Episode 390

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Hello again, friends!

Thank you all, our friends.

It's a nice, sunny day.

We're in a nice, sunny mood.

and welcome to another edition of jim cornett's drive-thru fun and games and laughter and all the usual things and all the usual suspects i'm your host the great brian last and here he is the main suspect mr jim cornet

ah you know how

you know it it it you took enough of a pause in between

playing with your organ and actually speaking to people that I thought just for a second, the split second that the thought hit my head, do you think he's realized that what that sounded like?

He's going to just start over again and then he launched right.

Oh, come on.

That was a special version.

Sunny day.

That was a special sunny version.

Yeah, sunny day version of it.

That sounds like what they've already got warnings out in southern Indiana, Brian.

Derby week continues here in Louisville.

I'm telling you that this week, above all other weeks of the year in Louisville, Kentucky, people just diddle around and don't do, don't do diddly squat, as Mama Cornette used to say.

As Bo Diddley used to say, and as on,

say again.

As Bo Diddley used to say.

Well, no, Diddley did squat.

That's why those videos were.

But nevertheless.

The week of Derby is all the festivities and all the, and people just ask off.

This morning, I'm trying to get the weather update on TV and the weather guy and one of the anchors are out with the Bellarman University basketball coach at Churchill Downs shooting baskets instead of giving the weather.

Nobody cares.

On Oaks Day, Friday,

obviously, convenience stores, gas stations, hospitals, things of that nature need to stay open.

But if you've got a small business, you're just fuck it Friday at noon for the rest of the weekend.

And everybody just

have all the festivities and the parties and things and such.

And this is a shitty fucking weather week.

And the Thunder Over Louisville was already canceled, which they said cost the economic impact to the Derby City was $125 million

that Thunder Over Louisville brings that it didn't bring.

And then they cleaned up the flood to get ready for.

you know, all of this week's festivities.

And now today,

severe storms are going to come through this evening.

And

hopefully, not anything like what we had a few weeks back.

And then the front is going to settle over us and it's going to rain waves to tomorrow, basically Wednesday, Thurby, which Thurby is the Thursday before Derby.

You see what they did there, Brian?

Does anyone else use these names?

You have like a name for every fortnight.

No, these are a fifth name.

Today, as we speak here, is 50 Tuesday tuesday at churchill downs

because the area code of louisville is 502 and that's all the local people that wouldn't be caught within 20 miles of churchill downs on derby day if they're not multi-millionaires in the goddamn box with the barn stables or whatever

uh they go to the on tuesday 50 tuesday that's for the locals And then the marks come in from all over the world.

Sounds like it's for the cops, 5-0 Tuesday.

Well, you know,

some people will be pulled over, but it's going to rain Wednesday.

This is going to rain for Thurby.

Now it's going to rain for Friday, the Oaks Day.

They're expecting rain right at the

time for the Oaks going to the racing that Friday afternoon.

And then now they're saying it's going to hold over into Saturday morning when all these

rich,

insufferable white, blonde, middle-aged women with their goddamn lunatic Carmen Miranda hats are out there trying to get on television.

It's going to be pissing on them.

This is goddamn ridiculous.

And they're expecting another two inches of rain over the course of this week to add to the nearly a foot or so that

we're heavy.

So this is a wonderful fucking Derby week festivity here in Louisville.

You got it?

Do you have some sunshine, Brian, that you can spare up there?

Why don't they just postpone thunder and bring it back at the end of the summer?

summer?

You can't do you.

Well, then it'd just be standing alone, and it would be odd.

And also, this thing is like planning some kind of military exercise.

They go from year to year.

They have dozens of military planes.

They have the largest fireworks display in North America.

Just focus on that.

Just focus on a minimized version of Thunder, just a big firework show.

Well, then that's if you minimize thunder, then that's what AEW got when their exploding ring turned out to be a popcorn fart.

See, if people are used to seeing the whole day of shit and the bomber jets and the fucking wing walkers and I don't know, and the mimes, mimes are everywhere.

And then, boom, they don't blow everything up.

It just, it wouldn't work.

I don't think it was really about the explosion.

It was more about Eddie Kingston showing his friendship by saving, jumping on the body of someone and saving them from nothing.

but it was the uh thought that counts and is that the way eddie kingston shows his friendship by laying on another man in front of thousands of people and humping on him

i thought that was the way that a

dachshund

i don't think there were but i don't think there were thousands of people

uh well you got me there sorry about that but but i did discover one thing brian i'm tracking i'm getting closer to one of my old nemesises nemesis nemesises nemesis one of my old foes,

the nim, the nemesi.

Well, that would be, then there'd be two of them, and I think there's only one.

I've talked about the moles, right?

Yes, you've talked about your nemesis, the moles.

That's I've talked about the mesoles.

People think about Leward Jim's big nemesises or nemesis.

They say

the moles.

The moles are first on the list.

Well, did I mention to you that that son of a bitch, I think, because I've looked this up on the interwebs, and it's not like a bunch of moles.

It's like they're they're very solitary they're loners or and every boy when you see one you know why

but they it's just one that does like just non-stop

tunneling through the yard in in a rather than multiple of them right well you you say they're loners is it just one mole

Well, that's the thing.

They don't like to be on top of each other.

So if you see a lot of mole activity, it's in a specific area, it's probably one mole.

It looks like that.

How the fuck would one little thing like that do all of that?

But it may very well be is what I'm trying to explain to you here.

You're fighting me every step of the way.

I'm trying to learn.

I'm just trying to learn.

Yeah, well, when we stop learning,

when we stop learning, you know, he looks like a mole.

He looks like the mole man.

Come to think of it.

Fantastic.

What was that?

Fantastic four number three?

Stop it.

John Hello, no.

I know the cover you're talking about, but that's not nice.

But the other day, what did you say the other day?

Broccolitis?

Broccolitis.

He's

little boy, your head starts turning into a lump of broccoli, but never back to the mole.

So, did I tell you over the wintertime, Brian, that when we had that foot of snow and ice, that little son of a bitch got stuck.

He couldn't get out.

He was coming up to the surface of the dirt, but he couldn't get through the foot of ice.

Good thing about that now.

Oh, wow.

You had to go winter.

It'd be harder to claw through.

It was so frozen and it was so cold and it was so thick.

So when the shit finally melted off, it looked like somebody had

done a relief map of a bobsled run all over this place right outside the back windows where he was trying to freaking out, trying to get out.

He moved landscaping stones underneath the ice.

It was that, it was that frantic, right?

And I'm thinking, well, maybe this son bitch got the idea he's not welcome around the house here and he can at least go way in the back where I'm not going to be just right on top of it.

And obviously, of a Sunday, I went out because that's the only nice, decent, peaceful, good weather day we've had.

I had to go out and I did some weeding and whacking and hauling and wheeling, barrowing, and more on that later.

But

I'm, I'm, remember, I've told you there's a drain I got to clean out on my back walk there.

And if not, it fills up, if it gets stopped up, it fills up an area with water about a foot deep where there's walls on either side of it.

And I looked down in that area and there was that fucking mole.

He was running around like a little bumper car because it was deep enough.

They can't climb.

They can tunnel the shit out of stuff, but they can't climb.

And he is, somebody has walked across from the ground onto the walk and then slipped off the edge and he's stuck in that area.

And he's going back and forth off of the thing, bumper cars, trying to go from wall to wall.

I can't get out.

Looks like a goddamn blackboard eraser with feet and a pink nose.

Because they can, they can pull, if they pull their feet in and duck down, you can't tell one end from another.

And they're like a tube.

And they just,

well, think about there is they're swimming in effect with these sharp claws they have through the earth in a tube-like fashion.

Why are you laughing?

This is goddamn legitimate science here, you son of a bitch.

It is.

I find, I actually like science teacher Jim Cornette, the new Mr.

Wizard, Jim Cornette.

All right,

but right now he ain't got any place to tunnel and he ain't got a ladder.

And I'm thinking, I've got him.

I've got him, but I ain't going to, he's got sharp claws, right?

So I ain't going to get him barehanded as I'm looking around to think, well, now, how am I going to scoop that some gun out of there?

And I'm going to take him across the road and just throw him in the forest, right?

There was one exit.

He ran up the open downspout in one of the retaining walls.

There is always, there's the downspout from the gutters runs through there and there's a drain and then it goes into that other drain, which is why it's getting a lot of water, blah, blah, blah.

But enough about the science of the water.

The point is, he runs up the goddamn drain.

And I'm like, well, fuck.

Now, I'm sitting, I'm waiting, is he going to realize there's no way out up there?

It's dark.

And he's going to, and then I thought, well, he's always dark.

He's under fucking ground.

He's happy now.

He's actually, instead of having to dig his own fucking hole in the dirt, he's got a goddamn PVC pipe.

He probably up there fucking rolling around.

Is this so smooth?

So I can't sit there for hours till this little son of comes back out, but there's no way that he can possibly climb up my goddamn gutter and

that way.

So,

but now here's the thing, it's going to storm here later on and torrential rain will come again.

And then

he will have no choice but to exit back out into the walkway area from whence he came.

And then he can't climb out.

If

the water stops up,

then he'll float to the surface.

But I've unstopped the drain.

So if the water keeps going down that drain when he can't go down that drain because there's there's a grate on that drain.

So he's going to have to fucking tread water somehow until that thing stops up and then he can float to the surface and jump off to freedom.

Or do you can you figure it a different way?

What do you think?

Has he got another option?

This should play out over the next 24 hours.

Over the

next six to eight.

But I'm not going to sit out there in a goddamn thunderstorm to watch and see if a mold shoots out a goddamn downspout.

What do you think?

I'm crazy.

You see, it looked like a water slide at goddamn six flags.

Out comes the mole.

Woo!

Right across the deal.

I had no idea that was going to be such an entertaining story.

I'm just,

they're funny-looking little things.

And speaking of funny-looking thing, before I turn your program back over to you,

have you seen

or have you heard about or even seen advertise, but not know what's going on with a television program?

It's a documentary series called The Curious Case of Natalia Grace.

Is that an NXT name?

No, I have not heard of this show.

I have not seen this show.

I thought you were going to ask me about that series with the Von Ericss that everyone was asking us about.

No, I'm not going to talk about anything that anybody's talking about.

I'm fucking asking you about about something that nobody wants to hear about.

I've never heard of it.

No.

Have you ever, this is the goddamnedest thing that I have ever seen?

We talk enough about wrestling.

This is not related to wrestling.

And it is, it ought to be.

If you're a wrestling fan, you might find some enjoyment in this somehow because it's a wing-dong dandy, as Ed Whalen used to say, or whatever.

It is, I don't know what network originally

did it or broadcasted or whatever, but I think it's been on like Discovery or the alert.

I can't remember because I accidentally

looked at it

several weeks ago.

You know, I watched nothing for fun because after we watch all the wrestling and talk about that, I generally nod off and go into a coma for seven or eight hours.

But I was laying in bed and I said, what in the world can this be?

And I got into it.

It actually kept me awake for a little while.

And so every Thursday night, they've been showing like multiple episodes.

And

they did six shows of season one.

Then I think they did eight of season two.

And now they're on season three.

And this, they never run out of fucking story.

This is all true.

They have documentation.

They have court records.

They have.

videotape.

They've been interviewing these people going back like five years and they have all kinds of this shit.

Now, are you wanting to hear the story, Brian, of this?

What was the name of it again?

The curious case of Natalia Grace.

These people up the road,

I think at one point they were living in Seymour.

Rip Rogers may have run into this fucking woman.

But in Indianapolis,

this couple adopted

this.

i i'll call her a little person because she's not a wrestler i'd call her a midget but she's a they adopted this like ukrainian little person and this was back in like 2009

and she was like six or seven years old right

and over the next three years apparently these people come to find out

or believe

that this is not a seven-year-old Ukrainian little person, but this is like a fully adult 20-year-old little person

who they have adopted and now wants to murder them for whatever.

That's like a twist.

Okay.

So, whoa, whoa, no, this is only season one, baby.

This is only season one, baby.

So they take this.

She's not fucking two and a half feet tall.

I mean, she would be minute in terms of little people sizes that we're used to seeing, and she's got other physical issues.

They take her

and they get some doctor to sign off on whatever he's got to do, and they take her to court and have her re-aged legally,

where they have a judge say that she's 22 years old instead of nine.

And then they

move her out into a goddamn apartment in i think lafayette indiana which especially on the wrong side is not the place for you know grown folks right

and she's living in this apartment where she's got to go up this giant flight of stairs it would blow me up and they show her crawling up these things and this is where these people move and they're still paying for her food and

But they've moved her out of the house.

Well, then as things progress, we find out that these documentary people find her goddamn real mother in the Ukraine, who was alleged to be dead.

And she said, no, I got her birth record.

She was born.

She really was fucking nine.

But now she's legally 22.

Wait, stop it.

What's going on?

Wait, it's a nine-year-old crawling up the stairs to her own apartment.

She really wasn't

where they left her for a month at a time before they jigging on her.

Oh, my God.

How could that?

No way.

Come on.

Because she wasn't really homicidal and murderous.

Come to find out this couple are bat shit fucking nuts.

And oh, no.

And the woman would not even be in her.

There are court cases involved.

There are all these things going on.

He was taken into court.

And she still is, she doesn't have anything to do with this.

The woman, the wife, the mother.

But

the guy, the father,

alleges now that he was a victim of the wife, too, and he gives some goddamn performances.

I'm telling you what, imagine

a guy who thinks he's Orson Welles on meth.

He is telling these fucking tales.

He's on meth, or it's Orson Welles on meth.

Orson Welles on meth.

A guy who thinks that he's Orson Welles and he's on meth.

And he's over-the-top lunatic.

And then they bring in another goddamn midget/slash little person from Indiana who was involved in

who I don't, he's some kind of sex fiend and claims that the woman tried to offer the little girl to him in exchange for some shit.

I think maybe she was wanting to have the husband disappear.

And then they find the little people that wanted to adopt this little person, but somehow their adoption was mysteriously foiled.

And they believe it was by these nuts that ended up adopting her and then going through.

And it's still going on.

I can't wait for the next episode.

There is more fucking heel turns and goddamn swerves, bro.

But this is all real shit.

Well, thanks for giving it all away.

Where is the...

No,

we don't even know.

You've got to see this.

Where is the little girl now?

I assume little girl.

Where is she now?

Oh, well, she was adopted.

Again,

she lived with a guy and his wife.

He was a bishop.

He called himself bishop, but he was a preacher, but one of those independent kind of preachers.

And his wife had several children that they had adopted and or were caring for and getting a check for the government for it.

And she was as happy

as a little

person could be

until this season.

Oh,

then the producers get a call.

They have to add a season.

It's a lights out, goddamn season.

They had to, they were done with this show and they had to add a season because the last time that they ended, we all was happy and she was adopted by these fucking people and come to find out now that, God damn, the guy had called and said, we don't know what to do with Natalia.

We got to get rid of Natalya.

What happened?

Well, that's what their story was.

But Natalya's story is these fucking, I met a guy online.

And he smartened me up that these people.

And then they have people trooping in to say, yeah,

they're collecting these kids and this publicity and this money and they're taking all the money for it.

They're just using Natalia.

But meanwhile, then the guy calls back and said, no, everything's smoothed over.

And then Natalya won't fucking knock her adopted father.

Stay tuned.

More shit's happening.

How old is she now?

God damn it.

I don't know.

She's got to be 40 by now.

No, she would be.

Hold on.

If she was allegedly,

she was 2002.

She would be 23 years old now, according to her birth mother in the Ukraine.

or yeah that's the way they used to say it in ukraine or wherever she's from ukraine

and but she would be

they added 13 years so she's either 23 or 36 and

she don't much look like 36

i just i can't get past the idea that they said she was actually 22 they put her in an apartment and she was nine years old it's like yes it's like a twisted uh movie or something it doesn't seem like real life But they got people testifying on both sides of this thing that, oh, yeah, the other side, they're completely full of shit.

And you believe all of them.

They're all fucking nuts.

Every single one of them.

Crazy as a rainbow trout and car wash.

You got to see this show.

I'm just telling you.

It's on Thursday nights on one of

the allegedly educational networks.

It's on Max.

You can see all three seasons on Max.

Oh, fuck.

We'll watch it on real goddamn television.

We watch it on Max.

You can just stream the whole series.

You can get caught up.

Marathon.

Well, I can't stay up that long.

All right.

This is your show.

Well, no, it's not, but you know what everybody's staying up for, don't you?

This Saturday, May the 3rd, if the Kentucky Derby gets rained out, take the money that you were going to bet on the fucking horses and come to jimcornet.com for the big sale Saturday, May 3rd at noon Eastern time, that is,

where a bunch of classic memorabilia goes on sale, Corney's vault sale.

We've got WWF promotional pictures from 1993, Smokey Mountain Wrestling programs and tickets, hardcover editions, the last 10 of them are behind the curtain, magazines and books from the 50s through the 80s, and the last of the sold-out, previously sold-out action figures.

We got about 20-something each of the raw variant, the bloody variant.

And another one of those variants.

And some of the action figures are going to be half price, including the first Christmas variant that doesn't come with a tennis racket.

And

they didn't paint my handkerchief, and that pissed me off.

And also,

you can get discounts on seven of the bloody variants that don't have the accessory tray.

But money off to you.

More money in your pocket.

No accessories.

We're not going to charge you for the goddamn things.

You're not going to pay for anything that you're not getting.

JimCornet.com, Saturday, May 3rd, noon Eastern for Corney's vault sale and all kinds of cool stuff there.

And trading cards.

Don't go to eBay and be ripped off.

From my personal collection to your personal collection, my personal autograph on my personal trading cards while they last because there's limited numbers.

At jimcornet.com.

That's where it was.

And of course, if you want to drive through t-shirt, arcadianvanguard.com or look for Jim Cornette in the shop app, or

what's the other option?

Oh, YouTube, that's it.

You sorry, everyone.

Blueberry,

so

we're going to talk about that later on.

Save me too from that yard work.

But

if you go to the YouTube video, Brian, tell me, Uncle Brian, how this works.

Now, if you go to one of the YouTube videos while you're there

with the video on your screen there, there's a place you can click to get the t-shirts for the show or the various corny shirt and thing and such also.

Literally right under the video, yes.

Well, there you go.

Well, it's not really video.

It's a thumbnail.

Award-winning thumbnails we have.

People remark about them all the time, but it's not.

You don't have to just look at our fat fucking jowly faces in a massive macro close-up.

That's exactly right.

Once again, get those t-shirts.

What do you think, Jim?

Considering all that we've done and continue to do and will do,

what do you think?

I don't know how much I'm admitting to all that we've done.

What I meant to say is, take off your where's this going?

Hey, what I'm trying to say.

What do you think about YouTube turning 20?

It's 20 years of YouTube.

It started 20 years ago.

What do you think of the impact of YouTube from what you've seen?

You know,

I get 20, 2005.

I didn't even have the computer, the computer, as they say, the Raslin, the computer until 2009,

because I didn't have a website till 2009, because

I didn't, I got a website when I put together the Midnight Express scrapbook.

And that's how that whole thing got started.

So I didn't know what the fuck or care, thankfully, what the fuck was really going on.

But

I know that later on, you were the one who.

Did I ever tell you the Bobby Heenan story about the flip phone?

i don't know

we're at a legends convention in new jersey in the early 2000s and we're at the hotel afterwards and sitting there talking in the in the lobby at the bar table or whatever

and bobby's phone rang and he says excuse me and he answered it he came back he said

I told you about this, right?

He said, I'm the brain, right?

He said, when I first got this phone, because these cell phones were new and the flip phone, the FIP flip phone, was the phone thing, right?

There was no other.

He said

he thought that when it rang, that was back in the days where you couldn't see the number on the top.

You had to open it, and then you saw the number.

He thought if he just cracked it open part way, he could peek at the number without actually answering it.

That was funnier when he told it.

Yeah, he probably had a good punchline or something.

Well, but no, but that's the thing is that you've actually, I thought the same thing.

But anyway, where was I going with that?

You're talking about YouTube turning 20.

Oh, YouTube.

So I felt the same way when you and I, you and I

started doing the podcasting here and the things.

And

you said, well, we can.

do very well on YouTube.

And I said, well, how can we make any money on YouTube?

It's free.

You can just watch it.

And you had to explain to me how there was a potential ability to make money on the YouTube.

So

I'm really, I'm behind on the whole thing.

I can't believe it's been 20 years because I didn't even know the goddamn thing existed until, as a matter of fact, I'd never seen YouTube until I got on Twitter.

When did I get on Twitter?

Stacey got me on Twitter.

It's her fault.

No, I had 65,000 followers on Twitter before I'd ever actually tweeted myself.

Because when we would take trips in the car, she was looking at Twitter and she said, Would you like me to make you go ahead and make me a Twitter?

She's on her phone in the car, it's something to do or on her computer.

I can't remember when you could do it then.

But I do remember dictating things, well, you ought to say this.

And she would tweet them for me in the car while we were on trips.

And then finally, about what was it

12, 13 years ago, maybe not even that I actually said, well, let me look at this Twitter thing on a computer.

I want to make sure that these things are going to last, Brian, before I invest my time in them.

If something's not going to, if it's just going to be some fly-by-night operation, I'm not going to waste time figuring it out.

All right.

At jimcornet.com, but a happy birthday, you.

Oh, was that still?

Was that still my plugin?

Yes, please.

Derby Day.

Spend some money with me.

Think of the children here in Louisville that are all rained on, the economic impact.

When's the crusade?

When's the crusade?

The crusade is in June.

At least it's indoors.

They can't rain.

Oh, shit, though.

If it was storming and raining like that, they wouldn't be able to bring all the fire engines down Main Street because it'd just be a goddamn mess.

You haven't heard those words really just out in public in a while.

When's the crusade?

When is the crusade?

I've been waiting.

Just from them pesky Christians.

But yes, the crusade for children is normally,

hopefully they haven't changed anything.

The first Saturday in June.

So we'll be looking forward to that.

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All right, we're going to move on now.

Yes.

I did a fun, jolly part of the show.

Jim,

I'm going to give you a choice here.

We could do a review, whatever it is that you watched, and get that out of the way, or we could start with guess the program instead of ending with guest the program.

program.

Oh, let's let's start with guest the program.

Hold on,

just because I know the people wanted, the people want to change a pace before we go to the

to the trauma that was, you know, Kansas City, the trauma,

the trauma that was Kansas City, because

remember I've always made jokes about, yeah.

You know, Kansas City was like the monogram pictures of the territories.

You don't want to go to Kansas City, ah, Kansas City, that type of thing.

But they had 11,000 people in Kansas City

for Monday Night Raw.

I'm just going to make that comment.

And Kansas City has grown up.

It's a big, money town now, but all those years they had actual wrestling matches.

They wouldn't show up.

But now that they will come out and speak to you,

for half, I have sat through fucking

school teachers

giving goddamn speeches about lessons.

I don't know what I'm trying to say there.

I've been to school in so long.

I've heard teachers drone on professors giving lectures.

Lectures was the word that I was trying to use

that didn't take as long as these fucking wrestling promos.

Did I make that clear?

Well, as we were saying, guess the program is a game.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's a game.

We go through programs.

People

We go through programs in my collection, and Jim guesses all the important details of the program.

Well, hold on now.

Now you're overstating the case.

I'm going to try to get the year and the town, but

I haven't been doing too good lately.

And more.

Let me put this down.

Here's our first one, Jim.

The opening bout, one fall, 30 minutes.

Oh, excuse me, one fall or 30 minutes.

Tony Milano vs.

Frank Valois.

The next contest, one fall or thirty minutes.

Wally Dusik

vs.

George Lenahan.

The next contest, one fall, thirty minutes.

Rudy Dusick

vs.

Joe Millich.

Good lord.

The next contest, one fall, thirty minute time limit.

Emile Dusick vs.

Bibber Bibber McCoy.

And finally, the main event, the windup, two out of three falls, 90-minute time limit.

Ernie Dusik versus Gino Garibaldi.

Good lord.

Okay.

Where do I begin?

I do not.

I do not have any recollection of Frank Velois' opponent

in the opening match, but

Frank, obviously,

was one of the, I guess he would have been the first

kind of handler that Andre the Giant had when he came to North America, right?

That's right.

It was him and then Arnold Scholand when Frank Valois and Andre had a falling out.

And people, maybe the, because people have heard Tim White's stories on the Andre biography and some of those programs, but

Vince Sr.,

well, going back to the Montreal days, that's what Valois'

job was, in that when they first started sending Andre out to the United States from Montreal, he needed a

veteran wrestler with him to, you know, to help him because he was a giant and to know the ropes and not be bothered.

And at the same time, it was his road guy.

And Vince Sr.

continued that tradition with Skolin and then later on, Vince Jr.

with Timmy White, whatever.

Wally Dusick

was not,

he was not one of the original four members, Ernie, Emo, Rudy, and Joe, right?

Wasn't it?

Was it Ernie, Emo, whatever the fuck.

But Wally Dusick,

I've actually met like

several people on his card, I think, or at least two,

because Wally Dusick

was an old-timer

and he was the father of Frank Dusick.

And Frank Dusick was a wrestler who also worked in the, remember the Dallas office in the

some of the world-class days, Captain Frank Dusick.

Yeah.

And

Wally was his father, and Wally used to live in Charlotte and come to the matches at the Charlotte Coliseum when he had to be 80 years old.

This was in 1986.

And he used to tell stories about going to goddamn Alaska and working in the Alaskan

tundra or whatever they call it up there, pro wrestling in the 1920s.

And it was just insane.

But anyway,

Linnahan, I've heard the name, don't know too much about, but Rudy and Emil.

and Ernie in single matches on this car.

Joe Millich, I met in St.

Louis when we went there for Crockett the first time because,

goddamn, who was it now?

One of the guys that had been to St.

Louis numerous times said, see that old timer over there?

I see, yeah, he said,

he won like some ridiculous amount of millions of dollars in the goddamn lottery when it first came in somewhere.

Joe Millich.

And he would still come to the matches and visit with the boys, but he was like fucking 80 years old then, but was a multi-millionaire.

Bibber McCoy, why do I think he was in the service?

Did he have a serviceman gimmick?

Was he in the service during World War II?

And

Gino Garibaldi, help me with the relationship.

Brian, is this Leo's

brother or father?

Father.

Father, I thought that because he would be too old because this is

the 1940s.

And because of all the dusixics,

I would want to say California, but and I don't know where Joe Millet should be.

He settled in St.

Louis, but he could have moved there with his millions.

And Garibaldi,

it's in California.

It's the Olympic Auditorium, just because you're going to throw another one of those in on me.

And I'm probably way off because it's going to end up being in New Jersey

but uh 1946

oh

wow

Monday March 4th 1946

8 40 p.m

and this is at the Camden Convention Hall Camden New Jersey you son of a man you said you said it you said what was gonna happen and then you made it happen I made it

do you Well, do you know?

Do you know

that I have a program?

As a matter of fact, it may be good.

This could have come from Big Andy Varga, your program, because I have one of them in New Jersey.

I don't know if it was Atlantic City or Camden.

It's on the wall in the vault, and I can't look around there now with

two Deusix autograph plus Sam Minneker.

Oh, wow.

And

that was, but

son of a bitch.

This one, uh, it just says really big: four Deusics.

And I'll read you just a little bit of the cover here.

Hail, hail, the gang's all here.

The gang of grappling Deusics, four of them: Ernie, Emile, Rudy, and Wally,

their Raslin's riot squad, you know,

and customers cramming into Camden Convention Hall come Monday night may expect to make out with no end of wows wows watching these wallopers of pull and tug parade.

Excuse me, on pull and tug.

I don't know if I would call it that anymore.

The pull and tug parade.

All right.

Box office flaggers around and about.

What?

But wait a minute.

What kind of box office?

What?

Oh, no, excuse me, figures.

F-I-G-G-E-R-S.

I thought it was.

Figure.

That's an old-fashioned sports writer's abbreviation

figures.

Box office figures around and about the grappling globe prove endurability.

All right, well, this is Camden, New Jersey.

We're going to get to the cornbread hemp spot later on, folks.

You came so close to that.

That was incredibly impressive.

Let's go to this next one here.

The opening contest, one fall 20-minute time limit.

Pat Fraley versus Chris Tolis.

A special event, one fall 30-minute time limit.

Patty Neff,

135, Rome, Ohio, versus Lana Lamar,

145, Silver Hill, Kentucky.

Where's that?

I have no, I've never heard of that town in my life.

The semi-windup, best of three falls, 45-minute time limit.

Lou

Soberg,

I'm assuming S-J-O-B-E-R-G.

Okay.

Versus Adrian Belargeron.

Belargian.

I get it wrong every time.

Another special event, one fall 30-minute time limit.

It better be.

Ruth Boat Calley.

Oh, good lord.

140 out of Bryan, Texas, versus Ethel Brown.

135 Columbus, Ohio.

And the main event, best of three falls, one hour time limit.

Doug Hepburn

versus Fritz von Erich, 250 Milwaukee.

Milwaukee?

That's what it says here.

Fritz von Erich, 250 towns, Milwaukee.

I've heard Fritz being billed from Dallas, and I've heard him being billed from Germany, but I never heard Milwaukee.

Okay.

Pat Fraley, a journeyman of the 50s, of which

this is

Chris Tolos,

the brother of John Tolos.

The Tolos brothers were a great tag team before John had to run as a single, and that's

some clue as to the location of this because Tolos, the brothers were based in Ontario at that point.

Patty Neff and Lana Turner.

I have no,

that had to be, that had to be two local girls because they've got girls

on the show later that you've heard of, but these, so these couldn't have been,

you know, from,

well, depending on whether it be the Mildred Burke, Billy Wolf, early Moolah contingent, depending on the exact year of this thing.

I don't know who Lou

Schloeberg is, but

Adrian Belarian

was a member of the Montreal Belarusian brothers.

They were strong men, wrestlers, weightlifters, etc.

And that's another reason why this is

going to be somewhere in Ontario and/or upstate New York.

Ruth Boatcalli was a name from the early 50s, Mildred Burke crew,

and so was Ethel Brown.

Doug Hepburn

is, was that,

was that or was that not, Brian, you can tell me without cheating,

was that Doug Gilbert, as in not Doug Gilbert, the Gilbert family from Tennessee, but Gashouse Gilbert?

Was that his

real name, or am I thinking of something else?

You might be right.

There's a picture of him here.

Seemingly,

redhead, very powerful upper body chest.

And Fritz, Fritz von Erich

is Fritz von Erich very early.

The question is: could this even be what year did he actually get the Fritz von Erich gimmick?

Because this is late 50s, and if it's

either going to be Ontario or the Buffalo, New York

metropolitan area, 1958

the card Saturday July 2nd 1955

no that early Calgary Alberta Canada Calgary

son of a bitch he ah foothills athletic club stew hart president

I should have remembered he went to Calgary first

And I asked about the women here, ladies bouts, big surprise.

Fast-moving lady wrestlers, two of them considered to be the best-looking girls in the acrobatic sport, had been matched in two special events at Victoria Pavilion Saturday night.

The matches were made unexpectedly by the Foothills Athletic Club, which had already contracted Doug Hepburn for a main event match when it found out the girls would be available on the same date.

Rather than lose the chance entirely to bring the four glamour athletes to the city, President Stuhart wired immediate confirmation of the date, even though he was already out on a financial limb with Hepburn's guarantee.

Of the four, Lana Lamar has been rated by professional talent scouts as a natural in any major beauty contest.

What does that mean?

Good lord.

she's been rated by talent skies she is a natural in any beauty contest

and not far behind her is patty neff 19 year old glamour girl from rome ohio who opposed lamar in one of the two bouts

so there we go and oh you know what no doug gilbert's real name was doug lindsay

that's right that's right so doug hepburn i think is a different guy

and Doug Hepburn, the Canadian strongman sensation at the 1954 British Empire Games, is already well known to Calgarians.

Calgarians?

Yes.

One of those for the spectacular feats of strength he has performed in the Calgary ring.

Now he makes his local debut as a wrestler.

For many fans, however, It won't be the first time they've seen the massive Hepburn in action on the mat.

He has been a regular performer on TV programs brought to Calgary from Toronto, where he has been grappling under the personal supervision of Whipper Billy Watson.

So there you go.

That's a pretty big endorsement for 1955.

You're Billy Watson's protege.

Well, and you know what?

Also,

we have, both you and I have programs from 1953 and early 54 from Dallas Sportatorium, Fair Park Arena with Jack Atkinson still on the card there.

A year later, he's main eventing in Calgary.

So that happened quick.

All right, that's what I have to say about that.

I'm grabbing another.

And by the way, that first program with the Deusix ticket prices, let me just, before I put this away,

$1.90, $1.35, $1.10.85

available at the Adam Hat Store.

And Philadelphia.

Okay, now

look here.

Is that a suburb of where the Camden would be out how far from Philly?

It's more

than Jersey, yeah.

You can say it's Philly.

The ticket prices, because we've been talking about this, we just read a letter on the last show we did,

some Los Angeles research.

The tickets in 1946 at the Olympic Auditorium were like 50 cents a piece.

and they were struggling.

Business was down.

And I mentioned, Jesus Christ, they were charging more money in Nashville, Tennessee to get into matches in 1946 than they were in Los Angeles, California.

And here, Camden, New Jersey, $1.90 is the highest price we've heard yet for ringside for 1946 between Nashville and Los Angeles.

Camden,

it must have been a rich city back in those days.

Well, Jim, let's go to our next program here.

The opening contest, The Demon

versus Daryl Cochrane.

The next bout,

Akai Yoshihara versus Jerry Oates.

You do, and you'll clean it up.

The next contest, Taro Kabayoshi versus Big Jim Wilson.

Billy Spears

versus Sputnik Monroe.

Good lord.

There will be a 10-minute intermission.

Buddy Colt versus Bob Orton Jr.

Colt has been hired by JC Dykes to get back the Infernos boot taken by Orton Jr.

He took the Clubfoot Infernos boot?

Huh, interesting.

Non-title match: The Infernos with JC Dykes versus Rick Gibson and Tom Jones.

Next, we have a six-man tag team bout.

Jesus Christ, an all-star card.

Butcher Vashon

and Stan Vashon

and Bobby Duncom

versus Ramon Torres,

Bob Armstrong, and Mr.

2 Wrestling is the way it says it here.

There'll be a five-minute intermission.

Wait a minute.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

I missed somebody.

You got Mad Dog, Butcher, Mad Dog, Butcher,

Mad Dog, Butcher, and Stan Vashon, and Bobby Duncom against

who?

No, Mad Dog.

It was Butcher's Vashon, Stan, Vashon, and Bobby Duncom.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I thought, okay, but okay, very good.

Against Torrey's Bulletin Wrestling 2.

After the five-minute intermission, the main event: a two-ring over-the-top rope battle royal $5,000 purse and a trophy to the winner.

Oh,

well,

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, if that,

if that ain't the Omni, but it

seems early

for the Omni, but maybe not the Open Omni.

It's almost well, first of all, let's go down the cast of characters.

Daryl cochran

he was a

long time

georgia alabama talent but didn't he marry

did he marry somebody in in fred ward's family his daughter because leon ogle married the other one he was involved some kind of way i thought

um

jim wilson obviously is a

famous name for all the infamous reasons in the wrestling business.

And that's why this,

I was at one point going to lean to the mobile territory, but this can't be anywhere but Georgia because of these names.

But Jim Wilson, that puts the window at

really 71 to 74 already.

Jerry Oates being on the card, again, indicates more Georgia.

Unless Fred Ward went out of his mind and opened up a baseball stadium for this show.

Billy Spears was the mad magician, bleach blonde guy, and that was his gimmick.

He could produce foreign objects from

any place.

And, you know, even if the referee searched him, and he served as a manager for a while.

Sputnik Monroe is way famous, everybody knows, as they know Bob Orton Jr., who

was close to being a rookie

on this card and was working with Buddy Colt, who

was an established heel and one of the top heels in the state of Georgia or a state of Florida, rather.

The Infernos, this Clubfoot was Frankie Kane.

He had the loaded boot.

And it was this

him and Curtis Smith, probably.

Or,

well, nevertheless, I don't want you to cheat or anything.

Ricky Gibson was Robert Gibson's older brother.

And this, I think, would have been his first

main event run in Georgia.

It almost had to be because he had really gotten over in Alabama in

71, 72-ish.

Tom Jones, babyface, the Vishans

had a run in

Georgia for quite some time, even in the 60s.

Ramon Teres, Bullet Bob Armstrong Wrestling 2 dates it also.

This has got to be in the Omni in 1973.

God damn it.

The program, Jim,

August 24th, 1973.

The Atlanta City Auditorium.

Oh, son of a bitch.

The first annual NWA 2-ring over the top rope battle royal.

They put this card in no wonder no wonder they were losing money

they put that card in the city on a town that's one two three but that's a lot of guys

well all right i got the town and i got the year i didn't get the building

here it has the updated 1973 nwa official wrestling rules sanctioned by the nwa major rule change

The count on the floor is no longer 20, but has been changed to a 10 count.

karate thrust attacking the referee karate thrust to throat i was going to try to do them off the top of my head okay karate thrust to the throat throwing a man over the top rope two uh attacking the referee

uh it was running the man into a ring post were they doing that then there uh

i don't see that one no and all and also the pile driver The pile driver hold is, once again, automatic disqualification.

Failing to break an illegal hold before the referee's five count well everybody knows that any low blow or any blow administered to opponent with a jump off the top rope that's in cap ah

there you go because

this was an nwa territory and until

I think they started,

what, in the late 70s, you could come off the top in Georgia, right?

But before that, it was like Tennessee, when if you jumped off the top rope and made contact with your opponent, that was an automatic disqualification.

If the referee saw it, which is why

when they brought Snooka to St.

Louis, when he was the hottest babyface in the business, people wanted to see the superfly, so he did it, but they disqualified him for it.

He lost the match.

Well, the other automatic disqualifications here: the use of any foreign object,

any interference with the duties of a referee, you said that,

continuing to abuse a defeated opponent,

any interference by managers, seconds, or corner men.

And now we go to the tag team save rule.

Automatic disqualification when one team member saves another on any shore pinning or submission combination.

That's interesting.

Wow.

A lot of territories,

they got that deep.

In Georgia, in the rules, but they didn't necessarily always enforce it that deep.

Whereas, like in the Tennessee territory, they didn't even, you know, bother to go that deep to begin with.

But

a lot of territories would have a one-save rule.

I think, didn't they do that in the Carolinas for a while, where you were allowed to save once, but if the second save was a disqualification, or that you couldn't save at all.

Or

one time, Jerry Jarrett, when he thought that

I think Lawler may have been booking it, he had the managers up and,

you know, interfering and all the time, and the people got disgusted, tired of it.

So he instituted a rule that if a manager got out of the chair, it was an automatic disqualification.

He had to sit at a chair in ringside, which severely,

you know, maybe the old timers liked it, but it hampered, you know, guys like Jimmy Harderby or whatever to be in that position.

But

gradually.

as they reduced the manager interference and it only happened behind a referee's back, then people forgot about the whole thing and they just kind of let it go and then they started doing it again.

And then

nobody cared because they hadn't seen it for a while.

So it was just, you know, different

areas would have slightly different tweaks on the rules.

Intentional striking of referee will result in an automatic disqualification and suspension.

The following maneuvers are legal:

judo chops, forearm blows, bolo punches,

instep, and flat of foot kicks.

The use of ropes to gain leverage.

Contestants may spring against the ropes, as in tackles and other such maneuvers, providing the contact with the ropes is momentary.

It is legal to continue wrestling your opponent until he is clearly entangled in the ropes and referee calls for a break.

Wrestlers caution to protect themselves on the break.

Championships cannot change hands when the victory is gained by disqualification.

In any situation not covered by these rules, the NWA will honor the judgment and discretion of the appointed official.

And there are the official NWA rules.

Georgia Championship Wrestling with Gordon Soling and Les Thatcher in Atlanta, WTCG 17, Saturday, 6 to 7.

Augusta, WRDW, Channel 12, from 2 to 3 on Saturday.

Savannah, WJCL 22, they're on Saturdays from 2.30 to 3.30.

And also in Savannah on WTDC 11, Saturday, 11 to midnight.

That's in the middle of the wrestling war.

So that's all their TV.

Well, and that's interesting that they didn't give, because Fred Ward

at that time was technically a satellite territory, wasn't

Columbus, Georgia, Macon, Georgia, and some of those spot shows,

they worked together with the Atlanta office, but Fred Ward owned

those towns.

So it seemed like they would have enough of a working relationship.

They would have plugged Columbus and Macon and Phoenix City or whatever the fuck Fred was doing down there then.

But hmm.

Because he even had his own TV show.

They did.

A lot of times guys would they would rush from the TBS studios in Atlanta in the 70s down to Columbus and do a fucking studio show in Columbus and then have the house show that night.

And the rumor has always been that those master tapes actually do survive, right?

I heard for a while they were in, I think Fred's daughter's name was Rose and she married Leon Ogle and they had them in their garage somewhere.

I don't know what the fuck at this point, but it would be nice if they surfaced while we were still alive.

They wouldn't be worth,

you know, the Star Wars franchise, but it would be interesting.

All right, one more program here, Jim.

The opening contest, Tito Coppa versus Benny Ramirez.

Ronnie Paul versus Killer Cox.

Danny Little Bear versus Rock Hunter.

Roger Nature Boy Kirby versus Steve Bolis in a non-title match.

And the main event, for a tag title I won't name, the champions, handsome Harley Race, and Baron von Roschke

versus Rufus R.

Jones and the Stomper.

Well,

and that would be Archie the Stomper, not Guy the Stomper, right?

That is correct, although I feel like I'm giving something away by saying that.

Well, no, you're not, because I knew that.

I'm just

being facetious with you.

Okay, besides Tito Copa being a famous band leader, wasn't he?

I thought he was.

You're thinking of Tito Puente.

Ah, there you go.

And the Copa.

At the Copa, Copa, Tito,

the hottest spot north of Encinito.

Benji Ramirez was the mummy,

not my mummy in Smoky Mountain, but the mummy, the other mummy, one of the original mummies.

Killer Carl Cox, everybody knows, was

a classic worker and nut character and Dick Murdoch's idol.

Ron Paul, is that Ron Dupree?

It's not going to make any difference either way.

There's no picture, so I'm not sure.

Don't know.

Danny Little Bear.

So one of the most famous native.

Let me just say, if we're doing that based on the picture here, I'm not sure this is Killer Carl Cox.

Seriously, it's Killer Cox

instead of K-O-X-C-O-X.

Ah,

well, now

he has a chin-strap beard, no mustache,

and hair, dark hair.

It's not okay.

It's not killer.

Okay, well, let's

scratch that one off, you pretender.

Danny Little Bear was a Native American star in the 60s and

70s, which this is getting close in the middle there,

and specifically in the central states.

He was a big deal, but he worked Tennessee for quite a while.

He lived

in

western Kentucky.

back in, I think it was the late 70s, early 80s or whatever.

And I don't want to malign his character, but he spent some time

in the big house over

some kind of various violations of things.

This was after his wrestling career was over with.

Rock Hunter was a wrestler, but was

more famous to the modern audience as a manager because he was on Georgia TV, et cetera.

Roger Nature Boy Kobe.

Along with Les Thatcher and Dennis Hall, the wrestling cousins group, remember from the early 70s.

And obviously, with Rufus R.

Jones and the stomper against Harley Race and Baron von Raschke, this whole card is Central States,

whether it's Kansas City or,

you know, one of the environs.

Is it

where else would it be in the Central States area with this number of names on the card?

It's got to be Kansas City, and it almost has to

be

what 19 with Von Raschke was headed for

greater things.

He would win the title, but he could have worked here at the same time as he was working for Bruiser in Indianapolis because they didn't really have that full of a schedule in 70, 71.

It's 1971 in Kansas City.

The date, Thursday, October 29th,

1970.

Ah, Memorial Hall, Kansas City, Kansas.

There you go.

Apparently, Killer Cox here was also better known as Freddy Sweetan.

Ah, Freddy Sweetan.

A name you never hear when people talk about that dirtbag Bob Sweetan, his gimmick brother, Freddie Sweetan.

But, well, because it wasn't his fault.

He was only a gimmick brother.

He didn't share any of the same

poisonous blood.

Well, there it is.

Guess the program.

I'm going to call this a success for you because you came so close to saying New Jersey.

And it would have been, that would have been the most impressive one for you to get.

But Jim, coming out of guest the program.

Yes.

You know, I'm feeling so good.

How can I keep this good feeling going?

Or.

If I need better sleep, how do I get better sleep?

Or,

or,

or many other options that you you are here to tell us about from our new friends at Cornbread Hemp in Louisville, Kentucky.

That is exactly right.

And again, we have neither confirmed or denied,

ladies and gentlemen, that I have anything to do with this just because corn is in the name.

There's a couple of fine young men, some entrepreneurs,

entrepreneuriers.

that

have started this whole thing.

And I've possibly a shadowy figure in the background.

But nevertheless,

cornbread hemp is the place you go for a plethora of products to make you feel better in mind, body, and soul.

And I tell you what happened, Brian.

Remember, I told you about the mole story earlier.

I was out working in the yard on Sunday, and that's when I encountered that mole just running around, and he ran up that drain pipe.

Now, this is not because of any of the THC gummies that cornbread makes, folks.

I actually saw the mole.

But what I'm telling you is while I was out in the yard, I was wheelbarrowing and I was raking and I was weeding and I was down on my knees in the soil and I hurt myself.

I was sore.

By the time that I was ready to lay my weary bones down that night, Brian, I felt like I'd been beaten with a sack of wet hammers.

And I realized then that not only Does cornbread hemp have the gummies to help you sleep or the seltzers to elevate your mood mood, or the various other products that you can find out about at cornbreadhemp.com.

They got the bomb.

They have the soothing CBD balm.

And what I did,

what I did was I took that balm and I rubbed it all over my body.

And I laid down in the bed.

And as I could feel the instant relief starting to take place, I drifted off into Dreamland.

And Stacy,

Stacy said, during during the night, I actually started glowing.

I was phosphorescent, glowing all over my body from the wonderful feeling and the aura that I was exuding.

And the next morning, Brian, I'll have you know, I woke up and not only did I not feel like I'd been run over by a Volkswagen beetle, not only did I not feel like that all of my bones had been disconnected and put back together in the wrong order, but I had the body of a 25-year-old man, Brian.

I'll have you know that.

What?

As a matter of fact, and I've unfortunately got it all stretched and wrinkled, but it felt like it.

Yeah, I mean, it made me a whole new man.

I came at, as a matter of fact, that's not how this works.

Also, I'm four inches taller.

Okay, no, this is not how any of this works.

You're not any of these things.

What you are is in a position

to feel good.

And of course, I'll tell you, Suzanne actually tried the sleep gummies the other day and she liked it.

And she had a great night's sleep.

And she told me that, you know, I better not touch them.

They're hers now.

Well, that's what the next day, since I didn't go out and hurt myself, I had one of the sleep gummies, this CBD sleep gummy with the valerian root, the chamomile, the lavender, and the full spectrum hemp extra.

Chamo meal.

The chamomile.

Chamo is right here.

There's an H in there.

It's grown in Kentucky.

Who knows better, you or me?

This is grown in Kentucky because cornbread hemp is they're Kentucky boys

and their packaging is flawless and professional.

Did you see amazing?

Did they send you that card that showed like the Kentucky soil and why they're

stuff?

Did you know about any of that?

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Yes, because we've got incredibly juiced up soil and water and stone and things around here.

Nature's wonderland is Kentucky.

And they also sent me the thing on the seltzers that are 100% federally legal with five milligrams of pure thc i don't know i would lead with that you make it sound really tulturous no that's that's that's that's that's the leading selling point folks these are 100 federally legal but otherwise

grown in low calorie low sugar there's no alcohol involved in the seltzers And as I mentioned, the sleep gummies, I took some of those.

And the next morning when I woke up,

well,

what did I do?

But I'll tell you what, I dreamt the whole night through that I was leading an orchestra and I was just floating away on the

musical notes.

Are you unwrapping some shit over there now?

I was unwrapping shit over here.

You were a conductor?

I was a conductor.

I was conducting the musical notes that I was floating away on in Dreamland.

You got to go to

Hornborn.

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Yeah, stuff's really working great.

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Why, that's a bunch of gummies or whatever that you might wore, a bunch of the balm that you can rub all over your body.

But whether you need

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And don't forget the seltzer.

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Don't forget the seltzer.

I don't know about why any of you want to rub it on their head.

You can drink it.

You can bathe it.

Well, you can do anything you want to with it.

It's free country.

Well, yeah, but you know, some people use it for colonics, but nevertheless.

No, let's not.

No, let's not.

No, nevertheless, yes, folks.

Nevertheless, that's why I said, you know, some people, but I wouldn't say do that.

But you want to maintain, you want to maintain your physical and mental wellness.

I'm trying as hard as I can right now to maintain what you want to do.

You don't want stress.

No,

and the CBD gummies will help you feel better on that, or the THC gummies make you need a little relaxation.

You got that?

They only use the best part of the hemp plant, Brian, the flower.

That sounds like that'd be the best part of a plant to me for the purest and most potent, poignant CBD.

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No, so they have USDA approved steaks.

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That's why the cows are in such a good mood.

That's not, we don't know any of this to be any reason for anything, but let's go back to a wonderful thing for the listeners.

Any reason for anything of what?

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Where?

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Well, Jim, one of the things that could, of course, make someone

want to seek out cornbread hemp could be the stress from watching.

I don't even know if stress is the right word, just the

gut-wrenching feeling that you have to watch a lot of stuff and that in that lot of stuff, there'll be a little stuff.

But why don't we review whatever WWE TV you've watched in the last week?

Oh, now you just dump it onto my lap here now with this.

Well, it might be or it might not be, but no,

SmackDown is a three-hour program.

Brian and I had a lot going on this weekend, but they had a couple of the big stars on the show, John Cena and Randy Orton.

And I say, you know, I got to see, I got to see what they're going to do with Cena and Orton because this could affect

the future of wrestling as we know it, right?

And I mean,

here's what they've got themselves in a situation.

They have the, they, meaning the WWE, they have mega stars.

They have

the biggest wrestling stars in the world.

But they can't risk the health of those megastars, and they can't make those megastars go out and wrestle for 20 minutes every week because they're older.

So they have to come out and talk for 20 minutes every week.

Or elsewise, you know, many of them would be in fucking traction.

I understand that.

But has it ever,

we can talk about what they talked about.

But before we talk about that, Brian,

has there ever been

an interview in wrestling where it took them so long to say basically so little?

This went forever.

It did go a while.

You were waiting for the big,

you know, aha, you were waiting for something.

You know, I mean, I kind of, I'm interested in it.

And I thought, if Cena's really doing his last year,

you kind of have to do something with him and Orton if they're both there and they're both healthy.

Yeah.

So, I mean, we'll say, I mean,

are they building to just the one pay-per-view and then they, which is in like a week, and then they move on?

I'm not opposed to the match,

but

this was more like a debate in, you know, it's a, it's a, 30-minute talk program because it with 30 minutes with commercials, this would have been a 30-minute television show, just this interview.

If they'd have put commercials in the middle of it, that would have been your time.

Between,

they're cheering for everybody now.

They're cheering as soon as the Cena music plays, they get a big pop.

Then they say, John Cena sucks, John Cena sucks, John Cena suck, because it fits.

And then Cena does a thing where he calls the announcer in and hands him the note.

And they're chanting, let's go, Cena.

Cena sucks for a long time.

And then the announcer does the proper introduction that Cena feeds him, and they cheer and boo.

And then, as soon as Cena Ghost opens his mouth, Orton music.

And he comes walking to the ring,

trickling to the ring, meandering to the ring.

He's milking it.

The song is longer than Stairway to Heaven.

And they're liking seeing Randy Orton, but by the time he got in the ring, I needed to shave again.

And then

Orton starts with, in a couple of months, it's going to be 25 years since we first met.

And I'm like, my God, he's going back that far.

But

he didn't necessarily go back that far, but he could have.

He does the promo.

He said, millions of kids looked up to you, John.

Generations and generations of children looked up to you.

Who is he?

Captain Kangaroo?

What's up?

Generations and generations.

It's like one generation is 20 years, right?

Anyway,

Eddie talked about how great a person that John was until...

You know, all this is happening.

He's, I figured out how you need to fill the void in you.

You need to have kids

then you'd be back to who you were it would make you a better human being i'm like i don't know whether that line necessarily got over with many of the audience

especially at cena's age and also i've i've heard that you you have more experience than i have but i've heard the kids require a lot of attention

Yeah, I mean,

and people who are really self-centered may not want kids.

And yeah, you know, again, it's such a weird.

Yeah, because you've got to be centered you've got in life that they have courses and they have coaches and they have speeches and seminars to help you be more centered you've got to take yourself and you've got to center it and be self-centered but still what the hell was this what was randy i don't know what this was randy orton hitting him with that It was just such a weird.

Well, you know what?

You know what?

Now, after when John goes off on the, I bet it was John fed him, said,

tell me I need to have kids.

Because then Cena says, how dare you parent shame me in front of the whole world?

Congratulations, you have kids, but good for you.

I don't have kids because I've spent 25 years raising all of yours.

And he's yelling at the fans.

And then he cut a promo on some six-year-old kid in the front row.

Your dad's a loser, kid.

Yeah, that was, that was a very interesting part because he's never been that harsh with any fan ever that I can remember.

And all of a sudden he's like, your dad's a loser.

Then he starts going after the kid.

Yes.

But,

you know, and if he could have kicked a dog, I guess, too.

But then Orton does the, well, without the fans, there'd be no WWE.

There'd be no John Cena.

It's the World Debate Federation.

And

so they went on more about the Cena, the fans have manipulated the truth to feel good about their lives.

They both did a great job of delivery.

And Orton, he's fired up, he's got energy, talked about his family tradition in wrestling.

And then Cena was very snotty to him.

You know, I've won 17 titles, you've won 14, but when I take this,

you're going to be frozen at 14, you babbling moron, and three generations of your family will be erased.

Babbling moron.

Babbling moron.

But then Orton, who is

for no provocation whatsoever, has just been known to lay waste to people.

So, well, in that case, how about we fight right here, right now?

And Cena says,

no.

So Orton turns around disappointed, like, ah, now what can I do?

He won't fight me.

How could I possibly?

And then Cena says, it shouldn't be here.

They don't deserve it.

It should be at backlash in St.

Louis, your hometown, because I want you at your best.

See, wants him at his best again.

The heel wants the babyface at his best.

Because this is as close to the belt as you're ever going to get.

And then he tossed him the belt and fucking nailed him and got some brief heat on him.

and went to hit him with the belt again and Orton ducked and RKO'd him.

And now every time,

every time somebody touches Cena now, the first bump he takes, he's there lifeless for the duration.

I'm thinking somebody ought to do the old Dick Murdoch thing and throw the fucking

cup of ice and hit him in the back of the head and see if he'll take a bump over the top rope.

And then the fans chanted, Randy, Randy, Randy, Randy, Randy.

So they're just there to cheer at everybody as they go through their

Shakespearean drama that they are presenting.

But,

God damn, it's just, I don't want the billion-dollar stars to take bumps every week, especially at their age.

But holy free, holy.

I don't know, it just takes a while.

Well, at least they started with that.

And that's as far as I got.

Well, that was on SmackDown.

That was SmackDown.

But no, we had a big raw.

We had a big raw.

That's why this is is all, it's all preface, all a preface to the big raw, because that's on Netflix and everybody, that's where the world is headed onto the net to watch their flicks.

And they had 11,000 people in Kansas City, as I mentioned earlier.

And

holy, it's not the Kemper Arena anymore.

I was at the same building and they renamed it.

Or

when's the last time you were in Kansas City?

Never.

Well,

see, I thought you were a world traveler and were all cultured and been everywhere.

You've never been to the Golden Ox Steakhouse in Kansas City,

then you have never had a piece of cattle byproduct in your mouth, son, if you have not

gone there.

That was purely

not even a paid promo, just a recommendation.

That was wrong.

I wonder if the Golden Ox is still there.

Yeah, that was raw.

The Golden Ox was closed, so we left.

No,

this is a long program, also.

But now I'm

thinking, okay,

you know, they can't just build up to WrestleMania every week.

It can't be

every week, just cataclysmic events.

And it's probably going to be what, another six or eight weeks before they have another pay-per-view.

And then I realized they got another pay-per-view of what, two fucking weeks now?

Is backlash.

it's it's lashing back at us.

A week and a half, somewhere around there, yeah.

Is it may is it, what's the date, May the 10th?

If that's the case, it would be

to 23 weeks after the two nights of WrestleMania, which is it's it's quick to come back.

But the show-long drama here was between,

of all people, Seth Rollins and Sami Zayn.

Because they opened the show with Seth and Braun and Paul E.

coming out to the ring.

And boy,

again,

you know, Braun immediately fits in with a suit.

He looks like a million dollars, like a top fucking star, coming out with the other top stars.

But the fans are still, they're woeing for Seth.

They're cheering.

They cheer when he won, when he mentioned that he won WrestleMania.

And

when he mentioned punk and reigns there was some booze for them because he was mentioning them but then they got some chance going

and when seth says we are the future of this industry they cheer him

so this is just it's

a personal appearance where you get to see the great actors you know playing their

their greatest dramatic scenes on stage, right?

It doesn't make, could he, could he eat a baby or you know do something cruel to a goddamn dachshund and they would still go whoa

as long as it's a hook i mean you need a hook okay well you got maybe that's the thing he's going to do it with a hook what do you think of bron brake out there made made you forget all about wardlow kind of had that look but chiseled and it was like wow there's wardlow

There's a name that I haven't thought of or heard in a long time.

Is he still getting paid to be invisible?

I believe he moved back to Bulgaria.

Well, I heard there was an open apartment.

So it's funny, this Bulgarian-American pipeline we got.

Anyway,

Seth says they're the future of the industry.

Everybody cheers him.

Sammy's music plays and Sammy comes out and gets cheered.

And Sammy came as a friend.

to tell Seth, this is a load of crap.

You knock punk and Roman, but the one thing that they had in common, him pointing at Paul Lee,

is with you.

And maybe you're just jealous, blah, blah, blah.

And then they started arguing about what their vision for the future is, because Seth, obviously, this is

the heel is not saying, I did this.

for selfish reasons.

I stabbed these people in the back to get ahead.

He said, I did it for everybody.

I did it for the good of the company.

And now

the heel

tells his longtime friend of 20 years, because they go back 20 years with each other.

I want you to get out of harm's way.

Get transferred to

SmackDown.

Get off of Raw.

This is not a threat.

It's an offer.

You'll be safe.

We won't have to hurt you.

so is this the first time in history that a heel has ever actually begged a guy and yeah they're going to come back and do more of this but he's begging the guy let me send you away please

dude i don't want to do anything bad just go over here

and by the way how did they get the decision-making ability to do this

Well, because of the wise man,

because he's got, you know, pictures of Aldous when when he was you know in that lingerie at that drag show in bolivia

but you heard about

go ahead well you know there there was a one cell phone camera but then that's the show long deal and let's go ahead and instead of breaking it up let's continue

because later on they had sami zane in the locker room and paul sits down next to him and blows off fat otis like yeah give us a sec

and paulie has the heart-to-heart talk with him we're

we're og bloodline

and paul gives the the paul speech and he says braun wants a match with you but seth is offering you a pass you get traded to smackdown and sammy you will face the winner of cena and orton for the world title

And that's what you've dreamed of.

You can live in the future or die in the past.

And then he leaves him to think about it.

He goes around the corner and he passes Braun Breaker that's there smiling and rubbing his hands together and twirling his waxed mustache.

So

does Sammy really need to be the world champion if he can't tell that a fucking guy that wants to beat the shit out of him is seven feet around the corner?

He's always having this

emotional conflict with everything.

He's a very emotional person.

Yeah.

So then later on

in the back, Jay Uso wished Sammy well and do what's best for you, right?

And then Sammy walked off and the camera froze on Jay for a while.

And then Logan Paul's fist came in and knocked Jay out.

So Sammy Zane.

gets wished well by a friend of his, walks 20 feet away and doesn't hear the fucking guy get the shit knocked out of him.

But anyway, and they did all night.

Finally, the time has arrived.

Seth Rollins is in the ring and he calls Sammy out again to talk it out.

And

they play the music, and Sammy comes out again.

Did we ever establish why Sammy Zane dresses like Fidel Castro?

I was wondering the same thing.

He's always buttoned up to the neck.

I mean, just what there's nothing.

But the whole, the army fatigue

fucking shirt thing and the cap.

He's not going for the combat boots.

He's not a revolutionary.

He lives in the safety of Montreal.

Well, Seth is the revolutionary.

In what way?

Well, he's a visionary.

What's the vision?

That he's a reactionary.

What's he reacting to?

The dictionary.

Hold on.

Anyway.

Seth says, look, I'm in a tough spot here.

We're friends.

We've been friends for 20 years.

And he is still telling me, I don't want anything bad to happen to you.

And I wrote, this is taking so long.

But Seth is like, we're the way forward for the best future,

for the company, for all of us.

Again,

isn't the heel supposed to say, fuck everybody.

I want to be, I want, I want to be me.

I want good for me.

I want to run things.

I want everything to be good for me.

Yeah, it's like Death Riders bullshit.

We're doing this to save the company and save the future.

How?

Why?

For who?

For what?

And forget about it.

Sammy, forget about it.

Sammy, that you don't believe in me.

It hurts because when

my baby was born,

I called you first.

Wait a minute.

It's supposed to be the other way around.

When Seth's baby was born, shouldn't have Sammy called him and said, Hey, congratulations.

I heard you had a baby.

But

Seth's baby was born and he called Sammy.

Maybe Sammy didn't give a shit that he had a a baby.

I just want you to know we had a baby.

We're registered at babies are us.

It was nine pounds and two ounces.

It was 22 inches long.

So he called Sammy apparently for kid advice and Sammy gave him some kid advice.

So now I want to give you advice, Sammy.

Take my advice that could save your life.

Now they're threatening to kill him.

Now,

there's a difference between even though we've been friends, we got to take this thing over.

So if you get our way, we got to beat you up.

But now, no, we're going to kill you.

If you stay on raw and you don't believe me, bad things are going to happen.

And he starts begging him.

He's begging.

He's saying, literally, use the word, I'm begging you, Sammy, leave.

Don't make me do this.

Look what you made me do.

Don't make me hurt you.

And Sammy responded by saying, Hey, our kids play together.

Andrew just threatened to kill him.

You threatened to kill my son's daddy.

Dude.

And Sammy said, I think you're playing games.

I've confided in you that the WWE title means so much and you dangle it in front of me, but have you ever known me to run away?

I wrote, my God, this is a lifetime movie.

And Sammy said, you're threatening me.

I can live with being a target, but not being threatened.

Because when I wrestle

and win the WWF title, it'll be on my own

and not with your help.

So now, as a friend of yours, Seth, go to hell.

And then they pray, pray.

I was praying it'd be over.

Then they prayed.

It was a real twist there.

Yes.

Seth was not a nice deal.

He was trying to save this guy.

And then he dunked him in a bucket of water.

No, they played Braun Breaker's music.

And I was like, finally.

But before we talk about this match,

again, this is the most dramatic, heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching.

Do grown adult men speak to each other in this feeling fashion?

Well, you know, this is kind of the issue in a way with the Cody Rhodes stuff recently.

You know, where he didn't not even cheat.

He didn't take advantage of the situation in front of him and he got made to look like a fool.

WWE's babyfaces are always weak and kind of,

you know, again, Bob Backlund-ish babyface for no good reason.

I got

talking all about being good and doing good.

What's wrong with you?

But hold on now.

AEW has been much worse with the weak babyface department, you've got to admit, but they haven't been weak until here lately.

It seems a lot of them have, well, weaker.

A lot of them have easily hurt feelings, it seems like, or whatever.

That's just.

But yeah, it's a long interview with a lot of heartfelt

whatever.

I mean, the whole show was built around this.

It was the whole, it was a show-long,

you know, like, you know, Alfred Heyman presents.

It was his, it was his drama in three parts.

Well, then they ought to play Funeral March of the Marionette for when Braun comes out.

But nevertheless, here came Braun and we're going to have a match.

And I'm like, well, thank God, because at least in this case, they have a main event match that's going to be better than their usual main event promo spot that they put in.

And Braun Breaker is a pro wrestler doing pro wrestling things.

He shoots a guy off and gives him an elbow.

Glory, hallelujah.

I just,

again, this is, it's, it's odd in today's world, but this guy's a fucking superstar.

And they had a good match because Sammy can work and he's a fucking ragdoll when he sells and he fights from underneath.

And then finally

He foiled a spear and went for the kick, but Braun hit him with a spear and then hit him with a second spear.

And then he's laying there selling.

And Seth again leaves that, Sammy, take the deal.

Take the deal.

And Sammy, go to hell.

And he got another spear.

And then Sammy rolled to the floor at Seth's feet.

And the referee called for the medical

and say, yeah, hold on here.

And Seth gives Braun the...

little signal and Braun jumps out on the floor and loops around the ring and hits him with a super spear.

Poor Sammy.

I don't know if he's going to make it.

They could be going to take his life.

Certainly, the fans are incensed, and the fans are chanting one more time.

One more.

Yeah, they loved it.

God damn it.

Shoot Bambi's mother again.

One more time.

And the referee called for the bell to stop the heels from doing any more damage to Sami Zane.

And the fans booed him.

And they started chanting one more time again.

And,

you know, in all honesty, Zane should have bled from the mouth.

That's the only way they could have made this any better.

But

in front of,

I mean, anybody until the last couple of, any crowd, I shouldn't, until the last couple of years,

oh, Jesus Christ, now they're like, yeah, fucking fuck him up.

And

then while the doctors were checking on Sammy, Seth ran in and gave him the curb stomp.

And the fans were singing Seth's song

when they were going off the air, whoa, as they went off the air.

And they love Sammy, but they just, they don't care.

It's all phony and they're just cheering people doing shit now.

And this has really ramped up up in the last, what, three or four months?

But

it wouldn't be fun anymore to be a heel.

Because even if, if,

if it's like they were with Dominic or they do with, with Logan Paul, they, you know, still boo him, thankfully.

I mean, it used to.

You used to be able to feel legitimate heat in the building, where when you had eight or ten thousand people or whatever it was and they in the i'm talking 70s and 80s when they legitimately hated you and you could feel it you knew it now sometimes

that created hairy situations when the legitimate hate went too far but you could feel that that was a heels thing and even when they started booing but you could tell they were just kind of fun booing and they didn't really want to see you hit by a car or wouldn't knife you or whatever.

At least that was some kind of feedback.

And it wasn't as good as the, we want to knife you kind of heat, but it was some.

But now, no matter what you would do, people would cheer for it.

What the fuck?

I don't think it's no matter what you would do.

You have to be a babyface worth cheering beyond like, yeah, I always have liked him.

There has to be a reason.

When Sami Zayn comes out there and his only reason is, hey, I see you guys out here having fun.

So I thought now's the time for me to stop the fun.

The entire arena is having a great time with Heyman Heyman and Rollins and Braun Breaker.

I just thought it was time for me to do my speech and really give you a lot of guilt.

What the fuck?

But that's the point.

They're having great, great fun with the bank robbers counting their fucking loot.

I mean, it's they're still, they're all,

they do heinous things to other people and hit people in the nuts and stab friends in the back.

And people, yeah.

Well, that's what I said the other day.

Get him down in the ring and butt fuck him.

Yeah, give it to him harder.

We want to see yes.

Who's the big baby face in WWE

to stand up against them that won't be made to look like a fool?

Hopefully, Cody.

If he, if he, if he can get his balls up out of his watch pocket from where they've been punted and

you know, do something about it, hopefully, Cody Orton, they're not gonna boo him, I don't think, under any circumstances.

But

they're just all having fun, and it just hurts my heart as a legitimate heel.

I like it.

I like the idea that Sami Zayn is a babyface for no reason, got laid out, and the fans were chanting in one more time.

Like, they just wanted more death.

Yeah, we've had enough of him.

It's time for him to go.

Again,

like, give De Niro a baseball bat in a movie and let him just cave some fucker's head in.

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Well,

that was WWE Raw.

Well, there was, was there anything else?

Actually, I'm looking at the notes.

Oh, did you see Hunter and McAfee?

Well, go ahead.

What were you going to say?

I was going to say, did you see Lyra and Becky?

I saw some of it, but Becky can talk.

She's got a lot of energy.

She's got a lot of fire.

But then she started in on old lyric and I saw Lyric come out and I cared less and they got in kind of a sloppy fight where they swing their arms and don't really hit anybody, much like the other girls did.

Did you see that thing on SmackDown the other day with Naomi?

Uh, no, I saw the one with uh oh, with EO Sky, Rhea Ripley, and Roxanne,

where they all fucking hit each other

in arms without hitting anything.

I'm going to show you, you keep talking.

I'm going to send you a link to the mother of all these incidents.

Oh, good lord.

What are the, what is it?

Not only that, but it's HD television now.

It's high def.

it's not a goddamn vhs camcorder at ringside anymore why do people think

that in this day and age of television and technology they can just swing their fists within a foot or so of somebody's head or body

and obviously make no contact and think that their motion is going to make up for it Why, why is that even a thing?

I don't understand.

Well, the one I just sent you,

it's an official WWE video, so after it happened, they still put it up, but it's uh, I just sent it to you, you'll get it shortly.

I saw this on SmackDown

and I couldn't believe it, and I was like, I wonder if anyone else saw this.

And then immediately, the video started going around.

It's worse than dark order, like when they were just punching the mat.

It's the worst thing I've ever seen in my life, but it's just terribly entertaining and watching it.

Some people have attached some slam dance music to it, and various things.

There's been various videos going around.

Well, I should mention before it shows up, because it's still not, ah, there it is.

All right.

In that case, I will, should I just click on this now?

Why not?

I'm clicking on this.

And, oh, it starts right there.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, good lord.

She looks like she's either having a spasm or attempting to have some kind of, she's using Jade Cargill like a Sibian.

well that's the most ridiculous thing i've ever seen and she missed her on a slap not one blow like her hands are i don't even know how to explain it it's like she's punching no ladies and ladies and gentlemen she straddled jade cargill and then just began flinging her fists up and down, attempting to swing in the neighborhood of Jade's head and arms.

And at the same time, she was snapping her head back like she was riding a mechanical bull at Gillies

and kind of a toddler having a temper tantrum.

Yeah, this was her attacking the big bodybuilder Jade in the middle of the match, and she just went on her and just started dancing on her.

I don't know how to explain that.

But

she's got her stuck in the corner, and it's just silly-looking blows now.

Good heavens.

Well,

they do that kind of thing over there, don't they?

And I was going to mention Gunther and McAfee, and you were right, but I didn't believe.

I don't know whether I want to see this or not, because I can't believe that they would want Gunther to be competitive with McAfee

in a match at this current time.

I thought they were giving Gunther something since he lost, you know, the title at WrestleMania.

Well, fucking beat up the announcer, get suspended, take some time off.

But

they're going to have a fucking match.

And unless Gunther just beats a teetotal piss out of him and won't finish him off, and somebody else in Gunther's future comes to help Pat, then I don't like that they're doing this.

And I know he played in the NFL.

But now I'm sorry, he's established as an announcer and he's never been a great wrestler.

And the last time, I think about a year and a half ago, didn't he enter the Royal Rumble and climb out in fear rather than be touched?

Remember that one?

That was after his feud with Adam Cole and NXT.

Remember that one?

Yeah.

So, point is: no, this does not need to be a competitive contest between Gunther and Pat McAfee.

But he did a promo that he, I bet he worked on for a while.

I expected to hear the fucking Green Acres patriotic music playing in the back of it as he started really getting into it.

Battle Hymn of the Republic.

But anyway, we're going to see that soon.

So that's,

and there was some other things, and we don't care on Raw.

I guess not.

That was WWE Raw.

Those are your only thoughts about the Pat McAfee.

What do you think of calling Michael Cole the goat, the greatest of all time?

Well, I'm not opposed to it.

He just didn't bother to mention what he was the greatest of all time at.

So that would help narrow it down a little bit so that we'd know

is michael cole the greatest wrestling commentator of all time oh good god no and i mean that's not even an insult to michael cole and i don't know whether michael cole would want to be called that legitimately it's his friend cutting a promo so you know

uh but that doesn't mean he's the shits i mean

There have been plenty of fucking shitty announcers, too.

He had years where he was the shits.

If you're talking about any Vince producing him and holding him back, too,

uh, but if you're talking about

you know, the greatest of all time, it has to be between J.R.

Lance Russell, Gordon Soley, and

who else can I be thinking of?

He's not even, he's not only is he not the greatest of all time, he's not even the greatest on Monday Night Raw of all time,

but it's not his fault because he's he's better than Art Donovan.

He wasn't on Raw.

That was a pay-per-view.

King of the Ring.

I remember I was there.

And I think that was the

same night that the governor was there.

And

his name was Governor Schaefer, but Lawler called him Governor Budweiser.

Because Schaefer beer was, I don't know if they had it all over the place, but it was a famous discount beer down south that Norman Frederick Charles, the royal kangaroo, liked to drink.

And Lawler called Governor Schaefer Governor Budweiser, and it caused an incident.

So Gunther versus Pat McAfee is one of the top matches now, obviously, for this pay-per-view.

Is that the issue?

You know, there's no way you can't envision really them doing it without it being competitive, but for all logical booking reasons, in no way should it be a competitive match.

Well, no, and I'm not saying that McAfee shouldn't throw a blow.

I'm saying that,

you know, after some carefully orchestrated

things that will get people

happy about Pat and make Pat look like a man standing up for himself, Gunther needs to just beat the goddamn shit out of him with no real particular great comeback, I don't think.

And somebody would

theoretically want to help poor Pat at that point.

Well, that's what I do.

That was WWE Raw.

And Jim, before we move completely on from the WWE stuff, a bunch of listeners sent this over.

So let me ask you about this.

It's quite extraordinary.

Someone on Twitter named Andrew Baidawa,

according to his profile here, he has been featured in Sports Illustrated, the New York Post, the Times, Maxim, CBS, Fox, NBC, and more.

For what?

What has he done to be featured for?

It doesn't say, but I'm assuming he's a reporter or a writer of some sort.

He was in Maxim.

Was he in a swimsuit?

Well, it says here, confirmed with on location, NWWE.

This is for SummerSlam 2025, MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

The Elite Plus package prices for first row floor centers on TV side

are $40,000

per ticket.

What?

And he confirmed that they are sold out of this very limited quantity.

Wait, what?

The tickets include premium front-row seating,

in-ring photo op at SummerSlam, private transportation to the events, an elite welcome event, a private section at all-inclusive pre-show hospitality with superstar appearances by Kevin Nash, and more.

And more.

Wait, wait, how did Nash get stuck with his duty?

Post-show press conference access and desk photo op,

tickets to both nights of SummerSlam, and tickets to SmackDown and Raw as well on the 1st and 4th of August, and more.

So that's the first highest ticket price.

We have another one here, but let me get your thoughts on it.

Wait a minute.

Hold on one second.

First of all, $40,000 per ticket, and they're sold out how many did they offer two

what

their

business is now based on everyone

their business based around finding the people who have the most money as opposed to finding the most people

but who has

even if they get to go to the raw and the smackdown and the two nights ten thousand dollars a show and a meet and greet and

you know, a coupon for a slice of pizza, whatever is in there.

Well, let me follow up on this.

The non-center front row

is just an elite package, and it is priced currently at $32,500 per ticket.

It includes premium front row seating, an in-ring photo op at SummerSlam, a private section at all-inclusive.

Why would it be all-inclusive if it's private?

Private section at all-inclusive pre-show hospitality with superstar appearances by Kevin Nash and more.

The post-show press conference access and photo desk op and tickets to both nights of SummerSlam and more.

How much is that?

32,500.

Jesus Christ.

These are new cars.

What?

Again, you know, I don't care how much money you've got.

There's a lot of millionaires in the world, yes, because

there's a lot of people in the upper two percenters in a country of 350 million people.

That would mean there'd be 7 million of those.

So, yes, people have money, but I like to fancy myself as having done reasonably well.

And I'm not talking about just wrestling, I wouldn't pay $40,000 to see anything, would you?

No,

Oh, you know, possibly one or two people that I don't like having illegal things done to them, but that's not a really a

possible option.

To sit front row and get driven to the event and get to take your photo in the ring,

is it worth it?

I'm just flabbergasted.

When they started the WrestleMania concept, I don't know what the prices were for, you know, one through 10 or whatever the fuck, but when I was working in the office for WrestleMania, what was it, 12, 13, 14

and thereabouts, I got the ticket prices.

I think Bob Collins talked him into doing a $500 front row in Los Angeles, I believe.

And you got to take the chair home.

Hey, we have something here.

I'll follow up on this.

This is from the Cult of Cornet Facebook group.

Someone named Blaine F.

Wheeler posted this.

This may be worth Jim and Brian talking about on the podcast since they already mentioned Endeavor and TKO pricing people out during WrestleMania 41's review.

The last several times WWE has come here to Lexington, Kentucky for weekly TV, I have bought front row ringside tickets and VIP packages.

Since Since my time sitting front row in 2019,

the price of the tickets have nearly doubled, with the most offensive jump being from last year to this year.

Bear in mind, these prices are for the exact same section and row each time.

2019, $497.

The same in 2020.

2023, $550.

2024, $585.

2025, $853.

Jesus Christ.

These are also the base ticket prices, not including taxes and fees.

When you factor those in, it's over $1,000 per ticket just for a TV taping.

Greedy motherfuckers.

I'm even more flabbergasted now that people are sitting there cheering and singing when they're watching people talk to each other.

I'd be in the ring with a goddamn stick starting to fight.

Hey, somebody hit somebody, motherfucker.

Boom, boom.

What?

This is

talk about the rate of inflation.

And we've, you know, the inflation calculator and the way that they figure things is on the internet.

You can look it up, but we've.

been talking about things in 1984.

A dollar then is like $3

now.

That means everything should have tripled in price.

And remember, I said the Wendy's triple combo indicator.

It's about almost exactly right, three times what it was then.

So Wendy's predicts the economy, but

any wrestling ticket in the country,

in 1984,

that was before the first WrestleMania,

I know for a fact

that the Superdome ticket prices, highest price was $50.

What was a front row ticket

in Madison Square Garden back then, Brian?

Do you have any idea?

I couldn't tell you, but when I started,

I think Georgia McCropolis sold me hers once for like 50 bucks, and that was in the 90s.

I know that the Great American Bash 86 ticket prices when they toured stadiums, highest price, $50.

uh

and and the wwf

they didn't run that many stadium shows but when was the last shea show shea show shea stadium show 80 1980.

august they didn't charge 50 for the front row

They didn't even have

seats on the field.

That's true.

Yeah.

But the point is, so the most expensive wrestling ticket in 1984 that you could find anywhere if you tripled it would be $150.

And this shit is way out of fucking control.

Well, Jim, those are the WWE ticket prices.

We'll follow up on this story when more comes in.

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What has something to do?

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What Shopify has something to do with?

What has it to do with them, Major Bones?

What they will do is help you.

That's the Shopify way.

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Jim, let's get some questions here on the drive-through.

I'm going to pick up where we left off last time.

We had an email from a listener, Greg C., who was going through ovw 2000

yes which he said was on youtube apparently

speaking of russ mccullough no boy why were we

during the five or six months he had 20 seconds in the ring with robbie d where if you squinted you could make yourself believe russ would turn out good

Outside of that, I think I saw him fall on his ass giving a Bigfoot at least twice.

Yeah, yeah.

There are two stories about Russ that come up and shoot interviews.

A,

that Kane came to the gardens and overheard him bragging that he was bigger than him.

And B, the Undertaker came to the gardens and Russ sized him up or otherwise disrespected him.

Are either of those true?

Hold on here.

Wait a minute.

Let me stand up for a moment.

Hum to yourselves for a minute.

I'm trying to see.

Hold on here.

Wait a minute.

I'm trying to see the lineup.

This is what we call exciting audio, ladies and gentlemen.

Sounds like he's having a stroke.

He's back.

Okay.

I'm back now.

No, the Undertaker story is not true because Russ McCullough wasn't even on the card the only time the Undertaker came to OVW.

I don't know

if he was caught bragging that he was bigger than Glenn and Kane, but that sounds like something he would say because he couldn't, he never could figure it out that he was just because he was bigger than other people didn't necessarily mean that

he was more enjoyable to watch

uh

but i mean that's minor stuff undertaker would have

laughed and i'm sure if kane heard it he did laugh all the boys would laugh at russ mcculla i'm not trying to bury the guy he just mentally

wasn't prepared for, ready for, or a fit for the wrestling business.

And

physically, he was seven feet tall, but he wasn't even

seven feet tall like old Big Bill, where he looked like a well-conditioned athlete.

He was seven feet tall, a fucking pudding.

And he, you know, the double strap top over the shoulder, and the fucking long black leather pants like every diesel wannabe was wearing,

and long blonde hair that,

you know,

just a blah look.

And I told you, he picked his entrance music.

Here is this seven foot tall, 320-something pound guy that really

has no distinct personality, is not a particularly good worker, isn't a good promo.

And he picked his entrance music, the song Dead and Bloated.

Because, and what, what band was that?

Do Do you even remember?

I have no idea.

It was like Stone Temple Pilots or some shit like that.

That was, this is 1999, 2000.

It was contemporary at that point, but bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bam, bam.

But it had some kind of riff that he thought was badass, like that would be his Road Warriors entrance, but he didn't listen to the fucking

song or see the title.

He's the one that I had

Batista turn babyface on and beat up in Huntington, West Virginia in two minutes and beat him.

And he cried about it, wouldn't help with the ring crew because he was on his cell phone in the back parking lot crying to his wife or somebody.

We had an OVW show

that was a sold show over in Huntington, West Virginia.

They did not get our television.

And it was at this nightclub place, right?

So when Russ McCullough was a babyface, he was going to be working with Leviathan, the demon of the deep, who was Batista

and had Stacey sin

with him.

So,

when this big seven-foot fucker dressed like Diesel comes out and they don't see the TV and they don't know who anybody is, they booed him a little bit because he looked like a fucking heel.

Instead of waiting for this big giant fucking freak and his heat-getting obnoxious ringside manager to come out one minute later and then everybody would get the picture.

Russ McCullough decided he's going to get on a microphone and he wasn't even going to do a fucking promo trying to get people to cheer him.

He was mad because they booed him.

So he started cutting a heel promo on him.

So I'm standing back here with Stacey and fucking Batista.

I said, all right.

Since he's switching heel, he knows better than we do.

I looked up at Batista.

I said, go out there and beat him in one minute.

He said, what?

I said, go out there and beat him up and beat him in one minute.

Spear him.

I said, in a working way, don't fucking jump him and shoot on him and try to, in a working way, jump him.

Don't sell anything and beat him in one minute with your spear because you're baby faces now.

So fucking

Batista charges down the aisle.

Stacey's following.

She's like, okay, I got the night off now.

I don't have to make anybody madness.

It's only going to last a minute.

And Leviathan rolls in the rig and starts clobbering him.

And McCullough starts.

He didn't know there was going to be a jump start.

Well, I didn't know you were going to cut a heel promo on my fucking show, asshole.

So he's trying to fight back, and Batista doesn't sell any of it and just fucking clubbers him down.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and shoots him off and spears him and hooks the leg and foot one, two, three.

Stands up, hand in the air.

People cheered.

Batista is the biggest baby face of the night.

Shut that fucking loudmouth up.

Eddie comes back.

And when he came, McCullough, when he came back, I said, oh, you want to turn heel.

So we sent the babyface in.

Who the fuck?

I said,

what was your goddamn deal?

What's the problem?

Well, they booed me.

I said, well, look at you.

You should be booed.

I said, I don't know who you were.

Instead of waiting to tell them.

And doing what we had figured on doing where they would have understood, you just said, okay, I'll just do what I want.

So we just did what we we wanted.

You're dismissed.

They booed me.

Well, look at you.

Yeah.

Don't look like Ricky fucking Morton.

So anyway, then he sucked and cried and sat in the parking lot all night, talking to somebody on the phone instead of helping the ring crew carry the fucking, the guys that were on ring crew.

carry stuff that night.

And I think he called the office too.

They beat me in a minute

and then they sent him to puerto rico dutch man tell told me he really had a nervous breakdown down there

and said that he walked in the because they were trying to run him off the wwe say anybody that they were trying to run off of developmental and that to like tiger ali sing they sent him to puerto rico so they sent russ mccullough to puerto rico dutch told me one time he went to the hotel or the lobby of the apartment building or whatever russ mccullough was sitting there crying

Say his wife was pregnant or something, but it wasn't him.

And I don't know what, I don't know where he's ever gone.

He's never appeared again, never done any wrestling-related,

never been any call for it.

I don't know what the fuck would

be going on with this 25 years ago.

Let's get a couple more things here from Greg C's email.

Your drunkard referee shit talking his own wife, including how much he hates to have sex with her.

I don't really have a question.

Wait, what just made me laugh?

Hold on.

I'm trying.

What now?

Say that again.

Read me that back.

Let me try to think what this might be.

Your drunkard referee shit talking his own wife, including how much he hates to have sex with her.

I don't really have a question.

It just made me laugh.

I don't know that our referee was drunk, but we had a heel referee around that time.

I can't remember this specific promo,

but the

heel referee.

Having sex with my wife, you don't remember that promo?

I do.

Well,

I don't remember it.

The heel promo, the heel promo, the heel referee was a guy named Phil Fair, P-H-A-I-R.

And he had.

He is,

he's a nice guy, but he was a slimy looking fuck.

He just, his face was greasy and his hair was greasy, and he's just greasy, and he had a smile that just made you think this is a crooked son of a bitch.

And so we made him a heel referee.

Keep it fair with Phil Fair, but I don't remember him.

Maybe he was talking about having sex with Briscoe's wife because Robert Briscoe was our babyface referee.

He was a senior official and he developed.

And that's what it was because

Phil Fair was Robert Briscoe's brother-in-law.

Now it's coming back to me.

Phil Fair got his job because he was Robert Briscoe's brother-in-law, and Briscoe stuck it.

And Briscoe was straighter than a Boy Scout and wouldn't do anything out of the way, right?

And he brings this fucking louse in because he had to feed.

Well, it's coming back to me now

because his sister had married Phil Fair, but now they got three kids and they can't afford food.

So he's trying to get him a job.

And then Phil Fair goes on to fucking take.

So they ended up Robert Briscoe had to fight Phil Fair.

So it was probably Fair saying, I hate having to fuck your sister.

It's what it was.

All right, well, finally, one last OVW 2000 question.

See, everybody thinks that this was just straight old-fashioned wrestling.

Robbie D.

Did he have a WWE developmental deal?

Yes.

In a TV interview, he used the same line about riding through Ethiopia with fried chicken that you later used.

Did you give him that?

And Robbie D, whatever happened to him,

he's dead.

Oh,

Slick Robbie D.

His name is,

well, no, his name was Robbie Dix.

And he was slick Robbie D,

and he was one of the very first WWE developmental guys and tremendous athlete.

Green had only started working, you know, just very recently.

to, you know, come into OVW, but with a tremendous potential.

He could talk his ass off.

He was like Chris Rock on the microphone and

very personable in the locker room.

Most everybody liked him.

He had an issue with,

I can't even remember the whole goddamn detail of the story.

And I'd probably bury somebody that's still living if I did.

But he and Batista had an issue one time.

And as Batista does not fare well against the African-American community.

But anyway, yes, he had like a 4

eight inch vertical jump or something like that, did standing dropkicks, was a great babyface, but then we switched him heel and was an excellent heel.

Mark Henry was here at the time.

He really liked him and was pushing for him.

And

I can't remember exactly where he was in terms of

potentially being called up or not, but I want to say

I don't don't think they had let him, I don't think they'd let him go yet.

I think he was still on developmental.

Maybe he was injured, but he was from California, went home to California,

got cops called on him.

Again, this is 25 years ago, but I want to say

a woman that he may have had a baby with and ended up in jail and they killed him.

Turned up dead.

The cops killed him.

So, or

at least they didn't bother to stop anybody else from killing him.

But he was in jail for non-violent type of shit, as I recall.

He wasn't a violent guy.

He wasn't even really a criminal, but some bullshit that he got put in jail for and ended up dead.

So

I suggest black people try to stay out of jail because it doesn't usually end well.

But that's what happened to Robbie D.

Who was the first developmental guy that you were

like who set the tone for guys being signed and they never did anything with them?

Well, the first Rico,

now that I think of it, because he was one of the first six.

And

yes, they did stuff with him, but it was ridiculous what they could have done if they'd have been serious about it.

And we had to beg Stephanie for that.

But the first

number of guys that they signed, none of them made it.

The only way that OVW was able to exist for about the first year was the guys that Danny Davis had already trained here in town, Nick Dinsmore, Rob Conway,

Damaja, Doug Basham, Trailer Park Trash, Jason Lee.

Those guys could work.

We got the Brackases

and the Russ McCulloughs and David Nelson that you brought up on a show here recently that, you know, was most famous for his porn movie Surfacing.

Um,

what was that other goddamn,

oh, goddamn, that other goddamn uh, goddamn who's that other goddamn that other goddamn, the big former, there was another former football player.

What was his name?

Danny Davis told him in front of the entire locker room that he was going to pull his fucking eyeballs out and feed them to him.

Um,

what was his Stefan,

Stefan something or other.

He was of German distraction, I believe, but he was American.

He wasn't as German as Brackis.

And he'd played football.

And he's another guy that had been a former kind of

real pro athlete and got a developmental deal and came in driving a big car.

And he took Danny Davis's adult daughter out on a date and kept her out until six o'clock one morning.

And when he pulled up at the back of the old Davis Arena in Jeffersonville, Indiana the next day for TV, Danny Davis, all five foot six of him, came out and told his six foot seven, 300-pound motherfucker in front of everybody that if he kept his daughter out until six o'clock the morning ever again, he's going to pull his fucking eyeballs out, skull fuck him, feed him the fucking eyeballs and leave his remains in a ditch.

And he meant it.

And the guy didn't say a goddamn thing about it because he would have.

And nobody would have been able to stop him

but that was an interesting uh what was his last name stefan stephan stefan nevertheless yeah all of the guys that they signed originally and sent were from scratch trainees

that with the exception of rico were the

until we

started get i think some of them were shane fines Ron Waterman wasn't the shits.

He was early.

But until we used Danny's guys, they could work until we started getting some more actual wrestling wannabes instead of what they were signing originally.

You said Ron Waterman was in the shits.

Considering his look, why didn't they try to do something with him?

His age, Shane

found him sat next to him on a plane, and they started talking.

Ron was already 40 years old.

He didn't look it physically.

No way, really?

Yes.

Holy shit.

Close to, if not 40, but he's still, you know, again,

responsible adult, not like one of these other jackoffs that we've been talking about.

Former MMA,

he fought in the UFC, I think a time or two, had done a variety of MMA promotions.

He was born in 65, yeah.

There you go.

So he was, he was 35 when we had him, and he was just starting out.

So I think it was age and just

Again, that was the era of, well, what kind of personality does he have?

You know what I mean?

Personality.

that's why we lost Rhino for three or four fucking years because Bruce said, what do you name me personality?

He's fucking 19.

You can't even fucking drink yet, legally.

Well, Jim, our next question sent via email, the Courney DriveThru at gmail.com from Dan in Ocean Grove, New Jersey.

What were your thoughts when the NWA put the world title on Mike Rapata in 2000?

Was that desperation?

There were rumors he paid for the belt.

You've mentioned the NWA struggle to stay relevant in the late 90s.

Did Rapata represent what they were doing wrong or what they thought they were doing right?

And was he ever on your radar for Smoky Mountain Wrestling?

Thanks, love the show.

And for those who don't know, that's the Colorado kid he's speaking of.

Yes.

No,

when I was running Smoky Mountain, I don't think he was on anybody's radar.

This was a couple of years later that he was the NWA champion.

And that was

at the time, as I recall, and I don't know.

I mean, it's not like that he would have had to have been a member of the fucking Bezos family to afford the NWA title at that time.

But Burt Prentiss liked him.

Burt Prentiss was probably

at the time running most of the more successful or better attended NWA shows

at the time in Nashville, Music City Wrestling.

And Rapada had worked for him in Arkansas, I think, also when he was out there.

And he worked for Bill Behrens, who was also working in the NWA at the time in Georgia.

So

it wasn't as ridiculous as it sounds now for Mike Rapada to be an NWA world champion, just because a lot of the shows and a lot of the promoters promoters he was working for were the most integral ones of the NWA at the time.

He didn't mean it.

I mean, Dennis brought him up a time or two, didn't he?

He didn't mean anything in the Northeast because.

I don't remember.

He may have, but I don't remember that.

I don't, you know, he may have ended up on one or two shows in the Northeast or an NWA anniversary show or whatever, but it wasn't like he was.

traveling all over the world defending this belt in

territory after after territory at that time.

I think that may have been a little overlap timeline-wise with Smoky Mountain because he worked for Ozark Mountain.

When did Ozark Mountain pop up?

Was it

okay?

Well, that's,

but that's why I got the headbangers, Thrasher and Mosh, Glenn and Chaz, because Bird had left them stranded when they closed a territory in Arkansas.

And I think they came to me after that, I believe, or was it Missouri?

I don't know.

But

yeah, no, yeah, no.

It was good for Nashville.

He worked there every week.

He had a nice smile.

He was very baby-faced to the girls.

But he wasn't on my radar.

All right, the next question as something's dropping through the sky.

Our next question, Jim, sent via email to CorneyDrive-through at gmail.com from Jerry, aka J Diddy.

I'm a long time listener.

Stop laughing.

I'm a longtime listener of the show, and I was wondering,

back in the 1980s, I was a huge fan of Continental Wrestling that aired in Knoxville back then.

I've always wondered why did they only air a portion of the Wildcat Wendell Cooley versus Ric Flair NWA World Title match on TV?

Gordon Soley said they would show the finish next week, but they never did.

Did Jim Crockett promotions prevent them from doing this?

Not knowing the specific episode of the show or having seen the way it was presented, I can't tell you with any degree of certainty, but I can just from knowing Territory Wrestling, I can give you an idea.

One,

they forgot.

Two, they changed Booker in between that TV and the next week's TV.

Three, somebody fucked up when they were taping the thing and

the rest of the tape was bad.

I mean, who knows?

It seems odd that they would say, well, we'll show you the rest of this next week and then not do it.

So I, you know,

I don't know what was right.

But at the same time, Continental Wrestling in those days was run on a shoestring and anything could happen.

And if you were getting the NWA champion, you weren't going to get more than likely a victory over him.

So if the finish was.

Well, yeah, it's not like he, yeah, it's not like he beat Flair and and won the title, and they didn't want anybody to know.

It's just they either forgot the tape was bad, or they changed bookers, or Wendell Cooley got mad and walked out.

I don't know.

Well, Jim, our next question was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by John Dunan.

This is a good question.

My daughter asked me about this.

As a kid watching WWF in the 1980s, Jesse Ventura was always saying that closed-fist punches were illegal.

Yet baby faces like Hulk Hogan did them constantly.

There seemed to be some disconnect there.

Were there certain territories where closed fist punches were illegal and others where they were legal?

And I said, my daughter asked me about it.

The other day we were watching wrestling and she said, are you allowed to punch?

And I was like, well, you're not supposed to.

You know, I realize everyone's doing it.

So I don't know what to say.

No, you're not allowed to, but everyone's doing it.

That's right.

Everyone's breaking the rules.

I don't know what to say.

Well, obviously, no, closed fist punches were illegal in pro wrestling at the start everywhere

and still technically would be because nobody's rescinded that.

But

the problem is

originally.

And this is way back in the 50s, 60s or whatever, most of the time you honestly, if you were a babyface and you threw a punch before the heel that you were working with had cheated

and done something bad to you against the rules, then you would get blessed out for it in the locker room, either by the booker or by some of the

topper talent, the top talent, the bigger boys, the bigger names, because you weren't supposed to do that.

That didn't make any sense.

And then,

you know, then it became, well, a

first few matches type of thing.

Babyfaces should just wrestle, but the top guys, because it's angle matches, it's grudge grudge matches, they're already mad at each other.

And then it just progressed like everything to where now

a closed-fist punch, by God, I can't get upset about that.

They just tried to pour bleach down a guy's throat.

So it's just like everything else.

It's been

prostituted and, you know, abused until it's just

accepted, but theoretically, no, that is not legal.

It's never been an automatic disqualification unless

there were matches in Tennessee because Lawler used a right hand

and

some other guys did too.

Some of the babyfaces would throw a punch that they would have a stipulation.

This has to be strictly according to the rules.

First person to break the rules and throw a punch will lose.

And then when the heel was getting the short end of it, he would

bow up and spit in the babyface's face or something like that, where the babyface would haul off and punch him and lose the match.

You can make rules and work things around anything.

But again,

when everything got so goddamn over-the-top and phony and ridiculous,

then people don't react to simple things like that anymore, which is part of the problem.

All right.

Our next question, Jim, sent via email to CourtneyDrive-through at gmail.com

from Bill in Louisville.

Bill in Louisville?

I know him.

I've had several Bills in Louisville.

I'm always a couple of weeks behind on the podcast and just listened to the episode where Jim complains about the guys digging holes in his front yard.

This prompted a few questions.

Are either of you aware of a wrestler using a paintball gimmick of any type?

And two,

what the waiter wait what what if it's what does people digging in my yard have to do oh and by the way you know what i got in the mail a couple days ago no what's that a notice saying that their crews were going to be digging in my yard

two weeks after it happened if it's not going they're supposed to tell you if it's not going to be gimmick infringement has jim considered obtaining a paintball gun himself It seems like it may occasionally come in useful when dealing with unexpected visitors to at a castle.

I guess maybe that's how it ties in.

He thought you were going to.

Well, no, I'm not going to take a fucking paintball gun to somebody because then they're going to take a real gun to me.

If I'm going to point something that looks like a gun at somebody, it's going to be a real gun or I ain't going to do it because that's the way you get shot.

And then I'd be standing there with a fucking egg on my face because I'd have a paintball gun and they'd have a fucking Uzi.

Get down.

This guy's painting the place all over.

Yeah,

he's painting everything.

active painter active painter at castle cornet what about a paintball gimmick

what would be a paintball gimmick

the wrestler enjoys paintball and he comes to the ring covered in paint with a paint covered in paint

And then all the give the fans paint balloons and they get to throw the balloons filled with paint.

There's a threat of lawsuits now.

Some guy comes into the ring with a paintball gun and starts shooting the other wrestler.

You know know, he's going to miss a few of those.

It's going to go flying into the crowd.

You can put your eye out with that.

All right.

Well, thanks, Bill.

Let me move this to the used.

Yeah, thanks, Bill.

You're here.

I'm leaning back.

Jim, our next question

sent

via the Culta Cornet Facebook group is from Darryl Hone.

In your opinion, do you think Indiana could have been absorbed into another territory after Bruiser left?

If so, who do you think would do it best?

And would it even profit after Bruiser letting it die?

Thank you for your hard work.

Well, thank you for that unwieldily worded question.

But, you know, I think we talked about this one time.

We were talking about the Bruiser's territory, even though

he didn't really die.

It was on life support for so many years.

It was still there, but you really don't think of it as being there like after 83.

I mean, they were still running spot shows in the late 80s, right?

I would have thought that the natural thing would have been for Vern to come in because Indiana's right next to Illinois, Chicago.

Vern had an interest as well as Bruiser and Snyder.

But the thing is, as I said, Brewser didn't actually go out of fucking business.

So

Vern didn't need Indiana until he needed anything he could get.

And by then, it may have been too too late.

Because

if the AWA with local television and all those stars that they had, including Hulk Hogan in 82, 83, 84,

that Road Warriors, if they had gone into Indiana, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Terre Haute,

you know,

even Evansville, maybe.

Because I think Jarrett lost television in Evansville sometime in the late 80s.

Nevertheless, they could have drawn money because it would have been many of the same talents that people were used to with Bruiser and the same kind of style,

but just a bigger, more well-financed at that time and well-populated territory.

But after

87, 88-ish, Vern didn't need to be expanding anywhere and it was already

open for grabs, the state of Indiana.

Jarrett,

Jarrett's TV in the glory days, if it had some time there, might have done some good, but it was a completely different product than Brewser had presented all those years with completely different talent.

On the other side of the fence, Ohio

at that point in time was being taken over by the Georgia office,

but only because Ohio had better cable coverage for TBS, Columbus, and that area in West Virginia, which the chic had left and was kind of dead.

But

I don't know that Georgia would have been able to take over Indiana at that point without getting

good local television, which may have been tough because Bruiser was so connected.

So maybe nobody went in there just because nobody wanted to mess with Bruiser out of respect or out of fear or out of

just not wanting to goddamn go through the hassle.

And

Vince ended up with everything because he didn't care about any of that.

Maybe.

Jim, our next question via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent in by Ryan Murphy.

Why was Stan Hansen never considered unprofessional for his stiffness, liberty taking, or working while blind?

Hansen didn't take liberties with you.

He wasn't,

he wasn't, he didn't fuck with people that couldn't defend themselves or, you know, bully him around to do that type of thing.

He didn't do that.

He liked

smash mouth offense.

That's why he liked working in Japan.

And he didn't complain about people that hit him as hard in what were supposed to be safe places as he tried to do to other people.

Stan's only drawback was that he was so nearsighted that,

you know, sometimes it,

you could be a little bit off under those conditions.

But

nobody, nobody, Hansen didn't get heat with the boys and nobody disrespected him or thought he was a bully or thought he was taking advantage of anybody.

It was just if you're going to be booked with fucking Stan Hansen in Japan,

you know, you got to watch out.

And you got to give it back to him.

And he's not going to complain about that either.

But when he worked in America,

you know, especially in in the early days,

he's a big guy who hit hard, but he, again, wasn't unprofessional and didn't have a track record of hurting people in the United States.

Although

in Memphis in the summer of 83, Lawler was booking.

Lawler and Austin Idol were the top two babyfaces.

And Lawler brought in Jesse Ventura and Stan Hansen.

Lawler worked the program with Ventura, whose punches wouldn't break an egg, and put Idol with Stan Hansen, who was goddamn swinging those fucking broad arms.

And Idol was like, fuck.

It was like being in a friendly street fight every week.

But,

you know, he emerged unscathed.

Jim, our next question via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent in by David Melendez.

If Jim never left OVW,

How do you think he would have handled CM Punk in OVW?

Heyman didn't want to change his name and was constantly bugging the office about how great he was and didn't want Punk to end up like some of the other OVW alum.

It ended up hurting Punk in the short term, but I'm wondering if Jim would have had an easier time communicating with the office.

Or if he would have been as frustrated as Heyman was.

Punk in a recent interview said that he talked to Jim the week he went to OVW

and in a few days he had already been, what says you're fired but you weren't really were you fired well you weren't fired you went home well

i was fired from my wwf consultant position but they could not fire me from my own company but since my own company was still making money from the wwf which theoretically i would get a piece of i said it i'm burnt

fine and i went home So how do you think, and it says here, you called them up and you said you were looking forward to working with them.

How do you think you would have handled the CM Punk at that point in 2000, what, 2006, 2007?

Well, again, I don't know because it's been 20 years ago, but I wasn't watching OVW television after I left and many others weren't either.

But I don't know what he was doing at that point in time.

And see, that's the thing is.

They say, would I have an easier time convincing the office of anything?

No, obviously.

And fuck the, you know,

Paul had the same

experience in terms of being frustrated, which is why he was on the outs and then back on the in and on the outs every time he got on the outs because he was frustrated.

Maybe at some point they were listening to him at that particular time.

But I don't know what I would have done with punk.

I didn't know in 2005 or six or whatever this was that CM Punk was a great promo

because he'd never done television, really.

I don't know that I would have said,

do we need to change your name?

Because they ain't going to use it

because they probably wouldn't have used it unless Heyman happened to win one.

And he was, you know, he was, what, 25 years old then instead of 45.

So I don't know what I would have done

with Punk because I never got a chance to work with him the once to see what he was doing then and what I thought he should continue to do.

And I know people are thinking, well, you've certainly saw him in Ring of Honor,

five Ring of Honor shows, and it's a whole different environment.

So you would have to, that's why when guys came to OVW, unless I had really good

prior knowledge of them, which wasn't often,

they started in the program and they started doing dark matches or they started doing the spot shows so I could see what they were doing and I'd be around them and I'd see what they talked like and I would

kind of get an idea of what their fucking deal was.

So I didn't have,

you know, a giant Russian menace going out there at a fucking pink mini mouse t-shirt or whatever.

Just incongruous shit.

So I didn't really have the chance to do that with punk because I was never around by the time he actually got here.

He didn't mention it during Raw.

Did you see the Rusev promo video?

No, because I didn't because Raw is one of those shows where we have no on-screen fast forward, so I was trying to get through the commercials.

All right.

Now, our next question was sent in via the Cult According Facebook group by Kev Mack.

What would the repercussion have been if the wrestlers went into business for themselves and did their own finish instead of the one relayed by the booker?

Any examples of such?

Well, what wrestlers and where and in what context?

And

i mean that's

that's too broad i mean it can range from everything i've said this before murdoch every once in a while if he was in a preliminary match back in the day would do it where he'd

snatch a guy and pull him down on top of him and pin his own self and then get mad to start yelling at the guy for double crossing him If the booker saw that and it wasn't an important match, a title match, he'd fucking laugh.

It was a rib.

If

both guys just went out there and felt it and say, you know, you know, something's happened here.

The crowd's with somebody.

I want to change it on the fly.

And it got over.

That might be unless, again, it fucked up long-term booking plans.

If it was just a match out there in the wilderness, and then I don't see anybody getting real mad about that.

If one guy double-crossed the other guy

and there was only one person in on changing the finish, then that was going to cause a goddamn issue, no matter whether it was an important match or not,

with the other guy, much less the booker.

And then if two guys just did their own shit,

as in going out, you can't get juice, so they get juice and you get fined from the athletic commission, or you can't go fight in a crowd, the building is, the building manager doesn't want anything broken, and they do it, and they do it.

And then, you know, that's how that fucking warthog, Callahan, got fired from MLW.

There's all kinds of things that can happen, you know, in an important match or where they fuck something up, either booking or with the building or

have a problem with the commission.

Then it or on the microphone don't get on a microphone.

They get on a microphone and the commission is mad or somebody cusses and blah, blah, blah.

So

there's a lot of leeway in wrestling to have matches and do your shit, but when you specifically do something contrary to what you are told to do, the bullet points of the thing,

then most of the guys don't know what they're affecting because

they don't bother to find out why they're not being, they're told not to be doing that type of thing.

They just think they're being put upon and discriminated against because they're not allowed to be the artist they can be.

And they don't know there's an actual goddamn reason and it's not their goddamn job to know

when people paying them say just don't do this

then just do four other things but not that

well jim of course if you're the booker you may want to look into how to sue

Well, that was an abrupt one.

Well, if you want to sue a booker for bad wrestling, and I bet you there's some candidates out there, then I know the man, the myth, the legend that you can turn to.

Call Steven

PD News

to be news to the news,

news to the new.

If you need to see

news, to be reduced, to be new, steady news, to be reduced, news,

and outlawmodures two

still to the rest.

Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen.

Stephen P.

New at newlawoffice.com, 87750 Steve can save you from bad bookers and perpetrators of all kinds.

And boy, howdy,

we're going to be talking about a perpetrator coming up in the near future.

The time is getting ever closer.

Stephen P.

New, along with a variety of other legal experts in newlawoffice.com,

can take you from the misery, from the misery of the abyss of legal unsurety

into the pinnacle and the top and the mountaintop of legal recompensation for the damage that you've undergone by a variety of evil and insidious individuals and or corporations.

And don't forget, if you want to this weekend, go to jail.

in the state of West Virginia and Stephen P.

New can represent you too because he is fighting a crusade to make the people of the state of West Virginia be treated civilly and honorably and like humans when they go to jail instead of a herd of wild fucking pigs like they're treating them now.

People not convicted of crimes, by the way, just picked up by the police state that we all live in now.

But he's working on that and he can work on you too.

Stephen P.

New.

Did I mention the phone number, Brian, 877-50 Steve?

Well, you did now.

Are you talking about

unmuted myself?

You did now.

87750 Steve.

Get even with Steven.

Newlaw Office.com.

Jim, let's end today

with four

in today.

There's still about another seven hours of it left, but I'm in favor of calling it here.

We might miss the severe storm.

Well, first, let's do some from the files.

And I said I'll do this.

I have the Eddie Gilbert file here from the Wrestling News Archive.

And a few of Dennis's.

Which is actually apropos because the dark side of the ring on Eddie Gilbert is about to air.

For the Eddie Gilbert Memorial Show in 96, that you and I both went to.

It says Jerry the King Lawler in the official thing, not Jerry Thinking Lawler.

Thinking Lawler.

Full page ad, $150, half page, $100.

Quarter of a page, $75, or a business card size, $50.

Payable to the National Wrestling Alliance.

That's not the typical thing that you see in here, but let's.

There's a lot of pictures.

Eddie sent in a lot of pictures of himself.

They were 8x10s.

This is a letter to Jim Melby.

Jim, thought I would send you a new color photo of myself.

Thanks very, very much for the photo on the front issue of review and story.

Also, thanks for the programs you've been sending home.

Thanks again, your friend, Eddie Gilbert.

Eddie loved to send pictures to all the magazines because because he was promoting himself.

He was, you know, there's nothing wrong with that.

He wanted to make sure that if he was going to get some press, he wanted to cooperate.

And also, unlike any other wrestler, by and large, he had been schmoozing with all these people for years.

They all knew who he was before he broke into the business.

Yeah.

There's another one.

Jim, hello, old buddy.

How's everything going?

Fine, I hope.

Here's some things on Puerto Rico.

We won the North American tag titles from Moondogs

June 5th.

Kangaroos, Don Kent, and John Heffernan.

Who's John Hefferman?

That was, oh, God damn it.

Managed by Al Costello, the World Tag King Champions.

The original kangaroos were Al Costello and Roy Heffernan.

And then...

Heffernan

went back to Australia or whatever he did, and Costello had a couple of different partners,

maybe not as kangaroos, then found Don Kent, and Costello and Kent were the kangaroos from, what, say, 69, 70 through the early 70s.

And then when Don Kent went out as a single,

Costello was a manager for a little while, but then he kept putting groups of kangaroos back together.

And I'm trying to think John Heffernan was somebody else under another name.

Well, obviously.

And I can't remember what other name he used, but in Puerto Rico, would that have been 1980, the date on that?

Because had they just left,

it would have been 80 or 82.

It doesn't have a date or a year on this.

No.

Tommy and

they won the tag team title, meaning Tommy and Eddie Gilbert.

They were the

tag team champions in Puerto Rico

in between runs in Tennessee, I believe.

And the Moondogs, that would have been,

maybe it had been 82-ish because the Moondogs had a run first in the WWWF.

That's where they got the gimmick and then went to Puerto Rico, I think.

I sound like I'm playing guest the program now.

Tell Norman I said hello.

Maybe we'll get together sometime like we did in Kansas City.

Take care, your friend Eddie Gilbert.

And again, lots and lots of pictures here.

Lots of rare pictures, pictures I've never actually seen before.

And then some of these look like yours.

This has to be yours.

Yeah, this is yours.

Lots of setup photos of Eddie.

There's lots and lots of photos that you can't read.

Lots and lots of photos of Eddie.

You can't really read.

Hold on.

Let me go back here.

This is a big file.

I have a letter from Norm Keitzer to Eddie Gilbert.

This may answer your question slightly.

July 27th, 1982.

Mr.

Eddie Gilbert, St.

Trope, Apartment 3F.

I La Verda I believe that's how you would say it, who knows?

Puerto Rico zero zero nine one three

Dear Eddie, it was nice hearing from you.

Thanks for the program and photos.

I will see to it that they are used in our publications.

The program is also of a help in compiling area close-ups.

I was glad to see that you and your dad were being put over.

Evidently, you guys are popular with the fans, winning the straps and all.

How long do you plan on staying in Puerto Rico?

Also, what is the attendance averaging?

I've heard from other guys that Puerto Rico is a fun place to work if you can make the money.

It must be nice to at least catch

some beach action, excuse me.

Puerto Rico not known as a well-paying territory, Jim?

Well, no, if you can make the money, that's, I mean,

it could be good or bad.

And I don't have any personal experience down there, thankfully, and on purpose.

I wouldn't go to go to Puerto Rico and be set on fire by those people.

But

I've talked to a bunch of guys and Dutch booked down there for ever and eons.

And what they would do

is they would, let's say you were supposed to make $750 one week, but they'd give you 500.

They say, oh, we're doing a little slow.

We'll give you the 250 next week.

Well, next week, you're supposed to then make $1,000.

Well, but then they'd give you 600 and they'd say, oh, well, we'll give you 400 next week.

And you would get so in the hole on what they owed you that they were trying to catch up, but they weren't catching up properly that it would be a situation where you couldn't afford to leave their company.

And then, and you couldn't afford to give your notice because you knew if you gave your notice, that they'd fuck you on the rest of the money.

So you kind of hung around trying to chase that carrot.

And that's how they kept guys from leaving the island.

Well, back to this letter to Eddie Gilbert.

The people that we do business with all seem to be doing pretty good.

The last Superdome show did their all-time dollar record.

I don't recall the exact figure, but remember the crowd was 22,000 plus.

Of course, the WWF remained strong.

Buddy Rose is next up for Backlund around the horn.

I'm glad to see him getting the push.

I've known him since before he got in the business.

We are now doing programs for Joe Blanchard, and San Antonio is doing okay too.

They've been running some real big cards in Amarillo and Houston.

Recently, Bach Winkle versus the Junkyard Dog set the all-time dollar record for a Houston house show.

How big was Dogg in Houston by the time you got there?

Giant.

Because he had before

Watts annexed Houston when Paul split off from getting his talent from the San Antonio office, Bosch could still bring in individuals that he wanted.

So he'd bring in some of the Hispanic stars for that group of the audience, and he'd bring in Dog or he'd bring in Moscaris.

He was using Bachwinkle as the

AWA champion.

And he got Dog

before that Watts, as I said, you know, took over Houston.

So dog was already made by the time the rest of the Mid-South guys got there.

But yeah, it was definitely big.

And I don't know what the record dollar figure would have been at that time.

But I know that when we got there at the end of 83,

the best house for our first couple of appearances in Houston was the same thing was Dog was on a card, I think, against Bockwinkle.

But then later on that year with jacked up ticket prices.

We did $89.80 for the scaffold match with the rock and roll and $102 grand for

the last stampede.

I think the best they had done beforehand was like in the $70,000 range.

Locally, Vern and Wally are having their best year ever.

We have been selling out the St.

Paul Civic Center on a regular basis, which is $18,000 plus when you sell standing room.

I've enclosed the latest card so that you could see who is working here.

What do you think of that main event?

It was one of the few times I've seen four babyface work in a tag team match, let alone on top, and draw a sellout no less.

Who was this?

The match itself was excellent.

The finish was Santana being counted out after missing a flying body block on Brunzel.

I think that was the high flyers versus Tito and Rick Martell.

I bet you're right.

Which the footage I've seen, I think, of them in San Francisco is incredible.

I'll close for now, but remember, if there's anything specific that I can do for you, just let me know.

Please give my regards to your father for me, your friend Jim Melby.

Once again, July 2nd, 27.

And boy, he's right.

In 1982.

everybody was doing great business for the most part.

And Jared, 1981 was the biggest year that Jared had had

in business since he had started his company because of lawless comeback and all those giant houses in memphis all year

well that's going to wrap up from the files like i said uh

just looking through there's a lot of pictures i'm trying to find anything with writing there's so many pictures here

But there we go.

And that was a letdown.

That was a complete letdown.

I should have brought the other file that I wanted to, but I didn't.

You know what?

I won't make any comments in case you want to edit anything later.

Hold on.

Wild card.

Oh, no.

And I'm dropping stuff.

And I'm picking stuff up.

And I'm dropping other stuff.

And I'm picking other stuff up.

Oh, boy.

Hold on.

This is a mess.

What the fuck?

Ladies and gentlemen, Brian last has been lost in the San Andreas Fault.

All right, take two.

We're going to have an additional from the files today.

Surprise sneak attack.

attack.

This is from the files.

This file is labeled the Tommy Rich Fan Club.

Let me see if it goes this way or this way.

It starts okay.

Oh, I think it goes both ways.

October 11th, 1982.

Norm Keitzer sends out two letters.

One to Carol Barry, West Columbia, South Carolina.

Dear Carol, I understand you operate a fan club for Tommy Rich.

We would like to include it in our fan club section in the wrestling news.

And close as an application for you to complete so we may do this.

Sincerely yours, Norman Keitzer.

Same day,

a letter to Karen Langley, Fairbourn, Ohio.

Dear Karen, I received your letter concerning the Tommy Rich fan club.

Since Miss Barry has not filled out an application for listing it in our fan club section since I have taken it over, I've written her for information about her club, and I will let you know what she says when I receive a reply from her.

I don't know what that's.

Oh, okay, this explains.

And for the people who don't even understand this whole thing, in the old days in wrestling, going back to the 50s, fans, if a guy was wrestling in the Georgia territory, some fan from Columbus, Georgia would say, I want to run your fan club and be the fan club president.

And the magazines

would actually

promote this if you provided them with a permission slip from the particular wrestler being honored sign that, okay, it's okay for this person to run my fan club, which guys would do all the time or whatever, you know, they didn't give a shit.

But you would have

different ones because the way the guys moved around until you got the real established fan club, like in the early 70s, when it was probably the biggest deal it had been,

everybody knew that, oh, this guy, the Pedro Morales fan club is run by so-and-so so-and-so or whatever.

And

otherwise, you just get them when guys

switched territories.

Other people would want to start them.

And

the other, meanwhile, the other fan in the other territory would lose interest because the guy had left.

So it was always moving around.

Well, it seems this was prompted by a letter to Norm Keitzer from Karen Langley, October 8th, 82.

I'm writing to you concerning a fan club, in particular, Tommy Wildfire Rich Fan Club run by Carol Barry.

In February 82, I sent $6 yearly dues to Miss Barry for what was supposed to be monthly bulletins, membership card, etc., etc.

In April, I received a very nice letter from the

West Columbia Postal Service containing

the

it's hard to read.

She's a very nice cursive, but it's hard to read everything.

The remnant of what I had been a packet of pictures and had,

and who knows whatever.

It's hard to read a little bit of this.

Sorry, folks.

They asked me,

if possible, to tell them what the contents were so that they could try and

find them.

Since I had no way of knowing what it had contained, I returned the remnant and postal service letter to Miss Barry, hoping she would replace it.

I, as of yet, have received no response.

In May, I received Volume 1, Issue 9, February, March, 1982.

It was very nice.

In August, I received Volume 2, Issue 10, June, July 1982.

It was also very nice.

It included some Brad McFarlane photos of Tommy.

I still have received no membership card.

I wrote to Miss Barry offering to help her with her problem.

Tommy comes to Ohio at least once a month, and I could help her out with pictures, et cetera.

I also asked for the price list of McFarlane's pictures, but I've still received no reply.

Poor Brad McFarlane being drug into this.

By the way, the world's only deaf pro wrestling photographer.

He was also a manager, handsome Johnny Bradford, but he took great pictures.

I have written to Miss Barry a few times asking her to please send the membership card.

The woman simply does not answer letters from the members.

Frankly, I'm beginning to be steamed.

I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I know that Tommy Rich been on a southern tour for quite a while, and it must be a pain to gather information on someone, excuse me, she has no access to.

But couldn't she at least send my card?

She's making herself look bad.

Would it be possible for you to contact her and maybe get this mess worked out?

Also, do you have any addresses for other Tommy Rich fan clubs?

Maybe I'll have better luck with one of them.

I would really appreciate your help on this matter.

Thank you for reading this.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Karen Langley.

So then...

And that's the thing is that people would take this task on and then it would be over their heads and they've got a real life or their teenagers or whatever.

But normally you'd get, you know, a membership card and you get the bulletins, which were X-Roxed, you know, stapled together, you know,

do-it-yourself type of things.

But, Brad, I've told you how I became the Bob Armstrong fan club president, haven't I?

Before?

How you did know?

And I won't mention this guy's name because he has actually written me in modern times, like in the last several years that he's up in the north now and

successful business.

But I joined all the fan clubs that were plugged in

the magazines because I wanted to get like autograph pictures or I've got one of Larry's Obisco from 1980 or whatever.

And the bulletins and all the stuff.

So I joined everything.

Well, one of them I joined was the Bob Armstrong fan club and this guy down in Ackworth, Georgia, outside Atlanta.

He was the president.

And he did the bulletins.

And, you know, they were all the bulletins of the fan.

Most of them looked like fan club bulletins, but every once in a while you'd come across a real sharp one.

But anyway, I got about four or five or six of these.

And then he wrote me a letter and said, Hey, would you like to take over the fan club?

I, you know, don't have time for it.

I'll send you the entire club treasury.

And if you want to do this, I said, Okay, because I wanted to do the bulletin, right?

I'm a frustrated writer, magazine, publisher, whatever.

This is my first shot at that.

I'm, am I 16 yet?

Maybe, whatever.

So,

and Bob also had just started in the Tennessee territory.

So he's going to be around here.

So I said, okay, I'll do it.

And he sent me the entire club treasury.

It was like $2.77.

And I was, so I started printing these, doing these bulletins with my friend Walt Molanski sent all the results and everything from the WWWF.

Somebody else would send the results from here and there.

And I'd do Tennessee and I'd have features and I'd have pictures in there that I was taking at the time.

I was starting to take pictures.

And

I would do them on legal size white copy paper.

And with my typewriter, I would leave room to put the pictures in with double stick tape and all this stuff.

And then it'd be 20 pages of legal size.

My mom would drive me down.

I didn't have a driver's license yet.

My mom would drive me downtown to this copy shop she knew from working down at the Chamber of Commerce.

And they do the fucking bulletin for like three cents a page, but it still was like $30 to have all these fucking bulletins done.

So I think I did like three or four of them.

And I'm like, fuck, I was making money taking pictures and spending money doing the bulletin, and something had to go.

But it was fucking fun.

Here's a follow-up letter from Karen Langley to Norman.

Dear Norman, hello again.

Have you heard from Miss Barry yet?

I highly doubt it.

I still haven't heard anything.

Maybe she left town.

I had a brainstorm, and maybe you can help me.

I figured that since Miss Barry is such a blank-up

with her club, maybe I should start my own here in the Dayton area.

That leads to a few problems, and that's where you come in, I hope.

I know that I would have to contact T.R., obviously Tommy Rich, first,

and get some kind of permission from him, right?

The only address I have is World Championship Wrestling Suite 110, 100 Techwood Drive, Northwest, Atlanta, Georgia, 30303.

If you think that Tommy Rich would get a letter from me out of the thousands that go through there every week and actually read it,

Is there another address that would be better?

Maybe someone I could call.

I tried calling the NWA in Atlanta.

All I got was some dipstick in quotes who knew nothing except where the wrestlers were.

I already knew that.

I tried to get in to see him and get things started on this.

I'm thinking, did she get like Charlie McGowan on the phone or something?

He's like, go to the Omni on Friday.

But have you ever seen the size of the goon squad they have?

It would be easier to see Ronald Reagan.

Who would want to do that?

Anyways, to make a very long and getting longer story short, I'm sincerely considering starting a Tommy Rich fan club.

And anything you might be able to tell me would be much appreciated.

P.S.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

And in case I don't get a chance to tell you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year too.

Hope to hear from you soon, Cameron Langley.

What about Valentine's Day?

How did she feel on that?

Norman Keitzer responded November 15th, 1982.

First of all, as I told you earlier, we have never received an application from Ms.

Barry, nor have we ever seen any material concerning her club.

I wrote to her and received no answer.

So other than your earlier letter to me, I'm not aware that she's even running a club.

And since she doesn't answer my letter, there is no other way for me to find out.

The address you have for World Championship Wrestling in Atlanta is the only one that I have.

I would assume that Tommy Rich would receive any mail sent to him, care of that address, but I have no idea whether he is able to answer any or all of the fan letters he must receive.

I do not have another address for Mr.

Rich.

I've enclosed an application for listing in our swap and sell section.

But in order to start a fan club, you would need to first get that individual's permission.

And I really am not able to help you more than that.

I'm sorry to not be able to be more of help to you.

Sign Norman Keitzer.

So Norman.

I actually, I've just typed into the Google machine Carol Berry and Tommy Rich, and I get Tommy Rich's Wikipedia and Carol Berry, who is a candidate from the Australian Labour Party.

I don't think it's the same one.

Here's a letter from a third person, Kathy Schuster, Mansfield, Ohio.

I wrote in a few months ago for an address for the Tommy Rich fan club.

I received one newsletter and a picture.

It said I would receive a newsletter a month.

Mr.

Keitzer, I spent $15 I could have used for a lot of other things.

I called this number on my membership card, and it said

the number was disconnected.

I don't know if you could do anything, but I would like a fan club that won't rip off a Tommy Rich fan.

Here's the fan club, and it's one in

Graydonville, Michigan.

I don't know if it's hard to read what she wrote here.

Gardenville, Graydonville.

The president is Sharon Kane.

The vice president, Julie Damagood.

I'd really like to join a legitimate fan club, not one who rips you off.

Signed Kathy Schuster.

What?

It's crazy hearing is like just within this period of time, there are multiple fan clubs.

There's no one delivering the demand for more.

And then here's a letter from Norman Kaiser to Sharon Kane: I understand that you operate a fan club for Tommy Rich.

We would like to include all fan clubs in the wrestling news magazine, which we publish.

Encloses an application for you to complete.

So he's just blindly mailing letters to fan club presidents.

This is the response to Kathy.

Nothing new there.

And then here,

we'll wrap it up with this pile.

This is from 1983.

Garrick

Ballard.

Dear Mr.

Keitzer, I'm interested in placing an advertisement in your swap and sell column.

Would you please send me an application?

P.S.

In October 1981, you listed Carol Barry as the official fan president of the Tommy Rich Fan Club.

After joining the club, I received only a few bulletins.

During my entire year's membership.

The bulletins were supposed to be issued monthly.

So another complaint there.

You know, Carol sounds like she's running a sloppy shop.

Dear Mr.

Boward, March 26, 83, per your complaint concerning Carol Barry's Tommy Rich fan club, I can only answer by saying that since I have over...

He left out the word taken, taken over as fan club editor and required an application to be filled out by each club we list, we have never listed her club.

I've had several complaints concerning her club.

I've had written to her several times for an explanation, but I've never received any from her.

I really don't know what else I could do.

I suggest you file a complaint with the postal authorities if you cannot get satisfaction elsewhere.

And then this is

now, according to this on the internet,

Tommy Rich's net worth is $5 million.

That's last updated on December 11, 2023.

It's almost like he can't trust the internet.

And here's something from Garrick Bower.

It looks like it's a pitch for a Tommy Rich board game.

I can't even read if I said those words.

I can't read it.

A Tommy Rich board game?

Game one is an exciting board game with Tommy wrestling against a variety of top Georgia area opponents, including Super D, Buzz Sawyer, Ivan Koloff, Iron Sheek, and Ric Flair.

What happens to Tommy and the punishment he must endure depends on the squares you land on.

Whether Tommy wins.

The squares you land on determine whether you're going to jail or whether you're going to be able to rent a rental car from that company anymore.

Whether Tommy wins or not depends on the way you roll the dice.

Game two is a combination board and card game where Tommy wrestles the opponent of your choice.

You advance Tommy on the board as he performs all of his favorite wrestling holds, but there are illegal moves by the opponent which hinder Tommy's progress.

Whether he wins or not depends on your strategy and luck.

Game one, $4.

Game two,

$4.

Both games for $6.50.

And here's his application.

And

there's a, yep, then that's the Tommy Rich Fan Club.

Information there.

Any final?

Oh, here's another.

Oh, hold on.

Here's one final one.

Let me open this.

August 29th, 1983.

There's an envelope, and I thought it was empty.

Dear sir, I would like an advertisement application for the Tommy Rich fan club I started.

Signed by Carrie Bailey, the co-president,

Ironton, Ohio.

Wait a minute, Carrie Bailey and Carol Berry?

What kind of scam does this woman operate?

Yeah, I don't know, but there it is.

From the fan club days, from the files tommy rich and with that

we're hot and we're tired this went longer than i thought it was going to

sort of like an interview on raw

all right well we'll be raw again next week wherever you find your favorite podcast on the jim cornet experience in a few days let me put this down And of course, on the drive-thru next week, wherever you find your favorite podcast, on the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel and patreon.com slash Cornette.

$5 a month to get access to the archive.

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