Holiday Special: Chris Jericho's Christmas Meltdown

Hello again, friends.

The great Brian Last here, you there.

We are back with another special episode, special clips, whatever this is, breaking news coverage of the Chris Jericho Christmas War of 2023.

Here on the front lines with myself, of course, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr.

Jim Cornett.

Well, it was breaking news, so I thought I would break something.

I got clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.

Here I am stuck in the middle with you, Brian.

One day,

one day after Christmas, and the only reason we didn't have to do this on Christmas was because we just refused to.

Just for the sake of it.

Just for the sake of it.

But we said maybe we'll make it through our Christmas vacation.

I feel like we're being driven down the road in a fucking...

van by Chevy Chase, but

we made it one day after Christmas before somebody, as we, I believe, predicted before our break, said or did something extraordinarily stupid.

And here we are.

And here we are.

I want to take everyone back one year.

It was between Christmas and New Year's, our rest week where we have some omnibuses, where Chris Jericho decided last year to...

for whatever reason, lash out and come at me, not knowing that the first omnibus that that was about to drop was the mind of Chris Jericho.

Pointing out to everyone what adult he is.

Adult.

That's a word that's not used enough.

Here we are one year later, again, between Christmas and New Year's, literally 4 a.m.

on Christmas.

Santa's not even done with North America yet.

And Chris Jericho starts a war, starts a Twitter.

I don't even know what to call it.

It's so ridiculous.

This whole thing is ridiculous.

Can I explain how I was first alerted of this, to this, and where I came in?

It had already gotten started.

And I'll explain that.

And then you can

back us up and give us the preamble to this.

Because,

again, you say it's Christmas morning.

And, you know, since I'm a senior citizen now, I don't

keep regular hours and I'm healthy because I'm away from the wrestling business.

I don't sleep as late as I used to.

I get up fairly early in the morning.

So instead of waking up Harley Quinn and Stacey from their peaceful slumbers,

I thought I would come up to the office and I'd look and see what was going on.

I know that you're a beast.

You're a maniac.

You never rest.

You never stop working.

You were going to tweet some clips and

tweets the shows.

And I was going to retweets them, things like that.

Maybe wish somebody Merry Christmas, which we we actually did later on from the castle here.

Yeah, I tweeted out in Christmas poems.

Well, and in proper times, also, we tweeted people Merry Christmas in the broad daylight, not under cover of darkness in the middle of the night, like some people do.

But anyway, so the first thing I see when I turn this on

is

we are both, you and I, even though you're blissfully slumbering at that point,

we're being inundated with retweets of various people

saying

various versions of what the fuck is the matter with this fucking guy, right?

And look what he's done.

And it's fucking

Jericho at 4:20-something a.m.

on Christmas morning,

decided to pick that time

to tweet, not even in response to someone tweeting to him,

not even in goddamn response to anything he's involved with.

He just decided to slander and name call and cuss not only our friend Stephen P.

New,

but also now to bring A.

Steele's wife, Lucy,

into the whole thing as a and called her disgusting, grouped her into disgusting people, Brian.

I can't even imagine how much money Brian Danielson will be finding this man for.

I would have to think it would be in the millions of dollars for this,

again, Christmas,

4 a.m.

on Christmas.

On Christmas.

And actually, to go even a little bit deeper before you do in this,

he was tweeting in response

to an article that his own website, whoever maybe run that piece of business, ran

that he then said is bullshit and began the whole thing in the first place.

Let's go back a second to there because this is a part of the story I wasn't completely aware of because I've never paid attention to whatever this website is.

Web is Jericho.

I thought it was just a fan site or something.

The article written by James Ryder,

CM Punk and A-Steals lawyer reveals only person involved in brawl out without an NDA.

And

if you go to the About on this website, Web is Jericho is a rock and wrestling news website founded by Chris Jericho, a renowned wrestler and musician.

Oh, come on.

The website offers breaking news, interviews, and exclusive content for rock and wrestling enthusiasts.

With its engaging and informative articles, Web is Jericho has established itself as the go-to source for fans seeking up-to-date information and in-depth analysis on their favorite bands, musicians, wrestlers, promotions, and events.

This site's commitment to delivering quality content has earned it a loyal following among wrestling fans worldwide, if we say so ourselves.

And they are.

They are saying that themselves.

Well, this website apparently founded by Chris Jericho, Chris Jericho retweeted that article saying,

hold on a second.

And basically this,

to my mind, was not really a revelation.

This piece of information has been out there before that Lucy Guy, A.

Steele's wife, that's her given Christian name,

was not under an NDA.

That's not even an inflammatory or debatable statement.

that Stephen P.

New,

the voice of the voice of the voiceless, that represented punk and a steel in this

whole debacle, was quoted as saying in this article.

So let's just clear that up.

Stephen has done a few interviews recently.

I know he did one with Rip Rogers, apparently, where he said this.

I mean, as a matter of fact, this is the way it is.

By the way, it is nice to hear that A.

Steele's wife now has a name because for a long time she was the original Nick Wayne's mom.

Yeah, and A.

Steele's wife.

A.

Steele's wife was there and a dog.

Well, everybody knows Larry.

Stephen's been talking about it.

The story's out there.

Jericho retweets the WebIsJericho Twitter account and says, I didn't sign one.

Dot, dot, dot, dot.

As if anyone's scared of what he has to say.

Because that's kind of like a, I didn't sign one.

The threat is there.

I'll say

what I saw.

He didn't see anything because he wasn't even there.

He was hiding in the hallway waiting for shit to go down.

He waited for everything to end so he could make his grand entrance like Liberace and scream at everyone.

And interject himself.

It was two years ago.

He ran up when everybody was finished and yelling and interjected himself.

And now he's interjecting himself two years later.

Every single person involved from every single side said that Jericho was not there when it happened.

He was hiding in the hallway.

So

reconcile with that.

I can believe he saw people storming past him and was like, oh, I'll fucking lay back and let him kill himself.

I'm going to look like a hero tonight.

But no,

no.

because hold on, is he not?

Wait a minute.

He is not, he's not now just saying he was there when they rushed in.

He's saying he was, I was in the room is his quote you're about to read.

And it's already been established that no, no, he wasn't.

He wasn't in the room.

He wasn't even there.

Well, Stephen Pinu responded to I didn't sign one by Chris Jericho by saying, it's in your employee handbook unless you have a special one.

We can figure it out.

To which Jericho responded, again,

at 4 a.m.

in the morning on Christmas, maybe he was still wearing his Santa outfit covered in booze, who knows.

Hey, Steven PNU,

I don't adhere to an employee handbook and have never had one in four years of working for AEW.

I've also never signed an NDA in my life.

Ever!

So stop trying to be a bully and making egotistical fantasy brags for your clients and start doing some research before you make blanket statements about your buddies.

Because I saw, and this is in caps,

everything

that night,

including how Lucy and her husband and best buddy acted and what really went down.

And since I was in the room and watching her and everybody else the whole time,

I know exactly what really happened.

And considering you weren't there and I was,

maybe you should shut your mark ass up because what really went down was disgusting.

I will now finish this bottle of gray goose.

Can you believe this?

At four something in the morning on Christmas,

he's not only

under the influence of some type of

rage

about something that was not inflammatory because it was factual.

And he not only tweets the elongated full paragraph fucking tweet with 500 words or whatever,

he lies,

he calls Lucy disgusting, Stephen P.

New a mark ass,

and

inserts himself into the situation that he was not in.

What is the matter with him?

What is because he sees another opportunity to get into Tony's good graces because Jericho's position there right now is not what it was a few years ago.

That's what it is.

Well,

that's kind of what I thought too.

And that's why I'm up at 7.15 in the morning.

I don't believe that's unreasonable.

And as I said, I didn't

mean to get up on Christmas morning and start slapping people's wrists, but I couldn't believe that he's at this point not only lying, but lying about shit that's that been verified for fucking ages and calling Lucy, of all people,

a god disgusting group at what her and her husband and best buddy did.

It was disgusting.

And trying to tell people that Stephen P.

New is lying when he made a factual statement.

Everybody that was involved in the incident has signed an NDA except for Lucy.

Jericho was not involved in the incident.

He was in the arena,

but he wasn't in the room because the only people in the room,

from everybody's fucking goddamn testimony and/or statement from the start, Punk and Lucy and Larry, when the EVPs and their merry band came in the door in whatever manner that you see fit to believe.

Not with Jericho, who was in the hallway watching it all happen.

And if Jericho was one of the group that would have barged in, then he would have been suspended too, because everybody else was, even the pull-aparters, right?

So he wasn't in the room.

And again,

he's so, he's already got, well, and that's why I said this.

I tweeted him back.

God, Chris, it's Christmas.

Slap Tony's dick out of your mouth.

You've got his dad's money the next 10 years, and the buckaroos will still let you play with the cool kids.

You don't have to tell the truth.

Just quit lying.

Punk is sorry he made a difference at AEW business and you haven't.

That's the whole problem.

That's why he was out to undermine Punk from the start of it and why he jumped on this bandwagon bandwagon after running up late enough to not be technically involved so as he'd get suspended

and now he's

and of course slap tony's dick out of your mouth was metaphorical he's verbally fillating him and massaging everything tony has because at At that point in time, I believe that Chris was probably way too drunk to be able to give a decent blowjob.

So it was only metaphorical.

On a country road.

And maybe that's what happened.

He was on a country road and lost track of time.

It was the aliens again.

It was a time-shifting, weird, everything went black and he woke up and, hey, my phone's on.

What's going on?

But again,

the best part about it was as soon as he said, I don't adhere to an employee handbook and have never had one in four years of working for AEW, Brian, what did you tweet back?

Oh, I tweeted a copy of the handbook.

I have it right here.

Right here.

I have the whole thing.

Yes.

What does it say on the cover of it?

It says, all elite wrestling talent playbook policies and procedures.

It has the revision date and it's page one of 44.

It is a confidential report.

I've had it for a long time.

I previously let people know I had this when,

I believe last spring, CM Punk put something on Instagram to, if I remember correctly, defend himself from something that was being said by Dave Meltzer or someone.

Yeah.

I forget the exact situation.

but I put out there a couple sections from this dealing with talent being told to take down tweets or what's allowed to be tweeted or Instagrammed or whatever the fuck.

And then Dave put out that someone leaked it because they were upset about CM Punk having to take down his tweet.

No.

It was given to me long before that, Dave, and I put it out there to try to explain to people what may be happening.

Again, I don't know where your lie came from.

I'm still waiting for my apology.

Let me know if you could do that or if you're waiting for Shabbata's brain to be removed again.

So

that happened then.

And then we're come back now here to this.

Well, wait a minute.

Hold on here a second.

Do you think maybe this is all innocent miscombobulation of circumstances?

Jericho has never seen the...

talent employee handbook for rules and procedures because maybe he's maybe he's just showing up every week week say toy you got room for me they never bothered to bring him into the fold officially maybe that's it no this applies to all talent at least according to this and there's lots of interesting stuff in here dealing with nepotism there's a whole section on that

cyber security anti-harassment workplace violence prohibitive conduct

domestic and other violence response procedure interesting stuff in here a lot of interesting stuff well but well now here there's a but Jericho says it doesn't apply to him oh it doesn't apply to him whether it does or not i don't know but to the question of whether or not there is a handbook a playbook whatever you want to call it here it is and it's real for those who think i made it on my computer i don't have the time nor the desire i like hitting people with real shit

And if they want to argue with us whether we got to real one or not, we could read some more of that confidential shit.

Yeah, we could read a lot of things.

Yeah, we could read a lot of things.

You'd be surprised by some of the things we got.

The fucking leaking sieve that is AEW.

Oh, wait a minute.

I thought you were talking about my leaking carbuncle.

But now, hold on a second, the things we got.

Let's go back to, before we talk about why Stephen P.

New is a mark ass, because he got his clients financially and

mentally satisfied with this whole deal at the end.

But first, Lucy.

Now, what did Lucy do?

According to every story we've heard up to this point,

Lucy, who had her leg in a cast from a broken ankle or shin or whatever it was, was sitting there trying to mind the dog when suddenly all this stuff began to take place.

This is the first time that now she has been grouped in with her husband and his best buddy in disgusting activities.

Now, what is this woman

sitting there with her leg in a cast dog sitting?

What's she going to do about it that might be disgusting?

Is she a member of the Gracie family?

Well, she must have looked suspicious.

Jericho said he had his eyes on her the whole time.

Yeah, he was watching her.

I was watching her and her buddies.

What's he watching most of the women very closely?

But, nevertheless,

is she some kind of karate expert, or did she train with the ancient masters the death punch that killed Bruce Lee?

For heaven's sake, poor Lucy, is she secretly a ninja in disguise, Brian?

Oh,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

hell are you doing?

Oh, Lucy was kung fu fighting.

That girl was fast as lightning.

In fact, she was a little bit frightening because she fought with expert timing.

There was funky a steel and cancer CM Punk.

They were biting for real and dropping some bucks.

It's an ancient Chinese art that may elite the popcorn farts.

It's called karma, you bitches.

It made Tony shit as britches.

Everybody was kung fu fighty.

Is this what we're expected to believe now that Lucy was in there doing damage and gouging people's eyes?

Did she try to

do the Brazilian taint hook on somebody?

And it was just the dirty tactics of Lucy Guy.

You, what the fuck, you drunken fucking sot.

The fuck.

uh well according to chris jericho she was a part of the disgusting antics in there that he was watching watching not participating in or helping watching he could see right through the wall with all that shit going on through one door whatever he's drinking causes him to be able to see through walls ladies and gentlemen why isn't this talked about more Could that have been from the alien anal probe when he was accosted or inducted or abducted?

On an old country road.

On an old country road.

But nevertheless, let's go back to Stephen P.

New,

who was slandered in this.

The old country road, Brian.

Why

did AEW have CM Punk and A Steele

sign NDAs in the first place if they were so in the wrong, so at fault, so egregiously

in the danger zone?

If they weren't desperate for them not to tell everyone what happened.

What were they going to do if they didn't sign the NDA?

Were they going to go out and say, well, boy, whole world, we really fucked up.

Here's what we did.

No, they were going to say what happened to them and why they responded.

And

if it came to it to go further in court, then the discovery process that we've often talked about here on the program, even though I am just a small-town bird lawyer and you are merely a builder of financial empires, discovery would have spoken to misconduct

by the EVPs in that incident or in others unrelated that would be seen to develop a pattern of conduct.

And they didn't want none of that.

So for that, what?

Hold on.

And for slandering

A.

Steele's reputation, he was made happy by

the settlement

to go away and fucking pursue other endeavors from a job that he was fired from twice for no legitimate reason.

And CM Punk, I think as we've all seen, if he was so at fault and Tony had him under contract

and could keep him from going to the other company to main event WrestleMania

and could have suspended him and said, well, fuck this.

I'm suspending you.

Whether with or without pay, but you ain't going to walk in the the door of the other company.

No, he was in fear of his life and CM Punk got out of there and is now the biggest star in the world.

Release the food.

So Wembley Stevens, he knew was on the side of the victors here.

The point is, we'll get back to Jericho in a second.

Everything had happened.

AEW could very easily just fucking put this to bed.

Let everyone talk.

Release the footage from Wembley of Jungle Boy being throttled.

All this stuff's in AEW's hands.

AEW doesn't want everyone knowing about it.

And there's reasons for that.

I mean, most corporations wouldn't want, most corporations don't have their in-house fighting go public like AEW constantly does.

But do most corporations, like on Wall Street, break down it where three of the EVPs go into the other guy's office and his shit's on anyway?

Yeah, and that needs to be said too for the people who think like someone like me is blindly defending Punk.

I'm not.

I think Punk was in the wrong too.

Punk shouldn't have done what he did,

and they they shouldn't have stormed his fucking locker room to start with.

Period.

Period.

Executive vice presidents being led by mega with their stooges stormed his locker room.

I say he shouldn't have done it.

If they went up there what would you have done?

That's the problem.

That's the problem

with his arms

in the air and fucking, what the fuck?

As soon as you hear what the fuck, after you've asked somebody if you got a problem, well, what the fuck boom you're sitting there on the couch injured and these people storm your dressing room after you just talked about him in that thing they storm your dressing room at a minimum at a minimum to dress you down

that's like the nicest thing it would have been like let us tell you what we think of you in front of mega that was what that was instead what happened AEW can let us all know right now, release everyone from the NDAs, or maybe Lucy will talk.

We'll see.

But But did one of the Bucks go in there and raise his hands?

Did one of the Bucks go in there and make a move?

Everyone wants to believe that the innocent, harmless Bucks are the innocent, harmless Bucks.

You're the most naive people in wrestling history.

The most naive fan base in wrestling history.

And that does take in some territory.

But nevertheless, so

that's what happened.

Stephen P.

New made a factual statement that the only people, the only person involved in the incident present in the room, blah, blah, blah,

that's not under an NDA is Lucy.

And Jericho's website reports that.

And he loses his mind on Christmas morning and starts lying, cussing people, calling.

Lucy disgusting because now of apparently her presence with a pulse in the room at the time.

That's the only thing anybody said she did.

Well, to be fair, he didn't say she's disgusting.

He says it was disgusting with what happened.

He grouped what she and her husband and best buddy did.

It was disgusting.

So anyway,

what the fuck is going on with this fellow?

Besides, tell me what other motive there would be besides to make sure that Tony knows, oh, I'm your guy.

I'm your guy.

You know, you signed me for 10 years.

I'm going to be here till I'm 62.

Hey, now's the time to do it.

Shit's falling apart again.

Now's the time to do it.

If you're going to do it, if you're going to make a move to try to get into Tony's good graces or get back to where you were with Tony, now's the time to do it.

The barely suppressed grin when he wished Kenny a

just

stay out as long as you need, Kenny.

We'll be here for you.

Just don't rush back.

You got him out of the way.

The buckaroos are fucking hiding.

Don't rush back.

If he has diverticulitis, he's going to get a colostomy bag, isn't he?

I'm not a medical expert.

And the last thing I want to practice on is Kenny's guts.

But nevertheless,

the point is,

everybody's out of the way.

So Jericho is making the big run

to be Tony's guy.

And Danielson is one

other major injury array or awry or away

who knows what.

So Jericho, again, trying to cement, hey, Tony,

it's Christmas, but I'm cussing random articles that say bad things about you, kind of.

It's Christmas and I'm fighting with CM Punk's lawyer on Twitter.

Yeah.

Again, what's Brian Danielson?

Hey, by the way, Chris, again,

your wife,

January 6th, two years ago, attended the insurrection like it was a fucking pleasure trip and was there to support the potential overthrow of the United States government and bragged about it with pictures of her other bleached, blonde, vapid Stepford wife friends on Twitter or Facebook or whatever the fuck it was.

So

how is Lucy disgusting when your wife was

a revolutionary, for fuck's sake?

If any of them had been any better of it, we'd goddamn be in a pickle today because they'd have actually succeeded.

Did you see Nick Houseman, who's the reporter who I guess now has his own website?

We've talked about some of his stuff in the past.

He's been involved with the CM Punk reporting.

He's out of Chicago.

He tweeted to Jericho when Jericho put out that long missive.

What about the NDAs you make other people sign?

What do you think that is?

That's interesting.

Why would Chris Jericho need anyone, man, or let's say female?

Why would Chris Jericho need anyone to sign an NDA?

Male, female, or person.

You know, I've only signed.

I'm never going to live that down.

Never, ever.

Never, ever.

I'm trying to think.

I think I signed one several years ago about a project that didn't have necessarily anything to do with wrestling per se.

And then the only one that I've ever signed in my life is the one that Tony asked me to sign when he first talked to me a year before this fucking thing went on the air, which, by the way, I still have a copy copy of and

was dated sometime in 2018.

But

I've never felt the need to ask anybody to sign one myself.

Because if I didn't want somebody to know something, I didn't trust them, I just wouldn't tell them.

These aren't the only NDAs in place.

Why does AEW want so many people to sign NDAs after dealing with Tony?

What is it about dealing with Tony or management and AEW

that causes them to try to lock people up in NDA?

And by the way, NDAs are something you can get out of.

It's just a very costly process.

You're going to have to go to court and you're going to have to pay a lawyer and they're going to try to delay and stall and cost you more money.

Everyone knows how this works.

But why?

Why would AEW feel that they need to lock everyone?

Does it help AEW more everyone making rumors about this every few months?

Or just letting the story out there once and for all?

Well, just anything.

Do you think that Tony or whoever's obviously doesn't, in all the movies, his father would have some

British fellow with a very stiff upper lip that's tasked with keeping an eye on Tony and not letting him go completely out of his mind, right?

Cadbury?

Cadbury.

So do you think it's that they don't want anybody to talk about what it's like dealing with Tony for real on the record or just interacting with or his personal traits, or whatever,

is why everything's NDA'd to death.

The social awkwardness.

You have more fucking NDAs than Vince.

I mean, come on.

And I bet a good deal less pussy.

I guarantee you, Vince McMahon has had more and higher quality pussy than Tony Khan has ever dreamed of in his life.

Well, I'm not going to brag about what pussy Vince McMahon's gotten because who knows how he got it.

He's a weird sicko.

Let's not pretend he's not.

Oh, come on.

I'm telling you, just a young Vince McMahon with willing participants would have still probably outpaced Tony Khan at this point in his life.

Personality of a bad game show host.

I don't know about that.

He needed the money and the fame.

He wasn't getting much.

Bischoff is the one that looked like John Davidson.

Bischoff, I could see going to a bar and pulling a girl.

Bischoff's got charisma and personality, especially when he was younger and he had hair.

A line of bullshit a mile long.

Exactly.

That guy's getting laid every single night.

Vince, he's the awkward guy at the bar who's like, he's got a big chest.

All right, who's that guy?

We've never seen him before.

He's not talking to anyone.

He's awkward.

He really is laughing at things that no one else is talking about.

Yeah, I don't know if he's leaving with anyone unless he stays to the end of the night.

Well, there you go.

Vince always did have that ethic to stay in.

But nevertheless, the end of the night apparently came at that point for Chris Jericho.

That was the last we heard of him on Christmas, wasn't it?

That was the last we heard of him.

Stephen Pinu replied, Thank you, Chris.

We will just attach this tweet as exhibit A.

Merry Christmas.

And again, Chris Jericho

embarrassed himself, whether he realizes it or not, embarrassed the company.

Hopefully, he's smart enough to realize that.

Brian Danielson's finding people for social media.

I can't wait to hear what they find, Chris Jericho.

And it's a shit show over there.

For everyone who wants to blame all the problems on CM Punk, or God forbid, Jim Cornette,

they're not there.

The problems are in the house.

The problems are the people in the house.

So, again, a shit show, a complete shit show at AWS.

And by the way, just for the sake of the kids keeping track, because Jericho does have the people that, you know, for the kind of people who like that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing those people like.

But his tweet.

Got about 7,000 likes.

Mine got about 6,500 likes.

And Stephen P.

News, the exhibit A tweet that you just mentioned, got like fucking 4,000 likes.

Because people are like, they were

more gobsmacked at Jericho than anything else that just the timing of him and the obvious not only groveling before the billionaire Richie Rich that he's his last lifeline.

but also the fact that he had to be

in some way impaired to do that at fucking 4.30 in the morning on Christmas.

So

maybe somebody can help the Ocho

there before he goes loco

and put him some, maybe Tony, give him a 28-day vacation as a as a thank you for.

Where's his wife?

Probably in bed, either that or packing for the next insurrection.

Storm Canada next, Chris.

See how that goes.

Honestly, they could probably take Canada.

Well, it depends on the province, if we're going to be fair.

But again, Chris Jericho, happy, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Thank you once again for causing everyone to want to hear what we have to say about you.

No one was talking about you or thinking about you, you idiot.

No,

it's not a thing.

It didn't involve you.

Your own website printed the goddamn article along with others that

Stephen made a factual statement that had nothing to do with you and you go off the fucking deep end about it because why Chris why because everybody's thinking about you you don't have to worry they won't forget about you in one day I have some breaking news Jim oh god on Twitter Larry the dog has announced he does not have an NDA either

and he was in the room that dog was in the room that is well until Mega and Kenny Omega took him and ran away with him like bad

was the only dog in the room until Megan showed up.

That's not what I was saying.

Well, it certainly would have been funnier.

That would have been great.

Let me just say, I mean, when it comes to all of these people and the AEW executives and the way it's been run, for the people that still, we've said it before, who still believe in the AEW dream, or maybe more appropriately, the myth of AEW and what it was and what it was going to be.

It's them.

It's not everyone else on the outside.

It's the fact that it's poorly managed and it's poorly run, that they have the wrong people in the wrong positions, that they have people there who are not responsible or adult-like.

And, you know, you're saying, oh, you're a stupid podcast.

Yeah, I am.

But goddamn it, me and just about most of the audience could run that place better than how it's run.

It's pathetic.

And for the people still pretending who don't want to call it out and say, Tony's really bad at this, who are you helping?

Who are you helping?

AEW succeeding is important.

It's an important part of the wrestling ecosystem.

We don't want it to go away.

We need it to be good and find a way to succeed.

And it isn't happening because Tony keeps surrounding himself and listening to the wrong people.

It's pathetic.

And more people need to come out and say it.

And that's

again, that's what I've been saying for the past five years.

We're never going to get another shot at this in our lifetimes.

A big budget national cable television wrestling promotion worthy of a at least the thought of competition for the WWE and some type of bidding war for talent.

And I knew what was going to happen because Tony, since the day before day one,

has insisted that he was going to run this thing

and he was going to write it.

And it's good.

And no,

I'm sorry, all good, well intentions.

This is the biggest budget version ever

of shit we've seen before.

A fucking Mark wins a lottery or a Mark finds an angel, as Burt Prentiss might say,

and it flames out in normally weeks or months because of the limits to most people's tolerance to pour money down a well.

But this

is a bottomless pit.

But that's what we're not going to, they've muddied the water.

They've screwed it up.

I'm sorry.

It's not going to get better because Tony's never going to give up.

Give up control, give up writing, give up booking, give up being whatever the fuck he's doing.

And he doesn't know how to pick talent.

He doesn't know how to pick executives.

And we'll talk about in a second.

And that's why I was so offended at the start when they actually went through with it.

As he's actually going to do this

and it's actually going to fuck everything up.

And I will not live long enough, nor will many of the people listening to me to see somebody get another chance because they're going to sit back and think,

oh, the last guy that tried to do this, the TV stations, the sponsors, the networks, the fucking whoever, sometimes even the boys.

It's happened over and over and over again across the decades.

Wherever it happened,

it didn't help wrestling in that particular area.

It hurt it.

When you have bad

wrestling on television that's very visible, it hurts all wrestling.

Why do you think when

WCW started sucking in the early 90s, Vince kind of started sucking too,

not just in terms of creative, but in terms of houses, gates, pay-per-views, awareness of wrestling.

And every time in every territory that you have something that people see

or the TV stations get screwed over by or lose confidence in only this time it's not WSIL in Harrisburg Illinois it's goddamn national cable network

the fuck that's what I've been offended by I knew he's gonna fuck this up because I knew that he and the people that he picked were not up to it.

Boom goes the dynamite.

And that's where we are today.

And it said, and again, everyone wants to point fingers and blame everyone else.

They want to blame external forces like us.

We hear specifically.

External innocence has been lost.

I understand.

You know, Jim represents, as I've said before, the voice of a lot of people.

You know, forget about Jim as the manager.

Jim is the fan.

A lot of fans who hate what is happening.

It shouldn't be those people are out of touch.

Fuck them.

And that's the way it's been treated.

And look at what's happened to AEW.

And the other problem is this.

Tony, because they're now looking for everyone to blame and it's all about the fans and people that aren't there blame them instead of blame everyone in the house including tony they're talking about how things are different now because challenger brands it's not that easy no what's different now is triple h is kicking your ass you're not against vince anymore you're against someone younger and better at this than you When I spoke to him five years ago, I didn't even hear challenger brands, it's always difficult, or whatever you just said it was oh this is gonna be this is a foregone conclusion I'm gonna kick their ass this is gonna be the greatest wrestling ever

that's what it

no no at best it was gonna be a long shot and you needed experienced competent people in charge of your departments instead It was, hey, kids, let's put on a show with

the wrestlers you were enamored of and their indie darlings.

And you wanted to write a national television show when your previous writing experience tony was for two other guys on the internet

that's why i rolled my eyes and i continue to this day and nothing has proven me wrong

because it's not good and it's not getting better

and they don't know how to do this and

And now there's been turnover

in

various departments of people who also we predicted didn't know how to do this at this level.

Imagine that.

That's right.

One final word on all this to tie it all together.

Chris Jericho, if you really want to earn your money, help Tony.

Find a way to actually help him.

Not just jump in when you think it's advantageous to you.

Because you're another guy just like Tony.

When shit's crazy, you're on Twitter saying everything's great.

When things are falling apart, you're saying, oh, it's overblown.

Everything's fine.

Why should anyone believe you about anything when you've lied so many times about everything?

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But, Jim,

in other AEW news, it's a banner week for AEW.

Once again, they have a pay-per-view coming up.

We're talking about CM Ronk.

Well, prophetically, the AEW pay-per-view is titled World's End.

And

boy, they may fulfill this.

That's right.

Well, it has come out in the last week.

I'll go with a story that came out first.

Sean Rossapa Fightful broke that AEW vice president of live events and touring, Raphael Morphy, is set to finish up with the company.

It then came out that He's leaving at the end of December.

He'll be working for the Barclay Center, the home of the New Jersey Nets in Brooklyn, and he'll be booking events in there.

I don't know if Ringling Brothers is coming there or anything, but he'll be the person they deal with.

I would have to think that's a much better fit for him

because, despite everyone saying he's a great guy and great at his job, I've heard nothing but complaints from people off the record about the job he's done.

And if you look at AEW and their touring schedule, unless he was told by Tony Khan to book certain venues and then book a bunch of venues within a close distance, nonstop for weeks at a time.

He didn't do a good job, but he's now leaving.

What do you think?

It was an interesting strategy.

I'll admit that.

I understand the idea of

because Raphael Morphe, I met him.

He used to work on JR's live events and he's worked for the WWE.

He may have worked for TNA.

I don't know.

He's been around and done various sports things.

But I understand in the old days when the WWE would go off and do three or four days of TV in a row, you'd be routed.

You'd be in Louisville, Nashville, Indianapolis, or Calgary, Edmonton, or

two or three towns in a row in the same area.

But not when you were flying back and forth in between them the next week or the following weekend or whatever the,

they literally would go to the same state.

but be in it once or twice a week, every week for a fucking month.

And then I assume unless they bought condos for all those people,

a lot of them were going home in between.

So I don't know what that strategy was.

And

as we've talked about,

it's inexplicable why they've been running these NBA-sized arenas when they don't do a seventh or an eighth of a house in some of them, except there has been

you know, a drastic popularity decline in their live events and TV taping, the ticket sales.

And you do have to book buildings like that way out in advance.

But when have they ever

justified booking 20,000-plus-seat arenas in the state of Kentucky or in some of these other places where they've just

so

the

spin on it was he was going to be closer to his home and his family and work in a specific building there, and that's that's fine.

But

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I don't know how you could say that their live events routing

and the buildings they've been booking

and even the local promotion of same have been good overall.

Now,

they said he was instrumental in promoting Wembley Stadium.

You think?

And Arthur Ashe.

And Arthur Ashe.

Well, but Arthur Ashe, okay, they're in his home market.

He got them a stadium and they were hot enough the first year.

And of course, they're going to promote a 20,000-seat stadium and an 80,000-seat stadium.

The thing is, they're dying a death of a thousand cuts in fucking Des Moines, Peoria, and fucking Poughkeepsie.

So I think they need to

not only find, and now apparently they need to find somebody new fairly quickly, but they need to rethink their strategy about what arenas they're running.

and how they're routing themselves.

So, because it doesn't do any good to be in Dallas on one Wednesday night and in Houston on the next Wednesday night.

What the hell?

They did fucking, it may have been when they did Arthur Ashe last time.

It was like Arthur Ashe and the week before it was like Newark and then they did Mohegan's Sun, like right around, like everything was within driving distance.

It made no sense whatsoever.

Bankrupt all our local fans and then we'll move on to the next region.

And then they kept running, I brought it up, they kept running big AEW shows on Long Island on Jewish holidays, which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

But we'll see what happens.

Like I said, a lot of people.

Raphael Morphy, he doesn't sound Jewish.

I'm going to guess maybe he's not, but I don't know if that's the

siding factor in the whole thing.

Well, I mean, he probably was unaware of the.

It'd be like me going to fucking Brazil and trying to fucking book dates around.

You'd say, when's Carnival?

I don't want to book myself in the middle.

Or maybe you do.

I don't know.

I guess you'd get a crowd if you booked yourself in the middle of Carnival, right?

Well, if you were in the middle of whatever, you might get a crowd.

That's like the Calgary Stampede of naked Brazilian women.

Generally, whenever you book a town for wrestling that's in the middle of a festival, you're going to die 15 deaths because it's in the middle of a festival and they didn't include you.

Well, the festival that is AEW will, I'm sure, continue on the road, but...

A new strategy is needed and everyone's saying that it was his choice.

He decided to leave to be close to his family.

It just so happens that it coincides with a time where it's an industry-wide joke because of the pictures that come out of these buildings.

So we'll see what AEW does there.

Well, now, and we got to get a, I get, we got the great meter.

Hold on here.

I got to try to find a VP counter.

What about, could this be the

there you go.

The first EVP to leave, obviously, was Cody Rhodes, one of the founding fathers, and that was coming up on two years ago now.

So one EVP,

but that's not, you got so many more EVPs.

You can easily pick up the slack, right?

Although we've seen that since Cody left, apparently he was one of the more VIPs of the EVPs.

But Cody was gone.

And then

I'm, well, QT, he just finished up, but he announced a while back, QT Marshall, another, a fine young man, I'm sure very dedicated.

I've worked with him before, was very eager, but was totally inexperienced.

And he was tasked with trying to make sense, apparently, of Tony's rambling booking and format the shows.

And he was proud of that, the way that he, you know, he formatted those shows.

But QT decided, even though he was a vice president of talent and this and that and the other thing,

QT's gone.

And then I'm not sure.

What was Kevin Sullivan's position?

Yeah.

Well, that's what was Kevin Sullivan, not the wrestler folks, but the production guy who now is known more outside of the interior workings of wrestling because he has a very familiar name, but two different people.

But Kevin Sullivan, who had built their production staff and their post-production facility out from the start and had been with them and has worked for TNA and has worked in a variety of other sports and everything.

Well, the new guy they brought in from the WWE, well, he fired Kevin Sullivan.

So if Kevin Sullivan was a VP, he's.

And then we got Raphael.

Raphael was the VP of the arena booking and the live events and the blah, blah, blah we just talked about.

And Raphael now is on his way to Brooklyn to.

Well.

But that's not the end of the list, is it, Brian?

Jim, the hits just keep on coming.

AEW, this past week, at the same time, I think it was the same day that we found out that Raphael Morphe was leaving, Dana Massey, the chief marketing and merchandising officer of AEW,

the wife of Matt Buck, Matt Jackson, Matt Massey, it was announced that she's leaving the company.

And when word came out that she was leaving the company, the reaction was kind of, I get it.

Merch is a problem.

Everyone's heard stories.

There's not enough merch.

There's not enough variety.

The merch looks like shit.

There's not enough merch for big shows.

We've heard complaints from fans.

We've heard complaints.

We've heard complaints from wrestlers.

That's right.

And she was in charge of that.

So we thought, okay,

Tony may be trying to do something here.

Maybe he's cleaning house and trying to

get things in place for 2024.

Again, he's still in charge, but something's happening.

And again, this was the original.

They all had a dream.

Hey, kids, let's put on a show.

Well,

what about old Dana?

Well, she can't really act, but boy, she did a great job sending out all of the Buckaroos t-shirts when they were on the Indies so she can be in charge of the merchandise of a nationally televised touring wrestling promotion.

Let's just do that.

Hey, let me ask you a serious question before we get to more about this.

How many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in merch money have they left on the table because they were unprepared they left a million dollars probably on the table at wimbley they've left multi-millions of dollars even at the big shows it was a joke going when the

when they would tour that the fans would send pictures it was almost like the

the lonely virgil at the table.

They would send pictures of empty merchandise stands that had a couple of generic AEW shirts and a few of of the

stars individually.

But most of the time, if you wanted a t-shirt of your favorite wrestler, you couldn't get it at the arena.

You had to go online.

And if you tried to get it at the arena, they had so few stands open and such low stock and so few people selling.

This is all obviously not our experience.

This is what has been reported by countless fans that the lines were long to get what you could get, and people missed the matches trying to buy shit.

And then we get pictures from people about look at the shirts they make.

They think people want to buy this.

Just these embarrassing, who's going to wear a shirt?

It says fat ass and bad attitude or big black and jack.

Like they make these ugly shirts.

Remember the Britt Baker black eye shirt?

Yes, I forgot about that.

Yes.

That was a good idea.

So merchandise is.

There's no, well, think about this.

Can you imagine?

They could have sold replica dynamite diamond rings for MJF.

They could have sold the glasses and the shit for the acclaimed or the acclaimed talking microphone.

Again,

their shit is limited.

It looks amateurish.

It's not in

prominent supply or good enough supply at the live events.

And

it's unimaginative in that they're not monetizing all the things.

If they had Don West from TNA, bless him,

he was cutting up the canvases from the pay-per-views and selling them three-inch squares at a plaque for hundreds of dollars.

I mean, it was goddamn incredible.

I think they made more on merchandise than they made

wrestling.

Yeah, AEW's merch department has been a disaster, so they could pretend that it hasn't been, but give me a break.

We hear from wrestlers, we hear from fans.

It's been embarrassing.

So I think that Mrs.

Massey there got one of those Felix Unger invites.

He was asked to leave and never return.

That request came from the boss.

Please don't do this anymore.

But now she's being babyfaced because that's right.

That's right.

You know, a few things have come out.

Can't be anybody's fault from the buckaroo camp.

Well, Matt Jackson, I guess, went on Instagram and he put up an image of her with one of their kids.

And it says,

End of an era.

You were in the first conversations when this was all only an idea.

One of the main builders of our empire.

Always positive.

Our empire?

Always positive in at times

was a thankless job.

That's horrible grammar.

Always positive in at times was a thankless job.

Glad you got to do it all and leave on your terms by your own choice.

I'll say that a few more times.

Totally, not that anybody wanted you to go and you were not asked to.

And it was completely and utterly what you decided to do when you got up that morning.

What was the line you had of a big swole?

We mutually decided I'm fired.

Yes, yes.

I've talked to Tony and we've mutually decided I'm fired.

It's been fun working with you.

See you at dinner.

So.

Again, Matt Jackson and boy, who has cleaned up on Tony Khan's money more than that family?

Wow.

And look at what they've given in return.

So that was that.

And then Dave Meltzer went on his show, and he had a bunch to say.

We're not going to play this audio.

Thank you.

I'll read this to you.

It is Christmas.

With Dana, it's a funny thing.

If you're in a position where you're a wrestler and you go with the flow, you'll work even if you're unfairly maligned.

I think that with her,

she was someone at one point who expected to do this forever.

I think with everything that happened over the last year with her husband and brother-in-law, vilified and never defended, and never being allowed to defend themselves, and the company never defending them,

it made it really difficult.

They re-signed.

They didn't go to WWE

basically because they got a great offer to stay

and it was the best thing for the family and it was the best thing financially to stay.

They soaked the billionaire for more money while a getting was good and decided to stay.

No, now it's even better.

Now it's they didn't because, yeah, it's only for the money.

They didn't want to be there.

Now we're finding out.

Yeah, but then the point is, is the only reason that the other guys would have given them anything is to get them away from Tony and then they'd have sitting catering.

Well, let me go back to this.

They all agreed to the majority vote.

And that was one of the things they all agreed to do.

They all agreed to, so they stayed, excuse me.

With her, I think it just got too tough.

I'm sure there's other things too, but that was a lot of it.

The fact that she felt they were never defended at a time where they probably should have been defended by the company.

There was the situation where Punk went after her too, and she was never defended either.

When did he go after him?

Did he throttle her or front face locker?

How did we miss this?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Has there been something that I'm not remembering?

Well, Punk went after her too, maybe for the shitty job she does.

If I had to make any guesses.

But maybe, hey, where's my fucking money for the shirts I ought to be selling that are not in the arenas for people to buy?

Maybe that's how he went after her.

But this is really important.

And we can get into the fact.

I mean, we've kind of already said it.

She did a bad job.

And she shouldn't have been in the position she was in from day one.

And she was for no good reason other than to make the young Bucks happy.

And if AEW wants to be a serious business, they need serious fucking people.

It wasn't to make the young Bucks happy.

They told Tony, remember, we heard about this, and he actually believed that because she had done such a wonderful job with their mail order t-shirts while they were just the indie darlings of merchandise sales that well naturally you need to look no further than someone to handle the merchandise for a touring national wrestling promotion on cable tv Who has AEW merchandise boosted more?

AEW or Pro Wrestling Ts?

They used to tweet out the Buckaroos pictures of her sitting cross-legged in their living room, surrounded by stacks of their t-shirts she was mailing out.

I identify with that also.

I've been in a very similar situation numerous of times, and I would not, and I've run my own business quite successfully, I might add, and I wouldn't hire me to be the fucking head of merchandise for the national fucking.

But let's listen to what Dave just said there, because that's really important.

It's really interesting and this goes into the bigger issues with the problems with AEW at its core at its owner

or from its owner in English.

CM Punk obviously not happy about the way things went.

Maybe he's happy he's in WWE, but if you talk about just the way things went down,

the way that you're talked about, the way you're allowed or not allowed to defend yourself, I doubt CM Punk wants to hear from TonyCom.

No.

Now we're finding out the Bucks are even mad.

So what did any of this, after all-out, brawl-out, whatever you want to call it, what did it accomplish if you chased away your biggest star into the hands of your rival when they're at their hottest?

And the people you decided to keep who have also decided to go home,

they're not happy either.

They fed it to Dave that the wife is unhappy because the Bucs were maligned and not allowed to defend themselves.

This is the problem with AEW right here.

But now here's the problem with the other buckaroos.

Let's say,

for the sake of argument, that I have not only talked a billionaire rich kid who's in over his head to give me seven figures a year to not produce very much of anything for his company, but I have also talked him into giving Stacy

probably six figures a year, one would think, given that position.

Certainly.

To do something that she's not capable of doing.

Am I going to let her quit?

I'm going to tell her, no, I don't care if you hate him and want to stab him.

I don't care if you goddamn want to put a fucking pipe bomb in his car.

Wait and get the money.

Continue doing the shitty job you're doing and get all of his money because we don't know how long this thing's going to fucking last.

But no,

they have to have her make a point.

Well, they didn't defend my husband.

Well, you know what?

Your husband wasn't worth defending because he was on the wrong side of the.

How about Lucy's husband, who was coming to help a friend of hers,

or a friend of his, rather, and hers too,

instead of, oh, Tony didn't say enough good things about my husband.

And it really bothers him, so I'm going to quit.

I'm sure they're not sorry to see you go.

Watch that doorknob.

Yeah, maybe there's a reason they didn't defend them.

Maybe there's a reason for that.

Maybe you guys are in the wrong.

And at some point, you need to look in the mirror and realize you guys are in the wrong.

Not just about this, but about a lot of things.

Maybe there's a reason they didn't talk her into staying any harder.

Remember, I've talked to you about the offering the food.

The first time somebody offers you the food, you're supposed to say no, and then they're supposed to try to talk you into it, and then you say yes.

But if they don't try to talk you into it the second time, well, they're pricks.

Yeah, by the way, if we're supposed to believe that Tony Khan wanted her to come back for this job to continue doing what she's doing, that Tony Khan's the biggest idiot ever.

And I don't think he's that stupid.

I can't imagine Tony Khan

that he would want her to continue doing merch.

He's on social media all the time.

He's non-stop on there.

He's on message boards.

He sees all this shit.

He participates in some of it, maybe under some other names, but he sees all this.

He knows people are making fun of his stupid merchandise.

He wants her to continue with the job.

Well, he certainly bolstered a bunch of other people in various positions that they're obviously not prepared for.

He bet it all on the elite, and Omega's now out for who knows how long.

Adam Page is cold as dead, and the Young Bucks went home, and now they're feeding the Dave Meltzer that their wife wasn't happy because Tony didn't defend them more.

Did Tony make the right decision?

I don't know, but I think we forgot to do one thing for Mrs.

Buck there.

What were we going to do for Mrs.

Buck?

Well, the VPs,

we got Cody Rhodes.

We got Raphael Morphe.

We got Kevin Sullivan.

We got QT Marshall.

We got Mrs.

Dana Buck.

The VPs

are leaving in droves.

The problem is, and we'll end with this because this is, we're not supposed to be recording.

The problem is this is an opportunity for AEW

to get the right people in the right roles.

But this is also going to end up the same way because it's going to be people getting frustrated.

And maybe they'll be more professional about it.

But they're going to get frustrated about the environment that Tony has created, fostered, and allows to happen.

And everyone wants artistic freedom to use that term to cover a lot.

And maybe in the early days of AEW, when people thought it was a, I've never seen a locker room like this.

Yes, you haven't been in that many locker rooms, but I've never seen, or sometimes the veterans would say that they've never seen anything like that.

Yeah, there's like real exuberance and excitement when you do something like that.

It runs out.

You can't run on that forever, especially when you have bad management.

And look at where they are today.

And for everyone, I'm going to keep pointing this out.

For everyone that loves to complain about these shows, we've been right all along.

Everything's archived.

Everything's there.

Go back and listen.

Keep listening because we're telling you what's going to happen.

Any final words on the Christmas miracle that is this show today, Jim?

All right.

Well, with that.

There you have it.

We're going to be back before you know.

We can't stay away.

Somebody's going to say or do something.

But

I'm sorry to have been

peripherally involved in this on Christmas Day, but

I couldn't.

I couldn't let neither Jericho statements nor this obvious sinking ship mentality among people in positions of various departments go uncommented on.

And our deepest sympathies to Lucy

on behalf of all of the decent, honorable wrestling fans for her being maligned as disgusting by the

vodka haze of Chris Jericho on Christmas morning.

Well, I guess the only person thankful about all this is Derek, because it was Lucy that got the attention, not him.

But with that, our attention is gone.

For Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian Less.

We'll be back in various forms and with the omnibuses, wherever you find your favorite shit.

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