Episode 597: Irresistible Force

My childhood was tough.

I didn't grow up in a warm, supportive home.

So the trauma I went through led to something called toxic stress.

But it's going to be different for my son.

I'm giving him the protection he needs to defend against it.

Learn more at first5california.com.

Like the midnight and the rock and roll.

He's in a fight for wrestling soul.

Using a racket and some mind control.

He's

The keys to the future held by the past.

And with tag team partner, Barion Last.

He sends this message out by podcast.

Jim Cornette.

Well, he's never fake a phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to perform

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

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

Today, we're going to talk about an irresistible force, Gorilla Monsoon, and an immovable object, AEW's ratings, all that, and so much more joyous talk and joining me in all this.

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

Co-host to you.

He's the irresistible force of podcasting, and here he blows.

Be great, Brian last.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Swami's Pappy, whatever you used to call me.

Another action pack week.

Some great wrestling history talk, and the listeners have really been loving that lately.

And of course, the contemporary thrashing that they have all become so used to, where we have no choice but to, I guess, say the truth.

Yes, well, there's choices.

Other people, people have no problems lying out their assholes.

I saw someone say,

and I don't want to do Dynamite now, but they said, man, Dynamite did a really good job of following up on stuff from the pay-per-view.

And I'm like, that Wardwell follow-up?

That was a good follow-up?

Him just walking out there with Don Callis and standing there.

But whatever.

We'll get to Dynamite later.

Well, we're going to follow up on all kinds of things but uh

hi it's ragweed season down here brian i got the squishy in my ear and i'm i'm croupy and drippy but i'm going to try to have the energy i'm setting the bar low the expectation lowered expectations at the top of the program so that i can exceed whatever meager standard I've set for myself.

But right at the top, I want to wish happy birthday to the Queen of Castle Cornette.

Stacy's birthday is today as we sit here and speak.

Some festival music?

What kind of festivals do you go to?

For Stacey, I'm sure she would appreciate it.

She actually likes good music, unlike you.

Anyway, as we sit here and speak, the people may not hear it for a couple of days, but it's her birthday today.

So I want to make sure to acknowledge that.

And you can send her, whenever you hear this, you can send her greetings or well wishes positively, well, posthumously, I guess, posthumously would not help her any.

Belatedly is the word I was trying to say, a belated fashion.

Not trying to tip off anything that may happen over the weekend here.

Hey.

But anyway, nevertheless, an update from what I said a couple of days ago, I said that The thank you, fuck you, buy t-shirts were on sale half price on clearance because we're making room for new stuff that's coming.

And at the time, I didn't know that they were pretty much sold out.

So a lot of people may have got pissed off.

But

there are 12 small.

Thank you, fuck you buy t-shirts.

If you want to get some for the kids,

there are 12 smalls still available at half price.

What is that?

$13

or whatever at jimcornet.com.

And then we're going to have the big announcement next week about the holiday sale and what all that's going to entail,

including a brand new coveted item that everybody's going to want to have before their lives are over.

Don't give them any more hints, Brian.

What would you like to have before your life is over?

I don't know.

I'm having such a good time right now.

A giant library of my very own.

Well, I hear that some some cities may have their

municipal libraries and things like that on on sale cheap with the way things are going these days you might investigate it maybe des moines has a good library you could pick up for half price i'm not going to iowa i'll tell you you know what i'd like before i'm done some peace and quiet Good luck.

That's what it, but the rest of the world will not cooperate with that.

Right here in the cocoon, in the bubble over here, it's all right.

But when you

evade the perimeter, it gets louder.

Did you hear the big news, Brian?

Oh, it was massive.

The biggest news I've ever heard.

The big news that

Jeff Jarrett's former babysitter has gotten engaged.

Did you hear about this?

Yeah, unfortunately, you can't escape this nonsense.

Yeah, I've heard about it.

Well, I thought, and the only reason I don't know anything about,

I've seen Taylor Swift pose for pictures on video.

I don't know.

Why do they show the people, the celebrities in front of a logo background?

And it's a video camera and they're posing.

Fuck it.

And besides that, even the still cameras, they have shutter speeds of one one thousandth of a cunt hair.

In this digital world, you can't take a bad picture now.

Back in my day, we used to have to work at it.

Why are they just standing there posing?

Can't they just move about normally and you take a picture of them the way it comes?

That's a question to you, Brian.

What do you mean?

What do you think?

What is this?

This is your takeaway from the Taylor Swift engagement announcement?

Well, no, it just came to my mind that the only thing I know about Taylor Swift is that she walks out on these fucking red carpets and poses for people.

I don't know what she sings.

I don't know what she writes.

And I know she's engaged to a football player of some description.

But the one thing I do know about her, it was funny, somebody retweeted that the other day, is that she was Jeff Jarrett's babysitter like 20 years ago or whatever.

Because

Jeff lived in Hendersonville, and apparently,

you know, that's where all the country music stars used to live back in my day.

So apparently that's still a tradition.

She was an aspiring country musician musician or whatever that

lived in Hendersonville.

Like most talent, her career really took off once she stopped working for the Jarretts.

How?

Oh!

I wish your sound filter hadn't goddamn

filtered out all of my sound effects.

I can't play no more.

I would have played some kind of goddamn.

screaming.

Hold on.

What?

Didn't it?

Something used to scream.

Yeah.

Does that work

that worked i heard the big scream well there you go

but anyway tara swift leaving the jarrett estate that one fateful day

what did she see that made her run out in fear and write songs endlessly

songs but think about this think about this now

Taylor Swift was Jeff Jarrett's babysitter.

And

well, for his kids, she didn't babysit.

Well, he paid her.

He didn't make the kids pay.

No, he didn't make those kids pay for their own babysitters until they were like 12.

So technically, she was his babysitter.

But Taylor Swift, Jeff Jarrett's babysitter, and Sputnik Monroe's son was Jerry Jarrett's limo driver.

You never know who you're going to fucking

run into that's going to.

And where did it was it Jerry Jarrett he lived?

Was it across the lake from Johnny Cash or next to Johnny Cash?

What was it?

That's before he built the big place.

When he built the big place, he didn't live near anybody.

He was on 100 acres of a fucking mountain with a goddamn 18,000 square foot house with a, no,

that may have just been the ballroom.

No, I think it was 18,000 square feet all in total with the gold fixtures in the goddamn bathrooms.

When he lived on Old Hickory Lake.

He had a house.

It was across the lake from Johnny Cash's place that I I got to see all those years later when I took Rick Rubin over there and had lunch there.

And he was next door to Bobby Bear.

No, he was next door to the house that George Jones and Tammy Wynette lived in briefly.

I don't know which one kept it.

And down the street from Bobby Bear.

Apparently that George Jones house just dripped liquor.

The walls, you touched them, and liquor would be still right out.

You remember the song that Jimmy Hart thought he could actually have a hit with at one point?

Which?

Tammy, Why Not Give George Another Chance?

You know, that's actually one of those Jimmy Hart songs I don't know.

I don't know if he ever actually recorded it, but he sang me some lyrics one time in a locker room, and it was hilarious.

We got to put Mark James or somebody in Memphis on that to find out if Jimmy ever committed that to.

I wrote a song about Barbara Streisand's nose and George Schoon's and Tammy Why Not.

What other celebrities was he writing songs about?

He had high hopes for We Hate School and it did get played on the radio in Memphis.

And also I was at a radio station appearance with him in Memphis when they did play Barbara Streisand's nose at least once.

Which was later remade into Lance Russell's nose.

Well, actually, no, it was Lance Russell's nose was first, and then he changed it because he thought he could get it on the chart.

See, he was trying.

And We Hate School was probably the closest shot he might have had because it was very Rick Springfield-y.

The problem is with We Hate School, let alone the Terry Funk cover version when he was like 40.

But the problem with We Hate School is like the video is awesome.

It's like wrestling awesomeness.

Coco Beware on guitar.

It's ridiculous.

But there's no kids.

There's no one young.

Like Jimmy Hart's the lead singer and he's like 45 at that point or whatever.

You needed someone young for that song to really work.

Well, but Jimmy was

50-year-old guy singing, We Hate School.

Jimmy was forever young.

See, that's the thing.

Look at him now.

He looks the same as he did 40 years ago.

Those notorious school haters, Jimmy Hart, Coco Beware, and the Turk.

Yeah.

But yeah, but Jimmy, Jimmy could remember when he hated school.

But yeah, but it,

they, the 45 sold at the matches.

He got it played in Memphis, I think, probably in Jackson.

And he hits her song to Rick Springfield, Eat Your Heart Out, Rick Springfield.

Eat your heart out, Rick Springfield.

Cause she's my girl and she always will be the only girl for me.

Ain't no rock and roll singer going to take her away from me.

How about that?

So that means that's pretty good.

That was spot on.

So that means Jesse Hart in the song, His Girlfriend, is Jesse's girl.

He's Jesse?

Well, he says, doesn't he like improv game like, Jesse girl's my girl.

Like, doesn't he say that?

But see, that's the thing.

You can interpret it any way you want.

That's the

good thing about deep songwriting, you know, interpreting the song.

What did the Beatles mean?

I got a song now.

I'm going to answer Kajagugu.

I'm not shy.

It's my new song.

And I have

a test press.

Flock of Seagles, I got a song for you.

It's called I Walk Slow.

I have a test pressing

of Jimmy Hart singing

Son of a Gypsy, which was Jimmy Valiant's entrance music that that and that, that actually got played in heavy rotation on, I was at FM 100 in Memphis, whatever.

Smoke a jotsuit!

Yeah!

There you go.

But Jimmy Hart's, because Jimmy Hart wrote it, right?

So Jimmy's version was the ballad of handsome Jimmy.

And

he did the test present and then Jimmy Valiant.

recorded his version and what he did with it, or possibly what he did to it, depending on your point of view.

And then they sold, I know, in the thousands of the 45s, and it was all over the radio in Memphis for a while there.

Hey, you know, this probably isn't the time, but it probably also may be the only time.

I don't have it in front of me.

I'm actually looking for one of the listeners has been sending in a question to Corney DriveThru at gmail.com.

He sent it in a couple of times.

I've been meaning to ask you about it, but we haven't had a chance about Len Rossi's The Wrestler's Prayer.

Oh, good Lord.

You know what?

I don't have one of those.

And I

have seen the lyrics transcribed

somewhere over the years in one of my books, but

it was, from what I understand, sort of a maudlin type of thing.

Wait, you've never heard it.

Really?

No, I've never heard it out loud.

I've read the words and I know that he recorded it.

Hold on, let me see real quick.

A little side.

Is it on the internet somewhere?

I think it may be.

Let's see.

Oh, good lord.

Can I play it from here?

Let's see.

Oh, this is someone actually filming themselves playing the record.

Oh, good heavens.

That's

completely other song.

Hello, Lord.

I thought perhaps I might make my reservations now

for that big main event in your arena.

I heard from your promoters that this would be two out of three

for the neverlasting time.

I hear that some of the all-time greats

are out there with you now.

Men like Gorgeous George, Tarzan Hewitt,

Don Cortez,

Larry Shane,

Ike Aekins,

and oh yes, Lord,

the one I knew best of all, my partner,

Tex Robin.

I know that throughout.

He pauses for a moment.

This is your first hearing of this.

That's Len Rossi, the wrestler,

singing or speaking there.

What are your thoughts initially?

Well, and

this was sold for the people going, who are these people?

Lynn Rossi was the top babyface for Nick Gulis in Nashville for years.

And he was a straight ahead babyface wrestler in great shape, you know, scientific wrestlers, they used to say, complete opposite of Fargo, who was also a huge babyface, which is why they never liked each other.

And Lynn Rossi never got into Memphis, but Fargo did get into Nashville.

Nevertheless,

it was made in Nashville, and all those wrestlers that he was referring to were guys that had been big in the Gulis territory over the previous 15 years and had died for one reason or another.

So that's where we're at so far.

And

I just, God, I can't imagine the thought that anybody would want to take this home and listen to it.

This is from Miracle Records in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Oh, I bet it was.

Let's go back to Len Ross.

And it's the same decade as,

you know, son of a gypsy, Jimmy Valley.

This is like what, 19.

Well,

I don't know.

It could have been the late 60s.

Oh, okay.

I thought it was early 70s, but you may know better than that.

It could have been the late 70s.

Well, see, he had his car wreck in 1972.

So I'm thinking it's late 60s or thereabouts, but it's the, yeah, and he's, it's country music because they're all in Nashville.

And

at various points over the years, the country music stars and the pro wrestlers in Nashville

intersected and their social circles connected.

So that's why a lot of the guys,

for good and bad, ended up making records and were thinking they could make records.

Like the guy record company in Bowling Green.

These men will make a big hit with you

just like they did here on earth.

There are a lot of my friends still here with us, Lord.

So please

take care of them

because

someday they will appear in that golden ring of yours

men like Jackie Fargo

Mario Moron

Joan Bill Sky

Mr.

and Mrs.

Corska Joe

Danny Dusick

Pat Malone

Eddie Graham

Greg Unco

and oh yes Lord

A-Stack Calhoun

let me stop it for a second such an interesting list of of people he just said.

He put someday all these people are going to be dead, and he put Fargo at the top of the list.

He said Fargo, Ray Gunkel, Eddie Graham.

So obviously two promoters at that period of time.

Well, but here's the thing.

That places it even better

because those were the guys that

were or had been in the recent past.

the top baby faces in

the Tennessee territory.

And in the case of Danny Dusick and Pat Malone, beloved figures in the office behind the scenes and et cetera.

So someday they'll call them up.

But yeah, but he put, so that's Gunka.

Gunkle got called up in 72.

So I think this is late 60s off the top of my head.

Yeah, what bad luck with some of those names.

The same in 72, he goes off the road and Gunkle dies.

Eddie Graham was.

in and out of the Tennessee territory

when he was first establishing uh Florida and, you know, really trying to establish relationships because he not only worked Georgia, but also he worked Tennessee for Gulis Welch, and then later on had a close relationship with Jerry Jarrett to send him guys from Florida.

So,

all those names were people, again, that the territory fans would know at that time.

Mario Milano had just been there, or maybe he was still there when this came out.

He was a major star.

Yes, and he and Jackie Fargo and Mario Milano, they were a big big tag team at the feffer files

i found

jackie and don and we'll talk about this the fargo's in a future episode when i have more time to sit down and look at these notes and cross-reference shit but jackie and don were kind of on the outs in like 64 65 he wrote to feffer and said Use your pull with Buddy Fuller.

I want to keep teaming with Mario Milano instead of Don coming back in.

You know, fuck Don.

But Fargo and Milano were a popular tag team.

He's pretty big, you know.

So please, please save him some room.

And I expect many of my fans will be there too

to watch men like Lester Welch,

Corey Combs,

Angel,

and many, many more

in the most beautiful arena of all,

your heaven.

So you see, Lord, we all know that someday we will receive your call.

And oh yes, please, one more request.

When a champ, Luth S, comes by, please

treat him with respect.

Because

if every man would follow in his footsteps,

The world would be a much better place.

And after all, Lord, he knows

and you're the greatest champ of all

this is lynn rossi lord

and in closing i would like to say

if i may

please

save a dressing room

of heavenly splendor

for me

oh

yeah don't forget me it's lynn rossi yeah now that i put thez over maybe also he'll book me

Oh my God.

Jim, is there a territory that the wrestlers or the promoters just, they treated Lou Fez better than Tennessee?

Even though he ended up running against Nick Ulis in whatever, 76,

it seems like they held him in such esteem in that territory.

Well,

they did.

Part of it was, well,

Nick, as much esteem as Nick ever held anybody in or any of the wrestlers,

the world champion was important to them because the NWA was important to Nick.

Whereas,

I guess what I'm trying to say is, Nick,

remember, I've talked about he had it plastered all over his interview desk and his TV sets and his newspaper ads and anything.

The only sanctioned NWA wrestling, it was a big deal for him to be in that club.

Roy, I believe, and maybe later on, Jerry Jarrett

had respect for Thez as a wrestler himself rather than just the representative of the NWA.

Because Jerry Jarrett always talked about how when he was a kid seeing these matches, Thez always came in in a suit with a nice bag.

He looked like the champion.

He carried himself like the champion.

He was a star.

And so Jerry, I think, along with probably Roy before, had a soft spot for Thez, not only because he was a shooter, but also because he was a

benefit to the business.

But Nick, it was more,

he probably didn't want to pay Thez the money they had to pay him when he was NWA champion, but he wanted to be part of the club.

And Lord, see, Lou Thes, just do me a favor, treat him with respect because he'll stretch you.

That's yeah.

You know what?

The rib of it all, Cora Combs.

She made it another 40 years.

She outlasted all of them.

Well, there was the wrestler's prayer.

We'll talk more about Memphis music again in the future.

How did we, what led to that?

What happened to Jimmy Hart?

Talking about Jimmy Hart songs.

Oh, well, you can't overlook the Memphis music without poo-poo.

But speaking of big events, Brian, I heard there was a milestone took place recently in the in the world of pro wrestling and

the

world in general, the world now that he's shaped in his own image, it's all gone to shit.

Vince McMahon's 80th birthday took place at a big swanky, fancy dan type of location in New York where they had the limousines and things, and people were seen.

There were witnesses to the attendees of the birthday party.

Yeah, this became a bit of a story.

A lot of listeners were sending over, you know, what does Jim think of this?

So why don't we just talk talk about it now?

August 23rd, Vince McMahon apparently threw himself an 80th birthday.

I don't know if you call that a gala.

Wait, he threw it for himself?

No, that's sad.

Who else?

Even for a purported head pooper.

That's sad that he would have to throw his own birth.

Are there no, he's got, it's just the daughter,

the son, the son-in-law.

Can somebody toss Vince a little soiree?

And again, maybe it's not the the case.

Maybe someone else threw him this really big, expensive party.

But well, certainly his son and daughter had to be seen there, weren't they?

As of

the various lists I've seen that list people who were in attendance, no one has cited Triple H or Stephanie McMahon as being there.

No, Linda McMahon, obviously.

I don't know about Shane.

I thought I could have saw something with that, but I don't see it in front of me as I'm looking.

Would anybody have recognized Linda?

Or would they have just thought that it was a figure from the wax museum that had gotten overheated you know there's almost like a whole side story you could do of like Vince and Linda as like this international

diamond thieves like they change their look and they get on planes and they have these different looks every time you see them and they look crazy But I thought the idea was when you're trying to change your look so you don't attract attention, that you don't change your look to a look that attracts a lot of fucking attention.

Hey, I saw a video of Vince purportedly leaving the party.

And again, it seemed like it was all in the middle of the day.

But it was him shuffling, or maybe it was just him leaving a restaurant, and he looked awful.

Forget about the shuffle and he can't walk.

The hair.

It's now obvious.

It's a purposeful look.

I mean, that's a choice.

He said, Give me the Sputnik Monroe.

Give me this giant flash of gray hair in the middle of all this.

completely black dyed hair.

His hair was never that black when he was young.

So it's a choice.

By the way, choice.

Right here, right now, I have sent you video of the skunk in my backyard chasing the baby deer.

And can you admit right now that's the biggest goddamn skunk you've ever seen in your life?

No, I just saw the video of Vince leaving this party or walking out to the other side.

I don't mean the two-legged skunks.

I mean the four-legged skunks.

That was the biggest skunk I've ever seen.

I've never seen a skunk that big.

And it chased that deer and didn't even really have to run that hard.

The deer just would turn around and flee.

And white from one end to the other.

It's like a

some kind of mutant skunk.

But anyway, back to the other mutant skunk.

And we'll see what we can do by getting some footage up with commentary at some point in the future of this amazing backyard battle.

But Vince McMahon, 80th birthday party.

Of course, he has the company 14th and I

no longer a part of WWE, although still a shareholder, and I believe it's still like just under 5%.

May not seem like a lot, but it's a lot.

Here are some of the names that we know were at his party.

The Undertaker, as well as WWE legend Michelle McCool, were at the party.

Well, I'm sure they came as a matched set.

John Cena,

who seemingly dresses like Vince now,

he was at the party.

Was he wearing one of the gangster suits with the pinstripes and shit?

Or what?

Seen reports that JBL,

as well as Gerald Briscoe, were at this party in New York City.

There is a photo making the rounds in this photo from the party, allegedly.

It is Drew McIntyre in a tuxedo, Seamus, Jerry the King Lawler.

What?

Titus O'Neill

and the Miz and Maurice.

Okay, well, we'll back up.

And I I didn't mean to say what, like Jerry Lawler would never lower himself to go to Vince McMahon's party.

I didn't know the king was flying all the way to New York for birthday parties these days.

Everybody else, and Titus O'Neill, I didn't know,

you know, he was on the Vince's inner circle.

The others don't really surprise me.

It may be Miz.

He's one of the new guys.

No wonder he's had the job for so long.

He mastered the art of Vince kissing years ago.

And by the way, that photo emerged apparently because Jerry Longer sent it out on social media.

And there's a little tag at the bottom that it was almost like part of the photo.

It says 80th.

So people are assuming that must be where it's from.

I have footage here.

Well, but anyway, I was hold on.

I was just going to say that the rest of the guys, especially Gerald Briscoe, he's been around him with him,

worked for him for 40 years.

And Undertaker and Cena have expressed their admiration for what he's done for them.

So I'm pretty sure they couldn't say, nah, Vance, we ain't going to come to your birthday party or whoever arranged it.

I'm pretty sure more people

than the fans realize talk to Vince McMahon all the fucking time.

But here's

footage.

Someone on Twitter named Danny tweeted out.

It is apparently just a van pulling up and people running out of it midday in Manhattan to go to this party.

Michael Cole, Booker T,

Teddy Long,

and Dave Kapoor, aka Ranjan Singh.

I think that was like a writer.

I don't know who he is under either of those names, to be honest with you.

I think that's like a writer who became a manager, but I could be wrong.

Also,

it's nice of Theodore.

Drew McIntyre was quickly getting on the bus in a bad attempt to avoid being seen.

Now, again, we're hearing about these names that were there.

It doesn't mean that names that we're not hearing weren't there.

Again, we brought up Triple H and Stephanie.

We haven't heard that they were there.

We haven't heard that they weren't there.

So they may have snuck in the way some of these people apparently did.

I was about to say, you know, Gemini, do you want to be, was it like a crush of people waiting to assault all of them if they didn't sneak in because they're such massive celebrities?

Or were they just not wanting anybody to know they went to Vince's birthday party?

Yeah, I'm not sure.

And that's a question I'm gonna ask you in a second, but real quick, as a follow-up, because this was apparently in the paper today.

McMahon, cited for reckless driving, applies for a pre-trial program.

Stamford, Vince McMahon, the co-founder and former CEO of WWE, applied for a pre-trial probationary program at the arraignment for his reckless driving case Tuesday.

McMahon appeared at State Superior Court in Stamford on Tuesday, where he applied for the accelerated rehabilitation program.

If granted, McMahon could see the charges against him dismissed.

McMahon's court appearance comes after his July arrest.

In connection, he was arrested?

Did we know?

Well, he was.

Hold on now.

Hold on now, Cowboy.

I think when you're given a

citation for whatever the fuck he was,

I don't remember the traffic offense, but going too fast, being unsafe, whatever.

You are being charged with that.

I don't know whether that may be a misprint or some mistake in their reporting.

It's technically an arrest, but I don't think he went to jail.

And someone see if there's a mug shot.

That's what we need now.

Oh, good.

You want to see that after you've seen what he looks like when he's presentable?

McMahon's attorney, Mark Sherman, said the application, if granted, could give McMahon the chance chance to guarantee a complete dismissal of the case, but still allow Vince to convey contrition and concern for the other drivers, which is his top priority.

That's a quote.

And it goes into the accident report there, and notably, the crash occurred just hours before the announcement of Hulk Hogan's death.

He was cited for reckless driving, and following too closely, resulting in an accident, he was released on a $500 bond.

He was arrested.

Well,

whoa.

Whoa.

Now, how come nobody said that before?

Clean out in plain language.

I'm not sure.

In an accident report, state police say the crash happened at 9:22 a.m.

July 24th.

They said McMahon was driving his 2024 Bentley Continental, wow, in the right lane of the Merritt Parkway.

also known as Route 15, north in Westport when he collided with the rear of a 2023 BMW 430 and then with the median guardrail.

Police said a 2020 Ford fusion driving on the south side of the highway hit some debris that had been projected over the center median.

They said that vehicle then collided with the guardrail on the northbound side.

I told you two things.

I told you this is a shit fucking road.

And everybody who responded to our clip on it said the same thing.

And that was the person that was allegedly the same name as one of the WWF employees going to work.

McMahon is next scheduled to appear in court on October 16th.

So we'll follow up on this story.

But the birthday.

So

released on Bond.

He was on Bond when he had his birthday party.

Well, yeah, but nobody made a big deal out of it.

Hey, we're going to take you in there.

I would love to see video of that.

Can we, anybody request some kind of body camera footage of cops telling Vince McMahon they he had to come with them?

That would be pay-per-view material.

That's interesting because I mean, you think about the fact that the cop was following him already, apparently, looking to pull him over.

So he was driving like a maniac for a while.

And you've talked in the past about his tendency in the best of times to drive like a maniac.

So he was going to get pulled over.

And then this accident happens.

He was arrested.

That's the part that's, you know, again, we didn't hear that previously.

I mean,

are we just dumb, Brian, and we missed this completely?

Or I thought he got ticketed for this stuff and fucking had to go to court and explain himself.

No, he got charged and released on bond.

So he was arrested.

But back to

this arresting issue, this party.

Yes.

What do you think?

What kind of bird don't fly?

A, is there any issue in your eyes with people going to a party for Vince McMahon, considering the charges that are out there?

And again, it involves people that work for the company and possibly even talent.

Should talent shun him?

Should fans have a problem with people who are around Vince McMahon now?

Again, if you have a problem with that, there's a lot of top people in that company talking to him all the time.

Some of us think there's certain people sitting near Gorilla who are only there because they're Vince's eyes and ears.

What do you think of this, the idea that people have a problem with anyone attending this party?

Well, it's ridiculous because,

goddammit, these are people.

And again, remember, Vince is, Titus O'Neal is the one that Vince suspended for some negligible reason.

And then they had a hoopla and then they made up, but I didn't know he became like one of the family.

Like,

you know, there's Titus O'Neill with Willie Gilsenberg and...

Phil Zacco.

But these are people that have worked with him for years, have known him for that credit him with a lot of what, if not everything,

that they have.

And,

you know, I'm saying he didn't shit on their head.

I'm sorry.

You know, do you feel

if someone has been really good to you for a decades period of your life?

Do you really want to say, no, I won't come to your party when you're 80 years old because you do all kinds of weird shit with other people?

I don't think the fans should be mad at him.

I don't think that the fans should be

particularly celebratory over anybody that didn't go.

We don't know who the fuck turned it down or had something else to do that night, but

he's still got to have a goddamn birthday party, even if poor thing has to throw it for himself.

We don't know that.

We don't know that, but we have not seen any reports that, you know, Barry Diller was seen going to this party and Dick Ebersaw, like no big players.

It's all just

people who would have been around backstage at the wrestling events.

These Hollywood people, it's what have you done for me lately?

Now that now that Vince's face is melting and his voice is gone and his gait is a shuffle and his head looks like a skunk, they don't have any time for him.

They used him up

and now they've, why Lord Michael should have been there.

If Lord Michael should have been there for all the wonderful things that Vince McMahon did for 11:30 on Saturday nights.

Again, I'm going back to my previous thoughts.

He's either going to start a wrestling company or try to, there's nothing to purchase.

He's either going to start a wrestling company if he doesn't buy TNA, and I don't think that's going to happen.

I hope it doesn't.

Or he's going to be back on WWE-TV once this Jano Grant case is settled one way or the other.

But he's not disappearing.

He's not going quietly until he goes.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean the WWE is going to let him stand up on the on the stage and growl at people anymore.

I just, it also, he's not

a

he's not a pleasant television personality anymore because not only is he,

regardless of what you think of him, even if people still halfway liked Vince, you've put him on, now it's a fucking downer for anybody that likes him.

Because look at the state of that.

And then

what purpose would he serve in any positive way?

You know, if he wasn't on when Hogan

died, then he ain't going to be on.

That's my belief.

And again, he was upset that he wasn't invited there, apparently, according to that interview we did with TMZ.

But here he is.

mingling with not just people that used to work for him, but a lot of people currently doing stuff with WWE.

We'll see where this all goes.

But Vince McMahon, whether it's getting arrested for crashing his car into some other executive in the morning on the merit or having a big birthday spectacular, he certainly is not going away anytime soon.

Well, and one thing that we now know from his own

surgically enhanced lips,

they didn't invite him because he said, oh, I think I should have been there.

What?

You know, he would have been saying, I couldn't be there if it had been up to him or something like that.

He's sore because they didn't invite him.

And

that tells me they don't plan to have him over for dinner anytime soon.

But I could be wrong.

But, Brian,

all the dagum,

the constant drama.

in real life today, don't you just wish you could have a daily fantasy to just take you away from these things?

I guess that's a way to look at it.

Sure.

If you get to just have a daily fantasy, something that could take you away into something you enjoy, like the football's coming up.

You heard they're going to do this again this year, Brian.

They're playing the football again this year.

They keep getting good feedback about it.

Maybe you want to have some fantasies about the football.

Because I would like to direct the folks' attention to our brand new friends at Prize Picks.

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Well, first you download the app, but everybody knows that these days, Brian, right?

The kids know to just whatever you're looking at, download the app first.

That's right.

The kids know this.

Everyone knows this.

Everyone does this, but you.

Well, we'll see.

I'm starting to trend, but they download the app and they go and they say, boom,

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Am I overstating the case, Brian?

Am I making it too complicated?

No, I think you're saying it in a very unique way.

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And of course, Jim, I got prize picks on my phone.

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Well, I probably don't want to say it that way.

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either root for them to do what you want them to do or root for some of these bitches just get knocked out early.

And that way it won't count against you.

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Well, that's 10 times as much, Brian.

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It's good to be right.

That's right.

Welcome back, Prize Picks.

Happy to have you back on the show.

You know, Jim,

this Anoki thing, there's a lot of listeners insisting that the thing he yells is are gato.

I don't think it is.

Did you hear that?

No, it's awfully drawn out, but see now, it's a wonderful digital audio recording remastered.

No, no, because the emphasis or the accent or the drava, as they say, is over the second syllable in what he's saying there rather than...

Arigato.

Yeah, I don't hear it.

Yeah, I ain't getting.

I still won't play the story.

Would you please stop?

All right.

It's not me.

It's Pelican Jaw.

All right.

Anyway, we got to update the people.

And I was hoping to get a different kind of update

than what we're getting here, but we want to update the people on

Rampage Jackson's delinquent felon son,

Roger Jackson.

Well, I don't think you can actually call him a felon.

He hasn't been arrested for anything yet.

Ah, well, okay.

Then escaped, attempted, wanted felon,

allegedly.

Well,

maybe should be a felon.

Maybe that would work.

Have had attempted homicidal mayhem attempter.

Yes.

Yes, okay, yes.

Yeah, well, you know, whatever the case it may be.

This fucking guy, is who we're talking about.

We were, I was hoping we would have a

update like, yeah, they've arrested this guy for bash this other guy's face in.

It caused all this chaos and uproar and turmoil.

Bunch of these, as we did a

discussion of it on the previous show and the clip on YouTube, a lot of people have chimed in.

A lot of people have heard it.

Almost everybody in this whole thing is subject to some kind of blame, but anybody with a level head and a

take on the real world knows that there was no excuse for what raja did once he had a guy down unconscious in front of him

and but have you heard he's been arrested brian by any credible source or even incredible source no i have not heard a single word about any I heard that psycho stew is doing better and he's conscious, but I haven't heard anything about anything about Roger Jackson.

No.

that's what I'm saying.

This story took over the whole goddamn world for a couple of days, and then it's easier to get the Epstein files than it is to find out what's going on right now.

Nobody else is saying anything.

I've had

random people

that either on Twitter or commenting on the internet say that, oh, everything from Stu's not going to press charges to I think Rampage has paid the cops off or whatever, but

no

reputable

source with actual information

has said any goddamn thing about what's going to go on from here.

And I am frankly somewhat stumped and dismayed

that we don't have,

they got to go fund me

for his medical bills.

It's raised 100 grand or whatever.

But

here's the, I'm not even going to re-litigate the incident.

And again,

Brad, whereas it's over 300,000 downloads, the clip on YouTube, us talking about the incident, just us, much less everybody else in the world, talked about it.

And that's not even counting our podcast numbers.

But

is somebody not going to go to Psycho Stu and say,

Mr.

Stu,

you may have been a goddamn outlaw mud show wrestler on the weekends as a veteran to deal with your PTSD

last week.

But now if you simply press charges against this guy that bashed your face in,

then even if the criminal charges don't result in anything past a slap on the wrist or even a dismissal, dismissal.

The civil charges, the civil suit

is going to be much more productive.

There is no jury in the world,

whether it was supposed to be part of a quote-unquote fake wrestling match or not.

There is no jury in the world that can see the footage of what happened in the parking lot with dehydrated Alpha and the holy gang

in the can on the head and the shaking of the hands

and then the guy sitting in the front row saying,

Well, they told me once, but I'm gonna hit this motherfucker as many times as I can and they pull me off of him.

And then him doing exactly that when sending the guy with the fucking ambulance with the teeth and the mouth and the blood and

die.

Case closed, as Judge Otto Dealer would say.

Case is closed, baby.

I don't know how much money Rampage still has.

I don't know what this moron spawn of his does for an actual living.

But there's, I don't know if there's any insurance companies involved in this, but if Psycho Stu

has one chance in his life

of being a multi-millionaire,

And how is this already not in motion, baby?

Because nobody,

much less criminal, if there's friends of friends or whatever the fuck involved, there's no

Brian.

Can you see a case where a civil jury would not award this fucking guy anything he's asking for?

No.

In California, no.

How about in Montana?

Anywhere.

I saw an interview.

I don't know how much you got to see of anything else, but there was an interview with the cowboy hat guy.

Oh, I watched it too.

And he's trying to wash his hands of the whole thing too.

He's trying to blame just the promoter and I guess the dehydrated alpha, as you have called him, which has become a popular nickname very quickly.

He's trying to say it was all him, that he didn't do anything wrong.

And he's really upset about it.

He lost his job.

But did you get to see any of that?

Yes, yes.

And I

got to say, what's his name?

AJ Mana?

I think so.

I think the cowboy.

And see, everybody's like, right, yo, Brian, they should have done research.

Brian and Jim, they don't even know these people's names.

Nobody knows these people's names.

They're starting to now because they're all a bunch of lunatics.

But I'll say this about the cowboy:

he can cut a promo.

He can cut a promo.

Of course, he either that or he's a goddamn raging mental case also

and and in in this situation you're not sure which one maybe both these things can be true but he came off like a lunatic that can cut a great promo

i don't if if he was working for the post office i'd goddamn start going to ups

but yet they're all trying to blame it's it's but there's plenty of blame to go around.

And I am not going to sit here and again re-litigate the various cases against everybody that many are talking about, the drinking in the locker room and letting people in and this and that and the promoter sanctioning it, whatever.

And Rikishi wasn't even there.

But I'm just saying

that Psycho Stu

has one chance in his life.

of being a multi-millionaire.

And I would hate to see him blow it over somebody.

What do you think they're going to say?

Well, don't press charges or they won't let you wrestle anymore down here.

Oh, it's my weekends.

What am I going to do?

You know, in this case, I actually care less about Psycho Sue Sue.

Psycho Stew Sue.

How about Sioux City Sue?

But more importantly, the idea of charges being filed or an arrest being made, because more importantly, Roger Jackson shouldn't be allowed to just walk around after doing what he did and then running away from it because he knew what he did was wrong.

but you know what here's why i'm thinking we were wrong brian about i don't know whether he should go to prison for because let's it in all honesty

said it would probably be a short prison sentence he might do one of these dominic mysterio things and he might come out of it and make a profitable gimmick out of it And, you know, if he went to the county jail for six months or so, he could come out and he could do the whole Dominic Mysterio thing.

You know what would be worse punishment?

Worst punishment for him?

Because

what was this whole thing about?

His father,

apparently, from what everybody's saying and all the comments that follow these people and their various lives and activities, making coleslaw and taking a shit,

his father browbeats him verbally.

treats him like shit and hadn't been a good parent.

And this guy, he's a fucking fucking wannabe MMA fighter that already got a concussion in sparring.

Good Lord.

Hopefully he, you know, they'll wrap him in bubble wrap next time.

So he's already soft.

And then he took the cheap shots.

Here's we know he's a pussy.

Instead of glorifying him, sending him to prison, what about if all of the people that heard about this whole incident.

Like I said, there was over 300,000 of just our clip on YouTube and then plus the podcast numbers, and everybody else talked about this.

So millions and millions.

Most watched indie match ever, you could say.

What about if everybody, for the rest of this kid, Roger Jackson's life, every time they saw him coming, they said, hey, look at there, there's bitch Jackson.

Because that's what he was all upset about.

And they go back, treat me like a bitch.

They're going to call me like a bitch.

Well, from now on, just laugh at him, the big pussy that he is, that he has to beat up unconscious people.

Hey, bitch, how you doing?

And smile at him.

If he goes in the post office or he goes in a restaurant or he goes in the fucking gas station or whatever, hey, it's bitch.

How you doing, bitchy?

For the rest of his life, that would drive him out of his mind.

And I don't know how the, it works with the, what do they call these things, the Twitches and the kicks?

that he was streaming on.

Well, I don't know what platform he was streaming on, but Twitch is a, I don't know that kicks but twitch is a streaming service yes well whatever they are or the you know i don't know how facebook works and all the twitters that they do and the insta

instagram and telegram and whatever you start calling him jackson hey

that will send this guy up a goddamn telephone pole and

Since Quentin Rampage Jackson

is a great fighter, Hall of Fame fighters, We can't call him a bitch, but since he has spawned a little bit,

then he becomes the bitch father because he's a better fighter than he is a father because he fucked up because of this kid.

How many times do you think Quentin Rampage Jackson wants to be called the bitch father?

Then he'll go to a bitch Jackson and say, you dumb stupid motherfucker, you've ruined our goddamn lives with your fucking idiot shit.

So all the wrestling fans could get together and wage a bitch campaign against the bitch Jacksons.

Well, apparently they'll get to see him.

He's booked for some show, apparently, allegedly.

Exactly.

Danger Pro Wrestling.

This, we heard this right before we were starting to record this program.

I've never heard of

danger, danger.

Wait a minute.

That was a fucking band, right?

Danger, Danger?

Maybe, yeah.

But they didn't have anything to do with wrestling.

Danger, Danger.

Where is high voltage?

That's a song.

Well, there you go.

One of those things.

Where are these people from and what do they do?

And they are apparently alleging that they are bringing Roger Jackson to their event to do what remains to be seen.

But the first of the lowlifes comes out from under a rock.

Yeah, and there's no date attached.

They put up an image coming soon, the Danger Pro Wrestling, Roger Jackson, in a bold move.

They're writing this about themselves.

In a bold move, Indie Pro Wrestling Company Danger Pro books now infamous son of Rampage Jackson, Roger Jackson, for upcoming appearance at their event.

That's the way it's phrased there.

No event is listed.

Stay tuned for opponent and date.

All dates are currently listed on our eventbrite.

San Diego.

So apparently this is southern california here's another show of theirs

dirty ron presents

wait a minute hold on hold on no you can't

we can't talk about that line of videos i've seen a bunch of those dirty ron's videos no dirty ron presents devil's night of death matches tribute to sabu

Oh, good lord.

All deathmatches.

All the time.

Only 80 tickets.

October 31st.

Oh, wait a minute.

Only 80 tickets or only 80 tickets left.

It says only 80 tickets

on their image.

They put that there.

It wasn't something I made up.

Doors 7.30, all ages before 10 p.m.

7:30 to 10 p.m.

wrestling.

There'll also be a costume contest for a cash prize.

Trying to see anything else here.

There's another show.

Danger,

72724.

So apparently this was over a year year ago.

Oh, it says here, happy one-year anniversary to Danger Pro.

42 shows in 52 weeks.

Not bad.

Hashtag San Diego Costa Manu.

Wait a minute.

42 shows in a year, but in a building that holds 80 people.

What do you think the profit margin is here?

I'm not sure.

Here's another one of their shows, live pro wrestling.

Oops.

All death matches.

And is that that the Necro Butcher?

And yeah.

Oh, they have the Necro Butcher for the Dirty ROM's Devil's Night of Deathmatches.

Only 80 tickets.

Necro Butcher will be there on the show.

Also, Damian.

I thought, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Hold on.

I thought he retired 15 years ago.

No, I had heard that he was doing some stuff not too long ago.

So I knew he was doing something, but I didn't realize he was working for Danger Pro in front of 80 people in San Diego.

Damien 666.

Lucha Legend.

Apparently he's working for them.

Bestia 666.

So they're really getting all the six.

Wait a minute.

Shouldn't there be heat between the Bestia 666 and the Damien 666 over the gimmick?

Are they a team?

I am not sure.

It seems like they use a lot of...

Well, if these aren't Luchadors, they're people who dress like Luchadors.

Well, I was about to say this also.

Nick Gulis used to book the fucking interns in three different towns on the same night and just send the real ones to the town that had the best advance.

So apparently this is Dirty Ron.

It says, because it's a happy birthday thing.

Dirty Ron McDonald, and he's dressed like an evil Ronald McDonald in terms of face paint, I guess.

So he must be one of the head honchos at Danger Pro.

Quickly, if you want to go see this show, there may only be 80 tickets.

You better hurry up quick and get those tickets.

We'll see what happens.

What do you think of the idea of someone booking him?

The idea of someone booking him and wrestlers being okay with that.

Well, we have no evidence that any of these people on these shows are actually real wrestlers that work anywhere else or are goddamn affiliated with anything otherwise than Dirty Ron's Wet Dream or whatever this is.

Bar wrestling.

That's what this is.

Is it even that dignified?

But nevertheless,

I think it would be ridiculous to book this fucking guy

on anything that alleges themselves to be professional wrestling, trying to draw fans of professional wrestling, not garbage deathmatch or not drunken bums in a bar or not as part of a whole goddamn spectacle of

lunacy.

For anybody that's actually in the wrestling business, no, I think it would be ridiculous.

And I think the fans would,

if they don't, if they won't tolerate Joey Ryan,

how are they going to tolerate this fucking guy?

At least Ryan never attempted to murder anybody.

He wouldn't have been able to accomplish it to begin with, but he never tried.

So, how the fuck do you think wrestling fans on any type of legitimate show would, you know, take this?

No.

Pitch Jackson.

If Vince McMahon could get arrested for that car accident on the Merritt Parkway, you would think Roger Jackson could get arrested for attempting to murder someone on video in front of a live crowd.

It's crazy that nothing's happened.

We'll see what happens there.

You brought up Joey Ryan.

We haven't talked about this.

Did you see that a few weeks ago he got booked for a show in Portland?

Yes.

And then people went completely crazy.

I believe there was even like a gun threat or something or a bomb threat.

I forget exactly what it was.

It was like a nutty thing.

They immediately canceled the appearance as you could expect would happen.

And it turns out Joey Ryan now has a

vlog.

That's still a term that some people use apparently about cancel culture.

And if cancel culture is really justice, this guy who tried as hard as he could to get you canceled, funny enough, back in the day, he has a problem with cancel culture because it came after several women women came out with accusations against him any thoughts on a purported attempted comeback and

that he's still out there doing something

well again

it was poorly thought out he convinced

some friend a promoter that was either friendly to him or friendly to the idea of this might work this might work

and they advertised him for a show in portland and there's apparently

an

infighting in the independent promotion of wrestling business in Portland between various groups.

And

everybody said, no, we don't want to see this fucking guy.

And he got, again, bad backlash and it was canceled.

But there's other drama and intrigue that I have honestly not cared enough to pay attention to as far as the one promoter was telling the other promoter, well, God damn, you're trying to put me out of business and et cetera.

Mike Rogers, where are you?

This is like perfect for ring around the northwest.

This is the kind of stuff we read for.

Yes, just put it on the mimeograph machine and send it down.

But

anyway, nevertheless, no, you know,

nobody wants to see Joey Ryan.

I'm surprised anybody wanted to see him.

And the amount of people who wanted to see him was overblown back in the old days before everybody found out what a creep he was.

And, you know, by the way, after five years,

everybody found out that all the people that were saying I was a fucking creep have all been turned out to be creeps.

But nobody wants to see him and it ain't going to work.

So I don't know why anybody's fucking trying.

Well, here's a quote.

This was in writing, maybe Facebook or something.

The promoter of Portland Wrestling, and I'm not even sure who that is or what they do.

Someone said, I don't think Joey Ryan was ever booked.

You were just testing the waters.

And the the guy said, no, he definitely was.

But at least I got the money back, minus like $12.

My first three choices were unavailable.

So I started going down the list of potential guys that were on the West Coast, available, and reasonably priced.

I see now that my capacity for forgiveness is infinitely greater than the rest of the American wrestling scene, which I have learned from through this experience.

So it's everyone else's fault for not forgiving Joey Ryan for alleged sexual assault stories that came out about him.

Well, I just.

After he was the dick wrestler, that's not even getting into the actual work and his giving.

Yeah, I'd forgive him for that before I'd forgive him for the just the bad wrestling hysteria that he caused for two or three years amongst the indie lunatics with the rest of their fucking simpleton favorites.

But there you have

But you know what we need to do now, Brian?

We need to switch a few gears because there is a brand new book coming out.

And it's about the life of Gorilla Monsoon, who the vast amount of our audience knows as the announcer and the namesake of the gorilla position, et cetera, et cetera, but who not only was an incredible pro wrestler, but at one time was one of the highest paid and most powerful people behind the scenes in the World Wide Wrestling Federation, the WWF, and then

as an extension in wrestling in general.

And we had an opportunity to get the author of the new book, Irresistible Force, the Life of Gorilla Monsoon, none other than Brian Solomon.

He's a member of the Arcadian Vanguard.

network of correspondents, as well as a great author.

He did Blood and Fire on the Chic, now an irresistible force.

We had him

phone in an interview with me

not even 24 hours ago.

And we're going to go to that as soon as you tell me that the Wayback Machine is prepped and we can make the seamless transition.

Well, I didn't say anything about seamless.

I mean, the Wayback Machine is ready, but let's now go, Jim.

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All right, folks, on the hotline, we have none other than the author of the brand new book, Irresistible Force.

It's the life of Gorilla Monsoon and the man who covered it and wrote it, as well as being a correspondent in the...

Arcadian Vanguard universe.

And, well, he's connected with a lot of people.

It's Brian Solomon, everybody.

Brian, thank you for being on the program.

Thanks for having me back, Jim.

I'm glad to be here, as always, as you know.

Well, it's good to see you're back, especially after seeing your front.

That's an old Jerry Lawler line.

I'm sorry.

But no,

I guess the reason why that I'm especially impressed with the book that you've written is because it hit me

not very long into it, how overlooked Gorilla Monsoon is in relation to his importance, not only the business.

At one time, he was one of the most powerful men in the business behind the scenes, but also

the contribution he made to what became the modern-day WWF and how some things may not have been the same without him.

And he's overlooked, and this biography sets that straight, but

you almost have to introduce the fans to get them into this book as to who Gorilla was and why he was so important?

Because

the home video era came in right at the tail end of his career.

So in ring, a lot of people are like, well,

they don't realize how great he was.

And

because he spent almost his entire career in the Northeast in the days of the territories, you read about him.

but almost nobody in the rest of the country ever saw him.

That, to me, is why a lot of guys, even in the business today, don't understand what a big deal Gorilla Monsoon was.

Yeah, you know, and that's the reason, one of the main reasons I wanted to do the book, because as we all know, when you think of him today, especially people of a certain age, all we think of is the friendly announcer guy in the frilly tuxedo.

And that's great.

That's an important part of who he was.

And he kind of narrated a lot of our wrestling memories and things.

But there's so much more under the surface.

And I started to try to understand why there had never been anything done.

That was one of the things I thought, how come there's never been a book?

There's never been a documentary.

I almost feel like even WWE doesn't really, you know, obviously, if you watch their documentaries and their shows and their things, you always hear his voice on the narration of all the old clips, but they don't really even do much with him anymore as a historic figure.

So I guess that's what I mean.

As far down the

well as they have plumbed and as much as they have gone into repetition, you would think we'd have got one good hour on Gorilla Monsoon, who was a partner to company for so many years.

And that's the thing.

People don't really know that.

You know, they don't know that part.

Like you mentioned the wrestling stuff, how there's not a lot of video.

And unfortunately, the video that there is of him as a wrestler is really from the later part of his career.

And I think that's why sometimes he gets a bad reputation as really being not a great worker or just kind of boring and dull in the ring.

And I explain a lot of that in the book, how his best stuff when he was a physical athletic phenomenon, which he was.

is really before video.

There's not a single Gorilla Monsoon versus Bruno San Martino match or even a segment of one of their matches that you can watch.

So it's like this weird archaeology you have to do.

The only way you could see him in his prime is there's some stuff from Japan.

Same thing with the Sheik, how they did a much better job preserving their footage over there.

And you can get a glimpse of it.

But I devoted really the first half of this book is all the wrestling years, the years before he was an announcer.

Well, yeah, because again, if people do know the name Gorilla Monsoon in the modern era, oh, the announcer with Bobby Heat in it, blah, blah, blah.

And, you know, and he was great in that role and

was well known by the national television audience, but

nobody understands why in the

1980 Madison Square Garden.

you know, card, there'll be Gorilla Monsoon in the ring and he's out of shape and he looks

and

the people are going ballistic.

There, they remembered it had only been 15 years.

He was like, you know,

in the pantheon of immortals, and you'd be watching in Dallas, Texas or Kansas City going, what the fuck is happening?

But he also

didn't push himself down people's throats in terms of nobody wanted to see him up there on the cards.

In a lot of cases, He was working on a card where he would be the office representative and they'd put him in a feature match because his name sold tickets or they'd put him in the garden into the six-man or whatever or to get a upcoming heel over

because he still sold tickets

but you wouldn't understand that unless you were in that territory at the time

right he might be a semi-main event or like you said somebody that is getting the heel ready for Backland or for Bruno or whoever the case may be, or maybe beating beating them on the, on when they're on their way down, that kind of a thing.

But you're right, he had a history there that if you think about it, if you're a fan in the 70s, late 70s, mid 70s, whatever, you definitely remember, or at least you know people who do when he was really in his prime.

And I talk about in the book how he kind of earned the respect of fans by

being such an important figure in the 60s.

I mean, he was really the WWE, whatever the company was known as over the years, their first monster heel.

I mean, that's a really important because that company is known for monster heels.

And he was the first one.

He was the first homegrown, created monster heel.

And he went through the whole transformation of, you know, winning the fans over, which was rare in those days.

It wasn't something that happened every week on television like it does today, where good guys turn bad, bad guys turn good.

It was a very, very big deal.

This guy who was an absolute monster turned into one of the most beloved, well-spoken, charismatic figures, you know, of course, with no explanation because that's wrestling.

It was like a New Jersey version of Fritz von Erich in Dallas.

All of a sudden,

he's a German, but

he's home.

And he just, they accept it.

Yeah, they got to the point where they just kind of gave up.

They would introduce him as the all-Asiatic champion from willingborough new jersey

that's that for real

but that's it going back even further um you mentioned what an athletic freak he was he was a legitimate amateur wrestler in in school and wrestled at a high level all the way through college and was a even though he was big he wasn't

he was one of those guys that was big and still in shape and still mobile, et cetera, in the early years.

And it didn't take,

you know, much time with a guy like that, who also we would find out

had the intelligence, had the aptitude for the business of wrestling.

You know, he gets trained, he gets

the minor pushes in western New York and et cetera.

But by the time he's gorilla monsoon and he's selling all those tickets in all those buildings in the Northeast,

he's impressing on Vince Sr., Zacco, Gilsenberg, all those guys that were involved in those days.

Hey, this kid is smart and he's smart to the business and he's dependable.

You know, I said, I've always said.

The boys can't work themselves into ownership anymore.

And Gorilla did it in the same place.

He really got started,

never had to leave.

And at one time was one of the highest paid guys in the business.

Yeah, he really won them over.

It was a combination of, obviously, he was a great draw in his prime, and he could really work.

And he had great matches with everybody.

And like you said, he was a great athlete and an NCAA heavyweight finalist.

AAU.

He was a standby member of the team, almost made it to the 1960 Olympics.

I'm not going to say he was one of the absolute greatest amateur wrestlers to ever turn pro.

I don't quite know if I'd put him in that class, but he was very, very good.

And it helped that he was huge.

And then when he got into wrestling, and like you said, you know, this was a time when a lot of those guys did not have a lot of education.

And a lot of them were not.

very, you know, their main ambition was just where their next meal was going to come from.

They were smart from the

carnivals instead of the universities.

They were street smart.

And so they looked at somebody like Gorilla and they saw potential there.

He had so many things together.

He was very imposing physically.

So he wasn't somebody anybody was going to mess with.

He was very smart about the business.

He was well educated.

was well liked.

That's important too.

He was well liked and respected.

And so when I talk about the transition in the book, where they start to look at him as somebody who could be a partner and could be part of the office, that's really how it goes.

And he's 32 years old when that happens.

I'm thinking in my head, yep, 32 years old.

And they cut him in for what was at the time 25%

ownership.

Well, now, hold on.

Let's not bury the lead.

Who explained to the folks who they were?

Gorilla's 32.

That's in what year?

1969.

69.

He spent the previous about five years or so as the phenomenon that he was in the ring for him at the time.

And he's generated him a lot of business.

But who are the partners at the time?

And exactly, how did that go down?

So he came first to Capital Wrestling, the Worldwide Wrestling Federation, in the summer of 1963.

And basically, he was...

plugged in as a replacement for Buddy Rogers to be the top heel, the top threat to Bruno, because Rogers had been flaking out and making all these money demands and he had health issues and Vince had a lot of buyers' remorse about dealing with him.

And so they brought in this kid who was a rookie practically and had a lot of the tools that they wanted.

And he was there.

He took a brief trip out to California in 65, 66 for about a year just to freshen himself up and came back.

But pretty much he was there all through the 60s in the Northeast.

And by the time you get, so at that time in the 60s, the Capital Wrestling Corporation is 50% Vince McMahon Sr., Vince and James McMahon, and 50%

Tutsmont.

So in 1969, Tutz is looking to retire.

That's what happened, basically.

And he's looking to sell his 50%

share.

Now,

what the original thinking was

that they were going to give the other half to Bruno.

And that's in the book too, where they wanted to do that whole deal, like where the top star would be, you know, like a Jerry Lawler thing.

And Bruno was a little, you know,

he held all those guys at arm's length.

And he wanted lawyers involved and accountants involved.

And they said, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how we're going to do this.

That doesn't work that way.

And he said, well, then I'm not going to take the deal.

I don't want to be in bed with you guys.

He didn't trust them as far as he could throw them, even from the beginning.

You know, that whole animosity with him and the McMahon family goes back to the beginning.

It wasn't just something that started with Junior.

So basically, they were looking around and they decided they were going to give, they were going to split it.

So they wound up giving half of Mont's shares to Phil Zacco, who had been this loyal promoter for them going back to the 50s.

He was a dinosaur even then.

And they trusted him.

He ran a lot of their TVs and things.

And he was the front man, basically, because Vince McMahon would not be listed as the owner and all this.

So you'd have Gilsenberg, who was never a part owner, by the way, and you'd have Zacco.

So they decided they were going to give Zacco half of it.

And the other half, at Bruno's suggestion, partly, I mean, I think they would have to have agreed with it, was to go to Gino, to Guerrilla Monsoon.

And that happened in the summer of 69.

where they made him this offer.

And it happened.

I actually got my hands on the paperwork.

It's not reprinted in the book, but it's described in the book.

And the deal was made on the very same day of the television taping where they turned him babyface.

Well, you can't have these crazy wild men from Manchuria, you know, showing up at the office.

But

was the amount recorded?

Yes.

Yes, it's in there.

I'm trying to think off the top of my head, I believe they each paid

$24,000,

something in that range.

$24,000.

For 25% each of what would later become the modern day WWE.

Yes.

So the company that's now worth like whatever it is, $10 billion.

A quarter of that company in 1969 would set you back about 25 grand.

And he, so he and Zacco had a deal with Tutzmont where they were going to send him a monthly check for like 10 years of whatever it came out to, a few hundred dollars a month.

And

Tutsmont died in 1976.

And my understanding is they continued to send those checks to his widow, to

Alma.

I think her name is Alma or Alva.

I think

you're something, something along those lines.

Because he retired and and went to St.

Louis.

One of the reasons he was getting old and also his mother-in-law was very sick.

I can't imagine.

I think he had a very young wife.

That's what it was.

And his mother-in-law was very sick.

And they went back to St.

Louis to take care of her.

And they continue to get these checks.

The ironic thing is that would mean that they wouldn't finish paying it off until 1979.

And then it's just three years later that they all get bought out by Vince Gina Rennie.

And they're still paying Turtz's winner.

And by the way, even 25 grand in 1970, even with the inflation calculator, which I don't have in front of me, but I can do some of it in my head at this point.

That's that's barely 100 grand, if that in today's money.

Right.

And I know I'm jumping ahead, but Vince Jr., when he bought it from them, the total was something like

7 point something million.

That's what he paid for the whole thing.

And I think he made his money back.

Oh, yeah.

But that's the thing with Gorilla, and we told the story that he was known for, Gorilla Monsoon, even when he was the WWF president and just, you know, at catering,

you go up to him, he would have a roll of bills.

He'd have $10,000 in cash on him in his pocket.

And you would add a gorilla, what do you got?

Well, I might need to buy something.

He was

at that point in time when he not only was still a main event wrestler in 1969,

but was 25% owner of the company.

Over the next 10 years,

good Lord, he was one of the highest paid.

You can say

the promoters made more.

Some promoters made more than in their territories than maybe his 25%.

But as a wrestler, still,

he was one of the highest paid wrestlers in the business.

Yeah, he was definitely in the same rarefied era as somebody like a Bruno.

I mean, he definitely wasn't making Bruno money as a wrestler, but he was in the six-figure range.

I, as far as I was able to determine, the thing about it, the irony of what he did was when the whole deal happened with Vince Jr., and one of the things I get into in the book is how that was not the most harmonious.

It wasn't like some sweet passing of the torch that I think we're sometimes led to believe.

Yeah.

And Gorilla was not in favor of it.

And I didn't realize to what degree.

And, you know, I talked to his family, I talked to people that were close to him.

And the reason he got such a sweetheart deal is because they had to make him happy.

Otherwise, he would have fought it.

Like, you know, Arnie Skolin, bless him, would have went along with anything they wanted to do.

Yeah.

And Vince getting his dad on his side, you know, it's his dad.

So he was able to kind of get him on his side.

And Zacho was very, very old and just wanted out.

So he really didn't care.

Gorilla would have been the obstacle.

And they had to do everything in their power to make him happy.

But still, it was a bittersweet thing because

he was making, let me put it this way, at the height of his earning

as an as an in his announcer years, he was making the best money of his career.

He certainly was because of the deal he had set up.

He knew that he wasn't making anywhere near what he would have been making if he'd been allowed to hold on to his percentage of the ownership.

Yes.

So you had to sort of balance those two things of, well, I'm doing the best that I've ever done, but wow, I could be doing a whole lot better.

I mean, well, and he didn't have full confidence in, you know, the ear at the early point when all this was first going on that Vince Jr., Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

may necessarily be able to pull this off.

It wasn't like he was, you know, a full-throated endorsement of, oh, Vince is, he's, he's the genius at that point.

Right.

And I think people have to remember that because now we have this picture of Vince.

Well, I mean, now we have a very different picture.

Yeah, oh, wait, I mean, do you have pictures of Vince?

If you've got pictures of Vince, call Stephen P.

New.

But the, the, the image he's created for himself and, you know, the post-1985 Vince or whatever as this mastermind and brilliant promoter and everything, that was not how he was viewed in the business.

I mean, when you think about, I'm talking about before that, when you think about promoters' sons, right?

I mean, historically in wrestling, they're not that well regarded usually.

People like Captain Ed George, right?

Who I, you know, from my last book, or George Gulis.

George Gulis, right.

It's sort of like somebody that you have to just put up with because they're the boss's son and, you know, you got to humor them.

And that is also how Vince was viewed.

He was not really a success.

He had failed at many things before that.

He was always coming to his dad and all of them for money.

He was struggling.

He had very young children.

And so it was a very dicey proposition.

He also got a sweetheart deal himself because when Vince Sr.

was looking to sell, there were other interested parties.

And it's pretty much a guarantee that the deal that his son got.

was a much better deal than anybody else would have gotten.

They just kept running the business and Vince Jr.

paid Vince Sr.

out of the money from the gates and nothing changed.

And they gave him every grace period imaginable.

So like when the sale first happened,

and this is something I think that gets misunderstood a lot, it was June 1982 when they actually sat down and signed the papers and everything.

But the sale itself was not completed for a year.

So Vince Jr., and that's why things don't really get moving on that national expansion until late 83, because it took a year for everything to be solidified they had to make sure that he really had the money and the thing was in june of 83 a year later they still didn't have all of it and they they needed uh there was like a month's grace period that was built into the deal and they gave him one more month and miraculously somehow he managed to come up with the rest of it in that month And he was always, and I will say this, he was very grateful in the end.

And it's another reason why I think he was loyal to guys like Gorilla and Arnie

because they gave him that leeway.

They didn't, they didn't call in, you know, the, the, the loans.

They didn't say, well, the deal's up.

They actually gave him the benefit of the doubt.

And so there was the loyalty there.

Well, there was also an element with Arnold Scholin, with Yeah, well, the

agents that were there for quite some time,

those specific people, Vince Jr.

could say to himself,

well, I'm taking care of my dad's guys like he wanted me to, while he had completely put all of his dad's associates out of business across the rest of the country.

Right.

So it was kind of a trade-off for him.

Yeah.

And also, I got the sense of this, and this is something that I didn't see talked about a lot is there really was a lot of

doubt and cynicism among all those old-timers.

You know, all those people that we see as the the ones that were the true loyalists, the Blasseys, the,

well, certainly Albano.

I mean, he blew himself up there, but all those guys,

Skoland and Monsoon, they were very, very skeptical of Vince Jr., very skeptical.

They still saw him as a kid, and they kind of just went along with things in a lot of ways because they didn't want to rock the boat.

But there was always that skepticism there.

Like even from talking to his family, you definitely get a sense, I'm talking about Gorilla's family, that there was a lot of unspoken things, a lot of like, we better keep our mouths shut.

We don't want to ruin a good thing here, that kind of a thing.

And like, you know, one of the things that's always a standout to me is they all still, especially Gorilla, they all still call him.

Vinny and Junior and things like that.

It's almost like their way of keeping him in his place.

And that was one thing I found out about Gorilla was that he insisted, especially privately when they weren't on camera, he always called him Vinny or Jr.

or Vinny Jr.

They would, I think they did that sort of thing on purpose.

Well, and at the time in the early 80s, you know, Vince Jr.

had been the announcer.

And, you know, he looked good in the suits and et cetera.

And he had, as you said, been given a number of opportunities and chances.

But gorilla through the 70s in the locker room behind the scenes, whether he was Booker or whether he was the,

what do they call it now, the younger generation, the locker room leader, the undertaker, the guy that would settle disputes, or I'm not talking about taking somebody to the gym and stretching them.

sit guys down, keep order in the locker room, be the leader, be the figure that's respected.

They knew he was a part owner.

But also, if he told you to do something, even if you were a wrestler, he was an intimidating son of a gun in those days and you did it.

And he had been

integral because all the rest of the office at that time

were, you know, Vince Sr.

was not.

He was the boss, but he wasn't, you know, imposing in the,

in the way that he would come in the locker room and start telling everybody what to do.

He had the smoother approach.

And then, you know, it was Phil Zacco going to come in, hey,

do this and do that.

No, Gorilla was the guy that held the company together with the talent.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And the approach of the father and son, McMahon's, was couldn't have been more different.

I mean, everything.

that I have always learned was that he was a very hands-off, kind of broad strokes kind of guy.

Like he, he, he trusted other people to do their jobs.

He would kind of put his head together with Bruno and they would kind of book the top feuds and things.

And Gorilla was involved in that as well.

But he really just kind of holed himself up in his office at the garden and just held court, basically, and trusted other people to do their job.

And when you had somebody like Gino in there, you could trust him to do the job.

And one of the things that's so interesting is he was so imposing and so

and respected i don't want to just make it sound like people were just terrified of him that he really was rarely if ever actually tested like nobody even tried

yeah

you know one of the only times in fact which comes up in the book because it's so rare was all the stuff with bruiser brody

And that,

well, that I was just going to say, Ed, you can recount the story, but that's so ironic given both guys' connection to Puerto Rico.

But go ahead.

That's true.

And that is such a strange, it's like one of wrestling's odd coincidences in a way.

I don't think

there's a connection other than a coincidence because one of Brody's first big programs, in fact, where he got the name was in the World Wide Wrestling Federation in the mid-70s when they were prepping him to be Frank Goodish to be an opponent for Bruno.

Right.

And of course, they gave him one of their big Irish, everybody had to have an Irish name, especially.

I mean, he named Blackjack Mulligan, Al Kolge.

He just loved the Irish names.

And so,

but the thing about it was that Brody, I'm not the first one to say this, could be a very difficult wrestler to deal with.

And, you know,

he could be

not only outside the ring, but even inside the ring.

He could be sometimes kind of a bully in the ring and maybe not always do what they wanted him to do.

And you know what?

He committed the cardinal sin that a wrestler can commit, which is putting your own needs first, right?

Because, you know, they always want you to not do that so that you can kind of go with the flow.

And Gorilla, as likable as he was and as

competent as he was, he was also a company guy.

And his attitude towards the business was the opposite.

He was very smart about the business, but he thought of it more as quote unquote for the good of the business.

He was one of those guys who really thought about not just himself.

and I really do believe that, but the business itself and especially the company.

And so someone like Brody is kind of like your worst nightmare, a person like that, to come in there.

And so their relationship was very tense.

I tried my best to get to the bottom of it.

It's, you know, it's, it's murky.

It's murky.

I had to go by some people who had firsthand accounts.

I talked to Kevin Sullivan.

uh about it.

He was one of the first people I interviewed because he was there in the locker room in Worcester, Massachusetts, where, which was the first time that Jose Gonzalez and Brody had wrestled.

And when he kind of roughed him up and there was a big fight in the locker room and gorilla had to get involved to break it up.

So I was going by these kind of secondhand accounts and things like that to determine how bad it had been.

But I think it's very telling that Brody never came back.

They kind of made their money with him and then he never came back.

But the Puerto Rico Rico connection is really insane because as some people may know, Guerrilla Monsoon owned part of Puerto Rico,

what's now WWC.

He owned 10% of it.

And if you can't explain

the World Wrestling Council, Carlos Colon, as people,

joined one to the other in most wrestling fans' minds, but it was started in the early 70s.

And it was one of the later additions to the territories.

And

Gorilla, through a few different contacts, had connections and was able to help out pretty much near the start of it, correct?

Yeah, that's right.

Because Puerto Rico had before Carlos Colon, it had sort of been a satellite of Florida a lot of times.

So Eddie Graham would run occasionally there.

And that is how the capital WWWF people got plugged into it because they were very close to Eddie Graham.

So when the deal was being made of, you know, Eddie Graham is going to kind of give his blessing to Carlos Colón, that, you know, you can, Puerto Rico is yours, people like Vince Sr.

and Gorilla were involved in all of that because they all moved in the same circles.

And so it got onto Gorilla's radar.

You know, it's this wonderful place.

The weather's beautiful.

They have, they have casinos everywhere, which is like, you know.

That's like music to his ears.

You can go on vacation there.

And, oh, great.

And not only that, but he also had a close working relationship with a lot of the Latino wrestlers, even predating that.

If you talk to people like Johnny Rods and Pete Sanchez and all those guys, they adored him.

So it was like he was a natural liaison.

He could bring some of those guys from New York down to Puerto Rico.

He could bring some of the Puerto Rico wrestlers up to New York, which he did.

And also, he was smart enough to realize whereas Eddie Graham and the Florida office was running it as a spot show.

So maybe guys could go over and spend a couple of days or whatever.

They, the whole, a homegrown territory, they'd never done big business.

Their big business was in Florida and that was a spot show for them.

But a homegrown territory with native talent on the island with local television was a gold mine.

That's right.

Their business was off the charts.

I mean, the hunger for wrestling in Puerto Rico was

you know, unlimited.

I mean, it was on fire.

And that's how Carlos Colon, I mean, Carlos Cologne had been basically an enhancement guy in New York.

He had not been, and he turned himself into, you know, a major, major deal because that area, that region was starved for big wrestling.

And to have its own wrestling organization was huge.

It was really the first time in modern times that that had happened.

And they're running ballparks and guerrillas.

He's got 10%.

Yeah.

And the way he got it was the original ownership was Cologne, Victor Jovica, and Victor Jovica's brother for some reason.

And Jovica's brother sold his shares, his 10%

to Gorilla.

And the thing about the Brody connection is, you know, a lot of people think, and I dispel this in the book, and I'm not afraid to give this away because there's tons of great stuff in the book, but this whole kind of ridiculous idea.

that Gorilla, you know, didn't like Brody and Bro, you know, Gorilla owned a part of Puerto Rico.

So connect the dots, blah, blah, blah.

Absolute nonsense.

Absolute nonsense.

But what happened was the 10% that Gorilla owned, he no longer owned at the time that any of that stuff happened with Brody and Jose Gonzalez in Puerto Rico.

He had been out of it for years.

In fact,

He gave his 10%, and I believe he gifted it.

I don't even think he sold it.

He gave it to Victor Quinonez.

Little Victor.

Yes.

And Victor Quinonez supposedly, allegedly, was in talks to sell that 10% to Brody.

And of course, something like that made Jose Gonzalez go through the roof because now he'd be stuck with this guy

who he hated.

And now he might even be his boss.

So it was all kind of connected in this weird way.

But, you know, I get into the book about how Guerrilla found out about what had happened down there there when Brody was killed, how, you know, Victor called him and it was this whole thing and how absolutely devastated he was.

And I want to make that clear because it's one thing to not like somebody for professional reasons and to think they're a pain in the ass.

It's quite another thing to want them dead.

And I think people who make that connection are just being ridiculous.

And there's absolutely no factual basis for that at all.

Well, obviously.

And that's the, you know, thing is people are always trying to, if they see a coincidence, then they're trying to, you know, tell the backstory.

But it also, you give some detail in the book on Gorilla's relationship.

You mentioned him, Victor Quinones.

And I said a little Victor because that was the way that they were known in the days where there were, sort of like I got two Brians on a show.

Solomon and Last, in the days where there was a Victor Jovica and a Victor Quinones in the office,

little Victor was to differentiate from Jovica, and he was like a

surrogate's son for years and years to guerrilla.

He was.

And I want to emphasize that word surrogate because

if there's no other purpose that this book serves, if I could.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, good lord.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Get that out of the way now.

I want to get it out of the way because I actually, I know you read the book.

I actually stopped the whole narrative of the book just to address this thing, because it is one of the most persistent and stubborn urban legends in the history of wrestling.

I've even confronted people who repeat it as fact, and you discover that their basis for that is really nothing.

It's just

everybody, okay, so I guess I'll just spell it out.

Yes.

The rumor that Victor Kinonez was some type of illegitimate love child or something of Guerrilla Monsoon is false.

And I debunk it very thoroughly in the book in a lot of different ways.

One thing I'll do is.

With amazingly enough, with facts.

Hey, imagine.

You ever heard of those?

Yeah.

Well, here's one.

Here's a big one.

And I'm not saying this is the be-all and end-all, but this is really what really got me thinking, okay, this is a lot of nonsense.

And I started looking further into it.

So there's this assumption, right?

When people say, oh, you know, Victor Kinonez was actually Gorilla Monsoon's son.

So the assumption they're making is that at some point, Gorilla Monsoon was wrestling down in Puerto Rico, right?

And he, you know, he had something happened down there with a fan or God knows what, or, and, and, and he wound up fathering a baby that he didn't know about, or he found out years later.

Well, here's the thing.

When Victor Quinones was born,

Bob Morella, was in Ithaca College in upstate New York.

Now, I'm not saying that makes it impossible, but in the words of Gorilla himself, it would make it highly

likely.

So, and that's just the beginning.

I'm not saying that's the only thing I go on.

But, and even if you go back further, like at the time that he would have had to have been, you know, for you biologists out there, for the time that he would have had to have been down in Puerto Rico, it would have been impossible.

I mean, he was, he was doing all his college competitions.

He was a, you know, a student.

He didn't just go on spring break to Puerto Rico and raise raise havoc and that wasn't guerrilla.

And here's the thing.

You know where this, a lot of it comes from, in some cases, all of it comes from jealousy over a guy that has pull and power

taking somebody under his wing that everybody else is going, well, it could have been me or why the fuck's it him or I just don't like this.

There were in the Tennessee territory in the 80s, there were still guys that would swear, talent, wrestlers on the card that would swear that they knew for a fact because the old timers told them that Jerry Jarrett was Roy Welch's son.

And that's why he made him the booker.

And that's why the blah, blah, blah,

ignoring the fact that at the time Jerry Jarrett was born, Christine Jarrett was married.

to a guy that later went in the service during World War II and it didn't even enter the world or realm of wrestling to get a second second job until

after the war was over with and she had separated from her husband.

So there was

it again, shit doesn't work, but the guys can't stand it.

They could, and they would sit and especially before

cell phones and computers and

earbuds and all the fancy dan entertainment.

That was the primary occupation in a locker room, especially amongst the eels, was sit around in a circle and bitch and bitch about the office.

Yeah, and it didn't help with the rumor situation when he actually moved in with the Morella family.

So that, you know, that added fuel to the fire.

But really, I know it's hard to believe, especially in the wrestling business, but Gorilla was just a really nice guy.

He was a caring, decent guy.

He saw this kid.

whom he first met in the early 70s or maybe mid-70s when he was a teenager, basically carrying bags, driving them around.

His mother ran the hotel where they all stayed at, the Tanama in Puerto Rico.

And so he got to know all the wrestlers.

He had a very, very bad upbringing.

His

stepfather had killed himself a few years before.

He couldn't read or write.

He had no education.

And

Gino just took him under his wing.

For some reason, he saw this kid as somebody.

that he could shape and mold.

There was something in him that he saw.

He brought him back to New Jersey with him and he lived there there with them for years.

And, you know, I talked to the family about it too.

And I was so embarrassed.

Can you imagine to even have to bring this up?

Because I did bring it up.

I said, well, what about these stories and things?

And they just kind of all laughed it off.

But the thing about it was they,

I think one of the reasons why the rumor persisted.

And I wish they had done something about it, is they never saw it as being worthy of even dignifying with a response.

Yeah.

And they never chose to refute it it or anything.

They just laughed it off.

But by doing that, though, I think they made it seem like it was some deep, dark secret, but it really wasn't.

In fact, I mean, Victor was prone to exaggeration and telling crazy stories.

And I think even he may have at times enjoyed the fact that people wondered if maybe he really was.

Gino's son.

In fact, he had told, he had said in an interview with a Puerto Rican wrestling magazine, he said, he claimed once that he wasn't gorilla's son, but he was his godson, and that he had taken him in the Catholic church.

Oh,

Victor told me that to my face.

Okay.

Oh, you know, Gorilla's my godfather.

Well, here's the thing.

If he meant it as a term of endearment, if he meant it in like the Marlon Brando sense, maybe, perhaps, but I, but he meant it in the literal sense that in church, that he had taken him on as his godfather.

And Maureen, God rest her soul, his late wife who was helping me with the book, she said that even that was not true, that he was not even his godfather.

So,

well,

see, that's the thing that he got from Gorilla.

That's why Victor later on became a fairly successful promoter in overseas ventures and things, because he could.

tell a good story and concoct a

fucking backstory to it.

Yeah, well, that's kind of what I guess makes you a success in the wrestling business.

He never chose to, you know what the other thing is?

The New York Times obituary, and I get into that in the book because the obituary in the New York Times actually said

Morella is survived by his wife, Maureen, and his three children, daughters Sharon, Valerie, and son Victor Quinonez of Puerto Rico.

So did Victor call the paper?

I, you know, we'll never know, but I will say this.

We all know that back in the day, now, unlike today, when the mainstream media is all over professional wrestling, you never really saw obituaries for pro wrestlers.

You had to be a really big deal to get mentioned in that way.

And when you did, it was full of mistakes.

Yeah.

And I think this was just like one of those games of telephone where just something.

got mistranslated, miscommunicated, a rumor, an unsubstantiated thing.

It got put in the obituary.

And when you talk to a lot of people today who believe

the legend, they'll always point to that New York Times obituary, which is also false.

Well, speaking of falsified information in the newspaper,

Gorilla had the column.

In what

helped me with the Philadelphia paper.

What was that?

The Inquirer with the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Inquirer,

where in the year you're about to tell us, but somewhere in the early 80s, he announced to the people that superstar Billy Graham was dead

and

never actually retracted it even after superstar Billy Graham showed back up in front of him.

And it was it just, could he just, it was it a rib at that point where he's like, I'll rib him.

People still think he's dead.

It's a new Billy Graham.

They replaced him.

Right.

So it was 1981.

And ironically, Superstar would be back in the company wrestling about a year after that.

But

these things, like I always say, it's partly archaeology because I can't ask either one of those guys about it.

But they did, at least Superstar especially did talk about it in later years.

It's a very strange thing that happened.

And even Davey O'Hannon told me that a lot of the boys who knew Graham

came to Gino and said, well, he seems pretty alive to me.

I was just talking to him the other day and things like that.

One of the reasons I think he was able to get away with it was that Graham kind of went on this lost weekend period, right?

Between in that year,

he was hardly wrestling anywhere.

I think he had like one match maybe within the span of a year or two.

He wasn't doing much of anything.

No, and that's the thing.

The state of mind that he was in at that time.

You know, if things had gone worse, he might have been dead, but he certainly was out of sight.

So, one thing I was able to determine about this,

and again, I know I'm giving away all the great secrets of this book, but I

you couldn't do that.

We're only going to be here like an hour.

There's no way you could do that.

Exactly.

Thank you.

I stand by the book.

There's so much good in it.

I don't mind giving away stuff.

Hey, we barely skipped over the 50s and 60s and early 70s, which is the best part of the things because that's what everybody don't know.

I learned so much shit.

But go ahead, back to the death of Billy Graham.

Yeah, so

apparently

the the originator of the urban legend may have been dusty rhodes

and it may have been a rib actually indeed a rib where i think so graham had said in an interview in later years that dusty rhodes had started the rumor now

i looked things up when i was putting this together dusty rhodes at the time a few months prior had gone through one of his trips through the northeast and i think it's very conceivable that he might have put his head together with Gorilla Monsoon and thought, hey, this would be a great rib.

You should keep it going.

Again, I cannot prove that, but the pieces add up.

The other piece of the puzzle is,

speaking of Brody and difficult people with the office, Superstar Graham was another one who had, I think, left kind of a bad taste in people's mouths with how everything went down.

being a little bit difficult to work with, difficult to get the belt off of, and kind of temperamental.

And again, when you think of Gino as part of the office, even though he always was still one of the boys, but part of the office, you can understand that, you know, Billy Graham may not have been the number one, his number one favorite person on earth.

You know what I mean?

He might have said, oh, yeah, let's get this pain in the ass.

You know what I mean?

What do you want me to write in my column, Dusty?

You got it.

All right, let's get this guy.

And no, he never retracted it.

And it got to the point where when Graham came back as the kung fu, you know, billy graham a lot of the fans um particularly in philadelphia right where the thing had run were convinced that it wasn't the same guy because gorilla had told them he was dead oh yeah and he looked like he was at that time that was the worst thing that anybody ever did to a superstar was give him that gimmick or he took it himself

yeah absolutely But yeah, you're right.

All the great stuff, the stuff from the 60s, I break down in very close detail.

Cause one of the things I wanted to do with the book is there's been a million documentaries and books and things that, and websites that talk about in such detail the WWF of the 80s and 90s and everything that went on and every last day.

And even the 70s, you get a lot, you can glean a lot.

The 60s is a very murky period.

And I really wanted to kind of break it wide open and give the kind of clarity of what was happening in the company in the 60s the same way they do for the 80s you know to really show what was going on because it's a lot more complicated than people think uh their business was very uh up and down it wasn't as uh hot as i think sometimes people think it is it got that way later on in the 70s but they were on very shaky ground in the 60s especially before they rejoined the nwa and i wanted to to get into that in the book and and you know that we've talked on on the show here before about the period of time they lost television in New York and didn't have a strong television presence just on the Spanish language channels.

And, of course, even

through the early 60s,

as we've been talking about, Brian Last and I,

the other Brian on the program here so often lately.

Vince Sr.

was even in and out at the garden itself.

He had Capitol Wrestling in Washington, but Jack Pfeffer and the old guard was still around.

And when Vince Sr.

was able to keep Tootsmont

on his side, that kind of turned the tide

at the last minute.

But it had been a transformative decade for wrestling in Madison Square Garden to begin with.

And Gorilla came in and,

you know, at the right place, the right time with the right guy.

Yeah, because it wasn't until about 61 that Vince Sr.

was really the only person

with the the Johnston brothers and all that stuff, but the only person promoting wrestling at the garden.

There had been kind of like a three or four year tug of war that was going on where Pfeffer was coming in and Pedro Martinez and even Cola Quariani tried to start some kind of like revolt where, you know, and that's how Bruno got blacklisted because it didn't work for him.

Cola had been.

And I would, now that you mentioned that, I wonder if Bruno was mad at Vince Sr.

all that time for something that Cola Quariani did but he had been one of the wrestling advisory board to the johnston brothers the licensed promoters at masses square garden since the early 50s because he'd had a piece of raqa and raqa had been the golden goose and i at the pfeffer files at notre dame i saw

uh uh from one of the promoters letters a list of the guys that the Johnstons listened to, and Quariani was at the top of the list

well he'd been around forever i mean he'd been around since the 20s and um he tried to start some trouble and he tried to run opposition and bruno who i think was very young and naive he had this attitude of well i'm a pro wrestler i'm an independent contractor i could work for whoever i want And he always had that attitude because even years later, he told me how Vince Sr.

got really mad at him when he kept talking to Ivan Koloff, even after Koloff had joined the IWA with Eddie Einhorn, because that was Bruno's attitude.

We can work for whoever we want to work for.

And he made the mistake and he crossed Vince and he got blacklisted.

And that was part of the reason why.

But by the time Gorilla got there in 63, they had really solidified their, at least in New York, their control.

But there were times, like you said, where they lost TV.

Of all people, it was Crusher Verdue who helped them like, you know, sell out the garden for the first time in years.

I know when I did an interview, a video with Bruno back like

over 10 years ago, 15 years ago, whatever,

we were going over his record at the garden and everything.

I said, You sold out with Crusher Verdue, Crusher Verdue.

I couldn't even get Bruno to say anything bad about Crusher Verdue, but he was like, Well, yes, he was, he was good, you know.

Actually, I think I chalked that more up to Albano because Albano was, he he was Albano's first guy.

And I think Albano was just so damn good at generating heat and getting people pissed off and angry.

I think it was more.

It could have been nothing against Crusher Verdu.

I think it could have been anybody.

It helped that he was a big giant guy that really looked unstoppable.

But that was one of the periods where they lost their TV and before that.

And they were, the garden went dark.

There were months where they just didn't even book any shows at the garden.

And this was during the time when they used to run monthly and they were taking time off, or there was one show where they drew something like 5,000 people, which was disastrous in those days.

And so it wasn't this easy road that people remember.

And I think that's partly why they were so loyal to Gino, because he had really proved himself.

He had seven main events.

And this is the tragedy.

We can't see any of this.

She had seven main events with Bruno San Martino at the garden alone.

He had something, he had more than that, I think, in Philadelphia.

I mean, they had big, big matches.

They had their famous like 70-minute curfew draw.

They had the one at Roosevelt Stadium.

I mean, he really proved himself and they never forgot that.

Well, and apparently they forgot to film all those matches.

And

in the 60s, I wonder, well, you've been up there,

Solomon Grande.

You've been up there.

What, to what extent,

and this was probably, you were there there before they stuck everything in the mountain, to what extent does even their library contain anything from the 60s, from this formative period up in the WWE now?

Well, I can only speak of the time that I was there.

And I could also go by what I've seen since.

And I know when I was there, and I was able to even go physically into the room and look through everything myself.

I saw nothing that predated the early 70s.

And I'm telling you, I was looking, unless it's mislabeled, the early 70s was as far back as I saw.

Now, I know over the years, a few things have surfaced.

Like there was the Bobby Davis tape.

I think I had told you about it, where Bobby Davis had made a kind of a highlight reel of all his stuff.

And it contained some 60s capital.

There's a couple of, and by a couple, I mean like literally two episodes of capital wrestling from the 60s that are floating around.

a handful of garden matches.

But you can't, there's nothing.

There is,

if it exists, I would be happy to see it and retract this.

Yes.

But there isn't a single minute of footage of Gorilla Monsoon as a heel in the WWWF, not a single minute of it.

Well, Anadio, you retweeted or tweeted or sent out the clip from his Japan tour in the 60s.

And it just him, you know, he was the guy that would jump up and do the high splash, jump up and touch his toes.

He takes the bump over the top rope like the old, the old-time giants used to take that bump.

I last guy I saw him do it like that was the one-man gang when he was Crusher Broomfield.

But he was so agile and just so impressive looking.

It's a shame, you know, that we have none of that left.

He would do cartwheels.

Okay.

Picture that.

Put that in your head.

And the move you're talking about, where he did that mid-air split, for just to be clear, like that's the thing that Raka used to do.

And there's pictures of him where he does a split in mid-air and his feet touch his hands.

Yeah, Raka didn't weigh 325 or 330.

You know, forget that.

He was doing it maybe closer to 375, 380.

And six foot six.

I mean, it's an incredible sight.

There is some stuff of that era, but it's Japan.

In fact,

he was on a tour in Japan at the beginning of 1963 when he first got the call to come to Capitol.

And there is some footage of that tour out there where he's teaming with Killer Kowalski and he's wrestling Ricky Dozan.

And actually, it was Kowalski.

who helped to make the introduction because Kowalski really got to like him in Japan.

They became good friends.

And that's also why he was, you know, they were always close.

But Kowalski had the connection with Vince because he'd been working for Vince going back to the 50s.

So he was able to kind of make that introduction.

And then the rest was history.

By the summer, he was already the biggest heel they had.

Well, I tell you what, we told him at the start, but we're going to tell him again.

The title of the book is Irresistible Force, and the author of the book is Brian Solomon.

And Brian, how in the world can people rush to their various devices and order this thing?

And when does it come out?

Okay.

Well, the first thing is for everyone that's asked, it will be available in print, in digital, and in audio.

I'm currently recording the audiobook version.

So that may take a little bit later to come out.

Oh, good Lord.

Yeah, that'll take a couple of years.

This thing is thick.

I know.

It's kind of, it's kind of torture.

I've been doing it for days and I'm not even halfway through.

And I don't even know how I still have a voice.

But the book, the print and the

e-book versions, the official publication date is September 30th.

You can pre-order it now, absolutely.

And you can get it wherever you get books.

You can get it on Amazon.

That's probably where most people will get it.

You can get it at Barnes and Noble, either the store or barnesandnoble.com.

There's Books a Million, all the major book chains, or you could even just your local bookstore.

And if they don't have it, if they don't have it, or they don't plan on getting it, just just ask them to order it because it's really going to be available everywhere you could even go to ecw press directly and order it there especially if you're if you're in canada that might be the way to go because it you know it'll be domestic instead of uh you know ordering it in canada from the united states it's dodgy going across the borders these days and here's something why don't somebody some enterprising person just go to every bookstore in town and tell them to order the book and then you don't have to come back and buy it but at least brian you'll sell a lot of books.

Maybe you could do that plan.

Why not?

Why not?

With the chic book, Blood and Fire, I kept pushing the pre-order so hard that Amazon ran out of copies before the on-sale date.

And then everyone wanted to kill me.

So, well, no, but now, see, they need to be prepared that you are a best-selling author.

Well, I hope they do better this time.

We'll see.

All right, but everybody knows how to get it now and when to get it and where to get it.

And I will say they should get it because, again,

there's not a lot of wrestling books that I learn stuff from these days, unfortunately.

But yours are always one of them or two of them or however many the fuck you've done.

However many there have been, I've learned something from them.

Thank you.

Brian Solomon, Irresistible Force, Gorilla Monsoon.

Go out and buy it.

All right, we are back.

We are here in the present.

It sounds like we're in the little wedding chapel in Las Vegas.

I wonder if Solid.

Are we married to Solomon now?

You know, I got to give him a lot of credit.

The research he did, and you know, there's still so many things you can't find out because there are so many secrets that guys went to, literally went to their death with.

And

he did as good as he could.

I think he did a better job maybe than anyone, very briefly, kind of quickly, but laying out how Vince McMahon Sr.

really came to power and really was about all the local promoters around him getting behind him.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's a lot of names, you know, for people that have always been looking to close the gap on, you know, how did Ray Fabiani move from, you know, wrestling to just opera?

You know, and how did Abe Ford get put in place in Boston?

A lot of that's kind of laid out here in the story, because the story of Gorilla Monsoon is the story of the WWWF in a lot of ways.

Well, and I guess we should have also made the point when I was talking to Brian

that the 60s as a formative period for the WWWF, they didn't have Boston till later on in the 60s.

They still had to make a deal at the first part of the decade for Baltimore.

And they got Philadelphia and the Garden, obviously, but the territory was still expanding into what even the modern 70s fans would know as

that era of WWWF.

So

Gorilla was instrumental in a lot of those acquisitions and being able to expand the territory.

Yeah, a fascinating book.

Again, it is Irresistible Force by Brian R.

Solomon.

Go to Amazon.

Well, the link will put up also when the show goes up.

But check it out.

Definitely well worth your time.

One of the better wrestling biographies out there.

And as he mentioned, he's recording the audio book.

And folks, just think, coming up sometime soon, you could have Brian Solomon's dulcet tones in your head for literally dozens of hours straight.

Only if you're tied to a chair, but folks.

they could be on your raycon everyday earbuds and that way you would you would not even have to deviate or be a deviant from your daily routine.

You could do two things at the same time, listen to Brian Solomon excite you with tales of Gorilla Monsoon and go about taking a shit or Megan Coleslaw.

It's completely up to you.

Brian, how many things can you do at the same time?

This is a hell of a spot.

Yeah, keep going.

Yeah.

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All right, Raycons.

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Just about everyone in this house has a pair.

But, Jim's.

Well,

I'll tell you what,

not everybody in the house.

Well, I guess a pair of something.

I was going to say, you got both genders in that house there, but there's a pair to be found either top or bottom.

Jim, speaking of a pair, I understand there's more wrestling.

Have you got a square to spare?

Just one square to spare you know she's a billionaire

julia louis dreyfus no jamie is it jamie gertz is that her name the woman what the woman who played spare to square woman

no no not you mean julia louis dreyfus that starred on the show for 10 years is not a billionaire but the the anonymous woman in the stall next to her handing her a piece of toilet paper is a billionaire i believe so yeah

well do do more than believe now you got to prove that shit right now start Start Googling.

Hold on.

I refuse to believe.

I've got to prove that.

You can make a billion dollars out of the residuals of handing somebody some shit paper.

Jamie Gertz.

I was right.

59 years old out of Chicago.

Like I'm bringing her out to the ring.

Out of Chicago.

Landon.

Let's see.

Going through her history.

She was, of course, in...

What was the name of that movie with Kevin Bacon where he rides his bike?

Quicksilver.

that one.

I don't fucking know.

That was an awful movie.

I really used to.

Has it been on Turner Classic?

That's really the only place I go.

Not yet.

She's married to a private equity investor.

Oh.

They're members of an investment group which purchased the Milwaukee Brewers.

And

they are the number one donor to charity of any celebrity.

But basically what she says, she didn't make a billion dollars.

She married a billion dollars.

I thought she also started like a business too uh you know after well some kind of monkey business i don't know but that's why she stopped acting so much i believe well wouldn't you i don't know if you really love it if you really love it could there be a billionaire wrestler

no

no why take chances on breaking your

neck

you got a billion dollars See, that'd be a good gimmick if there's a billionaire wrestler, but you never get to see him wrestle.

Every time he gets near the ring, like one of his dad's henchmen try to grab him and then just fight around ringside and he leaves.

You never actually see him.

Well, no, no, see, now you're doing Tony Kahn's reality show.

Well, no, his dad's henchmen are off every Wednesday.

No, his dad's henchmen are off.

All right.

Good Lord.

I think Cadbury needs to reign him in.

That may be a natural segue to

this week's AEW Dynamite was so ridiculous that I'm going to talk about a couple of segments just to illustrate some of the things that they're not going to be able to control in the future that are getting out of hand.

But there was some,

there was some controversy over the week about the arena that they were in this week.

Now, they've been running the smaller buildings and we said, yes, they should do that because when they were in the

NBA arenas with 3,000 people, it looked sad and it was a needless expense of whatever.

And

even though I've mentioned the Brady Music Center in Cincinnati or whatever in a tongue-in-cheek fashion the other day, at least

those places look

still professional.

It's the kind of like the Hammerstein ballroom effect in New York with the cool architecture.

You can get something out of a lot of these places, right?

But now they've started, what is it, a two-week residency in the historic 2300 arena in Philadelphia.

And boy, howdy, this don't do them any favors because I'm sorry for the people

in that part of the country that somehow have the fond memories of the ECW Arena, which is what this is.

But not only does it, now that it's been renovated 15 times, it still looks like shit on camera.

It's low rent.

It's like they're in a warehouse.

It's the big, that building is the biggest toilet that I've ever worked in.

And imagine how much fucking ground, Brian, that that takes in.

No, you've been in a lot of Philadelphia.

No, I've been in a lot of fucking toilets,

not all over the world.

But

either it was a shitty

facility

in terms of being out in the middle of nowhere or horrible, Kahoma, Louisiana, with a shitty locker room in the middle of a mud field.

Or, you know, some

times the facility might be okay, but goddamn, the neighborhood is the shits.

I remember her Ring of Honor years ago.

I was at the fairgrounds in Detroit, which didn't seem to be a flourishing location.

But for a combination of the worst neighborhood you've ever been in in a major city and the biggest shithole of a building.

This one is it.

And

I don't know what the,

for some people, the, the, the magic is about the thing.

You've been, you were there before I was.

You were there in the 90s.

Well, you were there in the 90s too, but I was there before you, yes.

Well, they snuck me in and out and I wasn't there long.

But I spent 12 hours a fucking day there numerous times in 2009 and 2010 with Ring of Honors doing that HD Net show.

And

the reason why I said that the building caused some controversy this past week

is because they had the union picketing the building

and picketing AEW for the production that they're doing there for not holding up union standards or whatever.

More on that in a minute.

But that's the thing.

Have you been in the locker room area of that building?

I have not.

hey it

the guy that owned that place or owned it or ran it or whatever the guy that was doing stuff there i remember his name was roger right out of right they always talk roger ask roger

and in that building

they were just doing you can't say renovations that maybe remodel

like the locker room walls were just wallboard put up on studs at his fancy if he wanted to create a new wall, one time I went in there, there was a goddamn window in the room.

There hadn't been a window before, but it looked out onto a goddamn big, empty fucking room with nothing in it.

As well, they're changing things.

And there was a stairway that went to nowhere.

And

there was like two toilets in the entire locker room area.

Sometimes they all didn't work.

But the point being,

Roger would just build this shit, these hallways to nowhere.

When when he had an idea.

There was no code enforcement.

There was no permits done

like you have to do at a big city.

He was just doing this shit.

So I can easily believe

that

there is no chance that they have ever had union labor

on a wrestling show that...

aired from that building before.

The ECW was paying a union or all these other indies and these hardcore groups.

So I'm not championing Tony Khan's cause, but if they're going to pick at him just because they know he's got some money, but in this dump that seats 850 people,

if nobody else has been using this union labor, why should he?

That I guess that is

what the statement that I'm making first and foremost.

You see what I'm saying, Brian?

I do.

But see, it's 1,300.

Why didn't they pick it when WWE ran there with NXT?

Well, and also, who said it seats 1,300?

Did you see 1,300 people there?

It was packed because it's a big fucking room with chairs on the floor.

I don't believe 1,300 people.

Well, I'll tell you, the bleachers are less packed now than they were then.

Did you even see bleachers?

Or is it all just flat?

I remember Paul had bleachers across from

the deal but i did yeah they missed bleachers they had bleachers on this week's dynamite

well maybe the bleach got in my eyes

but that's that's the point is between that and the neighborhood and again you can tell me probably better than

i know why the fuck that building is there in that place but it sits under an interstate

When you're out in the back parking lot where guys would find used syringes and condoms in the parking lot inside the barbed wire fence.

You're standing underneath the interstate with goddamn semi-trucks going over the top of you.

And it was next to the road that came to the building was gravel, it wasn't paved.

And it was next to an

outlet store of some description that sold men's suit jackets with two buttons on one side and three buttonholes on the other side.

And I don't know, it would

over there, too.

Well, would it would would this whole building or complex of buildings have been condemned years ago if not for people continuing to run wrestling events in this building?

Uh, no, well, yeah, remember they had a pretty successful midnight bingo operation going there.

Oh, I forgot about the bingo.

No, I mean, I'm serious.

I was talking to someone recently about it, and they said, Yeah, I remember leaving ECW.

I never even got to see this.

I remember leaving ECW Arena.

It'd be just a line of like old women waiting to get in.

You know, this is late at night.

An old woman.

What old woman would want to go there in the dark?

Well, bingo.

I mean, bingo's a big draw.

Jesus Christ.

So is fucking attempted murder on the streets.

Anyway,

the point is, if AEW,

I don't think they were mistreating anybody

any worse than any of the other fucking promotions that have run that building.

And there's many of them that have.

But if they want a nice warehouse that's been customized for a very little amount of money, they ought to call the new OVW owners over in West Fabersham and rent the Davis Arena.

It looks better on TV than this thing did.

Anyway, should we start talking about the show?

Okay, that was the running down of Philadelphia and the ECW Arena or the 2300 Arena.

I didn't say anything anything bad about Philadelphia, although it has never held the same place in my heart since they closed all those rivet locations.

But no, this building.

That's a historic place.

They say if you close your eyes and squint in the right light, you could see Geno Moore letting air out of tires.

The ghost of Geno Moore.

Yeah, a tornado came through there last month.

It did over $3 million worth of improvements.

Hey, I'm sure you're going to bring it up during the review, but we're talking about the building and the arena.

The one I actually didn't mind the look, I liked it.

But again, I'm sentimental towards

early to mid-90s ECW, and I was there for good lord.

But the parts at my heartstrings, the part that I thought looked the worst was Claudio's entrance when you realized that the crew is all just set up under the overpass.

Yes,

that's the

they wouldn't even, because of the Dick the Boozers, you know, ego and they have to do their entrance, they had to go backstage.

And there is no backstage.

It's just

piles of junk and a fucking parking lot.

But

anyhow, let's get to the, what went wrong in the ring.

Here is a problem that they're developing and it's going to happen next week in Philly and maybe it won't spread too much.

FTR comes out.

And first, by the way, did you see cash get in the face of the 18-year-old guy with the FedEx outfit on or whatever?

They've been doing this a lot lately.

I don't know if you've noticed it, but they've been doing this specific thing a lot lately.

Well, they shouldn't do it in Philadelphia.

And especially, they really shouldn't do it at all because here's the thing:

everybody's smart now.

They know you can't touch them.

You're not Roger Jackson.

You can't touch them.

But even in the days, the Terry Funks, the heels that would go out and challenge fans, in effect, and bow up at them, Terry taught me that he made it broader.

Every once in a while, if somebody looked like that he had gotten over

with something he said, Terry would get up in the guy's face and he could back him down.

That was a long time ago and a different guy.

As a general rule, yell at the crowd as a broad collective rather than get in one guy's face because he didn't back down.

Cash has to stay there jawing.

The guy's not going to back down from him because he knows he can sue cash if cash does anything.

And cash knows he can't do anything, but he thinks he's trying to fucking buffalo this guy.

So he just got told off by a teenage FedE driver.

Just yell at him broadly.

Don't pick one out and get in the face because you ain't going to win.

And then you just look foolish.

And this happened a few times with FTR recently.

There was one time where it may have been cash where, like, they drew back like they were going to hit.

Obviously, they weren't going to throw a punch, but it was just to get the person to flinch.

And they didn't flinch.

They stood there with

their hand.

And then this time the guy was blowing kisses.

Yeah.

So if this is a reaction you're getting is a heel, stop doing this.

Stop doing these things.

So then they got in the ring and Dax was going to start talking, but the microphone was not feeding the PA.

It was feeding television.

We could hear when he would take his hand and bang on it.

We could hear those things,

but he couldn't hear himself on the PA.

So he thought the mic was dead.

So he says it's not working.

They hand him a second one, but it's the same thing because it's not the problem of the microphones.

It's the problem of the fucking audio idiot in the truck.

And

it's the same thing.

We could hear everything.

We say it's not working.

And then he got bleeped for, I guess, said, give me a fucking microphone.

It works right.

Whatever.

Finally, they were feeding the PA.

Here's the problem.

They start trying to cut the promo.

They were pinned in the tag team title match at the pay-per-view by the illegal man.

And they're going to browbeat Paul Turner, the referee, about it and cross-examine him about it.

And then one tell him they want him to reverse the decision and give them the belts.

But the people are just hooting him down and they're chanting, shut the fuck up,

all that shit.

By the way, they're on

the Turner Networks.

There was no TNT when I was part of the Creative for the Wrestling program on the Turner Network, but we would get memos about language and nobody ever said fuck.

But they have just quit trying

to censor the chants from these crowds, and they're in Philadelphia.

Need I say more?

The same two-hour program, what were there?

40, 50, 60 fucks from all the people chanting, shut the fuck up.

And they're just letting it,

they've given up.

If somebody had said fuck

in 1990, I believe they would have taken the program off the air.

But the point is,

they're chanting shut the fuck up because A, they're not interested in this angle or these people.

B, they're a wise ass crowd, the most dedicated, devoted, hardcore, indie-minded crowd that's going to come to the 2300 toilet in Philadelphia.

And they're just hijacking the show.

And that is the meaning of it, hijacking the show.

You can't get the fucking probe.

It's throwing the talent off.

Nobody listens so that then

they need to be reacting to what the talent is saying and doing in the ring.

And instead, they're just taking off on their own.

And we don't want to hear it.

If they were interested in the angles and the personalities,

they would listen.

But instead, it's more and more of the Dominic Mysterio thing where it's fun for us to just shit on you.

And we don't really care what you're saying to listen to it anyway.

But it's happening on this program, not just here,

but to like three or four different fucking people whenever they start talking.

And if the people aren't listening, you can't get your points crossed.

And then you know the stories are bad enough to begin with.

Don't make them any harder to understand.

Do you see the point I'm making?

I do.

And I don't know how they're going to get out of this.

And also,

Dax is the one that cross-examined Paul Turner.

There's a manager for that.

Because Dax's strong point of his working or his talking is not his talking.

It's his working.

But then

Stokely fires up and starts browbeating Paul Turner when he said the decision is final.

But then the fans are chanting on their own.

No hoes, no hoes.

Because, you know, they've done the comedy where Stokely don't get no hoes,

but they're not listening to what he's doing.

And he's trying to do a deal with Paul Turner where he gives Paul the chest finger.

Paul gives it back to him.

And FTR gets in the middle, but the people had

not paid any attention.

Here comes Edge's music.

And he comes out.

And now they like that because they like him.

But he comes out alone.

He's looking around.

There's no Christian Cage.

And then suddenly in the ring, Cage appears from behind and gives Stokely

his finish, the unprettier, whatever they call it these days.

The manager gets hit first.

So he lays Stokely out, and then the FTR turns around and Edgie Christian beat them up.

And then here come the referees and 15 security guys.

They have a big pull apart.

Every outlaw indie guy in Philadelphia was booked that had a black shirt.

And they got FTR to the entranceway and Stokely's all shook up.

And Christian and Edge cut the promo and still managed to do some comedy because Christian is going to say, your fathers, you have fathers.

And Edge is like, oh, don't do that.

And then the fans want him to do it.

Okay, do it.

And your fathers are dead.

And they announce a tag team match for all out in Toronto.

But nobody listened to the majority of what went on there.

They just amused themselves.

And out of the two teams that Edge and Christian could face,

we said it took the

new off of them

teaming up to go against Luchasaurus.

And originally it was supposed to be Nick Plain and Pip Sabian.

It should have been in Toronto.

It should have been against FTR.

And if they had to get the belts off the hurt business, then FTR should have been the champions

instead of this goofy fucking

Brody King and Brodito or whatever the fuck.

But the point is, the fans are just taking over because all they're there to see is people break furniture and they're not listening to any of the guys try to set up any of the stories would they have done this to

the cm punks the drew mcintires

the roman reigns the paul heymans

the brawn breakers even the

main stars in the industry no they're interested they might want to boo what they're saying but they want to hear it With this, they've already said, ah, this shit ain't going to be worth a shit anyway.

Let's just have fun.

Do you think I'm overstating this?

Well, no, I mean, you're the expert.

I would listen to you before I listen to me.

I think you're right about the fact that the fans,

I mean, Stokely's just a part of the thing now, like Tully was.

He's like a comedy Tully.

Yeah.

But there's no reason to

want to see him get his ass kicked.

He's already gotten his ass kicked numerous times.

As far as Dak's here,

maybe we're- Wait, can you can you imagine?

I'll hold that thought, but can you imagine if we'd pitched a finish to Dusty, much less him giving us one like this, where the Midnight Express is in the ring.

We beat the job, guys, and here comes Dusty, and he knocks me out first.

What the fuck in the world?

No, he has to get to you, which gives Bobby a chance to take a great bump, which is always nice.

There you go.

Yeah.

But anyway, go ahead, Dax.

But,

you know, I agree dax's strong point ain't on the mic however i thought maybe it was because of the frustration with the mic issue and just kind of yelling it out and not hearing himself back right i thought he had more intensity in whatever he was yelling at the referee here than anything else i thought it was one of his best moments on the mic actually well but also he was trying to be heard over you know a lot of times people that weren't listening He sounded like someone who didn't practice what he was going to say, someone who was trying to just say something.

I actually liked that.

But that's the thing is that they've put the cart before the horse in that the manager should be the one to lay out the grievance.

Then the

wrestlers should be the one to back it up and fucking intimidate the fucking guy who's not cooperating with the manager.

And then when the baby face comes out,

Then the fucking wrestlers go to the babyfaces and they fucking fight them and maybe, as you said, get through them to get to the manager, but not completely because that's the tease

to continue this.

Because in a perfect world, the manager has caused them,

the babyfaces, endless strife, caused them to lose, caused them to get beat, caused them to get hurt, whatever.

So that that's the prize that they get

in the claw machine when they finally get a hold of him.

But this is all goddamn cattywompers.

And to me, there was the,

you know, again, I lost myself a little bit in the moment because I used to be in that building.

You know, it's a different crew of people, but Philadelphia stays Philadelphia.

Philadelphia never changes.

And I was enjoying the hell out of those fans just doing what they always do.

But what do you think?

I mean, I guess you kind of said I was going to say, what do you think of the setup to FTR versus Edge and Christian?

Well, that's the thing.

They shouldn't have already had a match together, Edge and Christian, against these other two that we, for all the reasons that was things that were wrong with it, that we talked about when we reviewed it, that their first match back as a team, Edge and Christian, they still have to put over the lizard as being somewhat of a force because the other guy broke his foot to the blah blah blah.

They should have done some type of focused angle to Edge and Christian versus FTR, where at at least FTR can do the things in the ring to make the focus on Edge and Christian rather than them having to be the veterans trying to get these greenhorns over.

And in Toronto, their hometown, and their career comes full circle, that could have been something that was promoted.

You've just taken the,

you've taken a lot of the icing off the cake and made it less palatable by having this false start and crummy match in Wembley.

But nevertheless, that's my opinion.

Or not Wimbley, but England.

Or good old Wembley, England.

Right down the road from West Fabersham.

You want to move on here, Brian?

We must.

We must because Dick the Boozer faced all 187 pounds of Danny Garcia.

They could get away with announcing him as 200,

but they just have to slap you in the face with there's nothing about this guy that's intimidating in any fashion.

And at least you notice that Boozer, he walked through the back

in the hallway, but not off the street because I assume he was scared of being mugged in that neighborhood.

But after almost 20 minutes of this with the entrances and everything, Moxley kicked out of a pile driver.

And then Garcia grabbed Moxley's legs and was stepping through like he was going to get him in a sharpshooter or something.

And were you even paying attention to this?

Did you see how he pinned him, how Moxley pinned Garcia?

I saw.

He small packaged himself.

Talent.

Garcia steps through Moxley's legs like he's going to set up

a figure four or a sharpshooter or something where he's going to turn.

And they're trying to do

the finish where when the guy starts turning,

the other guy small packages him.

But he small, Garcia small packaged himself.

He just rolled down and tucked his head under and put his shoulders down without Moxley moving or doing anything.

And then when his shoulders were already down, then Moxley hooked the head because it was right next to him.

One, two, three.

And even the announcers, you could hear the announcers go,

like they couldn't hold their reaction of what the fuck did he just do?

And then said, oh, Moxley capitalized.

Yeah, he noticed the guy had just decided to pin himself right next to him and took advantage of it.

Capitalize, yeah.

20 minutes to get there.

I give you a good idea.

I give Daniel Gilly credit.

He doesn't age.

He still looks like a 22-year-old skinny kid who came in.

You're thinking, oh, he'll fill out one day.

It hasn't happened.

And

look at the difference in Kyle.

Old Kyle Felcher.

He takes the right vitamins, too.

Well, but he's tanned and he's had some gear made.

He's made an attempt at a gimmick.

And here comes Garcia looking like Mopeface.

Anyway, there was a post-match, Jim.

I understand.

Yes, there was because there was Wheeler useless in the middle of the ring with that.

Talk about Mope Face and somebody looks like they ought to be goddamn parking cars.

He's in just, I can't even call him street clothes.

He's just in front clothes.

And he's the one who gets on the microphone and said Moxley is not going to fight Darby Allen while Moxley and Garcia were down on the floor arguing with each other.

And they were clearly wanting us to see it and getting camera shots of it.

And then they went to break, and when they came back from break, Wheeler was still in the ring with the microphone.

And again, he starts doing a promo.

I used to do Ring Crew here as a teenager.

And the fans are just shut the fuck up.

And it's the same thing.

He's trying to set up this story of his background there and how he's come so far and whatever.

But he looks like a no boy, no boy,

a nobody,

or a no boy, possibly, rather than a young boy.

New Japan had young boys, but he's a no boy.

The fans don't care.

The material makes no sense and is not really interesting, and they're just chanting over him.

And then the lights go out and

the hook signal.

goes up on the roof of the warehouse.

And that's new music, right?

It was a very

I liked it.

Whatever the wood was very new sounding.

Hook walks out to the ring, gets a choke on this fucking guy, then lets it go, then punches him and leaves.

That was pretty much it, wasn't it?

Did you see more?

Did I miss something?

Did I see more?

Are you talking about the career of Hook?

Are you talking about this specific thing?

Well, then, no, the specific, well, I mean, the specific thing here,

nobody was.

Yes, they reacted to, oh, it's hook, but it wasn't like, oh, my God,

it's hook.

He walked out there.

He'd got a choke on the guy.

He let the choke go.

He hit the ropes.

He punched him.

The guy that's been beaten by everybody else takes a fucking bump.

And he walked out of the building.

I don't know that they found a needle mover here.

Let's just hope it leads to Hook versus Mox.

That could be an all-time classic.

Good God.

I mean, it's Philadelphia.

It's where Taz was a star.

Taz is on commentary.

They've been building up the or showing vignettes for the return of Hook.

They've got new music ready to go.

Again, he's another one of these guys.

Just because the Rotary Club was recognizing Nick Gulis doesn't mean that George has to be praised praised and feeded as well.

Hook's been there for like five years now.

Same question as Daniel Garcia.

Same, well, Will or you, at least they've let him grow his hair and he just gets beat up not as just a generic job guy, but as Moxley's job guy.

But, Hook, has there been any growth?

Has there been any change?

You still look at him like, oh, he has potential.

Well, how long does that work for?

He's been there forever now.

Well, he's back.

All right.

We'll see what happens.

All righty.

Levitating past, MJF had a pre-taped interview from Forbidden Door after his match where he narrated the way that he got screwed over with B-roll.

And again, at this point, it's just, he badly needs a change of scenery and some

people to interact with that are in any way interesting.

And speaking of people who are,

well, they're in one way, some of these people are interesting, but not in a way that I'd want to watch them for that long.

Penelope Pitstop and Megan Brain wrestled Chris Statlander and Harley Cameron.

They did that.

You happen to know who won, Brian?

I believe Megan and Penelope won.

Well, good for them.

And then we were at nine o'clock.

I'm telling you, these shows are fucking dreary.

I'm zipping.

Mercedes Moon did an in-ring promo.

They set up the balloons, the flowers, a table with all of her nine belts.

She has now got nine

of the

outlaw indie girl promotion belts around the world that Tony has either bought or negotiated for her.

And she thinks it's a big fucking deal.

And

as a matter of fact, some of these fans think it's a big fucking deal, overlooking the fact that it's a goddamn ridiculous fucking deal because none of these belts have ever been heard of before,

but they look nice.

She was wearing a stripper outfit or something she may have picked up on South Street.

She's got the nine phony belts and her promo is Ultimo Dragon had 10 belts.

What the

how old is she?

Wasn't that 30 years ago?

And did anybody give a shit then?

Did Ultimo Dragon's 10 belts ever get him a featured spot in any way in the WCW hierarchy?

Well, he was working in WCW.

It didn't really boost him.

Yeah,

he was working his ass off on TV, getting the shit kicked out of him.

It was a big deal in Japan, of course, where

there were lots of photos of him with his lots of belts and the lots of magazines they used to have.

How many belts did Nash and Hall and Hogan have when they were working one-tenth as much and fucking making 10 times as much?

But this was the nine o'clock hour, and it was three or four minutes because there was nothing for her to say.

There was any new, just I'm going to get 10 belts and break the record

or whatever the fuck.

It lasted three or four minutes.

She did the stripper dance again

and off she went.

Mark Briscoe couldn't be there because he had a new baby.

Is that 10?

He's had a lot of kids.

Bless those Briscoes.

But,

you know,

I, again, we love Mark Briscoe, but he just, he even said in this promo, he's talking about MJF.

It was a good promo as always, but he even said, I never, if people say I never win the big one, you know what?

Because you never win the big one.

We'd love to see him win the big one.

But I think a lot of people have quit waiting.

Did you see the eight-man tag team confrontation, Brian?

The all-star eight-man tag team cataclysmic fucking Zabada.

I didn't watch the entirety of the match.

I saw the beginning, the setup for it.

I saw the ending of it and a few points in the middle, but this was a big ball of I don't give a shit.

So I did the best I could.

I was more intrigued by the intro, the setup there, the follow-up to the big return of Wardlow.

Well, you know, there's the thing is that people say that AEW doesn't, you know, their characters, their talent don't grow and expand and metamorphosize and everything.

Well, Wardlow,

a mere four or five years ago, he was just a flunky standing in a corner while all the other guys got all the attention.

And now here today in 2025, he's a flunky standing in the corner while the other guys get all the attention.

It was an eight-man tag team match play that Tony Khan loves with Oblada, the worst Japanese wrestler in history.

Josh Alexander, take a shit.

He's back.

And our friend Frank Mortis

with Don in, of course, in his normal position talking instead of managing, and Wardlow hanging around as a stooge in case anybody needed anything,

they debut this guy by beating up a goddamn

manager.

Why are all the managers getting beat up?

But

all the damage had been done, and then he comes in and

does practically nothing on a pay-per-view and then follows up on the TV afterwards by doing completely nothing.

How was this worth waiting two years for?

It wasn't.

He just came out there and stood there and laughed alongside Don Callis as other people came out to wrestle.

Which, by the way, was Kevin Knight, Hong Kong Fui, Bandito, and Burger King.

And then with entrances, again, 15 minutes.

And then

in what's indicative of this whole program,

Josh Alexander, the heel,

outsmarted Spitball, the babyface, avoided his offensive move and pinned him clean one, two, three.

Is that the first time we've seen him pin someone?

I don't know, but

I don't think he's won anything yet.

But how in the world does that finish get by multiple heads?

How in the world do they think, wait, how does the babyface go, wait a minute, I'm going to try to do my fancy shit and you're just going to outsmart me and beat me one, two, three?

Then

why are you the heel?

Why aren't you the babyface?

What the?

Obviously, there's no one involved.

Obviously, there was no one involved in that match or producing that match who understood that.

That's the problem.

Or maybe they just didn't care because it doesn't make any sense anyway.

None of the rest of it.

But then we got to hangnail Adam Page.

He did an in-ring promo as usual in his ill humor.

He appears very dyspeptic,

never smiles.

He's always

frowny and smile upside down-y.

He thanked Osprey for all of all that he's done for him and the company, and we'll miss you.

And got the fans to

chant for Osprey a little bit.

And then he started in on MJF.

And that's where I said, God, this makes the impact zone at Universal look like Madison Square Garden.

Because he's supposedly a world champion of something.

And with the.

the spectacle that the WWE is presenting these days, he's in this fucking barn in Philly.

And

then here comes Don Fallas's music again.

And at least they were listening to Paige, but now that he comes out, Don, he's doing the promo in the entranceway, and the fans are back to shut the fuck up.

And it's the same shit.

They don't want to listen.

They don't care.

They just want to just do what amuses them.

And Don wants the title back in the family.

So here comes Lance Archer, Josh Alexander, Cha-Cha-Cha-Chia,

and Rocky Romero.

And they're all, so here's a bunch of middle card fucking heels that have come out, and Paige tackles all of them.

And then they start beating Paige up.

And

the middle card heels are beating up the world champion until guess who saves him?

Spitball and Kevin Knight.

So now he's got preliminary middle card underneath babyfaces coming to save the world champion.

And then Rocky Romero stops them with a police baton

that Don just happens to have in his pocket.

And then Kenny's music plays.

And Kenny comes out and clears the ring.

And he and Paige do some really

shitty looking choreography with Lance Archer that didn't materialize like I'm sure they wanted it to.

And then the heels ran off.

So

again, the world, they need

a world champion that's also the top guy in the company.

Except it can't be Kenny now because he's

part-time at best because of his physical condition.

It can't be Osprey.

Yeah, part-time at best, then when he is there, you probably have to put him in a a tag team or something so he doesn't have to do everything.

Right.

Can't be Osprey because he's about to get surgery.

Can't be Swerve because he's about to get surgery.

He had his meniscus done.

I just saw that.

Which is a fancy word for cartilage, but it's still going to be a couple months before he can do shit that he

should be normally does.

So they can't have

a star as their babyface world champion because they don't have any.

Maybe they could bring another Warlow as a baby face.

Oh, wait.

He's managing the middle card heels.

We don't have time for him.

He's with the manager.

He's not even the manager.

He's just with the manager.

Well, that's true.

Yeah, he's seconding.

He's stooging for.

So then they had a match for the six-man tag team title with Samoa Joe, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Shapupi against Ricochet.

And his stooges are Tia Leone and Bishop Sheen.

I should use his full name, Bishop Fulton J.

Sheen.

Look it up, kids.

It's hilarious.

And the baby faces won and left.

And then

the hurt syndicate's music played

and out came Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin.

and got in a fight in the owl way with Ricochet Stooges.

While Ricochet was laying selling in the ring,

they fought these two in a big four-way and fought to the back

with nobody really gaining an advantage.

Did I miss something?

Were they involved in

potentially causing the

anything to go on here tonight?

And they were at the paper, they were at the pay-per-view, right?

Yeah, they came out as mascots.

They got Japan like uh jackets and everything with masks on and they beat up the or they they didn't even really beat him up they just kind of got him to fight with them away from the room yeah they they fought off yeah but why did if these guys

had this whole the the the hurt syndicate are baby our heels

so why did they wait to come out to fight these other guys that cost them the belts while the other match was going on when everybody else just does whatever they want to do well the other thing too was right before the finish

it was really brief and it wasn't shot well.

And I did not go back to watch it, and I meant to.

Some guy jumps up and hits one of the heels, and Excalibur goes, Oh, it's MVP!

And then he was gone.

I didn't even see him.

What?

Yeah, you didn't see that?

Yeah, no,

yeah, because MVP didn't come out with no, he did not.

Oh, god damn it.

Anyway, so now we gotta

watch Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin work with the two undercard Samoan-looking fellas.

All righty.

Yeah.

Again, you need top baby faces right now.

Do something.

Just do something else.

Tony, whatever you're thinking, do the opposite.

Well, speaking of the opposite, they finished this program up and I will finish this review up.

It was going to be a Falls Count Anywhere match with Claudio Castignoli and Darby Allen.

So they show Claudio walking through

the backstage area of this hovel.

And suddenly Darby dives off the top of a fucking mobile home trailer onto Claudio.

And then Claudio goes and puts him in a shopping cart.

and pushes him into a bunch of chairs and then picks him up and body slams him

through a flat screen TV stretched out amongst two chairs with a concrete floor underneath.

Then they get back up and they fight into the arena

where they are going to start having the Falls Count Anywhere match.

And Darby is already up doing dives.

And he climbs a pillar 20 feet and does a coffin drop off the pillar 45 seconds after he was slammed through the flat screen TV.

And And I see, you know what?

Why?

Why?

Why?

I'm done.

I turned it off.

I don't know.

And I don't fucking care.

Did they kill him or did he survive?

Once again, Darby Allen survives.

Darby Allen wins the match.

I like when the brawl started outside and you saw those workers in the back sitting there.

No one got up.

No one looked concerned.

They just looked over at this happening.

And now by workers, you mean actual people working there at the building, not the other wrestler.

The workers.

I mean, these were just like, you know,

I know you trained at Knox Pro Wrestling, so I don't know your terminology.

The popcorn guy is not scared of this shit.

Well, we talk about they need top baby faces.

They do have Darby,

who seems to not only take a beating, but want to take a beating.

They're doing these things to him because he's asking them to do these things to him.

I know, I know.

And actually,

they are so far in the soup right now that it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for Darby to be their top babyface of world champion, but obviously for a short period of time until they can set something else up because

people like him.

He has the weird charisma, even though he's a fucking moron.

And short term,

yay, but to carry a company, no, to be featured in the main events of pay-per-views with different types of opponents, especially with the slim pickens on that roster, no, not over a long period of time, you need a guy that looks

better than that.

I'm sorry.

Osprey, I'm not talking about Alex Luger.

I'm talking about Osprey.

Wouldn't be

unacceptable, cosmetically unpleasing, but not fucking Darby, because then you've limited yourself to looking like a fucking niche-level indie.

Well, of course, Jim Orange Cassidy is also due to return anytime, though.

God,

no, don't tell me that.

This show can't get any worse.

Oh, wait a minute.

I hear Robert Fuller now telling Jerry Jarrett.

Oh, yes, it can.

Orange Cassidy due to return.

Chris Jericho looking for a contract somewhere.

Somewhere else.

Anywhere.

Anyone who will pay.

He will be there.

But that was ABC.

That was the program, the Dynamite episode.

Brian, do you have any closing thoughts on last Wednesday's Dynamite?

Again, I actually thought one of the positives was the look, and you hated it completely.

Yeah.

I thought it looked all right.

I liked the energy of that crowd.

It's like if the NXT crowd was just evil, that's like Philadelphia the crowd is.

I love it.

And we'll see.

You know, I mean, you pointed out all the big problems with

like every angle they did, let alone matches or pinfalls or how they happened or who pinned who or what.

There's no one there.

I mean, I hate to reference the Jake Hager interview.

It's not like he's the greatest source in the world.

But there's like no one there, as he talked about, who can talk Tony off being Tony.

And Tony thinks he has the instincts.

He said that in his own interview.

The big thing he had to do was trust his instincts and and go with his instincts.

He thinks he has instincts.

He thinks he understands.

I think his instincts stink.

He thinks he understands booking philosophy because he watched a lot of angles on tapes.

But the problems with AEW always remain the same problems, and it's Tony Khan.

That's why WWE is kicking the shit out of him.

And, you know, it's going to be a full house pretty soon.

But the problem is Tony, and Tony doesn't see that.

Tony thinks that he's like the biggest asset of AEW.

Well, I think he should stop after the first three letters.

See, now you didn't get that, did you?

I got that.

That was dynamite.

You got that too.

Well, before we talk about whether anybody watched this thing or not, Brian, what in the world is going on in the world of the Arcadian Vanguard podcast network where people do indeed listen to the programs?

That's right.

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Wherever you find your favorite podcast, The Mothership.

Well, mother,

where are we at on the ratings?

I said they were an immovable object at the top of the program.

Did they move from last week where they were down in the

dregs of the dumpster down below 600,000?

It's looking bad.

The end is near.

The sky is falling.

What's going on this week?

Well, Jim, the ratings are in AEW Dynamite,

August 27, 2025 on TBS from 8 to 10.08 p.m.

On average, watched by 585,000 viewers.

Ouch.

A 0.13

in the key demo 18 to 49, which is the,

I believe it's the all-time low.

No, lowest, it says lowest viewership for dynamite since March 5th.

I'm going by WrestleNomics here, but I thought it was the all-time low.

Oh, no, they've been lower.

In the key demo.

It's pretty low.

Yeah, I'm not sure, but 585.

It's mighty low.

585, Jim.

Well,

thank you very much.

585.

I'll see you that and raise you 600.

No, is there still below 600?

But where now is this one of those shows that started with a promising fashion and then just plummeted from there?

Or is this one of those shows where it was the die-hard fans that kind of started and stayed there from beginning to end?

And again,

the key demo number lower than it's been.

Let's go to the quarterly numbers, the quarterly hour breakdown.

The quarters here,

these are compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one,

8 to 8.15 p.m.

The FTR Adam Copeland live angle and the Darby Allen promo,

638,000 viewers.

Gee, now last week,

they had had a wonderful first quarter, didn't they?

And then things started.

Or am I thinking of the week before?

Because that's pretty puny for the first quarter: 638,000.

They used to not fall below 600.

Now that's where they're starting.

And again, 166,000 in the key demo.

That's a low for the start of the show.

Quarter two, 8:15, 8:30 p.m.

Jon Moxley versus Daniel Garcia

with picture and picture

610,000 viewers.

So again, this is one of those weeks where they can look positively that they didn't lose 100,000 viewers in the first 15 minutes like they often do.

They just started real low and only lost 28.

Well, we roll into quarter three, 8.30 to 8.45 p.m.

The continuation of Moxley vs.

Garcia.

The post-match with the Death Riders and Matt Menard.

An ad break.

The Wheeler Wheeler Utah Hook Live Angle, the MJF tape promo, and the start of Megan Bain and Penelope Ford versus Harley Cameron and Chris Statlander,

622,000 viewers.

Good lord, they actually picked up 12,000.

So this is...

This is one of those episodes where only the sickos decided to pop in, and they're going to stick with it until almost the bitter end.

I can see that now.

Well, we go to the bitter quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of Bain and Ford versus Cameron and Statlander with picture and picture.

The post-match with Willow Nightingale, an ad break, and the Mercedes-Monet live promo.

553,000 viewers.

150,000 in the key demo.

That's the low of the show.

Jeez, O Pete.

Mercedes made them all moan.

But what about the top of the hour, Brian?

The big nine o'clock hour.

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

Mark Briscoe's backstage promo, Don Callis's live promo, and Brodito and Jetspeed versus the Don Callis family.

with picture and picture

591,000 viewers.

Good guys, so once that Mercedes was out of there, they figured it's safe to come back.

And that's 38,000 to the good.

Because they didn't have the bucks out here this week to

challenge Mercedes for ratings tanking dominance.

Well, let's see if the good continues, Jim.

We go to quarter six, 9:15, and 9:30 p.m.

The continuation of Brodito and Jet Speed versus the Callas family.

An ad break.

The Adam Page Callus family live angle,

566,000 viewers.

Okay, now we're down to almost the Mercedes low period, and I'm predicting

a steady little drop-off from here.

What do you think?

I think we go to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The continuation of the Page and Callus Family live angle with the Kenny Omega return.

Tony Storm and Mina Shirakawa and Athena's promo,

and the start of the ops versus the Gates of Agony and Ricochet with picture and picture

549,000 viewers.

Now we're at our low.

How much lower

can we go?

We go to quarter eight, nine: forty-five to ten p.m.

We have a six-minute overrun.

Continuation of the previous six-man tag match, an ad break,

and Claudio Castignoli versus Darby Allen with picture-in-picture,

572,000 viewers.

Aha!

Six-minute overrun, continuation of the match, and the post-match with the Death Riders, 550,000 viewers.

Poor things,

they just bail out at the end quickly.

So the Darby factor got them an extra 23,000 people there at the end.

Well, that ain't bad at all.

Wow.

If

year over year, they can't get the picture that they're just doing the same shit with the same people or the same kind of shit with people that look the same.

And every year they lose another 100,000 people off their average.

Well, there you go.

Well, there they go.

I know Tony says everything's up year over year,

but this is pretty pretty down.

His ego,

his dosage,

many things are up.

The best thing he has going for him in terms of ratings is the fact that no one knows the max ratings.

No one can confirm or deny any of the numbers out there.

And all he can do is shrug and say, hey, I don't know anything either.

That's all I know.

But that's AEW dynamite.

And that's hell if I know.

But I'll tell you what, folks, we're coming back in just a few days with there's some kind of WWE pay-per-view going to to go on and we'll have some other things to talk about as well on the drive-thru Brian your program

I'm blaming you

but if you have no more questions Brian you're free to leave and so are the cult of cornet members folks we'll see you soon on the drive-thru next week on the experience big announcement about the holiday season and until then thank you fuck you and bye-bye everybody

Cornette

of Jim Cornet

of Jim Connet.