Jim Cornette Experience Special - CM Punk In AEW Year Two Omnibus (Part 2)

Hello again, friends.

The great Brian Last here, and we are back with Jim Cornett's omnibus CM Punk and AEW Year 2.

Let's get going right now.

Jim, before we wrap things up, we have gone a while here, but we have some breaking news.

Or uh-oh, I don't know how broken it is.

Certainly isn't fixed, though.

But, Jim, we have some news that's coming out.

Fightful Select is reporting.

This is sent by a few of the listeners to the drive-through email.

Jericho approached cm punk unhappy about the brawl out fight as the brawl out fight the brawl out fight unhappy about the brawl out fight as well as the nature of the scrum that had just taken place jericho told cm punk that he was a cancer to the locker room and a detriment to the company those we've spoken to didn't recount cm punk's reply verbatim but said that he effectively told jericho it wasn't his business and he needed to leave

Can you imagine you're in the middle of all this shit, and you and your friend are fighting these other guys who have fucked with you, and his girl is there, and your dog is there, and people are screaming, and all this shit.

And you're fucking been hit in one way or another, and you're hurt, you're bloody.

And all of a sudden, in the middle of that, Jericho runs in.

Probably just combed his hair.

Stop enough, everyone, stop.

You're a cancer to the locker room,

said Mr.

Pot to Mr.

Kettle.

And

I wish we got the exact quote, but I'm sure that Punk probably drew his fist back from one of the bucks' face and took his other foot out of the other bucks's ass and turned over to Jericho and said, It's not any of your business, and I think you should go now.

And then resumed ripping out carotid arteries.

Thanks for showing up, Chris.

Yeah, thank you.

Where were you when we all needed you?

Why didn't you run in with everyone else?

Where were you, Chris?

If he's worried about being a locker room leader, why wasn't he one of the people that went to Tony Kahn and said, you've been hearing about this and you've been hearing about this and you've been warned that it's headed to a physical confrontation and there's going to be some type of showdown

and you're frivolously ignoring this.

Why didn't Chris step up and be a locker room leader by getting Tony to address the situation that he had been informed of over and over again.

Because he wanted Punk on.

He never wanted Punk there to begin with.

No, it couldn't be that.

Couldn't be that.

Why, they had

a long series of matches back in the old WWF days, didn't they?

They go way back.

Yeah, how far back?

That's a long time ago that you're talking about.

Well, I'm sure some things stay with you.

Can you imagine working a long series with Chris Jericho?

And I'm sure that was interesting discussions on how that would go even back then.

And to be honest, that's kind of the end of Chris Jericho when he was Chris Jericho.

That's kind of the end of that period right there.

Well, he may be back on his period because he's now he's firmly back on

in the seat here in control of

the period he's having right now, ladies and gentlemen.

Let me ask you this just to throw this out there because there are now fans saying it, so let's get your take on it.

The Bucks featured the CM Punk chant in the latest episode of their YouTube show.

They led the chant here during the match.

They mocked the Buckshot Lariat.

Omega bit the arm of whoever he bit the arm of.

Oh, yes.

One of the opponents, yeah, he bit his arm.

The fans that think this is building up the return of CM Punk

with another, let's say, FTR or someone, but CM Punk at least, to feud with the elite.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, it actually

would be business.

If they had that

lined up, laid out, then all this would be perfectly acceptable.

And wishful thinking would indicate,

you know, that everybody would want to see that, right?

Oh, yeah, everybody gets back together.

We have this big program.

It draws all kinds of money.

But what you are overlooking is the fact that these fucking

douchebags don't want to draw money.

They don't want anybody to jeopardize their position,

their company, their revolution, their movement.

If anybody gets over or is more important than them or shows people that their wrestling is shit and that people still in larger numbers react to shit they can understand,

that's bad.

And

that would have to

you would have to assume that the Buckaroos and Twinkle Toes were willing to work with a guy like Punk, who they've had heat with,

or that Tony would be willing to deal with a guy that's told him to go fuck himself or whatever.

Now, I know people are saying, well, hey, Vince McMahon has put the WWF title on a dozen guys that said, fuck you to him, or whatever, right?

Before that.

Yes, because Vince was all about business.

This is not business.

This is fantasy booking by a billionaire boy child

and

the incredible windfall that these self-trained, self-important, self-indulgent nitwits have fallen into by getting said billionaire boy child to fucking fund their goddamn vision of what this fuckta wrestling is.

And it ain't working because they're in the same place they were three years ago,

but they've had tons more bad publicity.

Ticket sales are going down.

Ratings are going down.

Everybody's getting in a fight backstage.

And the only people in the locker room that have the pull with Tony

to get him to do anything are the ones that are protecting their spots at the expense of everything else.

The show, the program, the promotion.

The show, the program, the business, everything.

So, yes, in a perfect world, this would all be a work, but it's not.

And it's not going to be.

And they don't have it in them to call punk and say, all right, let's put this fucking behind us.

Let's make some money.

And let's, to be honest, besides the same group of people,

you could probably get punk and Olivier if people thought there was goddamn real, legitimate bad feelings, which there is,

you could probably get a pay-per-view out of them.

To have Punk in the same ring with the Buckaroos would just be bringing him down to their level.

There's no money to be made there anyway, because the only people that would care would be the same people that's already watching the show.

I think there are people who would pay thinking the idea they would love to see CM Punk get his hands on the Bucs.

Because if you really think about it, even when they lose matches, no one ever gets their hands on the Bucs and just smacks them around and treats them like shit.

I don't know.

I think that anybody who dislikes the Bucs that bad would probably think, well, he already beat them up and for real and in a locker room.

And why should I pay to see it again for a work?

But I mean, just

there's no way, if you noticed, I'm sure everybody did,

CM Punk and neither of the Buckaroos ever crossed paths on camera during his entire time in that promotion.

Right?

The only thing I saw is apparently, and I think it must have been on their little YouTube show, when CM Punk debuted, they did a video of them making mocking faces of the reaction to CM Punk backstage.

That's the only thing I know of.

Well, yeah, because that's where they were back doing their little YouTube thing and he was doing the real television program.

But there was never any interaction because I'm sure that right off the bat, Punk said, I'm going to work with serious talent.

There was never any interaction with Olivier either.

But I'm not saying that if

people knew there's real heat and then they could get them to work, that might be interesting.

And if Olivier is able to listen and do as he's told and be led, probably have the best match he's ever had with Punk because he wouldn't be doing all that fucking cheerleading routine bullshit.

But I don't see any way in the world that Punk ever gets in the ring with the Buckaroos for any reason.

Working, shooting, or anything else, because nobody would give a fuck.

It would be ridiculous.

Look at them and look at him.

Nevertheless, speaking of, go ahead.

Forget it.

Forget it.

What?

What?

I was going to say, part of the problem is we haven't heard CM Punk say shit.

Everyone's, oh, CM Punk's side says this.

CM Punk hasn't said anything.

And I was going to say, why doesn't he just come out and say what's going on?

But I realize he's still an employee.

He's actually still confined to his contract, too.

Yeah.

And

I don't believe they're making any inroads to a successful resolution when the guys that he's already beat up once are out there making fun of him on fucking television.

Because Tony's either going to have to pay him this money

or he's going to have to bring him back and let him work.

Between the issues here with Tony and Punk, where purportedly there's a buyout, but we haven't heard anything, anything about movement on that or anything in a long time now,

and other stories about Tony maybe not necessarily having such a rosy time with other top talent that maybe some people are are turning into divas.

Do you think it's going to change the way Tony deals with talent and top talent?

Well,

I think something should have changed that a long time ago.

I think Tony should have stopped dealing with top talent

because

I know there's some nice people like a Mick Foley.

Mick Foley would sit down with Tony Khan for hours and try to talk to him and teach him and give him advice and pitch ideas and work with him because Mick is the nicest human being in the world.

But most top talent is either going to do one of two things with Tony Khan.

They're either going to manipulate him for their own self and best interests because they know they can, because he wants to be everybody's friend.

He has no experience with this.

He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing and he can be easily led,

or

the other

section of top talent is going to go, okay, you're my boss, and here, here's a handshake, and boy, you're a nice guy, but don't talk to me about wrestling because it's like you're a fucking grade schooler coming up and talking to a heart surgeon about a fucking bypass.

They might try to pitch stuff to Tony, but it would be frustrating because they could see it was going over his head or whatever the fuck.

So you've got the self-serving crew and you've got the group that is just like, my God, can we talk to a real booker or a real wrestling person?

We don't mind working for the guy and he's a nice enough guy, but he's not qualified or equipped to tell us what we ought to be doing.

You can't tell me that 95%

of the wrestlers on the AEW roster do not fall into one or the other of those categories.

I'd like to hear what the third category is.

Oh, everybody's happy to be there and going out and working their hardest.

That's for all the guys in wrestling school.

Because yes,

optimally,

you want everybody going out and working as hard as they can and being behind the promotion and excited about the momentum and all that stuff.

But that's a perfect world.

And this ain't a perfect world.

And

I can't imagine that anybody that is more than just somebody that's lucky to be being seen and paid would have any opinion otherwise than the two camps that I just mentioned.

And I guess now that, as we said, the Ring of Honor pay-per-view

is going on

and people are writing in that now

they're maligning CM Punk at the merchandise stand.

Is this why I saw this on Twitter as we took our last pee break?

What's going on here?

Do you have this stuff up?

Yeah, I see this guy here who has messaged both of us.

Again, we don't know the

identity of this man or exactly how true any of this is, but we'll go into the assumption that he's sending it for a reason.

Jim Cornette and Brian last.

So I'm buying merch at Final Battle, and it seems that AEW is pushing their anti-CM Punk agenda on the merch buyers and security.

A security guard who is regularly at shows and a lady at the merch table aggressively bashed CM Punk.

Very unprofessional.

And then he sent us a second one.

The AEW security literally said to me, quote, if he comes back, this company will end.

Oh!

This can't be the way Tony Khan wants his company represented.

Again, very unprofessional and makes a ticket buyer like me uncomfortable.

And it appears there's one more.

Tony Khan, I was told by the security guard that I can, quote, go see him somewhere else.

When he saw my CM Punk shirt, this is how you're running your shows?

So at least one fan, I mean, we can't say it's widespread or anything, but apparently multiple people working there bash CM Punk.

Oh, well, wait a minute.

Not only that, but the people selling the merchandise, they're still selling CM Punk merchandise, are they not?

Since he's still technically under contract.

As of, I believe, a couple dynamites ago at least, because I saw a picture of the merch stand.

Yeah.

I believe so.

Yeah.

So the P and who's in charge of the merchandise business in AEW?

Wasn't that one of the Buckaroos young wives that got to be the head merchandise person?

I believe it was the wife of one of the young bucks, correct.

So it's funny that the merchandise people are slandering a guy on the roster still that they're selling merchandise of.

Wonder where they would have.

Sold more shirts than her husband did.

Yeah.

Since he's been there.

I wonder where they could have got those opinions from, those merchandise sellers, possibly from their

supervisors or authority figures.

That's a great marketing tactic.

Yeah, here we got plenty of shirts of this asshole that would end the company if he came back.

You can go see him somewhere else, but buy one of these.

I will say it is interesting the quote here, allegedly from a security guard.

There, again, we don't know who this guy is sending it to us, and we don't even know who he's talking about.

But there has been a narrative among some there, the idea that

That night CM Punk could have killed the company because of his behavior, or that CM Punk could still do a lot of damage to the company, therefore he's after our jobs.

There is a little bit of that, and you could say that it's from people being fed that idea or from people just thinking it.

But, you know, it is interesting that this quote came from the security guard because you are hearing some of that too, or you have at least for the last few months.

Jim, another question that a lot of listeners, especially in the last week, have been sending in questions about because

Dave Meltzer, I believe, said something on one of his shows and various things going around.

There is now a growing consideration amongst fans that CM Punk may return to AEW at some point in the next several months.

What do you think of this and what do you think it would mean?

Well, they need him.

I think everybody's pretty much acknowledged that fact now.

There is no the guy in that company.

There's a guy wearing the belt, MJF, who is

the only needle mover that they've had for ratings or the, you know, really the big matches besides punk.

There's other guys, but

nobody knows whether Moxley is a heel or a babyface or what his deal is.

Brian Danielson has not been assertive enough with his talent to where he's viewed as the unapproached top guy in the company.

Nobody gives a shit about the EVPs anymore because the bloom is off that rose.

They've seen all they have to offer over and over again.

Now the viewers tune out except for the bedrock faithful.

So they need a star and they're still paying him.

See, that's what a lot of people,

they have to still be paying him.

Tony's, he's, he's under contract.

So he's either getting paid or he's been fired.

And he's injured.

So I don't think he's been fired.

And he's injured.

So he ain't been, we'd have heard about it anyway if they'd have fired him.

If they'd have come to some exit agreement, we would have heard about it.

So he's still under contract.

and that means he's still getting paid.

And the injury that he had in September, September, October, November, December, January, February, he's pretty good anytime now.

So they're either going to have to,

through their lawyers, through their whatever their

mitigation, mitigation, mediation process is.

He's going to have to either get bought out, paid off, and released, or

he's going to continue to get paid.

In which case, then, if he's healthy and getting paid,

then is he going to come back to work?

And that's the question they got to answer.

And if he does come back to work,

there's got to, I would have to think for a guy like Punk, who is, as we've mentioned, it's been phrased, doesn't take being disrespected very lightly,

He doesn't have to come back and wrestle Twinkle Toes or the Buckaroos, and he wasn't before.

He's never been in the ring with them, and he probably wasn't ever going to be because he doesn't do that shit, and he wasn't there for that.

But he has to coexist in the buildings with them.

And I don't believe that he's going to come back or that he would come back

and

continue to do what he did for the company, which was TV ratings and million-dollar pay-per-view gates and et cetera.

Unless Tony sits down with his EVPs and says, Hey, you guys need to go mend some fences.

There needs to be some kind of apology, settlement, agreement to move forward amongst you guys because we need this guy.

I'm paying him.

I've got to, you know, he's either going to come back to work

and do business for me, or I'm going to have to release him and he's going to be able to go and do even bigger business for my competitor.

And you guys don't have the leverage right now to say that I should do something that's going to hurt my business.

Yes, and Harpo's contract is almost up.

The Buckaroos, they got one last year on the thing that Tony,

the clause that Tony exercised, but they're going to be out of there or they're going to be renegotiating again.

And

what do they have to renegotiate on?

They've gotten everything.

They've gotten their family's jobs, their friends' jobs.

They've gotten to do all their little jerk-off segments, exist in their own, they have their own Codyverse, exist in their own little Codyverse.

Their own belts.

They've gotten everything they ever wanted from Tony.

And it seems like it's not enough.

But but now what do they have to negotiate on?

They tank the ratings every time they're featured.

Twinkle Toes was gone for an extended period of time and business didn't suffer, got better in certain instances.

The Buckaroos, is anybody clamoring to see them now that we know that they're never going to have the rubber match with FTR and it'd be meaningless at this point if they did.

Who do they want to see the Bucs wrestle now?

Anybody?

It was always, I want to see Bucks FTR, Bucks FTR.

What do they want to see now?

They saw seven times in a row against Felix and Penthouse.

Who else is there?

So I think Tony needs to sit down, his EVPs, and say, Punk's healthy.

I'm paying him a ton of money.

He's the only one that has consistently produced big numbers for me.

And the ratings and the gates that he's drawn on top blow away the shit that you guys have done.

And you started this fucking whole deal and put me in this position.

So I think y'all ought to line up with your tail between your legs and go and say, I'm sorry, Mr.

Brooks, for the problems that we've had in the past.

We'll stay out of your way going forward.

We'd ask if we could help you, but we know we're incapable of that and you wouldn't take it because it would be a hindrance.

So we'll just stay out of your way and we apologize.

Then maybe he gets punk back.

What else is there?

Who else is he going to sign right now

that's going to do

for the numbers what punk did?

It's going to do for the quality of the in-ring, what Punk did.

There's nobody else out there now that he can get because Vince has already snapped him up because he wants to sell his white elephant.

In terms of Punk, if he did come back, there's a natural thing there to be done with him and MJF.

Yes.

But looking beyond that, and that may be the initial thing they just go right back to.

And I'm sure they can get months and months of great TV if those guys are on the same page.

But beyond that,

if you're CM Punk

and things, there are apologies, you don't have to be friends with anyone, but there are apologies.

And the mission, whatever Cody Rhodes is talking about before, the mission is still the mission, which is, this is Tony's company.

Let's try to make this as good as we can.

Will you work with an Adam Page?

Would you work with a Young Bucks if they were willing to do it?

Well, I think Adam Page is irrelevant to this conversation.

And more than likely he is, but I'm just saying in terms of what you

bring him back, would you?

That's what Page is irrelevant.

The biggest money thing they could put together, the shortest term big money thing that would be attractive right away.

It wouldn't need to be built, especially to the base AEW audience, is punk at FTR against the Buckaroos and Harpo in a six-man.

Because, again, the Jerry Jarrett principle, people know there's legitimate heat.

There's been a real fight.

They don't like each other for a shoot.

That is what draws money in wrestling.

However, the problem becomes that in any other circumstance like that, when other guys have gotten in fights and done whatever down through the history of wrestling and the territories and nationally or whatever, and people have known about it, they've turned it into a way to do something in the ring and sell tickets to it,

and people have responded to it.

But I don't know know that you can do that here because,

I mean, let's just face it, being legitimately real, my real opinion is Matt and Nick Jackson and Kenny Omega don't have any clue of what the wrestling business is and didn't and wouldn't have gotten in it if they'd have known what it was to begin with.

And they've been trying to change it into something that they want it to be.

because it's their specialty.

They do that shit.

So they want that to be wrestling, even though most people don't want that shit to be wrestling.

And that unprofessionalism and stuck-uppedness and self-indulgence that they think their fucking farts don't smell.

They don't even think they think they even smell better than mine after a colonoscopy.

I don't think that they realize that they're now in a position where they could be professional and do business with a guy and draw real money for the first time.

They've brought their band of Merry Misfit fans with them, like they do everywhere they go, but it's not real money.

It's not sizable amounts.

It's not over a million people.

We've seen that.

To get a bunch more people interested in them that are not interested in their playtime matches into something that people might think there might be something go on here.

The problem is

they would probably not appreciate being in that position, And I don't think Punk could trust them to not take advantage of it.

They run in his locker room and he takes one down, beats one up, and his buddy takes care of the other two.

That was a real fight breaking out organically.

But if I'm Punk and I'm working with these guys, I got to lay there for fucking Harpo to come off the top rope.

Or I've got to stand there while the two little goof tennis shoe collectors throw super kicks at my face.

Or you'll work a different kind of match.

With a margin of error of a quarter of an inch.

And they can say afterwards, oh, shit, we're sorry.

Fuck you.

I don't.

They need to build trust with Punk.

He doesn't need to build trust with them.

So if they want to be in the money picture, if they want to be in a big match that actually might help the company,

They would have to do a lot of solabimin and a lot of fucking tuck and tail with Punk to get him him to trust them and then

they would have to follow through with not fucking potatoing him

or elsewhere and say what you want about his ufc career but does anybody think that phil brooks or cm punk can't take either one of the bucks down and beat the fuck out of him come on seriously i think even they especially after everything happened in that locker room and if you know what really happened they didn't have a chance and omega didn't have a chance i think even they would have to admit that i think omega just wandered in confused like he is normally at what was going on around him and didn't realize until shit started happening.

He was in his usual stupor, you mean?

Yes, the stupor.

But anyway, so, you know, I don't know whether they could put it together because why would Punk trust them?

Because they think that they're bulletproof.

They think they're special.

They think they're EVPs.

They think they could potato somebody.

And it's, oh, I'm sorry, except they would get the fuck beat out of them on live television, especially if FTR was in there because then all three of them couldn't do anything.

So,

you know, it would draw money.

And if it was all a bunch of professional wrestlers, it would be happening probably already or close to.

But since one half of that equation is a bunch of children who got in a business that they didn't understand to do play acting and be video game characters, they're probably scared that they would legitimately get their ass beat again.

And they're indignant.

that Tony would want them to apologize to this guy.

So there's probably going to be no movement because they're children and he doesn't have to work with them.

Let me ask you this.

Because we've said that I genuinely felt bad for Tony Khan when everything happened.

I don't agree with the way he's handled things since it happened.

And I think a lot of blame, truthfully, needs to be put on Tony Khan for things getting to that point.

Because he's the one person who could have put his foot down and stopped it.

And he did.

He was hearing about it a long time before all of us us heard about it.

And he didn't do anything about it.

So that's when it was made public.

Again, based on everything I know, I'm going to assume there's been very limited contact between Tony Khan, who was regularly talking to CM Punk as top star.

It's been probably very little contact in the time since then.

If you're CM Punk, based on everything that's happened, are you going to have any trust issues with Tony Khan if you did go back?

Yeah.

Again, he knew there's no way tony khan didn't know exactly how punk felt about these guys and you know what i actually think there's no way tony khan more than likely didn't agree with cm punk on this stuff because he knows and he's been hearing it from other people and he's seen other things that happened and he just he just couldn't go and be the boss to his friends that's what he couldn't do So he asked, can he trust Tony Khan?

Here's the thing.

I don't think anybody is going to accuse Tony of being a crook or a manipulative, you know, like a Paul Heyman-like figure that's manipulating everyone behind the scenes for his own selfish purposes.

He's not that person.

He's not that smart.

And that's why he's where he's at because he came into wrestling thinking all these guys were going to be his friends because he's giving them jobs and everybody's going to be happy with each other because everybody enjoys each other in the wrestling business.

And he finds out that it's egos and it's fucking backstabbing and it's goddamn jealousy.

And it's what about me instead of this other guy?

And he can't stay friends with everybody.

And he comes to the point where he has to tell some people, if not most people, what to do.

Those are the things he can't handle.

So

I think everybody can trust Tony not to be a

con man and a shyster and a crook and.

you know, manipulating people.

But

the reason why you can't trust Tony is because he's too nice and too trustworthy.

He won't hurt anybody's feelings.

He won't fucking

talk badly to a friend, even if it's business.

You can't trust him to do anything because he's scared to either make these guys mad or they won't like him anymore, or he just doesn't, he's not a person that likes confrontation.

I know this may come as a surprise, but you have to kind of like a little bit of confrontation to be in the wrestling business.

Or at least be able to manage it.

Yes.

And

that's why you can't really trust Tony, not because he's evil or has anybody's worst interest at heart or trying to take advantage of somebody.

It's because he's in over his head and cannot manage all of this.

And so you can't trust him to do the right thing because he may just chicken out and just say, well,

have one of the lawyers talk to whoever.

I don't want to talk to him because

it won't be fun.

See, I think that's the real story.

There's going to be no punk coming back to AEW unless Punk and Tony Khan are on the same page.

And we don't know what's the status of that relationship right now.

But everyone in AEW, it's based around Tony Khan.

And this is the biggest star AEW has ever had.

It's all going to be about that relationship and if that relationship is okay right now.

And again, I don't know.

I don't know what the status is.

But you brought up another thing.

We also don't know how much longer the Bucks and Omega will be there.

So if you're Tony Khan and you're looking at your future,

you got to look at who you think will be there in the future, the guy under contract or the guys who aren't under contract.

Well, and even if there wasn't a track record of one guy outdoing the other guys when it comes to drawing and business.

Yeah, because if he just signed Punk,

what was it?

I don't know if they ever determined the length of Punk's contract, but he hasn't been back more than a little over a year now, right?

So he's still got some time to go, and he certainly has not worn out his welcome to the point where the other three have.

But that's, you know, unfortunately, that's what we're going to find out.

If

Tony Khan has the nerve and the balls to do what's right, tell those other three, hey, you fucked me royally and you've started this whole goddamn thing, and it's your fucking fault that it all came out in public.

So you go to that guy and make him feel welcome, regardless of whatever you have to do.

Kenny, fucking treat him like a bushy.

Make him welcome.

Punk would probably turn down the bushi treatment from Kenny, but nevertheless.

And if they wouldn't do it, they'd say, okay, well, then in that case, then I'm just going to send you guys home and pay you out for the rest of the year.

Here's the thing.

Where are they going to fucking go?

Kenny will go back to Japan.

Jacksons will go back to fucking Kookamunga.

Because

if the WWE knows and is fully aware that Tony don't want him anymore, they wouldn't try to hire him.

They only tried to hire him before to keep the billionaire's son from having access to them when he was starting a wrestling promotion, the content and quality of which they had no idea of at that point.

Now that they've seen it and they've seen what's going on and these guys have stellar records at running TV viewers away and people rolling their eyes at their indulgent trampoline routines.

You think the WWE is going to offer them anywhere near the amount of money they're making now when, if they were to know that AEW wasn't even going to try?

What the fuck?

Why would they do that?

Here, here's something that the other guys that can compete with our budget don't want, and nobody else can afford to come anywhere close to.

So we're going to give them a big contract?

Fuck.

And it's a tryout thing in a sense.

I don't mean like it's a tryout like a guy at a taping, but we've also never, ever seen if the young bucks can work under the confines of someone else's rules.

No, they can't.

They can't.

And they will refuse to.

That's their whole thing, killing the business.

That's the name of their company that they started.

That's the name of their book.

They can't do it the way anybody else tells them to do it or the way everybody else does it.

They have to do their own shit.

That's the only way they get over.

And the only time that they were allowed to do their own shit,

it leads to the fucking downfall of the rest of the company because it makes it impossible for anybody to take the rest of the programming from that company seriously when you got these two little jokers running around.

So

that's the point I'm trying to make is the only reason they got offers before

is because the WWE didn't want the billionaire's son to have access to anything.

If they were to be on the outs with Tony, they would be worthless in the wrestling business except to go to Japan.

Kenny'd be back on top over there,

and the Bucks would be back jerking the curtain with the junior heavyweight tag belts.

And that's where else are they going to go?

All right, speaking of scary, there's some scary things being said.

Apparently, while I was taking a sabbatical of a couple of days from the outside world,

Uncle Dave, the the house organ for AEW, or would he be the house mouth organ,

maybe for AEW,

has lit up

our friend Punk again, as well as some of the things that they have done or actions they have taken on television this past Wednesday night.

And Punk had a response.

We don't hear from him often.

It's only when

it seems like that there might be some movement that he might be returning.

That then, somehow,

Uncle Dave comes up with a thing like, well, we think that Punk's trying to get back in, like he's there knocking on the pony.

Let me back in, please.

And then statements get made that Punk has to come out and inflame everybody's taint with by telling the truth.

And then that seems like that would,

to the outside viewer looking in,

would knock back the return time of said punk to wrestling, which seems like that's what

the power-drunk EVPs in that fucking flea market company want to see happen.

So

try to, do you have the

the chronology of events here from who ran whose dick liquor first that Punk had to respond to?

Well, let's first talk about the bigger issue, which is Punk's ready to come back based on what we know about his injuries, right, from way back.

Tony Khan definitely wants CM Punk back, but I think one of the big issues with all this is Tony Khan just, he never makes a situation better.

Whenever he has a chance, Tony Khan never makes the situation better.

But what happened, apparently, it started a few days ago.

CM Punk wrote a comment on Instagram about the new Steve Kern biography.

Steve Kern, from the Fabulous Ones, or Skinner, put out a biography.

Oh, come on now.

It wasn't his fault.

Well, he was on national TV, though, so people know it.

He wrote a biography with Ian Douglas, who's written several good wrestling books.

Punk wrote one of the forewords to the book.

In the comments on Instagram, he wrote, Best book about a fascinating man in a strange business since Brett wrote his book.

Great story about Gator and Coco fighting in the locker room, and then Lawler drags them into the office the next day and they squash it.

Fascinating.

And that was the comment.

So why don't we start there just because you were probably there when Coco and Steve Kern had their issue, I would guess.

Well, I didn't witness it.

I think I was on the buttermilk run at that.

I was in the other town in front of no people.

But what happened was

the fabulous ones, Lane and Kern,

were Jerry Jarrett's handmade gimmick to replicate the success of the fabulous Fargo Brothers as a team, but as baby faces.

And he,

in those days, everybody, as we mentioned, didn't have music.

And everybody didn't just go out and have the entrance they wanted to have.

You go to the fucking ring, right?

Well, he told the fabs, go out, go around the ring, hug the girls.

The girls loved them.

You've seen the rock and roll do the same thing, seen the Fantastics do the same thing.

That was the gimmick of that rock and roll MTV style tag team.

Go around the ring, hug the fans, hug the kids, hug the girls.

Well, then

they switched Coco Ware

of, I can't remember whether he'd been a heel or, but that's when he became either Stagger Lee.

I think it was Stagger Lee, because then he got music.

And he just decided one night in Memphis or whatever, he was going to go around the ring and do the Fabs deal, where he shook hands and hugged all the people and blah, blah, blah.

And then Kern walked in the locker room at a spot show a night or two later when he saw him and took exception to Coco doing the fucking fabs thing and they got in a fight about it.

But then, you know, the next day or whenever it was, nobody got called in the office because he would have had to go to Jerry Jarrett's house.

That's where the office was.

But they got called in the fucking room at the next building.

And his lawless, hey,

are we going to be fucking doing this?

We want both of you here, but are we going to be doing this?

Are we going to make money?

Okay, sorry.

Boom.

Done.

If you took a,

if you took a pen and you marked off from every wrestling card held in the world,

if through recorded history, every name of every person that it ever either had a physical fight with, threatened a physical fight with, or fucking wanted to goddamn have a physical fight with, and loudly proclaimed that,

another motherfucker in the wrestling business, you'd have never had a fucking show.

So that, you know, that was nothing unusual, but go ahead.

Well, that was it with CM Punk's quote.

Inflammatory words there.

More appropriately, his post on Instagram.

What followed that, apparently, is Dave Meltzer went on his website's radio show.

People pay for subscriptions and they get access to various things, including different radio shows.

So they got a paywall over there.

They got a paywall.

People pay them for a number of things, including the ability to go on a message board and say all sorts of things.

We'll talk more about that a little bit later.

But he apparently went on a show and referenced this comment about the Steve Kern book, which, again, he wrote the, CM Punk wrote the forward for.

and said this is a sign that CM Punk wants to come back, that he really wants to come back.

And in order to do so, he needs to apologize to the whole locker room.

What?

Yes.

Oh, boy.

Well,

and Dave knows that Tony's talking to punk.

So when he says Punk wants to come back, Dave knows that Tony is talking to Punk.

And this is the way it is.

But again, it's not like, oh, Mr.

Khan, please bring me.

Don't you think, honestly,

since Punk is sitting at home getting a check for multiple tens of thousands of dollars every week,

I don't know how to do that kind of math.

With a calculator.

Well, but you know what I'm saying?

I don't know how much giant fucking money he's getting every week to sit at home and be

no benefit to the company whatsoever by their choice.

And so it's like

he's not begging for his check back.

He's not begging for his money.

He's not begging.

The The injury,

which is the recovery time September, October, November, December, January, February, March, were pretty good.

And if anybody thinks that,

well, it's been reported that they have talked.

It's very fightful.

And the folks at Inside the Ropes have said that they've had several conversations between Tony Khan and CM Punk.

So one would think that there was something that was going to move out of that, that all of a sudden another detrimental story comes up because the one thing

that

the EVPs and their little buckaroos know is that if they tell Uncle Dave something, he will believe them wholeheartedly because he's a sap.

And he will repeat it.

It's not just the EVPs.

Well, you know what I'm saying.

Yeah.

And he will repeat it.

And then it will inflame CM Punk and Poke the Bear because he's not a person who likes to be disrespected or have all of this shit said about him in public when he doesn't do the same thing.

And that's how this all started.

And that's the continuing.

That's what started it.

That's what's continued this whole thing.

Every time it looks like that maybe they're on the verge, Tony and Punk might be on the verge of doing some business, then the fucking

little ragtag lollipop guild that runs his television has to do something on tv like they did wednesday night by the way when they had a shot of the production truck in the parking lot they leaned tables and cardboard up over punk's face on the side of the truck for the camera shot only person just conveniently

or a story like that comes out that it now makes punk's response which we'll get to in a second makes more sense of some inexplicable shit that they did on TV quite a while back.

But he has to come out and defend himself because he's not the one slandering these other fuckers in public.

He's apparently being professional and not talking to people about this, whereas they're feeding everything they can feed to the fucking guys that are willingly lapping it up and then spitting it back out.

And it pisses him off and he fucking fires back.

And then they can say, oh, well, Tony, look, he's goddamn, he's, he's still mad.

So

there's a bunch of fucking idiots around here.

He's the only one we don't hear from, you know, can I say something?

Because this is something I want to make sure is said.

Yeah.

Because I've reported about a lot of this stuff.

And someone show me where I've been wrong.

I've got good sources and I know how to gather information.

I've never spoken to CM Punk.

I've never heard from CM Punk.

I've never heard from anyone that I know of that's in CM Punk's.

whatever you want to call it, camp or wrestlers that are really close with them.

Everything I've said has been from the point of view of someone who's actually just tried to figure out the story.

Observation.

So the other day you brought up his comment, we'll talk about it in a minute, but when I tweeted out that it was nice to see him finally fight back, that's really what I meant.

Because I've seen all sorts of shit, whether it's in The Observer or just coming right out of Dave Meltzer's mouth or in various other places.

that I know is a spin that is wrong based on everything I know from what's been going on and what's happened.

And that's through never hearing about anything from the punk camp.

I hope he talks out more.

I hope he either confirms or says we're wrong about things.

You say he lashed out and then people said, oh, he's mad again.

This is the first time we've heard anything from him about this, really.

He made a joke at that combat show he did commentary on, but we never hear from punk.

We never do.

And the stories that we constantly see out there, or sometimes in a lot of cases, half the story.

And I'm not even talking about punk, but it'll be like, oh, this person did this, and they have this issue with punk, and then the story ends, not, and then punk was gone, and this person had issues with someone else.

That part is never really part of it, but there are certain wrestlers that get some protection from over there in the observer.

But I just wanted to point that out.

I never hear from CM Punk about any of the things I report.

And people accuse me of being someone getting stuff from punk just because what I report says that punk isn't the devil of professional wrestling.

Well, and then again, there's a lot that you can

not divulge, but a lot that you can glean from just looking at what the fuck's going on.

And that this should have already been settled long ago.

They need talent over there bad, as this past Wednesday night's TV program showed.

But nevertheless, so Punk commented on Kern's biography.

Dave

starts going on about, well, if he wants to come back, he wants to come back, but he's going to have to apologize to everybody for what?

For having his space invaded and being bum-rushed by a bunch of fucking

EVPs, employees of the company, but nevertheless, yeah, where's the apology from the good Christian boys?

Well, you know, they forgive and forget over there.

Yeah.

And all that stuff.

Some people pretend they're religious, but when you really look at their fucking lives and the way they behave and the way they do things, it has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ at all.

All right, but nevertheless,

so now

that the story is out that, oh, he's going to have to apologize and he wants to come back, but they covered his face up on TV.

What happened next, oh, great Brian Last?

That's where Mr.

Punk had to make a few things clear.

Well, no, that's not what happened.

That's not what Net.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I missed a step.

Again, going back to Dave Meltzer and Brian Alvarez's message board, a message board that people pay a membership to have access to, and then they can anonymously put whatever they want up there.

And typically, these things are left up.

It's very interesting.

But Dave went on there in a thread about all this punk stuff and his face being covered up on dynamite and said,

do you know why they didn't advertise Punk versus Moxley longer and why it had a short build?

Because Punk agreed to it.

Then AEW got a legal letter saying he wasn't down with it and wasn't doing it.

And they didn't know if he'd come until Tony put his foot down.

There are a lot of nice things I can say about him, and you could absolutely argue his position on Moxley was correct, but you can't argue he willingly did what he was asked in that scenario.

Okay.

So that's specifically, and I don't think you knew that or saw that, but that's specifically.

No,

I don't read Dave's tricklings anymore but

again that was the the

tv episode like a week or two before the pay-per-view where it was going to be moxley and punk but then suddenly we got moxley and punk and moxley beat the shit out of him like three minutes

and then a week or two later they have the pay-per-view match and that's where punk won but in the process hurt himself

so and we couldn't figure out at the time what in the flying fuck is Tony thinking, or why would you do this?

What's going on?

Apparently, now we have more insight in it from what Punk says Moxley's reaction was and how this whole thing came up.

But let's just remind everyone: what Dave Meltzer is saying is that the reason the match didn't happen was because Punk agreed to it and then had his lawyer send in a letter and refused to do it until Tony put his foot down and made him do it.

CM Punk responded on Instagram briefly in a post that was taken down.

Sigh.

Sigh.

I wasn't cleared to come back to wrestle yet.

Then, the plan was to wrestle at the pay-per-view.

I sat and listened to Moxley's Rocky 3 idea.

I explained how I'd never seen a Rocky movie

and thought the idea sucked.

But if the boss wanted to do it, whatever.

He said he wouldn't lose to me.

I'd never experienced someone refusing to lose to me.

I just laughed.

I asked Tony if this is what he wanted.

He said yes.

He's the boss.

So I said, okay, but I need to be cleared first.

They kept saying it could just be a squash.

So I didn't need to be cleared.

Wait, wait, you don't need to be medically cleared for a squash, Matt.

If you're the one taking the fucking bumps, you probably do.

They kept saying it could just be a squash, so I didn't need to be cleared.

I scoffed at that.

My health is more important.

Dave Meltzer is a liar.

Jericho is a liar and a stooge.

Boy, now tell you right there.

When you're a liar, that's one thing.

But if you're a liar and a stooge, well, you're just in a sad fucking state.

There were plans, but plans always change.

But I'll never put a company above my health ever again.

So again, we never hear anything from CM Punk.

There's CM Punk finally defending himself for once.

Explain to me what the fuck about what they did had anything to do with Rocky III.

In Rocky 3, I think this is what it would be.

I've seen Rocky 3.

It's been a while, but explain to me how there was similarities there.

I can't say about similarities, but in Rocky 3, Rocky gets destroyed in a squash match against Clubber Lang, Mr.

T.

Then he has to go train with Apollo Creed and learn a new way to fight.

And then he comes back and ultimately gets a victory, destroying his opponent, Klubberlang.

Okay, well, yes, but first of all...

Remember we talked about how what a rotten position that Tony had put himself and his company and Punk in because he didn't have a strong heel for Punk to come back and

defeat to not only as the interim champion to defeat and reunify the titles and blah, blah, blah.

Moxley was allegedly a babyface at that point, too.

Besides the fact

that did Clubber Lang, did they already have a match between Clubber and Rocky booked

and were selling tickets to it when 10 days ahead of time, they said, wait a minute, let's do this fucking fight in front of people at a press conference and have a sanctioned fight, and then Clubber will win that one.

And then 10 days later,

come back and remember Moxley was the interim champion, wasn't he?

Yes.

Wasn't it a match to unify the two belts?

Yes.

So

again,

it wasn't like, oh, we're having this.

And wasn't the original Rocky and Clubber fight, was that some kind of charitable situation they were doing or something?

I'm conflating that with Thunderlips.

Yeah, with Thunderlips was a charitable exhibition.

Yeah, but regardless,

the problem is Moxley thinks he's fucking clubber.

The problem is Moxley thinks he's a fucking wrestler.

But now we know that it wasn't Tony Kahn

being just weird and a bad booker and crazy.

It was Moxley basically saying, well, I got to fucking beat him first or elsewhere I'm not going to put him over.

And so they shoehorned that deal in

because Moxley had to have it.

Remember, I said, look, when he came out on the pay-per-view, I said, it looks like he's got job face on.

And he had job face, even though he just fucking beat the guy two weeks beforehand.

And this is the kind of shit that Tony thinks is not only good ideas,

but then

allows this stuff.

to be used to slander the biggest star that he's got who's not been on his television in seven months.

And then Punk has to set the record straight again

because he's being slandered in the press with the whisper campaign and the little things that they do to prick him on television.

And it sets back Tony's talks

because Tony has no balls, as we've come to find out, and will not put his foot down, will not make any decisions about anything.

And he allows this shit to go on.

Yeah, Tony is the problem.

Tony's the one person there who can actually squash everything.

Tony's the one person there who could have prevented all this from happening.

And

that's one of the reasons why they're going to, I'm positive, they'll find a way to settle with punk one way or the other, because the last thing they want is people talking about Tony's behavior throughout this thing.

Well, the last thing that they ought to want to do.

The first thing they ought to want is a name back on the television program.

The last thing that they ought to want is anybody talking about how anybody in that company is conducting themselves in any positions of responsibility, being revealed to the public, both just in terms of how stupid it makes everybody look and potential liabilities for things.

But that's, again,

you know what?

Even though Tony is the boss, and I say this in name only, even though he's the boss, he owns everything, he pays everybody, he doesn't have to go through a corporate infrastructure, he doesn't have to go through all of the various shit that publicly traded companies do, or Sinclair, when they bought Ring of Honor.

You remember, I told you a story about Adam Pierce and the merchandise weasel.

And it was the same, it's the wrestling business.

It's the same thing as the Steve Kern Coco Ware story, except it ended differently because in today's time,

we have either lawyers or human resources or corporate fucking structures in place in the wrestling business.

But when Sinclair bought Ring of Honor, the first announced team was set to be Adam Pierce and Kevin Kelly.

Dear old Adam from the WWE beleaguered manager role now.

And

I was told that there was problems.

I knew that there'd been problems between Adam and the previous Ring of Honor office.

And basically the guy that was still there was Ross Abrams, the merchandise weasel, the guy that went to the shows and sold the goddamn rags, paper, and pens, as Putnik would say, and filled fucking envelopes for mail orders at the office in Bristol.

The kind of guy you find on one of these message boards.

The kind of guy you find on one of these message boards with a fucking tube of clearosil in one hand and a goddamn fucking keyboard in the other one.

So Delirius and I went to Ross and we brought him over in the corner very respectfully.

We said, we want to let you know, I know you've had some problems in the past with Adam Pierce.

Well, he's coming in he's going to be the new color guy and i've talked to adam and he's willing to shake your hand and apologize for the previous interaction between you guys i'll tell you what it was i haven't said that they argued and adam pierce yelled at ross and said the next time i see you i'm gonna beat the out of you because i think it was over the phone right

that's it He just said, fuck you.

You're a no good piece of shit.

I'm going to beat the fuck out of you.

That's commonplace in the text messages of AEW personnel.

Well, I'm talking about it's the wrestling business, right?

Even if they had said fucking beat the fuck out of HOL, Adam would have beat the fuck out of him.

But you know what I'm saying?

Dude, Russ Abrams wasn't kicking anyone's ass ever.

Well, I know ever.

Anyway.

But we went to him and we said, Adam said he'll either

shake your hand and apologize to you and y'all can work together or he'll be glad to ignore you if you don't feel comfortable with that, whichever, because your merchandise, he's going to be TV.

You'll be in the same building, but you don't have to interact.

So we wanted to give you a courtesy heads up here.

This is what's going on and decide what response you would like from Adam and we'll go from there.

But nothing bad's going to happen and nobody's going to beat you up.

Okay, far as I was concerned, done, right?

So then I get the fucking phone call from gutless Gary Juster, who whenever a situation was bad, he could be counted on to make it worse by going to Starbucks and hiding and then saying, oh, well, it'll be okay.

And he said, well, Ross Abrams went over Joe Koff's head and called human relations at Sinclair Broadcasting.

Human resources.

Yes.

Whatever the fuck.

He's never had any human relations, Ross Abrams.

And I said, what the fuck is he?

I complain about Adam Pierce.

I said, well, fine, fuck him then.

We can get anybody to goddamn sell the merchandise.

It's not that.

Well, no, no.

I said, what, what?

No, they're not going to fire him.

I said, why wouldn't you fucking fire?

He not only, we told him what was going to happen and that we would take care of him.

Nothing bad is going to happen to him, but we gave him a courtesy talk.

He's now gone over Joe Koff's head and called Sinclair when he's only worked for this company for fucking four weeks or whatever.

And we're not going to fire his fucking little weasley ass?

Oh, goddamn.

I'll goddamn make him fucking hang himself in his closet by the time I get finished telling him what I think of him and everybody in his fucking family and everybody who's ever known this motherfucker.

Now he's goddamn fucking up my TV show.

I was going to go through the goddamn phone line.

And I said, no, no, he'll call human relations on you.

And it will all be in trouble.

I said, we are going to let this fucking dickless pussy hold us goddamn hostage and determine.

the color commentator of the television program because of human relations at Sinclair.

And everybody was so scared.

They just bought the company.

It'll be a big problem.

They'll think they're going to get sued.

So this fucking pimply-faced piece of shit with a dick the size of a fucking half a V and a sausage leeched two years of salary off of him before they finally fired him for cause because he was stealing from the company, taking merchandise from the warehouse and selling it mail order, using his own goddamn home address as the return address on the stolen merchandise.

But nevertheless,

he did that twice, blocked Adam Pierce,

because

it's not the wrestling business anymore.

It's a bunch of fucking sensitive, soft little pussies that want to whine and cry and complain to human resources or get their lawyer involved or whatever the fuck.

And this is the, it's,

I guarantee you that the Buckaroos, when they were around Ring of Honor the the first time, he was gone by the second time, were probably one of Ross's favorites because they're similar people.

Whiny little gutless pussies won't stand up for themselves face to face.

Anyway, it's just, you know, again, it all comes back to Tony Khan.

Tony Khan made all of this worse every chance he got.

And that wasn't his intention, but it says more about Tony Khan and his management skills and his interpersonal skills and his decision-making ability.

And it's ridiculous.

And we hear so many things since the very beginning, since before the beginning,

about Tony, good and bad, his love of wrestling and how he really wants to do this.

And then you see the finished product.

And then you see his behavior.

And then you just hear story after story after story.

You can ask everyone in the world to sign an NDA.

It's not going to to prevent stories of wackiness from getting out.

And,

you know, you said it way back about the all-out scrum, which, again, that didn't even start it.

It seems like there were guys who had a grudge against punk from day one.

Again, go watch that Bobby Fish match.

Yeah.

And then the Colt Cabana shit, a guy who is, even if you're his biggest fan, come on, completely useless in 2023 on major wrestling television.

Meaningless.

All of a sudden, that stuff started.

This stuff is happening with Moxley.

Before anyone thinks Jon Moxley's some, you know, just some innocent, nice guy who got swept up in this mean Phil Brooks stuff, has Moxley ever pulled this kind of shit before or since?

Where all of a sudden he wants to do things his way and he's refusing to lose?

That's a question that needs to be asked.

But I guess only Tony Khan can answer that.

And we know Tony's very selective in what he says.

But Punk had to deal with all this stuff.

You said it about all out.

He's sitting there saying these things.

You don't think he's been saying these things to Tony Khan?

You don't think Tony's heard them?

Tony didn't have the, oh my God, where'd this come from, face?

He had the, oh shit, I've heard this before face.

I don't think anyone goes out there and says that stuff if he doesn't think his boss agrees with him.

That's different than he's heard it before.

Does Tony agree with whoever he's in the room with because he's scared not to?

Who knows?

Tony's the issue here.

Tony's management or lack of management is the issue here.

And he's made all this worse.

And now it's ridiculous.

Because now, if Punk comes back, who's he going to work with?

I have to admit, they've kind of gone up and down in terms of people wanting to see him against the elite.

I think we've seen so much of the we've seen so much of the elite here lately.

Does anybody want to see any more of them to begin with?

I was was cheering when they carried the Buckaroos out in the meat wagon at the opening of the program.

I'm like, yes, we can avoid that.

And then they gave us everything else that we wouldn't want to see.

If you're a wrestler who keeps to himself and just wants to do his thing and have every segment be good, which is everything we've heard about CM Punk, do you want to return to the drama factory?

Because that's what it is.

It's Tony Khan's Drama Factory.

And there are certain people, certain cliques, they happen to be from Kookamunga,

but it's an extended clique, who have caused drama time after time after time.

And I understand because a lot of people are silent about it.

A lot of people are afraid to talk about these things.

It's natural.

People are working there.

They don't want to get out.

Oh, this person said this about this person.

But to a man, if you talk to people there, about who causes the problems,

has Phil Brooks made employees their cry?

Or have the elite ever made employees their cry from their behavior?

I'll ask that question.

And for those of you who think I just ask these things out of the blue, I usually ask questions I know the answer to.

So everyone wants to point the punk.

He doesn't defend himself.

He's a, whatever you want to say, a singular man out there in a political world of wrestling where you have to be friends with everyone.

and go along with everything.

If you know the other participants or if you know enough from everyone around the other participants, like Tony Khan and the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega,

and there's a lot more we can say about that, and even Moxley, then it becomes a little ridiculous, the whole idea that it's just bad guy Phil Brooks.

I'm not saying I agree with everything he did.

I'm not saying I would have done things the same way.

I'm not saying I wouldn't have gone even further, quite frankly, than him if those guys all bum-rush my fucking room.

But the idea that because people like these other guys, they're willing to ignore the facts of any of this is ridiculous.

And a lot of stuff hasn't been out there publicly, and it's a shame.

I put on Twitter the other day some of the AEW employee playbook, which specifically was showing.

I saw that, by the way, did they rip that off from football?

Because they keep saying team in a lot of it.

Well, again, it's Mega.

She's the attorney for this.

She's the attorney for that.

She's an attorney without terminology.

Tony,

I wouldn't understand Tony Khan as well as I do if I didn't go through Jeff Wilpon

running the Mets because his father let him run the Mets for a year.

I'm not even joking.

I'm not saying that as a joke.

No, I remember that.

And there was a member of the Wilpon family that a couple of guys in the business, what, about 10 or 12 years ago, were stupid enough to think was going to start this big promotion and give them all insurance and benefits and everything.

And that went far.

He has to apologize to the locker room.

I'm sorry that so so many of you don't understand what kind of business you're in and you think you're still at the romper room.

Can I ask you a question?

A very serious question.

Yes.

If you're Dave Meltzer,

and let's just say that Dave

recognizes, and I'm not sure he does, but let's just say for this example, Dave recognizes that he's being a little used by certain people.

And while that may have always been the case, and everyone uses everyone when it comes to wrestling journalism,

now it's affecting things like this.

Do you reassess the way you're conducting yourself and doing things?

Because at this point,

almost all of this punk, elite AEW drama,

the two sources at the very front aren't even the elite and punk.

It's Tony Khan for letting all this happen and Dave Meltzer for constantly fanning the flames, even if he doesn't mean to.

Well, because he's Tokyo Rose,

he's the propagandist

because he has decided which side of a

completely diametrically opposed conflict between two sides, he's decided which side he's on because that's the side that's nice to him and the side that puts him over and the side that makes him feel good.

And also, that's to be honest, the side that most of his readers are on because of the contraction of the wrestling business and the shrinking of it and the,

you know, the fucking fan base that's left.

They like a lot of the shit that he likes, and he's pleasing his readers and speaking to them.

And they have a crossover with his readers who have obviously cartoon minds and a lot of time on their hands now.

and the fucking cartoon wrestlers.

And so it's very synergistic amongst that.

So he's the supposedly independent journalist that's actually a house organ

unwillingly.

And people are saying, oh, Dave's on the payroll.

No, he's not.

He's doing this because he genuinely thinks these motherfuckers are his friends.

Just like Tony is paying all these fucking guys huge sums of money because he thinks they're his friends.

And Dave is doing this to protect his friends and his fucking business, his readership, readership, by keeping the only ones stupid enough yet to believe his goddamn seven-star drivel about Twinkletoes and the whole rest of this thing.

He's exposed himself.

It's so over the top.

If you heard that, oh, the goddamn Buckaroos drove over an old lady and three fucking orphans outside an orphanage in the street.

Well, they were crossing against the light, according to Meltzer.

All of a sudden, he doesn't critique matches over there.

He'll say the things he likes.

I read the house show report about the Britt Baker Anna J match.

Not one word of this was an epic disaster that people were laughing at.

Not one word of this clip went viral because these people were terrible in the ring.

He hasn't criticized any bad Jericho segments ever.

There are certain people that get protected.

Jericho gets upset when he's called names.

Now, we know that.

And by the way, if Punk goes back, that's going to be the first guy that's going to try to work with Punk.

Calling that one right now Jericho.

Well, yeah, because he wants to be in the main event of the fucking match, going to draw some money.

Listen, man, everyone knows I called you a cancer.

Why don't we play on this?

We can get Susan G.

Coleman involved.

No, Punk won't go for that.

He thinks they're phony, too, I bet you.

But the problem is, you know, and I've been reading The Observer a long time, and Dave talks a lot about Frank DeFord.

That's a different sports journalist I'm starting to think of with The Observer.

At the very end, Dick Young, who was a writer here in New York, started getting fed stuff by M.

Donald Grant, the chairman of of the board of the Mets.

They ran Tom Seaver out of New York.

The franchise of the Mets, they ran him out of New York.

Started planting things in the press about his wife being jealous of Nolan Ryan's wife and the money they're getting.

All these stories, they ran the best player in team history out of New York.

Dave's becoming like Dick Young at the end.

And anyone who knows baseball in New York knows what I'm talking about.

Now, remember, folks, it's not that Brian last called Dave Meltzer a young dick.

It's that he called him Dick Young.

Dick Young at the end.

At the end of his dick.

And I guess that makes Jericho M.

Donald Grant.

I don't know.

Jim, let's focus on some of the other things going on in and around the world of professional wrestling.

I have audio here that a lot of listeners have sent in.

A lot of people have wanted to get your take on.

The first batch of audio, Dave Meltzer.

No,

apparently went.

Now wait.

Now wait a minute.

Now Now, wait a minute.

Hold on here.

We're going to play

Dave Meltzer's audio from one of his programs.

Can we get sued for this?

Well, no, we're reviewing it.

It's fair use.

We're actually going to talk about what's said and we're going to talk about our thoughts on what's being said.

So we are in the...

No, no, no.

I'm not talking about Dave suing us.

I'm talking about English teachers across America suing us.

Why would they sue us?

For the way Dave speaks.

As Ain Lowley used to say, is he going to go around his elbow to get to his wrist before he makes a point on this?

I know the words he uses are English.

I've heard them used individually before, but never in the order in which they come out of his mouth.

I think we're safe from that lawsuit.

I could be wrong.

I have to check with Stephen P.

Dew, but I believe we are safe.

All right.

Well, is he going to make a point?

I don't know.

You see,

because here's the thing.

A lot of people got in touch with me the other day.

Right before the drive-thru came out.

Was it the drive-thru?

No, this is the drive-thru.

Right before the experience came out.

Yeah.

And they said Dave went on his show, and I heard different things from different people.

Dave apologized.

I heard there's a lot of hand-wringing going on.

Different people have different takes on these things.

I figured, let me hear it.

Jace Nacarado went through.

Jace Nacarado sent me notes.

I couldn't make rhyme or reason out of them.

And it's not Jace's fault.

So we have a little bit of audio.

Let's hear what this is, but this is going to be Dave and his co-host/slash partner, Brian Alvarez, business partner, Brian Alvarez.

Wait a minute.

I don't mean anything funny there.

I meant business partner.

I just said partner.

Well, why does your mind automatically go into

sexual things?

That's not where my mind is going here, but let's go to this.

And then we'll come back and try to tell you what they actually said after you hear what they said.

That's right.

Let's go to this.

Anything new on CM Punk today?

No, nothing new today.

No.

As far as,

you know, it's like this is twice that, like, I, I went through freaking guilt trip because the first time, if you recall, was when he did the thing, he did quote in Sports Illustrated.

And he's like, the Young Bucks called Dave Meltzer and blah, blah, blah, about whatever, which was a couple weeks before the big blow up.

And so I thought, you know, I just, oh, whatever, whatever he said.

And then everything happened there.

And you all know that, like, I like I

thought that it's like, man, I should have just told him that the young bucks had nothing to do with it.

Now, do I really believe anything would happen differently?

Probably not, but it's like you.

Well, let me stop.

Okay, well, yeah,

we're supposed to be doing our job as reviewers and or

commentators commenting on, I don't, I haven't yet understood what the fuck.

I know the subject he's talking about, and I still don't know what he's trying to fucking say.

Well, one thing he did say there is looking back now, he should have gone to CM Punk a year ago or whatever it was and said, I just want you to know the young bucks were not my source for, I guess, the Colt Cabana story originally.

Well, yeah, I guess we should have prefaced this because nobody would have been able to figure it out.

There's all kinds of drama been going on.

We talked about some of it on the last show with Punk having to refute

things that Dave brought up out of.

basically the ether because his sources told him these things when it appeared that it might be getting close to Punk coming back to work.

So they went to stir shit up and Dave went along with it and printed it.

We talked about that on the last program, where

upon at that point, Punk came back and said, no, Moxley wanted to do Rocky III and this and that and the other thing.

And now Dave is apparently saying he feels bad and is trying to somehow apologize for being in the middle of starting all of this shit to begin with.

Is that a clear summation?

And I already know what I just said.

No, it's not a clear summation, but I think to even try to make it more clear or less clear, we'll see how this goes.

What he's referencing here is the previous time.

This time now that got punk on Instagram to comment.

Wasn't in print.

This was on his message board.

That's the difference.

Ah.

But let's go back.

Let's hear a little bit more from Dave about this.

Just don't know.

And it's like, I kind of feel like I was, it wasn't my job to do it, but it kind of was.

You know, not kind of job, but I just, I just felt really bad and real guilty about like, I should have said, like, these guys had nothing to do with this.

But whatever.

So then this time, you know, it's like I did a

message board post that I really wish I never did because so much has happened since then, you know, in so many destructive ways.

Not just him.

But

let me stop there.

That's interesting.

That's interesting.

Because so many people have jumped on Dave's behavior in the last several years, specifically on Twitter, where

I don't know what you would call it, and I'm sure he may see it differently than other people perceive it, but rudeness, snarkiness, condescension, talking down to people, insulting people.

But I mean, not even.

It's like not even people that are going after him

or people with a platform.

It's just everybody that says something that contradicts an opinion that he has given or written.

He will search them out, find them, argue it down to the goddamn nub.

Or if he gets on, like when he got on my bandwagon there for a while.

Where it was like, hey, Dave, what'd you have for lunch?

Well, Cornette doesn't know.

Just apropos of nothing.

Yeah,

whatever.

And he just,

this is a guy that writes tens of thousands of words a week and does these podcasts and obviously watches a lot of fucking modern wrestling.

And he has the time to argue with people on Twitter that have three followers that tweet him that they don't like the fucking buckaroos or whatever.

And he will beat him to death with it.

It's, does he ever sleep?

Is that the problem?

He's not sleeping.

Well, we'll talk about Helix Helix in a little bit, but that's kind of the point, too.

He behaves one way on Twitter, and a lot of people have pointed to it and said it's a strategy.

Dave has said that this has gotten me more, I don't know, subscribers, I guess would be the word.

So obviously there is a business aspect to it.

But his message board, it's a little different.

That's not a big open forum.

That is something that people pay.

to get into.

There are people who subscribe to their website, him and Brian Alvarez,

and the message board is a feature that they pay for.

So behind that paywall, you even get a different Dave.

Remember, so much of the drama that he stirred up with you started because we started getting people sending us things from his message board that he was saying in private at the same time he was emailing you all sorts of pleasantries all the time and compliments on the show.

Pleasantries.

Yes, you are correct.

And

then his insidious nature came to light, and he wouldn't fucking leave it alone.

But that again, that's

this message board that he's got.

This is where he writes this stuff.

This is where his most devoted fans are because they have to pay to read it and to participate in it.

And that's where this latest

inflammatory business

came up that Punk then had to jump on and

respond to and now dave feel and then he said he feels bad he should have never wrote it well maybe you should have asked somebody else besides whoever it is you're talking to before you did write it maybe you should think twice before anything you put on social media dave but let's go back to the audio you know somebody just going oh you know like you know one thing we can say for is like it was all smooth as far as the uh you know the the match that he lost to moxley the real quick match before he beat him for the title and i just you know kind of said it's you know, wasn't, it really wasn't that smooth because it really wasn't.

There was a lot going on.

And,

you know, there was, there was drama and everything.

And when I said it, you know, I mean, it wasn't writing a news story or anything like that.

But when I said it, I never said, you know, a lot of it had to do with his injury.

And it did.

You know, it's like in his, in his defense, he was coming back from a broken foot.

And it was a serious injury.

Let's stop it right there.

That's exactly right.

He told one perspective of the story, completely leaving out his defense, as you put it, which was that he had a broken foot.

He had a broken foot.

And the people

that wanted to squash him were saying he didn't need to be medically cleared to participate in a squash.

To which point I responded, you do if you're the one taking the fucking bumps.

Yeah,

and now

we find out.

And remember,

as several people pointed it out on Twitter also, remember I said in that pay-per-view match, it looked like Moxley came out with job face.

And apparently,

because Tony

was so,

Tony Khan was so out of control of his locker room that he's got Moxley, who's the interrim champion, wrestling without a contract at all.

He's got Punk, who's not medically cleared to come back and get the belt back,

that Moxley doesn't want to put Punk over until Punk puts him over because of Rocky III, the Rocky III defense.

And

Tony can't make Moxley do anything because he's not under contract.

But here in the meantime, your big fucking babyface star is coming back from injury and he can't.

fucking win the title back that he never lost to begin with unless he does a squash job for this delusional fucking plumber that you've got working for you under no contract that could go anywhere he wanted at any time he wanted.

What the what kind of fucking

booker of the year?

Jesus, H.

Christ.

Go ahead.

Well, Dave didn't put any of that in his post on the message board as well, but let's go back to the audio.

And, you know, that played into it, you know, as far as you know, when he was going to be ready.

And it, you know, like the angle,

whatever you think of the angle, I mean, the angle could have worked.

I mean, the way the angle was, and it's like the whole Rocky III thing, it's like, if you had more time,

the angle probably would have, well, it would have been better if you had more time.

But because of the injury, you didn't have more time.

And yeah, they could have, there's things they could have done.

But the whole point.

So

in Rocky III,

let me get this.

In Rocky III, was Clubber Lang the interim champion?

And

everybody's drawing all these parallels to Rocky III.

No.

No, it's not.

No, there's not.

I don't see any.

The one question I have now coming out of this,

there was a spectacular segment with Punk and Ace Steele.

Remember that?

Where Ace Steele was in the ring and then Punk came out and he slapped Punk in the face?

Yeah.

Was that part of the Rocky III storyline?

Because remember, in Rocky 3.

Well,

there was the surrogate Mickey.

Well, Mickey dies in Rocky III.

Clubber Lang

causes his heart attack in the back.

Was Ace Steele going to die in AEW TV?

Like, where's the story?

Apparently, if Moxley had his way, no, the whole thing, Clubber Lang is an awful monster heel.

He's not a fucking babyface like Moxley was.

Remember, that's why we said the whole thing's fucked up.

Punk, the babyface champion, coming back to win the title, title, but he never lost in the ring against another babyface.

And then we found out that the fuck that the babyface

doesn't want to do a job for Punk unless Punk does a job for him first in a squash.

Well, boy, that's a revolutionary angle.

Hey, before I put you over, I'm going to beat you in about two minutes flat in the middle of the ring.

People won't see that coming.

No, they sure didn't.

And I refuse to do it any other way.

Yeah, there's no similarities with Rocky 3 otherwise than in

the deluded mind of Jon Moxley, who maybe has been down under that sink sniffing the fucking liquid plumber too much.

Well, it's nice to think an episode of AEW could have ended with CM Punk and Carl Weathers fighting it out at the end, but let's go back to some more audio from Dave.

Point is, is that like, I, it's, it's like a, a, a message board post that I didn't need to make, and I didn't mention, you know, the, the fact that the injury was part of it in the fact that there was drama which there was so it's just like you know there was and so I kind of I feel really bad about it and then you know he goes and like I it's it's not like um oh you know like him saying you know Dave Meltzer's a liar I mean that's not that's just you know I hear stuff like that on a daily basis.

And it's, you know, I try never to do that, but, you know, it's like, whatever.

It's like I felt like, you know what?

I

wasn't really thinking.

I didn't really tell the whole story.

And that's the thing.

And then everything happens from there.

And it's.

So, I mean, basically, and I think he's trying.

I actually think Dave's doing

for Dave as good.

He's trying as hard as he can to say he's sorry.

I thought you were going to say he's trying as hard as he can to be clear.

He's trying to be aware of his behavior, it sounds like.

And whether he is or isn't.

Hey, you know, if he hits that awareness mode,

then maybe his whole world will change well let's get away from raycon and let's get back to dave con here any thoughts on this

i still don't know what the fuck he's saying

this is he speaks at colleges

apparently let's hear a little bit more of his speaking it's uh you know and again it's almost the same thing because it's like you know okay you know i mean it's it's funny how different people take take what i call the shrapnel because i remember one time you know, somebody was mad at me, and I go, What are you mad at?

And then they said, You know, it's like, Well, Brian said, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, I'm not Brian.

And by the way, and it wasn't fair to what you said either, but whatever, it has nothing to do with it.

And so then it's like, what the fuck?

You know, I kind of blasted Moxley to a bid and certainly blasted Jericho.

And it's like, this was, you know, at the time when everyone is trying to,

you know,

see if you can make up and make this thing work and do the best thing for the company.

And you were used as a tool to get the drama out there.

Is everybody trying or is one side trying and the other side is getting using tools to get drama out?

You know, the other thing too, and, you know, we'll talk more about this because we have Jon Moxley audio to play too.

So I may say this a few times.

This all comes back to Tony Khan.

This all comes back to from the very beginning of CM Punk getting there, he has managed things wrong even while things were going right.

And

if you go look at the Bobby Fish match,

if there was or wasn't an element that wanted CM Punk there, if you're the boss, you're the one that needs to snuff that out or needs to figure out what you're going to do.

But all of the drama.

I actually think if you really think about it, Punk and the Bucks and Omega and Moxley and Jericho, they're all pawns in this fucking game.

The drama's been allowed to happen because of Tony Khan.

And in a lot of cases, it's been spread because of Dave.

And also,

a lot of people are still not getting the picture of Jericho's involvement in this when, no, he wasn't in the fight.

And he wasn't in the press scrum.

He didn't, you know, have any part in the press scrum or whatever.

But have you noticed that

anytime that Punk fires back at what he perceives to be people on a slander campaign against him, people try and get people to call him a cancer in the locker room, the people that are behind it, Jericho always gets mentioned.

And you know, a lot of times when somebody is engaging in a slander campaign against you at your workplace, you might know that they are doing it, but the general public doesn't.

So they might not understand why you would mention somebody like that, but you know who the fuck's putting the mouth on you behind your back, as Dennis Coraluzzo used to say.

And

so I find it interesting that Jericho adopts this, oh, I'm so innocent.

I'm above all.

I don't want to get involved in this.

But he's always the one mentioned when somebody fires back from the other side.

Because he's always involved.

Let's go to hear some more audio.

Then this happens, which just, you know,

how it's going to turn out, who the hell knows, but it certainly is never a good time to do that.

And Jericho Jericho had absolutely nothing to do with this message post, nor did Moxley, you know.

And it's just so let's right now, let's circle around that real quick.

This message board post, he's already said the Bucks from previously had nothing to do with it.

Moxley had nothing to do with it.

Jericho had nothing to do with it.

If we're going to assume that punk had nothing to do with it, considering it wasn't favorable to him, then somebody not related to anything involved in this told him something and he didn't ask anybody that was involved in it before he talked about it.

Or it's Tony Kahn.

Let's go to more audio.

Just like,

whatever.

Now it's like, oh, God, you know, I just, I just didn't like this.

I'm just really sad that it

happened this way.

You know, I want the best thing for the business, both companies.

I'm happy WWE is doing great.

And I was happy, shoot, I was really happy watching,

you know, Wednesday and CNAW get the good rating and the good rating pattern.

This is the weirdest apology ever.

He was throbbing happy over that.

I mean, there's a little bit more.

I'm looking through the notes here.

Brian Alvarez yells, don't pull me into this.

He doesn't want to be involved.

But Dave, I mean, the recurring message over and over again is he's sorry for a message board post he shouldn't have made or he didn't have to make.

He phrased it a few different ways.

The question is, does Dave accept his role in stirring up all the drama over the last year and a half?

I don't hear that.

I hear him talking about this particular incident.

I don't hear him.

I don't hear him grasping the whole full concept of what the fuck's been going on because then he would be saying the same thing we are.

Look how far Tony Khan has let all this shit slide down the hill.

You know, that's to me still the big thing.

Because for everyone that looks at the drama publicly being displayed or talked about now, this is not new.

We've talked about it on this show, going back several years now.

We've talked about the problems with Tony's management.

We talked about drama backstage.

There's a reason Cody's not there anymore, ladies and gentlemen.

And until people can say Tony is the problem, because Tony is not a boss.

Tony's not a good manager.

And Tony's not a good booker.

He may be an okay owner and promoter, but look at what's happening with his hands all over this shit.

And we'll talk about Moxley again in a little bit, but this is all because Tony doesn't know what he's doing and he's not capable of it.

He's got the money and none of the skills.

But until people say that, until people want to stop pretending that Tony, well, you know, booking was better last year than it is.

No, the booking's been shit from the beginning.

It's just they were more successful when they had bigger stars made event in a pay-per-view.

But until people can actually say that all all of these problems,

if this was Vince McMahon's locker room, it would have been snuffed out.

It wouldn't have gotten to this point.

It wouldn't have gotten to the point a year ago.

It all comes back to Tony Khan.

Comments.

Oh, I thought we were going to play some more fucking audio of

Uncle Dave and cousin Droplip analyzing this.

Well, let's give it a second or two.

Let's see if they add anything new.

Which is a really good story.

You know, like, it's like it's, it's the, the match worked.

You kind of made a star in one night.

You know, we talked about that was a phenomenal match.

So everything was kind of looking, you know, there's always ups and downs, but that was like a real up.

And then now, you know, who the hell knows

what's going on?

I don't know what.

I am.

I am.

Don't pull me into it.

I have to pull into it.

I do not.

I do not know.

You're involved in it.

Don't say, don't pull me into it, Brian.

You're involved in all this.

Oh, my God.

I think that clip

you should save of Uncle Dave just going, I don't know what's going on.

And I want to say something too.

And I always got along with Brian Alvarez.

I haven't talked to him in many years.

And beyond the issues that come at us since AEW, I never had a problem with Dave Meltzer.

But they've complained, or I've heard Brian Alvarez, I think, make a comment, and other people in wrestling about the Cornet fans, whatever you want to call them, the cult of Cornet, the Cornette fans, the biggest listenership in the history of professional wrestling audio.

And like any fan base,

we've got some nutty fans.

Most are harmless, but every now and then there's a nutty fan who says something stupid.

Stupid.

Some people anywhere that you go in the world are nuttier than squirrel shit.

And we get a few of them.

And you know what?

We don't typically embrace that.

Remember, there was a guy a while back in, I think, Miami, jumped the rail at AEW, almost got to Jericho.

He said on Twitter that he did it.

He was a member of the cult of Cornette.

We both denounced him and blocked him.

And even Jericho came out to his credit and said, Jim Cornette would have never wanted you to do that.

Not a real fan of his.

And then come to find out that he also, I think, claimed he did it for a few more people.

He was trying to hit everybody's fan base.

But where we can and where we see things, we jump in there and correct stuff.

We have a Facebook group right now.

It's got over 6,700 people in there right now with tens of thousands trying to get in.

I was about to say, and we're trying, folks.

We're trying to get those doors open.

And with a small group of moderators, we do our very best to keep this thing civil, keep the conversations good, keep the laughter up, keep the information coming in.

And we've done a pretty good job.

Brian Alvarez and Dave Meltzer have a message board.

Where, like you said, the most devoted of the Wrestling Observer newsletter readers go.

Not every observer reader.

It's a very small group that's on there.

But it exists for a reason because they know it's a selling point to get people to use that message board.

People want to pay for that right.

Maybe interact with Dave or Brian Alvarez.

So, for anyone who wants to say anything about the cult of Cornette, which is an incredibly large audience, and every now and then we get a few loose nuts and we try to do what we can to correct them.

And it's not just people, you hear people like, oh, he's parroting Jim Cornette.

Listen, it's the way fucking pop culture works.

When Chevy Chase took off and people started stealing his line, no one said, you're parroting Chevy Chase.

It's just the way things work when things are popular.

But for anyone to point their finger at the cult of Cornette, we do our best to regulate and keep people in line.

That may not mean they like the wrestling you like, but we do what we can.

They charge admission.

We don't charge admission.

What you do on Twitter and Facebook, we do what we can.

They charge a fee to enter the gate

for people people to go there and post all sorts of shit.

The other day it was sent to me and I went and looked because I've been a member since it's first started.

I've known Brian Alvarez from back then.

He used to send me my OVW tapes, actually.

Funny enough.

Wait a minute.

Where was he getting them from?

Son of a bitch, bootlegging?

Oh, go ahead.

Well, he was sending me my OVW tapes, which I was very happy for because that was the M ⁇ M period.

It was a great period of time there.

But Someone in one of the posts called me a bigot and a racist.

You know, this is in the conversation of me not liking their wrestlers and me talking about stuff on these shows, honestly, because I don't care if I'm friends with wrestlers.

I'm going to tell you the truth.

Someone on that board, some nut,

probably lonely, hiding behind an alias, said I'm a bigot and a racist.

If that was on the Cult of Cornet Facebook group, that comment would have been taken down.

That person probably would have been thrown out if that was about Dave Melcher or Brian Alvarez, because it's ridiculous.

Well, but now, but wait a minute.

These are the same people that wished us aggressive ass cancer and named the next great punk band in the process.

So

you mean to tell me that over there on the message board at that Alvarez and Meltzer are operating, that they're charging people to be a part of, that they're actually allowing people to go on there and slander other people, call them horrible names and not even trying to moderate them in any way, shape, or form.

Well, they have moderators there, but these comments are left up.

And I know we know that because we've now put together a giant file of horrible things that have been said.

That's the point.

If you want to say, oh, Jim Cornette's awful because he hates the wrestling I like, or he doesn't like Japanese women wrestling, if you think he's horrible for that, that's fine.

Everyone's entitled to be a boob.

Have fun, Kate.

I'm not saying you are, I'm saying they are.

Will you relax?

Oh, I lost you around a far turn.

You are entitled to be a boob if you want, Jim.

Well,

I'm entitled.

And do you like boobs a lot, boobs a lot, boobs a lot?

But for people to pay a fee to go on their branded message board and say stuff like that because we disagree about the wrestling.

And again, Dave's been on that message board.

Dave started this punk drama again on that message board.

Dave was running his mouth about Jim on that message board behind a paywall, hiding.

So I don't want to hear any more shit about the Jim Cornette audience.

The only thing you need to know about our audience, it's much bigger than yours.

Yeah.

But don't blame us.

We don't charge them a fee.

And everyone says a blue vein shows up on the edge of it.

But again, just to reiterate once again, don't say anything bad about this audience.

It's bigger than yours.

We've got less nuts than yours.

What does that say?

Yeah.

A lot of things happening in the world of professional wrestling, and seemingly in the last couple of days, one of the reasons we're recording this update, a lot happening around the world of CM Punk at AEW.

Once again, here we go again.

I guess it starts with a report yesterday came out from Fightful Select, I believe it was Sean Ross Sap, reporting that CM Punk has been in talks with AEW.

He's eager to come back to AEW.

They're trying to get him to sit down with Chris Jericho to hash things out.

And he's willing to do business with whoever, the Bucks, Omega.

I don't know about Jericho.

We'll see.

But the Bucks and Omega and the people that you think he would have a natural conflict with because of everything that happened behind the scenes.

So why don't we start with that?

The report that seemingly a punk return is imminent, with some reports saying that it's coming up at an upcoming AEW show in Chicago.

What are your thoughts on all this coming out?

Well, but we've this is not really, when you think about it, new news because we've heard a few times that there's been conversations between Tony Khan and CM Punk.

And every time we hear that,

then

the propaganda arm of the EVPs out there in Campbell by the Sea, California, you

Does anybody, even the impartial observers now, let's say, does anybody not think

that Uncle Dave is the Jerry Mahoney to the EVPs, Paul Winchell?

And Google it, kids.

It's going to be hilarious.

But he's the living-point lookout, Paul Winchell.

And that's the thing is that

every time that there is some public indication, some report that Tony and CM Punk had had a long talk or that this is coming closer to fruition.

Then immediately something comes out from Uncle Dave's side on behalf of the EVPs

that

is meant to either inflame Punk to defend himself and rightfully so, like he did a week or two ago when the fucking plumber was running his pie hole, or

as we talked about a few weeks ago, they start having a preemptive strike by putting out, well,

as long as Punk's willing to apologize, apologize for what?

Not suing Tony Kahn and his company under the fucking courthouse?

Is that what he has to apologize for?

Here's a guy who probably, because he's proud, doesn't want to go out of the wrestling business like this, where because of the children he worked with,

people think he's a cancer because he's not one that runs his mouth in public.

He, all the other fucking side, does that.

So they've buried him and buried him when he defends himself.

People are saying, oh, see there?

You can't fucking trust Punk.

He's going to, you know, get mad and cause an issue.

Yeah, he's going to get mad when people are lying about him.

So.

Every time that it looks like that Tony has done the right thing because Punk is not wanting to fucking leave wrestling like that with that kind of reputation.

But also,

I think what everybody overlooks is Punk is getting a check every week or every two weeks, whatever their pay cycle is, for what amounts to more than seven figures a year, right?

Or in the seven figures a year to do nothing, to sit at home.

He had an injury.

That's been seven months ago.

I bet you he's probably okay by now.

But now it comes down to the fucking cowardly, gutless, ballless.

If you took all six of the balls that the EVPs allegedly possess and rolled them at a fucking drinking straw, it'd look like six kernels of corn rolling into a storm drain.

They're so scared he's going to beat them up again or he's going to fucking show them up or he's going to outdraw them.

or outwork them or whatever.

They're so scared about him.

Every time it looks like there's movement for Tony Khan to get some return on his investment of seven figures a year, sending this guy a check to sit at home because his fucking EBPs are butthurt,

then something gets out to where to stir things up and buddy the water and screw up Tony Khan's business and his dealings.

He's trying to make a deal to either get some value for the fucking money that he's spending

or to get some fucking closure with the open-ended situation he's got with punk.

He's under contract.

He has to pay him, play him, or cut him.

And this guy's willing to be a professional, come back and earn his money.

And the other guys are running from him like their heads are on fire

because they're afraid either he's going to beat them up for real or he's going to beat them up in the fucking ratings.

So

it shouldn't surprise anybody by now that every time it looks like this might be worked out to AEW's benefit, Tony Kahn's benefit, how would you like, Brian, to be writing a check to somebody for over a million dollars a year and then just them sit home and cash it when it comes in the mail?

When they're willing to come back and fulfill their part of the bargain, but Pansy Dan and his fucking two friends are scared.

They're scared.

You know what?

As Ernie Ladd used to say, if you're scared, say you're scared.

if you're a mouse squeak

right and the other thing is if you're Tony Khan you can't be happy that every time you think you have a compromise and a solution something happens that seems to poison the well

but he he can't be too unhappy because he won't blister and and discipline the people that are causing it look at the very end If you're someone in the Bucks camp who thinks it's all punk's fault, and if you're someone who's in the punk camp and you think it's all the Bucks and Omega's fault, you're all wrong.

It's Tony Khan's fault that it got to this point and that it's still happening.

He still hasn't been able to stop this.

This is still happening.

He can't say, you blithering simpletons, I'm paying this guy a fortune.

He said he'll work with you.

You don't want to work with him.

Fuck you.

I won't pay you anymore because he drew me more money than you ever have.

That's what I want to talk to you about.

The idea that punk is willing to work with whoever it may be that's best for,

I hate to use the terms, it's such a cliche now, best for business, whether it's Omega, whether it's the Bucks, whatever it may be.

We're hearing that the feeling may not necessarily be reciprocated from the other side.

So to look at it from the other side,

if the Bucks and Omega simply refuse to work with CM Punk, should that be said?

Instead of this constant back and forth, he's willing to do this.

They don't know if they want to.

It kind of has to be settled.

Well, and who do you think, is there any problem with that, with someone saying they don't want to work with someone else?

Again, they stormed into his locker room before he threw the first punch.

But is there a problem with a wrestler saying, I don't want to work, or multiple wrestlers in this case, three guys potentially saying, I don't want to work with this guy?

Okay, there are a number of reasons, and especially a main event wrestler,

should be taken seriously when they say, I don't want to work with somebody.

Whether it was when when Steve Austin didn't want to work with Brock Lesnar because they were fucking with Steve and he knew it, but also he knew that Steve Austin versus Brock Lesnar is a pay-per-view match.

We're not doing it on free raw.

And he went home and he said, since then, he handled it wrong.

He shouldn't have just gone home.

He wasn't going to do the match, but he should have handled it differently.

But that's an example of a guy saying, I won't work with somebody for the right reason.

You're giving it away.

We could all make money with this.

I don't believe in it.

Or

conversely,

if you've got a mate, when Brock Lester just said,

Yeah,

you, I'll work with Bray Wyatt.

He's, you know,

what's that going to do to my career?

And he's the shits.

That's another good, legitimate reason because

sometimes a guy might say that, and it might not be true.

In this case, it was true.

It would have probably damaged Brock's reputation to work with Bray Wyatt.

So he said, no, that's a legitimate reason for a top guy to turn something down.

And there's also a top guy that somebody might say, well, we want you to work with, you know, Johnny Dipshit and put him over in five minutes.

And then it's the old ad don't work for me, brother, because if you're a big star and it's a nobody, whatever,

that's a, that's a palatable reason.

But examine this.

They're in the wrestling business to make money.

People have fucking fights and have since the dawn of fucking time in wrestling and in all sports, football players, basketball players.

You see it all at the bench clearing and baseball.

What happens when those guys that were on the opposite sides of that bench clearer end up on the same team?

They still going to fight or are they going to work together?

One guy's going to fucking hit the ball.

The other guy's going to catch it, whatever the case, because that's their job.

And

it doesn't, there's no danger that the one guy is going to take a bat and finish the job from five years beforehand when they were on different teams.

They're professionals.

They had a fucking fight because they're athletes.

That's the problem.

Again, to use a line from Bill Watts, if the Bucs or Kenny were in a men's locker room in wrestling 20 years ago or in any probably professional sport, maybe even still to this day, they'd be whistling Stranger in Paradise.

They think it's all, it's fun and games and everybody dances and plays together because this is community theater.

No, motherfucker.

You want to play a pro wrestler, you want to play a pro-athlete on TV,

then you got to put up with things that happen between pro-athletes.

They have fights, they get over it, and they fucking agree to work together and move on.

So that's the issue here: is that one guy says, I'm in a wrestling business and shit happens, and now

we have an opportunity to capitalize on it with the potential biggest money-drawing match that AEW has ever been able to put together.

They did a million dollars with punk and fucking page.

They did a million dollars with punk and MJF.

Imagine what they could do with, and I believe a couple other people are

amenable to this match also, Punk and FTR versus the Buckaroos and Kenny.

And you'd get all the AEW fans that would buy it anyway.

And then you get the fucking fans that buy it because Punk's back.

And then you get the people that say, you know what?

Even though I don't really like that promotion and want to watch their pay-per-views, somebody might go off and punch somebody in the face for real.

And I probably need to see that live.

That's called taking advantage of fucking reality in a working fashion to draw money in the wrestling business.

And that's what it seems like that

the EVPs, for their own selfish interests, don't want to make Tony any of his money back that he's been paying them and punk.

And you think that fucking Kenny Olivier versus El Hijo del Vikingo

would outdraw a six-man between the EVPs and punk at FTR on pay-per-view with this fucking history?

Fuck you.

No, the match that people are pitching is Kenny Omega versus Will Osprey.

Oh, it's the same thing with a fucking shorter name.

Who gives two flying shits?

It's a mark match for the audience that already watches and buys everything they do.

And most wrestling fans are going, here we got another goddamn case of competitive parkour.

Do you think the Bucks and Omega would dismiss this, turn this down, refuse it, whatever it may be, if there weren't guaranteed contracts in AEW?

And now, of course, everyone wants to be guaranteed they're going to make money.

WWE has their downside guarantee.

But if you're guaranteed a flat amount of money besides merchandise, you don't have to care about if this house will do good or not.

You're still going to get paid the same thing.

Yeah, which is really what led to

a lot of guys malaise in the wrestling business when they first came in a while back.

But in this 30 years ago, you know, guys automatically, especially in WCW, were like, Vince had the right idea.

I'll give you a minimum, but you can make more than that if you fucking get the spot and work hard.

Whereas everybody in WCW knew we're just going to make our salary, so we'll just fucking manipulate this to our own purposes.

But with,

again,

I honestly think that all three of those fucking knuckleheads would take less money if they get their entrance music and their custom-made belts so that they can have championship titles with their friends and do their matches with their kids they like.

I think they'd take less money.

Of course, they've never told Tony that.

But think about this.

He's paid these three more money than they've ever seen in their lives and hired family members and friends as well.

Oh, yeah.

Family members and friends of every single one of them.

That's right.

And for that, they get a chance to actually be part of what may be.

the biggest money match they could put together, but they're scared that he's going to beat them up for real.

And they know they can't do anything about it again.

And

they're pissed and their feelings are hurt.

Their feelings are hurt.

They're so hurt.

Fuck your fucking feelings.

If I'm paying you a million dollars or whatever the fuck, I don't give a fuck about your feelings.

Your feelings are being soothed by my million dollars.

Well, Jim, before we go too much further, I should bring this up because this is, again, how shit gets going.

Deadspin put up an article earlier today.

CM Punk is is gaslighting AEW.

What?

This article was retweeted by Brandon Cutler,

who wrote, someone gets it.

So here you have someone who is only in AEW because he's the longtime Stooge or friend, whatever you want to call it.

He's their Stooge.

He always has it.

He went to grade school with them.

Not even high school.

He went to grade school with them.

Brandon Cutlett has a job on a national television wrestling promotion because he went to school with some of the guys and he was the guy who on their behalf attacked jim ross a few years ago when he made a comment about all the dives and here he is yeah apparently this tweet has already been taken down

boy i'm i'm glad all these some bitches know how to take their tweets down i don't really know how to do that i just let them hang out there but they they get bad feelings about him real quick Let's talk about Dave Meltzer and his role in all this because a ton of listeners have been sending me audio and I've heard a little bit of it.

We'll play some of it here on the show.

We'll review it.

But Dave Meltzer, as soon as this news came out from Fightful,

that CM Punk, a return is imminent, discussions are underway.

Dave Meltzer had some comments on it.

I'm going to play you.

These are from the Meltzer said what Twitter account,

which apparently follows the travels and

travails of Dave Meltzer.

I will start with this one.

Let me see if I could play this and if you could hear it, Jim.

You know, if you just go in there and make amends, I mean, there's always ways to do it if you really want to do it.

Going, doing it this way tells me that it's still a power play of trying to make other people look bad, you know, in the little game.

You know, the thing with the end of the game is.

All right, let me stop it here because apparently this is not the beginning of it.

There's a lot of audio here.

Let me start.

Let me go to this.

This one should.

We'll come back to that other one.

I'm already gobsmacked.

Well, what's the latest on punk and FTR?

You tell me what's the latest.

How come I have to tell you?

Because you know more than me.

Well, I mean, I don't know if I know more than you.

Okay, no, I'm not going to listen to that one either.

Let's go back over here.

I'm over here now.

Let's go to this one again.

You know,

if you just go in there and make amends, I mean, there's always ways to do it if you really want to do it.

Going, doing it this way tells me that it's still a power play of trying to make other people look bad, you know, in the little game.

you know and the thing with the end of the game is is that i

i don't believe that they want to work with them as much as they want to get rid of them you know and he's saying that who now too many pronouns pal cm punk and ftr are not truly interested in working with the bucks and omega this is all a plot to drive them out of aew

By making them look bad.

Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Let me make a kind of number one, we couldn't possibly be that lucky.

Number two, drive them out of AEW.

Where are they going to go?

They're going to sit out in a parking lot and sell pencils out of a tin cup until somebody lets them back in the building.

He said, talking about making amends and blah, blah, blah.

I didn't see anywhere where Punk said, maybe he has.

I don't know.

He said, oh, I'd love to apologize to those guys.

For what?

He has said, and it's been reported publicly.

He has said to Tony Khan, he's willing to come back to work and he's willing to work with these people.

He didn't say he was willing to come back and be their friends.

He has nothing to apologize for.

If he wanted to, that'd be a bonus.

But what is all this apologizing bullshit?

When a guy owns a company and he's paying people this much money and they've had a fight, he sits them down and he says, okay, I need everybody here.

But

who's willing to work with each other and who's not?

The guy that's willing to work with everybody?

Okay.

I'll take you.

You guys don't want to?

Well, good.

See you later.

What the fuck?

It's up to them to make that decision.

If they say, okay, we'll be professional too.

We're not going to apologize to him either, but we'll work together and we won't try to fucking break anybody's neck.

Well, then that's fine too.

I don't want them to be friends if I'm the boss.

I don't care about their personal life.

I want them to earn the money I'm paying them and draw me some money.

And then it comes down to

who's willing to do that and who's not.

And nobody said they were trying to run them out of AEW, although that would be a wonderful fucking side effect

but it's ridiculous the drama from these childlike minds and when

anything that might potentially make them look like they're not the king shit of all starts coming to pass they try to poison it i'm sorry go ahead let's hear more from dave about the unprofessional power play by cm punk and uh

and apparently just dax harwood i'm looking here what meltzer said what had to say about this.

Let's go to this.

Like the idea of doing this.

They really want to work with him.

You know, all they got to do is they got to go up to him and they see him every week at TV and just go, dude,

you know, let's work together.

You know, and how can we work?

That's all it takes, dude.

Let's work together.

Well, they don't see him every week at TV anyway because Punk ain't been to TV since September.

I don't even know who he's talking about.

He's talking about FTR, but let's go back to this.

We do.

Do we put you over?

Do we, what can we, you know, can we do an angle?

What do we got to do?

What do we got to do to make amends to all be team players?

Okay.

Wait a minute.

Okay, but why does FTR have to make amends to anybody?

They got jacked out of the fucking belts from the fucking little whiny bastards when they decided to do their six-man thing.

They never did the rubber match to put all the belts on FTR that was set up.

Yeah, when they don't want to do the money match last year.

They didn't want to do the money match last year because it would have made them look like they weren't the greatest tag team in the world, which in their minds they are.

So they left FTR standing there with their Johnson in their fucking hands and didn't draw money for Tony with that big man and help FTR

get all the belts so that they would have that run successfully.

And they're having those matches with the Briscoes and they're getting all the attention.

They were a valuable commodity for AEW.

That's why.

Apparently, they were never on AEW television and never put in a prominent position because they got so much much conversation that the buckaroos were just jelly, as they say,

and had to stop that.

So, why should FTR go up and say, hey, dude, hey, we're sorry, you want to work together?

Fuck you.

First thing he said was, hey, you know, what can we do?

Can we put you over?

That was the first thing he said.

They did that before when they shouldn't have.

Why would they do it again?

Well, let's go back to Dave's thoughts on what FTR and CM Punk can do to make everyone else happy.

And they do it in the right way, in time,

you know, it'll work in time.

If they go and do it in a way where everyone goes, like, you know, you're not really looking at doing it, you're looking at making the other people look bad, then it's only digging the hole deeper.

And they know that, and everyone knows that.

And that's why it's like so.

That's why Brandon Cutler shouldn't have put that tweet up earlier.

That's exactly why.

Of course.

You know, watching this, it's like, you know, you see through this stuff.

And so,

you know, and it's going to keep going probably like that until I think also they all get together.

Let me stop it there for a second.

Dave, obviously jumping to assumptions here.

You see through it all.

It's clear that this is what Punk and FTR are trying to do.

It's clear as day, Brian Alvarez,

what my buddies told me that I've never talked to anybody on the other side, but it doesn't matter because I know what they'd say.

So, yeah, let's can FTR and CM Punk come in and do valet parking and mow everybody's lawn and wash everybody's car and make amends for all the shit that other people did to them?

You know what's going to end up being?

Punk's going to have to work with someone else, and the Bucks are going to agree to work with FTR as long as FTR put them over in Wembley.

But let's go back to this.

Even so much, you know, will the Bucks work with FTR?

The issue here is the,

you know, the claim that CM Punk is willing to work with the elite.

Well, of course, CM Punk is willing to work with the elite.

That's not the issue.

The issue is: do the elite want to work with CM Punk?

And it's not just a matter of.

Wait a minute.

Hold on here.

Alvarez, you little trained monkey.

Hey.

What the?

How is he saying, of course, Punk, like it's an honor, like working with Kenny and the Buckaroos, or like working with Fez and Briscoe and Ganya?

Punk is a bigger star, has made more money, has accomplished more, has been more places than all three of them put together.

It's not an honor to be in the ring with them for him.

It's not like that they drew more money or bigger ratings

than he did when they were all in the same company together.

How would that make it an honor for him to, oh, these big stars, it'll help me draw?

There is no benefit or pleasure or honor for CM Punk to get in the ring ring with any of these three except to play off the real life angle.

That's the only reason they're valuable in this scenario.

Elsewhere, he wouldn't even want to work with them to begin with because he didn't work with them before because he knew he couldn't make any money or have a good match with them.

Now,

the good match may still not be possible, but making money because of the real life situation may be possible.

That is why it is palatable, if not attractive, for CM Punk to get in a ring with either Kenny or Maddie or Nikki.

So I don't know what the fuck Alvarez is thinking, but maybe,

you know, 140 fucking something-pound gymnasts think alike.

Hey, you know, I want to work with these guys, and they're unprofessional, but not want to work with them.

But that's the whole game.

That's the game.

I mean,

there was a situation here.

That's the game they're trying to play.

Is like, we're, you know, he's willing to work with them.

They're the, you know, it's, it's a game for, you know, like, they're the ones unprofessional, not me.

You know, and it's just like, well,

you know, I mean, if

the whole thing started.

It's a game.

How is it unprofessional if he's, okay, I'll work with him and he will and they won't.

How is the guy that will being unprofessional?

It's only that.

Is he saying it's unprofessional because it was said because Dax said something publicly that they're willing to do this?

Because Punk hasn't said anything.

So it's all puzzling, but let's a little more audio here.

Thing started because somebody was unprofessional.

And if you want to argue that the whole thing started because Hangman was unprofessional, which I'm sure would be their site, well, that's fine.

Yeah, but

that has nothing to do with the unprofessional.

The issue that happened it all out was CM Punk being unprofessional.

So, you know, it's

for that.

Little things happened, but the big thing was the promo on Adam Page, which was totally unprofessional.

And there's no defending it.

But because he was never punished, which is one of the problems with this, is because he was never punished for it, it created a lot of heat that got worse and worse and worse.

If he had been told, if like he had done that promo and Tony would have said, dude, you know, you're going against the script.

You're going to sit out for a couple weeks.

I think that at that point, either, you know, you know, he would have powdered and quit and gone home, or he would have not powdered and quit and gone home, and maybe this thing would have been alleviated.

I got another option.

What if Paige, who did it first, had been disciplined or talked to or dressed down or chastened or sent home

or sent to a Tibetan monastery, fucking observe a vow of silence for a year, whatever the case, then would Punk have done the unprofessional thing that Dave is whining

and needs his pussy powdered about here in this case?

One was brought about by the other.

So, why did Dave decide that Punk should have been punished for what he said about Hangnail when Hangnail wasn't punished for starting the whole thing on live television with the guy in front of him?

And again, the Bobby Fish incident, the Bucks camp leaking all the stuff about Colt Cabana to Dave and Dave running with it.

All these different things.

Everyone who played a part in it points to Punk.

Since Tony signed Punk and Punk came in and sold out the fucking building in Chicago and drew the fucking giant rating for Rampage that they've never even approached since, and then was on top for the first couple of million-dollar gates they ever drew.

The campaign has never ceased from the whiny little bitch set over there from Rancho Cookamunga

to drive him away by pissing him off because they know that he will go off.

And the problem was he went off on their face

but i guess it's probably not the first time that matter nick have had somebody go off on their face and but it didn't happen that way so it got worse and worse and worse and so now we're at this situation where you know i mean it's like

uh you know i mean obviously he's probably going to be back

and um you know if they want to work and he's all this upset about this wait until ace still comes back with them.

He's going to be back.

There's ways to do it, you know.

But

going in there and trying to make the other people look unprofessional is probably the worst way to do it.

Isn't that exactly what they've done here?

Is they've done everything they can to leak stuff to make it look unprofessional for over a year now?

Yes, and

I must admit that Dave has done a wonderful job of being being their house organ or mouth organ or two lips on an organ, whatever the case.

Even though he can barely speak English these days and get a coherent sentence out, he's lost half his vocabulary.

He's been able to see things from every perspective from the start of this, as long as every perspective comes from Kookamunga.

Trying to just kind of like pressure them out of the company.

If that's the idea, you know, then we'll, you know, again, we'll have to wait and see how it all turns out.

It's a really, you know, but I like to extend like, like, this is clearly not good faith because it was good faith,

we wouldn't hear anything about it.

They would settle it.

They would settle it, and we would see an angle out of nowhere that would shock everyone, or at least even, or maybe we would talk about it or whatever and know the angle was coming.

And if that happens, that's fine.

But as long as they're talking about it, it tells me that, number one, they have no deal to do.

Who's they?

Who's they that's talking about it?

Well, the audio stopped here.

It appears that Twitter has stopped.

And I want to say something.

Well, no, but I'm just saying who's the they he's talking about that keeps talking about it.

They wouldn't, if they were really going to do business, they wouldn't be talking about it.

They'd just shoot an angler.

Well, who's the they that's talking about it?

FTA.

Everybody involved with the EVPs.

That's who that so he's just saying they wouldn't be well.

They're unprofessional because they're talking about it spilling the beans, trying to fucking screw the deal, trying to send it sideways because they don't want the guy around here.

They think Punk's trying to drive them out of the company.

I guarantee you, CM Punk does not want to become an executive in that company for the rest of his life.

He probably wants to wrestle another year, year and a half, whatever this contract is, and get away from these fucking nutty people one time.

Like Jerry Jarrett said to me when he quit the wrestling business at...

in the 90s.

He said, I didn't hate the wrestling business.

I just hated the people I was in the wrestling business with.

So Punk wants to wrestle and get the fuck out and go home and play with Larry.

These weasels want to be there for the rest of their lives to sap Tony Khan of his fucking funds.

So I don't see why they think he's trying to run them, maybe run them out in the eyes of the public, make them immaterial, diminish their reputation simply because he's bigger.

That might be possible, but I don't think he wants to replace them.

I don't see CM Punk becoming an executive vice president.

I want to get your final thoughts on Dave and Brian Alvarez's comments on all this, but let me just say one thing because it involves me.

Dave's jumping to a lot of assumptions here.

And you heard him basically say it, this means this, this is happening, so this, without a direct line, it's just Dave.

And Dave, to the best of my knowledge, does not have cosmic consciousness.

It is Dave just jumping to assumptions.

It doesn't sound any more like he's got consciousness.

You know, when Punk put up his Instagram thing to respond to dave must have been two months ago now i don't even know

i put up the next day after punk took it down some of the sections from the aew talent playbook because i thought it was important contextually for people to understand there actually are rules and barometers in aew

yes and and if people didn't see your tweet it it was the

basically the code of conduct for AEW talent in media and interviews, which looks like, because the word team was mentioned a lot, it looks like it may have been cribbed from the Jacksonville Jaguars section of the Empire.

Well, I put that up and it got a lot of reaction.

Someone brought this to my attention and I went and checked it out and there it was on Dave's message board.

It always comes back to that fucking message board.

Dave wrote that the AEW talent playbook stuff that I put out was leaked.

Because someone was mad that Punk had to take down his tweet.

That is absolutely false.

And I say that as the person who tweeted the talent playbook, which I've had on my desk since late last year.

It had nothing.

I didn't hear from Punk or anyone involved with Punk who said, put that up.

We're mad about it.

And I didn't give a shit.

I don't care if Punk tweets it or not.

It was out there in the ether already.

Dave jumped to an assumption.

He has my phone number.

He has my email address.

He could have said, Brian, why did you put this up?

Where did you get it?

Anything.

Didn't hear a word.

Instead, he puts on his message board that it was leaked by someone who was mad that Punk had to take down his tweet.

It was

leaked to me in 2022, you moron.

Well, yeah, well, besides that, just the way he phrases it, it was leaked because sounds like somebody anonymous source put it out in the middle of the night.

You tweeted it with your name on the fucking Twitter account because it's your Twitter account.

And said, here, in your capacity as operator and manipulator of the wrestling news, since this is in the news.

Here's why that punk may have had to take that down because it did violate when he answered the accusations of the fucking balding plumber and everybody else.

It did violate their terms and policies.

That's why the other cowards and dickless fucking pussies

only do

with a whisper campaign and nothing is ever attributed to them, except for Moxley.

He just, he talks like most people people fart, just at random out of the blue, and it usually stinks.

So he said, whatever the fuck, but I don't think he can read.

So they didn't really have him on the code of conduct anyway.

But you didn't leak anything.

You put it out there with your name on it.

I put it out there.

And the reason I put it out there was everyone was saying, why did Punk take down his tweet so quickly?

And my point was, well, actually, AEW prevents these guys from doing this kind of thing.

Here it is in writing from their playbook.

And I put put it up.

Dave jumped to an assumption.

He's completely wrong.

I'm sure he won't apologize, but Dave should apologize because he made a wrong statement about me, even though he didn't.

Could you guys work together?

Do you think you could work?

I mean, there's some way that it could be done.

Of course, you'd have to, you know, go up to him and say, hey, Dave, can I put you over?

I want to challenge Dave to a match at the garden.

The olive garden.

But then it ended.

I just want to say, because a funny little ending to this, everything I put up on Twitter from that playbook ended up verbatim in The Observer without any credit to where it came from.

The talent playbook somehow got out this week.

Somehow, the great Brian Lass put it out, you fucking dope.

So that's what I want to say.

Hey, don't call him a dope.

Dave's jumping to assumptions on a lot of things.

I just witnessed firsthand to me, he jumped to an assumption about why I tweeted something.

He very easily could have asked me if he was concerned.

And by the way, Dave, if you want a copy of the playbook, let me know.

You know, you could autograph those like I did the Russo restraining order.

We'd give the money to charity charity begins at home you know sometimes that's a great idea final thoughts on dave meltzer and brian alvarez's comments about again another apparent attempt from tony khan and campunk to iron things out get things together get the team back together or start some sort of process and here we go again

i wish i had final thoughts on dave meltzer and brian alvarez meaning i'd never have any more but unfortunately i have a feeling they're going to come up from time to time but again

these children

have never been in the wrestling business.

They've been in their little bubble of their indie world where people thought that they were the shit

with no s at the end

and

were lining up to smell their farts.

And suddenly they get in the real world in over their heads with guys that out draw them, guys that can outwork them, guys that can out talk them.

and guys that can outfight them.

And they don't know how to handle it because everybody's told them how great they are.

And they are to a certain section of the populace.

They love that competitive tumbling and aggressive parkour and combative cert d'ESOL.

But to most people,

out of the 10 million that used to watch wrestling every fucking Monday night, now we've got a couple million left, and a third of that watches their program, to most people, their little acrobatics and their little sissy ass fucking bullshit

is

offensive because it's not wrestling and it's not even goddamn pro-athletics.

It's

community theater is in their minds.

They're in the real world now and if they're going to make big boy money, they ought to have to put their big boy pants on.

and get in there and work with people that they don't like and aren't friends with and didn't get their jobs for them so that those people will do everything but lick their taint to keep the EVPs happy because they would have never gotten a fucking high-paying job in wrestling if it wasn't for being friends with them.

And Tony fell for all of that.

Nakazawa, Cutlett.

I mean, the list goes on.

We've been talking about him for four years and all of their various relationships and stoogification.

So,

Jungle Stooge.

Jungle Stooge.

It's up to Tony to decide whether he is running a professional sports franchise or a goddamn daycare center where everybody's supposed to be friends.

And you know what?

If you get in a match with a fucking guy you don't like

and he potatoes you, give him a receipt.

Unless you're afraid he's going to kick the shit out of you then and know that he can, in which case, take your fucking potato and swallow it.

Yeah, the Bulldogs and the Rougeots worked that Survivor Series match match in 88, the last match of the Bulldogs, because the Bulldogs wanted to be paid.

They knew if they fucked around, they weren't going to get money.

Yeah.

The problem is everyone knows you're going to get money if you stay home.

You're going to get money if you wrestle.

You're going to get money if you only wrestle your friends.

You're going to get money if you refuse all creative.

You just get sent home.

In one specific case, if you tell the boss, no, I won't punch another one of the boys as soon as I see him.

And then you fucking go and see him and you punch him as soon as you see him.

And then you tell people, well, I I just told Tony that, so he wouldn't keep me home.

And then Tony said, Well, I'm not going to fire you if you punch that guy.

I'll just send you home and continue sending you your check.

Boy, for that deal, there wouldn't have been a son of a bitch conscious in some locker rooms I've been in if they had that deal.

You mean I can punch that guy and you're just going to send me home and pay me?

Why, he'd have hit the floor quicker than fucking

you could hiccup.

There's the show.

turn the cameras on in the locker room and institute that rule just

chaos would be great that's the thing and and i'll i'll i'll wrap it up at a bow with this i hate to say i told you so but since i'm right so often i have to we've been saying this for four years now these indie-minded children cannot handle the big leagues or the big time and they can't get over for the big audience to make the big money And they're all going to have nervous breakdowns.

And look at what's going on and has been going on.

So there you got another case.

And there you are.

Well, Jim, before we wrap up all the CM Punk talk, one more thing, because one of the stories that came out this past week was that Tony Khan wanted CM Punk and Chris Jericho to sit down and talk, hash things out, and find out if there's any way either they can work together or just coexist together.

Let me get your thoughts on this initial story.

Well, and I believe that because if you,

if you're Tony Khan and

your bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, you know,

lollipop guild won't work with your biggest star, then who are you going to get to work with your biggest star?

Well, the next guy with the next biggest name is Chris Jericho.

So maybe there's some attraction there, pay-per-view match, Punk, Jericho.

But as you'll recall,

there's been some ill will between them as well.

Not only, I think, there's some issues stemming back to when they were in the WWE, but more specifically, as soon as this whole thing happened in September, Jericho immediately tried to side with the kids because,

hey, fellow kids, he's become a kid himself.

He wanted Punk fired and then he wanted a cancer.

Yeah.

Cancer.

And you got to be fired.

You got to go because he was the Punk being there was the guy that was keeping Jericho from being the biggest name.

And Punk being there was the guy that was keeping Jericho from not only having to pick of all of the top baby faces that he could work with and drink the adrenochrome of and sap the strength of,

but also

he could never be in the position.

And now he's got a, what, a 10-year contract?

Because he was right there to help pick up the pieces and pat Tony on the back and say, don't worry, Tony, Punk screwed you around, but I'll always be here, as long as you pay me millions of dollars a year.

For the next 10 years until I'm 60-something, I'll be here for you.

And just make sure you pay me more then than you do now.

So now, if Tony is thinking, okay, I'm going to bring Punk back,

can't have him against the EVPs, so maybe Punk and Jericho, well, but now there's trouble.

But Jericho,

being as he's been in the real wrestling business, and ego means more to him than feelings.

And if he gets in the main event with Punk at a stadium show, that might also draw one of the bigger

gates on pay-per-view that they will ever have.

Well, that would just be lovely because all the attention would be on Chris Jericho.

And, you know, so yes, so he will be, I'm sure, Jericho more than happy to cross his fingers, put him behind his back and say, oh, I never meant anything.

And come to me, my melancholy baby, and give me a hug.

And let's go make money.

And

I'm sure he'll be willing to, because he's, with him, it's more about ego and also taking care of that 10-year contract at this point than it is the other fucking clown's ego where they don't want to be involved with the guy.

Jericho, in his mind, thinks he can hang with Punk and he can be as big a star as Punk.

And that might be just wonderful.

But

I don't know.

This might be one of those things.

Does Punk think he needs to work with Jericho

at this point?

So that might be some.

some convincing on that side, but I'm sure Jericho would be all for it.

See, here's the thing: Jericho has been a major problem in any program that he works with anyone who is young or coming off a period where they're really hot, the fans are really into them.

Jericho has a track record over and over again of sapping everything that they had going for them.

It's just gone.

By the end of it, you're not even dealing with Jericho.

You're dealing with Jake Hager and his fucking hat.

Yeah.

He can't pull that shit with CM Punk.

And I've been saying it the last few weeks.

Chris Jericho, if he didn't control his own own creative there's something to be done there

and

to be very honest

if you need someone in that company to be on the mic if you're if you're going to do something where it's cm punk playing on all this it's cm punk versus the locker room or cm punk versus the people there who don't like him and you can't ignore it you have to play into that jericho will be better on the mic than the bucks and Omega

at delivering the argument against punk, as long as he doesn't get silly, as long as it doesn't turn into a skit this week and a skit next week.

And I don't think that would happen with CM Punk.

But

it would benefit Jericho, sure.

But when you really look at the big picture, it may,

as long as Jericho is not in charge of the booking, it may be the best thing.

But now think about this also, because they've still never told anybody on television where all those guys went or where punk has been since.

That's actually a very good point.

So thankfully for them, the entire AEW audience that they have lived their life on the internet and is smart.

And I will actually know we proved that when we got eyewitness reports from a couple of the tapings a few weeks after the media scrum, they didn't know why punk wasn't that.

So even their entire audience is not plugged into the internet.

Yeah, they sell his merch.

His merch is still being sold.

But yeah, of course, because, you know,

he's a star and they sell his merchandise.

He's under contract.

He's getting some of that money, too.

But they would only have to do a very elemental storytelling session to

bring the shoot that happened to the rest of the world.

And they could make some money on that.

Punk and Jericho haven't had a shoot yet.

And there would, so while their promos would be wonderful against each other, and it is two big names, still the intrigue of they might really have a fight.

And I know Jericho leg dived Goldberg one time or whatever, but do you think he doesn't want to fight at this stage of his life?

I don't blame him.

I don't think Punk really wants to fight either.

So they're not going to get in a shoot in the middle of the ring.

But

some people may still believe that it'd be too good of an opportunity to pass up for Punk to just ground and pound one of the Jacksons into a fucking pile of jelly and might just lose himself and do that.

I'd pay double for that pay-per-view.

But I

we'll see.

We'll see what happens.

But they got to tell some kind of story anyway when all these people come back and get involved with each other if they do.

A Twitter account, The Pro Wrestling World, tweeted out yesterday, Chris Jericho, and they tagged him, correct me if I'm wrong, but you've always been willing to work with everyone, and you always do what's best for business.

People are foolish to suggest otherwise.

And as a picture of Jericho next to CM Punk on commentary on Rampage,

Jericho responded, not everyone.

So what do you think of that?

He's willing to work with everyone.

Here's a picture of him and Punk, and he responds, quote tweets it, not everyone.

Well, yeah, because he's not sure that he'll be able to talk all the involved parties into putting this together.

And he doesn't want to make people think that it's going to happen until it's going to happen.

And then he wants people to think that it's his idea.

And

he wants it.

Jim, it's a separate topic here, but we can go back to all this in a second.

But you brought it up, so I want to ask you a question about the Brandon Cutler incident.

Brandon Cutler retweeted a dead spin article, you called it a hit piece, on CM Punk, and wrote, Somebody gets it.

That tweet wasn't up too long, and he took it down.

After everything that's happened,

from the very beginning of CM Punk getting there,

and some of the issues, of course, involving Colt Cabano, who in the general scheme of things means nothing to professional wrestling in 2023, let alone to AEW's business in 2023.

Here you have Brandon Cutler doing this.

Like we've said and joked about, but it's true.

He's only there because he's the young Bucks bitch.

And now this guy is going out there and tweeting something like this.

Wasn't this the perfect opportunity for Tony Khan to show people that the games are over?

If Tony Khan had fired him for that, because we know it's in violation of the AEW talent playbook, if Tony Conner said, you know what, you right now have made this situation worse.

I'm sorry, we can't have you here.

Would that have helped the situation?

Because it would have indicated that Tony's going to finally not be so hands-off?

Or would it have hurt the situation?

Well,

I mean, anything that you do to...

chastise or penalize or slap on the wrist or

punish for their actions, you know, Maddie and Nikki and Kenny, it's going to make the situation worse on their part because they believe that, you know, they're in fantasy land and think that not only are they big stars and important EVPs, but that they're the big shit in that company and that they do no wrong.

Obviously,

Brandon Cutler should be fired on general principle.

He never should have been hired in the first place.

If they could figure out what he does, maybe they could ask him to stop doing it, but nobody really even knows that.

But the bigger thing is he wouldn't have done that had he not been instructed to by his,

you know, executives, his bosses.

He doesn't work for Tony Khan.

He works for his grade school friends, Maddie and Nikki.

And they couldn't do it, but he could do it.

And then

they could say, well, we'll make him take it down later.

But he got the point across.

And Tony allows this to go on.

And if you read the article,

I've known neighbors having a property line dispute that spoke nicer to each other than this alleged author who has nothing to do with the company and so therefore shouldn't really have any inside information because he's not anybody in wrestling.

He's just some mark that writes on a site.

He's mad at punk.

Maybe his girlfriend had a crush on punk.

I don't know what the personal issue is.

Or maybe he's mad because he's got a crush on Maddie or Nikki, whoever wrote this thing.

I don't know.

There's some romance involved somewhere for a spurned lover to sound like this.

So that's,

yes, Cutler should be fired because he potentially threw another monkey wrench in Tony Kahn's efforts to bring the biggest star in his company back to work and draw some money over the summer.

But if Cutlet should be fired, then also

Maddie or Nikki or both should be as well because they're obviously the ones that told him to do it.

Because they think, well, we'll cover for you.

We won't let you get too much heat with Tony.

We just can't do it ourselves because it'd be too obvious.

We have a little bit of news that's coming out.

As we're getting ready to release this show, Jim.

Should we just talk non-stop and news news will break constantly, and we never end the program, and people can just tune in to the live stream until we die?

My plan is for us to back ourselves into a daily morning show that'll go for four hours a day.

But breaking news.

I'll back up on you on that one, but go ahead.

Breaking news.

Well, I don't even know if we can call it news, but this is going around right now.

With all the talk about CM Punk returning to AEW and a potential Chicago date and everything else, and a potential Saturday show, AEW collision.

Word has now come out that apparently CM Punk being included in the new Saturday show was a major part of the picture for Warner Brothers' discovery.

They wanted CM Punk, and Dave Meltzer did some math on his own.

And again,

wait a minute.

Have they left him alone again?

He's supposed to have somebody with him.

That last accident.

He wrote this in The Observer.

Well, I'll have you know they had to use Bon Amy on the bathroom floor last time they left him alone, but go ahead.

He wrote this about the new show, the new Saturday show.

If AEW only makes what Discovery has been paying for first-run shows as a general rule, which is $500,000 per hour in general, is what they're paying for first-run programming.

That's $52 million per year.

And that's a game-changing financial deal for AEW.

Jesus Christ, $52 million a year to give them a program with CM Punk on it.

The $52 million man, CM Punk.

Well, now, wait a minute.

Hold on here a second.

Now, it seems like that now that that little piece of information is being bandied around in the public, well, I think that besides the fact that CM Punk has had a long vacation and that vacation should come to an end for the good of AEW's business, for the good of Punk's business,

should he?

I think that torn peck ought to start bothering him a little bit unless he gets his contract renegotiated.

Because they're going to give Tony Kahn's AEW $52 million a year for a show contingent on CM Punk being on it.

And after all the public mudslinging and the fact that Punk is his name has been drugged through the mud after he was physically assaulted and his space invaded by the childish and petulant EVPs?

Shouldn't that be worth a

15% finder's fee on that $52 million?

Who's handling his business these days?

Years ago, I think it was Mickey Manle, although I've seen the quote attributed to different people, but I believe Mickey Manle was asked, once the era of free agency started, once players in baseball started making all that money, They said, what would it be like for you if at your peak, when you played for the New York Yankees, you had to negotiate your contract with George Steinbrenner,

considering the kind of years you had and how much money they're paying people today and the value of players?

And he said, I'd walk in there and I'd shake his hand.

I'd say, hello, partner.

You got to know your value sometimes, even if it pisses people off.

Okay.

And so coming back down to Earth, and I mean, that might be a thing that Punk's thinking about at this point, but coming back down to Earth, that makes a little bit more sense now with the reports that they were trying to or wanting to or thinking about splitting the roster and putting punk on, you know, one show or whatever, the other guys.

I mean, they still, the EVPs want to be away from him because they're cowardly little soots and they're all scared of him.

But

now it comes out that they have not only been sabotaging Tony Khan's efforts to bring back a big star in the wrestling business that may or may not, depending on your viewpoint, have brought significantly larger television viewing numbers to their program

or

sold a few more pay-per-views or a few more live event tickets or whatever.

Now we find out that they have been trying to sabotage the efforts to bring back the one guy.

that the network stipulates they want to be involved in a new program.

So is that not more?

I mean, I know that the little buckaroos, little Maddie and Nikki, are right-wing zealots, but are they taking a class in insurrectionism here?

Hasn't now we find out that what they've been doing with every time that the, we talked about it, what, just on the last program we did, every time that they get wind, and I'm sure they get wind even before we get wind, that there's conversations between Tony and Punk or intent to bring him back, or some opening of communications.

Then all of a sudden, something gets leaked from their side, or Blandon Cutlett tweets something, or agrees with something

that inflames the talks and sets them back because they don't want him back.

But apparently, not only do 300 or 400,000 of the television viewers want him back, but now the network wants him back

for a program that they could gross, that company could gross $50 million in a a year on.

If I was Tony Kahn, I would be telling Kenny and Maddie and Nikki to grab their knee pads and fucking do some squats because they're going to be on their knees in front of punk for a long time, whether they need to beg or plead or blow or whatever they need to do

to get that man to agree to come back and do whatever the fuck the network wants him to do for $50 million.

And if they don't like it, they can hit the fucking bricks.

How far is this going to go?

And by the way, he could still sue for the executives led by the Bucs and Omega and Mega from the number two in the company and the executive vice president storming into the dressing room.

There's still plenty that can be done over that.

So they just keep playing games, it seems like.

Is anybody at the network actually following this shit show to understand that the that work directly under Tony have been the ones trying to run the guy that they want on the program out of the company?

Is anybody paying attention over there?

Listen, when AEW started, there were several people that Tony Kahn wanted working for him.

You know that as well as I do.

CM Punk.

I'm not allowed to say.

I carefully crafted my phrase there, but CM Punk was one of those guys.

And CM Punk, for whatever reason, said, no, I want to sit back and see how this plays out.

So whatever investment mentally the Bucks and Omega and Cody and whoever made in the early days, Punk didn't see it that way.

He saw it as something to sit back and let's see how this plays out.

Let's monitor the situation.

Eventually he comes back and all of these guys that were big deals in their own little world, All of a sudden they're not selling the most merch.

All of a sudden, their segments aren't getting over the way they used to.

Never forget that Young Bucks segment where the fans started chanting FTR.

That was game over for FTR, that segment right there.

But CM Punk came in there, did all these things, as Tony Khan himself has said, boosted the business,

and kept to himself.

He didn't go hang out in their locker room or dressing room, whatever you want to call it.

Kept to himself.

Now, some guys would go and spend time with him.

But this is what happens when you don't go and play the game that everyone else is playing backstage

and if a saturday show again it's not as good as wednesday nights as you've said several times but if a saturday show means a fresh start for some of that crew where they're not going to have to put up with the backstage games and the drama and the children then that's a good thing

who's going to book it that's the problem

The problem, and again, and I've even heard some people be complimentary of the new Ring of Honor under Tony.

Now, we haven't seen it, but I've heard some people say, how come dynamite's not as good as that?

Which is funny that people would be saying that.

But if Tony...

Well, here's the thing.

He has...

I'll let you finish your thought in a second.

But with Ring of Honor, even if it's more complimentary, it's just because he probably has fewer people in Ring of Honor that he will listen to.

And at least it's something coming from.

basically one person instead of a bunch of people that he listens to in AEW doing doing their own shit, which doesn't fucking match with any of the other shit.

Go ahead.

So, even if Tony's doing a good job at Ring of Honor, which we haven't seen, and we see what Dynamite is, and that's not a good job in any way, but a lot of guys who are strong-willed, or at least will play the game, get their ideas on that show, maybe with some touches of Tony Khan that he thinks, because he thinks he's a booking genius, that he sprinkles on their ideas.

If the Saturday show is still that,

but it's CM Punk in charge of CM Punk segments, if it's maybe FTR not being used like goofs, who knows?

CM Punk, though, the one thing to say about his running AEW, it's a track record now.

One year, great segments, great matches, real emotion, fans invested in things.

Serious segments in the world of professional wrestling.

That's exactly what I think wrestling should be right now.

So I'm optimistic for CM Punk because he's proven it for one year, that no matter what damage Tony Khan does to the rest of that program, his segments, he's not going to allow the shenanigans.

It just, that's the problem is that if you have a program with shenanigans except in one great segment,

I just, I think you should have a program with great segments and no shenanigans.

And that's not going to happen with Tony Khan.

If he's getting a brand new two-hour program,

if he wants to put a talent roster on that program with CM Punk in charge, how about then giving, or the top star, giving CM Punk the right to pick two or three people that he might

think or believe in that company that he could entrust with putting together a proper television format and letting it be independent of the other program.

And then you've got a fair way to see,

you know, which one is more successful.

If it's just,

if it's Wednesday night, here is the Wednesday night shit, and Saturday night's the same kind of same-looking shit as Wednesday night, just with a few different people, but it's still booked by Tony, except for the CM Punk segment, which will be good,

then

it needs to be its own program.

If it's going to have different talent, it needs to have a different look and a different outlook and different presentation.

Different commentators

and different announcers, yes.

That's a big deal.

And Sockface will do everything he can to tank

anything that is opposed to the Buckaroo's outlook on wrestling because the only reason that he's the only reason he owns a television now, much less is on television, is because of Maddie and Nikki, his childhood friends.

I started Pro Wrestling Gorilla.

Of course he did.

Yeah, but just because your breath smells like cheetahs ain't no sign you're Tarzan.

So you can't have an announcer that's going to try to or wouldn't even understand how, if he was trying to do a good job, he wouldn't understand how to do a wrestling program.

He only understands how to do VHS commentary in the basement.

So there's a lot of things that need to be worked out for that $50 million.

And Jim, before we review anything or talk about anything.

Well, we're going to talk about this.

I was about to say, before what else is left?

News broke yesterday as we are recording, a little bit before the beginning of WWE Monday Night Raw and the USA Network, that Raw in Chicago had an unexpected visitor, that being CM Punk.

Reports have now come out that Punk may have been on the plane from Florida to Chicago with some of the talent.

He came, he said hello to people.

Met with Triple H, or at least saw Triple H.

I don't know if met with is the right.

Yeah, I think that might be grandiose terminology.

Saw and spoke with sounds to me like it would be accurate.

Reports are that he was asked to leave by either Vince McMahon through someone or just by the head of security on his own, but that's the story as we know it.

What are your thoughts?

Well,

last question or statement first.

The head of security, I don't care who he is, is not going to

ask

CM Punk to leave unless he was instructed to.

The head of security for the WWE, whoever that may be, as I said these days,

is not going to eject any wrestling personality without

either being instructed to or at least asking somebody, is he supposed to be here or whatever?

And I think obviously the,

hey, Punk saw some of the boys on the plane and said, hello.

Oh, why don't you come down and visit?

Well, I've got some free time this afternoon.

Ed, do you remember when Jerry Jarrett took the Russian to Stamford, to Titan Tower, when he was still with TNA, when he was trying to get out of TNA and they wouldn't

let him go?

He said, okay.

And he went down and visited and said hello to a few people.

And at some point,

and I can believe it was Vince, because he's probably the only one that would have the.

If it wasn't Vince, then whoever

had the thought probably asked Vince since Vince was, from what we hear, making changes and corrections and additions and subtractions to the rest of the show all day.

Not only does he look like a villain, but now we're supposed to believe he's working from some kind of villain's lair where everyone's calling in and he just answers the phone.

Yes, do this.

And then they're going to be.

No, no, it's not the phone now.

Come on now.

We may be jumping ahead, but it's not the phone.

This is the fucking 21st century.

He's got the big time video screen where it looks like he's beaming in from the Romulan spaceship onto the deck of the Enterprise.

But nevertheless, Vince or someone at a high level probably made the call that he's under contract to Tony Kahn,

and this could be a litigation situation.

It's not like the old days where

some guy that wanted booked.

somewhere because he wasn't and didn't have a job showed up at the back door and said hello to the boys and sat around to see if anybody'd notice him.

Punk is making, as we've talked about many times here on the show lately, a large check every week from AEW to sit at home and offer to come back and be shot down by the EVPs that are scared of him.

But it's a valid contract where he's under contract and he's getting paid.

And if he's there and it was already reported he was speaking with Triple H,

then Tony Kahn could, if he was want to do so,

say that's contract tampering.

So, yeah, he's probably got to go.

As well as the fact that it's just

the last story before this that we talked about was him being worth potentially $52 million a year to AEW.

Yeah.

And

now that he's heard that as well,

give me a plane ticket to Chicago.

Yeah,

he's like, Well, just to let you know, I'm worth $50 million

to them.

And we may be getting ahead of ourselves.

It's the reports are, we'll talk about later, I'm sure, in the program, that

Warner Brothers Discovery Media Limited, Incorporated, LLC, or whatever the fuck they are these days, has said, Well, we'd be interested in WWE programming.

So,

or Punk could have probably already been back to work if the EVPs who have Tony's

not only best interest, not at heart, but also his balls in their watch pocket, apparently, weren't such whiny little bitches that they sabotage it every time it's come up and

he wouldn't be able to be dangling himself around

to other potential interested parties, for fuck's sake.

I imagine Triple H is in the back, busy doing stuff.

It's raw.

I mean, busy, his dad, or dad, his father-in-law.

His dad.

It was more like his grandfather, but his father-in-law is at home, barking orders to everyone through his evil video screen.

Everything's going on.

All of a sudden, it's a tap on the shoulder.

You turn around.

Hello there, pal.

And it's fucking CM Punk.

Remember, when Punk left, he had heat with Triple H more than even Vince.

Yes, the infamous line, I don't have to work with you.

You have to work with me or need to work with you.

You need to work with me.

If you're Tony Khan, how do you react to this?

Well, you can't

prevent someone, especially under the circumstances,

from going to visit friends if they were invited on a personal basis.

Punk did not appear on the program program or do anything in any professional capacity.

You can wonder if you're Tony Khan and you can have your legal department send a cease and desist or contract tampering or whatever the fuck.

And then the WWE can deny it.

But that's stuff that they don't like to have going on because If there ever is a real legitimate case one of these days, then they don't want these little

minor things to muddy the waters, you know,

because now it's a track record, right?

Well, they talk to this guy and this guy was here, and blah, blah, blah.

So,

you know, it's, it's,

he wouldn't be doing that if he was at work at his job doing what he wants to be doing.

But he's got a lot of free time on his hands because the EVPs are gutless and don't have the company's best interests at heart.

So he's able to wander around and

do things to piss people off.

And he didn't, he's not guilty of anything.

He did nothing illegal nor to violate his contract by

going over and saying hello to people in his hometown when they're there and they're visiting him rather than the other way around.

So

do you believe that Wrestlers should in these times, Swami's going.

He obviously has thoughts on on this.

In the era of contract tampering being a real thing, and very little needs to be done to trigger that, should wrestlers be banned from going to other promotions, major wrestlers, major promotions, to their shows?

Well, they pretty much already are, aren't they?

How often does it happen?

It's not a wise thing.

Ricky Starks.

The Ricky Starks thing was a big deal.

Well, but here's the thing:

it only happens with Tony's guys because they know either, well, nothing's going to happen bad, or

they're wanting to get fired.

They do other things to try to get fired.

He won't fire them.

Or they just don't give a shit because, or it's like they do it on purpose to say, hey, remember me, I'm over here.

You know, you're not paying attention to me when I'm around, but when I'm over here at the other place, maybe this will get your attention.

It's all of those things.

But for the most part, you don't see that happening.

As I said, in the territory days, and even

sometimes in the old days of WCW and WWF,

guys who weren't booked in any meaningful place, didn't have a spot at all, or had, or were somewhere that they wanted to get out of and didn't give a shit what that place thought,

would come and hang around, visit people, and try to be seen or just catch somebody's eye or whatever.

But

it doesn't happen

in the modern era with guys under contracts, except every once in a while with somebody in AEW has their feelings hurt and wants to get some attention or doesn't give a shit.

When's the last time you saw a WWE

contracted talent at any other show ever?

I know impact, I guess, works with everybody,

you know, at one point or another.

But besides that, Tony's got guys

under contract to Ring of Honor that apparently Ring of Honor is in their own homes because they never leave them.

They don't, you know, so it just,

but no, if you're under contract to a meaningful promotion,

it's pretty much understood you don't go and hang out at the other company's shows already.

Or remember the.

What was the discount bushwhacker that came to the

TNA show WrestleMania weekend 15 years ago.

We put him on television.

He got fired.

That's

an indication.

What?

The discount bushwhacker.

We just talked about that.

Who was the, they were,

they were.

Oh, oh, the no, they were Scottish.

That's right.

What were the names?

God, I know what you're talking about now.

Scottish-Irish fellows.

Highlanders.

No, Highlanders.

And yeah, he was sitting in the fucking crowd and we were in between.

I've told this story.

Now you remember it, but we were in between matches and they were getting crowd shots.

And somebody in the truck said, well, that's old so-and-so, whatever his fucking name was.

And Jeff's sitting there.

He's, what?

That's, it was a WWF wrestler, E, I guess it was by then,

sitting in our crowd.

And it's, okay, well, we come back up.

Let's fucking say everybody's here in Orlando to see TNA Impact.

And they had a shot of him and they chironed his real name, not his gimmick name, because that would have been gimmick infringement, copyright, whatever.

Because the stupid son of a bitch, he was on television in the crowd anyway.

It's not like we shot him backstage.

He's sitting in the crowd watching the matches.

When he's in town for WrestleMania weekend, or we're over at fucking Universal Studios with 800 people at a fucking

NXT, remember they showed Britt Baker on the sidelines, I think maybe during War games or something, and like, there's Adam Cole's concerned girlfriend.

That's right.

So,

everybody does it to Tony.

So, because they know they're not going to get in trouble.

I just saw Buddy Matthews in the Hall of Fame next to Rhea Ripley.

There you go.

Okay, but so.

All right.

Now we have to compile a list of all AEW talent that has been seen or in some way affiliated with a WWE umbrella's programming and see if it's more than 50% of them.

Hey, real quick, back to punk.

Dave Meltzer reported, I have a quote here, the feeling in WWE was that he was there because he wanted back.

Whether that's true or not, I have no idea.

Well, I'm glad he was so.

First, he says, well, this was the feeling, but I have no idea.

Why would you want back

now

if the guy's paying you to do absolutely nothing for him?

Now, I can believe he might want back when this contract is up and he gets away from these fucking children that he's been working with for the most of the last year and a half or two.

But

again,

Uncle Dave has to, well, now he's going head in hand begging for a job.

He has a job.

They just won't let him do it.

He's still getting paid.

He doesn't need to go anywhere and do anything

he came to rattle some cages and and visit some old friends and just

just let people know he was around yeah when was the last time a major salaried professional wrestler got a gig by just showing up yeah

you know son of a bitch punks out there we forgot that he was still around

but now that he has has showed up and we see that he can still breathe now we're interested.

We never would have thought of that before.

What the fuck?

Punk said, I have an idea.

I'm going to do what Harley Race did, but just not light the ring on fire.

Yeah, well, there you go.

Because I think that's where Harley went wrong with setting fire to the ring.

Yeah, no.

If Punk wanted

to go back to the WWE right now, right instantly.

Get me out of here.

I'll tear up my own contract.

Just get me out.

He wouldn't go to the show and show up at catering to see if he could get booked.

We would never hear about it until he made his fucking debut.

But he knew, he knew that everybody would hear if he accepted the invitation of a few guys on the plane, come down and say hello.

He knew everybody would hear about it.

And he didn't have to say a word.

And that's exactly what he wanted to happen.

Hey, Tony,

you remember you're paying me a lot of money, and I could be performing for you, or I can be over here saying hello to my friends, and you can still send me my check every week.

Do you think Punk should go on tour with Raw, where he just shows up at the venue and gets kicked out, and no one sees it?

Yes, I think that actually

three weeks in a row, and he would have the most downloads of any wrestling personality on social media in the world.

If he did that, three weeks in a row that people would be talking about nothing but cm punk and and raw would be selling more tickets just for the people to be able to get in the parking lot see if they can spot him

because it would be fucking it would it would just be interesting

and scintillating which is what they need to be

well we will see how this turns out but the uh ever or never ending story of the AEW drama slash what's going on with CM Punk continues.

We will continue to cover it here.

All right.

Speaking of other states, let's talk real briefly about, now we've talked long enough on this program that a couple of other things have taken place of note.

In the state of Illinois,

the city of Chicago, Chicagoland, the metropolitan area, It was technically Cicero, Illinois.

I've been to this arena.

The Cicero Stadium, one of the guests at the Impact Wrestling event that took place on Saturday night, April the 29th,

was our friend Mr.

Brooks.

Our Mr.

Brooks, CM Punk,

was seen visiting some old friends and colleagues.

We just called this, didn't we?

At Impact Wrestling.

And it's in his home area, although Cicero is probably not anywhere around Punk's neighborhood in Chicago.

It's still, it's where he lives, and he was there visiting some, as I said, friends and colleagues.

And

from what I understand, the fans were very happy to see him when he walked in, and

they, along with the talent,

ushered him right into where he could visit for a while.

And

I know now Uncle Dave may say, well, He's trying to cover his ass.

He needs a job.

So hopefully he'll get booked with impact if his other visits don't work out no come on yeah yeah yeah well i'm i've that's a preemptive uh uh fuck you to uncle dave because here's what i'm thinking i'm thinking actually impact what's uh what's the feller's name that runs that thing nordholm oh he's a goof ed nordholm should have at that point when he saw that man walk in he should just said punk tell you what We'll make you our highest paid wrestler by a dollar a year, plus give you 25 to 40% of the the company if you will just come and be on our TV.

He was too busy asking Lenny Asper to twist his nipples.

Hey.

No, from what I understand, Dave Meltzer reported that CM Punk went there.

He was ushered into the show, but on the way in, he killed several small puppies.

Oh, but that's why he came.

Because, you know, that stray dog problem in Cicero.

And, no, you know, Punk is an animal lover.

It was old ladies that he kicked, and he turned a wheelchair over on the way out.

There were a few photos I got got out of punk with different wrestlers backstage.

Everyone seems happy.

Ricky Morton was one of them.

Again, this is now two different companies.

Ricky Morton, by the way, people say, wait a minute, is Ricky Morton now wrestling?

He was producing this weekend for Impact,

what we're hearing.

Picture with Ricky Morton, picture with some of the wrestlers.

Smiles on it.

He's putting smiles on people's faces.

So this is now two different shows in a week.

And if we want to go a little bit further back, he apparently attended that New Japan show they did in California a few months ago.

So that's three different shows, three different companies.

He's attended.

No one's been punched in the eye or had a chair thrown at them.

Everyone seems to be smiling at every photo I see.

There are some people that think this is all an act, that CM Punk doesn't actually enjoy going out and seeing people and attending any of these things.

He's just doing this to, I don't even know what the art would be, troll Tony Khan's wallet.

I don't know.

What are your thoughts on all this?

Well, again, he's a hey, Tony,

I got so much free time on my hands because of your immature, gutless EVPs that, you know, I got to occupy myself somehow going over, saying hello to some old friends, catching some grappling action at the various places around Chicagoland, you know.

Boy, I wish I had more to do with my time, like draw you millions of dollars.

But,

you know,

I mean, we, we, we think the return is imminent because they've got big plans for the United Center.

And

Uncle Dave has tried to start softening the blow to the AEW faithful out there by saying, well, it's going to mean a lot of money to the company, you know, with what they're paying for rights fees these days for that Saturday show.

If Warner Brother Discovery did indeed ask for punk by name,

He's the brand name, you know, ask for it by name

for that show.

They could put him on the video game cover again.

They could put him back on the video game cover.

God damn it.

They may have to take him back off of it because he might die of old age by the time that thing hits the shelves.

My god, he's he's he's 40 now.

He can't be wrestling when he's 77.

But he's basically showing Tony, you moron.

If I walk out into a goddamn parking lot, it makes news.

And who else do you have on your roster that can be said that about?

So

smarten up, get your head out of your ass.

And in the meantime, he's having fun visiting different places in Chicago.

I understand he's going to be signing muffins at Mindy's Bakery coming up on Tuesday at 3 a.m.

Get there early.

Where do you think Punk will be next?

Will it be AAA in Mexico City?

Will he show up at Carrick and Hall in Tokyo?

Where in the world will see him punk the

next?

I don't know if he's going to take an international flight just to troll Tony.

I think it probably has to be somewhere in the neighborhood of where he's at already.

He has a home in California and

a mansion there in Chicago.

And I think he's got a winter home down in Key West also.

But,

you know, there's...

Okay.

I don't know.

He's living all over the the world.

Why don't we start with the big news that's actually transpiring as we are recording, Jim?

AEW,

let me pull this up right here.

As part of the Warner Brother Discovery upfronts,

here's the press release.

TNT launches a second night of wrestling with AEW Collision, featuring headliners Thunder Rosa, Miro, Samoa Joe, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Andrade El Italo on Saturday, June 17th.

So let me stop there.

That's not even the press release.

That's just the headline.

What are your thoughts?

Well, that's the headline, and that may be part of the headline.

And no disrespect to any of the people mentioned,

because we've said good things about pretty much all of them at some point or another.

But Jesus H.

Christ,

who picks the names be

released in a headline?

They're not names that have been used prominently on the programming that they already have.

Miro's been in witness protection because he didn't like creative is the best reason we've heard.

Thunder Rosa has been injured for quite some time.

So

again, yes, she was at a high level in the women's division, but she's been off TV for six months or more.

Hobbs, my God, yes, but

he's

over the past month been a flunky in a bad reality TV news show parody segment.

Samoa Joe, I'm a huge fan of, and

he's probably been booked the best of the bunch of the people that were just mentioned.

And

he hasn't exactly been setting the world on fire on their television.

I don't understand how that they that becomes the lead here.

With these names, with a thunderosa miro andrade the rumor of cm punk and andrade wait a minute how no it who was it was he the one that they that toady said don't punch don't punch sammy and then he don't punch sammy anyway

yeah as soon as he got to the building he punched

so you get rewarded for punching the fucking guy by getting sent home paid for well over six months i believe it is

and then being announced as one of the stars of the new program.

But with these names and the rumor of CM Punk being involved and maybe some of the other names, do you think AEW, do you think it's a missed opportunity to call it AEW collision or Saturday collision as opposed to Saturday Malcontent?

No, I think they need to be building up the collision when all the people that can't get along, they do a pay-per-view where they say, okay, now all of the people that really hate each other at our wrestling promotion are going to be on pay-per-view.

They'll draw $100 million.

They've created their own island jail that they can send wrestlers to.

But wait a minute, we're buried a lead now.

We just

please don't laugh anymore because you'll get me tickled because I'm slappy anyway.

We've buried a lead and we just glossed right over it.

Allegedly CM Punk involved.

Wouldn't this have been the time to turn allegedly into certainly with a press release from the network during the big upfront presentations to get people interested in new programs?

Shouldn't they

have had their feces

accumulated well enough

to have announced that the biggest star in the company will be the big star on the new program, if indeed that is what is going to take place in that environment?

Well, it could be one of two things.

It could be one, AEW really does want to make it like the first, like the debut of Punk and AEW, not announce it, but everyone knows it'll be there on the debut of Collision, or two,

that there's some sort of issue still that isn't finalized with punk and Tony Kong and AEW.

Yeah, and I'm inclined to think more of the latter than the former because,

Okay, assuming still that if they've booked the United Center, right, June 17th for this debut of this, now that it's confirmed, this live broadcast is going to take place on this network.

And they have had, is this official, or was this just rumor, scuttlebutt, and birds chirping?

They've named it the second coming.

Did I see that?

That is what I heard as well.

I don't know how official it is or isn't.

I got to double-check that.

Okay, the United Center, debut new show, second coming.

What if it's like, what when they get to the fucking to the foot of the mountain, like they always do when the forecast of the Messiah returning takes place,

and he just ain't there?

What the fuck are they going to do then?

Are they going to

remember my old?

But he's in the parking lot handing out ice cream bars.

No, no, no, no, no.

If he ain't there,

remember I've said if you take these five guys off the roster and save X dollars, will the fans set the seats on fire?

I think the fans will set the seats on fire.

And so the, and besides that,

it's not whether or not they can do that.

Again, they can replicate that moment.

They can get a pop.

Again,

they are now involved in a press release.

They're in a favorable relationship with their network.

But if anybody at the network actually

was a regular viewer of the show or paid attention to the wrestling business and knew that those names were not exactly things that would send chills and shivers up

strong men's spines,

then

that high person up at the network might say, isn't CM Punk supposed to be involved in this?

Why do we have this announcement?

It was our upfronts.

What is Kayfabe?

Don't we want to tell people who the stars of our shows are?

They would not understand.

How is this not done?

Fuck.

And for the record, before we go with the press release here, the poster released with it, again, Saturday, June 17th, 8 p.m.

Eastern Time, the premiere.

In the poster are the wrestlers we previously named with several others.

Some people are getting upset about one of the names in there, as...

I'm sure you will see and hear in a second or feel in a second.

But maybe it's just that they're putting all their champions in it.

I don't know.

But also, in the poster, well, and now this, this pro they will be on TNT

on Saturday nights, Saturday nights,

as opposed to Wednesday nights where they got the dynamite.

Who is on the poster now featured for the new Saturday night program?

Samoa Joe, Thunder Rosa, Powerhouse Hobbs, previously mentioned also, Miro, Andrade El Italo, FTR,

the House of Black,

MJF, and Orange Cassidy.

And Orange Cassidy and MJF are the two biggest in the

artwork.

Their heads are bigger than the entire torsos of everyone else.

My God, Nick Gulis has come back from the grave, and he's put George on the poster next to fucking Ric Flair.

Tony,

here's one of Tony's biggest faults.

Tony is insistent on finding a way, because he believes there is a way, to get Orange Cassidy over with the people that don't like him.

Not to feature him for the people that like him.

If he's on this show, this is all about Tony wanting to get people that don't like Orange Cassidy, forcing them.

You will have to see this guy until you accept him.

That's what it is.

And how is that show then going to look any different from the shit they do on Wednesday nights with that asshole all over it?

Different color ring ropes.

So let's talk of the other FTR.

They couldn't make the fucking press release over Thunder Rosa or Andre.

But again, that's why with FTR, MJF, and Orange Cassidy there, you wonder if it's just, and the House of Black, technically, too.

You wonder if it's just they're putting the champions on there, minus the women's champions.

And that's why they're there because they would be on both shows technically as champions.

Well, good God.

Well, then there's other champions.

And by the way, the logo for this show is, well, I shouldn't say identical, but it would be impossible to see this logo and not think of WCW Nitro.

I don't know if you've seen this logo yet.

I have not.

And honestly, I'd probably have to look at an old fucking magazine to remember the Nitro logo because I didn't give a shit about that then either.

But

again.

If they're doing this with a strategy for a new television program that will feature a different presentation as on Wednesday night, a different style of matches, a different,

maybe a different announcer setup or something with a different look and a different feel and a different vibe with different talent than on Wednesday night.

If they have a plan for that and separate sets and whatever the case, it seems that almost

everybody that has been announced is a,

for lack of a better term, not a fucking aggressive parkour artist or trampoline cowboy.

So we might get some actual matches.

It made some sense.

Obviously, MJF has to,

because he is the world champion, and also because last time I checked,

nobody is looking to punch him in the locker room, nor is he looking to punch anybody else.

So I believe he can travel about amongst the warring tribes and emerge unscathed.

And he's the champion and also one of the best performers.

So, they they got to have him on both shows.

That's an interesting thing, though, you just said.

Do you think MJF should start a fight in the back just to keep up with the Joneses?

Well, no, I was going to say to not have to work an extra night of the week, if you mean.

Because now, budgeting people are like, fuck.

Now, you know, we'll stay over here.

We don't have to travel on the weekend, whatever.

But anyway, Tony, can I work Saturday?

No, I'm sorry.

You're booked for Wednesday.

Fuck, where's Sammy so I can punch him?

There'll be a line in front of Sammy Guevara like the fucking on the plane on airplane.

But anyway, if they have a plan for a different look, a different style, different presentation with mostly different talent and the major people that you would want to see that would mean something for business can vacillate back and forth as long as they don't get on the wrong side of the romper room section,

then that's one thing.

But

if they're going to do the same kind of show, same thing with a lot of the same people in the same way

on Saturday night as opposed to Wednesday, then what they're going to do,

basically, Wednesday, we've said it's a better night for television viewers because they're viewing because there's more people watching television.

That's what

the experts say these days.

But Saturday night's a better night for selling fucking tickets to a live event,

and especially if they're putting on a better live product, the Saturday night could dilute the Wednesday night live audiences, but they'll have,

as Mama Cornette used to say, a longer road a-hoe to catch up with the numbers of the Wednesday night audience because they've got a built-in

disadvantage.

But

now it becomes if there's no difference to this, if it doesn't have a more serious tone for people that don't want to see the guy stick his hands in his pockets and try to find his dick or play with his balls.

Then,

again,

what backup do they have?

Is Tony still going to be in charge of creative of a whole different group of people?

Because now he's added an extra column of people to remind him of who can't be in the same building with the other person.

But he's still going to write this whole thing, in which case the whole experiment may be fruitless anyway because he can't do anything different.

Actually, everything he does is different.

That's the problem.

But so I still don't understand

how this is

a good idea based on having to keep

your employees separate because they won't do what you tell them to do

and they can't get along with each other.

And you don't have the ability to just say,

get along, get it on, or get the fuck out of here.

Because they've now got,

and a lot of people are not even thinking about that.

Their rampage is still floating around out there.

They got five hours of national cable television per week now

that, my God,

any wrestling promotion in history would have killed for, including all the good ones.

Who never got that?

It's a double-edged sword, though.

Like, you want it's great to have all that TV time, but it's almost too much TV time, actually.

Well, yeah, well, here's where I'm going.

That's the point I'm making.

They've got five hours of TV time to fill in an entertaining way to get people to watch it and hopefully get bigger rights fees and blah, blah, blah.

We'll all be free to pursue a life of religious freedom.

And they're talking about splitting the roster up.

Fuck, let's go into war and take half our guns because over here, well, those people ain't really firing at us right now, but we'll leave half the guns over there anyway.

What the fuck are you doing?

Jesus sage Christ.

And if Punk's deal ain't done,

Tony ought to fire his fucking entire legal staff.

Pingo.

Starting with the one that is probably

causing most people to be at full staff.

So,

because how do you do

how do you do the network announcements?

And how do you stop it?

How do you do the network announcements?

How do you book a fucking NBA building?

And you still can't fucking officially say this guy's fucking name.

And besides that, now to go to your last point, we can talk about this.

Five hours of AEW,

five hours of WWE.

That's without

any other.

I'm not even talking about any other promotions.

I'm talking about any pay-per-views or Battle of the Belts or fucking tribute to the troops or

wing of the Ding Dong, whatever the fuck else they all do, premium live events, Saudi Arabian nightmares,

just from those companies.

What are people supposed to

quit their jobs and like they're going to go live in a convent that plays wrestling 24 hours a day and devote their lives to keeping up with it?

At some point, what the fuck?

And it wasn't like this when they said,

well, wrestling in the early or the 50s network craze was a victim of overexposure like boxing.

Boxing may have been.

Boxing wasn't particularly that fucking exciting and still ain't, except at the major level.

But wrestling wasn't on,

when it was on network TV every night of the week.

It still wasn't on this much.

And there were 30 million people people watching these programs.

What killed wrestling on the networks then was Dumont going out of business and then everybody folding their tent and going home.

But

this is impossible for anybody but a fanatic in the worst way to keep up with.

So by attrition,

the first thing I'd do is say, You gave us Rampage as a make good for switching the network on us.

Take Rampage back.

You just just gave us two more hours.

Pay us big money for that.

Take Rampage back.

We don't want it.

We don't want it.

You can have it.

It's no good for us.

But how much can you watch, Brian?

What is this going to do to our lives?

Well, we'll get to that at another point, but let's get to the announcement.

And then a few more.

Oh, I forgot.

We hadn't read anything yet, have we?

No, we haven't gotten there yet.

So here's the official announcement of AEW Saturday Collision.

New York, May 17th, 2023.

TNT launches a second night of professional wrestling with a new 10-pole series, AEW Collision, on Saturday, June 17th.

It was announced today by Kathleen Finch, chairman and chief content officer, U.S.

Networks Group, Warner Brothers Discovery, during the company's 2023 upfront presentation at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

That was one sentence.

Wow.

And I can already tell, I don't trust anybody with that amount of titles.

We should see Tony's list down here.

This live two-hour in-ring show will air every Saturday night from 8 to 10 p.m.

Eastern Time and feature more wrestlers, more stories, and more action to super serve fans.

AEW Collision will feature headliners including Miro,

Samoa Joe, Thunderosa,

Powerhouse Hobbs, and Andrade El Italo.

In only four years.

How did FTR not even get in there if they're going to be on this thing, if they're on the poster?

Well, that's what makes me wonder if people on the poster are just there because they're the title holders.

But then again, why are there no women unless there's not going to be...

Well, Thunderosa's on the poster, so there are some.

There's 14 people and a woman.

In only four years following the launch of AEW Dynamite, AEW's footprint has more than doubled across TNT and TBS.

Along with AEW Dynamite, Friday Night's AEW Rampage,

the recent follow-dock, AEW All-Axis,

and now AEW Collision,

TNT and TBS deliver the best matches and most entertaining moments in professional wrestling today.

You realize that this same network, almost 25 years ago, when they had five times the number of people watching these shows, couldn't wait to get rid of the fucking wrestling program.

AEW has reached 23 million total viewers so far this year across all its shows on TBS and TNT.

Wait a minute.

Goddamn, just took.

I think we've done that too.

Do we get to add up our YouTube numbers and our podcast?

I believe we've done that.

I don't know if they're counting their YouTube numbers in here, to be fair.

All right.

But here's a quote.

Well, we don't have a goddamn network TV show either.

Well, stay tuned.

We're doubling down on wrestling with AEW Collision, which gives fans two more hours every week, said Jason Solanis, president of Turner Networks, ID, and HLN, linear, and streaming.

Boy, everyone must hate their business cards nowadays.

Here's a back to the sounds like a word vomit.

AEW's roster of talent has expanded so quickly that we felt it needed another night to bring our audience to epic rivalries, unforgettable matches, and stars they love to watch.

Adding collision to our programming mix on TNT will allow us to satisfy the massive demand

will allow us to satisfy the massive demand we've felt from our hardcore fan base.

and be the ultimate complement to AEW Dynamite on TBS.

Any quotes on that so far?

I have Tony comments here.

Well, yeah, go ahead because I don't know what he just said.

Otherwise, then the roster has expanded.

He should have said, well, there's so many people that don't like those fucking EVPs that we've got the biggest roster on Saturday nights that we've ever had.

All right, go ahead.

With the addition of AEW Collision on TNT, I'm extremely proud that a Turner Network will be the home of Saturday night wrestling for the first time in more than two decades, said Tony Kahn, CEO, GM, and head of creative of AEW.

The debut of Collision is significant across numerous sectors, including television, wrestling, entertainment, and sports, and reinforces AEW as the bold property we envisioned when we launched in 2019.

Collision will deliver live every Saturday night.

more of what fans and viewers tell us they want.

Athleticism, big personalities, exciting storylines, and hard-hitting wrestling action.

They've been saying they want that on Wednesdays for four years now.

All of which have become synonymous with AEW.

And the only that's really it here.

Then it's just a little bit about AEW and a little bit about TNT.

But AEW Collision coming to TNT, not TBS, but TNT

on June 17th.

Again,

we shall see

if they're really serious about

having a different roster and a different presentation and a different program, or if it's just an exercise in

massaging his EVP's private parts by sending

the people that they're scared of to another television program.

And then, again, what about pay-per-view?

Is it going to be like

the old Georgia TV tapings during the promotional war when they had the NWA Georgia office guys come in and tape their show and then they left and then the all-South guys came in and taped their show at the same place, but they wouldn't be together.

I don't understand how that's even a thing.

If you're trying to compete with a company that now is...

I'm going to say this and I'm going to quit because it's a lost cause anyway, because he's not fucking listening because he's got his head up his ass.

But if you're trying to even compete not to beat, but compete to stay alive against a company that now with the WWE and the UFC and every goddamn Hollywood jang-alang all working together in a $20 billion conglomerate,

put all your fucking stars on the shows and push them all.

And if they can't get along, get rid of the ones that can't.

That's my statement.

Jim, an interesting thing about all this and i was just looking into it online i have something here that mike johnson just wrote but what i was looking for is there's no announcement about money and there's nothing about renewal there's nothing about the rights fee there's nothing about the future of the programming it's just that there's a new show here's something mike johnson of pw insider just wrote that i'm seeing because meltzer said what tweeted it

perhaps even more interesting is that there was no media rights renewal announcement today.

PWInsider.com is told by a source from Warner Brothers Discovery that there was never ever a plan for either side to announce a new deal between AEW and Warner Brothers Discovery.

There had been rampant speculation online about a new deal between the two sides being worth as high as $1.5 billion.

What?

What?

That was the rumor started on the Observer website on the message board by one of their guys.

But beyond that speculation, there had never been any inkling from either AEW or Warner Brothers' discovery that a new rights agreement had been locked in, much less was going to be officially announced today.

We are told there is no announcement expected today on that front.

But, oh, God,

let's back up again.

I'm just a small town bird lawyer, and

I've been closed up just watching the local news about poor Denny Crumb's funeral.

Somebody said they were going to give them a one and a half billion dollars for anything.

Apparently there was a rumor started on the Wrestling Observer message board by one of their contributors.

And this is the same guy, I believe, that said that he heard that CM Punk screwed over Adam Page a while ago.

So obviously he has great sources.

And he said that.

or he alluded to he wouldn't be surprised if it was something like this and people ran with it

and anyone who thought it was going to be anything like that is out of their way.

Oh, he wouldn't be surprised.

I bet he's the kind of guy who wouldn't be surprised if he woke up and there was a fucking dead horse's head in his fucking bed next to him.

Do you think there's any way that the Saturday show could even do Wednesday's numbers just because of the day of the week?

Well, again, that will be a challenge.

If it's a better program

and with stars that people want to see,

then it will probably do even with the

eventually after it's established with

something on Wednesday night because the handicap, although it could get hot, but we don't know anything about it, including whether or not apparently, see officially, CM Punk's going to be a part of it.

But again, there's nothing,

and this is not even knocking AEW,

but there's nothing going on here that anybody would ever pay them a billion dollars for.

I mean, especially now when the streaming services are starting to figure out that, oh, we've kind of massively fucked up and paid a lot of people too much money.

Like the early days, thankfully, I was able to

be a part of the early days when they were acquiring libraries for the eventual launch of a network.

They knew they wanted to buy all the libraries, the WWE.

But then, when they realized that they had paid a lot of money for a lot of stuff and a lot of it they weren't going to be doing anything with, they started lowballing people on footage and figures and et cetera.

Same thing happened with streaming services.

So, no, it's not possible that there's anything right now

that Warner Brothers Discovery would pay AEW a billion dollars for.

Could they, if they programmed their entire weekend, weekend, Friday evening through Monday morning, would they pay them a billion dollars a year?

No.

Well, there you go.

See, you heard it from Brian last, folks.

I mean, part of the thing with AEW

is that it's, all things considered, it's really good, affordable programming.

And it does get a good number in a key advertising demo, and you're not paying a lot for it.

You know, we hear like, oh, they're getting all these millions and millions of dollars a year.

In the general scheme of things, it's really inexpensive programming.

So, if you have people at the network who are willing to embrace it, that's all you need because wrestling will get numbers.

The question will be: what Saturday could bring as opposed to a Wednesday.

Saturday from eight to 10 is a lot different than Wednesday from 8 to 10.

From what I know about

television production cost, and I admit I am not

auditing the AEW books, but from just eyeballing, from what I know about the wrestling business and television production cost and et cetera, and the things that go along with it,

every time they do

with this new show, every time they do a week's worth of television in AEW now, they will be spending

as much money as

we used to run Smoky Mountain Wrestling, lockstock, and barrel for four years.

And again, you know,

you can only

expect so much from these rights fees going forward, especially if you can't

show these people some kind of audience growth over a period of time.

And

they've got the people they've got, and that's all the people they've ever gone after.

There's not enough about the AEW program that appeals to anybody who actually wants to see a fucking fucking wrestling show with people that might be able to beat them up.

I'm talking about the viewers.

Why do you want to watch people fight that you're like, my God, he's 12.

That's the problem.

They've never tried.

Maybe this new show has Miro and Hobbs,

except when Miro threatened to come all over me.

I've, you know, Otherwise, I've thought he was

quite a massive monster until he got all romantic with me and everything.

That wasn't even your problem.

It was more the pajamas and the mini mouse or Mickey Mouse.

The pajamas and the

pink Minnie Mouse shirt.

Yeah.

It was Mickey, though.

I think it wasn't Minnie.

Even though the shirt was pink, it was Mickey.

I don't know.

I'm pretty sure it was Minnie.

No, I think it was Mickey.

Well,

you say Mickey, I say Minnie.

Somebody will give us a, tweet us a freeze frame, but nevertheless.

Anyway.

I understand we got some news.

Actually, right now, something that we've been talking about so long now, something happening as we are recording.

Well, over the last, I guess, hour, hour and a half that we've been speaking, there's more on this punk business and collision.

And let me, we're going to pwinsider.com again, folks, because if you want to know the true story without any horseshit or people picking sides, and you can't get to your morning edition of the Wrestling News, we always encourage you to go to PW Insider because Mike Johnson does a great job.

He doesn't have any friends.

That's why.

He doesn't have any friends he has to be beholden to.

He's just out.

He's like on an island.

He's got friends, I'm sure, for the record.

Well, but he tries to hide them.

But anyway, so Sports Illustrated apparently noted earlier, and you've mentioned some of this, that AEW's press release mentioned all the names, but the email and link to the press release had mentioned CM Punk.

But then none of the disseminated material for the new Saturday Night Series Today featured punk, which surprised a number of people within the company, as the belief was today's announcement would be timed with the official reveal of his return on the premiere episode.

Then Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics.com confirmed the report by Jimmy Traina and Sports Illustrated that Punk was listed earlier before it was edited.

And then

we go to

And hold on

here before we come to the next update in a related matter,

apparently at 1 o'clock, I guess, Eastern time today, about less than an hour and a half ago, Andre Oliolio,

who was announced as part of AEW Collision today as part of the new Saturday night show,

tweeted, Orale, what news?

I had no idea.

He found out when they announced it that he was returning or not returning, but coming to the new Saturday night show.

Oh, my God.

So he had no idea.

And now,

in a report by Mike Johnson at 1.41 p.m.,

as we noted earlier, CM Punk was initially listed in the press release for today's AEW Collision Saturday Night Series on TNT, but was not included in the final release.

Connor Casey of comicbook.com reached out to Warner Brothers Discovery and reported he was told CM Punk is not affiliated with TNT's AEW collision.

Obviously, a major factor in the launch of the series next month was CM Punk's return to AEW with the first episode planned for Chicago's United Center on June 17th.

Needless to say, something has changed.

And

so, I mean, again, going back to what the options are, one option is the person at the network's either lying or they don't know.

The second option is the deal with CM Punk is not done.

Well, as a matter of fact, we had more reporting from 1132 this morning from Mike Johnson.

It was on the Elite account.

They do audio on pwinsiderelite.com.

Yeah, we'll make sure you specify not the elite.

Well, no, yes.

They had it.

No.

On the elite website, their elite website.

They had elite a long time before the Buckaroos did.

But pwinsiderelite.com is, but the audio,

not transcript, but summation is there was a lot of surprise among AEW talents today when CM Punk was not announced for collision.

We are told that as late as last night, Punk was expected by many to be front and center for the collision reveal.

And we are also told, they say, that going forward, there is no brand split.

As much as some talents will be exclusive to the Saturday show

and others will be one or the other or perhaps on one or the other or perhaps both something that will be dictated by storylines.

And if Punk ain't involved, there's no reason to do any of it because the only reason they were talking about any kind of split of the roster was to keep Punk away from the gutless little fucking douchebags.

that started the fucking issue with him and have been whining about having their pussies powdered ever since instead of getting back to business and getting over it.

So if Punk's not going to be involved in this, they don't need to split anything.

Because

except maybe Andre and Sammy

or Kingston and whoever the fuck he's gone into fucking violent situations with or perhaps some of the girls.

Well, now that I'm thinking about it, yeah, I guess they still got to split some people up.

You know, it's interesting, though, the Andrade news you just said, we'll get back to Punk in a second.

If Andrade's telling the truth, that he didn't hear from anyone in AEW, he had no idea he was being announced as returning on this new show.

You know, Leva Bates, the librarian, was just released.

Not a favorite of ours.

But I thought it was interesting in reading about that.

Apparently, she had no communication from anyone in the office and didn't know about it until...

They went out with it.

So the communication issues with AEW talent and either Tony Khan himself or whatever person he puts in that role of communicating with talent, apparently there are still major problems right there.

Well, all he's done is put a line of flunkies in between him and the people that might want to talk to him.

There's nobody with decision-making power.

Remember we read the list of names that he said, well, this will improve communication.

Yeah.

And meet more people for them to talk to.

And then those people will tell you what they're saying.

But those people

do not have, as Mama Cornette used to say, the power to either fish or cut bait.

They can't say, okay, I'll give you more money, or okay,

you can win or lose that match, or okay, you can have your release, or oh, whatever.

They can just, as Reggie B.

Fine used to say, delay the information on to Tony.

So until somebody's in charge of any of this, this is all going to continue to happen.

For Warner Brothers' discovery to state that CM Punk's not affiliated with AEW Collision,

I mean, if we're playing semantics, that doesn't mean he's not affiliated with AEW Dynamite on TBS.

That's not saying that he's not being announced now.

That means he's not affiliated.

When we announce him, he'll be affiliated.

You know, we're looking at a lot of the possible realities, but it also could just be...

the general AEW management issues kind of playing into this.

What do you think Tony Tony Khan is telling

the people at the network?

Well,

we think it'll be okay.

We think he's going to come back, or

if I can make my executive vice presidents not be mad anymore, he can come back.

Or if we can keep him and the people that they had a fight with apart, he'll come back.

Because if I was a network anything, okay, I don't know anything about wrestling.

What about those motherfuckers on that baseball team last week that had that bench clear and brawl?

We got to keep them apart?

What about the fucking guys on the NBA game that we telecast last Tuesday night or whenever?

They started fucking throwing punches.

And we got to have separate buildings for them now?

Or can those teams play again sometime?

Do you see where I'm going with this?

No, it's all ridiculous.

I agree.

How is he conveying this information?

to the network on why that this guy's under contract to his company, but they can't have him on their

TV network when he's the one that got them their biggest ratings.

How is that?

How is he delivering that news?

Because Tony Kahn,

either wittingly or unwittingly,

let his legal team, more than likely, run the clock.

And now here we are, the announcement of the new show.

The announcement of the Chicago show,

word that it's going to be called the second coming.

And these issues are still in the the air.

And for everyone who thinks- So you're not saying that somebody on the legal team that happens to be personal friends and on the side of the EVPs and against punk from the beginning would delay or throw monkey wrenches in any of these plans to prevent things from coming to fruition for selfish and personal reasons.

Are you?

What I'm saying is that if Tony Khan,

the owner, co-owner, GM, head of creative, CEO, whatever he is for AEW,

wanted all this done and taken care of so we could move on, it would be.

So either wittingly,

in that he's only a hard ass to the people that work with him and everyone else, he plays this soft guy who can't get anything done, or unwittingly, he is the soft guy that can't get anything done, and his fucking team does what they want to do.

There's something causing this shit not to get done.

And it's ridiculous because the other thing is

the drama in AEW is more interesting than anything in AEW.

And while that's fun in games for us, that's not good for a wrestling company.

No.

And the idea that this would be drawn-out drama with punk because it's good for things, it isn't.

The fact that they announced a new show today and all the news is already turning to CM Punk's not on it.

CM Punk's name being removed from it.

Orange Cassidy appearing on the poster.

Now Warner Brothers saying CM Punk's not affiliated with it.

Any positive spin you got out of this is gone already.

Am I wrong?

I know, but that's the perfect analogy.

They announced today a brand new two-hour prime time program, and within three hours, the biggest news is who's not on it.

Fuck.

So, what does Andrade do?

Does he wait for an airplane ticket to arrive in the mail?

What is Andrade doing right now?

Mira, Mira, what's going on over there?

Jesus age Christ.

Yeah, I guess he needs to get in the car now.

Where does he live?

I like the idea of just putting wrestlers on the poster, even if they're not booked and don't know they're going to be there.

So maybe

things could come out of this.

He was not only on the poster, he was mentioned in the press release, too.

They had him by name.

So he's.

But anyway, yeah, so all of the people, some of them are just now finding out, but all of the people that are supposed to be on the new show are apparently going to be on the new show, except for the one person that's supposed to be on the new show.

And again, even if he appears on this show now, they've already induced a few more hours of drama into the story for no reason.

For no reason.

So now Tony gets to announce this in a very clunky fashion on the show tonight.

Oh, I forgot.

Yes, we got, well, we got to, you know what?

We need to, we need to break and come back tomorrow and report on what he said.

He's going to sound like like Beaver Cleaver trying to explain to fucking Warden June how he ended up in that fucking giant coffee cup.

You know what my favorite thing he does when they do these really awkward, now they're doing it in front of a green screen so he could just stand there and practice and not.

His announcement background.

I like when he starts it because he goes, thanks, guys.

You know, like,

like he's actually, they're actually sending it to him and he's there waiting for them.

Thanks.

You know what?

Because it's because it's already been taped if one of the fucking announcers wanted to fuck with him and said, well, here's that screwball with an announcement thanks guys

well we will return with the drive-through in at this point a few hours with a little bit of an update on this and some of your questions and more and uh we're not leaving they won't know we've left we're not returning for the for the listener we're just taking a break so we can examine all this news and see what Tony has to whine for himself tonight, and we'll come back and finish this program.

Let's begin, I guess, with the mess that we left off with.

The poop flinging over at AEW?

We left it with word coming out, Mike Johnson reporting that TNT said that CM Punk has no involvement.

I forget the exact wording, no involvement with the AEW Collision show that will be debuting on Saturday nights on TNT.

That's where we left it.

And then more transpired.

How much of this are you fluent in?

Because I don't have anything.

I'm fluent in Frontier gibberish.

Actually, I have the article in front of me, an updated article on the reasoning

behind this whole deal blowing up again.

And ladies and gentlemen, it is as we thought.

And we've been predictifying a lot of things over the past few months, not only in AEW, but just everything seems to come to pass that we talk about.

But in this case, apparently.

Another deal has been blown up

just in time to

apparently now, as it stands now, prevent CM Punk from appearing at the United Center in Chicago or his name being mentioned on the network up fronts.

And Mike Johnson on pwinsider.com has this updated

piece.

The rumor making the rounds is that Punk and AEW are again at odds.

Now over the status of the return of A-Steel.

In asking around, there appears to be something something to that situation.

The belief amongst those we've spoken with is that A.

Steele was expected to return in conjunction with Punk next month, working behind the scenes.

He was obviously an agent, producer, whatever they call that position there before.

Get his job back, everybody back to work.

And Mike continues, however, the story making the way around AEW backstage today at Dynamite is that a decision was made that Steele would not be working backstage at the collision tapings.

As you might imagine, that left Punk and AEW on opposite sides of the discussion, which in turn led to Punk being removed from all promotional material released for the AEW collision series.

One person believed MJF replaced Punk in the promotional graphic, but we haven't been able to confirm that.

We do know that Impact Wrestling sources noted today they had had interest in bringing Steele in for a tryout,

and the invitation was was passed on several weeks ago.

Their belief was that meant he was either AEW or WWE bound.

So

apparently

they had another deal because I mean, first of all, we've talked, how long has this been going on now?

Six, seven months, long enough to have had a baby

or a cow man.

We talked about even if Punk did come back, he would want Steele to his his friend and trainer who was fired for defending his friend and his wife in the skirmish he would obviously want him back and one would imagine that would be the case because

as we knew there was no legitimate third-party legal investigation into the thing

uh Everything is still continued, is continuing, seems to be to be handled by AEW's crack legal staff.

No results of any investigation were ever given out.

Nobody was ever fired except for A.

Steele.

And how to, if you're not going to fire

everybody from the same side, they could have fired either the bargers, the people that barged into the room and instigated, or they could have fired the bargees, the people that defended their standing their ground there in their locker room.

But they didn't fire anybody except A.

Steele, who was actually going to the aid aid of his outnumbered friend in a room with, as we know, his injured wife.

So one would think that part of the thing that would get punk and good graces enough to agree to come back to the company would be to give the man his job back.

And I've heard everybody say, well, everybody ought to apologize.

Well, okay.

Ace, apologize for cracking little

whichever one it was, little twit or little twat with the the fucking chair.

Everybody shake hands.

Are they professional athletes or are they high school drama class students that need parental supervision?

But the point is,

apparently that was coming to pass.

Apparently

they booked the United Center.

So this hadn't been a secret.

It's not like

that anybody is saying that Punk has now said, oh, no, but you got to bring A.

Steele back.

Just all of a sudden, this is a surprise he's flung on him.

No.

Weeks ago, the guy's turning down

opportunities to go elsewhere.

I don't know.

He turned Impact down.

Maybe he still didn't want to do anything, but you know what I'm saying.

That's not going elsewhere.

That's going nowhere.

Well, there you go.

Somewhere over the rainbow, maybe.

But anyway, the guy's turning down other opportunities weeks ago.

This is not a fucking state of mind that CM Punk's been in recently.

It's been the whole fucking bone of contention, the way that his side was treated.

They booked the United Center.

They got a brand new Saturday Night Show.

It was reported by even Uncle Dave, who does everything he can to crowbar anything negative about Punk into the press, that Punk had been instrumental in discussions with the network about the new show.

The network was for having him on it.

And all of a sudden,

well now maybe he still won't be working they are going to blow up the new network program

the new saturday night television show

the rated the gate at the united center

they're going to do all because now they have not officially announced we in in our break also they've announced the first

like six weeks of tapings for the new Saturday night show location, except for the first one, which will be announced next week, because apparently

they didn't realize that if they said, no, fuck you, boy, Ace,

apparently, they thought Punk was going to, okay, well, we'll forget about that detail.

What the fuck?

So they are blowing this whole deal up over not wanting Ace Deal to come back and be an agent in a wrestling program when he would be

the

basically the Pat Patterson or Jack Lanza to the WWF champion.

He would be that CM Punk and working with punk.

And he's a hell of a trainer, which they need worse than ever with bad examples like Jon Moxley around.

They're going to blow this whole deal up because the EVP's asses are still chapped that this 40-something year old guy kicked a shit out of them.

It doesn't matter how old the person is that kicks the shit out of you.

It's just that they got bigger balls than yours.

So get over it.

Can you believe this, Brian?

Speak to me.

Earlier today, the wrestling news is Luke Hippelman was able to speak to A.

Steele.

So we have this exclusive soundbite.

He bit Lou Hippelman and now loses in the hospital.

So thanks, Ace Steele.

You know, look, this whole thing is ridiculous, and it's crazy.

Just

it's crazy how much bigger the drama is than anything that's actually happening on that show.

And it's so big and it never ends.

And we always say it, it's always because of Tony.

Everyone's pointing the finger at Punk.

If CM Punk was led to believe that Ace Steele was going to be there with him in his locker room for AEW Collision or whatever to work with him.

And be his agent.

And work with him on his matches so he could do everything the way he wants to do it.

If he was led to believe that was exactly what was going to happen, if he was told, yes, this is going to happen.

If

everything got to this point

right before the announcement of the new show at the network upfronts.

Now's the time they decide at the last minute to pull the rug out?

That's kind of bullshit.

They waited until the very end.

They're doing everything to like almost make it so he can't pull out.

I mean, he can and he and he did, apparently.

But

the

fact is, it's clear from all of this,

everything that's been publicly reported, that A.

Steele had a deal.

He was back with AEW.

And something happened between that deal being completed and now,

which is he can't be be there, and reportedly CM Punk is not coming back if Ace Steel doesn't come back.

In between that period of time, somehow

enough concern from someone other than the person making the deal rose up

to cause this problem.

What would that have been?

Who knew this was happening?

And who raised a stink about it?

And if he was going to be on another show, did people that were going to be in that locker room raise a stink about it?

Well, which way?

Let me again.

Did legal cause this to happen?

Well, well, now, hold on now.

Don't be casting aspersions like that because the legal department would be the ones handling this whole deal to make sure it goes seamlessly, wouldn't they?

Now,

what of the talent?

What of the talent?

Who on the talent roster would suddenly go and say, oh, Ace Steele is coming back to be the top agent on the Saturday night show working with the top star CM Punk.

I am going to complain to management.

What would the motivation for any talent on the roster to, and what would be the justification?

Hey, I've got a problem with that guy being on this show and being here because he punched a friend of mine.

Well, fuck you.

Then you've eliminated half the people in the wrestling business, at least as of five or 10 years ago.

And hey, maybe I farted in your fucking Aunt Lola's general direction one time.

But here's the mistake you're making, I think.

Even if, for instance, the EVPs did not want a steal back,

the way this has been done makes me think that somehow voices beyond that were solved.

That's what I'm saying.

Let's work from the bottom up.

None of the other talent either would probably give a shit, except they're personal friends of the EVPs and the Buckaroos and the whole California Raisin brand clique.

But they have no personal issue because they've not had a goddamn confrontation with this guy or any kind of problem.

So eliminate that.

The only people

that would have a standing and a reason to object to A.

Steele being there

would be the people he had a fight with.

or the people that have been trying to put this or maybe not trying to put this deal together.

See, See, you eliminate all of the people.

And if some fucking guy on AEW Dark Rampage Elevation

Tube says, well, I don't like him.

Well, fuck you.

He's the fucking top guy's agent and you're a fucking preliminary jack off.

So hit the fucking road.

So again, we're talking about a very small circle of people that would both have a problem with the guy being there and have

a legitimate enough voice in the matter and Tony Khan's ear or whatever orifice he hears through to be able to make these fucking complaints to

sidetrack this deal.

That's where I'm going.

The fact that they have not announced Chicago, but they've announced all these other dates for AEW collision.

I bet you they were going to announce Chicago until a couple of days ago, whenever this popped up.

Even from what I've read in some of the emails this morning, even Dave Meltzer on his show said that without CM Punk, collision is rampage.

Do you think they're going to move this out of Chicago?

I definitely think that they're looking around to see what they can do.

Because why else would they have announced, like I said, the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth week

and the exact location?

Because they're the same kind of buildings and the markets that they usually go to.

Nothing's out of the ordinary there, at least that I saw.

Maybe I overlooked something.

So well at me.

And they're going to be in Canada for four weeks.

But what I'm saying is they're not playing NBA arenas and they're not

going to markets that they normally, you know, wouldn't be expected to do well in unless it was some specific attraction.

United Center, CM Punk, leaked.

subtitle of show The Second Coming.

You know that's what they had planned.

And apparently, they thought that they could then jack this deal up at the last minute and he'd just go along with it.

And apparently, they found out very

last minute that he wasn't going to, and they couldn't announce that because if he's not going to be there, they'll look like idiots.

If they run a, what do they seat in the United Center?

20,000?

I'm not sure.

And

whoever would show up for that show would be chanting CM Punk at the the top of their lungs as a fucking protest.

So they can't do it without him.

And as a result,

he's bluffing, stalling, whatever you want to say.

I've done it in wrestling promotion.

Every wrestling promoter has done it.

You think you're going to do something.

Suddenly you find out not.

You don't know what you're going to do.

You don't want to back yourself into a corner.

If you've got a week, you won't announce anything.

You'll announce an announcement or something.

Did you see the announcement on Dynamite?

Dynamite?

We'll do the Dynamite review on the experience, obviously, but did you see the announcement?

Well, yes, it was the announcement that we've already heard announced.

No, but

nausea, but with Tony standing in front of the announcement background to announce the announcement that had been announced earlier in the day when they made the announcement.

He did my favorite thing once again.

Back to you guys.

No, thanks, guys.

Oh, thanks, guys.

Thanks, guys.

As soon as QG points out.

Thanks, guys.

But that's...

thanks, guys.

I'm here on a set that you've never seen in any other segment on this show ever.

It's like I'm on a spaceship.

But at least they're pre-taping him now.

He's not coming out there and just winging it.

But so that's the point.

They got seven days now.

He's bought himself seven days

to because you can't.

I mean, buildings are booked.

I mean, not as much as they used to be, but you know, when you've

still, when you've got seven days to come up with a suitable location that you can sell hopefully most of the tickets in the building to and that it will host a

you know national cable broadcast

and you know

unless it's one of their buildings that they work with on a regular basis

especially then there would need to be insurance forms filled out if it was a new place they'd i mean insurance proof of insurance and building contracts and et cetera, et cetera.

So it takes a couple days if you knew exactly where to call and they were open.

So I, you know.

And I like the fact that, you know, for so long, everyone's like, you know, CM Punk, he's just a disloyal guy.

He's all out for himself.

He's literally standing by the guy that fought with him to help him.

And people are like, look at what a baby he is.

Yeah, he's doing the right thing.

Yeah.

And again, how do you fire one half of one side of a fight

and explain it away by anything other than, well, we need Punk.

He's a star, but they're really mad.

So we're going to fuck with the other guy.

Well, that's don't fuck with the other guy then.

That's what this has come down to.

Put everybody back to work.

It's grown up enough to go and do it.

And if the assholes won't, fire them.

You know what?

This is a good thing, too, though, because Punk in delaying this or in this whatever state we're in now, and it not happening yet punk got to see the announcement he got to see the poster so now when tony calls to make the deal he'd be like you know what by the way this roster what the is this

come on help me out well no you know here's the thing i bet you if he if he was a picking if he was told here pick and he was a picking guy he would pick

Most of the names that were on that poster.

I don't think he'd pick pockets.

I think he would pick Pockets' pockets and send him back penniless to the fucking pocket farm or whatever.

But he would,

I don't think that Punk would say, I don't want any of those other talents on the show.

But

I think he would have the problem that we had in that these are all people that have either been off television completely or featured in such middling roles that you need some juice

with him and FTR.

And yes, I'd put MJF on it.

He's the champion.

He's the, he's the,

if Punk is the top babyface, which he will be, MJF's the top heel, he needs to be motivating between both programs because he's the champion.

That would give you some juice at the top, and the other guys are fine.

But they kind of, like you said, it was left because it wasn't in the press release, just the poster, it was left to the individual's debate.

as to whether FTR and a couple other people are in there just because they're champions or are they going to be on the program?

Obviously, he'd pick them too.

Have FDR even defended the belts?

I can't remember the last 50 matches.

Who knows?

Who fucking knows?

Because all the people that they want, the majority of the public wants to see, hear from, and talk about

are either hidden or goddamn off work

because they can't get fucking their management shit together to fucking apply the all the tools tools that they have in their toolkit

because it's a goddamn mess.

And then they make deals and reneg on them because somebody else doesn't like it.

And it's Tony had to be the one to make the deal because how does somebody else make the deal and then go tell Tony?

That's right.

So

that's the biggest problem.

When Punk did the famous

speech, whatever you want to call it at the press scrum, and he said, I work with children, he may be harmless, but Tony's the lead child.

And that's the problem because he's in charge of the company.

He doesn't behave in a way that any CEO that's effective that I've ever seen does.

Wait a minute.

They weren't big huggers.

They didn't request hugs.

Record industry or the music.

Well, no, I shouldn't say that.

I mean, some people do that.

Some people go for the handshake into the hug.

Usually people don't, you know, request them or, you know, beg for them or whatever.

Yeah.

Or linger or malinger excruciatingly and uncomfortably long.

Again, you know, I haven't had these meetings with people.

I always think the option is I could leave the room or just say no.

So that's always the thing.

But where was I going before you took me here?

I don't know where we were.

We were trying to hug it out.

But that's the thing.

Tony made a deal because how can anybody make a deal if it's not approved by Tony?

So when you assume you have a deal,

When everyone is assuming, that means that Tony has made the deal.

And then somehow the deal changes.

How does the deal change unless Tony is changing his mind?

And then why is he changing it?

And who's talking to him?

And why is it changing now?

Because that's the thing.

The forces that didn't want A-Steel to return to the company were the same forces that didn't want him to return to the company months ago.

It's not like that's changed.

So why was this timed so that Once everyone thought everything was smooth over, it appears, all of a sudden now, right before the upfronts, right before the announcement of the new show, right before Chicago, apparently, just hours before.

Why now?

That's the thing.

The people that were insistent that A-Steel wasn't going to return, their thoughts haven't changed.

Why was this timed so that this

boom got lowered right now?

Did they think they could get by with it without him finding out?

One would, how?

I mean,

we since we don't know the exact timeline at Eastern time or whatever, A Steel or CM Punk or whoever's involved in this found out exactly what do you think maybe they did they send out an email too early to somebody?

That would be a thing shitstain might do.

Or did a loose lip sink a ship?

Or were they going to try to get this announcement made and then

let the offended party Steele and Punk know that the deal was being sent south.

One wonders.

I mean, how do you do business like that?

Again, after all this drama, and whoever you want to blame for the drama at this point, whether it's Punk or Tony Khan, who's the blame for all this, let's be honest, or the Elite or Ace Steele, whoever, whoever you want to blame, they got to a point where it was done.

Okay, I'll go back.

It's not perfect there, but I'll go back.

And okay, he's not perfect.

He may slug someone, but he's coming back.

And the network likes him and he's a big star.

And we could really use him.

And then the drama gets introduced again.

It's like every time there's progress,

boom.

And this one seems like a big one.

Again, they lowered this boom right before this announcement.

The timing of this is pretty suspicious to me.

They tried to run the clock on CM Punk, is what it seems like.

Well, let's just sum this up with apparently

A.

Steele in,

I believe I've been around wrestling longer than A.

Steele has.

I haven't followed his career on a weekly basis, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time, and he's been around wrestling at least 25 years,

that he's ever.

punched, bit, or clocked with a chair any of the other wrestlers in a locker room skirmish.

We haven't heard any others reported all these years, right?

So

in that case, it's a small pool of people.

Again, I will restate what I said earlier, a small pool of people that would have

not only a grudge or a reason for him to not be around, but also the standing to say that.

You can say all day long, well, I don't like what he did to this guy that is a friend of mine.

Well, it has nothing to do with you.

Well, the question is, did they bring it up on their own or were their opinions sought out?

Well,

that's what I'm saying.

So if this deal was made, they didn't have to goddamn do a popularity poll on the guy.

One would think only a few, it would be a small pool of people that would even be consulted.

One would think, because why else would you, you wouldn't want something like this getting out.

So you wouldn't just go willy-nilly around and say, Hey, is anybody mad if A-Steel comes back?

Just checking.

Well, that would tip the whole fucking thing off.

That would be the stupidest thing you could do.

How would you feel about A-Steel coming back?

I wouldn't like it.

All right, thank you.

How would you feel about A-Steel coming back?

Yeah, that's what, and then the friends of the Friends are going to say, That's the stupidest thing you could do anyway, because if they like the one side, they'll say, Oh, yeah.

And if they like the other, oh, no.

So that's stupid.

But nobody should even have on the roster have that say anyway, because they weren't involved.

So it's a small pool of people.

The EVPs and or the legal representative and or a couple of the other agents that were in the room

and Punk and Steel and his wife and Larry.

Let's not forget about Larry and all this.

He got some of his teeth loosened.

So that should be the only people involved.

And

if everybody agreed on a deal and then suddenly something happens

and and it's being reneged on from the AEW side rather than the punk and steel side, then somebody's jacking around.

Maybe so.

I have a comment here from Larry that Lou Kippelman was able to get a little bit earlier today.

Let me go to this.

Apparently, he's unhappy about all this.

Well, but see, if everybody was as professional as that in this situation, we could move on.

Then A-Steel bit Lou, and again, Lou's in the hospital from an A-See.

But he's having all those those shots in his stomach for the rabies.

You know, a good tetanus round every now and then does help the system.

Sounds fishy to me.

You know what else sounds fishy to me, young Brian last?

The whole situation going on in AEW

that we just reported on a couple days ago on the drive-thru, your program, it was unfolding and the news was slipping out, eking out, dripping out, whatever, as we were recording the program.

But just to bring everybody up to date,

AEW has a brand new

two-hour prime time

television broadcast set to beg to debut on June 17th on Saturday nights on TNT

called Collision.

And at the network upfronts and the big announcements of SAME, they were supposed to announce that

the star of our show

would be CM Punk and the

debut taping, or not taping, it's live, the debut broadcast would emanate from

the United Center

in

lovely Chicago, Illinois, the Windy City.

And the title that we have heard leaked for

the event was The Second Coming.

And within, what, less than 24 hours before all those announcements were going to be made,

Tony or someone in his

periphery or orbit in the company managed to either

fuck up

or

we still don't know how the word got out that close to the.

I say they were trying to fucking run one by him.

I say they were trying to pull a fast one and he found out about it in the nick of time.

But they reneged on their previous agreement, as has been reported by multiple sources,

to

not rehire A.

Steele because A.

Steele was rehired.

Now we come to find out

a number of weeks or even months ago,

part of obviously their contrition for him being the only one that got fired over this to begin with.

When he's not the, he wasn't even the one that started it, even just the one that finished it off.

So they managed to fuck this up because Punk got word

that no,

they're not going to have A.

Steele come back to work to do what he's supposed to be doing,

which is

being the agent and producer for the top star in the company on the brand new two-hour national cable television program.

But instead, they'll send him a check.

I guess

they rehired him.

They'll pay him.

But he can just call Tony on the phone

and

tell Tony what he thinks over the phone about shit.

And that

somehow they think that that is going to

honor any kind of a deal that was made to get all these parties back on television and moving forward with the new television program.

And

so obviously those announcements that I mentioned were not made because Punk said, oh, hell no, what the fuck?

And again, Brian, and I will turn it over to you for any comment you might have or update you might be aware of.

But it's another example of Tony making a deal that's a deal until somebody tells him they don't want him to make a fucking deal.

Am I correct in this?

Again, we don't know because we can't really say what Tony Khan's mindset truly is, but it seems like from everything we've seen publicly reported, Tony Khan

is agreeing to certain things to the top talent that he's negotiating with.

And then somehow from that point until execution,

monkey wrenches keep getting thrown in the way that cause what we're supposed to believe is the boss's intent to not happen the way he wanted it to.

And how many times does that need to happen before you make some changes?

And again, the

information being leaked out, or the, well,

sources have said

that some people in the company wouldn't be comfortable with Ace coming back to work in person.

And we mentioned on the drive-through,

well,

those same people weren't comfortable with punk either, which is why this whole ridiculous, farcical, farcical, fucking brand split that's not

is being instituted to put him over there because the other ones are so fucking childish and immature and it's romper room that they can't fucking be in the same building with him and they're scared.

And if you're, if you're a man, say you're a man, if you're a mouse, squeak, but nevertheless,

then

the same guy that was on the same side of the issue that is being sent over here to Saturday night.

Now, the other guy can't be over there.

Who's going to be uncomfortable over there?

Does A.

Steele have a long history of axe murder?

Here is, is it a case of, you know what?

I'm pretty sure if you don't fuck with this guy and you're not in a goddamn fist fight with a friend of his, he's probably not going to bother you.

But again, we're assuming

that, or you're assuming, because I don't know if it's necessarily a fair assumption that the talent are really the ones causing this not to happen.

Well,

double duty, talent or EVPs.

The point is the

offended parties that are still have their panties in a twist over a fight in a locker room six months ago,

them or their friends would have the only reason

to have any issue with this whatsoever, right?

But is this not happening?

Or the way this didn't happen?

However you want to look at it, because it it happened.

Apparently, Ace Steele, from what we've seen publicly reported, has been under contract to AEW since April.

So for everyone who thought Jericho pitched the idea of Ace Steele, no.

He was already working there, apparently.

And for everyone who thought it wasn't going to happen until everyone cleared it, no, Tony already said yes.

So now it becomes about the execution.

And again.

Because they're paying him to work.

They just won't let him come to work.

Yeah, no, give him an, they want to give him, it seems like, an iron sheet deal where it's like, here's all this money, stay home.

Just, we don't want to see you.

Here's a bunch of money not to be seen.

But

the question really is,

is Tony Khan's legal team or his advisors, whoever you want to think of here, are they telling him Ace can't be here?

because the talent are upset?

Or are they telling him Ace can't be here because you and your dad will get sued if he bites another person?

Like, what is that?

That's the thing we don't know.

We're all making assumptions.

What is Tony Acely being told by his team?

Okay, I've got a great gimmick then.

Put him in the fucking Hannibal Lecter mask, and he'll be the hottest heel in the fucking company.

Wheel him out, and he's got the thing where he can't bite anybody.

But be the hottest heel in the locker room.

Again,

I think back and

in the history of wrestling, how many fights and incidents there have been amongst people that then, whether they either turned it into

fucking money in terms of at the gate or just learned to coexist or

one guy moved on and went somewhere else to defuse the situation or whatever.

And I've,

this was not that big of a fucking deal.

A guy got a fucking black eye punched in the face.

A guy got fucking whacked over the head with a chair.

A guy got bit on the arm.

For fuck's sake.

And this has been six months ago.

And if again, if you're talking about someone who was involved in something asking other people or,

you know, the legal liability or fucking,

you know, is someone uncomfortable with this person around this, a fucking wrestling business.

Do you think in 1996, Vince looked across his dining room table from me at a booking meeting and said, hey, Jim, I know

you're friends with Arne Anderson.

You guys have known each other for a while, but do you mind if I book Sid Vicious, even though that he stabbed Arne multiple times with a pair of scissors and sent him to the hospital with goddamn blood loss?

It never came up.

And I knew not to fucking bring it up because he was going to do what he was going to do.

And also,

we were pretty sure that we kept a halfway good eye on Sid, he wasn't going to fucking stab anybody anymore.

Someone called the seamstress, hide all the scissors.

Sid is in the house.

Well, they did go to plastic utensils and catering, but nevertheless, that may have been a coincidence.

But I actually likened this, truthfully, more

to

Randy Savage, Bill Dundee, Jerry Lawler, Jerry Jarrett.

Think about this for a second.

You've got two guys that have tremendous heat because of a real-life situation: Randy Savage and Bill Dundee.

And everybody knows the story.

Savage ambushed Dundee in the parking lot in Nashville at the gym and broke his jaw.

And Dundee was off for about, I think it was about four to six weeks

that it not only cost him money, but it cost Jerry Jarrett money because Dundee was a main event guy.

But then,

what was it,

two years later or whatever,

all of a sudden now

ICW is folding.

Angelo calls Jerry, tries to make some peace.

Well, as we've talked about with our Mid-South deep dives and our retrospectives on the Midnight Express and all the things that were happening at that time

in Memphis and Louisiana,

Jerry Jarrett was best friends with Bill Dundee.

Dundee had been his booker and one of his top stars for fucking years.

And here's goddamn Randy Savage, who not only had worked for the outlaw promotion that had done everything they could to damage their business, but had actually fucking broken Dundee's jaw and put him out of business for fucking six weeks, cost him all money.

But Jerry Jarrett says, I got a fucking way to make that money back.

And at the same time, Lawler and Dundee had been grading on each other.

So Jerry Jarrett gets Bill Dundee

the job as booker for Bill Watts.

Dundee makes more money in 1984 than he'd ever made in the wrestling business up to that point, which was a pretty penny.

Bill Watts has his record year with Dundee booking.

We all get jobs.

Then Jarrett brings Randy Savage and Lanny Poffo in and Angelo.

And he didn't ask any of

fucking Dundee's friends, do you mind?

I know he broke Bill's jaw and fucked with him for a long time, but no,

because

there was no more personal issue.

It was diffused and now they were doing business.

And Lawler works with Savage and trusts him with his body, and they draw money.

It's goddamn it.

And actually, I should mention if people think, well, a broken John getting clocked over the head with a chair, depending on which story you believe, he was either fucking had nucks in his hand or was using Dundee's gun that he'd wrestled away from Dundee to fucking pistol whip him.

Because there was a firearm involved in that and it was almost used.

There's serious shit that goes on with people, but they

again, this is well, this was nothing but one of these fights in Major League Baseball.

This wasn't even, nobody was after somebody with a gun in the parking lot.

Nobody used a razor blade.

You know, a couple seasons ago, the Mets got a big shortstop, Francisco, well, and Heidi's short, but Francisco Lindor, who is an all-star shortstop.

And he didn't necessarily fit in so great.

That first year was a little awkward.

And there was a situation where he and Jeff McNeil, between innings, reportedly, he had Jeff McNeil against the wall by his throat.

They were having some kind of physical issue because of something that happened on the field.

After that game, when the media asked about it, both guys said, oh, there was a squirrel.

We were looking at squirrels

in the hallway.

They protected it.

They were mad at each other.

They settled it.

Now they're good.

But they weren't going to let it spill out.

They were going to deal with it, not go and say, I demand to be traded away from this team because that animal is there.

And again, and either handle it or don't handle it, but keep it in-house.

Everybody had to hear about this because because everybody's a drama queen now.

And most of these guys in the locker room had never seen anybody have an actual fight in the locker room before.

But there were, that's why I'm saying for if you're in the wrestling business, and even if you've only been in it a while, if you had some whiff of the actual business before it turned into this Disney on ice on tour thing,

this was not a big goddamn deal.

As we talked about at the time, the only

unusual aspect of the all-out

post-scrum

bench clearer was that, number one, there was a group of people involved on each side.

It's usually one on one side and one on the other and a bunch of people trying to break it up.

And two, that there was actually somebody representative of the office that was on one side of it.

But otherwise, this was a minor incident.

And I think, you know, everybody's told the story about Bruiser and Bruiser Brody, Dick the Bruiser and Bruiser Brody.

Brody, especially, but a lot of guys, if they weren't mad about their payoffs, that's the way they fucking

went in and registered that displeasure and either got fired or fucking paid.

And does anybody now that I've said that, I guess half the people don't know what I'm fucking talking about?

Probably not.

Okay.

Basically,

Dick the Bruiser, and I remember this because I was still watching watching the TV as before I got into business, 1980, 81.

Dick the Bruiser, the dying days of his promotion in Indianapolis, brings in Bruiser Brody, who they called King Kong Brody,

to work Indianapolis because Bruiser had no territory left and he needed a big name opponent.

And he was like Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, and a spot show or two, right?

That was kind of it.

And he was obviously expected to be fair with Brody.

So anyway,

one night Brody gets in his fucking,

gets his check and says this is bullshit and goes through the building to the babyface locker room and into Bruiser's locker room.

And this is Dick the Bruiser.

In 1955, he was Brock Lesnar, but this is 1981 and it's Bruiser Brody.

And give, and I think Brody even said, give Dick credit.

He stood right up to me and here we went, but Brody had Dick around the neck and was bashing his head against the fucking lockers and busting him open.

And so the next night they walked in the fucking building, and here comes Bruiser and hands Brody his fucking check.

Point taken.

It's not that big a fucking deal, except for these kids that are festering about it because they got beat in a fight, they got fucking told off at a press scrum, and everybody knows that the points were valid that Punk made.

So they're fucking pussies need powdered,

but move on, get over it.

It's ridiculous.

Now they still keep

putting,

as you said, monkey wrenches in this thing.

When deals are done

and people are assuming that things are going to happen based on what they've been told, and then suddenly it's never that way.

And every time that it's close to an announcement of punk or a return of punk, something like this happens,

and they act like it's punk's fault.

It's Tony Khan's fault.

He keeps allowing this to happen.

It's his people.

Tony Kahn,

I don't care who he gets on the phone with and tries to be a peacemaker in this.

He's letting this all happen.

So, in one way or another, he likes this drama.

Anyway,

one more real quick, because I love the Gary Hart missing link story, but it illustrates that this is childish shit these days.

Fucking missing Link's work in Dallas for world-class, Fritz von Erich.

Gary Hart is the booker, Uncle Gary.

And Link was

different type of individual.

And at one point, he went up to Carrie.

I don't know if they were married yet.

I think it was still Carrie's girlfriend, later wife.

and asked her if the carpet matched the drapes.

So Gary, of course, hears about it.

And Gary fucking calls Link over one day.

And I don't know if I'm sure it was probably more heated than this.

I'm sure it was a longer discussion.

Gary told me the story in brief, but I can hear in Gary's voice, brother,

you cannot talk to the man's girl that way.

If Fritz tells me to fire you, I'm going to fire you like that.

And that's going to be a shame for both of us.

So be cool, right?

But apparently this did not sit well with Link.

And he walks in the next day.

Gary's sitting on the goddamn bench in the locker, in the sportatorium locker room there, those swinging doors and those old wooden benches.

And Gary said he was sitting there and he saw the door swing open.

And suddenly, bam, the side of his head exploded.

Link, who was 260 and jacked up, had just sucker punched him right in the side of the fucking head, right in the temple, knocked him to the floor with goddamn, you know, a blind shot, right?

And Gary's on the floor and he's on his knees,

bent over.

But what Link was too stupid to realize about Gary, and I've seen it, if you ever see pictures of Gary Hart in the old days when they had heat in Florida or Texas or wherever 60s and 70s, he's coming back from the ring.

The cops are around him.

He's got one of his kabuki or one of his tag teams, somebody with him.

A lot of times you'd see he'd have his hand inside his jacket, looking like Napoleon sometimes.

Inside his, every time that Gary went to or from the ring,

inside his jacket, not in his pocket where he would have to dip, but just taped right in there, he had a single-sided razor blade where he could lay hands on it anytime.

Goddamn, nobody uses razor blades to shave anymore, Brian.

But do they still know that there's the double-sided that are sharp on both edges and there's a a single-sided that you can like when you scrape paint off glass and shit with one of those.

When you get shaved at the barber.

Well, a lot of people aren't that fucking opulent.

Opulent?

It costs like eight bucks.

Well, it costs me fucking dick all of shit to shave myself and I'm

don't have to let anybody next to my throat with a fucking blade.

But anyway.

So Gary had a single-sided razor blade inside his jacket every time he was on the way to and from the ring.

But even in his personal daily life,

I've seen it.

He had one of those flip-open wallets, like a, you know, two-sided thing, and you could just flip it open.

And right inside that wallet that he kept right inside his jacket pocket was a single-sided razor blade with a piece of white athletic tape on the sharp side taped right there.

He could pull that thing out.

And when Link had clocked him and he had gone down on the ground face first on his knees,

he reached in his jacket pocket.

And as Link got him to pick him up and do whatever the fuck, he just sliced the missing link across the middle of his fucking stomach from asshole to appetite.

And that'll change your fucking emotion real quick.

And Link looked at that and fucking took it and grabbed his bag and left.

And that was his notice on both parts.

He never came back, and

they never expected him back.

And

no cops were called, and

nothing ever happened.

And Link went to work for Vince in the WWF.

Remember, it was managed by Bobby Heenan.

Well, that was very brief.

And that actually may have been before then.

I don't, I think it was, it was the last time Link was in Dallas was 83, wasn't it?

No, no, because

he had the brief run with Vince and then he worked for Watts in 86.

And then I think he went back to work.

He went back that day.

That was the last time.

It was the last time.

Because that was pretty much, yeah, actually, that was pretty much his notice from the business.

He worked some outlaw shows in Texas after that.

You know, and again, an interesting figure, not to go off on too much of a side thing, but in an era when everyone had those big physiques, he had already been a veteran for a long time.

So all of a sudden he changed his physique and got really, I mean, hate to say roided up, but that's what it looked like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then it was said that he also shaved the head.

Nobody knew it was Dewey Robertson.

Shave the head may have indulged in some extra party favors during that period of time.

So he was Dewey Robertson in the 70s.

He was a completely different guy.

You talked to a lot of people in the 80s.

Yes.

And also became a nudist, from what I understand at one point.

With that haircut.

That's interesting.

It was, yeah, it was, well, he didn't, he nothing was,

there was nothing sprouting anywhere else on him, just right on the front of the top of that.

That was the only hair.

Maybe that's the move.

You go to the nude beach and no one looks at your tiny dick because everyone's looking at that hair.

What the fuck's going on there?

Well, what the fuck's going on here?

So the point, I don't even know if we finished the topic, but basically, that's the update with

punk and steel.

Any

I guess not, because I was about to say, I'm thinking of the repercussions of the Rogers,

Bill Miller, Carl Gotch incident.

And that was kind of the end of Buddy's career or towards the end of it within the last few years.

So, there weren't like 10 years after that where we could have seen how everyone coexisted.

Yeah, that's well, I guarantee you that if Buddy Rogers had not had the heart issues and retired, that if he was still around as a booker or

top guy or whatever, that he would have tried to figure out some way to get even with both those guys.

And it probably wouldn't have been hard to stop Gotch from being booked because the promoters didn't like him that much anyway because he's so fucking bland and didn't want to get beat.

But Bill Miller was a star for another, what, 10 or 12 years.

Wait a minute, we got some news that's broken.

I just saw.

And the king of broken news, Uncle Dave.

Oh, that wasn't what I saw.

Well, I'm seeing that he's tweeting.

The belief is that CM Punk will debut on June 17 at the first collision show in Chicago and that the issues have been settled.

Unless things change, Chicago will be announced tonight.

And we're recording on Wednesday afternoon, folks, because of my tow gout yesterday.

Thanks, guys.

We're going to be in Chicago.

It's going to be great.

And Dave continues, how the announcement of Punk's return will be handled is unknown.

So that's the report that I'm seeing.

What kind of report have you got?

I was going to tell you, I'll save it and we'll talk about it as a separate topic here.

But what do you think about this?

The idea that...

Well, just milk me then.

How do you keep an idiot in suspense?

I'll tell you tomorrow.

Obviously, they've got something settled.

Who knows what?

But not even obviously, because these things have been obvious before and they don't happen.

I'll believe it when I see it, as Mama Cornette used to say.

I think there had to be some desperation

with the collision ticket sales that we've talked about earlier and the fact that if they had to come out there at night and announce,

my God, this

new network two-hour primetime television show that we've got.

It's supposed to be just the biggest thing you've ever seen is going to debut live from Daly's place in Jacksonville, Florida, that nobody even knew existed until AEW did TV there in the pandemic.

That's not exactly an NBA arena, United Center, Chicago, Illinois, et cetera.

So

their backs were up against the wall to make this thing succeed on a number of levels.

But they still are.

And for the reasons we've talked about early in the program, how much damage have they done to the reputation of their number one babyface, their number one attraction, their biggest name, babyface or heel, CM Punk?

How much have they made some portion of their

fan base not dislike him because he's a good guy or a bad guy, but because they've said he's a cancer and he's a problem?

So we'll see what happens.

Should we just take a break right now, Brian, you think?

And since this news will be announced in a mere five or six hours and come back and finish this program in the morning with the fresh announcements?

Well, let me ask you just a couple of things before we take a little break here.

I like that idea.

Do you have CM Punk in Vegas?

They're in Vegas tonight.

They're in Vegas.

I don't know if it's a live rampage or not, but usually they do a live one before the pay-per-view.

And then, of course, for the pay-per-view, they're in Vegas.

Do you have Punk make an appearance?

Or do you try to just sell the show?

And not just the show in Chicago, but at this point, because of the ticket sales that we talked about earlier, the show off the name CM Punk.

Does he need to make an appearance?

Well, since I'm pulling this all completely out of my asses, I've just heard this and read this tweet and blah, blah, blah.

What about

if they announced that

the debut of Collision would be in the United Center in Chicago on June 17th, but didn't say anything about CM Punk.

And what if then later on in the program,

possibly even while there's a fucking match taking place or coming out of a commercial break and the announcers are something that's, there's already something going on,

and suddenly his music hits.

And out he comes and everybody stops and stares slackjawed.

And he grabs the microphone.

And if there is a match going on, they just say, fuck it, we want to to hear this too.

Or whatever the VTR, they cut it, or the announcer pitch, they stop it.

And he says, did you really think you're going to go back to Chicago without me?

And he proceeds to tell

whatever the story is that he's going to fucking tell when he does come back.

I don't know.

There's going to be

a large portion of the audience that is going to be ecstatic to see him back.

And there's going to be a significant portion of the audience that are in the camp of the buckaroos and the video game characters.

They're going to hate seeing him back.

He's going to be at the same time

the hottest babyface and the most hated heel

to Vera, to one side or the other in the company.

And it's going to overshadow everything else.

So they've either got to play along with it and give the people the explanation for it that they want, that they can make the best use out of,

or they're going to ignore it and it's going to, because of legal or whatever,

and it's going to be a continuing distraction that nobody can get any business done around.

Punk is the best wordsmith they've got when it comes to

telling a shoot story, working and shooting at the same time, and where does one end and the other begins.

And I I would think that they would be able to agree on something that he could say

where he could both defend himself against some of his naysayers,

announce that he was back

to

go back to where he was before, which is the AEW World Champion,

and at the same time do some,

you know, immediate

out of triage or repair work on all the damage that's been done to the company's credibility

by coming out and talking like a shoot.

Yeah,

me and some people in the fucking locker room don't like each other to the point where we've gotten in fucking physical fights because it's a physical business.

Now, I'm going to do my thing just like I always do, and everybody else can do theirs,

and we'll see which one you like better.

And

well, hold on.

On the pay-per-view,

they haven't advertised him.

If they advertise him on Thursday for ticket sales, I guess some last-minute ticket sales, but I would go ahead and I would see because Tony's got some money to play with.

He's not desperate.

I would see what the fucking with knowledge that maybe in CM Punk will not be at the pay-per-view.

I don't know if I'd go that far, but

don't tell him he is.

And see if there's any last-minute

jump into this thing,

like a bunch of last-minute buys or a bunch of last-minute tickets sold,

and then decide whether to have him show up based on if there is, maybe you got to have him do something.

And if there isn't, Well, he wasn't advertised and they took you at your word.

But at least you would know that just the mere mere tease of him might have created a little oomph.

But I think it's too late to advertise him to mean anything.

You know, so maybe would it be better that he came out after MJF finishes with the other three pillows

and they had some kind of confrontation to tell people that Punk is back in the title hunt and that was unannounced, but people that, wow, we got a bonus on this this lackluster pay-per-view.

Maybe in the future, we might buy some more of them that don't look too good on paper because a big star might come out unannounced.

Who knows?

But it's late to shoehorn him into anything meaningful three days away, but they could at least kick collision off in a better

fashion and hopefully do some damage control on the mess they've already made in their own bed.

That's my opinion.

The announcement on last night as we are recording is Dynamite, which we will talk about on the experience this weekend.

Tony Khan's big announcement this week.

The big announcement of this week, the weekly big announcement.

And yes, we are going to save the rest of Dynamite from Wednesday night, I believe it was the 31st of May.

We're going to save that for the experience because we're going to have time to digest it, potentially have some Pepto-Bismol, and maybe get that aftertaste down.

But the newsworthy thing of the program was Tony.

He had announced another announcement.

Thanks, guys.

And

there he was on the announcement set,

the Bridge of the Starship announcement.

And he's, again, they found the...

They have found the way to make Tony look palatable on television in terms of they're telepromptering him.

They're toning him down, they're turning it at just the speed he should read.

He's being pleasant.

He's not hopping about and vibrating.

But obviously, in the last seven days, since they tried to fuck punk around the last time and steal to A.

Steele,

they have apparently now come to some type of agreement.

We have not heard that A.

Steele will be coming to collision as he apparently was supposed to or that they thought he was going to be when they hired him back apparently months ago.

But since that was what queered the fucking deal last week with Punk finding this out apparently at the last minute.

And so now they've had a week to talk about what, who knows what they did.

Maybe they gave Ace another raise on the job that they're

paying him for, but won't let him come to work to do.

Because that's Tony is like that.

He doesn't want anybody to be mad at at him or to yell at him.

He'll pay them just not to be mad at him?

I'm so mad at Tony Khan.

I hate you.

That's what I'm saying.

He figures if he just sends somebody a check or gives them a job or pays them or whatever, but he doesn't give them bad news or he doesn't make them mad or he doesn't.

give them any information whatsoever, communicate in any way.

As long as they're getting their check in his mind, he's not mistreating them when he won't talk to them or he won't honor the rest of his commitments or they just disappear and they don't know what the fuck's going on because he can't be,

he not only can't be confrontational, he can't even fucking walk up to you face to face unless there's a big smile on your face he can see from miles away, apparently.

But anyway, so in the seven days between then and then,

He talked Punk into coming back to Chicago, even though that they have, again, now lied to him on numerous occasions and screwed up deals at the last minute several times.

So, Punk will be a part of the new collision series on Saturday night, first episode, June 17th, from the United Center in Chicago.

And

if you noticed when they announced it in San Diego, California, or when Tony announced it, CM Punk,

and then they came back to the announcers and into the live arena,

where Taz said, Lack Mussolini,

the reaction was mixed from the crowd, as we knew it was going to be.

But again, this actually hearing it,

some people cheered and got a CM Punk chant going on.

Other people went, ooh, and then when the CM Punk chant started getting loud, they tried to chime in with the booze to compete with that.

But what these fucking mental midgets,

these goddamn microscopic nitwits, have managed to do

over the course of this last nine months.

I'm talking about Tony Khan.

I'm talking about all of the EVPs and their various stooges, the Cutlets and the Nakazawas, oil boy.

And I'm talking about, we can't leave out of the equation Tony Khan's legal team, which,

good God,

I mean, if I had Tony Khan's legal brain trust representing me, I'd be in prison right now for the Manson murders.

So, all of these nitwits have managed to create a situation over the past nine months where not only

have they

alienated

their top star, their biggest name, the guy that proved to be a bigger draw than anybody else, CM Punk,

they have

made him not trust anything that they say from anybody in the company.

They have

lost the use of their biggest drawing card because I assume he's probably been cleared from a torn,

was it a bicep or a pec?

Now I'm trying to remember.

I thought it was tricep.

Tricep, one of those arm things.

It's been nine months.

He could have had a baby.

He's probably okay by now.

He could have come back earlier.

But these whiny-ass little fucking romper room bitches

and their

whininess about the, oh, they're working for everybody supposed to be friends here.

He doesn't like us.

He's going to talk mean to us.

So he's a cancer

trying to screw the deal up has deprived the company of their biggest draw.

And now when they do announce he's coming back, they've managed to poison.

a significant portion of the fan base against him, which is what the EVPs were trying to do to begin with, because they were upset that he was more over and a bigger attraction than they were, and also a better wrestler and a better promo.

He was showing them up at every metric.

They didn't want him around.

They were trying to put the mouth on him behind his back.

And he finally, when Tony wouldn't do anything about it, came out and aired it out at the press scrum.

He said, All you motherfuckers are slandering me behind my back.

You hang nail, you little prick.

You went into business for yourself on live TV with me for your fucking silliness over being a friend at Colt fucking Cabanas.

Like he could be

an aluminum siding salesman could fill Cabanas role in professional wrestling.

And Punk airs it out.

And then they take him up on his invitation to come in and have a fight and they get their ass kicked.

And then they're pissed about that.

And here we are nine months later.

Now they have managed to poison a significant amount of the fan base against Punk by all his fucking falderall, that he's the problem.

And that has cost and will continue to cost Tony Khan all kinds of fucking money

because they can't sell the tickets, they can't draw the money, they can't attract the viewers, and they can't sell the merchandise that CM Punk can.

A real star with a real name from when people actually watched wrestling to some extent, instead of what we got going on now which is a bunch of kids jacking themselves off and playing sticky finger with each other on a billionaire's dime

so that's where we're at now that we've seen a couple of examples i mean when they announced chicago everyone kind of thought that meant punk obviously we've seen the crowds reaction a couple times now that you got what appears to be a mixed reaction and different cities will have different reactions, do you play into that?

I mean,

Punk was great

as a veteran babyface who hasn't wrestled in several years.

Like that character, Returning, was great last year, but there were always those moments where he very easily could have been heel.

And

it works either way for him.

So what do you do now to play into this?

Well, he's going to be simultaneously the biggest babyface and the biggest heel in the company because the people that are prone to like him are going to be so happy he's back.

And

the people who are prone to like punk also don't like the fucking buckaroos or the buckaroo fans or the fucking whole bunch of fucking pussies.

So they're going to be louder to try to drown out the fucking neckbeards and the cosplayers.

And conversely, those people are also offended because

look at punk.

He's had pussy before.

Fuck him.

So they hate punk.

So they're going to try to be loud.

So, and punk is the best promo in the company.

And

I saw some people say, MJF, MJF's great orator, Punk is the most experienced best promo in the company.

And he's going to be able to fucking take each section of those people, whichever direction he wants.

And, but the problem is, is it,

it didn't necessarily need to be this way that he would be the hottest babyface and the hottest heel at the same time.

He could have just been the hottest babyface, and it might have been better for business, but he will turn whatever this is into something he can work with.

But it's through no fault of the EVPs and the legal team

that,

you know, that he's going to be able to come out of this and still be over.

They were trying to cut his nuts off, but they just weren't good enough at it.

But they cost Tony Khan some money in the process, a lot of money.

And what do you think about this return all happening on Collision?

A new night, Saturday, a brand new show, as opposed to the established dynamite.

Any thoughts on that?

Well, again,

first of all, I saw on

the internet this morning that they don't have the United Center set up for a full capacity.

It's like set up for half a building.

So already they've dicked around

and they've taken the edge off of it.

And maybe if they I'm sure they could probably open it up if they sell the tickets.

I understand

they moved like 500 in the 12 hours after Punk's name was announced or some figure like that.

They got a ways to go, but they're not selling 500 tickets in 12 hours anywhere else except anywhere else in the United States.

And they're not even doing that at Wimbley anymore because they already did it.

They're in their plateau there.

So

it means something, but they've dicked around and they've obfuscated the issue and they've waited until 17 days beforehand

and they've had a bunch of shows in Chicago.

So

as far as the live gate, if they'd have had this button down for the big network upfront announcement and there wasn't any doubt about it at all, they probably could have done better on the live gate.

As far as the television show, I mean, unless you're going to put punk out there to wrestle for 20 minutes and talk for an hour and 40 minutes,

it's still got to have the rest of the AEW talent and apparently not all of them.

So we've got a show with part AEW talent and CM Punk.

And is Punk going to write this thing?

I haven't heard that.

In which case, if it's more Tony Khan effluvia,

then it's going to be Punk doing a good segment or two on a

show that looks like Wednesday night, but not with all the talent.

So

I can't be excited

unless there's going to be a new look and a new presentation, a new creative, and

possibly people being serious and take the children off my television program.

But I can't be excited over I'm excited Punk's coming back so we can see that once a week.

But goddamn, what's he going to do for two fucking hours?

One last question on all this.

When CM Punk first came to AEW, it was rumored, it was presumed, they announced a show in Chicago, the first dance, never announced him, and there he was.

It almost seemed like they were going down the same road here.

Everyone knew he was going to be there.

They called it the second coming, all these things, but this time they're announcing him.

Do you think that's anything other than ticket sales issues?

I don't know.

See, here's the problem.

The problem is is that they never

follow through with their original idea in in full without significant alteration because there's in that company there's always somebody that has an aggravation or an altercation or a

whatever with somebody else and and screws the thing up at the last minute

i if it had been me

would have announced at the network upfronts and the same day on the program everything.

Collision, brand new show, two hours Saturday night, debuts at the United Center in Chicago for the second coming, featuring the return of CM Punk.

The reason why he's returning is because he's been hurt.

He got hurt in his last AEW match and he had surgery.

And now he's coming.

So that fits the second coming for the people who aren't smart about all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans, since they have yet to ever explain anything that happened on their television program, including even a Kay Fabe reason, as the kids say.

He was the world champion, remember?

Of course he was.

They announced the next week the world championship and the world's six-man belts have been declared vacant,

and those guys have been suspended.

They did announce the suspension, right?

Actually, I don't recall.

Or did they don't?

They don't recall if they did.

No, they just said the belts are vacant.

We're going to find new champions.

That's where we left it in September.

If you don't get on the internet, you just watch the television program and you expect it to make sense.

So

he's got to come back

remarking about what happened to him the last time that he was in the company.

He won the world title and got injured, was off and had surgery.

Now he's back.

However, much more detail

that he wants to go into or that he'll be allowed to go into

without ruffling the feathers of the pussy brigade

it would be good if he could tie in some real life heat to that

because to be honest

nobody ever said

that the tricep that he tore was completely torn before the fight the legitimate fight he was in rather than the the fake one with the plumber

Sure, if he got hurt in the ring, that's one thing.

But now you're in a legitimate real fight with a torn tricep.

Could it have been just a small injury and then that made it worse?

So why not say that?

These motherfuckers don't like what I say.

They don't like what I do.

So they came to my locker room and I kicked the shit out of them.

But in the process, I aggravated the injury that I'd gotten in the match.

And I've been out with surgery and rehabilitation.

And now I'm back and I'm ready to take on any of those fuckers, either in the ring or in my locker room, if they want to come back there again.

And that would get a standing ovation from half the crowd, and the other half would be pulling out switchblades and pitchforks.

And based on how his first year went and all the drama that really eats up the entire second year, really, if you think about it, it was the first year on TV.

The second year was all the drama off TV.

Right.

Here's the third year.

Based on the audience reaction, based on his track record on the show, based on all the drama, how are you not going to want to see every single time this guy's on TV unless they do something to screw that up?

He's the most intriguing guy there.

You never know what's going to happen in one of his promos.

What's he going to say?

Who's he going to piss off?

Is anyone that he's pissed off going to do anything about it?

Who's he going to feud with?

How long is he going to stay face?

Can he be a face or a heel in this town?

Every single time, like right now,

I'm so intrigued to see where they're going to go with anything with him.

They've got a chance.

They've blown their chance with almost everyone else with me, but they've got another chance.

And I'm really intrigued by this.

And you're a prognosticator.

you've been doing good on predictions.

I'm going to make a prediction.

I don't know.

There may be a chance in hell that you would see Punk in the ring at some point with old Twinkletoes.

But I guarantee you, even though there's money to be made for the company that they supposedly helped start,

and they've drained plenty of money off their billionaire boyfriend,

but you will never see Maddie or Nikki have the guts or the nuts, either one, to get in the ring with Punk, even though there would be money made off of that because of the issue, because they're scared.

And also,

they know that their boss won't make them

attempt to make any of the money back that he's paid them for little to nothing and causing trouble.

That they cost him by storming into the locker room.

Yes.

They can make him some of that back.

But they won't because they're scared.

I think Kitty would probably get in the ring with him.

And I think think Punk would probably have too much compassion to just kick the shit out of Kenny because that would be like beating up a puppy.

He doesn't even know what the fuck's going on around him.

Hey, listen, say what you want about Omega, and you have many, many, many times.

Yes.

But after everything happened it all out, we talked on the air, my reporting, that night, Kenny Omega was the one

talking to CM Punk.

Chris Jericho was yelling after the fact, trying to make a scene.

The Bucs were screaming at Punk and A.

Steele, but that was more childish shit from the Bucs.

But Punk and Omega came together and it wasn't, you know, another layer of the fight.

It was almost trying to soothe things down.

So when you say you could see them in the ring, I agree with you.

I'm not saying it's going to happen, but that's the only one of those options that would happen.

I predicted after all out, there would be two people gone from the company.

A steel, and he was gone, now they brought him back, and Kenny Omega, based on a number of things.

We'll see what happens.

Again, the other thing is we'll see how much longer the elite are in AEW.

We have to see what happens there.

Well, I don't really think they ought to be packing their bags because whatever contractually time is left on Punk's deal,

you know as well as I do, he's just rolling his eyes, holding his nose, cashing his...

seven-figure checks per year and going to finish that out and then have a two-year run up north in the WWE, make several more million dollars and say, fuck it, at least I ended on a high note instead of with the idiots over there in the outlaw group.

That's exactly what he's going to fucking do.

And I don't blame him.

That's what he should do.

Well, that is it.

That's CM Punk, and we'll see how he mixes in now with the mudline over at AEW.

But, Jim, with that, this drive-through is finally closed.

Well, speaking of spending more time in the company, a long-lost friend is about to spend more time in the company because Tony Khan, then it was time for him to be on the Bridge of the Starship announcement.

Thanks, guys.

To announce his announcement on the announcement set.

And that announcement, as we have talked about briefly on the drive-through this

past week, a couple days ago,

Collision.

the new program on Saturday nights will feature

CM Punk.

And that's the very last thing he said.

And then they do the wide shots, the jib shot around the arena as the people reacted.

And as we mentioned, it was mixed because you got the initial yay

from the people who were waiting to hear that.

And the people who weren't waiting to hear that because they didn't want it to happen, it settled in on them after a few seconds.

And then they started the booze and the grumbling.

And that went on that wave.

And another thing, a good thing that, or a good point

that people have pointed out, they were in California.

So that's the Buckaroo's backyard.

So they were ready to not like that announcement to begin with.

But

whichever way you look at it, they've done damage with their childish foolishness and Tony's inability to put his foot down and to turn

personal pissiness into professional business, even though Punk has been trying from every indication we've got,

they've damaged a number of their top

attractions, whichever way you look.

The people who like punk now

probably

didn't necessarily like the buckaroos to begin with, but they hate them now, and vice versa.

The people who like the buckaroos, they probably weren't enamored of punk, but they didn't hate him.

They do now because their boyfriends

So,

you know,

and

meanwhile, the tickets for these TV shows are $500 apiece.

I think it was Taz after the announcement.

Lock Mussolini.

That's what I was going to say.

He didn't do it unfortunately as bad as that, or fortunately, as bad as that.

But you sound like crap.

You know that.

No, I do.

Now I'll have you know.

I do know.

I'll have you know.

I already know.

I just said it to you.

I'll have you know that my music teacher when i was

when i was a kid yeah said that i was the best pupil that she ever had

actually her exact words were of all the students i've ever had you're the only one i can't teach anything to see there you go see i knew it all already and then you threw a rock at her head

well no it wasn't her but uh

I wasn't welcome back in the fucking history class for a few nevertheless so

anyway, now we got this big announcement.

And again, when they come back east on the

on the right side of the Mississippi River,

then Punk's going to be tearing the house down.

When they go over there and they're on the left side of the Mississippi, actually, probably the left side of the Nevada state line, then the Buckaroos will probably have the home court advantage.

But

they've done nobody any favors and

inability to advertise this in a coherent fashion, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.

It's just ridiculous.

The other question, I guess, we don't have an answer to yet is, are you going to get the split audiences?

Because if it becomes quickly defined that CM Punk and whoever else, based on that poster, FTR, Andrade, Miro,

whoever else, they're going to be on this one show.

And the other show is going to have Kenny and the Bucks and Moxley and whoever else.

If it's a clear break when you're buying tickets, you know, you're going to the CM Punk show.

Are you going to go there to boo them or are you going there because you want to see them?

Well, it can't be a hard split because, for one thing, that'll tank the fucking ratings that they've still got on Wednesday night.

Because there's not enough people that people give a shit about to watch to go around.

It can't be, they can't.

Who we just talked about on the last program we did.

Yours, the drive-thru.

Who are MJF's logical challengers?

And yeah,

how are they going to split that roster up?

The MJF and Punk is money.

That issue has not been settled.

MJF and Darby looks like something they're going to do based on the finish of the four-way, because why would you have beaten the only challenger in the match that was worth a shit unless they were coming back with a single match?

Past that,

what the fuck's going on for the world title?

They don't have depth of talent.

They've got quantity of talent.

They have a plethora of guys on the roster, and they're mispositioned to where nobody,

can you do MJF and Danielson again after you just did it in February?

You could always do anything again.

Will people buy it again?

Should you do it again?

That's the other question.

I don't think you should do that match again right now.

Not to say it wouldn't be great and we wouldn't enjoy watching it, but

I think Danielson right now is going to play with his friends.

Well, yeah, and that's been muddied and muddled to the point where it wouldn't draw now, even though it was a great match.

A rematch now would not mean as much as it would have if they'd announced it right after the previous match happened.

So the point is, hard split, blah.

They ain't going to be able to do that.

And he's going to realize when he started to put these formats for these shows together sooner or later that he needs all his goddamn talent available at least for both shows.

All the talent I'm talking about, not all the roster, all the talent, all the people that fans would watch and give a shit about.

And this

program that we're talking about shows that because

even if he hadn't split anything, it's not that deep.

The next match was a triple threat match between Swerve and Big Bill and Cupcake of the Pudding Gang.

You mean to tell me that is flagship TV show worthy?

If you had any other alternative?

So, no,

honestly,

I think Saturday night is a better night to sell tickets to a live event, but is it now,

have they aggravated

a segment of the audience to the point where people are going to say, well, fuck, I'm not going to go support AEW because it's AEW

pink with punk instead of AEW chartreuse with the buckaroos.

So I'll only go if it's Wednesday.

And the other people are saying, well, fuck them fucking trampoline cowboys.

I'm only going to go if it's, if I get to go Saturday night.

And then you're.

And plus, they are adding a second show in the United States of America every week while the number of towns in the United States of America remains the same.

So that means they're going to.

Whatever they've been doing at whatever pace, they're going to do twice as much of it.

And that's going to be twice as many tickets they got to sell.

And I guess this kills any Saturday house shows going forward, unless you're going to run a house show against your own TV show, even if you have a split roster.

Well, from what I saw about the house show, the card rather, that they just ran and the ones that they ran in Corbyn and Salem, I think they just ran Tupelo with a fucking entire roster.

It was on the Federal Witness Protection Program.

That

they probably killed that as it was.

They probably dropped that idea already.

You don't hear more being announced.

But

at the same point, they do their pay-per-views on weekends.

And now that WWE is going on

Saturday night, they're going on and AEW is going on Sunday, at least they won't conflict with their own pay-per-views.

They'll have the night before as a go-home show,

but they will be conflicting once a month with a WWF pay-per-view.

And

if their Saturday night

go home show for a Sunday pay-per-view does not feature

everybody,

all the top stars that are on the card on the pay-per-view,

then that's kind of stupid.

And

if all the top guys are going to be on pay-per-views, which one would be led to believe you would want every

top name that you could have on the lineup on the pay-per-view, then all these fucking fussing and feuding parties are going to be together in the same building anyway.

And they're just going to have to avoid bursting into the other guy's locker room and fucking starting a goddamn hay rube.

So how's that going to take place?

Anyway.

Anyway.

Should we talk about the big controversy on ESPN

that didn't happen this past week that was predicted and predictified by some of the

the journalists and pundits in a kind of another whisper campaign that for once didn't

Well, I think that before we even talk about the CM Punk ESPN article, that's a bigger story, maybe, because the article was kind of a nothing burger.

The fact that in advance of the article, which the public didn't know about, word started coming out that Punk said things again.

He upset people again.

And then you read the article and it's like, that's it?

There's nothing there.

But they tried.

And this time it didn't work.

And I saw Punk tweeted out something, or not tweeted Instagram.

The call is coming from inside the house.

And I think people are starting to pick up on it now that haven't been stooped over to grab it, even though it was laying in front of them all this time.

We've been talking about it.

And finally, it backfired.

Finally, it didn't work.

Finally, it kind of made it clear what's been going on.

And just to summarize and bring people up to date real quick, you've told them most of it there, but

in the

days before the ESPN interview with Punk was due to come out to promote the debut of Collision,

the whisper campaign started.

Oh, he's said a horrible inflammatory thing.

He's going to stir this up.

And boy, this is going to be terrible.

Wait a list comes out.

It's going to throw a monkey wrench into the deal again.

Who knows?

Again,

potentially putting in doubt that the biggest biggest star that the show is built around will not be there on live TV Saturday night.

And the call

coming from the house was from their own company.

The Wednesday night crew trying to do a little sabotage again.

And this time it didn't work because when the article came out,

and he actually,

you'll read a couple of...

paragraphs from it or comments from it, but not only did he actually apologize and say that he was wrong to put Tony Khan in that position at the scrum, because, like we had talked about, and I could see it, he knew he was hurt, he was fed up, pissed off, and he worked with children.

And it came out, but he apologized that it was wrong for him.

He also said

that he had tried to bend in contact with the other side to apologize or to at least sit down and talk, settle it, whatever.

You'll read the quote.

And he was told by attorneys, no, don't try to contact these people.

And a bunch of things.

And his problem with Page, which has been well documented.

But

should you go ahead and read a couple of these really inflammatory things that threaten to shake the foundation of AEW and throw things into turmoil again that this no-good lying gum bumping sack of snake feces

was predicted to have told ESPN.

Well, again, I'm scrolling down because some of the early quotes in here are not really,

it's really just the things you think you would see here about his rehab and his wife's support and just all these things, not being there for a while, lost his, or left his champion.

Here, I guess, are some of the quotes that the Elite fans could probably get their panties in a huff over.

And I proceed to have what I think is a garbage match.

He's talking about Adam Page here.

Because I'm trying to protect myself on stuff instead of actually just working and trying to put on the best performance I can.

I'm keeping an eye out.

He chopped me in the mouth one time and I'm like, okay, did you do that on purpose?

You chipped my tooth.

And I'm like, all right, should I give him a receipt?

It changes the dynamic.

It poisoned everything for me.

And it made it all really, really ugly.

And that was what set all of this off.

And here we are over a year later.

And by the way, let me pause.

Somebody on Twitter, I saw the

footage,

they took the footage of that exchange of chops, right?

And slow-moed it and even did like the Telestrator graphics and showed that Punk had chopped him across the chest.

And then Punk leaned in.

spread his arms out, had his face up, chest out,

did not move, and Paige chopped him right in a fucking mouth.

Bam!

And it was plain, it wasn't like it was a moving target.

So I can see where he might have had that reaction.

Go ahead.

And here we are over a year later, and ain't shit's been done about it.

Let me scroll down a little further.

The first thing I said to Tony when I sat down with him and spoke to him after it was: Man, I'm really sorry I put put you in that position, Punk said.

I apologized for the scrum, but when you watch that scrum, you're looking at a very, very frustrated guy who had told people.

That's not the first time he heard all that.

It's not the first time the lawyers were told all that.

And I was just looking for something to be done, and nothing got done.

So if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.

And I just didn't approach it in the right manner, but tension was high.

I was very, very pissed.

I pretty much knew that I had just injured myself again.

I was hurt.

And I was disappointed.

Yeah, it's very easy for me to say I regret that.

And I handled it all wrong, 100%.

So let's stop there.

For everyone who says CM Punk hasn't admitted he did anything wrong, there it is.

But

what happened in advance of this was the whisper campaign, blah, blah, blah, right?

And then it comes out, and there's nothing out of the way.

There's nothing untoward.

He's honest.

And the basic issue he had that he mentioned there was with Paige,

but that he had tried to be conciliatory and had been rebuffed in those efforts and it had been blown up and blah, blah, blah.

We know the rest.

What did one of the EVPs do

before the

actually was this,

hold on.

Ah, this was after

the ESPN article came out.

Nikki Buckaroo puts on his Instagram a picture of Paige the other night from TV and their six-man trying to kill Wheeler useless when he's flying flips off the top rope where they just dropped him on the the floor

and says, not only is he good at wrestling, but he's an even better human being.

Hangman, Adam Page.

The defender of Colt Cabana.

The defender of us all from this evil force.

So that's what an executive vice president is supposed to do, right?

To again.

Try to get this thing sabotaged because they're children and because they're petty.

But it didn't work this time.

And there was a lot more backlash

to them on the internet and on social media because they were too obvious about it this time.

So

Dave Shearer at PW Insider wrote a nice piece, an article.

on the whole issue entitled Tony Khan as a group of people who he has been nothing but good to doing their best to destroy the thing he loves,

which is a heck of a title.

But I'm not going to read the whole thing because I encourage you guys to go to pwinsider.com and do that.

It was the article is up on June 16th at 4.28 p.m.

But the last two paragraphs,

he says Tony Khan has a big problem, and a big part of that problem is Tony Khan.

Now, let me state up front that as long as he wants to spend his family's money, AEW is fine.

It'll stay around.

The question to me is, what does he want his legacy in the business to be?

Right now, he is seen as the nice guy who some of the talent takes complete advantage of.

Some even see him as a marked promoter.

AEW started so hot and with so much buzz.

Now it's settled into a place where its core base likes it and growth has stagnated.

His management style and booking is the reason that's happened.

And at a time when WWE's business is up, AEW's is down.

It's not the business.

It's not the business.

It's AEW's business that's the problem.

And he said, again,

if any of the things

that

happened just in this ESPN article controversy or above

had happened at WWE, heads would have rolled.

After one event, there wouldn't have been a second.

EVPs would have been stripped of their titles and been told to toe the line or don't let the door hit you in the ass.

But Tony hasn't done that.

He needs to.

These wrestlers are not your friends, Tony.

Friends wouldn't do things that hurt your business and make your life more difficult.

So that's what, again, and Dave Shearer is an impartial person

because even though Mike Johnson is the nicest human being that ever walked face the earth and hates to hurt anybody's feelings and has a high tolerance for, well, it was a good match or whatever.

He's very honest, but Dave Shearer is brutally honest because he doesn't give a fuck and none of these people are his friends.

He's, if, if Mike Johnson is the editor of PW Insider, Dave's the publisher, and he doesn't

speak to or befriend or, you know, whatever either side in this.

He's just an adult looking at it.

There's another quote here from the ESPN article that I think is important.

Now we all got to roll in the fucking mud, and that never should have happened and has never been course corrected.

So I understand people want to say,

oh man, punk is a dick.

Well, yeah, because I'm defending myself and I will always defend myself.

I'm open to having a full-blown fucking sit-down powwow discussion with everybody about it, but it hasn't happened yet.

And it's not because of my lack of trying.

There it is.

The guys who say they're Christian don't want to forgive.

The guys who try to pretend like they're the saints in this matter don't want to even hear what the other party has to say.

Everyone wants to talk about the legal issues.

What were the legal issues holding up everything?

It's because Tony's trying to protect his company and his EVPs.

They put Tony in his position.

And now look where we are.

I will say one more thing coming out of all this, Jim, that's interesting.

What we've been talking about, I think a lot of other people are finally starting to pick up on.

If you're in the Young Bucks

fan base or camp even,

CM Punk's not the problem with all this.

It's all been Tony Khan.

And if you're in the punk camp, it's the same thing.

It hasn't been the elite.

It's Tony Khan.

Tony Khan has fostered.

an environment where this kind of shit happens.

You could argue it was encouraged to happen and that it happened.

And as Punk said, nothing's been done for course correction.

That's true.

Nothing's been done to change everything, to change anything, excuse me.

And my fear is, even with collision and with dynamite and the separations that appear to be there,

I don't know if the problems are going to go away.

And I think the problems whether they get a new deal or not with the original elite and the owner of all Elite

may be a growing concern.

You think the Wednesday night crew is going to be cheering for the success of the Saturday show in their hearts?

I think anyone who's not a main eventer will.

Probably.

Hopefully.

Well, yeah.

I mean, the rank and file, the,

you know, the...

The regular guys that just want to get over and be in the wrestling business, but I'm talking about the ones that Tony's paying the most money to, the big stars.

The main eventers.

They have a chance of being exposed.

i'm sure an adam cole and probably an mjf because he's the world champion are probably rooting for that that was the opening match this week the main event though the bcc and the elite

i'm pretty sure we know where moxley and the bucks and all these people stand on cm punk and what is basically the cm punk show

Well, there you again.

This time it didn't work.

Let's see what they come up with next.

But remember, folks, we were calling it before it was so see-through, weren't we, Brian?

This ends part two of Jim Cornett's CM Punk and AEW Volume 2 Omnibus.

Download and start part three

right now.