Jim Cornette Experience Special - CM Punk In AEW Year Two Omnibus (Part 1)

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Hello again, friends.

And you are our friends, the great Brian Last here.

You there, and we are back with another of our very popular omnibuses here during omnibus season.

And this one is a big one, a long one, a multiple part edition of the omnibus cm punk in aew volume two

year two

and of course joining me the leader of the cult of cornet mr jim cornet how are you brian i am ready to go you know how i am no i'm just great

but anyway

It is the bus season, and boy, have we got a long ride.

This is a cross-country one because we wanted to go back and we're we're starting right as

this is volume two of Punk's adventures in

Lilliput.

We start right about the time he came back to

brawl out.

No, before that, Rocky III.

Well, that's he was coming back for the brawl out.

Well, he didn't come back for the brawl out.

The brawl out just happened to happen.

We don't

get him sued.

All right.

But anyway, nevertheless,

we're splitting hairs here.

That's when he came back.

And then we end up when Ace Steele

was fired

after this, you know, this whole episodic thing took place.

And because we present it in its chronological order and we didn't want to leave anything out, not only do we not want to mislead any of the cult of Cornette out there listening, but also we want to show who were the prognosticators and who were the bullshitters, who were the truth tellers and who were the verbal fellatio artists that were characterizing all of these events with what we know now in the present modern day,

almost 2024?

So that's why we're doing it all in order.

Everything that we said and the people

can decide who knew what the fuck they were talking about.

That's right.

Again, a lot of things to cover here.

This is year two.

It is CM Punk's return from injury.

It is the Jon Moxley match, which we would later learn a lot more about.

It is Brawl Out.

It is a steel debuting in a promo on TV, and then Brawl Out.

And we will end this omnibus with Ace Steele being fired by AEW after CM Punk was fired by AEW.

And that's where we are today.

CM Punk said and down and out looking for work.

We don't know what will happen to this poor guy.

Poor fella.

But this is now our omnibus special, Jim Cornett's omnibus, CM Punk and AEW Volume 2, Year 2.

And finally, Jericho gets the belt, the title belt, and they hold Moxley up.

And they hold Moxley up.

And they hold Moxley up because the sound man's trying to find that button.

And finally,

Lac Mussolini, thank fuck he's back.

Because if I had to watch any more of these shows without him, I was going to crack.

Here comes Punk.

And for 45 seconds, again, we were transported back to a wrestling program.

Because here comes CM Punk, the returning champion, the conquering hero.

He's running down the ramp.

The people are blowing.

It's a big pop.

He makes a big comeback.

All the heels bump for him.

It's laid out perfectly.

Old cool hand Luke meets him in the entranceway, one shot and a big bump.

And Sammy tries to plunge

over the ropes, and Punk sidesteps him and grabs him and shovels him into the stairs, rolls into the ring, backdrops Hager over the top, lays waste to the other guy with the fat face or whoever the fuck it was.

And then

Jericho takes two bumps and he bails out.

So he went up the pecking order.

And finally, Jericho's gone and Punk rules the ring and the heels are backpedaling.

And that part was great.

It was executed well.

It was laid out well.

It got a pop.

It got the people up after all this dreariness.

And then there's the little matter of the current interim champion sitting in the fucking ring.

And

except I don't understand why Moxley was, while Punk was keeping an eye on the the heels, Moxley is behind Punk, not looking at Punk, but acknowledging that he knows Punk is behind him and making

faces

of somebody.

I know what's going on.

Whatever.

I think he was trying to kill the deal.

I don't think he likes having, I think since Moxley believes he's a blood-drinking vampire and a goddamn crazy pain.

freak lunatic.

I will come to your house and there'll be glass of blood everywhere.

Yeah.

I'll come to your house and stick thumbtacks in your elbow.

I don't think he liked the idea of being saved by a bigger star that's more popular and draws more money and is more accomplished performer because he was making faces behind it.

And that didn't fucking set well to me because it looked like he was diminishing or making mockery of what was going on instead of trying to get it over.

But nevertheless,

he stands up, he turns around, they go face to face, Punk and Plumber Moxley, and Moxley gives Punk the finger in his face and walks off.

If we hadn't seen six or seven other fingers on this show alone from Moxley and others,

it would have meant something.

But as it was, the end of the show was Moxley slunk off to snake a drain, and Punk got a standing ovation in the crowd, who is now has reason to live because Punk is back on television your thoughts on this whole deal brian last

the match was really something and i want to ask you a question after we're done to a review that relates to all this but you know it started with a gruesome match and it ended with a gruesome match

i don't know if cm punk says there's another thing why in the world would they do the fucking blood in the first segment when they knew they were going to have, even though part of the blood in the last segment, the world title match wasn't planned, they still had some planned.

Why the fuck?

Why can they not control themselves?

I'm just going to say one more thing, and I'll let you have it.

I'll be goddamned if I was going to, if there was a wrestling show in history where another manager on the card was going to bleed, I'll be goddamned if I would have got juice.

I mean, I don't understand

why they don't have a problem with going out there and cutting themselves open when somebody else has already done it.

So it doesn't even mean anything.

Go ahead.

What the fuck?

I don't know if CM Punk saved Moxley from Jericho as much as he saved all of us from this show.

When he came out there, the pop, the reaction, it was like a real star has finally returned to the show.

Based on the way they left the ring, it makes me wonder if they're setting up Moxley and Claudio in that group as heels, which can only be better than them as faces.

I'm glad Danielson's not there because at least he's not a part of their thing.

Is he hurt again, or where was he?

I think they're getting over that he got choked out by Garcia, right?

He's going to speak on the Friday show.

Oh, good God.

That should be best left never spoken of again to where people would forget it.

Punk being back makes me look forward to hearing what he's going to say next week on the show, thinking he probably is going to have to say something.

FTR appearing appearing on the show randomly again this week makes me hopeful that maybe they'll appear randomly next week as well.

But there's been a lot of crap on these shows.

It's been a rough slog for a while now watching AEW-TV.

Let's get to the

other side of the street here, the AEW program this past Wednesday night, because there's big news going on.

None of it's on television.

Not a lot of big news on TV, but there's big news going on in the company.

And

there was an element of tip off of that in the first segment on the TV program with

our returning champion, finally he's back.

Lak Mussolini

with an annoying hangnail.

Here comes Punk straight out of the box.

And he's got a live interview and he gets the big CM Punk chance.

They're in Charleston, West Virginia,

the home of Tudor's Biscuit World.

that people are up and they're ready to go.

And there was not a lot of time wasted on this, Brian, because he took the microphone, he gave the initial happy talk,

connected with the audience, and then

sat down cross-legged in the middle of the ring and challenged Hangnail Adam Page to a rematch right here, right now.

Let's go.

And nothing happened.

And no music.

And Jim Ross is like, do we know if Hangman's here?

And Punk waits and nothing happens.

And then Punk gets up and says, that's not cowboy shit.

That's coward shit.

And then he says, let me give you some advice that I suggest you take.

And that was a very key word.

Let me give you some advice that I suggest you take.

The apology must be as loud and public as the disrespect.

And if if anybody else back there has a problem with the champ, come on down.

No takers.

It was not written in the format for there to be any takers, and nobody got froggy and jumped.

Should we talk about the rest of the promo or should we delve deeper into this now, Brian?

What do you think?

The punk hangman stuff?

Yes.

Yeah, because I guess the second part of the promo is a whole different thing.

So we should probably, if we're going to talk about it, talk about it here.

Okay, so apparently,

from what we are now hearing from a variety of sources, including people on Twitter and even Uncle Dave, who we know has the

pipeline over there in that company,

a lot of people started out: well, what the fuck was that?

And they heard that Punk went into business for himself, that Paige was never scheduled to come out, that everybody was shocked and amazed that

he had said that because nobody nobody knew anything about it.

And as well,

they were starting to say, well, he's unprofessional for doing that because it buried

old hangman, buried Adam Page.

But then

some more details started coming out.

And I started seeing this yesterday on Twitter.

And then Uncle Dave has a report on it in this week's Observer, I guess.

I'm not going to.

They're long sentences with not a lot of punctuation.

So I'm not going to read the whole thing, but summarizing and the reader's digest version

is apparently:

remember, Brian, when Paige and Punk were in the main event of the pay-per-view earlier this year, Punk was about to beat Paige and win the title,

and they had a live interview on Dynamite.

And at the time, we said, What in the fuck was this?

Did they have something that they thought Paige was going to just be great at delivering

and he just melted down and botched it all?

Or did he,

was he turning heel in the middle of the ring, accusing punk of, you know, being all of this and that?

And we got to protect AEW from you?

It was something that

shit he was saying had no bearing on any of the way that this match or any of these people had been presented.

And it was speaking in riddles and one of those deals where the smart fans are going to know, but everybody else thinks this guy's a raving,

you know, just gibberish.

And we even said,

was he trying to turn heel or did he just not realize he was doing it because he sounded like such a whiny little bitch?

Yeah, even the smart fans didn't know.

Yeah, well, apparently

that was Paige doing the same thing to punk,

going off the beaten path, off the topics that had been discussed in order to take up for his company and his friends and the people who started this revolution

because there was also there was something

Paige did an interview somewhere recently and it was excerpted on Twitter and on the internet

where they asked well with all of the veterans and the great stars of the past and the

you know, the people who have so much experience in this business, like Jim Ross and Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Mark Henry, and this guy and that guy, does Paige ask them for advice?

And he said, well,

they may give me some advice every once in a while.

Yeah, I guess I'll listen.

But really, I don't think I need to ask for advice from these people

because I'm part of the movement.

that started this company and this revolution, and we've done just fine.

So do we really need that advice?

Yeah, you butterfly gene wearing dip shit you really do need the advice or elsewhere if you'd taken it you might actually be over now instead of a whiny little bitch

so he said that

and punk's verbiage was let me give you some advice i suggest you take

so apparently not only does hang nail

Tell everybody he doesn't like to take the advice of people that are smarter and more experienced than him, but maybe he hadn't been taking advice from the guy that's trying to get him over working with him because it's not the opposite.

I believe I'll paraphrase a line from Mr.

Punk.

Punk didn't have to work with Paige.

Paige needed to work with Punk

to get in a main event that he deserved.

And

then if we find out

that Paige was doing the same thing that they have accused Mr.

Punk of here this week, being unprofessional by going into business for himself.

And that was before this was a TV promo

where Punk

expressed a few opinions and then went on to the meat of the matter, his opponent, Jon Moxley.

When Paige apparently went to business for himself with his

inexplicable rambling that he wasn't talented enough to pull off to where anybody would get it, That was before the main event of a pay-per-view.

As I recall, that was one of the bigger houses, gates, and

overall revenue-producing nights in the history of the company.

And this fucking jack off is out there trying to make up his own shit.

Let's put it this way:

not only is Adam Page not a lyrical wordsmith, he can barely fucking read the cue cards.

So he didn't need to try to be jousting with Punk anyway.

And that's why I think Punk looked so confused when he was doing it

because

they had to have a plan when they went out there and it had to make sense or elsewhere they wouldn't have gone out there until it did,

as long as Punk was involved.

But when old Hangnail

bows up and starts doing a bunch of shit that doesn't make any sense,

How is Punk that is he going to be unprofessional and say, you know, you just you just said a bunch of shit that I don't understand and you're not supposed to say, so I don't know what to say back to you because you're a fucking idiot.

What's he supposed to do?

He's trying to sell a pay-per-view.

They're lucky enough to have a mainstream wrestling star that hasn't degenerated into a parody of himself doing song and dance routines over dinner and constantly changing his gimmick and latching on to other people to help buoy his sinking career.

They've got a money generator, CM Punk,

And they've got an entitled, whiny,

fragile,

not susceptible to advice or criticism, little cowboy.

Cowboy.

Want to be a cowboy, baby?

With my butterfly jeans and my pink t-shirt.

Cowboy, baby.

They're grating on each other is what we're trying to say.

And there's no leadership in this company.

We've talked about that every week.

Tony will not put his foot down

because Tony don't have a foot.

He's got a couple of chicken feet.

He's got claws.

So now it's all breaking down.

And you got people who are into business to do business and make money and get over and or fucking sell tickets or whatever.

And you've got people that got in business to take a billionaire's money because they think they're talented for some unknown reason.

Somebody has convinced them they know what they're doing.

And they now want to get all their friends' jobs.

And if their friends don't have jobs or jobs that they want them to have, then they get mad and then they hijack the program

to petulantly fucking protest.

Have I summarized this approximately from what we're hearing now from Uncle Dave and a variety of people about this situation that now has come to a head, but has been simmering for a while?

I guess so.

And I want to make a statement, so I'm going to just reiterate it for a second.

The go-home promo, the face-to-face promo before the pay-per-view, where Punk won the AEW championship, Adam Page decided on live TV with the biggest star in the company opposite him to, whatever you want to say, go off script, even though there's not really a script, but he decided to go into business for himself.

He went rogue.

He was the rogue cowboy.

And CM Punk, to his credit, played it off perfectly.

I don't understand what you're so mad about because he didn't understand what was going on at the time.

We're now led to believe, we'll talk about this in a little bit, that it was apparently Adam Page taking up for Colt Cabana.

But let me ask you this: a bigger thing I'm thinking, and maybe I'm just thinking as a businessman here, even though I'm not a promoter.

But Adam Page, right before this big pay-per-view, does this on TV live to the biggest star in the company.

He's lucky Punk would do business with him at the pay-per-view.

I wouldn't have.

Yeah, well, here's the thing.

When you double-cross somebody on live television to try to get the advantage, whether it's verbal or physical, how do you ever trust that person again?

And so, yeah,

if that's the case, if Punk had wanted to make a fucking issue out of it, he could say, well, you know what?

The motherfucker, the little weasley bastard that nobody ever heard of two years ago, he double crosses me on live national television.

Who's to say he's not going to double cross me on live national pay-per-view?

So fuck you, Tony.

Get a replacement for me because I'm the money match, not the fucking idiot that you thought would be a good champion because he spent two years tap dancing with Twinkle Toes.

So

again,

where do these guys get their balls from?

Who do they think they are?

They don't have a firm

grasp of their status in the community or in the wrestling pecking order.

They think they're over because Tony Khan doesn't tell them what to do.

But when they get talent out there that does know what to do and they can't follow instructions, they need to either follow or get the fuck out of the way.

But I guess we got Paige out of the way for right now.

So apparently we'll see what happens.

If A, if Paige is a cowboy, let him bulldog Punk.

You know, a lot of people say, well, Punk proved he couldn't fight in the UFC.

Well, he's had two more fights in the UFC than Adam Page Page has, which is two.

And he's done the training, and he's got a little bit of the fucking technique.

So, if I was just going to place some money on somebody's head in a fight between Adam Page and CM Punk, I'm not betting on the guy wearing butterflies on his crotch.

He's lucky Punk didn't kick his ass in the back right after that segment.

Seriously, because Punk could have.

Here's the thing: there's not a lot of goddamn Gracie family members in AEW.

There's a few of them there that have the credentials and have the fucking capability, and they're mostly fucking decent people.

But all the goddamn assholes couldn't whipped cream with an outboard motor and couldn't say Sue if the hogs had them.

So I think punk's UFC fucking record would trump the goddamn time they told the guy off at the indie show in Pomona or Rosita or wherever the fuck they're at.

Anyway, let's get on to Jon Moxley.

Oh, God, I can't believe I said those words.

Bump goes on and turns his attention to the money match coming up at the pay-per-view, or at least so we thought still at this time.

And this was fucking great.

He said, Jon Moxley, and they cheer.

Yeah, he's number one in your heart, but not in this ring.

Moxley is the third best guy in his own group, and that's a reoccurring theme in his career.

Holy shit.

You could have shaved a gorilla on the sharpness of these comments.

He said, Moxley says he breaks bones, but only one of us has broken a bone in the last few months, and that's me.

It was mine, but still, I mean, because he's making fun of this fucking guy, this Dracula that drinks blood and breaks bones and grinds them to make his bread.

The third best, and Eddie Kingston, I guess just because of.

whatever, Eddie Kingston is the third best Eddie and the second best Kingston he's ever worked with.

And he said that Moxley was not even the first John he was going to beat for a title in Chicago, talking about Cena.

So

after that onslaught, they play Moxley's music and here come the plumber.

And Punk actually says, I think I've got time before he gets here.

I'll do some Snow Angels.

And he lays down in the ring and does Snow Angels in the ring, waiting for Moxley to do his fucking.

How long is it going to be before somebody?

Somebody.

Can somebody just give Jon Moxley a locker room inside the building?

It's been years now.

And then I mean, Brian,

it was honestly like you see an independent show where you have a star that's got his shit together and is recognized and people know who he is.

And he's coming to work with the local indie guy.

And they're trying to work with each other, but one guy looks like a star that's together and composed and articulate.

And the other guy looks like he's fucking trying to do a promo for smart fans and talk himself into it.

And he did, Moxley did the spooky voice indie style stuff.

And then Punk said, well, you can be the heart and soul of AEW.

I'll be the dollars and cents.

And there was some more of the fighting spirit horseshit from Moxley.

And he bows up at Punk and Punk says, I'm afraid if I touch you, you'll just bleed all over me.

God damn, I lost it.

And then, of course, Moxley kisses Punk, and then they have the fight.

And

Jesus Christ, for a guy who literally likes to pummel people into jelly with his bare hands, according to him, Moxley can't throw a punch to save his life, can he?

You know, his elbows in the matches we talked about, those have looked really bad, but he's in the middle of a brawl.

And that was the thing that kind of took me out of the whole thing was immediately, you know, okay, this part is now they're working together because his punches look so shitty.

They look so bad.

And conversely, when he gets hit with a punch, he doesn't move his head at all.

So everybody else's punches look like shit.

And then also the way Moxley got in there and was throwing the back and forth.

Punk is, they couldn't have a decent one, two.

Punks having to kind of lean over the top and throw them down at him.

I don't know.

But

the security hits and they pull him apart, and they come back together, and they pull him apart again, and Moxley leaves, and then he comes back, but then he leaves again.

And that was, so that wasn't a bad way to start out the show.

And at least we know Punk is back, and now we've established, okay, now we know our main event for the pay-per-view for another three segments.

And at least they had some excitement.

People were into it.

Forgive me for not remembering.

Was this the part or was it later in the show when Claudio came out and manhandled Moxley?

I go a little bit more.

That's the second time.

the second time.

Picked him up around the waist, and his feet were going wee, wee wee, wee, wee off the ground.

Um, but anyway, uh, closing thoughts on this segment, or have we gone too long already?

I mean, it just depends on if you want to talk about any of the other things about the backstage stuff in AEW or you want to save that for later.

Well, let's save it for the individuals involved.

They'll be back out.

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But speaking of the title,

so last week on the program, we had that

rather

heated exchange between Punk and Moxley, and then it came out and got in a fight again.

And we forgot to mention that

they had announced toward the end of the program last week: fuck it, we ain't going to wait for the pay-per-view where you might have to pay to see this.

We're going to put the interim title versus the real title on the line between Moxley and Punk next week on free television.

And everybody at that point thought,

what is the matter with these people?

And we did too,

because why would you give that away?

Except

it's not like anybody wanted to see it anyway.

We've talked about the fact that this was botched horribly when Tony decided to put the belt on Moxley, the interim title, when Punk was out.

It should have been a heel.

It should have been the hottest heel you could get that could crow and fucking brag the whole time that Punk was gone and take advantage of people so that Punk would have a dragon to slay, a wrong to right,

a hill to climb, something to come back for in triumph that people would universally be on his side rather than a split audience dueling chance like they had here in this match.

Let's go, Moxley, CM Punk.

Some of these idiots were actually saying all the words together.

Let's go, Moxley, CM Punk.

Because it's just a thing to do.

They don't care who wins now, especially when you split their fucking affections.

So

he has an idiot for an interim champion that totally doesn't fit what Punk needed to come back to.

And obviously, Punk had to be aware of that.

So then they shoot an angle, and then they decide to bring the pay-per-view main event ahead a week to free television.

And I'm thinking, what the fuck are they thinking?

There's somebody's lost their mind mind somewhere.

But then I realize if this is what they intended to do,

they couldn't have made this the main event on pay-per-view because people would have set seats on fire in three minutes.

And at the same point,

a lot of people have been waiting to hear me say, oh, he's going to tear this apart.

And I might still tear it apart a little bit here, but

they're doing something

and it's it involves CM Punk.

So unless one of two things happen,

unless CM Punk just said, you know what, I made a fucking mistake.

You guys are fucking hopeless.

I don't want to be involved in this.

I didn't want to come back and do bad television.

Stick this belt up your ass, and I'm going home.

Then, in that case, it makes sense they did what they did.

There's one other way that this makes sense with Punk being involved in it, if he doesn't want to tell them to stick it up their ass, if he still wants to try to help this company,

then I don't want to

break the bubble.

I don't want to come out and say this is what they're going to do because if they do do it, then what they did on television makes perfect sense.

But let's just say this.

Let's just say if Punk has re-injured his bad foot,

he probably ain't going to be wrestling at the United Center in Chicago.

Now, that's going to hurt their live crowd in Chicago because those people wanted to see CM Punk because it's his hometown.

And that's probably the one place where the dueling chance would have been reduced to a minimum because even Punk would have been the raging favorite over Plumber Moxley, but it still wouldn't have been like an actual real heel to come back and beat.

And you had to think that that had to set

sideways with Punk to begin with, that he was going to be put in a position to come back in his triumphant debut in his hometown.

He's wrestling an alleged babyface, even though Moxley has no idea how to be a babyface.

He's presented as such.

So

you get, you rip the band-aid off the scab or whatever,

get it over with.

Nobody gave a shit to see Punk versus Moxley, so get it over with on free television.

And figure out some way that you don't have to have that match on pay-per-view.

And then I don't know.

Maybe if the plumber was to run his fucking yap and issue an open challenge, then some heel with heat that makes people feel something

could come out of nowhere and win that fucking belt during Punk's absence while he's re-injured on his bad foot.

And then Punk would have something to come and win back and right a wrong and take away

the most prized possession in the company from some asshole who was only using it for his own selfish gain and didn't deserve it.

Then you might have a wrestling story to sell tickets and pay-per-views and things.

But

if only Punk was involved in the decision-making, I would think that's maybe where they're going.

But since these other amateur dip shits are involved, I don't know what the fuck's going to happen because it was this fucked up to begin with.

So,

so there's what we think.

Either Punk said, you know what, fuck it.

I've tried.

You people aren't worth it.

I can't teach you anything.

You're going to run this thing into the ground.

I'm going home.

Or he said, you know what?

You have fucked this up massively and we need to take control over it somehow.

And if we have to piss people in Chicago off,

mama says it bees that way sometimes.

for the sake of the future.

Because

otherwise, this made no sense.

For the people who've been living under a rock,

they have the interim title versus title match.

They introduce Moxley and Punk.

They lock up.

Moxley gets a little on Punk.

Punk gets a little on Moxley.

Punk goes to throw a roundhouse kick, sells his left foot, which was the one that he injured, I guess, and got operated on, goes down.

Moxley sees what's happening.

Punk staggers to his feet.

Moxley clotheslines him, gets on top of him, and hits those shitty, phony, stupid-looking elbows.

But apparently, even though they look bad, they also hurt because at one point, Punk had to get his hand in there like, you fucking idiot.

You just hit me in the jaw.

And then Moxley gave Punk two of his double arm.

Are they suplexes?

Are they DDTs?

They started out as a DDT.

Then he puts Minoru Suzuki down like a Fabergé egg.

This was kind of in the middle, and one, two, three in three minutes.

And the Twitter blew up, and it's like, what is this the end of the company?

This is ridiculous.

What are they fucking doing?

And it doesn't make any sense unless they're just deciding

we've completely fucked this thing up and we're going to start from scratch and we're going to re-rack everything.

So maybe they just got it out of the way.

But otherwise, I have no thought

of what the fuck is going on here.

Do you?

Let me first apologize.

Julio and the gang are outside taking care of their duties.

But

I believe this is part of a series of events leading into the pay-per-view.

I have faith in everything CM Punk has done in AEW so far has been great.

So I have faith in CM Punk.

I doubt this would be the way it was if there wasn't a meaning behind it, whether or not we recognize it yet or not.

But I'm going to go with the belief that they're building up to something.

He's doing business with Moxley.

This is different than everything with the drama with CM Punk and, you know, the whole Kookamunga camp.

And or and or Hang Nail Page.

Well, he's part of, he's part of, I mean, look.

Yeah.

He wasn't around

here the other night, was he?

No, he wasn't there.

Who knows if he's suspended?

But, you know, it's Omega, the Bucks, Adam Page, Excalibur, and various flunkies all over the place who got jobs for no good reason

that's the group CM Punk's not really dealing with that he's dealing with Moxley he's friends with Moxley's wife I'm sure CM Punk was doing business here whether or not this was the right thing or the right way to use CM Punk I guess time will tell I am dead against the way Jon Moxley is used I know they have fans who like him and I've brought this up before it's ironic that CM Punk comes out the cult of personality because Jon Moxley is really the one who capitalizes on there being a cult of personality because his work in the ring ain't good.

I'm sorry.

There's no excuse.

People are going to go, oh, I like his matches.

They're not good.

The blows, whether it's the punches, which we saw in the brawl with CM Punk or the elbows, which we've seen over and over and over again, look like shit.

And if they're hurting the guy, too,

there's a double negative.

And his promos just,

they come across to me as phony baloney, to use a Ronnie Piper phrase.

They come across to me, or actually, I think I was Tony Clifton I'm thinking of.

It comes across to me as just, I don't believe him.

I don't believe in Jon Moxley, and he does the fucking Bez walk from Happy Mondays.

I don't believe in him.

And I know they have a lot of fans who really like him, and they were chanting for him and Punk.

And like you said, the same people were chanting both, which is,

if there's any example of what the modern wrestling fan who goes to AEW is like, that's the perfect example right there, the fan chanting both.

But I'm not a big fan of Moxley as the world champion, but I think this is all, this all has to be building to something more than likely at the pay-per-view, I would imagine.

We shall hope.

But then before we get to the main event of- And where did Regal go?

Regal walked in, they showed Moxley this time when he was walking in the bowels of the building.

Regal was next to him.

And then by the time Moxley got out there, Regal was gone.

Where did he go?

He got lost in the parking lot when Moxley had to go outside so he could come back in.

Maybe he got picked up by an Uber.

I'm not sure.

He's my least favorite wrestler in in wrestling right now because he's all over the TV and his matches are always terrible and his personality just, I just don't think.

I know a lot of people like him, but I don't get it with Moxley at all.

At all.

And then,

Lac Mussolini saving the booking,

giving it the best try he can.

Here comes Punk.

And he enters subdued, his hands in his pockets.

If you notice, he is always out with the appropriate emotion.

If he's happy to be there or should be happy to be there, then he's happy.

If he's wrestling, then he's got his game face on, but he's confident.

If something like this has happened, he comes out.

You can almost see the tears in his eyes.

And that's something that used to be standard in wrestling and is no longer even thought about, which is why Bianca Bel Air, you can burn her house down the next day, she's going to come out on TV skipping, smiling, twirling her hair.

So he did the promo.

And he started talking about the damage to his foot, three plates, 16 screws.

I have a feeling that he didn't make that up.

So apparently this was worse than we thought it might be.

And one smartass started to chant cold cabana.

Actually, that's usually the cold cabana chants usually consist of one smart ass, but could you hear this at home on tv you heard it actually

i had to go back and replay it because as soon as punk pointed at the guy and and said what he said which i'm about to mention that's i said what was that and then you can

you can hear if you're listening for it because it was it bled over somebody's microphone but it was a very faint cold cabana

But Punk heard it because the guy was in the front row.

He had just talked about his three plates and 16 screws.

The guy goes, cold cabana.

And Punk immediately says,

which, by the way, is 16 times more than this fat guy's got screwed in his life and gets a big pop from the people.

And then he explained he probably came back too early and he just got beat up in Cleveland and he doesn't know if his new 100% is good enough.

But he came back to wrestling because he loves the business and the fans, and it hurts to feel like I let you down.

This is great stuff.

This is the baby face.

This is the hero

actually being conflicted on whether he should return or not and whether he'll be good enough, but not like really

like some fucking mental incompetence.

Oh my God.

No, this is out in front of the people so they'll know that he supposedly feels this way.

So it will play into the story.

God damn it, I can't believe I have to say these things at this point.

And then he breaks down.

Maybe he's not good enough anymore.

This is classic shit.

If he really felt that way and wanted to fucking quit, then I'd say he's goddamn nuts.

But for the story, it's brilliant.

And then here comes a steal out.

And he again

identifies himself in a conversational way.

And they refer to what happened earlier, just briefly, and he gives Punk the pep talk,

the Rocky and Mickey speech, the corner man.

This is classic psychology.

He is Punk's old mentor, his old trainer.

And legitimately, Ace came first.

He was already established in the Chicago area in the 90s.

And

he gets him fired up and then he slaps him.

And he says, You fucking get up.

He got carried away and he fucking said fucking after they'd had the meeting.

And this was reported on the internet immediately when he went through the curtain.

He held his hand up and said, It's my fault.

I slipped.

He fined himself, I think, or paid whatever fine Tony Kahn wanted him to fucking pay.

But it worked here.

He was firing punk up.

You're better than this.

You can do it.

Get up.

It's not how many times you get knocked down.

It's how many times you get up.

You fucking get up.

Sign this contract.

And the fans were screaming.

And he says, Have you forgot who you were?

And the fans chant CM Punk.

CM Punk.

And now Punk cuts the fired up promo.

He's been convinced.

He's seen the light.

He starts firing them up.

He goes into the crowd.

He goes out in the audience.

He rouses Chi-Town behind him.

He runs for the mayor of Chicago.

You can't break my bones or drink my blood, Moxley, because we are Chicago.

And he signs the contract in the middle of the people.

Brian, did you see?

They literally did throw a baby in the air.

Well, they raised him up at least.

They didn't let go of him.

Yeah.

But they raised him up.

They offered up a baby to the god of CM Punk in Chicago.

Don't throw your babies, ladies and gentlemen.

Don't throw the baby or kick the baby.

But no, and everybody tweeted that picture of the guy holding the baby up.

The babies are in the air in Chicago.

This was fucking perfect.

I didn't see it coming.

And I realize now how much sense it makes.

If they'd have had this match, two babyfaces,

one a phony champion, inner rim champion, the other the real champion,

Moxley had not been on a reign of terror.

Moxley had not taken advantage of anybody in Punk's absence or done anything that needed to be gotten even with.

They had to do something, or it was just going to be a blase fucking babyface match for fucking marks of goddamn wrestling moves.

And there's a lot fewer of those than ever before.

They needed to have some emotion in this.

There needed to be a heel and a babyface.

And now, at least in Chicago,

there's going to be a heel and a babyface because Moxley is shit on the town at the same time as Punk just ran for mayor and was offered up

babies as sacrifices.

So now we got something.

Now there's going to be a fucking atmosphere.

Now maybe people

might buy the pay-per-view to see what's going to happen.

Do you think Moxley will threaten to either eat the baby or drink the baby's blood?

I think the, no, I think he's going to grind the baby's bones to make his bread.

This is the first time I've ever heard Ace Steele do a promo to the best of my knowledge, and he was fantastic.

He

nailed the tone that it had to be, and the look on Punk's face after he got the slap.

You mentioned how Punk comes out there, he always has the right look on his face.

I remember someone years ago saying, David Bowie's amazing, he's always in the perfect pitch.

And CM Punk comes out there, his face tells the story, but you don't know what the whole story is, and then it all unfolds.

So, again, this segment and the previous segment,

the first one with Moxley,

this sold this cold-ass fucking blase match.

And

since all of a sudden the entire direction, complexion, and inflection of this thing changed as soon as Punk showed back up, I have a feeling we know that this was not a Booker of the Year fucking inspiration.

You know what it was time for now?

Because it was past 11:30 on the East Coast, Brian.

You know what it was time for.

Trying to stay awake.

Lock Mussolini.

It's almost Monday.

And I'm so tired.

I hope they don't go long.

So

after all the

back and forth and happenings of the past few weeks, Punk does make his entrance in Chicago.

And

honestly, again,

Tony,

you squandered.

This was not a CM Punk ovation in Chicago.

And it's not because that he's any less over because of the angle with him dropping the thing to Moxley in three minutes.

He's probably more over

because of the Ace Deal promo and the whole thing they did last Wednesday night.

But here it is going on midnight when these people have been in the goddamn building.

for six hours at least, and they were happy to see punk, but the babies weren't going in the air because people are fucking tired for anybody.

And then, you know, they play Wild Thing, and here comes Plumber Moxley through the crowd.

And

the Chicago fans are probably not plumbing fans because they didn't.

Not only did he just switch heel on them on Wednesday, but for the same reason I've

just talked about, it's fucking late.

And the bell rings,

and they're they're almost five hours into the show.

But they opened the thing hot and they started to do a little play on a quick match because Punk was all over Moxley and given Moxley his own elbows and hit the go to sleep and got a two count.

People are like, oh, shit.

And then

they fought into the arena just enough.

It looked like it was Punk said,

all right, John, yeah, I will go out in the arena because I know that you have to do that in every match.

So I won't die on this hill.

And then

they come back and Moxley

sends Punk in the post and busts him open.

And now

he actually did his blood drinking bit.

He was able to punch the cut and then lick the blood off his hand.

For all the people who want to see that type of thing.

But Punk sold his ass off.

He was a big babyface.

Moxley was the full heel, both in terms of the crowd sentiment and that he was in control, starting to work on Punk's bad foot, blah, blah, blah.

And again, when Punk started coming back and they started going back and forth, I said, this would, the babies would have been in the air if this was a normal wrestling promotion where the main event came on two hours and 45 minutes after the bell time.

And they're still enjoying it, but it's not over the top.

Punk went for the elbow off the top.

Moxley catches him in a choke.

Punk comes out, goes for the arm bar.

Mox comes out and gets the choke.

Then an ankle lock, a German flips off the crowd.

Punk hit a roundhouse.

Moxley hit a clothesline.

They're going back and forth, folks.

It's dog eat dog.

Where's Larry when you need him?

And finally,

you know, Moxley hit his DDT and got a two count, and he was doing the elbows, trying to choke, but Punk comes out, hits the go-to-sleep, and Moxley bounces off the ropes and falls on top of Punk, who is crumpled there, but he's knocked out.

So Punk is under him, powers him up again, hits another go-to-sleep.

Boom, one, two, three.

And they not only

got the belt back in the right place, but they got the main event finish in six minutes before midnight Eastern.

But the show was not over because then suddenly the lights go out

and a voicemail from Tony Khan plays.

And

you can tell it's Tony's voice.

And he's saying, all right,

you know, we've got to do this deal.

This is the last offer.

You can come back and be it all out.

I'll put you in the casino ladder match.

I'll pay you bleep dollars.

But this is it.

It's a final offer.

And then they play the clip of Punk and Ring of Honor.

Somebody on Twitter said, well, see, it shows what a great investment it was because they got this clip.

I love everybody involved.

I don't know if this clip was worth a couple million bucks, but the video library would be all right.

But the clip of Punk doing the Jake Roberts line.

What was, you know, you silly ass, you knew I was a snake.

And then here comes the masked Joker fellow that was in the ladder match who comes out and unmasks as MJF.

And everybody went ballistic over this because they've been wanting to see MJF back.

And I have too.

And I love MJF.

And if it's MJF and CM Punk, I'm all there for it.

But I've made my

feelings known that I thought the latter match finish was just caca, just fucking horseshit.

And

I know everybody's just so happy to see MJF back.

And the thing is, I think they melted a little long.

And I know that, you know, plans have been changed because of all the injuries.

I don't know what was originally going to happen.

Was he going to come back at Forbidden Door?

That was the last pay-per-view.

I don't fucking know.

But

it's been a while, and now they're so happy to see him.

If they're not careful, people are going to start cheering it a little bit.

So, MJF,

I would have wished that he would have made a more

heelish statement rather than just a reappearance on this show, but he's got time to do that.

But he needs to do it quick because they'll start liking him because

now the people have seen

what this rotten television program is like without MJF on it.

So now they're going to be glad to have him back just so it's going to be more watchable.

And there's going to be the danger they're going to want to start cheering for him unless he does something heinous,

you know, fairly quickly.

But

they did the stare down with punk.

MJF gives the fingers to the crowd, which we've seen him all night, including from

Tourette Moxley.

So they should have saved.

That's another thing they should have saved.

But nothing happened at the end.

There was no physicality.

MJF didn't make a statement.

Like I said, who knows what they might have done originally, but at least they've got him back.

I was not as thrilled as everybody else was with the manner.

I'm just thrilled that he's back.

What do you think?

I'll talk about the match first.

I thought this was one of my favorite Jon Moxley matches in AEW,

and I think it's because he works so much better as a heel.

Yeah.

Not as a, I'm in a combat club, I'm a rough, gruff wrestler heel, but just I'm a fucking dirtbag, and I'm going to fight you heel.

I'm an assholish dirtbag that looks like that I fucking grew up in a cardboard box under an overpass in Newport.

That's a heel.

I find him a lot more tolerable like that.

It seemed like he was having a lot of fun playing with that.

I don't know if he can get that reaction everywhere just because of the way he's been used and he's coming out the wild thing and everything.

But I thought that brought out the best of Jon Moxley.

I'm sure punk was a big part of that just because he was working with him, but the fact that he was a heel in Chicago made it a better Jon Moxley.

The MJF stuff,

I don't know.

I'm happy he's back.

I'm not a big fan of the

cinematic aspects of a lot of this stuff.

Maybe I'm an old fuddy duddy.

I'm 42.

I've only got another 50-something years left.

But I don't.

Hey, wait a minute.

What kind of shit are you on?

Give me some.

I'm on that Billy Gunn shit.

Listen, I

didn't like

the whole playing the fake voicemail.

And then...

Because I mean, clearly, I mean, it wasn't a real voicemail from Tony Khan.

And then

the whole dramatic...

I don't know.

I didn't like it.

I didn't think it was necessary.

I thought.

It could have been a lot more evil and a lot more sinister and less the big pop for a big moment.

And I think that's what MJF should be a little more is just the sinister heel as opposed to the people got a big moment to pop for him.

And that became part of the talk after the event.

The idea, I mean, Jericho, fuck, Jericho just basically demanded he become a babyface on a scrum.

You'll hear.

But

the idea that people pop like that for him, you know, a lot of it's because he's a guy returning and a guy that made the show better and he's back.

But I don't know.

I think it should have been something less stagey, even though it wasn't like crazy stagey, but I think it should have been something a little more hardcore, a little more sinister.

A little more straight to the point, a little more violent, a little more underhanded.

Yeah, too dramatic for me.

Well, that was the dramatic close to the all-out pay-per-view,

where they are literally all out, all out of ideas all out of patience all out of civility no there are plenty of patients what's her name uh ruby ruby soho broke her nose oh yeah all all of the patients on and and also

we didn't even mention that of course adam cole is still gone somewhere hurt somehow kyle o'reilly's just had surgery we're not sure what happened there.

Basically, anybody that you don't see fairly regularly, you've got to assume in this company they're hurt.

Even if you see them regularly, did you know Christian Cage was hurt?

Yeah, yeah, we didn't know that.

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How do you want to cover this?

I mean,

everybody's waiting.

Everybody's waiting for us to talk about the media scrum.

Here's the thing.

At one point,

everybody was saying going into this weekend, well, you know, the WWE's got momentum.

They do the clash at the castle in front of 65,000 people or however many in who knows what we can trust,

in Cardiff, the first UK stadium show in 30 years.

And they thought, wow, this will be a big deal.

And by the next day, that is an afterthought, not because

of why Tony Kahn wanted that to be an afterthought because his show was so much blow-away better, but because his media scrum

was the most entertaining thing that that company has ever done, where somebody actually

finally came out and grabbed the bull by the tail and faced the situation.

As so, should we do the scrum first, even though it came second, or how do you want to handle it?

It's your show, Brian.

Well, this is the topic that everyone's talking about.

So, why don't we do this?

Why don't we do the CM Punk portion of the scrum first, and then we'll do the pay-per-view, then we'll do the rest of the scrum.

You don't even know what else was going on during the scrum.

There was all sorts of things.

I scrammed after Punk's scrum.

It was fucking one, whatever the fuck in the morning, and I knew knew nothing was going to top that.

So I've

departed at that point.

We've had very little sleep.

I may be a little slappy today, but this

the uh

just the sheer ridiculosity of this whole situation is what's keeping me motivated today.

So go ahead.

And this is an amazing situation that developed here after the pay-per-view CM Punk with Tony Khan.

The owner of AEW, his boss, and AEW sitting next to him.

The new, once again, the new reigning and defending AEW World Heavyweight Champion of the World.

CM Punk.

Is it a unified champion or is it just undisputed now?

What is it?

Well, it's just the real belt that he had all along before they decided to put something on Moxley so he could stink the joint out on the Indies.

You know, one thing notable here before we play into this audio is we know there have been plenty of wrestlers, more than people realize, who have had issues at various times with that entire camp, the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega.

Let's put Adam Page right there at the top, even though he's kind of like second tier.

He's their guy.

CM Punk, I think, is the first one to ever publicly verbalize any of it.

You know, we hear.

Yeah, so

yeah, we've heard a variety of these types of

comments, accusations, however you want to put it for some time from different people.

But here's the thing.

I see a lot of people on Twitter today and wherever on it, oh, how dare punk do something like this?

Well, I believe the instigating, motivating factor in all of this was when old hangnail page

did the exact same thing, only not as good.

And in more of what do the kids call it, a passive-aggressive way, which is more of a way of what the Kookamunga kids and all of their little buckaroos do things.

They like to just run their dick liquors behind people's back and in quiet instead of doing it out in front of them or in public.

But

if we're talking about unprofessional behavior and or telling the truth, imagine that, on television, then Paige crossed that rainbow bridge first, what was it, a few months ago with this promo.

And remember at the time we heard it and we talked about the show the next day on our show.

We said, what in the world?

Did he just forget everything he was supposed to say?

Cause none of this made any sense?

Or was he...

That's what you thought, yeah.

Well, yeah, I said, or was he trying to do a shoot interview of some kind, turn heel, or just because he sounded like a whiny little bitch?

What was going on there?

We didn't know.

And then we find out that he was trying.

Problem is, he's not articulate enough to be able to do this and still make it

legible to the general viewing public.

He was trying to do a shoot interview as a shoot on punk, in front of punk, in the middle of the ring on live TV before

their big pay-per-view match.

So

I think that if you're going to do something like that, then at a media scrum where everybody's talking to the media, and Tony's so open about everything, and that's where all the opponents come out and hug and kiss on each other and say how much they loved being able to express their art with each other that night.

That punk ought to come out and tell the truth about what happened.

How is that unprofessional?

They did it to him when he wasn't ready for it on a television show.

It was not supposed to be for the media, it was supposed to be for public consumption.

Well, now here we're talking to the press, so here's what's going on.

How is that

in any way?

What is as I think he asked asked one of the journalists in the room, what did I do to get this guy to go into business for himself on me without any warning on live national television?

So I don't see how they're blaming punk for coming out and telling the truth.

It's what we've been saying.

It's what a lot of other people have been saying.

There's two camps.

There's the people that are serious about the wrestling profession as a profession and a business.

And there's these jackoffs that got their heads so far up their own asses and love the smell of their own farts so much that they still think that their temporary

mass amnesia on a certain segment of the wrestling fan population is actually still going and that they're still the stars of this thing.

And that they can act any way they want and they can talk to people any way they want and they can treat them any way they want

and if they're in the little click they even stole the click if they're in the little click they're good they don't have to have talent or ever have been heard of or go anywhere do anything they just got to be friends from school and then there's a group led by if you want to be honest punk is the guy who

has drawn them their million people ratings on television.

Punk's the guy who's been on top in their million dollar gates.

Punk's the guy that's been on top in their million, multi-million dollar pay-per-views.

And as a matter of fact, I would hesitate to say what

by every metric that you can say, Punk has been the one to generate the business.

So

and remember, you know, This reminded me.

Remember some of the spin we were seeing a few months back when it was Punk vs.

MJF, one of the most coherent and well-thought-out storylines they've done on TV.

We were told that wasn't the draw for the pay-per-view.

The spin was it was Adam Page vs.

Adam Cole.

There has been a version of AEW that's based in reality, and then there's another version coming out of the, as Jim Cornette would say it, the chicken lips of various people and their various friends that has been bullshit.

And CM Punk, I said before, he's the first guy to verbalize these things.

He's the first guy to can.

They're guys afraid of their jobs.

You know, EVP, they're bullshit EVPs.

I mean, they're EVPs, you know, the way I can make Swami an EVP right now of Arcadia and Vanguard.

They're not fucking EVPs, but they're playing that role right now.

And I think it's going to be a harsh reality

that you can call yourself an EVP, but if you can only play with your friends and you're upsetting the biggest star the company has ever had,

you're in a lot of trouble.

So, it is going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

But before you and I go on any further and bore everyone, let's get some audio.

Jim, this is the very beginning.

Now, AEW's audio feed was terrible.

It sounded like everyone was a robot,

but also it kind of began abruptly.

We didn't get to hear what got CM Punk going.

We have some audio here.

Let's give credit to the source, Denise Salcedo, on YouTube.

Here is CM Punk from the very beginning of the press scrum.

We'll stop it at various points to discuss your thoughts on this.

Just say your name and your...

Hi, Nick House with Wrestling Inc.

I'll start, Nick.

Show of hands.

Who here fancies himself a journalist?

You're a journalist, Nick?

I try my best.

Okay.

No, real quick.

Go ahead.

You still do improv?

No, not a little bit.

No?

No.

When you did improv,

who'd you do improv with?

I did it with

Scott Colton.

Hmm.

Okay, so you fancy yourself a journalist.

Would you say you're friends with Scott Colden?

No, I haven't talked to Scott in some time.

So you're not friends with him?

No, no, Scott and I do not see that I.

Oh, wow.

Well, that makes two of us.

My point is, if you fancy yourself a journalist, even if it's for the silly world of professional wrestling, and you have journalistic integrity, people who report things, mostly that are bullshit, and slanderous lies against myself, if you are friends with somebody, you blew my spot.

If you're not friends with them, I apologize.

It's okay, but you should probably disclose who you're friends with.

I'm not from.

I haven't had anything to do with Scott Colton in almost a decade.

Probably wanted nothing to do with him even longer than that.

It's fucking unfortunate that I have to come up here and speak on this when I'm on my time and this is a fucking business.

Let me stop it there for a second because there's already a lot that's happened.

And by the way, we didn't paint the visual picture for those of you just listening to the audio, but Punk is sitting, he's still in his tights.

He's bleeding.

He's wiped it off, but he's bleeding from his match.

He's not showered yet.

But he's sitting there and he's eating muffins.

The muffins from his favorite muffin place there in Chicago, and I'm sure he'll plug the name of it.

And it's just, and he's licking his fingers and asking these or answering these questions and just eviscerating people all the while sitting there and eating bits of muffin and licking his fingers.

It's fucking classic.

Well, he also has some sort of beverage here.

I don't know if it's seltzer or what, but the other thing you want to set the visual,

Tony Khan is sitting right next to him.

Yes.

And 18 inches.

It's worth watching the video just, you know, again, you feel bad for Tony in a sense, but it's a real awkward situation because Punk is very free in the moment.

You can tell he's just speaking his mind freely, and Tony doesn't know where it's going to go and when it's going to end.

Well, I guess with that said,

let's get more audio here.

Why I'm a grown-ass adult man, and I decide not to be friends with somebody is nobody else's fucking business.

But my friends,

if I fall backwards, will catch me.

Scott Colton, I felt never would have.

My problem was I wanted to bring a guy with me to the top that did not want to see me at the top.

Okay?

You call it jealousy, you call it envy, whatever the fuck it is.

My relationship with Scott Colton ended long before.

I paid all of his bills.

I have every receipt.

I have every invoice.

I have every email.

I have the email where he says, and I quote, I agree to go our separate ways.

I will get my own lawyer and you do not have to pay anymore.

That's an email that I have.

The only reason the public did not see is because when I finally had to counter sue him through discovery, we discovered he shared a bank account with his mother.

That's a fact.

Let me stop it.

I don't know if that's the L-train or if

Subway is going by.

I don't know what that is, but let's go back to this.

And as soon as we discovered that fact and we subpoenaed old Marsha,

he sent the email, oh, can we please drop all this now it's 2022 I haven't been friends with this guy since at least 2014 late 2013 and the fact that I have to sit up here because we have irresponsible people who call themselves EVPs and couldn't fucking manage a target and they spread lies and bullshit and and put into a media that I got somebody fired when I have fuck all to do with him want nothing to do with him do not care where he works where he doesn't work where he eats, where he sleeps.

And the fact that I have to get up here and do this in 2022 is fucking embarrassing.

And if y'all are at fault, fuck you.

If you're not, I apologize.

But

what did I ever do in this world to deserve an empty-headed fucking dumb fuck like hangman Adam Page to go out on national television and fucking go into business for himself?

For what?

What did I do?

Dave?

What did I ever do?

You kill me?

Didn't do a goddamn thing.

Good comeback, Melzer.

Let me stop this for a second because he's about to go to another question here.

Because again, there's a lot that he covered there.

And here's the thing.

We now know what happened that Paige,

it's already come out.

Paige, when he went mad, insane in that interview and tried to verbally go toe-to-toe with the fucking expert.

He was, in some way or another, in their, as we said, whether it's passive, aggressive, or just their mealy-mouthed way, trying to take up for their friend Colt Cabana,

that they have been telling everybody far and wide that punk's the reason why that Colt Cabana,

the guy who stood as a background fucking mannequin in an underneath heel group that became babyfaces through no efforts of his either way for two fucking years.

Suddenly is switched over to another non-existent company, Ring of Honor, even though he's getting paid the same amount of money.

Tony just shifted him over to the side, probably

because Tony Khan was even smart enough to realize, well, now that I got this guy coming in to draw money.

And this other guy, they hate each other.

I'll just get him out of the way.

He's lucky he was renewed at all or whatever's going on because before Punk got there, when Punk had zero to do with AEW, it's not like Cabana was tearing up the world.

He was barely being used.

That's what I'm saying.

They could have fucking blown up a goddamn one of Kenny Olivier's ex-opponents, could have blown her up and stood her back there, and it'd have been the same fucking deal.

It's another one of Tony's early acquisitions that he had Buyer's remorse on.

and never made a, you know, any kind of difference.

But the point is.

He was another of the friends.

That's

one of the friends.

And because he was one of the friends, the friends in all friends wrestling got their panties in a bunch and decided to go do their thing where they whisper and they fucking

over the corner.

He did this and he did that and he did the other thing.

And finally, old Hangnail was stupid enough to bring it out on television.

And now he's opened himself up to Punk.

You can tell there's some things been building up.

I'm not talking about Punk being mad at Cole Cabana for 10 years.

By God, he knew him for 20 years.

That's enough to be mad at him for 40 years.

But

I'm talking about

this has obviously been building since that happened a couple months ago, and that wasn't the first of it.

And he probably hasn't got a suitable explanation or apology from either of the Kookamunga kids or anybody else in their little tree house that has been spreading all this shit.

And so he thought, well, okay, I'll just mention this.

What are they going to do about it?

I know a lot of people that don't like Punk.

Oh, well, he got whipped in the UFC.

Yeah, well,

old Matt and Nick fucking Hardley.

I don't know if they are tall enough to buy a ticket to see the UFC.

So who are you going to take there?

What about Twinkle Toes?

They say he trained a little bit.

He's got a bunch of injuries, too.

I bet if he tried that V trigger, Punk would fucking take that leg and fucking bend it south and fucking shove it up his ass.

So what are they going to do about it?

They want to fucking run their fucking mouths.

Well, somebody that now has the cachet and the industry and the platform to fucking say what he thinks about them is willing to do it.

So as Bobby Eaton used to say, fuck around and fuck around, see what happens.

There's more audio, and I can't wait to hear it.

Yeah, there is.

And I just want to say one thing.

This is what they did to you

it just so happens that you have this forum and your voice didn't go away and you could fight back most people couldn't do that but they lied they made up stories yeah there's real where they had problems with some of your criticisms of their work that's one thing but they made up agendas and stories and tried to demonize you the bucks cabana way back Omega, all of these fucking guys.

Here's punk.

And I'm not saying punk agrees with everything you say, but Punk obviously sees wrestling a very different way than they do.

He's a threat to them because he's a bigger star than them.

He doesn't need an EVP like Jericho.

Jericho's not an EVP.

He doesn't need it.

He realized Punk doesn't need it.

He's higher than that.

So now what are they going to do?

Now they start their whisper campaign and they start spreading rumors because it's Punk's fault that a guy who's never been used on TV is not being used anymore.

They started all this kind of stuff.

It's just Punk's going public.

They're still over in the corner whispering and looking for friendly wrestling journalists and air quotes that they could talk to.

And look, Punk's been there for a year before he finally decided, you know, I've had enough of these smarmy little fucking douchebags because they specialize in douchebaggery.

So it's not like you get ticked off at them, boom, 100% right in the same day.

It's like the douchebaggery builds up.

But

I knew from the start, I didn't want to be in the fucking building with any of them.

and now you know punk said enough but anyway let's go back to the deal

the pittsburgh what are you doing

i made it really clear in forbes and i just want to make it clear again nick it's not his position to make it very fucking clear there's people who call themselves evps that should have known better

This shit was none of their business.

I understand sticking up for your fucking friends.

I fucking get it.

I stuck up for that guy more than anybody.

Okay?

I paid his bills until I didn't, and it was my decision not to.

Yeah, but I shouldn't have no commented when Nick first said it.

It's my fault.

And if I hadn't, it's my fault.

It's my fault.

I appreciate it.

I should have just taken a head off because you know.

When I'm trying to run a fucking business, and when somebody who hasn't done a damn thing in this business jeopardizes the first million-dollar house that this company has ever drawn off of my back and goes on national television and does that, it's a disgrace to this industry.

It's a disgrace to this company.

Now, we're far beyond apologies, right?

I gave him a fucking chance.

It did not get handled.

And you saw what I had to do, which is very regrettable, lowering myself to his fucking level.

But that's where we're at right now.

And I will still walk up and down this hallway and say, if you have a fucking problem with me, take it up with me.

Let's fucking go.

What's your question, Nick?

All right, here's another thing.

And it was

was an awkward position

because that's where Punk had to win the belt from Paige.

Right.

But

here's the thing.

You look back at the old days, since Punk has somewhat of an old school mindset.

If that had been 20 or 30 years earlier with a Harley race, for example.

And the guy goes into business for himself on live TV, tries to bury the guy, Harley Race on a promo, then Harley Race may have walked back and asked Tony Con said, Well, who am I wrestling in the main event on your million-dollar house now?

Just like Steve Austin called Vince McMahon up that time about Mark Merrow after he got power bombed by Sable.

That's what he's talking about, Jeopardy, because if

the guy double-crosses Punk on a promo on live TV, who's to say he's not going to double-cross him when he's fucking laying there and the jack-off's going to come off the top rope.

Yeah, really.

I like Cabana enough to sabotage this on live TV, but I don't like him enough to punch you in the mouth when you're not ready for it.

Yeah.

So, and then what's Punk going to have to do?

He's going to have to fucking defend himself, which probably, and again, with Paige, yes, he's a fine-looking young athlete, but I'm just, since he's a goddamn, obviously, a meatly mouth little fucking butt muncher

that has to.

Yeah, empty head that has to, you know, do shit like that instead of coming up and getting a guy's face.

So I think I still bet on Punk against Paige, but that would mean that Punk would have had to fucking taken him down and applied some of that UFC training in the middle of a live pay-per-view.

And who wants that?

So I'm surprised.

I do.

Well,

you know what I'm saying.

I know what you're saying.

Well, let's get a little more audio.

Nick finally gets, and we always compliment Nick Houseman.

He always asks good questions.

It just so happens that

he's from Chicago, so Punk knew who he knew.

And he picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

But Nick Hausman goes to the next question about MJF, but it comes back to this because

Punk has never talked about this.

I mean, there have been so many things that people have thought about the falling out of him and Colcabana because publicly they were so close for so many years, but we've never heard anything from CM Punk about it.

So now that those floodgates have opened, he has more to say.

You'll hear it here.

First of all, you're always very nice to me, and thank you.

I wanted to ask about MJF.

Obviously, obviously

he played a voicemail from you before he came out obviously confronted you punk

why now what why why is MJF back in the fold now how do you both feel about him being around how do you feel about the time he spent away all of that well if I may I am the one who asked him to come back because MJF's a big star in this company and this is one of the biggest events a year ago CM Funk debuted here and I thought it was right for the fans and like I said for the fans I thought the best thing that we could do as a company was bring MJF back.

He wants me to work with pricks constantly.

That's what it is.

Nevertheless,

two of the top wrestlers in the world, MJF and CM Punk, could be a big match down the line.

Sorry to keep bringing this fucking up, but I've never spoken his word, and I don't know how long, so I'm a little fucking pissed off about it.

That's fine.

When it came down that he was going to sue me, I asked to talk to him.

He refused.

I asked for mediation.

It was denied.

I offered him money.

He said it was not enough.

He went ahead with the lawsuit and sued.

It's his fucking funeral.

I don't care.

He shares a bank account with his mother that tells you all you need to know about what kind of character that is.

You were always very nice to me.

Thank you.

I appreciate it, Nick.

I'm sorry if I'm a little fucking snippy.

That's fine.

And I'm hurt and I'm old and I'm fucking tired.

And I work with fucking children.

I respect your situation.

I regret not answering your question at first.

I only asked it because I have some familiarity and just wanted some clarification on the story.

I should have just taken a head-on like I did with Blake and and Forbes recently.

We're all learning here, Tony.

It's okay.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Thank you, guys.

This is from Mindy's Bakery, by the way.

It's a great place in Chicago.

If you like pastries and baked goods, I suggest you go there.

They're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

All right.

Well, there's the plug for Mindy's Bakery.

I'm tired.

I'm old.

I'm hurt, and I'm cranky.

And I work with children.

That's fucking hilarious.

Oh my God.

I wouldn't.

Where is Punk from?

He's 40.

I guess he would.

No, it would have been a little too early.

I did spend some time in the Chicago area, but

it would have been a little too late for him.

But he sounds like

we're some kind of blood relation.

All right.

I'm just trying to find the next audio snippet here that we're going to play.

And I'm trying to do that live on the air here.

But this next one,

I'm not sure who asked this question, but

it, I guess, gets Punk going again.

The question is about if Punk MJF will headline Arthur Ashe, and Tony says no comment, and here's what Punk says.

I'm not going to comment on that.

I'll tell you why I'm upset about it.

It's because if you're an EVP, you don't try to middle your top babyface.

Try to get your niche audience that's on the internet to hate them for some made-up bullshit rumor.

It really pisses me off.

Stepping on your own dick, trying to fucking, you know, make money, sell tickets, fill arenas, and these stupid guys think they're in a receipt.

Wow.

Living in Reseda.

That's where they still are in their minds.

They're in their little self-started promotion.

Where for 400 people they could do anything they wanted to do and live out their fantasies of being worldwide wrestling stars.

But now that they've got the opportunity to actually be worldwide wrestling stars, we find out that they were the understudies.

And

remember that we used to hear, we used to hear from wrestlers in California who were not part of their clique and not part of the pro wrestling guerrilla clique with Excalibur and Joey Ryan.

I mean, let's talk about this whole group that

if you didn't play the way they wanted to, you couldn't play at all.

There were guys that at the time felt they had to do the Joey Ryan stuff because they wouldn't get booked by Joey's friends if he didn't do it.

It was an entire little click, and they took the majority of that click and brought it to AEW.

And now that things aren't going the way they want, and let's not even forget about the fact that two weeks in a row, I think they lost 200,000 viewers for the six-man main event with Kenny.

Well, yes, and that's

another point that Punk is making without saying those exact words, but when he talks about this little fucking pretend wannabe cowboy that bows up to him on television,

Again, punk is the draw for the ratings and the pay-per-views and the Zabada.

And that's been proven the last couple of weeks when Punk's activities, whatever they may have been, have drawn over a million viewers.

And then they save the main event spot for Harpo and the kids.

And they come out and immediately 200,000 people say, fuck this,

because it's exactly what he termed it, a niche audience.

And

punk's just the vocal one there now, but it's not like that,

you know, other people haven't said this.

I'm not even going to go into what we say.

The people who are serious about wrestling as a business and a big business and a real business

do not identify with or want to mollycoddle or placate or put up with or go along with

the fucking trampoline cowboy crowd, except they're afraid they might lose their fucking job because they're EVPs

because Tony was crazy.

Instead of giving the illusion of having wrestlers having a say in his company, he actually gave it to them

and the wrong ones.

And again, CM Punk saying this stuff publicly.

Lots of other people have said it privately.

We never got to hear what Cody Rhodes had to say because there are NDAs in place and Cody, quite frankly, is more of a political kind of guy, so he's not going to say what he really thinks.

But this is not new stuff.

He just left.

Yeah, this is not new stuff with the behind-the-scenes stuff in AEW with these people.

But let's go back to CM Hunk because, again, he still has some stuff to say.

Let's go to this.

Last time we were here last year, I asked you about Terry Funk and his influence, like the legacy going on.

And this is for you too, Tony.

I kind kind of like,

you've done a great job with incorporating the legends throughout the course of AEW and as it goes on.

I kind of want to see

what you feel about how a lot of the modern talent today can kind of utilize some of the advice and take advice from like guys like William Regal and even like Jim Ross, Tony Schiavone.

I know I'm missing Jake Roberts, plenty I'm missing, I'm sure.

But I just kind of want to get both your perspectives on that and how that can kind of go a little bit more to help you guys out grow as a company.

We have

a locker room full of pretty brilliant minds.

You know, Jerry Lynn, Dean Malenko, Mark Henry.

You know, when I came back and I cut my promo my second week here, I thought it was pretty decent, you know what I mean?

Kind of blur the lines a little bit.

What's he doing?

How crazy Phil?

He's going into business for himself, and really I was just defending myself.

But you know, you mix that in with attacking Moxley.

You mentioned,

you know, Kingston being the second best Kingston, which is a pretty great line.

You know,

but our locker room, for all the wisdom and brilliance it has, isn't worth shit when you have an empty-headed idiot who's never done anything in the business

do public interviews and say, I don't really take advice.

Who the fuck do you think you are?

That's stupid.

I'm on a team with Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and

I don't need to work on my swing.

I'm not going to listen to these guys.

They're going to tell me how to swing a baseball.

Fucking go fuck yourself.

That's how I feel about it.

I dare you to fucking say that to Terry Funk's face.

I don't need to listen to you, Mr.

Funk.

I know what I'm doing.

Fucking grow up.

Well, there's another one from CM Punk.

The facial expressions were great, Dad.

Of course, he's referencing what we talked about a couple of weeks ago, that hangnail page did an interview, say, well, I guess I,

you know, some people try to give me, but I don't really think I really need to take advice because, you know, we've started this revolution and we've done pretty good, so I don't really need to take advice.

Oh, God, no, yes.

No, Mr.

Funk, I don't need to listen to you.

Oh, my God.

Can you imagine the frustrations, though?

I mean, if you.

Well, you know, here's what, you know, this is the kind of media scrum you would have got from everybody in Crockett Promotions in 1986 if you'd have kept the guys after a long show till 2 o'clock in the morning to talk to a room full of six reporters, this is probably what you would have got.

Well, let's get a little bit more audio.

I think the only other thing of note, I'm trying to scan through our notes here.

Again, the wrestling news at thewrestlingnews.com, wherever you find your favorite podcast, we have a great news team, Jason Ocarado, and everyone else helping out.

But let's go to this.

This is towards the end of the scrum.

CM Punk getting ready to leave, and he has a few more things to say.

Thank you, Alvarez.

you saw that video, man, and you were so incredulous that I went into business for myself.

And I was just like, no, no, man.

You were defending yourself.

And the reason I've never defended myself is because when you do, it just sounds like you're being defensive.

But I've eaten shit on this subject for a very, very long time.

And I'm very sad today that I had to get up here

and say his name.

He doesn't fucking deserve it and talk about it.

But facts are facts, you know?

Name two people

that have made the most money off the name CM Punk.

I don't think you're there yet.

The first one's Vince McMahon.

The second one's Scott Colton.

I hope you all have a good night.

Please be more responsible with the news you get from certain people.

And

just remember, we're human beings.

Thank you.

Wait a minute.

He was getting standing ovations in the front and in the back last night.

Again,

fuck around with a guy that doesn't give a shit about hurting your feelings or not

and knows that he has the

whether it's the pull or the gravitas or whatever to be able to tell the truth and speak out about something without having to worry about getting fired

and find out what happens they're used to playing with children

because they are children themselves mentally and in some cases physically

and

some people in the wrestling business don't want to play like children.

And not too many people have been able to speak out because, again, not everyone is in a position where they can feel comfortable that they could do something like this.

They can't fuck with CM Punk.

He's kind of invincible, but they can fuck with everyone else.

And that was part of the problem with that the WWE couldn't fuck with him either because he had

the power, the privilege, the inclination to just say, fuck you, I'll go home until I want to do something else that I want to do, which he did.

And you can't fuck with that.

You know, we've been saying it for a while, and we'll say it again so people aren't completely shocked.

There are going to be more and more stories coming out of AEW.

Coming out of AEW.

A and W?

Yeah,

wait till you find out how they make their root beer.

Chimpanzee piss is a fucking secret ingredient.

And that's actually going to be the name of this episode, but there's going to be stories coming out of there in the years ahead about the behavior of the executive vice presidents, about the behavior of Kenny.

And don't be surprised.

The guys that went out of their way to try to present their version of things to a lot of people, that they were the good guys and everyone else is wrong, that these are the bad guys, the guys who are full of shit, and the guys who try to fuck over anyone who's not in their click.

Don't be surprised when you hear more about this.

We've been telling you about it for a while, sometimes with laughter, but we've been telling you about it for a long time.

And now it's it's out in the open.

Now no one can deny it or ignore it anymore.

But we've been talking about this, Jim, for a couple of years now, at least.

That's true.

And also, I thought the title of this episode was going to be Melee, Tramps, and Thieves.

You know, we usually don't have titles for the drive-thru, but we'll see what happens.

It's up for grabs.

Melees, Tramps, and Thieves, or Chimpanzee Piss.

You know, that press scrum and what more audio from the remainder of the scrum later in the show was really something.

I mean, if you really want to do a media scrum with a wrestling media, that's how you do it.

You get headlines, you get someone talking real.

Yeah, that's incredible.

Because it wasn't a crummy scrum.

Well, there may be no waiting at Masterwork, but apparently there was somebody waiting for CM Punk when he got finished with his segment on the media scrum.

Well, we're still finding out details on this.

We're still trying to figure it out.

I could tell you, as reported by the Wrestling News on this morning's issue, or edition of the Wrestling News Wrestling Newscast, wherever you find your favorite podcast, that we reported last night, Fightful Select said that Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks were extremely upset with one source claiming they were threatening to walk over the comments to leave AEW.

There was some sort of physical confrontation that took place away from the media, obviously, during the press conference.

It actually happened during the Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland sit-down portion.

You could see there is video of security running out of the room towards what some people were saying, maybe CM Punk's locker room.

We're still trying to get some details, but

that poor one guy, he's like, what do they want me to do about this shit?

Brian Alvarez, Wrestling Observer Radio this morning, reported that his sources said the altercation took place between Punk and the Young Bucks.

Dave Meltzer called it a melee.

The word melee was used.

Those are all details we know as of now.

Well, hold on.

Let's see now.

When we come to find more details, let's see if that's true or not, because we don't know.

You know, Uncle Dave, sometimes he mixes his metaphors.

So let's just see.

Melee, according to the American Heritage Dictionary third edition.

Wait a minute, I'm still at mess, which may also be

in this situation.

Now I've got to meniscus.

Well, again, Dave's not calling it a melee.

He's saying that's what people have referred to it as to him.

Okay, well, let's see what a melee is.

Melee, melee, melee, a confused hand-to-hand fighting

a tumultuous mingling

also uh see synonyms at brawl it sounds like a description of the young bucks wrestling what was the first one the first one confused hand-to-hand fighting so it was a melee because the bucks were involved

Tumultuous mingling.

That's probably how they procreate through.

But nevertheless, so apparently the comments weren't received real well but apparently

even if there was a melee

uh they didn't get too froggy because we have not heard of cm punk being transported to any medical facilities and the same for them so

apparently they were smart and they were just running their mouths instead of trying to back it up

obviously this has been a very interesting dynamic As we said before, a lot of this dynamic has been there since the beginning.

It's been there through a lot of the drama with Cody.

It's just now it's playing out in public.

And part of it's because CM Punk's willing to fight back.

And as we said before, these guys in their camp have done everything they can to put down anyone and anything that disagrees with them or doesn't think they're the best thing since sliced bread, to use an old-fashioned expression from the days before sliced bread.

Do you know that's not as long ago as most people think?

I was watching the food that built America last season, and I think it was only like in the 30s or 40s.

So up until then, you didn't have sliced bread.

That's right.

I saw something, I think, on CBS Sunday morning at one point, but before we get to

sliced bread's been in the news a lot lately.

That's right.

It's one of those finishing maneuvers that makes no sense, I believe.

But what happens next if you're Tony Khan and you could say, oh, he needs an infrastructure, he needs a booker.

He doesn't have that right now.

If you're Tony Khan right now,

realistically, what do you do about a situation if if it has now gone beyond CM Punk expressing things publicly, beyond Adam Page unprofessionally trying to sabotage his opponent in what would be the first million-dollar gate of the pay-per-view?

It's beyond that now.

If it really did have some kind of physical altercation in the back, what do you do?

Well, you got to.

I don't know whether Tony's got it in him, but

if the executive vice presidents have been given that position, then they have got to be held to a little bit of a higher standard in terms of how they react to things.

And since the executive vice presidents,

is Paige an EVP or

is he just friends with EVPs?

We know of

the Hardleys and Twinkletoes are EVPs.

Is Paige one as well, or is he just in the protected circle of trust of the friends?

He's not an EVP, although he likes to take as much credit as Building the Revolution or whatever the hell they're trying to say about what their version of events is.

Okay, well, when Paige did that thing that he did, if Tony had been proactive, he would have gone to his EVPs that are good friends of Paige's and said, hey, tell the fucking phony cowboy.

that he's jacking around on live TV with my biggest fucking star before our biggest fucking pay-per-view.

And if he does it one more time, he's going to be an unemployed cowboy.

Tell him that for me, please.

Or if you'd like, I'll tell him myself.

But since you guys are friends, you might be able to deliver the message in a little more palatable fashion.

But Tony doesn't have it in him to do that because everybody's his friend.

So

as far as what you do now, depending on how much

insufferable douchebaggery has gone on between which of the EVPs and punk

i would think you know you have them sit sit them down in a room and say well here's the thing

i'm the boss and you guys got to work together and the first one that i find running their

particular mouth about the other one is going to be done

because i think that punk now that he's

probably said what he has to say, if he doesn't get any more bullshit like this, either from the Hardley Boys trying to do their whisper campaign or Paige trying to and failing miserably make a profound statement on live TV that nobody's ready for.

If that doesn't happen, I assume that he can go right along and do what he's going to be doing.

I assume there's going to be no more punk versus page matches.

And I don't think that Punk was ever going to cross paths inside the ring with the Hardleys to begin with.

That wouldn't have made any sense on a variety of levels.

And Punk's someone who could do something and choose who he wants to work with.

Well, yeah, and there are other guys who can't.

There's no reason for him to be in the ring with them to begin with.

It's a style clash.

It's a fucking genre clash.

It's a clash of everything.

Well, what I was going to say is I've heard from other people who don't want to do business with Adam Page now because they don't trust him.

But they may not be in a position where they could put their foot down about it.

Not that they're necessarily getting booked with him right now, but

once you break that trust, I mean, what happens if you're a wrestler and you get known for, I mean, Buddy Rogers got known for injuring guys in the ring, whether he really did or didn't.

He became known for that.

Guys didn't trust him.

What happens if you're a wrestler and people don't trust you?

Well, then your opponents are limited and then your

scope is limited as far as what you can do.

And

even if guys don't have the pull to

not work with you at all, if they don't trust you, they're not going to go the extra mile.

They're not going to, you know, oh, gosh, I really can't take that tonight.

You know, I get this back or whatever the case.

it's not going to be an optimum situation to have a great match.

So, Brian,

have we got more scrum?

There was something scrumming,

scrumming with Jericho.

Well, there were lots of other things, not just Jericho.

It was a scrummy kind of night.

But, Jim, before we get going, let me just give you a quick update on something we spoke about a little bit earlier.

A couple reports coming out now.

On Twitter, Stephen Muhlhausen, who it says he.

Wait, wait, what?

Muhlhausen?

Steven Muhlhausen?

Is he friends with Danhausen?

I don't know.

And now you make me question if this is indeed his real name.

But he's the boxing MMA and pro wrestling writer for Dazone.

And

he tweets,

sources there was an altercation between CM Punk and the Young Bucks early Monday.

The Bucks confronted Punk about his comments at the scrum.

It did get physical with Punk throwing punches at at least one member of the Bucks.

A number intervened to separate everyone.

More to come.

And there's also a separate report that I'm seeing here being reported by Sean Ross Sap

that the altercation involved Punk, a steal, and the elite.

But he has not confirmed that yet.

So a little bit more getting out about whatever it is that happened.

I mean, the whole story will get out sooner or later, but whatever it is that happened backstage.

Well, this sounds like it's interesting.

And I know Punk's straight edge, but I'm pretty sure he's taking pills bigger than Nick Jackson.

And I don't think that Matt Jackson could whip CM Punk or even half of Punk if the other half was helping him.

So.

Maybe A.

Steele was there just to make sure that Twinkle Toes didn't skip in from the back and pull his hair or something.

Yeah, you think Brandon Cutler was there filming it?

Hopefully,

he got the filming for being the.

They're going to change the name of the show from being the elite to beating the elite.

Biting the elite, and Larry gets involved.

Beat, beat, beat your meat.

Oh, my God.

If Punk had fucking sicked Larry,

well, no, but Punk's an animal lover.

He wouldn't want Larry biting any of those

suet-filled, tough, chewy, gristle-filled elite members.

I'm sure he gives he feeds larry a a proper diet of healthy food that a a growing canine deserves instead of just junk meat from the butcher shop left gristle you said gristle gristle gristly gristle

all right gristly well let's move on here

to just call him gristly smith

well going back to let's not call him that Let's not call him that, ladies and gentlemen.

That was a bad joke, but speaking of bad jokes, let's talk a little bit more about this media scrum.

Okay, the drive-thru continues, or for those of you hearing this on YouTube, hello.

Because so much is happening, we can't ignore things and just do the show as normal.

We used to do a late-night drive-through, early morning drive-through.

If the people only knew we are recording a segment while you are posting a previous segment, while a previous show that we have done is still being edited or post-produced for broadcast.

And we don't know where we all are, but things are happening fast in this world.

Yes, and thank you to all the very, very patient guest artists, the dozens of them who have been putting up with the chaos the last few days.

But, Jim, where we last left it, because the first people that are going to hear this segment will be on YouTube.

We're working on the drive-through.

This is going to be in the drive-thru, but on YouTube, everyone heard the breaking news audio, your review of the CM Punk press scrum audio from All Out or After All Out with Tony Khan next to him.

We mentioned in that show, which no one's heard yet, that we had heard rumors of some sort of altercation, and we really didn't have too many details.

Melee was a phrase, a word that was used.

Pierce six brawl would have been used at another time.

Batten down the hatches.

If it had been in Memphis, Lance Russell would have called it a Donnie Brook or a stem winder.

Well, there was a hell of a stem winder apparently in the back.

And since we have finished recording the drive-through, and since we have put up the audio of your review of the scrum, there's been so much that has happened that here we are breaking into the show with breaking news.

And then we still have more shit.

There's so much recording going on.

I don't know what to do.

That's it.

That's all I have.

Well, let's get to it.

So

the press scrum that shook the nation, the scrum heard around the world, was followed apparently by CM Punk returning to his locker room.

Whereupon, at some point soon thereafter, while as you mentioned, Tony was still doing the scrum,

one of the reporters in the room has released video of when they think

the incident going on in the back became apparent because one of the security guys is seen dashing out of the room in a panic.

But anyway,

the EVPs, the executive vice presidents of all-elite wrestling, took offense, even though none of their names were mentioned.

However, as a group, I believe they were referred to as people that couldn't manage a target.

But the Jackson Boys and Kitty Olivier,

I believe the phrase was stormed into

CM Punk's locker room.

Now, to be fair, they've probably seen a lot of people in video games doing this kind of thing.

Well, that, yes, yes.

So, that's a thing that they would think that

you would do in a video game.

We'll talk about here in a minute whether you do it and what the implications are in a professional wrestling locker room.

But anyway,

and from that point, there are only a few facts that are not in dispute on either side's retelling of the tale.

Apparently,

those facts that are not in dispute are that CM Punk clocked Matt Jackson, punched him

at least once, and then now I'm hearing possibly multiple times,

and that A.

Steele got involved.

A.

Steele, of course, working as a producer backstage in AEW, is also a friend of Punk's and his original trainer.

A.

Steele apparently

popped Nick Jackson with a chair,

bit

Kenny Omega and pulled his hair at the same time, or possibly at different times, but bit and pulled the hair of Harpo.

And that's, you know, besides the harp, that hair is his trademark.

Now, nobody knows who threw the first punch or whether, actually, probably Punk threw the first punch, but whether there was instigation or it came out of nowhere.

Those sides differ on that.

And apparently,

we don't even know for sure that A.

Steele was in the locker room when the elite stormed in,

but his wife was, because his wife was caring for and watching.

Larry the dog, who apparently is innocent in all of this, and no charges have been pressed on Larry at this point.

So that brings up to me an interesting question that if

Ace Steele, because nobody actually said from the accounts I'm hearing that he was in the room, but he was involved shortly afterwards.

Could he have been in the hallway?

Whatever the fuck.

Does he hear his wife yell?

Well, she wouldn't yell Ace.

That's not your request.

Help, whatever comes in.

His wife, a dog, and his best friend are getting maligned by three guys that,

well, let's face it, there's been ill will to begin with.

Are you, you know, what are you going to do, Brian?

You're going to take a bite out of somebody or clock somebody with a chair, aren't you?

I mean, we don't know what he saw when he came in the room.

Well, let's take a step back.

We don't know what he saw.

We also don't know where he was, like you said.

He may have been escorting Punk back to the room after the scrum.

Because again, it just happened right after that, just minutes later.

So he may have been in the room with everyone.

We also don't know who else was in the room.

Well, and who is everyone?

Yeah,

we also don't know who else was in the room.

We're assuming it's just Punk, a dog, and Ace Steel's wife.

Maybe A-Steel too.

Does Punk have any other friends in there?

There are any other wrestlers in there?

Punk has been pretty helpful to some of the younger wrestlers.

Is anyone hanging around?

We don't know that.

With Kenny and the Bucks coming in that room, I guess there were two options.

One, did they calmly walk down the hall saying, you know what?

Enough is enough.

Let's sit down and let's hash this out we'll straighten this all out this whole thing has gone too far we're all just we've got to

train ourselves in we're adults here we're executives we're making lots of money graduates of major universities did they walk down the hall like that or did they storm down the hall and go into the locker room of the biggest star in the company three on one

or three on one and a dog or three on one and a dog and a woman again we don't know we don't know what's going on in this room.

Did the three of them go and surround him?

Did they stand above him while he was sitting down?

Was anything we, I mean, there's so many details we don't know.

The only thing that's kind of universally agreed upon is that Nick Jackson got knocked out.

It's still kind of, I guess people are saying it is the chair, but is that confirmed?

Because I also heard the chair gave him a black eye.

What do you think happened with the chair?

I don't know.

Well, again, how did the chair come into play?

Was the chair in the way of the skirmish and it was thrown and whacked the guy?

Or did Ace Deal pick up a chair and perform a fucking Paul Bunyan shot to the face?

I mean, that.

Hey, if something happened with Punk and Matt Jackson that led to Punk apparently taking a swing at him, we don't even know if he hit him or not.

And I'm not saying Punk couldn't have hit him, but we just don't know.

Well, no, I think that's one of the things that everybody's agreeing on is that Punk punched him.

The question was, was there instigation and or how many times and or etc.

So if Punk hit Matt Jackson and Nick and Kenny are still there, so it's now, I'm just trying to figure out how this all happens because it's still the, they have the numbers.

They obviously, it wouldn't be fair.

It wouldn't be fair if they jumped in because then it'd be three-on-one.

So obviously they're going to stand there with their dicks in their hands and do nothing.

Right?

Or you jump in and try to help your brother beat up the guy whose career you've been trying to sabotage for a fucking while.

That would be an option as well.

And all of a sudden you're hitting the head with a chair because you're assaulting someone.

And you know, the other thing, I'd hate to go off a little bit here, but everyone's talking about, you know, everyone's clammed up on this because there are legal implications across the board.

This is an assault in the back.

But this isn't the only incident, but this is certainly the biggest public incident.

When it comes to the questionable behavior and decision-making of executive vice presidents in that company, take out of the equation that it's Kenny Omega Omega and the Young Bucks, the wrestlers, that you may not like their wrestling.

Let's look at them as executive vice presidents in Tony Khan's company.

This, a very public display here, this was what they thought was the good decision.

Not to go and sit down with Tony and talk to Tony, not to wait until the next day.

No, let's go have it out right now.

They're not wrestlers doing that.

They're executives in the company.

That opens AEW up to a problem because one could argue what is bullying and what isn't bullying.

You don't have to be the biggest, toughest guy to be a bully.

There's other types.

And if these guys who are executives, which makes them above all the wrestlers there, are exerting their power in this way, storming into punks locker room, causing a confrontation that wasn't going to happen.

They're executives.

They're not just wrestlers.

They're executives of the company.

At a minimum, before you even get to who gets...

what, they should be stripped of their executive titles immediately.

Because this is, again, this is public.

There are other things that aren't public, but the behavior of the executives is certainly not the behavior of any executive in any successful company.

Well, and then also somebody's going to say, well, but Punk said that stuff at the scrum.

Well,

Punk's comments were in response to

not only their good friend Hangnail

actually on national television going into business for himself and trying to bury the guy, but

Punk's belief that the EVPs themselves are the ones that have been spreading the whole Coke, oh, he got Coke Cabana fired or tried to get Coke Cabana fired business.

And that was obvious as well.

So it's not like that he just blew up at the press scrum and had Tourette's all of a sudden and decided to just start this whole thing.

But nevertheless, you also talk about executive vice presidents.

This is why

the number one, wrestling for 100 years didn't have executive vice presidents.

Number two, why it never should have any that are active wrestlers because.

And as we can, I can give you some examples here in a few minutes.

People storming into other people's locker rooms in the wrestling business is not a new thing, and physical altercations resulting from the same is not a new thing.

But can you think of any time where an executive vice president of a company, publicly traded or not,

in modern history, has ever stormed in somewhere and gotten in a physical altercation, whether they instigated it physically or whether they just instigated it by walking into the fucking room.

Can you see old Chip Burnham in the TBS WCW days?

I can see him kicking open the door and fucking snatching goddamn Gary Royal around the neck or something.

No.

They're executive vice presidents.

What they should have done immediately, because the EVP thing kind of trumps being one of the boys.

That's what now you're in office.

You're office now.

You're not one of the boys.

There's an issue with the balance of power in any situation like this because of three executives standing over him.

That's what I'm saying.

So they should have had the good sense instead of going into Punk's locker room and also

If they weren't smart enough, take a fucking witness on their side.

and apparently they're not, because nobody's fucking making them look like angels in this.

Everybody's shut up, which means there's fucking shit, fault on all sides.

But instead, they should have gone to Tony Kahn.

As soon as he walked out of that media scrum, they should have been standing there with their arms folded going, well, now, Tony.

We're the vice presidents, even if he's the world champion.

What are you going to do about this shit?

because then

that not only are they covered as executive vice presidents they've gone to the boss but then later on at a denny's somewhere they could have an issue that wouldn't have got quite so much attention but uh nevertheless

the it just i know that

neither the hardleys nor

Olivier

know anything really about the wrestling business and have no idea what the history of it is or what the meaning of things is.

But when you fucking bust into somebody's locker room after an emotional incident like that,

you might not be going to have a fight, but you have to be obviously aware that one may take place.

And

in most situations where somebody does bust into a locker room, something does fucking happen.

So I don't know how that they

thought

that somehow they were going to go in there and fucking tongue-lash a motherfucker to his face and/or whatever else happened in that situation, and something not happened.

That's fucking insane.

So, apparently, now

one report was that police were involved,

and

obviously,

who the fuck did that?

That's, you know.

Well, to be fair, could they have been there as opposed to someone snitching on this?

Well, okay, but that hopefully that may have been the case because they're in a fairly big building, and I'm sure there was a lot of yelling and shit going on.

So maybe that was, and we haven't heard that any charges were pressed, but that would add an extra level of fucking heat.

And that's the reason why that in the days of wrestling, when guys did get in fucking fights, and I mean, we've heard stories of, you know, the hotel room where fucking My Via tried to bite Robinson's face off and fucking severe assaults.

Cops never heard about it because if you call the cops in those days,

it would A, either make the papers or B, just go to court and you're under oath and all these other things, and it might expose the business.

So in those days,

when guys got in a fight and they were in the same territory, they had three choices.

One was get over it, fucking become friends again and move on, which some people did.

Two was give your notice to leave the territory.

Or three was get even some kind of way and then probably get fired.

But those were your three options.

Police were not

a fucking option.

And then if you've got a deal where some guy has to go to court

for something for fuck's sake, then he's really going to go back and kick some other motherfucker's ass or take a shot when he gets it.

So

that didn't happen in the old days, but this apparently attracted enough attention in the building because apparently there were, as we mentioned, only a couple people or a few people,

small number in the room.

And then

everything happened.

And apparently, after the physical altercation, it went on for some time as everybody was pulled apart with

fucking yelling and screaming and cussing.

And one of the best things that ever happened to Twitter was

when somebody's already tweeted this morning the picture of the Bucks sitting in chairs and then the dark side of the ring logo.

And so, I don't know, we busted in the locker room.

Next thing I know, Matt's on the ground and Steele's eating Kenny.

But anyway, so have you gotten any updates on anybody else claiming that they were there?

I'm sure

in a few years, 150, 200 wrestlers will claim that they were there.

But have you heard anything updating the melee?

Well, what I could say is a couple things.

One, again, we still don't know a lot of the details.

AEW has instructed wrestlers, even if they weren't there, to not say anything about this.

From the best of what we know, The wrestling news can report there have been suspensions issued by AEW

to personnel involved in this situation.

That's all I could say about that right now, but there have been, at a minimum, suspensions issued from AEW itself to people involved in this.

Whether those are paid or unpaid suspensions, we will find out, but we'll keep working on that story.

I guess the big question is, and we'll talk a little bit more about another thing in a second.

We're recording this on Tuesday.

Tomorrow's dynamite.

You know, we'll see who's there and who isn't there.

But if you're Tony Khan, how do you handle this?

The wings may be spicy in Buffalo tomorrow.

You know,

honestly,

we have not heard any indication

that

anybody has stormed out.

I think probably they're going to wait and see how this is handled.

I'm saying stormed out of the company.

Obviously, they left the building in Chicago.

Punk's a pro.

I would think that he's willing to come and work and carry the company on his back and be the world champion.

Possibly, Tony might have to send the children home for a few weeks because they're the ones that came to where he was

and in larger numbers than him.

And obviously, that wasn't, if you wanted to have a conversation about anything, that probably wasn't the time after a long

show and tensions running high.

And Esmeric Punk was still sitting there.

He hadn't even had time to take a shower.

We're still sitting there with blood on him from the match.

So I assume that was the same thing.

So, you know, since Kenny and the Bucks were on early, they'd had time to shower and calm down.

you know, be just chilling and relaxing.

Since they were the second, brush their hair, they were the second match, one of the preliminaries.

So they had plenty of time to compose themselves.

Whereas this guy's been working hard, being the main event on a million-dollar house and shit.

But you're looking at it from one side, and that's the problem.

What if, and you don't know what happens, you don't know what goes on in people's personal playing devil's advocate.

I'm playing devil's advocate.

What if minutes before this, Kenny Omega broke up with the bird he was dating and the sim app he plays?

Well, now, then, of course, his emotions would have been running high as well.

So they, you know, but in all seriousness, here's the thing.

I keep again hearing this shit on Twitter and people are saying, well, punk always has a problem with everybody.

Punk, apparently, to me, and that's kind of what got him over with me.

I mean, I've never said he was goddamn second coming or Ricky steamboat in the ring, but the guy's got a mind to be able to tell a story and he can talk.

But what gets him over with me is he didn't put up with bullshit and says what he thinks.

And if he makes himself valuable to a place,

then he expects to be rewarded for that.

But he then follows through with what he says he's going to do.

And he doesn't put up, like I said, with bullshit.

And has, I think, over the last, what, what's it been since that interview that Paige did?

A couple months.

Before that, the cult cabana rumors have been going around for three or four months or whatever the case.

And he finally, I've had all I can stands, can't stands no more.

And that's why he addressed it.

And that's why he addressed it at the press scrum,

because the press are the ones that have been spreading all this shit.

Because all of the darling websites are in goddamn,

you know,

they're members of the lollipop guild.

They belong to the Kookamunga kids.

And that's where he knew it was coming from.

So he finally decided, all right, here we are.

Let's just fucking bring this all out in the open.

But so people saying punk always has a problem with everything.

Look back.

How many problems have the supposed elite

been in the middle of?

Personal issues that problems with the AEW.

You know, sometimes I forget what's publicly known and sometimes I forget what's not.

You got to be a little careful here.

So I don't want to,

but you know, but we're getting a pretty good track record here, Brian, for people coming around and saying, you know, they were saying that about a year and a half ago.

And son of a bitch, wouldn't you know so-and-so did get fucking run off, or so-and-so did leave, or so-and-so was accused, or whatever the case.

I'm just saying,

if you look at the interpersonal relationships of the AEW roster and problems amongst same,

you get some member of the elite or their literal high school friends.

No, I'm sorry, Cutlet was grade school, grade school friends involved in it

or them picking sides in it.

And this is now starting to come out.

Because once again, okay, I'll liken the analogy to Sonny and Sable.

I said, Yeah, why wasn't he filming it?

Where was Cutler with the camera?

Well, yeah, hold on.

I said, one time I said, Sonny was an upfront.

She was talented.

She was good at what she did, but she was a bitch, and you knew it, and she'd probably admit it and do it right in front of you.

Whereas Sable was an undercover.

She'd smile to everybody's face, especially people that were more important than

she was and could get her ahead somewhere.

And then elsewhere, she was a bitch.

So I think CM Punk

is the upfront.

He may be a little assholish sometimes, but he'll tell you why and he'll tell you who.

Whereas the other ones, they like to run their little mealy butt munchers

behind people's backs.

And sometimes people have had all they can stands and they can't stands no more.

But I think everybody should, when the story of all this is written, look at the locker room beefs and see who the common denominator is before CM Punk ever even got there, who the common denominator is.

You know, Jim, and again, you brought up the Cabana thing earlier.

Remember, if Cabana had been released with everyone else, Jelly and Attella and Marco Stunt and all those other people, that would have been it.

It would have been gone.

And I think that was the path he was on.

That was the path.

Because remember that were they released or their contracts just expired and they hadn't used him in a while and they just went away.

Well, that's what Cabana's contract was expiring.

And that was Tony's passive-aggressive way to say Sayonara.

And then

the Hardleys went in to bat for him and got him signed to a non-existent promotion, Ring of Honor.

Yeah.

So a guy who's not generating any money for the company, who doesn't mean anything to the company in terms of ratings or drawing people or anything,

someone who, even if you like him and you're a fan of his, someone who means nothing to the bottom line, whose contract was going to be a thing of the past and they can move on.

We've seen what happened to other Dark Order members.

All of a sudden, And what got in the Observer was that the Jacksons, I think Nick Jackson specifically, the knocked out Jackson,

he went and got colt cabana a job with ring of honor he got tony to do that and then the stories start coming out that cm punk tried to cost colt cabana his job and that's why cm punk got mad about this whole thing that's basically it and the kids started their whisper campaign and throwing tantrums you know about something because they're they're here's the whole thing they've been exposed and they're jealous.

We started this.

It's ours where we can play with all of our friends and do our cosplay trampoline wrestling.

We don't want real stars coming in, doing real matches, drawing real money.

So that's why they created their little six-man thing so they could all play together.

And every time that it's come on for the past three weeks, 200,000 people have said, fuck it.

We don't want to see this.

And

the pressure is on them because they're being seen through

and their friends are as

unprofessional and mostly untalented and in some cases just blithering dipshits and and i'm sure the stress is there but they accepted the job of being executive vice president so therefore you can't storm into the fucking boys locker room and fucking tell them off for telling the truth in public.

They've disqualified themselves from being able to do it.

When you're one of the boys,

what you used to have that right, I don't know now anymore.

They'd probably call the cops if somebody came in or whatever the fuck.

But no, if you stormed into somebody's locker room in the old days,

you assumed you were going there to either hear what you wanted to hear or fight.

There wasn't really any backups to that.

In terms of Tony Khan, though,

and putting yourself in Tony's position, and not to make any jokes about Tony, but legitimately, putting you in Tony's position here, I guess you have to be angry at everyone to an extent, but there's different kinds of anger here.

A steel is one thing.

CM Punk's one thing.

But the anger with the executives who are representing your company, who there are other issues with, that's where it becomes another thing.

So how do you think Tony deals with each individual party here?

Or how should he?

I think,

obviously, I think the executive vice president thing needs to go away because they're a legal liability now.

Because if anything else happens where they are even remotely

culpable in instigating it, now they've got a track record.

And then whatever wrestler involved can just, okay, unsafe work environment.

Remember that from Shawn Michaels in Hartford, Connecticut.

And they can just sue Tony and

get their money that they would be paid for wrestling and more without ever having to take a bump.

So the executive vice president thing has to go away, and no active wrestler should be executive vice presidents in the company.

It was bad enough when they were just a wrestler in a territory and being the booker with no contracts, nothing in writing, and the promoter could just fire him if he wanted to or whatever the fuck.

But this is way too legally entangled now.

And there's a lot of large sums of money going on.

Who's Tony going to be mad at?

Everybody, including himself.

He was sitting next to the fucking guy for 20 minutes while he said these things.

So,

and he was nodding his head while Punk said them.

So that either means that he agreed with it or he's just lost and didn't know how to tell his star, hey, give him the Iggy under the table.

or reach over and give him the office and go, hey, we'll talk about this later, Ix Day, whatever the fuck.

But then, since he sat there and listened to that, I'm sure that

he was not hearing.

Does anybody out there think that Tony Khan was hearing those things from CM Punk for the very first time?

No way.

In public and a media scrum?

No way.

Of course not.

So he's heard it before.

And apparently he's not done anything to address it to anybody's satisfaction.

So who should he be mad at?

First, his executive vice presidents, regardless for walking into the storming, walking, motivating into the locker room,

three-on-one, because that's the way that they were looking at it.

They obviously didn't tell Punk, hey, go get two more guys.

If there were some around, it wasn't their fault.

So they go three-on-one to the guys' locker room.

So the vice presidents, I'd be mad at them.

I'd be mad at myself because I've been hearing this, obviously, for some time privately.

Can I stop you?

I've done anything about it.

Yeah, let me stop you there.

Just because that's a big point.

And I feel bad for Tony because of this whole situation, but Tony's also to blame for a large part of the situation.

We've been talking here on this show for a very long time about internal problems, backstage problems.

We were talking about them when they were a lot more benign.

And a lot of those reasons they were benign is because Cody Rhodes dealt with things in a very different way.

But these issues have been there from the beginning, and they've gotten worse.

And we've talked about it.

We've talked about the growing problems.

We've said that someone needed to step in.

We said there needed to be a better management structure.

There needed to be a better way of doing all this.

Tony has tried to do things.

We've seen some of the hires, Sanjay Dutt, and Pat Buck and Ace Steele.

I mean, we'll see what happens there.

But then we heard about this meeting.

You know, we're talking about this, but this isn't the only AEW backstage drama.

There's whatever's going on with Thunder Rosen as Eddie Kingston and Sammy Guevara.

There's all sorts of shit.

This shit that's not public.

They had this meeting.

Tony is animated, we heard, passionate about his company.

It's his company.

Yeah.

If we take Chris Jericho at his word, and we'll play that audio on the drive-through because we already recorded it, us reviewing him during the press scrum.

Chris Jericho, who we may not see eye to eye with on everything, sounds like he stood up and he said, There are certain ways we should do things, certain things we shouldn't do.

Maybe he should follow his own advice at times, but it sounded like he actually gave gave pretty sound advice.

We heard Tony Schiavone stood up and it was rather nice.

No one had a problem with it.

Even the young bucks, even if you thought they were full of shit, which they usually are, come talk to us.

Our locker room's open.

Omega got up there and

turned it into a contentious thing.

Eight out of 10 of them wouldn't be good enough to work for Kenny Omega.

They don't work as hard as Kenny Omega.

Yeah, he actually said, if it had been up to me, I wouldn't have hired 80% of you.

That's like going back.

Remember when Bischoff had the meeting and said the only people in the room that is drawn money is who was at Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, and there was Flair sitting there?

You know, we've talked about it.

I said it a few weeks ago.

Mega is going to be the next one out the door.

His behavior is going to become a big part of the story.

It's been unreported.

It's been ignored.

And his behavior in that meeting.

didn't do anything to help any issues.

It drove a bigger wedge in the issues.

So we're coming out of that.

And the next public thing we know about is him and the Bucks storming into CM Punk's dressing room.

I understand a lot of people think CM Punk's a dick.

And at times he could be a dick and he'll probably tell you he's a dick at times.

We all could be dicks.

Some of us could be big dicks.

Quit bragging.

But that doesn't mean that he's necessarily wrong.

And you may not conduct yourself the way CM Punk would or say the things he would.

And I get that a lot, so I understand it.

But that doesn't mean he's wrong.

And he's voicing concerns for a lot of issues.

Quite frankly, he's voicing it for a lot of wrestlers that don't have the voice and the platform that CM Punk has.

Some people may get upset about it.

Maybe Kevin Owens will put out a little cute tweet.

But to some people, he is a locker room leader.

And the way this all went down.

To the people that are predisposed to love the Bucs and Omega and want to just believe that they're just wonderful people that love love teddy bears and save old women from fires or whatever it is.

Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, waterfalls.

There's very little you could say.

I mean, they're just, they like their guys.

And I get it, you like your guys.

There are people that, you know, still like Woody Allen films.

The people like their guys.

However, their behavior

privately, or not.

in the public domain, the stories, and now we hear about some of this stuff publicly,

is the biggest part of the backstage problem in AEW.

All friends wrestling was real,

but after a while, there weren't really clicks of friends anymore.

There was just one giant click of friends.

And if you weren't playing with them and their friends in their way, it was like you didn't exist.

That's the reason the Cody verse happened because all of a sudden he couldn't interact with any of them.

Remember, they had their faces blurred out of the Cody Rhodes reality show?

So I think that's- Well, in all fairness, I would have asked for that too, but I see where you're going.

Yeah, but I think that's the thing.

CM Punk could be a jerk and he could handle himself in ways that other people may not, but that doesn't mean he's wrong about all this.

And here's the thing: Cody also, you know what?

Like you said, he's an executive, he's a professional, he wants to be on TV.

He had bigger thoughts.

He just said, you know what?

It's not worth fucking with these children.

I'll just go over here and make my big splash and,

you know, say Sayonara.

But with Punk,

he doesn't want,

need, or have to go back to the WWE.

And

he's like, hey, I don't need to go any fucking where.

Fuck you.

And that's the difference.

And that's why it's getting a little more public.

Anyway.

Jim, one more thing before we wrap up.

Again, this is a breaking news audio update for YouTube.

It'll be in the body of the drive-thru, which will eventually be released when stories stop happening.

But according to a front-page story on the Wrestling Observer newsletter website, f4wonline.com, Bobby Fish issues invitation to AEW's CM Punk for a fight.

Fish commented on the issues between punk and the elite on his podcast.

Boy, everyone is a podcast.

Let's get some quotes here.

Got your thoughts, Jim.

Let's make this a formal invitation to Phil.

I'm down.

If that's the the direction he wants to go, and I mean, he could pick the time, the place, we can do it in Chicago.

I mean, that would be kind of fun, right?

It could be boxing.

It could be kickboxing.

It could be MMA.

I mean, we could do this bare-knuckled.

Whatever sounds good to Phil.

He could pick the weight.

He could pick the place.

It's like a song.

Like I said, whatever he wants to do, but yeah.

Let's make this official.

There's a little more here, but let me stop right there.

What do you think of Bobby Fisher?

Last we heard, he had just left AEW

having issues there, and now all of a sudden he's, again, longtime cohorts with the friends of Bucks and one of them himself,

the Buckaroos.

He is a longtime, one of the older Buckaroos.

Remember when the Masketeers got older, but they still had the things on their head?

He's one of the older Buckaroos.

Well, I hate to hear this because I like Bobby Fish.

I worked with him, you know, briefly at Ring of Honor.

He's an older guy.

He's older than the rest of this group.

I thought he was more mature.

He's an excellent talent

as he's trained a lot in kickboxing, MMA, or whatever.

I hate to hear that, you know, but he was obviously part of the undisputed elite.

And I guess he's done a bunch of pro wrestling chimpanzee shows out in Rancho Cookamunga.

So he's on their side.

I mean, you know, I guess it's good to get attention and he's making a statement that, hey, if I'd have been there,

which probably makes them sorry they didn't go to bat for him more.

But if I'd have been there, I would have taken care of the situation.

If FTR had been there, it would have kicked all your asses.

Well, I was about to say, then, you know, then if so-and-so had been there, and then we got a 12-man, and fuck, then we have to do the football field fuckery match.

But

with

it's nice of Bobby to say that and take up for his friends, I guess, but obviously it's ridiculous.

And a lot of people will go, well, yeah, he probably kicked Punk's ass, but Punk lost in the UFC.

Again,

A, Bobby Fish never fought in the UFC.

And B, Punk ain't going to fight anybody for fucking free

because he's making seven figures a year to be the AEW world champion and he just got hurt accidentally.

He's not going to fight anybody for free.

So it's a grandstand challenge.

No, I think it's a good idea.

I think CM Punk should go fight out-of-work wrestlers who call themselves.

Yeah, and I'm, you know, but

so I was sorry to see that, but I, and I have the article here also.

I pulled it up because this was

what you never know about people.

Like I said, I've always liked Bobby Fish, but he says about the Buckaroos.

I love those guys.

I love them.

They're good people.

They got kids.

They got wives.

They're God-fearing, good human beings.

So I guess he's on the Jesus train, and that's the connection.

But anyway, but yeah, so Bobby, grandstand challenge there.

I don't know that.

Well, he says it's not even a challenge, it's an invitation

because he says, because at the end of the day, like, who am I?

I'm nobody.

So there you go.

We've answered our own question.

My favorite is the quote here at the end of this article.

Fish also addressed Ace Steele allegedly having thrown a chair at Nick Jackson and bitten Kenny Omega.

The quote, I know Ace, and that's surprising to hear.

Actually, it's not really.

And again, I'm going to go with A.

Steele either seeing his wife and a fucking innocent dog in a locker room along with his friend and three guys and decided to fucking even things up and just was in the wrong place at the wrong time

to get all this blame on him or whatever.

But nevertheless.

And by the way, Bobby Fish.

In another

statement, had said that the reason he just left AEW

was because,

besides the fact that his contract expired, he couldn't even get Tony Khan to sit down and talk to him just to give him permission to do a kickboxing fight since he wasn't being booked in AEW because everybody else in his goddamn stable is injured and is having surgery.

And so Tony's the boss, and here's Bobby Fish, and he says, since May, I've tried to get Tony Khan to sit down with me no less than five times to ask permission to do a kickboxing fight.

I could never nail Tony down.

You know, but what the, how long does that take?

Tony, can I do this kickboxing fight?

Or sure,

can we film it?

Whatever the fuck.

He just ignores people, apparently.

Well, he says it's been happening since May.

Maybe Tony was busy with Colt Cabana contract renegotiations.

Yeah, well, yeah.

You know, they got to put more important things first, I know, but still, so that, I mean,

again, so, and then they did the angle.

I forgot about it.

They split up the undisputed elite so they could bring Twinkletoes back.

And then Cole still hurt.

O'Reilly had surgery, and they just let Fish's contract expire.

Never had one goddamn match.

Booker of the Year.

No wonder.

It's chaos because they.

The EVPs

decide they want to do something and they put it in motion.

It all falls apart and everybody's standing there with Pete in hand.

When the suspensions are lifted, we'll see who gets the first match on the dynamite after that.

If it's the Bucks and Omega, they've learned their lesson.

They don't want to be last because they're afraid of the falling numbers.

Yeah,

do they want to be first right after Big Bang Theory and see that goddamn precipitous drop?

We'll see what the fuck happens.

What else we got to talk about on this special edition?

I think that may be it for this special edition.

We can get back to the regular edition, which we're actually still in the process of recording.

It's a two-day recording.

There's so much happening, and so much of it sucks.

We still, and the WWE did 60,000 people at a stadium, and we haven't had time to talk about them yet.

Yeah, they didn't even have a real castle.

I'm still pissed off about that.

That was what I wanted.

They should have brought the whole Viking boat in.

Close it up.

I'm going to close it up.

Well, for some people, I'm going to close it up.

We will be back on the drive-thru and, of course, the experience, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, this drive-through episode will be out in the regular podcast feed in the next day or so.

But thank you for subscribing to the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

And tell me,

so what we have here is failure to communicate.

And I appreciate and want to say thank you to all of the people who have been tweeting and writing in and etc., saying that, well, Cornet and Last have been calling us for a couple or three years.

We're finally finding out that they were ahead of the game on this.

But

now here's the situation in AEW.

Their biggest star is not only injured, but he's suspended.

Their entire roster of EVPs, the ones that remaining, Cody already hit the fucking back door, they're suspended.

They have gotten a ridiculous amount of bad publicity.

And more importantly,

the fans are picking sides.

So even if

even if all of this is somehow miraculously smoothed over,

the fans are already going to have a negative viewpoint of one side or the other in this thing.

And in many cases, it's baby faces that they're going to be fucking mad at and have a negative opinion of.

And the whole company looks like shit because of

You know, shit trickles down like everything else.

And from the top,

that's what we've gotten.

And

it's not just the cosplay wrestling fans and the childish contingent of wannabe indirific wrestlers.

It's also grown adult people

that realize that this is not good for anybody.

And so, yes, you have the California contingent trying to do everything they can behind people's backs and whisper campaigns to put heat on punk and anybody that fucking sides with punk because for all the reasons we've mentioned, not only are they upset about their positions, but they feel threatened because their friends have positions too that they don't deserve.

But everybody's looked like shit in this because Tony wouldn't do anything from the start to prevent this from happening.

And we mentioned,

you know,

the fact that there's no way he's hearing any of this stuff for the first time when it comes out on the internet or on Twitter or in the reports or whatever or in front of him at Media Scrums.

He's heard it before.

He hadn't been able to do anything.

I got an email from an actual grown adult.

out there in the cult of Cornette who doesn't know any of these people personally, but he had a pretty good take on it.

From Nick,

Jim, your frequent comparisons to what would or wouldn't happen in mainstream pro sports contests are accurate, and how the CM Punk elite conflict has been covered by wrestling, quote-unquote, journalists is another example.

As someone who works in sports journalism, it has been galling to watch.

From the journalists applauding wrestlers entering the press conference to the takes on the fight.

Any sports writer, whether they cover high schools or pros, would die to get the type of honesty punk gave.

Secondly, if it was so awful and so unprofessional, why didn't Tony Khan cut in to stop punk or tell reporters to limit questions to the night's match?

And as a journalist, I'd want to know why executives are scuffling with employees.

And if they were, why they were still executives.

When reading some of the stories, it's blatant that only one side talks to reporters and the stories are skewed in that direction.

And let's face it, also, that's true as well because

the people taking up for punk are taking up for punk purely because they can see what's going on in front of them.

There's been no whisper campaign with, oh, those guys.

We can see it straight out, and everybody else can.

But punk's not feeding shit to the press.

That's the other side's

wheelhouse.

So, anyway, Nick continues: anyone thinking AEW would be better off with the elite than punk is out of their depth.

Sports history has proven the all-pro quarterback, the leading scorer on a basketball team, or the guy who leads the league in home runs, gets more leeway.

He's the only mainstream star with ratings and merchandise sales to back it up.

If Tony can't see that, it's just confirmation AEW isn't an organization to take seriously long term.

So

that's an example from somebody

who has a journalistic background, but is seeing what's going on.

Here's another thing.

Dave Shearer at PW Insider wrote a column.

This was from Thursday, I believe, September the 8th.

That was Thursday, right?

I encourage you, if you can, to find it.

It's long and it's very perceptive, and I was going to read it, but now I realize it'd take me 30 minutes to read it.

So I've got a couple of paragraphs.

And the reason this caught my eye is because he started with a Mama Cornette quote.

Only he attributed it.

Well, he attributed to his old boss, Gary Snell Baker,

where he used to work for him at the Coca-Cola Company.

Sounds fake.

Sounds like a fake name.

Well, he said the same thing.

Mama Cornette, whenever we'd have a family get together, we're going to go out fishing or we're going to go to the store at holidays, Thanksgiving dinner, whatever.

We're supposed to all do something as a group, but everybody's standing around waiting for somebody else to take the lead and nobody's doing anything.

And that's when Mama Cornette would jump in and say, all right, let's do something even if it's wrong.

Meaning, let's do fucking something.

And that's what he started the column with.

But it was a quote from his old boss, Gary Snellbaker.

Do something even if it's wrong.

Do something, Tony.

Here's an excerpt.

From the beginning, Tony has seemed to be more concerned with being a fan who was able to hang around with wrestlers and book a fantasy federation in real life rather than a leader who would grow a company that could maybe someday compete with WWE.

He had the money, but he didn't have the leadership skills, and with each passing day, the latter becomes more and more apparent.

I remember back at Halloween of the first year when he dressed up like Orange Cassidy and sent pictures of it out on social media.

I called it a bad bad move that will send the wrong message to the talent.

Some scoffed at me.

Tony's just having fun, they said.

He's one of us.

Yes, that's the point.

The owner of the company should never come off as a cosplaying mark because most wrestlers are predatory animals.

And once they see that kind of weakness, they take advantage and they realize they have freedom that they shouldn't possess.

That's absolutely true.

Throughout the history of wrestling, that's true.

The vibe of AEW being Disney World for wrestlers had long since dissipated when Adam Page went on TV on the Go Home Show before his title defense against CM Punk and double-crossed the challenger by going into business for himself with a bizarre promo that made no sense at all, especially for a babyface taking on another babyface.

At that very point in time, Tony Khan was at a seminal moment in the history of the company.

Page, who I was very happy to hear get some deserved booze last night, started AEW going down the toilet with his actions, and Khan exacerbated it by doing absolutely nothing about it.

And then he mentioned, of course, Punk got hurt.

So his anger at Paige stewed while he waited for revenge.

When he came back, he got his receipt on national TV by also going into business for himself.

Khan could have done something then as well to defuse the situation.

But again, he played the fiddle while his room was burning.

And also while Punk was out, someone leaked to some favorable reporters that Punk had gotten Colcabana fired.

It was widely reported by outlets, even though there was no truth to it at all.

What did Tony Kahn do?

Not a damn thing until the story had blown up and turned into a disaster.

By the time he finally said, yeah, that isn't true, it was far too late, and serious damage had been done, and it all falls on Khan's ineffective at best leadership.

And then he mentioned, you got CM Punk, a man with a history of not taking being disrespected, lying down.

And there you go.

This is a long and interesting and perceptive

article on the situation, and that was just a part of it.

So, pwinsider.com.

But again,

grown that Dave Shearer has been a wrestling fan for 40 years, and now he owns the website, but he doesn't go to live matches and go to scrums and talk to the boys individually and become friends with them.

He is running a business of a website, and he likes wrestling, but he doesn't immerse himself in being friends with anybody to take their side.

He calls it like he sees it because he's removed.

He's impartial.

And yeah, a lot of people can say we ain't impartial, but we're also very perceptive and we see what's going on and we know what's happening and we have for a while.

And the whole thing boils down to

when you create Disney World for wrestlers, you not only let them do whatever the fuck they think they want to do, but you let them get the idea that they can do whatever they want to do.

And sometimes that's not limited to creativity in a wrestling ring.

Then they get the feeling, well, this place can't run without us.

And then when Twinkle Toes comes back and every week his match loses 200-something thousand viewers, then they start getting nervous.

And then they start trying to figure out some way that they can fuck with the people who are out drawing them.

And then there you go.

So, and here's another,

we've overlooked this.

It was announced this past week that the WWE has hired the guy that used to run the Oakland Raiders.

So now they have they hired the biggest mover and shaker agent in Hollywood that's making them a bloody fucking fortune, Nick Kahn, jolly old St.

Nick.

They hired the guy that used to run the Oakland Raiders talent to be in charge of talent relations, not booking.

But relating with the talent, the contracts and the fucking

big-time players.

Tony Kahn hired Matt Jackson's wife and grade school friends.

Let that sink in for a minute.

So then you've got this mess going on where one side's serious about the wrestling business, and the other side's serious about their own business,

and the show is schizophrenic,

and all this is starting to come to a head, and Tony still can't get in and do anything about it.

So now there's an independent third-party investigation.

I'd like to know who the independent third party is.

But what is there to investigate?

Is there only one investigation?

That's what I'd like to know.

Well, but what is there to investigate?

So this fucking guy, Adam Page, goes out and tries to bury the top star in the company on national television.

Now, I guarantee goddamn T you

that anytime in the history of this business, the Attitude Era, the territories, whatever,

you got two guys doing promo for a world title match and one of them tries to bury the other one on live television and he don't know what's coming.

I'm surprised you didn't see physical violence there.

And it would have been entirely justified.

Motherfucker ever went into business for me on with me on for himself on television and tried to bury me, he would have got a fucking racket.

But so you've got a guy

that does that to your biggest star and world champion.

Then the guy gets a chance to sit home and stew about it for a while, comes back and gets his receipt in very effective fashion.

And then to the rest of them that have been spreading the rumors that he's sick and fed up with, he tells them at the media scrum:

if you got a problem with me, then come to my locker room.

Thinking that the gutless pussies would never do it,

but they did.

They didn't, the EVPs, they didn't go Tony Khan,

boss of this organization, guy that was sitting right next to him when he said all those things, and you didn't say boo to a goose or try to argue with anything.

So, what are you going to do about it now?

Because now we're pissed.

No, they didn't do that.

What they did was

they go over to his locker room.

A bunch of them.

A lot of people have said three, but a lot more people than that got suspended.

Brandon Cutlett got suspended.

Michael Naka Naka to fuck off got suspended.

Kenny Omega's assistant.

Let's just throw that in there.

Kenny Omega's assistant and the young Bucks' grade school friend.

Does anybody think that they were storming in that locker room to pull shit apart?

So there's punk.

Now we know not only was he after the media scrum, he he was still bleeding from the match.

Now we know he was hurt with a torn tricep.

At least it was

maybe it was torn after the match, or maybe it was torn in this skirmish.

Who knows?

But he's after a match.

He's tired.

He's hurt.

He's bleeding.

And now we also know

from testimony and from things that have gotten out

that he's in his locker room with his dog and Ace Steele's wife, who now apparently we come to find out, is on crutches.

She's got some kind of injury.

Did she break her leg?

I don't know what the fuck, but Punk is sitting in his locker room, beat up, banged up, and bleeding with a dog and a crippled woman when anywhere from three to six grown men burst into the room, however they say they want to do it.

Somebody said, well, you can't kick those doors down.

I don't think that anybody in the elite could kick a goddamn door down if it was a door that you could kick down.

But they sure apparently opened it in a surprising manner.

And these guys rush into this fucking room.

What's he supposed to do?

He's just told them if they had a problem to come to his locker room.

Apparently they got a problem.

They've come to the locker room.

And there's three to six of them.

And there's one of him and he's got a dog and a crippled woman as a backup.

Are you going to sit there and say, Hey, guys, did you come here to talk to me while they pounce on you?

Are you going to take the one in the lead down, which I assume that's what jolly old Matt was?

Because he was the first one that was involved in this, apparently.

And he got the shit beat out of him, and then there's still a bunch more,

but they've made enough noise that a steele somewhere down the hall sees that the room that his crippled wife is in and his best friend is in,

somebody's just burst through the door and there's all kinds of shit going on.

So he comes in.

Go ahead.

And this is around the time we also know now from reporting Pat Buck at some point got in that room.

And he's another, I don't know if he's a producer.

I have the exact title somewhere, but not in front of me.

But he's a backstage, I think, vice president actually of talent.

Well, he after the big

promotions of the few weeks ago, but Ace Steele comes in and he sees his best friend in a skirmish with three to six other people in the room where his wife is either still in or just trying to get out of.

So he takes matters in his own hands

because I do the same thing.

And

the fucking elite gets a shit kicked out of them by a fucking guy that's bleeding with a torn tricep and a fucking retired producer.

And that don't set well with him either.

Hey, let me ask you this.

And one more thing.

And then when all this, when everybody realizes what's happened here, then all of a sudden,

from the EVP side, it's, well, we just went to talk to him.

You probably should have waited.

If all you wanted to do was talk, you probably should have waited till everybody was a little calmer.

And maybe till the guy had gotten out of the shower.

But he didn't give the Bret Hart offered events.

Punk didn't.

He didn't say, you know what, you guys just stay right here that have busted in my locker room.

As soon as I get out of the shower, if you're still here, I'm going to knock you out.

He just cut that part out and went straight to the knocking out.

What is hard to understand about this?

This has happened in wrestling a bunch of times.

The only

difference now is that some of the wrestlers are EVPs and they're whiny little bitches that when they get their shit handed to them, they try to backpedal and go, oh, no, we just wait to talk to him and iron this all out.

Then why'd you bring a bunch of guys in to bust into his fucking locker room to make it worse, pea-brained imbeciles?

What were you going to say?

There were a few different points I was going to jump in, but, you know, again, when you try to look at this objectively, like you just said, in the room, CM Punk, A.

Steele's wife, I forget what her name is.

Apparently, she was a wrestler at some point, with a broken leg, well, on crutches, one or the other.

His dog, by the way, my reporting has Mega Parik,

who everyone always says is the number two in the company, who's in charge of legal in the company, who I think is in charge of HR in the company, who was down the hall with the Bucs before they came down.

She somehow got the dog out of the room.

Other people have said Omega had the dog when he got attacked or beat up by A.

Steele, who knows?

But somehow the dog, what was the dog thinking when everyone storms in the room?

That's what I want to know.

Well, I'm surprised somebody didn't get their ass bit.

Well,

by the dog, I mean, by the dog.

Anna ass got bit, not.

And here one more thing.

A steel bit Twinkletoes.

Has A Steel had blood work done?

Oh, come on.

It's a concern.

Go ahead.

It would be a concern for anything.

If anyone had a bite that was deep, if you get bit by a dog, you would want to get your blood tested, just to be clear on this.

But again, just CM Punk, the dog.

Ace Steele's not in the room.

I think a lot of people assume that early on because of his involvement here and his friendship with CM Punk.

Ace Steele's not in the room.

In the room, we have Kenny Omega.

We have the Young Bucks.

We have Nakazawa.

We have Cutler.

So that's five people.

Apparently at the back of the line was Mega getting ready for the dog handoff, I guess.

I don't know what the fuck that's about.

And her involvement in this is something very interesting because if she has anything to do with that investigation and she's a party to that investigation and she was down the hall with the Young Bucks, she's waiting.

She's the one that actually not only let the EVPs go to Punk's locker room, but followed them there.

She's the number two.

She's the legal beagle involved.

Wouldn't her first thing to be, you shouldn't go to that locker room.

We should talk to Tony.

And I think part of the reason she may have done it, maybe part of the reason it's a problem, she's been working with Omega and the Young Bucks.

And like you said, Matt Jackson's wife, Omega's assistant.

She's been working with this group of people since the beginning, since before it was on TV.

Okay, well, here's another thing then.

If she's the number two and she's in charge of legal, why didn't she

lead the group in there and be the first?

If Mega or any other female was the first one through the door, do you think that Punk would have started firing punches?

Or would he have seen a civilian lawyer and gone, well, apparently they didn't come in here to beat my ass six-on-one?

And again, with all of this happening, and I don't know how big the room is.

I mean, CM Punk is what, sitting on a couch?

How far is the couch from the door?

Is it a big room?

Is it a sleigh room?

Well, to see, here's another thing.

And I can tell you from experience: the NBA arenas, the big buildings, a lot of people think locker room.

They think you see on TV, the football teams in there, the baseball team, whatever.

It's a big open area.

But this was not an NBA arena.

And especially if Punk had his own locker room, then there's plenty of for concerts or for other types of show business events.

These buildings have small locker rooms with a bathroom and a dressing facility, a vanity area or whatever, but it's not like you got a lot of room.

So

if suddenly, if he's in one of these private locker rooms, and four or five, six people bust in, that room's pretty full right off the bat.

So

how do you,

how do you suddenly

in seconds, how do you ascertain, oh, these guys have all come in here to talk to me like men, or they've just thrown this door open and I've invited them to come in and fight.

So I guess they're taking me up on it.

So here we go.

Did he open the door and walk three steps slowly and say, look, Phil?

Or did he walk?

You know, I'm serious.

When you try to visualize it in your head, like, did they calmly walk down the hall?

Or was it like, let's go tell that motherfucker what we did?

A bunch of pissed off people walking down the hall and I've heard somebody say, oh, they knocked and there was no, what the fuck?

They threw the door open, however the fuck they did it and started to say, hey, what the fuck?

And that's about all they probably got out before matters.

Took a turn for the worse for them.

And let's just go back a step to general etiquette.

The idea that someone knocked

and no one said come in and then they're like, all right, let's just go in.

When did that start?

I don't think they didn't knock.

Have you, again, nobody has seen the mad wrestler walk.

I've seen it for 40 years, the mad wrestler walk, where they're going to fucking tell somebody something.

They're not knocking on a fucking door.

And if you're going down to knock, how come six or seven people have to go down and talk?

How about just the people that were involved?

Or maybe if mega was a lawyer instead of a stooge she should have been the one to go down there and say well the other side of this thing is very upset and when tony finishes the media scrum we should all sit down

that's the key that's the balls behind that's the thing i'm always saying about the fucking executives in aew none of them even mega none of them act like actual executives it's like kids being fucking turned loose from tony on down no one understands how to be fucking serious make make good decisions.

If you've ever been around serious fucking executives, it's so obvious.

They all, because everyone's like, oh, Mega, whatever she did.

She went to Harvard.

She went to Yale.

I don't even fucking know.

But they're like, oh, look at all these things.

And then she makes dumb fucking decisions.

Well, but Alberta.

She's mixed up in everything.

Wait.

How many wrestling promotions has she done legal work for?

Before this project started, how many professional wrestlers had she met in person?

How much experience did she have dealing with any kind of professional athletes that were ready to fight each other?

Does that happen in football?

Probably.

But does she do any football business?

I believe so.

And that's how she started with the con.

She starts with, I think she still does stuff with the Jaguars.

She's like Tony.

She splits her, unless she's fully AEW now.

At least okay, then does the legal department there, do they handle the football players who want to kick each other's ass?

Or is that the football team manager and coach and et cetera?

What experience?

I don't care if she's goddamn Johnny Cochran or fucking Clarence Darrow.

What experience in life does she have dealing with large

adult male professional athletes that want to fight each other?

Zip, zero, none.

She shouldn't have been involved.

One of the biggest problems in the entertainment industry is when you take contract lawyers and you give them too much power.

Because they're smart people, they're talented people, they're capable people to a point.

And you also have to just understand basic humanity.

Ah, whatever.

This whole thing is such a mess and it's all their own fault.

That's the thing.

This is 100% an AEW fault.

Adam Page gets a lot of the blame for just acting like a buffoon and he's going to own that for the rest of his career.

But AEW, Tony Khan on down, the fact that it went from that point to the point where a few weeks ago they had to have a meeting that did nothing, that helped nothing, that was for show.

Nothing came out of it other than Jericho got to do his little show.

Nothing else came out of it, and Omega got to insult half the locker room.

Or, no, I guess 80% of the locker room.

Now that I think about it, he got to insult.

There was that, and then tensions kept growing to the point where even Dave was reporting on it.

And nothing was done.

Nothing was done at all.

Nothing was done.

It was like you could see this was coming.

We saw this was coming for various reasons, but it was obvious this was all going to happen if no one

got in there and eased this in any way.

And no one did.

And no one did.

Well, let's talk about Uncle Dave and the people that he talks to for a second because the story's coming out now.

Punk is a cancer in the locker room.

Punk is only out for himself.

Punk is bitter.

Punk is mad, blah, blah, blah.

Well, actually, there was an article on ESPN.com.

You may have heard of ESPN.

They actually still do have journalists working there.

I think the Sports Illustrated website's gone off the deep end a time or two, but

you're not lying.

This was on ESPN.com from May 27th.

Mark Raimondi wrote this talking about CM Punk and his return to

AEW, his return to wrestling in AEW.

And the reporter was there that night last September when they did the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing.

I love the name of that town.

Remember, Punk worked with Will Hobbs, Powerhouse Hobbes.

And it says, Punk, one of the biggest wrestling stars of the last two decades, opened their discussion about how the match would be laid out with something surprising.

Punk said he knew Hobbs' mother had just died about a month before, and the match would be in her honor.

Hobbs told ESPN, first thing he said, don't worry about anybody else.

Your mom's in the crowd.

Let's put the match on for her.

That made me feel so much better, so much more comfortable.

Punk beat Hobbs in a match that received solid reviews from fans and critics, blah, blah, blah.

But for Punk, it represented precisely why he'd returned to the ring and what he believes the industry should be all about in the first place.

It talks about Punk giving back.

and that he felt his time in WWE was almost wasted, walking on hot coals.

His mission now isn't putting on five-star matches, winning championships, or selling out arenas

as much as it's been about those emotional moments with Hobbes and making up for lost time, making new relationships.

Darby Allen was the wrestler tasked with being CM Punk's first match.

And

basically, Darby Allen

also says that his experience underscored the magnitude of punk coming to AEW because Alan's straight edge like punk.

And

they mentioned that Lee Moriarty said he didn't know what being straight edge was until he became a fan of punk and now he follows those principles.

And you've got other people in this article.

Dax Harwood,

he was apprehensive at first when Punk signed with AEW.

Because Punk made enemies in WWE.

He had a reputation for being standoffish.

But

Harwood and Wheeler, it says, ended up hitting it off with punk, in no small part due to their shared reverence for WWE legend Bret Hart.

He's always, oh no, this is a Dustin Rhodes quote about punk.

He's always coaching up the talents when they come back or on their promos or a certain move, saying less is more sometimes.

Those are very, very important things to learn as a young superstar in the wrestling world.

Hobbs said he couldn't even remember the number of times Punk has pulled him into his locker room to watch one of his matches offer guidance.

Max Castor said that he's come to Punk for business advice for non-wrestling ventures.

Castor added Punk made him feel included in the locker room.

There's more folks here.

Punk says he wanted to do for younger wrestlers in AEW what legends like Eddie Guerrero and Tracy Smothers did for him as mentors.

But he's also doing it because other older wrestlers he worked with did not do the same.

But the problem is, is that he expects people to take advice from veterans, and he expects people to want to improve.

He doesn't want empty-headed nitwits like Adam Page that I don't need to take anybody's advice.

So, all of these people, whether Dax and Cash or Darby Darby or Hobbes or these other people mentioned this in Punk's own words himself, he wanted to come back and help, as he said at the press scrum, he's trying to run a business because Tony ain't.

Hey, look, here's the problem.

There are guys who have problems with Punk going way back.

There are guys who don't like him from the Midwest.

There are guys that don't like him because they're on Cabana's team, which happens to be the entire Young Bucks team.

So there's always people whispering and complaining about him.

But we heard nothing but good things until he had to work with them.

Until he had to work with the guys who had a problem with him, we didn't hear anything about CM Punk.

We heard the exact opposite.

I mean, we heard this stuff.

And, you know, that quote you just read,

and I'm going to get it wrong, even though you just said it.

Less is more.

Actually, that's exactly what it was.

I don't know how I can get that wrong.

Less is more.

You could see why that advice is valuable to some and you could see why that quote even appearing attributed to Punk in that article would be threatening to others because that's the exact opposite of what they believe.

They think that idea, less is more,

is completely an old school idea.

More is more.

Just do more.

More is more.

And there's a lot of resentments for punk from those guys.

Because also, look, in their head, they really believe the shit that they say about we started this company.

This company was built on our backs.

This company was started by and built by Tony fucking Khan.

Yeah.

With his money, his relationships, and his fucking vision.

And they were lucky that he fell for their fucking mass hysteria and decided to bring them along for the ride.

And

it was all fun and games when Cody was there because they knew they could fucking outmanipulate Cody.

And Cody,

we talked extensively about Cody.

There's a 20-hour omnibus or whatever.

But Cody was flawed in a lot of ways as an executive.

And it wasn't the role for him.

But they needed the ego of Dusty Rhodes' son to to get to where they got and to make that happen.

And then they did everything they could to ice him out of the fucking company.

Well, now,

here's the thing.

If punk, the biggest star they've got, can be treated like this and subjected to the rumor campaign and have all of their darling little newsletters and websites.

you know, on their side to malign this guy because he came in and was the only one,

the only one so far that has produced million people fucking numbers and million dollar gates and buy rates that kept going up and kept going up until they completely fell in a hole here because of all this shit going on

if they can do it to punk they can do it to anybody because one of the selling points to come to this company was Don't let Vince McMahon be in charge of your career.

Remember last year, even Mick Foley, the nicest human being that ever walked the earth, got on the internet and said,

I trusted Vince McMahon with my career and he made me a star.

I don't know why anybody today would trust Vince McMahon with their careers.

And that was the selling point.

Go to AEW.

Vince won't fucking destroy you.

That's not the selling point anymore because Vince is gone.

Triple H is in charge.

Triple H is more friendly to the wrestlers when it serves his purposes, but he's certainly more

sympathetic to the wrestlers' cause, especially on bad, silly gimmicks, than Vince was.

And at the same point, now

it's not about even putting Tony Khan in charge of your career over Vince McMahon.

It's about putting Harpo McFingerbang and the Kookamunga kids in charge of your careers instead of Vince McMahon, instead of Triple H.

So, who wants to do that?

If you are,

again,

an indie riffic play wrestler on the outlaw shows that the clique of the elite likes, then sure, you're fine.

And you also know that you probably got no chance of going to the WWE anyway.

But if you're a serious wrestler and a legitimate talent and you have a future,

now who do you want to put your career in the hands of?

Triple H and the most well-run mega-billion-dollar wrestling promotion that's ever been on the planet?

Or

the Hardley Boys and Twinkletoes?

Because they're going to be the determining factor in whether you get over, or whether you're allowed to get over,

or whether you are

the victim of a smear campaign and made miserable and run off in the locker room because you are better than they are and they know it.

And they don't want that.

They want everybody subservient to them.

And they want all their friends that they can hold down and/or put in the right spot, but they don't want serious talent to show them up.

And this is what happened.

Like we said, Cody just left.

He said, fuck it.

I got another place to go.

Punk don't have that patience.

And punk don't like putting up with bullshit and punk doesn't want to go to the WWE because he's been there and he didn't like it.

So he's like, why should I be the one to fucking leave?

Fuck you, you leave if you don't like it.

Now they're fucked up either way they go because he's hurt again.

And that's another thing.

Would he have gotten hurt?

if they'd have had a sensible match for him to have its pay-per-view instead of having to do an angle where they switch the belt and give the preview of the pay-per-view match away a week and a half early so they can come back and do an interview to try to put everybody in the right place so then they can have that match on pay-per-view.

If they hadn't had to go through all of that, he might not have got hurt again.

Now, even if Tony does smarten up and decide that his EVPs shit the bed and acted unprofessionally, and even if he does figure out that his goddamn number two legal woman may be a fucking issue,

he's still got no access to his biggest star for eight months.

So

this is the biggest bunch of fucking bullshit I've ever seen in my life.

Even in the days of the click,

and Michaels and all of that hoo-ha in the WWF, I never saw anything like this.

This is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous.

And you know what?

Even to be more fair, even though he was there, from all the reporting I've done, and my reporting has been firsthand talking to people, not just reporting on what's been reported elsewhere.

Definitely some people have done some great work.

But I have to say, even though he was in the room and even though he was apparently bitten, I'd like to hear more about that and what exactly happened there.

But I heard that after it all went down, Kenny Omega was the only one who seemed to be a cooler head.

The Jacksons were still looking to go, although I heard they were a little too obsessed with...

They were looking to go where?

To the hospital?

One of them got knocked out.

The other one got fucking rattled with a chair.

Well, I heard they were still, I heard A-Steel and Punk were still yelling at him, and they were still yelling, and everyone's in the middle, and it's just a complete mess.

But Kenny was actually apparently at that point, willing to be a pacifist.

And as we reported, him and Punk at some point that night talked.

There was an attempt to like, let's get everyone cool.

And that did not work out.

That didn't work out, apparently.

And that wasn't very fruitful.

Well, but at least he did try.

Kenny did try to be a pussifist in all of this.

There you go.

A pussifist.

I've never heard that before, actually.

But let's talk about a couple things around this, if you don't mind.

Let's do it.

I have here

a tweet that's very interesting from the other day.

Relates to something we mentioned earlier.

From September 7th, 2022 which would have been Wednesday dynamite night

8 54 p.m

I've been way too fucking nice tweeted out by Brandy Rhodes

what was said on that TV show at 852 or so yeah hold on where was I just had that uh screen up let me find that again

Well,

and honestly, again, these little fucking, you know, crumb snatchers have been running around since this thing started.

We started this.

It's our revolution.

We, this all happened because of us.

No, it happened because you got a billionaire that happened to fall in love with you.

That's the only reason it happened.

But

they conveniently leave Cody out of all of that stuff because he was the misfit toy.

He was the one that didn't fit the picture from the start.

We've mentioned that.

And now they've just decided to erase him like he didn't have anything.

He probably had more to do with it than most people because he was able to have a grown-up adult conversation with other business executives that he may have come in contact with where they'd be looking at Harpo and the fucking kids and going, what the fuck is this all about?

In a lot of ways, Cody was the perfect compliment for them before

the company.

He was like the step parent that could keep them in line and take their ice cream away if they cried too much.

I guess that's another way of looking at it, sure.

But, you know, the Brandy Rhodes tweet is interesting.

Now, we know Cody Rhodes is an NDA, and I believe it may be a two-way NDA.

So Tony Khan can't even talk about Cody.

We don't know if Brandy has anything.

I think her contract just expired.

It is true.

Look, again, we're talking about Cody, very flawed as an executive, and certainly his booking after a while went off the rails.

But look at what happens with AEW.

Once you're not mingling with the friends, they do their thing thing and you're iced out.

And Cody had only so many people he could work with after a while.

He certainly got distracted with other things, but he came back to a very unfriendly place.

You know, it wasn't the same.

That's the reason why he left months after he returned.

But we've never heard what Cody had to say, and we may never, because he tries to play it nice and he's a very political guy.

But Brandy.

Brandy, on the other hand,

what is this?

Open Mike Night, bitch?

No, you know what?

Author of one of my favorite lines ever.

I still laugh about it.

You may have a black belt, but I'm a black bitch.

That's the greatest fucking line of all time.

And look, Brandy too flawed.

Brandy's wrestling push.

Someone should go write the history of that.

It was nuts.

She was a heel.

She was a babyface.

They were nightmares and cutting people's hair that they weren't.

Nothing made any sense.

But you could certainly say that any contribution she made have kind of been put down and diminished for a while.

And we joked about it a little earlier.

It's true that there are like factions, it's almost like Game of Thrones.

It's like you have the Bucks camp.

Oh boy.

And by the way, we talked about Bobby Fish challenging punk to a fight on the last program we did.

And I was like, that's a shame.

I always liked Bobby.

I thought he's a good worker, but obviously his head stuck with his friends from California.

Now,

guess who he helped and contributed money to?

I don't doubt it.

Drake Wertz.

Oh, come on.

He's one of the fucking ultra-religious crazies that think there's child molesters on every corner and we got to stop the child trafficking.

And he actually supported Drake Wertz in that.

So apparently, like you said, you got the

Republican right-wing religious nut faction from California,

the anti-Obama Bucks.

I don't know if Old Kenny's political or not.

He just probably falls in with them.

He was Canadian.

And then you've got normal people on the other side.

Well, that wasn't even where I was going to go.

I was just saying, you know, here you have the Bucs camp.

You have Cody and his crew.

I mean, this is all the people fighting for airtime.

You have Jericho and what he wants to do.

By the time Punk gets there, and that's the end of Cody.

Punk gets over so big.

Punk's getting a lot of time on TV.

You know, it's all like a battle for fucking airtime is really what it's about.

And everyone wants their thing to win out.

And the Bucs can't take it that their shit is not winning out right now.

The ratings for their shit isn't winning out.

They have so much resentment for CM Punk, and a lot of it's unjustified, I think.

I think they're lumped in with people that are mad at him for shit from like 15 years ago.

The people that didn't know him then, they just met whoever he is now at this age of his life.

And they're like, oh, he seems like such a nice guy.

What are your problems with 20-something-year-old?

I guess what pisses me off is that, yes, these little weasels can send their version of the story out to all the news sites because they're the same journalists that sit there at the media scrums and applaud them when they come in the room.

And the serious wrestlers who don't plant stories with the media because they don't talk to the media, because they're just trying to do their job and they don't give a shit,

their story doesn't get out.

And theirs is, in this case, the true one.

So it's about time that we examine this from all sides.

And suddenly, somehow, over the last two months, over the last two months, CM Punk went from the returning, conquering hero trying to help all the young talent to the fucking devil incarnate that's a cancer in the locker room.

And it all started with that hangman promo out in public.

So put two and two together and figure out what the fuck's going on in front of you.

That's what I'm telling people.

Hey, everyone's looking into

how did the story get out there that punk got Cabana fired.

Tony Khan is emphatic that it's not true.

CM Punk is offended that anyone thinks it's true.

So let's ignore that.

I think the bigger issue is how did it get into the observer that Nick Jackson saved Colt Cabana's job?

Because that has nothing to do with punk.

Well, I'm sure as soon as he talked Tony Khan into signing Colt to a contract because he's friends of all theirs, he immediately went and told all of the appropriate people what a nice guy he was to do that.

And guess who was almost responsible for getting our friend fired?

That's all they had to do.

And people were ready to believe it because everybody knows that Punk and Cabana have been on the outs, but nobody was looking at the fact that fucking Cabana wasn't on TV for the year before punk showed up any more than Dwarf Dongsucker was.

And they let him expire.

Tony was doing the same thing he does with everybody.

He's not capable of telling somebody eye to eye, I paid you for two years, but now I'm changing talent.

You're not worth it, or I love you, or whatever you need to tell them, but goodbye.

He just lets the contracts expire.

And that's what was obviously happening.

So then the Kookamunga kids figure, well, not only can we hopefully help our buddy Colt and give him six figures of the company's money to do absolutely nothing, but we can make Punk look bad in the process if we spread the word that Punk was behind Colt being sent out in the cold and everybody will believe it because they know they hate each other.

Because how otherwise would Tony ever release a talent like Colt Cabana?

I mean, obviously Tony would have re-signed him, maybe given him a slight raise, if not for CM Punk saying, hey, you know, that guy you want to give more money to or the same money to?

Get rid of him.

Tony was ready to give him what?

I mean, what is the other side of the argument?

What was Colt Cabana going to fucking get?

A run with the title?

Nothing.

He means nothing to no one.

And all this shit happened because of that.

CM Punk was having a fucking, in terms of being a wrestling fan,

having one of the great runs of modern times.

The feud with MJF is a classic.

It's maybe the best feud.

It's the best feud in the history of AEW.

It's great.

He doesn't have one problem with drama until he runs into these guys, the guys that are fucking looking to get him.

What the fuck is that?

And I heard Dave Melcher, he fucking bit a whole thing just destroying CM Punk.

Destroying him completely one-sided.

It's incredible the hit job.

that's coming out of one side about this.

Well, I shouldn't say one side, one side and a certain person in the locker room who loves leaking shit because it benefits him.

Who has no sides because he plays all sides against each other.

And it's the same thing they tried to do to us.

Oh, yeah, he's just bitter because we won't work with him.

We won't give him a job or we won't talk to him.

So they're bitter and they hate us because we're successful.

No.

I don't give a fuck whether you turn bled or turn turn turn bled.

Turn blue or drop dead.

I don't give a fuck if he turns blood.

I'd like to die.

turn blood I don't give a fuck if you turn blue or drop dead I don't want to work with you I don't want to work with anybody I'm just telling the truth and fuck you but they can't goddamn accept it so they have to figure out a way that there's something wrong with everybody that doesn't like us

and remember I've said it it's not just this

Before this all happened, I said they had problems with the executive vice presidents.

I'm going to say this again.

It's not just this.

No.

So when you're basing, like, oh, it's the innocent Bucks.

They like to, you know, super kick children.

How could they ever want to hurt somebody?

And all their friends, they're all.

And Christopher Daniels, he was in the room with them too.

That's hold on.

Christopher Daniels, Nakazawa.

Yeah, because, yeah, he got suspended and he's Talent Relations.

Talent Relations, who's buddies with the Bucks from Southern California.

Christopher Daniels, Nakazawa, Cutler, two Bucs,

and an Omega.

And an Omega and a partridge and a pear tree.

Here's another thing.

If one side was all on the up and up and the other side was all wrong,

well, the side that burst into the locker room had at least one talent relations executive, three executive vice presidents, and the number two in command and head of the legal department.

And there's still an investigation going on.

Well, it seems like with all all of those dignitaries in the company, you'd get the straight story, wouldn't you, from them?

Except

if all of those dignitaries were on the fucking side that caused the problem.

That's why there's an investigation going on because there's more to the story

than what that group is giving out.

You would think it'd be cut and dried there.

Okay, here's a lawyer.

Here's a representative of talent relations.

Here's three executive vice presidents.

Oh, you mean we still don't know the true story of what went on in there?

Golly.

As a talent relations

and or creative booking team, whatever member,

I've had to witness a couple of things before just in case

there was a lawsuit or whatever.

And

I'll tell you, remember when the skyscrapers, Fivee and Sid, when they beat that job guy up in Texas for not selling for him?

Oh, yeah, of course.

Oh, yeah.

I saw him, and Teddy Long gave me the eye roll.

Like, we're going.

They were headed for the guy's locker room.

So I'm in the back.

I'm going to try to see what happens.

I know what's going to happen, but I may need to testify later on.

And Spivey's in front, as you'd figure, because Sid looked great, but he ain't going to fight unless, you know, there's some advantage.

Spivey goes in there.

The guy stands up.

Spivey fucking punched him and dropped him and slapped him two or three times.

And then, of course, Sid's so big.

I'm trying to look over Sid.

And I think he may have kicked him while he was down there as he was cussing him.

Say, you got a fucking problem.

You don't want to sell.

Fuck you.

And then I think they spit on him and walked out.

And then as the representative of the booking committee, because the guy deserved every single goddamn thing that happened to him.

I then told somebody else in the locker room, I said, you better get his bags packed and get him the fuck out of here unless they decide to come back because they didn't think they got the point across.

That's what happens when somebody has done something and somebody else busts in a fucking locker room, shit takes place.

If you don't want shit to take place, don't bust in the locker room.

You know,

so go ahead.

I was just going to say, too, again, I'm thinking about the history of AEW, and like you and I have said and alluded to many times, we've been very well aware of the way things are going on.

When Cody had problems with the elite, you could pick whose side you want to take, right?

When FTR are having problems with the elite, and then Punk's having problems with the elite.

At what point do you realize it's the same people over and over who have a problem with anyone who's not doing their thing?

I think it's pretty obvious already, but

it all boils down to what Tony Kahn

is willing to put up with and or whether he wants to take control of his fucking wrestling promotion.

And

the easiest thing to do right now would be to say, okay,

I don't have any more executive vice presidents.

We're going to go back and start fresh, and I'm going to try to

find or hire or promote from within some experienced veteran wrestling personnel to run talent relations and the booking department.

And hopefully I can talk Jim Ross into helping me sit down with all the talent and determining who else is going to blow up in the near future and commit aggravated mayhem and find out how to assuage their feelings.

And then I will be the promoter that makes the decisions and authorizes the expenditures and tries to

regain my positive standing with the fans out there in the audience.

And all these other people are going to run this fucking thing

and see if we can get a coherent television show, a goddamn talent roster that doesn't look like it's mix and match day at the fucking buffet, and that's a cohesive, coherent team all pulling the same rope and going in the same direction and featuring a

palatable mix of wrestling styles instead of everything all over the goddamn page, like that fucking idiot Olivier wants and get my employees under control

and start trying to build for a potential contract renegotiation with our rights fees that may or may not be as easy as we thought it was going to be two weeks ago because the network's hearing about all this shit too.

And even if they didn't hear about the beef at the press conference and afterwards,

Then they would have heard about it when Tony said, well, we don't have CM Punk.

Well, we don't have, well, I guess the network wouldn't care if they don't have the Bucks or Omega because they don't do any ratings.

But we don't have CM Punk.

Why not?

Well, my executive vice presidents bum-rushed him in his fucking locker room because they were pissed off of what he said at the media scrum.

What did he say at the media scrum that caused that?

Well, he said that the EVPs couldn't manage a fucking target and that he was sick and tired of having to deal with children

who were spreading, who were spreading stories about him in the press.

So that's what the network would hear.

What the fuck?

That's all I'm going to say is I've been saying the same thing for the past three and a half years.

You can't do something at this level when you have everybody in charge with literally no experience at doing any of these things before and not willing to listen to people who have.

This is what you get.

Yeah, everything right now is, I think, being done to placate the network because that's their biggest fear.

They are terrified right now about the fucking network.

And how does the network know that somebody isn't going to go into business for themselves in the ring and get in a fight and something happen illegal and blah, blah, blah, and they'll be called in to testify or to give their thoughts on the situation under oath or blah, blah, blah.

How do they know that now?

It's a shit show.

It's a complete shit show.

And I feel feel actually, look, it's Tony's fault.

At the end of the day, this is all Tony's fault.

Adam Page, too, but it's all Tony's fault.

But I also feel really bad for Tony because he's in a rough position right now.

He's tried, except for being

oblivious to advice.

He has tried his best.

And I'm sure he has worked his fingers to the bone.

I see the bony fingers.

So yeah, you got to feel bad for him, but he should have known because we told him.

We told him what was going to happen.

I'm sure anybody that didn't want a job and didn't care for taking him for any money has told him,

well, goddamn, that would be me, I guess.

That's the sum total of those people that fit that description, but would have told him what was going to happen.

Jim, before we wrap things up, I'd like to bring up something that's actually starting to gain some buzz at the moment.

And the Young Bucks are trending.

Because of a report, it appears to be from the Wrestling Observer newsletter figure four online message message board

the headline is report young bucks sent feelers out to wwe

and this all seems to be coming from something on the f4w online message board i'm getting this from a wrestle talk article ryan frederick of the wrestling observer pointed out that the young bucks had their options picked up here's the exact quote they didn't sign new deals Their options were picked up.

They did reach out to a talent to send feelers that they would be interested in talking about coming in when their deals are up.

And what did Steen say?

But everyone on both sides are going to do the same because you want to look for the best deal.

Anyone who doesn't,

anyone who doesn't do so is dumb and possibly leaving money on the table.

And then, I guess,

explaining why the young boys.

When you're just a fucking talent, when you're an employee, when you're just one of the worker bees,

yeah, you want to see what kind of contract you can get.

You want to entertain all offers.

When you've made the commitment that you're an executive vice president of a company and they've already had one leave when Cody got run off, and now these,

I honestly,

if they had

not agreed to start AEW,

From what we hear, they probably would have got a fucking WWE contract because at the time before the company got started,

they had made offers to all of them because they didn't want a billionaire getting in the wrestling business.

So they wanted to try to take the talent at the start.

But now,

not only that, I mean, Vince McMahon, if they were willing to make an offer to the Young Bucks while Vince McMahon was in charge, that meant that they were worried about a billionaire getting in the business and they wanted to put a stop to it.

Because there's no way ever, ever in life that Vince McMahon would sign Matt and Nick Jackson seriously.

Maybe like James Elworth or whatever, but not seriously.

He wanted to stop the company.

Now they've seen the company.

And I've said this, I've been saying this for a couple of years.

They've seen what it looks like.

That's why all of a sudden they stopped those, not only stopped the high contract offers to the WWE talent to keep them.

but started fucking firing people.

They fired people that goddamn AEW could pick up immediately and did because they knew what they had as competition at that point and they weren't concerned.

So now,

if these two little fucking dipshits are trying to get a deal, I don't think Triple H would look at them with as much

disdain as Vince, but he still don't need them.

because they know now what the competition is and those guys would never make it in the WWE.

They wouldn't make it in the locker room.

They wouldn't make it in the ring and it would be ridiculous visually.

So now they're trying to see if there's any interest at this point up there in them so that they can attempt to put Tony over a barrel to sign him to a new longer-term deal or whatever the case.

But they ain't going to find a lot of people nibbling on that fucking worm.

The time has passed.

They didn't, they never wanted them to begin with.

They wanted Tony Khan not to have them.

Well, Jim, I have one more quote from this part here.

They reached out to to a talent to send feelers about coming in.

I can't say they talked to anyone direct to WWE, but that would fall under tampering.

And this came at the same time that the legal letters were being sent about tampering.

I can't confirm they actually talked to WWE people themselves, but they talked to other WWE talents about coming in, which they can do, much like WWE talent can send feelers through AEW talent, which has happened and happens on both sides often.

Good lord, that was a convoluted fucking way to get from point A to point B.

It's not something they wouldn't have done anyways, since their deals are coming up at the end of 2024, and you want to maximize your leverage when it comes to getting a new deal and get the companies into a bidding war.

Oh, good lord.

It's not necessarily a sign that they're going to leave.

Everyone should do it.

Hey, right now they have no leverage with AEW.

If Tony has a brain right now, right now they have no leverage with AEW.

They're suspended.

They brought disgrace to the company and they're currently suspended.

If that's leverage,

then I need to look up the American Heritage Dictionary definition of leverage.

And they ain't going to have any leverage with the WWE because the WWE now doesn't want.

How would Triple H sell that to anybody else in the company?

Yeah, I'm going to sell these two guys every time they're on the opposition program.

200,000 people tune out.

If what the fuck?

If the talent, I'm going to say this, even though it's not the thing.

If the talent they contacted was Cody, this whole thing's a work.

You know, I guarantee you they called up Steen.

The only reason Steen didn't come over to join him was because they gave him a couple million dollars to stay where he was.

And just the fact that

you could see,

you could see that the wrestling business is fucked up when Kevin Steen gets $2.5 million or whatever on a wrestling contract.

But no, they just call their friends.

That's all they know how to do is call their friends.

But now the friends ain't going to be able to help them because they have no leverage.

They have no track record of ratings.

They have no track record of fucking pay-per-view buys because they're, fortunately, they haven't been featured in any of the major pay-per-views in the main event.

And they have no track record of any kind of

great matches with top talent.

They do the same match every time with the gymnasts that they brought with them.

So they have no appeal to the WWE past

will take them away from the billionaire so that he will have a harder time making it in the wrestling business.

And now that they're not making any difference to the billionaire,

I can see

them going after MJF.

I can see the WWE being hell of a interested in Wardlow.

I can see the WWE being completely interested in powerhouse Hobbs.

I can even see, okay, for shits and giggles, let's see if we can get Omega away from him.

Maybe if, you know,

either he'll listen to us and make the changes we want him to make because at least he looks like an athlete and maybe some of our guys can get something out of him, or we've taken him away from the competition and they don't have him.

And,

you know, he'd have a nervous breakdown in that locker locker room in three months.

But I can see them making him an offer.

But for the Jacksons,

I think the WWE would rather make an offer to fucking Randy and Tito than Matt and Nick.

I would actually pay to see Randy and Tito team up, even today, if Tito still has any of that afro left, because that was a mighty fine Afro.

It was.

Jim, before we wrap up, I guess

where, if you're Tony Khan, where do you move from here?

If you're going to go under the assumption CM Punk and the Bucs and Omega at a minimum are gone for a while,

what does your program and your promotion look like in the next

month, two months?

And what do you have to do immediately to change this?

Again,

bring Jim Ross in, put him in charge of talent relations, see who else is mad at who and how it can be fixed.

Fucking

immediately, regardless of whether they ever come back or they fuck off and go away forever, do not let the executive vice presidents be executive vice presidents anymore.

No wrestlers with any type of office affiliation.

If they want to leave over that, help them carry their bags to the fucking car.

With punk, yes, he's been

pushed and coerced and instigated and provoked and et cetera, but still,

you got to do something because he buried Tony

at the press conference saying all that in front of him.

And of course, Tony buried himself by not doing anything about it when he heard it in private.

That's a great example, though.

He should have done something.

He should have stopped him.

He should have said questions only about this, whatever it may be.

And while he didn't do that, I still feel awful for him when I see that.

I feel terrible for the fucking guy.

But Punk's going to be out for eight months.

So that's enough punishment right there because he's punishing the company.

And he sure ain't going to want to sit home and recover from another surgery.

And also, it's punishing the company because they ain't going to have punk for ratings or goddamn buy rates.

I would get after I put Jim Ross on the case of trying to figure out who else in the locker room is going to try to strangle each other and make sure that everybody's contracts that I want to keep for the future are not only written properly but still have time left on them,

then I would get Jim Ross's and a few other people there,

William Regals of the world,

I would get their opinion on which

person or persons

might be good to put together to start booking the show with absolutely no input whatsoever from Tony Kahn.

And they would be in charge of booking the writing the show formats and booking the talent and working with them to make a cohesive television program from week to week that would start getting people over and building issues that you'd want to see instead of bringing in people from all over the place and then you never see them again and nothing makes sense and somebody's a heel one week and a baby face the other.

I like this guy's costume, so I'm going to let him go 20 minutes in the main event or whatever the fuck.

And then I would see about a new legal fucking

head

since Mega is obviously in over hers.

I don't think that's going to happen.

Well, you asked, none of this other shit's going to happen either, but you asked me what I would do.

So I'm telling you, don't ask the question if you don't want the answer.

I'd tell Mega to go piss up a rope, and I'd get a legitimate male attorney, about 50 to 60 years old, that's seen every goddamn thing in the world

and is a fucking barracuda when it comes to contracts and negotiations.

And I'd put them in charge of my legal department because a guy like that's probably not going to be intimidated

by wrestlers or want to make friends with them.

Either one is bad.

Because so far, everybody I've seen in a position of power that was not in the wrestling business until Tony decided to get into it either wants to be friends with the wrestlers or is intimidated by them.

Neither one is a good thing.

So, once I'd revamped my talent relations department, and I'd revamped my booking team,

and I had revamped my legal department department to make sure that

the fucking legal head is not with the people storming my top stars locker room,

then I would go to the network and say, I've taken all of these steps to make sure that the shit show that happened a couple of weeks ago never happens again,

especially while we're on your network.

Because elsewhere, he's what is he going to say?

Well, I suspended everybody.

Well, the horse left the barn for you did.

What are you doing about it to make sure it doesn't happen again?

That's what the network is going to say.

And he's going to say, well, we're having a third-party investigation.

What are you going to make sure?

What are you going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?

Well, we've suspended everybody, and I may not let them be EVPs anymore.

They're still going to be around.

What are you going to do to make sure it never happens again?

I've got a new head of talent relations.

I've got a new creative team.

I've got a new head of legal.

I'm stepping back experienced people are in charge and we're going to have a cohesive program from here on out with everybody either getting along or out the door

that's what you tell the network

but he can't because he's not doing any of those things

i'm done it was a pre-taped announcement that tony kahn did And somebody on Twitter or wherever met, well, why didn't he come out live?

I guarantee you, somebody close to him

told him, do not try this live, Tony.

But it's too complicated between the matchups he had to rattle off and the fact that Tony tends to wander

badly

when public speaking.

There's no way he could have got away with doing this live.

But as it was,

no mention again.

So I'm going to hit you with this, Brian, and we'll move on.

Because the good stuff's coming up.

Let's say that Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, and Babe Ruth are all working for the New York Yankees, right?

All playing on the team.

Sure, yeah.

And I'm going to look.

Ty Cobb was never a Yankee.

Well, nevertheless,

that's the four big baseball players I know.

And you're going to take me to task for comparing one of these to Twinkle Toes, but I don't know any job guy baseball players' names.

Twinkletoes?

Is it the Maggio?

Possibly.

So Babe Ruth is pissed off at Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle and Lou Gehrig.

And finally,

they get in a fight

because old George Steinbrenner has not done anything to fucking settle this down.

So they all have to be suspended.

My question to you is

after they're suspended, and the next time that the Yankees go out to play a game, and there's no Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb or Mickey Mantle or Lou Gehrig,

would George Steinbrenner

make the announcement, ladies and gentlemen,

the Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, and Lou Gehrig are suspended because they got in a fight in the locker room last week, so they ain't playing tonight.

Okay, you don't know anything about baseball, but you got one thing right.

If it was Steinbrenner, Steinbrenner would have put out a statement.

He also would have lambasted them publicly.

He was an owner that would do that.

In any professional sport, including the UFC, we just Dana White canceled his press conference because the guys got in a fight, and he said that.

It's a shit show back there.

In any sport, I'm not arguing with the suspension that Tony did what he had to do.

But in any sport,

would it be reported

that so-and-so has been suspended because they got in a fight?

You don't have to take a side.

I know there's legal situations coming up, but if there would be a legal situation coming up, if the baseball players got in a fight, or the football players, or the soccer players, or the disc golf players.

So, why, even if there is legal

investigations going on and potentially legal things happening, Why is it

illegal for the owner of the company to give the simple reason

I stripped these people of their championships because they got in a fight in a locker room and they've been suspended?

Not placing blame, reporting a fact.

Yeah, listen, I know CM Punk has good lawyers, but you could say something.

What is this?

Because this just made it just even more.

So anyway.

Well, why don't we talk about it a little further and let's talk about it seriously.

So Kenny Omega, based on this, is in Japan, visiting Sega at a minimum.

He's an executive vice president.

He's suspended.

The Young Bucks are executive vice presidents.

They're suspended.

CM Punk's the biggest star in the company.

As of this moment, he's at least suspended.

And I believe the same with Ace Steele and various other participants.

There's an investigation going on.

We don't know what that investigation truly is.

If we're going with the idea there's only one investigation,

we don't know what that investigation truly is.

Is it just about what happened in the room that night?

And can it be just about that?

Or is it about

everything that led up to that, which includes the behavior of the executive vice presidents, in which case, Kenny Omega may be staying in Japan?

I don't know.

But what do you think about this investigation, what we know so far, what we don't know?

And

again, what could it be?

It has to be more than just a fight, right?

It has to go back to previous things and to what led them to walking down the hall and everything else.

Well, if this was Vince McMahon, he'd say, Well, you can't make a decision in a vacuum, pal.

You need all the information.

You need to know what led everybody to that point.

What caused them to have a certain frame of mind?

What caused friction to be bubbling over and steps along the way of where it either could have been

alleviated or it was magnified.

And who's done what to who

from the feuding camps?

And as well, you said, is there only one investigation?

Well, there's going to be more than one investigation because at some point the investigation is going to find something about somebody that they don't like and don't agree with, and then they're going to want to conduct their own investigation of the investigation.

But at minimum, yes, you have to go back and say, okay,

yes, CM Punk said these things at the media scrum.

Why did he say these things out in public at the media scrum?

What led to that?

What

issues has he been having that he felt this was the way to settle things?

And then for the

invited guests to the locker room,

why did anywhere from three to six of them, as best we can determine,

barge into the locker room

instead of waiting for the owner of the company, since they were his subordinates, instead of waiting for him to tell them,

yeah, I think we might ought to, you know, just pack it up and go home for tonight while emotions are running high and let's everybody sit down tomorrow.

Or

would he have said, well, yeah, I think you ought to bust in the locker room room and see who gets whose ass kicked or whatever.

But they didn't do that.

They didn't wait.

Why didn't they wait?

What's their issue?

Let's get it all out in the open.

So, yes, the investigation has to go back to what's been going on that we know of for at least the last several months between the Buckaroos

and CM Punk and anyone

associated with him or sympathetic to his side of the story.

Because

that's the side that hadn't been saying anything.

The first we heard from the punk side was when Punk did the media scrum, right?

Has there been any shoot interviews from anybody associated with Punk?

Has there been any veiled references?

Besides when Punk responds to things like he did to Adam Page's interview when he did it a few weeks ago, or when he references something somebody else has done, And that's only been recent because nobody else was bothering to put out his side of the story.

Well, there's a difference too between bothering to put out his side of the story and getting his side of the story.

You also do have to, you know, it's tit for tat.

Well, no, well, and you got the tits on one side,

whispering everything and to all of their friendly journalists and making sure that they have the story that they want out there.

And you got the tat side

that's been acting professionally and going about their business until they're forced by the lack of leadership in the company and the general overall tone to do something about it themselves because nobody else is going to do it.

So you got the tit side and you got the tat side.

So this investigation, if it's going.

You know, have you ever noticed there's a lot more tits than there are tats in the world today?

And not anymore.

Everyone has a tat nowadays, it seems like.

It used to be you had to be a tough guy or a sailor or something to have a tattoo.

And then it became the punk rockers embraced it.

And then a lot of skinny white wimps saw Henry Rollins like, I wish I was like that.

And then they got tattoos.

And then Axel Rose influenced a whole nother crew of people.

And then they got tattoos.

But there's still more tits in the world.

Because you know what another word for tit is, don't you?

Boob.

And there's a lot more boobs in the world than there are tats.

All right, and there's certainly tit willows.

And before we get stuck in the willows here, why don't we get back to the question I was asking you, which is about this investigation?

If the investigation is about what happened in that room, like we said before, it can't be limited to just what happened there.

It has to be what caused it.

I have a very difficult time.

There's a few people I think have to be fired.

And it may not be the people everyone else thinks, but again, if it's all about the general behavior leading into this,

I think a steele's done just because i don't know how you bring him back after this

i think kenny omega may have an issue i think i think you should make a steele the chairman

he's gonna you can't steal is sean spears still there does sean spears still work there

boy there's a name from the past

see that gimmick is free available and open

who was his manager tully

blanchard is tully still there no he's in ring of honor with coke cabana and brian cage and all the guys no one sees ever.

Oh, no, he quit.

He didn't even show.

Remember, he no-showed the pay-per-view.

He no-showed when he was supposed to go to.

Yeah.

So, yeah, but

I'm most sympathetic to A.

Steele of anybody because he's just running in the room to save his crippled wife.

I guess the question becomes from a company standpoint.

Is Ace Steele's responsibility to go in there and de-escalate things or go in there and fight on behalf of a side?

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but if you're investigating someone, I'm going to guess that's going to be the question they're asking about A.

Steele's involvement.

I would think, yes, but I would also think that,

you know,

if your friend, his dog, and your crippled wife are in a room and six at least or thereabouts full-grown adults burst into the room and there's a fight going on, you're going to go in and help the outnumbered side.

But that's just me.

What do you think is going to happen?

What do you think the end result's going to be?

You know, here's the thing: if it was the wrestling business of days gone by,

then

Tony would probably fire a few miscellaneous people, yank a knot in a few other people's tails, and everybody would go on because it's business, and they'll get over it.

But now, with independent investigations and the cuntish nature of most of the buckaroos and their feelings,

you know, who knows?

Because here's the thing.

Punk's been putting up with this shit for a while.

If he's the biggest star in the company, he's on the video game.

He's on all the posts.

He's on everything.

If they fire him, not only are they shooting themselves in the foot, but also he'll probably sue because he's the goddamn injured and put upon party here that not only injured himself himself in the line of duty but then had various high-ranking employees burst into his fucking locker room while he's outnumbered and injured that's a lawsuit if nothing else

you can fire

the bucks and and kenny and it wouldn't really impact business

because people are already tuning them out on television anyway.

And we've done nine months without Kenny, and it was actually better.

I'd love to try to do nine months without the Bucks and see how the, but it's not like the core AEW audience is going to desert if they were not around because they'll watch anything.

It's the extra several hundred thousand people that the stars get that you got to worry about going away.

They're already going away just when these people pop up on television.

But

if Kenny was to fire, if Tony

was to fire the buckaroos there,

then they'll probably sue him.

Who knows what for, but they're litigious Twats.

They're whiny little bitches, so that'd probably be their last resort.

They may be suing Punk.

I mean, that's the other thing.

You're talking about them suing Tony or them suing AEW.

They're going to sue Punk, maybe.

Well, then if they sue Punk, because Punk...

I get Punk gave one a black eye and A.

Steele knocked the other one out with the chair, or vice versa.

There's so many stories going around.

They both got their fucking ruby red asses kicked in fine fashion.

I heard Nick Jackson's eye was closed shut immediately almost.

Well, so anyway, so they might sue, but if they sue Punk,

they're also, and I've been a party to a few lawsuits, not from the good side, from the bad side.

If they sue Punk, they almost have to sue Tony Khan

because Tony Khan not only set up the

working relationship and the working environment and the infrastructure of the whole thing, but it's technically, and they might actually,

depending on what kind of lawyer they get, they might name the arena and or whatever arena security were being used that night as well.

Because if the Bucs get a lawyer,

That lawyer is not going to worry about hurting anybody in the wrestling business's feelings.

If they're going to go to the point of a lawsuit, then they'd go all the way.

So they might sue Punk as well as Tony Kahn

because it happened on his watch and they might have to include the arena.

And a steel.

Well, and a steel, obviously, but I'm talking about even farther reaching the arena.

If the arena are the ones that contracted the security, if Tony contracted the security, then he gets sued twice.

But all these people, I mean,

we punched a fucking guy in Baton Rouge one night.

Well, I whacked him with the racket, and Dundee punched him three times.

And he sued me, the members of the Midnight Express, Dundee, who he didn't know, so that was a John Doe.

He didn't know who the fuck Dundee was,

the Baton Rouge Centriplex,

the security, and the city of Baton Rouge just for getting punched four times.

So

you spread a wide net on these lawsuits.

So if they wanted to file a suit,

their their lawyer would tell them most probably to include at least Tony Kahn.

Then, if they were still working there, they'd be suing the guy that they worked for.

So,

you know, I mean, from a business-only standpoint,

you keep punk and you get rid of everybody else.

If you want to just get rid of everybody, then you're shooting yourself in the foot for business because then you've lost significant you know talent at the top

i don't know what he's gonna

do

the punk stuff is interesting because again punk's not completely innocent no matter what we want to say even if you want to take someone's side we don't know what happened in that room so punk has to be admonished punished whatever it is at a minimum just like everyone else here

But the issue becomes if Tony just suspends him, and he's going to be out now with an injury.

So I don't know know even what a suspension means it's not like you know

baseball where it's from the beginning of the season or whatever I don't know how a suspension works if he's going to be out no matter what it's a paid vacation like you said

but there will be issues bringing punk back right now into that locker room I mean not just with the Bucks friends that is a legitimate thing the way this all went down the danger it put the whole company in there are a lot of people upset about it

does punk just if this happens and Tony just brings him back whatever a year from now

is it just he brings him right back or punk just continues to do what he's doing and stays to himself and doesn't really interact with too many people on the roster except for the people he talks to and gives advice to or whatever well apparently he had been interacting with almost everybody on the roster that's not in the kookamunga kids' fucking treehouse club we've seen the articles from a variety of people praising him for the help that he gave them or the fact that he was giving giving them advice and his door is always open.

Now, again, they may not

appreciate or they could have done without this happening because now they're shitting themselves.

Oh my God, the company I'm working for may be falling apart.

But otherwise than that, Punk has not done anything to

dissuade those people's positive opinion of him in the locker room, just as he hasn't done anything to help the negative opinion of him

that the Bucks camp has, which is what started the

rumor campaign and the blah, blah, blah.

And now

the whole thing with fish is coming out.

And now that makes a little more sense when they had that awkward match on TV a few months back that didn't, several months back.

that didn't

seem like it came together like it should.

And that also

there was some miscommunication, we thought, because fuck, he kicked out right at the finish.

Almost kicked out on the finish.

Come to find out he did kick out on the finish.

Because now we find out that Bobby Fish is a

God friend of the Bucs.

They're God-fearing family men.

And also Bobby Fish is apparently a right-wing.

religious fanatic because he just admitted in public that he gave money to that lunatic referee Drake Wertz in Florida to stop the child molesters that are apparently on every corner, according to these people.

So

he fits in with the ideology that the Bucs in their camp possess.

So was that?

And then Fish goes into, well, my MMA is so much better than Punks because he got his ass kicked.

Noted UFC veteran Bobby Fish says this.

I said this the other day.

I I hate to hear this because I always thought I'd never cross-examined him about every facet of his life, but I thought Fish was a good talent.

He was an adult and serious.

I didn't know he was a wacko, but now apparently he thinks he's Bobby fucking Gracie

and that he could have stretched CM Punk and he did CM Punk a favor by putting him over that well in the fucking match and challenge him to a fight.

And I'd stretch him from asshole appetite if it was a shoot and all this other stuff, which then backfired on Bobby Fish because all he got on Twitter in response to that was jokes about his fucking advanced age, including, hey, what could you have done?

You couldn't even have saved Abraham Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth.

But this goes to my question earlier about the investigation and how far it looks back.

I got to look to see when that Bobby Fish match was.

It may have been at the end of last year, after Bobby Fish first came in.

If Bobby Fish worked with Punk and now he's admitting he was purposely difficult, and we could see it, and it was noticeable at the time, although because Punk was kind of going through a phase where he would struggle in his matches, you didn't know what

we thought he was working the I'm rusty because I just came back deal and not the this prick won't work with me deal.

Yeah, not this guy's not giving me anything and I'm trying to be a professional and then he kicks out on the three of the pin.

If that happened then, How does that not tie into all this?

Bobby Fish's best friends, not best friends, I won't say that, but he's all in the Bucs camp.

I mean, he's defending them.

I mean, how is that not part of this whole thing?

If the whole thing is that the Bucks and their friends have been waiting to get punk, have had a chapped ass that CM Punk was around since the beginning because it took attention off of them and they was potentially they were seeing that somebody was going to elevate people outside of their little fucking social circle and their little clique.

So again, the investigation I would think would have to take that in.

So then it it covers a whole lot of other stuff.

I would think they would have to

talk about Adam Page.

A notably cranky motherfucker who does not take, I believe, as Dave Shearer put it, does not take disrespect well.

He comes into a company as the top guy and he gets his finish kicked out on on TV by fucking Bobby Fish of all people, who was the fourth member of the Undisputed Era.

He gets confronted by

a guy going into business for himself on a live promo before the main event world title match, Adam Page.

He sits at home for a couple months injured after

surgery, listening to all the alleged wrestling journalists whining that he's the one that got poor Cole Cabana transferred over to Ring of Honor.

Again, like a paycheck every week for working in a non-existent wrestling promotion is a goddamn horrible thing to have happen.

He's been getting a check to work in a fucking existent wrestling promotion for the past three years and done nothing.

The whole argument.

So I'm just saying that's he's had to sit on top of all this shit and fester about it because all this shit's been going on and nobody's been doing anything about it.

If we are to believe that version of events that punk is the reason Coke Cabana was not going to be there any longer.

Why would it have been done that way?

Why would it have just been, oh, his contract's expiring, so Tony's not going to renew him?

Why wouldn't it have been, hey, listen, if you want me to come in for this first dance, I don't want this guy that cost me a bunch of money, a bunch of fucking time I had to spend dealing with this shit.

I don't want him working there.

That's the time you would have made the move right there.

Send him fucking home.

Pay him if you want, but I don't want to see him around here.

I said that, but again,

the contract was coming up for renewal.

Tony was probably thinking, well, maybe Colts lost my number.

And then one of the Jackson boys says, oh, well, here's a way we can give Colts some free money from this sucker that we work for.

And at the same time, we can start some kind of campaign against CM Punk that it's all his fault.

So Cabana goes home to get a check in the mailbox every week to do absolutely fucking nothing.

And somehow he's a victim.

See, that's the way Tony actually played it smart.

I mean, in the long run, it all backfired, but he saw what happened to you when you fired Cabana from Ring of Honor, and all of a sudden you became public enemy number one.

He shifted all of that to punk.

He got away from it.

Yeah, damn, you would think that I'd taken ice cream away from orphans.

We said, no, no, we don't, no, we don't need you.

Don't have a spot.

Nothing open at this time.

See you later.

Well, we will keep everyone informed about what happens with this investigation.

Like we said, there's a lot of interesting things happening here, depending on how big the purview is.

My prediction,

Ace Steele and Kenny Omega fired.

But let's see what happens.

Yeah, wait, let's chisel that into some stone here because you've been right with a lot of your predictions the last couple of years.

And I have said Kenny Omega will be the next EVP out the door, but that, of course, was before Nick Jackson got knocked out.

And I don't even know which one got hit.

There's a chair.

That's the other thing.

Is it a folding chair?

Is it like one of these chairs?

Like, what kind of chair was thrown exactly?

I think it had to be a folding chair because those big squeaky chairs like you got, they're too padded.

They wouldn't have even hurt a little delicate flower like balding Nick Jackson.

Was it a chair with four legs?

Did Ace Steele come in there and pick up one of those big chairs with four legs and just haul it across the fucking room?

I want to know how they used a chair.

This is the most interesting part of the story that no one's talking about.

Everyone's upset right now.

You know, everyone's still pretty fired up about this whole thing.

Tony Khan has lots of money, and any of these lawsuits, at the end of the day, what it would be about is money.

If you're Tony Khan, as crazy as this may sound right now, but in a few months, do you spend what it takes to get these guys in the ring somehow to work together?

Is it worth it to try and do something with all these guys, or is it a lost cause?

Well,

again, if it was the wrestling business of the old days, that would work.

I don't put it past

definitely the Kookamonga kids to, okay, it ain't ballet and shit happens.

The first potato that they catch, they'll go into fucking full-fledged, whiny bitch mode

and try to sue or fight or do something or other.

And then,

what is Tony Khan's,

you know,

what's the statement that he makes then?

Oh,

everybody said they had made up.

So despite the fact that we had a big incident that caused investigations and potential lawsuits and everything before, they said they all made up and wanted to work together.

And

that's what we thought they were doing until so-and-so kicked so-and-so with the point of his toe in the fucking upper goddamn uvula.

And that guy fucking turned around and said, well, you son of a bitch, I oughta.

And here we go.

And they had another fight.

Now they're suing again.

My idea from a few months ago that I said to you, half jokingly, but half not, that Tony should just give the Bucs and everyone who's kind of into their style and their group of friends, give them Ring of Honor and just let them do their thing there and then treat the TBS show differently.

Even if you use them, just treat it differently.

If they're still under contract and they're not going to be fired and Tony's not going to let them go, is that idea as crazy today?

Even though Ring of Honor doesn't exist as really anything, we know they have contracted wrestlers because their buddy Colt Cabana is there.

Is that as crazy an idea today as it was a couple months ago?

Probably not.

Yeah, start two promotions, one wrestling and one gymnastics,

and let the Kookamunga kids and their friends play there.

Of course, then you're spending a lot of money for no fucking reason otherwise, and a bunch of people are goddamn immature, childish jack-offs.

But

and then we could see whether the real wrestling or the goddamn

cheerleading routines is what drew the ratings and the money.

And we think we know what that case would be.

Jim, here's one.

I'm going to read you one, and then I'm going to

make a comment after this.

We've received several about this or in this vein.

This was sent to corny drive-through at gmail.com from Robert.

What if it's this?

CM Punk tells Tony before the scrum, dude, I'm hurt.

I know it.

I'm going to be out a while.

I'll tick everyone off in the presser, make the EVPs and you look bad.

Maybe the EVPs even fight me.

You'll have to suspend me and take the belt off me.

So I asked this one.

This is one of many with the idea that this whole thing is a work.

So I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are about it being a work.

And then, I guess, to show the brilliance of the mind of Jim Cornette, if it is a work, how do we put it all together?

How do we deconstruct this?

Okay, well, no, I ain't that brilliant because it's not a work and you can't put this together where anybody benefits in any way whatsoever if it is a work.

If it was a work, I should say.

Again, from the Montreal screw job to...

whatever,

everybody wants to think

that everything in wrestling is a work because 98% of everything or 99 or whatever the overwhelming statistic is is a work.

But I think now people are trying to figure out a way to

justify this in their own mind as being a work because it's so ridiculous.

But that's the thing.

Much as

in wrestling,

you can find a top guy and you can put him over and you can give him wins and you can give him TV time or whatever.

But

a superstar, the magic has to happen with the people.

Right?

You know, you can push him all day long, but Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock has to happen because of the people.

And generally, that's accidental.

And you don't book it that way.

You know, Austin 316 says, I just kicked your ass.

Or, you know, if you smell what The Rock is cooking, because fuck you for die, Rocky, die, or what if something you, they, none of these things were intentional.

The screw job wasn't intentional.

It was seen as something that they had to get

over with and get past, and now they can't get past it 25 years later.

It's the biggest thing still they've ever done.

So you don't book those things.

And in the same way,

anything this ridiculous in the wrestling business, I promise you, was not pre-planned by all parties.

Now, some party may have had a thought: well, if such and such happens, I'd do this or whatever.

But no, none of this was planned.

Obviously, it was if it was, it was the most poorly conceived and thought-out

and implemented

fucking work in recorded history.

Let's play Devil's Advocate, okay?

We have not seen any photos or anything of anyone with any injuries coming out of this fight.

We've only heard stories about it.

All anyone has is stories.

What if this is all the build-up?

CM Punk and FTR versus Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks.

What better buildup?

The man behind the pipe bomb,

the kids behind Kookamunga.

I don't know what they're behind.

They all get together.

The 38 ball right now is what they're behind.

The greatest work shoot of all time.

What do you think?

Well, and then you're giving guest referee Colt Cabana.

Then you're given a number of simpletons involved in this credit for being able to conceive this and or pull it off.

And also,

again,

for what business...

I'm an FTR fan and I love me some punk.

And there's no way.

that punk at FTR versus the Bucs and Olivier with

Larry a special referee and Luthes is going to stretch the losers on pay-per-view.

That still wouldn't draw enough money to make the goddamn justification for fucking up your world title picture, taking your fucking top stars out of your open of your show, suspending them, taking them off advance advertising of places they're going to be.

taking statements, having attorneys burning up telephone lines.

You could have Mega in a shark cage above the ring.

Yeah, Mega in a shark cage above the ring.

Special guest timekeeper, Topher.

But then, you know what she's going to do?

Every lawyer carries a ballpoint pin.

She's going to drop the pin through the bars of the shark cage, and somebody's going to get stuck in the eye with it.

No,

it's not a work.

Bless y'all.

Please get hobbies.

Unfortunately, this isn't a work.

This is

apparently as legitimate as now.

The one thing that what was the caller's name that asked this question?

Oh, I actually don't have the email in front of me anyway.

Well, okay, little Robert, I think, was the email.

Tits McGee over there that asked the question.

I believe it was Robert, not Tits McGee.

Well, Robert McGee or Tits Robert.

I don't know.

Barack Hussein from the previous administration.

Arabian from the previous email.

Well, there you go.

I remembered it was something began with a B.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I can believe

that Punk, after that match, he's already bleeding.

He's hurt some element of his arm.

I've heard triceps is what we've heard now.

He's fucking frustrated anyway because he's just been off for an injury.

And he's had to suffer

through sitting and listening to the whisper campaign and all the rumor mill

about what he was pissed about.

And his boss has done nothing about it.

And

the only thing to make him smile is he's got a tasty muffin in front of him.

And I would think that he probably at that point saw all of the,

I'm going to try to say this with a straight face, the journalists.

I wonder how many people in that room actually went to journalism school.

And I'll give Uncle Dave that.

He went to school for it.

He didn't go to the school of common sense, but he knows how to write.

But I wonder how many of them went to school for journalism or how many of them just got free tickets because they're publicity machines.

And he decided to say a few things that had been

troubling him and get a few things off his chest.

I can believe that much.

That may have been pre-planned.

By the time he walked in there, he was like, well, you know, I got the chance to say to all these people that have been printing all this shit

from the

buckaroos camp.

I got a chance to make a point here to all of them and say some things that apparently I'm the one that's going to have to say because it's not coming from the owner and

leader and manipulator of the company.

So I'm going to have to do it on my own.

I can believe that.

Otherwise, everybody else pretty much was reacting to what they heard.

And if it's a work, where does it start?

Does it start with Punk and Cabana in 2013 saying, hey, I got an idea.

If a billionaire comes here in 10 years, we're set.

It's all part of the plan, Smithers.

Speaking of it the long way around, you just talked about the Young Bucks.

Jim, in a related story to this whole Young Bucks CM Punk melee, fiasco, whatever you want to call this whole thing, and it's still up in the air, so much of it.

There have been a lot of people, a lot of listeners of the show, sending in photos.

I'm going to assume you've seen some of them.

Kenny Omega on on his Japanese vacation stay, I'm not exactly sure what it is, appeared on some excursion.

His excursion.

He appeared on a TV show and a lot of people seemed to notice what appeared to be a bite mark on the inside of his forearm.

Have you seen any of these photos?

Yes,

I saw him at a table.

It looked like he was signing autographs.

Possibly he was on television sitting at this table.

I don't know, but I've seen the, and some people were kind enough on Twitter to do the telestrator thing where they circle it with a, you know, a colored circle so you can see it.

But yes, he's got a bite on the inside of his left forearm,

a little about halfway in between

the crook of the elbow and the

meat of the inside of the arm, which would obviously be the perfect place.

for somebody to bite you if you were in the process of trying to put a fucking rear choke on them.

So I don't see how

he got bit

by saving the dog.

Wouldn't you need both arms to pick up a dog and carry it to safety from a burning building or a locker room brawl?

The dog didn't bite him.

At least Larry Talbot has not been accused of biting him.

So

how in the world did A.

Steele manage to get his

teeth

right there inside

Kenny Omega's forearm, I wonder.

Unless Kenny Omega's forearm was being wrapped around his head at the time.

Yeah, because the other argument, like you said, is innocent Kenny Omega was holding this dog that isn't his, that I'm sure just loves strangers picking it up.

Now, while all this is happening, and the Bucs are getting their ass kicked by CM Punk and Ace Steele, and Christopher Daniels is in the mix, and other people are in there trying to break this thing up, While all that's happening, Kenny Omega is innocently tiptoeing out of the room with the dog until Ace Steele runs over to him, mouth first, apparently,

right into his arm and bites him.

It's either that or Ace Steele was in the middle of the melee.

Kenny Omega got either on top of him or behind him, got his arm around him.

Hey, you do that to me.

I'm going to bite you too.

I got to be honest.

Well, how do you know if the arm is coming from behind?

How do you know whose arm it is to begin with in one of those scrums?

Because I scrum, as they say, because scrimmages, I've been in that position

in

crowd activity where an arm comes around behind you and you don't know who the fucks it is.

And one time, as a matter of fact, I've told this story, it was a fucking cop.

The cops didn't like us in Saginaw, Michigan, when we jumped on the fucking mark that tackled Bobby.

And so I was trying to take my tennis racket and swing over my head to get the cop that had me around the neck from behind.

Because you can't tell it's an arm.

so a lot of that shit happened very quickly

and but apparently kenny's arm has the habit like kenny does of being in the wrong place at the wrong time

you had the same reaction i did to the kenny omega bite photo to circle back to where we started that looks like where you'd get bitten if you put your arm in front of someone's mouth yes Yeah, which is the way you've got to do it when you're going to try to get on somebody's back and fucking choke them.

So maybe

Kenny ought to concentrate on not trying to choke people while he's on their back.

We still haven't heard too much about the status of the suspensions of Omega, the Bucks, A-Steel, or CM Punk, the length of the suspension,

if there is in fact a suspension.

I guess we've heard that at least, that there are suspensions, but

we still don't know too much about this whole thing.

Well,

it sounds like that they

they dropped the suspensions on people that could reasonably have been expected to have been there trying to break it up instead of getting involved in it.

You know, I was.

Well, I'll just say we did see Pat Buck, Christopher Daniels, I think Brendan Cutler and Nakazaw were cleared, I believe.

And I can, you know, I was surprised about Christopher Daniels.

And Topher.

And Topher Backstage, I believe, was cleared.

Who?

It's someone you don't know, but he was involved.

Okay.

Well, Topher, is he the guy that used to be on that 70s show?

Whatever happened to him?

I wondered if he got a new job.

That was the worst show.

But nevertheless, I was surprised about Christopher Daniels because he's a grown adult and he is a talent relations, you know, executive now that Tony put out all those promotions.

And even if he is from California and friends with the Cookamonga kids camp, I didn't expect him to, you know, be going into a locker room with mayhem in his heart.

He's probably one of the people that was trying to

at least observe, caution, calm down, whatever the fuck.

So I can see that

cutler and knock it the fuck off.

I mean, you know, they're probably just

dim-witted stooges that were following their, you know,

the leaders of the Treehouse Boys Club.

But

I don't see how you can drop

any of the EVPs suspensions without dropping all of them.

And I don't see how you can

actually penalize a steele if you're not penalizing punk

because Steele was coming to Punk and his wife's assistance.

And actually, Steele may be the next innocent victim in all of this, even before punk and the EVPs.

Where he's going to get tied up with this investigation is you're going to have two different you're going to have three different camps, three sides.

It's punk side or the punk camp, the buck side, and management.

And the argument's going to be, or the question's going to be, was Ace Steele trying to break this up in his job as AEW producer or whatever it was, or was he escalating it?

Was he getting involved?

And I think that's where you're going to have different people arguing different things and it's going to to get tricky.

Well, but the problem is,

what

status does A.

Steele have that trumps his other status?

Is it more important to him and is it more natural to a human being to go into a room where his friend is in a fight with a number of individuals and his wife is stuck while she's on crutches?

and start clearing some shit out.

See, that's the thing there.

If he wasn't in the room when they busted in

and he turns around seconds later when a commotion is heard and knows his wife's in there on crutches and punks getting triple teamed at the very least,

fuck it.

Any normal person, whether they got a goddamn job as a producer or a representative of Walmart or whatever the fuck, is going to go do the same goddamn thing if they have any

balls and/or self-respect.

So,

you know, sorry.

If his wife hadn't been in there

and he hadn't seen numerous guys

in a conflict with his best was single alone best friend, then yeah, then you're supposed to break some shit up, whatever the fuck.

But no, that other shit changes.

Some news that broke overnight.

Although I had heard a few things last week, it is now, I guess, officially being put out there.

Dave Meltzer reporting a Ace Steele officially released from AEW.

I hate to hear that because he was my hero in the whole thing.

He's the one that really did all the damage.

He came to the, like a knight in shining armor, came to the rescue of his poor crippled wife who was trapped in a room with a bunch of raging EVPs.

And if it wasn't Larry that bit

old Yeller over there, if it was indeed a steele and that was heroic.

And the chair, and the whole nine.

It sounds like he was fucking Dick the Bruiser in this.

I think he should be on top.

He should be in the main event over there.

No, I'm sorry to hear that because he's an experienced veteran, wrestler, trainer, etc., with a lot of fucking background in the wrestling business, the kind of guy that they need.

If they didn't have the Kookamunga kids and the weirdo from fucking Sapporo,

you know, causing all this trouble, they'd still have a valuable employee.

So that's what I think about that.

They didn't really have much of a choice, though, with A.

Steele.

Out of everyone involved in it, he seemed, as I said early on, there were two people who I thought would be gone coming out of this and the various things that led up to this.

And I thought A.

Steele would definitely be one of them.

He was there the shortest period of time.

You know, there's...

Certainly been a lot of issues around the idea that it was put out there that CM Punk led to Cole Cabana being removed or almost fired.

Well, I'm going to assume that CM Punk is one of the people that led to Ace Steele being hired in the first place just because of the situation, but he's gone now.

How do you think this affects whatever else is going on with this mysterious investigation?

Well, you know, that's the problem is

Punk can't come back now if everything went, okay, we've you know, concluded the investigation and the dip shits were at fault.

Punk come on back.

He's just had surgery.

So we may not know what's going on there.

We may not know what's going on with the EVPs for a while.

Didn't somebody say that Twinkle Toes couldn't appear in Mexico because he was still suspended at Conan AAA?

Apparently, Conan is the one who said that he asked Kenny Omega to record a video, just a short video, because I believe he is still.

He's not the mega champion, right?

He's the number one contender for their mega champion.

He's the mega mega King Kong Godzilla champion.

Isn't Chris Jericho the mega champion?

But anyway,

Kenny Omega couldn't send the video, and the reason that was put out there was because of legal issues.

Well, I think they ought to send him to Mexico for about three or four years.

Just say, work every night.

That's how you can clear this whole thing up.

And that way we wouldn't have to look at him.

But everybody that wanted to search it out could easily find it.

No,

I don't know.

Again,

yeah, because A.

Steele's the one that, from what we can tell, did most of the damage.

But whatever was left over, the punk didn't do, Steele did.

So, you know, he's not the main event star.

He's not the world champion.

He's not the guy that drew million-dollar gates.

So

I guess they got to do something to make some people happy.

But we will see when it gets down to, as

Well, as everybody down south used to say, when it gets down to nut cutting time, we'll see what happens with the Mount Rushmore of the situation.

Twinkle Toes, the Cookamonga Kids, and Punk.

Let's talk about the big news of the week.

Apparently, now

the information has trickled out or dripped out, or trickled down and dripped, or whatever the case, that Punk and AEW are negotiating, potentially.

This has not been confirmed.

We haven't seen documentation of this, but that's the story going around.

Punk and AEW are working on a contract buyout

and that the holdup is a non-compete clause.

So

the one

good thing

that has happened to this company over the last year, they get a major star.

He produces ratings.

He produces gates.

He produces good television.

He produces good matches.

And Tony Kahn cannot keep his fucking nursery school

from fucking up this goddamn deal and pissing off his star.

And now, instead of telling Twinkle Toes and the Kookamunga kids, hey, why don't y'all go back and play with your fucking schoolgirl friends in Japan?

Because I need real talent because I'm in a promotional war and my ship is taking on water.

Now he's going to talk about Tapunk about a buyout.

Does that mean he's going to bring the other three back?

Or

will he buy punk out and just fire the other three for putting him in this position to spend probably a few million dollars at minimum

to

never have his biggest star on his television again?

Your thoughts before I get too pissed off.

I mean, it's very sad that this is the ending and this is where we've come to.

We'll talk about the non-compete because that's the very interesting aspect of this because no one has really thought about the idea of CM Punk going to WWE until all this has popped up.

I will say, it's almost poetic.

It's almost as if it was scripted perfectly.

CM Punk debuts in Chicago with the first dance.

Same building that Michael Jordan had the last dance in.

And they just had that ESPN documentary series, The Last Dance.

CM Punk has, in my eyes, and everyone has their own opinion and their own thoughts, has almost a perfect year.

His feuds, his promos, his matches, even the ones I wasn't crazy about, they told a story.

Nothing was phoned in.

And

we had one amazing year.

And he went out in the same place he had the first dance.

He had his last dance.

And what better way to script the ending?

Wins the world championship, knocks out the troublemakers in the back.

Now he's going to get fired for it.

I mean, the problem is it was set in stone in a way, because the only way he was,

the only way this was going to work is if Tony decided he was going to take charge and put his foot down.

But Tony had,

you know, Tony had Mega who wanted CM Punk fired.

And Jericho wants CM Punk fired.

So who that talks to Tony is going going to bat for CM Punk?

Nobody.

So now it's Tony's thoughts versus all these people saying fire punk.

You know, it's sad.

I hope this isn't the last we see of CM Punk.

That's my other thing.

I, as a wrestling fan, I tremendously enjoyed his last year.

Like I said, everything.

It brought a sense of realism to that program.

And people reacted to it.

So it's not just me saying it.

Other people felt it too.

I just hope this isn't the last we see of him.

And

if this is the last of him in AEW, if all this is true, it was the best run anyone's had in AEW.

And you know, that is actually perfect because you were right about everything you said.

He came in, he produced in every metric, television ratings, gate, pay-per-view, match quality, promos,

everything.

The only person in the three years of this television program, everything he did pretty much made sense, except for the shit that he had to coexist with.

And then he basically, on his last night, wins a world title and beats his shit.

And a steel along with him beats the shit out of the fucking guys running their fucking pie holes behind his back and tells the public what he thinks of them.

But it should have ended up with those three being exiled and Punk after his injury.

And here's another thing that I don't even think we've said this.

Maybe somebody else has brought it up.

He had to know

that he had torn his, what did they say, torn a tricep or whatever the injury was.

Okay, he had to know that that was in some way damaged.

And do you think he's sitting there at fucking midnight or whatever it was in Chicago going, all right, I've put up with these motherfuckers.

I have tried to talk to them and I've tried to talk to Tony about it.

I've done this business for these people.

I've brought these eyeballs on this company for these people.

I've put up with these children.

And now I'm fucking probably hurt.

And I'm tired.

And I'm old, and I work with children.

And you know what?

I might not get the chance to say some of these things in public again that need to be said.

So here we go.

Give me some muffins.

It makes sense now

because the one thing that you can say about punk and one thing that I admire about him is he doesn't take bullshit.

He will tell you you're full of shit.

And he did.

He told the whole world who was full of shit because he couldn't get it rectified any other way.

So

now the problem is Tony has allowed his lack of leadership and the people he's chosen to do business with, who are all,

as we've mentioned, mortified that real talent came into company and showed them up and outdrew outdrew them and outperformed them,

and they couldn't take it.

And they wanted to get him out of the way.

And now, if Tony does buy this contract out and Punk doesn't come back, but the other Jackoffs do,

then we will see again that he doesn't want this business to get bigger.

He wants to play with his action figures and promote indyrific

outlaw-style wrestling because that's what he likes, and that's what all of his friends want to do.

And he'll pay them as much money as they need to have

to be happy to do that for him.

On the other hand, we will have an amazing passive-aggressive war between the Jericho side and the fucking elite side.

We haven't had that yet, and that'll be coming up.

You know, the locker room angles are more entertaining than what's on television.

I wish they'd just feed the security camera to TBS, but here's about the non-compete.

Right now,

I would have said at any point in time,

no punk doesn't want to go back to the WWE.

Punk doesn't have to go back to the WWE.

He's still got his fuck you money.

He's going to get bought out for a lot of money if that happens here, or else if he comes back, he'd get paid a lot of money.

Nobody's going to be doing any fucking GoFundMes.

But

now would be the perfect time for Triple H

to show the world

that he will put business in front of personal feelings.

Because again, one of the greatest lines in the history of wrestling, it was never uttered on television, was what Punk said to Triple H in the locker room, I don't need to work with you, you need to work with me.

But that's not,

I hate you and your family, and I hope Stephanie gets run over by a herd of thundering goats or whatever.

Although there may have to be some apologies for firing him on his wedding day, that may be

one they have to apologize for.

But no, see, here's the thing: there's no real apologies that Triple H needs to ask for.

He needs to offer some.

And I would imagine.

That's what I'm saying.

They fired CM Punk on his wedding day.

He needs to offer some apologies.

But who was in charge?

Vince McMahon.

And

eight years later, whatever it is,

now, depending on what this non-compete clause is,

Triple H can go and say to the world and say to CM Punk, it's all changed.

We're about business.

Let's get together.

It's all about business.

No personal feelings.

And.

Have you met Nick Kahn?

Have you met Nick Khan, one of the slickest guys in the world?

And here's several million dollars.

And then they've got the goddamn top talent that AEW has had on their television over the past three years on their TV.

And

that he, and

well, and Cody,

one of the EVPs, the top in ring star,

depend on what happens in 2024, maybe MJF, who knows.

But it would make a statement to everybody else in the business, in the locker rooms.

They'll make up with anybody and they got money to spend because they're serious and it's a new regime.

And

so now, again,

they would make Tony look like an idiot at a point where his whole company has already made him look like an idiot multiple times.

And even if it's six months from now or whenever he gets finished with his surgery.

So that's probably what the holdup is.

Tony Kahn said, well, if I'm going to pay you, then you shouldn't be able to go anywhere for however long your contract was for.

Well,

maybe I'll just sue you for your EVPs busting in my locker room and causing a goddamn fiasco.

So we'll see how it plays out.

If you're Tony, are you demanding a non-disclosure agreement?

Jesus Christ, we know that Tony sleeps with those under his pillow.

Right, but that doesn't mean you have to agree to it.

Yeah,

are you buying my contract back or are you buying my silence?

Those prices may be different.

I hope he doesn't sign an NDA.

Well, everybody's going to know what happened, just not how much.

Nobody needs to know how much.

But everybody's going to know what happened.

And now,

again, if you are a serious talent in the wrestling industry, if you're not just...

A young rookie that has no other chance but to get on television or to make any kind of money, or if you're not an old veteran that just wants to coast and laugh at the goofs that you're sitting looking at and get a bunch of money from a billionaire, there's no reason to go to AEW.

If you're a serious talent that will outdraw and outperform the EVPs and their friends, or if you're not in their clique and you're not in their social circle

and

they don't like you,

well, then you're fucked because the boss is not in charge.

So it doesn't matter whether the boss signs you to a contract or not, then you're putting your career in the hands of Matt and Nick Jackson.

I understand.

Sit in, according to what I've been reading on Twitter or on the internet, sit in on the production and booking meetings.

Twinkle toes when he's there, sits in.

Talk about whistling stranger in paradise.

These morons sitting in on a wrestling booking session.

So that's who any serious talent would be placing their careers in the hands of.

A feckless, ineffectual leader that lets his talent run rampant over him, and a bunch of jealous, indie-minded, as you said, passive-aggressive little fucking twats that basically run anybody off that either is not in their friend circle or that can get over them, which is almost everybody.

in a serious wrestling business.

If the Bucs survive this, you think,

who do you think comes out on top?

Them and Jericho, in terms of backstage politics?

Well, but now, see, remember, you're still, the Bucks are still dealing then with an old master when it comes to conniving.

And Jericho is, you know, he's very, he's very polished with that.

So, and, and also, we know that he loves coups and insurrections.

So,

keep an eye.

He could be storming the gates of Daly's place anytime now.

I'm sure Hager will be with him.

Hager will be right there alongside of him.

So, CM Punk, I mean, here we are.

If this really is the end, how do you look at his AEW run?

I really couldn't disagree with anything that you said when you ran it down.

His matches have all made sense.

Somebody's, oh, but he botched a fucking

Buckshot Lariat or big shit.

Look at that program.

Maybe CM Punk wouldn't have looked so good over the last year if he was on a good television program, but he wasn't.

But everything that he did made sense, was serious, didn't insult the wrestling business.

It drew money.

It drew ratings.

The promos, whatever.

Everything you said.

That was something they could have built off of if Tony was smart enough and if the other people weren't working against him.

But because they're so schizophrenic, because they have to have their falderall and their best friends hugging each other and the goddamn lizard man and all that Southern California PWG bullshit that nobody wants to fucking see,

that's why they tune it out by the hundreds of thousands, they were working at cross-purposes.

If you'd have had

a young, serious

lineup of talent ready to go in some interesting situations underneath guys like Punk and Danielson when they were both doing ratings,

then you could afford to lose some of the top guys because people would be more interested in your newer talent now, with the exception of MJF, who gets himself over.

Again, who

on the male or female side is more, is in a better place now, is more over, is more popular, is more of an asset to the program than when they made their surprise appearance for the first time or when they first showed up.

Nobody.

Well, I tell you, apparently, from what we have heard,

the investigation,

the big and boy, thankfully, the January 6th Commission didn't do this

crummy and superficial of a job, but the January 6th Commission was comprised of professional people seeking the truth instead of children

forcing a self-fulfilling prophecy on a billionaire that's in over his head.

The investigation into the media scrum and the aftermath, we are hearing rumors has been completed.

Of course, we've already heard A.

Steele has been let go from AEW because he's the only guy that could actually handle himself in a fight, apparently.

Besides Punk, he's the one who did the other part of the damage.

We're also hearing rumors that CM Punk is being talked to, at least, for a buyout of his, I assume, multi-million dollar contract.

And there is also now

a story going around that the non-compete clause may be a hang-up in those negotiations because

apparently Tony wants to have his punk and eat him too.

And it's funny how the whole thing has worked out to benefit the people who instigated the whole thing in the first place, our friendly EVPs over at All Friends Wrestling.

So we thought we'd just talk about all of this stuff here today that's coming out or has come out.

And now Larry, potentially.

Larry was apparently injured by the door being flung open or flying open or whatever.

He

either that or somebody took a shot at Larry because he had to have two teeth removed at a veterinarian's appointment several days after the incident.

And people are now starting to shoot that story down

because they haven't heard anything about it up till now.

But Brian, maybe that's where we ought to start.

Because when this whole thing happened,

everybody was told the people who were involved in the fights, people who were trying to break up the fight, Everybody that had any knowledge of the incident or was going to be investigated or was going to be interviewed for the investigation.

they were all told, don't say anything,

do not say a word.

But all the stories and the leaks that we have heard come out

pretty much

in an unauthorized version since then have been from the Kookamunga kids' camp,

where we haven't heard anything from punk side, as some people are calling it.

So I wonder why that is.

Is it because maybe maybe again,

oh, I don't know, one side is not running around, running their dick liquor behind everybody's back,

trying to instigate shit, going to friendly journalists and friendly news outlets

that will get their side of the story out to paint them in a more sympathetic light.

And one side is doing that.

I just think it's been a little uneven.

We're the only ones out there in the broadcasting world that's trying to look at this from the obvious face value of it,

which is that they didn't want punk there from the start.

I'm talking about the Hardley boys and old Twinkle Toes because he exposed them.

And Jericho.

Well, hold on.

These guys, he exposed for their limited audience.

He exposed them because Tony Kahn

was sold a bill of goods that these guys were the elite in wrestling because of the,

you know, fucking overly hysterical, but unfortunately not numerous indie and New Japan wrestling fans in this country that were just in the bubble and just enamored of them.

And he thought that he could fucking put together a national wrestling promotion on their backs.

When he found out those backs weren't wide enough to carry it, he had to start bringing in stars.

They got somebody who was doing numbers,

and they were jealous of it because

not only was he doing bigger numbers than they were, but he was doing it with wrestling instead of their brand of convoluted Western swing dancing.

So, those three guys

needed punk out of there because he was exposing the whole myth of the elite as this massive, powerful force around wrestling.

Jericho,

think about this.

Without punk, and if MJF suddenly somehow becomes a babyface,

not in terms of being popular with the people, but in terms of acting like a babyface and destroys his appeal,

then without punk or without MJF, Moxley and Danielson just want to wrestle.

They don't want to get in anybody's way.

They just want to.

Moxley wants to do his Moxley matches and his garbage stuff, and Danielson wants to be nice to everybody because he's a wonderful guy.

So that means Jericho's a star if Punk's out of the way and MJF is

maltreated by the booking.

These guys would rather be the big fish in a fucking fish tank than one of the fish in the Atlantic Ocean.

And that's what it's been.

And they're the ones that ran their mouse from the start.

They're the ones that were doing the campaign against punk from the start.

All the friendly journalists that had a stake in whether or not the elite were exposed as indirific, fucking not ready for primetime players were more than willing to

lend a sympathetic ear to their viewpoint.

And it's funny how it's all worked out.

The one guy that came in and got in everybody's way from having Tony's ear and or what other appendages that they have of Tony's in their pocket

and

being the

star of our show,

that one guy, boom, he's out of the way.

And we hear, oh, well, punk was poisonous and punk was cancerous.

That's why all those people that we quoted on the the podcast a few, well, it's probably been a couple months ago now when this all happened.

The FTRs and the Hobbses and the Starks and then Darby Allen, I think, everybody had great things to say about punk.

A lot of those people don't seem to be on the program a lot lately either.

Maybe the EVPs felt betrayed that their brand of

amateur hour

dog and pony show was not being praised.

And instead, the big star that came in and was helpful to all those guys because they were serious about their business and they praised him for it.

Well, geez, they must be on his side.

So we got to get rid of that talent, too, because they'll poison our little fucking clubhouse.

They'll tell people that we're not as big as we think we are.

Who did the investigation?

Have we found that out?

Did they hire?

I mentioned at the top of the program, Inspector Clizeau.

I wonder if,

obviously, Colombo was not involved in this.

Maybe Leslie Nielsen, Frank Drebbin.

He's done some work in wrestling before.

Was he heading the investigation?

What was the third-party firm?

Was it a legal firm?

Is there there someone who conducts internal corporate investigations that was contacted or consulted?

Certainly they didn't leave it to their legal girl, Megan, because she was actually involved in the incident.

She was a mega, mega.

She's a megastar in that world.

Yeah, so Megan was there in the room because she apparently

trickled down along the down the hallway and and joined the EVPs when they

now a lot of people say they didn't bust the door down so I don't want to give people that impression because nobody has ever said when somebody without knocking or without doing in a silent calm manner

quickly opens a door and comes in in a loud fashion nobody's ever said well they busted in the room

But she was with them

because that's already been talked about.

Well, behind them, but yes she was well she was behind them

but she was with them she wasn't trying to hold them back apparently

so was she interviewing or being interviewed

certainly they didn't have the in-house legal department that was also on the scene as a witness conduct the investigation

into

i guess i don't know whether the executive vice presidents, are they her bosses or she's their boss?

No, she's their boss.

Are they co-bosses?

She's number two in the company, according to Tony.

Oh, she's number two.

Well, good.

Well, then she's even doing better than Patrick McGooon and the prisoner.

See, I like to just do those references every once in a while.

So

if she was, if she's number two, then she would be

investigating herself and her

direct employees, as well as an independent contractor, that those direct employees that she was in the group with

when they got in a fight came at.

So it sounds like a recusement would be in order there for something like that.

Do we know that Punk was an independent contractor?

Well, actually, we don't know that because now

he's never made any mention of it publicly whatsoever, except he alluded at the scrum that I'm trying to run a business here, but but then Tony Kahn

grouped him in just, what, a few weeks ago with a statement of people who did office work and had office positions in addition to,

you know, the wrestling.

So,

you know, it's funny how the other three

went out and got EVP tattooed across their fucking forehead as soon as they got the job.

And if Punks had it, we've never even heard him mention it.

Maybe it's because it looks bad publicly when one of the wrestlers is also one of the bosses.

Kind of makes it look like you're just there because of your job rather than your talent.

But anyway, so who did this investigation?

Was it the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, or Trickle Down and Drip?

Shyster, Flywheel, and Shyster, one of these major

investigative groups?

Who did the investigation?

Well, we don't know because we have heard that it was an internal investigation.

Then we heard it was a third-party investigation.

There are people who think that the television network wanted an investigation.

And again, Mega, who, based on what I believe I read from a Tony Khan interview, was number two in the company.

She's involved.

And there have to be questions asked about how close she is to wrestlers and how close she is to the wrestlers involved in this or anyone else who is suddenly opining openly about this.

Well, but now, hold on now.

Maybe they didn't need to talk to her at all because she was just there and I witnessed the thing, but they didn't talk to all the people that were there and I witnessed the thing.

Because remember, A.

Steele's wife, who we've now established, apparently from all accounts, that inside the locker room, we weren't talking about a big NBA locker room with 20 people in it.

It was a private locker room inside the room before the door was flung open

were

CM Punk, A.

Steele's wife with a cast on her leg, and Larry the dog.

And they didn't talk to A.

Steele's wife.

That's been reported.

Nobody talked to A.

Steele's wife in doing any investigation.

And the reason given was, well, she wasn't involved.

She was, I think the quote was a non-factor.

Well, that's the same reason why after the Kennedy assassination, nobody wanted to talk to Abraham Zapruder.

He didn't have a goddamn thing to do with it.

I may have gone over the heads of some of the kids there, but a lot of the older folks will get it.

The point is, when is the last time an investigation was done of anything and one of the direct eyewitnesses that was there from the start was a non-factor because they just saw it, but they didn't take part in it?

What?

Imagine what story

that might be told if they were talked to.

Kind of like, well, yeah, I was sitting there with a dog, and suddenly these fucking nuts busted in the door

in some fashion, and everybody went to fighting.

And Punk was outnumbered and fearing for the safety of his friend's wife and his dog and himself.

And then there came Megan in.

That's what she would have said, and that's not what they want to hear.

So we didn't talk to one of the main witnesses.

Is this why they're talking to Punk about a buyout?

Because Punk said, okay, you're not interested in the real story.

So just fucking give me my money and I'll be on my way.

Can I be honest?

If I were CM Punk or the way I'm looking at this, this is where CM Punk has them dead to rights.

Because

if they're really trying to buy them out of that contract, okay, take the money and go.

But if they want to non-compete, what do they have as leverage?

If CM Punk wanted to sue them over all this, if there was some sort of suit over any of this, he probably has a good idea what will come out in Discovery.

AEW doesn't want shit to come out in Discovery that would hurt the way people see their executives from mega to omega and anyone in between.

And I think

AEW

doesn't really, they shouldn't play too much hardball with Punk because the last thing they want is people knowing various things and it will come out quickly.

Well, because you're not just talking about things related to this case, if there's a civil suit,

and by the way, civil suits also do not depend on beyond a reasonable doubt, but on a preponderance of the evidence,

they would also be allowed to,

through

discovery,

be able to focus on or get details on or testimony on on any

improprieties or

bad business, as Dusty would say, involving any of the EVPs

before this or in the past as a history, as a precedent.

Oh, yeah.

You get your lawyer to contact them and say, make sure you don't delete any emails or text messages because we're going to go through all of them.

That's basically how that works.

So, yeah.

But in any way,

and then, of course, a lot of people got upset when they found out that Larry was injured in that he had a couple of teeth loosened.

He'd already been scheduled to go to the vet, and the vet discovered that a few days later after the incident.

And that's now just coming out.

And, of course, since that sounds bad, because

somebody hurting a dog, there was a lot of shit going on there real quick.

And now they're trying to shoot holes in that

and say that that's not factual.

Well, yeah, just because

that that hurts their fucking case they put together very carefully.

I have something here from the Wrestling Observer newsletter that just came out.

The story of the dog being hit with the door had not been told to anyone that we are aware of until the story broke on October 26th, which many suggested was timed due to the Bucks and Omega returning to television.

And perhaps with the result of the investigation being what it was, an attempt to take them down when the investigation did not do so.

Oh, good God.

He's so dramatic, Uncle Dave.

I mean, let me just comment on

again.

We just mentioned nobody has been hearing Punk Side.

We've been talking about it, again, from what we can

observe empirically.

But there's been no leak of, well, Punk Side says this and says that, except A.

Steele, when they fired him, they said he was surprised to hear that.

Because he probably figured, well, I mean, sillily enough, he probably figured they were actually going to do a legitimate investigation.

I got to be honest, he was going one way or another.

He shouldn't have been surprised.

That's for sure.

Somebody on Twitter said A.

Steele comes in, gets his first job on national TV, says fuck on TV, does a great segment.

kicks the shit out of the EVPs and leaves.

He's my hero.

But anyway, but besides that, we haven't heard, well, punk's side says this and that.

No, the story that we heard from the start

was pretty much the story, and there were multiple witnesses that we don't hear from punk, but we hear from,

you know, blink, winking, blinking, and nod over there that thank God they didn't have nuclear secrets during the Manhattan Project in World War II, or we'd all be speaking German.

These guys can't help but fucking spill their guts because they are so butthurt all the time when anybody recognizes their flaws and shortcomings.

And they need their pussies pampered on a constant basis.

So

anyway, now they're trying to shoot down

poor Larry getting his fucking teeth knocked out.

And he has more, correct?

Because again, this is not even a journalist trying to say, okay, well, this side says this and this side says that.

Here's the facts, like they do on the wrestling news every morning.

Yeah, by the way, if you want wrestling news without any opinion or spin, the wrestlingnews.com or wherever you find your favorite podcast, look for Arcadia Vanguard's The Wrestling News.

None of this.

Yeah.

And Dave continues to act like a...

This is a yellow journalism campaign.

He's William Randolph Hearst, and he's fucking pissed off, and he's going to use the power of his newspaper to make sure that his friends are not ill-thought of.

Keep going.

What else do you have to say?

Well, a couple things here.

In terms of the dog.

From the observer about the dog, a completely made-up story, said one person regarding the story.

Punk's losing and is desperate.

There was a multiple weeks-long investigation, and this was oddly not discovered?

Hmm.

Also, it's...

Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on here.

Number one, Punk's desperate.

Punk's desperate because he's in a bad position.

He's either going to come back to work and make multi-millions of dollars, or he's going to be given multi-millions of dollars not to come back to work.

God damn, I'd be almost suicidal.

Secondly, a weeks-long investigation, and we've heard nothing about, maybe you should have asked the other person that was in the room.

Also, it so happened to be mentioned the moment there was news about the elite possibly coming back.

It's insane that people would even humor this.

The dog story is a complete lie, said a neutral party who was in the locker room seconds after the incident occurred.

Seconds.

When the altercation was happening, Punk was a total psycho.

Kenny picked up the dog to save.

Wait, wait, wait a minute.

You mean he was a guy in an actual real fight instead of one of these fucking fruitcakes?

fucking skipping around doing round offs and cartwheels?

No, they meant he was wearing his mother's clothes and stabbing people in the shower, but let me give you a quick quote here.

Kenny picked up the dog to save him from being hurt and gave him to Mega.

Oh, boy.

Mega was holding the dog, screaming at Punk to stop.

Punk didn't even register that his, quote, baby was being held by a stranger in the middle of a fight.

It didn't stop him one bit.

Oh, because I'm down on the floor in a fight with a fucking guy, and there's chairs being thrown, and all this other shit's going on.

But when some girl is screaming, stop, stop, I instantly am aware that, well, the dog is in trouble.

Some girl that already hates you and already has chosen a side.

Some girl who's already friends with everyone who hates you.

The whole thing is slanted.

So again, now

she was there on the scene to be,

you know, to be handed the dog or whatever.

She's got in her hand that the boys are handing her these days.

Hold on, let's take a step back now because we kind of painted the picture weeks ago based on everything we had and the wrestling news had information that wasn't out there that we broke and we still have information that hasn't broke that we know about but what we could say is punk's in the locker room with his dog with a steel's wife and into the room come all these people the young bucks omega mega christopher daniels cutler nakazawa all of these people Pat Buck got suspended too, didn't he?

Pat Buck, I don't think he was in there for the initial bunch of people that went in there, just like Ace Steele wasn't in there for the initial bunch of people that weren't in there.

Guess who else wasn't there, by the way, everyone?

Chris Jericho.

I just want to point that out because I've seen a lot of things now.

There was someone hiding, trying not to get involved until it was time to give a speech and look good.

And his name was Chris Jericho.

And then he comes in now.

Hey, you.

Hey, everyone.

Let me be the hero here.

I'll make sure this gets out to the observer.

Tony, it wouldn't have happened if I was around.

All these people came in the room.

Is the idea, idea, you know what?

I can't believe what Phil just said in that scrum.

I'm going to give him a talking to.

Come with me.

Let's all go there and just stand above him and lecture him.

Like, what is, if it all had worked out perfectly and there were no punches thrown and no bites and no dog teeth on the ground or whatever the hell's going on, what was the best case scenario?

We're going to go in there and we're going to all confront him, all of us friends who have been here since the beginning, skipping along together.

What was the best case scenario?

I mean, I'm asking you a serious question.

What was the best case scenario here?

I have no idea.

I have no idea how they thought that would work because for one thing, and it's something I think we mentioned it a while back, but

punk tore it, what a tricep, bicep, some type of muscle.

I saw it reported as tricep.

Whatever the fuck it may be.

So now he's sitting in it.

And we mentioned this a couple weeks ago.

That's probably why he was like, well, you know what?

I'm going to go ahead and say some fucking things need to be aired out in public because I might be back on the shelf for a while.

But

he's sitting there and he's hurt and he's wore out and he's pissed off.

So let's, now that he's said that and is clearly ready, if they have a problem with it,

instead of, again, let's wait for Tony Khan to finish his media fantasy and bring all the rest of his action figures back to the locker room and go to Tony and say, what are you going to do about this?

But instead,

the three main people that he's pissed at,

two of their stooges,

another couple of miscellaneous

locker room AEW

personnel, and

Megan

all rush in at the same time.

And I would assume we're not saying, excuse me, Phil, could we talk for a minute?

You think there wasn't probably something like, hey, what the fuck are you talking about back there?

And then boom goes the dynamite.

So I don't know what they think.

Again, when it happened, I was okay.

You don't go.

The guys asked you to come.

If you got a problem, come see me.

You don't go unless you got a problem.

And if you got a a problem and show up, just because you're the one that gets fucking knocked out first

is not the other guy's fault.

You showed up.

It was a specific issue.

You don't show up because you're an executive.

I mean, let's go back to that.

Well, yeah.

I don't care.

He called us out.

Hey, if you're on the street, go fucking deal with it.

You're an executive and you're actually in your office.

I'm just telling you, that would be the first

impression that one would get if one had made an offer like that.

That when here comes everybody, well, not only are they going to fucking take me up on it, but they all want to go at the same time.

You know, the other thing, a lot of people have brought it up, so I think it is worth saying.

CM Punk, very openly on TV,

would wear shirts to support women's rights and various things.

He is the only one at all of them.

I don't want to make this a political thing, but he is certainly a different thinker than the Young Bucks camp and the Jericho family.

Oh, yeah.

And he was a different presence in the locker room.

And there are people who think of AEW as just a place for you and your like-minded friends to play your games.

But sometimes people don't want to play your games.

It doesn't mean that they're going to ask for your game to be fired.

They're just going to make their game better.

But we've seen,

we've seen throughout history with the Young Bucks, we've seen who the insecure people are who constantly have to get their side of the story out there.

I've personally witnessed the way they've lied about you publicly and things you've said or done.

So, I mean, Sam Paul.

And they always do it in the way that, well, obviously so-and-so wants to be involved with us, but they're so whatever the fuck.

Or obviously, so-and-so is jealous of all of our success.

They still,

they're so warped, they have to frame themselves in their own minds somehow as this pinnacle of achievement for people to be able to associate with and deal with them and interact with them.

But

again, from the start, we saw what it was going to be like.

You talked about like-minded, whether it's politics or wrestling or anything.

That's right.

That's why I said it wasn't just about politics, but it just happens with these guys, but you have to be like-minded.

Business-wise, business-wise,

punk comes in.

You didn't see him interact with pockets.

That was obviously because why?

Why would you spend all that money on a real star and then fucking

do that?

You didn't see him interacting with the trampoline cowboy crowd.

You saw him working with the young guys that he thought he could either elevate or teach something to or make something,

you know, some advancement in their career.

And again, the Hobbses and the Darby Allens and the MJFs and the blah, blah, blah.

And he didn't fuck with the people who weren't serious and were hopeless

in their spots.

And that's all the friends of the EVPs.

And let's, while Punk

came in and drew million-dollar gates

and record pay-per-view buy rates.

No, it was Adam Cole and Adam Page and everyone knows.

And ratings,

et cetera, by whatever metric that you want to use.

Meanwhile,

when the and also tried to advance people and was praised for it by those people,

what do you hear from the EVPs that are supposed to have a vested interest in this business?

Well,

they're the

California Raisins.

They wouldn't put FTR over for the belts when it meant something for them to have all four of those belts because the ones they have, the three they have now are absolutely meaningless in the United States of America.

The three belts they have would have meant something if they had the AEW belts because that's the company that they're on and the show they're on.

And they had the chance to do something right for business there when FTR was so hot and the people were tearing the house down for them.

But instead,

they bring back Twinkletoes from his hiatus, which wasn't nearly long enough, and they scratch all those plans so that they can have the six-man belts and they can play with their friends.

And they work it in such a way that FTR isn't just like obviously jobbed out and beaten.

They just disappear and they're just marginalized and they're just allowed to float around.

And where do you see them?

Most of the time you don't.

And we'll put

the belts on some mid-card mid-card team because that's not like everybody knows they're not as good as we are.

We just won't put the one team that the fans were starting to think is better than us over.

That's the kind of example of the professionalism of those guys.

Then you've got old Twinkle Toes.

I don't really think he knows enough.

I don't think he's smart enough.

to do what Jericho does and manipulate backstage and bury people that are a threat to him and or put them over and kill them with kindness and ask for their shit to be changed so they won't be a threat to him.

Because Twinkletoes doesn't know how to do that, he's an idiot.

What he does is he just sabotages the company with the women's division,

which is a complete joke and has been from day one because he cannot put his personal feelings aside and recognize that not everybody is a complete fucking weirdo mentally like he is, and wants to see

on their television.

Nobody wants to see her wrestle, and nobody wants to, as Dusty Rhodes might say, make sweet love to her, either one.

So, what the fuck?

That's the kind of professionalism you get from these guys.

If you're a friend, you're fine.

If you're a talent, you're fucked.

So,

now everything, as I said, has worked out so well for everybody except Tony Kahn,

whose business continues to suffer.

The EVPs got rid of the threat that they had that exposed them already, but Tony ain't realized it.

Jericho's cleared the way for the canned ham to be the most prized product in the whole store.

Yeah, and the other thing is, Tony,

Mega has Tony's ear on a lot of the non-wrestling issues, and Jericho has Tony's ear on way too many of the wrestling issues, but Jericho also has Mega's ear.

So Tony's kind of getting tagged teams.

And what does Mega have of Jericho's?

I don't know about that,

but basically Tony's not necessarily, I would think, being advised from a good impartial party.

Well,

when you're grabbing people by the ear or the nose or throat or any other appendage and getting in there with your thoughts, sometimes they register on weak-minded people.

Should Tony have called their bluff if the Bucks and Omega?

Let's just start with them.

Jericho could be a separate one because, you know, Dave's reporting top guys don't want to work with CM Punk.

And it was previously reported that the young Bucks did not feel safe or did not want to work there if Punk was there.

They were even thinking about reaching out to Triple H.

Oh, good God.

Oh, good God.

We don't feel safe.

Wait a minute.

Hold on a second.

We don't feel safe.

If Punk is around, he may come and whoop us again.

You fucking pussy.

Hey, let me take that the other way.

The idea that people are jumping on Punk because one of the stories that came out, I believe, in Nick Houseman of Wrestling Inc.

reporting, he reached out to the punk camp that Punk didn't feel safe in the ring with Adam Page after Adam Page went into business for himself during that promo.

I can believe that.

Some people are looking at that and saying, oh, what a pussy punk.

He's a tough guy and told this, not realizing.

He's not saying he wouldn't have won the fight.

He's saying that's that's not what you're supposed to do out there on pay-per-view.

Well, no, and besides that,

but hold on a second.

Hold on a second.

There's completely different fucking trust factor involved.

When you're working with somebody and you're laying there and they're on the top rope and they're going to jump, oh, golly, I was just that far off.

That could be a fucking story.

Do you want to lay there?

and trust that guy when you've already had words with him because he's already gone into business for himself and he obviously doesn't like you because he's goddamn enamored of one of your enemies and they apparently play pocket pool together or whatever the case.

That's different.

A match trust is different than, oh,

I don't want to go back to work and be in the locker room and be in the same building with Punk because he might come and find me and track me down and kick the shit out of me again.

What's about, don't run your goddamn pie hole and it won't happen again.

But is anybody really going to fucking make the case that Punk is going going to, if the Bucks and Punk are in the same arena, that Punk is going to, well, I didn't get enough last time.

I'm going to go over there and kick the shit out of them again.

No.

But there's a lot different trust that has to go into a match.

And

the margin of error is nil for a lot of shit that's done to begin with.

And how are you going to disprove a guy if he says it was an accident?

At the same time, he's made his point.

That's the kind of trust that Paige threw out the window.

So,

again,

these fucking amateurs and/or the fucking Twitter crowd that's never been in a goddamn ring and don't even understand how this shit's constructed,

and the ones that they've listened to for what they have learned is the goddamn self-trained contingent of trampoline cowboys that don't know how the wrestling business is supposed to work to begin with, either.

So, they get their information from people who've made it up.

This ends part one.

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