Episode 389: Jim Reviews WrestleMania 41

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Hello again, friends!

And you are our friends.

I would have given you the long intro, but we have a lot of things to get through today.

We're going to pound right through it.

God damn.

I'm your host, the great Brian West.

This is Jim Cornette's drive-through.

This is the big WrestleMania review.

When I say big,

I mean lots of hours, lots and lots of hours of lots and lots of wrestling to get through.

Plus, of course, hours of your questions.

Here at some point, or probably next week, here he is, the leader of the show, the leader of the Cult of Cornet, whatever he is, Mr.

Jim Cornette.

Hold on here, just one flipping second here.

I'm trying to figure out a way to turn you down, son.

Your enthusiasm today, I believe.

Speak to me for a second.

Hello.

Yeah, that's good enough.

Yeah, I've turned you down.

Your enthusiasm today

borders on the manic.

I think this weekend of wrestling at weekend, this five-day period of wrestling or whatever that they present has

affected us in different ways.

I,

I, me over here,

I'm just about ready to just stick my head in the oven.

Goddamn thing is, it's an electric oven and it gets uncomfortable before it really does any damage.

But you, on the other hand, are bouncing off fucking walls.

Well, I'm trying to,

I'm trying to make it a happy show because there was a lot, just a whole lot.

Oh, that there is no joy in Mudville because mighty Cody has struck out.

Well, I mean, it was that plus, you know, think about it.

It was, what, seven hours of Paul of Eck's speech and then WrestleMania?

Just non-stop

endless bits of endlessness.

There are,

there are people, I think, that are still waiting for Triple H to finish mentioning them.

So he went through the Trenton, New Jersey phone book.

We're going to talk about that, but the Hall of Fame had a lot of problems and it was

detrimental to the uh

to the talent in some cases some of the talent caused their own problems but it was detrimental to the talent in some cases the way that they

the conditions what prevailed and the way that they did this thing so we'll go over that but did you hear in non-wrestling related news real quickly

Dick Van Dyke,

you know, Dick Van Dyke, Brian.

Dan Dick Van Dyke?

I know Dick,

I stuttered.

No, that's Jerry Van Dyke.

That's his brother.

No, I stuttered for a second because I'm goddamn wrestling overdosed.

You know, Dick Van Dyke, don't you, Brian?

Of course.

I think he's like 99 years old now, right?

He is 99 years old.

And you know what?

He's just, he's in the news.

He's quoted as saying he has no interest in slowing down.

He says, I love what I do.

He has a goal to win an Oscar.

See, this is what I I told you.

You're never going to retire.

We have so much to do.

99.

He's got a younger wife.

Have you ever seen, he's interviewed on TV sometimes?

And his wife, she's like 45 or something.

I don't, well, Jesus Christ, I don't care if he's got a team of geishas and a fucking physical therapist.

I want to slow down now.

I have a lot of interest in slowing down.

I'm not necessarily in love with what I do, and I don't know that I want an Oscar or to actually

any other type of awards at this point.

I'd like some peace and quiet.

I want to slow down, Brian.

I want to live the simple life.

I want to go out in the backyard and plant seeds and farm and watch

the crops grow to the sun.

You need to play some flute music behind me now.

Oh, yeah, grow to the sun.

Can you play the flute as well as the organ?

They kind of go hand in hand.

Maybe, maybe in the territory she's been a part of.

Well, nevertheless, oh, there you go.

And watch the crops grow to the sun, ladies and gentlemen.

Then the birds come and eat the seeds.

And

but, nevertheless, uh, he's uh, he's part of a barbershop quartet, I believe.

He still sings and performs uh for people who are

for all those kids that are big fans of the barbershop quartets now.

Yeah, those so, those young hipsters, the

uh young beat generation.

But actually, if he's in a barbershop quartet, he doesn't go to the barbershop.

He's, he's got a looks like grizzly Adams these days.

I get maybe his skin at 99.

If you

try to

shave him, it might come off on the razor or whatever.

Do you think the head of hair is the most amazing part about his age?

I mean, when you really think about it, 99, he has a full head of hair.

Yeah, it's gray, but it's there.

So he's got, you know, it's,

he must have, he's just lived a happy life.

He's so positive.

He's so positive.

Ah, positive is good.

No, Sheiki.

He's a positive, smiling, uplifting, happy guy.

I'd like to slap him in a fucking

99 years.

I don't want to slow down.

This will slow you down, Dick.

Fuck you.

He's a nice guy.

He's the only person that does a worse British accent than you or I, Dick Van Dyke.

Hey,

I'll have you know.

Hello, Mary Poppins.

I'll have you know that that I do a great British accent and I can I can do the various British accents and I can be Porsche and I can do the cockney.

What about Welsh?

He's a right gentleman, he is.

Do you do a Sean Connery?

Bond, James Bond.

See, there you go.

Other than like saying his name, do you say anything to Sean Connery?

Fuck, fuck you.

See, there you go.

But anyway, but yeah, Dick Van Dyke is way too cheerful for me.

He does 99 years old.

I have a time of his life.

What the hell's wrong with him?

He's never been in a wrestling business.

That's what the problem is.

If he was in a wrestling business, he'd have died miserable about 30 years ago.

Did he ever host Raw?

No, he never did.

And then they could have had Lou Albano, Captain Lou, come back from the dead because that was the come back from the dead

but no coming

if if he was still alive he could come back to the wwf that's right really jr i'm reanimated with albano

that

was the second most repeated captain lou albano joke behind hey i hope that shirt's waterproof because that tie is a real pisser If he didn't say that to you, he would bring up the fact that,

did you know that dick van dyke only made it in show business when he changed his name his real name was penis von lesbian

you know that must have been like such a hit in the chicago locker room in like 62

back in 63

oh what a night i'm telling you captain lou baby But anyway, we needed Captain Lou on the Hall of Fame.

We did it.

As a matter of fact, right now, Captain Lou, if they brought, if they dug exhumed the coffin and brought the remains out, it would have been more entertaining.

But

should we, should we just talk about the

old?

Yeah, let's talk more about the old.

You know, Carl Reiner just passed away a few years ago, but he got to be in his late 90s too.

There was something about that show that kept people going.

How old was Maury Amsterdam?

That's a good question.

Can you

Google that?

Can you Google find that?

Because now,

Rosemarie,

she always seemed like an old adult person, even when she was younger.

Maury Amsterdam died in 1996 at the age of 87.

Jesus Christ.

So there, Buddy was 87.

Look up Rosemarie.

Buddy was 87.

Dick Van Dyke, still her at 99.

Carl Reiner, 97 or 8, or whatever he was.

Rose Marie died December 28th, 2017, 94 years old.

Jesus H.

Christ.

And she was in show business when she was a kid, baby Rosemarie.

So

what about Mary Tyler Moore?

Was she the, she was the youngest looking, most fittest, in shape,

one of the bunch of them.

She certainly didn't live to be 85, I don't believe.

Wasn't she younger than that?

And it has here, for whatever reason, the hospital, too, but

she died January 25th, 2017, 80 years old, Greenwich, Connecticut.

So she made it to 80, and she was the youngest one of the bunch.

She made it to Greenwich.

Hold on, hold on.

Maybe it was Greenwich that did it.

Hold on here a second.

Look up Millie Helper,

Ann Morgan Gilbert, G-U-I-L-B-E-R-T.

The next door neighbor, Millie.

She passed away June 14th, 2016 at the age of 87.

Boom!

Because I've seen her on TV in the last 10 years or whatever the fuck it was.

And so she was working to the end.

What about Jerry Paris?

All right, hold on.

I would have gone to the show page if I knew that was going to turn into.

Well, I'm just saying, I mean, but you know, there's

what was it about this program that caused these people?

Jerry Parris died March 31st, 1986, 60 years old.

Oh, what was he hit by a bus?

Let me see here.

According to Wikipedia,

he was hospitalized at Cedars Sinai.

Doctors discovered he had a brain tumor.

God damn it.

He underwent two surgeries, but doctors were unable to remove the tumor.

And then he remained hospitalized until his death on March 31st at the age of 60.

Son of a bitch, he's the odd duck.

Wait a minute.

What about the Richard Deacon?

Richard Deacon, though.

Richard Deacon.

This is how badly we don't want to get the mania, folks.

Think about the cholesterol.

He was an overweight gentleman.

He passed away.

And I remember this because he didn't make it to the new Leave It to Beaver.

August 8th, 1984, 62 years old.

See, he didn't take care of himself, though.

He should have taken Buddy sorrell's

jabs more to heart

and and the the kid uh uh larry matthews he's got to still be alive he was like fucking seven when i was

five he is still alive he is 69 years old

well then he was

when i was five he would have been he would have been 11.

Well, there you go.

This has been our new drive-through segment, finding out if old people are alive.

Till next week, where we go through the honeymooners.

Spoiler, they're dead.

It's remarkable when you think about the main players

of that television program.

One of them is still around and the other one's passed at ancient, antiquated ages.

I remember one Oscars.

This must be like 25 years ago.

They had like the greatest actors of the century.

And,

you know, there were a lot of like old-timers there, but, you know, for the most part, like the old-timers were starting to be guys who were in films in the 40s.

All of a sudden, in the middle of that, there was Fay Ray, and she looked like she was 200 years old.

Like, holy shit, Fay Ray.

She was horrified to be there.

When I was a kid.

Well, I say a kid, I think I was a teenager probably, because I want to say it was around the mid-70s.

Here, Google Adolph Zucker.

Adolf Zucker was one of the early

Z-U-K.

I know who he is, yeah.

O-R-E-R.

No, Zukor, O-R.

One of the early film magnates, I could remember they did a special broadcast, some type of presentation for him on network television on his 100th birthday.

Which would have been 1973.

Boom, there you go.

And at that point, it's 1973, there's goddamn cinemascope for Christ's sake.

And here's one of the guys still alive that invented the fucking

movie.

It was in on the ground floor in pioneer days of the movie business and the Nickelodeons.

And he was already an adult at that time.

And his daughter married Marcus Lowe of Lowe's Theaters.

There you go.

See, it was all, it was a very incestuous business, the film industry.

Excuse me, I'm wrong.

But they lived long lives.

That was the daughter's father-in-law.

so she married marcus lowe's son which would have made

would have made her a son of a bitch well there you go

all right it's your show well we will now go through the cast of

make room for daddy no let's um

let's uh get to the big events that took place this past week in las vegas after smackdown and we'll talk briefly about some stuff from smackdown in a little while but let's get to the hall of Fame because happily it ended in time for us to record this show.

I thought I was the only one when I said, you know, I'll watch this tomorrow.

I'm going to bed.

But watching it back and seeing the people in the crowd, the wrestlers,

it wasn't just me.

Jim, let's talk about the 2025 class of the WWE Hall of Fame.

They went to bed too.

They just didn't go back to their hotel rooms to do it.

They just sacked out right there.

No, this, I swear,

a part of it,

well, most of it was not the talent's fault that this was the

most boring presentation.

It looked like you had piped into the closed circuit intercompany broadcast of a goddamn presentation by the CEO with graphics on the screen.

Every employee was nodding off.

Or maybe at catering, they served Soma soup with propofol croutons.

But it was just the whole thing was dreary.

There's going to be more excitement at the Pope's funeral.

And

they started it at 10 p.m.

local time.

And you saw guys in the crowd that had been on SmackDown, that had been beat the shit out of themselves.

And

I'm sure if, let's see, that's a three-hour show.

So if it was off at eight o'clock pacific time

they would have started at five the talent had probably been there since 11 o'clock maximum in the morning at the other building

on top of whatever the else is going on out there

and and the it looked like people had been herded in there at threat of losing their jobs And they would applaud for their friends and or co-workers, but where were the, where were the fans, Jerry?

There were no no fans, Jerry.

Did they have any?

I mean, there was a lot of people in the building, but you only saw the shots of the crowd on the floor.

I think there was a balcony, but would just, you know, they cut to the boys.

There was no

real fan interaction.

Could you hear them up there in the balcony chirping or snoring?

Well, they also kept it really dark, which probably didn't help everyone falling asleep.

You couldn't even see.

You couldn't really see how many people were there and where they were.

Well, yeah.

And that big-ass stage, McAfee was dressed like a cat burglar.

And Michael Cole, at least he

would look like Orson Welles in a 50s fucking B movie.

He looked like he was on vacation in fucking Panama or something.

But they had no podium for the host, Cole and McAfee,

who had the

headset mics

and hadn't were just standing awkwardly, like 10 feet apart from each other on the stage, like and didn't know what to do with their hands.

They were gesticulating, you know, broadly and so I

just wandering around.

And

they were not,

you know, a comedy duo that was really engaging in any snappy banter or repartee to begin with.

And

Christ on a cracker, it just,

and again,

you said right before we went on the air, you said, well, if I, when, when you criticize the production and the etc of this, people are like, well, yeah, you go ahead and do it yourself or whatever.

But I have actually been in the production of the Hall of Fame.

as a participant

and there were fans there that were reacting.

It was in a,

in, in Orlando.

They did, I can't remember the name of the new building downtown, but it's the big sports arena where they were doing other fucking television shows.

They had fans there.

Now, they also started at eight o'clock local time, but there was some energy.

There was some excitement.

This was like you just, like I said, you piped in on an inner office closed circuit that was only for the people in the company, which was actually kind of verified by when the fucking boss came out and talked for an hour and a half until it was 1.30 in the fucking morning or whatever out there.

What the fuck?

Help me, Brian.

How?

How should I help you with this?

No, it was,

it was like your,

you know, your principal and the art teacher got up on stage to host a talent show.

It was just so awkward.

It was just so awkward.

They didn't match the energy and whatever.

There was no energy.

But this was an awkward Hall of Fame, if you really think about it.

The last few years, and I'm not saying this was perfect because it certainly wasn't.

They've been doing the Hall of Fame right after SmackDown.

The fans are still there.

They take down the ropes.

It was a great look,

but the fans were unreliable from

either.

making too much noise during an induction or tackling Bret Hart.

You know, we've seen how that goes awry, that kind of setup.

And by the way, I'm not laughing that the guy tackled Bret Hart.

I'm laughing at it.

I just remembered the guy tackled Bret Hart.

It was the Hall of Fame, but go ahead.

But you know, Heyman last year,

you think about him doing a speech and his kids are in the front row and he's in the ring looking down on them.

You know, take that in your mind and then look at this year.

They're on the biggest stage you've ever seen.

Except they're 10 feet above everyone.

And there's just no

Hollywood bowl.

It's like you need binoculars to fucking pass out to the fans so they can see the people on stage.

So it was a different energy than they've had.

And,

you know, no disrespect to the people that it means a lot to.

And I loved, I'll say it here, I loved the natural disasters induction.

I thought that was tremendous.

But it's hard to take this year seriously and not think that it's just some slapdash thing when it's literally Paul Levesque, who deserves to be in their Hall of Fame, and they really just made it a tribute to Paul Leveck.

We'll get to that, but he's there.

Like, it's not like we have to worry about getting him in time unless he's sick, he's there.

And Michelle McCool, inducted by her husband, which,

again, you know, you look at it, you're like, I could see why this means a lot to them,

but this isn't supposed to be about them.

But, you know, you think of it, there's always been, you know, James Dudley got into the Hall of Fame.

It's all about the people in charge, making sure the people they care about have a moment to be celebrated.

But this year's Hall of Fame felt like it was lacking a lot.

And,

you know, Bret Hart and Steve Austin kind of got the energy going a little bit, and they were out there less time probably than everyone.

Yeah, because they knew that it was a fucking death march and they need to get in and get out.

But that's the thing.

They started late.

It was most of the boys and the families of the boys.

And if there were fans, they were few in number or they were asleep upstairs also.

And

the energy level, even though some people tried,

you know, as I was making notes with DDP inducted Luger first, and they did a nice package on Luger.

And, you know, DDP is not a

boring speaker.

Of course, he was, you know, reading it off of his tablet.

I wish they'd, if they're, if guys are going to have notes, at least make them use paper because it looked like he was a newscaster trying to keep up with the goddamn teleprompter.

But anyway,

he usually has energy and he tried to put Lex over in nice verbiage, but it was just like he was in this big empty fucking room.

I wrote, you need to hold a mirror up in front of the crowd's mouths.

And then Lex came out, was introduced, obviously.

And

they were saying they'd been working on him walking,

you know, some distance.

I don't know if they knew how big this stage was, but walking some distance at this event.

But they wheeled him out in the chair and he stood for it.

And he explained that he had taken a bump, evidently getting in his Uber car or whatever the day before at the airport, but at least he was standing up.

And Lex was, again, he was very honest and he's very, he's so much more personable now, as we've talked about a number of times than he was maybe back in the day.

And he admits it.

And his speech was nice.

And he talked about not being a wrestling fan until he was out of the business, which we've discussed.

But, you know, people were polite, but

it's fucking late at night and they're in this giant

stage with this dead crowd, and there's just no energy.

And it was a shame.

I'm sure everybody, you know, involved, as you said, was

into the moment, but they

again, when you have

some level of intimacy with a small crowd that at least is wanting to see the legends,

Or you have a big crowd that's wanting to see the legends, and you've got some of the boys and the family and mixed in.

You've got some atmosphere, but I don't, you know,

maybe somebody, if there was even any fucking

regular fan there, could they check in if they're listening and let us know what the percentage was of boys that were falling asleep with their families because they'd been up for three days and regular people.

Even the legends didn't get pops.

The Kamala,

you know, not that,

you know, it would bring the house down like the appearance of Steve Austin, but just familiar names that Taker, Taker came out.

You know, they're applauding, but it's like, oh, God, we need to move again.

And he introduced, as you mentioned, his lovely wife,

who came out and talked for

it.

I'm sure it was almost 20 minutes, but my God,

it just, I don't, I couldn't even process what was going on at some point.

I zoned out.

She was very

happy about everything.

And she's painfully thin.

Was there any

highlight of this so far that I've missed that you think we should bring up?

You know, again, The Undertaker clearly loves his wife tremendously and obviously has changed his life tremendously.

He's not chasing Jenna Jameson anymore.

So, and apparently it's her fault.

But,

and again, I understand why this means a lot to them.

I understand why it may have been insisted that this has to happen.

But But it's a WWE Hall of Fame, not a the People Who Made My Life Special Hall of Fame.

And it's not about Undertaker.

I've had this complaint.

I had this complaint about Leah Myvilla.

She'd be in the grandmother Hall of Fame, but the WWE Hall of Fame, let alone any wrestling Hall of Fame, let alone whitewashing her history.

I have an issue with Michelle McCool

was not.

a top star and they made this video and they presented her like she was a revolutionary wrestler who is influencing women to get involved in the business today.

I don't think that's the case.

And

again, I know this meant a lot to The Undertaker, and obviously it meant a lot to her to be put in a wrestling Hall of Fame.

She gave a longer speech than almost anyone other than Triple H, I guess.

She gave a longer speech than her career.

I mean, it's astounding.

So, you know, I, you know, again, I'm happy that they're happy, but this is one of those things that delegitimizes a Hall of Fame that needs any legitimacy it can get.

And

well, but I wonder at this point, should it's a rewriting a history.

It's a pretending of things and events that didn't happen in order to make the Undertaker happy.

And I got a problem with that.

Should they at this point just make it an industry dinner thing?

Yeah, it should be the Cauliflower Alley Club.

Here's someone we really like.

who's here every year.

Let's give him the Mike Lano Award.

Here he is, Joe Vedoofus.

Yeah, it should be like that.

No, anyway, Joe Vedoofus was already inducted some time back.

That's right.

But no, I'm talking about not televise it, not advertise it.

Just make it for all of us, then, all of us in the industry, as they say, or in their industry, the WWE-specific industry.

You can't come if you're an indie guy.

I don't know.

But as a television production,

you need to have stars and you need to have an atmosphere.

And you need to not start it at fucking midnight and go for three and a half fucking hours.

I think the Michelle McCool speech going forever and this turning into a tribute to Michelle McCool, who was one of the women there

who never

look at history.

She never meant anything towards the business or anything.

It's just she was one of the women there and she happened to marry the Undertaker.

And they gave her endless time.

They rushed Bill Watts and the funks and everyone else.

Like, you got two minutes.

Get out there.

And they pushed him off the stage.

They gave her endless time.

And I think that is another reason why just the room felt like it was dying.

I'm sure there were people happy for her, but they would have been happy for her with a five-minute speech.

Instead of this, turned into, it turned into The Undertaker apparently has been watching way too much Joel Alstein or Joe Austin, whatever his name is.

And he's now.

I vaguely know he's some type of preacher, and that's why I've avoided the rest of it.

And that's like the Undertaker's shtick.

If you watch the way he conducts himself on stage, you know, he's like a wrestling preacher now, it seems like.

And I feel like this was their big moment, and just like it'll be her big thing when she's on the show instead of Mickey James.

But I feel like it was for them, and it wasn't anything about WWE history or anything about the wrestling fans.

It was just this would make the Undertaker happy, so let's do it.

So, I, you know, but but I wanted to uh correct you or or

verify you on one thing.

It wasn't like she was the only one that they didn't rush, though.

So

now she was not the Lone Ranger there.

Well, they couldn't rush the boss,

but

you mentioned they rushed the funks when they were actually there.

Dory Funks Sr., my favorite part of the goddamn whole thing was the video they had because there's not enough in the public domain accessible accessible footage of Dory Sr.

But they had some nice pictures and video and I wrote way too short.

I would have taken 10 minutes of Dory Funk Sr.

at this point just to cleanse my palate.

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And then they did,

they teased us with the main event because they did a package here on Triple H, even though there'll be another package on Triple H.

And it was a history package done by the Fox sports guy, I guess.

They gave him credit.

And it was nice stuff.

And then

they featured in this thing the curtain call.

And then that's when I kind of lost interest and got pissed and fast-forwarded.

They didn't need to, they still don't need to keep trying to justify that to the world like it was something they should have done or that was the right thing to do.

Talk about rewriting history, that's when it was since since they have come from the dead to gain power all of the click members still oh it was revolutionary it was the greatest thing that was ever done and they and russo bought it and he was guilty of that also but they can't just let people forget about it they can't admit that they fucked up and shit to bed because it's a big part of the triple h backstory you know the real thing it led to that actually helped was steve austin winning king of the ring and giving yeah yeah but they make it now that it's the big part of the Triple H backstory.

He had so much to fight against because Vince was going to punish him while at the same time hanging out with him and Sean.

So, I mean, it was, you know, it's a big part of the mythology of Triple H.

So obviously it had to be here.

The mythology.

And they did a nice package on a nice package on earthquake and typhoon,

the natural disasters, and

Fred Ottman was there and John Tinta's family.

But did I miss it somehow?

Or was there no one to induct them per se?

They just brought them out there.

Yeah.

I think so.

Okay.

So that was.

And Jimmy Hart was there.

I was about to say, I swear to God, I was about to say Jimmy Hart was in the audience, wasn't he?

They cut the shots of him.

He was at his age at that time of night.

He looked a little more alert than most of them.

Save time.

Michelle McCool went long.

Just bring out the family.

Bring out your dad.

But no,

again,

there was no atmosphere, but John Tinta's son

was very well spoken,

was the best speaking family member ever, I think.

And he kept it short to the point.

He had a pleasant personality of

delivery you could understand, Seemed to be a well-groomed young man and fucking brought it in on time.

And people gave him a nice little,

as good of a nice little hand as this room was given.

All nice.

I'd like to adopt that boy.

I thought this was the highlight of the Hall of Fame.

I actually really liked it.

And just seeing Fred Outman out there with the Tenta family.

It was very moving.

It was very touching.

And I recognized a few of the kids from Darkseid.

Remember, they were interviewed on there so I was like oh you know it's nice to see them again almost oh there they are yeah

I actually thought this was kind of the highlight of it and

like this felt this was like the feel-good moment of the whole thing for me

well yeah because I well and Lex

you know, just seeing him that he's still, well, no, I'm saying that here, follow me on this train of thought, Lex, and that he's still around and everything.

And Earthquake and Typhoon

were the only, as I'm looking at my notes for the end, were the only inductions or inductees,

inditees, whatever the fuck, the only people that went in that aren't usually coming back around to begin with and still with the company or married to someone still with the company.

It's the WrestleMania guy, Undertaker, Austin, Brett.

Yes, that's wonderful.

But it's not like

any other, you know, goddamn legends, legends actually

got in here was it did it

no see and again it's not like there aren't a lot of guys there it's not like there aren't guys you'd really want to try to get to right now based on age based on a lot of things you know i thought they just signed their legends deal demolition Would have been great to have them in there.

Maybe they'll be in next year.

I saw them in a crowd shot.

Yeah, they're not getting any younger.

They're not in.

Ivan Koloff, they put him in.

He got one of those.

Hey, hey, hold on.

Hold on a second.

Hold on a second.

Darso's like two years older than me.

Fuck you now.

Well, you guys too, obviously.

You and the Midnight Express.

No, I'm saying you said Darso and Bill Eady ain't getting any younger.

Fucking Darso's two years older than me.

You know what I mean?

So don't put me in the goddamn

senior citizens.

Well, I'm still say there's plenty.

Look at the AARP magazine.

There's plenty of fucking active senior citizens, motherfucker.

I'm just saying, I don't want to go in the Hall of Fame, but I don't want to put in the category of doing while it's still time.

Oh, look who's on the cover of this month's issue.

Dick Van Dyke.

Oh, son of a bitch.

See, there you go.

Slap him.

No, you will not slap him for the record.

He's a wonderful, lovable man who's out there doing God's work for the American people still.

I'm way too fucking happy.

He's a happy man.

Let's spread.

Put on a happy face.

Come on, Jim.

Let's get back.

Let's let's get back to this hall of fame what was the question at hand we were talking about legends yes

we were yes we were mentioning that you know there was an opportunity for some other actual legends that you don't just see pop up

every few months on the regular programming that could have gone in but this was more of an industry function see that's the thing i think a lot of fans do want you know the one thing I always enjoyed under the Vince years, even though the finished product would usually end up pissing me off, but I always liked the idea of, you know, it's this year's Raw Reunion or whatever.

And then, oh, there's IRS, there's Ted DiBiase.

You don't even need to see him give speeches.

You just want to at least see them.

And when the only sight you get of some of these people at WWE TV ever is like in a dark room sitting next to,

does Paul Heyman not sit back?

Did you see Heyman sitting down?

He either sits at the edge of his chair or he doesn't sit back or, and I'm not piling on like you, or he's so rotund that he can't go back any further.

Well, see, here, I can explain that to you here because, see, now, and some people out there in podcast land will understand this.

If because of his rotundity and the way that the geographical and gravitational forces imbalance the fucking corpulence, if he leans back,

then he started, he gets the narcolepsy and he starts snoring.

He's got the sleep apnea because the jowls constrict his airways.

So he has to lean forward so that he can actually intake oxygen through the cholesterol infested arteries that's the medical description he was more forward than anyone else in his row it looked like if like a spotlight was turned on he was ready for it

he also may have been constipated

we have no uh nothing to base this uh but he may have been he but you know

i don't know it for a fact but a lot of people are saying it

Anyhow,

the next highlight of this thing was the package, the video of the Bretton Austin match from WrestleMania.

You know, and just the highlights.

I wrote this is a completely different product.

Nothing looks like this today.

It's sad,

the level of

aggression and violence,

you know, that

they gave off and the aura of animosity.

And not only that, but the people jumping up and down, you know, batshit at that point because they were into it and it gave you the overall aura of some shit going down instead of,

yeah, we're going to put in 20 minutes here tonight, folks.

And

you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, but to be fair, it also stood out from even wrestling in 1996 or 1997.

It wasn't like there was anything else on the card like that it was the it was the standout match it's probably still the greatest match in wwe history well i'm not even talking about the quality of the match i'm just saying in the highlights you see moments and you had moments like that with bretton taker or moments like that with taker and austin or moments like that with

foley or okay

all of those that top guy mix

you know you can go back and look at highlights and say jesus christ those guys try to fucking rip each other to shreds compared to what most of the time you are seeing today.

There are a few scant practitioners of the art that are trying,

but the chaos of the thing.

Anyway,

and they had,

God damn it,

they had punk come out

to fucking do the induction here of the match.

And

again,

after we've heard from a variety of people at length, he said, they've given me two minutes.

Why didn't everybody else get two minutes?

It's what I wrote.

This guy,

the most cunning linguist on the roster, perhaps, and he gets two minutes to induct the best match they ever fucking had.

which he called the greatest match in WrestleMania history.

It's perfect.

And

I can't, I think, as we've said, I can't argue it's the greatest match in WrestleMania history.

I think I've said before it was my, was that quantifying my favorite WrestleMania match or just my favorite WWF match?

Because it looked like a goddamn pro wrestling match.

But anyway,

and he named all of his mentors that have passed away.

Fucking, thankfully, I wasn't on that list.

All that you were trying to rush me here a minute ago.

And he was glad that Steve and Brett are still there to get their flowers.

And I'm pretty sure they probably, they're happier with the check if there was some flowers in their room, but the check is probably the most important thing over the weekend.

But he introduces Steve Austin and Brett Hart, and they get a soup son of response.

I mean, could it be that they just had no crowd audio and there was a balcony going absolutely bat shit for the biggest stars in the history of the business?

Or was it their fucking immediate family that was now up at midnight, you know, in a long day going?

Yeah, this is just hours after SmackDown.

Everyone had to go get changed and come to this thing and sit there.

And Michelle McCool went long.

So I think there were a variety of elements that did not make this a

pleasurable experience, seemingly for the viewer at home and the viewer there.

And the viewer there.

uh perhaps we should call them the hostages the captives

and uh they get a bust with half of each guy's head as so now if they're what if they ever induct a tag match will it look like the incredible four-headed transplant

half the guy's head smacked onto the side of each other is the trophy for the

the great match or moment or whatever the fuck they they're calling what do you do with that what if you're like inducted for a match with someone you hate well but yeah besides that which one gets it do they have to split it like six months to six months

if brett still lives in calgary he'll take it in the wintertime i guess yeah but if it's like a match with someone like you personally don't like do you want to have their half their face in your office no

well

Actually, I'd like to have half of one of their bones of some description.

Maybe one that I'd broken personally.

I could fucking,

you know what?

That would be something.

Now I'm thinking about at some point,

besides the urination that I've promised, I wonder if I could do a little do-it-yourself exhumation after the fact and

get a souvenir for the rest of a leg bone or a ankle bone.

Urinating on the grave was probably pushing it to the limit.

I didn't say anything about a grave.

I think going into the ground to pull a bone that may be a bit of an issue well actually it could be it's a dog park that may be a step too far or knickknack petty whack give corny a bone or a dig too far

that old stains coming home all righty

i mean it's just i don't know it's not as impressive yeah there's vince russo's femur i don't i don't know

Like it would have to be like the jaw or something.

It couldn't be like, there's his pinky.

He doesn't have a femur.

He has a female

anyway so back to the hall of fame the uh steve turned on the personality for he keep it basic and simple just like his speech just like he approached the match and he had some personality and he thanked vince and he thanked jr and he thanked lawler for announcing it those three guys

And then he drank some beer with Bret Hart and Pat McAfee

and boom.

And he got out of there,

as did Brett, who looked thrilled about the whole thing, you know, while the getting was good.

Imagine the pop Brett would have gotten, at least from the fans, if he said, you know, that Vince was a dirty pervert.

Like everyone's like, oh, how could I not say thank you?

Well, you, of course, but you could also say,

and you know, I had no idea, and he was the devil.

But you know what?

If Stu was still around, he'd go, I told you, he said, I knew it.

They were on Pirberts.

Let him do Pirverts.

Ivan Koloff, they had some nice footage.

They could have at least invited nephew Nikita to induct him, but nothing.

Nothing, nothing.

Now, his wife, Renee, nice, nice lady.

She was in the audience and she did a little parade wave and then they moved on.

And again,

Cole and McAfee, let's go back to how not good they

in this environment, in this role.

I don't know what they,

if you're going to be speaking to people on that giant of a stage,

and I'm going to defend them here for a minute for not being any good.

If you're on a stage that fucking big and you're talking to a crowd that fucking dead.

And you're standing 10 feet apart from the guy that you're supposed to be trying to do in between this some witty reparte with or you know a little brump dump or some lively conversation or just lead to the next thing or whatever they're standing apart like they've just found out the other one has anthrax in his pocket and they have no microphone to hold on to so they got nothing to do with their hands because it's strapped around their head and there's no podium to lean on as one does when one is speaking to a large group of people.

It was just fucking awkward.

and it looked like they were ready to

get the out of there

and then they did another triple h video

nothing else matters i have a feeling that was the theme of the show here so far as long as we just make triple h happy and give him about an hour and a half nothing else matters

It was like his actual lunches in his heyday.

Just went on and on.

And his promos.

Remember he used to open up Raw with like a 20-minute promo?

Yes.

See, nostalgia clouds.

And we're not saying that Triple H is an idiot and that he's a shit and a blah, blah, blah.

He's doing a better job than the people that have prefaced him have.

So we're not taking that away from him.

But at the time,

there was some interminable bubble bull talking going on and

long matches that was a concerted effort to get him over.

And now they have an entire catalog of footage that they can use that shows how fucking over he is.

Wasn't that why Pat Patterson went home?

Like, you know, Vince, I think you're pushing.

The video was too long.

No, Vince, I think you're pushing your son-in-law too much.

Okay.

You know, Pat, it's time to go home.

Well,

he didn't exile him to an island forever, but I think at one point Pat

may have made that suggestion.

But I mean, even this video,

which...

My God, the clips they had.

I don't know how many production assistants they may have put onto just locating

he's on this show and that show and this famous appearance and that fucking thing and this fucking match and that.

And they put this thing together to make after this, he should run.

I was going to say for president of the United States, I think president of North Korea.

I don't know if maybe this might not be a wag the dog kind of thing where these people need to go make videos for

Kim Duck.

What's his name over there?

Kim Jong-il son.

It's not Kim Duck, that's Tiger Chung Lee you're speaking of.

Well, and

which name do you like better?

Which name you like better, Kim Duck or Tiger Chung Lee?

Well, Kim Duck is the first one that I knew because that's the first one he was using.

But when you hear Tiger Chung Lee, it probably is a little bit more fearsome than Kim Duck.

I think so.

Yeah.

Into the WWE Hall of Fame next year.

Kim Ducker.

Yeah, Kim Duck or Spring Roll or whatever the fuck.

It just sounds no, when you, when you get to

Tiger Chung Lee.

Tiger Chung Lee.

All right.

Well, here's Tiger Triple H.

So it was 10 to midnight local time

when they introduced Sean Michaels to

come out and introduce the main event inductee.

And honestly,

Michaels gave a great speech and was heartfelt in points with how hard it was for Triple H to stay his friend.

And he wasn't reading it.

It was from the heart.

He got choked up on a couple of occasions.

And honestly, I think he was legitimate because in my experience with Michaels, he's not that good of a promo that he could have faked any of this.

And still, you know, it just

needed

a more receptive audience.

I don't know.

The boys and their families, they probably didn't know whether to how to react, or there may have been some eye-rolling from amongst each other in the audience with their heads down.

But

it was, you know, finally, when he introduced Triple H,

that got the pop of the night, the best pop that the night offered.

Because at that point, after they've showed that video, it's past fucking midnight.

The crowd is in the show has been dead so far.

And here comes the boss.

You know, everybody's going to try to contribute something.

But then

he was there

for the next one hour.

And I believe,

do I have it exactly?

I was going to say hour and 20 minutes, but I'm one hour and 22 minutes.

Oh, I thought it was 117.

Well, it was one hour and 22 minutes after Sean began.

I'm sorry.

So an hour and 17 minutes.

If the kids today ever want to know what it felt like to sit through a Triple H main event, now you know.

What happened also?

Even again, when I was there in Orlando, this was only what, seven years ago or whatever it was,

you got to have a tux.

Everybody, I had to go get the tux.

Everybody had to have the tux.

They're just out to Michael Cole, as I said, looked like, you know, goddamn

the hero of a fucking Raymond Chandler movie in the 50s.

But anyway, Triple H came out

and he was choked up too

a few times in this thing.

He shouted out Rich Herring and their Rich Herring stood up 55 years

since the WWWF.

And

let's just put it this way.

Rich's

hair style has not changed with the times, but his hair piece has his color has changed with his age.

Let's just put it that way.

But I like Rich Herring.

He was always a nice guy to me.

Now let's point out some other wig wearers in the crowd.

Hey, Jim, did you see Kowalski?

Well,

it's not like that anybody couldn't fucking tell.

That's the thing.

He was like a Dick Van Dyke.

He just had a healthy head of hair at an older age.

Well,

at least he's healthy and because he's older.

But as Triple H said, if shit was really bad, call the wolf.

Okay.

Then he talked because he said, it's not about me.

It's the people who got me here.

And then he proceeded over the next hour and some minutes to thank everyone that he has ever had an interaction with in his life.

Would you like to hear them in order, Brian?

Oh, no.

He thanked his parents, his sister, his friends from the gym, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ted Arsidi, who sent him to Killer Kowalski, Killer Kowowski, Eric Bischoff,

Dusty Rhodes, got choked up about Dusty,

Arne Anderson,

who he was the designated driver of, Harley Race, Steve Austin, Mick Foley,

Terry Taylor,

who apparently had some kind of medical issue earlier in the day,

but and he didn't think he was there.

And it was that they got a shot of Terry sitting in the audience.

What was the medical issue?

Bird flu?

He's a rooster.

I don't.

I don't know what, but hopefully

our old friend Terry is feeling well, but maybe he was, maybe he got nervous.

He was scared for his job if he didn't come back and make it in this fucking North Korean goddamn propaganda performance they're putting on here.

But anyway,

Steve Regal.

Triple H was supposed to be the blue blood, one of the blue bloods with Steve Regal, apparently.

Well, he was teaming with Steve Regal right before he left WCW.

That's when Earl Robert Eaton would have

come into being.

Is that correct then?

Bobby would have been after that.

That's right.

So there you go.

They bleeped

the F in WWF when he said that.

Even TKO are afraid of the World Wildlife Federation.

It wasn't just Jerry McDivitt they beat.

Everyone's afraid of them.

So anyway, then he proceeds the rest of the, and he said he wanted

when he went to the WWF,

he wanted to be with the guys that were talking about business in the car.

And the other guys didn't want to talk business.

At least in my experience, almost everybody in the wrestling business talked business in the car.

That's what me and the Midnight Express did, but perhaps we were just,

you know, feathers of a different horse also, or a

flock of a different color, or whatever the case may be.

Maybe don't ride with Marty Giannetti.

Maybe just go with someone else.

Maybe, yeah, maybe it was just the company he had been in that didn't want to tell, but nevertheless, so he got in with Nash and Hall and Michaels and Waltman, and they talked about the business.

And he told a story about the first night he rode with them.

They created a scene at Denny's and took Waltman to the hospital.

And that's when he decided to ride with them for good.

And then he thanked China and Road Dog and Billy and Steve Austin again and Mick Foley again

and

Orton and Batista and Ric Flair.

Where's Dwayne?

Where's Dwayne?

He didn't thank him.

Not on my list.

He thanked Dr.

Jim Andrews and everybody in Birmingham.

And that is

Dr.

Andrews in Birmingham has put more of the boys, not just of this company, but in general for the past 30 years back together than probably most people.

They showed the footage of when he

tore his quad and then came back eight months later.

If there was ever a better argument for why steroids are good, they should make it there.

Like, if I wasn't loaded to the tits on steroids here, I would have been out a year and a half.

But because I had steroids used for the reasons that they were actually supposed to be used for, healing my muscles, healing my body, I was able to come back, but

I guess you know, then, Brian, somebody might say the loophole in that was if he wasn't used to the tits on steroids, he wouldn't have torn his quad to begin with.

Well, that's true, too.

We saw a lot of muscle tears that were never seen before in science with the uh

with the introduction of steroids into wrestling and the infiltration in the late 80s and early 90s, just muscle ripped off the bone everywhere.

So, what steroids giveth, steroids taketh awayeth, or do they take them awayeth first and then they giveth backeth?

It depends.

It depends if you get the meat DDP.

Bang.

But anyway, then he talked about

the creative.

Good God.

Yes, good God.

He's still talking.

He talked about the going to the production meetings and he mentioned Lanza and Patterson and George Steele put Pat Patterson over.

That's why he was inspired to build a developmental system.

They already had one.

They just didn't spend any money on it.

He might not have been paying attention.

But

that horse had already left the barn, cowboy, as far as the idea of

that whole situation.

But he was inspired.

And Dusty again.

And he put the NXT talent over.

Said, oh, most of the people here are, you know, from NXT,

except for all the stars that they're putting in all the title matches for the last

Cena and Orton.

But nevertheless,

it was dragging now.

I was writing.

Oh, he mentioned Michael Hayes was a unique individual.

He thanked Bruce Pritchard,

one of the writers, the crew, the riggers.

Paul Heyman, who he called the consigliary.

Linda was sitting there in the crowd with Stephanie.

Stephanie has more wrinkles now than Linda does, since she's had her face stretched.

He thanked Shane, who wasn't there.

He thanked Vince, who wasn't there,

because it's a complicated story.

He's a complicated man, and no one loves him, but his woman.

If unannounced, Vince showed up with Ave Letterman.

I don't know

i wonder well and here's the thing it wouldn't have been up to

the final word would not have been up to triple h

and he's probably happy about that because i'm sure he gets to fucking not be the the final word on some things being involved in the company and still in the family.

Here's a question for you based on not really being around him at all the last several years.

Do you think Vince watched this

no definitely not i don't think when it was on the air live

he's he's 80 years old and he's on the eastern time yeah zone so that's head shitting time you can't do that uh well so this is this thing if you watched it live on the east coast on peacock

it would not have been over until 4 30 in the morning And this is about 4.15 here.

But he said he loved Vince.

He's the father of his grandchildren or the grandchildren.

You know what I'm saying?

He's the father of his grandchildren.

Holy shit.

Genetic jackhammer.

I had no idea.

He's the

family just sick.

That's sick of people.

Stop it.

Stop it.

The sickness.

It's spreading like wildfire.

No, he's the children's grandfather.

And it's complicated, but he wouldn't be there without him.

When somebody helps you that much, you owe them.

So thank you, Vince.

And then he went to Taker and he thanked Taker

for giving him advice about Stephanie.

And at that point, I've notated that we were three hours into this program and he said he was getting some signals.

He's going to be done in a couple of minutes.

And

he proceeded to go another 20 fucking minutes.

What are the signals?

Everyone closing their eyes?

Yes, I think.

I think somebody, somebody may have fainted from the camera position.

Like the camera guy just fell over.

And he said, I'm getting some signals.

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He talked about his heart issue reordering his priorities.

He talked about his daughters, Aurora, Murphy, and Vaughan.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with any three of those names,

but does that

what

motif were the parents going for?

They seem like very divergent names, Aurora, Murphy, and Vaughan.

Names to make Vince happy.

Is Murphy Irish?

I think Murphy.

Murphy's Irish.

Murphy was named for Vince, yeah.

What about Vaughan?

How do you spell Vaughan?

Vaughn V.

Well, I would, well, I don't know.

It's a woman, the name vaughn i've like robert vaughn right is that how you would spell it for a woman i don't know is that wrestler viva vaughn or viva van v-a-n well no that's that would that would be a van an and instead of an on there's vaughn but what about aurora aurora aurora

that's a more more hippie-ish type of name well

Anyway, if they were the Andrew sisters, Vaughn would be Laverne.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

So Jim will not not be joining the Hall of Fame anytime soon, ladies and gentlemen.

Hey,

boogie boogie, boy, company B.

Toodaliata, Doodle-yada.

So, then he thanked Stephanie.

And then he thanked Nick Kahn.

Nick Kahn came after Stephanie.

I mean, it's instead of God and country, it's wife, but boss first.

Stephanie Nick Con, the best businessman I know, apparently,

this guy thinks it, you know, negotiated him out of a goddamn

apparently out of a big lawsuit at WrestleMania.

More on that later, the best businessman I know.

Where have you worked?

I've worked here.

No, Nikon is a very, very talented guy.

No, no, no, no.

Now, think about it.

He worked there and he worked in WCW under Turner.

So he met a bunch of fucking

qualified businessmen.

And then he is heartfelt in the way that Triple H, that is, and how

wrestling hooks you and it's all you ever want to do.

And he tries to be positive and he thanks the fans and promises to keep the business alive for the next generation.

And

thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

One hour and 22 minutes, as I notated after Sean Michaels began talking about him,

he finished talking.

Is there a filibuster rule in the Hall of Fame or just in the Senate?

You know, it's one of those things Vince never wanted to be mentioned, let alone be inducted.

You know, it creates a weird dynamic when the boss is the person you have to sit there and watch give.

a very heartfelt speech about their entire life.

Like, this was a life speech.

It was cathartic.

It almost, you know, it felt like he had to get it out and do all these things and thank all these people now.

And it's nice, but I don't know if it's overindulgent or just self-indulgent.

It went forever.

You know, how can I complain about Michelle McCool doing a 30-minute Broadway when you had this thing going an hour and a half?

Texas death match.

Yeah, this thing was an hour and a half.

And again, I know it meant a lot to him, but.

Was the Hall of Fame this year just about doing things to make the people like Undertaker and Triple H happy about themselves?

or was it for the fans and the people there?

Triple H is certainly worthy of a WWE Hall of Fame.

And again, it was a heartfelt speech, but

at a certain point, everyone was ready for a helix sleep.

They well, they have

some level of duty or responsibility to, if they're going to advertise something and put it on television, it has to be worthy of being on television.

And this was in the bare minute.

I mean, if the video packages hadn't been there,

Jesus Christ.

So every 30 minutes or an hour or so, you could see some movement.

It was like watching goddamn paintings hanging on the wall.

Congratulations.

That's got to be the longest one ever, right?

Longest Hall of Fame ever.

It was just unbearable.

It has to be.

Congratulations to the 2025 inductees to the WWE Hall of Fame.

We'll see whose wife gets in next year.

But you know, Jim, maybe part of the problem why so many people were seemingly falling asleep in the audience there,

you're really dodging the elephant in the room.

These are a bunch of wrestlers.

Some have cauliflower ears.

A lot of guys who have taken a lot of bumps.

They may be tired.

They may have hearing loss.

And they may need a little aid, a little friend, a little help, so that they can hear the endless speeches or really just one endless speech.

And I think you know who I'm talking about, our brand new friends with MD hearing.

Well, I'll tell you what I sure do, Brian.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Hold on.

I know I'm yelling.

Let me turn my MD hearing aid on.

Oh, okay, now.

I'm sorry.

Am I still yelling, Brian?

Because I can hear so much better?

But I'll tell you what, I'll just go back to normal.

Because folks, we have new friends at MD Hearing.

And you know what I did, Brian?

They comped me one of their fine products because we have this business relationship now.

And I didn't know anything about it.

And what I did, because Stacey's stepfather, who's recently moved here, you know.

I've talked about that on the program.

He has hearing loss and is in a past worn hearing aids and has been dissatisfied and has not been wearing them.

And that's why you got to go, hey, Dad.

But nevertheless, I gave him the pair and I said, check these things out.

And son of a gun, now you can go up to him.

He can hear a mouse pissing on cotton.

You can go up to him and you can go, hey, dad, he'll go, would you please quit shouting?

And that's, I'll tell you what, folks.

It may be that extreme.

It may be just a regular,

he's an extreme kind of guy.

Extreme danger.

He has extreme reactions to things.

So, you know, but you may have similar results, but we're not promising.

But nevertheless, besides that, here's the good thing.

A lot of people that need hearing aids may not know.

how to get them or where to get them or what to do about them, or they may not take the step to do it.

Or they may say, Well, I can't afford that high-priced technology, Brian, because you know, they think it's like NASA equipment goes into your head in order to do this.

They think I can't spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, it's just out of the question.

They may not realize, Brian, that MD hearing

can provide you with hearing aids, premium quality hearing aids, that are only $297 a pair.

It's this is not like buying a car.

And

as a matter of fact, one of the comments from one of their fine satisfied customers was, these are the best hearing aids that you can buy, simple to use, durable, and better than hearing aids that cost 10 times as much.

That's why these things can cost thousands of dollars, but they don't have to.

Because MD Hearing was founded by an ENT surgeon.

You know what that means, don't you?

An int surgeon?

That means he's into

all the different things that go on in your head.

No, no, that's what he's into.

That's why they shorten it down for medical purposes.

He's into ear, nose, and throat, ENT.

Oh, yeah, he's all up in your shit, all over the place.

He'll go in your nose.

He'll go down your throat.

No, no, he'll stick some shit in your ear.

It's a profession.

It's something they study, these doctors.

Well, yeah.

You know, whichever one they, do they let women do that now?

He or she, whichever one will be just all up in your shit if you go to one of these doctors.

But see, you don't have to because MD Hearing was founded by an int surgeon who's all into your head, who saw just how many of his patients needed hearing aids, but couldn't afford them.

And he made it his mission, his quest.

to follow that star, no matter how hopeless.

He made it a mission to develop a quality hearing aid that anybody could afford.

And that's what he has done here.

And now they have sold over 2 million of these ding-dong dandies because they offer a $45, a $45, a 45-day risk-free trial and 100%

money-back guarantees.

I'm so excited about these hearing aids.

You can buy them with confidence, Brian.

You can trust these things

because they will give you your money back back

because it's a risk-free trial.

All you got to do, if they don't work for you, you have to take them out of your ears.

You got to clean the ear wax off of them.

That's one thing that they're, because they have a detector.

It's like one of those neon lights.

No, there's no detector.

If there's any earwax on this son of a bitch, they ain't taking it back.

There is no ear detect

detection, I guess it would be.

There are no neon lights.

Well, you have to.

It's a black light.

Let's talk about neon sounds.

You'll be hearing everything happening all around and all abound with MD hearing oh yeah as i said you'll be able to hear a mouse pissing on cotton you'll be able to hear a ghost whispering to a grave

but all you got to do and here's another thing brian also

i forgot to tell you about this they're they're small they're the smallest hearing aids ever from md hearing

the neo xs model

I think it's it's also got one of those fucking Maserati type engines with the valves and the pistons.

So when you rev it up, it sounds real impressive too.

No, no.

But the Neo XS, the smallest hearing aid ever, nobody will know that it's there.

Now, technically, if somebody got in the right position and looked close enough and maybe had either a magnifying glass or one of them little jewelers things they could stick in their ear or in their eye, they could see.

that this hearing aid is in your ear, but then they would be invading your personal space.

And in most states, you stand your ground, You can elbow them in the nuts or punch them in the fucking face.

Again, let's focus on, let's focus on these wonderful hearing aids and a wonderful.

Well, I just want to make sure that everybody knows that if somebody does see these hearing aids in your ear, you can punch them in the fucking face or kick them in the nuts and you won't be charged.

That is not true.

And you have no authority to give any sort of disclaimer or any sort of indemnification.

Yes, they'd have to be.

I'm not getting so mad.

You're getting me fired up.

God damn it.

Can you hear me now

ladies and gentlemen yes you're deafening me i've got to turn you down

hearing will give you the ability you know lots of us in everyday life we have some hearing loss this gives you the ability to hear your wife when she says how come you don't answer me and you always say no no no don't tell them that no don't say that we want to sell these son of a bitches we don't want people sending them back No, you can turn these things off and you can't hear your wife, ladies and gentlemen.

You'll be stone deaf if the power goes out on these things.

You won't be able to hear things.

You'll be back to where you started.

You'll be back to where you started, but let's talk about where you can go.

And

if you pay extra, then

they got ones that if you turn it off, you're completely deaf, and that way you can't listen to your wife.

They do again, they do not have to.

They do not have this even for an extra cost as of present.

But what they do have is a terrific price for the listeners on hearing aids.

Jim, let's get to the finish line.

Well, I'll tell you what.

All you got to do to get the high quality, affordable hearing aids that you deserve for your ears with MD Hearing is go to shopmdhearing.com.

That's shop, S-H-O-P-M-D, as in medical doctor.

That's what it stands for usually.

Hearing.

Everybody knows how to spell hearing.

H-E-A-R-I-N-G.

Thank you.

Maybe the people who can't hear me don't know how to spell hearing because they can't hear how to spell it.

Shop mdhearing.com and use the promo code JCE to get a pair of hearing aids for just $297.

And

they're adding a free extra charging case, which is a $100 value.

How in the world can you beat these things?

Some people will charge you thousands of dollars for some of these apparatuses or apparati.

and and then people will still say, Hey, why have you got TV antennas sticking out of your ears?

But these things, like I said, they'll be down there so deep, nobody's going to see these son of a guns.

As a matter of fact, you'll have to send in the Army Corps of Engineers to try to find these things.

That's how invisible they're going to be.

That is not how invisible they're going to be.

You will be able to get them in and out whenever you need them.

Don't,

don't, don't,

don't worry, don't worry, don't worry,

just listen up.

Go to shopmdhearing.com and use the promo code JCE to get a pair of hearing aids, $297, free extra charging case, $100 value.

And I can hear clearly now the

deafness is gone.

I can hear all the people cussing at me.

Once again, MD Hearing.

Jim, one last time.

What's that?

Promo code.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.

Promo code JCE,

shop mdhearing.com, 297 bucks, free charging case, $100 value.

Do the math.

You can't afford not to hear.

What if you're standing in front of a train and they go

and you can't hear it?

Well, see?

Once again, MD Hearing.

And Jim, before we move on to the big WrestleMania review that everyone wants to hear what you're going to say, there was a Friday night SmackDown

that hopefully we're not going to spend too much time on, but there were a few things worth talking about.

Well, and no, we're not.

Yes, there were, but

they were already in Las Vegas, the T-Mobile Arena, same place they're going to do Raw on Monday.

And,

of course, they got a big crowd, but this, everything has been done.

It was all done.

This was

basically three hours of promos from the main constituents, participants, whatever.

Even though they were good promos,

it was promos with matches in the middle.

And, you know, I got to think a lot of these people were out-of-town fans that were in for WrestleMania weekend and doing the whole thing.

My God, the energy they must possess.

But they were happy.

to sing the songs and to do the chants and to see the stars in person and to hear them talk about what they're probably in town to see the next day.

But otherwise than that,

and one thing before we talk about Rey Mysterio,

Cody and Cena,

you know, they had another promo where they can both talk, boy, and

they cheered.

They will both cheer and boo, John Cena.

Let's go, Cena.

Cena sucks.

And they, but they like to sing John Cena sucks, whether they're going to cheer him later on or not when the music plays.

But he came out and trashed the fans and put himself over.

And I was thinking at the time, how can he ever switch back?

Maybe they're just not going to switch him back.

He doesn't give a shit, right?

He could just ride off in the sunset.

Because from what he said about these people, even if they're still cheering him,

he said something.

How can you say I'm sorry?

That should be the title of a song.

It's hard for him to say he's sorry, or it's going to be.

And then Cody came out and he got booed when he started to promo Cena, but he

fired up and did two minutes or less, just demolished John Cena.

And the people started cheering him and chanting, you can't wrestle.

So,

and then when they were finished assassinating each other's characters,

Cody gave him another crossroads and laid him out.

So,

just real briefly, Brian, how do you think that anything is going to happen that they can concoct that John Cena can apologize to the fans for what he said, or do you think they'll just forget about it?

I only see one option.

Kind of like Twin Peaks or David Lynch.

The real John Cena never came back from the Bray Wyatt pseudo-world in that weird cinematic match I had at WrestleMania.

This is a replicant.

This is not the actual John Cena.

This is some bizarre puppet that was sent back from Bray Wyatt's world to lose the Austin Theory and turn on Cody Rhodes.

I don't know.

I like the Transporter brought the evil one from another dimension better.

Because more people have seen that Star Trek episode than probably saw that WrestleMania.

But anyway, nevertheless, otherwise, I think

what you think, though, you know, again,

recognizing that, especially Vegas,

that

it's a town that may not be the typical, it may not be the typical wrestling crowd, the typical Monday Night Raw crowd.

Well, you know, it's the WrestleMania crowd, and they have come from all over the world dressed just as they are.

But still, Cody getting the reaction that Charlotte got in,

you know, a regular SmackDown or on a regular

bad.

But still, what do you, again, the fact that it happened, it wouldn't have happened last year with the same exact audience, would it have?

If it was Cena, maybe.

I don't know.

Because they've liked him for so long and they know that.

And if they didn't know, the commercials for the new television program from from the writer's room will tell them that it's all fucking scripted anyway.

So

nostalgia is powerful, blah, blah, blah.

I don't know that this means that Cody is ready to fucking hang out a goddamn unemployed sign and, you know, go looking for work.

I think it is the WrestleMania weekend and the

the most willing to spend money and the diest hardest coming in to just cheer for everybody because they're all big stars and this is all a fucking happening.

And I think if they go back, if they go back to Dubuque, then it'll probably be, they're still going to like Cody.

And it's interesting, too, this whole feud of back and forth promos face-to-face in the ring.

We've seen several of them.

Cody's laid out Cena.

Cena never got his hands on Cody.

Well, and that's

that's why I've been saying here for what, about a week and a half now.

well looks like we're going to have a new champ folks

but that uh yeah that otherwise as I said it was just it was appearances by everybody to promo what everybody's already in town to see

but they were doing it for the for the world also I think people like Cody when he

Again, when he comes across as more real, not when he comes across as having a bullshit argument like, you hurt these people or whatever it is.

And when he's dressed like he's a fucking banker on Fleet Street, as opposed to,

you know, coming out there with a tower around his neck and looking like someone who's ready for a fight, you know, again, you can't do that every time, but

I think with Cody, there's a

there's an overexposure that leads to resentment that we saw from the AEW crowd that could repeat here if we get more of

wimp babyface Cody making bad decisions.

Well, I would hope

that

the chasing the title is going to help him get a little bit more oomph to him, except that the reason why he lost it, which we'll get to,

probably going to help in that regard,

that he kind of cost himself the deal.

But I don't want to spoil anything.

But you know what was spoiled, Brian, is that was the biggest thing on SmackDown

of an unscheduled nature was they hurt Rey Mysterio.

It's like when Vince Sr.

came into Hansen's locker room and said, You hurt Bruno, and he shit himself.

And did you even see this match?

Did you go back and look at it?

Did you pay attention?

Because if you blinked, you missed it.

Stan Hansen really shit himself when Jilly Rizzo said, You hurt Bruno.

Yeah.

I mean, I saw when it happened.

Obviously, I didn't pick up on everything right away as it happened, and the story then transpired.

What are your thoughts on this, Mr.

Expert on wrestling injuries?

Well,

in all honesty, I didn't watch the show live.

I watched it the next morning.

And I'd already seen on Twitter that somebody

had said that, you know, or had fan cam footage from the bleachers where that they were helping Rey Mysterio out.

They had one guy on each side of him, and he was limping at first, and then they were more or less just carrying him.

And I said, what's the fuck?

That generally means an ankle or a knee or whatever.

I'm thinking, oh, God, poor Ray, right?

So I started watching that match, which I may not normally have watched.

And I couldn't figure out all of a sudden, I just realized, wait,

where'd Ray go?

And I had to go back

and watch it again because I think it was the very first time anybody laid hands on him.

The first thing he had done.

He was in the ring and one of the Creed brothers, a.k.a.

the Greenhorns,

was supposed to pull him out of the fucking ring like you pull a referee, right?

When he's making the count.

He's going to grab his leg and pull him.

But what he did,

first of all, Ray Mysterio has had bad knees, right?

So he grabbed him with both hands around his ankle and jerked him.

And Ray doesn't weigh very much, and this fucking guy is strong.

So when he jerked him, he just flew.

Out under the bottom rope and he landed on the goddamn ground with a splat, boom.

But when he did, he turned over, he put his hand between his legs.

And he, and I said, they've torn his groin.

So it wasn't either a knee or an elbow, or a knee or an elbow.

Jesus Christ.

A knee or an ankle,

which one would think because they helped him out, but they've done something to his groin.

whether pulled it or just torn it or whatever, because that's why he was in such pain and couldn't

you know walk because he was you know he couldn't put weight on the and move his legs normally

so i

it's possible that it could have happened one of two ways either when the guy jerked his leg and and that's why i said a guy with bad knees you don't want to do that because you can

If his ligaments are dodgy to begin with, you can pull a fucking leg out of the socket.

I can tell you from experience, I don't like to have my legs pulled straight.

Nobody's pulling my fucking body weight with my ankles.

Either that could have done it, or when he landed on the floor so hard somehow,

that may have jarred something, but I'm more thinking that it was the jerking motion of the guy pulling him out of the ring.

But that's

so

That put him out of WrestleMania,

not even 24 hours before the fucking thing.

And it was the first time anybody touched him in the match.

And what they did, apparently,

since he was already down on the ground outside the ring,

they just shot around him.

I get the doctor came, checked on him.

They scooped him up and helped him down the aisleway, and you never saw him gone.

And I didn't hear the announcers refer to it.

It just, he just disappeared.

But I hate that he missed WrestleMania, but that was,

it can happen.

There's already chances that anything can happen to you when you're doing this, which is why I scoff at all the fucking goofballs who want to become crash test dummies on purpose for no reason.

But anyway, that was that.

We'll get well soon, Rey Mysterio.

And they'll need you now that they got Triple A under their banner.

Oh, boy, that's right.

They ought to make him the commissioner.

That was where I first saw him, Rey Mysterio Jr.

against heavy metal.

That was the first match I ever saw with him.

Two out of three falls.

And he was spectacular, but it's almost like a different guy because he wasn't just short.

He was really, really skinny.

There was no muscle in him.

And he was spectacular.

And here he is.

All these years.

Wow, I'm a lot older.

Imagine how old he is.

Just as old as me.

It's been 30 years, right?

I saw that in 93.

So,

yeah, it's been a long time, but get well soon, Rey Mysterio.

And yeah, I guess we got to go to WrestleMania now.

Try to think what we do next here, ladies and gentlemen.

We will now.

That was SmackDown.

Hope everyone enjoyed it.

Yes, we will now travel through time to another dimension.

If you thought the Triple H speech was long, here's WrestleMania.

Let's go to time travel.

Well, Jim, of course, it's that time where we have to talk about the thing that everyone wants to hear about, which is how happy I am that I didn't even consider going to WrestleMania.

But we're going to talk about WrestleMania 41, two nights in the desert.

Felt like being buried in the desert.

Two nights in the desert.

I can't stop myself.

I'm sorry.

Las Vegas, or technically Paradise, Nevada, I guess.

But WWE on the strip for WrestleMania 41.

Help me.

Help me.

Just

stop.

Just stop.

Oh, good Lord.

Well,

we saw some things we thought we were going to see, some things we didn't think we were going to see.

We saw some things we liked, and we saw some things we didn't like.

And that's pretty much it.

Back to you, Brian.

Of course,

anticipation had been building and then about two weeks ago people are like i really don't anticipate any of this anymore but we here we are six and then

you're building the anticipation of when you'll stop talking

oh god i have a sudden gas pain i'm trying oh i don't

i'll tell you what it's it's coming from from watching all of this wrestling i've got a sudden sharp gas pain I'm trying to shift around to see if I can sneak one out here because the pressure is building.

Hey, here's also this news has just crossed the desk before we talk about WrestleMania.

This just popped up on the interwebs.

Did you hear about this?

The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, you know, Ice Barbie.

had her purse stolen Sunday night in a restaurant in Washington, D.C.

with thousands of dollars in cash, her Homeland Security access badge, her passport,

her driver's license.

I hadn't heard this.

No.

She's supposed to keep the whole country safe and she can't keep track of her purse.

And so now somebody's got access to the Department of Homeland Security and/or

her passport will look good on somebody's wall.

Or maybe.

Do you think if they just get some random stripper to impersonate her, that she can get through

the checkpoint at the airport with

what's called its path port path port yeah i think so with their path port well speaking of purses jim yes that's the one thing wwe is going to keep pointing to is their purse when people say how lackluster this wrestlemania may have been

it may have been that

it may have been lackluster uh but no

i tell you you know there was some moments here and then there were some moments.

And of course, the funniest thing of the weekend, we'll get to when we get to night two, but let's start at night one because that's where they began.

And again, the stadium looked great.

It's a sea of fucking people.

Where the fuck, when they get the aerial shots of that stadium, where is the fucking parking lot that parks the cars of 60,000 fucking people?

You mean the location of WrestleMania 9?

No, I don't know where that is.

How many people were I saw video after the fact.

I don't know.

I think it must have been night one of just a madhouse, at least just because of the amount of people waiting for their car share rides, their Ubers, their lifts.

Oh, yeah, I saw that.

Yes.

But here, see, I have never actually Ubered myself.

Well, I haven't Ubered myself.

I have not, as a, as myself, have, have experienced the Uber experience because I can't stand, you know, this, you know, from New York, I can't stand anybody else driving a vehicle that I'm riding in.

It freaks me the fuck out.

I had you in the passenger seat driving through Manhattan traffic.

It was quite the, uh, quite the scene.

Well, you remember when they almost had to call a fucking ambulance on me when I got in that cab to go to me and Stace to the Carnegie Deli,

and he was driving like Mario Andretti in between red lights.

Fuck it.

I was trying to tell it, I'll give you a tip if you'll slow the fuck down.

I swear to God, I was holding money in my head.

Slow down, you can have.

He either didn't get it or he needed to be somewhere.

It usually goes the other way.

Usually the big tip is for getting in there quicker than you thought.

No, I was trying to explain to him, if you will just slow down.

And I'm gripping the sides of the goddamn cab and putting the brakes on on the floorboard in the back with my feet.

And Stace is trying to fucking open the window so I get some air.

Fucking anyway,

back to Las Vegas.

What were we talking about?

We were talking about the Carnegie Deli, I believe.

What, no, the straw baby on ride.

Those sandwiches.

Oh my God.

No, the crowd and where to park and the Ubers.

I've never Ubered,

but I'm pretty goddamn sure that I would know that if I'm getting out of a stadium that there's 60,000 people,

what are the chances, or how the fuck am I going to find the car that I've called to come for me?

Or how does that even work?

Have you ever

smart out of a

smartphone to be able to do this?

So that makes sense.

What is the goddamn Uber guy going to say, excuse me, 5,000 people standing in a fucking cluster?

Get the fuck out of the way.

I got to go pick up Arnold.

Well, there's a way they link.

I never use Uber either.

I drive everywhere.

So I don't know.

How the

that would be a goddamn Army Corps of Engineer logistics project instead of some dip shit that delivers fucking Costco

Instacarts and fucking Ubers, you know, in their spare time.

Anyway, where was Basil DeVito?

He could have done it.

Well, because he's good logistically at setting these things up, especially in parking lots.

All right, they had a big crowd, night one, Triple H in the ring.

Welcome, everybody, to WrestleMania live across the globe.

And again, the crowd, the drone shots, the production of this thing is just, you know, insane now.

They started with some

goon on stage with a bunch of people dancing.

I think that's what they were doing.

It could have been epilepsy.

I'm not sure one of those two things.

He's a record producer.

I don't remember who it was, so I can't help it.

I don't know either, but

he didn't look like, you know,

the good old days with the Phil Specters and the, you know, fucking, nevertheless.

The good old days of Phil Specter, what, wearing a wig sunglasses and having a gun shooting off everywhere?

Well, no,

but he was a record producer.

You could tell that.

And then here came Jay Uso amidst.

The people waving the yeet flags down the aisle and the cheerleaders.

And down he came, they had him come through the stadium from one of the, you know, upper areas where he could come through the stands.

But if you noticed, he wasn't all the way into the waving and the yeeting.

He had his game face on and he was headed down there purposefully

because

it wasn't like he wanted to blow up like on Raw.

It didn't matter, right?

But this is WrestleMania.

He's about to win the world title.

And he didn't want to fucking blow up.

And I don't blame him.

They were smart with that.

They probably told him, Jay, please.

And then here came Gunther.

And the world title match opened the show instead of closing the show, but it was probably for the best

that it was in this.

But the people were ready to see something, and they were going to be as responsive, probably, as they were going to be at that point in time in the evening.

And I don't, what do you think?

The only, the only thing I really didn't like about the earlier matches in either show is when it's so daylight.

It just, it looks

off-putting on television.

Am I just sensitive to light because I'm a vampire?

I'm not terribly

turned off by it, but because it's the West Coast.

Well, yeah, they're on LA time, right?

As they say, out in Hollywood.

Because when you think about like the ones where it looked good, Pontiac Silverdome, Hoosier Dome, WrestleMania started a little later in the day.

It was the East Coast, so the sun was already going down.

So you got the cool for like Roddy Piper versus Adrian Adonis or Roddy Piper versus Bret Hart.

You got the look where it's natural lighting, but it doesn't take away anything.

And then it pretty quickly started shifting towards

darkness.

Here it was very, very

bright.

And it had the windows there.

Like,

what's the mid-Atlantic arena I'm thinking of?

Oh, a Dorton Arena in Raleigh.

Like Raleigh.

It had the uh windows.

I thought that looked cool, so I didn't mind that.

But I'll tell you what, in summertime, TV tapings were awkward in Raleigh, too, because they had those windows.

Anyway, um,

I don't know.

You tell me because I have the hearing loss, and also stadium crowds are hard to mic.

It seemed to me like that they made a correction between night one and night two

where that you could hear the people better on night two, because on night one,

even when you could tell they were into it,

the crowd was down, the crowd was down, as

they would goulet would say.

But

crowd noise is hard in a stadium anyway, because it goes up and it's so spread out and blah, blah, blah.

Everybody says that, and it's true but what do you think was it louder night two

not even necessarily because of the response but also did they adjust something on the broadcast

i don't know if it was mic'

the best it could have been but also it's a giant building so i really don't know too much about the logistics of miking that size room versus a 20 000 seat building

i do think night two

you know, not to play spoiler here in the review, but like, for instance, the opening match of night two.

Yeah.

The fans may have been more into that than anything else, but I don't know if that's just because the micing was better or just it was working.

Well, no, that was all that was everything.

I think they made production changes, but also as we'll get there, that was worth being loud for.

But anyway, with Gunther and Jay,

the long-awaited

confrontation where Jay is finally going to prove he's not scared and he can stand on his own two feet and be his own man and blah, blah, blah.

And it wasn't a great match, but it was an emotional match because the people wanted to see, they came to see Jay win.

They wanted to see him win.

They would have been ticked the fuck off if he didn't win.

And as we said,

he would have been pretty fucking deader than Kelsey's nuts, as they used to say, if he didn't win.

So it was more about the moment and him achieving his goal as the baby face.

Gunther is a master.

I'm just, I, you know, again, I think he's one of the more perfect guys in the business to work and talk like he looks and like he should

be that person.

And I think he led,

you know, most of this.

Jay was working his ass off.

He's not naturally the crispest worker, but as we say, it's emotion with him.

And he sells for the big guy and he fights from underneath.

And they had some good false finishes.

And

Gunther is a heel.

Again, this is

even if in the WWE as transposed with AEW,

even in a match that's not going to be a technical masterpiece,

They still take it seriously.

And there is a heel and a baby face and some goal in mind.

There's reason for these matches.

And these are the way you create moments rather than creating moments by having the goddamn five and a half

star and seven eighths star matches

out of nowhere between people they don't care about.

That's the kind of point I was trying to make.

So, nevertheless, boom, boom, boom, and Jay was right there with him.

And finally,

Gunther had the sleeper, and he had

worked on it.

Jay got a rope break.

Gunther got more heat on him.

And finally, Jay fought back

and leveled him and hit a power bomb and two super kicks and a spear

and went to the top rope and did a splash off the top and another splash off the top and another splash off the top

and grabbed the fucking sleeper on Gunther

and Gunther tapped out.

The only thing he didn't hit him with was a fucking school bus.

And boom, and Jimmy's the new champ, or Jay, I'm sorry, Jay's the new champ.

And

Jimmy came out to celebrate with his brother, and that's what they wanted to see.

And

as we said when we were talking about this ahead of time, I don't think it hurts Gunther because

he can actually move on to something else.

And

I believe they've established that he's going to be a champion more often than not in the WWE because they keep talking about how he's been a champion 80% of his time there.

But it actually might be better if he doesn't have a belt right now where he can get in a mix with some of the

biggest stars.

Most of them don't have any fucking belts.

So that would be a main event upgrade to not have to worry about a fucking belt

but anyway what'd you think brian i thought it was okay

not great i wasn't really crazy about the finish

you know someone brought it up and i don't know if you could really do it nowadays or if it's the same thing but you know sometimes it was better when the arm was raised three times it was a little more dramatic

I wasn't crazy about the finish.

I was very surprised they opened up with this.

Now, obviously, they opened both nights with matches they thought would really get the crowd going and the crowd would really be into it but it felt like sometimes maybe they needed a match like that later in the shows

and uh knowing you're going to give everyone a happy moment here i was surprised they opened with it

well i think honestly that's probably

one of the reasons why they did because they wanted to start the show off with everybody feeling good, but also since this world title match wasn't the main event, in effect,

in this position, it was more

crowd-friendly to Jay's response because they weren't tired out, et cetera, et cetera.

So I can see why if this wasn't going on last, it almost had to go on first, in my mind.

I can see why they did that.

But

at the same point,

you know,

they love Jay so much, and it would have made him look so weak he couldn't draw a greasy string out of a cat's ass if he hadn't won this thing when they put him into it.

But now it's not going to be like it was the, what do they used to call it, the work, the worker's title or the working man's or the,

I don't,

the idea that the best technical in-ring wrestler is that world champion has gone by the wayside.

And now he's going to have to defend it against people.

And I wonder he's got to keep it long enough that it doesn't make him look like a goof to lose it real quick.

But I think he's one of these guys that they have more sympathy for when he is the underdog.

Because when he's the world champion, but if he was to have to defend against somebody that

they're kind of liking and starting to get into.

they may want to see that guy be the world champion.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, I wonder if it's like a Tommy Rich thing.

I'm not saying it's going to be like an eight-day championship reign or whatever it was, but.

Well, I thought you were going to blame Barnett.

No, that's not what I was saying either.

But the idea of here's the most popular guy.

He's always chasing.

Not that it was a long chase.

But then you gave it to him, and the chase was kind of over at that point.

You know, everyone's a different kind of champion.

We'll see with Jey Uso.

I won't even ask you about what to do next with Gunther.

Let's wait until we watch Raw later.

But that was the open of WrestleMania night one.

Well, and then they showed my old friend Rick Rubin at Ringside.

He is so gray.

His beard is now snow white.

He looks like

Dusty Hill's grandfather.

And he's, I think, only about a year or so older than me.

And, you know, it's all those years of meditation and vegetarianism.

That would scare anybody to go gray.

But he was heavy in his younger days.

You know about this, being the music industry insider that you are.

But then he got on the

better eating plan.

And

that's what us insiders do.

We sit around and talk about the weight of the talk about when Rick Rubin was fat.

Yes, when he was younger, he was, and then he...

That Phil Specter weighed nothing.

Well, Specter was always, you know, on the thin side.

But Rubin was fat and then he lost a lot of weight because he got on the meditation and the yogi and the vegetarianism and things like that.

That's why he ordered that

cracker pizza to Pizza Hut in fucking Barberville.

And Chris Angel, do me a favor.

Look up

how goddamn old Chris Angel is

and tell me that he never, he does, he was old when we first saw him 20 years ago when he had his TV show on.

And I used to love that TV show.

He does some cool shit.

57.

And he's still out there in Las Vegas.

57.

He does not look like a 57-year-old man.

He ought to get in the the wrestling business.

He could whip half of them.

Anyway, back to the matches.

Or make the audience disappear, one or the other.

Well,

I'm doing a pretty good job of that.

The tag team title match, the Vikings versus the New Day.

I have a couple of random comments.

As I've mentioned, the Vikings.

can work for big guys.

And now that they're more serious, the presentation is more serious.

Vince McMahon is gone.

And his,

you know, lunatic ideas about what the Vikings used to do in days of yore or whatever the fuck are gone.

So they're more serious.

They're better.

But people were blasé about this.

This was after that match and that reaction.

And then,

you know, as we said, the new day.

seemed like they were going to be interesting as heels and did that heinous thing.

And then

everybody's wrestling the same middle card tag teams that they always did, but they're on the other side.

So,

eh,

New Day foiled the Vikings double team thing and hit their own double team thing and beat them one, two, three.

Second match, second title change, new champions,

which is starting to become a theme.

But was there anything that really that

any except the most devoted devotee would have really been into this match for?

I saw a lot of people wandering around thinking, how far do I have to walk to get popcorn?

No, I didn't really,

I didn't pay too close attention, to be fair, to this match, because I felt the same way the fans do about it.

And it's not that

we are trying to disrespect any of the people involved.

It's just, you know, they got parts in this motion picture that we ain't really interested in and are not necessarily vital to the overall scheme of things.

After the Big E interview, if the New Day had gone on a run of being diabolical heels, where you had to see what they were going to do next, there'd be another story.

But they did the Yango with Big E and then they were just slotted right back to mid-card where they were, wrestling other people you don't care about.

You know what?

They could have made them two

offshoots of Brian Pillman, where they had both just cracked up because of the goddamn disrespect of having to pitch you fucking peons, pancakes, and fucking cereal and shake our booties.

And fuck now, we've just, we've lost our minds.

You know what the only problem with that is?

That ended up being what John Cena did.

Well, but at the same time, they did it first.

And they hadn't had that idea for John Cena to do that then.

So they didn't know that they were saving it for Cena.

They just didn't fucking have it and didn't do it.

And they put them back in the same fluorescent colored outfits and sent them back to the same kiddie pool.

But yeah, I'd like to have seen them just to fuck all of y'all.

It's a new day.

But nevertheless, it's an old match.

And now we'll move on.

At Ringside were some stars from something that's going to be on Netflix and Jelly Roll.

And Jelly Roll is apparently is undergoing a major weight loss fucking deal.

He's going, is he going to go from jelly roll to jelly donut to jelly biscuit to jelly bean?

Better watch out.

That did not do any favors for the career of John Popper.

No, I really don't know.

I feel like society is at their point where they've probably had enough jerry roll.

Enough jerry roll.

Enough jelly roll.

He's everywhere.

He's on everything.

He's on every single channel because he's friendly.

It's like the Dave Grohl thing.

If you smile and play along, you could be everywhere.

But

yeah, I mean, the other thing is these Netflix people, it's every single time now, because this is the big thing.

It's like UFC.

Between matches, show celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, and people who would like to be celebrities who are sitting.

People who are affiliated with our company and or its corporate sponsors.

But they always introduce like, and here's this person.

And you're like, I don't know who that is.

And then you're like, listening for the crap.

They're not reacting either.

And he's on the new Netflix special.

that's why he's here but no one knows who this is and then they awkwardly stand there and i'm thinking everyone around them is just sitting there no one's reacting so now they just have to watch this person stand up and wave to the camera that's right in front of him for like a minute straight while people are talking about it it's so awkward when you really think of it you see people over their shoulder turning to each other like who the is this we don't know we'll just be on camera rick rubin rick rubin's like barely ever like doing interviews now he does more than he used to but for years like you you would see pictures every now and then, but he was kind of mysterious.

Here he stood up.

Hey, wait a minute, but remember when he came to Spokey Bad Wrestling,

we were just talking about this.

He was like Cat Collins's hippie friend.

Nobody knew what Rick Rubin looked like, and he was producing Johnny Cash.

And here he stood up in front of the camera, and he doesn't do anything.

They just film him standing there staring at the camera, almost smiling.

And then he like kind of backed up like he was going to sit down and he realized they're still filming me.

So he just turned back to the camera and stood there.

It's so awkward.

It really is.

It looked like he was in a lineup.

And I was like, all right,

turn to your left

right now.

Take your hat off.

Oh, Christ.

And then the,

well,

they don't get the celebrities that are introduced don't get any response unless they get booed.

We'll get to a few of those here as we go through this.

But then another celebrity, Jim Cantori from the Weather Channel.

Apparently, the big entrance for Jade Jade, I can't remember whether it really is Jade or Jane, for Jade Cargill

that they came up with was for the guy from the weather channel to forecast a storm coming over the stadium while they green screened.

a goddamn thunderstorm coming over the stadium.

Was this the goddamn hokeiest thing

on a television production of this magnitude with unlimited budget and the incredible talent at every

position camera audio the director the produce

this was like cable access saturday night live green screen shit wasn't it

you know the other thing is we've seen jade for a few years now aewn here

because it was in the middle of the day and everything it was almost her least spectacular entrance I think I've ever seen.

You're saying she looks better with the lights off.

Well, usually they have the whole smoke show, they have the lasers, they have the big screen, they have the music.

Here, it was kind of like you're saying that covers up what she looks like in the daylight.

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying here, they went to the channel that grandma watches.

Hey, let's go to the weatherman to pitch to this hot match.

Because you know, the storm is coming.

The storm was and the storm came down the aisle watch us find out that guy like it turns out his agent was nick con we're gonna keep finding out more and more people that nick con has represented are on this show watch

well you know nick con sees a lot of money into former weather channel anchors and hosts but uh

her thing is the storm and the storm is coming And here she comes and she has arrived.

She is here.

And it was Naomi versus Jade.

And

again,

the fans were mostly silent.

I mean, they like

both people, but there was nothing that was going to set the world on fire here.

And

I kind of thought back to, okay, this is about where

if this was Ohio Valley Wrestling, some of the ladies, I won't call any names, but some of the ladies that we had in the 2003-ish, four-ish era would have have been over at the flea market practicing this match.

And that's they practiced it and

they went through it, but there was not a lot of fluidity to it.

Naomi got up on the turnbuckle

and

Jade was bent over, but looking at her, but she was looking at her before she even started getting up and she just looked up and dumbfoundedly looked at her.

Well, she got up and stood up and then jumped off and then she caught her and turned her over for the it

took a while for them to set up their bulldog off the top rope that i think they got a little complicated

and it was something that they had walked through but

it you know they walked through it uh i wrote at one point this won't end

and then

Jade at one point hit a spinning power bomb where she boosted her up alley oop and and fucking landed, and she

almost really powerbombed her.

Uh, she was high on the shoulders with that one, and then Jade hit her finish one, two, three.

And it was 10 minutes, and it seemed a little longer to me.

It was fine for what it was.

You know, sometimes you need Billy Jack Haynes versus Hercules Hernandez when you have Andre versus Hogan on the card.

Um, hey, come on now.

You know, I think Charlotte

and Tiffany could have learned learned a lot from these two

about

what

you know um jade

the best stuff she does really are the power moves and she got the big move at the end which looked complicated as

but she did it yeah somehow but that's why she was well served being hidden in the tag team not hidden but in the tag team with bianca You know, when JYD got to the WWF,

he had a few matches, not a few, but he had matches.

But then on TV, every time you saw him, he was in a tag match.

Him and Tito, him and Ricky Steamboat.

It was always a different partner who could really work.

And Jade in a one-on-one match,

you know, length isn't necessarily a good thing, but I think they got through it just fine.

I like Naomi as a heel.

She doesn't glow anymore, so that kind of sucks.

But it was the middle of the day.

She wasn't going to glow.

So there you go.

Well, if she don't glow, we can't go.

That's right up there with no hair and no flare.

Anyhow,

they showed more unknown celebrities and rappers.

And then

it was time for the U.S.

title match with L.A.

Knight against Jacob Fatu.

And

L.A.

Knight came out in the sports car.

I'm glad.

Steve Austin wasn't driving that one.

But

I don't, they, they,

they talked about all the pageantry and everything, but

goddamn, I got the

sports car for the thrill seekers at the Knight of Legends in Knoxville.

And my budget was the guy wanted people to be able to see his nice car.

I'm just,

there was not a lot of, there were attempts at some of these entrances, but there wasn't a lot of over-the-top type of, you know, expense going into anything.

anything.

He just came out in a sports car

and then

went to the ring to get his ass kicked.

No, um,

both these guys are over.

The people like them both.

L.A.

Knight is obviously the babyface, but the people like to see

Fatu uncork his crazy shit and the shit that he shouldn't be able to do when you look at him visually and then something happens out of nowhere.

It's like, holy

and the the

the personality that he gives off is somebody that could very well either go into business for themselves or just go too far with something you know what i mean brian where they i don't they're past the point in wrestling where they'll believe he's really gonna

fight the guy but you're not sure

short of that what he might do to him or anybody else, right?

He's dangerous.

Yeah, they brought up on commentary that he's been in prison before.

Yes.

I don't know if they've ever just outward, maybe they have, and I just haven't noticed it because I try not to pay attention to too much of the commentary, but they said that we're here.

When he first came in

on one of the programs, they did also, and that adds to it.

Is that,

you know, with that guy, you're like, fuck

you used to have a variety of

not a million, not even two dozen, but a good eight, 10 or 12 of the, holy shit, this guy is a fucking monster guys in wrestling that populated around the various territories going from place to place where it didn't wear either of them or any of them out,

you know, too long, but you could still go, oh shit.

And there's not that many, oh shit, guys to business anymore.

So, you know, with Fatu, you have a feeling of, oh, shit.

Anyhow,

and they also mentioned he'd never been pinned or submitted in the WWE to this point in time,

which

there's another

example or exhibit B.

The indie guys think if they have a great 30-minute match, then who wins, finish, doesn't matter.

Well, when you're trying to become a star, yes, it does.

And

the fact that you

make a star, you build a star is by him winning more than he loses,

because that is what a star athlete does.

And so, you know, something like that,

here is the difference between the indie mindset and

actual real life.

Did you see the LA Knight?

He made the comeback and he did the leaping elbow drop deal where he's on a second buckle and he jumps up to the top and comes off with an elbow drop, but Fatu had stood up and he elbow dropped him while he was standing up.

They took the bunk perfect.

That was fucking great.

And

this time, LA Knight's top rope leap was the leaping German suplex off the top and another big false finish.

And

then Jacob got a false finish and they had the dueling chance going.

Let's go, Fatu, L.A.

night

and then they did the spot where jacob did the moonsault off the ropes and la night got under him and caught him close enough for rock and roll in a bft boom and was a two count and that got a big roar they just kept kicking this thing up because

you know they were dreary for the first or for the previous couple of matches, but now as the people got even more into this, they were getting them

with these deals.

And finally,

Fatu hits the Samoan drop off the top, the moonsault and another moonsault.

It's taken more of these to put everybody away than it used to, Brian.

The people are getting more impervious to high impact maneuvers.

But two moonsaults.

One, two, three, new U.S.

champion, Jacob Fatu's WrestleMania debut, first gold, blah, blah.

And it was congratulated by Haku.

He just walked down to ringside.

He didn't get in the ring.

I wonder if he just did that on his own.

I wonder if anybody knew he was coming.

You're going to stop him.

Well, exactly.

That's why he was probably there.

But again, you know, Fatu, the people wanted to see that because they want to see more of this guy.

They want to see him in main events because he's fucking impressive and he's got the aura.

But another title match and another title, has a title not changed hands yet?

We didn't have anything with, and the girls, the title wasn't on the line.

So, yeah,

bad night for the incumbents so far, but this one kicked it up a notch, put some seasoning on it, didn't it?

Yeah.

Good match.

Jacob Fatu is spectacular to watch, even if you see the things that he does

on various occasions.

Still, you sit back and you watch what he does.

It's so impressive.

He deserves a good concerted push.

And,

you know, things could always change, those famous words.

But it definitely seems like the bloodline's kind of on the back pages now.

And maybe we should be more focused on the individuals who used to be in various versions of the bloodline, like Jacob Fatu, and focus on his singles push.

Eventually, they'll do him and solo.

But a changing, it's like a changing of the guard, this WrestleMania, when you really think about it, all the different title changes.

Well, and I think they're in the stage now with the bloodline where they do want them all to go on and do their things independently so that it's some, because I believe at some point,

however long that may take,

they will get them back together and do the, you know, like the shield thing, oh, blah, blah, blah.

and talk about that history, but give the people a break from it because they got so many other things going on now.

So that's probably

at least one of the thoughts that's crossed their minds.

Having said the thoughts crossing people's minds, what was the goddamn thought?

Now, El Grande Americano, who's poor Chad Gable, who can't catch a break.

Now he's got to be from the Gulf of Mexico again because they got heat from introducing him from the Gulf of America.

I get they might have, since they've been down to Mexico lately, they might have sensed,

I can feel the heat, it's not scalding, but it's there,

or whatever reason caused them to back up on that.

And so poor Chad Gable is still in this goofy

red, white, and blue outfit.

And he obviously, because of Mysterio being injured on

SmackDown by the Greenhorn, he had to face Ray Phoenix instead.

So

Phoenix comes in

three months after his brother and makes his WrestleMania debut first.

What do you think old Penna was thinking?

I'm sure he was happy for it.

Yeah, he was making his debut the next day.

I think he was okay with it.

Well, he just, you know, my brother, he beat me.

And they showed.

Remember El Hijo del Vikingo

from AEW?

Apparently not from AEW anymore, but

he was presented to us on their television a while back on a number of occasions.

And he's sitting at ringside because I guess he's part of this.

So did they not?

AEW never signed him.

He was just like a fallback date in case the regular girl didn't come through or what.

Well, I know you didn't see it, and we talked about it earlier in the show during a different part of the recording, but when they did the thing during the pre-show with Triple H and all the people from AAA

and all the Luchadors on the roster,

you had like, let's say, eight Luchadors on one side, eight on the other, and El Gio del Vaikingo in the middle.

Almost like he was the trophy.

And, you know, again, this was, and we'll talk about it with the Triple A thing again, a different part of the show, but you know, this was a big fuck you to Tony, clearly.

Beyond that, it wasn't just for that, but El Gio del Vaikingo also made his WrestleMania debut with Penta and Ray Phoenix at WrestleMania.

And they showed Dana White at Ringside.

He got booed.

He lives in Las Vegas, his hometown.

And they all knew he was.

And he got booed.

And good.

I hope he catches some kind of skin fungus from hugging his orange friend.

But again, Chad Gable, I love him as a wrestler and an athlete.

If they had continued to treat him seriously,

they, you know, they had a match here.

You know, I don't know whether the

fans felt the same way, but I wasn't particularly concerned about the outcome.

At one point, Gable did a backflip off the top rope and landed flat of his back

in Phoenix's stomach.

And I'm like, God damn it, at some point,

you know, some kind of internal organ is going to shoot out some of these motherfuckers sphincter

when they keep just jumping and landing with their full weight on people while they're spinning and revolving with centrifugal force.

And then

Gable loaded his mask and Phoenix came off the ropes with a crossbody, but Gable head-butted him and then hit the diving headbutt and beat him one, two, three.

Did I miss any subtleties of this classic lucha presentation?

No, it was a good match.

Probably better match than the Rey Mysterio match would have been.

Were you surprised they beat Ray Phoenix here?

Well, no, because

they are committed to

this El Grande Americana from the sepia tone

entrance lighting and treatment video, whatever,

to

the whole ludicrous video backstory history that they they did, they've got all this tied up in that, but they couldn't beat him

at this stage of it.

So they think that's the heat is now he's beaten a real Mexican fella.

And now they could send him down a triple-A, he'll be the biggest heel in Mexico.

Yeah, well, because they followed this matchup with video of the announcement: hey, we bought Triple A,

so now all of this is ours.

And

they've just showed the people, because they're global.

This is being telecast worldwide, according to Triple H.

They've showed the people in Mexico that these no-good Americans are making fun of their luchadors and their people in the Gulf of America and the Gulf of Mexico, whatever.

And now they bought our fucking wrestling promotion.

How many tickets do you think that's going to sell for AAA in Mexico?

Well, I don't know.

I don't know how how many tickets they're selling right now.

Well, they might even, you know, as Jerry Jarrett said one time, it can't get any worse.

And as Robert Fuller answered, oh, yes, it can.

Anyhow, moving along, since we've already talked about the whole AAA business and et cetera,

this.

It didn't work in 1997 when the previous Piña

wanted to work with Vince, so they couldn't even fucking show up on the right day with each other.

I don't know how this is going to, but anyway,

uh, Sean Michaels announced the crowd.

Brian, did you get you jot that number down?

We need to keep that in the files.

I've got it right here if you'd like to take it down from me.

I didn't know.

Well, I've got it right here.

Get ready.

Get your pen and paper ready.

61,467

people.

Boy, howdy.

That's a lot of people to be out in the middle of the desert.

When you get into WrestleMania 3, people pop because it was like, yeah, we're a part of a big thing here.

This is breaking the indoor attendance record.

After a while, you're just cheering for the people who made the money.

Here's how many of you people paid to be in here.

Yes.

Let's all clap for the money you gave well but at least they announced number of people rather than remember for a while there they were saying this is the biggest gate in wwe history and people go yeah and then they realize yeah we we've paid more money than anybody ever to see this same thing

see that's part of the problem that's part of the problem if you want to real quick here i'll just say it here that's one of the things i worry about now with wwe it's going to become like ufc And UFC makes a lot of money.

They're really big.

What was the last UFC fight you watched?

Well, I may not be a fair representation of the public because since they've gotten so fucking Trumpy, I just, I don't even want to look at it.

Well, beyond that, who's the

last fighter you remember?

Beyond that, they had bigger stars and they had more mainstream consciousness.

And actually, the same thing in some respects as the WWE.

They were bigger with popularity before they started making all the fucking money that they make now with rights fees.

See, that's the issue.

It's not what it once was.

WWE's ownership is just going to chase all the money, and it's their right, obviously, chase all the money everywhere, no matter where it is.

That's why you get pay-per-views in Saudi Arabia.

That's why you get pay-per-views all over the world or events all over the world.

The priority is going to be going where the money is.

And I don't know if that's good for the product.

If they think even more so than Vince that the brand is this big selling thing and they could just pump it i mean how much money was pumped into wrestlemania here the canvas was covered in spots matches had individual sponsors there were other sponsors all sorts of music being played

it's everywhere i mean they're trying to make money out of every end of this and again they're they're businessmen and this is their asset but in terms of the product going forward that should worry people i think well yes at some point uh when they've integrated the commercials and the sponsors completely into the programming and the guys are wrestling a giant fucking ice cream drumstick,

you know, it made me a little who knew they had a budget.

I've been seeing those in the supermarket for years.

They're sponsoring WrestleMania.

Where did that come from?

Apparently, Nick Con's got the magic touch and then the silver tongue.

I like your robust chocolate drumsticks.

I'd like you to sponsor Cena versus Code.

It's, it's, it's all part of our flywheel.

Get in our flywheel.

We'll get ice cream all over the place.

Anyway, then they announced Stephen Amel,

who I've heard of him at least.

I've never actually, I don't think I've seen the things he's on, but I've heard his name, a UFC guy, and Dana White again, and he got booed again.

I don't think he ought to be walking around Vegas unaccompanied.

Yeah, why'd they give him two different introductions?

Well, they didn't introduce him twice.

The first time they just put him on camera, I think, accidentally, maybe he was sitting in the wrong seat or somebody else had left to go piss.

I don't know, but it was he got booed twice, so they didn't get tired of it.

And then the women's championship match that we've all been waiting for.

Is this going to be the last

true shoot match since Alondos and Lewis or

Tiffy Stratton and Charlotte Flair?

And

again,

this was actually probably the cutest.

I say the word cute.

Now I'm saying the word cute.

I'm dying to hear where this is going.

Cute when related to a wrestling show review.

But this was probably the cutest entrance

that they did where.

They playing the music and on the stage there, the big set, the big megalit.

It looked like the fucking front cover of the VHS of Metropolis, the big building set they got there.

And there's three boxes, and Tiffy

looks like a Barbie doll in her box in different outfits in each one of them.

And she's moving and grooving, dancing, and telling me, I'm sorry, she's a dancing machine.

And she's in the boxes.

And which one, she can't, they can't all be real.

Are all these videos?

Is some real?

You can't tell the difference it was an amazing bit of sleight of video until finally tiffy

came the real tiffy came out of the middle box and

instantly she was over brian oh stop it oh give me a well she came out of a box

it has nothing to do with your concept you cannot apply that to this I certainly can't.

There was a window.

The box had a window.

None of the boxes and your references in the past had windows.

I have never excluded the possibility of a box having a window.

It's not my fault.

It's still a box-like structure.

It's not my fault.

It's not my fault that the other boxes have been constructed, not up to building code.

But the box, nevertheless, she came out of the box, whether it had a window or not.

She's over.

The only thing is it opened like a door.

I think the window should have slid up like the old peep shows, where you had to put another fucking token in to get the window to slide back up so you can see that what you were trying to.

Well, you've had that happen many times.

I don't know what you're talking about.

You think she's over now?

When do they start billing her as the woman with three boxes?

She can headline Mitchell Brothers.

Anyway, uh,

so she got to the ring, and Charlotte got to the ring.

And

I I see what they were trying to do.

But unfortunately,

the women's match of the weekend was yet to come.

It wasn't this one.

But they tried to work a fight to capitalize, and especially at the start, where they were really going at each other and the hair pulling and rolling around.

They tried to work a fight based on the legitimate, apparently, animosity that got out that people know that they have or had.

And the element of, is this going to get out of control?

And is somebody not going to cooperate?

But it's

this is neither way.

Charlotte's strong point is not fighting.

It's the wrestling, the athletic part of the wrestling.

And Tiffy is a scrappy young thing,

full of piss and vinegar, but she's not that experienced.

So it looked like a struggle over tips at the gold club in some spots.

But again, the fans were into this because of the animosity and the,

you know, the way it was incorporated in the buildup.

Charlotte works like a heel.

Tiffy is, Tiffy acts in every way like a classic heel, but people like her, especially against Charlotte.

So the

dynamic is working there.

Charlotte got a lot of heat.

At one point, they went into a series where I don't know what they were actually doing.

And then

they each worked on the other's leg.

And then they had an awkward back and forth with a couple of false finishes in there.

And

suddenly Tiffany hit the moonsault.

And one, two, three.

It got a big pop,

but I'm not sure that I really felt like that was

you know how you can feel in a big match when a finish is coming and oh whoa whoa whoa this was kind of like huh oh

20 minutes bell to bell

probably could have been shorter what'd you think yeah i didn't think it was very good at all it didn't work if that's the way we're going to put it it didn't work It didn't connect.

It looked sloppy at times.

They weren't on the same page at times.

You know, expectations were high because of the promo.

And it just, it didn't,

it didn't hit.

And it's going to be really curious what happens now because I think everyone's looking right at Charlotte.

You know, Tiffany's young and Tiffany's over.

So whatever Charlotte does next is going to be very interesting.

You know, again, it's been a while since we've seen a really good Charlotte match.

This wasn't it.

And

I admit that also, because even though that I think that she is or,

and again, it's not like she's goddamn 15 years older than she was a few years ago.

She had some great matches.

She has had a knee injury, but I'm not going to

I'm not going to say that this was good just because Charlotte was in it when it wasn't particularly that good, but it wasn't her.

her forte, her flywheel.

It wasn't her flywheel.

I don't know if it was either one of their flywheels.

I think the wheel fell off.

Anyhow,

you know what that means now?

It's time, Brian, for the Hall of Fame package

and the introductions of the people that were inducted into the Hall of Fame.

And the only one that wasn't there was the package.

Is this story legitimate that you told me right before we went on the air?

Folks, just so you know, when they introduced the Hall of Fame inductees, Stone Cold Steve Austin was out there, Brett Hart was out there.

Brett looked like he was having the time of his life.

He just looked thrilled.

Everybody was out there except Lex Luger.

And

what was the reason given?

Or has this reason been verified or validated or whatever yet?

I have not heard any validation.

So we will say the two things we heard.

One has referenced, I guess, at the Hall of Fame, that he took a bump.

We'll call it.

He took a fall.

I don't know what it really is.

He took a bump the day before.

And obviously in the and not on purpose.

Right.

Obviously.

Yes.

And obviously in the physical condition he's in.

That's a yeah, that's a thing.

The other rumor was that WrestleCon paid better than WrestleMania.

And that's why he wasn't there.

But

I don't know.

What was it?

We need to know, did he make an appearance at WrestleCon?

And then that according to, I have something here.

Fightful reported that Luger was still in Vegas on Saturday, April 19th, and he was said to have visited with friends.

Well, now that could have been at the hospital.

I mean, you know, that doesn't really tell us anything.

But if he was outside and autographed,

well, now, hold on now.

I got to visit with some friends.

I think his good friend Odom would have told him not to

go out there.

But

no lex is a a kind and and and

decent christian man

but point being if he was at an appearance signing autographs at at or approximately the same time that he would have been standing out there

getting introduced then that's that might be a story well we need to check in on that somehow

anyway

And they got a big pop for Triple H also on that one, by the way.

They expected him there, but he showed up on a show on TNT instead.

He just walked out.

What a throwback.

That Lex Luger.

Oh, God.

You know what?

If I had been the WWE, I would have fucking set that up somehow just to have that happen, just for that to just be

fucking seen.

That is hilarious.

Oh, my God.

Imagine if they did like a heel turn, like he's out there and he just like lets go with the brakes of his wheelchair and just pushes Dallas Page right off the stage.

He would have so much heat, people would go crazy.

And

he could do the Ron Wright gimmick.

You know what?

Instead of Mr.

Ron Wright, Mr.

Lex Luger.

All right, well, now the time that we have all been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen, the match we've all been waiting for, the last one of night number one,

the real main event of this thing: the triple threat match

cm punk roman reigns seth franklin rollins

each one of them

his animosity toward the other and the the wild card

our friend happy heyman paul heyman to return the favor to

cm punk before etc etc everybody knows this story of he's going to be in punk's corner but he has sworn he would never be disloyal to his best friend or his tribal chief.

And you mean Eddie Gilbert?

What's going to happen?

His unnamed best friend from his biography, he'll never be disloyal to Eddie Gilbert.

And

the, the, the,

again, major entrance here, I thought they'd gone to AEW at this point.

Seth came out in a giant hefty trash bag, apparently with some kind of safety suit, because he also had a flamethrower.

And he was shooting the goddamn flamethrower, burn it down.

And he's shooting the flamethrower around.

And the fans get into the big sing-along with the, whoa,

whoa.

And then he drops the hefty bag and he's dressed all in white.

Was that,

Brian, back in your flamethrowing days, was that a safety suit he was wearing at first or just another weird outfit?

I really don't know what goes on in the world of Franklin.

It's kind of just anything to get attention to hide the fact that my gimmick is just that I'm a whiny guy.

I don't know what this is.

But anyway, so he

had that, you know, the flamethrower, and then Roman came out

under his own power, but alone.

He was the picture of alonedness.

And then after Roman, they did a punk video that they put on a screen.

And it was juxtaposing Punk's Days in OVW over here at 4400 Shepherdsville Road.

Everybody knows that address.

In the Davis Arena to Punk Today.

And

actually, I like the part best where the 25-year-old punk

they were showing clips from things he had said in his interviews, and the 45-year-old punk was still saying the same thing, and they blended it together.

I thought that was fucking cool.

And then the highlights of his

previous, you know, sojourn in WWE

and tonight's my main event.

And then they got the chance going, and then

Lack Mussolini

by Living Color themselves, the real ones.

I guess the singer's old as dirt now

And Kennedy.

So, how old is?

Because I still think of these guys as these

vibrant rock stars in living color.

Is the lead singer?

He looked more like George Clinton in his final days.

Vernon Reed, right?

How old a man is he?

Vernon Reed is 66 years old.

Jesus Christ.

He's older than me?

But they were on top of the 90s.

I was on top of the 80s, almost in the 70s.

Well, they were on top in the late 80s, wasn't it?

Maybe it was the late 80s.

But still,

how old were they then?

Well, not everyone was a child prodigy like you that just broke in and took off in the business.

Me and Jackie Coogan.

Really?

We're going all the way back now.

Well,

you got to go back to the originator.

So

they're playing the

music that I've just quoted earlier.

And then here Punk appears and behind him or beside him, coming out with him,

direct from Marvel Comics, the kingpin.

Oh, no, no, it was Paul Heyman.

And

they go to the ring, big CM Punk chants, big cheers.

You know, of all of the participants in this, they've decided punk's the baby face, right?

The people have.

So this was the reaction there.

And

I got to be honest with you.

I think from now on, I need to watch the main event on these shows first and then go back and suffer through the rest of it.

Because if I did that, I might like more of the rest of the show.

because it was three and a half hours into this pay-per-view before this match got in the ring.

And this was the one I really wanted to see.

So

it takes the edge off things a bit.

But

I've been trying to figure out.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to go move for move or try to give a description of this.

Like, well, they did this and they did that.

It's what they did that it's what they didn't do that I liked about this match.

The things that everybody else does that I don't like about the matches.

It was a three-way, but they weren't doing the choreographed, alley-oop, cute,

three-way combination shit that just is implausible.

And people just,

you know,

they like the movement, but it's not like legitimate stars having a fight.

It's cute.

It's choreographed.

They didn't do that.

Punk and Seth did what every AEW garbage match does.

They went over the rail and they went and they fought out in the back of the arena, on the floor behind ringside or whatever, and then the

stadium, not the arena.

But you know what they didn't do is they didn't walk fight.

They didn't fucking throw fake punches in the...

vicinity of somebody's ribs.

They didn't make it funny.

They were throwing punches to each other's face.

They were hitting each other with the garbage can and the fucking plastic trash bucket and the shit that they were fighting past.

They seemed serious about it.

Their shit didn't look unprofessional.

All of the things that you don't normally like about a three-way because it's somebody's diving everywhere and then two other guys stand there to catch him.

This looked like they meant it.

They were all mad at each other, and they were grown men at various points shining over the other two guys.

It wasn't ridiculous.

It seemed halfway plausible for somebody who would want to lose themselves in the thing.

And then,

because Heyman, obviously,

It not only involved, but a lot of these guys have had a lot of experience themselves.

And they went to the big fucking false finishes and they all kept registering and everybody's in the right place.

There's no,

you know, fucking, oh shit,

almost lost him, or goddamn, that fucked up, or the furniture that was supposed to be cooperating with him fell apart.

And, you know, so they, I like the things about this match

that they didn't do that you see in other kinds of matches like this.

And

again, the fans were into it and they were hanging on this thing and they couldn't call it.

And they went back and forth.

And again, I encourage everybody instead of me saying, oh, then they did this and they go back and watch it.

But finally,

Punk had fucking given Seth the GTS, boom.

And then Roman immediately speared Punk, boom.

But then as Roman was trying to roll over from that, Seth had got the stomp on him, boom.

And all of them were down.

And that's when Happy Heyman came into play.

He went over and he got a chair and he comes to the apron of the ring.

And both Roman and Punk

want the chair from Paul.

And as they're laying there, they each look up

and then they look at kind of each other too.

And fucking boom, Heyman slides it to Punk.

But as Punk gets up and is advancing on Roman, Paul gets in behind and nutshots Punk.

Oh, got it.

And he drops the chair.

And now Roman's like, yeah.

And Paul gives the chair to Roman.

And Roman gets up and fucking bashes Punk with that chair three times over the back, ka-wham, ka-wham, ka-wham.

And then Paul points at Seth.

And Roman turns to Seth, and Paul's right behind Roman, and he drops down.

Well, this was the perfect thing, too, because it all went back to the original breakup of the shield.

where Seth was behind Roman and hit him with the chair.

Yes.

This was a perfect way to bring that full circle and for Roman to get his revenge.

But it was not to be.

Those plans were foiled, Brian, because Heyman,

who has never been

as unerring in his aim on people's balls as he was this night, he dropped down behind Roman and nutshotted him.

And Roman drops the chair.

And then without turning around,

Seth gets a smile on his face.

Of course, he

had the benefit that the direction he was looking, I believe he could look at that giant screen.

But without even turning around, he holds his hand out and Paul picks the chair up and gives Seth the chair.

And I wrote at that point, this would be so much better without the referee standing there watching.

And I know it's no disqualification.

And everybody knows that you can't lose a triple threat on DQ or whatever, but goddamn it.

It gets more heat if the referee's not standing there staring at it.

However,

Seth got the chair, milked it for a while, hit Roman in the back with the chair, gave him the curb stomp.

Boom.

One, two, three.

And then Heyman raised Seth Franklin Rollins' hand.

Forever, forever cementing in people's minds

as a duo

the picture, the meme that they have sent out of who was it?

Fucking Heath Slater, whoever, Heath Ledger, whoever, and the God to the Joker and Batman and the penguin, the Oswald Cobblepot.

And now we've got the fucking Joker and the goddamn penguin.

Bravo, I say.

What'd you think?

I thought the match was okay.

I thought the series of events.

Oh, after all this other shit that we've had to muddle through, you thought this was just okay.

There was no match that really blew me away on night one.

I thought this was good, but I thought the last five minutes or so were really good.

You know, Heyman, if you'll watch, he kind of eyed

when he was standing next to Roman Reigns, his eyes went to where he was about to go so he gave it away and the camera missed originally Rollins putting his hand back

the dramatic moment where Heyman gives him the chair yeah you know was was a you know cool moment but I thought it was good I thought it was really good

what did I say before thought it was a very good match I thought the ending was really good

And

we'll see where they go.

Heyman with Rollins.

If that means Rollins doesn't have to talk, that'd be wonderful.

And Punk and Roman Reigns now have a reason to

commiserate together.

We'll see.

But what did you think?

What did you think of the way they handled this after years of him and Roman Reigns?

And obviously, him and Punk was on off because of Punk not being there.

But what did you think?

I am trusting that Paul will have some legitimate way to explain

everything

on Raw, which has not happened yet, which is why we haven't seen it.

I said Paul needs to be a heel to be important in the overall scheme of things on a long-term basis.

And I think he realizes that.

This was a time to do it.

And everybody was kind of looking

at either Roman or punk because of the connection with Haman.

So Seth winning

was somewhat shocking to everybody except you.

But I think now the way this

has played out at

least now,

I'm thinking that Punk

may be headed toward Sina

and let Roman and

Seth settle this business, but with Punk vowing to at some point return the favor that he now owes Paul.

What do you think?

I don't know.

I hadn't even thought about Punk and Cena.

That's very interesting there.

You know, we always said Heyman's big thing was he has all these great ideas.

There's no ending.

Look at the bloodline.

There's no ending.

It just died off.

Well, it didn't die off.

It faded away.

You know, it's interesting with Rollins because...

Rollins may be the last guy, I guess, of that group, that generation for Heyman to manage.

You got to think the next person will be a younger wrestler needing to be elevated or needing to be legitimized the way Punk was with Heyman, the way Roman Reigns was.

Roman Reigns was pushed to the top and everyone knew he was a Vince handpick guy and the crowd rejected him.

It was really Heyman that got Roman Reigns over that barrier.

Yeah.

So, you know, we've always talked about, you know, he likes Braun Breaker or whatever it may be.

I don't know if he needs a manager right now, but...

You got to figure with Rollins, because Rollins is already made.

He's not making Rollins.

This may be the last guy for Heyman to manage before he manages a new crop of people, assuming he will.

Well, assuming, because again, you know, cholesterol is a hell of a fucking disease.

And you never know at any point, something might break loose in one of fucking Paul's arteries or capillaries.

And

fuck, then parts of him would land everywhere.

Anyhow, it was a big building.

Well, then some people would have been safe, but I bet he would have reached at least row 15 of the fucking mezzanine.

Think about that pressure.

Suddenly,

all right.

Well, speaking of pressure, that was night one of WrestleMania, and of course, Jim.

Yes.

Coming out of that event.

Yes.

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Those are the same thing.

Shirts, programs, hats.

Shirts, t-shirts.

Sometimes you can wear a shirt on your ass for pants.

Whatever it is, WWE just printing money right now.

And if you have your own business and you have your own products, you could be printing money too

with Shopify.

You know,

that's all that they were hearing

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I think, as a matter of fact, they'll give you a 10% dynamic.

I don't know.

I'm going to just try to talk right past you because I don't think that's even possible, let alone something endorseable.

Well, as long as you don't cross county lines, I think Shopify would love to help you set the site up.

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Elsewise, they're going to drop down like Paul Heyman and

I don't know how much of this is applicable or how much is legitimate or how much is just from the Tony Legend program.

I don't know what's going on here, but Shopify is there for you.

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Yes, that's what this means.

I think I hit the wrong note, but here we are.

We are in, well, it's actually the same day.

We haven't really traveled anywhere, but we've come out of the shop and we're about to go into night two of WrestleMania, which I must say had a very promising start,

but we'll get there shortly.

But WrestleMania 41, night two.

Well, and

as again, as I said earlier in a program, the crowd was definitely more into

more of this.

They were louder.

than night one and i think they may have made some production tweaks also because it seems like that that came across better on the broadcast, at least the one I saw.

But

they had a big moment to kick off Saturday night with Jay and Gunther, even though it wasn't a classic match, but this match tore the house down.

The women's title, one of them, triple threat EO and Bianca and Rhea Ripley.

And

I'm sorry, everybody, oh, but he owes Kai Soga.

Yes, she can do a bunch of moves.

She didn't get in the way of this match.

She was right there.

They liked her, so she added to it.

But visually, to me, I'm sorry.

Bianca was a great heel and took great bumps here and did aggressive shit.

And Rhea is a star and is a tremendous worker and takes great bumps and did great shit.

And EO

looks like a child that wandered away from a parade.

And

I think part of it is just the visual.

In that, the girl, it's so indie to me.

The girls that are just presented as so cute and schoolgirly and pixie-ish or whatever the fuck.

She's not presented as any of those things.

She's she's got the frilly outfit, she's got the smile, and then she goes, Oh, she over acts, and

whatever the fuck.

I don't, I'm, I'm sorry, I can't,

i can't buy her in a fight with bianca it just i buy her carrying a lollipop with a small dog on a leash she's a small baby face who has to overcome the odds to find a way to beat bigger opponents and she and she dressed like she wandered away from a parade again i don't i'm sorry they all have funny outfits i mean area dressed like she wandered away from plato's retreat i mean what do you yeah she looks like she's on the board of directors of a massage parlor so i mean they all they're

Everyone has got their outfit.

I mean, what do you,

now I'm defending the seamstress.

I don't know what you want me to say.

EO's good.

EO is really good.

Well, and also, I like Bianca and Ria's work.

They're laying shit in.

Hey, the, yes.

I've been saying it to you for a while, and you've been seeing it a little more, but now that you just watch this match, what do you think of Bianca as a heel?

I think she's going to be great

because, and she was starting, she wasn't full out fuck you everybody and flipping everybody off but she was patting her ass a little bit at them and she was heelish with Rhea

and I think that's you know that's going to be a freshen up for Bianca because remember I think the thing that I disliked the most was the skipping and smiling and hair twirling I mean even as a babyface she was

If you had run over her family and set them all on fire, the next week she would have come out to the ring skipping and smiling.

That's right.

Yeah.

So,

but I'm just to me, Bianca and Rha, they mean it.

They're fighting.

I can, they're laying their shit in.

EO does the

pretty gymnastics, flippy things with the weird facials.

But.

They were into, they were doing good false finishes with the timing perfect on the saves on all of their parts.

And

this thing built, and the people were into it.

And they all worked their ass off.

And then

EO tried to reverse Hurricane Rana off the turnbuckle, but Rhea blocked it and just pulled her forward over her shoulder and slammed her on the fucking ring post.

Boom.

And that hung her up on the top rope.

So then Bianca

got Rhea up for her finish, but Rhea blocked it.

They had a slug fest.

Bianca hit her finish and covered,

but EO came off the top rope with a moonsault and broke the cover by landing on both of them.

Which, again, that's a lot of trust.

I don't know where these elbows are coming.

And when it broke the cover, EO rolled over and covered Bianca.

Boom, one, two, three.

So as they had been, again,

I like the way they used EO in this

because they had been disrespecting her in the promos from the start when Bianca and Rhea would be nattering at each other and they'd just pie face her out of the way.

And everybody was thinking the announcers even said, Well, EO doesn't have to be pinned to lose the title in this instance.

And they were setting it up to be one of the other two girls.

And EO won it.

But

it leaves this open.

And

I almost have to think that Bianca is going to blame Rhea and we're getting that out of this.

Aren't we?

Don't we?

Shouldn't we?

Well, also, I guess Bianca and Jade is hanging out there too.

If Bianca's going to go heal and Bianca's been acting heel ever since Jade returned at Elimination Chamber and attacked Naomi, I thought.

Yeah.

You know, EO didn't beat them.

I mean, what I mean is, it sounds ridiculous.

They beat the shit out of each other.

EO got her stuff in, but EO was able to capitalize on the punishment, which is a perfectly fine way for a smaller babyface to win.

For me, this was the best match of WrestleMania.

And the crowd seemed super into it.

Again, it's the first match of the night, but I think it was more than that.

I think it was the right match.

And it worked.

And I enjoyed this match more than any other match at WrestleMania.

I thought this was great.

You know, now that I'm thinking of it, besides that, to be honest, I still like the triple threat from night one,

you know, a bit more than for

the drama and the happenings and the

fact that it's the main event picture and opens up possibilities.

But this in ring,

as I review it in my mind, I probably got to agree with you.

But anyway,

I just don't want to see

Bianca versus IA, IA, IA, E-I-E-I-O.

I don't want to see Bianca versus EO

or Rhea versus EO.

God damn it.

I want to see something I can pronounce.

Rhea and Bianca.

And I think we should.

I mean, I said that years ago when they both were in NXT.

And then when they came up, I think long term, that should be kind of like the flare steamboat because I think they're both really good.

They're different, but they work perfectly together.

They're similar in size.

To me, Bianca and Rhea long long-term, should be, and you can't wait too much longer.

I mean, they've been up there for a while.

That should be the big feud for women's wrestling.

Well, fortunately, we've got you calling these shots so that you can just make it so.

Because we don't want to leave this to leave any chance to this.

Did you know that Flavor Flave was still alive?

I wasn't aware of it.

And he doesn't look like he ought to be, does he?

Well, I knew he hadn't died.

What do you mean?

He doesn't look like he ought to be.

He doesn't look that bad.

He's like your age.

Well, Jesus Christ, he's looked my age for the past 30 years since I've seen him on TV.

And he was fucking Bridget Nielsen.

He was produced by Rick Rubin originally.

Well, look how old Rubin looks now.

He probably the Flavor Flav aged him

anyway.

And then there was a UFC guy and another rapper, ringside.

And then

we got the Sin City street fight, Brian.

drew mcintyre against damian priest

and

this started out with a guy who cannot play guitar i again you're more musical than i am was this good guitar playing

it was just rotten to me it was a guy from slayer i guess they said it looked like an inter guy from yeah

seriously again what did he wouldn't he bring a whole van reuben

and they were all just sitting around ringside?

But

was this any good?

It's not my thing.

And I could recognize that about that kind of music.

So I'm not going to pretend that it is.

And I'm not going to say that I liked it.

But I'm also not going to say if it's good or not, because for me, it's not.

I don't like it.

It didn't look like any Glenn Campbell or Roy Clark guitar picking that I'm used to.

You know, the other thing is it didn't seem like it got the fans anymore into Damian Priest.

No, because they were, I think, thinking the same thing I was.

They're like, who the fuck is this guy?

Well,

so they jump-started this thing and went out to the floor.

And they had a little fight, and Drew started taking the stairs apart and arranging them in the right place.

So Priest leveled him while he was doing that and pulled out a table.

And

Drew hit Priest about four times with the stairs, and I was already about to tune out

because I love Drew McIntyre.

And

at one point, he did take a selfie with a fan's camera while Priest was laying there.

But then McIntyre pulls out another chair, and he sets up two tables at Ringside, and the other guy has to sell.

And everything comes to a halt.

And it's automatically, I could watch AEW and see this.

the athletes wouldn't be anywhere near as large or as probably as good of workers but the same principle it's just

because they got to have a street fight

and

the show's too long already is another thing i wrote so i fast forwarded a little while

Priest hit a razor's edge on McIntyre through one of the tables to count.

Fast forward.

Drew hit a DDT

on priest on the steel stairs to count.

Fast forward.

Priest did his rope walk where he's holding on to Drew's hand and Drew shoved him off backwards off the top rope through the two tables that had been set up on the floor previously.

And then

He claymored

priest while Priest's head was in the corner with the chair in the corner of the

jello pudding and the boom, one, two, three.

We've wanted to like priest.

There's just something going on.

We love McIntyre to just de-doodly death.

But this was just another weapons match because they didn't have one.

And they, I guess, think they have to have one.

Did I miss out on appreciating the finer things in life?

I don't think so, although it did seem like the fans there really got into it.

You know, Priest, you want to see guys protect themselves, but he did the thing where McIntyre pushed him through the two tables that were set up and he covered his head as soon as he left the apron.

Yeah, I would, not the apron, the top rope.

Memory came off the rope.

And, you know, again, I know you want to protect yourself.

I just fucking had a football helmet on.

But to me, it stood out like, okay, here I go.

Help me hold my breath.

You know,

the nesty plunge.

I will say here, too, because it hasn't been another time to commentating.

Pat McAfee, I appreciate how, I guess, if you're a fan of his, you're into his enthusiasm.

But holy shit, is he awful as a commentator?

He just screams.

And sometimes he screams and no one else has anything to say

because they don't even know if he's done screaming.

But he's awful.

God, he's all.

I know he's a big wrestling fan, and I'm sure he means well.

And he'll probably, he'd probably admit I was right, too.

But he's awful at commentary.

Holy shit, is he bad?

I think enthusiasm is one of his trademark

personality quirks or whatever.

But yeah, I agree.

He's got to gear it back some so that he can go somewhere every once in a while.

But I'm afraid he's, you know, they're going to have to strap him up some kind of defibrillator.

Like, I'm just like waiting for a football season to start or whatever, like, just so he gets the fuck out of there for a while.

Maybe he'll, maybe he'll go to work for the Rock's UFL.

If they're still in the UFXL or S-U-FLP.

Probably that's an all-time bomb this season.

We'll have a wrap-up, I'm sure, at some point.

I didn't mean to get you started on The Rock.

Oh, no, no.

Hey, listen.

Go back there eventually.

I'm nowhere near The Rock's biggest hater this week, so I'm just going to sit back.

Let the other people do the heavy lifting well we got a football player daniel cormier from the ufc and the kill tony guy were introduced and he got booed they don't like him either

and then

we had a guilty pleasure of mine the intercontinental title match the fatal four-way

between Pinta and Dominic Mysterio and Finn Balor and Braunbreaker.

And remember what I said about, I liked about the multi-person matches, just endless, repetitive.

We hate them.

We hate them.

But I said the reason I liked the triple threat on night one was because they didn't do

the things that normally the multi-man matches do, where they have the alley oop and the contrived multiple person spots where they just trade.

intricate tumbling like you're watching the fucking Ed Sullivan show or America's Got Talent for kids in the audience.

And this was a four-way, and they started alley-ooping all over the place.

But Braun Breaker is amazing.

I will watch Braun Breaker read the newspaper on a park bench at this point.

He's a fucking amazing.

And I've watched this thing just to see him do shit.

And

he doubled German suplexed Balor and Penta,

and he double vertical suplexed Finn and Dominic.

He did Brekensteiner on Finn.

But it's not just the moves that he's doing, the look, the face, the aggression.

You can see

with his back turned, you know what the expression is on his face when he's tensed up with his whole body like that.

And

just explosiveness.

And

he did the thing where he came off one of the announced desks and speared Carlito

on the other announced desk and the fucking thing busted into a goddamn million pieces.

And

I mean, he's the future of wrestling.

And you used to have,

I mean, he would have been a prodigy in any era, but you used to have, you know, maybe.

five or six of those guys because of all the territories come along every year or two,

not looking exactly like Braun Breaker, but that you could say, okay, this guy's going to be a big deal.

And those are fewer and farther between now.

And

most of the indie guys are just small and they don't have personality and they don't get the

business mentally.

And Braun checks all the boxes.

So,

yes, I watched this for him.

And finally, Braun speared Penta.

and Dominic hit Braun with a 6-1-9, but he went to the top.

But Finn tripped Dominic because they had been fighting.

They finally fought in this match and got a big pop.

And then Finn double-stomped Braun and covered him.

But Dominic,

and it's kind of, and again, in these multiple man matches, that's another thing you kind of get.

Dominic splashed both of them

to break the cover and then covered Finn one, two, three.

So kind of like what the girls did.

But in this case, Dominic beat his Judgment Day stable mate for the belt without Braun losing.

And Braun, I think at this point, this is another example like with Gunther.

He didn't really need the belt.

He needs to work with more main event guys.

And I think that's probably coming.

So Dominic now's got heat and something to fucking

crow over and brag about.

Braun didn't lose.

Something going on with Dominic and Finn.

Penta was in there too.

I don't care.

And there you go.

What'd you think?

Well, just like Gunther last year, he lost the U.S.

belt, and that was the necessary thing for him to move up.

to be world champion.

I'm not saying they're going to put the belt on Braun Breaker right away, but they do have to start developing the next crop and they have to start moving him up.

And how long?

This is the second time I think he was intercontinental champion.

How long was he going to do that?

Unless you were going to give him just a really long run.

Do it here.

He doesn't even have to get pinned.

So nothing on him.

Get to move him up.

Dominic Mysterio getting a massive babyface reaction.

And then running back out to the ring after he left to get more reaction.

I don't know if that was a one-night thing or what.

Again, if he's going to feud with Finn, Finn's clearly the heel.

Well, yeah, but it's also the WrestleMania audience.

Right, but again, if he's going to feud with Finn, Finn's clearly the heel,

right?

Well, maybe he will be and maybe he won't be.

Because Finn could be just the old stick-in-the-mud babyface.

If Finn has a beatdown of Dominic and all of a sudden Carlito and JD shows back up and they beat up Dominic, all of a sudden Dominic's a sympathetic baby face,

although he's still with Liv and she's a heel.

I don't know.

It's interesting to see where they're going to go.

I didn't expect the finish.

I expected that the Judgment Day would have issues and it would cause something, but I was surprised by the way it went down and massive reaction for Dominic Mysterio.

The fans were jovial for this entire second show.

Your earlier thing about the crowd noise.

I'm sure if they noticed an issue, they improved something.

But I also think the things that connected here connected better than they did on night one yeah there was overall they were yeah or this yeah

overall they were just happier to be there and that's so now out of what

i've lost track but eo is the only one who's retained out of like six title matches so far over both nights

uh but anyway so now it was time

to see Randy Orton's open challenge because obviously we know with Steen and and

Kevin Owens

had revealed that he's got to have neck surgery for a shoot, and he's out for who knows how long.

And they'd already set the match up, and that sucks.

But Orton had vowed, I'm going to be there, and somebody needs to step up.

And

let's get it on.

Let's get it on.

And he reiterated the open challenge when he made his entrance and is his 20th 20th WrestleMania.

Who's going to come out?

And we go to the stage and music and it's Joe Hendry,

the TNA world champion.

Joe has say his name, as they say, and he will appear.

And we've been,

Brian, remember we said we got to see Joe Hendry.

And I said, fuck, I met him 10 years ago.

I don't know if I've seen him wrestle yet.

And everybody's been talking about him and he's got so much publicity and attention.

And he's the TNA world champion.

And I know it helps their relationship,

but God almighty,

the TNA-WWE relationship I'm talking about, and it got TNA more exposure than they've gotten it.

I don't know how long, but I'm still old school enough to think, well, maybe it.

might not have been the best thing if it was their world champion that got beat in three minutes like he was goddamn downtown Bruno.

Well, they have a new girlfriend, a new Mexican girlfriend.

So now they can throw TNA right out to the curb.

They don't own TNA.

They own AAA.

No, I think they're still going to be working with the fine folks over at TNA.

But

Randy did what obviously

They told him to do.

He gave him a couple of things,

never took him too seriously, hit him with a eye poke and a couple clotheslines, a power slam and a DDT.

And

Hendry got a fallaway slam in

and did his pose.

And then Orton jumped up and RKO'd him and pinned him one, two, three.

And then Orton helped him up, held his hand up, and then RKO'd him again and then did his pose.

The pose, you know, being the thing where they zoomed the camera in on him.

Yes.

Him doing that right into the RKO was amazing.

That was done so well and it was perfect.

Oh,

but we've established the pecking order, I believe, is that the TNA world champion can't hang with the WWE legends, though.

But he got Joe Hendry on the show.

And in terms of the options they had, or at least the ones we could think of,

TNA's World Champion and TNA's Championship getting the exposure, even though it's a loss.

Obviously, there are guys some may debut tonight as we are recording, whether it's a Rusev

or a Aleister Black or someone else on the roster.

Was there, I mean, was this the best of all options when you think about it?

See, the problem is we don't know what they want to do with Orton from here,

and we don't know how they're going to present, especially like one would think, hey, Rusev,

Omiro,

have him come out and fucking surprise everybody, shock everybody and beat Orton.

But they might have Orton lined up to do something with Cena.

So that wouldn't be possible.

So depending on what they're doing with Orton, who's already a big star,

they might not want to use him that night to make somebody.

So they decided to just let the people see Orton do a personal appearance in tights and

beat somebody that the people will get a kick out of seeing and they can tell TNA they did him a favor.

We had no Owens.

One of these days they're going to ask me for a favor.

We had no Owens.

Were you surprised there was no Sammy on the show?

And no, because see, again, remember they

Sammy and And Owens just in this universe beat the shit out of each other.

I agree.

He couldn't be the surprise opponent.

I'm not saying as a surprise, just on the show in general, no Sami Zayn.

Well,

it wasn't planned that way.

Mama says it be's that way sometimes.

I'm sure he's still in good graces.

He'll be back.

He'll be back.

He's gone away to learn a new hold.

Speaking of learning a new hold, Brian, Logan Paul has learned a couple.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I was going to, Logan Paul and AJ Styles,

just because,

yeah, they kind of brought AJ back.

It's kind of obvious on the face of it.

They brought AJ back to have a high spot match with Logan Paul because they didn't particularly have anything for Logan Paul to do.

But having said that,

they did it well.

Again, another really good match.

I think.

AJ should have raised his arms in the tanning bed.

But both these guys, they look good.

They're in shape.

AJ's work is great.

Logan Paul is

exceptionally advanced for the amount of matches he's had.

And he's

such an athlete, and he's got such an attitude, as we've mentioned.

He gets so much heat because he is a dick,

but he's a heel.

And AJ's a baby face.

And

they had a wrestling match rather than, again,

if this was

the other guys,

the flippy guys that want to outdo each other on the flippiness go so far and they're allowed to go so far that it just becomes ridiculous.

Whereas these guys

still keep the

flavor of a contest and frame it as a contest between a

prick and a halfway decent guy that doesn't like him and then they do wild athletic things out of nowhere in the middle of it, but they don't overdo it.

But at one point, Logan Paul did the lion saw.

Jericho needs to just pack that one in now.

He did it all the way across the fucking ring.

And Logan Paul did a frog splash that made Eddie Guerrero look like he didn't know what he was doing.

But at the same time, they also

let AJ shine, but then Logan Paul got the heat so AJ could sell.

And there's some element of AJ being able to kind of pace the thing by how he sells with Logan Paul so Logan doesn't get too

antsy-pansy or fidgety or whatever.

And then finally,

Logan Paul hit a styles clash.

It wasn't,

he got him up and he turned him over, but it wasn't like it was a leaping high-impact thing like AJ does.

But AJ rolled up on that and gave Logan Paul the styles clash.

And then whatever Logan Paul Stooges' name is, one of the

podcast stooges he has.

Why don't we have Stooges?

Why don't we have just people to...

Hodgkiss Featherbottom.

No, I mean on this show.

We need to have people coming in and bringing us fucking food and...

Sprite Zeros and goddamn engaging in comedic banter.

Then we'd have to, we'd have to let some son of a bitch into one of our homes, though, to do that, wouldn't we?

Go ahead.

I do like the idea that every time they have one of Logan Paul's friends, they're like, here he is.

And you never know who they are because, you know, we don't watch this stuff, but here he is.

It's Jeff.

Oh, okay.

And then it seems like the pitch they must give them is, okay, the wrestler is going to take you and they're going to throw you.

Just go with it.

And they're never trained or never taught anything because they never, they always go down awkwardly.

It's always, yes.

It looks like someone's getting hurt.

Well, and that's the way that untrained dip shits that don't know what they're doing it looks like when they try to be involved and also they must tell them

freeze whenever the the the wrestler looks at you just freeze with your hands in the air like you've been frozen in amber

But the Stooge is behind the or down below the ring apron hiding from the referee site with the brass nooks.

But suddenly, Karrion Cross, who's been interjecting this, he appears and he grabs the nucks.

And that's when the guy froze with his arms out and just

he made no attempt to just turn and run away, just run away.

So he freezes until AJ can roll out and be standing behind him and grab him.

And then when he turned around, again, it was so awkward and stiffly

his movement until AJ just shoved him and the guy just rolled away, Rolled away, rolled away.

And

then Cross

pleads with AJ to put the nucks on and fucking go in and hit the guy that's been kicking the shit out of him.

That's a noted dick.

But AJ

being a good babyface, and this is another thing.

This is a rare quality control mishap from the

WWE.

I can't believe they did this spot with what was coming in the main event, but AJ has the gimmick and he throws it down

and punches Cross

and then gets back in the ring and

Logan Paul hit him with a heck of a knockout punch and that flipping DDT thingy.

Boom, one, two, three.

Maybe the baby face should have just used the Nucks.

What do you think, Brian?

Yeah, Carrie Cross seemed like a real nice guy.

helping you.

I'm helping you.

Yes, just please do this.

Please do this for me.

I have a gift.

That's going to come back later on, too.

That premise there.

Yes, we know the baby face is supposed to be honorable.

But when the baby face is honorable and then moments later is honorable on his fucking face, a loser,

sometimes these sadistic 20 to 50-year-old men that were in the stadium on Easter fucking Sunday instead of with their families

probably ain't going to have a lot of sympathy.

Brian, I understand we're being invited to step into the WWE's writers room

with the new upcoming Netflix series WWE Unreal.

It's come to this.

We've already heard from a ton of listeners saying, what does Jim think of this?

Will Jim watch this?

What does he think about the writer's room being something exposed to the public?

It's come to, well,

I have conflicting thoughts because, yeah, it's a writer's room.

It's not a booker's room.

It's not what we used to do.

It's this

form of thing they do today.

But no,

I'm going to need to get a list of all these son of a bitch's names and addresses

because I'm going to have to go pay a visit to each one of them individually.

I have a feeling I'm going to like this

probably less than anything else that has ever been presented on television.

We're screaming like Stephanie's places.

Well, there's a few of Stephanie's places that even though I've, you know, I haven't visited there before, I'm willing to take a trip to, but I don't want to see these fucking writers or their room.

And I don't want anybody else to see it either.

Because it's going to be fucking embarrassing.

If you were a wrestler working there, would you want them to see this?

Would you want the public to see this?

No.

Because then

inevitably, even if they don't come out and say on the show, yeah, I'm writing

CM Punk or Roman Reigns or Cody Rhodes' fucking promo for them.

Or the other guy said, well, I'm coming up with their finish.

Well, then you're turning your stars that people look up to and they love to hear him talk and they love to see him do all these fucking wild ass things into trained chimpanzees that are doing what they're fucking told by some nebish in the writer's room that if he was in the locker room would be whistling stranger in paradise

and that's the quickest way to can you imagine if if so if if if that brian gerwitz was still around that little pepperoni pizza-faced prick

and he was on the show saying well yeah I'm going to tell Jacob Fatu to do this, that, and the other thing.

Would that get Jacob Fatu over that some little goddamn nerd is telling him what to do or giving him his material?

No.

See, that's why I specifically brought up the active wrestlers.

You don't want anyone seeing that.

You just want them to think that you're sitting there talking to Triple H, not that here's 10 other people who don't know anything.

writing what they think I should say.

You know, I think the other thing going into the earlier conversation about WWE and what they're becoming, I think they have lists of shows that they're looking for someone to develop or pay for the right to air so that they could just churn out content

in every area of the company.

And this is the.

What else can we show them?

You know, fucking famous Diva's bowel movements.

Come to think of it.

Well,

yeah.

We call that that the corner office.

That one may have been in development for a few years now.

Well, speaking of people having bowel movements

and them being the divas, the next one,

the women's tag team title was on the line, Brian with Liv Morgan and her partner, Rochelle Rochelle.

They were scheduled to take on

Lyric Valedictorian and Bailey, but Bailey was injured

in a dastardly attack.

And

everybody was wondering who old Lyric was going to get to be her tag team partner.

Did anybody give two shits and a tickle about Lyric

when she came out dressed like a giant pigeon?

Like a bird.

She was flapping her wings.

She had wings and she was flapping them, literally.

Okay, remember the story I told you when the heavenly bodies started the WWF and the goddamn creative team wanted to put wings on their jackets and wanted them to come to the goddamn

ring with flapping their wings.

That was the motion that was demonstrated to them as to how they should flap their wings.

Well, Bruce has been waiting a lot of years to teach someone how to be a bird.

Well, we gave him the bird the first night,

but that was the motion that she was flapping, and then she still had the feathers in her fucking hair.

And so

she got down there and people are like, what the fuck is this?

This is, you know,

Jesus Christ, she looked like she'd been tarred and feathered Mid-South wrestling.

And then

her partner was revealed and it was Becky Lynch.

And they blew for that.

Big response.

She's back.

They were were singing her.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Or wait a minute.

Sami Zayn is whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Or is Becky Lynch?

Whoa, but Seth is whoa, whoa.

I think she's just, whoa.

So it's like, it's kind of an extended, oh.

Oh, no, wrong way.

I kind of like that.

Well,

anyway, so the point is, if you're going to win the belts at WrestleMania, be sure to wear the feathers in your hair, ladies and gentlemen.

If you're winning at WrestleMania, be sure to wear the feathers in your hair.

They did a great job.

I don't even know if it's considered a great job, but, you know, a lot of people were saying Becky's not coming back for a while.

They were even for a while, a little while back.

I've been saying while a lot.

While you're saying while, they've been whiling away the hour.

There was once a rumor that she was going to, you know, that she would entertain AEW.

The point was no one was saying she's about to come back or she's coming back.

No one prominent.

Like it wasn't something that was being spread.

So I think it really did catch people by surprise.

Yes, and they were shocked and they were happy.

But he said there was a rumor she entertained AEW.

And I didn't hear that rumor.

Every single one of them in the whole, it's a big locker room to entertain all of them.

I didn't even say that she entertained, that she would.

And I'm not saying she did.

I'm saying that was a rumor again not sexual you go right again we're viewing the women's tag match and you have to take it right into the gutter and you're not even talking about liv listen uh becky lynch suddenly got awfully defensive there becky lynch is back

and

becky lynch is back bitch and no one cared about lyra valkyria

and finally

Liv hit her finish on Becky, but Lyric saved the day there.

And then Lyric dove out on Rochelle.

And then Becky hit her finish on Live.

One, two, three, new champions.

That's what is that?

Like six and one

for the title matches.

Yeah.

So it's a brand new day.

But Becky's back, but how the fuck?

I'm not sure why they think that this little timid girl is going to get over and needs to be in this top spot, our friend Lyric with the feathers in her hair.

But boy, that's like Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Brooklyn Brawler winning the tag team title, isn't it?

How's this going to be?

I don't think it's necessarily that, but I think it'sn't Becky Lynch kind of like a mentor to her fellow country people or country men.

You say country men if they're both women.

They're fellow country.

Well, they're fellow.

They're not fellows.

They're sister country women.

They're sister country women.

They're fellow countrymen.

Well, you can be a fellow countryman, but you would have to be a sister country woman.

Well, the point is, they must have a respect from the old country, and they bring it over here now to WrestleMania.

From the old country to the new country.

Again,

let's behave ourselves.

Helix Sleep.

No, let's behave ourselves.

And that was the women's tag match.

Live in Raquel, lose the belts.

Dominic's a champion now lives not.

Yeah,

that's going to cause some stress.

Would you like to go to another country now?

Let's go to another match.

I hope we don't have to edit the hell out of this.

Giving everyone work.

Let's go now to the next match on this extravaganza of wrestling kind, WrestleMania 41.

It wasn't a match, except if you count Stone Cold Steve Austin struggling with a four-wheeler.

In that case, it was a match because

they played Austin's music.

You heard the glass break, and when they hear the break of the glass, that's your ass, as they say.

And they start panning the stadium, and the people are screaming.

They got their phones up and they're waving their arms in the air and partying like they just don't care.

And there's more stadium crowd pans and more ambiance scenes, and the music is playing don't oomk, don't oomk, don't oomp.

And you're like, where is he?

It's they're milking this boy.

You expect to see him walk out any second and then suddenly

he appears on the stage on a four-wheeler and starts heading down the ramp but

the reason why it took so long is the fan cam footage as they say revealed

they to the ramp from the stage to the ring they had to put a ramp on the side of that up to the top of the stage and then to come down the ramp for the four-wheeler to be driven up because you can't come through gorilla in a four-wheeler.

There's stairs involved.

So when Austin had come out from behind the curtain at the foot of that ramp to lead him up to the stage, he was already moving at a pretty good clip and he couldn't turn left.

You can't turn those things on a dime, I guess.

And he overshot the ramp.

and went beside the ramp and couldn't stop and went all the way to the fucking stage ramp and got stuck under it.

And then he put it in reverse.

And when he backed up, he was so close to the ramp that he was supposed to take that he got the back wheel stuck under that.

And then you see all kinds of crew guys come out and frantically start jerking this four-wheeler to get it unstuck out from the side of the ramp.

And so he can back it up.

And then he makes it up the ramp.

And that's when the whole crowd and stadium can see him and they can pick it up on their telecast.

and now and he had to be dying fucking laughing i get because steve right i guarantee you he's blowing snot this son of a bitch

so

he's starting to come down the ramp to the ring now and he flies down the ramp and he circles the ring once and he circles the ring twice and as he's coming around to

to wave or whatever the fuck to the announcers that the announcer as he flies by them

To give them the finger.

To give them the finger.

To give them the finger.

He goes around the left side of the fucking ring again, makes a left turn and he goes wide again and he crashes into the goddamn barricade in front of the front row fans, boom, and comes to a stop.

And there's a woman standing there.

And she takes a delayed bump.

It's like she, boom, she realizes, what the fuck?

And then she gets a a pissed look on her face, and three seconds later, she falls down.

And then he's getting up and he's like, Are you okay?

And

so then

he gets into the ring.

If you're having a good time, give me a hell yeah.

And he is there to announce the attendance, like I think Michaels did on night one.

And he announced 63,226.

But I don't know.

I think there's more than that.

I demand a recount.

And he said, everybody sit down and remain still.

And he starts counting one, two, three, four.

And he only went to 20.

But he said the two-night total that they're claiming, 124,693.

And then he had somebody,

I don't think Mark Eaton's with him anymore, but he had somebody pitch beers to him where he drank the beers.

He might have had a couple before he came out on a four-wheeler.

And then he went down to the woman in the front row

where Nick Kahn was personally checking on her.

Yeah, Nick Khan was throwing out money like he was Ted DiBiase.

Yeah, and

I'm thinking, this guy gets it.

Tony Kahn's not smart enough to get this guy gets it that he was on the fucking hook there.

He wanted to see himself what was going on with the woman that was run into by Stone Cold Steve Austin on a four-wheeler at WrestleMania

because everybody knows there's some money to be had

there.

And somebody tweeted,

actually, the woman in front of me just got hit by Steve Austin when he crashed his four-wheeler and she's pissed.

So I wonder what they had to do to make her happy.

He didn't hit her anyway.

He didn't hit her.

That's the thing.

The delayed bump is what's throwing me off here because she took a weird, like,

he hit the barricade and then she like stared at it and then she just kind of sat down.

She swooned.

She swooned.

It's like she faded over the shock of it all.

But, you know,

I would like to know what the conversation was there with

her and Nick Kahn.

How many shares of stock would you like?

Would you like to?

Are you interested in being on our robust board, part of the flywheel?

Would you like to be part of the flywheel, uh, ma'am?

Anyway, you know what?

Austin always said that he wouldn't come back if it wasn't for anything good.

He didn't want to just show up and

do stuff.

And then a few years back, he said he had an idea to come back and sing, and Vince shot it down.

I was like, man, Vince did the right thing.

That sounded awful.

And a lot of people had hoped that Steve Austin kind of could have been part of the whole rock thing in terms of like

an icon of that time to counterpoint.

That it would make sense in some way, even though Triple H it does as well.

The fact that he was here and this is the way he was used, forget about

crashing and drinking or whatever was going on there.

Just the lameness of the counting, just to get the what chant, I guess, because then McAfee started doing what on commentary, which was unbearable.

Yeah, because when the announcers try to lead it, then it just comes off even phonier.

Yeah, so I guess that's the disappointment, just that Steve Austin was used like this, that he was okay with being used like this.

He wasn't a part of the thing last year with the rock and everything.

That was the Undertaker, where it would have fit if it was Steve Austin.

Here he did nothing.

Well, what he did was carry a check for, I'm sure, a nice six-figure sum home for having a match that he had inducted into the Hall of Fame and then running over a fucking bitchy old lady in the front row with a fucking four-wheeler.

And drinking some beer.

It's been a while since Steve's been here what's uh what's the worst that could happen well he almost took down the backstage area and then he hit a woman in the front row allegedly and

then he started counting in the ring like he was the count on sesame street then he drank some beers and then he uh said a little nikon then he left

all right Same old Steve.

I loved it.

That was my favorite segment.

That's the funniest thing I've seen.

We need to get that fucking four-wheeler up there.

The bump, I can't get past.

I watched over and over again the way the woman fell.

Yes, because she didn't want to hurt herself.

See, when you're falling down on purpose, you're self-conscious, you don't want to hurt yourself.

All righty.

Are you ready for the match we've all been waiting for, Brian?

The second one of night two, the real last one.

We've really been waiting for this thing.

John Cena versus Cody Rhodes for the world heavyweight title, and

the soulless Cena versus

the very babyface and righteous Cody Rhodes.

What did the guys on the motorcycles have to do with Cody?

Was Cody a famous motorcycle daredevil in his younger days that we missed?

Cody's really into BMX.

He always wanted to be in the movie Rad.

I really don't know what it had to do with anything.

And then it just kind of abruptly ended.

And then the regular Cody entrance happened.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, first, we got Cena first, and he came out lackluster as his heel persona has been doing.

And they did the John Cena sucks because it works in the song.

And then we saw, again, guys on motorcycles just running back and forth and doing trick things.

And then Cody came up through the stage.

And I think it was.

I don't know whether they meant to time it like this or somebody jumped something,

but the people in the stadium saw Cody standing on the stage before they heard his music start.

And I think that got him off on the wrong foot.

Because normally

you hear the wrestling has more than one royal family and the

and that gives them the pop.

And then you see him appear, right?

They put the Cody before the horse.

It was odd.

But the fans woed and they sang and Cody kissed his baby and his wife and his mother and his girlfriend.

Everybody was there.

His girlfriend?

Well, the whole family.

He didn't want to leave anybody out.

He had them all in the front row.

And then

on the introductions.

Cena got a mixed response.

They booed him flat out when they first heard the music.

Then he got a mixed response on the introduction.

Then Cody

got the cheers and the boos.

Then they got the chant going, let's go, Cena, Cena sucks.

And then when they rang the bell,

the longer it went, the more it became

Hulk Hogan and the Rock in Toronto.

I mean, not to the,

they just, they roasted the rock over an open fucking fire that night.

No, but this has been coming.

This This was not to that level, but

it was the WrestleMania audience.

It was John Cena, many of them there probably seeing him for the first time live.

Nostalgia kicked in.

The weird story of the whole thing, and the fact that now that it's the

WrestleMania audience, and this is the people who spent the most money and are into this the most, they wanted to see the belt change hands.

And so they flipped around as this, the guys took their time.

The crowd was loud anyway, and they started slow and worked it.

But the more that they did, everything Cena would do would get some kind of reaction, mixed at best, and a lot of times

cheers.

And

when Cody would fire back,

it'd be a bit mixed, but more booze.

Yeah, and I think it's more than just people wanting a title change.

I think this has been something coming.

And we saw it on SmackDown.

Again, that's kind of the WrestleMania audience, but the crowd rejected Cody on SmackDown against Cena face-to-face.

And

I think part of the problem

that may have caused this to happen quicker, or at least here, is Cena as a heel pointed out things about Cody that are true.

He pointed out that you're a baby face by numbers.

You know, he's like heroic for no reason.

Like, there's no central cause.

It's just, I'm a babyface, and this is what we do.

Like, he pointed out all these things that if you stop and think about it, the heel was telling the truth.

And then the heel got beat down by the babyface and then the babyface left.

I think, I think it's, you know, I'm not saying it's the Charlotte situation, and I'm not saying it's what happened to Cody in AEW.

But I'm thinking,

you know, Cody can't just be the Bob Backlan, Mr.

Goody Two Shoes.

And the Cena thing kind of brought a lot of that out.

And Cody had something when he was chasing the title.

People wanted him to finish the story, and he was able to ride that wave into a year as champion,

but he hasn't really grown as a character much, if that makes any sense.

He hasn't really shown more than, you know, I drink my milk and go to school on time, kids.

Like, it's just, it's not fleshed out right now.

Well, but then the problem because it still was a long way from wearing thin because he's still getting great responses, selling merchandise.

Everybody's just loving Cody until

he got into this thing.

And even then, here's my point.

It's still the WrestleMania office.

It ain't going to play this way in Peoria.

And it was the nostalgia factor and the fact they want to see the title change and et cetera.

But

what to me

has hurt, did hurt Cody about this more than the people just booing him because, you know, the Rock survived the Hogan match, et cetera, et cetera.

The finish

is what to me hurt Cody.

Remember when I said earlier when the heel tries to use a gimmick and the babyface gets given that gimmick and is too...

pure of heart to fucking give the guy a taste of his own medicine.

That people don't like.

That's what they did.

And I couldn't believe they did it twice the same night.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself, though, on this match.

But overall, though, just to finish your point, overall, though, the finish killed this match.

I think the finish overall, the last few minutes, killed the entire event for some people.

It would just, it, it suddenly, this high-energy, exciting show suddenly went

and it was just bleh.

But they did a good job with the match with laying it out.

I think the layout of the match up until the last couple minutes or whatever,

the false finishes were great.

The execution was probably not as

crisp as

the layout, because let's face it, John's 50 or whatever he is.

But goddamn, he was putting on a clinic for the lip readers too, wasn't he?

I could follow right along with the match, just fucking reading John's lips.

That's always been a scene of problem.

He used to be really bad on law where you could watch him talk and hear him talk.

At one point, when Cody was firing up, he punched him and John's again, punch again,

like Jesus Christ.

But nevertheless, they got good false finishes going.

There was a lot of attitude adjustments, you know, exchanged.

And as they would go back, and Cody cutters and they would go back and forth, and

Cody spoiled

the

first

effort at the five knuckle shuffle.

But then Cena hit it later on.

And, you know, again, trading the attitude adjustments and the Cody cutters.

And then Cena got the

attitude adjustment and the STFU and got a big pop on that.

And he was holding the STF and he would foil the rope break.

He would, whenever Cody'd get close, he'd drag him back and it would get a big pop, like, yeah, drag him back in the middle and hurt him some more.

And then

Cody kicked Cena off, and they squashed the referee in the corner.

And the referee was down.

And

again, I've usually

the main event finishes.

They hit more than they miss here, but goddamn, two ref bumps of the same ref.

But nevertheless, they bump him the first time.

Down he goes.

Cody foils the AA into a crossroads.

He covers John.

There's no referee.

The crowd counts to 12.

And then Cody goes over to kind of check on the referee.

And at that point, Cena pulls the buckle pad off

and sidesteps Cody and runs him into the buckle twice and hits the attitude adjustment.

And the referee has.

recovered and bound to count.

One, two, kick out.

That was great.

Then music starts playing,

if you can call it that.

And here comes Travis Scott

out on the stage fondling his mark title belt that he's got over his goddamn shoulder.

And he just decides to wander down to the ring at

a pace I can only assume would be called glacial.

Brian, from the first note of his music to the time he got to ringside it was one minute and 50 seconds

and during that time cena just had to sit there and look at him grin like yeah here comes my guy and cody had to sell

they're doing nothing there's no motion in the ring for one minute and 50 seconds People been hit by fucking tark buses and been back on their feet.

Why they involve these amateur morons in important shit, I will never know.

But this fucking Travis Scott needs to be fucking launched onto the next goddamn spaceship.

Put him in orbit for a while.

What percentage of fans at this point in the show, either when the music hit or when Travis Scott was out there, when he got to the ring and when Cody came to whatever.

What percentage do you think thought the rock was coming out?

I thought you were going to say what percentage wanted to see him.

I was going to say 0.0007.

It didn't sound like, I don't think that anybody thought the rock was coming out when the music hit because it wasn't rock's music.

And when they saw him, there may have been some

guess, but when he just kept walking and walking and walking, it was like, this is all we're getting and getting and getting.

I think it killed the people because as he got down there, they were like, fuck, he showed up and the rock didn't.

And nobody gives a shit about him.

How do you get to be multi-platinum, motherfuckers?

It's awful easy to be a multi-platinum.

They had five multi-platinum people on this fucking show sitting in the front row that were recognized on camera and you never hear their names anywhere.

People, you could scream it in a fucking shopping mall.

People, huh?

Anyhow, so now,

apparently, in front of the referee, who's still up, by the way,

Cena holds Cody like Travis Scott's going to slap him again.

But as he brings him over to the apron of the ring where old Travis Scott is, Cody gives Rock an elbow

and grabs at Travis Scott, who jumps down.

And then he turns around and Cody hits the crossroads on Cena

and covers him.

And as the referee goes down to count, Travis Scott pulls the referee out.

And the referee face plants.

And now he's out again.

And again, I've done finishes with two referee bumps of two different fucking referees.

It's just, Jesus Christ, somebody get this man a fucking defibrillator over here.

Cody dares Travis Scott to get in the ring.

Now, fuck it.

I'm wrestling John Cena over here, but this fucking minute

thug rapper that nobody's ever heard of and has fucked up two of my matches now.

I'm more concerned with getting him to come in the ring.

Travis Scott gets in the ring face to face, like he's not scared of Cody, who's 100 pounds bigger and much taller.

And Travis Scott swings at him.

And Cody blocks it and gives him the crossroads and then rolls the sack of shit out

and turns around.

Cena's got the belt.

Cena swings the belt, but Cody blocks that and pulls the belt away and Cena begs off.

Puts his hand up.

Please, Cody, don't.

And crouches down.

Please, I'm begging you.

I'm begging you.

And Cody's got the belt and Cena's begging.

And when Cena begged off,

For just a second there, the people turned back a bit.

They went, oh, like he's begging.

And they had the germ of something there, but then the germ turned into a fucking virus that infected the whole thing.

Cody hesitated

hitting Cena with the belt and then

lowered the belt and turned away like, oh, I can't do it.

And that's when Cena football kicked him in the balls and picked up the belt and hit him over the head and got the referee and covered him one, two, three, and got a big pop.

Because Cody,

who all of this time has mostly prevented himself from looking like a just a goddamn goof,

the people say, well, fuck.

You fucking, he kicked you into balls.

He said all these things about you, hit him in the head with the goddamn belt.

It doesn't mean

that you're a horrible human being

it means that the guy deserved it it this is again they're they're using this the writer's room

is trying to use this trope that the baby face couldn't bring himself to do it the wrong way now you

If there hadn't been any witnesses, I'd have taken a goddamn hammer to that guy who was digging a hole in my front yard a couple of weeks ago and wouldn't felt bad about it at all because he dug a hole in my fucking yard.

So, if it was just people on the street, I can understand Cody not wanting to hit an innocent person over the head with a blunt instrument.

But when it's a guy that turned on him and kicked him in the nuts and said all those bad things about him and wants to take his title and has done a variety of bad things to him here in this match, hit him with a fucking belt.

You deserve to lose because you should have hit him with a fucking belt.

That's what they did that was wrong with Cody here.

He would survive the WrestleMania

heavily dedicated nostalgic crowd wanting to see a fucking happening.

Cheering Cena, that's the thing to do.

That's not, but

he lost the belt because he just was too, he just pushed out.

I don't think Dusty would have pushed out.

I think Dusty would have fucking slapped Baby Doll across the side side of the face because she deserved it, that Jezebel.

Well, I don't know about, let's not, I don't know about anything with Baby Doll there, but that's been the problem.

I think he did slap Baby Doll across the face one time now, come think.

That's been the problem with this whole thing.

After the attack where The Rock and Travis Scott and Cody turned on Cena,

gave him a black eye that was visible to everyone.

They've had good back and forths that went like 10 minutes as promos, but there hasn't been the right amount of anger.

And again, it wasn't about like, I'm going to get you for doing this to me.

It was, you can't do this to them.

They deserve so much.

Cody's coming across like a bullshit politician.

And

the finish here did not help that.

And in fact, it just adds more fire.

They bored him to death waiting for a bag of bones to get to the fucking ring and then did

the one thing that the people would say makes the babyface deserve to lose.

Well, he could have beat him, but he didn't.

So fuck him.

I don't get that.

No, I don't get it.

What do you think now looking back?

Obviously, I got a lot of heat at the time for saying that the WWE had a rock problem and saying that despite the angle being a great moment.

It's about where you go and it's about the problems.

It's a whole bunch of things that I've been saying about the rock.

One would think that if The Rock came in with a goddamn idea and that idea was done to The Rock's liking, the way Rock wanted to do it, that he would have been here to fucking finish it.

And that lends credence to him

wanting to mess with this thing in other ways and Cody maybe stepping up a little bit and saying no.

But so Rock is, oh, okay, well,

Travis will have fun being there, but I got other things to do.

He showed up, got himself involved, and then didn't come.

That means to me that he wasn't happy with the reception it got or the feedback it got or the way that it was played out or playing out.

Yeah, you can show up for NXT, you can show up for WrestleMania.

Fly in for a day.

We've had guys who had like roles or concerts or whatever it was where they had to fly in for WrestleMania and then fly right back out.

It's been done.

Yeah.

But

yeah, but instead he got the pin Cody last year, the day before Cody won the world title.

So that's his last match.

Him pinning Cody.

And we never got the rock and Roman.

Dwayne Johnson.

Well, and

he showed up just to disturb everybody's build to this thing and then wasn't in the rest of it and didn't need to be.

So he might not, it might as well never have been involved at all.

That's what I don't understand this.

And, you know, maybe they're going to get tired of letting him do this.

But, and I don't know that anybody missed him.

Isn't that a shame that

you have to be nervous that the biggest wrestling star in the world and one of the biggest movie stars in the world might come and want to be on the fucking show?

Oh, goddamn him again.

The next time he comes out there and slaps his arm to show the goosebumps, no one's going to believe it.

It was already at a point where barely anyone and then punk the last time we saw rock the next day on tv punk did an interview saying you come out here with your bullshit you slap in your arm we never saw him ever again

well you know that there's a way you can work that you you squirt lemon juice on your taint i don't know anything about this listen the other thing is we hear from fans who say you guys aren't with it travis scott is a big star he's had all this success you know he a Kardashian, all the things that big stars do nowadays.

Wait a minute.

I don't know if that's the definition of success, something, that garden variety that happens every day.

Well, I guess that's part of the point here, but it's not the same thing as Dennis Rodman for WCW, let alone Mike Tyson for WWE or,

you know,

I feel like it connects more like Lawrence Taylor did.

Although it's not necessarily a regional thing, it connects with a portion of the audience, maybe, and a whole lot of people don't want him involved in the, don't want him involved in the main event of WrestleMania.

And WWE is at a point now, worse than ever before, where they'll embrace any sort of celebrity that wants to be involved.

But this Travis Scott stuff hasn't worked.

Now, the only thing anyone wants to see is him get a receipt from anyone.

They just want to see him in the ring.

get speared by Braun Breaker or something.

Yeah, there you go.

Cause the crossroads was too easy for this guy to take.

This, the spear from Braun is the

you know, I mean,

like 6'9.

You know, I mean, like, he was a big, he was an athlete, he was a nationally known athlete.

It's just this isn't working, and even some of them still look awkward when they try to get involved in the wrestling world.

Some of them can pull it off, and some of them can't.

But if an athlete can't do it, a rapper ain't gonna fucking do it.

And besides that,

again,

you know, it may be a celebrity in some genre

but do i want to see liza manelli in the main event of wrestlemania no it doesn't it's just no

i mean look at wrestlemania one mr t was in the match liberace wasn't

you know like vince understood there are certain guys that are right for this and other guys we just want around so people see them

The parsley, the parsley on the on the side of the plate.

They've shoved Travis Scott into this.

And, you know, a lot of people when the scene of turn happened wondered, is this like the WrestleMania 17 thing?

Is this the right move or the wrong move?

They have incredible success.

They just had that incredibly successful European tour.

It does feel like that was a moment where nothing has really connected the right way since.

I hope it's not a WrestleMania 17 moment, but

I guess they just did it because Rock promised Travis,

yeah,

you can do something at WrestleMania because that way when you hang around with me, we both look cool.

But even if you wanted to use Travis Scott, let's even go with that.

He's a nationally known musician and rapper.

You want to do something with him.

The Rock didn't need to be there for the Cena turn.

It didn't need to be about The Rock.

And especially because you have to question if The Rock's ever going to work a match again.

So it's not like Cody is guaranteed a big win over The Rock to overcome all these obstacles, all these things that have happened.

Couldn't somehow Cody have run afoul of Travis Scott, and there'd been a personal issue.

Did Rock just have to be there to say, hey, Travis, don't like Cody?

John Cena's whole gimmick was he was a rapper.

It could have been as simple as John Cena's friends with Travis Scott.

He worked with him to screw Cody.

I'm not saying I would have done that.

My point is, if you wanted him to be a part of this and you wanted this to all tie in together nicely, the rock caused a distraction that they never got past.

And despite Cena's, I think,

really strong work on the mic,

it never got past the distraction of the rock.

And it's still there, I think.

Yeah, in hindsight, I liked the promos because both guys can talk and they really, and they sound like they mean it, et cetera, et cetera.

But

besides the opening kick and the balls, really, it was Cody crossroads him twice.

And I said the second time, I said, well, this means he's definitely losing because he's laid scene out twice with no rebuttal whatsoever.

But

it just, it didn't, it didn't get there, dog.

They should have had Brandy jump the rail and like spear Travis Scott.

That would have got the biggest pop of the night.

For real, I think she could take him.

Brandy?

She's talking.

She definitely could take him.

And now that you've said that, I'm thinking, goddamn, what a missed opportunity.

Yeah, but we'll see how what Cody has to say for himself, because he's going to have to say something for himself to mitigate any further damage over

having the opportunity to keep the goddamn thing and make all the fans happy and being a sucker and not using it and leaving himself open for the old kicko and the balls hoe.

Again, it was very reminiscent of AEW Cody, where some of the decision-making was questionable.

Of course, this is a produced match, and it's the world title match, the main event of WrestleMania.

A lot of people had their hands in it.

A lot of people have thoughts in it, but.

Cena's had more contact with Cody's balls lately than Brandy has.

Well, there it is.

Cody Rhodes versus John Cena, new champion, John Cena, as we are recording.

He said that later tonight on Raw, he will destroy wrestling or let people know how he's going to destroy wrestling.

Well, you know, Jim, before we move completely on from this, it has to be noted here, John Cena,

never seen with facial hair.

I can't remember any time we've seen him with facial hair.

Cody Rhodes had that unfortunate period of time where he had a mustache.

And then we never saw him again with facial hair.

They need the shave, and lots of other people need to clean up that face and shave.

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Because they've got a guy that's working on my toenails while the other guy's shaving.

Again, that has nothing to do with Harry's.

I don't know who you're inviting over or whatever.

I do.

I may have called the wrong company.

Yeah, I think so.

They provide excellent service.

Well, Jim, we have to get to the end of the show here, and we have Raw coming up.

And as we're recording,

you're not going to believe this.

Hold on, let me turn on the audio.

Oh, Christ.

Pat McAfee, obviously, although choked out and had trouble breathing, he was on his podcast today or his show, whatever it is.

And his guest was Dwayne Johnson.

Uh-oh.

Here's a quick.

He showed up to McAfee's podcast, but he didn't come to WrestleMania.

He must be in a snoot.

You have to see the visual.

He's not there.

He is via Zoom or something, and he's wearing a nice shirt with glasses to make himself look like an executive.

Hold on, let's go to this.

Matches, first of all, I was very happy with the show.

A couple of things I thought could have been better, which we're going to talk about here in a second.

But overall, man, everyone, the work rate of every single performer,

women and men.

Man, was dynamic.

I thought.

Let's stop it there.

A couple of things could have been better.

If you're working there, do you want Dwayne Johnson going on a fucking interview to say this?

I don't mind if he says it to me personally, but I'd like him not to say it on fucking national television.

Yeah, again, there's a whole interview here.

Pat McAfee has sent it out.

See, again, he put up a three-minute video.

The quote is, we could have inserted the final boss in the finish at WrestleMania.

But then where do we go?

Why get involved in that finish when the spotlight should be just on John Cena?

John Cena getting number 17 and being a heel champion is the anchoring storyline.

I agree with that.

Why'd you get involved in the first place?

Yes, once you showed up,

once you were at the scene of the crime, you needed to be brought back later for questioning, didn't you?

Real quick, but before I even play any other audio,

Triple H goes into the Hall of Fame, gives the longest speech in the history of mankind.

Thanks everyone he's ever met and works with currently, except for Dwayne Johnson the Rock,

who conveniently enough was nowhere near WrestleMania.

Thanks for nothing.

After inserting himself in the picture with the John Cena turn and as you've discussed, was not needed.

He was not needed for the John Cena turn.

It distracted from everything else, and then people expected him there.

Him giving Cody the ultimatum distracted from people's consistent support of Cody.

They were like, well, what's he going to do?

Is he going to do that?

It was completely a bump on a log.

Yeah, again, there is tremendous disappointment from people due to the finish at WrestleMania Night 2.

And a lot of it was from the expectation, how could The Rock not be there based on the way things went down?

And now here he is saying,

the storyline is John Ceno getting the title win.

What would I do?

The spotlight should be on him.

What do you think of all this?

Well, it was presented like that that was he was the one that talked Cena into doing this.

Let's talk about you saying the final boss needs to step away to,

you know, kind of let the spotlight be where it should be with John and Cody, who, you know, potentially you talk about John being the GOAT.

There's a chance Cody, when it's all said and done, is also trying to vie for a spot on that Mount Rushmore rock with his dad dad on the backside with you raising your eyebrow.

A lot of people just assumed you were going to show up, just assumed you were going to show up.

So when Travis Scott comes out, they think there's a chance of maybe, you know, there's going to be a reunion from the elimination chamber.

What are your thoughts on Travis Scott getting involved and you saying, I need to stay out of that?

Was there ever a moment where anybody was trying to tell you differently?

Like, no, no, no, Final Boss.

Anytime you're around is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Stop this here.

Yeah, they all address him backstage.

Hey, final boss.

Please don't come around.

That's what he's saying.

Is that what it's saying?

Come around here no more.

That was a very long-winded question from Pat McAfee, but let's get to what Dwayne Johnson said.

It had an element of dear leader in it, or like he was trying to talk to Trump.

He had to put him over first.

Oh, fearless leader.

Yeah, instead of final boss, fearless leader.

Oh, fearless leader.

Oh.

No, they don't have to say anything like that to me.

And they know when I come to them and them meaning Triple H and Nick and Ari as well, and I lay this out and I say, hey, here's how I really feel it should go.

We can insert final boss in the end of this finish, but then where do we go?

There's other commitments that I have, and I want to also be careful that we're not overstepping and leading over our skis too much here.

Can get involved in a finish.

And I said, but why get involved in that finish when the spotlight should just be on, in my opinion, John 17 heel champion?

What does 2025 look like if this man is saying he's going to ruin professional wrestling?

That to me is the anchoring storyline.

It's not soul right now.

Right now.

Let me stop it there for a second.

Again,

that should be the storyline.

You distracted from the whole fucking thing.

Well, no, but I think he's being nice.

He's saying, hey, why should I?

I could be in the finish if I wanted to, but hey, let the kids have their moment.

And again, when I talked to him over there, Paul Nick Ari,

it's not like he's like, hey, let me call Bruce and run something by him.

He goes right to the boss of the bosses, his boss.

We'll go back to it.

Still got it, though.

Still got it.

Look, I can't take the text that I got and from the guys that I got

who are these top guys who are saying, you know, one in particular who I love is my guy.

You know, I call him the superman of the company.

He's like, listen, my soul's for sale when it's time.

And I said, I love it.

Let's do it.

So, look, I love Travis Scott involved.

And I'll tell you why, because he loves wrestling.

He's a huge fan and he respects it.

He's working his ass off.

I know that he has plans to train.

Stop right now.

Do you hate him?

Do you hate

Brock yet?

Yeah, he loves it.

He's working his ass off.

He walked to the ring.

It took him two minutes.

and he got dumped on his head.

He's working his ass off.

He's going to train with Booker T.

This guy's fucking as big around as my wrist.

Let's not do anything to deprive Booker T of that payday for this, but let's go back to this audio.

I don't know if it's happening already, it might be.

Not quite too sure there on his schedule, but uh, he loves the business.

Now,

I was uh, I was just as surprised to see Travis Scott as well.

And I knew the moment I saw Travis, well, that immediately amplifies, well, here comes the final boss.

And so, again,

I love

that

they were waiting.

Let me stop here.

McAfee's unbearable.

Yeah, he needs to, yeah, just don't.

The idea that he didn't know Travis Scott was going to be there.

He was surprised by it.

So now you don't know how much he's working.

And

of course, that's going to amp up things.

People expecting the guy who was walking with him to the ring the last time we saw this guy

the the problem is now he's just like travis scott is my friend and he's a star and i like hanging around him because he's with the cool kids so i'll let him play on my show

yeah i think i texted you i think i texted you as it was happening holding

you were like are you coming out and i was like no dude i would tell you i'm coming out i'm not defaming you but again again i i loved at the end of the day, North Star John Cena, heel champion 17, the goat.

Says he's going to ruin wrestling.

Now we tune every week, in every, in, every week to see how it happens, how that goes down.

No, we don't.

He said how many weeks he has left.

We don't tune in every week.

We tune in 26 more weeks.

That's what we tune in.

Some parts of it, I would have

just adjust

a little bit more.

I would have finessed it a little bit more.

When he was a great WrestleMania, I think you all should be incredibly proud.

Let me stop it there before he claps to the rock for the success of WrestleMania.

If you were

the boss, the booker, whatever you want to say Triple H is, and we'll use him as the example here,

and two days later you have someone who at worst is an equal, but is actually higher up on the totem pole,

do you want your boss, for lack of a better term, going on TV and saying, I would have done things better?

Even if he would have.

Even if he would have.

well it we didn't listen to the entire interview but did he enumerate on these things or did he just leave it there because if he started dissecting well i think it should have gone this way then yeah that would cause some heat it's a general all-purpose well you know

i would have done a few things differently but that that's you know that's just to show

that he thinks he's an expert and at the same time not specifically crucify the other guy.

You have to see the video.

It's just such such a performance.

Like it's not genuine.

Nothing he is saying sounds real.

It's a performance.

You have to see.

But that's the audio as we are recording.

Dwayne Johnson couldn't be a WrestleMania, but he was on the Pat McAfee show for the day after, the day after

Mania.

Jim, let's go to The Day After Mania, WWE Raw.

Well, this was, of course, April 21st, for those of you keeping track.

And they were in Las Vegas again at the T-Mobile Arena.

So I don't know how many they had for Friday Night SmackDown in the T-Mobile Arena.

It was a pretty good looking crowd.

But then they did,

allegedly, we will wait for further confirmation: 125,000 people at the stadium in two nights.

And then they came in here with what they said was 19,262.

And it looked pretty close to it because they had the small

entryway with just a short screen and the guys walk out on the ground and walk down the tight aisleway.

So they sold every seat they could get in this fucking building.

And,

you know, again, this, I wonder how many of these people are actually from the Las Vegas area.

And I would think it's heavily the out-of-town travelers,

a lot of them foreigners probably come in.

And they're reacting like the WrestleMania crowd reacts, which is basically at some point they're cheering everybody for doing everything.

It's not like you can get any real fucking heat, except if you're like Dominic and it's cool for them to boo you, but then they still kind of cheer you.

And

again, this was

a lot of things happened,

but it was a chance for the fans to see a lot of these people in person,

you know, and hear them talk, and then something briefly happens.

And they opened up with Cena, and he got a big pop

soon as the music plays.

They cheer, God, it's John Cena.

But then he comes out and they, John Cena sucks, because that's fun and it works with the music.

And then,

let's go, Cena.

Cena sucks, chance.

There's really

everybody has somebody, everybody has somebody that likes them.

And some of these people, I'm pretty convinced, Brian, are doing both parts.

John gives the ring announcer, calls him in, and gives him the proper introduction instead of the disrespectful one that he did.

And the guy reads the big introduction.

And he is getting cheers and booze.

And then they chanted, Cena, Cena.

And then he opened again.

you think you can bully me on Friday and because you cheer for me on Monday, I'm supposed to forgive you.

This is not a functional relationship.

I can still tell you to go to hell.

You all owe me an apology and you're too cowardly to do it.

And then the fans chanted, we aren't sorry.

But

then Cena said, you are sorry.

You're the sorriest bunch of people I've ever seen.

You know, that got me sued in Baton Rouge one time, Brian.

Did I tell you that?

That exact line?

I went out to introduce the Midnight Express and took the microphone and said, you're the sorriest bunch of people I've ever seen in my life.

And then I introduced him and we had the match on the way back.

That's when the guy took the swing at me

and fucking.

I was trying to hit him and Dundee tackled him and blah, blah, blah.

And the cops are involved.

And then the headline in the newspaper said, Wrestling spectator alleges he was, quote, fed to the lions, unquote.

And the guy, because he got beat up.

And the guy said, the reason why he was so incensed and had to felt like he had to come up there and go after me was because I had gotten on the microphone and called everyone sorry.

Some people are easily offended.

But nevertheless, John Cena said, you people don't mean anything to me.

And the fans chanted asshole at him.

And then he counted down the days that they have left to see him before he's gone.

And there's nine down and 27 to go.

Not matches, just appearances.

Because if you say I can't wrestle, I don't have to.

And then he's the last real undisputed champion because he's taking the title home and keeping it and they can crown somebody else.

And he said, the best chance that you had was Cody Rhodes and they booed.

And then he blistered the fans for turning on Cody.

And finally, he ends up, he says, nobody in the WWE has the ruthless aggression of me.

But I'm going to do something nice for you.

Get your cameras out because the last real champ is here and he's holding the belt up.

And Randy Orton

rolls from under the rig, comes out on the other side of him behind him.

And when he turns around, Cena says, shit!

And Orton gives him the RKO.

And that gets a huge pop.

And the people chant, Randy, Randy, thank you for

knocking out the fucking guy we were just cheering for.

See what I'm saying here?

And then Orton held the belt up and put it across Cena's prostate, frustrate body.

They like everything.

There's nothing these guys, I mean, if somebody just rolls in and just butt fucks one of the guys, yes, give it to him.

But now we got, and remember, I said something at some point.

We certainly did.

Oh, yeah, lots.

Well,

I said something when we've been doing these shows

about

Orton, it depended on what they had,

should Rusev have debuted against Orton?

I said, it depends on what they're going to do with Orton.

Or, you know, or it should have been Joe Hendry or whatever the fuck.

Yeah.

Well, it obviously they're doing something important with Orton.

So

that's why that happened.

Do you kind of rush through?

Not that you have to rush through it, but do you kind of, if you're doing Orton now, is it something where there's like a

a one-month timeframe you could do Orton and you got to move on to punk or something else?

Like you want to get the most out of Cena?

Or

do you see this?

I mean, this is a long, you want to talk long-term booking with Cena.

Cena and Orton goes back to the very beginning.

Yeah.

And somebody said on Twitter, it's going to be the first time ever for a heel Cena and a babyface Orton.

Au contraire, Monfray, because I was there.

We did it 24 years ago.

But I don't know if you have to rush anything because

it goes through the end of the year, which is going to take us through Survivor Series in terms of major events.

You got SummerSlam, whatever.

I'm thinking

that if they get CETA, because remember, he said 27 appearances, that doesn't mean matches.

I'm thinking if they get Orton and Punk

and potentially, I would assume that Cody may get even.

And there's you eight months if they can do all that then.

So I don't think they're rushing anything.

Oh, we got to rush through this.

All these quotes coming out now from this rock interviewer.

Oh, you're just wanting to fucking bless him out a little bit more today.

The rocks, according to WrestlePurist, The Rock says that TKO CEO Ari Emanuel called him for help because ticket sales for Illumination Chamber were slow and wanted something must-see.

He came up with the whole sell your soul idea for Cody Rhodes.

Oh, good lord.

Then Triple H suggested John Cena,

which I guess maybe that would have been after they already pitched John Cena on the heel turn, but I don't know.

Yeah, well, yeah,

at some point, either,

well, no, what they're saying is what he's confirming is what we talked about that he came up with the idea for Cody and they pitched it instead to Cena because I guarantee you, Triple H either said, oh, God, no, you're not going to fucking turn Cody heel,

or

Triple H agreed with Cody, oh my God, you're not going to turn me heel.

And by the way, he's confirming some stuff that we said on the internet, and people jumped at me.

Oh, you're believing Dave Meltzer.

Dave was right about it, too.

Geez, just because he doesn't rate the matches you like the same way you do, point that out, but you don't have to say everything he does is wrong.

The stuff about Dwayne, we've said he's got good Dwayne sources.

He's got the best Dwayne sources.

He's got real good Dwayne sources.

Yeah.

You just have to know kind of what to believe from, but both of these things can be true.

Dave can be full of shit and also write about a guy.

That'll be it for now.

We'll cover any other quotes from this on the experience, but it's breaking as we're recording.

Well, speaking of breaking,

they broke the string of the new women's tag team champions

after Becky Lynch and Lyric Valedictorian won them at WrestleMania, they had a rematch with Liv and Rochelle and lost them back.

It took 20 minutes, however.

So I'm basically just going to tell you what happened in the end.

Becky had been leveled and

live or Lyric or Lyric,

I should say, was fighting them off both for a while, but Liv hit her finish on her one, two, three, beat Lyric, new champion.

The people cheered.

Yay, the heels won the belts back from our beloved babyface.

It just returned.

Yay.

And then in the ring, Becky Lynch picks up old Lyric and hugged her and then clotheslined her and berated her and started to walk out on her and then came back and got back in the ring and beat the shit out of her

and then left and came back in.

and gave her two rock bottoms and started to leave again.

And the fans said, one more time.

So she gave her another one.

And apparently, because Lyric, while she was still conscious and able to, was just sitting there looking up at

Becky scared and didn't make any move to fight back because it's her mentor.

So I'll just lay here while you kick me in the teeth.

And so Becky Lynch is a heel now.

Do you think she's going to be the woman in this?

alliance that her husband is starting to put uh to be involved with

I don't know.

We'll see if they keep an eye out for that.

They haven't done very much to have him and her do anything other than references every now and then.

But I thought it was an okay match.

Well, maybe that, maybe they just thought to keep Kay Fabe up, if he's going to be a heel, then she's got to be a no-good, dirty heel, too.

You know, I thought it was an okay match.

I'm a bigger and bigger fan of Liv Morgan every time I watch her.

And it's not just the skimpier outfits, which, you know, more of that, but it's what she does and how she does it, how she throws punches when she's trying to pounce.

Like, there's little things you could tell she's a fan.

And I really appreciate her and I enjoy her matches.

But there were a few spots in here, and I liked it, where it was Raquel

and Lira that Lira Valkyrie.

Is that Valkyria?

It's a horrible name.

But they were going back and forth, and the crab died, completely went silent.

And I don't think it was Raquel.

I think they brought Lira up from NXT and they've given her a good push.

And it just

is just so

far.

It's not getting over.

And they're going to try and they're going to try.

I mean, they're going to do something with her and Becky Wish.

So they're going to try, but it's not there yet.

But you can tell that she knows she's trying hard to look at people and yeah, cheer for me and fire up and everything.

She's doing that a lot because they ain't.

But

some about her

facial expression, she goes from concerned and worried to confused a lot.

It just, the work ain't smooth.

It's not flowing.

I don't, you know, but it ain't happening for

she's not worth the lira that she's being paid.

Not yet.

But anyway, speaking of someone

that they're paying a lot of money to, Rusev is back, formerly Miro.

and thankfully they were teasing that we were going to get a tag team match play uh with uh otis and tozawa and new day

when

rusev's music played and he came down the aisle and new day bailed and got the fuck out of there and rusev beat up Tozawa and Otis and the fans were chanting Rusev Day because the

heel came out and beat up their beloved babyfaces.

And they've also announced now that

Lana,

that was her name there.

And her, what was her name?

CJ Perry.

There you go.

Steve's sister.

You remember Steve Perry?

He can hit higher notes than she can.

She has signed a legends contract is what they announced.

Now,

that doesn't mean she's going to be a talent on television now.

That means that they have put her in the category where, you know, she's a legend and they might do merchandising or marketing or whatever the fuck, right?

But

does she qualify as a legend of the WWE?

Or is this another,

well, yeah, instead of paying you

a million dollars, we'll pay you $950,000 to pay your wife 50 grand.

And again, I think it's all

the big picture is just locking down the industry so that no one else has access to anyone even purported legends i think that's a big part of it purportedly

you know we didn't even talk about triple a about um the fact wwe announced that they purchased triple-a

what do you think of this what do you think of the idea that wwe is buying one of the only two major mexican wrestling companies CMLL, cml owns their own buildings.

Now they're working with AEW.

The week they announced they're working with AEW, WWE announces they're buying Antonio Peña's AAA.

What do you think?

Well, and that's right.

I realized we didn't talk about that.

We talked about talking about it.

And we haven't talked about it yet because in the middle of all this other

chaos and all these shows and everything, this was just announced at

what a pre-WrestleMania pre-show press deal or whatever.

Yeah, on Peacock.

Oh, yeah, by the way, we've just, yeah, on Peacock, they were on the cock.

We just bought one of the two major promotions in Mexico.

And so there's that.

They had obviously Antonio Penez passed on, right?

But they had.

What is his, is that his daughter, Maricella?

Oh, no, he had no daughter.

That's, I believe, his sister, maybe.

And his

nephew.

Well, you say, oh, no, he had no daughter.

And

maybe i remember now why that might be but i just i was trying to establish the relationship you didn't have to scoff at it so quickly

uh there were family members and they've carried on the tradition or whatever and they were there and she looks like a fucking bond villain if they made the fucking james bond movies in guatemala

but now that

And help me on this, because again, all of these relationships, there have been AAA

guys

that have appeared for AEW.

But then in the past, but then just recently,

AEW has announced a relationship with CMLL, which is the other competing promotion down there.

How long do you think they've known that these talks were going on,

that the WWE was going to buy the whole son of a bitch?

They may have suspected something for a while because, you know, AEW has had their issues with people involved with AAA.

Penta, Phoenix, Conan, Conan,

Conan.

So it's not like they would be completely surprised.

And again, I think Tony, I would hope that Tony completely understands, and I think he does, that WWE is out to shut the door on any competition worldwide.

That is not under its umbrella or beholden to it.

That's not either owned by them or completely subservient to them.

Yes.

So and now did well, we just we were talking about their efforts to take over the world here on a, I think maybe the last show we did just a few days ago.

And we said they could probably

do big money events in Japan on a limited basis, not be based there or do it a ton, but they could do that on their own right now.

And they've, you know, they really wouldn't need to buy new Japan, but that Mexico, because the way they do business down there and it's just its unique setup in a variety of ways, I thought they'd have more problems there than anywhere.

So they have solved that.

They probably agreed because they said, fuck it, we're not going to try to do this even working with somebody.

We're just going to buy the fucking thing that's already there.

But now the problem becomes

trying to figure out a way to state this.

How the fuck is it going to work for the WWE corporate office that owns this entity in Mexico

to run it and to

interact with the people, the NAAA that know how the business runs and have been running it, which is obviously, I think, why they bought it.

Because they know the buildings, they know the market, they know the people, they know the advertising, they do whatever the fuck.

Because remember when

30 years ago, when Vince tried to work with Antonio Piña,

they couldn't even schedule the meeting and get them there on the same fucking day.

And

then Vince completely emasculated all of the talent on his television because he didn't understand what they meant in the culture there.

And the whole Super Astros thing lasted, what, 90 days, maybe?

So, how are the

it's going to be like if there was a language barrier when Sinclair Broadcasting bought Ring of Honor.

Trying to, for the wrestling people trying to teach goddamn Sinclair Broadcasting how that a wrestling business worked.

Well, now you add a second language into that.

with them trying to tell anybody that the WWE has in their office or that they send down there how the business in Mexico works.

This should be interesting.

Do you think they made this move because of the relationship between OVW and their new owners, MSM?

Obviously, this new multinatural, multinatural, multinational conglomerate there to pick up wrestling companies?

I think they probably jumped in while it was still available because they figured, well, if they've already bought OVW, then AAA's got to be next on the list.

And then they'd move the whole shooting match over to fucking Fabersham West Country.

This is one of those periods of time, too, where you kind of, if you were a fan of AAA,

at any point, you would kind of wish the WWE network was still here because it's not like they're going to upload the entire AAA archive to Peacock or Netflix

so that it'll be another tape catalog they own.

And they probably, I can't imagine they're going to monetize it that much because how are they going to do it?

Well, but hold on.

They can, and then we'll move on with Raw here in a second, but I just thought of this since you brought that up.

You can geo, what do they call it?

Geo-block the things, or

what would it be like if they had

a service where all the people in Mexico that have been AAA fans could go on the internet and does AAA have this and watch all of the tapes, all of the shows?

And

if they don't, they might very well want to.

And I don't know if people in Mexico or it's a cultural thing where they pay for a lot of streaming or not, but even a YouTube

channel supported by advertising that would get tons of views, one would think there would be a market for that in the country there.

And that's the WWE's expertise is they'll stream this shit up your ass if you let them.

Yeah, and actually, that's a great point because WWE has done a lot more recently with YouTube, recognizing the strength of it, like the WCW archives.

There's no other home for it, and you could put advertising on it.

You could get it out there to the world.

So maybe you're right.

Maybe that's maybe that is what they'll do.

Well, in the meantime, what they're doing over on Raw

was they got EO Sky, the new,

not the new, but still the women's champion.

She came out and screeched a promo in

barely discernible English.

And then

Stephanie Vacker came out and did the same thing.

I didn't realize she couldn't speak English either.

She's from Chile.

Well, I'm a little cold on her.

Because now I had two people that I couldn't understand nattering back and forth at each other.

And then they got in a match and it was long.

And I moved on.

Did you see what happened?

I didn't see what happened.

What happened?

That's a good question.

What happened?

What happened was Roxanne Perez

attacked EO

and then Julia.

Damn her eyes.

And then Julia showed up and she got involved with the attack as well.

And then Rhea Ripley made the big save.

What?

Saving Stephanie Vacor and EO Sky.

Okay.

And then she handed EO Sky the...

Oh, wait a minute.

She saved Stephanie and EO.

Stephanie's the one that came out and got in a fight with EO.

But there was respect.

I guess there was a level of respect.

A respectable fight.

But then Rhea presented EO with the belt and said something along the lines of, you know, I'm coming for that or I'll be back for it.

Or

even the announcers weren't sure exactly what she said.

So now they got Rhea playing with the children.

God damn it.

Well, speaking of children, the Uso children, they did a video on Jay, his family, his history, the Usos as a team, his journey as a single star, bringing him from a child up until today.

Wonderful editing job.

Have I mentioned that modern music sucks balls?

It's the music they pick.

There's always good music out there.

It may not get the promotion behind it.

It may not be glam enough, but there's always good music out there.

It's the music they pick.

Okay, well, the music they pick sucks balls.

But this segment, Jay came down through the arena.

He's got the new shirt, the heavy yeet champion.

And they loved it and they waved and they yeeted and they chanted, you deserve it.

And Jay did his thing where he blew up doing the doing the promo, but they love him.

And then Sami Zayn came out

and spent some time congratulating him and telling him.

what it meant to him.

And then Jimmy came out and

they all congratulated each other and everybody was happy.

It was was a very happy segment.

That's pretty much that on that segment.

Nothing to add to that, really.

They all left.

Yeah.

They were happy, though.

Did you believe they were happy?

I believe they are happy.

It was a very convincing performance.

I believe they were happy.

Did you think Sammy was going to turn?

Not really because

they're not being stupid now.

They're not just doing just stupid, self-inflicted wound shit for no reason, like when Vince was around.

And

nobody wants to boo Sami Zayn.

They've got something there.

If they turned him on Jay, I think it would start to give people a bad taste just with people turning and kicking other people into balls and everything.

It's unnecessary.

They had enough turns.

See what I'm saying to you?

Yeah, him hear what I'm telling you.

I do.

Too much jelly on the bread, too much gravy on the plate.

But speaking speaking of gravy, I bet Pat McAfee had some in his pants.

Because Gunther came down to ringside, and this was, I think, my favorite thing possibly on the show.

Well, second favorite.

Gunther came down to ringside, yelling at Michael Cole, the things he said.

He's pissed about their chanting, you tapped out at him now.

He's just, Gunther's in a bad way.

And he was yelling at Michael Cole and slapped the

headset off his head.

And McAfee got up and he shoved McAfee all over the chairs and down on the floor and grabbed Cole.

It was trying to put the sleeper on him, but Michael Cole turtled his head.

He was so nervous that Gunther couldn't get his fucking arms around his neck to fucking put the sleeper on him.

But McAfee came from the side, jumped Gunther and started fighting him.

And here came Adam Pierce and the agents.

And Gunther grabbed the sleeper on McAfee.

And I guess there are a bunch of guys there that are McAfee's friends, teammates, Stooges,

gardeners, whatever they are.

They were trying to get in and the security and the agents trying to hold them back.

And the referees,

and Gunther's holding that sleeper, and he's putting a little pressure on it because McAfee's face is getting red.

And the fans are chanting, fuck you, Gunther.

But he squeezed him and squeezed him until his britches were full, as Mama Cornette used to say.

And then Gunther stalked out and was followed by the agents, and they helped McAfee out.

And he was selling that like he was,

you know, come back from the brink of death.

He's kneeling down and choking and coughing.

And

he can talk fine, I guess, the following day.

But

I thought this was a good deal.

I love Gunther doing that shit because you believe it shit is breaking loose with this guy.

And that was a nice deal to

to give him something

to signal that he's going to be dangerous after he's just lost and he's out of control and all they gave mcafe the rest of the show off and were apparently had made the offer to cole but joe tessatori

in a golf shirt and

you know just unprepared this was unscheduled came back out after the break to take over the announced position, but Michael Cole came back and was, you know, put off somewhat, but was going to be professional and do his job.

But this was a good little deal.

What did, did you like it?

I did.

I mean, it was minutes before this.

I was literally thinking, I wish something would happen to Pat McAfee's throat.

I wish someone could get him to stop screaming, talking, doing anything out there.

I want to like the guy, but he's the worst.

And then Gunther came out like a Santa Claus and answered.

and answered my letter and choked him out.

And I'm like, oh, was that bad enough?

And as he was leaving the arena, they showed him choking and coughing.

And

now he's back on his podcast today.

That's a bad sign.

But if this gets him off commentary for a while, even if it was McAfee building up for a match with Gunther, doing promos or something, not to say he should be competitive with a former world champion.

I'd like that McAfee more than McAfee on commentary, just yelling randomly throughout the night and acting like a big fan.

Yeah.

As I said, we need to get on the decaf and back a notch or two and It would be a little more palatable.

And they're not going to book, I'm pretty sure,

Gunther and McAfee.

They're just, you know,

this was something for well, this was something for Gunther just to

tide him over until he does something else with somebody he's going to be working with, just to get him some steam back, some, you know, to show how

Verklimped he is over this whole thing, to use a Finkel word.

And,

you know, that I think it worked.

If it was building to a match with McAfee, I don't think it would be good because, number one, Gunther would have to beat him pretty fucking quick.

And that wouldn't do Pat any good as the announcer.

And, you know, just why, right?

But it was just something for Gunther.

Get some fucking steam on it.

Speaking of steam.

They had an intercontinental title match with Dominic Mysterio defending against Penta, and J.D.

McDonough returned and interfered and helped Dominic retain.

So

Dominic is

up one now in his first Intercontinental title defense, and it was what it was.

And there's been a lot of wrestling this weekend.

So are you ready for the main event of Raw?

Sure.

Hold on here.

Oh, boy, the audio died midway through it.

So maybe that's fitting.

Son of a bitch.

Oh well.

It's these new audio filters you got.

The main event of Raw was a promo, as usual.

And they played the music.

And here, of course, they played packages all night where you understand what happened in the big matches at Raw.

So everybody was ready for this.

The music plays, burn it down.

And here came Seth Franklin Rollins and his new,

I don't know what he'll be here, not wise man, advisor, advocate, whatever.

Paul Heyman, should they now change the musie to music, musie?

Should they now change the music to burn it down and eat it up?

What about burn it down and then lose the weight?

Listen.

What exactly is he burning down?

Well, how much weight is Paul losing?

See, you can ask a lot of questions.

But here,

go ahead.

If he's a heel, should he be coming out there with the music, dancing, and giving the audience time to get into it?

Well, that's the point I was going to make is here is the Paul Heyman has just stabbed his best friend in the back and betrayed his wise man.

And this is the guy, Seth Rollins, that has beaten both of their

people's heroes, and they've been doing it by hitting people with chairs and kicking them in the balls.

And when they come out, the fans whoed as much as they ever did.

And when the music faded down, they cheered Seth and kept singing.

They like everybody.

And the chance, there was a small thank you, Seth,

but then there was a bigger CM Punk,

and then a little smaller, OTC,

and then a little bit bigger, fuck you, Heyman, because everybody could agree on that, right?

At least there's some things that bring humankind together.

And Seth was just standing there milking it so they could chant for everybody they liked and, you know,

assisted living.

I mean, they're chanting for everything.

And he said, I took a wise man from Roman Reigns and I stole CM Punk's best friend.

And now I'm the undisputed reigning

champion.

I am the winner of the main event at WrestleMania.

I am.

And suddenly, like Mussolini

and a roll of tape, wrapping up his fist to fight,

here comes CM Punk to save the night.

And he's going to hit Paulie.

Punk comes down the aisle.

He is taping his fists already.

He's ready to, it's clobbering time.

And he immediately slides in, and he and Seth go to the fight.

And he takes Seth to the corner.

He's beating the shit out of him.

Boom.

And he's kicking him.

Boom, boom, boom.

And Paul is looking like he's trying to sneak up behind him or he didn't know what.

But Paul could creep a little bit quicker.

Paul's not very mobile these days.

But Punk turns to Paul and Paul sees him and the people chant, you fucked up, you fucked up.

And Punk grabs Paul and takes him into the corner.

And then Seth is back up and he's in Punk's eyes and he rakes his eyes and he gives Punk the curb stomp.

And that's when the fans are chanting OTC and we want Roman.

And then

Paul got the microphone and started talking while Seth was carefully standing on Punk's head to keep him down.

There's a new top star in this entire industry, Seth Franklin Rollins.

That's kind of what he said.

And as soon as Paul said that, music hits, here comes Roman.

And so now Seth throws Punk out of the ring.

He's got to be down there selling.

And Roman comes to the ring and he slides in and spears a shit out of seth

and paul again is transfixed like oh and roman spins around and hits paul with the superman punch and paul heyman took a bump that made ox baker look like bobby eaten

i swear to god i don't know if every part of his body actually at the same time ever left the mat.

I think he rolled on the side of his foot and kind of went down from calf to thigh to hip, a lot of hip.

Am I lying about this description?

No.

If ropes hadn't been there, he would have rolled all the way to goddamn Paradise, Nevada.

He is brilliant on the mic, but whether it's creeping up behind someone or getting ready for a nut shot or this, he can't do anything physical without it being kind of awkward, let alone bumps, which he never took.

Even in his prime, he couldn't take bumps.

I was about to say, I had that issue tried to work with him 35 years ago, 200 pounds ago.

But nevertheless, he stuck his chin right out there and he was there for it.

And he rolled to the ground.

And then Roman was backing up and he's going to spear Paul.

And I've got to think at that point, if Roman Reigns was to spear Paul Heyman,

they'd get a lawsuit because Roman would bounce over the top rope and out at least into the second or third row.

And he'd land on one of the fans.

But as he's setting up for the spear,

Punk sees that.

Or I'm sorry, not Punk, but he's setting up for the spear on Paul is Roman.

And that's when Braun, Braun Breaker, suddenly appeared and speared the fuck out of Roman.

And he revealed himself under his hoodie.

He was wearing a hoodie was covered up, so he didn't know who it was at first.

Yeah, you had no idea.

Well, you had no idea when this fucking giant figure comes in with the greatest spear ever.

Boom.

We think it's Braun.

But he unmasks his Braun, and that's when Punk came in and tried to save Paul and Braun speared him.

Or tried to get to Paul, rather, and Braun speared him.

And then Seth hugged Braun, and Braun went to Roman, and Roman punched Braun.

See, that's what it was.

And Braun, in retaliation to being punched by Roman, ran a loop around the ring and speared Roman through the barricade.

And then

they got him down, and Braun held Roman while Seth stomped Punk and then turned around and stomped Roman.

So once again, Punk and Roman

have been left laying at the hands of Seth Seth Rollins and now

the future of the wrestling business, Braun Breaker.

You know, it's amazing how that

nobody saw that Braun Breaker is the future of wrestling and is a main event superstar and needs to be shot to the top right away.

It could have happened maybe even quicker, but nobody saw that.

Did they, Brian?

You have a good track record the last several years.

And on this show or this company, particularly, Jacob Fatu, Braun Breaker, you know, technically

Seth Rollins.

Because again, it all goes back to the beginning.

He could have been a TNA

if someone didn't say this guy could be a star if he goes there now.

Please,

please don't sign that contract, sir.

Please, I'm begging you.

40 grand a year.

I believe it was what I was hearing.

They were going to give him a guarantee for a certain amount of dates with a minimum of 40 grand or something like that but they ended up running about half as many dates as was promised in the contract that they had showed him the following year so what do you think of heyman having a group at a minimum it's going to be just these two but we'll see what happens but what do you think of brawn breaker and rollins together

i think this is perfect because

We said Seth, you know, was being kind of received as a whiny heel in this.

And then they've had this, obviously, they didn't just make this decision last week.

So they knew they were going in this direction.

And

Paul needs to be a heel.

We've been saying that, but they don't want to switch Roman back because he's part-time and they ain't going to switch punk.

Seth is,

I think, going to be fresher because of this.

And at the same time, Braun being involved and being able to sit under.

I don't know if Paul has a learning tree or if he's just more like a Buddha type figure.

No pun intended to some of these people.

But Paul can really be hands-on helping Braun.

And Braun

being with Paul Heyman, the guy that was just with Roman Reigns and CM Punk, and Seth Rollins, the guy that just main invented WrestleMania, it makes him look like a bigger star.

He's not playing with children anymore.

So they just had to get that pesky belt off of him so they could elevate him.

I believe we talked about that.

I really love where this is going.

And then, you know, Punk and Roman are going to have to get together and kind of work together and say, who can we call that can outsmart Heyman?

And then they can call you

and then

you against the two guys that you picked that Heyman somehow with, you guiding these guys, and then the battle over who gets Brock.

No, I think they ought to call Stephen P.

New.

I thought that's where you were going.

Oh, no, I was going to you.

Don't call me.

Don't call me.

I'll call you.

Don't call me.

I'll call you.

But in the meantime, call Stephen P.

Newt.

87750.

Well, again, it's sneaking up.

They're not setting anything up to call me to fucking

No.

If nominated, I will not run.

If elected, I will not serve.

But nevertheless, but yes, Heyman is putting together another dangerous alliance.

And boy, howdy, where are they going to go from here?

But anytime I can see more Braun Breaker, I'll take it.

Well, we talked about WrestleMania, him losing the Intercontinental Belt.

He didn't get pinned.

He just lost the belt.

What are they going to do?

Obviously, that's kind of a setup for we're going to elevate him past what I see title level is kind of.

And here you go.

He's now mixing with the main guys and he has Heyman as a manager.

What more could he ask for?

Yeah, I just had to drop that pesky belt.

Remember when guys always wanted to win the belt because that, you know, that meant you were a top guy, right?

Promoters could even give a guy a belt and pay him less and he'd be happy but now everybody's got a belt so you need to drop the belt sometimes so you can get in the money spot not only do the wrestlers have belt literally the celebrities they introduced walk out with belts

i saw more celebrities holding belts that they never won than i've ever seen before It was a rarity.

I remember there was one kid who used to go to the Nassau Coliseum when I was a kid, and he had like a bullshit belt.

It wasn't even like a WWF replica, it was just a wrestling title belt he got out of like a magazine.

And he would hold it up like the wrestlers were going to see it and be like, It's the champ, or whatever they were going to say.

But it stood out because no one had any belts.

Now everyone has one.

Well, yeah,

the fans have belts now because now that they make replicas and that's an actual business, and this goes on, the fans now have belts that are much better looking than the actual goddamn wrestling belts from 40 and 50 years ago, because I've had a number of them in my hands of both categories and the the real promoters belts look like compared to these things they were beat up and pissed on and bled on and screws missing

i've had the southern heavyweight title belt in memphis for almost a year one time had a fucking decal of an eagle stuck on the front of it because the metal eagle fell off Someone scratched the word stooge into the front of the mid-Atlantic North American mid-South, excuse me the front of the mid-south North American Championship.

Yeah, and Kerry von Erich scratched his initials into the domed globe NWA World Title Belt.

Oh, well,

what are you scratching your initials in this week?

That was WWE Raw, and

I guess that's what we're we've scratched a lot this week.

So questions return next week, we promise.

Yes, because now that this insanity is over, and on the experience, we're going to talk about Dark Side Side of the Ring and a little AEW, as little as possible,

and some other of these things that are developing in the wrestling world as we're sitting here now.

And we'll see if The Rock responds to any more of the criticism that he's getting from a lot of people.

There's a reason why so many people are saying, Brian, we're sorry, you were right.

I'm not doing anything.

I'm just staying.

Hey, that sounds like, yeah, he called me because Elimination Chamber, the ticket sales were slow.

He got that off the goddamn documentary of WrestleMania 9.

That's Hogan's story.

Isn't it?

Yeah, by the way, I don't remember ticket sales being slow.

I mean, again, I don't know their internal numbers, but I remember it kind of being like every other event they were running within months of that.

Where

I was looking at wrestle ticks every day, it looked like they had nothing to worry about.

Didn't seem like any cause for panic, but you know, just to make sure they called him.

All right, well, let's see how this all gets spun.

But again, Triple H never said thank you or said anything but the rock.

And all of a sudden, I've got some thoughts on the booking that I would have done differently.

Could you imagine?

Name one other time in wrestling history that ever could have happened.

It would have happened a couple of times in a locker room, but never

out in public.

Well, oh, this is my show.

That's what you're waiting for.

Yeah, yeah, I'm waiting for you to fucking tell me what to do.

Ladies and gentlemen, with that, the drive-thru is closed.

A peaceful ending to one of those shows.

Throw that on the ground, too.

We'll be back on the Jim Cornette experience in a few days, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, on the drive-thru next week for more fun and games.

What else?

Go through the archive, patreon.com/slash cornet.

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Check them out.

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What's going on, Jim?

The big

May Mayhem Corneys vault sale starts Saturday, May 3rd at noon Eastern.

All kinds of stuff that has never been listed before, and some of the old favorites that have been sold out.

Limited numbers of each, so jump in early, but something for everybody: books, programs, DVDs, classic memorabilia, stuff back to the 50s, trading cards,

just everything, Brian.

May 3rd, noon Eastern, JimCornet.com.

That's right, JimCornet.com.

Of course, the drive-through is brought to you by the law office of Stephen P.

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Tally ho!