Episode 510: Jim Reviews WWE Survivor Series 2023

Suffs!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com

A happy place comes in many colors.

Whatever your color, bring happiness home with CertaPro Painters.

Get started today at Certapro.com.

Each Certapro Painters business is independently owned and operated.

Contractor license and registration information is available at Certapro.com.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the Jim Cornet Experience like a Phoenix rising from the ashes.

Like MacArthur, he has returned.

Like Mussolini with extra cash.

CM Punk is back and the question is, will Tony Khan survive the Survivor Series?

Joining me today, Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting lion, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-host of you.

It's collaborating time.

TG Blast, everybody.

Hello, Hajim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

I'm going to assume we're not doing guest the program today.

Well, I don't know.

We might have time later on.

There's not really much happening.

You know, but here's the thing.

Hell froze over in Chicago and it was cold.

It's freezing down here in Louisville all the way.

For heaven's sake, it must be sub-zero up there in Chicago.

And Brian, you know what the problem is, don't you?

You know what I've learned from this whole episode, what I have realized.

from what has transpired here over the last 24 hours.

Do you know what that is?

No.

I realized never to listen to anybody.

I should never listen.

People say,

oh, Cornan, you're so opinionated and blah, blah, blah, you're out of touch.

You're always wrong.

But I'm always right except for when I listen to other people and they make me wrong.

So from now on,

I am not going to listen to any other people except you.

Because we've been saying the same things here on this program.

So for the purposes of this exercise,

you and I, I am we and you are we and we are we and we are all together.

But just what was it on the drive-through?

The walrus was punk.

The walrus was punk all along.

Turn me on, dead man.

On the drive-through, we were previewing Survivor Series and you asked the question, well, is he going to show up us?

Well, I guess not.

I guess not because we've been saying, I've been saying

for what, two months now or three months, however long it's been since the incident at Wimley, the unpleasantness, as they used to refer to World War II across the pond, the unpleasantness occurred in England.

I would say this is fucking perfect.

In Chicago, Survivor Series, set up fucking Royal Rumble, set up WrestleMania.

What other free agent?

What other individual not under the WWE umbrella could they possibly sign in the world

that is not

under contract elsewhere that is able to be signed, could they

sign with the magnitude of the impact that this would make

that the new owners, they've been hot shotting, they've been bringing the stars back.

And you got to know the Triple H with his head for the business smells not only

You know, blood in the water, but the cocaine bear is bleeding out over there in the Great Great Smokies.

For those of you who saw that movie, um, cocaine boo-boo.

Boy, I'll tell you, did you see Cocaine Bear?

I have not seen it yet, but I want to.

Well, it's a fabulous, fantastic movie, but we're not talking about that now.

The point is, they smell this sucker's blood in the water and they are chomping on it because now Triple H has told everybody in AEW.

Yeah, the guy that

your EVPs said was a a cancer and that they couldn't get along with under any circumstances.

They didn't want to speak to, they didn't want to meet with, they didn't want to work with, they didn't want to make up with.

And

their friends and minions hounded him and badgered him until finally he face-locked one of them.

Well, now he's going to maintain WrestleMania.

That's following.

The only EVP so far to date that has left that Titanic of a vessel, who is probably going to make it the other night of the fucking WrestleMania because he's the hottest baby face to business.

That's what Triple H has just told these fucking people that work for AEW that would like to get somewhere in their wrestling career that are not the EVPs and their immediate friends and minions that have built this billionaire's son out of a comfortable living for however many years this has been now.

He said, but if you really want to go somewhere, well, here's the gravy train, folks.

Over there, you're just eating the purina fucking generic dog chow.

Plus, you get to experience the reverse Copeland.

You come out, and there's fans on both sides of the arena.

Yes, and you can see them all the way around you.

Look in my eyes.

What do you see?

Fans in the seats every 18 inches.

I'll work on that stuff.

But anyway, that's the point, though.

Sound like Jock Brell.

No, keep going.

I have been saying, I said that was perfect three months ago.

But then Uncle Dave and the rest of them, I think the SAP guy, well, that might not narrow it down too far in this crowd we're talking about, but all these people on the internet, the naysayers, no, Uncle Dave said it.

I've talked to my source.

It's not going to happen.

They say it's not going to take blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I said at the time.

Well, if it was going to happen, that's the first thing I'd fucking say anyway, right?

How can this not happen?

It makes too much sense and they'll make too much money.

And it will work on so many levels to send a message to the other company at the top and to the locker room at the bottom to, again, hot shot ratings in a time of rights renegotiations.

into the peak hot.

Everybody wants them to jump on the cock now.

Everybody bend over and take a big leap up on the cock.

Well, maybe not like that.

Well, that's what they're wanting people to do because all of the, this is hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.

I sound like Carl Sagan now in billions.

But this is what we're talking about.

And that's why I said they got to do this.

And everybody else was shooting it down on the internet to the point where finally

I said on the drive-through, I said, well, I guess they, if everybody else is saying that this ain't happening, fuck, I guess they don't need to make $50 million anymore.

Go look the clip up, people.

The goddamn podcast is right there, too, for your perusal.

I said, How can this not happen?

Guess what?

It fucking happened.

And I was saying it all along because how can it not fucking happen?

This is not do we draw a house in Cleveland anymore or in Dallas or Minneapolis.

It's tens of millions of dollars that this company can fucking make.

And at the same time,

literally backhand bitch slap the only competition they have in this country that they can see with binoculars behind them.

And they did both at the same time.

There's another con out there right now who's willing to spend money and are going after big stars.

And do you want to work for Antonio Canocy?

Or do you want to work for Triple H?

If you want to do something serious, if you want to do something on a big stage, if you want to make money, if you're looking at the trajectory of the companies, if you're looking at the management of the companies, if you're looking at the people booking or around the booking of the companies,

where would you want to be?

And it sends a big message to a lot of people, but I think the biggest message was, and you saw a lot of people have meltdowns on Twitter and other people celebrating on Twitter.

It makes AEW look awful

because,

you know, up against this is Collision and Rampage.

Collision, which was a show that was built around punk.

It was one Bill Phil show.

He's now punkless.

Punkless, I say.

He would have been there.

He would have been there that night.

And instead, he was in the Survivor Series.

And look at the moment we got.

But they're going out of their way to sign Coda Abushi,

an Osprey, who's a talent, who WWE certainly wanted.

But WWE, in front of a packed house that was well lit

with monster pops brought back Randy Orton and then CM Pop.

Well, hold on.

There's a lot to unpack there, as they say in broadcasting.

Let's go back for a second.

Koda Ibushi, come on.

Seriously, that's because he once was something to

the

small portion of Japanese wrestling fans that exist in this country and is currently not that and never will be again, apparently.

And he's friends with the, what's their names, the golden

the golden fleece.

Uh,

he's friends with Kenny, the golden fleece.

That's good.

There you go.

So,

so once again, Tony's the one who got fleeced by those lambs, or one's a lamb, and one's, I don't know.

I'm not going into bestiality any further, but nevertheless, that could be the name of the AEW book, The Golden Fleece.

Ibushi wasn't a serious signing, and the WWE would have laughed if you'd offered him and his services to them.

But with Osprey, yes, I'm sure the WWE did want him or did look at him or did negotiate with him or whatever level of the interest there was.

But only a delusional person can equate

the signing of one side of Will Osprey and the other side of CM Punk as in any way equal or even comparable or even at the same level.

That's not even saying

I'm not the biggest fan of Will Ostrich, but that's not even saying that he doesn't have talent or that he's not any good.

This is not even an insult.

It's a simple empirical, factual statement based on observation.

There's still a small part of the overall pro-wrestling audience, especially the WWE audience in the United States of America, that knows who Will Osprey is, and everybody knows who CM Punk is.

And

the WWE, I'm sure, wanted Osprey if there was interest.

And we heard there was as someone to develop and someone to start out and boom and go on, whatever the case.

But it wasn't like this was going to be a landmark signing that they were going to crow about.

And he was going to be figured into WrestleMania in fucking four months or whatever.

So it's two completely different things.

And only the most delusional

AEW apologist at this point or indie wrestling fanatic, and they're pretty much the same thing these days, could equate that because Osprey will have better matches

than CM Punk with Coda Abushi or whoever the fuck.

CM Punk will, oh my God, give me a fucking break.

Help me, help me, help me.

No, the NWA and 89 had much better matches by and large than WWF, but better matches doesn't always win the contest.

You know, I think it's also

going forward going to be more and more obvious.

I mean, Cody Rhodes, CM Punk,

and to an extent, but differently, Jay Cargill, are stars coming over.

It's going to be interesting when it becomes next, when it becomes like another tier of people, when it becomes a tier down, let's say, and they have to choose.

Because it's a choice between

continuing to do what you're doing on the indies with the people you're doing it with

or go somewhere else and try to elevate your game.

It's going to be that simple.

And again, look at

SmackDown, look at Survivor Series, then look at Collision and Rampage.

And it's that feeling of watching WWF in 89 and then turning on the NWA.

Or maybe 1990 may be a better.

I think probably 1990 is probably a better example at this point because 89, NWA was still defensible.

Although 1990, WCW, as low down as it was, I think they lit their buildings better than AEW did.

So, and again, it's unfortunate.

Everything's unfortunate with AEW.

The way things went down with Punk is completely unfortunate.

The way it was managed was unfortunate.

The way people were enabled to think they could do certain things and act in certain ways.

Look at how it worked out.

But CM Punk returns.

It gets all these views.

It's a big thing.

It blows up.

It's just, it takes away from AEW.

It's another thing that takes away from AEW, whether it's fair or not.

And it's all Tony's doing.

But Tony chose the Bucs, who are now taking time off.

The word from at least Dave Meltzer is they're being retooled to come back as heels and have their own faction and play up that

you know their locker room problems.

Oh, good lord.

Doesn't work as good now with Punk back into WWE

with Punk and Triple H taking pictures, pointing at each other, smiling.

Somebody tweeted: one thing's for sure, Triple H will never be in fear for his life.

But hold on, let's back up for a second here, because that's the thing also is that

while the buckaroos slink off in shame and retool so they can have a group and talk about their problems in a locker room, boy,

that'll put asses in seats, as the old quote goes.

Their whole story is going to be shot to shit because

for one thing, if,

and by the way, Punk should probably send old Jungle Jack off a Christmas card because

if Perry hadn't ran his pie hole, then Punk would not only not have gotten a front face lock his ass, but he also, as a result, got a job paying him probably several more million dollars that he was about to finish up making because he was almost at the end of his AEW deal.

He's just at the start of this one with a bigger company.

So I'm sure Jungle Boy Jack is sitting there slapping himself in the face right now.

But the fucking point I was about to make before I segued into

Cheetah the chimp

is that punk is not going to front face lock anybody in the WWE locker room.

Punk is not going to fucking knock anybody.

There's not going to be any goddamn skirmishes because they don't work that way.

Because there would not,

yes, they have plenty of people that I'm sure don't like each other, probably some people that hate each other, but they're not allowed to get away with expressing it to the point where it really gets on the other motherfucker's nerves, are they?

Is it that simple?

They just don't let them go that far with shit before they yank a knot in it, as Mama Cornette used to say.

I think there's certain people that may hang out in certain locker rooms that if they hang out in a general population locker room may not

last too long in that locker room.

But at the same point, that doesn't happen.

Not in WWE anymore.

Yes.

And they manage their shit.

And the fact Triple H,

say what you want, but he learned from Vince what's best for business, pal.

So he will shake that motherfucker's hand and they will stand there and grin.

And he will arrange to pay him.

several million dollars because the company will make several tens of million dollars per year.

And

he may have fantasies of bidding him over and running a goddamn sledgehammer up his ass, but he ain't going to fucking act on it, nor is he going to make that known to the general population or to the individual.

But it would be very hunter because there couldn't be any rematch, so he would get the upper hand and the feud would end.

Yeah, but anyway, so and it also

punk now has something to prove in that it was the other guys and the childish nature of the atmosphere that he was in and the unprofessionalness of the supposed professional promotion that he was a part of that drove him nuts.

And that if everybody's doing business and being professional, that he can too.

And, you know, that's the thing with,

my God.

All he's got to do now is come out and say, you know, there's a lot of people here in this company or in this promotion promotion or however he would word it, talking about finishing their story.

And most of these stories span generations from father to son, from grandfather to father to son.

That's not mine, but my story is not different generations.

It's different people,

different

personalities of me that I've been and I've changed through the years.

And you know what?

This is my last one.

And that's why this one's the real me.

And I want to finish my story the right way.

I want to do the thing that I've never done.

I want to fucking go out as me,

the real CM Punk.

And I don't put up with bullshit.

And I don't roll over and play dead.

And I don't fucking suffer fools gladly.

And I've got some goals I want to accomplish.

Apologies in advance.

Oops, you moved.

And just let him be him.

And let the people take it how they take it.

Because he was at one point in the other company the hottest heel and the hottest babyface.

Now, in this company,

with a much bigger viewership and most of them not even cognizant about why the other people were booing him when he was clearly acting like a babyface, if they saw it at all,

they will probably react positively to him because he is a master wordsmith.

But regardless, he gets a reaction.

He gets people

involved in what he's doing.

And

while we're on a subject, another of the reasons

why that I said that

this was perfect is because

nowhere almost in the United States these days does a pro wrestler get the

the level of reaction,

the the level of genuine emotion

as punk does in Chicago.

And when you have a pay-per-view that is guaranteed to sell out anyway,

But in the guy's hometown and all the history he's got in the building and this place and that place, whatever the fuck,

You know

that a surprise debut will give you, as it did for AEW,

what, two, three years ago, whatever the fuck it was,

the most incredible visual, the incredible highlight video.

He looked like a megastar.

People were jumping up and down and shitting themselves.

There was literally a picture of a baby being held in the air.

They love him.

He's a hometown guy.

He puts them over because he lives there.

They know it.

He loves Chicago.

He's one of the, it's not phony bullshit.

He's at the fucking hockey games.

It lawler in Memphis in the old days.

Not even today.

Bless him.

But nobody gets that response as a

one of us type of person.

And it's amazing, especially with the surprise element of it.

And that's where the people who may not have even been watching,

although I don't know if they've made a ton of new fans, more than lost the ones they had, but the people who may not have been watching

how but 10 years ago, last time he was there,

they thought, oh shit, this is like Austin coming back or Rock coming back.

These people are goddamn ejaculating themselves in their fucking underwear.

What the f I got to be checking this shit out.

That's the kind of video you can't.

If you brought 17,000 people to an arena like that

and you told each one of them, if you will give me this reaction exactly like that, I will pay you $100 a piece.

You can't.

You can't get it because people can't fake that

and they can't shoot around it with their technical wizardry.

You have to

be over

like few people are in any place to get a reaction like that.

So if you shoot that and you show it to the world and they think, well, fuck, this fucking guy's great.

It's got, it's Pavlovian, it's subliminal, it's fucking lyrical and logical and cynical.

I'm super tramping now.

Help me, Brian.

I could do what I can.

There's always so much I can do to help you.

But a few things to talk about with CM Punk and I guess it is a little thing to talk about here real quick.

aew was in chicago this week they just did dynamite at the wind trust arena in chicago well yes and then smackdown was in chicago friday

and then survivor side that's why i was wondering if they did do they still have live wrestling anyplace else but chicago

well who owns chicago right now

well i think who's your daddy Holy shit.

I think that's been asked and answered.

I don't know how many people Tony had in the building, but it wasn't,

it wasn't comparable.

According to WrestleTicks, they had 5,066 people in the building, which is down from 6,291 the previous time in June, but still looks like it's one of the better houses they've had in a while.

Well, it's Chicago, and is that the second or third now largest metropolitan area in the United States?

But the WWE on Friday night had what for SmackDown?

Let me see if I can get that.

Hold on.

See if you can get.

get.

And then add

17,000 was their

announcement.

I don't think you can get away with it.

They showed the entire arena.

Every seat was full.

So $15,000, $16,000 for Survivor Series on top of whatever they had Friday.

God damn, they're starting to get to Fred Kohler numbers from the

late 50s, early 60s, when he was doing the ballparks.

Friday night, SmackDown Gym, the All-State Arena, Rosemont, Illinois.

Tickets distributed, 15,937.

Jesus Christ.

All right, well, what does it say for Survivor Series then?

They said 17,138 or something to that effect.

Yes.

This is not the final count again.

This is from WrestleTicks.

Tickets distributed as of 22 hours ago, 16,809.

That was so good.

And And there were 115 tickets remaining.

Okay.

So they ran the same building two nights in a row and sold 32,000, 33,000 fucking tickets.

And Tony was over at the other place and sold.

He better be lucky he was first.

He wouldn't have sold 3,000.

How much money do people have?

But again, in Chicago, it's the birthplace of AEW.

It's where all in took place.

Well, and apparently that's where they're headed.

They're all in now

and headed for a stroke.

Does anybody need to run Chicago soon again also?

My God, again, how much money do people have?

They sold 37,000 tickets in the course of three shows over the week for both companies.

Tired of spills and stains on your sofa?

WashableSofas.com has your back, featuring the Anibay Collection, the only designer sofa that's machine washable inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.

That's right.

Sofas started just $699.

Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabrics.

Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.

Check out washable sofas.com and get up to 60% off your Anabay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund.

No return shipping or restocking fees.

Every penny back.

Upgrade now at washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Time for a sofa upgrade?

Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices, with sofas starting at $699.

Anibay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.

Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Liquid simply slides right off.

Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Plus, our pet-friendly stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Don't compromise quality for price.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Authors are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Well, Jim, last night, much like AEW do their media scrum after the pay-per-view events, WWE did one sponsored by Slim Jim.

After the Survivor Series warning.

At least nobody got their feathers ruffled.

Well, there you go.

They didn't have sponsorship over the press scrum, only the show itself.

The scrum sponsored by Ruffles Scrummles.

Well, let's snap into a little bit of the scrum because Triple H talked about CM Punk.

That was the one thing everyone wanted to hear about.

So let's play some of this.

We'll stop it along the way and talk a little bit about it.

So the last thing I'm not mentioning, obviously, is

the elephant in the room, but I'm going to open it up to questions because I'm sure somebody is waiting to ask that one first.

All right, first question here in the front row.

Emily May with Sports Guitar Wrestling.

We all want to know, we just saw it happen.

CM Punk made his return to WWE here at Survivor Series.

How did that all happen?

And what's next for CM Punk?

Good question.

Right?

Not bad.

Well, I'm actually, I was transfixed because this, this actually sounds somewhat like a legitimate press scrum might sound if you did it with people that are professional.

It's still apparently sports key to wrestling.

I don't know, is that bullshit?

I have no idea, but it sounds better and people are speaking more professionally and coherently.

Well, speaking of which, let's now compare the coherence.

Coherency, I guess.

Let's now compare how coherent.

Let's apparently not be coherent about our coherent.

Let's be completely transparent about our coherency.

Well,

let's compare how coherent Triple H is compared to Antonio Canocchi, who we hear draped in his red scarf during his media scrums.

Here's Triple H's answer.

So this is

one of those things.

Is that me?

Excuse me.

All right.

Is this still working?

Yeah, all right.

This was one of those

sort of lightning in a bottle moments that came together very quickly.

But we are incredibly excited about it.

You know, it's been a long time

and

in some ways been a long time coming.

You know, you could say this about CM Punk.

Love him, hate him, positive, negative, whatever you want to say.

People talk about him

all the time.

He is a magnet for that.

He's a conversation starter.

And it's tough to look past that.

And for me,

if

our fans want it, if the WW universe is excited to have it, then let's go.

And we'll figure out the rest of it from there.

This came together super quick.

Let me stop it right there because I heard the first cackle.

He's doing everything but say, I hate this motherfucker.

But god damn it.

That's how you hear that.

Some tickets.

I mean, I've heard people have a more enjoyable, jubilant tone in their voice when they were on a toilet tank and a shit.

Yeah, I mean, that's the first thing that struck me: he's like trying to anything positive that will come out of his mouth.

He's going to rinse with scope afterwards, but god damn it, this is business.

This guy's going to draw money.

He'll rinse it with scope or perhaps a slim gym.

Let's go back to Triple H.

Which I'm sure is why it stayed very tight.

You know, there's a lot of speculation at that point.

It was nothing but speculation.

For most of the time, it was speculation.

It didn't really start to come to fruition until everybody stopped thinking it was going to happen.

And then all of a sudden, it was happening.

But

extremely excited.

See, he perks up when he starts talking about the deal.

What are you saying?

I'm saying he perks up when he starts talking about the deal because he's happy about the deal.

He didn't really

want to admit that there was any reason for anybody to want to see CM Punk, but he's happy about the deal.

Now we're now going forward here.

I'm just saying you can detect an uplift in tone.

Go ahead.

A lot of time has gone by, almost 10 years, right?

And if you are the same person

you were 10 years ago,

10 years later, you've messed up.

Everybody grows.

Everybody changes.

And I'm a different person.

He's a different person.

This is a different company.

And

we're all

on the same even starting ground.

So

we stop it there.

That was an excellent point, I think, by him.

In terms of,

I'm sure it's a bit awkward, no matter how long you talked on the phone to CM Punk before this.

But maybe over time, it works out.

They are different people.

I mean, they're the same people, but you grow as a person and it is a different company.

It's not going to be Vince McMahon in the middle of anything right now.

Yeah.

And circumstances change.

And sometimes the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend and

dynamics change.

And Triple H was both

you could take that, depending on how you view the situation, how you view the personalities, you could take that as Triple H saying, well, Punk, he's changed.

Or you could also take it as Triple H saying, well, he's trying to babyface himself.

I'm changing.

I'm giving the guy another chance.

I mean, but it's very, it's a masterful answer is what I'm trying to say.

Even if it's Nick Khan decided he's going to do this because it is what, in his eyes, is best for business.

And you had to suck it up and have a conversation.

It may work out well.

He's certainly spinning it well, no matter what it is.

Well, and also here, one of the rumors going around a while back, several weeks ago, was that, well, we've heard CM Punk is to meet with the WWE board of directors.

And I don't think you and I talked about it at the time because it was so preposterous.

And then I kept seeing people for a while talking about it on Twitter, but

no,

remember we did a show about this.

I think when we said, when Uncle Dave denied it would ever happen, we said

that that would be the first thing we'd say if it was going to happen.

But if there wasn't any deal of that kind in place at that point and this came together quickly, it still makes sense that nobody knew

because the only people that would need to know would be CM Punk, would be Nick Con, would be Triple H and

whoever their immediate stooges are, right?

And Punk has shown that he's old school and,

you know, he kept a masterful K Fabe on his debut.

I admire that.

Remember, we've talked about it.

I did a few of those in my time.

People were shocked about it.

Because, goddamn, Kayfabe, don't tell anybody.

Figure it out how you can get in and get out.

It ain't that hard if you apply yourself.

Nobody does.

He has the pride to do that.

Nevertheless,

it would have been a small circle that needed to know about this.

So,

you know,

that's why it worked.

Let's go back to Triple H.

What's next for CM Punk?

That'll be interesting, won't it?

Yeah,

I'm interested to see that myself.

I know whatever it is, it'll be talked about.

It'll be exciting.

And it'll be a thrill ride for the day.

Yeah, just wait until A-Steel bites Bruce Pritchard.

That's what I'm waiting for.

It'll be exciting.

WWE Universe, no matter what it is.

And I'm thrilled.

We're all thrilled

to have him back here and to have him back, you know, cliched to say, but to have him back home in WWE, to where he belongs.

That is kind of their mindset going back to Vince, right?

No matter, I mean, unless you're like Nails or David Schultz.

Yes.

This is your home.

No matter what you've said or done or wherever you've been, at the end of the day, this is your home.

That's what he said to me

at the Hall of Fame in 2017 when I first saw him.

Well, it's good to have you back home.

I don't know if you've always considered it your home,

but that was his terminology he would use, okay?

Either, you know, like welcome home back in the family with the with the estranged,

you know, or estranged, as the case may have been, individuals that he reconciled with that had been a part of the company.

In most cases, as you said, there were some

deviations or deviance or whatever.

But now

I'm hearing also that the

let the games begin, not the war games, but the speculation games as to who's pissed off for a work and who's pissed off for a shoot.

Well, Jim, we have a little more from Triple H, and he takes a question from momentarily one of CM Punk's biggest reporters, of course, Nick Houseman, who's been on the

beat.

Well, let's go to this.

Thank you.

Hi, Nick Houseman.

How's the wrestling?

Just to kind of follow up on Emily's question there.

How much of this was something that

you were pushing for as opposed to TKO was pushing for and Arios are pushing for?

obviously the dynamic has shifted a lot it would there has been zero push from anybody

past

WWE

you know it's it's

myself Nick Khan

to be honest

very few people knew about it past that

and

you know it's a it's a funny thing now because all of a sudden there's like this mystery entity behind WWE

people are interested to kind of know how that dynamic is working.

That's why I asked it.

Um, yeah, we're we're doing our thing,

um, and we're trusted to do our thing and trusted to do what we feel is right for business.

And, um,

I'll

be honest, I

probably the top people at TKO were watching the show going, holy,

you know,

yeah, which is a good thing, right?

So, um, it's an it's a a

crazy cool time right now in WWE.

And I think fans can feel that.

There's a lot of energy, a lot of excitement.

And

I'm ready.

Let's run through a wall.

You know what I mean?

Let's do this and do it in the biggest way possible.

And just keep building on what Vince McMahon made into a

global juggernaut for 50 years.

And

if I have anything to do with it and

have any say in it, we're going to make it bigger than it's ever been before.

Let me stop it there, Jim.

A couple of questions for you.

One,

in general, what do you think of Triple H's performance here versus a Tony Khan and a Media Scrum or just his performance in general here at the Media Scrum?

And

secondly, Is this the dream

TBS scenario that never happened?

Having owners with a lot of money who are willing to sit back and let the wrestling people do their thing?

Well,

within, let's not

let's not get too optimistic or excited.

They still had the ruffles and the slim gym commercials in this thing.

I think we're, you know, that's going to be a part of this new ownership all over the place.

They're going to have it fucking, they're going to have slim gems up their ass, the boys are.

But first of all, Triple H compared to Tony Khan.

Triple H sounds like the wrestling version of Dana White.

He's not cussing.

And, you know, and

at the first part there of his answer, it sounded like he was trying to

struggle for words that wouldn't get him in trouble when he was basically trying to figure out a way to say, hey, we made this decision not to fucking hire ups that you're talking about.

And old Pismo there asking a question, it kind of fired up a little bit at him.

The fucking,

yes, something like

who is the head of the whole goddamn schmear now ari emanuel ari emanuel yeah okay

isn't this what hasn't he been quoted or reported as wanting to put people in positions and and jobs and let them do them

yes and i believe that's what he has done by and large with the ufc and dana white yeah so i don't think that every time dana white signs a fighter

that you know he necessarily runs it by Ari Emmanuel I don't think that Nick Con or Triple H every time maybe if it's the rock maybe Ari wants to know right just because of all the cross-promotional fucking shit that might go on but otherwise he's letting them run a fucking company and it's not like that punk had to go before the board of directors which was preposterous and

hey here we have and now uh here's the brooklyn brawler board what do you think about him they don't audition fucking wrestlers before the board.

And

by the very nature of

wanting to have surprises and wanting to create talk and Triple H being able to

impress upon these people the idea of having surprises and keeping things secret in wrestling, a small group of people that need to know and they can move quick, that's better.

It helps.

Childish blabber mouse in AEW can't keep anything a secret.

They tattoo their goddamn social security numbers on their foreheads.

Did you see Matt Riddle's tweet?

Oh, yes, yes.

And I retweeted

old Vince McMahon's Thoughts account, I find hilarious at times.

And because Riddle said something to the effect of, well, yeah,

if you think I was a problem, good luck dealing with the, you know, the guy that was 0-2.

And, you know, good luck there.

And McMahon's Thoughts tweeted back, well, he's,

you know, you're, oh, he's 0 for 2 in the UFC, but he's undefeated in drug test, you fucking idiot.

Yeah, Matt Rill tweeted that, and then he ate a bunch of Excess and heel hooked a porn star.

And she reversed it, though, is the fucking problem.

But anyway, so

do we have more audio for that trips?

That was the end of the audio.

You know, CM Punk came up a few other times.

Cody Rhodes talked about him being there.

There's all this interesting,

there are all these interesting dynamics.

Again, what you talk about with WWE, you get excited about the possibility of things more than the actual matches in a lot of cases.

There are so many possibilities right now.

And some of them seemingly are playing out right before the fans.

Well, as a matter of fact,

the let the games begin, as they say, not the war games, but the speculation games on who's really mad.

That CM Punk is part of the company.

And

I think they're going about it in different ways, although we don't know.

There's still a fluid situation going on with Drew McIntyre, according to the interwebs.

But

after,

and we are going to talk about the Survivor Series in more detail later on, but we're leading with the big story, folks.

We don't want to, you know, nuclear fire showers.

But first, is it going to snow next week, Cal?

But at the end of Survivor Series, after they went off the air, one of the fans got a

fan cam video off his phone that

he put on Twitter of Seth Rollins just screaming and flipping the finger off back at punk in the entrance way and fuck you, you motherfucker, fuck, fuck, fuck it, he mick, fuck, fuck.

Did I count the number of fucks or did I get that right?

Maybe.

And so everybody's, obviously, there's, there's,

Seth is the one who said that there was issues before right on the internet or he was a cancer or whatever.

Ah, Philly Phil.

Yes, and obviously, I'm sure he was at that point laying groundwork for the potential and probable WrestleMania event, but nevertheless,

but he was,

here's the, we talked about them being a professional company.

And I hate to burst their bubble.

I wish he wouldn't have gone so far and we might have believed it.

And if they would have erred on the side of subtlety and let some fan shoot it with the camera.

But the WWE is PG, family-friendly.

There's 17,000 people there, kids with their families and their parents.

Is suddenly Seth Rollins of all people.

I can believe Brock Lesnar and maybe one or two others, but Seth is going to be the one to get Tourette's syndrome

unauthorized and go into business for himself with fuckity McFuckFuck in front of all the little kiddies.

Don't you think it went too far?

It was funny.

I mean, I saw two different angles of it.

The far one, the one that was like kind of from above, was the better one because you get to see in the background Randy Orton and Jay Usla just having a good time, like high five at each other, just having a great time back in the background, while Cody just kind of stays away from all of it.

Very Cody-like.

And Rollins, again, it's one thing trying to run to someone to punch them.

It's another thing just just fuck you, fuck you, just waving his middle finger around.

Again, it's a weird reaction.

It's almost the reaction of someone who doesn't want to fight to someone who they see 20 paces away or whatever.

Because nobody was holding Punk back and in front of him or guarding him or anything.

So it was pretty much all up to Michael Cole.

Michael Cole held Rollins back.

That was it.

Michael Cole.

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

See, I like like that.

You know what?

If that's the gimmick change, I'm all for it.

If it just becomes, I'm so mad, I got Tourettes.

Fucking Phil!

Ah!

Piss, piss, pissing my ass.

This is why we need a new network.

Fuck you.

And then as he's dancing.

He's dancing down the aisleway.

Michael Cole could be screaming, get the microphones away from him.

He could say something at any time, and he's fucking jerking his head around, emitting epithets at the top of his lungs.

And then the people can sing along that way.

They can say, Fuck,

piss.

The other problem is,

why is he so mad?

I mean, I know he's made comments, and guys make snarky comments back and forth.

Is there something that would trigger this level of madness?

It's right.

Right?

It's not like, oh, I hate this fucking guy.

Fuck you.

No, I'm gonna get you fuck you

what is that

and he just come out of this 45 minute long fucking physical mayhem but he's got the energy to goddamn be that mad at a guy that just walked out and and by the way punk's arms looking bigger than fucking seth's now you're lucky michael cole's here to waist lock me He's it looks like Punk's been in the gym a little bit.

He was looking and he was wearing the white shirt.

It was maybe a size small, either that or maybe he's just,

you know, the Mindy's bakery.

They must be having the health food section working overtime.

And he looked fucking great.

If I was Seth, I might not fucking be so anxious to goddamn stir that up.

The white t-shirt was a good move, too, because it gave fans the opportunity to write whatever they want on that shirt when they repost it, like,

you know, thank you, Jungle Boy.

You know,

yeah, and we must mention Jungle Boy Jack Perry was trending on Twitter, at least this morning when I looked up, the morning after, has got to be a morning after.

He was trending with people saying, thank you, without you, this moment would not have been possible.

And I think Tony Khan should remember that.

Without

Jack Perry,

that incredible, triumphant moment for the WWE would not have been possible.

If only Tony Khan wasn't afraid for his life in London, none of this would have happened.

You know, here's the reason why Tony gets so afraid for his life easily is because he's never been afraid for his fucking bank book.

Well, you know, he puts his dad's money where his mouth is.

Well, there you go.

But when it comes to punk and this Rollins thing, how much do you play up with punk no matter how you use him as a face or a heel, his past, and even his recent past, his reputation, however you want to use it on TV for locker room fights.

And secondly,

he had a bag

with the title in it.

He can't show that title on TV.

That's intellectual property.

He can show that bag.

I don't think they're going to, but it wouldn't be interesting if he just showed up.

I've got this bag here and I'm the uncrowned champion.

I know they're not going to do that, but how much should they play up his past?

I think with the bag and the belt, I think probably obviously none at all.

And not even just for the reason that you said they won't, but

that's all immaterial, trivial is the word I'm searching for at this point.

Nobody gives a shit that he's the unbeaten champion of the goddamn joke league that just got beat 10 to 1 in the ratings last Friday.

We've gone past that now.

We put our big boy pants on, as they say.

And they will refer to his past the same way as they've done most of the time at other successful

transitions like this, where in generalities, where if you know, you know.

And if you don't know, it still works because it still works that he's, they've already said a controversial figure.

Triple H, he gets people talking.

He's a conversation starter.

You know, they can throw out, Michael Cole can call him,

you know, a boy, I don't know that problem child is the right term, but, you know,

a polarizing figure in the locker room, polarizing figure with the fans.

He walks his own path.

He is a dangerous individual.

When you cross him, you know, in and out of the ring, they can make these illusions to make it sound like, my God,

this guy may have been leaving fucking trails of broken bodies in his path if you don't know any different and know that he just punched out a buckaroo and front face locked a fucking chimpanzee.

You can make him sound more dangerous based on that real life shit.

And the work makes sense for the people who don't know or care otherwise.

And it still makes sense for the people that know because you're alluding to shit that has root in fact.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Yeah.

Does it make any sense to you?

It makes some sense.

I mean, you tend to do that from time to time.

I was just distracted.

I was watching more videos of Seth screaming.

There's different angles of it, and they're all funny.

They're all really, really, really funny.

Well, now, and here's a bit.

I mentioned old Drew Mac,

too, but now there's no video of this, but this is a fluid situation.

It was reported this morning for some reason.

Nobody knows who, why, what, how,

what the instigation of this was, but Drew McIntyre stormed back to his locker room, put on a hoodie, grabbed his shit, and left in a huff.

And people are naturally attributing it because it just happened after the,

you know, the reappearance of punk.

You know, they're attributing it to that,

but we don't know that.

He could have been pissed off at something else.

And

I'll make the point that because Punk came out merely was an entrance and had no bearing on the match.

The participants, I'm not saying they knew or didn't know, but technically they wouldn't have needed to It wouldn't have affected

their performance if they'd have told babyfaces celebrate in the ring until we give you the signal that we're off the air.

So

maybe they knew or maybe they didn't.

But

again, Seth, I'm sure, is

politicking for that match.

But I would have to think that

the office would have been able to or would have had to bless him using that kind of language or doing that shit unless he just went crazy and might have got fined for it.

Who knows?

But with Drew, was there heat with Drew McIntyre and CM Punk from the good old days?

Or would they have had any reason to have an issue?

You never know, but nothing I know of.

I want to dispute one thing you said.

I heard, or you said you heard that he left in a huff.

I heard he left in a minute in a huff.

So just want to clear that up.

Well, he had to stop and get his hoodie and grab his bag.

You know, Drew McIntyre has finally started to be used again in a way that's a little bit interesting.

He's siding with the heels.

He's kind of a hired assassin in a sense.

Well, there you go.

It may have been just he was working the match.

His team that he chose did not win.

And he's pissed off about it because he doesn't care about them either.

Because unless they don't want you, the last thing I would think coming out of that Survivor Series is, you know what?

I'm pissed.

I'm going to go home and call Tony.

So it can't be that.

No, I don't think Drew's making any

giddy calls to Jacksonville or whatever.

But so anyway, so we'll monitor that and see.

But it's going to be an interesting.

We got to watch Raw this week.

Oh, yeah.

We have to.

I guess we've blown it off for the last couple of weeks because, Jesus Christ, what a slog.

But now there's actually something

that's going to be addressed that we want to see.

And we will.

What?

Oh, I just had a thought.

What?

If Punk beats Rollins for the belt,

Cody has a difficult decision to make if he wins the Rumble.

Yes.

Because of which championship?

Does he still go after him?

I thought you were going to extrapolate on that.

Does he still go after Roman?

Or does Punk say something?

Enough to establish that belt is more than it's been so that Cody says that's the belt I want.

If punk goes that way, unless you're going to use it as a baby face against that heel stable.

I don't know.

But nevertheless, that works for me only if The Rock has the match with Roman.

And otherwise, I think it should still probably be Cody and Roman.

Well, I think that's the exciting thing is why Drew McIntyre should probably stay there right now.

There's so many interesting things.

You don't know where they're going to go.

And all they did was add a couple of people into this mix.

You know, we're not even talking about Randy Orton.

We're not even talking about Randy Orton.

And L.A.

Knight was not on the fucking show.

And neither was Roman Reigns.

Neither was Roman Reigns.

Remember, two years ago, we said, God damn, they have no stars.

Now they've got stars, stars, stars, stars.

More stars than there are in the heavens.

How's Tony going to respond?

Who's he going to sign?

Matt Riddle?

Donald Sigler?

Well,

I hate to slag on

my old student, Nick Nimeth, but no, that's the problem: Tony's got the

leftovers now, the people that

they used up and spit out, don't have time for, don't want to put up with.

So more of these people are going to be attitude problems or people nearing the end of their careers that can pick and choose

the jobs they want rather than going for the best job they can have.

And that's kind of what every other company

that ever challenged Vince ends up in the position of, isn't it?

Wouldn't it be something if Raw with CM Punk ended up on TBS?

Those television rights are up and David Zazlov loves CM Punk.

They could divest themselves of AEW.

Okay, now here's okay.

When CM Punk is on SmackDown or Raw and draws 2 million people for a quarter hour or whatever, you know, outstanding number,

then are they going to say well god damn we had this guy and you couldn't do 900 000

what the

then it's direct

direct comparison is it not in an unfavorable unflattering fashion there's nothing favorable or flattering about any of this for aew

let's be real life happens kids spill pets shed and accidents are inevitable find a sofa that can keep up at washable sofas.com.

Starting at just $699, our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out.

So you can say goodbye to stains and hello to worry-free living.

Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics.

They're kid-proof, pet-friendly, and built for everyday life.

Plus, changeable fabric covers let you refresh your sofa whenever you want.

Neat flexibility?

Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa anytime to fit your space, whether it's a growing family room or a cozy apartment.

Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200,000 happy customers.

It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa.

Visit washable sofas.com today and save.

That's washable sofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Well, Brian, before we begin going into the

grapes, as they say over the weekend in excruciating detail, let's do a little housekeeping.

Welcome the people to the program.

We've been going long enough already as it is, but it was, it's still Thanksgiving weekend as we're talking because we hardly ever, we got three days in a row off, you and I, from recording with each other, which I think may be a new modern record,

blissfully enough, but now we're back to it.

But it's still Thanksgiving weekend.

The people just had the holidays, the turkey, the festivities, the family.

Did you have some nice meals there at Last Manor with family and friends and loved ones and Swami and others?

Yeah, we had a big family meal, the traditional turkey and shit meal, and it was nice.

What the turkey and what?

Well, you know, just all the stuffing and the sweet potato with the marshmallows and the cranberry sauce.

You dismissed it like the turkey and shit.

How the turkey and stuff, turkey and friends, I don't know what you want me to say about the usual things that are on the Thanksgiving table.

The Thanksgiving standards were all there.

It was like a parade of standards, and they were all delicious.

Turkey and Friends is going to be my new Thanksgiving meal.

Trip to Fan Mania.

Did you have,

if any family members that you haven't seen in years show up for Thanksgiving, are they like lasts from the past?

I mean, that's actually a great line, but the problem is if anyone showed up who I wasn't expecting, they're not getting in.

They're not getting in.

No, you have to be invited.

You don't just get to show up.

You have to request an audience.

You don't just get to show up.

Well, I'll tell you what it was we did over here for this turkey day this year, because we didn't have to record.

And Stace and I actually got to spend some time inside the house, away from the outside world, just with little Harley.

We had gone over here to this fine little market that has a meat gentleman and a deli counter and a variety of prepared foods.

And we just, we got all kinds of a big spread.

We got meatloaf.

We got hot browns.

We got twice-baked potatoes and green beans and pies and cakes and sides and stuff.

We just ate in waves throughout the day.

I did most of the eating, to be quite honest with you, but in waves throughout the day.

And

I'll have you know that my friends over at Emo's Pizza in St.

Louis sent me a box of holiday goodies.

They've got new product now.

And not only did they send me five of their frozen pizzas, which

they're starting to get in the Walmarts and the retail places, but also a pillowcase-sized bag of the beef ravioli,

the frozen beef ravioli that you just heat up in the oven.

And

it's a goddamn restaurant-size.

I told you they're my friends over at Emo's.

They don't just send out willy-nilly a couple of samples.

It's a goddamn one of their restaurant bags of

the frozen raviolis

and two big bags of provell bites the provelle cheese they look like tater tots but you drop them in a deep fryer for a couple minutes and it's gooey from st.

Louis baby

and I got sauces and I got they sent me t-shirts and a whole night but I've already gone through two of the pizzas there's nothing like provell cheese it's not like

going in and sitting down and having the whole emos experience, but if you're not in St.

Louis, it's as close as you're going to get.

I told you the first time how I found Emo's Pizza, did I not?

I'm not sure.

Gooey in St.

Louis, wasn't that Harry White's name on various chat rooms?

Well, yeah, until they found him and cracked down on it.

But no, the first time that the Midnight Express and I worked the Checkerdome,

the arena, as it was called for most of

its life, but at that point it was the Checkerdome.

I always loved the name of that.

And, well, it was because

it was some corporate sponsorship was it purinum i got checkerboard square i don't know how they got or no it was the hockey team wasn't it the the checkers i don't know

but one way or another they renamed the arena for a while but it was an old building and cavernous it reminded me of the the cow palace in san francisco it was there in the 40s That's where they drew all the big houses, you know, with longs and right because it seated almost 20,000 people.

And for a building in those days, that was a rarity for an arena.

But anyway,

that's where Much Nick had his retirement show and where they would take the really big matches out of the Keel Auditorium in St.

Louis.

So we worked there one night for Crockett.

And leaving the building, Bobby and Dennis wanted to get

some beer to take back to the hotel.

And where this was, and we weren't familiar with St.

Louis to begin with, but we couldn't see lights anywhere, convenience stores.

Fuck, it's off the highway, the side of the road.

But there was what,

you know, we saw a sign, Emo's Pizza.

It's a restaurant, not just like a delivery place there at this location.

There's cars there.

Well, they'll get some beer there.

As soon as we walked in and I smelled this place, I said, oh, my God.

That is the best smelling pizza I've ever smelled in my life.

And it's not only the secret herbs and spices they use, but it's the Provelle cheese, as I later came to find out.

So I told the boys, I said, get all the beer you want.

I'm staying to get a pizza.

Well, I'll take it back to the hotel, but let me order this.

And boom, I took that.

I had it halfway eaten in the car back to the hotel at the airport.

And from then on, I was an emos fanatic.

They got me.

Now,

if you just go into one of the window, the storefront window, the fake window rooms,

window doors.

Yes.

You just have to dive right through the plate glass window.

That was what Ken Patero was trying to do.

He was trying to go in.

Yes,

forgot to put the door in the McDonald's.

But if you just go to one of the storefront emos, it doesn't have the sit-down.

You know, there are some of those locations around.

It may not have the same scent because they're not cooking multiple pizzas and raviolis and their delicious, delicious sides and et cetera, all at the same time.

Anyway, my friends and emos, thank you for the box.

You know, anything that comes out of a box is over, Brian.

That's something you claim.

It's up for debate.

I've yet to be proven wrong about many of these things, and I'm not going to listen to people, as I said at the top of the program, and say that I'm wrong anymore.

Because just as soon as I start doubting myself, then I'm wrong.

What if something wouldn't be wrong if I was not doubting myself for being right?

What if something comes out of a box that you already have?

Well, it depends on how long it's been since I've seen it because how could I miss it if it won't go away?

All right, right, I got an email here real quick.

This is from Chad

in Fayetteville, West Virginia.

Hi, Jim and Brian.

On episode 509 of The Experience, you mentioned that when you looked at MJF's shirt

that he was wearing, you know, I mentioned that the shirt he was wearing was he's our scumbag.

But when he turned sideways, it looked very reminiscent of he's our cum rag, right?

Yeah, I do remember you saying that for whatever

reason.

Whatever,

what I saw there.

Well, Chad goes on to say it looked like it said cumrag instead of scumbag.

For reasons I've yet to fathom, it made me think of the original meaning of scumbag,

which do you know what that is, Brian?

A condom?

Well,

Steve, where's your mind at?

Because Chad said the original meaning of scumbag, which is a used rubber as opposed to its common parlance, meaning despicable person.

To confirm this, I hit the Google machine and both the Oxford and American Heritage Dictionaries online list one of the definitions of scumbag as a used condom.

MJF's abilities, both in and out of the ring, I'll always enjoy, but thanks to your comment, I'll never be able to hear scumbag or see that on his shirt again without laughing my ass off.

MJF is now,

his tagline is he's comparing himself to a used condom.

Well, I think it's the version of scumbag that's used in popular culture just for being a despicable, down-and-out, bad person.

Well, but you know, we got to go to the root, to the entomology or whatever it is of these.

What is that, goddamn?

Hold on, I got the American American.

The sling blade?

Let's go through everyone's nickname, what they actually mean literally.

Well, what is a sling blade anyway?

What is a baby?

Well, I know what a baby is.

That's a fucking baby.

It's a little tiny baby.

But what is a sling blade?

What is a sling blade?

Is he a sling blade?

Is that his name?

That's

a switchblade.

Well, I know what a switchblade is.

A switchblade is a knife.

Is he just a little thin knife?

Yeah, he's a little thin knife.

But he did the sling.

The other guy does the sling blade.

Who?

See, I don't know who these people are.

That sling blade move.

I've heard one of those Japanese guys are doing that.

I hear a phone.

Your phone's doing the sling blade right now in the middle of the show.

All right.

Nevertheless,

we'll move on.

Did we talk about the pizza?

That was the best part of it.

By the way, you know what's coming up, Brian?

Christmas time in not only America, but around the world, in most countries.

And it's just in time for you to get your...

friend or family member or loved one or wrestling fan and wherever you find them gifts from jimcornet.com, leading with, but not

totally exclusive, the Midnight Express four-pack of action figures for our 40th anniversary with figures, book, photo, and certificate of authenticity, but also the Santa Corny action figures.

Make great stocking stuffers, Brian.

I've got my cute little Santa hat on and my red and green outfit.

comes complete with tennis racket or the t-shirts, DVDs, books.

everything can be purchased individually or most of it can be autographed.

Much of it can be shoved in your stocking and what can be shoved in your stocking, I'm sure, will fit in some orifice near and dear to your heart.

And you can go right now to jimcornet.com and please, if you order domestically in the United States by this coming weekend, December 2nd and 3rd, we can get you your stuff by Christmas because we're all caught.

Believe it or not,

as of the day before Thanksgiving, everything that has been ordered has been signed and is being prepared and is prepared over the weekend and will be going out this week in the mail right up to date for the first time in a couple months.

So now you can order with impunity for the next week before we get swamped again at jimcornet.com.

Exciting.

Boy, I can tell the fucking adrenaline coursing through your veins and your voice.

Do you want to talk about just real briefly some thoughts about SmackDown

that was very forgettable because it was on FS1 this week again due to the ball game?

Did you catch this?

I did catch it.

And for whatever reason,

I don't know how DVRs work.

I've never looked into it.

Whenever this is moved to FS1, I still get it.

It still records on my DVR.

Well, here I'm going to enlighten you, oh, great Brian on, because I wouldn't have gotten it had I not accidentally looked at the TV,

the

program guide

about an hour beforehand for another program and saw that there was college football or whatever it was, it was on Fox.

If the program guide says the program is new,

like it usually does, if it's a first-run program, then you will get it, at least on mine.

But this, it said SmackDown was listed on FS1, but it did not say it was a new program and it was not recorded.

So fortunately, I manually did it.

I used my own fingers and I fingered that son of a gun

and I caught the program.

Now, having said that, I'm not

saying I was happy about catching it after the fact, but

this was like

it was almost like an episode of Women of Wrestling with a couple of men's matches thrown in.

They were heavily promoting the women's war games throughout this thing.

And we all know how I feel.

I'll save the reiteration of my thoughts on that for the Survivor Series.

But again, this was the, they were in Chicago.

As we mentioned before, AEW was there Wednesday.

They were there Friday.

And again, on Saturday, WWE sold 32,000 tickets.

AEW sold 5,000.

And they opened with Shotzi and Becky and Charlotte and Bianca with the in-ring promo

about the War Games match and Bayley coming out and cutting a promo on them.

And

basically,

the bottom line of the whole thing was, as a noted sports entertainer once said,

that Becky challenged any two members of Bailey's group to face them and her and Charlotte that night because she and Charlotte were going to prove they could work together, all these different personalities on these teams.

Everything that they were doing with the goddamn men's war games are doing with the women's too, where the people can't get along or they have a checkered past or there's ill will and bad feelings.

And again,

even if you want to see women fighting in a war games match with weapons and all that other horseshit,

why do you want to see two

different matches all with the same stipulations, all doing the same angles at the same time, whether they're men, women, children, animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Why does it have to be the same?

Give them their own goddamn war games on another show when it's called for.

Brian, am I going off a limb here?

I think so, a little bit, just because if they're going to treat women's wrestling the way they do, and WWE does it worlds better than AEW,

I don't know if it should be on an equal level, equal footing, just because I don't think the fan demand is there, no matter how loud the craziest of women's wrestling fans get.

But I think they did something a little different here because you had to play up the Becky Charlotte stuff.

There's a story there.

People know it.

Those two happen to be two of the biggest stars ever.

Then why not have the Women's War games on a pay-per-view in

the June one or whatever?

Because they put it on the major one.

Because they don't want to bring that cage out more than once a year.

And they got it to Chicago, and it's a union town.

And they're going to pay for it one time.

Now you're starting to say something.

It makes sense to me.

All right.

But basically, so it's Becky and Charlotte against any two members of Bailey's group.

And the heel team, the Bailey's bunch, immediately are not happy about fighting Charlotte and Becky and say, well, it ought to be you, Bailey, and old Oscar.

So it's going to be Bailey and Oscar.

And then we got a tag team title match with Priest and Finn against the Street Prophets.

And the bell for that

rang 23 minutes into the show.

Because again, this whole War Games women's drama

and commercials and

Gaga taking up.

And then

they start the match and go two minutes to break.

And they they come back and go another four minutes, and surprise, surprise, Judgment Day wins.

And Lashley is not happy at Street Profits lose again, but it's a heel versus heel match.

And who are we supposed to cheer for?

This is an ongoing theme with both these companies when they do their filler matches where they're

whether it's AEW or WWE, where they're just sticking a match in to break it up between their interviews where they

put stars out and do their business.

And

did I miss anything so far?

No, I think you've covered it all so far.

Okay.

There's no reason to stop now.

So

then we got the segment with Grayson Wallers affected.

And boy, is he, but he

they had the scent of something, a whiff of something, a germ of an idea here before it went sideways.

He brings out Kevin Owens as his guest that he's announced he's going to have.

But out comes Austin Theory, dressed as Owens with the t-shirt.

But the problem is,

he looks so much better because he's got arms and a tan and a physique and neat hair and beard.

But I'm thinking, okay, they're going to give Theory a chance to show some personality here and

take off on Kevin Owens, as Gomer used to say.

And as soon as they sit down, before Theory even speaks and does any kind of imitation to build up a little heat or whatever, here comes the real Owens.

Theory has never uttered a fucking word.

So now all you've seen is a motherfucker that looks tons better in a t-shirt than this fucking

fat, fucking buggy whipped arm, pale, unkempt fucking Owens, right?

He should have given the guy a chance to piss people off and

be an asshole.

I mean, we've seen it all throughout history that heel dresses up like the baby face.

And you know, Al Snow and Unabomb did it about the Rock and Roll Express and Smoky Mountain in 95.

We've seen it many times throughout history.

Funk dressed up.

Oh, what's the guy's name?

Well, he had the guy dressed.

What was the fella's name?

He worked for the company.

God bless him.

He died of a horrible illness, but he had a guy dress up as Ric Flair, and they dressed up as the horseman or the NWO did.

Whatever the fuck.

It's been done a million times, but

they all say shit.

They all do an imitation at some point.

Yes.

So

Waller tells Owen, you can't be here.

You're suspended.

He said, well, idiot, it was up today.

I thought that's why you announced me as your guest.

Well, and then

the whole shtick was Owens saying, I'm supposed to be your guest, so you can't shut me up and blah, blah, blah.

And then I got bored and zoned out on it, but then L.A.

Knight showed up.

So I started paying attention again.

And when he came out and cut his promo,

the crowd is yeah-uh-ing,

yeah-ing, or yeah, id.

I don't know what the terminology should be, but every time, like Austin with the what, it works for him.

And I bet you in 10 years,

they're going to be as mad at LA Knight for inventing this as they were for the what, but it works for him and they do it every time they're supposed to.

And he's almost got, he needs to go into more fucking synonyms sometimes or saying the same thing, meaning the same thing, but with a different verbiage to give them a little bit more, but he's working on it.

He's getting there.

And they do that every time they're supposed to.

And

the other three, he comes out, cuts promo, and people are with him.

The other three do some childish, unfunny bickering, and then the baby faces dump the heels like sacks of shit

and they went to the break.

So I did they end the Grayson Walwar effect for good?

I mean, they destroyed the plants.

They ruined the set.

I've seen that happen before.

Those plants get thrown around more than a New Orleans whore.

It doesn't.

They'll bring them back again next week.

What?

Talking of Jack Curtis lately?

I don't know where you're heard.

That reference out of.

I'm just telling you.

So then they come back back from the break and they're having a tag team match, Playa.

And

with Grayson Waller and Austin Theory against L.A.

Knight and Kevin Owens, it looks like two professional wrestlers having a tag team match, but one's partner is a radio DJ and the other one is a fat guy from the crowd.

It just, it was

so

finally, it

LA Night won, which was the right result, but they beat Theory again.

They never beat Waller.

They're beating Theory like a fucking drum.

And look at the two of them.

Who is convinced in that company that Grayson Waller is going to be a thing that happens?

I don't know.

I guess that's rhetorical.

Yeah, I can't answer that.

I don't see it.

Well, moving onward,

then we had Becky and Bianca backstage talking to each other about Charlotte.

They're worried there.

But then here comes the segment with Carlito and Escobar to explain, well, not explain, but they did a history package and explained it and Rey Mysterio's involvement, but to promote, plug

their match.

And Carlito does the promo and he's taken up for Ray and he's going to get even with Escobar and then he apologizes for you.

Don't speak Spanish.

I want to make sure he knows exactly what I'm saying.

And he chews Escobar out in Spanish for a while.

So it kind of lost a portion of the audience, which is, but it sounded good.

But then here comes Escobar.

And

besides that, I've noted that again, it's always the same with every

interview segment.

It's almost like the South Park parody where

you talk about the guy and then, and they make fun of it on the programs.

You talk about the guy, and then here he comes.

But every time, but now he's speaking Spanish too, and they're going back and forth between Spanish and English.

And I'm losing the fucking

train of thought here to some degree, except they're mad at each other.

But there's like live, it was like live-action San Antonio wrestling, Southwest wrestling, but one person doing both roles because Escobar would say something and then say what he he said in English and then he would say it again and then he would do it.

He kept doing that.

But it's hard for maybe whether it was the same shit or different shit.

Yeah, it's hard for either audience to keep track.

Did you see there's a video going around?

Now you said what you just said.

Jimmy Carter told some story that he went to Japan and he told some joke and the translator he had said it a lot quicker than he said it and the room was laughing.

So he asked the trans he found out what the translator said.

The translator said to the room, President Carter just made a joke.

It's funny.

And everyone started laughing.

But

back to Carlito and Escobar.

Anyway, the bone of contention here was over

whose family Rey Mysterio was.

Escobar, he was my family.

You took everything away from me.

And Carlito said, he's my family.

Well, they got in a fight.

And then Carlito beat him up.

and then the referees came out and separated him.

And then Escobar came back with a cheap jump from the side and leveled Carlito.

And then

after they went to a break, and they come back, and they're helping Carlito further the officials or whoever the fuck.

And Escobar attacks him.

And Dragon Lee runs in and does a Hurricane Rana off an equipment case.

And Escobar ran on purpose about 10 feet forward to run headfirst into another case.

And

boom, he's been attacked.

And basically,

without,

they go to a match involving purely Dreary and the brawling brutes and not a chance, purely Dreary rule, but they come back.

And Nick Aldiss updates us that Carlito is hurt and cannot compete at the Survivor Series.

So he's going to postpone that match.

And Dragon Lee comes in and says, I'll take the match.

And Aldous grants it.

And I wrote, oh, fuck me.

Because

what did I say would probably be the

best of a normal match on this program when we previewed it was

Carlito and fucking Escobar.

Carlito's a a veteran.

They're going to want to do good.

I bet you they could have a good match.

The issue's there.

Was Carlito,

he obviously,

they wouldn't have known he was injured that quickly unless this was written.

Was he hurt before?

And they let him go through the angle?

What happened here?

I'm not exactly sure because the other thing, too, is the person they put in the match who they've been building up on their show, Dragon Lee,

it didn't exactly help him being in that match, substituted in for Carlito.

So, no,

the whole thing is puzzling.

So, it

again, it was less than 10 minutes after this television presentation here, the angle, but when they said, well, he's hurt and he can't compete.

So, I mean, he didn't do a lot

in this fight, but

maybe he was hurt before.

This is what they did to explain it.

But regardless, we got a massive downgrade

on the match there.

So, all right.

And then there is more.

A Judgment Day was speaking scripted stuff.

And Becky said that she's good with Charlotte and vice versa.

And so finally, we get to the main event.

By the way, this is already the main event on this program.

Charlotte and Becky against Bayley and Oscar.

And

I mean, even most of the guys' matches that I've seen on this show look like girls' matches.

But there was 20 minutes left on the air when the entrances started.

And the bell rang with 13 minutes left on the air.

And they wrestled for one minute and went to the break for almost four.

I said, fuck it.

I didn't come back.

I don't know what happened.

I don't care.

What did you think?

You know, I

didn't think much of SmackDown at all.

I mean, I like Escobar a lot as a heel.

I'll just say that.

I've enjoyed Escobar's stuff the last few weeks.

When he yells and he gets angry, you kind of believe him.

And the girl stuff was telling the story of Becky and Charlotte leading into war games.

Not exactly something exciting me right now, but

those fans there seemed...

lukewarm about it.

Lukewarm about it.

I don't know.

Everyone there is into their stuff, but it was another episode of SmackDown.

I don't even remember the finish of the match or anything.

I don't even know if I watched a match, to be honest with you.

That's because it's just what it is, Brian, is they gave us a bunch of parsley.

They gave us a bunch of

garnish.

They didn't give us anything to chew on, to sink our teeth into.

They didn't give us the meat of the matter.

They weren't giving us the big stars, the Roman Reigns, the L.A.

Knights,

the beef.

They were giving us parsley.

And Lord knows you can't make a meal out of parsley.

But I'll tell you what, Brian,

you want to know where you can get some beef?

You want to know where you can get a big slab of meat shoved right in front of you?

I'll tell you where, sitting right at your own kitchen or dining room table or potentially even outside, weather permitting, at your barbecue, and that's from our friends at Omaha Steaks are going to send you a box of goddamn cattle byproduct and various types of proteins and meats from animals that once roamed the earth and now are there merely to feed and nourish you and your family.

And they're going to save you money doing it.

Have you heard about the 50% off deal?

No, what's that, Jim?

Well, I'll tell you, I know you've heard about it because you've already taken advantage of it because there's jubilation running roughshod at Last Manor when the Omaha Steaks box comes in.

You've talked to

it off the air.

So?

So

I'm saying you know what it is because you've already taken advantage of it, but our friends out there in podcast land can

as well or canned as well.

You can possibly can the steaks and save them for even longer.

Oh, I thought you were talking about our listener, Candy.

I didn't know where you were going with this.

Well, Candy, you know, don't talk about candy.

Right now, go to omahosteaks.com.

She's changed.

She went through a program.

She's not the same person she used to be.

Go to omahostakes.com right now, folks, and save 50%

offsite-wide.

That's half off.

My God, that's as half is as big a piece of it as the other half is left over.

So you're equal there.

And when you use the promo code JCE at omahostakes.com, you're going to get an additional 30 off your order on top of the 50 off site wide i mean this they're almost

they're doing everything but herding the cattle and trooping it right down the road to your front yard well beyond the beef and the meat and everything i have to say for thanksgiving we use some of their because they sent it to us the potato scallops and then also the apple tartlets Yeah, the caramel apple tartlets,

if you're going to put their name in your mouth.

We added some ice cream to to it it was delicious the cheesy scallop potato sides oh my gosh also the butcher's cut filet mignons the mouthwatering burgers the gourmet jumbo franks these things are john holmes like

i'm telling you the possibilities are endless with our friends at omahosteaks.com

that's right and right now endless They're ready to ship your order right away.

So shop early and beat the shipping rush.

And use that promo code JCE.

Remember, it's half off, 50% off site-wide, plus another $30 off your order with the promo code JCE for the boxes of these meats and sides and things that you're going to chew on all winter long.

And the best part is,

they're practically paying you to take it.

I mean, after the health department came in and made that visit, they want to clear everything out.

No, I merely kid.

I josh about about our fine friends at Omaha Steaks.

They are the world's best beef, naturally aged for the ultimate in tenderness, juiciness, and flavor.

And five generations of family-owned expertise have gone into this uncompromising quality.

Five generations of the Omaha family.

They're originally from Parsippini, New Jersey.

No, no, they're from Omaha, and the family has a different name.

Oh, I thought the family's name was Omaha.

It can't be.

No, way.

Well, in that case,

and then whoever's making this meat, folks, you're going to like it.

Don't ask too many questions.

Every steak and every entree is flash frozen, vacuum sealed, and it comes to you in a styrofoam cooler with the dry ice.

And I'm telling you what, don't grab a hold of that dry ice with your bare hands either.

No, but the kids like it when you throw it in the sink and turn the faucet on.

Well, the kids like it when you throw it at them, too.

You can play like snow

fights with this.

No, you can't.

No, you certainly cannot.

Either party would be injured by that.

Just put some goggles on them.

They'll be fine.

Ladies and gentlemen, don't play with the dry ice.

Well, and stay away from the brown acid, too.

But folks, the Omaha steaks, they're guaranteed to put a smile on your face when you send them a gourmet gift.

So right now, for the holidays, everybody needs food.

Everybody needs meat.

Everybody needs sustenance, calories, energy, caloric intake to put through your intestinals and make them right as rain and it tastes good too.

Your tongue will slap your brains out.

Omahasteaks.com.

The code is JCE at checkout for an extra $30 off the 50% off site wide.

A minimum order may be required, but my God, how cheap are you?

At prices like this, you ought to have to buy the whole goddamn bison.

So if you want some meat you can trust right now, a slab of it slapped you in the face with it, delivered right to your door, omahasteaks.com.

That's right.

That is certainly right.

Promo code is JCE.

At checkout.

At checkout.

Well, no, don't just go in screaming JCE.

They won't know what the fuck you're talking about.

You got to shop first,

for heaven's sake.

Well, I guess we got through with that, didn't we?

Yeah, you don't have to throw away the, you don't have to be so aggressive with the paper there.

Here's something that I got over the weekend, Brian.

I was trying to avoid doing any actual professional work with the wrestling or the podcast or anything.

I was trying to do some chores around the house.

This is not going to take a second, but I just wanted to read you something.

I got grippers for the rug.

Stacy ordered them off the internet.

Where it's a piece of tape that goes on the back of the rug, and it's sticky on the back of the rug and sticky on the floor.

And it keeps your rug from slipping and curling up, creating a safety hazard, trip hazard, potential lawsuit, being thrown out in the street, broke, penniless,

that type of thing.

Right.

Spend a couple of dollars on these rolls of tape.

You can save yourself that.

But

if you don't know how they work, they've got the instructions on the back of the box.

And see, what you're supposed to do is because they're shaped two different ways.

There's an A shape and a B shape.

And if you put the A together with the B on the corner of the back of the rug, you can create a right angle that'll just make you a nice little neat corner there.

You got that?

Okay.

Okay, well, this is the way the box tells you to do it.

How these grippers for rugs work?

Question mark.

Number one, distinguish the combined use of shape AB when you combine it at right angles.

Number two, moistening the grippers for rugs before tears off the grippers for rugs from carpet directly.

All right, well, that's clear.

All righty, I guess we should move on to the survivor series.

That was the whole segment?

That was the segment.

I just had that box sitting here, and I just wanted to bring that up to you.

All right.

Survivor series?

The survivor series just took place last night as we are recording on the 25th of November in Chicago or in Rosemont almost near Chicago or in in in wrestling land they've they've renamed it instead of Chicagoland it's now wrestling land because that's what the only place that has wrestling these days uh and the all-state arena formerly the Rosemont Horizon another name I love for an arena

the Rosemont Horizon rather than the right all-state arena you know the Rosemont Horizon is a cool name and it was and it was it was It was a cool name.

And

the tradition with the WWF goes back to, what, WrestleMania 2?

And I guess they did house shows there before that.

But I mean, the big show history.

Immediately,

we are shown that AEW got woo energy drink and WWE gets ruffles.

There were ruffles.

There were bags of ruffles sitting on the goddamn

announcer's desk.

The ruffles was lit up on the LED boards around the rig.

There were ruffles on the screen.

What do you think is a more popular product to consume in the United States of America today?

Woo, energy drink or ruffles potato chips?

I don't want to go off on AEW right now.

We're going to review Nitro later.

Nitro.

Nitro?

We're going to review dynamite later.

Freudian slip there, but it looks bad when they show the screens and you just see the Ric Flair cartoon saying Woo Energy.

It's a brand no one knows.

It doesn't look like, again, Ruffles and Slim Jim were the two sponsors here.

And Coca-Cola and Kleenex and goddamn, just iconic.

I don't know whether Ruffles are as big around the world, but if, you know, there's pretty much there's a choice of two potato chips in the United States.

If you're going to go with your Lays or you're going to go with your Ruffles.

Where do you fall with?

Where do you fall with Pringles?

well i was about to say then there's the renegades amongst them that want the the chips in a can and go for the pringles but you know pringles

are not literally potato chips they had to actually they were sued by the lays people and they had to stop calling themselves potato chips because they are not potato chips it to get the uniform shape It is a potato puree that's made from potatoes and other things and is then shaped and baked in that particular shape, which was engineered in the laboratory to prevent breakage in the tube because it's a geometric shape that puts all the pressure on the chip equally and prevents breakage.

Were you aware of that?

Why did it bother the lays people so badly that they were calling themselves potato chips?

Because they were selling a lot of them and they were trying to fuck with them.

It was just like the WWE and AEW, only on a

chippier scale.

What do you think about ruffles?

Ruffled potato potato

chips.

The potato chips from ruffles?

What do you think?

I'm a lazy man myself because I like the more genuine potato taste without the sharp corners that potentially can gouge

your upper palate.

What do you think of the baked chips?

Well,

when I was on a diet at various points in time, I have suffered through them, but it's really, it's almost like a low-fat Twinkie.

It's like, just don't eat the goddamn chip.

And on the topic specifically of Ruffles with Survivor Series, did you have any issues with the placement of the sponsor in the show?

No, just the

here's the, with the,

the job guys or job women or fucking lower card comedy characters, the Tozawas of the world and the model girl and Otis,

I don't mind pitching these these products.

Why does it have to be so silly and not even funny at the same time?

Why can't they get some Madison Avenue whiz that can make something entertaining in the way of these plugs rather than just this childish nonsense?

And with the new day with the Slim Jim car and screeching and talking, they're so much happier than any human being would be that they got to drive that car.

Well, it kept them from the ring, so don't complain too much.

Well, I'm not going to complain about that, but I wish that with endeavors of

contacts for sponsors would also come their contacts for

advertising people to make the goddamn spots entertaining instead of just silly and stupid and grown people acting like idiots.

Did that answer your question?

That does one other question.

So AEW has Woo Energy as their big sponsor.

What do you think of WWE still having Ric Flair's Woo in the beginning and their opening montage?

I think there's not a goddamn thing that AEW can do about it because they own that audio and video.

And that's another little.

See, they're farting in their general direction.

Was that what that was?

That was a fart in a direction?

Yeah.

It's like a sputter start there.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's just a general direction fart.

Okay, speaking of a general direction fart, let's hop over the front of this.

The Women's War Games was first, and everybody knows what I think about it.

And I don't care whether you're men or women.

You don't have dinner before you have dinner.

You don't take a shower before you take a shower.

You don't have a war games before you have a war games match, especially when both the babyface teams and or the heel teams are doing

the who can you trust and there's dissension and blah, blah, blah.

And then

they managed to figure out ways to have

garbage cans and chairs and tables and kendo sticks and hats on a hat in both these matches.

The biggest trash can lit I've ever seen.

Yes.

It just so

I was not going to watch

a War Games match before I watched the main event War Games match because then I wouldn't like either one of them.

I wouldn't like the first one because it was women doing it.

And if the 90-pound Japanese girl can fucking put a garbage can, this was on Twitter, over her own head and dive off the top of the cage onto the other girls, and nobody dies.

Then what are they going to do to the men?

So

I skipped that for the good of the rest of the fucking review.

And we were nearly one hour into the show before that was over with.

I'm sorry.

It doesn't make any sense to me to do that, especially with women, even with men, on the same fucking show.

Come up with it on one of the other pay-per-views, big or small, I don't care.

Book a program

between the women that necessitates a war games match and have it all by itself on the show along with matches of other stipulations.

And then at least it would make more sense, but

because you have a

men's war games match it's phony as a football bat to put the women in the same thing.

And it dilutes everything they're going to try to do.

And since they can't even get by without bringing the goddamn furniture into the fucking ring and putting the hat on the hat, at least you wouldn't have had a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat.

So tell me what I missed.

You missed a fine women's war games match, big moment where Bailey and Bailey were Becky and Charlotte hugged.

The sting Nikita Kolov 92 War Games moment where the two

people who are awkward around each other embrace each other and then go back to kicking ass.

A fine match for what it was, the women's war games.

I can see that there were many other highlights that we will let the other programs cover.

Not that I completely disagree with everything you're saying, so I just want to make sure we understand it.

What you just said, you're not, even if they wanted to do a women's war games, it should be a separate show.

That's your major point here yeah i i but it shouldn't be like the night before it shouldn't be like two nights of war right my my point is double-pronged one it just stretches credulity and or

dilutes what you can really draw money with to have women be able to survive a war games under any circumstances but if you're gonna do the goddamn women's war games don't do it an hour and a half before the men's war games

it's stupid

Would you have a problem with the general concept with women if it wasn't any of the smaller women?

Let's say you had a Charlotte and a Rhea and a Bengali.

Oh, goddamn.

Whoever else?

I'm sorry.

I was watching Animal and Hawk and fucking Nikita and Dr.

Destee Williams and all these fucking

people bash each other's brains out in the war games.

It troubles me that women are allowed to do it or would want to do it or that anyone would want to promote it because it hurts the credibility of the men who still are the ones that draw the major amount of the money

for all those reasons.

But if you're going to do it and you're just going to have the soft equal women's wrestling 50-50 type of deal,

put it on another show so that they're not stepped on by the men's war games.

In general, with WWE War Games, what do you think of the fact that they've changed it up?

It isn't Dusty's War Games.

There's no roof on the cage, for one thing.

Well,

I can, I like that they actually gave the rules, first of all, and they do somewhat stick to the rules, even if they've modified it.

Having no roof on the cage, it does make it different than Hell in a Cell, which kind of

the only reason Hell in a Cell had a roof on it was because I stole it from the war games.

So, this is all incestuous.

I'm not that concerned about the roof because the goddamn thing's 15 feet high.

Originally, it wasn't.

And I don't mind

the teams at Ringside being in a separate cage rather than being loose at ringside.

I wish they were closer to the ring so they could be cheering each other on.

That's really the only

change that has been made.

I mean, they're doing high spots now off the top.

I mean, Charlotte did a moonsault off the top of the cage.

Well, yeah, I mean,

that's why they took the roof off of it so everybody can dive off of it.

But that in itself wouldn't wouldn't be a horrible thing.

The biggest thing is bringing the furniture in.

You don't need it.

It's already a gimmick.

It's so over, that furniture is so overdone in every fucking match.

And then to be able to pull out chairs and tables and,

you know, fucking slide them in or throw them in or whatever the fuck.

It's just so.

And then it clutters the ring up so you have less space to motivate and operate safely to begin with so the one the one thing i'd take out is the furniture make it different than every other fucking match ever held these days don't have any furniture either that or advertise the furniture

say okay

we're gonna have the war games we're gonna have five tables eight chairs, four kendo sticks, a garbage can.

Brought to you by Home Depot.

There you go.

And don't even worry about what wrestlers are in it because the furniture is the most important thing.

And then, were you finished asking me a question to piss me off?

You know, I think I could save the rest of the pissing off.

Well, you know, we're going to have fun later.

Dynamite's coming up.

Yeah, we can take the piss out of that, all right.

But so then this was one of the parts where the jobbers were in the back arguing whether the ruffles are chips or crisps, because the

British folks call it the crisps.

And

that's what I'm saying.

It's AEW level clownish when they do this.

And it, to me,

it's not doing a good job for the sponsor because the wrestling fans that are watching this on purpose are the ones who are probably most saying, well, this is stupid.

And why are they acting silly?

And,

you know, get back to the show.

So can't they make it good

where some of the

legitimate talent is actually enjoying the product in a clever way rather than this goddamn horseshit where they're just jumping up and down and screaming at each other?

This is their way of getting their lower card talent onto these shows.

And I guess the other sad thing is you said it's AEW-like

the lower card talent goofy comedy segments in WWE are like the main stuff for people in AEW.

Yes, but it doesn't come off any better either place.

And then the storyline throughout the evening, Brian,

is that

Randy Orton isn't there yet.

And we get Sami Zayn telling Jey Uso that Orton isn't there.

And Jay said,

I didn't think he was going to be.

It's because of me.

It's because of what I did in the past.

He's not going to be here.

And Sammy gives him a pep talk.

Don't worry about it.

It'll work out.

But that's going on through the night that Orton is not there.

And, you know, what's going to happen?

So we'll come back to that.

But then

the match that I

didn't think I would like, and as it turned out, I think is my favorite.

Gunther and Miz for the Intercontinental title.

Because I couldn't watch the Women's War games.

The

Escobar-Carlito match got fucked up.

Rhea was unfortunately tanked by greenness.

So, this was pretty much the match, except for the final event, which we'll get to here in a few minutes.

I told you you would like this, and I told you every time you put down the Miz and you actually watch his stuff, you end up liking it.

Well, yeah, because the little prick,

he knows what to do.

He just looks so horrible, you know,

visually.

But this is what

Gunther hasn't been pinned in two years since he came to the main roster, and they made a point of saying that.

And they put that over.

And also the thing is, Miz worked with him like he was supposed to.

Miz had to fire back with everything he had.

Gunther would toy with him.

Gunther would chop him once.

He'd go down.

Miz would hit Gunther seven or eight times and have to go for the leg.

But it was because of the size disparity.

And that's the way that these matches work.

And And Gunther,

as a gimmick, as a personality, a performer, doesn't work without giving him a long winning streak and credibility.

Because he's not the goddamn Sid Vicious bodybuilder type giant.

He's a wrestler and

he needs that.

that credibility put into what he does.

And then it gets over over time.

So they've really invested, and it's paid off, and he's over as a heel.

And they worked this match.

I wrote Miz is wrestling a smart match.

You know, he went for the legs.

He tried to take the big man off his feet, take his supports out from under him, stole a little from Bret Hart with the figure four around the post.

But Gunther, again, would stay in control most of the time with his physicality and the chops and the clotheslines.

And when Miz would get the opportunity to make a comeback, then the people were with it because he was really firing up and really getting a flurry.

And then Gunther would shut him down.

So they had a good match through.

And then when they started the false finishes, nothing was ridiculous.

Nobody did anything.

They shouldn't.

Miz didn't goddamn pick Gunther up and give him goddamn a jackknife power bomb or whatever.

They went back and forth with Miz trying to be more

resourceful and Gunther being more powerful.

And then finally,

they did the deal where Gunther got the sleeper and Miz, in holding on to the turnbuckle, pulled the pad off.

And as the referee goes to put it back on or whatever,

Miz went to mule kick him in the nuts, but he missed it.

So he turned around and just football kicked him right in the nuts.

And the people went crazy.

And

Miz is wrestling at this point as a babyface, like MJF does as a babyface, to do the dirty tricks to get the babyface popped.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

It's the same concept, but MJF is better verbally.

It is fresher, and it got over to a smarter audience.

But nevertheless, and I don't mean smarter in terms of intelligence, I mean in terms of the inner workings of wrestling.

The AEW audience is somewhat smarter.

Anyway, boom, boom, boom.

They go a little bit back and forth.

And then finally,

Gunther hit a splash off the top and got a deep hooked Boston crab on him.

And Miz couldn't get the ropes and finally had to tap.

And it was an okay finish, but a really good match.

And it continues to elevate and or keep Gunther over.

This was never, now that we see how this worked out, it was not meant to.

I had trepidations.

They were going to ruin it.

But it's not meant to stop Gunther's streak.

It's meant to build and elevate him more for whatever they've got planned.

So

for what it was, I kind of liked this the best of everything of the whole night.

I thought this was really good.

I won't say I liked it the best of anything because, of course, there was a big moment at the end that everyone will remember from the pay-per-view.

Well, I mean, in terms of a match.

In terms of a match, it was good.

The Miz is better than he gets credit for.

It'll be interesting to see how much further they go with this, him as a babyface.

But Gunther,

especially lately, with the mini programs of sorts with Gable and I guess even Champa, The Miz, various people.

Like, this is the sports-based wrestling someone like me talks about.

Yeah.

It's not.

Two guys in Trunks grappling.

It's the big heel who can talk, who's out there wrestling with a guy, and they're telling a logical story in the match.

That's sports-based wrestling, treating it all like it's legitimate, not

let's go out there and very gingerly exchange holds.

And Gunther also openly saying, you're an entertainer, these people are entertainers.

The ring is sacred to me.

I'm a sportsman.

That feeds into that and

makes it work because he's a prick trying to take all the fans' fun away.

Like me.

but yes sports-based gunther that's what that's what we ought to call him sporty gunther

i mean just think about everything for the royal rumble coming up just everyone involved and then guther i mean they have all these guys at the top and guther's i mean technically he's not not a top guy but he's the intercontinental champion they're developing this it's working for him braun breaker still hasn't been brought up He just added a couple of people at the top to this.

It's pretty exciting, just all the possibilities right now.

And again, we said a couple of years ago, boy, they need some talent.

They need some stars.

And now, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Maybe Brock shows up again at the Rumble or something.

Well, yeah, that's right.

We don't know when they're going to pull that trigger.

And then again, there's people, the mainstream.

There's people on their cards and on their shows that people are going to see in the movie theaters, that people are watching on the internet, Pat McAfee, Logan Paul, whatever.

They got fingers in everything.

Man, there was no Logan Paul on this show.

Think about how many guys who were in the top mix weren't even on this show.

No L.A.

Knight, no Logan Paul, no Roman Reigns, no Solo.

They didn't need him.

No Paul Heyman.

You know, there's a lot going on right now.

Well, but...

But we got fingered in the next match.

They needed some

talent here.

We got Escobar and Dragon Lee for the reasons we mentioned earlier.

Whatever,

whether Carlito was injured and they found out and had to do that angle or whatever the case.

I can't believe they would have switched an advertised match to this unless this was legitimate.

Yeah, but then why blow through Dragon Lee like this?

That's the other weird thing.

And when they announced this was the substitute match, I said, okay.

Good move, Triple H.

You want to have one match on your show that's going to cater to like the AEW audience because these are two

guys that could work a lucha match for a WWE crowd and make it good and get big pops.

It wasn't even that.

It was,

you know, a fine match, but it was pretty quick and unremarkable.

Well, I wrote it, looks like I'm watching Rampage.

You got Escobar, who could be Rush, working with a guy with a lucha mask on, which could be anybody.

And in eight minutes, he just hit a powerbomb on him and some other kind of move.

And boom, one, two, three.

Thanks for coming, Mr.

Lee.

So.

one two three

look at mr lee look at mr lee

so pad they want to keep pushing escobar and i guess they just said well fuck it we're just gonna goddamn have him beat dragon lee in eight minutes or whatever but um

so that was that i don't think we need to go into much detail

Because the new day was there to sell us some slim gems.

But then it came to the women's championship match with Rhea Ripley and Zoe Stark.

And I mentioned I was going to watch this because I wanted to see what Rhea could get out of Zoe.

She's, I mentioned on the preview that we did that she'd seemed nervous on some of the interviews in the ring, and she's just been brought up.

We know she wants to do good.

But, you know, let's see if she can have a match with Rhea.

You know, if she can't have a match with Rhea, she can't have a match with anybody.

The jury may still be out on that.

Zoe started out, and obviously, Rhea was bumping off of her, wanted to put her over, wanted to give her credibility.

Because the problem is, is that

no matter how good she may or may not be, the people don't see her at Rhea's level.

She's just joined the main roster.

She's not over yet.

She hadn't really done anything to get herself over.

And Rhea Ripley's the hottest woman in the business.

And they've got the dynamic that even though Rhea is the heel, the people cheer her

either when she's by herself without the Judgment Day or just if she says something with the Judgment Day.

They boo them.

They still cheer her.

So

when Rhea, you know,

she was bumping and selling for her,

but people are kind of like, eh, and Zoe was going 100 miles an hour at the same pace and doing a lot of.

Did you notice it seemed like she was trying to do complicated shits thinking that that was going to impress impress people and get her over.

But what it ended up being was too complicated.

And it got sloppy and or just too rushed when Zoe was in control.

Maybe a bit, yeah.

And because when Rhea stopped her and the fans started chanting, mommy, mommy,

Zoe came back.

But it was starting to get, it was just rushed.

It was sloppy.

It was the same speed.

She spent a lot of the time in the match screaming.

Zoe did.

Ha!

Like the fired-up scream, trying to get the fans with her.

And the fans weren't with her because they like mommy.

So

then they did something that they tried something

that looked like off the top rope, Zoe Stark was supposed to, Rhea was going to throw her, but she was going to land on her feet and potentially

throw Rhea or reverse something or whatever, but they both of them fell in a heap and neither really sold anything.

And then as soon as they stood up, Rhea moused something and ran towards Zoe and Zoe hit her with a roundhouse kick and got a two count.

So it was supposed to be Zoe's thing, but I can't tell you what it was.

And at that point, I think they kind of lost it because,

again, the fans, they want to see Rhea.

They didn't want to boo Rhea.

I don't know they really wanted to boo Zoe that much,

but it just, it, eh.

And they did a stiff back and forth, and then Rhea hit the riptide, one, two, three.

But I think that's the thing is Zoe's still not smooth.

It was rushed.

She was trying to be too complicated.

trying to scream and get the fans behind her when it wasn't going to happen and she was trying too hard

And I think Rhea did

the best she could do with what they were doing, but I think she should have said, hey, calm this down a little bit more and make sure you can do everything right first before, because then she looks sloppy too.

So,

and Zoe is coming from a bunch of different directions.

Not all of them safe ones, I don't think.

Your thoughts?

One of the listeners in the Cult of Cornet Facebook group put up something.

His name is Ryan Claire.

A couple images saying that Zoe looks like Mary Grace Canfield, the

Ralph Monroe.

Ralph Monroe.

Famed 60s character actress Mary Grace Canfield.

You know, and Rhea here was channeling her inner Sherry Martell with her makeup and hair and everything, wasn't she?

It was certainly a look.

So it was Sherry Martell versus Ralph Monroe.

All righty, are we moving on?

We are moving on.

There's not much left to move on to, but let's move on to it.

Well, here it is.

There in the back in the locker room is Seth and Jay and Cody and Sammy.

And as we mentioned before through the whole show, Orton is not there.

But Cody's now telling him, trust me, because remember, it was him that said he was going to be there.

Trust me, he's going to be here.

And they walk off, and then the camera sees Cody, and he's looking worried.

Oh, boy, what's going to happen?

He should have looked at Ringside.

We heard from fans that saw Randy Orton's wife sitting at Ringside taking selfies and having a great time all night.

Well,

but that doesn't mean, you know, maybe they're having trouble.

She came for a night out with the girls.

I don't know.

He's not there.

But then they go to the package of the history of the men's war games match with the Black Sabbath, the War Pigs.

And again, nobody does packages like the WWE.

That production facility is fantastic.

And they do the entrances.

And

as I mentioned, they have the team cages to be locked in at the entranceway.

So you got to come down the aisle to the ring.

But again, there's no Orton for the babyface team.

And the first two guys are Seth and Finn.

So we got Cody, we got Seth, we got Jay, and we got Sammy against Priest and Finn and JD Funco and Dominic Mysterio and Drew McIntyre.

And one thing I really like, that the metal plate that they have put in between the rings to make the apron smooth where the rings join, that was always the problem.

Two ring battle royals, two ring matches of any kind, you break your fucking leg if you weren't careful.

in the middle of the where the two rings meet because you couldn't ever get it flush.

So that was a nice little

adjustment they've done there.

And the first five minutes with Seth and Finn is that they bounce each other off the cage to put the time in and to build the anticipation.

And Dusty used to start out with his best workers like Arn or Tully and one of the baby like Ricky Morton on the babyface side or somebody.

that could go and put time in, but nothing important is going to happen.

And then

the third got to come in because the heels have the advantage in this and by the way the baby faces had the advantage i guess in the women's zabada that's right well that certainly always works they needed jj to flip the coin yeah because jj's coin heads i win tails you lose anyway number three is jd funco and he ran to the door and tried to get in and seth kicked him in the face and knocked him back out to the floor

so he grabbed two kendo sticks and brought them in.

I was like, they couldn't even wait the first six minutes before they're bringing the shit in.

And then the heels beat Seth up with the kendo sticks for two minutes.

And

what

does it bother you as bad as it bothers me with the

maybe a chair or a set of brass knuckles snuck in by a manager or crafty heel or one weapon.

But by the time it's over with, we've got a table, we've got multiple chairs, we've got a kendo sticks, we've got whatever the fuck.

Am I just alone in this or is it unnecessary and just makes everything look stupid and the same?

Well, it makes everything look the same.

I think that maybe answers the other things, if it's necessary or not.

If everything looks the same, what good is it?

Who knew in 94 when the Sandman started using the Singapore cane

because Michael Faye got caned in Thailand or whatever?

Does anybody

understand that now?

Does anybody even know what you're talking about now?

Well, I assume a lot of the listeners know exactly what I'm talking about.

Oh, goddamn.

Would you assume you make an ass out of you and me?

I've assumed that people knew shit from 30 years ago, a lot they didn't know.

This fucking kid in Singapore, what did he do?

Get caught shoplifting?

Some minor offense.

He was an American citizen.

And they fucking took him to court and sentenced him to be caned.

They played played it up in the media here, like it was the worst thing.

Oh my god, he'll be caned.

He'll never be the same.

And you're like, oh my God, it really does sound awful.

Yeah.

So they introduced it into wrestling.

At the time, the Sandman started using it, and then it never went away.

We're still using it now.

It's the kendo stick, not the Singapore cane, but it's the same thing.

Anyway, so number four:

Jey Uso comes in.

He's carrying his own chair.

And he makes a comeback with chair and blah, blah, blah.

And then Drew

was waiting to come in next,

but when the time came, priest stopped him and said, stick to the plan.

And priest went in.

So all right, they're teasing a little dissension there.

But then

when priest goes, goes in,

The other heels were selling.

So the babyfaces backed up and okay, let priest come in the door and then rushed him.

And then the other heels jumped up and blah, blah, blah.

But somehow priest had a metal baton

that even the announcers say, is that a baton of some kind?

And you saw it was like shiny.

And he hit everybody with it

and then tossed it away and you never saw it again.

Brian, if you're in a fight against multiple opponents, and you have a weapon in your hand, do you use it a couple of times?

And then say, okay, well, I've done that.

Now I'll go back to my bare hands.

Well, in some of the older video games, you could use a weapon a few times and then it would just like disappear.

You used it too much.

Apparently, that's one of these.

That's what, again, all the, they've just got to use the shit for the sake of using it for a pop, whether it makes any fucking sense or not.

And there's a way you can do both and not overdo all this shit.

So

then the heels are beating everybody up with the weapons.

And then here comes Sammy.

And Sammy uses a kendo stick and slams the door on Finn's head and then pulls out a table and slides it in.

And then he makes a comeback while the table's just in there.

And then he goes to the top of the cage, and JD catches him up there, and they fight.

And then Sammy pulls a

quote-unquote lead pipe off the cage and jumps off

the top rope and hits JD and Priest both over the head with it,

but they're okay.

It's a fucking lead pipe.

Am I being too picky that they get up and continue fighting after being hit over the head with a lead pipe from a high distance?

And then they have more garbage match.

And then here comes Drew.

And Drew manhandles everybody.

And then he faces off with Jay.

And Drew wins the exchange with Jay.

He eventually comes out on top of this.

But have you noticed now that Jay,

now that he's gotten over,

is potentially getting way too rockish for his own good and very hot doggy.

And he better slow that down just a tad, or he's going to be too full of himself for his ability level.

Does that make any sense?

I haven't noticed that.

What did you say?

Too rockish?

Too rockish.

He's doing the slap punches.

I'm not talking about making a slap sound effect.

I'm talking about the big exaggerated swing, and he hits them with an open hand.

But he's doing the rocks, drawback, and swing, and then he does the rocks, draw back the hand and spit in it for the last one.

He's being real hot doggy.

And a babyface needs to be hot doggy, but he's hotting somebody else's dog.

It's getting really close.

I can see some people going, eh, slow down a little bit if he's not careful.

That's just what I'm saying.

It's very rockish.

And Rock ain't coming back to wrestle Jey Uso.

So then Drew beat Jay up.

And then they all started fighting again.

And then here came Cody.

And finally,

because

everybody else taking time to come in with a weapon and you got to take time to lift the chair and swing it, or, you know, being cute with a kendo stick or pulling the table out or whatever.

Cody was a babyface that came in and made a fucking fired-up comeback with his hands and wrestling moves and got the match off its ass.

And Cole mentioned that Dusty invented the war games in 87, and this is Cody's first ever war games in the match that his dad invented, which was kind of nice to add to the story.

On the same night at Charlotte's first war games, too.

So a Flair and a Rhodes have their first war games on the same night.

There you go.

36 years later.

And then Cody pulled a bull rope and a cowbell in as a nod to Dusty.

But that was the spot so that Seth could grab the other end and they have their moment of tension.

Are they going to work together?

Are they not?

And then they do it by double clotheslining the heels with the bullrope.

And I would like to have seen more cowbell man, but then it kind of got lost in the shuffle.

And then

number nine was Dominic, and they did that perfectly because when he came in, see, that's the thing.

Nobody else could really feed for a big comeback besides Cody.

or besides for Cody's comeback because everybody else was doing the weapons.

At the same time, they did the opposite for Dominic

in that nobody took him seriously and didn't watch when he was coming in, and he was able to jump everybody from behind.

And then all four of them stood up and cornered him and he shit himself.

And then they all started beating him up.

And then

there's more, you know, back and forth, blah, blah, blah.

And the heels pretty much take over and destroy the baby faces.

And Priest gives Seth the razor's edge through the table they finally used

and then it's time for number 10

and there's nobody there orton's not there

and then

here comes ria with the briefcase and the referee she's gonna take it to priest he's gonna cash in on seth while he's laying there

and before the fucking actual cash-in could occur,

then Orton's music hits, and then here comes Randy Orton and the place goes ballistic

now Brian

do you know what my biggest problem is with what I just said and what they've done here

no

why was Randy late

why wasn't he in the cage with his other partners exactly

if he was there why did nobody his partners didn't seem

He just got there and changed when the match started.

Nobody sent a word out.

They didn't close up the loophole.

They were milking it because people would think it was punk.

And people did chant

mildly throughout some parts of the match, CM Punk, CM Punk.

And they wanted to milk it just to see if Orton was going to work together with the other guys, whatever.

But there should have been, and maybe there will be on Raw.

Maybe he'll say, oh, my God, my cell phone was dead and the fucking limo was in a ditch and we couldn't call.

And so I got there and changed in the limo on the way.

But any reason,

even in storyline, why that Orton would have been late, not there.

They didn't know where he was.

The partners didn't know.

What was the delay?

He came out walking normally like nothing was wrong.

Because you don't get the pop of these in the cage with his partners.

Well, exactly.

But the whole fucking deal is when you do something like this, you've got to give a plausible storyline

explanation to cover up why instead of just saying, well, we just jacked y'all off.

You see what I'm saying?

There was no reason for him to be late.

Well, his partners didn't know if he was going to be there.

I guess that's why they teased the whole thing, just so they had some kind of excuse to get the pop.

Even if he was, even if he was to come out Monday night and say, I fucked you guys around, didn't I?

You were scared shitless.

I wasn't sure I wanted to do it.

Something.

He should say I was hanging out on the bus with punk.

There you go.

That would explain it.

But anyway, so here comes Orton, and he makes a comeback first on Dominic, and then on JD,

and then on Finn.

And then he and Drew get a face-off.

But just at that point, Priest stops him from behind.

And you're like, oh, what the fuck?

But then the other babyfaces get up and there's a big 10 way.

And they do lots of big moves.

And Sammy and Seth

chase JD to the top of the cage.

He's trying to get away, climb out.

But they grab him and

they throw JD off the cage into an RKO by Orton, who was like...

framing the shot like yeah put him right here and i'll i mean in in storyline not really it was a milking of yeah throw that little prick to me and i'll break his neck

And then after he did that, that was the big RKO,

which we needed to see.

And then Orton feeds Priest to Cody,

who hits the crossroads one, two, three.

So Priest is the one who dropped the fall

when I thought it would be JD because I figured he'd play the J.J.

Dillon part.

But JJ, J.

J.J.

J.J.

McDonough.

J.J.

McDonough.

That's his new name.

J.J.

McDonough took the big big RKO that Priest couldn't have taken, and then Priest did the job for Cody.

So everything was perfect with the finish, and everybody was in a place they should have been.

No explanation for Orton being late in storyline.

But then they all celebrated at the end, and they showed the replays, and they had the beauty shot.

And they were about to go off the air.

And Brian, all was right with the world.

Your thoughts on the War Games match to this point?

I thought it was all right.

Not for me.

I like the

classic war games matches.

I even love 89, which you've never really said nice things about, even though you were in it.

But 91, 92 is a favorite.

I'm not a big fan of WWE-style War Games matches and

wasn't a big fan of this one.

I thought it was all right.

You said they were getting ready to go off the air.

The image at the bottom right corner of the screen, the copyright notice, was up.

We're about to go off the air.

And

suddenly,

lack muscle

with extra cheese.

Broiled or fried, the cow must die.

When the meat is done, then the toppings fly.

You don't have to ask me

if I want some extra cheese.

I'm the cult of meat with extra cheese, the cult of meat with extra cheese, the cult of meat with extra cheese.

Now with tomatoes.

Oh, stop.

Come on.

It's been a long time, baby.

It's been a long time since we cult a personality didn't like Mussolini.

And here he came, and the people went absolutely bat shit.

It's Chicago.

It's jammed.

There's 17,000 people.

The chance,

they sent the baby in the air.

There were men.

It looked like

they were hopping up and down.

It looked like they were tearing up, if not crying, and some of them may have pooped themselves.

I think I saw one of them shark.

Again, the response was through the stratosphere.

They went mental.

And Punk looks great.

His arms were bigger than half the guys on this roster.

And that's why it needed to be Chicago.

I said it at the top of the program.

You can't buy a response like this.

They acted like the goddamn rocket returned.

Maybe even Kennedy returned.

He was a megastar and he knelt and did the watch point and did the it's clobbering time and the whole fucking building did it with him.

And he went to the railings and they were hugging him and was one guy was screaming, Chicago, Chicago, Chicago.

They were out of their minds.

Again, you can't manufacture that.

And for anybody that saw it that hadn't been watching AEW,

they think, my God, this guy's one of the biggest stars in the history of the wrestling business.

And if you watched him in AEW, you said, wow, this moment seems so much bigger than all the moments in AEW.

Yes.

The first one in AEW was similar because he drew a similar size crowd in a similar building.

And then they couldn't follow up on it to save their fucking life.

And it would have probably saved their lives.

I'm talking about AEW.

But they're pretty much out in the lifeboat right now.

When that happened, when he debuted in AEW, I remember what you said.

You said they didn't do it the way I would have done it.

They did it better.

And that was one of the best moments in AEW history, the highest rating for Rampage.

Just a high for AEW.

Yeah.

What about this moment here?

Is this the way you would have done it?

And if so, or if not, what did you think of the way they did it?

I think, honestly, I probably would have done it this way because you wouldn't put him in the match.

I know when they milked Orton for, you know, they probably had that in the back of their mind.

Well, the fans may think it'll be him and then we'll double swerve or whatever.

There was no need for him to be in a match.

He just needed to make an appearance, to be there, to

the announcement needed to be made, whether, and I think we talked about this several weeks ago whether to

make his intentions known just to let people know that he was there

or just maybe make a challenge maybe not say anything whatever the fuck

you didn't need to book him he didn't need to work he didn't need to do an angle angle because this is big enough if it had been tony he might have appeared in the locker room and after the first match and gotten a fight backstage in seg four and been in the main event and you know at the end of the show but this is months of storytelling that they can do so now the people know he's there and what the fuck is going to happen

you you want

you want the fans to ask the right kind of questions you don't want them to ask

how did he get here or who is that guy or whose side is he on

Those things they need to know.

But you want them to ask, oh my God, what's going to happen when so-and-so meets such and such or when what's going to happen on raw monday night when they talk about what happened that's good kind of questions and with orton's return i like the way they did it because it's like that classic wwe thing of jake roberts will be in the royal rumble we haven't seen him in a while what's it gonna be

they didn't have him on tv he didn't run in and do something you had to wait to see right and he was in great shape with punk

that moment that surprise there was only one way to do it and get it and they got it it.

Everyone thought the show was over.

Yeah.

And the music hit.

And apparently they rushed him in, you know, already after

the show had started and secreted him someplace.

And then he went out.

And that's why I said earlier, I don't know that any of the people in the match needed to know that that was going to happen and possibly didn't.

Probably didn't.

I think they did for one reason, though.

You don't want the wrestlers to get to a point where they don't trust the promotion, the office.

Well, but there's no double cross there

because he wasn't interfering.

He wasn't even coming into the ring in their segment.

It was over.

They're celebrating.

Oh my God, here's a new surprise star to come out and look at you guys.

And if you're a professional, then you could probably react

appropriately to what you're seeing, but it wasn't a double cross that they had to know or it would compromise somebody's safety or fuck up the finish or the timing or make anybody look bad.

So no, they didn't have to know.

Well, that was CM Punk's return to WWE.

What was it?

Almost 10 years in the making?

It's going to be very interesting.

I think everyone's going to tune in and want to hear what he's going to say.

Yes.

And we will see if

because Raw has not been doing the level of SmackDown lately and football's been involved and blah, blah, blah.

But I think if they're going to do a number on Raw

for anything other than one of these 30th anniversary, we're bringing back everybody from Hogan to fucking Bruno, it's going to be this Raw.

So

we will see what happens.

And we will also

need to see what happened with the collision and rampage ratings against Survivor Series this time.

That's a whole different can of peas.

Do you put them on Raw because those rights are still up?

Now, say again now, what?

The television rights to Raw are still up.

Oh, I see.

I'm sorry.

Is that why you would put them on there instead of SmackDown?

Because SmackDown, we already know where it's going to land.

They don't really need to do anything to hotshot the ratings right now.

Well, no, I think this week you put him on both.

Why would he be on one or the other?

He just walked out.

Nobody said he's signed to wrestle officially.

Nobody said he's signed to wrestle or that he's going to be doing anything officially.

So

Would he come out on Raw because everybody's demanding an explanation?

What happened?

We don't want to wait a week.

We want to hear from this fucking guy.

What's going on with you?

Would that lead to him saying,

as a matter of fact, I'm going to tell the folks at SmackDown my intentions also this Friday?

Because he's not been assigned anywhere.

He just got there.

And as far as we know, he could be a wrestler, a manager, an announcer, or he was in Chicago because he was on his way to Mindy's bakery.

So

capitalize.

He doesn't have to be on one show or the other.

He's not one of the talent roster.

Make him an outsider.

Maybe somebody wants to fucking challenge him to prove himself.

Come on in.

Who knows?

Do you put CM Punk in a match before the Royal Rumble?

Whether he's in the Royal Rumble match or in a separate match, do you put him in anything before that?

Or should we just have him talk?

I don't see why you would.

I mean, you know,

I know there's a lot of money in television these days, and so it's not the difference between the pay-per-view is where you should make everybody pay to see everything, and TV ratings or whatever are not as important, but he's going to get ratings for talking.

And if you put him on TV, just the

idea of, okay, here's CM Punk's debut in 10 years in the ring in the WWE, it's going to be on Raw.

What the fuck?

That's not where

Muhammad Ali's title title fights or Mike Tyson's title fights would be or Conor McGregor or what it wouldn't be on the free

fight night broadcast.

It'd be on the big pay-per-view, something to talk about, something to build to to create interest in the whole fucking thing, the premium live event.

So

I would, I mean, I would put him in the rumble,

but I wouldn't have him wrestle until he got there.

I've been saying it for a long time.

Who knows when?

But the biggest match in AEW history, Cody Rhodes versus CM Punk.

It's going to draw a fortune.

Absolutely none of it for Tony Kahn.

That's right.

But hey, the Bucs are going to come back with a big heel run.

Oh, yeah.

The only run they're going to have is the skid mark down their shorts when they see what the business they're going to be doing is by the time they come back.

Jim, we are in the future once again.

Jesus Christ.

We are in the future and in the future, AEW still exists and WWE is still doing their thing and we are still doing our thing and here we are once again.

We didn't travel that far.

It's only really just mere hours in the future.

But

God,

you almost put me to sleep with the trip and then yelled at me and scared me.

You know, I was trying to, before we go any further with the wrestling, well, I think we've ended with the wrestling and now we're going to go to Saturday Night Live next, folks.

But this is going to be a real rip snorter.

We're going to hear from the other side of this war.

But I was going to tell the people before we had to travel, for reasons best left unsaid, about the great box that I got in the mail today here.

Well, not today, but here recently now, because we've traveled in time.

So it was recently.

Did I tell you about my box of awesome that came?

Before we traveled through time?

No, you have not.

Well, no, I mean any time.

When I was speaking to you off the air, sometimes I do that.

Well, no, you haven't.

I mean, in the past, you told me about...

Present boxes that you would receive, but you didn't tell me about future boxes you expected to receive.

And here we are in the future, and I don't know about the past box you recently received.

What are you fucking talking about?

I'm just, did I tell you I got the chill, the chill cooler from the fine folks at REN, W-R-E-N, in my box of awesome most recently here.

You did.

You said you got the chill and it's multiplying.

Well,

I got chills.

They're multiplying.

I did it to myself.

And I'm losing control.

Because this cooler they're supplying is not electrifying.

I don't advise you to fill this cooler with liquid and then stick your feet in it and then

stick your finger in a light socket or anything.

So we don't want you to be electrocuted with it, but it's almost big enough to take a swim in.

Here's the deal on this thing.

No, it is not just,

it's not styrofoam.

And it's not like a cooler, a hard plastic cooler that you would see.

Or you would be carrying around and bumping into your legs and everything or tripping over a big klutzy thing.

This is a,

well, I'll read from the material here.

You got a tarp grade vinyl body with a durable waterproof base and lining, nylon webbing straps, a rust-proof zipper, and plenty of pocket space for corkscrews and sunscreen, plus a built-in bottle opener.

Just like Ric Flair.

In its own special pocket.

Have you ever seen Rick's special pocket?

I have not, or his special bottle opener.

Well, it's what he'd uses with his Woo Energy drinks.

Very good.

You know what?

You somehow made it all mixed.

It made it, brought it right back.

But this cooler, it's soft-sided.

It's pliable.

You can mash it and mush it, and so you could carry it in something else or put it away when there's nothing in it real easy.

Yet it's highly durable, heavily insulated, and

it holds a full case of beer cans or eight bottles of chilled wine.

If you

choose to go in the direction of being a raging drunkard or you can if you're gonna go out and have a cookout go out to the park sit by the creek watch the the puppies play or do something like that and and and grill out

maybe those of you in Florida the lower part of Texas and out in California at this time of year but nevertheless anytime

and you can put you can put burgers in there you can put the cookout supplies and and it'll keep ice cold for

goddamn.

And if you put ice in there, then the ice will keep ice cold

unless you ask for warmer ice.

I'm sure they can give you that too.

But nevertheless, the beach or the park or wherever you spend your leisure time can be so much better with the cooler bag from Ren with the stainless steel bottle opener.

And it's fucking ginormous.

It's just plain big.

23 liters is what

it's measured at, tear resistant, up to 375 pounds.

And you got the nylon webbing strap.

And if anybody tries to, say you're walking down the beach

and you got this and it's over your shoulder or your arm with the strap, you're an old lady, you're defenseless, you're 70 years old,

and some thug, some hooligan.

tries to snatch away your full goddamn case of beer cans.

Well, you you can fucking hold on to that goddamn nylon webbing strap, and he'll have to cut one of your hands off to get it away from you because this stuff won't break.

Well, there's a great example that obviously all the listeners can relate to.

So, for all you old ladies out there walking on the beach with all your earthly possessions on a case of beer cans, oh, beer cans, that's what it was,

or eight bottles of wine, if you want to be that way about it.

And, you know, and by the way,

why is the poor woman's family

allowing her to walk down the beach with unaided, carrying that much weight?

Eight bottles of wine.

She's 77 years old.

She's got osteoporosis.

She's an independent lady.

Well, God, they ought to give her some help.

Maybe she doesn't want.

You know how much a case of beer weighs?

This poor woman, no wonder she's so distracted.

She's about to get mugged and hit over the head.

But what if it's like a Mae Young?

Just like, you know, to the end of time, she's hardly ready.

Really next year.

Get out of my way, kid.

She'd be the one jumping out from behind the sand dune, hitting some guy over the head and stealing his wallet.

But she's not here anymore.

Well, in her youth, maybe.

I don't know if she was still doing those kind of tactics when her and Mula were hanging out with Reno or whatever.

What did you say in her youth?

In her youth.

In her ute?

What have you watched, my cousin Vinny, lately?

I said youth.

You.

You almost got it.

You, you New Jerseyites, I'll tell you.

But anyway, you want to know how you can get stuff like this in your box of awesome folks?

I bet it's been a while since some of our listeners have had an awesome box.

Well, we can rectify that.

They'll stay away from your rectum, though.

But all you got to do is go to boxofawsome.com, spelled exactly like it sounds, and you enter the code JCE at checkout.

And you get 20% off your first box of awesome.

And it doesn't have to be a cooler.

It can be anything.

As we have mentioned so many times before, the incredible array, the knives, the barbecue rubs, the blacksmithing ware, the multi-tools, the hot sauces, the cocktail kits, the various items from small businesses around the country, possibly even around the world.

They may have some small Bolivia.

I mentioned the knives.

I think you need to re-emphasize the knives.

You are a scary son of a bitch sometimes with your knives, Mr.

Scissor hands.

You can't see what you can't see.

But all you do is you go to boxofawesome.com and you take the quiz.

They'll ask you questions about what you're interested in, and then they will supply you with things that fit your interests.

And boom, you get a new box every month, tons of different categories to choose from.

Each box valued at approximately $70 on the open market.

Some of this stuff may go for $80 or $90 on the black market if you find somebody that's really

in need, but you pay only a fraction of that price.

And again, you're supporting the small businesses.

Yes.

Yes, you are.

90% of everything that comes into your box of awesome is from a small up-and-coming brand.

And the other 10% are just medium-sized.

Well, yes, there's none of these monolithic chain store Walmart type of things going on in here.

You're not going to get any true value items in here.

These are, these are handmade, hand-carved.

Sometimes the craftsmen and women and the artists that make these things, they don't even want to part with them.

Some of these things have been literally ripped from their fingers against their better judgment and will in order to be sold at a fraction of their value to you, the consumer, so that you can save money.

And those people, they had bloody fingernails from holding on to this shit, but it was more important that we get it to you at a discount.

A fair transaction between partners who enjoy doing business with each other led to these fine products ending up in this fine box that is indeed awesome and delivered right to you.

Yeah.

A partnership that everyone benefits from.

A partnership, the consumer and the provider of the consumer product and the poor manufacturer, some of these people.

Well, don't say they'll never get over it.

Well, don't say poor the manufacturer.

and everyone's going to get over what?

They're going to work together and make lots of money.

These one-of-a-kind items that they've slaved over and they felt like they were their children, but now they've been sent away to you so that you people can save money.

You're saving a ton of money because you get 20% off your first monthly box, which is already underpriced for the value that you get.

It's like

stealing from these people.

It's exactly not like stealing from these people.

It's like working.

It's like walking into a store and buying something from these people.

These people are indeed the store owners.

Well, these people aren't the store owners.

Box of Awesome is the store owner.

These little small businesses working their fingers to the bone to make these fine quality products that you can't get anywhere else.

In conjunction with?

Box of Awesome.

Well, yes, Box of Awesome then takes these things away from those people and passes

on to you.

They make a deal the way any storefront would, and they stock themselves with the finest things that they then take off the shelves and put in these boxes.

And you never know what will arrive, but it'll be awesome.

Their deal makers extraordinaire.

They say, you got a nice place here.

It'd be a shame if something happened to it.

Maybe I need some of your goods.

That's not what I'm doing.

And then they pass the savings on.

You did watch my cousin video.

That is not what they say when they show up.

They don't show up.

The mailman does, and he gives you the box of awesome.

The mailman has an awesome box and he'll hand it right to you folks once again go to boxofawesome.com use the code jce at checkout you're going to get 20 off the first monthly box when you sign up there you're going to save a lot of money you're going to get awesomeness in every box and you know who cares what happens to these small independent cons you know businesses along the way box of awesome hairs weak hair well we want to we want to keep stringing them along to get more stuff from them no we don't Yeah.

No.

Boxofawesome.com.

Well, yeah, that.

Promo code JCE 20% off.

You can't beat the, hey, some of these small businesses about to go under.

You can save money.

Buy your shit back from us.

You know, it's such an outrageous thing for you to say.

I can't even.

Ladies and gentlemen, Box of Awesome, of course, works with the finest brands that you've never heard of, but you will and you'll enjoy their products.

Box of Awesome, please check them out.

Promo code JCE.

20% off.

Let us know what you think.

Go listen to this guy.

What's going on in the world of the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week, Brian?

Well, we have a bunch of awesome podcasts this week, as in every week, as in every week, as we do every week.

Let's throw this down.

We're botching everything right now.

The Arcadia Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information about all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcast or on Facebook.

At facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

One of those moments where I know I got to talk and I know I'm fighting laughter that's coming from no specific place other than the fact that we're doing this silly show once again.

Be a professional.

Be a professional.

Why don't you?

The wrestling news.

Of course, every day, get the wrestling news.

A serious look at the news, unlike whatever you get here on not necessarily the wrestling news, but hear it today for free at thewrestlingnews.com directly or wherever you find your favorite podcast, your free daily wrestling newscast.

Every morning, get all the news, none of the opinion.

Straightforward and right to you from the wrestling news.

Want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, a great two-part episode.

Right Right now, part one is dropped, part two about to drop, with Mike Semper Vivi looking at the Observer Hall of Fame for 2023.

Hear that today at SUAWPod.com or look for Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcasts, and of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the

Mothership!

Go through the archive today at 605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

The Mothership.

Sounded like a William Castle film for a moment there.

All right.

All right, Alan Parsons.

Before we talk about the,

as I mentioned, we saved this for last because we could just kind of

laugh and scoff at it since everything big we've already covered going on in the world of wrestling.

That's AEW and their dynamite last week.

But you mentioned that we might have to look at Uncle Dave, who

may be still clinging on to some hope for this moribund organization that he has championed.

He gave some star ratings to the big pay-per-view that they did about 10 days ago that nobody remembers to this day now.

Well, it was,

wow, just a little over a week ago, and it feels like it was a lifetime ago.

But Dave Meltzer's star ratings for full gear AEW's pay-per-view extravaganza, the overbooked wrestling card of all time.

Here they are for zero hour.

Eddie Kingston defeating Jay Lethal, three and a half stars.

We didn't see it.

We can't comment on that.

We had no frame of reference from our own viewpoint.

It was certainly a promising opening to the

pregame show, but the second match on that zero hour, Claudio Castignoli defeating Buddy Matthews, three and a quarter stars.

Well, again, you know, we didn't see it.

Two fine young athletes.

So, you know,

let's get to something that we have a frame of reference on.

MJF and Samoa Joe defeated the Gun Club to retain the Ring of Honor Tag Team championships that Samoa Joe is defending on behalf of Adam Cole, who can't wrestle.

That we saw.

Which I don't think they've ever defended in Ring of Honor once.

Three stars.

So,

all right.

I mean, we can't.

It was the story they were telling.

If you were going by in-ring action, nothing sucked.

They didn't nearly hospitalize anybody that I can remember.

So that's right in the middle of the road for Uncle Dave these days, right?

I guess so.

Three stars is kind of the middle of the road between zero and six.

So then we get to the main car, Jim, Sting,

Darby Allen, and Adam Copeland versus, or defeated, I'll give the results, Christian Cage, Luchasaurus, and Nick Wayne.

Three and three-quarter stars.

Okay, I remember saying that that was probably the best match of the night for professionalism and logic and cohesiveness and etc.

So three and three-quarter.

That's that's pretty darn good.

What's going to top that, though?

That's what I'm scared of.

Well, we're just getting going on this big card.

Orange Cassidy defeated Jon Moxley

in an international championship match.

Four stars.

Oh, good God.

Do you regret creating the four stars?

Yes.

Well, no,

I'm going to find the corpse of Leonard Moulton

or whoever it was that inspired me.

Well, have you seen him lately?

He walked past a cemetery last week.

Three guys ran after him with shovels.

So

that's who I'm going to blame for the whole movie fucking

four-star rating system business.

But even overlooking the fact that one guy needs to be in a fucking state home and the other guy, look at the state of him, pick which is which,

just for work alone.

Moxley didn't want to sell anything.

He didn't want to be there.

He didn't want to do the job for the fucking mascot.

The other guy's shit.

He missed every goddamn one of the six or seven punches he threw is what he does Roman Reigns' finish for his triumphant victory there.

It looked like shit.

Who?

That's Flair Steamboat level.

That's a Kurt Angle doesn't have a five-star match, according to Uncle Dave, but that's four stars right there for a fucking

two guys with brain damage.

All right, here we go.

Well, the next match, we had Tony Storm winning the AEW Women's Championship from Hikaru Sheeta.

That's Hikaru Sheeta.

Or as her name is pronounced, Hikaru Sheeta, two and a quarter stars.

I don't know we can argue with that, except maybe shave about a quarter off.

Apparently, you know, Dave hasn't, uh, he hadn't got his check from the women's division this week.

In a latter match,

Ricky Starks and Big Bill defeated FTR, the Kings of the Black Bench and Elefino,

four and three-quarter stars.

Oh, God.

Almost five.

As good as five.

Technically, based on what Dave has said, four and three-quarters is five.

Why would you even argue?

So that was Flair, Steamboat, and Michaels, Undertaker.

That was Michaels and Razor Ramon.

And again, I know that the ladder matches changed, but it has to be weighed for inflation.

If there are all these just generic ladder matches, everyone's doing the same spots.

Do any of them stand out?

Will anyone remember this ladder match?

Well, I didn't even watch it, and you pretty much said it was basically what you would think it would have been.

Well, let's see if this is what you thought it would be: Julia Hart defeating Statlander and Sky Blue to become the new TBS champion, three and a half stars.

Oh, good Lord.

Now, that thing

was as good, he claims, as at least MJF and Samoa Joe against the guns had an angle and some level of star power and talent to it.

Well, the next one, the controversial Swerve Strickland match, defeating Adam Page in a Texas death match,

five-star match.

Five-star match.

What are your thoughts on that?

Did he at least do one of these deals?

Well, it wasn't for my taste, but the people in the room loved it, so I give it five stars.

I'm going to, I'll let you talk about that for a second.

I'm going to pull it up and get what he actually said.

Well, that's always, you know, he'll caveat it for people who expect him to still act like a rational adult human being that knows anything about wrestling.

He'll say, well,

they went too far for my taste with some things, but

noncommittally.

But overall, you know,

the fan base wants that, and it delivered on all those levels.

Here's the final comments of Dave's review.

I was not a fan of this match.

Oh, boy.

But it would be foolish to say as a match itself that it wasn't among the best matches of his, of his, of this type ever.

When has there

only been matches of that type for the last 10 years or so, except by the fucking weirdos with brain damage and grovers of the world in fucking goddamn armories off in the middle of nowhere.

But how does that work too?

I mean, even if you're objectively looking at the way to rate matches, if you rate it based on,

I mean, at what point do you just give up and say, well, you know,

I didn't like it, but I can't lie.

It's one of the, I mean, Men on a Mission and Doink versus whoever was the best of that kind of match ever.

You know, like, where do you?

It's a weird argument.

Somebody somewhere is going to like

somebody or something better than anything else, regardless of whether that would be the prevailing opinion or not.

Remember when I told you the story when Rick Rubin put me on the goddamn phone with Sir Mixalot?

He got to ask me one question related to pro wrestling that he claimed he was a huge fan of.

He said, whatever happened to Zeus?

I loved him.

He was my favorite wrestler.

What did you watch wrestling twice?

Because that's the number of matches he had.

But, you know, but no, it's like

of all of the shits that I've ever taken, that was the best of that particular type and consistency.

Normally, when the edges are that sharp, it hurts me.

I mean, what?

Damn.

Well, the next match, Jim.

Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho defeating the Young Bucks.

Four and a quarter stars.

for match story and execution.

It was classic match level.

And they did get the crowd by the end,

but the drama aspect wasn't there until the end due to the prior match.

Not due to the fact that the Young Books aren't over anymore with fans.

Well, and he's got to, again, you know, you couldn't deny

that nobody gave a shit for a lot of this, so he had to come up with some backstory.

And

story to classic match level.

They're throwing fits like 12-year-old children.

And they've already got heat with the people that that's going to get heat with for acting like 12-year-old children in real life.

So it's not going to boost anything or gain anything.

It's going to give them a chance to go away so that Tony is not reminded every goddamn time they go out for the next month or two

how bad they suck and that nobody wants to see them.

And then they can figure out some smoke and mirrors to come back with something

at somebody else's expense to fucking

potentially get a reaction or just play with their friends in a long-recurring angle that nobody wants to see.

And finally, Jim, MJF defeated Jay White

in 29 minutes and 41 seconds.

Oh, boy.

Four and a half stars.

I mean,

again,

it's now it's the rating system.

If you can actually give the

unprofessional,

business exposing, distasteful, stupid

match with phony props and whatever, five stars, and then the world title match where the guy gets goes a half an hour with one leg, gets four and a half.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't care about poor Dave anymore.

I think,

you know, something's going on with his, is, is there something he's doing that's killing brain cells?

Could he be putting some type of chemical formulation on his head on a regular basis that would be

seeping into his scalp and preventing brain cells from multiplying?

I don't know what you could be speaking of.

The only images I've seen of Dave lately, he's wearing a baseball hat to cover,

or it covers whatever.

I'm just wondering, maybe it's too much sunlight.

Is he getting thin up there?

I don't know, but, you know, I guess one last thing about all this.

When you look at all the issues today with AEW, when you look at all the, and again, there's so many issues, and it all comes from the top, and then the people the top surrounds himself with.

But there have been issues for a long time, and everyone now is starting to see it.

Everyone's starting to say something.

Go back now, please, go back and go through our archives.

For all the times everyone said Jim was wrong and everything, we were calling this out before it happened.

Now everyone's acting like because it's happening, they could talk about it.

We were saying all these AEW problems were going to happen well before they happened.

You know, if you get, instead of a proper contractor, if you get 10 fucking yehoos with hammers and saws to build your house,

they may make it to the fucking roof before the whole thing falls in.

But, you know, if you know anything about building a house, you can probably pick out those fucking guys before they've started off the foundation and say, well, they're not going to make it all the way.

But, you know, the Indy mindset is working for a star rating.

Whether it's Dave's rating or just the ratings that people will give it,

based on the way they've seen Dave rate matches, if we're being very honest about how this has all worked,

AEW is a company working for the star rating.

WWE isn't.

And again, it's just one of the many problems with AEW, but it's almost an overarching issue with the protocol.

It's an overarching issue with the mindset and the sensibilities of the top down.

They're working for star rating.

I mean, not everyone.

You hear MJF do like these press scrum things about how he's trying to do story.

And unfortunately, the story's been what it's been for a little while.

But these guys are working for star ratings and they're getting less and less popular by the day

imagine that

because that's

the whole idea of rating

the matches to begin with was

how good they were when they weren't trying to be rated.

They were having a match.

And then you yourself said, well, that's that's great.

It's like the movie.

Was anybody ever trying to make a movie in Hollywood wondering what Leonard Malton, TV guide, whoever came up with the goddamn star system

was going to give it?

They would crow about it afterwards, got four stars in the Charlotte Observer.

But it was who was starring in it and whether people were going to buy tickets to it and whether it was good.

or not enough to fucking make people come and see it.

It wasn't about how many stars it was going to get.

And, but now

it's like they're writing, they're

doing movies to appeal specifically to the critics instead of the people that are going to pay to see them.

All these fuckers get in free already because they work for the company.

So they're having matches for themselves and they're the ones not buying a fucking ticket.

And for and for their sycophants,

sycophants, all the people who have that indie mindset and love that kind of thing.

And as we've seen, I believe I predicted this along about the time of the first all-in.

How long can the crowdfunding go?

How long can this number of people

fanatically,

financially support this company and these people in this endeavor, seeing the same shit all the time?

And more of it now.

It can't be the first ever ever big show every goddamn month and then every week on TV and then twice a week on TV and going back to the same towns and the same buildings that diminishing crowds are gathering in.

Because

you haven't given even the audience you started with something new

that they're interested in.

And you've never given the audience that you've never gotten anything to be interested in.

because it's fucking indie niche.

And when Ring of Honor went on TV with Sinclair,

the goddamn original Ring of Honor fans were just

horrified and mortified that we'd actually try to make more people watch the fucking show.

And they hated everything.

But meanwhile,

So much goddamn bad phony wrestling had already gone on

that there was

most of the

existing wrestling fans that knew of something other than the WWE

had mostly wandered away.

Well now they get national cable television and a lot of goddamn

publicity and financial backing and money behind them

and people hear about it and they even sample it

and they don't come back

because it looks gaga to them.

They don't understand it.

Who's on whose side?

Why are these people doing this stupid shit?

What are these fucking children?

And then they get punk and he brings them a couple hundred thousand and the children run him off.

So that's where they're at.

And again, I think there's an overall issue, especially with AEW, with the style.

Not to say WWE style is perfect.

They obviously are going for a very different thing where they milk everything and they slow things down.

Not that you don't get great matches, but it feels like AEW, these are guys working towards the rating they want and the matches built around that.

You know, the near fall, constant near falls, constant kickouts of everything.

Nothing works.

Nobody can be injured.

It would hit the objective more if guys hit a finisher and won, or guys hit any move and won.

But it may not get the star rating.

So then the fan who's fickle, who says, I want to watch just these high quality matches of a certain type that Dave rated high for years,

they're not getting that.

But to the overall goal of trying to get wrestlers over, characters over, storylines over, things bigger, it would sure help.

Instead of just, you know, now they have this tournament.

So now they're just going to have long

athletic, I have air quotes going, athletic matches, long matches where everyone kicks out of everything is really what it comes down to.

And I don't think that's going to do anything to help AEW.

Well, should we talk about some long matches where everybody kicks out of everything?

For a little bit.

I mean, I actually thought when watching Dynamite,

there's a few spectacular moments, I guess, that I wanted to hear what you thought.

But in general,

it wasn't a very good show.

I didn't know how much you were going to have to say about it.

Well, I have observations.

I'm not going to go blow by blow, although a lot of it did blow, but some of it requires some explanation.

It may be entertaining for you and me to try to, along with the listeners, muddle through what the fuck was going on.

Then this was November 22nd, the day before Thanksgiving for Dynamite.

So they're in Chicago four days before the WWE has sold 30-something thousand tickets.

So they've,

you know, they got the

woo energy drink is on the screens now.

And you you mentioned, I think, earlier in the program, the caricature.

It looked like an old WCW under Jim Heard fucking merchandise drawing.

Flare looked like a drawing of the guy that played Flare in Young Rock.

It's just...

I think

this looks cheaper than Ruse did as a sponsor for WCW or NWA because at least kids kind of saw commercials for that.

There's nothing for Woo Energy.

You have to buy it from their website.

Shoes for your feet, pockets for your stuff, but no woo for you, kids.

So at the announce desk, they have the drinks, but they're sitting on a shelf on the front of the desk behind a partition.

So the announcers can't reach them without standing up and leaning over so they can't take a drink of them.

Apparently.

They're not they consulted their doctor and the announcers are not allowed to drink this stuff before broadcasting on national television.

And there's only one bottle sitting in front of each and that is three bottles.

They couldn't even put a six-pack up there.

It looks so cheap.

What the fuck?

So

then they announced the rules for the Continental Classic, which each match has a 20-minute time limit.

A winner gets three points.

A draw is one point.

A loser, obviously, is no points.

Seconds are barred from ringside.

Nobody's allowed to be ringside, so there'll be no interference.

Unlike our normal matches where we've just proven we could easily stop this, but we don't.

That's a good point.

That's a good point.

Yeah.

And I promise you, nobody will be keeping score at home except for the fucking nerds that have watched the New Japan Round Robin.

tournaments or whatever.

And most people watching television will be going, what the, now they want us to do math?

What the fuck?

Round Robin's my favorite joshi

well yeah and her her big aunt square robin she she got heavy and used the big bonsai drop

uh and the first tournament match was swerve strickland versus jay lethal

and i love jay lethal i've talked about him so many times if they'd have pushed lethal from the start when he first came in like they pushed jay white they might have something

he's a better worker he's a better promote he He has more experience, but he's a fucking heel.

And they're putting him against Swerve, who

is such a dastardly heel that invades the cribs of children that people cheered him against their goddamn cowboy babyface former world champion.

And so I don't want to see Swerve again at all against anybody after the garbage match last week.

And I know that Lethal is not going to win.

That's my, you know, that's my personal opinion.

But for the viewer at home, it's two heels, but one

is Lethal has more heel heat because he's in Jeff Jarrett's group that they don't like for real.

And he's used as an underneath guy that loses most of the time.

So they're naturally going to boo him against a cool heel

that they've been cheering with the, you know, whether he has his manager dancing or not, that they know is going to win because he's pushed as a main event guy.

So how does it help either one when your main event heel is getting more and more cheers and you're leading them to do that by giving him this opponent and Jay Lethal, poor fellow, is just going to do another fucking job?

Did you hear Sockface trying to explain the tournament and he couldn't grasp the phrase single elimination tournament to differentiate it from this round-robin tournament.

So he was like, This is not like a

just

lose and

leave once thing or something like that.

And they just let him hang in the wind.

There was nothing to do.

Well, I don't know whether they could come up with it at that point or not.

He'd butchered it so bad, he probably scared it out of them.

But anyway, so

Swerve beat Jay Lethal with a double stomp off the top rope and got big cheers for it.

And

I swear to God, when it looks like it can't get any more

amateur-ish, Renee Moxley Good, did you see the backstage with hook and pockets and the Japanese fellow who was just standing there and

his name was never mentioned until Wheeler Useless came in to knock all of them with one of his whiny memorized

monologues, and it was Shibata,

the guy with the brain replacement.

And who

do we know?

It's the same brain.

It's his brain that, as reported in the Wrestling Observer, was removed from his head and placed back in.

He did not get a second brain.

Okay, but it was.

Do we know?

for sure who the doctor was that did this because could you put it in backwards i believe it was dr Dr.

Bombay.

Well, do you think he might have put it in backwards, and that's why he's wired up crooked?

That's why he's tagging up with Orange Cassidy and Hook?

Yes.

But nevertheless.

Well, Jim, if I could just jump in to go back to the match.

Well, yeah.

That's the problem.

That match is the problem with AEW right there.

I can't judge Jay Lethal based on what he can do.

I can only judge him based on how he's been used.

Why would anyone think he's going to win?

So now you're going to have a long competitive match with one of the top stars in the company who's booked as a heel, and the fans accept him like a babyface, which is what they wanted, although it's just backwards and done in such a fucking backwards way.

But you know, he's going to win, and it took him 20 minutes.

It was a 20-minute match.

It was long.

It took him 20 minutes to beat Jay Lethal, who never wins, who never beats anybody.

That's the difference between like a match,

that's working for star ratings and working for match quality versus working to make sense.

For business.

And it's again, nothing against Jay Lethal.

I know what you think of him.

Like I said, I can't judge him based on what he could do or what he did for you.

Based on how he's been used in AEW,

this should have been a 20-minute match.

No.

You brought up the backstage interview I mentioned also when you said, let's go from the ridiculous to whatever you said, Renee is now wearing like, I don't know, like a bra and a blazer.

I know what I thought she was doing the thing from the woman on Seinfeld.

The O.

Henry candy bar heiress.

Yes, yes.

She wore the

Sue Ellen Mishkin.

Maybe that's what she's doing, but what's happening on this show?

It's from the Sue Ellen Mishke collection.

Well,

and that's the point is all of the matches, and you know, I've said it in a variety of ways.

You succinctly said it there.

They're not working for the match they should have for the business goals they want to have.

They're working for every match to be, goddamn, a classic, quotation marks.

And as I told guys in training camps and tryout seminars and et cetera, 15 years ago, every match doesn't have to be the main event of Starkade 86.

It's when you're auditioning for something or when you're performing your job.

It's better to have the match that's called for by business rather than that you want to to have and that your Mark Booker will allow you to have just because you can have it.

There's a reason why that the fucking extras that get a line, boy, these pretzels are making me thirsty,

they're not on screen for 15 minutes going toe-to-toe with goddamn Bruce Willis in diehard.

But you know, also the other thing, look at the first

20 minutes, 25 minutes of Raw SmackDown.

SmackDown this past week had a lot of women's stuff.

Women Women who are stars in their company.

You know, Bianca, Charlotte, Becky, those are three of the biggest stars in all of women's wrestling.

Raw, usually you have Judgment Day,

maybe Cody, maybe Jey Uso, maybe Sammy.

God forbid Rollins.

Here you had Swerve, who is certainly, I think, one of their top guys.

Other than that, Jay Lethal, Orange Cassidy, Hook,

who whatever potential there is, it's still just that.

There's been no progress in like three years with Hook.

And Shibata, the man with no brain, who, if you don't read The Observer, or the man with his own brain, excuse me.

He has a brain.

He got it back.

That's right.

He had to surrender it for a few minutes, but he got it back.

If you don't read The Observer or don't watch New Japan and I see what their numbers are on Axis, not many people are watching New Japan in the States.

You have no idea who he is.

So you have one show or one promotion giving you stars stars right at the top.

If you're someone giving this company a chance and just tuning in,

there's been a lot of buzz, good or bad.

You want to check them out, see what it is.

Look at what it is.

There's no star power.

It's childish booking, childish skits.

Everyone's just working to please themselves.

They forgot about how to please the fans.

Well,

you want star power, Brian.

Is that what you want?

You want the big names.

You want the hits to just keep on coming out.

I think you need star power.

Well, they're about to give it to you because here came MJF and Adam Cole for a live in-ring promo.

And folks, I just want to describe this to you.

Adam Cole came out in a,

he's got a cast on.

on his foot where he's had the ankle surgery from his big toe all the way up to under his knee.

He's walking on crutches.

He obviously cannot put weight on this foot for a shoot.

And when he got in the ring,

he had to sit in a chair in the ring because he couldn't stand up that long.

And he's pale and he's dressed like a hobo and he looks 50 years old with the scraggly beard and the unkempt hair.

And meanwhile, MJF, our world heavyweight champion,

is walking with a cane

because he really fucked himself up.

Apparently, from what we heard on that elbow off the top, he's got hip issues.

We're not going to hopefully make him miss any time, but

I've got to think that he needed the cane because you wouldn't be stupid enough to fucking go out there.

Being the world champion with the guy next to you that need almost a goddamn hover around

and have any kind of help walking

it looked like a goddamn the fife and drum corps from the revolutionary war

these are their two fucking

i mean my god if they'd

the only thing else they need is the heartbreak of psoriasis all over their body and it would be put them in quarantine

And these are the fucking two top goddamn stars on that side of the fence, the babyfaces.

Go ahead.

Should Tony have his team looking at various pharmaceutical companies for sponsorships?

No, I think they need goddamn long-term care fucking insurance.

And maybe, you know,

the old folks home can lower their age requirements so these people can come in and play shuffleboard in their declining years of their 30s.

So

MJF, he did his babyface stuff for the fans, and he's trying really hard with this, and that's the problem because it shows.

And then Adam Cole does seeded story time with crippled Cole.

I mean, the crutches looked as big around as his calves,

and the same general ghostly pallor.

And they're doing the promo.

They're still Ring of Honor tag team champions.

The world champion of the company is standing there in the goddamn ring, but they're still doing his thing because they

it was great that they loved MJF and Adam Cole when they were both healthy and out on the boat and assing off.

But people get hurt and things happen.

You can't fucking

grieve forever, as Lawler used to say, when they'd go to break after a heavy angle and they'd come back with, and now here's Sonny.

But

they're still Ring of Honor tag team champions, but Adam Cole says he's not even close to walking yet but he's going to try as hard as he can and he's going to come back

just better than ever

and he's worried about mjf because everybody's after him and mjf says don't worry about me when i was born the devil didn't want the competition

and then suddenly on screen

the guy in the devil mask laughs and then the blackout happens and here comes Samoa Joe music.

So you got MJF trying so hard he's going to have a hernia.

Adam Cole looks like a goddamn

coma patient has just arisen from a fucking two years in limbo.

The devil is still hopping in.

We don't know who.

Maybe the devil is Jungle Boy.

Because Tony at least thinks he's the devil now after he cost him all this embarrassment.

And you know what?

I think a lot of people are thinking that.

They've been teases of it.

Of course, he got Max, not Max, the other one.

Bowens got thrown through the glass.

It makes sense, especially with Punk there now.

I mean, all of a sudden, the guy who, who's the devil, the guy who drove the biggest star out of the company.

I mean, it makes sense from that aspect of it, but it'll be a massive letdown if that's Jack Perry.

Well, but

he's missing it.

Yeah, and besides, he'd be a massive letdown if he was going into his own birthday party with his immediate family as the guests.

But

you got the devil popping up.

And then here comes Joe.

And, you know, at least, you know, I wrote, good God, a wrestler just walked in.

Joe was ambulatory with no crutches, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs.

And he came in and cut a wrestling promo that sounded like he meant it and wanted his title match.

And MJF said, in response, blow me.

And they bleeped it.

They bleeped MJF two or three times.

If they're bleeping it, apparently the network doesn't want it on television.

I would suggest stop trying to give them any little more annoyances other than these record low ratings.

And then

Cole

tells MJF that he should honor his word because he's not that person he used to be.

And you promised, Max.

So

MJF, in the space of 20 seconds, then reconsiders and says, okay, let's do it right here, right now.

While he's on a goddamn cane

and his backup there that talked him into agreeing to it at all is practically in a fucking wheelchair.

But no, Samoa Joe, the only real heel left in this company.

What does he say, Brian?

You know the response.

You've said it so many times.

I'll give it to you.

What does the heel challenger say to the injured champion who's offering to defend the world title right there, right now?

I don't want you now.

I want you at your best.

I want you to be your very best.

I'm going to be there to make sure you train.

In fact, I'll train you.

I'm going to hire trainers to train you to make sure you're ready for me.

Because that would be the only fair thing for me as a heel to do.

That's right.

He even said that.

We just said that we're sick of this.

We just said it again and they did it again.

I think he even said the phrase fully healed, didn't he?

So there's no excuses.

And then he said, how about World's End pay-per-view on December 30th?

Maybe by then they've got time, six weeks, they can change the name to Company's End.

And MJF says, okay, and they shake hands and then

They insult each other.

And Joe says, yeah, you're my property from now on.

Nobody's going to touch you until December 30th.

And then I'm going to finish you.

And again, what we talked about the other day, there are germs, there are traces, there is evidence of great wrestling ideas of booking in the past

in a lot of this stuff, but nobody actually saw the whole goddamn thing or didn't see the buildup, just saw the payoff or heard the joke secondhand and couldn't remember the punchline, whatever, because they hide it in all the other

ludicrous logic that nullifies everything.

So

the challenger,

the heel,

basically making the champion his property, nobody's going to fuck you up but me.

That's been done, but not with all this other chaos around it in this particular fashion and with everybody except for the heel being fucking crippled.

Yeah, man, what are we going to get to?

Who's been trying to get to MJF?

Wardlow.

We've seen Wardlow and Samoa Joe.

We're going to see that again?

I don't think so, but.

No, Joe's just going to run out and beat people up if they try to beat MJF up.

There's a few things to say about this.

Let's start with the

corniest part.

Sorry, Jim.

The devil who took over the production truck momentarily, like the famous Max Hedrom guy in Chicago.

Took over the production truck,

darkened the arena, I guess.

I don't even know what happened, and then disappeared.

This really is their black scorpion.

It sucks.

Unless the payoff is fucking zombie Randy Savage or something,

there's no way this is going to work out well, I don't think.

Adam Cole, I don't want to see on my TV anymore.

I don't care how nice a guy he is, I don't care how much Tony Khan personally loves him.

Bad overacting, childish segments, the size of my daughters.

I don't ever want to see him in a ring again.

Can't stay healthy.

If you like Adam Cole, he's doing damage to him because people seeing him like this, feel like this.

It's like seeing a loved one in the fucking and on their deathbed.

You know, I think they got into a little bit of a trap where with the MJF Adam Cole stuff, it started getting over and they kind of embraced the silliness of it and went as far with it as they well, I don't even know if as far as they could, but they went far with it.

They went farther than they should have.

Instead of making it serious and see where it would go, and now we're in this trap of bad WWES comedy, not even modern WWE, old WWES comedy and segments, segments that don't end.

The bad comedy, when Adam Cole finally turns on MJF and you think back to their friendship and their relationship, it's all been childish.

It's all been fake.

It's all been, hey, let's go get a camera crew and hang out on the water in a fake way and have fake conversations and talk on video screens.

Neither one ever, in a legitimate, realistic looking angle or match or whatever, ever saved the other from horrible doom.

All we remember is the goddamn bad buddy comedies from the wannabe film school students.

Orndorff was a heel at WrestleMania 1.

Turned babyface shortly after it because Piper and Orton turned on him, obviously, but also he fired Bobby Heenan, who was never even his manager at that point.

And he had like a one-year run or a little more than a year as a babyface.

In that one year, fans believed that him and Hogan were friends.

They had just been on the opposite side of things, but it had a year to play out and they were allies.

And Orndorf was on the side of the babyfaces.

He turned on Hogan less than a year and a half after he had been a heel,

and it was the biggest thing.

Literally, it was the biggest thing business-wise in the history of WWF up to that point.

Still the most successful house show run, maybe.

Actually, I don't know about that.

You may know better than me of that versus anything in the Austin era.

No, it's still, it was the most successful adjusted for

the difference in era.

But it was two adults, even though Hogan was a ridiculous cartoon character.

It was two adults that you believe probably had some kind of friendship having something where there's some heat there.

When Adam Cole turns on MJF and all of a sudden is a heel again,

it can't negate all of this.

Him being a dastardly heel will never feel believable.

And all of this won't feel believable because it doesn't.

Or the other option is

the other option is MJF turns and goes back to being a full heel,

in which case you have to ask what all of this is all for in the first place.

Well, and if they're banking on

keeping this going until Adam Cole is ready to wrestle or do something physical, then that's already bad because it's apparently going to be a while.

And unfortunately, MJF may not survive this pandering, childish.

Again, we said it all and we'll move on after I say this.

I'll recap what we said the other day.

If this MJF was the first MJF that people were exposed to on television, Would he be getting over, would he have gotten over like he fucking did

as the real MJF when we first saw him?

And our mutual answer was, fuck no.

The only reason that they like this MJF at all is because they loved the previous MJF.

And the longer we see this MJF, I'm afraid the more he's going to wear on people where it's going to diminish that.

Well, the other problem is they're chasing

any reaction.

So the crowds are smaller than they've been for AEW.

And the limited people that are there, there's a portion of them, you heard them on TV, that'll yell, Adam!

They're into that.

That's a very small part of the AEW audience right now, but they're the ones still going and making noise.

So they're catering to the people that want the cheat pops, that want to be in on it, but they're leaving everyone else behind.

And again, this is a time where you're seeing more and more of the people who attacked us non-stop for being AEW haters, whatever they wanted to say.

They're now saying everything that we've been saying for four years.

We told them it was going to happen.

It's now happening.

And people can't deny it.

And they're pointing to this stuff.

This MJF Adam Cole stuff.

There's a portion of the audience that loves the kangaroo kick.

There's a portion that really, really hates it.

And I think the separation of those two audiences for AEW is something that they may be banking on the wrong side of.

The only thing I have to disagree with you there is I don't think there is anybody out there that's been saying what we've been saying because they don't know all of those words.

They may have been saying part of what we've been saying, but not all of it.

Our vocabularies are much larger than the rest of the podcasters.

You should see some of the people out there.

When did Tony become a bad booger?

When did this happen?

How did this happen?

Maybe the problem is he has too much on his plate.

He shouldn't have done ring of honor or it was collision or too many belts or no.

These are all the problems we told everyone about from the beginning and everyone chose to ignore them because they, as you always said, they were smoking the hopium and the hope has run out and now reality is set in.

And look at the state of AEW.

They need one of those hope dividing rods where they can find them some hope.

That's right.

Speaking of running viewers off in droves, as I believe we were just talking about, the ex-Jericho appreciators, who are Mac Daddy, Cool Hand Luke, and Jake fucking Hager

wrestled a six-man tag against Hook and Pockets and Shibata.

Shibata, Shibata, Shibata.

And everybody on the babyface team had a belt of some kind.

Hook has his own belt that the whole gimmick is it's not recognized, but then they recognize it and pockets has his belt that tony gave him it's as big as he is

and shibata has a belt of the new japan strong open weight cruiser title or whatever the and

as i was fast forwarding apparently pockets brought out danhausen to do something standing around ringside and

they gave this 15 minutes of tv time before the baby faces won because as we mentioned,

the mascot is the boss's pet.

Did I miss anything?

No, you missed nothing.

AEW is the one missing things right now.

Now, there was an important development in the Adam Cole ongoing saga because he was in the back, and here came Roddy and Larry and Curly to confront him.

And Adam Cole told Roderick Strong to shut up because, Roddy, you're not my best friend anymore.

Deal with it.

And he stormed off.

And I'm wondering, can they get either Mr.

Rogers or Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keishin, possibly Mr.

Green Jeans, Lumpy Branham,

anybody to be the interviewer for this morning children's show?

Are they going to do kind of the romper room spelling segment?

You're not my friend anymore.

I don't want to be your friend.

It's either that or I want you at your best.

Everything happens over and over and over again.

Well, speaking of happening over and over and over again,

goddamn,

they should have rehearsed this one over and over again until they got it right.

I want to.

I want you to see if you can tell what my favorite thing was about this segment, or not favorite thing, maybe be the improper, the thing I most fixated on, and I couldn't take my my eyes off as it developed.

Christian Cage and Dino Douche and Nick Plain were doing an in-ring promo.

No, no, no, you can't say that because that's not right.

They announced it beforehand that it was going to be this

thing where Christian was going to be renaming or rechristening, I forget the way they put it, his family members.

Yes,

at some type of ceremony where he's christening them or whatever the case.

I guess you would know nothing about that.

And me, I was young.

I think it happened to me, but I was too young.

I was defenseless at the time.

But anyway, Christian does the promo, obviously, and he says he didn't lose the six-man tag, and old Nick didn't lose.

Dino lost, and that's unacceptable.

And since they're both his children, he's going to recreate them in his own image.

And he tells the fucking goofy dinosaur to take a knee.

And the monster, he won't do it.

And Christian is starting to do the whole thing where he berates him and just talks bad about him.

He's going to do it some more, but he finally gets him down on his knee and he changes his name from Luchasaurus to a name of strength and toughness and certain victory.

Kill Switch.

So now the lizard's name is Kill Switch.

But that's what Christian called his finish after he left the WWE, wasn't it?

Or was it?

Where did he get that from?

Or did he call it that in WWE?

I don't know.

That was definitely his move.

I thought it was the unprettier at one time or another.

Oh, yeah, that name sucked too.

Kill Switch.

I think it's because Vince thought that he was such an unattractive person.

Did he?

Did Vince ever say anything?

Christian?

Yeah.

You've never heard that story?

No, what?

Oh, God damn it.

Hold on one second.

Before we go any further with this,

Vince was convinced that when we got Christian and Edge,

Vince liked Edge, but he thought Christian was ugly facially, as an appearance, as a human being.

He said he was, he just, he looked.

Not necessarily was he ugly.

He was normal.

He just looked like anybody.

He didn't look like a star.

He just had a normal fucking face.

Unlike Edge, who looks like he has 80 teeth in his mouth.

Well, yes, but he's got a striking look, but

it went so far that they started joking around.

One of the fucking gimmicks was that they would

have Christian when he wrestled, they'd put a blue dot over his fucking face.

Oh, I do remember that.

Yeah.

Yes.

And then finally, he, you know, and that was unfair because Christian ended up looking as good.

He fitted in the brood and he looked just as good as anybody else.

But it was a Vince thing

that he, you know.

Well,

long hair was not his friend, Christian.

I think when he got his hair cut, he didn't look as uh

moopy or whatever you want to say.

Well, whatever.

But now you got Nick plain.

Can you imagine what Vince would have thought about that face?

Anyway, so Dino's not happy about being named Kill Switch.

And then Christian turns to Nick, and he drops down to his knee right away.

And he's, no, no, get up, son.

You're the son that I always wanted.

I love you.

And your name is the prodigy Nick Wayne.

And I wrote Mike Bennett wants his 2011 fucking gimmick back.

The prodigy Mike Bennett.

And then suddenly,

here comes Nick Wayne's mother.

And she is in a gimmick.

She's a gimmick now.

She's, I assume if he's 18, she's got to be,

let's give her 37, right?

At minimum, one would think.

I'm not trying to say she was a child bride, so we'll, we'll go with that.

I was thinking like 45-ish, but, you know, in that range.

But I'm saying

her age.

I'm not trying to say what, I'm trying to say the minimum age she can be is such and such.

I'm not trying to get anybody mad because I'm guessing her age.

Right.

She's got an 18-year-old son.

We're going to say she's 37.

She's dressed in a blue jean jacket with studs on it, like the Road Warriors' daughter, and patches, and she's got boots on.

She's dressed younger than Nick.

She's a gimmick.

If you want somebody's mother to come out and try to

get sympathy as you're yanking her baby away from her arms, do you want her to look like she was just down on more street corners than the fucking Dallas Times-Herald?

What the?

Does she think she's supposed to be a gimmick?

Has nobody told her what this, how this might work?

Did it bother you that she looked like a member of the Partridge family or something?

The way she looked didn't bother me at all.

The way she just ran out from the back into the ring and then Christian, who's this fucking dastardly heel who obviously saw MJF's early stuff and said, I could do that.

Christian all of a sudden goes, oh, what's your, what's what's your mom doing here?

What's going on?

All of a sudden, he completely changes his tone because this woman is going to hit the ring like she's going to attack him or something.

And then the segment got even worse.

Well, yes, because then he regained his composure and told her to get out of his ring.

And he knocked Nick's dad and verbally annihilated her, and she was fake crying.

And

then suddenly,

Dino, Kill Switch, stepped in front of her like he's going to defend her.

And now he's screaming at Dino and he slaps him in the face.

And it's going so long where he's screaming at him.

And the guy's not doing anything to turn or to not turn.

And finally, he shoves, double hand shoves Kill Switch.

The lizard fucking turns around and makes a sweeping motion with his arm and takes out Nick Wayne's mom.

I don't know whether she still has a fucking name.

And

she goes down

and stays there

and never moved

again.

Now think about this.

I'm about to explain to you what the fuck's about to go on here.

She gets knocked down.

By an or by an arm, a stray arm from a guy that got shoved three feet into her.

Christian tells Nick to get the chairs, and slowly he does.

And they drag her motionless, immobile body over to where they could put her head, the chair under her head.

And then they got the other chair.

And then Christian is telling Dino to concerto the body, but now he's conflicted.

He doesn't want to do it.

And then Edge, or not Edge, but goddamn Nick,

you do it.

Well, then what?

She's not breathing.

She is completely motionless.

And then finally, Edge's music plays.

So now we know he's got to have his music before he comes out to rescue a middle-aged soccer mom.

And he makes a comeback on Dino and Nick, and Christian escapes.

And then

mom is awake at that point and is crying in the corner.

And Edge concertos Nick

right in front of his mother.

So who's the fucking heel here?

Edge comes out to save the mother.

And instead of going after Christian, well, he went after him, and Christian bailed.

So instead of leaving to go after Christian, who is the instigator of all this, or the giant lizard

that might be a physical threat, he takes his fucking teenage kid and in front of his mother, he bashes the kid's head in with a fucking chair.

What the fuck is going on here?

This was an all-time bad segment.

This was the moment Christian, I think, officially jumped the shark with a lot of AEW.

Swear to God, I wrote Cage is not the smartest man in the company.

At one point when he was insulting

either Buddy Wayne or Nick Wayne's mom, Nick Wayne started smiling.

It looked like he had trouble containing himself because of how ridiculous all this was.

The teases with Luchasaurus, is that what anyone wants?

A babyface Luchasaurus run against Christian?

This thing was all.

Didn't they do this with Wardlow and MJF three years ago?

Yeah, I guess to an extent.

Well, look, Christian's obviously doing an MJF tribute act.

He's just, you know, updating it a little bit and getting more.

He just repeats the same stuff over and over again.

Your dad is dead.

Your mom is this.

You worked a job as a waitress.

What are you talking about?

This is the best you can come up with.

Well, since nobody's doing the MJF stuff anymore, he might as well do it, though.

They could have done Christian versus Edge and made it something that was must-see, and you couldn't wait to see these two interact.

Instead, they gimmicked it up.

And now it's just.

I mean, they already wrestled in like a six-man or whatever.

It doesn't mean anything anymore.

But also, the bad acting around the periphery, it just makes it and takes

the attention away from them possibly having an issue people would care about and muddying it up with all this other phony shit that who gives a shit.

Where was the mother?

Who is she hanging out with backstage that should just happen to be there?

This isn't in their hometown, is it?

She just happened to be there.

No.

No,

Chicago is that Tuttlein town,

not Seattle.

No, she was, she was, her son was there.

She's probably haunting him, following him.

He's probably going to have to get a restraining or maybe be emancipated.

He wrestles there.

Who let her in the back?

I mean, whether or not she wants to have a relationship with her son, he said, you're dead to me, and now he's hanging out with Creepy Christian.

Who let this citizen into the back and then let her run out

on the fucking entranceway?

She wasn't like at ringside raising a stink.

She ran out of the back like Riho.

And she waited until Nick was about to be rechristened or had been rechristened with his new nickname of the Prodigy and then his old name that she gave him.

And then she ran out because she couldn't stand no more.

You know, you can't give him a nickname.

I've been trying to talk to you.

I figured this is the place and the time to do it.

You know, Christian should have come out and said, okay, we're going to change your name to Big Dick Hurts.

And then she could run.

No, no, your father would hate you.

Nick, I love you.

Call me Big Dick.

That's Mr.

Hurts to you.

Seriously, from

the moment Adam Copeland came into now, do you want to see him and Christian one-on-one more or less?

Less.

That's what they do.

That's what AEW does.

Well, speaking of something, I'd like to see less, did you enjoy the match between Rush and Jay White?

It was fine for what it was, but it goes back to what I said earlier.

Although neither has been treated as badly as Jay Lethal, there is just a match to have a high-quality match for this tournament of high-quality matches.

There are two more heels.

Because Rush, I remember he gained great fame for completely eviscerating and neutering and castrating and castigating

Jungle Boy before that big four-way world title match where he just beat the piss out of the kid.

And I think LaFuckers and Goobers are heels, right?

That faction.

Are they?

Are they?

I mean, they were kidnapped and almost dead, and then they got rescued and escaped Mexico to come back with Preston Vance and just randomly appear with.

I don't even know what Jose the Assistant does at this point.

Well, because Jose has been a heel in the past, and he's interfered with things.

So

I mean, they don't smile, but I don't know if they're heels.

Well, if they don't smile, that's a pretty good indicator.

But point is,

Jay White versus Rush.

And we know who's going to win because it's Jay White.

And you can tell.

And who am I supposed to cheer for?

What dog do I have in this fight?

And Jay White won.

After Rush kicked his ass for the entire match.

What is this guy fucking hoist Gracie or goddamn Dr.

Death or somebody that everybody's scared to say, hey,

what the fuck, dude?

All right, what did you think

of the

Rene Moxley Good and RJ City

presentation to Timeless Tony Storm?

I completely fucking hated it.

I feel bad that I embraced and enjoyed Tony Storm when she first started doing this.

It's gotten so bad.

And so far to the bad side,

it's NXT level bad.

It's bad.

It's

and I feel bad.

I liked it when it first started, but they went way too far.

Now it's just

silly.

It's alienating their fans and the limited fans that go to their shows.

A good portion of them are reacting, but it's also a barrier of entry now for people who either were AEW fans or want to give them a chance because

this is not

good for professional wrestling.

They've also shot themselves in the foot again on

helping Toni Storm do this in the proper way so that it would get over and

that they're hampering their fans' enjoyment because

it would be she does it well, but nobody around her is doing the things they need to be doing, nor is she being instructed to do what she does well in a proper way.

And so everybody suffers from that.

And their fans would like it more if she'd been produced properly, and she'd get over better, and blah, blah, blah.

What they did was, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who are lucky enough to miss this, Renee Moxley goods on a stage with R.J.

City.

And R.J.

Sitty would be great, as I've mentioned, as a correspondent on the Daily Show, because he's snarky and whatever the fuck.

But on a supposed wrestling show, that is already silliness-filled from top to bottom, it's just he's just another joke, a joke that doesn't really ever get to either be as funny as he could be because

he wouldn't be funny in a wrestling context.

He could be funny, funny, but you're not going to get that on this show because they don't have good writers.

So the point is, where did he even come from?

Is he a fifth-grade schoolmate of the Buckaroos or something?

But send him to the Daily Show.

But they are acting, he and Renee are acting like it's an awards show.

And they're on stage and they're going to

announce, they're going to present the AEW Women's World Championship.

We already know who it is.

It's Toni Storm.

She won it.

We know that, right?

It's not like a...

Here we're presenting a new belt to the champion or whatever.

They're presenting it to her like it's the Oscar.

And then they do the envelope.

And the AEW women's title goes to

Timeless Tony Storm.

And then she gets up shocked and she goes and running toward the stage and she trips and falls and accepts the belt from Mariah May, the new stooge they've got that'll be a part of this.

And she,

of course, says, I had nothing prepared and then pulls the notes out of her cleavage.

And the best part of her acceptance speech was she, I want to thank Warner Brothers and I want to say especially Jack Warner.

That popped me.

She's got something.

They're wasting all of it

because by that she was getting whated

and they loved her three weeks ago.

But here's the problem.

Again, on this show, it looks more like Saturday Night Live.

If this was the only thing that was preposterous,

it would probably work because she does it well and you'd have one person doing silliness well.

But it has to be presented in the proper universe, in the proper context.

Why are the announcers cooperating?

The company announcers are cooperating.

The announcers...

If they're company announcers, they should be going, this woman is delusional.

They should be the voice of reason, the straight guy.

This woman is delusional.

She's lost her mind for some reason, whatever's behind this.

She thinks she's a Hollywood, whatever,

and put the attention on her as being a whack job.

And

because she's crazy, she's willing to go to any lengths to do this.

Like, whatever happened to Baby Jane, for fuck's sake.

But instead, they're all acting like it's normal and they're going along with it.

Imagine if

Oliver Douglas didn't find anything unusual on Green Acres.

He just accepted everything.

You've blown the fucking show.

Right?

So

they took something that she was doing well and they've completely

foobarred it to where everybody's going along with it and the people are getting tired of it already.

It's been six weeks because it's silly now.

Instead of look at her, it's all come on.

Am I arguing with the am I preaching to the choir here, Brian, to you?

I mean, it's awful.

I don't know what else to say.

The other problem is when you saw the beginning with RJ City and Sue Ellen Mishke,

Moxley Good, they're so pleased to be a part of this.

Like, the problem is, it's a bunch of stuff that makes the people involved in it really happy.

And it's terrible television.

RJ City could be used on this show in a number of ways that would be useful.

None of those ways have been applied.

This was a bad segment,

and we're just getting more and more frequent bad segments from AEW.

It's really, really bad TV right now.

Well, anyway, Anna Jay and Blue Sky and Ruby so-so had a big messy three-way, and not in a good way.

I watched this.

Well, tell me all about it.

You know, it's just Anna Jay's really good-looking, so I just wanted to watch her, to be honest with you.

I didn't care about the match or anything.

WWE should sign her.

She's got some height.

She's athletic.

She's willing to be goofy.

She can take bumps.

She's got some height.

She's got some weight, especially where you like it.

I'm serious, though.

WWE, she's one of the people WWE should sign.

I wouldn't say that about too many women of AEW, but I would say about her.

And hopefully send to NXT to learn how to wrestle.

Yeah, just like Jade.

Well, there you have it.

Did you hear about Triple H?

What he said about Jade?

Yes, that was on Twitter this fine morning.

He said, through no fault of her own, she's not where she should be as far as her development, but we're going to give her all the access to the tools to rectify that, basically, in paraphrasing.

And it's true.

He compared to the fucking...

Performance center and all the coaches and et cetera that she's going to have to whatever the fuck she was doing in a barn once a week was not and and then remember when she did the interview saying they said just hit this girl over the head with a chair but nobody told her how to do it yeah punk had to tell her what to do yeah well that

that may be part of uh what he was talking about with she's not as far along as she should be in her development if

anyway seriously you want to believe if you want if aew wants fans to believe any of these wrestlers are coming next they want to be there they should have them get in the ring and just go i know i've been wrestling all around the world but anna J is just so hot.

I had to sign here.

But that was the highlight of the show for me.

At least it would be plausible, right?

Yes, you'd believe it.

Yeah, you know, that does make sense.

This guy's marriage is on the rocks.

I can see why he did that.

All right.

Well, the main event of the evening: another tournament match.

And imagine this.

This time it's not two heels.

It's, well, it's a baby face against I don't really know what I don't think he does either.

Mark Briscoe versus Plumber Moxley.

But

even though these matches have a 20-minute time limit,

they started the match, the bell to begin the match.

They had seven minutes left on the air, and they were already saying that, well, Tony Kahn has.

Already made arrangements.

We're going to stay with this until the conclusion, no matter how long it takes.

Well, of course, my DVR didn't do that because I was watching it on Thursday morning

from a broadcast on Wednesday night.

So I pretty much had time to write down, I really don't want to watch them do this to Mark Briscoe, who is a finer talent and better person in every way than this garbage-minded fucking hobo from Cincinnati.

And again,

I know who's going to win.

And I know who could really be over with a goddamn audience and who I hope finally one day gets the opportunity to go to the WWE and they'll make him as hot as L.A.

Night, Mark Briscoe.

But I wrote those things and then the DVR froze because they can't run a live program and

something on this show went drastically over.

And I would bet on the MJF and Adam Cole business.

And I don't know who won, but I would assume it would be Deplumma.

De Plumma.

The Plumber received three points points for beating Mark Briscoe in maybe the better, maybe, I shouldn't say that.

The other matches were probably just as high impact and high star rating.

No, if Mark Briscoe was in this, it was automatically better than anything that was on the rest of the program.

But that's they put that where people, if they DVR'd the program, wouldn't see it.

And let me just apologize to Jace.

There's going to be some kind of humming in the background.

Oh, God, don't.

The listeners won't hear it, but Chase Nakarano will, and we do a great job at Arcadian Vanguard, so the listeners won't hear it.

You know what?

Some people here the other day said, I finally, for the first time, heard a noise behind Brian last when you talked about the chainsaws or whatever.

I think you hired those people to just go out there and rev those things up outside your window to take the heat off yourself.

You can't prove anything, but what I was going to say is, you know, another episode where you missed the match because of your DBR.

Do you think there's anybody at Warner Discovery who's saying, you know, if we make that deal for Raw, we don't have to worry about any of these timing issues anymore.

If we make that deal for Monday Night Raw, we don't have to worry about getting a phone call.

They need more time.

They're going to go over.

We have to change our whole schedule.

You have to wonder.

You have to wonder.

And there's going to be people out there that are going to say, oh, you guys don't know everything.

I'm sure that they're fine with Tony.

Tony's probably got it worked out, but he's Kayfabin.

He doesn't want to tell people because that would tell him the match is going to run over.

There's a reason why that the USA network, when Raw was scheduled for regular runovers, it was on the goddamn listing.

Wasn't it till 11.08 or whatever it was?

Yeah, that's right.

And there have been times in the past when they have

advertised in AEW, well, the first 30 minutes is commercial free or whatever, because that's something you need to work out ahead of time with the network.

But that's to advertise something to make people watch the show.

And an overrun,

USA Network used to advertise that because people, it made people watch the show.

It gave the next show a good lead-in.

I think they were doing that when UFC got that tremendous lead-in.

If Tony has an overrun that he can have anytime he wants,

then why doesn't he advertise it?

Why don't they make a point of saying that in the DVR, in the cable guides, dynamite is from 8 to 1008 or 1005 or whatever, and then advertise that.

We do this, right, to give you more for your money or whatever.

Instead of it happens,

sometimes it's only one minute or two minutes.

Sometimes it's three minutes.

I don't know how long this one was.

Did they cut them really short?

But

it's not advertised because they're calling from the truck as they realize that it may be close.

And

in this show, they started talking about, well, we're going to stay with that main event early on, like they were drastically long on time by the time they were halfway in.

That's why I believe it may have been either that first fucking match or the MJF Cole segment or both.

And he just panicked and said, give us as much more time as you can give us.

If somebody's willing to send a statement over from AEW,

from the production truck or the talent relations office or the goddamn legal department, whoever,

and deny this, I'd be happy to read it on the air.

Did you see the story that came out a couple of weeks ago before the NXT to CW news, or maybe right after it, that CW had offered the spot the Ring of Honor last year, or at least were willing to have a discussion, and Tony wouldn't.

He didn't want to upset Warner Discovery and take a show that's not even on their platform and put it on a different platform.

And that's why, well, that's why he's collected Ring of Honor, but he doesn't have time to put a new display case up.

So he's just got it in his closet for right now.

Well, that is where we are now.

And ladies and gentlemen, at this point, we will once again, for the second and final time today, time travel to that wonderful time when the ratings come in.

Let's go there right now.

Hey, Mr.

Nielsen.

All right.

We're going to get a concussion with all this time travel this week.

Good heavens.

That sounds like somebody wired the Sibian up backwards and put the positive on a negative and the negative on the positive.

Oh, excuse me.

Ooh, sorry, Doctor.

Well, we're going to be here.

We've traveled again because we're pumping this content out, baby, so quick that the Nielsen people couldn't keep up with us.

We had to take a break to close the show with the big ratings extravaganza because of the holiday weekend.

Everything's been delayed, and now we have the ratings

for last week's dynamite episode that

was more like nitroglycerin in that it was very volatile and blew up when they didn't expect it.

But Brian, you want to talk about some ratings?

I want to talk about some ratings.

I want to talk about some viewers.

You remember when

I drew the very clear and concise picture, the timeline and everything to where I proved that not only did O.J.

Simpson invent Stone Cold Steve Austin, but he owes me $5,000.

You remember that.

I remember he cost you that house in Knoxville that night.

I don't remember.

Well, and then I extrapolated on from there that because then Jake the Snake no-showed me because he got a shitty payoff and his wife got mad about it because O.J.

Simpson was on the car chase when he was defending the Smoky Mountain title in Knoxville.

And we didn't draw.

And as a result, Jake was gone.

And therefore, he would not have done what he did.

And when he came back in the WWF, he wouldn't have cut the promo and the blah, blah, blah.

And there would have been no Stone Cold Steve Austin.

But I've got another one now.

I got another one now.

CM Punk

is the Beatles, and I am Ringo Starr.

All right, let me know how you set this one.

I know the Beatles.

I love the Beatles.

I want to hear how you set this one up.

Because apparently, this is a big deal to the kids these days.

You know, they're these YouTubers and these influencers

and these and effluviers and various people that live their lives to get on the you know the old old spooky spooky boy up in canada he lived his life to get on youtube and and bleed and bleed and have subscribers and take your blood just blood everywhere but the thing is almost people they're trying

they're trying and that's the problem because you got to just be you got to just be the beatles and cm punk is the beatles because this is a big deal to the kids like I said, right now, as we sit here recording this

on YouTube,

not wrestling YouTube or a subcategory of you, but on the fucking YouTube.

This is how over CM Punk is, ladies and gentlemen.

The number one trending video on YouTube is CM Punk is back on the WWE YouTube channel with almost 5 million views on this two minutes alone.

CM Punk is back.

See the Epic Return, blah, blah, blah.

That's the number one trending video on YouTube, courtesy of the WWE, a billion-dollar corporate, multi-billion dollar corporation.

Now, number two,

number two

is apparently, and I guess trending, it's the pace that you're at right now.

It's not the total views, but it's like the, apparently the pace, because this number two

has 24 million views, but it's slowing down.

Apparently, a girl group

called Baby Monster

performing something called Batter Up.

It does have a couple of lyrics here.

I'm on a mission, don't need permission.

No matter what, I'm going to make my own decision.

I'm talking you, you want it too.

So written by

that's from Baby Monster.

And then, number three,

trending video on YouTube, one is from the WWE, a multi-billion dollar company.

Number two is Baby Monster, and

they got a check mark next to them, and apparently, somebody's dressed him up, so they probably got a record label behind them.

And number three, trending video

on YouTube right now,

Jim Cornette on CM Punk returning to WWE at Survivor Series.

No, it's not.

Get out of here.

Yes,

go to YouTube right now and look at the click on the goddamn deal.

I'm not talking about our YouTube page.

I'm talking about the trending thing on the whole YouTube.

I don't know.

Number one, number two, and number three.

And

obviously, we are neither a multi-billion dollar corporation nor a major record company.

We got the number three trending video on YouTube, which is an audio clip with Travis Haeckel's thumbnail.

And we're kicking the shit out of Hammer Jam upgrade uproar,

which is apparently number four.

What the hell is that?

I don't fucking know.

Hammer Jam?

The Clash of Clans Animation.

And then number five is Benavidez versus Andre.

That's not our Andre.

That's a Showtime boxing.

Yeah.

But CM Punk is so over and so hot that we get get the number three trending video on YouTube with an audio clip talking about what he fucking did.

I got to see where my trending thing is.

I think a lot of it's dependent on what you watch.

Right now, I have just my recommendations of chiropractors, Paul Revere, and the Raiders.

We're having people comment and tweet at me.

That's why I brought this up to you.

No, say it.

Hey, we were trending number four, and then we were trending number three.

We could trend number two.

Hey, watch out, baby monster.

Fuck, you will kick you right in a uterus.

Speak for yourself.

Well,

right in your uterus.

How many members are there?

How many members are there?

One, two, three, four, five, six of them.

Just you and me?

Well, you're going to go for all the uteri?

No, maybe, maybe we'll talk to them about this.

See if we can call this squash this beef.

There's six of them.

This beef that you started.

Well, fuck, who are they getting in the middle of me and punk on trending?

Nobody asked them to show up.

Hold on now.

Now, wait a minute.

Let's go back to what you started with.

We somehow went right past this.

I could understand the punk to Beatles comparison.

Maybe not the one I would use.

Well, one, two, three, four, five on the top 40 charts.

I was kind of going that way.

Right.

Punk's a big star.

How do you get the Your Ringo?

Where did that come from?

Well, because he was the least important member, but I do have a part to play in this number three somehow.

Does that make Tony Khan peep best?

You know, it makes Tony Khan peek worst.

It makes Tony Khan want to tear his hair out because

the television program that Punk would have been on

had Tony Khan not lost his mind and fired him instead of Jack Perry for being a smartass

would have been getting

not even as many views on network cable on TBS as we've gotten for this audio clip talking about him appearing on the Survivor series.

We're up to 300,000 pretty much already on that clip.

The TV program that they spend a lot of money to produce would not have had that many viewers if Jack Perry had not been a smartass and Tony Khan was not Dickless Pete.

Holy shit, I just pulled it up.

You're right.

Here's Baby Monster and here's Hammer Jam, and we're right in between.

Well, God, there you go.

The baby and the hammer.

We're in between the baby and the hammer.

Between a rock and a hard place.

Please, Hammond.

Stop the baby.

Stop.

Stop what?

Hammertown.

Oh, God damn it.

Anyway, it's twice some guy.

You keep doing that to me.

Well, anyway,

speaking of Hammer Time.

But we don't have the ratings yet for Collision Against Survivor Series, do we?

No, no, those are the holy grail of ratings right now.

Those are coming up, but we do have last week's dynamite that's finally been revealed to the public.

It had to be, these ratings had to be put out in a plain brown wrapper for those of you old enough to remember, when you had to order your smut through the mail like God intended it.

How much smut.

All right, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Hold on.

How much smut did you order through the mail?

I know where you were living.

There was a variety of smut that got ordered through the mail back in those days before you had just the unlimited smut machine called the internet.

And that's why they sent it to you in a plain brown wrapper.

That's how everybody knew when you got a plain brown envelope, you were ordering fucking diddle material.

All right.

Well, let's talk about Tony Kahn's diddling.

As a matter of fact, sometimes when you went to school back in those days, you stuck a plain brown wrapper

in with your school books so the other kids would think you were cool.

All right, when I was in second grade, one of the kids came in with these pens that if you turn them upside down, the girl in the bikini, the bikini, like the ink in the bikini, just like it goes away.

Yes.

I have a vintage one of those from the 50s with it.

It looks like Gypsy Rose Lee, but I could be wrong.

Yeah, this was vintage too, and then the teacher took it and said to the collection.

Well, goddamn her.

She could have, that's worth a lot of money these days.

Well, she wasn't a collector, but of course, Tony Khan is a collector of wrestlers.

AEW Dynamite Gym this past week.

Wednesday, November 22nd on TBS.

You're laughing already.

I'm having fun.

We're having fun.

Just like AEW.

We're having fun.

Everyone should have a good time.

Give me a number.

845,000 viewers on average.

And

Jesus, do they have these same people?

strapped to a chair every week.

It's 8.35, it's 8.25, it's 8.45.

They're consistent.

I'll give them that.

But where did they start and where did they wind up?

Well, let me make a note here.

According to WrestleNomics, this was Dynamite's highest total viewership since October 18th.

But in the key demo, 18 to 49,

viewership was the lowest since October 25th.

Okay.

So they're running off the

well, they're running off Uncle Dave's group.

The young kids and children, the 18 to 49ers, the

hip cats that swing and groove and jive.

Paint their hair red.

Paint their hair different colors.

It doesn't have to be red.

It could be one color one day and one color the next day.

Well, Jim, let's go to the ratings right now.

These were compiled by wrestling.

Sometime when the light catches it, it fucking, it just

looks like a kaleidoscope.

She's like a rainbow.

Oh, the colors of her hair.

They're everywhere.

It's like an old woman suddenly decided to look younger.

Well, let's see if Tony Kahn came in colors this week.

Quarter one.

That's because when he ejaculified, he blew a blood vessel.

Once again, these were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Oh, they were?

Quarter one, 8 to 8:15 p.m.

Once again, November 22nd on TBS.

Jay Lethal versus Swerve Streckland with picture in picture.

971,000 viewers.

Jesus Mary and Joseph riding a camel.

If they started there, the Big Bangers are coming back around.

The Big Bang must be doing a heck of a number, but they started there and their average is 845.

We are about to.

Is this going to be a slalom?

Is it going to plummet straight down or are we taking any twists and turns first?

We shall find out.

Here's quarter two, 8.15, 8.30 p.m.

The continuation of Lethal versus Strickland.

The Wheeler-Utah confrontation with Orange Cassidy Hook and Shibata.

Shibata, Shibata, Shibata, Bam, Bam, Pam.

The man whose brain returned.

Also, MJF and Adam Cole begin their confrontation with Samoa Joe.

How did it find its way back, I wonder, on its own?

They removed it, I guess.

Well, they had to remove it from the cord, but anyway.

So somebody was still in charge of it.

They didn't just leave it to wander around.

948,000 viewers.

Okay, that is a shocking surprise because one would have thought that they would have lost about 100,000 of those right off the bat.

And let me just say, that's also the high point in the key demo, 382,000 viewers.

And I think that may be the Swerve Strickland effect.

And again,

you know, they never keep a large number like that through the second quarter when they get it handed to them.

They always plummet.

So, bravo, Swervo.

Well, let's go to quarter three.

No more Swervo as we're now calling him.

Swervo is done now.

Well, let's go from Swervo to Swerley, the continuation of the MJF Adam Cole Samoa Joe live promo.

Ooh, boy.

An ad break.

Jake Hager, Matt Menard, and Angelo Parker versus Hook.

Shibata, the man with the returned brain, and Orange Cassidy with picture-in-picture ads,

862,000 viewers.

Okay, again,

I have to be completely honest.

I would have thought that after MJF and Cole, they would have lost more than that.

Maybe we're starting to see that erosion.

But again, with 971, 948, and 862 and an average of 845,

it sounds like that's entertainment is headed toward the end of the program.

Go ahead.

Well, speaking of 845, quarter four, 8.45 to 9 p.m.,

the continuation of the six-man tag match that I'm not going to name all the participants of again.

Yeah.

The Cole Roddy Strong Kingdom backstage angle, an ad break, and the beginning of the Christian Cage ceremony, or live promo, whatever it was,

859,000 viewers.

Okay.

Apparently, now what's coming up is either a plague of locusts or a goddamn

existential crisis like an asteroid hitting the earth.

Well, there was a big asteroid that night.

I can't believe

they're this far up in that first hour.

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

The continuation of Christian Cage's promo with Nick Wayne, Luchasaurus, Nick Wayne's mom, and eventually Adam Copeland,

and then the Matt Menard, Angelo Parker, Jay Cager, and a J backstage angle leading into Roosh

versus Jay White,

920,000 viewers.

Wait, what?

Okay.

Massive power failure on the East Coast is coming up.

I don't know how in the world they gained for that, but this ain't adding up.

Where are we going?

Three more quarter hours.

What the hell is going on here?

End an overrun.

End an overrun.

Quarter six, Jim, 9.15 to 9.30 p.m.

The continuation of Roosh versus Jay White with picture-in-picture ads, and then an ad break,

799,000 viewers.

Oh,

okay.

So 121,000 people all of a sudden said, fuck Jay White and rush.

I mean, but still,

they've still got 800,000 people watching this rotten program.

And the first five quarters were better than they had any right to be.

So if they can

keep around 800,000, but I'm still having a problem doing this math.

Where are they going from here?

They're going to quarter seven, I believe.

9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The Ricky Starks Big Bill Chris Jericho backstage angle.

The Tony Storm

ceremony, whatever that was,

and then the beginning of Ruby Soho versus Anna J versus Sky Blue

with picture-and-picture ads.

I don't mean to laugh.

But what do you expect here?

746,000 viewers.

Okay, well, again, this is not as bad as I had contemplated it would be because they only lost another 53,000.

That brings it to 100 and

wait a minute.

I can't do that much math in my head.

A hundred and seventy-four thousand

people left in a half an hour.

They've done that before.

Once again, we have an overrun here, but quarter eight, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

The continuation of Ruby Soho versus Anna J versus Sky Blue.

And the post-match,

the Wardlow A.R.

Fox backstage confrontation.

I forgot to watch that, by the way.

And then the beginning of Mark Briscoe versus Jon Moxley with picture-in-picture ads,

733,000 viewers.

The Moxley effect.

Seven-minute overrun, Jim.

10 to 10:07 p.m.

Mark Briscoe versus Jon Moxley.

Now, hold on.

Now, the overrun is always higher than the last quarter of their show because it's people tuning in to watch the program they think is coming on at that point in time.

And generally, that's,

you know,

a larger number, apparently.

So this should be larger, I guess, right?

Well, again, it's a seven-minute overrun.

688,000 viewers.

Oh, Jesus.

12,

45,000 more people said fuck Moxley, their main event guy, their big-time tough guy that drinks bones and eats blood.

So

as six, now get your calculator out there, Brian.

Don't start this again.

Come on.

Well, if they started with 971,000

and they ended up with 688,000, that is a loss of 283,000 people.

And what's 283

times

four?

283 times four.

Three million.

No, it's goddamn.

No, no, no.

1,132.

1,132.

So that would be 1,100.

So they lost

somewhere around 22%

or so or thereabouts of their original audience, I guess.

I don't know how to do that math, but G-Minnie.

Again,

what other program does this?

SmackDown doesn't do it.

Raw loses that many people,

but not that percentage because they're starting with so many more, and it's three hours.

It goes to 11 o'clock at night.

And we've talked about in days gone by, back when wrestling was supposed to be so boring, according to these people.

The main event, the last match, gained viewers.

Didn't lose.

You gained more.

You ended up with more than you started with.

And that was raw in the attitude era, blah, blah, blah.

And

this was a gift that they got the first five quarters they got until people said, well, fuck, is this what's going to be the, you know, the rest of the night?

Good lord.

You know what the saddest thing is?

I mean, it's all, again, it's all self-induced.

It's all Tony's own fault.

Tony thought he knew better than everyone.

I can't see anything right now to fix all this.

Because of the problem being where, you know, it's at the top.

Well, and remember, I said that, and J.J.

Dillon wrote about this when he wrote his book and said that he was,

you know, privy to the fact that

Flair and the Horseman asked him to go because he was also working as Dusty's assistant booker, but he was their manager.

He was in the office.

He was experienced.

Go to Jimmy Crockett and basically say, We think we need to win more.

We need to get more heat because

if we lose this thing,

it's harder to get back than it is to maintain it.

And I said, That's with wrestling.

It's harder to get something back once you've lost it than it is to maintain it.

The more you hot shot or the more in Tony's case, you just go.

I can't call this hot shotting.

I don't know what it is, weird shotting.

You're just losing more of it and losing more of it.

And

it's not easy to get it back.

Sometimes you don't.

And

this may be his point at this juncture.

We know the audience that will watch for free

is what this is.

And it hasn't grown.

It's shrunk somewhat slightly since the start.

They're selling fewer tickets.

I don't know what kind of pay-per-view attraction they've got, but sooner or later, these people are going to, you know, how many times can we spend $50?

But the just the

who's he got to sign?

Who's he got to get?

He just signed Edge, and

we're talking about the end of the fucking end times of the company.

He signs Edge, and they debut or re-debut Orton and Punk in the same night.

And,

you know,

we're trending talking about something the guy that he fired did

that got tons more attention than us talking about it.

I just can't get over how long people ignored what we said because you were funny or said things they didn't like about wrestlers they love.

And the excuses were the video game's going to save the company,

where the company's worth a billion dollars,

or

Tony's going to be able to get a a television rights deal that's going to be so astronomical it'll make it all worth it or they're going to beat Raw in the ratings

and it was not a quick thing

but if you were paying attention objectively you saw this all happening

and now we're at this point where we're questioning how could they save their company it's going to exist I don't mean it's like save it from going out of business

unless Tony's dad says enough and I don't think he's going to right now,

this is going to keep going.

Even if it's on, you know,

some online platform

television deal.

It's going to keep going.

It's going to keep going.

The direction is yet to be determined.

But I don't know.

It's just, it's AEW is such a disappointment because of that, because of what, you know, you all you said it early on, and I think it becomes more and more apparent as time goes on.

It was the opportunity.

This was the opportunity.

We may never get it again.

God bless Tony Kahn.

He was the wrong person to be in charge of this.

Yeah, he was the right person to pay for it and the absolute wrong person to give the fucking keys to and let him drive.

And, you know, that's why I didn't take it seriously from the start.

Because I heard him talk to me and I listened to the words he said.

This guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing and he doesn't realize it.

And $100 million apparently will buy you a lot of fucking smoke and mirrors.

But at some point,

when everything starts falling apart because you haven't put any fucking curbs or guardrails on it, and you don't know how you got there really anyway, and it was kind of haphazard to begin with.

And now, shit, how do I get out of all this mess?

And meanwhile, the

you know, the Uranus Corporation over there that's worth tens of billions of dollars is just publishing you with stars and

fucking professionalism.

You know, that's one of the things, too.

We've gone through a lot of audio recently.

Jay Snakerado or Jay Sharknado, as he's known, Incognito, has especially just for omnibus.

Where is Cognito and how often is he there?

It's in Ontario.

And he's been going through a lot of the stuff for omnibus season.

You know, so many of the things we both said in the early days, you know, I thought what was going to do in AEW was without even knowing too much about what Tony Connor was going to do, it's a rich kid being given unlimited funds, there's no serious management in place.

And look at the problems that have happened since.

But a lot of people wanted to turn the other way.

They wanted to will Tony to success.

They wanted to will their favorite wrestlers to getting American time to work their favorite style of matches.

No one's happy now.

Even the AEW fans are now split.

No one's happy now.

And how do we end this show on a happy note?

Have a second.

Well,

it's my show.

So

here's the thing.

Here's who's happy.

Punk is happy.

Instead of being on a show on Saturday night that didn't get as many viewers as our clip talking about what he did on Saturday night, God, he's getting millions and millions of YouTube views for walking out and waving to people.

And that's when he does something, people talk about it.

And then people talk about the people that are talking about it.

And they're goddamn going back and forth.

Everything Triple H said, he gets attention.

He makes people talk.

He starts conversations.

He creates debates.

And that's what you want if you're in goddamn any type of professional sport or entertainment business where you sell tickets or get people to watch television.

And that's what Tony couldn't figure out is he finally got one of them things,

one of them ratings people that he always wanted.

And he couldn't see that his fucking hand-chosen EVPs that he had fallen for because he had fallen into that bubble didn't want the guy around because he showed him up.

And so they fucked with him and pushed his buttons.

And he's not a person that likes that.

And then created all the gaga.

And then Tony was

so afraid of a confrontation of any kind where he has to be the boss and somebody might not be his friend because he's mean to him.

He let it go completely out of control.

And then finally.

When the guy, Punk said, fuck you, I'm going to front face lock the jungle jack off

and yelled at Tony,

his little romper room contingent, one, see, you got to get rid of him.

So he fires him, keeps the rest of them,

and now you've got one guy suspended, Jack Perry.

He's not even on the television, and nobody gives a fuck if he comes back.

The two other EVPs that got in the original dressing room dust up are so not over now, and people are so bored with them that they're having to take time away and come back with a new gimmick and a faction because nobody gives a shit.

And all of their friends still have jobs where we have to look at them on television just because they went to school with the buckaroos and they do no ratings.

This is what Tony got, and this is the people that Tony was telling me that he was going to be in business with when I talked to him in 2018.

And I knew this day would come.

I just didn't realize how long $100 million

would bluff you.

Well, Jim, before we completely bluff out, real quick, here's Tony Khan talking to BBC reporter Steve Herman

about CM Punk returning to WWE.

Let's hear what Tony Khan says.

I have to ask you about CM Punk.

Of course, he was at all in and his last appearance for AEW was at all in at Wembley Stadium.

We've now seen him appear at WWE Survivor Series at War Games.

Were you surprised to see him there?

Can't talk about that, nor do I think it's the time or the place, but I appreciate you asking and I'm very excited about AEW all-in Wembley Stadium.

Not to dodge up your question, it's just not something I can legally talk about.

Not something he could legally talk about.

What would be the legalities that would stop you from answering a question?

What do you think?

Were you surprised that he was at at the Survivor Series?

You know what?

I don't even think a judge's gag order would have prevented Tony Khan from saying,

unfortunately, our relationship has come to an end, but I wish CM Punk all the best in his future endeavors.

But I can't legally talk about what I think about him showing up in another place.

And obviously, he's been so prepped by someone about how to answer any of these questions because the real answer is, Tony, what did you think?

I shit my pants.

I think I shit myself, pal.

And by the way, by the way,

he still snuck in, but it's going to be great at Wembley Stadium, but I can't legally talk about anything else.

All righty, it is my program, isn't it?

It is.

Well, it's over with.