Episode 399: Jim Reviews WWE Night Of Champions

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There we go.

Hello again, friends.

And you are our friends.

And welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's drive-through on a nice summer's day,

right here or right there, wherever you are.

I'm your host, the great Brian Last.

We have a trip around the world today and your questions with this man, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr.

Jim Cornette.

How do you know it's a nice day?

Could be a shitty day where some people are.

Some people could be hunkered down in the goddamn tornado bunkers.

And you never know.

They could be in the middle of a potato famine.

You never know what's going on.

You don't just make blanket statements, assuming everybody around the world is just as bippy and cheery as you are.

That started out sounding like a funeral and ended up sounding like a soundtrack to the chipmunks go to Japan.

I'm working on the world is issue.

I'm working on my silent film, Sai.

I've been working on different emotions.

You should work more on being silent.

How about dim apples?

You like apples?

How about dim apples?

I'm going to tell you what here, just right now today, I'm in no mood to brook any tomfoolery, to quote the great Luthes.

about anything here today because

we're going to be serious here.

I gave you some homework.

I gave you some homework when we talked last.

I said, make sure you see, did you watch

the General Lee jump the fountain in Somerset, Kentucky?

Oh, no, I actually didn't.

I forgot about that.

Oh, you know, you know, good,

sorry, sack of.

fertilizer you.

I think the thing that triggered the conversation about that specific thing, that was stuck on my mind.

So I kind of went down that road instead of the road of

the frivolous fun of whatever it is.

What in the world are you?

Well, the road, all roads lead to Somerset, Kentucky when the General Lee is.

No, you got to Google it right now.

I want to get your live on-air reaction.

Hold on.

Because ladies and gentlemen, they had a big fair, a festival of some description down in Somerset, Kentucky.

And as part of the festivities,

They blocked off the entire main street down through town for it looked like several blocks and put concrete barricades up in front of the businesses.

And had General Lee

drive at a high rate of speed down Main Street or whatever and jump the goddamn fountain in the town square and then land on the other side.

A semblance of landing.

Have you found this yet, Mr.

Last?

I have indeed found it.

Hold on, I'll give you some background audio if that proves it.

Is that a blue fountain?

Yes!

They run all out.

Oh!

Oh, let me see from this angle.

Yeah.

It's a compilation of different angles that this was filmed at.

All right, I think I've gotten the gist of this.

The general lead.

Yes.

Not Daisy Duke, but generally.

The fountain was all blue and everything, and he goes through the top of the fountain and it just blitzes the water everywhere.

And people were all, oh!

ho

and then he landed on the other side and then one of the besides one of the doors falling off he skidded to the left and ended up in one of those concrete barriers before he went into

aunt fanny's thrift store and sunday shop

uh but that's uh see that's the way you do it down in in kentucky down in eastern kentucky there

Yes, you honor the Dukes of Hazard.

Yes,

I just said the General Lee.

I assume everybody know that's the that's the car from the Dukes of Hazard.

But in the TV show, it was Hazard with two Zs, and Hazard, Kentucky only has one Z.

And I guarantee you, back in those days, what was the blonde Duke's name?

The blonde one?

Not Tom Wopat, the other one.

The other guy, if he'd have walked down the street in Hazard, Kentucky back in them days, somebody would have

done him inappropriate things to him that we're not allowed to talk about on the air at this particular time in society you heard it from kentucky's biggest ambassador right here some nice right here i'll tell you what he wouldn't have made it a sent you just that he had all of his teeth do you remember what triggered this conversation what i referenced earlier what triggered us talking about the general lee off just to get you off of play in the organ no um

I just mentioned it because I just seen the clip.

It was Kentucky News because I told you it was a Kentucky news story and and you said, Oh, was it the General Lee?

And I said, That's right.

It's about a loving couple that apparently was holding hands when the tornado hit and their arms got ripped off.

Yes.

And that was went in a completely different direction than where I was going with this fun

fountain jumping story of a Confederate sports car.

But yeah, and I said, Well, that had to be down in Laurel County.

And you looked it up, London.

Yeah, there you go.

That was where they had the big one last month that killed 17 people.

The General Lee thing, is that like when WrestleMania comes to Vegas, all the wrestling conventions and all the vendors show up?

I give your cell Dukes of Hazard merch.

Do you have to be there?

Oh, yes.

I mean, it's a big, it's a, it's a happening.

Not only, see, you're, you're, you got worlds intersecting.

You got the

the car fans, because that's one of the classic cars, you know, with the Batmobile and whatever the fuck else is at these shows.

You got the General Lee, and then you've you've got the classic TV fans, you know, 70s and 80s Dukes of Hazard TV fans, and then you've got

rednecks of all descriptions,

and they all converge and have the,

you know, the General Lee signs autographs.

Actually,

what they do is they lay down for 50 bucks.

They lay down in front of it, and the guy runs over them to leave tire tracks.

See, I'd be trying to, if I was promoting that event, I would be trying to do some interesting things like get Lawler with his Batmobile and have a race.

Oh, I don't know if

this fucking General Lee that jumped the goddamn fountain, it looked like it could go.

I don't know if Lawler's Batmobile was for go or for show.

He drove it down the goddamn,

I was at a comic-con with him one time in Memphis, and he drove it from his house,

wherever the fuck it was.

I'm trying to think think where the convention was.

Anyway, it was a ballroom and a convention area at a hotel in suburban Memphis.

And he drove the Batmobile, he and his significant other at the time

may still be, I don't know what his romantic, you know, I'm not trying to break him up on the air.

I don't know what his status is these days, but the point being, they're in the fucking Batmobile, it doesn't have license plates on it.

And the fucking cops see a goddamn Batmobile with no license plates and pull him over, but then they see it's Lawler and they gave him a goddamn police escort the rest of the way to the comic convention, where I was two

booths down from him.

And he's, he's sitting beside the Batmobile on the floor of the thing.

And the Batmobile plays

the Batman theme song.

Over and over, like every minute and a half, it loops again.

Yeah, it's a short song.

And it's cool.

Well, yeah, but it's cool when you're walking by it and you're stopping to look and take pictures.

But when you're sitting there for three hours, I'm like, Jesus Christ, king, please turn that thing off for 10 minutes.

All right, well, this has been Happy Talk.

Well, no, come to think of it with automobiles going on,

automobiles going on.

I haven't told you my incredible, it's a small world

story

about black beauty.

My

My poor beleaguered,

you're a grown adult, reasonable, financially responsible, adult person with a family.

So you can tell me that I'm right.

Now, I've mentioned that Black Beauty has,

well, it's now, it's a little over 303,000 miles on it.

And I'd said back in 2019 that when it got to 300,000, because it was like a 298.5 then, I was going to get a new one.

It's the last vehicle I'd ever have to buy, right?

But then, since then, I average now, Brian, 35 miles a week driving.

And it's taken me the last six years to get the next 5,000 miles.

So I would be fiscally irresponsible if I bought a new vehicle or even a used vehicle at the prices these days

just to drive 35 miles a week, wouldn't I?

Ask your question again.

I would be fiscally irresponsible to buy a new vehicle just to drive 35 miles a week.

Well, it depends on the condition of your car and how easy it's going to be to keep it in shape going forward.

Well,

the thing that we don't know about that yet.

Because here's the thing is

there's cosmetic issues like the door handle on the inside of the driver's door is broke off.

So I got to roll the window down and reach outside to open a door.

So people can't escape.

Okay, that's one.

What else?

And Will and

Willa, the handle on the other side is a little loose, too, to be honest with you.

And

the air conditioning and heat, the fan has been stuck on high for about the past four years, but it doesn't, in the wintertime, it doesn't matter, but in summertime, the air conditioning doesn't really cool.

So it's just kind of blowing the hot air at you.

And there's holes rusted in the bottoms of both of the front driver and passenger doors.

And there's a couple of sensors that don't work anymore.

And,

you know, just a variety of cosmetic issues.

But since I only drive, and I've got to drive the 35 miles a week, because within

three miles of the castle here, you've got the bank, the post office, the dry cleaners, the Paul's market, the grocery store, the UPS place.

You know, those, and I like it.

This weekend, I went over and picked up some furniture for the in-laws.

I can stick it right in the back of this giant thing.

It's very useful around the area.

But I can't see

paying tens of thousands of dollars for anything to replace it at this point.

So, but as it's gotten hot weather,

there's a little bit of an oil leak.

And also, it's shuddering a little bit on the acceleration.

And there's a matter of this horrible hot burnt rubber stench and fucking white smoke coming out from behind the front wheel

as of

last week when it got real hot.

And so I'm thinking, well, something might be wrong

because that didn't, you know, that didn't used to do that.

So I'm going to, I called

yesterday

and was going to take it into the place that I had the service done on it last year.

They fixed it right up.

It was just running like a speckled pup.

And they

have closed down.

They are gone.

They're gone.

And so I'm like, what the fuck?

So I look on the internet

to an automotive repair place close to me and I pick the one at the top

and I call it, right?

And the guy answers and I said, yes, sir.

I said, I've got a Ford expedition expedition with really high mileage.

It's got a few issues going on.

And he said, is this Jim?

Who is this?

Hey, this is Tyler.

I used to work over at the other place.

And I used to,

I said, you ain't, they ain't in business anymore.

Oh, no, I'm over here now.

They went out of business.

A big.

multinational corporation bought their chain, regional chain or whatever, and closed about 60 of the stores.

And but he's over here at this bigger, nicer, newer place now.

And I

buzzed right over there and I've dropped it off, and he's now addressing the issue.

So, what is the chance of that?

Yeah, everyone needs a David Putty.

You're lucky.

I've been to this previous place just the last two summers because it's not like I get regular maintenance driving that few miles.

I've, you know, but he was there.

So, yeah, it's this Jim?

I'm like, what the fuck is going on here?

So it's a small world.

I think you need a new car.

But no, what the, why?

What year is it?

What year is your car?

It's a 2007 Ford expedition.

It's going to be 20 years old in a couple of years.

Well,

what it's, you know, are you an ageist?

Are you discriminating against the aged?

If it's still running over time, when it comes to functional automobiles, yes, yes, I am.

If I can get it not to have a hot, burning stench and white smoke coming out from behind the front

tire, you don't even have to worry about the torture vehicle things, like the no-door handle that works and the hot air that shoots out of the rusted holes.

Well, no, now, you know, I've got used to if I ride in Stacy's car,

if I ride in Stacey's car to open the door, I start to roll the window down to reach out because it's been a couple of years.

I've got used to it now.

But there's no sense.

Roll the window down.

There's another, see, there's another whole thing.

Man,

I would hate to be a prostitute in Louisville, like waiting on the street for someone to give them a ride.

Oh, come on.

They're in for trouble.

I have a sign on the dashboard that says, really, this car is just fucked up.

But no, there's no sense just throwing your money away, Brian, on frivolous things like cars.

You know, I just need something that will haul shit around the neighborhood here.

And you want size.

You don't want to be in a sedan.

yeah that's right because size matters baby no but you don't want to be in a sedan you want to be high up off the ground you're getting used to that i want to be high

oh boy i want to be

um i've got yes because think about this i've driven 303 400 miles since 2007 all in that vehicle If I sit in Stacy's car, which is the Jeep thing that's kind of a mini SUV,

or God bless America, in a regular car, I feel like a roller skate is sitting underneath me going down the interstate.

It's very disconcerting because that's the only vehicle that I've operated for all this time.

Had you ever driven a vehicle?

Have you ever had you ever driven a truck before?

Before you had a truck, had you ever driven one?

Um, I didn't.

When years ago, when I was on the road, I didn't like large vehicles because they were so unwieldy.

And but think, think about this.

You had fewer choices back in the old day.

Bubba had a, what was 40 coniline vans.

But goddamn, that thing was like driving a refrigerator down the fucking highway, right?

If you got up any speed and it was not in the best repair either.

And Bobby had one of those goddamn, in Louisiana in 1984, he had a 76 Lincoln that those things you used to have to pay three parking meters.

They were so fucking long.

And then, or you got a pickup truck.

A lot of the guys got a customized van.

You couldn't take a pickup truck on the road.

That was a big vehicle, but there weren't these SUVs that are kind of like the middle ground between light and shadow.

So I always just had something that got good gas mileage because I've never owned a vehicle since I've been in the wrestling business that I put under 175,000 miles on.

So,

but then

the guy over in Lexington that was the dealer to the stars over at Paul Miller Ford, Donnie P,

he got me to get a Lincoln Navigator.

And I liked that you could haul things and it was very comfortable and blah, blah, blah.

But it got brain damaged.

Actually, that is the one vehicle I didn't put 100 and whatever 1,000 miles on.

It got brain damage, and I traded it in and got this one.

Its computer brain couldn't function properly, and it was not

telling the right, giving the right signals to the fucking engine.

See, that's the other thing.

Even if you got a new car,

as much as I think once you adapted, you would like modern conveniences, all mod-cons.

But no, I don't have to

to a screen, to everything kind of being smart now in the car, no matter what you got.

No, I'm not driving anything smarter than I am.

I've driven 1.3 million miles or whatever it was we figured out at one point successfully so far.

I'm not letting the car take over, but no, Stacey's car has a thing where it'll break if it...

If it thinks you haven't broken properly, it'll broke for you or swerve or beep or honk or fucking talk to you.

It says, get out of the way, you dumb shit.

It honks?

I've never heard of a car that does that.

It does all kinds of shit.

It makes me a nervous wreck.

No, I'll not be having any of that.

I want the car will do what I tell the car to do.

I am the pilot.

It is my tool.

Well, what are you going to do?

Speaking of tools, how are you?

What are you going to do when your plane is decommissioned, Mr.

Pilot?

Well, that's how I'm going to stay on the ground.

You're going to get a bicycle?

I'm going to, I'm, no.

Everything's within three miles of your house.

You said it.

Just get a bicycle with a basket.

No, fuck you.

What do you think I am?

Margaret Hamilton?

Goddamn.

Plenty of other people ride around on their bicycles with their baskets.

I am going to.

I am going to fix the engine or the Framostat or whatever's going on in Black Beauty, and it will will continue to carry me around at the rate of 35 miles a week for the next several years until I'm too old and shriveled to go out and do these things I do all the time.

And they have no idea what the burnt rubber smell or the white smoke is?

Well, I haven't heard back yet.

I'm waiting to hear back now.

They're going to take it out now that it's getting hot here and it stopped raining.

See if it rains, it cools it off.

You need a good, hot, sunny, bright, miserable fucking day with the heat beating down and then drive it in some traffic for a while and then

it

starts stinking.

All right.

Well, like this show.

Speaking of stinking, Jim.

Yeah.

What do you got?

We got a great show.

We got lots of questions.

We got a Saudi Arabia review.

Hey, you know what?

We also want to say Robert Foreman.

From Lake Arthur, Louisiana, sent us a nice email.

He's had some health issues the last quite a while, and we hope he feels better.

And Robert, we love you.

We want to say that and get that here at the top of the program before anything gets lost.

Yeah, feel better, and the show will get better, Robert.

Well,

you know, he was already liking it.

See, now you've pointed out shit to him he hadn't noticed before.

How can he not notice?

No.

Feel better, Robert.

And the show really will get better.

And of course, that will happen right after we tell you about about wonderful things at jimcornet.com, Cornett's Collectibles.

Well, the wonderful thing is that we're shipping quickly.

Hotchkiss is back full speed now, whether it's the t-shirts, the books, the pictures, the cult of cornet membership certificates, of course, the Midnight Express and the Jim Cornette action figures and so much more at jimcornet.com.

Stay tuned.

Plans are already being made for a wonderful Christmas for the Cult of Cornet out there that are merchandise and memorabilia collectors.

I'll just give that little tease there.

But jimcornet.com right now, buy the stuff we have now

because once we get rid of this stuff, we ain't going to have this stuff anymore.

We're going to get new stuff.

And then the stuff that is already collectibles will become rare collectibles.

So get it now.

And then we'll buy it back and resell it for more money.

Oh, a buyback program.

This is getting interesting.

Yeah.

See, I rethought the corny bucks thing.

Well, that's it.

I figure I'll I'll just, what I'll do

is I'll wait until this shit's really valuable, and then I'll go to everybody and buy it back for the same thing that I sold it to them for, and then I'll resell it for more money.

All right.

Once again, Continental on sale, whoever wants to buy this territory.

But, Jim, let's move on here with the show.

And because we have a ton of Saudi Arabia news.

Oh, and by the way, on the topic of merch, I should say drive-through shirts, corny shirts, Travis Eckle Artwork shirts, arcadiavanguard.com, or on the shop app,

or of course, every video on YouTube.

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Why don't we start with some from the files here before we go to Saudi Arabia?

And I know we've been doing Paul Heyman.

Now, wait a minute.

No, you're doing Paul Heyman.

What I meant to say is I know we've been.

What did he write to you, Jim?

That night with you was so special.

Oh, come on now.

He said, thank you for one of the greatest nights of my life, but it was at Sabatino's.

So, you know, I'll wait for you at the tunnel.

I think that's what it said.

No, he did not say that.

He did not say there was nothing about a tunnel involved.

It was behind a dumpster, but we're not going there either.

No, not today.

But we will return to the Paul Heyman file, but we're going to take a break and visit a different file.

I bumped into one that was also surprisingly large,

like the Paul Heyman file.

And let me grab this here.

Shockingly big file.

Jim, I have in my hand.

And of course, by the way, you didn't even mention this is from the files of the wrestling news that are held and curated by Arcadian Vanguard.

That is correct.

Everything that was a part of the collection of the wrestling news, Pro Wrestling Enterprises, Wrestling Review, The Rings Wrestling, Major League Wrestling Programs, and various other publications.

And this is the Gory Guerrero file.

Oh, no.

Oh, yes.

No, he was a fine man.

No, I just said, oh, no, that's a man.

I would have never picked that name out at a million years.

I would have even thought he had a large file, but apparently it's ginormous.

Well, let me get through.

There's a lot of pictures of the family members, the various family members.

Here's an original piece of artwork.

Gory Guerrero, Mexico's contribution to the wrestling world, has made himself quite a name with his cyclonic and aggressive style.

Wrestling knowledge unlimited.

And there's some artwork there.

Maybe we'll post that one after the fact.

I'm trying to get this in correspondence.

Lots and lots of family pictures.

A whole bunch of pictures.

Now, what era?

Everything.

Seemingly.

Everything.

Seemingly Gorey's career and everything from the start of the career of his children.

I don't know if there's too much of Eddie Guerrero here.

I'll have to check.

Again, this is a gigantic.

Here's, this is a Jim Cornette photo of Hector.

Yeah, Hector Guerrero, photo by Jim Cornette.

what'd you think of hector in uh mexico what'd you think of hector in memphis in what 81?

no 79.

oh 79 he was 79 he was tremendous because here's the thing

hector obviously guerro was well versed in the lucha style but he also could work with Americans and incorporate lucha into the American style so that it didn't come off

caca.

And of course, now, bear in mind, this was 1979, so both Mexican and American wrestling looked a lot more legitimate then.

But it was because he had a completely different style.

He was doing the flying head scissors, but instead of the Ricky and Robert Gibson Americanized flying head scissors, he was doing the ankle.

where they would jump up and he'd fucking catch the guy's head with his ankles and fucking spin and take him down.

And the

reverse fucking presses where he'd reverse direction in midair and the big flying leg drops and all his shit.

And it was exciting because he was the one guy on the card doing that style.

And as a

smaller,

he was still, he was six feet tall, but he was thin.

But as a smaller baby face,

Doing the flying, it made sense.

The bigger heels couldn't deal with it.

And he could sell his ass off properly and get fucking heat on the heel and then make a fiery comeback.

He was really good.

And the fans loved him because they hadn't seen that

type of work.

Of course, the famous angle where Austin Idol was the Mente Negro produced the famous line from Lance Russell: Hector, tell him in Mexican to get out of here.

Yeah, yeah, the no-good son of a guy.

I have a letter here to Norman Keitzer when he was still in New York.

This is from International City Wrestling Club, Wrestling Lucha Libre, El Paso, Texas,

June 11th, 1974.

Of course, we should mention Gory Guerrero was the promoter in El Paso by this time.

That's right.

Actually,

the actual letter, unlike the letterhead

on the envelope, the letter says Guerrero Resources Inc.

under Wrestling Lucha Libre.

Dear Mr.

Keitzer, received the magazines and have sold some, and look forward to perhaps being able to build the sales up.

In reference as to who we would like to see in the Western Edition here in El Paso, the popular boys are Ricky Romero, Dory Funk Jr., and the Kozak Brothers.

There are also two very good Mexican lady wrestlers, which I will make an effort to furnish you copy and pictures in the near future, which might be more than worthwhile considering for your publication, also.

Yeah, that is the way it says that.

Yes.

Enclosed is some information which I thought you would like to have.

Didn't know if you had this particular information in your files or not.

Anytime I could be of assistance, don't hesitate to ask.

Sincerely, Salvador Guerrero Jr., Gore Guerrero.

And it's signed and he attached from a magazine, and I'm not sure which one, the history of the world's junior heavyweight championship by Leroy McGurk.

And it says it's written in apparently pencil here.

Found the missing link to the world's light heavyweight championship.

On next page, seem it later became the junior heavyweight until the tournament in Chicago.

I am sure Leroy McGurk would know more about it.

So I guess there was some question about the

title and who had it and and what claim people had i mean obviously the picture is here rip kirby john swensky varn gagne leroy mcgurk danny mcshane baron leone

the junior heavyweight title did have a weird history in terms of its placement on the card and the people who had it at a certain point they stopped being elevated to anything past that point

well

there was more legitimate call for a world junior heavyweight champion in the

40s and 50s and some even into the 60s, because of Danny Hodge.

I mean, he was a special case.

He carried it for all of the 60s for the most part, and dropped it for a month to Sputnik Monroe in Oklahoma to win it back.

And Sputnik was scared to fucking death.

He didn't want it because he didn't want Danny to beat him up trying to get it back.

But there were junior heavyweight territories.

Tennessee was one.

They used

at one point, Nick Gulis and Roy Welch used the

World Junior heavyweight title,

and even in the pre-TV days, as their

holy grail championship rather than the World Heavyweight title, because it was a

lighter or junior heavyweight territory, and some of the other territories in the South were like that.

But,

you know, except for Hodge, like I say, you know, in the 60s, really it had

kind of gone by the wayside.

In the early 70s, Ken Mantel,

I can't believe the same balding, pudgy, sad, beagle-faced motherfucker that was my booker in 1985, was the world junior heavyweight wrestling champion in 1975.

But

it wasn't drawing any money, and it would be featured,

you know, if a

popular

Hispanic star in California was going to go for it, or

Nick and Roy would still

feature a World Junior heavyweight title match every once in a while, but for the most part, it was neh

some photos here just looking at the captions at the back, or on the back of these, I should say.

Chavo Guerrero gets tangled up in the ropes after a Dory Funk attack.

Who Chavo pinned?

And the photos by Michael Eino.

But instead of like a C with a circle for copyright, it has an R circled.

I guess it's restricted use.

Here's another photo.

Possibly ripped off.

Balderis Bullring, September 3rd, 1967, Juarez, Mexico.

Gorey Guerrero with a vicious knee lift that sends the medic number one reeling.

Photo by Bill Mobley, Amarillo, Texas.

Oh.

Yeah, a lot of those old 60s photos are from Bill Mobley.

Never met the gentleman, but I recognize the name.

And here, you know, once again, here's another letter from Gorey to Norm Keitzer going over this history.

May 8th, 74.

Dear Mr.

Keitzer, I'm enclosing a complete history of the light heavyweight championship belt to the best of my knowledge.

Also, I'm answering your questions as honestly and as impartially as to help you along with the story that I appreciate very much.

Here are the questions.

I know that you still wrestle occasionally, but do you still today claim to be the world's light heavyweight champion?

Yes, I still wrestle, and I still claim the championship.

I promote in El Paso and Juarez, Mexico at the same time.

And it's here that I mostly defend my title.

So let's stop there.

We're talking about the light heavyweight championship.

Here's Gory Guerrero saying he's the champion at 74, at least in his towns.

Well, now, the light heavyweight and the junior heavyweight title was two different things.

And

the light heavyweight championship

had been

one of the traditional belts in Mexico because they all had small, they had more weight classes that were actually pushed, had stars in them.

And

I don't know what their situation was with the light heavyweight title, but maybe with the documents that he had there, he's trying to draw some type of lineage

to the light heavyweight title, or at least the one he claimed and the junior heavyweight title in the States, or whatever.

But it wasn't

uncommon for a lot of the big stars in Lucha Libre to

have a belt.

And didn't Moscaris just keep some kind of belt for like decades?

Was it Eddie Einhorn?

It might have been that.

Yeah, I think it was.

He just said, fuck it, I'll just keep it because I never lost it.

They would keep the the belt if they never happened to lose it.

Or even if they did happen to lose it, but not a lot of people heard about it.

They just claim to still be the champion.

And he's defending it into the two towns he promotes.

So, you know,

I don't know that it was a hot national and international championship at that point.

Question two.

Again, these are written questions that were submitted to Gory Guerrero.

It is not myself, but the National Wrestling Alliance that recognizes the claim of the title of Ray Mendoza.

Since your promotions are under the banner of the NWA, do you recognize Mendoza?

The answer?

Definitely no.

I will not recognize anybody until I'm defeated in the ring for the belt.

In one of the two towns that I've promoted.

Question three,

would you like to wrestle Mendoza for the title, his claim against yours, with the winner becoming undisputed champion.

Assuming that, Mendoza would sign for such a match, and the percentage were right for both of you.

The answer?

Yes, I am sure Mendoza would sign, but the wrestling promoter in Mexico City, Mr.

Salvador Ludaroth Jr.,

would not let him.

In the 1971 NWA Convention in Mexico City, With the hopes of ridding of the problem for promotional purposes, I offered to do so and was turned down.

I must confess that before the title stripping in 1966, they had made a similar offer to do in 1963.

I then started my promotions here and the contract was not direct, so I turned it down.

I came in through the wrestlers union and I was not getting along with them at that time.

Now, and by the way, he's not bullshitting in Mexico they have or they had at one time.

I guess they still have a wrestlers union.

And some of the commissions actually treat,

or treated, again, the business legitimately at that point.

So there was all kinds of shit you could do.

And again, talking about these issues, the NWA convention in Mexico City,

he was stripped of the title.

He was willing to unify it or have a big champion versus champion or claim versus claim match and Salvador Ludaroff.

That's CML,

but he turned it down.

Well, and

that's like a even more than the United States, there was always guys that when they were on the outs with a promoter, I ain't gonna book that son of a bitch, right?

But no one more.

They carry it.

Well, yeah, they carry it to this day that

one of their wrestlers can't work on a show where another of the company wrestlers is on and all this stuff and everything.

So they blackball people heavy down here.

The next question: You enclosed a list of championship matches in which you defended the title from 1960 to 1967.

Have you defended the belt you hold since then?

The answer?

Yes, four times more, and getting ready for another title defense this month.

Four times in seven years?

The next question?

I believe you have two sons who are professional wrestlers.

Though I am not sure of this, would you please include some photos of them and also any short information so I can include a mention in the story?

I have a family of six, is the answer: four boys and two girls.

Three of my boys are wrestling professionally.

I'm including a picture of each separately with their respective school record.

So, this is early before anyone really knew about all the kids.

Well, now,

what date did you say it was?

74?

74.

It is May 8th, 74.

When did Shabo

first start

getting attention attention in LA?

Was it 75?

Because by 76, he was over there.

So it must be 75.

And Mondo followed him to L.A.,

or I don't mean followed him, but came afterwards.

Hector was younger, so this would have been right about the year before anybody knew

really nationally or widely who the Guerreros were.

But then, you know, Chavo was on

Georgia TV and they spread quickly.

The next question:

As a promoter, are you a member of the National Wrestling Alliance or associated with an NWA booking office?

From the wrestlers on the cards, I assume you work with the Amarillo booking office.

Here's the answer: I am not a member of the NWA.

That's because I do not have a booking office, but work with the booking office in Amarillo.

The Funk Boys,

that's actually the whole sentence, the Funk Boys.

The Juarez promotion is completely independent from the El Paso office.

And there I am supposed to be bucking Ludaroth,

and he is a member of the Alliance.

So let's stop there.

Him running any town in Mexico is him bucking Salvador Ludaroth.

Yeah, well, and El Paso, for anybody not familiar with Texas geography, is in West Texas, about as far West Texas as you can get.

And it's actually a bigger city than either Amarillo or Lubbock, at least it used to be.

And it was when we were out there in 85,

when even when Amarillo and Lubbock were kind of like, blah, well, we did $8,000 or $12,000, you go to El Paso, it's $30,000 at $6 and $8 tickets or whatever.

So

that was, since Gory Guerrero, that was his hometown, he had the ends and could get favorable rates on things or the building or the TV or whatever the case.

He was the local promoter for

world class in that city.

But then

world class didn't run anything in Mexico.

So he's jumping over to Juarez and

using completely different talent that were lucha guys exclusively.

But he's got the ends in that building, in that town also for the building and whatever.

So he can promote that.

He's doing his own thing.

The final question here: At this time, in 1974, if you do not seek a match with Mendoza, how do you think the situation of the world's light heavyweight championship should be settled?

The answer: I do seek a match with Mendoza, but I doubt it will come about.

I am of the firm belief that championships are won and lost in the ring and not because of promotional differences.

I have offered to settle the whole thing under their conditions, but the response has been negative.

I do confess that if an offer would be made now, I would let my promotional desires influence me.

I would like them to be recognized and dealt with as far as Mexico City is concerned.

I hope you find all this material useful in preparing the story on the light heavyweight championship belt.

If I may be of any other service to you, please feel free to call on on me in regards to this or any other matter.

Thanking you again.

I am, yours truly, Salvador Gore Guerrero.

How old was he at that point in 1974?

Well, that's the thing.

When I said, you know, he was saying he was still the champion, you know, in 74.

I know he was still wrestling.

A lot of guys never retire, but, you know, he was up there.

I mean, he was El Santo's partner years and years earlier.

Well, yeah, but I mean, like, the Sheik had the U.S.

belt until forever.

So, but again, he was defending it on, you know, his own shows and or then, you know, whoever would book him, but he wasn't about to lose it.

But he was born in 21.

So he was 53

at that point in time and apparently on the outs with,

you know, the office, as they say.

And so that's,

I think when Adrian Street,

because he got sideways sideways with

joint promotions, and he started doing independent shit, which is why he ended up moving to the States.

But

I think he had kept some kind of belt or championship or was still the champion and hadn't dropped it or whatever.

And it happens, especially in international wrestling and in the older days where there wasn't

as much control over the

particular promotions championship as

happened because everybody kept doing this shit.

Here's the bios he sent of his children: Sal Chavo Guerrero,

four-year varsity letterman in high school, team champion in 1967.

1969 to 1971, two-year letterman in college, UTEP.

1968, third place in Mexico Olympic tryouts.

I didn't know that.

Only El Pasoan to make the varsity team in college.

1972 to 1974, Jefferson High School coach in wrestling and football, football district champs, wrestling district champs.

In two years, have developed the team to sixth place in the state of Texas in wrestling.

His high school wrestling record 38-9 and 1.

College record 24-and-4.

Armando Guerrero, Mondo, 67 city champs by team,

68 city champion, 120-pound weight division, captain of the wrestling team for two years,

68-69, have four second-place medals and one first-place medal.

Three years of judo, ranked as a first-degree purple belt, Shotokan in Mexico.

Summer of 68 participated in the juvenile games.

Wagos.

They were just so silly.

Wuegos Juveniles held in Veracruz, Mexico, was eliminated.

And also this Hector here, I won't go through everything.

A lot of the same stuff.

Two years judo orange belt, four years of football.

So this is early in everyone's career.

And again, the promoter is now in touch with the person like we've dealt with with previous episodes of From the Files, selling him programs, selling him magazines, things he he could sell at the newsstand.

And,

you know, the West edition

that Norm Keitzer had referenced in the letter was they did NWA East, which covered the Carolinas and the Tennessee Territory and Georgia and Florida, but NWA West was for the

Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana.

Where's the state I'm searching for?

Missouri, McGurk, Missouri and Arkansas, that area, and out into West Texas.

And they had a separate edition trying to feature those wrestlers, especially with them on the cover, so they could sell more magazines.

I have here another letter.

This is part of an envelope with a bunch of stuff.

This is slightly before the previous thing I read, but I guess I may clarify some of it.

March 12, 74.

Dear Mr.

Keitzer, I received your request this past week, and I hope that the information I have will be of value to you.

As a courtesy to you, I phoned Mexico City, Mexico in your behalf.

Ray Mendoza is still champion.

El Solitario has not regained the title.

As a point of interest, which I believe you are not aware of, is that I possess the original, that's in caps,

light heavyweight World's Championship Belt.

I won this championship belt on July 29th, 1960, in Mexico City from Ray Mendoza.

I have today this belt in my possession.

Now, wait a minute.

Hold on.

Stop the presses for a second.

He won the, this is 1974.

He won the belt in 1960 from the guy that currently has the belt now.

That currently has the championship now, I guess.

Well, you know what I'm saying.

Yes.

Well, boy, talk about stale at the top of the card, but go ahead.

I have today this belt in my possession because I refuse to defend my championship belt exclusively in Mexico.

That's in caps exclusively.

The reason for this was that the conditions and percentages were not compatible.

As a result of my action, I was stripped of the belt and the title without any notice.

The NWA, in parentheses, Mexico City, created another belt and title to be available for future competitions.

I have enclosed documents and photos supporting my statements.

I have other documents, should you desire them, should you wish to write an article on this in caps, injustice!

Injustice!

So it sounds like that he

said the percentages weren't right.

He wasn't making any money in Mexico with this belt, but Gory Guerrero had runs in Texas and different places in the United States.

I don't know his career verbatim off the top of my head, but it sounds like he went and wasn't working for them in Mexico when he had a better fucking spot.

And they said, fuck it, and stripped him of the belt.

Is that what it sounds like to you?

Do you know that no matter where you might look, that there is no record of my having won this light heavyweight championship of the world?

I thought that since you asked about the championship record, that this might be of special interest to you for a feature article.

I am most willing to cooperate with you completely on the facts, pictures, or other documents you may desire.

Yours in wrestling, Sal Gorey Guerrero.

And with this package

appears to be copies of handwritten notes of his matches.

Good lord.

Al Cache, Juarez, Mexico, Medic, Kozak.

There appear to be photocopies from the mid-70s about him winning the title.

Again, more.

It appears to be his notes.

And then there's just copies of other letters.

Here's a copy of a letter from Salvador Ludarolf, but it's in Spanish, so I'm not going to try.

He has lots of like official documents he's attached here.

Here's a copy of a telegram in Spanish about the whole thing.

Is there anything in English here?

Well, you know, if we could find somebody that could interpret this, we might could get to the bottom of this long-stirring controversy about whether or not Gory Guerrero Guerrero got screwed out of the light heavyweight title.

Here's a letter, which came first here.

This is, I'll read this one first.

September 27th, 1962, the Mexico City Commission,

Florida number 10, 20 Peso, Mexico City, DF, Mexico.

Gentlemen, at the recent convention of the National Wrestling Alliance in St.

Louis, Missouri, on August 24th and 25th, the membership has decided to vacate the light heavyweight title as recognized by our organization.

Gory Guerrero, who has held the title, has been wrestling and apparently booking wrestlers around El Paso and thus has not defended the title in Mexico City, where he originally won it.

Aha!

We felt that Salvador Ludaroth, who is a member of our organization, should have the services of the light heavyweight champion and have,

therefore, informed him, also

the promoters of Houston, in addition to

the promoters of Houston, Texas area, to begin a tournament, and the winner of the tournament will be recognized as the new light heavyweight champion by our alliance.

Signor Luderoth was unable to attend our meeting due to other businesses and had no idea that such a resolution would would be adopted, when a new champion is crowned, and if Gory Guerrero wants to challenge this champion later, we will have every right to do so.

Would like to hear from your organization as to whether you will go along with the National Wrestling Alliance in the recognition of a new light heavyweight champion.

Sincerely, Sam Mushnik, Executive Secretary, National Wrestling Alliance.

And this letter was addressed to a variety of people or who specifically.

This was addressed to the Mexico City Commission.

Ah.

Who wrote back?

Oh.

Here's a letter, and it looks like this is in English from the Commission de Box y Lucha Libre, November 13th, 1962, Sam Mushnick,

the Claridge Hotel, St.

Louis.

Sir, we acknowledge receipt of your letter of September 2 referring to your alliance's decision to vacate the light heavyweight title.

The contents of your second paragraph are absolutely incorrect.

Gory Guerrero has defended the title in Mexico City on two occasions against the former champion Ray Mendoza and against Suji Cito.

In addition,

we have gathered enough information to learn that Gory Guerrero is at present one of the most active champions,

having defended his title from all the outstanding contenders in his class.

The mere fact,

there's a red X next to this one, the mere fact that Gory Guerrero does not wish to sell his services to the Mexican promoter Ludaroth

is not, to the thinking of this commission, reason enough to deprive Gory Guerrero from his well-earned title.

The Mexico City Boxing and Wrestling Commission, as affiliate of the National Wrestling Association of America, will continue recognizing Gory Guerrero as world's light heavyweight champion as long as he is recognized by the National Wrestling Association of America, or he is defeated in the ring by a better man.

Signed Jose

Govarubia,

the wrestling, that word, I can't really make out, the Mexico City Boxing and Wrestling Commission.

But hey, you don't mess with Jose

Gargiola.

What do you think of the fact that

Sam mushtick sent this letter and that they said no

well as as i said the commissions down there were not

beholden to the promotions and they were an ind there they are i guess still possibly an independent body

and then the different promoters they would try to you know

excommunicate some of these guys, but the commission would need and they would treat it like it was a fucking shoot.

And

I'm sure that since Salvador Ludaroth was the NWA promoter in Mexico, when they had the meeting, he told Sam Mushnick, ah, this fucking guy is running his own shows.

He's booking these other guys.

He's not defending the title.

And so they stripped him in absentia

and then sent that letter and

they got it sent back to him.

That's why they're, they're,

even if a, if a,

the way that I understand it, and again, if they've changed it in modern times, you know, somebody let me know, but I think it's still the case that if you hold one of the recognized championships, the promotions themselves, at least until modern times, didn't control

a championship in Mexico.

It was whoever won it could quit one promotion and go to the next one.

And,

you know, the commission would back them up because they were still, you know, the champion,

which led to much more ill will.

That's what I'm saying.

Imagine if it was like that here.

If you jump from one company to another, you just take the title, not just the title, but the actual recognition of the championship with you.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Crazy.

Here I have a newspaper article.

July 1964, El Paso, Texas, 1840, see Wild Gory Sheik bout.

And there are a ton of photos of this bout that look like a bloody mess.

Gory Guerrero and the Sheik were licking their wounds today after staging one of the wildest wrestling matches in recent seasons.

All rules were out the window during last night's frantic test at the Coliseum, which lasted 22 minutes and got nowhere.

Both fighters were disqualified.

Hold on there.

22 minutes for the Sheik.

What do you think of that?

Well, but no, no, here's the this was several things is 1964.

Because remember in the 50s, he was athletic, he took bumps, he, you know, did business.

And also, because he's in West Texas, he's working for Dory Sr.

and that office.

And

Dory Sr.

and the sheik went so far back, he would come down and work extended periods for.

Dory Sr., even when he had just bought his own territory and blah, blah, blah.

And he would, you know, he had to work in Texas at that point.

So

he was still a guy that, you know, would get in there and work hard and not do

all of the crazy shit in five minutes.

But it's

Sputnik Monroe told us all one time, he said, yeah,

Dory Sr.

called me up and said, Sputz, can you come into

Amarillo?

I've had the chic down here for a month.

Everybody works like the sheik.

I need somebody to teach him to take bumps again.

But, But, you know, but he would put in time and do his shit.

A paid crowd of 1840, second largest of the year, had a little respite during a brawl in which both strongmen slugged one another through the ropes and drew blood.

The sheik started the illegal activities by using a small stick to open a wound on Guerrero's forehead.

But the crowd roared in approval when Guerrero snared the dubious weapon and slashed a cut across the Sheikh's head.

Referee Lee.

Referee Lee Artega had little luck controlling the match and received almost as much punishment as the principals.

Artega and both fighters were splattered by blood.

The Sheik added to Guerrero's misery by walloping his head against a ring post, then biting him on the forehead.

Referee Artega finally decided to halt the match after both fighters took turns belting him to the canvas.

The match ended without a fall, thus squelching Guerrero's hopes of a quick revenge for a previous drubbing handed out by the Sheik.

The slugfest continued after the bell until both fighters were separated by wrestlers who jumped into the ring.

The mysterious medics made it eight in a row in the other headliner by quieting gentleman Ed Sharp and hangman Bud Cody in 33 minutes.

I'm not too familiar with them.

Do you know them?

Was Ed Sharp?

I'm thinking of Ed Miller, the third Miller brother.

I don't think Ed Sharp was related to Mike and Ben, or was he?

But I don't know.

I don't know Bud.

But see, that's the thing.

is

they shot an angle.

That was an angle.

They had, it went out there, big fucking double juice, bloody the referee up, no contest, pull apart.

They probably came back the next week with a cage or, you know, a strap match or whatever the fuck.

And 1,800 people for, this was El Paso, right?

Or was it?

El Paso, July 64.

For El Paso, a couple thousand people.

In the old building, there wasn't bad.

And they probably did better for the rematch

because of that publicity.

Yeah, what do you think of doing like a match like that?

I mean, assuming they had an idea this was going to be one of their better drawing crowds of the year, this was the second best as of this point in July, Midway.

Doing a match like that,

do people feel fulfilled?

Like, okay, we've seen it, or is the reaction we need to see more of it?

No, that was

the predominant, overwhelming feeling in the building at that point in time

in wrestling was

we still want to see a fucking sheet get his ass kicked by Gorey.

So

when we watch TV next week, are they going to give Gory a stipulation where, you know, we can control this fucking guy?

Oh, it's a cage.

Yes, I want to go back.

The people went.

to see the babyface win.

And if you got them hooked in the program, they would go until the babyface won.

That's why

Jerry Lawler and Jimmy Valiant did, I think,

like 11 out of 13 weeks in Memphis and the same thing in Louisville.

And Dundee and Lawler did 9 or 10 out of 11 or 12 weeks in 77 because the people just kept coming and coming until

the babyface finally gets even.

And now they just, oh, we've seen that match already.

Well, it'd all be different fucking matches.

Every single one of them would be different with different rules and different finishes and different happenings in them.

But now people are like, oh, we've seen that match.

That defeats the whole purpose of fucking wrestling.

Well, Jim, to finish these results here, the Medics victory was made difficult by the handcuffs used to keep one of them chained to the ring post.

Other matches, Paul Harrison and Arnold Patrick Drew,

Wayne Shaddle topped Bobo Johnson and Gordo Martinez and Gordo Chihuahua teamed up to whip Kenny Mack and Kurt Von Hess.

My God, I've actually heard of Gordo Chihuahua and Kurt Von Hess.

And Kenny Mack,

was that

the guy that became one of the Dillingers with Don Fargo and got his leg shot off?

No, I'm not sure.

That's interesting.

I didn't even think of that.

Yeah, maybe.

I'm trying to think.

Kenny Mack became somebody else.

I'm trying to think.

Well, nevertheless.

Yeah, you can see it wasn't really an all-star card.

They were carrying the weight up top were Gorey and Sheik.

Yeah, it didn't sound like it was the talent being booked out of Amarillo or, you know, main event talent from Texas that time.

I think for some of these shows, and again, if he's on the outs of the NWA, they're literally writing letters to the fucking company.

Well, see, that's what I'm saying.

It sounds like Gorey was running the town himself, booking people that worked around West Texas, and he got the chic from Dory.

He didn't just bring the chic from Detroit to work El Paso.

So the funks were still

supporting

Gory, but maybe not giving him

access to everybody.

Well, there it is, and there's more here, so maybe we'll do a part two in the future.

But from the files, Gory Guerrero, any final thoughts hearing this and hearing the biggest star and promoter for that town dealing directly with the publisher of the programs and the magazines.

Well, that's not unusual because, you know,

if the biggest star in the town is also the promoter, he's dealing with everybody sooner or later.

I mean, I was a massive megastar,

but when I was promoting Louisville here, I was still dealing with the

common people.

But

it's a fascinating look at

not only the political behind the scenes manipulations, even back then in Mexico, especially, but even involving the NWA and Sam Muchnik and their convention, but also

the way that a lot of the old-time wrestlers said, no, this is my fucking belt.

Nobody beat me for it.

I'm going to defend it on my shows and I'm the champion until somebody beats me on one of my shows.

I love that.

You know, it's interesting, too, because the complaint that he hasn't defended the title of the commission says that's not true.

We actually know for a fact he's defended the title in Mexico.

You have heard in the past about the office being the stooge to the commission to punish the wrestlers they're unhappy with.

Didn't work here.

Well, and because

it's a different ballgame down there with the way that commission is set up.

Here, the commissions,

unless they were just complete assholes to the business in general, were way more likely to favor the promoters because they did regular business with them for years and years and years.

And they're the ones that paid the taxes and they're the ones that licensed the rent.

They get their money from them.

So,

you know, they

either were pains in the ass to the promoters in a place where they didn't particularly like or understand the business, or they were more likely to be on the promoter's side than the boys in the places where they'd been old cronies for so long.

But

you never actually got any commissions in the United States.

It was really a boon and beneficient to the wrestlers at large.

But in Mexico, it happens.

Well, there it is from the files.

And of course, Jim,

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Because you're going out in society and you've got media the flyers and you're campaigning

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Well, Jim, speaking of kaching,

the cash registers for WWE were ringing a lot over the last few days.

One of their visits, I guess I should say, to Saudi Arabia.

And of course, we covered this action as it transpired, as it took place.

We watched it at some point.

That is completely a bunch of contradictory shit you just said.

Well, what else best exemplifies the WWE-Saudi Arabia relationship?

Let's now go through the power of time travel halfway across the world, although we'll be safe.

All right, Jim, well, you know what that signifies.

Yeah,

I do.

We're on a journey across this great, big, wide world of ours, God's green earth.

We had a little break there is what we did.

before from the one part of the show to the other part of the show.

And now, before you say anything,

my

lawnmowers have showed up and if you hear any

sounds of that description just so you don't start you know we're not doing the the goddamn vinyl pressing a dark side of the moon here you know

it's even radio stations they have the big truck goes by the radio station sometimes you never know what's going to happen

might hear it could be hitman

They used to have wacky radio used to have a

the studio was right on a River City Mall where you could walk by the

bystanders or the bypassers or the passersby or whatever could walk by and

there would be the dagum radio shows going on.

They could look at through the window unless they closed the drapes.

And it was a nice touch.

Brought you closer to your radio personalities.

Maybe we ought to do that.

Should I start sitting in the front of my big old front window in the TV room down there with the drapes open, Brian, so people driving back and see me do the show in my

underwear and unshaven yeah

what about you what what would you sit in front of i don't know i don't know i picture you like whistler's mother sitting there in a chair

no i would uh i would probably just close the shades or close the curtains and uh take a nap

No, you got it.

You got to be out on like on the front lawn.

You could be out on the on your front yard doing the show.

It'll be like that Citizen King.

It'll be like the trailer to Citizen King.

You just see a microphone when you hear the voice of Orson Welles.

You see all the other people from the Mercury players, but you don't see him.

Well, they had to wait.

The big reveal, you got to pay to see Orson.

They got to actually get him in the theater.

All right.

Well, they got him in the theater this weekend over there, didn't it?

Do those people come of their own free will, or is this one of those

Nora?

When they went to Korea, New Japan, went to

Pyongyang or whatever and they had the 180 000 people that were all suggested you better show up what what is the the the persuasion rate over there for the see now everybody's going to go oh cornet don't know anything about geopolitics again i can't even be inter goddamn taining anymore

is that a word inter goddamn taining

without people oh you don't know i'm not doing 60 minutes here people

not doing the goddamn huntley huntley brinkley report we're trying to be

reasonably entertaining to listen to conversationalistic program am i getting just too pissed off for this no keep going

why so you don't have to no you're doing great no

come on keep the energy up come on what are you doing

yeah come on

damn put the stick down jesus christ

faster faster

Like the fucking piano player in Reefer Madness, who just all of a sudden

goddamn went off the beam there, pal.

This is your show anyway.

I'm just, I'm just a

squirrel in your world of trees.

That's right.

Well, speaking of squirrels and world of trees, there aren't too many trees that we saw, except ones that were planted after the fact, I guess.

But Saudi Arabia, WWE's.

What kind of trees they got in Saudi Arabia?

I don't know.

Do they have normal trees like all the rest of us, or do they have to have only trees that can grow in a desert?

What kind of tree?

Can you look that up?

Well, I'm I can

look up agriculture at Saudi Arabia?

Just give me a moment here.

That wasn't on my menu today, so I wasn't prepared for that one.

Well, check with the State Department fucking website.

Now, I don't WrestleMics have anything on agriculture.

No, they do not.

You don't have to.

Well, no, if Thurston doesn't have it, it's not.

But anyway, before they did the big pay-per-view in saudi arabia they they had to do smackdown in saudi arabia and again folks we're not going to go through

three hours of smackdown and three and a half hours of pay-per-view and three hours of raw in in a four-day period of time or whatever in

excruciating detail, but there was a couple of things that made some news.

And one of them wasn't good, but they made

some chicken salad out of the situation with the chicken shit and did, you know,

the best they could.

But

the big power failure, apparently, they

blew the fucking, they plugged in so much of their shit, Brian, in the

what is it, the Saudi Arabia Gardens, whatever their building is called over there.

They said it.

I didn't retain it.

I guess there was a big power outage and it flummoxed

some of the broadcast.

What are they on around the world live?

Is it Netflix now?

I think so, yeah.

The broadcast, the streaming service, well, they just had to, they went dark.

And I guess they were down for about 30, but right at the start of the show, when

Cody, I forget the exact moment, but it was the Cody and Orton,

you know, face-to-face interview.

So they went black for like 30 or 40 minutes on the streaming live thing for around the world.

And then

since the time difference, they had some time before it went to USA Network for SmackDown Friday night in the United States.

They were able to put

some of the oddest camera angles, but we'll try to explain.

Yeah, the Mazel.

The Mazel Brothers filming a movie on their iPhones is what it was.

Well, no,

it looked like the Blair Witch Project if they were all drunk.

But no, I think I can explain some of this because normally

when we have the technical difficulties, since I've been in a variety of places that have had technical difficulties, we try to explain, well, this is what happened.

Well, this is a complicated one, but

I got an idea

on a couple of things of how they did this.

But that was the big thing.

I mean, the promo was.

It was fine between the two guys, but it was hard to pay attention.

But

the basic gist of it was that it was their go-home promo, and

Randy was a little fiery or a little piss and vinegar.

Vinegarier

had more piss and vinegar in him.

And, you know, he's the more heelish guy anyway, and he's the viper, and he could turn.

And there's always that, you know, the tension there, whereas Cody was more calm, babyface, voice of reason.

But each one needs the win more than the other.

But

what happened was everything looked normal because I obviously saw a SmackDown on USA.

Everything looked normal until

shortly after Cody began speaking.

I think, yeah, Orton was

out as well, and everybody sang.

There are singers over there.

They know all the words.

And

do you think they're like the

new guy that Journey got to replace Steve Perry?

He was Filipino, so he didn't really speak English.

He had to learn the songs phonetically.

Or they're all just

the bilingual over there because everybody's just with everything.

I don't know if everyone's bilingual, but there probably are a good amount of people that speak English.

I guess the bigger question is, do any of these songs actually sell on the charts worldwide?

The amount of people that sing every word to them.

Because I don't know what the fucking words are.

because my hearing shot anyway and i'm just watching it on tv do you think they've got the goddamn headphones on at home

whatever but

anyway

suddenly i get there as i said they said there was a power outage in the building where they're already into this thing

and i guess they didn't want to just

wave them off or whatever but they had the audio they had the audio

and you could tell something was different in the building because all of the pretty lights the pretty crowd lights were off

but the video screen behind everybody was still on

and

the only thing that i can think

is that even though they had because they've got such a big production setup

They probably had generators there

to handle certain things.

And the things that they had generators for were still running, but

when they were just plugged into building power, it blew.

I don't know.

But some of the shit worked and some of it didn't.

And they still had the audio track, and the audio sounded fine.

But what they were able to do, apparently,

the camera shots that you saw, this is my guess:

that they had

one or two different guys with handheld cameras, with battery packs, and they were completely independent.

They weren't feeding the truck.

They weren't supposed to.

They're going around getting the backstage footage or the ambiance for the packages because

sometimes when you see the montages of the bumps and everything,

it looks more cinematic and was shot from a different angle.

So their production

now is so big.

They've got guys wandering around with cameras in different places that you see in the documentary footage.

So, I'm thinking they say, Well, we've got these guys, but they don't shoot

like a handheld cameraman for television, they're just getting shots, right?

All their shit's going to editing.

So, that's why you would see they're just walking around with the camera or they're zooming in, or they're focusing, or they're pulling out, or whatever, because that's not, they're not supposed to be covering it

in the other fashion.

And somehow they were able to put all that together to where,

and then they had a graphic down at the bottom of the screen.

There were technical issues at the end of live recording.

We appreciate your patience.

And I guess after in the building, after Orton and

Cody had finished, then they just shut down,

you know, doing anything until they could get the issue resolved and then

came back up and you saw the on-camera with the announcers, we're back.

But that was,

it was a miracle they were able to get anything out of that.

But at the same time, it was odd for a building that big that looks like you could park goddamn 747s perpendicular in there and have room.

It's a giant place.

Even the audio, it almost seemed like it was dubbed in because you would watch their mouths

cameras and it was just all

it was so bizarre the way it was coming across.

And again, they kept putting up the thing at the bottom.

And then they shot right to Wade and Michael Cole and they were in perfect, you know, hey, sorry about that.

Yeah.

Well, see, the thing is, the audio was dubbed in.

In effect, actually, I don't know whether the audio was dubbed in or whether the video was dropped over the audio.

But in some fashion, it was weird.

Because of the difficulty, they had the audio in a broadcast form, but they had to scramble for video.

So

I don't know, but

it can have beware of dog.

Remember that?

I was that afternoon, I was out in the parking lot in the back of the Florence fucking, what was the Civic Center, looking up at the sky going, oh, shit,

because it's a fucking giant tin building anyway.

And

we made it, what, two matches in, and zap.

And that whole building was dark.

Their emergency lights came on, like the exit lights and the, you know, shit that's on,

you know, their battery operated generator public safety type shit.

And everybody was sitting there wondering, is somebody going to try to pick my pocket?

but anyway

you know we actually had to get the dagum

head of the electric company in pikeville kentucky out of bed one night in smogy mountain

what time out of bed what time

well like like nine o'clock uh well it's a small town how old was he was he a little old man i i don't i didn't meet the gentleman because he he had to then call other people he wasn't gonna climb in up in that bucket truck himself.

We were doing four TV shows in Pikeville, the same place that we do the Bluegrass Brawl, right?

Every April.

But this was the middle of summer and we got a book to TV taping there.

And we had like seven or eight hundred people or whatever.

And we'd done the first two shows and the goddamn,

not the generator, not the alternator, the fabricator, the fornicator.

What's the goddamn thing that sits up on the pole, the big round thing?

It's not a generator.

I know what you're talking about, too, and I can't think of the word now.

Google laptop in.

Transformer, there you go.

Transformer, bam, went, son of a bitch, you plugged in too much shit for this building.

And I was, oh, shit.

Because see, with the bluegrass brawl, we shot it for home video.

We had a smaller setup.

This is how we'd brought the truck.

And the truck drew too much power.

And the whole thing, you know, the Jim was dead.

We said, oh, shit.

And the fire department was our sponsors.

And the fire chief said, hold on.

I'm going to call Fred.

I don't know what Fred's fucking name was.

And

he got somebody that worked for them that knew how to fix this out there that could get in the bucket truck from the fire department and lift him up to the thing to fix the deal to is flip the switch to turn the power back on so we could do the other two shows in like 35 minutes.

We had to take a 35 minute intermission when we thought we were fucking dead

and gonna be short two TV shows.

So it didn't, it pays to know people.

See, we knew Fred from Pikeville.

And they know the crown prince of the country.

So

you get your electric turned back on quicker that way.

Well, of course, that wasn't the only thing that happened on SmackDown.

It was the only thing that happened in both darkness and light.

But sometimes out of the darkness and into the light comes a segment, and they ended the show with a segment a lot of fans were talking about.

Well,

after the first segment, then we waited two hours and 35 minutes, and then came something else to watch.

Cena came out,

and jumping Jehoshaphat,

the John Cena sucks chant drowned out the music.

But

I don't know that it's that they hate him, but just that

they were enjoying more than anything else

yelling for or against or about him.

Does that make any sense?

They're just participating in the whole fucking thing.

It does, because other than the joy in yelling, singing John Cena sucks, they seem to treat him as a babyface most of the time.

Yeah, yes, and they were just, they were into it.

They were, this was, you know, and again,

you know, hey, it's always been.

It was

more prominent in the 80s when they first started going to Europe, but the international audiences.

are always, and I'm not saying a few years behind or a while behind or whatever, like they're fucking stupid.

The new guys get over quicker in the United States while the old guys are still more over overseas.

You see what I'm saying here.

And this is nostalgia, and this is a happening, and this is, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And then he cuts the promo on punk, and punk ain't going to win it, and

et cetera.

And all of a sudden, they play the word life music.

Whatever the fuck they're doing there.

And the graphic says punk life.

And here comes CM Punk out dressed like a

thugonomic John Cena with the jorts and a cubs shirt.

Actually, there's some modifications here.

And he had the fucking knuckle jewelry, fist

brass knuckle jewelry, whatever that said drug-free instead of

piss off or whatever.

Cena, what did Cena say?

Does he

know the knuckle stuff?

Oh, it said

word life.

Very, well, I guess, because that's what the music says.

So regardless, all these things.

And it,

again, you know, it's the old rib of the you know, the guy dressing up like his opponent and trying to make fun of him and everything.

And a bit of people are with punk too, because he's a star.

CM Punk, CM Punk.

And

I can't repeat this.

It would have taken a court stenographer to take it down because he did his promo as a rap,

but it wasn't like,

you know,

it wasn't like an easy rap.

It was like an actual

promo, but it rhymed.

And goddamn it.

I don't know how he did this because it went on and on, not in a bad way.

It was,

I couldn't have done this promo to save my life because I can

talk, as most of you people realize, all day long if I have to.

But I couldn't make it rhyme and make it come out right like this.

And he did three or four minutes.

And it was a,

I don't know how he remembered it.

And it had to be

heavily his input because you couldn't, I wouldn't think, write this and hand it to somebody and go, okay, just do that.

Oh, okay.

Fucking Jesus Christ.

He called

Cena a fish-bellied white Hulk Hogan, but more problematic.

I can't remember what that rhymed with because I was just.

He called me a player hater, but Cena's buried more talent than the Undertaker.

But is this the first time ever, Brian, that a main event promo made sense,

drew money, and

was delivered completely in rhyme?

No, Cena used to do it all the time.

Well, no, but I mean,

you know, I mean, well, I mean, his shit was a little more juvenile, wasn't it?

This wasn't like the

rap thing.

This was a little more literate.

This was him doing

this was him doing

no this was the same way with cena doing the pipe bomb this was him doing a classic cena promo i know i think i think that the cena used to rhyme a lot of stuff with booby and shit you know

i don't know i don't have the uh lyric book of uh old

put that out put that out please no

see

cena's a better rapper but punk is a better poet

uh he had better material punk Punk was really good here.

And again, it's so impressive, the memorization that has to go into that.

Yeah.

When Seema used to do it, it was impressive, but he did it.

Like he was doing it regularly.

I don't even know how you build up the ability to constantly do that.

Punk has never done that.

And he came out there and he delivered.

He hit a home run with that, I thought.

I know some people thought it was too corny.

But, you know, it plays off the pipe bomb last week.

I thought it was really good.

Oh, you need everybody was yelling at me on the Twitter machine.

Well,

he laid there, he being punk for 10 minutes, because that's the way that it was, it was the opposite.

Cena was laid out in the ring.

Well,

yes, I remember the promo.

I remember him sitting there, and I remember watching the promo.

Truthfully and honestly, the fact that he had laid John Cena out beforehand escaped me.

But as many people also pointed out, when they started arguing about what those other people had brought up, Cena got laid out in the ring.

Punk sat on the

stage you didn't have him sitting over the top of cena

on a on a slim gym table on a slim on a slim gym table in the same shot and they said even cena rolled over and sat up in the ring and collected his self a bit to listen to his brow beating from 80 yards away so

meh

Well, that was WWE SmackDown.

Yes, it was.

From the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

What happens when the king dies and the queen takes over?

Is it become the queendom?

Oh, it'll never be the queendom.

It'll always be the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

And the king.

I was thinking maybe they would goddamn, then they'd turn the tables over there and flip the script and the guys would have to go around wearing beekeepers' outfits for a while.

I don't think that's going to happen.

I don't think there's going to be really too many changes in terms of

treatment of women or gay people or anyone who's a minority or anything like that.

Anyone whose passport passport is being held.

That's right.

And speaking of people with their passports being held, let's talk about the WWE's latest extravaganza from Saudi Arabia.

SmackDown was just a show, but an extravaganza, night of champions,

where

there's just champions galore all up and down the card.

And it said night.

And

they're in the dark.

Let's be real.

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As I mentioned earlier, it's an an odd-looking arena.

I mean, it's massive.

And that's the thing is, I don't, you can't,

you can't really get a grip on how many people it seats, on how many people are there, on exactly what the extent of it is, because it just seems to, it's compared to other arenas there, it's abnormally high and it has a giant wall on one side.

I don't know.

what's going on there, but it's, it's,

did they report any type of attendance figure?

As Thurston Howell weighed in on this, maybe by the time that I described, set the scene for the first contest, we'll know.

But

they opened up with Cody and Orton for the King of the Ring final.

And

again, the crowd is live over there.

Is it my imagination, or when they started doing this a few years ago,

the people were a bit more

reserved, weren't they?

Or am I misremembering?

Because I don't remember them just,

and I know people would say, well, they,

you know, they hadn't seen it.

Well, they had to see it enough for them to pay for it to be over there on television or whatever.

So

I'm just wondering if now people have loosened up more than they used to there.

I don't know.

Obviously, WWE has been coming over there and people really like it and it's embraced by the kingdom.

So you're allowed to embrace it.

You asked about the difference between this and the North Korea show.

If you remember, those fans just sat there.

Those fans, it was almost like synchronized fandom.

Yeah.

You know, they weren't allowed to do anything or they were afraid to do anything or they were only allowed to do what they were told.

These people were dancing around and shit.

So I don't think it's they're just there dancing and singing and moonwalking and all kinds of stuff.

And that's when Cody and Orton, they started out.

locked up and did whatever.

And the people were just chanting and waving and singing and jumping about to the point where they stopped the match match and just stared at them.

So they, you know,

and they're doing nothing.

And then finally,

this was refreshing to me because it was one-on-one.

It was not a match where there was no disqualification.

And they started out actually doing wrestling stuff.

And they had a wrestling match.

And

they're two of the best guys in the business at it.

And there was the tension, obviously, you never know, is Orton going to turn?

You know, he's already made threats.

There's nothing he won't do.

But at the same time,

Orton was really the one that sold in this match.

And it was brilliant because he hurt himself.

In that, at one point, when he gave Cody

a superplex, boom, and he landed, They know he's got back problems.

He hurt his back and he started selling his back.

And that was brilliant because, with where they're going in the finish,

you know, later on or at whatever point, Orton can make a claim, I've beat my hurt myself.

That's, you know,

but nevertheless, nobody was cheating,

but Cody worked the back.

But it was forearms, it wasn't punches, he wasn't doing shit behind the referee's back, but he's being a competitive athlete.

So nobody

did anything in this out of character, something that that person wouldn't do just for the sake of a goddamn, oh, this is a cool move

to change people's perception of them.

Orton sells to me better than anybody his size in the business.

And look, he's fucking

massive.

And yet, you know, he can sell and he conveys the pain and the facial expression.

And, you know, anyway,

they did a number of big moves, two counts, things like that.

You know, finally, the Crossroads once, the

RCOO.

The RKO wants, they got two counts.

But then Cody was in a spot where he was set up for the punt and Orton was

backing up for it.

And then you could see on his face, and it wasn't like this,

the goofiness of when they go out and they grab the belt, they got the belt drawn back, and then suddenly they have a pang of guilt.

It was like he's waiting for Cody to get up there, and there he is.

And he's thinking, Should I go down there?

I don't want to kick his head in.

Ah, fuck it, I'm going to.

He waited just a second,

and then Cody moved.

And then Cody got the figure four and Orton turned it.

And they did a big rubber-legged yay-boo in the middle and went into a hockey fight.

And this was, boom, really good.

And then Orton gets a chair.

And they've, they've.

They're doing this there too, where

a guy can bring a chair in the ring and the referee, as long as he either asks for it politely or just grabs it back, it's not a disqualification.

But nevertheless,

while Lil Nate, Charles Robinson, is

putting the chair out, Orton undoes the turnbuckle pad.

And he tried to run Cody's head into it, but Cody blocked it.

Boom, boom, they jockey for position.

Orton goes for the RKO, and Cody pushes him into the buckle into a crossroads one, two, three.

This was refreshing.

Great babyface match where neither guy turned heel

or did anything out of character.

But at the same time,

after Orton lost, as he was walking back,

he was not looking happy.

And you never know what might happen in the future.

And

Cody was was cutting the promo, putting Orton over.

And Norton was kind of looking back at him.

And then

Cody promised he's headed to SummerSlam to face either Punk or Cena.

And he will get the ball back.

So

he better get the ball back at SummerSlam.

Might he not, or elsewhere, that's going to be another kick in the balls.

He has to.

And I don't want to spoil it now, we'll get to it later.

He has to, and it can't be a finish like the finish they had on this show.

It has to be a finish,

but yeah, I think so, and I think this is a good match.

And I think they even got me for a minute thinking, oh, you know, maybe Orton will win this.

What did you think of the turnbuckle spot?

Well, again,

he said there wasn't anything he would stop at, but he did vacillate somewhat on kicking his head in.

And Orton's

the Viper, he's a little bit heelish

it's not out of character for him to do that as a baby face

what i would have loved for them to done i i see where they were going

cody was working the lower back because the lower back was affected by the superplex that's why i hate when these

indie morons

give a guy superplex and then just roll through and either pick him up and give him something else or roll through and the guy that got superplex does something.

We go, what the fuck are you doing?

So I know they, but they were working the lower back.

But when Randy went for the RKO

and

Cody pushes him off, he had to turn and kind of hit his ribs because I would have loved.

I see they wanted to foil the RKO, but I would have loved if Cody could have jerked him around where he could have taken a flat back turnbuckle and sold it out into the crossroads.

And that would have, to me, looked more

painful and convincing.

That's the only problem I had with the turnbuckle.

All right.

Well, good opening match.

And now it's King Cody Rhodes.

I don't know if he's going to wear that crown.

Are they allowed to take the crown away?

Or is it like that championship you win over there where you're not allowed to leave with it?

I don't know.

But also now that would be unwieldy to sing King Cody Rhodes, King Cody Rhodes,

King Cody Rhodes, King Cody Rhodes.

And Queen Brandy.

Now with more queen.

Well, speaking of the queens

coming up on the king and queen of the ring, well, these weren't the queens of the ring.

These were actually, it is the queen of the ring, Rhea Ripley.

She's always going to be the queen,

or possibly even the goddess of wrestling, the

ruler up above in the heavens of wrestling rhea ripley all praise to you goddess rhea

and rochelle rochelle our friend raquel rodriguez

is it see now rhea ripley raquel rodriguez see that just it just rolls off the tongue

in a street fight and

besides the well first of all all the women

i mean i know that the first show or two they went over there they worked in sweatpants and sweatshirts because

who has full body scuba suits on hand in a normal world when you're a pro wrestler now they've gotten

you know all the stuff custom made and everything and it's it's lovely gear

but it is ridiculous in not only the the scuba suits what the fuck is wrong with those people over there but also

with Rhea Ripley and Raquel, they're both approximately the same height.

They both got long black hair and they were both wearing black from literally from head to toe and from shoulder to wrist and

everything.

You could see their hands and their faces.

If the hair was down, at some points, I'm thinking, does anybody in the cheap seats even know which one is which?

Did you notice that when they're just all there are no cheap seats?

Well, okay, in the farther, farther away places.

But nevertheless, they were both very aggressive here.

They laid their shit in.

But it was a street fight and the kendo sticks and the

they fought on the desk and did the power bomb through the desk hood into the sound pit.

And

the first two or three minutes, I was like, okay, they're starting to go here.

And then they started using the furniture and the stairs.

And

Rhea took her belt off and whipped her about 50 times and then

hit her with a razor's edge and a kick and got a two count.

And then Rhea got her clover leaf on.

So in the middle of,

again, there's sticks and

bullshit laid around and they're back to a wrestling hold.

I wish they wouldn't.

They're poisoning Saudi Arabia, too.

They'll think, well, they're supposed to have all this shit in wrestling.

But then here,

as Rhea got the clover leaf, Roxanne Perez,

who also came into the ring covered from head to toe in black pleather,

ran in and broke the hold in front of the referee because it's a street fight, no DQ.

So then

Rhea chased Roxanne around and bumped her on the floor and pulled out a garbage can and put it on Roxanne and kicked it.

But then Raquel ran down and posted Rhea and ran her into the stairs and gave her a splash.

Two count.

I said, there's more.

And then they

went back to the fucking match.

Roxanne Perez disappeared.

Apparently, she was either killed or paralyzed.

And the referee just let all, again, because it's a street fight, all this stuff goes on.

And then they started the match again, and they set a table up across the top rope

with it balanced

in front of the turnbuckle, but across the top ropes, so that they could both get up and balance on it.

And then Raquel helped Rhea

to the point where,

because they don't want to fall off and break their fucking necks, right?

So they're trying to balance and not fuck this up.

They're not goddamn circus performers.

But when Rhea is picking her up for the riptide, Raquel, as she's bent over, she had to reach back with her right hand and her right arm and put it up so that Rhea could hook it without throwing a...

and and then she gives her the ripped hat off the table.

Oh, and one of the referees had to hold the edge of the table so that, and people on Twitter were fighting about it

because some people said, Look at the referee holding the table.

And the other idiots were like, Well, what do you expect him not to hold the table and they fall and hurt themselves?

No, don't do this stupid shit.

Would be an idea, just a concept, just a thought to run by somebody.

What next time put a table up there, balance the two chairs, and bring your pet dog

and have the dog with a ball on top of the two chairs, and then you put the thing in your mouth that allows you to bite down on the edge of the chair and you can balance it while flapping your wings, blah, blah, blah.

I'm so sick of this shit.

These two can, you could buy them in a wrestling match

as two physically threatening individuals that could potentially do some damage to each other if they weren't trying to make them do

goddamn Buster Keaton silent movie routine shit.

Your thoughts.

I like Buster Keaton, so I'm not going to complain too much.

The general, Steamboat Bill Jr.,

so many different things.

But

I thought this was okay.

I mean, again, it's the awkward dynamic of everyone being dressed head to toe.

I don't even know why you just don't bring the women at that point.

Roxanne Perez wasn't even wrestling.

They flew her over to put on that outfit and run out for this.

But I thought it was all right.

I like, I mean, Rhea is, I think, the best there is.

But I like Rhea and Raquel.

Together.

We've seen them multiple times over the years, probably since NXT, or maybe shortly after that.

She's at least Rhea signed.

She seems like someone who could beat Rhea.

Yes.

Yes.

And I'm not criticizing the talents

effort here.

I'm criticizing the stuff they either feel they have to do or are asked to do or have put into

this whole fucking thing with now everybody's.

That used to be

the derogatory

thing of some people who like wrestling.

Ah, don't like wrestling, right?

Say, either a bunch of stunt men.

Well, now you have to be.

Because what the fuck does it you're balancing on ladders and tables

propped over fucking shit.

But here's the problem, Brian.

Did you?

And I don't know.

You know, I was one of those children, right?

What do you mean?

I was one of those kids.

What do you mean?

And well,

I was one of those kids that goddamn had to analyze shit.

And it didn't even start when I even by the time I discovered wrestling,

I noticed this from the Batman fights.

So this goes back to when I was five, six years old.

I noticed

that wrestlers are better

at making a fight look good.

than movie and television stunt men

because I would always

love the Western saloon fights and the Batman fights.

And oh, look at the bump the heel took, and there's the chair and a whata da-da.

So I always studied those.

Maybe it was meant to be.

And by the time that I was discovered wrestling, I realized, well, wait a minute, yeah, hell, blah, blah, blah.

Over here.

And then I started picking apart the stuntman's fight scenes, except for Robert Conrad in the Wild, Wild West,

who was probably the best

television performer in a fucking fight scene during his era.

But nevertheless, but the stunt men, Brian, this was the point of this.

They're better at taking the bump off the balcony.

You know, in the Western,

bam!

The fucking

heel, the outlaw that's trying to ambush the hero is up on a second or third floor there, a doc's office, and he's got the gun and he's pointed, he's waiting, and the hero shoots him, and bam!

And he takes the bump over the rail and into the dusty street.

Now, that was a bump I didn't see wrestlers taking.

The stunt men had shit like, or when they jump a motorcycle over something and leave the motorcycle in midair and they fly through the saloon window and come out the other side with a fucking muffler up their ass.

They had motorcycles in the West.

Well, you know what I'm saying.

The saloon window, yeah.

The stunt men did all that shit just fine, but they couldn't fucking fight.

And the wrestlers could fight,

but back then they weren't taking buffs off the fucking balcony and jumping over Caesar's Palace fountain.

So I think everybody should stick to their goddamn specialties.

That's the moral of that story.

All right.

Well, that was that match.

And there was more to come from this spectacular.

If you think about visiting, they got wonderful tourist packages, apparently, from Saudi Arabia.

And just make copies of your passport just in case you need to have it tattooed on your ass in case you need to prove.

Uh,

okay, carrion cross and Sami Zayn.

They added this one,

you know, with what we talked about the other day on the program, you know what I had to watch for.

And by the way, the people love Sammy.

They just love Sammy.

They love Sami Zayn more than they love Sammy Davis Jr.

But you know what I was looking for, don't you hear?

The story went out.

Did we ever source that

this rumor?

Yeah, we talked about that off air.

I don't even think it was on air.

Oh, was it?

We talked about it.

So we had to keep an eye out there.

Well, because I saw the story on

the interweb after you had brought it up.

So it's out there because I think they had crossed, somebody had cross-responded.

He was laughing at it.

Ah, you know, people say that.

But the story went out that Karrion Cross

was allegedly either scared of, afraid of, reticent to,

not enthused by,

taking bumps.

And that may limit how far he could go in a business where people have to fall down on a, you know, regular basis when they're in the main events.

And said, did you watch for this, Brian?

Yeah, I mean, that was the only reason to watch this match.

Well, that was the only reason to watch this match.

I mean, what before, because I made a few notes,

but before I give you details, what was your impression when you came away from the match as to whether or not

those rumors may have any validity?

Well, again, I don't think it was a fair sample because word got out before this match.

So I think he took just fine the amount of bumps he took.

He took fine bumps when he took bumps.

Well, in that case, then I think he's probably smarter than we thought because

he did get through this where the way that they worked the match, you wouldn't have noticed, right?

But if you're going through the match just to write down,

just to write down when and how this guy falls down in the course of a fucking 13-minute match.

But he is a very good psychologist.

I got to say, again, I'm not,

if he does this good a job of hiding it all the time,

more power to him.

Yeah, Jake wasn't taking bumps.

I mean, there are plenty of people who learn how to work around having to do anything like that.

Like,

no,

Jake was not going to have this match.

No, he, but, well,

it depends on how old he was and

where his head was at.

But nevertheless,

so Karrion Cross is Sami Zayn.

Sami Zayn is an underdog anyway.

He likes to fight from underneath.

So he gets a little flurry at the start.

He excites the people and then the heel usually cuts him off and then he fights from underneath.

So that was the story of this match, but there's nothing unusual there.

But

at two minutes, Karrion Cross took a safe bump over the top rope where I believe he got clotheslined and he went over the top, landed on his feet, crumbled to the ground.

And then

they were fighting on the floor and he was standing on his feet.

Sammy moonsaulted him.

He caught Sammy and they went down, kind of a soft bump on

the floor.

You consider that a bump?

Well,

now there was several times that Cross went down with more force than this when he was suplexing Sammy, but I don't consider it a bump when you're throwing the fucking guy and just happened to land, you know.

So, we're only talking about

actually,

because I'm telling you, when he's throwing Sammy with them fucking Saito suplexes, he hit the ground a couple of times, but we're not counting those.

Let's see, number three,

he collapsed off the buckle and took an ox.

I wrote ox bump.

So that's an ox baker bump.

Ox baker didn't take bumps.

Well, no, when ox went down,

it was a bump in state.

What the boys used to say in stages.

It was a stagey bump where

part of him went down, then the next section, then the next section.

So

anyway, one is the bump over the top.

Okay, two,

the moonsault catch down.

Okay.

Three,

collapse, ox bump.

Okay.

Number four, flat back bump from a clothesline.

Okay.

Number five,

got an axe handle from Sammy off the top to the head, took a bump, boom.

Okay.

And then Sammy's into his comeback now.

And he got a blue thunderbom.

He took that blue thunderbomb.

And then

what did they call it?

The exploder, where Sammy grabs him and belly to belly overheads the guy into the turnbuckle, where the guy lands like on the back of his head and his shoulders on the ground and into the turnbuckles.

Well,

he did that to Cross.

And I wouldn't want to take that fucking thing.

There's a lot of shit going on, but he was a little short.

It looked like Cross went, caught the back of his head, and then kind of went into the buckles.

But the announcers had to say, don't think he got all of it.

One of those types of deals.

And then number eight was a crumble bump from the fucking Haluva kick in the corner.

One, two, three.

So he took eight bumps in 13 minutes, and four of them were somewhat suspect as to the force or velocity with which he hit the ground.

He's pretty fucking good.

You know, this could become a new game for fans.

You know, they begin to count out loud.

One, one bump.

Two, like Suplex City for bumps.

I swear to God, if if that became a thing,

that would probably drive him out of his mind.

He thinks a hip toss three,

and then sometimes, like, it's a bump where, like, we talked about earlier, is a soft bump.

Is it a bump?

And then our fans can fight with each other, you know, bump, no bump, bump, no bump.

And if he becomes known as the bump guy, Tony will hire him.

Bump, no, bump, bump, no, bump.

And Tony says, I got a bump.

Exactly.

But I mean,

you know, that's so.

You weren't writing him down.

So

see, you got the impression, yeah, he's really upped his fucking game.

Yeah, he obviously heard the criticism and said, I'll do more bumps tonight.

He did eight.

And can you think that I'm starting to like this guy more because can you think of any time he's ever been thrown through a piece of furniture?

Off the top of my head, no.

I'm sure he must have done something stupid in NXT.

He was there for a while and he was on top.

But I can't think of anything, no?

Well, there you go.

More power to you, Carrion.

What do you think of the Carrion cross-push now?

Everyone's been talking about him getting a better push, and then he goes over there, and it was kind of a flat finish, don't you think?

Well, no, I mean,

Sammy is still a guy that you can put into main events, top positions.

They love him.

I'm sorry, I just, I don't see on the big show in front in that, in front of that crowd.

They've already got some things on here that could be considered downers.

They're not going to put crossover in that particular, you know, light, spotlight, venue, whatever.

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All right.

Well, that was the site.

But yes.

I was about to say, you know what was next, don't you?

No, actually, I don't remember.

The thing that you were going to say before I interrupted you, that was what was next.

What was next is

next on the show.

Let's see.

How many matches is that now?

One, two, three.

Yeah.

What was next on the show?

I think it's time for

the United States Heavyweight Championship to be decided, is what it's time for.

I was going to say more women, but you're right.

And now, here's a question:

Why is it

that the Sheik could defend the U.S.

title in Toronto, but it would have been just ridiculous at the time if Dewey Robertson had defended the Canadian heavyweight title in goddamn Erie, Pennsylvania?

You know, again, I don't know.

It is a little weird when you have U.S.

title changes in Saudi Arabia.

This isn't the first time I think it's happened there.

Should this be a thing that's allowed to happen in,

you know, should any country's championship be put in a position where it can fall to someone on foreign soil?

What about the

should the world of sport title,

the mid-heavyweight title or whatever that Mike Marino, should that be put up for fucking auction over here in Cleveland?

I think not.

But we got a U.S.

title match in Saudi Arabia.

Solu versus Fatu.

And

I'm trying to think without insulting anyone too heavily.

Solo isn't a great opponent for Fatu to have a great match, is he?

There's two.

Is there anyone, respectfully, because I think he's been used well at times, is there anyone for Solo to have a great match with?

Well,

maybe let's not throw great around,

you know,

unnecessarily.

Let's just say a better fatu

i like as a heel

uh where he's with a younger or not a younger but a smaller more agile baby face that does take bumps or whatever you know there's a size difference but as a baby face fatu still with a

even a wise ass fucking heel that's smaller and goddamn athletic

But Solo is kind of like, as we talked about before, a little bit, what do the kids say, the Timu Fatu?

So Solo is a lot of punch and kick.

And

then Fatu, when he's fighting a guy that's like that, he's relying, he's still taking his bumps and stuff, but he relies on a lot of punch and kick.

They're not, you know,

they're a little too similar to be complementary, I think.

But it was what it was.

It's a match that existed on this date.

And they got some heat, or he got some heat on Fatu, he being solo.

And again, Fatu can fly around

on the bumps and, you know, the place he needs to be.

And Solo's kind of flat-footed.

But then finally, Jacob makes his comeback and he's going to the top.

And here comes JC Mateo,

who waddles down.

He runs in an awkward fashion.

Were you watching the run-in closely here?

Did you notice his gait?

I did not actually watch that, no.

He is a

tubbier.

I mean, I watched it, but I didn't pay attention to his gait, I guess.

Well, yes, you did not watch the specific manner in which he ran down there, but it was there was

it was, yeah, he drew the referee.

And Tonga Low is there and took Jacob off the top rope with the neck breaker.

And

solo got a two count

and then jacob's gonna spike him

or no i'm sorry solo's gonna spike him

but jacob ducked the spike and dropped solo and then dove on the other heels

and then did a samoan drop on solo and then

Mateo comes in and gets super kicked and then gets the ass in the face.

And again, here

they have decided suddenly.

Well, I don't know how long ago it was, but

not suddenly, but certainly recently

that if another guy that's not even connected to the match gets in the ring, as long as he just gets beat up and he doesn't hit anybody, they won't call the DQ.

So now

Jacob is beating up

Mateo while the guy's in the ring and the referee is staring at it.

And then he moonsaults Solo, boom.

And then

a giant,

an old,

mean, smelly giant

pulls Jacob Fatu out on the floor.

And what the fuck?

And the announcers say, oh, my God, this is.

And then it sounded to me like that they were just saying alternate versions of Tamaloa Loa Tonga Tangaloa Tonga Tonga.

What the fuck did they call him?

No, I mean, I heard him say it's like Tala Tonga.

Okay, it was like, well, that tall guy is the cousin of Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa called Tala Tonga.

I don't know what the fuck.

But anyway, he was supposed to choke slam Jacob on the desk.

But

I don't know if their timing got off, but

Jacob, we know, can jump pretty well.

So I don't think it was that alone.

But he barely got up over the top of the desk.

And instead of a big, ah,

it was like a clump.

And then he rolled him into the ring.

And the referee's back has been turned through all of this with the

distraction of the lower tongue.

And Solo spiked him one, two, three, and we got a new champion.

And

again,

I wrote down here at the bottom: way too much interference for too long

on all these matches.

It seems like every match of any consequence now has multiple people running in in every company.

And sooner or later, again, that leads to people going, ah,

you know, I didn't know what was to come yet, but I wrote that then.

And

it goes on forever.

It's like,

again, I didn't know what was to come,

but

a match will just stop happening and a bunch of people not connected with it will start fighting with each other for a while.

And then

they started again.

Well, again, at least this one, not to justify it, at least it introduced someone new, a new character, the most boring giant ever.

No.

They introduced a new character here, unlike the end, which was just, okay,

they couldn't come up with a way for this match to end, so they're going to give us all of this.

And this guy also, he doesn't have a giant head.

I think that's going to be problematic.

I think we got to see like a promo with him standing there in the ring because he didn't look gigantic, even though he is.

The way he just came out there and, you know, all in black stood at ringside with everyone.

He wasn't coming across as like, oh my God, it's the biggest man I've ever seen.

No, but it's because of his head.

He's got a regular head.

He needs a giant's head.

Think about this.

How many giants have a normal-sized-looking fucking head with a normal facial expression?

You got to have some fucking,

you know, the old saying: beauty's only skin deep, but ugly is to the bone.

You got to have some bone sticking out.

You got to have Andre fucking head.

Or goddamn giant sing head or something.

And then you got a giant.

He's just a tall fucking guy.

Well, Hicculeo has finally arrived.

We'll see where Tamatonga is, but at least Tongaloa is back, so we're guaranteed there'll be some hilarity in the weeks ahead.

And now Jake.

Oh, wait a minute.

Was that that was Tongaloa?

Yeah.

Instead of Tamatonga.

That was the first time we've seen Tongaloa since the war games.

I mixed up my Tongas.

Because I was thinking he was, yeah, he's the other one.

They got to introduce someone that's just Tonga Tonga, don't they?

Oh, he's the baddest of them all.

Tonga Tonga.

Tonga Tonga Tonga.

Three Tongas.

Oh, my God.

Three Tonga.

Well, that's when they call him by his first name and Mr.

Wouldn't that be funny if fucking Tonga in

island language was Mr.?

Then he could be Mr.

Mr.

All right.

Well, before we get to the main event, we got one more.

This ain't going to take long.

Seriously, at some point, Queen of the Ring,

Jade Cargill versus Asuka.

And in about eight minutes, Jade hit her finish.

And

it had to be warm.

It had to be warm in those

plethora full body suits out there in that heat.

You know, it can't be easy.

Like, MJF, we saw do that a few weeks ago, where he went from his trunks, which he wrestles one of his eight matches a year in, to the full body suit or the half-body suit, whatever it is.

It can't be easy if you're used to wrestling one way to all of a sudden, in terms of just breathing and everything, right?

It can't be easy to all of a sudden be all covered up and work the same way.

Well, MJF's tribute to MVP, I don't think hampered him too bad, but when, you know, when you, yeah,

because it's hot over there, they, the announcers made the point that it was very hot in the building.

You see guys sweating and I'm thinking they're cut from neck to wrist

all the way down to feet because the tights go into the boots.

You know, that's you,

it might, because they're custom-made form-fitting outfits, it's not going to be like you're trying to wrestle wearing a goddamn flotation device.

But at the same point, trying to sweat, cool off, just get a goddamn breeze of some description with the head to toe, because I didn't expose a lot of fucking flesh back when I was

competing in the ring.

You're a pioneer when it comes to these outfits the women wear.

I need to, but I see my body needed to be covered up, unlike most of these girls.

But after you've see, I wasn't doing the whole goddamn thing by myself.

You know, I was in tag matches or handicapped matches or whatever, or the manager match would last for eight minutes or whatever.

But if they're going out there trying to do a lot of shit in a hot, humid fucking building at high speed, they got to be dying.

You're going to have to peel that shit off like the fucking safety wrapper on some Tylenol.

Did you see the promo?

Anyway,

a very emotional promo afterwards from Jade Cargo.

No, I saw she was speaking and I didn't want to just have to break down and cry at that point.

I knew it was going to bring tears to my eyes.

So I just, I couldn't face it.

did she say?

She's just very, she just, she's the one wrestler we've seen who, you know, again, she wasn't in the business.

All of a sudden, she was.

There have been several times, even when she was a heel,

like her daughter was in the crowd, where she would just get emotional.

Like this all really meant something to her.

It's nice to see.

It's actually really nice to see.

Like someone is

jade, is the only one not completely jaded by the process.

Ah, see what you did there.

Well, at least now she's a babyface instead of being a heel with a cute little daughter.

See,

when she was a heel, if she'd have known how to conduct herself in a wrestling atmosphere, she would have then yanked a lollipop away from her daughter and

committed her to her room or whatever.

I liked there as a heel with a stable of like stooges who just show you their ass.

That was my favorite period of shade

where she came out with women who would turn around and just bend over on the stage.

That's still the baddies.

I think that's what their name was.

The baddies.

The baddies.

I can't believe that TKO didn't take that and run with it.

You know, copyright that and trademark it and sell t-shirts and membership cards.

The baddies.

There's still time.

Well, they missed the opportunity so far.

And how bad can you get?

That could be their new tagline for the whole WWE.

How bad can you get?

All righty then.

We got to get to it because this way we can move past it.

The main event of the evening

for the WWE, why do they call it the undisputed title when they also have a world championship on their pro?

I would think the world champion is disputing

the validity of the WWE title as being the number one title.

They do it in every interview, don't they, Brian?

Right, it's not undisputed champion, it's undisputed WWE champion, right?

well but if the world champion says my title is the the big title in the wwe then he's disputing that

the other guy is the champion of the wwe

see there's loopholes here that need to be addressed hey listen aew has a world champion they're about to have a unified champion who's not the world champion who's not the world champion well say there's loopholes that need to be addressed See, some people are disputing some undisputed things,

and then some people are are being disincluded from the unification.

And instead of being unificated, they're being segregated.

And goddamn it without even being masturbated.

So once again, something needs to be done.

We're in Saudi Arabia, the big main event

for Night of Champions, a match that they've been building up.

Maybe they've done a better job of building up than anything else recently with Cena.

But of course, it's a main event in Saudi Arabia, John Cena versus CM Punk.

And the people were lit up to see it.

And they did the chants.

They were chanting for Punk before they played the music.

And then,

Hakamussalini,

if he was Saudi, is now Punk an honorary Saudi now.

Ick Ein Berliner, is he an Ick Ein Saudier?

I mean, it's gotten out now.

That whole little pretentious setup scene where the fan Muhammad in his WWE hat

called him out and of all the people punk saw that like Bruce Springsteen with Courtney Cox he outside Muhammad he's like you who are you I didn't mean it I woke up in a bad mood I didn't mean Saudi Arabia even though I specifically said a blood money covered dick in Saudi Arabia

But uh I apologize to you and to everyone you know and to everyone who is here now and but no no no no hold on he apologized to the people of saudi arabia

but that because people can be different than the because look we have an evil government here in the united states but there are some good people still here trying to fight against it so you could you can insult the united states now and but he didn't but when you say that you're not insulting the people of saudi arabia you were insulting the people who actually committed the murder the people who supplied the blood

and the money they're actually supplying the blood from the murders and the money from the oil fields that the people don't get the money from.

So they are the blood money suppliers.

So it's specifically the government.

Well, yeah.

So he apologized to the people, did he not?

Power to the people?

Or did he apologize?

I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.

Did he apologize to Muhammad and all the people of Saudi Arabia?

All of the people.

Well, all of

the people.

The cult of Cornett are the people, and none of them are the government.

He's apologizing to the government.

Apologize to prince muhammad salamander over there yeah you know again i think it's it's the modern day of wrestling and the reality is wwe's business model is built around saudi arabia's money not built around it but it's a thing that makes it profitable it's it's highly desirable

a lot of their business strategy is built around saudi money so there's a lot

There's a lot that they don't want to fuck up anything with that relationship.

So you're saying as soon as they got him over there and had his passport in their hands they said now here you've got to go out and talk to a kid named muhammad i think punk knew for a long time that he was going to have to go over there and apologize

i think he just came out and did i mean triple h afterwards said oh i'm so proud of him he's grown so much as a person

and you know

how your mother-in-law is in the evil administration and again it's one thing just you know hey i don't care i'm just i want to work the show i'll get a lot of money but you know it's it's when you actually go out and go to bat for for a thought or a concept or something happening.

And then all of a sudden it's like, well, they got all that money.

So I'm sorry.

I mean, that's what's getting people a little up in arms about the thing, but it'll pass.

Do you think, is there an element of,

am I ribbing myself now because I'm the only one that won't

involved in that?

Or is it like, well, god damn it, you know, it's $5 million.

You have to wonder if it was something

that was an an option

really hey you want to come back you know we don't know when the conversation happened the conversation could have been nikon talking to him when he first came back you understand we're working saudi arabia you'll have to eventually go there you'll have to say you're so not just go there you'll have to say you're sorry

because the other thing is they're not doing that just so he's not booed for one night just so they don't boo you that one time you're there just please say you're sorry to everyone no they're doing that so they don't cut off punk's head and throw it off the top of a building and then play soccer with it.

I don't think he would have been too upset if the people had decided to boo him and cheer Cena because the match could have been just fine either way.

But I think he wants to leave with his head still on his shoulders.

And again, a lot of fans says people see it both ways.

But again,

Punk being so out in front on is what makes it a punk issue.

But the bigger thing is if you have problems with Saudi Arabia, I'm not very happy about it.

The sad reality is it's the future of wrestling with TKO.

So much of their beyond WWE, so much of their money comes from Saudi Arabia.

So it's an issue bigger than punk, but a lot of people make it just about punk because, again, he makes himself part of the issue at times and it clouds things.

But

it produced an interesting dynamic.

He got him over again.

They went from booing him to all of a sudden he just said, I'm sorry, and they're ready to cheer.

Yeah, they're like, okay, that's all we were waiting on.

And then they got the headline: Punk apologizes to Muhammad.

But you know what they've always said, Brian?

Of all the fans.

Yeah, go ahead.

If you can't bring punk to Muhammad, bring Muhammad to punk.

Rock the Casbah.

Rock the Casbah.

So the match, the people were lit up.

They were chanting.

They were the ole, ole, ole.

That's everywhere.

What the fuck?

And they started slow again.

They didn't need to rush because they already had the people and they had some time to put in.

But also, they were wrestling and it was one-on-one again, allegedly with no disqualification.

More on that in a moment.

Punk did a little terry funk and the ropes at the start, but

on this one, Cena was working harder.

He obviously, and just this is factual, is not the athlete that he was 20 years ago,

but he was making some contact.

He was working harder than doing more.

Those punches, though.

He was throwing punches at Punk.

Punk was doing all he could.

I actually thought Punk was really good here because Punk is really good at looking genuinely exhausted and like he's in a fight.

And he was moving his head to those punches that sometimes it was an open hand, sometimes it didn't come near his head.

Yeah, but that's Cena.

I guess you just got to accept it.

But I mean, he was, he was trying here.

You can't say he was dogging it.

He's just, you know,

that's where we're at.

It's why there's 14 dates left or whatever.

But anyway,

at one point, either

I wrote, because I'm trying to figure out, I watched it a couple of times, then I kind of figured it out afterwards because either Cena forgot to lift Punk, I said, or Punk is practicing to climb Mount Everest.

And then about a minute later, they went back and Punk got the octopus on him.

And then Cena hip-tossed him off.

So

I'm thinking that Punk was trying to get the octopus on on top of him.

But Cena's like, what the fuck are you doing up there?

Yeah.

Because that's it.

It was like Punk was climbing up on him, but Cena was just like bent over, like, what the fuck is happening?

Anyway,

And they, Cena had to do his stuff.

You know, you can't see him and all that stuff because people want to see that.

But then Punk got to do his his stuff and the elbow off the top.

And

Cena foiled the go to sleep and got an STF.

And then Cena got an AA and Punk got an STF.

So many initials.

Where's the STP?

But the thing is, this was

instead of just blandly saying this move and that move.

It was a good back and forth match where everything made sense.

It was a good world title match.

It was probably the best best

John Cena match of this

particular retirement run here, I would think.

I agree.

I completely agree.

The people were going, this is awesome.

They were getting big pops on the false finishes when Cena hit the third attitude adjustment, got a two count.

It was a big pop.

Yeah, you know, we said beforehand, too, how this match should be in the States.

It should be in Chicago.

But you can't take anything away from the crowd reactions this was getting over there.

No, they were there, yeah.

No, it may not have been as good anywhere, actually, as it was there.

And uh, Chicago, if they were properly motivated, might have given them a fucking if they thought punk was going to win it, they'd have been off the

beam, but nevertheless,

and Cena went out and got the title belt and brought it in.

And the referee and the fans are, no, no, no, and he kind of looks and he tosses it out

and

he goes for the AA, but Punk hits the go-to-sleep and gets a two-count.

And then they get up and boom, boom, boom.

And now Cena's doing his thing where he hits the shoulder tackles off the ropes.

And

Punk drops down, and Cena hits the referee with, I think it's Rudy Charles, whatever name they're calling him these days,

with

the shoulder tackle.

And the referee goes down, rolls out on the floor.

And I was like, oh, shit.

Because

the only

thing they can do when a match is

not no DQ is knock the referee out, which I'm not opposed to

referee dumps.

Yeah, they feel better if they take one every.

It's a stand.

I don't hear too many wrestling professionals take.

Well, I think they should take one every day and more fiber.

But in addition to the referee dumps, I'm not opposed to referee bumps.

I have done a bunch of them as a booker.

But the problem is now referee bumps have evolved into

the referee has been placed in a fucking medically induced coma

by a open-handed slap and is going to be down for 10 minutes until such time as he's needed again.

And here we go.

So Punk hits the, and by the way, I've loved this match up until this point.

This has been a yeoman's job on everyone's part.

And Cena is taking a referee out, and Punk hits to go to sleep and covers.

There's no ref.

And Punk gets up and looks like, where the fuck is this guy?

And waves to the back, calling for another referee.

Seth music.

And here comes Seth Franklin Rollins and Paul Heyman and Bronson Reed and Bron Breaker all walking out

and down the entranceway and the music is is blaring, and the entrance video.

Brian, you're old enough to remember when the referee would get knocked down.

It'd be because somebody jumped out of the way, he got dropkicked, or whatever, the boom, and he goes down and he's momentarily stunned long enough for the heel or the heel's compadre and cohort to cheat in some meaningful way

while he's not looking and he's dazed.

And then he's back up to his feet and it's none the wiser when he looks around.

That was basically the idea of knocking the referee down.

Correct.

But now they got to be in a goddamn coma.

Even if you're not in the ring and you're dazed, the goddamn music is playing over the loudspeaker.

What's the referee supposed to think unless he's completely slapped dab unconscious?

In which case, some doctor needs to be bringing over a goddamn oxygen tank.

And we'll come back to the referee in a second.

They make the long music entrance.

Everything has come to a halt.

Nobody's in a hurry.

It just, it stops to focus on this.

And Seth

has time to reach out and then make his motion,

his fist with his hand.

So then his stooges run in and sick punk, but punk fights them off.

Boom, boom,

And one guy goes this way, another guy goes that way, and then they end up on the floor.

And he dives on them and overshot them.

And I know they're shaped like bowling balls, but goddamn, I didn't think he had that much spring in his legs left, but he overshot them and almost landed on his head over the top of them.

Then

they picked him up and slammed him through the Arabic announce table.

And there went Phubar, Micah Fakalube, and Slapco Fudd scurrying for their lives.

And then Seth is standing in the ring with the briefcase.

And they say, Is he going to cash in?

And as he's caught, he calls for another referee.

Well, here comes Lil Nate, old Charles Robinson, running down the entranceway.

One would have thought, again, the reason for urgency in cheating when the referee is down is because if you don't do something quick, certainly someone in the back is going to be alerted to send send another referee down.

So your clock is ticking when the first one goes down.

Is it going to take 30 seconds?

Is it going to take 40 seconds?

Well, we've been a while.

Here comes the next referee, and Cena stands up in the entranceway, bam,

and wipes him out.

So

he's down.

So then Cena and Seth start arguing with each other.

Seth swings the briefcase at Cena.

Cena ducks it and gives him the AA.

But then Braun and

Bronson,

Breaker and Reed, let's call them Breaker and Reed.

Breaker and Reed get in and start getting some heat on Cena.

But then music plays.

Am I exaggerating this, Brian?

Oh, no.

And then the music.

Okay.

If the music, if you're talking about Sammy, the music played for like five seconds.

It was the most unnecessary playing in the music.

No, no, no.

You've skipped somebody.

Oh.

The first first music was Penta.

Oh, that's right.

Remember, Penta out of nowhere,

out of nowhere, Cinderella story.

Penta comes out and he gets in a fight with Braun Breaker on the rampway, the entranceway,

and they're fighting.

And then the music plays again, and there comes Sammy within five seconds.

And he

gets on Braun and they fight off to the side of the entrance where the Penta, who's been

leveled before, can get back up and run across the stage and dive off the stage, onto the floor, onto both of them.

But now, what do you say is going on in the ring?

Well, Bronson Reed goes to the top and he's going to splash Cena.

But Punk pushes Bronson Reed off.

And Cena picks Reed up and gives him an AA.

And then Cena and Punk are in the ring, and everybody else has rolled out and left.

And Paul is still standing around there.

I think he was just, he was blown up from the trip down, and he didn't want to leave and go back in case he had to sit down and rest halfway.

But everybody else that ran out there as magically has all disappeared.

And

now Punk and Cena are in the ring.

And Punk offers his hand for a handshake, and Cena takes it and pulls him in for the hug.

And the people are like, yay.

And then Cena makes the face,

like the face he made with Cody.

Right into the camera.

Right into the camera.

He goes for the gut kick, and Punk catches it

and starts to pick him up for the AA.

And there's Seth with the briefcase, suddenly, where the fuck he came from.

Boom, hits him with the briefcase in the head gives him the stomp rolls out of the ring cena covers and the referee

the first referee rudy charles

who was bumped with a shoulder tackle

seven minutes ago

rolls right in and counts one two three

so

i thought it was a real good match until it became sports entertainment instead of wrestling.

And

then everybody came out and you just lost the fucking plot.

And then they went back to it and there it was.

And that's the best that they,

I'm sorry, but whatever I used to figure a finish,

regardless of what company it was from or where it was, if you can't account for everybody's whereabouts and participation in a realistic manner in front of the live audience in a particular period of time,

then either make an adjustment where you can or don't do it.

With seven minutes for a shoulder tackle and all this shit, it just,

but that's what they expect these days because they're training people.

This is what

wrestling is supposed to look like.

So it was very exciting,

but it just, it, it,

it hurts me that is this the way the musicians feel about that auto-tune thing where Aunt Fanny can sing like goddamn bet middler if she wants to?

No, I don't think this or that you just don't have to be good at it anymore,

you know.

Again, it's become very standard, but I have a feeling people are going to get burned out if they aren't already, and some of us are

by these non-finishes that include big moments?

Triple H is good at giving you big moments,

but you see more and more holes in everything he actually puts together the more you watch it.

And I thought that was the most important thing.

And unfortunately, for all the good that we say about Paul E,

he is a big moment with holes guy a lot of times.

That's his specialty.

So you got a lot of big moments and you got a lot of holes.

But again, I just didn't think,

you know, nothing against Penta because I don't mind him.

But when he showed up, it was like him?

He's the one to come out here to make the save for

punk, I guess.

Sammy, it makes sense.

They've been aligned a little bit and they both hate this group of Haymans.

Well, yeah, but just on a level of the way that people are viewed, Penta was the odd duck.

It was like, what?

I know they're pushing him, but it's the, you know, it's the main event, you know, world title match on Cena's retirement tour.

Maybe let's just leave that one alone.

And again, it was almost 10 minutes of interference and non-finishes.

Not even non-finishes, interfere, interferences.

It was a different fucking match for about five minutes.

Yeah.

Here now,

let's all go to the lobby.

Let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves a snack.

We'll come back in five minutes when the match we were watching starts back up.

What I don't know.

But yeah.

But at same time,

goddamn, they made a bunch of million dollars on it, and everybody

is professional.

I assume, except I didn't watch Jade and

who's he, what's he?

Osuka.

Yeah.

But they're, you know,

I'm sure they did find.

Nobody was almost killed.

We got that going for us.

But, you know, it was,

it was better than than your

average standard five-match

kind of blain pay-per-view because of the two big matches.

And coincidentally, they were two actual singles matches that meant something between stars, but

the one finish was so gimmicked up, it was a little disappointing because they were doing so well.

And again, I know, you know.

Even if it's Cena and Punk, I don't know whether either one of them would have

just come to

with the idea, even Cena for Smoke and Mirrors come with the idea of let's just run 17 people in it to finish this thing and take five or six minutes and then get back on track.

I think that was probably an office

influence.

Heyman, especially, like you said.

But that was

WWE's latest excursion to Saudi Arabian.

And good to hear that the plane was allowed to leave the runway this time.

But of course, Jim, WWE, all those wrestlers, all those scared staff members.

Yep.

So happy to be back on American ground.

So happy.

Probably thinking about their future.

Thinking about their future.

I was going to talk about thinking about the nap, but you're right.

The future.

Oh, you told me about the future.

You know, I just started thinking about how I felt after the pay-per-view.

And I said, curveball, wild card.

Jim,

if at all possible, I'd love to talk about the big nap that everyone had to take, the big sleep after getting home.

After they kissed the ground, happy they're back in the States.

Everyone needed a good night's sleep, and we know where everyone can get one.

Well, you know what?

Most of the time when you're feared for your safety and your life, and you finally you get away from that and you get back home.

You just want to lay down

on a comfortable mattress.

You don't want to sleep with the fishes.

You want to sleep with Helix.

That's what you want to do because folks, our friends at Helix, they got a big deal going on right now.

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And right now, the 4th of July sale means you are going to save more money than you're ever going to save.

on these fine mattresses.

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And Brian, you know the drill.

We've been talking about Helix for years now.

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I sleep on them.

Many people, some people sleep with them.

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And then the line keeps going.

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I don't know anything about them.

These mattresses promise things that don't exist.

Let's

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It looks like an S.

And that way, when you're all hunched over, you still got a place to fucking sleep.

I don't think that's how it works.

And of course, visit your chiropractor or whoever works on your back, ladies and gentlemen.

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No, let's not say that any of these mattresses will cause you.

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No, give her the Advil for the first, give her the Advil for the first couple of nights.

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we love them helix sleep

It doesn't seem to want to end the time machine.

We are, let me change this.

We are in the future.

We are back to where we were back from Saudi Arabia.

After a day in the life in Saudi Arabia, we are

back here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whoopie.

After all of that, the big trip to Saudi Arabia, what better time than ever to have an early edition of Raw

which started at 6 p.m.

this past Monday.

Did you see any of it?

Well, yeah, I'll tell you about that in a second.

But first of all, they come back from Saudi Arabia and they go to to pittsburgh to do a raw show and they started at six o'clock because i guess because friday's the fourth of july they they did a double taping but

i number one how did they get 14 000 people to show up in pittsburgh in the building at six o'clock on a monday do these people have no no jobs no Are there no prisons, no workhouses?

How did they all get there?

And secondly,

what the fuck?

We used to complain about

my schedule.

I was, oh, mid-South, it was so hard.

Or Crockett, I'll take Atlanta TV at 10 o'clock in the morning, Baltimore at 2, and Philly at 7:30

instead of Saudi Arabia on Saturday night and Pittsburgh for fucking four hours on Monday.

That's insane.

What are the people in Pittsburgh saying about it?

Did they all have to quit their jobs?

Were there mass firings?

In that traffic, how did they get there?

And maybe it was Canada Day.

I don't know.

Well, now in Canada Day, nobody works.

We've established that, but that's

a whole different thing.

Pittsburgh Day?

Pittsburgh Day.

Maybe it was Rusev Day.

All right, I got a new problem with the Netflix, Brian.

Have they changed their MO?

Have they?

In what way?

Well, you watch the thing live, don't you?

I best you can.

I try to when I'm going to watch it.

And this week I got the email that Raw was coming up early.

It's six, like 10 minutes to six.

So I just turned it on while I was working.

But otherwise, I would have missed the live performance.

Well, here's the problem.

And again, let's backtrack.

On normal television, when you DBR a program, you can just zip right through the commercials.

And you've got an on-screen reference for fast forward, so you know what you're skipping.

And not only in the case of commercials, but with RAW, you can skip the travel logs and the product placement and the endless backstage inanity and the 10-minute entrances and get to the meat of the matter, right?

If you record it on real television.

But Netflix, as I've mentioned, doesn't have any on-screen capa.

You can fast forward, but you don't know what you're missing.

So you have to check in every few minutes to see if they're actually getting to the goddamn meat of the matter.

But now, Brian, when I tried to watch it that way this time,

guess, because I remember I've said before, every time I try to skip ahead five minutes, I end up in some kind of commercial.

Now, you, once you end up at a commercial,

you can't fast forward the rest of the commercial.

You have to sit there and watch two minutes, two and a half.

There's a clock on the screen.

Ed will end in 229.

And you can't fast forward it.

And then when the program comes back on and it's a travelogue, then you can fast forward it again.

But if you stop, you're in another fucking commercial.

I spent the whole time trying to watch the thing.

And the only thing I watched was the commercials.

And the only thing I could skip was the program.

So I saw a couple of things we're going to talk about, but have you heard from anybody else that this is a new thing they're doing

where you now you're just stuck with it?

This has been a long-term internal project at WWE to make it so that you get stuck in commercials no matter where you go, what you do on the Mat, on Netflix, everywhere you go.

I haven't heard anyone else complain about this specific thing.

Well, I would have noticed it if I was not able to fast forward the commercials before now because it's been several months that we've been going through this.

And

anyway,

and when I would land on the program, they were either replaying shit from earlier that I didn't want to see the first time

or talking about something I wasn't interested in.

But finally,

we got to Gunther.

And by the way, they had an in-ring promo with Rhea Ripley and E.O.

Skye, who are going to face each other.

And Finn and JD beat the New Day for the tag tag team title and Rusev beat Seamus.

And we were already pretty much more than halfway through the show, I believe.

But Gunther

in the ring, he did a classic promo last week, just ripped Goldberg from asshole appetite and did

kind of the same thing here.

He said, I'm not afraid of what is left of Bill Goldberg.

My God, after the vultures got him.

And

he was that I could beat him in under three minutes, but I'm going to blow him up and embarrass him.

And you don't like bullies.

Well, I'm the biggest bully around and I'll treat you like a piece of crap.

Still got it.

You never had it.

But I love him because he's one of the best promos in the company now and English is his second language.

But enough of...

me talking about how great Gunther is.

Brian, tell me how great Gunther is.

I think he's been the highlight of Raw the last couple of weeks.

You know, Liv Morgan, I think, has been the highlight of Raw and that she got hurt.

Gunther's promos, he may be the best promo all year.

Not just this run, but if you really think about what he does, the issue, and I don't know if it's just because it's Goldberg and,

you know, it's cool to boo, I guess, you know, the old good guys,

but I don't know if it would happen if he was against anybody right now.

He's almost turning himself babyface by being the big bully badass that no one could beat up.

Well, and he's not really turning himself because now he's messing with Seth too.

And we'll get there in a second.

But again, that's what I like about him:

he's the kind, he's not a chicken shit heel.

He's not a lying, sneaking, conniving.

He's a proud, pompous, arrogant heel who's good enough to back it up.

And you can go either way with that.

And it still doesn't,

again, you know, the thing I always talk about is I hate it when baby faces or heels do, especially babyfaces, do things that they wouldn't do if they were who they are purported to be.

It's out of character for them.

It's bad booking to make them do or say things that

you don't think that that personality would do or say.

And Gunther doesn't do it.

And, you know, he ripped up

Bill Goldberg.

He's taken Bill Goldberg away from Bret Hart now,

but he ripped him.

He said he could beat him in under three minutes, but he's going to blow him up and embarrass him.

And he's the biggest bully around and he's going to treat him like a piece of crap.

And he's getting babyface pops for every one of these things that he says.

Well, because again, you know,

this is a newer generation and

they like the Bret Harts and they like the legends

that their favorite wrestlers look up to and like.

But has anybody ever, my favorite wrestler was Goldberg in the business?

It's not a tradition now that the modern fans have adopted.

He should, he was a huge name.

He should get

one last match on a, you know, big stage and et cetera, but

it's too long.

He waited too long for the people really to be, oh, Goldberg is back.

Oh, shit.

And now it's, you know, he's, like I said, a week or so ago or whatever, he's kind of taken the place of, I think they wanted Gunther to beat Brock Lesnar.

Because who is a,

before Brock got in all that trouble,

who's another smash mouth, physically dominant guy that Gunther could beat

that would get him over in that way.

Besides Brock Lesnar, it'd be Goldberg.

There's nobody else on the list.

So this serves a lot of purposes.

But on the other hand, if this is Goldberg's last match and this is the build to Goldberg's last match,

do you try to change anything if all of a sudden he's getting these big babyface reactions that Goldberg's a piece of crap and I'm going to get the shit out of him?

No, I think they're going to have the same match, probably regardless of who's cheering who, because it's going to be, I would think, a Paul Heyman type special where they bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, and bam, and that's it.

I don't think that Gunther is going to matt wrestle Goldberg for an extended period of time.

And there's,

you know, it's probably not going to tease the time limit.

But it doesn't matter because, and again, it's network TV.

That's a better audience for Goldberg than the streaming.

And he gets to wrestle one final match on network television in Atlanta and help.

another guy do some business in the future.

He gets to wrestle for his kids.

Gunther,

everybody comes out better for it.

You think they're going to put Ventura on commentary for that match?

Oh, good Lord.

I don't know whether I hope not for Goldberg's sake or whether I hope so for our entertainment's sake.

Because who knows what could be said in that situation.

But anyway, but then, so Gunther finished with Goldberg and then he said, and then I'm going to be the one to say who's next.

And Seth's music plays and he gets a big pop, but he comes out with Paul and they take

a long time to get in the ring and speak.

And Seth was crowing about preventing Punk from being the champion over the weekend.

But he said, when I won Money in the Bank, I said that it would be an assault on both titles.

Well, congratulations, champ.

And before they get a chance to say anything else, like Mussolini,

but he got to leave the country.

Here comes Punk, and he tackled Seth, and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And Seth runs out into the arena,

and they're chanting to see him punk.

And Punk sees that Seth ain't coming back, and he turns around to leave.

And Gunther grabs his arm, like, hey, don't walk away from me.

And Punk shoves Gunther down

and storms out.

And Gunther's like, well,

I never.

And then you see Seth standing in the bleachers, and suddenly L.A.

Knight is behind him eating popcorn.

This was the best segment of the show.

And then he hit him with a popcorn, and they fight into the breezeway near the concession area

in an obviously cleared and roped-off area designed for their fight with guards holding back multitudes of people that are standing out there for no reason.

Did Did they advertise the fight in the concession area?

Not that I'm aware of, no.

Why were all those people standing there?

How did they know?

When L.A.

Knight went up there to get his popcorn, he said, Hey, gentlemen, please follow me.

I want to make sure no fans are going to be hurt because I'm about to do something that I'm allowed to do because I'm a wrestler.

But I mean, seriously,

I mean, I can see the school of thought that if there are people out there, it looks more legitimate, but it didn't look legitimate because the way the people were arranged and then parted by barricades.

But then, if it doesn't look legitimate, then why have people there?

Okay, to make noise, but then can't you make it any less obvious that?

And again, what did they do?

Did people just notice them roping off the entire concession stand and stand there and wait to see what was going to happen?

Yeah, maybe they thought Jey Uso was next.

Actually, they've given you kind of a they've given you something that makes sense as a plausible reason.

They thought Jean Uso was about to come up there and yell at the camera and come out.

He's done it plenty of times.

Yeah, he's about to come up there and then yeet and go back to where he came from.

You know, that's got to be a long round trip to leave the locker room, bypass the entrance to the arena, go all the way up into the top of the building, and then come back down to the ring when you were 50 feet away from it to begin with.

I guess so.

Think about that now.

It was nice to see that punk came out to Cult of Personality.

I thought he may come out to the Brenda Lee classic.

I'm sorry.

Joe, come on now.

I'm so sorry

that I

such a fool.

Keep going.

Keep on the lyrics.

I was going to try to customize it, but that I tweeted you mean.

All right.

Well, speaking of mean tweets, let's get back to this.

Like Mussolini, if he was sorry.

That works.

What was somebody on Twitter said, like Mussolini in Italy, just like it's 1943.

But anyway, we go back to the show.

I know Bailey had a time limit draw with Lyric.

And then I was sick of landing on the commercials.

I would have watched the entire main event tag team match, Sami Zayn and Penta

versus the bronze, Breaker and Reed.

But I didn't want to take any chances on hitting another commercial, so I went to the last five minutes to see the finish.

Actually, the last six minutes or so.

And

I know they're trying to make a superstar out of Penta, and he sells merchandise.

God, I hate to see men with Braun Breaker because a lot of his shit looks phony, and it drags Braun down.

And it's just the oddness of the timing and everything.

But Sammy made a comeback.

They had some nice false finishes.

Looked like it was a good match, Cook.

And they had a big pop when Sammy finally got a suplex on Bronson Reed.

He had just a vertical suplex.

But he had worked for it.

He couldn't do it.

He'd gone back to it.

He couldn't.

They milked it.

And finally, when he got it, he got a big pop.

But then, as soon as he got up to go for the cover, he got speared by Bronson Breaker, Braun Break, which, yeah, he suplexed Bronson Reed

and got speared by Bronson Breaker.

One, two, three.

It was a very nice finish.

And then they speared

Pinta and went to splash Sammy, but Jey Uso came out and beat the shit out of him with a chair.

And the heels bailed and the crowd yeeted.

But I like Braun Breaker and Bronson Reed.

That's a fucking team.

And Braun Breaker is,

it's not like you've got two big giant monsters because Braun can move to the point where you,

you know, you're not like, oh, this is two big guys doing splashes off the top, but at the same time, he's got the size.

That's just me.

And that's just Raw.

You know what I actually thought was really good on the show?

I know you didn't watch it, so you can't really comment.

And it pulled me in because it went so long that I was like, you know what, I should just watch it at this point and see what's happening here.

Miro or Rusev versus Seamus.

I thought it was really good.

And I'm sure it was.

And if I cared really right now about either guy, I might have watched it too.

If it was on real television,

but that's in two and a half hours, they had four matches.

And

not all of the matches were necessarily the can't miss type.

All right, friends, that was Raw.

WWE Raw.

Early in Pittsburgh.

Let's move on.

Let's move far, far away from all this.

Far, far away.

Jim, let's get to some questions from the Cult of Cornet.

This one was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Kyle Hansen.

Would Roman Reigns move the needle for AEW

like CM Punk did?

Hold on here.

Would he move the needle?

Yes.

I mean, if Roman Reigns showed up on AEW, I think a lot of people would

be paying attention to that, see what was going to go on.

Would he move the needle like CM Punk did

at this point?

I'm not saying he's necessarily a smaller star.

I'm saying

is the needle capable of being moved as big as that now?

Because when Punk got him over a million viewers, they were already at 800,000.

And when

Punk drew the, what, a couple of million-dollar gates,

that was,

you know, out of the,

out of the norm for them at the time, but they've raised the ticket prices now to where even though they have so many fewer people,

they're still grossing money.

So I don't know if it's possible.

You would think that he would move the needle as possible as it is to be moved by anybody just for signing with the company, wouldn't you?

But how much that would be would be debatable.

Yeah, and again, there's a few differences.

Obviously, CM Punk going to AEW when he did is a little different than any top star going to AEW now.

The company has been seen a little differently.

They're rebuilding, if anything.

CM Punk went to AEW as CM Punk.

What would Roman Reigns be?

Oh, that's right.

Roman Reigns couldn't go to Roman.

Roman Reigns couldn't go to AEW.

The guy could.

And that's another thing.

CM Punk came back from a long

retirement from wrestling.

Roman Reigns had just has not wrestled often, but he's still been around.

And the thing is, then you'd have the problem.

Who, if Roman Reigns, regardless of what you called him,

showed up tomorrow in AEW, who could he work with to draw money?

He'd be in the same position as the Hurt Syndicate.

There's no

tag teams.

It would be credible.

That's who we can work with.

Well, but they're set up as a tag team that's a

point i'm making is

you have almost nobody there

that would be credible against a guy the level of roman reigns

and moxley's their world champion can you see that match well actually that's probably the one forget about the actual context and content of the match well that's right because they're old compadres before moxley flunked out of the big league that's the biggest thing you could do probably right out of the gate before people see how stinky the match match will be is present the match.

But,

you know,

I don't see how that with the structure, with everything that we know about AEW, that they can sign any, of course, they're not going to sign Roman Reigns.

It can't possibly, but

I don't see who they could bring in that at this point

would make anything but a short-term curiosity difference because then they'll end up

immaterial like like everybody else they bring in.

So,

yeah, Roman Reigns as,

you know, somebody else, whatever name,

Roman Snow, I don't know.

He initially people would go, oh shit, what the fuck's going on here?

But then he'd get lost in a shuffle and there'd be nothing interesting for him to do.

And I also think CM Punk was uniquely situated to be that guy for that audience.

Again, not a lot of guys have a big hometown drawing ability.

Yeah.

What's Roman Reigns' hometown?

San Jose?

Like, I don't even know.

Does he draw really big there?

Like Punk does in Chicago, where it becomes part of the story.

Punk was a unique figure that worked perfectly for AEW at that point.

Well, plus, Roman Reigns is a great promo, but Roman Reigns can't talk to people like Punk can.

Well, that's the other thing.

And if you came out there without a message,

but that was a reason why Punk was perfect for the AEW audience because he could communicate to the smart fans while still

not

coming out and make it all wrestling bullshit he was able to do it in this in the story

well that answers that question jim our next question was sent via the culta cornet facebook group by alexa forrester

in jon moxley's book

he talks about jr giving a talk at fcwa wait a minute he wrote one i didn't know he'd ever read one he wrote one apparently it's a real piece of work.

He talks about JR giving a talk at FCW

and recommending the boys have a backup plan in case wrestling didn't work out.

Moxley didn't agree with this because,

and there's a quote here.

I think if you really want something, whatever that is, you have to go for it with 100% of yourself.

If you're going to go for it, go for it.

Great things aren't achieved with a safety net in place.

Safety nets, backup plans, these are distractions, excuses to give up early.

A backup plan may be put in place for your benefit, but what it really serves

is as a way out.

If you want something bad enough, if you believe in yourself, failure can't be an option.

The very concept that you may not succeed simply can't exist.

Oh, Christ.

Sounds like a warrior.

I'd love to know Jim's thoughts on this.

Did he advise the developer?

He also sounds like he's 14, doesn't he?

He doesn't he sound like some kind of fucking wannabe

that's wants to be his favorite action movie star or badass video game character hero or something.

You're a fucking idiot if you

especially for the audience that JR was speaking to, not just a bunch of guys who wanted to wrestle indies on the weekends weekends and actually had

some type of job or way to support themselves and pay their bills, but people

in FCW

who were apparently thinking of making this their living and doing this for real,

in which case a lot of them weren't going to make it.

And you know what?

A lot of them didn't make it.

So it's, you know, him saying,

don't let the wrestling business ruin your life because you have had, you've got no other option or you don't have any other plan or what would I do if this or whatever.

He was trying to be nice to these people, but this fucking

gelatinous-headed moron

is too wrapped up in the fantasy of who he thinks he is

to fucking see that.

And, you know, I'm sure he, he's another one of these people that doesn't mind, I slept in my car.

Well, good for you.

I'm not going to sleep in a fucking car, asshole.

I'm going to be a goddamn adult in a crazy business, but I'm not going to sleep in my car or stick myself in a sleeping bag on somebody's couch because I'm too much of a goddamn bum to be able to support myself.

I don't want to grow up.

I'm a Toys kid.

Yeah, well, let him go back to fucking Munchkin Land and be the cabbage patch kid he wants to be.

But JR was talking to aspiring professional athletes who may flunk out of the course.

And Moxley's talking to a bunch of garbage championship wrestling wannabe dipshits who look just like him, a fucking corpse floating in a river for three days.

Well, let me just, the final part of this question here that was sent in by Alexa.

I'd like to know Jim's thoughts on this.

Did he advise the developmental talent and OVW to have a backup plan?

Is this something you advise talent or, you know, aspiring talent to have?

Well, I didn't.

The first thing that I said to everybody when they came in the door was, God damn, I hope you got some options, right?

It wasn't the, the,

you know, how,

you know,

and there was a number of people I suggested that they find new careers.

Linda Miles, those Shane twins, I said, you, you people need to do something else.

But that was after

experiencing what they had to offer.

But no, I would tell the guys, look,

this is why we were trying to teach them how to be in a wrestling business.

If you want to be in a wrestling business, pay your taxes.

Yes, I sent memos out on paying taxes and

circulated the name of an accountant here in town that they could potentially go to.

And we talked to them about keeping their records.

And we mentioned to them that,

you know, this is, it's fucking show biz and you might not get to be the movie star or the rock star or whatever.

But here's, we're educating you and teaching you how to be in a wrestling business.

And because you're here in Louisville,

either you're on contract and you're making enough to get by and you can concentrate on your studies,

or you've already got a job and you're training and you're part-time.

Nobody thought they were going to get fucking rich,

but we were very clear with

the pitfalls that you can fall into in the business and

that

it ain't a sure thing.

But

I never would have coached anybody.

No, don't consider that this is not going to work out because it's probably not going to work out.

You're deluding yourself.

It doesn't mean you don't have to try your hardest or work for it.

If you know the odds are against you ahead of time, maybe that gives you some,

what's the word I'm searching for?

Some encouragement.

I'm going to climb this mountain.

But you can't just

be single-minded like, yes, this is going to fucking happen for sure.

And I'm going to

be an idiot and fall through furniture until I'm 50 or it does.

That's not, no.

Yeah, sounds like a great book, but I thank you for your question.

Jim, our next question via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent in by Cody

McMoyle.

Mick Lemoyle.

Is he one of the Moyle?

Is he the Moyle?

Not exactly sure.

The Moyle, the Moyle cut my finger off.

All right, let's go to the Moyles question.

Cody the Moyle, that will be Cody's new gimmick.

What is Jim's opinion of why Nathan Jones never worked out?

Dealings with him, if any, in OVW?

I can understand why he didn't pan out, but seeing how devastating that kick to Nunzio was makes me wonder.

Thank you for all the content.

I don't remember seeing a kick to Nunzio.

You know, Nathan Jones,

they may have sent him to OVW one time just to work out, but I never even used him on television, and I don't remember the first conversation I've had with him.

But the deal was: a lot of people may not know or remember the name, but this was 25 years ago or whenever.

He's this giant seven-foot guy.

Where was he from?

Australia?

I believe he was.

Yeah, I think so.

And they signed him, and

I think he never got it.

It didn't work out.

He wasn't real good.

And then,

what was the

this might be a goddamn Google thing, but

somehow they brought him back and booked him and he wanted to quit, but he waited until they took they booked him on the tour of Australia.

And then when he was home, he just said fuck it and left and never came back.

And he's been in movies and had

different parts and things.

Was he in prison for a while?

I haven't brushed up on my Nathan Jones.

According to Wikipedia, here

or did he do a prison movie?

He's a pro wrestler.

He's a a mixed martial artist.

He was a strong man

after WWE.

On December 6, 2003, Jones quit the company due to the rigor of WWE's heavy travel schedule while on tour in Perth, Australia.

There you go.

He worked.

He worked for TNA.

He signed with TNA in 2008.

But nerve damage caused by a cement truck hitting his left arm.

Jesus Christ.

Wait a minute.

It didn't hit the rest of him.

It just, because, boy, that cement truck just barely touched me with the left arm.

Thank goodness.

It kept him sideline for the first three months.

He never wrestled for the promotion.

That's right.

I was there in 2009.

I never saw him.

Following a segment on Good Morning Australia, in which he lifted and pushed an oot

down the street, U-T-E.

And a what?

Ute.

Were these two Utes?

What did he push to did it?

It's an Australian abbreviation for a car.

So

he pushed a car down the street, and then he was in a Jackie Chan movie, First Strike.

And then he was in a Brad Pitt movie.

Nothing about being arrested here, though.

Okay, well, then he was in prison in a movie, I think, then.

That's what it was.

Yeah, it didn't, didn't pan out.

They said he was very odd.

Jim, our next question sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent in by John Viviani.

You spent a lot of time in the territories on the road.

As a car enthusiast as well as a wrestling fan, I was wondering what car you in the Midnights used or if there was a favorite type of car, the boys in general like to rent or own.

What I've talked about earlier in the program, some of the cars that I've had and we had, and no, our cars were always beat to shit

because we're going up and down the roads in Louisiana or North Carolina or whatever.

I'll tell you what, when we started working for Crockett and started flying more, the cars that we liked to rent in 85, 86, 87

that the Hertz company had, and I had the Hertz gold card,

they had these Mercuries and T-Birds that were turbo.

were turbos and they were boy they were sporty little things

and we used to like to try to rent those whenever possible Now,

if it was Flair and the Horseman or the big baby faces or whatever, they would always,

you know, rent a Lincoln Continental or something like that.

But that was an upcharge and it was harder to get availability.

We would always, me in the midnight, would always get the

full-size four-door.

And again, with Hertz, that was usually the T-Birds or the

Ford Taurus or something like that.

And that's what we would rent.

But no, we

Dennis Condry at one point had his entire bank account in his driveway with his Corvette and the other, he liked cars,

but we wouldn't take those things on the fucking road because it would beat him up.

And me and Bobby always had whatever the cheapest thing was we could find that we could

make the trips in.

That the Ford Taurus that I bought

in 19,

what was it, 1990?

I had that for seven years until I got it for $12,000 from a car dealership over here in Shelbyville.

And I had that for seven years until I was in Connecticut and it had like almost 300,000 miles on it.

And Tony Rumble, his cousin, owned a Toyota dealership in Connecticut, and I got a Camry.

Exciting times.

Sad ending to the story there, but thank you for the question.

Was there a failure?

The Camry lasted even, it was up into, I think it was $265,000 or something like that.

And then it was so beat up that we, I had it until I was in OVW.

So we auctioned it, didn't auction it, but we raffled it off.

People bought raffle tickets for a dollar, and I made 220-something bucks on it.

Beyond the Midnight Express, what was considered the best car just to handle the road and the miles that you wouldn't mind driving amongst the other wrestlers?

Well,

I don't think it had anything to do with how it fucking handled on the road or drive the mileage or whatever.

It had to do with how the guys liked it and how it looked.

Remember, everybody says when they do interviews about the old Crockett days, that the parking lot there at the office on

Briar Bend looked like a Mercedes and a BMW dealership.

But were they driving everybody to the shows or were they just driving it?

Was that their home deal?

A lot of them were driving them to the fucking shows.

Magnum and Dusty were coming back from Greenville in that fucking Porsche that was just,

it was the most expensive kind of Porsche you could buy.

And that's, you know, and it didn't take water and slick roads well, unfortunately.

But yeah, all those expensive fucking cars.

Remember the time Flair wanted me to drive his.

It wasn't a, was it a Rolls-Royce?

What the fuck was it?

That,

no, it wasn't a Rolls-Royce because it was a foreign car, but it was a $100,000 car in 1989.

And he wanted me to drive it back from Atlanta to Charlotte for him because he was going to stay over and fly.

I took it to a gas station on the outskirts of Atlanta to fill it up.

And it took me 30 minutes to figure out how to open the goddamn thing to the gas compartment.

Right.

It was this thing back before it was a common thing.

It had heated seats and individual air conditioning and all these bells and whistles.

And

I'm looking around in the goddamn glove compartment for the manual to try to find where the release is to open the goddamn

gas thing.

And I'm standing there at midnight.

On the outskirts of Atlanta off I-85 on the way to Charlotte with a $100,000 car and I can't fucking figure out how to put the gas in it.

People People are looking at me.

So they had all kinds of taste in cars.

Why, mine, whatever was cheapest.

I didn't care if people goddamn tarred and feathered it.

All right, Jim, our next question via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent in by Eric Kelly.

Did Jim ever consider using Ronnie P.

Gossett in Smokey Man Wrestling?

He would have seemed like a good fit to me.

Well, there's a fat joke in there somewhere, but Ronnie's gone.

So,

no, I never did.

I mean,

to be honest, between me and Ron Wright and Tammy, I think we had the managers, you know, buttoned up.

And as much as I got a kick out of Ronnie, besides the fact that he

lived in, I can't remember whether he was living in Memphis or Nashville in that last run that he had in the Memphis territory, but.

You know,

I didn't particularly want him to come over and just do TV and fucking major shows.

And I wasn't going to pay him to come to the spot shows.

And I would think that he'd have probably needed a good size fucking mulch trailer to travel around in at 500 pounds.

I loved him.

No, I,

you know, I'm not knocking him, but it wasn't really a thing that I pursued.

I don't think that he would have made a big business difference.

And I would have had to drag him over to Knoxville and pay him 15 times a month.

So it, it, it just, it wasn't a thing that was going to happen.

All right.

But he was entertaining around the boys, too.

And I've one time, where was it?

Was it in Memphis or was it on some independent show?

It was an independent show in Georgia.

This was late 90s, one of the first independent shows probably I did.

And I punched him and he took a bump.

And I swear it was the funniest thing I've ever seen.

Because for people who haven't seen Ronnie P.

Gossett, he literally was a human waterbed.

He was six feet tall, but he weighed in a neighborhood of 500 pounds.

And he was,

there was no muscular, there was no weight to him.

He was all like a big Pillsbury doughboy marshmallow type of thing.

And when I punched him in the chin, one of his chins,

He threw his hands up and the arms up in the air and he kind of kicked a leg out and he kind of crumpled and went down and rolled.

And I was like, What the fuck was that?

But a 500-pound guy who's light on his feet take a bump like that.

All right, are you still there?

I am still here.

And that was a good answer to the question: Ronnie P.

Gossett and Smokey Mountain.

No, but he took a funny bump.

Now, I wish I could see it.

Jim, before we get to some songs and get out of here, real quick, let me grab this.

On the topic of retro wrestling figures, because we haven't done this in a little while, Hastell Toys, their gimmicks and grapplers, or grapplers and gimmicks, excuse me, line, has put out a few figures recently of

some interesting gimmicks from the mid-90s in the WWF.

Want to get your thoughts on them real quick.

First figure here is a figure of John Pierre Lafitte.

John Pierre Lafitte

with his finishing move, the Cannonball Clobber.

What did you think of the repackaging of Pierre as Jean-Pierre Lafitte?

Well,

they used that at some point

in between, what was it, in between,

could have been in between the Mounty and what am I thinking?

Because he went through a couple of different gimmicks, but at that point, they wanted him to be a pirate, right?

Well, this is Pierre who was in the Quebecers with Jacques Rouge, and then he disappeared.

He came back as a pirate.

And then I don't think he came back again until he was in the amazing French Canadians, maybe in WCW.

But Pierre was a heck of a, and still, you know, he's been working in recent years in TNA and other places, the monster gimmick, right?

And he's

bless him, he takes wonderful bumps for his age.

But he was a good talent, but I think he was easily led astray by, like, remember, I think the locker room had him convinced they were going to put the belt on him in Montreal and he didn't want to do a job for fucking

Nash and all this other stuff and it led to ill will.

But yes, Jean-Pierre Lafitte

was going to be the pirate.

He was, you know what?

That's something you don't hear enough these days also is about swashbucklers.

Think about that.

Used to be all the swashbucklers were the heroes, the Douglas Fairbanks.

seniors and the Tyrone Powers and the swashbucklers.

It's a phrase you don't hear enough of these days, swashbuckling.

Was it as simple as he had one eye?

So Vince is like, he must be a pirate.

I think so.

Yeah, he was blind in one eye.

But you know what?

The thing is, they should have ribbed him and told him to wear the patch on the other eye just to change it up.

Jim, here's another interesting one.

Of course, Savio Vega would become a popular wrestler in the WWF.

And actually, I thought he was quite underrated.

He had some good matches with Steve Austin and did some good stuff.

But what about Kwang?

Kwang with his finishing move, The Orient Chop.

What do you remember about the gimmick, The Masked Kwang?

Well, again, Savio was a hell of a worker.

And

Savio, that's what he was in TNA as an agent.

It was because he had been an agent and booker and office personnel in Puerto Rico.

He and Dutch knew each other well.

And he,

besides for his very strong accent, which was challenging at times to get to the bottom of it, shoot him, shoot him, who's him?

But he knew what he was doing.

And

I liked Savio Vega as a gimmick because he, like you said, had good matches with Austin who wanted to work with him because he knew that Savio was helping him get over.

The Kwang thing was when they were just trying to find shit to do with him.

And he

did know some martial arts, but it was a,

to me, a pale imitation of, do you remember the TNT gimmick

and the videos they did?

My first exposure to him was seeing pictures of TNT in the magazines from Puerto Rico.

In Puerto Rico, his original gimmick,

or the one he came to be known by first, was TNT.

He was a masked wrestler, but he did martial arts and they did

a video of him, at least one I remember it was so cool to where it looked like it was a Puerto Rican James Bond movie.

And he was the secret, you know, fucking

martial arts agent going around fucking leaping over these cars and doing all this cool looking shit.

And Kwang was just kind of clung

to me.

But that was years later.

All right, Jim.

Well, Castell, with their grapplers and gimmicks, recently put out a line of Charles Wright toys, including, of course, Papa Shango, the Godfather.

But what are your thoughts on comma?

Kama, the finishing move was to hear the comma crush, and it comes with a gold chain.

What are your thoughts on comma?

I think comma should have been done away with exclamation point.

No, that was the thing is, and by the way, did they should have come up?

Did they do Soul Taker?

They did not.

They only did the WWF gimmicks.

Or at least,

actually.

They ought to do his whole line.

Think about this.

You could keep a toy company busy for a year and a half if they did a figure of every one of Don Fargo's gimmicks.

But no, with

Papa Shango,

et cetera,

the comma thing just didn't work.

The Godfather was the best because that was closest to the person.

But comma, you know, the...

Vince didn't understand.

That was the early days of UFC.

They were trying to present him as some kind of MMA fighter, which he's a fighter, all right.

But I don't know if the Gracie family has anything to worry about.

And there had just been a fighter that got a lot of attention called Kimo in the UFC.

So it was right after Kimo that was Kama.

Right.

Kama.

Kama Kimo.

Uma Oprah.

But it just, he was black.

It didn't, the outfit, it did, it didn't fit Charles Wright.

It didn't fit Bear.

So

I think the initial early, you you know, Papa Shango was all that show biz bullshit and everything.

And

Kama was just there, but the godfather finally blossomed.

But Kama was not the

jewel of his gimmick canon.

Other than the tattoos, you would have no idea it's the same guy as Papa Shango.

And when you think about it, the godfather looks nothing like Kama, and Kama looks nothing like Papa Shango.

Soul Taker had facial hair and hair.

So his look kept changing.

But one final one here, Jim.

A tag team set:

Marty Jannetti and Al Snow, the new rockers

with the Cassidy Crunch, and of course, the Rocker Dropper, the Chuck Austin special.

What the fuck?

Why did they keep making up these names?

Because these guys, they never won a match, so they didn't have a finish.

But even with the guys that had finishes,

they weren't clobbers and crunches.

And that was at the time they

Al Snow had come into a lot of fanfare from myself, Jim Ross, other people that knew him.

But he tried to do that springboard shit on real ropes instead of cables and fell the first time Vince saw him.

And he was doomed from then on out.

And they made him avatar

and

all this other shit.

And they were trying to figure out shit to do with him.

And Jeannetti was in

pretty much the same situation

when Sean Michaels had been at the Knight of Legends in Knoxville for Smoky Mountain in August of 95, Jannetti was booked on the card against Al Snow in a Midwest title match.

And Sean and Marty hadn't seen each other in however many years at that point, but they got back together that night.

Sean put a word in for Marty.

And they rehired him, but then they didn't know what to do with him.

So when they've got two guys they don't know what to do with, they made them a tag team.

And

because Al could do spots and

was athletic, they all were the new rockers.

Well, what do we call them?

Again,

it was a fucking

Vince didn't give a shit.

Bruce is just trying to tickle him.

And what are we going to call Al?

How about Al Snow?

Well, no, the Rockers.

So they came up with

a compilation of two teeny bopper idols.

This was 1997, and they went with Leif Garrett and Sean Cassidy.

Leif Cassidy.

Not David Cassidy.

The Rockers.

Not even David, but Sean.

All right.

That's an interesting little twist there.

Did Al Snow need to be goofy?

Was that the only way Vince was going to put up with it?

He wanted him to be...

to show personality and be a character there?

Or if they had done the Rockers as a serious thing without Leaf Cassidy being a clown character?

Well, no, Vince never said be goofy, but would you put him in a goofy outfit with a goofy gimmick and send him out there to have goofy matches?

Al started being goofy.

Because he was like, well, what the fuck?

I'll get noticed or fired one or the other.

But yeah, it was rotten.

That was the babyface equivalent of the new Midnight Express.

That was just fucking rotten.

Fucking rotten.

Well, there it is, retro figures.

We'll revisit this again in the future.

But, Jim, with that, let's get out of here.

After a song or two,

we have a song that's been sent in.

This to corny drivethrough at gmail.com is the 50th song submission sent by Rocky the Ramon.

Oh, Rocky.

Let's go to this.

Speedball, Mike Bailey.

Who is this fucking guy?

Speedball Mike Bailey, not place it to the human eye.

This guy is small, I mean really small, and his run has been a flop.

He doesn't look tough, he really sucks with his Hong Kong fooy slop.

Speedball Mike Bailey, who is this fucking guy?

Speedball Mike Bailey, not place it to the human eye.

Chicken chunk, chicken chunk, chicken chunk, chicken chunk, just another action figure from Tony Con.

Speed ball, Mike Bailey.

Horrific.

Oh, yeah.

There you go.

There you go.

Rocky's back.

Rocky's back, baby.

Wow, very good.

Speedball, Mike Bailey.

Thank you, Rocky Reather.

We'll hear more from him, I'm sure, in the future.

Let's get one more song here this week, Jim.

This one

was sent the song name is the louisville slugger you're allowed to use this song

this was sent by jake well thank you very much for giving us permission this was sent by jake let's hear what this is

this has to be ai doesn't it

Well, hold on.

Stranger things have happened.

This guy could be some kind of fucking musical genius.

From Kentucky's lands with a racket in hand.

He'd talk the the talk and to take a stand.

Manager Supreme with a fiery glare.

If you cross Cornette, you better beware.

Oh, Jim Cornette with a southern draw, laying down truth and breaking the brawl.

From ringside fights to microphone wars, he's the legend they just can't ignore.

All right, there's not a human being involved in it.

I was about to say, that's way too good for our people.

Thank you, Jake.

And thank you for that.

I don't know.

Now, to be honest, I don't know what the state of country music is these days because I seldom, if ever, have listened to it.

But I'm pretty sure that's kind of a standard AI make me a country song about

my grandmother being run over by a train.

All right.

One final song.

We can't end on AI.

This one was sent to CornyDriveThruGmail.com from Kev Smith.

A parody song for the show.

I've emailed this one, but it's never made the show.

Thought I would try again.

No AI.

Yeah.

Let's go to this.

If you're sick of modern wrestling,

if it gives you gas,

you're not a mock who wants to kiss Kenny Omega's ass.

There's a show

you should know:

QA's

and reviews starring Jim Cornen

Starring Jim Cornan and Brian Lastu.

I can give a button brother any of y'all like you Corny's drive-through

You're gonna have a really good time

Corny's drive-through

Johnny St.

Face would never draw a dime Hear him cuss up Republicans

And lazy booking too whole fucking thing When he reviews WWE N A W

He stays facts

He don't hold back

Hear him swear

Hear him rant and rave about tripstay Russo

He will outlive it Russo

just to piss on his praise.

Fuck you, goddamn shit.

Cornies drive through.

You're gonna have a really good time.

Holy shit.

Cornies drive high

through.

Moxley's matches

are a crime.

Fuck you.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Fuck you.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Fuck you.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Thank you, fuck you, bye, who.

All right.

Well, there you go.

Kev Smith, thank you.

There you go.

Wonderful lyrics there.

He's a budding songwriter.

Possibly even he's already budded.

I don't know.

Well, we'll see what he can send in again in the future.

But thank you, Kev, for sending that in.

But with that, the drive-through has closed.

All right.

Ding.

Ding dong.

The show is over for today.

We'll be back next week on the drive-thru, and of course, in a few days, on the Jim Cornette experience.

A lot of things happening in wrestling.

Hear all about them on the experience and the drive-thru.

Official clips on the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Just go to YouTube and search for Jim Cornette.

It'll be the first thing that pops up.

Full episodes, clips of the episodes, omnibus collections, travice heckle artwork.

Check it out today.

The official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Don't forget, patreon.com slash cornet.

Get access to the archive going back to 2013.

Patreon.com/slash cornet.

Coronets collectibles at jimcornet.com.

What's going on, Jim?

The same thing that was going on at the top of the program.

Just send me money to jimcornet.com.

I'll send you stuff in return.

Go there, look at it now.

It's phenomenal, and it's all guaranteed to be actually real

at jimcornet.com.

Of course, the drive-through is brought to you by the law officer, Steven P.

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Get even with Stephen.

Jim, anything you want to say to intro that great song?

Well, I'd like to say play that music, and I'll tell you who it's about.

Steven

P.

News,

Stephen P.

News, Tim P.

News, Steven P.

News, TV the renewed.

If you need to

renew the news to news to the news to the news to renew an outlawmod show or two

news, those are the rest.

Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen.

877-50-STEVE and newlawoffice.com is where you can go to get retribution, revenge, vengeance, and mayhem, and also potentially paid in a court of law.

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Of course, the wrestling news, each and every day, wherever you find your favorite podcast, get your wrestling news, no paywall, no clickbait, just the actual news from the wrestling news.

We'll be back 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.

Tally ho!