Episode 392: Jim Reviews WWE Backlash

Transcript

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Tickets available now. Visit lovbnab.com/slash iHeart.

Speaker 5 Hello again, friends!

Speaker 5 And you are our friends, the Great Brian Last here. That's not how I begin this show.
Well, we are here. Aloha!

Speaker 5 Happy day to you.

Speaker 5 I am the great Brian Less. This is Jim Cornette's drive-through.
We're starting off with a good spirit here because it's going to be a fun show. We got lots of things to talk about, lots of topics.

Speaker 5 We have reviews. We have questions.
We have apparently maybe some Hulk Hogan audio. We have lots of things.
Oh, good lord. With this man, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr.
Jim Cornette.

Speaker 32 It's going to be another one of those shows, I could tell from the way you started out.

Speaker 32 And also, and you know, somebody said to me, Brian, the other day on the, on the Twitter said, you don't get as mad, Cornette, as you used to.

Speaker 32 You don't encourage people to be drawn across the interstate like a spike strip in heavy traffic. You don't just get indignant

Speaker 32 because it's

Speaker 32 wrestling is ridiculous, and the world is ridiculous now. And it is just to laugh.

Speaker 32 Sometimes we have to just laugh as things burn and crumble around us, and the tomfoolery and shenanigans just come at us from all sides. But at least today, here,

Speaker 32 over here at the castle, it's peaceful and quiet. Why, you can't hear a pin drop on this side.

Speaker 5 Well, I think I hear something behind you right now, actually.

Speaker 32 No, it's all in your mind, Brian.

Speaker 5 All in your mind. Is that right? It's all in my mind.

Speaker 32 Where did the ominous buzzing sound hurt you?

Speaker 5 All right, well.

Speaker 32 No, the lawnmowers are here. They couldn't come yesterday because it was raining again.

Speaker 32 Feels like I'm losing.

Speaker 32 And so they had to come today. And so the conflict of the

Speaker 32 and it's going to rain tomorrow. May rain later today.
It's going to storm on Thursday and Friday, we might get severe storms.

Speaker 32 So I had to have the grass mowed and you were already complaining. My hearing having grass mowers out there.
Well,

Speaker 32 just speak louder and you won't be able to hear them. See, I put my headset on.
It blocks the noise out completely.

Speaker 5 We were about to start and you just go, oh, the lawnmowers have rolled up. Like they just popped up on your lawn magically.

Speaker 32 Well, no, rolled, no, magically with

Speaker 5 a gangster leak and then they roll up on you.

Speaker 32 They rolled up with a goddamn vehicle with wheels in it. I don't know how else to say it.
They just rolled right in.

Speaker 32 With a trailer with wheels on it too. There's wheels everywhere.
It would be like if they popped in magically, they'd just appear out of nowhere.

Speaker 32 But no, they were in the distance and then they grew ever closer as they rolled up.

Speaker 32 And they're trying to get the lawn mowing in before, because it's the only day for a week and a half that since the mowed it last time, they could be able to come over and mow it.

Speaker 32 So you're going to have to live with it.

Speaker 32 It's faintly in the background.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we'll see how faintly it ends up in the background. Usually this is when they're far away, then they get closer.
Next thing you know, it sounds like they're under a roof.

Speaker 32 They're far away, then they're getting closer. You know how goddamn Kevin Sullivan,

Speaker 32 every time we would end up on a commercial flight sitting next to each other, and he knew how I was,

Speaker 32 he'd wait until I kind of got engrossed. And hopefully the middle seat would at least be empty.

Speaker 32 But he would wait till I would get engrossed in a magazine with my head down and not paying attention to where I was on this airplane.

Speaker 32 And then I'd feel suddenly just a slight tap on my left shoulder or my right shoulder, whichever side he was on.

Speaker 32 And I would turn around and he'd be right up in my face going, awful tight in here, isn't it, Jimmy?

Speaker 32 Anyway,

Speaker 32 you know, you're familiar with the TV listings they have on the on the TV guides, on the on the guide pages on the TV these days, right?

Speaker 5 I don't know if TV guide's still a thing, but yes, I'm familiar with that.

Speaker 32 Well, no, not the magazine, but the the actual tv guide when you got your cable box there and you you say info you want to have more information about the program the guide pops up right

Speaker 5 right you know about this yeah it used to be channel 14 on long island when i was growing up

Speaker 32 no it's not even a channel it's just the on-screen guide whoa i'm not talking about when you were growing up i'm talking about right goddamn now see now you've got some anger and pissed offness and indignation i have my remote here in my hand if i press the the guide button, I get a guide of what's on right now on this channel.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 34 And the channels around it.

Speaker 5 Yes. And it's 2014 on Long Island.

Speaker 32 Well, but it ain't anymore, is it?

Speaker 32 But right now,

Speaker 32 if you do that and you hit info on a television show, right? Like if you hit info on Seinfeld, it would say cast, Jerry Seinfeld.

Speaker 32 Julia Louis Dreyfus, et cetera, et cetera, right? That's the cast. And it might say the director.
It might say the year or the episode number or whatever.

Speaker 5 That's right. Are you fighting paper over there?

Speaker 32 I've got a note in my hand. I'm about to read to you if you'd let me establish this fucking bit.

Speaker 32 Because

Speaker 32 I just happened to see the listing for AEW Collision.

Speaker 32 on the on the info on my on my guide there on Spectrum Cable.

Speaker 32 I saw collision was

Speaker 32 on the on the guide as i was perusing the the thursday night programs they switched it they're trying to stay away from people or something

Speaker 32 but anyway as i hit the info to see what it said brian where they've got cast for aew collision would you like to one two three four would you like to know the five names five wow there's five names

Speaker 32 and sometimes like if you it's a sporting event or it's a hosted by or whatever, cast will be the announcers or, you know, something like that.

Speaker 32 But would you like to hear the five names that are listed as the cast for AEW Collision,

Speaker 32 at least on my Spectrum cable listing here in the greater Louisville, Kentucky metropolitan area?

Speaker 32 Yeah,

Speaker 32 some and this is in order. This is in order.

Speaker 32 Samoa Joe.

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 32 Chris Jericho.

Speaker 5 He's a big star. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 32 Jake Hager.

Speaker 5 Well, he's been gone a long time.

Speaker 32 Long time.

Speaker 32 Number four,

Speaker 32 Schuyler Andrews.

Speaker 5 Who the fuck is that?

Speaker 32 S-C-H-U-Y-L-E-R Schuyler.

Speaker 32 Is there another way I can do that? Schuyl? Schuyler?

Speaker 32 Andrews.

Speaker 32 And the fifth name, possibly the biggest star on the roster they saved for last, Maxwell Jacob Feinstein.

Speaker 5 Feinstein, that was his name on the Indies when he first started, wasn't it?

Speaker 32 Maxwell Jacob

Speaker 32 Feinstein. I jotted it down

Speaker 32 so that I wouldn't

Speaker 32 forget this. upcoming star's name.

Speaker 5 Skylar Andrews is the wrestler Scorpio Skye.

Speaker 32 The fuck

Speaker 32 who's smarting Spectrum up?

Speaker 32 You know, they fucking killed his gimmick.

Speaker 5 I thought you were going to say like CM Punk, Kevin Kelly, like something like from like two years ago. No,

Speaker 32 no, but

Speaker 32 we don't even know that Skylar Andrews is Scorpio Sky's real name and he hadn't been with the company for years.

Speaker 5 I presume that's Skylar, just like you did.

Speaker 32 Could be or could be Schuyler. Schiler.

Speaker 5 Schulheuler.

Speaker 5 Could be a lot.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 32 Maxwell Jacob

Speaker 32 Einstein.

Speaker 5 All right. Thank you, AEW.
Doing a great job promoting your talent or someone's talent or talent that may have once been there.

Speaker 32 I think they got the...

Speaker 32 They may have accidentally sent Spectrum cable to goddamn Social Security fucking records or something. Hey, here's everybody's real name.

Speaker 5 What do you have something funny? I click on Skylar Andrews' IMDB page, and it's just a video of MJF doing a promo from like four years ago on dynamite when he had his presidential address.

Speaker 5 For whatever reason, that's the video that plays on this guy's page.

Speaker 5 All right,

Speaker 32 okay. Hey, yeah,

Speaker 5 I can

Speaker 5 say something.

Speaker 32 It was your show. Thank you.
I'll take it back in a minute.

Speaker 5 I'll mention this to you because I got this book a little while back and I've been moving things around the office.

Speaker 5 And I just got it here because I'm trying to put it someplace here in the office, not the library. It's called The Schedule Book: Four Decades of Network Programming from Sign On to Sign Off.
Oh.

Speaker 5 And this came out, I mean,

Speaker 5 it looks like it's from the early 80s, but, you know, for a lot of reasons outside of wrestling, I wanted it.

Speaker 5 But also specifically, you hear so much about the prominence of wrestling on early network TV. And although this is not a definitive book, I guess, it has a lot of the listings here.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I find this really interesting actually just to see what was on, but how much wrestling was on at different times.

Speaker 32 Have you compiled a list of the various wrestling programs as of yet, or are you about to delve into this?

Speaker 5 I haven't really gone through it yet. It's been one of those future projects I want to do.
But if I look here, winter 1951 evening

Speaker 5 on

Speaker 5 the Dumont Network, from 9 to 11 was wrestling from Columbia Park with Dennis James.

Speaker 5 That's a two-hour block.

Speaker 5 And then, did anyone else have wrestling in prime time at that point? The Paul Winchell show was here.

Speaker 5 Not there. And then if I, that's Monday night.
So if I go to Tuesday night, roller derbies on ABC from 10 to 11, not wrestling, but a lot of people always think of roller derby and wrestling together.

Speaker 5 And then on Wednesday on ABC, from 9.30 to 12,

Speaker 5 wrestling from the rainbow in Chicago.

Speaker 5 Wow, that's two and a half hours.

Speaker 32 And this is, wait a minute, this is Eastern Time listings, right?

Speaker 5 I believe believe so, correct.

Speaker 32 Then that would have been 8:30 to 11.

Speaker 32 So they were telecasting pretty much the whole card from Chicago.

Speaker 5 And then on Thursday, on Dumont, was boxing from Eastern Parkway with Dennis James. I bring that up because Dennis James was the same commentator.
And, you know, you bring up who the stars are.

Speaker 5 And sometimes you see this in the listings now, but a lot of the times back then, even though you had Gorgeous George and Raka and Vern Gagne and Lufthans, it was actually the commentator who got star listing on a lot of these shows.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 32 And also

Speaker 32 the way that

Speaker 32 television worked in the early 50s,

Speaker 32 a lot of the major markets had even more wrestling programs than were on network.

Speaker 32 And some of the smaller markets

Speaker 32 had to,

Speaker 32 that's why some of those sprouted up early, had to make their own. I'll give you an example for what I've been working on here lately.

Speaker 32 Knoxville, Tennessee didn't get television until 1953.

Speaker 32 And I think Nashville was 1950.

Speaker 32 I'm talking television stations, not television wrestling. And then even in Louisville here,

Speaker 32 until the year I was born, 1961, there were two television stations.

Speaker 32 So some of the smaller markets ended up, the TV stations picked and and chose what network programs they were affiliated with more than one network they picked and chose the shows that they wanted to carry because there were three networks but only one or two stations in a market they had to split programs up and sometimes they would rerun the less popular network stuff they do the kinescope thing

Speaker 32 And they wouldn't rerun it, but they'd run it on a weekend or a delayed time or whatever. But a lot of programs didn't get,

Speaker 32 a lot of network programs didn't get carried in the smaller markets at all for the first half of the 50s. But

Speaker 32 wrestling with Chicago and Los Angeles and the major markets that had multiple TV stations,

Speaker 32 if you look through some of your wrestling as you like it's, which you have many times, in Chicago, there was some kind of wrestling on five nights a week on television.

Speaker 32 So it just depended on where the outlets were.

Speaker 5 And even here, obviously there are different gaps in the schedule for local programming. We're talking about just what was on the national network.

Speaker 5 And again, we did Monday and Wednesday, and then Thursday was the boxing. And then on Saturday,

Speaker 5 on Dumont, I don't know what exactly this show is, from 8.30 to 11, it's Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. Not saying that's wrestling.
It could be just anything. I don't know.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 And then after that, from 11 to 1 a.m.,

Speaker 5 wrestling from the marigold in chicago

Speaker 5 so there was wrestling there and again this is not counting local television this is just what's on national that's three different wrestling shows the first one wrestling from columbia park is a two-hour show

Speaker 5 the second one was wrestling from the rainbow that's a two and a half no that was also two hours excuse me and then this one here was also two hours. So they had a lot of time.

Speaker 5 Again, that's not counting all the shows you've heard of before from like, you know washington dc or texas wrestling which was a syndicated show and uh wrestling from hollywood and you know the northeast there were so many different television shows at different times they taped it in the studio on the west side that used to be the sony studios so

Speaker 32 well and god damn it where did i just see this because

Speaker 32 We've looked at the Wilbur Snyder book, but this is a little bit before his era, but Scott Teal, crowbarpress.com, also sent us the new book on Ed Don George, but I've been flipping through things, but there was a schedule that I saw.

Speaker 32 Los Angeles had wrestling on television, I believe, in either 1946 or 47, I think it was 46,

Speaker 32 especially with, you know, obviously kind of the center of television being New York and Los Angeles and pretty much nothing else in those days. But the station it was on,

Speaker 32 they showed the schedule. And it was like

Speaker 32 from

Speaker 32 midnight to fucking 4 p.m. the next day, test pattern.

Speaker 32 And then they'd come on with some kind of block of local program wrestling and then sign off or news and then sign off or whatever. This, the state, nobody had a television.

Speaker 32 The station was only on like four or five hours a day.

Speaker 5 See, that's what fascinates me.

Speaker 32 Wrestling was one night of the week in Los Angeles of it.

Speaker 5 That no one had a TV. This is fall 1947 evening.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 on Thursdays on Dumont,

Speaker 5 from 9 to 11, was wrestling from Jerome Stadium.

Speaker 5 And then the next night, from 9 to 11, was wrestling from Jamaica Arena. So that's a New York, that's Jamaica Queens.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And then there was sports from Madison Square Garden on CBS.

Speaker 5 Sports from Madison Square Garden was on CBS as listed here on

Speaker 5 Wednesday. from 8.30 to 11.

Speaker 5 On Thursday, same time spot. On Friday, on Saturday,

Speaker 5 and on Sunday, it was a lot of sports. I mean, there was almost nothing on the schedule.

Speaker 5 Here's what's on the schedule: Small Fry Club, Doorway to Frame, Showcase, Swing into Sports, The Gillette Cavalcade of Stars, and NBC News.

Speaker 32 Gillette Cavalcade of Stars lasted

Speaker 32 a while into the actual, you know, early 50s era, and it was a big-time show.

Speaker 5 Well, there it is. I'll go through this a little further in the future so we could do a concerted segment on it.

Speaker 32 Well, and you know what? I don't even know if I mentioned this to you, but

Speaker 32 I had known, again, Scott Teal, CrowbarPress.com, his books are great for research, but I'd also, we had known previously from Mark James at Memphis WrestlingHistory.com, his books that

Speaker 32 in Memphis,

Speaker 32 WMC Channel 5, that was the station that Jarrett went to in 1977, that all the modern Memphis tapes are from, WMC Channel 5. It's the NBC affiliate in Memphis.

Speaker 32 And it was the first station in the market in 19, the end of December 1948. They went on the air.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 it was then known WMCT

Speaker 32 were the call letters.

Speaker 32 And I think they even, they were on a different channel number than Channel 5 when they went on the air and they had to switch over because of interference with Channel 4 out of Nashville.

Speaker 32 But nevertheless, I knew that they had telecast in the early 50s

Speaker 32 at least some Ellis auditorium matches from Les Wolf's promotion before it became a gulis Welsh town. But apparently that led me to chasing

Speaker 32 some histories of Channel 5 on Wikipedia and et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 32 The Ellis Auditorium apparently was across the street from the original location of WMC television. And they actually did go over

Speaker 32 and telecast the live matches as early as when they signed on or shortly, like in 1949,

Speaker 32 because they were able to run the cables across the fucking street.

Speaker 32 They had no, you know, they had no remote truck or no whatever, but they were able to extension cords and audio cables and the camera cable.

Speaker 32 They could reach from the building across the street into the back of the Ellis auditorium and they had the actual cards on television for some short period of time.

Speaker 32 But that obviously none of that exists. I can't even imagine it was ever recorded on anything.
They just broadcast it.

Speaker 32 But that's the first time I've ever heard of doing a remote by actually being able to fucking run an extension cord from the station.

Speaker 5 That's pretty crazy. You know, there should be like a compilation.
I don't know who would buy this book. You and I would.

Speaker 5 But just of all the different TV stations and radio stations, too, when they aired wrestling from like the 30s up through the 60s.

Speaker 5 I'm fascinated by that kind of stuff. You know, I bring up radio.
That's why I go to 30s just because it was on radio or there was some sort of radio coverage or even if it was a local weekly segment.

Speaker 5 Before TV, that was all you had. That and programs and newspapers.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 yeah,

Speaker 5 this has been a drive-through. Well, let's end on a good note.
This has been a drive-through. Okay, we'll see you later.
We'll see you on the experience in a few days.

Speaker 5 And, of course, next week on the drive-thru for Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian last.

Speaker 5 Nice try.

Speaker 32 Shit, I was about to hang up if you'd have gone more.

Speaker 5 Well, you can't. We haven't talked about Cornette's collectibles.
You can't have it. All right.

Speaker 32 Well, you know what? As a matter of fact, I will have you know

Speaker 32 that,

Speaker 32 hold on, I got my notes here. The first 200 orders

Speaker 32 from the mayhem that happened when we went on sale on May the 3rd will be handed off to Hotchkiss Featherbottom this coming weekend, which is as we sit here, May 17th and 18th.

Speaker 32 He'll be slapping labels on them and they'll be flying through the U.S. Postal Service and more are to follow the following week.
So we have this assembly line set up going.

Speaker 32 And if you want to get in on the action, For anything that may be left and all the regular type of things and attractive merchandise it is at an affordable price, jimcornet.com but we're going to be caught up in two weeks i bet you

Speaker 32 boy howdy

Speaker 32 and i got something i got an update here on

Speaker 32 a topic brian that we've discussed and i wanted to just bring it up to the people's attention see if you've heard anything about this

Speaker 32 do you remember we talked about the hundred men and the gorilla oh yeah last week yeah

Speaker 32 Well, and then it went into, you know, some other various species and mixed martial arts rules and et cetera. But

Speaker 32 this is from Chad, my friend Chad over in West Virginia. He's still blind.
He says, P.S., yes, I'm still blind.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 he heard about this. He didn't see it, but he heard about it.
He said, after hearing the drive-through about the 100-minute gorilla, it reminded me of a story from the early 2000s,

Speaker 32 where in Cambodia, a promoter of a midget fighting league was challenged by a fan saying that all 42 of his fighters could not beat a lion

Speaker 32 and the match was allegedly staged and ended in 12 minutes with 28 of the fighters killed and the rest of them crippled

Speaker 32 and he says you can always have brian look up cambodian midget fighting league and see if it's there i'll take your word for it blind chad

Speaker 32 Well, no,

Speaker 32 I think we should look for this, shouldn't we?

Speaker 32 Is this a news story that's been missed a lion killed 28 midgets and mauled the other ones what am i looking up cambodian midget fighting league this is apparently this is a story at least they got it by chad no obviously he knows about it googling uh well you know he and even he says allegedly now

Speaker 5 The Cambodian Midget Fighting League, or CMFL, is the premise of an internet hoax that was widely circulated around the internet beginning in May 2005.

Speaker 5 The hoax was particularly significant as the article was taken on face value by a good deal of British newspapers and magazines.

Speaker 32 The British are so polite they'll believe anything.

Speaker 5 The article was reported as a tragedy at a midget versus lion fight in Cambodia.

Speaker 5 A fan of the Cambodian midget fighting league challenged the league's president in response to a recent league advertising campaign that the midgets will take on anything, man, beast, or machine.

Speaker 5 The fan claimed that one lion could defeat the entire league of 42 midget fighters.

Speaker 5 Accepting the challenge, an African lion was flown to Kampong Chang

Speaker 5 especially for the event. And then here's a quote.

Speaker 5 The fight was called off after only 12 minutes, and 28 of the fighters were declared dead, while the other 14 suffered severe injuries, including broken bones and lost limbs, rendering them unable to fight back.

Speaker 5 But it's a hoax, apparently.

Speaker 32 Ah,

Speaker 32 well, I thought they just had different rules over there in Cambodia about animal cruelty. Seems like you wouldn't want a bunch of fucking angry midgets ganging up on one poor little kitty cat.

Speaker 5 I mean, what kind of houses were they drawing that they had the money to fly in a lion?

Speaker 32 Well, now here's another thing.

Speaker 32 What's the native jungle cat in Cambodia? Is there one? Couldn't they have done, you know, domestic,

Speaker 32 the domestic animals? Is there like a jungle tiger or something there?

Speaker 32 What's the native animal of Cambodia?

Speaker 5 I've never gone on holiday to Cambodia, but

Speaker 5 do you think Tony Khan should bring back this concept, have a lion versus his midgets?

Speaker 32 I don't know.

Speaker 32 I'm still thinking the gorilla. I'd rather see the gorilla with his midgets.

Speaker 32 Oh, good lord.

Speaker 32 Well, you see, the whole world, the whole world, Brian, is a bunch of ding-dong ding bats. That's what they are.
A bunch of ding-dong ding bats.

Speaker 5 If you insist, yes, they are.

Speaker 32 But this is your show. Oh, and I forgot.
I need also, I want to, no, I want to plug the crusade. It's that time again.

Speaker 32 The first Saturday in June, or first weekend in June, I should say, is the WHAS Crusade for Children. And we will talk more about it as it comes up.

Speaker 32 But crusade.org is the place to go, or you can watch the telethon if you're in the greater,

Speaker 32 if you're almost anywhere in Kentucky, you can watch the thing now. First weekend in June.

Speaker 5 Will Randy Acher be appearing this year?

Speaker 32 No, he's not going to. Oh, now quit making fucking mockery of all of us, me and Randy.

Speaker 5 I'm not making mockery of him. I'm making mockery of you.

Speaker 32 Well, he's no longer with us to defend himself.

Speaker 32 For the long time listeners of the show, I'm not going to explain that to you. Just go back and find it if you have to.
But if Brian last was messing with

Speaker 32 my mind.

Speaker 5 I didn't do anything.

Speaker 32 Yes, you did.

Speaker 5 How did I do anything? You're the one who said you saw this. And then you said, look him up.
How old is he?

Speaker 5 He must be 90. He has to be at least 90.

Speaker 32 Hell, he would have been if he hadn't died 10 years before. It was a rerun.
It was a videotape. I came in in the middle middle before the pitch i don't know what to tell you

Speaker 32 i got his autograph right over here in the in my office you're too distracted if you had been paying attention maybe you would have done a 10-bell salute at ovw or something Oh, for heaven's sake, I didn't get the word in time because we weren't all wired up to the internet like we are now, where there's breaking news just instantly appear in front of you.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 5 Well, you know, before we have a lot to get to, and we have a big topic we're going to discuss early on here because obviously, as a lot of the listeners are, or most of them are probably aware, Sabu passed away, and there's a lot to talk about there.

Speaker 5 But why don't we start on a light-hearted note or two?

Speaker 5 I'm going to read you a quote that a lot of the listeners have been sending over to me. Let me get your thoughts on this, Jim.

Speaker 5 This is from Dominic Mysterio in an interview from the Intoxicados podcast.

Speaker 5 If you go out there and wrestle 100 times and you do a moonsault 90% of the time, the people are going to expect it.

Speaker 5 If I give it to them 10% of the time, when I do hit that moonsault, everyone's going to be like, damn, did you see that moonsault? It's going to mean more.

Speaker 5 And listeners, I've been sending it over. I want to know what you think of the quote, but just

Speaker 5 a few years ago, we talked about the idea of, you know, should Rey Mysterio leave WWE and go to AEW? Would that be a better place for Dominic to train?

Speaker 5 And that was before we saw him as a heel and we really didn't know what

Speaker 5 this was going to happen. But you always wonder about the mentality and understanding work, understanding how to work.

Speaker 5 And it sounds like, I mean, we see it, but it sounds like from this quote, he may have a good understanding.

Speaker 32 Well, yeah. And the thing is, some people are going to say, oh, but Ray does the 619.

Speaker 32 Well, Ray's like Mick Jagger at this point. He kind of has to do some jump and jack flash or people would be disappointed.

Speaker 32 And he's in the later stages of his career, much as hopefully my lawnmowers are in the later stages of their work so that they can get away from the house.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 he is exactly right in that if guys, especially at his stage of the game,

Speaker 32 just do something all the fucking time that gets a pop, yes. It will get a pop, but establish some different things besides your finish to get a pop.

Speaker 32 Your finish should always get a pop, one would hope.

Speaker 32 But you would also think that you've got different ways to do things and different moves to pull out depending on the kind of match and the kind of opponent and whatever.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 he's exactly right. If, you know,

Speaker 32 especially if he does something well, but he does it in every match, then they're going to expect it. And it's kind of, oh, there he did, you know, the thing that they love Ray that he's still.

Speaker 32 walking, right? Well, I shouldn't even say that. He just got hurt again, but that he's still around at this stage of the game.

Speaker 32 But you don't want young guys to establish they have to do this, that, and the other fucking thing every time. It's just,

Speaker 5 nah, I agree with it. Especially if you're a heel.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's one of the things we see a lot, you know, especially, I guess, any indie footage you see, but AEW, someone could be a heel, but they're doing things to get babyface pops.

Speaker 5 In WWE, you have heels coming out there with theme songs that people want to sing and dance to. It kind of defeats the purpose.

Speaker 32 Yeah. And

Speaker 32 i i agree with you also that uh

Speaker 32 the the singing of the music and everything

Speaker 32 is especially hard to it's hard for you to be a heel and and it's hard for the people to want to sing the song and then boo and the singing the song is what they like because it gets them to you know be a more of a part of it

Speaker 32 But at the same time,

Speaker 32 you know, you've almost got to now they're backed into the the corner where everybody knows it's bullshit and they just want to cheer the people that they really like that are stars.

Speaker 32 And it makes it, you know, it makes it harder for the younger guys to break into that if they don't have the

Speaker 32 cool song to sing along and the fact that, you know, the stars mostly all can fucking talk and they talk much more than they wrestle.

Speaker 32 So we've got orators and musicians

Speaker 32 and the wrestling just kind of gets in the way.

Speaker 5 Let me get your thoughts on one other thing I just was seeing this morning. Mark Shapiro, the TKO COO,

Speaker 5 was talking to the JPMorgan Global Technology Media and Communications Conference, and he said that.

Speaker 32 And by the way, can I just wait?

Speaker 32 What was the name of that place again?

Speaker 5 The

Speaker 5 JPMorgan Global Technology Media and Communications Conference.

Speaker 32 Okay, Brian, Brian, if that's a place that I ever want to go to, I want you to shoot me in the fucking head.

Speaker 5 Well, I may not do it, but I may know someone who could help. All right.

Speaker 5 According to what he said here, and I have something that Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics wrote, he defended slashing house shows by 75%,

Speaker 5 noting profitability is up on WWE live events, and hinted further cuts to house shows.

Speaker 5 We've talked about this in the past, and tying into Dominic Mysterio, who

Speaker 5 is one of my favorite people in the company i mean for a heel i'm not saying like i love that heel but right he's entertaining his matches may not be five star classics in the eyes of five star classic hunters but there's always something it's always entertaining it's kind of in a lot of respects he may be the most classic wrestling guy there sometimes him and live

Speaker 5 but he got this way without having to work extensive house shows And traditionally,

Speaker 5 working frequently is the way that professional wrestlers hone their craft and figure out how to work and what works and what doesn't work.

Speaker 5 What do you think hearing that they have already slashed 75%?

Speaker 5 They are defending it because profitability is up because they're running less of these shows. And they said there's going to be more cuts?

Speaker 32 Well, in first, Dom

Speaker 32 is not a typical case because, also, I mean, he is obviously,

Speaker 32 I would imagine, had plenty of workouts with his dad and just talking sessions with his dad. And I'm sure that because of his dad and because he

Speaker 32 apparently, obviously, he's been in the system this long without getting any heat on himself.

Speaker 32 He must be a model employee.

Speaker 32 Everybody wants to, has wanted to help him and work with him.

Speaker 32 Between

Speaker 32 the way he looked when he was a babyface, the way he worked when he was a babyface, we thought maybe he had

Speaker 32 goddamn chosen wrong in his field of endeavor, but this whole dirty Dom thing has, you know, just he's blossomed.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 I would imagine still that he's had more time in the ring or more time speaking to and learning from a veteran or veterans than most people have with his experience level, right?

Speaker 32 So let's take him out of it. Point being,

Speaker 32 it's almost even house shows

Speaker 32 are crucial

Speaker 32 in the same way that I'm trying to figure out a way to make it relatable to

Speaker 32 the average person in another.

Speaker 32 Imagine you're a stand-up comic,

Speaker 32 but

Speaker 32 past being in a group of people who are being taught by a stand-up comic how to be funny in a fucking classroom, then you suddenly, you're on television and there's nothing in between.

Speaker 32 And you got to be funny from scratch on TV and for on video forever in front of all these fucking people. What the fuck?

Speaker 32 House shows are the comedy clubs.

Speaker 32 But the problem is at the level that the WWE is now, even the house shows that they do,

Speaker 32 you can't call Madison Square Garden a fucking laugh factory, right?

Speaker 32 And with NXT, i don't know what their house show schedule is i assume they still run some type of live event somewhere don't they besides the big takeovers and ples or ppl whatever the they are

Speaker 32 uh they got to be running

Speaker 32 you know lake city florida or something right

Speaker 5 Help me. I actually don't know.
I presume, you know, we don't get a lot of people saying, hey, I went to an NXT house show in Jacksonville.

Speaker 32 Well, that's, I was just thinking that I haven't heard about that. No, I mean, they used to, and I quit paying attention, but now I'm wondering if they are.

Speaker 32 Point being, you can't,

Speaker 32 you can teach all day long, but the reason why,

Speaker 32 reason why OVW is successful, and I'm not just picking that individually, the reason why any

Speaker 32 training program would be successful is if you learn and then you're able to go out and apply what you're doing doing in front of regular fans, regular people that are going to give you the fucking feedback and so that you can adjust and correct or, you know, find out whether you shit the bed or not.

Speaker 32 But that shouldn't be on national television and it shouldn't be in Madison Square Garden. It ought to be at the fucking flea market in front of several hundred people or whatever the case.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 I don't know if cutting down the house shows at the WWE level,

Speaker 32 especially if it means less traveling for the guys, is going to affect them any more than the fact that, goddamn,

Speaker 32 the ones coming through NXT better still be out,

Speaker 32 you know, somewhere in Delray Beach working at an armory somewhere so they'll be able to figure this shit out before they go to national television.

Speaker 5 It's going to be really interesting to see, you know, Vince McMahon did a lot of damage to the wrestling ecosystem, which eventually affected him when he stole everyone's talent or just raided everyone's talent, however you want to say it,

Speaker 5 and killed the system for developing talent in the process. And it took him a long time to recover from that.

Speaker 5 He had to have his own developmental eventually, but probably should have done that 10 years earlier, if you really think about it, because of the damage he did.

Speaker 5 Now, with no house shows,

Speaker 5 it's another thing that's going to hurt the next generation of wrestlers, especially if they want them to work the WWE style, not the indie style.

Speaker 32 Well, if they want to get them before they're crippled, regardless, it's, you know, that's why that I'm, I scoff at the state of the industry because the future is being left to the indie people.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 yeah, not a very promising or a very pretty scene that you paint there.

Speaker 5 Well, Jim, one more thing before we move on to a big topic, and this involves you.

Speaker 5 I saw you tweet out something the other day or retweet something. I believe it was Inside the Ropes,

Speaker 5 a list that they posted. Vince Russo claims you are a mark,

Speaker 5 if,

Speaker 5 and then it's a list of things.

Speaker 32 And well, yeah, and now we should claim for that. If it went past people real quickly, this wasn't Inside the Ropes posted.
This was Inside the Ropes reposted.

Speaker 32 or retweeted or rewhate a list that apparently that the man himself had uh put up and perpetrated for our consumption so don't blame inside the ropes for any kind of endorsement or authorizing of this

Speaker 5 vince russo claims your remark if you have convinced yourself that professional wrestling is real

Speaker 5 real as in caps Yes,

Speaker 32 the best part is just random things are. Not even proper nouns are sometimes capitalized, and in random words are capitalized.
It's like his memos.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if professional wrestling is the most important thing.

Speaker 5 That's all in caps. In your entire life.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you're a mark if you own a lot.

Speaker 5 That's caps. of black shirts with pit stains

Speaker 5 pit stain from shit stain.

Speaker 5 That was.

Speaker 5 Hold on, hold on.

Speaker 32 That's why you wear a black shirt so the pit stains don't show.

Speaker 5 Who has more pit stains than wrestlers wearing tight shirts?

Speaker 32 Well, do you know? Speaking of, you know, again, there was a freeze frame of him in the state of him these days where he's got the gray hair and the beard.

Speaker 32 And for a while, he looked like, I don't know, either fucking dehydrated Kenny Rogers or some kind of grizzly Adams fucking deal.

Speaker 32 But he was wearing a shirt that with the sleeves that had been cut out of where,

Speaker 32 you know, just the little, almost like a little wrestling double singlet, the little shoulder pieces are hanging off of you, and you can see your armpits and his

Speaker 32 concave,

Speaker 32 pasty white, fucking white boy armpits were just, oh my God.

Speaker 32 But I digress.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if

Speaker 5 you don't just want to go in caps to a wrestling show, but you want to be a part

Speaker 5 of it, part in caps. I'll stop yelling these.
I'll just say what's in caps.

Speaker 32 It hits you in the face better, like it does on his.

Speaker 32 And I mean, he's actually even right with some of these. Like, if you want to be part of the show, you go to for anything, not just wrestling, you're a mark.
But he's so.

Speaker 32 not only obnoxious, but grammatically incorrect when he does these things that it's hard to

Speaker 5 really rally behind him Vince Russo claims you're a mark if you sing along with wrestlers theme songs at the top of your lungs

Speaker 5 you know again when you use mark you're using it as an insult and that's just describing what we talked before like 90% of the fans that are going to wrestling nowadays so he's stupid he's not even made at smart fans he's mad at the fans fans well he likes baseball too right

Speaker 5 I have no idea.

Speaker 32 Well, no, that's because we've talked about it.

Speaker 32 Remember when the fantasy baseball thing, that's what they all wanted to talk about in TNA was all of their baseball and their fantasy baseball of whatever.

Speaker 32 And he loves the New York, one of the New York teams. I don't know if

Speaker 32 it's your beloved Mets, Brian, or whatever, but he likes.

Speaker 32 He likes the New York. So the point is, the fans that don't they sing sometimes in baseball too?

Speaker 5 I mean, take me out to the ball game with a seventh inning stretch.

Speaker 32 Oh,

Speaker 32 in baseball, they actually get up during part of the later stages of the game and wave their hands in the air.

Speaker 5 Well, they don't call them marks, though, they just call them fans. Ticket behind fans.

Speaker 32 Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. I mean, and believe me, I'm tired of the people singing the fucking song,

Speaker 32 especially Seth's, because I'd rather him get to the goddamn deal. But, you know, they do that all

Speaker 32 over.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you're a mark. If Dave Meltzer is your god,

Speaker 5 that's in caps.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims your remark. If work rate

Speaker 5 in fake wrestling matches is important

Speaker 5 to you.

Speaker 32 And see, he can some way,

Speaker 32 you know, find a way to insult both sides of the fence. He's both.

Speaker 32 deriding the people who like the play wrestling and at the same time calling the whole business fake and disrespecting the people who do it professionally.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you're a mark

Speaker 5 if you hate any form of entertainment in your wrestling.

Speaker 5 His entertainment.

Speaker 32 I mean,

Speaker 5 I like Dominic Mysterio's entertainment to talk about what we were talking about earlier.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if, and we'll talk about this one after,

Speaker 5 you orgasm

Speaker 5 over Japanese wrestling. However,

Speaker 5 orgasm was spelled wrong.

Speaker 32 Yes, and when I saw that, I had to get on the Twitter machine and make mention of it. And I got 3.7 thousand or whatever of the

Speaker 32 little hearts over that because I said, in unsurprising news, Vince Russo does not know how to spell orgasm.

Speaker 32 He actually, this is the,

Speaker 32 he went to the journalism school there in Evansville, Indiana. Doesn't say much for

Speaker 32 poor county out there. Um,

Speaker 32 he went to journalism school. He went to college allegedly.
He can't spell orgasm. I know he's had no personal experience with the

Speaker 32 actual act, but one would think that you could spell something that you might have seen written down before.

Speaker 5 For the record, he spelled it O-R-G-A-S-I-M.

Speaker 5 I've never seen it spelled like that ever.

Speaker 32 Well, you know, he spelled it out phonetically.

Speaker 32 That's what he did. And it's because of his weird way of

Speaker 32 pronunciating the words.

Speaker 32 He that's, it's, it, it works in his mind. Just hear him reading it.

Speaker 5 This is such a bizarre manifesto. Vince Russo claims you are a mark if you are opposed to seeing attractive women in wrestling.

Speaker 32 If you're opposed to seeing attractive women down on their knees barking like a a dog with a fucking hot dog dildo in their poop shoot.

Speaker 5 Now call her a tramp. That's people didn't want that stuff.
People were fine with attractive women on the wrestling show. I bet what was the one?

Speaker 32 The all-women show we pitched. One of the gimmicks was toxic shock.

Speaker 5 That's right.

Speaker 32 Yes, if we could only have found an attractive woman to have a tampon-related infection.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if you walk around the arena with a championship belt over your shoulder. Now, he ain't wrong about that.

Speaker 32 Yeah, and especially if you claim to be a recording artist.

Speaker 5 You know, it used to be like one person, but when you have like a row of fans and you see multiple people with belts, it's like, man, that's a little off.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if you rent space free of charge in your mom's basement.

Speaker 5 You rent space free of charge. Is it really rent if you're not paying?

Speaker 32 There's, see, again,

Speaker 32 his mind is cluttered. His mind is like a hoarder's house.
It's in there's a lot of shit in there, but it doesn't come out clearly.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if you are part of a tribe that loves one wrestling brand and hates the other wrestling brand.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if

Speaker 5 you hate Vince Russo.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if you are offended by anyone. Excuse me.
You are offended if anyone refers to you as a mark.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark.

Speaker 32 Wait a minute.

Speaker 32 Hold on here now. Wait a minute.
He may have solved this whole thing.

Speaker 32 So read it again.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if you hate Vince Russo.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if you are offended, if anyone calls you a mark.

Speaker 32 So it's only if you get mad if he calls you a mark

Speaker 32 that makes you a mark.

Speaker 32 So therefore,

Speaker 32 if you're not mad that he called you a mark, you're not a mark.

Speaker 32 So he went, he, he's, he's, that doesn't work, does it?

Speaker 5 No, it doesn't seem to.

Speaker 5 Vince Russo claims you are a mark if you honestly

Speaker 5 believe Triple H or Tony Khan are true

Speaker 5 bookers of the year.

Speaker 32 Oh, good Lord.

Speaker 5 Why is he lumping them together? Triple H and Tony Khan.

Speaker 32 That's what I'm about to say.

Speaker 32 It's not like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello. It's like fucking Costello and goddamn Mahatma fucking Gandhi.

Speaker 32 What is his?

Speaker 32 He thinks that he legitimately thinks that he knows better than triple h about the wrestling business at this point

Speaker 5 two more here vince russo claims you are a mark if you cried when cody rhodes finished his story and beat roman reigns at wrestlemania

Speaker 5 and finally vince russo claims you are a mark if you make every excuse in the book

Speaker 5 when your brand's rating is down for the week

Speaker 5 all right

Speaker 32 ladies ladies and gentlemen he does have some points but the problem is the biggest one is on top of his head

Speaker 32 and so and he presents it in such a juvenile and childish and illiterate fashion that it's hard to get behind the the the substance of the issue

Speaker 5 why wouldn't you proofread i mean how did the fake the fake how did the misspelled org get the fake orgasm how did the fake orgasm

Speaker 5 how did the misspelled orgasm get on that that's ridiculous oh

Speaker 32 Hey, it doesn't surprise me. I've been reading shit.
Well, I haven't lately, but I spent quite some time reading interoffice shit this guy wrote.

Speaker 5 Well, Jim, let's transition away from that and let's talk about the biggest news story that's happened over the last few days. Everyone's been talking about it since the news came out.

Speaker 5 That Sabu has passed away. A legend of the NDC in the 90s who

Speaker 5 was really one of the main people involved with transforming ecw from just being a regional company to something that people needed to see

Speaker 5 why don't we talk a little bit about sabu and his place in wrestling history

Speaker 32 and

Speaker 32 60 years old by the way and just wrestled

Speaker 32 his retirement match last month which we'll we'll get to but

Speaker 32 you know here i've been dreading this because i don't want

Speaker 32 I don't want people to think that I'm being disrespectful if I don't have all these great memories, because as I told you, I have literally in over the past 30 years said

Speaker 32 hello to him in passing at a convention or

Speaker 32 a wrestling show or two, as we'll talk about, like five times.

Speaker 32 And I'm seeing all these guys that, you know,

Speaker 32 that he worked with and that he knew, you know, posting things and everything. I have no

Speaker 32 personal experience whatsoever and and i i'll explain again why we just were never in the same place almost never

Speaker 32 and so i don't

Speaker 32 i don't have any personal anecdote but also i have

Speaker 32 nothing personally against him

Speaker 32 or you know so i am not biased in any way on a personal basis except

Speaker 32 what that i've you know heard and observed and you can probably

Speaker 32 help remind me of things as well. But

Speaker 32 I mean,

Speaker 32 the thing is, you have to,

Speaker 32 we'll get to this, but

Speaker 32 you have to just be, you're not shocked anymore because it's wrestling and with the amount of people that die, but still when somebody just did their retirement match last month,

Speaker 32 it comes out of the blue is what I'm trying to say as I beat around the bush.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 and the first time, and I think I told you this also, we talked about it on the phone, the first time that I'd met him and just briefly was that Gordon Scasari show in 1991, right?

Speaker 5 That had to be when it was when it got in the middle of the Gordon Scasari show was in 91, yeah.

Speaker 32 And for those of you who don't know real quickly, this fucking kid in Massachusetts had come into money and thought he was going to be a wrestling promoter and booked a show in

Speaker 32 a small building in Massachusetts, somewhere with the most eclectic group of wrestling personalities you've ever seen. And

Speaker 32 Eddie Gilbert was going to be his booker and wrote the TVs and then didn't show up. Remember, he didn't come to the actual fucking TV.

Speaker 5 You want to talk about a good Eddie Gilbert story that Darkside missed when Jeff Gayward attacked him at the sportatorium because apparently Scazari paid him off? yes to teach eddie

Speaker 32 yeah before the guy went broke and was committed to from what i understand to a mental institution he paid jeff gaylord to beat eddie gilbert up for stiffing him on the but nevertheless at that taping

Speaker 32 and brian you would have blew snot

Speaker 32 he had booked the chic because gordon scasar was a big wrestling fan right i mean you know Paul Orndorf was there. Stan Lane and I were there.
That's why I was there.

Speaker 32 There was a variety of talent from all over the place, place, but he booked the Sheik. The Sheik brought Sabu, and some way or another,

Speaker 32 Dr. Mike Lano

Speaker 32 got to be the Sheik and Sabu's manager and had a fucking turban on and was in his regular fucking Dr. Mike Lano suit, but with a turban out there doing promos for him.

Speaker 5 The promos. Sabu, I think, wrestled two matches.
One of them, funny enough, was against Chris Candido. And the Sheik's around Ringside doing his thing.

Speaker 5 Lano, who was actually at ringside shooting photos earlier that night.

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 5 Walks out and

Speaker 5 puts on a turban. You say he was doing promos.
Yeah, they did a promo after the match. He got on the mic during the match.

Speaker 5 And as Sabu's doing moves that no one had ever seen before, he's like, look at the mighty Sabu. We've got all the money.
Jushin Liger. He's just saying random shit.
No one's paying attention to him.

Speaker 5 They're trying to pay attention to the ring, but he's distracting.

Speaker 5 And then I believe he took photos again later that night. Yes, and he went back out.

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 32 And I was just sitting there watching most of the night because i was supposed to do the tv commentary but they forgot to set up a announce position the tv crew and they had no no way to do commentary so the guy said i'll bring you back and we'll do it in post right i yeah

Speaker 32 it it was commentaryless last time i i saw it but um

Speaker 32 But anyway, and yes, you're right, he did work with Candina and Tammy was there because I remember,

Speaker 32 again, this was right as I'd met them or right after I'd met them, you know, when they were working for Dennis Cordaluzzo.

Speaker 32 So anyway,

Speaker 32 the point is I knew Sabu there from, you know, seeing him. And then, yes, the videotapes, which we'll get into.

Speaker 32 But the next time I saw him was like 1993.

Speaker 32 I had just started for the WWF

Speaker 32 and

Speaker 32 Sabu had some had got the tryout match and somebody retweeted it the other day with the time code numbers on the bottom of the tape and everything. So I don't know where it came from.

Speaker 32 But Sabu had gotten a tryout match. I assume from Bruce Pritchard, probably, because I don't think Pat Patterson was paying attention to VHS tapes of, you know, indie shows at that point.

Speaker 32 And so he was there. And I fear he's the Sheikh's nephew.
And, you know, kids trying to get a... shot because I'm talking to Vince McMahon in the hallway and Sabu walks through there.

Speaker 32 And I made a point of saying, oh, Vince, this is Sabu, the Sheikh's nephew. Does a lot of amazing stuff, right?

Speaker 32 And Vince, oh, I'll be sure to watch or whatever the fuck. And

Speaker 32 then he had the trap match with Scotty Taylor, Scotty Too Hottie.

Speaker 32 And they didn't get it

Speaker 32 because he,

Speaker 5 I think

Speaker 5 the fans got into it.

Speaker 32 Well, but that's the thing is that Vince did, because part of it was

Speaker 32 Al Snow syndrome, because Sabu, a couple of times he tried to do the deal where he jumps and he landed on the top rope and he flipped backwards and arm dragged the guy or whatever, but it was ropes,

Speaker 32 whatever. He slipped on a couple of things, but also

Speaker 32 when he dove over the top rope. He wouldn't tell, he gave a tope or a flying cannonball or whatever it was to Scotty, and he just landed boom on the floor.

Speaker 32 And I mean, I wasn't on the creative team at this point in time. So I was in no inner office discussions about it.

Speaker 32 But I can tell you that Vince was didn't, he didn't get it. That's one of the things he didn't get.
He's like, what the fuck? This guy's going to kill himself.

Speaker 32 Which to be, and that's it.

Speaker 32 There, it was not the style that was in any way going to be featured at that point in time.

Speaker 32 And by the time that it was, everybody else had already stolen all of Sebu's shit and they were already doing it. And he never got the run to

Speaker 32 take advantage of it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, in a lot of ways, I see him akin to Tiger Mask. Again, there's a lot of differences.
But for a few years,

Speaker 5 everywhere Sabu went, he changed the way everyone who worked after him worked. And in 93,

Speaker 5 the buzz really started getting big early in the year. He had a match for Dennis in Minnesota, NWA Grand Slam, him against the Lightning Kid, right before Sean Waltman went to the WWF.

Speaker 5 And no one had ever seen a lot of that stuff before.

Speaker 5 That was one of the things that got the Lightning Kid over because he was really skinny and everything, but he was doing a lot of stuff that no one had ever seen before.

Speaker 5 And that match had a lot of buzz. And by the time you get to the end of the year, Paul Heyman takes over as the Booker of ECW.

Speaker 5 He brings in Sabu.

Speaker 5 On a gurney coming out there, one of his bodyguards was 9-1-1. That was the start of 9-1-1 in ECW, and he became a big thing for a while there.
Originally managed by Hunter Q.

Speaker 5 Robbins III, Robin Hunt, and then eventually managed by Heyman. I think I tweeted this out.
I'm not sure. I think he may have been the last person managed by Heyman as Paul E.
Dangerously.

Speaker 32 As Paulie Dangerously. Well, and that's it.

Speaker 32 And first of all, by the way, I think they should have stuck with it. And that should have been the thing they always did.

Speaker 32 The Hannibal Lecter on the board with the face thing

Speaker 32 entrance of Sabu,

Speaker 32 that is one of the things

Speaker 32 that I liked about what they did with him and what they could have done with him.

Speaker 32 And it's no secret, I was in no way a fan of the actual wrestling style, which we'll get to in a second, but the gimmick and the fucking presentation.

Speaker 32 And again,

Speaker 32 he could have been produced if...

Speaker 32 If he'd listened to somebody besides his uncle, he could have been produced and could have done something.

Speaker 32 And Paul E saw that even Paul E. wasn't going to, you know, go as far as Sabu would go later on, having a top being Sabu.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 the presentation and the gimmick, Paul E. saw, I've got the modern day sheik.
I've got to manage this personally.

Speaker 32 And because he knew part of the deal was he can't talk. Well, with Paul E, he didn't have to.

Speaker 32 And he had everything else. And Paul E.
was the only one in the business willing to let guys go that far at that time with the various things they went that far with.

Speaker 5 I remember the first time I heard his voice. That kind of threw me off.
It was backstage at a Dennis show in 95.

Speaker 5 It was a big show at that moment for Dennis with his local guys because Sabu was on the outs with ECW.

Speaker 5 And we'll talk about that in a minute. Paul E.
turned the fans on him.

Speaker 5 And he was working with Devin Storm, who at that time, I would say, was the top top local guy for Dennis and was the top high flyer for Dennis.

Speaker 5 And it was a big deal for us nerds into that indie wrestling. And I think it was in Woodbridge or Woodbury.
I always get the two confusion. Woodbury, I guess it is.

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 5 And it was a great match. And we all went out to eat afterwards.
But when I was with Georgie Macropolis and she had a good relationship with Sabu and she, you know, oh, hi, honey.

Speaker 5 And he started talking to him. And I hear, yeah, yeah, I was like, it threw me off.
I didn't know what I expected.

Speaker 5 I expected something, but it was just very, like almost like Beavis and butthead-ish, you know, the first time I heard it. And it threw me off, but it was a spectacle.

Speaker 5 Everywhere he went, it was a spectacle.

Speaker 5 And back to ECW, you know, the buzz around Paul Heyman's ECW was around Terry Funk, who was doing amazing work considering his age, Sabu, and maybe a bit about Shane Douglas in the early days because of the promos.

Speaker 32 Yeah, but then Shane wore off quick.

Speaker 5 Well, like Dominic Mysterio talking about moonsaults when you say fucking shit every time it takes away the impact of the first time you said you piece of shit oh my god i've never heard anyone say that but sabu

Speaker 5 was like kind of the face and the feel of ecw

Speaker 5 and when you think about tables when you think about public enemy in ecw and then leaving ecw going to wcw and walking to the ring with tables or the dudleys

Speaker 5 And quite frankly, the tables were the most popular member of the Dudleys tag team.

Speaker 5 That all came came from sabu and it wasn't just using tables and matches he did a thing where after his matches he'd be so upset that he didn't cripple his opponent he would put a table in the middle of the ring and moonsalt it himself and moonsalt the table even if it would i used to say why is he mad at the furniture but he'd do it two or three times if it wouldn't break well that's before they were

Speaker 5 that was before they were cutting tables or trimming them or whatever they do so they were just not gimmick tables he would take in the ring and just moonsalt the out of them well i got i got news for you they don't really

Speaker 32 i don't know what some goofball indie guy might do but they don't cut the tables they were a lot of times especially back in those days they were just grabbing whatever kind of table it was around ringside to do that and it was feast or famine sometime as far as what kind you got whether it go break or whatever and there's There's little tricks for some of these modern ones, but nevertheless, we would get bogged down.

Speaker 32 This is the point that I'm going to make, because again, don't want to be disrespectful to the fellow that I barely had any interaction with whatsoever.

Speaker 32 If he had been the only one,

Speaker 32 fine, because the sheik was the only one. That's why he was a huge draw.

Speaker 32 But when everybody in ECW, and I blame Paul more than the talent, they're just after

Speaker 32 Paul turned the ECW people on sabu more more in a moment. Everybody else got to steal his shit.

Speaker 32 But the table becoming every now, you can't get around it. You can't look away from it multiple times in every fucking match.
It's so goddamn overdone.

Speaker 32 That's why if Sabu had been able to

Speaker 32 have some type of protected status as the Sheikh did,

Speaker 32 where he was the only one with this incredible fucking over-the-top bullshit stuff

Speaker 32 then it would have been fucking fine but when everybody started doing it now we can't get rid of it 30 years later

Speaker 32 and

Speaker 32 so it's he's kind of like mick foley in that respect to taking bumps off of high fucking places we can't get rid of the furniture fucking either but sabu never got a chance to cash in on it because everybody took his

Speaker 32 shit and ran with it and there was no structure to modern wrestling to make him him the only guy. And like I said to you the other day,

Speaker 32 if you had one sheik, you had a mega box office attraction. But if you had same territory, 18 guys working like the sheik, you were out of business.

Speaker 5 And you know, he was one of the top stars in ECW, one of the most over guys by far. And I think when you went to a lot of those ECW shows, you wanted to see Sabu.
There was a buzz about him. And then

Speaker 5 Off the top of my head, the way I remember it was Sabu had a tour for New Japan because he had previously been working for FMW with his uncle.

Speaker 5 I mean, that was one of the first that was one of the first clips people saw was when the ring was on fire. He was with his uncle in that match.

Speaker 32 Yes, where, you know, where they almost killed a sheik

Speaker 32 and put him in the hospital with whatever degree burns. No, he had had a shot for New Japan and he wasn't going to be able to get back in time for the big

Speaker 32 triple threat match or whatever that Paul had built up to. But he got the chance to work for New Japan and he didn't want to give it up or whatever the case.

Speaker 32 And so

Speaker 32 Pauli did an even bigger job than Vince did on Austin when Austin walked out not to do the job to Brock.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Paulie went in the ring and he turned Sabu into a heel in front of the ECW Arena crowd. I don't even remember if it aired on TV or anything.

Speaker 5 I would think it was just him trashing Sabu in front of the crowd because Sabu took the New Japan tour as opposed to the one ECW Arena date.

Speaker 5 And again, we don't know what the communication was or anything else, but he went in there and turned the crowd on Sabu.

Speaker 5 And those ECW Arena fans, and a lot of them were smart, but a lot of them thought they were smart, but they were really just slurping up anything Paulie gave them. And they were like fucking

Speaker 5 like walruses, you know, just doing whatever he wanted to.

Speaker 32 Slurp is a good word. I like slurp.

Speaker 5 Whether it was the flare is dead shit for Shane or whether it was the fuck Sabu chant. And those those ECW Arena fans who had gone nuts for Sabu,

Speaker 5 Paulie could have come out there and said anything to them. They would just change on a dime what they thought about something.
And Sabu all of a sudden became persona non grata there.

Speaker 5 That's when he started working for Dennis again. And Dennis and ECW, Dennis Carluszo, had always had problems going back to pre-Paul because Dennis didn't get along with Todd Gordon.

Speaker 5 Dennis got along with Eddie Gilbert, but Dennis didn't get along with Todd Gordon. But ECW wouldn't let their guys work for Dennis.
And a lot of those guys worked for Dennis for Terry Funk, Sabu.

Speaker 5 A lot of those guys worked for Dennis before ECW was a thing. So that created a lot of the problems, but Sabu wasn't there.

Speaker 5 Remember,

Speaker 32 that was supposed to be the handshake and the limo between Paul and Dennis for me to go to the ECW arena that time was supposed to be.

Speaker 32 And the ECW guys could work for Dennis on their days off in Cherry Hill or whatever,

Speaker 32 which didn't happen.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 And that was the year 95

Speaker 5 where he showed up. It was like maybe the third episode of Nitro or something.
It was Sabu against Mr. JL, Jerry Lynn in a mask.
I still don't understand why. He was Jerry Lynn.

Speaker 5 Why'd you have to put him on the meds? Mr. JL, not even a cool name.
Mr. JL, who will figure this out?

Speaker 32 That's why the destroyer got even bigger as Mr. DB.

Speaker 5 And, you know, this was the era where Nitro was only an hour. So they still had like a bunch of shit, but nothing went longer than like six minutes.

Speaker 5 And maybe it should be like that today, quite frankly. And Sabu was in and out quick.
And then in 96, he returns to ECW.

Speaker 5 And you want to talk about another thing that was really popularized due to Sabu.

Speaker 5 If Heyman did it before then,

Speaker 5 I can't remember a specific instance, but the one I remember the most, turned out the lights, turned them back on. Taz was already in the ring, and there was Sabu.
You could almost hear the fan, Sabu!

Speaker 5 Oh, they turned back. All he had to do was come back, and they turned back to loving him.

Speaker 5 And that set up the big Sabu Taz thing, which may be Paul Heyman's greatest job as a promoter because he convinced people that may be a good match.

Speaker 5 And it never could live up to the hype because they did a better job of hyping up Taz then, Sabu also. And then they did a double switch where Bill Alfonso switched from Taz to Sabu.

Speaker 5 And that began Sabu with Bill Alfonso and eventually with Rob Van Dam.

Speaker 32 And you're right. I don't, don't,

Speaker 32 I'm not going to say the lights had never gone out before.

Speaker 32 But then,

Speaker 32 again,

Speaker 32 lights went out all the time. And then other people started doing it.
And then they'd go out and come back on and go out and come back on again.

Speaker 5 So I never liked it. I never liked it because like even that instance, Taz, I forget what Taz was doing.
Taz like beating someone up. Lights go out.

Speaker 5 Enough time for Sabu to run to the ring. Lights come back on.
Taz has his hands crossed, his arms crossed. Sabu's pointing up in his familiar pose.

Speaker 5 And then they get ready like they're going to do something. And then the lights go off again and everyone's gone.

Speaker 5 Like that to me is the epitome of playing.

Speaker 32 When I was there, I was in that building one time in my life and the lights went out for me to come to the ring.

Speaker 5 That's like the ultimate Paul Heyman lazy booking thing. And then you're like, Paul, why'd you do that? Well, it worked.
People popped. It worked.
Yeah, but it didn't have an ending. It went nowhere.

Speaker 5 It made no sense.

Speaker 5 Yeah, how did it happen? Who's the light man? What's going on? Well, they worked. It popped.
And,

Speaker 5 you know, again, Sabu,

Speaker 5 when the WWE and ECW did their thing in 97, Sabu was involved with that.

Speaker 5 But he was really, I think, for a lot of people.

Speaker 32 Well, and here's the thing. I was there that night.

Speaker 32 Remember in 97, he didn't actually get on television.

Speaker 32 Because at the Manhattan Center, it was him and Van Dam that Paul had had in the,

Speaker 32 there was some kind of motor home or not a mobile home, but a motor home of a camper, as they used to call it.

Speaker 32 And Paul was relaying back and forth what Van Dam and supposedly what Van Dam and Sabu were saying and wanted to do or demanded or whatever, but he was trying to,

Speaker 32 that's.

Speaker 32 One of them ended up working. I don't know if the other one did.
I can't remember.

Speaker 32 We've talked about it before, but from a Paul standpoint, but that's when he was trying to protect his guys, but also put the heat on them rather than him, just in case something happened.

Speaker 32 So he was communicating back as Lawler told Reggie B. Fine

Speaker 32 on Memphis TV, come out here, bring your guy out here. Reggie B.
Fine said, you just tell me what you want him to know and I'll delay the information back to him.

Speaker 32 Paul was delaying the information back and forth and

Speaker 32 Sabu never got a job again with the WWF. I don't think.
Well, no, then they redid ACW 10 years later, right?

Speaker 5 And then him and Van Dam got busted smoking weed in a car when Van Dam was the champion, remember?

Speaker 32 That's right. And they fired him again.

Speaker 5 But you know, him and Van, he's really responsible for getting Van Dam on the national stage in a lot of ways because Rob Van Dam had worked for, first time I saw him, was Eddie Mansfield's IWF on Sports Channel in New York.

Speaker 5 And then he was in WCW

Speaker 5 briefly in the beginning of 93 as Robbie, Robbie V.

Speaker 5 Not even Rob Van Dan, Robbie V. And he was such a bland babyface and it really, it didn't do anything for me.
And then he did some all-Japan stuff because I think Dory Jr. got him booked.

Speaker 5 And his promos as a, you know, nice karate loving babyface, it didn't really, he didn't seem like he had the voice for it or anything else.

Speaker 5 And then they started working with Sabu, his longtime friend, in ECW in the summer of 96. I went to one match they had, it was a nightmare.
It was the hottest fight.

Speaker 5 It must have been like the middle of the summer. It was so hot in that building, the AC went down, and then the ring broke, and then they fixed the ring, and they start Sabu versus Rob Van Dam.

Speaker 5 And Sabu goes to do his triple jump moonsault where he puts up the chair in the ring, and he runs, and he jumps on the chair, and then he jumps on the top rope, and he moonsaults back, and the top rope, the ring broke again.

Speaker 32 Oh, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 5 It was just the worst night. And that may have been the night Kimono Wanalea danced atop the ECW arena.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 5 But Rob Van Dam getting over in ECW was because they started doing a lot of stuff with him and Sabu.

Speaker 5 And then eventually he turned heel and it kind of clicked. And I think the stuff with WWE was a big part of that.
The Mr. Monday Night thing, taking that back to ECW is a heel.
Yeah.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 like I was telling you with what Vince got at that time.

Speaker 32 Van Dam, by that point, had gained weight and had a fucking physique and the flexibility. And cool trunks.

Speaker 32 I've called him, well, and cool trunks, but I've called him the modern version of Argentina Raca because he did unorthodox shit, but it worked for him.

Speaker 32 And nobody else could land on their various joints, knees, ankles, you know, in those positions, contort themselves, do that shit. But he also looked like a goddamn top guy and a little cleaner look.

Speaker 32 And that's what Vince was looking for. And

Speaker 32 with Sabu,

Speaker 32 the difference in the work, whereas Van Dam could jump off the top rope and do the five-star frog splash and land on you and bounce and that's physically impactful shit.

Speaker 32 But whereas Sabu's shit was launching himself

Speaker 32 over or off the top rope or off of something.

Speaker 32 onto somebody and,

Speaker 32 you know, cross fingers, hope for the best in the way he landed.

Speaker 32 And Vince's head would blow up at shit like that. And

Speaker 32 in this case, I don't blame him that much

Speaker 32 because you're looking at, and we've seen the

Speaker 32 highlights that they put out of Sabu's

Speaker 32 ECW stuff and compilations and everything.

Speaker 32 You've got to admit that

Speaker 32 In most of those things where he's diving somewhere to take somebody through a table or into the barbed wire, whatever.

Speaker 32 You can't apply the standard wrestling logic that we can do this, the two of us as trained professionals in this way and have a reasonable expectation of not getting hurt.

Speaker 32 You can't apply that to that shit. That's why Vince wouldn't fucking go for most of it.

Speaker 32 And that's why, because that's why a whole generation of wrestlers wouldn't go for it. it.

Speaker 32 And it was the younger guys that were doing this shit

Speaker 32 because you couldn't talk anybody into it that

Speaker 32 was at the time over and already had a job. And I don't mean to denigrate the man.

Speaker 32 But when I look at this stuff, even today, I'm going, you can't.

Speaker 32 There's the thunder now, Brian. Are you hearing the thunder?

Speaker 5 I thought there was no thunder over Louisville.

Speaker 32 Well, they rescheduled it for today.

Speaker 32 You can't look at that and say, okay,

Speaker 32 the people perpetrating this had a reasonable expectation that they could pull it off without getting hurt.

Speaker 32 And that's why I couldn't, I can get into the athletic aspect of wrestling and I can get into the violent part of it.

Speaker 32 But the violent, the art of the violence of wrestling is that the violent part has to be controlled as the athletic part.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 I didn't want to be on either side pitching or catching of anything that those guys were fucking doing.

Speaker 5 And eventually it really did go too far, at least for me as a fan.

Speaker 5 You know, I, in 94, that was kind of the year that you got all these Sabu dream matches and all the best of Sabu compilation tapes started going around because every match he had was a thing that had to be seen.

Speaker 5 That was the year we got Cactus Jack. against Sabu because Cactus left WCW.
And that was like the big dream match. Two guys that don't care about their bodies wrestling each other.

Speaker 5 That was a big deal. And they had a few matches.
I think they had one in Hamburg that they aired on ECW-TV later in the year.

Speaker 5 And then that was the year that we got Sabu versus Terry Funk a bunch of times.

Speaker 5 And where I was going with this, because I'll come back, the match they had, I think, in 97, the barbed wire one, I love Terry Funk and I like a lot of that Sabu stuff. That was too much for me.

Speaker 5 That was too gruesome and too far and too disgusting. And I actually worried about people I like watching too much.
But if you go back to 94,

Speaker 5 he has the three-way match with Terry and Shane, which doesn't really hold up as well now, but at the time was a big deal. And then one of my favorite ECW moments ever.

Speaker 5 It's supposed to be Terry Funk against Mr. Hughes.
The Bruce brothers come out and attack Mr. Hughes and beat him up.
I forget what their problem Mr. Hughes was.
I don't know. I've seen their tattoos.

Speaker 5 Who knows what their problem Mr. Hughes was?

Speaker 5 But now Terry Funk doesn't have an opponent. He says, I'll wrestle anybody.
Paul E. hits the ring and says, I know who you should wrestle.
And as soon as he's done, the fans are already, Sabu!

Speaker 5 They know who it's going to be. And he says, Sabu.

Speaker 5 And then when Terry Funk turns around, he clocks him with the phone. And then Terry Funk goes down.
Paul E starts doing the promo to introduce Sabu is being wheeled out.

Speaker 5 Terry puts a plastic bag over Paul's head and tries to kill him.

Speaker 5 So then Sabu gets in there and Sabu and Terry have one of the best matches I think they ever had.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 at the end, the bodyguards who had helped like bring Sabu out on the gurney and everything, and they were out there still,

Speaker 5 come in there and they get unmasked and thrown out. And it's like some of the local guys, like Donnie Allen or whoever it was.
And eventually, one of them, it's Bobby Eaton, beautiful Bobby.

Speaker 5 He hit the Alabama Jam. People are like, what the fuck? Who's that? And then he pulls it off and it's Bobby Eaton.
And the place goes nuts out of nowhere. Because who expected us?

Speaker 5 Arne Anderson runs out of the back of the ECW Arena.

Speaker 5 And if you ever watch the footage, it's incredible because someone who must have been involved with ECW next to the camera yells, Holy shit, it's Arn Anderson!

Speaker 5 And it's not supposed to be there. You could tell it's just someone terribly excited.
And they go in there and the place goes. I can still see Sarge McGee in the front row, like lifting his arms up.

Speaker 5 He couldn't believe it. And then they had the tag match.

Speaker 32 I can't believe Sarge could lift his arms up at that point.

Speaker 5 Arn and Terry Funk versus Sabu and Bobby Eaton.

Speaker 32 And well, and also, we should say, for the again the kids out there that think we're all on drugs that was when paul got a settlement

Speaker 5 over the copyright infringement whatever lawsuit he had filed which lawsuit was it he had filed against wcw see i think it was a different one because the copyright thing for when worlds collide when they did the triple-a pay-per-view funny enough they're using that name for the thing coming up That's what caused November 94 against the NWA tournament in Cherry Hill in Philadelphia.

Speaker 5 Paul E got Brian Pillman because he was supposed to get Steve Austin and Steve Austin couldn't do it or he was hurt. I forget what it was.
Got Brian Pillman.

Speaker 5 I think he got Kevin Sullivan back that night. I think he got Sherry Martell back that night.
And I may be forgetting one of the person.

Speaker 32 No, this was some kind of settlement that he got in the uh some other industry.

Speaker 5 It may have been from everything with

Speaker 32 Mike Awesome and Taz had a title match that era of time.

Speaker 32 Anyway, Paul was always getting talent because he would sue WCW for something.

Speaker 32 And he got Arn and Bobby that night. And it tickled me when I heard about it because that's the same two guys I got every time that somebody could get talent from WCW.

Speaker 32 They wanted Arn Anderson and Bobby Eaton.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that feud went to three different promotions.

Speaker 5 That feud went to three different promotions in a year. That's what made it so cool.

Speaker 5 But that year also, we got Sabu versus Two Cold Scorpio, which was again another one of those like, holy shit, how's this going to happen?

Speaker 5 And then my favorite was from a show Dan Farron promoted in the the middle of a residential neighborhood in California. They did Al Snow versus Sabu.

Speaker 5 No one had ever heard of Al Snow outside of people going to Michigan Independents and fans of the late, late, late version of the fabulous kangaroo.

Speaker 5 No one had ever heard of Al Snow until those matches from Michigan started going around to him against Sabu. That put Al Snow on the map for a lot of people.
That's what got him booked in ECW in 95.

Speaker 5 And those matches are great. They brought it out to California for this show.
And it was a really, really fun match.

Speaker 5 And at the very end, out of nowhere, because he wasn't on the card, he wasn't booked. And this is a residential street in the middle of the day in California.
Terry Funk runs in.

Speaker 5 And the pick starts going crazy. Terry starts beating the shit out of them.
There's just a big fight everywhere.

Speaker 5 The woman who ran the building freaked out because she didn't know who this man was attacking everyone. So she calls the cops.
And now the video ends right before the cops get there.

Speaker 5 And outside, Dan Farron, the promoter and referee here, is on the ground. Again, middle of the day, he's on the ground.
Terry Funk is hiding under a car,

Speaker 32 like the sheikh in Chicago.

Speaker 5 And the video ends with Terry Funk walking down the street. There are houses there.
It's just a street, just walking down the street, muttering to himself. But, you know, again, Sabu and Terry Funk.

Speaker 5 During that period of time, if you were a tape trader, you wanted to see every single thing they did, no matter where it was.

Speaker 32 And even if it was under a car on a side street in Southern California,

Speaker 32 that's the thing is, I think,

Speaker 32 especially, you know, we know that Paul E will let guys go too far and didn't, you know, particularly look out for anybody's best interests physically.

Speaker 32 But I think in his quest to go so extreme and to go too far and push the envelope and

Speaker 32 set people,

Speaker 32 goddamn it, it, wasn't Sabu in the deal where they set people on fire too?

Speaker 32 Or where Terry got fired?

Speaker 5 That may have been him and Terry. Yeah, that may have been him against Terry, I think.

Speaker 32 They swung the chair. Yeah, and people, they had to evacuate the lights went out as people were on fire and they had to evacuate the building.
It was filled with smoke.

Speaker 32 Wonderful place to take the kids.

Speaker 32 They get two-for-one admission, folks.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 32 I think if Vince had been more up to date at that point, and Paulie had been a little less behind the times, maybe,

Speaker 32 and there would have been a sweet spot in the middle,

Speaker 32 Sabu as a gimmick and as a personality, and with the stuff that he could do without even doing furniture in every match or the look to, you know, bleeding constantly from any orifice or the really dangerous stuff that requires surgical repair, and with the cool entrance and the music and a manager and the whole thing, I think he'd have made more money than he did diving off the roof through a bunch of shit in

Speaker 32 the fucking, you know, rec centers. But

Speaker 32 as I was saying the other day,

Speaker 32 he took the sheik's advice on how to be a star and stay over and maintain your

Speaker 32 your drawing power and et cetera.

Speaker 32 But the part that he got, he skipped was the sheik didn't do all that until he was one of the biggest, most powerful guys in the business and the owner of a territory. Then he did whatever he wanted.

Speaker 32 And Sabu skipped that part. He wasn't the owner of a major promotion or one of the biggest stars in the business before

Speaker 32 they let him do his shit, which is why

Speaker 32 nobody on a mainstream aka high-paying basis would let him do any of that stuff

Speaker 32 because, with no control over it at all,

Speaker 32 instead of the

Speaker 32 danger with the sheikh was that he was going to fucking

Speaker 32 blade somebody too deep, but he never like put anybody in a hospital for surgery.

Speaker 32 But with Sabu, you know, and guys cooperating with all of that

Speaker 32 on a mainstream big money basis, you can't.

Speaker 32 And now they even, they don't even let guys in in modern day do shit as out of control and as recklessly as the stuff that these guys were doing in ECW and then those indies in the early 2000s.

Speaker 32 If you look back at the clips, it's like, I can't imagine how some of them were not paralyzed.

Speaker 5 I remember Bob Barnett telling me a story that he went out east for a Joel Goodhart show, probably 91, maybe 92, but probably 91. Actually, it had to be 91 now that I think about it.

Speaker 5 And Sabu was booked. I think he was in like a reverse battle royal or whatever it was, one of those early card gimmick matches just to get everyone on the show.

Speaker 5 But he was driving the Sheikh's limousine, and the Sheik was with him, because I think it may have been the Sheik versus Abdullah or something.

Speaker 32 Okay, yes.

Speaker 5 And Bob Barnett somehow got to talking to them at the hotel or whatever. And he was going through the building too, so they were going to follow him.

Speaker 5 And he said, I remember him tell me, he goes, you know, it's the first time he met Sabu. Sabu came over to my car and he said, my uncle says if you get us lost, he's going to cut you.

Speaker 5 And he didn't get lost, he got to the building.

Speaker 32 The pressure is on. If I'd have gotten lost, I'd have just sped off and left him and just gone back home.

Speaker 5 You know, he had a look too, you know, in terms of what could have been if different things had happened or anything. The scars all over his body, no one else in wrestling had that.

Speaker 5 And it worked.

Speaker 32 Not sure I'd want to go that far, but if they were already there, you could have used them.

Speaker 5 Yeah. It was a great look.

Speaker 5 He had a unique look.

Speaker 5 even when everyone started stealing every part of his of what he did his repertoire he still had a unique look even though there were copies i remember when pablo marquez the first time i heard of pablo marquez he was a sabu ripoff called ubaz yes yes sabu backwards ubaz

Speaker 5 so i mean there was an influence uh among some people from sabu but you know he to me you know what it is a lot like mick foley because there was a the

Speaker 32 i hate to say this but for you know it's the same thing with Mick and I love Mick to death and everybody knows it, but they were both guys that

Speaker 32 all that,

Speaker 32 the young male audience at the time said, I'll never look like these guys.

Speaker 32 I'll never look like Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels or Ric Flair or whatever, but that fat guy or that little fucking scarred up guy, I could do that shit.

Speaker 32 And it was kind of like a bonding moment for that generation.

Speaker 5 I remember Marty Gorman being asked years ago, Marty, what's your favorite match of all time? And his answer was, Sabu.

Speaker 5 You know, because I didn't actually saw Sabu and was his favorite match. And again, like I said, there was a period of time there where that's why I compare it to Tiger Mask.

Speaker 5 Even though Sayama did the UWF and Sayama eventually had comeback matches later on when he, you know, was not Little Tiger Mask anymore.

Speaker 5 For a couple of years there, everything he did influenced everything that came after him.

Speaker 5 From the weight division to the style to everything. And I think with Sabu,

Speaker 5 it's a lot of the same thing. Again, for good or for bad, I'm looking at it as a teenage mark from the 90s, not as an industry professional like yourself.
Yes.

Speaker 5 But if you look at where we are today, how much of that is directly because of what Sabu started doing in front of wrestling fans? And also, what would ECW have even been if they didn't have Sabu?

Speaker 32 Now you're, you're fired me up to get indignant again. That's the problem.

Speaker 32 Well, in all seriousness, and I hate, I hate the fact that, again, a lot of what people were talking about over the last day or so is that he never even made a lot of big money for doing this shit and was broken down his body and et cetera.

Speaker 32 But with Tiger Mask, yes,

Speaker 32 you're correct in the same,

Speaker 32 the same level of influence. with a completely different style, et cetera.
Because with Tiger Mask, you said, my God,

Speaker 32 that guy's a world-class athlete. Nobody can do that like he can.
This is amazing athleticism.

Speaker 32 With Sabu, you were like, Jesus Christ, this guy's going to kill himself.

Speaker 32 And I'm, and I just, because

Speaker 32 I came from the previous generation of wrestling and was trained by the previous generation from that,

Speaker 32 I was like, what the fuck?

Speaker 32 Why is anybody allowing this to go on, to be quite honest with you?

Speaker 5 But it's goddamn exciting to watch i remember you being asked when i was probably 14 at fan week if it wasn't 14 it was 15 you know why don't you use sabu because again this is the period of time where he was the hottest thing even though he's working a lot for paul that may have caused a problem and you at the time i remember you know not even talking about money or negotiating or anything you couldn't wrap your head around what to do with him because he'd be a heel So he couldn't exactly do everything he's doing as a heel,

Speaker 5 but you may want him to do some of those things, not necessarily in an offensive way. Am I saying this in any way that makes sense?

Speaker 32 Well, yeah.

Speaker 32 See, here's the thing, and we've talked about it in a different way.

Speaker 32 Eddie Gilbert, when we were talking about the dark side episode, what worked in Philadelphia wouldn't work in Memphis, what worked in Memphis wouldn't work in Philadelphia, vice versa, right?

Speaker 32 And at the time for the audience, how do I bring

Speaker 32 Sabu in and introduce him when he doesn't speak as a babyface?

Speaker 32 And what is, how does he interact with the rest of my babyfaces against the fucking heels?

Speaker 32 It wasn't the indie style presentation that Paul was doing, picking up from ECW and from Joe Goodhart and all that type of thing. It was

Speaker 32 regular weekly episodic television, monthly show, territorial wrestling.

Speaker 32 If he was a heel and that a manager could speak for him, he'd get a lot of fucking heat doing some of that shit to Ricky Morton or whatever Tracy Smothers, but at the same time,

Speaker 32 there was too much margin for error with most of his. I didn't want people to, I didn't want the fans to see that stuff because that's the problem.
Once they see it, they can't unsee it.

Speaker 32 And then they want to see more of it. And then you give them more.
And then gradually the stunt show aspect takes over.

Speaker 32 And that's what they pop on rather than the personalities and the issues and what you can give them safely.

Speaker 32 And then you have a situation where guys have to fucking hospitalize themselves on a regular basis just to give the normal performance, kind of like what we've got today.

Speaker 32 So I was trying to slow that shit down.

Speaker 5 Well, again, Sabu,

Speaker 5 you know, when you look at the 90s, it's definitely one of the faces of wrestling in that era. Unlike a lot of guys that were indie stars, again, independent wrestling really changed.

Speaker 5 Right around the time Ring of Honor became popular. It may start a little bit before then, but that really was like the point where independent wrestling became a different animal.

Speaker 5 But the big stars in indie wrestling were the Terry Funks, the Cactus Jacks, the Eddie Gilberts, the guys who had national TV exposure. With Sabu, it kind of started switching.

Speaker 5 It was all about buzz from smart wrestling fans trading tapes, which aren't necessarily the people that are going to fill the room, but they'll be in the room making noise while other people are discovering it.

Speaker 5 And again, for good or for bad, there are very few people that had as big an influence on everything we see today than Sabu, whether it's the tables, whether it's the lights being put out to do something.

Speaker 5 You know, a lot of these things.

Speaker 32 And now, you know what? A lot of people are going to say, and Coronet was taking a piss out of him for it. No.

Speaker 32 I took the piss out of everybody that copied it and the promoters that allowed it and the promoters that fell back on the lights as a crutch or the tables as a crutch or the people that controlled the shows not saying, okay, we're going a little too far here when we're lynching each other with fucking barbed wire around our testicles or whatever.

Speaker 32 And if Sabu was going to have that gimmick, which was the update of the sheik, the wild hardcore guy, but instead of cutting people with a razor blade and wrapping a snake around their neck, he was throwing them through tables, then it should have been protected.

Speaker 32 And somebody should have been able to produce him well enough that he could assimilate into a major promotion. So that if he was going to take that many chances with his body, which didn't

Speaker 32 obviously, you know, he didn't emerge unscathed from that, that he would have got compensated for it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that is one of the sad things that apparently he did not do.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's not a surprise when you think of some of the places he worked, but apparently he did not do very well throughout his career financially, or at least to the level of a top star in a major company.

Speaker 5 Although, even if he did, you have to to wonder if he would have still been working. I mean, he, you know, we'll talk about it a little bit later.

Speaker 5 He just had his retirement match a couple of weeks ago. He hadn't really worked too much in the years before then because of

Speaker 5 things that were happening physically. I mean, he had gone through a lot physically.

Speaker 5 But, you know, like his, like his, I was going to say his grandfather, like his uncle, not his grandfather, his uncle, ladies and gentlemen, like his uncle, the Sheik.

Speaker 5 You know, Sheik, I think, would have kept doing stuff. As long as someone was willing to pay, the Sheik would probably find a way to get there.

Speaker 32 No, it it was Sheikh. It was 70 when he did the, how old was he when he did the burning ring match in Japan? He was already 70 or was he 72?

Speaker 5 He was in his 70s when he was working for FMW, that's for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 32 So, yes, the point being,

Speaker 32 because we talked about that on the Sheik dark side episode, he couldn't.

Speaker 32 He fell on hard times financially over the

Speaker 32 last, what, 30 years of his life? Because of the first 40 years of his life, he established that he lived at this certain level and he couldn't

Speaker 32 downsize and have the fame taken away and not, you know, whatever with

Speaker 32 Sabu. He never lived at that level, but he had the sheikh's example to look up to.

Speaker 5 So it was, you know,

Speaker 32 nevertheless, they liked the limelight.

Speaker 5 60 years old, Sabu.

Speaker 5 And again, go back and watch some of the footage of him in 93 and 94 if you want to see him at a period of time where the fans had never seen anything like that before.

Speaker 5 So you get some really interesting reactions from people.

Speaker 5 But that is our look at Sabu.

Speaker 5 You know, Jim, in the awkward transition department, Sabu had a lot of scars all over his body.

Speaker 5 And he wouldn't have had that problem if he was just focused on his face and using a safe razor like our friends at Harry's

Speaker 32 Well, you have that exactly right, Brian, because for heaven's sake, if you're talking about the Sheik or any of the Sheikh's relatives, you've got to mention that this show is partially sponsored by a razor blade company.

Speaker 32 And our friends at Harry's, they've got them covered up so you can't cut yourself accidentally.

Speaker 32 And even if you take one of these things and try to just run it across your forehead willy-nilly, you couldn't really do too much damage because they're made to scrape your face in a safe and affordable way rather than cutting your head in a dangerous but potentially profitable way.

Speaker 32 But they got the German-engineered blades made in their own factory that stay sharp longer, the customizable delivery options for scheduled refills, half what you're going to pay for the big brands.

Speaker 32 And you get the five-blade razor, the weighted handle, the foaming shave gel, and a travel cover for only $6.

Speaker 32 It's regular $10, but now you're going to save $6, $6 or you're going to save $4

Speaker 32 because it's $6.

Speaker 32 You see now 10 minus 4 is 6.

Speaker 32 Unless on one side, the 100 gorillas have a fucking, is it 100 gorillas against one man? I guess that wouldn't be fair.

Speaker 5 That seems like it would be a problem. The gorillas may start fighting with each other.

Speaker 32 Well, so what you need to do is you need to get your Harry's customized trial set and you need to shave a couple of the gorillas, put them on the right side of things.

Speaker 32 But again, folks, if you want to make your

Speaker 32 face, your face, your face smooth, smooth and attractive to others, possibly of the opposite sex or maybe the same sex, which,

Speaker 32 you know what, with most of the listeners, I wouldn't rule anything out because you'll increase your potential gene pool. Once again, but if you want to,

Speaker 32 yes, you got to make yourself attractive.

Speaker 5 Your face will be smooth and kissable if you do your razoring the right way with the right razor.

Speaker 32 If whether it be man, woman, or puppy, you might want a puppy to give you a puppy kiss.

Speaker 5 I believe these are, um, these are, I don't know if there is a disclaimer or anything, but I believe these are recommended for human beings only.

Speaker 32 No, if you want to, if you want to shave your face slick, so your puppy will give you a puppy kiss.

Speaker 5 I thought you were saying shave the puppy's face. I was like, What's wrong with you?

Speaker 32 No, no, you don't shave the puppy's face for heaven. What do you ever shave the puppy's face? You shave the puppy's ass.

Speaker 32 If you get your Harry's five-blade razor with the weighted handle and foaming shave gel and go to town on Fido's Sphincter, go to town on your

Speaker 5 stains on the carpet will will vanish instantly phytosphincter is a term we use on the show to describe the facial hair on someone's face go to town on your face get rid of that beard clean up that beard get rid of that mustache or do something else whatever it may be

Speaker 32 you need a razor and you need the right razor and we can recommend our friends at harry's you know i saw santa claus at a christmas special and he had a long phytosphincter hanging down to his belly folks right now are you normally that trial set is $10, but you can get it for just $6.

Speaker 32 So if it really means that much to you to save $4, you fucking cheap bastard, go right now to Harry's.com slash JCE. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com

Speaker 32 slash JCE.

Speaker 32 $6 for the trial set that's normally $10. Save that $4,

Speaker 32 you cheap bastard, you.

Speaker 32 If that's the only thing that's kept you from just buying some Harry's before is that lousy $4. I hate to think of what kind of fucking life you've led or how much a loser you are.
Harry's.com

Speaker 32 slash

Speaker 5 CCE. For all the winners, Harry's.com slash JCE.

Speaker 32 Yeah, shave that face or that sphincter.

Speaker 5 Be a winner. Shave that face with Harry's.

Speaker 32 No, it says be a winner, shave that sphincter.

Speaker 5 The face, the sphincter of the face. I don't even know what that means, but Harry's.com slash JCE.

Speaker 5 All right, that wasn't necessarily clean or appropriate, but here we are now. We are in the future.
Minutes after what we just did.

Speaker 32 Minutes after.

Speaker 5 Jim, I know we have a bunch of big reviews. We have the pay-per-view backlash.
We have that incredible press conference afterwards, or at least a moment of it.

Speaker 5 And then a little bit from Raw, a little bit of SmackDown. But I know there's a little bit more about the Sabu story, apparently, that a lot of the listeners have...

Speaker 5 A lot of the listeners have been posting about or sending over so uh let's talk about this this is

Speaker 32 again this is why i say the world is ridiculous wrestling business is ridiculous because

Speaker 32 now within you know 48 hours or whatever of sabu passing away

Speaker 32 There's controversy over whether Jelly Nutella killed him or not. I can't even believe I'm saying this.
And of course he didn't.

Speaker 32 It's probably one of the only things he's been accused of. He's not guilty of.

Speaker 32 But just that we're having to talk about this.

Speaker 32 We talked earlier about

Speaker 32 old shitstain himself, Vince Russo, using marks as a derogatory term for the wrestling fans. And you may be a mark if that the list that he made up.

Speaker 32 I think where we ought to use marks as derogatory terms in wrestling

Speaker 32 is when people don't know which side of the goddamn rail to stay on.

Speaker 32 If you're a fan and you know you're a fan and you stay in the, in the, in the seats in the arena and enjoy things, then it doesn't matter if you're a mark or not, you're not a bad mark, but you're a mark

Speaker 32 like old Russo

Speaker 32 or like Jelly.

Speaker 32 or like the guy that runs garbage wrestling that employs Jelly, when you don't know enough to realize that that's all you should ever be is a fan in the audience watching something.

Speaker 32 You see Mick Jagger on stage, so you instantly put your own band together and make yourself the lead singer.

Speaker 5 Or

Speaker 32 that's the problem.

Speaker 32 And now apparently, what we're finding out is,

Speaker 33 because

Speaker 32 I'm used to legends having matches in their golden years, and

Speaker 32 you know, guys find a way to work around it. And you, you know, sometimes it's okay.
And sometimes it's sad. But

Speaker 32 I've just now seen highlights, if you can call them that, of Sabu's last match that he had with Jelly Nutella, of all people,

Speaker 32 like three weeks ago or whatever.

Speaker 32 And it's ridiculous.

Speaker 32 And now we're finding out that he was to get in the ring to do the match, he had to take something that we're just now, we might have to Google as we're talking about it, that we're just now hearing about.

Speaker 32 And, and Jelly was told the story

Speaker 32 between the time the match happened and the time that Sabu passed away. And now they're trying to walk it back, as the TV commentators say.
Oh, no, he wasn't really fucked up.

Speaker 32 And so what do you know about this, Brian?

Speaker 5 I'm kind of playing catch up because I've been pretty busy. And then, all of a sudden, it was just an inundation of,

Speaker 5 again, emails to corny drivethrough at gmail.com as well as posts that tried to get through to the Cult of Cornet Facebook page.

Speaker 5 We have one post there so people can comment on it, but then like more people wanted to just have their own posts saying what they thought or posting it again.

Speaker 5 It's been a popular topic of conversation, so I have a few things here. I presume, based on everything I'm seeing, it all originated from this Yahoo Sports article

Speaker 5 by

Speaker 5 Phil Schneider.

Speaker 5 Sabu was Sabu until the very end.

Speaker 5 And those aren't my gardeners, they're the neighbors, and there's nothing I could do. My gardeners have learned.
If I scroll down here, there's some quotes.

Speaker 5 Joining midway through this article here, that was the impossible standard Sabu aspired to live up to.

Speaker 5 And Lauderdale, that's the GCW promoter Brett Lauderdale, was fully aware of what Sabu meant to the fans coming to the show.

Speaker 5 A quote, I talked to Sabu a couple days before the match, and he was telling me, my knee hurts, and this and that.

Speaker 5 And I said, listen, Sabu.

Speaker 5 Listen, Sabu. I'm sorry.
Listen, Sabu.

Speaker 5 Everybody knows you're hurting. You're 20-something years older than the last time you did this.
People's expectations are realistic. No one is expecting this to be born to be wired.

Speaker 5 His iconic no-rope barbed wire match with Terry Funk.

Speaker 5 And he said to me, good,

Speaker 5 because it's going to be better than that.

Speaker 5 Predictably, the night of the April 18th show was chaotic. Nothing was going to be easy with Sabu.

Speaker 5 Here's a quote from Jelly Nutella, his opponent. I was fairly confident that he was fine.
I was kept in contact with him. and he has a team of people around him, guys this time.

Speaker 5 they were all saying he was ready to go, that he was going to the gym, that he was on a training program. I believe them until the day of the show.
Then, two hours before the show, I get a call.

Speaker 5 Sabu can't walk.

Speaker 5 Let's just stop there for a second. The guy's 60.
He's not 40. It's not like, go to the gym and get ready to do this.

Speaker 5 You know?

Speaker 32 Well,

Speaker 32 let me go ahead and I'll say it now so that when we get to the to the details here later on, you'll know what kind of people we're dealing with. Because let's face it, Jelly

Speaker 32 is

Speaker 32 he's a mark,

Speaker 32 and that's why he's in the wrestling business. If he hadn't been a mark for wrestling, then he'd be some other kind of con man.
He'd be selling siding, or he'd be a drug dealer.

Speaker 32 But because he was also a wrestling mark,

Speaker 32 he decided to apply his natural, apparently ability to be both an attention whore, a fame whore, and a con man

Speaker 32 to fucking get in a wrestling business because that's the most important thing to him. He wants people to know that he's around.

Speaker 32 He wants me, he didn't get in wrestling because he had great athletic ability or a striking look or a wonderful physique or a natural personality to be a showman.

Speaker 32 He got in it because he wants to be a guy that gets known for doing stupid shit on videos on the internet. He wants to be famous in some respect.

Speaker 32 He will, he's like the geek at the carnival. He will, there's no depth to which he won't stoop to get some attention.
And when you make fun of him for being

Speaker 32 a bloated fucking

Speaker 32 used condom physically and fucking things up, he loves it because it's still people paying attention to him.

Speaker 32 He's a kind of, if he got made national news for having projectile diarrhea in a crowded theater, it'd be the proudest day of his life.

Speaker 5 Well, you have to think this is not the attention he wants. We haven't heard anything about this.
Well, no,

Speaker 32 the first thing we hear about him is that he, you know, no, this week wasn't the attention that he wanted, but last month was the attention he wanted with this match. Right.

Speaker 32 He either he attaches himself to these, let's face it, girls that aren't too bright in the wrestling business, thinking, giving them the line that he can get them places or he can train them or get them booked or whatever the fuck his deal is with them.

Speaker 32 He talks to these outlaw promoters that are marks, like this Brett Lauderdale that does the garbage wrestling and has got more money apparently than sense.

Speaker 32 And it should have been on the other side of the rail. But he buddies up to him.
He tried to do it with Tony Khan, but even Tony had some kind of standards and let him go.

Speaker 5 One white claw, too many.

Speaker 32 But he buddies up to the promoter who's a mark because, oh, look, I get all this attention on the internet.

Speaker 32 And then he lets him do these garbage shows where he gets to get in the ring with talent that has at least been recognized and legitimate in the past.

Speaker 32 And he gets his thrill by getting to

Speaker 32 it's like a fantasy camp where you get to perform on stage with some famous celebrity.

Speaker 32 That's Jelly's whole fucking existence. He's, you know, the pond scum at the bottom, the mud bug at the bottom of the lake that revels in,

Speaker 32 you know, when he gets to come up to the surface and people go, oh, look, there's a mud bug. And he pops back down.

Speaker 5 I think you may have just coined something new for.

Speaker 5 The champions of the outlaw mud show, the mud bugs.

Speaker 32 He's the mud bug.

Speaker 32 But anyway, so that, so they booked Sabu

Speaker 32 in his big retirement match against Jelly Nutella, because Jelly's a mark and wanted attention.

Speaker 32 And they're out there.

Speaker 32 Well, before we get to what they did when they were out there, let's get to the rest of the story about how the match got put together when you said

Speaker 32 Sabu's can't walk.

Speaker 5 Sabu can't walk. I think that was where we ended.
And by the way, I got to double check this, but I believe they previously put them in their indie wrestling hall of fame and he note-showed.

Speaker 5 So, you know, the relationship was.

Speaker 32 I don't know whether it was this company or somewhere else, but no, they, they, that was last year.

Speaker 32 He was in the hotel and he was going to be put in the hall of fame, but it was on the other level of the hotel. And this is a shoot.
He refused to get in the elevator.

Speaker 32 Sabu would not get in the elevator to go up to the next floor to do the hall of fame thing.

Speaker 32 And nobody's explained to me why there were no stairs available, but that was the legitimate reason given by witnesses.

Speaker 32 So they gave it to him this year, I guess, on a

Speaker 32 fucking ranch house environment.

Speaker 5 Well, back to Jelly Nutella.

Speaker 5 What do you mean, Sabu can't walk?

Speaker 5 They said, yeah, Sabu, something with his knee. They're locked up.
He can't walk. And his feet are bleeding.
He's not coming. Sabu's not coming.

Speaker 5 I said, Sabu's fucked. So we talked to Matt Tremont or Traymont.
He's an indie wrestler, it says here. And Traymont is about to be the replacement for the match.

Speaker 5 And I feel like this is going to be the most embarrassing moment of my wrestling career.

Speaker 32 Oh, now that's not really possible.

Speaker 5 There's 2,000 people here.

Speaker 5 This is one of the biggest spring breaks ever. The biggest crowd mania weekend indie-wise.

Speaker 5 And I'm going to have to go out there and announce that Sabu,

Speaker 5 once again, no-showed.

Speaker 5 And no showed his own retirement match.

Speaker 5 Brett Lauderdale was less concerned. In the back of my mind, I knew Sabu was coming.
I never once worried. If we didn't hear from Sabu, then I would be worried.

Speaker 5 But the fact that he was communicating, I knew he was coming.

Speaker 5 So now we're back to Jelly Nutella.

Speaker 5 We are an hour into the show, and I just said, just get Sabu here.

Speaker 5 So they gave him something called Kratom. Kratom.

Speaker 5 I haven't seen this word too many times. K-R-A-T-O-M.

Speaker 5 You could buy it at the smoke shop or something. It's like a legal opiate or something.

Speaker 32 A lot of things are like something to him.

Speaker 5 They said he's hopping on the bed. He's hopping on the bed.
We're going to get him to the show.

Speaker 5 It's like you hear about John Kennedy got a shot from Dr. Feelgood at the fucking Waldorf, and then he was running down the hallway naked, just hopping around, just so happy.

Speaker 5 So he shows up two hours into the show. Sabu was on a different fucking planet.
Everyone in the back was like, What the fuck is this match going to happen?

Speaker 5 And my God, did it happen?

Speaker 5 And then it talks about this morning. So waiting for Sabu apparently being knocked out in the match.
I didn't realize that. Oh my God.
Well,

Speaker 32 hold on before we go any further.

Speaker 32 So now you've got a 60-year-old man with a history of major injuries to his body, including he broke his neck one time too, didn't he?

Speaker 5 Oh, Benoit in 94. Benoit threw him straight up in the air and he came right down a minute and a half into the match or something.
Yeah.

Speaker 32 See, a 60-year-old man with a history of major injuries in various parts of his body and a legitimate documented history of not only substance abuse, but actually overdosing at fan fests and being carted out to the hospital in in front of the fans,

Speaker 32 and you're going to book him

Speaker 32 under the best of circumstances in a barbed wire match with some indie fucking jack off.

Speaker 5 Was it a barbed wire match?

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 32 Oh, watch, watch the clips on the, you know, make the garbage people some money. They'll probably need it to defend this court case that may come up.

Speaker 32 It was a barbed wire match where not only did Sabu

Speaker 32 fall into the barbed wire, but actually at one point he fell out of the ring through the barbed wire and head first,

Speaker 32 like to the floor through some furniture and shit and was knocked goofy, goofier,

Speaker 32 whatever.

Speaker 32 But no, under the, if this was two 25-year-old guys, you'd say, well, they're fucking idiots. They're going to kill themselves.

Speaker 32 But this was a 60-year-old man on drugs, having been on drugs for much of his life and major injuries that they put in there on purpose, so this fucking little cum stain

Speaker 32 could have his markout moment in front of his 2,000 fans. Oh, it's the biggest crowd we've ever had.

Speaker 5 Well, back to some of the quotes here from this story.

Speaker 5 It was an immediate sign to the audience this wasn't going to be a nostalgia match. Sabu was going to go out on his own terms.

Speaker 5 Then, minutes later, Sabu got whipped into a barbed wire board, which was resting on the barbed wire ropes, and flipped backwards out of the ring, landing in a heap. Here's Jelly Nutella.

Speaker 5 He was definitely out cold. He was done.

Speaker 5 They were telling me there was no way. The refs were communicating to me there was no way he was continuing this match.
Like, holy shit, that is the one time you want barbed wire to stop you.

Speaker 5 He just blew right through it.

Speaker 5 And then the sandman came out, and that was all Sabu needed.

Speaker 32 Oh, that's all we need.

Speaker 5 And that was all Sabu needed.

Speaker 32 The voice of reason

Speaker 32 suddenly appears.

Speaker 5 And that was all Sabu needed. Then the resurrection happened.
Jesus resurrected two days later. The anniversary.
Couldn't fucking believe it, dude. He was ready to go again.

Speaker 5 I guess that concussion knocked him back into 1996 or something.

Speaker 5 I don't know. So let's stop for a second.
He called it a a concussion. He also said he was out cold.

Speaker 32 Well, yes, you, you know, you could get a concussion without even being knocked out. So if he was out for a say, yes, that's a concussion, but

Speaker 32 again, what this is what

Speaker 32 drives me absolutely out of my mind why I just threw up my hands a number of years ago, pretty much gave up.

Speaker 32 Because of indie wrestling mark bullshit

Speaker 32 to where, yes, Bob Armstrong was in the ring when he was in his 50s and physically looked like he was in his 30s and would dwarf half the fucking AEW roster today, but we didn't fucking have him launching himself through barbed wire and

Speaker 32 going through tables.

Speaker 32 And the whole idea of these

Speaker 32 the whole outlaw bullshit mud show wrestling mindset that these marks have for themselves,

Speaker 32 that everything's got to be wrapped up in barbed wire and falling through tables and fucking jumping off the goddamn deal. And oh my God, did you see that holy shit thing?

Speaker 32 If they want to cripple themselves and they're of appropriate age and feel like doing it, fine, you know, it does damage to the business, but I gave up on that because it's their own fucking fault.

Speaker 32 But when you're just, when you're running a promotion where where you will put a guy with this amount of problems in his past and in his health and in his physical health, his body,

Speaker 32 to do stupid shit like that with this fucking, again, little fat, chubby, fucking wannabe blob

Speaker 32 on your garbage show in front of 2,000 people. 2,000 people.
So I'll dive into barbed wire. Good.
All I needed to do was get put in a diaper in front of 25,000 in a superdome.

Speaker 32 If they'd have told me dive in that barbed wire, I believe I would have dove in my car and gone home. Have we lost our fucking minds?

Speaker 32 So,

Speaker 32 so no,

Speaker 32 it's their own fault for the publicity they're getting.

Speaker 32 I don't believe that they contributed to his death, but they didn't contribute to his good health either.

Speaker 32 They couldn't have honored him in some other way than put him in a fucking barbed wire match for a bunch of fucking goofs that fucking like that kind of shit.

Speaker 32 Anyway, I'm sorry, continue.

Speaker 5 Well, that's really, it seems like the end of what we need from the Yahoo story, but after that.

Speaker 32 Well, I've got one, I've got another quote here.

Speaker 5 From that story?

Speaker 32 From no, from Joey

Speaker 32 defending himself. Have you seen this?

Speaker 5 I had another one here from an article I found on the Observer site that may be the same one you're going to. Sure.

Speaker 32 Well, well, you start and I'll finish.

Speaker 5 We didn't give him kratom. His team did.

Speaker 5 It's also not illegal. And 85% of professional wrestlers do it, especially the ones on TV.
What the fuck? So fuck you.

Speaker 5 Sabu was a grown man. He did what he had to do to get out there.

Speaker 32 Hold on now. Hold on.
Hold on. There's more, but we got to stop there to make this point.
He said, it's also, it's not illegal. And 85% of professional wrestlers do it, especially the ones on TV.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 this guy is such a goddamn sleaze ball. And this is, again,

Speaker 32 indie wrestling doesn't have to be sleazy and dirty and the people involved in it just low class.

Speaker 32 Jelly makes Russo look like he's got class.

Speaker 32 You think 85% of the professional wrestlers making legitimate money that you see on TV from the WWE

Speaker 32 or from billionaire Tony or even even from TNA, they pay a little something these days, have to resort to truck stop opiates like fucking Jelly because he's used to gargling meth from underneath somebody's fucking bathroom cabinet.

Speaker 32 What the fuck? Fuck you, Jelly.

Speaker 5 Let's go back to this.

Speaker 5 Where did we end? Did we end with fuck you? So fuck you. Sabu was a grown man.
He did what he had to do to get out there.

Speaker 5 I took care of him to the best of my ability, and I didn't think what happened halfway through would happen.

Speaker 5 It was all to get him one great payday and one last shine in the spotlight. That night wasn't about me.

Speaker 5 It was about Sabu, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Speaker 32 So wait a minute, wait a minute. Sabu was a grown man.
He did what he had to do to get out there.

Speaker 32 So you've admitted that this fucking 60-year-old senior citizen had to take truck stop drugs to go out there and perform the match that you booked him in, then that you came up with, and that to get him a payday, you couldn't say in a special ceremony honoring Sabu and the highlight of our event here, everyone come and honor Sabu, and we're going to give a portion of the gate to him for his contributions to wrestling.

Speaker 32 He said, hey, Sabu, we'll pay you a lot of money that you need if you get in the ring with me and do this garbage bullshit.

Speaker 32 That night wasn't about me. It was about Sabu.
And I wouldn't change a thing because it was about me getting to wrestle Sabu.

Speaker 32 Normally, I would never be in the ring with any big major star, but now since he's old and broke, I can pay him to do this stupid shit. They were throwing chairs at each other's head.

Speaker 32 They were hanging themselves in barbed wire. They're covered in blood.

Speaker 32 It's a goddamn freak show fucking thing like Janelle is always involved in.

Speaker 32 And it wasn't about Sabu, or they'd had a nice ceremony for him and give him a nice payoff and let everybody stand up and applaud him instead of making him load himself up on goddamn something that C.W.

Speaker 32 McCall mixed up in the back of an 18-wheeler and sells out of the trunk at a gas station. The fuck.

Speaker 5 Well, I'll go back to sleazy. We have more from this story, if you don't mind before we get off this convoy here.

Speaker 32 No worries. No worries.

Speaker 5 This is an update from the Wrestling Observer newsletter site in an article by Brian Rose.

Speaker 5 GCW owner Brett Lauderdale released a statement defending his usage of sabu at last month's spring break event, saying he would never put someone in the ring who he thought would be a danger to themselves or others.

Speaker 32 No, we're going to let this 60-year-old man that just, they said, couldn't walk two hours ago.

Speaker 5 He's going to jump through the goddamn goddamn barbed wire to the fucking floor here's a quote any suggestion that i or gcw or jelly nutella forced him to do this match supplied him with substances or somehow caused his death is irresponsible disingenuous hurtful and false it's upsetting and discouraging to see people so eager to cast judgment without knowledge of the facts.

Speaker 5 I would never knowingly put someone who I believed was a danger to themselves or others in the ring, and my track record shows this to be true.

Speaker 5 I have pulled people in a public and painful manner from big matches before,

Speaker 5 sometimes literal moments before a match was to begin, and would do it again if I had to.

Speaker 5 I spoke to Sabu moments before the match, and he was Sabu.

Speaker 5 He was the same Sabu I had encountered in years past when I participated in his matches as a referee and later as a promoter.

Speaker 5 He was the same Sabu I met the following day at WrestleCon, and the same Sabu that made multiple appearances on podcasts and at conventions in the weeks that followed.

Speaker 5 So there's a...

Speaker 32 Demi's been carted out of some fan fests, too, to be honest.

Speaker 32 But nevertheless.

Speaker 5 I didn't know that.

Speaker 5 Is that a recent thing or that happened a while ago? I didn't know anything about that

Speaker 32 within the past few years. I lose track of time these days, but it hadn't been 15 years, more like three or four or five.
I mean, somebody can look it up. I'm willing to be corrected, but yeah, they

Speaker 32 had to take him out of more than one from what I remember.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 before we go,

Speaker 32 I just saw this because I clicked on this thing. It's

Speaker 32 Jelly's tweet and said, we didn't give him kratom. His team did.
And it's also not illegal. And 85% of wrestlers do it.
So fuck you.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 32 he got like 18 responses to this because, you know, nobody follows Jelly anyway. But of the responses.
One of them is, and yet you sit here tweeting this with no shame. You acted stupid in AEW.

Speaker 32 You acted stupid with that flaming kick and you act stupid and inconsiderate of actions now. Sabu was a grown man, but so are you.

Speaker 32 And regardless of what happened, a man is dead and you sit here doing this.

Speaker 32 And another one said, you still wrestled a man who was 60 years old and couldn't fucking walk without taking a drug to make the pain disappear. Have some shame, dude.

Speaker 32 Another one says, why did you at Lauderdale kill Sabu?

Speaker 32 Another one said, it's fine you killed a 60-year-old man because his team forced him to wrestle after you told him to do whatever is needed to force him to work.

Speaker 5 This is all caused by his quotes. It's not like it's his.
This is people that follow.

Speaker 32 This is people that follow him apparently on Twitter because they saw his tweet. Here's a, well, here's an opposing view.
What a complete piece of shit Joey is for this.

Speaker 32 Nothing's stopping you from apologizing and owning up to a legend's death. Karma's going to hit hard for sure.

Speaker 5 But on the other side of it, what do they want him to say? I'm sorry I killed Sabu.

Speaker 32 Well, and again, you know.

Speaker 5 Or I'm sorry that I was involved in the map. Like, what is the mob wanting?

Speaker 5 Because, you know, they're mad and sometimes that doesn't go away. And,

Speaker 5 you know, it may not be a lot of fun.

Speaker 32 I think some kind of shame of, you know what, we're so sorry that this is happening in hindsight.

Speaker 32 Maybe we shouldn't have booked him to wrestle a few weeks ago or something to mitigate the circumstances to that. Well, fuck you.
I didn't do it.

Speaker 32 Because that just meant, well, fuck you too, whether you did or not. Because he's such an obnoxious twat, Joey, or Jelly, or what is his name again? Jelly.
Jelly, Joey.

Speaker 32 People want to dislike him anyway, because of that fucking smirky look on his little midget face.

Speaker 5 If they start testing for Kratom, they're really going to dislike him.

Speaker 5 If 85% of the business is on that shit? And why? If Samu needed that so that he could hop up and down on his bed and go to the show to get knocked out, what are the wrestlers on TV using it for?

Speaker 5 Just for an energy boost,

Speaker 32 I don't, I don't think that

Speaker 32 I don't think he understands what anybody in the actual real wrestling profession is doing. I think he's talking about a bunch of fucking indie guys because I'm sure that's all that they can afford.

Speaker 32 But I don't think that millionaires are taking truck stop fucking heroin or whatever to

Speaker 32 but

Speaker 32 regardless,

Speaker 32 they they have to

Speaker 32 have their mark moments where they get these guys that need a fucking payoff and they're induced to get in the ring and cooperate with this bullshit so these guys can live out their wet dreams in front of 2,000 people, which they think is a crowd, and risk their fucking necks and their backs and their knees and

Speaker 32 whatever the case.

Speaker 5 And you know why they're in panic mode, too, because aren't they doing stuff with WWE? Like WWE has been working with them in the nice way they do before they destroy your company.

Speaker 5 You know, the last thing you want is WWE saying, fuck you, because Tony ain't going to say welcome home.

Speaker 32 Well, and besides that, they just don't want this publicity.

Speaker 32 Because the indie audience that's more likely to know who Sabu is than anybody else is the only audience they've got.

Speaker 32 So they don't want to piss piss those people off.

Speaker 32 But anyway, Nutella strikes again. Maybe he ought to be the new vice president.
One killed the Pope, the other one killed Sabu.

Speaker 5 You know, one last thing on Sabu, I just remembered. He was the first guy I heard about super gluing his cuts closed.

Speaker 5 He wouldn't go to the hospital and get stitches. He would use super glue to close them.

Speaker 32 Yeah, and I mean, there is some medical precedent for for that, depending obviously on location of the cut and, et cetera, and conditions in the field or whatever.

Speaker 32 But when he fucking ripped his bicep open and got somebody to run out and get duct tape and just taped his arm back together, there's not medical precedent for that.

Speaker 32 That's just, and that's another thing. These fucking.

Speaker 32 These fucking indie outlaw goofs

Speaker 32 that were praising, oh, what a fucking beast he was. He just taped that, the bicep is laid open to the bone, but he just taped it up with duct tape.
And they're, oh, what a guy. Fuck you.

Speaker 32 I'm not putting myself in that fucking position.

Speaker 32 They'd shit themselves if they were in a good old-fashioned riot like I used to be, but at least I didn't goddamn do that to myself.

Speaker 32 I would rather be in a riot than be duct taping my arm clothes from being ripped apart with barbed wire. But they think that's an element of tough.
That's just kind of an element of fucking goofy.

Speaker 5 Well, Jim, it's my show.

Speaker 32 Let's stay on the topic. Yes, it is.

Speaker 5 Let's stay on the topic of goofy and let's talk about the world of WWE.

Speaker 5 They had a pay-per-view

Speaker 5 and I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Speaker 5 And there was a SmackDown that there was maybe one thing worth talking about. There was a raw that I just gave up by that point.

Speaker 5 But why don't we talk about a weekend of WWE festivities?

Speaker 32 Well, really, the SmackDown was you waited two hours and 45 minutes, and John Cena came out and cut a promo. And the promo was lovely.

Speaker 32 As a matter of fact, they even.

Speaker 32 The audience gave him a little prop to work with because one of the ringsiders, and there was actually from one of the people sitting underneath the hard camera, they tweeted a fan camera of this where you caught the guy that threw the bottle at Cena throwing the bottle because it came from the hard camera side.

Speaker 32 So when you're watching the TV, you see it appear and then it lands at his feet. This angle, you saw the guy throw it and the security had him in like 12 seconds.

Speaker 32 And then Cena picks the bottle up and does the bit with it where he looks at it with disdain and throws it away and says, this is what you're reduced to, throwing bottles at.

Speaker 32 Yeah, SmackDown's three hours long, Brian.

Speaker 32 And there was matches and there was promos. And

Speaker 32 nothing is unprofessional.

Speaker 32 Everything's shot and produced very well. And

Speaker 32 the work is, with the rare exception where something goes awry, very professionally done.

Speaker 32 And then John Cena came out two hours and 45 minutes in and did a fucking interview. And he was selling the match at Backlash and

Speaker 32 did a good interview. And again, I maintain I have no idea how he will be a heel when he retires and they just ain't going to care.
Because there's no way to fucking say, I'm sorry.

Speaker 32 And I apologize for the level in which he is verbally eviscerating all these people, is there?

Speaker 32 He can't just, what does he do? Get hit on the head and he cures his amnesia? What's going on? How can this be reversed?

Speaker 5 I don't know. And, you know, I'm really down on WWE right now.
I've not been enjoying the show by and large and the current angles and everything. I just, I'm not feeling it right now.
And

Speaker 5 as much as I get a kick out of the Cena heel promos,

Speaker 5 it does feel like there's like a weird disconnect between

Speaker 5 whatever he's doing and

Speaker 5 everything else. I don't know.

Speaker 5 It doesn't.

Speaker 5 You know, the constant 10-minute promos

Speaker 5 talking down to the fans, I think we've had that enough. The stuff about Randy Orton was pretty good.
I mean, it was pretty harsh. No one knows who your grandfather is.

Speaker 5 Your dad was best known for, you know, losing or whatever it is that he said. No, his dad was best known for having sex with his mom to produce him.
I think that's what he said.

Speaker 32 Well, what he said was your dad was best known for knocking up your mom or the only successful thing or something to that effect.

Speaker 5 But, you know, talking about the show Beyond the Cena promo,

Speaker 5 they're kind of training me not to give a shit about the show because I could just wait for the pay-per-views and actually see stuff that matters.

Speaker 5 And those commercials are 10 minutes long in between matches and not just in the middle of the match.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 the week-to-week show is just not doing it for me.

Speaker 32 And yeah, that's that's the thing is that right now there's nothing happening. And

Speaker 32 after WrestleMania, obviously you would think it will slow down. A few new people will be, you know, thrown into the mix.
Few others get kicked out the door, that type of thing.

Speaker 32 But there's nothing happening. There's things happening, but

Speaker 32 nothing that you really want to sit through three hours of a show to see.

Speaker 5 I'd rather hear about it after the fact and seek out a YouTube clip of of part of whatever they're talking about than have to watch that show.

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 32 But having said that, that was SmackDown.

Speaker 32 So let's go to Backlash. May the 10th, St.
Louis, Missouri sold out.

Speaker 32 I think they said 17,000 something

Speaker 32 people.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 of course, it's Randy Orton's hometown, so that's he's the main event,

Speaker 32 the feature match that night, but they opened up with the U.S. title match for the fatal four-way

Speaker 32 L.A. Knight, Drew McIntyre, Damian Priest, Jacob Fatu.

Speaker 32 And we love Fatu,

Speaker 32 and we love Drew McIntyre. We're very, very fond of L.A.
Knight, and we'd still like Priest to grow on us.

Speaker 32 But goddamn,

Speaker 32 I wrote at the top of this, it's a four-way match, so the match won't be any good.

Speaker 32 But all four guys are over, and their work is good.

Speaker 32 And the people are going to be, especially because Fatu's explosive. Drew has the fucking heat.
They were loving LA Night

Speaker 32 again.

Speaker 32 And they did give LA Night a win, believe it or not, on

Speaker 32 SmackDown on Friday night,

Speaker 32 which the people loved. So

Speaker 32 what they giveth on Friday, they take taketh away on

Speaker 32 fucking Saturday. But

Speaker 32 nevertheless,

Speaker 32 it was guys doing good-looking wrestling stuff to each other. And then they take turns.
One guy gets to beat everybody up for a minute.

Speaker 32 Within five minutes, the crowd, we talked about Sabu and the legacy. The crowd was chanting, we want tables five minutes into the match while nothing regarding a table was going on.

Speaker 32 They just, everybody was going about their business normally in the match, and that crowd just started, we want tables.

Speaker 32 I don't want any more tables.

Speaker 32 I love, again, Fatu. The people are really getting into him and they're chanting for him.
When he and Drew faced off, they did a big yay boo spot. The people are on Fatu's side.

Speaker 32 But while they did that, the other two had to disappear and hide for minutes. You didn't see them.
And then finally,

Speaker 32 you know, the spot comes and suddenly they reappear just fresh as a daisy.

Speaker 32 But again, I think Fatu probably

Speaker 32 got the people up more than anybody else in this match with, you know, the stuff that he does and when he opens up.

Speaker 32 But finally, boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 32 Drew had covered LA Knight after the Claymore

Speaker 32 and

Speaker 32 when he covered him, Priest pulled the referee out. And then Drew and Priest went to the floor and over the rail, and they're fighting in the back of the arena.

Speaker 32 And then in the ring, Fatu missed a moonsault on LA Knight, and LA Knight hit two of those elbows off the top rope and got a two count. And people were about to

Speaker 32 buy that there.

Speaker 32 and then

Speaker 32 you see drew and priest in the back of the arena standing on an equipment box

Speaker 32 and priest chokeslams

Speaker 32 drew and of course he goes with it the way he does it they go off the box through a table

Speaker 32 that was set up next to the box And it looked to me like Drew went past it

Speaker 32 and fucking landed a lot on the floor, but that that took them out but no he definitely did it's not just you that saw that head first

Speaker 32 they have to

Speaker 32 i mean you would never even think in the course of figuring a finish to a wrestling match okay you guys go

Speaker 32 fight out into the back of the arena get up on something about 10 or 12 feet in the air and take a double bump off through a table to the floor

Speaker 32 and then we'll do the finish in the ring you guys are fine what the

Speaker 32 So anyway, back in the ring,

Speaker 32 L.A. Knight and Fatu were fighting and went over the desk.
And L.A. Knight was going to go for the elbow, but Solo

Speaker 32 pulled Jacob off the desk. And L.A.
Knight went to grab Solo. And that's where Jeff Cobb came in.

Speaker 32 Brian,

Speaker 32 they couldn't change that name. They wanted to change everybody's name in the history of wrestling.
But a guy comes in to join the Samoans.

Speaker 32 We got Solo Sokoa. We got Jacob Fatu.

Speaker 32 We got Tama Tonga.

Speaker 32 We got

Speaker 32 Jeff Cobb.

Speaker 32 He sounds like Boomhauer's fucking neighbor on King of the Hill.

Speaker 5 Maybe they're going to play into his actual background.

Speaker 32 Does anybody know what his actual background is?

Speaker 5 So we're going to find out. And now, because they use his real name, you'll be able to do a Google search.

Speaker 32 What is his actual background?

Speaker 5 See, it's a mystery to me, too.

Speaker 32 Well,

Speaker 5 he's so intriguing in this guy. He sounds like a star.

Speaker 32 Nobody's ever heard of him on this level.

Speaker 32 So you got a chance to, you know, oh, we could have a cool Samoan name for this guy, Jeff Cobb.

Speaker 5 Fucking hell. Well, maybe they'll give him a Samoan name.
They just had him come out and they. The announcers didn't play stupid.

Speaker 32 Then why did the announcers say, oh my God, that's the hottest free agent in the the world, Jeff Cobb?

Speaker 32 That sounds like that's the most flamboyant entertainer on Broadway, Joe Smith.

Speaker 5 Well, he's getting brought into the bloodline. I guess the bloodline's a thing again, and he'll be given an official name.

Speaker 5 But what did you think of Jeff Cobb's debut? What did you think of?

Speaker 32 Well, he beat up L.A. Night, and he looked very good doing that.

Speaker 5 And one night, they used him better than Tony did all those times. They brought him in and he would like do a job to someone or just appear randomly on AEW-TV.

Speaker 32 one night well yes but uh and fatu

Speaker 32 looked surprised to see him and was not happy

Speaker 32 and fatu finally hit the moonsalt one two three after

Speaker 32 jeff cobb had had uh

Speaker 5 done damage that might be something i mean it will be something but jeff cobb versus jacob fatu

Speaker 5 I'm intrigued by that.

Speaker 32 But now the problem is Jeff Cobb is a little vertically challenged also. So they start getting shorter because Solo's not a giant and Jacob Fatu is not as big as he presents on television.

Speaker 32 So they all work well together. But then you get Jeff Cobb.
They start to get smaller. Pretty soon we're going to have to find fucking Coco Samoa again.
Remember the original Sabu.

Speaker 32 He was only like five foot four, but he had Jimmy Snooka's body underneath it.

Speaker 32 Anyhow, that was the four-way match, Brian. What did you think?

Speaker 5 It was okay. I'm not a big fan of these multi-man matches, as I've said dozens of times here on the show.

Speaker 5 LA Night's still super over, and they still want to do more with the Drew McIntyre or Damian Priest stuff. The spot where McIntyre hit the floor,

Speaker 5 you know, Triple H was asked about it in the post-show scrum because you can't ignore it. It looked bad.
And

Speaker 5 we've seen a few things recently. I saw a clip from TNA that someone sent me of a guy on top of a cage doing a super spinning whatever, landing face first because no one caught him.
Oh, good lord.

Speaker 5 On here, there was no one to catch you. There were crash pads and they overshot it.
But, you know, I'm not crazy about that. Intrigued about the bloodline, seeing where they go here, knowing

Speaker 5 that we say this Hikuleo is somewhere developmental. And now they got Hicculeo.
Now they got Jeff Cobb. So let's see where they go.

Speaker 32 Hicculea. Hicculea.

Speaker 32 All righty.

Speaker 32 So next up for the women's championship of some description, one of those women's titles, it was Becky Lynch and Lyric Valedictorian.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 I'm sorry, but she ain't going to get over.

Speaker 32 The name sucks. The birds of prey outfit looks ridiculous.
She's tiny. Her facials are bland.

Speaker 32 Do you see her? She doesn't,

Speaker 32 she looks like underlying all of her expression, she's nervous and distracted. I don't know how to explain it other than that.

Speaker 32 But between that and the outfit, the name,

Speaker 32 nobody, this ain't working. I'm sure Becky and she are friends.
That's why Becky's doing this.

Speaker 32 And,

Speaker 32 but it just, I don't think, are you seeing the fans care about Lyric?

Speaker 5 No, and when she came out with the wings again, I couldn't believe it. I I thought maybe that was a one-time WrestleMania thing.
I didn't realize it was going to be an every time thing.

Speaker 5 And she starts flapping them. And my daughter, who's seven, was here.

Speaker 5 You would think maybe that's the audience for a young woman who's an athlete. Flapping her wings.
Flaps her wings.

Speaker 5 She said, why is she flapping wings?

Speaker 32 Flipping her wings.

Speaker 5 I said, I don't know. I really don't know.
She seems like she's competent in the ring and Becky Lynch came back to work with her.

Speaker 5 but I have not seen,

Speaker 5 I've not seen anything that says she's going to break out. I think

Speaker 5 that's the ring, but I don't know if that's the same thing.

Speaker 32 She's competent. She's competent in the ring, but she's just doing the stuff.
There's no,

Speaker 32 they know.

Speaker 32 And did you see Becky when she was getting the heat on her? Grabbed it. They were out on the floor and she was taunting her, Becky was, in front of.

Speaker 32 What I thought at first from the camera angle was Lyric's sister.

Speaker 32 And then they said it was her boyfriend. And then the angle switched around.
And I, my God,

Speaker 32 I'm thinking, is he better hope she gets fired the next three weeks? Because with her in the WWE locker room and him looking like Tiny Tim's daughter,

Speaker 32 that relationship is doomed.

Speaker 5 I think they said fiancé. It's going to be a reverse Sammy Guevara.
That's what it's going to be. Oh, look.

Speaker 32 The only way that I knew that

Speaker 32 when they said and he certainly because it looked like her goddamn ugly sister

Speaker 32 the fuck

Speaker 5 anyhow i'm sure he has nothing to worry about nothing to worry about uh

Speaker 32 after about 20 minutes of this uh becky tried to school girl her and

Speaker 32 Lyric reversed it and held her with one arm in some kind of something, one, two, three.

Speaker 32 And then Becky got back on her and got the arm bar and the officials had to pry her off.

Speaker 32 The end.

Speaker 32 I'm sorry to shortchange this

Speaker 32 classic confrontation, Brian, but that's all I got on that.

Speaker 5 There's only so much to say. I mean, there's only so much to say.
The match was just fine. Again, Becky Lynch came back.
She wants to work with her.

Speaker 5 I just don't think anyone, I just think I'm not fully invested in lyric valid, whatever her name is.

Speaker 5 The name sucks. You were right.
The name sucks. Having a bad name, you could push someone to the moon.
The name sucks.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 the wings,

Speaker 5 after the last time she came out flapping her wings, no one said, you know, maybe drop that. Or is someone fucking with her?

Speaker 5 Is she friends with Terry Taylor?

Speaker 5 Like, is it like, oh no, if she really showed some personality, she would really, you know, take flight.

Speaker 5 What?

Speaker 5 Why the wings and why flapping them? It's so ridiculous. It was fine.

Speaker 5 I don't really care about this feud in the women's division right now, despite it being one of the main things they're pushing, just because

Speaker 5 it seems like she's

Speaker 5 not in above her head, but just it doesn't feel like now's the time, I guess.

Speaker 32 Yeah, yeah, not ready for prime time.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 we are ready for the Intercontinental title contest between Dominic Mysterio and Pinta.

Speaker 32 And now they're starting to cheer for Dominic.

Speaker 32 Even though they still boo him when they're supposed to boo him because it's cool to boo him, but they like Dom now. They like everybody.
These people are a kind and friendly bunch.

Speaker 32 And they did dueling chants for these guys. And,

Speaker 32 you know, again.

Speaker 32 Both guys worked hard. They laid their shit in.
There was lots of lucha,

Speaker 32 but it wasn't the really insulting, overly choreographed type where they get lost and don't know what the fuck's going on. They, you know,

Speaker 32 they kept it to a minimum in that respect.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 finally,

Speaker 32 Pinta does the Mexican destroyer on the apron of the ring.

Speaker 32 There ain't a lot of margin for error there either.

Speaker 32 And I don't know why everybody feels like it's necessary to do this on the apron if the apron moves are the only thing that brought the people into the building you've made a mistake in your promotion

Speaker 32 but

Speaker 32 carlito came out and drew the referee's attention and fin and jd

Speaker 32 got on penta but finn

Speaker 32 waited. He's, oh, wait, wait, let me go get a chair.
And he kind of dicked around till the referee caught him. And as the referee's trying to kick them out, Penta, it was a cool little spot.

Speaker 32 The referee's bending over through the ropes, and Penta runs from behind him and flips over the top of the referee and dives on the heels on the floor.

Speaker 32 And then, as the referee is seeing that they scurry off, Penta goes the top rope, but Gable comes out with the

Speaker 32 El Gulf of Mexico or whatever his fucking name is, the mask on, and gives Pinta the loaded headbutt with his mask. And then Dominic gave him the splash off the top.
One, two, three.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 nice little match with about 16 people interfering and the referee can't find his ass with both hands. One, two, three.

Speaker 5 Yeah, just fine.

Speaker 5 I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what to say.
It was just, I'm not a big fan of the El Grande Americano stuff. Like every match has something something I'm not really crazy about.

Speaker 5 I like Dominic. Dominic's really getting height on that frog splash now.
It actually looks good.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 no Liv Morgan either. Apparently, she's making a movie.
So there was no Liv Morgan.

Speaker 32 Oh, really? I'd like to get a copy of that.

Speaker 5 Is it a canned Faton?

Speaker 5 It will be a regular movie from a studio or someone who wants to be one.

Speaker 32 Well, we'll look forward to that.

Speaker 32 All righty, moving along to one of the feature events of the evening. You know why I like this pay-per-view also, Brian, is because it was less than three hours and only had five matches.

Speaker 32 Because

Speaker 32 if given a choice of five and a half hours and 13 matches or three hours and five matches, I'll take the short one.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 it was time for Gunther

Speaker 32 to tell that Pat McAfee a thing or two about wrestling and teach him a lesson and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 32 And they gave the statistic. This was McAfee's eighth match ever.
Do you remember eight?

Speaker 32 I don't remember eight. We were talking the other day.
Was it three or four?

Speaker 5 He had the one at WrestleMania, right?

Speaker 32 Yeah. Right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, was it him against Vince? What was the match at WrestleMania?

Speaker 32 He was involved in the thing somehow there.

Speaker 5 Was the actual match him against Vince?

Speaker 32 No, no, that was.

Speaker 5 uh that was the aftermath of him against someone else, so there were two matches technically, but that's when Austin came out, too. Austin Theory,

Speaker 5 no, Steve Austin, Steve Austin, wasn't it? Well, that's one match at least. There was the Adam Cole.

Speaker 32 Well, nevertheless, he's he's had eight matches, or this was his eighth match, he's had that now.

Speaker 32 That's what I was saying.

Speaker 5 I will not argue,

Speaker 32 but I don't remember that many.

Speaker 5 I accept your word,

Speaker 32 and they did this right for the most part,

Speaker 32 almost all the way through. Gunther toyed with him.

Speaker 32 And he got the fans behind McAfee because he's embarrassing McAfee and he's toying with him and he's throwing him around or showing him what, you know, what he can do.

Speaker 32 And when McAfee would try to fight, Gunther would level him.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 again, Gunther was taking his time. He wasn't approaching it like I've, you know, he was desperate to beat this guy before something bad happened.

Speaker 32 And he was laying the kicks and chops in and chopping the shit out of McAfee.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 whenever, you know, Pat would try to hulk up, Gunther would put him back down

Speaker 32 and he'd play with him a little bit more. He started inviting Cole in the ring.
Why don't you get in here?

Speaker 32 And laughing at the fans.

Speaker 32 And then they had to give McAfee, as we mentioned when we talked about it beforehand, they had to give him some hope spot, not just beat the shit out of him and emasculate him.

Speaker 32 And at one point, McAfee escaped a German and kicked Gunther a few times. And then

Speaker 32 Gunther got up and dared him to chop him. Go ahead then, Ken.
That's the way you're supposed to do it, like you insignificant peon.

Speaker 32 And they traded a little bit, and Gunther staggered, but didn't bump. If you know, he never

Speaker 32 through

Speaker 32 almost the entire, you know, entirety of the match till the end never took an actual bump for McAfee. McAfee never knocked him down till the end.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 Gunther powerbombed him and put the crab on him. And that's when Michael Cole got up from ringside

Speaker 32 and was trying to cheer him on. And McAfee tries to get the ropes, but Gunther pulls him away.
And then he sees Cole and he goes over and he grabs Michael Cole and pulls him into the ring

Speaker 32 and goes to powerbomb Michael Cole. And McAfee from the side saves Michael Cole.

Speaker 32 And then Gunther boots

Speaker 32 boons.

Speaker 32 Gunther boots

Speaker 32 McAfee down.

Speaker 32 And McAfee got a little roll up there. And I wrote right at that point because I'm taking notes too long now.

Speaker 32 That's where they McAfee should have saved Cole

Speaker 32 and Gunther should have booted him down and fucking pinned him and then tried to go back to Cole for a second and let McAfee

Speaker 32 come back from behind and distract him. And then a bunch of people come out or whatever the fuck.
But they went too long because they're giving,

Speaker 32 they were giving McAfee a little too much, even if the crowd liked it. Gunther went for a

Speaker 32 suplex, but Michael Cole did the fucking leg pull spot where McAfee came down on top and Michael Cole is holding the leg down like a heel manager. We got a two count.

Speaker 32 And then McAfee got a sleeper

Speaker 32 and Gunther escaped it and clotheslined him and sleepered him and McAfee fought up, which he shouldn't have at that point, and but backed down and McAfee went out. The referee rang the bell.

Speaker 32 I think it should have been 12 minutes instead of 15, right as after McAfee saved Cole, they were burning daylight. I think he should have put him out of his misery right there.

Speaker 32 But I'm willing to be argued with.

Speaker 5 I think it should have been eight instead of 12, but then again, they already have five matches there that filled this pay-per-view. Michael Cole

Speaker 5 was unbearable during this match on commentary. And then when he left, he did a good thing.

Speaker 5 Made me realize, you know what, I'd be okay with Wade Barrett as a Lord Layton kind of solo announcer on these shows. I'd be perfectly fine with that.

Speaker 32 Well, Michael Cole did apologize at the open of the match, saying I can't be impartial or good.

Speaker 5 You know, in any way. A micro example, but the way we were saying how the rock wasn't needed for the scene of turn on Cody and it only took away from everything.

Speaker 5 I don't think Michael Cole was needed for there to be an issue between Pat McAfee and Gunther.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I didn't like that part of the match, especially when Michael Cole started getting when Michael Cole's in the fucking ring.

Speaker 5 I didn't like that at all. It could have just been what it was, a couple minutes shorter without the commentator being the focus of the thing.

Speaker 32 Well, yeah, and I don't even mind Gunther pulling Cole in and going to power bomb him and

Speaker 32 Pat saving him from the blind side. That's fine.
But

Speaker 32 when you got Cole doing the leg pull and the old manager spots,

Speaker 32 it's too much. It's odd.
It's out of place.

Speaker 32 But nevertheless, Gunther reigned supreme and tipped his hat, gave a tip of the cap, if you will, to Pat McAfee on the way out.

Speaker 5 See, I didn't like that either. I think that's unnecessary.
He's a heel. Shouldn't be doing that.

Speaker 32 Yes. Well, and also it's unnecessary that the announcer shouldn't really impress anybody with their athletic prowess, even though he has played football, I know.

Speaker 32 But nevertheless, it was time, Brian.

Speaker 32 For the main event of the evening, for the world heavy, well, not even the world heavy, the WWE title, which is bigger than the world title randy orton in his own hometown of st louis missouri challenging for the title against 17 time champion john cena

Speaker 32 who we can't see anymore after another what 25 dates now is it 24

Speaker 32 and

Speaker 32 We knew going into this, just because everybody's smart in the whole world,

Speaker 32 that Randy wasn't going to win it this quick because

Speaker 32 they've got other fish to fry while this is going on. So we knew Orton, there was going to be no title change, and Orton was not going to win.

Speaker 32 But at least

Speaker 32 it's a pay-per-view-worthy main event against two of the biggest names of the past 25 years.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 it is somewhat of a box office attraction, so I can see why they did it.

Speaker 32 And I wish it was like the old days where you thought that

Speaker 32 somebody might win at any point. But since we are all smart, we knew that wasn't going to happen.

Speaker 32 But I'm just, there was a few things I'm wondering. And one of them is,

Speaker 32 god damn it, I'm thinking

Speaker 32 John Cena could have gotten a tan for this match, but it gets him more heat as a heel being that pale, doesn't it?

Speaker 5 Well, let me stop you there. And obviously, you're not knowledgeable about this.
And I just learned about it yesterday. There was an article in Maybe People or something.

Speaker 5 John Cena battled skin cancer. Oh, geez.
Which is why he's not tanning anymore.

Speaker 32 Well,

Speaker 32 what about the spray on shit? Let poison your kidneys or something?

Speaker 5 Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 32 Because, I mean, I'm not like the AEW spray guy

Speaker 32 where you look, you know,

Speaker 32 phony or like Godfrey Cambridge, but

Speaker 32 I'm talking like a professional job where he might have just a little color to him.

Speaker 5 Have you seen what Heyman looks like?

Speaker 5 Have you you seen what Heyman looks like? I don't know if there is a professional out there who could do that job right.

Speaker 32 Well,

Speaker 32 but now we'll look what the canvas is to work with.

Speaker 5 Even if Heyman was a slim, slight, good-looking man, it wouldn't matter. It's the paint job I'm talking about.

Speaker 32 Well, no, see, they didn't bring enough to cover his whole gigantic bucket-sized head, so they had to dilute some of it with iodine.

Speaker 5 I didn't know where you were going to go, and now I know where you are going.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 with iodine, okay

Speaker 32 anyway so the

Speaker 32 the wwe history has john cena at 17 titles flair at 16 and orton and triple h tied at 14

Speaker 32 and that's where we stand on that scoreboard and i've got to admit this was bittersweet for me because they were having a wrestling match i mean one of the first spots they did was that Cena the heel poked Orton in the eye.

Speaker 32 And then they did a spot which paid off with Orton poking Cena in the eye, which got a huge pop.

Speaker 32 Rip Rogers would be proud. That's wrestling.
And we're talking about guys that just have

Speaker 32 nearly paralyzed themselves. And these guys are getting a big pop in the main event of a fucking sold-out building by poking each other in the eyes.
But that's wrestling.

Speaker 32 And they did headlocks and drop downs and leapfrogs and shoulder tackles.

Speaker 32 And I say,

Speaker 32 it's it's great to, to see that

Speaker 32 there's a wrestling match happening again after all the stuff we have to watch, but it's a shame that the only guys that still have wrestling matches are between 45 and 50 years old minimum.

Speaker 32 And I'm thinking, what's going to happen when

Speaker 32 these guys are gone and we can't see John already?

Speaker 32 And nobody will be able to have a goddamn professional wrestling match because they're too worried about being in the year's Olympics on the gymnastics team.

Speaker 32 Cena took a walk and Orton chased him and brought him back, and the fans got up for that.

Speaker 32 Orton gave Cena the 20 punches in the corner. The fans counted for it.

Speaker 32 I thought he was going to break out into the full garb and stomp, which

Speaker 32 one of the announcers even called was it Wade Barrett?

Speaker 32 But he didn't, he didn't go all the way around him. But the fans were bat shit with Orton doing very little

Speaker 32 because they built it properly.

Speaker 32 And it's driving me crazy that Cena won't stop talking because he is no ventriloquist. He ain't even fucking Paul Winchell.

Speaker 32 You can see Paul Winchell's lips flapping a mile away.

Speaker 32 And I think it's also kind of sad that Cena was trying,

Speaker 32 but Orton's work is way ahead still. It's faster.
It's sharper. It's crisper.

Speaker 32 And,

Speaker 32 you know, John was trying to keep up with him in that respect.

Speaker 32 But again, you know, the draping DDT, when he hit that, the fans went crazy for Randy.

Speaker 32 And then they started doing the big yay boo exchange where

Speaker 32 they got the let's go Cena and Cena sucks chant out of the out of the people. And Then Orton hit the RKO out of nowhere.
Both of them were down.

Speaker 32 They just started building these things into the two counts, either the attitude adjustment or the RKO.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 then finally, Orton went for an RKO and Cena shoved him into the referee. Cena hit the attitude adjustment, but there was no referee.

Speaker 32 So Cena went and got the belt. And again, this is where the WWF takes over in them.

Speaker 32 Instead of the referee's down, I have a very limited amount of time to cheat. I need to rush and get away with this.
Then time just stops.

Speaker 32 I already know the referee is going to lay down until I instruct him otherwise. I'm going to milk going to get the belt.
It's the milk hour.

Speaker 32 And he gets the belt and comes in, but Orton RKOs him out of nowhere. And then suddenly the referee's up and get a two-count.
Oh, shit.

Speaker 32 And then

Speaker 32 Orton clears off the desk at ringside, but Cena knocks him into the referee again

Speaker 32 and posts Orton and Orton slips the AA again and AAs Cena on the desk.

Speaker 32 And it kind of, you know, boom. And then Orton pulls a table out and sets it up.
And I wrote, even them,

Speaker 32 even them.

Speaker 32 So disappointing.

Speaker 32 And he AA'd John through the table at ringside. And the referee had been down for minutes at this point.
But the fans are chanting, this is awesome.

Speaker 32 So it's all show biz these days.

Speaker 32 And Randy hit the RKO and covered him, and a second referee came in and got a two count.

Speaker 32 And then Cena went to hit Orton with the belt, but Orton ducked and nailed the or Cena nailed the referee, the second referee.

Speaker 32 And then Orton hit the RKO and covered him. Why? Just saw the referee go down.

Speaker 32 So the fans can count to 10.

Speaker 32 And then all the agents and Nick Aldous come into the ring and check on the referee. We're 25 minutes into this fucking thing, right?

Speaker 32 And Orton gets up and he's pissed off that they're checking on a referee. So to show his pissed offedness and also because he's about to get fucked, so he's got to get something out of this.

Speaker 32 He RKO'd Aldous and all the agents in a row, like what, five or six of of them. Boom, boom, boom.
And people love that.

Speaker 32 And then Orton goes back to Cena and he goes to punt him.

Speaker 32 But here comes R-Truth,

Speaker 32 who, as we know, has long been a John Cena supporter.

Speaker 32 And he likes, oh, no, don't kick poor old John Cena.

Speaker 32 Orton RKOs R-Truth, who rolls out. And then Cena hits Orton in in the nuts and then hits him with the belt and then covered him.

Speaker 32 And the first referee, who had been down for somewhere around a day and a half at that point,

Speaker 32 rolled in and counted one, two, three.

Speaker 32 I thought they had a good match. I thought that was overcomplicated at the end.

Speaker 32 That's just stupid with R-Truth, but they

Speaker 32 apparently want to get some kind of goddamn TV match out of this.

Speaker 32 Your thoughts, Brian.

Speaker 32 I like both these guys, and I think Orton's work is still incredible. John slowed down a bit,

Speaker 32 but the finish was just cluttered up real, real bad to me. They were trying to give everybody a fucking out.

Speaker 5 The finish was cluttered up and it went a while.

Speaker 5 That all took a long time to go. And you kind of said it without saying it.

Speaker 5 You say the WWE in them, or whatever you said, the WWE comes out. This felt like Vince shit

Speaker 5 from 10 years ago that felt out of place.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Just too much. And,

Speaker 5 you know, I know Cena's not 35 years old, and he's not used to wrestling a regular schedule or even a semi-regular schedule for a while. You're not expecting to go out there and have

Speaker 5 incredible, highly physical matches.

Speaker 5 We're probably going to get a lot of this kind of

Speaker 5 stuff around these matches to make them work. But I don't know.
It was kind of a deflating ending to the show, just the way the ending went down, how long it took.

Speaker 5 And you knew Randy wasn't going to win, but I don't know.

Speaker 32 There's no sense of urgency anymore when anybody's trying to cheat and get away with something.

Speaker 32 And that makes the fans not.

Speaker 32 When you've got time in your mind, when they're constantly milking, oh, the guy's got the belt and he's drawn back and he's waiting for the guy to stand up for some reason.

Speaker 32 I want to beat this guy so he's down now, but I'll wait till he stands up and knocks him down again.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 everything takes so long

Speaker 32 that, yes, they're teaching that. And there is some element of truth to it.
You've got to milk it. You can't just run off and leave people or not.

Speaker 32 make something picturesque to where that they see it and understand what happened in a big building. They may have missed it, but you've also

Speaker 32 got to keep moving from one thing to another. Because if people have too long to think about what they're looking at,

Speaker 32 a lot of them are going to come up with the right idea. Sometimes it's either he's going to hit him or he's going to duck, one of those two things.

Speaker 32 The more time they have to think about it and come up with their own conclusion,

Speaker 32 the less they pop when they turn out to be wrong or right

Speaker 32 because they knew it was going to happen.

Speaker 32 Some of the biggest pops in

Speaker 32 finishes like that come when shit's happening, bing, bing, bing, bing, and it's shit you don't expect. Oh, shit, dumb, whoo.

Speaker 32 That's why I used to teach in OVW, especially

Speaker 32 that each finish

Speaker 32 when we're calling something for everyone to do, because however many people are involved in the match, including referees, managers, and anybody running in,

Speaker 32 you have to account for them when you give the finish when you lay it out beforehand everybody has to have something to do and and a place to be to make it all come together

Speaker 32 but the important thing is everybody doesn't do their all at the same time

Speaker 32 i used to tell them okay Spotlight is on you two people to do this, boom. But once that happens, that's when you two take over because boom, you're going to do that.

Speaker 32 And that's when the the referee and the manager are going to do this. And the spotlight goes boom, boom, boom, because you don't want it all to happen at the same time.

Speaker 32 People are miss it, but you don't want it to take for fucking ever like this is where everybody's already calling it ahead of time. There needs to be a happy medium.

Speaker 32 Anyway.

Speaker 5 Well, that was the main event, Randy Orton versus John Seema. And just recently, WWE uploaded to the Vault channel them against each other in OVW.
We may have to do a watch-along of that.

Speaker 5 Everyone's begging for one. One that you actually critiqued in the past, just not on camera or on audio.

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 5 But, Jim, you know, John Cena, Randy Orton, one thing that they learned how to do in OVW, and it has helped them well throughout their career, is learn to sell.

Speaker 5 But not everyone knows how to sell. And in fact,

Speaker 5 mom and pop businessman all throughout the United States and beyond, but let's focus on.

Speaker 32 Mom and pop businessman.

Speaker 5 That's right. It's a new era and Main Street is a whole new thing.
But the point is, everyone needs an online presence for their store. Everyone needs to sell.

Speaker 5 And here's the man to sell you on everything I just set him up for, Mr. Jim Cornette.

Speaker 32 I don't know what you're talking about now, Brian, but I'll tell you what what we were talking about earlier was people that want to be

Speaker 32 things that they're not or things that they're not capable of being. Like Jelly Nutella wants to be a pro wrestler.

Speaker 32 Well, sometimes when you're a kid, you want to be an astronaut or you want to be a princess or you want to be the president of the United States. I guess that's the bar is fairly low there these days.

Speaker 32 But when you grow up, Brian, as they used to say, you put away the childish things and you focus more on realistic goals instead of being a princess or a double knot spy.

Speaker 32 Instead of going into outer space or owning your own castle, you want to own your own business.

Speaker 32 You want to run your own little empire and make money, make profit, be a capitalist so that you can provide for your family and potentially pay child support later on.

Speaker 32 The wife leaves you and takes the little Cretans. Well, that's just you still on the hook for it.

Speaker 5 Let's focus on the good times.

Speaker 32 for this

Speaker 32 for the good times but when you've got your own business it's a dream that lots of people share but you know what you're going to need brian you're going to need a website.

Speaker 32 You're going to need a payment system. You're going to need a logo.
You're going to need a way to advertise to new customers. It can be overwhelming.
It can be confusing.

Speaker 32 But thankfully, you have friends. You have the people at Shopify.

Speaker 32 At Shopify, they're going to sit down on your side and they're going to.

Speaker 32 Give you that right in the rib. Say, hey, we can make you some money, kid.
You just listen to us.

Speaker 32 And you're going to be farting through silk. And what if you can't design a website? Shopify's got you from the get-go.

Speaker 32 Why they will make you a website that's so delicious, you will slap your mother.

Speaker 5 And what if

Speaker 5 metaphorically speaking?

Speaker 32 Well, yes. And what if

Speaker 32 you can slap her forehand or backhand, whatever kind of thing? What if you need a hand with everyday tasks? Everyday tasks like

Speaker 32 speaking, speaking English, enhancing product images and writing product descriptions. Hey, that thing sucks.
Stuff like that.

Speaker 32 Or generating discount codes. What about if people haven't heard about your brand, Brian? You might say, how do I get the word out there? Well, Shopify

Speaker 32 helps with easy to run email and social media campaigns. You just give them your entire address book and they will go through it.

Speaker 32 And they will call everybody you know on the phone and they will say, hey,

Speaker 32 Joe over here is in business. And if you know what's good for you, you're going to support him elsewhere.
We're going to call you every goddamn day.

Speaker 5 Shopify will not be making any phone calls. You won't be getting any phone bills for calls made on your behalf.

Speaker 5 Shopify will be there so that you can put your store online and sell your products without any problems or any people causing problems every time you speak about this wonderful product.

Speaker 32 Yes, no, there won't be any phone bills. They don't charge for long distance anymore, Brian, but there's the Shopify phone bank team will be harassing your customers daily and no

Speaker 5 they won't know there will be no harassment on behalf of the you find people at shopify or on the behalf of mom and pop businessman all across america yeah and speaking of mom and pop businessman Shopify has the birth records and they know who everybody's mother is and everybody's father is.

Speaker 5 No, they do not. Wait a minute.
That's another.

Speaker 5 No, they don't.

Speaker 32 Well, because that's the way that they can go to mom and pop with all these products that you make, that you sell, that they want to help you sell.

Speaker 32 And they can go to mom and pop and they say, we know where your kids are. So you just buy this stuff and then

Speaker 5 mom and pop have nothing to worry about. The kids are safe.
And so

Speaker 32 as a matter of fact,

Speaker 32 the FBI got a phone call on tape. The only sound they could determine was a screaming child.

Speaker 32 But nevertheless, nevertheless, never the truth.

Speaker 5 Never the truth. None of that was true, ladies and gentlemen.
What we want to tell you about is the truth, which is that Shopify is there for you. You have your products.
You need to sell them.

Speaker 5 You need them in the biggest online

Speaker 5 resource and storefront. And here's Jim Cornet.

Speaker 32 Yes. And you can turn your dreams into

Speaker 32 reality and give yourself the best shot at success with Shopify.

Speaker 32 By signing up for your $1 a month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com slash JCE.

Speaker 32 Shopify.com slash JCE, a $1 a month trial period where you will be put on trial and you will be cross-examined.

Speaker 5 And if they determine, that's not

Speaker 32 a quality person that can join their team, then they will make you money.

Speaker 32 Just watch it. Don't admit to certain things.
And the age of consent

Speaker 32 is 17.

Speaker 5 This has nothing to do with Shopify. But once again, Shopify is there for you.
Shopify is. $1 a month.

Speaker 5 How much cheaper can it be? It's like Shopify magic. But one more time, Jim, how can the listeners use

Speaker 5 what we use? Because they power our store, ArcadiaVangard.com and the Find Drive-Thru t-shirts.

Speaker 32 Yes, they will design your website. They'll market your products.
They'll write descriptions. They'll take your money.
And

Speaker 32 they'll take all of the money. No, they don't.

Speaker 5 And then they'll give you.

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 5 they will take shit.

Speaker 32 they'll take your money a dollar a month, and then they'll take the money from the other people they're selling stuff to, and then some of it will come back to you.

Speaker 5 But they will do this all for a dollar a month. Once again, we use them for all.

Speaker 32 How do you know what the exact amount is? If they round off to the closest dollar, I don't think anybody's going to be upset.

Speaker 5 Round off. If this keeps going, I'm going to drink some round up.
Listen, ladies and gentlemen, we're trying to let you know.

Speaker 5 The store is there for you. Yes.

Speaker 32 Yes. A dollar a month trial period.
They'll show you all this great stuff. They'll show you all their shit for only a dollar.
That's why they wear raincoats. Shopify.com slash JCE.

Speaker 1 This isn't just a game.

Speaker 2 It's a once-in-a-generation event.

Speaker 34 Austin, get ready for first serve.

Speaker 31 On January 7th, 2026, Love Austin Volleyball kicks off its second season at the HEB Center.

Speaker 31 Watch league MVP Madison Skinner, Aja O'Neal, Logan Eggleston, and more as the reigning champs seek to retain their crown. Power hits, wild rallies, and a hometown crowd that shows up loud.

Speaker 31 This is a new Austin Night Out. Tickets available now.
Visit LLVBATX.com/slash iHeart.

Speaker 5 Well, there it is, that Shopify jingle that you've all come to know and love here on the show.

Speaker 5 Jim,

Speaker 5 before we finish with Backlash,

Speaker 5 And move on to

Speaker 5 again, I didn't watch Roy. I can't.
I just can't. But Backlash.

Speaker 5 The show didn't end with the show, or the event didn't end with the end of the pay-per-view portion, which is never ending. It's just the content rolls right into the next thing.

Speaker 5 There was the post-show, and there was the media scrum.

Speaker 5 And I guess part of what happened in the main event continued to play out

Speaker 5 in a very interesting scene in the media scrum. Have you seen this?

Speaker 32 Well, yes, I didn't watch the entire scrummy scrum,

Speaker 32 but I did see

Speaker 32 the main event portion, I guess, of it.

Speaker 32 Because Triple H is sitting there and he's talking, and suddenly John Cena comes out and stage whispers, I'd like to have a word.

Speaker 32 Okay, well, I didn't know this was happening, Triple H says, but let's let the goat have his say. And

Speaker 32 Cena sits down and he starts talking for a minute. And then suddenly you hear, oh, wait, where's John? Where's John? And R-Truth comes in.
And he's like, John, John.

Speaker 32 I did, you know, I can't even remember what he said. I'm just like, oh, my God, I can't believe they're going to do this.
But he's always been the John Cena fan.

Speaker 32 And he didn't want to leave it like that, that, you know,

Speaker 32 they had a miscommunication or whatever. And

Speaker 32 Cena picks him up. and gives him the attitude adjustment through the desk that they're sitting at.
But it's in a press conference atmosphere.

Speaker 32 And I guess they didn't tell everybody this was going to happen. And nobody knows whether to cheer or boo or say boo to a goose, as Adrian Street would say.

Speaker 32 So they all, everybody in the room sits there in complete silence. So the guy goes through the table and it's like somebody just did it in a library.

Speaker 32 And it, it,

Speaker 32 Brian, helped me describe how odd is it when somebody

Speaker 32 picks somebody up and throws them through a table and nobody makes a sound in the room.

Speaker 5 Well, I guess the first question is, do you think that they anticipated everyone being like, oh, do you think they anticipated like everyone jumping out of their seats?

Speaker 5 What do you think they thought was going to happen?

Speaker 32 I don't think they thought about it. I think that, oh, it'll be cool if, yeah, if R-Truth comes out and Cena picks him up and gives him the

Speaker 32 AA through the desk. And I get they're building up a match again to give John a night off of personal appearance and tights, but it, but nobody knew what to do.

Speaker 32 So they just sat there and people come running in to check on him as he, as Cena walks off and our truth is laying there. And it's just complete dead silence.
It was just very odd.

Speaker 32 It's hard having a backstage fight or a fight.

Speaker 32 with no people there because there's no feedback and no, you know, crowd noise.

Speaker 32 But in this case, it was the oddest thing I've ever seen because there were people there and there was still no crowd noise.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 it was odd, off-putting, possibly.

Speaker 5 It would have been nice if like Bill Apter or Keith Elliott Greenberg had a run in and tried to save Archer.

Speaker 5 Just something to make it a little more believable.

Speaker 5 Wally Yamaguchi. Who was it? Jimmy Suzuki.
Eddie Gilbert made bleed on TV.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 5 Something happened there.

Speaker 5 What do you think of the idea of them doing this in the last year of Cena with limited dates?

Speaker 5 In a way, the end of a long time

Speaker 5 sub-storyline of some sort of this weird friendship/slash idolization of Cena by R-Truth? What do you think of them doing it? And

Speaker 5 we'll see where it is. Did they announce where it's going to be? Is it going to be Saturday night's main event?

Speaker 32 I would think it's going to be Saturday night's main event, but that's the thing. It's an easy match for John Cena to have.
They can advertise him wrestling. There's some type of story behind it.

Speaker 32 R-Truth is going to take good care of him.

Speaker 32 So I'm not even opposed to them having that match because they can all be

Speaker 32 25-minute main events, you know, in his last year. But

Speaker 32 the

Speaker 32 just the AA through the fucking desk in the silent room was just odd. It just, it was very strange.

Speaker 5 What do you think they were thinking too? Like all the media people, like, oh, okay, they're doing one of these things here.

Speaker 32 Well, but now what kind of media people was it all website people like it would be at one of Tony's AEW scrums or was it legitimate reporters of some description?

Speaker 5 It didn't sound like the usual suspects to me. They had a few people ask Triple H some stuff

Speaker 5 that I saw. on the pre-show, but no point did I go, oh, I recognize that name.
None of them. I didn't know who they were.

Speaker 32 Well, a lot of unrecognizable names were there, and that's why they didn't know how to react.

Speaker 5 Well, there it is. That's the end of

Speaker 5 Saturday. And of course, on Monday, Jim,

Speaker 5 as has happened every Monday, seemingly forever and ever and ever,

Speaker 5 WWE Raw, a show that goes on forever and ever and ever,

Speaker 5 aired on the USA Network.

Speaker 32 And no, it didn't.

Speaker 5 No, it didn't. It's on Netflix.
See, I didn't even.

Speaker 32 The other one's on. Yeah, yeah, we don't care.

Speaker 32 I watched the first segment because that was all the people needed to know.

Speaker 32 They were in Louisville at the KFC Yum Center. What we used to have the cool arena Freedom Hall, and that's the Yum Center.

Speaker 32 But they did a package on last week with Paul Heyman and Seth and Braun Breaker and Jey Uso and Sammy and Punk

Speaker 32 and

Speaker 32 you know, set up that story

Speaker 32 that is that is being told now. And then

Speaker 32 they'd had the walk-ins, and suddenly they go to the back, and

Speaker 32 Lacka Mussolini

Speaker 32 in Kentucky.

Speaker 32 Out he comes. CM Punk is back in Louisville, back home.

Speaker 32 You know what, Brian? I was, I didn't know anything about the ticket sales beforehand. I remembered they were coming to town.
I was obviously not moved to tears by that, but

Speaker 32 it ain't like the old days here in Louisville because they're drawing some big crowds. They had 17,000 in St.
Louis or whatever. They only had 10,000 or so in the Yum Center.
It seats 22,000.

Speaker 32 And this at Lexington and Louisville.

Speaker 32 In the Attitude era, I think we sold Freedom Hall out twice and Rup Arena once.

Speaker 32 So things have not come back everywhere.

Speaker 5 Rup Arena's how many seats?

Speaker 32 Rupper. Well, it was sold off for a pay-per-view.
They did 20-something, 21, 22,000 people there. Wow.
I mean, you know,

Speaker 32 if you had a

Speaker 32 regular wrestling setup and no television, you could get 24,000 fucking people or 25 for wrestling and Rup, but it wasn't that big. Still,

Speaker 32 point being.

Speaker 32 And remember, that's when Triple H had to get juice and did it right in front of the fucking commission, even though it was against state law and they didn't do another fucking television or pay-per-view in the state of Kentucky for 15 years.

Speaker 32 Because Tim Gonerman wanted to have their license pulled, but they just ended up fining them like $20,000 or something. Anyway,

Speaker 32 point being.

Speaker 32 Here came Punk to the ring and he's pissed off about everything, but he's most pissed off at himself because heyman stabbed him in the back he did it before but twice is on me

Speaker 32 he i thought we had all matured and moved past that but paul's a fat little snake and seth rollins is the teamu cm punk

Speaker 32 and punk said he wanted to get his hands on paul and squeeze him till his eyes pop out

Speaker 32 And then Heyman appeared.

Speaker 32 And Punk said, oh, come on, penguin, get in the ring

Speaker 32 come in here and explain why you did what you did and remember when you choose those words they will be your last

Speaker 32 and then seth's music played

Speaker 32 and seth and bron came out and that got the big cm punk chants going

Speaker 32 and

Speaker 32 seth took up for paul and said that punk's the problem

Speaker 32 And he's the reason that Seth is not champion.

Speaker 32 And Punk said, as long as I'm on two feet, you'll never be champion.

Speaker 32 But Seth went on for a little while and then sent Braun to the ring.

Speaker 32 And Braun got on punk, but Punk fought back and tackled Seth. And Braun got on punk again.
And Sammy came in.

Speaker 32 And Braun stopped Sammy. But Paul gave Seth a chair, but Jey Uso came in.

Speaker 32 But they stopped him, but then Punk and Sammy got their own chairs and the heels bailed out.

Speaker 32 And they set up a tag match for Saturday night's main event. And

Speaker 32 it's like we talk for 10 minutes. We're going to jump in the ring, a little dust up, make a match, get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 32 And it worked. And it's going to be Punk and Sammy against Seth and Braun

Speaker 32 at Saturday night's main event on May 24th, which, by the way, is the night before the

Speaker 32 pay-per-view event by the Children's Wrestling League.

Speaker 32 And it's going to be a busy weekend.

Speaker 32 And I know a lot of, let me just say this, a lot of people are going to say, oh, the WWE is obviously persecuting AEW.

Speaker 32 I don't think that the WWE has that much control over NBC Television's network schedule. Do you?

Speaker 5 Not now, no.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 mama says it bees that way sometimes.

Speaker 5 But anyhow, we will see what happens. But that was all of WWE Raw Raw that I watched.
Do you think Sammy's going to turn on CM Punk?

Speaker 32 No.

Speaker 32 I really don't believe that it would be in Sami Zayn's best interest, as over as he's gotten and as popular as he is for being the pacifist and the babyface who sees the good in everybody.

Speaker 32 I don't think he needs to stab anybody in the back anymore.

Speaker 5 All right. So it'll be a big boring tag team match at Saturday night's main event.
In whenever. A few weeks.

Speaker 5 That was raw, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 32 You're just demoralized by this.

Speaker 5 You know what? I've just stopped enjoying their programs. It started shortly before Mania.

Speaker 5 You know, everyone points to the rock, but it wasn't just The Rock.

Speaker 5 You know, it wasn't just the lateness in WrestleMania this year on the calendar. Something's felt off.

Speaker 5 booking-wise or lazy booking-wise. Now, look, maybe part of it is,

Speaker 5 you know, when you think of the WWF in the early 80s, the WWF that Paul of Eck would have seen as a kid,

Speaker 5 they really gave you very little.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And everything took forever to happen. Maybe this is part of that.
Because look, they're giving everyone enough to make the money they want to make.

Speaker 5 They just had another, you know, quarterly profit announcement and it was through the roof. They're making so much money.

Speaker 5 And they're giving people less and less. More commercials on the pay-per-view.
There's advertising everywhere. The fucking men had Morgan and Morgan in the middle of the fucking ring.

Speaker 5 It's just, it's over-monetization. And again, you want to make money with every angle of it.
And someone's going to go, well, you try to make money. Yeah, there's a little bit of a difference.

Speaker 5 They've got a sponsor for every sponsor.

Speaker 5 This is the Snickers match brought to you by Towlette or just all sorts of shit.

Speaker 5 Cody's doing really bad acting in his commercials for Wheatley Vodka, which is a commercial in the middle of the pay-per-view.

Speaker 32 He can talk about vodka, but he can't come back to get even with everybody's kicked him in the balls.

Speaker 5 And Cody, they took a lot of steam off Cody. Everything with The Rock,

Speaker 5 the Cena stuff, the match,

Speaker 5 the things that he did as a babyface in 2025.

Speaker 5 Roman Reigns is like in and out. I guess he's at it.
He was just on Invanity Fair. They did a big article about him and his acting.

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 5 I thought this was going to be like a big boom year, and it feels like

Speaker 5 they've got the elements for a boom but they don't got the

Speaker 5 i mean they've got big interest but there's not like anything that's really just hot right now

Speaker 5 or am i wrong argue with me no

Speaker 32 i know i'm i'm actually i can't find anything to argue with and i'm looking i'm hot right now having to watch this

Speaker 5 all right you heard it here first less reviews if there's good we'll watch it otherwise we'll watch plenty of bad somewhere or we'll just talk about some stupid people all right well jim that was raw and uh let's stay on the topic of people.

Speaker 5 People being people.

Speaker 32 They're the luckiest people in the world.

Speaker 5 Jim, several listeners have sent this over to me. Hulk Hogan did an interview with Ariel Hawani.

Speaker 5 According to the split screen here, Eric Bischoff was there too, obviously promoting their brand new.

Speaker 5 I don't even know if it's theirs, actually. Apparently, it's the guy who put up the money for the Ric Flair drink and the Hulk Hogan.

Speaker 5 Like, it's a guy who puts up money for all sorts of like old wrestlers to have branding on projects. This is his thing.

Speaker 5 And here's Hulk Hogan play this audio. Why he thinks fans are booing him.

Speaker 5 It's been a big story. He started getting booed a while back, but it really blew up after that raw in Los Angeles.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Let's hear some audio here and get your thoughts on this.

Speaker 35 You're in a real interesting...

Speaker 35 point in your life and career because I think that there's a sector of people who were with you in the 80s, who rided with you, who will always ride with you and always support you.

Speaker 35 And obviously, there are some fans who don't feel that same way anymore, who have turned against you. And we see you at RAW and they boo you when you come out.

Speaker 35 But then there are other fans who want to support your beer or whatever product that you're attached to.

Speaker 35 How do you feel, without beating around the bush, how do you feel about your relationship with the

Speaker 35 public right now, your relationship with the people, especially coming off the last time we saw you on a major stage, was that Netflix show back in January at the Intuit Dome?

Speaker 33 Well, you know, they're still nipping at my heels. You know, I can go out there and get booed.

Speaker 33 As

Speaker 33 the last time I was in LA, I was Hollywood Hogan with a black beard and doing the.

Speaker 5 I should have paused there as a buffer, but that was a good point to stop it.

Speaker 5 Was he Hollywood Hogan in Los Angeles?

Speaker 32 No.

Speaker 32 He wasn't. No, he came out with Jimmy Hart waving the fucking flag.

Speaker 5 That's right. That's right.

Speaker 32 Dressed in his golden red attire and trying to be a real american and they were booing the out of him he's trying to claim that he has the people in the palm of his hand where he can be a bad guy he's like doing like the rock

Speaker 32 i can go out and be a bad guy and they'll boo me and i can go out and be a good guy and they'll cheer me because

Speaker 32 i'm controlling this rather than

Speaker 32 No, I've been so full of shit for so long and done and said so many stupid things in public and on tape that a lot of the people don't like me anymore he can't say that so he's got to act like he's in charge of it well let's go back to the hulkster talking to ariel hawani on the ariel hawani show especially coming off the last time we saw you on a major stage was that netflix show uh back in into a dome

Speaker 33 well you know they're still nipping at my heels you know i can go out there and get booed um as as actually the last time i was in la i was hollywood ogan with a black beard and doing the the bad guy thing i can go out there and get booed in la

Speaker 33 or the rock can get booed in la or john cena gets booed in la

Speaker 33 but when i get booed there's a whole different reaction media wise for some reason i've laid some type of groundwork for some reason

Speaker 32 for some reason i've laid some kind of groundwork yes you get booed more than the rock and john cena because the people legitimately don't like you

Speaker 32 they are booing the rock because they're kind of pissed at him for screwing up their wrestlemania and they're booing john cena because they know it's a work but with hogan they're booing him to say you are full of

Speaker 32 please stop lying out your ass we are tired of you

Speaker 32 is but what i'm doing i just now he's got i've laid this groundwork where i've done so many stupid and offensive things that it's really working out for me now.

Speaker 5 Well, you know, I keep thinking about what Shelton referenced the other day in the tweet back about how Hogan should stop mentioning his name.

Speaker 5 When he had to apologize at a locker room for being caught on tape, it wasn't just that he said the N-word. It was that like he, I think the conversation was like, we're all racist.

Speaker 5 Like it was just like some kind of crazy declaration. Usually people don't just declare themselves to be racist.
He did.

Speaker 5 And then his apology to the locker room was like, don't get caught.

Speaker 5 Be careful.

Speaker 32 You know, you're all, you're all public figures. You got to be careful what you do because there's somebody waiting out there with a recorder.

Speaker 5 Let's go back to the Hulkster here.

Speaker 33 And so for those that are on the team and

Speaker 33 are riding with the train to the station, that's great. For those that are.
that are the haters and still have a problem with me.

Speaker 33 You know, there's nothing I can do to fix that except, you know, just keep proving by my actions that, you know, I'm still in the game. I'm still pushing hard.

Speaker 33 You know, I took a lot of of time off because I had like 25 surgeries and I was down for a long time. And, you know, I've always loved the hunt.
I've always loved to get back in the game.

Speaker 33 But it's always been that way with me because my whole career, I had that top spot, no matter what it was, even through the 80s, it was the fastest draw.

Speaker 5 Let me stop for a second. Are the people booing him because they're jealous of his spot?

Speaker 32 Yes, he goes, I've always been on top, even in the 80s, and he's got to go back. And again, you know,

Speaker 32 it's always been, I'm the greatest.

Speaker 32 And he's just so full of it. He's just so,

Speaker 32 I mean, everybody has a big ego if you're a star, but you don't have to just slap people in the face with it constantly about how it's all me.

Speaker 32 And I did this and I was going to be in Metallica and I was going to be George Foreman and I was going to be this. And then it's just too much.

Speaker 5 Well, let's go back. We have more from the Hulkster.

Speaker 33 You know, during the 80s, it was just a situation where everybody was knocking me. Everybody was trying to knock me off that top spot.

Speaker 33 I'll trade that for not being on the bottom of the card, if you know what I'm saying, or being on the bottom of the pile of life. So for me, it's just part of the territory.

Speaker 33 I mean, it's kind of like, you know, when you get booed and then you get 3.2 billion engagements all of a sudden, you know, and then you rock that whole world in LA with how much interaction there was on the internet.

Speaker 33 I'll take it.

Speaker 5 Okay, so let me stop for a second. The interaction was Hulk Hogan's a racist liar.
I want him off my TV. That was the reaction from people.

Speaker 5 I'll take it. 3.2 billion people said that.

Speaker 32 Well, but to be fair, they asked a couple people twice.

Speaker 5 Well, there's a little more here. Let's stop for a second.
He takes accountability for nothing he's ever done.

Speaker 32 Well, and that was the problem with the apology speech for the WWF locker room that was supposed to be an apology speech and was instead, hey, guys, you know, don't get caught. You know, I know

Speaker 32 I'm a big star and all the attention was on me, but it can happen to you too.

Speaker 32 They didn't like that apology.

Speaker 32 They were expecting to hear something like, you know, I'm sorry I use that language. I know some of you were uncomfortable or something like that.

Speaker 5 Could have said anything. Could have said anything other than, don't get caught.

Speaker 5 Make sure your best friend isn't filming you when you fuck his wife. That's the thing I really want you all walking out of here thinking about.
Let's go back to this.

Speaker 32 And by the way, and if that does happen, and who doesn't find themselves in that position every once in a while, don't make racist comments on the tape.

Speaker 5 How was Hulk Hogan? Was he good with pillow talk? Oh, he was putting down every single fucking race and gender there is.

Speaker 32 Let's go back to Hag. He hates the Italians.

Speaker 5 Let's go back to Hulk Hogan talking to Ariel Hawani on the Ariel Hawani show.

Speaker 35 After that, you didn't view that as some sort of like indictment on the state of your career, how people feel about you. You felt like they were just booing the character?

Speaker 33 No, no, no, no, all the above, all the above. You know, there are certain people that, you know, boo the character.
There are certain

Speaker 33 WWE superstars that had an opinion and they had advice for me. But I would like to ask those same guys when I go to New York or Chicago and the people cheer.

Speaker 33 you know, out of the rooftops, you know, I would like to know what their advice is then and what their opinion is. So it's a double-edged sword with me.

Speaker 33 And it's always been at least part of the character. It's part of, you know, me personally.
It's part of my professional life. It's part of my personal life.

Speaker 5 Let me stop it for a second. What the fuck is he talking about?

Speaker 32 I don't know. I don't know.
I was hoping I'd find out.

Speaker 33 It's all the above. I mean, and at the end of the day, I'm just like an old scarred up seal with a bunch of scars on me.

Speaker 33 And I'm really relatable to most normal people because a lot of people have been through a lot of stuff I have professionally.

Speaker 33 A lot of people have made the same, not the same mistakes, but personally made mistakes and i'm still relatable to so many people if they boo me fine if they're on a team lead that's great too so not hating on anybody brother i'm just i'm still here i'm still moving forward and it's kind of like the old rocky move to come sound on how hard you can get hit get back up and keep moving forward and brother i'm always leaning into the wind

Speaker 5 Well, that's the end of that.

Speaker 5 Let me just encourage Hulk Hogan. I agree.
You got to lean into it. Make more appearances.
You mentioned New York and Chicago. Hit those markets next.

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 5 They seem to be big fans of yours. I would love to see the live reaction in New York and Chicago and then maybe do a Southwest swing.

Speaker 5 But Jim, on the topic of Hulk Hogan, I have to hit you with this. This was posted the other day.
Where is the actual quote from?

Speaker 5 Okay, apparently it's a 2009 interview that was just recently uncovered by SE Scoops.

Speaker 5 Hulk Hogan claimed that following Vince McMahon's purchase of the WWF from his father in 1982,

Speaker 5 Hulk Hogan played a crucial role in educating Vince McMahon about the business.

Speaker 5 I moved in next door to him in Connecticut and taught him all about lifting weights and riding motorcycles and partying like a madman. Oh, good lord.

Speaker 5 And then I taught him about the wrestling business and making money.

Speaker 5 What are your thoughts, Jim, on the idea that Hulk Hogan taught Vince McMahon how to make money or how to learn how to make money, whatever the hell he's saying?

Speaker 32 Or taught him anything about the wrestling business or taught him how to

Speaker 32 ride motorcycles. And,

Speaker 32 well, for one thing, no, Hulk Hogan

Speaker 32 didn't live next door to Vince in fucking Connecticut because you would have heard if Hulk Hogan had one of those giant fucking mansions in Connecticut in Vince's neighborhood.

Speaker 5 I believe when he did come to work there in 84, Vince did have him.

Speaker 5 I don't know where exactly the house was in Greenwich. It's always been said they were neighbors.

Speaker 32 Did he put him down in fucking

Speaker 32 Shane's house,

Speaker 32 the servants' quarters?

Speaker 5 Oh, I don't know. I don't know where.

Speaker 32 Vince had a

Speaker 32 actually, it was a garage with like an apartment. business over the top of it in a detached building down the hill from his big mansion.

Speaker 32 And when Shane and Marissa got married, he spent a couple couple of hundred thousand dollars and had it renovated into a nice house and gave it to them but it hadn't been renovated at the point hogan first went up there you think he just stuck him in the servants quarters

Speaker 5 when did he have that house

Speaker 32 well i was there in uh

Speaker 32 i'm talking about going in 90 in 96 on the uh on the creative team but i was at that house i think in 94 at one point but that's a that's 10 years after could have have been a different house.

Speaker 32 Could have been.

Speaker 32 Nevertheless,

Speaker 32 even if he did live next door to him, everything else he said was bullshit. Vince had already been in the business for 15 fucking years with his dad

Speaker 32 when Hogan

Speaker 32 began the Hokamania fucking run or whatever. And I think Vince was, Hogan had been.

Speaker 32 In the business five years, Vince 15. Vince was a millionaire, the owner of the company, and hogan was a rising star i don't know who was teaching who what

Speaker 5 well that is the hulk hogan update here this week fans fans of hulk hogan news

Speaker 5 seriously if he thinks this is good for him make more appearances please will they even put him on the air if he wanted to right now

Speaker 32 i i don't know I don't know whether it would be

Speaker 32 beneficial to anybody or not to put him on the air right now.

Speaker 32 And what taught him about lifting weights? Hasn't Vince always been jacked up, even when in late 70s, when he was wearing the multicolored announcer suits?

Speaker 5 I guess what Hulk Hogan would want you to believe is that Vince McMahon saw superstar Billy Graham and then said,

Speaker 5 I'll wait.

Speaker 5 And then for the next six years, he didn't lift weights. And then Hulk Hogan moved in.
He's like riding motorcycles and shitting and heads and fucking lifting weights.

Speaker 5 Just craziness in Greenwich. In Greenwich.
If you've ever been to Greenwich, you know that really is crazy. But all right, that's the update on something there.

Speaker 5 Jim?

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 5 I believe you have an email that contains FCW Florida Championship Wrestling Talent Reports.

Speaker 5 These hit the internet the other day.

Speaker 5 profiles of several wrestlers that were in developmental at that time

Speaker 5 with comments from the trainers.

Speaker 32 Yes, and

Speaker 32 boy, they got fancy because I was used to the ones that they just send down, you know, typed out, whatever.

Speaker 32 But this has pictures and graphics, and

Speaker 32 apparently, the times that they've been in the ring and the times they've done promos or whatever, and their stats, birthday,

Speaker 32 day they turn pro, whatever the case.

Speaker 32 This is quite fancy.

Speaker 5 Yes, it is. Indeed, I assume it is.
I don't have the previous version here, but what do you think of some of these? Because you know these trainers, obviously.

Speaker 5 Steve Kern, Gerald Briscoe, Tom Pritchard, Dusty Richardson,

Speaker 5 Ricky Steamboat. Yeah.
Am I forgetting anyone? Norman Smiley.

Speaker 32 Norman Smiley is on here. I don't know him, but I know everybody else.

Speaker 32 I got a kick out of a few of these. There's Evan Bourne, who is Matt Seidel, right?

Speaker 32 That is cool. In his younger days.
What year would this be from? This has to be,

Speaker 32 what, at least 15 years old.

Speaker 5 Well, Nemeth is there. When did you have Nemeth in OVW?

Speaker 32 Well, that's what I was going to say.

Speaker 32 Just about Matt Seidel. There's nothing really,

Speaker 32 no comments from Tom. Dusty says, ECW, good for him.

Speaker 32 Apparently, he went to work for ECW. I don't know.
But

Speaker 32 Nick Nemeth was here in OVW in 2004 and 2005,

Speaker 32 as I recall.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 maybe even just part of 2005.

Speaker 32 But it has in his injury history, April 8th, he had his right, or April of 08, rather, 2008, he had his right elbow drained. So this is probably 2009-ish, 10-ish, something like that.

Speaker 32 But nevertheless,

Speaker 32 Gerald Briscoe comments about Nick Nemeth. This guy's ready.
We're wasting time with Nick at FCW. Great bumps.
Look, work. Great moves.
Sell and can wrestle. Move up.

Speaker 32 Tom Pritchard, after being in the system 34 months, so if he started in OVW late 2004, this is somewhere around, well,

Speaker 32 he was in a system longer.

Speaker 32 Did we get him before they signed him, though? Did he come from one of our tryouts camps? We may have had him before they signed him.

Speaker 32 I don't know. Anyway, Tom Pritchard feels we have to feel it's time to find a place for Nick somewhere on the roster.
He can be an asset to any brand. He's ready as he's going to be.

Speaker 32 Steamboat said he's ready. Could tell right away he was the captain in the ring.
Does everything well.

Speaker 32 Dusty's comments, ready.

Speaker 5 That must be frustrating, though, when all the, and this isn't exclusive to Nick Nemeth here in this one situation. It's other talent all throughout the years.

Speaker 5 Everyone's saying this guy's ready, this guy's ready. They don't

Speaker 5 see it the same way. It's frustrating.

Speaker 32 That's what we used to say he's ready, giggle.

Speaker 32 Well, the creative doesn't have anything for him. The fire the fucking writers.

Speaker 32 What the fuck? That was constant.

Speaker 32 And I've made the joke, but it was true. It was just funny that JR one time said, rank the guys from number one through number 21, because we had 21 of them.

Speaker 32 And in what terms of what order they're ready to come up.

Speaker 32 And they brought up

Speaker 32 18, 19, and 21. They skipped over 20 because he was fucking hurt.

Speaker 32 And it was, and, and Bruce Pritchard would normally, he knew all the guys that they, Laura Nitas and those Yahoos really wanted to succeed, the Sean O'Hares and the Jindrax and the guys that we didn't think were any good.

Speaker 32 So he'd find ways to compliment them and find something else to pick at about the guys that we said were ready and were model employees and ready to go.

Speaker 32 Seamus

Speaker 32 is on here.

Speaker 32 And again, his injury history, March of 2008, strained right something and twisted left ankle.

Speaker 32 Gerald Briscoe, like look and good promo, white skin.

Speaker 32 Steve Kern comments: Seamus is really trying hard to understand storytelling and matches, but he still needs experience to become more seasoned.

Speaker 32 Tom Pritchard, progressing well, has the passion and dedication,

Speaker 32 needs more ring work.

Speaker 32 Dusty was high on him.

Speaker 32 I don't, you know, I'm not understanding what the

Speaker 32 graphics are at the top when it says ring April 7, May 7, June 7, promo April 7. Is that a numerical ranking? Is it a grade? I guess it is.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I guess it's a grade.

Speaker 5 T.J. Wilson got a 10 in attitude.
Well, so did Seamus, actually.

Speaker 32 So did Seamus. So did Nick Nemeth.

Speaker 5 Everyone just has a attitude. So did Nemeth.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 32 Evan Bourne only got an eight in June. He was getting a a bad attitude.

Speaker 5 Yeah, maybe that explains Dr. Tom Fritchard's comment.
None.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Dusty's comment, good for him.

Speaker 32 Yeah, because he went to work for ECW. Yeah.

Speaker 32 Steve Kern comments, Matt has already appeared for ECW. Yeah, good for him.

Speaker 32 TJ Wilson.

Speaker 32 Everybody was kind of high on him.

Speaker 5 He must have been high to get that haircut. What the hell is that?

Speaker 32 Yeah, that's not real attractive.

Speaker 32 The Bella twins, Nicole and Brianna Garcia Kalachi. I feel like people should goddamn stick to a fucking name.
What is it with the hyphenated Napica name?

Speaker 32 No hyphens.

Speaker 32 Especially when your first names are already multisyllabic.

Speaker 5 I like the injury history. Nicole, February 8th, strep throat.

Speaker 32 Strep throat.

Speaker 32 Brianna, sinus infection.

Speaker 5 From India.

Speaker 32 From India.

Speaker 32 Good God. Wasn't that when Steve Regal, they sent, or William Regal, they sent him to India and it almost killed him, didn't it? Wasn't that where he got that horrible disease? I think so.

Speaker 32 Gerald Briscoe comments, twins work well and ring as partners, have moves that work as a team. Can move up, seem to have a heel attitude.

Speaker 32 Steve Kern comments, we feel they are both ready. Tom Pritchard, they're getting better each outing and would do well in any situation on the card or any brand.

Speaker 32 Dusty, their improvements have been very evident.

Speaker 32 So they must have known that somebody in the office wanted these fucking girls to go up because how could they all get this

Speaker 32 many raves and then turn out to

Speaker 32 do what they did?

Speaker 5 Well, the other thing is you have to remember where we are now versus where we are then, where we were then. How many other women were there? How many women are on the main roster who couldn't work?

Speaker 5 It was still the divas era, and they were part of that, but they actually went through developmental as opposed to

Speaker 5 you know, you win the diva contest. Now, here's uh

Speaker 5 walk out to walk, idiot, walk by the hives. That was the theme song for one of the diva winners: walk, idiot, walk.
But anyway, that's uh, the Bellas. What'd you think of Colt Cabana?

Speaker 32 Well, hold on,

Speaker 32 Drew McIntyre. We got it, he got eights in the ring, ring, eights and a nine on promo, tens on attitude, had no injury history.

Speaker 32 And Kern commented,

Speaker 32 doing a tremendous job as half the tag team champions. We've tried Drew in singles.
He seems to have more of a problem telling a story by himself, but we feel strong that Drew will be an asset.

Speaker 32 Look forward to educating him. Tom Pritchard said, Drew is progressing fine, has good size, finding his confidence, has become a good worker, has a lot of promise.

Speaker 32 Dusty, Drew continues to impress, but in my opinion, is not ready at this point in time.

Speaker 32 Steamboat, you could tell that his attitude in the ring has completely changed from when he was sent up a while back.

Speaker 32 So areas for improvement.

Speaker 32 Experience and continue within-ring confidence and relax. But boy, he looks different back then.

Speaker 32 He doesn't look good as a young guy. He looks better as a grizzled veteran.

Speaker 5 The facial hair adds so much.

Speaker 32 But anyway, let's get to Coke Cabana because, yes, this fucking clown was actually in developmental at this point in time.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 how long had he been in the business at this? We don't know what year this, somewhere around 2008, 2009. He'd been in the business 10 years at this point.

Speaker 32 and

Speaker 32 let's see uh steve kern colt is pretty settled in his ways i don't foresee him making any changes in his work or body it is what it is and if there's a place for him with this character he's ready that's the best honest review there is

Speaker 32 well tom pritchard comments colt has a combination of styles that are similar to a regal and finley because that's what he was trying to do in their system was do he colt did study world of sport wrestling and was very good at that and we actually on ring of honor shows booked him a couple times against one dave taylor and somebody else one time that could do that

Speaker 32 and when he was serious and did that you know it was okay but he couldn't stop being the unfunny

Speaker 32 unfunny face making, unfunny joke telling, unfunny match having comedian.

Speaker 32 And it just, you couldn't put him in the ring with anybody that you cared about wanting to use seriously because he would funny them up and people would be laughing at him.

Speaker 32 But Tom says he has got away from a lot of the hokiness,

Speaker 32 at the same time, keeping some of his entertainment factor,

Speaker 32 needs to work on his body and lose the baby fat around the waist.

Speaker 32 But I think this guy could have some entertaining and competitive matches. He needs to combine enough enough showboat with wrestling, which I think he can do.

Speaker 32 Dusty, Colt is charismatic and exciting, but most brands have seen him. So in order to move forward with Colt, we must have some direction.
And otherwise,

Speaker 32 we keep sending him to all these dark matches. Tell us what you want us to do different with him because.

Speaker 5 Oh, is that what that means?

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 32 Most brands have seen him. He had done a dark match probably on

Speaker 32 each show they had split by then, Raw and SmackDown.

Speaker 32 In order to move forward with Cold, give us some direction. If you don't like what we're sending you, what do you want this fucking guy to do?

Speaker 32 But yeah, area for improvement. This month's initiative, get in better shape and continue to find his niche.

Speaker 5 He's still looking.

Speaker 32 Oh, and Tiffany, old Taryn Terrell.

Speaker 32 Apparently, she got fives across the board on Ring and Promo.

Speaker 5 Oh, no, she got a six for June for promo.

Speaker 32 Oh, okay, for promo. Dusty's comments, work in progress.

Speaker 5 Do you know her?

Speaker 32 No, but goddamn, that's the lowest score that anybody got on these fucking

Speaker 32 little grades here that slipped out. We didn't give people, again, numerical scores and shit.

Speaker 32 When I was getting these or doing these, I got to get in the files and dig up some of the OVW stuff. And there was never anything particularly helpful that came from the office on feedback.

Speaker 32 But we would try to encapsulate,

Speaker 32 you know, the talent to send to the office. This guy's a better babyface or a better heel.
This guy's in rotten shape, but he's entertaining.

Speaker 32 This guy's in great shape, can't stick his thumb in his ass. Whatever the case, we would try to give them a description instead of putting a numerical value to anything.

Speaker 32 And we figured we didn't need to put pictures on the sheet because they signed signed them so they knew what they look like.

Speaker 5 So who would this have been going to? John Laurenitis's office?

Speaker 32 Yeah, well, yeah, it would have been Laurenitis then, whoever was in talent relations, or if Laurenitis, because see, that's the thing.

Speaker 32 A lot of times, especially when Laurenitis first took over talent relations, he didn't want to sit down and watch the OVW-TV.

Speaker 32 So they would make somebody in the office do it. One time they were punishing Bruce, they made him do it.

Speaker 32 But most of the time, for the first few years, nobody up there even, Kevin Kelly watched the TV every week because he wanted to see it.

Speaker 32 But none of the actual goddamn office people ever watched the TV because it was a wrestling show.

Speaker 32 They weren't going to watch that for goddamn entertainment. And

Speaker 32 that's why they, you know.

Speaker 32 They had to redo everybody when they got there because they were making up all the bullshit entertainment gimmicks for them instead of concentrating on what kind of talent they had and what they could do

Speaker 32 so it was it was yeah

Speaker 32 keep track of the developmental talent well let somebody else do that we're too busy trying to pretend to be writers up here well that's our look at scw talent reports report cards from some year in the past that we're not sure of now jim if you were a wrestler and you weren't happy with the book report you got i'd sue the son of a bitch you may want to sue Well, I know who to call the man who gets even with everybody that variates or vacates the legal standings of America and goes into the shady side of life and misrepresents you, mistreats you,

Speaker 32 gives you a wrongful termination or a deadly illness by poisoning or chemicals or any of those other types of horrible things.

Speaker 32 Or if you go to jail in West Virginia and they don't treat you right, you can call this man.

Speaker 5 Call Stephen P. News,

Speaker 5 Stephen,

Speaker 5 if you need to.

Speaker 5 And outlaw much show or two

Speaker 5 because of the rest.

Speaker 32 Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you are correct. That is right.
Stephen P. New

Speaker 32 at new lawoffice.com. 87750 Steve can be your champion in the court of law and order.

Speaker 32 As a matter of fact, Brian, they should have made CSI about Stephen P. New

Speaker 32 or Law and Order.

Speaker 32 That they or all those series.

Speaker 5 CSI

Speaker 5 was jarring all of them. CSI West Virginia.

Speaker 32 CSI West Virginia. That's right.

Speaker 32 CSI West Virginia, they'll show you how to track cows through the wilderness and trail the raccoons and the opossums and then track them into court and sue them for every penny they've got.

Speaker 32 And that's where newlawoffice.com comes in. Because if you find a raccoon that's got a lot of money,

Speaker 32 well, he'll sue the pelt off that little raccoon's ass.

Speaker 5 Once again, I don't have any disclaimer to give on this one. Fuck the raccoon.
Stephen Pinu, get even with Stephen, new lawoffice.com. 877-50 Steve.

Speaker 32 Where do you think he got that coonskin cap from?

Speaker 5 He doesn't like raccoons or weasels. So more about that in the future.

Speaker 32 Yeah,

Speaker 32 he's going to have weasels britches.

Speaker 5 Jim, let's, we ran along with just about every single thing we had planned to do and lots of things that just popped right up. Why don't we end with a short edition of Guess the Program

Speaker 5 to put you in a good mood, to put me in a good mood, and put the audience more importantly in a good mood to leave the people on an up note all right this one right here let me find oh i have the ticket stub i predict i'm gonna i'm gonna win two out of three here i predict of course guess the program i go through programs in my collection i quiz jim he guesses every single detail he can

Speaker 5 about the town the building the location the wrestlers and everything else

Speaker 32 we're trying for the year and the and the town is what we're trying for.

Speaker 5 And here I have two ticket stubs. Which building are these in? These are, oh, they are here.
Okay. The opening contest, Jim,

Speaker 5 one fall, 20-minute time limit. Ramon Torres

Speaker 5 versus Fred Blassey.

Speaker 32 Lord, the opening match.

Speaker 5 A tag team encounter: 20 minutes, one fall.

Speaker 5 Enrique Torres

Speaker 5 and Enrique Romero

Speaker 5 versus Curtis Iukea

Speaker 5 and Kit Fox.

Speaker 5 The next contest, 45 minutes, two out of three falls.

Speaker 5 Sandar Zabo

Speaker 5 versus the Alaskan.

Speaker 5 And the main event, two out of three falls, two-hour time limit.

Speaker 5 Lou Thes

Speaker 5 vs. Eduard Carpentier.

Speaker 32 She, Minelli Shelly. All right.

Speaker 32 At At first, when you mentioned the Torres and a Blassey, I was thinking we were going to be potentially in Georgia.

Speaker 32 But this, then Enrique Torres, is that Enrique Romero? Is that Ricky Romero?

Speaker 5 I would have to look. I don't know.
Let me see if there's a picture.

Speaker 32 King Curtis and Kit Fi. Sandor Zabo is an old-timer, but this would have been toward the end of his career.

Speaker 32 One would think

Speaker 32 that Thez and Carpentier,

Speaker 32 two out of three falls with a two-hour time limit.

Speaker 32 That would be for the NWA title. One would think is that after the,

Speaker 32 I know you can't answer me, but the disputed decision which led to Carpentier and Thez both being recognized for a short period of time was in 1957.

Speaker 32 With Torres and Blassey

Speaker 32 in the opening match,

Speaker 32 this has got to be on, and Sandor Zabo, this got to be on the West Coast.

Speaker 5 Well, let me just say opening match as it's listed here. They may have added matches, I don't know.

Speaker 32 Well, yeah, but then also, you've got King Curtis,

Speaker 32 who would have to be almost a rookie at this point. And what year did he start? I'm trying to remember.
Or could this have been

Speaker 32 is everybody taking a vacation to hawaii

Speaker 32 and he was already there

Speaker 32 and i don't know who the alaskan was but i bet you it wasn't mic or j york

Speaker 32 this is either california or hawaii from 1959

Speaker 5 Impressive. This is San Francisco Wrestling, the Civic Auditorium.
I have here ticket stubs for Section F3, Row D, seats 6 and 7, August 16th, 1960.

Speaker 5 Ah!

Speaker 5 And on the cover,

Speaker 5 and this is Referee Magazine. On the cover, Lou Thes vs.
Eduard Carpentier,

Speaker 5 Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, Tuesday night, 2 hours, 2 out of 3 falls.

Speaker 5 International Champ versus NAWA Champ.

Speaker 32 So they

Speaker 32 obscured that a little bit.

Speaker 5 A little bit. Let me get another one here.

Speaker 5 Oh, this one's interesting, I guess. Let's pull this one out.

Speaker 5 Jim, the opening contest.

Speaker 5 Randy and Bill Mulkey versus Colt Steele and Jack Hart.

Speaker 32 And by the way, Jack Hart was Barry Horowitz.

Speaker 5 Eddie Roberts versus Mitch Snow.

Speaker 32 Good lord. Mitch Snow

Speaker 32 was one of the young guys that was trained by Nelson Royal up in Mooresville, North Carolina.

Speaker 5 Brady Boone versus T. Joe Kahn.

Speaker 32 And Brady Boone

Speaker 5 Robinsdale High School.

Speaker 32 But they gave him a gimmick in the WWF for a brief period of time.

Speaker 5 Battlecat.

Speaker 32 Battlecat, that's right. And TJo Khan

Speaker 32 was from Minneapolis also and came down with guys like Warlord and remember of Al Blake, Vladimir Pietrov.

Speaker 5 The Tahitian Prince versus Dennis Brown.

Speaker 32 Didny Brown was the former world junior heavyweight champion when it was a job guy belt. And Dusty liked him and he used him a lot in Florida.

Speaker 32 The Tahitian Prince was that Samuel was one of that generation generation of Samoans.

Speaker 32 I can't remember which one.

Speaker 5 I'm not sure.

Speaker 5 Ron Simmons and Scott Hall versus Shaska Watley and Ed the Bull Gantner.

Speaker 32 Pez Watley, obviously from Chattanooga, standout amateur, broke in for Gulis and Welch in the mid-70s. was doing the Shaska Watley thing at this period of time, which is going to be 1987.

Speaker 32 Ed the Bull Gantner had got broke in in Florida. He had a football background, didn't last long.
Ron Simmons was a rookie

Speaker 32 at this point.

Speaker 32 Maybe he started in 86.

Speaker 32 Ed Scott Hall was still floating around before he was going to be more famous when he became a Cuban.

Speaker 32 Keep going.

Speaker 5 For a tag title, I will not name.

Speaker 5 No disqualification.

Speaker 5 The Mod Squad, Basher and Spike

Speaker 5 versus the Southern Boys, Steve Armstrong and Tracy Smothers.

Speaker 32 Did the Mod Squad have their manager, J.D. Costello, with them?

Speaker 5 He is not listed here, and here's a picture. No, it appears they may be managed by Bill Dundee.

Speaker 32 Aha, yes, as a matter of fact, they were now that you think about it, because

Speaker 32 Dundee, well, now that may have been a picture from Kansas City, though, because Dundee was with them when they were in Kansas City.

Speaker 32 Keep going and then I'll explain all of this.

Speaker 5 For a title I will not name, Mike Rotunda versus Kevin Sullivan,

Speaker 5 and the main event, Barry Wyndham versus Big Bubba.

Speaker 32 No trouble.

Speaker 32 This was in Florida. First of all, and it was after that Crockett Promotions had bought Florida Championship Wrestling or Championship Wrestling from Florida, whatever the legal title was.

Speaker 32 They bought the territory. The Mokies were there because Dusty wanted to reward Randy and Bill for those

Speaker 32 memorable TV matches and

Speaker 32 their dedication and their determination. And he sent them to a territory.
And it's that Colt Steele, another guy, the world's biggest calves, was trained by Nelson Royal up in Mooresville.

Speaker 32 Barry Horowitz at that time had worked Florida before for Dusty.

Speaker 32 Mitch Snow and Brady Boone, T. Joe Kahn, Denny Brown, they were all guys that had worked for Crockett underneath and were getting a chance to be more featured.

Speaker 32 The mod squad was Mac and Jim Jeffers from

Speaker 32 Greenville, South Carolina. And

Speaker 32 they were a brother team that did jobs on Crockett's TV, but J.D. Costello had been

Speaker 32 the goddamn ring announcer in Greenville and

Speaker 32 wanted to be a wrestling manager and had was friends with Mac and Jim and paid to have a video done with them as this gimmick, the mod squad, where they were the police brutality thing and he was their manager in the odd suits.

Speaker 32 And I called Randy Hales and got him booked in Memphis for a little while at one point. And then they came back home and Dusty wanted to use the mod squad gimmick.

Speaker 32 So he sent them at one one point to Kansas City and when they bought that, and then at one point to Florida. And Steve Armstrong and Tracy Smothers, the Southern boys,

Speaker 32 they had been in Florida when they bought the territory. And that was the first time we got to work with them on a couple of the Crockett TVs in 87,

Speaker 32 three years before they came into the rest of the territory. And

Speaker 32 Barry Wyndham, Mike Ratunda, Kevin Sullivan, Florida names, and Bubba in the main event with Barry because

Speaker 32 this was during the period of time.

Speaker 32 Dusty had started Bubba in spring of 86,

Speaker 32 worked the angle with him and

Speaker 32 Dusty and Bubba through the bashes in 86 and the summer and the fall.

Speaker 32 And then as 87 started, they bought Kansas City. He wanted to send Bubba to Kansas City for a little while.

Speaker 32 He sent him to Florida, and then he sent him to the UWF when they bought Watts out and put the UWF belt on him because

Speaker 32 he was so

Speaker 32 confident in Bubba. He wanted to make him more than just my bodyguard.
He was going to become a top heel.

Speaker 32 And that's why he was sending him to these different places and putting belts on him, letting him work as a single. Akbar managed him in.

Speaker 32 the UWF and he was always being pushed in these places, even if he wasn't on the national TV, because the thought was to bring him back to Charlotte and,

Speaker 32 you know, have him main event Starcade one day. But

Speaker 32 things got in the way of that. He got a shitty payoff for Starcade 87, and Hulk Hogan needed an opponent, and the big boss man was born.
But so this was Florida, and I would bet you by the...

Speaker 32 number of matches, even though there wasn't a lot of high-priced talent, this had to be either St.

Speaker 32 Petersburg at the Bayfront Center, if they were still running that big a building, or Tampa or potentially Miami Beach.

Speaker 32 And it was definitely in the later stages of or the mid-stages, summertime of 1987.

Speaker 32 How close am I? You're pretty close.

Speaker 5 I'll tell you the town because you missed completely on that. Fort Myers, the Lee Civic Center.

Speaker 32 Fort Myers. All right.

Speaker 5 Friday, April 17th, 1987.

Speaker 32 And they were having one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight matches in Fort Myers, which wasn't a major market town, but all these guys were cheap and they all needed experience.

Speaker 5 Well, let me ask you this, because I have a program. I actually got a bunch of programs from this period of time recently.
This is 10 days earlier, April 7th in Tallahassee.

Speaker 5 Pretty much the same crew with one big difference. Well, Rick Flair's in the main event against Barry Wyndham.
They spell spell his name wrong here in the program.

Speaker 5 But it's the Mod Squad and the Southern Boys for the Florida tag titles. I didn't say before.

Speaker 5 Rotunda, Florida Heavyweight Champion versus Ed Gantner, Brady Boone versus Shashka Watley, the Mulkies versus Eddie Roberts and Mitch Snow,

Speaker 5 Kevin Sullivan, TJ Khan, and the Tahitian Prince, and I think it is Samu,

Speaker 5 versus Scott Hall, Ron Simmons, and Stan Lane.

Speaker 5 When did Stan get the call to join the Midnight Express? This is April 7th. Well,

Speaker 32 I don't think he made that show.

Speaker 5 Oh, okay.

Speaker 32 Because,

Speaker 32 can I reach? Hold on. Let me.
I'm taking my headset off.

Speaker 5 Jim Cornette is taking his headset off. He's walking across the room probably to get that Midnight Express scrapbook.

Speaker 32 Putting my headset on,

Speaker 32 going to 1987,

Speaker 32 trying to find 1987.

Speaker 32 Uh, because I'm going to say that it was yes, April 4th at Atlanta TV and that night in Boston at the Garden was Stan's debut. And then on the 7th, we did TV in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Speaker 32 So, Stan, but see,

Speaker 32 those cards would be booked three weeks, four weeks in advance for the TV advertising, and Dennis didn't disappear

Speaker 32 until

Speaker 32 March 25th.

Speaker 32 So

Speaker 32 we pretty much,

Speaker 32 between March 25th and April 4th,

Speaker 32 looked for Dennis, couldn't find Dennis, determined that Dennis wasn't coming back. Dusty said, We got to do something.

Speaker 32 I came up with and pitched Tom Pritchard, and Dusty had already said, Well, what about Stan Lane?

Speaker 32 He got him up to the fucking office in Charlotte in time for us to all say yes, and he debuted April 4th. So we were not dicking around.

Speaker 5 And obviously you wouldn't have been managing Bubba on the 17th against Wyndham.

Speaker 32 No, no,

Speaker 32 he was down there by himself. On the 17th, I was in Macon, Georgia with the Midnight Express against Ron and Jimmy Garvin.

Speaker 32 But now, you know what?

Speaker 32 Having said that, in Athens, Georgia on the 16th,

Speaker 32 the Midnight Bubba and myself had an eight-man tag with Wahoo, Wyndham, and Ron and Jimmy Garvin.

Speaker 32 So, and then he went from Athens to goddamn

Speaker 32 against Wyndham. Or was it Fort Myers?

Speaker 5 Yeah. Against Barry Wyndham.
But listen to the schedule. So this is 87, so this is really late for Florida Wrestling.
April 12th, Orlando. It's a Sunday.
Monday, West Palm, April 13th.

Speaker 5 Tuesday to 14th, Tampa. Wednesday to 15th, Jacksonville.
Thursday to 16th, Port Ritchie at the Southland Roller Palace. Friday, April 17th, Fort Myers.
Saturday, April 18th, Lakeland.

Speaker 5 Back to Orlando, Sunday, April 19th, a week later. Melbourne, April 21st.
April 22nd, a Wednesday, Miami.

Speaker 5 April 24th, Friday, Arcadia. And Sarasota on the 25th on a Saturday.

Speaker 5 So, you know, even though the promotion was dying to the point where Crockett took it over, and, you know, that didn't help it save it or anything. They still had a full schedule of events.

Speaker 32 Oh, yeah. Well, in those days, you had those those buildings booked months and months in advance.
And,

Speaker 32 you know, when business went down, you were still running the towns. You had to run the towns.
You didn't cancel towns in those days because then the regular fans in each

Speaker 32 Louisville ran every week for

Speaker 32 20-something years at the Louisville Gardens. I don't remember a show ever being canceled except for the ice storm that delayed the Jerry Lawler Coyote Calhoun match for a week.

Speaker 32 The DJ from Louisville, Coyote, the fucking local people sold the building out. I've told this story, but the wrestlers couldn't get here from Nashville because of the ice.

Speaker 32 So they brought the same card back the next week. But in all those years, you didn't cancel shows low advance.
Don't pay the fucking boys.

Speaker 32 But you didn't cancel shows otherwise. So up until the end, they ran the schedule that they had to run.
and then they just said, Well, we can't do this anymore.

Speaker 5 All right, Jim, one more program. This has been fun here today.

Speaker 5 This one

Speaker 5 just

Speaker 5 written what it says on the cover here. The opener, one fall 15-minute time limit at 8:30 p.m.

Speaker 5 Jolting Joe Blanchard versus Bronco Lubich.

Speaker 5 Oh, good lord, preliminary one fall 20 minutes. George Scott versus Johnny Walker.

Speaker 5 The semifinal, a terrific six-man tag team match, star-studded teams.

Speaker 5 This team,

Speaker 5 Tim Woods, Mr. Wrestling, Thunderbolt Patterson, Jolton Joe Blanchard, total team weight 746 pounds, versus this team, Bronco Lubich, Chris Markoff, Toru Tanaka, total weight 746 pounds.

Speaker 5 The Europeans manager, George Harris, will be in charge of this trio. Two out of three falls, 45-minute time limit.

Speaker 5 The first main event, Kowalski answers Wahoo's challenge and accepts

Speaker 5 Indian strap match, Chief Wahoo McDaniel versus Waldek, Waldek, whatever you want to call it. Killer Kowalski.

Speaker 32 W-L-A-D-E-K, it's Polish. And yeah, there's a variety of pronunciations.

Speaker 5 Both gladiators asked the promoter to make it one fall to the finish and to allow it under brass knuckles rules so everything goes.

Speaker 5 And the second main event,

Speaker 5 Coliseum fans in a frenzy demand this match. Let me go back to the cover and read what it says here.

Speaker 5 Primitive maniacal action on tap tonight.

Speaker 5 This is definitely a championship championship match.

Speaker 5 Rugged Johnny Valentine, Texas champion. Well, I gave that away.
Fuck. Rugged Johnny Valentine versus formidable challenger Pepper Gomez.

Speaker 5 Psychological intervention of ring announcer Florentino Sheldon, who will second Pepper. See story inside program.

Speaker 32 Well, we'll see that story in a minute.

Speaker 32 I know it's Houston already. Okay, so you didn't really give too much away.

Speaker 32 With Blanchard and Lubich being, it's a Texas gimmick. Blanchard Lubich in a single and then coming back in a six-man.
It's a captain's match.

Speaker 32 They stretched the card without having to pay extra guys back then.

Speaker 32 They did the same thing in Dallas. One time, Dennis Condry.

Speaker 32 The minimum was $50 and the spot show was the shits, but he worked twice, so he got $63.

Speaker 32 They gave him a $13 extra payoff for wrestling twice. Like they shaved that fucking right down to the nub.
It's as much as we can give you.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 Blanchard and Lou Bitch, obviously Texas names. Joe would later promote

Speaker 32 San Antonio and

Speaker 32 Sire Tully.

Speaker 32 Bronco was a great guy, became a referee later on. George Scott.

Speaker 32 Brother of Sandy Scott,

Speaker 32 my least favorite booker ever in history, George Scott. Boy, two brothers couldn't be more different.
Well, Bruce and Tom.

Speaker 32 Johnny Walker would later on be Mr. Wrestling number two.
Tim Woods would be Mr. Wrestling No.
One. Thunderbolt Patterson would be Thunderbolt.

Speaker 32 Chris Markoff and Professor Tanaka. George Harris, George Tuton Harris, George Bunk Harris, the baby blimp.

Speaker 32 was from Tennessee and was a childhood friend of the Welch families and got into business that way, and ended up working a ring crew and maintenance for Crockett Promotions in the late 80s.

Speaker 32 And Killer Kowowski and Wahoo, and Johnny Valentine, and Pepper Gomez, that's what gave it away. Wahoo, Valentine,

Speaker 32 and Gomez were huge in Houston.

Speaker 32 And goddamn, by

Speaker 32 some of these names, I want to,

Speaker 32 I just think because of the main events, it would be early 70s, but at the same time,

Speaker 32 the preliminaries, I might even go 68 or 69. I'll split the difference.
Houston, Texas, 1970.

Speaker 5 The date, Thursday,

Speaker 5 February 11th, 1971.

Speaker 5 Corpus Christi, Texas.

Speaker 32 Corpus Christi.

Speaker 5 The Sheldon and Emerson's Memorial Coliseum for their weekly run.

Speaker 32 Son of a bitch. I thought it was Houston.

Speaker 5 20 cents.

Speaker 32 Corpus Christi never got fucking cards like this in the 80s.

Speaker 32 Corpus Christi was not one of the major towns at that point in time, except when we did the clash there and

Speaker 32 Moscaris drew all the fucking money.

Speaker 32 Corpus Christi, well, son of a bitch.

Speaker 32 Loved the holiday inn's room service there about the holiday Inn and Corpus Christi in the late 80s, early 90s, mid-90s. Wonderful room service right there on the water.

Speaker 5 Prices this week, ringside, $4.

Speaker 5 Dress circle, $3.

Speaker 5 Balcony, $2.

Speaker 5 All children under 10, $1 balcony when accompanied by an adult. Admission.

Speaker 5 And wrestling's on channel 3, K-I-I-I, if that's what this is.

Speaker 5 Saturday, 10:30 p.m. in color.
It is in color.

Speaker 5 So there we go. That is this.
Now,

Speaker 32 what was the story on this fucking weird

Speaker 32 information they had going on?

Speaker 5 Psychological intervention of ring announcer Florentino Sheldon, who will second Pepper.

Speaker 5 Pandemonium to engulf Coliseum as Valentine risks belt. Opposite fiery Pepper Gomez and Wahu Teskowalski.

Speaker 5 Let me see specifically about this Florentino. Here we go.

Speaker 5 It was because of this match that our good friend, ring announcer Florentino Sheldon, Jr.,

Speaker 5 became the victim of a pulverizing Johnny Valentine right to the jaw that saw the rotund official catapult to the canvas in agonizing pain. Our good friend, the rotund Sheldon.

Speaker 5 Sheldon told this writer that all he said to the champion was that the match was over and that that unexpectedly Johnny approached him and before he knew it he felt the impact of what he thought was a cannonball on the side of his face and the lights seemed to dim and the whole coliseum was whirling and momentarily his eyes closed in involuntary slumber.

Speaker 5 It was an experience, he says.

Speaker 5 Sheldon, who has been a good friend of Gomez for many years, will be Pepper's second in this match.

Speaker 5 He says that he has seen Valentine so many times that he knows his moves to the letter, and that he will avenge Johnny's brutal attack by signaling Pepper the champ's next move.

Speaker 5 It is a psychological impulse more than anything else, Sheldon says, and that he strongly believes it will prove effective.

Speaker 5 We told him we would have a stretcher ready for him just in case.

Speaker 5 And he gave us a faint smile,

Speaker 5 very faint.

Speaker 5 And there it is.

Speaker 32 You think Paul Bosch wrote that? He's using a lot of big words.

Speaker 5 I don't know. I mean, this is obviously a Houston town.
These are Houston wrestlers.

Speaker 5 I don't know. We'll see what we can find.
I have a whole bunch of these from Corpus Christi, so we'll see what that I could use them now in this game.

Speaker 5 So we'll see what we can find.

Speaker 5 But there it is. Guess the program.
Where is this thing? And with that, the drive-through is closed.

Speaker 5 Drama.

Speaker 5 All right. Of course, we'll be back next week.
And songs will return next week. Send your songs to cornydrathru at gmail.com.
We have a lot of questions. We ran long on stuff.

Speaker 5 We will get to them next week.

Speaker 5 What else was I going to say? Ah, go through the archive, patreon.com slash cornet. Get episodes going back to 2013.
Patreon.com slash cornet. Don't forget the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Speaker 5 Just go to YouTube and search for Jim Cornette. It'll come right up.
Full episodes, clips of the episodes, omnibus collections, all with the Travis Echo artwork you love.

Speaker 5 The official Jim Cornette YouTube channel. We have t-shirts on sale for this show, and they are on the YouTube channel and also ArcadianVanguard.com.

Speaker 5 And of course, on the shop app, powered by our good friends at Shopify. Cornettes Collectibles at JimCornet.com.
What's going on, Jim?

Speaker 32 JimCornet.com. That's what's going on.
Go there now and send me money.

Speaker 5 That's right, at jimcornet.com. The drive-through is brought to you by the law offices, Stephen P.
New, 87750 Steve. Get even with Stephen, newlawoffice.com.
And with that, we're out of here.

Speaker 5 We'll see you in a few days on the experience. And next week, back here on the drive-thru for Jim Cornette.
I'm the grip, Ryan Last.

Speaker 5 Tally Ho.

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