Episode 512: The Holiday Spirit

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

AEW is the birthplace of the biggest stars in wrestling, but when they grow up, they move out and they never call or visit.

It's the one more week and we get a vacation edition of the experience today.

And joining me...

Hawaii and Brian, the podcasting lion, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-host to you.

He's the dean of the College of Podcasting Knowledge, the great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Vacation schmecation.

We got lots of work to do.

I'm slapping my face.

I'm squeezing your hand.

I'm slapping my face here.

That wasn't a pause.

I just want you to know that I've done

almost absolutely no preparation whatsoever for this program.

The bare minimum that can possibly be called preparation.

My My enthusiasm level is at

an all-time low here.

I've paid just enough attention to the wrestling this week to get by.

And I, because I got the holiday spirit.

And when you get to holiday spirit, the last thing you want to do is fucking work.

But we're going to do it today.

We're going to pull this completely out of my bottomless, cavernous ass here and turn this into some type of hilarity.

You see, I always

no matter, no matter what the situation,

when I need to pull something out of my ass, it's bottomless.

I'm always able to pull something out of my ass no matter what situation I'm in.

That is

a pretty positive attribute to have, don't you say?

I guess it's a positive attitude to have.

I don't know about an attribute.

You like the purple marks of asses?

No, it's an attribute.

attribute when no matter what kind of position you are in or situation you are in you got a 3d printer in your ass you got a the you're gonna pull something out of your ass what you need the episode of the twilight zone what you need what you need is in my ass what you need well what i need has always been in my ass now i'm not in

I'm not in the goddamn habit of just pulling things out of my ass and handing them to other people.

It's limited to what I need.

Did you ever see that episode, by the way?

Which episode is that?

I don't know them all by name.

Oh, God, it's the, there is a street peddler that has the ability as people

need various things or would have some

accident where they would need something to save them or whatever.

He always had the magic ability to sell them at a very cheap price out of his little suitcase on the street corner what they needed.

I have just what you need.

But then

this evil thug, gangster type,

he realizes the old man's power and he's going to exploit that for malicious no-goodery.

And finally,

he extorts the old man into

giving him what he needs.

But then

in the climactic scene that I'm going to spoil, spoiler, wait a minute, hold on here.

Let's get some kind of

I'm going to spoil this.

That's a warning, that's an alert.

There you go.

I knew you'd come up with something.

The old man sells him a pair of shoes.

And the guy,

this is what I'm saying.

Okay, something's going to, I'm going to walk into the bank and something's going to happen.

I can take the money, wherever, whatever.

He puts the shoes on.

And then

he's walking across the wet city street, and a car is coming around the corner, and he slips on the slick soles of the shoes, and bam,

he gets run over, and he's laying there.

I thought you told me this is what I needed.

And the old man says, No, it's what I needed.

All right, it's a great episode so far.

Well, see, I told you

I did nothing for this.

We'll start now.

We'll start over.

So is it hard, Brian, you've got children.

I don't think they're of this age as of yet, but is it hard when the kids move out and go to college, out on their own, become big stars?

You're still living in a fucking double wide.

They don't call.

They don't come home.

They don't visit.

We haven't had that problem yet, soon, but not yet.

And hopefully we'll have a little more space in the double wide for a few years.

Well, you got a triple wide.

They got extra lane room in the lanes up there on the Jersey Turnpike.

Well, it's all about the width.

But it's all about, I thought it was about the girth, but nevertheless, we've been told different things.

But

it, it, how, what the fuck are they thinking over there in Kookamunga Land

when the two,

well, I can't say the two, two of the biggest stars in wrestling

are AEW talents that

honestly,

in Cody's case, no disrespect to him, didn't move the needle at all.

And Punk, who is the only one really who has moved their needle, but the needle is a lot goddamn bigger.

It's like one of those things they give the fucking epidural spinal thing with or whatever, that he's moving now.

And they had them.

And they couldn't fucking make it work.

I don't think it's fair to say Cody never moved the needle.

I think Cody was an important part of the overall package, and early on didn't move the needle.

Well, but that's the thing is that honestly, Cody, as we've seen in retrospect,

there were more people.

Well, there were more people, but also he was more important in keeping it some semblance of a professional wrestling promotion, a professional in capital letters wrestling promotion.

And his loss was probably felt more behind the scenes, locker room, flavor of the whole fucking thing, Tony goddamn going off on tangents, whatever, than maybe than in the ratings.

But still, both of them,

the fluctuations in viewership on the programs that Punk and Cody are on now are bigger than some of the total ratings of

Tony Khan's broadcast these days.

You know, we always said it jokingly, the biggest match in AEW history is going to be Cody versus CM Punk.

I think originally we said it's SummerSlam and then Survivor Series and who knows when

it still is.

I mean, it's the biggest thing that could happen to AEW.

And I don't want to spoil too much before we get there because I know there's a big review coming, but it was telling the lack of reaction.

Punk got talking about punching people in the face in the back.

That says that that audience audience had no idea what the fuck he was talking about.

They had no idea who the Young Bucks are.

They don't have any idea what he did in AEW.

They know he's a former WWE champion who worked with Paul Heyman who's coming back.

And at the same time, that line

illustrated a point that I have made about everybody that tries to do the shoot promos, the insider promos, I have the,

you know, the, it used to be newsletter promo, now it's the website promo audience.

There's got to be a double meaning.

You can't just go out there and talk smart.

You have to either say something that wasn't designed to get a reaction for that audience.

It was designed to get a reaction for a certain audience,

but it made sense

in the course of what he was saying to begin with.

If you had no idea what he was talking about, he'd just be in a smart ass.

Yeah, but there are a lot of those guys get punched in the back there on the screen, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's what I'm talking about.

You can make allusions

to backstage things or things that happen in the world of the websites and the newsletter readers and etc.,

but only if it doesn't confuse the people who don't know that world and it makes sense in the context of what you're saying, anyway.

The old, it's not a double entendre.

I'm not saying one part has to have a lewd meaning,

but it has to be

something that

makes sense for both audiences.

Have I articulated that in any way clearly?

I think you have.

And again,

that was the big test.

If punk references something from AEW, we'll get booze, we'll get cheers.

You got nothing.

Everything else got a big reaction in that promo.

So that's really telling.

And now, and bear in mind, he wasn't going for a big pop on that line because you could tell the way that he kind of tossed it off.

I'm not saying he wasn't.

But

that was the opportunity to gauge what the audience reaction was more than something Punk was trying to set up for an audience reaction.

Yes, and I'm not saying you were, but some people are going to say that.

He didn't get any reaction with that.

That means that

they don't agree with him.

No, it means that it wasn't designed to get a reaction because that audience, and especially that live audience there, the WWE faithful, they didn't really know.

There was the, I'm sure, the contingent in there that went, oh,

but at the same time, that's why he threw it off.

But it meant something in the continuity of the promo.

It didn't just come out of nowhere, but it was designed in a more professional way to get back at the kids from Kookamunga and their romper room class that were always assing off and doing the victory laps or making the snide comments or hangnail

that quote unquote empty-headed dip shit

that tried to do a shoot promo that was not only unintelligible to the audience that wasn't smart to that world, but it was unintelligible to everybody else too, because he couldn't figure out how to do it.

That's why you leave this shit to the professionals.

And again, we'll talk more about it during the SmackDown review, but the limited interactions Punk has had with other people

who would maybe be on his side or maybe not in the back, back, whether it's Cody or Owens or Randy Orton, whoever it may be, that's kind of the way AEW should have had it, not guys, okay, if you really don't like him, go out there and let him know it.

Like, that's not necessarily a good idea.

They're doing it right with punk right now.

We still haven't seen any physical action.

We're still just excited to hear words come out of his mouth.

Well, but, and, and here's the thing, and again, we'll talk about it.

Well, I guess we're talking about it now, but we'll talk about it more.

But every one of the baby faces that he interacts with, there's a certain level of tension, animosity, outright pissiness from Seth Rollins, who's, you know, fuck you, fuck you, to all the way down to Cody, who's hello, darkness, my old friend.

Welcome back.

You know,

and it's funny that the guy that

he's been most universally welcomed, or not universally, but most warmly welcomed by and shook hands with is Cody,

who is now

the other guy that has to win the Royal Rumble to finish his story.

And there's levels in between from Owens going, yeah, we're going to see you later.

Go ahead.

Whatever.

This is what they did with the Bloodline a year ago.

There are so many options to get somewhere.

Any of them being plugged in are interesting, and you can't wait to see what it is.

Punk has already established an interesting dynamic with Cody, Owens, certainly Rollins, Randy Orton, Roman Reigns, Heyman.

I mean, the only one he got along with so far is Nick Aldis, I think.

So, I mean, not got along with, but just there's that tension, like you said, there's an interesting thing.

You don't know what Punk's going to do.

He's not a declared babyface or a declared heel.

He's just him.

And so far, it's been good.

We'll talk more about it later in the show.

But Cody and Punk, this all could have been an AEW.

The more you see now of what's happening with WWE, and they are right now having a business boom, so it's a special time to see them.

And then you see what's happening in AEW.

It's

one is going one way, one has gone around the hill and is going down the other way.

But by the way, I will say one thing.

Punk will be very respectful of Aldous in a physical manner because they've already had Orton RKO him, and they're not going to go just punching up their goddamn general manager with no retort with everybody on the roster, like would probably be happening over on the other side of the street.

But anyway,

we will move along.

On the other side of the street, we would hit him with a Canadian destroyer, and then the other guy would get up and do the same thing to him.

On the other side of the street, I thought you were going to say he'd probably hit him with a truck,

which we have an update on some things of that nature later on.

First, but I wanted to read this top of the program.

This is not an official Reggie's Corner segment, folks, or anything like like that.

But I wanted to give

this its own read here and its own mention because Dave from Kent, Ohio

sent me a comic book and it just teared me up.

So I'm doing this at the top of the program so I can recover by the end of it.

Because it was the adventures of Dagny von Bacon Pants.

And

he also,

it's a beautiful full color cover and comic book and everything.

And he also sent a letter along with it saying, our furry friend who left no scent unsniffed was named Dagney von Bacon Pants.

And for Dagne's birthday, November 6th each year, my wife and I would try and do something fun to acknowledge it.

For her seventh birthday in 2015, we opted for a superhero theme comic book.

And then he said, two months after this birthday, we learned of severe and ultimately fatal damage to her kidneys.

I won't go through the whole thing, but they found out just routine blood work that she had been infected with leptospirosis, which is what Harley had had this past summer.

And she'd been vaccinated also, but the vaccine only covers specific strands like, you know, the flu shot does if you get some off-brand strand.

But

unfortunately, Dagny passed passed away 10 months later.

And he says she was a wonderful companion, smart and well-trained, had several tricks in her arsenal, including an adorable fist bump.

And her last day with us was the morning of November 2nd, 2016.

And I know that's been a while, but at the same point,

this was a special case because she'll live on with the comic book.

So, Dave, I'm sorry to hear about Dagny von Bacon Pants, which is also a great name.

Yeah, sounds like a real collector's item.

Oh, come on.

It was very cute.

We got Harley an adventure book.

What?

Yeah, it's where she can be drawn into the adventures, the adventures of.

That's not for Harley.

That's for you.

Well, she enjoyed reading it, and then I read it to her a couple times.

Did you read it to the dog?

You read the book to the dog?

Of course you read the book to the dog.

how do you think you're gonna get the dog to fall asleep

the fuck are you talking about

the dog sitting up all night going daddy read me another story

someone has to animate this

all right this comic book just just

i've got another email here all right from jeremy

Apparently, Jeremy is from somewhere around Dayton, Ohio.

Yes, there it says Jeremy in Dayton, Ohio.

Greetings, Mr.

Cornett.

On this week's experience, you were discussing people hitting animals with their vehicles.

And it brought to mind two very different stories.

The first story,

my uncle Denver had a beautiful 1964 Ford Mustang convertible.

And he was driving down a very hilly rural road in our hometown.

And coming over a hill, he came up on a herd of cows who had escaped through a downed fence.

He said he had no time to stop, so he tried to slollom through them and hit as few as possible.

All cows survived, as did my uncle, but the Mustang never neighed again.

So, what is it about these Mustangs?

Fences and cows?

Oh, boy, you really did.

Do you have any?

You really did have nothing this week.

I didn't realize that.

No, hold on.

But there's part two, two stories, I said.

Oh, that's right.

He did have a second story.

What's the second story?

Yes.

The second story, a former friend and co-worker was driving southbound on I-75, a little south of the Dayton Mall.

I know where that is, and struck something lying on the roadway.

He slammed on his brakes, but the article he hit had become entangled in the undercarriage and was dragged some distance.

After exiting his car, he saw that what he had hit and drugged down the interstate was a man.

The story, as it was later shared with him by police, is as follows.

The man was an undocumented immigrant who, along with two others, had been trying to cross the highway when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver.

Due to their immigration statuses, his cohorts did not report the incident and continued on their way.

Well, shit, could have been us too, I guess.

But my friend's car was impounded while they investigated the events and was eventually totaled by his insurance company due to being considered a biohazard as they could not fully remove the remnants of the gentleman from the undercarriage.

Oh, man.

So

it seems like a good steam clean.

I know it doesn't, doesn't it?

No, it does not seem like a good steam clean.

Well, they get this, the

road grime and the salt from the snowstorms and the

various other

chemicals.

You'd think it just flesh and blood and brain matter and fingernails, toenails,

urethra droppings.

I think if that was a good idea, you would already have like a steam serial killer.

Like the steamer is back on the streets.

No one can figure out what he's doing.

No, I'm not saying you're not.

Because he steam cleans everything.

Well, no, but the thing, you know, oh, I thought you meant he would kill him with the steam.

The steam killer.

He can do that too.

He's a steamer.

There's any kind of steam option.

You You don't know what he's going to do.

He's a madman.

Steamboat never switched to heel.

Never.

But nevertheless, no, in all seriousness, why could you not get body particulates off of a

good old

Ford, an American car manufactured right here in the bygone United States?

You mean to tell me you can't even get brain matter off with a goddamn pressure washer or a steam cleaner?

At that point, wouldn't you just try to get a new car?

Well, not if nothing else was damaged.

Human body parts to the point where you have to get your car steam cleaned on the outside?

Well, it didn't say parts.

It was more residue at that point.

I think once you drag a fucking leg down the interstate about a half a mile, I don't know that there's much left but bone and particulate.

Probably, you know, the thing is, I drug a chain one time that was hanging or connected to my trailer.

that Jack Victory had hooked up for me and left the chain dragging.

And I got out about 90 miles later and that thing had already worn in two.

So, if I don't know how much of that person you'd have left, except for the stainage,

it's something to think about.

Certainly, is I've got another email, but you're a historical

savant here.

Maybe you can help with this.

That it is

an amusing antidote from the history of wrestling.

This gentleman's name that wrote is Irfan Dupovic,

because he's from Bosnia,

Herzegovina.

Herzegovina.

Is that serious, or are you my.

I'm not serious.

That's how you say it.

Oh, I thought you were my Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Well, you do, and you'll clean it up, as Mama Cornette used to say.

But anyway, recently, Irfan, I'll just, because we're on a first name basis.

I'll just call him that.

It's really Irfan, not Efrain or anything?

It's I-R-F-A-N.

Okay, you're right.

Irfan.

Because he's my fan.

He's not your fan.

You fuck up everyone else's name.

Why wouldn't I think you were messing up Irfan's name?

Because

I don't know how to fuck this up.

I don't know what it is to begin with.

What does Irf?

Anyway, what does IRF have to say?

IRF, IRF the Surf.

Norman Frederick Charles, when he was in the 60s in Australia, worked as a

like a fucking beach comer, Murph the Surf.

IRF says, recently I've been reading a lot about mafia bosses and came upon an interesting little fact about Tony Ocardo, longtime boss of the Chicago outfit that came into power after Capone was sent to jail.

Anyway, the text from Wikipedia reads, for example, when professional wrestlers Lou Albano and Tony Altimore, wrestling as a mafia-inspired tag team called the Sicilians, came to Chicago in 1961, Ocardo persuaded the men to drop the gimmick to avoid any mob-related publicity.

He says, I found it quite interesting, but unfortunately have not been able to find any other sources apart from the above.

This, well,

I didn't particularly know the guy's name was Tony Ocardo or that there was some specific individual.

I don't know, Brian, if you know if that can be attributed to one person, but the story has been in wrestling since the early 60s.

That

Albano was at that point a wrestler, not a manager.

He was not a real good wrestler from the film that survives.

And Tony Altimore, who spent most of the rest of his career working and

I think some behind the scenes office work for the WWWF,

but they were the Sicilians in the late 50s, early 60s, and worked in a few different places.

But when they went to Chicago to work for Fred Kohler, even though they were not pushed as a main event tag team, they were just on the cards.

They had the fucking

cigars and the fucking hats and the goddamn scarfs around the neck.

And they were doing the Untouchables, which was,

you know, Elliott Nesty the Untouchables, Robert Stack, it was a top five television program in 59, 60, 61, produced by Desilou

and narrated by Walter Winchell.

And that's the gimmick they were going for.

But when they got to Chicago, it was too close to the nerve, as Dennis Condry used to say.

And

whoever people

told them,

don't do this here anymore.

That story's been around.

You've heard that, I'm sure, ages ago.

I heard that, and it's also Chicago, right, where the Hells Angels got in trouble with the Hells Angels.

Well, yes.

And that's the thing is

apparently wrestling was so big in Chicago, but you couldn't piss off the

wrong people because that was, again, it was, what, 68, 7-ish, 8-ish, 9-ish.

I hate myself that I can't narrow it down.

68, 69, I think, actually, yeah.

Yeah.

But Don Fargo, one of our favorites here on the program, was in one of his thousand different identities.

He was Jack Dillinger, and he had a partner that was a big blonde kid that had just been in the business a couple of years, I think, named Frank Dillinger.

Can't remember what his real name was.

It came out in the goddamn newspaper coverage.

But they became the hell's angels.

And they had the motorcycle, you know, shit and the chains.

And, you know, we've talked about Don Fargo living his gimmicks where they would drive up to the back of the arena on the motorcycles and come in the building and wrestle in the same goddamn shit, the same clothes.

And then they wouldn't shower.

They'd leave, get on the motorcycles, and ride to the next town.

And

they lived the fucking gimmick, right?

Like Fargo did with everything he did.

But in this case,

at some,

you know, at one of the matches there, Brian, you may be able to remember more details just from the newspaper coverage, but

they somehow ran into or met representatives of the Hell's Angels.

And I mean, I've heard this story again,

especially because of the Fargo name in Tennessee since I got around the business, where

they at first told them, oh, we love what you're doing.

Yeah, you're getting our name out there.

Or what have they lulled them into a false sense of security, as they say.

And it's a come back to the party at our clubhouse.

And once they got in the clubhouse,

the worm turned and the hell's angels told them, hey, you motherfuckers, you don't have any right to wear our shit or use our name or whatever the fuck.

And we're fixing to fucking put an end to that right now.

And they shot.

Frank in the fucking leg.

I don't know, was it a handgun?

Was it a shotgun?

Brian, do you remember?

Because

they ended up amputating his leg.

I believe so.

And I want to say, did Fargo jump out the window into the water?

He dove out the window.

Into the water?

Well, I don't know if they were on the beach, but no, he just dove out the fucking window, however high up that they were, and got the fuck out of there.

It's the only reason they didn't shoot him.

And I mean, I don't know if it was a fucking one of those peer six brawls,

but

yeah, that's, and it obviously made the newspapers and that's when

Fargo, who was still obviously able to wrestle after he got all the glass picked out of his fucking ass, got Chris Colt and they

basically kind of did the same gimmick, but with no Hell's Angels patches and became the chain gang and did the same kind of shit,

but not

to get on the wrong side of the fucking Hell's Angels.

Let me, since we're talking about it, here's a little bit of audio because I love this.

This is the chain gang of Jack being Don Fargo and Frank Dillinger.

Yeah.

This was their promo style, which is so cool because no one else has ever done it before and it's impossible to pull off.

Here's an interview with the chain gang.

We heard that we look pretty bad.

No, sir.

You should see the men.

We wrestle the crusher and a bruiser.

You should see that.

Listen, we're used to looking like

this don't bother us a lot.

We're all trying to put together

plastic surgery.

We would like to have another match together, right?

We're not afraid of that.

Because we didn't have a lot of people.

We heard a comment made.

As far as we're concerned, as far as all righteous people are concerned,

the way we can within seven or eight days.

You know what we do?

Now we're heading for a fight 24 hours a day, not only in the ring, everywhere we go.

We fought all our lives.

Every time we were

crawling

the heads of the people, We are winners.

And now we know

what we are doing.

Because we're the greatest cheaters there are.

There's only one way to get out of here.

Why are we winners?

Why are we winning?

Because we are cheating.

And that's the only way to get

cheats.

Now, we got this so-called,

what's our main laughter?

Oh, I can't think of his name right off the group, Snyder.

Peter.

Snyder.

And there is a big round

of Pat O'Connor.

Pat O'Connor.

Ex-Champion.

That's another big.

These guys don't have a chance against us.

How can they possibly think they can stop

us?

We're like God.

Because we have

the momentum because we have race.

And so we step up for two moments.

We're going to have a moment.

It's just like a big thing.

No way in the world.

What do you call them?

You know.

Crane.

No,

you're welcome.

That's what's going to happen to them.

That's what's going to happen to them.

Tanks.

They're going to be dead.

And that's going to be run over.

You know, before we finish up our front interview, I want to say one word.

Go ahead, say a word for Wilson.

I want to mention one word.

Mention what word?

Wilbur's.

That is the biggest joke.

We destroyed him right there in the town of Hampton.

We

come back to the hospital.

The result of using office crutches can't hurt us.

You can strike it with my guns, and he's ready for it.

Well, there it is.

And for people who have never seen these guys, the visual was fantastic because there's an announcer in a fucking suit and tie.

It's black and white.

It's the 60s.

And he's older and he's got the fucking hair combed back.

And then Don Fargo, who was doing the lead there, and Frank was doing the fills, and somehow they always came back together to say the same thing at the end of it and started again

don

though they look like fucking hell's angels like bikers and don's got the scars and the fucking beard and the hanging off his ears and the goddamn leather and the chains and there's frank as a big moondog looking motherfucker anyway

And they're both doing these independent promos of each other, kind of talking about the same shit.

Like I said, end up the same place.

And they both look like they haven't goddamn slept in three days or bathed in three weeks.

It was, it was just amazing.

And no wonder they could get hit against Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher.

These two fucking guys.

No wonder it was money.

It's hard to do.

How many guys could pull that off just talking and trying to not lose where you are and also laugh while the other guy's doing the exact same thing?

Well, yeah, but if you listen to each one of them independently and try to,

each promo would make sense of itself.

They're each doing their own promo.

It just

like you said, it's the magic of how they match up at certain times.

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Thank you, Irv fan, for stirring it.

But here he had another

question, and god damn it.

Like eight or ten years ago, this was brought up for some reason.

Somebody asked it or was doing a story or whatever, and I talked to him on

mafia involvement, or mob involvement, or organized crime involvement, whichever

description you might want to use, and not to pigeonhole any ethnicities from Sicily or anything.

But how much of that there was in wrestling.

And

I don't know, Brian, do you remember?

Were we involved in that topic or was that even longer ago?

I don't remember anything about this, no.

But that's the thing is, I mean, there's sounds like Hollywood.

Well, no,

I'm talking about the question was raised, was there really any or to any extent?

And yet there were people

on the periphery of wrestling over the years, and I'm not an expert, I'm not going to call any names, who at some point may have been involved in, I mean, Danny Little Bear, for fun, you know that name, right?

One of the top Indian stars, 60s and 70s.

He went to prison, apparently.

He lived out in western Kentucky and went to prison for some time for some type of

organized activity involving

weapons and or illegal substances.

But there's been no really,

and I'm sure in Philadelphia or New York in a union building, or there's been people brushed up on it.

I bet you we're going to get email after email saying, oh, well, in 1968, it was the union boss and the guy over here in Cleveland or whatever.

But there's never really been

mob involvement in wrestling like there was in boxing.

It wasn't the same thing as managing a fighter that might go to the top of blah, blah, blah.

It wasn't set up that way.

Go ahead.

What were you going to say?

It wasn't, but actually,

the

organized criminal element you're speaking of,

part of their limited involvement in different places with wrestling, especially in the Northeast, was specific to boxing.

Like Newark, for instance, the same building ran boxing and wrestling.

The same promoters were involved and partners in both.

So there was an intermingling of boxing and wrestling in general.

So, yeah, I mean,

there are a lot of guys that were hanging around the wrestling clubs in Queens who may have been connected, who may have also shook Bruno San Martino's hand.

That happened.

Exactly.

Well, and also,

probably to get into a lot of these buildings, the local promoter, the boxing promoter, probably needed to be involved in terms of getting a fucking payoff or whatever.

And that type of thing.

But wrestling was kind of its own

setup where they weren't.

They wouldn't even trust the mafia guys inside.

Well, no,

they would not smarten up the mafia guys because then

you'd get into the theory of, well, now they're smartening up the wise guys on the street and everybody's going to know because they're big mouse about bullshit like that, right?

The mafia ain't going to kill them if they tell people that fucking wrestling's fake.

But also, the way wrestling was set up, it was like a kinder, gentler mafia without the murder, in that they had their own thing and their own racket that they controlled, but because they weren't dealing in illicit substances or tax-free alcohol or prostitution or whatever that organized crime dealt with, they didn't have to worry about the cops and to worry about the government antitrust business, but they

technically weren't, the wrestling promoters weren't breaking any laws by presenting

a product that was predetermined because there wasn't betting.

And in the days in the early 1900s and teens and 20s, when there was still betting and all that shit, yeah, if everybody'd have known, probably people could have gone to jail.

But by that point,

the wrestling business was set up like this thing of ours, it's very tough to get into.

There were fewer people smart to wrestling than there were probably

working with or aligned with organized crime all through the 20th century.

Again, again, a lot of people, when you think of organized crime, they right away go to thinking of Italian guys from the Northeast.

If you really look at what people were doing, there was lots of things that are associated with organized crime that other people were doing.

Jackie Fargo was a bookie for how many years?

Right?

He didn't break someone's legs a few times or owing them money.

My place of business.

No,

we have no knowledge of Jackie Fargo breaking anyone's legs now.

Exactly.

He would have a friend do it.

That's how it works, friends.

That's the mafia.

I didn't say anything about just saying Jackie was nowhere near when those things happened.

But yeah, that's the thing is that

there wasn't a mafia control of wrestling because wrestling was kind of already its own mafia, but there was,

you know, you bumped up in the same social circles every once in a while when you're also dealing with boxing and the arena, especially in the Northeast, Midwest, in in the old days.

Yeah, look, if Mickey Cohn's going to hang out at the Olympic for the boxing, he's also going to get to know the wrestlers because the boxing and wrestling promoter were the same people.

Yes.

And

the Olympic Auditorium Twitter account, if you follow it, they have great pictures of the Olympic through its history, but also includes...

you know, a lot of the wrestling posters or pictures or whatever history from that point.

And they also do have this celebrity or that guy at ringside or whatever.

That's the shit I want Tony Khan to do that's good for wrestling.

Forget AEW.

Just fund it and let someone else run it.

Go buy some of these buildings that still exist that you could probably get pretty cheap, like the Olympic Auditorium, and take it and let the people there build them a church somewhere else and turn that back into an arena.

Fix up some of these old buildings the way they do old movie theaters and make them work for wrestling.

Well, but also now, you sound hard-hearted to maybe to people who are not fully aware of what's going on.

Or they want to kick them out of the church, the poor little Catholic orphans.

No, it's the Olympic auditorium has become some kind of

sun-young moon church now.

Is it the moonies?

I was about to ask you that.

Well,

I don't know.

I don't want to be quoted, but

it's not like the traditional church that people would think that orphans would be kicked out on the street if these people were relocated for Christ's sake.

For Christ's sake, see, I just made a funny funny there.

But anyway, speaking of funnies, Brian, you know how funny it is that people are still ordering from JimCornet.com for Christmas?

I think it's hysterical.

Keep going, folks.

Bye, too.

Hotchkiss Featherbottom has chewed his fingernails to the bone, followed by his fingers, and is pulling his hair out of his head.

And actually, he's he also he's eating, he's eating basically his pillow and different things at night.

He's having nightmares.

But we are still trying to fill these orders as quickly as we can.

I will have you know that if you have ordered through

Sunday.

Sunday.

No, if you've ordered through Saturday.

No, Saturday.

Saturday comes before Sunday, except on days with a Y in it.

If you've ordered by Saturday, December the 9th, your stuff has been signed and should be in the mail by the end of the week, Thursday or Friday, the 14th or 15th.

It's up to the United States Postal Service after that.

We have done everything we can.

But at this point, if you have not made your order, the Featherbottoms would probably appreciate it if you just quit.

But I will say that if you'd like to order now to make sure you get it by New Year's,

that's the only thing we can, and that's domestically now.

Our friends across the various bodies of water that ring the continental United States.

I don't know where you're at right now.

I mean, all your stuff, if you've ordered it, it's out, but it's in the hands of boats and planes and people snooping around, x-raying it, make sure there's no anthrax in it or anything.

See, that's what Tony Khan should do if he wants to do something good for wrestling.

Use his dad's super yacht to get all the wrestling figures stuck in China over here to the States.

See, you've come up then with two good ideas about how Tony Khan could

benefit humanity, except for what he's doing right now.

I want him to benefit wrestling, not benefe with wrestling.

Benefeld, yeah.

Anyway, JimCornet.com, Cornett's Collectibles.

And boy, howdy.

And if you want to get a t-shirt, hurry too, because we've ordered again and

your orders are outpacing our ordering.

JimCornet.com.

I got another email.

And this is maybe will lead to to some type of pithy conversation, Brian, for just a few minutes.

Why start now?

Well, we got to change this tempo sooner or later.

It's from my old friend Chester Snapdragon McFisticuffs.

You remember him.

He's from Cold Spring, Kentucky.

You know, sadly, I do remember that name, actually.

Yes.

Well, he sent an email, and actually,

he included you on this too, so

I don't feel too bad.

But anyway, I saw a post on ex formerly Twitter from ESPN reporter Mark Raimondi

in which he says that Bree Garcia told him Brian Danielson ignored her.

Why can't she just be Bree Danielson?

Why does everybody have to have a goddamn different name these days?

And then they've got aliases when they're on camera.

I'm just editorializing now.

She's embracing her Latino side.

Well, she was a Bella.

That was when she was embracing Italian.

That was when she was embracing her Italian side.

Maybe one day she'll get to her white guy.

No, she ought to have her white west side.

She ought to just embrace herself in the middle and she'd probably be happier.

But anyway, he says that Bree Garcia told him Brian Danielson ignored a broken orbital bone until his nose went numb.

I might get some shit for this opinion, Chester says.

But I don't think Danielson ever should have been cleared to wrestle after his initial retirement.

If I had been WWE, I never would have cleared him after discovering he was hiding concussion-related seizures in order to continue wrestling.

This is something I don't even think we talked about it, but a couple of years ago he said that, right?

Yeah, I think so.

He'd had a few seizures, but he didn't want to tell anybody because he thought he'd get better or whatever.

He says, I know they caved in when it became clear he was trying to leave, but if it had been my call, I never would have allowed it after realizing I couldn't trust him to be 100% honest about his health.

Of course, Danielson ultimately left WWE in pursuit of more freedom, and I feel a solid argument could be made that AEW is more lax when it comes to medical issues and restricting talents in ring versus the WWE.

I know everyone is ultimately responsible for their own destiny and well-being, but at what point, if any, should a promoter step in to save a wrestler from themselves?

It's not that I hate Danielson, but I feel like, in conjunction with being a highly respected technical wrestler, he's also been incredibly stupid with his health.

So, bottom line is:

to what extent is a promoter responsible for protecting a wrestler from themselves?

And have you ever been thrust into a position where you had to intervene with a wrestler you were overseeing?

Oh, talking about Danielson first.

Yes, thank you, Chester.

But talking about Danielson first,

you know,

everybody likes him, and nobody wants to see him get hurt.

And that's all he's been for the past year and a half, is hurt.

And I know he's still, but

still wanting to keep doing something

and modifying how you do it so that you are not taking an unnecessary risk and can still do it

is different

from

still wanting to do something and do it exactly the same way you always have, even though you're fucking hurting yourself with more and more frequency, more and more often, more and more severity, whatever the fuck, especially after he was off

how long with the

concussion deal to begin with.

You know, there's always been, as guys got older and they got hurt or Ray Stevens couldn't do when he was 50, what he could do when he was 25.

But they learned to not do the things that

put them at risk so they could still keep doing what they

did for a living because they did it for a living.

The problem is a lot of the fans who became wrestlers after becoming super fans through tape trading or seeing stuff from Japan specifically romanticize the brutality of wrestling, whether it's in the training or whether it's in the headbutting or things that just don't seem logical

that don't actually go with what professional wrestling is supposed to be, which is a work, which is working together, not hurting yourself.

Well, and you just put that so

no wonder, no wonder they pay you the big bucks.

You put that so good, just so briefly briefly, when you said the

fans that were tape traders that got in the business that romanticized the violence or brutality.

20 years before that,

when I got into business, it was the complete opposite.

The people

that were admired and were respected and coincidentally were in all the main events making all the money in 90% of the cases were the people

that could make the shit look devastating

and you'd never fucking feel them touch you.

And

that had been kind of the

idea ever since wrestling became a thing that was somewhat controlled, as we mentioned earlier, by its own little,

you know, fucking commission type of goddamn hierarchy.

And that was what you admired.

And

yeah, and if the top guy wasn't a guy who fit that category, in other words, somebody that had shit that looked devastating and you never felt him,

then that meant that he was the fucking money drawer in the territory and you brought people in that fit that description to work with him.

That's it, but that's what everybody aspired,

you know, to, oh,

a night off.

How is it working with so-and-so?

It's a night off.

That meant you would never feel it.

He would never touch.

He would never hurt you.

He wouldn't take any liberties, but his shit looked great.

And now

they act like they're really going into a goddamn

UFC octagon to fucking wage war with this friend where they know they're going to hurt each other, but they're not even going to really win anything in the end.

They're just going to beat the shit out of each other for real

and then it'll work.

So they can go in the back and be happy about what they did.

And the reaction from the fans, you know, a lot of the examples MJF's talked about and some of those, I think, media scrums and stuff, you probably could have got a bigger reaction, a better reaction from doing simpler stuff.

But once you establish that you're the guy working those matches, there's no coming back.

You know, Danielson's never going to be able to work a different style.

He's going to do this until he stops wrestling.

But every match you see him in, if he doesn't get hurt, you're afraid he's going to get hurt.

And it's because of the style he wrestles.

And

like you said, he's a very nice guy by all accounts.

Guys really like him.

He's went on, and he's never really not on, but on the mat, he's one of the most beautiful mat technicians I've ever seen.

You can watch what he's doing, and it's amazing.

You get entranced by what he's doing there.

But he maybe doesn't make the best decisions, which,

you know, goes into the question of why Tony Khan's putting so much faith into him.

Nice guy.

Maybe he doesn't make the best decisions for himself and who knows about for others.

Well, and

the first time I remember this happening, he's going to start getting the wrong kind of sympathy, I'm afraid.

And when I say that, I mean

the first time I remember it happening, I've talked about it, was Mick Foley.

When he became dude love and he stopped taking all those bumps and he was like, am I shortchanging the fans?

I told him, and it had started to be obvious.

This was something that was going on.

The people liked him so much as a person.

It had never been in history, even with the people that took the big bumps and Bobby Eaton or whether it was a babyface or a heel, the fans would never get uncomfortable

thinking, I'm worried for this fucking guy on a goddamn personal human basis, right?

I mean, still with the babyface, you'd be cheering, but you wouldn't be like turned off to their match because you're afraid he's going to hurt himself.

And that's what started happening with Mick.

He was taking those bumps and doing those things that the people that really liked him and

as a person, they were kind of, oh, I don't want to see him do that.

And they were smarter to the business than ever before.

And they knew that it was hurting him for real.

And I think that Danielson,

for the people that really love him

and love this style of AEW or whatever,

if he's had a broken face and a goddamn broken arm and a goddamn, what was the injury before the broken arm?

Was that a concussion?

I think it was a concussion.

There was the orbital injury.

There was the arm injury.

Yes.

I mean, when he first came in, he got hurt pretty quickly, didn't he?

Like after a few months.

But I'm not trying to jinx him, but the point is, if he still keeps doing this high-risk stuff,

the fans are going to start cringing instead of cheering, aren't they?

When they say, oh shit, he's going to hurt himself again.

Oh, shit.

You don't want that.

And again, there's a reason why this business has been a work for 120 years.

Because it's easier, you're manipulating people's emotions to buy a ticket to see this conflict.

That's why they call it the wrestling business.

But it doesn't matter what happens in the match between two people that nobody pays to see.

It doesn't matter how good it is.

You first want them to pay to see it, and you can manipulate that.

And you can manipulate your finishes to

help get a guy over or to necessitate a rematch that you can sell tickets to, or whatever the case.

And the reason why working developed, especially in the TV era, when people were able to see closer, to pay more attention,

is to

minimize the damage to your body and maximize the way that you appeared to the fans.

And the art

of drawing money came from

getting yourself and your physicality in the ring and your personality over with a wide number, variety of people

as being something unique, something special, somebody to look

forward to seeing or to look forward to cheering for or against.

And you manipulate those personalities if you're a promoter and the conflict needs to be believable enough to draw the witnesses in, the ticket purchasing patrons,

and lead them to want to see more of this or similar,

while at the same time not showing them every goddamn thing they could ever possibly see or exposing that you're yanking their chain all along and the whole thing's bullshit

this goddamn concept of wrestling

and it it's it's not about going out and performing the most death-defying dangerous crazy shit all the goddamn time that you go out there because it's fun for you and your friends

and the problem is,

is that

it used to be a situation where the guys were doing this for a living and they had to take care of themselves because if they didn't wrestle, they didn't get paid.

And it's very

modern and very convenient that guys get paid contract money now, regardless of whether they wrestle or don't wrestle or draw or don't draw or whatever.

And in the first generation

of contracts like that, 30 years ago, it bred a bunch of guys who'd come up in the territory system and felt ill-used by that very principle that they had to work no matter what.

And so then took advantage of the guarantees and sat on their ass with hangnails and soaked the promoters for as much as they could get.

But now they've taken on a different mindset where they go away.

They have to be saying to themselves before they agree to do this shit to each other, well, you know, this is going to be, wow, the people are going to go crazy and they're going to chant holy shit.

And it's risky, but fuck, we think we can pull it off.

But, you know, nobody wants to get hurt, but at least we'll get paid at home in a cast or a sling or an iron lung.

They have to be safe.

Who could talk

any

rational fucking human being

into taking a Canadian destroyer off a ladder through a fucking table onto concrete, unless you know that if you can't wrestle for the next year,

you're still going to get paid to be at home in fucking immobile plaster.

Otherwise, you would have to say, fuck you, moving on.

So that it's done the opposite.

It's made these guys more apt to try to kill each other because they know their money's guaranteed

instead instead of fucking slacking off because all of a sudden they got guaranteed money.

And there was another question: Have I ever tried to intervene?

And I will answer this as briefly as possible.

Besides

asking guys, and in some cases, arguing with them, like when Steen wanted Mark Briscoe or Jay or one of the others, Mark, I think it was, to dive out of the balcony in Milwaukee and splash him through a table in the middle of the ring in front of 732 people

and debating a few of the guys in Ring of Honor about the wisdom of,

you know, similar stuff.

I was lucky in Ohio Valley Wrestling because none of the guys were wanting to do this shit.

And they didn't ever bring it up and pitch it

for me to shoot it down because

they didn't need to.

They had an audience and they had a program that they were on, that they were over with, and they had

quality fucking opponents and instruction.

But in some cases, you will,

when you're a booker or whatever, somebody wants to work hurt

because they feel like, you know, they don't want to let the town down, let the fans down, or they can gut through it or whatever, and you have to make the executive decision.

You know, Tracy, I'd love for you to work this spot show in goddamn Welch, West Virginia, but it's more important that you take a few days off so you can be there in Knoxville, just in case,

or something like that.

But the level of

lunacy

over the last even five, six, seven, eight years, you know, prompted by the buckaroos and the Ariolk and the killing the business kind of thing.

No, nobody ever even presented shit shit like this, even 10 or 12 years ago, that you should have to be able to fucking pry themselves from the grip of insanity.

Yeah, it's good to watch Stan Hansen matches and enjoy them.

He's one of the greatest ever.

But when you watch them and you see how stiff they are, it shouldn't be, let me emulate that.

It should be, oh, shit, he's blind as a bat.

Yeah.

And he doesn't know what he's doing.

Not he doesn't know what he's doing.

He's

going to land.

He doesn't know where it's going to hit when he hits.

And that was, that was, you know, part of his aura.

But,

but, yeah, you know, if you, if you know that a guy is hurt, and it depends also on the, on the situation.

If it's the WWE or that level of business, obviously, as soon as you know somebody's hurt, pull them.

You got to protect your investment, whatever.

If it's on the independence or if it was in the territory days,

I've seen guys have perfectly safe matches, even though they were legitimately injured, because

you just work around the goddamn injury and do enough to

get by with what you needed to do to make sure it didn't disrupt somebody's program or make anybody look bad or whatever, give the people what they wanted so they weren't pissed off, and nobody got hurt.

But that was in the days when people actually expected to see a wrestling match and guys

working, even though they didn't know that term, as opposed to goddamn gymnastics exhibition, which you kind of can't do unless you got all your appendages 100%.

But I mean, there's been,

you know,

countless

incidents through the territory days of guys with broken hands, broken wrists.

Hawk was on the goddamn scaffold with a broken, what was it?

That small, the small bone.

Well, it was the bone in the ankle that he taped up under the boot.

I can't remember the technical, the medical term for it, but

you know, but

that's why guys would, as soon as you'd lock up with them, if your shoulder was hurt, you'd lock up with a guy.

You'd say, watch my left shoulder.

That's all you need to say.

And then nothing that they did would involve your left fucking shoulder.

And they wouldn't be giving you bump like dip shit Slingblade White or whatever his name is gave the Uranagi to MJF off the top rope and right on his left fucking shoulder coincidentally the one that's now injured

Anyway, so that thank you, Chester, for that question.

For heaven's sake.

For heaven's sake.

It was a good question.

What?

Well, no, I'm just saying for heaven's sake over the

nuttiness of these guys that think that humans can do this shit.

And it's phony too.

It's phony too when you get a cinder block broken over your fucking head that is calcified bone and flesh and nothing explodes in your head.

Part of the problem too is the expectation of fans, especially certain fans in certain cities or certain promotions buildings.

If

everyone in the company toned it back at least a little bit, would that help?

Because you can't really tone it back for one person and not everyone else if everyone's going crazy.

If there was an effort to tone things back, would it work?

Or is it just going to be do whatever you can to get the attention?

I mean, the problem is if you tell everybody to tone everything back, then you have to do your job.

You have to give them personality and let them show their personality and book them in a logical and sensible way where you get people over and make stars.

You can't just say, okay, don't do everything that you've been doing, but now you're just going to be boring ass indie wrestlers not doing anything because I don't know how to do my job.

That's when

the booker can say,

no more furniture.

You're not going to use any more fucking furniture unless I tell you to, and it's going to be sparingly.

And there's going to be no blood except when I call for it.

And there's going to be, goddamn, no cussing except when I say you can say, goddamn.

And there's going to be none of this comedy bullshit

where you cooperate with each other in the middle of the fucking match.

And there's also going to be no more fucking constant kicking out of every goddamn devastating wrestling move known to man.

That's easy because that was the rules before the past 10 or 15 years to begin with when we drew big money and lots of people.

But the problem is then You have to, as a booker or a matchmaker or whatever, you have to find talent, which has never been in shorter supply.

There's plenty of guys, not a lot of talent.

And you need to, if not train them properly, find them already trained, which is even harder properly.

And then you need to put them on a television program and make them interesting enough in terms of the reasons for their conflict and their personalities that you expose to the public that people start fucking watching them

and you get ratings

upon which people will know who they are and then they become stars.

And that's the, they're neither trained nor picked nor exposed properly.

So

they just do bullshit.

But it's not hard, you know, again, picking.

Picking people, you just, you have to see who fits

your vision of a fucking promotion.

And the people know who we like here.

So, would it be a bad thing?

Just the people that we like if we said, okay, this promotion will feature Roman Reigns, L.A.

Knight, CM Punk, Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton, Jacob Fatu, Gunther.

I don't know who's on the...

Is there anybody left at FTR?

If they could get their shit together,

would that be a bad promotion?

Doesn't look too bad in this day and age.

Depends who's booking.

You know, it depends who's booking and depends what the objectives are for the wrestlers.

You know, the Undertaker got to the point where he wrestled one match a year, give or take, and he would train all year to get there and he would get hurt and not be able to do anything for another year.

Some of these guys today aren't the Undertaker and they're not wrestling on a WrestleMania main event stage,

but their bodies are reacting somewhat similar.

You're working a stiff style.

It's one thing if this is the big payoff match at WrestleMania at the end of the year or at the beginning of the year, whenever.

But if it's just,

hey, it's Rampage, let's have a hard-hitting match.

The fuck are you thinking?

There's no one in the building.

There's no one watching.

Who are you doing it for?

Yourself.

Look at Orton.

Orton came back after a year and a half back fusion.

He looks great from being in the gym, but you can't

tell any difference in his matches.

He's not

doing anything stupid or anything foolish to risk himself, but he's still doing all the shit that people want to see him do.

And if he ain't doing it, they're not noticing.

That's working smart when you get the experience and to the level where you need to protect yourself, but you still have value in the ring.

That's why it's a

But you know what all these guys need, don't you, Brian?

Well, I can think of a few things.

What do you have in mind?

Well, if you've had a cinder block bashed over the back of your head, if you've been double-stomped from off the roof of the superdome, if you've been wrapped up in barbed wire and slung around like an Argentinian bolo,

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All right, Brian, should we turn our attention to the international incident that we perpetrated on our neighbors to the great white north?

AEW came to Montreal last Wednesday, December 6th.

Will American and Canadian relations ever be the same again?

I don't know.

I think it may not affect American and Canadian relations because it was so minuscule in its impact in Canada.

And that's part of the story:

the crowd size.

They did two nights.

They did Collision, which apparently was the empty arena version of Collision.

There were some people there.

I shouldn't pretend there weren't.

And then it had a bigger audience for night two.

And they presented them with

an array of matches, the likes of which Montreal has never seen before.

Has never seen before.

Don Leo Jonathan, Mad Dog Vachon, the Rougeau dynasty.

Nobody ever did this before.

And again, this is a program where we're not going to really go so much blow to blow as just

the concept of why, why, dog, why?

And again,

when the other program is beating them over the head with packed buildings and stars, they go to these giant arenas that they can only shoot kind of one angle of, and

they start

the show again with another one of these tournament matches.

At first, I thought, well, at least Tony's doing something, you know, helping humanity.

You suggested that earlier in the program.

I said, he's now he's helping shelter the homeless.

And then I realized it was Moxley entering the arena.

I wondered why the camera was following the bum that they let in out of the elements.

Because I'm badass

and cold.

Plumber Moxley versus Rush.

And I admit

I had morbid curiosity.

Normally, I'm going to dismiss the plumbers matches, but these two, okay, what are they going to do?

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

they did the same goddamn thing he does every time.

At the bell, they stood there flat-footed and took turns chopping each other.

Then they went out to the floor and fought over the rail into the crowd and had a sloppy fight that you could barely see.

Then they grabbed each other and walked to an empty spot in the back of the arena and fought there where nobody was counted out or

disqualificated.

Disqualified, even though it was not a no-disqualification match.

I like disqualificated.

Well,

they ought to disqualify more people.

And, you know, it would be one of those deterrents.

If you know that a good friend of yours just got disqualificated, it's less likely that you're going to commit that offense.

And the announcers even had to talk about the referee letting them fight or letting them go because of this prestigious tournament.

They're in the goddamn back of the arena, and they could get counted out for a 10 count, and he can't have a fucking match unless it's just all bullshit.

Just do anything you want.

And it's the same shit they do every time.

And then

at one point,

Rush stopped fighting and laid down in a ring and just hit like a playgirl pose to taunt Moxley.

And Moxley got back to his feet and he didn't attack him while he was laying there.

He flipped him a double bird and let him get up and they started trading fake forearms.

And

who's the babyface?

Who's the heel?

You can't tell by the way they work because they're just doing shit.

And they go to the floor again of the break.

And

they came back.

I swear to God, Moxley tried.

They tried some kind of docey dough.

You duck this and I'll duck that.

And then Moxley was going to DDT him.

He lost his fucking head on the DDT and just

he grabbed his, just on the back.

He grabbed his arm and like a fucking elbow or something and just jerked him down.

And their rush tweaked his right knee or ankle or something because he was jerked down in a heap

and then Rush went for a pile driver a trapped arm pile driver where he ties Moxley's arms around his own chest and he's holding him and he's got Moxley's head between his legs he's going to pick him up for this goddamn pile driver

and remember this is the same moron that got concussed and then had the guy hit him with two different pile drivers to beat him here about six weeks ago.

So Moxley says, fuck you.

He kicked his legs out and sandbagged him

and he just fell on his fucking, you know, hands and knees.

And Rush goes to pick him up and gives him a regular pile driver.

And that he goes for because

he's got his arms free just in case.

But it's like, fuck you.

Let go of my arms.

He did a face flop.

Yes.

They're just sandbagging because the guy's just instead of

instead of thinking, you know, maybe I'm not going to give this guy that just came back from a concussion a goddamn pile driver with his arms trapped.

I'm not even going to go for it.

Instead, he tried to and ended up looking like a doofus when the other guy has to fucking

sandbag him.

So then they did

the other thing where they stood there and take turns allowing the other to throw forearms forever and ever.

And then Moxley hit the shitty double arm DDT finish and got a two count

on his finish.

So Moxley just turned around and grabbed a choke.

And Rush didn't tap.

Moxley choked him out, quotation marks.

And the referee called it.

And I put my watch.

My watch has a second hand.

I put my watch on it.

After he had been piled, or not piled, but hit with the double arm DDT finish that Moxley uses and kicked out at two

and then choked out to the point where the referee called it.

How many seconds do you think it took Rush to get back on his feet and argue with the referee while the winner was still down selling?

10 seconds.

Seven seconds.

It was one of the worst matches I've ever seen.

And by the time it was over, it was 21 minutes into this show.

Like you, I was intrigued by what it could be because it's the battle of the two guys who don't sell for anyone.

And

the first like 10 minutes of the match went exactly the way I thought it would.

And then it was just more of what I thought it would be.

And again, if you're into the personality of Moxley and Rush's

stylings of a match, I'm sure you may have liked it.

Stylings?

I don't know.

If you're into Moxley's personality, you need to do what Keith Richards did and have your blood transfused.

In Switzerland.

In Switzerland.

And what now?

It's modern times now.

I think they can do it down at the strip mall.

Maybe in Switzerland.

I'm not sure.

I'm pretty sure you can probably just go down next to the check cashing place.

Well, with this transfusion.

With this victory, let's talk about really what this is about.

Moxley has three points in the Continental Classic tournament point system.

And now they've,

you're the Japanese expert more than me on the tournaments of days gone by and especially through the 90s.

Konichiwa.

They kind of had it to where there were, what, four or five guys that were in the running and several till the end, right?

Where it could

anybody could win down to the last match or two because of the point standing.

They've already mathematically eliminated a number of people because

some people now have six or nine points and other people have zero.

Is this this what I'm seeing?

Then

how the fuck is this

going to come down to in anything, in any way exciting?

Well, that's the question.

We'll see how an American audience reacts to it.

But in Japan, I think at times there were more people in the tournaments and also,

again, it's a different point system.

I think there were more matches.

It's a different way the fans there follow wrestling.

The mainstream fan there in a lot of ways followed wrestling more like the sheet fan here in the States because it was all reading-based.

so they would pick up this information that the wrestling fan you're even picking up the magazines here in the states wouldn't necessarily get it it's like baseball if you're a baseball fan you know what the standing of the teams is in the various conferences and things but this is i think i said it to you the other day what's the point in having guys in here if you kind of know they're just the tournament job guys and i hate saying that about jay lethal and mark briscoe specifically at least in the blue bracket or whatever the fuck bracket they're in.

The blue blocker.

But they could have great matches, but it doesn't matter.

You know, they're going to lose, and then they lose.

And then you realize they're the only guys losing.

And now they're eliminated.

So now they're just going to have more matches.

Why would they win?

If they win a match now, is it Boogie Malfeasans?

I don't even know because there's been so much.

I don't know.

Well, let's go back to Renee Moxley Good.

Law.

On stage

with Roderick Strong, Matt Tavin, and Mike Bennett.

And of course,

the Princely House is sad to announce, or whatever the fuck.

We had a horrible, never-ending match, and now we've got goofy comedy with Roddy in the wheelchair and the neck brace, and he's screaming everybody's first name.

And you can hear the people rumbling, rumbling,

the rabble being roused because nobody cares about this.

Nobody cared about the promo, the people involved.

They've ruined Tavin and Bennett.

Roddy's a clown now for whatever reason.

And

if they, this is another one of those promos where if

Roddy thought of it,

it sounds good to him, but he couldn't convey it.

And if they told it to him, he didn't get it because he couldn't convey it.

And he's not going to be limited by the wheelchair anymore.

And he stood up out of the chair and threw it off the ramp.

The chair has held him back for too long.

I mean, what the fuck is this?

He was in the chair on purpose to begin with, and everybody knows it.

Nobody understands this or believes it or, more importantly, cares what the fuck.

It's gone completely off the deep end.

And it was created

as a thing to be in between MJF and Adam Cole, where one guy may not wrestle till next fucking fall.

And the other guy is still and needs to be the world heavyweight champion and doesn't have time for this tomfoolery and chicanery

and i so now he's out of the chair maybe now i guess i don't know he told someone in the back this idea or someone came up with this idea by yelling everyone's first name and someone else said that's a great idea you should do that and they're still doing it it's terrible

it's terrible i mean there's so much terrible you know

even if you look back at the beginning like all the stuff that was bad and we at least laughed at it the jelly nutellas and the legless people and all the crap happening.

I don't think it was as bad as this stuff is

because this is a higher level of talent doing worse shit.

Because, at least, you know what?

At least that stuff wasn't trying to be what this is-bad comedy.

Well, yeah, and we couldn't say, My God, look at all the talent they're wasting because the talent was shite.

But now we can say, Look at all the talent they're wasting.

And speaking of wasting talent,

we'll get to the bait and switch in a second, second, but Renee Moxley Good,

after the break, was at MJF's locker room door when Hangnail Page walked up.

And she, oh, where have you been?

Well, I couldn't fly for a few weeks because I got hit in the head with a cinder block.

This guy is not serious about any of this.

He talks like a putz.

His promos never grip you or make any sense, really, or

if they do make sense, sense, it's a story you don't care about, delivered in a blase way from a bland white boy.

And then the opposite walks in.

Here comes MJF, but now they're both baby faces, but there's tension.

And

MJF did have a good line.

It's great to see, you know, you guys, you and Swerve out there fighting to see who gets the most STDs

and talks about Paige putting the fans to sleep, but they bickered back and forth

about bringing up when they beaten each other and they did fake, backhanded, smart ass stuff without really getting mad.

It was very WWE-like,

prepared statement, although MJF does it better than everybody else.

But MJF thinks Paige is the devil and Paige thinks MJF is the devil and they were almost ready to fight when Samoa Joe came in and pulled MJF away.

So we got other things to think about tonight.

What did you think about this confrontation between MJF and hangnail Adam Page?

And please, God, if there is a God in a heaven, can we never see that match again?

You know, I actually thought this was one of the best things on the show.

What?

I did.

I think this was more of classic MJF than anything else we've seen from MJF in a long time.

And

it was unexpected, which is nice for a change in AEW, something unexpected.

You're like, okay, let's see where this goes.

We haven't really seen these two guys bicker at each other.

It's an interesting dynamic.

I thought this was good.

I don't ever want to see this match again.

Do you remember seeing this match before?

Because I don't.

No, they had it once, I think.

Do you remember?

They talked about a couple of them.

No, I just don't want to ever see Hagnail Page again, to be honest with you.

This fucking tofu motherfucker

um now you're using tofu for him well it is

blandon cutlett has that wrapped up

uh it just jesus christ he's a jobber he's a

insignificant

non-personality motherfucker that can do some moves and doesn't have a clue in his head about what to do with them and by the way he was still referencing swerve swerve beat him again at that last match hopefully they're not gonna have another match I don't know, but the thing with MJF is they established he was in the building

and he's back there and he does that.

Maybe that's another reason I didn't like it because now they've drugged him into this goddamn bullshit chaos again later on.

But we've got to go to another tournament match before we talk about the bait and switch of MJF.

Because then what you mentioned, his name earlier, Mark Briscoe, he's now become officially a fucking tournament job guy.

You got Mark Briscoe versus Swerve Strickland, a babyface that never wins against a heel that the fans love.

If Mark loses this, which he did, he's mathematically eliminated now from the tournament, but still has to continue to wrestle in it.

And

between the people Love and Swerve and the bad, horrible booking and treatment and presentation

that they've done with Mark that has buried him.

It didn't make any sense wasting my time to watch this because I knew what was going to happen.

He's going to do another job and the golden opportunity of Mark Briscoe is

over.

They just threw it away, balled it up and kicked it out down the road.

Swerve wins.

What'd you think?

I think I didn't watch the match, so I can't really judge it.

And there's nothing against either guy because I think both are good, but I like you, I knew what the result was going to be.

So now, what am I watching?

I'm watching a match.

I know Swerve's going to win.

All they can do is maybe tease me a little bit that Briscoe may win, and that wasn't even done well.

So,

well, and I'm not saying that you can call the finish if a booker knows what he's doing on a lot of TV matches.

A lot of TV matches are just meant to expose

the guy you're pushing is, but but no that's not this one but also

i could still if they had presented mark briscoe as he should have been presented and gotten him over as a single talent to the level of his ability and

then put him in this tournament i'd have no problem with him doing a job for swerve but now i don't want to watch it because all i'm seeing is a guy that honestly had a lot more potential draw more money than swerve Swerve Strickland.

Wasted.

Bah.

Yeah.

No, it's easier.

It's easier to compare Mark Briscoe with Jay Lethal right now, not just because of the tournament standings, but just how they've been used.

Yeah, well, funny enough, we'll talk about Jay Lethal here in a little while, but let's get to the bait and switch.

So

MJF last week accepted the challenge of the devil mask guy on the screen who was was typing out a challenge for him and MJF to meet two of the devil's guys in a tag team match.

So Samoa Joe enters the ring and then suddenly blackout.

The lights go out and then the lights flicker.

And then with the lights flickering like the strobe light, you can see the masked hooded

minions surrounding the ring.

There's four of them, one on each side.

And then there's another blackout, and the crowd you can hear lightly booing, right?

Like,

and then the lights come on, and Joe's in the ring, and the devils are gone.

But then the devil himself is on the screen,

and then it cuts to video of MJF laying in the garage, in the parking garage,

laid out face down with his

belt perfectly arranged next to him and a broken bottle also perfectly arranged.

I mean,

these criminals, it wouldn't need Colombo to be able to figure this shit out.

I don't think we needed to go to forensics.

They've left all the evidence right there.

And the crowd starts booing, and it's not a good boo.

It's like, oh no, what the fuck?

They want to see MJF.

He didn't go out in the building.

Those people

bought tickets to see a goddamn,

and they were told that they would see him wrestling on last week's television.

They thought, okay, well, we'll get to see this.

He didn't even go out in the fucking building.

And they go to the break.

And we get no match.

And

again, it looks phony as fuck.

And they know, the fans know that Tony's idiotic booking prevented them from seeing MJF in person in the ring doing any goddamn thing.

Am I wrong about this?

Again, AEW has done a few bait and switches lately.

They teased one with the pay-per-view when MJF got hurt and he had to come back.

I don't think this is the kind of thing these fans want.

I mean, beyond the bait and switch.

The lights going out and the mysterious bodysuit men at ringside, and then the lights going again and the the devil on the screen.

This is getting groans.

And the more the lights go out on this show,

the less anyone wants to see it again.

Now, the House of Black do it, these guys do it.

It's too much.

And,

you know, again, the payoff of the devil really better be something.

Otherwise, this all looks even worse.

Who's stuck in the past more?

Someone who wants younger,

newer talent to follow the traditions and the

philosophies of the past,

or someone who just books endless repetitions and rehashes and homages to angles that happened during a five to seven year period when they were watching TV as teenagers and booking for the other two members of their fantasy wrestling federation?

Just a question.

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And that brought us to the nine o'clock hour.

Brian?

Again, we say so many of the nine o'clock hour, put some names out there, get something big for the people changing over from a previous show or whatever.

We've talked about that concept and how it's done in the WWE, and we keep track of it in the ratings and everything.

Apparently, they think

or they thought that the best they could do in this show for the 9 o'clock hour was a pre-tape with Ben Mankowitz.

I love Turner Classic movies, and I love Ben Mankowitz, and I love to watch that station.

But if I'm watching the goddamn Major League Baseball game,

do I want to, if I tune in, do I want to see Ben Mankowitz do a pre-tape from the TCM

fucking living room for a minute and a half?

You may want to see that more than you'll want to see the Tony Storm match.

Well, now you may have something there, but he did a TCM-style introduction of Tony Storm and, of course, pitched it playing the part of the AEW women's world champion, Timeless Tony Storm.

And that kind of encapsulates everybody almost on the AEW roster.

They are playing the part of someone,

they are not those people.

And then we go to Tony Storm versus Sky Blue at the nine o'clock hour.

And

oh boy,

I asked you to watch this match.

Well,

I I

yeah, I zoned out on the match to because my God

specifically I asked you to watch the pin.

Well, the pin we'll get to, but it's just

it's the same four or five girls now.

And,

you know, poor Tony, she had something there and they couldn't fucking

They just couldn't keep it to anyway.

The finish is Tony Storm gives blue sky a really awkward superplex and does the ass in the face spot

and then old blue sky tried a jackknife where she leg double-legged her and tried to do the jackknife but tony reversed it rolling over like she was supposed to have her in a sunset flip position

and paul turner counted it

But the problem was that old Skye's shoulders were on top of Tony Storm's thighs.

The only part of Blue Sky that was actually even touching the mat was the top of her head.

And the referee just counted it.

And,

you know,

we got an email

from one of the listeners, and a lot of people pointed it out on Twitter.

But the email asked the question, you know, at what point

does the referee, even if it's the finish, have a responsibility to say,

I can't count this, and this was an example of it.

Because sometimes you can get away with it, or you can say the referee was out of position.

It's a big main event world title match.

I'm not talking about the women's world title in AEW.

I'm talking about something important.

And, you know, you can get by with it.

But I've seen, and we've all seen in some cases, not in AEW, of course, but in actual wrestling,

you know, somebody go for a cover and the referee says, You're under the ropes.

I'm not going to count it.

Or,

no, the shoulder ain't down.

I'm not going to count it.

That happens from time to time, enough where we've all seen it.

And if it's obvious to the referee, he's got to call it.

Because if it's obvious to the referee that the leg is under the ropes or the shoulder is not down or whatever,

then the people in the building can see it too.

And that's where the referee has to say,

I can't count that.

Give me something else.

What the fuck?

And he should never get any heat for that.

But speaking of heat,

as soon

as the match is over and Tony Storm is celebrating, now Brian, you've got to admit, and I've even got to admit.

That they had something and they've still got something, something with Tony Storm.

She looks great.

She's great herself.

They just, they didn't know know how to control the gimmick and they let it run away to where now it's

what it is.

But she's a talent

and they pushed her and she's the champion.

Did she deserve to be put in the position that they were about to put her in on national television?

Music played as Tony Storm was celebrating in the ring, and there came

Riho!

Her name is Riho, and she won't draw 50 grand.

Skipping down the ramp comes the mousy, diminutive pretend wrestler who, if they do a Japanese remake of Rocky, will be an excellent Adrian, but otherwise should never be in any type of media or entertainment.

And she got in the ring and was smiling and waving at Tony Storm and then ducked something, hit the ropes where she the ropes didn't bend because she's not heavy enough, and hit a shitty drop kick.

And Luther had to carry Tony Storm out in his arms like a little baby.

And Riho is back.

And not only that, but now they've got Tony Storm, the women's champion.

The closest thing they still have to a legitimate talent in the female fucking division.

Well, is Statlander still around?

Who knows?

And she's fucking running around and bumping around for this fucking little

idiot.

This little mousy, frilly pet project of Kenny Olivier's.

It's embarrassing.

The best was her getting in the ring and just waving hello.

Yes, she waved hello.

Like hello.

Because she would be happy to see her at this moment.

She looked like a Japanese Eugene.

Oh, come on.

Eugene looks like

Eugene looks like Fez now next to this fucking gimmick.

Well, AEW is just doubling down on being AEW right now.

And I think it's only going to get worse.

And that was the whole 9 to 9.15 quarter was this business.

Ben Mankiewicz and Tony Storm and Riho.

So we're going to look at the ratings here in a few minutes.

But

you know, Brian,

am I wrong in thinking that a large portion of the wrestling fan public at large, according to the Twitters we've seen and the emails we've seen and the comments that we've seen on the YouTubes and et cetera,

am I wrong thinking that a lot of these people think that Riho needs to find another line of work?

We have seen an element of fans that maybe a large element that believe that Riho maybe is not what they want out of women's wrestling.

There are a lot of people saying that they wish that Riho would find a new career and stop darkening our television screens with her ominous shadow.

We have a lot of listeners who are HR professionals.

A lot of them are giving career advice, we could say, sure.

And, you know, I think I found something.

And, you know, because I know it must be hard for a person who's, well, she's so light that a strong wind would blow her away and she actually defies the law of gravity.

It might be hard for her to hold down a job and herself at the same time from floating away.

Or it might be, what now?

I hadn't thought of that example.

It's a very interesting example, you see there, there's

assembly that a lot of people can relate to.

She may not have any other, any other marketable skills than standing there and doing the parade wave in a frilly skirt and a wrestling ring.

So she doesn't know what direction to take.

She needs help.

Well, I'm telling you right now.

That if we could hook Riho and a lot of these AEW wrestlers up with our friends at Shopify, then it would be a better TV program and their lives would improve because they could actually learn to sell things at Shopify because they don't sell anything right now.

And at the same time, they would be making a good, comfortable living for themselves and their family without staking up our entertainment.

So it'd be a win-win.

And folks, you don't even need to be bad on television.

to work with Shopify.

They'll work with you.

You're not even on television at all, as strange as that may sound.

Because the people at Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business, from launching your online shop to the first real-life store stage, all the way to your 1 millionth order.

They're there to help you grow.

and

grow away from the public eye in some cases, if you're like Riho and don't need to be seen by the naked eye.

But no matter what you're selling or what product you're offering, Shopify helps you sell everywhere, folks, from their all-in-one e-commerce platform to their in-person POS system, wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify will help you turn browsers into buyers and not disgruntled TV viewers rapidly changing the channel.

And all these other AEW wrestlers, as well as you yourself,

could could take advantage of the fact that Shopify powers 10%

of all the e-commerce in the United States.

So, right there, you know they're heavy hitters.

You could get in on the bandwagon here because sooner or later, they're going to be a monopoly.

They're going to take over everything, and then you will serve them.

They will not be a monopoly.

They will strive to not monopolize what is a marketplace for many people, but they will succeed in getting

great

ways to sell your stuff with Shopify, and you can do that today, right, Jim?

That's right.

And in English, I'll tell you what, Shopify, they're going to take over everything sooner or later.

They got 10% now, but they'll have 100% before it's over with.

So if you want to make them work for you before you're working for them, take advantage of this offer because Shopify,

their extensive resources are there to help you support your success every step of the way.

You need to get in good with these people right now.

Like I said, before they're selling soylent green, they're going to be selling your Aunt Fanny's fudge recipe.

So for Aunt Fanny's fudge or a whole lot more, right now, you can sell anything as long as it's legal.

In some cases, there is a gray area.

More on that later.

If it's legal, there is no gray area.

There's only a green area for money for legal things with Shopify.

Or money for legal.

Or money for nothing and your chicks for free.

Because right now it's not free, but your chicks can be a dollar a month.

That's the cost of the trial period.

At shopify.com.

Have I confused everybody now?

Let me start again.

Shopify.com slash JCE,

lowercase JCE, by the way.

They're sticky about these things.

You will have to go through a number of hoops and jump through some things on fire to satisfy these people because they're anal, but they're good at what they do.

Shopify.com/slash JCE in lowercase, and you're going to get a $1 a month trial period of their fine services where they're going to be able to, I'm telling you what, these guys, they can sell pussy on a troop train, they can sell icicles to Eskimos and everything in between.

And right now, you need to take advantage of it.

Shopify, making it easy for you to show up exactly the way you want to and customize your online store to your style.

They have gorgeous, flexible templates that are also hot, from what I understand.

Hot and flexible.

So anyway, shopify.com slash JCE, and you're going to

make some money, honey.

That's right, honey.

Honey?

Well, back to the lady.

I sound like Burt Prentiss now.

Well, honey, love, it's back to the sweetness that is dynamite.

I'll tell you, honey,

Edge and Christian, they did a history package, and on this show, it looks like Steve Austin and Vince McMahon.

But they had another tournament match before we get to that, the main event of the evening, with Jay Lethal and Jay Slingblade White or Switchblade or whatever the fuck he is.

And just refer back, rewind it.

All the comments about Mark Briscoe and Swerve, the same thing here two heels one never wins even though he's the superior talent

uh in in again

we've seen jay white now seen enough

jay lethal's a better worker he's a better talker he's got more experience and if you want to go back to this he's a bigger name because he was on television on tna on spike when they had three times the viewers that collision has, which is the only thing we ever see him on, except when he comes over here to do a job.

And it had twice the fucking number of viewers that goddamn Dynamite has.

So

Jay Lethal in every category, except to the modern-day Japanese wrestling fan, is more

known and more equipped and more qualified than Jay White.

So he does the job here for Jay White because Jay White's over in Japan.

And that's the only thing that matters to Tony.

Did I miss anything in this match?

When this match came on, I asked myself: Does anyone want to see this?

Would anyone want this on their main show?

Would anyone sit down and watch it?

And we'll talk about the ratings a little bit.

Alrighty.

Well,

what theoretically,

as I swallow my Sprite Zero, that they did want to see was Edge against Christian.

The culmination of this angle, you know, of a 20-year professional relationship and a 40-year friendship and blah, blah, blah.

And they came back.

And by the way, they came back, got the entrances, got the guys in the ring, and had 16 minutes left in the show when the bell rang.

That's going to be important.

And again, we're not going to blow by blow this match, but it was refreshing because

It's two pros.

You've got a clear heel, a clear baby face, two guys that know how to have a match that's not stupid, not dangerous, and doesn't bury everybody involved in it.

The shit looked good.

It made sense.

They took their time because the people were with it.

There was no reason to run off and leave them.

And

it was

a level of professionalism that you don't normally see on this program.

And, you know, they did enough of the grudge match stuff where Edge bounced Christians' head off the desk, but they didn't stay out there for three days.

And then they'd go back to the floor and fight a little bit.

And the momentum changed a time or two.

Then they started going to the false finishes.

Edge at one, Christian, hit a splash, got a two count.

Edge countered a spear into a DDT and got a two count.

Edge got a sit-out powerbomb and got a two-count, but there was selling in between this, and it wasn't egregiously stupid, unprofessional, whatever.

And

Phila, as I said, the people were with it from the start, but then they went through,

you know, a little exchange where Edge went for the spear.

Christian leapfrogged him, went for his finish, and hit it, and got a two count, got a big pop there,

and then set up Edge for the spear, and Edge moved.

But somehow, and we didn't see exactly how because the camera missed it, imagine that.

Edge somehow caught the referee in the eye, and the referees turned around, bent over, holding his face in some fashion.

And Christian sees that

and just hauls off and kicks the referee in the balls as he's bent over from behind.

So the referee didn't see who it was.

I bet you probably knows he got kicked in the balls.

And at that point,

everything

that I just said in praise of this match fell completely a fucking part.

That's right.

And

I shouldn't be surprised at this point with this company, but I am with

some of the people that still managed to be drugged down by it.

So at this point now,

the referee has been kicked in the balls, and Christian goes out to the floor and gets the title belt because this is for the

he's the TNT champion, right?

He's a TNT title.

So he's, of course, waiting for Edge to get up so he could hit him with the fucking belt instead of just goddamn hitting him while he's already down.

Edge gets up, Christian swings, Edge ducks it,

they hit the ropes, and both of them go for a spear at the same time, and they have a double knockout in the middle of the ring, and both of them go down.

And right at that point,

my DVR froze.

Don't worry, fans.

I know what happened.

But again,

they had 16 minutes at the bell to start the match left on the air.

And they still could, you can't tell me that they're not doing this on purpose because Tony is thinking they're getting some kind of ratings bump out of a two-minute overrun or something because they just can't be that unprofessional.

What am I saying?

I think Tony probably has Dave Meltzer's defense, which is the fans should work harder.

The fans should know.

We're training them.

They should just do it.

And that's the wrong way to think about it.

Well, if that's the Meltzer defense, I've got the Alvarez counter.

It's not my job.

It's not my job.

It's not my job, man.

So anyway, what happened?

Because

this was worth seeing.

And I'm sorry that anybody who DVR'd the program won't see it.

But they've both gone down from colliding with each other, have Christian and Edge.

And then here comes Nick Wayne's mom down the ramp.

Her name is Shana, Shana Wayne.

Come back, Shana Wayne.

Come back.

She's a gimmick now.

She's dressed in leather and the floppy white shirt and boots.

And we established she has to be 40 years old because she's got a

fucking 18, almost 19-year-old son or whatever the fuck.

I don't know what the age of consent is in Washington state,

but she's now when last we saw her,

she was laying there in the ring while Edge gave her delinquent son the concerto.

So she steps into the ring and you heard the people starting to groan and go.

She gets in the ring and picks the belt up.

And they tried to do the old deal

where she stands in the middle of them, but you think she's going to clock Christian because Christian has taken her son and made her cry and crapped in her post-toasties and whatever else he's done.

But from the time she picks the belt up, she's looking at Edge

and she's looking at, and then she looks back at Christian for a second, but then she looks and she starts moving closer to Edge.

She milked it the exact way that it should be milked if she was going to turn around and hit Christian.

That's right.

But instead,

she turned around and hit Edge.

But she didn't hit him because she whiffed it.

The belt shot looked like shit.

But

so she basically visually threatened Edge and then hit Edge.

And then the announcers were like, oh my God, why would she hit Edge?

And then she stood there for a minute.

And then Christian

got the belt away and she left the ring.

And the fans were shit booing.

Not boo like booing Dominic Mysterio or booing like somebody really has heat and we want to fight you, but booing like we don't want to see this bullshit.

And then the referee was still motionless from a kick.

I've been kicked into balls.

Your eyes still work and you're not unconscious.

You are miserable and you got other things on your mind, but you would be aware of it if a car was about to run you over and you could move, right?

Brian, you've experienced this,

right?

Am I am I lying?

No, no, my kids kicked me into balls the other day accidentally.

Well, there you go.

Well, see, it's most time it's your immediate family and especially children that will kick you into balls.

That's why I didn't have any.

But the referee still laying there motionless.

So then

Christian

picks Edge up from the belt shot by Nick Wayne's mom, hits his finish on him, then puts the belt under Edge's head and stomps on his bad neck,

and then removes the belt and turns him over and covers him, and then the referee dives in to make the count

in like two seconds after the cover was made.

From zero to hero in two seconds.

This was a

well-crafted, quality professional wrestling grudge match between two experienced professionals that, as soon as they had the double knockout, and the amateur mother, and the goddamn goofy referee, and the amateur shit booker that called this finish,

and whoever produced this that they didn't listen to,

it all shit the bed.

And it was the worst

three-minute end to a decent match I've ever seen in my life.

Your Your thoughts.

I thought the match was okay,

and the finish killed whatever was there.

And it was so bad.

The building knew it was bad as soon as it started.

As soon as you saw her coming down the ramp, you knew.

Like, oh, no.

A bad finish makes this whole thing suck.

And the whole thing sucked.

And now we got this.

Is this what we wanted with Christian?

It started.

It was okay.

Now it's Christian and Nick Wayne and Nick Wayne's mom and Luchasaurus.

You know, now we have, to...

Does she have to do the promo now where she explains why she turned?

Then we get that.

Because I always wanted to be on TV and dress like I'm 15 years younger than I really am and act like a drama school dropout.

Is she going to be bumping for Beth Phoenix?

What are they going to do with her?

I guarantee I know Beth Phoenix.

She'll be bumping whether she wants to or not if Beth wants her to bump.

Or I shouldn't call her that.

She probably can't use Beth Phoenix.

Elizabeth O'Rion.

No, wait a minute.

She might be able to use Beth Phoenix.

She may have been Beth Phoenix before she was Beth Phoenix in OVW.

So she may have been Beth Phoenix before WWE.

By God.

But this was awful.

I'll sign a document for her.

Anyway, yeah, yeah, this very, very not good,

very extensively bad.

Let's be real.

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So, what were the extensively bad

ratings for the dynamite of December the 6th, a famous man's birthday who will soon be a national holiday?

AEW Dynamite for December 6th, 2023 on TBS

from 8 to 10.02 p.m.

Two minutes.

They just two minutes and they could have got it in.

Did 823,000 viewers on average.

It's literally the same people, 823, 835, 852.

This is who they can't run off at this point?

I think that would be maybe a way to look at it.

AEW can't run these people off, but this is going to be an interesting thing.

Well,

they can run them off through the course of the show, but they will still come back next week to give them another chance.

If there was ever an episode to run people off, this may have been one of them.

The show opened, and these were compiled by WrestleNomics.

8 to 8.15 p.m.

quarter one,

Jon Moxley vs.

Roosh.

With picture-in-picture ads,

983,000 viewers.

Wow.

Okay.

They're going to lose a lot of people on this program.

But we shall see.

Quarter two, 8.15, 8.30 p.m.

The continuation of Moxley vs.

Roosh.

The match that would not end.

Followed by the promo that would not end.

Rodney Strong and the Kingdoms ramp promo and an ad break.

878,000 viewers.

Oh, Jesus.

Okay, 105,000 people.

And that, honestly, as bad as that match was,

that ain't bad.

Well, we go to quarter three, 8:30 to 8.45 p.m.

The Adam Page MJF confrontation in the back.

and the beginning of Mark Briscoe versus Swerve Strickland with picture-in-picture ads

835,000 viewers

okay another 43,000 people and that makes it 148,000 in 45 minutes have jumped ship they've almost at this point they've almost got to come back somewhere for the average that they got.

Well, we will see where they come in quarter four.

Where they come?

We'll see who comes in quarter four.

Quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.

The last six minutes of Swerve versus Briscoe.

The Mariah May promo.

Samoa Joe's live.

I skipped that, by the way.

Sorry.

You missed nothing.

Samoa Joe's live angle, which is what it says here, which is where the devil's associates surrounded the ring and there was a big disco with the lights going out and the lights going on and MJF was hurt.

Followed by Moxley's promo.

794,000 views oh good lord

uh another

35 41 000 people bringing our total that we have lost from the start of the program to the end of the first hour to 189 000 fans

but wait there's more

quarter five the big nine o'clock hour nine to nine fifteen p.m

the ben mankowicz introduction for Tony Storm versus Sky Blue with picture and picture ads,

791,000 viewers.

And three more thousand.

Okay, now they've lost 192, and I'm trying to figure out how they're going to make their average.

We go to quarter six, 9.15 and 9.30 p.m.

An ad break.

Christian and Adam Cage, Adam Cage, a Christian Cage-Adam Copeland video, and the start of Jay Lethal versus Jay White with picture-in-picture ads, 723,000 viewers.

That's 260,000 viewers, and obviously the low point of the program.

And

what's next?

Well, next is quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The final three minutes of Lethal versus White,

an ad break, and the start of Edge versus Christian,

765,000 viewers.

Okay, here we go.

And people just said, fuck this.

Let me know when Edge and Christian is on.

Now they've gained 42,000 back.

And I would imagine quarter eight will be higher still.

And we go to quarter eight, and also we have a two-minute overrun.

Edge versus Christian with picture-in-picture ads, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

807,000 viewers.

and the two-minute overrun, 860,000 viewers.

Okay, well, I don't believe 53,000 people switched on specifically because Nick Wayne's mom popped up on the screen.

So that was

whatever the fuck was going to happen with the following program.

And

some people say, well, the following program didn't get 800,000 people watching it.

No, dumb shits.

But if

even 53,000 people tune in thinking they're going to see that, that would account for this.

We already had 807,000 to begin with.

They lost 260,000 at the worst of it.

They ended up 123,000, no, I'm sorry, they ended the regular program 17.6,000 below where they started.

And the only reason that they came back from the depths of despair in the last two quarters was because they had

two of the only big stars they got left having a match for the first time in people's memory.

Imagine if they had just held an audience throughout the show.

I mean, that's the thing they can't do.

You start the show with some optimism.

What's it going to be this week?

You give the first match a little bit of a chance.

What's it going to be?

What else is on this show?

When you quickly start realizing what it is,

again,

unless you're like a super hardcore fan who wants to see jay white versus jay lethal

right now no one no one for 20 fucking minutes or whatever it's gonna be in all these tournament matches but and that's another thing with the time management edge and christian wasn't a tournament match and they had plenty of time they could have done that two minutes earlier tony's thinking that

He's getting credit, I guess, for this fucking overrun.

He's artificially inflating his fucking

number at the expense of people who miss the angle.

And it's not that

it won't look like a real sport if it doesn't, if it suddenly goes off the air right at the right time.

If you'll recall, there's been many times

on Raw, which was a live program, or when SmackDown became live,

that

the angle, the finish and the angle would happen five or six minutes beforehand,

before the end of the show, because Vince always wanted time for the react,

to get the reaction of the person who was wronged and the person

who got away with it, and to replay the treacherous incident, and for the announcers to talk about what this means in the overall scheme of things.

And then you're going to see a shot of the doctor at ringside if necessary.

And then, folks, we're out of time.

We direct you to next week to tune in and see what's going to happen.

That makes it more important and reinforces what you've just done in people's minds.

So you could end a little early and do that on an angle.

But

don't run your angles over to where either the DVR crowd isn't going to see them or whatever the fuck, just because you're getting an artificial bump in a ratings loophole.

And that's the only reason this could be.

You know, the problem is the person who from day one bragged about being the one to write the TV is the one writing the TV.

And right now, he's doing worse than he ever has before.

And even the best bookers would have burned out by now, probably, or at least needed an extended time out.

And if they owned the company, it would have been easy to do that.

Yeah, but he's burnt out and didn't have good shit to begin with.

And now it's shit he's done before and or his worst instincts.

Anyway, so that was the ratings on that.

And again,

there's also all kinds of controversy and or discussion continuing on who this fucking devil is going to be.

And we talked about it a little on a previous show, but now

I don't know why anybody cares at this point.

I think the devil, whoever it is, what he's revealed, is going to want, the fans are going to want to run him out of town.

Well, like you said, a lot of questions have been asked.

And we just did a segment recently about who the potential devil in AEW could be.

And since that time, more people have been, I guess, tagged as options to be the devil.

Possible surrogates for the devil.

I'm not sure.

But I have some other names here, Jim, that I've compiled from suggestions that the Cult of Cornet have sent in or just tweeted out.

The amateur detectives, the Columbos out there, the Clusos.

Let me go with a few of them here.

Let's start with someone, it's been reported he's been backstage at several recent dynamites, Kyle O'Reilly.

I love Kyle O'Reilly.

I've always had nothing but good things to say about him.

But no, this is not the spot for him because that's so

deep cut

that the idea that everybody would instantly go, oh my God, Kyle O'Reilly, because he was friends with Adam Cole and Adam Cole came in between MJF and about what the fuck.

And Kyle's been out for over a year with his neck issues, and he was not pushed in a main event singles world title contention

spot to begin with.

And

it's just they're grasping at anybody that has ever been personally associated with,

you know, with the prominent players in this in any promotion, which I don't blame everybody for doing that because Tony Khan will pull some shit that nobody...

except the goddamn most die-hard dedicated fan of indie wrestling would ever know in a million years and expect it to be common knowledge.

But I can't see anybody, I can't see MJF going along with that

because this is going to affect him more than anybody.

And again, that would be Kyle O'Reilly's return to TV to be unmasked as the devil.

I don't know if that would work or not, but another name people are looking at or maybe one of various names with all the talk of the Young Bucks being rebranded as Super Dick Heels, killing the business heels, with the confrontation with Adam Page.

I don't know if you need to rebrand them like they've been before to be a killing the business heels.

That may be true.

With the confrontation with Adam Page on Dynamite, what about a member of the elite?

And now you have MJF, the world champion, being attacked by the elite and all elite.

Well, but who's it ain't going to be either one of the Buckaroos because they don't work as a single.

Neither one of them works as a single.

To me, they don't work as a tag team, but the whole whole thing doesn't work with either one of them as a single.

MJF should wipe his ass with either one of them singly.

If it was Hangnail, if he's still in the elite, then we've already

seen that and we're seeing him bicker anyway.

If it was Harpo,

good old Kenny,

he's not that smart

and he's not that

cool.

And his voice doesn't fit the devil.

It fits fucking,

you know, Aunt Clara on Bewitched.

Oh.

So, no, who else is in the elite?

I mean, everybody's

in the elite or the Brandon Cutlett.

There you go.

Boy.

Cole Cabana.

That would, hey, he could come out and say.

I was responsible for putting an end to this company financially, and now I'm going to put an end to your title reign.

I've seen a lot of people show up with their moms.

How many of them share their bank accounts with their moms?

Yeah.

No, there's nobody in the elite that would make any sense for this whatsoever.

I mean, you can go through more names, but I think it's going to end up being

some fucking yahoo that all the really smart Adderall-taking fans think is just the coolest thing in the world.

And every normal person watching television is going to go, who the fuck is this guy?

Go ahead.

Talking about wacky ideas.

What if MJF has an evil twin?

An evil twin.

Yeah,

I don't think we can do the Samantha and Serena thing from Bewitched either.

All right, you're shooting down the evil twin idea.

What about someone who could suck the energy out of any room, Chris Jericho?

I mean,

they could make it Jericho.

It ain't going to get over anyway, pretty much no matter who it is, because we've kind of established that there's nobody for it to be that will be a game changer, business changer, or a big exciting reveal.

If Jericho wanted to be that, he did the bat.

He's got the black bat, but so does Sting.

Sting's retiring.

And besides, he wouldn't even be a heel when he was a heel.

So Jericho, the only reason it would be him is if he talks Tony into it to keep himself in the spotlight.

And Jericho and MGF do have the

checkered past.

But,

you know, and again, I'm not saying I've said on the previous time we discussed it, Wardlow makes sense.

And it was Wardlow at least in the ring the last time they were holding him down.

You saw those pictures of the boots have been going on.

The boots.

Yeah, not only did Wardlow have mask hair, but also he had the exact same boots on when he came out to have his match as the guy did that was holding the bats.

So, but that just means that they said, hey, Wardlow, put this outfit on.

It doesn't have to be him, but it would probably make more sense.

I have seen other fans guess that maybe Dax Harwood was one of the masked figures because they thought they saw the outline of a mustache in the mask and a bald head.

Again, going with the various options, Wardlow, Dax, what if it's the pinnacle?

What if it's Sean Spears and FTR and Wardlow and maybe even old Tully getting back together to get revenge on MJF?

Well, there's only four, so that would take into account Wardlow, both of FTR, and Sean Spears, who I'm sure is still around.

We just never seen.

With Tully as the masked figure, right?

No, because there's...

Well, there was four of them in the ring, including the leader guy the other day.

There was three holding him and the guy with the back.

That's right, that's right.

And then there was four guys that surrounded the ring.

But it wasn't clear that any one of them was the particular devil.

Point is, we're trying to put logic in this, and it's going to make no sense.

And we're going to be able to pick holes in this thing like a fucking block of Swiss cheese when it's revealed.

But Wardlow was the guy

playing the part.

And I wouldn't be surprised if Dax wasn't one of the other guys.

They're not like bringing

different people in that they've got to pay just to put these outfits on.

It's some of the boys from the locker room.

That's why they're all covered up from head to toe.

But does that mean that any of them are going to be actually in this group?

Probably not.

A faction of people who hate MJF, would that work?

Just a group of people who wouldn't normally get along, who get together because they want to stop MJF.

Well, at this point, I'm fixing to join them.

They've taken my favorite fucking wrestler, and I don't even look forward to it anymore because it's just so stupid.

Oh, the way he's being presented, the things they're having him do, the people he's surrounding himself with or that he's being surrounded with.

You can't even look forward to it anymore.

So I might join the group.

Well, we shall see what happens, Jim, but a couple more names here.

What about Shibata?

You know.

He's not behaving like himself since his brain was returned to his head.

I was about to say he has had a personality change.

I think they wired it in backwards.

I really did.

I don't think it's Shibata.

I don't think it's Shibata or Shippoopi.

And finally, Shippoopi, Shippoopi, Shippoopi.

And finally, today, and we encourage anyone who wants to hear the other picks, go to the video of part one of this, Swerve Strickland.

Well,

the only thing I would say, the reason why that I think that it's not him is just because he's been involved in every fucking thing else.

I don't know if he'd had time to change his clothes that quick.

Why would you do that with Swerve when you pushed him in completely different directions and giving him all this time in every other direction?

Why would you do any of this with any of these people?

Well, I

good, good answer.

So, my hands are up in the air.

All right, this has been the Devil's Choice segment here on the show, and we shall see

who the devil will be revealed as.

This is one of the biggest mysteries in wrestling history.

Who is the devil?

Maybe Vince McMahon.

What do you think?

I don't think it's going to be Vince.

I think we're pretty good there.

Shane McMahon.

Now that might.

No, come on.

That's like when

remember when this whole thing first started and people were wondering, wow, what if Tony brings Shane in?

Like

he's available to be brought in.

Like, oh, gosh, he made me an offer, so I can't turn it down.

And Shane would be working opposite his father's company.

That was.

People believe a lot of things, but I don't know whether anybody's believing this angle or not.

Maybe it's Punk.

What do you think?

Is the devil Punk or is Punk the Devil?

A lot of people thought he was the devil.

Imagine if Punk really does go to NXT

and then he just, with NXT, beats AEW in the rating.

Well,

he's already kind of

started that, hadn't he?

Because Punk,

this past Saturday night, after his rousing rendition of a promo on SmackDown

was on the NXT.

it's not a pay-per-view because it's not on pay-per-view, but they have it on the cock, the peacock,

the premium live event or whatever.

He was on that from Bridgeport, Connecticut, opposite Collision from AEW, the show that was specifically built around punk at the start because Tony's other employees weren't men enough to fucking be able to work with the guy.

So they banished him to a Saturday night TV show that would have

all kinds of opposition programming against it to begin with, and he still was able to carry off the best wrestling matches and or on the program have the best wrestling matches if he wasn't involved in them with FTR to Bullet Club

that we've seen on television in a long time.

And they ran him off and now he is opposite that program that is tanked in the ratings and he's working for the biggest company in the world and taking viewers away from the program that Tony designed to be built around him.

There is some level of ironicosity

going on around here, isn't there?

It sure seems like it.

And

again, this has not been a good period for AEW because of things they've done and now just people who used to work there who are doing better things elsewhere.

And we don't know what the ratings were on Collision, but against, again, the NXT

premium live event, one wouldn't think it would have the same effect as Survivor Series, but they made sure to announce that Punk would be dropping by.

He missed his flight.

He was in Bridgeport with nothing to do, anything going on.

Sean Michaels sends him an invitation on Twitter.

Well, hey, we'll save a phone call.

Come on down and talk in person.

And he goes out and does a live interview on the NXT show just to show, again,

that anything can happen, any major star can show up.

And he's obviously, again, as we said, he's opposite

the program that Tony was gifted practically by this network and promised the network that he would build around CM Punk, the only ratings draw he's had.

And now Punk is on everything opposite that fucking program while it twists in the wind with the viewers.

And seeing Punk and Sean

speaking to each other, there was a little allusion to the two problem children that they've had history in the WWF and E at various points, having problems with other people.

That was kind of ironic in its own way, wasn't it?

Yeah, they actually opened up the show with that.

And everyone kind of knows the history or at least, you know, part of the history with Sean and...

or not Sean, but Punk and management.

And of course, Sean was best friends with Triple H.

He was Vince's boy.

They were not necessarily always friendly in the past.

I don't exactly know.

So they began with Sean Michaels out there with his cowboy hat.

Brett.

Sia punks in a pink Brett Hart sweatshirt.

And this leads to a selfie.

Let's, I have a little bit of audio I've pulled up here, Jim.

Let's go to this.

Backstage, quite a few people come up to me and they say things like, I grew up watching you and they take selfies with me.

And now I get to do it with you because I grew up watching you.

That's a beautiful thing.

I missed my flight today, and I owe you a phone call.

I thought I'd come in in person and talk to you because the big question is: is CM Punk going to be on SmackDown

or is CM Punk going to be on Raw?

Or is the newest NXT superstar named

Well, there it is.

That kind of gives you an idea of a little bit of the spirit of it there.

CM Punk out there, he's

you know, it is something a lot of people have said it, and maybe it's because he's wearing pink here and it brings out the color in his face.

He looks younger and healthier than he ever did in AEW.

Not that he wasn't healthy there,

but this kind of looks like it's rejuvenated him, doesn't it?

More vibrant,

perhaps, you might say.

And I mean, let's face it, it's a very charitable comment to make that they might send punk to NXT, but it ain't going to happen.

But I love the reaction.

Nobody wants wrestlers they want to see to go to Raw because then they have to watch Raw.

Is that the

reaction?

Yeah, SmackDown didn't get booed, did it?

No, SmackDown, it was like they weren't going to cheer for it because they weren't at SmackDown, but they weren't going to boo it.

But Raw, boo, no, no, no, Raw.

Fuck.

You know,

that's a slog to watch that program.

Hey, let me play this real quick.

I don't know what this is.

It's a WWE video here.

It says CM Punk is proud of Cora Jade,

Deadline exclusive.

The event last night was deadline.

Let's play this.

Cora, Cora.

I'm sorry.

What do you want?

I just had one more question for you.

So everyone's seen the video of you meeting CM Punk for the first time.

How do you feel now that he's back in WWE?

Well, I'm guessing she met CM Punk when she was a...

Shout out.

She met CM Punk when she was just a lowly child and he patted her on the head and

it changed her life.

You know, I'll be honest.

It's only fitting that the best in the world and the best in NXT returned to NXT in the same night.

But, you know, in all seriousness, I will say he's my all-time favorite wrestler and this couldn't be about a perfect day.

It's also my five-year anniversary of being a professional wrestler.

So it.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

I don't know if you're going to ask another question again, but if I could, really quick, look at me.

Legit.

Okay.

I'm proud of you.

Thank you.

You should be very proud of yourself.

Often I feel like I need to be stepping on the gas and I don't stop and smell the roses.

So you should do that.

This is your house now.

You should be very proud of yourself, and April's proud of you, too.

Oh, thank you.

I don't like me crying.

I don't like it when women cry, but you should, you should be 100%.

Bring it in.

Thank you so much.

I'm proud of you.

He's a monster.

Kick him out.

Fire him!

He's dripping with toxicity.

He's poisoning us with his negativity.

Fuck, what have they done to my boy?

I expected him to come in and say, ah, you're the shits.

But yeah, boy, you can't have people like that around roaming around saying things like that.

Goddamn inflammatory comments.

Building up the locker room, hugging them, making them feel good about themselves.

What kind of cancerous tumor is this fucking guy?

I'll tell you.

Did you see any of the rest of the NXT deadline spectacular?

I did not.

It was not on the traditional television.

We haven't been watching NXT regularly.

I heard about punk being a part of it

and researched that after the fact.

They had these matches.

I don't know if they've ever done it before.

I haven't seen it before.

These multi-person elimination matches where they did it for the women and it was, I wish you would have seen it.

It was quite the spectacular event.

And then they did it for

more multi-people matches and women and men the same thing.

But

was it multiple people in the match or how did what

obviously a multi-person match would be that, but how did this thing work?

Is this worth paying attention to?

Is it different from the normal horseshit they've been feeding us lately?

It's different.

Imagine an elimination match with War Games rules, kind of.

So two people start in a ring.

Okay.

Every five minutes, another competitor joins, but no one's eliminated.

So just more people are in the ring and everyone's out for themselves.

If you get pinned, you have to go in,

what did they call it?

It's not an elimination chamber.

You have to go in like some kind of chamber, some kind of penalty box, a glass penalty box,

and you are out, and the person who pinned you gets a point.

And at the end of 25 minutes, once all the competitors are in there, whoever has the most points becomes the number one contender.

So

if you get pinned, you go to the penalty box for an allotted period of time, so you can't gather more points.

It sounds convoluted, and it kind of is i'm i think i'm good but they're good they explained it fairly well and had a graphic up and it was a really entertaining couple of matches i have to say they got their point system down a lot better than aew did you probably would have hated it and thought both matches were blasphemous who's the baby face and who's the heel

well trick won the male match

Is he still about it, bout it?

Oh, the place.

You see, this is worth seeing it.

The place went fucking crazy when he won because he was the only one with no points.

And within like a minute, he got three pins at the very end with four seconds left.

And the place exploded.

But it was him.

It was Braun.

It was another guy with

some tattoos that I've never really seen before.

And then another person who I'm not thinking of.

And then the women's match.

Sounds memorable.

It was a memorable thing.

The women's match.

I don't know any of their names, but there was some crazy shit.

This one girl did an Asai Moonsault right into the desk.

Oh, well.

Lord, we can't miss that.

No, she was good too.

I don't know who she was.

No, she was good too before she, while she lasted.

She was very athletic.

It's a shame what happened to her.

Well, she had a chance.

We'll remember her fondly until she hit that fucking desk.

But it was a unique match, a unique concept, and I'm sure we'll probably see it in WWE on the main roster at some point.

That's what I'm afraid of.

It wasn't terrible.

I liked it better than the Elimination Chamber, which I guess they don't go to too often.

It is only once a year now, but some of these things, it feels like you see them too often.

It was a different spin on these things, and I thought it was good.

Yes, that's why it was so memorable.

Why it was so easy to explain.

And Carmelo Hayes defeated, at least I think that's who it was, defeated Dominic Mysterio to win the North American Championship.

Oh, well, now mommy's not going to be happy about that.

And then there was a big women's match with the Cora Jade return.

How big were the women?

And then another woman returned.

There's one of the women in the elimination match.

And again, I'm not up on NXT.

I swear to God, it was like

she went to her stylist and said, make me look like Jamie Hayter.

It was like an identical Jamie Hayter.

You had to see it.

Where is Jamie Hayter?

She's on her.

She's hurt.

She's hurt.

Yeah.

She's hurt.

Well, sounds like I needed to see all of it well.

Next year, they'll do it again.

I'll be sure to tune in.

Well, Brian, I'll tell you one thing they're probably not going to do next year, so you better take advantage of it while it's here now, and that's the Omaha stakes offer that's going on right now, 50% off-site-wide.

How can they do that again next year?

How could they possibly repeat something like this?

There won't be enough cattle left.

I don't think they have to worry about the cattle, but they have wonderful deals all year round.

And of course, right now, a specifically great deal for the listeners and the hungry out there.

After this big big sale, you won't be able to find a cow within 500 miles of you, folks.

I'm telling you right now.

So your tongue's going to slap your brains out over this one, though, because the folks at Omaha Steaks, I said 50% off-site-wide.

I'm talking about the butcher's cut filet mignons, the mouthwatering burgers, the gourmet jumbo francs that we've talked about, the bulbousness and the girth and the length of them.

They've got easy to prepare meals that are ready in a flash, the sides, the caramel apple tartlet, desserts, all that kind of stuff.

And it's the holidays.

You got all kinds of moochers, I mean family, coming over to visit you and eat your food and drink your liquor and

have their way with your women, whatever the case they're coming for.

Well, you never know what some of these people are up to.

That's why you got to have plenty of steak to distract them.

And their families?

You're talking about families.

Well, you know what?

Hey,

what's an Alabama family reunion, but a great place to meet women?

But I'll tell you right now, if you go to omahostakes.com, you're going to meet some cows that you're never going to forget.

From Ferdinand to Bossie and so many more.

Stop it back there.

And again, 50% off-site-wide, but we can save you even more money than that.

Because at the holidays, everybody does need to save money because of the amount of people that are coming over to freeload.

So if you go to omahostakes.com and use the promo code JCE at checkout, you're going to get an extra $30 off your order.

So 50% off to begin with, and then $30 off of that, well, you can get that thing down to 12.5%, and that's below the legal limit,

but not for driving.

I don't know.

What legal limit?

The cholesterol limit.

So anyway, right now, say 50% off, then get $30 off of that.

If you go to omahostakes.com, use the promo code JCE.

They're going to send you whatever you order, and it's all going to be delicious.

And

you can just set fire to the whole bundle and cook it all at the same time and just stick your face in it and scarf it up, or you can put it in the freezer because it's already vacuum-sealed and airtight, like the lost in space airlock.

No air is going to get into this stuff until you're ready, and you can eat it a little bit at a time, but that's no fun.

There are cooking recommendations with each order.

They do have recipes there, and the Omaha steak seasoning.

To make anything, you put that stuff on a leather boot.

It'll taste good.

And I believe the last time I was over to your house for dinner, that's what your mother did.

Hey.

Put it on a leather boot.

It wasn't leather.

Well, it may have been suede.

I certainly was suede not to eat at your place again.

But folks, you won't have that problem.

If you're serving Omaha steaks, people will come from miles around to your home to just climb in the window and just eat off of your table.

I'm talking strangers, homeless people, bums.

No.

All of that service men that have

been tradesmen, door-to-door siding salesmen, they'll be busting your door down, getting into your refrigerator, and eating off of your table when you serve food like this.

You won't be able to stop them.

You will be able to stop anyone trying to get into your home.

Once again, you will enjoy the food, the fine food, the wonderful, delicious, fine, fine, delectable food from Omaha Steaks.

But you also don't have to worry about anyone coming in.

No one will know you have this unless you alert them to it.

You need to call the police ahead of time before you, the Omaha steaks are so good and so tasty.

If you don't call the cops and have them put a cordon of security around your home before you cook this stuff, I guarantee you you will be invaded by hordes of no, you cannot guarantee that.

Stop, stop, stop, stop.

Well, I'm just, there's a lot of hungry people out there, and they don't know about the half-off deal.

So, man, we could solve world hunger if everybody knew that Omaha steaks right now are half off and $30 on top of that with promo code JCE.

I don't know how that solves world hunger.

How does that solve world hunger?

Because everybody could afford this.

Okay.

Well, so just get the word out, people.

What do you do?

If you want to help get the word out to stop hunger in the world for Christmas, get the word about this deal out because everybody, even the people in farthest

Tibet, want to save half off.

That's right.

Even in furthest Tibet, you can save, make great savings.

Because the internet's

made the world a smaller place now.

So Omahasteaks.com, whether you're in a monastery in Tibet or down at a weather station in Antarctica, you want to save half off and then take 30 bucks off again on meat.

that you can eat in a variety of ways and places, put in a variety of different recipes.

Yeah, you could stretch this shit for a while.

And if you live in Antarctica, you don't need to put it in the freezer.

Omahasteaks.com.

That's a good point.

Good point.

Promo code JCE.

All right.

I'm starving.

Every time we talk about them, I get hungry and then we still have more show to do.

Well, you've got a bunch of shows to do.

What do you mean, more show?

Before we finish this show, or after we finish this show, you're going to do other shows because you're just showing up and showing out over on the Arcadian Vanguard network.

That's right.

Real quick, let's do this.

Go through the archive for, what are we talking about?

Oh, we're talking about the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information on all the shows.

That's usually what I say here.

On Twitter at Super Podcast or on Facebook at facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Thank you to everyone who's been checking out all the shows and the archives of the shows.

We really do appreciate it.

Of course, the wrestling news.

Each and every day, get your wrestling news from the wrestling news with the wrestling news morning newscast.

Get it from the wrestling news at the wrestlingnews.com or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Do you feature any news?

We have nothing but wrestling news.

No opinion, no conjecture, no bullshit, just the wrestling news.

But we have plenty of bullshit on the other shows.

No, go through, listen to the latest episode of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcast or mcadampod.com.

If you love classic wrestling talk, deep wrestling talk, check it out today.

Stick to wrestling with John McAdam.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast.

Hey, that's not respectful.

I don't like that.

Go through the archive at 605pod.com.

Available wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

The 605 Super Podcast.

Membership!

Well, speaking of things that we don't respect and we don't particularly like, let's talk about SmackDown.

Hey, yes, let's.

No,

they did something good for people this past week.

They had the tribute to the troops,

the 21st annual, and Bradshaw was,

JBL was on color commentary because it was his concept to do that back in, what, 2001 or, well, I can't do the math now.

2002, I think they did.

This is the 21st.

It's not, yeah, there you go.

It was his idea, is what I'm saying.

And it was nice to see him again, but I'm glad he

mostly just does whatever the fuck he wants to do and drops in every once in a while over there.

He's not, he's perfectly happy playing golf.

I enjoy that about him.

Yeah, his wife is rich.

Well, he's got a few dollars too.

Oh, yeah.

I'll have, you know, he saved his green stamps.

He's a genius.

But

the tribute to the troops began

with Escobar versus Dragonlee again.

Again,

they just had that on the pay-per-view because Carlito.

Where is Carlito?

Has he been kidnapped?

They didn't say he was injured for real.

I haven't heard of any arrests, suspensions.

or firings.

What the fuck happened to Carlito?

It's weird when someone gets hurt and you don't hear anything, or when someone gets suspended and you don't hear anything, or when someone's just off TV after showing up after being off TV for 10 years.

They got us interested.

They tickled our taint.

He's back.

He's in the middle of this thing.

It looked great.

We wanted to see Escobar and Carlito.

Everything was pointing to that.

They advertised the match.

And then now,

refresh me, they did an angle where Carlito, so Carlito, it's not like he walked out, went back to Puerto Rico and refused to fucking participate.

He did an angle backstage where they

hurt him, where that usually means that he was injured and in real life and that they're trying to cover for it.

But we've heard nothing about him, positive, negative, or indifferent,

since that.

He's just gone, right?

That sounds like what it is.

We'll see what we can find out.

I do have to make a bit of a correction.

And right here, live in the show, Jace, if you hear this, we're going to edit this part, even though we're going to keep this in the show.

We're going to edit this specific little part at the end of the NXT video clip.

I was wrong.

I forgot what I saw last night.

It was not Carmelo Hayes defeating Dominic Mysterio for the North American Championship.

Carmelo Hayes defeated Lexus King, the former Brian Pillman Jr.

Dragon Lee with Rey Mysterio defeated Dominic Mysterio for the North America Championship.

Ah,

so,

well, that just changes everything.

So that was it.

We got that result wrong.

I got it wrong, not you.

Well, I didn't see the whole thing.

But Dragon Lee.

I wasn't even there.

Dragon Lee gets squashed by Escobar, who I like more and more every time I see him out there as a heel.

And he doesn't look that great.

And then he goes to NXT and he's a massive baby face.

And he's got Rey Mysterio in his corner.

It was like night and day from SmackDown.

Well, but here, okay, then chronologically,

he Dragon Lee takes Carlito's place on the premium live event, and Escobar beats him in like eight minutes in a kind of a bleh match.

And then they have Escobar versus Dragon Lee again on SmackDown here, and Escobar hits his finish and beats him one, two, three.

This time it took him 20 minutes,

and then dominic

who came in and stood over dragon lee and taunted him as dragon lee was laying there like a sack of shit because of their match for the nxt

title that we just referenced the following night

and the following night dragon lee after he's got the shit kicked out of him twice in a row by Escobar comes in and wins the fucking belt is what you're saying with Ray in his corner with Ray in his corner

okay

all right.

So we got that straight now, right?

Yeah, the booking of him on SmackDown has been puzzling, I have to say.

I don't see what, I don't, I'm not chasing the dragon here.

I'm not on the dragon train.

I don't know what's going on with this guy, but to me, I don't, I'm not seeing it.

But

did you notice they had Nick Aldiss?

in the back in his office with Randy Orton, Randy who RKO'd

Nick, the GM of this whole schmaz.

They did a big package on his return,

and then they're standing there in the office.

And

I like Alda.

Adam Pierce is kind of like the

somewhat frazzled and beleaguered, hardworking, honest guy that's doing the best that he can and just wants to do his job.

And you can tell Nick Aldiss is just a fucking corporate ladder-climbing, fucking power-hungry son of a bitch who wants to run everything with an iron fist.

But Orton came in and upset that because he's RKO.

And remember, I said earlier in the program, the one thing you can be sure of is Punk is not going to attack Aldous in any fashion, or nobody else is going to be beating Aldous up because Randy's done it and will probably do it again, and that's going to become his thing.

Maybe he's going to be Austin and Aldous is McMahon, but nobody else is going to get a hold of the general manager.

But Nick has Orton teaming with LA Knight against Jimmy Uso and Solo on the show because

Aldous said that L.A.

Knight, well, he saved you last week.

And Orton's, oh, he saved me.

Well, and I got to trust this guy.

I don't know him, blah, blah, blah.

And Aldous is trying to put him at ease saying, oh, it'll be fine.

So Orton is given,

Orton got fined 50 grand for giving

Aldous the RKO, right?

So Orton hands him a check and he looks at it.

He's like, this is for $100,000.

And Orton says, that's right.

That's for next time.

And he walks out.

So we got that going.

And that's going to be fun.

And Aldous has got that pomposity of being an upper crusty British fellow that people are going to love seeing him get planted on his fucking face every now and then.

Should they have Aldous chasing him down each week to give him back a check for the overpayment?

And no, I think they should have one of the production assistants.

And he never accepts the money back.

He never accepts.

He's, hey, you keep it.

Go buy you a car.

Or he starts doing the RKO to the production assistants.

Well, and then giving them the check back.

I don't know.

Anyway, we'll leave that one alone.

See, that's about as much thought as the writers actually give this shit.

Aldous has been great, though.

He actually has been a breath of fresh air on this show.

He's very British.

Very British.

You don't know what he's going to do.

You can't tell how big of a dick he is.

You know, like there's still the mystery.

Like, who's he going to really fuck over at some point?

Well, that's the thing.

He's not really like a flaming heel,

is that you can tell that he's just he wants to be a success.

He maybe they're patterning him

after Vince a little bit.

It's going to be nothing personal.

It's business.

He's going to cut anybody's nuts off if it means his show and/or he himself does better.

Whereas,

you know, poor old Adam is probably going to end up being a babyface in this situation as the guy who genuinely wants to do good.

Like, Adam's like the GM you can see showing up in a minivan.

Yes, Aldous, Aldous is coming in in the fucking, you know, the SUV with the black windows.

Aldous gets out of the car with Vince.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Adam Pierce gets out of the car with me.

Anyway, speaking of getting out of the car, Cody got out of his car, went into the building, and then came to the ring and did a promo

and

got a big response.

But it was the tribute to the troops-themed program.

And

I don't know if it wasn't everybody, but a significant portion of the audience was in uniform of some kind of another, whichever branch of the service they were in, right?

And

so he got a big response.

He introduced the tribute to the troops package that I'm guessing was recycled from some time back because John Cena was really the only talent in it, right?

And this wasn't new footage.

So it gave the

flavor of the tribute to the troops concept, but it was pretty much John Cena, right?

Which is probably for the best because he's the biggest fucking name.

But anyway, there was no wrestling

content with Cody to this.

He just came out, introduced that, thanked the troops, and introduced the Army drill team.

And they juggled their rifles.

And I mean, they're throwing them up in the air and they're turning loops and they're catching them.

And I'm thinking, my God,

this is goddamn a wrestling crowd with these guys doing this intricate shit.

If anybody drops one of these things,

they're going to blow the fucking roof.

But fortunately, they

well, no, you know,

huh?

No, I'm not talking about the gun going off.

I'm talking about the fans are going to hoot at this fucking guy.

You fucked up.

You fucked.

It's a wrestling crowd.

You know, they'd acted like it was the goddamn, it's like the bartenders do the bottles with the fucking acrobatic pouring and everything.

Somebody drops a bottle, everybody applauds.

I felt bad for these guys because they were there with the spotlights in their eyes and the fucking crowd in arena but they nailed it they juggled the rifles and then they left

but that would be funny if the dropped the fucking rifle and the rifle shot grandma in the cheap seat shot right between the eyes it wouldn't be funny we're not saying it would be funny well the idea is hysterical grandma could be a fucking bitch when she wanted to be can you imagine that though If the fucking rifle landed, bam, and it shot some woman in the fucking cheap seats between the eyes and she just fell right over in the middle of her popcorn.

No, she fell over the rail and

does a fucking flip and lands on somebody down in reserved and breaks their fucking neck.

Now they're in a goddamn wheelchair and they're got to be represented by Stephen P.

New 87750 Steve.

Oh, good laden could set off a chain reaction.

Shoot the woman.

She falls on the when the guy's neck gets broken, he shits himself.

When he shits himself, someone slips on it.

Somebody slips on it behind, falls down the fucking stairs.

It's a Rube Goldberg goddamn contraption.

I'd watch that show.

Well, that's

how many people can we kill with one shot?

Well, speaking of which, let's go back to the weekly death that is

moving on.

So, Lashley and Carrion Cross, they're having a tournament here in We Land now

to determine who's doing what to who.

Help me again.

What title should you do?

Number one contender for the U.S.

title held by Logan Paul.

There you go.

And there's eight people in it, basically four people that you figure might win and four job guys.

And this was Lashley against Carrion Cross.

So you see which one neatly fits in the other compartment.

And besides, again, who's the heel here?

Why am I

if you don't want to actively cheer for someone or root for someone or at least have some minor interest in one of the two people winning, you just watched a fucking match and then it defaults to who's the biggest star?

Well, Lashley's the biggest star.

That means most people are going to fucking cheer him.

But usually the reason why heel versus heel matches, when presented very rarely and sparingly, would draw is because

if you booked two heels against each other, they were two heels with both with heat that the fans wanted to see each of these

dastardly assholes do the horrible things that they do to the babyfaces to each other because they deserve it.

And which that doesn't fit here either.

And

it seems like it might not be hard to at least have some babyfaces and heels in the tournament also instead of just blah, picking names out of a hat.

But nevertheless,

what did we see in Carrion Cross

in another lifetime?

He was bald and intense, and he had a good entrance in the smaller NXT environment, and he had a valet that stood out, and they worked well together, and she was really good at lip-syncing.

And

yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

Boy, how were we wrong?

That's the question.

Yes, yes.

See, for the people

who say I never admit when I'm wrong,

I mean,

growing the hair hurt.

The change in their presentation hurt.

The fact that he was brought up and couldn't succeed at anything hurt.

The promos really hurt.

We didn't hear that many of them in NXT.

All he was doing for a while there when they brought him up was these horrible, memorized, hokey, dramatic promos.

I don't remember so many of those in NXT, but nevertheless, he went from somebody we thought, well, this guy's got a lot of potential to, oh, Jesus Christ, what happened?

And I saw the first minute or two of this.

It was sloppy, awkward, and plodding.

And they went to the break, and that was enough for me.

When they came back, Lashley beat him with a spear one, two, three, after a while.

She doesn't even even lip sync like she used to, and she wasn't falling and praying.

She was just, she was lip-syncing, but not.

I think their prayers ran out.

Yeah, well, they may have fallen, but I don't think they prayed enough.

But then came the nine o'clock hour.

And Brian, you know what that meant.

Lock Mussolini

got fired by Tony, and now now he's in the WWE.

Oh, it's the cult of draw me money, please.

Now with more money

and viewers, too.

Mindy's bakery's open seven days a week now.

All right.

Oh, come on.

That's not like you to give up halfway through the song.

You didn't prepare more.

I'm unprepared.

That was good.

But no, but that's again, you look at here at the nine o'clock now, which he even referenced.

That's the first thing he said.

Hey, for those of you who haven't noticed,

it's the top of the nine o'clock hour.

I'm in the middle of the show.

I'm not going to get my time cut.

So go ahead and chant all you want

because it became a thing that he got his time cut before.

But it was

this was what, first of all, the music plays.

He gets the ovation, the music, the singing, the chants.

He's wearing the Hell Froze over shirt.

The announcer he's a free agent.

Where will he sign?

Bradshaw put him over big.

And now he had the time to do the promo.

He had

12 or 13 minutes instead of six.

And

yet, again, this was

what we needed.

He not only

did his normal thing where he talks like a reasonable person and connects with people, but then he starts firing up a little bit.

So, you want to see the prickly CM Punk?

Well, I can do that.

And he starts mentioning people.

He asks the fans, Raw or SmackDown,

which one do you want to see me go to?

And he gets them fired up in that.

Do you want to see me throw out 29 other stars in the main event or 29 other stars in the Royal Rumble and main event WrestleMania?

And that gets chance.

And

then, you know, he references people.

We talked about earlier in the show, and we'll rehash it here because it's been a while.

All of the other baby faces that he has to interact with, there's a different level of acceptance of him by them.

Going from Seth Rollins completely, fuck this fucking guy.

all the way to Cody shaking his hands, welcome back, old friend, and everything in the middle.

And,

you know, he starts off right at the top.

The old friend who welcomed me back the most, which we later find out, or we find out pretty much here, Cody, says, What do you want to talk about?

But maybe it should be more like, who do you want to talk about?

And, you know, he mentioned the spicy shit, but now he's more comfortable now that he's got back home.

He's going to get the fuck, put the feet up on the couch.

And he mentions Roman.

I acknowledge you.

congratulations epic reign don't forget who the og heyman guy is he was my wise man first

so now that's open

and he shouted out jey uso

but now does he need to fight with jimmy and solo if he needs backup can i tag with orton

you know because somebody wouldn't want to tag with me

You know, maybe like L.A.

Knight or Kevin Owens.

And then that's when he hit the fucking line

kevin owens he punches people in the locker room and backstage you can't do that in 2023 that's insane

and like we said at the top of the program the people didn't react there was a few

but for the most part that audience doesn't know but he though you saw the smirk on his face that wasn't a reaction line that's also one of the bucks pals that he's talking about owens well yes

And also the fact that he said that and smirked at the camera and looked right at Kookamunga when he said it and then moved on to the other stuff that he's going to say that draws money.

And if they wanted to be childy, he can make childish remarks on a program watched by four times as many people.

But it worked both ways.

And, you know, again, for the target audience that, you know, likes that kind of thing.

That's the kind of thing people like.

And he mentioned everybody's really welcomed me back except that one guy who's got a whiny voice and he's not even the man in his own household.

Boom, shots fired.

I'm a visionary.

If he's a visionary, he should have seen that one coming.

But anyway, and so that he's, we're going to find out on Monday at Raw where I'm going to sign.

And everybody that I've mentioned has one thing in common.

CM Punk is in their way, and everybody's talking about finishing stories.

Well, I'm back to finish what I started, and that's to main event WrestleMania.

And boom,

he said, he mentioned people, he set a goal for himself, he teased the fans with where he might go and what he might.

You want to see me throw out 29 other guys?

Of course they do.

There's directions all over the place.

There's multiple things set up.

There's a stated goal.

Other people that have stories to finish their stories

would mean that he might not be able to finish his story.

So, at what point does that become more important than friendship?

Because somebody said he wasn't here to make friends, he's here to make money.

So, all the people that he's shaking hands with now

may or may not last.

And

that's what it's questions for fans to, that's what Vince used to in the smaller production meetings with the creative team and the agents, not the broader ones.

And the announcers would be, he'd say, are we telling stories?

Are we getting them to ask questions?

Not because they don't know what's going on, but are they asking the questions we want them to ask?

We want them to be at.

We want them to be anticipating

these things that they're going to make themselves want to see.

That's Vince's shit, and that's honestly fucking common sense.

So that's what they did here.

And again, it was 12 minutes, not six.

Mentioned names, stated a goal, got a little more prickly, got under some people's skin without trying to do a smart fucking promo that nobody understood.

I say bravo for this one.

What do you think?

I thought it was great.

It was exactly what it kind of needed to be.

The raw promo was so disappointing, there was no time for it.

The crowd was into it other than the Bucks line because no one knows anything about it.

I thought it was really good, and they've done a great job a month and a half, two months out, for making you want to see that Royal Rumble.

What's going to happen?

Multiple people have already declared.

They made a big deal out of Cody just declaring himself that he's going to be in it.

And now Punks kind of said he's going to be in it.

So they're already building that rumble up.

And I'm looking forward to it.

But think of the number of people for once this year that you would want to see, or some fan,

some segment of fans, not just one guy in a fucking, you know, basement in Cleveland, but large numbers of fans would want to see Cody win, would want to see Punk win, would want to see

L.A.

Knight win, would want to see Jey Uso win,

would want to, and you can

Orton win.

You can tell the story Jey Uso wants to win to fight his fucking cousin again everyone has a story that's the great thing I mean

punk said that he wants to get even with for fucking the other the other month over there in Saudi Arabia Cody has to finish his story punk has to achieve his goal everybody has a different singular reason for needing to win the Royal Rumble and again Punk brought up he's the OG Paul Heyman guy so there's the thing that immediately ties him somehow into the bloodline story.

Just actual history.

If he was to win to face Roman Reigns,

can you see Roman looking like, wait a minute, can I really trust you, wise man?

And they've already had the kerfluffle in the past over Brock.

Do you get a title shout automatically at Roman Reigns, or because there's a new championship with Rollins, is that on equal footing?

You have to pick which one?

Because this is the first year it's been there.

Well, that's a good question.

And I would think you would get to pick, much like

if the Money in the Bank briefcase can pick, can't the winner of the Royal Rumble pick?

So you have that dynamic, too, because they are building up Rollins punk without either one saying the other one's name.

Yeah.

Well, and I don't think it's not going to be punk and Roman, but I'm saying that if you did that,

there's a story to it.

If somebody gets hurt, you change your mind.

Okay, we got to do this.

Well, there's stories to all of this shit.

So you got different ways to go.

But I still, I still, I think Punk and Rollins and Cody and Roman, if they don't have the rock and

who knows, rocks are harder to get a hold of these days.

Does AEW look worse and worse every day that goes by that CM Punk doesn't punch someone in the face?

Or make someone scared for their life?

I think he's too busy giving out free neck rubs and aromatherapy treatments.

And then after this interview in the back, they had him outside the bloodline door and he raised his hand like he was going to knock and he's thinking about it and he says, ah, fuck.

And he turns away and there's Owens.

And they kind of exchanged tense words and somewhat of a reluctant, I can't remember if it was a handshake, fist bump, but it was like, yeah, we're good.

Okay.

So it wasn't love and tenderness, but it wasn't we're going to fight on sight.

but he just called him out, even in Kayfabe, he just called him out of the ring.

So I thought it was an interesting, short, simple segment.

I like it again.

Where are they going to go with these two now?

Hopefully, not far for long.

And then when Punk walks off, when Punk walks off, Owens is walking the other way.

He stops and turns around to see Punk where he's going.

Yeah.

Well,

he's going to be looking over his shoulder.

You never can tell.

And then we got Charlotte and Oscar.

And now this,

did you see the break spot where the incident occurred?

I saw the video going around because I guess people weren't sure what she did.

That she hurt herself.

And then the video made it pretty clear what happened.

Well, this was going to be, you know, I wasn't going to watch this, but I didn't really have to fucking

ignore anything because they had a bad

girl fight in the entrances with all the seconds where

Oscar's whole group and Charlotte's babyface friends where they all fought off and Charlotte and Oscar got started and she did the Charlotte did her moonsault off the top rope to the floor and they went to the break in 90 seconds.

And I didn't intend to come back on it, but I had heard already by the time I watched the program on the internet what had happened.

They come back from the break and both girls are laid out selling in the middle of the ring.

And the referee's talking to Charlotte,

and they're there, and then the referee says something to Oscar, and there's some communication,

and then

Charlotte gets up limping, favoring her left leg.

And as I mentioned, there was a lot of, they were calling something on the fly of how to get out of this.

And Charlotte limped into

a figure four barely and kind of, she couldn't really do anything with her left leg and even got most of the bridge up.

But Bailey reached in and pulled her, pulled Charlotte's arms out so she lost her bridge.

And Charlotte hops up on one leg and nails Bailey off the apron and Oscar schoolgirled her one, two, three.

I assume they were probably going to go longer and there was some

element of interference in the finish that may have borne some resemblance to what they were going to do.

But

what had happened in the break

is that they were fighting on the top rope, and it looked like that

they were going to get in position.

They were in the position where Charlotte was facing the ring, and Oscar had climbed up the turnbuckles.

And

if you were, if Oscar was going to give Charlotte a superplex, they were kind of in that position.

And

Charlotte had her feet on,

I believe, the was she on the second turnbuckle or was she all the way up on the top turnbuckle?

I think she had gotten up to the top when they both slipped, right?

She'd gotten up to the top and she had a hold of Asuka and Asuka lost her balance standing on, that's what it was.

She was standing on the second buckle.

And she started going backwards.

And since Charlotte was holding on to her, it pulled her forward.

And whereas

Asuka could just go backwards and land on her back in the ring, Charlotte flipped forward sideways

off the

top rope and landed off the top turnbuckle and landed with her legs over the top rope, which immediately whiplashed her, whipsawed her, or whatever,

back around to where she landed, I believe, knee first

on her left knee in the middle of the ring.

Because

I don't think this would be an ACL tear because she didn't have any weight on the leg.

I think it was when she was whipped around it with such velocity, if she had driven her

kneecap into the mat, it would not only hurt like fuck, you wouldn't be able to walk on it, but it could still be a debilitating injury.

And remember, I've told a story when when I got nailed off the ring by Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam 96, and I started to take a regular bump off the apron, but then I realized at the last second I was supposed to stay on the apron to draw the referee, and I tried to grab the rope and keep myself on it.

I spun around, boom, kneecap first into the floor, and it almost busted the bursel sack.

And

point being, I had to have tons of blood drained off of it.

It's not a pleasant procedure.

That can fuck your knee up too without tearing a ligament.

But she either landed on the point of it or maybe the whiplash of hitting the rope at that speed possibly may have torn some cartilage or done something.

But the point is, she gutted out to get out of the thing as best she could.

But goddamn it.

I know I bitch all the time about how they all fight forever gingerly on the top rope.

But think about how stupid this is.

It's only a foot and a half difference, 18 inches, between the second rope and the top rope, and it becomes 10 and 20 times more dangerous.

The superplex was started

by the superstar, Bill Eady.

He had his feet on the second rope.

on either side of the turnbuckle inside the ring,

and the fucking guy he was giving it to,

you could crotch the guy on the top rope, or you could pick him up and set him on the top rope, but he could sit on the top turnbuckle.

He didn't have to climb up to the top rope either.

His feet could be on the second buckle.

And then, when you start to give the guy the move, he can push off with one foot on the top rope.

Most people might not even notice it, and you're going over.

But while your feet are on the second rope, you have a base for your balance.

The guy inside has the top rope going around his knees, right below his knees, if he's a grown adult man.

And you can brace yourself that way.

And the other guy sitting on the, going the other direction, he's got something to push off of, to grab a hold of that's not the shit that he's sitting on.

It's easier to balance on the second rope and to not make it look phony.

Because for both people to get up on the top rope with their feet and nothing else to take that bump that's 18 whole inches higher

you have to gingerly help each other up there like you're pulling a baby out of a fucking well

and it looks so bullshit phony and it's dangerous how many times have you seen people brian fall off the second turnbuckle and fall out of the ring

off the second turnbuckle yes i mean i've seen them intentionally do that a bunch of times no i'm talking about accidentally how many times people that are on the second rope, either inside the ring or even outside the ring,

slip or accidentally fall off out to the floor?

Pretty rarely.

How many times have you seen that happen when people are standing up on a top rope?

Somewhat more frequently.

There you go.

There's a reason for that.

So anyway, I hope Charlotte's okay, but it looked like it fucked her up.

And there's that.

And then

Nick Aldiss was in his office with CM Punk.

And Aldous hands him the contract and said, I'll let you look at this and leaves.

And that's what I mentioned before.

And we're not going to see Punk be the anti-authority guy.

He may be anti-authority, but he's not going to be physically

abusing Aldous.

But as Aldous leaves, Punk's looking at the contract, Cody walks in.

And they're kind of standing there

looking at each other.

Cody said, well, it sounds like to finish your story, you need to win the Royal Rumble.

Yeah?

Cody says, that's interesting.

And Cody offers his hand and says, welcome back, old friend.

And Punk shakes it.

And

they wouldn't be having these conversations if it wasn't going to mean something.

But we don't know what yet, or how or in what form or fashion.

And then they continued that before you comment on this, L.A.

Knight and Orton were in the back.

And Orton wasn't really happy about teaming up with L.A.

Knight because L.A.

Knight got there after Orton left.

They don't know each other.

Can he trust this guy?

But then Punk walks up and says, good luck, boys.

and walks off.

And then Orton says to L.A.

Knight, are you ready?

And L.A.

LA Knight, yeah.

And off we go.

This is like it's almost getting to be the end of the show at the old days of Crockett Promotions, Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, where they just send three or four of the top mini baby faces that they had to go out and just say a couple of things about their big angle.

And that was all they needed.

But they're all interacting with Punk already.

Yeah, usually I'm against the whole the camera's there.

Why is it there filming these conversations?

What purpose?

Makes sense here.

See how Punk's in the back.

Follow him with a camera.

There you go.

See what he does, who he hits.

They've done nothing but build up intrigue with Punk and everyone.

He's aligned himself with no one, even the people that he's literally either called or been referred to as a friend by, like Cody.

There's a tense, not awkwardness, but a tense feeling there.

Yeah, and when he says that a lot of the people who have welcomed him back also realize he's now in their way.

And the good thing is, it's not AEW, WWE.

We'll draw this out, hopefully, not too long.

We may not see him wrestle until the Rumble.

There may not be any reason for him to wrestle before.

I don't think he should.

They're not hurting for ratings.

They don't need desperate ploys.

So,

you know, you want to see CM Punk?

Watch the Royal Rumble.

It's going to be the biggest ever.

Well, we shall see what happens.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, so,

and then they started the entrances for our main event, which was Solo and Uso

against L.A.

Knight and Ortno.

And I liked it because they only took eight minutes tonight or that night for the entrances for the

main event.

So they actually had 15 minutes left on the air when they rang the bell for the match.

And have you noticed now that

not only next to a lot of the people on this roster, but next to everybody we're watching in modern wrestling, Randy Orton now looks like Andre the fucking giant.

He also does look pretty big, bigger than he was before he left, but he looks gigantic compared to what he's doing.

He can't take supplements and grow four inches.

He looks six foot eight now next to all these other fucking guys.

When did he suddenly get so fucking tall?

He's a giant now.

He was one of the normal guys at OVW.

Fucking hell.

Anyway,

they did the thing where Orton and L.A.

Knight do the reluctant,

not reluctant, but they tag themselves in when the other guy...

doesn't know it's coming because there's tension there.

But then suddenly, because I guess they figured they're running late, Uso just nailed Randy from behind and they went to the break in two minutes.

And they came back and they got some heat on Orton for about 30 seconds.

And then he made an ice-cold tag to L.A.

Knight.

And

again,

when I say he made it, it wasn't his fault.

Nobody was trying to fucking stop him.

These fucking guys cannot set up a hot tag to save their lives.

And I'll say it again for the newbies out there in the audience: if the baby face that has been selling

can make a tag to his partner, and it's obvious to the fans in the arena that he cannot be caught, cannot be stopped, his way is unobstructed, and he's so close, nobody else is anywhere remotely around him to be able to prevent it.

It ain't a fucking hot tag.

It's a foregone conclusion, and you kill your pop.

So, ice cold tag to L.A.

Knight, makes a comeback,

did a nice Bobby Eaton running neckbreaker,

and then Solo stopped him, and they got heat on L.A.

Night for about fucking a minute, maybe.

And now Jimmy Uso's punches, I use punches in quotation marks,

both those brothers are killing me.

But Jimmy now, his punch is an open-handed slap to the forehead that he then shows to the fans afterwards.

Did you see that one?

I'm now watching it because of you, yeah.

He fucking slapped him in the head with an open hand and then held an open hand up to the fans with a follow-through.

Like, see that?

It's like the old deal where you're showing the referee, I didn't hit him with a fist.

It was an open hand.

He really did hit him with an open hand.

It's not even illegal.

What the fuck do they think people are blind?

They're not goddamn magicians.

They're not sleight of hand experts.

Who was that goddamn guy that did the as seen on TV magic kit when I was a kid?

I've got it on one of the shelves around here, but I can't see the fine print.

Anyway,

so then L.A.

Knight gave Randy Orton an even colder tag.

He was right in front of him, and nobody was preparing or trying to even stop him.

But the fans popped for it kind of anyway, because it's Orton.

And he made a comeback and boom, boom, boom, and hit his draping DDT.

And then Solo stopped Randy from behind.

And then L.A.

Knight DDT's Solo and then went to use his BFT

on Jimmy Uso, the BFT, and the DDT

went to hit the BFT on Uso, and Randy snatched him out of the grasp of the BFT to hit the RKO.

One, two, three.

So Randy stole L.A.

Knight's victory, but they shook hands anyway.

But there's tension.

RKO, BFT,

FYI,

YOU.

Tension.

That's the big thing now.

You got to have the proper amount of tension.

You can't just be slack and limp and flaccid like Tony is.

Roman Reigns back next week.

Back next week on the SmackDown to be confronted by who?

Who knows who?

L.A.

Knight, Randy Orton, CM Punk, Nick Aldiss,

Logan Paul, Pat McAfee,

Bronco Nagurski.

Oh, come on.

Loud noises.

All right.

Well, this has been a loud edition of the Experience is Your Show.

It certainly has been.

And Brian, what do you have for us this week on the drive-through in just a few days from now?

We've got questions.

We've got answers.

And maybe even a mystery or two.

Yeah, oh,

and a mystery or two.

And will Aunt Clara get her spleen taken out by Dr.

Johnson before his wife Magda finds out that he's secretly in love with their Dalmatian?

Tune in next week on As the Stomach Turns.

Well, we'll have more stomach turning wrestling content on the drive-thru.

That is assured, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And until then, and next week on the experience, where maybe I'll actually have something to talk about.

Thank you.

Fuck you.

Bye-bye, everybody.