Episode 516: A Little More Conversation, A Little Less Action

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Jim Cornette Experience.

The WWE has found the formula.

A little more conversation, a little less action is what's selling the tickets, baby, and satisfaction in the people.

And we're going to talk about that today and take a deep dive into my actions in Mid-South Wrestling 40 years ago this month, January 1984,

and a whole lot less here on the program.

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

Co-host of you.

He's the only podcaster that deserves a painting on black velvet.

The great Brian last, everybody.

Aloha, Jimmy.

Pleasure to be here once again.

Thank you for that compliment.

This is episode 516.

That, of course, is the area code for Nassau County, the classic area code.

516.

And here we are.

After that introduction, that's the best you fucking had.

Your fucking area code.

That's what I'm looking at the notes right here.

I say 516, and that's what you think about.

You think about, oh, I don't think about that.

That's what I think about.

I don't think about that at all.

I don't even, when I see the Kentucky, the Louisville area code 502, I don't necessarily, the first thing I think about, oh, that's my goddamn area.

It's a fucking area code.

And it's not even an exclusive club anymore.

Remember when each state only had like one area code?

Well, that's why I said this is a classic Nassau County area code.

If we're a county, for a county actually was for all of Long Island, I think, at one point, then

West Virginia.

West Virginia only had one area of code until like fucking six years ago.

Are you kidding?

Anyway,

I make they had the story.

They had a story on 60 Minutes last week about this amazing neurosurgeon who has developed brain surgery without actually going into the brain using ultrasound.

And this guy's a genius.

And he has helped people.

He has helped, I guess, prevent the,

not the growing, what's the word I'm looking for?

The spread of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's from getting worse than it is.

This guy's a genius.

And the story that even they have to point out that this is crazy.

So where did he decide to go with all of this?

He decided to move to West Virginia.

And he's still doing amazing work, the best work of his life, but he's in West Virginia.

That was what I was just thinking.

Where is he going to go with this and somehow you managed to tie in the world's most brilliant brain surgeon with west virginia after we were talking about area codes i couldn't fit and it all came together at the end well this is your show i'll just sit in the background well no don't sit because that's what i'm about to tell you i may need some support i may need some help today because my head's all squishy

My head's all squishy and my ears all thumpy, Brian, today because it's so fucking cold.

And again, when I took Harley out to attempt her morning Russo, the wind chill was 15 below zero in the outlying areas here of my sunny little metropolis.

And the air temperature is, I think it was five below in Shepherdsville today.

So imagine that.

But anyway, my ear that I've has been touch and go, it could go either way, it could stay or leave.

For the past few weeks that I've mentioned, I'm hollow in the ear.

I'm echoing on one side of my head, and it's squish.

If I blow my nose to get all the

cold and the snot,

you know, if you think it's butter, but it's not,

then I squish my ear worse or try to get the, you know, the whole thing.

So my head is just, I may need some help here today.

My energy level, my,

and I'm not projecting why I think I'm screaming.

Am I screaming?

Am I screaming now and I don't know why?

I'm at capacity.

Ladies and gentlemen, Brian went toy shopping after his recent near-death experience with the flu.

Apparently, he's not quite nipped up fully just yet.

But anyway, I'm echoing and I'm squishy.

So I apologize if I can't hear you.

Although that may be a positive thing today if I can't hear you.

For heaven's sake.

Brian, do you know, have we ever talked about this with specificity?

I know you know in general terms,

all those

interviews that are now hailed as the classic promos from Ric Flair and the four horsemen and Dusty Rhodes and the Road Warriors and me,

whoever on the old Saturday night TBS Studio 605 show that's been the hit on the network and it's

just played and played to this day.

You know approximately what those interviews were formatted in the show, the length of them, what they were formatted to be.

But have we ever specifically talked about this?

What do you mean?

The way you're phrasing the question, what have we, what are you wondering if we've talked about?

Okay, well, we've talked about local promos.

We've talked about promos being fully

shows.

I'll try to speak in more specificity.

How long were those fucking things versus how long are the promos that we're getting to see today?

I mean, if someone went two minutes, that was long.

Bingo!

The

and I mean on SmackDown, and we'll talk about it when we get there, but it's

endemic or pandemic or epidemic or whatever the

possibly

you know

umatic or even Vegematic

the promos are endless now, these days, the live interviews and the soliloquies and the confrontations and the back and forth and the witty banter and et cetera, et cetera.

And yes, there are some that are memorable and generally they revolve around the big return or the big reveal or whatever.

But the reason why that

so many of the great promos of those days are always, you know, Ric Flair, does anybody ever remember a bad promo, but they can quote all the fucking lines?

And Dusty Rhodes,

people have committed their lives to memorizing the hard times promo or the fucking this, you know, whatever the fuck.

They were two minutes, two and a half minutes on the format.

It was

literally the Dusty, when he wrote the TBS show,

he would give, if he wanted to give the middle card guys the opportunity to speak and see if they might, you know, pick up some fans and just see what they could do.

They're like a minute at the desk.

And some of them could and some of them couldn't get through that.

And for some of the, even the babyfaces that you had to hear from, but they weren't noted orators,

a minute and a half at the desk, plug the matches Abada.

But for Flair and the Horseman and,

you know, the Warriors, me,

the top guys that were noted as being able to, it was still two minutes.

And that wasn't, it wasn't hard, though, because Dusty would sit,

obviously, in the producer's chair, in the, you know, control room,

and they didn't count you down.

They gave you the signals.

Like, you have 30 seconds left.

You got the physical.

You have 15 seconds left.

And if you're cooking and you were Ric Flair or Tully and Arn or Jim Cornette or the Road Warriors or whoever the fuck,

you knew that you were probably going to get the slow rap when you went over two minutes, which would be the finger waving in the air in a circle in a slow manner.

That's what does it, giving the slow rap.

If you were over time and your shit was stinking, you would get a goddamn rap and sometimes even they'd signal to Tony with the thumb like a hitchhiker, like pull a fucking microphone.

And you knew to just shut up and get the fuck out of there.

But WeD usually didn't get that.

I don't think I ever got that.

But that was Dusty's way of, okay, this is the framework.

You probably

should be able to say all the shit that you need to say and get my issue over that I've given you with whoever

in a couple minutes and we'll move on.

And that's why they were so high energy.

But at the same point, if you were cooking, he would let you, you know, finish your tray.

If the rap started quickening, you knew that maybe he was starting to get unhappy.

But as long as it was slow, you know, you knew how to get out of there.

And no one overstayed their welcome.

No.

Well, every once in a while, but it wasn't by time.

It was just by material and fucking execution.

That's true.

It was more like, oh, no.

Here comes Paul Jones' army again.

It's going to feel like an hour.

But that, that,

I mean, I understand they're, you know, they got three-hour television show.

Of course, this one was two hours.

Still, we had a ton of talent.

But I mean, in numerous, not we all had tons of talent, yes, but we had a ton of talent on the program.

But goddamn, the problem is now that,

as we'll talk about, and then I'll get off of this shit, the WWE has made the expectation of the majority of the television audience that when you see the stars on the program, the people that you really care about, most of the time

it's going to be the interviews and the promos that they're doing and or that you're interested in.

And

sometimes when they do wrestle, you see a bit of it on television.

Much of it is in the commercial break.

And it ends in an angle to get you to want to hear the next promo to explain it.

They have completely flip-flopped.

Promos started out and interviews started out as a way to sell the match.

And now the matches exist to sell fucking next promos.

And it's working for them.

And it works.

And that's part of the thing.

I guess when it comes to the old TBS show, you know, sometimes we'd see you twice.

in the show.

You'd have your squash match and you'd have your promo.

It's almost like they got rid of the match part part of it.

They gave everyone the same amount of time.

All right, go out there and you could talk for this long.

Here's the other question.

And most of the guys they have on the mic on these main shows are pretty good, at least for WWE.

But how do you unproduce or

how do you take someone who's been so produced as far as how they talk and what they say and the cadence and everything else and get them to be natural?

Because the Rogue Warriors were ridiculous as a concept if you really close your eyes and think about it, but it worked and they were believable, but they were also kind of themselves.

You could say that about everyone on that show, but if you've been taught, if everyone on that show was taught a way to speak, you can't just say, okay, everyone, just be yourselves.

Just go out there and be yourselves.

Like, how do you walk that part back?

Okay, and hold on.

I'm just thinking, Hawk and Animal.

If you tried to get them to act either one of them any other way, like anybody else, I don't know what the, I I mean, Hawk, you would, he could act the fool, as they say, in a number of ways in the locker room and put on accents or whatever the fuck, but it wouldn't, you know, it was just

joshing around.

You can see Hawk joshing.

They couldn't be anybody else but that because it was kind of, they were only that loud in real life, maybe 20, 25% of the time.

But Hawk, you know, he would turn and say, well, he'd say that in a locker room to start out a fucking sentence, but it just, they just turned it up.

And

to the question you asked is, how do you get somebody to just go, okay, now don't do any of that acting shit.

Just come up with a way to be interesting on your own.

And don't use the words that sound so fake.

I want an opportunity for the belly.

Just little things that they make everyone do.

And because everyone does it, no one sounds like anything other than a robot when they do it.

Yeah.

And

you have the

outstanding verbal artists like the, you know, the punks and the Romanses, and the people who can

punk speaks to them in his own words.

Nobody writes it.

They might write the concept, and he somehow translates it and walks the line, blah, blah, blah.

And it sounds natural.

Roman is

another budding Hollywood superstar.

He just, he's that guy, and he's got into this whole thing.

He's, you know, he's going to be Schwarzenegger one day, whatever the fuck.

But the guys at the top, whoever they may be,

they're good at it, but still, there's not the

animosity that you used to see in wrestling promos of guys

getting in each other's faces and having to be fucking held back while they're screaming and slobbering on each other, you motherfucker, without saying that.

Or

a guy cutting a

just for two minutes or whatever, an intense promo vowing revenge or retribution or mayhem or whatever with fire in his eyes and get people to believe it

because it's become so

this is all prepared for you to say as part of the greater,

you know, stage play and progress.

And for guys who never

done

just

cut a promo on this motherfucker.

Here, you guys are mad.

Here's why.

Go fucking.

And not only would that probably be petrifying,

but also, like you said, how do you start thinking that way all of a sudden when you've been told another thing?

The reason why these guys in the territory days,

the memorable ones could do this is because

a bunch of them couldn't and nobody remembers them.

But you had to learn because nobody, they were going to tell you what to talk about, and they might give you lines to say, or boy, here's zinging with it, or whatever.

But basically, it was the sell tickets.

Become

whatever your fucking gimmick is that we are currently portraying you to be.

Be that.

Talk like that.

And it better be goddamn interesting, positive or negative.

Because if it's not, then we'll finish you up and do something else, some angle with somebody else.

And so that's how those guys, that's why everything was different.

And the cadences and the deliveries and the material and the way of going about it, except for

obviously, you know, Dick Slater thought he was Terry Funk for years.

And, you know, there was still imitation.

You know,

a gimmick that was over in the Carolinas, a guy would see it and he'd try to do it in fucking Texas or Portland or whatever.

But

it was still

his take on a classic.

And now everybody's learning in almost the same place, or in the Indies, they're not learning this at all

because of no need for it because they're not on fucking television.

And they don't, I won't say there's no need for it.

There's no way for them to apply it.

There's no personal incentive, though, other than like, I want to get signed and I want to be on TV.

It's not like I won't make money unless I could do this right.

Yes, that's, you know, that's the problem is at this point, whether you can do this right or wrong at some level, and now especially with Tony around with a blank checkbook, you can make money.

But, you know, being memorable and making money over a long period of time is a different story.

And, but I think that's with some of these guys at the top,

which is, I was, I was told this by a

person one time with connections to

the UFC in a very close fashion at one time.

That

I don't know whether they're on the ins or outs now, so I don't want to bury him.

But Dana White would let the guys at the top that he knew were kind of smart to what they were doing pull a little bullshit amongst themselves verbally and in the press conferences and everything to hype the fights.

That's not saying their fight was crooked or fixed, but they knew they were going to make more money

if they

promote it and got got people interested, and he knew that too.

And he didn't go to him and say, I know what you're doing, you know, but at the same time, he let him do it on numerous occasions.

He realizes the UFC wouldn't be as popular as it got if everyone did Bob Backland promos.

Exactly.

But at the same time,

he was protective enough of the...

credibility and integrity of his business that he wasn't going to let the guys in the fucking opening match go out and shoot their own fucking angles without yanking a knot in their tail or firing them outright, which is here's a lesson to be learned by today's wrestling.

So it depended on who it was, and that's kind of the way that wrestling developed.

Depending on who you were,

that's what you got, the level of what you got away with.

If you're the main event, if you're guys selling the tickets, if you're drawing fucking money, if you're really good at what you're doing in some fashion or another, it's beneficial to the promoter, you get away with more shit

than if you're fucking and going into business for yourself or doing whatever, than if you're jerking a curtain and you just think you're hot shit.

And that should be applied more to the wrestling business today.

How did we get on this topic from times of promos?

We're talking about the formatting of promos.

You were talking about the promos of TBS and that created the situation for the compare and contrast to modern talkers and how they do it and where they do it.

Well, thank you very much, Dr.

Proctor, you analyst you.

Well, thank you.

Um,

that was a long one.

That was a long one.

Mexican last night.

Oh, me.

Um, what was her name?

No, come on now.

Stop doing things like that.

I'm trying, what, Rick?

I'm um,

all right, before we talk about the things we're going to talk about today,

and this is another one of those programs I'm not going to take too seriously besides the echo in my head.

I'm not hearing voices in my head.

I'm just hearing my own voice about a second later.

Is that a sign of anything mentally?

That's a no-brainer.

All righty then.

We've got to catch up with some of the listeners, the people, the cult of cornet out there.

We took the holiday break and we've been trying to catch up with all this inanity

and insanity that's been going on in wrestling.

We've neglected some emails.

I've found a few more that need to be recognized.

This is not an official Reggie's corner, by the way.

You don't need to

play any music or whatever.

I just want to recognize a couple of people that had ridden to one way back in December.

And I was sorry to hear that Tom

lost his 15-year-old Shih Tzu Simon.

But he had a myriad of health issues.

And

so he and his

wife had to make the decision.

But he just said, if you can, shout out my boy Simon on the show.

And I wanted to make sure that

we did that.

His wife knows that when Tom says there's a new cornet out,

that she knows that he'll have a friend to listen to in times of troubled waters.

And you're involved there too, in some fashion.

I'm waiting for the new cornet, too.

I'm tired of this old cornet.

Hey!

That's what he meant, right?

Yeah, hey, Jim, it's good to see you're back, especially after seeing your front.

Anyway, and also, Damon from Florida lost his 14-year-old mini schnoodle,

Lexi.

And it was his best friend, and coming home from work hadn't been the same without her.

And he caught her Lexi Pooh.

And so, anyway, a mini schnoodle can you imagine how cute little Lexi

so cute I I see you're you're fully familiar with the mini schnoodle brand apparently you've had a bad experience I'm not familiar with the schnoodles I don't have too many uh the schnauzers and the poodles

they get the schnauzer and the poodle together and in the pudding and

There you go.

You know, the Cosby impression may be one you have to retire because you it's one thing if you're making fun of like perverts like you went from like Vince McMahon to Cosby and kind of make it work

dead animals that you built Cosby

no we're talking about schnauzers and foodles

all right all right anyway Dustin

from Redding California wrote into both of us he mentioned you in the salutation hello Jim and Brian

But he just he wanted to mention it last April his father passed away and then just a few days ago and this was just last week, his grandmother has passed away.

And they were both, he says, back in the day, they were responsible for showing me wrestling and introducing me to the product, which at the time was old school WWF.

And he's been rummaging through YouTube, and it led to him rekindling memories of those days.

But, you know, that's

the question I was saying, and Dustin, we're sorry for your losses, and especially your grandma,

just recently, but

that brings up the question,

in previous generations, I guess all of them, or almost all of them, except maybe when television was first invented,

this would not be true.

But otherwise, you became a wrestling fan

because of a mother or a father or a grandmother or grandfather or the uncle.

How many letters and emails for years have we got,

you know, like that?

And

whose fucking grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, eccentric older cousin, whatever is going to get anybody into wrestling these days?

Are they?

Maybe WWE, but anybody eccentric older cousins, I'm sure, out there right now.

Well, okay, I guess that's

that category would be filled up, but, you know, but

when I started going to the matches live, you would see, you know, three-year-old kids sitting on the laps of the father and the mother together in the front row.

And sometimes, you know, Aunt,

you know, Phyllis or Gladys or whatever or Uncle Snort was sitting next to him.

Well, you know, the cool thing is, like, if someone now...

whether you have a child or a grandchild or a nephew or a niece, whatever it may be, and they're younger, if they're into it and they're at all interested in history, instead of like just telling them stories, you can go to a peacock.

You know, if my son ever gets to the point where he's interested in wrestling, God forbid,

or

gets to the point where he likes wrestling enough that he wants to like wrestling history, I could show him all the stuff that got me into wrestling.

The Saturday night's main events and all that stuff.

It's there.

So I think

it may not always translate to the current product,

but wrestling fans never never stop talking about wrestling no matter what age they are.

They never stop thinking about it.

They never stop believing they know more than everyone else about it.

I think that's like a common trait amongst all wrestling fans.

Every wrestling fan is the smartest wrestling fan they know, and they all believe it.

But you never get over that.

You never do.

There's a reason why people leave wrestling,

not even wrestlers.

I'm just talking about in terms of names that are talking about wrestling out there and then return to it.

You never get away from it.

well i don't know

a bunch of people have gotten away from it

who you can't deny that over the over the years that are watching on television at least on watching on television is one thing but i'm saying all those people that watch just remembering whatever period of time that they actually did pay attention they know more about it than anybody else i don't think all those people that watched in the late 90s during the Monday Night Wars that were watching both shows, the record numbers, that all of a sudden were gone when shit got bad.

I don't think like none of them think about wrestling anymore or talk about wrestling.

Those are the people who will go watch the old nitros or raw clips on YouTube or seek out things about the older wrestlers on YouTube.

So I don't think

even if you don't watch the current stuff, and that's the thing, if you liked that stuff back then, there's no reason to think you would like AEW unless you just like matches.

And WWE.

And then even the matches with people who don't look anything like the people that you probably liked.

Yeah, you know, I think about that sometimes.

Imagine if you're someone who took all these years away from wrestling and you came back and, you know, it's a Jack Perry.

It's an Adam Cole.

Dude, it's just one of these smaller guys, not someone who's like cut and smaller, not a Rick McGraw,

but just small, skinny guys.

They don't even look like they do good in like MMA or anything.

You know, sometimes people could justify, oh, that guy's small, but, you know, he could choke someone out.

They don't look like that.

And they don't look like wrestlers.

And, you know, it just makes the whole thing ridiculous to anyone who's trying to return back to it.

WWE, at least they look like wrestlers.

Well, and you know, that's what you mentioned with going back and being able to look at the previous generation now because of YouTube and home video.

You know, when I started going to the matches live in 1974 and I'm hearing these fans talk, they couldn't show me, well,

you know, this guy, he may be great, but he's no Lou These or Blacksmith Pettigo,

who was a local favorite around here.

here,

you're like, what the fuck?

Or Pat Malone, right?

When they were being kindly toward, you know, what I thought was this pie-faced old man, and the guys would say, oh, he was the fucking meanest man in the business, and he was the fucking toughest shooter, and he was the biggest draw in the history of fucking Tennessee.

And I thought they're humoring this.

pudgy old man.

No, it was all true.

I found out 40 years later.

So that would have been cool.

That would, you know, you could have

obviously made a bunch of fans off of that.

But I just, that's the thing is,

there's no

family,

you know, oomph because this appeals to such a narrow

current product.

There are no family products.

Well, it appeals to a narrow demographic, not only in terms of age and, you know, potentially gender or or sex, whatever they call it these days,

but also affordability and accessibility.

And you don't make family bonds going to see something live once a fucking year.

You know, that was another byproduct of the territories.

What are we going to do with the kids?

We can't afford a babysitter.

Well, well, fucking kids under five free.

We'll take them.

And that's the way that, you know, so

it's a

we're not

drawing in a lot of potential fucking

grandfathering in the fans anymore.

That's what I'm trying to say.

And the other thing is just how content is consumed and discovered.

I became a big wrestling fan seeing WWF local TV on Channel 5 in New York on weekend mornings when I was home from school.

If you're a kid nowadays, my kids don't even,

other other than me watching CBS Channel 2 news, they have no idea what local TV is.

They don't care about TV.

There's no Presto the Magic Clown on to greet them when they come in from school.

No, it's everything is about the phone.

Everything is about TikTok and YouTube and shorts and all these things that are just coming at them.

That's how they discover things.

That's how every kid, not every kid, but a lot of kids discover things.

So that's the other thing.

There's no local TV show to bump into to become a fan, something that's going to be there every week.

It's just, if you don't watch TV

and you're only on your phone, that's the only way you're consuming content or streaming it on a TV, then you're discovering wrestling that way, too.

That's where it's going to be interesting to see the next group of fans that come up because that's how they're going to discover wrestling.

Are you sure there's going to be a next group?

Are we going to go the way of buggy whip fanciers?

You always worry because of roller derby, but you also see how powerful and strong WWE is.

Now, they can't maintain this hotness forever.

They can't break every record every time forever.

So, it's going to have to come down.

How far down will be the

question?

If they come down all the way, it affects the entire industry.

Everything goes down.

But right now, things are hot.

But Roller Derby went away.

Roller Derby was hot too.

It went away.

It was gone.

And

like a thief in the night, we had our roller derby and then suddenly there was no roller derby.

Well, you know what's not going to go away quickly?

Well, this is a horrible transaction.

I hope they go away quickly.

Transaction.

Transaction transition.

See, hopefully it's going to be an easier transaction than that transition that I've announced the second and final chapter of the Midnight Express 40th anniversary celebration this year at

8384 to 2324.

We had the Midnight Express four-pack action figure launch in September.

And by the way, there's about 500 left, folks, for those of you who want one of those limited edition collector sets.

And then I announced last week, that was the program you were off of, Brian, but we already

welcomed you back and everything on your show, The Drive-Thru.

So we've just jumped right back into the saddle here.

Only a couple of saddle sores.

But I announced on a program last week that the only complaint we got from the Action Figure 4 pack was they couldn't, they couldn't fit it in their budget.

And so if you don't want all four of us now, you can just get two of them.

The Midnight Express Tag Team Action Figure 2 packs are going to go on sale on Saturday, February 10th at noon Eastern at jimcornet.com.

Limited in number.

There were only 2,000 of the four packs.

We have 500 left, as I mentioned.

There'll be just under 1,000 of the Lane and Eaton set and the Lane and Condry.

Or shit.

Let me try that again.

The Lane and Eat.

The rare Georgia Lane and Condry set.

Wow.

Stop it,

dastardly, dastardly dirty bird.

The Eaton and Condry, there'll be less than a thousand each of the Eaton and Condry and Eaton and Lane tag team sets,

all of them coming with a full color 8x10 photo of myself with either set of the team, whichever you're ordering.

autographed by myself and personalized to your specifications, autographed by Dennis if it's Dennis and Bobby autographed by Stan if it's Stan and Bobby and as we mentioned with the four packs uh obviously Bobby's autograph cannot be on the majority of the photos but

there will be one deluxe package we've got like 45 pictures of Bobby and Dennis that he signed this was the last thing that we have remaining that Bobby signed before he passed away So that will be offered as well as packages with these tag team sets, both figures and the photo, and the milestones book that also accompanied the four-pack because we got 2,000 of the four-packs, but we had to get 2,500 of the books to get the price break.

2,500 costs a little bit less than 2,000 would have.

Explain that one to me, Lucy.

So we're passing the savings on to the consumer here, and we're including some of them in the tag team packs as well.

They will not, these books be sold separately.

And also mentioned

that just for shits and giggles, because why not while we're doing this, I want to go out in style, as we'll talk about in a second.

We have 500 limited edition of two packs of Dr.

Tom Pritchard and Sweet Stan Lane, the original Smokey Bad Wrestling Tag Team Champions, the Heavenly Bodies.

The Mouse's Ear Years.

The Mouse's Ear Years.

And they are,

that also comes with a photo of the three of us, autographed by all three of us, as we're all still around,

and personalized to your specifications.

500 of those, these are the first and last heavenly bodies figures that are going to be done.

As a matter of fact, that's the thing.

This is the end of the Midnight Express figures.

No more are going to be reproduced of these or made in the future.

And you can only get them at jimcorned.com.

And again, as we've mentioned, we're eliminating the middleman here.

We don't have to to pay a cut to Walmart.

So after the manufacture

and distribution costs, we are all splitting the money equally, including, as I mentioned, Bobby's kids and grandkids.

And

Stan has thanked every

undiscovered children.

No quit.

No, he has been cleared of everything, believe it or not.

Believe it or not.

Stan is cleared of every outstanding issue that could ever be brought up.

And he's a happily married man.

As I've told you last week or this past week on the drive-thru, he's financing his mother's rest of her retirement.

She'll be turned 104 in the year 2024.

Can't there be like a Stan Lane boating playset where it comes with a boat and a little microphone?

That might be the next.

That's the second career he retired from.

That might be the next thing that somebody else explores because that's the thing.

We've been planning these, as we mentioned, it was two years, it was August of 2021

that

officially the contract, Bobby signed the contract right before he passed away.

And now we're here in almost February of 2024.

And it took us until this past September to get the four packs here and get them on sale.

I don't want this to sound like going out of business.

That was the greatest thing about fucking Dick the Bruiser's TV show in Indianapolis on Channel 4 late Saturday nights, the sponsor spots.

They had the same furniture stores going out of business, prices slashed to the bone.

Every week for years, it took these people decades to go out of business, right?

And after a while, it got to be that you looked forward to him.

I can't believe he's still around.

I don't want to do a dramatic,

I'm getting out of the business, but this will be the last round of action figures that I'm going to be offering for sale.

It'll be the year 2024.

Without going into great detail, there'll be one more Jim Cornette variant figure with a little twist on it this time.

And I am out of the action figure business.

And I will explain why.

Because

of the pre-planning,

several reasons.

One, because of the pre-planning.

This took, with the Midnight figures, two years to execute, but you have to commit to this massive undertaking if some financial investment is involved.

And, you know, I started thinking now as I get to my later years,

if something had happened to me on this thing

at the same time we signed the contracts and put everything in motion,

Stacy, somebody would have told Stacey two years later, hey, by the way, we got four tons and a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of action figures.

Where would you like them?

Hello, Stacey.

The boat has arrived.

Yeah, the boat has docked and your ship has sailed.

So,

and also because

even though the action figures,

the reason why we've done this, just like the Midnight Express scrapbook, just like a lot of the things we've done, is you know how I feel.

I'm a collector and I'm a wrestling fan and collector.

And so are you.

And

we've loved doing this because we like to make shit people collect.

I live in a fucking museum.

Stan was joking with me the other day.

He was thinking about moving.

He said, I guess you can't ever move, Corny.

It'd be like moving the Smithsonian.

But so I've liked making stuff the people collect and the different variants and the debut editions or whatever the case.

And they've been very popular.

But I don't want to start making six-figure and or multi-year commitments at this stage of the game when I've already done these.

I think the reason why that most of them are collectors' items or at least

prized members of people's collections is because they're limited number and there's not just, they weren't mass produced to the heavens.

But at the same time, we've done quite well and I hung out.

Actually, the other cornet figure I mentioned is ready, but I didn't want to step on these midnight figures since they they came in.

I wanted to go out with the midnight figures and make sure that these guys,

you know, got the figures that they should have had a long time ago.

And we talked about, you know, the various toy company deals and promotional politics or whatever.

But now we can close this up

when this has been executed and people have had the opportunity.

If you really like the Midnight Express, well, this is the final piece of merch.

We've had the books, the DVDs, pictures.

This is the last piece of merchandise.

And

so we want to thank everybody.

Me too.

I'm making something out of this.

Eventually, I think I will.

But thank you to everybody who has or will

participate and for providing Stan and Dennis and Bobby's kids and grandkids with the last reminder that the midnight were something special to them.

So

you can right now go to jimcornet.com.

Hotchkiss is over his deathly illness and you can see

banners on the front page.

You can click on that and you can see all the information on the various

tag team sets that come with a picture, the tag team sets that come with a picture in a book, which one's which, what you would like.

They start at $99.95.

So

I think it was with Solomon last week.

I said one guy, he said, I'd love to have the four-pack,

but to afford it, I'd have to sell a kidney.

And I wanted to write him back and say, motherfucker, if you need to sell a kidney for $229.95, you need to reevaluate your life from the ground up, right?

But nevertheless, for the budget conscious, we're starting at $99.95,

and everything goes on sale.

Saturday, February 10th at noon Eastern Time.

And

we're going to stand over Hotchkiss and make sure he's he's right at the crack of noon on the

the special

the deluxe packages with Bobby's autograph because we know those are

those are gonna go quickly but we can't figure out a fucking special lottery system we don't know how else to do it but first come first serve

what are your ideas my ideas for what

How could we do this more fairly where everybody gets a fair crack at it?

Well, I think everyone's going to get a crack at it, but I think it's important to know from what you just said, because a lot of people may be hearing this.

You do things very differently than most people in and around wrestling.

When it comes to merchandise or something specific like this, the action figures, you're a direct partner from the first dollar spent.

This isn't something where someone else puts up the money and you just sit back and hope for a royalty.

This is something where you are involved from the very beginning.

You're a partner in the entire process.

You own the process.

Well, and I had

six figures of the process tied up in the process.

I was hoping that the fucking boat wouldn't be shot down or something by goddamn Somalian pirates or whatever.

But that,

you know, we've been lucky with the audience we have, and that's why I thanked everybody a minute ago.

But with the audience we have, just volume-wise, numerically,

we're able to reach enough people that we can be our own platform, tell people this is, you can have the greatest product or the most valuable service or the most wonderful commodity.

But if you don't have a way to tell people that it's available, then you can't make any money on it.

And so that's why so many of the guys, as we've talked about before, I don't mean to

go into it again, but so many of the guys in the business, especially in the territory days or in the old days, or even even in some modern times, really get screwed on their royalty or their likeness or the money they should earn from same

because

they don't have their own platform.

They're working for

the man of the big machine.

And

you can be a talent that contributed, but you can also, at the top level, you can be overshadowed by the

Stone Colds or the Sinas or the Reinsa or whoever the big merch mover

to where you're, you know, you maybe be

a great merch seller on your own, but fuck, how much money do people have?

And this guy's, you know,

a license to print money and everybody's throwing their money at him.

So, you know, this wave, the midnight actually, so far,

without doing everybody's tax returns, and they are very grateful since I'm the young when I'm 62, Stan's 70, gonna be one very soon, Dennis 73 and a cancer survivor twice.

They've made more money off the action figure four-pack than any pay-per-view payoff they ever got.

So, you know, because we didn't have our own platform either.

So that's

the difference.

And some guys could make one.

Don't you think the modern day guys, they've got enough of a following that they could, if they were

not everyone's a business, not everyone's a businessman, because it's not just a business.

I said they've got enough of a following, they could make one, but could they

administrate it, keep it up, be

entertaining on a regular basis at another

genre, whatever the case.

Are we entertaining at other genres?

Whatever genre this is, I think so.

So that's at least a one.

But I think it's also a scary investment.

Not everyone has the money to invest.

Not everyone would make that kind of investment.

And

you feel bad sometimes.

I mean, I don't want to say anything, but there's one toy company I know of out there who, you know, signed up a bunch of guys to exclusive contracts.

And if you really look at it and you look at the royalty rate, it's almost, it's,

it's, I dare say, impossible for the wrestlers to make any money on this.

And that's the thing you feel bad about because you want to see more creative product out there, but there has to be a really good way for people to make money.

And you did it the best way, which is actually be,

you know, it's your project, you're a partner from the first dollar.

Well, yeah, well, I thank you for looking at it in such a cold and calculating way.

I, you know, I prefer to look at it as we're trying to bring something that our fans would enjoy directly to them without involving fucking Walmart or goddamn some other vicious, evil corporation that's going to take a large part of the

proceeds before the the poor

you know uh r b star gets any you know it gets any money for heaven's sake but anyway jimcornet.com on saturday february the 10th is is when that will all take place

where were we i've lost my fucking page of ah your show it well it's my show and i'm going to ask you

i don't i don't want to just knock on wood i'm not going to make a segue or a transition or even a faw pas

between the Midnight Express and I at our advanced ages and this next topic.

I'm just going to ask you, you've heard about Seth Rollins, right?

Apparently he's going to address his future and et cetera on RAW this week, but the diagnosis that I've seen reported is a torn MCL and torn meniscus.

Is that

what you you saw?

Have you seen any updates?

Or is this valid?

That is what I've seen as well.

I apologize for any noise.

The wind is quite mighty.

Oh, God damn it.

Now, look, I'm just completely.

It is indeed God's fault this wind.

I cannot hear it thunder.

And

I cannot hear it thunder

with my bad ear, and you're claiming that you have this hearing damage and hearing loss, and you can hear the fucking wind.

Or it's the wind tunnel through my head.

I hear wind somewhere.

I'm out of here.

There's something in your head.

I'll go along with you there.

But no, nobody can hear these things.

Your hyper-sensitive hearing.

They ought to call you Arl Man.

Wouldn't that be a cool name for a superhero?

R.O.

Man?

A-U-R-A-L?

He's got super hearing in one ear.

Be very popular with the women.

Oral man.

Yes.

But anyway.

Back to the revolution.

What is he?

He's an innovator.

He's a dominator.

What is this?

He's a revolutionary he's going to need an imaging machine i think he's

well maybe he's he's so magnetic

um

seth rollins toward mcl and torred meniscus the plan apparently that they were going to go with was rollins and punk for wrestlemania

and

To be quite honest, we don't know yet.

That might not be out of the question, and we will dissect that in a second.

But this was, he did,

oh, goddamn, I read the name of the move, but it's one of those goddamn names they've made up for moves.

So, but he took a bad bump in just a course of a routine match the other night.

The Falcon's Crest.

Oh, that was not it.

It was something, it was something with a Q in it.

The Knott's Landing.

That might be it.

You know what?

That would have been the great.

Well, time has passed.

That was a top 10 TV show for you young kids out there, but the time has passed.

They could just name finishing maneuvers after 80s TV shows.

Oh, he's going for the Belvedere.

Here he comes with the what's happening.

Back to Seth.

This is Webster.

Webster!

Webster!

Oh, God.

This is a serious goddamn situation.

He was Sanford and sonned

into

Seth is hurt.

He's hurt.

and he's going to address this on Monday Night Raw and now as as we sit here it's January 21st

WrestleMania is what the first week of April can't remember the exact day so that's 10 weeks

he's got a torn MCL it's never it's never good to have it torn anything

But I think we talked about this with somebody else a few weeks ago, maybe Charlotte.

If you're going to tear a ligament, the MCL is the one that you need the least.

Now, Seth is,

the way he works and in his size and the athletic shit he does, he needs all the support and his need that he can get.

But it's a savior.

He's a skybreaker.

Well, now, come on.

Well, he broke his MCL here.

We're not trying to make mockery of the man and kick him while he's down.

We're just going to spit on him.

No.

Point I'm making is the MCL is not an from my experience in dealing with the athletes and the developmental programs and et cetera, an MCL is not something that

a doctor or surgeon is automatically, oh, we got to get in there and fucking fix that.

And it's going to be nine months.

It's not an ACL.

The ACL is a bigger fucking deal.

And torn meniscus is the cartilage.

And that's what I have right now.

Yes.

And

you know that when you hurt, when you tear it, it hurts like a motherfucker.

It can be very painful, but you can also, you can have most

cartilage tears, even if they're in a bad, not a bad, but an inopportune position or whatever, you can have that orthoscopic surgery and,

you know, you'd be talking four to six weeks for, you know, most athlete, blah, blah, blah.

Even if you didn't, just on rehab, I can tell you from my personal experience, I believe believe between now and wrestlemania if someone just had the meniscus just the cartilage tear yeah they could be ready for a wrestlemania match yeah and

well and and again i remember guys in the days when they had to they could come back get through a match not saying it was a good idea a couple weeks after being scoped guys would do that but

Then also you can do without, basically, when they scope, they're not repairing any meniscus.

If you tear it, they're just taking out the shreds, which are irritating your nerves and causing the pain.

They're cleaning it off.

You know, you can exist without the cartilage.

I've got less than half of the cartilage in my knees that I started out with.

And that's what eventually, when you hear of guys having knee transplants,

or knee replacements, I should transplant, or knee replacements,

if you lose all your cartilage and it's bone on bone, then that starts wearing, and the cartilage is the goddamn padding, is the bubble wrap or whatever that cushions that.

But nevertheless,

all is not lost with him.

It's not a Charlotte situation, and he could very well make WrestleMania if they take care of him and in the condition he's already in otherwise.

He's an athlete and he trains and he knows what the fuck he's doing.

So that cause is not lost, but it's

again, now they lost Charlotte,

and that was a freak thing in a match, and they lost Seth, and that was just a, you know, a freak thing spotting a match that wasn't really anybody's,

as far as I can recall, anybody's negligence.

But boy, it's not at a good time.

But how many people at the top are hurt?

I don't know your thoughts on all these people getting hurt.

You know, you don't look at Rollins and say, that guy works a dangerous style, but he works a very physical style.

And he's constantly, you know, up and down.

I know it sounds silly, but

you know, Randy Savage destroyed his knees.

And a lot of these guys, I'm not saying everyone's doing what Randy Savage did from the top rope to the floor or anything,

or just the elbow dropped to the middle of the ring, but these guys are regularly doing lots of things that were like the big moment in old matches.

The guys who work those matches are feeling to this day.

They're doing nothing but stuff like that on top of

while you could say they train better

because physically they look better without all the steroids that guys back then not well not all you didn't need all of them they're not saying they're not on stuff now

well i will hold on it's it is both they they look better than because some of the guys were on a lot of the steroids and some of the guys weren't on even training so there was a wide disparity now everybody pretty much looks like an athlete so if you do like crossfit or you roll around on the mat and do some MMA or some BJJ, I should say more specifically, and you're working a style that's very physical, anyone out there, the wear and tear is going to get you.

It's amazing Rollins hasn't had more time off just because of, again, the way he works, the way he's been working since, you know, Ring of Honor when I first saw him.

Yeah.

I think it's unfortunately the nature of things.

Charlotte got hurt.

How many times have you seen Charlotte do the Adam Page moonsault to the floor?

Or one of these things that it looks great.

She hits it.

Just imagine what her ankles and knees and everything is feeling when she hits that thing.

You know, there's a reason why Muda can't walk.

I'm not saying he can't walk, but his knees are done.

There's a reason he had to stop doing the moonsault.

He had to come up with a different finisher.

He physically couldn't do it.

And it was the most impressive moonsault ever.

I think we have a generation of guys

who, and girls who are going to get more surgeries than ever before,

who are going to be injured more than ever before.

And a lot of that is the style.

You are correct, sir.

Well, thank you.

I'm sorry.

I was actually engrossed in what you were saying.

That's, again, the thing is that

there's already enough risk in this, is what I'm saying.

There's already enough risk in this, in

going about doing what you need to do as a top star whether top guy or top girl to stand out like the charlottes and the cesss or whatever without

the

out of the just the ridiculous risks that are taken for

i don't know what reward five stars from uncle dave and somebody's going to praise you on cage match that some of the other independent promotions or aew itself you know go through through because you're, yes, there's freak stuff.

I mean,

Adam Cole jumping off the ramp and breaking his ankle

was a freak injury in a vacuum.

And he may be fatal.

Well, but I was about to say, a freak injury in a vacuum, that can happen, just dumb, stupid luck, but it may be more indicative of a

bigger issue that, you know,

that Adam, injury, injury, injury things going on.

Like, look at Jake Roberts.

Jake Roberts, I mean, he had to have a bunch of like, go fund me stuff years ago.

What was it?

His hip, his shoulder.

I mean, just all messed up.

Yeah.

Do you remember any crazy Jake Roberts bump ever?

I was about to say to you, you were going to ask me, do you remember Jake Roberts taking a fucking bump?

Yeah.

When?

I mean, he's a smart worker.

I'm not trying to put him down.

He's a genius worker who didn't take a lot of bumps because he figured out a way to get around that.

And he still physically got beat up.

So these guys today,

how many times do they do their move and it looks great in midair, but they're crashing to the floor right on their knees?

If they're lucky enough not to just go backwards head over heel and hit their head on the floor,

these guys are going to get all these guys are getting all banged up.

And I worry about like the next generation of injuries and just wear and tear.

These guys are all fucked up.

Well, and

MJF,

the

injury that we would have thought

was the problem that he had from doing that fucking lunatic elbow drop off the top onto the floor when the table collapsed early was apparently not the injury that's the majority, which

major injury he's got, which is the shoulder.

And so he's going to address multiple things.

Our friend, Mr.

Olivier,

just came back after having multiple surgeries for multiple things and is back out again.

And

the,

you know, his favorite tag team partner, Mr.

Ibushi,

who the recent signing of Tony Khan's, is he going to be the first time that a guy signs a contract with a company and never wrestles for them after signing that contract ever until the end of the contract?

Yeah, he's going to be Tony Khan's Carl Pavano.

Yankee fans will know what I'm talking about.

Okay, well, in wrestling, Nash, I think, made it a two-year contract and only wrestled once, once, right?

But

he was hurt.

No, he wrestled twice because he wrestled.

He got hurt.

He came back and he wrestled again, got hurt, whatever.

And I know

you may can think of some, but there's so many other guys or girls that are hurt right now

that are either they're in the undercard mix in AEW and we don't even hear about it, we don't think about them, or, you know,

but there's

everybody's hurt in some respect,

which

again, I think is why

that the WWE to get a return on their investment, possibly if no, for if not for any charitable reason,

is insisting that a lot of these top guys talk more than they wrestle because they don't want to risk their investment out there in the cold cruel ring.

What do you think?

I don't know.

I mean,

you look at an MJF,

and this is someone we've cited in the past for working a really smart match.

And he doesn't wrestle too often,

which is kind of the thing for world champions nowadays, now that I think about it.

Well, but remember, it wasn't his fall with the shoulder.

It was a Dingleberry fucking light switch that Uranagied him off the top rope onto his side.

There was the elbow drop to the floor.

Like even, you know, there, MJF did a couple things in that match.

He did, what he went over the top rope to one side, and then he did the elbow drop right onto the floor from the top rope, which I've never seen anyone do before.

That was insane.

And that's the guy that works the smart matches.

Yeah, in all fairness, he didn't plan to do it until he got up there and saw that or got out there and saw the table collapse.

Said, well, fuck it, I'm going to do it anyway.

But still,

you know, I'd have called another audible.

But yes, I get what you mean.

Is that he's the safe one and he's fucked up.

But they,

this is

it's never looked phonier and it's never been more dangerous how the have they managed to do that

it's crazy and you know it's both ends it's the people who are doing too many high spots i hate to just throw the word flips at that tricks i think is what we used to call them tricks And their bodies are going to break down.

And we've seen them break down in the middle of matches.

We've seen elbows snap and ankles snap and knees buckle.

We've seen all these things on TV, but then it's also the guys that

overly romanticize the stiff style they saw on Japanese tapes.

And

there are the guys who can't lay it in, and it looks awful.

And then the guys that are laying it in, you're like, why are you laying it in like this?

This is professional wrestling.

What are you doing?

Well, and part of it also is that, well, he'll pay us anyway.

You know, we'll,

what the fuck?

We'll go out on our shield.

But I'm just, I'm advising everybody that there's

a little bit more reason than ever before to take care of yourself and concentrate on trying to sell some fucking tickets and draw some money with your mouth instead of your back and your neck because the biggest company in the world that ain't going nowhere,

even if their rich father passes on,

is

goddamn talking us to death.

So that's what you need to be working on.

But there have been a lot of injuries, Brian.

And there have been a lot of close shaves like we saw with Austin Theory the other night and old Carmelo landing on their heads.

A lot of close shaves.

You know, it's,

you don't want a close shave, Brian.

You do not want a close shave.

You know what you want, don't you?

You want a smooth shave.

That's right.

That's what you want, a smooth shave, not a close shave.

You may need to have your bacon pulled out of of the fire, but a smooth shave, you're going to look suave and deboner when you walk around town.

And

you know what I got right there?

Do you hear that?

I hear that.

That is the bag.

This is a polyurethane bag, a Ziploc container, by the way, resealable from Harry's, our friends over at Harry's.

And

it says it all here on the package.

It says, herein lies everything you need for a smooth shave.

And I believe I've mentioned that since I've got this stuff from Harry's,

I'm just, I'm slicker than whale shit and an ice flow.

Wait a minute, where's my thing to come out?

There we go.

Not only do you get this just on the side here, you get the Harry's foaming shave gel that lathers richly to soothe and cushion.

your face against the onslaught of the tremendous shaver, but it's not an onslaught.

It's more of an insinuation as this incredible razor

with the ergonomically designed handle insinuates itself onto your face.

And

when you drag it down in an orderly and smooth fashion over the top of that hairy foaming shave gel, well, friends and neighbors, I'll tell you what.

You leave behind a strip of ground that is free of any hairs or whiskers, even blemishes.

You can shave a goddamn mole off with one of these things.

It's just

telling you.

Let's focus on what these razors are for, which is, of course, shaving facial hair off of your faces, not any sort of

protrusions or anything.

But it, well, any protrusions or contusions, whatever, you won't have any contusions or any lacerations or perspications because

there is a strip of lubricating gel strip on top of the cartridge on the head of this razor.

And then you've got five blades.

Count them.

Five.

I just counted them.

And they're sharper than a serpent's tooth, each one of them.

And when you drag that right across your face, see, now don't do it without the shave gel, because then elsewhere you'll take a significant portion of your epidermis right along with it.

But with the concombination in cohort with the shave gel, you use this razor.

Did I mention the incredible orange-designed gripping handle where you can, you could also potentially, I would think, use this as

possibly a nose picker, the other end of it, if you had a big nostril.

But nevertheless,

it goes right in your hand.

You draw it right down over your cheek, and it's smooth as silk what's left behind.

Smooth as a baby's bottom,

smooth as a con man's tongue.

And that's what you can get from Harry's because

they're all about providing you with everything you need for a smooth shave.

And they even give you a little card here that explains everything and tells you how you can order more of their products.

But basically, what a deal they've got going on.

Because, you know,

the razors here in the stores, you know,

they're weighted.

They have balls and chains around the cartridges and the the inserts and the plug-ins and things because people apparently steal these things at the prices they charge.

I'm pretty sure I know why you can turn them in and they can be melted down for more than gold.

But

Harry's is not going to make you go through and pass a background check at your local Kroger store and have them bring a crowbar out and pry off the fucking anti-theft device.

It's like trying to drag a corpse out of a mausoleum and get away with it.

No, they're going to send this this to you in the mail.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, what are you asking me?

I'm trying to stop you.

I don't know where you're going, but go ahead.

Well, I'm trying to illustrate how miserable it is to go out and get something that they're going to send you in the mail for cheap.

That's basically the point that I'm trying to make.

You can get their plan set up for you over at Harry's.com, and that's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com/slash JCE.

You got to use the slash JCE to get this deal because this trial set here that I was just describing to you with the razor and the cartridge and the shell, the shell foam, the

foam shave gel,

all that, that's a $13 set.

You got to get it for $3

at Harry's.com slash JCE.

$3 for the trial set so you can figure this out on your own.

You can perpetrate things with with this exact product that I'm talking about and see if you like it as much as we think you will.

And then you can sign up for the dagum refill options that they'll schedule you the refills for as low as $2.

That's even cheaper.

I mean,

that's like, well, there's five blades too.

That's 40 cents a blade.

My Abdullah the butcher could afford this kind of thing.

It wouldn't even make a dent in his income.

So anyway, you get the trial kit for $3.

You check it out.

Then you sign up for the deal.

And they will schedule your refills as low as $2.

And you get a travel cover on this, by the way.

I forgot to mention the travel cover, the nice plastic.

It's over here.

Here it is.

It's a nice plastic deal that folds right over the...

Hear that?

See, I'm snapping it into...

I just snapped it into place.

Could you hear that snap?

Yeah.

Well, you can't get this just any old fucking dollar store.

Oh, shut up.

I'll snap you into place.

You can't get that anywhere else besides hairs.

So anyway,

right now, that's what you're going to do if

you want to make yourself attractive to people.

For whatever various reason, if you want to fight them, fuck them, or run them a foot race, whatever it may be.

Don't scare little children when you go out in public.

Groom yourself with Harry's.

That's right.

Harry's.

One more time.

What's that promo code, Jim?

Harrys.com slash JCE.

Blaze your own trail with Harry's.

Don't settle for the status quo.

All right.

Once again, Harry's, we're happy to have them here on the show, but it is indeed your show.

Football season is here, and now you can legally bet on football in all 50 states with Cauchy, the nation's largest legal prediction market.

Every game, every prop, every parlay, Calci has it.

And it doesn't stop at sports.

You can trade on elections, the Oscars, and more.

You can finally bet on football in all 50 states.

Download Calci today at ka L S H I.com.

Use code RADIO for $20 when you trade 100.

Calci, get in on the action.

This is an investment that carries risk.

Calci.com.

Oh, well, thank you very much.

Well, then I'll direct where we're going to go next.

Let's layeth the smacketh down on the people, the people from January 19th, because, again,

this program, it was a fantastic wrestling program if they just get those pesky matches out of the way.

But at the same time, they're kicking

AEW's ass.

There's nobody else even in the race.

And they're talking to us, these soliloquies and the monologues and the dissertations and the speechifying.

But it's all stars and it makes sense and it's working.

You know,

they started off the program with recapping last week what happened between the bloodline and AJ and LA Knight and Orton came out to save the day and the babyfaces, you know, triumph there.

Then Roman and Paul, they come in through a metal detector.

What the?

They're making Heyman walk through a metal detector.

What do they think?

He stole the silverware out of catering?

It wasn't the silverware.

It was the two bowls of pasta.

Anyway, so

they walk through in the back of the arena, the metal detector, and there's Solo and Uso stand there.

And I'm like it.

As long as I don't have to watch either one of the Usos wrestle, I love them.

Jimmy Uso's there.

He's trying to shake Roman's hand and be all fucking Jimmy J.J.

Walker.

And he gets ignored.

And so he's like, oh, okay.

And Roman said, you know, last week he said, I said, fix it, and it didn't get fixed.

So I'm here to make it right.

And he walks off and

Solo gets his close-up where he says, I'll fix everything.

So we've teased, oh, okay, the big dog's in the house, blah, blah, blah.

They're in Atlanta.

It's sold out.

It fucking.

I mean, when was the last time you remember, Brian, that spoken words sold out NBA arenas?

Was it the heyday of Andrew Dice Clay?

Or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Not with his speeches.

No.

I don't believe.

So Nick Aldiss is in the ring, and they're going to have the contract signing for the four-way title match between the three aforementioned

baby faces, although AJ is

straddling,

and Roman for the title at the Royal Rumble, because that's what Aldous told Paul that his boy had earned him last week, earned himself.

So AJ enters and he gets in and he signs immediately, no verbiage at all.

And L.A.

Knight comes in, gets a bigger pop, and he signs immediately, no verbiage.

And

did you know when these guys come out, they're dressed like they're somebody?

It not necessarily, I'm not even saying it was great fashion, but you don't,

they're dressed like they're somebody, whether some weirdo celebrity, an athlete, a star, movie, TV, some, they're somebody.

Normal people don't dress like that.

Instead of the fucking indie guys on the other channel that come out dressed like Ned, they just woke up in a Salvation Army drop box.

They look like somebody.

And then Orton comes out, and he's dressed to wrestle because he's going to wrestle later on.

And he's wearing his own t-shirt, his own fucking, no, he's not wearing a t-shirt in tribute to his favorite Japanese wrestler.

And Orton signs, and the fans are digging him just fantastic.

And then Aldous introduces Roman and Roman music play, but wait,

it's just Paul Heyman, the wise man.

And he comes out in the entranceway, and it's the old manager's story.

Well, I haven't had a chance

to submit the contract to my attorney or to even review it.

So sadly, unfortunately, Roman Reigns will not be signing this contract tonight.

And Aldous says, oh, that's fine, Paul.

No problem.

I understand.

And Paul turns around.

He's going to leave.

And Aldous says, I've already got these other three guys' signatures, so it can be a contract for the triple threat match for the vacant Universal World Global

Heavyweight

Championship of the planet.

And Paul comes back to the ring with his mean face.

And Brian, do you know when he got up, when Paul got up on the apron of the ring and was walking straight over to Aldous, who was looking at him and they had the view from the hard camera?

Do you know what it reminded me of when Paul walked up to Aldous?

Can you just leave him alone for one week?

No, it reminded me of the opening of Alfred Hitchcock's presents when Alfred Hitchcock's silhouette walks right into the fucking frame

and goes right into his caricature and he went nose to nose.

Alfred Hitchcock's caricature and Nick Aldous went nose to nose.

It did look like, go back and watch.

If you've saved this on your DVR, it was very effective.

They could actually, you could do a mashup.

I'm not inviting any of the

very talented video artisans to do this, but if you had the opening of Alfred Hitchcock presents,

the caricature there of Alfred and then the silhouette walking in, and you could juxtapose that with Heyman walking toward

Aldous, well, you'd have an award-winning piece of video that I would probably retweet.

Anyway,

Paul tells Aldous that he cares deeply about him and the mediocre job that he's done as general manager, wearing his Paul Heyman wannabe custom suits, but there's no way that he's going to be able to sell that to the board of directors or the fans or anybody else.

And Roman Reigns ought to be in a one-on-one match at the Rumble.

And NLA Night pipes in and tells Paul to shut up and gets a pop.

It ought to be a one-on-one match against me because I knocked Roman Reigns's half-wit, cross-eyed cousins out of the and said that he would come over there and cut bacon off of Paul's back.

I mean, I'm saying finally, we're hearing wrestling promos again.

Just

a little personal insult goes a long way.

And these guys are not saying, oh, it's always been my dream to stand in the ring, and I want you at your best.

They want to cripple each other.

So anyway, L.A.

asks why that A.J.

Styles and Randy Orton jumped his line when he almost had Roman Reigns a while back.

But A.J.

bowed up and told L.A.

that he was lucky to be in the match.

And L.A.

said, watch the bass of your voice, son.

You need to worry about Roman Reigns.

And then as they're arguing, Orton's just leaning back in the corner and listening.

And L.A.

Knight tells AJ off and starts to walk away, and A.J.

punches him.

And they go down to the floor and they have a big fight.

And Aldous calls security and the referees, and they pull them apart.

And Heyman's on the apron, laughing at these guys on the floor.

And Orton walks up behind him and grabs his tie.

And Paul does the slowly I turned.

Paul is great

at being physically intimidated.

He's muttering under his breath, please don't hurt me.

And his jowls are trembling in the wind.

And Orton just just tells Paul that I know what you're doing, and it ain't going to work because I'm going to drop solo tonight, and then I'm going to reintroduce Roman Reigns to the RKO.

And he pats him on his extra-large face, and

they play the music.

It was 18 minutes.

It was commercial-free.

It flew by.

Everybody's not only a star, but everybody was great and said what they should say.

And It is a big-time presentation of an important issue for the biggest box office attraction in the business's world title match at the Royal Rumble.

The problem is you can't goddamn do this for two hours.

And they, you know,

but boy, you know what they do?

They're selling shit.

They're selling tickets.

They're getting fans to ask questions.

They're getting people interested in what's going to happen next.

Just almost none of it has to do with these damn wrestling matches.

What do you think, Brian?

I thought it was a great opening segment.

I am a big fan of Nick Aldis so far.

The way he handles these segments, the way he carries himself, he delivers his lines, his interaction with Heyman.

I'm a big fan of it so far.

Good opening segment.

Randy Orton lied, though.

He said the most dangerous three letters in sports entertainment are RKO.

It's NDA.

I don't think he signed one of those.

He's not allowed to mention it.

Oh, the NDA that you can't mention the NDA?

Yes, he signed an NDA to not be able to talk about his NDA.

You know, when we put up the video for Tony Khan talking about the Jericho thing, someone put a comment.

It was so funny.

It was the first thing that comes up.

It's the most popular one there.

It's like, why didn't Tony just sign himself to an NDA?

This is so secret, I'm not allowed to talk to myself about it.

If I think about it, I can see myself.

And I don't want to be hauled into court by me.

And right after this, by the way, they go back into back where Aldous is walking.

And A.J.

comes in all pissed off and wants L.A.

Knight tonight.

And Aldous says, fine.

So now we not only know

the main event, Roman and or not Roman, but Randy and Solo, but also we're going to see AJ and L.A.

Knight.

We've seen these guys.

The emotions are running high.

What's going to happen?

So they've hooked us, and we know there's more of this shit to come in this program.

But then what came next?

Because

remember, they're a third of the way through the first hour now with this one segment, and we're cooking.

Boy, big stars, people are into this shit.

A six-man tag match with Angel, Herbert, and Escobar against Carlito,

Walking Wild, and Benicio Del Toro.

I believe those were most of their names.

I'd like to see Carlo.

Remember, we wanted Carlito come back.

Where'd he go?

We wanted to see him fight

Escobar, right?

And then it didn't happen, and there was no explanation.

And Carlito's back, and now they're fighting.

But I'm not really interested in all these people people fighting.

Are you?

I'm interested in what happens, not really the matches for these specific people.

So what happened then anyway?

Because I wasn't interested in either one.

You know, I wanted to see what happened, but when I left the room because I didn't want to see the match, I didn't come back in time to see what happened.

Well, I'm glad we were able to break that down in such excruciating detail for all the people.

It's like they give you match time on SmackDown until you get over enough that you have talking time.

If you can get over that match time, you get time to not wrestle anymore on TV, just talk.

So hopefully Escobar could break away from the package.

And again, it used to be the opposite.

When you came in a fucking territory, everybody got to wrestle, but only a few people got to talk.

And then

now the idea is to wrestle enough until you get to where you don't have to wrestle.

All you have to do is talk.

Okay, anyway.

so Purely Dreary

worked with, wrestled.

I don't know.

Either one probably doesn't apply.

Tyler Bate and

Pete Dunn was formerly known as Butch, but now he's again known as Pete Dunn, and he's back to his old gimmick with the Bruiser Brody furry vest.

And we saw that.

I invoked the Purely Dreary rule.

Did you?

I still hadn't come back into the room from the previous match.

Well, by the time

it's been about 40 minutes,

I'm going to be in the minority here.

I thought Butch was better than just Pete Dunne being Pete Dunn.

I don't know what's happening here.

But basically, then that was the first hour.

We got the dynamite 20 minutes, and then we got the fucking matches in the way.

But then,

at the top of the hour where it's network television, they want to snag the viewers.

We got the next big talking segment.

The history package between

Kevin Owens and Logan Paul.

And Logan Paul complained about the cast and his black eye, and he won't fight Owens if he's wearing the cast at the Royal Rumble.

And then we come right in at 9 o'clock into the KO show,

and he brings

Logan Paul out.

And again,

in the first hour, the only good thing was the first 20 minutes of talking.

and the second hour starts.

And again, it's stars.

It's people we know who the fuck they are.

And they're going to talk to us.

And we got to listen.

And

Logan Paul's story now is that Kevin Owens is the reason why that Logan Paul became a WWE superstar because they showed the VTR of...

Owens giving Logan Paul the stunner at WrestleMania 2021 when he was just, I guess, the guest celebrity, right?

And he embarrassed Logan Paul at his first WrestleMania.

And so he has given him the determination that's why he trained and he's done this and he's a U.S.

champion or whatever the fuck.

And

again, Logan Paul is a natural at this.

He's milking and pausing in the right places.

And he's better than,

you know, half the guys that get into business at talking, at being a prick and getting,

you you know just people annoyed in one way or another don't you think

like corrupt crypto scams

taking his fans money i mean he's totally that kind of guy i think so and but i mean he could also at the same time he could be a shitty talker

he gets it in a way that like

I'm not to compare him to the rock, but when the rock hit, rock had timing and he knew when to pause and how to pause and how to read the room.

Yeah.

Not a lot of guys get that.

There's no nervousness with Logan Paul.

Or if he has it, he doesn't show it.

He just seems like a natural at it.

Yeah.

And part of that because he's really full of his own shit.

And that's easier to be not nervous when you're convinced that you're, you know,

something special.

But anyway,

whereas...

Owens in response and says that he barely remembers it

stunnering Logan Paul because he was just, you know, the celebrity that came in, blah, blah, blah.

And he put Logan Paul over at what he's accomplished, but you're not one of us.

You're not me.

You're not Sammy.

You're not all of his other friends.

But then they started going back and forth because I was kind of tolerating this to this point.

And then Logan Paul uncorked a promo about himself putting himself over that the dream machine would have been proud of.

Did you hear that string?

I can't even, I couldn't write it fast enough and I can't quote it, but he put himself over with a line of jive, as Barbara Billingsley would say, in airport, or airplane, rather.

Airplane.

Airplane.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

And then,

and he got the fans chanting Logan sucks.

And then

Owens fired right back at him because Owens is a goddamn promo.

There's a lot about you, Logan Paul, I can't talk about because you've been protected.

You were given all the tools.

And yeah, you're U.S.

champion.

But I think it's a joke, and I'm putting an end to it.

And then they argue about the cast, and Owens says, You can't knock me out.

As a matter of fact, I'm not going to have this cast at Royal Rumble.

I'm not even, I'm going to take it off right now.

And he takes it off and tosses it down, and he turns back around.

Boom, Logan Paul punches him right in the fucking mush, turns around, and of course, as you do every time you hit some guy one time, you immediately turn your back on him

and

exults in the crowd.

And Kevin Owens gets back up to his feet.

And Logan Paul turns around and shits himself.

And Owens tackles him, and they go to the floor.

But it ends up that Logan Paul rams Owens's bad hand into the fucking ring post or stairs or whatever it was.

And Owens is selling his hand and Logan Paul's taunting him.

And again, not only Logan Paul was great.

This was good for even for Owens.

And like 12 minutes,

but but it's selling tickets.

It's better than any of the fucking matches.

I don't know what that says about their matches, but it makes you want to see the matches.

It makes you want to see these two have a match.

Yeah, but actually, when I see this match, I probably won't like it as much as this promo because it's going to be another WWE match, but I want to see it.

But

again,

Logan Paul's not experienced at this, even if he's done media and done his own YouTube and talk and talk.

He's a natural because he picks it up.

And with what he's done in the ring,

you know, you can't look at him anymore except in terms of schedule like a part-timer.

He's one of their top guys for the big major shows.

He's an asset now.

Other than Rollins' world title and maybe like the women's tag title or something or any of the tag titles, every champion, every title is serious right now.

It's amazing.

When you really think about the way things have been for like the last 25 years with lots of title changes and everything, Logan Paul,

Gunther,

Roman Reigns,

Rhea Ripley,

they have strong champions for the first time in a long time.

And I mean,

we get on Seth Franklin Rollins, but he is a star.

It's not his fault that they made up a belt and gave to him that is overshadowed by the real lineage of all the real belts that they've been featuring for the past 20 years.

If he is injured, they hate to go back to this, but if he is injured and he can't wrestle for a while, what do you do with the belt that was made up and he was the only person to ever get it?

I'd make the winner of the Royal Rumble the new

world champion that Seth Rollins used to be and get to pick who he challenges for the deal, but that would potentially be reuniting the titles, but that would be what I would want.

But,

you know, if Rollins, if a bus came along and ran him over and he was out for nine months tomorrow, I would put the thing up for the winner of the Royal Rumble.

And let's increase all of the goddamn interest in whatever comes out of that.

It'd be a good business model.

Like every three years, you unify the titles and then you create a new world title in the next year.

And then a few years later, you unify it again.

How about just

recognize we got too many of them?

Because, you know, you can sell

a reign like Roman Reigns is no pun intended,

because it is the

not only the one title down deep in there somewhere, but the two that were featured for quite some time.

And there was a big deal about unifying them.

But then you can't make another one and just, you know, that quickly and just expect that with no history and with no, you know,

direct lineage besides kind of a okay tournament on television, blah, blah, blah,

you can't sell that to people.

These promos are selling tickets and they're selling pay-per-views or premium live events and they're selling interest

in

who these guys are and who they're fighting and what their personal reasons are.

Because as we know, personal issues draw money.

But I really think that the business would be exactly the same, the revenue,

really, if Seth was not being called a world champion and was just in the everything was happening in the mix that it's happening already.

But I think it's going to be a long road a hoe, as Mama Cornette used to say, to sell

that third world title in the fans' eyes.

I don't even know, Brian, if our friends at Shopify could sell that.

Well, I think they could sell that or more appropriately help you sell that if you had that to sell.

Well, I don't know because you might not be able to sell some things to some people, and you can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people all of the time, but you can't fool Shopify at all because if

you can't sell with Shopify, well, you're just not a salesman.

That's what they always say.

Folks,

who's they?

Who's Who's they?

Well, that's they.

That's the people at Shopify say that.

They do not say that.

You're not communicating with these people.

Well, they've sent me an email.

Did they say that?

Well, they said something like that.

But not that.

Close enough.

We have to be disruptive.

Anyway.

There's some level of disconnect here.

Folks, if you need a platform to sell something, we talked about that earlier.

When I have the platform here to speak to you people and to sell the fine products at jimcornet.com, if you need a platform on which to sell your goods and services, your merchandise, the things that you make with the sweat of your brow and the toil of your tired fingers,

And you need one of the global commerce platforms that is a leader that helps you sell at every stage of your business from the launch your online shop stage all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage it's our friends at shopify because no matter what you're selling as long as it goes through certain fbi background checks and regulations and is not explosive corrosive or conducive to the moral turpitude of the general public, Shopify will help you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout.

It's up to 36%

better compared to other

converting checkouts, apparently.

And you can sell more with less effort thanks to Shopify magic, because once you merely give

your soul over to Satan and dedicate yourself

to black magic witchcraft.

No, no one's doing anything about black magic.

Well, once that you have

had the seance and you've brought Shopify magic into your circle, then you can sell things all the time with less effort because people will be under the spell of the magic power of Shopify.

You will take some wolf's bane and you will take some eyeballs of newt and mix them together and suddenly all your merchandise is flying off the shelves.

And of course, we're speaking in purely positive, metaphorical phrases.

So look at these and negate them.

And there'll be no black magic.

It'll be just magic.

Wonderful, nice magic.

Look at these and negate them.

You have to believe that it's magic.

Don't let it stand in your way.

No, don't let anything stand in your way of running now to Shopify.com.

Because Shopify powers 10% of all the e-commerce in the United States.

And that other 90%,

well, they're giving them a lot of trouble because if they can't run the thing, they'll tear it down.

They are sabotaging those platforms left and right.

You never, if you're with one of the other platforms, you never know when Shopify is going to hit you with some kind of virus or something.

They're taking all these people.

No, that is not what they do.

That isn't, there's no viruses.

Again, Jim's just making up some stuff.

What?

Some stuff?

Well, some of there's a grain of truth in here somewhere.

No, who said that?

And we're going to find it.

because shopify's extensive help resources

are there to support your success every step of the way that's what you're going to find if you've got a problem go to shopify's help resources and they will find it because their their resources are extensive and they're there to support your success and cover their ass every step of the way Because businesses that grow grow with Shopify if they're smart and they know what they're doing.

Because you got a nice business there.

It'd be a shame if anything happened to it.

So, and right now, it's going to cost you almost nothing.

It's going to, you can sign up for a $1 a month trial period.

We're almost giving these things away anymore.

Are these people paying us, Brian?

How can they afford to?

But anyway, go to shopify.com

slash JCE and you're going to get a $1 a month trial period.

Now, that slash JCE, that's all lowercase.

That's important for some reason.

We're not sure what.

But shopify.com/slash JCE,

$1 a month trial period for

a global e-commerce platform to set you up and be able to sell snow to Eskimos and stink to skunks and anything else that you want to market.

It doesn't even have to be good.

It can be complete hogwash.

They'll sell it for you because Shopify is going to make you money.

They're not going to worry about whether your product causes some type of testicular cancer in mice well no what what

shopify again i don't i don't know where you whip some of these out of

well you know there's a lot of regulations these days

and just because something causes cancer in mice's nuts doesn't mean it's going to be bad for people It doesn't mean we need to reference that during the spot about the wonderful people at Shopify and the wonderful service they offer.

They have nothing to do with mice's nuts.

It's just an observation.

It's an observation based on nothing.

So we want to tell you about something, and that's Shopify.

What's that promo code, Jim?

JCE all lowercase.

And did I mention?

Did I mention?

Hey,

you had the whole Heehaw gang in there.

It started started out fractured fairy tales and then went to Dudley Dew Wright.

Should we go back to SmackDown?

If only Jay Ward was in charge of SmackDown.

Well, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.

Nothing up a sleeve.

Oh, that trick never works.

Raa!

Hmm?

The Mercedes-Benz dream days are back with offers on vehicles like the 2025 E-Class, CLE Coupe, C-Class, and EQE sedan.

Hurry in now through July 31st.

Visit your local authorized dealer or learn more at mbusa.com slash dream.

We were back in the Bloodlines locker room and Roman was roaring.

Brian, I know you'll find this hard to believe.

He was bitching out old Jimmy Uso

for letting Paul go out there alone, the wise man.

And Paul's sitting there looking traumatized like he's been sexually assaulted by a porcupine.

And while this tan is going on

by a what now?

By a viper.

Well, you know, that have you ever seen that video of that woman and the eel?

No.

Anyway,

eels are very similar to vipers, except some of them are electric.

All right, well, let's electric slide back into the locker room here.

So, wait a minute.

So, Solo stepped up and took the the blame.

Hey, it was my fault last week.

I'm going to fix it.

So

he's the motivated one there.

Jimmy Uso's always got the excuses.

Solo took the brunt of the blame completely on his shoulders.

So now what's going to happen later on?

He's a very responsible young man.

He was brought up right.

But then we got a girls' tag team match.

Playa.

Playa.

So after that,

a nice graphic and a little spot for Pat Patterson's birthday.

Happy birthday, Pat.

We miss you.

It's nice to see that somebody noticed that.

And coming up on Royal Rumble season.

And then we get

a pre-tape, spooky, lit, dark,

treated video.

What do you call that shit?

Out of the weird video,

wild and woolly video of the final testament carrion cross scarlet paul ellering and the aop

which i'm beginning to think the aarp may be a little more intimidating but

um

what are they doing with the video they're just random shit pops into the video there was a shot of a guy in a hazmat suit was that because this gimmick stinks or what's going on here with this you're the You're the modern-day music mogul video genius over there.

What the hell does that have to do with hazmat suits?

Well, that's what I'm asking.

Why was the hazmat suit in this video?

It was a way to reach out to our fan base to reference toxicity.

Hazardous waste.

Well, that's a hazardous waste.

That's what this gimmick is.

They should put it in a lead-lined box and drop it in the ocean.

That's a better name than AOP for the tag team.

What?

Hazardous waste.

Hazardous waste.

Well,

why are they trying to make Tarrion Cross out to be Aleister Crowley now?

He's always been spooky, but now he's spooky with friends.

He says this prepared scripted shit that nobody understands.

It sounds cool if it's a trailer for an independent horror flick.

And otherwise, what are any of these people going to do?

And why do we care?

And

what the fuck?

The final testament.

It would work better if it was like El Ring showed up and he put everyone in the Zubaz.

The Zubaz Testament.

And they can't even,

they obviously can't go heavy on any kind of religious angle because that would offend somebody.

So, what are these people doing?

And why, again, do I ask,

rhetorically this time, should should we care?

I don't yet.

No,

again, I think we need to ring the bell on Karring Cross, right?

At this point, what the fuck?

He should have never grown that hair back.

And then Carmelo Hayes was in the back, upset about last week's stoppage between him and Theory, but he said, well, I didn't win or lose.

And then Theory comes in and they argue and Hayes challenges Theory for a rematch next week.

And Theory says, well, I'm busy next week.

And Carm, or not Carmelo, but Grayson Waller jumps in and accepts it for him.

Oh, you'll be glad to.

And then, boom.

And then Theory's like, what do you keep doing that for?

Now

are they trying to make Waller and Theory into Martin and Lewis, and they're not sure which one is which?

No, I think they know which one's which.

I can't wait till Waller does the nutty professor.

Well, I was about to say, in that case, here's the thing.

If they know which one is Martin and which one is Lewis, between Waller and Theory, the question is, are they French cinema fans or are they fucking 50s crooner fans?

That's right.

Jerry Lewis is a genius in France.

And old Dino could talk your panties off in a heartbeat.

Unless you're going Commando.

Well, that's well, but that didn't start happening until, for the females at least, until the 60s or 70s, did it?

Oh, yeah, because he was done with women by then.

Yeah, well,

ones that he didn't have to pay for, but nevertheless.

So then we got L.A.

Knight and A.J.

Styles.

And this

big grudge that happened from the fight earlier, and they ring the bell,

and

boom, they go back and forth.

There was no,

you know,

this guy shines, then that guy shines.

You can tell the fans are more behind LA Knight,

but they basically go to the floor, and LA Knight gives AJ the yeah, heads into the desk where he runs head in the desk.

People go yeah with each one, and then here comes Jimmy Uso walking out.

And

LA Knight comes around like, you want some of this?

And then turns back to AJ.

And AJ hits him with a fucking flying inzagiri in front of the announced desk.

And when L.A.

Knight goes down, he's getting up.

Solo is at the railing and spikes L.A.

Knight.

Referee calls for the DQ.

Then Solo beats up AJ and spikes him.

And then takes the microphone and says, two down, one to go.

Orton, get out here right now.

And right at that point,

they went to the break.

But that whole match and angle was like five minutes.

It was like, we're going to rough each other up for three minutes and then we're going to do this angle.

So you can't, and I'm not saying that wasn't the thing to do.

I'd rather see the fucking five minutes in the angle than see another WWE style match.

And that's what they're counting on.

You could argue that's the right length.

I mean, when anything happened on any of the classic wrestling TV shows, other than Memphis, which had 90 minutes to draw things out, five minutes, right?

I mean, it was a segment.

Or if it was some main event title match, you might go 15 minutes when it was rare to do so for any match on television, and then you'd do your angle or whatever.

But

that's it.

They milked us after that opening interview segment with what was going to happen amongst all of these people

for the rest of the show.

And then with at 23-till,

they put LA and AJ out there to do their thing and then run run it directly into, minus the break,

run it directly into the already advertised TV main event.

Because when they come back from that break, then there's solo in the ring.

And

again, somebody

has got a fucking concession and a carry-out service because we last left LA Knight and AJ Styles.

They had been Samoan spiked by this dangerous man, and they were down

in three minutes.

They got the medical crew in there, the spatula, whatever.

They've disappeared.

That's the thing.

I appreciate they're trying to be more, somewhat more wrestling here, and maybe baby steps.

But God damn, when would your

main event baby faces ever be laid out and hurt like that?

And when they came back, you came back from the break, they've disappeared.

And

nothing more is.

Am I being too picky?

Well, this is the era of the disappearance.

All right.

So we're into Orton and Solo, and it's 12 minutes before the hour, right?

This is the advertised main event.

Well, we got 12 minutes.

They get in an immediate fight.

Solo takes over.

They go to the floor.

They run one time into the desk, one time into the stairs, and they went to the break again in one minute of action.

I'm like, what the fuck?

So now.

Again, from 23 before the hour, they've had a little five-minute skirmish with L.A.

Knight and AJ.

And by the time they come back from one minute of action of Orton Solo, they got nine minutes on the air.

Actually, it's nine minutes before the hour.

SmackDown ends up two minutes early, usually, or at least a minute and a half.

So they come back, they're on the floor, Orton drops Solo on the announced desk, gives him the draping DDT,

and calls for the RKO.

But there comes Uso down the aisle, but L.A.

Knight catches him and they get in a fight.

And as Uso runs off, AJ comes out.

And Orton's watching all this.

And Solo goes to grab him and turn him around and go for the spike.

And Orton hits Solo with the RKO to a huge pop.

Out of nowhere.

Boom, one, two, three.

There was literally less than two and a half minutes of this match on the air.

And then

L.A.

Knight and AJ get in the ring, and they have a three-way face-off with Orton.

But out of nowhere, L.A.

Knight says, fuck you, AJ, and punches him.

And then Orton gives L.A.

Knight the RKO and then gives one to AJ.

But there's Roman in from behind and hits fucking Orton with the Superman punch.

So all three babyfaces are down.

And then Roman asks Aldous in a condescending fashion for

the contract.

And he signs it.

And he drops it at Nick Aldous's feet in a rude and vulgar manner and then sets up to spear Orton.

And as he charges to spear Orton, Orton hits the RKO out of nowhere

and Roman Reigns is flat of his face colder than a banker's heart.

And then Orton gets the contract and puts it in front of Roman Reigns and we go off the air.

Perfect timing.

There was no match to this at all, but goddamn now everybody was, what the fuck's going to happen now?

Oh, the RKOs, oh, the RKOs, oh, the spears, oh, the humanity, what can happen next?

They're angling us and talking us into their biggest business.

Well, money-wise, ever, viewer-wise, obviously, not, but

that's all

their audience wants to see, and they're giving it to them,

yeah, by not giving them too much

and you know again um you're always left wanting more from the main people i guess the only thing i worry about and get i want to get your thoughts here obviously is your show

well thank you whether it's cody rhodes or la night do you think anyone has lost any steam because of some of the recent things like punk coming in or The Rock returning.

AJ just came back.

Does it seem like everything's still okay?

I mean, L.A.

Knight's still super over, but did he kind of hit a plateau like this is where he's going to be?

Or, you know, Cody is a weird, unique situation just because of the gold.

But what do you think?

I think with L.A.

Knight, it depends on what they do with him next and what he accomplishes next.

AJ is going to be a heel in the

sometime in the future because they're already leading us in that direction.

And the people clearly like L.A.

Knight better than they like AJ at this point.

But Orton is an icon who's come back after so long being away.

And, you know, they're really appreciating him.

I don't know that it's going to cool anybody off.

I think they're getting more people hot.

And maybe it doesn't stand out as much when

some shows, the only people they were really

getting up for were AJ or were LA Knight or the only person they were really getting up for was LA Knight at one point.

Now they've got a variety of people that they're into, and the ticket sales are increasing, and the crowds are increasing.

So it just, it doesn't stand out

as

so unique when they've got six or seven or eight guys that are getting a top guy reaction instead of just two or three.

But

it depends on what they do with them from here because everybody's still interesting.

And I think AJ, again, you know, becoming a heel will probably

help him because there's no way as long as he's been there.

And just with,

honestly, with AJ's promo,

he's not going to be hotter than LA Knight right now or Orton right now or Cody right now or even Owens right now.

So as a heel, his in-ring is more important than what he can do.

But anyway,

To answer your question, that's,

I think they've just got a lot more people hot, and they can spread them out.

And punk, we didn't even mention punk.

They can spread them out over three hours of Raw and two hours of SmackDown and the once-a-month pay-per-view.

And

AEW just

I laugh every time I hear people say, well, they've got so much talent they can't push them.

No, they got so many guys.

They don't have enough talent.

They do not have nearly this many main event guys, guys, much less healthy main event guys.

And that's in

Tony's disjointed shit.

It doesn't make enough sense to keep,

they're keeping here on SmackDown and Raw all of these people

and Seth Rollins until his injury and Cody, who wasn't even on this program in punk, they're keeping them all interconnected in a way that they've got multiple matchups because of the jealousy.

Drew,

talk about Drew, the jealousy and the backstories and the history between these guys when one was a heel and one was a babyface, now it's switched, or just both of them are on the same side, but they want the same thing.

They've got multiple intriguing matchups where AEW has almost none that are going to draw any money, just that the basement fans are going to mark out about.

So I don't think they're at a problem right now in the WWE with anybody cooling off.

I think it's just more of a dog fight for these guys to stay where they are.

And that's what's probably prodding them to do a better job and cut more pointed promos.

But anyway, you know, it's

right now

the

AEW is a bowl of fucking mixed nuts, and

WWE is a box of fluffy ducks, don't you think, Brian?

That wasn't what I was thinking as a comparison, no.

You wouldn't think of that?

Well, it's just smooth sailing for the WWE.

They're farting through silk.

They're in tall cotton.

They're a box of fluffy ducks.

And over across the street,

it's not so good.

It's rough.

It's a hard row to hoe.

That was a favorite expression of Piper, wasn't it?

A box of fluffy ducks?

Well,

it's WWF-centric.

It comes from the Bruce and Pat and Vince inner circle.

Ah, no problem.

Box of fluffy ducks.

But anyway, if you would like a box.

That sounds a lot of shit.

I mean, that doesn't sound like a good thing.

It sounds like a box full of shit.

Well, if you would like a box that doesn't contain shit or fluffy ducks,

but contains something that you would like and be interested in and pay a fraction of its proper premium price for,

then you need to sign up with our friends over at bespokepost at boxofawesome.com.

Because everybody knows that anything that comes out of a box is over.

Brian, we've established that on numerous occasions, haven't we?

You've claimed that on numerous occasions.

I think it's still, you know, something that has to be tested over time.

It's been adjudicated in a court of law, and I've got papers to prove it.

Anything that comes out of a box of awesome is going to be over with you because what you do is you go to boxofawesome.com and you take the quiz and you

tell them the things you're interested in because they have tons of different categories.

They just go down the streets and those markets across the world, New York, Bombay, London, Tokyo, Paris, Munich.

Everybody's loving pop music and they pick up all of these incredible items.

from these mom and pop small businesses that you might never have heard of here in the states well anywhere but especially in the states.

Especially here.

That's especially exclusively here.

Especially, exclusively here.

And

they're over in Des Moines, too.

And they get all this stuff.

They put it in a freight car.

They take it to their headquarters and they put it in boxes.

And then when you sign up for the box of awesome, they send you the box of awesomeness that contains the product.

or products that you frankly have told them that you were interested in the genre of same.

It's simple.

And besides that, you're supporting the small businesses because if their stuff gets complaints,

if the customers of Boxofawesome.com, if they get complaints about something that they're sending out to people, well, they go back to that mom and pop and they grab mom by the scruff of the neck and they make her watch while they slap pop around.

No, they don't.

They don't do any of that, ladies and gentlemen.

That is metaphorically,

because they're not going to in any way do that they're going to work with mom and pop if there is indeed a mom and pop to be worked with well

everybody's got a mom and a pop well i don't know if they're running the business well if they're running

because

if mom and pop aren't running the business no wonder the kids are in such bad shape these days but the point is is that they're not going to let people cheat their customers if your stuff is not awesome when it comes out of that box there's going to be hell to pay for whoever put it in there, I'll tell you that.

And whoever made it.

And there's a paper trail.

They can track these people down.

So if you're one of box of awesome suppliers, don't try to cut corners.

But folks.

But if you wanted to, there'll be wonderful knives in your box of awesome to cut those corners.

That's another thing.

There's knives in these boxes that a motherfucker might get cut.

I'll tell you what, when you become a member, you're going to have access to stellar discounts across a plethora of products, products 30 off or more sometimes from what you would pay if somebody pulled a knife on you individually and like we said you're supporting the small businesses 90 of everything that comes in your box of awesome is from mom and pop or pop and pop we're not sure of their proclivities or personal relationships but they ma and her special friend

Ma and her special friend, they make darn good framostats.

And it's free to sign up at Box of Awesome.

And you can skip a month or cancel anytime.

And right now,

I'm talking immediately.

You can get a free mystery gift with your first monthly shipment when you sign up at boxofawesome.com and enter the code JCE at checkout.

These codes are getting pretty uniform.

So just remember the initials of this program.

You can't go wrong.

Boxofawesome.com, the code JCE, you're going to get a free mystery gift

free along with the

monthly shipment that you're going to pay a seduced rate for,

much less than it's normally charged or cost anywhere in the world.

So you're just, you're getting shit just given to, just handed to you for no reason at boxofawesome.com

that you've subscribed to box of awesome and you're willing to receive wonderful well but yeah what have you done for them that you should get that much money off and a free mystery gift?

Well, that's not about what you do for them.

It's about what they can do for you.

They're wonderful people at the Box of Awesome.

Well, ask not what

your Box of Awesome can do for you.

Ask what you can do for your Box of Awesome.

All right.

Well, between now and the end of the decade, I plan to put a man on this Box of Awesome.

Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

But it's easy to sign up.

It's just hard to get out of this shit.

Boxofawesome.com.

Promo code JCE.

It's like a roach motel.

You'll never get out.

You're talking about this show for the record.

That's the one I'm talking about.

This program right here.

Well, Brian, speaking of awesomeness, what in the world is going on over there at the Arcadian Vanguard Network and the wrestling news this week?

Oh, you know, the usual.

Well, that's, I hit the wrong button.

This.

is Mike Lano button.

Actually, all these are kind of insults.

Now that we look at it.

Yeah, that didn't work.

All right.

Well, yeah, another oh yeah week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information about all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcast or on Facebook at facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Speaking of oh yeah or oh yeah,

here, Brian Solomon on Shut Up and Wrestle just talked with John Finkel, the author of the upcoming Macho Man Randy Savage biography.

Hear that today at SUAWPod.com or available wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, thank you to Brian Solomon for filling in for me last week.

Also, want to make mention of the latest episode of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam.

John's guest, Bob Smith, from PWI or the old days of PWI.

Here's some fun magazine talk, McAdamPod.com or look for Shut Up and Wrestle with John McAdam, McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Of course, the wrestling news.

Each and every day, get your wrestling news for free.

Every morning, get your wrestling newscast from the wrestling news.

Get it at thewrestlingnews.com or look for Arcadian Vanguard's The Wrestling News, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, on the Arcadian Views.

What's the title of that again?

On the Arcadian Vanguard YouTube channel, you can find The Wrestling News.

And don't forget about the 605 Super Podcast, the

mothership.

Hey, lady, go through the archive today at 605pod.com.

Available wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

The mothership.

The mother.

I'm at capacity.

Yeah,

my cup is running over at this point.

I'm going to take your batteries away.

I had to buy new batteries.

You know, well, they shouldn't have sold them to you.

You should have had to have your parents' permission before you bought those batteries, kid.

They would have never allowed me to get any of these.

It's over 18 only.

Oh, good heavens.

Boy, they got longer and longer every time I press it.

Yes, it certainly does.

I think you need to see some kind of doctor about that.

Dr.

Proctor.

Nevertheless, you know what we're going to do now, don't you?

We're going to, in our continuing series, since thankfully in the last couple of days, nobody's done or said anything egregiously stupid in the wrestling business, we've got a little time to talk about classic wrestling.

And we are going to pick up where we left off and talking about what I did 40 years ago this month.

We last did December 1983,

which we were talking about the early formation of the Midnight Express and I and our first full week on the road road in Mid-South wrestling.

And now we're going to pick up with January 1984.

And I remind everybody,

you can, you can, what's the title on YouTube of the December 1983 clip?

December 1983?

It may just be Jim Cornette looks at his December 1983 schedule.

Well, you can go back and you can hear we've done a variety of months in 1983, and now we're getting to the good stuff.

So you can go back and catch up on the YouTube channel, or I can simply remind you that Bill Watts had come to Memphis, seen the talent, the deals had been made, he was bringing me and Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condry as the Midnight Express.

Bill Dundee started as booker.

Terry Taylor was there, Rock and Roll Express soon to follow.

The Mid-South wrestling territory was down

and business was bad.

And that's why Watts wanted a change in the talent, the booking, et cetera.

But from my standpoint, as I've illustrated, this was a massive upgrade.

I went from being the absolute most least important person and lowest paid person on the roster in the Tennessee territory to the manager, top heel manager of the soon-to-be

top heel tag team in Mid-South Wrestling.

I was making more money than I had been when we were working preliminaries every night of the week just to get over in Mid-South.

So it was,

it was, you had asked the question last time we talked about this.

Was I, you know, kind of disgruntled or anything?

I can't remember how you phrased it, that the towns weren't really drawing the first time we went through.

I was like, fuck,

I'm making more money on

shitty towns and preliminary matches than I was, you know, working five and six times a night in Memphis, so I'm

good.

But

we did get off on one wrong foot.

We ended up on December 31st, 1983, when we were in Oklahoma City on that big $60-something thousand dollar house.

And we ended there because that was 1983, but we got to even up today, Brian, because my book goes from Monday to Sunday.

But Sunday, January 1st, it was a Sunday.

So there's eight days this week we're going to act like.

Eight days a week.

Are you ready?

Not for you singing the Beatles, but ready to hear about your eight-day a week schedule, Hulk Hogan.

Let's hear about this.

I could at least make a run at Ringo's vocals.

Anyway, we left off in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on New Year's Eve of 1983, January the 1st, New Year's Day.

We're booked in Little Rock, Arkansas.

And we found out at that point that from Oak City to Little Rock, it's 270 miles across the interstate.

And we went went there

a little bit early, checked in, $27 for the motel.

Spent $11 on food that day.

And the manager's license for Arkansas was $15, just

as a little side note.

And here's the thing.

This was Barton Coliseum in Little Rock, Arkansas.

You remember Grand Funk Railroad, where an American band, Sweet, Sweet Connie, was doing her act, right?

That's the place.

That's the Barton Coliseum, is where they had all the fucking rock and roll shows in the 60s and 70s, and where Connie, one of the world's most famous groupies at that point, was

active.

And Little Rock,

you would not imagine that Little Rock, Arkansas would be as much fun as Little Rock, Arkansas was based on the fact that it's in fucking Arkansas and it's Little Rock.

But there was a variety of lovely young ladies in that town.

However, almost none of them were there on January 1st, 1984.

The house was $10,000.

And

at average ticket prices, some of the towns were different, but let's go $10,000, $7,000, and $4

for a regular Mid-South wrestling show in those days.

That was, you know, what was it, $1,500, $1,800 people.

And this is New Year's Day.

What was the start time?

Started that evening.

It was no afternoon show or anything because it's New Year's Day evening.

No.

Thank God.

But there's a thing, they couldn't really set anything up on the way from Oak City to Little Rock.

There wasn't anything that you could do in that direction.

That's the only way we got by with it.

And you hardly had time to get to Little Rock.

But

again, we were just in a preliminary match with Lanny Poffo and Rick Roode, where we went over because Little Rock was like Oak City and Tulsa.

It was furthest behind on the bicycle of the TV tapes.

And

I don't have this written down.

I used to know it by heart.

But if you shot TV in Shreveport,

you shot two shows every two Wednesday nights, right?

Every two weeks.

So the first show that you shot on Wednesday night would air in Shreveport that weekend

and also probably in New Orleans, and maybe another town or two.

And in the following weekend, it might air in Lafayette, Lake Charles, and Alexandria.

And the following weekend, it'd be over to, and Houston was early up on the thing also.

But the following weekend, it might be finally out to Biloxi and Jackson, Mississippi.

And then five weeks later, from the time it was shot, they would see it in Little Rock, Oak City, and Tulsa.

That way,

you could all, since the regular towns ran every two weeks, you could always go into that town with the hot fucking thing off television by booking carefully a few weeks ahead.

You wouldn't have to wait

because the way it was set up,

something hot was always going on, right?

So you just feature what was hot off the television on that week or the following week's live event at the house shows.

Does that make any sense?

It makes sense how you laid it out.

Does the bicycling of everything that way make sense?

That's for someone else to decide.

Well, and that's that's the way they did it, that's the conditions that prevailed.

So that's why I had to learn to keep track of not only what we did on television and on each numbered tape, tape 240, tape 241, 242, whatever, but also

I would write down

when we did local promos what tapes were showing in that town the week we went into them.

So we'd know what it

was.

Watts loved to do paperwork and he loved to get shit, you know, logical and details.

And I picked up on that and

it was a lesson.

A lot of the other guys got confused and they got yelled at.

So anyway, we're in Little Rock on New Year's Day.

The house is $10,000 at the giant Barton Coliseum at the fairgrounds.

And again, we were thinking, well, we got a lot of room to fucking grow.

It would be less than five months.

We would go to Little Rock for the last stampede.

Not only would it be sold out and not only were people turned away, they locked the front gates of the fairgrounds half an hour before bell time for the show so that no more people would come in and try to buy tickets that they didn't have left.

And that's when we had had car trouble from the afternoon show we did then and got there so late they'd locked the front gates of the fucking fairgrounds.

We had to circle the fairgrounds until we found a gate open in the back and figure out how to get to the fucking arena.

And that house was $71,000 and there were somewhere around 6,000 whatever plus people.

That's how you can, as the tool that Watts had that made this possible was even if his buildings, the house shows were down, the ticket sales were down,

all the wrestling fans were still watching the TV.

They just needed to see something they wanted to go buy a ticket to see.

And that's how you could pop a territory.

If nobody was watching the television, it didn't matter what you did.

Anyway, so then we got to go home.

Brian, I'm sorry.

No, it wasn't 270 miles from Oak City to Little Rock.

It was 340 miles from Oak City to Little Rock and then 270 miles back to Alexandria that night, where we were living at the time.

So we did

610 miles and a house show in one day.

That was an easy day in Mid-South.

What were your first impressions of Alexandria?

And did any of the hotels you started staying in have

HBO at that point?

Oh, God, I can't even remember what the cable situation was like at the Alexandria Motor Inn.

We were barely in the room anyway.

And the hotel that we stayed at in Alexandria for the first month till I could find an apartment, we got a weekly rate.

And then we were in the situation where when we had to go to Oklahoma,

we would leave our hotel room with enough stuff for the weekend trip and have an auxiliary hotel room in that city.

So at one point, we may have had three hotel rooms at one point.

I can't remember.

But it was.

How do you get an apartment?

because what do you tell them i mean

landlords want leases yeah so what do you say can you say i'll give me a one-year lease

well the thing is

in some cases back in the old days before computerized shit and all that stuff that's what guys would do is they'd sign a lease to get an apartment and if they got their notice or they gave got fired or they quit and left early, they just fucking bailed on the whole territory.

It wasn't like they were moving across town where you could be found, right?

They were gone to Portland.

And

a lot of guys didn't give a shit about their credit.

I ended up trying

to take a plane.

There you go.

He didn't take a plane, he stole a plane.

I'm not coming back.

I'm just going to

flying your plane to my next territory.

Come and get it.

He did call and tell Stu, where it was he come and get it, right?

But anyway, so

I looked for an apartment and ended up getting this place.

They had six-month leases.

And because it was a reconverted roadside motel, like with the outdoor,

you would just park in the parking lot.

And it looked like a fucking old-time Super 8.

You just walk up to the door and go in, and there was an apartment.

It was a living room and dining room/slash kitchen in the front room.

And then the bathroom and the bedroom was in the back room.

It was an old hotel.

And that proved to be interminable after a while, but I was at least in the thing.

And I ended up switching for the second half of our stay to an actual apartment complex.

It still wasn't much, but it was a regular apartment.

But yeah, and I mean, I don't even have my records here on what the rent was, but we're talking rent of

$300, maybe, maybe.

And also, by the way, we forgot to mention the inflation calculator.

Whenever I mention a dollar figure in January 1984, it's $3 today, $1 to $3.

So

$100 payoff was equivalent to $300,000.

The $10,000 house that was the shits,

equivalent to $30,000 on a town they ran every two weeks.

So it added up.

Anyway, we bopped back to Alexandria that night long enough to go to bed and get up the next day and leave at fucking two o'clock and go to New Orleans, which, as we mentioned before, was a 400-mile round trip and ran every Monday night.

And this was, again, our second week at the old downtown municipal auditorium.

We beat George Wingeroff and a kid named John King,

which always got a kick out of him because that was my grandfather's name, my Mama Cornette's father.

So it wasn't just Lanny.

What did you think about working with all these ICW guys that you had seen on TV and had been the enemy of the promotion you worked with?

Well, but that's a I didn't have any heat because I was just the photographer, and it's not like George Weingroff had, you know, been sucker punching people in the parking lots.

So he couldn't see you.

Yeah, he couldn't, he couldn't see you can't see me.

It was his original gimmick.

For those of you who don't know what we're mocking,

that's

George Weingroff was legally blind, but was a heck, he was the son of Saul Weingroff, the old-time Tennessee wrestler and manager.

And he, George, was a hot shot amateur in school on a regional basis, but he was legally blind.

So that was his gimmick.

And at any rate, the house in New Orleans that night was gimmick.

It wasn't his gimmick, it was his life.

Well, but that's what, you know, they would mention it.

Stop it.

What's that boy's gimmick?

Oh, he's uh, he's blind.

He's blind.

Legally blind.

He could see shapes and shit.

And up close, he could read up close.

He'd look real close to it.

But the house was $23,000, what I'm trying to say.

It was up from Christmas night, I believe.

We got $150 for a preliminary match.

It's like $4.50.

I wasn't making $150 in Tennessee on most of the shows, working five times a night.

So I'm still happy.

Anyway, we know that we're working these prelims and it's going to lead to, because we're already starting to do some things on TV.

and that's where the problem lay.

After that New Orleans show, we go back to Alexandria, right?

And then the following day, January 3rd, we were booked to go back to Baton Rouge, which is literally the way we just came.

You got to go through Baton Rouge to get to New Orleans, but Baton Rouge is only two hours.

So I'm looking forward to the easy trip, right?

However,

that morning I had to go to the doctor

because

when we drove down Christmas Eve to move into Louisiana and start the tour, I had been getting what I believed was a zit

in my armpit.

Have I told you this story?

No.

This might be a new one even on you.

I thought it was a zit.

Got a bump in my armpit and it was itching me.

Christmas and a few days afterwards.

Boy, when we were on that weekend where we were in Oklahoma City and then in the hotel, Little Rock, whatever, I was like, God damn it, this thing's getting bigger and it's bothering me.

And the boy said, Well, here, heat up a piece of tape, put on it, that'll bring it to a head and you can pop it.

And they're doing all these dressing room remedies.

And then Bobby tried to squeeze it.

I'm like, motherfucker, that hurts.

And it's getting bigger, right?

So I get up that Tuesday.

And I look in the mirror, and about half of my side is turned red.

And that knot's getting bigger yet.

And it's like a golf ball now.

And I said, Bobby, look at this.

He's corny, you might need to go to the doctor.

So we find

an urgent care place in Alexandria.

And the doctor looks at it and says, oh, you got a staph infection.

What?

Yeah.

Oh, you're, that's, see where your side is turning red?

Yeah, your blood is being poisoned.

You need heavy antibiotics, and you may go to the hospital if you wait any longer.

Oh, shit.

So

they told me, they said, take these antibiotics and immediately go home.

They didn't know what our story was that we were living in a fucking hotel.

And

put a hot heating pad and a hot, wet compress on this and take these antibiotics and keep an eye on this because,

you know, you may end up in the hospital.

Oh, shit.

So now I've been there for a week.

And they have to show up.

Bobby and Dennis have to show up in Baton Rouge and tell Grizzly Smith on behalf of Mid-South Wrestling, Cornette's sick.

And I'm thinking they're going to say, already, and this is going to be the big one, right?

But I'm in pain.

I've got this infection.

They said, whatever the fuck is

we'll cover for you, Corny.

So I stay there in the hotel room while

fucking,

you know, Bobby and Dennis go to Baton Rouge.

And I lay down, and I'm so tired anyway.

I lay down in bed on this hot, wet compress with the heating pad that I've gotten.

And I wake up a couple hours later, and I start to turn over, and this fucking wet towel under me

has got shit on it.

And I look, and that fucking thing has popped.

And I stand up, and I'm dripping.

I go over to the mirror and look in the fucking sink, and I've got a hole in the middle of that lump in my armpit.

The hole that you can see into my side is as big around as the end of my little finger.

And I go to squeeze this thing, right?

And I hear this rumbling noise from inside.

And this yellow shit comes out in the sink.

And so I stood there for the better part.

Are you entertained by this yet, Brian?

Have you heard this one before?

I have not.

I don't know where you're going to go.

Well, where I'm going is I stood there for 15 minutes squeezing this fucking pus out of this deal, right?

I've never seen anything like it before or since.

And it's sore as a motherfucker, but it quits leaking pus.

So now I figure, okay, because I have to get up the next morning and go to interviews.

So

where I was going with this is.

I know one clip you can definitely see, but if you've got any of the local promos that I shot on January 4th at any of the shows, or the angle where we come out and I call Magnum TA and Wrestling 2 a couple of chickens, and then we tar and feather Magnum TA,

I couldn't put my left arm down by my side.

It hurts so bad that in all of these interviews, I've got my tennis racket in my left hand and I've got it cocked over my shoulder like a fucking rifle in army formation.

I know which ones you're talking about, yeah.

Yes.

And I'm like, I'm jauntily got my racket over my shoulder because I couldn't put my fucking arm down.

It hurt so bad.

And I had put band-aids over this goddamn hole in my side.

And shit, blood and leakage was coming through and soaking through my shirt.

And so that's why when you see me from this TV taping,

I'm at the weird, unnatural angle of having my left arm at a 90-degree angle from my body holding my tennis racket over my shoulder like I'm a hobo with my fucking,

you know, bag tied on a stick.

Did you do anything to clean it or have it looked at or?

No.

Some ointment?

No.

I took the antibiotics they gave me.

I wiped it off whenever I could.

I sweated like a fucking whore in church at all these shows and never put any goddamn antibiotic shit on it because nobody told me to.

They didn't tell me it was going to pop like that.

And

I made the rest of the fucking towns.

I'd already taken one day off.

Fuck it.

Blood poisoning.

What's that?

So

that was the January 4th.

That was the day I got up at 6.30 in the morning and drove to fucking Shreveport,

did a whole day of interviews, and then we did the TV tapings that night.

And that's the night that we shot the first angle where we knocked Wrestling 2 out with the slapjack and tarred and feathered Magnum TA on camera calling them chickens because they wouldn't defend the tag team title against us.

And that's by the time that that started showing really in most places, two or three weeks later,

that was the first thing we did to get real heat.

And that's what led to immediately the fans found Bobby's, he had a 1976 Lincoln.

We called it the USS Alabama.

You had to pay three parking meters to park this fucking thing.

One of those mid-70s Lincoln continentals, right?

And I don't know how many hundred thousand miles on it that he had,

but the fans found it at the Alexandria Motor Inn and tarred and feathered his car.

He came out one day to go get something to eat, and there it was.

It looked like a giant fucking chicken.

See, the problem is he probably wasn't as mad as Magnum PA appeared to be.

And the other problem is

Magnum PA looked ridiculous, covered as a chicken, because any movement, feathers fly off.

So anytime you move, it looks like you're flapping your wings.

And he did the perfect promo because he said, I know that some of you people out there may find this remotely humorous, but I assure you that to me, it's not.

And

of course, it wasn't tar, it was Cairo syrup and feathers.

But that's, you know, that

they hadn't seen anything like that on wrestling.

I mean, back in the 20s in Louisiana, a number of people were tarred and feathered, not with K-Ro syrup.

And that's why it registered.

They did things that registered with these people.

I don't know that there's a long history of tarring and feathering people and running them out of town on a rail in Minnesota.

It might not have connected.

You said they.

This was a Watts idea, not a Dundee idea?

Well, see, that's the thing, is that

they had done this before in Tennessee.

And yeah, it worked in Tennessee back in the old days, too.

It got a lot of heat because people remembered.

But Watts would make the most out of everything.

Remember, I talked about the Blindfold Battle Royal.

It was just a throwaway in Tennessee.

Well, he made it sound more

dangerous than anything you could come up with.

With this, it wasn't like, oh, you made him look like a chicken with the feathers.

There's Jimmy Hart running around blowing the whistle.

It's like,

they used to do this to a lot of your ancestors.

And that got fucking heat.

And that was the, you know, we

couldn't do it to

when Coco and Norvell came in as the PYTs, we couldn't have done it to them.

We'd probably all been shot.

But just the Ts of the tarring and feathering down south.

You know, people were fucking pissed.

To the grumpiest babyfaced hag team ever.

Well, but, you know, that's why they did it to Magnum instead of Wrestling 2, because Wrestling 2 was way

not sympathetic.

But anyway, that was, you know, so we started at 6.30 in the morning.

We drive up to Shreveport, or I did.

Actually, Bobby and Dennis were still going with me at that time.

That was the first couple of interview sessions they made until Watts realized, well, they're not going to talk anyway.

It'll make them more special if we don't see them.

So we did.

six hours of interviews, had time to eat something, and then went and did two hours of television and then drove back to Alexandria and got back home at night about one o'clock in the morning.

And then there was January the 5th.

We go to Jackson, Mississippi.

My first time in Jackson.

And that was,

if Shreveport was northwest of

Alexandria, Jackson, Mississippi is northeast.

And it's about 200 miles each way.

So we did a 400-mile round trip.

And our opponents that night still lanny and rude because Jackson was also on the later

TV taping bicycle run.

And that was my first time seeing the Jackson,

the Fairgrounds Coliseum.

That's where they traditionally ran wrestling for years and years, even before Watts, even before McGurk, when the old.

you know,

George C.

Kulkin days and the Curtis family.

And before that,

the building building that they ran

in Jackson was another building on the fairgrounds.

It was smaller.

But the Jackson, Mississippi Coliseum, it was another, it was a big kind of round building, sort of reminiscent of the Mid South Coliseum, but not as big.

I think it was like 6,500 seats, let's say.

But the house there was only $12,000.

We made $150,000.

Again, that's like $36,450.

But it was a preliminary match, but this another one.

Not to give spoilers, we're going to be going over this in detail in the journey, but by May, when May came around, the last stampede, not only did we sell the building out and turn them away and did $63,000, five times this house,

it wasn't the all-time people record in Jackson, but George C.

Kulkin himself said the last time there were that many people in the building to watch wrestling, the house was only $18,000 because the tickets were two bucks apiece.

You know, so,

you know,

again,

we were just building.

But Jackson, Mississippi, go ahead.

What were you going to ask?

What did Dennis and Bobby think of working with Lanny?

Because

he was good, especially against his brother, I guess.

But he was odd in the ring.

I mean, not odd, but

he might be.

Unorthodox.

Unorthodox.

Was he easy to work with?

Yes, because, see, this was not

Lanny and randy savage had had these one hour draws for the icw world title with all these suplexes and double sledges off the top and moonsaults and there'd be 300 people in frankfurt to see it right

but lanny's position here was he's working underneath it's going to be an eight-minute match bell to bell and they're there to put the midnight express over and lanny with basics headlock drop down hip toss kickoff arm drag drop kick

you're fine.

And

Lanny wasn't there to do his stuff.

He was there to get us over.

And there was no conflict.

And Bobby and Dennis can do anything with anybody anyway, but there was not like this intricate, you know, set of spots that they were working out.

They'd shine Lanny, shine Rude.

cut Lanny off, get some heat on him, give Rude the tag because he was the rookie and beat him.

It would just to get us so you know lanny could work

regular matches as well as anybody it was remember i told you a story about when dennis called the spot with rude in one of these matches and he couldn't get it you know lanny could pick up just like that on you know drop down hip toss body slam drop kick whatever you know

but that time that i i was watching it from the outside didn't know what the fuck was going on rude tags in grabs a headlock on dennis and they start walking in a circle circle around the ring.

And I can tell Dennis is calling something.

They walk around the ring once.

Dennis tries to start to shoot him off, but then he stops, and he walks around the ring again.

And then they walked around the ring a third time, and then Rude tagged back out.

He had tagged in, got the headlock, walked three times around, and tagged back out.

Afterward, I said, Dennis, what the fuck?

And Dennis had, he'd locked up with Rude.

He said, take my head.

Rude got the headlock.

He said, I'll shoot you off and drop down.

Nail Bobby, get it again

and he started to fire him off and root said what

and dennis said i'll shoot you off and drop down and nail bobby meaning jump over me nail bobby on the apron turn around get the headlock again i'll shoot you off drop down nail bobby get it again

root said i i i i can't

dennis said i will throw you into the ropes

I will fall down in front of you, continue moving,

strike Bobby in the face, and get the hold again and roots i can't get it does a it tag out

because he he'd never seen these spots but we're doing tennessee spots and just on the fly and he's green and he's a rookie and he didn't know what but anyway different ring every night oh yeah all these buildings

the buildings that ran regularly had their own rings for good and for bad in some cases And you had to learn the particular piccadillos, which ones with the

garden hose rope covers are not taped down, so if you stand up on them, it'll spin under your feet.

Which ones are so tight it's like hitting a cheese grater, and which ones are so loose you feel like you're going to die every time you hit them, and you don't take a fucking bump in Laranga.

And,

you know, just different ring.

And then spot show rings, they had different ones depending on what part of the territory they were in.

But in Jackson, that's what I was going to say before is Jackson, along with Greenville, Mississippi, Greenwood, Mississippi, Vicksburg at the old building there, I can't remember what they called it, and Biloxi, Mississippi, were all part of the George C.

Culkin's towns, the Curtis family.

George Curtis, the original, that was George C.

Culkin.

He wrestled as George Curtis and his brother Jack Curtis.

And then Jack Curtis Jr.

had been a...

a name in that territory in the 70s and was now working for Watts as a road agent, selling the merchandise and et cetera.

So

you always had either George or his son Gil Culkin

at all these towns.

And that was because Watts,

in a variety of these towns, used local promoters.

And sometimes it was literally that they had been in the wrestling business since way before Watts or even McGurk annexed this part of the territory like the Culkins.

And part of it was like down in Baton Rouge, where you had a local promoter like Jimmy Kilshaw, who had been there since dirt was invented.

And because Louisiana especially was so political, you had to have a local guy that could get the good price on

the fucking building rent or could get the publicity or could pay off the athletic commission inspector or whatever the case.

So there were a variety of local promoters in most of these towns.

Anyway, when did you realize just how corrupt some of the local commissions were?

Well, really, just Louisiana, Arkansas, there was a commission, but you didn't have any problem.

And Houston, there was a commission, the Texas Board of Inspection or whatever, but,

you know, they knew what was going on.

They didn't fuck with Paul Bosch.

So really, the Louisiana,

Watts had an in in that.

Emile Pepe Bruno was a friend of his.

When he had started running the Superdome, he got over like crazy with the Louisiana Boxing and Wrestling Commission.

Watts did, because remember, wrestling had mostly been a small money business in Louisiana for the years, and boxing they did huge because of the Superdome and blah, blah, blah.

But when Watts brings big money shows in there, gets in the Superdome, drawing these huge crowds, he got over with the commission down there, and he had some friends on it.

So

It was more with the local political situations.

And that's why they ran Laranja, they told me, because whoever owned that shitty building was politically connected over in the next fucking parish.

And

Homa.

You know, it may be the most political television show because Watts was doing commentary.

So he would talk about a lot of these people and specifically like their kids.

He would put over their kids because he knew what was up.

He wanted to stay in good shape.

He was the only promoter allowed in New Orleans, wasn't he?

Yes, because the commission would award the booking license to a particular wrestling promoter who was then allowed to book wrestling in the state of Louisiana, and there was only one.

And he got it.

And that's, you know.

And it drove Vince nuts when he realized it.

It drove Vince nuts.

And it was a long road a hoe for Vince to get down there.

And that's, again, Louisiana was the crookedest state in the Union politically, going back to the days of the kingfish, Huey P.

Long.

every bridge in the state of Louisiana is named after a governor because it was built on the governor's brother-in-law's land.

And it was all about payoffs and who knew who and who was friends with who.

And that's how things got done.

So, and Bill Watts had worked for Eddie Graham, who was doing in Florida, mentioning all the local politicians and the people running for office wanted to get on the wrestling program because they had a built-in audience.

And that's helped when you're renting on a regular regular basis a variety of buildings in the state of Louisiana owned by the cities.

So it all worked together.

And there was another one the following night.

On January 6th, we were in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

And Lake Charles had never been a big money town, but they had this brand new civic center that Watts started going to.

And

it was a beautiful building, but the Lake Charles Civic Center, the Jackson, the Fairgrounds Coliseum, all of these buildings were owned by the city or part of the state fairgrounds.

And, you know, you had to protect their interests as well.

What were you going to say?

No, I think you answered my question.

But

with Lake Charles, the following night, January 6th, was a Friday.

Lake Charles was $6,800.

That wasn't even 1,000 people at that point at their ticket prices.

We made 60 bucks a piece for beating Lanny and George Weingeroff.

But with Lake Charles, that set up an interesting

problem we had there because when we started getting heat and the houses started coming up, Lake Charles was a hot town.

That was one of the four or five you had to keep an eye on everything.

That's where when Akbar had heat, the cops were good.

They would, it was like in Little Rock.

They would give the heels about 10 or 12 uniformed police officers with batons and guns and handcuffs to walk you to the ring and back.

And that was for everybody, the preliminary guys, everybody.

They just said, we're going to do this because we've had so much trouble.

So the fans got smart

and they couldn't reach the heels through the cordon of cops surrounding them on the way to or from the ring.

So with Akbar,

the fans got water guns and put Drano in them and tried to shoot him in the eyes because they could cover more distance that way.

Or they would try to get the guys outside the building.

That's where the Freebirds had heat.

They got so many of their tires cut off their car that they had to start going to the police station and have the police park their car there, have the police bring them over in a patrol car.

And son of a bitch, at least one of the police cars got their tires cut that brought the Freebirds to the building.

And once we had been there a couple times started the program with magnum and wrestling too

we came out one night the cops would walk you out in a parking lot with the gut with the guard dogs or the police dogs the big german shepherds right they brought them over from the police station specifically to walk the heels to their cars

and we found that they had taken they had taken hypodermic needles and shot glue into all the keyholes in Dennis's van and they had lipsticked all the headlights.

So you turn the headlights on, you can't see.

And we had locking gas caps or they'd sugar your gas tank.

So Lake Charles was one.

In a couple of cases, when we knew we were on last and we got the finish of our match, we decided instead of taking the time to change clothes and let the people

get out the front door and around to the back, we set our bags packed with all of our street clothes and everything by by the back door.

When we got back from the ring, instead of turning left into the locker room, we grabbed our bags and immediately ran out in the back and jumped in the car and got out of the parking lot before the fans had time to come around back.

That's just to avoid, that's what we used to call it pulling a midnight because when we could see trouble, even into the WCW days,

we would leave our bags packed and right next to the back door where we could get out quick.

And that's what we did in Altoona that night.

We hadn't packed them, you know, ahead of time, but when we had that riot with the guy that jumped over the rail, instead of sitting down, when we came back, we grabbed the bags, grabbed the shit, headed to the car.

That's how we avoided the cops that night.

We started by avoiding the people and then graduated to avoiding the cops.

So that was Lake Charles.

And by the way, Jack Curtis, this is another town that he would go to because he was on the road most of the time full-time.

He was selling the merchandise at that point, but also,

whether it be Grizzly Smith or Jack Curtis, there was always at least one, usually both of them, because Grizzly never missed anything,

that could not only be there to check up on the boys and to run the wrestling card, but also to be in the box office with the local promoters because there was not a strong element of trust with some of those fine folks.

Are you ready to go on further?

Yeah.

On January 7th, that was a Saturday, we were in Alexandria, Louisiana, where we lived.

We actually could sleep late and not have to drive.

And we beat Lanny and Jumpin' Joe Savoldi.

And the house was $8,800.

And I hate to sound like a broken record, but the Rapides Parish Coliseum was a 6,000-seat building.

And it was where we lived, so we like it if it would be a halfway decent house most of the time.

But

I don't know whether sometimes they ran it on a Sunday afternoon and it wasn't a great atmosphere.

It didn't draw most of the time

because it just, it was a big building in a town that was kind of a B town.

But we went from $8,800 and $100 payoff here to by the time the last stampede came in, we sold it out, turned them away, did over $40,000 at the house, and

made a nice payoff that would be in the thousands in today's money.

But at the same time, Alexandria was not a town that was going to do big business, even with the midnight and a rock and roll, even with the scaffold match.

It just, it wasn't big or consistent, but it was close.

And

it was at the fairgrounds, the Rapids Parish Coliseum, with an actual cattle barn with cattle in the back and all the livestock shows they had.

And in the right weather, if it was sunny and warm, you could go out and you could talk to the cows for entertainment in the back of the building.

What'd you think of Jeff and Joe Savaldi?

He was a good kid.

He was, you know,

the problem was his family was in the business, so he ended up just going to work with them.

And that was kind of his cap.

Yeah, well, and it probably was anyway, between size and just he was a good babyface, but there was nothing that really stood out.

And while his grandfather may have revolutionized the business, I didn't see that potential there in Jumpin' Joe, but he was a nice kid.

I don't think it was his grandfather either.

What was it?

Who was it?

Joe Savaldi.

The original Savaldi.

His Mario Savaldi's brother.

And they're the sons of Angelo Savaldi,

who just took the name Savaldi from the famous Jumpin' Joe Savaldi.

Oh, shit.

Okay, I thought that he was still.

Well, see, now I'm a Mark.

I thought Angelo was in some way legitimately related to the original famous

Jumpin' Joe Savaldi.

What a Mark I am.

Well, in that case, fuck this kid.

I'm glad we beat him.

No, that's not what I was trying to say.

But you never hear about him.

He worked for IWCCW.

You're trying to see about his grandfather.

Yeah, that's, you know, he was up there, not the ICW at the Paphos, but the Savoldi's Northeastern ICW.

He was there and then he was gone.

And by the way, in Alexandria, the local promoter was Jimmy Kilshaw.

Was that, no, or was he in Baton?

He was in Baton Rouge.

Who was the Rapids Parish promoter?

Or no?

God damn it.

Now I'm mixing them up.

There was one in Alexandria and one in Baton Rouge.

Jimmy Kilshaw was in Baton Rouge.

Who?

Charlie D'Amico.

Charlie D'Amico was in Alexandria.

And he was the one you'd see the old newspaper ads.

Charlie D'Amico has brought this match back and demands a winner or whatever.

I don't know that I ever met the motherfucker.

For some reason, he was connected.

If you ran wrestling in Alexandria, one of these political deals, he had to be involved, but Grizzly ran the show.

Jack Curtis checked up at the box office most of the time.

This guy may have wandered around a time or two.

I don't really, nothing stands out.

But every town had one that had been there since the 50s or whatever, when the Fullers were running things.

And then

we finished the week.

It hadn't been a bad week travel-wise, Brian.

And you haven't asked me about the mileage, but New Orleans, we did a 400-mile round trip.

I was off sick the day.

Shreveport, 260-mile-round trip.

Jackson, 400 miles-round trip.

Lake Charles, 200 miles round trip, and we were in Alexandria, so that wasn't a bad travel week, was it?

Just short trips.

But on Sunday,

Oklahoma City,

when we got out of the Coliseum in Alexandria that Saturday night at

we were a preliminary match, probably got out at 9 o'clock or whatever.

We had to start heading to Oak City.

It was 550 miles and it wasn't even interstate till you got to Shreveport.

So there were a few times over the course of the year we actually had to leave the night before to get to fucking Oak City.

And if I'm not mistaken, because I know it was one of these early trips, we're tearing down the road about 15 miles out of Alexandria.

The fuzzbuster goes off.

Fuck, hit the brakes.

Goddamn cop catches me.

This was 1984, right?

I said $3 to a dollar.

The ticket then was $127 for going $70 to $55.

So that's almost $400 today.

I was, and I had to drive another 500 miles.

Thinking about that, 100, that was more than I was used to getting paid per night.

I had to pay it a ticket.

So we finally, we get to Oak City, we check in the fucking hotel,

$37.

We spend $11 on food, and we beat Rick Rude and Joe Savoldi.

And remember, we have just been there

New Year's Eve, December 31st.

We're back

nine days later, January the 8th.

New Year's Eve had been $61,000.

This one was $35,000.

Two shows eight days away from each other grossed $100,000 in Oklahoma City in a downtime for the territory.

So that's where we knew instantly we were going to love Oklahoma City.

I've said on a show the other day, there's always the rotten town in a territory.

In the Tennessee territory, it was Tupelo, Mississippi.

In Mid-South, it was either Homa, Louisiana, or LaRanja, Louisiana.

And there's also always the best town.

And for safety from the fans, for a beautiful new building, for

the house always being good and you always being able to make money.

I think Oak City was my favorite town in the territory.

Questions on Oak City before we move along?

Because I'm going to catch us up the next week and that way we'll be even.

Well, beyond that, just a general first week in the territory, thoughts?

What did you think about the new crew you were working with?

JYD was obviously there, butchreid.

you had a bunch of new people you were working with.

Everyone.

Yeah.

You get along with everyone?

Was anyone a dick?

Yeah, well, Wrestling 2 was the grumpy old man, but he wasn't, he was one of the more professional guys in the wrestling business because he'd been in it for 30 years, but he was just

not a fun-loving guy.

But honestly, almost all these guys.

Everybody, and this is where we first met, Dr.

Death and Barry Darso,

and all these guys loved it.

Nikolai Volkov was the biggest jokester.

He's the one that would sew the sleeves of my suit jacket together when I was out watching a preliminary match.

So when I got ready to go out and tried to put my coat on, I couldn't get my hands through the sleeves.

But and then he did pop the fucking stitches.

It was a rib.

He didn't hurt anybody's shit.

Or he'd have the

exercise tube.

All the guys had the.

the

stretchy rubber tube.

You'd stand on it and do curls and you could pack it easy in your bag.

And it's a hollow rubber tube, right?

So he would be doing his curls in back of you.

And then while you're watching the match, he'd put one end of the tube up next to your ear and he would blow in the other one, even though it's eight feet long.

He's got the lungs of a goddamn beast.

He blows in your fucking ear.

You don't know it's called, oh, shit.

He just, he was always having fun.

The guys, you know, Butch Reed and JYD like to sit there and fucking knock each other for fun.

Oh, you're playing the dozens now.

So it was, you had to have fun in the locker room because if you didn't in this territory, you'd go out of your fucking mind, guys did anyway.

But you're fighting fans that are trying to punch you and hit you with bottles and stab you, and you're driving these ridiculous two-lane roads through these fucking swamps.

And,

you know, at four o'clock in the morning,

you had to have fun in the locker room.

So there was not a lot.

I mean, it stood out when there was heat amongst the talent.

Remember, Buddy Landell and Sonny King.

That stood out, and everybody'd watch those matches and everybody'd talk about it because it wasn't that usual at that point in time that guys in the locker room would actually be mad at each other.

So we had fun with, you know, most all these guys.

Now, every once in a while,

and even Dr.

Death and even being good friends with us, and,

you you know, when substances came into play,

ah, fuck it.

I'll tell a story.

Almost everybody's gone.

So Doc gets a new van.

A custom, one of those, remember in the 80s, it was big to get those customized vans with the captain's chairs and the sound systems and TV systems.

He had a refrigerator, TV, everything in it.

He got this beautiful custom van.

He wants all the heels.

Me, Bobby Eaton, Dennis Condry, Buddy Landell, Carl Fergie, the referee,

may have been one other person.

Let's all take the Oklahoma trip.

I'll get some boiled shrimp.

You know, we'll make a trip out of it.

So me and Fergie are in the very back, right?

There's like eight fucking captain's chairs.

We're in the very back.

We don't know what's going on, but Buddy and Bobby and Dennis and Doc's driving.

They're sitting up.

more toward the front.

And all of a sudden, you know, we notice that there's some kind of tension going on up front.

Me and Furry kind of trying to sleep.

We're not really paying attention to what's going on.

Make a long story short, Doc has overindulged in the Bolivian marching powder,

the

Tony cocaine special.

And he's starting to get grumpy, and he's convinced that one of the people in the van is dipping into his shit.

And he's looking in the rearview mirror every five seconds.

And he's fucking making comments up there that we can't really hear in the back.

And I notice that as he's getting more agitated,

Dennis was the one who told me about this later on.

He's, you remember those old fucking glass iced tea and soft drink bottles had the big necks and juice bottles and everything.

They were plastic.

They were glass.

Dennis is putting the cap back on that and put it in between his legs in case he needs a fucking weapon.

And they're all up there thinking, how the fuck are we going to stop Dr.

Death if he goes off?

And Doc pulls over on the side of the interstate, gets out, goes around to the back door behind me and Furby, Furby, behind me and Furby, Furby, behind me and Fergie, Fergie is what I'm trying to say,

opens the door

and rummages around in his bag.

And huh.

He was checking his cocaine supply again, like we could possibly.

And so all the guys up front were ready.

Do we all jump him at the same time and try to hit him in the head with a hammer?

How are we going to stop this motherfucker if he gets violent?

And then he settled down.

And, you know, of course, me and Fergie get out when we get to the goddamn building in Oak City and don't know what the fuck has even gone on.

And Bobby and Buddy and Dennis and I think, goddamn, may have been.

May have been, was Ronnie West in the referee, in the territory at that time.

Anyway, they're telling us what happened.

Yeah, he was looking for his cocaine.

He thought we were stealing it.

He was freaking out.

He was having having a moment.

He was vibrating.

We didn't know what the fuck we were going to do.

Then there was no way if we had to fight him.

If any of us lived that we could let him back in the vehicle, we were going to have to leave him on the side of the road.

I mean, you know, everybody still thinks brawl for all Dr.

Death, but you know, sorry, fuck that.

Everybody was scared of that motherfucker.

And these were grown adult men that had been in goddamn bad situations before on purpose.

So anyway, but that was a sideline.

But But anyway,

I'll go through the next week very briefly.

I just want to call attention to some things.

January 9, the Monday night was Tulsa.

That's why it wasn't an Oak City-Tulsa double shot like they normally did on Sundays.

They had been off schedule with the Christmas show in Oak City.

They came back.

They couldn't get the building in Tulsa on a Sunday or whatever the fuck.

So they did the Monday night.

And this is where we learned that there was a difference in tulsa and oak city for whatever reason no matter how good tulsa did oak city would double it

and even if tulsa sold out oak city's building was twice as big and i

and i don't know what the and tulsa was the base of the office bixby was a suburb of tulsa that's where watts was based.

And also,

even though the house would be less than Oak City, your payoff against a house versus any other town in the territory would be slightly less.

And I started noticing this, and I was told by some of the guys that had been there, Watts would take his regular office expenses out of Tulsa.

So before he started splitting the money up, before the payoffs out of Tulsa, not only did the TV come out, the TV cost or whatever, but the advertisement, but also regular office expenses and shit.

I don't know if that's true, but Oklahoma City was a split with Fritz von Erich, right?

Was Tulsa too?

No, no, it wasn't a split.

Fritz had a piece of it.

Watts owned the majority of both of these towns, but Fritz

had points in the town.

I don't know what the percentage was.

Was it 10%?

Was it 15?

Was it whatever?

But Fritz had no ownership of it per se, but to supply talent.

And because of the fact that Fritz's TV

in Dallas and in some of the Oklahoma markets overlapped, they'd come to an amicable agreement that Fritz would get a piece of whatever Oak City did.

And I probably Tulsa too, maybe, maybe not, but probably

because

it's the same area.

They're only 100 miles apart.

And they would run the same day.

And if Kerry would be there or Chris Adams or whoever, they'd be at both shows.

So it was,

it was a financial incentive for Fritz to send guys who were even more over in Oklahoma than they would have been in Jackson, Mississippi over to Watts' cards.

And that's a, you know, again,

these two cities in Oklahoma, the only two cities really in Oklahoma, there's some towns, these are the only two cities.

They're 100 miles apart,

and they got it to where you could sell 20,000 tickets between the two of them in one day.

It was just, that was insane for markets of this size.

But in the meantime, on January 9th, the house in Tulsa was still a shits, and we got $100.

And then

we came back on the 10th.

We went to Shreveport, which basically we stayed in Tulsa and just picked up Shreveport on the way back because why are we going to rush back to our hotel rooms?

So that's another case where we had a hotel room as a satellite of the hotel room we were staying in.

And Shreveport was rude and Savoldi, and it was a $60 payoff.

I mentioned the old on our last segment, the old municipal auditorium there in Shreveport.

And it was never a big money town, even when Watts was hot, because it was where they did the TV, and they were there so much, and it wasn't a major market.

So we were occupying time there.

And that's why if a lot of people,

if you want to go back some of the building descriptions or town descriptions or the piccadillos of same,

I'm not going to repeat it every time.

You got to follow this series.

And then one of the greatest

fucking fiasco bookings that could possibly be done in this territory.

We were in Shreveport on Tuesday night, right?

For a house show.

We get up the next morning and we've stayed overnight and we do the local promos, as I've talked about, at KTBS and Shreveport, Channel 3.

We do from 9 o'clock in the morning to 3 o'clock in the afternoon, local promos for every market, babyface and heel, that's going to be running over the next week.

And you know where we were booked on Wednesday night, Brian?

Laranja, Louisiana.

How far is that from Shreveport?

280 miles.

And

just to make it even more fun, almost none of that was interstate.

You had to take the two-lane from Shreveport to Alexandria, then follow that from Alexandria almost to Baton Rouge to pick up the interstate where you could then go through Baton Rouge and then

off Kilter into the goddamn hinterlands of southern Louisiana where you would find Laranja.

And

I left Shreveport.

I think I met the boys on the way through.

I think they were done with local promos by that point, but I couldn't left Shreveport before 3 o'clock.

And the bell time for the town was 7:30.

So we

literally got in there after the show had started.

And this was the Midnight Express's first house show match with Magnum TA and Wrestling 2 because they booked it in Laranja.

We'd never worked with them before and never met them before we got here.

So let's take a look at it.

Nobody will see it in La Ranja.

So, and it was basically heat on Magnum or Heat on Wrestling 2.

Magnum gets the tag, makes a comeback.

They get in a four-way.

The referee double DQs it and the heels bail.

It's a small show in La Ranja in front of 500 people.

We had $60,

but that was for

everybody to get acquainted.

Well, Bobby and Dennis had met wrestling too in the past, and I would imagine Dennis had probably worked with him.

Magnum was new, and so it was just, it was a thing to work shit out.

And then we went back to Alexandria, which was 150 miles back the exact way we came.

And we got ready for the next day.

And Laranja, by the way, that I said every town, there's a worst town.

Laranja was not the worst town in terms of danger to the heels.

It was in terms of a shithole building and a place you didn't want to go that you weren't going to make any money.

And it was a building that sat in a mud field with a gravel parking lot, and the boys parked around back in the mud.

The dressing room.

was maybe five feet wide and 15 feet long, and you had to get a whole group of heels in that, and the babyfaces got the bigger room.

And it was so muddy and so wet usually that there was that

industrial pallet stuff down on the floor of the locker room so you could walk on that and be above the water for when the toilet backed up or whatever.

And in any kind of decent weather, the boys would go out and change clothes in their car behind the building rather than actually change in the locker room.

And

in intermission, the guy running the building, and this was some kind of political political thing to be able to get Baton Rouge and wherever Thibodeau, wherever else the good places,

he would run

an auction.

His merchandise stand looked like a flea market.

You could see everything from fucking toys and shotguns to cakes and baked goods to goddamn home furnishings and lamps.

And at intermission, he would start either selling shit or auctioning it off.

And he wouldn't ring the bell to start the show again until he figured he had made enough money.

So, as we're standing back there, if you were after intermission, the boys wanted to bid on the shit themselves just to get it over with.

And

the ring was not only harder than Chinese arithmetic with almost no padding on it and absolutely no give,

but it's the only ring I've ever, and this ring was used nowhere else.

It was part of his building deal also.

The ropes were real ropes, and they weren't wrapped.

No duct tape, no garden hose,

nothing.

Fucking ropes.

Try hitting those son of a bitches with a bare chest, right?

So it was just,

it was horrible.

And you wanted to get out of there from the time you got there.

But it was one of those ones you had to do.

So that was Laranja, Louisiana.

January 12th, we go to Port Arthur, Texas.

It's only 200 miles away from Alexandria.

the other direction

from Laranja.

And again, Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas were right next to Houston.

Houston, one of the great wrestling cities in the world, right?

And

over the years, Houston from the 40s through the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s.

Business could be up and down, but it never stunk, right?

Houston was Houston.

Port Arthur and Beaumont couldn't draw 15 cents in Chinese money.

And I never figured out why.

And they were run off the Houston television.

And

it was part of Paul Bosch's agreement that that area of Houston they would supply talent for.

Port Arthur this night did $7,000.

And we actually did the fucking scaffold match in Beaumont.

And as I recall, I don't think it did $15,000.

So I don't know why.

But fuck Port Arthur in Beaumont, Texas.

Except for a young lady that I met in Beaumont one time that I wish I'd have got her phone number.

Nevertheless,

Port Arthur, as I said, was, you know, they would run it every once in a while or more often.

They'd run Beaumont

in agreement with Paul Bosch.

And that's when

Paul's son, Pete Burke, or Paul's son-in-law, rather Pete Burkholtz, would be in charge of these towns.

Nephew.

His nephew, rather, nephew, I'm sorry, not son-in-law, nephew.

And that's really, that's what Paul was running in those days.

His biggest, most important thing was Houston, but occasionally you get these towns.

But Lanny Papo and Rick Roode, $75 payoff.

And we went on to Houston for the following night, which was another 80 miles.

And then, remember, we were at Houston Christmas week, came back, this another good house, $42,000

at the Sam Houston Coliseum.

And we were against Lanny Pafo.

And I got a kick out of this, Jose Martinez El Bracero.

El Bracero

had been somewhat of a name in his time in Mexico, but had moved for whatever reason.

Remember, I've told you that One of the most famous luchadors in Mexican wrestling history, Blackie Guzman,

ended ended up as a job guy in Indianapolis in the early 70s.

Same thing, I had watched Bruisers TV and watched Jose Martinez El Bracero

as an underneath guy in Indianapolis for years and years.

And he lived up there for a while.

And suddenly, here we are working with him.

And we beat the shit out of him, too.

But that

night in Houston, $42,000 house, we're at a preliminary match,

$250 payoff.

So we, again, we could see, boy, when we're at a main event in Houston, when we're in an important match in Houston, this is going to be a big deal.

And we got to do the Houston TV and do the stand-ups on the stage, the interviews with Paul Bosch and rile the people up.

And his television in Houston had even stronger reach than most of Watts'

one-hour Mid-South shows in the other markets.

It was a local institution like Memphis Wrestling.

So

we treated Houston from the start with a lot more.

You could tell the fans the reaction, the cheers, the booze, the loudness, what they popped on.

It was a wrestling fan crowd.

They knew their shit.

They knew everybody.

And they picked up on subtleties.

If you just reached back and started to pull the baby face's hair, they would come up.

So they had really been educated

superbly by, because Paul had been in control of that promotion and, you know, educated his fans the way that he wanted them to see wrestling.

And it was, it was a pleasure to work in Houston.

Did you get to go to the office?

I went to the office a couple of times.

I mean, I could have spent five years there to look at everything.

And I was still timid at that point where I was like, I was so impressed.

I was just like staring at the shit on the walls without asking him to start opening up drawers or whatever.

I didn't want to be a burden.

But

it was incredible.

And the stuff went back to the 30s and one-of-a-kind shit.

And it was just everywhere.

It covered the walls.

Hey, with Watts, he hired you after watching you at the Mid South Coliseum, not after hearing you do a promo.

What was the reaction when you started doing these local promos and people started seeing the way you talk, which was different than you had never done promos like this before in Memphis?

No.

Well, and that's the, that's the thing when Watts asked Dennis, he said, can Cornette talk?

That's what Dennis told me.

And Condry said, he can talk his ass off.

But I'm sure that Watts probably, he was getting Dennis's feedback also, but I'm sure he'd probably seen some tape, even though I didn't speak that night.

I'm sure that he probably went over to Jarrett's house and they'd showed him some local promos, but there wasn't much to show of me

at that point, like leading anything or being in charge of anything.

But

yeah, when

I started doing what I started doing,

think about this.

None of these guys had really ever heard of me before

because I'd only been in the business since, what, October, September, October of 82, only

in the Tennessee territory.

VCR still weren't a big thing.

And think about this.

The guys

did not jump into the VCR revolution like us fans did because they were on the road every night they weren't taping wrestling why they were on the road wrestling wrestling every night

so they didn't see and and they didn't trade tapes so the point is none of the talent or the local promoters or anybody in mid-south wrestling with the exception of Bobby and Dennis and Dundee, the guys that came from Tennessee, and maybe Lanny,

because he'd been able to see the TV up here, had ever fucking heard of me before.

And if they had heard of me, if they'd have read the articles in actors magazines or whatever, I got a few.

That's still like, well, we don't know what he sounds like.

So yeah, that's when they started making the, oh, these people are going to fucking cut you.

They're going to fucking kill you.

They're going to burn you.

They're going to fucking hang you in effigy.

You're a heat getting machine.

The guys didn't, it's never been a thing where guys in the locker room just went up and effusively praised people when they first met them.

Like, oh my God, I can't believe you're so good at that, like they do now, where everybody's got, oh, you're so great.

You never got compliments.

So I didn't really get a lot of compliments, but Bobby and Dennis would tell me that the other guys would go to them and say, Where the fuck did you get this guy from?

Especially Wrestling 2, who thought I had to be on the strongest cocaine that was ever invented.

But, you know, once that they,

the heels were kind of

not disgruntled, but the heels were kind of raising eyebrow at it because they saw that, goddamn, we can't keep up with that promo and he's got these guys can work their ass off.

So we got competition.

But they were all, we were all, again, it was the boys, not everybody cutting each other's nuts off.

The baby faces.

With the exception of the rock and roll, they didn't know how sharp I could be.

And there was occasionally, you know, what the fuck, when I would delve deep into them.

But Watts loved it.

He wanted me to get personal.

So,

you know, they were surprised and they looked at me sideways.

But then when we started doing business, they were like, okay, well, Jesus Christ,

he can talk.

You know, that's...

They were in that territory, they were used to the Scandal Rack bars or the Gary Harts or the ex-wrestlers that,

you know, talked like they were ex-wrestlers.

And

this was different, which is why it was getting over because the people hadn't seen something like me.

I don't know if there were things like me back then.

But yeah, they were surprised at first.

When they first saw us without seeing them work or hearing me talk, they were like, what the fuck's going on here?

But then they got it.

But you know, the biggest reaction, Brian, from the boys was not how I can talk or how they can work.

They were all trying to take bets on how long it was going to take one of the fans to cut my guts out.

That was the big thing.

How long is it going to take?

They're betting on my continued survival or imminent demise.

And that just proves that if you want to bet on something, you could pretty much bet on anything.

But I think that was kind of in bad taste for them to wager that I was going to be assassinated.

I think you should stick to the football and the basketball and the sporting events and stuff like that.

Stuff like our friends at DraftKings do.

Bet on those things.

Don't bet on whether the heel manager is going to get his throat cut or not.

Yeah, let's not bet on that.

Let's talk more about the things you can bet on at DraftKings, the things more like what Buck Robley would be betting on, not whatever was happening in that locker room.

Well, Buck Robley, if you were running at a track, whether you were a horse, a dog, or even a two-legged human, Buck Robley would bet on you.

But folks, you can bet on anything you want if you download the DraftKings sports book from our friends at DraftKings because they're an official sports betting partner of the NFL playoffs.

And are they still playing off over there in the NFL, Brian?

They're playing off.

Well, then you still got time to bet on it.

And right now, if you do what we tell you to do, and you always should, then new customers can bet five bucks on any game and get $200 instantly in the bonus bets.

That's bonuses, that's in addition to.

That's a bonus.

That's a fortuitous

fucking happening.

And it's very lucky for you they're going to do this because they don't have to do it for everybody, just for the people that download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now and use the code JCE.

That's the code to get $200 in bonus bets instantly when you bet just a measly $5,

just a sawbuck, just an Abraham Lincoln.

You know, even if you're a tight wad, you can afford $5.

Although I do know that Angelo Poffo pulled a $5 bill out of his wallet one time, it was so old Lincoln was clean-shaven.

Did you know that?

I did not know that.

I don't know why we had to go after Angelo Pofo here.

Well, he's the most miserly son of a bitch I can think of.

But anyway, download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now.

Use the code JCE.

$5, you bet on the game, you get 200 in bonus bets.

And that's because the crown is yours with our friends at DraftKings.

Of course, now other things may apply.

If you've got a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit www.1-800-gambler.net.

In New York, call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY-467-369.

In Connecticut, help

is available for problem gambling or problem spot copy.

Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.

Letters, phrases, and loud noises.

Please play responsibly or don't play at all.

God damn it, we've given you an ultimatum.

On behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas, something is going to happen here.

21 plus age varies by jurisdiction, void in Ontario, as always.

Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance.

Cdkng.com slash football for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms, and responsible gaming resources.

Breath kings.

Our friends.

Our friends at DraftKings, the official betting partner of...

The Jim Cornette experience.

Yes,

they're official.

Now, we've deemed them such.

We have knighted them with the officialness of our partner.

Well, in terms of official, we have,

from the official schedule, about three more weeks to go for January.

So let's get going.

Oh, good Lord.

We're not going to go all the way through January.

We're just going to catch up a little bit with a couple more days, and at least we've put in some time here.

Because on Saturday, January 14th, remember I said there's always a shitty town and Larange is it?

Remember, I mentioned another town,

Homa, Louisiana, at the Homa Rec Center and somebody sent me a picture.

It's still there.

I believe they sent it not too long ago.

It's 400 miles round trip from Alexandria, which we're doing on a Saturday there.

And we're going down to Wrestle Annie Papo and Rick Roode.

And the house was $6,000.

And it wasn't going to get much better in Houma either because the capacity of the building, I think we ended up selling out maybe $12,000 or whatever.

But

this was another one of those political ones for some reason.

This was the place

where

if you were going to get hurt by the fans, there was a high probability it was going to be Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Houma, Louisiana, or potentially maybe Lake Charles and sometimes Little Rock.

And Biloxi was not good, but Houma

would be worse because it was a small building with a dark parking lot.

You had to park with the fans.

Of course, a lot of times we got there, the doors were already open, the people were in the building, but leaving was an issue if you had heat.

And it was a spot show, so most of the time they didn't do too many hot finishes, but occasionally it would happen.

And then,

like I said, it was a rec center.

Imagine like a rec center with a basketball court, and there's a small balcony on two sides where people can be up,

you know, watching from above.

And you're putting chairs in this thing.

And when you came in from the parking lot, you had to enter into the big, the building, the basketball court area.

And then you had to go into the locker room that had only one door.

There was no back door to the locker room.

So once you got in the locker room, Technically, you were trapped.

You could not leave without going through the fans, which is why

when they did do a hot finish and the fans were pissed,

nobody was allowed to leave the heel locker room until the police could get the fucking building cleared.

And so you basically they put a fucking cop in front of the door and you couldn't, they said, lock this door and don't open it until we come back.

And so you're locked in a fucking concrete block room with whoever knows how many people plotting to do whoever knows what to you outside.

And the only way you can get out of this room is either through the door into the people

or if you could squeeze through a 12-inch by fucking 12-inch

window about eight feet off the ground in the back of the room that gave the only ventilation for this thing.

So every night that we were in the main event, we would be locked into this fucking

closet

until the cops came and knocked on the door and said, okay, you can leave.

And then they would let us go out to the back.

And if we were lucky, they would walk us to our car.

But there was one night

that they didn't walk us to our car.

I've told you the story.

This is where this was, Homo, Louisiana.

Dundee is the booker.

Bobby Eaton has decided to ride back to Alexandria with Bill Dundee because Dundee was by himself.

Leaves me and Dennis in my car by ourselves.

And Dundee and Bobby got out of there, but as we get to our car,

Dennis is putting his bag in the trunk, and here comes these seven or eight guys that are disgruntled, Cajun types,

making fucking trouble, saying some shit.

And I'm like, okay, now it's in a dark parking lot, me, Dennis Condry, I'm carrying a tennis racket,

and that's all we got.

And the lead guy mouths off to Dennis.

Dennis says something about, fuck you.

The guy takes an unopened beer can and tries to chuck it at Dennis and hit him in the face with it.

Dennis ducks that, grabs the guy's left wrist, Fujiwara armbars this motherfucker into the gravel and boots him in the face.

That guy's neutralized.

The other six are not happy.

And just then, I'm like, oh, fuck.

And here we see headlights and a car horn.

The Rock and Roll Express have gotten their car on the other side of the parking lot, seen that we're about to get killed, fired the car up, turned the bright lights on, and are driving in between

me and Dennis and the fucking crowd of guys,

which we took as that is the opportunity to jump in the car and get the fuck out of there.

So they were technically kind of breaking Kfab in that they did save our lives, but at the same point, they could just say, hey, it was dark and we didn't know which way was out.

And we drove the wrong way.

Boy, we wish you'd have got them.

But in HOMA, also, Dr.

Death and Hercules Hernandez did something with the rock and roll when I was managing them.

Some finished with the rock and roll that, I think, November,

October, November-ish.

I had Dr.

Death's football helmet, right?

I carried it instead of, that's after they had banned my tennis racket.

And the fans started coming after Doc and Herc as we were on our way back to the locker room.

And instead of trying to fight our way back through the crowd, we had gotten

through ringside

and were at the back of the ringside section and were almost home free when the ringsider started rushing us from behind.

So Doc and Herc turned around and we were backing up toward the locker room fighting.

And Doc would throw one one way and Herc would throw one the other way.

And if one peeked through, I'd whack him over the head with that fucking hard-ass college football helmet.

And we got back in the fucking locker room and they locked us in there again.

And we had to stay there for about 45 minutes or an hour till the cops that were on the scene could clear the place out.

So you would go down there for between $75 and $100,

and you would risk

getting fucking cut or attacked or stabbed or run over in the parking lot or whatever because you had to run that town so you could run other bigger towns in that parish and part of the area.

And that was HOMA.

And then finally, I'll finish up on January 15th,

on a Sunday afternoon.

Remember, I said we were in Alexandria on January 7th?

Came back a week later on Sunday afternoon, January 15th.

And

whereas we had beaten Lanny and Savoldi and Alexandria the previous week, we beat Rood and Savoldi.

And the house was up from 60, no, I'm sorry, from 8,800, it was down to 8,100.

And we got another $100, and that was just in time for us to get out of there and make a 200-mile round trip up the road to Monroe, Louisiana, at the Monroe Civic Center, where that was another secondary market, but a nice big building that

was there for some reason.

And we did $8,800 there and got paid another $80.

The point is,

we're going all over the goddamn place, but we wrestled nothing but preliminary matches and did the TV angle.

And we made $825 that week, which is the equivalent of $2,500 in today's money

on these, you know, downed houses.

And by the way, Monroe,

that's another one of those towns.

I can't remember what came up the other day, but

I was going to bring this up, and I don't think that I brought it up because we got in a different direction.

But you talk about

sometimes something that's done in wrestling gets buried

by not being sold.

You know, nobody would know what it's like to fucking be Spanish flied off the top rope, whether it would kill you or not, except that, you know, if you sell it, oh, it's dangerous, right?

But if you pop right back up, well, that wasn't anything.

Well, in Monroe, Louisiana, I'll never forget this because this is the only time this fucking happened.

They had the scaffold match when we were ready to leave the territory with the midnight and the rock and roll.

And every night where they had the scaffold, they had to set up the fucking scaffolding on the outside of the ring and they had to get the ladder and the walkboard and everything across.

So they would use,

you know, maintenance people or

what's the word I'm searching for?

Building employees that worked in that kind of field where they did maintenance and they did work around the building, right?

Or they just picked some people up, you know, say, hey, come in here, you get four free tickets, help us put up this equipment.

And that usually went okay.

But one night in Monroe, we're back there, intermission before the scaffold match.

We're watching them put the thing up.

Bobby and Dennis always liked to make sure that it looked like it wasn't going to fall over before they climbed it.

And guess what one of the guys working on a scaffold did, Brian?

What's that?

He was up there on the top of it.

And after they finished getting the ladders tied down and the railing on the sides, and everything was all buttoned up,

instead of climbing back down like everybody else, everywhere, every time,

he leaned over the side of the ladder, grabbed the ladder underneath, hung from it, and dropped to the fucking ground in the ring below and walked off, just like we were going to do.

He hung from below the ladder and dropped and landed on his feet in the ring and walked off.

Took the fucking bump the guys were going to take later on and sell

without even a fucking bobble.

So it'd be like you doing the Stark Hit 86 bump of just landing on your feet and walking out.

And just landing and walking off.

And he was some fucking, he didn't know what the fuck he was doing.

He's like, well, it's quicker for me to get down this way.

He was an athletic spry sort.

And we're like, God damn, we're glad everybody's getting a beer, right?

But anyway, so that one, two,

three,

four, five, six, seven, eight house shows and a six-hour set of interviews in seven days in the Louisiana Territory, and that was not even a long trip week.

But now we've got to the middle of January and it's starting to get interesting because it will be

only the next Wednesday where we shoot the first major angle on television that we would do and also debut at a couple more interesting towns and get into the main event picture over the second half of the month.

So we're going to do that coming up here shortly because this month is almost over.

Holy, where does the time go?

Just every 40 years, it seems like only yesterday.

It certainly does.

And it was only yesterday that the drive-thru came out or Wilkie coming out or it's your show.

Yes.

And we just did one.

We did did one now and we're going to do one again in a couple of days.

Any final thoughts on the first two weeks of Mid-South Wrestling or have we covered it for now?

I think we covered it for now, but I look forward to this ongoing series.

And boy,

in a couple or three years, when we get to 86, boy, people are going to be on the edge of their seat.

It's my show.

I'm closing it up.

Thank you for hanging out with us, folks.

Somebody will do something stupid between now and the drive-thru, and we'll be here to talk about it.

Until Until then, for Brian, I'm Jim.

Thank you.

Fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.