Episode 517: Vince's Scandal & The Royal Rumble

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Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the Royal Rumble edition of the Jim Coronet Experience.

Vince McMahon is gone again.

Slim Jim left and came back, and the Royal Rumble was the latest big event overshadowed by chaos in the mainstream news.

And joining me to talk about all this and so much more.

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

Co-HostU.

He was going to be number 31 in the Rumble, but the airline lost his bag.

Be great, Brian.

Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

And I did not enjoy the Rumble as much as I did last year's Rumble.

I'll just say that to start.

Well, don't give anything away.

But I think it's kind of, it might be self-evident.

There were moments, there were moments, and then there was a lot of other moments.

But we'll talk about that.

But do you remember when back in the old days, Brian, when promoters tried to sabotage other companies' pay-per-views and not their own?

I do.

Is this two in a row now that

something bizarre comes out

right before a company's pay-per-view that's of their own making, or technically in this case, of the previous administration's own making?

And the big event, it's kind of like after it's over, you're like, oh, I wish I liked that a lot more to make up for the other shit.

And it was like, eh.

But anyway,

before we get into this story with Mr.

McMahon,

who has now been replaced or replaced Satan on the fucking all-time hit list of people who want to

burn him in hot fucking boiling oil.

And well-deserved, allegedly.

Do we have to say allegedly at this point?

I guess it still hadn't been adjudicated.

Jerry McDivitt's still on the payroll.

We have to say allegedly.

No,

Jerry McDifferent, unless he's discovered the fountain of youth, he's not going to live long enough to get Vince McMahon out of any of this shit.

And I'm betting you he's got his telephone disconnected.

He's he's clipped a fucking cord.

But

at any rate, whether it's alleged or not,

Vince has so much heat.

You and I got some of his fucking heat.

And I will tell the people what happened because the other day we had just finished, finished, we were still on headset with each other talking, had finished recording one of the 18 shows we do every week

when suddenly the Wall Street Journal headline popped up on your computer and we were still going and we said, we'll do a breaking news for the YouTube people.

What's the fuck's going on here?

Vince is getting sued again.

And as we read this,

you know, I don't know what to say to you, folks, otherwise than, god damn it, if you can read in the Wall Street Journal that an internationally famous billionaire that you once worked for is being hauled into court and sued for, among other things, shitting on somebody's head, you're going to fucking laugh.

And potentially at that point, the whole thing becomes a fucking rib.

So I apologize for my first blush, but here's another thing.

As we've come to

find out more details, because a lot of people, by the time that they listen to this thing,

the comments on either Twitter or the YouTube channel,

there's some fucking people, again, on this issue

that are just goddamn

with a lack of taste.

on a variety of points

that were blaming this girl, this young lady.

Because I think that's in addition to the people that were hot at us, were saying we're the worst human beings in the world, because we were laughing at and making mockery of this thing after they'd read the complaint, because now the complaint is out in public.

But there's also people that, unfortunately,

they see this shit on television.

And they figure, well, this is another one of the cases of the Hollywood producer getting his girlfriend apart in a fucking movie,

or, you know, fucking pushing her to goddamn the moon on the stage or whatever the fuck,

or some kind of business arrangement gone wrong.

And most normal people

that live, even you and me that are not normal, but live somewhat rational fucking lives and don't deal with tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

And they see shit on TV about NDAs and and hush money payoffs and millions of dollar payments going on and fucking BMWs being bandied about.

And they think, well, everybody's full of shit.

Fuck all these people.

And because of what happened last year,

Vince was outed with the hush money payments and all that shit, or now the year before, I guess.

People never could figure, we made jokes about the illegal paralegal.

And somebody you know we everybody assumed that well vince gets girlfriends and he's got them on the side and then he gives them jobs and pays them a bunch of money and whatever the fuck and and he was paying his girlfriends with company money

well they're all a bunch of heels

but when you read

the the actual and how do you get can is this public the complaint the lawsuit whatever the terminology is can

okay, then everybody ought to go read this.

This wasn't a case of Vince went to fucking,

you know, St.

Petersburg and found some stripper at a goddamn hooters or whatever and gave her a job in the legal department.

This girl, and remember

when you asked me on the clip, because I'd seen a black and white picture, and I said, What can she be 30?

And I was kind of giving it the benefit of the doubt to the elder side because he fucking 75.

And it, but then

you said well i don't know she looks younger than that i saw the color picture i said you're right we think

she was 21

we've got to verify that because there's been some kind of other reports you thought she was in her early 40s

the newspaper said the flat out i saw i think in the new york post and somewhere else that she was 43 and that she was 41 a couple years ago when all this happened well bullshit

So

the point is,

she's a very young girl that's never had a job or worked worked out in the real world because she's been taking care of her ailing parents that have passed away.

They've lost a family home and bankruptcy.

This is like goddamn Dorothy in Kansas.

It's a tragedy.

And

because she lives in this building where she knows the building manager,

the building manager says, Well, you ought to meet Vince McMahon.

He's a billionaire.

Maybe he could help you give you a job in his company because she doesn't know what to do.

So that's where she's not experienced in any of these these things and suddenly gets in with this master fucking manipulator.

And we've talked about,

you know, Vince's Jedi mind tricks

with the wrestlers on getting them to do finishes or talking them out of shit.

But when you read this

lawsuit,

it's like a horror movie.

It's insane the way.

Playing mind games.

It was him playing mind games.

No, that trivializes it.

That's how it started.

started god damn

i can't believe he was he was he had to be writing down to do to this to prey on her mind like this this wasn't any kind of frivolous

i'm sorry again any kind of frivolous arrangement with some hooters girl this was this poor girl that's obviously disturbed mentally about numerous things.

And here comes this billionaire handing her all this shit and telling her she's going to be a vice president.

I wouldn't even say disturbed mentally.

It's a girl, and we don't know exactly how old because of the conflicting things who's going through.

Wouldn't it disturb you if your parents had died and they were bankrupt?

It signifies something else when you phrase it like that.

You don't say she's disturbed mentally.

She says someone who's obviously going through an incredible ordeal emotionally.

And it appears based on what you read in the complaint.

And again, like you have talked about it, it's out there public.

Anyone could see it.

She goes into detail about their first meeting.

It was like a two-hour meeting in his apartment, his penthouse, and it was all him trying to relate to her, all him trying to relate her hardships to everything he experienced growing up.

And that's how it started.

And

this,

number one, I talked about,

you know, in previous episodes plenty of time, how

the times that I was around Vince McMahon, his contact with anybody, with anybody

was so limited besides the limo to the fucking show, to the office, to the fucking.

It boggles my mind what has happened to is it

is it a combination of late stage, I guess, I don't know of late stage where late age concussions.

He started getting concussions after the age of 50 and all the fucking

human growth hormone and testosterone or whatever the fuck he's done.

Or you were around him during the one brief period of time where he acted like an adult in between the steroid trial and all the scandals of the early 90s and the attitude era when he was the most behaved, where he seemed at a time he got off steroids and he just seemed like a skinny guy.

He was in shape.

He seemed like he was growing up.

And then they threw a billion dollars at him and a publicly traded stock.

Well, no, no, no, first he got in the ring.

First he got in the ring and then the fucking body went out of control, and then he got a billion dollars.

But he was on steroids in the 80s and 90s.

He got off them for a few years.

Again, he had scandals everywhere.

It was a sex scandal.

It was the steroid trial.

And then we don't know

if this is something that's been in his behavior going how far back.

We just don't know.

This is one story we're hearing about.

You have to wonder if this is really the first time he's done any of these things or something that he's become accustomed to.

We really don't know.

But I won't, I don't think it's fair to assume

that this is just something he started doing in his 70s out of boarding or anything.

Well, and how

could you start doing this in your fucking 70s?

I mean, it's just that, and that's the with Vince

during the time that I was there, being in a room with him was like being in a fucking room with the principal.

You know, I can't

fathom this behavior and from that and from the people around him.

But

dealing

chronologically with this thing,

he put time and effort into this

plot against this girl, constantly meeting her, constantly giving her gifts,

letting her go to WrestleMania, her and her building manager.

promising her these jobs and then set it up and then put her in these places where

not only did she not have everything to do and she didn't know what she was supposed to be doing for all this money, but apparently, most of the people

that she was working under knew that she was there not to do anything.

And they didn't say anything.

And then when finally he

coerces her into that again, we're not going to go blow by blow on this now with this ridiculous shit.

But

I mean, I can't imagine being in the building 25 years ago when I was in that office and

the shit going on, any remotely resembling this, and people not obviously knowing about it.

And how they were able to keep it under fucking cover

indicates that a number of people apparently just didn't give a shit.

Makes it clear from reading the complaint, although there are a number of parties unnamed, and we can discuss that in a little while,

that

company-wide or executive-wide, there was

a longtime knowledge of Vince's behavior, an attempt to kind of brush it aside or ignore it, and maybe even protect him.

Protect the company by protecting him, too.

But it doesn't appear like

I'm not saying these executives knew some of the gory details, but they certainly knew something was happening with someone who was not qualified to be there, who had had a job.

It appears from the complaint, everyone knew why she was there.

That's the other thing.

Like, from the complaint, from like day one,

people knew she wasn't,

I hate to, you know, I don't know what to call it, a proper hire.

Someone who had the qualifications for the job, she was Vince's person

put there to pacify Vince.

Everyone knew that from day one.

That's a systematic problem.

Here's the thing.

I don't see how,

and I agree with you.

Probably most people not know

particular details, which

besides the fact that maybe something might have been done beforehand, also nobody would have been able to keep quiet.

There were still enough people named in this that were involved and knew the details because they were there in the room that you would, how the fuck?

This is another thing.

Vince.

His brain has melted along with his face now.

We've laughed about him because he looks like fucking Ernie Ernie Kovacs in a fucking 50s TV sketch.

But he would have never

been this stupid or this childish or this.

I didn't even ever see evil.

You know, I saw, you know, the guy, I'm going to put this, you know, guy out of business or that or whatever, but not,

you know, his brain has fucking melted.

Yeah.

And, and, and, but here's what I was going to say.

She has so much proof in, it, or at least evidence.

Everybody has to call it evidence, even if you don't call it proof.

If you

the text messages, if you faked text messages from a goddamn billionaire with all of this kind of publicity, I'm sure you could find a fucking expert to disprove them.

And they've fucking put them out there.

Hey, can I stop you talking about the text messages?

Yes.

There's a few things I want to ask you about those.

Please don't read any of them.

They'll kick us off of fucking whatever we're on.

And again, we hadn't seen all of that when we discussed this previously.

And it's incredible to see these that Vince McMahon is actually sending these horrific text messages out there, gross, horrific, whatever you want to call them.

There's a range of them.

The first question is:

Does he have spelling?

Like, when you used to get memos from him or anything, or anything he wrote, what did you get from him ever that he wrote?

And does he have spelling issues?

Because there are several words or, you know, he writes like prints, like there are letters instead of words.

He's trying to do

i think he's trying to do the the thing the kids do where the word you is instead the capital letter you and then you are is your and i think he's got some kind of shorthand he thinks making him look hip here's the thing

when i left that was just at the era when they were getting the what what were the blackberries was that what it was Yeah.

The black and everybody, because as soon as Jim Ross would come to OVW or Bruce or anybody would come down from the office to OVW,

they'd have these things.

And you could, I said, what the fuck?

Vince wanted to be able to keep in contact with everybody always.

And

we were fortunate.

It was basically a phone in your house

back in my day in the office.

And right as I left, all this shit happened.

So I never got a text from him or texted, as everybody knows, or blah, blah, blah.

But

I started thinking about this.

How you're a billionaire like this, a multi-billionaire international figure, and it's the same thing as you're the president, and you're sending shit like this out to somebody

does not show the,

at least, the prudent judgment of the potentially sane Vince McMahon I once knew.

But I started thinking, You know me, Brian, I'm an obsessive saver and I save things and paperwork and file shit.

I do not have one example of Vince McMahon's handwriting

because

we would be there.

He insisted everybody, if Jim Ross is in the room, Bruce Pritchard, Shitstain, anybody, we've all got the same kind of ledger book that we're all booking out of.

We've all got the same house show cards that we're working off of, that Jim Ross has booked or whatever.

We're all writing our own notes as we're talking about it.

And I would see Vince writing his book and make notations on his cards or whatever.

But Vince would he would call up and he would dictate shit, or he'd tell people, hey, do so-and-so

or let so-and-so make the changes to the cards or disseminate this information.

Or you would get memos from the office that he didn't actually write, but that he dictated.

But he, and

from 96 to 99,

he had a computer in his office, but we didn't have a fucking computer on the, on the desk or the table in the dining room that we booked TV off of.

Nobody had a computer in that fucking room.

He didn't type,

at least that I've ever saw at that point.

So,

you know, that's the thing.

He's like Trump.

He didn't put shit on paper.

You're like Trump in more ways than we found out.

So that's, I mean, I've gotten many notes from Bruce or JR would have Xerox copies of the cards that he had written out by hand.

I could fucking forge Jim Ross's handwriting at this point.

But you got nothing that Vince actually sat down and wrote himself, at least in those days.

And, but when

you see the text, it's

a 17-year-old, disturbed

boy

just having diarrhea of the keyboard typing to

some fantasy fucking girl with one hand and the other hand's in his lap.

And it's embarrassing for a fucking

again.

It's like I've known a guy I thought it was Professor Albert Einstein.

It turns out he's he's fucking

Goddamn, fucking Jeremy, goddamn, whatever the fuck, that porn star.

I've lost his name now.

Ron Jeremy.

Ron Jeremy.

they're jeremy ron let's just be happy vince put it all in writing because this is only what's in the complaint that doesn't mean this is anywhere close to everything

that's only what's in the complaint and you know what else

three years how many texts did he send her when there's five of these in the 70 pages of this thing it has to be thousands and who else did he text there were other people who got million dollar payoffs that for one reason or another what were they getting and here's the other thing

when was this august is when he was hit with a grand jury subpoena and a search warrant.

Did they grab his electronics?

I don't know.

I wasn't there.

Because there's a big thing.

If they got his phone or his computer, because if we're reading what he's sending her, which is disgusting, and

he's sending this to her thinking that she's on his side, that she's going to do it.

What was he sending to Laurinitis?

What was he sending to the physical therapist that he was doing stuff with?

Well, yeah, and if you haven't read this, folks,

Laurinitis was involved in some of it.

There's a quote unquote physical therapist that was involved in the head defecation that apparently, and he's Vince not only starts a physical relationship with this.

young lady, but then he gets Laurinitis in on it.

Then he gets this other guy in on it.

Then he starts having her take and send pictures pictures and videos to other people.

And that now

she's worried about that because they've got blackmail on her because they've got all this fucking porn of her.

And he says he's showing it to everyone.

He says, I'm showing it to people and they all want to sleep with you.

Yeah, but

here's the thing.

This, again, I'm not absolving Vince McMahon of anything.

I'm actually, this is more indicting than the way some people are taking it.

There's this longest, I didn't know you could text this long.

It's just paragraphs and paragraphs with no indentations of how he was showing her pictures to a bunch of, quote, a bunch of guys on the tech crew.

I paused to count out loud how many guys there were, 12.

And all the, it's like the unnatural, stilted dialogue that he would give the fucking talent on television.

In that he's telling her that all of these guys want to do this and that and the other thing.

and they're cheering loudly the thought of doing these things.

He's in a TV taping and he's

saying this like it didn't really happen is what I'm saying.

Of all these other things, yes, but this didn't really happen.

He's like a 17-year-old fucking pervert teenage kid

blurting this shit out like a penthouse forum letter as a 75-year-old supposed adult billionaire to this girl who's got to be think, what the fuck is going on here?

Well, she's stuck because, again, she has no job.

She has no home.

She has an apartment she's living in in what I'm going to assume is an expensive building to live in.

It's a tropical city.

It's a half a nice neighborhood.

Yes.

So it's an expensive place to live.

Vince buddies up to her.

I'm going to get you a job.

I'm going to pay all this money.

It quickly becomes apparent that the job is in exchange for him just wanting sex all the time.

Or eventually, and this is is where the sex trafficking starts to come in, ordering her to have sex with other people, setting a schedule.

This guy wants Tuesdays.

This guy wants Mondays.

He's acting like a pimp.

And it's insane.

It's insane.

Like all the dirty shit we knew about Vince.

Who was this crazy?

No, this is

crazy.

Again, that's why it's

in a business that has been based on preposterous stories that were surrounding ridiculous personalities for 100 and something years, this is the fucking most

outrageous ever, one would think.

But again, she's got documentation on

when they did the NDA.

One of the, he told her, ask the doctor that I sent you to for still for unnamed purposes.

I don't know what the fuck was going on.

Ask the celebrity doctor for an attorney referral.

So he's telling her to ask the doctor that he

set her up with or has been sending her to to find an attorney to do the NDA.

What did you take celebrity doctor as?

That the doctor is a celebrity or that it's a doctor for celebrities?

Well, it just, it's capital C, capital D, celebrity doctor.

Because it's Greenwich.

I mean, there's a lot of famous people and, you know, around Greenwich.

That's why I asked.

Well, maybe it's a doctor that celebrities go to.

I don't know.

But I mean, they've got documentation just right here without even having an

adding machine.

He gave her like $250,000.

How much is a BMW these days?

It depends on the model.

Well, he gave her like $250,000 worth of shit and diamonds and

$20,000 to medical expenses, whatever.

But

then that's when they started just bringing her to the office and locking her in an office somewhere.

And

how the fuck do you get away with that?

I mean, what she describes in the complaint.

I felt self-conscious when I brought a bag of McDonald's in and closed a door when I ate in my office.

I mean, she described, she described a rape room.

She described the fact that she was saying, no, please stop.

And either Laura Nighters or Vince was saying, no, means yes,

while business was happening.

There was a rape room that they were using while business.

And then they, I guess, leave the room and just go do whatever and come back.

That's insane.

How does, I mean, we could talk more about Vincent.

We're going to.

John Laurinitis.

I mean,

the fact this was happening when his wife was undergoing cancer treatment.

The fact that when his wife moved to Connecticut, it didn't stop.

It continued.

But now it had to be in the office.

How does that

happen?

How do you bring that up in the fucking conversation?

Johnny, enough about the finishes for the pay-per-view.

What?

Well, let me ask you this, and we'll get back to it.

And again, just to reiterate to everyone, they should read this complaint.

The video that we put up was our live reaction in real time.

People yelled at me and Brian because we were laughing because of the preposterosity of it.

But with more details, no, it is not what, again, most people have thought that one of these situations would be.

This is...

And again, the the time and effort that vince mcmahon a 75 year old billionaire put into doing this and how can he physically it's got to be drugs doesn't it artificial hormone at almost 80 years old how could he be physically up to

i'm not talking about the just the actual well i am talking about that but also just goddamn he was still running a fucking billion dollar company and he's putting this much time into this and effort into this.

And again, who are these other depraved individuals?

This isn't just let's have an affair.

This is depraved fucking shit.

Who's this physical therapist that went along with all this?

Yes.

And Laurenitis, again, this isn't just he was cheating on.

I hate to say anything, but I know Vince has a personal trainer.

Would personal trainer be physical therapist?

Or we probably don't want to don't know anything

yeah let's not assume there but when you assume well here's another thing that comes up in this but how yeah how do this many people find each other in the same fucking place

yeah and again it makes you wonder a lot about things in the past things that inexplicably got on tv i was thinking about something and it's the stupidest example but I think it was when Kurt Angle was feuding with Booker T and he was supposed to be interested in Charmel.

I think that's what it was.

And they gave him a line to say on TV that he's into bestiality.

Like, there's just weird things that got on WWE TV over the years.

You knew that Vince had a childish sense of humor.

Turns out, it may have been beyond just thinking things that are stupid or funny.

He had a completely perverted sense of humor, and perverted may not even be strong enough.

Just, I mean, this is deviant shit he's into.

I think the

how many other people did he do this to

the pooping aside

it seems and to be honest

he doesn't he go against

stereotype like isn't people in high positions of power usually want to be submissive in their personal life whereas He's been about as big of the boss as you could possibly be for the past 40 years.

And this this whole thing is about controlling everybody's power and telling people what to do and

forcing your will upon someone.

Because Vince doesn't do good unless he's that guy in the room.

Well, that's but he can never be submissive.

He would never allow himself to.

He can't turn it off, can he?

But

again, I'm just

it's like when somebody that, you know, and again, I wasn't at Vince's Christmas parties,

but

somebody that you think is, okay, we know he's crazy in his own various ways.

And then you find out that he thinks like Charles Manson.

And again, people should read the complaint because Vince's text messages are in the complaint.

It has her timeline of events, and it has the actual text messages so you could see

what she was going through, what was coming to her phone.

And you're sitting at your desk, desk, you're sitting at home, whatever it is, and all of a sudden these things start popping up on your phone.

It's,

it's, uh, you know, I can't.

Well, yeah, and she, he was,

he was forcing her to do shit after she had signed the NDA.

Well, after she signed the NDA, he still was forcing her to do shit.

He, what, he's completely insane.

And then the stuff with one in the complaint is said to be a former UFC champion.

Everyone's assuming the articles out there are all talking about Brock Lesnar.

The idea that

he was telling her that her sex with that wrestler was a part of the deal,

that she had to submit to whatever perverted videos or anything the person wanted, and allegedly he wanted a P-video of her just urinating.

But yeah, she has the text message of

Vince saying that, yes, you're part of the deal.

Just flat out, declarative statement.

See, that makes you wonder, too, Vince's relationships with top guys.

Is there anyone else he had some kind of weird relationship with?

If this is true,

and he's telling Brock, by the way, you got to do this.

Here are the photos.

Look on my phone.

This is the girl.

Just text her and she'll do whatever you want.

And then he tells her she has to.

Was this a tactic Vince used for anyone else?

You know, here again, well, can you imagine

Bret Hart being involved in anything like this?

Boy, oh, Jesus Christ.

I could say I would have got over like a fucking lead balloon.

No, but the idea

back in the back in the old days, there was rumors about why doesn't he put up with

Sean or with anybody that was supposed to be his favorite, with the Ultimate Warrior?

No, there was not that dynamic.

I'm just telling you.

And again,

Obviously, this didn't take long to fucking come out and blow up.

This is more than rumors.

There was a lot of jealous guys coming up with fucking reasons to justify their positions in those days.

This is

text messages written down and things going to court.

And they're requesting a jury trial.

And there's no jury in the world that's going to hear these details as laid out here.

I don't care who's defend them.

How is he going to fight against all this stuff?

It's in writing.

Is he going to say, I thought she was into it?

Is he going to say, I didn't think there were any problems?

I mean, that's just anything with her and him, let alone anything he did illegal in his capacity to the shareholders, to the company and everything else, because it was on company property.

She's a company employee of a publicly traded company.

She's worse off personally now than she was before because

When he meets her, she's, as we said, she's upset.

Her parents have passed away, all the problems that she had.

But now she's not been able to hold a job because she's afraid to leave her apartment.

She got a job managing her building and couldn't leave her apartment to manage her own building.

And she's got all kinds of after effects from all of this shit.

And again, we don't know how old she is for sure, but I am leaning toward that she was in her early 20s based on the picture that we've seen.

and other things that we've heard, and that she had had no employment history.

She had to be a young person.

And there's some newspapers that reported her as being older.

But that brings up this is only one of the payoffs.

So who else is she maybe getting confused with, or vice versa?

And

what were the higher fucking payoffs for than possibly than this?

See, that's where it gets crazy.

And some of the other payoffs, apparently, for talent.

It's one thing, and this is all inexcusable and awful, and Vince should burn for it.

But it's one thing with someone in your building that you bring into your office,

this is a wrestling company, if he was doing anything similar to this, to any of the female talent, that's a whole nother story.

Because,

you know, talent talked to talent, and talent's supposed to look after each other.

And,

you know,

at this point, you can't assume that Vince wasn't doing awful shit with other people if he was paying them millions of dollars, hoping that it would ensure their silence forever.

And how many other people did he stop paying?

Because we said that before.

He did it to this woman.

He also did it to wrestling promoters.

I mean, he's done this to other people where he makes a deal and he just decides, I've had enough of that deal.

I'm going to do something else.

He figures out some way that they broke it first.

You know, wouldn't they?

The cover story on Calgary was that did Bruce Hart run a spot show show at a fair somewhere up?

Yeah.

Whatever.

But

that's, again,

the problem becomes not only the payments or whatever, but I can tell you that with talent,

no,

I'm not saying that nothing ever happened with talent because...

There wouldn't be an agreement, et cetera.

And we think that there's probably something that's happened with the talent or two,

but no way that it was to this extent or in the flavor of what this was with this young lady, because again, no way.

Well, no, no way it could have been kept quiet.

Hey, listen.

Because the girls in the locker room would share shit.

No, they'd be scared that they're going to get sued by Vincent Jerry McDivitt also.

I think that's why a lot of people have been quiet for a long time.

It's like the Colin Thompson thing.

He wanted us to shut up.

He right away started threatening lawsuits for tens of millions of dollars.

We call this bluff.

It's not that easy to call the bluff of someone who you know will just go as far as they can because they have more money than you.

And it has to be an uneasy thing.

There are stories I could say, there's a story I've heard.

And I'm not going to give too many details here because it's not my story.

Although enough people know it because the first person who I heard tell the story, I think, told lots of other people the story.

And another person who's told the story was on the plane.

But about Vince having one of the women perform for him on the plane in front of the writers and other people.

And this was someone who ended up having a lot of problems.

That's what he's doing publicly.

If he's doing that in front of people that are his employees, he's doing that publicly.

We don't know what he was doing privately.

We don't know how crazy he is.

This whole thing makes you rethink the Rita Chatterton story, where he pulled her into his limo,

promised her the world.

Yeah.

demanded a blowjob, and then just decided, I've had enough.

I'm going to take you, according to what she said.

And then threw her out of the limo and then got rid of her.

And then tried to get the athletic commission, I think, not to use her.

I mean, Vince has a pattern.

And if you read the details of the Rita Chatterton case,

it's the same guy.

It's not like this is

what's happening here in 2021 or whatever, the 2019 to 2021 to currently, I guess, seems like the same guy that was accused of doing those things in the late 80s.

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The problem becomes now

that,

well, I guess we've jumped ahead over kind of the lead.

Vince is gone.

He resigned.

How many things did he resign from?

The

executive chairman of TKO.

And...

Was he on a board of something?

Did he sell all of his share?

Yeah, he's the chair.

He was the executive chairman of the board.

Well, I don't think you can just sell that many shares just like, just sell everything right now.

That takes a while to gather up and liquidate, right?

But he's officially not holding any position of,

you know,

not only of employment, but of ceremonially on boards or in any way with the company.

Because as soon as this, what was it, like maybe four hours later after the news came out of the lawsuit, Slim Jim said,

we are deciding to pause our promotional activity for the Royal Rumble the following day.

And you know, that had to be some fucking money because it's the number two pay-per-view, and they were the big title sponsors.

And

what was it?

Was it a half hour after that?

We got the news of Vince's resignation.

Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting how that happened.

The day before

the Wall Street Journal article was published, the complaint started going around a little bit after that.

Other news organizations organizations started picking up the story.

CNN was running with it all day.

I saw it on CNBC as well.

Vince put out a statement, or his side did, saying that it was all false and he was going to vigorously defend himself.

And well, it was all either false or distorted truths.

There was that caveat in there.

Alternative facts.

Alternative facts.

But then TKO put out a statement, and it was kind of the opposite tone.

Vince McMahon is not in charge here.

He's not running anything.

And then, as soon as the first sponsor, and it's a big one, they just announced, I think, over the summer, like the biggest sponsorship deal ever with Slim Jim.

When they announced they were pausing it, they did not wait.

Vince was gone right away.

And

at this point, how could Vince have any

friends on that board, or maybe friends isn't that word?

Anyone who's sympathetic to him being there.

It's now a complete liability for him to have anything to do with the company.

You have to wonder if the name McMahon could be used anymore for this company.

Well, and that's they had to know as soon as that news came out,

they already had to be talking because it was going to be a waterfall of sponsors dropping out if they hadn't made an announcement and if they, you know, hadn't nipped it in the bud.

So as soon as that news came out, I'm sure they were

whoever needed to talk to whoever was talking to them.

And they probably said, well, let's see if anything happened and boom something happened and there you go

but that they would have cost him a fortune and and like you said i think

you know it might be good

if stephanie came back stephanie might be the mcmahon

that well

but think about this in hindsight

She has dodged Vince every every chance she could for the last two years, right?

She left.

Then all of a sudden he had to leave.

So she came back.

And when he came back, she left again.

And

was Triple H, did he not at one point vote that maybe Vince shouldn't come back?

Vince, Stephanie, and Nick Kahn, all three of them voted for him not to return.

Vince had the power to override everyone.

Yeah, well, but so

maybe

she kind of was trying to do the right thing or at least wasn't doing the wrong thing.

She's in a tough position.

Triple H, and we could talk later on about what he said during the Royal Rumble press conference, or what he didn't say, or how he tried to address this, or didn't address it, however you see it.

Stephanie went on TV.

If Stephanie, and again, we don't know who the unnamed executives in the complaint are, but if Stephanie's one of them, or if she, as a member of the board, was privy to the investigation and what its contents were, and if the investigation showed any of this.

And we don't know if it did, because if they didn't speak to Janelle Grant or her attorney, it's kind of like the AEW investigation.

It didn't speak to Lucy.

It's not a real investigation then.

But if their investigation showed any of this stuff, and Stephanie knew about it, and as

an act that wasn't publicly known, did some things behind the scenes, including but not limited to walking back and leaving, coming back to help, leaving as soon as her dad came back, she still went on TV and led the audience in a thank you, Vince chant.

That's fucked up.

There are stories, and I'll say this because enough of them are going around.

We could talk about it, but we don't know how true they are.

There are stories going around now

that one of the reasons, or in part,

maybe Shane McMahon had previously left WWE going back.

almost 20 years

because of issues with his dad, because of his dad's behavior, and that Shane wasn't like that.

And that Shane didn't want to do those things, whatever those things were at that time.

And that

Shane and his dad, because they were so different personality-wise, it's caused a lot of issues.

And that's why Shane wasn't really a part or privy to any of this stuff, you would think.

Although he did come back to the company, he wasn't an executive.

He was just talent.

Well, yeah, and Shane.

obviously more different now than Vince.

Shane had a lot of similarities with Vince in that, you know, the energy and the physical fitness, you know, fanaticism and, you know, the gung-ho business, blah, blah, blah, good stuff.

But I've said Shane is a nice guy and he's got a nice wife and nice kids.

And I'm not sure.

The other explanation.

was also very plausible that Shane realized he wasn't going to be, because I don't think Shane's aptitude for the wrestling business was off the charts.

Shane knew he wasn't wasn't going to be his dad in terms of running the company and went off to do his own thing.

That's entirely plausible.

I think at that point,

you know, I'm not saying Shane might not have known that,

you know, Vince was trying to,

you know, inappropriately integrate himself with other women or whatever, but I can't believe

that Vince would have even tried to pitch any of that to Shane.

Could you believe that if either of his kids got wind of any of his behavior?

Again, a behavior isn't just cheating.

I can believe, I guess, if I sit down him pitching this to Laura Nidas because he didn't give a shit, I don't think Vince would have wanted to disrupt his son's entire family life and whatever the fuck.

And go ahead now and ask me what you're going to ask me.

Well, no, I mean, that kind of sums up a lot of it, but the family stuff's interesting because Triple H is still in charge.

And based on the complaint, it appears that people knew something was going on in that office.

They knew that Vince had a girl on payroll for one reason or another.

Who knows how much anyone knew?

Well, who knows what Vince shared with what people?

Are we supposed to think that John Laurenitis and his physical therapist are the two people he trusts the most in the world with this kind of stuff?

How did that door open with him and Johnny Ace?

Jesus.

So we don't know.

And, you know, he's talking about this stuff with Brock.

Is there anyone else he's trying to impress

by showing photos of someone who didn't want their photos around there or talking about someone like this?

We don't know any of this.

The big thing is we don't know who knew what.

The complaint has a lot of unnamed people.

Was Kevin Dunn,

who was, based on everything everyone always said before this, someone who was always there because of his relationship with Vince.

Because he knew how to work within Vince's system, that he was maybe the second most powerful person in the company at times.

What did he know?

John Warrenitis was involved in this.

And let me say one thing here about Kevin Dunn.

I'm not saying that he didn't know anything or didn't know anything or whatever, and I could believe either story.

Probably I could believe more that he did know everything and was, you know, he would never betray Vince, but I can pretty much guarantee goddamn to you that he probably was not involved.

I don't never had long personal conversations with Kevin Dunn, but I'm thinking he's like a fucking person who would live vicariously through stories, if anything.

And also

the timeline of events.

I mean, a lot of this takes place during the pandemic.

Lauren Nidas was all of a sudden made the head of talent relations again in 2021, remember?

No one thought he would ever have that role again or that he should.

That was just based off things that people heard that wasn't this.

And all of a sudden he was the head of talent relations again.

That was funny.

Here's another thing we should talk about.

Let me pull up this tweet here.

Bruce Pritchard all of a sudden returned to WWE a few years back.

Bruce Pritchard,

who most people didn't think would ever return to WWE because there were forces outside of Vince who really didn't want him there, who knew why he would be there,

and also most people didn't think really had a function in the modern wrestling business going forward in the roles that he had previously had.

Bruce all of a sudden got brought back.

Let me pull up this tweet from yesterday, the day of the Royal Rumble, 12.51 p.m.

Out of nowhere, Ronda Rousey, who left WWE several months back, made an appearance for AEW and Ring of Honor.

Here's what she wrote.

Bruce Pritchard is basically Vince's avatar.

If he's still around, Vince still has a hand in the business.

Vince was still running things through Bruce when he was gone, and gone is in quotes,

before.

And that is in line with everything we've ever heard, or at least I've

heard that.

I mean, well, I can't argue with that as far as, yes, obviously

Bruce is now

Vince's longest, you know, running confidant now that Pat Patterson's gone and Laura Nidas was not there for nearly the number of years Bruce was.

And we talked about at the time,

Bruce gets it.

And what it is whatever Vince wants.

Bruce knows how to take Vince's

sometimes, you know, cloudy instructions and disseminate it where Vince gets what he wants.

Not saying it's going to be good or bad or indifferent even, but that's just the facts.

And Bruce is Vince's ears and Bruce is Vince's eyes in a lot of cases.

And

so, yes,

but

That would be as far as business-wise, as far as the company, as far as the tan, a lot of people,

everybody thinks I'm out of touch, but every time I would actually go back and work with some modern promotion over the last five or ten years, they'd say, Wow, he really helped me a lot.

But Bruce is so old-fashioned.

But

I the fact that this was an open secret that Bruce was only there because he's doing Vince's bidding, I mean, she's saying what everyone knows.

Well, yeah, but again,

I'm saying, with having known Bruce and know

he may have known something was going on.

And this, Bruce Pritchard is a person who is so fastidious.

He brushes his teeth with warm water.

He refuses to eat hotel room service on the bed, even if that's the only place you can watch TV.

He won't eat in bed.

He has to eat at a table.

He's scared of pickles.

He is revulsed by pickles.

And he's not a germaphobe, but he's a very fastidious person.

And also, when they did the fucking Val Venus and Jenna Jameson shoot for Raw in 1997 or whatever it was, that was in the hot tub at Bruce Pritchard's house.

And Bruce's wife, Stephanie, wouldn't let him hear the end of it because they let a porn star in her bathtub.

And I just cannot believe

that, and nobody has said this, but I'm making a preemptive strike.

I can't believe Bruce Pritchard being involved

in any of these various things, but I can believe him

covering his ears and turning his head and walking as far away from the thing as possible to where he wouldn't know any more than he had to know.

I mean, it's hard for me to believe that Vince McMahon, when all of a sudden he's surrounding himself with all of his confidants, we all thought it was just a power grab for the company.

We didn't realize all the other sick shit that was happening with the same confidants.

Maybe not Bruce, maybe not Kevin Dunn, but John Laurenitis was there for a reason.

Vince,

again, everything changed the last few years.

Remember, Vince all of a sudden had his old gang back around him.

And this is what he was up to.

And it's just

in the office.

I mean, that's the other thing.

There are unnamed executives who Janelle Grant would walk past and they would treat her bad,

or someone would treat her good, but everyone was aware that there was something with her and Vince.

Yeah, she was, she introduced herself to one, and they say, Oh, I know who you are.

And who is

the thing?

Is that Stephanie?

Is that Kevin Dunn?

When I was there, when I was there, it was the era of the Human Resources Department, and they ran everything, and you could say boo to a fucking goose.

And this is, you know,

I'm reading right now a book that you'll be reading soon, The Six Pack by Brad Belucci, and it's coming out pretty soon.

And he talks about the early days of WWF, how crazy it was in the office in the 80s when HR was Linda McMahon.

And beyond that, it was just a boys' club in that office.

So,

again, it may have been different while you were there in the 90s,

but you could certainly say there was a weird,

if not at times, completely toxic culture around Vince and

the way he wanted things set up for himself.

But yeah, but now he's

become

maybe it's again, again, maybe concussions, Alzheimer's, the drugs, the steroids, whatever the fuck, but in his 70s, he's become a fucking teenager, but like a teenager with like the fucking Twilight Zone episode of, you know, he's a teenager with omnipotent power and he's wishing people into the fucking cornfield.

He's lost all

element of his reason or even his risk-reward ratio, his just willingness to leave himself open to this shit that you would have never thought the guy of 30 years ago would do, just be this stupid about it.

It's beyond stupid evil.

It's flat out evil.

And that's the thing too, beyond wrestling.

I could believe Vince would be evil more than I could believe he'd be this fucking stupid.

You know, beyond wrestling, if you look at the history of entertainment or just people of notoriety, people who are celebrities or top executives.

No one goes out like this.

Like, this is just extraordinary.

Like, it's one thing going out and people hate you, or going out, and you rip people off, or you're evil.

This is as evil.

I mean, this is as evil a way to go out as anyone ever.

The last things we're hearing about Vince are these completely deviant stories.

It's horror movie shit.

Yeah.

And it wasn't even consensual deviance, which is nothing wrong with that.

No.

But it was, it was fucking torture, psychological, fucking.

And physical.

Well, but I mean, psychological manipulation and then

fucking getting this girl stuck in this situation and doing whatever the fuck and thinking you can get away with it.

I'm astonished.

Yeah.

And again, there's no excusing Vince McMahon here.

There's no excusing Sean Laurinitis as physical therapist or anyone else that was aware or involved in any of this.

And for anyone who was bothered or offended by my laughing at the initial thing as it was coming out in real time about dildos named after wrestlers or the defecating on the head, I'm sorry.

We chose to put up on YouTube a real-time thing, thinking the listeners would want to hear how we discovered it.

And I'm sorry if anyone was offended by that, but that was my real-time reaction to hearing this.

And then I read the complaint afterwards.

And the Wall Street Journal article did not do a great job of laying everything out there.

It's a serious thing.

And we're treating it as a serious thing.

And if anyone wants to clutch their pearls over this with us, go fuck yourself.

The Wall Street Journal article was not 70 pages, which this complaint is, but they also

skipped over a lot of the things that people would naturally want to fucking know before they assumed that it was all a bunch of fucking hogwash.

So,

you know, they led with head defecating and dildos named after wrestlers.

And how are you going to bring that back from parody?

You know, it's just so crazy, too, because,

you know i don't know vince i never worked for vince i just know him as a television guy and for what i know about behind the scenes in wrestling

but when you read these text messages it's it's almost hard to envision him sitting there writing them i mean it's not it's the same human being

It's, and I'm not even, I'm not even the depraved content, but just it sounds like the fact this is some illiterate teenager and not the

we talked about

when we talked about Vince's melting appearance

the presence he used to have when he came in the room imagine and

Aldous may hate me for saying this but Nick Aldous but he wasn't as good looking a man as Nick Aldous but when he came in the room six foot two or three or whatever with the big shoulder jackets, the hair was perfect.

You know, he carried himself like a fucking important person.

You knew when he'd walked in, you stood up or sat up a little straighter or cleared your throat or whatever, paid attention.

He commanded some

attention and some respect with his, but

this

not only in appearance now, but in action.

And like I said, I'm not.

I said I never saw him write anything, but he didn't speak or dictate like this fucking dribble that you see in this

and again, she lawsuit.

They're asking for a jury trial.

We know that.

He's cooked.

Oh, no, he's done.

I mean, the grand jury,

whatever happens here, he's done.

And I think about this quote he had years ago.

I remember him saying about when him, according to him, he used to get into fights with his stepfather growing up in the trailer.

And he would get the shit kicked out of him.

But his attitude became, I lived, so I won.

That's his attitude.

As long as I live, I win.

And I don't think he deserves a win on this.

I'm not saying kill Vince or anything, but he's got to serve time and he's got to pay her.

I don't want to go into politics, but Donald Trump was just found to have to, the amount of money he had to pay the woman who won a trial saying that she was raped.

$80 something million dollars.

$80 something million dollars.

This woman has text messages.

This woman has details and dates

of

multiple participants.

And

what we've said before, we've talked about Vince is a more articulate Donald Trump with better hair.

But now it turns out that

fucking Vince is worse than Trump.

Vince is Trump with concussions.

Well, I mean, again, this is, we can keep going over it.

This is one of the craziest stories ever.

This is maybe the craziest story in wrestling history.

This is one of those stories that, if things weren't going so well right now, it could almost kill the business.

It's that big a deal.

You could, you could write this as a movie and it might be far-fetched.

People would say, oh, come on now.

Nobody would ever actually try to get away with something like this.

Any before we move on, any closing comments about all this?

Again, people have been talking about it.

Some of the people heard the YouTube clip were not exactly.

And once again,

goddamn it.

I'm sorry when I hear in the Wall Street Journal that of all people, Vince McMahon,

potential germaphobe, is goddamn being sued for shitting on somebody's head.

I couldn't fucking compose myself after that.

And there was no way,

and nothing has been reported to the present time that this came out that anybody would think that anything.

like this had been going on.

So yes, if anybody's mad at me, I'm sorry.

I'm not going to fucking make fun of it after we know the details, but

good lord,

how the fuck do we expect that to come at us on a fucking weekday afternoon to begin with?

So, I do apologize.

And you kind of hit on what the next big issue is going to be.

Who knew what and when?

And what were the higher payoffs for with other people?

For how could, what can be any worse?

How many women haven't asked for payoffs?

Those are just the women who have asked for payoffs or payoffs were offered to them.

Are we to believe those are the only only women out there it i mean if if there was a lot of if there was any doubt and nobody really doubted it because you kind of see vince doing it the way it was described trying to grope the tanning salon lady or the

some of the other minor incidents as it turned out now comparatively uh

you know those are pretty much proven too i guess at this point

There are very few bad stories about Vince that you could think about right now and not find a way to really believe.

I mean, it works.

Like I said, the Rita Chatterton story, if you go look at the details and then you hear, you go read the complaint from

this thing,

it's the same guy.

It just, it seems like the same guy.

There's always been questions about the dark side of Vince, whether it was the mysterious suitcase sent to the police with Jimmy Snooker that Snooka told everyone about.

And that we don't know anything about, or any of the things with women or any of the things with the divas when that was a thing.

And again, all of a sudden on TV, he became a different guy.

And it wasn't just Mr.

McMahon, the boss.

It was Mr.

McMahon has women all over him.

Mr.

McMahon has a thing with different divas.

The genetic jackhammer.

You have to now you have to really wonder, and you were out of there for all of that.

I mean, you were gone.

Yeah, I wasn't even there, ladies and gentlemen.

Yeah, so I mean, you have to wonder what was happening.

That you could argue that Vince may not be the same Vince you knew in 1996.

No, you know, you get

a billion dollars and I still maintain concussions, multiple concussions late in life, a billion dollars to a megalomaniac to begin with that never thought the rules applied.

And we've talked about how Vince never thought rules applied to him in benign ways or humorous ways or, you know, the ways that made a good story.

You know,

fucking run off and leave the cop try to give you a ticket or telling the fucking rental car people that the fucking car is sitting on the goddamn curb at the airport or whatever.

But,

you know, this is drugs, brain damage, age, and

deep, dark shit in his head that he suddenly felt, well, fuck, I can do anything I want.

I'm publicly traded.

By the way, John Laurinitis is the motherfucker that said to me, Jim Cornette, don't you cuss out those wrestling trainees?

We're a publicly traded company.

We'll get in trouble.

Well, fuck you, John.

Yeah, it is interesting because we don't know how far back his perverted activity goes, too.

The dynamic dudes

were not noted for their perversion back in the day.

Well, this is certainly one of the craziest stories ever, and there'll be a lot more coming out from this.

We could certainly say that.

And we'll stay on top of it.

We may have Steven P.

New on at some point to talk about some of this.

Yes, because there's some legal ways that

not only Vince fucked up here, but as a person, but the WWE as a corporation fucked up, which doesn't usually happen, maybe because this was done under the table and had to be kept in a small circle because they handled it wrong.

And then

Stephen has ideas on how TKO, if they knew anything, might have handled this a little bit better retroactively.

If they got his phones or his electronics when they did the search warrant,

again, this is what he was texting her, and it's disgusting and awful, and he thought she was cool with it.

What was he texting Laurinitis?

And what was he texting that physical therapist?

Because that's going to be a big part of the story.

It's not just what he said to the victim, it's what he said to the other people participating in the activities with him.

Vincent,

I can't imagine how, I mean, it's not even about coming coming back at this point, but he won't live long enough to fucking show his face in public again, will he?

And then, I mean, all those things that just all of a sudden he changed his face.

I mean, it's so many weird things just showing up.

So whichever face he's wanting to show in public, I don't think he'll live long enough at this point to be able to do it without having rocks thrown at him.

Yeah, he's really become the all-time villain.

Because before

he came back, I'll say this and then we'll actually move on to something involving wrestling.

Before when he came back, or at least when he retired, remembered he got

the farewell on TV.

They came out and people gave him a round of applause and big cheers, even though bad publicity, because he was Vince and he gave them their wrestling.

Well, I don't think they'll think that way anymore.

I think

they'll think he's Vince and he tried to take a big shit on their wrestling.

Yeah, think about that moment now in retrospect.

That it wasn't just, all right, I'm off the board.

Let me come by and say goodbye.

That was the board knows about all this nasty shit I've been doing, but I'm going to still go out there and shove it in everyone's face and say, welcome to SmackDown.

Yeah, and show them how much that the fans love me.

He ain't going to, if he lives to be his mother's age, he won't live long enough, I don't think, to go out in public again and

not get fucking hooted at.

All those wrestlers that went into the Hall of Fame should be happy that they were always told never to thank Vince.

That's an interesting thing.

I mean, just what a maniac this guy was, and it's all about him and all about power and domination.

And he didn't want anyone thanking him.

But he also wanted everybody to know that he wanted everybody not to thank him.

Yeah, that's right.

See what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Because that's even a that's even better than everybody thanking him.

He's like, I know you owe everything to me, but it'll make a rotten television program if that's the same thing everybody says.

Yeah, there's a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where they go go to an art gallery and there's a wall that's been dedicated by Anonymous.

And as soon as Larry David gets there, someone's like, Anonymous is Ted Danson.

Everyone knew it was Ted Danson.

And Ted Danson knew that he would look really good if he made it Anonymous instead of Ted Danson.

Same thing.

But like you said, we've discussed this endlessly here, and I'm sure we will be discussing it more in the future.

Well, as soon as somebody else talks about something, sucks.

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But in the meantime, before we get into the programs, real quick,

I was going to say, because we had so much going on on this show, I was going to save emails for next week.

I've seen a few, not a ton, but this one got to me.

This came in last week as it was anyway.

I didn't want to wait too much longer.

But

it's from Christina.

I won't give her last name.

But she says, my fiancé Jonathan, John, was one of your biggest fans from Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

He had triple bypass heart surgery on December 28th, and on January 11th he passed away.

He was only 40.

His heart was not able to handle the surgery.

We listened to your podcast together on repeat.

It was one of our favorite things to do when we were together.

My heart aches for him.

We were together for eight years and we're going to get married on October 1st.

And she asked if we could

have a moment of recognition for John,

you know, on the show.

And that just, yeah.

You know, it makes me feel so bad when something like this happens.

When I would imagine that Jonathan is probably the one that got Christina into our shows, and

you know, but they were able to do something together, and then something like that happens.

He was only 40.

So, Christina, we're sorry for your loss.

Yeah, very sorry, Christina.

But on a more

positive note, Michelle and Andrew,

who

we wished them well on their engagement back in

November 2022.

And

finally, they got married on July 21st last year.

And they just now sent me a picture.

I don't know what took eight months, but nevertheless, well, they were

driven to do this, reminded to do this, because

when we were reading Russo's pitch to DirecTV, they got a special fucking tickle out of that and realized they need to send their wedding picture.

But anyway, congratulations, guys, Michelle and Andrew.

Oh, good Lord.

All right, real quickly, I don't want to be too commercial at this time of rumble season, but I just want to make sure that everybody knew that the pictures are up, the information is up, and the Midnight Express 40th anniversary part two, the final chapter, will be in full swing very shortly with action figure tag team sets

of either your favorite combination of the Midnight Express Eaton and Condry or Eaton and Lane as well as the Heavenly Bodies Stan Lane and Tom Pritchard

under a thousand sets of the Midnight combos and 500 of the Heavenly Bodies tag team sets and

as we mentioned and Brian I will say now all the more none of these will be remade or others produced in the future because after this year and I mentioned one more cornet variant where we're going to get out of the action figure business because we're planning two and three years ahead of time.

And I'm starting to run out the clock.

And to be honest,

with the way everything else is going in the world, I'm not sure that there will be a wrestling business in two or three years anymore.

But

nevertheless, the celebration for the midnight anniversary, we wanted to go out with a bang and make sure that these guys had the action figures that they deserve before we close this chapter out.

All of them come in a beautifully illustrated display box.

All of them come with autograph photos, depending on what you get of all the surviving members of our teams.

And there's some packages also with books and,

again, less than 50 of the autographed pictures, the last ones that we had that Bobby signed before he passed away.

So go right now to jimcornet.com and you can see all the information of what you get in each.

And they started only $99.95 for the people who couldn't afford the four-pack.

And here's a heads up.

If you want to

order Jim Cornette merchandise, the Cornet Face t-shirts, the Cult Cornette membership certificates, the books, the DVDs or whatever, order before February 10th, because all these figures go on sale February 10th at noon Eastern.

We're taking all the other merchandise down like we did last time so that we can get everybody because it's still, it's just me and the feather bottoms, folks.

And your orders will be locked in, and everybody will get everything, but it's going to take us

probably another six or eight weeks to process everything so we don't want to complicate the issues.

So, if you want non-Midnight Express merchandise, get that before February 10th.

It's going to be down for a little while.

And otherwise than that,

then you can have us

forever immortalized on your office or display shelves in your rec room

for our 40th anniversary and the last one.

Brian, I'm figuring out that the less that I associate with the general population and the more that I look forward to my retirement and slowing down and not doing as many things,

I just want to read books and sit under the fucking tree.

Every time that we get more of these fucking stories, I lose my faith in a grand swath of humanity.

I don't know what to say about that.

I mean, my attitude has been this is a dirty business.

You got to be honest about it.

But it's a dirty world.

But it's a dirty world, but this has always been a especially dirty business.

And what Vince is.

I don't know anybody.

You see the other guy,

the guy the other day on the news, I'll say it in a minute.

He was arrested with a fucking human hand in his pocket, just walking down the goddamn street.

I don't.

Was it sticking out of his pocket?

How'd they get him?

No, remember I told you that?

Or was that the show that Solomon was on?

Do you remember me telling you about that?

I don't, but you know, I forget these things.

It was on the news.

They arrested a guy for murder.

And they ended up, when they arrested him, he had a dismembered fucking human hand in his pocket.

So I don't trust anybody anymore.

You never know who's got one hand in their pocket and the other hand on your fucking throat.

Well, that's the wrestling business for you.

All right, but it's a dirty, dirty world.

It's a a dirty world.

I choose not to participate.

If nominated, I will not run.

If elected, I will not serve.

Well, Brian, I guess what we ought to do before we get ready to rumble is just briefly go over.

No earth was moved.

No new ground was broken on SmackDown on

Friday night.

What was Friday night?

The 20th.

26th.

6th?

26th.

The 26th of the month of January.

No new

Brown was broken.

No new ground was broken.

Don't snicker at me.

I'll slap you for snickering.

Whatever happened to Ground Strowman?

That's a good question.

What did happen to the world's strongest giant

man with a beard?

I think you got hurt, but.

God damn it.

What did they do?

You know what Arne Anderson said to fucking Vic Foley?

In 1989 in WCW, after the Christmas break, Cactus had gotten in a fucking car wreck in Long Island, just, you know, not on a road trip, I don't think, just as he was home, you know, visiting his family.

And he missed a couple of shows.

And Arne had seen the fucking.

bumps that he had taken and been able to get up and walk back from and everything.

So the first night that Cactus got back, he's sitting in in a locker room.

Arn said, you had to take time off for a car wreck.

What'd you do?

Run off the edge of the Grand Canyon?

Anyway, so no new ground was broken on SmackDown,

but it did set up more of the various issues at the Rumble.

But did you know, let's talk about more aesthetic things on this television show and just observations rather than blow by blow.

Maybe that's not a good term to use anymore.

Play by play.

The opening, they got the main eventers walking in the building while the announcers are billboarding things.

They go to the package of last week's main event and the angle.

The editing is top quality, but it seems like they're open to the show.

They're flowing better.

It moves along.

They're upgrading things in terms of a...

tempo standpoint than just giving us the arena shot and hearing the announcers and blat somebody's music plays and out they come from the entranceway.

They're jazzing it up with the network look, right?

And new head of production.

Well, that's that's what I'm saying.

Maybe that is, again, we've heard that maybe some more changes will come to get it in more in line.

What are they saying?

How are they phrasing it with the an athletic presentation?

Not actually coming out and saying, yeah, you know, like the UFC, but kind of what we've been maybe hoping for.

Or like wrestling, like what wrestling's supposed to be.

Yeah, well, imagine that.

If they could have that groundbreaking idea, then we'd be all set.

And it's Michael Cole and Corey Graves again, because poor old Kevin Patrick, you know,

maybe

he knew this time was coming.

That's why he couldn't catch his breath.

He was like hyperventilating like when are they going to fire me?

When are they going to fire me?

Where are you taking me?

No, way

wade what do you mean i thought i could stay in this country corey corey help me they're taking me away ha ha he he ho ho to the funny farm

but it thank you very good uh so they introduced a rapper

And the rapper whose name I can't pronounce or spell, I've never heard of, obviously, I don't know if it's my demographic,

but he welcomed us to SmackDown and didn't do a bad job apparently is he somebody oh oh music guru you know i had the open on mute so i saw him but i'm not exactly sure who it was but they were in miami so i'm guessing it's someone who uh really has the beat well satan but now you're starting to show your age a little bit just that you don't know all of these people from sight Because I go based on ear.

You're talking music.

I'm not like you, a superficial music fan.

Well, I care about what the people look like.

I care about the sound and the song.

No, but what I'm saying,

you would recognize who this was if this was a person who you knew it was.

This was a person so talented in their craft that their image doesn't matter.

It's about what's happening on the record.

That's what I'm saying.

Well, on the record, for the record, what was happening here was he welcomed us to SmackDown and introduced Randy Orton.

And here came Randy, and apparently Randy is in this guy's music video.

And he has done some tribute to the RKO or something.

But anyway, Orton cut a promo on the bloodline, and

he knows what he sounds like, he means what he says because he understands the importance of either doing in the ring or saying something in a promo that sounds half-ass,

real, and convincing, or just don't do that.

So he talks in a way that he can talk and sound half-ass, real, and convincing.

Wonder where he learned those type of things from.

But anyway,

so he, of course, is vowing to beat Roman Reigns at the Royal Rumble, and he'll be a 15-time world champion.

And suddenly, AJ's music plays and he cuts the, and here we go.

I think this is AJ's downfall from being

when it's Roman and it's Orton, and right now it's LA Knight and it's AJ.

AJ's kind of fucking Zeppo, isn't he?

Well, no, Zeppo became a very successful talent manager.

I don't think that's AJ at all.

Now, come on now.

We don't know what he's going to do later on.

His wife left him for Frank Sinatra.

He's still AJ's?

I know, Zeppo.

Oh, all right.

Well, we don't know what AJ's got a chance to do later on.

He could become a great agent or potentially, you know, fuck Frank Sinatra's wife.

I don't know.

There's still time, I guess.

I mean, there has to be someone out there.

Mia Pharaoh's out there.

Well, there you go.

I knew that he had at least one living

ex-spousal person.

Yeah, because he married her when she was 19.

But anyway, go ahead.

Well, but that's legal.

Point out.

She's like 55 years old, but go ahead.

Oh, let's not even get into this goddamn discussion.

In light of recent events, what I'm saying to you is that AJ's phenomenal in the ring, and he's better verbally than he was in the TNA days.

But I think his

level of conviction and delivery and just whatever is that I think is

what is his shortcoming.

But thankfully,

L.A.

Knight's music played and he got a big pop and he livened the thing up and the crowd was chanting his shit.

And he cut a good promo on AJ.

And

this is all about, you know, who's going to be the one to dethrone Roman but LA Knight cut the fucking promo and said and that's a fact of life and he tossed the microphone down and walked off on him and there's AJ and Orton with their mouths open and suddenly AJ just flips upside down and just sucker kicks Orton and again and leaves him laying there and walks off

So, and that's basically, they wanted to cover that match.

They wanted to cover a couple of other things.

On SmackDown here, the matches were secondary, even

more so than usual, I think.

And maybe

was this a good fucking week for it anyway?

Just keep them talking so

the crowd doesn't start chanting amongst themselves.

I guess.

I mean, with this thing specifically, I feel like the segments with the intrigue about who's doing what to who here and Randy Orton get in the...

The moments where they just show him looking on, not knowing what to do, but he doesn't really say anything.

it's a lot more interesting than the actual match yeah

because we we got Escobar and Carlito

and remember a couple months ago didn't we want to see this match on pay-per-view when it was fresh in our mind we almost did we almost did

yeah and then suddenly we didn't and then and now we did but i you know I wanted to see it and had time to watch it then, but neither one applied this week.

So maybe did I miss anything or did you see this?

I watched some of it.

I think Escobar is really good as a heel.

He's really, really, he was great as a babyface.

You totally believe him as like the best friend, and now he's really good as a heel.

They just got to do something interesting with him, other than just feuding with everyone he's been with for the last couple of years.

Yes, or ever known potentially

in his previous life.

But

a big package on the jump to Netflix.

The rock at WWEHQ, the new one, apparently.

They didn't have that high ceilings in the building I worked in.

The big board announcement, the whole thing.

This is, it's

Entertainment Tonight

Wrestling, where you get the talking and you get the packages on the big events, and then in the middle, the matches or the commercials.

The only thing you don't have is the hosting.

Entertainment Tonight at least has like hosts to pitch to different things and host different segments.

Here, it's just like anyone who has a microphone, go.

Am I being led to believe that The Rock's daughter is now the general manager of NXT?

I told you this would happen in terms of her being all over TV all of a sudden.

She's now the general manager of NXT.

She doesn't seem to be that good a talker or particularly

intriguing as a character, but all of a sudden she's in a role that will have her on that TV show more than anyone else on that show, I would guess.

Well, but I mean, how I'm not even saying this in a derogatory fashion.

How old is she?

How long has she been there?

Has she ever done television before?

When did this happen?

I mean, I know I ain't been watching NXT lately, but I thought I would have heard about this if it was more than a week ago.

She's been there for a while because we did a story a while back about how they brought her in and immediately changed her name to something else.

Well, but I know, but

that's not the general.

I'm talking about how long she's been general manager.

When did this

last week?

I think from what we're doing.

How did she go from reporting for training duty to she's the general manager of the motherfucker?

We ain't heard shit in between.

From what I read, because I did not watch NXT, because despite how good people say it is, every time I give it a chance, it runs me off again.

William Regal showed up at NXT, the former general manager, and he went backstage and he talked to her and said that she's a new general manager.

I don't know much more than that.

Obviously, well-qualified.

She's a seventh-generation wrestler wrestler in some way, I'm sure.

Yeah.

She's the great, great, great, great-granddaughter that wasn't of Nef Mayava.

I don't know what's going on.

She's the great, great, great daughter of the great one.

But I just, how did they present that?

Has she even been on their television?

She has.

I want to say that she's been doing something on their show, and it didn't light the world on fire.

So now they made her general manager.

She had a stroke, so they made her head a talent relationship.

Well,

that's a good place to go so you can

recuperate at a

leisurely pace.

All right.

Oscar and Carrie wrestled the

or wrestled for the tag team championship or defended it against Chance and Carter.

And then we had a little

vignette backstage with Heyman and Solo and Uso,

where Paul says, hey, Solo, you solved the problem, but you didn't fix the problem.

Don't be merciful.

And Solo takes off, and then Paul gets up in Jimmy's ear and gives him the big pitch to enter the Royal Rumble and do this and that and the other thing and beat Seth Rollins.

And Heyman is captivating and brilliant to listen to.

So again, I enjoyed hearing this little soliloquy after that unfortunate choice of a match they presented.

But then the string of soliloquies stopped, Brian, because

the in-ring with Lashley and the street prophets calling out Carrion Cross and

what is the, I haven't even remembered the name of the unintimidated ministers.

What are they?

The bare-naked ladies?

The Final Testament.

The Final Testament.

Apparently, it's a multi-parter.

But

the street prophets go after the heels, and Scarlett jumps on Lashley, and then Cross stops him.

And the heels are getting heat, and they had to do...

I don't even think it was bringing up the microphones.

I think it was actual piping in of the booing.

Because you're looking at the people and they're like,

Sort of like trying to tolerate that examination that the doctor just has to give you, but you didn't really want to go through it.

How is it that everything that this

carrying cross, this guy, and this beautiful girl get involved in gets negative response?

They bring back the fucking cheers they emitted in the previous segment.

I don't know.

I can't explain any of this.

I mean, even the faction, like with Paul Ellering.

What is he doing?

What does Paul Ellering do?

He just every now and then gets on the mic, but then he doesn't even go to the ring.

He just stands in the back and the other guys are out there.

And the other guys.

And the new t-shirt with the cross, but you add another line to make it an F for the final testament.

So just the whole trying to make it some kind of religious thing, too.

I don't know.

I don't know what the hell they're doing with it.

Actually, I thought that was one of those dravas that they put at the end of the sentence for for a, you know, a fucking footnote.

But nevertheless, we got the rematch between Austin Theory and Carmelo Hayes, and neither one of them got hurt.

They actually got to finish it.

I wondered why they started at 100 miles an hour because they were going so fast that Thier slipped and fell on a knee lift, his own knee lift.

And then Carmelo Hayes fell on his ass on a drop behind.

But then I realized they did all this shit in less than two minutes before the break.

And then when they came back,

they had like 90 seconds before the fucking bell

and

a couple of big two counts.

And

Hayes nailed Waller and rolled up Theory.

And Theory reversed it and held the fucking tights.

Boom.

One, two, three.

And then the heels jump right back on him.

And suddenly music plays.

And did you see who it was, Brian?

Do you remember who it was?

It was Trick.

It was his friend Trick.

They've been friends from way back when we used to watch NXT.

And he hit the ring and made a big comeback and shit canned all the heels.

So

they're, they're fucking

now they had a three and a half minute match and they're at an angle with Carmelo and a new guy

who made his debut.

Any closing comments on that?

No, this SmackDown is just not that

overwhelming, not even over-under.

Not over under.

Not whelmed.

Well, let's whelm you with the main event because that's what we were all waiting for.

LA Knight and Solo.

And you know, that's going to be a big fucking, you know, main event match that they're going to devote plenty of time to.

So immediately they get into a big fucking schmaze and LA starts working on the guy's, you know, his thumb, try to nullify the spike, and he smashes it on everything, and they go out to the floor, and Solo stops LA Night with one blow, and they go to break in two minutes.

And again, when they come back,

you know, they're minutes from going off the air, but basically, this isn't just an angle for because they were, they didn't even use the minutes that they had for match, a little more heat.

And LA Night makes a comeback, and the fans are with him.

They chant big.

The fucking yeah heads on the desk.

And then

suddenly you're watching LA Night beat fucking Solo up, and from nowhere, AJ Styles just fucking levels him.

And immediately the bell rings.

Nobody even saw him coming.

They must have dropped him in out of a helicopter, as Heard would say.

And now he's beating up LA Night and fucking runs him into the stairs.

And Uso

has a chair because he was in Solo's corner, but he sets it down and offers it to AJ.

And AJ slowly, now they've just completely slowed it to a crawl, slowly gets the chair, and Solo's like, Yeah, hit him, hit that no-good LA night.

And so AJ beats up Solo and Uso with the chair.

And then here comes Randy's music.

And he hits the ring and he nails Uso and AJ and drops Solo on the desk.

And

DDT's Uso and DDT's AJ and RKO's AJ.

And the crowd's ballistic for Randy.

Wonder why.

Haven't seen a fucking dominant campaign like this since Sherman's March to the Sea.

And then, right as Randy's got the beauty shot and his music is playing, and the announcers are pitching out to next week.

And you think, well, wow, that was great.

Boom, LA Knight comes up and gives Orton the BFT.

And then they go off the air.

So that was a nice little twist.

But I'm wondering, are they making,

as much as I love Randy Orton, he's a star, he's kicking the shit out of everybody.

Are they making him too invincible when he's just recovered from back surgery and is maybe closer to the end of his in-ring career than he is, obviously, to the beginning.

And

who are they going to come up with can beat this fucking guy?

Of course, he looks great.

What do you think?

I mean, what do I think?

Who's going to beat Randy Orton?

Well, I mean, if he is,

he kind of came in.

L.A.

Knight was, I'm not even talking about AJ, but we've seen that L.A.

Knight.

And Cody Rhodes, and now they've got CM Punk, and they've had a number of new faces, newer faces that they've elevated.

But Orton has come in, and so far, he's the one kicking the shit out of everybody.

Except in this instance, yes, L.A.

Knight got him from behind with

goddamn is, or is he just running away with it because he looks like a goddamn brick wall and all his shit looks good when he drops people on their fucking face?

Yeah, but L.A.

Knight's still the most over of the three.

I don't know.

Randy's got the

icon pop and the main event pop and also the sympathy pop from coming back from a serious surgery.

So right now, I think they're louder for him.

I don't think he gets that.

You know, that's the one thing I disagree with.

I don't think Randy Orton has a sympathy pop.

I don't think people look at him that way.

Well, I don't mean the sympathy pop, but I mean the, oh, wow, we're glad we got him back because we might not have.

Yeah, we're happy.

I don't think anyone's like, oh, poor Randy, I can't believe he's been never.

No, I didn't.

All right.

Poor verbiage on my part or whatever then.

But yes,

that's basically the deal.

They're glad to see him.

He's been there so long.

He's been at that level.

So,

well, you asked me the other day, are they cooling LA Night off?

I don't think so.

I think just Randy's kind of running away with some of this.

I don't know.

It does feel like there are guys that,

you know, not to compare it to AEW, but LA Knight got really hot.

And then,

you know, things kind of come down a little bit.

Punk came in.

It was the biggest thing ever.

You know, they're still kind of fitting them into things.

There's still a lot of stuff we haven't seen, but also The Rock came in right behind that.

Again, not to compare it to AEW when they had like Punk and Danielson and Adam Cole and just one after another, boom, boom, boom.

But it does feel like some guys are not.

I don't know.

You would think that if in a world where punk did not come in, let's say, and when The Rock did not come in,

they may have used L.A.

Night a little differently between Survivor Series and Now.

Yeah, but I agree with that, but at the same time, I don't think it's too late or anything or

to spell doom and gloom.

Unlike AEW, where they don't really follow up and people just lose track or interest,

they've still featured L.A.

Knight.

He's just in a much more crowded forest.

So his blossoms can't shine quite as brightly in the middle of all the other foliage.

All right.

Is that a good transition to how we can relax and

help calm our desperate minds after all the things that are going on these days?

Do you hear this wind behind me?

No, nobody hears it.

No, you do.

No, no, this mic is really good.

Do you hear the, listen to the wind.

Give it a chance.

Listen.

I could hear a mouse pissing on cotton.

It would sound like thunder.

You hear it, though.

And what I know, and what I'm...

You do.

Yes, you do.

Yes.

You hear the...

Look here.

Instead of going to the ear, nose, and throat guy, I'm going to start sending you to a fucking therapist here.

Oh, come on.

If you, I'm telling you.

You know, as a matter of fact, here, what I was about to say might possibly help you in your current malady and situation with your apparent apparent delusions and or what voices you're hearing or sounds you're hearing or community telepathic it's thoughts that you're picking up literal wind i'm seeing trees sway in the breeze of the wind that i'm hearing that you hear that you're denying because you know jacelle edited out and it makes me look like a fool

well

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No,

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What?

You said something in a way that took me aback.

So I'm not exactly sure what you said other than...

Take it back.

Woo, woof, woof, woof, woof.

Well, let's take it back.

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Yes, it is.

That's right.

Well, Brian, if we got a good night's sleep and got rid of all of our aches and pains and we were able to rid ourselves of anxiety and improve our concentration, sores,

sore.

Well, you might have some sores on you.

I've got really no lesions or anything, but

we were all ready for the Royal Rumble.

And boy, I didn't realize, I thought we'd need to get a good night's sleep to get ready for the Royal Rumble.

I didn't know the Royal Rumble would put us to fucking sleep.

How guilty?

Well, not guilty.

How much of it do you think was the crowd?

How much of it do you think was the wrestling?

Well, I mean, the crowd liked what the crowd liked.

And,

you know, here's the thing.

They can't hold

a lot of this reasonably against the WWE as an entity now because

if all of the people who were gone or all the people who were involved or there or knew

of the things going on have either gone or are probably about to be gone, it's a new ownership and the boys, the talent, the girls, the rank and file, it's not their fucking fault.

So if this had been

If this was a deal where

Vince still owned the company and everything was still as before, before, the whole WWE would be fucked.

But I don't think the crowd was holding back because the news had dampened it that much.

I think it just

wasn't really that fucking stirring.

I mean, there were moments and, you know, they did get up for what they like.

They just, it wasn't that much there that they liked or that we liked in this thing.

The cake didn't rise.

That's my opinion.

And the thing is, if you didn't like something, you were stuck with it for a long period of time because now there were only four matches.

AEW has 13 on a fucking pay-per-view.

WWE's gone down to four and two of them last an hour and a half apiece.

So it was just,

it was a four-hour show, and it was a bit of a schlog.

What did Hulk Hogan add to the open?

Because did they get some kind of Tampa tourism fucking payoff to do that open?

I didn't see the open, but in the middle of the show, I was watching something with Hulk Hogan.

I'm like, oh, that's interesting.

I guess 40 years of Hulkamania.

But no, it was him pitching the beauty of Clearwater Beach.

Yeah, well, the Cold Open 2 centered on, you know, not only the Rumble, but the great history of the Tampa area.

What I saw was a flat-out commercial for.

Oh, yeah, no, that was in the middle.

That was in the middle.

Yeah, come down and visit our beaches and hang out at my store, and Ron Howard can fucking tell you all the latest latest conspiracies.

Brothers.

So, anyway, they had Michael Cole, Corey Graves, and they introduced Pat McAfee.

McAfee was back on commentary, so a three-man booth for this one.

But they led with the Women's Royal Rumble match.

And, Brian,

I think if anybody doubts what you comments you made in the last

several days on one of these programs about

basically there not being a lot of depth in anybody's women's division.

Did this prove it?

Did this prove it?

It proved that there are a lot of women who,

it seems, are taught how to do moves or move around, but aren't really taught how to work.

And there are a few women who really stand out.

That you say, geez, that person's a star.

And then there's a lot of women just running through moves.

And

not everyone works at the same speed or could do what's in their mind and it ends up being a sloppy mess at times.

The crowd wasn't really into it, but to be fair, they weren't really into much throughout the whole show.

It was a weird stadium crowd.

But I mean, with the, you mentioned they, they can do moves.

A lot of it is adapting their cheerleading routines to throw somebody down on the mat instead of having them land back on their feet.

And otherwise, that's the wrestling.

And it's just so much like running, like getting in just right away, running and doing the move that you rehearsed.

And herky jerkiness.

Yeah.

There's a lot of that.

So I'll give the participants in order from one on down.

Natalya, Naomi.

She's back.

Didn't bring the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Bailey.

Candy LaRue.

Jordan Grace from TNA with the belt.

Remember, they did that with Mickey James last time.

So they've said, okay,

you know, TNA is no threat, so we'll do something with it.

Hold on, let's talk about that real quick.

I actually thought she looked pretty good in there, all things considered, but

WWE working with TNA.

It's a very interesting time.

Again, new ownership, things happening with New Japan.

Tony working with different promotions throughout the years, calls it the forbidden door.

It's an interesting time for WWE and their new management to be working with other companies.

But they did this last year with Mickey James, remember?

And then they ended up with Nick Aldiss, who they're married, he and Mickey, you know, coming into the company.

Mickey's now working.

Is she working with TNA?

Is that where she's working?

No, I said Aldous came in.

Well, no, Mickey was in TNA last year and appeared in The Rumble.

Or two years ago, maybe.

Well, I thought it was last year.

Was it last year?

I don't know.

Point is there's precedent.

And I mean, it's, you know, did a lot of people there know who the fuck TNA is, much less Jordan Grace?

I think it's a bigger deal to the smart fans than it is to the general population.

And again, they don't see them as any threat.

So if, yes, if there's some kind of talent exchange on a limited basis, I don't see them going whole hog with it because

who has TNA got?

The WWE has an embarrassment of riches right now on the roster.

And why would they want to bring somebody in part-time and focus on them?

Yeah.

I remember in 95 or whatever it was, Dick Murdoch showed up in the Royal Rumble.

No, Murdoch was working there.

Murdoch worked there for close to a year and didn't do anything.

They just brought him to, well, a couple of times, they brought him to TV.

See,

that was what saved me right before

I went up there full-time.

I was just, I was was tired out from Knoxville and Smokey Mountain Wrestling, and I'd go up there, and

at that point in time, I wasn't doing a ton on camera.

But

basically, it was a chance to talk to Dick Murdoch and fucking hear bullshit, funny old stories was the most entertaining thing about the TVs during 95-ish.

He was in every TV?

Yeah, he worked there for a long time.

They couldn't figure out anything to do with him, but everybody liked having him around.

and I think Vince just said I fight it's Murdoch fucking pay him we'll do something eventually

and then they didn't

but he was there for quite a while

anyway um

so after old Jordan Grace was Indy Hartwell

Oscar

Ivy Nile

Katana Chance

Bianca Belair, she woke him up a little bit.

She got a pop.

See, that's part of the problem.

A lot of these women got introduced, and their music was really loud, and no one moved, and no one made a sound.

And when the music went down, it was silence.

Silencio.

That's a weird, it's a weird reaction.

It's hard to not focus on that when everyone starts getting that weird reaction.

But then, like you said, the stars, like Bianca, got a big pop.

And then we were Carrie Sane, Tegan Knox, Caden Carter, Chelsea Green, Piper Niven,

Zaya Lee,

Zelina Vega, Model Girl from fucking Dupree Models.

She fucked up her first spot.

And just

fucking, they all fell in a heap.

Naya Jax, people kind of went, oh, instead of, yay, it's like, oh, this could go either way.

She moved like a glacier.

Hey, at least she's presented like a star.

You could at least give her that.

They present her like she's, you know, better than she is, but they present her like a star, and the fans at least act like it.

So, really, we've got Nia, we've got Bianca, and

number 20 in was Shotzi.

And basically, we've had Naya and Bianca that people take as stars.

And then here came Becky Lynch,

and again, they like her.

So now we got three out of 21.

And then Alba Fire, and Shayna Baszler, and Valerie Halla.

And then one of the biggest responses so far was when R-Truth came to the ring.

He ran past old Valhalla

and was going, Where's all the guys?

He was trying to enter the women's rumble, thinking that was his number for the men's rumble or whatever the fuck.

And he looks around and Nia shit cans him, and then Pierce kicks him out of ringside.

And then Val rolls in, and Nia shit cans her too.

And then she runs after the truth.

Yeah.

She can't handle the truth.

I'm sorry to say it.

I'm very sorry to say it.

I am entertained by the R-Truth stuff.

He's so committed to the stupidity.

I'm entertained by it.

This guy's a 4-NWA champion.

I'm so entertained by just how committed he is to this.

It was the highlight of the match so far.

And unfortunately, you are correct.

And then Mia Yim.

And then Zoe Stark, and then Roxanne Perez.

And then we're up to number 28.

Jane Cargill makes her debut.

Jade.

Or Jade.

Although Michael Cole sounded, I called her Jane.

Well, they may change it.

Slightly, you know, just so they can trademark the thing.

Nah, Jade's a star.

She goes into the ring, has a face-off with Nia Jax, and Firemans carries her and drops her kind of awkwardly, but gets a big pop.

And then picked her up for a slam and dumped her over the top rope and got a huge pop.

And then she fought with Becky.

And that, so that, you know, then she ran into the post and they were all selling.

So out could come Tiffany Stratton.

Whoever the fuck that maybe she looked like seven other girls in the match.

And then that's my favorite spot.

Everyone lay in a corner.

Yeah, just lay in a corner.

Here comes a girl.

And then number 30 was Liv Morgan.

We got to put up with this again.

She came down, all minute,

and we were an hour and 10 minutes into the pay-per-view, and there were still like eight or 10 girls in the match.

And

finally, it got down to Bailey and Liv and

Miss Cargill.

And

that's where I'm like, what the fuck?

Poor

Jane,

who thought that it was going to be a good idea for her to try to work with Liv Morgan because she's green, but she looks like a star, and Liv is rotten, and it looked like two women fighting in a zero-gravity simulator at NASA.

Just

and then they got stuck in the ropes.

Cargill and Morgan get stuck in the ropes while Morgan's trying to give her a finish, and Cargill catches her.

And Bailey runs at them and had to backdrop herself over both of them to the apron because nothing else happened.

Bailey just ran and vaulted over him.

And then...

Charlie Cook.

There you go.

What's a split-legged leap, though?

And then

Cargill dumps Liv over the top to the apron barely.

And then

Bailey and Liv pull Jane over to the apron.

And they have a sloppy struggle.

And now at this point, Miss Cargill is holding her top up with one hand because it's almost coming out.

And Liv knocked her to the floor, and then Bailey pushes Liv to the floor.

So Bailey won.

Miss Cargill was in for too long.

And what the fuck does anybody see in Liv Morgan?

Is my thought.

After an hour and 20 minutes, we determined to win her in the first match.

Well, Liv Morgan's pretty.

She's got weed, drives fast.

That's dope.

That's dope.

Badass.

I was really happy to see Jade here.

I was hoping that she would be in this because I see some of the other women who get used on TV and she's not that bad.

So there's no reason for her to still be hidden and away.

But it started out great.

They were putting her over and then it was too long with girls that came.

Is this

if you're not...

And again, wrestling today is so much different than it used to be in just in terms of experience and how often you do things, but if you're relatively inexperienced,

even though Jade's been on TV and working for AEW for several years, relatively inexperienced, is it hard to be in a situation like a battle royal or a Royal Rumble where there's

people everywhere.

You don't know what to, not that you don't know what to do, but there's a lot to be done.

Yes, it's crowded.

And sometimes, and you can't call all of that.

A lot of times somebody will go to guy or girl, would go to somebody, say, okay, let's do our spot.

But in the meantime, they're having to keep

occupied while they're setting up their spot that they prearranged.

And that's where you get a lot of this wild swinging or grabbing and whispering.

Or what I didn't, I don't know what the fuck's going on.

But

yeah, if and

Cargill was the same as Mark Merrow

in WCW,

in AEW, they taught her to go out and have seven-minute matches with girls that aren't really good.

Sometimes they didn't last that long,

And it was all about putting her over as unbeatable.

That's all he did with Mark Merrow was teach him how to beat Johnny B.

Bad, have the eight-minute match and work the gimmick.

And

they have to be completely,

it's worse than starting from scratch because you've learned bad habits.

And obviously, Merrow never recovered, but hopefully Jane will.

And now with Bailey, they have the story, will she challenge her fellow fellow damage control friend, EO Sky?

Or will she challenge Rhea Ripley?

Boy, she better keep Rhea Ripley's name out of her fucking mouth.

Well, Bailey's good.

Well, yeah, but I mean, again,

that makes natural sense for Bailey.

That's the

other girls have been conspiring somewhat against her or clicking up with each other in her group, and that makes sense with that.

But I don't want to see Bailey against Rhea Ripley because it stretches credulity that she could give Rhea any kind of contest, doesn't it?

Boy, they need Charlotte back sooner than later.

That's going to be nine more months or whatever.

Anyway, can we move on?

Yes.

The four-way title match was,

and they did a nice history package, right?

And,

you know, we got,

but

we get a lot of filler, even on these pay-per-views now, between the plugs and the different things.

The girls' Rumble was out at an hour, 20 minutes into the show.

And by the time they did a history package and got the four-way title match entrances in the ring and the introductions for that match done, it was 20 fucking minutes in between.

So.

And also during L.A., before L.A.

Knight's entrance, they cut from A.J.

Styles' entrance to an L.A.

Knight and Bianca Belair Slim Jim commercial shot on location some fucking where with actors.

We got a commercial in the middle of the introductions.

Do they do that in the UFC?

I haven't watched the UFC in a while.

I don't remember them going from,

you know, and here's the next competitor coming into the octagon, and all of a sudden that guy, they're playing a fucking commercial for goddamn

Reese Cups or whatever.

Anyway, when they rang the bell for this match, obviously, as I said, 20 minutes after the previous match had ended, it's a four-way.

A.J.

Styles, L.A.

Knight, Randy Orton, and Roman Reigns for the title.

And

you can't really describe the play-by-play on this or what the story was that was being told because it's while, as we've established, it's a great idea to have four of your top guys, or maybe the four top guys, fight for the title,

that's a great idea, but then you have to have the match.

And

these guys are, they're all over, and their work is excellent, great technically.

And these guys probably do a four-way match as well as you can do a four-way match, but it's moves.

It's not a match.

You can't suspend your disbelief.

The rules are ridiculous.

People just jump in and begin wailing away on fucking people in the match that are not in the match, and the referees turn around because it's no disqualification.

You can beat a guy who's not the champion and still win the title.

So I just, I can't, I can't.

But I love all these guys.

Well, I like, I love everybody but AJ.

I kind of like AJ.

But as far as being the top-level guy, he was the one that you figured if they were going to beat anybody, they should beat him.

And eventually that's what happened.

But, you know, they're having their match, and then

they just take these

right turns where Solo comes out and pulls the referee to the floor to break the count when it looks like Orton's going to win the thing and beat Roman.

And then Solo spikes Orton and it gets in the ring and spikes L.A.

Knight and puts L.A.

Knight on top of Orton.

And the referee's just walking around limping.

And the announcer is saying, well, it's no disqualification.

So you can't do anything about this.

And then Solo charges AJ, but AJ moves and Solo goes through the barricade.

And then AJ blasts Roman and covers all three of them, and all three of them kick out.

And then it just,

that's the thing.

Everybody's got to hit

their goddamn move and turn.

They use a chair.

And then finally, L.A.

Knight hits the belly-to-back, hits the LA elbow on Roman, goes for the BFT.

So many initials here.

But Roman pushes L.A.

into AJ,

and then Superman punches L.A.

and then spears AJ.

One, two, three.

So for a four-way match of any kind, it was fine.

But for a dramatic world championship wrestling match between a dominant champion and a fucking fireball challenger or whatever, it's not close to what you can can do there in a single match.

It just happens till it quits happening.

Am I being too hard on it?

Again, the crowd reactions hurt things all night, I think, especially here.

I thought the action really got interesting towards the end.

Did you get past the fact that it was a sloppy mess?

The way things were kind of timed and the way big moves were hit.

Yes, they were doing it very well.

They were doing it really well, especially at the end.

Although the finish kind of fell a little flat.

I don't know.

You couldn't have had Roman beat one person and just had a good singles match.

It's kind of a waste of a few of these guys.

The Rumble could have used them, quite frankly.

I mean, you know, this was

when we first started doing the monthly pay-per-views, whenever that fucking was,

and right when in early 96, when I joined, they'd started, they'd been six months by that point when I joined the creative team.

And this would have been

what Vince would have described in those days as like the in-your-house main event or the B-level pay-per-view, like a February pay-per-view or a May pay-per-view.

Don't waste your big singles match that will really draw the money and that everybody wants to see.

Give them a multiple-person match or whatever.

But this is the Royal Rumble.

How much bigger can you get, right?

So

it's just a lot of these things have become habits because they've they've been doing it for so long.

And unfortunately, I think now that is bred upon itself to where they just think, well, this is the way we've always done it.

And

everybody just thinks, okay,

we don't really care about seeing the matchup between Ollie and Fraser as much as we care about seeing six guys with boxing gloves in there swinging away at each other with chairs.

It's not the big match anymore.

It's just the fucking overbooked match.

I don't know.

It was like they wanted Roman on this show and they wanted these guys on the show, but who comes out of this match for the better, really?

It's not really, it doesn't really feel like a big

Roman Waynes.

Roman Wayne's win.

Roman Waynes win?

It doesn't feel like one of those.

I mean, no one's talking about Roman Reigns' match or anything.

He was hardly in this.

All the attention was on which of the other three was going to fight each each other or fuck each other around.

But, you know, that's the thing is, if you like

all of these guys doing all of their moves to everybody, and they gave it at least some element, it's not like one of the trampoline cowboys productions over in the Indies or AEW, same thing.

Whereas at least

AJ is in a gray area now where he's, you know, being heelish.

L.A.

Knight and Randy Orton, even though they're both full-fledged babyfaces, still have a reason that they can grate on each other because L.A.'s a new guy.

He's come in since Orton was gone.

They don't know each other.

And then Roman's full-fledged heel and blah, blah, blah.

So there are at least the right dynamics in this, but, and it's not just a spot fest per se where everybody's doing ridiculous vaulting and aggressive parkour, but it just, it doesn't make sense as a wrestling match.

You can't.

You said AJ's in a gray area.

I understand he's very big with the gray community.

What do you mean, the gray community?

What are you talking about?

So now we're two hours into the program, and we have literally seen the end of the second match, right?

So we go to the U.S.

title match with Logan Paul and Kevin Owens.

And this time it was only 15 minutes from the end of the world title match to the beginning of this match.

But

now

you've got two guys in a single match that have to follow four of the biggest stars in the company that had to follow 30 fucking girls for an hour and a half.

So maybe that might be why the crowd was

petering out by this point, and it's been two hours already, right?

Owens, as advertised, and as he said, he didn't have a cast on his hand.

He was wearing a wrist support and some black tape, and he was throwing left-handed chops.

But

Logan Paul, by the way, is getting raves and from everybody, and he should.

He's a natural.

He was able to take over and work on the hand, get heat on the hand.

He unwrapped the tape like an old timer.

I mean, after Logan Paul got his ass kicked and he can sell,

and his timing, his athleticism, his heel attitude, and when he's getting heel on the bad hand, the way he's twisting the finger, he gets little things

that are not honestly easy for a lot of aspiring wrestling school students and even professionals to pick up on.

It's just amazing how far he's come with this.

But

great heel heat.

And then Owens made a left-handed comeback, couple cannonballs and a frog splash, and they start going into their big moves and two counts and trading the Swantons.

And finally, Logan Paul hit the big right hand, boom,

and dropped him and cover one, two, two count.

And Logan Paul, oh, shit.

His big move didn't, didn't work, didn't pay off.

And then here comes one of Logan Paul's.

I get his internet stooges, his YouTube show, wherever.

A guy in a white shirt to the the average person.

Yes, he's always identified as one of, you know, Logan Paul's consorts or cohorts.

I better look consort up before I use that again.

Anyways, security blocks this guy off, but here comes Austin Theory and Grayson Waller.

And Theory slips Logan Paul the nucks, but as he tries to stand up and use them, Owens grabs him and takes him away and nails Logan Paul with the nucks and covers him.

And the referee counts one, two, and points at the knuckles on Owens's hand and sees him and calls for the disqualification.

Oh, boo.

And actually,

I like that.

It was a nice fucking wrestling finish

from back in the old days.

And the program isn't over.

That's obvious, because not only from that finish, but then

Owens jumped Logan Paul and powerbombed him through the desk.

I wouldn't have done that.

I'd have left with the fucking prick having some heat.

Because then that makes Owens,

what are they going to have next?

Maybe a taped fist match.

I don't give a shit.

But they get heat on the heel for cheating and winning, and then the babyface gets to fucking powerbomb him or whatever through a desk.

But it wasn't bad.

And Logan Paul is,

I'm a huge fan.

He's another top guy in this category.

Instead of getting over as a wrestler to become a major star, he got over as a star and then became a wrestler, but he's not, he's the furthest thing from bad at it.

So I can't knock him.

Your thoughts?

I thought it was all right.

The crowd reactions, again, hurt the match.

I don't know who this guy was.

Again, I don't follow the world of Logan Paul.

I guess if you do, you know who he was, but it was just a guy in a white shirt.

And

it was a clever, I thought it was a pretty clever finish.

I thought thought it was well done.

Logan Paul doesn't seem out of place in there.

You know, that's a dusty spot, by the way.

And I know he might have stolen it from Eddie Graham, but

remember the referee catching something on you?

The referee catching something, rock and roll.

And midnight, we did a version of it two different ways.

One, I would get in and whack somebody with the racket.

But when I put my heel on top of the guy knocked out, I would accidentally leave the racket to go get the referee and revive him so he could count.

He won, two, and then his hand would come down for the three, but he'd grab the racket and hold it up, and people would go crazy.

And another one, Big Bubba, would come in and give the Bubba slam to Ricky Morton, but

his hat would fall off and he'd roll out of the ring real quickly.

And I'd slide the referee in, and the referee count one, two, and grab the fucking hat.

And as soon as he would hold it up, everybody would fucking go crazy.

Yes, yes.

And And then there you go.

And that was a dusty.

But anyway,

you know, that's

the thing is that,

you know, it's a creative wrestling finish that we used to get in the old days that would necessitate a rematch or a DQ or just a way to get out of something and go to the next thing.

It's a nice little throwback.

It makes some sense here because they're obviously going to have another match.

So

we shall see.

Are you ready to rumble, Brian?

Yeah, once again, only four matches here on this show.

Three matches on the Royal Rumble.

Hey, it's been the 1920s since there were two fucking matches an hour and a half long on a fucking wrestling show, though, hadn't it?

How could you have six or seven matches when two of them last an hour and a half apiece?

That's a good point.

So the

men's Royal Rumble is what we were most

anticipatory of because we want to see it with Punk, with Cody, maybe even, you know, Gunther as a dark horse or Drew McIntyre.

There was different ways they could go here with this.

But at the same time,

you got 30 guys.

You got 30 spots to fill.

And

I mean, I know there were always underneath guys that were booked in the Royal Rumble.

Some as fodder for the Giants, some as just a break to settle people down for the next big peak.

But

it seems like even the middle card guys in the 80s, late 80s, and through the 90s and the attitude era

were more over with people, had more interest, had more

reaction enough to keep this thing going to where

people were caring instead of just, again, it wasn't as bad as the girls' Royal Rumble, where it was 30 girls and four of them got a reaction.

But there was,

there's, it's showing the weaknesses of the roster here on a few of these.

Not necessarily their bad talents, but people don't care necessarily about what they're doing.

Does that make sense to you?

You know, I was really looking forward to this match specifically, and

it was a letdown for me.

And I guess it's so weird.

I get the crowd reaction, the crowd not reacting to a lot.

hurt things, but there are just a lot of people who run out there.

And when you really think about it, why, what has been presented of them to make someone care about them?

They have a name that's slapped on them, not even a gimmick, just a name.

And they run out there.

Here's Frederick Stevens.

Here he is.

Here's Mr.

Popenheim.

You know, there's not a lot of people that are actually over and get reactions.

And I'm sure we'll talk about it.

Once again, R-Truth got one of the biggest reactions of the whole night during this match.

Well, but also,

you miss Pat Patterson.

Pat was there for those 90s rumbles that were nail biters.

You miss Pat Patterson in a situation like this because

I think Cody made a big comeback when he got in.

Gunther had shit to do.

Braun Breaker was phenomenal.

This, to me, it was the Braun Breaker show because we're getting a glimpse of the future.

But Pat knew how to set shit up where when a guy hit, the right people were in the ring for to feed him, for him to make an impact, for him to chuck out.

Another thing,

I've had guys in several Royal Rumbles that I've managed, and they took, get to the fucking ring.

It were burning daylight.

Everybody walked to the ring for the most part.

Sometimes they'd get,

you know,

they'd get close and then they'd run, put on a spurt of energy.

Cody had to wait for his fucking pyro and his, whoa.

But it's like there's so much time being taken for them to go in this stadium down this long aisle.

It just doesn't have the pace that it used to.

So

we started.

It's also 90 seconds now, not two minutes.

I thought it was two minutes still.

90 seconds, I think.

Well, goddamn, then how does it end up lasting so fucking long?

Hawaii and Brian time.

No, no, no worries, bro.

Or bra?

It's bro in New York and it's bra out there, isn't it?

Out where?

In Hawaii.

Out there in Hawaii?

Is it bra or brah?

I mean, maybe amongst the Howlies like you.

I don't know if the Islanders are actually talking the way you are.

Well,

whether it be bra, bro, or brah.

It ain't really bro out here either.

That's kind of a misconception based on one notorious person who.

One disreputable individual who's poisoned the pool for everybody.

I've never called you bro ever.

Not well, the

brothers Uso started out, Jay number one and Jimmy number two, and they had a match back and forth, and that was a nice way to start out.

But then the number three was Grayson Waller, and he's got a microphone.

He's cutting a promo on the way to the ring.

It doesn't do anything for the energy level, right?

And then number four, their surprise debut.

Imagine this when you know who won the contract.

Andre has returned.

It didn't work when he punched Sammy Guevara in the face.

He had to sit home and take almost a year of Tony Khan's additional money.

And then number five was Carmelo Hayes.

And at least at that point, Carmelo dumped Waller.

I was like, okay, things are looking up.

And I'm watching this in real time.

I'm not zipping ahead, which is why it was so burdensome.

Number six was Nakamura.

Number seven was Escobar.

Number eight was Carrion Cross.

And I swear to God, I was nodding off at this point to begin with.

But when Cross entered, the crowd went to sleep.

And at that point, I did pause it because Harley needed to poop.

And I took her out instead, instead of watching

whatever Cross was doing, that's how interested I was.

We were three hours into the show at this this point and we ain't got 10 guys in the men's rumble

so then

we came back from harley's pooping session and number nine was dominic mysterio and finally somebody woke these people up because they don't like dom and they like to boo him

and that woke the people up and then

Number 10 was Carlito, and he got a nice little reaction when he

leveled

one of the fucking heels, I can't remember, and grabbed the apple out and bit it, and then spit the apple in Escobar's face and dumped him.

So people liked that.

But then they'd quiet back down.

And number 11 was Bobby Lashley.

And here everybody was walking down like they're going to get the mail.

And at least when Bobby got close there, he fucking rolled in and he speared several people and he eliminated Carlito and Cross.

And that's what they always have,

and this goes back to a Pat Patterson blueprint.

But when you've got a physically dominant guy that you give a fuck, a big guy, whatever that you give a fuck about using in any way, you always give them a good,

impactful entrance into the Royal Rumble, and they have to dump a couple people.

So this was the first exhibition of that, but then Cross on the floor

pulled Lashley out over the top rope.

And the AOP, what does that stand for again?

Age of

Authors of Pain.

Aesthetics.

Authors of Pain.

Whatever.

They beat him up until the Street Prophets come out and they get in a big fight.

And nobody really cared in the crowd as they fought back down the aisleway.

But you have a guy that's been eliminated pulling a guy out flat in front of the fucking referee.

And again, they say, well, we can't do anything about it.

Has that precedent been set?

I understand a distraction by the guy on the outside.

And then somebody inside dumps the guy.

But have we set, didn't Vader

do that in the Royal Rumble at 96 and it didn't count?

What is your question?

If what counts?

If somebody that's already been eliminated can just get in and pull some people out or just pull people out or whatever.

I feel like at one point that was something they did not allow, and then at other points it's something they just allow for whatever reason.

And again, it's been 20,

my God, 28 years now, but in the 96 Rumble, I think that's how they got Leon out on some kind of

distraction elimination, and then he came in and beat a bunch of people up and tried to eliminate them, but it didn't count.

That's what he got into sideways with Gorilla Monsoon.

Remember, Sid Vicious was pulling Hulk Hogan out or holding onto his arm arm when Ric Flair dumped him into the or dumped him to the floor in the Royal Rumble.

So technically, Sid would have been helping, and he was already eliminated.

But he didn't do it.

All right, I'm picking it, Nits.

We're going at the rules of the Royal Rumble.

I like this.

Number 12, here comes the Kaiser.

Number 13 was Austin Theory.

Number 14 was Finn Balor, who dumped Carmelo for whatever reason.

And finally, at number 15, Cody.

And the music plays, and the people come up and he does get his pyro at his entrance and he hits the ring and he's got big moves set up with people.

And he hits the moves and then he fires the people up and he dumps Theory, eliminates him, and he throws his weight belt out.

He gets in a fight with Dominic and Finn.

That was an impactful entrance from a star, and he had shit lined up to do.

And I have to think that either whoever's producing the thing or told people who shouldn't make any goddamn impact whatsoever.

And also, some of these guys are apparently either not smart enough to go to whoever's going to be in the match and say, hey, when I come in, can I bing, bing, and boom, boom?

Okay.

Because they just wander in and look for somebody to fucking punch.

But anyway,

we got 90 seconds or two minutes or whatever it was of Cody, and then number 16 is Bronson Reed.

And everybody can resume their nap.

And Reed dumped Andre,

and then number 17 was Kofi,

but then Cody eliminated Nakamura.

So Cody's still on a little string here, and Kofi eliminated Kaiser.

And that now we're at least we're getting, it's starting to get where we see somebody we want to see a little bit more frequently.

Number 18 was Gunther,

and he, same thing, he got in and made a difference.

He leveled Kofi and Finn and Dominic with the chops, and then Jay with a chop and Jimmy with a chop and body slammed Bronson Reed

and then got into it with Cody, but Kofi broke that up so we didn't see

what the resolution might be.

And then Gunther dumped fucking Kofi.

And then number 19 is Ivar.

Yeah.

And then number 20 was Braun Breaker.

Tell me that anybody got the idea, the picture, the concept of entering the Royal Rumble and making a big comeback and making an impression on everybody better than Braun Breaker did.

No, that was great.

And the way he hits the ropes, and they brought it up right away, but just

he hit the ring and then hit the ropes with speed and power.

And a lot of people started reacting to that.

They said he's been clocked at 23 miles an hour when he hits the ropes.

And that means he's only got 20 feet to get to that speed.

And that's,

I had this idea for

Matt Morgan when he was the blueprint, but they ought to take him out and shoot videos with Braun Breaker like he's a cyborg, like he's the training video of the Russian perfect athlete in the Rocky movie, or clock him with a goddamn radar gun when he at 200 and whatever pounds he's doing this four second, hundred-yard dash, or

give him the tackling dummies and measure the poundage of the impact of his shoulder tackles.

And illustrate you're building the perfect athlete.

That's he can carry it off, and he's got all the fire in the world.

So he speared Jimmy Uso, he dropped Finn Balor, he dropped Ivar, he dumped Jimmy Uso and then Finn,

and then

pressed Gunther over his head.

Gunther Gunther drops down to his feet and tries to clothesline him or whatever.

And he ducked and speared Gunther and got a big pop.

And he wasn't done.

There was other shit he was going to do, but he just,

you can see, and the people,

obviously many of those, and it's a big, major pay-per-view crowd, they watch,

you know, NXT also, or they know what's going on, but a lot of other people that got brought up or brought in, or even on the main roster, didn't get anywhere near this response.

They know he's something to watch out for.

And he's got to stay up on the main roster now at this point.

It has to be soon, doesn't it?

It's been a few years now.

And that's, I mean, it's usually a good sign that you're going to get introduced when you make the rumble.

But

anyway, then we're back to reality.

Number 21 almost is back.

All 7'3 of him.

And his size 32 fucking fucking feet.

And MVP was alongside.

I thought MVP would be on a cruise this time of year.

I do not believe he was booked for a cruise.

He had the Royal Rumble A bigger booking.

Maybe he wasn't invited this year because he's been there and done that, knocked that out.

But

maybe so.

So almost came in with choke slams and dumped Bronson Reed.

And then Braun Breaker speared and dumped dumped Ivar.

And then number 22 is up, and it's Pat McAfee.

He's doing commentary.

And they did this with Lawler one year, and it was actually a little bit more extensive.

But he got up from his desk, took off his jacket, he gets in the ring, he sees Braun Breaker and Almost standing there,

and turns around and climbs back over the top rope and eliminates himself.

And then Braun immediately dumps Almost.

So

you got the comedy spot, which I really care for.

It was better with Lawler because

he actually wrestled predominantly.

And also, it was a little more entertaining.

But you get Braun Breaker to get the opportunity to dump the biggest guy in the match.

And then

Dominic,

the little heat getter, comes from behind.

and dumps Braun while he was busy with almost, which gives Braun Breaker

a graceful way out that he got screwed on.

And then immediately,

they play J.D.

Funco's music, and he's part of Dominic's group.

So as he's coming down to the ring, Braun Breaker comes around the side and speared J.D.

Funco

in the next week on the floor and said, how about your boy now?

and left, and there's J.D.

laying there.

So Braun Breaker came out of this, I think, the best of pretty much anybody.

I thought the Pat McAfee spot was so stupid.

I didn't like it at all.

There was something that they could have done with it, but

it was too slow and it wasn't.

The concept is it would have been entertaining if they'd have done something to,

you know, Lawler, when he was a heel, I've mentioned they did this with him before.

I can't remember what he did when he got in the Rumble, but when he was a heel.

He got eliminated right away.

Well, but I can't remember exactly how it was done.

But

in Tennessee, when he was a heel, he used to have a spot where he would get up on the apron of the ring, this big cocky grin on his face, grab the top rope, vault over the top rope.

And as soon as both of his feet hit the mat, the baby face would be there with an uppercut under his chin and he would go straight up and take a backwards bump over the top rope that he had just come over.

on the other side of the buckle into the floor.

And if McAfee could have pulled something like that off, it would have have got a big pop.

Oh,

but instead, he gets in, he stares at them forever.

They don't move at him.

He shows he's intimidated.

He crawls back over.

He gets his nerve back and gets back in like, and then he crawls back over again.

And

too long, not enough.

Didn't work.

Even the fans that reacted to McAfee coming out, they didn't really seem to react to the spot.

I think because it was also telegraphed.

You knew what it was.

Also, the almost Braunbreaker moment was pretty cool, but the entrance music of JD almost ruined it because people started counting down to see who the next person was, not knowing who it is, right when they're having the moment where he gets eliminated.

I agree.

I agree.

And that comes from,

I don't know if they were trying to, if they were perfect, because I didn't watch the clock every second, but in the

pioneer days of the Rumble, they would stretch a few minutes or a few minutes, they'd stretch a few seconds if what was supposed to happen had not happened yet.

But they may have been keeping this legit.

So I don't know what, but it did step on each other somewhat.

But we had time to rest and think about it because here came our truth.

Now, hold on, was he?

I got to go back and see what spot.

This is number 24 in the women's.

Yes, number 24.

So at least they got that right.

He came out number 24 in both.

You know, I didn't even pay attention to that.

That's good consistency.

At least I got that going.

I see, I got the notes here.

So,

so R-Truth comes down to ringside and throws JD in, who's still laying there

from being speared by Braun Breaker.

And it's, and JD immediately stands up, and Jey Uso is there to clothesline him out over the top rope.

So, that's kind of, and that did get a bit of a pop because it was, it was so quick and slick and smooth where he's, he rolls in, stands up, clothesline out again.

So, his time was officially, I guess, one second in the ring.

And that was, but then

R-Truth gets up to the apron, and as Gunther has a hold on Dominic,

R-Truth is milking the tag, like, come tag me, Dom.

And the announcers are making.

And that got a big reaction.

Yes,

the fans reacted more to that than in a tag match when they're milking the fucking tag.

Because it's preposterous.

And now, at this point, I think the fans are just going along with the parody.

And obviously, R-Truth has been a wrestler for 20 years.

He doesn't really think, but Dominic

gets away from Gunther and hits a hot tag on R-Truth, and R-Truth makes comeback.

So we had a hot tag in the Royal Rumble.

I think Pat Patterson actually may have got a tickle out of that.

And then number 25 was The Miz, and he and R-Truth did some comedy that I didn't particularly understand or pay attention to.

And then number 26 was Damian Priest, who got in and leveled R-Truth and dumped him.

But they ain't reacting to Priest like he's made it to the level yet, are they?

Or at least they didn't hear.

No, and that's why it's a good move for him to do that to R-Truth because it would get him heat right away.

Yeah, but

I think all of this,

there's so much going on in the Judgment Day, they're losing focus on any one person in it, except maybe Rhea, who's bulletproof at this point.

They're losing focus on the seriousness because now we're getting the backstage drama discussions where everyone kind of loses their promo voice and talks with concern.

Yes, it doesn't really make you interested in someone.

I don't know if I want to see the villain in the movie be overly concerned about things,

but nevertheless, at number 27.

Here he came.

Your voice.

Here he came.

CM Punk comes out, and now

they know we're going home, thankfully, finally.

Now they know we're getting into the meat of the matter, as Jim Ross would say, nut cutting time.

We're at number 27.

We only got three more to go.

Cody's in there.

Punk is in there.

He He makes a big comeback on everybody, gets a big pop, pulls his shirt off.

He's gained weight and tanned somewhat.

Chucked Dominic over the top rope to eliminate

the most disliked person in the match.

And then Priest dropped him so that his flurry was over with so we could get Ricochet to come on down.

And

as Ricochet came in

and did his thing, then Gunther dumped Miz.

But

again, Punk came in.

He looks like he's aging in reverse now.

He's

not got stress.

He's not got worry.

His hair is getting darker.

His skin is getting tanner, and he's gaining his weight back.

Was it all just the

fucking mental duress of working with children that was aging him before his time?

Maybe it's the money.

Well, he was making money before.

He's been making money both places.

He just got more motivation.

There's something to actually be accomplished at this point instead of just treading water until you get out of your deal because nobody else can contribute.

And maybe he's actually at a good place in his life, and he was a few years ago, and that's why the drama affected him so much.

And now he's in a place where there's not going to be any of that drama.

They're not going to put up on any of that shit.

Well, anyway, but nevertheless, number 29 was Drew McIntyre, who beat everybody up and then got in a fight with Damian Priest to no reaction,

which was a telling thing about Priest.

And then Gunther dumped Jey Uso.

And number 30 was Sammy Zane.

And he went right after Drew because that's who put him out before.

But

Drew flipped Ricochet out.

A lot of people hit moves on everybody.

Sammy dumped Priest and Drew dumped Sammy.

And then we got down to the meat of the matter.

Rhodes and Punk and McIntyre and Gunther.

And there were two heels and two babyfaces.

So the heels got heat on the babyfaces for a while.

And

at that point,

I was like, you know, this.

This, I would really be interested in this more if I hadn't had to wait almost an hour to get here.

Right?

That was the thought I had, but they were doing good shit.

And then Drew hit a kick on Gunther by mistake, but he kicked Cody on purpose.

And then he hit the kick on Punk.

And he told Punk, I'm not the same kid that I was 10 years ago.

And then Punk stood right up underneath him.

Firemans carried him and dumped him right over the top rope.

That was a little

abrupt, wasn't it?

Did you expect that?

No.

And neither did Drew, based on the reaction.

Yeah.

He was completely surprised.

And then Gunther hit a kick and a powerbomb on Punk, but set Cody on the top rope and was going to push him out, but Cody pulled Gunther over and out and got a big pop for that.

So now there we go.

It's Cody and Punk.

And they actually had a bit more of a match, and each one of them did their shit.

And now we see

this is where people were interested.

And we also see that,

you know, they're doing pretty good shit.

They, you know,

they set it up where they did back and forth.

Punk foiled the cutter and hit three Germans.

His knee lift and Bulldog, but Cody foiled the GTS, hit the flip-flop and fly.

Punk foils the crossroads, goes to dump Cody.

Cody foils that.

A lot of foiling.

Cody blocked the GTS to hit the crossroads again, but Punk was dead weight until he was playing Possum and then he hit the GTS.

But then Punk had to go for one more, but Cody landed on his feet, spun around, and threw Punk out.

Big pop and music, and

Cody gets the first back-to-back win successive years since Austin 25 years ago.

Did you hear what Punk said?

What did he say?

I think the exact words were, I'm not going to lose to Dusty's kid.

And then Cody eliminates.

Ah!

I heard, I heard the announcers say something about that, but I did not pick up on it because I was jotting down what had previously happened.

Yeah, no, Punk looked right at the camera and said it, and then he got eliminated.

So you have to think that plays a big part in the story now because that's, again, an interesting thing after the Drew moment for Punk to make a statement like that, which telegraphed to me that he was about to lose, which is the only bad thing about it.

Well, and then now Punk has to say, I shouldn't have opened my big

mouth

so there you go

all right that'll maybe be the promo he does

i should cody i shouldn't have opened my big mouth i'm asking for a do-over big

mouth i got it like ralph cramdon i got a big

mouth alice

but it's so

ralph

but now we've got

see, this again raises questions.

Are we going to get Cody and Roman?

In that case, are we going to get Rock and Roman?

Are we going to get Rock and Wrestling with our Rock and Roman?

There's Elimination Chamber coming up in Australia.

We'll discuss what time of day we're going to watch that event.

Oh, good lord.

But that's coming up, and that usually has some sort of repercussion towards WrestleMania.

We said the other day an option is to have Rock as the...

referee to get him involved, but not have him beat Roman yet, but who knows what they're going to do?

They certainly made it that, I mean, Cody said it at the press conference afterwards.

He's challenging Roman.

Oh, yeah.

So the question is now, how do we get from here to there?

Well, and they had Seth and Roman both in skyboxes watching, but you know, it's clear that

Punk and Seth had had words, so you would think that that would lean that way, but Cody wants Roman.

He's made that statement.

But the fact that Punk made that comment before he was eliminated sets up issues with him and Cody.

Yes.

The question becomes, does Punk do something to cost Cody that match?

Ooh, that would reveal some true colors, wouldn't it?

Does Punk turn more heelish?

Because again, the comment wasn't a babyface comment because Cody's the top babyface.

Yeah.

So what does that say?

What are they going to do with that?

What it says is we still need to see Cody Rhodes and CM Punk, and that ain't happened yet, but it's going to.

It's going

but in the meantime, Cody wins and he gets the be in the main event.

They don't even say anymore, you get to choose who you wrestle.

It's just you get the be in the main event of WrestleMania.

Well, they mention you can choose whatever title holder that you want to challenge, but at the same time, even more important than the

championship match or the opportunity is just to main event WrestleMania.

That's the big thing.

That's more important than the world title.

That's where they're going with that.

All right.

Well, actually, we're not completely done with Rumble news yet or Rumble reporting at this point, but I've got a

we took a break just real quick so that one of us who has older kidneys could relieve themselves.

But as we were starting to start again,

I asked you the question, Brian, last.

If there had ever been a superhero in the history of superheroes whose only power

was super hearing.

And because you've got it, and we were trying to figure that out, and I mentioned something, and you asked me a question that I was astonished to hear you ask.

Did you or did you not ask me, does Superman have super hearing?

I did.

Well, hold on.

You're saying it out of context, though.

I also want to go back to the fact that you said, I have this superpower.

If that's true, If what you're saying is indeed true, I do not concede that's my only superpower.

I have all sorts of super sounds.

I don't need glasses and I can read small things and big things, far things and near things.

Small things and big things, far things and near.

Well, thanks.

Try to Brian Seuss.

But

I know you haven't got super smell because there's a couple of stinkers you haven't sniffed out.

Hey.

But

we've been involved in most of them.

That's right.

But

the point is, no, Superman, but he has a plethora of superpowers.

Yes, he does.

Yes, he does.

You are not.

I knew Superman, and you were not Superman.

What I was saying was this.

You said only superpower, first of all.

Yes.

Superman has many superpowers.

I refuse to acknowledge that you have any other superpowers besides this

one that you have demonstrated

may turn out to be goddamn a slight brain tumor on your non-compass mentis.

Well, let's get off me and let's get on Krypton's favorite son.

What I'm saying is, what I asked you is, do you have any specific examples you can cite of Superman displaying his super hearing?

Yeah, so he would do it all the time.

Give me an example.

Well, I don't know.

He'd hear through the wall that the fucking bomb was ticking.

I can't.

Your honor, you're honoring a super issue.

I'll say that.

Strike everything.

Strike everything this guy is saying.

I do not have time to go through a box of Superman comic books to fucking find an instance of his super hearing, just the same as I don't his super vision

or his not supervising, where he would be supervising

or his goddamn super strength is apparent on numerous covers of.

magazines and publications, but the various other, the x-ray vision, it's what it is.

Is there one where he's like listening into a door?

Like, what are they saying in there?

Like, there's no covers like that, are there?

Well, it's hard to draw that in a still frame.

There's certainly instances of that in the television show.

Which, the George Reeves television show?

Yeah, yeah, but

I guess if his hearing had been that good, he would have heard who was sneaking up on him.

When you were a kid, how did you hear that he died?

Did you hear the real story or any of the urban myths?

Um, well, that he was that he thought he was really Superman, he tried to fly and he died.

Hold on now, hold on now, cowboy,

because you're making me older than I really am.

What year did he die?

Okay, he died before

that I was born, did he not?

He did, but that show was in reruns, it was the only televised Superman for years.

By the time that I saw it, which was up at Ain't Lola's on Cincinnati's finest independent station, uh, Channel 19,

WXIX.

I was nine years old, probably, and then I was already starting to get into comic books, or already had, and was getting fanzine publications, and had read that it was a myth that he, you know, was trying to demonstrate that he could fly or whatever the fuck, or that.

Some kid shot him because he wanted to watch the bullet bounce off of him or whatever.

That was all.

I already knew that that was bullshit at the same time as I knew that he had been shot.

Don't you see?

But you remember examples on that show where Superman or Clark Kent demonstrated their super hearing.

That's what I'm asking you.

Yes, yes, as plain as day, as plain as the nose on

his face.

What about in book form, in comic book form?

Well, I'm sure it happened.

And I'm sure.

I'm sure, and many of the cult of Cornet members are going to send send John Fell, I know, is going to hop right on this and make you look like a fool, boy.

I didn't say anything other than ask questions.

I'm like Jesse Ventura.

I'm only asking questions.

Well,

you're trying to doubt my word, and I'm an elderly person to you.

You're disrespecting your elderly.

To me, you're an elderly person.

Yes.

All right.

All righty then.

But that Superman had many superpowers.

To go back to your question, you asked about someone who only had the superpower of a superhero.

Yes,

that would be you.

So now we've come full circle, and you're not sniffing out any of these stinkers.

All right, should we go on to this audio that we were going to talk about?

Apparently, they

felt it was a good idea to have a press conference

after

the Royal Rumble.

And

why do they have are they contractually obligated

to, who in that room wanted to go out and face the press that has answer questions?

And is this real press indeed, not like Tony's friends, but like actual real people that are going to ask questions or at least follow up on the questions or whatever the case?

The reality is there are real,

when you say real press, let's speak specifically about the wrestling press, if you want to call it that.

They're asking real questions.

They're trying to get some accountability.

They're trying to get some answers.

They're out there.

There are also the members of the same press asking about, like,

what did 14-year-old you think of what you booked tonight or whatever the fuck?

I don't think anybody better be asking any questions about 14-year-olds.

But as you'll hear here, I mean, and we hear so many of the AEW media scrums here at the Royal Rumble Post-Show press conference,

they let people in that were going to ask questions.

And since this time,

some of the people who asked these questions have come out and said they did not vet my question.

They treated me like a serious journalist.

They did not tell me what I could not ask.

So

it's

a company that's not for a company that's always done the opposite, it's certainly a different way of doing things.

We could say that.

Okay, but then why am I hearing that everybody's answers was bullshit or just?

Because

it seems like that would be the one question.

I know you've got the audio.

We'll play a little bit of it.

I haven't heard it.

I've heard the general consensus of people is that's the best he could say.

And so

didn't they know that these people were going to have to ask about the thing that everybody in the world was heads were on fire about?

And why didn't they either prepare proper answers or potentially not have poor Triple H out there at all all to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

We'll find out if they fire their press guy this week.

Yeah, see what his continued track of employment is.

But anyway, you take over from here.

You got the audio.

Yeah, and again, we'll talk a little bit more about Triple H in a moment, but we want to play some audio for a wee.

Here over at the studio, we want to play some audio first

of Cody Rhodes, who had a big night he won the Royal Rumble.

Here's a couple of questions of Cody Rhodes.

First, he asked about what kind of media was in the room.

Here's a question.

We'll see what you think of this.

Well, our first question comes from someone who knows you very well and vice versa.

WWE Hall of Famer Diamond Dallas page.

I just was in the hall with him going, do you want to go to the presser?

I was so damn proud of him.

I climbed through all the people and over the railing to hug him because I have been a Cody Rhodes fan since his very first state championship title, his second straight.

And I believed in him when a lot of people didn't believe in him, but I know he believed in him.

And it was a guy who believed in both of us called the American Dream Dusty Rhodes.

And to do this

here in the St.

Pete, Tampa area,

Dusty Rhodes country, dude, what does that feel like?

Have you absorbed it yet?

Earlier today, I saw Steve Kern and

Gerald Briscoe, and I went and said hello, but I saw Dory Funk.

I wanted to hide because

it sounds silly.

I can't think about him

because the fight isn't really for him.

He had his fight.

If you could ask him, he was as happy as could be with what he accomplished.

But the fight now is for my wife, my daughter, my mom.

So I don't think about Dusty,

even though I can't not think about him.

I think about them and to see them in the front row.

And, you know, I never tell them anything that's happening.

So they're always just

the best possible thing to ever is to see my mom and

her know

I'm doing all right.

Sorry, guys.

Sorry.

But yeah, that's, it's very exciting to be here and do it.

And when I go to sleep tonight and hopefully dream of

the man himself, I can tell him.

Drew a pretty big house in St.

Pete

and was on last.

Hit my finish.

That's all that ever mattered to him.

So it'll be a great moment.

Thank you, Dee.

Let's stop it there for a moment.

What did you think of that?

Oh, that was cool.

I'm glad that apparently maybe Paige was just wandering by.

That sounded kind of impromptu.

And that was, you could tell that it means a lot to Cody because who would have thought from three years ago or whatever that

he actually was?

He won the main event of the second biggest pay-per-view of the year for the biggest company of the year to get the chance at the title to finish the story of the blah, blah, blah.

in Tampa, St.

Petersburg with, you know,

Dusty's cohorts and, you know, his generation of talent watching, et cetera, that had to be emotional.

So

that was pretty cool.

And that's the thing.

Yeah,

we drew a hell of a house.

I was on the main event, hit my finish.

You know,

that's Dusty.

And seeing Cody in moments like this really makes you like him.

And Triple H said later on, I don't know if we have the audiobite for this, but he said that Cody's the guy.

He's the guy they have to drag back in because he won't stop signing autographs and stuff.

Yeah.

You know, it's nice moments like this, but it's also how you handle big questions.

Let's go now to Cody Rhodes getting a question about everything that's been happening the last few days.

Next question.

Almost pointed.

You're in the front row.

Hi, Cody.

Nick Howsman, House of Wrestling.

You always introduce yourself like I don't know you.

It's not for us, right?

It's for the overall.

I got it.

I'm not special, Cody.

Nick Howsman, everybody.

Thank you, Cody.

There was a real dark cloud over this weekend following the allegations against Vince McMahon.

You've talked about how Vince met with you personally to bring you into the company.

I just wanted to get your reaction to the report.

And as someone who served

as an executive within the industry, what changes do you think should be made across the board to prevent situations like this from happening again?

Let me stop there.

Great question.

Wow.

Nick Houseman.

You see, when you say, do they ask real questions, there are guys that are a part of the wrestling press that ask real questions, and they're ones who want to know the favorite color of the wrestler.

You know, you got Tiger Beat in the same room as, you know, the serious people asking serious questions.

But now here's the question.

To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, it's not the asking of the question.

It's the answering of the question.

How was Cody's answer?

Well, let me ask you before we get to that.

If you're a talent and you're doing something like this, and I know this is not something you ever did, it wasn't, you know, great job in the supernova tonight, get out there for the media scrum.

Yeah.

But

you have to expect this question.

You have to expect that you're going to have to say something.

How well prepared are you going in?

What are you thinking going in if it was you?

Well, if I'm a talent.

It's an unfair position in a sense because, you know, Cody is just a talent.

Because that's a thing.

If you're a talent,

then you can fairly well answer the question honestly and at the same time not cause controversy.

If Cody, there was two parts of it: what do you think?

And also,

what would you do as a former executive?

He gave what I think is,

yes, I met with Vince McMahon, and I worked at the company for several years previously.

And

I was as astonished as anyone to hear of behavior like this in a complaint.

I say, you know,

let the situation play out in court, but I never saw any side of Vince McMahon like this.

Because I think that would be a pretty honest answer for Cody.

And with the, as a former, hold on and both, and I'll answer both.

And as a former executive,

the question, he could say,

you know, quite honestly, since there is a new administration here and new owners and the TKO holdings group and et cetera, that's probably the answer right there: is that a new administration with a stricter supervision and oversight, and we luckily already have that in progress.

Do you think a talent would get in trouble if they came out and said, you know, I'm disgusted by this.

I hope we never see him again.

I hope he rots in hell.

Go fuck yourself, Vince.

Would someone get in trouble right now for doing that?

I think they would almost have to get in trouble, not

because maybe even from somebody who might echo the same sentiment, but it's not the talent's place to say that because, can you imagine the fucking headlines and blah, blah, blah.

And they don't want.

That's the last thing they want.

Open those floodgates.

The next person comes in.

I want to say, go fuck yourself too.

Yeah.

And then, you know, or whoever, well, so-and-so is fired.

Well, I never liked him.

Yeah.

I would think that even if whoever was disciplining the talent agreed,

you know, with the sentiment, they would have to say, no, you can't fucking do that.

But

anyway.

Yeah, let's go to this.

If you're going to be a top guy, you got to be able to answer these kind of questions or at least get through it.

Let's see how Cody Rhodes does.

It's a great question.

I know as far as the news is concerned,

we were finding it out and reading the same things that you guys were reading.

And you said a dark cloud, certainly.

As far as TKO, Nick Khan, and the board clearly took it very seriously,

acted immediately.

And

looking at the future,

you know, I don't know the answer to that.

And I think somewhere is a really probably a basic tenet of just

this crew more than ever from a roster standpoint is very family.

I've never seen anything like this.

Most of the time, wrestling locker rooms are fighting, talking trash about each other, making fun of each other, sandbagging each other in the ring, all that nonsense.

This crew is very team-based, and perhaps that's the ingredient:

everyone looking out for everyone, being accountable.

And I know for me, as a performer and a competitor, I've been through dark periods in our industry before.

And it might sound cheesy, but it's very reinforcing, if you're in my position, that it's a time when, hey, we got 50,000 people out here.

I want to give them something else from this weekend that isn't a terrible situation and terrible news.

And I think we were able to do that.

And obviously, as more news comes out, we'll be seeing it just like you do.

Thank you.

How do you think he handled that?

excellent you know he he sounded sincere genuine he didn't say anything that could be

ripped off as a inflammatory headline cody rhodes says this or that and he was at the same time as honest as he could be

uh so yeah you know and that cody is glib cody is eloquent cody is verbose And that's why he was the adult in the group of the EVPs over there, actually doing business.

Well, that was Cody Rhodes' answer to that question.

What a lot of people are talking about is Triple H's answer, and he was asked a few times.

We'll play the audio in a moment.

Now, Tony Khan recently experienced something like this because of the rumors swirling around Chris Jericho and the non-answers being given.

Really, it started that night with the non-answers.

He was asked several times in between

tiger beat questions

about it and one time dressed in a funny manner, but he didn't answer anything, didn't say anything, didn't shut it down.

So now let's look at Triple H having to answer because he has to know, like we said before,

he has to know he's going to be asked about this.

And see, the thing is, Cody, as we said, also didn't have the responsibility

as just a talent, not an office employee or whatever, of giving the

sort of official company response, this would fall on Triple H if he's going to be out there.

Certainly, there would have been mass cramming and preparing, one would think, for exactly the right thing to say.

Well, Jim, let's go to the first question of Triple H about this right now.

Hey, Paul, right here.

John Alba Feitful, speaking of the business side of things, it was about a year ago the WWE Board of Directors unanimously opposed Vince's return to the company as executive chair due to the ongoing investigations at the time before ultimately voting him back into power.

You, Stephanie, Nikon, you were part of that.

What degree of knowledge of the current accusations against him did you guys have at the time, and how does the situation affect WWE's relationship with partners going forward?

Let me stop right there.

How about that for a question?

Boom.

As I was hearing that, I was thinking if it was me, about the only

defense that I might even have was, well, I didn't know some of the details.

But let's see what he said.

What?

I'll say what I was going to say for after we play the audio.

Let's play the answer to this question.

Okay.

Yeah, so I'm going to do exactly what you would expect me to do here.

Look, we just had

an amazing week.

I just said a 10-year, $5 billion Netflix deal.

Rock joining our board.

We just sold out the Royal Rumble, put 48,000 people in the Tropican Field.

I choose to focus on the positive.

And yes, there's a negative,

but

I want to focus on that and just keep it to that.

Oh,

that's the end of that.

Very reminiscent of Mark Maguire when he was questioned about steroids.

And he said he just wanted to look at the positives of that era, not the positive tests, but the positives of that era.

Triple H, again, had to know this was coming, had to know he would have to say something at some point, because if it wasn't brought up, it would be the biggest indictment of this press conference ever.

How do you think he did there?

No, no, no, that ain't it, bro, as they say.

I think almost if he was going to be out there, not only as a corporate executive with the company, but as a member of the family, if he was going to be out there there at all,

then couldn't he have

fielded the first Vince-related question with, look, guys,

obviously, this is

a touchy and stressful and sensitive subject for me, not only business-wise, but personally.

And I am as shocked as anyone here in this room to hear some of the

things that have been alleged,

but I can't comment on things that have been reported in this complaint, both as a member of the family who, even though I've

apparently,

you know, learning things about my father-in-law, he's innocent until proven guilty.

And at the same time, it's not the same company that put on this production that drew 50,000 people here tonight as it was,

you know, a few years ago when these things were alleged to take place.

So

leave me alone.

Would that have been something?

You know, we said it about Tony Khan.

He could have shut down everything right away.

If Triple H had come out here, and again, we don't know what he personally feels.

And the other thing we have to remember,

we don't know if he has any liability here.

We don't know if he's one of the unnamed executives.

We don't know anything about what he truly knew when he truly knew it.

We know that his wife may have known things.

And again, it's his wife.

They live together.

It's not a Vince and Linda situation.

But also, he did have, and nobody's saying that it wasn't legitimate.

He had a heart issue.

And what year was it?

Was that...

Yeah, right when he found out about this.

Well, I mean, we don't know what triggered it,

but wasn't that the pandemic year?

Or was it the year?

So the point is

at some some point,

he was not around for an extensive period of time.

And then over the past, what, year, year and a half, he and Stephanie have been trying to dodge Vince whenever possible and voting against him returning to the board.

If anything was said reflecting that, I think it would have gone a long way.

Somebody is going to do a timeline on what executives came and went against this complaint or allegation in the lawsuit and

where certain key people were in relation to their involvement with the WWE and maybe George Barrios leave

yes and Michelle Wilson they will leave didn't Vince say see you

um

so you know all the comings and goings talent bus office executives whatever compared to the

that would be it maybe Thurston Howell III can do that on WrestleNomics.

It'd be more interesting than the AEW ratings.

Well, we'll see.

But again, Triple H could have just come out and said, I can't say too much, obviously, due to my role in the company.

I don't even think you bring up the family thing because no one's sympathetic to that right now, I don't think.

Well,

weren't you sympathetic to fucking Jeffrey Dahmer's mother, who had the goddamn news media or whatever on her fucking front porch or in any case where it's like, yeah.

Your son, we found six heads in his freezer.

Well, please leave me alone.

I haven't talked to him in five years.

He's the son-in-law.

He's not the mother.

It's a little different.

Well, yeah, I'm just saying.

It's like, what's he supposed to say, right?

Well, that's the thing.

If he had permission from up above, and you have to think anything he said here was cleared one way or another from

legal of that company.

It may not be WWE, but I got to believe they're doing that the way WWE would have.

If he came out there and said, I can't say too much, but let me just say Vince McMahon is not coming back.

That's a good thing.

We're horrified like everyone else.

And

unfortunately,

that's the amount of what I could say right now.

Because again, we don't know,

we don't know who knew what, and we don't know who the unnamed people are.

So there's a lot going on that we still don't have details on, and we don't know if he's tied into that.

But

I think something could have been said to shut this down.

And it wasn't.

Yeah.

And to clarify, since everybody's so touchy these days, clarify what you just said.

We don't mean Triple H into it as far as participating in any of the activities.

We're talking what level of knowledge did he have of what, to what level of extent of things was going on.

Right.

Because if anything ever happened with talent

and it was reported through talent relations, God forbid when John Warnitis was in charge.

But if it was reported through talent relations when Triple H was in charge, we don't know who has knowledge of what.

And I'm not justifying that.

I mean, I would like full accountability immediately.

And if Triple H was knowledgeable about all this and turned a blind eye, that needs to be called out right away.

But we don't know that.

So that was the first question.

Let's go to the next question about this right away after that one.

All the way in

back.

Hi, there, Honor.

Cameron Hawkins from the ringer.

Just a question that was asked earlier to Cody.

I wanted to get your thoughts on it.

Just what's being put in place just to make sure that employees employees feel safe they don't feel like they're taken advantage of just what is being done to make sure that um people in positions of power can't take advantage of employees under them i'll give you

once again let's hear it for the wrestling media what's going on all right yeah the most

generalized answer that i can

everything possible

Yeah,

that is a very important thing to us, a very very important topic to us.

It's as simple as everything possible.

Our final question, we'll head to the...

Well, let me stop it before that final question that's being said there.

It's a very Vince answer, isn't it?

Yes, yes.

And

again, second guessing, but I would have had to think that you could say, look, this is.

For one thing, we have new ownership and new people in place at the top and a new line of who we report to or corporate structure or however that's phrased these days and new accountabilities.

And

I would venture to say that not only will it not, could it not happen, it is almost impossible for something like that to happen with the current structure of this brand new company in place with all these fucking professional

muckety mucks.

I mean, you know, you see what I'm saying?

That lie with all the experience that these people have running this massive corporation now, why there's, we feel that stronger than ever before, everyone can feel comfortable and safe, and this is handled in the most responsible of manners.

Blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Anything.

It was almost like he was scared to say anything.

But I didn't, I really just didn't say anything, did I?

Specifically?

You may be more comfortable with words than Triple H is in moments like this.

Loud noises.

Well, let's go to this what is being said to be the final question.

Right-hand corner.

Hi, Brandon Thurston from WrestleNomics.

I know you have a microphone, but they are moving a bunch of stuff, and it's really hard for me to just a little bit louder, please.

Brandon Thurston from WrestleNomics.

Yes.

Did you read the lawsuit that came out this week?

And if you did, what was your reaction to it?

I did not.

I did not.

I think Cody mentioned it that we all found out real time when you were.

And that's the truth.

I'll go back to what I said before.

This is an amazing week for us.

And I just, at this point,

I don't even want to get bogged down in the negatives of it.

I just want to focus on the positives and where we're going.

And we're at the most exciting time of the year for us.

We're at the most exciting point to me, business-wise, I think, that we've ever had.

I think Cody might have said the,

I don't exactly remember how he said it, but the

best positioning of this company since the Attitude Era.

I've been through that era.

I understand what it's like.

I feel like we are in the middle of something that while we might not be able to put our finger on it right now,

five, ten years from now, we're going to be saying like, wow, what a time that was.

I want to focus on that.

What do you think of that answer?

Oh, well, for one thing, yes, he may have really have found out in real time 48 hours before they're sitting there, right?

But I read that 70 pages in less than 67 in less than 48 hours.

You can't tell me.

That he didn't read it with that Wall Street Journal article at everything, blah, blah, blah.

Most people are not going to believe that.

Wouldn't you say that's a fair assessment?

Most people would not believe that he wasn't going to read that thing.

And

not if he's an executive, not if he's a member of the family, not if he was involved.

I mean, there's no way he's not aware of what's happening there.

So the point is,

at that point, you have to say something like, look, you're asking me

to comment on pending civil litigation against my company at a press conference and my family at a press.

And all I can say on a personal basis is that the person described in this complaint is not the human being that I have come to know, but as this person is.

They may not want to say that.

They may want to stay.

They're staying away from saying anything.

Well, but no, but here's the thing.

You could say that truthfully, because if...

If you can't say that out loud and kind of mean it, then you're really fucked anyway because people will be going, see, you knew he was a goddamn fucking horrible human being and Satan and whatever

with the guy's son-in-law say to get any off of this is not the human being that I have come to know but as this plays out we will obviously I'm you know sure the true facts will come to light whatever they may be but I'm not going to try it in public opinion it would have made it worse if he said this is not the human anything that sympathizes Vince at all in any way would kill him.

He has to come in, kill, he has to come in and say what everyone thinks of Vince right now if he's truly disgusted about it like everyone else is if he says this is not the human being i know first of all that opens him up if there's any stories from anyone ever over the last 30 years that he's been there well okay yeah you're right if this was the human being he knew but yeah and we don't know how dirty and perverted vince has always been and what he keeps from some people you know he didn't marry you into the family you know

he keeps some things from some people and we don't know what he keeps from others but we know there are a lot of people that have spent a whole lot of time around him for the last 20 years so we don't know who knew what.

Well, then, in that case, if I'd have been Triple H there, I'd have just said, I can't fucking comment on ongoing civil litigation against my company in a press conference, guys.

So, you know,

again,

you know, we'll see what happens.

I think it's time for a new podcast where we do wrestling mock trials, and we could each like do a Perry Mason thing where we one wrestled the defense and the other one.

Which

do I have to be Hamilton Berger?

Well, since you volunteered.

Oh, for God's sake.

But yeah, I don't.

Somebody, some glib

Nick Khan type or Ari Emmanuel or whoever these people are that make these silver-tongue deals should have

tried to give him a paragraph or something.

Well, instead of just leaving him sitting out there fending for himself.

Let's get back to that in a moment.

Just to tie things up with Triple H here.

He's getting a lot of blowback, a lot of people complaining about what he said here or what he didn't say, a lot of people really giving it to him.

Do you think it's well deserved?

What are your thoughts coming out of this?

Yes, because that's the thing.

He both,

you know, that he can't say many things, but he didn't say anything.

And the stuff that he did say made it sound like he was avoiding saying any more things.

You see, that's what the thing is to me.

Cody sounded more like the representative of the company, and

Triple H sounded like the guy on the talent roster.

It didn't really know what to fucking say.

I'd rather not talk about the rape.

Let's talk about the house.

Like, that's not a good answer.

That's not a good answer.

But again, I don't know what exactly he could say or what he would say, but we don't know what he can say because we don't know who's tied up into what

with all of this.

But

I think even a smoother, you know, on any of the questions, guys, I cannot, I'm,

you know, just prohibited from speaking about ongoing litigation against my company.

As a person, we are all shocked and horrified at these allegations and hope that the truth comes to light.

What the fuck?

How can, you know, can you get that out?

Do you think the company is going to be in trouble?

Because obviously there was an investigation.

There were stories going around.

Vince was ousted, and he came back specifically to facilitate this purchase of the company where he would serve as executive chairman

well but if you

if you buy something legally from an asshole and a criminal that you intend to run

fairly and above board and honestly

i don't even know what the end of that question is otherwise than should you not be able to get a thing to to use its powers for good because the guy you're buying it from is a fucking subhuman creton.

If a subhuman creton has a great asset to sell, maybe you buy it, but you probably don't put him as the head of the board of directors, the executive chairman of the board of directors.

But

was that the deal?

Was that the only way they could get it?

Was that, and then we know that,

you know,

Vince was demoted or made ceremonial or whatever the phrase was they used the other day.

He had really no control over anything anymore.

He obviously was always going to want

ownership of all that stock, all that money, basically, but was that also part of the deal?

You got to put me somewhere,

you know, in this corporate structure, even in name only.

And is that also why he started converting his

stock to what he could sell so that they could kind of slowly...

And he got the rights to his life story.

And he got the rights.

they're going to slowly divest, right?

But maybe this hastened the divesting.

Boy, let me ask you this.

On the topic of, you know, we'll see what happens at Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro and everyone there, Nick Khan, who knew what, when, and who turned a blind eye?

And did you know that Vince...

Again, we don't know what they knew Vince was doing, so we don't want to make any assumptions here.

And to be honest, Hollywood types, if they were, if their understanding of it was superficial enough that it would be like, oh he's hired his girlfriend to be an administrative something

you probably wouldn't dig into that but

the level of and

is nick kahn actually in

wwe headquarters every day or is he still bopping around the world we have a very robust office well i'm glad you had that quote ready to go there but but your point is that's what i'm saying is they if they only had a superficial

yeah you know vince puts his girlfriends on the payroll, probably people in showbiz wouldn't think anything about that.

And they would think everything was consensual, even if it was below board or whatever.

But I can't imagine that these fucking professional people

would not have prepared more

statements and or ways to weasel out of it if they knew the extent of the story that was coming their way.

Does that make sense to you?

It does make sense to me.

And we'll find out.

I mean, again, this isn't just this lawsuit and

everything happening that we're talking about.

There's a grand jury.

So there's something much bigger happening.

He may get indicted any time.

Who knows?

And we don't even know for what and for who and for which case did they get his phone?

Did Vince have a cell phone when you were around him?

No, remember we talked about that, I think, a little while ago.

right as i left and came to louisville they started getting the blackberries but before that just a regular cell phone that you could i'm well you know what yes yes as a matter of fact he had a

that was the first couple of years we had small ones that were available and uh

because when i first the first year i was up there i had a beeper we still had beepers back but you know anyway

um

but you know again he had a phone in his limousine right That was cool too, you know, the old phone and the limousine deal.

But

he,

I mean, he was always, when I was around him, he was either in the limo,

which he might be on, you know, either one of the phones, or in the office, he'd be on his office phone, or at the house, his fucking

office-type phone at the house, where it had all the lines and hold and blah, blah, blah, big desk job.

He had it sitting on his dining room table whenever we'd have a writing meeting.

So he was on the phone a bunch, but I never saw him actually make

a personal fucking call.

Or a selfie.

That wasn't even a thing then.

Oh, no.

Good Lord, no.

Well, again, we'll find out who knew what and when, but that was the WWE, or at least parts of the Royal Rumble Post-Show press conference.

Triple H has a lot to

the company has to figure out what they could say and what he could say.

And and if he can't say anything don't put him out there

i think you know maybe they ought to they ought to let cody do it because cody can can talk cody can sell things he could sell an igloo to an Eskimo well I guess an Eskimo would need an igloo he could sell

ice to fucking people in hell.

Well, I guess they'd probably need, what is that old phrase?

Well, I tell you, the point is, Cody can sell.

Sell like he's going to the electric chair, as Ernie the Cat lad would say.

And you know what?

It's easy for you to do the selling, too, when you partner up with our friends at Shopify, because ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't matter how fabulous and wonderful your products are.

The things that you make with

your own fingers, your own hands, the things that you craft, the things that you have manufactured, the things that you want to make money on to provide food for yourself and your spouse and your children and educate them so they can grow up and be important members of the community and make money so that they can have children of their own that they can pay for.

And it's a vicious cycle with paying for the children generation after generation.

That's why you got to start early.

And Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business, whether it's the embryonic stage or it's the birthing stage or it's the high school and college stage.

And I mean, they'll start you all the way at the squirting stage, and they'll be with you every step of the way with Shopify, because they're people like that.

They're not going to leave you twisting in the wind like Triple H at a press conference.

No, because Shopify will help you turn browsers into buyers.

They can help you set this thing up, monitor it, run it.

They are the power behind 10%, Brian, of all the e-commerce in the United States.

Did you realize that?

That's amazing.

It's incredible.

And we've talked about Shopify magic, where you can whip up captivating content that converts.

They, boom, you either snap your fingers or twinkle your nose and blog posts appear and product descriptions and

fact answers and all those things.

And

they can grow your business thanks to an endless list of integrations.

They are fully integrated.

It's a come one, come all, no matter what your background, race, creed, or national origin.

And they've got third-party apps.

So,

you know, party on, Garth, you can bring party hats and noisemakers for the whole thing.

But anyway, right now, Brian, you'll never guess, because if you're just starting up your store and you need some help with every step of the way, every aspect of the game, you will never guess what minute amount of money that you're going to have to spend to get get Shopify on your side.

Can you imagine that?

Just take a wild guess.

$10,000.

No,

think again.

$75.

Not even.

$40.

You are incorrect, sir.

You can now sign up for a $1 a month trial period.

at shopify.com slash JCE.

All lowercase, by the way, that JCE.

You can go out right now and just panhandle.

Just go out with a hat or a box or a cup in your hand.

Try to limp and maybe wear some old clothes and just hold it in front of you at any corner, street cornered America.

No.

And in probably 10 minutes or less, you can have the dollar that it will cost you to sign up for this dollar a month trial period at shopify.com/slash JCE.

Don't panhandle.

We don't advise anyone to do that.

Well, it doesn't have to be a pan.

It could, like I said, a box or a cup.

They don't call it a box handle.

He's out there box handling.

They don't say that.

A cup handle.

Just even pull your pants out and let him drop the change right in the crotch of your pants there.

Just pull it out at the waist and you'll be like a

human fucking coin depository there.

You're going to be a human coin depository when they take you down to the tombs.

You're going to get arrested for that shit.

What are you talking about?

Well, I didn't say pull them down.

just pull them out.

If the guy giving you the change looks down, that's up to him.

You didn't ask for that.

But nevertheless, they will give you money on a street quarter enough in a shorter period of time that you can sign up for this at shopify.com/slash JCE.

One dollar a month trial period to grow your business no matter what stage you're in or what state you're in.

As a matter of fact, hopefully, not in a state of inebriation.

Shopify.com/slash slash JCE.

That's right.

Well,

we've gone through the business.

Well, you're starting to take over my program now.

Well, that's right.

It is your show.

Well, we can

turn it back to you.

Well, Brian, I'll tell you what they couldn't sell the other night in Savannah, Georgia.

What's that, Jim?

Well, see, I was waiting for you.

You got to be snappy here.

I didn't expect that.

You took it.

You got it.

Abbott and Costello thing.

It's a give and take.

I'll tell you what, they couldn't sell in Savannah, Georgia last week.

AEW Dynamite tickets.

Now, was this the

they were in danger of having the lowest attendance ever, but then I think they had a late flurry of a few hundred tickets and it's only the second worst ever.

Is this what I'm hearing reported?

That sounds about right.

I don't have anything in front of me.

It was a few days ago, but Russell Ticks was talking about it and people were talking about it going into it, just the

ticket sales versus even tickets distributed and then even that versus capacity

versus

tickets handed out at homeless shelters around town.

And to be fair, Savannah was always a hard town.

It didn't draw for the Georgia Territory.

It didn't really draw for Crockett.

It's

a tough town.

And we're covering this, by the way, the AEW Dynamite from January 24th.

It's almost a week ago as we're talking about it.

But to be completionists, and just because we have to

make some notes, we're not going to go through this in granular detail, but there were a lot of things wrong.

And we're going to tell them how to modify their behavior.

It was a rough week.

There's a lot of really bad stories out there.

We need something to have fun with, and that's what Dynamite's here for.

AEW is to have fun with.

There you go.

Fun.

That's what the AEW fans like is fun, right?

They say Cornette never likes fun.

Well,

here's some fun.

So Samoa Joe comes to the ring to do a promo.

And

not only are they chanting Joe Joe, what there is of them there, but they're big cheers when he speaks.

And

again, this is not the fault of the heels.

It's the fault of the booking and the bland,

blase, shitty, douchebaggy baby faces.

And

so Joe and Swerve, as we know, they're just as popular as can be.

And as soon as Joe swears that anybody that faces him is going to to be dealt with like Hook was last week, they play Hook music.

And out he comes and he speaks

in an awkwardly,

he looked like he was holding a microphone.

Like, remember, I said when I had that fucking staph infection, that big lump under my armpit on the angle with Wrestling 2 and Magnum TA, he had the microphone up way up over his elbow, was up in the sky.

And he said, Last week, you won, I lost.

And And then they shake hands, and Hook.

Me, Hook, you, Joe.

Well, yeah, and it was like cheetah trying to pull Tarzan into a hug because when Hook tried to pull him in, really, Joe's gravitational pull pulled Hook in.

And he says, Hook says to Joe, I don't know when or where, but I will see you again.

And from the crowd, there was a cacophony of e.

Nothing, no reaction.

And Joe said, I bet you will.

Now, security,

get this unworthy bum out of my ring.

And Joe actually gets out of the ring for Hook.

And they have three obvious indie wrestlers come in and take Hook's suplexes.

And then so he can leave.

And Joe just goes to the desk and sits down for color.

This was somebody's idea.

I forgot about the ending there.

Yes.

It was somebody's idea.

Well, we got to do something for Hook because he lost.

What the fuck?

It's the world champion in the goddamn ring.

And he doesn't need to be

given a warning by, again,

an upcoming young preliminary fellow.

And then step out of the ring while the guy.

Obviously, there are tomato cans being thrown at him so he can give these people these moves.

It was so phony.

It didn't do anybody any good.

It was surprisingly amateur and bad, considering Joe was involved.

But again, what can you do when?

I mean, what was the purpose of it?

If anyone comes out here, I'm going to deal with them like I did Hookie.

Well, here's Hook.

All right, young man, you're a decent young man.

I'll see you again, I'm sure.

Now get him out of here.

And then that's the end of Hook.

It was.

To be fair, Joe, if this was what they all had to do, Joe was as good at whatever he did as you could be.

But

yeah,

they're afraid to damage any of the talents' feelings, apparently.

So they want to give them a.

There was a run on concessions.

All 12 people went during this segment.

But then the

first match began.

We're seven minutes into the program, and it's hangnail page against Penthouse.

And I have just a few observations, and we're going to talk about this finish, which was insane.

At times, it was so quiet in the arena, not only during this match, but even later on, even worse, that you could hear the ropes quiver.

And

when they hit the ropes, you'd hear.

And both guys, they do the same shit that they always do.

And it wasn't that good the first thousand times.

that we saw it.

And they do some more of it.

And Paige is boring and Penthouse is sloppy.

So, and they hit each other hard over and over again while not selling it.

And then, 15 minutes into the show, they went to a break.

So, we're, this would not end.

So,

then they did everything they ever did in the match before, but they did it on the apron.

And then, the finish was

Paige gives Penthouse the deade, where he drops the guy headfirst over his back, right, Brian?

The dead eye.

Right.

He gives him the deade on the apron of the ring.

And Pinhouse rolled off the apron and didn't even go down, stood up on his feet, rolling off the apron so that he could stand there and Paige could hit the blind moonsalt off the top rope backwards on top of him, where he caught him, right?

And then

Paige rolls the guy in the ring and goes for the buckshot Lariat, and Penhouse ducked it.

He's taken a finish on the apron on his head and still didn't leave his feet.

Then he was hit by a flipping 230-pound man off the top rope.

And when he's thrown into the ring, he can duck the fucking finish.

And then when he ducked it, Paige clotheslined him again, went back out to the apron, and did another buckshot.

And this time he hit it one, two, three.

Does that sound like it made any fucking sense?

No.

I'm glad you concur.

It's the same match these guys have always had there.

I mean, these guys are going back to the beginning.

They've been here since day one.

The only difference now is a thicker mustache.

And the crowd was dead.

I mean, sometimes you'd hear them react to the theme music and you'd be like, okay, they're alive.

They're there.

And then they were gone.

And with AEW, you never know if it's just a general audio issue because of production

or if it's just a dead crowd and it was a small crowd.

I thought it might actually be carbon monoxide.

Well, it was a small crowd and they didn't react to a lot of this stuff.

Well, anyway, 23 minutes into the show, that was over with.

They brought Officer Barb Brady back,

who was in the back stopping Nicholas and Matthew in the hallway, the Buckaroos, their Christian names.

they're still dressing like,

you know,

fucking,

what are they dressing like?

Who dresses like that?

Was Don Johnson and the other guy in Miami Vice?

Was that the

model for this?

Is that what they think executives are supposed to dress like?

Like arrogant executives that they're trying to pretend that they

pretend that they aren't so they can pretend they're a different version of whatever this is?

Well, they're dressed like uterine cleansing devices.

And he asked them, he says, last week your statement or whatever created a ton of buzz.

I thought it was more like crickets, but apparently they call it buzz these days.

So what is your first plan of action as executives in AEW?

That is the question that their own representative who's been there since the start asked the EVPs

that have been there since the start.

What is your first plan of action as executives?

They've been EVPs.

And referred to it on TV as such.

Yes.

And how is it supposed to help AEW to have fans think that these douche nozzles are running things?

And no normal person that just would watch this TV show would understand what the fuck's going on.

And they basically, their blistering promo is that backstage morale is through the roof since

they've been back and they blister Top Flight for being late when Top Flight had already been there and they just showed up.

And that was it.

They're getting paid seven figures a year to show up and do this.

So bad.

Of all the ways to bring these guys back and try to rehab them,

they went with another bad comedy run.

Terrible.

They went into cocaine rehab by switching to fucking fentanyl.

And then Trent with Muffin Top and Pockets had a match with Wardlow,

who was with Tavin and Bennett and Roddy and Cole.

And I invoked the pudding gang rule.

But

when that was over with,

Brian, have we used the term, or do most people know what a cover pitch is?

Or should I explain it?

Explain it.

Well,

the cover pitch, and J.R.

used to love to write these in the format because he hated constant on cameras with the announcers.

He'd rather, you know, have more excitement and pageantry for a 15-second deal.

So he would format the, but a cover pitch is when they go to a beauty shot of the arena

or the fans screaming or people holding up signs or whatever the case.

And the announcers over that.

will say, and last week you'll remember that it was a fateful night when the house exploded and little Jimmy was trapped in the well.

And that's a cover pitch.

And then you pitched it, whatever that is, and boom.

They did

a 55 second, they're supposed to be like 15 seconds, 20 seconds, right?

Because

these shots get old visually quick.

They did a 55 second cover pitch with a shot of the ceiling of the arena and the lighting grid

because they had had no beauty shots of the building.

It was so sparsely populated, and the crowd was sitting there cruising on Lake Havasoma.

And so they, but they had

because Tony can't understand that less is more on these billboards.

They scream all the matches you're going to see on all these fucking shows that nobody cares about.

And Eugenata is going to wrestle somebody Friday night.

And then this and that and the other thing.

And it just endless graphics with a cover pitch of the fucking ceiling for almost one minute.

And then they went to a package with Edge and Minoru Suzuki, who was this

particular episode's TV main event, trying to make anybody care about that.

And oh boy, howdy.

And then they went back to the ceiling.

They had to go back to the ceiling to go to a promo with Deanna Perrazo on the stage.

They shot more of this building than they did the fucking ring.

The problem is, the fans that were there, and there weren't many, were all shoved together, and you couldn't even film them because they were all bored.

So the fans that were there all like had their hands on their knee and on their chin, just sitting there like, what's next?

You couldn't film that.

The next best shot was the ceiling.

Yes, the ceiling.

I remember one time on a Smoky Mountain Wrestling TV taping when we literally only had like 216 people there,

we shot a turnbuckle for the bumpers and the cover pitches.

That works better than the ceiling.

Well, yes,

but

no one said, hey, guys, why are we still on the shot of the ceiling?

Because it was so beautiful.

They were probably like, where else do you want me to go?

You pick it, find something, I'll take it.

I can hear that chatter in the truck.

So, anyway, speaking of going somewhere else, we could take that shot.

The next, they did a sit-down interview on the stage

with

Renee Moxley Good in between

Deanna Perrazzo.

and Tony Storm with her cohorts Luther and Mariah May.

And the split screen was the Deanna's side was in color, and the Tony Storm side was in black and white.

And they're literally on the same stage.

They've taken it so far, it's ridiculous.

And

the upshot of this thing was talking about their background where apparently Tony Storm was normal and not a mental incompetent.

And

they used to live together and train together.

And they showed matching amateur-looking tattoos on their ankles.

It may have been a prison fucking tattoo situation.

And Tony Storm told Deanna to blow the tattoo out of your butthole.

Whereupon Deanna Perrazo threw her shoe at Tony Storm and then got a Fujiwara arm bar on her on the stage while

Mariah May

saves the day, and Deanna kicks Luther in the face, and the heels run off and

Jesus Mary and Joseph.

What the fuck?

Explain this one to me, Lucy.

I can't explain it.

The black and white split screen thing was so stupid.

That's when you're taking, oh, you said it was too far the other day when they were just going back and forth and they would switch from one camera to the other.

This was completely ridiculous.

And it's not good.

Even when Goldust finished his entrance and was wrestling, his side of the ring wasn't instilling black and white, right?

And just the ridiculousness of Toni Storm, again,

if she was on a game show or entertainment tonight as some wacky person interviewing people on the red carpet,

that'd be, I probably still wouldn't watch, but that'd be something.

But I, for me, it's lost its charm in the wrestling show because...

At a time where people are trying to justify, the AEW women's fans are trying to justify the use of women and more of them on the show.

The only one that's over at all is the one doing

wacky comedy based off 1930s and 40s Hollywood.

I don't know what to think of this.

It's not for me.

I didn't like it.

I was thinking during this, this is going to hemorrhage viewers, but we'll talk about ratings later.

Wasn't Sunset Boulevard 1951?

You may be right.

So it's more modern than you're giving them credit for.

When did Sunset Sunset Boulevard's about earlier years, though, in a sense?

Well, no, Sunset Boulevard is at the current time, but about

a woman who has lived through her glory years.

This is Tony Storm in the years before she ends up in the house.

Well,

hopefully they don't have Eric von Stroheim come in as a technical consultant because read up on him, kids.

That would be wonderful.

Anyway.

So can somebody do a CAT scan on Jon Moxley?

Did you see the promo that or hear the promo that he did in the back where he was raving?

As you, but it made it makes no sense with anything he says.

I mean, you know, the words go together as he's saying them, but the end of the sentence bears no resemblance to the subject that started it.

If that

kind of describes things.

But after that, there was 30 more seconds of the ceiling.

And then they went back to an interview with Johnny TV, John,

how many names and poor old John Hannigan, Johnny Nitro, Johnny everybody, and Taya Valkyrie, and they look great and she can talk.

She did most of this and he can work.

Why don't we at least see some of them?

It couldn't be any worse.

Did you see that clip of them going around?

There was something that happened on one of the shows.

It must have been Ring of Honor because Dalton Castle was involved.

And he was like yelling at Jerry Lynn.

Maybe it was collision.

I don't even know.

And Johnny Nitro comes out of his office, his locker room, and he says, I got a split.

And he does a split, but I guess they tie like a rope around his foot.

So as he does the split, someone from behind the curtain pulls it.

So he's in a split form, just flying backwards.

I don't even know how else to explain it.

It was the most ridiculous thing.

I watched it like 15 times in a row just to see who's pulling that rope.

He's just flying back.

And then Taya comes through the curtain, but I don't think she was doing it.

You have to see.

Oh,

all righty then.

So

we're here at the all-important nine o'clock hour, ladies and gentlemen, and we get Swerve Strickland, the most popular heel in the business today,

with Prince Nana against Jeff Hardy with Matt Hardy.

And boy, howdy.

In the Carolinas.

Oh, no, Georgia.

No, it was Jeff's.

And Savannah is really.

Savannah was an odd duck town.

It wasn't really a Georgia town, as I said earlier, or a Crockett town.

It just, it sat there.

They both ran it at different points.

But nevertheless, this match needed to be run out of town instead of run in any town.

It was sad to watch on everybody's part because Jeff is obviously not as young as he used to be or capable of doing the things or with the intensity or the speed or the precision.

He can do swerve shit.

He can hardly do his own shit anymore.

And Swerve is trying to figure out how to get over, you know, or at least turn in a good performance without doing a lot of his shit.

And

there was no life to it.

The timing,

the staggering, the missing, the,

you know, they were underwater.

And then

finally, again.

Jeff gives Swerve the twist of fate on the metal stairs and then rolls him in the ring and goes for a Swanton.

And Swerve moves already after he's been given the goddamn hardy's finish on a fucking set of metal stairs.

And then Jeff misses the Swanton, and Swerve kicks him in the head and gets a two count.

So Swerve again, he took the finish on the stairs.

Now he moves, now he's up and running and kicking the fucking guy in the head in 15 seconds.

And then

Jeff gets some roll-ups, but Swerve hits some more

and a vertical suplex and a double stomp and one, two, three.

But this thing had to be almost 15 minutes bell to bell.

And it was, it just,

I don't know whether there's no life in the crowd because there's no life in this match or vice versa, or

whether it just, god damn.

Did you see what I'm talking about?

Yeah, no, I watched this.

It wasn't very good.

The crowd certainly, at a certain certain point, just gave up.

It was the wrong opponent for Swerve.

They're trying to turn Jeff Hardy, or at least Jeff Hardy's trying to turn Jeff Hardy.

I don't know.

Which is really the only thing left to do at this point.

I don't think you can do that.

But no, Jeff Hardy, you know, the other problem is, and again, we'll talk about the ratings later, to put Jeff Hardy in this match at the 9 o'clock hour, you have to think there's some value still in Jeff Hardy.

I don't know if there is right now.

Well, and if there's a value to be in the 9 o'clock hour against one of the guys in the company, no, we're not saying he's completely valueless and should be banished to the land of misfit toys.

We're saying ratings draw the hardy magic of old, etc.

But

you can't turn Jeff Heal because he can't talk well enough to piss people off.

And people will remember what he's done in the past that a lot of people saw rather than what he's doing now that not a lot of people are seeing.

And they will also feel sorry for him because he's obviously physically,

you know, not

a spring chicken anymore.

So I don't know.

Not good, wasn't good, very, very not bad.

Not good, bad.

Whatever the fuck.

Moving along.

Next week, as a result of an argument between Hangnail and Swerve,

They will choose each other's match, the pick your poison thing or whatever the case may be.

So we got that to look forward to for next week.

And Thunderosa was back to wrestle Red Velvet.

Oh, boy, did you watch this match?

Please say you watched this match.

Well, I was captivated by Red Velvet, who has tights with a matching cooking apron.

So I had to watch some of it.

I swear to God, I heard two guys in the front row plotting on how to cheat on one of them's wife.

It was a whispered conversation, but the microphones were picking it up because you were in a sound vacuum.

It was so quiet.

It was awkwardly quiet.

It was like they were in a cave.

The referee's instructions had an echo.

And

anyway, Thunder Rosa won the match, but when they panned the guests in the front row,

and Brian,

the past week's news aside, as it relates to the WWE,

can you see a point in time where the WWE would be there for Raw or SmackDown and they would pan the fans in the front row and then introduce the barnstorming baseball team, the Savannah Bananas?

Well, anything could happen in WWE.

Well, it happened in AEW.

That's the biggest celebrities they could get.

Why do it at that point?

Why introduce celebrities if the only ones you can get are the Savannah Bananas?

That women's match was pretty rough beyond the crowd being silent.

They didn't work well together.

At least I didn't think they did.

Well,

yeah, you got a lot of things working against him.

So then Darby and Sting.

Tony Schiavone is in the ring.

Brings him to the ring.

He's good.

And immediately Darby takes the microphone from Tony and he's completely useless and never referred to again.

And Darby does the whole promo.

And

I'm not sure I understood a lot of it.

He's like he's doing an essay question.

What's it like to team with Sting and his impact on my career?

Well, in 2015, when I heard he had to retire, I thought, what if it was me?

What if my life's work was cut short?

In 2015, Sting had been wrestling for 30 years.

I'm not sure how short that's getting cut, right?

He was in the prime of his life.

And they insert a shot of this interview of the Buckaroos back in their

suits watching on the monitor.

But Darby rambled.

He said, the rankings are back and we're undefeated.

So why not win the tag team championship before you retire?

Cause you still got it.

And actually, the only thing the fans really reacted to here was they would chant, you still got it for Sting.

But then Sting just said, Yeah,

I'm all in.

That's the only thing.

He said, Yes, we should.

I'll end my career as AEW tag team champion.

I'm all in.

And they left.

It's really weird, wasn't it?

And then because even like, I'm all in.

He's all in the one.

Of course, they're going to have a match.

What are they talking about?

Well, that's the thing.

It's, and

again, they put the belts on Starks and Big Bill and wherever that fucking thing has gone.

Suddenly, they've decided that Darby and Sting should be the tag team champions going into Sting's retirement match against the Buckaroos.

But the Buckaroos can't win because that would be the ultimate level of douchebaggery for them to win the belts that they don't deserve in the Legends last match.

Even if Sting's, oh, I want to put them over on the way out.

Fuck you.

You're an icon.

We're not going to shit on the people like that.

Too soon.

We're not going to make the people unhappy like that.

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

And then they go to the back and Starks and Big Bill accept their challenge.

And Big Bill's promo was better than Ricky Starks'.

I think Starks has just checked out until he can

take up residence in Cody's spare room.

And they're actually one of the few things in AEW that works is Starks and Big Bill.

Despite the doing the thrown together thing, and they kind of got it over.

So, if they drop the belt to Darby and Sting, which you would think would be the conclusion, because why else do this unless it's to set up them being embarrassed going into the match with the Young Bucks?

But if they're going to win the tag titles, that means your two options are

the titles become vacant because Sting and Darby retire as well, Sting retires as tag team champion during that match,

or the Bucs beat Sting and Darby in Sting's final match,

which I don't, man, I don't know how BEW fans will react to that.

You know what?

I guarantee you that somebody, maybe the Bucs, has sold Tony Kahn,

oh, can you imagine how much heat we'll have if we beat Sting and ruin his retirement match ceremony, whatever the fuck, and win the bells for us?

Yeah, they'll have all the wrong kind of heat.

And it'll be like, you know, I don't want to watch this shit anymore kind of heat.

If they take the piss out of that big moment, that's so that's the only thing

that has sold tickets for anything that they're doing until Wembley in fucking August or whenever.

And has sold all those tickets before the Bucs were attached to the main event.

Yes, a very Hogan-esque,

reminiscent of the Georgia Dome.

So

the World Six-Man Tag Team Championship was on the line with

the reject, Nana's rejects, the

guys he's got that aren't over, Brian Cage, Tia Leone, and Bishop Kahn.

And they wrestled the acclaimed and Billy Gunn, who were accompanied by the Gang Bang Gang, because we now have the

super group called the Bang Bang Scissor Gang.

Jay White and the guns have joined.

So you got three baby faces and three heels, and Castor rapped for the first time in months that I've heard.

They cooled them off quick.

And I didn't pay attention to any of this because it was all these fucking idiots on the other side.

I don't care about.

What happened?

The rap was good.

It was the best rap in a while.

Sounded good.

He sounded good out there.

I didn't watch the match.

Okay.

Now we come to our main event of the evening.

Edge versus Minoru Suzuki.

By absolutely unpopular demand of no one.

who was this a rib on?

Are they ribbing Edge?

Are they ribbing the viewers?

It was a gift grad.

He gets to work with this guy one time before he retires.

What the fuck?

Why would he want to have a bad match before he retires?

He looks ridiculous.

This I know he's a mixed martial arts legend, but the average people watching TBS on a Wednesday night couldn't give a shit and are looking at

an old,

sloppy-looking, pale pale Japanese guy with toothpick legs doing fake-looking shit.

Slowly at times.

Yes.

And

they rang the bell at seven minutes till 10, so I knew I wasn't going to see the finish.

But nevertheless, I'll tell you what I did see.

You're never going to guess, ladies and gentlemen, how they started this thing, trading forearms that nobody sold.

I thought, who would this match help?

Because Suzuki drops in every so often to have fake-looking bad matches where they do the same thing every time.

And he's obviously not going to beat Edge here.

Edge does not need this win.

You mean to tell me it makes Edge more valuable to AEW

to beat this fucking guy on TV?

And then who's the babyface?

Because

Suzuki just does the same shit and people cheer for him for whatever reason that the AEW fans cheer for any of these decrepit sub-par performers.

And Suzuki won the forearm exchange twice, dropped Edge before he even, Suzuki even went to a knee.

And I'm right, who, I'm right, who's the star?

Who are they pushing here?

And then they would

Suzuki gets a front face lock on Edge, and Edge pushes him through the barricade on the floor, and they lay there, and the arena is deathly quiet.

And the handheld camera pans up, and there's empty seats in the front row.

And then once they roll in and beat the nine count that took about a minute, minute and a half, they get in the middle of the ring again and trade 21

fake forearms and real face slaps.

Now,

here's the thing.

You can hit somebody fairly stiff with a goddamn forearm and not hurt them,

but a slap is a fucking slap.

So they're faking the forearms and they're really slapping each other in the face.

And then they did a double knockout on simultaneous face slaps.

And we were four minutes into this thing, and I couldn't wait for it to be over with.

And they were down again for about another minute,

and they got up and they started trading forearms.

And finally, Edge hit his implant

DDT, which again,

a combination of Suzuki being almost immobile and everybody treating him like he's a Faberge egg, it looked like shit.

And that was the point where my DVR froze because it was the top of the hour and the show was supposed to be over with.

How much longer

did this bullshit go on?

The bullshit went on for another five minutes.

Oh,

hopefully, Edge won.

Edge won.

Edge finally won.

Well, that was that.

Dynamite.

Did anybody watch this thing?

Well, let's, well, I'm dropping stuff all over the place here.

Let's talk about the ratings this week, Jim.

Talk about dropping.

Well, let's talk about dropping.

Let's talk about the AEW Dynamite ratings for this past week, January 24th,

8 to 10:05 p.m.

AEW Dynamite was watched on average by 837,000 viewers.

The same

people,

the same numbers.

But

the only question is how high do they start and how low do they go?

Limbo Limbo.

Well, quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Samoa Joe's live confrontation with Hook, leading to him going to commentary for Penta Elzero Mieto versus Adam Page.

1,7,000 viewers.

That was almost identical to last week, wasn't it?

Well, you know, the Big Bang Theory has a good run of shows going right now.

Yeah,

listen, it's every week now because I've been paying attention to it.

The first minute of Dynamite, technically, 8-801, is the Big Bang Theory ending.

So anyone who's watching that show is staying, and that's boosting that number for that first quarter, every week.

Quarter two, 8:15 to 8:30 p.m., the continuation of Hangman vs.

Penta with picture and picture,

Orange Cassidy backstage promo, and an ad break,

907,000 viewers.

So right off the bat, there goes 100,000.

That's not as bad a drop as normal.

Well, quarter three, Jim, 8.30 to 8.45 p.m.

The Young Bucks backstage promo.

Trent Beretta vs.

Wardlow with picture and picture.

The post-match with Orange Cassidy, Chuck Taylor, and the Undisputed Kingdom,

followed by an Adam Copeland video.

903,000 viewers.

That's a gift that they only lost 4,000 on that.

The fans said, we want a who's who of wrestling, and they gave them a who's that.

Well, the who's that continues in the quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.

The Deanna Perazzo Tony Storm ramp promo/slash angle, an ad break, the Johnny TV Taya Valkyrie backstage promo,

and that's it.

841,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Another 62,000.

So now we are 266,000 down from our starting point, halfway through the show.

That's not a good sign.

Well, we're at the big nine o'clock hour, 9 to 9.15 p.m., quarter five.

Jeff Hardy versus Swerve Strickland with picture and picture and an ad break,

793,000 viewers.

Oh,

the Hardy effect worked in reverse.

That's 48,000 more people.

That's

48,000 more people.

48,000 more viewers left from

to quarter five than quarter four.

You mean less viewers?

Well, 48,000 more departed.

They left.

They bailed.

They got the fuck out of Dodge, is what I'm saying.

Yes.

There were 48,000 more survivors that escaped.

All right.

Well, let's see who else escapes.

We'll go to quarter six.

9:15.

Who else gets to the top of the bottom of the Poseidon adventure?

Before traffic gets bad in Savannah, 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

Quarter six.

Six.

the Adam Page swerve strickland backstage angle and Thunder Rosa versus Red Velvet with picture and picture 754,000 viewers ouch and that was all in that 15 minutes no wonder there goes another

39 39,000 yes 39,000 we go to quarter seven 930 to 945 p.m

The Darby Allen and Sting live promo, an ad break Billy Gunn Gunn and the Acclaim versus the Mogul Embassy with Picture and Picture, 729,000 viewers.

All right, now we are

at the low point of the show and 278,000 down from the start of the program.

And finally, quarter eight, and we have an overrun too.

Oh boy.

Quarter eight, 9.45 to 10 p.m.

The continuation of the previous six-man tag match.

Adam Copeland versus Minoru Suzuki,

737,000 viewers.

Five-minute overrun, the continuation of the match, no commercials, by the way.

And then an Adam Copeland live promo, 705,000 viewers.

Oh, my God.

So they got 8,000 people in the last quarter for the main event of the show and with Edge.

And then the last...

the overrun always does better than quarter eight because you get all the people that were already watching plus the people who were tuning in for the next program.

This is the first time I can ever remember they lost 32,000 people in the overrun.

A lot of it's the trend of the show and what was interesting people and what wasn't.

A lot of it, I think, unfortunately, a lot of the overruns we see are with people that are featured regularly on this TV show.

Edge versus Minoru Suzuki may not be what holds an audience, even the key demo.

Well, I mean, if you looked at the first seven minutes of it, you sure didn't want to see any more of it, but I figured for most people that were already there by that point, they'd stick it out.

But oh, so they actually were down

302,000 viewers from the start of the program.

And 302,000, that means basically they lost 30%.

They started with a million and they ended up with 700,000, let's say.

So they lost 30% of the audience from the start to finish.

Well, that was Dynamite.

That was Tony's show, and this is your show.

And it's my show, and it's over.

And you are out of here.

Don't ever come back here again.

Don't show your fate.

Do not darken my doorstep until next week on The Experience or in just a few days on Brian's show, the drive-thru.

And I think we've given up the breaking news updates.

But otherwise than that, folks, thank you.

fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.