Episode 400

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Must be 80 plus replay void or prohibited.

Hello again, friends.

And you are our friends.

And welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's drive-thru on a hot day.

It is hot, and so is the wrestling talk with this man.

Did I say my name?

I'm the great Brian Last, your host.

And here he is, the man who'll be answering your questions and doing who knows what else, the leader of the Cult of Cornet, Mr.

Jim Cornette.

Oh, boy, howdy.

You just every, you know what you need to add to that organ, Brian?

You need, you need a zither and an oboe.

And then you could go, you could be a traveling quartet, not quartet, then you'd need another.

How about a dobro along with the oboe and the zither and the organ, and you could travel around the I have some of those.

I have some of those other sounds on this other thing here.

Maybe I can get them all going at once.

Not now.

I'd have to practice.

Could you do the one-man band thing where you're pumping the thing with your foot and you're blowing the thing and you're clapping the cymbals and you, you know, you're banging your head with the fucking drumstick on the back of the.

Now you do the one-man band thing where I'm like surrounded by synthesizers and wearing sunglasses and I just press something on each thing and things happen.

Sunglasses are the bigger, biggest part of that, I guess, aren't they?

It's attitude.

It's all about attitude.

You've certainly got that.

Hey, you know what I got?

I got some smart people out there listening to our shows.

Here's what I got.

I'll include you in that.

They listen to you too, even though they're smart.

And do you know,

do you know that when I was talking about having Black Beauty in the shop last week as it had crossed 303,000 miles and was emitting a hot burning stench and white smoke and shit, Greg Smith tweeted me and said, Jim, it sounds like you're calipers.

And son of a bitch, wouldn't you know who won the pony?

Thanks to my man Tyler over at Springdale Automotive.

He's a very nice guy.

Guess what it was?

You're not guessing.

You just said it was the Framistat or whatever, Tyler.

No, Tyler.

Email man, Greg, from Wisconsin.

I don't remember where he was from.

He didn't even retain it.

I just said it.

Did I not just get it?

That's right.

It was the calipers.

Them damn crappy calipers.

I got the calipers canned and replaced with new calipers.

And he charged up my air conditioning, too.

It's still stuck on high on the fan, but it's cold now.

What do you mean, charged up?

Charged it up with the refrigerantating stuff.

Because it was just...

The heat worked great in the wintertime, but the air was still hot in the summertime that it was blowing.

But he recharged that.

Did he do anything with the doors that won't open in that torture van of yours?

No, the door, for heaven's sake, the only torture was when I didn't have air, but I was only driving five miles.

No, the handles work from the outside, and one of them still works from the inside.

It's a little loose, but I'm the only one that can't get out.

But I don't want to just be throwing money away frivolously.

That's you got to go to the dealer for that and parts and all that shit.

Has anyone had the tough conversation with you?

Like, Jim,

we know you love this car, and in some form, you can keep keep it forever

but it may not be road acceptable at some point who would it be that would have that conversation your mechanic

no they said it's it's a ford truck for god's sake it's a goddamn symbol of american pride and engineering oh i'm starting to talk myself out of it no it's it's a it's a durable piece of machinery just there's cosmetic but it's old issues it's old well i told you i'm not going to be fiscally irresponsible you say it's a ford like that makes it okay okay to be old.

Why don't you drive a model T Ven?

Well, we are looking into the potential restoration of the Cadillac LaSalle.

I forgot about that.

But no, why am I going to spend the money that it would take to buy any acceptable used vehicle just to drive 35 miles a week?

Or you could spend some of your hard-earned money and get yourself a gigantic,

flashy-for-you car, something that really makes you feel feel like you're the cock of the walk

or the highway i guess spend some money get some oh there's plenty of cocks on the highway listen who cares if you put two

i don't want to attract any attention same as when i just go about my daily

weekly activities in any public place i'm not trying to attract any attention i don't know what the fuck anyone has ever seen

yeah you don't draw any attention who's that guy in the biggest car i've ever seen in my life but but it's black.

It blends in.

How's he going to park that thing?

Where's he going to park that thing?

I park at the back of the parking lots and I walk up so that I'm unmolested on all sides and I fold my mirrors in.

When was the last time you parked the car on the street?

Oh, Jesus Christ.

I mean, this may be a really stupid question because I've never driven anything that big.

You can't parallel park.

Like, that's out of the question, correct?

Oh, I, yeah, god damn it.

If you're good enough, which I ain't, you can parallel park a goddamn truck fucking dragging a 18-foot trailer.

And I see these various work people of various types of trades doing this all the time around the area, but I couldn't do that.

But yes, you could parallel park a Ford expedition.

You could parallel park any drivable consumer vehicle, pretty much, or any

you can,

I saw that fucking guy that brought the action figures.

He goddamn backed a full-size

tractor trailer, what a 60-foot, 40-foot trailer, a 20-foot cab, whatever that measurement is, just backed it in on a dime on a, on a place.

You can back anything, but I don't like to, as to answer your question,

I can't remember the last time I parked on a street.

I don't, it would have had to have been in downtown Louisville in the last five years because I was down there once or twice, but I try to find a lot lot whenever possible.

And

it's a handful of times that I parked on the street just because I don't like to park on a fucking street in the middle of downtown.

Feel like you're just leaving your goddamn transportation out there saying,

come and molest me, criminals of all shapes and sizes.

But could you even find parking spots that would fit your car?

Well, that's another thing is you can't just parallel park if it's one goddamn spot that's only for the size of a car.

that's another hindrance

and i get the idea that people will come by and sideswipe me

so i like to i like to be off in a corner somewhere but i don't go

almost anywhere at any time where there's a necessity to park on a street

that's part of the perks of being old, semi-retired, and fucking reasonably goddamn homebound.

I still don't think there's anything prohibiting you from getting a brand new nice car that you would love.

I would rather, I would love the money more than I want to spend to do the limited amount of driving that I'm doing.

Stacy has a brand new car.

It's a year and a half old or whatever.

You could put Black Beauty in the yard.

You know, every now and then sit in it.

Think about the good times, the burger towels, the condiments.

You know, I still, there's ketchup and salt and pepper still in the goddamn

thing.

I guess it's a sunglass compartment up there, but I had it right above the rearview mirror where I could just pop the thing open, and there comes the ketchup, the salt, and the pepper.

So,

you keep it the sunglasses then?

That's where you keep the condiments.

Well, it was easily accessible while I'm driving with my left hand, and I don't wear sunglasses.

It never just fly out, it can comes down in a controlled manner so you can grab the specific thing you want.

Well, it folds down, and there's a little lip, so you kind of reach up over it, and you can feel the difference in the ketchup and the salt and pepper.

You You got any bread in your wheel well or anything?

What else is it cooking?

No, when the guy was changing my oil, he found a baked potato up on the engine wrapped in blue book oil.

But anyway, so thank you again, Tyler.

You're my fellow if you're listening.

I don't know he listens to the show.

He's just, he's a wrestling fan, but he

don't think he follows closely the various goings on of

what's going on or what we're doing for that matter.

He's got his own life over there.

You know who else has a life?

Why are you yelling at me?

You know, who else has a life?

I'll tell you who has a Sean Delaney over in Evansville.

Or wherever he lives, he's in the perimeter of that.

I don't know if he might be out of town.

Sean Delaney has been doing the history of professional wrestling at Evansville, the books,

a series he did from starting in 1959 when Evansville was its own little territory and Rip Hawk was the

Sputnik Monroe of Memphis of Evansville.

And then through the 60s, when the town was dark, after Bruiser had left, and before Jarrett came in, but there were still forces trying to get in, and the Coliseum had gone sideways, was closed for so long.

And now he's gotten to the first year of

Jerry Jarrett running Evansville, 1970 to 71.

And

he's including what was going on.

Think of it.

And this is,

I don't know offhand how far it is from Evansville, Indiana to Paducah, Kentucky.

It's not that terribly far.

But Evansville to Owensboro, Kentucky

is like fucking 60 miles miles or whatever it was.

And there were weekly matches at one point.

Phil Golden was running Paducah with his own TV show and his own crew that would later on spread out.

Remember Brian, all-star wrestling with Phil Golden and run opposition to Jarrett in Evansville and Louisville and Gulis, opposition to Gulis, various places.

In 72 and 73, Phil Golden's running Paducah.

Nick Gulis out of the Nashville office is running Owensboro every week.

And goddamn, and Jared opens up Evansville.

So there's like three different crews

going into a very small geographic period during that time.

Anyway,

and he sent me the book, so you can look it up, folks.

History of Professional Wrestling at Evansville by Sean

Ebonville.

In Evansville by Sean Delaney.

Have you got yours yet, Brian?

You've had time now to Google it already.

He doesn't send me books, so I don't have his book.

Well, Sean apparently has been publicly served.

Yeah.

Upon which, Sean, contact me and I will give you the appropriate place to send Brian's book.

Don't email me asking for favors.

Well, you don't even send me your fucking book.

That's what I say.

Well,

did he email you asking for a favor?

Oh, yeah.

Why is he?

You know what?

Every time I mention somebody, it seems like, even when we're off the air, I'll say, well, so-and-so

sent me something just out of the blue that I didn't ask for.

And

you will have a contradictory story where so-and-so asked me to do something and didn't send me shit.

Yeah.

It's like they're keeping a list.

Well, we...

We were nice to one, so we got to be naughty to the other.

And actually, to be fair, I have some of his previous books.

From you mentioning them i went and got them but uh oh so yeah

so you know he chased me off as a as a reader i guess well but maybe he'll maybe he'll lure you back with uh i'm gonna put out a history of evansville series of books starting next year

it'll be everything that's in his books plus more

Now with more stuff.

Now with less Evansville, more everything.

No, but

good luck with the book.

Yes,

Sean, I'm sure with a rave review like that, you're going to hit the bestseller list of the Evansville and Hooterville Gazette down there.

But anyway,

this is your show, but I told you before we went on the air

that

everybody has been apparently tweeting and or emailing or commentating or however they reach out to our ourselves, yourself, a lot more than myself.

I'm unreachable, but they love the old paperwork that I've been pulling of the TNA stuff, the talent reports to the WWE,

whatever the case.

And

I told you before we went on the air, well,

I said, well, let me see, because I have, wait a minute, one, two, three, four,

I have 12 built-in

file cabinet drawers, file drawers.

in my wall cabinet here, and they're jammed.

They're two and a half feet deep apiece, and they're completely fucking jammed.

And things are kind of in

genre.

Like, here's a bunch of TNA shit.

So, I pull a handful out, or OVW, I pull a handful out, or whatever.

And so,

we've got, I could be reading for a while.

I don't know if all of this stuff is interesting, but there's some of it I was just looking at that may be interesting.

Because

I just filed this away as paperwork 25 years ago or 20 years ago or whatever it was, not

understanding that with the benefit of hindsight and 15 or 20 or 25 years or whatever, and et cetera, that it would be hilarious to read it to people.

But here we are.

So

I found something.

I've got a couple of OBW things, which we'll get to, but I found something

that I thought would help better explain

the task that I was trying to

undertake in TNA as a producer.

Because

nominally, it doesn't sound like that this would be, you know, ditch digging in terms of being a television wrestling match producer, right, Brian?

I mean, there's people working harder than that in the world.

But, you know, the thing is, it was mentally somewhat challenging.

And I've explained that as the producer or the agent, whatever the terminology was, here was the job for me or anybody in that position.

You sit in the production meeting

and you hear what creative wants for the different segments, matches, whatever on the television show.

And then if it's your match to produce or you are in charge of it, you will go, you will get with all the talent in a match, including the referee and anybody that's involved in that.

And you will explain to them what the creative vision is,

and you will get their input and try to give some of your own in

laying it out to make it entertaining, hit the time, get to the objective they're trying to get to.

And then

I would get with the announcers if there was anything oddball that they needed to say or be aware of or make sure don't

miss this.

And then you would go and you'd get in the truck and you would convey it to the director specifically and the producer of the crew as to, okay, don't miss this camera shot or don't miss that or whatever, or

he's climbing the ropes.

He's going to fucking leap off and be impaled on a goddamn barbed wire spike, whatever.

So it's shepherding that process, right?

And it entails a lot of detail work, but one would think that it wouldn't be that difficult.

However,

I found an email because this is an email from Dutch Mantel to me on Thursday for the

upcoming TV

tapings that we were going to be doing that Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, right?

So this is Thursday, March 5th, 2009.

Dutch is still there, as you can tell, because there hasn't been the blow-up with Jeff and Dixie yet, and

the mass firings have yet to begin.

But at the same time, this is

before

they left and were gone.

This is the kind of stuff that I was dealing with.

He wanted to give me a heads up

about one of the matches that I was going to be working on at that upcoming set of tapings.

And before anybody thinks, when I read this, they say, oh my God, I always thought Dutch Mantel knew what he was doing.

This is not what Dutch Mantel

wanted.

In particular, this is what

Dutch Mantel, in with a group of people such as our friend Mr.

Russo and the

Stooge, what was his name, Matt Conway, that they put on.

And

Jeff was overseeing this.

And then also there was

who knows what kind of forces were going on in the office there, right?

But

this is what the creative team had come up with to convey to me so that I could get with the talent and lay it out.

And he's given me the story and the match.

So have I summarized that right, Brian?

I think so.

In that case, now that I have taken a deep breath, I will try to start this email from Dutch Mantel.

Jimmy,

your mission, should you choose to accept it, is the following.

Here's the story.

The second show on Tuesday has a cage gauntlet match with 20 or so guys.

It is an elimination match

with two guys starting and a new one enters every two minutes.

This will be on during the second hour and it'll more or less take up the whole hour.

It is scheduled for four segments and we'll probably do this in real time.

And when we come back from breaks, we'll replay what happened during the break.

The story is,

is that everybody is competing to be the captains of the two teams that face each other in the lethal lockdown match on the pay-per-view.

When it gets down to two guys, we will know our captains.

The winner's team will then get the advantage on the pay-per-view, which means that the winning team gets the one-up advantage when a new member enters.

War Games rules, right?

The winner of the match is the one who exits the cage first.

Also, wait, wait, so every

two minutes someone enters.

Yes.

And the winner is the first person to leave.

Well, only when he gets down to two guys.

Okay.

I wasn't watching TNA at this point, so these stipulations are new to me.

Well,

and honestly, if anybody wants to look this up anywhere, you can find it and watch it.

I don't remember a goddamn thing about what I had to do with this match.

I'm reading this right now and I was like, oh, yeah, I remember the fucking email.

But anyway, but listen to me now.

Here, hear me what I'm hearing what I'm telling you.

Everybody's competing to be the captains of the two teams that will face each other in the lethal lockdown match on the pay-per-view, but there's 20 or so guys in the match.

So

some fucking schlub could technically win this and be the captain of the.

And then

again,

once you get down to the last two, we know the captains, but then they will fight to see which one gets out next.

And he'll be the winner of the, and to get the advantage in the thing, you see, right?

Also,

the first two guys that start will be Abyss and AJ.

We want them to more or less have a match between themselves for the entire match.

The reason for that is when AJ and Abyss get eliminated, we will announce that just announced for next week is a Legends title match.

AJ will have defeated Booker at the pay-per-view to become champion with AJ taking on Abyss.

The second story of the match is that Kurt and Jeff hate each other.

Now, this could be a little fucking art imitating life here

at the time.

Jeff is not originally in the match, but he puts himself into into it during the first segment in ring by saying he's getting in to keep Kurt from winning.

Later on, early in the first hour, Kurt attacks Jeff as he is talking to the young guys by telling them that Kurt is bound and determined to take over the company.

And if he does, everybody in that room will be let go.

Kurt will then enter the room with a weapon.

and attack Jeff, and we have a big pull apart.

And Kurt goes ballistic and vows that everybody in that room is dead tonight in the gauntlet match.

Here's the guy.

This is going to, all this reasoning is going to take place, the build in the first hour.

Here's the guys of the match in no particular order.

AJ, Abyss, Chris Sabin,

Consequences Creed,

Alex Shelley,

Kayoshi,

Homicide, Steiner, Booker,

No Limit One and Two.

Who are No Limit One and Two?

I don't know.

I thought that was Matt Stein.

I don't.

Kurt, Jeff, Shane.

Shane, Shane, Shane.

Can't remember what Shane that was right now.

Matt Morgan, Sheikh Bashir, that's Davari.

Samoa Joe, Hernandez, Eric Young, and possibly Nash.

But he says, I'm going to suggest that Nash not be in the match, but accompany Kurt to the ring to help on the finish.

Okay,

that's the setup.

Here's my entry list.

I think it's pretty good down through 10 where it kind of breaks down.

Abyss and AJ start.

Number three is Shelly.

Number four is Lethal.

Number five is Sabin.

Number six is Matt Morgan.

The idea is that Abyss and AJ keep the match going between themselves

to build the Legends title match, but Morgan

will enter the ring and attack Abyss while AJ lays out.

And then AJ and Abyss would both come back on Morgan and eliminate him.

And then Morgan will do something to Abyss the next week to keep him from winning the title from AJ.

And then Homicide.

And then Steiner.

And then Creed, and then Jeff.

Now, see if you can guess maybe who might be behind this.

A little bit of creative here, Brian.

See if anybody's fingerprints are smeared on this.

Jeff comes down the ramp, but Kurt from out behind the announced desk ambushes Jeff with a weapon, chair, pipe, or bat, and lays him out.

Jeff gets juice and never gets to enter the ring.

Referees and security out with trainers attending to Jeff.

Jeff lays there while the match goes on with that.

11.

No limit one.

12.

Kurt down to the ring with Nash.

Jeff is still laid out.

Kurt attacks Jeff again

before he enters the cage, and he's a wild man.

Kurt goes nuts in this part.

Ankle locks, a couple guys.

They tap out like Creed lethal homicide.

Now the heels have the advantage, and Abyss and AJ are still at it.

Booker T in.

Booker attacks AJ.

Abyss in to help.

AJ takes the fall on Booker.

Before Booker leaves, he does something to AJ, which allows Kurt or Abyss to grab the fall on AJ.

Then Kurt takes one on Abyss.

Trainers then help a bloody Jeff to the back.

Now, not only did he not win, he's hurt and he's out of the match.

No limit to

angle lock, tap out.

50.

Shane the glamour boy.

Shane, the guy, Shane Sewell from Puerto Rico.

Glamour boy, Shane, that he was working there.

Bashir.

Eric Young, Kurt takes him out.

Heels beating up the babyfaces.

Hernandez in.

Big comeback.

And then as the Heels take the win on Hernandez, I guess by the numbers game.

We see a bloody Jeff as security is trying to hold him back as he does the spirit of 76 down the ramp.

Jeff gets in.

Everybody needs to think he's going to win it.

He takes a fall on Steiner, and then he turns attention to Kurt.

But Nash fucks Jeff somehow, and Kurt thinks he's won the gauntlet.

But then we hear Samoa Joe music.

Joe down to the ring.

Joe and Kurt go for two to three minutes.

The finish is both of them going through the ring door to the floor in a tie

and he says i know it's scrambled but if you'll use your computer laser like brain we can figure this bad boy out did anyone ever say to russo i mean forget about bad booking and bad ideas and disagreements but in terms of you're asking us to put together matches that are really really difficult to put together because

it's overly intricate in the worst possible ways.

Did anyone ever like tell him that this is a difficult task?

Well, this wasn't even as,

in all honesty, except maybe for some of the talent and the busyness of the multiple,

this would, there's the skeleton of a decent pay-per-view ultimate blow-off match in here somewhere, but it's an hour of weekly television to build the pay-per-view.

So where you're not going to see 20 bleeding men bashing each other with bats in a cage for an hour.

He would give the people every, so much of everything that there was no reason to pay for any of it.

And

not only is this, because not only do you have to lay this out, I was going to say this wasn't as bad as that 30-man brawl all over the impact zone and out into the Universal Studios that

we had four different camera setups for at four different locations.

That was a challenging one that day.

But the idea that then you have to go to all these people and not just to lay everything out, there's got to be a finish laid out for somebody of everything.

But also, then you're dealing with the goddamn personalities.

And then he'll just write down and so-and-so takes a fall on Scott Steiner.

Well, how long is it going to take to figure out how that's going to happen?

Right?

Yeah.

And then, you know,

I suggested Nash not be in this match, you think?

And then, and then after you do that and you get everybody's, you know, and I mean, no limit two is going to do whatever the fuck you tell him.

I'm not saying it's 15 of those, but then

you have to go to the production crew and say, okay, we're going to be here for a while because I'm going to explain to you who you're shooting, when you're shooting, what the fuck's going on.

Don't worry about the ring while the star is being carried out on a fucking stretcher to come back later on.

And that was one of, and that was one day out of three days in a row that we were shooting shit.

That was one match of that night that I was.

Yeah.

What do you think Dutch was thinking?

Because obviously he's the one emailing you.

He's the one.

I know what Dutch was thinking.

If we didn't talk about it, well, he said

we need to figure out the order of elimination and how we're going to break.

Feel free to suggest, tweak, change, or otherwise screw this up as much as I have and putting it together here.

It can't get worse,

it can only improve.

Health, we need it

because it just

and you know,

but they say you want to be a wrestling producer, kid

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And then, anyway,

I got some OVW stuff.

Oh, cool.

And, well, I haven't read this stuff in 25 years, so bear with me if I, because I did get wordy back in those days when I actually cared about imparting knowledge to people.

So I will pick through this, but there was a memo I sent to the talent when we got on WBKI here, the WB station, when they came into,

I've told that story before of how they came into market.

And before,

Danny's originally the OVW show was on a low power

station here in Louisville that didn't have any viewership or any reach.

I think that's the one that a couple of women were running out of a fucking mobile home, right?

And when we finally landed that, we instantly got on full cable coverage, the top tier of channels, as they say, the top 10, channel seven.

And boom, we had an audience.

And I'm trying to explain to everybody who was there then because this was early developmental talent.

This was, I think,

May, no, yeah, May of 2000.

So, this was the very earliest developmental talent, and a bunch of guys that Danny had trained, but I mean, Densmore, Conway, people that

would soon

be heard of, but they'd never really been on TV before where anybody actually saw it.

So, I gave them,

you know, a memo saying, you will,

this will make you,

this will make a noticeable difference in your life.

You will be recognizable in the Louisville area.

Our first week did a one rating,

and a second week was a 1.1.

And this was,

it said, we're just this week or next week going to be included in the TV listings because the press deadlines.

So we hadn't even got going yet, but because of the

viability of the station, you know, we already had an audience.

And I know somebody said one time, do you remember when somebody said, oh, Cornet's a liar, he's bullshit.

OVW did a one rating.

That'd be like a million and a half people or whatever, like this blithering dip shit.

Didn't know the difference between a national one and a local one.

That's right.

But

we were doing well on a region on a local basis there, as they say.

But anyway,

I said

our main purpose at OVW is to be as good as we can be, teaching you as much as you can learn and get everyone prepared for a job in the big leagues.

There are a number of things I'm seeing you can correct to help yourselves yourselves accomplish this.

If you're not serious enough about this to do these things, we need to know now so you can move aside for the folks that really want it.

Look professional, keep your tights clean, go to a dry cleaner, get the sleeves of your jackets or pants hemmed to the proper length for $10.

Keep your shirt tails tucked in or pin the goddamn things inside your pants.

Always be in gimmick when performing on any show in front of people.

At one One of the flea market shows, guy forgot his bag and was out there in sweatpants.

Conditioning is important, including referees, drop the pot bellies, get in the gym, or get on a diet and improve your cardio.

The WWF wants athletes who can work.

If you can work your ass off and still look like a fat hobo, you might as well fold your tent.

We are attracting a large amount of talent who want to come here for training.

In addition to the contract employees, there will be competition for spots.

The talent that is in shape, focused, dedicated, and can go will be featured, and the others will not.

Stay in the hunt.

At St.

Therese last week, the babyface locker room was almost a ghost town during the two main events.

Watch the matches.

You learn by watching almost as much as by doing.

All WWF contract talent is required from this point forward.

to watch as many matches as possible.

And non-contract talent is encouraged to, because sometimes they had to, we had to put some guys on early if they were working the night shift bartending or whatever, right?

If they didn't have a contract.

So sometimes we had to let guys out early.

But anyway, it is mandatory now that all of you can see the TV show because

some people couldn't actually get the fucking TV show and still lived here in town on the old station.

Now that all of you can see the TV show, watch it each week or tape it.

It looks considerably different after post-production.

You'll learn from the commentary.

All of you have the potential for a career in this business.

Some of you a lot of potential, but all the potential in the world is not good enough without focus, effort, desire, and opportunity.

We are not home movies anymore.

We're establishing a real territory.

and setting up contacts with other promoters.

We are increasing our involvement with the WWF in several areas.

don't be left out

so a good little rah-rah speech right because this wasn't a year into the

the program yet yeah what was the date on that

well it was um we debuted on

uh wb in may of 2000 so the somewhere around there with the first week or two so are there any specific talents you'd be addressing indirectly like with any of those specific complaints about actually actually more more of the local guys that all of a sudden weren't realizing they were about to get left back.

If they,

a lot of guys that Danny trained thought they were probably just going to do this here for fun, and a few of them got chances to do it for real because they were good.

But remember, I've said,

Mr.

Black,

you're 22 years old.

You weigh 420 pounds.

If you weigh 350, I can get you a contract with the fucking WWF.

And he wouldn't lose weight.

Shit like that.

So I'm trying to prepare the guys that they're going to be held to a higher standard.

In your head, as you're writing that, are you thinking about Bill Watts and the memos you got in Mid-South?

Well, yes, but I mean, just any

memo from

the.

Were there a lot of memos other than Bill Watts?

Well, no, I guess Dusty didn't give out memo.

Frisk,

Watts.

Watts didn't give out nearly as many memos as I did, though.

I was a memo guy because these people didn't know any of this stuff or didn't know anything of what we were about to teach them.

So

with Watts, he'd just send out a memo whenever guys had pissed him off.

If I did that,

I'd send out more memos than I goddamn sent out, I guess, but you know what I mean.

Like one time, and I have it on video, Dennis Carluzzo gave a really fired-up locker room speech because the previous show, and I won't say who it was because I don't think they've accepted it was them, even though it was them.

One of the wrestlers was given, as you would say, the Iggy by the referee time to wrap up.

And the exact words were, fuck Carl Uzzo, I'm getting heat.

And Dennis gave this whole speech about, look, you know, we have to have a schedule.

We're not just wrestling as long as you want.

And he gives this whole fired up speech.

Yeah.

The wrestler he was talking about wasn't there.

Oh, shit.

So, the next time we had to show him the videotape of the speech, it was so awkward.

It's like, here's the speech you would have heard.

You know, he has to sit there and watch a video of it.

Here's the speech you caused that you would have heard if you was he supposed to be there?

He was, I believe.

And he didn't.

Well, he didn't show up.

So, there you go.

Anyhow,

this is something,

and actually, I didn't even remember I sent this at all,

but this was after,

well, it's attached to,

let me see, what, if there's a goddamn date on this, the fucking paperclip is fossilized.

It's the wrestling observer

obituary for Crash Holly.

And it doesn't have, I can't find a date.

Do you know what year that was offhand?

Ah, geez, 2002, 2003, somewhere in there, I think.

Brian Solomon would know.

Well, he ain't here.

But it's the OVW letterhead for my letter has our new building address.

So I assume it was after 2002.

But anyway,

I copied and I haven't read the

obituary in quite some time.

So I don't know what points were made, but apparently I thought it was something

that should have been conveyed.

But the

cover letter

is to all the talent from me.

And it says, we speak often of success stories in our business, but perhaps we don't speak often enough about the other side of the coin.

The death of Crash Holly a few weeks ago seems to be the opportunity to do that.

Crash was one of the first talents put on developmental contract five years ago.

And

the reason for that was, and I did, Brian, do you remember?

We haven't even talked about this since in the 10 years you and I have been doing this show,

but the san francisco shows that vic grimes and crash holly's original name that he was a leprechaun aaron o'grady aaron o'grady

but the tapes that

actually is stacy's friends uh ron and ron head and jr benson yeah that's where i first saw them that's where i first saw aaron o'grady yeah they sent us from California and it was, you know, obviously there was a lot of guys.

Hey, kids, let's put on a show.

And then there's these two guys.

And for various reasons to me, for varying reasons, I should say, different reasons, both of them stood out.

Grimes was the big fucking,

he was another Mick Foley in that he had just a repulsive looking fat fucking body and a bald fucking head and blah, blah, blah.

But he could move and do all this shit and take the bumps and everything.

But okay, as Denny Crumb said, I don't want guys to to know how to play basketball just give me guys can jump i'll teach them how to play basketball

and aaron o'gradi was complete opposite he's too small

but he's got he's a great athlete he's you know built well and

is an incredible worker with he can do

so

we got that I got them the tryout match they had in,

I guess it was at a Ross San Francisco, whatever, and they got two of the early early developmental deals when at that point, the only place to go was down to Memphis first with Lawler and then, you know, later on with Randy Hales.

But

as I've said, Grimes turned out to be he just couldn't get his head out of fucking garbage wrestling and couldn't get the picture mentally and pissed him off.

And they fucking ran him off.

Well, they didn't run him off.

They don't have to run you off into WWF.

They fired him.

New Jack ran him off the scaffold.

Well, New Jack ran him off of life, I guess.

But

But with Crash,

he had a better mindset for it and he made it.

But

anyway, so I'll continue the memo here.

Crash was one of the first talents put on developmental contract five years ago.

His story is remarkably similar to many of yours.

He had a good WWE run,

but ended up being miserable there, being let go and dying at the age of 32.

Why was he unhappy or why was he so unhappy with his job that he developed an alcohol problem?

Or was it his problem that made him unhappy at his job?

Did the WWE quit using him well then not at all because of this problem?

Or did the problem stem from them not using him?

We may never really know, but hopefully we can learn a lesson from it.

I liked Crash and I'm no way trying to blame him for anything.

But all of you can heed some advice from this situation.

Open your eyes to the realities of the profession you're entering.

It's positives and its negatives.

Be sure you enjoy what you enjoy about wrestling enough to offset the bullshit.

Be prepared that in this business, it's talent and luck, and sometimes the chances you get or the way that you're used aren't fair.

Be prepared at all times to take advantage of an opportunity you're given and hit a home run.

Don't feel once you get to the WWE roster that you you have the pull to show up late or impaired or complain about your push.

If you start making money, take half-ass care of it because it may or may not always be that way.

Pay attention to all aspects of the business because you may need to branch out at some point to stay employed or successful.

And feel free to enjoy being young.

and a worldwide superstar and being on TV and pay-per-view without feeling like you have to turn it into Keith Richards and/or Courtney Love and screw all of it up.

With the style of work these days, you'll probably be prescribed enough pills already without building up a tolerance so you're screwed when you really need them.

There are a lot of people who lead great lives from this business, but there are some who don't.

I'm not telling you to be saints, but I am telling you to be smart.

Wow.

And you know what?

That kind of got to me.

Yeah, I could tell.

I could tell.

Because I don't remember doing that, but I did.

You know, the Crash Holly thing is interesting.

There's an episode of Shut Up and Wrestle of Brian Solomon that I was a guest on, and he told the story.

I brought him up earlier, half joking, but it's true.

He was writing for WWE magazine, and I want to say it was like something innocent, like

an article on short wrestlers, or he made reference to him being a shorter wrestler, which was his gimmick, you know?

Yes.

He got really offended by it and like started harassing Brian Solomon.

Oh, good lord.

And it turned out apparently he was bothering other people there.

At some point, he just became miserable up there and was determined to take it out of other people.

And then the way Brian Solomon tells it, again, SUAWPod.com, someone got word to Shane McMahon, who was running running the magazine.

And then one day, Shane just comes over to Solomon in the office, like, hey, that thing, it won't be a problem anymore.

He walks away.

But, and that's, you know, again, we don't know what caused the problems, what were the problems.

Obviously, we've learned a lot since then about concussions and about a number of things.

You know, you talk about those early shows in San Francisco.

I remember one, I think he may have been on it.

I want to say J.R.

and Ron did it either like Valentine's Day or Father's Day.

It was like a weird holiday to do a show.

They brought like Candido and Sabu out.

Oh, the Father's Day Bash.

Father's Day Bash in 94.

That's right.

Yes.

Because

Candido and Tammy asked off that weekend for me.

And Stacey was on the show.

As a matter of fact, I've got the poster.

Well, that was the first time I ever saw Matt Heison.

There was some really small, skinny guy who jumped like onto his head on the floor.

It looked awful.

And then like a year later, he was Spike Dudley.

Spiked udley.

But

point me, even if it wasn't about crash,

because the topic came up a couple of weeks ago

of how what kind of advice did I give guys or, you know, guys in Ring of Honor OVW or tryout seminars or whatever.

And then it came up again.

We were talking about Moxley saying, don't have a backup plan.

Give this your all.

Sleep in your car until you fucking sell your blood.

Foot on the gas into the water on the gas, baby.

Yeah.

Well, that's what I was telling the guys in OVW

in writing.

Here, here is this.

This is, can you,

can you say that whether the subject was drugs or ego or mad about your payoff or anything, that there was anything in there that a goddamn young aspiring wrestler should not have heard?

No, I think it's something that they all needed to hear.

It's something that not a lot of guys necessarily would hear, especially in writing.

Every now and then, you know, you'd hear about it like Vince McMahon pulled everyone together to give a speech.

But it's an important message.

Do you think guys listen to it?

You're doing your job and you're doing everything you can

as the trainer and also as a responsible person.

But do you think you have a receptive audience when the guys are that young and doing these things?

If I had the list of, you know, probably 40 guys that this one and girls

that this went out to, I could tell you because the ones that listened either still have their money or have a job if they want one now, or had never had a goddamn drug habit, or hopefully been in fucking problem with the law.

And

then there's probably some who in that room who didn't listen because they aren't around anymore.

There's a few of those too.

But anyway, anyway, on a lighter topic, Brian,

you've heard we used to not only give out memos, but have you heard about the quizzes I used to give out sometimes in OVW?

I think so, yes.

And I had to, this was one I gave to,

oh, god damn it.

Well, hold on.

Who are the names?

Because everybody's got their name on it.

So

let me see if

I can identify anybody.

This was

Slick Robbie d what was that the year 2000

uh rico 2000 2001

well maybe bj payne it would have been that

the early 2000s

i gave everybody

25 guys at the at the time

a uh a a wrestling quiz Well, not even a wrestling quiz, just a quiz for a special project.

I said, this data is for something I'm compiling for OVW.

So fill this out tonight because there was no Google back then, right?

No, nobody's going to fucking look this up on their cell phones.

I said, I don't want you to take it home and look the shit up, do it in the locker room tonight.

It's 10 questions.

Brian, see how you can do because I was grading them one point for each.

10's a perfect score.

And I said

at the bottom, please don't one smart ass, Jason Lee, go around copying everybody's shit.

I want this to be a shoot.

And Rip doesn't count because we know he's going to get a perfect 10.

So, anyway,

would you like to take this, Brian?

Yeah, sure.

Number one,

who invented basketball?

A naismith.

You are correct.

Out of 25 tests, 14

got it right.

Who is Lou These and why is he famous?

Lou Thes,

sometimes called La Jos Tiza, sometimes called Aloysius Louis Thez.

Lots of different names.

He was just a kid fooling around in St.

Louis in the 30s with

a dream.

I was going to accept.

I was going to accept a world champion, greatest of all time, any just vague thing like that.

Do you remember seeing that?

His real name is La Jos Tiza, and then it's like, his real name is Aloysius Luis These like one of these is wrong.

So I don't know.

Well, but it was a, it was a translation out of the original mugwamp.

I don't know.

Let's continue here.

Yes, please.

Nine of them.

Wow.

Nine of them had an answer I would consider

acceptable

to fill in both of those main topics.

But of course, Rip filled in youngest and oldest NWA champion of all time, six-time NWA champion last match at age 70, blah, blah, blah.

That's pressed name.

It went into detail, right?

But I, but nine.

Okay, what team, Brian, did Babe Ruth play for?

He played for several teams, most famously, the New York Yankees.

Well, and I accepted that answer.

And of course, Rip again,

original Boston

traded to Yankees, finished career with Boston.

24 out of the 25 got that.

Wow.

Isn't that interesting?

Number four.

That goes to the argument that he's the most famous athlete of all time and the most easily identifiable athlete of all time to a lot of people.

It may not be that way now.

I mean, this is 25 years ago or whatever.

But that's pretty interesting.

Following up, number four, who is Toots Mont and what did he do?

He was a wrestler, a stretcher, a hooker, whatever you want to say.

And eventually, he was the partner of Vince McMahon Sr.

in the Capitol Wrestling office.

And I think that went

in the early 70s.

He had his problems with various people.

Guess how many correct answers I got?

Oh, if you got nine for Luthes, you got

four, I'll say

one.

Rip Rogers.

Wait, why is Rip taking the test?

He's not talent.

He was on the no, he was

in the locker room.

He might have been on the card.

This was early.

So this, you know, he might have still been working at the time, but everybody in the particular locker room at night

got to take the test.

Did he write Goldust Trio?

Well, yeah, I mean, his writing is horrible, but you know, it's all there.

Number five, what college football team did O.J.

Simpson play for?

Syracuse.

Well, I don't think that's correct.

I think it was USC.

Oh, USC.

Fuck.

I'm actually, yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking of.

But the point is,

hold on, let me.

Wait a minute.

Let me ask Rip.

Yep, USC.

But 13 of them knew that.

Number six, who trained Ric Flair and in what territory did he begin his career?

Vern Gagana, AWA.

You are correct, and four people knew that.

Number seven.

That's crazy.

Name the man who won the first Ali Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden in 1971.

Frazier.

You are correct, sir.

Nine people knew that.

It was only the fight of the century.

Name the man who defeated Bruno San Martino for the WWWF title in Madison Square Garden in 1971.

Ivan Koloff.

Three.

Three.

Now, when you're giving this test, this is still mostly local OVW guys, not WWE guys.

Hold on.

I'll give you the list of names here in a second as I go through it.

I just didn't want to get clustered up in the details, but two more questions.

Number nine, what do Joe Lewis, Rocky Marciano, and Muhammad Ali have in common?

World heavyweight champions who participated in wrestling.

I didn't even want it that narrow.

I would have taken world heavyweight boxing champions.

But all three were actively involved.

I mean, Dempsey was really involved for a while.

If you really go look at that.

I didn't say Dempsey.

Who'd you say?

You said Joe Lewis.

Joe Lewis, Rocky Marciano, and Muhammad Ali, but they still

refereed fucking Buttnick and Billy Wicks in Memphis.

59.

Joe Lewis wrestled and refereed.

Ali had a little tiff with Anoki we heard about.

But 13 people knew that they were world heavyweight boxing champions.

Last question.

What do Whipper, Billy Watson, Pat O'Connor, and Gene Kiniski have in common?

Oh, you know, I was going to say Canadian World Heavyweight Champions, but Pat O'Connor is not from Canada.

No,

Billy Watson, Pat O'Connor, Gene Kiniski.

International NWA champions.

Yeah, well, actually, NWA champions, because remember, Watson from outside the States.

They were all born outside the states is what it meant.

I didn't even, I was just going for, here's the thing.

The NWA champions at the same time as the previous boxers that they knew were boxing champions, these were the wrestling champions, right?

Yeah.

Two people

knew that.

This is a locker room of wrestlers.

And again, Rip got 100% and I told him not to fucking tell

but i was able to then call them all together the next week and say you blithering dipshits you realize that you have just told me

that you know more

about basketball and football and boxing and baseball than you do the business that you are trying to make money and have a professional career in.

Does that make you ashamed and feel like idiots?

And does that make you want to learn more

about

who has done this and why and why you should emulate or not emulate the shit that they did?

And then they were like, yeah.

Did anyone pull a Sputnik Monroe and say, I'm not ashamed to be an idiot?

No, unfortunately.

Nobody had that much personality.

But that's when I started giving them all the shit to read, the reading material.

Hold on, I'll tell you.

The names here, let me sit up straight.

My back hurts.

I'm carrying all these guys for all these years.

Rip Rogers, obviously.

Nick Densmore got a four and a half

because

he was trying to be so brief that he didn't goddamn

give me the other half of the question or elsewhere

he got the wrong

who trained ric flair in what territory did he begin his career bruiser in minneapolis

i only gave him my half that's a half point yeah minnea uh flash

flash i got uh no matter wait a minute hold on so how did i grade this formerly flash flanagan for those listening flash flanagan no i'm sorry

I tell a lie.

I circled the one.

So it's minus four and a half.

So he got a five and a half.

It's minus four and a half.

I'm sorry, this is the key going forward.

Flash, minus three and a half.

That means he scored a six and a half.

Jason Lee

got a six and a half.

Shelton Benjamin, I'm

Shelton.

I love you if you hear this.

God damn it.

It wasn't his sport, but Shelton Benjamin didn't know who invented basketball.

He knew that Luthes was an old school wrestler.

I wrote too loose and deducted a half a point.

He knew what team Babe Ruth played for.

He did not know Tootsmont.

He didn't know O.J.'s college football team.

Well, I guess O.J.

played college ball in the 60s, right?

This was 2000.

Shelton wasn't alive.

He didn't know who trained Flair.

He thought Ali won the first Ali Frazier fight in the garden.

He didn't know who beat Bruno.

Joe Lewis, Marciano, and Muhammad Ali, he knew they were all boxers.

I took off a half point for just being so loose that you could at least have thrown in the heavyweight champions.

And he didn't know who Watson, O'Connor, or Kiniski were.

But now,

As a grown adult man who went through the program,

he knows all these important things.

You know, Lou These is one thing.

Did you expect anyone to know Tutzmont, or was that just to set an example?

You know, at that point, I had already passed out copies of the manuscript to, if not the fall guys, to Thez's book.

But, you know, at the same time,

people were coming and going, so you have to reinforce things.

And sometimes people didn't read shit.

But anyway, other names on here.

Chris Alexander,

who,

oh,

he thought that OJ played for the Jets in college.

He never played for the Jets in the pros.

They thought that Ali thought Ali won the fight.

He thought the Iron Sheikh defeated Bruno.

Thought Lewis, Marciano, and Muhammad Ali were all boxers from Louisville.

Famous Louisville resident Joe Lewis.

Jebediah Blackhawk.

And

he was the guy who,

as I've mentioned before, was not arrested for drinking and driving, but he drank and then he drove.

What do Whipper, Billy Watson, Pat O'Connor, and Gene Kiniski have in common?

They all have first and last names.

Yeah, he got a.

How many did you deduct for that?

He got a three out of there.

Trailer Park Trash got a two and a half.

Our old referee, Robert Briscoe, got a

good Lord, got a three.

Slick Robbie D, he got a three.

One of our referees, I can't remember what his name was.

We called him Fudd.

He got a three and a half.

What now?

Other than Rip, who is kind of more of a contemporary of yours, even though he may have actively been wrestling on this card,

would you have done anything or said anything or pulled anyone aside if one of these guys did get 20 or 20 or 10 to 10, whatever it is?

10 to 10, I guess.

Oh, yeah, no, I would have recognized him publicly, but it wasn't fair.

But Rip is a goddamn savant.

It's not just wrestling.

He can tell you the lineup of the goddamn Toledo Mud Hens from 1942 and how many bats they used.

You know, he's some type of,

I think he's on some type of savantish spectrum for sports.

It's ridiculous.

I don't remember which.

Was this the kid we had, Randy Royal?

Possibly.

He got a four.

Derek King, he got a three and a half.

Where's Brock?

Scotty Sabre, he got a four.

Where's Brock?

I don't, I don't, I'm still going through, but I don't know if he was here yet.

B.J.

Payne, he got a four.

Russ McCullough

actually got a four and a half.

Mr.

Black got a four and a half.

Rico Constantino,

he got a four and a half, unfortunately.

But he knew the wrestling stuff.

He just didn't know.

He thought Ali won the fight.

He didn't know who beat Bruno.

But anyway, and he didn't know who invented basketball.

The Damager.

He got a fucking six.

Conway

got a

six.

Bull Buchanan got a six.

This is exciting stuff.

Oh, Sylvester Turkai.

Well, they're all pretty much, yeah.

There you go.

That was all the names.

It was early on in the program.

Yeah.

That's what it was.

But yes,

they didn't understand until you put it in that perspective what they didn't know about the goddamn business that they were trying to make a living in.

Instead of, they knew more about shit that they were never going to participate in in a million fucking years.

So smarten up, study, learn, read, study, learn.

See, I'm not as obnoxious about it as some people, though.

It's sad that you have to say that.

I'm sorry that you don't want to learn.

I learn.

I'm I'm doing AI Meltzer and just taking everything.

You can learn too.

You can learn too.

He didn't learn how to auto-save, but he learned everything else.

LBTD NBC.

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All right.

Okay.

Hold on.

I've got a, there's a whole file here.

I've gone too long on this.

This will, what I'm going to do will be quicker, but I have like three different files of talent reports.

And here, I've written a page typed.

on just Cena and three quarters of a page on Orton.

I'm I'm not going to, I don't even haven't even read this in 25 years, so I'm not going to see how much came through.

Are they all typed?

A lot of this stuff is typed because I was faxing it to the office, see, back in the fax days.

That's why I have the originals.

But for now, we've been going on a while, but I'll leave you with something else.

If you want to, later on, we can come back to it.

But

I gave the

fans a questionnaire

when they would come into

the Davis Arena on Wednesday nights for the TV tapings.

I think we, well, we just did it one week.

I was going to say we did it two weeks in a row, but we did it one week.

And we handed out this piece of paper and we said, if you folks would be kind enough to help us by giving us this information, fill this out for us, then everybody gets a free picture when they turn it in.

I can't remember who the picture was up, right?

And

more more often than not, they turned it in.

We got, I think, a few hundred at least.

So

what we did was then we typed up the results, or I typed up the results and

sent them to Tom Pritchard, who was working in the office in Stamford at the time to pass because he was in charge of

I can't remember what his title was at the time, but

they were sending him to the various places.

They'd send him to Louisville.

They'd send him to

Cincinnati when I guess when they had a developmental there or to Memphis, or they'd send him to camps or look or whatever, but he was based for a while out of Stanford.

So this was actually April 28th, 2004.

This is dated.

So we passed out these questionnaires, everybody that came to TV.

And ah, we got 175 completed forms back

out of the people that came to see our television show tapings live on Wednesday night.

Would you like to hear the results, Brian?

Yeah, that's a pretty good amount.

I would like to hear it.

Who is your favorite current OVW wrestler?

And we say you're allowed to pick more than one because people aren't, you know, they might want to do two or three or whatever.

Guess who, and this is 2004, guess who number one was by a two-to-one margin?

I don't know.

Matt Morgan.

Really?

Wow.

Matt Morgan got 70 first place votes, as they say.

And

the next, and honestly, this, I think there was some lobbying going on because at the time, Tank Toland was a big baby face for us, and Johnny Jeter was a big baby face.

And they got 35 and 31, respectively.

And if you remember seven, Kevin Furdig.

I've I've heard a lot of stories about him over the years, yes.

He got 33.

And

I got to think, and

I don't even, I think they were babyfaces then, but still,

I got to think there may have been some effort on his part to gain favor somehow.

But they were filling him out in the crowd, right?

Anyway, number five, Matt Capitelli, 28.

Number six, Nick Dinsmore had just switched back babyface the week before.

Number seven,

our cult favorite that never was seen outside the grounds of the Davis Arena, the real deal Rod Steele.

Number eight was Sin.

Number nine, Nova, and number ten, Mac Johnson.

I won't bother you with all the way down to number 33, but let me just give you

some of the names that were in the bottom 25 that would go on.

Alexis Larie was Mickey James.

Yeah.

Jillian Hall, Johnny Nitro,

John Morrison.

Well, that was before, was that before MM?

This was before.

Well, but this, see, the thing is, they were heels.

So I said, who's your favorite?

This is for the baby faces, but also just, you know,

you'll see.

Hold on here.

But wait a minute, where was I going?

who's your favorite his favorite we're back on carlito cologne got four votes

and

guess who got one vote

shaniqua linda miles oh my god oh my god but uh uh aaron de idle stevens was on there but see these were some of the names but they were baby faces but hold on a second here now

Because now, who is your least favorite current OVW wrestler?

You can pick more than one, but these are the heels.

Number one was Nova

and number two was Idol, Aaron D.

Idol Stevens.

And they were partners at the time.

So

even though, you know, some people, because they were local guys, all these guys lived here and people knew them.

Some of them are going to get votes, even if they're a heel is my favorite or whatever.

But for the majority, it was along party lines.

Where's Danny Inferno?

Believe it or not, number eight with 13 votes.

Actually, 21 people said none.

All are good.

They were afraid it'd be held against them.

But Chris Masters, Brent Albright, Danny Inferno.

And remember, in Inspector Impact, Luther Reigns.

But again, you know, the Heels didn't get that many votes because

basically they just said, ah, Nova and Idol and, you know, the top four or five heels.

And then Erasmus, like Shaniqua still got one vote.

She was one person's least favorite, one person's favorite.

But Matt Morgan ran away with Matt Morgan, Johnny Jeter.

Capitelli and Densmore and Tank, they ran away with the thing and seven.

As I said, I never saw that response otherwise.

But

what is your favorite promotion?

You're not allowed to pick more than one.

94 said OVW, 47 said WWE,

26 said both OVW and WWE, and seven had no answer.

They were afraid it'd be held against them also.

No one said TNA, which existed.

Well, and hold on, there's more questions on that down here that might answer that.

What is your favorite TV show, Raw or SmackDown?

99 said Raw.

52 said SmackDown.

16 said both.

Neither said one, and six had no answer.

So at that time, because SmackDown was.

Well, it had been around for, well, what date was?

Yeah, 04.

He'd been around for a couple of years at that point.

Well, no, five years.

They just liked Raw better.

So,

how often do you watch the following TV shows?

OVW Saturdays at 11 p.m.

Weekly, 114,

sometimes 37,

never nine.

How the fuck did you end up here then?

And 14 had no answer, and they were immediately taken and back and frisked.

And

WWE syndication on UPN Big 58 Saturdays at 11 a.m.

How often do you watch?

Weekly, 45, sometimes 35, never 80.

14, no answer.

The same 14 didn't answer these goddamn TV questions.

How often do you watch raw on spike TV?

Weekly, 123,

sometimes 20, never 17, and no answer 14.

And finally, smack down on UPN

Thursdays at 8 p.m.

Weekly was 122, sometimes was 26, never was 12, and no answer 14.

So it was pretty much spread out, except for nobody watched WWE syndication at that point in time.

But listen to this one:

do you watch TNA?

I'm sorry.

Do you watch NWA slash TNA?

That's what they were

being called then on pay-per-view?

Never.

134.

Oh my God, it's almost everybody.

Not often, nine.

Twice a month, seven.

Sometimes five.

Once a month, five, once a week, four,

three times a month, one, and no answer, nine.

That was when they were still doing weekly pay-per-views, I guess.

I didn't realize that.

I get, well,

I think they did.

This is.

Before they had TV on Fox.

Yeah, this is April 2004.

Wow.

So.

What ex-OVW wrestlers do you want to see return to OVW?

And you can pick more than one, just, you know, people who have been here before that you'd like to see come back.

So is it 2004?

So John Cena, 89.

And next, and now remember, this is

2004

where the Damager has become Danny Basham

and has become brothers with Doug Basham.

And they've taken him up there in

WWE land and put them

unfortunately under the goddamn auspices of Linda Miles as Shaniqua.

And that's another story when we get into the talent reports

another time where I said, here you've got the best in-ring heel tag team in the business, not just

in your company or in my company, but in the business.

Right here.

And they brought him up there and made him the stooge of this goofy girl that didn't even want to be in a wrestling business.

And

hopping around while she whipped them

because she was the dominatrix and talk about, you know, they talk about that Bruce Willis and Sybil Shepard sexual tension on moonlighting.

There's more sexual tension between a tree and a fucking rock

than

it was, God, oh, fucking hell.

But anyway,

now bear in mind some of the names that are on this list, right, of people that they want to see back that were in OVW before, but these are who placed.

John Cena, 89.

Danny Basham, 34,

but

Damaga listed by that name, 20, so the total was 54.

And then followed by Doug Basham at 38.

But also

by machine, his OVW name

got 15.

So that was a total of 53.

Then the next place was Batista.

24 people, 30 less than the Bashams, wanted to see him back.

Well, but Leviathan, listed by that name, because they liked that gimmick, got another 12.

So he got 36.

Randy Orton, 34.

Rico, 32.

Victoria, 27.

Shelton Benjamin, 17.

Rob Conway, 12.

He'd been there so long, they really hadn't worked up too much of a fucking miss for him yet.

And guess who got 12?

We had 12 people.

We want to see his son bitch come back.

Who?

Brock Lesnar.

Wow.

Only 12 people.

Well, this is April 2004.

Is that when he had the thing with Goldberg at WrestleMania when everyone knew they were walking out?

No, that was years after that, wasn't it?

Was it?

That was WrestleMania 20.

Well, I don't know, but they didn't want him to walk back here.

I think that was around this period of time, April 2004.

Well,

they didn't give a shit if Brock Lesnar was walking out of the WWF.

They just didn't want to see him walk back back here.

They would just prefer he just keep on walking.

That's the point is they don't want to see him come back.

Are the bashams individually, you know, and then as a team, are they the most frustrating to you as like someone who promoted them, booked them, knew what you had with them?

Probably overall, yeah.

When I'm sending the office these tapes of this local TV show where they're having fucking matches for 20 minutes, they're tearing the fucking standing room only house down and people are screaming and jumping up and down.

They're drawing money at shows and an amusement park, for fuck's sake.

And

they're performing at a level when they're still in, still,

Doug had more training, but Damaga started in 1999.

This is less than five years in, and he's fucking He's working with goddamn the WWF stars, and they're saying, why aren't they bringing him up?

And Doug had already been there for a while.

They worked with Angle and fucking Benoit and goddamn

everybody that we brought in is like, what the fuck?

This is a night off.

But they bring them up there and they're stooges jumping around in leather pants to a

dominatrix that couldn't fucking swing a whip.

But anyway, other people

placed with Nikita,

Miss Jackie,

Nydia, they liked the young ladies.

And

one one person wanted to see Mark Jendrak come back.

Mark Jindrak.

One person.

Okay, do you approve or disapprove of the way OVW wrestlers are presented on Raw or SmackDown?

Approve 83,

disapprove 38.

Disapprove specifically mentioning Eugene

27 for a total of 65.

So the approvers won out 85 to 83 to 65,

but actually, well, then somewhat disapproved, got 13.

So wait a minute, 38, 50, 65, 78 to 83 they approved,

but no opinion was 10 and no answer was four.

What do you think about that?

The comments,

I'm sorry.

Were you surprised by that one?

By the results?

I thought it would be a little bit more heavily disapproving, but I knew it was going to be at least halfway because everybody was mad specifically right then about Eugene.

But the and the bashams.

Eugene and the bashams, I think, were the worst blowback that we got.

But here's some of the comments.

This is to the office.

So

Densmore comments were mostly unprintable.

But there was a very vehement negative feedback.

Also, Batista should be Leviathan.

They're upset Rico is either gay or a pervert.

Yeah, I was going to ask you about the reaction to Rico getting called up and getting a whole new thing.

Yeah, it ain't like that.

Because Rico,

he was so nice to everybody that

they were personal friends of his by that point.

Also, WWE makes OVW wrestlers jokes.

WWE gives OVW wrestlers mediocre, stupid characters.

WWE should show who they really are.

OVW wrestlers made to act stupid on TV.

WWE needs more wrestling, less talk.

Positive comments.

Cena has exploded, become big star.

Like seeing those we know on TV.

Any publicity is good publicity.

Everyone has to start somewhere.

These are fan comments, right?

What WWE wrestlers do you want to see on OBW events?

But they were, we mentioned, okay, within reason, don't pick Steve Austin, Undertaker, Rock, or Triple H, because Austin, by that point, I think, was retired.

Undertaker wasn't going to do any more since they closed the gardens.

Rock was in the Hollywood, and Triple H was in Stephanie.

You couldn't get in Stephanie.

You couldn't get the Undertaker for six flags

uh i

it wouldn't have been worth it no it because we see we paid him 20 grand for the gardens

or was it 15

i i've got the paperwork i'll find it we gave austin 25 but he actually outdrew the undertaker but financially no you know we would give

the guys that we would bring in, you know, a couple grand, I think it was, but also

they knew that they were helping out.

They were going to be working with the, you know, the guy who deserved it most or fit the match most in developmental and try to help them along.

We were very mercenary for the goddamn gardens.

We just want to sell this son of out because Clear Channel Radio had bought the shows.

But anyway, so, but with the schedule of the way it was then, no, we weren't going to get any of the four.

But otherwise,

who do you pick?

And they picked.

And And by the way, this was 2004.

So I was working

on a bit of this list and we produced some of them.

Rey Mysterio got 32.

I never got Ray.

That's the top vote getter?

He was the top vote getter.

And remember, I only had another year of this, our six flags 2004 season.

Talent was mostly booked.

And then so we were working on the next year's season we did have ray mysterio down here a few times on the

the old uh back when he they'd sent him to cincinnati for hwa in the old arena but nevertheless oh and by the way another thing i found

was the email where we we found out that after dreamer told us i went back and looked it was john lorinitis' fault for not telling randy orton he said i've confirmed with everyone and am talking to Orton today.

This was in March.

We started advertising Orton in fucking June

and then found out he wasn't there because Laura Nitis never did fucking talk to him.

And that was one of the last straws, also, when I was, I had false advertised my six flags people and cussed about that.

Nevertheless, here's the list of people they want to see.

Rey Mysterio, Rob Van Dam,

got 29, Edge, 20.

Chris Jericho, 17.

We had Jericho that summer.

Lita, 17.

Chris Benoit, 16.

We had had him the previous year.

Kane, 14.

Matt Hardy, 14.

Sean Michaels, 12.

Keep dreaming.

Eddie Guerrero, 12.

Hurricane Helms, 10.

And then

like every name in the world, down to one person, want to see Mark Jendrak.

But what WWE wrestlers do you not want to see on OVW events?

This was interesting.

Number one was Kane.

He got 21 didn't want to see him against 14 that did.

I don't know who he pissed off here, but guess who number two was with 17 votes?

Triple H.

Randy Orton.

Oh, wow.

Randy must have been rude to some people.

Well, when he was a young man, one of the talent evaluations, we'll get to that also.

When he was a younger boy,

no Triple H and Big Show tied with 13 each.

Triple H had never been to Louisville, but Big Show had stayed here for a while.

Again, some of this may have been personal.

Rick Flair.

11.

We don't want to see you.

Fuck.

I don't know what he could have done.

He was a liar.

If people didn't want to see Triple H, that may be it,

Christian number five, and then

it goes down to you know, just people's personal.

They're they're listing umpteen names, Funaki.

Somebody said Funaki.

I don't want to see Funaki.

Bischoff and Heyman got one vote each.

All right.

Oh,

What do you like about seeing OVW at the Davis Arena?

I'll pick this up in descending order.

Live experience overall.

Good wrestling matches, clean environment, meeting wrestlers, friendly staff, everything about it.

Seeing myself on TV, seeing big name stars, convenient location.

Jim Cornette.

I got six votes.

Family event and air conditioning conditioning came in right below me at four.

So I'm a little bit more popular in Louisville than air conditioning.

What do you not like about seeing OVW at the Davis Arena in descending order?

Nothing.

Everything is fine.

Got 67 votes.

Arena should be bigger.

Show should be longer, two-hour TV show.

They don't like waiting before the doors open in the weather.

They don't like people saving seats, talk between matches, need new music before the show,

need bigger restrooms.

Four people said drinks are too high priced.

The drinks are too damn high.

Or three people said we need more comfortable chairs.

And three people would like to do away with intermissions and raffles.

What are your thoughts as the promoter about people being upset about other people saving seats?

Well, it can, because it was all, you know,

come as you are, and not come as you are.

Some people didn't even bother to get dressed.

What am I trying to say now?

Not come in when you want.

First come, first serve.

Stop it.

Stop it with the fucking.

It's first come, first serve, general and festival seating, as they used to say, but the regulars would come in.

Donna would be there with her coat in the other seat.

You know,

it's a weekly social thing.

And what would you like to see sold at the concession stand?

This was all over the place, but winning out were pretzels with cheese, pizza and fries,

and beer, but we couldn't get a

beer license.

What did you guys have?

Well, we pretty much had Drake's and fucking pretzels and cheese and pizza and fries.

But we had real good pizza because remember when I landed Wix as a sponsor, they gave us a pizza oven.

And they would deliver us six big giant fucking pizzas that we could sell by the slice.

If you've ever had a Wix slice of pizza, you need goddamn

hernia fucking support just to lift the thing.

They gave you a pizza oven.

It's still a pizza oven?

Is it Davis Arena?

Well, actually, then that's the thing is when

old Wick himself, Michael, the guy that owned the thing, he made his wife business partners with him on paperwork.

And then they got a divorce and he didn't want to die on the wrestling hill.

So we lost the sponsorship, but we kept the pizza.

But I don't know if anybody now works in Wick's corporate.

The current owners of OVW, the West Faversham people, they've had a goddamn pizza oven of yours for the past 20 years over there at 4400 shepherdsville road in louisville better fucking come get that son of a bitch

uh vision market ovw pizza may do better than the actual current

all right it'll get over like arthur treacherous fish and chips did in fucking louisville or h salt fish and chips i should say wrong english fella

All right, but anyway, there's all kinds of things

here in these files if people are interested and they keep, they keep telling us that it's better than the current wrestling stuff.

So, which, by the way, we've taken a rest from this week.

I read the recap, Brian, on the Raw and SmackDown from this previous week down, week down, this previous week down.

And on both shows, it apparently a bunch of the top guys came out and had some stern words for each other.

And that's about it.

So we've got Saturday night's main event and Saturday afternoon's

fucking hysteria to cover here in the next week or so.

So we're trying to give the people a break from the modern wrestling and show you how things used to be.

What about the women's pay-per-view or women's premium live event?

I wish them all the luck in the world with that.

I really do.

All right.

Well, this has been talent.

Reports and fan questionnaires.

And by the way, and I also found a memo when

they were talking about needing to make budget cuts.

And I was wanting to get them to sign Johnny Jeter to a contract.

I'll tell you somebody, if you need budget, if you need to save on the talent budget, you can start looking at cutting right off the bats, Linda Miles.

And I'd forgotten that besides the fact that she was the shits in every way,

she had...

had told us, well, I just, I don't know whether I

really am cracked up for this or not.

And I'm going to have to think about some things.

So I reported back to the office.

I suggest that you give her the chance to think about a bunch of other things and save some money.

And that's, and they brought her up and put her on fucking spec.

Well, like you said, we'll be having more of this on the show on the experience as well.

Jim's files, we have from the files.

We have lots of historical wrestling content, the likes of which no other podcast could produce.

But Jim.

The likes of which has never been seen before, baby.

And you know what?

It will never be over.

As I'm looking at this drawer over here, like I said before, if I was to just start reading, it would take me a fucking while to read all of the things about all of the people.

The people.

Well, you reading these things isn't the issue.

People being able to receive them is something you need

to listen along, to hear all this historical content, to pass your test or your quiz, whatever it may be.

And of course, all you need.

is the power of our friends from Raycon.

Well, you need the power of hearing.

You need the power of your ears is what you need.

And then to

convey this information that we're giving to you, you need to have fine sound quality.

You need to have a comfortable fit.

You can't just be walking down the street carrying a record player anymore.

And if people frown at me when I go out in public with my portable eight-track tape player.

So I think the thing to do now is just make it to where nobody knows that you've even got these little bad boys in your ear, the Raycon everyday wireless earbuds.

They have no wires, hence the name wireless, so they can't be dangling out of your ears and get caught.

You know, when people are walking down the street, that's a good way that somebody could just garrot you, Brian.

If they wanted to mug you, they could just come up from the people with the wires sticking out of their head attached to the thing that goes into,

they could just grab those wires and just in

kind of a bungee knot around your neck, they could garot you like some ancient Hindu mysticism.

Well, you don't want that because to in any way

you don't.

No, we don't.

No, in any way to hospitalize you wearing these, they'd have to come up with a hammer and a chisel and just kind of pop them all the way into your head.

And I don't think people are going to have the balls to do that, folks.

Once again,

I don't know where this example is going or what you're doing.

Well, I'm talking about the safety factor.

Let's talk about safety.

You can safely rely on Raycon to bring you the best audio, your music, your podcast, your audio books, whatever it may be.

You can trust Raycon.

We wear them, we love them here at Last Manor.

Every member of the family has a pair, and I and the colors and the colors.

And I know the colors, I'm seeing them right now.

The colors of these things are just incredible.

And so, when you're walking down the street and you're making a fashion statement, you're matching your summer vibe, baby, because they come in a spectrum of vibrant colors for you to vibe with.

And sometimes, if you listen on the vibing

earbuds with the vibrant colors to a girl with a vibrator well you'll just you'll feel swell and there's the 32 hour battery life and the multi-point connectivity that lets you hook up with two devices at once talk about summertime whoo let it all hang out And 10 minutes of charging yields 90 minutes of battery.

Boy, if you plug this thing in and charge it it up all the way, you could probably electrocute somebody.

If you just send out a signal through your

touch one side, not through your punch.

No.

No, touch one side of your earbud on one ear and point your right finger at somebody.

You can send out a bolt of lightning.

No, once again, they have great audio.

And they look good and they're stylish, lots of colors.

I know a lady that loves the color mint and she's got those.

And of course, you can pick whatever color you want like i said we love raycon we listen to them over here or we use them to listen to other things over here that don't produce their own songs and of course kim and his family love raycon as well yes my whole damn family but also here's the thing is mint is that spear mint green or is that mint as in like a candy mint red or a candy stripers candy mint red which i think green is kind of uh

the way that would go it's kind of greenish

well so for all the frogs out there, folks, also, you'll never know.

And once again, folks, right now, you can save money by listening to all these fine programs.

You'll have voices in your head.

They will talk to you.

They will understand.

If you go to buyraycon.com, that's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N.com slash J-C-E,

you're going to get 15% off the best-selling everyday earbuds right now.

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If you buy 10

pairs at 15% off, that means you get 150% off.

That means they're going to send you half the money that you would normally spend, plus all those earbuds.

If you get 150% off, I'm pretty sure the math works that way.

But 15% off right now at buyraycon.com slash JCE.

All right.

It was a cheery.

If it did not sound well, if that's just the way it is.

It sounds like a guy carrying an accordion falling down the stairs.

Well, this is the big 400th episode of the drive-thru.

We have cheery music.

We have a lot of big things.

A lot of your questions we're going to get to.

That's what the drive-through was built on.

Wanted to ask you something, Jim.

Yes.

I just got a program recently, and it's something I really wanted because I'm a big collector, as you know, of stuff from the...

Anything before the 30s, I'm a big fan of, or in the 30s even.

It's fascinating pioneer material, the log cabin era of wrestling.

And there's still a lot to discover from this period.

So I got this program, and I'll tell you what it is.

It's a fascinating program from Braves Field.

It is Paul Bowser presenting the main event, two out of three falls, Ed Don George versus Henry de Glane.

Well, and

you've run off and left some people, maybe the international audience, Braves Field being in Boston.

Oh, yes.

Massachusetts.

massachusetts it's it's it's for paul bowser in what year 1931 this would have been

uh let me see if i have the exact date here because they actually don't put the date on the program july 14th 1931

and ed don george was at that time in the middle of his big push he'd been an olympic wrestler but he was in the middle of his big push, the world champion, had had

issues with,

you know the the power struggles between the promoters at that period of time and henry deglain

would be the guy who double crossed

or had he double crossed at that point in in 1931 strangler lewis no 31 yet i think 31 is that the year that they actually uh went out and i'll see what i can find out here in a second but

For this program specifically, I'll get to my question shortly.

I see some research here that Steve Yeoie, or Yeo, depending how you pronounce it, did.

July 14th at Boston Braves Field, Henry deGlane defeated Ed Don George two falls to one to defend the AWA world title.

Attendance was 25,000 with a reported gate of 70,000.

Let me stop there.

No, who?

131.

On the program, are there any ticket prices?

Three advertising.

The program itself is 10 cents.

Well, no, but I mean, is there any advertising about what the ticket prices were?

The only thing is on the very back, important notice, watch for announcement.

Big athletic tournament to be held at Fenway Park, biggest athletic night in the history of Boston under the auspices of Harold A.

Estee Post,

veteran of foreign wars, Wednesday evening, August 9th.

Here's why I popped on the 70,000 because

the amount of people

is legitimate with Londos, Paul Bowser, in Boston, Dan O'Mahoney, Ed Don George.

Bowser was drawing ballpark-sized crowds, and they were doing it in other places with Londos also.

But the average ticket price

at that period of time would, because remember uh 96 grand was the

the record gate for the business and that was gotch and hackenschmidt right or no i'm sorry landos and lewis in 34

until fizz and leone beat it in 52 with 102 000 point being

i'm not going to call complete bullshit because

There was a deflation rather than an inflation

in ticket prices and everything during the Depression, of which 1931 it had started, but it wasn't the worst yet.

And if you go back and look in the 1920s for major wrestling matches and wrestling cards around the country, the ticket prices sometimes were almost double what they were in the 30s and 40s.

And it took until the 50s, and in some places, longer than that, for prices to catch back up.

If you go for the inflation calculator, something from the 1920s

may be equal to 25 times in today's money, but in the 1930s, it would be 30 or more times.

So point B, that would have been a hefty gate for that period of time, but it's possible.

You know, you bring up the depression.

I have this amazing photo.

It's from a rooftop somewhere in Manhattan.

It's Dick Schickat with Tutzmont on his shoulders.

Tutzmont was his trainer.

And on one arm is Jack Pfeffer.

And on the other arm, I think, is Rudy Miller, the bookers for the office.

And the date of the picture is the day before the stock market crash.

Oh my God.

And that just asked me.

If it had been the next day, they would have jumped off that roof.

Now, Pfeffer would have seen opportunity, I think.

But this program, I asked you about it.

And according, by the way, to the research here, DeGlain, after he won, was awarded a championship belt by the Boston mayor, James M.

Curley.

So he was a big deal.

31 was his year.

And it was, I believe, the year of the Lewis match.

Well, and that was, now the AWA world title existed in Boston

well into the early 50s.

But the, I believe, the double cross in Montreal had happened with DeGlaine, especially if he was defending there.

And

he won.

How about this?

Contest number seven, Charlie Hansen, 210, Minneapolis versus Secret,

214,

three question marks in 1931.

At least he wasn't a dark secret.

Hey, and I just thought about the Ed Don George and Henry DeGlaine.

DeGlaine was an Olympic wrestler for France, right?

You may be right.

So

that main event was kind of the equivalent of, well, it doesn't have a moderate equivalent.

If Kurt Angle had wrestled somebody of approximately his

amateur wrestling credentials at a big pay-per-view, that was the modern-day equivalent.

So, the question I was going to get to after all this, and we had a great discussion about this.

Oh, I forgot about a question.

I wanted to add this program to my collection, naturally.

It's laminated.

What are your thoughts on laminated anything?

Laminated programs, laminated posters what are your thoughts on lamination for collectors well wait what

so they have actually and it's clear i guess where you can see but is only is it only a two-sided

program it's uh it's a two-sided program you've seen them before it's a two-sided program that folded in half makes four sides so it's just opened all the way up so it's opened all the way out and laminated well if you were gonna

and i yeah you can see both sides but if you were gonna frame the thing that might be one thing.

But

I don't know.

I think

then you've

kind of altered it forever.

Whereas if you bag and board it, then at least it's removable.

Even that's the slabbing of the comic books, the CGC business, where they're sealed in there.

I would have never enjoyed that when I was an active collector because I would want to feel the book and read the book every once in in a while or just look at the smell the book, touch the book, experience the book.

It's in fucking a glass case.

Same thing with that.

You've altered it where you can never take it out and

actually feel the original thing.

I don't like that.

Yeah, see, I'm not a big fan of it, but I also look at it like, I don't know how many opportunities there'll be to get this program.

I don't know how many exist.

I don't know how many will.

Well, no, if you only, if you can only get that, I'm not, but I'm just saying to do that

something that is not

already done to it, there's better ways to preserve it.

Are you going to laminate the goddamn Mona Lisa?

You see that sometimes also with old newspapers.

Some people actually have laminated copies.

And again, if you were going to have it dry-mounted and framed, and it was a one-sided thing, you didn't need to see the other side, you want it on your wall, I can see that.

But just for the sake of doing that, that's not, you know, really,

yeah,

not a fan.

All right.

Well, as we move on, just a short correction here.

There's a few people got in touch.

Apparently, I missed it on a Wikipedia page.

Nathan Jones indeed was in prison.

Aha!

Seven years.

I knew it.

Seven years in a maximum security prison.

Seven years of bad luck, baby.

For those emailing asking if I'm blind, the answer is obviously yes.

Very much yes.

But thank you for writing.

I knew.

I knew he didn't go to prison after wrestling.

He was in prison and then he wrestled, right?

He drank and then he drove.

Well, Jim, let's now get to some of the questions sent in by the Cult of Cornette.

And we have a whole bunch that were sent in.

And it's always hit or miss.

We'll see if any of these are actually stuff that we get something out of, but let's give it a shot.

Jim, this first question sent to corny drivethru at gmail.com is from Chad Smith.

Was the city of Omaha a pure AWA territory in the 60s and 70s?

And was the Omaha Version Championship a big deal or no?

Well, it depends on, I mean, to the champion's mother, it was a bit, no.

First of all, Omaha

was its own

territory at one point.

And I'm trying to remember what helped me with the promoter at that time.

Was it one of the Dusix?

Yeah.

And, but he worked in conjunction with some of the other, you know, surrounding territory so he could get a different talent, but it was

its own

little circuit with its own champion.

And then as Vern Gagne,

first he bought the Minneapolis Boxing and Wrestling Club.

And

the AWA was basically the state of Minnesota and Wisconsin at that point.

But then he got an increased interest in Chicago and started branching out out west to Winnipeg and et cetera.

And

at one point, there were

in the days before, I know this sounds ridiculous now, but in the days before the internet and people didn't know what was going on wrestling-wise in a town 250 miles away.

Omaha became part of the AWA, but still they had a different AWA world champion there than they did in the regular Omaha or AWA territory.

And then it wasn't until,

what, probably about the start of the late 60s or start of 1970s, Brian, that

they standardized everything and it was an AWA town.

That probably about that time period, just off the top of my head on all this.

But yes,

it was a big deal because

major wrestlers held it and it did have

some conjunction with the AWA and Ghana.

Mad Dog Vashan was a champion out there for a while.

So

you could get bigger bookings and Omaha during those days was a nice wrestling market

that actually kind of got eclipsed in modern times and wasn't as

well attended or as successful as it was back in the 50s and 60s.

I pulled up the Omaha AWA or Omaha World Championship title lineage here.

It's interesting too, because it's another one that starts from the disputed Eduard Carpentier-Louthez match.

Yeah.

Their first champion is Carpentier, June 14th, 57, recognized as champion after the disputed match with Lou Thes.

The majority of the NWA continue to recognize Fez.

Vern Gagne.

won it in 58, followed by Wilbur Snyder, 58.

Dick the Bruiser, 59, back to Wilburn, 59, then Dr.

X.

Again, this is all pre-AWA in Minnesota.

But at the same point, because those guys were huge stars off of the Chicago TV that had been network up until the previous couple of years, they were getting booked all over the country.

Don Leo, Jonathan, Dr.

X, Vern Ganya, Fritz Feiver.

And Dr.

X was that buyer?

61.

Apparently, it was Big Bill Miller.

Bill Miller was the first Dr.

X there.

The Crusher got it in 63.

Again, it's changed hands a lot.

And then, according to Wikipedia, around the time the Crusher won the title, February 15, 63, he also won the AWA World Championship from Vern Gagne in Minneapolis on July 9th.

And from that point forward,

I guess both titles, the...

lineage links because then it goes from Vern to Fritz to Vern

although it says he won the AWA title from Fritz and Amarillo.

And then the title was unified as of September 7, 63, according to Wikipedia.

I think there were still some gaps in it between

the actual AWA Minneapolis lineage and either that or

because I remember especially Vashon had it at one point

when he was not in the regular AWA, I thought.

But nevertheless,

as you can see, it was name guys and guys that were figured in with Ganya and in the Midwest and et cetera.

So it was always somewhat of an important belt because,

you know, it was also aligned with bigger people for bigger things.

Jim, our next question was sent to cornydrivethru at gmail.com from Brian.

If you could choose only one of these movies, which would you choose and why?

And these are the upcoming releases of the Fantastic Four and Supermen.

You know,

I think I would like to, I've always wanted to see a really good Fantastic Four movie because they were my first favorite superheroes.

When I started collecting comic books in 1968 in the Marvel universe, the Fantastic Four were the

They were the rock, they were the stone cold, they were the main event fucking deal.

And Spider-Man was secondary.

And then you got to Hulk and Thor and Captain American, etc.

But the Fantastic Four was the thing, and no pun intended.

And,

you know, they've done nothing.

Well, there's been 18 billion Spider-Man movies and all that other stuff.

So I think I would rather see the Fantastic Four because again, Superman has been done to death.

And

the more modern it gets, the more Superman looks like an AEW fucking wrestler.

And

I'm not fucking impressed.

Well, what they tried to do with the Superman movie, and I'm going to go see it with the kids, is they tried to make it faithful to the comics more than anything else that's been done in a very, very long time, if not ever, really.

Because

the Superman TV show is kind of based off the Superman cartoon that the Fleischers did more than the comics, even.

Well, but the TV show, any of the Christopher Reeve, for fuck's sake, I want to see a goddamn jacked-up Stallone Schwarzenegger.

Somebody needs to be Superman, not these goddamn milk sops.

What do you think about the Fantastic Four?

And again, they've tried to do this a few times.

Now they're pulling it into the Marvel cinematic universe.

What do you think of a female silver surfer?

What?

The silver surfer in the movie is a female.

Oh, Christ on a cracker.

No.

Right?

The Silver Surfer isn't a fucking.

Because then

it's not being.

I actually said this to someone and they said, well, Silver Surfer was a female at one point.

I'm like, yeah, well, look, everyone apparently at some point in the comics became either a male or a female or changed gender or race or something.

I've never heard of that.

The Silver Surfer to me has always been that silver bald-headed dude.

And it's not being misogynistic or sexist to say, no, I don't want little orphan Annie to be little orphan fucking dick.

I don't.

What an example to use.

Yes, I agree.

Well,

I mean, just leave the shit the way it is when it gets over.

Don't fuck with it.

It'll all hinge on how they do the thing, though.

They could make people burst into flame and stretch and become invisible, but how

good's the thing going to look?

He's my guy anyway, Ben Grimm.

Well, apparently, it's actually a timepiece too.

It like takes place whatever, 62, 63 when the first comic and the series first launched.

So I'm interested to see how it looks.

But yeah, the Silver Surfer, I'm sorry.

And then someone argued to me the other day.

They said, well, this is just one dimension.

This is just one universe.

All the different universes are going to meld up and there'll be a male silver surfer there.

No, goddamn it.

I just wouldn't, I'm just worried about the dimension I'm in.

If I'm in it, I want my silver surfer to be a male.

Let the other dimension people worry about their fucking movies.

And what are they going to do about Wonder Woman?

You're going to Wonder Willie?

How are you going to change that around?

I don't know if there'll be Wonder Willie, but that's apparently a popular film for rent right now.

But, Jim,

I guess you're picking Fantastic Four over Superman.

Let's get to another question here.

This one was sent to Corney DriveThru at gmail.com

from Eric.

Eric from sunny San Clemente, California, here,

and I've always been fascinated by Ron Garvin's 1988 heel turn at Great American Bash 88

to his departure.

It's a big sentence.

Sorry, I messed it up.

Then, him winning the AWA TV title from Greg Gagne

and the WWC Universal title from Carlos Cologne.

Then, eventually signing with Vince while still being both AWA TV champ and WWC Universal champ.

My question to you:

what were your thoughts when you heard that Ron left the NWA right after shooting this hot angle, betraying Dusty?

What did the locker room think as well?

And do you know what the definitive reason

why Garvin left?

I've heard so many conflicting things.

I would love a solid answer.

I'd love the end of the question.

P.S.

Oh, Jesus.

Please release the Midnight Express versus Bad Company.

I need that match in my veins.

And where is this gentleman from?

Eric from sunny San Clemente, California.

Okay, a long way away from Louisville.

Good.

Okay.

You know, I got to be honest with you, right at the top of the program here.

I don't, besides Ronnie Garvin being mad at dusty for either something

either mad or dusty or mad at the office either for the way he was booked or the money he was getting

i don't remember why he left

and

that was the summer of 88 that was the the bashes by god i was

i was occupied that's when we had that you know, schedule of like 40 something fucking days and 40 or 40 something matches and 40 something days all over the country.

Can you remember why Ronnie was it ever talked about?

He said he's heard conflicting stories.

I don't remember hearing any.

He just got mad and left.

Ronnie Garvin from the interview footage I've seen over the years has been pretty vocal about his,

I don't want to use the word hatred, his dislike of Dusty Rhodes, specifically the way Dusty booked.

I don't know if he always felt that way, but that's the way he always discusses it.

And

yeah they shot the thing at the bash in 88 where he turned on dusty and then he was gone

i and see here's the thing rodnie garvin was a great worker and everybody respected him everybody wanted to work with him unless that you know they were afraid of getting the kicked out of him uh

but he also he would tend to get grumpy

And, you know, he'd be doing something for a while and you'd not know he was grumpy.

And then after the fact, you'd know he was grumpy about it.

But at that point in time

because god ronnie was older than he looked because he was in such tremendous shape but at that point in time i think he was on the the downhill slope not conditioning wise but just of interest of the people because the matches with flair in 86 were so good and

The boys loved to watch them, and they were beating the shit out of each other.

And you could show people that and say, this shit's real, and they'd buy it.

But the fans, Ronnie was getting older, and the fans weren't buying him at the level of the Rock and Roll Express or Magnum TA or Barry Wyndham or the younger baby faces.

And

Dusty put the belt on him over Flare so that Flair could win it back at Starcade that year.

And it was a big

thing, but I guess Ronnie took that as an insult, like he

only had it, you know, eight weeks or whatever.

Well, he actually

probably really shouldn't have got it.

He just went on a box office alone,

but he was so fucking good and believable.

So,

and you actually got to see him as a heel.

You know, most people never got to see him as a heel.

Oh, yeah.

Well, not only in Tennessee when it was Ron and Terry Garvin with manager Jim Garvin in 1973, they were a great heel team, but he was a heel in Knoxville part of his southeastern run.

And then, like Steve Austin, the people started liking him because he was so tough and so crazy, and he became a babyface.

And then he was their kick-ass babyface.

And that's when he was 10 years younger, you know.

And

so at any rate,

the reason why he

had all those belts and everything at the same time is because Crockett was signing everybody to contracts at that point.

I don't know whether his had run out and they were trying to get him to sign another one, or he just got mad and left, and it was about ready to expire or whatever.

But,

you know,

the Ganya, the AWA wasn't going to sign him to an exclusive deal at that point.

Their business was down.

Puerto Rico, they didn't care what else you were doing.

And when he got the chance to work for Vince,

he knew he'd make legitimate money, even if he wasn't getting a guarantee.

Being on the WWF shows

was going to outrank the dying days of the AWA and go to Puerto Rico.

He was going to make more money there, but he had to sign a contract, so he did

and

didn't go back to work for those other people.

But that was the only other place to go.

I don't know if he was ready to quit, I think, and become a full-time pilot anyway, which is what he did, not

for Delta or whatever, but a private pilot.

Hey,

when he worked for you in Smoky Mountain, tell me the truth.

Did you wish he had blonde hair?

No, because I always thought he looked odd with the blonde hair because that wasn't,

it wasn't his personality at all to be a bleached blonde guy.

And when he had been most over in Knoxville in Southeastern wrestling, he'd had dark hair.

And he'd been, he hadn't been the hands of stone.

He was the one-man gang, Ronnie Garvin, with dark hair with that Canadian accent.

And he'd go out and fucking bleed and do hard ways and bash people with furniture.

And so I was perfectly fine with that part.

But he was working for me because he had been over in that territory before, and he could do his flying and do whatever the fuck else he wanted on days he wasn't booked for me.

But I don't, unless he was already ready to transition to wrestling

part-time and flying and doing whatever, I don't know why he would have walked out on Crockett because the only other place to go was work for Vince.

And he was there for what, a year?

Because by then, when was Ronnie Garvin born?

What year?

Hold on.

I can tell you, in terms of when he was with the WWF, he was there all through 1989 into early 1990 at least.

So, you know, about a year or so, probably is what deal he signed.

And

obviously, being French Canadian, he knew Pat Patterson.

Born in 45, 80 years old.

Okay, but at that time, he was

45.

So,

I mean, physically, he was in such great shape.

Or whatever,

what year do you say he was born in again?

He was born in 45.

In 1945.

So, yeah, in 1988, he would have been 43.

That's crazy to think he was 30 already in 75.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

But that's when,

you know, really, Rod, the Garvin brothers as a team were a heel team in the South, Georgia, the Florida, Gulas Territory.

But Roddy didn't really get over as a name on his own until...

the mid-70s.

And Eddie Graham liked him in Florida because he was so tough and so believable.

And that same thing that they liked him in the Carolinas for.

But anyway,

he wouldn't have quit Crockett

unless he figured I'm probably already ready to transition into the next stage of my career because he's in his mid-40s trying to go to the WWF for the first time.

So that was probably to have a run and see.

how things worked out.

The idea he shot an angle where he turns on Dusty, who, although he had his detractors, was still one of the top baby faces and the booker.

And that's it.

There's no back and forth.

There are no matches.

There's no feud.

It just ends.

That's probably what he liked the best about it.

I was going to say,

is he spiteful enough to just do all that and walk out just to fuck over Dusty?

Well, no, I don't think he would have done it.

if he was intending to leave.

I think whatever caused him to decide, you know, fuck this, happened either in the execution of or what he heard or learned immediately afterwards, I would think.

All right, Jim, as we move on here with the show, and that was the Ronnie Garvin 88 question.

Jim, as we move forward here with the show, why don't we preview this?

Why don't I drop my pen on the floor?

It'd be easier than dropping it on the ceiling.

Jim, why don't we preview AEW All in Texas, the big H propaganda?

This weekend we'll be watching on a pack day.

It's a Super Saturday.

Let's go through this card.

You didn't tell me we were going to have to,

you know, now I'm going to just be in a state of trepidation all week, worried about what I'm going to have to watch.

Well, let me let you know.

I'm going to give you a heads up on what they have on their official website.

Early warning.

They still have ticket packages available, but I believe they have at least 20,000 tickets distributed, so good for them.

How big is the building?

It's a stadium.

It's an outdoor stadium, probably.

Yeah, that's you know, a lot more.

They could have rented Reunion Arena and put that 20,000 in there.

It would have been goddamn insane.

Jim, for the TNT championship, the champion Adam Cole, baby,

versus Kyle Fletcher.

Good Lord.

It looks

like a Mr.

Universe contestant browbeating a small child.

The physical difference is,

and Adam Cole is not a senior citizen, right?

So there's an age difference, but Kyle's real young, and Adam's, you know, in his 30s now or whatever.

But the size difference and just the

difference in one guy looks like a fucking beast and the other guy, you feel bad.

There is something

wrong.

I try not to say this if we hear that he has some type of goddamn flesh-eating disease, but he wouldn't be out there wrestling 20 minutes, would he?

Do they have medical standards in AEW?

What has happened to Adam Cole?

That's all I'm saying.

I don't care about this match, and nobody else does either, because it's making people uncomfortable to look at the state of Adam Cole.

It's like an escaped fetus.

Oh, God damn it.

Has hair and everything like a grown person, but still just has,

I don't know, like kind of like E.T.'s body.

But let's move on here with the card, Jim.

Oh, God damn it.

I got a cramp now.

It looks like the conjoined twin growing out of somebody's head.

For the AEW World Tag Team Championship, a three-way.

The champions, the Hurt Syndicate, Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin.

Wait, this is a three-way now?

I thought they just

challenged and asked and answered with the two little dip shits that they beat up.

Well, again, it's the Hurt Syndicate against Jet Speed.

Of course, the team of Speedball Mike Bailey and Kevin Knight versus the team of the Patriarchy, Christian Cage and Nick Wayne.

Wait a minute.

Last week.

The Kevin Knight and Hong Kong Fuye came out and ranted about their tag team title match.

And the Hurts Syndicate beat them up about three or four times and said, if they can get up, we'll take care of them at Texas Stadium.

Was

Christian Cage or Nick Plain or Nick Plain's mom or anybody anywhere around that

episode?

Not that I recall, but we didn't watch on Saturday.

I don't know what they did, if anything.

Oh, fuck.

It's a week before the fucking show when they're just got, well, then why are these two?

Why are Knight and Spitball still in the thing?

If they got laid out the other night and these two fucking goofs come in on Saturday, what sense does this make?

Maybe Tony added a third team so he can get the belts off the Hurt Syndicate without them losing.

Are you fucking ribbon?

I'm trying to come up with any solution I can think of.

I don't understand why, because we've seen now weeks.

How bad would that make their tag team titles look

if two guys who just were stuck in this fucking match

beat the other two guys who were stuck in this match for the belts or vice versa.

If anybody beat anybody for the belts and the people that got beat weren't the hurt syndicate, how bad would that make the belts look?

And how stupid would that make the hurt syndicate look?

And they're their only fucking stars.

Again, we've seen weeks of buildup, whatever you want to say about jet speed and the realisticness of them being able to go in there with the Hurt Syndicate.

At least they've been building that for Christian Cage to all of a sudden be thrown in this.

I don't know.

To come and beat the other team besides the champions.

Well, we'll see.

Again, maybe the Hurt Syndicate will retain and there'll be some kind of inter-family drama with the patriarchy.

We'll see what happens.

Jim in a tag team match: the Young Bucks versus Swerve Strickland and Will Osprey.

Oh, but now, wait a minute.

If Swerve and Osprey win, then the Young Bucks are no longer the EVPs the people are.

But now think about this for a second, though, Brad.

They may need to amend this because if

they talk about the people, is it the audience of the TV show?

Then there's 600,000.

If it's the pay-per-view, then we're down to 100,000 or less.

But goddamn, that would still.

press the confines of the normal conference room.

Don't you think that the people should then get together and nominate a representative to go to the meetings instead of having all of them show up?

Because,

you know, to elect Howie from Poughkeepsie, New York, he's our representative and he can be in that.

And that way they can get around a normal conference table.

But then

if Swerve and

what's his name again?

Will Osprey.

Will Ospreay.

Yes.

Yeah.

If they lose, then they can never fight

other people besides the young Bucs again for the next year.

If they lose, they cannot challenge for the AEW World Championship for one year.

But

neither of the Bucks are AEW World Champion nor are going to challenge for that.

So it actually,

why the fuck would they give a shit?

You see,

so one of those things is going to happen in this match.

Now, where does this power go, though?

Where does that EVP power go?

Is that power just go away?

I think it goes away.

They're stripped of their championship and they

just go back to being schlubs.

I don't know what to say.

Well, then, or what about the other EVPs?

Which other EVPs?

Cody?

Well,

Cody's gone.

I'm just wondering how come they needed all these EVPs at the start, but now they're just losing EVPs, and there's no problem.

Cody's gone.

These two aren't EVPs anymore.

That leaves Omega.

Omega said he didn't want to be an EVP.

He said it's too easy peasy.

So I'm just wondering why they had him in the first place if they don't need him.

Well, Jim, also on this card, a women's casino gauntlet match for a guaranteed world title spot or shot.

It's very small.

Or slot.

It's very small.

Well,

slot slipped.

Wherever you want to stick that title.

Participants to be determined.

And I'm sure they are.

There's also a men's casino gauntlet match for a guaranteed

title slot or shot.

Yes.

Spot.

Yes.

And so far, announced for this match: Mark Briscoe, MJF,

and the dynamic Mystico.

So that's he normally puts in his casino gauntlets.

For the guys, there's normally at least a dozen, right?

Before they get some resolution.

And with the women, I don't know, but there you go.

The same thing as the WWE,

only with

fewer talents.

You do the women's thing before you do the men's thing, and then you've had dinner before you have dinner.

And then there you go.

And my appetite's shot now.

I probably would have liked the fucking meatloaf and green beans more than that goddamn chicken kiv with mac and cheese, but that came first, so I'm full now.

They got to get the von Ericks on the show, don't they?

Oh, brother, they're in Texas.

Do they still pay the Von Ericks or the Von Ericks under contract?

I can't stand under contract, but they're still around with AEW, I think.

Well, and

they also move back to Texas for the kids or grandkids or some of the family to play college ball, right?

So they're in Texas.

If Tony has a stadium show in Texas and doesn't bring

at least a Von Eric or two out, he's out of his mind.

Jim, winner takes all for the AEW Unified Championship.

The international champion, Kenny Omega, versus the continental champion, Okada.

Okay, first off, it's not winner-take-all.

It's winner-take-most

because they still have a world champion.

So it's also not undisputed because the world champion disputes it.

He has a big problem with it.

Major issue.

So

what they're doing is they're eliminating one of the multiple meaningless belts that they have that, you know, because Tony and a certain segment of his die-hard audience are just, oh, look at the belts.

But this is supposed to be a dream match amongst these.

You saw the dream match between Ibushi and who's he what's he.

That was supposed to be a dream.

Is this going to be a better dream?

I will admit that Kenny,

he's better than a bushy, whatever else you want to say about him.

But are we going to watch them not be able to do the shit they could do 10 years ago?

Or are the people going to be blind to it and just see it because, oh, it's them and not notice what it actually looks like?

I think there'll be an element to that.

It's a big match.

for that kind of fan base, and they're going to be really pumped up to see it.

Kenny Omega has a tendency to push himself really far.

I have to think if he was ever going to do it again, it would be this match.

Okada

has his pace,

and very little is going to break that.

But he looks like he needs a pacemaker.

Who do you think is going over?

Well, it's got to be Kenny.

You think so?

For God's sake.

I think he's going to put Okada over.

Why would Okada is an insult to the profession?

Okada is the laziest, laziest, most good for nothing, no account, lack of trying, lack of effort, blase,

no facial expression, no personality, no charisma, no fashion sense, no haircut, boring ass son of a bitch that I've ever seen.

And he's making a lot of money.

And at the same time, Tony Khan has the most feckless, impotent, limp dick bunch of babyfaces on one roster in the history of wrestling.

And on a stadium show, he needs Kenny to step up and win this fucking thing.

And I would have said that he needed Osprey to step up and beat this fucking drunken fucking plumber and

bring the world title back to goddamn some semblance of credibility.

But since he wasn't smart enough to make that fucking match,

then unfortunately now it's up to Paige.

Paige is going to suck, but at least he'd be better than Moxley.

And if they don't do it now,

then I suggest that Tony just fire all his fucking baby faces and just make the heels work against each other.

And I guess we'll get to the main event shortly, but

for the AEW Women's World Championship,

which title, who is what title here?

It's a very small print of errors.

Mercedes Monet.

It's the one that Adam Page isn't going for because he mentions he's going for the men's title.

He may not be going for that, but it looks like he's going for the same salon that does the hair of these women with the picture of a beer, but for the AEW Women's World Championship, the TBS champion Mercedes Monet against the AEW Women's World Champion, Timeless Tony Storm with Luther.

Again,

the Mercedes fiasco has been his female Okada.

He has spent a fortune to get discernibly nothing except bad fucking promos,

obnoxious acting, and people don't give a shit.

And they like Tony Storm.

They like her a lot.

If this

Josephine camel face douchebag.

Beats Tony Storm

in a minute.

I think people may hit the goddamn ring.

Mercedes, you've already seen the memes going around on Twitter now of Mercedes with the Hulk Hogan, Fu Manchu, and the do-rag.

She thinks she is the biggest women star in the world and should be winning all that shit.

You can tell.

And she shouldn't, because she ain't.

And it's the big show.

The babyfaces need to stand up for themselves.

Kenny needs to win.

Osprey and Strickland need to win.

Tony Storm needs to win.

And Paige needs to win.

And if they didn't want all those baby faces to win in the same show, they shouldn't have booked it.

But these baby faces are so unappealing and whiny,

such pussies and losers and nerds and douchebags.

That unless you start doing something for them, it's going to get worse and worse because it's already getting worse and worse.

Jim, the main event

in a Texas death match,

the AEW world champion John Moxley versus hangman Adam Page.

You know why they want a Texas death match?

They wanted that because Moxley is jealous that he didn't think of the blood drinking first.

So they're going to try to redo that spot, but he's going to not only, he's going to drink it and also have a blood enema.

Think about that.

Paige is going to bust him open, put his head in a bucket, get him to fill it up with blood, pour the blood in a goddamn enema bag, and shoot it up Moxley's own ass.

Big show, big blood.

These two are going to try to do any kind of stupid, goofy, jackass stunt that any garbage wrestler like Dick the Boozer's idol, the bank addicted drug robber Nick Gage would do to have a Texas death match, be dope, and all that stuff.

And

I honestly, I think that they may not put the belt on Paige.

I think they're going to continue this thing because Moxley's having such great fantasies about it while it's driving people away in drooves.

It's this whole thing has been a joke.

It's the worst main event angle that has ever gone on this long in the history of wrestling.

And Moxley fantasizes he's somebody that he's not.

Nobody sees him as that,

except the Kool-Aid drinkers that are the base audience of this company.

And most of them are tired of it.

So

it's a big stadium show.

Get it over with.

That's why I say a page, he'll be rotten too.

Got the personality of shingles.

but at least it's not Moxley.

But I think they might continue this on somehow

because Tony has no balls and lets people tell him what to do.

So one or the other.

Do you think we see Darby Allen?

That's, I think they might be waiting on Darby to come back down off the top of the mountain and win the thing.

No, he's back.

I just saw a video of him in a car jumping over something.

He's doing his stuff.

I don't know where he is on the wrestling show, but he's back and he's not hurt.

While Tony's paying him every week, he can climb mountains and jump cars.

He just can't show up and save this goddamn moribund wrestling program.

Do you think we see Jungle Boy?

I think they just want to forget about him.

All right.

He may be a candidate for the Casino Gauntlet match.

But there it is.

He might be a might be a candidate for reform school.

Well, there it is, Jim AEW all in texas a preview of that event and of course

some of these people need another line of work brian you know you hear uh you you hear uh experts like you say that you also you heard a lot in the early days of aew how screwed up everything was with the merch

what if aew from the very beginning had said you know what

we should open a store with shopify we should work with Shopify.

We should be easily available to all the people on the shop app from our friends at Shopify.

What they would have said was, we should hire professional people to be in charge of this instead of some dumb shit's wife, is what you're saying.

And you're right.

You're absolutely right.

Because at the start of that venture, they were actually doing some business.

They were selling merch.

Well, they'd sell merchandise whenever people could find it available.

But if they'd gone to Shopify right off the bat, they might have a template, a pattern,

and and a cash register but they might have a plan for success now but instead they twist it away in the wind left to their own devices folks don't let that happen to you because the last thing you want is to be left to your own device especially if the device's batteries are run down but shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all the e-commerce in the United States.

That's why you hear that sound.

Not a small child child about to run you down on a tricycle, but the sound of sales.

Sales.

Money.

See, like that.

Money.

There you go.

All the household names like Mattel and other names you would know in your own home where your household is.

They use Shopify and you should too, because Shopify.

gives you that leg up from day one with hundreds of beautiful ready-to-go templates to express your brand style.

Tackle those important tasks in one place.

Inventory, payments, analytics.

Anything to do with anal is very important and needs to be tackled all in one place.

Well, again, that place isn't Shopify.

I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Analytics right there.

A-N-A-L-Y-T-I-C-S.

That is the practice and process of studying.

Oh,

of

analyzing data.

I think Tony Cox.

I thought there would be a Z on there then.

Spread your brand's worth with built-in marketing and email tools to find and keep new customers, whether they're anal or not.

And folks, everybody knows the cha-ching that comes from the iconic purple shop pay button that is used by millions of businesses around the world.

That's why so many people that use Shopify are happy because they are putting their finger on their little purple button.

That's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet.

Your customers already love it.

They can't keep their fingers off that button.

And folks, if you'd like to have your button fingered,

if you want to see less carts being abandoned, the poor things, they need homes.

It's time for you to head over to Shopify.

There you go.

And sign up for your $1 a month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com slash JCE.

That's how you get a $1 a month trial period.

Let them show you what they can do for you.

Shopify.com slash JCE

for a $1 a month trial period and

boom,

boom,

you'll hear the sound of success a mile away.

You'll never forget it.

It'll echo through your head at night in your dreams as you're tossing and turning, unable to sleep because of the guilt of the previous merger of the giant corporation that you built from a small little store on Shopify.

You'll have the nightmares that come with big corporate finance and multi-million dollar business deals, folks.

It all starts with Shopify.

Do it right now.

That's right, Shopify.

They power our online store, ArcadianVanguard.com.

Get drive-through t-shirts there.

They're on the shop app.

They power us.

They can power you.

They can power Tony.

Now we're friends at Shopify.

Jim, let's get some more questions here on the show.

This question sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Justin Wells.

Seems like many of the people I enjoy are Kentuckians.

Corney, John Prine, Hunter S.

Thompson, and Johnny Depp.

Curious if Jim has ever met any of them or if he's a fan.

I have not ever met any of those fine folks.

And

I mean, I've seen some movies with Johnny Depp

in them that I didn't find repulsive, but I don't know if I'd go out of my way just to see something because of him.

I've read a few passages that Hunter S.

Thompson has written.

And

who was the other fella?

John Prine, musician.

John Prine, the musician.

Yes.

And

he's mighty fine, is John Prine.

I don't know if I'd buy a ticket to see him.

So I'm ambivalent on all those people.

I'd really like to talk to D.W.

Griffith.

He was from LaGrange.

Well, that's not Louisville.

Well, it's close enough.

Who's the most famous person from Louisville you've met?

Colonel Sanders.

Well, he's not from Louisville.

He's from Kentucky.

The most famous Kentuckian I ever met in person was Colonel Sanders.

Who would be a famous Louisvillian that I've met?

Yeah, I don't know when I was a little kid.

My dad knew the mayor, but I don't remember if I met him.

Oh, Ah, Randy Acher.

Think about that.

The most famous Louis million that I've ever met, Randy Acher.

The late, great Randy Acher.

Our next question was sent via the Cults of Cornet Facebook group by Patrick Stubblefield.

Oh, come on.

Do you think Goldberg might have been developed and used properly by the WWE as opposed to the path that was taken in WCW.

It's an interesting what if, what if Goldberg had come up in WWE instead of WCW?

Yes, he would have been developed better, trained more properly,

and would never have been as big as he was.

Because

they didn't try to do that.

And that's, you know, like the Montreal screw job or the, you know, the greatest angles or the greatest attractions in wrestling usually come

from shit that you didn't really try to do in the first place.

They saw this big guy, former Atlanta Falcon,

fucking jacked up, body tattooed, whatever.

Yeah, let's put him over, but he's a shit worker

because he doesn't know anything.

So let's put him over quick.

But because of the intensity that he had and the appearance and just the way that he did it,

that's been done

a lot of times before in wrestling, regionally and nationally, with a big slug that it can't work, smash him over quick, but it didn't work like it did with Goldberg.

He had the personality.

But they were because WCW had no direction.

They had every kind of direction, multiple directions in the world.

Different people were doing different things.

There was no

equality control.

There was no one voice behind everything like there was with the WWF.

So Vince would have never put the guy out there to begin with, unprepared, just say, I put him over on TV without a plan behind it.

And if he had a plan behind it, then he wouldn't have changed that plan when

Goldberg started to get over as a massive babyface.

He would have kept him as a heel or whatever.

So because it was so ad-lib and snatch and grab and no one person was in charge and shit like that got to happen,

then they see Goldberg's and then they start the streak, Mike Tanay.

But then, of course, they have to start bullshitting the streak and making numbers up that people knew couldn't be.

He won 15 matches in the last seven days or whatever, right?

It was unnecessary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But the thing is, Goldberg got over like that as a phenomenon because the people chose him.

He was the right person with the right look.

And then they fed him people

to keep that going.

And they had

an unlimited roster of cannon fodder

because they were, again, they were paying everybody.

They could bring in people that.

He hadn't seen on TV for a year, but had names and have him jackhammer them.

Or they just jackhammer almost everybody that didn't have creative control and political pull

because a lot of the guys didn't give a shit because they got the same money either way, and nothing was really drawn.

So, fuck it.

Yeah, let him beat me.

And that's why it worked.

And then, when they started fucking with it and made him a normal human, and started doing the screwy booking,

then it was kind of on the downhill slide.

But they really went out of business before they had a chance to kill Goldberg, right?

All the way.

Oh, yeah, no, they never got a chance to kill him all the way.

He never, I mean, he's still over today for a reason.

Yeah.

Well,

Vince did a better job trying to kill him when he first brought him in a couple of years later and, you know, didn't understand the whole deal.

But that's the thing is,

he got over by himself by accident, not planned, and then they ran with it for a while, but then they started fucking it up.

But

before he was really dead they went out of business so he still got the

the aura but in the wwe

where they were more

there was more top talent

there was more control over the booking there was more of a plan behind the way that people were being presented whether it's good plan or a bad plan it was at least a plan

So Vince wouldn't have let him just throw Goldberg out there and that whole phenomenon wouldn't have happened.

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting too, because you've heard it probably like I have over the years that maybe

some of the guys who are around his age, that have been in the business a lot longer, who were main event guys in WCW may have gotten in his head, may have told him.

Yeah.

Maybe they weren't conducting themselves in the best way and they advised other people to do the same.

Maybe it benefited them.

I mean, you've heard a lot of different things.

What do you do if you have a prodigy?

You know, for lack of of a better term, someone who comes up and maybe not a prodigy, someone who comes up and right away they're a star.

You, when you have a phenomenon.

And you need to build upon it.

And you also have to make sure while you're doing it, you could work with the person.

What do you do to protect someone who doesn't know the business from people filling their head with shit?

Well, therein lies a problem because you can't fix stupid, right?

If

somebody is inclined to believe

people's bullshit that they wind them up about,

you know, then there's almost nothing you can do about it besides telling them, hey, people are going to wind you up and tell you shit, but you just try to show them the right way.

And if they trust your opinion, then they will believe you instead of other people.

But

I mean,

there's all kinds of different

ways that people can get in, you know, a guy's head like that.

And whether whether he's insecure or whether he's too secure, whether he's over fucking egotistical or he's completely a basket case.

When you get anybody that's really dedicated to want to do something, because you can't say that Goldberg wasn't giving it his all,

and he's a former pro athlete anyway, that you can really fuck him up when he ain't smart to the wrestling business.

But it just, you know,

it depends on

that's the thing about show biz of any kind, entertainment sports of any kind.

Joe Namath probably wasn't the best football player of all time, but goddamn, for about 10 years there, he was, when you said, name a football player, Joe Namath.

Who sold the most ticket?

Joe Namath.

Who's in a movie?

Joe Namath.

Because it's the package of charisma and personality and look and talent.

And brains has to come in there because you have to know what to do with all of those things.

I don't know whether that tells you about Goldberg or not.

All right, Jim, our next question sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Michael Sean Braswell.

Hey, Jim, do you think Brian Pillman would have become a world champion or at least become IC champion in WWE if he didn't die in 1997?

Oh, well, the international, intercontinental title definitely which at the time was still something major in the company

i

1997 to

i can't say if pillman had

if pillman had stayed healthy had not had the wreck had not had the issues i can't tell you he might not have been the wwf champion someday because

a different type of wrestler in the 2000s was going to at least get short runs with it than what Vince would have picked in the 80s and 90s.

The Intercontinental title would almost be a gimme because Pillman would have been

one of the couple of

most important heels in the company that he might even have been a Piper situation where he was used so well, but never actually won the world title.

But yeah,

he had everything.

He could work, he could talk, he was creative, He had the personality.

But physically, by the time, as we've gone over in the past and after the Pillman dark side of the ring, by the time that he got the opportunity,

there were too many injuries and the wreck in the ankle finished him off in terms of really ever coming back to work again as he could once before.

If he had stayed healthy, what do you think his ceiling was?

Well, I don't, again, I don't know that he had one because, by God,

even though the 2000s were going to mostly,

you know, be WWE and nothing else, TNA, a distant second,

you know, Brian's the kind of guy, if he wasn't used on top in the WWE, he could have got money in TNA.

Or he could have stayed in the, he could do commentary.

He could be a manager, but a high-level manager, like a Heyman type of guy with an insidious

and that's after again if we're talking if he had stayed healthy

after a number of more years of run as a wrestler past 97

you know he was what was he 35 maybe

um 33 i thought but maybe 33

So

so yeah, he was going to wrestle for years more at a high level.

But he would have been figured in, I'm sure,

barring if he ever really did

flip out and go crazy, or you know, instead of just working that.

And what do you think would have happened to Pillman after the Montreal screw job if he had stayed healthy and everything was equal and he was a member of the Hart Foundation?

Well, but he didn't need to be a member of the, he was a member of the Hart Foundation because he had the Calgary background and had trained there.

And we brought that into the story and he fit with those guys.

But Vince didn't consider Brian Pillman

a part of the Hart family, it was a gimmick.

He was part of the group on screen, but he would have got no heat, had no heat for that.

And

with Brian, I'm sure he probably didn't appreciate that Brett got screwed, but at the same time, he had five kids or whatever and a high-paying contract, so he wasn't going to walk out on a moral stand over it.

All right, Jim, our next question was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Rory Melberg.

Off topic.

I've heard that name before.

Which is better to grow with, charcoal or propane?

Honestly, now, again, no answer can be a yes or no and a simple thing.

If you want to just

get to the meat of the matter, get that meat cooked and shove it down your neck, propane, because you can control that better.

But if you really want to get the old-fashioned cookout taste, like you're in the backyard and

your mama's slapping them burgers together or Uncle Frank or whatever the fuck, you got to go with charcoal, but that's a process.

And you have no preference.

You're not going to take any side in this whatsoever.

It depends on, it depends on how much time I've got and how hungry I am.

You're going to get a little more convenience with the propane.

You're going to get a little more of the flavorful taste of the experience with the charcoal.

Better smell, too.

With which?

Charcoal.

Propane doesn't really, I mean, if you're over there huffing the propane, it might, maybe that's what's wrong with your organ plane.

That's a propane high, if I've ever heard one.

It's not going to impart propane taste to your food.

You're not going to have propane-tasting hot dogs.

Like, well, honey, those Oscar Meyers taste like propane.

You go outside and someone's barbecuing the smell of the charcoal.

It's a good smell.

That's what I say, yes, but it's also a more laborious and painstaking, time-consuming process where you can just turn that goddamn.

Well, Bruce Pritchard called me at home one time in Connecticut.

I said, because we had the fucking meetings

in the two months of the year that good weather hit Connecticut.

We would sit and write at the table outside of Vince McMahon's swimming pool that he used to push people into.

I've told you this, right?

Well, one day Bruce called me, said, when you were there writing yesterday, or we were there writing, did you fool with the

knobs on Vince's grill there by the pool?

And I said, no, I didn't.

I don't know how that thing works.

I've never seen him use it.

I thought it was just there for goddamn looks.

I said, I didn't.

No, I didn't.

Apparently, he had gone that night to light it to make steaks or something, and somebody had turned the thing up high.

And when he,

it almost Undertaker pyroed him, Vince's head almost went up in flames.

Oh, my God.

I said it wasn't me.

Did he blame Bruce?

He was just trying to get to the bottom of who was monkeying with his controls, and I think they were interviewing everybody that had been in and around the house.

I feigned complete ignorance of the entire situation.

Well, as long as you feigned it, Jim, let's get a few more questions before we wrap things up.

This one, and we received a lot of questions in the last couple of weeks because the WWE's Vault has been uploading Great American Bashes 85, 86, 88.

So the content's now getting out there.

What the hell happened to 87, by the way?

87's War Games, isn't it?

Well, no, they haven't released it, is what I'm saying to you.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm sure we'll find out something, but

some questions that have come in.

This one sent to cornydrivethru at gmail.com from James.

First off, longtime loyal member of the Cult of Cornette, before it was a cult.

Met my cornet and San Francisco Civic Met My Cornet.

And San Francisco Civic Auditorium, Great American Bash, I believe it was 1987.

And that's what made me want to be in the business.

Oh, God, I'm sorry about that.

But actually, I think it was 88 by the time we got to San Francisco for a bash.

But nevertheless.

Trained by Mike Modest and Brian Danielson at APW Boot Camp in California.

So it's an honor to get your wisdom and knowledge, even to this day.

My question

is about Steve Regal.

In the NWA.

Which one?

Well, again, we're talking about Bash 86.

Okay.

In NWA, he was often mid-card or open matches, heel.

But I can help, but feel again, this may have been spoken out and transcribed.

I don't know.

Or possibly alcohol was involved.

But I can help, but feel like he was a very underutilized based on his in-ring work and heel persona.

Do you have any memories of him?

And what's your thoughts on whether or not he could have handled and pulled off a main event push?

And we received, like I said, a lot of questions about it.

I have one here also

from the Cult According Facebook page, Adam Woolcock.

What's with Steve Regal going from the AWA to Crockett in June 86?

and leaving almost immediately after he teamed up with Jimmy Garvin again, but was losing prelim matches in WWF by September.

Did he annoy someone?

So, what happened with Steve Regal, who arrived in 86?

Well, hold on.

First of all, Steve Regal, for the more modern fans, William Regal,

the

fine gentleman from the United Kingdom,

was originally Steve Regal when he came to this country.

It was his name before Steve Regal.

And he worked as that at Lord Stephen Regal and WCW etc but the Steve Regal being talked about here

it was actually the first Steve Regal who was the son-in-law of Wilbur Snyder

Steve was trained in Indianapolis in probably I guess 70

would have been 73 74 thereabouts along with Spike Huber who became Bruiser's son-in-law for a time and Steve and Spike were partners they were were the only two wrestlers on Bruiser's roster under 50.

That's why his territory went under.

Steve was the star of

the group there.

Tremendous athlete, wonderful worker, athletic.

It took an incredible turnbuckle where you'd shoot him off and he'd leave his feet halfway across the ring, turn in midair, and hit the turnbuckle.

Incredible standing dropkick.

He came to the Tennessee Territory in 79, was partners with handsome Jimmy Valiant when Jimmy was a babyface and was a good

mid-card, high-card babyface.

He could sell.

He was a good-looking guy.

He had a great smile, intelligent person, well-spoken, decent promo,

wasn't you know, goddamn Terry Funk or anything in that department.

And really, I think it came down to

he spent

probably the first, I'd say six years of his career for the most part,

either working out of Indianapolis occasionally.

Like I said, he went, came to Tennessee for six months once, and I think he went to Georgia for a while.

But because he was based in Indianapolis, and at that time, nothing was happening.

Not a lot of people were working with Bruiser.

You know, a lot of people didn't seem,

maybe he didn't want to go.

Then finally, when he did get out there, he and Jimmy Garvin were the world tag team champions in the AWA.

They were a good

heel team, gorgeous.

Jimmy had more of the pretty boy, the sequins, and everything, and precious.

But Steve, with the blonde hair, as a heel, he fit in.

I always liked him as a babyface, but he was a good heel, also.

And

they got a push, and that's right when the Road Warriors had left.

So they went down in history as the ones who beat the Road Warriors for the AWA tag title.

But the thing is, Vern's business started going south, and when they brought him into Crockett,

I think it again

was just too much talent.

The guys at the top of the card, are you going to Steve Regal or Magnum TA or Barry Wyndham or Dusty Rhodes or Steve Regal as a heel or Tully Blanchard or Arne Anderson or Ric Flair?

Jimmy Garvin again, Jimmy Garvin came in with him and got a push.

Well, Jimmy Garvin

in the Carolinas, remember, Jimmy Garvin came in before.

Jimmy Garvin was there before Steve.

And he had a push as a single.

And

he also had the valet and he had the gimmick.

And he had a, he had the whole, the whole gorgeous Jimmy Garvin gimmick was tailor-made for Dusty to book

as first a heel and then the flamboyant babyface.

Steve didn't really have

that flamboyant gimmick.

And that's why I always saw him as a babyface because the way he could sell and get sympathy, and the girls loved him, sold a bunch of pictures here.

But you know, by then, the late 80s, there's only one or two places to go.

And if they ain't going to use you there,

Steve got out of the wrestling business and

got into business business.

He actually

had email, what did he email or did he tweet?

Whatever he did.

A couple of years ago, I've went back and forth with him a time or two because he had heard us talking about him.

And he's

now he's a little bit older than I am and retired and was successfully, I think, living in Florida, whatever.

But

so he didn't suffer because the territories went out of the way, but he should have been

He had the talent to go farther than what he was able to do by what was happening in the business beyond his control.

Well, he stands out.

I think on that Bash show from 86,

I want to say it was like him against Denny Brown.

So he stood out and you're looking at Denny Brown.

You're like, how did this guy get in there?

Yeah.

Well,

and Dusty liked Denny Brown from Florida.

And when they put the world junior heavyweight title on Denny Brown, that was the sign that.

The junior heavyweight title was never going to ever mean anything again.

Is that the worst belt ever, the one with the crown?

Yeah, yeah, the absolute worst.

Nelson Royal made his own

with a leather crafting out set and whatever.

The one that Nelson had in the late 70s, he made his own, I think, rather than wear that fucking thing.

Jim, our next question sent to CorneyDrive-through at gmail.com.

Once again, related to the WWE Vaults release of Great American Bashes from various years.

This was sent by Joe Gross Cup, Charleston, West Virginia.

I recently watched a Bash 88 from Greensboro and was shocked to see so many empty seats.

It looked like whole sections were empty.

This was very surprising, given it's Greensboro, and there was both a scaffold match and war games.

I would love to get Jim's thoughts on why attendance was so poor at this event.

Well, hold on.

And I've just reached around the corner and got my 1988 book because several things were going on.

And if you will remember, the most important was that the summer of 1988 came after Thanksgiving, 1987.

Remember that?

That usually, that's the way it happened.

Yeah.

And the people in Greensboro were so fucking offended that Starcade got taken away from them and put in Chicago.

And

I know a lot of people now are going, oh, bullshit.

No, it affected Greensboro.

All the longtime Greensboro fans will tell you that.

They've said that before, but it really did.

If you go back and look at the numbers, they got pissed.

And

let me give you an example.

In,

I know it was early 87.

But I believe in February or March 87.

So I'm getting there now.

Let's see, February 87.

Can I find Greensboro?

Yes.

Greensboro in February, on February 7th, 1987.

It was the Midnight Express versus Ronnie Garvin and Barry Wyndham for the U.S.

tag team title, but it was a stacked lineup.

It drew 12,000 people, $120,000,

right?

And business was great.

And then, hold on, the following month where

I might have to try.

ah

on

March 14th, Greensboro, 1987,

the Flair and Wyndham NWA title match sold out 15,000 plus, paid $130,000.

Okay.

And then

in the summer of 87, I'll get there.

In 1987, Greensboro didn't get a bash show.

Now that I'm looking at this,

really?

Okay, here's the goddamn schedule.

Lakeland, Landover, Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, Baltimore, West Palm, Baton Rouge, Little Rock, Johnson City.

Norfolk, which did $180,000, the state of Virginia gate record for wrestling.

Charlotte, that did $174,000 was a disappointment that year in the stadium.

Roanoke, Chicago, Greenville,

Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Ohio, Fayetteville,

Rock Hill, Jacksonville, Florida, Miami, Florida, and the Superdome on August 1st.

Greensboro didn't get a goddamn bash.

And

I'm looking at August.

I don't see us back in August either.

They may have run a town and we were run the town and we weren't on it.

So point being

Greensboro on July 11th.

Wait a minute.

Where was I then?

July 11th?

Oklahoma City.

You were for the UWF.

Yeah.

We were at the bash.

It says it's a bash show, but that was a UWF bash.

So they were in Greensboro.

Anything on the house?

I know it says 10,532.

Here's the card listed.

Kendall Wyndham defeated Thunderfoot number one.

Nelson Royal Royal defeated Thunderfoot number two.

The Mod Squad defeated Jimmy Valiant and Lasertron in a bunkhouse match.

Michael Hayes and Buddy Roberts fought Manny Fernandez and Ivan Koloff to a draw at 13 minutes.

A time limit draw of 13 minutes.

Holy Anderson defeated the barbarian.

Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard defeated Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson by disqualification.

Rick.

Oh, I remember this match now.

Rick Flair beat Jimmy Garvin with Precious in a steel cage match.

And Alex Luger defeated Nikita Koloff

in a cage.

Well, and there's the problem.

And we, meanwhile, the Midnight Express and the Road Warriors are in Oak City, and it only did a $54,000 house because the mid-south towns were dead.

But anyway, in 88,

asking the question of why the empty seats, in 88, they changed the structure because the bash had never been on pay-per-view before

because we had not been doing pay-per-view in 87.

So, the great American bash

in July of 1988 that was being promoted was the one in Baltimore.

And that

did

13,000 people sell out, paying $206,000, which was a Baltimore record.

But some of the other towns suffered because before it had been all about the great American Bash on tour, see it near you.

Now it's,

you know, buy the big one to watch on TV and oh, come live also.

So

what happened with Charlotte?

Charlotte went from the 85 Bash had 25,000 people.

The 86 Bash still had 20 something thousand.

and the house was a couple hundred grand.

The 87 Bash, as I said, was disappointing when it did $174,000.

The 88 Bash in Memorial Stadium did 98 grand, less than 10,000 people.

That's the last time they went outdoors in Charlotte.

And then

Pittsburgh.

The Great American Bash there, we had run Bubba and Dusty there in early 87 and sold out, did $160,000.

The Bash did 80 grand in Pittsburgh.

Chicago only did 100 grand.

So

most of the houses individually

were down across the Bash house shows from where they'd been in 86 and 87.

But the one in Baltimore that the promotion was focused on did a record house.

Out at Chattanooga did a record on July 14th.

It did 83 grand because they weren't used to getting a bash at all.

But Richmond was down to 109 grand.

And then the house in Greensboro was 100 grand.

So a little bit less than 10,000 people

because

it wasn't special anymore.

Philadelphia did 147,000.

That wasn't bad, but certainly it wasn't the $200 and something thousand dollars of the 86 bash.

and we got zoomed on that one to begin with.

The biggest bash that year besides the Baltimore show

was Landover, Maryland, the Capitol Center.

Did $157,000.

That was a hell of a building.

It always drew well, but Crockett couldn't get in there all the time because Vince had it sewed up.

Do you plan to check any of these out on YouTube?

The 88 Bash or any of the other ones?

Yeah, you know, I've got the VHS tapes, but it's not like I have watched them in

years and years.

The Greensboro one wasn't on VHS.

Oh, the 88 Greensboro.

Well, actually.

I've had that VHS because that was my three-on-two handicap match meeting at midnight against the Fantastics.

I got that from the office.

I've had that for 40 fucking years.

No way.

Yeah,

I actually, well, I was going to say, I think it was on the

rookie year DVD that I sold on the website for a while.

Because it's just raw footage that I got from the office.

There's no commentary.

It never aired on television.

So I'm like, well, they ain't going to sue me over this.

Now maybe they'll sue me over it.

You know, it's so weird when I watch some of the footage from the 86 Bash, which is memorable from the Ric Flair entrance and the helicopter, which is really cool just to watch the whole thing play out, you know, without any editing.

But the thing that stands out, the crowds, but, you know, it reminded me of Smoky Mountain.

It just kind of seeing everything outdoors like that.

It reminded me, I don't know, I just got like the scent of when I was,

you know, at Smoky Mountain Wrestling in 94.

Well, that's the thing.

When you would go, there was nothing like outdoor wrestling events down south in a summertime.

Because the fans were naturally more, you know, into it than other parts of the country.

And it's hot and sticky.

So everybody's sweating.

And, you know, they tried to pull some things.

And somebody,

somebody watched the Flare entrance and the helicopter

said, who's that fucking idiot getting out with Flare waving a rubber chicken around?

And you see it, and the guy had a rubber chicken.

And now I'll tell you who he was, but I'm trying to remember his name, goddammit.

But he was one, he was, if not the most popular nightly local newscaster on one of the TV stations

or sportscaster that was a big Flair fan and had done big promotion and buildup for this thing.

And he was one of the most recognizable people in town.

And

they had done some promotion where I don't know, the rubber chicken made some sense with some offhand remark that Flair had made about Riggie Morton being a chicken or whatever.

But when

this helicopter appears, they're in Charlotte in 1986 or whatever.

It wasn't like that,

you know, the people were used to these big mega stadium shows that they see with WrestleMania now.

And still, even when they've seen the stadium shows, the guys come to the ring and they play some music.

And then they get in the ring and wrestle.

They didn't know helicopter entrances.

And all this.

When that helicopter starts flying over and lands in the stadium and Flair gets out with that robe and the newscaster that everybody watches every night on TV is with him.

It was a big fucking deal.

People went crazy.

Well, that was that.

That was that question.

And, Jim, with that, we're going to wrap up the questions here this week on the drive-thru, and we will go to a song or two to wrap up here: episode 400.

This one,

we'll give this a shot.

This was sent by Stefan in Auburn, Maine.

He sent three songs.

Ooh, that's uh

that makes me worry that he didn't pour his all into one of them.

Well, one of them apparently is a Stephen P.

News song, one of them is called Invisible Penis.

That's the Stephen P.

News song.

No, that's the other song.

And then the third song is the ever-trending Jim Cornette.

Let's try this one from Stefan in Auburn, Maine.

Oh my god.

Did you ever feel close to Mary Hardy, but then chose to poke and laugh?

We've endeavored his gimmicks, they're so awful, but then we further gasped.

No,

he never should have crashed through wood now jeff's bros becomes baz claims that he's misunderstood the toxic fandom made him cry never

should have crashed through wood now he gabs on an outlet Cause those Twitter feeds that could be trending for Jim Cornet.

I was wondering how he was going to pull it.

What is happening?

I was like, what is happening?

Where did this come from?

Oh.

Well, let's go back to the mighty, mighty Stefan in Auburn, Maine.

Am I just in the breach?

Let's see if the next thing has anything to do with you.

Remember when they jumped for Dick's Fot guy?

The man that Joey would molest.

His clever comedy, he would reply.

No wonder why Jim would protest.

Joe Way

in

the knuckle locked his wood.

All right, let's just see.

I don't know what this is.

By the way, why does it always sound like he's whispering, like he's afraid he's going to be discovered in the house?

I think he's afraid he's going to be discovered in the house.

Let's see what Invisible Penis is.

You remember the song Detachable Penis, Jim?

I can't say that I do, Brian.

That's what this is.

Let's see if this has anything.

Detachable penis.

Stephan, where are you?

Come on in.

I was working a typical indie house show with all the gimmicks and comedy spots to boot.

They throw me in with the invisible man, which seemed fine at first.

Coloral motion to sort, and sure enough, when they were making choke, I realized I have a very obviously problematic slapping me in my left butt cheek.

I turn to him and he suggests, well, why on earth?

We're gonna stop invisible penis.

What the fuck?

Let's get on here.

He's two for three in awfulness.

Let's go to one more.

Let's give it a shot.

Here's the Stephen B.

News song.

Can you imagine how many Tudor's biscuit worlds they're going to have to open to earn $200 million?

But nevertheless.

Hey, I got a complaint about your Stephen P.

New plugs.

How is that?

Who's complaining?

One of the listeners wrote in: they said you're a liar.

Well, in what way?

You said the phone number is 1-877-50 Steve.

Yes.

They said you're a liar.

It's 5-0-Steve.

They dialed 5-0 Steve and it went to the wrong place.

Oh, goddammit!

Steve!

Call him!

Whoa, he's been.

Saying his competition, defense attorneys.

Call him!

Whoa, pay

house!

Faces of the meat cross upon them, he will count out!

Call him

restitution!

he can have compensations for your pain

877-50

Steve

507-8383 or just 5-0-STEV

on the ladder was implied.

All right, you know, I never was a big fan of Pearl Jam to begin with.

Let alone whatever this is.

The email says Christmas in July.

Get the fuck out of here.

Thank you.

It all remains.

Hey,

some people around the world don't have a bountiful Christmas.

So it could be considered Christmas in Cambodia.

All right.

One more here.

This is from.

This was sent to Corney DriveThru at gmail.com from HashlipsHarryHughes,

a longtime listener of the show, a new Stephen P.

New Jingle.

Let's give this a shot.

877 Famous D, a number to call for justice and money.

Oh, okay, that was rather okay.

There you go.

Let's hear it one more time.

877 FIMOSD,

a number to call for justice and money.

For justice and money.

That's what he's saying there.

All right.

Well, thank you, Hashlips.

Hash lips, Harry.

If that is indeed your real name.

Thank you from me.

And thank you from Brian.

And thank you from Steve.

And

even if he's not here right now on the show.

Once again, send your songs, Corney DriveThru at gmail.com.

Of course, Jim, if you do need to sue, we know someone they could talk to.

Oh, goddamn.

You just played the goddamn song again.

It's got the number.

it's got the name everything steve and

87750 steve that's it

all right well with that the drive-through is closed

i went too long

you just now figuring that out of course we'll be back on the gym

bicycle bell again We'll be back on the Jim Cornette Experience where you find your favorite podcast in a few days.

Next week here in the drive-thru, guest the program will return.

So stay tuned for that.

Of course, go through the archive, patreon.com slash cornet.

$5 a month gets you access to the archive going back to 2013.

Patreon.com slash Cornette.

The official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Just go to YouTube and search for Jim Cornette.

It'll come right up.

Full episodes, clips of the episodes, omnibus collection, and so much more.

Omnibus collections.

There are multiple ones.

and so much more.

More than one in the plurality.

The official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

channel speaking of the plurality there are plenty of things to check out and buy at jimcornet.com cornets collectibles there certainly are and as a matter of fact brand new i forgot to mention this earlier in the program and i'll i'll hit it uh again for the folks who may have missed it now that if i why am i talking to you if you're missing it now you're not listening There's a brand new rookie year 8x10 color photo out of me in my beautiful white jacket and gimmick jewelry that I I had taken six months into the business.

We've got a limited number of those.

I think there's 90-something.

Another thing we found in the vault, and those are on sale right now and can be personally inscribed along with all the other fine, fine articles of merchandise at jimcornet.com.

That's right at jimcornet.com.

Of course.

That's what I just said.

The drive-through is brought to you by the law office of Stephen Pinu, 877-50 Steve.

Get even with Stephen, newlawoffice.com.

Don't forget, if you like the drive-thru, support the drive-thru.

get a t-shirt, arcadianvanguard.com, or just go to the shop app and look for Jim Cornette, or just go to YouTube, look under any video for some great artwork from Travis Eckle, and of course, the drive-thru logo.

Don't forget the wrestling news each and every day.

Wherever you are, get your wrestling news with that opinion, without paywall, with just the news from the wrestlingnews.com, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

But until next week on the drive-thru, and of course, in a few days, on the experience for Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian last,

Talio.

Ouch.