Episode 603: Showdown

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Every now and then I rinse it out.

And I need downy rinse tonight.

And the smell never leaves.

I don't know what to do.

I'm always in the dark.

The sweet deck shore smells like a dark bar.

Downy rinse fights stubborn odors in just one wash.

When impossible odors get stuck in, rinse it out.

like a midnight and the rock and roller, he's in a fight for wrestling solar using a racket and some mind controller.

He's Jim Cornette,

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 Cornette.

Well, he's never fake a phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Oh, where?

Oh, where have our TV ratings gone?

Oh, where, oh, where can they be?

There's no need to fear.

The Jim Cornette experience is here.

And today, folks, the showdown at the O-Crap Corral.

AEW takes on NXT.

Who loses?

The viewers.

What's left of them?

We'll talk about all this and so much more today with...

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

Co-host to you.

He's humble and lovable, but he don't shine shoes.

Be great.

Brian, last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Feeling good.

Looking forward to some good wrestling talk.

Feeling good, looking good, moving good.

Things ain't looking good in the TV world, at least for wrestling.

We're being discriminated against, just the wrestling folks.

And I think the call needs to go out.

You know what I'm talking about, Brian.

Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom.

When TV ratings disappear and fill promoters' hearts with fear, why folks aren't watching isn't clear.

To lose rights fees will cost them dear.

They underperform,

underperform.

Speed of lightning, roar of thunder.

Some promotions may go under.

They underperform.

Underperform.

This is your show.

Well, thank you.

I just thought I would just pipe in with that.

Brian,

the shit, as Mama Cornette used to say, may be about to hit the fan in the wrestling business.

Do you think?

Am I being...

overly dramatic here based on

the numbers that are apparently walloping just the wrestling industry with the new rating system.

We'll

have to, we'll get into that.

But I think this could be the beginning of the end.

It's going to be very interesting.

I'm sure we'll talk more about the ratings later on.

But,

you know, like you said, it seems to be having the biggest negative effect on wrestling.

There are plenty of other shows all over, you know, television that are not having these issues suddenly.

But wrestling is,

in a lot of ways, you have to think, again, it's an in-exact science, but it's an expose of maybe a more true number than what it's been the last several years.

Now, again, at the same time, young people aren't on cable TV as much,

but still.

And, you know, there are people using Macs, but still.

And

you said, is this, you know, the shit hitting the fan?

No, that's going to be when it's time to get a new rights deal.

Unless there's some sort of thing that would kick AEW or WWE off one of their deals because they're not hitting certain quotas,

I can't imagine that the shit's going to hit the fan really until one of these guys needs a new television deal or a new media rights deal.

And even if the partner recognizes the importance in a wrestling audience and how dedicated they are and how they'll always be there, they're going to use this to their advantage.

in a negotiation.

Well, look, the old system said you had this many viewers.

the new system, which is more accurate, says that it's not even that, and your key demo number is barely there.

It's going to be very interesting.

Very interesting

and stupid.

But

here's something.

Go ahead.

Well, no, I'm sure you got me thinking about this now, but you know, when WWE or AEW, but mostly WWE, because AEW is in bed with Warner Brothers Discovery.

And until that ends, AEW is going to be with Warner Brothers Discovery.

WWE has to go go out and find new deals in different places.

You know, when it started, like all of this media rights talk, because again, the traditional days of wrestling, no one was getting paid for TV.

You begged for TV.

You paid for TV, with rare exceptions.

But

over the last 10 years, give or take, maybe a little bit more than that, when these deals became the story, maybe you look at the beginning like WWE Network.

But when the media rights deals became the story, it was all about wrestling being being compared to other sports and how valuable those deals are.

NHL, NBA, NFL.

NFL is the king.

But all sports.

You know, even if you think, oh, hockey doesn't have a major following in the States, and it certainly has a pretty good following.

But they're going to get a big deal even if the numbers aren't there.

It's for sports programming because it draws people in.

Wrestling was along with all of those shows, even though it's not technically sports.

It's sports entertainment, not sports programming, unless it helps them get a deal.

But none of the other sports are having this issue.

You know, this hasn't hurt the NFL.

Major League Baseball just had their most successful game on ESPN

in years for the Yankees versus Red Sox at a time where, like last year, the numbers for everything on ESPN with baseball were going down.

So it's only well, and they were saying that the

new rating system was projected beforehand to benefit the NFL, which nobody was unhappy about because that's their cash cow or whatever.

And I was going to say, here's something else.

The WWE

is somewhat more diversified.

So all their shit can't go sideways at the exact same time

and for

multiple years.

But

poor Tony's eggs are in

Warner's basket,

coin purse, wherever they keep Tony.

And

this, he,

but you said before, I got to be fair to everybody here, even the people that we don't necessarily think do a very good show.

It's only hitting wrestling at such a disproportionate pace,

and nobody can explain why.

Other shows were slightly up or slightly down or whatever, and wrestling's getting hammered.

So,

you know, this is going to be a developing situation here.

But no, I don't think they're going to pull the plug next Tuesday.

But

just when you think you got all the answers, they change all the fucking ways they do the ratings.

You know, and if kids are not watching wrestling on traditional television, and by and large, I'd be surprised that there would be a large audience doing that because that's just not the way they consume content.

How come it's not affecting everyone else?

And if one of the benefits of doing these shows is they're live, it's live programming.

People have to tune in because you can't miss it.

But then they're not tuning in and they're just watching everything on YouTube after the fact or checking out clips on TikTok.

Then what's even the benefit of doing the live shows at a certain point?

So, I mean, this could change a whole number of things going forward.

I know we may talk about it later.

I hate to go too deep into it, but this is concerning.

You've already been pretty deep into it, but thank you.

Good news for regular listeners of the program.

Stacy's mother, as we speak, as we sit here, is coming home today from

her physical or from rehab.

Well, what a whino she is.

No, she from her physical rehabilitation place that she has been at following her surgeries, and she gets to come home.

And that's good news.

Just, I want to keep people updated because it's been a cliffhanger for the past several weeks when we bop in with mentions.

Brian, did you hear about the latest logo fiasco?

No, I don't know what you're talking about.

You don't, you haven't heard about this.

We heard about Cracker Barrel.

That whole, they changed their logo

and then had to change it back or bring the old man or whatever.

And people were riding in the streets about that.

This to me

is an even more egregious change, something that's unwanted, unnecessary, and doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense.

I saw it on the news just yesterday.

Long John Silver's.

Long John Silver's seafood

is replacing the fish in their little logo.

You know, the little fish is flipping up out of the fucking ocean.

Great nose he's about to get eaten.

In their logo, it is Long John Silver's.

They're replacing the fish with a chicken.

And it's going to be Long John Silver's chicken and seafood.

What the fuck connotation?

Isn't it the whole thing?

Is there?

I mean, what?

Yes.

I mean, how many, does pirate booty include chicken legs?

And they've always had chicken planks.

And the chicken planks are quite fine.

They're battered, dipped, and fried like every other goddamn day.

You can't tell at Long John Silver's.

It's all greasy goodness, fried.

Even the cracklings, which is just the fried goddamn dough.

But you can't tell the chicken from the fish, from the shrimp, from the whatever, at least in my experience over 40 or 50 years.

But

there's no chickens on pirate ships.

When you think of Long John Silver, do you think of you maybe he's instead of a peg leg, he's got a chicken leg?

I have an article here from USA Today.

Today, actually, as we are recording by Amaris and Sinas.

Long John Silver is putting chicken front and center with new logo design.

And then it has here a quote from their executive Christopher Caudill.

Guests have been telling us for years that our chicken is the best kept secret.

Our hand-battered chicken strips, known as chicken planks,

are every bit.

Wait a minute, you're laughing like you've never heard that before.

I've never been to Long John Silvers.

I've never been to the job.

Oh, goddamn.

I've been to Joe's Crab Shack, but I haven't been to the Long John Silvers.

I've been to Red Lobster, but I haven't been to Long John Silvers.

I don't even know if there is one around here.

There won't be many more after they get finished fucking it up like this.

The whole restaurant, it looks like a fucking dock.

well their chicken their chicken planks are every bit as crave worthy as our legendary fish it's time that we let that secret out

you know what the the bigger problem is don't you they it's the yum brands brands

they you know we got the the kfc yum center here in louisville the big sports arena

which sounds obviously ludicrous.

But long ago, I can't keep track, but I'm pretty sure that they

owned at one time.

They still own all of these things.

Kentucky Fried Chicken, Long John Silver's, A ⁇ W,

Pepsi, and the A ⁇ W restaurants.

I'm not talking about just the drink.

Pepsi and Pizza Hut.

The corporate name is Yum Brands, and they were based here in Louisville.

Colonel Sanders is now spinning in his grave that they're trying to repurpose the chicken that don't make it over to KFC over at Long John Silver's.

I bet the pirates would have rather had some chickens on the ship instead of goddamn sharks and shit.

The current chicken offerings at Long John Silver's include a three-piece chicken, I guess chicken planks, fish and chicken platter, a fish chicken and shrimp platter, a two-piece chicken combo, a two-piece chicken breast, a one-piece chicken, a nine-piece chicken share, a super sample platter, and a three-piece chicken meal.

Jesus Christ, they are pushing more chicken than.

When I was a kid, they had chicken planks and peg legs, and that was it.

The peg legs were the little bitty chicken pieces for the kids.

See, they should do like a series of commercials now, make this like a big thing.

Like, the fishermen are upset and they're taking it out on the chicken farmers and have like them like in front of the restaurant fighting each other.

What do you pick?

Chicken or fish?

Come in and vote today with your wallet.

I think they should have the chicken farmers fighting the pirates, and the pirates have swords and fucking hooks on their arm.

They're just laying waste these fucking red-necked hill-bellied chicken farmers with their shovels.

See, I said fishermen.

I forgot they're actually, I guess, technically pirates.

Long John Silver is a pirate, not a fisherman.

A famous fisherman, long John Silver.

They had to fish in order to live on a pirate ship.

Unless they turned to cannibalism, started eating each other.

And that was discouraged in most parts of the sea.

In polite society.

But yeah, so Long John Silver's chicken and seafood.

I can't wait.

Are you okay with this?

No, I think it's ridiculous.

Besides Captain D's, which as everyone knows, is a great little seafood place.

There really is no fast food,

seafood place anymore.

There's a place here in Louisville called Moby Dick, and it tastes literally like they fucking chopped up Moby's dick and fucking fried it and handed it to you.

It's the last chicken or chicken.

It's on my mind.

The last fish I had from Moby Dick here in the metropolitan Louisville area,

you could have fucking

patched one of your tires with.

It was rubber.

There's no good national, just fast food seafood.

Give me a nice fish sandwich

give me you know the three-piece fish and the fries and the hush puppies

and some tartar sauce that's i'm a simple man

all right this has been logo news we'll see what happens at wendy's next week you know what the big news is don't you brian i do we are we are after

October 11th at noon Eastern as we are talking to the folks out there in podcast land, the cult of Cornette, the people, my friends.

Uh, we are recording this less than 24 hours before

the actual on sale at jimcornet.com of the holiday sale at Cornett's Collectibles.

That's that takes place or took place.

See what it tenses, pal.

Took place Saturday at noon, but you're not going to hear this until afterwards.

So, the sale is underway.

That's why I can't tell you how we're doing because we ain't done it yet, but I can tell you what we got.

My brand new book, Heroes and Friends, Pro Wrestling Remembrances, is on sale for only $24.95.

And now that I actually have it in my hands, ladies and gentlemen, I didn't charge enough.

This thing is beautiful.

And I will reveal now

that we were supposed to have this in two weeks ago in hand.

And

the printer here that is consulting with me and the printing plant up in Chicago, we're going back and forth on the

crops and the bleeds and the gutter for the binding and the Zabada and all these terms.

And

that took longer than the actual printing process.

But for a while, I didn't want to power town anybody and say that, you know.

It'd take money for something that I did not have in hand, but this thing's being printed in Chicago instead of China.

And I knew I could drive up there near back in one day and get it myself if I had to.

But they came in and they're real and they're spectacular, Brian.

As I said to you earlier today, I really hope everybody will like this thing.

I don't,

boy, this format for classic wrestling has not been done.

There have been some beautiful classic wrestling books like the 50th State Hawaii book that was a nice tabletop thing and the St.

Louis

Chase

50th anniversary or whatever the commemoration was book that Herb Simmons had a hand in helping with.

But this format with this quality paper, if I do say so myself,

and the quality of the photography, if I do say so myself, and the quality of the writing.

I've already said that myself, haven't I, Brian?

I'm really proud of it.

I think if it's a, a,

if you're any kind of a wrestling fan

for the last,

what, 50 or 60 years, there's something for you.

Because if this was before your time, you can learn all about it.

And if this was concurrent with your time, you can relive the memories, as the tagline went for some famous broadcast.

That is on sale also.

The

action figure sale with discounts across the board on Jim Cornet tag team and Midnight Express four-pack compilation sets.

The Wrestling at the Garden book, we have a limited number of those, new 8x10s.

I bet you the limited stuff like extra trading cards and things has already sold out, but you can hop on and try jimcornet.com.

It's going on now.

I think, again, my favorite

Brian part of the book, and we've talked about about this before, but I stand here and stare at the picture of Lance Russell that I took in 1979 from the original source with 19 or 19, 2025 technology.

Hodgkins Featherbottom has outdone himself, but a lot of this stuff looks like it should have been in Time magazine 40 years ago.

I'm anxious to hear the feedback too from everybody and on the cult of Cornette Facebook group

or on the group or on the page or in the group.

What's the terminology, Brian?

Group members.

About

my request

from the fans, I do want to hear feedback on this book, what they think and what they like and don't like, et cetera.

But how is that done?

Well, there's a post on the official Cult of Cornet Facebook group for all the lucky people that are already in there.

And it'll be pinned to the top of the page.

And once these books start going out, everyone is free to contribute their thoughts, give you feedback, and let you know what they want in volume two.

Maybe a chapter on deer, maybe a chapter on the raccoon, maybe you could, maybe you could just all the different animals and people around Castle Cornette.

Possibly

a look at Web City.

You remember Web City.

That's halfway up a spider's ass.

But yes, I want to know what you think.

If you are a member of the Facebook group on this book and if I'm on the right track or not with stuff like this, that you folks would like to see and read and collect.

And

I understand almost everybody is in there.

We're trying to shoehorn everybody in the group, right, Brian?

We've all, it's trickled down to hundreds instead of thousands now.

But

how do they apply?

We try to keep the dickheads out.

which is more than many online forums can say these days.

So it takes a little while for you.

You got to,

you know, just send over your banking information and your social security number and date of birth, and we'll process you and let you know when you're accepted, right?

Yeah, again, it's pretty simple.

If you're on Facebook, apply to be in the group.

You have to answer a few questions.

Again, there are a lot of people trying to get in, a lot of people who are already on the line to get in.

We'll get to you as soon as we can, but it's as simple as that.

Over 20, I think over 21,000, we finally got in there.

But a lot more waiting, and we're trying to get through everyone as fast as we can.

But the thing is, are we going to have to rent a bigger building to get them all in there?

No, I think they have unlimited space.

They're in the cloud.

They're in the clouds.

Oh, so they are taking advantage of our sponsorship at Cornbread Hemp.

Okay.

All righty.

Anyway, the great writing, the best illustrations, the pictures are incredible.

Classic wrestling.

What can I say?

JimCornet.com.

That's on sale now.

Please.

I want to do another one of these.

If nobody buys the first one, I'll just chuck the idea.

And speaking of chucking things, did you chuck the broken, the discombobulated Antonio Anoki keychain that we have been plagued with for the past?

The other day it stopped working when you began slapping it about the head and face, trying to make it play that song.

Which you told me to do, so you should buy me a new one.

Well, I was reading the copy from what was his name, Ralph.

Ralph said to do it.

He said he was an expert.

I don't know about these things.

I'm a simple man.

I'm not going to judge.

Keychain expert.

Yeah, it broke.

It broke.

He broke it.

I broke it.

Well, you told me to slap it.

And now, if I push this, nothing happens.

For those of you following on Instagram and Twitter, I posted some photos.

I have two more ready to go.

I I said, I'm going to have to do that.

We're getting this song on the air one way or the other.

So everyone said, open the one on the left because the one on the right looks so good, you don't want to open that package.

So I did that.

I opened the one on the left.

It's Antonio Anoki in a red robe, black tights, blue towel.

I cleaned the corroded battery port,

put the batteries in, closed it.

Does nothing.

I'm taking it.

However, there's a weird thing where if I move the three little batteries around,

before it was

hear that?

There's something there.

There's some life.

Ah, there go the batteries.

I got to try this again in a minute.

But there's something there.

We have found signs of life, ladies and gentlemen.

And they aren't just any life.

They're the life of Enoki.

So we're going to do what we can.

See?

There's something.

It's still just yelling Taigada.

There's still no music, but there's something happening.

it gives me hope that

it's the same thing the first one did i'm gonna have to open the third one as nice as that package was i guess that's the point the pressure the peer pressure the solution is there is there some way you can steam it open or something so that you know

if anyone out there is a japanese engineer who wants to work on the back end of one of these and take them apart and reconfigure it

This fucking thing.

This fucking...

But look here.

You blamed me.

Now, here's what I was doing.

And for the people who didn't hear this particular exchange.

One worked and you told me to beat it up.

That was great.

I was reading.

I was reading information that was sent in by a guy who apparently knew a lot about this stuff.

As I said, I think his name was Ralph.

And I was reading it to you.

Now, if some Yahoo

named Ralph wrote in to say, well, the best way to treat your

fucking broken leg is to cut it off at the hip.

Would you be sawing on it?

Why are you?

there?

You go, and by the way, Ralph, good job writing a letter in.

Now, this guy's throwing you under the bus.

How do you like that?

Come on, everybody that contributes here to the program is open to some form of abuse.

Man, this is stupid.

We had one that worked, and that's the one that's not working, but I know it could work, so there has to be a way to get it to work.

And then this one, I have to literally play with the batteries while they're in here to get it to do.

Come on, Tiger Dog!

You know, if anybody would just clip about the last 30 seconds of Brian's conversation, I believe that would top the Captain Quig's statement in fucking the Kane Mutiny.

Anyway, Baba was better.

What was Giant Baba famous for saying?

Give me that cigar.

Talk to my wife.

Seriously, can you think of any, can you think of any time that you've really seen Baba?

I mean, yes, he's, you know, spoken words in the ring, but like making a public statement or having a catchphrase or just

really making a spectacle of himself in any fashion while Adoki was out there screaming, look at me.

Well, there are compilations of like commercials, like giant Baba appearing in various commercials.

And it's kind of like Shaquille O'Neal in that, like, here's this giant star and he looks great, but then you hear his voice like,

like you can't even understand

Japanese, but even if he did, it sounds like he'd be difficult to understand.

Yes.

The giant Baba.

One of those things where it would be,

it's not a linguistic thing.

It's more of a fucking sonic thing.

All righty, well, we wish you the best with your keychain, Brian.

Keep us up to date on that.

I'm going to open the other one and I'll let you know.

This one is.

There has to be a way to get this.

It's like the first battery has to be like slightly.

Oh.

That's number two.

Let's see if we get the third one.

Come on.

All right, this is your show.

I'm going to mute myself for a moment.

Fucking tighten.

Well, now wait a minute.

Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you right now that he's taken himself off the air because now he is so obsessed with trying to stick those batteries in in just the right place that he's just completely.

He might have walked out of the room.

He might be going to where there's more sunlight.

I put it down.

Luckily, I have one that already died because I slapped it, so I feel free slapping that one now.

But I got to remember, it hurts my hand every time I do this shit.

Fuck.

Back to you.

This has been a great show.

Yes, back to you.

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Well, speaking of people who are not having a good day, old Roger Jackson.

Old Roger

was hauled into the arraignment on the charges which have been up updated, upgraded is what I'm trying to say.

up charged, whatever the official legal terminology is, to a felony, some description.

And he went to court and pled not guilty,

which, I mean, is

that's kind of what everybody does, unless you're Ed Gein and you're like, yeah,

you know, I did it.

But at the same time, isn't that going to be kind of difficult to prove against a prosecutor who has video footage of you saying, I'm going to do it.

They told me not to do it, but I don't give a shit.

I'm going to do it anyway.

Yeah, I don't know how he's going to get out of this one because of the video.

I mean, the arguments they've made publicly are Psycho Stew was drunk.

And again, that doesn't excuse it.

This was part of the show.

If a drunk insults you in a bar, you can come back 20 minutes later and cave his head in.

And then tell him you're going to work with him and then actually plan to knock him out and punch him until he's dead or until you're stopped or whatever happens.

You know, none of the witnesses that we've heard speak publicly who were there

are going to say anything good about this or anything like there's a misunderstanding or anything.

No, it was this guy was embarrassed, or this guy was upset, or this guy had a chip on his shoulder.

And he said, I'm going to take it out on this guy tonight, and we're going to live stream it, and people will see I'm not a bitch.

I mean, that's what it was.

And look at what happened.

Well, and

uh, Doug Malo, right?

Milo's his name, correct?

I believe so.

Yeah, the guy who, yeah,

well, the guy who successfully pulled him off, he wasn't quite first, but he got it.

He's already on

record and doesn't mind being on record.

Obviously, he was very open with it on video and audio saying what happened.

And if there's a case, whether it's being pressed by PsychoStoo or pressed by the state prosecutor's office or local municipality, whatever the fuck.

government organization, which I'm pretty sure this is,

he would be one of the first people

subpoenaed, asked to give testimony, whatever.

So if

there's a flag that somebody might,

if he doesn't come into court and say the same thing

that he said right after the fact, if he is not called in or not involved in this some kind of way, then somebody's getting paid off.

You've got to have him.

He was.

And I assume he's still willing.

So if they don't bring him into this, then something shady is going on.

And he'll just nail his fucking guy to the wall by telling what he's already said.

And

much less if they get Stew up there.

And

I mean, again, he's probably not the

sharpest knife in the socket or whatever the old simile is.

But he's going to say, yeah,

we shook hands.

I thought everything was okay.

And

I woke up in the hospital.

What else can he say?

So

he's going to cook Raja.

Who,

if they get a wrestling expert of any professional level,

and again, if there's a wrestling expert that is called to the defense on this,

I'd like to see who that is and what

the fuck his name and credentials are.

But if the prosecution gets any kind of legitimate wrestling expert, Roger's cooked.

So who could possibly mitigate any of this with any kind of testimony otherwise than, well, yeah, an hour and a half before, Annie hit the guy with a can, but then we got videotape of him apologizing and accepting it.

Yeah, I don't know if that person exists.

I mean, again, I don't know who's going to speak on behalf of Roger Jackson, even if his father says anything and his father has said a lot of different things in the media.

He wasn't there.

I mean, there's really nothing he can contribute to this other than his feelings about it he wasn't there and he wasn't involved raja's cameraman maybe that's the person who will back him up but beyond that you know that that cowboy wrestler guy what was his name the one who everyone blamed and then he put up a video like screaming and crying about it blaming everyone there's a plane going overhead jesus christ um

That guy, I mean, it'll be interesting to see what happens if he gets called in because he was the one that they tried to blame.

Roger and Rampage, I think, tried to say it was him.

And then Doug Malo and other people were saying, Yeah, this guy does have a fucking issue with Psycho Stew.

I guess it'll be interesting to see how much of the drama.

And he was that

cowboy hat guy was not defending what happened, as just as saying it wasn't me that was responsible.

So

that'll be interesting if they get him out there to contribute some testimony.

So

we'll keep an eye on it.

But

I think Raja might ought to get used to

some type of routine in his life because he's going to be probably on a strict regimen for some time after this.

And a lot of people were saying, oh, it's California.

They're not going to charge him with anything because you know why.

Well, now we know why he's got charged with a felony because he did something imagine that

oh boy you know brian you know what we've got out there in the cult of cornet don't you smart people yes good people

we got smart listeners and they have come in again since today's topic is the ratings and the ratings dropping and what shows are going to be dropping.

Who knows what the fuck is going to go on.

I'm not going to give this fellow's name because he's given us confidential information here.

And we, you know, this could be some kind of I spy bullshit where they'll drop a poison pill in his martini or something if they find out that he's stooging.

But we have

another update on this

new ratings methodology and et cetera, et cetera, from one of the knowledgeable listeners out there in the cult of Cornet.

And he said, because remember, we had asked, I had asked you,

because I'm sick of this whole shit already, but I'd asked you,

can they figure like the old numbers and then the new numbers so that we get both and we see how they compared,

how they would compare going forward?

Well, it's the new number is this, but the old number, it would have been that, right?

I asked you that.

You didn't know.

Right.

Because

you disappoint me all the time with things like that.

Hey.

But this guy knew.

And he said, long story short, there is no way to reverse engineer Nielsen's old viewership counts using the new methodology and vice versa.

So the answer is no.

But

this is something that has occurred throughout 2025.

the new methodology with Nielsen, Comscore, and even Crossix and IQ VIA

switching up their household viewership methodology.

They are all black boxes that take known individuals within their panel along with digital signals,

parenthetically, actual measurable views on channels like

online video and connected TVs, to extrapolate viewership.

OLV and CTV data is especially valuable, and you'll find all big players have agreements with Samsung, Roku, and other tabletop devices services that aren't walled gardens.

Example being Apple TV

to aid in calculating viewership.

Brian, did you get that so far?

I mean, the gist maybe, maybe.

There's a lot there.

This is more complicated than it used to be.

But he goes on, The shift across all these third-party measurement platforms is due to them being able to increase the resolution to use a video analogy of households to better identify individuals within said households using shared devices and engaging in either multi-screen and or multi-device viewing

using a combination of machine learning and anonymized anonymized anonymized clean room identity matching that doesn't run afoul of privacy laws, they now claim they are able to better project viewership and know, for example, if it was Jim or Harley Quinn in the room watching the prices right.

Whether it be streaming or broadcast media, Nielsen, digital publications and dot-coms, ComScore, Global Web Index, or the pharma industry, that's IQ VIA and CrossIX, the measurement they provide is always best taken directionally and not as an exact count.

See, now this is something we need to clarify this business.

And then he sent us a follow-up email.

And

this is a couple of clarifications, and then Brian, we'll discuss it for just us small town bird lawyers.

He says the actual platforms themselves, Netflix, Disney, Apple TV, etc.

Having seen the data myself, all know the exact counts of streams and plays, but don't share it for a myriad of reasons.

Nielsen and the others I mentioned use proxy data signals

via a data agreement with Roku, Samsung, and nearly all smart TV providers to obtain those proxy signals anonymously and use that coupled with their known panel to extrapolate viewership.

And there's new third-party measurement platforms claiming to have better anonymized clean room matching, identification resolution, or data sources emerging almost daily.

The TVs are watching you.

The telephones are watching you.

They are listening in to whatever the fuck we're doing.

So they can hear when I say, Stacy, don't ever buy this goddamn dial soap again.

Or whatever the fuck.

Do you understand any of this?

Do you have a problem with dial soap?

I'm just using that as a for instance.

How can they be this minute with this shit unless all these devices

that we're bringing in?

And my refrigerator tells the goddamn television when the fucking filter on the water thing is out, or the stove tells the goddamn Stacy's phone when it's preheated.

What the fuck are they telling other people?

Yeah, wait until AI starts telling all this to kill you.

That's going to be the real scary thing.

It's interesting, and I have to dive in deeper.

We've received a lot of emails, more than I thought we would, from people who either work in

for catch-all broadcasting or people who actually work at Nielsen.

You know, a few people have said, do not use my name, no matter what.

Don't use this information.

But if you do, don't use my name.

So, I mean, there's a lot of people out there.

And one of the things you just said is something I've heard from everyone, and I've been hearing it for a while.

Streaming numbers are known by the streamers.

The idea that Warner Brothers Discovery and Max don't know the AEW numbers and therefore Tony doesn't know what they are, to me is nonsense.

And to everyone who I've heard from, and again, we've heard from everyone from people that work at Nielsen, to people that are television executives, and they've called bullshit on this.

This new ratings

methodology, as we've called it, it doesn't take Max into effect or into account for the AEW dynamite number.

We don't know what that number is because that number has never been released.

And like the email said, it's to any streaming platform's benefit to not release those numbers if you don't have to.

Because if you close your eyes, you think about it, more people probably think things have a higher viewership than

a lower viewership.

Did I answer any of your questions?

I'm not even sure.

Yes.

Well, that's the thing is that

there has been a public rating system for broadcast television and or cable television as it's existed.

And back when the numbers were phenomenal and nobody needed to be embarrassed.

But now think about these streaming services, besides the fact

that, yes, they are airing first-run programming.

and or the sports or whatever.

But if you go on any of the streaming services, there is countless movies, countless TV shows, countless Gaga, right?

That's what drives me crazy about it is you can't even go through all the shit and there's no just

list.

Point being,

a lot of people cannot be watching the majority of that content just mathematically.

With the number of streaming services and the number of options they have on each one, they're enough people.

You see what I'm saying here?

So

if they had

three or four major shows that were getting numbers that were, you know, brag worthy, but with it comes releasing numbers of, when it gets down to 27 people watch this or whatever, that would be somewhat embarrassing, right?

So I think that's why the proprietary info is what they call it in the business world, right?

That's our proprietary information.

That's why they don't brag about a few things because they'd have to suffer about the majority of stuff.

Am I crazy?

Yeah, but I don't know if you're necessarily crazy about all this.

Oh,

something at least.

You know, again, it all goes to going back to the very beginning, the idea of using

whatever method Nielsen uses as a barometer, as something that's supposed to tell us

or give us a representation of what the viewership really is.

It's, to me, never, ever been a reasonable way that makes sense.

The only thing that makes it works is that the advertisers honor it.

And that's what the advertisers are going on.

But beyond that,

well, the idea one family in a neighborhood is going to be somehow a representation of any other family in that neighborhood is ridiculous.

Well, but here's the thing that was

besides the fact that the advertisers went on it, the other thing that was at least consistent about it was

it was the same system being applied to everything

because

it was television.

There was one kind of television and it was the same system being applied.

And even if

occasionally in debuke,

if you know, if they had no wrestling fans with boxes, the ratings may suffer.

It would statistically be made up for.

Every program was being judged in the same way on the same kind of platforms.

So it was somewhat even Steven.

But now,

for whatever reason, that again, nobody can determine,

that nobody's come up with a good answer for,

pro wrestling programs under this new system are being disproportionately reduced, harmed, zapped, like 20% or whatever, or

much more than almost any other program.

And I think as we mentioned at the top of our show, you know, they were thinking that it would help the NFL, the new system.

And everybody was happy about that because they make tons.

Everybody makes tons of money off of that.

So yeah.

And that so far, there's stations that are up, stations that are down, shows that are up, shows that are down,

but nothing to the disproportionate level level is down as far as the wrestling shows.

And this is what we're trying to figure out: what the, what's the gig here, Slick?

And something to take into the equation, you know, if we look at the last 10 to 15 years,

we've talked in the past about, for a variety of reasons, it's not as easy for a kid today to become a wrestling fan as it was when I was a kid or when you were a kid.

Yeah.

I had wrestling on Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings at noon or 10 a.m.

sometimes on Saturday, WWF Syndicated TV.

Then there was other stuff, but that was like kids' television time.

You know, kids' cartoons were on channel 2, channel 4, channel 5, channel 7, channel 9.

I think channel 11 even had something.

So it was all kids' stuff.

And then channel 5, we go to wrestling.

And I watched it.

Kids don't have that today.

Kids don't have Saturday morning cartoons.

That's a dead thing.

And kids don't have weekend wrestling shows they can watch while their parents are still getting up and getting together.

You know what I mean?

So the kids who discover wrestling and become wrestling fans today either see a primetime show on cable or I guess network when SmackDown was on Fox.

That's Friday night.

You're either seeing that or you're seeing clips somewhere else.

So I've always wondered how that would affect

the fan base going forward.

So again, we're talking the last 10 to 15 years.

And then, well, let me just finish with this.

We know what we see with the ratings.

And we know what traditionally is part of the wrestling audience.

And that going back to the very beginning, even

you could focus on young people.

There's always been a dedicated older wrestling audience.

And it's only grown because of the amount of people that grew up, like we just described, watching wrestling on weekend mornings, having it there, looking forward to it.

If you grew up in the 80s with that, or the 90s, even, even there's a chance that you still get pulled in by wrestling.

And check it out.

Do your kids?

And what would make your kids get pulled in?

So these ratings,

it doesn't show any key demo growth for wrestling.

You have to assume that, well, if a kid wants to watch AEW, they're on Max.

They wouldn't even go to cable TV.

And I think, in a lot of ways, that is a fair assumption.

But it's not a fair assumption that there's a lot of kids watching it.

And

the same vein of what you're saying, but in a different avenue that leads to the same destination,

the parents that used to pretty much bring their kids into wrestling, they were watching the show every weekend, and the kids had to watch it whether they liked it or not, unless they wanted to go outside or whatever.

As well as

we've talked about it before in the territory days, 60s, 70s, 80s, and it was still a thing into the 90s,

where families would go, or the guy would take his kids.

It used to be grandmothers, and I saw three generations at the Louisville Gardens.

But there was still some kind of family involvement where

the guy had grown up going to the matches, so now he's taking his kid.

And who can afford that?

Because as we've been talking about the prices, had they priced themselves out of the family market, the good thing was when the 11-year-old kid went with dad

then the 11 year old kid got in the habit

and and grew up in the same fashion

and also started watching the television and liking it rather than just having to be in the room when it was on

So that was a way of cultivating the fans.

And

wrestling cultivated fans by the millions for 100 years because there was so much local television, live match exposure.

If people wanted to go, they could go.

And that's the way that that group kept.

It ebbed and flowed over time, depending on how hot the business was, but it was always pretty fucking large.

And that's all shrunken.

Yeah, for the guy that comes home on a Monday night is going to watch Raw for over two hours.

Do their kids watch with him or are their kids watching some guy stream themselves play Minecraft on YouTube?

It's a tough thing.

I don't know how much of the young audience is there.

And also you think

and it used to be that the parents would also say, hey, come watch wrestling.

Here's a blah, blah, blah.

And encourage instead of, hey, get lost, we're watching wrestling.

And, you know, it would make the tent bigger.

The other thing that I've seen from my own kids and some of their friends who have been here at different times, some of the complaints we make, die-hard wrestling fans don't think it's as bad.

And people who aren't wrestling fans see it even worse than we do.

When we say things like, WWE, the entrances take forever and nothing happens, we're saying that as wrestling fans.

People who aren't wrestling fans who, again, sit down and watch SmackDown for a few minutes,

they may think it's more boring than that.

People who see AEW and they say, neither one of these two guys guys in this match look like a star, and this match is going forever.

That's magnified by people who aren't wrestling fans who see it.

So I think, again, it may be a long-term issue.

We're talking about ratings, but a longer-term issue,

the amount of people that become wrestling fans.

There'll always be new wrestling fans.

There'll always be wrestling fans.

But I just don't know if you're going to gain as many as you had previously in the past.

Well, and we've concentrated on AEW when talking about, oh, deep shit, bad moons rising, because Tony's,

you know, his TV deal is that, that's his, you know, big, big Thanksgiving turkey there.

And the WWE, they've got streaming this and streaming that and streaming the other thing.

I've got a goddamn list written down of where to watch these programs now.

We've talked about it.

It's ridiculous.

But the point is, they don't have to depend on any one thing, but their numbers are still getting hit too, at least on television.

But the, the, that's what I'm saying.

We've concentrated on AEW,

but the SmackDown ratings, which

SmackDown and NXT

are the

only two major shows they have now that are going to be subject to this new

formula, right?

Because the others are on the streaming where they keep it secret and lock it up in the goddamn basement at Fort Knox.

Right?

For now, I mean, we get Netflix numbers, and you know, there's been a lot of focus, and at some point we probably should dive into it and do a segment.

It won't be today, about raw on Netflix and the realities that we're seeing there.

SmackDown's going to be affected.

AEW is going to be affected.

NXT has been affected.

Yeah, but the Netflix numbers do not, they're not under this system, though.

They're the Netflix numbers.

Netflix says, yeah, here, here's our numbers, and trust us.

We're here to help.

But the new system, it's going to be AEW's television shows, Collision and Dynamite, and NXT and SmackDown.

On, what are they on these days?

God damn it, SmackDown.

USA.

CW.

Oh, no, SmackDown.

SmackDown.

Excuse me.

USA.

Yes.

Yes.

That's the ones that's going to be figured in the new rating system.

So, with that being said,

again,

Uncle Dave has taken a swing at analyzing this situation.

And, you know, when there's numbers involved, Dave loves it.

And

your head hurts, and your eyes desperately want to be bleached by the time you get halfway.

He did like three pages on it.

And Thurston Howell III, he's a clinical-minded fellow, too.

But I'm again

just a small town bird lawyer, Brian.

So whatever

the methodology is and whatever the difference is and whatever demographics that are lacking, the bottom line is most people out there just want to know SmackDown is apparently losing about 200,000 people or more

from its old numbers to its new numbers with this system.

So they're getting walloped

just like Tony Khan, just maybe not as big a percentage.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Again, I don't know the percentages, but SmackDown has taken a wallop since the new ratings methodology went into effect.

And,

you know, we know what Raw was doing on USA.

We know what SmackDown had been doing.

We also know that WWE TV is the opposite of hot right now.

It's not must-see TV.

And yeah, SmackDown, we just, I mean, You know, I was just editing earlier today, the last review we did a SmackDown.

We haven't been saying good things about SmackDown.

It's not a good show.

No, there's a few good things on a long,

long

show.

But

the percentage,

let's just figure this in our head.

SmackDown has been doing

what between 1.2, 1.4 million folks on USA Network, right?

On the

old method.

And then suddenly the new method comes in and they dropped about a couple of hundred thousand people.

And 200,000 as a percentage of 1.2 million, let's say.

That is,

that's one

fucking,

divide by three, carry the two.

What's a percentage of that?

What are these percentages, Brian?

I don't know.

Well,

I'm asking you.

Why don't you know?

Why don't you know?

You have it in front of you.

Because you're not the one asking me.

I'm asking.

I don't know.

It would be.

Well, 200,000 is 20% of a million.

So it'd be about, what, 16% or 17% of 1.2 million.

But now when Dynamite.

was doing around 600,000 give or take and all of a sudden it's like 400 and something

well they've lost is that 20% or 18%?

It's somewhere around the same thing.

So it's wrestling.

See the percentages.

See, when you do the math in an exact fashion like that,

you can't argue with the numbers.

The point is, SmackDown's getting slapped around too.

And

again, nobody knows why and can explain it, but this isn't happening on other programming that has been called anybody's attention at this point.

And nobody, because I think the phrase was that if this was happening to every television program

on the air under the new methodology, that people would be fucking storming the goddamn gates out there in TV land.

because it would be costing billions and billions and billions of dollars.

Yeah.

And again, wrestling has been attractive.

AEW is supposed to be attractive to Warner Brothers Discovery because of the key demo number, because of the younger audience they could bring in for the television show, not even talking about Max.

They're not there.

And I don't know how much of that's an AEW problem versus a wrestling problem.

The young audience is simply not there

in traditional cable or broadcast.

Then you're talking about YouTube.

You know, I just saw the AJ.

Are the Gardeners here?

Yeah, the Gardeners are here.

God damn it.

I I just saw the CM Punk AJ Lee.

Well,

tell them dagum gardeners.

Is it Ava and her new husband?

Tell them to just turn around and go come to dinner tomorrow.

It's Julio and the gang.

The AJ Lee video, her return promo or whatever it was, did like 5 million views on YouTube.

And I actually thought that was, I thought it would have been higher.

But then, yeah, now they're right behind me.

But it was 5 million views.

And that's how a lot of people saw that.

If a million people give or take watch SmackDown and then 5 million people watch the clip from the main segment on SmackDown, that's not even counting other social media.

That's not even counting anything else.

It's a good audience, but you have to think that's a younger audience more than likely than the people watching SmackDown, the people watching picking.

They're actually picking which clips they want to watch from the show.

Well, that just ain't fair.

Somebody's got to do something.

I think they ought to come up with a new system, Brian.

All righty.

Well, we will continue to monitor this ongoing situation also.

But you know what I'm thinking?

I'm thinking with all these numbers,

we got to sit down with calculators.

We got to get these numbers in our heads because not only are we going to need to cover it for in the course of our employment here, Brian, as erstwhile commentators on wrestling, but also

we need to have the computers or the calculators so that we can join up with our friends at Prize Picks.

Because if you know numbers, well, then you can just pick some and you'll actually make some money.

Because with PrizePick, you download the Prize Picks app.

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If you don't do that, well, the rest of this information is going to be absolutely no good to you.

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We'll wait.

Hold on.

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I bet Josh Allen won't be the first guy from the NFL to be in a lineup.

But if you can pick the same player three three times, that almost sounds like cheating, doesn't it?

For heaven's sake.

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Follow these other sappy prize picks players around

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And whether it's a friend, a celebrity partner, or someone who, or a celebrity lookalike, possibly, if somebody looks like Gilda Radner, just copy their shit.

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Yeah, this is a weird example.

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All right.

Well, I'll tell you who I am picking in the pool to become the most time on the injured reserved list in the history of professional wrestling.

And I'm not laughing about this guy getting hurt, but at some point,

if there was anybody on the face of the earth that would walk out in the street every day he leaves his house, he gets run over by a bus, people would start laughing sooner or later, wouldn't they, Brian?

And say, God damn, again,

again,

five buses.

Coda Ibushi

has apparently broken his leg from what is a femur.

A femur is in your leg, isn't it?

Femur in the leg, and femur all through the hip.

You give me femur.

I believe it is indeed a broken leg, yes.

The least surprising broken leg in wrestling history.

This hasn't even aired yet as we're speaking, but initial reports on the ground say, and that's where he landed.

I guess Ibushi was on collision that airs,

again, you know, 24 hours from where we're now speaking, Saturday night.

He was wrestling Josh Alexander, and somehow,

and I know, Brian, I'm not surprised at this description, but just

somehow they were up on the top buckle, and Josh Alexander had Coda Ibushi up for like a Death Valley driver

while they were balanced in some fashion on the ropes and they fell over backwards.

And

they stopped the match.

They

got a stretcher for this fellow,

didn't carry him out, wheeled him out and to an ambulance.

There's footage online of them wheeling him out to back parking lot, straight into the ambulance and straight to the hospital.

So this wasn't like, oh, golly, do you think I'm hurt?

This was like, get me to a fucking doctor.

And again, I'm not,

what is going on with this guy?

Is he cursed by the sign of the gypsy queen?

I'm not laughing, but I am dumbfounded at this point.

Help, help me.

clarify this.

I don't know if I can clarify any of it.

It has to hurt as a professional wrestler to know you had this big, bad injury and was on collision.

If it was on dynamite, at least you could say, well, it was their A show.

It's on their B show that no one watches.

Although it's catching up, I guess, to Dynamite.

I can't explain this.

Koda Ibushi,

some of the matches I've seen of his in the past,

he's clearly, or he was clearly, a very talented guy.

He also, based on some of the things I've seen him do in the past, wasn't necessarily the brightest guy.

And

his last great moment,

you know, minus whatever he did in Japan that people are fawning over, he appeared in that WWE Cruiserweight Classic, like right before AEW started.

And then apparently they wanted to sign him and he didn't want to, which is why he lost in the finals to the guy they did sign.

But then he went back to Japan and

every time I've seen him since then,

he either was completely out of shape or just looked dumbfounded for no reason.

Nothing was happening.

It was just a look.

Or he's getting hurt.

And we remember in Japan,

was it he broke both of his ankles?

I mean, it sounds crazy.

As I'm saying it to myself, I'm like, that can't be it.

Was it

broke both of his ankles?

I believe it.

He did, but in two separate situations,

two separate incidents.

And somehow.

And that was,

again, you know, we're not his press agent.

We've reported on this from time to time, but I haven't dwelled on it.

But so I don't remember the chronology exactly.

But didn't Tony Kahn sign him like two and a half or almost three years ago?

And that's when immediately after he signed, he did the

whatever he did to both of his ankles in two different moves.

fucking his fucking ankles up and was off for

pretty much the entirety of the rest of the contract.

And remember, this is one of those things where it's happened a couple of times and it just happened the last time after that injury, he would return and you'd hear from AEW fans like, all right, get ready.

You're going to see the real Coda Ibushi now.

And every time he returned, it was worse and worse.

He was in a War Games match and it was a disaster.

His stuff looks weak.

Even AEW fans, even his fans have admitted he's looked awful.

It's one of those deals where it's a horrible contract.

The decision behind it was horrible.

Tony should have known that, but Tony doesn't care because he gets one of the little pieces that he wants for his collection.

The guy got paid for two years to get his ankles fixed.

And I'm sure he's grateful to Tony for that.

But you're talking about the drop off in

match performance.

Remember when he and Kenny would be a team and they'd try to do their thing where they run to separate corners and flip off together.

But Kenny would run and flip off and Coda would run and have trouble getting over the top rope and figure out where to put his feet and then flip off.

It just is so.

You know, this goes to the conversation.

Even though Ibusha and Kenny started with DDT and eventually ended up doing New Japan stuff, Kenny being a much bigger star than Ibushi,

but that entire fucking crop, Omega, Ibushi, Okada,

Tanahashi, Ishi-e,

Shibata, like everyone who had anything to do with that era of New Japan is in one way or another a shell of themselves now.

A physical wreck.

Yeah.

But.

It says something about that style.

You can brag about strong style all you want.

If you're 40 years old and you can't do anything without breaking your legs.

Strong style failed.

Well, now in this instance,

it sounds to me like that

I've got to see it because when we review a couple of these programs, we'll talk about a

balancing issue.

You think they're going to air it?

Will they fucking err everything else?

Why wouldn't they?

He got counted out.

Oh, golly.

It would explain where he's going for the next year and a half again.

Didn't Tony like come out and lead the crowd in a chant of a bushy?

Is that true?

I read that somewhere.

Is that true?

He told them he was hurt and

got a round of applause for him i don't know if he was leading chance or what he was doing but

the point is whether we see it or not if josh alexander had him up on his shoulders and they fell off backwards did ibushi

up their balance or did alexander

lose it or what the were they trying to do we may never know if they don't show it is that the first bat that josh alexander has won

I think so.

He had to hospitalize the guy to do it.

Yeah, see, now he can cut the promos.

I'd show it and he'd cut the promos.

Say, see what happens when you beat me all the time?

I just start putting you some bitches in the hospital.

So I don't care what the finish is.

I'm going to win the next one too.

But that's

the point is he got, he was,

he was paid for his rehabilitation from his broken ankles.

Now he's.

gone again when we we barely knew ye this time around and he's gone again how

what the fuck is going on here with how long he'll be back?

He has cost Tony more per match than any other wrestler in history.

You could definitely see why Kenny Omega's friends love him so much.

He got them all hooked up with Scrooge McDuck, and they've all been able to do whatever the fuck they want ever since.

I'm going to stay in Japan.

I'm going to work on a video game.

I'm going to snap my legs.

Whatever it is.

Doesn't matter.

Tony's going to pay you.

Well,

we go from somebody who just snapped his leg to somebody who's going to get paid.

Brian,

earlier today, before we went on the air, you said to me in our preparatory phone call where you begged for another five minutes,

we got to update the Santos Escobar situation.

And I said to you,

what the fuck did we say before and what's happened now?

And apparently,

by the time that we were able to record a segment for your program a few days ago, the drive-through, and just as it was going up, we took that segment out so that we could update it because

it's out of date.

And that this whole saga with Escobar,

he's going to leave.

He's not.

He's going to leave.

He's going to leave.

He ain't going to leave.

Oh, I didn't leave.

It's just, it's, it's escalating.

What the hell is going on?

Right.

And we're going to play that audio, which originally was intended for the drive-through, and we held it back for this very reason.

We'll play it here shortly.

But Santos Escobar, former member of the LWO,

Legato del Fantasma, formerly El Fantasma or EO del Fantasma.

I actually thought that LFG, the WWE LFG, was a goddamn show that they'd made just for the LG

Gee.

What was the name of the Legato?

LG.

Eligato del LD.

What were they?

LDS.

Are they Mormons?

What are they?

The legends of the Phasmas.

Fantastic.

I thought that.

Not Phasmas.

I thought it was LFG was that also.

Well, I don't know where I was going, but the point is, we're going to play this audio.

When we last recorded.

The story going around was his WWE contract expired.

They made an effort to renew him.

He didn't necessarily agree with what they wanted, and he was ready to move on.

We heard that AEW was interested, that there was at least some sort of internal conversation about

bringing Santos Escobar under a different name, I would presume, because that's a WWE name,

El Phantasma, but who knows, into AEW, where you could see why that would be a fit for

Tony's tastes, but also for CMLL,

where where we do have this relationship.

And as we talk about in this clip, that's a big part of the story, I think, the CMLL AAA

thing and who owns AAA and who's on the side of CMLL.

But I think that's where we left it was

that is everything that had happened.

Yes, we were opining about all those things, and hey, may just want to go back to Mexico and potentially work for AEW and get paid by a millionaire or whatever.

Nothing offensive or anything like that, but that's where we left it.

That's where we left it.

Presuming, as people had, that he may sign with AEW anytime now.

If he's free and clear with no non-compete, it could happen at any moment.

Well, as we were recording this segment, apparently WWE reached out and made an agreement with Santos Escobar.

We heard it was a multi-year deal.

We heard an amount of money that

was staggering.

I mean, it would be the craziest thing of all time if he didn't sign this deal, if what we heard was true, and I believe it is.

But it's an incredible amount of money.

It speaks to how much they're spending on wrestlers.

It also makes you wonder, again, was the priority keeping him from AEW?

Was the priority keeping him from CMLL?

Or does WWE see something right now in the position they're in?

where they can use Santos Escobar and really get a benefit out of it.

Well, let's go back to, say what we said, and then we'll come back and talk about what we're about to say.

Well, here it is, originally recorded for what episode was this?

Drive-through 4:13.

Here's Jim and I talking about Santos Escobar.

We'll be back on the other side.

Let's talk a little bit more about WWE News before we review what you watched this past week.

Word came out today.

I have an article here from SI, formerly Sports Illustrated, the Takedown, SI.com, by John Alba,

WWE superstar, expected to sign with AEW after being moved to alumni section.

Hours after rumors of his departure from WWE began to spread, it appears one former WWE champion is indeed gone from the company.

Santos Escobar,

spent five years in WWE and had a notable run in NXT following his debut in 2020.

However, reports surfaced Monday afternoon after months of social media teases that Escobar would be leaving WWE on his own volition upon the expiration of his contract at midnight.

On Tuesday morning, WWE informally confirmed the news.

The former leader of Legato del Fantasma was officially moved to the company's alumni section of its website, indicating he has indeed left WWE.

Indicating he is indeed going about his future endeavors.

The 41-year-old signed with WWE initially in 2019 after a successful run in Mexico, specifically CMLL, as El Hijo Del Fantasma.

He spent three years on the WWE main roster, and aside from leading Legato del Fantasma, was also a part of the re-established Latino World Order.

He has not had a match on television since June.

But now if I scroll down,

as Tony Khan's AEW bills itself as we're the best wrestle, Escobar is rumored to be on his way over to try and prove he fits the moniker.

What?

Dave Melcher and Brian Alvarez of Wrestling Observer Radio covered Escobar's WWE departure

where it was stated that the former NXT cruiserweight champion is expected to sign with AEW.

Jesus Christ.

It was noted that WWE officials were all aware that Escobar was leaving the company and it was widely believed

and it was widely believed he would be AEW bound and didn't care.

Of note, AEW has an active working relationship with CMLL while WWE purchased AAA Lucha Libre earlier this year.

Escobar enjoyed a lengthy run in CMLL.

We said that already.

What do you think about the idea?

On the heels of Andrade coming out with his hair out, as I put it in.

Now wait a minute.

Don't say it like that.

Coming over, coming out to confront Kenny Omega, is what I meant.

You went in a different direction.

The other direction.

I want the world to know.

Now that Andrade has arrived.

Yes.

And he is here.

What do you think about the idea that Santo Escobar, formerly in the LWO with four other wrestlers and a woman, what do you think about the idea that Santos Escobar could possibly be aew bound

and again he'd be able to wrestle with cml

well and and and there you go it sounds like that's what he needs to be doing um

first of all when you were building that up i thought it was going to be okay some shocking name here my god this is breaking news

come on

Is this going to make any difference to the program that Mr.

Escobar is no longer on it?

He's been floating around in shit that we didn't watch, and probably many other people didn't either for quite a while now.

And

if there have been teases that he was leaving since, what did you say, July, August?

That's about three months ago.

They were probably nice enough to him, hey, your contract's expiring.

You want to go home?

You want to go somewhere else?

Please feel free.

Because

if they're already saying he's expected to sign with AEW, then the WWE office would have known that and would not have given a shit because why?

Why would they?

And if

all these other more major names didn't make a difference, then why is this guy?

But on the other side,

Jesus Christ, I wonder if Tony's got a fucking

tanker truck ready for when the, you know, the stars of the WWE dump their fucking mobile home trailer fucking dressing room toilets so he can take their turds home.

I have a quote here, Jim, from Sean Ross Sap.

WWE sources confirmed to Fightful Select this morning that Santos Escobar's contract is up, quote, very soon, and it hasn't looked like he'll be staying.

The company has made attempts to re-sign him, but he passed on the offers.

Usually the only people who make that move are going to OnlyFans.

So this is a

you're going to one fan.

Tell me, well, but but again,

is it

well?

Here's the offer.

Well, you know, it's okay, it's whatever the fuck it is, it's like not what he wanted for himself, so he's going to go and potentially bilk the billionaire out of more money.

But if they wanted him, they would have kept him.

The offer would have been fine.

If, if, if for some reason, again, after

Andre

and

now this, just

taking middle card underneath guys.

And if he is making a bigger offer than the WWE made,

then

does that upset the AEW locker room?

Well, this fucking schlub comes in having done basically blah,

and he's getting a million dollars or whatever now.

But it's, I know it's hard for the guys to get mad at Tony because, think about this.

He's taking a bunch of guys in their 20s that would never have made any money in the wrestling business.

And he's paying them from

who knows the figures that we hear.

But if you get a job when you're 25 years old, making

750 grand a year for five years, do you ever need to work again unless you're an idiot?

So I know they

might not, you know, not want to get mad at him, but at the same time, what the fuck?

How many more people do they need that already they don't use half the roster who disappears for months at a time?

But if he brings this guy in and puts him over anybody meaningful,

what the fuck has he been doing?

So the guy that the other company didn't really want to keep or that kept him

probably wants to go home and work CMLL because they're the hottest promotion in the world as far as selling tickets.

But if he goes to AEW, then Tony's paying him more than he was making in the WWE.

He can work at home too.

But if he beats any of the AEW guys, you got a schlub that never won from the WWE beating meaningful people in the AEW.

You know, I think he's a really talented wrestler.

And I think I remember saying to you before he turned heel,

he's really good as a babyface that you just kind of feel like, yeah, I like this guy.

He was so happy with Rey Mysterio that he turned heel

and he kind of just got completely lost in the shuffle.

I mean, the LWO

was kind of just thrown together.

And then again, everything kind of just, he's been off TV since June.

I haven't heard anyone say anything.

Hey, I missed that guy.

Where's that guy?

No one.

That's a while.

Again, I think he's a talented wrestler.

The issue becomes AEW

has plenty of talented wrestlers for the middle of the card.

They don't have main eventers and they don't have stars.

And I think this guy's really good, but I don't think he's a main eventer

in AEW, let's say.

He ain't going to be able to do that.

And I don't think he's a CML.

He very well could be, but are they making money comparable?

Even if they are selling out, comparable to what they're paying the middle card guys in WWE because they print their own money.

Well, we'll see what happens.

We'll see if he shows up on Dynamite for Title Tuesday or any other day of the week.

And that wasn't as good as the other one.

There we go.

We need to go deeper.

And here we are.

We have just gone deeper.

Deeper and deeper, deeper, baby.

Jim Santos Escale.

Well, they went deep in their pockets.

They went deep in their pockets because after we said all of that, as you mentioned right before we went to the clip,

the WWE has come to terms with him.

We have heard for a

ridiculous,

in my opinion, amount of money.

But does it speak to

do they want Santos Escobar for their

existing programming, or do they want it?

Do they want it?

Do they want him

more for this

fight that's shaping up for the domination of the country of Mexico, AAA versus CMLL, and potential Hispanic inroads?

Or

is it something else that we have not uncovered as of yet to why they would want to keep this person from leaving?

Does he have pictures in a brown manila envelope?

Maybe he knows lots of ladies.

Elaborate on that, please.

I'm waiting for details.

I'm taking notes.

Hey, I'm going into Chicago, and you know anyone?

Oh, yeah, I know some ladies.

I'll hook you up.

I don't know.

I'm just guessing here.

Who knows why?

Look, talented wrestler,

well-spoken from what I've seen, can do babyface or heel,

has been booked under, has been just off their TV, I think, for a good while now.

So they got to do something different.

He may have been featured, but was not necessarily.

Relied upon or made tremendously interesting when he was on the television.

But I will say this, if the amount amount of money we heard is true, and I believe it is,

that's enough money to make me say, you know what, fuck CML.

I'm over here now.

And we'll see if that's really what the play is, is that he could be slotted in a spot in AAA at the top of the card.

He's someone WWE has faith in, or at least

it's not Andrade.

They're not saying, let's get the fuck away from this guy now.

Yeah.

So I would have to think that would be the priority more than anything because other than other than that, what's it going to be?

Smackdown?

He's barely been used on that show forever.

And same thing with Rawl.

But we can also

insinuate or

extrapolate

when they were trying to sign him for the, when they were originally trying to sign him for the offer that they had given previously, which, again, what we heard probably around half of what...

not even half of maybe what he ended up getting

they were thinking well, we're going to do this thing with him potentially in AAA or whatever, but we don't need to tell him that because he'll want more money.

So they were just going to sign him for, again, what in the real world and in the previous 120 years of history of wrestling would have been just buku of money for a guy at his level.

But now he's making double or more of that.

They didn't just have an, oh, shit.

I got a great idea from this guy that we were going to let go last week.

If he didn't want to take this Chincy offer we gave, so we got to pay him double or triple now.

They didn't just do that.

So they were going to do what they were going to do all along.

They just figured they could pay him less.

One would think.

Well, again, if what we heard is true, he got a

I mean, an increase in pay is not even the proper term.

It's more like a doubling in pay.

It makes you wonder, A, what their priorities are with him, but bigger picture, beyond the legato of Fontasma,

how much are they going to start paying guys who are not main inventors?

And, you know, we talked about Tony elevating the pay scale.

That's really been one of his big weapons from day one.

I mean, again,

we're not going to say numbers, but if they're paying him what I think they're paying him, and if they've paid others in a similar position, what i think and know they've paid those people

they may be cutting the discrepancy between how much tony pays and how much they pay and i don't know if it's because of tony or if again they're making so much money they can i mean that's that's the other thing we've always talked about they're making so much money now not even when vince had it and he was making so much money they're making so much money if they wanted to They could give every wrestler, you know, double, triple what they're paying them.

They could.

I don't know where they're going with this, but that's going to be the interesting thing: how this affects the pay scale going forward.

Well, talking about the numbers, Brian,

the numbers have gotten ridiculous, ridiculous, as Corey Macklin would say, on the

pay scale side, but they're also ridiculous on the

grosses side, but they're also sometimes ridiculous on the publicly released attendance figures side.

And there has been a revision

to the all-in-Texas with the big stadium show.

There's been a revision based on public documents that were given out by the city because now Tony's playing the game.

He's getting,

you call it a rights fee, a site fee.

He's getting money from the local government to bring

his his show to the local municipality and bring all these tourists and all these spectators but whereas

the wwe has these major cities bidding against each other and the saudis kidnapping wrestlemania and all these major stadiums chucking in millions of dollars

apparently

tony went to the city of arlington i guess and said hey that's where it is arlington right the stadium That's right.

Or in my thing in Texas stadium.

And that's where they did a residency last summer, too.

Yeah, well, they went to Arlington and they got the stadium, but they got paid an amount or agreed to be paid an amount depending on a certain attendance, and they didn't hit that figure.

So instead of getting a million dollars, they're going to, they have to settle for like

70% of a million dollars or whatever because they didn't hit the attendance figure.

But in

revealing that information

they revealed how many people were there and it's about 7 000 light of what

everybody else was saying according to what i'm doing from memory do you have actual figures there yeah i have something here from wrestle nomics and i believe brandon thurston of wrestle nomics is the one who broke this story he's the one who was actually writing to the local government there looking for the information

Overestimated attendance will result in lower funding, but AEW will still get hundreds of thousands in reimbursements.

AEW all in Texas qualified for public reimbursement dollars through the Texas Event Trust Fund program.

So, by the way, your tax dollars are now going to support the starving AEW wrestlers.

According to records obtained by WrestleNomics, the governor's office initially approved just over $1 million in combined state and local funding to help cover expenses for AEW's biggest event of the year.

AEW will end up getting somewhat less than that amount because attendance for the event at Globe Life Field in Arlington was lower than expected.

The funding was based on an estimated attendance of 33,490,

including 32,500 spectators, and that was a projection from February.

Let's stop there.

You would have to think

Texas isn't saying, here's what we project.

This is them working in conjunction with Tony Kahn, Chris Harrington, AEW,

and coming up with what they thought was a reasonable number that February,

this past February, I guess.

Yes.

To get people in there.

You know, what do you think of that?

That that, I mean, would anyone have made that projection in February who was following AEW and their attendance?

I don't.

Well, besides, did Uncle Dave ever say they were going to do that much?

He would have probably been the one.

But

again, you're pulling a number out of your ass.

Really, whatever you extrapolate

show that far out of what it's going to do

in any company in wrestling.

So they were just hopefully a little smoking, a little of the hopium, and they didn't want to go too far because they, then the city would say, well, where else have you done these type of things?

Well, Wimbley, where else?

Oh, well, Wimbley.

So I think they tried to make it something probably that was still get them some money and that they thought might be achievable, but at the same time, wouldn't raise any red flags where the city was going to delve into it for more information.

But they ended up,

Tony was claiming it would be 29,000 at the end of the show.

Oh, it all said and done about 29,000 people.

That's right.

And I think the

ticket sales sales were actually 27,000, but that includes

or tickets distributed,

including tickets sold.

But the point is, how many did the state now or the city or whoever's issuing this document,

how many did they say actually were there in the building now?

The number in the building, according to the official documents,

the actual attendance was 23,759,

including 21,973 spectators.

So when we get the 23 figure, that includes all of the employees and crew people, everybody else, and the total number of humans in the building and spectators was just under 22,000.

So it's still a

hell of a crowd.

Yay.

But the problem is, is that now we see

what were tickets sold originally reported as?

Was it up to 27 something thousand?

WrestleTick said that.

WrestleTick said it was 27,000 and change.

Was that sold or distributed?

Distributed.

Okay.

Because what's happening is

there is always a percentage of a live event, a concert, a football game.

What are people buy tickets to?

Even if it's sold out, there's a certain percentage

of people who will not, for whatever reason,

not show up, fucking can't get a babysitter, got sick, got run over on the fucking interstate, whatever it is.

And that's normal with any event.

And I think we've illustrated in the past when

we've talked about big show attendance and versus this and that, that

a lot of times it can be eight or 10%,

eight, 10, 12% thereabout.

When you have a big event and you're dealing with multiple people coming from different, more far-off places,

but going from

27,000 distributed to 22,000,

that's 5,000, that's about 20%.

That would be heavy.

And that night, Tony Khan said 29,000.

He thought it would be.

Well, yeah, when all was said and done.

Well, all's been said and done and it wasn't.

But the point I'm making is I think a lot of those are comps that they had out that people

got the tickets for free and weren't that motivated and didn't come.

And the only reason there's that many comps is either if you're going to die and you just got to get people in there, or you've gotten a ton of advertising.

But to have,

you know, 22, and that 21,973 is still a spectator number instead of paid attendance, right?

That's the paid attendance

was not a

they weren't working with the payment they make from the government on a paid attendance.

It was the amount of people.

And that may be another reason why they threw out a bunch of fucking tickets.

Like get people in here because then we're going to lose this million dollars or a portion of it.

Remember my idea last week of Tony Khan buying 500,000 smart TVs to help himself with the new ratings methodology?

Maybe Tony Khan went and bought 6,000 tickets.

just in case I need them.

Well, and in all honesty, he's taking money from his left pocket and putting it in his right pocket.

Exactly.

So, but nevertheless,

they still did a lot of people, but we don't know how many were paid, but they didn't do nearly as many as they claimed they did.

They also didn't do nearly as many events as they promised Arlington, because apparently there's a whole schedule of events, including CMLL and Ring of Honor and all these different things.

And yeah, they had a whole series of events planned, and not everything happened.

So it's not even just they didn't hit their attendance,

you know, marks.

They didn't hit the event marks.

They didn't hit all the things that they promised they were going to do.

You know, this is the first time we've really heard about this with AEW in North America.

If they've done it in other places, I don't think we've ever seen any of the data.

But this doesn't look good if you under-deliver.

You know, if anything, you want to promise less and over-deliver.

Underperform,

underperform.

In February of this past year, things were so dead.

I could be wrong because I'm, you know, I'm just thinking off the top of my head.

I remember things being so dead that we would have been shocked if they got 20,000 there.

I think that was like 15,000, 20,000.

It felt dead.

Wasn't that about the period of time where they were in the music hall in Cincinnati and

you know, some other

small facility.

But

the point is, again,

it's another example of real numbers coming out that don't make

wrestling look as hot as even we might have thought it was here.

And whether it's Tony's inflated attendances or

the

bottom dropping out of the ratings market with the new systems or whatever, it's, you know.

It don't look good.

Just everything was sunshine, lollipops, rainbows, and and waterfalls back several months ago and now it's just all going to hell in a handbasket as mama cornette used to say

i don't know have you got any tko stock brian i do not have any tko stuff that stock has done well actually though yeah but see what goes up must come down

what must rise must also fall

Notice A

doesn't talk about Arthur Ashe Stadium anymore.

That seems to be a thing that they'll never do again.

But anyway, go back to you.

I'm sorry.

Well,

I heard they were renovating that place.

There's renovations going on there.

They're turning it into a peep show after the AEW fans found out where it was.

The regular tennis snoobs, snoobs, snobs, snooty, snooty snobs from the tennis people won't go there anymore.

So they're turning it into an adult theater and a peep show booth so they can get the AEW crowd back in.

But nevertheless, what I was about to say was you know what we'd all need to do brian is we need to tighten our belts we need to figure out ways to do things differently because the wrestling promotions now

they're trying to squeeze every dollar they can out of us and at the same time

so is everybody else and at the same time

the

has never been worth watching for free any more than it is right now

You know how we're going to be able to do that, Brian?

Have you figured out where I'm going with this?

I have not figured it out, and I can't wait to see what it's like to get there.

Well, I'll tell you what, you don't have to jump the shark.

You got to surf the shark.

Surf shark, VPN, our brand new friends, folks.

If you think that the wrestling companies have jumped the shark with how much they're trying to charge you and make you pay and the hoops that you have to jump through just to watch their programming, then you got to surf the shark and go to our friends at surfshark.com because they

have the key.

Not only, we've established that the smart TVs and the smart stoves, the smart refrigerators, the smart microwave, and I'm looking at you, you fucking can opener.

I don't trust my fucking can opener.

I think it's the one that got my toaster pregnant.

But all of them are talking to each other and they're talking about us.

Well, you need a VPN to protect you

Because all you got to do is sign up with the folks at Surfshark.

And then not only, Brian, will you be able to protect your identity and secure your privacy,

but also

you'll be able to tell these streaming companies where you want them to be that they think you are.

or potentially where you want to be that you want to make them think you.

Point is, you don't have to be in Canada, folks, to get the commercial free WWE on the Canadian Netflix

you can just tell surfshark to tell these greedy son of a bitches that you're in Montreal or Vancouver or maybe even

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You were making so much sense a minute ago and then it kind of took a turn there.

But yeah, this is a great way.

You know, we've talked so much about what a hassle it is to access WWE events all over the world right now because they're on this platform or that platform.

This is a way to mitigate that.

And just say, hey, I'm Canadian.

Yeah.

And you got to say that.

Take it all the good stuff.

That's That's right.

Canadian Netflix and all sorts of content you're blocked out of.

You're not on their schedule.

They're on your schedule.

Decide what you want to see and when you want to see it.

And this is a great deal for the listeners, especially with WWE.

I mean, as we're recording, Crown Jewel Perth is coming up 8 a.m.

on the East Coast.

What a pain in the butt.

But now with Surfshark, I guess I'll still watch it at 8 a.m., but I can watch it on the platform if I can watch it.

Surfshark will not help you change the time of day.

However,

you got to go to a completely different site for that.

I know they're good, but it's just not their area of expertise.

But at the same time, folks, that you can watch all of this content that we all talk about on the wrestling programs, you can protect your privacy from all these snoopy people.

Because they are a VPN, and the P stands for privacy, and the V stands for very.

Very privacy network.

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All right.

Well, as we mentioned, Brian, at the top of the program this past week was the big showdown,

showdown at the Oh Crap Corral where

NXT went head-to-head with TNA or TNA went head to head with NXT, depending on how you phrase it.

They were on Tuesday night.

That's NXT's normal night.

TNA was bumped one night early due to network programming.

AEW, you mean?

Or AEW.

What did I say?

Well, because NXT is feuding with TNA, you, I think, confused AEW with TNA for this example.

So you're saying...

Well, there's TNA and NXT.

Yeah.

So that's one show, and then AEW is the separate show.

Yes.

Yes.

That's what I'm trying to say.

God damn it.

I'm looking at my notes here where it's NXT versus TNA

on one channel and AEW versus my goddamn last nerve on the other channel.

Somehow I've dropped my pen.

Hold on.

See, that's what happens.

The wrestling war just makes you go crazy.

The point is, NXT was on its normal night on the CW network.

And AEW was

on Tuesday night opposite because of network programming.

And TNA was infiltrating NXT for their big showdown over there.

And

we know,

we knew going in, nobody would suggest anything different.

The chances are that

were that NXT was going to win the night because it's their normal night and normal everything, whereas TNA is off kilter here, or TNA.

AEW is off-kilter here.

They're not the only ones.

But they're not the only one.

But the question was going to be, how bad was it going to be and what was going to happen?

And for this occasion, I watched both shows.

And I was thinking with NXT,

am I going to see anybody that

Am I going to see a brawn breaker?

We haven't paid attention to the show in a while.

Am I going to see somebody that snatches my attention?

Am I going to see something that gives me hope for the future?

And also, what does their show look like that they are putting on, the content of it versus what AEW would do?

And I've got to admit that NXT

had the match of the night of both shows, by so far it wasn't close.

I'm not sure but whether or not that might be faint praise.

We will delve into that, but

holy God, I felt so sorry for the Hardies.

Matt and Jeff Hardy, at this point in their life, at this,

at the ages that they are, whatever their ages are, and their status in the wrestling industry.

Jesus Christ, they don't deserve what they got on this program.

They had a match.

They are the

or were the TNA tag team champions coming in

facing the NXT tag team champions, a team called Dark State.

Apparently there's four of them.

Only two of them ended up wrestling.

They picked the wrong two.

They had to have.

What the fuck?

Have you seen a heel team that has been less ready for television in the last several years than Dark State?

I have not been a big Hardies fan, but they were not the problem here.

And Dark State was not very impressive.

They were in a very dark state.

Florida.

I will say you can't rely on the crowd reactions here because they were at the performance center.

It's their friends and family crowd.

So they were liking everything.

The hardies are over.

I think we can all agree on that.

But even the crowd here couldn't,

there was some roars and some chuckles when this,

the first thing that happened was the four heels came out and just got in the ring and attacked the hardys.

And then within seconds, the hardies turned it around and just cleared the whole ring out of all four heels.

And then as the four guys were surrounding them,

they just jerked one guy in, and the referee kicked two of them out.

And the referee rang the bell and they started the match.

Okay, so then

I waited for a while to hear the announcers say the names of the two individual guys in Dark State.

And after a while, I forgot to pay attention.

So I'm not sure what.

Oh, Osiris and Lennox.

I jotted it down.

The first heel double team.

They grabbed Jeff Hardy.

And instead of grabbing him by both arms and shooting him off into the ropes where he would come back and they would do something like you normally do, shoot the guy forward.

They grabbed him by both arms and they shot him backwards where he was backing into the ropes.

And

that doesn't really work anyway, right?

You can't get any fucking oomph into a backhanded arm shoot off.

But as he's coming back, the heels

instead of going for like a double elbow or a double clothesline or what they both started doing something different.

One was going for a gut shot, and the other would look like he was going high.

And Jeff just kind of ran in and squinched his face up.

And when he felt contact on his midsection, he took a bump.

The other guy had never even thrown anything.

So he decided, since he didn't get to hit him the first time, as Jeff took took a bump and sat up and was like selling,

the other heel went for a fucking leg drop.

On a guy that's sitting straight up.

And he just dropped flat of his ass right behind Jeff, missed completely, never touched Jeff's body in any fashion, just leg dropped the mat.

And then Jeff.

heard the big bam behind him and thought he'd kicked him or something and took a big bump back off his ass.

Like, oh, golly.

What the fuck?

Jeff didn't move

when the guy went for the leg drop.

Jeff was sitting there and he was still sitting there when the guy hit the mat.

He just missed a stationary sitting target.

And I wrote, Osiris might not have made OVW-TV at this stage of his game.

Lennox is green, but he's got some potential.

But then

they got the heat on Jeff.

Matt made a comeback

and they stopped him and it went back and forth.

And the heels were going to go for the doomsday device on Matt.

And Osiris had Matt up on his shoulders.

Good God.

For some reason, as Lennox is going to the top rope to come off of the clothesline,

Matt is struggling, trying, you know, like in a working way, trying to punch the guy in the head or get off his shoulders or whatever.

And maybe it was going to be a deal.

Whereas they got set up, Matt struggled back off of him and did something.

I don't know.

Because as the, as Osiris was turning Matt around and Linux was getting set,

Osiris just suddenly let Matt's legs go.

And Matt tried to,

he grabbed a guy at a camel clutch, trying to hang on to his back because he was about to go over backwards.

Like, what the fuck?

And he grabs the guy under the chin,

and that throws Osiris all off.

And Matt struggling like he's trying to ride the bull at Gillies.

And Osiris's legs buckled with the weight going sideways, and they fell in a heap.

And Matt caught on to the top rope and just punched Lennox, who was on the turnbuckle, and then gave a twist of fate to Osiris, a twist of fate to Linnox, tag Jeff, Swanton off top, one, two, three.

Good Lord.

I always told guys when they were having dark matches, tryout matches, when they were doing seminars, whatever,

degree of difficulty of five and an execution of 10 will get you a job, not the other way around.

Hawai Brian, your thoughts.

Well, again, you haven't seen the Hardys in a while.

We lost.

We lost.

We last saw them in AEW,

and it was what it was.

And we talked about it in real time.

This is your first exposure to the dark state.

It sounds like you don't even think they're ready for a dark match.

It's a dark day.

Yeah, that was rough.

It was rough.

What does that tell you about the WWE?

I mean, because again, this is developmental still, even though there's people that are ready for the main roster if the time were now.

There's still a lot of people that it's almost like they're in wrestling school.

What did you think of in terms of what this says about the training system there?

Well, that's the thing.

Well, it's not necessarily an indictment of the whole training system, but

these guys were the tag team champions.

Now the Hardys are dual champions.

They've got both, and they'll do something with that, I'm sure.

But

the fact that these guys,

I never

put the belts on anybody in OVW, any tag tag team that could not have outworked these guys and we had

25 or 30 guys in a warehouse and they've got an entire training program with

unlimited budget for all intents and purposes especially compared to what anybody else has ever worked with

there's got to be a better tag team

unless these guys just

had nervous breakdowns and fell apart because, well, they're on national TV every week.

That's the problem.

Developmental doesn't need to be on national television because you see guys having matches like this, and this

those

ups were shit that you, and you've seen a number of OVW television programs.

Guys would miss shit or show greenness, but there was no

obvious fuck-ups to the level that we're, and we're going to talk about here again in a second that were on this program.

It's being broadcast to the nation.

And these guys, it's like,

you know, showing the fucking guys with their pants down before they're dressed.

It's like they're not ready for this.

They're not ready for a wide audience.

A lot of work.

Need a lot of work.

You know what they had next on this program that I was trying to let impress me, Brian, NXT?

The Women's Survivor Series match.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

They had four women from TNA

and four women from NXT with Jordan Grace,

I guess, has gone both ways

as the referee of the thing.

And as a Survivor Series elimination match, the segment started with entrances at 9:24

and ended 28 minutes, no, third, 29 minutes later.

and i don't know all these girls names and i didn't give a

but did you see the finish yes i watched the match

what did you think about the one girl doing a reverse zinc you know the fosberry flop is a recognized

recognized high jumping technique.

I think the zinc should forever be known as when somebody looks like they're just trying to commit suicide in a wrestling ring and just diving into the unknown with nobody there.

She did a reverse zinc.

So

two of the girls carefully helped each other balance on the top rope, and then they both backflipped off.

And I was going to say that I didn't realize which one had really taken the brunt of the blow, but that was established seconds later when one of the girls

just jumped right up and ran back up to the top rope

to come off with a 450 splash on the other girl.

So I assume that girl backflipped off the top rope with the girl and said, Well, there's no reason for me to, just because I've given her a move off the top rope, no reason for me to cover.

I'll go back up to the top rope and jump off again.

So she goes back to the top rope

and she jumps off to do a 450 splash on the other girl, but the other girl got her knees up.

Kind of sort of, because the flipping girl landed on her feet first and then kind of rolled forward across the knees.

So it looked a little suspect.

Then

the girl who raised her knees leaped up to her feet, ran toward the ropes away from her opponent.

jumped up on the second rope

and did an inverted.

It wasn't a backflip.

It wasn't a moonsault.

It was a forward flip, but she was moving backwards.

She jumped off the second rope, did a forward flip while moving backwards, and was supposed to

catch the other girl with a Cody cutter.

But she came up like three feet short and just landed in front of the other girl.

She might have grabbed her cheek with her hand on the way down when she reached out and boom, right in front and then the girl realized she'd gone past her and she just fell forward anyway

but then

our old friend Jane Wayne Gacy remember her

from back when we used to watch NXT before we regained a level of sanity

Jane Wayne Gacy is the NXT champion now

So she had blind tagged the girl who missed the Cody cutter and she jumped in.

Now, the girl that missed the cutter, it looked like she fucked herself up.

Bam.

She probably knocked the breath out of herself.

But the other girl.

You haven't given any names.

I believe that was Saul Rucka or Ruka, whatever, however you're pronouncing it.

Saul Rucka.

Saul right now.

Well, she landed there in a heap, but the other girl just kind of fell face forward.

But that was the girl that needed to drop the fall.

So Jane Wayne Gacy had blind tagged Saul Rucka,

who, and then Jane ran in and stole the pin on

Faceplant Girl.

Christ on a cracker, 30 minutes to get there.

What'd you think?

Every time I say anything negative about NXT, people just go crazy.

I always say it's not a great show, and people are like, it's a great show.

No, it's not a good wrestling show.

It's like professional AEW.

And this match went forever.

I like the best of the women's division in wrestling.

I've raved about recently Stephanie Vecer matches.

You know what I mean?

Like, I like the good stuff.

It was just a whole lot of stuff.

You could appreciate some of the athleticism, but it almost looks like if you watch it and you've watched wrestling for a long time,

not people who are naturals, but people who are like, have just been taught how to react or how to turn around and sell like your body's in motion, even like nothing seemed real at times.

And as a professor,

they're doing everything on purpose not by just feeling it and doing it they're trying to do everything as is what you're saying and you can tell that they're remembering the things they need to do as they go along yeah again just that whole ending sequence of the whatever the spanish fly or whatever it was off the top rope

uh the then the uh 450 which came up a little short because they knew what they were about to do and then the botched ending where you know it was just one was shorter than the other and didn't get there in time.

I just nothing felt,

no one felt like a natural in there.

It just felt like a bunch of people that were taught the same way to kind of react the same way to things and do things.

And,

you know, I don't know.

Again, I like the best stuff in women's wrestling.

These are, for the most part, people that WWE brought into their system and trained from scratch, and it shows.

I've noticed a lot of the WWE women's division at the newer part of the division is

looking like more like competitive gymnastics and a little bit of the parkour than.

Yeah.

I mean, they're all about sports entertainment.

Literally, they should start like a volleyball team.

They would kill everyone.

What about full contact volleyball

where they actually get to fucking nail you over the net and shit, like fucking spike your head as well as the ball?

Well, I mean,

again, it may not be the best sport for full contact, but

Well, maybe, okay, make it a ball, a lead ball with spikes.

They should do that.

Remember, like, Battle of the Network stars?

It should be like Battle of

the Superstars, not good enough for TV and just have them all compete in like athletic endeavors and air that instead of like LFG for a few weeks.

LFG.

Now, was that the Legados Del Fantasmos?

No, that's not.

There's a D and not a G.

This is a G.

And we're back to

what we're talking about.

NXT.

Yes.

The North American title was on the line with Ethan Page

taking on our old friend from the WWE, Muhammad Ali.

Mustafa.

Him too.

And remember, I said that NXT had the match of the night from both shows, and it wasn't even close.

This was fucking it.

And

I'm going to preface it by saying, yes, people are going to say, oh, Cornette, they still did a little too much in places and they still got to slow down a little bit.

And it wasn't perfect.

But

these guys recognized that they had a main event spot or not a featured spot, let's say,

on the fucking TV show.

And they want to get over and they work their ass off.

And they nailed

a high percentage, 90-something percent of whatever they tried to do.

They kept the pace up.

They had interesting and innovative spots and moves.

They, again, it was a little, it was, it was modern.

They went a little too far in some aspects, but

the spots, the pace, the work, the effort,

the break spot, Paige swung Ali throat first into the post in a strange way that I can't describe, but it looked neat.

There was a spot where Paige dropped Ali face first on the top turnbuckle and then hit him with a big kick.

And Ali took a bump ass over tea kettle.

And Paige went for the cover, and Ali backbridged out and then collapsed from the effort.

It was odd, but it got a pop.

There were some different things here.

Ali took a hell of a face first

into a lower turnbuckle for a two-count, and he gave a nice tornado DDT for another two-count.

And right as they went for this,

Ali did a big dive, and both of them went over the announce desk of what a bump that was.

I wrote, they're hitting everything, but they're pressing their luck.

I'm like,

something's going to go bad unless they go because the people were with it.

And

Ali's, when they came back from the bump over the goddamn desk, Ali's foot was wrapped in one of the audio or camera cables.

And the way that he did it,

I'm not even sure yet that it wasn't an accident because he got it around his leg and it stopped him.

It distracted him as he was trying to climb to the top rope.

And I'm wondering, did he fasten it that well

and that smoothly and do it that realistically?

Or was it just a happy mistake or happy moment?

But Paige pushed him off the turnbuckle all the way almost to the railing,

boom, and then threw him in with the cable still around his leg and hit a twist of fate on him.

One, two, three.

Yeah, that push looked pretty brutal.

I think he wanted to go about two feet farther and land a little different way,

but it, but he

knock on woody's all right.

But

again,

it wasn't perfect.

It was starting to be a little much, but by far the match of both shows, and they did it in 15 minutes.

So the time flew by because they were, they were busy.

Shit was going on, but they didn't stay forever.

And they would actually sell shit

at some point in the middle of things to give it some some oomph.

And the fans were in this.

Yes.

And again, hometown, that's their building.

But there was some other things that night that they weren't nearly that much into.

They didn't need any,

they didn't need to be biased to like this.

So that was of this show.

That was the thing.

That I remember and

really that I would have watched on purpose if I was just a regular guy walking down the the street, peeping into people's windows to watch their TV.

So, obviously, it started with pure hatred because of his silliness and TNA.

And then in AEW, you would watch Ethan Page.

I would tell you, I thought he was all right, but he really didn't get a chance to do too much shit.

And some of the stuff he was involved with was just terrible.

Now that he's in NXT, what do you think of him?

Seeing him actually work a one-on-one match that isn't surrounded by silliness or anything?

No, he's good.

He's good technically,

and he obviously mentally knows how to put this shit together to where they did a heck of a job here.

I'm sorry to say that I think he can be employed in some aspect for some time.

With the physique and just the general overall aura, I don't see him as a main event guy, but

he's also,

he was better here than many of the fucking folks that we see on the roster on a weekly basis.

I mean, the main roster is what I'm saying.

So

he's got something, but we're not looking at the next Braun Breaker here.

I'm sorry.

You know what else I was sorry about?

Did you watch one of those backstage segments?

I don't know.

No, I skipped all of that because time was limited, but I was sorry that that wasn't the main event.

They had to give us one more match.

We had the men's eight-man

TNA versus NXT elimination match with special referee Joe Hendry, who also, like Jordan Grace, goes both ways.

And

works in both places, just to clarify.

Yes, he's not on either side, TNA or NXT.

That's right.

He's been in both fucking.

Trying to find some subvertive thing to say.

I see what's going on here.

He's been in both positions.

He's been on both ends of the spectrum, so to speak.

This was TNA's team was Moose

Santana, Mike Santana, formerly of AEW, Frankie Kazarian,

who I love.

He's a great worker, great athlete, great guy.

He looks like he'd been microwaved.

He's really tanning.

And

who else was the other fellow on that team?

God damn it.

Dick Slater.

Was that his name?

It was Dick Slater.

It was Slater, somewhat Heath Slater.

No, Leon Slater.

Oh, Leon.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe.

Sounds right.

Could be.

Carlos Slater.

I don't know.

Anyway, they were against Team NXT of Javon Evans, Miles Bourne, Trick Williams, and Ricky Starks slash Saints.

And they,

the entrances were 10 minutes.

And then

here's the thing.

Now you've got eight more guys.

Everybody looks like an athlete.

There's no,

you know, there's nobody in this group that was like the tag team champions in the Seg One and just didn't need to be on television.

But it was 100 miles an hour with move after move.

You can barely keep straight who's on whose side when they're moving in and out that quickly or who's on whose team.

Nobody fucked up anything that I saw, but I zoned out.

And the highlight was they had a spot for Javon Evans where he could come in and dive everywhere and do all his shit right before he got eliminated.

And he

dove over the top on Moose and almost landed on his head, but he did this and that and the other thing.

And

he's a bouncy, bouncy young fellow is what he is.

And he bounced all over the place.

And then

he missed some kind of kick on Kaz and got pinned.

And I would, again,

I liked it, loved the match with Sami Zayn the other night on whichever show it was.

He needs to slow down.

And I'm not.

Again, people are going to court and say, oh, man, he's telling him, slow down.

That's why he's popular because he's so fast.

He does all that stuff.

I'm not saying slow down and grab a headlock.

Slow down enough to hit everything and don't break your own neck.

That level of slow down.

There was a point where he was running from thing to thing so quickly to hit everything and make people excited.

And that's his big moment before he gets eliminated.

But you could tell when he went for that dive over the top on Moose,

where he was going to cannonball him, and Moose was supposed to catch him in like a fucking upside-down type of powerbomb position.

The one time that Evans didn't get a lot of bounce, bouncy,

was when he went over the top rope and

he had done these things beforehand.

And you could tell as he was going over, he looks like he's not as fast as he was a second ago.

His legs may have given out.

He didn't get the jump on that.

And he almost went headfirst to the floor before Moose could catch him around his thighs.

And because Moose is

so stout, he was able to

keep him from landing on his fucking head.

But he needs to slow down enough in between his things to get his bearing, to get his balance, to breathe for just one beat and hit everything perfectly rather than trying to just, what do the kids say, spam it all over the place and just do everything as fast as possible.

That kind of slowed down.

And finally,

Trick

walked out on Saints.

And that was the

thing that left Saints in the ring against Santana and Moose two-on-one.

And Saints sold and then hit Santana with super kick.

dodged Moose, who speared Santana, which was very nice, nice spot, nice timing.

And then Saints dumped Moose and covered fucking Santana at a two count.

I was like, that would have been a great finish.

But then

Santana and Saints did a docey-doe

and Moose powerbombed Saints.

And then Santana hit a clothesline and won, two, three.

So TNA won, but it took.

the two guys to beat Ricky Saints.

So

they told a coherent story at the end, but I just, it's like watching shit on Fast Forward through the majority of the match.

This is a professional show.

The talent is level is all over the place, as we saw.

And I mean, it's not insulting or confusing or necessarily this one that I saw, a parody

of wrestling to the extent that AEW has become.

We'll get to that with the

Molotov cocktail hour.

But, you know,

this is not something the NXT show is not something I would look forward to watching on a weekly basis based on this.

Brian, is that far off your mark?

No, I mean, that's kind of the way I feel.

And you're not even talking about any of the backstage segments.

And we didn't see some of the usual characters doing some of the usual vignettes that we've seen in the past.

But, I mean, Ava in the back, those segments are just cringeworthy every time.

I don't know if we have to revisit NXT for a while as far as that main event goes javon evans is incredible that one movie he does where you set him to the ropes and he like jumps into the rope and jumps yes it's so it looks so cool it's not something i've seen too often if ever so uh yeah

that was all right and

and and if he gets over people will start doing it and they've got to Remember, I said I would tell anybody on the same show or same brand that Javon Evans was on.

Nobody else can dive over the top rope.

Fuck it.

This guy's got it.

Why do something second best anyway?

That's what a lot of guys don't realize these days.

In the territory days when there was competition amongst multitudes of wrestlers,

you'd steal some shit when you could that got over,

but you wouldn't do

somebody else's shit around on the same show or in the same territory if the other guy did it better than you.

Because then then you just look like goddamn idiot

but nevertheless yes javon

they need to keep him special

but i don't know brian at this point i know it was a head-to-head thing

but to be honest with you at that point in time

i had to get a little rest i had to take a little nap i had to go to sleep in between shows so that i could

just have the strength and the courage to go on.

Do you blame me?

I can't blame you for that.

It's a long, it's a long road with all this wrestling.

The road is long

with many a winding turn

that leads me to bed.

I go to bed like I'm dead.

And I sleep the sleep of the corpses, ladies and gentlemen.

I sleep the sleep of the undead because I am on a helix sleep mattress and they will put you six feet under baby i'm telling you i'm surprised but we're not telling them that they're not going to put anyone six feet what the hell kind of thing is that to say figuratively six feet under a cloud of wonderful sleep that's what because no i'm surprised if you're sleeping on a helix mattress i'm supply i'm surprised i'm surprised that people who sleep on a helix mattress can even pass a medical test.

If you if they're if you're laying on your back with your hands clasped over your chest on a helix sleep mattress and somebody was to walk by and put a little flower in your hand, you'd pass for a corpse.

They would just go ahead and knock you up.

I'm surprised that you decided to go down this road here, but of course you're not going to be able to.

Well, you don't even have to move around on the side.

I don't think it makes sense.

Why would you be six feet under a cloud?

Why would that be comfort?

It's six feet.

Well, on top of the cloud,

but you're on the cloud.

No difference.

There's no distance between you and that cloud.

A good night's sleep, a Helix sleep, night's sleep.

We love them here.

Why do you want to be in the middle of the cloud?

You won't be able to see shit.

You want to be under the cloud?

Well, most people are.

To see shit.

How many times?

You want to be on your belly or your back?

How many times in your life are you on top of the cloud versus underneath the cloud?

But the whole idea is.

And you can be on your belly or be on your back because Helix has mattresses for people who like to sleep in a variety of positions.

Well, yes.

So whether it's on your back, on your stomach, on your side, missionary, reverse cowgirl, they've got a mattress.

Let's keep it professional.

Well, they got professional mattresses.

These people are paid to make them and they sell them.

They don't give them away.

It's in some amateur goddamn deal.

Helix,

H-E-L-I-X, helixleep.com.

They got professional mattresses all the way around and they got professional people that work on those mattresses.

And if you want to know a professional that works on a mattress you just call up helix sleep and they'll fix you up and now if you've got a a specific issue like snoring or back pain or sleep apnea well sucks to be you but you can feel better on a helix mattress because they got things that'll help that too and all you got to do All you got to do to sleep like you're under a cloud, at least six feet under it.

Some people,

some people are 20, 25,000 feet underneath the cloud.

But sleep, the sleep of

the absolute

peacefulness that comes after you've passed into the great beyond.

Again, people won't be able to know the difference until you start to decompose.

But right now.

Again, let's focus on the living, Jim, and let's focus on a good living situation, which means having a good night's sleep and a good mattress.

You need a mattress you could trust, a mattress that will be there for you.

And Helix Sleep has been there for you.

It's not like the mattress is going to get up and leave on its own.

Once you put it in, it's there for you until you take it out.

You'll never want it to leave.

It is a fantastic sleep.

The walking mattresses are extra.

They have no walking mattresses, and we have no out of this ad.

But what we're trying to say, ladies and gentlemen, what I'm trying to say is, I'm trying to tell you the discount.

Yeah.

I'll tell you what it is.

It's 27%.

You can get 27% off site wide right now exclusively for the listeners of this program.

If you go to helixleep.com slash jce,

helixleep.com slash jce, 27% off site wide.

Any of these fine quality, professionally made mattresses and funeral wreaths and flower arrangements not included.

Because they wouldn't need to be, because again, we're talking about a great life, a great night's sleep.

Many great nights' sleep lead to a great life.

That's what the old mystics say.

And you could have a great night's sleep with Felix Sleep.

One last time, Jim, what's that promo code?

Well,

it's

JCE.

That's what all the old mystics say.

That's right.

How many old mystics do you know?

I can't comment any further about this in a public forum.

On a public forum.

Then let's get back to the private forum.

Yeah, I don't know where I am.

Yes,

under the harvest moon.

So AEW

tried to counteract the dominance on Tuesday nights.

They're a Tuesday night Titan, NXTR.

And AEW tried to counteract this on their special night with Titty Tuesday.

I'm sorry.

Hold on.

That's Title Tuesday.

I couldn't read my writing there.

It would have been more enjoyment if it was Titty Tuesday.

Well,

there was some big floppy titties, but the problem was it was the guys that had them.

Anyway, they were back at Daly's place in Jacksonville, Florida.

And it looks like the set of a game show, but at least they,

you know, they feel at home there.

And they started the show with an in-ring face-to-face with Hangman Adam Page and Samoa Joe.

And this this was a long-awaited confrontation, Brian, because as you will recall,

Samoa Joe and Adam Page got mad at each other six whole fucking days ago.

So I have been

foaming at the mouth to see them go face to face.

They

shot that impromptu thing last week because they didn't have a pay-per-view main event, I guess, because maybe somebody else got one of the people that got hurt, screwed things up, whatever.

So they manufactured a sudden reason for Joe and Paige to be mad at each other.

Joe would be a great heel if they're switching him.

I don't know if they are.

He came out with Hobbes and Shipupi and they all shook hands and then Hobbs and

Ship went to the back.

But if it's more of this indie level, there's no baby faces and no heels bullshit that just confuses an already confusing issue here.

They're wasting their time and they're just going to beat Joe

in the pay-per-view match, and then he's going to go back to being one of these six-man miscellaneous champions.

If they're switching him heel

and he's going to goddamn

have a concerted push going forward,

I wouldn't even mind him dropping the goddamn thing this week.

But I can't believe, or next week, whenever it is, at the pay-per-view,

I can't believe they're going going to put the belt on him, even though I'd like to see it.

So

again, if they're going to switch him heel and put him in a main event spot, this is great.

If they just did this for one show to beat him with Paige, it's getting more and more on my last nerve.

Oh, do you listen to what, again, he doubles down on this type of promo where it's clear that he's not speaking in a natural way?

And then eventually it always ends up with like, bring your best, or I want you at your best, or I used to look up to you, or you should look up to me.

It's a phony delivery with phony enunciations of prepared material that he thinks sounds good in his head.

And he's always got to growl it and sound fierce and like he's a tough guy.

The good, the better thing about this segment was that, unlike

everybody else,

when Paige is droning on and on in this fashion, he's an unappealing and unlikable babyface in traditional terms.

You have to already like him to put up with this.

You have to want to like the concept of him, the idea of him.

But what Joe did was he just stood there and smirked at him, which is what

Samoa Joe, if he was really the guy Samoa Joe is supposed to be, would do to this fucking guy.

He would stand there and smirk at him.

And

Paige goes on about, I gave you a shot because you and the others helped me with Moxley's bunch, but I will not let you take this from me.

Joe cut a promo like a professional wrestler.

He sounds more natural.

He has a tone and a delivery and an inflection.

And

he called Paige a pretender.

He said, we had your back or you wouldn't be the man.

Everything you said was true.

But I forgot who I was, who my target is, the champion, and you are no champion.

And Joe tore him a new asshole verbally with

a pro wrestler's delivery and an attempt to have a serious interview segment that might draw money for a pay-per-view main event.

And he told him he's going to choke him out and win his belt.

Why don't they let this guy fucking go regularly, weekly on television Instead of having green partners and meaningless multiple man belts, they are so short on

either exciting heels or appealing baby faces that Joe could be either.

And then Paige tried to come back on him by yelling louder and tried to sound like a tough guy in front of a guy who could break him in fucking half.

But Joe was still unbothered, even though Paige had the last word.

But

Paige was unintimidating, and I'm interested in seeing what they're going to do with Joe.

But I will not hold out a lot of hope because I think

they just manufactured this for one show, and then he's back in the deep freeze.

What do you think?

I mean, we'll see.

It's weird that they would manufacture this for one show.

At the same time, WWE is manufacturing stuff for one show, but it's weird that they would do that.

Samoa Joe is so much better as a heel.

I know they need top baby faces.

He's not going to be the top babyface.

They need a good heel that isn't in the Moxley group and that isn't in the Don Callis group.

But again, I'm not convinced he's turning heel just yet.

And it seems like Hobbes isn't either.

So we'll see what happens there.

But Adam Page is terrible.

People like him.

People swear that his promos are good.

I guess because he puts so much passion into them.

But if you listen to what he says...

He has a lot of words and enunciates them all clearly.

Yeah, if you listen to what he's saying, he's full of shit and he goes too long.

He goes way too long.

All righty.

Well, speaking of going too long,

I know a couple of guys who have gone about three or four years too long.

They should have retired a while ago.

Dick the Boozer and Ishii.

That's a match we got.

The worst

American wrestler in the world.

I can't say the worst Japanese wrestler in the world, as long as Okada still draws a breath.

But my God,

Moxley took forever to wander into the building.

They rang the bell.

They went forehead to forehead.

Again, Moxley and a Japanese baked potato with arms and legs.

And they talked to each other, and then they traded

33

fake forearms that didn't land and nobody took a bump.

What

who watches this?

Two ugly guys doing fake wrestling.

Why

in what universe, in what planet can you live and look at these two guys just swinging their arms at each other, making no effort to put any body language in, making no contact,

making no fucking effort to facially sell that they've been struck, just repeating it over and over and over and over,

because that's what they're heroes from Japan.

What?

Am I just seeing?

Have I got the Roddy Piper they live glasses on?

Is everybody else seeing them hit each other?

Or what is happening here?

No, it looks bad.

And the other thing is, this match went a while.

Moxley sold more for Tomo Tomohiro Ishii than I think anyone I've seen him in the ring with for the last two years, at least.

He sold more for Ishii

than anyone else.

Nobody thought Ishii was going to win.

Ishii's broken down like everyone else, and Moxley like gave him as much as he could without, you know, giving him the win, which would have been stupid.

But yeah, the stuff doesn't look good.

The trading chops thing or trading blows in the middle of the ring that Moxley always does, it never looks good.

And he goes to it every match.

Sometimes he goes into it after all the heinous shit where it completely doesn't make sense.

But yeah, please, back to your expert review.

Now that I've tried to pour bleach down your throat, I'm going to hit you with a devastating forearm shiver.

And I'm going to wait for you.

I'm going to tell you, do it to me.

Now I want you to do it to me.

Please, please hit me so that I can then in turn hit you again.

It's just so fucking stupid.

And we will do this until we speed up to the point where no one knows what the hell's happening and no one can see that no one's hitting anybody

every time so easy is five feet tall and nothing on him bends

he's like the goddamn tin man before they found the oil can

hey by the way this is title tuesday what title is this for We ain't got there yet.

There ain't no titles up yet.

But it's like watching Sweet Daddy Watts wrestle.

If you've ever wondered, Brian, what it was like watching Sweet Daddy Watts wrestle at 5 feet 4 and 402 pounds.

Yeeshe.

And they went about 15 minutes.

And finally,

the most boring finish possible that you can imagine for these two

would be for him to just grab a hold in the middle of the ring and fucking lay there for a while.

And that's what happened.

Boozer choked him out.

So that was that.

Then

the long-awaited six-man street fight that was challenged for by

MVP on the behalf of the Hurts Syndicate against Ricochet and his Stooges, Tia Leone and Bishop Kahn.

And

as soon as Ricochet and the Stooges came out,

They fill the ring up with the horseshit.

They throw chairs in the ring and they got a garbage can and whatever the fuck.

And of course, this, as we mentioned last week, this kind of

it makes sense with what the Hurts Syndicate have done with these guys, except that they then brought these heels onto TV to have the tag team champions beat them

in between the first match where these guys beat the Hurts and this match where the Hurts wanted revenge.

So it's all fucked up.

But

nevertheless, the Hurts came out in the suits for the street fight.

Brian, do you remember that's what me and the Midnight Express did at Starcade 85.

We came out for the street fight with Ronnie Garvin, and

I should say, Miss Atlanta Lively, and Jimmy Valiant.

We went and got tuxedos.

As a matter of fact, I think I still, the only part of mine that still is

in one piece is the Cummer Bun.

But anyway,

they started a six-way on the ramp.

They had the chairs and the trash cans and the ring.

It was the same shit that everybody does in these

situations.

The Hurt Syndicate looked good because they're grown men

in suits, but and they can work, but

goddamn, this is tough.

The big one,

Leone, is not good.

Not good at all.

Not good in a variety of ways.

How?

Let me count the ways.

I can't.

And nobody cares about the heels because Ricochet only has

this guy's kind of an annoying douchebag heat.

And poor Bishop Khan has the potential of the bunch of them because he's got size unlike Ricochet, but he's also can work a little unlike Leone.

But

a street fight is above these heels.

Ricochet doesn't know how, and the other two are too green.

And they barely use the ring for a lot of it.

They broke two tables ongoing in the match.

And then Ricochet,

they put Shelton on a table in the middle of the ring after they've already broken two.

And then Ricochet does a backflip off the top rope onto a splash onto Shelton, and he's so small it didn't break the table.

And the people are like, eh.

So two more guys just ran and jumped on it and broke it.

And

why did they break the other tattoo tables first if they were setting up that spot?

But hold on, there's more.

They got another table in the ring.

I wrote this one in.

Lashley speared all three of them

and put Leone through a table on the floor.

So there's number four.

And then all three of the Hurt Syndicate cornered Ricochet,

and Shelton hooked Ricochet and gave him a big German suplex and threw him through another table.

Number five.

And then Shelton covered him one, two, three.

Besides, what in the world?

Five tables.

What does it mean?

Somebody's going to get stabbed one of these days through the goddamn intestines with a table shard for some spot that they've done four times previously in a match.

It took almost 20 minutes.

It was not good.

And I believe it damaged the Hurt Syndicate's aura and reputation to win this match.

Because it just, it ain't working.

There's no chemistry here.

Am I lying, Brian?

No,

you're not lying, Brian.

The Ricochet thing to me hasn't been working.

They brought him in with a bunch of fanfare.

They pretty quickly turned him heel and then made him an annoying heel that you didn't take seriously.

They gave him the.

But now, hold on.

They didn't turn him heel.

He turned himself heel.

Yeah, the fans turned him heel.

Yeah, the fans said, you know what?

We realize now that you're allowed to be yourself.

You're a goddamn douchebag.

And they capitalized on that by months later creating a faction for him and the Gates of Agony, who have been in multiple factions so far in AEW, I believe, and hadn't won a match.

Didn't Don Callis have them at one time and trade them to somebody else when he'd never had them before?

Or was that vice versa?

I'm not sure.

I know Jake.

Didn't Jake sell them to somebody?

No, Jake sold the Mexican wrestlers to Don Callis us in exchange or no he got mexican wrestlers back in exchange for lance archer

that's what it was oh and then we never saw jake ever again he must be in mexico

if jake goes to mexico i bet you you'll have a problem getting him back i think they were part of prince nana's stable

and then

that kind of became

something else

Again, look, I don't know.

Yeah.

I like the Hurts Syndicate.

The fans seem to too.

I mean, the fans are still chanting for them when they come out.

They get into it.

But that's not going to last forever if they don't have the right opponents and something that people could really sink their teeth into.

Well, it not lasts forever.

It's already kind of

cooled off because there was more of that and more vehemence for it when they were

again when they were the tag team champions and looking good and they needed opponents and Tony had made no opponents that were credible enough for them.

I've heard people say, well, they don't want to put so-and-so over, but put so-and-so over.

No shit.

No shit.

Because here are professionals

that know and can assess talent and evaluate who they can work with.

And they say, okay, so our choice is this fucking team, this fucking team, or this fucking team, or Hong Kong Fuy and his best friend.

They didn't come there

and sign, and probably this will be their last run in a major promotion because of age and et cetera.

They didn't come there just to play in the ring with Ricky Steamboat's fucking daughter

or some goddamn

combination that Tony has slapped together on the spur of the moment.

They came to get over and then establish some serious talent.

And Tony has put no serious talent in front of him to establish.

So they're having to make shit out of fucking toothpaste and duct tape.

You know what I would do?

You know what I would do?

What would you do?

In a few months or whenever it is, whenever MJF returns, I don't care how you get around the stupid announcement they made.

He cashes in.

He cashes in.

He wins the belt.

The only thing they've built up that I was interested in that never happened, go into an MJF Bobby Lashley program and draw it out.

Don't go right to the match.

Give it time, but go right to the Hurt Syndicate.

We're supposed to help MJV.

MJF, that's his name.

Supposed to help him.

He did it on his own.

And there's a reason for them not to like him.

At least there is a feud that someone will care about.

But other than that, the Hurt Syndicate, who's the best.

And if

they'd have stuck with that when MJF was in the thing and had them in the group and had the tensions boil over, and finally there's the thing with MJF and Bobby,

with one, with MJF having the championship, that they could have helped him.

Who knows what they were going to do before they just said, oh, we're not going to do any of this and just took it away.

But then you would have MJF versus Lashley with a personal issue behind it.

And Lashley is the baby face that people are going to want to see hurt.

people and that people would be MJF and you'd have something.

Good Lord, but they couldn't finish that like they can't finish anything else

so you know what happened next brian we were treated to the returning

tag team of dino douche and jungle jackoff

and they wrestled i don't know and i don't care did you get any names from these people Were they even announced?

No, I mean, I missed it.

This was a squash match, which shows you how squash matches could work nowadays.

Just let guys go out there and, you know, win quickly and get them over.

But I didn't get the names, though.

But having said that, you got to be judicious with who you choose to try to get over because we're back in 2020.

The only thing, he's not in his loincloth.

He's still dressing like a mechanic with an empty knife holster on his belt, like a hunting knife is supposed to go there.

But it would be somewhat ridiculous if you let a guy wrestle while he was wearing a hunting knife visually.

so why don't he take the goddamn holster off?

What is that a fashion now with these young jackoffs that are sons of legitimate stars?

No, I think it's a thing where if CM Punk kicks the shit out of you, you start carrying a knife.

I'm not going to let this happen again.

Come get me now, punk.

Either that or they're building up to a celebrity crossover with Mark Sanchez.

Brunch Sancho.

All right.

Well, maybe it was that knife.

He had an empty knife thing.

Maybe it was.

Yeah, maybe it was that knife.

There's, it's been taken for evidence.

The baby faces won in two minutes over these guys.

But there's, again, the kid except the loincloth and the fucking dinosaur.

It's five years ago.

It was underneath then.

The people like hearing the Baltimore, so they can go, oh,

whatever.

But seriously,

he's five years older and deeper in debt is jungle jack the hardley boys

were watching with the other marks in the stands this match and then they came to the ring and pulled jungle jack out

and then they got in the ring and made the

big production of leaping into dino's double choke slam grip

But then they double ball kicked him and gave him the shitty needle.

And now they've got the giant lizards selling that shitty little double knee lift that they do

that has never looked good.

And there's not even any way to take a bump off of it.

It's just blah.

And then

they double super kicked Jungle Jack.

Lil Nikki never even took his glasses off.

So they're really taking this seriously.

And then they challenged him for a match at the pay-per-view and gave Jungle Jack off the phony flipping tombstone.

And nobody cared.

They didn't care that the buckaroos beat these babyfaces up.

And they didn't care that the babyfaces are going to get a match with the buckaroos.

They don't care.

What are

the Hardley boys right now, little Maddie and Nikki?

What are they contributing?

Everything is either comedy with tongue in cheek and just they're jacking off

or they come out and do an angle like this that nobody they don't fart people don't care and then they have a match where they do the same shit they always do

is what are they contributing to this operation

nothing

they're contributing what are they contributing to the budget that may be uh

a different thing there but

Yeah, I mean, they even tried to play into the throwback of them punching Jack Perry in the gut the same way Jack Perry had done to Tony Khan in the exact same building.

Why would you want to remind anyone of that?

Why would you want to remind anyone of the angle that went nowhere that everyone said was a joke that AEW Fince said, no, sit back, watch this, and then it went nowhere and it was a complete joke.

But that's what they did.

You know, let Jurassic Express and Young Bucks work together.

I think it should be, you know, best of nine.

Just let them work together for the next year and build up the rest of the show, not having to deal with the Bucks crowd.

Well, then we had the Battle of the Kyles: Kyle Felcher against Kyle Brozlovsky.

I'm sorry, it's Kyle O'Reilly.

You know, this was a shame that I didn't care because Kyle O'Reilly has such a unique style, he's such a hard-working kid.

I say kid, now he used to be a kid,

and at one point,

especially when he was in NXT with the group,

you know, that hybrid MMA style that he uses, the different things that he could do, he doesn't have a tremendous physique, but he's like an Ilia, the small, wiry guy that can sell, blah, blah, blah.

You could have done something.

He's just been floating around in this

crowd for so long, never wins, never taken seriously.

So naturally, the guy that Kyle Felcher, that they're pushing to the moon, they have a match and go 15 minutes with a flat finish.

But Felcher hit him with a brain buster,

then hit him with a big head kick,

and then hit him with a brain buster.

One, two, three.

I was like, what the fuck?

What?

He had just gotten out of an attempt by Kyle to do a leg lock or an ankle lock or whatever and hit that brain buster.

That would have been perfect place.

Cover one, two, three.

Exciting,

convincing, and gives Kyle something.

Instead, he brainbustered him, then he kicked him in the head, then he picked it up and brainbustered him and beat him like a goddamn carpet on your porch.

Flat,

blah.

I don't mean beat him flat, I mean it was fucking flat.

Bleh.

So then

Lance Archer comes in to beat up Kyle O'Reilly, but Roderick Strong comes in, in.

And Ishii comes in.

But Rocky Romero comes in.

And they're all kicking the shit out of the babyfaces.

The fans are kind of, eh.

Mark Briscoe comes in with music and makes a big comeback and dumps all the heels and gets the fans up.

And at least they're ending strong.

And then Mark turns around and sees Kyle Felcher.

And they both stop.

And they start staring at each other.

And they don't fight

and it kills the momentum and the crowd comes down

and Kyle walks out and Briscoe lets him.

What the fuck?

It's again, it's some kind of indie wrestling thing or Japanese wrestling thing or where whatever small subset of the wrestling profession that Tony's mind is in, and all these indie guys

that that's a big dramatic thing.

That here comes the babyface making a big comeback.

He clears the heels out of the ring that have been doing the damage, and all the people are up.

And then he turns and sees one of them.

And to make sure this is a big deal,

instead of fighting him, he stops and he stares at him, and the other guy stares at him.

And they stare some more, and then they

walk off.

What the fuck is the matter with these?

They've never had to sell a ticket next week.

Their money's always been guaranteed.

They've always been on a goddamn

minimum or a contract or a whatever.

And they think this is somehow dramatic.

Is that what I'm gathering from this, Brian?

Is this a Japanese thing or an indie wrestling thing?

Oh, I don't know.

It's not a good thing or a logical thing.

I don't know where it disseminates from.

Well, speaking of insemination, up next was the TBS title with Lacey Lane

challenging Mercedes Moon.

Should Lacey Lane team with JC Jane?

JC and Lacey or Lane and Jane?

Swear to God.

Go down.

Every fucking name in women's wrestling sounds like they're auditioning for porn.

Remember, we did that segment.

We should do another one of those.

They got a whole bunch of new names now.

Developmental porn star.

I guess it is time for another round, maybe.

Okay.

So, after about 10 minutes, thank God it didn't go longer than that, they made Pat O'Connor spin in his grave, reversing roll-ups,

trying to reverse roll-ups, and Mercedes came out and hit that mess of a finish that she does.

One, two, three.

I watched it again in slow motion.

I can still not tell

not only what really what damage it's supposed to do, but even how the person is supposed to take it because everybody takes it a different way and she does it a different way.

But a legitimate booker,

regardless of

regardless of how much of a disappointment Mercedes Moon has been.

to business and to the program and everything else for the money she was paid and the attention that she apparently believes she warrants, a legitimate booker would go to her and say four

short, simple words that would need to be followed: find a new finish.

I can't believe that nobody

feels that they have the cachet in the industry, including the goddamn guy that's paying her millions of dollars,

that they can go up to her and say, find a new finish.

Find a new fucking finish.

All righty, then.

Would you like to talk about the Double Jeopardy Eliminator match, Brian?

Let's talk about the Double Jeopardy Eliminator match.

A lot of guys, a lot of Callis family.

Let's get to it.

Well, here was the stipulation.

Now it's

Bandito and Burger King under their team name of Brodildo.

And they they are facing from the Don Callas family Oblada, the world's laziest wrestler, and

our friend Take-A-Shit.

And the stipulations are: if Brody or

Bandito win the fall, then they get a unified title shot against

Okada.

But if

Okada Okada and Take win, then they get a tag team title match with Bandito and the other fella.

And

I'm sorry, Okada makes a propofol addict look like a meth head.

There's complete disinterest.

There's no effort.

There's no, it's, it's almost like he's being drugged and held hostage against his will, and he's sleepwalking through this shit.

And I get at two minutes into the match, Bandito threw a dropkick, landed, hurt his arm, and tagged out

and never got in till the finish.

Then he was fine, but I don't know what's going on with this guy.

The Japanese fellas do the same shit that everybody else does.

Brody King tries to do shit that a guy 100 pounds lighter than him should do.

They finally cold tag.

But Bandito made a comeback.

The arm, as I said, seemed okay.

The comeback was sloppy.

The finish was a mess because it was an extended four-way back and forth with no flow.

The fans were sitting on their hands.

Neither team, in my opinion, knows how to be a team.

There were no tags.

The referee was staring at everything.

At that point, it's just moves.

Who's the faces?

Who's the heels?

You know because

you can recognize the people, but you can't tell because of the work.

And then Bandito goes for that stupid, flippy German suplex where the guy has to bend over like he's preparing to be butt-fucked in prison,

hanging on to the top rope, and he flips over the guy, then back over, and then Germans him.

But he couldn't do it because of his bad arm or whatever the fuck.

And he landed and turned his back on

his opponent so obviously

so that Take could jump up and give him a reverse Hurricane Rana.

But then he went for a knee.

But he, as Take was going to run out of the corner to knee the guy, Okada was supposed to jump up and tag his partner, but Okada was late.

So Take had to start running, stop, back up into the corner, get tagged, then start again, and then realize he'd been tagged and then stop.

And Okada got in and clothesline Bandito one, two, three.

So now Tony has put this lazy louse

over his tag team champions when at least the people like the tag team champions.

They like Bandito and Brody King.

I would have Okada for his money, I would have him out doing verifiable roadwork every morning at 6 o'clock.

Put one of those goddamn Apple watches on him to make sure he gets his steps in.

I would crack down on that lazy, indifferent, uninterested, unmotivated son of a bitch and make him earn every single penny of his fucking money because he is taking a spot.

that other guys are working their asses off for.

And whether you like any of these guys or not, at least the people who are working hard and have some talent should be rewarded over this

waste of flesh just because tony has a goddamn heart on for what the guy used to be able to do 10 years ago

i'll move on yeah and i'm sick already of the long-term build at the kesha and okada finally coming to blows like they're gonna stare at each other again next week i know they are brian they do it in the promos they do it in the ring it's the same thing and it just never goes anywhere if you were mad at somebody why would you just get up in their face and stare at them without saying something

doesn't that kind of go along with it when you're in somebody's face you're about to have a fight with i'm motherfucker you you

they just look at each other with wide eyes and strange expressions

Yeah, like Larry David would sometimes do on Kirby Enthusiasm with like funny music playing behind it.

Like you can't take it seriously because no one behaves like that.

But that is the modern-day Don Cow.

Someone called the Don Cowless family.

I saw this in the Culture Corner Facebook group the other day.

The Who World Order.

The Who World Order.

Everyone's in there, except Andrade, who conveniently disappeared off TV a week after his big debut and attack on Kenny Omega.

We'll have developing updates on that.

There may be a story there.

Yeah, there may be something there.

Just a little tale, just a little tale to tell that a little, wee little bird might tell.

A tale with cause.

So then tell it with cause, baby.

Cause the next match was pockets and pack.

Two hours and 15 minutes into the show, and we get.

The company mascot against the returning pack.

And I wrote, numbers will plummet because this was a two and a half show.

With that haircut, Pac now looks like midget General Zod on steroids.

No,

I beg to differ.

I think General Zod on steroids would be a fine-looking man.

I think that Pac now, with the short hair and the lighter look

with the haircut and beard, it makes him look like Eric Young and Austin Ares had a baby.

Okay.

See there?

I'll stick with General Zod.

I'm telling you, facially, he's Eric Young.

Hair-wise, he's Austin Ares.

Body-wise, he's 1982 Billy Jack Haynes.

Jesus Christ.

Well, but that's the thing.

He's ripped.

He's lost weight and

gotten ripped.

He's actually lighter, I believe.

And he's in incredible shape, but the haircut,

you can tell now he's this, he looks the same as all the rest of them.

He

come to me, son of Jerrell.

But no, he looks shorter.

I said midget general sad on steroids.

But yeah, that's the thing.

He looks like a shorter child, at least with the long hair that he would flip down through his and look through, you know.

in front of his face.

It was just something, but he looks like a young guy with regular hair now, but hell of a body.

Did you see their promo earlier in the night, the Death Riders, minus Moxley?

Did a promo?

I've just, I've, I've, I've passed that out of my memory.

Oh, it was so embarrassing.

You should have seen it because they're all standing there trying to look bad.

And clearly, they've rehearsed who comes in when.

Because it was like, I'll stop talking.

And then the next person just jumps in looking right at the camera.

Like, and now it's my turn to say something that almost sounds natural.

And now I will say something.

It was bad.

Daniel Garcia is so bad at these kinds of things, but that was building up this match here.

Well, this match needed some building because it looked like Dynamite Kidd wrestling a guy from Starbucks.

Again, this fucking guy has been off for six months with an injury or whatever, but he comes back

and he's in incredible physical shape, hair choices aside.

He has to go 15 minutes with the mascot.

What the fuck?

I don't.

How do they think anybody is going to get over?

And then,

not only that, to be quite honest,

he got beat.

They put the mascot, this little buggy whip armed fucking nebish

beats Pack.

Looking like a goddamn badass.

The finish was Pack rolled out and crawled away.

He was crawling away from Pockets, trying to avoid, please don't hurt me anymore, Mr.

Pockets.

And they go into the stands to this exact place

where then suddenly Pack

gives Pockets a tombstone

on the bleachers, on the risers.

One would think that that would be the end of Pockets, but no.

Pack tries to go back to the ring, but he looks down, and Darby Allen behind him has chained his ankle to the railing of the risers.

So Pockets

manages to get back to the ring.

And finally, Pack breaks the chain,

beats the count, gets in at nine, and Pockets rolled him up and beat him.

One, two, three.

His first TV match in six months, and he gets beat by a joke.

And they wonder.

So then, oh, Brian, before we get, because now we're past 10.30, they're in an overrun of their half-hour overrun.

But any comments on this athletic contest before we get to the

exchange of munitions?

I certainly didn't think PAC would beat Orange Cassidy because Tony Kahn's the booker.

A surprise finish.

You know, you never expect handcuffs.

And the match was a main event that I didn't think would get people's interest, which is always questionable why Tony does that because he always does a big angle at the end lately.

And this was just like every other week.

So after they have given us an extra half hour of show and they put the mascot in the main event to run off the viewers and they've gone into an overrun, so Impractical Joker's now number is in jeopardy.

Pack goes after Darby over by the announce desk.

And Darby,

the announcers never even got to call it because it looked like he sprayed what would be pepper spray or mace or something in Pac's face.

And the announcers started to cough and like, oh,

but they didn't have time to even tell you, oh my God, he's used mace on the guy.

Here comes Wheeler, useless, and he gets thrown over the desk.

And Darby pulls out a taser,

a taser, and he's crackling, crackle, crackle.

And he's threatening Garcia and Claudio.

And with the taser, after he's used the mace, I mean, what kind of Army surplus store

is he shopping in?

Moxley gets out there and joins the party with Marina Schaefer.

And Darby runs away out to the back with the heels following him.

And as they start to come up on him,

they get a shot of Darby.

He's got a Molotov cocktail.

He's dropped the mace.

He's foregone the taser.

And he's gone straight to a Molotov cocktail.

For the young folks out in the audience,

that means he has

a glass bottle or container filled with a flammable liquid

with a piece of cloth or other type of wick sticking out of the neck of the bottle that he's about to light with a lighter that he will then throw at the boozer and the four horsemen

and set them on fire.

But security tackles him before he can light it.

And I swear to

this, yeah, we were foiled.

We were that close.

I almost got to see the the Death Riders burn to death, those goddamn security guards.

Well, but now we don't really know that it will hurt because he flamethrowered Moxley the other week, and Moxley was back out several days later on TV, wasn't even limpet or with a band-aid.

But

20 security people and referees come into the middle of this thing, but all of them

go to block off the heels and kick them all out and scream at them while one security guy is on top of Darby holding him immobile on the ground, the baby face.

No wonder he needs the goddamn Molotov cocktail and a taser and a fucking mace, because one security guy

has him down on the ground stretching him.

That's why Jack Perry needed that knife.

So that's the way that we're going to get away.

All these show guys at AEW need any weapon they can get, and Tony seems to allow it.

And boy, they know where to shop.

can we

can we cover this program as anything other than a parody at this point

isn't it just now it's just a parody a bunch of guys who were frustrated because they were too young to get on the original jackass

is and now they're just playing wrestling

molotov cocktails in a

And they wonder why that the announcers, that nobody believes the announcers.

And everybody says the announcers are the and the announcers can't sell anything

because they have to talk about this like it's really

happening

and they sound like morons

and of course that's mother nature's plan when we're talking about sock face but

yeah if he had done it too if he had thrown it at moxley they were still like near the fans it would have lit the fans on fire it would have gone into the stands and lit the whole building on fire darby would have killed the audience to get to Jon Moxley.

And instead of just the ratings.

Yeah, to get to Jon Moxley.

But it's just ludicrous at this point.

And,

you know,

the roster is dropping from injuries because they can't stop trying to top everything everybody else has ever done.

The more risks you take, the more times it backfires.

The segments run into each other and they're so incomprehensible.

Now they break a table, they break five tables.

The excess and the

just cloudy booking where nothing

makes sense by the time you come to the end of something because so many people have joined in

and the lack of any coherent focus on getting any talent over.

It's just, it's,

I think we need to cover it as they're trying to be a shit show.

And this is an intentional parody.

I mean, how far are we going to go with this Darby stuff, too?

Like,

I saw someone raise the argument, it may have been the Cult of the Corner Facebook group.

Like, if I was a kid, I would have thought it was cool that some guy came out with a flamethrower.

It's like, all right, well, there aren't too many kids watching the fucking show.

Start with that.

Secondly, again, it's wrestling.

I mean, Yeah, if I was a kid, I would have popped if someone drove a Jeep right through the middle of the ring while a match was happening.

There's no logic or reason to it.

The fact that Darby, in the span of like two weeks, had a flamethrower, handcuffs,

mace, mace, a tight

tub cocktail, and a Mollotop cocktail.

He got tackled.

By the way, signed the security guard.

That guy gave Darby a fucking spear.

Darby went down.

But yeah, this isn't very good.

And, you know, what are you supposed to do?

They already did the coffin match.

This is all, all this shit is the build-to-the-eye quit match.

It's causing the fans to quit.

And they do it at the end of the show, so the fans don't even see it.

They know they see the ratings.

No one's staying around till the end to see

orange pockets.

That's what they call them.

Orange pockets versus PAC.

And they buried this angle there where it'll mean the least.

But if they'd have just had some kind of finish where Pack could have picked Pockets Pockets,

maybe he just picks pockets.

Well, that was AEW Dynamite.

It feels like they're picking our pocket.

I'll pick Pocket Edition.

You know what I'd like to pick for them, don't you, Brian?

No.

Another line of work.

I would love for the people in AEW to get in any other line of work except someone or one that I have

given blood, sweat, and tears to, and hate to see have the boots put to it.

I think they need to figure out,

should they sell munitions, perhaps?

Should Darby Allen start an online business where he can market munitions and weapons to all the war-ravaged countries around the world?

He can sell a boxed Molotov cocktails.

Maybe a box of eight could be cheaper than just one.

Whatever.

I'm just, I'm spitballing here.

Well, for this specific example, knowing where I think you're going, I don't know if we should suggest that idea, but maybe Darby can get into some other business like creating stuffed animals for children or something that isn't dangerous in any way where we don't have to worry about any restrictions on that business.

And he needs a help, a helping hand, that is, for his business.

He needs a hand.

He needs a hand to help.

Don't we all?

And of course, ladies and gentlemen, our friends at Shopify.

Shopify is where we're going with that because Shopify could help Darby Allen.

And I agree with you.

Shopify could take Darby Allen's incoherent ravings and rantings of a madman, and they could put them into a coherent business plan that could be successful for all parties.

Now, let's say Darby Allen decided, like you mentioned, that he wanted to make cute stuffed animals for children.

And you find out when you get them.

And you make money with them that way.

And then you find out when you get them that for the adults, you can tear the head off the stuffed animal or bunny rabbit or whatever.

And there's a wick and it contains flammable material.

And you can turn that son of a bitch into a motorcycle.

Let's not do that.

We don't want to.

Okay.

See,

we want to make money for the children and the adults.

And the children need the stuffed bunnies and the adults need the Molotov cocktail.

The adults don't need Molotov.

The adults don't need Molotov cocktails.

And ladies and gentlemen.

This is the United States of America.

We are allowed to possess any weapons that we want, from weapons-grade uranium to all sorts of hand grenades and

missiles.

Again, well, hold on.

Oh, you hear that?

That's dramatic.

That means we need to get back on.

That's dramatic.

Well, Shopify can help you folks get started with your own

business and

commercial property idea because Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world.

10% of all e-commerce in the United States.

Household names you would recognize, like Mattel and Garbage, that's a household name, all the way down to brands just getting started, like Darby's Munitions.

From your design studio, content creation, marketing team, a commerce expert, social media campaign, Shopify can do it all for you and they can make you money in the process.

And all you have to do to turn your big business idea into

reality is get Shopify on your side sign up right now for your one dollar a month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com slash JCE $1 a month trial period just it's a feeling out process you're gonna feel them out they're gonna feel you up for only a dollar Hey, you're the cheapest date out there.

And then if you like each other and you want to get together and make Molotov cocktail history, not that.

Shopify.com slash JCE.

Again, for

safe,

non-flammable business products, and of course, a fiery team behind you, Shopify.

Big drama, shopify.com slash JCE.

Well, speaking of drama, before we talk about the

final show down here with the ratings information, such as they are between NXT and AEW.

Brian, what in the world is going on at the inflammable world of the Arcadian Vanguard network this fine week?

Another fine week, or so they say.

Check out all the shows on Twitter at Superpodcast or on Facebook, facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Of course, each and every day, the Wrestling News.

It's there for you.

It's there for all of you for free.

The WrestlingNews.com directly or wherever you find your favorite podcast the morning wrestling newscast no clickbait no paywall just the wrestling news jace has been telling me i go through it's there for all of you it's there for all of you that's right from the top of your head to the tip of your toes i'm trying not to go too fast here jace tells me i go too fast as i go through these things of course stick to wrestling with john mcadam mcadampod.com and shut up and wrestle with brian solomon s-u-a-wpod.com wherever you find your favorite podcast and the 605 super Podcast, the Mothership.

Well, that's right, Jim.

Go through the archive, 605pod.com.

Every episode is there for free to download the mothership.

All righty.

Well, do we have the information such as it is being given to us?

The new ratings configurations for this head-to-head showdown on Tuesday night.

I got a piece of paper here.

I'm going to jot these things down.

Elucidate us, Mr.

Last, on who won this battle and why.

All right, Jim.

Well, we do indeed have the numbers, and I guess we'll do two sets of uh ratings here because it's NXT and AEW.

NXT is at home on Tuesdays, AEW is a visitor.

So why don't we go to NXT first?

Well, let's do that.

NXT on CW,

Tuesday, October 7th, 2025,

from 8 to 10 p.m.

on average,

watched by 625,000 viewers.

Boy, howdy.

And that,

I guess maybe you'll be able to tell us in a second if that's up or down from the previous week, but that is around about or a little bit better than

AEW has been doing on Wednesday nights.

So

where does this stand in the NXT

trailing average or whatever?

Is this better or worse than they have been doing with the previous rating system?

Well, again, it's hard to say how you can compare one to the other because this is now week two or three for NXT not having the old rating system.

The trailing four-week average is $668, but obviously the four weeks incorporate both ways.

Last week, 572.

So this is up 950.

Geez.

Okay, so they gained

over 50,000 people because of their big showdown event.

Even with the new measurement style, is what I'm saying.

And with NXT,

we don't have quarter hours.

We have half hours.

And these were compiled by WrestleNomics.

So these are only the half-hour breakdowns.

So we'll have to see how this affected AEW one way or the other.

Half hour one, 8 to 8.30 p.m.

A recap.

The Hardy Boys versus Dark State with an ad break.

The post-match with Team 3D.

Isn't that funny?

They only like to be called Dudley Boys in WWE, and they're doing something with TNA.

They still can't call themselves Dudley Boys.

Team NXT versus Team TNA Women's Elimination Match start.

699,000 viewers.

Yikes.

So that was...

significantly above what their average turned out to be.

Is this going to be a deal where they turned in big and then zone out through the show like AEW, or did they have peaks and valleys here?

And by the way, 163 in the key demo, approximately

segment two or half hour two, 8:30 to 9 p.m.,

continuation of the women's elimination match,

ad break times two, and picture and picture one time.

The Ava Santino Morella backstage angle.

Oh, thank God, I didn't see that.

672,000 viewers.

Pretty consistent there.

Not a big drop.

27,000 people.

150 in the key demo.

The big nine o'clock hour, 9,09.30 p.m.

The Ethan Page vs.

Mustafa Ali match with Picture and Picture.

El Hijo del Dr.

Wagner Jr.

and Lexis King and Tavon Heights backstage angle.

An ad break.

JC Jane and Jada Parker and Lola Weiss and Sal Rucka and Zarya and Blake Monroe's backstage angle.

Followed by an ad break,

622,000 viewers.

Holds on to 150 in the key demo.

I hate that because they lost 50,000 people, but nobody in that age group.

is what you're saying.

They're trying to tell us here.

Isn't that interesting?

But I hate that Ali and Paige lost viewers since that was the only thing worth watching all night from either channel.

Well, it came after the Ava Santino Morella uh segment of the previous one, but let's go down Jimmy the kiss of death: 9:30 to 10 p.m.

Team NXT versus team TNA men's elimination match with picture and picture plus Ava and Santino backstage angle

640,000 viewers, 177 in the key demo.

Good lord, so the

the only

the lowest rated quarter or not quarter hour, but the lowest rated 30-minute segment is the one that contained the the best match.

That's that's a shame.

But that uh that that gives us this is different mathematics because we got 699, 672, 622, and 640.

That would not work out to a 625,000 average.

How is this happening?

I do not know.

That is what the information here is.

So I can't tell you anything other than that.

Yeah, but we're starting to get all kinds of suspect numbering over.

What are the numbers over on the other side of the street?

Well, Jim, let's talk about AEW Dynamite.

On TBS, as usual, on Tuesday, October 7th, 2025.

8 to 10 p.m.

Now, they ran past that.

They ran to what, 10.30

again?

Yeah, they're at at 10.35.

Yeah, they're running.

Every show is now two and a half hours.

It's been the last few weeks.

On average, watched by 321,000 viewers.

Ouch.

So

we can assume,

based on these numbers that we're being given, which are all up in the air, and who knows what the

story is on these things.

But since they're using the same measurement parameters from one week to the next, we can assume that not only did nobody not watch NXT to watch AEW, but more people watched NXT this week that it had wrestling opposition than it did last week by being measured under the same

system.

But somewhere around 320,000 of AEW's normal fans who would watch on Wednesday either remembered to, cared to, or did make the choice to switch nights and watch them here.

And last week.

Yeah, last week in their usual Wednesday night spot, they did their record low of 465.

Well, and that was their first

experience with the new ratings system.

So now this is the second.

experience they've had, but they're also on a different night.

If next Wednesday is up back up in the fours,

at least, then we will know that it was the night change.

And if it's not, then we'll just say, Jesus Christ.

But go ahead.

What are do we have quarters or halves?

We've got quarters.

Times.

We've got the quarters here.

You dime bags in that company?

These were compiled by Russell Nomics.

Quarter one, 8 to 8:15 p.m.

Samoa Joe and Adam Page's live promo and Mark Briscoe's backstage promo.

445,000 viewers.

Okay, so I do apologize.

445,000 knew that it was on and started watching it.

They just apparently ain't going to keep them.

Go ahead.

They started right where they left off last week.

Quarter to 8:15, 8:30 p.m.

And by the way, that was 117,000 in the key demo since I discussed it for the other show.

I'll bring it up here.

8:15, 8:30 p.m.

Tomo Hiro Ishii versus John Moxu, a picture-in-picture,

350,000 viewers.

Good lord, out of 445,000, they lost 95,000 in 15 minutes.

People wanted to see what was on each channel.

Was Adam Page and Samoa Joe followed by Moxley versus Ishii versus the Hardy Boys promo or promo, Hardy Boys match.

Yeah.

Followed by the start of that women's thing.

Second quarter here.

They definitely didn't want to see Moxley and Ishii.

That's for sure.

Go ahead.

And that did 101,000 in the key demo.

Quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

The Young Bucks Backstage promo, an ad break, Tony Storm Chris Statlander video, and the start of the Hurt Syndicate versus the Demand street fight.

And with picture on picture,

354,000 viewers.

So they actually picked 4,000 back up once they got rid of Moxley and the potato.

99,000 in the key demo.

Jim, if you still have it there, what did NXT do in quarter two?

Because that would have been, or segment two, 8:30.

Well, 8.30 to 9 o'clock would be 672,000 people for NXT with 150 in the key demo versus.

for the first 15 minutes of that period, 354,000 and 99.

So

they're not quite doubling

the uh the the audience and they're about half again in the key demo

when we go to quarter four 845 to 9 p.m the continuation of the hurt syndicate demand match followed by an ad break

323 000 viewers

88 000 in the key demo

yeah i told you that one was a rough one to watch for a while but did they

now here's the thing at nine o'clock, it appears

that NXT loses a significant portion because even though we've only got the half hours, when we go to the third half hour, they go down from 672 to 622.

Does that mean that AEW got a big pickup in quarter five at nine o'clock?

Well, they do call it the big nine o'clock hour.

Jim, nine to nine: 15 p.m., quarter five.

The Don Callis backstage promo,

KM versus Orion.

Okay, I don't know what the hell he wrote here, WrestleNomics.

The Jurassic Express match,

the post-match with the Young Bucks, the PAC backstage promo, and the start of Kyle Fletcher versus Kyle O'Reilly.

321,000 viewers.

Ouch.

107 in the key demo.

Okay, they lost 1,000 people, but they gained

19,000 in that particular age group.

I'm smelling stinky fish all over the place here these days.

Well, Jim, that stink will continue into quarter six, 9:15, and 9:30 p.m.

The continuation of Fletcher versus O'Reilly, the post-match with the Callis family and Roderick Strong and Mark Briscoe, followed by an ad break.

277,000 viewers.

Ooch.

97,000 in the key demo.

And then the key demo is still 97,000 when there's 277,000 viewers versus the key demo was 88,000 when there was 322,000.

So I don't know what's happening here.

Well, we go now to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The Kyle Fletcher Backstage Promo.

Mercedes Monet versus Lacey Lane with picture and picture.

The Sammy Guevara Beast Mortos backstage promo,

270,000 viewers.

86,000 in the key demo.

Well, that's the low on everything so far.

At this point, they got to come up somewhere to hit their average, don't they?

Well, we'll see what the rest of the story tells us.

We will now go to quarter eight,

9:45 to 10 p.m.

I remind you, we have a 33-minute overrun.

So there'll be three more quarters to talk about after this.

The usual end of the show, 9.45 to 10 p.m.

An ad break, Brodito versus Okada and Takeshita with picture-in-picture ads.

249,000 viewers, 72,000 in the key demo.

By the time they get to the end of this,

are they going to owe us viewers?

Well, we shall see, but those are the lows right there.

We now go to the big 10 o'clock hour, quarter nine, ten to ten.

The continuation of Brodito vs.

Okada and Takesha, the Jet Speed Willow Nightingale promo, an ad break, Stokely, FTR, Megan Bain, Penelope Ford Backstage Promo.

Why are they all together?

Brodito's backstage promo, and the start of Orange Cassidy vs.

Pack.

325,000 viewers,

77,000 in the key demo.

Okay, wait a minute.

So

it was, as I recall,

Impractical Jokers was listed as the program afterwards at 10:30 to 11.

We're still at 10 o'clock here.

But how did people turn off NXT and go here?

Ah.

And not even a large amount.

I mean, less than 100,000.

Did 80,000 people say, hey, I'm going to go see what's going on over there.

Okay.

Now that's, I'm sorry, I forgot about that point because that is 51, 76,000.

But while they gained 76,000 people,

they say they only gained 5,000 in the key demo.

So,

yeah.

But that's, okay,

that saved them.

That influx right there saved saved AEW from one of the most miserable numbers ever.

What was 9:45 to 10 before?

Or I'm sorry, what was 10:15 to 10:30 before we get to the override?

We have two more quarters to discuss here: 10:15 to 10:30 p.m.

continuation of Orange Cassidy versus PAC and the post-match with Darby Allen and the Death Riders, or at least the start of it.

301,000 viewers, 76,000 in the key demo.

Three minutes past that, 10:30 to 1033, more of the post-match.

304,000 viewers, 77,000 in the key demo.

Yeah, at least they got the last half hour.

Because if you took that out, they wouldn't have been over 300,000 for an average if you took out those

last two quarters in the overrun.

Good night.

It's a sad state of affairs.

And I mean, who knows what the validity is of any of these numbers, but they're all being judged in the same fashion.

And

it didn't look good for

Tony's ponies.

Well,

that's about it, ain't it?

Yeah, until the drive-through in a few days, but we do have wrestling to watch in just a few hours from Australia.

So there's a lot going on still.

Oh, boy.

Well, we'll be down under,

and then we'll see who gets

But until then, folks, for the drive-through and the experience next week, and don't forget about the big sale that's going on at Cornett's Collectibles and my pride and joy, it's like having a baby.

I'm cradling this book in a blanket in my arms, heroes and friends.

It's on sale now.

Stories about

some of the most unique people I've ever known and a couple of really good friends.

And I hope you'll enjoy them.

Until then,

and next time, thank you, fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.