that was one of the major cash payments that Vince got that he was able to finance
the first WrestleMania with, you know, not too long afterwards, along with the booking fee from Inoki in New Japan.
So that will be the,
I'm sure people will be looking at it with new eyes now, but that's the
program's topic.
And the topic is great, too, because you get Oli Anderson involved.
And there's that famous story that Ole told where there was a meeting amongst the board members of Georgia Championship Wrestling.
Vince was now the head of the board.
And
even with all this happening, Vince is, according to Oli, Vince was still trying to get Oli to come work for the World Wrestling Federation.
This doesn't have to be a fight.
Come work for me.
And Oly said, go fuck yourself.
And then Vince, the next time, brought Linda and he said, Oly, I'd like to introduce you to my wife, Linda.
And Oly said, go fuck yourself and fuck her, too.
And then Vince said, you'll never work for the World Wrestling Federation.
Oh, my God.
I don't know if Oli's in a condition where he could talk on camera or anything, but oh, that'd be great if they got to him for this.
I'm not sure, to be honest with you,
by the time that they finished the program, whether or not they were able to do that.
He wanted the Briscoes to make a blood oath with him?
I gotta say one thing about
in the summer of 83, we were working for Ole.
Dundee liked Ole.
Dundee always liked.
I think Ole liked Dundee because he, you know, he fucking worked hard.
He hustled.
He had good finishes.
He's one of the boys, right?
But Dundee, talking about oli's demeanor because even when oli was being witty and sly and every once in a while he'd laugh for you if if it if it wasn't a show he was running if he was just in the locker room he'd laugh or he'd have a little grin on his face
but most of the time he came off as grumpy ole right
and dundee said ole anderson likes to but he don't like to come he just wants to all the time he don't want to come he just wants to keep fucking.
He's miserable.
The wisdom of Bill Dundee coming to bookstores soon.
Well, that's Black Saturday.
That'll certainly be an interesting one.
Here's one that a lot of people certainly wanted to hear what you had to say about Chris Colt.
Well, and this one, I believe I will have some input on this one.
And I did have some of the
only existing footage of Chris Colt from Tennessee, at least, and in somewhat of the prime of his life and career.
You know, we've talked about what a fascinating story Chris Colt was as a wrestler and a human being before on the program on and off.
And I think we had Dave Brzezinski,
Supermouth himself
on the program one time talking about, you know, especially the Michigan stories of Chris Colt.
And they really went back and tried to find everybody they could and went
into as deeply as they could into his roots in Arizona.
And, you know, he was a fan that
wrote, you know, letters to Tom Burke, our friend up in Massachusetts, one of the early trading fans.
And he ended up, you know, pursuing his dream to be a wrestler.
becoming tag team partners with Don Fargo and then ending up being
probably one of the only only people in wrestling that there are weirder stories about than Don Fargo
and being kind of an enigma that he was such a great worker, but he was so self-destructive.
And
the weird shit he did in his life, both positive and negative, whether it be, you know, a roadie for Joe Cocker or fucking,
you know, dying of AIDS in a homeless shelter and everything in between.
So I hope that they'll be able to, for once and at least
put everything down in one place where we can figure out at least what was bullshit and what wasn't and sort through it.
But what a fucking worker in his day when he was, when he was fucked up in the right kind of way, because he told people he never worked sober.
He couldn't.
But when he was on the right shit, he was incredible.
Here, there's that famous story where he was in a cage match and he ate a bunch of acid and he thought spiders were coming into the cage to get him and he left the cage and ran away i believe i will be voicing over that reenactment i just have a have a feeling
that that might happen well we will see what happens on the chris colt episode another episode of dark side of the ring this upcoming season jim the sandman
and this one obviously i didn't have any input in because i've met the sandman obviously way back when he was the sandman with the surfboard and the nose tape or whatever working for dennis corluso
but uh obviously i wasn't around during his ECW heyday.
I'm not knocking him.
I think maybe he realizes this.
That was one of those ECW kind of gimmicks, wasn't it?
That
you couldn't
take that out of that
gimmick.
Yeah, you couldn't take that and put it in any other presentation
and
it would work, let's just say.
Well, the one I said that was a little puzzling on this list, Jim a lot of people have been trying to figure out what's the dark side of this story Earthquake John Tenta you know I'm not involved in the episode and I haven't seen any advanced copies so I would have to think
that it was just the fact that he you know passed away young from illness of
how's that the dark side of the ring Well, he because he couldn't get in the ring anymore because he was dead.
I don't know, you know, don't fucking goddamn blister me for this.
Maybe they just, goddamn, they got a story to tell.
They got a song they want to sing, Brian.
Let them sing it.
He left Sumo to go to all Japan.
Then he came to the WWF's Earthquake.
He had the shoot thing with Koji Katao and SWS.
And then he was Golga.
He was a shark.
And then he was gone, gone.
I don't know what the, again, we'll see.
This is an interesting one.
Everyone's kind of wondering what the dark side is.
Well, let's see.
We got to tune in and find out, don't we?
Another episode people will be potentially tuning into
Harley Race.
And this is one I honestly, I've commented on Harley.
I don't expect to be in the episode because I wasn't instrumental in any way in his life or career, but
this, again, something I'm just looking so forward to just to get for the opportunity for more modern audience to be forced to sit down and watch some fucking clips of Harley race.
Does that make any sense?
I just want more people to see the stuff they're going to dig up that's going to paint him in a more positive light than maybe his WCW managing run in 1993 or whatever.
Again, this isn't biography.
This is Dark Side of the Ring.
I don't think they're going to be painting him in a positive light.
They're going to find some scandal he was involved with.
No.
No, they're not going to have to find anything.
They're all out there.
I mean, as far as the positive light, the clips of Harley in his prime and people talking about him, his
contemporaries.
But let's face it, you know, there were problems he had.
He had the fucking boat accident.
He lost lawsuits.
And,
you know, he had a life of peaks and valleys.
But I don't think you're going to get any of the boys to comment.
in this program on anything other than a positive,
you know, look at Harley.
And also with Dark Side of the Ring they've done many of the darker stories and Vince came out after these their season of editing was over with so let them tell some stories for fuck's sake
I want Harley race on TV in 2024 I don't care how it happens
well let's see how it happens we shall see and now another question before we wrap up with the other two episodes Is Chris Jericho still the narrator of this thing?
Well, that might yet to be determined.
I haven't seen any clips that would indicate either way.
Have you?
I haven't, but I haven't seen anything to say that he's not going to be involved, and it's a little awkward considering.
Maybe he'll recuse himself when they get to his episode.
Well, I guess we'll find out.
Another episode.
What do you think?
What would it be like if he did the voiceover?
And then I had a super spreader on my cruise ship.
Well, Jim, another episode of Dark Side of the Ring coming up this season.
Buff Bagwell.
And I think we've all got to look forward to this
because
we're going to separate the fact from the fiction and the rumor from the innuendo and the
wacky stories from the wacky facts.
And I think we're even going to hear from Buff himself on exactly why he was indeed at one time the stuff.
All right.
That expert analysis was stunning.
And finally, Jim, the last episode listed here for the season of Dark Side of the Ring coming up, Brutus Beefcake.
And I've seen,
again, one of the early clips on one of the previews of this one where he says, yeah, so
they didn't know what to do.
They had my face in their hands or whatever.
Obviously, I think, you know, Brutus is still alive and with us, so this is not a real dark side, but it was a dark.
It was a dark, dark day that happened to him when that woman caved his fucking face in.
That's what happens when you party with Brian Blair.
Well, you know, and that's that's another thing.
Why the fuck do people want to get in the ocean?
What the fuck?
Do you know how big the ocean is?
And do you know how powerful?
Do you know how powerful the currents are and the riptides and the waves and the, well, you're flying, Brian, aloha from
Hawaii, from Oahu or whatever.
Hawaiian, Brian, you know this.
Why do people want to get out in the ocean?
I'm not stepping foot in the fucking ocean farther than up to my knees to just walk in the cool sand.
Those people that want to swim in the ocean, well, fuck you.
They may never find you again.
I'm going over here to the community swimming pool and get chlamydia with the rest of the folks.
Bruno Speaker wasn't in the ocean.
He wasn't even trying to swim.
He was trying to parasail.
He was getting ready to in a woman's.
Well, don't you have to be in the ocean to parasail?
Or was he getting ready to, or was it just that the woman that was parasailing hit him in the face?
Well, how would a fucking, somebody parasailing hit somebody in a fucking face if the somebody wasn't in the water over in which they were parasailing over
something
all of a sudden this woman flies by and knees him in the head if she's if she's fucking flying over the fucking dock at that velocity at that low of a goddamn altitude there may have been other issues wouldn't there be what the how the We got to tune in and find out what the details.
Do they have footage?
This woman was flying by.
She gave him the Clearwater Beach trigger right to his face.
We'll see the reenactment and then we'll know.
I think what people are looking, well, not looking forward to, but they're wondering if the wife, Misty or Missy, whatever her name is.
Is that his manager?
He has a wife for this beefcake who apparently makes a lot of outlandish comments.
So people are waiting to see if.
No, she was on, she was on one of these other programs that was identified as his manager.
Oh, Missy Beefcake.
Man, I just saw, and I hadn't seen this in a few years, so I popped.
Jimmy Valiant just did some autograph shows somewhere, I guess before an actual wrestling show, and he sets up, he has his table and all of his gimmicks, and he has a giant poster behind him.
Come meet, you know, legendary wrestler, WWE Hall of Famer, Jimmy Valiant, and world-renowned manager, Captain Joe.
And I saw this years ago, and I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe he's still with Captain Joe, whoever this guy is.
And it's just like a guy in a funny outfit with glasses, just some guy drives Jimmy Valiant who became Captain Joe, the world-renowned manager.
Yeah, that's because everybody knows handsome Jimmy
doesn't drive often and hadn't probably since the 70s.
And he'll usually ride upfront shotgun in the passenger seat, but there's generally, and there have been other captains and majors and whoever that have managed him in the past but they all involve around a guy that's going to drive the car and then put on an outfit and draw kids attention at walmart to come over to the table and buy some autographs
and he's world famous world renowned renowned not even famous people he's renowned people think highly of him but back to beefcake yes there's the parasailing accident obviously
And then at some point he was working for like Boston Transit.
Oh, God.
And he was like in the subway and he was doing cocaine, but they didn't know it was cocaine.
They thought it was, they just saw white powder.
He was at one of the fucking ticket windows.
I don't know.
I don't take this fucking form of transportation in Massachusetts or wherever.
I don't know how it works, but wherever the ticket window or the tokens or whatever, he's in the window.
He leaves his cocaine.
They think it's goddamn anthrax.
They shut the whole goddamn station down.
And that made some news.
get ready for that reenactment that uh yes that one probably took a while to shoot well that is the upcoming season of dark side of the ring season five gives you 10 reasons to uh
to see what's gonna happen
but wait a minute now there there there's not a mystery episode I thought there's always with any kind of good deal, there's a mystery episode where you get an extra bonus piece of content and you don't know what it is.
And that way, when you get it, you're pleasantly surprised.
Well, I don't, I have not heard anything about a bonus episode.
The station would have to clear that.
Obviously, the budget would have to be approved and increased for next episode.
I'll tell the people where they can find an extra mystery bonus.
They need to look no further than our friends over at boxofawesome.com.
Have you heard about what's going on right now, Brian?
Right now, I just realized what's going on.
And yes, I've heard about what's going on right now.
Well, folks, if you don't know what's going on, I'd like to tell you, I know there's something going on over at boxofawesome.com.
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Well, apparently what has not been awesome lately, Brian, is the
cognitive abilities or the
the discerning abilities of our friend Uncle Dave, Dave Meltzer, who seems to not be able to discern fact from fiction
anymore.
And it's kind of blown up this week with this story that
it sounds ridiculous to say it out loud, but it happened.
Somebody sent Dave a clip of a video of Triple H and The Rock from like 10 years ago
doing a promo backstage somewhere and challenging each other or whatever, like they were going to fight at WrestleMania
and told him it was like, what, this last week when they were in whatever town they were in doing the fucking deal, right?
Vegas.
In Vegas.
And he ran with it.
He ran with the scoop all the way until he ran from the scoop when everybody started laughing at him.
They sent him the video.
They were 10 years younger.
Have there been?
I know they're in good shape for their ages, right?
But there have been no changes.
There's been no changes in production.
You couldn't instantly tell if this is your line of work.
This is your business to cover this stuff that this was 10 years ago?
Well, why don't we spell it out for the listeners?
Because what happened was, after everything, like you said, that happened in Vegas, Dave Meltzer in The Observer put, and this is on page four for anyone who has a wait, an unredacted copy because we'll get to that later.
It don't say this no more.
The storyline they are doing now is that Johnson, as a member of the board of directors, is seemingly in a battle for power with Paul Levesque, the COO, who is now going as Paul Triple H Levesque, even on television.
At the Mania press conference on February 8th 8th in Las Vegas, Levesque talked about guys going into business for themselves with the idea Rock was going against the planned script.
Later, they filmed a segment which didn't air on television, but was all over social media.
All over social media.
Where Levec and Rock went nose to nose and actually challenged each other for a match at Mania.
Although, it was they would love to each other.
Hold on, I swear to God, this is how it's written.
Although it was they would love to each other before a giant crowd at WrestleMania,
that is what it says, right?
About having a stroke.
Come on, people now, smile on your brother.
Everybody, love each other.
They would love each other.
Although it was, they would love each
although it was they would love to each other before a giant crowd at WrestleMania without the idea it was this specific one.
Given Levesque's heart issues, such a match would seem to be impossible.
And virtually everyone believed that to be the case.
The fact it was never put on television
says it was not something they wanted to hammer home as a storyline and more was a way to make people think that the two weren't getting along with the idea that aspect of the angle was real and real is in quotes
it was 10 years ago it was on one of these
reunion show or the raw legends come back or whatever and they did 10 years ago
He thought it was last Tuesday.
I guess Vince is booking again.
I want you guys to make love to each other.
What the fuck?
What was Dave writing there?
I think he left out the word fight, but
it led to even more confusion that he was already suffering.
Because,
again, the main part of the story is people said, what?
What is he talking about?
And come to find out.
It's a clip that they did 10 years ago that he was referring to.
And it probably did air on TV back then.
Was there a fucking social media that whatever the fuck.
Point is.
So he wrote that and sent
his
publication out to its consumers.
And then people apparently,
I don't know, called attention to what the fuck, because on its face, it didn't read like something that would have happened.
And then instead of,
well, I don't know whether he
could you can obviously we now know he can go back and change the issue.
Instead of putting correction, this was originally reported, but blah, blah, blah.
He just deleted it.
He just,
it ain't there no more.
You know, every day on the wrestling news, if there's anything we get wrong, we have a section called corrections, where we'll say, we'll point out anything, even if it's minor, that we got wrong.
That's all you have to do there.
We had previously reported this.
That was reported in error.
Explain yourself.
Apologize.
That's it.
And is he going to do it in next week's issue?
It would seem that if he can go back and change the issue that's currently out,
he couldn't take it back from what he had sent out, but on his
sources or site or board or however the fucking kids get this thing, you can't find it anymore written like that.
That whole part's been deleted.
But he.
He obviously,
Brian, you just saw these fucking guys and what they look like this goddamn week.
How could you fall for a 10-year-old fucking video?
Yeah, Triple H looks a lot younger and he had no beard, or at least nothing to speak of like he does now where it's a long one.
And The Rock looks like he's three times the size as he used to be.
Yeah, right there.
You know, but we're in modern times.
The Rock is 50.
He's got to be twice as big as he was when he was 40.
But
this is not,
I guess, the first time.
Well, we talked about on one of the programs we did recently,
Dave's confusion and or, you know, just blurting stuff out without getting to the root of it here lately,
where he had to come back the week after he wrote that the morale in the AEW locker room has never been greater.
He came back the following week and
let me just add that everybody's scared shitless that they're all going under, but it's what the.
They all get along as well as they ever have.
It's just collectively, they're all miserable.
Yes.
And then apparently,
with the sudden and abrupt severing of Scott DeMoore from TNA land,
well, Dave was right there on the spot reporting that, well, now Tommy Dreamer will be the head of creative.
But that
declaration apparently was denied by Tommy Dreamer, who said, no, I'm not running anything.
What are you talking about?
Why didn't you call me, Dave?
That's all you have to say.
Why didn't you call me and ask me?
Are people now just sending him stuff to see how far he'll go with printing shit, whether there's anything to it or not?
Or is he
just losing his ability to differentiate fact from fiction these days?
I don't know because the Triple H rock thing, he specifically cited that it was all over social media.
So we don't know if anyone sent that to him or if he just bumped into it online and thought it was in the moment.
With the TNA story, you could fact-check that pretty simply, can't you?
And again, Damoores,
he was president of TNA, even if he had his hand in everything.
It would change nothing about the creative team if the president, they would still be working under someone.
And if they weren't fired, they would still be in the same positions they were in, would they not?
It's not, you know, it's not like a fucking
you had to, oh, Colonel Mustard got him with a fucking candlestick in the drawing room, so now you're it.
Well, again, Dave reported that Tommy Dreamer was taking over as the head of TNA's creative team.
Tommy Dreamer came out and said that that isn't true.
Nothing's really changing.
He's involved with it delirious is still involved with it robert evans whoever that is not the famous robert evans
no actually i know this this robert evans he's a nice young man he came to one of our ring of honor camps years ago uh apparently got into the writing aspect was not a was not a bodybuilder par excellence or a giant or anything like that just a normal physique i think was his drawback but it'd be nice if it was the real robert evans i well then at least the uh i told
go himself, and then I hired Russo.
It'd be a more cinematic approach to things, but if they knew what they were doing,
Delirious would be the head of creative, but nevertheless.
Well, apparently, the new head of hold on there's a whole bunch of names here.
Former general manager of the Fight Network or Fight Network, if there's no the
Ariel Schneerer or Schneerer.
Forgive me, Ariel.
S-H-N-E-R-E-R.
E-I-E-I-O.
Schneerer.
Maybe.
Ariel Schneerer will oversee all content and work closely with the newly appointed TNA president, Anthony
Shichion.
I don't know who any of these fucking people are.
Wait a minute.
He's the one.
No, that guy.
Chichi-one.
He's the one that did the soundtrack for all those spaghetti westerns with with Clint Eastwood.
And again,
the former general manager of the Fight Network and Mr.
Chichion will be working together on all talent and creative decisions.
That's why everybody over there is writing letters.
What the fuck?
Who are these people?
It's like letting Cornette make decisions at NASA.
What the fuck?
Has anybody ever heard of these fucking people before?
How are they supposed to evaluate?
i i i'm not a judge on
the goddamn um
now i've lost the goddamn the singing contest american idol thank you i'm old i'm not a judge on american idol because i don't know how to judge people singing because i don't know anything about singing except i'm a talented amateur you know nothing about singing we could agree on that except i'm a talented amateur well you could stop it know nothing about singing well i could choose to continue but nevertheless
But what the, how are they going to be head of creative or making decisions about who are the good wrestlers?
I don't understand why any of these companies think that something like that will work.
You don't,
I'm not going to take my car to have the engine overhauled by a goddamn drywall guy.
Right?
Everybody's got their purpose and everybody's got their speciality.
But
is it wrong that I think it's less scary that these guys would have a hand in booking than Tommy Dreamer would have a hand in booking?
Unfortunately, no.
It's not wrong to think that because he, I mentioned, booked OVW for five weeks while I was on the wrong side of John Laurinitis one time.
And even the boys standing there doing the show couldn't understand what the fuck was going on.
And as a matter of fact,
after he booked his last show, I was coming back the next week.
Danny Davis, he had created some mystery, and Danny Davis said, Well, wait a minute, how's this going to fucking end?
He said, You guys, you take it from there.
What the fuck?
But nevertheless.
That's learning from Heyman.
That's what that is.
Well, and that's back when everybody,
in those days, everybody, oh, that Cornette, he just can't get along with that big executive, John Laurenitis.
It's all Cornette's fault.
He's a fucking hothead.
Yeah, man.
Anyway, nevertheless,
you can't expect the boys to have any confidence when someone who is in charge of what they are going to be doing on television as themselves and it affects them.
And if it's shit, they get it on them
has never been in charge or even involved in any of that particular area of endeavor before in their fucking life.
Are they going to come in and say, okay, creative team, you be creative and just call us if you need us.
But it's not really a leader or somebody that's going to fucking give them a direction of something.
And you have to wonder if the reaction from talent would be what it was if Scott DeMoore was replaced by someone who was considered a wrestling person, maybe someone they had worked with, either Elevate Delirious, like you said, or
hire someone who
has anything resembling a qualification for the job.
If they knew that all of a sudden it was going to be two people from Anthem Corporate put in charge of the wrestling company, I can understand why people would be a little upset about that.
And again, I mean, there is,
it's never happened in actual fact, as Adrian Street used to say, it's never happened, but there is always the possibility that they could do the smart thing and say, okay.
We own a wrestling company.
We will oversee you people, but you do the fucking wrestling.
And as long as the
returns are somewhat positive in whatever metrics they're using,
their financials and et cetera,
then
do what you're doing and explain it to us as we go along.
And do you need another star?
How much will that cost?
That type of thing.
But they've all, they all get the wrestling bug or they all think they're going to be.
They're either going to be Jim Heard and they're going to fucking show these goddamn wild gypsies how to fucking be business people
or they're the kip fries and mark out
for the performers and pay them twice as much as they should get to do the job they were hired for to begin with.
Well, if we're supposed to believe what we've been hearing, it may be the opposite because it sounds like one of Scott DeMore's issues, and we don't know exactly what the reason is still,
was he wanted them to increase the budget.
And to be honest, no matter what company you are, if you want to compete right now for talent, for good talent,
you're competing against Tony Khan, who throws money against a wall, doesn't give a shit.
And then anyone else, if they want to be on a big stage, you got WWE, but it's hard to get talent right now.
These guys may be there to cut budget severely and just say, you know what, we can get the same numbers and have the same success
with a cheaper roster.
You don't know.
No one knows exactly what this will mean or if it's just going to to be everything holds steady forever.
Or they could, you know, by what's that, Discovery Network, the Midget Show is on.
They could say, well, hey, they're doing better ratings than AEW.
Did you see that clip that someone sent on Twitter?
Because I saw it a few times of some of the action from that little person wrestling company.
These guys could work.
It was better than AEW.
It was like they were getting massive pops from the audience for the simplest things.
It was incredible.
I was afraid to watch it because I thought it'd be a bunch of fucking tables and garbage cans and shit.
You mean it was actually halfway good?
I don't know.
Whatever I saw, and I'm sure now you'll see it from a variety of places,
the crowd was going nuts for like a hip toss.
It was incredible.
But I guess to wrap this up, we're talking about Dave Meltzer.
Like you said, it became a story because he didn't acknowledge it.
He deleted it.
We'll see if he acknowledges it.
The observer has to be a different animal.
It's hard to just do now a weekly summation of things,
just like we deal with the podcast.
There's so much happening.
There's so much happening.
Well, he could probably save about two or three hours of his valuable work time by not droning on into detail every time some independent girl wrestler in Japan farts.
That would be a time saving for him.
He could just stick to the goddamn meat of the matter of what we're discussing in the wrestling business here, but he does do a lot of sub-genre,
very niche marketing for the dwindling audience that he retains.
So, I guess, in summation, there was no backstage angle filmed with Triple H and The Rock to set up a match at WrestleMania.
AEW
backstage
have never gotten along better, and they've also never been more unhappy collectively.
They're making good time, but they're hopelessly lost.
And finally, Tommy Dreamer is not the new head of TNA Creative.
And apparently, he was never even asked about it.
Instead, it's Ariel Schnerr,
who I'm sure trained at the knee of Eddie Graham.
Well, that was the update on a rough week for Dave Meltzer.
He was trending all week for the wrong reasons.
And I know it probably helps his business arguing with people, and his arguing is just like throwing back questions at them like in a condescending manner I don't really understand how productive that is
but it's hard to justify that shit when you're getting all this shit wrong in the observer
well and you talked about you know Tony Khan promotes by throwing money at the wall and Dave he appeals to this dwindling audience who primarily he has created of the fans of the buckaroos and their ilk and he throws shit at the wall to see if anything sticks.
And you know what?
A lot of people today, Brian, in this uncertain economy, they're throwing shit against the wall to see if it sticks.
And sometimes it sticks and sometimes it bounces back.
But you know what they say?
If you throw money at the wall and it don't bounce back, you go hungry, which is exactly why you should have an online store with Shopify.
Because Shopify.
Yeah, well, how'd you get there?
Yes, I agree with you.
Well, talking about making money after you throw it up against the wall to see if it bounces back.
And a lot of people these days are going hungry.
Well, you're going to be bouncing all over the walls if you get hooked up with Shopify folks as partners.
Because think about the team, the Venus and Serena, Pippin and Jordan, Gronk and Brady, Bachwinkle and Stevens, the perfect teammates down through the years when it comes to business.
That's you and Shopify.
Wait a minute.
Hold on here.
There you go.
We We got to, it says I got to put a sound effect in.
And that's the thing.
Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business, all the way from the conception stage to the actualization stage,
and then to the realization stage, and then to the penalization stage, and finally to the criminalization stage, and then to the sentencing stage.
They'll be with you every step of the way until you hit the big house and they turn around to find somebody else to partner with.
Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout, which is up to 36% better compared to other leading commerce platforms.
Do you know,
Brian, if you have Shopify and somebody buys an item on your store for $10,
it automatically jacks it up 36% and you get actually $10 plus $3.60.
You get $13.
It says 36% better.
There is no jacking up of anything behind the scenes or behind the back of the consumer.
It converts the checkout.
So
once the consumer pays and they just drain another 36% of the consumer.
But they don't drain anything.
No, we should not phrase it like that.
They're not draining anything.
And you friends won't be drained of anything when you use Shopify to power your small business.
They are there to help you.
Yes.
Because you have a small business.
You have a small staff.
They're there to almost be like an entire entire staff yes but they're not there that's
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And then you guys can start talking business because they're going to know yours and you're going to know theirs because you're all in this together and Shopify's extensive help resources are there to support your success every step of the way they can refer you to the best criminal defense attorneys they can tell you which officials in your town that need to be paid off once that this whole scam comes to light i'm telling you
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If they tell you you need something done, by God,
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Hey!
Oh my God.
You know what?
Before we talk about the wrestling programs, I've realized we've gone this far in the show, and I haven't given the people an update.
Some of the people out there, the cult of Cornette, have sent me their money.
And they need to know where their products are.
Yes, they do, Soupy.
Yes, the Midnight Express and Heavenly Bodies action figure tag team sets that went on sale on February the 10th, last week, as a matter of fact, last weekend.
The several hundred pictures have already been signed by yours truly.
And I mentioned Hotchkiss has illness in the family, but he's still a trooper and a warrior.
And this week, he's going to be picking these pictures up and packing things.
And by the following next weekend, what is that, 25th-ish or whatever,
the first couple of hundred packages should be ready to go out.
And we will continue doing that until everyone has their merchandise, which is still available at jimcornet.com, the Eaton and Condry version, the Eaton and Lane version, or Stan Lane and Dr.
Tom Pritchard, the Heavenly Bodies, as well as the last few hundred of the Midnight Express four packs right now at jimcornet.com.
All of them come with an autograph picture.
We've mentioned that.
Some of them come with the Milestones Midnight Express booklet,
and all of them suitable for displaying on your collective shelves with the beautiful display display boxes.
That's what I'm talking about.
That's right.
Your collective shelves will never be more full than they will once they have all of these many, many, many Midnight Express members and they're many, many, many figures.
Everybody's wearing different shit in all these sets too, by the way.
The outfits are all different.
And you can wear whatever you want and buy them today at jimcornet.com.
Jim, before we get to the other show.
You don't have to wear anything.
You don't have to wear anything at all when you buy these.
I believe we were going to talk earlier about the upcoming season of WWE Legends, Biography, and Rivals.
We were, weren't we?
That's right.
Well, I'm glad you remembered that.
Yes.
What are those fine programs?
Because again, this is, they've done a few seasons of these now.
We like the biographies in a lot of cases.
The Rivals has great
vintage footage and, you know, the wonderful aspect of the production that WWE does and the editing and et cetera.
But it's the pesky host and panel that have nothing to do with the subject that get in the way and take up valuable time.
So some of those our reviews are mixed.
Who are being focused?
Is that English?
What are the
subjects or who are the individuals?
There's nothing you can say there.
It doesn't sound right.
That are being focused on in these seasons of these programs, Brian.
Well, WWE biography returns on February 25th on AE
with Randy Orton.
I'm sure you were interviewed for that one.
Yeah, and they quit trying before when it last time.
But no, I'm sure there will probably be some vintage OVW footage.
I would love
if they hadn't botched everybody
that we sent them from OVW between 2003 and 2005.
I'd love if they put some footage of our new building that we moved into on goddamn national television.
All the footage they ever use is from the old warehouse in Jeffersonville, and it looks like shit.
We had a beautiful fucking building that, you know, looked great on television, and they destroyed all those people's careers before they attained legendary status.
But go ahead.
Week two, Jim, biography on actually not week two, I guess a few weeks later.
I think they're starting on February 25th, and then they're skipping a couple of weeks.
Well, they return March 17th with a preemption.
Instead, it will be an infomercial.
DDP.
DDP will be the subject.
And, of course, Yoga will be the sponsor of the program.
The next week, on the 24th, another one that should be interesting.
Davey Boy Smith.
I'm looking forward to that because
I know they got
almost his entire catalog.
He started with him in 84 and was there on and off, but I'm hoping that they research some of it because there is footage out there.
A long time ago, a friend in England sent
me a DVD compilation of Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy matches on television there before they even went to Calgary.
So it exists.
The question is, how deep are they going to go?
That would be interesting.
Young David
over there, I believe.
Yes.
Because he started when he was like 15.
And he looked it.
I mean, he looked like a really small, you would never imagine that he would turn into the British Bulldog years later.
Well, no, if in the day, if Dynamite and Davey Boy stood next to each other, they neither one,
both of them together wouldn't make a what
you got me so frazzled I can't form a cogent simile.
Both of them together would not have made one of them when they got on the sauce is what I'm trying to say.
That is correct.
And finally, Jim, on the 31st of March, biography of Roman Reigns.
And that'll be interesting again, too, as more modern guys.
So you can't go back and look at vintage footage.
He is also, you know, their biggest modern era star.
How do you feel about the fact that they can't tell a story without presenting him in a sympathetic manner due to his illness?
And this is right before WrestleMania.
So you're presenting him as a real sympathetic babyface going into WrestleMania because they get a lot of viewers on these shows.
Yeah.
Might have held it off till next year because by next year, I think they'll want to present him as a sympathetic baby face.
Well, those are the episodes, the four weeks announced so far for WWE Rivals Jim on the 25th.
Sponsored by the Wrestling Observer newsletter.
It's Triple H versus The Rock.
Oh, my God.
Do you think he conflated these things in his mind because he never stops hunching over that keyboard, typing drivel about independent wrestling in Kansas?
Oh, well, no wonder they're doing a special on their rivalry.
They're going to meet again.
Sadly, Kansas is dead right now.
This
is a perfect time for it because they're actually going to be doing a version of a rivalry with Triple H as the chief content officer and the rock on the board of directors.
So
if, and I think,
well, shit,
the edit was probably done before the events of the last month.
So I would hope on this program that they would be a little, if they're interviewed, either one of them on a sit-down, they would still be a little prickly with the other to keep that illusion going.
And I will say this because I have some knowledge of previous A ⁇ E WWE shows.
There are times where they're producing it up until the week of the show.
Well, in that case, then they might revamp some things.
On the 17th of March, John Cena versus Randy Orton.
And, you know, this will actually be interesting to see how much
of the old warehouse in Jeffersonville they use the OVW footage because they had their first
in-ring matches in OVW and on our television.
But again, obviously, they've done a few things since then.
And it works because here, Orton,
it makes Orton look bigger that he was a,
even today, for the modern fans that may have come along last few years, that he was a rival of the guy that, you know, went Hollywood and is a major superstar.
Well, Jim, the next week's episode is sponsored by AEW Rampage.
On the 24th, it's Edge and Christian versus Matt and Jeff Hardy.
I wonder how are they just
going to ignore the existence of AEW?
Are they going to Matt and Jeff have been there a while.
They may not be interviewed for it.
Christian's been there for a while.
But
they do have plenty of archival interviews with
us about this feud.
True, true.
So they're going to use old comments of everybody except maybe Edge.
They'll probably ignore that AEW exists and kind of sidestep around that all of these guys are actually still wrestling.
Should it be these two teams or should the Dudleys be in there too?
I think
everybody, when they think of the Ladders, they think of the Hardys and Edge and Christian because they were the daredevils.
I think if anything,
the Dudleys might have been some glue in the middle that held everybody else from not killing themselves themselves at this point, you know.
But
it's again,
maybe AE knows what the WWE and AEW and everybody else don't.
In a three-way, nobody gets over.
Tell the fucking story simple.
And finally, Jim, on March 31st, WWE rivals will be Daniel Bryan versus The Miz.
If you were to sit somebody down that had watched WWE or F wrestling over the last 40 years and sit right down
every rivalry you can remember,
would anybody have ever come to that?
Now, with that said, maybe they'll present an interesting story that we're not thinking of, and it'll be the sleeper hit of the season.
Or maybe it'll be the one of the season that makes everybody go sleep.
I mean, they don't really do anything from the 80s.
I mean, there's so many things they've never done anything for.
And I can understand why, I guess, in a lot of cases, they want to to ignore everything.
I mean, they did the obvious, the Hogan and Savage,
but they don't delve any deeper into
the catalog in the 80s, which they...
Because they can't.
What are you going to do?
Roddy Piper versus Adrian Adonis.
Then you got to get into the whole WWE portrayal of Adrian Adonis.
Well, but I'm sure there's things that you could just show some fucking classic footage and talk about
the rivalry without
having to necessarily put anybody in there wearing a dress or whatever.
You know, it's interesting, thinking about everything we know now about Vince,
remember when they did the big angle where Andre the Giant,
nobody could ever win a match, teamed up with S.D.
Jones, and they proved it.
They put Andre the Giant with S.D.
Jones against Big John Studd and Ken Patero with Bobby Heenan, and they kicked the shit out of them and cut Andre's hair.
And that's when Vince...
on commentary was saying, they are raping him of his dignity
over and over again.
It was such an awkward phrasing, and
you know, I don't know why he would say that, but he did it over and over.
So it was a well-thought-out thing or a thought-out thing from him.
I was about to say, let's drop the well-thought-out.
But knowing what we are hearing now, and just knowing about how he seems to revel in humiliation, it's interesting that that's how his big Andre angle
was portrayed.
That was Vince, even when he wasn't, or on,
I don't even know if he ever was now not, but when he wasn't actively being a sexual deviant, Vince, that was the promoter in Vince.
He wanted the hyperbole.
He wanted to think of the strongest phrasing that he possibly could for
anything.
And they're raping him of his dignity.
You know, in his mind, is that whatever the fuck.
But that's where he was going with that.
But that's, you know, as a matter of fact, we've got probably
the WrestleMania main event and that everybody wants and Cody Rhodes potentially going to finish the story of whatever.
If Vince was still here, I don't think we would have got that.
Not because that he didn't like Cody, but because he'd never think about it.
How many times would he back down to any public pressure or change his mind or alter shit that he had announced and said?
If he didn't fucking absolutely have to, and especially when people were telling him he ought to, I think he would have still gone with it.
He would, that was the, he would, whether it was the way he was phrasing things as an announcer or the way that he wanted you to do things as an announcer, which is why he ended up overproducing everybody to the point where they all quit or fucking got a nervous tick.
He just, he had control, like you said, he had all over everything.
I don't think he would have changed his mind.
I don't think he would have backed up and switched this thing.
And think how long he refused to switch Roman Reigns' heel, and then Roman Reigns became the biggest heel he'd made in 15 years.
Well, we'll see if that's a future episode of Rivals, Vince McMahon versus Reality.
But this is the upcoming season on AE biography and rivals, and this is your show.
All right.
Well, instead of watching programs about
all the wrestlers that made money and drew money in the wrestling business, now we go to the modern program where they may be making it, but they sure ain't drawing it.
Our weekly stop-in in the crazy world of Tony Kahn.
Boy, if his name was only Arthur Brown, that would have been so perfect.
They were in Austin, Texas for the Valentine's Day episode,
February 14th of AEW Dynamite.
Now, when they came on the air, Sockface said the crowd was, they were jam-packed in Austin.
Now, it did look like they had a few more people than the, what, the 2,200 they had out in in Las Vegas the week before.
But were they jam-packed, Brian?
Do we have any verification of that?
Did they suddenly fill up a fucking building and we didn't hear about it?
Give me a moment.
I'll pull it up.
Well, while you're pulling that up, I'll tell you what they pulled out.
I'm beating myself.
Dax Harwood versus the plumber.
Plumber Moxley opened the episode
for what reason, you might ask?
Just like everybody would add, there is no reason.
It's a rib, right now, on Dax.
Is this
they're the best in-ring tag team
in the business now that Jay Briscoe is gone?
Even though they've been booked putridly and stumbled over
the buckaroos getting in their path of being
used prominently.
But why do they insist on breaking the team up?
And then, and
not that I want to bestow this fate on Cash Wheeler, but he's goddamn as good as Dax is.
And they're both better than 95%
of the wrestlers on the AEW roster.
Why do they break them up and constantly put Dax in singles matches that he never, ever, ever wins?
And somehow,
I don't want to be a spoiler here,
but somehow they managed to not only put him in a singles match and beat him, just choke him out flat in the middle of the ring, then have his partner save him and beat him up and choke him out too.
Is it a rib?
Why would you use the fucking pudding gang, Muffin Top Taylor and his friend Trent?
Why would you use that?
Well, why would you use them at all?
That's a question.
But why would you even use them this badly?
for this long?
Well, before you explain to the listeners exactly what you're talking about, remember I told you I saw a few episodes of Collision that you didn't see?
Yes.
And there were FTR segments where they got beat down, I think by the House of Black.
And it was,
it was like, it's hard to explain.
Just Dak's laying there selling.
It almost looks like it's real.
Like the soul is getting stomped out of him.
And he's realizing what is happening.
But it doesn't.
The booking of FTR has been atrocious since a while back.
Well, and that's again,
there was no reason for a lot of the matches, Tony Books, but there's no reason for this.
And somebody's going to say, well, they did an angle on collision.
Yeah, no, I'm saying there's no reason
for this.
And
again, because Dax never wins a single match, you know what's going to happen, but it's also going to be
in normal cases, a good match.
In this case, the best that anybody could do with the fucking plumber, who is unwatchable.
And I wrote at the top, can even Dax make this schlub look like something?
And
I was torn from the start because it was mostly a Moxley kind of fucking thing.
Within the first minute, Moxley kissed Dax and then Dax kissed him back.
No matter what he's doing, Dax's shit looks halfway professional and it looks like it connects or he knows what he's doing in the ring and he looks physically presentable.
Moxley's shit is sloppy or weak or both.
And, you know, he had to do Moxley's shit, which is chopping and biting.
And every once in a while, Moxley thinks he's hoist Gracie and he's going to stretch somebody.
There wasn't the normal amount of Moxley's bullshit.
They didn't go out into the goddamn arena in the concession stand or stay out on the floor for five minutes at a time, but they still had slap fights and, you know, bullshit that Moxley does.
And then
at one point,
they had a fight on the turnbuckle,
and Dax took the bump off and was laying there for Moxley to apparently come off the top or whatever, but he laid there
motionless for 20 seconds while Moxley just sat on the turnbuckle doing nothing nothing like he's selling dizzy.
Maybe he was concussed again.
But that's what I was talking about with Dax.
I've seen him sell multiple times just motionless.
And it's.
Well, because he was waiting for the motherfucker to do something.
He didn't want to move and have the guy come off the top rope and land on his face.
That happens with a regular basis over there in that company.
But he's laying there.
Well, the spot is that he's going to jump up and run to the corner and climb up and superplex Moxley.
but the idea was that when he would take the bump, Moxley would do something to indicate that he was going to come off the top rope, and then Dax would jump up and run up there.
Well, instead, Moxley just sits on a top rope with that dumb, dopey, gomer pile look on his fucking wretched face.
And then
Dax jumped up and got up on the turnbuckle, and Moxley not only fed Dax his head, but visibly grabbed Dax's arm and put it over his head and put himself in the fucking superplex.
He is the fakest looking professional wrestler in the fucking business today.
Plumber fucking Moxley.
So then they made the five-minute remaining call.
So at least they listened last week.
Because they're not going to a draw, but now if they actually call that every once in a while, people might not know for sure.
And they did back in the pile drivers were two counts.
And Dax hit a nice brain buster on him.
That was a two-count.
And then Dax went to headbutt him off the top rope, and Moxley just turned and grabbed him in a choke as he landed and choked him out.
And then wouldn't let go.
And then Cash came in and got on Moxley, and Claudio came in and they choked both of them out.
What they do at FTR never makes you want to see them get even with the people that did it to them.
It just makes you want it all to go away.
Yeah, or make you believe that they could if they tried.
Remember here about a year ago when the people would stand up as soon as they heard the music, stand up and cheer, and you had FTR at FTR.
And now it's okay,
but they've managed to beat that passion out of the fans
for FTR by
beating them, marginalizing them, hiding them.
They had the best tag team match in the history of television last summer.
And these jackoff fucking Mexican interchangeable mass dip shits and these fucking
featherweight fucking independent outlaw mud show Japanese girls and this interchangeable parade of indirific morons
that Tony brandishes in front of us on a weekly basis, and he's not got room
to use the only really competent, quality, talented tag team he has on his roster.
Fucking hell.
Any other comments on this contest?
No, I didn't like it at all.
I hate Moxley's matches.
Even physically, it's like he's not,
I don't know, He used to be in better shape.
So now he's trying to portray himself as a bigger badass than ever before, and he's not even looking as impressive as he used to.
And the BCC stuff, just overall,
when has it been a help to the booking or the company, the BCC?
Moxley's great idea.
Hit Moxley and Claudio and Danielson with Regal.
You know, again, they're being put over so strong here.
Why?
Wait, wait.
Who was the other one?
Wheeler Yuta.
Where's he?
That's a good question.
He just diss a fucking peered.
Oh, God, I hope they don't bring him in because then you get him against Garcia because Garcia is FDR's young boy now.
But yeah, if anybody has any milk in their refrigerator, see if there's a picture of Wheeler Yuta on the carton.
Is that a dated reference?
Will the young folks get that one?
Do they still do that?
Yeah, I don't know because it was kind of almost dated when I was a kid, but people understood the reference because a lot of people made it.
I don't know if people make it as much anymore because they don't make jokes about missing kids like they used to.
Well, you know, that's all we used to do.
We were kids, make fucking jokes about the ones that we couldn't find.
But I'll tell you what.
Well, but I may have missed that reference anyway.
If they want to find Moxley, they need to put his picture on a bottle of whiskey.
Anyway, so then...
They were in the back with Don Fallus talking about his family, the Fallus family.
And apparently, no one will fight our friend Take.
Now, you know, I got heat the other day for actually trying to pronounce his name like you do because people say, hey, goddamn it, we like Take a shit.
I hate to take something that gives the people pleasure away from them.
But at the same time, I feel badly for this poor guy because he is talented and he's in the middle of a shit show.
Yeah, he's not complaining about this.
Take a hike.
How about that?
Well,
I'm just going to settle in the middle and call him Take.
But
am I correct that the story that he was, Don was telling here was that nobody will fight him.
Nobody will fight Take.
This promo is something.
Nobody
can compare to him.
He can't find any competition and nobody wants to get in the ring with him.
So Don is going to have him fight somebody else from his own family,
which is going to be Will Ostrich.
I thought he was going to say Will Hobbs at first because he looked at Hobbes and he said Will and then he said ostrich or osprey.
Excuse me.
Well, either one.
People know when you say that's the osprey is ostrich's nickname.
But how does this make sense?
And he said, it's going to be the greatest match between my two guys.
I've got two of these stars here and I want one of them to hurt the other one for the sake of having a good match.
Is this what?
Was that the explanation or was I just sleepy and I couldn't fucking follow it?
There was no valid or good explanation to any of this.
It makes no sense that this would be the match they're going to have.
If they use this as some kind of bullshit way to turn
one of them, it makes no sense.
Then it's just rushing into something with weird booking to justify the
end justifies the means, I guess.
One would think because they've just signed
Ostrich and he's just going to start soon that he wouldn't be doing jobs.
So, would they, are they going to beat Take?
And when he's barely beaten anybody himself in any singles matches that we've hardly ever seen?
Well, here's the issue, too.
Now, Osprey's really good.
We don't know how they're going to use him.
Even good people who are over get beaten down in AEW
or just disappear, which is the same as getting beaten down in AEW.
If they have plans for him and they gave him reportedly a massive contract to keep him away from WWE.
And he said, My favorite is still, I signed at AEW because I wanted to spend more time at home with my family.
He lives in England, he lives in England, but that's still the greatest reason ever.
But if they're going to do something with him and they're going to turn him babyface or run with him as a heel,
there aren't too many top people slotted in right now.
Right?
I mean, who's the top babyface and top heel in the company?
Swerve
is probably the top babyface, although he's still aligned with a heel stable.
Right.
Samoa Joe, you can't really call him the top heel or top babyface, can you?
Well, he's presented as a heel and acted as a heel, and because that he's a babyface to the fans, but he's the champion, so he can defend against anybody.
I don't know.
Maybe they, I mean, this could be a chance to come up with some kind of stupid reason to get Osprey to turn or get the Callus family to turn on Osprey.
Because otherwise, you're turning to catch the babyface, or otherwise, you're just having a match with these two stable members, and they'll shake hands, and you'll get a five-minute warning, and it'll go close to the.
I don't know what the reason for this.
Tate can't be a babyface because he can't talk.
So, instantly, that ain't going to work.
He needs to be a heel.
He looks good.
And so, maybe they have Buyer's remorse that they spent all this money for Ostrich and put him in this group of malevolent fucking heels.
Yeah, he could talk.
I mean, it's, you know, hey, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, very much like it's going to a Libertines concert.
But
he may be a babyface option.
So we'll see what happens.
Makes no sense, though.
Makes no sense.
Well, Wardlow beats somebody.
You know, let me stop you there.
Speaking of makes no sense, I thought about this the other day because there's a name that we haven't mentioned in a while and I don't think we're going to be mentioning in a while, MJF.
Yeah.
He's so banged up, he's not going to be there for a while.
Thank God.
It'll only help him not being maligned with all this stuff or aligned with all this stuff, I guess.
Or maligned by being aligned.
That's right.
But let's not forget, Adam Cole was the devil.
They built up this whole thing where he was spending all these months pretending to be MJF's friend, these bad segments, whatever.
MJF is the world champion, top babyface in the company.
They did this.
Wardlow.
You had the guys doing the bad comedy like The Kingdom and Roddy.
But they attacked the top baby face, knocked him out of action, world champion.
Have they meant anything since that day?
Nothing.
Are they even a top heel faction?
Does anyone even remember they're on the show until they pop up?
I didn't.
I forgot about them.
Wardlow came out.
I was like, oh shit.
Yeah, Adam Cole is a slight.
Well, besides that, if you go back in history, the last person,
not the last person, but the person in the history of AEW
that has the most decisive victory over MJF flat in the middle of the ring one, two, three, is Wardlow.
After MJF tormented him for months on end with his contract and a blah, blah, blah,
which they've recycled with Christian Cage and Dino Douche and et cetera, et cetera,
he beat him flat in the middle of the ring and that was just over.
And then
he went into the feud with the security and the fake lawyer.
And since then, anytime they try to do anything with Wardlow, which has been few and far between, it's stupid, it don't work.
And it's got to the point where now they had him over doing the powerbomb symphony that people wanted to see.
And then they derailed that to the point where now it's just every once in a while he comes out and powerbombs somebody.
And there's no focus, and there's no, who do you want to see Wardlow wrestle?
Wardlow versus
redeep, reedy.
Yeah, I mean, and then it's also just weird in general.
I like the idea of squash matches, as we call them.
I think they're an important part of the wrestling television presentation that's kind of gone.
So I'm not going to criticize the idea of having one.
But it leads to something.
Yeah, but also when you have just one in the middle of a show that never has any,
what is it?
Like, it doesn't feel real in a sense.
Like, it's just like, okay, what is this?
They're giving this one guy and...
The baddest motherfucker on the show is getting the easiest win.
Yeah.
Why?
Well, and the why is obvious to everybody sitting in a building because this is the only thing they want to see him do.
They come out and do a few power moves and power bomb a fucking guy.
But
there's no, he has no rival, no nemesis.
There's no clear direction of why he's going to be the muscle for his group to succeed in such and such manner.
The guy that...
is supposed to be telling them all what to do is a fucking cripple.
And the person they turned on
and deprived of his world title is not even here.
So it's a goddamn shit show.
Anyway,
speaking of a shit show,
Edge has now decided he wants to have good matches, trademark,
with every one of these indie riffic jack offs on the roster.
And this week, it was Daniel Garcia.
And
as I was watching this, Stacey and Harley were in the room because I was giving Harley a belly rub, and Stacey was looking, and she, what the fuck?
I told her I couldn't have gotten Daniel Garcia over on OVW television,
where the local fan base was forgiving of inexperience and greenness because they knew what the deal was, that it was the developmental system.
But
Daniel Garcia is not at smooth Johnny Spade level.
As a local guy, never got a fucking contract.
He lived here in Louisville and he worked for Danny and he worked for us for a while.
He could talk and he could work and he had some personality.
And unfortunately, he was probably only about 195 pounds, so he was a dwarf at that fucking point.
But he could get heel heel heat, and he had oomph to him.
Garcia has a bland physique, a blank
stare look on his face, a nondescript head.
I've never heard that before.
What is that?
Nothing, there's no, there's no, he's not a talker.
He's not a bullshitter.
He's not a personality.
He don't have the oomph in the ring or some gaga to him.
Or so there's no, there's nothing there.
He does fucking wrestling moves.
There's nothing to work with.
Now, an AEW defender would say, well, he has shown a lot more personality since he started doing his little dance on the runway.
Horse shit.
There's a boring fucking guy that everybody gets a kick out of him doing the one interesting thing that he does in his life in the corner at a party.
All right.
Well, what about the party that was Daniel Garcia versus Adam Copeland?
So
after about 12 minutes of this,
Edge has the crossface on, and here comes Dino and Nick Plain, and they come in and get a disqualification.
So he did, because Garcia is a babyface also.
It's a babyface match on top of that that they're having for why, who knows, to potentially increase the chances that poor Edge is going to get hurt more he does this shit.
So Edge has the crossface.
Here comes Dino and Nick Plain in.
DQ.
Christian Cage comes down along with Nick Plain's mom.
And Christian gets the two chairs like he's going to do the concerto, but they've got
Daddy Job Guy at Ringside that tries to stop him by jerking the chair away from him.
So the dinosaur levels
Daddy Mac.
There's a sentence never uttered before.
Yeah, the dinosaur leveled Daddy Mac,
And then
they get heat on Garcia.
And then Edge is selling somewhere on the floor.
They go for the concerto on Garcia, but Edge saves him.
And then Nick Plain's mom goes from behind with the old women-style uppercut nut shot on Edge, and the heels beat up Edge.
And then Christian gives him the concerto,
which again, I don't care how many times they switch the camera on a moment of impact and how loud it sounds when you hit one chair with the other chair.
Bill Watts, and he would have been right, and I would have done the same thing if the concerto was a thing I'd had to deal with at OVW or Ring of Honor.
Fortunately, nobody tried to do it.
As phony as a football bat, unless the guy's brains squirt out the top of his skull, don't do it.
And anybody that had done that in front of Bill Watts or Eddie Graham or whoever, they would have fined him.
Said, don't ever do that again.
Does anybody believe that thing?
And you can't even sell it.
What are you going to do?
Kick your feet up and down?
There's no bump to take from it.
And it looks hogwash.
Am I being too goddamn strict with this?
Well, we've probably seen it too often for it to have the same impact that it would the first time you see it or hear it.
But the other problem for me is,
since Edge returned or Adam Copeland returned to wrestling a few years ago, how many times have we seen him just beaten down?
Too.
Yeah, too many times.
I don't care anymore.
Like, they completely blew it with this Adam Copeland, the layup of a feud, Adam Copeland and Christian.
And they overcomplicated it with everything.
What is this feud?
Do you think, certainly it's not Edge and Christian.
Christian's a smart guy.
He's been, he was smart for longer than most of the people in this company with being able to come out on this television program and look professional and not have to do anything stupid or be involved with children.
He was smart because he was getting paid for not doing anything for a long time.
That's why he was smart.
Well, but when he did something, it still, you know,
it stood out as being professional at a level that, you know, wasn't matched on most of the rest of the program.
And now he's got the woman and the fucking teenager and the goddamn big useless lizard and
and his
longtime best friend who was a major star in the business edge until just six months ago not even
now it's like eh nobody gives a shit and who's he gonna be aligned with daniel garcia who he gets along with after this match who's been aligned with far who just got their ass kicked on the show it's
it's just so stupid the way the booking the booking's stupid but let's uh move on from that jim i have to answer a question from earlier that you had yes the attendance for aew dynamite at the heb center h eb center i don't know if you pronounce it's h dash e dash b
uh but they were packed jam packed is what we heard from sock face jam packed wednesday february 14th this is from wrestle ticks cedar park texas
there were 3246 tickets distributed
Now, previously, they've been there four times.
I'll go from the beginning.
Okay.
February 12th, 2020.
So that is four years ago.
They debuted there 4,143.
The second time there, year and a half later,
July 14th, 2021, Fighter Fest,
4,680.
The next time, March 23rd, 2022 for Dynamite, 4,327.
And then December of 2022, later that same year for Dynamite, 3,379.
And this one was 3,246.
I'm surprised that they've held up that well.
And for the record, the Hebb Center, HEB Center, I don't know what the fuck this place is, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm very sorry.
Holds 8,000 people.
Well, at least 700 is capacity.
At least they weren't in the Superdome.
But
again, I don't know how they've held up that well.
If people have seen,
the more you see of this, the less you want to see of this, because the less it changes.
Except
they're bleeding stars.
They're bleeding name attractions to where now it's, you know.
It's the thing.
It's like WWE for years wanted to make WWE the brand so the wrestlers didn't matter.
And it turns out that works for like mid-card and below, but you still need big stars that you could.
Yeah.
WWE with these stars is coming to your town.
Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, whatever it may be.
AEW has the opposite.
Everything's about the brand because there's no one they could put that will draw.
Brian Danielson.
So now you have to hope that a WWE fan will, first of all, just quickly recognize that that is the former Daniel Bryan and then want to see what they're going to be doing here.
Moxley, he's not helping much.
The Bucks, give me a break.
Osprey.
Talented guy.
Let's see what he could do as far as a draw in America.
They got to start him from scratch.
Nobody knows who the fuck he is except the same people that are already watching this program to begin with.
The buzz around the brand of AEW was strong enough in the beginning to help them overcome one of the big problems we foresaw early on, which is how is this going to work as a week-to-week promotion?
How are they going to get enough fans in there?
And now the excitement's gone.
The stars are gone.
The guys that were there in the beginning are still there.
No one's doing better.
It's like you said, it's amazing they draw even this much.
but no they they get along better than ever
but see that's the thing brian that's what i'm trying to tell you you don't need to make money when when like you said tony's got enough money he can just he can just throw it out the window he can pitch it like a football or like a soccer ball he can he can do anything he wants to with normal people Is that video of Spanky McFarlane throwing the money out the window yesterday?
There you go.
Yes.
Just throw the take my money.
He can just throw the money away.
He can burn the money.
He can stuff the money in his mattress.
He can do anything he wants to with it.
Normal people have to save money.
Normal people cannot just have an unlimited budget and just throw caution to the winds and just pay big prices, for example, for razor blades.
Normal people can't do that, Brian.
Do you pay normal prices for razor blades?
even as successful as you are?
Not anymore.
Not anymore, folks.
I don't care if you're rich or poor or whether you're just comfortable.
You don't want to spend money more than you have to.
And that's why our friends at Harry's have made shaving not only more convenient, but also less expensive.
Because the folks at Harry's, they've not only got the equipment that can make your face slicker than come on a gold tooth, but they've also got it at the right price.
Now, for example, I mentioned the incredible package that I got from Harry's not too long ago with the ergonomically designed razor with the weighted handle that just feels so good in your hand and it grips well.
You don't drop it and cut your dick off by accident.
And then also the cartridge that has five blades.
Do you remember the commercial they used to have where the one blade would stretch
the whisker out?
and the other blade would cut part of it off and then the third blade would cut the rest of it off before it jerked back into your face.
Now, this was very technologically illustrated with fine cartoonery.
Well, there's five blades now.
It pulls the whisker out, then it pulls it out some more, then it cuts it off at the base, then the last two blades follow it into your cheek and eradicate the follicle.
That's what happens with a Harry's five-blade razor cartridge.
And the best part about it is they've got the the deodorants and the lotions and the body wash and the hair gel and the the shaving cream and all the other things go along with it.
And you don't have to go to the store.
You can get it delivered to your own home and pay much less.
You don't have to go through that cumbersome process of having the cashier take the warning bell off the thing so you won't be electrocuted when you walk out the door.
And I'll have you know, Brian, that I got such a close shave, my face was so slick when I laid down that night and went to bed and put my weary head on the pillow, it slipped right off the pillow, and I fell straight to the floor headfirst and bruised my coccyx.
No, no, this has nothing to do with Harry's.
Well, not until the suit is filed.
No, there will be no suit.
There would be no suit, but if you were wearing a suit, you would have it buttoned up to the neck.
And let's talk about the neck up and Harry's.
Shaving up the neck up.
Well, here, speaking of necking into your faces, Sislick, if your wife was to come and give you a peck on the cheek, she'll slide right out the front door.
The German-engineered blades made in their own factory stay sharp longer.
Now, wait a minute.
Is Harry's from Germany?
They're German-engineered.
They brought the Germans over here, had them engineer the blades.
Customizable delivery options for scheduled refills start as low as $2.
And you can get a five-blade razor, a weighted handle, the foaming shaved gel, and a travel cover.
So you don't slice yourself up sticking your hand in your bag looking for this bad boy.
And all that is only $3
at Harry's.com.
That's H-A-R-R-Y-S noapostrophe.com slash J-C-E
razor, handle, foaming shave gel, travel cover for $3.
And then, if you like, they will continue to send you these refills for, as I mentioned, as low as $2.
And they've also got the, you know, they got the body wash and scents like the redwood and the wildlands and stone and mud and silt and compost.
It's a very, you'll commune with nature, folks, with these wide variety of scents.
And it's to where that the wildlife will be able to smell you out and find you.
So if you're walking down a street and you're attacked by a cougar or a grizzly bear.
It will be the woman variety of cougar.
You have nothing to fear with
shaving your face.
If you use redwood body wash, it does increase the chances that some dog's going to take a piss on your leg.
But they've got extra strength, high-quality, amazing-smelling deodorant for just $5.
And just like Plyboy Frazier sat down on the bench next to me in the locker room at the Tupelo Sports Arena one night, and he had a half-gallon mason jar full of what looked like urine.
And he fiddled with the top of it a little bit where he poked some holes in it and unscrewed it a second, and he sprinkled some out in his hand and started slapping it under his goddamn armpits.
I said, Frazier, what's that?
He said, Oh, it's cologne, neighbor.
I buy it by the gallon.
It's cheaper that way.
Well, you don't need to get a gallon from Harry's.
You can buy a reasonable portion fit for a human being for just $5.
No risk trial.
You don't like your shave?
No worries.
They will come back to your house and they will glue that fucking hair back on your face.
And they've got the convenient subscription option that you can cancel at any time.
You need to keep paying, but you don't have to get the stuff anymore.
So getting the best doesn't mean spending the most.
When you shave with Harry's, you can get started with a $13 trial set for just $3
at Harry's.com/slash JCE.
$3
$13 trial set for $3.
Easy for you to say.
Well, that's because I'm so gobsmacked and amazed at how they can charge this little.
And then you get all the other stuff and it doesn't cost much too.
You would think, no wonder Tony Khan can't afford to goddamn shave his face anymore.
He looks like the werewolf of London.
It's because he spent all his money on wrestlers.
Somebody needs to tell Tony about Harry.
All right.
Well, we're telling you about Harry's once again.
One more time.
Jim, what's that promo code?
Oh, I don't know.
I already looked away.
The promo code is JCE, Harry's.com/slash JCE.
All right.
Well, let's see.
What?
We're at the 9 o'clock hour in Dynamite.
Did you realize that?
I didn't, no.
Samoa Joe for the in-ring promo.
And since, of course, he is the heel world champion who breaks people's bones and stomps on them and
commits all kinds of acts of mayhem.
The people love him.
They're chanting, Joe, Joe, Joe.
And he's pissed off because, of course, the reason why all of us are pissed off because last week when Swerve Strickland and Hangnail Page went to a time limit draw in their match to determine the contender to Samoa Joe's title.
As Joe said, they made my match bigger and dumber because now it's a three-way.
And nobody wanted to see this because nobody wants to see Paige.
But
anyway, those are the conditions we're working under because Tony Kahn is mentally damaged.
So Joe says, I'm going to hurt both of them then, and there's nothing that they can do about it.
And then that's, of course, means that Swerve Strickland's music plays.
And here he comes, and there were massive Swerves house chants, the terrorizer of babies, the
Reaper of Souls, massive baby face.
And Swerve gets in, and Brian, did you catch the...
I've heard this happen at a comedy club,
but I've never heard it at a wrestling show in an actual real arena, maybe TV studio wrestling, but I've never heard one
random fan
in an arena that seats 9,000 people,
that it would be quiet enough and that that person would have the timing and be loud enough that he could pop the whole fucking room in the middle of an in-ring interview.
But that's what happened.
Swerve says, Joe, when you became champ, you said, and he kind of turns and he starts walking the other way.
And I guess he's going to, for effect, he paused.
He's going to say, and he says, you said,
and a fan from somewhere just said, what'd he say?
And all the crowd started laughing, and it stopped fucking Swerve.
And he had a turn and ignited like, What?
And are they in a library that one crowd or one guy in the crowd can pop the crowd with the with no microphone from the stands?
What the
so anyway, um,
Swerve cut a hell of a babyface promo, putting himself over and
got, you know, the people who would listen to this promo would be with him and want to support him to win the title.
Which,
if they're going to make him a babyface, that's fine.
But why does he have a heel manager who actually Nana has no heat when he's with Swerve?
They love the dance, but then Nana's supposed to have heat when he comes out with those.
fucking job guy schlub heels that they put him with
i don't know what the fuck
And then here comes Paige to interrupt the thing, and the fans start booing the shit out of him.
And of course, now it's obvious that
they want him to because
they were doing it anyway.
So
I guess it's obvious they want him to, Brian, right?
Because
Paige is acting more and more obnoxious and more and more entitled and more and more douchebaggy, or is that just
he's he's shooting again?
Paige is the heel.
I've been saying it all along.
The eliter heels.
But do they, does, does Paige know he's the heel yet?
Oh, I think they're playing into it, yes.
Okay, all right.
I want to make sure.
I think the mustache being grown was because he turned heel.
It's as simple as that.
What did he mean by because he's mad at the internet?
He'll be a good guy when he uses Harry's.
Whoa.
Actually, he'll have to pay for Harry's to be a good guy.
But
what did he mean?
But his first words were on the microphone when he's getting the ring.
Paige, when you write your weekly dynamite report, don't say I was mad last week.
Did somebody report that he was mad last week over some part of his segment or something that happened?
And now he's got to answer.
He feels he needs to answer them on Tony's national television show.
You know, he's so boring.
I don't even know, actually.
I haven't heard a thing.
He didn't answer CM Punk when CM Punk called him out on the national television show, but I guess he's mad.
No, he didn't have someone who didn't say goddamn much from what I understand in the fucking hallway in the back when CM Punk confronted him, and it wasn't a goddamn national television show, but we won't go into that.
But he said, when you write your weekly dynamite report, whatever that fucking means to whoever he was mad at on the internet, don't say I was mad, but last week was horseshit and they bleeped horseshit.
They've been trying to bleep.
The language on his program and it's backed up in terms of the fucks and things, but you can obviously tell still that the the network doesn't really want it because they try to get it out of there
and as page's thing is swerve had 30 minutes and he couldn't beat me so i should have the match well you didn't beat him either dipshit of course that's the heel part
and page tells swerve that he doesn't deserve one second of my time and
Even if he knows he's a heel now and he's trying to be a heel, he can't talk.
He's trying to sound like a badass.
He's trying to sound like he's verbose and eloquent and knows big words.
He's trying to sound like he's got a personality.
He's a boring, empty-headed dipshits, never done anything in the business.
He cuts a wonderful fucking flip over the top rope.
And now
he's in this match.
And then Joe jumped in at the end.
and just saved the thing between Swerve being thrown off by a random drunk in the crowd and Paige coming in and bringing his thing down into the porcelain throne.
Joe jumped in, sounded like a badass like he meant it, said he's going to beat both of their asses, dropped the microphone and left.
And they played music.
Good way to get fuck out of there with Joe.
Do you want to see this match?
If Paige's plane is late or his car breaks down, I want to see Swerve versus Joe.
I'm probably going to fast forward through the goddamn three-way and just see what happens in the finish because Paige will clutter it up.
If Joe wins, he retains the title to drop it at a later date.
If Swerve wins, you get a big moment, but not as big because it's a three-way, not just him beating a world champion.
If Adam Page wins, he's a heel, and the Elite beat and the Bucs beat Sting, and Darby and win the tag titles, I could see AEW thinking that that would be a big thing to get heat on all these guys.
Tony's crazy, but he ain't going to put that belt on Paige again.
He's proven himself to be nothing but a failure and a loser.
Anyway, speaking of failing and losing,
apparently the friendship between Tony Storm and Deanna Perazo has failed, and Tony has lost her matching tattoo.
They did a segment in black and white on Tony having her tattoo covered up.
It looked like a goddamn prison tattoo anyway, didn't it?
Yeah, it wasn't.
I mean, I guess it had
significance or
some meaning to the title.
What it had was they probably got drunk in japan one night and had somebody do it in a goddamn japanese version of a walmart maybe so
so then that's when they did the whole buckaroos and darby allen deal and we covered that on the last show because that was so newsworthy for its preposterosity that darby came out and
as uncle dave said, tried to make Jim Cornette the babyface using all that Cornette vernacular
when he told the buckaroos the truth that they hired their friends and they're a bunch of jerks
on their own television.
But we covered that.
If you want to, you can look for it on YouTube or
the drive-through.
The drive-through or YouTube.
Either one.
Or actually listen to both.
See if there's any difference.
That's right, both.
And then Blue Sky faced Willow Nightingale.
And I guess Blue Sky was whispered to by Julia Hart before she entered the ring for the match.
So
what's Julia Hart doing these days?
She's apparently injured.
She'll be out of action for a little while.
All right.
Everyone gets hurt.
They had this match.
It's a weird dynamic Willows managed by Stokely Hathaway now, who's a heel.
I don't know what he's doing.
Wait a minute.
Blue Sky's a fucking heel.
I thought Willow was a smiling, happy baby.
But isn't Stokely Hathaway a heel?
Well, he was last time we saw him, but we haven't seen him in fucking months, have we?
No, but I think he's doing something in the greater AEW universe, like on YouTube or on YouTube.
Well, I know he was on commentary on this, but obviously, since I fast-forwarded the match, I didn't hear what he had to say.
Yeah, I didn't really watch anyway.
But since we only seem pop up once every six months, it couldn't have been crucial.
WWE should sign Willow Nightingale.
What?
Yeah, she'd be a really good babyface for them.
Well,
I'll pass.
And then finally, we come to the main event.
And the reason why that I have been waiting for this show to talk about this is because I can't wait to see or hear the numbers on the ratings.
I have remained blissfully ignorant of what the numbers were this week until you present them as only you can.
But the main event of a national televised wrestling program from this company
because they were in Austin, Texas, was another fake Texas death match where it's not even a Texas deathmatch.
It's just no DQ.
Anything goes lazy booking.
Matt Tavin,
who,
as I've mentioned, has a ton of talent and had a ton of talent 10 years ago and has come in and with Bennett was a good tag team.
And we haven't seen them do dick except comedy.
And I don't think he's had a singles match that we've seen on television, but he gets a Texas death match against the company mascot, our little puppy Pockets, in the main event, a Texas death match between a guy who's never had a singles match on TV
and the fucking boss's teacher's pet who doesn't deserve to be on TV at all.
And they fought in the arena and they fought on the stage and they fought with the furniture.
And Pockets got juice
and they went past 10 p.m.
So it was like everything that could be wrong with anything that you would put on a show
right here concentrated in this one little contest here.
Bad talent, no talent, nobody with a push, no reason for a match, endless garbage, couldn't hit their fucking time,
and devalued real wrestlers bleeding because it means nothing after the people who see
the fucking parody do it.
I obviously didn't see the finish because that happened after 10 o'clock, but I assume that Pockets is keeping his undefeated streak going.
That is indeed correct.
And it was an amazing spot where Matt Tabin did a dive.
It looked like he broke his neck.
He was fine, thankfully, but it looked bad headfirst into the desk.
It was really bad.
But that was AEW Dynamite.
You want to talk about the ratings?
Yes.
My faith in humanity could be restored if quarter eight went to 17 people.
Well, we shall find out.
AEW Dynamite on TBS Wednesday, February 14th, 2024, 8 to 10.05 p.m.
811,000 viewers on average.
I thought that was last week.
No, that's this week.
Last week was
last week was 8.05.
Oh,
they found 6,000 people this week.
Okay.
But the more important question is, as always, where did they start and where did they finish?
Well, these were compiled by WrestleNomics.
Jim, quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m.
Jon Moxley versus Dax Harwood with picture and picture,
944,000 viewers.
So is the bloom off the Big Bang rose lately?
They've been feeding them over a million people at the start, which is how they've been able to artificially inflate this average for quite some time, but the last couple of weeks, they're not even getting a million.
Are the Big Bang viewers turning off the show a minute early because they've smartened up to that thing and they don't want to be in any way involved with the wrestling program?
Or are people less interested in the Big Bang these days?
Well, again, it's another year that it's in reruns on the network.
I'm sure that that the ratings may not stay the same as they were, but we'll see what we can do about finding those Big Bang Theory numbers.
Again, this was Valentine's Day, but you would think maybe the audience going out for Valentine's Day
is not the audience watching the Big Bang Theory.
Yeah, well, do you seriously think that any of the AEW fans are getting any pussy?
Let's go to quarter two, 8:15 to 8:30 p.m.
The continuation of Mox vs.
Dax,
the post-match beatdown with the Black Bull Combat Club,
Don Callis' backstage promo,
Barrett Brown vs.
Wardlow.
Oh, that was who it was.
And a Young Bucks video,
905,000 viewers.
Also, the high point in the key demo, 18 to 49-year-old men, 431,000 viewers.
Now that is shocking.
That is much less of a drop.
They usually experience 100,000 people bailing pretty pretty quick.
Is this a tribute to Dax's ability to keep something even with the plumber interesting?
Because his shit always loses.
Moxley lost 100,000 people last week, didn't he?
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if we're prepared to call Dax Harwood a ratings draw yet.
Well, I'm saying, did he make Moxley palatable?
I don't know.
You know, we can't dismiss that.
Moxley has fans too.
But quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.,
an ad break, and Adam Copeland versus Daniel Garcia,
762,000 viewers.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Okay, maybe
people were just feeling the cold and the arthritis, and they were a little slow to get up because they lost 39,000 from quarter one to quarter two, and then they lost 143,000
from two to three.
143,000 lovers.
I mean, if you make a 9 p.m.
dinner appointment for Valentine's Day, you're leaving in quarter three.
Who's waiting till nine o'clock to eat dinner on Valentine's Day?
You wouldn't be getting to the good stuff till 11:30.
The working man, they've been out working all day.
They got to go to dinner before they have to go to sleep to wake up to get up the next day and jump on the Long Island Railroad and deal with it.
They're thinking about getting home that night and jumping on their wife.
Well, let's jump on to quarter four.
The Long Island Railroad.
I've been working on the railroad.
How many fucking railroad, what, somebody's choking or stoking the fucking fire there, and the other guy's the conductor?
How many railroad employees you think watching the goddamn wrestling show?
I wasn't talking necessarily about the employees of the railroad, I was saying that the working man would use the railroad as transport to get to the working place.
Oh, I thought you meant they were the engineers and the coal burners and things and such of that nature.
Well, no, not that those aren't working men too, but I don't know their schedules.
Let's get back to the schedule of quarter four here, Jim.
8:45 to 9 p.m.
The continuation of Adam Copeland versus Daniel Garcia, the post-match with Christian Cage, Nick Wayne, and Kill Switch, an ad break, and the Samoa Joe promo,
792,000 viewers.
How the fuck did they manage to get 30,000 to come back for that?
That's what I'd like to know.
They left at the end of quarter two, which affected quarter three.
The end of quarter two two was the Wardlow match in the Young Bucks video.
Quarter three is Adam Copeland versus Daniel Garcia.
If you tune back in at a certain point, that's how you get people back.
Oh, Edge is on.
I'll check it out.
See what's happening.
We go to the big nine o'clock hour, quarter five, nine to nine: fifteen p.m.
The Samoa Joe, Swerve, Strickland, Adam Page Live promo,
the Tony Storm video, the Deanna Perazzo backstage promo, and Young Bucks versus Top Flight.
Flight,
838,000 viewers.
Well, for once, they got a bump at the top of the hour.
They added another 46,000 people.
So that brought them up
to about their normal average.
But since obviously their normal average, they didn't reach this week, they're going to be dropping.
I still maintain that quarter eight will be the worst quarter in the history of the television program because how can it not be?
You might as well show Mighty Mouse rerun.
Well, for the record, I don't have the record of what is the previous worst quarter in the history of the show, but let's keep going here.
Quarter, where are we?
Quarter six.
Six
9:15 to 9:30 p.m.
The continuation of Top Flight versus the Young Bucks, picture-in-picture ads,
the Young Bucks Live promo, and Darby Allen's promo to the Young Bucks,
785,000 viewers.
So, again,
with the exception of quarter three, these two little douchebags put up the lowest numbers of the show so far with the various things that they're involved in because nobody gives a shit.
It's kids cosplaying.
It's every single quarter that they're the last thing that's in that quarter.
It kills the next quarter.
It's every single time.
But let's see how they recover here.
here.
Quarter seven, 9.30 to 9.45 p.m.
An ad break.
Bullet Club Gold, the acclaimed and Billy Gunns backstage promo.
Willow Nightingale versus Sky Blue with picture in picture.
741,000 viewers.
And Edit begins.
That so they're down 203,000 people from the start, and that is the lowest point of the program.
And now, drum roll, please.
Wait a minute.
Oh, hold on.
What are you holding?
Drum roll work.
I got a new thing.
Hold on.
What?
I got a new thing.
Papa got a brand new bag.
I got a new cajon.
Oh, I have to reveal the red.
What the fuck is that?
That sounds like you're just taking your fucking sneakers and drubbing them on the desk.
See, it's a cajon, but it has a snare.
If I take off the snare, cajon, listen, wait a minute.
This is with no snare.
This is the snare, and then I can open up the airway here.
If I was over there, I'd close your airway up.
What are you talking about?
Cajon?
I thought you were supposed to have two cajones anyway.
What is a cajon?
You're speaking of the Wevos.
I'm talking about this Cajon right here.
It's a percussion tool instrument, some might say.
I have a variety of them in various places all over the manor.
So I can just stop anytime, anywhere I am, and just start making some music.
Well, I'm thinking of a certain kind of tool right now.
So why don't we have that tool provide us with the quarter eight numbers?
Quarter eight, 9.45 to 10 p.m.
The continuation of Willow Nightingale versus Sky Blue,
an ad break, and Orange Cassidy versus Matt
with picture and picture,
725,000 viewers with a five-minute overrun
bringing it to 785,000 viewers.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
In the last five minutes,
60,000 people were desperate to see the finish of Matt Tavin and Pockets.
So again, the main event draws the lowest number of the entire show because of the fact that an idiot and somebody that's never been used before was in it.
And they thought because they were in Texas, a Texas death match would be just lovely.
And then they get an artificial bump from going five minutes over for the people that were tuning into the following program.
And now, as we find out from the other numbers, 944 was still
at least fucking 50,000 or 60,000 of the big bangers to start out.
So they did an 811,000 viewer average with an artificially inflated beginning and end.
It continues to trickle down and drip away.
On that topic, as WrestleNomics on their chart has the 90-day trend line, it is well below the 90-day trend line.
Well, that's because Tony's fucking brains are below his waistline.
They're in his ass.
All right.
Well, that was dynamite.
You know,
I don't know what else you can do to lose people like that.
I mean, think about this.
They lost from the start of the regulation time period of the program to the end of the regulation time of the program, they lost 220,000 viewers, which was basically 25% of the, more than 25% of the audience they started out with.
And do you know, Brian, what 220,000 people would weigh?
They lost from the start of that program to the end of that program at least 4 million pounds.
Can you look at it that way?
That's a new way to look at it.
I've never
lost 4 million pounds of viewers because you've got to figure a 200 pound, well, I may be light, a 200-pound average because a lot of these basement-dwelling Pop-Tart eaters that watch AEW,
they got to be 350, maybe even 400.
You know, they're on the biscuits and gravy diet.
He just died, the guy who invented the Pop-Tart this past week.
I thought you meant the guy who invented biscuits and gravy.
He's long dead.
Well, and boy, you should have seen his cholesterol before he passed away.
And the Pop-Tarts poisoned that guy, too, old Mr.
Kellogg.
So I'll tell you what, folks, we need to get in better shape.
We need to watch what we eat because from now on, I want to try to get all the AEW viewers on the special, delicious, ready-to-eat, chef-crafted, dietitian-approved meals from Factor
so that they can lose some weight.
And that way, you can lower the amount of poundage or tonnage that is lost every week on the Dynamite program.
If all the AEW fans were only to weigh 120 pounds apiece, they'd only be losing about, what, one, 1.5 million pounds a week.
So anyway, folks, Factor.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They've got, hey, some of your transitions, I wouldn't blow it out your ass there, transition boy.
We are well past transition point.
This is mid-show.
This is mid-show.
I was trying to plumb this well, see if I could get some fucking goddamn liquid out of it.
But Factor, as I was talking about,
has delicious meals that are delivered right to your home, ready to cook, ready to eat.
You don't even have to actually cook them.
You just got to heat them.
You don't have to prepare them.
They're right in the thing.
You just, you add temperature.
And you can choose from dinners including or meals including keto-friendly meals and calorie smart and the vegan and the veggie meals.
And so much more.
You got 35 different options a week to choose from and even more to enjoy with over 55 nutrition-packed add-ons
that help make your weekly meal planning even more delicious.
You can add a pinch of this and a pinch of that.
Before you know it, you goddamn got an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord.
But anyway, it's all going to be healthy and easy because you know, Brian, we talked about the busy, hurry-scurry lives that many people lead these days.
You don't have time to go in there and and bake the bread from scratch like they used to do back in the pioneer days.
So what you do now is you just get the factory meals to restaurant quality, by the way, delivered right to your door.
A wide variety of easy options.
They've got breakfast, they've got midday bites, they got dinner, snacks, smoothies, whatever you might want to eat, they've got it and it's going to be healthy for you.
It's going to be good for you.
You're going to live longer.
You're going to enjoy the smell of the air.
You're going to have a skip in your step.
You're not going to be eating all the poison and the process shit that we get shoveled down our gullets these days.
None of that is guaranteed, but it is a possible outcome if you eat good and you eat right and you eat these great meals that are supposed to be shift-crafted.
Well, nothing's guaranteed in life anymore, but you know, you try to do the best you can.
And the factor meals are 100% ready to heat and eat, so there's no prepping, there's no cooking.
You don't even have to clean up.
You just throw the shit away and start over again the next day.
And right now,
thanks to our friends at factormeals.com, that's F-A-C-T-O-R, FactorMeals.com,
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So go to this site, factormeals.com, pick the meals that you are interested in.
If you're cutting down the sugar, get the keto.
If you're cutting down to calories, get the calorie smart.
If you're cutting down the vegans and the veggies, get the vegan and veggie.
They will have very little meat in the vegan and veggie menus.
So you don't have to worry about that.
You don't have to worry about a cow sneaking up on you.
Although occasionally, I'd like to put some bacon in a motherfucker's broccoli just to fuck with them.
Why?
Well, first of all, that won't happen with Factor.
Let's stress that.
Jim has nothing to do with the preparation of these fine chef-crafted meals.
Boy, it would taste a lot better if I did, but I don't have time.
All right.
Well, once again, Jim is not a chef.
Well,
one of these vegetarian son of a bitch is, I'd like to stick some bacon in their broccoli and see what happens.
Would their head cave in?
Why would you want to do that?
They're living a life.
They're making a choice.
They're trying to do something they think is better for...
themselves or maybe the environment.
Why would you want to poison them with bacon?
Because
nobody gets poisoned with bacon.
If you don't like bacon, I don't know.
It's an emotional poisoning.
I do not trust a person who doesn't like bacon.
You can't trust people like that.
But you can trust Factor Meals, folks, and you can trust you're going to get 50% off factormeals.com slash JCE50.
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you can be skinny or you can be well-fed or anything in between.
And you don't have to clean up afterwards.
And as a matter of fact, if you get some plastic forks and knives, you don't even have to wash the utensils.
Or just use your hands.
But you might
tie one of these trays around your neck like a feed bag and just fucking go to town.
Or sit down and eat the old-fashioned way with a knife, a fork, a spoon, a napkin at the table with the family or by yourself.
Whatever it is, be the Valentine Valentine of Factor.
What's that promo code?
If you live by yourself and you're already fucking miserable, just go in your goddamn lonely home and sit in bed with a factor meal and a fucking tub of ice cream and watch Netflix.
But what's that promo code?
Oh, to save 50% off, JCE50.
All right.
All right.
Well, now I guess we should go and take a look at the network quality television production of the week, SmackDown for February the 16th.
It was a Friday night in Salt Lake City, Utah.
They had 13,681 people in Salt Lake City.
They've got 14,000 people in Salt Lake City.
And if you didn't come to watch the interviews, you saw Kevin Owens and Dominic Mysterio, Zelina Vega, and Tiffany Stratton, Hakeem and Razor versus Who Gives a Shit, Miz versus Logan Paul, Naomi versus Alba Fire.
That was the main event.
That was the main event.
Yes.
So
is the WWE now the world's most successful spoken word tour promoting company?
What the fuck?
Anyway.
So the show opened with The Rock pulling up in the parking lot in a big old black truck.
And I guess that's all they needed.
It's the weekend.
We don't have the ratings, but I'm sure they've been doing two and a half million people.
And they've advertised The Rock, his appearance on this show.
So one would think that things were going to be popping over there as well.
But then we get another Elimination Chamber qualifying match to start the show with Kevin Owens against Dominic Mysterio.
And
again, there's nothing particularly wrong with these matches, but
20 minutes of Owens and Dominic with R-Truth involving himself and then refuses to give Dom the chair and Owens beats Dominic with the pop-up powerbomb.
And it took us 20 minutes to get there.
But now Owens has qualified for the elimination chamber.
That's a big shock.
Were we treading water and killing time here until we got to see the most electrifying man in show business and the tribal chief.
This was an episode, you know, sometimes they begin with the big segment, sometimes they end with it.
They ended with it, and there was nothing really, there was nothing else really until you got there.
So it was a real test of the audience to see them sit through
kind of just a bunch of stuff happening to get to the only thing really happening.
Well, isn't that kind of like the that's kind of like the whole New Year's Rock and Eve telecast.
You just watch it for one fucking five-minute period.
Right?
That's right.
Dick Clark's New Year's Rock and Eve.
Boy, what?
Before he passed away,
I wish that somebody had whispered in his ear, Dick, don't do those cut-ins.
After he had the stroke and everything, wasn't that sad?
It was.
I will say, too, because I've actually, I'm fascinated by Dick Clark.
There's no good biography of him.
Like, you would think such an important figure in terms of television and music on television and all sorts of things starting in Philadelphia.
There would be a good biography, a thorough biography of his business, just anything.
Nothing.
There's nothing.
Can we get Langmead or Hornbaker on that?
I already mentioned it to Solomon.
I was like, you know, after you're done with monsoon.
You know who could use a book?
And he's probably thinking, oh, what wrestler is he going to recommend?
And I'm like, Dick Clark.
Well, and you never know.
We could find a wrestling crossover or two.
Anyway,
Drew and L.A.
Knight argued about the elimination chamber in the back, and the referees separated them before it got too out of hand.
And it was good to see Roman trying to make some amends with the members of the bloodline.
When he saw Jimmy in the back, when Roman and Paul got there, he gave Jimmy a big hug, and he said, let's go fix what Jay messed up.
So Jimmy was beaming for the rest of the episode.
I think also when he was in the ring with The Rock watching him do his shit, he couldn't help but fucking smile.
He was five years old again.
And then we got
an Elimination Chamber qualifying match between Zelina Vega and Tiffany Stratton.
Because as we've mentioned, much to our chagrin and dismay, they're going to have a women's elimination chamber two match in front of the men's to make sure that we don't like the men's as much because we've already seen half the shit.
And I guess Tiffany Stratton's been a hot shot down in NXT.
She's got a valley girl accent.
He's like, oh, should I beat you?
Or should I beat you?
Is this a Laurenitis holdover from a lingerie catalog?
No, no, no.
She's someone who apparently people watch NXT say is quite good.
She became a favorite of Shawn Michaels and the people running it because they say she was quite good.
Quite good.
And now she's up here in the main roster.
And.
Did you feel she was quite good?
You know, it's a battle between her and Mariah May.
Who will be the first one that I confuse with the other one that becomes a star here in the States?
I don't know.
It was all right.
It was all right.
I knew Zelina wasn't going to win, unfortunately.
But,
you know, I was watching for one reason and one reason only.
I thought you'd be watching for two reasons.
I was watching to see what The Rock was going to say, not for whatever perverted ideas you have, Mr.
McMahon.
Well, with some of the comments that you make sometimes, so we went to the back again.
And remember, AJ was in the group with Gallows and Anderson and Mia Yim, and now they're all together.
And Anderson tells AJ right off the bat, you forgot where you came from.
And AJ slaps the shit out of Anderson, and they fucking shove and gesticulate, and then they settle down, and AJ walks out on them.
So
do they do Gallows and Anderson still wrestle?
I don't remember the last time we saw them wrestle.
They made a few appearances with
Meechin or Mia Yim, whatever name she's using today.
I'm thinking they must have got into real estate.
We don't see much of them anymore.
Hey, they're wearing Good Brothers t-shirts.
That was their like name outside of WWE.
So that says something right there too, doesn't it?
Well, if we hadn't already wasted the Shopify spot, we could have really had a transition there.
But
so anyway, they're not happy with each other.
And then we got Akeem and Razor versus the venerable tag team of Tits McGee and his brother Phil.
I don't know who these fucking people were.
And
this is the team that they have been dealing with and holding back or
keeping in
abeyance until the time was right.
They've been in the system on and off for four or five years.
These are two fucking indie-level fucking guys.
They would have been great for Dennis Coraluzzo shows in Vineland, New Jersey or whatever, or Teterboro.
But do you see anything about this tag team that belongs in a major promotion on a national television program?
They've got size.
Boy, do they.
They need the factor meals.
Is Ellering helping with any of this?
Well, what is he doing?
He stands there and rubs his hands together.
There's that carrion cross is death to everybody he's involved with because I've never seen anybody that's just gone from, hey, that guy looks interesting to what the fuck him again quicker than this guy.
Nothing works.
It's boring.
And nobody understands what he's saying.
He's trying to be spooky and gothic.
And it's drivel.
And
Ellering pops up.
I love Paul Ellering, but what?
How have they even explained who he is to a new audience?
And then what part does he have to play here besides standing there and rubbing his fingers together?
And then you got these two fucking fat guys that you could have seen on any 90s indie show.
And I'm what, what the this is,
I know it's new ownership and they want to give everybody a chance, but what the fuck is going on here?
Anyway,
any other thoughts on the authors of Pain?
No.
No.
What about Logan Paul?
Well, he's awesome.
One of my new favorite wrestlers.
He did a great heel promo about his match, and then he went out and had the qualifying match with The Miz.
And
Logan Paul's thing he said he was going to do was he's already the U.S.
champion.
He's going to win the Elimination Chamber.
He's going to win the world title.
He's going to have all the titles, be a double champion.
And
I'm loving everything about him because he gets this at a natural sense.
He's got personality.
He knows how to be a heel.
He knows how to get under people's skin.
But also the in-ring,
he's not
experienced or smooth or fluid at everything, but he's a prodigy
with what he's been able to do so far and what he can do and what he can.
I'm not just talking about executing moves.
You could get the goddamn gymnast for that.
I'm talking about
doing it as a heel main event level pro wrestler is at this stage of his experience is highly difficult.
But now there is a difference between the pay-per-view matches that he's predominantly, this was his first match ever on SmackDown
because he's only really done the big show matches, right?
So they've got plenty of prep time.
And you can get there, you know, early and you've been talking about it with your opponent beforehand, and maybe they sent him to the performance center.
I don't know.
With TV matches, there's shorter prep time, shorter rehearsal.
Time gets changed.
All kinds of shit goes on.
And there was a couple of instances in this match with Miz, because Miz was leading it.
He is the veteran.
I give him that.
Where you could tell that Logan Paul got
lost, or one time he went for a standing back flip and
was going to land, I guess, on Miz's knees, but instead he went too far to the side, and Miz had to take back over on him and get it back on track.
But overall, even with
a TV match not having the prep time and everything, he's got amazing instincts and he just needs repetition now.
I had few, if any, guys in OVW
that were that were this natural.
In the ring, Shelton Benjamin on the microphone, maybe John Cena.
Logan Paul's personality at this level of experience, even though he's older than Cena was then, is better than fucking Cena's.
So I enjoy being impressed by somebody these days.
I like watching Logan Paul.
And then finally, bing, bing, bing.
Miz gets the figure four.
Logan Paul gets the ropes.
He rolls out.
He asks his Stooge for the Knucks.
Miz stops him and tosses the Knucks away and rolls Logan Paul back in the ring.
And Paul crotches him on the rope and hits a knockout punch and drops him one, two, three.
So it was a good match with a WWE finish.
Just kind of, there it is.
But again, you know, Logan Paul, who would have thought from this random fucking guy that they would find
a good wrestling superstar?
It was clear from day one he got it, but the fact that he's gotten it so well and he continues to impress is
really incredible.
And the other thing is, like you said, it's his first match ever on SmackDown.
He's been around for a few years now.
They don't waste his matches.
And you never think like, oh, I haven't seen him enough.
They've done it really well with him.
They've used him really well and he's been great.
Well, remember, when he first started, it was, you know, this was still a part-time thing and a feeling out.
And then I guess they've signed him.
Because didn't he make the comment on an interview somewhere?
Well, this is my full-time job now, so I guess I got to start trying and paying attention.
You know, I think in
a couple of years,
he might be the champion.
I mean,
he can light people up.
Anyhow, that's when Nick Aldiss was in the back dealing with Braun Breaker and Jane Cargill, and that Tiffany Stratton came in and got in an argument with the other girls.
Oh, well, you just didn't say that.
Oh, yes, I did.
And then we had Naomi and Alba Fire.
I'd like an extensive breakdown on this contest from you.
I didn't watch this match because
I did watch the entrance.
I like Naomi glowing in the dark and dancing.
It's kind of cool.
Good lord.
But beyond that,
The problem, the overall problem is just no one gives a fuck.
And certainly I am part of no one.
No one.
So I didn't give a fuck either.
They built it up.
They, you know, one match left as a sponsor now.
But this was the match.
The main event was what was coming after it.
They had to sit through this to get to or
go outside or go to the kitchen.
At least after that, Nick Aldiss brought out Braun Breaker, who is now officially signed to the SmackDown roster.
And they acknowledged that he was the son of Rick Steiner and the nephew of Scott Steiner.
So
at least we got that going for us.
And,
you know,
I just, I don't know how that they can possibly fuck him up.
He's a goddamn megastar waiting to happen.
And hopefully they won't.
I don't, I would be scared shitless if he was an AEW because I would think a talent like this doesn't come along more than once every 10 years or whatever, and that would ruin him.
But in the WWE,
as long as he doesn't get heat with them for some reason,
is there any way they can fuck up Braun Breaker?
Oh, of course.
I mean, there are plenty of ways.
This is Vince McMahon's company.
Don't ever forget that.
Well, but he's gone.
And I'm saying, as long as he doesn't get heat with the office
or hurt, how else is
what else could miss about this guy?
You would think he can't miss, but anything could happen in WWE.
That's what I've heard said.
All right.
Well, here is what happened.
Now that we've sat through that whole program, here's what we've all been waiting for.
Roman and Paul and Solo and Jimmy make their entrance.
And from the start of the music to the first word spoken was five minutes.
I mean, they're just,
what the fuck?
People are paying attention.
And again, Roman Reigns, natural.
He's both gruff and condescending.
He's a smart ass in places.
He belittled Salt Lake City and its fans.
And then when he's got enough bass in his voice, because he's got a man's voice, that when he says something serious, it registers.
When he fired up at him, he said, Look, everything that we say has purpose and information that you need to understand.
Almost you could hear him say, You fucking asshole.
You know,
excellent delivery.
And he gets the massive Cody chant, you know, going because they want to see Cody kick his ass.
And then once Roman does his promo,
he said, but tonight is about history because finally I can say
the rock is a member of the bloodline.
And then here comes Rock's music.
And he gets, still gets a big pop and he gets cheers because it's the rock.
But then he gets booze because of what's going on.
And then it's just,
noise.
People because this is the rock people want.
This is the kind of rock that was edgy and that was good, not coming out there doing bad comedy material with a smile on his face.
So now he's going to be the fucking next one to be such a fucking horrible heel that people cheer him to the rooftops.
But
and I mean, they even, it's so good.
They got the handheld camera to get a close-up of the goosebumps he has on his arm when he hears the people.
And was that a
native Samoan vest from the tribal collection or what?
It was very ornate.
Well, I think it may have been from the Ricky Starks collection, actually.
Well, and we might see him here soon when his time in the penal system runs out across the street.
But anyway, so they go to the break on the rocks entrance.
And I'm said, boy, they know people are not going to go anywhere.
When you go to a fucking break on the main part of the goddamn show, when somebody's just walking to the ring, they got confidence.
And when they come back three minutes later, of course, the music is still going and the rock milks the reactions.
And then that's when he announced they'd broken the all-time indoor attendance record for Utah for the largest group of trailer park trash ever assembled.
That's what it was.
And he torched the fucking people.
As a heel, bang, bang, bang, and he cut the heel promo.
And then they were going to still even chant for the finally, but he said, No, no, no, no, no, sing along with the rock is over.
You've lost that opportunity.
If they chanted Rocky, then he healed further.
And he blasted Cody for ruining the biggest WrestleMania main event of all time.
You know, what's Cody's story?
He got beaten, he wants a rematch.
What kind of logic is that?
And when they tried to what him, he blasted them, the
inbreds chanting what?
And the fans are crybaby bitches.
And
I mean, it was fucking,
the problem I saw,
and Stace noticed this also, because she was in the room for this one too.
Everybody wanted to see this,
is that no matter how good Roman Reigns is.
And I mean, there's
Jimmy Uso and Solo, and they're stooges, and they know it.
And Paul's the manager, and
he can't can't make himself disappear.
He's way too large for that, but he can back up.
But you had Roman Reigns standing there in the group with Paul and Solo and Jimmy
watching The Rock own the fucking building and own the ring and own the show.
That's the issue.
He overshadows Roman.
And there's almost no way he can be The Rock and not overshadow anybody.
But the way the positioning was, there was Roman standing back and admiring the main event guy's work instead of at least being somewhat close to him facing in the same direction with the other three off in the fucking corner.
I could have bought that better.
But Rock tore the place down and then said he's going to do everything in his power to make Cody walk out a loser at WrestleMania
if you smell what the bloodline is cooking.
And I mean, I don't, I can't put a dollar value to their every ratings point or every 10,000 viewers or whatever.
But between that promo and Rock's appearances on television for the ratings and
whatever his eventual
involvement is going to be at WrestleMania, I think he's made them their 30 million back already, hadn't he?
Oh, I don't want to say that.
I don't think we could really estimate that.
With this amount of money going in the merchandise and the fucking...
What merchandise?
The extra rock shirts they're selling right now?
well i'm just talking about the at wrestlemania you think they're not going to sell fucking 10 or 20 000 rock shirts easily i think the rock being a heel and this kind of being the direction is awesome i think he's a big part of wrestlemania i actually don't think in 2024
The rock being in the main event or involved with it is going to be a major increase in the eyeballs watching the event as it would the storyline of whether it's Cody versus Roman or anything else that had time to play out.
But I think it'll be easier to convince big corporation A, B, or C to spend five or ten million dollars on a sponsorship for the rock
WWE instead of for Cody Rhodes and the WWE.
Again, I don't know how much that's going to matter.
Not a lot of brands are diving into the Dwayne Johnson business right now, so I don't think that's going to.
Well, I'm talking if you're a goddamn,
if you're a fucking beer company or a chicken wing place or fucking whatever and you want to reach a large amount of people, the more people pay attention to the rock still than pay attention to the people that are in just it alone in the world of wrestling these days.
You smell what I'm cooking?
It's from the chicken wing place.
There you go.
Or the movers and shakers over at Netflix or all the streaming services or the Hollywood or whatever.
Or that's, they're still looking at a guy like that.
That's all I'm saying.
Time will tell.
I also, like I have always said, I think he's going to get badly hurt in the first match back just because of physically his age, the shape he's in, the muscle mass, what it takes to work a modern main event match at a WrestleMania type of event.
But we'll see what happens.
But this was a big step in the right direction.
And he played off that crowd perfectly.
It made watching or getting through the rest of that show worth it.
And that's all we can ask in this day and age, isn't it?
Well, did we make this program worth getting through or sitting through or
tolerating today here on the experience?
I don't know, but we always have another show just a few days away to try to fix whatever we did here today.
That's what they always said.
Well, no matter what happens on this television program, there's always next week until you get canceled.
But we can't get canceled because nobody officially employs us.
That's right.
We're just kind of here.
And we'll be here again on the drive-thru in a few days and on the experience next week.
Brian, any closing thoughts?
We will be here on the drive-thru in a few days and the experience next week.
That sounds like a closing thought to me.
Until then, thank you.
Fuck you.
And bye-bye, everybody.
Get the experience.
Get the experience of Jim Connest.
I've Jim Connest.
Haft