Episode 602: Big Data

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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 Jim Cornish.

The keys to the future held by the past.

And with tag team partner Barion Last, he sends this message out by podcast.

He's Jim Cornet.

Well, he's never fake a phone

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Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

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Get the experience.

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

Today, the government shutdown will not affect our program, but Tony Khan's Feet a Starving Indie Wrestler Plan may be shut down.

All that, and Dallas, Texas wrestling history for no particular reason, except we want to.

And joining me for all this and so much more.

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

Co-host to you.

He never shuts down because he's governed by no one.

Be great, Brian, last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again for another action-packed week.

And

he doesn't want to sing his song just yet, but it will happen.

He doesn't want to.

He doesn't want to.

Well, he's going to one of these days.

One of these days, he's going to.

That was the point.

One of these days, my friend.

You know,

we got just horrible news.

You know, and I tried, Brian, I tried going.

Sometimes we have the happy talk, right, where we talk about fun things at the top of the program.

I tried to go through the news because there's usually a story about,

I don't know, a Dalmatian that finds its own way home from the Arctic Circle.

It's kind of heartwarming or some kind of funny story about the foibles of human nature, like a burglar tries tries to break into a glass factory and ends up falling in the glass smelter and making a spectacle out of himself.

But there's nothing, Brian.

It's all bad.

The news is bad, baby.

It's bad.

It's nothing but bad news and misery all around.

And now the bad news and the misery has apparently been inflicted on the wrestling industry.

Could this be

the thing, the needle that pops the bubble, brian with all these big money tv deals

you know they tried to make me a nielson family we talked about that these people are still calling me from a 513 area code somewhere up there in ohio

but the ratings are changing that were already

as we saw fucking flawed to begin with when we went through that little package they sent me and now they're changing the ratings

and I, or how they do the ratings, and I don't understand a goddamn thing about it

because I've only had it explained to me by two so-called experts.

Well, I haven't had it explained to me personally.

I've read the writings,

and if you've read the writs they've written, you'll know they're really confusingly written writs.

Uncle Dave, who would you give him numbers, he'll just

go on.

And it just degenerates into

brain salad surgery.

I study this.

And he studied, you know, the numbers all make sense to him.

And then there's...

Because he wants to learn.

You have to want to learn.

He's a student of the game.

I wish he'd learned how to write concisely enough that any other human being besides his own tortured minds.

possibly if you're issuing insults, you've lost the argument.

Well, no, I didn't issue them.

I emitted them.

Well done.

Well put.

They emitted from me.

I didn't issue them.

If I put them down in my next book, we'll talk about my new book later on, but my next book, I'll put them in and then I'll issue them.

But nevertheless.

And also,

the learned scholar over there at the Flummocks place, I don't know.

I saw an email where he was trying, who was that?

Thurston Howell?

WrestleMix.

Thurston Howell.

Yeah, not Thurston Howe.

Brandon Thurston is the editor or the boss or what he owns it, whatever the fuck it is.

Well, he was trying to explain it, and it doesn't seem to be abundantly clear there either.

But all I saw, all I needed to see, Brian.

All I needed to see was one statement from our friend Uncle Dave.

One statement that puts it all into perspective.

It says pro wrestling's value to television right now looks to be taking a very significant hit across the board.

I see the bad moon rising.

I see trouble on the way.

I see earthquakes and lightning.

I see bad times today.

Also, bad organ play.

Hey,

hope you got your things together, wrestling companies.

And I'm looking at you, Tony Khan, when I say this because the WWE not only has

more money now than

has ever been printed before,

but they're also having their pictures taken with that

glory hound in the Oval Office.

So they're pretty safe.

But holy mackerel,

if the ratings get worse, the only thing that is

has been agreed upon by everybody that's said anything about this, Brian, maybe you can shed some more light on this, is that the new way that they're figuring the ratings,

wrestling is suffering.

Football did

better,

and some shows are only doing a little worse,

but wrestling sucks ass in this new system.

And

if

don't the rights fees at some point down the road here in the next few years

have to somewhat be concurrent with the people if AEW is losing viewers already on television, which we've established that they have since they started,

and then they lose more because they changed the fucking

They changed the rules.

Is this good?

Or anybody else that wants to get in the wrestling business?

Or already in and we just don't pay any attention to them.

I don't know if it's good for wrestling.

I don't think it really affects necessarily streaming platforms.

Those numbers are what they are.

But we've always said the issue with television ratings is the accuracy.

The business, the advertisers, not the wrestling business, the television business has always run on this model using these ratings.

But they are far from accurate.

For whatever reason, there's no just direct

everyone who has a cable box.

Here's what everyone's watching.

There isn't any of that.

It's an assumption based on how many people do keep track of the ratings.

Who would have thought that wearing an ankle monitor somewhere on your person, if you're over the age of six, that while you go about your daily life that we'll hear signals that are hidden to the naked ear that you come in contact with as you traverse the goddamn town?

Who knew that system could be flawed?

And we'll get to it.

I have the article here that Brandon Thurston wrote for WrestleNomics, and we should plug them if we're going to talk about this.

WrestleNomics is on Patreon.

You can subscribe there for all the information that they have.

But it's important to note: last week, right after we recorded the experience and we did the AEW Dynamite ratings, which as of right now are not in for this week, they may not be in by the end of the show.

But right after we came out, what was it last week, like 636 or something?

I believe so.

Reports started coming in that programming insider had a different number and that number was like a hundred thousand less

and apparently it was somewhat similar i want to say for nxt

whatever the number was that came out the traditional way

the programming insider number appears to be the brand new big data plus panel that's what they call it nielsen way of grabbing the ratings and it showed significantly 100 000 people on a show with 600,000 viewers.

That's a 60 audience wasn't there.

So,

what you said before,

I think, is that

this should help wrestling.

It helped football.

You would think it would help wrestling, and it's gone the other way so far early on.

To explain any of this, because I don't think we've done that.

Yeah, well, and also,

nobody apparently understands why this is that why this thing is so as of yet, that wrestling has taken a hit over this, even over some,

as we mentioned, some programs were slightly up or slightly down.

There's some variation, but

wrestling is a lot, whammo, and nobody's taking a swing at trying to figure that out yet.

But when they say,

what the fuck?

Just words, words out loud.

That's the explanation for me.

What is big data plus panel?

What is that terminology that they're using now to describe this horseshit?

Again, going through the article from WrestleNomics, up until now, generally Nielsen TV ratings data has been measured with the panel-only methodology, sometimes called automatic content measurement or ACM.

That's what I always called it.

That's going to be phased out in quarter four of 2025, which is

the current quarter year.

Nielsen's going to big data plus panel.

Panel-only data has been based generally on a representative sample of households whose viewing is actually being metered.

The national.

Okay,

hold on now.

That's what traditionally in one form or another, as we've mentioned before they had the ankle monitor thing, you had a

demographic and geographic and numerical cross-section of people that were supposed to represent the greater number that either had an old diary that they'd write things down in, or then later on, there was an actual gimmick box on their TV that could tell what they were watching.

And that was extrapolated multiple times to get the number.

So it was still

obviously not a

real accurate system.

It was a sample.

It was a sample size, and everything was derived from that, whether or not it was a realistic number or not.

Back to this article here.

Nielsen claims that big Data plus Panel will improve accuracy.

The Media Rating Council, whoever they may be, has accredited the methodology, which at least means the non-profit third-party organizations that's intended for this very purpose agrees it's a credible form of measurement.

So whoever this third party is.

What is that form of measurement, though?

What is big data?

Big data plus panel.

It sounds like big daddy.

Big data plus panel uses massive device level data from set-top boxes and smart TVs.

Panel data is also in the new methodology to validate the big data and scale measurements.

Last week, this is from WrestleManics here, last week and in every report up until this writing, We have reported panel-only data for traditional TV ratings.

Starting today, I expect we'll see big data plus panel TV ratings.

And I'm trying to see if there's anything here that explains how it affects the wrestling ratings so far.

This certainly explains the discrepancies we saw last week in TV ratings reports from Programming Insider and others, including WrestleManics.

In general, under Big Data plus panel, I expected that we would see telecasts with generally higher viewership measurements.

But so far, for the wrestling telecasts, for which I have measurements under both methodologies, viewership is mostly lower.

Still, other telecasts measure higher.

It seems like telecasts that have a younger age skew, in some cases, tend to measure lower with Big Data plus panel, but it's by no means consistent.

And by the way, I mean, there are less and less young people watching TV.

And the AEW key demo, we've seen that number shrink and shrink and shrink.

So I don't know how much that would be the

thing here, but it seems like they say it's going to be more accurate.

Well, but

it's not just AEW specific, but it's also WWE as well.

And they have,

well, the kids.

What about the kids?

Does anybody think about the kids?

But it's, you know, Uncle Dave is

again, his statement is nobody has been hurt as badly as WWE and AEW.

Reasons why aren't known.

But the NFL did get gains, but maybe the NFL is behind this.

See, that's part of the problem, though, in my estimation.

And again, I don't have a methodology that I'm applying to this, just my own sense.

That's going with the idea that the numbers we were getting were in any way accurate, which I don't think they ever were, especially the last few years.

And that's also going with the idea that all things being equal, if we took a real number, if we got a real number of how many people are watching these shows, it would be higher.

And it takes out of the equation that Dynamite's been terrible.

And Raw and SmackDown,

if you're lucky, you get one or two segments worth watching, but there's slogs to get through.

It's not Bill Watts' Mid-South Wrestling, an action pack 60 minutes that you can't miss.

There's plenty you can miss, and people do.

do.

Well, this may not bode well, Brian.

It may not,

their whole business these days is everybody's is built on TV rights.

TV rights.

I want TV rights.

I'm just wondering how they get it from smart TVs.

You have a smart TV I know in your house.

I have a smart TV here.

Do they just get that information, or do you have to opt in?

Well, there's this guy that has been coming by for the last several months.

He knocks on the door about once a week and just goes behind the TV and does something.

I don't know what.

He's back there for a little while.

I don't know why he has to pull his pants down, but he says it's real tight back there.

And one last thing: this is from Nielsen themselves when they put out a press statement a few months ago.

Big data plus panel national TV measurement combines Nielsen's unique high-quality representative panel measurement with data from cable, satellite set-top boxes, and smart TVs across 45 million households and 75 million devices.

There's a number.

That's the sample size right there.

Well, that seems like

that that would be more accurate than a bunch of people up and fucking dating,

you know, harassing people on the phone to put on their ankle monitor.

Do you know anything?

I mean, one last thing about this, and I know we've talked a lot in the past about Nielsen and you've had.

different experiences at OVW where test patterns did record numbers and all sorts of things.

But when they find new Nielsen homes, new Nielsen families, like they tried with you, is it something where everyone in your neighborhood is hit up?

Or is it something where it's one person here, one person miles away, one person in the next state?

Like, how is it done?

How many Nielsen homes would there be in a community?

You know, I don't know the answer to that question, Brian, because most of the people, you know, live around here won't speak to me.

But no,

I have never thought

to ask the

few neighbors that I am cordial with: hey, did you get a fucking $2 in a mail from Nielsen last week?

It's never come up, but that is a good question.

Ever since you brought it up, we've had a bunch of listeners say that it's happened to them since then.

We've had listeners post in the Cult According to Facebook group like pictures of the money.

Here's the money.

Here's the evidence.

I got $2.

Show me the money.

Well, that might be.

But

actually, think about this.

If it was in any way even ever intended to be legitimate as far as a cross-sampling,

then one would imagine that you wouldn't just blanket a neighborhood because you would be picking

by some mathematical formula, okay, you know, 37% of the country is

Methodists that, you know, eat fucking ice cream.

So we got to find 37 Methodists that eat ice cream or whatever the fuck, right?

So

a bunch of the same kind of people probably live in the same fucking general neighborhood.

One would think that wouldn't be a wide cross-section of age or race or sex or

genre or whatever the fuck.

You know, every single day.

Tony Kahn's family collects

countless millions of dollars because of their patent and everything that brings in.

So money is no object.

You could overspend on anything.

And he wants to make this wrestling company work.

Six years.

There are people saying, six years, he's getting better.

No, no booker has ever gotten better after six years straight and he was bad from year one.

But should Tony Khan consider buying 500,000 smart TVs?

And just

put it getting a warehouse, maybe a warehouse in Alabama, where there's lots of people.

You're talking about Tim Horner with unlimited funds.

Well, no, but this is, yeah.

I mean, but this actually would work if they're, if they're actually measuring the smart TVs,

I don't know.

It may be worth it for Tony.

Get a big break.

Remember when years ago there was an early podcast

entity without naming any names that we swore to God in some way or another had to have some hut in Bolivia downloading over and over?

Yeah, the one where the guy literally told me that the numbers he didn't think they were real and he blamed his partner.

Yeah, that one.

Yeah.

That one.

Yeah.

Is there some type of farm?

Like they have the Russian bot farms you hear about.

Is there some type of farm where you could just pay some

black market dark web service to download your shit millions of times so you can get famous with the numbers?

I don't know.

Tony's farm.

Thanks, Guy's Farm.

Thanks, Guy's Ranch.

Welcome to Thanksgiving's Ranch.

I'm a real farmer.

I think it would work.

That's a South Park episode.

As a matter of fact, Tony Khan looks like a South Park character without, you know, the goddamn.

Without the blinking.

I was going to say without the bother of animating his face, but you kind of succinctly cut to the fucking chase there.

But nevertheless,

we will continue to monitor this situation as far as

who's rating who with what and whether these are the when we give numbers, we're going to tell you whether they're the old-fashioned fake numbers or the newfangled fake numbers.

Because we believe in accuracy and the fakery.

Hey, you said there were no good stories in the news.

I got one here at the New York Post.

Kentucky cheerleader Lake and Snelling

for selfies while giving birth and then popped out to grab McDonald's.

That's a Kentucky headline for you.

Well,

I would encourage laughter, except in the middle of that, there's the issue of the dead baby that was left in the closet.

Yeah, she's a Kentucky cheerleader, I believe.

And those fucking douchebags over there apparently have their entitled noses up their own asses in a variety of ways.

They just ran one off for

a racist outburst and attacking a security guard here a couple years ago and now this dude

you thought i'm a cheerleader well no just one of the general university of kentucky type women that go to the university of kentucky entitled white people

now this one gave birth in the closet.

I didn't know about the selfies,

but they've had her in the news for a while, gave birth in the closet, and then

apparently left and went apparently to McDonald's.

And

other people discovered,

hey, there's a dead baby in the closet.

And nobody has come out right and said whether the baby was alive or dead when it was given birth to.

But going to

McDonald's after either doesn't indicate a lot of remorse or

whatever emotion you're supposed to feel like in that

in that instance.

Even like, let me get as far away from here as possible.

Oh, but I'll stop at McDonald's.

Maybe that was what you thought the alibi would be.

Oh my God, whose baby is this?

Surely it's not that woman with the fresh Big Mac.

I had a line there, but I shouldn't because there's babies involved.

But

anyway,

but yes,

this is

the college youth these days.

No wonder we're all headed to shit.

You know what, Brian?

Here's the thing.

If you don't trust the ratings of the TV that you're watching, or you don't trust the TV you're watching in your own home, not to be reporting all kinds of things now, apparently, to these various entities,

you could just unplug everything and sit down and read a book, couldn't you?

A book cannot harm you.

No.

There are no tracking devices in books.

There's no goddamn recording or eavesdropping or electronic emissions.

Even if you don't have electricity, you can still read a book, at least in the daytime.

The only thing that will keep you from being able to read a book is if you don't have $24.95,

because that's how much the son of a bitch costs.

Heroes and friends, ladies and gentlemen,

from Jim Cornette.

That son of a bitch, Jim Cornette, has written a book and

it's got pictures.

There's pictures in it.

We've been talking about this for weeks now.

It goes on sale Saturday, October the 11th at jimcornet.com, noon Eastern Time,

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And as we've mentioned, simply put, the book is A dozen of the most unique and fascinating individuals that I've known and interacted with in the wrestling business in various different ways and descriptions complete with photos from my own collection and that i have taken and from that my voluminous memorabilia store and archive also the pro wrestling enterprises wrestling news files thank you brian and so much more And

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Are you going there then, Brian?

You have, you have, is that your wind chimes is it is the wind blowing again in your living room

a very special message from jim cornet

well thank you it sounds like the fucking

jack handy a special message from jack handy

i got a special message for you

Because I came up with something and you said you were interested in it, so I saved it until we could just talk you and I, Brian, here, just with a few million people eavesdropping.

But

we've talked about here on the program when wrestling promotions suddenly get hot and get popped.

And in my Heroes and Friends book that I just referenced, the story of Pat Malone, the Green Shadow, popping Nashville wrestling and Knoxville wrestling in the 40s when it was pretty much it was dead in Knoxville and not doing well in Nashville.

Or Sputnik Monroe in 1959, Memphis was dead, and suddenly they're doing ballpark shows.

And

at various points in time, different promotions have gotten hot, but we don't talk

a lot about

how bad they got before they got hot.

It can go the other way.

And

the reason why I'm bringing this up is because while I was working on something else in the office a week or so ago, I have Fritz von Erich's 1977 booking book from Dallas, from the Dallas wrestling office.

And I was looking for at something else, but I picked it up and

I've had it for years and have not looked at it

since we've had these discussions and with a specific eye toward what I was looking for.

But when I did,

I don't think that anybody, all the world-class documentaries about how hot world-class was in the 80s and the TV syndication, the Von Eric boys, the Freebirds, Gino and Chris, and

everybody's seen the tapes and the footage.

And

in 1977, Dallas, Texas for wrestling was so fucking dead

that if the Von Eric boys had not come along, I believe by 1980, Fritz would have been like the chic and out of business.

And that's a remarkable statement for a whole bunch of reasons.

And it just, if you look at

financially,

what they were doing,

and then who that they would lose, because

Paul Bosch was the key to this, the Houston promoter, and we'll get into it in a second.

But in overall terms, I didn't realize until I looked to pay attention

and specifically, because I was look when I first got it, I looked at the names on the cards and oh, the different notations he'd made and all that was cool, but I never sat and looked at it from this perspective.

Dallas, Texas, one of the biggest cities in the country, Dallas, Fort Worth, they ran both.

The Metroplex, right?

They were drawing maybe 1,500 people sometimes, if that in Dallas at the sportatorium and barely anything more usually in Fort Worth, and the spot shows

were just dismal.

The only town, and we've heard this said, and it really was true here,

that was doing well in this Texas, this part of Texas, was Houston, where they had the booking alliance with Paul Bosch, but Paul Bosch still brought in

his own particular stars, major names, big main event, and he used the

Dallas-Fort Worth office talent to fill out the cards because he couldn't fly 20 guys in, right?

But if it wasn't for Houston,

a lot of these guys, I don't think they would have been able to afford to stay in Dallas because the payoff that they got.

for a lot of these Houston shows was probably equal

to what they made working the rest of the week for Fritz.

Let me ask you something and I'll say a couple of things here.

What year did you say we're doing?

77

or 78?

Yeah, 77.

77.

So this is before Joe Blanchard split off as well, correct?

Well, they are going, yes, they're going to San Antonio.

They're going to Corpus Christi.

So this was when they still had the South Texas towns.

Houston was always the money town.

And, you know, I've heard it talked about, and it's funny just considering this conversation about wrestling.

You know, the TV show Dallas, which was all about these successful oil men in Dallas, was actually supposed to be about Houston.

Like, that's where you find successful oil men in Houston, not Dallas.

And Dallas sounded better.

Dallas worked.

The show was Dallas instead of the swamp known as Houston.

But Houston was the money town.

And

for many years, I mean, we're not for a while around this period of time, time, but Houston was the booking office in Texas.

And Houston would book out talent to Dallas and everywhere else.

And that changed even though Houston remained the money town.

Well, and

Morris Siegel, and basically, as you said,

Houston was the main town in Texas that booked the talent out.

And Morris Siegel and his, oh my God, his brother, what was his name?

Geez.

Nevertheless,

once they died, and Paul Bosch

in 1967, I just mentioned, I've got the program for his first card, purchased the promotional rights in Houston.

That was the same time where just the previous few years, Fritz had bought Dallas.

And Fritz was more in

with the NWA as

an ex-wrestler and a star in the Buffalo Territory and St.

Louis.

That's the key right there was the relationship with Sam Muschnick.

Yeah, with Sam Muschnick.

And so as Fritz started, and see,

we should go back and say, I'm not saying that Dallas always sucked for wrestling because Fritz drew

a ballpark crowd in the 60s for a world title match with Gene Kiniski, and they had done big money in the early 70s at another stadium show.

But as Fritz got older and his crew got older, the same thing was happening to him that was happening to the Sheik in Detroit.

The Sheikh's business

was big, much bigger than Fritz's business during that promotional war with Bruiser that we talk about so much.

But then the same thing happened after.

After the war was over, Sheik's crew aged out and boom.

And were, they were still doing better in 1977 than Fritz was in Dallas.

And Sheik was coming down to work for Fritz.

But point being, Dallas, there had been some money there in the past, but now in the middle of the 70s, with Fritz getting older, the boys had not debuted yet.

Nobody knew they were going to be.

They could have been a couple of more promoters' sons.

Like,

so, but then,

you know, people knew that Fritz wanted his sons to be wrestlers, but they weren't in the ring yet.

So, this was 1977 when

wrestling all over the south.

Kevin has known about that point, right?

He's not in the book, not in January.

Let me go to December.

Here's November.

I think he's starting in 78.

No, wait.

Hold on.

Kevin and David in November.

I think they they started late in the year.

Yeah, Kevin's here later on.

So point being, and

son of a bitch.

I don't know.

That's just an anomaly.

I was going to say business came up,

but no, it took a minute.

But yes, so

Kevin started first, I believe,

somewhere in the summer, and then David.

Anyway, they were a couple of years away.

See, this is another thing.

And Brian, you know, we've talked about this.

In 1979, 1980, when

wrestling fans started trading tapes for the first time.

Because if you were a wrestling fan in those days, if cable came available wherever you were, you got it to see wrestling.

And if a lot of people started getting VCRs to trade wrestling tapes from other territories.

So at that point, everybody wanted the Georgia show on SuperStation TBS, but since it was on cable, it was easier to get.

People wanted mid-Atlantic wrestling.

They wanted mid-South wrestling.

They wanted Tennessee wrestling.

And

honestly, the only

Florida, my God, how can I miss Florida?

The only thing that they didn't really want on tape from the South was nobody was interested in Dallas wrestling.

And this was the boys had already started and they were starting to get over with that audience.

But this was also still before they got

with the people at Channel 39 and got the syndicated TV and changed their name to World Class Wrestling.

It was still Southwest Sports presents big-time wrestling.

And they had that two-hour TV show on Saturday nights on KTVT, probably the biggest independent television station with the biggest signal and the biggest population for

at least 500 miles in any direction, probably farther.

But it was the, Brian, I've told you, it was the most boring,

slow-paced, elementary, rudimentary TV show that you can imagine.

You could hardly get life in it.

So it took a few years for them to,

first Kevin and David,

and then

some of the younger talent came in, because as we're going to see,

the talent, when we finally talk about this cards,

the talent was as

blase,

to be honest, as the rest of the show.

And they needed some youth.

They needed different guys.

There's guys here that had been in and out of Texas for years, or guys that were just,

you know, past their primes primes or whatever.

And Fritz, I've said this: that office,

when they got so hot, they were selling out Reunion Arena.

They were still running the company out of that fucking rat-infested sportatorium.

And it was, you know, a bunch of wonderful, well-meaning guys.

And I love Bronco Lubich.

But the office was a joke as far as running

a business grossing anywhere near that amount of money.

They just kind of

took off, and the infrastructure wasn't there.

And that's why when the whole thing fell apart, they couldn't save it.

But at the same time, if they'd had a real company going in Dallas, Texas, one of the biggest fucking markets in the world, they wouldn't have made it through this year.

You want to hear some of this, Brian?

I do.

And let me just say, I don't know if, even with that bad office, as you put it, I don't know if anyone was going to be able to save that, save that office, save that town, 87, 88, 89, 90, considering everything that was happening outside the room.

But even if they had had

a business office as

professional even as Crockett's, I hate to say that, but.

No, you're right.

They should have taken more advantage of Massachusetts.

They only went up there, what, one time when they had the biggest.

No,

I'm just talking about getting an actual legitimate place that you could have people come in and do fucking business.

They couldn't.

They're in Dallas, Texas.

And yes, and they worked with Channel 39, and they could have meetings at the TV station, but they couldn't actually even have some big fucking

local car dealer like Paul Bosch did, where he had the local furniture store and the car dealers and all these sponsors of his TV program that paid him money.

They could have him come into sportatorium and sit down in Ken Mantel's office.

My God, a rat would peek his fucking face out.

That's why I'm just, it was a small deal, it was set up to be a small time deal.

And they got really hot for a few years.

And somebody

that had first count made a fucking fortune.

But boy, it was.

See, that's,

let me give you an example.

The first week of January of 1977, and I have this book.

This is Fritz's book.

He wasn't the booker.

He didn't make the matches or whatever, but since he was the boss, he would have the cards written down usually for Dallas and Fort Worth.

And then he would have the

just the names of the talent that was booked out into Houston or into Corpus Christi or San Antonio or whatever to the other offices through the state.

Did most promoters have a book like that?

Yes, everybody did.

But it also has the Dallas ticket prices and Fort Worth ticket prices.

And since this was 1977, basically Dallas Sportatorium was

$4 ringside, $3 box seats, $2 general admission, $1 children,

and 50 cents more at the door.

What a fucking miser, which

was actually a goddamn pain in the ass because back then, nobody paid with a credit card.

You had to fucking fumble with the quarters, right?

It was down to this that they were making people come up with an extra 50 cents or given 50 cents change.

What was your other option if you didn't buy it at the door?

Where could you get tickets for world class?

Or it wasn't world class.

Where could you get tickets for big-time wrestling at the sportatorium?

Nowhere that I'm aware of that you would have to go to the sportatorium and fucking knock on the goddamn window and I guess Bronco or whatever.

At Will Rogers Coliseum, they had

a box office.

And it was saying that ringside was $4, box three,

general admission, $250, or reserve general, $2.50, and general admission, $2,

and 50 cents more at the door.

I don't, you know, but the point is, They didn't have, when we talk about these figures, and this is for Dallas and Fort Worth, I don't know if they weren't still at, say, three and two for spot shows,

but assume they have the ticket average, is not $3.

The average tickets, it's $2 and something, right?

When we talk about how many people might have been there with inflation, what would that be today?

Well, in 1977, a dollar

is equal to $5.35 today.

So basically, you could have sat front row for 20 bucks.

But it was there for a while.

For a weekly territory, yeah, for a weekly territory.

That's fair, I think.

Well, but not a lot of people were doing it

because in those days, the schedule, which they changed later on by the time that I got there in 1985,

but they would run a Fort Worth on Monday at the Will Rogers Coliseum, Dallas on Tuesday, the very next night, 50 miles from point A to point B away.

But it's a Dallas whole different city because of the Metroplex.

Then Wednesday would be San Antonio, Joe Blanchard.

Thursday was Corpus Christi, which I

don't know who the local promoter was, but that was part of the

South Texas territory that would eventually be Southwest when Blanchard broke off.

Friday nights was Houston.

And then Saturdays would be spot shows around

the state.

And sometimes

they would have Houston on Sunday.

But otherwise,

they would book their guys out to

like the funks were still running Amarillo.

I think it was the last year before they would sell to

Black Jack Mulligan and Dick Murdoch.

So they'd book guys out on Sundays.

Gary Hart, Detroit,

Ivan Putsky, New York,

Cian Karis.

I can't read this scribble.

Casey to Amarillo, Hansen, out.

Who would they have booked Gary Hart into Detroit with?

The Sheik.

Managing the Chic?

Well, no, working for the Sheik, because the Sheik was coming in and out to work for Fritz.

Right.

But who would he be managing?

I actually don't know.

I don't know either, but he was there several times.

But the point being, they never ran on Sunday

in the out of the Dallas office.

I think potentially it was the old-fashioned thing.

Well, that's church day, or potentially because I don't know if Fritz was

religious yet or not.

The point being,

let's get back to this.

January 3rd, 1977.

In Fort Worth, Texas, a major city,

a battle royal is on the card.

Listen to the names: The Chic,

Andre the Giant, Black Gordman, the Great Goliath, Scott Casey, Tony Charles, Les Thornton, Tiger Conway, Moondog Main, Lord Alfred Hayes, Butcher Brannigan, Frank Valois, Gary Hart.

Well, now it's Gary Hart and the referees, manager and referees.

Anyway, 12-man battle royal, and I assume then matches out of the order of elimination.

But what was the gate, do you suppose, for Andre?

What was the date?

What was the gate?

What was the date?

What do you think the gate was?

Yeah, what was the date?

Oh, January 3rd, 1970.

January 3rd.

So first show of the year.

They had Andre, it seems like a few other Januaries, too, because I think he did that in January 84 for them, right as the national expansion started.

Andre and Dallas,

$6,000.

$3,397.

Wow.

Let's say the ticket price, ticket average $250,000 or whatever.

We're talking

1,500 people, maybe.

The next night in Dallas, here's the card.

The Sheik versus Andre the Giant.

Gordman and Goliath against Thornton and Charles.

Lord Alfred Hayes and Scott Casey.

Big O.

Big O.

Potentially that may be,

is that Bob Orton Sr.?

It can't be.

I may have the programs.

I think I may, I got to double check.

Well, nevertheless,

some big O against Moondog, Maine, Butcher Branning, and Skip Young.

Point is Chic versus Andre in Dallas, Texas.

Care to take a guess on the gate.

And this is a week after the previous card, which was the first of the new year.

No, this is January 4th.

Oh, this is the next day, excuse me.

First, yeah, next day.

First Dallas show.

If the other one was that, I'm going to go with

$4,000.

$5,945.

So they probably got 2,500 people at the sportatorium.

But then I won't play guest the fucking day, but this is their big week with Andre the Giant.

San Antonio did $4,151.

Corpus Christie, $8,663.

Corpus Christie, you couldn't draw fucking

money if you dip somebody in glue and drug them through Fort Knox in 1985, but they came out for Andre.

But anyway, point being 30-something, 100, 50-something, 100, 40-something, 100, 80-something, 100.

Houston on Friday night, Andre and Sheik,

and basically that whole same crew, except Dusty is there also.

Bob Ellis is there.

Gino Hernandez, Jose Lithario.

Paul brings in his own talent to augment the Dallas crew.

And they have a two-ring battle royal, $27,997.

Houston drew $8,127

more than the rest of the week.

Hey, I grabbed.

And the guys would get payoffs on that from Paul Bosch.

Go ahead.

I grabbed my Dallas 1977 folder, and I think I have just about every program from this year.

The Big O is a photo of him here.

It says in the program for January 4th,

260 out of Oklahoma versus Moondog, Maine.

It looks like Ron Bass.

It may not be, but in this photo, it looks like him.

It may very well be

because

either that or he didn't make it.

And then that Saturday night, they did Killeen and Austin with, believe it or not, Mil Mascaris

on on the card in Austin, Texas, and did $2,600.

And Colleen, Texas did $2,200.

And that was their big week.

I want to skip ahead and let me give you some figures for February, Brian, because again, this is what I was saying.

It's insane that not only were they doing this level of business in Dallas, that was a major American city, and with talent that was noted elsewhere,

but again, Houston, the saving grace, and even in February, I think this could have been the start of cracks in Bosch's relationship because they were dragging Houston down.

Houston was in single digits with Dusty on the card.

And

then, of course, we'll get into as we close this thing up and move on the fact that the first crack with Paul Bosch and the NWA was when Harley Race miscommunication missed a big show at the summit this year, 1977.

And that was the first of two.

And that led to Paul Bosch

splitting from not only the

recognition of the NWA champion, but from the Dallas office and

aligning himself for, I think, almost two years with Joe Blanchard, the AWA,

the San Antonio office, et cetera.

But listen to this.

The first week of February, Fort Worth does $2,118.

And the next day, Dallas does $4,000.

The next day, San Antonio did $1,969.

That's like 700 people, even at these cheap ticket prices.

On the 3rd of February, Harlejan, Texas, down on the Mexican border, did 1,536

and Corpus Christi did 1,218.

And then they followed that up with Houston on Friday night doing $4,040.

This is the lowest Houston figure I can find.

And then they went to Killeen on Saturday for $1,200 and Austin $2,200.

But the following weeks, nothing changes in their main territory, really, except Houston does 13 grand.

Houston does 13 grand.

Houston's back down to eight grand, but

it's still almost equaling the rest of the week's take from the territory.

I don't see how they could have

kept this up.

And they've got Bruiser Brody on these cards.

And they've got Ivan Putski has come in by March.

You know, things are

jazzed up a little bit with Brody.

And,

you know, they're into the $4,000 and $5,000 range.

But

again, it's pretty dismal.

Yeah, listen to this card.

Tuesday, February 8th, 77.

This is in Dallas at the Sportatorium.

Opening match, George Macquarie versus Butcher Brannigan.

Second event, Dan Burdick versus Scott Casey.

who was he a rookie then or he had been around a few years i guess scott had been around a couple years the third event, Bruce Abrody versus Tank Patton.

I list the main event last, even though that's the next match listed.

The final match of the evening is a semi-final.

This actually sounds like a great match.

I don't know if he would draw.

Les Thornton and Tony Charles versus Gordman and Goliath.

That was probably a great match.

Yeah, in the ring, it would have been a masterpiece.

And the main event is a body slam battle royal.

Black Gordman, Grand Goliath, Bruce Abrody, Moondog Mane, Tony Charles, Les Thornton, Scott Casey, Butcher Brannigan, Ivan Putsky, Tank Patton, George Macquarie, and Dan Burdick.

Body slam in ring or on floor eliminates.

So they're doing wacky matches and having, you know, barely any star power.

I mean, Bruce Abrody's a star, sure, but there's not a lot here.

I mean, you know, you skip ahead in July, just real briefly.

Fort Worth still does $40-something hundred dollars.

So does Dallas.

San Antonio is under two grand.

Corpus Christi does $745.

Some of these towns are doing $1,200, $1,600.

Corpus Christi was canceled, as a matter of fact, the next week after it did $745.

And

they didn't come back for, they went to Harlegen the next week for $900.

They came back to Corpus Christi.

in August one week and did $2,500 and canceled it the next week.

I mean, they were canceling towns.

Meanwhile,

you know, Houston, again, is the only one that's hitting double digits.

And sometimes it's not.

But here's where I was going to go with this, and we will end this for right now.

And I'll just give you some comparisons of what happened later.

But it was May 29th, 1977.

This is when Paul Bosch had been promoting that they weren't going to be at the Sam Houston Coliseum as they always were.

They're going to the brand new sports arena in town, the Sunday, Super Sunday at the summit.

And because for some reason,

I don't even remember why, if it was necessary to hold the crowd, I don't think it was.

They just wanted to do a date, or they had to do a date or whatever.

The Coliseum was booked, and they made it a Super Sunday.

And they had two world titles: harley race versus terry funk for the nwa title and because this was where

nick bockwinkle

had started

being

you know interested paul bosch and nick bockwinkle started their relationship in the late 70s to where bachwinkle had bought into the company

uh into houston by the time that he wanted to retire there, but then, you know, shit fell apart in the 80s.

But nevertheless,

Bockwinkle got over

with Paul Bosch that night or that day.

Wasn't that when nobody told Harley it was an afternoon show?

Was the story?

Or was that the second one?

That's the second one, I think.

That's the story.

The first one I want to say

was it that he was running late.

There was no way to get to them.

Which one was it where the fans literally saw him arrive and get to the building as they were leaving?

I thought that was the

maybe that was this one.

Nevertheless, Harley didn't make it.

So Bachwinkle worked with Jose Litherio in his build match and then went out and went an hour with Terry Funk.

And Paul Bosch hated

no shows and replacements, especially a world title match.

He was bullshit.

And when it happened the second time, he not only, as the story goes, the NWA had it in for him, but also

with the nwa booking office in dallas that he was

relying on to provide him in his town with a lot of these cards even though he'd fly in ernie ladd or mil mascaris or whoever the

he needed you know their american champion american tag team champions you know blah blah blah

So I can see why he was thinking, well, what the fuck?

Anything could be better than this.

And he ended up within the next couple of years, bailing out and switching and joining Joe Blanchard.

But these houses are dismal.

And also importantly, he didn't take a hit leaving the NWA, switching title recognition and bringing in Nick Bockwinkle as a champion.

He also started bringing in Junkie Ardog before the official deal with Watts when he was doing stuff with Southwest.

Yeah.

And see, oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say, it's a remarkable couple of years that probably doesn't get the attention it deserves in certain respects.

Everyone knows how good Nick Bockwinkle was.

And Flair won his first title on your birthday in 1981.

Yeah.

But from like that period of time, in 81 through 83,

Bockwinkle's in the biggest drawing stuff in the AWA with Hogan, which ain't bad.

He's having big drawing matches in Houston with the Junkyard Dog and others.

He's having amazing matches in Memphis.

The stuff with him and Lawler, again, another place where they switched recognition, went to the AWA.

Flair's great.

We all love Flair in 81, 82, 83.

But I almost think it's kind of a step down from Bockwinkle at that point in time, maybe in those specific places.

When Flair came in in 82, It was a one-off, but the energy in Memphis was different than it was, just the energy alone.

And again, it was a one-off.

He was there once, but 81, 82, 83 is the period where Bachwinkle almost becomes a touring champion.

There's a match with him and Manny Fernandez and Southwest that's out there.

That's fantastic.

He was a touring champion as the AWA champion for a couple of years.

And Bachwinkle,

actually, of

Of all the guys that

you mentioned as being world champions, Nick was the best in the ring all around at having a match and a match with anybody he just was tremendous um like i would take him over harley race in this period of time promo everything in terms of being a world champion he gave off the aura of being a world champion more than others

and you know and truthfully and honestly

the reason why that he stayed with vern

He could go where he wanted to go, but he was based in Minnesota from 1970 through the end of his was because of that reason.

Instead of trying to conquer the world and like Harley and Flair and burning yourself out,

he could work 15 days a month for Vern.

He told me this in 1983.

I could work 15 days a month for Vern and make 150 grand a year and then do shots when I want and take seasons off.

He loved that.

And he was making a fortune.

He was a smart guy.

So he obviously was saving money too, but he was in the best position of all of them and was the oldest.

But nevertheless, the point being,

on that show in May, where Harley miscommunication, no showed whatever,

the gate in Houston was $32,765.16.

If you take out the other two Houston shows

in May, that

more than the rest of the territory drew all fucking month combined.

So that's the point that I'm making is that, and we can look more at this if anybody's interested because I've got the whole year here.

But

if

when Paul Bosch pulled out, and he was probably, he was going to, because nothing really happened,

you know,

to change that

before the boys got hot.

So when Paul Bosch pulled out, if the boys had not, the Von Erich boys had not already been gaining ground in Dallas and starting to get some more interest going,

I think the territory would have folded up.

They'd have been like the Chics.

They'd have been like Bruisers.

It was just, there wasn't any reason for top talent to go there because there was no money in those payoffs.

And

even with the talent that they had, which was there there were talented guys there, but nobody was young and new and fresh and hot at that point.

And I bet they weren't fucking happy.

So,

you know,

that's the reason why that a lot of times territories would die is it would become a self-fulfilling thing.

If there wasn't enough money in the payoffs for top talent to go there, the only people you would get was people who had no other choice.

And if you've got,

you know, bless him here in July in Dallas or June in Dallas, Tommy Siegler beat Mike York, the Alaskan.

Reno the Samoan beat George McCreary.

Gino Hernandez, who was a rookie at that point and had just started.

Drew Scott Casey, Jimmy Snooka, who was on his way to the Carolinas to make some fucking money.

Drew with Big John Studd, who was a giant waiting for fucking Vince to find him.

And then Andre.

He had already been up there as one of the executioners.

This is him especially

himself without the mask.

That's right.

That's right.

I'm sorry.

The year before was the executioner, 76.

But he was getting the fucking gimmick and Andre and Brody on top.

But

it, you know, again, Andre and Brody drawing fucking seven grand in Dallas, Texas.

It's just, but the rest of the card.

So So then you had

the Von Erich boys get hot, start getting a little interest back in the local fans in the territory.

They still had the same old TV, so it wasn't like beating the world.

And then suddenly they get that syndication, but also the talent changes.

And Gary Hart

was always a proponent as a booker, was always a proponent of younger talent and fucking, you know, different guys.

But by 1982,

when everybody starts talking about it, who is

who's drawing the money?

Well, let's look at Christmas.

Hold on here, because I've got another thing I can look up the card.

We'll look at Christmas 92 or 82

and then go on.

I'm just fascinated by this shit.

Christmas 82 is the big angle that sets off the entire Free Birds-Von Erich feud.

Of course, Gary Hart leaves right away, so he doesn't get to ride that wave.

Ken Mantel does, even though he didn't come up at the angle.

But the rest of that card,

I'm guessing it's going to be like Bugsy McGraw, King Kong, Bundy,

Superfly, maybe.

Not Superfly Snooker, just Superfly.

Well, no, hold on, hold on.

Skip Young, Skip Young on the show.

Hold on, because now

remember they didn't run

Christmas Day in 1977.

There was no Christmas tradition in Dallas, Texas.

The show's in December 1977

in Dallas had drawn $3,900, $2,800.

The office was closed and $6,700 on the two days after Christmas, the 27th.

That was it.

All of a sudden,

because of the Von Eric boys and the Freebirds and the things that they were starting to do, that they were changing the talent, at least at the top, Kabuki,

the magic kabuki and the magic dragon with Gary Hart and all this other shit.

They ran Dallas Reunion Arena on Christmas 1982, five years later, and had 18,000 people.

I have the,

in case you want the card, I have the program here, December 22nd.

I got the card in front of me.

That's why I was fumpering until I found it.

But that's the point I was going to make is still the undercard, as you mentioned, was uninspiring.

Brian Adidas, who was a

school friend of the Von Ericss, beat Frank Dusick, bless him, who worked in the office.

And Jose Litherio and Al Madrill against checkmate and the Magic Dragon checkmate was Tony Charles,

was still, you know, still around.

Yeah.

Lone Eagle, the midget match.

Lone Eagle beat Little Tokyo with special referee Bugsy McGraw.

Sarah, yeah.

Oh, my God.

But then, but then, and Ken Mantel, who was the booker, I didn't know that he was still working at that point.

He was a

rotten physical-looking specimen in 1985.

I can't imagine him in tights in 1982, but he won a battle royal.

But Kevin von Erich beat King Kong Bundy.

And Bundy was new at that time.

He was still fresh.

was the first time he was King Kong Bundy.

That's kind of the towards the end of Bundy's run there.

And of course, it was months earlier where he had the retirement match with Fritz von Erich at Texas Stadium, which if you ever see that footage, it's at night.

It's not the Texas Stadium crowds of a few years later.

No.

That's one of the things where you can kind of see, because it's the same building, the difference in the Dallas territory having a really good night.

and a record-setting night in the middle of a record-setting run.

Well, see, this was the turning point is that for those of you who don't know what we just referenced, Fritz, when he retired in 1982,

and he hadn't been wrestling regularly, but he's, oh, yeah, this is my retirement.

He was already so fucking old and just looked old.

He looked older than he was.

That's the issue.

Yes.

And he had the balls to do it at Texas Stadium and against King Kong Bundy.

And as I recall, a match sucked.

But also, there was, what, 6,000 people in the stadium.

But as soon as they started focusing on the boys and the free birds and the Gino

Hernandez and fucking the young folks.

So anyway, the rest of the card, Kevin beat Bundy.

Then you get that six

match.

Does it say who the other who the function?

I'm about to tell you, hold on here a second.

David beat Bill Irwin.

This is, see, this is another thing that they always did.

They would have these big shows.

They didn't have enough guys in the territory to fill in the fucking card.

When they got successful, they'd bring in some outside guys,

but they still had the habit.

They just have a special match where people had to work

multiple times, right?

So

they had a six-man tag title where it was Hayes and Gordy and supposedly Roberts against Iron Mike Sharp and

Ben Sharp?

Did Mike have a brother named Ben?

It's Iron Mike Sharp with a phony Ben Sharp, a play on Mike Sharp's father and his brother Ben, but it wasn't.

I forget who.

I want to say it was Kelly Kiniski, but that can't be right.

Well, and then some other schlub, Tom Steele, but they instituted the six-man.

tag team titles that night, and David substituted for Buddy Roberts,

who was late or whatever the fuck, and then gave the belt to Roberts.

But so they established that the Freebirds were babyfaces and that they were friends of the Von Ericks.

Well, that was established in the TV building up to it because when they announced that Michael Hayes was going to be one of the guest referees in the or the guest referee in the main event with Kerry versus Flair, that was a thing to celebrate.

The Freebirds were good guys.

So David von Erich earlier this night,

as a show of what a good guy David von Erich is, helping out the Freebirds to win these belts and knowing he's not, he doesn't even want the belt.

He doesn't deserve it.

He's just a good guy.

It plays into the betrayal so perfectly.

He is.

And

because people are so used to the Freebirds, Von Erich's feud and rivalry, they start thinking, oh, God, they always hated each other.

No, they presented them as babyfaces at first and friends.

But then the main event was the NWA title, Flair and Carrie in the Cage.

Hayes was the referee.

Gordy was watching the gate, and they slammed the fucking

door on Carrie's head and start the whole thing.

But the point is, in five years, they had gone from

almost the stench of grisly death about them

to running Reunion Arena and drawing 18,000 people.

And that was the start of a run of about three years

where,

as Dallas, Texas should have, they were drawn some of the biggest crowds in wrestling in the country.

But it hadn't been that way just five years beforehand.

And

if the suns had not clicked

and they had not made these changes in the product and gotten the bigger TV or the better looking TV,

they would have been, the chic was out of business.

in Detroit.

And it had already been taken over by the, you know,

the

well, it hadn't actually even been taken over yet because the expansion wouldn't start from Vince.

No, it had been taken over by Country Music on their own television show.

Yeah, big time wrestling, big time country.

But my God, Dallas, Vince wanted Dallas from the start.

Can you imagine if it had been this

product that was drawing 1,500 people to the sportatorium in the worst part of Dallas on Tuesday nights instead of, wow, everybody in town is watching this shit.

He could have waltzed in there and just picked it up.

Yeah, and again, you know, it's a different time, but a few years later, both Bill Watts and Jim Crockett had thoughts on Dallas being the centerpiece of something, and it didn't work out because it had already been killed by everything that had happened.

But, you know, when you talk about the Sons, it's interesting.

Kevin debuts at the end of 76, famously.

His first match is with Paul Pershman, the future Playboy buddy Rose.

David's after that.

Kerry's still in school.

Kerry's a while after that.

Gino starts.

Tully starts.

Tully, out of all the promoter sons in Texas, is the first one to actually get involved, I think, in the office.

And then Gino, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, and you have the books.

Geno is actually the first son to make an impact at the box office because he meant more to Houston.

early on than the Von Ericks did early on.

Not to say they didn't mean anything, but it took a while to build up Von Eric mania.

Geno was kind of slotted in in a great spot early on and then turned heel early on.

And he meant more to Houston than anyone else may have meant anywhere else in that territory for a little while, at least.

Yeah, he, because this is even before the run he had with Chic, which I'm going to say was maybe the next year, 78, but

Gino was like a 19-year-old presented as a 19-year-old, you know, prodigy and, you know, the great looks and a nice baby face, blah, blah, blah.

And

because the chic was working in Texas, he needed, after the war was over with Bruiser, he needed something, somebody new, young, still had blood in their veins, and brought Gino up and they gave him a push as the,

you know, fucking shocking U.S.

champion

at 20 years old or whatever.

And in, I think, 78.

I saw some of the TVs.

And

so, you know, he was

people were pulling for Gino and considering him a talent early on.

I think Gino was the first of any of the sons to wrestle at the garden.

I think he was the first one to go to Japan.

He did a lot of, and again, Paul Bosch took care of him, but also he held up his end.

Gino was trying more as a wrestler and a worker in the late 70s than he was in the mid-80s, even though he was great in the mid-80s.

But he, he, he, well, he'd been on those fucking hard Texas rings for all that time, and he figured out, I need to put my hands down and also just fucking lower the count on some of these bumps.

But anyway, that's the thing is

they would have been cooked because you couldn't have consistent, somebody would have come in and taken it over.

It looked like...

the San Francisco situation in 1960 when Roy Shire went in and just took it away away from Joe Mankowitz because he just didn't have any shit going on.

When you were in Dallas, did you have cable TV?

Yes.

85.

I'm just curious about that because remember when they brought the Freebirds in in 82,

they presented them like they were friends with David, even though Michael Hayes and Kevin had been on Georgia TV, on TBS.

So I was just always curious, were those shows not seen in Dallas in 82 or 81?

Did they not know that Kevin had this relationship with Michael Hayes, not David?

There's two explanations for that.

Number one could be that they didn't have cable in Dallas in 1981,

maybe not availability because, and that's not crazy, folks.

The big cities were actually longer in those days to get cable than the smaller towns because.

They had different companies bidding on the franchises.

The bigger companies wanted the bigger cities.

Or the second thing is they just didn't goddamn know

and and just came up with because that's the thing at the the dallas office the creative team there would just come up with some ridiculous fucking statement to make and then just make it and because fritz thought that it was

still in the 60s you could just tell people shit and they hadn't they'd believe it and had no other way of finding out anything so who knows

but it ain't the 60s no more, Brian.

Oh, no.

You can't just make money under false pretenses, just telling people any old simple story and get them to believe it and then take their money as a result of the bullshit story that you've made up that they believe.

You can't do that anymore.

It's not the 60s.

You got to have professionals coming up with your bullshit.

It's got to stand up to scrutiny.

If you're going to con some sucker out of his money, you've got to have professionals helping you every step of the way to make your shit look as legitimate as possible.

So they won't know that they're being conned and phlem flammed and bamboozled and taken advantage of.

And you're selling them a bill of goods.

You're sending them down the river.

No.

You're barking up the wrong tree.

I could go on with these similes.

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And so can trust them.

Which way are you going?

Both ways?

Right into the wall, it seems like.

But our friends at Shopify, a great company, let's just talk about how wonderful they are.

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Because

let's say you've got some kind of harebrain scheme or preposterous plan.

Or maybe something that you've given some thought to that you think you could really put something over on somebody and flim flam them out of most of their fucking funds.

An honest business plan.

Let's just say that.

Again,

if you you have this concept you need to take it to somebody that can help make it a reality you need a team of henchmen no alongside of you no people that can accelerate your content creation make up phony shit good people making real stuff for you no shit no fakery

there it is the shopify way

Well, you can build a beautiful online store that'll look gorgeous on the outside, but meanwhile, you can trap them on the inside.

No.

And get the word out.

You need a marketing team behind you to go out and spread the word.

Hey, do business with old Joe because his shit works.

They won't tell these people where Joe is or how to find Joe after you, Joe, have gotten their money.

You can be gone

away, and nobody will know how to find you or how long you've been gone.

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Honestly, they'll strong arm a son of a bitch in a heartbeat.

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shopify your friends to the end and we're here at the end

a happy place comes in many colors whatever your color bring happiness home with certapro painters get started today at certapro.com each certapro painters business is independently owned and operated contractor license and registration information is available at certapro.com well brian before we go any further with the program i'm having something is coming across the news desk here

over at the castle.

This is from a fellow,

a fellow named Ralph Jackson on Twitter has sent me: do you have your Antonio Inoki

keychain there with you that you're trying to play the music?

Because he has given us some information on these models of these collectibles and how they might be operated.

Well, that's the beginning of the itchy ni sanda chant.

And then,

of course, the famous Tagada.

And I've seen some of these people with their guesses.

None of them have gotten to say, hold it down.

Here's me holding it down.

No.

No.

They say there's a button or a pressure point somewhere.

There's no pressure point or no button.

Listen, listen to me.

Listen to me.

Listen to me.

I've got an expert here.

It's trying to tell you.

You're just all fucking head up over nothing.

It's got a impact activation.

Since it's themed around a wrestler, it might have a motion or impact sensor.

You try slapping or tapping the face head area moderately hard, like in Noki's famous fighting spirit slaps.

Okay, I'm a not too aggressively to avoid damage.

I'm slapping the shit out of this thing, eh?

He's.

Whoa.

Aha!

No, that was a scream.

Slap him again.

He'll scream again.

He'll squeal like a bitch.

Slap him.

Slap him in the face.

It was just a slap.

Did you hear that?

Yeah, no, nothing.

Just hit him.

Kick him.

Kick it.

Kick it.

Kick it some more.

Now, I will say users report this works on some versions, but it could drain batteries faster if overused.

Now,

there's also some other options here now.

Oh, yeah.

Because

the toy could be defective, which is a common issue with these Iwaia-produced items, as many eBay and collector listings note non-working sound, even in new condition.

You might need to contact a toy repair specialist or look for replacement parts online.

Again, let me just jump in real quick.

I, when I got this, I got three of them.

There's three different ones.

I said, I'm opening one of them because I want to hear it.

And of course, the batteries were dead and didn't do anything.

I replaced the batteries.

I fixed the corroded areas because parts of it had been corroded.

It's from 1998.

Yes.

And the music plays, it's just one every,

I've heard it at least six times.

But just not.

It's never on the air.

No.

You hear these songs play, but no one else can hear them, is what you're saying.

The pressure point.

If I push from his head,

what's that?

I'm pushing it so hard, his legs are bending.

Wait a minute now.

Hold on.

Here's another one.

Try holding it for two to three seconds to trigger the song.

One,

two,

three,

four.

See, fuck it.

God damn.

Now I'm debating, should I open one of the other ones?

I was going to keep the other two closed.

Do I need to open one of the other ones?

Fix the other one.

Oh, yeah, because they're Fabergé eggs.

And if you open it, it'll ruin your children's retirement.

I mean, I didn't think these Anoki things are going to be worth a lot of money.

I just figured, why open it if I already have one open in a white robe?

Because the one you got open doesn't work.

Now you just, I didn't know you had three of them.

Now you're just wasting all our times, me and Ralph Jackson over here.

Do I give up on this one and open another one?

Is that what you're suggesting?

I think you ought to throw that one out the fucking window.

Well, that's not going to work.

Let the lawnmowers run over it.

That'll teach him.

You've already slapped the shit out of it.

Now, listen, the bottom thing that you push, it's the base of the bottom of this.

And it feels like you could kind of like shift it up or down or left or right or press in the middle.

But

everything does the same i'm not telling you what to do with antonio andoki's bottom you can shove it or twist it or knead it or slap it or do whatever you need to do

all right well this is a great segment the mystery continues i was just trying to give you i didn't mean for you to just go completely insane there i just was trying to get give you some information here you might have

been able to use in some reasonable fashion

can can we

sounded like it just jumped off a bridge there

just screams now that's a new one as well it's because it's

all right cool get away from tiger dog

and later on it's gonna say my name is antonio andoki and i'm going to kill you trying to mellow out here

Well, why don't we talk about the mellow tones?

Oh, would you stop it now?

For heaven's sake, would you stop?

Let's talk about the mellow tones of Pro Wrestling Illustrated that has named the 500

wrestlers that they think will sell them some fucking magazines this year.

Well, I presume you're speaking of the 35th anniversary.

Yes, I'm speaking to you.

Yes.

The 35th annual PWI 500.

Wow, this got really big on my screen.

How do I reduce the size of this fucker?

Well, it's supposed to be the 500 best wrestlers, but as we've established over the last couple of years, it's the

well, they list about 20 wrestlers at the top that they think will sell them some magazines and then 480 people that call themselves wrestlers.

That's basically where we're at here.

Well, Jim, let's officially say how it's done.

Here it is from this is the.

Is it December?

It is the December 2025 edition of Pro Wrestling Illustrated, the 35th annual PWI 500.

Boy, they like to get the jump on the holidays, don't they?

Boy, they really do.

If this was 25 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, they'd be right now putting out what, like the May 2026 edition of the magazine.

They always had a big,

it used to

take 90.

No, that's the thing: they would be three months in advance, but you would actually

get a

how can I say this?

You would get a magazine that was reasonably cover dated.

Like if it was in May 2026, you would, in May, you would get a May issue, but it would have been printed in fucking February by the time they get it out.

So they would always be three months.

And now they're still three months in advance, but they just have it out instantly.

And by the way, this is witchery.

I think I may have broken my finger hitting that Inoki thing.

It really hurts now.

Well, it's see, you're beating a senior citizen over there.

Elder abuse.

The PWI 500 evaluation period is from August 1st, 2024 through July 31st, 2025.

The criteria:

in-ring achievement.

That's win-loss records, championships, tournaments won.

Influence.

Your visibility and prestige within a promotion and/or the industry.

Your technical ability.

The quality of moves, matches, and in-ring storytelling.

Competition.

Success against the most varied and highest quality opponents.

And finally, activity.

Minimum of 10 singles, non-tag matches total, or, barring this,

six such matches in separate months.

That's very interesting.

I never had to have that qualifier years ago.

You have to have at least 10 matches or six matches in six months.

There's a committee.

I've zoned out on that markish drivel, but did anybody talk about box office in there at all?

In-ring achievement, influence, technical ability, competition, and activity.

Not necessarily, no.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well,

in that case,

they'd have to hurt a lot of feelings if they considered the box office, but go ahead.

And for the record, they have a committee, and our friend, and certainly the person lending credibility to this committee, Brian R.

Solomon, is on the committee.

Publisher, publisher.

Editor, not the editor either.

The writer, the author of the brand new Gorilla Monsoon book, Irresistible Force.

He did it all, but now

he's attached his name to this.

Are they just paying him for his credibility here?

This list prioritizes success in singles competition and in vying for heavyweight singles accolades and to a lesser extent, those in lower weight classes.

Jim number one on the PWI 500 for 2025,

Cody Rhodes.

Cody,

Cody Rhodes, Cody Rhodes, Cody Rhodes.

19 years pro.

He was number one in 2024 as well.

And it says here, Side Hustle,

co-owner and coach at the Nightmare Factory Wrestling Training Facility in Atlanta, Georgia.

Well, hopefully he's not relying on that to send the children and Pharaoh through college.

See, this is interesting.

Here are the top five moments during the evaluation period.

Number one, he beat fellow world champion Gunther to win the inaugural WWE Crown Jewel Championship in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, November 2nd.

Number two, defeated friend turned arch rival Kevin Owens in a thrilling ladder match to retain the WWE Championship at the Royal Rumble, Indianapolis, February 1st.

Number three

became the 2025 king of the ring after defeating Andrade

and Shinsuke Nakamura in a three-way match.

That was in the last year.

That's crazy.

That's a literal, where are they now of wrestling?

In a three-way qualifying match on June 13th, he beat Jey Uso in a semifinal bout on June 23rd and Randy Orton in the tournament final in Saudi Arabia, June 28th.

Also, number four, he retained the championship against Solo Sokoa in Bloodline Rules, August 3rd, 2024.

And finally, he bested Kevin Owens, the bash in Berlin, August 30th.

This is last year.

This is last summer this shit happened.

Jesus.

But yeah, that's

why Cody Rhodes is number one.

A fine list of accolades.

And

It also just so happens that Cody is the top babyface for the biggest company.

And I bet they put him on the cover, didn't they?

I believe so.

I don't want to scroll back up because I'll lose my place here in this list.

It's not worth it.

But I would, yeah.

So now by process of, oh, we got to make sure Tony Khan, the billionaire that runs the only other company that's on any kind of national TV, doesn't fucking get pissed at us.

So which one of his band of merry pranksters did they pick to come in second place so they could at least act like it was a horse race?

Well, at number two,

Jon Moxley,

21 years pro.

Last year, he was number eight, and his ring style is brawler.

Oh, God, his

ring style is wretched.

Again, I understand that they had to

have some AEW talent in the number two spot, and they're going to dribble and drab these out over the

top 10 because they got to be somewhat fair to the fan bases.

And the AEW fans are a little more fanatical.

But

Moxley, out of even anybody in AEW, they don't want to feature anybody else besides that.

It says here,

it wasn't always pleasant to watch, but Jon Moxley's fourth run with the AEW

title.

Wait a minute.

When is the last time a favorable fucking

statement or piece was written that started out with, well, it always wasn't.

Good lord.

But Jon Moxley's fourth run with the AEW World title was certainly impressive, spanning across 10 months and seven successful title defenses against both legends like Cope and Samoa Joe.

When he was champion 10 months and defended seven times.

And hungry contenders.

Flair would have called that the second week of April.

And hungry contenders, including Jay White and Powerhouse Hobbs, he received many an assist from his Death Rider compatriots, who were always nearby to lend a helping hand or a plastic bag.

Since taking on the role of a sadistic cult-like leader a year ago, Moxley has undoubtedly found considerable success, but has also warmed in the patience of some fans, especially when so many of his matches devolve into nauseating gore.

Moxley's bloodlust.

Moxley's bloodlust is well documented, but so too is his natural charisma.

And it seems he sacrificed one at the altar of the other.

Despite recent title losses, Moxley remains one of the top names and stars of AEW.

Well,

I'm certainly happy for him.

So

I guess now we got to swing the other way.

Are they ready to bring in?

They certainly at number three can't bring anybody from TNA or

outside the country in that high.

So we're going to go back to the WWE, aren't we?

We are number three,

Gunther.

20 years pro.

It's crazy to see that.

Last year, he was number nine, nicknamed the Ring General.

they should try to discourage and i know it's probably too late and the announcers have done it a million times but they should try to discourage the announcers or anybody or gunther himself from talking about him being a pro for 20 years he looks younger and

I would lean into the

experienced veteran professional without quantifying that it's been because it makes him, I know he started when he was a teenager also he was a chubby little fellow

but uh it just it makes him sound older than he even really is that uh

but that's just me

but I'm glad to see him getting some recognition at the even though let's be in all fairness uh yes in the ring and he's wonderful to watch but as far as being the third biggest star in the wrestling business over the last year or whatever the period,

he wasn't.

Was he?

Did I miss it?

No, I mean,

again, it's an interesting list.

At number four,

Hangman Adam Page.

Oh, good God.

17 years pro.

Last year, he was number 42.

And it says here, and I never heard this before, trained by Jimmy Valiant.

Poor Boogie.

I would imagine that if Adam Page is from Virginia and he apparently really is, that he probably at some point as a teenager ventured to Boogie's wrestling camp in Shawsville, Virginia, where he,

I'm sure, was encouraged to continue because I've seen some of Handsome Jimmy's students and at least Page is full-grown.

Or did PWI confuse hangman Adam Page with hangman Bruce Pobans?

There could be an element to that also.

Or were there there two rival hangmans at Geneva Valley School?

One of them was a bullshit artist named Bruce Pobans and the other one was a young Adam Page.

I bet you that somebody else had a hand in Page after Boogie broke him into the basics.

But okay, they've gone back to AEW.

But again,

boy, howdy.

And I'm not saying Gunther should be in, even though I'm a big Gunther fan, he shouldn't be in the number three spot.

Cody is number one.

Obviously, he's the biggest babyface, the biggest company.

But

if Moxley and Paige are the two fucking folks that you're, you got to stick in a top four.

But I've, obviously, we're headed back to the WWE next before we are, is there girls in this too?

They're going to make the women mad if they don't hit one of them, or is that, are they a separate list?

I'm not sure yet because I haven't scrolled down and we have to get there.

Last year, I think there were women on the list, even though there was a separate women's list.

I don't think it it was 500.

That may have been 250 or 200, maybe a buck and a quarter.

I don't know.

77.

Go ahead.

Let's get back to this list, Jim.

At number five,

Hiroki Godo,

22 years pro.

Last year, he was number 125, and his signature move is the GTR Spinning Headlock Lariat Backbreaker.

So now they've decided for all the new Japan fans who are probably, you know, more disposed to predispose to buy the magazine, we've got to go for number five to but

last year he was 125 and now he's number five.

Is he causing riots in the streets to come see him?

What's happened here?

Godo's unlikely late career surge was fueled by tragedy as the death of his father inspired the 22-year New Japan veteran to make one last serious run at the IWGP World Championship, having failed in his eight past attempts to capture the title.

Yeah.

He's on top of New Japan.

Well, we'll move on from there, Jim.

Number six.

Okay.

I'm still, you know,

if he hadn't fucking lost the last eight, I would think that, you know, maybe that was a good story.

But at that point, holy shit.

Nevertheless, the Japanese folks, they love

a good feel-good redemption story.

They love a thing that feels good to just rub you the right way.

Well, Jim at number six,

17 years pro.

Last year, he was number 17 on the PWI 500.

This year, number six, main event, Jey Uso.

Boy.

When they present it like this, the WWE's not putting up a big fight either at the top of the card, are they?

Where the fuck is Roman Reigns?

Where the fuck is Punk?

Where the fuck is Rollins?

Where the fuck are some of these stars?

Um,

yeah, Jay's over, Jay's popular.

Maybe that Jay will sell some magazines,

but is that that's besides Cody?

He's got Gunther and Jay to back him up in the top six already.

One word, four letters,

feet,

as in what an incredible feat it was for someone pigeonholed for nearly two decades as one half of a tag team twin act.

Wait a minute, did you say someone pigeon-toed?

Pigeonholed.

Is that why they've got happy feet, the Usos?

Are they pigeon-toed?

He's pigeon-holed, it says here, and he wasn't.

Oh, boy, wait, if you get pigeonholed, shit, you need to go get one of those fucking kits.

Get checked out.

Well, that's number six.

Number seven, Jim Swerve Strickland.

16 years pro.

Last year, he was number two.

Previously, he was in the military, U.S.

Army Reserves.

Before he was number two, he was in the military.

God bless America.

I would have,

well, I mean, he didn't have the greatest year because of the lousy booking, but I would put him above

Moxley and

Furnham, the other fella.

just on the basis of talent, if nothing else, since they're not going by box office or

any other legitimate statistic, they're just alternating back and forth.

I would have put him up above the other two.

Yeah, if they were going by box office, I don't think Hiroki Godo would be anywhere near this list.

Number eight, Jim,

17 years pro.

Last year's number four, Seth Rollins from the Vision.

Well, at least we got some fucking

star power, as Vince used to say, name recognition on the list for the WWE.

But yeah, yes, you know, he's one of the top 10 biggest names currently in the wrestling business, so he belongs there.

I'm questioning a few of the others.

Even without any gold, the visionary did some of the best work of his career over the last year, cementing his status as arguably WWE's most complete performer.

All right, that was number eight.

number nine jim yes mystico

27 years pro last year's number 10 and his nickname is the prince of silver and gold

well you know honestly and truthfully if we're going on box office i shall mystico's work and again a lot of people oh

Jim just doesn't see how good Mystico is.

No, I don't.

It's like I don't see pink elephants either.

But if we're going by box office, he ought to be farther up the list because he's on a hell of a fucking run in Mexico, drawing

the big crowds on a weekly basis, like the olden days.

So,

you know, he can't work, but he's over with a certain audience and he should.

continue to perform for that audience and leave our goddamn eyes alone.

Yeah, this was based on box office.

You couldn't put Moxley above him.

lord, you could argue that he'd be number two.

I mean, if WWE has the number one spot and you have to put something else as number two, he'd be number two based on box office.

Based on box office, you couldn't put Moxley in a goddamn box.

Well, Jim, at number 10, 13 years pro, last year's number three,

Will Ospreay

nickname the billy goat.

I left the goddamn

nickname off.

Osprey,

boy, how quickly we forget.

He's only been gone a month.

We forgot about him.

I'd have certainly put him ahead.

I don't care about their shitty booking, just to have a decent looking, young, athletic

person as the face of my company instead of a balding, simpering plumber.

I would have put Osprey higher than, oh, shut up, John.

I'd have put Osprey higher just to at least he presents some kind of positive image.

Well, he's injured.

So we'll see when we see him again.

And now, Jim.

So Swerve.

Swerve?

Swerve's injured too?

That's right.

That's right.

Yes, yes.

Well, Jim.

Everybody's injured.

At number 11,

Kazushka Okada.

Oh, for Christ's sake.

Oh, a rainmaker.

All right.

No,

he couldn't make it rain if he pissed on your fucking head.

Listen to this positive review.

Only Japanese wrestler ever to top the 500.

Had a fine freshman year in AEW, even while competing below main event scene.

Beat longtime rival Kenny Omega at all in Texas to unify the titles.

Still could use more motivation.

Wow.

Number 11 needs more motivation.

Jim number 12,

Joe Hendry.

Again, all right.

I get that they have to include some of the other companies eventually.

And I like Joe Hendry, and he, you know, got over and got the, you know,

the people chanting his name and doing the whole thing, singing the songs.

Everybody loves to sing.

I love to sing about the moon and the June.

But the 12th best wrestler in the world is not Joe Hendry.

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And number 13,

Zach Sabre Jr.

Oh, good lord.

21 years ago.

I believe that Joe Hendry could kick the ever-loving shit out of Zack Sabre Jr.

Number 14, Jim.

Oba Femi.

Do you think Zach Sabre Jr.

glows in the dark when you turn the bedroom light off?

Is he still glowing?

What part of him you can see above the blankets?

You know, it says here he's been a pro for 21 years, and I've seen him, you know, going back at least 15 years or so.

And I remember thinking he was really skinny then.

He's put on no weight.

He's still exactly the same as he was then.

Which is why he's not a star in the project.

Which is why he's exactly the same as he was then.

Number 14, 14, Oba Femi.

Oba Femi, you got that out real quick.

Oba Femi.

And there's no way to really extend a name like that.

Oba Femi.

Now they got to have the NXT guy.

It's just.

Again, no disrespect to some of these people, but he's not the 14th best wrestler in the fucking world.

At number 15, CM Punk.

And one of the four or five biggest box office attractions in the business comes in at

what it was it, 14 or 15.

He is number 15 and he's 19 years pro, not ranked next year.

Can you make a case that fucking

Oba Femi is a better wrestler than CM Punk, or that

Horky Goto

is

a better

wrestler than

Seth Rollins or anybody that he was above.

Even going by their standards, not talking about who draws money, but just who

the Kayfabe fan would enjoy.

What the fuck is going on here?

Well, Jim, at number 16, Bandito,

the most wanted.

By who?

That's his nickname.

El Mas Buscado, the most wanted.

He couldn't get arrested on the street.

Nobody knows who the fuck he is.

Well, that's why he, and he wears a mask.

At number 16.

But

if you screamed,

if you went down to Main Street, USA, and you screamed, Randy Orton,

few people would turn around and go, where?

Whereas if you screamed Bandito, somebody else would scream Frito.

Jim number 17.

I encourage everyone, don't go downtown yelling out Bandito.

What about Frito?

At number 17, Konosuke Takesha

from the Don Callis family.

All right.

Which is getting bigger all the time.

Is Don Callis a deadbeat dad?

Can he support all them children?

He's got like 10 of them now.

Well, we'll talk about that ridiculous stable when we get to dynamite.

Number 18, Damian Priest from the Bronx.

Wow, from the past.

Remember when we thought he had potential?

And

it ain't materialized, has it?

And he's now past 40 from what I saw on the interwebs the other day.

21 years pro.

Yeah, no.

Well, Jim, with four years pro, we have Trick Williams, number 19.

Well, the jury is still out on the Trickster because he's only been a pro for four years.

So we'll see how he develops in the future.

But

again,

they're just bopping back and forth between the main promotions so as not to offend anybody too badly at this point.

Number 20,

Jacob Fatu, the Samoan werewolf.

Okay, yeah, I'm sorry.

Sorry, you know, Jacob, we just, we couldn't put you any higher on the list.

We've got Oba Femi.

We've got Trick.

We got

Gorky.

We just don't have any room for Jesus Christ.

This guy's not top 10.

Even if you're not talking,

sure, he hasn't been in a

position to draw at the box office on a regular basis if we're dealing with box office.

And if we're not dealing with box office,

he's torn the house down on all of his shit until he had to face his

great value clone and solo.

But otherwise than that, boom goes dynamite.

But he's number 20.

Okay.

Followed by number 21, Nick Nemeth.

What?

What?

Number 21, Nick Nemeth.

Oh, I forgot he was using that name again.

I was like, what are they watching 2004 OVW tapes?

Yeah,

no.

He apparently held two world championships simultaneously in AAA and TNA early in this evaluation period.

Well, seems like they should have evaluated again after the antibiotics had had time to work.

No, I mean, he's a great worker, but he's not the 21st biggest star in wrestling over the last year.

At number 22, L.A.

Knight.

Catchphrase, yeah.

Yeah.

He might be number 22 for real.

I have got a list of all of the people that really ought to be above him, but he's certainly, he should rank right up there in the top 25.

At number 23, Mascara Dorada.

Second generation Luchador, spectacular.

It's all right.

Yeah.

At number 24, Jim, Braun Breaker from The Vision.

Oh, good.

Okay.

Wild-eyed Paul Heyman guy.

Braun,

we know you're going to be in the main event of the next 10 WrestleManias, but we don't have room because Masquerita Dorito is, you know, in your way.

The fuck.

At number 25, Jim, Masha Slamovich.

It's not Marsha.

Who knew?

What?

Masha?

It's not Marsha.

No, it's Masha.

M-A-S-H-A.

Is she Russian?

Hometown, Moscow, Russia.

Remains the sport's most prolific intergender competitor.

Regularly taking on and beating top male performer.

Boy, this is a poor.

Oh, my God.

This is a poorly timed one.

Taking on and beating.

Oh, my God.

All right.

Ladies and gentlemen, sorry.

I hate to laugh.

Okay, we're gonna, we're just gonna stop the show right now.

And

that was her gimmick in wrestling,

and she was drawing

art from life

is what we now apparently are being led to believe here by this thing.

Here, I believe she has been suspended.

I hope I'm getting this right.

Suspended from TNA, as it turns out, for

alleged domestic abuse

against her partner.

She was beating up her boyfriend, is what she was doing.

Sonata,

say it in English.

Yeah, that's what it was happening.

Well, and

I've seen a picture of him.

Good Lord Christ on a cracker.

If he's a wrestler,

I guess everybody can be one these days.

But,

but yes, we, and he didn't stooge, but he didn't deny it either.

He admitted it, but apparently a friend of his is what stooged it.

But he said, I just hope she can get the help she needs.

What the, why do we have to hear about everybody's goddamn personal issues anymore to begin with?

And

well, Jim, number 26.

Oh, no,

25.

There's 500 of these motherfuckers.

I thought we were like hitting the fucking 25.

We've got a grip on it now, don't we?

We're going to get through 30 and then we'll take a quick glimpse through the rest.

Number 26 is Ozawa,

three years pro.

He's from Team 2000X,

relative newcomer to the sport, makes an impressive PWI 500 debut on the strength of an impressive six-month run with NOAA's GHC heavyweight championship.

I thought they outlawed GHC.

You can't buy it anymore because people were overdosing on it.

Well, we may have to see him if he's this impressive, three years pro.

Number 27, Tatsuya Naito.

We've seen him before.

Number 28, Mark Briscoe.

And number 29, El Hijo del Vicingo.

They're just all over the place.

They'll stick Mark Briscoe in the middle of two or three people that nobody's ever heard of.

Followed by number 30, MJF.

Oh, good Lord.

Geez, talk about kicking a man when he's down already.

Yes, his booking was the shits, but they've put

seven people that nobody's ever heard of outside their immediate family on the list and made MJF number 30.

I forgot about him even.

We were so far down.

They really must want to

mollify or mollycoddle the childish minds over in AEW with the high rankings that they got.

They figure MJF's an actual semi-adult.

Maybe he won't be too pissed at us.

Again, at what point is this based on anything in reality?

And another point, it's some sort of advocacy for wrestlers that people personally like.

Number 31, Yoda Suji,

nicknamed Gene Blast from New Japan.

Number 32, Randy Orton, son of cowboy Bob Orton.

Nicknamed DNA Splooge.

Number 33, Kyle Fletcher, signature move brain buster.

Number 34, Moose.

Nicknamed the Sploogee.

34, Moose from TNA Wrestling.

At number 35, Gabe Kidd.

At number 36, Luke Jacobs.

From Manchester, UK.

I have no idea who that is.

From Progress and Rev Pro.

Watch out for his Lariat.

We will.

We'll move on.

37, Mike Santana.

38, June Saito.

Number 39, El Desperado.

Who's June Saito and how did she get on this list?

It is a man, native of Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, reached zenith of

zenith of achievement.

Was this written by someone in Japan?

In his own promotion, defeating Davey Boy Smith Jr.

for all Japan's triple crown.

Reigned for the rest of the evaluation period, earned 10 points in the championship carnival block A contention.

Oh, well, there you got it.

Did it by itself.

At number 39, El Desperado.

At number 40, Marcus Mathers, Philly's finest.

41, Ricochet.

He's a high 40.

I thought Marcus Mathers was Eminem.

That's Marshall Mathers, obviously who this person you would guess would have stole.

Now that the indie guys that are ripping off a rapper from 25 years ago, getting the top 50, is this what the business has become?

Well, he is a WWE ID prospect under

Beyond Wrestling, I guess this is.

He also held the Dreamway Alternative Championship for 252 days.

And he dropped the ETU New Jersey title to Mike Santa.

There are all sorts of titles I've never heard.

You know what?

When I was 17, I was the Kentucky in a Championship Wrestling Champion for about 14 days or so.

At number 41, Jim, as I said before, Ricochet.

At number 42, Effie,

entrance theme, goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.

Number 43, Ethan Page, all ego.

At number 44, Tom Latimer.

NWA.

I think he's a world champion.

Yeah, it says here, world champion, NWA.

Okay, well,

nice to check in, NWA, with your world world champion at number 47.

45, Penta, 46, Drew McIntyre, 47, Javon Evans.

Come on.

Javon Evans.

Drew McIntyre is below

Fernam and Snavitz.

Number 47, Javon Evans.

Number 48, Dominic Mysterio.

Number 49, Matt Riddle.

Number 50, Mance Warner.

This is all over the page.

Number 51, Steve Macklin.

All right.

You are just, you're hooked on this now.

We got 52 somewhere.

Who's this?

Number 52.

One called Manders.

What?

The number one called Manders.

One called Manders is number 52.

Followed by Leon Slater at 53 and Chris Jericho at 54.

Oh, my Adam Cole at 55.

Come on, this whole list is fucking crazy.

But poor Jericho.

How the mighty have fallen to put the boots to the guy when he's down.

Alberto El Patron is 66.

I'm scrolling down.

Neon, 68 is Neon

at

number 76, Speedball Mike Bailey.

Followed by Tomohiro Ishii,

Nick Wayne, and at number 79, AJ Styles.

Jesus.

Followed by Daniel Garcia.

Darby Allen's 83.

Solo Sokoa, 89.

Trying to say, let me go to the bottom and see if there's any names that just stand out from the 400 range.

This is a long-ass list filled.

We didn't even get to 100 when we got the people we've never seen or heard of.

Well, I mean, that's the thing is to make a list of 500 legitimate professional wrestlers in this day and age, it's almost impossible to

get even to, I would think at the end, and I'm sure you'll let us know

that nobody's ever heard of any of these people past a local you know indie or whatever tell me if you've ever heard of any of these names number 355 is show

sho show

his affiliation is with the house of torture what about 356 jim do you know lou nixon

lou nixon

he he actually yes lou doorknob nixon

He was a heck of a guy.

No, no, I don't know who Lou Nixon was.

There was a doorknob Nixon one time, I think, worked for Bruiser.

What about 357?

Hector Invictus.

I've never

viewed Victus.

359, Anita Vaughan.

Anita Vaughn.

Well, now that's a that's a girl, Anita?

I would think so.

Like Anita Bryant.

So there are girls on this list.

Number 360,

Hoodfoot,

whoever that may be, with his manager, James Brown.

Get on the Hoodfoot.

Who the hell is this 361 Hayabusa?

One-year pro.

This is a new Hayabusa.

I was going to say that'd be a little hard to do there, wouldn't it?

But I don't know who that is.

They took over.

Well, go to the end.

Who's at the end if these big stars are in the threes?

I'm looking at some of the names here: Otis Coger, Lavaniel, Dylan McQueen,

Andino, Jeremiah Plunkett,

Alfonso Gonzalez, Dark Sheik,

QT Marshall, I know that name,

Kylie Ray,

just so that she's taking time off, she's pregnant, Hayata, Billy Starks.

Well, they do have girls on the list all over the place.

Well, then they're all sexist because there weren't any girls in the top 50.

All right, here are the final bunch here.

At 484,

Declan Grant,

followed by Tommy Vendetta at 485.

At 486, 23 years pro,

Dan Shoko Dieno.

At 487, Tommy Dreamer.

At 488, Shino.

Followed by at 489, Horace.

Horace?

Horace.

And Tommy Dreamer just randomly shows up in this list of generic names.

Shane Malice, 19 years pro, number 490, followed by TJ Sykes, and then a 492, our old friend, Crowbar, trained by Iron Mike Sharp, down in brick, I think.

493.

But I understand.

Okay, Crowbar,

Devonstorm for the uninitiated.

Yes, he's been a pro for 20-something years, and we've heard of him.

How are these other people pros for 20 years, supposedly?

And you've never heard these names or even seen some of them in print.

You want to feel old, Crowbar, 33 years pro.

Well, I already felt old, and yeah, wow,

wow.

Uh, number 493, three years pro, Satinam Singh.

Whatever happened to him?

Good God,

it seems like he'd be hard to hide.

Followed by LSG,

followed by Milo Mira,

followed by Chris Nasty,

followed by RPD.

498 is Eil

O'Neal.

Eil O'Neill.

Eal O'Neill.

Followed by Jeffrey John,

the babushka baron.

And finally, at number 500,

Cereal Man,

15 years pro, and it appears from the picture here, it is a wrestler whose mask is a fake box of cereal, and he's also holding a box of looks like fruity pebbles.

So, this is the list.

Why can't it?

I don't make the editorial decisions for the magazine, but why can't they just come to grips with or admit to people or just change it and don't even say anything about it and ignore it that you can't list 500 real pro wrestlers anymore

and

do the PWI

250, which sounds like it would be padded, but at least it might be somewhat

easier and less silly.

Because when you get to that point,

you know, aren't you just wasting space that you could actually put something in there that the folks would buy?

That's the question.

Yeah, I just wonder how many fans there are that actually

would know a great deal of these.

Like when I used to get the early editions of this, I think it started in 91.

So let's say 91, 92, 93, 94.

I knew a good amount, like into the hundreds of those.

There were still indie guys you'd never heard of or anything, but you knew a lot of these people.

There were a lot of pro wrestlers, though, at that point in time.

Yeah.

That's true.

Well, yeah, yeah.

Well, and there still is, if you count, if they went through the entire roster, including NXT, and just listed all the names, as we've talked about in the past, you'd get hundreds of people, but that doesn't mean that anybody's ever heard of them either.

At number 400, Cappuccino Jones.

Oh, come on.

Cappuccino Jones, he's with WWE ID, apparently.

Three years pro.

He's a member of Adrenaline Drip.

Wait a minute.

I had a tag team.

named Adrenaline and OVW, but not Adrenaline Drip.

Adrenaline was kind of a cool name for my babyface tag team that were full of adrenaline, and they were just popular as all shit, but I wouldn't have named anybody drip.

Hayata's here at 383.

His affiliation is with the passionate Rattels.

So much of this is ridiculous, but I get a kick out of it.

Brian, you know what the problem is here?

Oh, which one?

I can tell you what the problem is here with

the folks up at Pro Wrestling Illustrated, they are not,

they're not trying to just relieve stress and sleep better and maintain an overall physical and mental sense of well-being.

They're on some kind of psychotropic, psychoactive, hallucinogenic.

chemically induced, made under the bathroom sink.

Holy shit, is this permanent kind of stuff?

Well, I don't think we should say that or can say that.

I know Brian Solomon's not he's a good guy i just did say it well we shouldn't say it's see solomon looks like a nar on the outside but he may be he may be a goddamn heavy-duty fucking acid head we don't know

who knows about people behind closed doors anymore brian can you vouch for anybody anymore i'm gonna vouch for brian solomon that's one person i feel sick

you don't think he's on hallucinogenics i'd be over there hanging out mushrooms if he had mushrooms i'd be talking to him right now Well, he did have fungus in his toes.

All right.

But nevertheless, where are we going exactly?

I'm talking about all these heavy-duty drugs that the people at Pro Wrestling Illustrated are on to make this list up.

But that's not, you shouldn't be doing stuff like that, folks.

Don't take the brown acid.

What you need to be doing is concentrating on helping yourself feel better, taking away stress and discomfort, a nice little relaxation, some good sleep.

You'll wake up feeling mentally refreshed with no hangovers.

The cornbread hemp CBD gummies.

That's what you're going for here.

You're not going to come up with a list like they do at Pro Wrestling Illustrated because that requires you to take some kind of mind-altering substances that send you into the fifth dimension into a kaleidoscope of

no return.

My God, don't go into the light.

But

you can just take some of these CBD gummies formulated to work with your body, not against it, using only the best part of the hemp plant, the flower.

It's a purdy flower.

For the purest and most potent CBD,

they help relieve the discomfort and stress and sleeplessness that comes with realizing that we're all doomed to a catastrophic end.

But you can put that off for at least a little while by using these third-party lab-tested USDA organic safety and purity insured cbd gummies from cornbreadhemp.com right here in Louisville, Kentucky.

Yeah.

So do you want to take the fucking acid brewed in a bathtub in a fucking warehouse down on San Leandro Street?

Or do you want to come to the Derby City to taste some of our flour, baby?

All you got to do right now.

They will send it to people.

You don't have to come to Louisville to check out the fine products.

Well, it's cheaper if you come pick it up in person.

You can go to cornbreadhemp.com and you can order it and just put it in the pickup line and they got a drive-through.

And then you just fucking, but don't take the gummies until you get out of the drive-through line because it slows down the goddamn procedure.

There's no one's drive.

There's no drive-through, ladies and gentlemen.

Let's do this the old year.

You're not in Louisville.

You don't know what's going on down here.

We're going to do this the old-fashioned way with a wonderful promo code, but let's uh get there first.

Yes, well, the promo code, of course, is JCE, but that's only if you want to save money, Brian.

You don't need the program program, the promo code of JCE,

that's JCE.

You don't need that at all if you don't want to save money.

You want to pay regular price,

just go to cornbreadhemp.com.

But if you want to save 30% on your first order, that's where you need the code JCE.

CornbreadHemp.com/slash JCE and use the code JCE at checkout and get 30% off cornbread hemp CBD gummies that are again

full-spectrum CBD gummies.

They got watermelon, they got berry, they got peach, but they also, you know what they got for you?

Bliss, pure, unadulterated joy, floating off into the atmosphere

on a sea of bad organ music

instead of crashing down to the ground and the spiders are coming.

Yeah, that's Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

We don't want that.

We want cornbreadhemp.com slash JCE.

30% off your first order.

Yeah.

All right, that one's going to have a lot of feedback.

Let's turn that off.

We are here in the future, Jim.

In the future,

for future.

Sounded like Granny's magic musical saw.

Oh, that was kind of what I was going for.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well,

you've got a musical saw setting on

the organtron there.

The orgasmatron.

The album, The Musical Saw, will be out on Arcadian Arcadian Vanguard Records later this year.

Stay tuned for more information.

We may do a bundle with the new Jim Cornette book.

We haven't decided yet.

But, Jim, here we are in the future.

What's the cover picture going to look like of Granny's musical saw?

Is she going to be bowing it on the porch?

Well, no, we're not using Granny in the title.

We're kind of getting away from the whole Granny thing.

We're just focusing on musical saw.

Well, it's Granny's musical saw, though.

That's not...

Again, that may be your idea.

You're saying Granny isn't marketable?

I'm saying in this context, I don't think Granny is marketable for the avant-garde drone music that we will be producing.

I don't know.

You, those fucking non-agenarians, they got some piss and vinegar in them.

All right.

Yeah.

You know what we need to do before we go on to the climactic portion of the program with blowing our nose with dynamite is check in basically on what they're doing at the big event.

They're over at they're just down the road in Australia coming up this coming weekend.

The WWE, when do they grace the United States' presence with a big event again?

When one of the local municipalities will pay them as much money as they want.

So don't fill the potholes.

Pay the WWE to come do a show.

But anyway, they're going to be in Australia, Brian.

And are they trying to soften the

negative stigma behind the Crown Jewel show title by putting it somewhere else besides Saudi Arabia?

It says, now they get WrestleMania.

Yeah, it's interesting because it was an event that we thought was created specifically for Saudi Arabia.

Last year, Cody defeated Gunther

for the Crown Jewel Championship, a championship he wasn't allowed to leave the country with.

So we figured it was kind of the Saudi event.

Now it's in Perth, Australia.

I mean, the big test will be next year.

Will it be in Columbus, Ohio?

I don't know if Crown Jewel works there, but it's now just part of the traveling package that is give us your money, WWE.

They want your jewels.

They want your family jewels to see the crown jewel.

And what does the king of Australia have?

Do they have crown jewels in Australia, the king and queen, or do they?

Well, I don't think they have a king or queen.

Do they have more like sheep horn on their

crowns?

There is no New Zealand.

There is no king or quite a lot of sheep down there.

Yeah, I don't think there's a king or queen in Australia or New Zealand.

What about sheep?

Unless you count Paul Hogan.

I don't know.

They have plenty of sheep, from what I understand.

Well, I'm trying to figure, is it which one?

Is it Australia, New Zealand, or both that has all the sheep?

Because the sheepherders from New Zealand.

New Zealand sheepherders.

Maybe Australia doesn't have as many sheep as we think.

That's why

some of the men are highly frustrated.

In the heyday of Australian wrestling, were the New Zealanders considered like outsiders or automatic heels or were they accepted immediately as one of our own because they're our neighbor right over here?

Well, Brian, I don't know that that question has ever come up to me before.

And I wasn't there during the heyday of Australian wrestling.

So I can't comment on the

race relations amongst the

different factions down there in warring fucking Australia.

You know, just recently the photo was going around on Facebook.

I don't know if if you would have seen it on Twitter.

You may have seen it before of Luke Williams in his early days with his beautiful gimmick having his hand.

Yes.

Yes.

Looks like another person.

But anyway,

Luke and Butch.

I loved them.

So

are Luke and Butch on this show?

It might be more entertaining coming up, but I'm afraid they're not.

I'm afraid Butch passed away several years ago.

Well, I realize that's one of the reasons why they're not on the show.

But Rip Morgan said he's available and ready to go.

God damn it, I almost spit on his nephew of Butch Miller, Rip Morgan.

But, Jim, you brought it up.

Crown Jewel, Perth,

Saturday, October 11th, 7:30 p.m.

local, 8 a.m.

on the East Coast, 5 a.m.

on the West Coast.

What do you think of that before any?

Again, I know that you don't want to just like SummerSlam 92

in Wembley didn't air live here.

We didn't know the results.

It was a different era.

There wasn't a vibrant internet.

So it aired several hours after it took place.

It was light there when it was pitch black here.

What do you think, though, about the idea of airing stuff live?

And it's the middle of the night, middle of the morning.

It's like a New Japan kind of thing.

Well,

I guess everybody can get the results instantly, but at the same time, you can do like the Seinfeld episode where he instance phone.

I'm taping the game.

Don't tell me what the result is or whatever.

And try to stay away from it and watch it at a convenient time of the day because it's all, there is no

bell time is 8 p.m.

anymore.

With the streaming, you can watch whenever the fuck you want and DVR, et cetera, et cetera.

That's why the whole concept of a big show has gone to hell.

Back in my day, they had faces.

But

it just the idea of,

you know, if it's not an immediate thing where you have to watch it and it's on at eight o'clock on Saturday morning and you got, you know, put kids in their tree house or whatever the fucking normal people do on goddamn Saturday.

I don't know.

Do you put children in the tree house or do they go there on their own?

I think they climb up to the treehouse on their own.

Well, you got to kick them out of the house first.

Chase them with a stick.

It helps.

Wouldn't be the thing to do.

Point being, it's easier to just get busy with Saturday and not watch the thing, isn't it?

Even if you were planning on it, unless you're

again, boy, they're preaching to the base.

This whole, the whole wrestling industry is preaching to the base now because they don't get the masses anymore.

Some of their fans are massive, but they don't get the masses.

You see, if you go out the night before or just you're waiting until the end of the week because you've been getting very little sleep during the week for work or school, whatever it is, if you're waiting until Friday night to get a great night's sleep, you're going to want to wake up early to see it.

I mean, I almost feel like this would be a better plan for Tony Khan because he does 10-hour shows.

That way he gets started 8 a.m.

on the East Coast.

And by the time like one o'clock, you want to check out what's going on.

There's still plenty to go.

And he'll be done by dark.

That's right.

That's right.

But, you know, like a telephone.

I don't.

Yeah.

You know what?

Would it be better if he...

Just said, at the start of the show, we're going to have matches until you pay us a certain amount to stop and then raise more money through crowdfunding with people sending in contributions.

Please end it.

Please end it.

You should do it.

The Thanksgiving's telethon.

But nevertheless, they're having this show, and we are

going to try now to tell the people what's on the show and how excited we are about the show that these matches are taking place on, allegedly.

Yeah, we're going to try to.

This show is coming up less than a week as we release this show here.

If I go to the official WWE website, there is a page.

I mean, the event is Crown Jewel Perth.

They don't actually list any matches.

They give you, first thing on the page is win a trip to the Survivor Series War Games.

Enter now.

It's a minute-made contest

with Cody Rhodes there.

And then right under that, it says on sale now, two-day combo tickets for WrestleMania 42.

Look here for tickets.

And then under that, is Crown Jewel Perth, a big image of several superstars, has the date, buy tickets, and also a click to, or a link to buy

priority pass.

And then it says featured superstars.

And it shows Cena, AJ Styles, Cody Rhodes, Rollins, and Stephanie Vaca.

And then it's highlights of SmackDown and Raw leading up to it.

No matches listed.

That's crazy.

On their own website.

Yeah, I mean, this is their website, and this is the official page for the event.

There's no matches.

What happens if I click click for tickets here?

All right, we'll come back to this.

Uh, let me go to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia will have the lowdown if they won't tell us.

All right, Wikipedia has four matches listed.

Four matches.

I mean, the last pay-per-view we saw was what, five matches, right?

Yeah, but well, maybe they think they're giving people too much because it is eight o'clock in the morning.

And maybe we could think of things they may add.

Let's go through what's officially a match as of now, according to Wikipedia.

In a tag team match, Rhea Ripley and EO Sky versus the Kabuki Warriors.

If the

television segment, as we will phrase it, that we

talked about previously

is any indication of what,

you know, these other three that are the kids that are in with Rhea are going to be contributing to this thing.

I'd love to see her in and out of this thing as quickly as possible because that was just stinky bad.

I guarantee you this match will be many times better than that awful segment with awful acting on Raw.

That went 20 minutes.

It probably won't go as long as that segment either, if I had to guess.

Why?

Do we care about the match after it reminds us of the stinkiest promo to build a match that's ever been done?

Well, let's see what you think of the rest of this card as of this very moment.

In a singles match, John Cena versus AJ Styles.

And I think I agree with this one because obviously Cena wants to do it first of all.

Or, you know,

AJ was one of the people on his list that he'd like to work with, whatever, but also

it's a way for

them to relive their history.

it's gonna it it's john's probably not gonna get hurt working with aj

and at the same time this is not a it's a big show in name only right again because they're an australian etc but this isn't like they're giving away

a wrestlemania main event

and you know for a do they even have the term b show anymore are they all b shows but you know what i'm saying feels like there's more televised B shows now than ever before.

Well, that's because they've

busy bees.

They've got more shows than, you know, all these towns that they're willing to hold hostage for ransom to, you know, come and grace with their beneficence.

They're just lined up.

Now, I thought they were potentially building up Jacob Fatu versus Drew McIntyre for this card, but it's not listed amongst the matches here, and it certainly isn't on the WWE website.

So we'll see what happens.

It would be a bonus if they had it.

That would be nice.

Otherwise, you have four matches and three hours of commercials.

Doesn't sound very pleasant.

For the WWE Women's Crown Jewel Championship,

the raw women's champion, Stephanie Vacare, versus Tiffany Stratton, the SmackDown women's champion.

Okay, well, I'm going to watch every single solitary second of this, son of a bitch,

just because I don't want you to think that I'm not giving Stephanie her proper

due or respect or whatever.

And this probably ain't going to be bad.

And once again, it's for another miscellaneous women's championship, but

they'll probably, they'll just, they'll love it over there down under, over under Captain Roger.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see who they put over there.

It'd also be interesting, are they allowed to leave the country with the championship?

Now that this event's not in Saudi Arabia, who owns?

First of all, do they have to make a new Crown Jewel Championship belt?

And secondly, who owns it?

Well, and that's a good point.

And if they

could probably get something out of Australia easier than they can get it out of Saudi Arabia, so now you know it'll be on eBay next week.

Unless you cut it up with a bone saw and put it in little bags.

Oh,

Jim, final match listed here for the WWE Crown Jewel Championship.

The SmackDown undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes, who was last year's winner of the Crown Jewel Championship against Gunther, versus the Raw World's Heavyweight Champion, Seth Rollins.

With only the Crown Jewel title on the line.

Correct?

That is correct.

Only the Crown Jewel Championship and

maybe the championship with the most interference in wrestling.

We'll see what happens if we had to guess.

I i mean this one

boy you'd think seth would have to win something sooner or later but i don't know that i i see it here but uh and

and oh they don't want to start a riot down in australia either those people are made they carry knives um

i

don't know boomerang huh wouldn't you be more afraid of a boomerang than a knife Well, no, because once it comes back to them, it comes back to the guy that did it so you could catch him easier.

See, they could just stick you with a knife and walk off and leave it in you.

Think about that.

I hadn't thought about that.

You may be right.

Yeah.

There you go.

See,

you never hear on the news about a boomerang killer getting away with it.

The shit always comes right back to him.

I've never even seen anyone successfully use a boomerang in person in my entire life.

Well, you don't spend enough time down in Australia.

You've seen Australian.

Yeah, you saw Al Costello.

You've seen Australian Australian wrestling.

Have you ever seen anyone actually throw a boomerang and have it return to them?

Well, not in a wrestling situation.

They were throwing boomerangs into the crowd.

Nothing ever came back.

Well, those were gimmick boomerangs.

They're not the magic fucking boomerangs.

See,

then some of them were just cardboard.

And Al Costello, when he'd hit the guy over the head with his wooden boomerang, well, he couldn't.

He didn't have enough room to throw it because he was right next to the guy.

So he just hit him with it because it was easier.

But now, out in the out back,

then the Al Costello would fling that thing and it'd go and it'd come right back.

I'm, you know, from what I've heard and been told, he wouldn't tell a lie.

You know, it's kind of upsetting, not upsetting, that's not the right word, but it just seems almost like a waste or a disappointment.

There have been elements in the Cody Rollins build,

and those elements don't include the length of the segments or the singing of the fans or any of the superfluous shit.

But the whole argument, the breaking apart of these guys that were friends leading into Cody, or at least Seth Rollins was the shield to help Cody get the title from Roman Reigns a couple years ago.

Yeah.

Feels like more could have been done for this to be a bigger thing as opposed to all of this to build up this match.

You know, for a championship not the one either of them hold, or a championship that will be defended anywhere ever.

I don't know.

It just seems almost like a waste of the build for this.

They could have used that for something bigger, long-term.

There's more to be done, I guess.

It seems like.

I have a feeling they're going to do this match again.

This isn't the last we've seen of it.

They'll probably take another swing at it later.

You think they'll unify the belts again?

You think they'll ever unify the belts again?

I don't know because

there is the

reason why they did it before is so that they could tour more efficiently with having two touring groups, but they don't tour anymore as much as just go as we said to the highest bidder and the big shows and TV.

It probably would be a benefit, but I don't think they will just because

I think they're like Tony.

They like all the belts.

They think their fans like all the these belts.

And then they can use the belts to

fight the other belts.

Then we don't need the wrestlers anymore.

Yeah.

Well, Jim, that's it.

Those are the only matches listed on Wikipedia, not even on the official WWE page for the upcoming Crown Jewel pay-per-view event this Saturday, 8 a.m.

East Coast.

Well, at least if there's only four matches, we'll be able to get over to Wild Eggs for brunch before they close.

Well, speaking of Wild Eggs, Jim.

Oh, yes, yes.

How about goose eggs?

Wild goose eggs, yes.

Wild goose eggs.

It was the sixth anniversary episode of AEW Dynamite on Wednesday night, October the 1st, and they were in Hollywood, Florida.

Hollywood, Florida, the other Hollywood, like it's the other white meat.

And

where they are at their sixth anniversary is

they're back where they started from

in that time they have gotten a number of stars or people who are over on to as main event level people to their fan base especially and they've either run them off or crippled them

and we are back

with the Kookamunga kids and their friends from the trampoline in the backyard as the primary

you know,

episodic characters of this thing mixed with, you know, Moxley's bunch that's dry and

drab and worn out.

So

I think they've kind of come full circle, only they lost half of their

riders along the way.

But what

they didn't really do anything for the sixth anniversary different to what they've been doing because it all looks the same.

Am I

exaggerating this?

Well, no, they tried to make it a big deal that it's the sixth anniversary and they presented a lackluster lineup and it didn't look great.

I almost feel like they should have just done it at Daly's place.

And it's not the biggest place and it doesn't look the best, but it looked better than whatever building they were in here.

And they even shot it at some point.

They switched the camera so you can kind of see the other side.

It looked better on the side they weren't showing.

They shot, they had the hard cam kind of where the entranceway was, and it just didn't look good.

The building looked like shit, and it didn't feel like a special show.

And if you stop and think about it, you know, we've said it with the return of Orange Cassidy and Jurassic Express.

They're doubling down on the things that for their crowd worked five years ago, four years ago, six years ago.

And that crowd has dissipated.

Less people are enthusiastic or excited by AEW's product.

They have less star power than ever before.

The stars they do have, in a lot of cases, are the same people they had, again, six years ago, five years ago, four years ago.

And the business just isn't there.

You know, we take their word that they get these great pay-per-view numbers.

And a lot of that's just taking their word for it.

We really don't know.

The ratings we'll talk about a little bit later.

But sometimes you could watch WWE and you could say, I'm not particularly a fan of this television show here today.

I don't like some of the wrestlers being pushed.

I think some stuff goes too long, whatever it is.

But you see that, you see that there's an excited fan base paying for these tickets and seemingly happy to be there and do these things.

And then you see AEW.

You know, a few years ago, they were drawing great crowds.

They're not drawing great crowds for any TV shows ever, anywhere.

Maybe England.

And there's no energy there.

There's no star power.

It's like a six-year anniversary.

Again, six years of Tony Khan as the booker.

That's not something to celebrate.

The delusion of pretending that Tony's good at this and that Tony somehow will be getting better with age.

It's ridiculous.

This was not a special sixth anniversary show.

It didn't feel like to me.

Well, I mean, even just as a television program, because sixth anniversary is like, what anniversary is that?

Cardboard, coffee grounds?

You know, but

just do a good TV show.

It's the same shit.

People just randomly come and go in the never-endingness.

And that's nothing people talk about.

Well, Cornet

just blows right past the WWE stuff, but he recounts every minute AEW detail.

No, I don't.

I don't watch the matches anymore on either of these fucking programs, unless it's Braun Breaker or somebody really fucking fabulous.

But in the WWE,

you can tell people what happened.

Well, so-and-so had a match and so-and-so, boom, they went back and forth.

He won with his finish or so-and-so went back and forth and won with his finish.

And then the guy got mad and beat him up after.

It makes sense, but it don't take too long to fucking tell.

With this, people keep coming out and doing things.

It leads to this and that.

And this segment never ends.

And by the time they get to the end of it, people involved weren't even there at the start of the fucking thing.

They transitioned to completely different.

It doesn't make mostly sense,

but it takes a while to tell

what the fuck is going on.

It's

these are complete polar opposites.

And every excess that AEW is doing,

the people that still are coming live, they like that kind of thing.

Sometimes, sometimes they're standing there.

But people watching on television, how long is it before,

good God, this, it all blurs together.

What are we watching?

The other thing, too, is AEW is having a popularity and a creative and everything, just a decline.

And again, they'll say, well, the pay-per-view numbers are great.

A, prove it.

B, it doesn't change anything.

These TV shows are bad.

What's going to affect it is going to be WWE helping TNA get a television deal.

Because right now,

I would argue that NXT is hotter than AEW.

You hear more people buzzing about things in NXT.

More people get mad at you for not watching NXT than they do for not watching something in AEW.

And you see more and more of that from TNA, who again is under the thumb of WWE.

But they're still, as of now, technically an independent outfit.

But WWE is helping them for a a reason.

Industry domination, they're shutting the doors around AEW so AEW is not going to have options.

And while all that's happening, AEW, again, presenting a sixth anniversary show that is so uninspired, everything about it,

especially the Death Rider shit at the end, just the slow-moving four horsemen.

It's not very promising.

I mean, the only thing they have going for them is that Tony can fund this thing forever.

Tony can just have fun and games forever with his dad's money, but it doesn't change reality.

And, you know, again, we've always said the other sad thing is Tony's never going to replace himself as Booker.

This whole thing exists so Tony can be what he's always wanted to be despite not being very good at it.

But even if you did replace him, there's no one there to replace him with.

It's just, I don't see much of a positive future for AEW.

I really don't.

In terms of it'll exist, but how is it going to possibly get better?

Do you think year seven of Tony's booking run will be better?

Do you think year eight of Tony's booking run will be better?

Do you think another year of Excalibur and Tony Schiavone and Taz and now Danielson giggling and laughing when shit happens will be better or worse?

It's not a very promising thing.

So it's celebrating six years and it's commendable six years on the air, but it's not a good show.

People pretending it's a good show are just wrong.

Tell us how you really feel.

I feel it's a disappointment.

You know, the same thing you kind of said at the beginning, it's a lost opportunity, and it's been six years of lost opportunity.

And to be quite honest, it's the last one that I'll see in my lifetime.

If anybody take a swing at it, and it might be the last one ever, because the longer that it hangs on, the more that it prevents

any other alternative to the TKO Empire from ever happening to begin with.

I mean, it's sad to say, but the best case next scenario, just due to the changing media landscape, and this isn't a positive option, but the next best thing might be, or the next chance might be one of these actual networks saying, hey, we need a wrestling company.

We need wrestling content.

We don't want to deal with the Tony Khans or the TKOs trying to hold us up.

Let's just find some wrestling people and create a show.

And it won't last and it will flame out.

But other than that, you have to count count on a billionaire wanting to put up the money.

And then, where are they going to air it?

Where is it going to live?

So, there's a lot of problems with this.

And again, six years of missed opportunity from AEW, no growth from AEW,

doubling down on all the things that haven't worked.

But hey, they've made wrestlers rich.

Well, let's talk about those rich wrestlers because a couple of them went broke.

That's how they opened their show.

The sixth anniversary show opens with a pre-taped comedy bit

with the Hardley boys at a casino down there.

And

they do their phony dialogue where Nick loves to be at the casino.

So Matt's going to go off and arrange for their big entrance with all these bells and whistles, and he'll be back shortly.

And Nick goes to the casino.

They show him.

This is not even a big budget fucking shoot.

They showed him playing like video poker for 20 seconds and a couple other video machines or whatever and then maddie comes back and nick's mope faced because he's lost all their money and now they can't afford their big entrance

and

by the time that this was all had evolved after their big billboard on the show and everything we were almost five minutes in

And they faded to, they dissolved to,

there's Maddie and Nikki already standing in the ring with no music,

with their long faces on again, and the graphic said the broke bucks.

Who cares?

Why do this?

It's not even entertaining the people who are literally entertained by everything AEW does.

Because they're just standing there looking at these two fucking mooches now.

And it's not good material.

It's not funny.

It's not entertaining.

It does nothing for the show or them.

They just like to jack off and do what they consider funny.

Neither one of these fucking

clowns is the comedic mind of goddamn

Laurel and Hardy.

So

then they have a six-man tag

with the Kookamunga kids and Josh Alexander against Bandito Burger King and Kenny.

Kenny can wrestle the six-man tags, just not the,

I guess, the real burdensome matches where he has to do 18 of his dives or elsewhere he feels like he's failed the world.

So, Brian, did I miss anything when I skipped the kids getting to play for about 15 minutes and do all their tricks?

No, I think it was exactly what you probably thought it was.

And it's exactly, you know, in so many ways with that opening skit and then, you know, this six-man match and Omega in the middle of the six-man match, this is so many, so many of the things that have hurt AEW were on display here on this show.

The Young Bucks act,

their comedy act, just their act

has never worked on a national stage.

And that's one of the things that has plagued AEW from the very beginning.

These idiots.

and their idiot friends convinced themselves that they were somehow making great content and and people would want to see more of it on national TV.

And the exact opposite happened.

I don't know if there's ever been anyone in the history of Dynamite that has cost them viewers from one segment to the next more than the young books.

People have rejected them.

Yet here they are

an opening segment.

Again, not a big budget thing, probably shot by Brandon Cutler, but they gave it time.

That's the valuable part, the real estate.

They opened the show, telling the audience, the clown show is here.

And again, these guys are the highest paid tag team in history.

These guys, EVPs.

You mean to tell me the best way to use them and the best way to present them from the very beginning has been like this?

I know they're now doing the broke Bucks thing.

They weren't always broke, but there's never been a thing that they've done that you could take seriously.

Not one thing.

They clown through everything.

They make it obvious by the way that they act or overact or not even acting that it's just all bullshit.

So, yeah, congratulations on the crowd you drew in Ring of Honor in 2018.

But here we are now and the Bucks mean nothing.

And then Omega's in this match and he gets to work with his friends and that's a benefit.

And you have to wonder how many singles matches you'll see with him going forward.

You look at him and he does not look healthy.

Look at his head.

I know it's a weird thing to say, like his face, but look at his entire head compared to his head like six years ago.

It looks like there's something going on, but we'll see.

Well, maybe it's because he keeps landing on it.

That's the thing.

You talk about the condition that Kenny's in.

Here was the finish.

Kenny nearly broke his own neck, giving Alexander a reverse hurricane rana, the stupidest move in wrestling.

I don't know why anybody goes for it or cooperates with it, but he landed on his shoulder and head and neck sideways, clump.

And the other guy just rolled right over.

Then he gave him a power bomb.

Then he he gave him his shitty little knee lift while everybody else in the match was just on the floor.

Then Bandito and Burger King roll in and stand and watch Kenny give Alexander another knee lift.

And then Bandito did a flippy-doo German suplex to Alexander

while Brody King just ran and dove out on the floor on the two flunkies, the

Matt and Nick, that were just standing there in front of the desk.

And then

Kenny then gave Alexander the one-winged fairy.

One, two, three.

No surprise.

If you had to guess who was going to eat the pin at the very beginning, you knew right away.

Josh Alexander has never beat anybody.

Well, but I don't know how because they just proved that he's the toughest guy in a fucking company.

Not only did they hit him with seven finishes in a row before anybody thought to even cover him, but it took the three baby faces working in concert together to beat him all by himself while his two partners were out on the floor.

What the who comes up with these fucking finishes?

Oh, god damn it.

Well, that was that wasn't the end, obviously.

There was a post-match where Kenny Omega had a special message for the faithful.

Well, that's that's what I was about to bring up is for apparently absolutely no reason, these guys are partners, but suddenly

Bandito and Brody King say, Fuck it, we're done, we'll see you later.

And they leave and they go down the entranceway.

And Kenny stays with the three heels

in the goddamn ring.

He's

that they've just fought.

Now, he's

apparently has no issue with this.

And he,

the announcers are even asking if

the

fucking Kenny and the whatchallo bury the hatchet.

Because they've had an issue before, whoever the fuck it was, which ones we had the issue with.

But the point is, he stays with the three heels they've just fought, right?

The Bucks.

That's right.

The Bucks and Kenny, are they going to bury the hatchet?

Why would they do that now

when they've just goddamn had a match?

Why they just say, oh, well, shit, we've been wrong all along.

We should have known this 15 minutes ago before we beat shit out of each other.

So Josh Alexander super kicks Kenny

while he was standing there staring at the Bucks.

And Alexander beats the shit out of Kenny.

And the Bucs are standing there like, well, what do you think we should do?

But then music plays.

And there's Jungle Jackoff and Dino Douche walking out again, smirking,

smirking and walking and walking and smirking

they're not concerned about kenny josh alexander is still pumbling and gouging and choking kenny in the corner while the buckaroos are standing there staring at fucking their two little buddies

and then they get in and they bump the bucks out in 10 seconds but then they turn around and get their hands up and they never help kenny at all

and josh turns around and goes to them like, hey,

I think we should fight now.

And Jungle Jack off gives Josh the knee lift and then Kenny suddenly

pops up to his feet after he's had the shit kicked out of him, fresh as a daisy, and gives Josh Alexander the Begonia suplex.

So now,

for one thing, Josh,

congratulations on being made of iron.

You took seven finishes from three guys before you could go down to defeat.

Then you get up and you beat up one of those guys.

And then he gets up and gives you another one of your fucking of his finishes.

And Josh Alexander rolled out.

And then Kenny got up and was pissed at Jungle Jack.

And they started arguing and shoving each other because as nobody recalls,

remember like a year and a half ago,

Jungle Jack sent Kenny to the hospital.

He joins the long list of everybody in Cook County, Illinois,

fucking half the goddamn retired steel workers in America.

Everybody has sent Kenny to the hospital.

Yeah, but by the way, you said the main point.

No one remembers that.

Exactly.

Since that time, Jack Perry disappeared from TV for almost a year and Omega's been out a bunch of times.

And

the fucking Felcher just hospitalized Kenny.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, I forgot about that.

That just happened.

I forgot about that.

Yes, but then Felcher immediately went into a fucking match with the masked Mexican midget.

And then Kenny's in a six-man tag here with these fucking, I don't know.

But nevertheless.

Jack and Kenny are arguing and shoving at each other.

And then Jungle Jack off just runs past Kenny and dives out of the the ring, again on the fucking buckaroos who were just standing on the floor.

And then

all four of them

suddenly and with little effort just kind of play fight to the back

and leave Kenny still standing in the ring.

And this is where he has the heartfelt message.

And he gave the wishy-washy douchey

rah-rah speech in his milksoppish delivery.

He would have been perfect

in the days of the ruffled shirt and the powdered wig with a little snuff box.

He would have been perfect.

And then

the lights go out.

And when the lights come back on,

Brian, wouldn't you know who won the pony?

It's our old friend Andre.

He's back.

He's gone.

He's back.

He's gone.

He's back.

And he leveled Kenny and beat him up.

And I guess took him to the, sent him to the hospital.

Everybody else does.

Why should he be left out?

And then shook hands with Don Fallus.

and has become a member of the Don Fallus family,

which now numbers

more than the goddamn goslin kids.

The most inclusive heel group of all time.

And so that was, we were 30 minutes into the show by the time that, and

some of these people weren't even out until the third wave.

They'd have had whole interruptions and brawls and people fought off and everything

by the time that the last part of it was over.

I don't, I would have had to have write down, write down, wrote down.

I'd have had to write it

who was in the thing at the beginning because half an hour later, I can't remember.

Well, the big story here was the return of Andrade,

being the latest person to beat up Kenny Omega, had his hair out, had a hair color that we have not.

And his hair out.

Well, he didn't look the way we've typically seen Andrade look,

I guess, is the point.

And

he had his hair long.

He didn't have his hair out.

It wasn't in a ponytail.

If it was out,

it'd be bald.

Well, a lot of my hair's out.

Well, again, Andrade joins a heel stable.

You always said he needs someone to talk for him.

Promos are

the single weakest thing about him.

But now he's with a stable, with a joke heel manager, with 20 other people in the fucking.

Rocky Romero was in that stable.

I mean, come on.

What is this?

And

that's why I was laughing.

He needs a manager.

He needs a manager to speak for him and get him over.

And

again, I think we said earlier in this marathon broadcast that we're doing here, Don.

Whether he knows better or not, I would be

surprised that the guy that I knew 25 years ago is just assing off on national television, as hungry as he was to be a star in 1997 or whatever in the WWF.

He's just taking this and just wiping his ass with it.

He's overacting or comedy acting.

He,

for whatever reason, has now 10 people in his stable that he does almost nothing with.

He sits at commentary instead of at ringside as a manager.

He's ineffective

when he interferes.

And at the same time,

he's obviously faking being a pussy rather than showing that he's actually a pussy.

It's just, it's not worked in any phase of being a manager or a heel, top heel main event stable group.

And they just keep sticking people in it.

It almost would have been better to give Andrade Stokely because he doesn't have too many people.

And maybe that's another way to try to use him in a single thing.

I would almost rather have given him Sammy Guevara as a shit-talking heel manager/slash wrestler.

Boy, there you go.

Because at least there's something there that people will buzz about.

Oh my God, he's with Sammy.

But they bring out Andrade, who

had an unremarkable run in AEW previously.

Again, the highlight of that run was beating up Sammy Guevara in the back after being told, you better not do this.

Oh, I forgot, boy.

I guess maybe that's why they don't give him Sammy Guevara.

But that's what he was most famous for in AEW, that and seemingly time off

whether it was something he requested or something that is part of the tony khan plan of just uh pay him and send him home but apparently he left under good terms went to the wwe

got a big buzz i guess you could say when he first debuted because he was like one of the first aew guys if not the first but no cody was first but he was one of the aew guys to return And that quickly went away and he faded into the background on a show like SmackDown, which over the last couple of years has had more Latinos featured on it than ever before.

He didn't stand out.

Well,

he didn't stand out, but also apparently it's done him no favors that the story is that he is.

And if he wants to sue them for putting this out there, then fine.

But they said he's failed multiple

wellness, well, not wellness check,

wellness policy violations is what I'm trying to say.

Right, but I think

wasn't one of those from his first run, and then one of them was from this most recent run.

Well, they don't announce them anymore.

So we don't know what the fuck.

But what I'm saying is, in a company that does tend to tolerate things more than what one would expect in some cases,

they just don't give a shit about him.

Not only did they say, you know what, whatever he did or whatever they think about him,

not only did they say, you know what,

fuck it.

Just not let him go.

Don't even give him a 90-day, just

be free.

They didn't care whether he went back or not.

That speaks something right there.

If they're doing all these other things to try to hamstring AEW, but here, here's this guy.

You know, good luck.

So he's been

in AEW and it didn't.

make any difference.

He was in WWE, it didn't make any difference.

He had come from WWE originally, where it made a little bit of difference, but now he's back where he didn't make any difference.

And

Tony has basically rewarded a guy that

left on him before and then went and was unremarkable and was a somewhat of a disciplinary issue.

Oh, but come back here.

I'm sure everything will be fine.

I just, I don't.

What the fuck?

You know, this is divided AEW fans.

There are AEW fans that were genuinely excited.

I guess maybe because it's a fresh matchup for Kenny.

I really don't know.

I can't imagine how anyone could be excited about another heel being thrown in that fucking callus stable.

But there were fans that were generally, whether it was a surprise or not, excited for this.

And then there were fans and Dave Meltzer specifically who

were very upset about this, or at least didn't think this was a good move.

Dave did a whole thing that we heard from a bunch of listeners about.

Some of them sent over a clip where he went on a show.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, he was very vehement from what I understand, that all the various reasons.

And he had said beforehand, before this happened, that he wouldn't have brought Andrade back.

I'm just saying, there are two Dave Meltzers with AEW.

There's the Dave that texts with Tony when Tony's on his plane and he wants to know what Dave thinks.

And then there's the Dave who...

doesn't like that Tony's not doing what he wants him to do.

Well, I was about to say they've entered that phase of the relationship.

They've been married long enough now where,

you know, Dave is just resenting that his,

you know, his advice is not being adhered to like it once was.

Well, Jim, if you don't mind, I have a little bit of audio.

It's only a minute and a half, but we'll break it up and discuss this.

Tell me if you think it's fair or not.

Here are Dave Meltzer's concerns or issues with Tony Khan bringing Andrade back.

on the sixth anniversary of Dynamite.

Andrade made his return.

AEW has enough talent.

They don't need.

I see everyone like celebrating.

Oh, my God.

This is so great when all this.

You know, Andrade is a very good wrestler.

He is,

you know, he's coming off of a run that wasn't good in WWE.

Then he was fired, you know, over disciplinary reasons.

He had lots of problems in AEW over disciplinary reasons.

I always think, you know, burn me once,

learn a lesson.

This was not a lesson learned.

And I know know that my view is very unpopular in this.

Let me stop it for a second because he's

that's speaking of Tony.

Well, besides that, the way he cut cousin Brian right off there, that is a mistake.

But then he made up his own down home homily.

Burn me once, fucking whatever the fuck he says.

We won't get fooled again.

We won't get fooled again, ladies and gentlemen.

You know, these oft-repeated phrases, but yeah, he's not leaving any wiggle room here.

Because all I've seen is, oh, it's so great.

Andrade's back and blah, blah, blah.

And who cares about his problems?

And it's like, one of the biggest problems with this company has been

the usage of WWE guys,

you know, but the guys who were fired, get William Regal, you know, not a success, went back as soon as he could.

Well, let's stop it there.

That's a different sit.

It wasn't William Regal came and he wasn't a success.

So he went back.

William Regal came, was used poorly, immediately slotted with an awful Jon Moxley idea, and then quickly realizing what a shit show it was in the back, and get me out of here.

I just want to go home.

I just want to be close to my son.

I can't be close to my son while I'm working in the same country one day a week for your company.

I need to be closer.

So, yeah, that's the William Regal example.

Malachi Black didn't do jobs, left.

Rusev.

It's like last night on SmackDown, Malachi Black did a job for Sami Zayn, middle of the ring, clean job, just laid down, didn't move.

This guy wouldn't do anything in AEW, and then he goes to WWE and he's putting over Dominic, you know?

I mean, he wouldn't put over guys twice as good as Dominic in AEW.

Actually, let me stop it there for a second.

Hold on, who's twice as good as Dominic these days in AEW as far as being over with the people where you would expect him to go over instead of doing a job for the other fucking guy?

Yeah, what does that mean?

Better than Dominic?

You just mean in terms of the moves they do in the ring without selling anything because if dominic mysterio arrived in aew today he'd be the biggest star in aew by far oh my god he'd be the isn't that crazy i mean where we started hey jim who do you think has a brighter future dominic mysterio or hook hook and here we are he'd be the biggest star in aew if he arrived tomorrow dominic mysterio

swerve was released and became a big star huge star Swerve is the exception.

That's right.

That is the one exception.

He's not super charismatic.

And one of the things that's different is before, one of the advantages that Andrade had is that, you know, I think that AEW really wanted good Hispanic wrestlers, and he's very good.

They have access to much better guys now than Andrade.

And that's where the clip ends right there.

This is from Wrestling Observer Radio, posted on Twitter.

Again,

Dave's qualifiers for what's good and who's good and the advice he gives Tony on that may not be the right advice to take.

Well, my advice would have been: no, what the fuck?

He didn't work there, didn't work out there before.

There's not really anything special about him.

The other guys didn't want him.

You just look like a

putz for taking in a former,

you know, an ex-boyfriend after they broke up with the fucking girl they left you for, whatever.

Adds nothing to the show.

He can't book new fresh people over, much less stale blah people.

I don't see this as making any difference.

He's just paying more money out in fucking talent.

And even if he got a sweetheart deal and Andrade agreed to come back for pennies on the dollar, you know, I think about Eric Bischoff always said that when Luger wanted to come back in 95, he didn't want him because he didn't like him.

And all of his friends wanted him back.

And he agreed to take Luger back for a cheaper deal than Luger ever signed his entire wrestling career.

And Luger agreed to it, and it worked out.

And eventually, when he got a renewal, he got a ton of money.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's this.

And Andrade is not Lex Luger.

Andrade is not a guy who has ever shown that he increases the bottom line.

He doesn't sell any extra tickets.

He doesn't move ratings.

You could argue that a lot of that's about the way he's been used, but a lot of that may just be he doesn't connect with an American audience.

I don't know if he's ever connected with any audience without the mask as well as he did as La Sombra and CMLL with the mask.

I think he may be one of those people.

It's better if you cover his face up.

Well, there it is.

Andrade versus Omega on the horizon.

Something to really look forward to.

Oh, but boy, you know, you ain't going to want to listen to the promos, Brian, because...

Kenny sounds like a milkshake would if it talked.

And Andre, you can't really figure out what's going on anyway.

So, while you're watching them fight like a silent movie with the sound down, you know what you could do?

You could listen to something else that you'd want to listen to on your Raycon Everyday Earbuds Classics.

The classics have been reissued from our friends at Raycon with all the upgrades that you've come to expect.

And Brian, now you can stick classic stuff in your ear and just listen to anything you want to, no matter where you are.

Well, Raycon.

You can walking down the street, huh?

raycon classic not just classic stuff i don't know what that well you can listen to all kinds of classic stuff you can listen to the mormon tabernacle choir oh but wherever you go you can be walking down the street you can be riding down the road in your car you could be sitting in your own home ignoring your relatives you could be in the bathtub you know

And the thing is, they will not electrocute you as long as you don't stick your head under the water.

Once again, let's go.

Let's find that out on the internet.

I don't know what you're finding at anywhere.

Let's not focus on things that are not possible.

Some people had seen that news thing where the one woman in Poughkeepsie, who was in the bathtub wearing her earbuds, got hit by lightning and fried her like bacon.

She fried her like bacon.

You heard some pleasant, happy tunes there.

And what that means is we're not going to focus on electricity or electrocution.

We're going to focus on the colours.

We're not going to focus on Mrs.

Bacon.

Katie was her name.

But the new colors they have,

electric sounds.

Let's focus on that.

Yes, well, see, the electric part was what got her in trouble.

The new colors are just, they're just pleasant, like blush violet and cool mint.

As a matter of fact, you get that feeling in your ear as well when you stick the cool mint colored in.

Your ear starts burning and all of a sudden you get shivers.

No, again, none of this happens.

Let's not say any of this happens.

No, let's see.

No, it doesn't.

No, no.

My keyboard isn't on.

I did this one.

That could have not happen to you.

That could have been that tick bite is what you're saying.

I'm saying earbuds.

None of this is anything you have to worry about.

These are safe earbuds.

Put them in your ear.

Hear the greatest sounds.

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Listen to them with comfort on the go.

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That's right.

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And then the retribution comes.

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listening to the Raycons while you do it.

Again, I don't know what the hell that has to do with anything or what that exactly means, but you said it best.

Raycon,

that's it that's all you said that i agree with so far in this entire raycon we love him here at last manor i know that stacy cornet's a big fan over at castle quin and we know that you'll love him too in your house once again one final time jim that promo code

well it it's jce like it always is buyraycon.com slash jce

all right jim let's get back to dynamite find what you were buying from dynamite Well, then you know what happened next, don't you?

It was supposed to be, oh my God, these people.

Last week, they did a big deal where Kyle Felcher, who they're building up to be,

you know, just the best thing ever.

You know, if he was, instead of having that whiny little

down under voice or whatever, if he had a Russian accent, he could be like the next Dolph Lundgren in the Rocky movie.

But nevertheless, he sounds like Alvin the Chipmunk.

But they did this deal where he beat up and hospitalized these

Kenny and he's fucking had a big world title match where he went 45 minutes, all this stuff they're doing.

And then all of a sudden, last week, they had him

literally challenge this 160-pound

generic mask guy that Tony's come up with a gimmick for, hologram,

to a match for the TNT title on this week's TV.

And somehow, Hologram managed to, at the very only next and only time

that he was got in the ring or was gonna get in the ring between that challenge and this week, he got hurt.

So

since he got hurt, they changed it

and they stuck pockets in there for the TNT title with poor old Kyle.

Because again, what are they doing?

The guy looks great.

The guy is an amazing athlete.

The guy has a world of potential, as we've mentioned.

While he needs to get a little older and a little gruffer looking and somehow get some kind of cohesive gimmick instead of whatever their video game character they're dressing him up like most of the time.

But he's learning bad habits, and he's being made to look like just one of these fucking clowns when he's bigger and has more upside than that.

And then they keep putting him in with these goof.

What are you going to learn of any positive consequence working with the company mascot, the six-year-old one-note joke.

And,

you know, the only good thing I've got to say about Pockets, Brian, I'll give you this.

He looks like an average dip shit at the shell station.

But if you got in a fight with him

over at the gas pump, he looks like he could pull a knife on you and do some damage.

But you could.

But he doesn't.

No, if he had a knife and you didn't know it was coming, he could do something.

I don't know.

But at the same time, now that Hong Kong Fui has arrived,

even if he was coming at you with a knife, you'd have to laugh first, wouldn't you?

It depends if he does his kicks first.

If he does like his little standing.

Yeah.

You know, it's almost like a dance more than kicks.

If he did that first, I don't care how bad he is.

I'd start laughing.

Because pockets could be on meth.

He looks like that could be a thing.

I don't think so.

He seems pretty healthy.

He just, just, you see a lot of healthy people walking around with no shirt and sunglasses and fucking blue jeans with their hands stuck in their pockets.

Did you hear Danielson trying to, again, this is six years in, trying to give the explanation for why Orange Cassidy is an effective wrestler, because this is his strategy.

Some people may not like that he does his hands in his pockets, but it's a strategy to psych out his opponents.

Because again, and this, I'm not saying this is a good explanation, but it would have been one thing if this was the explanation in year one.

We're six years in and he's trying to explain the psychology behind Orange Cassidy, which, why would any wrestler fall for that if they've seen him for six years straight?

Six fucking years.

It's so stupid.

It's one of these self-fulfilling things from AEW.

They love Orange Cassidy.

He will certainly be in the AEW Hall of Fame first class,

but he's one of the main issues with this company not connecting with people.

All right, well, here's how they're taking care of Kyle because after another fucking 15 minutes of this nonsense, of this match, Kyle's going to superplex him, but Pockets knocked him off the turnbuckle.

And then Don jumps up on the apron and is like pulling his shoe off or whatever he's doing.

Like he's going to sneak down the apron and hit him with the shoe, but he's having to creep along because

hologram

has to run out.

And Hologram's late.

So Don is taken forever.

The referee is looking for no reason, otherwise, and he's just talking to

fucking Pockets in the middle of the ring, or not Pocket, but you know what I'm saying, Kyle.

Referee's talking to Kyle.

Don is creeping in slow motion.

Pockets is up on the top rope waiting.

Here comes Hologram finally.

Hologram runs out.

Nobody cares.

Nobody makes a noise.

He

then turns around and crotches, hologram does, pockets on the top turnbuckle.

And then Kyle jumps up and gives him a brain buster on the top turnbuckle.

Oh my God, I don't know why he didn't bring out a goddamn bat just to make sure.

Beat the brain into jelly.

Yeah, that's the way you kill him.

I don't, what the fuck.

Brain buster on a turnbuckle one, two, three.

Kyle needed help to beat the company mascot.

They never learn.

And

they all start beating up on pockets, and several of the baby faces run out, but all of the Don Fallus family comes out.

I counted nine plus Don.

And they reveal that Hologram is really a clone of Hologram,

not the real Hologram.

And then the lights started flashing and the music was sputtering while they all posed there and did nothing.

And we were an hour into the show.

Am I exaggerating the description of that?

No, I don't think so.

The idea that there's a clone, a hologram, is a whole nother

booking issue we've never dealt with before.

We've dealt with teleportation and how ridiculous that was in year one.

But a clone, an evil clone of a Bizarro hologram being here.

I don't know how I feel about that.

Well, you know, they've they've cloned away sheep.

Bizarre hologram, another member of the callus stable, apparently.

Yo, yo, yes.

I forget.

Now there's 10.

The sheep.

I mentioned the sheep earlier.

They've cloned the sheep, but at least there's a use for sheep.

And you can eat them, too.

And then they had a six-man tag.

What's nothing?

Let's continue.

Then there was a six-man tag.

Six-man tag.

Dick the Boozer with Claudio and Danny Garcia against Samoa Joe and Hobbs and hangman Adam Page was replacing the injured Shapupi.

And I don't

hopefully he's not really hurt too.

I'm telling you, they need to open up a wing in a hospital.

Tony needs to have his father fund

the wrestler's wing.

So here's another 15 minutes of six guys just whatever

and then everybody except paige and claudio just took bumps and rolled out of the ring and laid their dead

just just rolled out and just they were dead for like a half a minute or more while paige and

claudio went back and forth and then paige hit the buckshot one two three

So boom.

But then

Paige hands Hobbs.

Hobbs is a six-man champion and Joe's six-man champion and Paige is the world champion.

So Paige hands Hobbs his belt and then goes to hand Joe his, but he kind of sticks it in his chest and lets it go and Joe drops it or doesn't have it.

It falls.

And then Paige picks up his belt and

stageily turns to the handheld camera to

make sure he's turned his back on Joe while Joe in the background is going, did you see what he did to me?

What the fuck?

Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?

And then

he gets in an argument with Paige and the announcers, for one thing, noticed instantly,

too quickly, because they were reading their notes.

Oh,

fucking.

Joe's pissed because he dropped the belt.

They didn't even take time to go, wait a minute, there seems to be something happening.

But then, as they're arguing, Joe and Paige, 10 security guys just run into the ring

for an argument.

Couldn't there be any consistency, Brian?

How many times have we seen attempted hatchet murders that just went on forever?

But these guys are fucking up in each other's face, cussing each other out.

Oh, shit, send the troops.

And it was that bad security indie guy acting, like putting your hands out.

No, no, no, no, no.

And then turning around to the other guy.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

What exactly?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Nobody can do it fake like you do.

I don't know what kind of security tactic that would be to stop anyone from doing anything.

Just halt.

Just I'm holding up my hands here.

Freeze.

Immobilize yourself.

Guys, you missed the Omega assault.

You better not miss this one.

Go, go, go.

So then Joe is saying, you never beat me for the title.

And God, at this point, it'd be wonderful if Samoa Joe was the AEW world champion.

And he shoves Paige and they have a pull apart.

And as Hobbs is trying to take Joe out, like, come on, big man, come on.

I swear to God, Joe screamed, I'll fuck your ass.

And it made DV because a lot of shit was getting bleeped.

But if it wasn't, I'll fuck your ass.

I don't know what it was.

And they need heels.

Samoa Joe would be great.

He is great as a heel.

He's a great promo.

He's a fucking believable badass guy.

He would certainly be better than what they got now, which is Adam Page as a world champion.

But isn't this awful sudden?

Didn't it just escalate quickly, as the kids say?

If you think Adam Page getting mad at Swerve and burning Dano's house was something, how mad's he going to be when Samoa Joe fucks his ass?

Well,

by the way, what kind of heel insult or heel comment?

I'm going to fuck your ass.

That's what I'm saying.

But we should not make any judgments.

We don't know whether Paige would be upset by that.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Hobbs is like, just when you think you know a guy, geez.

And then they, they,

they do this suddenly between these two when Joe Joe has been the voice of reason as a baby.

I don't know.

I don't know who's on the side we're supposed to be on.

The page is so unlikable to begin with as a personality.

And then he was in the back

after the break, cutting a promo on Joe.

Say, yeah, I'm confused.

So are we, pal.

But if Joe wants a title shot, he's going to get it at Wrestle Dream.

So this was the angle shot for the World Heavyweight Championship match at the pay-per-view.

Fuck you, asshole.

You dropped my belt and disrespected me.

Well, let's just fucking settle this in the ring at the main event.

Long-term storytelling.

Is he making this shit up as they're going along, Brian?

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm looking forward to the promo next week where Adam Page tells Samoa Joe, I want you at your best.

I always grew up really admiring you.

Like all that usual shit that he does in every awful promo he does, that he tries as hard as he can to deliver with some sort of fucking feeling, but the actual words are awful.

One other thought about all this.

You know, Daniel Garcia being in the Death Riders has changed everything.

I see him as a serious wrestler now.

He really stands out.

He means a whole lot more.

This has all been really well done.

Oh,

Christ.

Hey,

you can't pick up a turd by the clean end.

Just remember that.

So then, boy, this is an awkward transition to the ladies.

Tony Storm had a match against Ty Mela Yella.

And Tony did another black and white

dramatic reading in the theater and the round setting.

But this time,

I mean, I skipped the match because obviously, but

the people were what in her.

Is this wearing thin or was it just a group of assholes in Hollywood, Florida?

Maybe a mix of both.

There is a high demographic of the assholish contingent in that part of the country.

You know, but the other thing is, and AEW fans typically have really been behind the Tony Storm gimmick, which is as gimmicky as it gets.

But you would almost have to think that at certain points, some fans will run out of patience with this.

and think, okay, it was cute for a few minutes.

Now it's not.

I don't know if that's what this is.

I don't know what outfit she was wearing.

I don't know what the hell any of this was.

It was nice to see Anna Jay.

Oh, Christ.

It's licensed to see Anna Jay's, what?

Anna Jay's back, especially after seeing her front.

But she looked like she was the Madden Magazine spy versus spy, good spy.

But

nevertheless, I think it's done more damage that they just involved her and they took the title off her in the miscellaneous four-way and it's just been muddled from there and whatever the fuck, but that's that's nevertheless.

Boy, howdy.

The next match, Brian, was Blake Christian and Lee Johnson against

what are they?

The fucking, I can't remember what their name is, the team name, but Tia Leone and Bishop Khan,

Ricochet Stooges.

G-O-A.

What are they called now?

G-O-A.

I thought they were.

They changed it to something else.

They should change it to D-O-A.

Well, how about C-O-A or C-O-D?

Collect on delivery.

That may work.

That's going to deliver something.

Yeah, that may work with Tony Kahn.

What was the name of Blake Christian and Lee Johnson?

They had a tag team name, and I forgot what it was.

I did too.

I didn't write it down.

I mean, this was a throwaway match.

I can't imagine anyone really want to see it.

I know they're trying to repackage and push GOA.

They've been around for a while and not meant anything.

And the ricochet heel run

is not really clicking to me this whole thing was about the promo and specifically mvp

well yes and and that's the thing is ricochet made himself a heel by just exposing that apparently he's a self-absorbed dick on twitter or whatever and but then when they when they make him a heel he's still not a much smarter of a fucking wrestler in as far as how to actually get

generate money making heat with your wrestling performance rather than just being a dick to people.

But nevertheless,

the live crowd didn't care about the match.

The heels won.

The hurts syndicate came out to the stage and the crowd woke up.

And they were chanting.

And yes, Florida is his neck of the woods, but they were chanting MVP, MVP.

And he did the babyface promo.

I say he embarrassed himself and his boys at the pay-per-view.

And he apologized to everybody for losing.

And

maybe, you know, do I

have I lost a step?

But

even if I can't wrestle like I used to, I can still fight better than anybody.

And they challenged for a no-disqualification street fight

next week on TV.

They've got a pay-per-view coming up, but it's going to be next week on TV.

And the crowd got up for that.

And Ricochet just said, oh, okay,

and and agreed to it.

But somebody just beat

the Stooges last week on TV.

It was Brodito and

Brodito and Berger or whatever the fuck.

So MVPP.

Brodito's the team name.

Well, but the point is, they won.

And they beat the Gates of Agony.

So in between a six-man tag on a pay-per-view

where

MVP wrestled and

got beat.

Then, before that, MVP and his guys come out and challenge them to a rematch no DQ street fight

on TV as opposed to pay-per-view.

They have

the two Stooges do a fucking job to the tag team champions in the middle of that.

Start the angle on pay-per-view, beat the fucking heels that win, and then blow it off on free TV.

Brian,

if a pilot of a plane disrupted the order of events that badly, they'd crash into a goddamn mountainside every time they took off.

What the fuck is this?

I can't explain that.

I can't explain that.

This was the biggest babyface promo I've ever seen MVP do, I think.

And it was good.

Yo, he wasn't the problem.

He's not.

I was about to say, I wish they'd give him some help.

Yeah.

Where's Rocky the Ramon?

I need a version of, I can't explain it.

Anyway, then finally,

the last match on this thing

was Darby Allen and Chris Statlander versus Wheeler Useless and Marina Schaefer.

I swear to God that the WWE gave a Seth and Becky against Punk and AJ, and this is their response.

Darby and Statlander against Wheeler and Schaefer.

And

the babyfaces jumped the heels in the arena

and off we went.

And by the first commercial break, they hadn't even gotten to the ring.

So again, the girls broke a table.

The ring was full of chairs.

They dumped out a bunch of thumbtacks.

Things I've never seen before.

And then the babyfaces won.

And then

Tony Storm came out,

and she and Statlander looked at each other and just started just a clubbering each other.

And they fought off.

And then Dick the Boozer and the Boar Horseman

walked out in a blase fashion,

wrapped a belt around Darby's neck, and choked him blue in the face while Moxley threatened him in a

slightly malicious fashion on the PA mic.

No life, no energy, no passion,

no new material.

Same shit over and over, same

stuff, same people, same, same.

The The worst of the four horsemen run-ins in slow motion, and they had heat.

They were sitting here choking Darby Allen,

and there was no heat.

There were no fans that were really upset about it.

They understood this is just part of the show.

And also, you can't take any of this stuff with Moxley seriously.

We've seen angle after angle, match after match, segment after segment ruined by Moxley and his friends that he wants to work with in a crew that isn't over,

slowly coming out to just garbage music.

Slowly I turned step by step to do this awful.

Inch by inch, I killed the ratings.

Yeah, and look at where the ratings are, and we'll talk about that shortly.

But the Death Riders are one of the most...

Jon Moxley's creative ideas from the Blackpool Combat Club, we brought up William Regal earlier, to the Death Riders have been awful.

Jon Moxley is not a creative guy.

He's a guy who, on his best day, can be a wrestler told what to do.

But when he thinks he's the singer-songwriter, we've seen what you get, which is years of bad fucking wrestling TV.

It ain't James Taylor.

And they just had a coffin match.

Now I'm supposed to care about the I quit match.

What's after that?

Because I can't expect that'll be the end of anything.

Mimbosa may have

no one would think that Darby is not going to say I quit because that would kill his whole fucking gimmick.

So, the question is: is Moxley going to do an actual legitimate job by saying I quit in some decisive fashion to get the guy over, or is there going to be either so much interference or some cute way out of it

where he doesn't actually say I quit, but it counts anyway, or just some muddled flummox that's just going to

suck.

We will see.

Well, another banner episode of AEW Dynamite.

Six years in the books, six years of Tony Khan.

You ought to get six years in the state pen.

Well, that was dynamite.

But Brian, before you tell us whether anybody watched this thing or not, what are people listening to this week on the Arcadian Vanguard Network?

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How come that these fancy damn noise filters you've got us wired up to now doesn't blank out on your

sound effect there, but mine just don't pass the muster.

I don't know.

I'm holding this thing down.

Some people said if you hold it down, it should do it.

Right now it's doing the same thing.

I'm trying anywhere I can.

Please try to stop it.

Oh my God, it's so loud.

All right.

Well.

Jim.

You know what?

I'll tell you what.

That's going to be the equivalent of like the manager's whistle.

where that's going that's going to get somebody to come up knock you over the head

all right well jim let's go now to the big ratings for aew dynamite now it's important to note yes this week is the first week we will be having numbers from nielsen's new big data plus panel methodology as it's being called which According to Nielsen, as we said earlier, is supposed to be more accurate, and on its face, you would think it it would be, than what they previously have been doing.

So the number we're getting now is a number that Nielsen is saying is more accurate, and that although it'll apply now and going forward, you have to wonder what that says about the number before this point and how accurate that was and how this applies to that.

The question I have, speaking for the lay person out there in the audience who just is here just to get laid,

is, is there a way that going forward, are they just giving this number out and that's the one we're going to get or is there some mathematical figure some way one of these really motivated people can figure out how to give us the old number just for shits and giggles like that it would

would have been back in the old days in the before four time

so that we can compare and see what because this is technically

and I'm even taking up for AEW here because they're going to get hurt worse than WWE because WWE's numbers are all bigger to start with.

They got further to fall, as one of my old financial advisors used to say.

But to be fair, we're comparing them on a new scale rather than the scale that was

being done before.

So yes, there's going to be a difference.

Is there any way to compare to the old number is my question.

I don't know if there's a direct correlation between the old number and this number and how you reconcile that.

But again, what the new number is, based on what Nielsen's telling us, you would think is more accurate.

And if you applied it to the previous last few years, it would have changed some of the perception when people said, Hey, the booking's bad.

And someone said, No, they got 700,000 viewers.

The booking's great.

But let's go to these numbers, Jim.

These numbers, AEW Dynamite on TBS, Wednesday, October 1st, 2025, 8 to 10:30 p.m.

On average, did 465,000 viewers.

Holy shit.

Welcome to the new reality.

Wow.

All right.

Well, you know what?

And I'm saying this right now.

So remind me, I said it later when I forget about it.

But we've got to start

doing some WWE numbers too now to see how much they're going to be affected and whether this is an anomaly because they did 400 and something thousand with the old methodology here several weeks ago.

So I think we need to start looking at both numbers, what they've been up until this point, and what happened

when the earthquake hit.

But

happy sixth anniversary.

Yeah, and we'll discuss that maybe on the drive-thru, how this hit has affected SmackDown and NXT.

Those are the two examples we can use.

Once again, last week's number was 638.

The four-week average had been 577.

Those were low numbers.

This is significantly lower than that.

But of course, it doesn't count max.

Well, there must be millions of viewers consuming this dead product.

Jim, let's go to the quarter hours.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Wow.

Quarter one,

8 to 8:15 p.m.

The Young Bucks angle.

Josh Alexander and Young Bucks versus Brodito and Kenny Omega with picture and picture.

543,000 viewers.

Good lord.

147 in the key demo.

That's where they're going to get killed because this is going to expose the key demo number that it's not as high as these networks thought it was.

Not just for AEW, for WWE too.

And that's where advertising dollars are based around.

Or that's what advertising dollars are based around.

So as that number starts being exposed and dying here, the effect on wrestling will be very interesting and it may not be a positive one.

Jim Quarter 2, 8:15, 8:30 p.m.

Continuation of Alexander Alexander and the Bucks versus Brodito and Kenny Omega.

The post-match with the Jurassic Express, Andrade, and Don Callas,

530,000 viewers.

Well, this is, again, a different animal, but it's significant that

that's the smallest drop from first quarter to second quarter ever.

We got that going for them.

They didn't lose, but 13,000 people, and it's normally a lot more than that, but they've started in the fives.

You know, before we go even further with this, it's not that these numbers seem unreasonable.

Like looking at these numbers, knowing that we've discussed these ratings week after week for a couple of years now, a few years,

this seems kind of like where you would have thought they would have been if things hadn't been shown as skewing higher for a long time.

But

we go to quarter three.

Yes.

8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

It says video.

I'm not sure what that video was.

Maybe, oh, that was the

sixth anniversary video where they didn't,

I didn't particularly care.

They didn't create art, and it was what it was.

Well, it was nice to see Dynamite when they had fans and excitement and stars.

But a video, an ad break, Mark Briscoe's backstage promo, and the start of Orange Cassidy versus Kyle Fletcher,

510,000 viewers, also 155 in the key demo.

That's the high point in the key demo.

You know,

to be honest, I don't know about the total numbers, but the pattern is what I would actually expect this show to be doing until the end, as we've said it for a while, and the other numbers kind of bore it out, but this bears it out more than than they did, is that the people who are motivated to watch this show

are

it's a lower number than before, but they they are going to stick with it as long as they can until there's just no hope.

Well, we go to quarter four,

8:45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of Fletcher versus Cassidy

with picture-in-picture ads and the post-match with hologram or at least hologram uh Pizarro and the Don Cowas family,

517,000 viewers.

Yeah, 543, 530, 510, 517.

They would have killed for that kind of consistency when they started in the nines and eights.

And it is important to note, big baseball game that aired this night, Red Sox and Yankees actually did the highest number for a baseball game on ESPN in forever.

So there was competition, although.

Do you think there's a big Cincinnati Reds fucking AEW wrestling crossover audience?

Well, I'm not sure, but let's go now to the big 9 o'clock hour, quarter five, nine to nine, 15 p.m.

Mercedes-Monet's backstage promo, as bad as ever.

An ad break, and the start of Adam Page and the Ops versus the Death Riders,

490,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Okay, they lost 27,000 at the top of the hour.

That is the most, the biggest loss they've had at this point.

Um,

not good,

not good at all.

We got a quarter six, 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

The continuation of Paige and the Ops versus the Death Riders

with picture and picture

jet speed, Willow Nightingale, FTR and Stokely's promo,

and an ad break,

484,000 viewers.

And another 6,000 down.

They are still only

59,000 down from the start of the show after an hour and a half.

But the problem is they started so low to begin with.

But

I have to think that after quarter eight,

the thing is going to plummet like a stone because they had a couple of ratings killers in there at that point.

Well, Jim, we now go to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

Adam Page's backstage promo.

Tony Storm versus Ty Mellow with Picture and Picture and the post-match.

477,000 viewers.

Another seven.

It's a

chip.

C-H-I-P, not the other type of

cracked piece.

Okay.

You were done there?

I didn't show where you were at.

I didn't want to use bad terminology.

Let's go.

Talking about another small hunk that's been chipped out of the number.

Let's go now to quarter eight.

I remind you, we have two segments, 30 minutes overtime here.

9:45 to 10 p.m., quarter eight.

The Sammy Guevara Eddie Kingston promo, an ad break, Samoa Joe's backstage promo,

and GOA versus the swirl.

Here's where it's going to go.

With picture-in-picture ads, 402,000 viewers.

Ouch.

I didn't know it would go that far, but I

hope the passengers weren't hurt when they hit that air pocket and had that sudden drop.

We go now to quarter nine, 10 to 10.15 p.m.

The Demand Hurt Syndicate live angle.

Chris Statlander's backstage promo.

The demand.

That's what it was.

The problem is there's no demand.

No demand.

Okada, Takesha, and Don Callis's backstage angle.

An ad break.

And the start of Darby Allen and Chris Stantlander versus Marina Shafir and Wheeler Yuda.

356,000 viewers, 96,000 key demo.

Oh, sweet.

Mary and Joseph.

Yeah, I have to say it too here because it drove me crazy, and I've brought it up before, but it happened again.

Marina Shafir stepped on the thumbtacks in the match, and that looks as painful as any thumbtack thing anyone takes a bump into, just actually stepping on them.

The announcers started laughing.

Go back and watch that.

As soon as it happened, Excalibur starts chuckling.

That's your lead announcer.

That's part of the problem.

He's a fucking amateur.

But, Jim, finally,

quarter 10, 10:15 to 10:30 p.m.

Continuation of Darby and Statlander versus Marina and Yuda.

Post-match with Tony Storman and Death Riders:

338,000 viewers.

97,000 in the key demo.

So they lost, they started with 543,000 people and lost 205,000 of them.

That is a,

that's fairly close.

That's 40%, ain't it, or more?

It's almost close to 50%,

but

Jesus.

It's a scary picture now for wrestling.

Just real quick here at the end of these.

NXT on CW, Tuesday, September 16th, 737,000 viewers.

Tuesday, September 23rd, and I think this is the first week that it may have been affected.

617,000 viewers.

This past week, September 30th, 572,000 viewers.

Wrestling shows are hemorrhaging audiences with this new measurement tool.

That's not good for wrestling.

Well,

and if this is more accurate, they may not be hemorrhaging the audiences.

They may just be getting caught with their hand in the fucking cookie jar.

That's true.

That's true.

And we'll stay on top of this story, but this might be a bigger story

every day as we go forward.

The new ratings gathering technology, methodology, and how it affects wrestling, but there's AEW Dynamite record low rating for the show.

Brian, I'll just say this.

That's why I saved all my VHS tapes.

Never know when all this shit will be off the air anymore.

Anyway, we're about off the air.

Folks, do all the things that we told you to do during the program, and we appreciate it.

And until Brian's program, next time we do a program, I'll sign this program off by saying thank you, fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.

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