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Ho, ho, ho, everybody.

It's the last experience before Christmas, and our Holly's going to be so jolly talking about Tony's folly that you'll scream, golly, and scare your collie who's a real dolly named Molly, given to you by a girl named Polly from Raleigh.

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

Co-host to you.

He's got a reindeer with a red nose because even the animals in New Jersey are on drugs.

The great Brian Last, everybody.

Hello, Hodge in.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Weed is legal, so the animals legally, if they could, well, they can't legally walk into a place and buy it.

So someone is giving the animals drugs.

This is a problem.

The herbal essence ain't the thing that's making the noses red on that reindeer crew.

I have a feeling that Tony's got some reindeer.

lined up along with him.

I don't know where this shit's coming from, but boy,

boy howdy, just when we think we were almost paroled, Brian, it was going to be clear, smooth sailing, downhill, uphill, whatever.

We've never resolved that argument.

All the way into our Christmas break.

And then a lot of people do and say,

not in all cases, stupid, sometimes just inflammatory things.

And we got to cover all this stuff again, but we're almost there, baby.

This is the last experience before the

holiday break.

We're coming up this week.

So it'll be the last drive-through before our holiday break.

No, we don't get on a cruise ship and go to Guatemala or whatever the fuck.

I don't know if the people, the cult of Cornette, Brian, I don't know if they understand

how much you and I talk to each other.

And most of it is recorded.

We can hardly bear to speak any more than that.

But do we go in one day this this year, we went four days without recording something?

And that was because I think

somebody was sick in the family or something happened.

I can't even remember.

It was such an odd occasion.

Otherwise, every two days, every three days, we're doing not just little bits and pieces, but this massive, insightful, incisive reporting that we have been come to be known for.

And it can be draining mentally.

So I'd like to say that I'm, you know, I've got the feeling when we take the 10-day break, 10 whole days,

it's like either you went to the doctor and he says all the tests came back negative,

or you've just gotten out of court, all charges were dropped,

that kind of relief feeling as we go into the holidays where everybody's just so fucking jolly.

They're shickle titless, as Mama Cornette used to say.

That's right.

This is your show.

Are you listening to me at all?

I am.

What are your comments about how we're about to take the holiday break and we're about to have a respite from one another where you don't have to speak to me just like I don't have to speak to you unless somebody does something stupid.

And then we've got to do a breaking news update.

Yeah, I'm going to be talking about that.

Which I guess.

Now that I've said that, the likelihood of that, the probability is high,

as are many of the individuals and participants involved in some of this stuff.

So I guess we're still going to be talking to him.

But we're not going to do full-length shows for at least

that short period of time.

We're going to have some omnibuses.

See, I said it right.

You said it right.

Omnibi.

I guess it'd be the omnibus.

Hey, it's a free country and there's nothing wrong with that at all.

They can be whatever they want to be.

and express themselves and love who they want to love.

Well, we have some big omnibuses coming to the podcast feeds.

Also, I think maybe one or two that are just YouTube because of the excessive length of the episodes.

But, you know, we will be back because think about all the things that are going to happen before the end of the year, likely.

We have at least, what, two pay-per-views.

We have the TV rights deal.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Two pay-per-views.

Where are you sneaking this other one in on me?

We got the end of AEW's world.

Don't WWE have something right after that?

No, they did their.

That's till that's the next one is the rumble.

We got a break this year.

I thought they have a New Year's.

They did.

Apparently, was that the previous business administration that decided they were going to do a pay-per-view on New Year's Day and make it a thing?

I don't know.

You know, there's a lot from the swashbuckling years of Vince McMahon.

We need to go back and review again.

That is a word that does not get used often enough.

I've said it many times.

People I know have said it many times, swashbuckling and swashbuckler, all of a swash buckled, all the various usages of that word.

But no, I think we're good with them till the rumble.

The FBI is going to come get him.

He's going to fucking pull a knife out from his teeth and go down the curtains like Fairbanks.

No, no, no, no.

No.

Uh-uh.

No, I'm telling you, it's not going to be that way at all.

He's going to be like Jim West.

He's going to spit a fucking handcuff key out of his inner jowls and he's going to unlock the handcuffs and then he's going to fucking subdue one of the guards with a nerve pinch, and then take a small scalpel or potentially even a razor blade.

He might have a blade, and he's going to shave the guard's skin off his face and use that guard's face skin as a mask to escape.

He'll walk right out of Titan Tower.

No way, it's going to be at the end of Scarface, but instead of cocaine, it's IcoPro.

You know, say hello to my little friend.

I swear to God, the first time

I was in Vince's office kitchen

about three times in my tenure up there.

And to explain this, when you would walk into

the outer office, you'd open these glass doors, this glass wall, and there would be the desk where Beth Zaza, his executive assistant, sat.

And then if you go on past her desk and turn right, you go into the room where that's the office with the windows that people have seen on the documentaries and the fucking Tyrannosaurus, dinosaur, skull, whatever the fuck, all that shit, right?

But before that office door, you could go off to the right and they had to, he had to, they, like he's sharing it with the whole fucking class.

He had

a little bitty kitchenette area

where he had,

you know, you had the refrigerator and you had microwave and you had various things.

If he needed some of his protein powders mixed up, there's the blender.

Or if he needed his goddamn whatever weird shit that he ate and the power bars, whatever, it's all stocked in there.

And a couple of times,

I think just Bess said, oh, grab your a couple of waters before you go in or whatever.

And so I would just walk in there instead of having her get up.

And I saw, this is where I was going with this, this,

whatever the fuck that Ica Pro was, was it a powder?

I saw jugs of it, jugs or jars or containers, whatever they were.

It was a powder, I believe, yeah.

Okay, well, that's what it was sitting on the fucking, it was 1996.

I thought that stuff had been discontinued.

Did he just, maybe he was consuming the leftover after it got sent back from Walmart and

Energy Plus or whoever sold it.

Did they ever get it in stores?

I don't remember ever seeing it in a store.

And I used to do it.

Maybe if it was just a mail order, he probably got the rest of it and just stocked his office.

Maybe that's what it believed in it at least.

Maybe that's what happened to his voice.

All that ICOPRO.

I don't know.

Do you think

should he try some of the woo

energy drink to potentially grow his vocal cords back after the IcoPro damaged him?

Let me stop it.

I can listen to that all day.

All right, baby.

But what do you think is going to happen?

Something's going to happen really big.

I mean, I'm sure there'll be several minor big things that happen, but what's going to be the big thing that draws us back to record for 45 minutes?

You know, I think hopefully everybody would have the

common human decency to just shut up and sit still over Christmas weekend and that week.

I think it'll probably be

who will land on whose face or head on Tony's pay-per-view?

Or

I think they've weeded out everybody that wants to fight with each other,

at least publicly and or physically.

So I don't think we'll have any backstage.

I think there'll be some either ridiculous,

maybe, maybe that's where they reveal who the devil is and turns out it is the returning Marco stunt.

Who the fuck, some acid dream of Tony's or some

flummocks in their in-ring, I think, will drag us back early.

And what's scary is I don't think the devil thing is anywhere near done.

I think this is going to go for a while.

They think it has legs for a while, I believe.

So this isn't going away anytime soon.

You know what the best thing for Tony would actually be?

What, therapy?

A different change in medication?

What?

No one wants to lose their TV deal, but let's just say he did.

And let's say he got to negotiate with other parties out there.

And there are going to be people interested in his company.

And he's a billionaire and he owns an NFL team, or his dad does, and he gets to say he does too because of that.

So people are going to want to do business with him.

If he can get a deal with a streaming service like Amazon,

that kills any future conversation about ratings.

You'll never hear another conversation about quarter hours.

People won't be focusing as soon as the show ends on what did what.

He could just do his show without worrying about that.

Again, no one wants to lose their TV deal.

Habit, habit, habitat, habitat.

How does he make money

comparable to what was supposed to make him profitable,

as we we discussed on our previous program, the one you host,

with a streaming deal?

Because if you're a Netflix or an Amazon and you're competing for streaming dollars,

you know that wrestling gets people in the door.

And if you can have a show and you're going to pay a lot for it a year, but maybe not as much as an original production would cost for just a 12-episode series,

and you're going to have weekly content.

And again, they split money with Warner Brothers Discovery on pay-per-view and stuff.

If they go elsewhere and that's previously been on the table, if I was negotiating with him, I would expect that to be on the table once again.

So it's not crazy to think that there would be a path there and a lucrative one, maybe,

unless WWE goes there and takes that deal.

Well, but then here's the thing: which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

So every fan that he currently has

that supports the company needs to put their money where their mouth is and have that particular service or elsewhere they don't see the program anymore

what percentage of that might be weeded out or maybe they they all maybe all 800,000 on Wednesdays says I'm going to get that thing

I'm going to get that thing but how do you make new

fans that that will subscribe to that service specifically to see your program

that are not already subscribing to that service?

Again, you would think that there would be a

thought-out YouTube strategy.

I think that would be important, even if it's on a competitive service.

You believe there would be a thought-out strategy.

Even if they're on a competitive service, there should be.

And I shouldn't put any credit into AEW social media team.

They tagged Jay Briscoe this past week.

I saw that.

I saw that.

Which was just terribly embarrassing.

I don't know how that happened.

No, not tagged.

He mentioned him.

He mentioned him and said he made a great comeback.

Yes,

instead of Mark.

For those of you who are still dumbfounded with your tongues hanging out like long red neckties, but go ahead.

But a streaming service, these companies have money.

These companies need content.

This is regular content.

This isn't a season.

This is 52 weeks, more than likely.

And in terms of discovery, more kids are on social media and streaming platforms than on TV and cable TV right now.

So, again, if you have a successful social media strategy across all platforms and specifically with YouTube, you could hopefully push some people there, get some new people in the door.

But more and more people have Amazon Prime or Netflix on their TV than ever before.

I'm unimpressed.

If you can't make it on Broadway, baby, don't come to me with your cable access program.

I at least need a good old-fashioned national cable network to salute and look up to instead of this modern tomfoolery, the Wi-Fi witchcraft with signals flying around in the air.

Witchcraft.

Anyways, yeah, go ahead.

Hey, talking about TV deals.

We never discussed it.

What do you think about the MLW-WWE settlement?

I think

they paid him basically to go away, didn't they?

Because it's not Vince anymore.

Vince McMahon,

I think, would have rather had his toenails pulled out with a pair of pliers than ever settle a lawsuit that he absolutely didn't have to settle, right?

How many times has he

just, he was noted for the exact opposite of what Turner Broadcasting in the 80s and early 90s was known for, which was they'd settle most anything because they were afeard of lawsuits not only for wrestling, but just all the divisions they had.

And Vince never settled shit unless he was goddamn staring down a rifle of a

rifle of a gun, the barrel of a gun.

So

does that show the new ownership is like, fuck, we don't have time to fuck around with this shit.

Give these plebeians

whatever they'll be happy with, go away.

And will any of the wrestlers share in that pool of revenue?

I wonder if I was the new owners, I would think to myself, this is a shakedown

that is someone else's problem that's going to become a big headache for us once it hits discovery because they're going to get to go through all of our shit.

Pay them to go away because that's all they wanted to begin with.

And that's the thing: is that we talked about it's not, we're not just specifically pointing at MLW here or belittling MLW.

We talked about.

well I'm going to belittle everybody here

in general, but you could be with more specificity here in a second.

But we talked about this when the TKO deal was made and the merger and UFC and WWE and Vince and Dana and Ari and Nick and

you know and Ann B.

Davis as Alice.

I mean the whole gang.

They're worth billions and billions of dollars.

Nobody can ever compete with this shit.

And,

you know, to them,

whatever the settlement was, unless we see Court Bauer flying around in his own private plane in the pilot seat with goggles on like fucking Wrongway Feldman, he didn't get tens of millions of dollars.

And tens of millions of dollars is pissed to them now.

How much is going to go to the wrestlers?

Well, and that's what I asked a second ago.

And I'll conclude my statement with it.

It's not like Vince, who just didn't ever want to give up.

They don't give a shit.

It's a board and a whole bunch of shit now.

And they don't want people going through their books and, as you said, dragging them into court and discovery and et cetera.

But the question is:

yes,

what improvements will be made to keep some of the disgruntled folks who have been asking for their release less more gruntled?

Well, we shall see.

I assume there'll be a lot of wrestlers in MLW celebrating the news because they'll be getting big bonuses any day now.

Any day now.

Any day now.

I think they'll be being thrown a bone instead of big bonuses.

Does anybody say that anymore in the wrestling business?

Throw him a bone.

When you've got some guy bitching about his money or bitching about his goddamn finishes or bitching about whatever, throw him a bone.

Give him extra $100 next week or fucking put him over in Jonesboro or whatever the case.

Throw him a bone to chew on.

Every dog needs a bone to chew on.

Speaking of bones to chew on, Brian, should we talk now at the top of the program about somebody who might not be having a holly jolly Christmas, who might be, I don't know, getting ready to look good in stripes instead of a Santa Claus outfit.

The folks have not heard

an update on cast media and our favorite weasel, Colin Thompson, in some time, because well, I believe we, we, we already, we did the 14-part series, so they, they had a pretty good background and, and in-depth dive on what was going on.

But for the new listeners out there,

the reprobate, thief, con man, liar, shyster, con artist,

and all-around criminal, but not a mastermind.

Allegedly, Allegedly.

It will soon be alleged in writing.

The person that was behind the cast media debacle that not only defrauded our operation here, me and Brian, of six figures and money, but others up to seven figures and celebrities, including Theo Vaughn and Sarah Silverman and a whole

bunch of those people, Pinjalette.

And at least he had the razor blade business to fall back on.

But nevertheless,

we haven't done an update in a while because certain things have been going on.

There's been some investigating and some certain things going on that we could not

comment on publicly for fear that that weasel might be out there somewhere listening to us and we'd tell him some of the things that we know.

That's one of the reasons.

But

we thought we would end the year, first of all, Brian, I've got to ask you as the

Wall Street Street guru.

Of course, the longtime listeners and the folks who heard these segments before know that Colin tried to strong-arm everybody he owed money to into entering into an agreement with Podcast One that was going to take everybody's show to levels they'd never dreamed of.

And if they didn't do it, he would go bankrupt.

And if they didn't do it, he'd go bankrupt.

And it was the only way you were going to get your money.

How are we going to go to levels we've never dreamed of when we're already number one?

Would we loop everybody else again like a fucking jammer and roller derby and come back around?

But nevertheless, he tried to strong-arm everybody, even though

his tactics may be strong-armed, but his demeanor was limp-wristed about it.

And

as a result,

well, podcast one went public after we had revealed

everything that we revealed about Colin and about cast and about the guy behind podcast one, the guy from Live One, Rob Ellen, and the machinations that they were going through to try to pump up this apparently going to be allegedly bonus stock.

And in the initial public offering of said stock,

they went from the penthouse to the outhouse in about 24 hours.

And Brian, so my question to you is,

have they got out of that outhouse yet?

Or are they stuck in a two-story outhouse on the first floor?

We were told that the only way we would come close to being whole,

still without any actual accounting,

would be to accept a deal with podcast one where a portion of it would be paid in stock.

Podcast one,

two other parties, we believe, were saying that the stock would be valued at $8 to $12.

They went public with that as well.

The The stock today, the stock that we refused.

By the way, if anyone hasn't been able to tell, we're having the best time we've ever had with the show right now.

And we're doing fine.

Podcast one stock as we are recording, $1.68.

And

it debuted at $8

that sunny morning that it went public.

No, it didn't debut at $8.

They wanted it to be $8.

And as soon as it opened, the market decided, you know what, $5.80 sounds good.

Oh, that's right.

That's right.

They had said $8.

It started at $5.80.

And it's now $1.68 with a market cap of $39.2 million.

So if you have $40 million, you could buy all of Podcast One and their

and figure out how it's worth that much even right now.

Well, it's worth that much because.

Rob and his

now apparently not close friend, Colin,

has got together and said, hey, we'll print up a bunch of certificates of stock in this fictitious company that we're going to fucking strong-arm people into working for.

And we're going to say that it's valued at tens of millions of dollars and get people to buy pieces of it.

And then we're all going to move to Calabasas.

And for the record, podcast one, 80% of it is owned by Live One, the parent company.

Yeah.

Rob Ellen's company.

Well, here's another.

This is Rob Ellen is the CEO that tried to strong arm me via email with a veiled threat

that I

believe I ended my last communication with him was: so you go fuck yourself.

But nevertheless, this guy, CEO of a multi-multi-million dollar company,

what's that stock worth?

The parent company?

The parent company of the $1.68

Podcast One, 80% is owned by Live One, which is at $1.05.

And I just hate it that Rob

and Colin the Weasel are having a miserable Christmas.

While, Brian, as you mentioned, not only have our pod, because now we are in complete control of not only our podcast and our intellectual property and our trademarks and our feed and our YouTube channel and also our advertising agency who works directly for us.

So we own everything and control everything.

And we get to numbers on everything.

So thank you, you, Colin.

And our new advertising agency is already doing a better job than you ever did.

So thank you, Colin.

And we got a better deal.

So thank you, Colin.

And we got all of our sponsors back because they heard where you took their money that was supposed to come to us and shoved it in Calabasas.

And so we got all of them back and now the podcast is doing better than ever.

And we're having a holly jolly Christmas.

And you, you miserable piece of shit, are hiding under a rock out there on the coast somewhere, not knowing whether to wind your ass or scratch your watch.

And you don't know what we know.

And you don't know when we're going to tell you.

And Stephen P.

New is aching to take a trip to California.

And he's got a new co-council named Andre the Giant.

who's going to put the big giant splash down.

So I just want to say hello.

there may be some trademark issues with that but we'll work on it for the future i just wanted to say hello

to colin and his and his his ilk rob nobody's hearing from colin these days and even

the podcast one press releases don't mention any involvement with colin thompson or cast media anymore do they No, it's very interesting, and everyone needs to remember his name, Colin Thompson.

If he still has the ridiculous hairdo he had ridiculous frosted tips if you see this clown that's him

this guy who owes us a lot of money again we're doing great but that doesn't change the fact that he took our money we never got it back we never got the accounting he kept billing

so

there's a few hundred thousand dollars that need to come back home.

But we'll get there.

That doesn't change the fact that we're doing great now.

We could celebrate where we are today here at the end of 2023.

I don't know if Colin could do that.

You know, he said the quiet part out loud.

There was an interview a few months ago.

Forget which publication had it.

And he didn't want to say the names of his shows

because he was afraid that people would get in touch with the advertisers.

Or that people would leave comments on Apple podcasts or reviews.

Because he's still in business.

The threat of take this deal or I will go bankrupt.

We didn't take the deal.

Other people didn't take the deal.

Cast Media is still in operation.

They're still billing.

They're still pulling in money every month.

Now, when you say they, since we know that almost every single employee either quit or is actively suing him in some kind of class action situation,

it's basically just him.

He's still sending people bills for things that he's apparently collecting money for.

That's right.

So Colin's still in operation under the name Cast Media, but his name seems to be missing.

You know, a press release went out November 15th.

Podcast One

acquires exclusive rights to Lost in Panama podcast,

including IP for TV and film.

Now,

this show, I believe,

like The Opportunist, that's another one of the shows that Colin still owns,

were Colin's intellectual property.

They were developed by Cast Media.

They were his shows.

When all the other shows said, fuck you, you're a thief, I'm out of here,

he's still in operation because of these shows he was still able to bill.

Four, to complete that sentence, to bill four.

Yes.

So now all of a sudden this press release comes out.

Podcast one has acquired season one, the previous episode, which was downloaded two million times,

and future episodes, as well as the TV rights, a documentary series is in development.

19 new shows added this year.

You go through this press release here,

not a mention of Cast Media,

not a mention of Colin Thompson.

That's a little odd.

They're acquiring this show.

Who are they acquiring it from?

How come all of a sudden Podcast 1 doesn't have Colin Thompson or Cast Media, I'm looking through this, anywhere in this thing?

It's returning in May of 2024,

but who'd they buy it from?

How much stock did he get for it?

And how's that stock doing?

So that's the point.

We said that we're going to try to wait everything out,

get Colin back into the game.

Weasels like weasels.

Rob Ellen has shown himself to be someone with no integrity whatsoever.

So Colin's right up there with the kind of people he would want to work with.

Colin may not like the way things worked out because he's an idiot.

He played his hand wrong and he's an idiot.

The only thing he had going for him was his advertising.

He's a podcast moron.

But again,

there's a lot of things in play.

Don't forget his name.

He may not want you to know what are his shows.

Go look at what his shows are.

Let those shows know what you think of the fact that they make money for the person who stole money from a bunch of shows, including Jim Cornette and Brian Lest.

And he's still in operation, folks.

And from innocent parents of special needs children.

Because I don't know how much, there's a limit to how much sympathy you can probably drum up for you and me because they know we'll make it.

And look, podcast one can make deals with some of the desperate shows that were cast shows that are just shit out of luck.

These are shows that are never going to really get popular, never going to really make real money.

And podcast one is promising the world with programmatic ads.

If you listen to a show that's a podcast one show and you're like, man,

there's a lot of fucking ads in the middle of this show, that's their business model.

Overload the shows of programmatic ads.

It's a model that we reject, by the way.

Ours are done in good taste and with

decent professional lighting.

So this is going to be the last thing we say for a little while.

We have to go radio silent for a variety of reasons, but as soon as there is an update we can give, we will give.

But the point here at the end of the year,

we kind of end this year the way we ended last year.

Where's our money, Colin?

But we're in a better position today than we were a year ago.

And in life, you can't let creeps like this intimidate you,

lie to you, steal from you, cheat you, and think they could bounce off and just go hang out in West Hollywood.

No.

So, more to come.

And in the meantime, Colin, maybe you're going to hear from Sergeant McCoy.

I don't know.

Maybe you're going to hear from Andre the Giant.

I don't know.

Or maybe you'll hear from this man.

You don't know what's coming, but it's coming.

And by the way, if you hear this, this has all been approved by our lawyer, the esteemed Steven Pinu.

Happy birthday, Stephen Pinu.

We love you.

Happy birthday, the consigliary himself who as i said is looking forward to a nice west coast tan

but and and by the way you you know you mentioned the uh the the weaselness of colin thompson

and i mentioned the the weaselness of him and his cohorts

but

again

They have created a situation where I know for you, it would be nothing to give good stock advice.

You follow the game on Wall Street there.

But they created a situation where Jim Cornet

looked like Edgar Casey prognosticating the stock market.

I was actually able to say, they're going to try to sell you this shit and it's going to fucking fall apart.

And I was correct.

So that tells you how stupid the people that actually bought that stock, the few few that did,

must have been.

And by the way, for quarter two, for 2024, the fiscal year of 2024, podcast one reporting $10.5 million in revenue with $1.4 million in losses.

So they can't make money on the millions they're making.

And just wait until they have to repay those loans.

Should Tony Khan buy Podcast One?

How do we take that if he does that?

Is that an attack on us?

How do you see that?

I see that as the only other person that might buy something that loses that much money and run it just for the fucking fun of it.

If he bought it for $40 million,

who does he put in charge?

Well, I say probably

RJ City and referee Aubrey Ed.

You know, you're joking, but that may actually be who he puts in charge.

Well, you heard it here first: Tony Khan

allegedly

in talks to buy podcast one.

Yes, yes,

allegedly.

Allegedly.

Well, just so he could,

all of his wrestling action figures can have their own podcast.

If Tony Khan lets it come out that he's going to buy podcast one, does Nick Khan go and set up a meeting with Rob Ellen?

No,

I don't think that.

It appears to me that if you actually met Rob Ellen, at least the way that he writes English in his emails, you would think that he was the guy that fucking invented huffin goddamn kerosene behind the barn and instantly dismiss him as a serious person to speak to.

You know, one day, and we can't do it today, we're going to end this segment momentarily, but one day after some other things get taken care of, we need to talk more about him because when we talked about him, we got feedback from a variety of people.

who hate this man.

Like, we think he's a mook and we can laugh about him and he tried to rip us off, but he's a jerk off.

But there are people who fucking hate him and

he's alleged by former investors to have ripped off them, the investors.

Apparently him and Bo Didle, the famed investigator, private.

Oh, good lord, that private eye character with the fat jowls and the fucking stubble that was always on news shows for years.

A New York legend.

Well, apparently they have had a feud because he got ripped off.

Apparently,

this is the weirdest one.

Apparently he got sued, Rob Bellen, by the widow of Brandon Tardakoff, TV legend,

programming legend, because he rented her house and wouldn't pay.

I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff, a variety of lawsuits and depositions.

Like, more people don't like this guy and are just waiting for anyone to talk about him.

They just send all this shit out.

But maybe in the future, but more things need to happen and stay tuned for those happenings.

I need to hear more about the problems with Mrs.

Tardakoff.

Lily Tartakoff.

Lily Tardakoff.

Well,

she certainly did.

All right, I want to, a couple of things real quick.

I've just got things I've jotted down.

It's that time of year that people are sending cards and gifts, and I appreciate it.

And I've been to the post office at this point in time.

I want to thank Charlie from Starkville for the Cracker Barrel gift card.

And

Dan Rhino from St.

Louis sent me a copy of the excellent Wrestling at the Chase book.

And I thank you also.

Another kiss ass.

You didn't get your Cracker Barrel card from Charlie?

I don't even know if there is a Cracker Barrel anywhere near me.

There's a Cracker Barrel

around

civilization.

That seems more South Jersey than up here.

South Jersey, it seems to me, would be like the

Bergen Hunt and Fish Club, isn't it?

No, that's nothing near South Jersey.

Is that North Jersey?

The Bergen Hunt and Fish Club, which kept their neighborhood safe, is over in Brooklyn, and South Jersey is in South Jersey.

Oh, I thought, well, Bergen, there's a Bergen newspaper.

Bergen County.

Bergen County.

Well, who is this Bergen?

And how did he get so fucking

such a be a big deal that all these things are named after him?

He was a ventriloquist.

He was very popular.

God damn you.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

He's a gentleman.

I'll be here all week.

And I want to say also, and I want to tell you, Seth Turner up at the International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, boy, that's a mouthful in New York now.

We mentioned him several months ago when I talked about they were inducting Christine Jarrett to giving her their Trailblazer award.

And he sent me a wonderful gift that i got this past week in the mail because when they indict someone induct someone in that hall of fame there's two plaques one of the family or person or representative of same gets and one hangs in their hall of fame

and when they got

teeny's plaques one of them

had a ding in it and they didn't want to they obviously got that remade but they kept the ding one it's just a very small little ding on the front of the plaque.

And to thank me for sending the video that I did, a little statement on Tiny,

Seth Turner sent me down the extra plaque.

So that's kind of a cool thing that I can set on the desk here or put up on my wall over the desk, which nobody else has.

I'm neither family nor

the Hall of Fame, but I have one of her plaques.

So I wanted to thank Seth for that out here

in public, if you will.

What kind of plaques are you getting this Christmas?

None.

Yeah, see?

I'm sorry.

I didn't know I could just take the plaque off the wall of the Hall of Fame and send it to you.

Hey, here's a gift for you.

Something that's supposed to be in the Hall of Fame.

See, if you were more thoughtful,

you would.

Seth Turner's a crook.

You would know if

he's the guy up there.

He's running the fucking thing.

He took it off the wall and sent it to you.

That's not the way it's supposed to be.

This is not the one that went up on the wall.

I need evidence.

See, now

here's the thing.

If people are not sending you plaques

and you are not thoughtful enough, if you go out and you see a plaque that you think I would like, you never just take it off the wall and send it to me.

No.

All right.

I got a few wrestling plaques, though.

I have one for Paul Bosch from the city of Houston, honoring him.

And I have one for Roy Shire

from San Francisco honoring him.

And that's the wrestling.

Oh, I have a Paul Jones, the promoter.

I have his Wrestling Hall of Fame plaque.

Oh, I remember when you got that, you sorry son of a bitch.

I'm not sorry at all.

Well, well, I have a number of plaques I'll have you know.

And my dentist has removed most of them, but some of them are coming.

All right, I've got another email, but I'm, you know, I'm skipping that.

It's a sad email.

And why ruin the mood?

And that one is too.

So fuck it.

I'll just take that one out.

I'm looking for something to perk us up.

We'll come back with that in the new year because we'll all be sad in 2024 again.

Here is a card that I got, an actual card in the mail, handwritten from Pete.

Well, he's from Virginia, but he resides in Georgia, as he will say here in a second.

Mr.

Cornette and Mr.

Lass, see, he's a mature adult and has proper respect, even to you, for whatever reason.

Hello, Pete.

Thanks for joining us.

I want to thank you both for the incredible content that I get to enjoy on a weekly basis.

I grew up a lifelong wrestling fan in Virginia and now reside in Georgia.

Needless to say, I'm a huge fan now and growing up of wrestling.

I spent two months in the hospital over the summer recovering from major cancer surgery.

And Pete, we're glad you're recovering and out of the hospital.

But he says, Your reviews of AEW brought a smile to my face during a time that smiles were hard to come by.

So he thanks us and says, Happy holidays.

And Pete, we thank you for listening.

And

we're glad you nipped up.

But

I don't know if,

should we take thanks for

the material that AEW just hands us on a plate, Brian.

Do we really?

I mean, you can't write this shit.

We couldn't write this shit.

Nobody would believe it if we fictitiously said what this wrestling promotion was doing.

Do you ever feel like they're doing the show?

And when I say the show, I mean dynamite and everything that happens in that company off TV,

that they're doing the show for us?

You know,

just to give us something to comment on.

What'll Cornette think of this?

I'll take a shit and I'll eat it and I'll throw it you.

And then I'll catch it and I'll fling it back because I got one of those goddamn

croquet things.

Not croquet.

What is that?

Well, now blow the joke.

What is that?

High lie.

High lie.

High lie.

All right, I have a old friend, an old friend of mine has written me.

Well, we're happy Pete's getting better.

That's what I wanted to say.

Yes, yeah.

Well, you distractified me.

We're happy pete's uh better and and hopefully he'll be better yet

and

and and hopefully aew will be better but i wouldn't put any money on that but anyway i got a letter from my old friend jasper tapping butts

and he it's been a while since he's written but he had a couple of observations would you like me to read his

his letter to me i don't remember ever hearing this name on the air so yeah let's hear this you don't remember jasper all right

all of these people, he says, are talking about how Tony Khan's handling of the CM Punk tenure had terrible results now that Punk has debuted for the WWE.

But Jasper says, let's not forget what Tony gained since Punk was fired.

And he lists the top four things

that Tony has gained since he fired CM Punk.

Would you like to hear these?

I know what number one on the list is.

What's that?

Wing!

I'm trying to give a serious list.

Hey, okay, I was the wrong button.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a serious list.

This was worked over by experts.

The top four things

that Tony Khan has gained since Punk was fired.

Number four, he gets to exchange pleasantries with Colt Cabano once a week.

Number three,

no more emails from Matt's wife complaining how overworked she is from handling all the CM Punk merchandise.

Number two,

can give the 30 minutes on pay-per-views that were previously allotted to punk matches to more deserving wrestlers like Chuck Taylor, Gravity, and Brandon Cutlett.

It's a real skill to put the list of three names together and have it mean something.

And having gravity in the middle there was the right punch.

Gravity, well, see, gravity brings everything closer together.

Oh, that was good.

And number one, and we're done here, no longer has to take time out of his day on Sunday, listening to fans and network brass telling him how great collision was on Saturday night.

And that's the things.

Yeah.

What do you think Tony's more upset about?

I'm being serious.

I know it sounds like a joke question because it should be that punk doesn't work for him or that punk's not his friend anymore.

I think Punk's not his friend anymore.

Yeah, I think the same thing.

Because, no,

Punk nor

Hulk Hogan nor Steve Austin

or The Rock could draw enough extra revenue to Tony Khan's wrestling company to make a difference in Tony Khan's personal lifestyle.

Could they?

What would that be?

He's spent over $100 million out of pocket on a wrestling company.

And he ain't, nobody said he's going without anything.

He's not eating the ramen and the hamburger helper.

So even if he signed The Rock and The Rock drew him

$40 million extra dollars,

it wouldn't be like that's going to make a goddamn mind-blowing difference to Tony Khan.

But if The Rock or CM Punk or any of these people

actively told him we're not friends anymore,

I believe he'd probably lay awake at night more longer than he already does.

Don't you think?

I think so, and that may be the other cure.

If some woman would just come along and wildly fuck him, probably change his personality, make him see things in a different way.

I'm just trying to figure out the personality of that woman well she's a hooker

well you know there's some things that even money can't buy i don't oh allegedly

i could believe you could get a different one every day but i don't think you could get the same one three days in a row how about that

if you were a billionaire and you were single and young

Would you want to meet someone who knew you were rich?

Or would you want to dress like a front and meet someone in a bookstore or something?

Just start talking to them and get them to actually like you.

Then you reveal, by the way, I'll be on my suit, my dad's super yacht this weekend.

Would you like to come?

It depended on what the scenario was that I had in mind.

I mean, you know,

was it to be an anonymous type of thing, or was this, you know, something that, well, nevertheless, we don't want to go into that.

And then also, that would depend on what kind of underwear I was wearing.

But nevertheless,

Tony, getting back to him,

we'll talk more about his various relationships later on.

And

I had one more thing I was going to do here before we do something else.

Oh,

I said on the drive-thru, I was going to try to read Sean Delaney's book on pro wrestling in Evansville in the 60s enough to

discuss it for a minute, and that has not happened.

I'm eight pages farther along

than I was when we last recorded, only because by the time that I sit down or lay down at night and open the fucking book, I get two pages in and go to sleep.

So I'll try to say something about this on the drive-thru.

But Sean Delaney, Pro Wrestling at Evansville, the 60s, adapted from the 400 Court Street podcast.

Find it on Buy More Press, and they want you to buy more, but it's spelled B-I-M-O-R.

It's on Amazon.

You can't buy less.

It's on Amazon.

It's on Amazon.

That's what it is.

Well, I'm just giving all these buzzwords.

That's a new term.

It's like a media scrum here.

It's amazing.

Yes.

You just

and also best non-fiction from something somewhere.

It's a nominee.

And buzzword.

Everything is great by Tony Con.

Everything is great a full in its own way.

Well, should we, what have we talked about?

Have we done all of this?

Have we done that?

Have we done the other thing?

Should we talk about some of the wrestling from last Wednesday night that Tony gave us?

Well, you know, I think we have to because there's things that happened after that that we kind of need to talk about this putrid dynamite first before we get to that.

Before

we talk about how the putrid shit that they were setting up fell apart into more putridity, we must first tell you what they wanted to do to begin with.

The AEW episode of Dynamite from December 13th that was subtitled Winter is Coming

better be sub-subtitled.

It's going to be long and hard, so Tony better have done some cannon if they're going to eat.

That used to be a big deal for them, right?

Two years in a row.

That was the show that Sting debuted at.

Winter is coming.

That's why it snowed every week for fucking a year after that.

And I guess

did they lose their budget for snow?

Now Sting just walks out in whatever weather that

comes about.

Could be raining, could be hot, could be cloudy, could be sunny.

Well, it can't be sunny.

She's in jail.

If he had stayed surfer Sting, do you think that Tony would have paid for sand to be brought to every town?

You know, that would have been not only that would have been great, but also his arch nemesis could have been the original Sandman.

The original Sandman?

You mean not the ECW one, the one from Marvel Comics?

No, the original, no, the original Sandman gimmick.

Not the Sandman with the Singapore cane and drunk and fucking wearing Zubaz.

Why the fuck is his name Sandman?

His name was Sandman because when he started on the Indies up there, you know this.

He had a goddamn surfboard and he had a long,

what are they, neoprene or not spandex, but the long fucking...

In a wetsuit.

A wetsuit.

And he was Mr.

Sandman.

Mr.

Sandman.

And he had the fucking zinc oxide shit over his nose, right?

He was a surfer.

He was Mr.

Sandman.

Mr.

Sandman, drink me a beer.

But anyway, back to the mistakes that they're making in modern wrestling instead of that one.

So

right out of the box, they've got Samoa Joe in the ring doing a promo and a recap of last week where the devils.

you know, had attacked.

And I mean, you can't go wrong with putting Joe in the ring to do an interview because he's one of the only dependable professional ones these days that you want to listen to on this program.

But

as he is a heel, he gets big Joe, Joe, Joe chance.

This company has now become a roster of the most popular heels and the most blase babyfaces in the fucking industry.

So

he did the promo talking about taking care of MJF until his title match.

If he wanted to take care of MJF, he ought to kept him out of the ring with Jay White.

Because that's where all of MJF's goddamn injuries occurred.

But anyway,

it was the

beer brand

that Hangnail Page drinks that MJF got hit over the head with the bottle next to him.

And Joe couldn't find Paige anywhere.

So now

they're trying to finger Adam Paige.

They ought to get a proctologist in here to do it right.

So as soon as he says that, of course, here comes the music for the hangnail.

And

Brian,

I'll let you chime in on this.

When he comes out,

does anybody give a shit about this guy anymore?

Even their audience.

The most hardcore of the believers still do.

Well, a lot of them believe a lot of things.

But

he gets in the ring and does a, if you're accusing me, then say it to my face.

I don't care who did it.

Blah, blah, blah.

Joe is

great at everything he says registers with people.

And Paige is just meh meh

to me.

Sorry.

And then suddenly,

here comes Roderick Strong out screaming, Samoa!

Samoa, because his gimmick,

for those of you who have tried so hard to forget, is that he screams everybody's name, but her first name, but I guess Samoa is Samoa Joe's first name.

See, that's the comedy part of it.

And

I'll just say it one more time because it bears repeating.

They've made Roddy look and act so ridiculous that nobody can care about him.

And they made Tavin and Bennett the mute flunkies of the guy that nobody cared about because he's so fucking silly.

So, and

there's some talent there.

There was before they shot themselves in the foot on that.

And Roddy's story is: the devil is really MJF, and he's the one pulling all this.

And then Paige nails Roddy, and Roddy takes a bump out.

And referee Aubrey told Samoa Joe to leave because she was feeling her oats that night.

And then Roddy jumped Paige from behind, and the bell rang for the match between Roddy and Paige.

And Joe just leaves.

Your thoughts so far?

I like Joe.

I hate Roddy Strong.

You can say whatever you want about Adam.

Which Adam is it?

Adam Page, the hangman?

And boy, Bruce Pobans must be upset about someone sullying the good name of the hangman.

But Roddy Strong is the one with go-away heat, not

Adam Page.

Oh, I didn't say Adam Page had go, except with me, he's got go away heat.

But I mean, it just

not like that he's electrifying even their crowd when he comes out.

They're not standing up and jumping up and down, going, Yeah, Paige, get him.

No, I agree with you that they want Roddy to just leave and never return like Felix Unger's wife.

But

and it's not

Roddy's one of the best workers on the roster,

But they've done nothing to

show that.

And they've done everything to make people go, what the fuck is this stupid shit on my TV screen?

By the way, they've had him act and the things they've had him do is fucking ridiculous.

Yeah.

They found out FU wasn't Felix Hunger.

It was fuck you.

And so then they have a match.

And Roderick Strong's work.

is impeccable when he's being presented

in a promotion where the athleticism and the

sports-based presentation

is the key, he excels.

He's always in great shape.

He lays his shit in.

He's got animated selling.

He can have a match with anybody.

And conversely, Paige does the same old shit that he always does and blah.

But however,

like I said, you could have given Roddy enough credibility, even with his size issue, which has been the only drawback he's ever had.

Well,

he's not a cunning linguist on the promos, but as a wrestler,

but you could give him enough credibility that he could be putting top

baby faces over if he's a heel or vice versa, and it would mean something,

and he would mean something.

But they've neutralized that.

And meanwhile, Paige has been pushed to the moon.

And would you say it's fair that he's as over as he's ever going to be in this company right now?

I can't see him ever getting more old.

Well, I shouldn't say that.

I think they'll turn him heel because they have to.

And he already teased something with him and MJF, and the Bucs are supposed to come back as heels.

Okay, well, you're right.

The only way to make him more popular is to switch him heel.

Yeah.

Okay, I guess.

It's like Swerve, like Samoa Joe, like all the really popular heels.

So anyway, there was never a doubt about who was going to win this match because roddy never wins but did you see the finish

uh i don't even remember actually the deade

that was not oh yes where you didn't even come close to it yes okay folks the deade is where paige bends over under the guy and picks him up sort of like bob holly used to start the alabama slam right

He's got the guy hanging upside down

over his back with his own head in between their legs, and he drops to his knees, allegedly spiking their head to the canvas behind his ass, right?

He forgot he's like six foot two and Roddy's like five foot fucking seven.

And when he dropped him, Roddy's head was, what was it, six, seven, eight inches off the mat and the shot was clear.

He just

apparently it was a giant upper thigh drop to Roderick Strong because that's the only part of Roddy's body that actually underwent any fucking contact with anything.

It was gravity.

It was gravity all along.

And one, two, three.

And we were 22 minutes into the program from seeing what I just described there.

So should we move on?

I don't know what else there is to say.

It's awful.

Well, speaking of awful,

now we've got another tournament match.

The red and the gold and the green block and the blue block and the butcher's block and the auction block and HR block are the sponsors.

And it was Andre with Hot and Flexible.

Hot and Flexible is with Andre now.

So there's going to be problems there with Omiro.

And he's wrestling Brody King.

Two heels.

Again,

who are we supposed to cheer for?

for?

Who do we want to

support in this contest that we're supposed to watch?

And

by the way, Hot and Flexible is with Andre, but she couldn't come out to the ring because all the managers and seconds and interference are barred.

Remember, we've got to

make mention of this, that they've now established that anytime that anybody interferes in a match and fucks up the baby face or steals anything or the heel tries to get heat, it's the fault of the promotion because they can stop it when they want to.

Right?

They get banned seconds from ringside, yeah.

And no interference.

They say, go further, they say seconds are banned from ringside and no interference.

So nobody's going to interfere.

So they've just killed their whole goddamn fucking business, their whole logic, their whole fucking

the bible of wrestling

if you prove that the promotion can do something to stop something then you can never use it again without getting heat on the promotion

you know i think it doesn't apply here because there's so much other stuff that aew will do to get heat on themselves people forget about this one Well, I mean, as soon as they said that, I said, what are you?

Out of your fucking mind.

You can advertise seconds barred from ringside,

and that's been done for decades and decades.

And you can do that and then

you either honor that and the heel finds a way to cheat on his own and blah, blah, blah.

Or maybe that's the way that the baby face gets even.

Or maybe one of the goddamn, the manager tries to come down dressed as the popcorn vendor and gets foiled or whatever the fuck.

But you can't do.

Just a blanket.

Not only is there no seconds, but nobody's allowed to run out.

Nobody's allowed to interfere in any way.

Well, then you have to bite the bullet and say, okay, we can never do this again because it will no longer get heat on the heel.

It'll get heat on the promotion because we can stop it when we want to.

Fucking morons.

Anyway,

15 minutes later, after the bell rang, Andre won with a DDT.

It's not all these heels also win these matches with a clean finish and nobody cheats.

And then,

did you see the segment with the Von Ericks?

I did.

I was disappointed with it.

Disappointed would be a mild word.

They were in Dallas or the Dallas Metroplex, the area wherever this building is in the suburbs.

And they had Renee Moxley Good in the back with Kevin and Marshall and Ross von Erich.

They are the guests.

They're the subject of a brand new major motion picture.

and they're legends in the state of Texas.

And

the best that they can treat the Von Eric family

by putting them on their television program is to involve them with the company mascot, Orange Fucking Cassidy and Danhausen and Trent.

They can't just have them do a nice interview by themselves, talking about the movie and putting AEW over and talking about they're going to be on Rampage.

Or they can't interact with main event legitimate fucking talent just out of respect for Kevin, if nothing else.

And what do you think he was thinking when these fucking clowns walked in?

I mean,

this is the equivalent of going to Raw and then saying, okay, Von Eric, you're going to play Ring Around the Rosie with the New Day.

Not even no.

At least the new day made legitimate money for

some time in this industry working for the major company and aren't just hanging around collecting a check because the owner thinks they're cute.

It was insulting, is what it was.

And

so then

Pockets just,

hey, I need partners on Rampage.

You guys want to do it?

And then the other two chuckle fucks with pockets are up.

So, well, why did you ask us?

And

the Von Ericks awkwardly agree to be this fucking idiot's partner for

if I'd have been Kevin, I'd have called an Audible and said, you know what, boys, no.

If my dad didn't teach...

me any better, I got to teach you better than to fucking associate with these clowns.

What, I mean,

so the people of Texas get to see the Von Ericks wrestle in a comedy match with a joke partner

against whoever, who knows who the fuck.

And that,

why do that to the Von Ericks in Texas?

Why not get him in front of the crowd, get a big pop, do something nice, or do something with

mid-card or above talent.

But this is what AEW chose to do, and to plug the B show, to plug another show that no one's going to watch.

And again, you could have had

Marshall and Ross von Erich against Mike Bennett and Matt Tavin, and the Von Ericks would have looked like a million fucking died.

It would have been better than the shit on this show.

And put them on the show that people see and talk about these guys that are on our television show are the real life

progeny of the subjects of a major major motion picture?

And here they are having a great 10-minute tag match with a couple of veteran heels that can fucking lead them.

Because unfortunately, Marshall and Ross, the thing they lack, not athleticism or attitude, it's repetitions, it's experience.

They've lived in Hawaii.

Ain't a lot of shows in Hawaii.

But again, especially Kauai.

Yeah, you know, not exactly the fucking epicenter of the sports attractions in Hawaii, but 10 minutes, Von Ericks in Texas looking great against a couple of veteran fucking heels and winning with a fucking claw or this malarkey.

Anyway, but then speaking of malarkey,

we get to the in-ring promo for the ages involving the golden fleece, Twinkle Toes, and Jerobloat.

and

i wrote at the top of it oh joy one can't talk and the other one won't stop one's playing dress up the other one decided to not wear anything special at all for the occasion well i know i've read jericho looked like a

biker suddenly

and hey edge looks cool i gotta steal that Yeah,

and there's fucking Kenny wearing a baggy shirt and some baggy shorts and goddamn fucking shoes of some description.

And that, you know, like he just rolled out of bed.

And I know what a lot of people,

because as soon as this, the next day on Twitter, people are all over this.

My God, this segment sucked and it was horrible.

This is the worst interview of all time, blah, blah, blah.

And then with what we found out about that, we're going to talk about here in a second, since this has transpired, a lot of people are going to try to give that to Kenny as an excuse for why this interview segment sucked a fucking dick.

He was in too much pain.

No.

He can form a sentence.

No, because he, then in that case, he's in constant pain because he can never form a sentence.

This was the

classic Kenny Olivier promo.

He has no conviction, no base in his voice.

He sounds like Mr.

Rogers with harpo marks as fucking hair.

He's blase about everything.

He's the most unaggressive fucking baby face you've ever seen.

Nobody that you would want to represent you in a fucking fight of any kind.

And he can't string three sensible sentences together that would make anybody interested in what he has to say.

And this was just a classic example of that because

nobody else had anything to work with much either in the whole segment.

And it brought it all to light.

And

to blame his upcoming illness on, no, the Crummy promo was classic Kenny.

But that's

they came out, Jericho and Kenny,

and started cutting a promo about Ricky Starks and Big Bill attacking both of them.

And Jericho called them out.

Jericho sounds like he means something,

even if, you know, then there's the troubling visual of how

his fucking,

you know, dissolution is going these days, but he sounds like he means it.

And then here comes Starks and Big Bill.

And Starks, he did cut the promo.

He told Jericho that he sucked the life out of everything he touched, the inner circle, the Jericho appreciators,

etc.

But then Kenny

just started blathering on.

He was apparently trying to say things that he assumed might be cute,

but it was boring.

He didn't get to any point.

He said nothing to interest fans in any kind of match.

Everyone's face told the story.

Jericho had a moment where he was like, what's going on here?

And then Ricky Starks' face was all about, how much longer do I have on my constant?

Because Starks is out there trying to look like a star.

And every time he'd get the opening to talk,

he would try to

interject some kind of life into this fucking thing.

He told Jericho that he beat him twice.

He reminded him of that.

And every time Starks would get a chance to talk, he would try.

And that's the problem is you could tell he

you could almost see him sweating because he knew he was trying.

Big Bill even spoke, and that's not probably an idea they ought to repeat.

And everybody was boring.

And Jericho and Twinkletoes were giving the heels joke names for their team, and

somehow they were accomplishing both getting bleeped by the network and falling flat with the live audience at the same time.

Because the reaction that wasn't there wasn't what was getting bleeped.

I think

there was a murmur when they called

fucking Starks a new Enzo Amore or whatever.

But I mean, it was, it was, much of it was unintelligible.

It was like, what is this with Omega?

What is this fucking guy saying?

And then he bid everyone, and I'm not making this up.

I wrote it down.

Adieu, goodbye.

He made a kissing noise.

And good night, ba-bang.

Good night,

adieu, goodbye, moi, good night, ba-bang.

Less cringy than Jericho trying to get Big Billy Starks as a chant going.

Well, why does this douchebag think that that's a thing that's over?

Is that a thing he used to do?

Good night and bang for the Bullet club or whatever when he was in that in Japan.

Let me explain something to you about the true believers, the moron fans who love Omega's matches and also have been insistent that he's a good promo because he would wrestle these matches in Japan and then afterwards, when he's out of breath, he would get on the mic and he would talk a little bit in Japanese because he learned it over there.

And then he would do the breathy,

and then at the end, it was always the adieu

and goodbye.

He's like Miss Piggy.

I mean, he literally talks like Miss Piggy.

He behaves like Miss Piggy.

I think Miss Piggy has been a big influence on him.

Are you trying to say that he's got a hand up his ass, too?

I'm just saying he speaks in a very similar way to Miss Piggy, but he's always done promos like this and they've never been good.

And now that now they found out that he doesn't have to wrestle the match first to talk like that

because that's the way he talks.

The sound of air escaping from a douchebag.

He was in so much pain.

You're lucky he was there.

Okay, well, this 10 minutes that I just talked about, that seemed like two hours, set up

a tag team match playa

for

the big pay-per-view at the end of AEW's World on December 30th, right?

With the Golden

Nuggets.

What are these?

What are the

They are the Golden Jets, although Omega Omega screwed up and called them the Winnipeg Jets during the promo, and then he corrected himself, realizing he forgot the name of his own tag team.

Well, that's what I

couldn't tell whether he was joking or whether, because I would think that he wouldn't forget the name of the team, but then it sounded like he had, and I couldn't, that's one of the unintelligible things I was talking about.

But it set him up to jet over there and have a tag team title match with Big Bill and

poor Ricky Starks on the pay-per-view, right?

Right.

Right.

Well, that was on Wednesday.

Well, now we're going to take a pause in talking about

AEW for a second to talk about the rest of Kenny's week.

Because after he went out there and did a live interview, not well, but he did it

and confused quite a bit of the issue until finally they got out that they're going to have a tag team match on the pay-per-view

By, what was it, by Friday?

He's Twittering, up, I'm in the hospital.

I'm out of action.

I'm in bad health.

I suffered through the pain too long, but now I got to do something about it.

I have the exact tweet here, just for the record.

Go ahead.

I can't really sugarcoat this.

I'm out indefinitely.

I tried to keep pushing past the pain for as long as I could until it became too much.

Luckily, doctors caught me when they did.

I'll be here.

So, in the meantime, please enjoy wrestling with a photo of an unkempt Kenny Omega with a thumbs up for a positive spirit.

In a hospital gurney bed apparatus gown, some description.

It might be a gown he wears at home.

No, that is a hospital gown.

It looks like a gown

gown he might lounge around in.

That's a hospital gown.

Stop it.

Well, I don't mean to accuse him of not being fashionable, but, you know.

But nevertheless,

this is fucking Friday.

And

he just set up.

You had to know.

Did you not have to know?

Did he just?

Because here's the problem.

You know what they've said that he's got.

He didn't say it there, but you know what a lot of people are saying.

Diverticulitis.

He got problems with his guts, Brian.

He's got a bad gut problem.

And I'm wondering,

was the thing that gave him the biggest stomachache when everybody universally said, what the fuck was that segment?

Who the fuck wants to see that match that they just set up last night?

Because he looked like he didn't give a shit to begin with.

And he just now

suddenly.

Even though I said this two days ago, I'm can't take it anymore.

I'm fucking done.

I'm out.

I'm gone.

Wouldn't Wouldn't you have had some idea that maybe

as a professional athlete, something was going on

that might prevent you from doing your job, especially the shit that you just advertised 48 hours ago?

That's my first question on all of this.

And then secondly,

is there now any doubt that karma is a real thing?

You heard about the video game, right?

I know about this.

Now, we don't know for sure that he was the person that named the maneuver.

I don't know if you want me to say it or if you were waiting for the big reveal, but we don't know if he was the person responsible directly or not.

Well, the big reveal was revealed when people started laughing about this set.

And we're not making mockery of any medical condition that Mr.

Olivier might have.

We're making mockery of the timing and how somebody else has pulled the rug out from under Tony Kahn, the most agreeable boss in the world.

But apparently, a bunch of the fans jumped in to say that, well, how ironic that it would be that Kenny would get diverticulitis, an inflammation, or what, a disease of the intestines,

because that's the same thing that Brock Lesnar got that

took him out of fighting in the UFC for what, a year and a half or so.

And in the AEW video game,

they have you able to do Brock Lesnar's finish the F5, but they couldn't call it the F5.

I guess WWF's got that trademarked.

So they named the F5 in the video game that Kenny was the point person for in charge of, if not responsible for all details, diverticulitis.

So

it's just,

you can't write this shit

that they make a video game that not only bombs, but the guy that is in charge of the video game

has the same illness that they are mocking Brock Lesnar for having in their video game Dead Bombed.

And that guy was the point person for production of aforesaid video game.

What the fuck is it's not Vince Russo, it's O.

Henry.

writing this shit.

You know, when he came back, I got some grief from people because because I said he came back too soon.

He was out for a while

and he still came back too soon.

He had to wear a bodysuit the first time.

He

clearly was physically in a lot of pain.

And you would hear from people in the company that Kenny Omega is very clearly in a lot of pain.

So

not surprised that he's in a lot of pain.

Surprised at the timing, I guess, but he's saying that he just discovered quickly that he had diverticulitis.

I don't know too much about it.

I think of the Joe Piscopo bit on SNL, like at 81.

Boy, but here's the, if he's pushing through severe abdominal pain without getting it diagnosed, it's not hard to,

I don't think, to diagnose diverticulitis or to figure it out that you've got it.

But if he wasn't going to the, oh, shit, my fucking guts are on fire, but I'll be all right.

You're a professional athlete and you're advertising matches and pay-per-views and et cetera.

Go to the fucking doctor.

It's not a goddamn, oh shit, I hurt my fucking knee in a match.

It couldn't be helped.

That's an ongoing medical condition that I would assume would be getting worse.

And you would figure one would do something about it before two days after you announce your pay-per-view match in two weeks.

Think about how WWE lucked out with the Elite renewing with AEW.

Because they would have spent a lot of money on Kenny Omega.

It would have been like when a Major League Baseball team signs a player off a great year, and they play like 30 games over the next two years because they're always hurt.

He re-signed.

Kenny Omega's style of wrestling isn't conducive to keeping him out of the hospital.

And I'm not even joking about that.

No, I know.

His style.

That's the funny part.

Yeah, his style of wrestling.

You can't work a match like he does that he's built up the reputation for having without fucking yourself up.

That's why traditionally guys didn't work like that.

Most guys don't do a flip under their ass over and over over the top rope to the floor.

So,

you know, he's safe because he has an AEW contract and he's someone that Tony Khan loves.

and protects.

But I don't know how much more in the ring we're going to see Kenny Omega.

I mean, even now they were trying to get him into tag matches and kind of hide him there.

But he can't go the way he has gone.

I don't know if this is the kind of guy that could transition to a different style.

Again, I actually just hope he

gets better.

Like I said, it's been very well known that he has been in a tremendous amount of pain for quite a while.

He shouldn't have come back when he came back.

He was out a long time.

He should have been out a lot longer because of his style of wrestling.

Whatever damage has been done to his body, whatever is just happening naturally, again, I don't know too much about diverticulitis or how that happens, but,

you know, Omega's been fucked up for quite a while.

Well, and you just hit on something else that, again, Tony Khan has saved the WWE a lot of money because if they had signed them and the other two dip shits, the Buckaroos, just because they were hot and they didn't want somebody else to have them and they had gone that way.

Well, we've talked about Kenny by now

would have probably been released because he would have driven them crazy or vice versa.

And they would have got the buckaroos and they would have been not only miserable because they'd have never put them over in a top spot under Vince or Triple H, I don't think.

They would have just collected them so the billionaire rich kid didn't get them.

They'd be wrestling Gargano and Champa on Mondays.

Yeah, but they would have paid them a lot of money and they would have gotten nothing out of the Buckaroos in that that company.

Look at who's on top now and explain to me how they would fit in.

So they would have spent a lot of money on these three guys just so Tony wouldn't get them.

So Tony saved them money and in the end,

by the time Tony's finished with them, they will not be an addition to the WWE or even on the WWE's radar.

He will have neutralized or time will have, in the case of Kenny, probably,

any appeal they would have.

And the WWE doesn't have to sign them at all.

The Bucs have never been less over, and Kenny won't make it till the end of his contract to be signing of anything big with the WWE to begin with.

You know, WWE gets Cody, they get Punk.

AEW got Danielson.

Danielson can't stay healthy.

Omega's one of their top stars.

He certainly is not going to be able to stay healthy.

They signed Will Ospreay.

Again, another guy.

His style.

We'll see how much longer he can hold.

I mean, I know he's a younger guy, too, but there has to be a real conversation with these guys.

I mean, maybe they know it.

If I wrestle this style, I'll be really fucked up by the time I'm 40.

Well, no,

they accept that.

I mean, that's just the reality of it.

You're going to be fucked up by the time you're 40.

To be honest, that may have played a part in whatever offer or whatever negotiations they made with Osprey.

Because

I can't imagine that they wouldn't say up front, and I can't imagine that he wouldn't go in knowing that if he signs with the WWE, he's not going to be doing

a lot of the shit that he's been doing because they don't make major investments in talent and let him do all that shit.

And I mean, you know, there's the big spot where they come off the top through the fucking announce desk and blah, blah, blah, but just some of the made-up, let's see what's laying around and work something out in our head and talk it over in a locker room or what that shit,

he wouldn't be doing

not working for them.

Is that,

did they tell him that?

And he said, well, you know,

Tony will let me do it and he'll pay me more money because he's a mark?

Or was it that he doesn't want to do it, but Tony expects him to do it, but Tony's paid him more money than the WWE was going to because Tony's a mark.

But I'm sure that was told.

If Will Osprey spoke to the WWE

and anybody in that talent relations office, they would have said, you know, you're not going to be

goddamn doing triple, quadruple flips off the top rope through random fucking tables working for us.

But Tony can give him more money right off the bat and also give him Wembley.

So we'll see what happens there.

And does anybody think, obviously, they wouldn't have brought Osprey to the main roster because nobody knows who he is and they don't know who he is.

They would have changed his name and they probably would have given him some kind of gimmick.

So I think a lot of people are thinking, thinking, oh, he would have showed up on Raw or SmackDown if he'd have signed.

But no, he'd have been in NXT for a fucking year, too.

And Tony brings it, is going to bring him right in and

just tell everybody he's great.

Well, I have one final thing here we'll do as an update on the Omega situation, but you know, it's telling WWE is signing these guys.

Look at who AEW is signing.

You know, Adam Copeland, Brian Danielson, Kenny Omega's contract, and now this situation.

Ibushi, who's shot?

I forgot about him.

Shibata, who's been shabotomized.

I mean, look at the Will Osprey.

It's a shabotomy.

That should be his finisher.

That's the name of a finish.

That should be his finisher, the shabotomy.

It says something about who's getting signed where, but let me read this quote.

This is from Dave Meltzer.

I did not hear if he had surgery yet on it, but he was rushed to the hospital Friday.

He had been in a lot of pain, and he thought what happened was, you probably all remember, remember he had that hernia that was really really bad which caused him that long long period off

he had been hurting really really bad and he presumed it was a hernia

he had bloating which he thought he may have messed up on his diet somehow and eaten something wrong but he just kept training on it working on it and did the match with ethan page

He was hurting really bad on Wednesday when he did the promo with Jericho.

So were we all.

By that point, it was really bad.

So he went to the hospital and found out he had diverticulitis.

It was a really bad situation in the sense of had he not gone, oh, excuse me, if he had not gone in another day or so, it could have been horrendous.

So the situation.

Very, very serious.

Very horrendous in Dave's mind.

But then why did he say he thought he had a bad meal and it turned out it was diverticulitis?

Why did he say, yeah, Tony, I'll be glad to plug his pay-per-view match for you.

I'm at Death's Door.

I don't know if I can hang on much longer, but.

Kenny, are you okay?

Yeah, I'm just a little bloated.

Yeah, it's just some bloating.

I don't know.

It happens every four weeks or so.

The cramps, the bloating.

I don't know.

I'm

stuck in some kind of monthly pattern I can't get out of.

Well, you know, it sucks to laugh about this, but AEW just can't get out of their own way.

I mean, that's really the story.

And whether it's them doing things or just the bad mumbo-jumbo that are the bad,

whatever you want to say, the bad mojo.

It's the bad mojo.

The bad mojo around.

You never spent too much time in New Orleans, did you?

No, I have not.

I'm not into the humidity, but it's getting real hot into the collar for AEW.

Yeah, you know, you got the mojo down there.

You got the mojo from the Cajuns and the voodoo people, brother.

You know what you had next on this program, don't you?

You want to get back to dynamite?

Let's get out of the hospital and back to the dynamite.

Well, we might be back in the hospital.

Ruby So-So took on Riho.

And

Kim,

remember when they signed Ruby So-So?

And she got the music from

Lars Frederickson.

Rancid.

Rancid.

And

she was the goddamn, she was the runaway or the outcast or whatever the fuck she was.

She got videos and she was gonna be pushed to the moon.

And now she's flunkifying for Riho.

Her name is Riho and she don't weigh ninety pounds.

And when she hits the mat, well, it barely makes a sound.

And when she's booked, you know, the house is really down.

Oh, Riho, Riho.

Well, she's just a mud show clown.

So you're looking at this in a real negative way.

I think we should look at this as a positive.

This really showed how gutsy Tony Conn is as a promoter.

This was the nine o'clock hour.

Yes,

it was

nine o'clock.

And that's why I wrote, Can You Imagine?

And by the way, it went through a break.

Actually, I watched the break.

I didn't watch the match.

There was an iron claw spot in the break.

But can you imagine a WWE fan or an old school wrestling fan that hasn't seen anything in a while accidentally finding out there might be a wrestling program on him, flips over and sees Ruby Soso versus Riho.

And it's so sad.

And guess who's going to win?

Because Kenny

and Riho wins.

It's sad.

I mean, we haven't been a fan of Ruby Soso's, but

she worked for a real promotion.

She's a recognized talent.

She's got a nice-looking little gimmick.

It's not a complete parody or a joke or some kind of somebody's sad fetish idea or

idea of what is this kind of idea that Kenny's got that these girls are going to get over that he keeps bringing in.

He believes in Japanese wrestling and he believes that even if any of the things defy logic, like a 75-pound girl being able to beat some of the biggest people, like Nyla Rose, was someone she beat several times back in the early days.

Doesn't matter.

It's all part of the beautiful art that is wrestling.

As long as you can kick out of a move, you could be a wrestler.

If you could lift your shoulder on two and three-quarters, you could be a wrestler too.

This is not about even liking Japanese wrestling.

I'm not scoffing at the people who like the legitimate top guys in Japan and/or top girls, if there is such a thing.

And this is an obvious parody of she doesn't belong in a fucking ring.

It's ridiculous.

Not everybody can play.

It's like if I,

when I was a kid, they had an ABA team in Louisville, the Kentucky Colonels, and I loved the red, white, and blue ball.

And I had one, and I had a basketball goal at the end of the driveway out here at the castle.

And I got quite adept at shooting the three-pointer, which was a thing there, but not in the NBA.

But no, I didn't ever think that at any point when I grew up that they would let me play for the Kentucky Colonels.

Because no, they would have been insane.

It would have been insulting to the basketball fans that I should become a professional basketball player.

And it's insulting to the wrestling fans that they're trying to pass.

Riho and a few of these other fucking girls that dress up in their pajamas and play act like this in Japan, but they're on national fucking cable television here, and it's insulting.

You know, the ABA were an outsider league.

I don't think it's outrageous to think if you were really shooting all these threes and you also had like Rio doilies around your wrist, maybe they would have brought you in for a halftime thing to entertain the locals.

I wanted to beat a Louis Dampier.

Did you watch a lot of games?

Yeah, I actually went to one live too at the Gardens.

They were only here for about three years and they weren't on TV a lot because there was only three channels and they expected you to buy a ticket.

Sound familiar?

Yeah.

Anyway, you know what Riho needs, don't you?

She can turn her whole opinion or my whole opinion of her.

She could turn it around, do a complete 360.

If she just do one thing.

180, 360, wouldn't she end up back where she was?

Well, Well, she looks like a person that follows her tail around a lot and ends up back where she started from, but she could do all kinds of spinning around and change my opinion if she'd do one thing.

Brian, you know what that is?

I do not know what that is.

No.

If she'd gain some weight.

Good Lord.

I mean, when she takes a body slam, it sounds like a mouse pissing on cotton.

I mean, for heaven's sake, if you've revved up your blow dryer to dry your hair, it would blow blow her out the third floor window.

And the only way that I know how she's possibly going to pack some poundage onto that bony skeletal frame is to, as the dream machine used to say, eat some meat and potatoes.

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Well, speaking of a bunch of bull, then we had another one of the tournament matches.

And this one was Jay Lethal against Rush.

Two more heels.

But fortunately, everybody knows to feel sorry for Jay because he never wins.

And he didn't hear.

And

at least this one didn't go 20 minutes like all the other tournament matches did.

No, this fucking goof Rush taps him out in four minutes.

And again, a lost opportunity.

People knew who Jay was.

He does a great promo.

He's a great athlete and a great employee.

And he can fucking work.

Or you've got Rush.

I will go on record now

as stating this, and then we'll move on to something even less interesting.

This goof is never going to draw 15 cents in Chinese money for Tony Khan or anybody else.

He does same shit all the time and the people who are already watching this stuff like it that he hits everybody and he doesn't sell anything and his matches don't make any sense.

But sorry,

he can't promo, he can't put a logical match together and he's an interchangeable guy doing moves in a company full of them.

Do you disagree with any of that assessment?

I think Rush is all right, but I don't think he's someone who's going to be a meaningful main eventer here in the States.

But I think he's a really good wrestler, and I also think the result was known.

Jay Lethal was put in this tournament to lose every match,

and I didn't watch this match.

Well, and speaking of people put in a tournament to lose every match, the next match was a tournament match.

Jay White and Mark Briscoe.

And

I've already said everything about Mark.

They wasted that too.

And I don't care if they shove a fucking tube up Jay White's ass connected to a helium tank.

They ain't going to get him over.

But they had a chance to with Mark and the window closed.

He was even more valuable.

But they won't get it back now because the time passed.

And he's already...

Briscoe and I believe Jay also, they're already out of the tournament according to points.

So they're wrestling for no reason.

because they can't possibly win.

And you know, the people that can't possibly win are generally going to lose anyway.

So, what the fuck is that?

And the fans at one point started chanting dim boys,

but you know,

where's Juice?

Where is Juice?

He's injured.

Juice had back surgery, right?

Back surgery.

Oh, goddammit.

The one interesting fucking part of Jay White is his friend.

That's the AEW thing.

You come, you sign, a couple of big appearances, then you're out for like six months.

And, you know, again, even the WWE could not get Jay White over.

I'm going to go on record of saying that right now.

Not that we'll ever see him try.

And finally, Jay White hit his finish.

One, two, three.

After he raised his knees, Mark was going to give him the froggy bow.

And And Jay White raised his knees and,

you know, caught him and then hit his finish on him.

So the heel just beat the babyface flat with no cheating, no out for Mark Briscoe, no heat for Jay White, a useless match that did nothing for anybody

in a tournament that one guy could not possibly win, even if he won this match.

And who does these fucking finishes?

Where

they don't even know the simplest thing about the heel does not beat the baby face flat one two three

for it for almost any reason except if it's a complete job match and

then that goes against the idea of having good matches for your tournament but do something to to do business out of it don't just have the fucking guy get beat flat it does nothing for nobody

or anything for nobody.

Or any other proper execution of grammar.

You know, it's interesting that AEW, I mean, there are people that go and they'll tell you, oh, I had a great time.

But at home, watching on TV, it seems to get really quiet a lot,

especially when it's matches with people that the fans there don't care too much about.

It was really quiet at various points throughout this.

It almost feels like everything reversed.

The darkness, the tone, AEW feels more like NXT did when the Wednesday Night War started.

And NXT has more color, more life, young, flashy wrestlers flipping onto their heads.

NXT feels more like AEW did when it started.

I feel

like I'm getting the sour belches.

So, one more match in this program.

Then we're going to find out if anybody watched it.

And the other match was a tournament match with

Swerve versus Plumber Moxley.

And at least

I believe there is a heel and a babyface in this because Swerve is a heel.

We know that because the people chant for him and cheer for him and love him.

And I believe Moxley is a babyface because he constantly uses foreign objects to stab people and cut them and slice them and choke them and drink their bones and eat their blood.

And he flips off the fans.

And flips off the fans and etc.

So at least we're clearly defined in our baby face and heel roles there.

And

the

premise of this being the last match was affected because

you know that we've been talking about even Uncle Dave and his,

you know, of Jerry Mahoney-esque sidekick.

Brian Alvarez have been arguing back and forth about the constant overruns on AEW television.

The DVR never catches the finish of the main event.

They go two minutes over, three minutes over, whatever.

They can't manage their time.

Uncle Dave says, well, goddamn, that's part of your job.

You got to work to see this show if you're a fan.

It's not my job.

And that's what Uncle Brian says.

And that's what we've been saying: is that Jesus Christ, if they can't get their show in, why am I going to bend over backwards?

But

in listening to the internet criticism, Tony made the big announcement this past week that they were going to have a five-minute overrun.

A five-minute overrun has been announced for this week for this program for dynamite.

It was Monday or Tuesday they announced that.

And that's just in case the, you know, because it's real sports, Brian, you know that, and sometimes sports go over.

So

they tried to make it look more real this time by instead of just going over and not telling anybody so people don't see the finish.

They announced ahead of time they were going to go five minutes over.

And then these 20-minute time limit tournament matches, they started the tournament match with 15 minutes left on the air.

So,

but anyway.

The plumber started out actually trying to wrestle because he's convinced himself that he's some relation to Hoyst Gracie.

And, but it was what you would expect from these two people.

And I say, you know what, fuck it, I'm about

finished with this program.

We're going to see who wins this one because this is one that

maybe the finish might be up in the air.

You don't know whether Moxley will politic to win because he's the baddest man in the world, even though he looks like a floating corpse.

Or you never know whether they'll put Swerve over because Swerve's the one ought to win this thing because at least it might do something for him.

So I zipped ahead to see the finish, at least now with the overrun having been called ahead of time, agreed upon ahead of time.

I'll see the finish of the main event.

And at 10 p.m.

Eastern Standard Time, my DVR froze.

Because, Brian, we've now found out that apparently it's not just enough to ask for permission from TBS to run over,

and it's not just enough to tell Twitter you're going to run over.

You have to inform the cable companies

that broadcast the program that you're going to run over, or they're going to assume, like they do with most things, that you're a fucking professional and you know how to end up on time

because they still, the DVR still didn't record

the overrun that they announced ahead of time.

How many

different ways can they fuck this up?

As many ways as you can.

Tony's a statistician, isn't he?

So he knows all the ways.

He can figure out ways that we haven't even figured out yet.

Well, he's a doing-it.

So who won this thing anyway?

Moxley won, beating Swerve.

He is now the point leader in the gold bracket, I believe it is.

Oh, good God.

And the overall point leader in the Continental Classic.

And then the show ended where the devil's associates arrived.

Outside.

In the dark.

Four-on-one.

They're beating the shit out of Adam Page.

They throw him onto the windshield of a car,

just like what happened to him at Wembley against Crimea River himself,

Jungle Boy.

And then the devil, driving, or at at least behind the wheel with his mask on, got out of the car to make sure that his presence was felt.

And we went off the air, and I lost the last few seconds because it went to 10.06 here, not 10.05.

Swerve.

By the way, I don't care about anything else and how bad everything is.

Swerve shouldn't be losing.

Why Swerve in this if he's not going to win?

Well, it's because

Moxley went to Tony and said, well, you know, I'm a badass.

Well, you can do it better than me.

What did he say to Tony?

All right, so we do a tournament, all Japan style, and then I get all the points.

That's it.

And, you know, and Danielson, I forget, is he hurt this week or is he still okay?

Yeah.

Because they're doing the tournament.

Find out.

They're doing the tournament for Brian so he doesn't have to go to Japan for the G1.

So it'll end up.

They've sold Tony on this.

So fuck all your new talent that might draw you some money.

I'm retiring next year and the plumber is the shits.

So we'll go to the finals because that means that two members of the BBC will have to duel with each other.

They'll be sword fighting over there in the BBC clubhouse.

It's either going to be one of them, I think, because it should be Swerve.

And if Swerve doesn't get this, Swerve should be in line for the world title because he has momentum.

But if it's going to be...

If it's going to be

who's going to be the world champion?

Well, we will find out.

But if it's not going to be Moxley or Danielson, I could see them doing something crazy like Eddie Kingston all of a sudden gets points and gets into the finals and gets a big dramatic win because he's a fan of Japanese wrestling.

I could totally see that happening.

But back to the question I asked because you glossed over it, but here's what I'm saying.

Yes, Swerve should be

in line for the

world title if it's still going to be MJF.

But is MJF

hurt to the point where he's going to have to drop it to Samoa Joe, potentially, in which case you don't want Swerve versus Joe.

That doesn't make any sense.

And that's the thing.

They're having to figure this out as they go based on who they have not allowed to fuck themselves up this week.

So anyway, that was the closing time fuck up.

And who watched this fiasco with these wonderful tournament matches that mean nothing to their business?

Let's go to the numbers here, the AEW ratings.

801,000.

AEW Dynamite for December 13th.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

AEW Dynamite, on average, was watched by 845,000 viewers.

There you go.

Does it have the last several weeks on your graph there?

I don't want you to go looking.

It doesn't have it in front of me.

Okay, but it's 835.

It's 825.

It's 845.

It's 8,000.

It's

you got to say one thing about them: they're consistent, they do an 800-and-something average, they start out with almost a million, they end up with barely 700,000 every week.

Keep that number in mind: 845, because it's a very interesting story here this week.

Okay, let me start by telling you because WrestleNomics has this:

the Big Bang theory at 7:30

averaged 1,157,000 viewers.

So the Big Bang theory, which is reruns of a situation comedy from years ago in non-prime time,

a time slot, in a prime time adjacent time slot, does

almost 1.2 million viewers,

but the first run program

that they air in their entire,

well, two hours of their three-hour primetime

averages

over 300,000 less than that.

That doesn't look good to me right there, but go ahead.

Quarter one, eight to eight: fifteen p.m.

The Samoa Joe, Adam Page, Roderick Strong live promo and angle, followed by the beginning of Roddy Strong versus Adam Page with picture and picture

1,098,000 viewers.

Oh my god, okay, so for the first time in a long time,

they start out with over a million viewers, and they've still lost

59,000 from the Big Bang, but there's a bunch of Big Bangers still there.

Where do we go from here?

Now that all the children have grown up.

We bang on to quarter two, 8:15, 8.30 p.m.

The continuation of Strong vs.

Paige, an ad break, and the start of Andrade El Italo versus Brodie King,

868,000 viewers.

Oh,

that's 230,000 in 15 minutes.

Okay,

so

maybe there was something in the water on the eastern seaboard that paralyzed people's legs at 8 o'clock and prevented them from standing up and leaving the room or something.

And Jim, at this point, let me give you this number that WrestleNomics provided.

Excluding the first quarter hour,

the 1 million, you know, that's all the way over the top there, the total viewership would be 810,000

compared to 840,000.

So in terms of how much that first quarter and whatever is left over from the Big Bang helps,

help by 30,000 in the average there.

Yeah.

You know, again, when you look at an AEW where they are, there's there's a lot of artificial things that somehow boost the number up a little bit, but if you get past that, it's not a pretty picture.

Let's go back to quarter three.

The continuation of Andrade El Italo versus Brody King with picture and picture, 874,000 viewers.

Well, they got 6,000 back out of the 230.

We now go to 8:45 to 9 p.m.

Quarter four.

The Kevin and Ross and Marshall Vonera confrontation with Orange Cassidy, Trent Beretta, and Danhausen,

an ad break, and Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega, the Winnipeg Jets confrontation with Big Billy Starks,

888,000 viewers,

and the second highest in the key demo, but 888,000 viewers.

So

they're

basically biggest name

ex-WWE star and their biggest elite fellow team up and get an extra 14,000 viewers.

And the question is, where do they go from here because it was so bad?

Did anybody sit through this?

Well, everyone wanted to see what was going to happen at the big 9 o'clock hour, 9 to 9.15 p.m., quarter five.

A recap followed by Riho versus Ruby Soho.

Oh, here we go.

And the people are about to go.

With picture in picture and a post-match with Timeless Tony Storm,

followed by a Wardlow video and another ad break.

804,000 viewers.

All right.

So 84,000 people said we've seen enough.

And

as I'm looking at their average with these numbers, I have a feeling that the

The attrition is beginning to start in earnest.

Well, it continues in earnest in quarters 6, 9.15, and 9.30 p.m.

Jay Lethal versus Roosh, a Sorb Strickland, Jon Moxley video, and Mark Briscoe versus Jay White,

771,000 viewers.

Not as bad as I was afraid.

That's only another 33,000.

Well, we go from there to quarter seven, 9.35.

I see they've got more room to fall.

Well, 9.30 to 9.45, quarter seven, Mark Briscoe versus Jay White continued with picture-in-picture ads, an ad break, a final battle video, and main event entrances for the next match.

725,000 viewers.

And there went another 46,000.

Now they have, since the top of the 9 o'clock hour,

They've gone from 804,000 to 725,000, but that's not as bad as the first hour where they lost 210,000 total viewers from where they started.

So, and they're down

373,000 from the start of the program.

Well, we go to quarter eight, and we also have a five-minute overrun.

Oh, yeah.

9.45 to 10 p.m.

Jon Moxley versus Swerve Strickland with picture-in-picture, 755,000 viewers, five-minute overrun, the conclusion of the match, and Adam Page attacked by the devil's friends, 772,000 viewers.

And again, did 17,000 people just show up to watch the last four minutes of that match, or they thought they were going to see something else?

And that's the...

I'm not saying that all 700-something thousand tuned into the day.

There was enough people tuning into the next program

that it made a difference of 17,000 people.

If they keep this up, they're going to be averaging

under 800,000 pretty soon, not counting the first quarter's artificial bump.

If you take quarter two as a real number,

instead of where they started,

they still lost

98,000 people,

but they didn't lose 300 and fucking,

what did I say it was, was uh 25 000 or whatever from the start of the program to the end like they did in this fucking deal so i

no mjf

well i mean is is that a difference maker these days

he still somewhat but not like it was because he'd be a difference maker nine o'clock over reho doing 804.

Well, sure, but anybody would have made a difference over Riho.

Fuck's sake.

And

before we get off of just an idle thing, it wasn't on this show, but apparently on the Ring of Honor Final Battle that he presented also over the weekend,

Viking O.

Everybody was sending out the clip on Twitter and laughing.

Some people were laughing about it.

Some people were like, what the fuck?

Some people are like, you know, this is just sad.

But apparently he's Mantar has gotten work now.

He was wrestling Mantar

because the guy was wearing a big fucking

giant bullhead, right?

That's what I saw.

And Viking O

is in the ring and the other guy with the bullhead is on the floor.

And he's standing there looking at Viking O, who runs.

to the far side of the ring, hits the ropes,

runs back across the ring, jumps up to the top rope backwards, like facing into the ring, like he's going to backflip onto the guy with the bullhead.

But he doesn't get his balance and he falls back into the ring.

So he lands on his feet.

He runs and hits the fucking far ropes again,

runs back to the ropes in front of bullhead,

jumps up on the ropes backwards so he can backflip off

and loses his balance again

and jumps back down into the ring.

So then he turns around, grabs the top rope,

vaults up to the top backwards, and backflips off that way.

And the fucking guy wearing the bullhead is still standing there waiting to catch him.

And I don't know if this requires a lot of discussion or we should go into detail on this, otherwise, then what the fuck.

But I guarantee you

that nobody when he went back to the back even said anything much less cussed him out or fired him which is what i would have done both

you can screw anything up

but when you then immediately

and not only go back to the same thing and expect your opponent to stand there like an imbecile and wait for you but then fuck that up and then still want to do something

every veteran in the world, if they had been talked into standing there to catch this moron in the first place,

after the first time he bobbled it, they would have moved on the second one or they wouldn't have been there to begin with.

Because

they knew how to keep from looking like fucking idiots.

The man you're questioning is Black Taurus.

Well, whatever he is, I don't give a fuck.

Because he's an idiot.

See, I don't care about him now because he's a moron.

We've established that with his actions.

And this other guy, as I said,

they should have cussed him out, told him, you don't ever do that, you fucking moron.

What were you fucking thinking?

I would have fired him.

Well, actually, I wouldn't have fired him because I'd have never hired him because he's fucking useless.

And with that fucking stone face and that blank expression and that droop-lipped goddamn.

that he fucking has in every goddamn match and every goddamn situation, the ridiculous outfit and this ludicrous choreographed gymnastics routine that he does in place of wrestling.

But to do that, no, he should have been yelled at, reprimanded, and like I said, if not just fired for just what the fuck?

We can get anybody here that would be less stupid than you.

Viking O

El Hi O del Vikingo.

He's the son of Vikingo.

He's a son of all right.

Jump three times on the top rope if you suck.

Fall on your ass and look like a goof.

Oh, Vikingo.

Oh, no.

Let's stop that.

You know, it said Ring of Honor does this Ring of Honor.

Tony, under the guise of Ring of Honor, does his final battle show.

The only two things, the only three things I heard about it were the Vikingo spot, the spot about Dax Harwood apparently leaving the ring during the match to go to some woman in the front row who was on her phone to get her to watch the match.

Oh,

I thought you were going to say he has to make a call.

No, he stopped her.

Like he got her off the phone to watch the match.

Well, good for him.

And then Tony apparently announces a new Ring of Honor women's TV title,

which is funny because there's no Ring of Honor TV.

So now they have a TV title, a new one for women

with no TV show.

And not enough, nearly enough belts and titles and championships and awards and

leg lamps being given out.

Tony has been

acting somewhat erratically since we heard about the, and we reported on this on the last program also, the discussions, negotiations between Warner Brothers, his network, and the WWE.

He's been,

as Mama Cornette used to say, in some cases, he's protesting too much.

And

in other cases, he's just looking like he's potentially been overindulging in his medication.

Well, after the Ring of Honor final battle show, Tony did a media scrum, his favorite thing in the world, where he gets to get softball questions and give non-answers.

And after the wrestlers left, it was all Mr.

Khan.

But wait a minute,

can I tell you without even having heard any of this?

I'm sure everything was just great.

It was just all gray, right?

Everything's gray.

We're all great.

I have not heard or seen any of this either because it was Ring of Honor.

I didn't pay attention, but I have this here, and Jay Snakarado put together notes so we have an idea of what to look for, kind of.

Tony rambles a lot.

It's hard to transcribe this.

He said that's kind of what we're trying to do here is we're trying to listen to a man.

having a breakdown in front of our very ears and trying to ascertain how long it's going to be before they put him in one of those long

jackets and tie it around the back.

Well, with that said, we're going to do our best to break this down and make it make some sense.

But let's go to Tony Kahn, and I believe the first topic will be about Warner Brothers' discovery and who and what they're talking to.

Well, it's been tremendous catching up with you guys, with all the great stars from the amazing show tonight.

A lot of great things happening in Pro Wrestling, so I can take some of your questions here while we're together.

Tony, first of all, great show.

Thank you, Stu.

It doesn't count when somebody else says it.

It doesn't count when somebody else says it.

I'm already making a mental note of how many times Tony says great.

You're counting the greats.

I mean, he said it a couple of times, right?

He sees it.

He's a two.

Let's see where he goes with this.

All right.

Regarding Warner Brothers' discovery, what they plan to do in the pro wrestling world

involves, of course, AEW, Ring of Honor,

and maybe another company or two as well.

Just give me your thoughts on the relationship.

Can you give us any type of insight as to what

discussions are looking like now as far as AEW Ring of Honor and Warner Brothers Discovery?

Ring of Honor.

You know, normally it's actually...

It's the answers I don't understand at Tony Scrums.

But in this case, now the questions I'm fucking oblivious to.

Well, it was a long way to get to where we've gotten, which will be Tony explaining what's going on at Warner Brothers Discovery.

Important to note, it came out that CW were interested in Ring of Honor.

Tony wasn't interested in giving a non-Warner Brothers Discovery entity Ring of Honor and loyalty to it.

Never show loyalty to a major corporation.

Unless you're a fool, but let's go to this.

Honor, we haven't had recently as many, but we've had really good conversations about AEW, even in recent days.

I've had really good talks with Warner Brothers Discovery.

You know, we've been with them for several years.

It's a really exciting time for AEW.

We were the number one show on cable on Wednesday in really what are considered both of the key demographics in TV, which are 18 to 49 and 25 to 54.

So it was a great week for AEW.

I think we've been putting out some of the best shows we've ever done.

Right now, we're on this incredible run.

You know, tonight was a great episode of Rampage in addition to the.

There's four.

Wait a minute.

Now it's starting to pick up a little bit.

Do we need some kind of

some kind of alarm or a great buzzer or something to hold on here a second?

How about how about this?

Every time he says great, I'll ding and you count.

What is that?

I'm not counting.

What do you mean counting?

Well, I got a ding.

I'm running the production over here.

I got to keep count.

Well, goddamn it.

We should hire more people to take care of Tony.

To be counters?

Tony's counters?

I'll see if I can do both, but you know, this is a fucking hard job.

It's like the guy that's on the mute button on the bleeper on the Dynamite show.

You know, one of the problems is, how are you supposed to believe anything Tony says when we've been watching these scrums for years now and everything's always great?

Never, you know, we're going through a rough time.

Everything is always.

Yeah, we're on a string of the.

When has he not said we're on a string of great shows?

Well, I don't mind him even being positive, but he could be positive with different words and and he could acknowledge when something else goes sideways.

But anyway, go ahead.

Let's get back to Tony.

I got my thing here now.

I got my dinger in place.

Great.

Wrestling here on ROH Final Battle.

The last few episodes of Collision have been tremendous.

I think some of the best in the history of that show.

And also Dynamite has been on a great role in recent weeks.

I think there's so many great things happening in AEW.

So it was great to come in and have the number one rating and be the number one show on cable, which we've done so many times.

We've performed incredibly well for Warner Brothers Discovery.

And, you know, we're very, very,

very strong relationship.

I think with

meteorites and all the things coming up, everyone has to do their due diligence.

It's just part of the TV business.

But I think where we stand, we stand in a position for AEW to have a huge growth year in 2024.

There's a lot of really exciting things happening that I know Warner Brothers is really excited about that we've talked about.

The advanced.

Yeah, they were excited about Rhodes that atop season season two.

They were excited about a lot of things.

Is this what they're telling them?

Hey, hey, are you guys talking to WWE?

Oh, we're just doing our due diligence.

Don't worry, just keep doing your little show.

Yeah, well, and that's the thing is, whether they're telling him that is one of the things, one thing, or but whether he's believing it is another.

Because these people don't tell the truth when there's tens of millions of dollars on the line.

Fantastic for All In just being a massive success as we're approaching a five million dollar gate for a show that is eight and a half months away and you'll lose a lot more than that before then so far ahead of where we were we didn't put the tickets on sale last year until spring and now getting on sale ahead of the holiday season i mean it's been a huge success that's going to be tremendous and one of the biggest wrestling shows in the history of the world following up on the biggest wrestling show in the history of the world.

Well, you can take that money off the 2024 book center if you're selling all those tickets in in 2023.

Let's go back to this.

Just months ago, we've done great show after great show.

It's been a great year for us.

We started out with

some great wrestling to start the year, great matches, and then we went to Revolution in San Francisco and blew it out.

And, of course, Ring of Honor, I think all three of the major Ring of Honor events have been tremendous this year, including tonight, which was one of my favorite shows of the year, along with Supercard and Death Before Dishonor.

I I think the Ring of Honor shows have been excellent, but in particular, focusing on the Warner Brothers Discovery relationship that you asked about, we've just gone out and crushed it time after time, and this has been a great year for us.

And the

really

all-in

is the biggest thing we've ever done.

And I think it's one of the biggest things anybody's ever done in wrestling.

But you have to also look at all the other huge events we've had.

Recently, month after month, you know, All-In was a great show, but really since collision started, I think we've been able to do so much with five hours of television.

So this was a big year for us with Warner Brothers Discovery.

They came to us and asked us to go from doing three hours of TV a week on TBS and TNT, expanded it to five hours.

And that's

been very successful.

Collision did a great audience this past weekend.

It's been up the last couple of weeks.

And also the shows have been as good as ever, really strong shows.

I was really proud, in particular, the last few weeks.

Let me stop it here real quick.

Everyone else is wrong.

God, everyone else is wrong.

Everything is as good as ever.

The shows are the best they've ever been.

The matches matches are the best they've ever been.

All in is one of the greatest things anyone's ever done.

But we didn't look at all the other great things that he's done.

You brought up at the top, is he protesting too much?

I mean, when you constantly have to list your credentials to a simple question, like, what's going on with the over and over and over.

And some of it doesn't

pertain to the question asked.

And it's just

a verbal stream of, I'm talking myself into this while I'm trying to talk you into it too.

It's almost, it's,

I mean, even if everything is great, there's no reason.

If everything was fucking perfect, there's no reason for that many words in that answer, is there?

No.

What's going on with you in the network?

There has to be some way to answer that without going on a five-minute filibuster session.

Continental Classic, I think, has been something really special.

So it's a great relationship and it's going very, very well for us.

And I think part of the TV business for both sides is going to be doing their due diligence.

And that's just a part of sports and television, really.

And being a part of the NFL and the Premier League, you know, I've seen that process play out with certainly different TV networks looking at different sports and the sports themselves looking at different TV networks.

We've been a part of this multiple times in the NFL.

I'm part of the NFL's fan engagement and major events committee.

So I sit in a select group of people in the NFL looking at our

different fan metrics, looking at how we're engaged with the fans digitally and in real time and also planning.

Yeah, you guys are doing a great job.

The AEW social media team, you're the person who should be consulting anyone about how to keep things going digitally.

They referenced Jay Briscoe.

Well,

in all fairness now, Tony's got a lot going on at the gorilla position.

What with wrestlers getting into fights and him getting scared for his life that he's still tweeting at the same time with the other hand?

I will will say, I've heard from multiple people there who say that Tony's at gorilla on Twitter, that he's at gorilla looking at instant fan reactions.

It's what he lives for.

He's obsessed with the reaction on Twitter, on social media, on message boards.

Well, because remember the last time he was a booker, he only had two other guys reading his e-fed paperwork to really give him feedback.

So now all these people can tell him what's going on all at the same time.

And they all said he was good and he's acting like he's doing a great job here not like the tv's awful the ratings keep going down you're losing people going to the shows your product is as cold as it's ever been all your stars are hurt or chased away instead everything's great everything's great not me you can't that doesn't count let's go back to tony khanning major events and looking at those trends and i've been able to take a lot of the things i've learned in the world of professional sports working in the two biggest sports leagues in the world and being around some of the biggest rights fees in the history of sporting with the Premier League and in particular the NFL, which is the biggest media

superpower in the entire planet and is running hotter and hotter every year and defying gravity.

And so for what.

Let me stop it here.

This is part of the problem.

He can leave.

He's awful defensive, isn't he, about all of important people that he hobnobs with.

The problem is, this is the problem going back to the beginning of AEW.

He believed that he understood the television rights scene and that if he created a wrestling show, he'd be able to double or triple the rights within a few years because of just producing the numbers that AEW is producing right now.

He's banking on that.

So he's acting like he's some kind of expert in this stuff.

I don't know.

I think...

From someone who spoke to him, he thought that he was going to whip fence.

He didn't think they were going to be producing these numbers.

He thought they were going to be producing big numbers.

Like I said, he talks like it was a foregone conclusion.

He thinks he can book.

He doesn't understand that he's terrible at it, that the people around him who pat him on the back all think he's terrible at it.

And that the people who don't come right out and say it,

maybe they're in California, are doing that because they want to kind of push him to do what they want him to do.

So let's go back to Tony Khan.

We're doing here and my experiences in the TV business.

We stand to be in a really good position going into 2024.

And Ring of Honor is a different company than AEW, but it is under my promotional umbrella.

And it's under the umbrella of the Challenger brand, which is AEW.

And what we've created in this family of AEW that now includes Ring of Honor,

we have great partners that we work with in International Pro Wrestling.

New Japan Pro Wrestling has been a great partner to us.

Now we're working with some of the great Lucha Libre promotions as well and other companies all over the world.

I like doing things with Andy at RevPro in England in particular.

There's a lot of great companies around the world.

But for AEW and I think Ring of Honor, because it falls under my ownership, to be AEW is to be under constant attack.

You do a great show and the next day somebody's saying something negative.

You do five great shows in a row.

Somebody says something negative.

You break the ticket record for the most tickets ever sold for any wrestling show in the history of the world and somebody has something bad to say about it.

I just, at this point, I don't worry about it.

We just need to go out and do great shows week after week like we did.

We were the number one show on cable this week on Wednesday.

We beat every single show on TV on Wednesday out of hundreds and hundreds of shows across hundreds of networks.

And

we continue doing it.

And everybody who works here is going to be in good condition.

Can you pause one second?

Yeah.

No, it's insane.

How were they the number one show on Wednesday when we just heard the numbers from Thurston Howell III that the Big Bang theory outdrew him?

Well, he's talking about the 8 to 10 o'clock time slot, I would assume.

Oh, good Lord.

And, you know, Vanderpump is

not around.

We were the highest rated show on the entire day of Wednesday, except for the other ones that were higher than we were.

Tony, is Warner Brothers Discovery talking with WWE?

Well, we've been crushing it, and, you know, we were number one on Wednesday, and everyone has to do their due diligence.

Until he acknowledges that he's bad at this, this is all going to continue.

The downward spiral will continue.

Things are going to get worse, not better, until Tony acknowledges that he cannot run a wrestling television show.

He could sit back and watch it.

I think it's challenging because I've never seen anything quite like wrestling when it comes to...

such a large percentage of the business spending such a large percentage of their time on one platform, which is X, you know, formerly Twitter.

It's amazing how many people in the wrestling business are on Twitter all the time.

You,

you,

when your talent gets on the phone with people, it's you they talk about being on Twitter all the time.

You,

you, you're complaining about the reaction that you see when you're on Twitter.

The problem isn't the people on Twitter.

The problem is you're going there seeking it out.

What do you think about him saying owning AEW is being under constant attack?

Is that an inherent thing by being the challenger brand?

No matter what, no matter who it was, they'd be under attack right now.

No.

Because in a lot of cases, the challenger, the plucky underdog, is the babyface.

They're not getting

constantly attacked.

The people are pulling for them until they do stupid shit.

that nobody can pull for because it's bad as in not good.

and then

they get attacked

they were attacking the wwe when all their shit sucked and they fixed their shit

much of it doesn't suck anymore but more of tony's shit sucks now so he's getting blistered that's the way it works Remember what we said when we reviewed that audio of Dave Meltzer and Brian Alvarez fighting?

What Dave was saying was going to become Tony's argument for things.

It's the fans' fault.

Yeah.

It's not that your DVR didn't catch it.

It's your fault for not setting it right.

That's what's going on here.

AEW is doing everything great.

AEW had an exceptional year.

We're poised for a great 2024.

Everything is wonderful.

It's those fans

and what they think.

That's the problem.

And to be honest, I understand it because it's good reason because it's engagement because there's such a large percentage of the wrestling fans and you, the wrestling media, and

opinion makers and the wrestlers themselves and the companies.

So many people are on this one platform.

It's pretty unique

because in other sports, it's more evenly distributed.

Like, to be honest, in the NFL, the biggest platform, and there's all these, you know, there's so much engagement across all these platforms.

There's been so much growth in TikTok.

We're up 300% year-over-year NFL and TikTok.

And the amount of football being consumed in TikTok is insane.

But that also, I don't want to down, I mean, what the NFL does on Instagram and Twitter X, it's incredible.

But in wrestling, in particular, this one platform, X, it is amazing how much time is spent in the industry on it.

And it sometimes becomes what I've seen is sometimes in the industry because Paul Leveck and Bruce Pritchard and Nick Connor on Twitter during raw.

Constantly.

Well, I've seen it happen many times that their Vince McMahon would sit there

and he would look at a fucking computer screen and type letters to people on AOL during the Monday Night Wars.

No.

If he cared what the fuck anybody was saying, he had Finkel or some Stooge keep an eye on it because he was running the fucking show.

I want to remind you as we are playing this audio, the question was asked.

Geez, how long ago was this now?

I don't know.

Eight minutes ago, the question was asked about Warner Brothers Discovery talking with WWE.

Oh, that's right.

He's still on the first question.

Yeah, we're now talking about the NFL social media engagement.

Let's go back to this it's a bit of an echo chamber and also there's a lot of uh

bad faith there's a lot of bad faith posting on it and uh you can have a great day in the business like do the number one show and people try and tell you you didn't do something great or you can break the world record for the most tickets ever sold to any wrestling show ever and have this massive

huge success on pay-per-view and just hit a home run and the wrestling's great and everything's great and still people are trying to tell you there's some problem with it or some detrimental.

I I have news for you.

When people, the drop count of the show, when people posted the number of people that go through the turnstiles, I've never heard of somebody posting a turnstile count,

which is not like, there's so many ways to get into a show.

And there's so many people I talked to that were.

I want to bring up, no one brought this up.

No, nobody.

He's re-litigating this.

You can tell what every one of his sore spots are and how who's chapped his ass based on what he brings up unsolicited.

Yeah.

And by the way, it is you in the fact that it's the way you behave.

You trigger a lot of fans to want to ridicule you and your product because of the way you behave.

That bought tickets that did not have to go through the turnstiles.

But take that aside for a second.

The turnstile count, that is so normal.

For North American Pro Sports, even if it was 73 out of 81, that would be over the average of

show rate for North American Pro Sports.

So if you take the average, like big

is like the tickets purchased and then the people who actually go through the gate

people talk like that was abnormal or it's like and we explained this whole thing on our show Tony

there will be people coming for you gunning for you because that's what this is there's a reason that every sport

who stepped into my position until now has gone out of business I'm the only one left everybody who has stepped up and put millions of dollars into this and done it week after week and there's no offseason you do it 52 weeks a year.

It's a fight.

And that's.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Who has stepped up and put up millions of dollars to do this that he's the only one left?

They're gone.

Impact has put millions of dollars in it, but they're still around.

Well, I think he's referring to the fact that Bill Watts, Jim Crockett, the promoters that Vince defeated.

They didn't put millions of dollars in this.

They made millions of dollars out of it.

Not one

great territory promoter had even as much as $1 million invested or wrapped up in their territory, did they?

Vince McMahon bought the WWF from his father, the biggest regional territory in the country, for $1 million.

Nobody else even paid that much because you didn't pay.

He didn't pay that much.

He paid it out of the company profits.

But yes, but I mean, even the sale price.

So

what the fuck is he talking about?

Yes, some people have lost millions.

We talked about the guy that

won the lottery, that started the Women's Wrestling League, or that Paul Alperstein.

He might have lost millions of dollars or whatever, but

no,

when you're talking about

who's still left, he didn't start until everybody else was done.

And he's put more money into this business than anybody ever,

ever.

Even WCW, think about it, did not lose

as the entire period from 1988 until 2001,

the WCW, Turner Broadcasting, did not lose as much money as Tony Khan has lost to this point in four years.

That's what I was going to say.

That was the biggest ever.

I was going to say Brandon Thurston estimated when we did that segment, $34 million as their losses for 2023.

That's not counting any of the years leading up to it.

Yeah.

And Turner lost $60 million that last year when they had gone crazy because of Bischoff and

spending money like a drunken sailor.

But the losses in the early years were like $4 million or $6 million.

Still appreciable money, but not

exorbitant when you're looking at it from Tony's standpoint.

That

if he grossed $150 million or whatever it was, $130 million last year and lost 30 million, what did he lose the first fucking year?

So, no, nobody has ever put this much money in wrestling ever before by even close.

I'm sorry, go back to...

Tony the Tiger.

Antonio Kanoki.

He's not wearing the red scarf anymore, by the way.

Oh,

I know what it is to be a wrestling fan 52 weeks a year.

It's hard.

But it's also the most rewarding thing.

That's why you can't get away from it for too long.

That's why we always come back to it.

We're addicted.

And

he was worth the fight.

And I love the fight.

And I'm never going to stop fighting it.

No matter what happens,

no matter how things change, it's worth it.

It's the fight Jim Crockett fought, and Vern Gagne,

and

Ted Turner, and

so many other people that have tried and that have tried.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Ted Turner never tried to be a wrestling promoter.

His minions handled that and they botched it when they had full control over it.

But Vern Gagne and Jim Crockett, well, they tried and it like and ultimately failed.

Vern Gagne was not only at one point the highest paid, most famous wrestler in the country in the early 1950s but he ran one of the biggest territories in the business for 30

years before it went out of business and made a fortune

and fucking

and it probably would have put up a better fight if he had a dad who said here's 200 million dollars i'll be on my yacht for the next few years my god he you know and he was shorted

He was shorted funds that he could have fought with at the end because of that real estate thing where the government declared imminent domain on some of his property.

He lost money.

And again, Jim Crockett, yes, he went out of business in the fight with Vince.

And Crockett Promotions had been a company for 55 years at that point.

And Jim Jr.

had been running it for,

is it 13 or 14?

So,

yes, sooner or later,

almost everything is going to go under in some fashion or another, but to compare himself like he's outperforming them,

what the fuck?

Well, I don't think it's necessarily outperforming them.

More like.

Well, I mean, longer lasting, or I've outlasted everybody.

No, he didn't.

I think a lot of it is he wants people to get behind him and not criticize him so much because he's the last person standing with considerable money against Vin.

Well, against Vince.

What he is.

Against WWE.

What he is, is, is the guy that's prevented us from ever seeing a real legitimate alternative to the WWE in our lifetimes.

Because now that he's spent all his money and made this splash and put this fucking jack-off product out there,

this was our shot.

And he's blown it.

And it was predicted he was going to blow it from the start by me because he didn't know what he was fucking doing.

And he hired a bunch of people that didn't know what they were doing.

And he presented a joke product that was indie-minded

and now all of us who wanted to see somebody

at least be comparable to the WWE

are going to have to wait for reincarnation because it ain't going to happen again he's muddied the water nobody's going to put this much money in wrestling ever again probably

And nobody's going to come along and be able to do it right because of this fiasco as it immolates and self-implodes.

So we lost our chance because Tony got spellbound by the buckaroos and fucking Twinkle Toes.

You know what?

At this point, we could say that even if there was no buckaroos and Twinkle Toes, even if you had gone there from the beginning, and despite what some people think it wasn't, he would be in prison because I'd have killed him.

Yeah, and some people say, oh, Tony just wanted Jim to be a manager against the Bucs.

Okay, sure.

But if you had gone there from the beginning, there's no way you would have lasted.

Like you joke, you would have been in prison.

the way it's run the way it's working with tony khan as the head you would have lost your mind i'd know even if the bucks and omega weren't there anything that's going to be run like by tony khan is going to be run by tony khan this way well no then that's why you know i instantly dismissed the whole thing when he told me about oh and the elite and the bucks and blah blah blah but also as soon as i heard no i could not sit in a room with this guy talking about wrestling because it would have driven me out of my mind i eliminated stress on myself by not taking him seriously and stopped taking his calls because I knew where this was fucking headed.

You would have lost your mind because he would have thought he was on the same level as you in terms of wrestling knowledge and tried to talk to you.

No, I think he thought he was ahead

because

he has an unnamed go-between

tell me that, hey, this guy's a billionaire and he wants to start a wrestling company and he really does want to do this and he wants to talk to you.

Okay.

And then all he he didn't want to, he didn't want to talk to me about what I thought about his project.

He wanted to tell me how great all of his ideas were to hear me say, wow.

And every time I would not say wow, and I'd instead say, well, you know, what about this?

That's not going to work.

And here's why.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

And you heard billionaire.

You thought it would be a Mark Hube and you got Roger Rabbit.

Yes.

Vince is shot and nobody wants the WWE anymore.

And I'm a wrestling expert because I'm going to give them what they want.

And there was no doubt.

So that's why,

again,

I chose to alleviate myself of this headache before it became a headache to me.

And now he's fucking melting down because he, somewhere down deep, is starting to realize, oh, shit.

The only one that didn't want a job and the only one that didn't want to talk to me was right.

Well, let's finish this first question.

We still haven't finished the first question.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Oh, and I'm doing this for all of you.

And I know all of you are here in spirit.

So thank you very much.

Let me stop it there.

He's doing this for Jim Crockett and Vern Gagne.

And he knows that they may not be there, but they're there in spirit.

Because if Vern Gagne in the afterlife had anything he needed to do on Friday night, he would have hung out with Jim.

but hey Baba's not there because he wouldn't come because of Antokyo Kanhoki

you know what I like to think of now after why Baba's like no can't book can't book yeah no no book good no good book uh let's get at least one more question here oh so another 30 minutes well no this looks like it's rather brief it's about kenny omega's health and his uh current status let's go i thought it would be about his wrestling talent that would be brief joey hayden doss Morning News, do you have any sort of further update on Kenny Omega, his health, and then what his absence will mean for the short term of the AEW?

I know Kenny put out a statement of his own, and I completely support it.

And I spoke to him today, and of course, we've been very...

Stop.

Does that mean he put out a statement without queering it with the office?

No, apparently he just announced on Twitter with a picture of him in the hospital, yeah, I'm out indefinitely, and then let Tony read it, I guess, when it came out.

I mean, there would be a protocol, right?

If someone was working for you, not a bad person.

No, no, only in a business.

Okay, well, that answers my question.

Just because he's one of the biggest stars in Tony's company doesn't mean that he would have to clear it with, I don't know, Tony before he tells everybody he's not going to wrestle for the foreseeable future after being advertised for a pay-per-view in two weeks.

Why would he bother to talk to Tony about that first before?

sharing it with the fans.

Well, the other way to look at it is maybe it's like the Matt Hardy thing.

The best way to get to Tony is is to post something on social media.

You know, he'll see it.

And maybe he might make a miraculous recovery if Tony comes around with another big bonus for his contract.

Let's go back to this audio.

Tony's not blinking much.

He

looks whacked out.

Let's go to this.

Very, very, very concerned.

And honestly, it's hard to focus on pro wrestling when somebody that you care about, somebody that is so responsible for all of this in so many ways.

Boy, that's certainly true.

Launched AEW, and this would all be be possible without Kenny Omega.

And certainly, he's as influential on the launch of AEW as anybody.

And

he's one of the greatest pro wrestlers in the world, and he's also a really important figure in this promotion and this business.

So I think we're all really concerned, but thankfully, he's communicating.

And, you know, I think we're hoping for the best.

And it's like, wait a minute.

Thankfully, he's communicating.

What is this?

Is struck him dumb?

He's mute now.

What the fuck?

You've heard his a piece.

Well, okay.

You got me there.

Seriously,

we're thankful he's communicating.

In other words, you're thankful that he's telling you

how he is now since he's told the world.

He put a picture of himself with a thumbs up in a goddamn hospital.

It's not like he's in a fucking medically induced coma.

He's communicating.

We're happy he's admitting he's fucked up is what he's saying.

He just didn't want to talk to you.

Apparently, Tony is what it was.

Gonna turn for the better.

The most important thing is that he got help from the doctors at the right time and didn't wait any longer because he was in a lot of pain.

And I don't think we knew how sick he was, or nobody would have wanted him to, you know,

I think, you know, to be honest,

I'll leave it to him to give updates because he's already kind of been communicating and it's his health.

And I don't want to speak for him, but we're all praying for Kenny Omega.

And thankfully,

it seems like there's good reasons to be very optimistic, but we were all really worried about him.

So it was honestly really hard the last 24 hours focusing on wrestling when somebody who's a part of our wrestling family

has something happening that's not wrestling like that.

So there's, you know, whenever there's a

real life situation like that, it always takes the most precedent.

But we're thinking about Kenny Omega and hoping he gets well very soon and wishing.

Good God.

It sounds like he had his uvula uvula amputated or something.

Well, I'll stop the Omega portion here.

There's one other little portion I'll play here in a moment just because it follows up on something we've talked about.

But, you know, the other thing I'll say is Tony said it earlier that on Twitter specifically, but social media, there's bad faith.

Bad faith fans.

What's a bad faith fan?

Someone who says they don't like dynamite?

Someone who says something that Tony thought was good was bad?

Well, it's easy to pick on Twitter because there are so many either fake people or fake accounts or people with 18 accounts or people that are just going to say, oh, fuck you, I hate sunshine or whatever the case.

But in this case, he's attempting to deflect the legitimate criticisms and obvious things that are happening in front of our eyes to equate that all with, oh, that's all those fucking assholes on Twitter because everybody knows there is a bunch of fake assholes on Twitter.

Right, but the real bad faith is coming out there and telling us everything's great when everything's been awful.

I didn't say it wasn't, but I'm saying this is what he's trying to do.

He's trying to say, well, anybody that's knocking me is one of these fake assholes on Twitter.

Again, we joked about it.

It happened.

It's the fans' fault.

Everything's great.

It's just you guys won't acknowledge how great it is.

It's you.

In his own way, he's kind of like shit stain.

Oh, bro, it was the greatest writing and the greatest story.

It's just the people, they're just, they don't get it.

Well, Jim, we recently talked about Brian Danielson, his injuries.

I think you had an email from a listener and it caused a big discussion.

It spurned the big discussion from you and I.

Here's Tony apparently talking about Brian Danielson's health.

Take care of yourself.

We saw Brian Danielson being attended to.

Ringside update on Brian's health.

Is he okay?

We know he's got the match tomorrow night.

In the Continental Classic, just give an if you've got an update on Brian.

He's living on the edge.

This guy, he's amazing.

He's amazing.

I've never met anybody like him in my entire life uh i think hopefully he'll be good for tomorrow but uh he's just having one of the most amazing years i mean you think about it he's had three major injuries this year and he's come back i think better every time i'm not sure that's a goddamn amazing year

whether it was his option

is it an amazing year when you've had three major injuries in a calendar year well when you are up for comeback of the year three different times in the same category that's a pretty amazing year.

Three comebacks in one year.

You got me there again.

Eye, his arm, his shoulder.

He's found a way to work through it each and every time and come back better.

I think he's the smartest person I know.

I think he's the smartest person I've ever known, not only in wrestling, but in any walk of life.

I think he

could have really done just about anything he set his mind to, and he's become, in my opinion, the greatest wrestler of all time.

I got to stop this right now not only is brian danielson the greatest wrestler of all time tony's almost getting emotional here he's the smartest person he's ever met in his entire life

wow

anytime we get to go out there and watch him do it it's an honor and a privilege and tonight that's how i felt and uh I hope and pray that he'll be okay to wrestle tomorrow on TNT on AEW Collision right now.

I expect it, but on the other hand, I can't take it for granted because he got the hell beaten out of of him tonight.

And,

you know, we'll hope for the best, but I think he'll be okay.

I'm optimistic for collision.

It's just a flesh wound.

You know how smart Brian Danielson is?

He realized after the first one, you know what?

I'm going to keep telling this guy I'm fucking hurt.

And he's going to be so impressed with me just coming to work every week.

Hey, Tony, this week, my foot, my ankle, my knee, my shoulder.

Well, what do you think?

Is Brian Danielson the smartest person you've ever met?

You've been around him.

Well, I've never quizzed him.

I didn't have the scholastic aptitude test or the standardized IQ test.

I've heard Mensa is highly overrated.

You know, they'll just take anybody.

But

no,

I have a hard time believing

that the guy who has limped back like the black knight, carrying his arms stuck under his fucking armpit and hopping on one leg and fucking, et cetera, is the smartest human being that this guy has ever met.

But then again, maybe Tony don't get out much.

Well, I guess we can understand a little more clearly or with some clarity why Tony has been putting over Danielson so hard and saying that if anything happens to him, he told his dad put Brian Danielson in charge and Danielson recommended Jimmy Jacobs, who's been Tony Khan's shadow for the last few months.

And

everything's going great.

I mean, luckily, it's all worked out well.

And the product's never been hotter.

They're set up for a great year because they can't go too much further down, I guess.

They're set up for what?

A great year.

Oh, God damn it.

Well, that's the end of the media scrum audio.

Any closing comments?

It's great.

All right.

I guess now that we have covered the

underdog, the upstart, the rival promotion, we should head on across the street and address the industry leader who, by the way, Brian, for the people who complain out there about the old school, the old time wrestling, the studio wrestling, back in the territory days, they had the 10-minute headlocks and the 15-minute arm bars they say that we loved so much.

The WWE is currently

making more money than ever before and drubbing the competition.

And it's it's not even a 10-minute head.

They're just showing us people walking for five minutes at a time.

Nevertheless, that is the WWE.

They're making more money than the federal government, showing people walking and talking to each other.

And before we get to the actual SmackDown program where they do that, there's been a lot of people talking.

And apparently, she may do some walking, walking right away from this about poor Liv Morgan has run afoul of the law, the gendarmes,

did a brief bit of boarding with the warden on the bounty of the county at the Crossbar Hotel, as Cowboy Bill would say.

What in the way?

Now, did you have who was on the crime beat this this when this came in for the wrestling news?

Was it Kippleman?

I know Kippleman's on the West Coast.

He's the late edition.

He's out there with all the all the whores and the

drunkards out there in like Vegas and California and Hollywood and the druggies and things like that.

Well, you're kind of right.

He's in San Francisco, so technically you're right about half.

Well, there you go.

He's covering that whole cesspool of humanity.

But to answer your question, no, even though it's not.

Who was obvious?

Well, the wrestling news covered it.

Everyone covered it.

It was a public thing because she was arrested by the police.

Yes.

Who else would she be arrested by?

A goddamn fucking Tinseltown fucking usher squad?

She was charged with possession of marijuana, but not more than 20 grams, as well as possession of, I believe, a vape pen containing an oil-like substance that also tested positive for marijuana.

An oil-like substance?

Wouldn't that be oil?

Marijuana oil, yes.

Cannabis oil.

Well,

back up here now, because once again,

Brian,

you're a young man about town.

You spent a lot of time there working in the big apple.

And you know about these things.

I'm just an old fart here, just a small town bird farter.

And so you know the prices of the kilos and things and the way that they measure out the grams and get the marijuana pills to the customers.

But first of all,

so she was in Florida.

Florida.

Of all places, Florida, with the most batshit, complete fucking insane people wandered around on a daily basis because of the warm weather.

They don't really need to come in at the wintertime.

It doesn't kill any of the crop off.

So they continue to populate.

Marijuana is not illegal in Florida?

No.

It's legal in like goddamn Kansas, in Oklahoma Homa.

Marijuana is legal in Oklahoma.

I have an article here.

She's from New Jersey.

She's from here where I am living where it is not illegal to have marijuana, possess it.

Less than 20 grams is nothing.

And well, and here's another thing.

What is 20 grams and like what I would weigh out on my butcher's scale?

Is that in ounces or

fucking,

are we talking about a quarter pounder here?

I have no idea.

I've been buying a lot of people.

Give me a goddamn measurement.

I can understand.

I have no idea.

I don't, you figure out the measurements.

I I don't know the gram.

Well, how does it translate to ounces?

Do you have it on your goddamn, like a four-ounce patty or a goddamn eight-ounce fucking,

you know, half-pound fucking OMG burger from over here at Befo Brady's?

Give me some measurement I can understand.

What is under 20 grams or eight gram?

What was it?

One ounce is 28.3 grams, and she had less than 20 grams.

So she didn't even have a fucking slider's worth.

She had nothing.

She had nothing.

and and as a

also this oil like substance i saw one of the the articles that said it was a synthetic

cannabininoid cannabininoid synthetic weed yeah you got to watch out for that that's nuts well so that's fake they have fake weed now well for years even before marijuana was legal like if you went to a head shop on long island they would sell you this crap that was like

i don't even know what it was and I only tried it once and I lost my mind for a few minutes.

I said, I'm never doing this again.

And then I did it.

And then I did it a second time, actually, to see if I was right the first time.

And then I gave it all to my buddy Andy.

No, yes.

Have you seen Andy since?

What happened to Andy?

He's a fisherman, and he's been out at sea for a long time.

Been catching the biggest fish ever.

It's just no one can see them.

All right.

Well, back to, so, so this is, but now again, from the reporting that I saw, and I didn't notice where it was or who wrote it, so I'm not going to credit anybody.

But also, that's a felony, whereas the

real weed is a misdemeanor, but the fake weed is a felony.

How the fuck does that work?

To be fair, a lot of people seem to think the freebirds may have set her up.

Well, that fucking haze.

I knew it.

He's going to carry that.

You know, a lot of people now have completely no idea what we're talking about and are going to think that we really maligned Michael Hayes for being a part of that.

I don't know if this is going to be in the Iron Claw movie.

Kerry von Erich and his either girlfriend or fiancé or already wife, whatever it was, were returning from Mexico or going to Mexico, from Dallas.

And apparently they found a variety of colors of pills all over Kerry.

And apparently the little girls who read it in the newspaper didn't all over his body.

They didn't believe that it could happen it had to be that michael hayes he's clearly a druggie he had to have planted all this on the innocent milk drinking garry von erich

and that spread amongst the wrestling fan populace and of course you know well that's you know remember what nick gulis said about the free birds he asked i think it was tom renesto when renesto was booking he said are they taking him marijuana pills

so you know they had a reputation should they should they lean into this and have one of the heels have planted this honor?

I think that probably they'll probably want it to blow over for the greater good.

I don't know if that angle would set records and cause them to rethink the main event at WrestleMania.

But nevertheless, so here's the point of the fucking thing.

And this is one of the best looking mugshots I've ever seen.

Well, she does.

She knows how to take a picture in any circumstance, apparently.

And she was at the same time probably thinking, what, you know.

This is probably going to get out, so I might better brush my hair.

And she was obviously not like coming back from some four-day fucking drunken binge out at the local fall and crawl tavern she was probably going shopping somewhere well she was in florida i wonder if jericho knows where she was she was uh driving a yellow jeep on country road 476.

now she may have come back from an alien encounter

But no, and I was going to make an important point also in her defense as well, and that apparently the

story is that the oil-like substance, the fake shit that's more

penalty-ridden than the real shit, was left in her car by someone else.

Now, we've heard that also.

We've heard that many times.

But in this case, if she had the real stuff, who knows?

It may be true.

Would you be mixing the real shit with the fake shit?

But point being, what the fuck?

Come back to New Jersey.

What are you doing in fucking Florida?

That's the point.

Newark airport's here.

It's just as easy to fly out of here as it is Tampa.

Come on.

The point that I've made before is that this is ridiculous.

Either something is illegal or it's not illegal, and you can't do it state by state.

That's why there's a need for a federal government since we're a goddamn country, not a collection of fucking, well, actually.

Maybe we're a collection of fucking dipshit fucking municipalities.

But

in one state,

something is perfectly legal for people to walk into a store and purchase and take to their fucking vehicle and drive home with, right?

And if somebody were to hijack your car on the way home,

you could call the police and tell them they stole my car and my weed, and the police would have to go and get both of them and bring them back to you, right?

But you drive across a fucking bridge or a state line of any kind to the next state,

like Florida, apparently.

And if you're driving home with shit that you've got, the police will arrest you, take it away from you, handcuff you, and take you to fucking jail.

Five miles away.

That's fucking stupid, regardless of what side you're on.

Now, for the record, according to this article I have here from Villages News, I believe this is a local newspaper or something like that.

They've got a big, it's a retirement community like The Villages in Florida, a big ritzy-titsy where the polo ponies roam free called The Villages.

You think she's living over at the retirement home?

Well, it does say here at the end that she announced earlier this year she obtained a real estate brokerage license.

So maybe she's doing some business.

Maybe she's

like, yeah, well, there you go.

So she's minding her own business, selling some poor, decrepit person near death a chance at paradise for the remaining days, weeks, whatever they may have left.

And the cops throw her in the goddamn slammer.

Although it does say here, the cops noticed, the sheriff's deputy noticed, her vehicle crossed over the yellow and white lines on the roadway several times.

And when he approached the Jeep, the odor of marijuana was detected.

So there is a difference between having it on you a little bit and smoking it while you're driving.

We do have to say, there is a difference.

Not the best decision in a highly populated trafficked area such as that to be doing that.

But I'll tell you one thing.

I bet you I'm not excusing the erratic driving, but I bet it came from texting because she's under fucking 40, so she naturally can't stop staring at her phone screen.

I bet you she was texting.

If she was that stone, she'd be doing 15 miles an hour and fucking attempting to goddamn stay in between lines that weren't even applicable to the goddamn road.

Now, it has come out, at least people think that there will not be any punishment from TKO or WWE.

Do you agree with that?

Do you think there should be?

How do you think this should be addressed, if at all?

Well, again, besides a traffic infraction,

throw the weed out because it's ridiculous.

It's fucking ridiculous.

And

it's legal in so many places and so many different forms that it's it's

that should be a traffic citation then too

and again

unless they can prove that she was somehow so impaired that she was a danger to other people

then i don't see how that it then everybody that gets a traffic infraction

in the tko umbrella would have to be brought up on charges before the tribal council.

All right.

Well, that is the story of Liv Morgan.

We'll see her soon,

hopefully, with just real marijuana, no synthetic marijuana that is unacceptable and choice.

Well, and she's going to be doing a goddamn co-promotion with Flair.

What do you mean?

Well, they'll be doing the weed and the wings.

The wings.

The wings.

Flair can throw the weed in and she can spread her wings and fly away.

The snowbird takes it.

All right, enough, Anne Murray.

Should we get to SmackDown now?

Yeah, why not?

All right.

Well, and here's the thing, as I said,

half of this program was them having stars that are so big, and

they have been doing stuff that we are so interested in that they are

basically getting people in

not record numbers forever, but along in biggest numbers in a while, to watch people walk

and enter

and stand there and talk to each other.

You know what's interesting too, the feedback we get from people who attend SmackDown or Raw Tape, SmackDown more than Raw, to be honest with you.

We used to get a lot of complaints about how boring it was.

We read some of them on the air waiting around.

We now hear from people that say they had a great time at SmackDown.

Whatever they're doing and the fan environment that creates the atmosphere in the building is working.

Well, the difference is the stars they've got now.

Remember when we were

two years ago, we were saying, well, who are they going to put against fucking Roman or whatever?

Geez.

And now it's bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

And

I think the people like their entrances live more than they like to see these other guys wrestle.

So

speaking of entering live, here came Roman Reigns, who hadn't been around

very much lately, and came with Paul and Solo and Jimmy Uso.

And

I got to be honest with you, they look wonderful.

Well, all except for Paul.

He looks like death warmed over, but he's such a fucking great talent.

You stop it.

Why do you always make fun of his looks?

Well,

it's there.

They're there.

My God, the state of him.

He walked past a cemetery last week.

Three guys ran after him with shovels.

And then

he went in the mall, and the first person that saw him says, my God, does your Undertaker know you got up today?

All right.

Well,

he's doing his best.

Everyone loves somebody, and somebody

must love him.

He looks better than Dean Martin.

You've got that.

I'll give you that.

But from the start of the entrance on television to the first word that Roman Reigns spoke was almost five minutes.

But again, Roman speaks and he's so good.

He's condescending.

He's arrogant.

He's articulate at the same time.

He has the inflection.

And he starts building up the deal that tonight is all about the one man who's been over backwards, who sacrificed for the bloodline.

The man who will be next in line, the tribal heir.

And Jimmy is back there.

You see him over Roman's shoulder.

He's smiling and he's pumping himself up for this big introduction.

He's kind of nodding and going along with it.

And all of a sudden, Roman says, the next tribal chief, Jimmy, join me in congratulating your brother Solo.

And fucking Jimmy's face and he just

and it falls.

And now he's awkward and he kind of steps back and mopes down.

And it was fucking classic.

And as soon as Roman hugs Solo, that's the only information they've imparted.

We're almost, you know, we're seven, eight minutes deep in this thing.

As a matter of fact, nine minutes, because I've made a note,

Roman hugs solo, and Orton's music plays.

And here comes Orton.

And as he's coming down the aisle, they go to a break.

They got breaks now in the goddamn interviews.

So it's three and a half minutes later, they come back from the break, and Orton is just stepping into the ring.

And just again, it's got to be awkward for the talent having to just come down there and then just stare at people or shake hands at the front row or what, you know.

Anyway, he gets in and Orton does and he's waited 18 months for this because the bloodline put him out.

I can't even remember actually what the

what the offense was that they committed to him.

Can you?

I'm not exactly sure.

That was when he was teaming up with Riddle, wasn't it?

Because remember, Riddle was on TV for weeks that he missed his friend Randy.

Yes, and then we started missing.

Well, actually, we didn't start missing Riddle.

We miss him.

He just went away.

Yeah, we didn't miss him.

Well, anyway, Roman Reigns, I'm coming for you, and I'm going to take everything away from you, and I'm going to go through your family to get to you.

We've heard this before, but Randy does a great job of it, right?

And he challenged Roman Reigns for the WWE

Undisputed or Universe, whatever they're calling the real title these days, at the Royal Rumble.

So we pretty much have to assume that's the main event, correct?

Other than the Royal Rumble match itself, it seems like it, yeah.

Well, yes, I mean, that's it's not going to be, I'm challenging you, and then they're going to do some fucking angle like Tony would that next week the guy gets hospitalized and his younger brother from across the fucking street takes his place.

But anyway,

but Roman, however,

says, you don't deserve it.

You can go to the back of the line.

The voices in your head should be telling you to run away from me because I will retire you, right?

And Orton said, well, Roman, you're a legend, but I'm a legend killer.

And as Orton goes for the RKO,

Rain slips it and falls back on his ass with shock face.

And Orton tells him, start thinking about him now because the voices that he hears are telling him that daddy's back,

which is apparently going to be a good catchphrase for young Orton.

But this was, it was great what they did, but it was also 20 minutes in by the time they just did this.

But now, again, even though, as I said, Reigns has not, I didn't hear him officially accept or agree to anything or whatever the fuck, but you would have to think since they put that out there that that's going to be the title match, right?

And he doesn't have to accept anything, and it goes down to uh Nick Aldiss, I guess, to make the decision.

Well, yes, who's not afraid to step on some toes and keep on walking?

So I think that uh, yeah, it has to be the main event.

And the only thing I don't like is I kind of think it's

I don't know, daddy's back or daddy's home, whatever the fuck he's saying.

It doesn't uh resonate

daddy's home,

daddy's home

to stay.

I think he is

At least for the rest of his contract.

Daddy's home until his contract's up and then he's a free agent.

MLW, WWE lawsuit has been settled.

Now you wouldn't have to worry so much about

real or fake claims of tampering if you wanted to expand the family and bring someone in.

Seems, I mean, I always keep saying, I've been saying it for a while.

It feels like they need to add someone that would make sense.

But I don't know who that would be.

I don't know what the holdup or drawback or whatever the fuck that they perceive is,

if there is any now with their reasons why they haven't before.

But if the WWE and whoever their creative brain trust in is does not

attempt to or complete signing Jacob Fatu to be part of that fucking thing and unleash him him while he still can do this stuff

on the world,

it's a goddamn crime.

He's like the man in the iron mask.

Here's this fucking insanely good fucking talent closed up at a goddamn bell tower somewhere, and nobody can see him or fucking experience it.

I don't, I don't get it.

Unless he was with Janeti down by the railroad tracks that day,

I would think any other offense that he may have committed in his life would be goddamn negotiable at this point.

Well, it would be interesting because the offense he committed in his life prohibited, according to what I was told, and I believe the source I had knew what he was talking about,

because of his criminal record, he wasn't hired by WWE.

That was under a different ownership structure.

You do have to wonder.

I mean, not everyone in the UFC is a fucking angel.

I was about to say they've had a few

delinquents over there in that division, haven't they?

They have.

But again, this guy,

this is

in the past, and

since he's been somewhat on the wrestling radar for at least the past five years or more,

and I've met the guy and talked to him.

I believe

if he was

in a position where he was earning money and being featured, that he could stay away from a life of crime for fuck's sake.

Anyway.

But he may get arrested with Liv Morgan for weeding the car.

Now that is, you need to stay away from certain states, Jacob.

Certain states you may still need to tread lightly, tiptoe through the tulips.

That's right, and have Stephen Pinu's card on you.

Yes, or just remember 87750 Steve.

I'm not going to argue.

Anyway, can we continue on with SmackDown?

Please.

I'll save us some time here.

The next match was a tournament for the shot at the United States title with Grayson Waller versus Carmelo Hayes.

And I invoked the Waller rule, and thankfully,

they invoked the Hayes rule because at least Hayes won.

I don't really, I don't know that much about Hayes, but I'm in support of anybody beating Waller.

But by the time that was over, we were 40 minutes into this show.

So we've basically

watched Waller do whatever it is he tries to do

and heard three or four minutes of information imparted in almost 45 minutes.

But they're watching it, two and fucking half million of them or whatever.

Good match.

I mean, you may not have liked it, but it was an all right match.

Well, I'm glad to hear that at least that's on the record now.

And then we had Orton and L.A.

Knight in the back because, again, here comes L.A., all these baby faces.

This is fucking

a peak time for

baby faces over at a certain level altogether in the WWE in how long, Brian?

Several years.

Would you not think?

I can't remember the last time they had this many topics.

You know, it's interesting.

If you go back like 10 years, a lot of the guys there now, like Punk or Cody, were there then, but they mean more now.

Yeah.

And at the same time, you know, it's since the 90s, probably that you had

a level of babyfaces that, or a number of babyfaces at the main event level that they all are liking for different reasons.

So here's Orton and L.A.

Knight, but.

They're obviously with egos this big, there has to be a little tension.

And Orton was like, I don't need your help,

L.A.

Knight.

But L.A.

Knight says, well, you know how the numbers work.

Somebody's going to get you from behind.

I'll be there, blah, blah, blah.

And Orton just tells him, well, stay out of my way.

And L.A.

Knight's

sentiment of this whole thing is he still wants Roman Reigns before anybody else gets him.

So,

you know, there could be some competition here.

They're not outright fighting, but

they have some level of grown adult disagreement about all this shit.

Instead of, are you my friend?

Are we friends, Brian?

I felt like you were my friend, and then you weren't my friend no more.

It was tension between Orton and LA Knight, but not like over the top.

It was just two

guys that seem to have the same enemy, so they're trying to get along, but not,

hey, are we going to hang out?

We didn't hang out.

Why didn't you hang out with me?

I thought we were friends.

We're not friends.

I'm going to go ride lawnmowers with these people.

We got to reform our group.

I thought we were friends again now we're not friends again how many times can this happen

and boy when you and by the way are you friends again with finnegan bob finnegan bob finnegan if you're not friends again with finnegan

then i'd hate to think who you're friends again with

anyway then we had another tournament match for a shot at the u.s title with Kevin Owens and Austin Theory.

And I wrote, this is a shame.

And

I was going to try to give it an opportunity, even though my boy Theory has just been just,

they're just wiping their feet on him now.

And again,

the difference, the polar opposites in visual appearance between Owens and Theory.

But Logan Paul did say that Owens dressed like a fifth grader who takes PE dodgeball way too seriously, which popped me.

And then they went to break in two minutes or less.

And

they came back and

theory worked over Owens's forearm

for most of the match when he was getting the heat on him.

Owens's forearm, they've done an injury angle.

I don't know, he may be hurt for real, but it's at a cast, right?

It's at a cast.

His forearm is

like his hand and his knuckles all the way up to his elbow is in a cast.

And theory has

stomped it and he's run it into the stairs and he's done this and that and the other

And then Owens does the little tries a little comeback and does a duck and a dodge and realizes he can just hit him.

And he hits him one shot with the fucking cast and knocks him colder than a banker's heart one, two, three.

What did you think of that finish?

And shouldn't it have

like when your mom used to take the fly swatter to you, this is going to hurt me a lot more, it's going to hurt you?

I thought they were actually going to go the other way when he started really fucking with his hand.

I'm like, wow, they're showing, you know, some aggression out of Austin Theory here, but then he lost.

I was surprised.

Doesn't help Owens.

It's just another thing that hurts Theory.

And

maybe they don't see him the way you do.

And again,

he's got an injury that is serious enough that a medical facility has put a cast on his arm,

and then it is beaten and stomped and battered from pillar to post by this opponent for much of the match.

And then he just hauls off and fucking hits the guy in the head with the fucking cast containing the injury.

So the bloodline was in the back.

And Roman Reigns is pissed that Randy Orton ruined Solo's moment.

And Jimmy says, well, Solo can handle Randy Orton.

And Roman says, no,

you can handle Randy Orton.

And then they try to say yeet.

And Royan says, quit saying fucking yeet, right?

Well, he didn't say fucking, but he did say yeet,

which is completely different from Jeet.

A lot of people have confused the two.

Yeet

is nothing like Jeet.

You know what Jeet means.

Okay.

No, I'm telling you.

Yeah, Jeep.

Did you eat?

Are you doing that joke?

Did you eat?

Yes, did you eat?

That's did you eat anywhere south of, say, central Kentucky?

But people are confusing it on Twitter with yeet,

which is completely ridiculous.

All right.

We're an hour and five minutes into the SmackDown episode.

And we got more spooky carry and cross.

What the fuck?

Well, I wanted to know what you thought of this.

Are they trying to repackage him or rebuild him or make them interesting again?

What do you think of this?

He's got a different hairdo.

That's the only thing has changed.

Every time they do a

video package of him, it's him in a dark room with Scarlet saying spooky things that make no fucking sense to the average person.

And they don't really understand it.

And

you're not motivated to listen to him because when you see him wrestle, he gets the shit kicked out of him and gets beaten about five minutes.

And then he comes back on.

And the next interview is,

well, the time is about to happen and the clock is ticking.

And

the heaviest shit that ever happened to you is fixed to come down on you is basically his attitude.

And none of this shit ever comes down.

The hammer never falls.

The shoe never drops.

The last dribble never never drops on the floor.

It's just he says shit's going to happen and nothing ever fucking happens.

Am I misinterpreting the basic gist of this?

No, I mean, they did this video for him.

It was interesting and I'm sure he'll lose in like six minutes next week, but with a commercial break in between

to whoever,

to a street profit, to Lashley, to an LWO, to a Randy or it doesn't matter.

Just he's going to lose next week to somebody.

Or he'll further this.

He'll jump out of the crowd and attack them.

Like, oh, they're doing something.

Then he loses the next week.

When

is the inevitable,

well, we could do something with her with somebody that they actually would give a shit about conversation going to take place.

I wonder if they have an anti-Sabolite

clause in the contract the two of them sign.

Because they are a couple in the real life.

Yeah, I don't think they want to do anything other than stuff with each other.

Well, I don't blame them with that.

You know, I mean, but I'm talking about, you know, working somewhere professionally with other people.

You know, in some ways, you commend a lot of these couples that decide they want Miro and hot and flexible.

They decide they want to do their thing, and that's all they want to do is just work together.

It used to be: if you brought your woman around wrestling, someone else is going to steal her quick, like time and time again.

But now,

you know, it's kind of like

a couple going on the road with the circus or something.

But, you know, if she could make like

two or three million dollars in the right spot and

who, his future is looking very, very dim,

you know, I would think it's, you know, Hollywood is calling.

If you're him, what do you do?

If you're him and for whatever reason,

this is how they're going to keep booking you.

What do you do?

Do you keep doing it without any problem, knowing that it may,

not that there are all that great, all that many options out there or places to work, but it may hurt you appearance-wise to fans in the future because of the way you've been used?

Or do you, I mean, what do you do if you're this guy in this position right now?

Well,

I don't know his financial situation or his frame of mind about the wrestling business, but

you know, I would think that when my contract is up, whatever that may be, I and potentially her both ought to go somewhere and do something else to,

you know, if that's the best they've got for them.

But, and I said, you know, she might,

you know, be one of those deals where you move on from him, but at the same time, they've been working with her for a long time.

I've never met her.

So maybe they...

They either think, well, she doesn't want to do anything with anybody but him, or maybe there's something that we don't know that she's dumber than owl shit, slapped with a board, as Aunt Lola used to say,

and probably wouldn't work with anybody else because I don't know, but I would think that she's more marketable than he is, is my point.

Just appearance for appearance's sake.

We've heard her speak a few times, but she

do they've never spoken live, I don't think either one of them.

Maybe Maybe she couldn't say Sue if the hogs had her.

I can't remember what she sounds like, so I don't remember any promos.

I'm sure she has.

I remember her lip-syncing the song, but actual promos.

So we know she can move her lips in a rhythmic fashion.

There's a market for that somewhere.

We'll figure it out.

Anyway,

shit.

Well, now we got to, even though she wasn't on the show, they showed a VTR of the injury, but we got to talk about Charlotte Flair.

She's hurt.

And

did we

know, we haven't even talked about it at all on the last program.

It's happened in between because we're talking about...

No, it happened on Raw.

So we talked about it on the last program.

We've broken this news.

We didn't break it.

Am I gibberishing now?

Yeah, you've gone a lot of different ways so far here at the beginning of this.

We talked about the match, Asuka versus Charlotte.

By the time we reviewed it, there was fan footage of an incident on the top rope where there was an awkward fall.

Yes.

And that hadn't aired on TV.

So we discussed the injury and what we thought was potentially a serious knee injury.

Well, and now we know that it is and what it is.

Apparently, she not only tore her ACL, but also

the

is it did she tear her PCL or MCL?

I want to say it was MCL.

MCL.

Her toller MCL.

Yes.

She tore her MCL and also

apparently

the meniscus, which is cartilage, tore some cartilage.

But if you tear

a ligament, most of the time you're going to fucking tear some cartilage too.

And apparently even rattled her neck and or head with that whiplash effect on the way down.

But the knee injury is what is serious.

And that's

the the ACL is at least six months for athletes.

And

somebody that does the athletic stuff and the, you know, the

moon salt off the top to the floor, and et cetera, probably longer than that because the ACL, the anterior cruciate ligament, that's the big one.

That's the one that's most damaging for, especially for athletes.

And the

MCL is the medial collateral ligament.

And that's, you know,

if it had just been the MCL and nothing else was damaged, she could have actually probably

a therapy and you could get by with that, or at least you could in the old days.

They might still,

you know, want to fix those these days.

And, you know, the cartilage is not that big of a deal.

It's just the byproduct of the extent of the damage from the ligaments and the knee going

in ways that it's not supposed to fucking go.

80% of the ACL injuries or more happen when your leg is straight and it is hit or clipped or bent to one side or the other that it's not supposed to go instead of forward and back, side to side, and that will snap your ACL.

And

the MCL, if I'm not mistaken,

Because Bobby Eaton had this.

He did the rocket launcher on a shitty hard ring in Columbus, Georgia, and instantly sold his knee.

And he went to the doctor, which

that meant that it actually was legitimately serious.

And at the MCL, they explained a lot of times happens

in car wrecks when people are sitting and they're thrown into the dashboard and their knee is bent back too far, right?

So

all those things happened to her.

We saw that bump, and then they played because it was in the commercial break.

The fan footage is what we saw, but they played their professional footage on SmackDown.

And when she was jerked forward,

first her legs hit the ropes, so that could have whiplashed her leg to the side and torn the ACL.

But then she was

buzz-sawed back into the ring where it looked like she either landed on her kneecap or with her leg.

Remember, I said her leg under her, but on her kneecap, I I thought it might have

dislocated her knee or whatever.

But if she bent her leg back, that could have been that.

But

she was whipped in so many different directions that I don't think we'll ever know what did what unless she was to sit down and walk you through it.

Like, yeah, when I hit the rope here, that's when it fucked up my ACL.

And when I fucking landed here, that's what, you know, elsewhere, it was, but it just fucking brutal.

You know, we talk a lot about it with AEW because they typically have a lot of people get hurt, it seems like, from a lot of the things they do.

This wasn't a completely crazy, outrageous spot, although still you have to question how necessary it was.

This goes, I guess, to the bigger discussion about the wrestling style that everyone's working.

And

you have to ask yourself, is it really necessary?

And at some point,

there has to be a recognition that these injuries piling up the way they are isn't helping.

Now, look, it's a different world too.

Wrestlers train differently now than they did then.

In the past, there's more wear and tear because of the training.

I don't know how many people want to acknowledge that.

It's not like you could just go out there and lift all the weights you want as long as you want.

There's going to be no damage to your body from that.

It's not taking a bump, but it's still damage.

Or they don't spend as much time as they used to on reversing hammer locks.

They go straight to the fucking suplexes.

Straight to high spots during commercial breaks.

What's the point of that if it's a television show?

Well, you know, and that's the thing.

In all honesty, we don't know what they were going to do.

And maybe it was going to be a deal where they

fought up there.

And when they came, because they were about to come back from the break.

So they may have been going to set up for something.

They knew when they were coming back.

And you would see it on television.

But and what it wasn't

in this in the scope of what we see these days, it wasn't preposterous what they appeared to be trying to do.

They're probably going to do a superplex or some shit or a hurricane run off the fucking top rope.

But remember, I said, just

so many people have to fight gingerly on the top rope for so long, it's a buzzkill to begin with.

And too many people try to come off the top rope that's only 18 inches from the second rope that is exponentially safer.

But point is,

this was not a move that hurts somebody.

This was

a fuck-up trying to do a move that hurts somebody.

We see so much of not only AEW, but,

you know, these independents where they actually do the fucking move and hurt people or knock them out on camera.

They didn't even get to whatever they were going to do because they couldn't stay balanced on the rope.

And Oscar, as she's falling backwards into the ring, she pulls Charlotte, who took the guy.

And somebody said, well, it was Charlotte's fault.

If you get jerked off the top rope

enough that you're doing a fucking flip and catapult yourself off the goddamn ropes at that speed, somebody pulled you.

I'm sorry.

It wasn't like Charlotte was going to fall backwards out into the goddamn cavernous arena.

She went right on top of her.

So they just.

They were holding on to each other and Oscar fell backwards, whatever.

But again, the bigger conversation about the style, and again, I'm not blaming Asuka, I'm not blaming Charlotte, it happened here, but

if that move they were setting up from the top row, if we're going with the idea that caused a good portion of the injury here,

if that wasn't there, would it have hurt the match?

No.

If you had done something in the ring instead to continue the storytelling without the excessive physicality for a Friday night SmackDown main event,

would it have hurt the match?

Big E broke his neck on this show.

Remember Rich Holland belly to belly selects him on the floor?

And it was one of those things.

Why are they doing that spot here?

It's awful this happened.

Dusty Rhodes,

if somebody was willing to take that bump on the floor, and we didn't have pads back in those days.

From Magnum TA with his belly-to-belly finish, Dusty would have made an angle that people would still be replaying today of whoever it was getting fucking belly-to-bellied on a concrete floor, carried out,

coming back to get whatever the fuck, it would have been

replayed to this day like the scaffold match bump.

But instead, they did it in a fucking TV match, and

he was out for a year and a half or whatever.

He's still been out,

so yes, a lot of this stuff.

It's fine, you're trying to do it, but let's err on the side of safety,

you know, just for a spot to come back out of the fucking commercial break.

But anyway, so that's a,

they're saying nine months, but and this is a, she's a freak athlete, but she's also made a career out of doing a backflip off the top rope and landing on her feet on the floor outside, which is fucking nine feet or whatever it is.

And,

you know, that's going to be hard to regain that level of stability

from this getting fixed in that amount of time.

And that's only one of the many things she does.

But

that's the thing.

She's done that move in every match, probably twice a week, whatever she wrestles for the last 10 fucking years and never been injured.

And she's just getting up on top to do a fucking whatever the fuck.

And she's got her goddamn legs destroyed.

Hey, there's got to be wear and tear.

You know, Randy Savage did that axe handle to the floor

for years.

That wasn't a moonsault going backwards.

That was just an axe handle to the floor.

Sometimes he didn't even jump up.

He just kind of went down.

That killed his knees.

Yeah, well, plus that he weighed 100 pounds more than she does, which helps also.

Maybe not in 79.

Well,

he did have his rangy period, but he was still, I mean, he was cut.

He was deceptive, but he was goddamn, when he was training for the bodybuilding contest, he was still over 200 pounds.

It was only in the

baseball days that he was,

he looked like Jimmy Valion after Jimmy became a vegetarian.

No, I saw those early photos of him wrestling in Daisy Dukes.

He was very, very skinny, but

get well, Charlotte Flair.

We hope you get well and come back soon.

Yes, please, because gee, Manelli, we're going to be seeing more of

the rest of the girls.

Shotzi.

Shotzi.

Well, speaking of someone posted the other day on Twitter, I wish I can give them credit.

But they say, Shotzi looks like she just smoked an Acme cigar and it blew up in her face.

And it was a picture of her with her current hair doing shit, like dirt on her face and stuff.

All right, anyway, moving on.

Moving on past Mia Yim and Zelina against Oscar and Carrie Sane.

We're moving on past that.

Because now we came to the Bloodline locker room where there was Jimmy and Solo.

And Jimmy's talking to Solo because Paul and Roman are in conference.

They've been talking for a long time now, longer than usual.

And Jimmy asks Solo, hey, if something was going to happen to me, you'd tell me, right?

And Solo says,

I'm your brother.

Well, so is fucking Jay over on the other fucking show.

And they're, you know, so Jimmy did not appear to be too comforted by all of that.

And then we get to our main event.

That is really the, that's the show.

That's the fucking show.

And we're time for our main event.

And

it's Orton and Solo, by the way.

And the entrances only took four minutes because Orton attacked at the bell.

And I'm thinking, well, all right, we're going to actually get to it here.

And

they fought for like 20 seconds, and Jimmy Uso bailed out to the floor.

And without even pitching, they just faded to fucking break in

less than 30 seconds of this match.

I was like, what the fuck?

Is it just me, or is it hard to get involved, invested, interested?

Just get in.

Wouldn't they just you, yeah.

No, I've learned that unless there's an angle, unless there's like a main event, well, not a main event, unless there's a promo that's being billed as being after the main event, I usually don't watch the main event for SmackDown.

There's no point to it.

It's just going to be a bunch of commercials, and then it ends three minutes before the top of the hour.

Well, that's the thing.

They started the entrances at 9.33 p.m.

Eastern, right?

And by the time that the entrances took the four minutes and then boom, we went to break in 30 seconds and we come back and Orton is beating

Uso or

did I say Orton and Solo?

You said Orton and Solo.

Well, it's Orton and fucking Uso.

Uma Oprah.

Oh, God, don't do that.

All right.

Well, there's so many O's.

There's Orton or Solo.

There's Uso.

There's OOO, but it's Orton and fucking Uso is what it is.

And Orton beats Uso up, and everything that Orton does looks good, and he's a smart worker.

And then after a couple of minutes, Uso takes over and gets some heat.

And after they've gone four minutes since they came back from the break, they go to another break.

And finally, they come back.

Orton makes his comeback, hits the DDT, milks the RKO, and then Solo's music plays.

After Aro milks the RKO on Uso, here comes Solo.

And that distracts Orton, but instantly L.A.

Knight comes out and tackles Solo and beats him up in the entranceway, and Orton hits the RKO on Uso

Unos Dos Trio.

And he wins the match.

And then here comes Roman out.

And And he, and by the way, now we've still got,

we've got like six or seven minutes on the air.

They end a minute beforehand every time on Fox.

So the match, literally, there was maybe five minutes of this match shown on television, but then the afterbirth on the angle, Roman comes out, levels L.A.

Knight,

and

just with a shot to the back of the head, and L.A.

Knight crumbles.

And then Roman gets in the ring and has a face-off with Orton

and L.A.

Knight had just disappeared like he got he got bonked on the head and suddenly he's fucking he's comatose they've carried him out somewhere we can't find him

and then while they have their face off they get in a fight do Roman and Orton

And then Uso stops Orton and they get heat on Orton, but then suddenly LA's back fresh as a daisy and gets in, but Solo stops him and they get heat on the baby faces.

And then they play more music.

And suddenly from the back of the ring, nobody saw him coming.

Here's AJ Styles looking like 1989 Lex Luger.

Have you ever seen A.J.

Styles look so

muscular in

your life and all your born put-togethers, Brian?

I have never seen them look like that.

And it appears that a lot of guys are returning to WWE with more size than they had when they left.

In peak physical condition.

Well, he does the flying phenomenal forearm on Roman and makes a big comeback on the heels and clears the ring out.

And so there's the heels in the entranceway yelling, and the babyfaces are in the ring yelling, but AJ's standing there looking.

And then he spins L.A.

Night around

and clotheslines the fuck out of him

and then jumps out of the ring and walks past the bloodline to the back.

Now,

what happened between L.A.

Knight and AJ Styles that we don't remember?

Because AJ's been out and back and forth and L.A.

was a male model.

Do they have previous heat or are we going to find out that this is

some personal grudge they've been carrying without anyone knowing it?

When L.A.

LA first arrived in WWE, he told AJ that he thought it was commendable that AJ was so big with the gay community, and AJ got offended, and now they've been feuding.

Ah, there you go.

And again, somebody's going to take that seriously.

We are parodying a question that AJ Styles was famously asked on a call-in radio show or whatever and LA

was not involved.

Yeah, he was on the Observer show, and a caller called him up and said that he's a big fan of AJ.

And the entire gay community likes him.

And AJ's response: the whole time AJ's just talking like this: Hey, how you doing?

The guy says, You're big with the gay community.

AJ goes, The gay community.

Yeah,

he never realized why they all fought over him to fit him for those leather chaps when he'd go in the store.

Well, we'll see what the community thinks of him now because he is twice the size as he was before.

He's backing 50 pounds heavier.

The new thick AJ Styles.

And that was the smacketh downeth for December 15th.

That was pretty much it.

You know, the AJ thing at the end, they always leave you with at least some kind of question for next week.

Yes.

Imagine that.

Yeah, because I mean, it has to be some kind of resolution.

Why did he return?

Why did he do this to L.A.

Night?

Why did he help Roman?

Why did he attack the bloodline?

Well, he didn't help Roman.

Well, he didn't help Roman, excuse me, Orton,

help Orton.

But he, at the same time, he did not attack the bloodline after he had cleared the ring of the bloodline.

But he also walked past.

Yeah, well, that's true.

He walked past them and they

let him live.

And then they looked at him like, what the fuck are you doing, dude?

So like we all did.

So if they don't know and we don't know,

then he must be the only one that knows.

Right?

Possibly.

Do you hear this wind?

Oh, God.

Now it's just an act of fucking mother nature that you're complaining about the noise.

I'm going to get you a government-issued, completely soundproof room

that also will serve as a sensory deprivation chamber

and maybe even an anti-gravity device.

Would you like to just float in complete darkness and silence?

Yeah, I think I can go for that.

I'll call a store and have them send one over probably three days because it's the holidays.

Anyway, closing thoughts on SmackDown or this program that we're about to close up.

Well, we just covered a lot, and believe it or not, there's even more to talk about, which we will talk about in a few days on the drive-through and lots of big topics, lots of big issues.

And we're going to talk about Jim's December 1983.

Also, omnibus season about to hit us.

So stay tuned to the podcast feeds as well to the official,

as well as to, let me say it in English, the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel, because there'll be some omnibuses that are so long, they will only live there.

But omnibus season is here, and it's over.

They will only live there.

They're going to be dead on arrival everywhere else.

Well, they won't be arriving anywhere else.

They'll be only there.

There.

Well, that's a different way to say it.

That is.

Yes.

We're running out of things to say here today, this week on this

show.

In that case, since I have to do the official sign-off,

hey, ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas.

If you don't hear us in time on the drive-thru, and otherwise, thank you.

Fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.