Episode 608: Blood & Guts

Speaker 1 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!

Speaker 1 The keys to the future, held by the past. And with tag-teap partner, Barion Last, he sends this message out by podcast.
He's Jim Cornette!

Speaker 1 Well, he's never fake a phony.

Speaker 1 He never backs down from a fight.

Speaker 1 He never wins the pony. Cause his mama raised him right.

Speaker 1 It's time

Speaker 1 to render

Speaker 1 your mind.

Speaker 1 Get the experience.

Speaker 1 Get the experience.

Speaker 1 Get the experience of Jim Cornette. Hello, we get everybody and welcome to another exciting episode of the Jim Cornette Experience.

Speaker 2 If blood and guts were ips and butts, then Tony, the putts wouldn't be nuts. AEW jumps the shark and trips on the way over it.

Speaker 2 Plus, we'll have some talk about actual legitimate pro wrestling, whether it's the Hall of Fame or the Hall of Shame. And joining me for all this and more.

Speaker 2 Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting line, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr. Co-HostU.
He's the jaws of podcasting, so you're you're going to need bigger ears.

Speaker 2 Be great right last, everybody.

Speaker 1 Aloha, Jim. A pleasure to be here once again.

Speaker 2 You know, we got to start the show off with good news this week. Guess who beat who this week?

Speaker 1 Oh, I don't know.

Speaker 2 The University of Louisville beat the University of Kentucky in college basketball.

Speaker 2 Soundly and convincingly, I might add. What a game, though.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 we got a brand new coach,

Speaker 2 Coach Kelsey. He's goddamn just popular now.
He's gotten over in town. He's a little

Speaker 2 just weasel-looking white guy that's about 5'6 or whatever he looks like on the TV news. But he has come in and taken over this program.
He's got a great personality. He's got great players.

Speaker 2 For 10 years, we have been

Speaker 2 sidelined the University of Louisville Cardinals, Cardinals, and now we're getting back in action and we beat the Wildcats.

Speaker 2 So we got that going for us.

Speaker 2 2013, we were the national champions. And then

Speaker 2 between Patino scandals and recruiting violations and hookers and pimps, I don't know what the fuck was going on over there.

Speaker 2 We had to give all that shit back and we had a shit program with 18 coaches, booked like AEW for all these years. And now we're, but you don't sound thrilled that we're back.

Speaker 1 And I'm very happy for you. I'm very happy for you.
It seems to really matter a lot to you.

Speaker 1 So for you, I'm very happy. You know,

Speaker 1 however they recruit people, whatever they do.

Speaker 2 Whatever it is they're doing over there, you hope they do more of it.

Speaker 1 The fuckers and the pimps and whatever it is they're doing over there.

Speaker 2 No, there was all, that was all beforehand. That was all in a past now.

Speaker 1 I'm sure it's a perfectly clean program now. Congratulations.

Speaker 2 This coach doesn't look like he'd get a blowjob in the bathroom at Carabas.

Speaker 1 Those are the people you have to worry about.

Speaker 2 Well, but he reminds me of Brian Hildebrand.

Speaker 2 He really does. The way he's so energetic and happy and peppy.

Speaker 2 And at the same time, just a very short little white fellow.

Speaker 2 But he's just, he's a ball of energy

Speaker 2 you know what else happened this week brian what's that

Speaker 2 the last ever penny was minted this week because they now cannot afford to make pennies they can't afford to make the money

Speaker 2 You have no thoughts on pennies? I mean, specifically.

Speaker 2 We've had pennies since we've had a country.

Speaker 1 I know, but to be honest, if they cost more to make than they're actually worth

Speaker 1 and no one really wants to use them and any digital commerce, they're not used at all. I'm okay with rounding up a little bit and losing that cent.

Speaker 2 But no, no,

Speaker 2 it bothers my OCD. You can't be exact now.

Speaker 2 Why can't they just make pennies out of cheaper shit?

Speaker 2 They're stealing copper wire out of the goddamn.

Speaker 2 They've got a task force here in Louisville now

Speaker 2 because the copper thieves are stealing the copper wire out of the interstate

Speaker 2 floodlights, spotlights, whatever, causing the interstate to go dark and increasing wrecks because the copper is worth so much money. So, why can they not make pennies out of something else?

Speaker 2 Aluminium,

Speaker 2 aluminum penny. You know what they did in World War II, don't you, when copper was at a premium?

Speaker 2 steal pennies.

Speaker 2 That's why the 42, 43s, and 44s, maybe the 45, I can't remember. It's been so long since I've been a child, are silver in color because they were not made out of copper because of the war effort.

Speaker 2 Why can't they do that again?

Speaker 1 Why have I not heard one person bring up any of these arguments you're making?

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 I haven't heard anyone mention.

Speaker 2 Nobody has a grip on the fucking obvious.

Speaker 2 Just make it out of cheaper shit. Don't force everybody to goddamn round up or round down or throw off people's mathematics or have some kind of Y2J

Speaker 2 fiasco allegedly going to go on. Just goddamn make the pennies out of cheaper shit.
End of end of fucking problem.

Speaker 1 But again, a penny, the value of a penny has changed. dramatically

Speaker 1 in 50 years, let alone 100 years.

Speaker 1 you can't buy anything for a penny.

Speaker 2 Then why don't they figure out the price of everything? So, including the tax, it all comes out even to begin with.

Speaker 1 Why don't they? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Well, there's another goddamn thing I'm saying to you. What is the matter with the whole world has gone mad?

Speaker 2 We don't know how to figure this out. We'll just stop making a shit.

Speaker 2 We've had it for 250 years. In the 1700s, Brian,

Speaker 2 the United States had a half-cent coin. Did you know that?

Speaker 1 Well, I did know that. But again, there's a difference between.

Speaker 2 Oh, now you're Mr. Goddamn Numismatic fucking champion of the world.
You knew that already.

Speaker 1 I knew that. My point being,

Speaker 1 they're not getting rid of coins. They're getting rid of the penny.
There will still be plenty of coins. You could still jingle around your coins.

Speaker 1 Think of Vince McMahon Sr. with his quarters.
You could still have fun with change.

Speaker 2 You can't be correct.

Speaker 1 They got rid of the half penny. Exactly.
They got rid of the halfpenny.

Speaker 2 That's because a lot of people decided, you know what? The halfpenny, which I, as I remember, was about the size of a goddamn half a dollar would be today. It was big around things at a half cent.

Speaker 2 But that's not, you can be exact without being exact down to another decimal point.

Speaker 2 See, now we just need to round everything off to the nearest dollar. Fuck the goddamn coins in.
If we're going to do this to the, to the innocent little penny,

Speaker 2 fuck nickels and dimes and quarters and half a dollars.

Speaker 1 Again, you're the only person, and I'm saying this not to dismiss what you're saying, but actually just as a point of fact, you're the only person I've heard raise any of these arguments and defend the penny.

Speaker 1 Everyone else seems ready to say, okay, you've had your run.

Speaker 1 It's time to leave the terrorist.

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ, I'm glad you're never going to be in a fucking healthcare decision-making position for me. Okay, you've had your run.

Speaker 1 You're not a confidential.

Speaker 2 You can't be bothered with looking at goddamn alternatives. Just get the fuck rid of grandpa.

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 Commerce is in a bad enough position in this country today without taking away some of the money.

Speaker 2 They're taking away enough of the money already. Leave us the pennies.
You'd think they'd want us to have the pennies.

Speaker 1 What are your thoughts on a silver dollar?

Speaker 2 I love silver dollars.

Speaker 2 Silver dollars to me are the

Speaker 2 symbol of

Speaker 2 American money.

Speaker 2 Whether it be the Old West, where they'd slap that silver dollar down on the fucking

Speaker 2 saloon bar or they would pay off the various bounty hunters and the silver dollars,

Speaker 2 but not the new silver dollars now.

Speaker 2 Only the

Speaker 2 Morgan's and the Peace Dollars and maybe the Standing Liberties.

Speaker 2 But the Morgan is my favorite. I have a number of those since I was a child.

Speaker 2 They look old. They look valuable.
And they got some value to them.

Speaker 1 All right. What about half dollars?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 2 not so much. When they were silver, it was one thing, but then they kind of polluted them, you know, and watered them down.
And then after Kennedy, you know, what the fuck.

Speaker 2 I really like a good Ben franklin half a dollar

Speaker 2 because he had such a

Speaker 2 a head that was shaped for a half dollar coin you couldn't have put him on a dime he wouldn't have fit

Speaker 1 and finally jim to round out the roster what about the two dollar bill

Speaker 2 i got some of those too

Speaker 2 i've showed those to people they think they're fake

Speaker 2 I've been alive long enough that people actually fucking commerced and,

Speaker 2 you know, trans

Speaker 2 had trans actions in $2 bills that would pull them right out of their pocket.

Speaker 1 They still make them, right?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 You know what I haven't seen? I don't often see $50 bills anymore, but Brian,

Speaker 2 do you remember the 500s and the thousands?

Speaker 1 I've heard about them. I've never actually seen $500 bills or $1,000 bills, though.

Speaker 2 I have,

Speaker 2 because again, you know, back in the 80s, had had, you know,

Speaker 2 finances coming in back

Speaker 2 in the glory days of wrestling. I've had a number of $500 and $1,000 bills, and they were cool also.
And you don't see them anymore.

Speaker 2 You know what else you don't see anymore?

Speaker 1 And again, there wasn't a Jim Cornette arguing, you got to keep the $500 bill. We can't do this.
Commerce and whatever your argument is.

Speaker 2 Well, no, because that would be ridiculous because you can just take 500 bills and make a 500 now the thousand dollar bills were cool because you could pack a fucking wad that wouldn't choke a horse but still have a lot of money on you

Speaker 2 it was good if you wanted to secrete them in fucking little places that people wouldn't think to look for a large amount of money do you currently pay for anything in change i don't know how many places you would actually have a transaction nowadays but when you go to the supermarket do you pay with change or do you use a card no i use the card now because they look at you like you've got turds hanging out of your mouth if you try to give them money i never used to pay with change i would pay with cash up until i don't know a number of years ago when again they stopped being able to figure out how to count it

Speaker 2 but i would take the then i'd take the change and then i would collect it and once a year

Speaker 2 i would take a big bag of change to the bank and they provided the counting service and would deposit it in my account and I'd have $300 in change or whatever. Now the bank won't count it anymore.

Speaker 2 They say you got to count it.

Speaker 2 So I got a jug down there with about $6,000 and fucking change

Speaker 2 because I ain't got time to count it.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, this has been but you know what I'm going to do?

Speaker 2 I'm going to keep all the pennies now.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, because one of these days, one of these days, I'm telling you, somebody's going to need some pennies bad. And then I've got the market cornered.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm going to charge four cents a piece for them.

Speaker 2 I'll have you know.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't it be funny if we find out like copper pennies or the kryptonite to whatever alien beings land here on the planet?

Speaker 2 Just grab some round pieces of copper. That's the only thing that will small, round pieces, flat pieces of copper.

Speaker 1 Throw those pennies. Those what? What are pennies? Throw those.

Speaker 2 All righty, real quickly,

Speaker 2 I want to send our best wishes to a listener named Raymond's. And this, I'm going to spell it because I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it right, but R-A-I-M-U-N-D-S, Raymonds, or Raymond.

Speaker 2 Help, just you, you know who you are.

Speaker 1 Raymond.

Speaker 2 Well, you do and you'll clean it up.

Speaker 2 But no, but in seriousness now, being serious here, our listener lost a friend of his recently named Sal. He passed away, and they had listened to the shows together.

Speaker 2 He wrote us a nice email to let us know about that. And we wanted to send our sympathy to him.
I didn't want to,

Speaker 2 but I've never, that's a name I've never seen. It's very unusual.

Speaker 1 Very sorry for your loss.

Speaker 2 I wonder where he's from. He didn't mention that.
I wonder if he's

Speaker 2 what nationality. Is that a French name or a

Speaker 1 scottish brazilian well it's friendly something like that and his friend was sal not like you know some exotic name like well that could be short for

Speaker 2 salo deleo oh that of course

Speaker 1 you never know what it what

Speaker 2 all right well let's get back to the english speaking people uh because we've got an update on

Speaker 2 our friend across the pond, the former prince, now the

Speaker 2 I think he's the Duke of dog shit at this point. Nobody wants him around, but Andrew,

Speaker 2 one of the stories on him had Brian, I forget how it was phrased, but part of his rent he was paying on this

Speaker 2 expansive cottage was a fucking peppercorn.

Speaker 1 You can get rid of the penny, but don't touch my peppercorns.

Speaker 2 Don't touch the peppercorns. Well, we've got Gareth in London

Speaker 2 who sent us an email to try to make some sense of what we were hearing here.

Speaker 2 And he says, Hi, Jim and Brian, as a fully paid-up, loyal subject of the British crown and more importantly, a homeowner here in Britain.

Speaker 2 Let me give you a bit of insight into the UK property market and the reason why Andrew

Speaker 2 has apparently been paying for his rent in peppercorns.

Speaker 2 Here in England, property can be owned two two ways freehold and leasehold

Speaker 2 basically freehold means owning the land and building outright that would be you're like you're in your house or whatever and that's there you are that's freehold and free load is refusing to leave frogmore cottage

Speaker 2 All right now, come on.

Speaker 2 So this is going to be complicated enough as it is. Don't fucking, I can't take it today.
I won't be able to keep track of this. Freehold, you own the land, you own the building.
You're pretty good.

Speaker 2 Leasehold means owning the buildings only, not the land itself, for a limited amount of time, typically 99 years. 99?

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 But what

Speaker 2 earthly goddamn sense does that?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 if leasehold, if

Speaker 2 if you own the land in the building, then you can rent the building out. So, but how do you own,

Speaker 2 but for a limited time of a little less than 100 years, the building on the guy's land? What if the guy said, you know what, I'd like to take my land and shove it all up my ass?

Speaker 2 I don't know what the fuck.

Speaker 1 Is it a guy's land or is it the kingdom's land?

Speaker 2 Well, no, this is this is property in England. This is merely for commoners and

Speaker 2 royalers alike. But if you're the way they do things.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying. If we're talking about the only royal we're talking about here has this freehold rule.
So he could actually own the land and the house.

Speaker 2 But we ain't got there yet.

Speaker 1 And everyone else has to, you could buy it, but only for 99 years. Who's the actual owner?

Speaker 2 No, no, you're fucking this whole thing up.

Speaker 2 It's not just the royal people.

Speaker 2 This is the way they do shit with property in England is what I'm trying to say to you.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 if

Speaker 2 let me go on here a second and we'll argue about the next line.

Speaker 2 A leaseholder owns their property in all practical ways and is responsible for all ongoing maintenance repair and repairs, but they have to pay the freeholder a ground rent every year.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 both these people are stupid

Speaker 2 because if you own a piece of land and a building

Speaker 2 that you then

Speaker 2 leasehold the building to somebody, well, you can't do anything with your land because the guy's got the fucking building.

Speaker 2 And why would a guy spend any appreciable amount of money improving a structure on which

Speaker 2 it's on somebody else's land?

Speaker 1 All right, here's your deed.

Speaker 1 I won't be around, but someone in my family will be around in 99 years to collect the keys.

Speaker 2 And I'll say 99 years.

Speaker 2 Well, unless I buy the house across the street, well, I'm going to rent it out for to somebody for 99 years.

Speaker 2 What the fuck are they going to be? I'm going to be here. So, anyway, he's going on.

Speaker 2 The ground rent is usually very low,

Speaker 2 especially when the lease is long and is essentially symbolic.

Speaker 2 So, that means that

Speaker 2 I've got a piece of property

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I don't know whether the building was already there and I just leased the building, but I still own the property of this guy, or maybe I just leased, he built the house. I don't know what the fuck.

Speaker 1 You don't have points, you have options.

Speaker 2 But I've got a now a piece of property that a guy's built a house on and is living on. I own the property, but all he gives me is symbolic rent of a peppercorn

Speaker 2 for the next hundred hundred years. Why did I own that land to begin with?

Speaker 1 It doesn't sound like a smart real estate book. What the fuck?

Speaker 2 And it said the term peppercorn is applied to these low rents, but no one is actually paying a peppercorn.

Speaker 2 Either the freeholder simply doesn't bother collecting, or there's a nominal fee, such as one pound.

Speaker 2 So Andrew actually bought a 75-year lease on the Royal Lodge for a reported 5.3 million pounds,

Speaker 2 which covered a £1 million purchase and $4.3 million for upgrades and repairs on the Royal Lodge. He later paid another 2.6 million to buy out future rental income.

Speaker 2 I've tried to work out exactly what this means, but to be honest, I got bored.

Speaker 2 So the fact that the ground rent is a peppercorn

Speaker 2 is a bit misleading. And it doesn't mean he got his house for free.
It also complicates the issue of moving him somewhere else because legally it's his house.

Speaker 2 Now, none of this means the fucker deserves a single solitary penny of UK taxpayers' money or that he shouldn't be in jail for the fucked up shit he was into, but that's another story.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Gareth, for that. But so

Speaker 2 he's got millions of pounds that he can fucking trick up the Royal Lodge with, but he pays a peppercorn for the

Speaker 2 ground that it sits on.

Speaker 1 He bought his yacht with beanstalk seeds

Speaker 1 you know that's the other thing you say he paid this amount for the land and this amount of repairs i don't give a fuck how much he paid in repairs that's on him but the point is where did he get that money he doesn't have a job he's a royal that is british taxpayer money isn't it Well, no, apparently, you know, the family also, they have all the money from the crown jewels and all the other shit that they've had that they've built this country out of for the last thousand years.

Speaker 2 They don't sell it.

Speaker 1 it's but they don't sell it it's not like andrew needs a home let's sell some jewelry

Speaker 2 okay stop

Speaker 2 right now google royal family net worth because somebody was saying that these

Speaker 1 because of the lineage and the privilege that they have gotten have oh wow literally well i mean again it's a kingdom that goes back hundreds of years uh you know, to a time where it really was a kingdom and they really did take everyone's everything.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 and now they have kept all that plus the interest while no official legitimate work is done.

Speaker 1 It's estimated to be worth, the royal family is estimated to be worth around $28 billion.

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 And again, this guy gets away from every goddamn gets away from. Well, he ain't got away from it now, but gets away with all this bullshit.
They said

Speaker 2 he was the favorite son of his old mother, Queen Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 It should have been Queen Victoria. She would have put her foot down with all that perverted stuff going on.

Speaker 2 So they've just lavished millions of dollars on his sack of shit his entire life, multi-millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 Hey, here's a question I don't know the answer to, and you may not either. This may be a future segment.
We'll hear from Gareth or whoever sent this in.

Speaker 1 When did the kingdom or the queendom, whatever it is at the time,

Speaker 1 when did it go from actually ruling the country and being in charge of everything to being a mostly symbolic role that the taxpayers fund?

Speaker 1 Right? Well, when did the prime minister just take over? Like, when did everything change so that, I mean, I don't know. Does King Charles have any official power?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 He can't give a cripple crab a crutch officially as far as state, as far as dealing with America. Okay, we're going to put a tariff on you or sending anybody to war or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 2 No, they can't do jack shit.

Speaker 1 Please come on a tour. See my family's jewelry.
That's basically. Wait a minute.

Speaker 2 Google that then.

Speaker 2 Fuck the royal family. I don't know how you'd Google it.
Rise of.

Speaker 2 Is it democracy in Britain since now they vote for the politicians like we're supposed to?

Speaker 1 Well, hold on. I just also looked it up.
As a constitutional monarch, I guess that's the question. When did it become a constitutional monarch?

Speaker 1 King Charles III's powers are primarily symbolic and ceremonial.

Speaker 2 Shambolic, maybe.

Speaker 1 He reigns, but does not rule.

Speaker 1 The ability to make laws and govern the country reside with the UK Parliament and the elected government, but the king performs several key state functions and holds significant soft power.

Speaker 2 Significant soft power. I wonder, is that why they make those blue pills when you have only significant soft power?

Speaker 2 What does that...

Speaker 2 What do you do with your significant soft power, Brian?

Speaker 2 Can you threaten people with being tickled to death

Speaker 2 in the Tower of London?

Speaker 1 Camilla, Camilla.

Speaker 1 I don't know how it works. The UK effectively became a constitutional monarchy in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution.

Speaker 1 with the signing of the English Bill of Rights and the Scottish Claim of Right Act. These acts formally limited the power of the monarch and established Parliament as the supreme legislative body.

Speaker 2 Well, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 What about the revolution?

Speaker 2 I was about to say that was 100 years later.

Speaker 2 We said we don't fuck the king. Did we not get the memo that they had already fucked the king?

Speaker 2 We're in 1776, we're saying we don't want a monarch. We don't want the fucking king, no taxation without representation, all the shit we got today.

Speaker 2 And we didn't get the memo that they'd said to fuck the king in 1689.

Speaker 1 See, it really wasn't the king. It turns out it was the network of promoters that were like, you will be booking our top star in your territory.

Speaker 1 It was the alliance. It was the alliance king.

Speaker 2 That's right. He was only the alliance king until they were behind him.

Speaker 2 What the fuck is going on? So.

Speaker 2 Why were they still supposedly fucking our forefathers four score and however many years ago that we had to revolutionize them when they had already revolutionized their royal family.

Speaker 2 Again, this may be not the thing to is this just a bunch of stupid people having stupid problems that affect the world in horrible ways for centuries to come

Speaker 2 centuries to come possibly likely or and go yes yes it never quits

Speaker 2 so so

Speaker 2 point being what was the point here?

Speaker 1 The point is the royal family are rich as fuck. Yes.

Speaker 2 The royal family are rich as fuck, but they have no legitimate power. It's just that King Charles gets soft every now and then.

Speaker 2 And yet they're treated for some reason because they have

Speaker 2 inseminated members of their own family for countless generations that they deserve all this fucking posh treatment. I don't.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you say they have no power. They have power.
They have the power to sell newspapers,

Speaker 1 the power to make paparazzi lose their mind.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, apparently they got the power to put $28 billion in the bank.

Speaker 1 They're the biggest celebrities in British history.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 why?

Speaker 2 Why are our friends across the pond not up in arms about this and try to throw the whole bunch of them out in the streets?

Speaker 2 For heaven's sake.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 it's getting awful deep in here, Brian.

Speaker 2 I'll just say that. I think we need a good quality pair of waterproof boots to wade through all of this poo-poo and caca.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 2 You see what I've done there?

Speaker 1 Well, especially in the British countryside, or especially over in England with that weather, I'm sure you definitely want a good pair of boots, but let's focus on America.

Speaker 1 I don't know why I brought that up.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean,

Speaker 2 the people in our

Speaker 2 good friends over at Brunt, I'm sure that they're not going to discriminate or differentiate. If you go,

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Speaker 2 I'm mucking around in the muddy creek. I'm over on my hands and knees in the mulch beds pulling weeds.
The boots.

Speaker 2 They keep my feet warm. They keep my feet comfy.
I got good balance. They got the treads on the bottom so I don't slip and bust my keister.

Speaker 2 They're just, they're almost something you want to wear to bed at night. So that way you get up in the morning ready to attack some more work.

Speaker 2 But if you go to bruntworkwear.com, as I was about to say,

Speaker 2 we're not going to send them to Britain because the British people don't work. They know it's only the royal family that doesn't work, Brian.

Speaker 2 The rest of the people over there, they're good salt of the earth people.

Speaker 2 They like to stick their hands in the dirt and plant the seeds and make the flowers and the crops grow, to make the rain fall on the dew of the morning. And then you go to work again.

Speaker 2 That's what you do, isn't it?

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Speaker 1 Don't do that.

Speaker 1 For any reason, no reason.

Speaker 2 Well, it's at least a phone poll.

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Speaker 2 If you've got a hardworking man in your life, they make great gifts. Brian, do you have a hardworking man in your life? Y'all, your gardeners.
They all work hard.

Speaker 2 Are you going to get them all, Brunts?

Speaker 1 I have my own Brunts. I'm a hardworking man.

Speaker 1 And of course, you could all get your own without committing to buying them for others. One more time, Jim, that promo code.

Speaker 2 JCE, get them for all the gardeners.

Speaker 1 All right, let's

Speaker 1 weed whack our way through the rest of this show here.

Speaker 2 All righty then. Should we go ahead and talk about the blood and guts?

Speaker 1 I'll say something here.

Speaker 2 I was wondering whether you had just said no and just muted yourself. Like, no, we're not going to talk about this.

Speaker 1 No, I was, you know, waiting to see if you were going to jump in with any more thoughts, but I realized you were deep in thought there.

Speaker 1 It was a shit show, but it was one of those shit shows where I really couldn't look away.

Speaker 1 And it almost felt like every single thing on this show

Speaker 1 in its own way was terrible.

Speaker 1 Now, some things.

Speaker 2 Because they kept finding different ways.

Speaker 1 But some things are more terrible than others. It may have peaked earlier in terms of star power,

Speaker 1 but this was one of the biggest dynamites of the year. I have to assume it'll do one of their better ratings.

Speaker 1 You could probably question why this isn't a pay-per-view because.

Speaker 2 What do they got left to sell us?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't give a shit about their pay-per-view in a few weeks. This was the pay-per-view, but let's talk about it.

Speaker 2 In a few weeks, it's fucking 10 days from this episode's airing. Oh, 10 days, they got

Speaker 2 they're going from

Speaker 2 two rings in a double cage with 20 different men and women in two different matches for an hour apiece on the free tv to two guys in a cage in one match

Speaker 2 on in one ring on pay-per-view for 50 i don't but here's the thing you

Speaker 2 you mr last

Speaker 2 you knew that I was more than likely going to skip

Speaker 2 watching an hour of indie girl garbage match and you called me up early the very next morning after this thing aired and

Speaker 2 i won't give the the entire transcript of our conversation but basically i think you'll agree the gist was you saying people are demanding to hear what i have to say about this thing because it was an all-time shit show of epic proportions and please watch it

Speaker 1 was that the summation of the those may have been some of the words i actually said too yeah I think so. And

Speaker 1 more than anything else on Dynamite in a while, you know, we just did a review of Dynamite last week. I think it was like 30 minutes, the shortest one ever.
It's not a fun show to watch often.

Speaker 1 The same people doing the same things. There's only so much you could say.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 was classic AEW Dynamite here.

Speaker 2 And there's a lot to say.

Speaker 1 We heard more feedback about this than anything that's been on Dynamite in a while. So I thought that merited you considering to watch this match for the listeners.

Speaker 2 Well, and at the same time,

Speaker 2 a lot of people are going to say, Well, well, that's good, and that's what they're trying to do. I

Speaker 2 are you a successful high-wire walker if you say you're going to walk between the two skyscrapers in downtown Chicago and you make worldwide news for falling off the fucking wire?

Speaker 2 I, I,

Speaker 2 it worked for evil Knievel, but his fucking, you know,

Speaker 2 cycle rocket

Speaker 2 just said fuck it. And he, you know, parachuted into the Snake River Canyon.
That got

Speaker 2 worldwide publicity, but it wasn't exactly a proud achievement.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 what they have done is they have just said, we are going to

Speaker 2 do as much as we can to appeal to the smallest number of people because it is an ever smaller number of people now and they're still 20

Speaker 2 down with the new method of figuring ratings so

Speaker 2 you know maybe if this show is up 20 it'll be back to what a bad show used to do the point is

Speaker 2 10 days in front of a pay-per-view, but more importantly,

Speaker 2 Tony's going to fund this thing for 10 years

Speaker 2 or till whenever it's such time that he's non-compass mentist by his father.

Speaker 2 And what can you, what can you do to another human being?

Speaker 2 But it's all just random. It's just chaos.
And the reason why

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 especially

Speaker 2 this got a lot of attention

Speaker 2 was because now instead of just the guy, well, I don't say now, they've done it before, but the highlight of the garbage indie wrestling that appeals to the smallest, diest, hardest part of this audience that tells them all they know what they're doing

Speaker 2 and that they're the greatest thing ever, though that small group of people,

Speaker 2 the girls get to fucking be sickos too.

Speaker 2 While they resent the jokes that you make about the AEW fans being the people legitimately that have people chained up in their basement.

Speaker 2 We didn't make that up. The news did.

Speaker 2 We joke about that and they get mad and then, oh, but this is so great.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 whenever you, and boy, by the way, the AEW fans with 27 different Twitter accounts, all with Japanese anime and fucking some kind of outlaw wrestler in their gimmick.

Speaker 2 They hate it when you fucking say anything about this stuff, about the girls getting to do it too. Because that, I triggered a bot with a couple of the things I said, where that they all somehow,

Speaker 2 people that don't follow me, that I didn't tag AEW as the kids say or whatever, but they find it and come in.

Speaker 2 Because it's like 17 people,

Speaker 2 but it's all they do all day.

Speaker 2 That's the bubble that these people live in in AEW, the talent.

Speaker 2 The reason why

Speaker 2 that the girls match here, and I do use that term derisively,

Speaker 2 because that's what they showed they are. They're girl marks.

Speaker 2 And Tony will let them do whatever the fuck they want.

Speaker 2 Because I saw that on the

Speaker 2 statements on the internet.

Speaker 2 You boomer, the girls are equal. They wanted to do this.
They didn't have to be talked into it.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Because they're marks.

Speaker 2 They have cushy jobs where instead of having to protect themselves and their opponents so that they can work regularly or elsewhere be out of a job again not getting paid, they're bankrolled by a billionaire boy child with some kind of cognitive thing going on.

Speaker 2 And he'll pay them if they fucking, and they're young and they say, I want the file, break my leg, or whatever the fuck he'll pay me.

Speaker 2 And they don't, they think it'll be cool. We'll take cool pictures of us bleeding.
And we'll get to use the kendo stick wrapped in barbed wire.

Speaker 2 And they're marks.

Speaker 2 They have the only the not even the barest

Speaker 2 superficial understanding of what not only the wrestling business is, but why blood should be used in it and how it should be done and by who and in what quantities becomes just ridiculous.

Speaker 2 And they don't care that it's potentially risky for either sponsors that may get a wild hair up their ass or the network one of these days will start watching the fucking show and they'll go, What the fuck?

Speaker 2 This is on our air,

Speaker 2 or somebody will have a goddamn conniption fit because it's just so gross and in such bad taste. But they don't care

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 the idea of women rolling around in broken glass, the barbed wire, and the thumbtacks, and the bleeding, and all the other shit,

Speaker 2 it's not going to increase AEW's business because it turns off more than it turns on. And the ones it turns on are already there.

Speaker 2 But they don't care that it's not going to increase business. It might have increased the viewers,

Speaker 2 50,000 viewers, whatever the fuck, the numbers, you know, who knows these days.

Speaker 2 But what difference does that make? Because the money's guaranteed.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they don't care whether they even get hurt or not because they view it as a badge of honor.

Speaker 2 Oh, when I came off the top of the cage through a fucking table, it was on fire with the goddamn barbed wire.

Speaker 2 Hey, oh, look at the pictures of this nasty fucking break here, and I was in the hospital, but Tony paid me.

Speaker 2 They're all children, and they're marks for themselves.

Speaker 2 And before we get into this

Speaker 2 12-way cluster fuck

Speaker 2 with any specificity,

Speaker 2 that's the deal,

Speaker 2 is that it's not about girls being equal because they can draw money. They want to show that they can be as big a marks for themselves and as stupid as everybody else, as the guys can.

Speaker 2 And no, I don't believe they were forced to do it. I believe they wanted to do it because they're marks for themselves and they don't get to business.

Speaker 2 We get to do the cool shit. You know, we need to break, we get to break the furniture.

Speaker 2 It won't increase their checks. They're just having fun.
They're on a guarantee. They get the cool pictures.

Speaker 2 But it's bad indie wrestling.

Speaker 2 If there was a reason for some of if, First of all, if everything didn't look so fucking phony, that's what struck a nerve with people on Twitter.

Speaker 2 I say, I wasn't as offended by the women bleeding and rolling in broken glass as I was the fact that, as a professional, so much of it looks so fucking fake.

Speaker 2 And they can't get over the fact that

Speaker 2 the reason that you and I hear, Brian, from

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 9 million of the 11 million people that used to watch wrestling on Monday nights, but don't watch it at all anymore,

Speaker 2 75% of them, their complaint is: well, everything just looks so fake and it sounds so silly and fake.

Speaker 2 So they do faker shit, but they hurt themselves in the process of doing it.

Speaker 2 And none of these girls are talented enough at working with gimmicks, obviously,

Speaker 2 that they can be trusted not to hurt somebody.

Speaker 2 It's bad taste indie wrestling that stays in

Speaker 2 rec centers for a reason. There's no athletic ability involved.
And that's why the junk wrestlers, garbage wrestlers of the business do it because that's the only way they can get over.

Speaker 2 But some of these girls have talent. Some of the guys have talent.
Not as many, by the way, in the men's match.

Speaker 2 I wanted somebody to hit me in the head so I'd see some stars.

Speaker 2 But they don't need the talent to do this because it's just a stunt show where the fans don't care

Speaker 2 what happens as long as they see somebody bleed and somebody break some furniture. Miscellaneous interchangeable talent.
We won't remember the exact thing tomorrow. Just break a lot of shit.

Speaker 2 So they're all just breaking a lot of shit.

Speaker 2 Blood can be important in wrestling.

Speaker 2 If the heel makes the baby face bleed, if it's in a match, then the fans are nervous because the baby face is hurt. He's at a disadvantage.
He may not be able to pull this out.

Speaker 2 Or if it's in an angle, then he gives the baby face some reason to want to get even with the heel for injuring him, for hurting him in front of all his fans.

Speaker 2 When the baby face gets heated or gets juice on the heel,

Speaker 2 It's because he's getting even for something that was done to him. He's showing the people they get what they paid to see in the end usually.

Speaker 2 If not the end of the program, at least the end of the fucking match. But no, now he got him.
He finally got him. There's reasons for it.

Speaker 2 You don't do it in the first match in a cold match between two fucking dweebs. You don't do it up and down in six matches out of six on the card or nobody gives a shit anymore.
It's just ridiculous.

Speaker 2 There's the parameters and the rules of the road.

Speaker 2 And then it's a useful tool.

Speaker 2 If you use it too much, then people don't give a shit. And then you've just fucked yourself.
If you never do it,

Speaker 2 then people are. I remember back in the day, they used to beat the shit out of each other.
It's got to be

Speaker 2 a balance.

Speaker 2 But these idiots just do it because they think it makes them cool.

Speaker 2 I'll say a few things. He's still there.

Speaker 1 I'll jump in with a few things. And I think what you just said is a part of the issue and specifically with the war games here

Speaker 1 there were a lot of weapons and a lot of different gimmicks introduced well you know we'll get to the bed of nails we'll get to all these different things

Speaker 1 it's not like they were necessary you know you it wasn't about the fans like i need more than war games no this was They had these ideas. They wanted to do them.
I don't remember what match it it was.

Speaker 1 It may have been like Anna Jay and Ty Mello versus

Speaker 1 Penelope and someone. I don't even remember for sure.
But there was like a no DQ women's match on a collision or something.

Speaker 1 And it was like a bloodbath, and it was just a complete crazy match, like the men have. A little sloppier, but the same kind of match.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the quote that came out afterwards was like, We really wanted to do it. So we asked Tony and he said, sure.

Speaker 1 And again, you hit on, I think, one of the big issues. A lot of this stuff that's done is done for them because

Speaker 1 it's not that you need a Vince McMahon, but you need more than a Tony in terms of having an overall idea of the big picture and what needs to be and what doesn't need to be a part of that.

Speaker 1 Now, with all that said, my last comment will be, I enjoyed the women's match a whole lot more than the men's match.

Speaker 1 And part of that was the shit show spectacle of it.

Speaker 1 Because I've never, obviously, I've never seen you. I've never seen, no one's ever seen a women's match like this.

Speaker 2 Well, no. And also because all the stars, what there were of them were in the women's match, at least bigger than in the men's.
And they did more goofy shit.

Speaker 2 Because what else was there left to do? Which is the stupid

Speaker 2 thing about seeing a War Games or a Blood and Guts or these Elimination Chamber or these giant gimmick matches, two of them on the same show, one right after another, one with the girls usually on first to make it look like, well, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 If that 120-pound girl can survive this incredible structure, then what about Brock Lester? It's insane to begin with.

Speaker 1 And that's one thing with Elimination Chamber or Royal Rumble. Elimination Chamber is a little heavier than Royal Rumble, but that's one thing.

Speaker 1 When it's the War Games match and the women are up first and they introduce every conceivable weapon into it and they escape during it, like everything that's going to happen, they did first.

Speaker 1 I think it took a lot away in terms of crowd reaction from the men's war games match.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, because they're sitting there going, Jesus Christ, it's a bunch of job guys and they're doing the same shit we are. All right, let's take it one at a time because

Speaker 2 that's the problem, also, is that now

Speaker 2 I think I've made this

Speaker 2 simile before

Speaker 2 in that the AEW male fans now are the 14-year-old teenage girls that used to write me death threats because of what I did to Ricky and Robert.

Speaker 2 In the day, you had women in the crowd hanging from the rafters, flinging themselves at the Rock and Roll Express and the Fabulous Ones and the Von Erics.

Speaker 2 And now all the guys in the business are so small, so geeky, so unintimidating, so lacking in personality.

Speaker 2 The women don't give a shit about them, but it's the 30-something year old guys that are desperate, that are like, Jesus Christ, anybody. Oh, look at those pretty girls.

Speaker 2 And they're so,

Speaker 2 but they still act like,

Speaker 2 how dare you say that about Blue Sky?

Speaker 2 They act like the 14-year-old girls. So this was the

Speaker 2 pretty much the main event of this thing to that audience.

Speaker 2 So let's see, where did we start?

Speaker 2 And by the way, the rules of this are

Speaker 2 two people start for five minutes, right? Like it always, and then

Speaker 2 every few minutes, another person will come out. There was no time.
There was no clock. There was no rhyme or reason.
They didn't want to send anybody to commercial break.

Speaker 2 They just said, we won't promise them anything. We'll just send them out when the spot comes up.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I really do think this kind of thing does damage to the whole business because

Speaker 2 for all the reasons

Speaker 2 when people see this

Speaker 2 and think this is wrestling, fuck, they don't want to see any kind of wrestling

Speaker 2 unless it's this, you know, that, well,

Speaker 2 the average person that's not a faithful member of this audience wouldn't stumble past this thing anyway.

Speaker 2 So it was Willow and Sky Blue.

Speaker 2 And the kendo sticks and the garbage can lid. And

Speaker 2 blue starts bleeding buckets what two minutes in

Speaker 2 and she's in this whole thing which is going to go an hour and and you they she's already tweeted all the pictures and everything and she made sure to get in front of the camera a bunch and smile so you knew she was happy about

Speaker 2 that she went bleeding to death jesus christ

Speaker 2 and julia hart came in next and she and Sky Blue, did we ever find out, Brian, did I zone out and miss it? They went to the

Speaker 1 pads. Yeah, we never found out.

Speaker 2 They both go to the corner and they reach in the top buckle, the middle buckle, a bottom buckle, back in the top buckle. They're trying to find whatever's hid.

Speaker 2 And then they realize they've just stopped the match. And they go over and start beating on

Speaker 2 Willow. And

Speaker 2 it never happens.

Speaker 2 And then they double teamed Willow. Did you see on the charges in the corner they were giving her when they ran into each other?

Speaker 2 Because Sky Blue went in there, boom, and she had it. She turned around, didn't get out of the way in time.
Here came Julia, and bam, hit her own partner. And it just,

Speaker 2 so Harley Cameron came in then with a chair

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 tatered Blue with it. And

Speaker 2 at this point, we were starting to get a picture of a bunch of women dressed like strippers using weapons, botching moves, and bleeding and getting lost.

Speaker 2 And then they went to the break.

Speaker 2 So when they came back, it had been like five minutes since they might come in, and then they sent Thecla.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it looked like drunk square dancing. I don't know how to explain.

Speaker 2 It wasn't like anybody was trying to have any semblance of it. They were trying to do what they've seen on tape the guys do in the war games or whatever.
And then

Speaker 2 about a minute and a half after Thecla came in after five minutes, Jamie Hayter came in.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I don't think it was even supposed to happen where she had a bag of thumbtacks, but the bag immediately just exploded and the thumbtacks went everywhere.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I wasn't sure either. I mean, I don't know, but that happened pretty quick.

Speaker 2 So she just grabbed a kendo stick and beat on some people.

Speaker 2 And then here came Megan Brain.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 every week, Brian,

Speaker 2 more and more I realize why she is not here. Remember what we used to ask, how did the WWE miss out on her?

Speaker 2 Boy.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 she went to double clothesline Harley and Willow.

Speaker 2 And Willow took the clothesline, but Harley tried to duck it.

Speaker 2 She got hit in the face anyway, but she didn't sell it. She stood up and kept running.
And when she came off the other side, Megan

Speaker 2 slammed her. So I'm not sure

Speaker 2 which one fucked up, whether it was the one took it or the one to duck it.

Speaker 2 And Harley can't, in some cases, it looks like she's confused when somebody shoots her off and she tries to figure out how to just run straight ahead.

Speaker 2 Can you get lost trying to run straight ahead, Brian?

Speaker 1 Well, there's a lot going on. It's an

Speaker 1 action-package match.

Speaker 2 It's not like you can stop on the corner for the light and fucking wait for it to change while you think about it.

Speaker 2 Alrighty. So then Penelope Pitstop

Speaker 2 is at ringside, even though she couldn't be in the match because she is in a arm sling

Speaker 2 or a sling in her arm. Whatever.

Speaker 2 She's apparently.

Speaker 2 She's fucked up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we saw that. It's when she did a moonsault onto a group of women on the floor and just landed arm first on the floor.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's right. Well, that'll do it.

Speaker 2 But she handed Megan Brain a chair. And then

Speaker 2 this is why I call her Megan Brain, folks. She flung it full force.

Speaker 2 Jamie Hayter was sitting in the corner, like on her ass and leaned in the turnbuckles.

Speaker 2 And they've put a garbage can lid over, sit on her lap, and it's over her face, right? So apparently, somebody thought a spot would be, well, we'll hit the chair, the can lid with the chair.

Speaker 2 She flung it. Did you see this, Brian, full force into the can lid with Hayter's face behind it for no reason?

Speaker 2 It didn't even hit it

Speaker 2 through it and let go of it.

Speaker 2 And I'm foaming, and we didn't see Hayter do anything for, God damn it, what was it, the next 15 minutes?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I've heard that apparently they're reporting that some of her teeth are up or something i don't know i didn't see that oh no

Speaker 2 you know

Speaker 2 it wasn't like she wasn't bleeding but you don't necessarily i don't know what they did to her she laid there for quite a while in the other ring like i'll be over here now

Speaker 2 but that's one of that should be a fine

Speaker 2 Anybody that did that

Speaker 2 in

Speaker 2 the WWE would be fined, I would think, for unprofessional conduct because

Speaker 2 there's no way. You can't.

Speaker 2 And also stupidity.

Speaker 2 And if that happened

Speaker 2 in regular companies,

Speaker 2 nobody'd work with this fucking bitch.

Speaker 2 So I don't know what the fucks. Anyway.

Speaker 2 So then Statlander came in with a pool cue.

Speaker 2 And she used it once and dropped it and started doing wrestling moves.

Speaker 1 Well, no, it broke, though. When she used it, the top broke off right away.

Speaker 2 You still got a goddamn stick in your hand.

Speaker 1 Well, it's

Speaker 1 very sharp now. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 Well, also, have you not seen the goddamn all the pool hall fight movies where they break the pool stick in half and use the heavy part?

Speaker 2 You're just not thinking, Brian.

Speaker 2 Nevertheless,

Speaker 2 for some reason, at that point, Queen Yayata showed up at ringside wearing a neck brace.

Speaker 2 She was supposed to be in a match, but she got these people are really hurt. So they've lost two out of this fucking roster before they even got the thing in the ring.

Speaker 2 And they're trying to kill the rest of them, but the girl in the neck brace chased the girl in the arm sling off. I'm not making this up.

Speaker 1 It's going to be funny when they can't get to the end of their tag team tournament because multiple women are hurt because of everything they've done since they announced the tournament.

Speaker 2 So then

Speaker 2 Willow and Statlander, even though they're on a sand, they're on a babyface team, but they've had issues with each other. So they do a face-off.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the announcers are trying to tell the story of, well, they've had a checkered past or whatever. And they're trying to, well, suddenly, old Blue comes from behind and shoves.

Speaker 2 Statlander like she's going to shove her face first into Willow.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, Willow lurches forward. Like when Statlander goes down or ducks or whatever, she's going to clothesline Blue.

Speaker 2 But when Blue pushed Statlander, Blue shoot, tripped and fell and ducked the clothesline.

Speaker 2 And Willow is like, where'd the fuck she go? Oh, she's down there now.

Speaker 2 And I swear to God,

Speaker 2 she shoot. tripped and fell and fucking ducked the clothesline.

Speaker 2 So they went back to the face-off. And then the announcers start trying to tell the story again about.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, they've had a checkered past, and this time

Speaker 2 Stellander has turned to where the handheld in the ring is from the viewpoint that it's coming. Because here comes Megan Brain to do the same thing and shove them into each other.

Speaker 2 But just everybody fell down, including, I think, Blue Sky, who hadn't really got back up yet.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 so meanwhile, we're 30 minutes into the fucking show and they come back from another break and here's Mercedes Moon.

Speaker 2 And they actually put a table at ringside with job guys holding all of her fucking belts with her champagne bucket, which actually looked like what you'd get goddamn.

Speaker 2 mud bugs in at Joe's crab shack was the champagne ice bucket.

Speaker 2 But they got the champagne and they got the job, guys, and the belts. And she does her normal entrance, the stripper dance, and drank champagne off the table while the match is going on.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 she does get heat because she's an obnoxious douchebag, but I'm not sure that

Speaker 2 this is a proper heat when you just go, that is a person that I just couldn't ever like.

Speaker 2 She's so convinced that her shit tastes like caviar.

Speaker 2 And I know that's a good heel attribute, but then she's going to get in a rig and stink it up and never do a job. Although

Speaker 2 you can give her this. She had as little to do with this thing as possible, this match I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 She did as little as she could possibly do. She stayed away from most of the broken glass and the thumbtacks.
And by the finish of the thing, she wasn't even in the cage.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 she's got creative control, I guess. But

Speaker 2 she just would go in and out of the cage and threw all of her belts in the ring so that all the girls' heels could awkwardly whip the other ones.

Speaker 2 And then Mina Mellons came out with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.

Speaker 2 And she got in the ring and hit one of the girls with, I say hit, I can't use that word.

Speaker 2 She tapped

Speaker 2 one of the girls the lightest bat shot ever and then threw the bat

Speaker 2 to Megan, who caught it. And then she dropkicked Megan.

Speaker 2 Why the fuck did you, why would you take a bat and throw it to your guy? It's this giant lurch-like fucking Amazon that's going to kick the shit out of him. Oh, here, take this baseball wrap.

Speaker 2 baseball wrapped barbed wire

Speaker 2 from the bank addicted drug robber. Take this fucking thing

Speaker 2 and I'll dropkick you.

Speaker 2 Or maybe I could have just taken the bat that I already had and just beat the fuck out of you.

Speaker 2 You giant bitch.

Speaker 2 What the? So then Mercedes picked up the bat

Speaker 2 and missed a swing and dropped the bat. And they went back to wrestling spots and trading fake forearms.

Speaker 2 There's a fucking bat.

Speaker 2 There was just, there was a fucking bat there is what I'm saying to you. And then it's, and then it just,

Speaker 2 let's drop down hip toss.

Speaker 2 Marina Schaefer comes out through the crowd

Speaker 2 with the spooky lighting and she pulls Statlander out of the cage. Statlander's bleeding.

Speaker 2 And they start fighting on the floor. It's a two-ring double cage, but they've got to have the fight on the floor.

Speaker 2 And that's when they turn the bed of nails over from where it had been secreted against the barricade, and she take knocks that lander onto a bed of nails,

Speaker 2 which they got earlier that day. It's a bed of nails store.

Speaker 2 What the fuck?

Speaker 2 Why

Speaker 2 did any of the crew say

Speaker 2 we got a bed of nails over here? Does anybody know what the oh shit, call the police? What the fuck?

Speaker 2 Then Tony Storm comes out, dressed as Michael Myers in Halloween,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 brings in a giant pearl necklace and the champagne ice bucket.

Speaker 2 And she uses the pearl necklace as brass knuckles on Schaefer.

Speaker 2 And Schaefer just says, fuck it, and doesn't sell it and takes over on her.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they're 40 minutes into the show, and we go to the break. And they come back.

Speaker 2 And Jamie Hayter, that's actually the first time I've made note on seeing her. She may have recovered from having her face smashed in

Speaker 2 for this giant, witless Amazon.

Speaker 2 She powerbombed Sky Blue onto a table. It didn't break because, of course, blue only weighs 100 pounds.

Speaker 2 75 pounds of that are in her glutei

Speaker 2 and then she jamie hater gives her an elbow drop on a table it no breakie

Speaker 2 table no breakie

Speaker 2 and then everybody started doing all the moves that they knew

Speaker 2 and it's you can't really

Speaker 2 there's no rhyme or reason when everybody's

Speaker 2 looking through the cage

Speaker 2 from that distance that you have to look through that fucking cage. We're talking about the people in the arena

Speaker 2 and/or on television where you can't understand half of what's going on. That there's 12 of these nitwits just doing everything to everybody.
You can't even keep track of who's in charge here.

Speaker 2 They're just popping on if somebody's going to get fucking injured, carried out on a stretcher, or break something.

Speaker 2 And that's what Harley Cameron with the

Speaker 2 brass knuckles KO'd Mercedes Moon.

Speaker 1 Well, did you see how she had the brass knuckles?

Speaker 2 Oh, you know, inside a puppet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Mercedes went for the puppet.

Speaker 2 She was like, the puppet of Mercedes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. She tricked her with the puppet.

Speaker 2 It was a puppet trick.

Speaker 2 Then when Mercedes yanks the puppet off, then she hits her with the brass knuckles.

Speaker 2 But I believe that that was Mercedes'

Speaker 2 cue. That was her reason to get the fuck out of there and stay out.
Well, they,

Speaker 2 anyway, they,

Speaker 2 Julia Hart and Thecla then just crawl through the openings in the cage trim or truss or frame or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 2 And they just figured out they could do that.

Speaker 2 So they

Speaker 2 crawl through, crawl through

Speaker 2 and knock the referee out on the floor and get the key to the door and open the door. And they throw several of the babyfaces out on the floor.

Speaker 2 So then they have about six girls fighting out on the floor.

Speaker 2 And Statlander, no, Statlander and Mercedes, that they fell through the belt table. That took oh, moan out of the fucking thing.

Speaker 2 And that's when

Speaker 2 Storm dumped the broken glass out and DDT'd Marina Schaefer on it. But Schaefer

Speaker 2 turned around and broke a framed mirror over Tony Storm's head. So there's got glass flying everywhere.

Speaker 2 And then Mina Mellons put a figure four leg lock on Megan Brain around the barbed wire baseball bat.

Speaker 2 This, by the way, all of this is taking a lot fucking longer

Speaker 2 than the way I'm describing it.

Speaker 2 Because this thing is going for nearly an hour.

Speaker 2 Then they held finally

Speaker 2 Tony Storm.

Speaker 2 Several of the girls, I can't remember who, doesn't matter, held Tony Storm

Speaker 2 while Megan Brain whipped Mina Mellons with one of the title belts. And Tony was so worried about...

Speaker 2 Have they, we established now, I guess, they're lovers? They love each other.

Speaker 2 The announcers were using the words, well, they're in love, a person you love.

Speaker 2 Are they appealing to the

Speaker 2 basement crowd again with the lesbianism, or what's happening here?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not exactly certain, but wasn't that also the gimmick that they had with Mariah Mae and Mina Shirakawa?

Speaker 1 Because Mariah Mae was like the understudy of Tony Storm, but Mina and her had this relationship from stardom,

Speaker 1 and it created like a schism in the timeless Tony Storm, Mariah Mae relationship.

Speaker 2 A schism?

Speaker 1 A schism.

Speaker 2 You're talking about like a small crack or chunk

Speaker 2 in the sun.

Speaker 1 I don't know where you're leading us, but yes, that is indeed the definition.

Speaker 2 I can't use the other word on YouTube.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 It can only be a crack in the armor.

Speaker 2 But nevertheless,

Speaker 2 so Tony Storm gives up to save Mina Mellons from being whooped on by Megan Brain with the title belt.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 again,

Speaker 2 I'm sure they all had just a fun time doing it.

Speaker 2 But this is the kind of thing, like I said, that turns people off to all wrestling.

Speaker 2 And it's just unnecessary. It's meant to go almost an hour.

Speaker 2 I don't know which was worse, the fakedness of it and the contriveness of it, or the stupid use of the childish weapons, or the

Speaker 2 multiple women bleeding everywhere, or the idea that these are supposed to be

Speaker 2 professionals in a professional business, but they're actually

Speaker 2 legitimately hurting each other, taking bumps at a bunch of sharp shit

Speaker 2 for no reason,

Speaker 2 Except they're marks for garbage wrestling.

Speaker 2 And the younger people have to blame Tony for rewarding goofs like Moxley at his fucking viewpoint with

Speaker 2 teaching this to the newer generation.

Speaker 1 In terms of positives,

Speaker 1 do you see anything with Sky Blue? The fact that she was in there the longest.

Speaker 1 She bled the most, maybe the most I've ever seen a woman bleed in America.

Speaker 1 And she obviously.

Speaker 2 Wait a minute, what about those trips to Thailand? What are you talking about in America?

Speaker 1 Well, I think Chigis and Agayo may have bled more. I'm not sure exactly.
Oh, good lord. What is that? Against dump Matsumoto.

Speaker 2 You know, most of the guys in the business that I've known when they got juiced to where people said, geez, I've never seen somebody bleed so much. They didn't mean to do it.

Speaker 2 Go ahead.

Speaker 1 That was my only point. The fact that obviously she has very limited coaching because it's AEW and she kind of is a singer-songwriter.

Speaker 2 Do I see anything? And I see something in blue-sky

Speaker 2 because she's sky-blue. Now, I don't know which is which.

Speaker 2 She's an attractive girl. She's obviously in shape.
She has a good look and she's obviously dedicated.

Speaker 2 So, yes, that right there, but I don't see anything from this because what talent did it take to go out there and wander around in the middle of that mess with 11 other girls for nearly an hour?

Speaker 2 You can fucking just lay and sell in a corner when it's not your turn. It's not like you're having a 50-minute wrestling match.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 no, I don't attribute anything to her talent for being able to bleed profusely when she cuts herself.

Speaker 2 If again,

Speaker 2 whether she meant to do it that bad or not, or whatever the case,

Speaker 2 or to get that much sauce, as they used to say,

Speaker 2 in the middle of this ridiculousness that is like one of these goddamn garbage championship wrestling shows with a giant budget, as I said on Twitter, because the billionaire boy child has a cognitive defect.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 here's what we get.

Speaker 2 If it meant anything for business, that'd be wonderful.

Speaker 2 But since it didn't,

Speaker 2 everybody's talking about her,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 it didn't make her another goddamn penny because she's on a guarantee and they're on a guarantee and everybody's on a guarantee.

Speaker 2 They're just trying to kill each other to appeal to a weird, smaller section of the

Speaker 2 fandom these days.

Speaker 2 They ought to have a woman locked in a basement match on pay-per-view, or at least make these people pay something to see it.

Speaker 1 Instead of escape the cage, escape the AEW fan.

Speaker 2 Yes, if they get out of the basement, they win.

Speaker 1 Out of the basement. And one of the households.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Well, out of the, well, if you get out of the basement, pretty much you're going to be able to get out of the house.

Speaker 1 There's no guarantee there. I don't think it's a victory until you get out of the house.

Speaker 2 All right. Okay.
From the basement to the front yard, when they plant foot in the front yard, they've won the thing.

Speaker 2 But the problem is you can only have one AEW fan buy a ticket. And you got to have at least four to six girls in the basement or it wouldn't be exciting.

Speaker 2 Then you take the six girls and you drop them off at a bus station in the middle of Iowa, maybe Montana,

Speaker 2 in the middle of the night. And they have no identification on them.
And then a panel van pulls up. And then six months later, you you call the guy that bought the ticket.

Speaker 2 You say, Okay, are you ready to shoot this pay-per-view now?

Speaker 2 Well, again, spitballing.

Speaker 1 It's just a workshop and some ideas here. But if you are one of the AW Sicko fans, obviously mind your own business, keep to yourself, leave these women alone.

Speaker 1 But that was the women's blood and gush, gush, blood and guts match.

Speaker 2 Blood and gush. Boy, I'll tell you, you know.

Speaker 2 But Brian, we we said it, and

Speaker 2 blood,

Speaker 2 we said it, and I think it's, it's, it's, it's never been more true that they're marks for themselves and they wanted to get the cool pictures, right?

Speaker 2 They wanted to get the cool pictures themselves. They could share on social media.
They could send each other's phones and they can.

Speaker 2 You know, they can think about this moment back when they were covered in blood and rolling around in broken glass

Speaker 2 i think that they ought to contact our friends our brand new friends over at aura frames don't you

Speaker 2 because that way they could set one of these aura frames we're going to tell you what these are folks they could set these aura frames on their on their uh nightstand or on their piece of furniture there the the the humidor or the whatever the fuck

Speaker 2 and they could look at themselves gushing blood on national television just over and over again from all kinds of angles. What do you think, Brian?

Speaker 1 Again, maybe not the most appropriate of photos to display, but I have to say, this is Aura Frames.

Speaker 1 That is, this is one of those things that when it arrives in the house, you become a superstar to your wife. Suzanne fell in love with this quickly.

Speaker 1 We have a couple here in the house, one upstairs, one downstairs. And

Speaker 1 if the wrestlers are anything like us humans, I think they would definitely love Aura Frames.

Speaker 2 well here's the thing and by the way it's aura a u r a folks see i have no accent i'm very neutral so i can pronounce aura frames but that's what you look up aura frames.com because here's the thing when it came to my house to castle cornet here because of course

Speaker 2 we they're we're in the family now so they they sent me one

Speaker 2 And Stacy flipped out, went out of her mind because turns out that is exactly what her mom had gotten from her nephew,

Speaker 2 Stacy's mother from Stacy's nephew. You see where I'm going there.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 as a result, Stacy's mom liked it so much, Stacy was going to get her nephew one. And instead, she took this one and sent it to him and then got another one.

Speaker 2 And now they've all got aura frames and they're all connected to each other and they're just sending pictures back and forth like crazy.

Speaker 2 And that's exactly what you can do. You can

Speaker 2 preload pictures and then send it to somebody, or you can send it to somebody and then upload or download. Which term is it, Brian? Pictures.
You can connect it to the Wi-Fi.

Speaker 1 You will be uploading them to the

Speaker 1 through the Wi-Fi.

Speaker 2 It'll get you can send from your phone. You can send pictures.
I'll tell you what. I actually.

Speaker 2 I went down to the pay phone on the corner and figured out a way to send some pictures to a guy down the street and he got pissed about it. It was pictures of my ass.

Speaker 1 But nevertheless, and it comes from the payphone. Yes.

Speaker 2 It took me a while to figure it out, but I did.

Speaker 2 And also each one of these frames comes.

Speaker 2 Now this is very important.

Speaker 1 Of course, I'm about to

Speaker 2 talk to you people about very important information.

Speaker 2 There is a gift box included with each one of these Aura frames. Every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag.
And that means it's free.

Speaker 2 So you'll get one of these for free every time that you get one with no price tag, I guess, right, Brian?

Speaker 1 No, that isn't how that works. That isn't how we should put that out there.

Speaker 1 Nothing is free in life, kids.

Speaker 2 Of course. Oh, no.

Speaker 2 So when it doesn't have a price tag on it, well, I guess, well, you know, how else are you going to know how much if you if you send somebody a present, a gift for the holidays, and it doesn't have a price tag on it, how are they supposed to know how much you like them?

Speaker 1 Well, again, it's the thought that counts, and also a picture of the fancy.

Speaker 2 What you're thinking, I want some goddamn valuable merchandise.

Speaker 1 If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen, ladies and gentlemen. We have lots of expressions we can do.

Speaker 2 No, don't put these things in the kitchen because right then and there, it'll get greasy.

Speaker 1 You can put it in the kitchen. Let's not scare people and alarm them.
You can put this in the kitchen.

Speaker 2 No, you don't want to fuck it up.

Speaker 1 You're always trying

Speaker 2 the fritters and the fucking various things.

Speaker 1 Oh, Jim, you heard that? That means you need to tell all the good people out there that they can display photos of their family, their friends, the good times, everything they want to see.

Speaker 2 And the bad times. A cool feature.
You can have a slideshow of funerals if you want to, just to make sure you remember the departed.

Speaker 2 But right now, for a limited time, folks, here's some business for you. Visit Aura Frames, A-U-R-A, AuraFrames.com and get $45 off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frames.

Speaker 2 They were named number one by Wirecutter.

Speaker 2 And so if they can stand having their wires cut and still operate right there, you know you're getting a sturdy product. Use the promo code JCE

Speaker 2 at checkout to get that $45 off. AuraFrames.com, promo code JCE $45 off.

Speaker 2 It's a Black Friday Cyber Monday deal, and it is their best of the year. So order now before it's over with.

Speaker 2 And mention us at checkout. Just so, as a matter of fact, Brian, you and I should send some carefully posed photographs of ourselves to load into all these things.

Speaker 2 So that way the listeners, when they order one, they'll just have our pictures on there automatically.

Speaker 1 That's the kind of nightmare you don't have to worry about. You'll get a brand new ready to use, nothing preloaded or a frame ready for you.
Load it with your favorite photos.

Speaker 1 Your family will love it. So will you.
One more time, Jim.

Speaker 2 And videos. You can upload

Speaker 2 up to 30 seconds long. That would be, you know, 80% of the listeners' sex sex tapes.
Didn't fit there.

Speaker 1 Ladies and gentlemen, once again, for appropriate, wonderful photos and videos.

Speaker 1 There's a speaker.

Speaker 2 A speaker can play audio.

Speaker 2 So that you can have the pictures talking to you.

Speaker 1 We're going to have a whole lot more. It's a movie studio.
We're going to have a whole lot more to say about this wonderful product, but you can check it out today. Jim, what's that?

Speaker 1 That promo code.

Speaker 2 J-C-E.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, Brian, there's some people that don't necessarily have an aura to them, and they had to get them on the show. But did you hear now? Uncle Dave is apparently a stooged.

Speaker 2 They taped the segment last week where they were in the back parking lot, and a bunch of Don Fallus' heels jump or have jumped already, Dino Douche and Jungle Jack off.

Speaker 2 And it went on and on because they kept. trying to do comedy spots to show that Dino wasn't selling anything, but then they'd have to beat him back down.

Speaker 2 And then the whole thing was a setup so that Don and the Kookamonga kids can walk out of the trailer, and Don can show them what happens if they're not a part of the Don Fallus family.

Speaker 2 And then they, then

Speaker 2 I guess the goddamn people that got beat up are just laying there because then they have the lingering shot of Maddie and Nikki's faces while they're like, what should we do?

Speaker 2 Certainly, this is setting up, apparently,

Speaker 2 for them to switch babyface in some fashion. Is that going to work now?

Speaker 1 See, both options are bad.

Speaker 1 It would seem obvious they're setting up them becoming babyfaces because how else would the young bucks do it than a multi-month, drawn-out, dramatic,

Speaker 1 why are these adults behaving like this or making these expressions kind of angle?

Speaker 1 On the other hand, if they actually swerve everyone and turn heel and join join the Callas family, that sucks too.

Speaker 2 Then there's 16 of them in there.

Speaker 1 There's 16 titles in there. I mean, what the fuck? They don't care.

Speaker 2 All righty. Well, let's go to the next match because it's of great importance.

Speaker 2 Of course, we're coming up on

Speaker 2 a big pay-per-view where

Speaker 2 the world champion will defend his title against Samoa Joe. So we're going to have the world champion against Samoa Joe's henchman, Powerhouse Hobbs, in a Falls Count Anywhere match.

Speaker 2 Everything on the show is a gimmick, but instead of just having,

Speaker 2 they can just have a match and we can sell the pay-per-view. It's Falls Count Anywhere.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 again, when you look at these two and you see it visually in a sane world, Hobbes would be the star and Paige would be the guy, local guy with a book to put him over.

Speaker 2 But instead, you know, so

Speaker 2 by the first break, they were up in stands,

Speaker 2 the trash cans, the table, up into the bleachers.

Speaker 2 It's the same shit that everybody does, and they don't have room to do a lot. And

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 it is what it is. And

Speaker 2 finally,

Speaker 2 they were fighting on the

Speaker 2 top of the

Speaker 2 there's a breezeway to go out to the concourse or whatever, and then the seats are on 10, and they're fighting on the ledge above that, right?

Speaker 2 And then they've got a special effects spot planned, but did you hear Shiavani blow the fucking thing anyway?

Speaker 1 He was driving me crazy all night. What did he say specifically here?

Speaker 2 He blew it because Hobbs is on the edge and Paige is

Speaker 2 leaned back, but he's about 10 feet away and he's pulling his boot off.

Speaker 2 And Shivani already says,

Speaker 2 Paige gets a running start. He hadn't started yet.

Speaker 2 And then when he gets the boot.

Speaker 2 And he takes a step, Shivani repeats it. So it's obviously the line.
Oh, the way we're going to finish this is Paige is going to get a running start and hit him with the boot. And

Speaker 2 so he called it before he ran. Then he called it again.

Speaker 2 Then Paige hits Hobbs, but Paige is trying to go down those steps and it's dark up there. And he's trying to figure out how to not really knock this guy off and kill him.

Speaker 2 So he, the running start turned out to be a little stutter step, and boom, he hits him with the boot.

Speaker 2 And Hobbs then turns and looks over his shoulder because these guys aren't stunt men.

Speaker 2 This is fucking stupid. And stunt men don't do it live in one take where it's supposed to look real in front of the fucking people going to the movie.

Speaker 2 But Hobbs looks over and he falls off and covers up.

Speaker 2 And right before he hits the table that he's going to fall on, the special effects sparklers blow off.

Speaker 2 And then he lands on the table and then a case comes down on top of him and it's the electrical table and he's been electrocuted.

Speaker 2 We've actually had an electrocution.

Speaker 2 But if you go back and you,

Speaker 2 because I thought, I said, wait a minute. If you go back and you frame by frame it,

Speaker 2 right before he hits the table, they blew the thing off that was buried back where it wouldn't like blow up underneath him and set him on fire. They saved that for the next match.

Speaker 2 But nevertheless,

Speaker 2 and then Paige goes down and covers him in the river. He cuts one, two, three.

Speaker 2 After he's been electrocuted,

Speaker 2 the fuck

Speaker 2 comments before we go to the afterbirth.

Speaker 1 Who knows if the good boots would have helped with the electrocution?

Speaker 1 It seems like an interesting choice of a kind of match to have on a show with two gigantic gimmick matches that both went over 45 minutes.

Speaker 1 Like, this was the buffer.

Speaker 1 this is one of those little things that's probably always been there but this was the night it drove me crazy adam page's necklace

Speaker 1 like it's just so big and obvious why doesn't the heel just take him by the fucking necklace like it's just it's so gigantic on him when you're watching this

Speaker 1 uh other than that

Speaker 1 i didn't notice the Pyro going off early. Again, you went frame by frame.
I didn't notice it when I watched it. I went back and watched it a second time.

Speaker 2 It was like a half a second, but it was a rib because it was like it came from underneath the deal, you know, not

Speaker 1 whatever.

Speaker 2 So then,

Speaker 2 then we're not done yet, folks. After he covers him one, two, three,

Speaker 2 then here comes Shapupi. And he gets in a fight with Paige.
And then here comes Samoa Joe, and he gets in a fight with Paige. And then they throw him in the ring

Speaker 2 and they've got him cornered and the cage is being lowered

Speaker 1 how

Speaker 2 by who

Speaker 2 samoa joe and shapupi and hobbs well hobbs been electrocuted so he's goddamn not

Speaker 2 who's doing this on his behalf

Speaker 2 and they're trying to the cage is moving

Speaker 2 like a fucking 90-year-old man in a soup line.

Speaker 2 And they're trying, oh my God, God, he's going to be trapped. And then

Speaker 2 out runs

Speaker 2 Kingston and Hook. And they roll in and chase the heels off.
And then the cage lowers. And now he's trapped in the cage, but with his friends.
So he narrowly, by like 45 seconds,

Speaker 2 avoided disaster.

Speaker 2 Who was lowering the cage?

Speaker 1 Ole Anderson apparently got the controls to help the four horsemen.

Speaker 1 Of course, that was Capital Combat. I don't know.
I was wondering the same thing. Why is the cage being lowered here? That was never explained.

Speaker 1 The announcers really didn't seem overly worried about who's doing that or why is it happening. Just that it was happening.

Speaker 2 Yes. Oh, the cage is coming down.
They'd better get out of the way. Well, what does this happen intermittently? Is it like something we should be on the lookout for?

Speaker 1 Because we didn't even know about the, at least I didn't realize it was going to be a promo segment next.

Speaker 1 So I'm thinking, okay, they're lowering it for War games, even though these guys are in the ring. But that wasn't even it.
The cage went back up.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 When they were done with it.

Speaker 2 So anyway, at that point, Paige gets on a microphone and says, if Joe, if you wanted me in a cage, all you had to do was ask.

Speaker 2 Because apparently he makes his own matches. So at full gear, it's a cage match.

Speaker 2 10 days away, they've just made a cage match for their world title match. One guy against one guy in one ring.

Speaker 2 When for on free television, we're seeing, as I mentioned earlier, 20 people in two rings and two cages and two different fucking matches, and all of them are goddamn bleeding like they've been run through a razor blade factory.

Speaker 2 So why do I want to pay $50

Speaker 2 to see this thing here, Brian?

Speaker 1 And why did Joe act worried?

Speaker 1 How does that make sense? Samoa Joe, the one thing he's going to be afraid of is a steel cage match with Adam Page?

Speaker 1 We just saw that they can go up and down willy-nilly.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this seemed like a bit mud. They're trying to manufacture like a feud while the feud is happening.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't necessarily... mean that it's done well.

Speaker 1 But yeah,

Speaker 1 it's like a segment. And I hope Powerhouse Powerhouse Hobbs is alive.

Speaker 2 Well, we'll get an update on him from the Duke Energy soon.

Speaker 2 So then,

Speaker 1 and you brought up the commentators earlier, Shiavani, all night.

Speaker 1 Whatever you want to say about Excalibur, who's awful, or Danielson, who just yells even when everyone else isn't yelling.

Speaker 1 And it seems like he's just trying to come up with things to say, like a John Smoltz for wrestling.

Speaker 1 But Shivani at this point is just doing commentary

Speaker 1 of what the other commentators are saying.

Speaker 1 That's a good call. I don't need the commentator to tell me that the other commentator is making a good call.

Speaker 1 That's a good point. You're like, why do we need that? What is the point of that? He doesn't add anything to the commentary.
He just says things.

Speaker 2 You certainly got a point there, Dave.

Speaker 1 He says things to reaffirm what everyone else says. It's awful.
But that's my commentary note for the pay-per-view.

Speaker 1 Well, that

Speaker 2 actually,

Speaker 2 that brings me to Tony Schiavone in the ring.

Speaker 2 Introducing in kind of an awkward way, this whole thing was awkward. Here comes Ricky the Dragon Steamboat.

Speaker 2 And Steamboat came out, and he's gray-haired because he's in his 70s these days. He's not in the physical shape he was once in, but it's nice to see Ricky Ricky

Speaker 2 at least still around because he didn't have the bad habits. But

Speaker 2 there were supposed to be, Brian, I guess we should bring this up. There were supposed to be two guests in Greensboro, North Carolina at the Coliseum for this night of AEW episode of AEW, whatever,

Speaker 2 Ricky Steamboat and Rick Flair.

Speaker 2 And Flair apparently was there

Speaker 2 earlier in the night,

Speaker 2 came out in front of the people to cut a little promo with Tony, which I guess there's, I haven't seen it, but people have referred to a clip being seen on the internet.

Speaker 2 And then he left.

Speaker 2 He was never on the TV. They even refer to him in this interview that they're about to do.

Speaker 2 But to the TV audience, except for him being referred to, they would have never known that he was fucking there.

Speaker 2 And I saw one report that said he was in a lot of pain from

Speaker 2 a torn rotator cuff or some kind of shoulder injury from doing what?

Speaker 2 How did he hurt him?

Speaker 2 But if he hurt himself that bad, then how could he not just come 30 minutes later and stay 30 minutes later and be on television?

Speaker 2 What the hell is going on here?

Speaker 1 I was throwing kamikas across the bar. Woo!

Speaker 2 He was all right till the Egyptian showed up.

Speaker 1 The Egyptian! Tony Connor's friends are the Egyptian, I have to leave. Woo!

Speaker 2 But that's, but yeah, he came and he saw and he left.

Speaker 1 So apparently he was in a sling. Like, you know, you said he was in a lot of pain.
So

Speaker 1 he mustered up all the energy he had to do the promo with Tony off air.

Speaker 1 And for whatever reason, made sure he wasn't there for the on-air portion.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe he got an idea of what the on-air portion was going to look like.

Speaker 1 It wouldn't be surprising to hear Ric Flair was driving around the arena on the phone with the office saying,

Speaker 1 I'll go in. You better make a deal.
I'll be on TV.

Speaker 2 No, he'd never do something like that in 1998. But nevertheless,

Speaker 2 so Tony's interview with Steamboat is awkward. Tony

Speaker 2 didn't pitch him the greatest questions. And Ricky didn't seem like anybody had given him anything to really talk about.

Speaker 2 I wonder if they went over a thing where Flair would do a lot of talking and all of a sudden Flair ain't there.

Speaker 2 But Steamboat put Flair over for helping him at the start. He was about, or he was about to do that.
He'd mentioned Flair's name after this awkward back and forth with Tony

Speaker 2 and FTR's music played and they interrupt and come to the ring.

Speaker 2 And this is where it got

Speaker 2 confusing because

Speaker 2 as Dax and Cash and Stokely get in the ring, Steamboat

Speaker 2 points out Dax

Speaker 2 is like, oh, I know this gentleman. I know him.
I worked with him a few years ago. Like he's never heard of them since.
Like he doesn't know about the team or what they've been doing.

Speaker 2 But then, later on, in this same promo, they're going to show

Speaker 2 Still Frame on a screen of FTR was the partners when Steamboat had his last match in the Carolinas there three or four years ago, whatever it was. And there's a picture of them with their arms.

Speaker 2 He knows him. He teamed with him in his last fucking match.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Stokely did a promo where the material was not great.

Speaker 2 And Ricky reacted awkwardly.

Speaker 2 And that's where they showed the

Speaker 2 picture. And I said, why did he only know Dax?

Speaker 2 And then Dax told the fans that Ricky helped trade him 13 years ago in NXT, but didn't teach him anything.

Speaker 2 None of this was making any sense. And he didn't teach him anything.
And 13 years ago, why did they

Speaker 2 team up up with him for his last match

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 dax said that steamboat had given him the advice to save his money

Speaker 2 and then he said if if steamboat and flair had taken that advice they wouldn't have to be there tonight

Speaker 2 and that's when the tv audience went are we going to see flair

Speaker 2 Because elsewhere he hadn't been mentioned except when Steamboat said Flair helped him years ago in his career.

Speaker 1 Well, that was the thing. It seemed like they were building to Flair or someone

Speaker 1 coming out.

Speaker 1 And it didn't happen. But even if it had happened, you start thinking about it.
Is Flair going to come in there and save Ricky Steamboat and cheat up FBR?

Speaker 1 None of it made any sense.

Speaker 2 So then

Speaker 2 Dax insulted Steamboat. They got nose to nose and Dax grabbed Steamboat's face and Steamboat shoved him.

Speaker 2 And then nothing happened.

Speaker 2 They just stood there and kind of looked disgruntled with each each other. And then

Speaker 2 Dax told Steamboat to get out of the ring and Ricky started talking calmly.

Speaker 2 Hey, you know, at one time I would have

Speaker 2 done something about the discretion is the better part of valor.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be 73.

Speaker 2 So I'm going to be the smarter man. And they're trying to get sympathy on him, but he's just meandering.
They didn't.

Speaker 2 This was like it was all done on the fly and everybody was lost. And it didn't put Ricky in the light that it should have.

Speaker 2 They just left him out there fucking floating around. And people who've never seen him go, what the fuck, this old guy? What?

Speaker 1 Did you ever see that interview when Larry Merchant was interviewed? He was interviewing Floyd Mayweather Jr. And Mayweather Jr.
is giving Larry Merchant shit for some of the comments he's made.

Speaker 1 Like, you don't know shit about boxing. You don't know shit.
Larry Merchant goes, I wish I was 50 years younger. I'd knocked you on your ass.

Speaker 2 reminded you of that's what this we didn't get that from ricky we got well i'll just i'll be the smarter man in league

Speaker 2 after a while it was just it was awkward and then he goes to walk off and they grabbed him and of course they don't want to hurt ricky steamboat but so i think it was cash was just cat one of the other was just throwing punches at his head that were no not remotely connecting.

Speaker 2 And then they go for a pile driver, but here comes Brodildo.

Speaker 2 And now I'll tell you something.

Speaker 2 I know that nobody wanted to hurt Ricky Steamboat or make any mistakes, but when Bandito and Cash started swinging at each other,

Speaker 2 Brian, describe it for me. They won't believe me.
They'll believe you.

Speaker 1 It was embarrassing. I couldn't figure out who was trying to protect who.
It was like not punches and not even a Jey Uso open-handed thing.

Speaker 1 It was kind of like the wrists were kind of limp as they were like Bandito looked especially awful. Yes.

Speaker 2 They were just waving their arms at each other.

Speaker 2 That's in, and then Dax fed Steamboat for some chops and the heels bailed out. And I just,

Speaker 2 I wrote awkward, laid out badly, not produced, rotten material. What the fuck?

Speaker 1 Did Flair find out this is what they want to do? And he was like, you know, my shoulder hurts. I'll be at the bar.

Speaker 2 I'm kind of thinking that might have been it.

Speaker 1 Because what was he doing? Did you stand there and take it from FTR and Stokely?

Speaker 2 Well, I don't know, but they probably would have had Flair do most of the talking if it was him and Steamboat in the ring or whatever. Maybe that's why Ricky had nothing to say.

Speaker 2 I don't know what they were thinking, but maybe they weren't thinking.

Speaker 2 But, you know, again, and

Speaker 2 they're in Greensboro,

Speaker 2 but they only had, they didn't have 5,000 people. I saw the number.
It was 4,800 or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 1 It looked pretty good. You know what?

Speaker 2 It looked, it looked, but that's what I'm saying, you know, is they at least had some kind of turnout and they just,

Speaker 2 their legends just look like shit.

Speaker 1 Did you see Jericho recently made some comments? I guess it may have been on his podcast.

Speaker 1 I don't even know he still does a podcast, but he made them somewhere about how TNA's crowd recently looks so good, like they're the number two promotion in the country,

Speaker 1 and how you know dynamites may not look as impressive as they used to.

Speaker 2 I did not see that, but it's interesting that he said that.

Speaker 2 Well, he's uh feathering his next nest.

Speaker 2 But anyhow, so are you ready, Brian, for the main event of the evening?

Speaker 1 In my eyes, we already saw it, but let's go to the men's blood and guts match.

Speaker 2 Well, again,

Speaker 2 and this

Speaker 2 say what you want about the girls match, but at least they put all their top girls in it.

Speaker 2 This was like, you know, the parade of mid-card

Speaker 2 champions.

Speaker 2 They started out with Darby and Wheeler,

Speaker 2 and they're in a cage match. So naturally, they started on the floor.

Speaker 2 And after a couple minutes, they got in a cage, and Darby had his skateboard with thumbtacks on it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 old Wheeler starts bleeding already.

Speaker 2 But this time, I guess they were running late because it didn't take them five minutes. This time, they shaved some of the five minutes off

Speaker 2 and Pockets moped in

Speaker 2 and took his time with no enthusiasm doing his gimmick where he wanders in and he then crushes his sunglasses and stabs Wheeler in the face with them.

Speaker 1 Hey, can I ask you a question before you go forward? Please do. Please do.
Conceptually, booking wise.

Speaker 1 There are inherent problems with the babyfaces having the advantage. How do you do that and not have it turn into two babyfaces just kicking the shit out of a heel for minutes at a time?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 like they do here later on when they hurt one of the babyfaces so bad that he can't come out, and that they announce that he's definitely not going to be medically cleared to compete in the thing.

Speaker 2 And then he comes out 10 minutes later and kicks everybody's ass, not showing any goddamn

Speaker 2 signs of weather.

Speaker 2 See, that I guess we should have mentioned that in the girls, the heels had the advantage. So this time the babyfaces have the man advantage where they get the extra guy to come in first, which again,

Speaker 2 that's why the heels always won the coin flip. Because it hurts the match and it takes away comebacks and excitement.

Speaker 2 But the reason why that it wasn't a problem when the heels always won the coin flip is because you're only supposed to have one of these like every three or four years.

Speaker 2 Then it wouldn't have been as big a deal. And in two per night,

Speaker 2 they got to switch it around a little bit. So,

Speaker 2 and but that's another thing.

Speaker 2 At one point, when Briscoe's music played, I don't want to get ahead of myself too much, but

Speaker 2 the babyfaces had the advantage of the man, but

Speaker 2 the babyfaces were already beating up the two heels

Speaker 2 to begin with, before that they found out Briscoe wasn't coming out. So they couldn't even.

Speaker 2 You see where I'm going with this.

Speaker 2 But the point is, the first four guys are Darby Allen, Wheeler Useless, Danny Garcia, and Pockets.

Speaker 2 Nobody in the ring weighed 185 pounds.

Speaker 2 Dipshit, Pockets, is dressed like he normally does, so it looks like a mechanic wandered in.

Speaker 2 The rest of them look like children.

Speaker 2 And then they're having a children's cage match.

Speaker 2 And then, as I said, when the Briscoe music plays, there's no Briscoe. So in the middle of

Speaker 2 the cage match, they go to roving reporter Rene Moxley Good in the back

Speaker 2 with video where Kyle O'Reilly and Roddy Strong find Mark Briscoe down and selling from what we don't know.

Speaker 2 Who did it? Who did it? Oh, oh.

Speaker 2 And Roddy says, I'll go. I'll go.
So Roddy's taking this turn.

Speaker 2 So Roderick Strong runs out to the ring while in the ring, everybody's standing and watching the goddamn screen.

Speaker 2 They don't want to do anything to distract the people from knowing what the fuck. So everything in the ring comes to a halt.

Speaker 2 Then Roddy makes a comeback.

Speaker 2 And then he turns around and leaves the cage and gets the chair and comes back in.

Speaker 2 Now they've got the rules where that until everybody's in the ring, they don't lock the door.

Speaker 2 Except they make a big deal out of stealing the key afterward.

Speaker 2 So, anyway, here comes Claudio.

Speaker 2 And again,

Speaker 2 there's no stars.

Speaker 2 And Roddy, by this point, is bleeding slightly. He got what

Speaker 2 they used to term in the locker room when someone would get juice that was highly underwhelming. He got a pap smear.

Speaker 2 And then Kyle O'Reilly comes out.

Speaker 2 And by this point, you can hear the people are sitting there. They're waiting for the blood.
They're waiting for the furniture or they're waiting for somebody to get hurt.

Speaker 2 And in between, they don't really give a shit because they've already seen this shit and he's already even the fucking main event guys.

Speaker 1 I was surprised at the lack of reaction Kyle O'Reilly got coming out.

Speaker 1 Not that they didn't react to him again later on in the match, but he comes off two weeks of the Moxley stuff, which you could argue is being done to make him at least a little bigger than he is now.

Speaker 1 And he's actually doing really well in it, but they didn't really react to him coming in.

Speaker 2 That's because it's been two or three weeks of the Moxley stuff as opposed to two or three years of the way that they've treated him like a fucking idiot.

Speaker 2 so it takes a while for people to get the memo and then when he does

Speaker 2 right in front of them they react to it but they're they're still not to the point where kyle o'rowley is going to come out oh my god it's kyle

Speaker 2 because most people are used to oh it's kyle because of the way they've presented him

Speaker 2 and speaking of presentation Dick the Boozer still has to do his entrance where he wanders in from the parking lot with the spooky lighting.

Speaker 2 And again, everything in the ring, there's nothing happening.

Speaker 2 They're all waiting for him. And did you see him trip trying to get over the rail?

Speaker 2 And the fans actually laughed at him. They're like, well, look at this stumble bum.

Speaker 2 And he gets in the ring and his contribution is stabbing everybody in the head with a fork.

Speaker 2 And then he goes out and gets the barbed wire bat and the ice bucket with broken glass from the girls match that nobody bothered to remove from ringside

Speaker 2 and the girls already did it he's bringing the scraps from the girls match in

Speaker 2 and as moxley stabbed o'reilly with the broken mirror renee moxley good

Speaker 1 was given a voiceover update that mark briscoe was all fucked up and wasn't going to be in the match and while her husband's doing that she's not only giving a voice update they have her image on the screen on the bottom corner.

Speaker 2 Well, just to make sure, you know, this is real sports.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 then Moxley dumped the broken glass all over the place and Powell drove Darby Allen in the glass.

Speaker 2 And they had another break and then they came back from that and everybody bunched up in the middle of the ring all of a sudden. And then so Darby could.

Speaker 2 climb out to the top of the cage underneath and and just let go and they could catch him and then everybody falls down.

Speaker 2 They were all looking up at him. If they'd have just backed up, there would have been no problem.

Speaker 2 And then here came Pack.

Speaker 2 No stars.

Speaker 2 Now they were all in the ring, though. And they got the tables in the ring leaned up in the corners.
They got broken glass. They got thumbtacks.

Speaker 2 And then here comes Mark Briscoe,

Speaker 2 who

Speaker 2 was fine. What was hurt on him? Did you see anything hurt?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 He came in with a chair and a toolbox and a set of bolt cutters and cut the lock off with the bolt cutters and threw the toolbox in and made a comeback.

Speaker 2 And then the baby faces had a logging chain and a wrench.

Speaker 2 And Briscoe got on the floor and beat up Useless and Garcia.

Speaker 2 And he put Garcia on the table

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 was going to climb the cage, but Garcia rolled off. So now Briscoe and Useless were on the top of the cage.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 at this point, all that mattered was these two wandering around on top of the cage. Everybody else just laying down there selling.

Speaker 2 And Briscoe hauls a chair up to the top with the... fucking rope, but O'Reilly hooked it on

Speaker 2 and it got stuck, but then nothing was happening. But then they fought with the chairs.
And then they went to the break.

Speaker 2 And they came back from the break and nothing was happening in the ring. And they were still on top.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 Mark gave Wheeler a J-driller

Speaker 2 on the top of the cage and started climbing down. And everybody in the ring was like they were in quicksand.

Speaker 2 And there was some more fighting on. And then here came Gabe Kidd, who I thought was Josh Alexander.

Speaker 2 And Gabe Kidd leveled Darby Allen and kidnapped him to the back of the arena.

Speaker 2 But now in the ring, Pockets

Speaker 2 is Garcia's got him in a sleeper. So to show that Garcia's sleeper ain't shit, Pockets puts his hands in his pockets.

Speaker 2 But then Dick the Boozer comes up with a staple gun, and Staples pockets his hands in his pockets.

Speaker 2 And Brian, guess what happened right then?

Speaker 2 That was 10:30, and my DVR froze because this week was a two-and-a-half-hour program, and they still ran over.

Speaker 2 And I didn't think to record the show after the goddamn extra 30 minutes,

Speaker 2 but I thought it was fitting that my dvr froze when

Speaker 2 dipshed had got his own hands stapled in his own pockets

Speaker 2 but apparently afterwards they set darby on fire by throwing him through

Speaker 2 two flaming tables and had to put him out with a fire extinguisher

Speaker 2 and then after all of that moxley tapped out to kyle o'reilly's choke

Speaker 1 With some ridiculous facial expressions from Moxley, which I think in his head looked like, oh, I really don't know what to do. I have to tap, but looked ridiculous.

Speaker 2 Do we know if Darby lost any skin in this

Speaker 2 immolation that he went through?

Speaker 2 Because they said he was on fire for just a second or two.

Speaker 1 I have not heard.

Speaker 1 What are your final thoughts about the men's blood and guts match?

Speaker 2 After the women had done it and done it better, and this, you know,

Speaker 2 the band of Merry Mid-Carters, and

Speaker 2 it made even less sense. It people just sat there.
They're like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 There was two hours on this television show, and for those people in the arena, they didn't get the commercials to break it up

Speaker 2 of just watching these idiots meander around, making up different goofy,

Speaker 2 jackass-style

Speaker 2 ways to semi-hurt each other.

Speaker 2 And it's just meaningless.

Speaker 2 And they still don't get it. They can't get over his personalities.

Speaker 2 They can't get personal issues and animosity over because nobody believes it, because

Speaker 2 not only the booking, but most of the performances are so preposterous and silly and wink-wink.

Speaker 2 And it's just a car crash. And people

Speaker 2 honestly don't care whether the good driver or the bad driver wins as long as they run into each other.

Speaker 2 So that's what they've got. And what are you going to do after this?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 again, in the same program, you've electrocuted one motherfucker, set another motherfucker on fire.

Speaker 2 The people with goddamn neck braces and slings are chasing each other around the ring.

Speaker 2 Everybody's got a belt.

Speaker 2 Nobody knows who the top guys are supposed to be and who the bottom ones are because Tony doesn't.

Speaker 2 And at the root of the thing, Tony lets these guys and girls do whatever they want because he's going to pay them no matter what, whether they're in the ring or in an iron lung.

Speaker 2 And Tony's a mark for this shit, too.

Speaker 2 Because of, as I mentioned, whatever the cognitive issues are that he has.

Speaker 2 This is the kind of thing he just loves. So it will continue to happen.

Speaker 2 They just got to find new people with more skin and bones to break and burn.

Speaker 1 Hey, Jim, real quick before we move on, I have the star ratings here from the wrestling. Oh, good lord.

Speaker 2 I'm sure you do.

Speaker 1 Dave Melcher's star ratings for this big wrestling extravaganza known as Blood and Guts.

Speaker 1 The women's match, Sky Blue, and Tecla and Julia Hart and Megan Bain and Marina Shafir

Speaker 1 defeated Jamie Hayter and Willow Nightingale and Chris Statlander and Harley Cameron and Tony Storm and Mina Shirakawa. 46 minutes, 4 seconds,

Speaker 1 4.5 stars.

Speaker 2 Boy, oh boy.

Speaker 1 Adam Page defeated Powerhouse Hobbs in a no DQ Falls Count Anywhere match. 14 minutes, 9 seconds,

Speaker 1 4.5 stars.

Speaker 1 And finally, Jim.

Speaker 2 Wait a minute. Now it's just regardless of what you thought about either match.

Speaker 2 If you like that kind of thing, it's kind of thing those people like.

Speaker 2 The fucking 45-minute long 12-girl gang bang blood orgy was a lot better than the boring ass fucking fake champion against Hobbs for 15 minutes with half of it not even on television.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was not a four and a half star match. I don't know where they

Speaker 1 loves that.

Speaker 2 You get an extra star if you get electrocuted.

Speaker 1 And Jim, finally, the men's blood and guts match: Darby Allen and Orange Cassidy, and Roderick Strong and Kyle O'Reilly, and Mark Briscoe

Speaker 1 defeated Jon Moxley and Claudio Castignoli and Wheeler Utah and Daniel Garcia and Pack.

Speaker 1 54 minutes,

Speaker 1 six seconds,

Speaker 1 five-star match.

Speaker 2 Oh, come on.

Speaker 2 Oh, come on.

Speaker 1 Maybe the greatest episode of wrestling television of all time.

Speaker 2 No, he didn't say that.

Speaker 1 No, I'm saying that based on the star ratings here.

Speaker 2 Even if you don't care about all the sloppiness and the stupidity and the laziness that went on in that main event to go an hour and just the boringness of it.

Speaker 2 Again, for the kind of people who like that kind of thing, nobody, I won't even deny the girls' match was better than the guys. That's faint praise for me, but it was better and more exciting.

Speaker 2 And they fucked up about equally because there's a bunch of guys and girls on either side that can't work.

Speaker 2 And the people were tired out of seeing that horseshit by the time the guys got in the ring.

Speaker 1 I have a little bit here from Dave. I will end with this.
The Blood and Gut Show was, as far as an in-ring crazy violent show, show, was one of the best shows of its type in television history.

Speaker 1 It's not my taste.

Speaker 2 What other show of its type has there ever been in television history?

Speaker 1 It's up there with Bonanza

Speaker 1 and Mr. Peepers.

Speaker 1 It's not my taste. I wish war games were like the Dusty Rhodes war games with super heat, no weapons.
and people not escaping the cage.

Speaker 1 I wish wrestlers didn't take the level of risks they do. The blood is the blood.

Speaker 1 There are going to be people who love it and others who hate it.

Speaker 1 I think too much is a negative, and it's turned off TNA fans over the years, just as it did many promotions historically when the blood got out of control.

Speaker 2 He says all these things and he gives them all five stars.

Speaker 1 That's what is

Speaker 2 his.

Speaker 1 That said, this show was called Blood and Guts.

Speaker 2 Oh, Lord.

Speaker 1 You were warned ahead of time.

Speaker 2 You were warned. Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's your own fault if you watch this shit. We told you it was going to suck donkey balls, but you wouldn't listen.

Speaker 1 There were endless know-it-alls. There were endless weapon shots and the usual barbed wire, broken glass, staplers, chairs, tables, and such.

Speaker 2 The usual.

Speaker 1 If you watch Blood and Guts and then complain about too much blood,

Speaker 1 the issue is that you were told what it would be and you had the choice to skip it.

Speaker 1 It was a three-match television with that one.

Speaker 2 Brian, do you think anybody would have even been mad about all the blood if the other shit wasn't so stupid?

Speaker 2 If the shit looked good, if the shit didn't look phony, if the people, individuals involved were over,

Speaker 2 if the angles made sense, if they all didn't look like they were cooperating with each other to be stupid, any of those things.

Speaker 2 But it's just the blood. Yeah, we warned you about the blood, not the fucking childish stupidity.

Speaker 1 Well, it's a weird argument that I don't know if Dave's ever had for anyone in wrestling history before. If you really break down what he's saying here,

Speaker 1 it was the craziest show in his eyes, maybe in television history, but he doesn't like it. He prefers something more sensible as we do, actually.

Speaker 1 However, if you have any kind of problem with this, you're the problem.

Speaker 1 Not AEW, not these wrestlers, not the people who came up with these spots. You, you're the problem.
You had the choice to turn the channel. Why is Dave making their defense for them?

Speaker 1 Right? I mean,

Speaker 1 that's the kind of thing like Howard Stern would say or Vince McMahon would say. You know, all people,

Speaker 1 I think a lot of people, they have the choice. They can pick which channel they watch.
Why is Dave making that argument for blood and guts after saying he prefers something else?

Speaker 2 Because that way you can justify giving it five stars, because otherwise he'll hurt their feelings and they won't be friends with him anymore.

Speaker 1 Well, there's the star ratings for

Speaker 2 he continues to just carry his balls around up in his watch pocket and won't speak the truth because the last

Speaker 2 semblance of a social circle or a readership that he has is the kids that he's taught that these kids are state-of-the-art wrestlers. And

Speaker 2 everybody that's known him for a long time thinks he's off his fucking nut.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's because he doesn't hear Tony's defense. He helps him craft it.

Speaker 2 That's what it is. That may be the best booking done is between these two try to figure out a way to put a positive face on some of these fucking stories.

Speaker 2 But you know what? I was ready for after this thing was over with, Brian, don't you? After I saw these two hour-long extravaganza cage matches, I was ready for a good night's sleep.

Speaker 2 And luckily, I was able to get one because when I lay my weary bones down, frustrated over having to watch children play,

Speaker 2 well, then I'm laying down on a helix mattress. And your children can play on the helix mattress too, if they want to play wrestler.
These things are big and soft.

Speaker 2 Just let the kids just body slam and suplex each other on the shit. Just watch out for your bed frame.
That might cave in, but the helix mattresses will, well, they'll stand up to punishment.

Speaker 2 And folks, I'll tell you right now, there's no better time than right here. The holidays are coming up.
Think about, do you want your family sleeping in sewage for Christmas?

Speaker 2 Do you want your family sleeping in, I don't know, other people's DNA and bodily fluids? That's what's happening.

Speaker 2 Because every time that your family lays down on one of the mattresses in your home, you know who's been on there. Not only grandma, not only Aunt Lola and Uncle Bernard, but also their pet Rochester.

Speaker 2 Remember Rochester, Bri, the cute little, well, was he a Spitzer? Was he a fuzzy little poodle?

Speaker 2 But Rochester was on the, on the mattress too. And Lord knows what he did.

Speaker 2 And do you know that the average mattress, Brian, has over 17 pounds of dust mites in it every year?

Speaker 2 Have you seen that statistic?

Speaker 1 I recently learned that statistic.

Speaker 2 Well, it's terrible. So get rid of all of the DNA and the dust mites and get you a brand new helix mattress for the whole family for Christmas.
That's what you need to do.

Speaker 2 And right now at helixleep.com slash JCE.

Speaker 2 You can get 27% off.

Speaker 2 I don't care whether they want to or not. We're making them give you 27%.
That's what we're saying.

Speaker 2 And you can go there and you can get the mattress for sleeping hot or the mattress for sleeping cold or the mattress for the kids sleeping.

Speaker 2 Or they have, they have the special mistress model where if you get a regular family-size double or bigger, then you get a little small twin bed for your mistress.

Speaker 1 Also, that is not one of their deals. It is an idea, though, that maybe they should revisit.

Speaker 2 It's a pairing.

Speaker 2 It's a combo deal.

Speaker 2 it's not a pairing or a combo it's a mistake go back to your wife and get a good night's sleep with helix sleep well you're saying he can't stay over every once in a while i mean i we don't want the mistress to feel left out but folks you're gonna you're gonna sleep better it's gonna improve your everyday life you won't be as grumpy and cranky because you're going to be on a mattress that gives you the support where you need things held up and lets the other things that need to dangle dangle.

Speaker 2 And that's the Helix Sleep mattress. Just go there, take the quiz, pick out the mattress that you like.
And with that little code JCE,

Speaker 2 you're going to get 27% off. And make sure that you enter our show name after the checkout so they know we sent you.
That's how they're keeping tabs on these things, from what I'm told.

Speaker 2 So don't worry about being a tattletale. You can name names.
Helixleep.com slash JCE.

Speaker 1 That's right. We love them.
We have them here in the house. We're going to get more soon.

Speaker 1 We love them. You will too.

Speaker 2 Why do you say you always say that we have them here in the house? Now, I mentioned that you can put them out in the backyard in case of fire so the kids can jump out the second story window.

Speaker 2 You just kind of put a row on the back of the house down right, you know, right next to the, to the eaves there. But you always say you have them in your house like you've taken me up on that.

Speaker 2 And you scoffed at me before.

Speaker 2 No, so unless it i'm gonna say i've got them i'm letting the listeners know that we legitimately have them here we use helix sleep we love helix sleep and you will well yes i know you do but you can just say we have them here rather than we have them here in the house because until you put them out in the yard

Speaker 2 You should take my advice. What happens if the house catches on fire and you're on the third or fourth floor?

Speaker 1 No, you've had great advice so far. Buy a mattress for your mistress and put your mattress in the backyard.
That's a great, great advice so far.

Speaker 2 No, I didn't mean put your mattress. I meant put other mattresses out in the backyard.
Just ring the whole area. And that way, no matter which window you jump out of,

Speaker 2 and that works

Speaker 2 whether you've got a mistress or there's a fire. You're going to be jumping out of a lot of windows.

Speaker 1 Let the mistress jump out the window. You stay and get a good night's.
Wait a minute.

Speaker 2 What's her husband going to do when he comes in and finds you there and she's out in the backyard?

Speaker 1 Also, you think she's cheating too? You don't just think she's some Jezebel dating a married married man.

Speaker 2 Well, she's a mistress, ain't she?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, you can't trust them.

Speaker 1 You could trust Healing Sleep. Let's get out of this on a positive note.
You could trust Healing Sleep for a good night's sleep one more time. Jim, that wonderful promo code.

Speaker 2 Helixleep.com slash JCE for the best mattress you'll ever sleep on, or potentially, if you want to get thrown out the window by the mistress's husband, you'll land on it. Helixleep.com/slash JCE.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, that actually ended up being somehow a safe landing.
And this is still your show.

Speaker 2 All righty, but we can't sleep forever. We got to get up and get back on with the program, I guess.

Speaker 1 Hey, I got some news.

Speaker 1 Kind of following up on your conversation earlier about the penny, things that have been here forever going away. Did you hear that the Farmer's Almanac

Speaker 1 will cease to exist? This is the last year there'll be a Farmers' Almanac.

Speaker 2 How in the world, besides Woolly Worms, are we going to tell whether it's going to be a hard winter or not?

Speaker 1 Again, it may not be the most accurate periodical,

Speaker 1 but it's one that's been there forever. And that's what makes it feel weird when you hear that it's going away.
They can't survive in the modern,

Speaker 1 the modern era, where magazines themselves have problems, let alone something like the Farmer's Almanac. But to a lot of people, it's a tradition.

Speaker 2 But how do the farmers, in all seriousness besides the weather report how do the farmers know all the things now that they would know if they were getting the farmer's almanac which is supposed to tell them all the things that they need to know

Speaker 1 but does it really i mean i i guess what i'm saying is i'm not trying to take away from the farmer's almanac i think it's a fun publication but it's not like there's farmers waiting like oh we don't know about next year's crops until we get the farmer's almanac well how do you know are you a farmer no

Speaker 2 Well, and you don't know diddly squat, do you, about what a farmer thinks?

Speaker 2 I think we ought to ask the farmers out there. Farmers,

Speaker 2 how many farmers are in the audience? How many, we've never done that specific survey.

Speaker 1 That's one demo we have not checked.

Speaker 2 We did surveys for various demographics and

Speaker 2 income levels and education levels, but are there, I'm opening this floor up to any farmers that are in the sound of my voice that would receive the farmer's almanac

Speaker 2 on a normal basis, but now they're not going to get it. What type of information

Speaker 2 are you going to be deprived of because there's no farmer's almanac?

Speaker 2 That's what I want to know.

Speaker 2 Emails to what corny drivethrough at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 CorneyDriveThru at gmail.com. I'm trying to see.
I read in the newspaper, but if I go to look for news about it, like the first headline, it's like marthastewart.com,

Speaker 1 Montgomery Advisor.

Speaker 1 Hold on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, after more than 200 years of sharing a unique blend of weather, wit, and wisdom, we've made the very difficult decision to write the final chapter of this historical publication.

Speaker 1 That's the note in the new 2026 edition, which will be there last.

Speaker 2 I know you can get the weather other places.

Speaker 2 Something to hear about the wit, but what about the wisdom? That's what I want to know about. What are they going to lose?

Speaker 2 The farming generation, what wisdom

Speaker 2 are they losing now because of this?

Speaker 1 You know, all kidding aside, it just sucks when you hear about these things that have been there forever, like a publication

Speaker 1 that has a history and it's just going to be gone. It happened a few years ago for me with Who's Who in Baseball.
Like it had been around since the beginning of baseball.

Speaker 1 And then one year it just didn't come out.

Speaker 1 And that was it. That was the end of the history of who's who in baseball.
A lot of people collected those.

Speaker 2 It's like who in a territory would go out of business and all the fans would be like,

Speaker 1 you know, you hear that, though, like from fans, like maybe like Georgia Wrestling specifically, just because that's national, we could use that as an example. The idea that even to this day,

Speaker 1 6.05 or maybe even 6 o'clock getting ready for 6.05 on a Saturday, there's like a feeling. There's like a, almost like a feeling in your gut, like I was supposed to do something right now.

Speaker 2 A bowel movement coming on, something that's not there.

Speaker 1 Yes, thank you for ending it on a classy note.

Speaker 1 Any final thoughts on the farmer's almanac?

Speaker 2 Yes, it's just another thing that we're losing. That you know, but sometimes it's worse when the publication doesn't go out of business, it just ruins itself.
Have you seen a rolling stone lately?

Speaker 1 So, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 That's true, nothing's like it used to be.

Speaker 2 That's why we're creating more stupid people.

Speaker 2 But yeah, you got to learn, Brian. You got to learn things.

Speaker 2 You got to read and learn. You know, learning and reading are our friends, and not reading and being stupid, apparently, would then be the enemy, right? By that logic.

Speaker 2 But I learned something the other day.

Speaker 2 Actually, I'd known it before, but I hadn't thought about it in a while. But it was brought up because when we were playing Guest the Program,

Speaker 2 you mentioned one of the guys on one of the cards in the 1930s or early 40s was Jim Clintstock.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I had transposed, first of all, in my head, Jay Clintstock was a guy who worked in the Leroy McGurk territory and that part of the country back in the 70s.

Speaker 2 Jim Clintstock was the guy that I mentioned that got murdered in a dentist office in Charlotte in the 1940s.

Speaker 2 And The son of a gun, right after we mentioned him, maybe

Speaker 2 as a result of it, because a fellow named Alan Cercy on Twitter follows me.

Speaker 2 He is a,

Speaker 2 I guess, an author and a screenwriter and a storyteller, according to his bio and various types of historian.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 he did a whole

Speaker 2 train. What is a

Speaker 2 thread on the Twitter?

Speaker 1 A train. Right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, the whole train of thought thing

Speaker 2 where he

Speaker 2 gave the whole

Speaker 2 he gave the whole Jim Clintstock story. Not only was he allegedly murdered and actually probably wasn't murdered, but who knows? But he killed somebody also.
He got the double.

Speaker 2 Would you like to hear about this for a second?

Speaker 1 When you say he killed someone, you mean the same time at the same fight that cost him his life?

Speaker 2 No, no, a whole different goddamn deal. Oh, yeah.
This was like 10 years beforehand.

Speaker 2 Apparently, from what this thread from Alan Searce says, in the 1930s, Jim Clintstock battled legends like Jim Londos and Ed Strangler Lewis.

Speaker 2 By his peers, he was considered to be one of the toughest professional wrestlers in the world.

Speaker 2 But after killing a man in Memphis, his life unraveled, and a decade later, he'd be found dying on the floor of a Charlotte dentist office.

Speaker 1 That's like a Johnny Cash song, if I ever heard one.

Speaker 2 And Ed Burns, Burns, Burns. In In October 1934, the 6'4, 240-pound, quote, part Indian grappler was arrested in Memphis after a fight turned deadly.

Speaker 2 Furniture dealer Leo Kahn insulted Clintstock's wife during a dispute over a $39 stove bill. Clintstock beat Khan badly.
He died from head injuries two days later. Clinstock claimed self-defense.

Speaker 2 The case made headlines. The powerful wrestler who'd battled trachoma, a blinding eye disease that nearly ended his career, stood accused of murder.

Speaker 2 Promoters and wrestlers across the South raised money for his defense, insisting Jim was as gentle as a baby unless provoked. In 1935, Clintstock went on trial for Khan's death.

Speaker 2 The prosecution claimed he stomped Khan's face in.

Speaker 2 The defense said Khan insulted his wife and swung first.

Speaker 2 After six hours of deliberation, the jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to up to eight years.

Speaker 2 While being held at the Tennessee State Penitentiary, reporters sought him out, convict number 26,447.

Speaker 2 He insisted he was coming back to the ring. Prison officials described him as an intramural wrestling star.
The day he was checked in, inmates passed the word around, around.

Speaker 2 We got a wrestler in today.

Speaker 2 Clintstock was a model inmate and paroled after serving just 17 months. At 38, he planned to wrestle again.

Speaker 2 He told me he was going back into the ring in Nashville for a while, said a clerk who helped process his release.

Speaker 2 For several years, he wrestled around the Southeast, taking matches in Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Georgia. His sight was still poor, but he was determined to reclaim his career.

Speaker 2 Then

Speaker 2 in January 1944, the comeback story came to a complete stop when Clintstock was found dying in a Charlotte dental clinic belonging to Dr. Henry C.
Parker and Lee Sykes.

Speaker 2 Both men were charged with his murder after witnesses said a towel had been twisted around his neck. Police said Clintstock had been drinking heavily and got into a fight inside the lab.
Mrs.

Speaker 2 Parker claimed he'd tried to grab her, leading her husband and Sykes to step in. At some point, Sykes wrapped a towel around Clintstock's throat to calm him.

Speaker 2 Moments later, the wrestler stopped breathing. Parker and Sykes were charged with murder.

Speaker 2 In court, both men swore they never meant to hurt the wrestler and insisted Clintstock simply collapsed from a heart attack brought on by alcohol and exertion.

Speaker 2 The coroner found no evidence of strangulation, only signs of an enlarged heart as well as heart disease.

Speaker 2 With no clear proof of foul play, the judge ruled there wasn't enough to send the case to a jury and dismiss the charges. Dr.

Speaker 2 Parker went on to become a respected dentist but overdosed on sleeping pills in 1961.

Speaker 2 Sykes ran the lab until his death in 1972.

Speaker 2 What a fucking story.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Wow. But

Speaker 2 I have an actual newspaper clipping of a couple of them from when it first happened. Because in

Speaker 2 with the mid-Atlantic films and the posters that I salvaged from Crockett's office that they threw out

Speaker 2 was a scrapbook from the old Wilmington, North Carolina promoter. They used to run shows out there at a place called Thallion Hall.

Speaker 2 And this was covered in that scrapbook because there's an article since he was a big deal, Clintstock was a big deal

Speaker 2 on the wrestling cards in Wilmington at that time.

Speaker 2 And this happened somewhere.

Speaker 2 There's a clipping January 25, 1944,

Speaker 2 where it announces that the promoter is having to make Burt Causey.

Speaker 2 is having to make changes in Friday night's show because of the death of grappler Jim Clintstock, who was murdered Saturday night in Charlotte.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 on January 28th, there's an article where Parker and Sykes were indicted for that murder. And then on January 31,

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 news came from Charlotte. This is dated January 30th, actually Associated Press,

Speaker 2 that they had the

Speaker 2 hearing and et cetera. The defense sought to show that the 240-pound wrestler died from natural causes

Speaker 2 and the heart attack.

Speaker 2 And at the same time, the prosecution was trying to decide to prove that he was murdered. But listen to

Speaker 2 the testimony from Clintstock's widow, who apparently, hold on here, apparently was not the same wife who was insulted 10 years earlier when he killed a guy, because they only got married in Florida in 1942.

Speaker 2 But she said

Speaker 2 that Dr. Parker called her about 9.30 last night and told her, we've had a hell of a fight and you'd better come over.

Speaker 2 Mrs. Clintstock said she left her hotel where she had been helping out in the coffee shop the two weeks that she and her husband had been in Charlotte and went to the laboratory.

Speaker 2 Jim had his head on the floor. Mr.
Sykes was holding a towel around his neck. I said, look at his tongue.
It's hanging out.

Speaker 2 I asked him to remove the towel and he said, no, he'll jump up fighting. He's drunk.
I said, let him up. I'll be responsible for him.
If you ask me, I think more than him is drunk.

Speaker 2 And Mrs. Sykes, the wife of the other dentist,

Speaker 2 she said that she came to the laboratory, or she said that Clintstock and Parker came to the laboratory where she was working late on the books, right?

Speaker 2 And Dr. Parker took a denture impression for the wrestler.
In the outside office, she said, Clintstock grabbed Mrs. Stewart by the head.
The man seemed crazy. I ran back and told Dr.
Parker. Dr.

Speaker 2 Parker then came out to see what the trouble was. Clint Stock pushed me around and knocked me over a wastebasket.
He fell and hit his head on the corner of a desk. He bled pretty bad.

Speaker 2 Mr. Sykes came up and sat Clintstock up and asked him not to act like that.

Speaker 2 Clintstock slid over on the floor. Jesus.

Speaker 2 Someone called police at an ambulance, but they wouldn't take him because we didn't want to prefer charges.

Speaker 2 We put a towel to Clintstock's head and he revived. Then he pulled the chair out from under Mrs.
Parker and threw her on the floor.

Speaker 2 He started fighting everybody again, fell to his knees and seemed to pass out.

Speaker 2 He was fighting everybody, mostly the women. He acted like Frankenstein.
He hit me on the nose and made it bleed. He told Mrs.
Parker he was going to pick her up and throw her out the window.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry to laugh.

Speaker 2 But in between this guy passing out and being choked out, he's throwing people out the window.

Speaker 2 Again, no wonder they took this to court.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 Clintstock, she said, was obviously under the influence of whiskey. Dr.
Parker went down to the street to call the police and get an ambulance. Mrs.
Stewart corroborated details of her testimony.

Speaker 2 We were all standing in the room. No one seemed mad at anybody.
Nothing out of the way was said. Clintstock grabbed me by the head and I ran back to the other room.
The man acted like he was crazy.

Speaker 2 I was keeping my husband in the other room. I didn't want him to get mixed up in it.
I looked through the door and Clintstock was on top of Mrs. Sykes.

Speaker 2 I never saw anything like it before.

Speaker 1 So, so far, everyone is a different story about what happened.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a lot of clear facts and details, but that's uh, but how did they end up again?

Speaker 1 The wife showed up while the guy literally had the towel around his neck, choking the life out of him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because they had called the wife. Say, oh, you better come over here.
We've had a heck of a fight.

Speaker 1 We don't want to press charges, so you better come over here and watch him die. Yeah,

Speaker 2 come over here, get this fucking guy.

Speaker 1 Jeez,

Speaker 2 but nevertheless, uh, obviously a clear-cut case of natural causes. Nothing shady to report.

Speaker 2 In any way, but

Speaker 2 that's our weekly history section on crime and wrestling. We used to do those on

Speaker 2 your various programs, the In the News segment. What in the world is happening this week? in the Arcadian Vanguard network world.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe we'll have to do that again pretty soon on one of these shows, but go through the archive, listen to everything, do what you got to do, be who you got to be

Speaker 1 on Facebook, facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard. And of course, on Twitter at Super Podcast.
Also, I have stuff I put on Blue Sky and whoever uses that or threads. It's out there.

Speaker 2 She's out for blood loss right now.

Speaker 1 That's a different person. The wrestling news each and every day.
Find out what's happening. Hear what's happening.
The morning wrestling newscast.

Speaker 1 No clickbait, no paywall, no star ratings, just the actual news. Get it from the wrestlingnews.com directly or wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Speaker 1 Want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon. He is in the middle of a series he's been doing for a while looking at the great NWA champions of the past, the Pat O'Connor episode.

Speaker 1 Just came out. Listen to that.
Go through the archive, listen to the previous ones, and get ready for more.

Speaker 1 S-U-A-WPod.com or look for Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcast. And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the Mothership.

Speaker 1 And it cut off. And I guess that says a lot, just like dynamites on your DVR this week, Jim.

Speaker 2 But I can't have any fun with my sound effects anymore.

Speaker 1 605.com. 605pod.com.
Go through the archive.

Speaker 2 The mothership.

Speaker 1 The mothership, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Speaker 2 all right well speaking of mothers

Speaker 2 we got one more thing to talk about we have the mother of all

Speaker 2 issues has come out of uncle dave's publication his

Speaker 2 readership has spoken again they voted people into the hall of fame

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 dave's hall of fame at one point

Speaker 2 years ago again like the man himself

Speaker 2 if you read the list of names in the Hall of Fame, you know, you could argue, oh, well, maybe this guy should have been for that guy.

Speaker 2 But generally, the list of people was a list of wrestlers that you would think, as a long-standing wrestling fan, if you're going to have a Hall of Fame, these guys should be in the thing, right?

Speaker 2 It wasn't

Speaker 2 just preposterous.

Speaker 2 And then he became friends with people.

Speaker 2 And then,

Speaker 2 as his

Speaker 2 longtime friends

Speaker 2 began shying away from reading what he had written for

Speaker 2 fear of wanting to do a wellness check on him or just giving up and rolling their eyes, and the younger generation came in,

Speaker 2 he has shaped their view of

Speaker 2 who the great wrestlers are to the point where,

Speaker 2 was it last year or year before, the Buckaroos got in the Wrestling Observer Hall Hall of Fame. So it can happen to you, folks.
It can happen to anybody.

Speaker 2 But now we're at a situation where

Speaker 2 pretty much everybody that

Speaker 2 votes here, he's either shaped their opinion or they still agree with him enough to associate with him.

Speaker 2 So now things have, over the last few years, have kind of started getting a little screwy

Speaker 2 in terms of actual real

Speaker 2 money-drawn main event, worldwide talent, and

Speaker 2 the individual little niche products that emerge from his world.

Speaker 2 Brian, did I say that kind of

Speaker 2 well where people would understand what's going on?

Speaker 1 I think so. I voted for a few years.
I stopped voting. This year, I didn't get a ballot because I think Dave got the message.
I wasn't going to vote again.

Speaker 1 One of my issues has been the voting body. And sometimes you could tell that by

Speaker 1 what group votes for who.

Speaker 1 And I look at it sometimes and I'm like, you can't tell me that person's a Hall of Famer. And if the same group votes someone who clearly should have been in much lower than that, that doesn't change.

Speaker 1 That just means they don't know history. It doesn't mean that that person

Speaker 1 shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. But there's a lot of questionable things.
The idea that You know, Morris Siegel is not in the Hall of Fame. He's on the ballot.

Speaker 1 So you have to know who Morris Siegel is, promoter that died in 1967.

Speaker 1 Yet, like the French promoter, just got put in.

Speaker 1 I heard lots of big things about this promotion. Here's one of my friends to do a write-up.
He's in the Hall of Fame now.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 none of Morris Siegel's contemporaries are around. Why isn't he just put in using him as an example?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 Roy Welch is in the same boat. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Any American promoter from the pioneer days that was way more powerful in their wrestling world than almost anybody is today in the modern wrestling world.

Speaker 2 People don't remember them. They were the promoters.
They were behind the scenes, whatever. That's one story, one way to look at it.
But there's also,

Speaker 2 whether you want to talk about current wrestlers or past wrestlers, there are

Speaker 2 gigantic, major fucking names in the world of wrestling that because they don't appeal to Dave's

Speaker 2 viewership or readership or whatever that he's cultivated, they're way down the list. Whereas,

Speaker 2 you know, somebody that Dave has written about fondly recently

Speaker 2 is almost an inclusion for you.

Speaker 2 You get

Speaker 2 Seth Rollins and Pampiro Furpo

Speaker 2 on the bottom of the very bottom of a list where Jose Tarres

Speaker 2 almost makes it because Dave has conveniently written numerous articles about Jose Tarres, who was a

Speaker 2 big draw in the 40s in somewhere. Where was it?

Speaker 1 I have not read the, I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 I can't remember either. And I was supposed to be a wrestler, but that's the point.

Speaker 2 It's ridiculous. Randy Orton

Speaker 2 is down and getting 30% in a wrestling Hall of Fame that the Buckaroos made easily.

Speaker 2 You see where this has gone. Again, you can look at the

Speaker 2 killer Carl Cox may not be a wrestling Hall of Famer,

Speaker 2 but seriously,

Speaker 2 should he get his ass kicked by Mike Tonay

Speaker 2 as much as I love Mike Tonae?

Speaker 2 This is all over the.

Speaker 2 Wild Bull Curry is not in the wrestling Hall of Fame.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I'm one of the people responsible for Wild Bull Curry being put on the ballot originally a few years ago because he was just never, he was never on the ballot previously, and he wasn't in the first class that Dave anointed Hall of Famers.

Speaker 1 So he

Speaker 1 couldn't get in. But

Speaker 1 like Larry Matasek, I have nothing against him. Like, I don't want to say anything bad about him.
I don't want anything I say to be perceived as being bad about him.

Speaker 1 But he finished higher on this list than a ton of fucking people.

Speaker 2 Than cowboy Bob Ellis.

Speaker 1 You know, and that's where it's like,

Speaker 1 you know, good guy, great guy, good at what he did.

Speaker 1 Hall of Famer?

Speaker 1 I don't know. And the people voting for him above other people in that category.
That's where I question.

Speaker 2 Well, because Dave has, and rightfully so, because he he was telling the truth.

Speaker 2 Dave has said Larry was the right-hand man, booked to announced, et cetera, which he did all those things, but Dave has mentioned it and brought it up numerous times,

Speaker 2 as well as saying that Mike Tanae was the smartest guy in the wrestling business, which, again, I'm not arguing at that particular time.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying for all years in the past 60 years of his life, but. I'm not going to argue that point.
But does that make Mike Tanay, should he come in

Speaker 2 20 spots above the steiner brothers in a wrestling hall of fame

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 should the hardys get more votes than the steiners

Speaker 2 probably

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 2 probably not but at least it should be a kind of equivalent different time periods but We've gone through a lot of the names, and I'm sure we'll discuss more of these.

Speaker 1 We should probably say who did get in this year.

Speaker 1 The Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame.

Speaker 1 Here are the votes needed to get in. For the United States and Canada, you need 274 votes.
For US and Canada Historical, 243 votes.

Speaker 1 For Japan, 189 votes. For Mexico, 143 votes.
And for the rest of the world, 127 votes.

Speaker 1 Jim, with the most.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, actually, just the highest percentage. 170 votes, 78%.

Speaker 1 Spiros Arion

Speaker 1 is now a member of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you know what? And

Speaker 2 Dave gives a little rundown on

Speaker 2 how much money that Spiros Arion drew with Bruno in the Northeast, and Spiros Arion was a draw in Australia.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you could write down

Speaker 2 Wild Bull Curry's career, and he would have drawn as probably almost as many people. He never got the big run in the garden with Bruno or did, no, it was beforehand.

Speaker 2 But nevertheless.

Speaker 1 Well, again, though, Spiros Arion's not getting, you take it into the account that he was a star in the Northeast at a few different points. And then, of course, the big run with Bruno.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But he's voted in 170 votes. You need more than that to get in for America, historical.
That's the rest of the world. That's Australia.

Speaker 2 Well, yes. And that's the point is that

Speaker 2 when you've got a guy like Bull Curry, who was a main event star for 40 years and who drew money in tons of places for tons longer and was more

Speaker 2 influential in the business as a whole, I'm not saying Spiritus Aryan didn't do dog shit.

Speaker 2 I'm saying again, it's just it, and suddenly Arion jumps from 46% last year to 78%

Speaker 2 this year because Dave said he was, he was one of his favorites.

Speaker 2 But that's the point I'm making is that there are

Speaker 2 40 names on the list of people that didn't make it in

Speaker 2 because of this particular voting

Speaker 2 constituency that were every bit as big or

Speaker 2 stars, but have not been presented in as favorable a light in this particular publication.

Speaker 2 So therefore, everything is somewhat

Speaker 2 slanted.

Speaker 2 But Spirus Aryan, you know, a great, great talent. But my God, as I'm looking down again, besides

Speaker 2 Bob Ellis and the Steiner brothers and Edge and Goldberg and fucking, hold on here.

Speaker 2 Well, Tony Schiavone. I don't know if he should have got in over Schiavone.

Speaker 1 Goldberg and Edge both came in under James Melby. See, that's part of the, that's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 Well, and Kevin Sullivan is underneath Rossi Ogawa.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Bob Armstrong, the Mongolian stomper are underneath all of them. But poor, again, poor Seth Rollins, the only person he beat was Pampero Furpo.

Speaker 2 Are we living in Randy Orton down here languishing in obscurity while again, well, talk about who made it because

Speaker 2 specifically, there's one name on this list that

Speaker 2 I'm sorry. It's only for this readership.

Speaker 1 We'll go through the list.

Speaker 1 Spiros Arion, though, if you want to talk about something that's like a holy grail for me, any of the local promos when he turned heel that are not already out there, I would love because a genuine psychotic.

Speaker 1 You completely believe this guy's nuts and he could kill Bruno San Martino from the little bits I've seen and from what I've heard from fans from back then.

Speaker 1 It's like nothing else. But back to the list,

Speaker 1 with 179 votes,

Speaker 1 which would be 75.2%

Speaker 1 from his region,

Speaker 1 Gran Hamada.

Speaker 2 And I guess the reason there's an explanation that Gran Hamada never made it, was actually off the ballot a time or two because he was in the Japanese section, but he was really a bigger star in Mexico.

Speaker 2 So he put him in the Mexican section and he won that.

Speaker 2 Gran Hamada was an insane worker. He was an incredible physical specimen.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Could do all kinds of shit in different styles, could wrestle as well as do pro wrestling spots, as well as do the crossbow.

Speaker 2 The first Japanese tape that I got where a guy climbed up on a top rope and dove off onto the floor on a guy, which was like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 It was Grand Hamada, 1979.

Speaker 2 Having said that,

Speaker 2 again, I believe that Uncle Dave has written fondly of his contributions to Lucha Libre and et cetera. But when you've got

Speaker 2 the names that we have mentioned, that were not only major American stars and America was the center of the wrestling universe during these periods of time, but also went around the world.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Gran Hamada was

Speaker 2 his best spot in Japan was as an underneath guy for Inoki

Speaker 2 because he was also

Speaker 2 like what, five foot fucking five

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 he wasn't

Speaker 2 the genre

Speaker 2 game changer like Tiger Mask was because he didn't have the cool gimmick with the costume and not necessarily. I don't know about his promos because I don't speak Japanese, but he was never featured

Speaker 2 as a guy that drew money in Japan and he fit in better in Mexico, but still

Speaker 2 he's not

Speaker 2 really thought of in Mexico by the average person as a Lucha Libre legend.

Speaker 2 He's just the best Japanese wrestler that ever got over in Mexico. So what the fuck's going on here is what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 You know, sometimes if you go back to an era and try to mine it looking for Hall of Famers, if you've already inducted a lot of people, I'm not even saying it's necessarily this, but in general, if you've inducted a lot of people from the era and you're still looking for people from that era, you may have all the clear-cut Hall of Famers in already.

Speaker 1 Then it becomes

Speaker 1 almost like a second tier.

Speaker 1 You see that in baseball with the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 1 You know, you wonder about a Grand Hamada.

Speaker 1 You know, you talk about guys from that era. Would he be in the top five from that era to go into the Hall of Fame? He hasn't been.

Speaker 1 So it's, you know, you wonder where it all of a sudden comes from.

Speaker 2 Well, where did the next one come from?

Speaker 2 Dory Dixon.

Speaker 1 Out of Mexico.

Speaker 2 And I'm not saying that Dory. And Dory Dixon was actually a star in this country at one time in the early 60s, had a nice run, worked the Northeast, was in the garden, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 he was primarily based for most of his career in Mexico.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's easier to get in in Mexico because it takes less votes. But what you've got now is you've got

Speaker 2 Dory Dixon, who had, as I said, a nice run for a few years in the States and

Speaker 2 did, you know, big business in Mexico.

Speaker 2 But he's in before

Speaker 2 Randy Orton or Bob Ellis or the Steiner brothers or got the junkyard dog.

Speaker 2 Dog's drawback to Dave and his viewers or listeners or readers or voters or whatever. Well, he flamed out so quick.
It was only a short period of time.

Speaker 2 Dog was one of the biggest stars in the entire business at the same amount of time that Dory Dixon

Speaker 2 was a star in America. And Dog was much more known and influential.

Speaker 2 And you could say that about a half dozen other people on the goddamn list here or more.

Speaker 2 He's trying to figure out a way to put these people on a ballot that they'll get in on rather than getting them in. You go ahead.

Speaker 1 Well, I guess that's part of what I'm thinking too. With the Lucha ballot, years ago when I was voting, it was packed.
It was packed with big stars from the world of Lucha.

Speaker 1 And they pretty much all got in.

Speaker 1 So now there's still a Lucha ballot.

Speaker 1 And again, I'm not trying to take anything away from Grant Hamada, great wrestler. In the early 90s, he was was still great.

Speaker 1 But, you know, if you've already put all the, you know, Babe Ruth's in already, Ty Cobb is in already.

Speaker 1 Right. Who was the other second baseman around at that time other than Ty Cobb? You know what I mean? You start looking for,

Speaker 1 there's still a ballot. The ballot's not going away.

Speaker 2 Tony Charles was every bit as good in his own way in the ring as Gran Hamada was. Should Tony Charles be in the Hall of Fame? Probably not.

Speaker 1 Well, again, that's Tony Charles, and that's not Tony Charles. That's

Speaker 1 Grant Hamada and Dory Dixon who joined Spiros Area. And we'll get to the other selections in a moment.

Speaker 1 But I understand, Jim, you have a special message about a great deal for people running their own business.

Speaker 2 Well, you know what? Because a lot of these people on this list need to be running their own business because they're out of the wrestling business, many of them because they're dead.

Speaker 2 And folks, if you right now are either unemployed or dead and need to run your own business, you'll find that it's hard, especially if you're dead and starting from scratch.

Speaker 2 You need a help, you need a leg up, you need somebody to embalm you, you need an undertaker to make sure you get up tomorrow. You need

Speaker 2 Shopify.

Speaker 2 Well, because Shopify is going to keep right on top of things like that, the sound effects and everything, and they're going to make you money.

Speaker 2 With that incredibly wimpy sound effect of a cash register, it will translate into billions and billions of dollars that you're going to be richer than the royal family of England.

Speaker 2 As a matter of fact, if you can tap into a way, it's not well,

Speaker 2 if you can tap into a way to sell pictures of Andrew with his various whoers,

Speaker 2 then you could potentially blackmail the royal family, including old King Charles Bag Ears, into giving you money to not put those pictures out on the internet. We don't want to stop them,

Speaker 1 they cannot help anyone with blackmail. We don't want to encourage blackmail.
We encourage you not to commit blackmail. And of course, leave the royal family alone.
I'm sure they have security.

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And the good old

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Speaker 2 oh god damn jesus christ it hurts those time

Speaker 1 well jim the speaking of hurting what what other

Speaker 2 what other damage did dave do to the wrestling business who else is in this thing

Speaker 1 all right well, let's go back to 2025 class of the Wrestling Observer newsletter Hall of Fame.

Speaker 1 With 294 votes, the most votes anyone received,

Speaker 1 and 65.5% of the votes from his region,

Speaker 1 CM Punk is now a Hall of Famer.

Speaker 2 And this one had to just gall Dave because he couldn't,

Speaker 2 no matter what he did, he tried the poison pen letters and the

Speaker 2 public slander and all the other stuff. And he tried to sway the people.
And even his own

Speaker 2 crowd still voted Punk into the Hall of Fame that actually doesn't exist. But still,

Speaker 2 did you see

Speaker 2 when Dave describes who got in? And he starts talking about punk,

Speaker 2 he spends two sentences talking about Punk's career career

Speaker 2 between

Speaker 2 ROH and quitting the WWF and going into UFC.

Speaker 2 Two sentences and then a long paragraph

Speaker 2 about all the problems he caused not wanting to work with Cold Cabana and AEW and how all that whole thing ultimately is his fault, even though other people acted badly as well.

Speaker 2 He can't get over it. He's still pitching the fucking story.

Speaker 2 And he even, this is a quote. He was easily the biggest short-term star in AEW.

Speaker 2 Although one could make the case that in the long run, he hurt the promotion.

Speaker 2 His arrival in the first few months were the business peak, and he was the key reason for it as his return to wrestling after more than seven years led to AEW's popularity and pay-per-view peak.

Speaker 2 But the tenure otherwise was a failure.

Speaker 2 Based on an inability to work with cold cabana and then he goes on for another two paragraphs on

Speaker 2 and he just couldn't treat page right he agreed not to not to say bad things about the buckaroos and kenny so he turned his focus to adam page

Speaker 2 after page went into business for himself and brought a knife to a gunfight and couldn't outshoot promo cm punk with his mushmouth fucking oatmeal bullshit

Speaker 2 why

Speaker 2 he can't leave this alone, can he? Even his own people voted the guy in. And instead of just saying, okay, he's one of the biggest stars and needle movers of the modern era.

Speaker 2 And how could you not vote him in the Hall of Fame if he's up for it?

Speaker 2 He's still got to fucking try to pass this bullshit off so that the Hardley boys don't get pissed at him and don't invite him over to the trampoline.

Speaker 2 Is that as see-through as it looks to me?

Speaker 1 I mean, he wasn't just the biggest short-term star in AEW history. He was the biggest star in AEW history.

Speaker 1 Period. And it didn't have to be short-term.
It was because of the conditions that Tony created and allowed to fester and the fucking ridiculous games. And for everyone who said,

Speaker 1 let's see how angry Punk gets in WWE.

Speaker 1 I don't think I've ever seen him as happy as he seems. And it's not just because he's making lots of money.

Speaker 2 He's so happy. He's killed his gimmick.
He's the smiling ice cream man, for fuck's sake.

Speaker 1 And I don't think it's just because he's making lots of money.

Speaker 2 I think he's actually enjoying what he's doing so it didn't have to go the way it went in aew but again there were games there were lots of games and he didn't put up with it but is this as see-through as it looks to me to the average viewer that he still dave still cannot leave this alone and he's still got to push that story

Speaker 2 even though it's bullshit

Speaker 1 to take up for his buddies You know, in Dave's point of view, Punk was in the wrong too.

Speaker 1 When multiple people stormed in the dressing room and one of them may have lunged at him. But he did anything about it.

Speaker 1 Surprise he hasn't ripped Larry in the observer yet.

Speaker 2 He don't have the balls.

Speaker 1 No, but again, biggest star in AEW history. It could have gone on longer.
They screwed it up.

Speaker 1 And you could argue that that screw-up cost the company more than anything else because

Speaker 1 Whether you thought Punk was right or wrong, it sent a message about the behavior behind the scenes and about the leadership or lack thereof in the company. That's what everyone noticed.

Speaker 2 And I don't think that the buckaroos have never recovered from that because the people blamed them and their childishness for

Speaker 2 the punk being gone. And that's what

Speaker 2 pretty much started the fact that nobody gives a shit whether they burst into flame or fucking turn blue or not anymore.

Speaker 2 I mean, their own boringness and smarminess have something to do with it, but they all got,

Speaker 2 they sent Perry away to Never Neverland to make knives and license plates or whatever for a year because people were pissed at him and his little fucking scrawny neck.

Speaker 2 Anywho, but Punk made the Hall of Fame so he can retire happy now. He's in the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame.
I wonder if he's throwing a party.

Speaker 2 Chicago deep dish pizza.

Speaker 1 You know, I'll just say to be consistent, I'm not necessarily a fan of putting him in or the next person we're about to talk about or a few years ago.

Speaker 2 While they're still active? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm not saying he isn't. I'm not saying he doesn't have the credentials.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying he's still maybe not in the middle of his career, but he's having a career resurgence, which I think has only added to his.

Speaker 1 If not the thing that put him over the top, it's added to his credibility as a Hall of Famer.

Speaker 1 But he's still in the middle of his career. He's still doing it.

Speaker 2 And Dave's, and I can see this.

Speaker 2 I can actually see the logic in this. Dave's thing is: nobody in wrestling ever retires, so we would never be able to vote anybody in the Hall of Fame if we didn't take active wrestlers.

Speaker 2 So I guess I can say they do have to be active for

Speaker 2 some period of years, 20 years, or whatever the fuck it is. I don't know.

Speaker 2 But again,

Speaker 2 this whole thing is is flawed anyway because

Speaker 2 it is a cross-section of people that he chooses

Speaker 2 from his readership and social circle.

Speaker 2 And so even if you're going to have, you need some type of consistency. If you're going to have active wrestlers, Punk got in.
Another guy we're going to talk about here in a second got in.

Speaker 2 But Orton's way down the list, and we've already talked about Gran Hamada and Dory Dixon.

Speaker 2 So there has to be some kind of consistency when you're talking about major stars that have had similar accomplishments and similar longevities,

Speaker 2 but one guy doesn't work the style that Dave is a proponent of.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Or doesn't get along with the right people.

Speaker 1 And again, with punk, I'm not saying he's not a Hall of Famer. I just don't like the idea of putting people in while they're actively active.

Speaker 1 I guess the best way to put it for a a wrestler, but it must also

Speaker 2 when they're hyper-active.

Speaker 1 Hey, real quick, before we move on to the next person, I'll bet you I know the next reclamation project. The next person who's gonna have write-ups about their drawing ability and everything else.

Speaker 1 Jon Moxley's all the way down the list after Roy Welch.

Speaker 2 Is he wait a minute? Is he on this?

Speaker 1 He's after Roy Welch. Roy Welch did better than Jon Moxley amongst this.

Speaker 2 Well, as he should, but I didn't even see the fucking name. Where is

Speaker 1 after the Steiners, after Jim Johnston?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 see, Roy Welch and Mize is way too low, and Moxley's way too high. So,

Speaker 2 yeah, he's going to have to have to drum up some support for Dick the Boozer. Elsewise, he's going to hear all kinds of bad things from René Moxley Good.

Speaker 1 Well, Jim, the next name to get into the Wrestling Observer newsletter Hall of Fame for 2025.

Speaker 1 Again, another name with ties to AEW:

Speaker 1 Cody Rhodes,

Speaker 1 289 votes, 64.4% of the votes from his region.

Speaker 2 Well, and to be honest, because

Speaker 2 Dave's readership and social circle that I mentioned is somewhere,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 a high percentage are AEW fans or AEW-oriented or whatever. And Cody was part of the ground floor of that.

Speaker 2 So I bet that had more to do with this bunch than Cody being the biggest babyface star in the goddamn world right now.

Speaker 2 And probably all the people mad that we had punk too. These son of bitches ruined it.

Speaker 2 But with Cody,

Speaker 2 he's even more of an example of all of these things. He is the biggest wrestling star in the world right now, or one of them.
and the leading lead babyface of the biggest company

Speaker 2 and should

Speaker 2 be in a a wrestling Hall of Fame, but he's actually not only active right now, but not even like Punk, didn't even take a long break, is in his first big run

Speaker 2 and is really in the middle of things. So there is some element of, yes, Cody's a Hall of Famer, but right now he's not even remotely done with his biggest run yet.

Speaker 2 But at the same time,

Speaker 2 he deserves it a lot better than some of the people on this list. So if you're going to put active wrestlers in, he would have to be there.

Speaker 1 Again, AEW, his role in the start of AEW plays into it. I don't think he really had a Hall of Fame career, naturally a Stardust or anything he had done in WWE up to that point.

Speaker 1 But coming back,

Speaker 1 looking at it now,

Speaker 1 you could argue that

Speaker 1 the peak of WWE's popularity, it felt like, and the peak of the Bloodline storyline was all tied into the Cody Rhodes chase.

Speaker 2 The story to finish.

Speaker 1 That

Speaker 2 it all tied in perfectly.

Speaker 1 It all tied in perfectly, but you know, that was all centered on Cody and Roman.

Speaker 1 And that was,

Speaker 1 has it felt as hot since? Since Cody got the belt? Not to, you know, I hate to say that because you don't want to say take the belt off him for that reason, but it's never been as hot.

Speaker 2 Well, and

Speaker 2 you got to say, Reclamation Project, renovation, or whatever,

Speaker 2 Cody did a tremendous job. He left AEW television, which even then had more viewers than it has now, but was often a shit show.

Speaker 2 And he wasn't even the most popular guy with that crowd and stepped into the WWE and immediately blossomed and became

Speaker 2 the fucking draw he's become. So he

Speaker 2 really renovated himself from

Speaker 2 the glorified indie promotion to the star in the big company. And then he did it just by walking over.

Speaker 1 But again, I'm uncomfortable because he's still active.

Speaker 2 That makes sense.

Speaker 2 And also,

Speaker 2 I can say a lot of good things about CM Punk, but I'm not going to say that he's in the middle of his

Speaker 2 first big run because it's not his first. He's closer to the end than he is the beginning.
Cody's in the middle of his first big run.

Speaker 2 And so that's even more premature, but he deserves it under this criteria.

Speaker 1 But that's why I actually think Punk is a stronger candidate than Cody.

Speaker 1 Because look at everything Punk did before he went to AEW, which was his comeback.

Speaker 1 You could argue he may have been a Hall of Famer already at that point.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 If he had not returned to wrestling still based on what he did, he would certainly qualify again.

Speaker 2 If all things were equal and all these people had any sense, he wouldn't be bull curried.

Speaker 2 He would still be in if he hadn't come back.

Speaker 1 Well, Jim, the next name on this list, receiving 288 votes, one less than Cody Rhodes,

Speaker 1 64.1% of his region back on the ballot this year. Sabu.

Speaker 2 I hate.

Speaker 1 Oh no, is this the one you have a problem with? I thought it was Gran Hamada.

Speaker 2 Well, no, there actually, then there's a couple.

Speaker 2 He got in because he died this year.

Speaker 2 So that, you know, pretty much

Speaker 2 gives a handicap to people that are already dead because they can't die again.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 Dave's, again, thrust of the thing is that, well, he wasn't ever a main event guy in a big company. He wasn't really a money-drawing talent.
He obviously wasn't, you know, world-class on promos.

Speaker 2 His work,

Speaker 2 let's face it, was awful

Speaker 2 in relation to actually having a goddamn wrestling match.

Speaker 2 But because he was so revolutionary with the tables and et cetera,

Speaker 2 That's why he belongs in.

Speaker 2 That to me is the biggest thing that ought to keep him out because we still can't get away from the goddamn tables.

Speaker 2 But I'm not trying to speak ill of him because he just died.

Speaker 2 But if you're going to talk about a revolutionary, high-flying athlete, okay, Sayama, Tiger Mask.

Speaker 2 who within the realm of a wrestling ring and the

Speaker 2 concept of an athletic contest between two people did all the flying with incredible world-class athleticism and precision, and

Speaker 2 the grace and the working ability, and every style from the matte wrestling to the lucha to the blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 Sabu's work was the shits. He hurt himself

Speaker 2 often.

Speaker 2 And you've seen umpteen fucking

Speaker 2 eclipse of him landing on other people's heads or taking them down in a goddamn train wreck with him.

Speaker 2 That to me has always been the antithesis of what the wrestling business was supposed to be about.

Speaker 2 So, yes,

Speaker 2 while he was influential and he meant a lot for ECW and for the Indies at the time,

Speaker 2 unfortunately, the influence has been negative overall because it's been 20 years. We still can't get rid of the fucking tables.

Speaker 2 But if you look athletically at his work,

Speaker 2 he's not a Hall of Fame wrestler. Sorry.
And he was never

Speaker 2 a difference maker at the gate

Speaker 2 anywhere except maybe in ECW, where the difference was if they could stay away from the goddamn bill collector this week.

Speaker 2 Argue with me and blister me all you want to, but

Speaker 1 a a wonderful guy.

Speaker 2 Um, I mean, I'm not even saying anything about him personally, but just no, not with no again.

Speaker 2 Sabu

Speaker 2 is in a wrestling hall of fame with Wild Bull Curry, Cowboy Bob Ellis, Sputnik Monroe, the Steiner Brothers, Edge,

Speaker 2 fucking Ole Anderson, for God's sake, Goldberg,

Speaker 2 fuck Pampiro Furpo, Seth Rollins, the Mongolian stomper, whatever era you are from,

Speaker 2 present your case.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying I would have voted for him, but I don't think it's as awful as what you presented there. And yeah, there's a lot of things that came out of ECW

Speaker 1 that Sabu started and Paul Heyman exploited. Again, he did the tables.
Paul Heyman immediately let public enemy use tables. And then everyone did tables.
It was all over the place.

Speaker 1 I think for a few years there,

Speaker 1 he was the most exciting guy or one of them in the business. Again, you had to be a fan, even though he got magazine coverage.

Speaker 1 Whenever he showed up on WWE or WCW,

Speaker 1 he wasn't necessarily there the next week. It was usually a one and done, but there was a period there, and you could argue, and I think I would.

Speaker 1 The people that put ECW on the map when Heyman took over from Eddie Gilbert were Sabu and Terry Funk, with a minor for Shane Douglas' promos, which were for a moment unique.

Speaker 1 And I think Sabu played an important role in the 90s in wrestling. Again, most exciting guy.
I saw a match with him and Devin Storm for Dennis in 95. Tore the place down.
It was great.

Speaker 1 Again, there may have been 550 people there or whatever it was.

Speaker 2 I saw a few of those too, and I also saw him land on a lot of people's heads.

Speaker 1 And I saw him land on his head. And I saw him in the ECW arena

Speaker 1 with a good match. And I saw him in a match with Rob Van Dam where the ring fell apart.
And it was a nightmare. So I kind of got to see every side of it.
I got to trade tapes for him.

Speaker 1 I would have to spend more time thinking about if he's a Hall of Famer or not. I mean, you kind of presented the argument to throw him out of heaven more than the fucking Hall of Fame.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying.

Speaker 2 If there weren't other, other, if there weren't other names to compare some of these people to, that you go, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 It would be like, oh, we don't have room for Babe Ruth and we don't have room for Ty Cobb, but here comes Oscar Gamble.

Speaker 2 See,

Speaker 2 I know some of these names.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and again, there is certainly a bump for when you pass away. I think it helped in the past.

Speaker 1 And I think Lou Albano should have been in the Hall of Fame, but it helped, I think, Lou Albano in the past. He died and then he immediately got in.

Speaker 1 I was a little sad to see that Gorilla Monsoon didn't get in.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 here's what we haven't even mentioned him.

Speaker 1 A great book by Brian Solomon.

Speaker 2 But also, Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura and the Junkyard Dog are underneath that didn't make the wrestling Hall of Fame underneath Gran Hamada, Dory Dixon, and Sabu. So

Speaker 2 help me come to grips with this.

Speaker 1 It's just. But there's a great example.

Speaker 1 You know, there's there's a great example for you in terms of the influence of Dave over the voting body.

Speaker 1 Brian Solomon's book, Irresistible Force, available wherever you find your favorite books, one of the best written biographies of a wrestler ever, talks about in there that dichotomy, where people like Brian Solomon, people like myself,

Speaker 1 not necessarily people who were kids like us at that time, even older people, we listened to Guerrilla Monsoon with Jesse Ventura on the pay-per-views or with Bobby Heenan Heenan on Primetime or on Challenge.

Speaker 1 We liked him. We enjoyed his commentary.
We didn't have a problem with him. The Observer hated him.
He was voted

Speaker 1 worst announcer of the year like six years in a row, whatever it was.

Speaker 1 And, you know, again, when you kind of train your audience to think, this guy's terrible, this guy's the worst.

Speaker 1 And then that same voting body votes for like Tony Schiavone

Speaker 1 to be in the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 2 That's the problem. But this same publication is supposed to be

Speaker 2 a learned

Speaker 2 repository and guardian place for all this wrestling history. And okay, so Gorilla Monsoon, who not only was the biggest drawing in-ring heel of the New York Territory of the 1960s

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 pretty much set Vince McMahon Jr.'s company up for success in the early years, but then bought part of the company and was one of the three or four most powerful men in the wrestling business while still being a superstar wrestler, while still being one of the highly, the most highly paid people in the wrestling business for the next 25 years.

Speaker 2 He can't get in the Hall of Fame, but Gran Hamada,

Speaker 2 after switching his

Speaker 2 He put a VP in on Gran Hamada and switched his fucking geographic location and got him in the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 1 We'll have more about Surf Shark next week if you're on the show.

Speaker 1 But, Jim, one final name. Actually, two, I guess I should mention here.

Speaker 1 I saw it before. Where did Dave write it?

Speaker 2 Oh, the French promoter.

Speaker 1 French promoter. I just saw this.

Speaker 2 Raul Paoli, named after a city in Indiana, Paoli, Indiana.

Speaker 2 He just decided to put Raul Paoli of France

Speaker 2 into the Hall of Fame without anybody voting voting on him.

Speaker 2 It's sort of like a fucking executive order here because somebody has just done an article on how Raul Paoli was the biggest wrestling promoter in France from the 30s to the 50s, and they drew a ton of money.

Speaker 1 Did they do more business than Morris Siegel for the same time period or even longer? Because he was actually a successful promoter for a longer period of time.

Speaker 2 Well, and I believe now they're saying he was having this fellow, Raul Paoli, had a couple of years there in the 30s where he drew a couple dozen crowds of over 10,000. So that was that was wonderful.

Speaker 2 But that was also 90 years ago. And if you're going by promoters, again, as you mentioned, Morris Siegel and Roy Welch didn't draw any crowds of 10,000,

Speaker 2 but he drew fucking few hundred crowds a year of 5,000.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 1 well, Jim, the final.

Speaker 2 I was about to say another, another promoter. The last name is kind of a promoter, more a booker, but he fits Dave's profile

Speaker 2 because he invented Japanese wrestling. Go ahead.

Speaker 1 And that is the category he is in: Japanese wrestling, not U.S. and Canada historical.

Speaker 1 With 197 votes, 62.7%

Speaker 1 of the voting body, Bobby Bruns

Speaker 1 finally gets into the Wrestling Observer newsletter Hall of Fame.

Speaker 2 And Bobby Bruns, for everybody going, who

Speaker 2 was a wrestler for years.

Speaker 2 He also booked for years for Sam Muchnick in St. Louis.

Speaker 2 And that he was a well-thought-of wrestling mind in the industry, and he had different connections where he could book talent in different places for different tours or in territories. And

Speaker 2 in one of those particular adventures, he took

Speaker 2 wrestlers over to Japan in the early 50s and had the first American-style pro-wrestling tour, found Ricky Dozan

Speaker 2 and trained him and gave him a push, made him a star.

Speaker 2 So, once again, nothing shabby about all that.

Speaker 2 But Bobby Bruns, as

Speaker 2 a behind-the-scenes talent, Bobby Bruns, or behind-the-scenes talent, as a behind-the-scenes wrestling personality,

Speaker 2 Bobby Bruns

Speaker 2 wasn't shit or nothing, but he wasn't, again, as you mentioned, Morris Siegel or you mentioned Roy Welch or you mentioned a few of these other people.

Speaker 2 He wasn't any more or less

Speaker 2 successful than they were, except he happened to

Speaker 2 find the guy and start Japanese wrestling, and that

Speaker 2 has forever warmed Dave's cockles.

Speaker 2 So it's not again that we're shitting on Bobby Brunson. That was a very important thing he did.

Speaker 1 Plus the St. Louis connection.

Speaker 2 And the St. Louis connection.
But

Speaker 2 if we're establishing some type of consistency or whatever, it's just, there's none here.

Speaker 2 It's whoever he's written well about or brought publicity to or lent a favored eye to,

Speaker 2 especially in the historical categories, because a lot of these people

Speaker 2 base what they know on history on reading what Dave writes about it.

Speaker 2 And then there's the punks and the

Speaker 2 Cody's and the people that get in, because if you've got them on a ballot with the and they're happening right now, they just can't not get in,

Speaker 2 even if Dave don't want them to be.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 that's where we're at. And

Speaker 2 Stanley Weston placed higher than Goldberg and Edge.

Speaker 1 Well, listen to this. Tony Schiavone with 105 votes.

Speaker 2 Zane Bresloff continues to be on the ballot because he was friends with Dave and gave Dave all the gate numbers. Go ahead.

Speaker 1 Here are all the people under Tony Schiavone who had 105 votes,

Speaker 1 23.4% for his voting body. He got more votes than EO EO Sky,

Speaker 1 Dave Brown, the Hart Foundation, Steamboat, and Youngblood,

Speaker 1 Mad Dog and Butcher of a Shan, Holland Nash, the Iron Sheik, the Samoans,

Speaker 1 Kevin Sullivan, George Scott, no matter what you think of him. There was an argument, at least.

Speaker 1 And Noki and Sakaguchi as a team, Carl Cox, Zane Bresloff, Bob Caudle, Bob Armstrong,

Speaker 1 and several. Bill Dundee.

Speaker 2 Stomper, Bill Dundee. Sweet Daddy Seekey.

Speaker 2 Sweet Daddy Seekey is 20 points below Tony Schiavone

Speaker 2 and right up above Mercedes Moon.

Speaker 1 There isn't any argument for Tony Schiavone being a Hall of Famer, even if you're a fan of his. So the question becomes, why would anyone vote for him? Who's voting for him?

Speaker 1 Their ballot should be yanked away.

Speaker 2 Well, I bet Tony got probably, how many votes did he get here? 105? And probably half that came from the AEW locker room

Speaker 1 you ain't lying well that's the ballot for the 2025 wrestling observer newsletter hall of fame or the people who got in uh hayabusa and the junkyard dog right underneath the cusp of 60 needed for your division here's right under that who didn't get in hayabusa junkyard dog june byers jesse ventura jose tarres Ted Turner, Kevin and Kerry, and David von Erich, Guerrilla Monsoon.

Speaker 2 And that's as a tag team now. I think one of these is in individually or more, aren't they?

Speaker 1 None of them are in. No?

Speaker 1 What? Yeah, that's why they're on like this, because none of them are in. Oh, Christ.
Oh, God. And of course, Zach Saber Jr.

Speaker 2 So Hayabusa and Junkyard Dog almost made it. And of course, Hayabusa and Junkyard Dog comparable in stardom and wrestling.

Speaker 2 Almost neck and neck there. Can't hardly tell them apart.

Speaker 1 Well, if you're on

Speaker 1 the cusp, a good thing to do is die. Then you'll get in.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure I like the trade-off. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Can I get in if I just become very sick?

Speaker 2 We'll figure that out. Brian, do you have any closing thoughts before we close the program?

Speaker 1 A memorable dynamite, a

Speaker 1 not terribly offensive Hall of Fame class. Another good episode.
We'll be back on the drive-thru in a few days.

Speaker 2 That's right. That's your program.

Speaker 2 So we'll do that soon and then we'll come back with my program and we'll alternate until you're all sick of us until then folks thank you you and bye-bye everybody get the experience get the experience of jim card net

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