Episode 386

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Hello again, friends!

And you are our friends.

And welcome back to another edition of Jim Corn Edge Drive-Thr.

On another sunny, funny day here for another sunny, funny drive-thru.

I'm your host, the great Brian Last.

It's going to be a ring-a-ding-dong dandy today.

Here he is, the leader of the Cult of Cornet.

We have reviews, and of course, he'll be answering your questions, Mr.

Jim Cornette.

Oh, for heavens, so after that Inagada DeVita intro,

And the morning I got going on

and the things that, you know, Brian, people say

that I never admit when I'm wrong and I never change my opinion.

And there's no way to I'm rock solid on everything.

There's no way to get me to deviate or variate or perpetrate in any way anything different.

And I say every year,

spring is my favorite time of the year.

I love the spring.

I love to sing about the spring.

And the birds start chirping and they lay in the eggs and the little babies come up out of the nest and

the leaves sprout and the dogwood blooms and everything's so beautiful.

Well, I was wrong.

Spring sucks.

Because after we spent the winter time

being encased in a goddamn block of ice for like a month straight.

with all of that horseshit,

then it hasn't stopped raining, not just raining, but storming.

Storming, lightning, thunder, tornado warnings, wind blowing,

deluge of rain

over and over again.

And just Sunday, we had the severe weather go through a tornado past.

I'm going to say eight to 10 miles as the tornado flies south of the castle here.

And here wasn't even as bad as the storm we had last August.

that toppled that giant tree over in the back, but there was a tornado down the road.

And that was one of three or four, I believe they're still doing the surveys around here.

One of them down in, I believe it was Mead County, was 500 yards wild, wild, 500 yards wide and stayed on the ground for like 30 miles or whatever the fuck.

They were way out of the metropolitan area or

other shit would have taken place, but nevertheless.

And

we just got finished with that.

And they're saying that tomorrow night,

another goddamn line is going to come through that has twice the wind energy and looks a lot worse on the radar.

And if it comes through late at night, it's going to be bad enough.

But if it speeds up and comes through when it's real warm, because this morning it was 35 fucking degrees, but tomorrow it's going to be close to 80.

If it comes through when it's real warm, I believe the weatherman's exact words were: we're going to be in big trouble.

They're saying that shit on television.

And

once that happens sometime overnight, tomorrow night, then for Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday,

it's going to rain.

The storm front is going to sit on the top of us, and they're forecasting 10 to 15 inches of rain

in some areas of this particular beleaguered part of the fucking country which i believe has never happened before

in four days

so i get up

and i watch the weather this morning brian

And I get that good news to really lead me to be chirpy first thing out of bed.

And then, then, of course, I've, you know, got the pleasure of being able to watch Raw this morning from last night so that we can talk about that.

And I look out the front window at 8:30 in the morning or whatever, when I, after I've taken my morning Russo and brushed my twofers and done my, I come down, I look out the front window.

What do you think is in my front yard?

Pulled off the road is a giant pickup truck and a big van sitting on the grass in my yard, right outside on the other side of the fence.

A pickup truck,

a truck and a van.

It's like it's a goddamn, what is the fucking, is there a

press camped out?

Have I done something overnight I wasn't aware of?

And then I look down there and I see some guy in one of those fluorescent outfits digging a hole in my fucking yard.

And so I go down there and I,

you know, it's as I mentioned, it was 30 something degrees.

It's It's brisk.

And I go down there and I said, excuse me, what the fuck are you doing?

Who say you can park in my yard here?

And what, why are you digging this hole?

And he stared at me.

And I said, hello.

And

I mean, he's standing knee deep in a fucking hole about 20 feet off the edge of the fucking road in my yard.

And

I'm obviously asking, why are you doing this?

But he can't speak English is what he manages to communicate with.

He's pulling out his phone and he's calling somebody.

And he's giving me the like the one-minute fucking gimmick.

And I said,

you can't speak English.

No.

And it's not his fault he can't speak English, but whoever sent him to somebody's property to park in their fucking yard and start digging holes without being able to tell said property owner what the fuck he was doing.

That guy I got a problem with.

I said, call this, get this guy over here.

I said, in the meantime, stop digging.

And somebody get these trucks out of my yard, right?

Fuck, it's already rained two inches yesterday or whatever the fuck, going to tear up my goddamn grass.

Well, then two other guys in the fluorescent come around the corner of the bush from the, they're over in the neighbor's yard, and they come around and I said, the trucks, I'm pointing at the trucks, and they're going that way.

I said, get the fucking, I'm Vimous,

right trucks out of here, off my yard.

And they get in the van

and back up and start pulling out.

And then I'm telling the guy in the hole, he's still digging.

I said, no,

stop digging until somebody tells me what's going on around here.

And he nods and then turns around and starts digging.

So I went, I took his shovel.

I pitched his fucking shovel.

I said, no, stop of the dig.

Wait, what do you mean you pitched his shovel?

You threw a shovel.

I grabbed his shovel.

I pitched his shovel away from the hole so that he could not dig anymore until somebody told me what they're doing around here

see

because i don't know what he's

even if i can't speak spanish i could have told if he was telling me in a similar situation if i was in his front yard digging a hole and he was gesticulating in the manner that i was

i could have understood stop digging.

You weren't afraid once you grabbed the shovel and then threw it that he was going to get up and try to fight you or anything?

He's in a fucking hole.

I've got the king of the hill.

Have you ever played Brian for heaven's sake?

But I don't believe he wants to fucking get in a goddamn fight over whatever job it is that he's doing that I've yet to discover.

So then down the hill comes a truck and pulls in the garage and I are not in the garage in the driveway.

And I said, is this the guy?

I'm pointing it.

Yeah, yes.

Okay, great.

He gets out.

I said, What if why are all these vehicles parked in my grass?

And what are you doing digging holes here?

And you know what he said to me?

I said, You speak English, right?

Yes.

Okay, then I asked that question.

You know what he said to me, Brian?

This is a guaranteed

mood settler.

He said, First of all, sir, you need to calm down.

Number one, that's not a good thing to say to me under any circumstances.

But B,

I was calm compared to obviously what was about to transpire, what would normally be transpiring when you see somebody in the front yard desecrating your property.

And I said, I am calm.

Why?

Who said that it was a good idea to park these cars on my grass?

And what are you digging his hole for?

Well, we're putting in the fiber optic.

I said, what does that have to do with making my place a parking lot?

And

what do you mean?

Oh, like, oh, fuck this.

I'm going to go down there and cut it as soon as they fucking put it in.

I'll guarantee you that.

They can't do that.

It's a federal offense, but I was thinking faster internet is what I was thinking.

Oh, fuck you.

I'm thinking faster way to fucking sing sing.

But anyway, back to this fucking guy.

I said, again, is anybody going to tell me why without asking or telling me what the fuck, you just decided to start digging holes and parking in my yard

and that's what we're putting in the fiber optic and we have a 28 foot easement

and i said okay

again

your truck's farther in the truck is farther in because the fence is 40 feet back

again

and he's then it's he said

So with the easement, we can do whatever we want.

That's a second I said, well, I got a fucking hammer and I can do whatever the fuck I want.

And if you don't get that truck, dig whatever you're going to have to goddamn dig around here.

But if you don't get that truck out of here in five minutes, I'm going to take a fucking hammer to it.

And then as I start to go, he said, go ahead and do that or some words to that effect.

I'm like, motherfucker, you know what?

We're right there.

And the little voice is going, hit him, hit him, hit him right in the face, right there.

Because I'm still bigger than this guy is too.

And he ain't even standing in a fucking hole.

Hit him.

But at the same time,

there are many witnesses and I can't go to jail.

I got to record today.

You know what?

Turn around.

I went on the other side of the fucking fence.

The French drain grabbed a fucking rock out of the, you know, the round gravel you put in the French drain.

I said, this is my right of way around on this side of the fence.

And I chooked that fucking thing.

I was aiming for glass, but unfortunately, it dinged off his fucking bumper.

He said, I'm

hostilinguine, whatever the fuck he said.

I don't know.

And I said, now I'm on my right of way in here.

You want to come around here this way and talk about it, where at least I have the right of property, apparently, according to what he said.

I'm farther than 28 feet back.

He wouldn't come around there and I wasn't going to go back over there.

So I said, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and fuck all of you.

And then move that fucking truck.

and I come back up the drive because also did I mention it was 35 degrees and I'm out there in flip-flops

come back up the drive and fucking stew for a minute and look out the window and the truck's gone

and the guys were gone too everybody was they were now there was some guy up in the neighbor's yard to the right at the top of the hill in his front, digging some hole in his fucking place.

But all of my people left after digging a couple of fucking holes.

And I mean, what the fuck?

Well, then just as we were starting to goddamn record, I look out and there's a goddamn machine in my neighbor's yard that they've got looks like a fucking giant chainsaw on the back of it.

And they're digging a fucking trench in his yard.

But then they went 10 feet and then I looked out again

and they're gone again.

The fucking thing's sitting there, but you can't find the people.

There are no people, Brian.

So, I don't know what the fuck they're doing around here.

I don't want the, they cannot, they can hopscotch me on the fiber optic.

I just got the goddamn blistering speed

internet,

and I don't want to, I've just

got the drainage fixed down there and put the nice French drains in, and fucking grass is growing now.

They're trying to come and dig all the shit up again.

Have any of your neighbors said anything?

I don't know that they're around

because I definitely know that the fellow next door would have been down there snooping.

He's not as volatile as I am.

He's an elderly gentleman, whereas I'm still in the piss and vinegar stage of life.

But he'd be asking a ton of fucking questions.

So I don't know how to, this is all just sprung on me this morning while I'm trying to do my job here.

Is there anything worse than the arrogant city worker?

The dead city worker would have been worse.

Worse for you.

If I'd have had a hammer in my hand and the voice had been loud, the voices talked to me.

And if it had talked a little louder, I'd have hit him in the head with a hammer.

What do you think, sir?

Fuck, and I don't even leave the property.

They come to me.

When is the last time I had a fucking issue with anybody in any public place or anywhere except right fucking here where they won't leave me alone?

I think Stephen would have a good defense saying that he is known for wielding a racket, not a hammer.

This sounds like it could be anybody.

Yeah, it could have been the fucking, you know, miscellaneous hammer villain fellow from down the road.

It's been committing all those hammer crimes.

I was hoping they would send a cop and it would be the same guy from Mustang Hill.

You the guy yelling?

Yeah.

See, you could have heard me now from the new precinct over there.

So you still have these giant holes?

Can you see them from your office?

Well, it's right on the other side of the, there's 40 feet in between my front fence and the road, which I did specifically to give all the electric people and the fucking water people and everything room.

But once they've finished all of their work that we assumed that everybody was going to be doing, we didn't count on this fiber optic business.

Who gives a shit?

Put it on the goddamn, there's a pole down there.

There's poles all over here.

If you want to run something, there's already wires there.

Just put the wires with the other wires.

Why are they digging everything?

Why are they digging up the road, Brian?

Have you ever seen that movie?

Falling down.

Oh, of course.

I haven't seen it in years.

That was a great movie, Michael Douglas.

Yes.

Every time I've watched that with anybody, especially Stacey, they have likened me.

to the central character in many, many ways.

But nevertheless.

You said every time I've watched that with somebody, how many times have you watched that?

That's not really like a, hey, I love that.

Let's share a good night movie kind of movie.

No, if that movie happens to be on, it's on the TV regard, whatever we're doing.

But I love it when he takes the thing.

Yeah, fucking tell me, rude ass motherfucker.

I just want a fucking burger.

You're a fan of vigilante justice.

The way he does it.

The way he does it

with he did it with a flare.

Ah, Charles got a little too fucking cool for school with it.

What does that mean?

Michael Douglas was more like, I'm just, if you just leave me alone, I'm not even hunting you.

You're bothering me.

I'm just trying to, I'm going home.

Whereas Bronson was like, I'm going to get even with every motherfucker in sight.

So is it, you know, it just, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to stay home here.

Just leave me the fuck alone.

I'm home.

I won't yell at anybody if you leave me the fuck alone on my own home and property.

So you think they're going to come back?

Sounds like they have incomplete work.

Well, I don't know what they're doing.

They do something and then they leave and then

they brought another piece of equipment and do 10 feet of work somewhere and then they go away and there's flags down and then there's not.

I don't know what it's the city?

It's not a utility or anything?

Well,

who is in charge of the fiber optics of the situation?

I don't know in your area.

I mean, over here, years back in a lot of places, Fios by Verizon had the fiber optics everywhere.

Well, I mean, they did, I don't know if the executive that runs the company is the one who's out here digging the fucking trench, but for whoever is doing this, they're using the county right-of-way of 28 feet or whatever the fuck.

And you ever received any kind of notice?

Nothing was like sent to you in the mail, nothing.

Well,

they've stuck flags in the yards of all up and down the road and the next road road, and a road over, and they're doing all it, but they're orange flags and yellow flags.

And I looked at mine and it said gas line.

And I'm like, okay, the gas line may be buried here, but I don't have any fucking gas.

So they're checking for something, but who knows what?

And then they show up and start digging fucking holes.

Well, I guess we'll see how this goes.

How close were you to having a hammer?

Was there a hammer nearby?

If I could hammer in the morning and then I could hammer in the evening all over his head.

I had a hammer on the forehead, I had a hammer on the chin, and I had a hammer on his noggin between his ear and his other ear, all

over his head.

All right, well, you guys wanted songs to return to the show?

There it is.

If I had a hammer by Jim the Hammer Cornet, but uh, that's this is happy talk.

So, this is this is the yeah, this is called the Bitch Fest episode of the drive-through here,

where, and, and hopefully, we'll do a show here in a few days if we have it either blown away or washed away with what's going on.

Think about that.

If they're giant holes there, I mean, they have to do something quickly if the weather's about to really turn.

Well, that's another thing.

I'd say, Oh, and thank you for bringing that up because I said, Yeah, as wet as it's been, you're parking on my yard and you're digging holes when it's about to rain a foot.

What are you fucking doing?

So, now they're, they've at least

so far they've dug a 10, 12, 15-foot trench in my neighbor's yard that unless they fill up by tomorrow is going to have a foot of rainwater in it over the next four days where it will be severe weather and unsuitable for anybody to be out there doing any fucking thing.

So they're going to make a goddamn mud trough.

You needed to see the visual of this

and just be in the moment, Brian, to understand why I wanted to throttle this motherfucker around his goozle pipe.

I can understand.

No one wants an outlaw mud trough.

Nobody wants an outlaw mud trough.

That's for sure.

And I'll tell you what.

Well, that's,

you know, this is your show and we got all kinds of new and exciting things to talk about.

But I've, again,

before we get anywhere else, I got to go to my.

to my email here, Brian.

Pardon me.

I'm not as quick as you are on the switching around and everything, but we have an update on the mystery that has taken over our lives over the past couple of weeks.

Elijah from Norcross, Georgia, whose father was from Nigeria,

swore that Jerry the King Lawler was part of the IWA television show that was broadcast over there in the 80s.

And we said, well, everybody else, Ernie Ladd, Bill Moscaris, Mike Igor, everybody else you mentioned, but Lawler never worked for them.

And then he, along with a couple other people, had sent the clip, cut and paste results of an IWA event at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey.

And there was Jerry Lawler in the preliminary match.

And we said, how, again, we debated how this was possible.

Well, this is from Chris from Texas

because he went to the newspaper archives, whichever ones he was studying, also, and the report on

that show on August 7th, 1975,

it tells about all the matches that we spoke about and everybody that was there.

And then it said Daisy May

upset Maria DeLeon

and Jerry Lawler, L-O-L-L-E-R.

Jerry Lawler was an unpopular victory by a pin over Dan Sharp.

And

I have no explanation

for why it was a Thursday night.

Lawler was just again coming back into the Memphis territory.

He'd been gone since January.

He was there in Memphis that Monday.

Remember, we found that show.

Yeah.

And

they would have had to have flown him.

It's not like he was going to drive to Jersey City, New Jersey.

It's not like he had just come back to work for Jerry Jarrett, who still technically was part of the NWA with Gulis, who was not working with anybody that was going to run opposition

to Vince Sr.

or eventually Crockett in the Carolinas.

So it's still,

I'd love to know if anybody actually was there and saw him.

And the thing is, a lot of people are saying, well,

stars made.

appearances in different places, you know, shots here and there, but this was before.

No, this is different.

No, nobody besides, and I'm not belittling Lawler, but this was 1975, except for the Tennessee territory and to a lesser extent, never having been a main event guy in Florida and Georgia, he'd never been anywhere.

So

there was, so this was so odd.

And he would apparently,

to the best of our ability, never work for him again since we didn't know he worked for him this time.

So that's the oddest thing

that i've ever seen just wild weird wacky stuff ed

also because you think you would have heard something about it you know the various issues that jared and lawler had over the years

you know they talked about it you know they both had they both had no problem talking about it never heard and then jerry came back and went to work outlaw in new jersey that week.

And then he came back again the next week.

Now, this is the only thing we have found because I found a few listings last time.

I think it was from whenitwascool.com.

No mention of Jerry Lawler, had the other matches.

This has a mention of a Jerry Lawler.

Now, I guess if you had heard the name by the ring announcer and you never saw him or read his name before, that could be how you spell it, but it doesn't even say Lawler.

So, well, and

this is a newspaper article.

It has a byline by Mike Rowan.

Doesn't mention what newspaper it's from, but it's local paper coverage.

Probably not even the New York Times,

the Jersey City Journal or whatever.

But it has

the rundown of the card that kind of seems like it would be written or helped out by one of the promoters.

To the wild cheers of the crowd, the South American pair defeated the Mongols, but the excitement was just beginning.

And he reached for the microphone and blah, blah, blah.

8,100 fans

reported.

And, you know, he goes into detail on all of the matches.

And then also, Daisy May upset Maria DeLeon.

Jerry Lawler was an unpopular victor by a pin over Dan Sharp at 440.

That's and that's the only line about that match.

So they

flew Lawler from fucking Memphis to New Jersey to beat Dan Sharp in four minutes and never returned.

I don't.

It doesn't make too much sense.

And again, I'm tempted to just call the king.

I haven't talked to him in ages, but just call the king.

But he, like I said, he probably wouldn't remember.

And because

he was like, did we do that last week 40 years ago?

I was like, yeah, whatever.

And he always talks about how

I can't remember.

He'd never,

the thing was, it's not like he's mentally deficient.

He never gave enough of a shit about a lot of this to remember

you know who may know if it was him or not bill apter i don't know if he shot son of a bitch i don't know if he shot that show or not just because i don't know how it would have been looked politically yeah i don't know if vince mcmahon senior would have said okay you can't shoot the garden because you shot that show

but if jerry lawler was in the new york tri-state area

by 75 would bill after have already met him

He might not have met him, but he would have known who he was because the first articles in the Apter magazines about Lawler started in about 75 after that big run in 74, where it's like, holy shit.

So that he

started running stuff in 75.

And the, god damn it, what year was the Burt Reynolds

center fold?

Oh, that was before.

Yeah, that was before then, I think, right?

Well, but, oh, but, but, yeah, but, but no, but, but Lawler did the takeoff, remember?

Oh, I thought you meant Burt's one.

Yeah, I know.

Well, I kind I kind of did both, but what I'm meaning is, is that, and for the, for the kids out there,

what magazine was it?

Was it, was it

Playgirl or was it Cosmopolitan?

I thought it was Playgirl, but now it's.

Probably Playgirl, yeah.

But, you know, they all wanted to see Bert's wing-a-dig.

And Bert Reynolds, sex symbol movie star of the era, did a nude center fold for the newsstand magazine, and it just got so much

news.

Covering his parts, though.

Cover it.

Cover it.

Well, yes.

Because Lawler did a play on that.

Well, yeah, I'm about to

hold on.

Who's fucking this dog?

You're just holding its head.

Lawler did a play on it.

Whereas Burt Reynolds was, of course, yes, he was covering his bits with, what was it, the cowboy hat?

or whatever the fuck he had over his over, you know, his, what did they call it, twig and berries.

uh lawler used the crown

and he did a takeoff on the bearskin rug of burt reynolds's nude cinema and not only did after run it but actually

they had black and white prints because there's a black and white magazine anyway uh prints made eight by tens

and tried to sell them at the table and teeny i saw him the first week i got one but teeny saw him the first week is like no we're not doing it and put him back in the suitcase.

But anyway, where were we going with that?

Who would know if Lawler was there?

Who would be aware of that?

I'm writing down a note.

Willie, if you're listening, but I'm going to send you an email.

Yeah, we hear from him every now and then when we mention them.

Re

Lawler.

All right, we're just making this up now as we go along.

Well, we're going to get to the bottom of this, kids.

That's right.

Hawaii.

Well, it's your show.

It is.

Have you told the people about our shirts?

No, I haven't had an opportunity yet, but I'll jump right in.

It's been such an interesting show so far.

Why not?

Wear clothes.

We have new t-shirts on sale.

Go to ArcadianVanguard.com or even easier, just go to the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Watch any video.

You will see there links to click on, images of the shirts.

Buy them, click them, go there, do that.

Also, we're on the shop app.

Our partners at shopify our good friends go to the shop app we are there look for arcadian vanguard look for jim cornet look for corny get corny with these new shirts more on the way travis heckel artwork a lot of things planned but uh thank you so far to everyone who has purchased one of or in some cases every one of the brand new products Or all new,

all numbers in between of those products.

You got the drive-through logo.

You can proudly proclaim your loyalty loyalty to this program or to me personally.

You can get corny.

And we got on the shop app.

That's a big deal, right?

You can't just be some

jack leg running around riding the Ferris wheel at the county fair and be on the big shop app.

That's only for the distinguished merchandisers such as ourselves through our friends at Shopify.

Well, we should probably, why don't we just talk about them right now?

Because actually, Jim, anybody could do that for only a a dollar a month to try it out wait a minute you mean the guy running the ferris wheel at the county fair if he goes to shopify for only a dollar a month he could have the same kind of commercial platform as you and me big stars the magnitude of us such as we are well i don't know what products he would have so i can't just say generic person with nothing to sell goes to shopify becomes millionaire i don't know if that's necessarily an honest story but i think we could say if this ferris wheel man somehow

has parts that he legitimately acquired that he wants to sell for other Ferris wheel operators, he could open up a store and it can be powered by Shopify.

Well,

we'll see about that.

They're our friends.

Now, folks, I'll tell you what, if you've got a great idea for a business, if you want the number one checkout on the planet, if you want the big boys handling your dreams to make them realities, then you got to go with Shopify, except if you're going to sell parts for Ferris wheels to county fairs, in which case, sorry, pal, we put the Iggy on you.

They're not going to deal with you because you have pissed me off.

But everybody else, you can, you can sell ice cream to Eskimos.

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And I forgot, you know what you're going to hear, Brian.

Oh, that's going to be all over the place.

Your ears are going to be ringing when you deal with these people.

You'll think you got tinnitus

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That's right.

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You hosted the power hour a few times, I believe.

That was my show.

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Well,

it was my show.

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Before we get to some of the shows that took place, we're on SmackDown and there's things to talk talk about.

Let's talk about a few things first.

Jim, something we did not have an opportunity last week to talk about because it happened

during a period of time we were getting ready for these shows and we had a lot of things planned, but the passing of Bill Mercer last week.

Yes, and

99 years old.

I guess he, except for a fellow from Mexico, he may be the, may have been the oldest living wrestling personality or something to that effect.

But it was great to see they covered a lot more than his wrestling involvement in, you know, the articles.

Obviously, most of it was wrestling websites, but he was famous at other circles and they covered him primarily for his other exploits.

He'd been a teacher at North Texas for like 40 years in broadcasting journalism.

He had been a reporter.

He'd done wrestling back into the 50s and then took a break for quite a while because he was a real life news reporter and broadcaster.

He is the guy who actually officially informed Lee Harvey Oswald that he was being charged with the murder of John F.

Kennedy.

He was covering it on the scene for one of the local stations.

He broadcast all kinds of sports.

That's how Fritz got him involved again.

He had done it in the 50s, but then Fritz brought him back because he was so well known in the community and he was a real sports voice to those people.

It was like having your,

you know, your major football or basketball commentators in whatever your market is doing the wrestling show, too.

And he did

the world-class show up until almost to the end.

But my God,

40 years ago when I knew him, he was almost 60.

That's just insane.

I mean,

he's had an incredible life going from,

you know, early television and broadcasting to real news to multiple sports to fame in wrestling and being a teacher.

He's got everything in the world named after him in broadcasting and journalism and things like that in Texas.

It was just...

He's a really nice guy and really

like

Lance Russell for the people of Texas.

Does that make any sense?

He was just a nice guy.

He was kind of local, but still they knew he was a big deal and they could believe him when he talked to them.

And

he wasn't a professor like Gordon Soley.

He wasn't really teaching him anything.

He was just letting them know what was going on.

And he had the inside scoop.

I almost feel like credibility-wise, maybe not a perfect analogy, but similar to Ed Whalen

with fans and Oh, yeah, but much less pomposity.

Right, just in terms of the credible.

Ed Whalen

was credible before wrestling and beyond wrestling.

He brought that to wrestling.

Bill Mercer, same thing.

The comparison with Lance Russell, I almost feel the comparison's better to talk about two guys that started as outsiders that never looked down on wrestling, that understood it.

that could talk to it.

And whenever I saw a Bill Mercer interview, whether it was in any of the Von Erich documentaries or various things throughout throughout the years, he never looked down on wrestling.

He understood that it was an important part of his career.

And, you know, I think some people do.

And I think the people, you know, I always found this perspective very interesting because he was such a credible guy doing something that a lot of people, especially then maybe, would mock every now and then.

He did it and he had no problem with it.

Well, you know, and it's, it's a good comparison with Lance and both, they both lived to be 90, you know, whatever, also, and just went so many eras of broadcasting.

But, uh, but

Bill was even more,

I get Lance got once he got involved with wrestling and Jarrett's company, that had been 25 years later or whatever.

He was mostly a television executive.

And then Jarrett's company took off and he just hired Lance.

you know, full-time at that point.

Well, full-time.

Lance still was more closely involved with the promotion.

He did the Saturday morning TV, the Monday night announcing

another house show once a month.

And,

you know, that was full time for Lance, but he didn't,

he didn't, again, go back out and

go into real television again.

So Mercer was just, you know, it was amazing.

He kept his finger in everything.

At the same time, this guy, he's such an experienced broadcaster.

At the time I'm there, I'm what, I'm 23 or 24 or whatever.

And he did the local promos.

So, you know, he was trying not to break, but every once in a while, you can see he had the twinkle in his eye.

When I'd try to do that, I'd try to break him because Mark Lorentz was impossible.

It was like Mark Lorentz.

I told him one time, I said, You look like you ought to be standing on top of wedding cake.

He was just like a kin doll.

He never broke

that

nice guy, but he had just that dry

monotonistic mood that he had.

Well,

it seems that the chainsaw has just penetrated Sunshine's abdomen.

The winner of the match, Kevin.

Kevin.

Yes.

And, you know, I think he's a preacher in real life, but he's just the most even person you've ever seen.

And you couldn't get him to crack or do anything.

But Bill Mercer, every once in a while, and the free birds tormented him, but I just tried to get him with one-liners and he'd get the twinkle in his eye.

What'd you think when he went full C.

Everett Coop and he had just the beard, no mustache?

Oh, that I was, I was now, he had the regular face when I was there, and then he started doing different hair designs.

I don't know.

It was a little.

He was just experimenting, maybe.

As he turned 60, he wanted to see what different type of face warmer.

See, I always liked him on World Class.

When I first started seeing that as a kid on ESPN, the reruns, I liked him, even though he was different.

And, you know, when I first started reading various newsletters, a lot of the smart fans didn't because he didn't call the moves.

And, you know, again, it's a very different style than a Jim Ross, let's say.

But I always liked it.

A sleep hold.

A sleep hold.

I always liked the way he called it in the credibility, but especially in the vignettes and World Class TV eventually had a lot of those.

My favorite always being him going to Jimmy Garvin's house.

Jimmy Garvin?

Jimmy Garvin.

You open the door.

And then Precious and Jimmy Garvin are in there.

Like Chris Hansen.

It's Chris Hansen with Daylight or whatever the fuck.

And that was, and then you would see sunshine in the bikini or the robe or whatever.

And you'd almost see Bill Mercer's face turning red.

That was Precious answered the door in just a shirt.

Just a shirt, just one of Jimmy's shirts.

And then Jimmy Garvin had sit there and go, Bill Mercer, I can't believe you came to my house.

The funny thing was the shirt fit perfectly.

And it was amazing.

But

but yeah,

because he was the straight guy, he was a straight guy like Lance was.

Like you could, this, the announcer was not a gimmick.

So you could trust him.

He's the sane one with these crazy people.

And it put the attention on the talent, but you had to play it straight.

You couldn't wink it to people.

Or it would be like it is today and there it just be.

But

for all, the funniest thing I ever heard heard Bill Mercer say wasn't on purpose because he he wasn't a

funny guy on the air.

But remember when John Nord was Nord the barbarian

and he was from Minnesota, he was really from Minnesota, John Nord, but the barbarian, he's a Viking, right?

Kind of gimmick, not as gimmicked up as the WWE Vikings were here lately, but he had the helmet with the horns on and he's got the goddamn Viking fucking chest thing or whatever.

And Viking, Bill Mercer is trying to say he's a,

he's from, he's introduced from Norway, right?

And

Bill Mercer during the course of the thing is trying to recall his home country and trying to remember where this fucking Viking is from.

And he said, well, there you have it, Nord the barbarian from Norwegia.

And I said, God,

this is a guy who's done major fucking news and it can happen to anybody, but it was so fucking funny.

From Norwegia, Nord the Barbarian.

I always wish he had gotten a chance to be the one to call the Flair Carrie Von Earth title change instead of Mark Lawrence.

I guess Bill Mercer, he had something else that day.

So we got Mark Lawrence.

And not that that match was the greatest of their matches, but I almost felt like Bill Mercer should have been the one doing it.

Yeah, and that was a thing.

There was something even then he was doing.

I can't remember what it was, if I ever knew, but it was some type of either the mainstream sports or mainstream or something with the college maybe that he was affiliated with or whatever.

When you think about all the tragedies that hit world class, at least the ones they talked about on air, he was always the one delivering the news.

I can almost visualize him sitting there.

You know, we've reached another sad milestone here.

Yeah.

You know, it was always Bill Mercer.

He had that credibility.

And

it was a different show when he was, you know, if you think about GWF,

you know, Petacino and Beyond, it was always like Doyle King or, you know, just different people, especially after the Atlanta boys left.

And I love Doyle if he's listening, by the way.

Doyle and our friends.

But he wasn't Bill Mercer.

You know, think about what it would be like if Bill Mercer every now and then showed up and, you know, called some of the matches with some of the characters of the GWF.

But there it is, Bill Mercer, world-class announcer, Texas broadcasting legend, Beyond Wrestling.

And

yeah, I guess go to YouTube, check out some of the footage of World Class TV if you've never seen it.

If you're one of the younger listeners who's never seen World Class TV, see what Bill Mercer was all about.

But, Jim, let's move from there to, why don't we go to SmackDown, get SmackDown out of the way, and we'll talk about some other stuff.

Boy, you make this next section of our program sound so entertaining.

Let's get this out of the way.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's go from the obituaries to international travel, endless international travel.

And you know what?

We're going to change it up a little bit, to be honest with you, in the way that I talk about some of these segments on this program, because

even if they're good, if I try to tell this story, then I'm just

recapping like a goddamn Shakespeare soliloquy.

The verbosity is off the charts now.

There's some good stuff going on.

There was some nice, violent, bloody, gutty

material going on this week, but there's a lot of talking and they're still in Europe on SmackDown, March 28th.

And

I think today may be the day as we're talking about this.

They finally get to come back home, but they were still there for SmackDown and Raw in London.

This is London.

They needed Edward R.

Murrow to do the fucking.

Could you AI Edward R.

Murrow doing the cold open to their

fucking, that would have been great.

But they're at the O2 arena, what a crowd.

I didn't hear whether they mentioned the number on SmackDown.

I'm pretty sure it was sold out and it was 16,000 something on Raw.

So

again, Jesus age Christ.

But this, and we may need to talk about this later on in the program.

Three weeks, six shows of this,

to me, has

kind of, it's great to have an atmosphere like that, right?

You want, oh, yeah, but not six shows in a row where they won't stop singing and chanting to let the people talk.

The people need to talk with the microphone.

And, but I mean, it's so easy.

Cody was, his entrance was first on SmackDown and they're singing and they're whoaing and they wouldn't let him talk.

And then finally,

He says five words or whatever, mentions John Cena's name and boo.

And whoa, I'm going to go face to face with John Cena on Monday.

And then Orton music.

And they sang his song and they chanted.

It was three minutes from the time he started coming out before he spoke.

And then they started chanting for both of them.

And then

Orton cut a great promo.

Putting Cody over.

He needed to leave and prove himself.

And then they did more singing.

Are you you noticing a pattern here, Brian?

Especially with SmackDown, and I'll let you actually respond to that, but SmackDown's three hours

and it ain't been as exciting as Raw has been.

And

if you

condensed the singing, you might get a two-hour show.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

No, yeah.

I mean, I'm sick of Boney M.

Enough of this.

Enough of this.

Well, you're sick of Bone and Who?

What?

What did you say?

I'm not even going to try try to correct this.

Bony.

Sick of boning him.

Daddy cool.

It's what they've been singing now.

Well, he don't now.

Don't try to suck up to me now.

I may be cool or I don't know whether I'm your daddy, but who are you talking about boning?

This was the worst.

Yeah.

All right, Lou.

Go back.

Go on back to the fucking show.

You just completely derailed me, MVP.

Let me think what I was trying to say.

The chanting, the singing.

The chanting, the singing, enough.

That's enough.

I'm ready for some bored AEW fans.

I'm sick of jumping singing fans, especially when no one could get through a promo.

And again, it's against the wrestler's law to cut people off when they're making noise like that.

And I understand that for those people

in those cities, this is a special deal to them.

And they paid a lot of money and they ought to be able to have as much fun as they want to have.

But goddamn, it's almost like there's too much response for television.

It is just,

and again, I'm going to ask you by the end of this show, I'm going to ask the

cult of Cornette out there to tell me whether there was an overrun

or whether or not they just went off the air on the main event thing because I'll get there.

It's our new game, Overrun or No Overrun.

Well, yeah, because it's they never overrun SmackDown.

Nevertheless, Orton does a great job.

He told Cody's history and he put him over.

He's really comfortable speaking.

And he said, I respect you.

I love you.

I'm proud of you.

And then you're going to beat fucking Cena and I'm going to beat Owens.

And then I'm going to want to go for number 15, but I won't kick you in the balls.

I'll look you in the eye and say, I'm coming for that belt.

And right then, Drew's music hits.

And here we had more singing and chanting.

But I love Drew.

Again, a couple of Nepo babies having a love fest.

Drew McIntyre has joined Gunther in my top five.

I don't even know if I've awarded the other three spots yet.

But Drew said, Randy doesn't deserve a title shot.

He ought to get to the back of the line.

The fans start chanting for CM Punk.

WrestleMania should be Drew against Cody, but it isn't because of Priest.

And they started singing again.

And then by the time Drew got to the ring, he said, I'm going to take the title from Cody

and told Randy that his back is hanging like a thread and he's going to break it.

And as for you, Cody, and Cody just fucking

booted him and fell on his back and uppercutted him.

And Orton went for the RKO and Drew slipped it and they played the music.

And we were 25 minutes into the show.

I'm not

critiquing anybody's performances.

They're all doing great here.

You can't have a goddamn ambulance angle every week.

I always say that either, but it just takes so fucking long because everybody's so over, they won't let them do anything.

Are you speaking to me?

No, I'm not speaking.

I don't know what to say.

I mean, they're stars.

The people are going crazy.

They're enjoying being there, but yeah.

you know, I'm not, I think I said it to you off air, I'm starting to really hate SmackDown.

Again, it's the three-hour show now, and that's not forever.

But,

you know, when you think about what was on Raw this week, which we'll talk about later, there's a few different things

that I want to talk about, that I want to hear what you have to say.

With SmackDown,

there's a whole lot of show,

and it takes forever to fill up.

And I haven't enjoyed it in a while.

And I don't know if I'm the only one feeling a little bit of burnout.

And again, the WrestleMania buildup this year is ridiculous.

And because there's another three weeks, because they did it at the end of April, it kind of has extended things in an unnatural way.

They're doing the same things on both shows just to make sure everybody catches it.

And it stretches it out double the time.

But yeah,

it's a rough show to get through.

So yeah, it was an opening segment.

I like Drew McIntyre.

I agree with you.

I like him a whole lot more in the mic than in the ring.

Not to say anything bad about his in-ring, but on the mic, you have to watch and listen to what he's going to say but uh you know it was a fine segment i guess future cody orton stuff at some point down the road a fine a fine segment is that like three stars is that what fine is i would say middle of the road yeah middle of the road it wasn't great it wasn't all middle of the road would be two starks that'd be like very good if you're grading comic good very good fine meant if i'm going with a five car five car a five car system if i'm going with a five star system three is middle of the road well who said you're going with a five-star system?

I was using a five-star system in my head when you said how many stars would you give it?

Three stars?

Well, no, I just, I think we ought to go with the original that was created by Leonard Malton.

It was ripped off

by me and well, it was ripped off by me and Weasel Dooley.

Four stars.

The movies get for you.

You can also have a dud.

You can all, there was a lot of fucking old monogram pictures were duds in Leonard Malton's movie guide.

I've still got one on the shelf of somewhere.

I'll find that later.

Yeah, but anyway.

But there's something about them that when you start watching them, you can't look away.

You have to see what the, how did this get put on film?

Or was it, was it film?

Middle of the road, I would say.

All right.

Well, they're inducting Stone Cold, Steve Austin, and Bret Hart from WrestleMania 13 into the WWE Hall of Fame as a, what did they call it?

Some kind of moment, monumentous moment, or whatever the fuck.

A moment to get lost and embred on the show somehow.

To get that.

Well, they'll be there, apparently, they said, at the Hall of Fame deal too.

And I mean,

somebody was making fun.

Have they inducted a match before?

It seems like that's not a new thing to me.

I thought they had done that before.

They've not done that before, but I believe the UFC with their Hall of Fame, they've had matches that were big matches in the history of UFC going.

It's not a crazy idea to do it, but, you know, we'll see.

The first match, that's like, what the fuck?

When that goes in, that'll be a moment.

Well, and that's the thing is, I guess I heard it from there, but the point is, I'm not against the concept because

that was maybe the greatest wrestling match.

I mean, you know, the

WWF of the 90s

was mostly, you know, the pretty ladders with Sean and.

you know, all of the other falderall, but I've always said Austin and Hart could have been the main event at Starcade or in the mid-Atlantic territory or in the Omni or whatever the fuck as a wrestling match.

So

that's a good place to start.

I'm not against the concept.

I'd rather see them induct a match between those two guys like that instead of,

you know, some random celebrity that did a fucking guest host on Raw some night.

You know, when you're really thinking about a match, that would be the first match they put in there.

Obviously, there'd be a lot of picks, Hogan, Andre, whatever it may be.

They may want to keep Hogan far away from this.

But when you think about matches and the result, or specifically what came out of it, is there a match that caused that industry to explode?

Not that it was the lone thing more than Steve Austin coming out of that match and the fan reaction and that kind of triggering everything.

You know, as much as Austin 316

and the King of the Ring, it was the Brett feud.

And to me, it was that match.

And coming out of that match, it was clear that Austin Austin was the top guy in the company to me as a kid, as a teenager.

Yeah.

Well, it was to me as

a backstage minion.

And that's what caused Vince to be able to go public with Steve Austin.

And now, see,

some people are going to say, well, Sting and Flair are the first clash of champions, which is

the same principle, but different application in that that got Sting over as a main event guy.

It didn't boost the intent.

The business at that point was still doing well

overall, Crockett's.

And of course,

his buying up of territories and everything had put him in the hole by that point, but

there was not a ton of difference in the grosses at the houses and or the ratings

after Sting and Flair's matched clash of champions, but Sting was a main event talent in the people's eyes because of that and was elevated into that.

Whereas Austin was the catalyst to

kickstart business that had been

wounded over the previous couple years.

And while things were looking up from two years before, as you said, everything exploded under Austin and

that's, you know, that was the catalyst.

But they're going in the Hall of Fame.

We'll see if the scaffold match gets into this division of the Hall of Fame.

Oh, come on now.

Well, it has to be the one with PN News where they captured the flags.

What if they said we want to put you in the express in the Hall of Fame, but you have to do it from atop a scaffold?

Yeah,

I'll put my drone up there.

I'll have a drone broadcasting from up there.

You know what?

That was, if we'd have had a scaffold match today, we could have just have our drones fly up there and peck at each other.

Did anyone say to you when you were having those matches, like, this is the future?

Like, they're going to be doing this match forever going forward.

not we're going to do this with you guys and then we're going to try to do it again in a few years and then we're never going to do this ever again

no um

none of those things ecw did it too though but yeah well the obviously dusty knew that we had done it because dundee had us do it in mid-south and because dundee had done it in tennessee so there was some element of it stayed in the family

and then dusty just said oh we'd we'll do a a scaffold match baby

and

but at the time we were doing them they never they

never either said we're going to have other people do these or not do the they didn't talk about any others in the future besides what we were doing at that and then we did some with the fantastics in 88

and uh

but but a lot of the boys

The universal response from everybody that wasn't involved in it was, what the fuck are you guys doing?

Or rolling the eyes or we ain't going to be doing that shit, or some combination of all of that.

Oh, are we still on Raw or SmackDown?

What are we talking about?

SmackDown.

Yes,

there was a girls' tag team match involved somewhere in there.

Poor LA Knight defended the U.S.

title against Brown Strongman.

And I just want to mention this because

Fatu came out and just beat the shit out of everybody and just gave L.A.

Knight the Samoan drop

and a couple of moonsaults to Mr.

Strongman and,

you know, got over like a million dollars, but they only went three minutes to begin with in this match.

And I was thinking maybe L.A.

Knight won the lottery, only having to go three minutes with his giant fucking chest of drawers.

He's a giant chifferobe

is what he is.

He's very awkward to move around.

Probably won't go in the door frame.

But now, Solo and Fatu are having words, Brian.

Did you catch this?

Because afterwards,

Solo,

Fatu said some things.

The Solo was telling her, hey, lower your tone.

And basically, the last statement was, I'm going to be the last man standing and win the U.S.

title with or without you.

So

better not make that another three-way.

Oh, God.

I did.

But now, poor,

poor Tongaloa,

apparently, they've just.

Where is he?

Well, he didn't break his toe in that match.

And that was a convenient time for us to never see him again.

There's people who come back from fucking heart transplants.

That same match.

Didn't Jimmy Fatu, like Jimmy Fatu?

Jimmy Uso.

Did Jimmy Uso break his foot in that match or something?

Well, yes.

And somebody else

fucking, I can't remember, nearly died from asphyxiation or some shit.

But the point is, they got rid of Tonga Loa, so Solo had Tommy Tonga.

And Tommy is the fall guy in all of this.

But

Fatu is a baby face in terms of the people are awed by his athleticism and fury,

but he works better

doing that as a heel.

I don't think it's the time

to particularly make him a babyface.

But if

the problem that I'm thinking is even if they just, okay, we're going to have fatu versus solo

is some similar styles that might diminish

Jacob and or Solo, because it might make Jacob shit look less special and it might make Solo look like he can't do all the shit Jacob can do.

Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, I don't know where exactly they're going.

Obviously, Jacob could be the leader if he beats Solo, but I don't know if that's.

I mean, it's weird the way they've minimized the Bloodline story

over the past half a year or so.

It was the main thing on SmackDown.

Everything revolved around the Bloodline being there.

If they weren't there, Heyman was.

Then there was the second version of the Bloodline with Solo, the Tongas, and Fatu.

That was kind of doing something.

Now, like, the Bloodline's a non-entity.

I mean, Roman Reigns calls himself the OTC.

There's kind of nothing happening, and he's barely on the shows at all.

Now he is a little bit because they're weeks away from WrestleMania.

And on SmackDown,

the people want to cheer fat too.

They're teasing something.

But Solo means a whole lot less than he used to.

Yeah, he's just kind of hanging out in the parking garage, bitching at people.

Yeah, they had Roman beat him a few times, and then all of a sudden, no one cares about Solo.

Who knew that was going to happen?

So I don't know.

It's weird that the Bloodline was the main thing.

And now it's not.

And I don't know.

I mean, I kind of want them to do something and just get it over with already.

Here's the thing.

You can't have a bunch of top guys.

You can only have a few top guys because if you have a bunch of top guys, then you obviously you're watering shit down.

And sometimes when you are lucky enough to have an abundance, a plethora, if you will, of top guys,

you don't need to see all of them.

So I don't mind roman being gone for a while and he comes back for the big thing that's probably better because the other newer fresher sparklier shinier things

may outshine him that people got a chance to miss him how can i miss you if you won't go away that whole fucking thing right

so that i don't know

but

the actual

Like you said, the diminishment of the whole bloodline.

I don't think Roman should be necessarily in the bloodline anymore, but I think the

mudline, as we call it, the outlaw mudline, the evil mudline,

they got mixed up in the transporter and they all came out evil with facial hair.

That could have been,

could be a bigger deal with Jacob Fatu still in it.

And Solo doing something and Tommy there to be flunkies for a while longer.

And it seems like that I'm not arguing they put their eggs in the Fatu basket, but there's poor Solo and Tommy over there.

See, you can't turn them.

I would hope they wouldn't turn him babyface yet either, because I feel like there's money

to be made with him and Roman.

I don't even know if money to be made is an expression you use anymore.

It's going to be on a show that was sold to a local municipality for millions of dollars.

And everybody else.

No, no, no,

we're going to sell it to the Saudis.

Yeah, well, someone will be paying for it.

But Roman and Jacob Fatu,

It's been teased.

They've had moments, but as a one-on-one feud, that could be something.

But again, Roman's barely there.

How many matches does he work in a year?

He's on the Young Bucks schedule.

Well, and he, well, that's actually apropos because he's the same size as both of them.

But that's, I see Jacob and Roman for something like

a bit Summer Slam-ish or Survivor Series-ish or things like that.

I'm not saying that that's not a thing, but I don't think they need to

have Jacob and Solo nattering at each other right now because people are going to choose sides.

Solo comes out looking, nah, whatever.

They should make Jacob the evil bloodline chief, and Solo loses to him and falls in line behind him.

And they got Tamatonga and they got Hicculeo and Developmental.

And then all of a sudden, you're building up something to confront the OTC.

Who the hell are you to call yourself the OTC?

I'm the TC right now.

Well,

how about the NTC?

I'm the new tribal chief.

Yeah, I mean, something, but otherwise.

Or the FTC,

the fucking tribal chief.

I hate to say it because I like LA Night, but otherwise you're just people running into these LA Night segments where WWE uses the fact that he's over to hide the fact that they're doing like worthless segments a lot of the time.

Yeah.

And he happens to be there when other people come out and beat other people up.

You know, the fans are going to react for him.

You know, he's going to get a big pop and and then, you know, someone's going to beat him up.

That's really what it's come down to, but we'll see where they go with the bloodline.

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All right.

Well, and then, you know,

I've skipped over Naomi with dramatic music was crying about what she had to do.

And

then they had Naomi beat up Mia Yim and B Fab.

And then Jade came down and

helped old BFab up and was helping her out.

And Mia Yim was there in the ring and she just left her for dead.

And then Charlotte comes out and is ready to kick the shit out of Mia Yim.

What the fuck?

Played goddamn favorites, didn't you?

But that's

drama.

As I heard Conan say one time in TNA, but that's drama for another day.

That's the girls' drama.

They can cover that on the podcast that center on the girls' drama, can't they?

Conan.

Hi, Conan.

Conan

Conan.

Remember when the video?

I mean, the vocal was funny enough, but just him getting tackled by that guy.

Yes, Conan, but he got it.

Conan, what the hell?

What's going on?

Hell.

The guy's trying to stretch him, and he's just there going, what the hell?

What is this guy trying to do?

Fans, for complete information on that one.

That was a few years ago, but it's on the YouTube channel.

Maybe Brian might think of the title of it.

But yeah, when a fucking Mark Photographer took fucking Callas down in Mexico and Callis.

Oh, man.

Jim Cornette on Dodd Callus in Mexico or something like that.

That's what it would be.

Anyway, then at 10 o'clock at night.

in the in the USA time slot, they had Randy Orton versus Drew McIntyre.

And I I watched this one because,

again,

this is what,

this, this completes the look.

When you have, and besides the, and notwithstanding, as the chairman would have once said, notwithstanding the crowds singing, delay and everything,

when you've got a building, it looks like that in a major international city.

with 16,000 whatever people in it and a major league production, and then you've got two top guys that are stars that look great that are great workers that are smart and serious their

looks good

they this

these international audiences are a dream audience for if you're in the wrestling business since the dawn of time before television you dream of A crowd where everything is so over, you can go out and just fucking promo each other and do the bare minimums in the matches, but make the shit look professional

and fucking get the people involved in it and they're reacting

and then do your finish or your angle or whatever you're going to do and get reactions like this.

That is the dream of everybody in the wrestling business.

It didn't used to be where you would go out and do it

for 25 minutes verbally and then seven minutes physically.

It was kind of the other way around, but this is even better.

But Orton and

fucking Drew, and they don't get hurt.

They're in front of WrestleMania.

They're too important.

They do some professional shit.

And then Owens comes down the aisleway and distracts Orton and Drew hits the Claymore one, two, three.

And then Orton and Owens have their obligatory dust up where

Owens is going to pile drive him on the desk and Orton trips him and goes for the punt and Owens bails over the rail and he runs off.

so it's just it's it's a 25 minute talking segment with these stars and then these stars are going to go out and have a five minute match to lead to a little tease where everybody takes two bumps and off we go it's that kind of show

yes do you have any incisive thoughts on this this piece of business on this match no nothing i could top your incisive thoughts

Okay, well, then we get to the meat of the matter.

Because they go to the back, and of of course there's Drew McIntyre.

He's leaving the building.

He's celebrating with old Jackie Redmond of what he's done.

And as he goes out,

I guess goes through the door into the parking garage, there's Damian Priest and just jumps him and they have a big fight.

And

coincidentally, Drew McIntyre was wearing a leather jacket and Priest choke slammed him through the windshield of a car.

I'm not sure if it was real glass, but nobody was crying a river.

and then it's a he boom he's done that and he's laying there and he's selling and the officials are there and so we you know we're still in that direction for mania

but then the deal is is he's laying there selling mcintyre by the by he is what i mean

punk walks in with his security guards and just looks and snickers at him and then fucking walks off smiling

uh

you know it's it's become commonplace, these

aggravated assaults and attempted homicides in the back.

So it's just, it's a snickering thing, but that was a nice little touch.

And then we got to the main event, which was the contract signing.

And I'm going to say this now so we can get not bogged down later before breaking this down.

But this is what I'm trying to figure out.

Did the USA network do an overrun?

My DBR froze when they were still in the middle of this.

Now, I know because it was in London.

It was on,

well, what the fuck was it on from London in this country?

Was it on Netflix or was it on in this country?

It was on, in this country, it was on USA Network at eight o'clock, like it always is.

And I think it may have streamed on Netflix somewhere, but I'm not even sure.

Well, but that's the thing is some people saw it before it would have aired here, but I didn't think it'd be on Netflix.

So I was wondering if those people would be in another country because Raw is on Netflix.

I don't understand anymore, Brian.

It's become too complicated.

But the point is, my DVR cuts off for some reason, and I can't change it at 10.59 p.m.

on SmackDown nights for the show.

Now, normally they've done everything they're going to do.

And maybe you don't miss the last few kicks from the heel or whatever.

But in this case, it froze up when Seth was still pitching his fit.

And when I went and finally got to YouTube and watched the entire thing, they went another three or four minutes.

So for anybody who watched it as it happened, did USA do an overrun?

Or did even they,

the almighty WWE and Lee Fitting, our production god, did they run over time because people wouldn't quit singing and get cut off the air in this country on USA?

That's my question.

Because I don't know at this point, which is the case.

Have they ever done an overrun on SmackDown on USA

since it's been on it?

Not that I remember, but I don't know for certain.

Anyway, and they put the little bug for the credits, executive producers, Paul and Lee, they put that on while fucking Punk was down on bended knee or whatever, maybe even before that at the end of the thing.

But nevertheless,

the contract signing was between Roman Reigns, CM Punk, and Seth Rollins.

And the intrigue has been, how's Heyman going to play into this?

And,

you know, they've been costing each other thing, as Punk said, neither one of you have ever beaten me except with the other one's help.

They've got this three-way mutual animosity society going on.

So now we're going to have the contract signing for WrestleMania.

And Aldous is in the ring, and he introduces Roman and Paul.

And they go to the break on the entrance.

I'm thinking, okay,

they won't take a break for the rest of the show.

That's great.

And when they come back,

the fans are singing Roman, Roman Reigns,

and chanting OTC.

And he says, acknowledge me.

And they chant again.

And then they sing again.

And then Paul is classic.

He takes his handkerchief out.

He wipes off the chair for Roman to sit,

wipes off the armrests, and Roman sits down in the big chair at the head of the table.

And Paul kneels beside him with that beaming smile.

And they start singing again.

And then Paul sings.

And I'm starting to look at the goddamn clock here because they're, you know, they got a long way to go and a short time to get there, right?

Because it's like 10 minutes unless less at this point now that's on the air.

And so Roman was there to be acknowledged and to sign the contract, and he signs.

And then Seth's music plays and they start singing again.

And the whole arena is the whoa,

whoa,

whichever tune he's got.

And then Seth's promo,

he was

supposed to start out with,

you know, you and I, Roman, we landed on the roof of this place in a helicopter 12 years ago and go through their history.

And I'm thinking, my God,

they won't quit fucking singing.

And he's trying to recite, you know, their entire lives.

So we were born poor children in a fucking log cabin.

And the crowd started singing again.

And Roman was looking.

And then the crowd started chanting CM Punk while Roman looked bored.

And then Roman has to respond to Seth.

We died a long time ago.

I made this place.

And, you know, I made it what it is today.

And they argued for a little while.

And

Seth was like, you let the biggest snake into the garden.

And he was mad that Roman didn't let him finish punk off.

And now he's going to have to clean up Roman's mess again.

And he signs it.

And then,

like Mussolini,

with four minutes lefty,

the big pop, and they sang his song and the CM Punk chants.

And, Brian, before I go into the rest of this, did you notice that besides for the fact that they were enjoying singing and chanting, that the people weren't particularly enthralled by the content of what Seth and Roman were going through?

It was dragging just a bit until punk came out.

Do you agree?

To an extent, I thought Seth did a good job.

I didn't like Roman here at all.

I thought it was the most unnatural, and I know he's not necessarily Mr.

Natural on the mic in terms of

unlike Punk and even Rollins when he gets fired up, it comes across like a guy playing a role.

But I thought that was, I just didn't believe him at all here.

And I thought it was,

I thought he was the one kind of slacking out of the three of them.

It was, it was a little, it, it took a while.

And then Punk comes out and I've come here to chew bubble gum and sign a contract.

And they chance see him, Punk.

And

Punk is trying to fucking read it.

There's, and I'm looking at the clock.

I'm like, there's like two minutes fucking left on the air.

But the deal is he is looking for something.

He's supposed to be looking for something.

And Paul comes over

and tells Punk, I know what you're looking for, and it's in there.

And he kneels down with Punk, and they have a moment where you are closing the show at WrestleMania.

Yay, you get to live your dream.

You're a WrestleMania main eventer.

And Paul kissed him on the head.

Punk ought to see if Larry's vet can maybe give him some spray for that.

But that was a fucking meaningful thing.

And

right there, Roman again says, that's right.

We're checking all the boxes.

One man's dream is another man's favor.

Check.

And Seth loses it.

He doesn't deserve it.

It's sacred to me.

And that's where my DVR froze.

And when I went to look at the YouTube clip, they went another, like I said, three or four minutes.

So

the best part was either in an overrun or not on the air on USA.

So check it out on YouTube if that happened to you.

But that's where.

I think it was on USA.

I think it may have just been your DVR.

Well, but

did they do an overrun?

Because they had to have done an overrun.

My DVR cut off at 1059.

They won another four fucking minutes.

That's the point I'm making.

Somebody needs to clarify this for me.

But nevertheless, Punk got into it.

And he was teary-eyed and he was overcome with emotion.

But at the same time, he stood up.

He said, I want to thank London, Chicago, and Louisville, Kentucky.

And Brian, did you know that there was a study done

that there are more CM Punk fans per capita in Louisville, Kentucky than there are in any other town in the United States?

Did you realize that?

They did that study.

Down to Courier Journal.

There's one guy lives down in Shively.

He's a Mormon.

He's got like 18 kids.

Skewed the average, or elsewhere, it would have been Peoria.

But he thanked London and Chicago and Louisville.

And he said, it may be corny,

but I want to thank you all for getting me, putting me in this position, et cetera.

And then Roman said, well, you ought to be thanking me.

So Punk gets down on his knee in front of Roman and he sarcastically thanks him.

And he lays it on thick with, oh, thank you, my tribal chief, for allowing me to share your ring and this whole spiel.

And he says, and I will see you at WrestleMania.

And he stands up and he says, and by the way, that's not the favor I'm owed.

Oh, and then Roman, what the fuck?

And you see Paul kind of, oh.

And then they play the music and then they're done with the thing.

This was the i wish they'd have put this on at the top of the 10 o'clock hour so they could have they could have milked this for 20 more minutes and it wouldn't have got old i don't think but some of the other got old in about five

what'd you think i thought like you said everything really picked up when punk was there but i thought rollins was great here this is the seth rollins i like Yeah, he did fire up.

He showed a lot of oomph.

He just had to go over all of those details while people wanted to sing and chant.

He delivered the irrational irrational hatred of Punk perfectly because it's consuming him and it just eats him.

I mean, he's really good in this.

I really like it because a lot of it's probably real.

He's really good.

Yeah, he's really good when he's irrational.

I think Punk was great here.

And in terms of the favor, what do you think the favor is?

Is the favor having Heyman walk him to the ring?

Is the favor, it couldn't be, you will cost Roman the match and help me.

I mean, what do you think it is?

Well,

I mean, it's gonna be more than just walk me to the ring he's not giving him away at his wedding right oh if you would ceremonially walk me to the ring or you know what don't we

i'm just telling you um you know and then kiss me like he kissed me the other night when you gave me the news kiss me on my forehead and and spank me and call me sunny boy

uh

obviously it can't be yeah

the guy or whatever i don't know where they're going with it One would think that it would be some type of manipulation that Punk would want,

that a business manager or advisor could give or do or sign in some way.

But I don't know where they're going with it.

Now, that's the good part about it.

And that's why it got the big ooh, just something as simple as that.

Punk and Drew had the people screaming and yelling when they were fighting over a fucking plastic bracelet.

And now just

who, what is the favor and who's going to do what for who has become a thing.

Because it's something everybody can understand.

That's why it's getting over.

Well, that was WWE SmackDown continuing this European jaunt.

And we shall return with jet lag right after this.

All right.

You know what that means, Jim?

It's time to move on.

I was already ready without the organ.

I want to ask you about a couple of things.

I know we still have questions, we still have maybe some guests to program, and we have Raw, of course, but a few topics before we get there.

Have you been following the Mickey James?

I don't even know if you would call it a controversy, but

she made some comments on

what is it, LFG?

Is that what it is?

Is it LFG?

Yeah, yeah,

I always think lifetime goals, but that doesn't even work.

But legends and future greats

of America.

Lego

or Lego my leg.

No, the last time I heard about Mickey James being controversial or being in the middle of controversy was when

they were switching places with her and Michelle McCool on next season of that program to

apparently justify

Mikael McCool.

Mikkel McCool's status as a trainer and legend.

Well, apparently on this past weekend mickey james was speaking to zena sterling who is a mentee of bubba ray dudley

and she had just had a match is ment is mentee no mentee is not a word it would be protege protege and mentor well apparently Or maybe she has mentee fresh breath, but go ahead.

Well, apparently she's been training under Bubba Ray Dudley and had a match.

Oh, that kind of thing.

Under it, is she always underneath, or every once in a while, she's on top?

Again, here we go again.

But she had a match with Tamara May Steele.

Real quick, Xena Sterling and Tamara May Steele, do they pass the name test?

Well, it sounds like both of them are pretty sharp.

I don't know about who was Tamara May Mary Sterling, who?

Goldra May Steele.

Tamara May May Steal, or she may lie.

Or

she might very well fuck around.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'd have to see the entire package, so to speak.

I'm only hearing these names verbally, but it sounds a little

over the top for people who ain't in the business yet.

Well, apparently we have a quote here.

There may be some audio, but let me read the quotes.

It says the audio cuts off the quote.

Here's what Mickey James said to Zena Sterling, questioning her in-ring attire:

I lived during the diva era, and we fought very, very hard to not have to wrestle in lingerie anymore.

Since I'm a female, I could speak on this.

It's very frustrating when women go out there and wrestle, and all I see is their ass,

and I can't look past it.

It's all I see.

I can't look away.

It's very distracting.

So you want to be taken serious as a wrestler, but you're wrestling in pretty much jazzed up lingerie.

And that's my opinion.

And that's coming from someone who's had to wrestle on TV a lot.

I actually don't have any.

issue with what she just said there as far as

you

you are are proof of that, because how many times have we been talking about a match?

But did you see so-and-so's ass cheeks hanging out?

Yeah, I mean, I see you couldn't look past that.

I don't disagree with what Mickey James is saying, and that isn't very inflammatory.

That isn't to say that every now and then you can't have someone whose gimmick is, you know, here's my ass, I guess.

Well, yes, every once in a while, you got to have ass as a gimmick, but it seems like it's become a thing where

you have to just have a thong thong and a wedgie and all sorts of under ass support to lift the ass up higher it's all focus on the ass they hide the tits but it's just all ass and there are matches mickey's right there are matches you watch you want to pay attention to how talented the person is or isn't and it's just ass it's just non-stop ass

just right there in your face just the ass

yeah

not to say that so why

the movie girls didn't have asses but they hid them they wore bathing suits like it was the 50s well

they had to do that but

some of them it was it was i think demanded by the public officials that they cover up some of those buttocks that but there were but i get your comment but when you go but when you go out there when you go out there with a wedgie and you have things under your ass like like i don't even know what you would call them just they're just fucking threads under their ass to lift their ass.

If you're putting the focus on your ass, you you can't be mad when people want to pay attention to that ass

and

back that ass up.

It was a lot of ass.

I mean, it's just a lot of ass.

It's a lot of ass.

So if you're into ass, you should be watching wrestling.

Can we put an ass?

Wait a minute.

Every time we say ass,

but let me ask you this.

And let me ask you this.

What's inflammatory and controversial about that?

That's kind of what we're just saying is, yeah, everybody's got their ass hanging out.

I have an article here.

This is from SE Scoops, and the quote here:

James's comments have sparked a discussion among fans about ring attire and the progress female talent have made, especially in WWE over the past decade.

Some argued that James is right to criticize what they perceive as an over-sexualized attire.

Others believe that it is ultimately Sterling's choice to wear

W-H-E-R-E, to wear what she feels is what?

To wear,

wear,

to wear what she feels is best, and that James has also worn similar attires.

Well, now, and

hold on now, to be fair, that's kind of what she said, too.

I came through that era where

We had to put up with that.

So it wasn't like she was saying, hey, I think I'll go out in this fucking teddy from

dressing for pleasure in Montclair, New Jersey or something.

Velvet Sky tweeted out, I feel attacked.

Laugh out loud.

Wait.

Nothing wrong with sex appeal in wrestling.

Diva era or not.

I personally find nothing wrong with her gear.

Just my opinion.

But what do I know?

A emoji of someone crying with laughter.

Let those pigeons loose, Xena.

And another emoji.

Well, and also, let's bring up another thing.

This is a fucking reality TV show.

They've got producers and

it's built for drama.

So

did the producer say, hey, Mickey, cut a promo on the girl's lingerie outfit.

Let's get something,

whatever.

I mean, I'm not saying that she's lying through her teeth, but maybe she might not have given two shits either way.

And they just, well, let's run with that.

There's something there also.

But I don't, again, see anything to make any besides the people who were currently or formerly wearing lingerie, nobody else should be particularly pissed off about it.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know why.

Apparently, a lot of people got upset with meeting, a lot of people, a lot of fans, a lot of crazy fans.

How dare you?

Let's not wear, don't you?

What do you know?

Let's not call those fans people, whatever we do.

But,

you know, is there anything to be said about, you know, if a woman had a great ass in the eyes of, you know, me?

Or, you know, in the eyes of whoever, in the eyes of society, if everyone says that.

In the eyes of the Lord.

If everyone says, wow, that's a great ass.

Does she have to expose it if she was a wrestler?

Is there anything that she could do?

Who's the last person with a great ass who didn't have it?

Like out.

Just all the way out.

Like, it's, I mean, it's true.

I mean, Mickey James is not saying anything wrong, but it's also true that she wore revealing outfits.

But you, you seem to be taking it as her saying,

we did that in my era.

That was the battle we had so that you didn't have to do that.

Right.

And there's, there's some truth to that.

And as well, there's also some truth to

just with everybody with their ass hanging out, then that's all that.

I can understand why the ladies, especially the ones at the top, want to be taken more seriously as athletes.

They understand that the glamour and the sex appeal is part of the overall package.

But if everybody's thing is to just, I'll get noticed because I got a good ass and I'll wear lingerie and show it, it's the same thing as

when there was one guy doing a pile driver.

Oh my gosh, now when there's 20, or when there was one guy doing something else, and then there's 20, it's just now it's too much

from everyone.

So I think that may have been part of her point also.

Do you think maybe they should go the other way and embrace this?

Like a best ass championship?

Why don't they just have everybody?

You know, you always hear about topless dancers.

What about bottomless wrestlers?

See, in some cases, they can wear anything.

It looks like they're almost bottomless, some of these girls.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

They can wear anything.

They wear an alpaca sweater down to the waist, but they got to be completely naked from between the waist and the ankles.

And then they can wear shoes so they don't break their toes.

And then let's see how all those fucking figure eights look and everything.

Well, that is the update on that.

We will uh stay on top of this story, and we'll see if Mickey James has anything to say once uh, the time on the show ends.

So, you're volunteering to stay on top of Mickey James.

I'm volunteer, she's married to Nick Aldis, uh, he's a general manager.

I'm volunteering to stay on top of well, I'll stay on, I'll stay on top of him.

Okay, this took a turn I did not expect, and I guess those will be the whitest teeth that Jim comes across today.

It's been on every show, that joke lately.

Jim,

let's get to another thing here.

Let's preview the upcoming aew dynasty oh boy howdy that is another thing isn't it which is taking place this weekend as we are recording april 6 2025 philadelphia pennsylvania

well

how many matches 13 14

What's on tap for this big event?

Right now, there are six matches listed on Wikipedia, but if I go to AEW's page, they only have five.

and there's another TV to come, so who knows what will happen.

How is their own website behind Wikipedia?

Well, Wikipedia may not be official.

It could be people guessing.

Let's see what we can figure out here.

For the AEW TNT Championship with no time limit and no outside interference,

Daniel Garcia, the champion, versus Adam Cole.

Oh, boy, so it can all night and nobody can interfere.

That means we got to look at just these two and for a long time.

Do you predict a title change or what do you think will happen?

Oh, good Lord.

I don't.

I mean, they seem to be in love with Garcia, even though we haven't been subjected to him as much lately as we were there for a while.

Poor Adam Cole.

I don't know what else to say.

I feel so bad for him.

He's a nice young man.

Could they have this before they open the doors and just say we couldn't hold him, folks?

Here's a package for two minutes.

Well, Jim, another match announced.

This is on Wikipedia, but not on their page.

Title versus mask for the Ring of Honor World Championship.

The champion Chris Jericho versus the mask, Bandito.

Oh, boy.

Thank you, Maskman.

Yes.

Maybe Bandito will steal away into the night, and we won't have to worry about that.

I mean, Jericho is going to try to do some lucha, and Bandito is going to try to do some American.

And

people ain't going to really give too much of a shit except for the most die-hard of the fans.

And it's for the Ring of Honor title, which is

not exactly as prestigious as it once was.

And imagine how much territory that takes in.

So there you go.

Well, Jim, the next match listed here

for the AEW World Trios Championship:

the Death Riders, Claudio Castignoli, PAC, and Wheeler Utah versus rated FTR,

Cope,

Cash, and Dax.

Cope, Cash, and Dax.

My God, it sounds like some kind of formula for taking drugs.

Cope, cash, and dax.

I mean,

what more is to be done with this?

Is Dax going to be pissy at Edge?

Are they turning FTR heel?

We said that probably wouldn't be the worst thing that ever happened, but the Death Riders are death to people's attention.

So it is what it is.

Hopefully, there'll be some type of turn on the babyface team, but then who's going to be on edge's side if ftr turn on him

and if they turn on each other

i would suggest both dax and cash maybe apply for social security while it's still in existence because that'd be the end of both of them right now did you see that footage going around of them on collision it was fr versus kyle o'reilly or roderick strong oh god yeah

And

they,

one would think both those teams would have been amongst amongst the most technically proficient performers in the company, and they couldn't get out of their own way.

I fucking died laughing.

It was, it's like a minute and a half clip.

And

I mean, it was just, it was a, they couldn't get together for some reason, and it just kept botching and botching, and they couldn't stop themselves.

But I think once they got off, they just got rattled.

Cash had tried a leapfrog at one point, and Roddy didn't go down far enough, and Cash was jumping sideways because he didn't think he was going to get over him.

And they kind of crumbled.

And then

they were trying to do an old heart attack, heart foundation bear hug clothesline.

But every time Dax would run to one side of the ropes, Cash would turn to the other side.

They were just crisscrossing around and couldn't figure it out.

It was

bad.

Then they, you know, they kind of

got back on the same page, but it was

brutal.

Yes, for a while.

I felt bad for them.

well we'll see what happens next

for the aew world's women's championship or world women's championship women's world championship

timeless tony storm the champion with luther

versus megan bain

well i'm i'm thinking that they like megan brain because she's the new flavor of the moment and she's a striking looking physical specimen.

We still haven't figured out

because now somebody told me, somebody sent an email.

Remember, I mentioned that to you

saying that, well, she just like broke in a year or two ago and they saw her and signed her before the WWE had seen her.

Then somebody else has said, no,

she's been wrestling since maybe 2017 or whatever.

So I don't know what the story is.

Someone sent me something that says she was out of OVW.

yes and i saw that also but now that would be more recent ovw and obviously you don't know what you're getting these days but i i

again

if she's been around seven or eight years and she's not in the wwe something's wrong with her maybe it's maybe it's mental i don't know but if she's only been around a couple of years and

they just signed her up early somehow, then there will be hope for her, her, but it ain't going to fucking happen here

anyway, because they take women who are

really over in the world of wrestling and put them under.

So much less one from scratch.

Tony Storm has been the

exception, and she's apparently decided that the audience for

the funny, ha-ha, ironic wrestling is what AEW has got and it's worked for her.

So apparently she's right.

I can't see him switching the belt.

Why do the match?

I mean, I guess they don't mind beating Megan Bain, but I wouldn't beat her yet.

But we'll see what happens.

Where would you spank her?

Jim, in a three-way match for the AEW International Championship, the champion, Kenny Omega, versus Ricochet versus speed ball Mike Bailey.

Is the Hong Kong Fuye TV show theme under public domain yet that we could play that for him?

I mean, this is going to be their self-indulgent,

you know, uneven parallel bars routine where the three flippy fellas

get to do all the flips and

say what you want,

and I have about Kenny, at least in this environment, he's looked at as a main event guy.

And Ricochet, they thought would be, and he became an annoying

nerd.

And so they kind of made him a, you know, dick heel.

But he's still somewhat athletic.

And he and Kenny could certainly do the play the parts of Olga Corbett and Nadia Komenichi

without having some fucking tiny little grinning goof job guy

muddy this up just because he can do a bunch of fucking gymnastics routines.

He looks like he would have been a hell of a cheerleader in high school.

He might even have made the men's team.

But how is this fucking underneath goof in the middle of a top guy and a guy they're trying to make a top guy?

Just because he can cartwheel?

Help me out with this.

I don't have an answer for you.

I am not Tony Khan.

Do you think he's going to cartwheel his way into a championship?

No.

So you think they're going to beat him already?

Or I guess the three way you get around that, you could just beat Ricochet or Ricochet beat Kenny.

Well, I don't believe, I don't think anybody of these two is going to beat Kenny, but if it was one of them, it'd be Ricochet or elsewhere Spitball might fucking pull out a goddamn ball peen hammer and wrap somebody over the head.

But no, they've done that here.

That doesn't work either.

All right, you with the hammers.

I apologize for any noise behind me.

There are gardeners somewhere in the vicinity.

Oh, good God.

I'm worried about being blown off the face of the map and then washed away into a sea of goddamn flood waters.

And you got gardeners out there.

Are we interrupting?

Do you have a cookout scheduled later on?

They are not my gardeners, they are someone's, as I said, in the vicinity somewhere.

But, Jim, the main event, AEW Dynasty in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love

for the AEW World Championship:

John Moxley, the champion versus Swerve Strickland with Prince Nana.

I mean,

don't you think that it would be just out of nowhere and what the fuck if swerve is the one who just brings this all to an end and then they just go away or whatever um

the catch 22.

do you just want it to go away so you do it and swerve wouldn't be outrageous with their fan base or is it something where you've invested this much time and

things aren't completely dead let's hold off until texas stadium yeah yeah there's there's still a pulse and if we hit it with the defibrillator every once in a while, you know, we can get a heartbeat.

Let's hold off to the stadium show to put an end to this fucking lunatic and the way he's tanked the company.

Swerve ain't going to win this because, like I said, it's not time.

They haven't built, I mean, it's past time for Moxley to lose, but they haven't built this up where this would be the culmination of anything.

And they're supposed to be in a stadium in a couple of months.

So I don't know.

They'll probably just puncture him with something, swerve.

It's his turn to get skewered.

Remember, he got the

syringe and then Moxley got the nails.

So this time it'll be a red-hot poker.

They'll just impale him on the somewhere, you know, like on shoulder skin or something.

It won't hurt too bad.

How many minutes into the match or how close to the finish do you think Wheeler Yuta will do his running?

And give somebody danielson's knee uh i'd say uh six minutes before the finish takes place

right before they call for an extra blood transfusion well again those are the matches announced so far for aew dynasty on the sixth this weekend as we are recording nothing with christian cage and uh nick wayne so maybe there'll be something there to settle their father son or whatever the hell it is feud and uh

Yeah, that's the show.

Well, yeah, six matches announced.

Last time they had 13.

I can't wait to see what they're hiding from us.

They spring on us at the last moment.

Jim, before we get the raw one question here, we'll have more questions later on, but this is from the Cult of Cornet Facebook group.

This was sent in by Dave Parsons.

In Jim's opinion, who would have the better podcast,

Bobby Heenan or Dusty Rhodes?

Oh, my God.

Bobby,

without a doubt.

And that's not

that's not disparaging Dusty.

Dusty would be one of the great podcast guests.

But whereas Bobby,

Bobby was not only witty and quick and funny, but he could, as a manager, he could kind of drop back and be the host a little bit and, you know,

do some bits with some other people where they would get their chance to shine.

And they're just different personalities.

Also,

I I think Bobby would have given more oomph to it as a program, whereas Dusty would be like, I'll just come out and do my thing, babe.

It wasn't that he didn't want he just Dusty was good at creating things for other people or being Dusty.

Uh,

I, I, I can't see him as the as the host interviewing people rather than being the personality that comes on,

you know, Johnny Carson

brought on fucking Bob Hope.

Bob Hope didn't really bring on Johnny Carson.

Does that make any sense?

Who do you think would have been a better podcast host in their prime?

Bobby Heenan or Jerry Lawler?

Oh, God.

Now, again, Lawler did a good job at because

he had that talk show and, well, talk and I won't say variety show, but a talk sports-oriented show, wrestling, variety, local events, the Jerry Lawler show in Memphis for years, and

he could kind of draw back and play the host and be the guy to do the banter with some of the other guys.

I think Bobby would still have been the best of the bunch.

Lawler would be second and Dusty, again, I see Dusty

as the guest rather than the host.

All right.

Well, that answers that question.

And Jim.

Whatever podcast it was, you would have to listen to it.

And of course, listening requires using your ears and how you're going to facilitate this listening exercise.

What better way than with Raycon?

Well, that's right, Brian.

You got to use your ears to listen.

And that, I mean, that's, they teach you that by the time you're in third or fourth grade.

If you do not use your ears, you can't listen to things.

And that's why.

that they when you get the raycon everyday wireless earbuds they tell you the first thing that the instruction book says is stick these some bitches in your ears.

Because if you stick them under your armpits or maybe even in between the taint and the ball sack where you can grip them with your thighs, you won't be able to hear shit.

But if you put these things in your ears, folks, I'll tell you, the latest model is better than ever.

Sounds like

the voice of God is coming through to you from the heavens.

Because of the quality of these, they're half the price of the other premium audio brands, but they sound just as good.

They got the 32-hour battery life, the multi-point connectivity.

See, it lets you pair with two devices at one time.

And Mother's Day is coming up.

You heard about this, right?

You know, Mother's Day is almost almost every year it's celebrated somewhere.

That's right.

And well, now you can get mom the everyday earbuds and see even if she if she's too old

to understand how this stuff works, then you just you just set them up for her and boom, boom, tell them, stick these in your head, mom.

And she'll listen to things.

And you better, with that pairing two devices at once, you better watch out what you pair your mom with or elsewhere shit could happen.

But with the quick charge function,

you can plug it in for 10 minutes and you can get 90 minutes of battery life out of that.

You've got the active noise cancellation.

That might work.

Actually, if you have a pair and your mom has a pair and you cancel cancel the noise in yours, if you bought hers, can you cancel the noise in hers too?

So she can't hear you and you can't hear her.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but this gives you a chance to hear audio without having to worry about any of the noise.

What a wonderful thing from our friends at Raycon.

Well, that's right, because most people have noise in their audio.

You've got the sound of wood chippers and...

helicopters going overhead.

Boom, you hit this button, you can't hear shit except what they want you to hear.

The control voice will control all you hear they will control the bass and the treble and they will tell you how to best serve the new state and raycon's everyday earbuds come in a spectrum of vibrant colors to match your mother's style let's say your mother is let's say she likes pink flowers or let's say for example that she's a a merry black widow she's been married nine times and she goes around dressed in mourning all the time because she's poisoning her husband's for the insurance policy and the estate.

Why?

You want to get her black?

What?

Yes, black.

Black, Raycon.

Black

in a situation like that.

Again, let's again, these examples you're coming up with are just bizarre.

Let's just focus.

Well, I'm just trying to throw out things that might happen to people in their everyday life.

Throw up or throw out, whatever it may be.

You can

grow into a pair.

Well, that's not really how it would work, but you can get a pair that will fit you just perfectly.

And with that perfect fit, you can hear music to keep you fit and get up and move with Raycon.

Yes.

And if you continue growing while you've got the regular earbuds, then sooner or later, your ears are going to get too big.

You're going to have to get the adult size.

But this is only if you're on the children's everyday earbuds.

They got the little teeny weeny ones, could be little teeny weeny ear holes.

But you want the adults because folks, you want to be able to listen to adult music and adult conversation and possibly the sound of adults doing adult things.

We don't know what you're listening to and we're not going to judge.

Let's focus on just music and podcast for this specific example.

Well, what about news?

What about sports?

What about weather?

That would be filed under podcast.

What about documentaries?

Well, let's, again, for this example.

What about me singing?

Is that filed under music?

I don't know if that's covered by the warranty.

Let's not focus on that, but Raycon is there for you to listen to what you want to listen to.

Use your own.

There's more here than meets the eye.

Your own ears.

There's more than meets the eye.

Well, no, if you put these in your eyes, not only will you not be able to hear, but you won't be able to see your shit.

Don't even suggest that.

Raycon, responsible like you, listen to your sounds with Raycon.

Yeah, if you put that little hook on the back of these inside,

you might be able to dangle them there, but I wouldn't call it.

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I'm letting it percolate.

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By raycon.com slash JCE.

We love them here.

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Okay, Jim, let's move on here.

Let's go back

once again across the sea to the endless run through Europe.

WWE Monday Night Raw.

Well,

i mean go back and and if the folks can depending on what manner that they're listening to us consuming our show uh here because what we just said

for smackdown

it's old at this point and i mean it it works with cena and cody i like the crowd was into it also but

Again, this is a two and a half hour show.

And by the time

that the singing and the chanting and the woeing and the cheering, it's a dream crowd.

But goddamn, it makes it a schlog to listen to or watch some of the television programs.

But having said that,

they tried a lot harder with Raw.

Raw had more

oomph to it.

Raw had more shit going on.

Raw had more mayhem and chaos and build to these big matches than SmackDown did.

I think we can say that without fear of contradiction.

Yeah.

It's just between the commercial, and this is on Netflix between the commercials and the travelogues and the spots and the long entrances and the backstage people chatting with each other just to fill up time.

I got no on-screen fast forward and I'm trying when they go to break, I'll come back in three minutes.

They're still in a commercial.

I come back in two minutes.

They're still in some kind of fucking spot.

It's like trying to drill for oil.

You don't know where to go when you're going to hit a gusher and actually see something you want to see.

Are you having this problem?

Or you just, you just leave it on and multitask, don't you?

It's become that, yeah.

It's not must-watch.

There may be a must-watch segment, and they've started off the show with Cena.

It's interesting that's been starting the show.

Yeah.

But there's a lot of stuff that

you kind of pay attention to, but you don't have to

stop doing what you're doing on the computer while it's on.

And then there's other stuff you really want to see, and you want to see everyone's reactions, and you want to see everything.

Again, the fans are singing to everything, so everything just feels like it's at one level.

But,

you know, I think.

Well, this one was.

Oh, go ahead.

No, that's all I have to say.

Well, this one was even better because they

had more words to the song and they did more of it.

But again, they were in London for Raw this March 31st.

They announced the number on the show, I think, 16,566.

If they were full last Friday,

that'd be there's 33,000 tickets in two nights in the same city.

And the arena shot before they even played any music, before anybody even came out.

They're panning this giant packed arena, and the fans are going, let's go, Cena.

Cena sucks.

Before anything's even happened.

And then they play Cena music and then John Cena sucks, John Cena sucks,

and he comes the ring, and they bring the music down, and the crowd makes various chants and noises.

And he raises the microphone like he's about to talk, and Cody's music plays.

And now we start this process all over again.

They're singing his song and the whoa,

and he's hugging fans and kissing babies on the way down the aisle.

He's dressed in in Al Capone's Halloween suit.

I don't.

And the music comes down so the whole arena sings the final verse, a cappella.

Oh, a cappella.

You didn't know I could sing a cappella, did you?

And then they sing.

Oh, come on now.

You're just jealous.

And then they sing Cody, Cody Rhodes,

and more sweeping crane shots of the packed arena.

We're 10 minutes into this fucking program.

People have walked to the ring to be sung to.

But then finally, Cody started.

And

his whole thing was, how you going to make fun of me?

How you going to, you know, blister me here with my lisp?

And the fans chanted Stardust.

And the neck tattoo.

And the fans chanted, Cody, Cody Rhodes.

Are you going to say I got booed in a company that I created?

And they kind of glossed over that.

Let's go, Cena.

Cena sucks.

And Cody demands to know why.

Tell the people why.

Why?

Let me jump in here before you review the rest of it.

What did you think of this?

That this is kind of the tact they've taken.

This is the road they've gone down.

The idea that Cody got his ass kicked by Cena, who turned on him, betrayed him, and beat him up, choked him out in front of the rock.

And they've they've done these promos these last few weeks and now it's tell them why they deserve to like, I don't know.

I don't know if that's the best.

I'm more mad that he parked on my grass and dug a hole in my yard than what he said to my neighbors.

What?

There's a bigger,

there's a bigger offense here.

Cody should be more of whoever told him to wear that suit.

Well, that's another thing entirely.

between the buttons that were rolling stones what the hell was that

but that's that's the thing is they they he kicked him into balls and he humiliated him but then they still had two months and they can't beat each other up every week and they're excellent promos

both of them can talk their ass off but i get what you're saying is that

It's and plus they have to just stand there and look at the other guy that, you know, they're kind of mad at or whatever, have the issue with for while that they're sung to for so long.

It, yeah, it does take some of the urgency away from these exchanges.

I want Cody to be mad that someone kicked his ass.

I want Cody to be mad that his hero, in his own words, that his friend turned on him.

Not

you have to tell the people what this is about.

Like, that's where, give me a fucking break.

You know, just be human.

That's why Cena, it was the ultimate heel promo because he told the truth throughout this whole thing.

And Cody stood there and heard it.

The other problem is, you know, I'll go back to this in a second.

You just need someone in between them.

The fact that Cena keeps getting right in Cody's face, right in his face.

And that's another thing.

Even when there's an announcer that's

allegedly conducting the interview and it gets interrupted and there's a back and forth, just visually and subliminally, there's somebody there that's still in control.

They can't just begin fighting, but they've been conditioned that there's nobody there and they can just begin fighting.

And then it's a letdown when they don't just begin fighting.

But Cena goes back because he said, yeah, he cuts the promo.

I'm not going to cook you.

I'm going to bury you.

I don't bury talent.

I am talent.

I bury mediocrity.

And he answered all his critics.

And said, the only reason is because basically I've been too good.

It's not that I've buried anybody else or kept anybody else down.

Cody's a manipulator was riding my coattails.

And I made this company so great that the WWE can hand the reins to my chauffeur as Cody used to drive him around.

You stole all my secrets to be undeniable, but you're underwhelming.

You're too perfect, polished, rehearsed.

You got a catchy tune that tricked these people into loving mediocrity.

But you're a generic mix of every star you've ever loved, all in a big, confused blob.

Man, and I mean, I he nailed it, honestly.

Yeah,

I mean, again, Cody's the babyface, but he said everything that's kind of true about Cody here.

Well, and that's the thing.

And I'm waiting, I was waiting, and he's not quite done.

And then I was waiting to see what Cody was going to say and how he was going to say it.

But Cena basically ate his lunch there, and we can't do it word for word.

It took a while, but I'm the last real champion, and I'm taking that belt home for good and exposing you as an errand boy that got lucky.

There's your why, pal.

And then Cody,

I mean,

it was pretty fucking close because he fired back up and he started eating fucking Cena's lunch.

And maybe I was chosen, but they chose me.

Who chose you?

The one guy in an office that's not here anymore and we don't talk about him?

And if anybody's a company creation, it's you, not me.

You've got more dick in your promo than you do in your jorts.

It sounded stern, but I'm not sure if you break it down exactly what it

meant.

I don't know.

But he said, you created a lot of disgusted fans,

disenfranchised fans.

that made it easy for me to leave and create something.

And finally, he said, between you and me, between the two of us in the ring, which one sold out to The Rock?

And that got a big pop.

And then you sold out.

And that's the first mention of The Rock since the Royal Rumble in terms of these two guys doing stuff.

And that was the only one that they made also.

The announcers will drop it in every now and then, but they won't.

I think they're placating

Mr.

Johnson, first name Rock.

with him being mentioned, but this is being personal between these guys, because that's what they need for this match.

But But

Cody told him, You're still my hero, but you're also a piece of shit.

And the fans chanted, piece of shit, piece of shit.

And then Cena fired back up at Cody and said, No matter what kind of garbage they gave me, I made it great.

Me, that's why you had to leave because I make empires for billionaires, and all you've ever done is steal money from their kids.

And that got the ooh.

Because even if

the normal audience for the WWE television tapings

in this country in

Butte, Montana, probably doesn't ooh

at any AEW references because

it's a wider, more casual audience.

But with the people in London, they knew what the fuck was happening there and they got it.

And then

Cody also said, wait a minute, before you go, they've never chanted at me, you can't wrestle.

And that's what gets Cena mad.

And he turns around to have the face off, and then he's going to turn back.

But then he swings, but Cody ducks it, hits him with a crossroads, one crossroads, Cena's laid out, unconscious, dead, potentially with no pulse.

And Cody stood over him and picked up the belt and walked out.

And it was 20 minutes long.

The

content

was great.

That would have taken maybe about seven or eight.

But now

they got another heat angle coming up before Mania.

They have to, because this isn't the way you'd go in.

So remember, you asked me last week, what do you think they'll do?

And

I didn't think they needed more than one physical angle.

between now and then or maybe a physical angle and a freshen up.

But since this was a physical angle light, one move, but the babyface came out ahead, I have a feeling Cena's going to do something to beat the fuck out of Cody coming up here before too long.

I mean, again, they got a few more weeks to have to do something else physical, and it can't be Cody gets the only physical thing in Tolmania, unless that's the justification for Cena walking out with the belt.

You know, I really enjoy the Cena stuff.

I do have a problem with him getting writing Cody's face over and over again, but if you watch him while he's doing it, the intensity,

is incredible.

And the smile, there's a few points where Cody thought he had him, and then Cena just shifted to a smile.

It was perfect.

We've never seen this kind of intense heel promo from him on a big stage.

I've liked it.

A lot of fans haven't.

I've been surprised in this WrestleMania season, the amount of people we've heard from who

think we're being too kind to the John Cena promos.

And

what do you think?

I mean, is it blurry?

Is it talking to Inside?

Is he making

for a John Cena heel run?

Is he doing enough?

Is it enough?

Is the direction of this and the reasoning for the feud with Cody enough?

What are your thoughts on the people who don't think this is really a great build?

It's probably because they don't like Cena.

It's a generational

showdown between the previous era and the current era.

I know, obviously, why they would want to have it, but at the same time, they needed a heel babyface dynamic of some kind for WrestleMania.

And so we were surprised that, you know, they would switch Cena during his retirement year, but now they've done it.

I don't think he needs to come out and talk to people and be a,

be a heel.

as he's being

with a goddamn finally i'm i i don't need need you people anymore.

Now, I'm friendly now.

I'm telling you what I really thought of you all this time because you and here's why, and all the things he said.

You took and took, and he's crying, he's whining.

I'm liking the promos, they don't need to cut each other's heads off with swords.

And

I mean, what other match right now would you want Cody to have

against any heel?

They're not going to put Cody at WrestleMania against

another big babyface.

They're not going to do that, I don't think, without a heavy personal issue.

So who would it be if not Cody and Cena?

Well, that's the question.

Do you think they've made the issue big enough?

Have they made it make sense enough?

I mean, Cody came out here this week and said, tell them what this is really all about, which is, you know, over a month after everything originally happened.

But I think it was good to draw anyway because it's fucking Cody and Cena.

And I think now they're just letting them cut the promos.

It's not

the hottest angle in the history of wrestling.

But having said that,

maybe the guys just want to come home.

They've been overseas selling out arenas everywhere, grossing millions of dollars.

Now they're going to come back and have two nights at a fucking stadium.

I don't know that they need to do the

DBase and Murdoch angle on Mid South Wrestling to draw.

I think that's honestly, I think that's what they're doing now.

Is they're just, they're sitting back.

And like I said earlier, they're doing enough in front of this crowd or they're doing enough in front of the fans to get them interested without anybody getting hurt and anybody

going crazy.

Have they successfully made this make sense?

If you're a wrestling fan and you have a friend who's a wrestling fan and they say, Hey, I've missed all the Cena Cody stuff, explain to me what their problem is.

Would you understand it?

Now, possibly.

Beforehand, it was just that, you know,

Cena sold out to The Rock and kicked Cody in the balls, but we don't really know why, because what

Rock offered Cody when he turned him down, Cena already has.

He's a movie star and a millionaire and all that stuff.

But once we got past that and the rock quit showing up.

Every once in a while they mention him, but it doesn't really get in the way.

Now, you know,

there's the problem.

If the whole thing is built around the idea, and this is what it should have been built around probably from the beginning, that Cena resents Cody for all the reasons he laid out here.

But I don't know about long-term how much damage it'll do when you say a lot of real shit about your top baby face.

I don't know, but there's at least something there.

If between now and WrestleMania, The Rock and Travis Scott show up again on TV and do something,

does it ruin all the progress of this?

Yeah, probably.

It depends on what it takes away from it one way or another, whether it helps or hurts.

It takes away in terms of attention being taken away from it.

I don't want to see Rock and or especially Travis Scott

show up anymore because he gets in the fucking way when everything makes sense that they're going to a direction that everybody seems happy with.

I'm talking about the fans with what, and then he shows up and then there's fucking controversy.

And things start getting put together in different order and fashion.

Well, we shall see what happens.

Again, we still have a few more weeks.

You know, WrestleMania would kind of be right around now.

It would either be this past weekend or this weekend coming up traditionally.

And here we are.

We have weeks to go.

And

yeah, I really hope they get back to the normal schedule.

I think the gap between

the rumble, then the Elimination Chamber and WrestleMania was way too long.

We are living it.

It is way too long as we are living it right now.

Well, actually, now I haven't missed having to watch another four four hours of fucking wrestling to talk about it.

It's been refreshing, but it is for their purposes a little long in between.

That's why they're kind of repeating and they're stretching.

Phil, Phil.

Anyway, there was another deal before we get to the

to the main event of the evening or whatever we're coming up on.

Jimmy Uso and Gunther.

And this was another one where I was trying to

fast forward through commercials and the match was already in progress when I found it.

And I didn't want to lose it again because I love Gunther.

As I said, him, Drew McIntyre, two of my top five.

He's unique today.

I don't get tired of watching him and he can make something out of anything.

But they're doing, obviously, Gunther is going to defend the title against Jimmy's brother, Jay.

So they had a match, and then Gunther hit boom,

a drop kick and a powerbomb cover, one, two, and pulled him up.

And then started taunting Jimmy and

hit him with a big boot and hit him with a clothesline and cover one, two, and pulled him up.

And I haven't seen this deal done in a long time.

And I haven't seen it done properly in even longer than that, but they did it here.

Jimmy was selling and trying to crawl, pull himself up with the ropes.

And Gunther grabs him with a sleeper and puts him out and wins the match and puts on the belt with his music playing.

And then he goes back to Jimmy and puts the sleeper on him again

and won't let go.

And then here Jay's music plays

and Jay hits the ring and they have a fucking fight.

And Gunther takes off through the crowd.

And then Jay goes to check on Jimmy.

And that was a great deal.

But when they go to the break,

When they come back, they're showing

Jay helping Jimmy out and, you know, trying to recover from what happened previously.

And here comes Gunther again

and attacks them from behind.

And security's trying to stop him.

And he power bombs one of them on the stairs.

And then he posts Jay and then

gets zip tie, a zip tie

from one of the security guys who one of the announcers dropped in.

Well, yeah, they're known to carry the zip ties.

These fucking security guys didn't look like they were allowed to carry anything but plastic sporks.

But

he zip ties Jay to the rope and then beats the shit out of Jimmy while taunting Jay

and hit Jimmy with the title belt and taunted some more and Jimmy came up bleeding.

And here's the, then when they got kicked into it,

Gunther just beat Jimmy bloody and choked him out right in front of Jay and Jay couldn't reach and Gunther was covered in Jimmy's blood.

And that part was a great heat angle.

But when

Gunther got the zip ties out and then started the taunting,

and I don't know whether he was waiting for Jimmy because Jimmy wasn't coming or what, but it took too long in the middle where Jay was zip tied and just trying to reach and pull.

And Gunther was taunting.

And even then, when he got a hold of Jimmy, the officials, the referees, referees, the agents were around ringside.

One of them, the security guy had already got power bombed, but there were people wearing suits and ties around ringside.

If they weren't going to be trying in vain,

frantically,

to free Jay so that he could help Jimmy, then they should have all fed in and let Gunther chop the fuck out of them.

Because with them standing around the ring,

that part,

when there was not a lot going on with the talent,

again, in the arena and even subliminally to the people

in the television audience,

the focus of their attention goes from, oh my God, look what he's doing to Jimmy in front of Jay to, well, why don't those motherfuckers do something?

They're just standing there.

It took a little sharp off.

It's like the

thunderstorms when they don't come through at peak heating.

They come through in the middle of the night when it's a cooler and it's taken a little bit of the fuel away.

It takes a little bit of your fuel away in the presentation that you're trying to create without people frantically

trying and failing, whether they're jumping up and Gunther's kicking them off and then going back to Jimmy or whether they can't find anything.

They'll cut through that heavy plastic and they're sawing with something.

There has to be an attempt.

Do you see what I'm saying?

This was great, but the pace should have been picked up and the middle tightened up.

And because this is the kind of angle that they used to do to get fucking fans in the ring.

And they really could have created some jeopardy there, but it was a little bit long and a little bit slow.

Tell me what you think.

I thought it was a lot of bit long, to be honest with you.

Well, and in English next time?

Yeah, maybe.

It took a while.

It was a good angle.

It's the best thing with Gunther in a little while.

What do you think they're going to do at WrestleMania?

Oh, Jay's winning that belt.

You think Jay was supposed to win the world title?

Oh, yeah.

Well, if not, then he'll be ready to have some sad singing and slow walking as troy graham would say and let him be laid out and have words spoken over him

um

the whole thing they've made jay look like a klutz he slipped on a dive a couple weeks ago so now they're doing the deal where oh he's

you know he's lost his confidence he gunther's in his head or however they're phrasing it and

Gunther's beaten his brother bloody in front of him.

I mean, you know, if he's not winning the belt at WrestleMania, then Jay has been significantly damaged as an attraction to me.

However,

if he does win the belt at WrestleMania, at this point, I don't know that it hurts Gunther.

It might be time for Gunther to do something else, but he's kind of established at this point, and he always turns in a bravura performance, whereas Jay

needs to win the big one because he's a lot of gimmick and a lot of flash and a lot of music and a lot of yeet,

and not a lot of

let me see 30 minutes of this guy wrestling hard.

Does it hurt him if he doesn't win?

Oh, definitely.

I mean, that's the thing.

It doesn't hurt Gunther, I don't think badly.

And at this point, with him setting records, big deal if he loses, but it

kicks Jay into balls if he loses, if he doesn't win that belt.

So that would be my,

unless they've said, well, maybe, Jay, you want to take a year off?

Okay, we'll do this angle just like this, then Gunther will beat you.

Thanks for coming.

That's the only

otherwise, he's winning.

What do you think of fans who are upset?

And I kind of think it's a non-issue, but Jay Uso and Charlotte Flair win the Royal Rumble.

Some fans think that it's not about getting your title match at WrestleMania.

It's about getting the main event at WrestleMania.

And obviously, the main event for night one or night two is going to be Cody versus Cena and then the three-way match with Roman Punk and Rollins.

Fans, there's some fans who think Jey Uso and Charlotte got gipped out of being in the main event.

Well, as much as I even like Charlotte, no, sorry.

That wasn't going to be the goddamn main event to begin with.

And

to me, the tradition has been the main event is, at least for the last couple of years since they've had it, the main event should be for whatever world title.

you know, each night and or last year they did the tag team thing.

But

no, no, you were never, Charlotte doesn't have an opponent right now, whether it be Rhea Ripley, my other favorite, or anybody else that would deserve main eventing over three or four of these matches.

And so I can understand being people.

I can understand being people.

I can understand people being upset that it's not one world title the other night and the other world title the next night.

Because technically, the world title match usually is the main event.

But

no, when you look at business, which which is going to be a bigger attraction?

CM Punk versus Seth Rollins versus Roman Reigns or Gunther versus Jey Uso.

There's not a contest there.

It's got to be the three-way.

So that is the main event because it is the most anticipated match, the match that will

create the most interest, sell the most tickets or the most views or whatever for that particular night.

And you can't argue with that.

So

then it just becomes, are you mad that, you know,

Jey Uso is not a strong enough challenger against Gunther to be the world champion and

fucking main event show?

It's not my fault.

Would you want to close the show with a big yeet celebration?

If you're going to do it, if you're going to do it and you're going to have whatever, I don't know what ticket sales are, 45,000 people.

standing up doing the yeet, do you give them, do you end the show with that kind of celebration?

i don't think it needs to end the show to get a massive you know great feeling and a feel-good moment and all kinds of highlights and footage out of that i don't think it has to be on last

and it depends on what they're doing

in because have we have we figured out nights yet

because

whatever night that the jey uso and gunther match will be on, make them feel good, especially if the main event, what goes on after, might not make them feel good.

They might not be happy about that.

So, at least, you know, it just depends on what else is going on that particular show.

All right.

Well, speaking of particular shows, you mentioned the main event.

Oh, did you see the tag match before you?

Oh, yes.

Uh, Braun and Pinta, and Finn, and Dom.

And again, you know, they didn't give this very much time.

They did the, you know, maybe two minutes to the break deal.

Uh, I love Braun Breaker's comeback where he gave Finn and Dom a double vertical suplex and held them for a second.

And then

Braun and Penta, I will say, meshed better as a team than what you might have been afraid that they might.

And they even did the old Steiner Bulldog off the top rope tag team move.

But again, basically,

they went kind of an awkward setup at the end of the thing, but Braun was coming with a spear trying to spear Finn and Finn moved and he speared Penta instead.

And then Finn double-stomped Penta one, two, three.

So

like you said, I think last week or on one of the shows, his brother's coming in, Penta.

And maybe that's an excuse to I need somebody I can depend on because this was just a, I didn't want to team with Braun Breaker anyway, that type of thing.

And it keeps that alive.

Braun's not particularly a babyface, but they like him probably

as much as anybody here.

But was that what you were talking about?

There was that match.

There was also

AJ Styles and Logan Paul.

Did you see that?

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

I, you know,

I was a fan of Logan Paul's when I said, wow, this guy's a natural.

And holy shit, he's exceeding his time in the business and his experience level.

And boy, he can really talk and be a heel.

And then we found out he is just a fucking dick in person.

So he's not even really talented.

He's just playing himself he's very trumpy uh

but

aj came out it does aj look lost to you like he's from another time and he's just landed and

you know after a

space warp and he used to be a big deal but everything's passed him by and now they've picked him to have the big high spot match with douchebag Logan Paul, because that way they can do a bunch of spots with each other and Logan will be happy and be interested.

Did that what it say?

Was that what it seemed like to you when they exchanged their awkward, scripted verbiage?

And at one point, Logan Paul just broke into a tirade on the audience and ignored AJ, just walking past him, insulting each audience member individually.

And then they get in a fight, and

Logan Paul nuts him and gives him a big flippy move that looked great and AJ was laid out the end.

I think that they're there to give Logan Paul a nice match where he can do high spots and be happy and talk about it on social media.

Prove me wrong.

I don't know who's going to prove you're wrong.

AJ does.

AJ hasn't done anything interesting in a long time.

And then he's been in and out a few times because of injuries.

He's older now, too.

Someone should cut his hair.

Why does everybody have to have their hair cut?

I'm proud of him.

He's that age.

He's still got his hair.

But no, that's what it's not anything against him as a talent.

It's just that it seems like, wow, this is so long ago when everybody else is fresher.

And it's not his fault he hadn't done anything interesting because they didn't tell him to do anything interesting.

But he's still,

it's like, you know, he's left over from the previous administration.

Well, once again, possibly an underwhelming WrestleMania buildup to what will be on WrestleMania, but there was a main event.

There was a main event on Raw.

There certainly was.

Rhea Ripley versus EO Sky for the women's title with Bianca Belair as the referee.

And boy, howdy, I'll tell you.

They started Bianca to the ring from the time that we left AJ Styles being laid out

through Bianca's entrance and commercial breaks and Rhea's entrance at EO.

It was over 15 minutes by the time they started this match from the previous deal.

And

is it okay match?

And again, people are going to say, oh, fuck Jim Cornette because he doesn't realize EO Sky is the best women's wrestler in the world today.

I don't care.

Because I'm not saying that she should be run out of town and run out of the country and never allowed to work and have gainful employment again.

I'm saying, I'm not interested.

She's small.

She does the

besides the fact that she does the ridiculous

karate kung fu movie choreographed stuff that there's Rhea's a foot taller and has got to be stooging for it, etc.

I'm sorry, I see Bianca as a main event women's champion level person.

So I see Rhea, just because EO can do a lot of the wrestling moves, she's still small, she can't cut a promo, And I don't see her in the main event or in the women's title deal with these other two.

And there was a couple of times where both of them, I thought, were going to break their fucking necks because they kept trying to do one was a reverse hurricane Rana on the floor.

And then the other one, they were trying to do something off the top rope.

And on the floor, when EO went and lost Rhea's head, and then Rio went and fell on EO.

And then on the other one,

she almost lost her off the top rope, but Rhea brought her back up and they gave her a big wing ding off of that.

But

and then, seconds later, EO was okay.

But the point I'm making is they go through a bunch of two counts.

They had a fine fucking match.

This was better than most of the men's matches on AEW, much less any of the women's.

But I just don't care that EO Sky can do a bunch of fucking moves.

So finally, with Bianca as the referee,

she gets in a way.

Rhea catches Bianca with a kick that's meant for EO and then gives EO the riptide,

but there's no referee for the count.

And the crowd counted to like 12.

Then Rhea's yelling at Bianca, get back in here.

She gets a cover and gets a two count.

And then she's still mad at Bianca, but

Rhea gets back back on EO and won't break.

So Bianca pulls Rhea off of EO.

And then Rhea slaps Bianca,

but EO comes off the top rope with a drop kick, but Rhea moves and EO hits Bianca.

And then Bianca calls for a double disqualification and the crowd booze that and not necessarily in the right way.

But as of this point, they're still fighting, but we've established that

the crowd likes EO

and wants to see her succeed because they pull for the underdog.

The crowd likes Ria

and likes it when she does shit, whether it's to Bianca,

but they don't like it when anybody does anything to EO, including they don't like Bianca when she tries to do anything to Eo.

Have I described this just about right?

The fans like EO, yes.

Well, yeah, but they're picking other people's side.

They like everybody except when certain people do certain things to certain other people.

And then they're not happy about that.

But Rhea and Bianca fought on the floor while Bianca was throwing punches at Rhea, but she was looking at the ring because EO was about to dive in on them.

EA dove on them.

Each one of them fought the other one.

And then finally, Ria head-butted and riptided

Bianca and riptided EO

and was going to leave both of them laying, but then the fans chanted one more time.

So Rhea went back in and got Bianca and picked her up on the second rope and gave her a riptide off the second rope.

And apparently now, obviously, we're going to have a three-way, another three-way for WrestleMania with all of these folks involved.

Well, we knew it.

That was the direction they've been going in.

I guess this is another one we ask, what would it be if they didn't have these extra weeks of buildup for WrestleMania?

It feels like nothing, I mean, so far, nothing feels like it's peaking at the right moment.

I don't know.

Something's already got there and it's starting to droop.

You're like, two more weeks already?

Yeah.

Well, that was wrong.

But everybody has a reason for what they're doing, and they got a lot of stars on the card, but there's still similarities with one thing to another.

That again,

if I was punk and Drew and

Schyster, Seth, I wouldn't want women or any other men to have a three-way on the show except for me.

You mean Roman, not Drew?

Or not Roman or not Drew.

You know what I'm saying?

Yes.

See, it's so confusing.

Just prove my point.

But if I was, yes, if I was punk and Seth and Roman.

having a three-way, I wouldn't want to have anybody else having a three-way on the same fucking show.

Well, that was WWE Raw

once again in Europe.

They're coming home, I guess,

soon.

But with that, we shall return momentarily with more drive-through.

All right, we have returned.

Time travel to return shortly.

But, Jim, let's play some guest the program.

All righty.

If that's okay with you.

That's perfectly fine with me there, fella.

Of course, this is where I go through programs in my collection.

Some that I've had for a while, some that I've just obtained, but I'm getting ready to file them away.

So I have them here.

We go through them.

Jim guesses the location, the date,

the bell time.

Oh, come on now.

And everything else.

But, all right, let's get going here.

I got an interesting card.

I was a little surprised looking at the main event here.

The opening contest:

Big Moose Cholak Cholak

versus Fred Atkins.

Ooh.

For a title I will not name.

The champion Johnny Case

versus Johnny Gilbert.

A ladies tag team match.

Shirley Strimple

and Corinne Cordero

versus Betty Clark and Babe Bittner.

I can honestly say I don't know any of those four women.

Shirley Strimple, I have heard of.

I've heard of Strimple.

And

not Shirley Temple, by the way.

Shirley Strimple.

And not George Temple.

But Dick Steinborn versus the Mighty Atlas.

A tag match.

Sweet Daddy Seeky and Seaman Art Thomas

versus the fabulous Kangaroos,

who are listed as World Tag Team Champions.

And the main event for the World's Heavyweight Championship,

Pat O'Connor

versus the Crusher.

Oh,

well.

Boy howdy.

At first, I was thinking when I heard Fred Atkins, immediately I was like, what the fuck is Moose Cholak doing in Toronto?

Because Moose Cholak,

one thinks of the Midwest, Chicago, Indianapolis, but Fred Atkins was

a wrestler and later a manager early on in the Northeast and in Toronto.

But Johnny Case and Johnny Gilbert bring it back to Chicago.

The girls' tag is immaterial to this.

Steinborn and the Mighty Atlas.

Mighty Atlas was Morris Shapiro,

and he was a big deal in the Midwest and in Chicago.

Dick Steinborn,

because of the time era that this would be, was,

oh, he'd probably been in the business six, seven, eight years at this point, was the son of Milo Steinbourne, the famous strongman from the 30s and 40s, who was a promoter for Eddie Graham in Florida for years and years.

And Dick Steinborn was also a noted photographer.

Did you know that, Brian?

Wrestling Wrestling photographer.

Well, he liked to take pictures, but he did some wrestling photography.

No, I did know that.

I believe Scott Teal has those, and it may be because Dick Steinborn ended up owing him money, like he owed a lot of people.

I believe he was also known as a bit of a locker room.

What's the word I'm looking for?

Light-fingered Louie.

He didn't mind touching other people's stuff and just leaving the building with it.

He would touch their junk.

And

Sweet Daddy Seeky and Seaman Art Thomas, before he became sailor Art Thomas, seaman

didn't have as many connotations back in that time period,

were a popular African-American tag team about that time in the Chicago area.

And the kangaroos, they were the world tag team champions.

They wrestled all over.

The world heavyweight title

with Pat O'Connor and the Crusher.

This is what, and you said, it's odd to you,

that would almost take you away from Chicago because

O'Connor was not noted.

It wasn't until they had a bunch of NWA title matches there until Rogers won the belt in Chicago.

Of course, that's where Rogers beat O'Connor in 1961.

So

we're in Chicago and it's 1960.

Are you talking to me on mute?

I'm on mute, and it's 2025.

The program,

the International Amphitheater,

Halstead Street, Chicago,

May 26, 1961.

No!

Oh!

See, the O'Connor being champion thing, if you assume that, again, you could have assumed it was the crusher as the champion somewhere else.

Well, but no.

But you would only have a short window, and that was the window.

So it was right before this was, they were giving O'Connor a win over Crusher in Chicago to set up the match with Rodgers, is what you're saying to me.

I presume so.

Let me see.

I just put it down, but no, the results are not marked in this one.

Not marked.

There's a big cut in the cover, though, but all right.

Jim, the next program here.

The first match, one fall, 15-minute time limit.

Oscar Salazar, 210 out of Barcelona, Spain,

versus Texas Tiger Romo,

204, El Paso, Texas.

Okay, immediately, you stop there.

I can name this song in two notes.

No, I'm kidding.

Go ahead.

A special event, tag team match, one fall to a finish.

Bob Bomber Hamby, 205 out of Charlotte,

and Mickey Sharp, 206, the blonde bombshell out of Houston, versus Alejandro Cruz,

200 pounds, the human rocket out of Mexico City,

and Ray Crosby, 209 out of Albuquerque.

Ray Crosby?

I didn't know Bing's brother got into business.

The first main event, two out of three falls, or 60-minute time limit.

Paul de Gaulle, 213,

at a Paris, France, the fancy Frenchman, claimant of the International Junior Heavyweight Championship,

versus Gory Guerrero,

212,

World Light Heavyweight Champion.

So finally, somebody I've heard of.

The second main event, two out of three falls, 60-minute limit.

The Mummy,

two eleven, from somewhere in South America, weirdest wrestler in the world,

vs.

Juan Garcia, two ten, Albuquerque, New Mexico, popular wrestler.

And finally, triple main event, winner take all, loser leaves town rematch,

two out of three falls, or sixty minute time limit.

Andre Drapp,

200 pounds.

Mr.

France, Paris,

unsatisfied on last week's decision, issued challenge

versus the Mad Mongol,

227 pounds.

Claw hold expert,

seldom lost rematch.

That's it, huh?

That's it.

Boy, howdy.

Um,

first match, obviously, never heard of.

I've heard of the name Bob Hamby

in that second match.

Obviously, Gory Guerrero, the father of Chavo and Hector and Eddie and Mondo,

grandfather of Chavo Jr.

and Paul de Gaulle, the mummy in this incarnation.

I'm not sure, but the most famous mummy was Benji Ramirez.

And

with Andre Drap, who, again, I've heard the name,

the Mongol could have been anybody.

This has got to be

either West Texas or New Mexico, especially with some of the hometowns.

Gory Guerrero

may very well have had a hand in promoting the fucking thing.

But if this was,

if this was Ramirez was the mummy, it would have been 1970,

71, 72, that time period.

If not,

I still maintain

that it's West Texas, El Paso, or New Mexico.

And

with Andre Drapp in the main event, it seems like it would be older back in the 60s.

I don't know.

1970, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The date?

February 26, 1963.

No!

The program 15 cents.

El Paso Wrestling Program.

And this is a special one celebrating our first birthday.

Tonight marks the first anniversary of International Wrestling Enterprises, bringing to the people of El Paso the wonderful sport of wrestling.

Thank you, fans, for making it possible.

That may have even been before Gorey had part of the promotion, possibly.

But if that's 1963, which, like I said, with Andre Drapp, I thought it would.

Is that Benji Ramirez, the mummy, or is it just a regular old outlaw mummy?

Or can you tell from the picture?

I can't tell, but I'll double-check against other things afterwards.

Four beautiful girls have been signed to appear here in El Paso next week.

The promoter,

and maybe we can talk him into wrestling.

The promoter, Dr.

Gardea,

received a good number of letters of girl wrestlers asking for a chance to meet the peppery Miss Olga Martinez.

Anyway, Dr.

Gardia has signed up the following girl wrestlers: Ann Casey, Olga Martinez, Brenda Scott, Judy Grable.

We still don't know if the promoter is going to book them in a singles match or tag team match.

And there it is.

All right, let's get our next.

I saw Ann Casey wrestle live in 1975.

She had her leopard print one-piece bathing suit on and the big

black hair and a whole nine yards.

All right, this one here.

Interesting program.

The opening bout: Irish Danny McShane versus Jackie Nichols.

As it says here, a colored girls' tag team match:

Lulu May Provo

and Babs Wingo

versus Marva Scott and Kathleen Wimbley.

An Australian tag team match.

Dr.

Jerry Graham and Professor Roy Scheier

vs.

Wilbur Snyder and Chief Big Heart.

Tarzan Killer Kowalski

versus Zaya Nandor

out of Budapest, Hungary.

How do you spell that first one?

C

Z A Y A.

That's right.

N-A-N-D-O-R.

Was he any relation to, or was it even the same guy, Bob Nandor?

I don't know.

I'll see if he's.

But he was Hungarian here, though.

The Saya Nandor.

Yes.

Carl von Hess

versus Eduardo Carpentier.

And finally, the dream match of the century.

Antonino Raca,

uncrowned champion versus Ricky Starr, undefeated sensation.

Greenwich Village, New York.

Okay.

Boy, howdy, when you said Danny McShane and Jackie Nichols,

I was thinking, is this out in the Olympic Auditorium?

Danny McShane was all over everywhere.

Jackie Nichols, i seem to associate with california wrestling uh the girls tag marva scott and babs wingo were sisters as has been talked about with the new queen of the ring movie along with ethel johnson

and lulu may provo and kathleen wimbley

were i think the first two

uh black girls that came along afterwards.

And

goddamn, since the last one of the sisters sisters didn't debut until 1954, we've got Jerry Graham and Roy Shire as partners against Wilbur Snyder and Chief Bigh.

Snyder, of course, I don't think debuted until 55.

He played pro football for the Edmonton Eskimos.

Jerry Graham and Shire would have been a team,

or at least able to be a team in the late 50s.

Kowowski and Nandor,

Von Hess and Carpentier, Raqqa and Star

is what.

Are you trying to fool me with a Madison Square Garden card?

Or is this, again, a

Toronto or a Philadelphia?

I don't think it's Toronto, even though a lot of these guys were over at that

market.

It's either,

oh, goddammit.

It may not be Madison Square Garden, but it's a major city in the Northeast.

And it's, I'm just going to pick a year.

It's 19

before Jerry got Eddie, maybe 1958.

Very close.

The date, June 10th, 1957.

Ah!

Official program, Griffith Stadium, Washington, D.C., Vince McMahon promoter.

Yeah, it didn't look like a garden card, but that was the time period.

And it's just,

you know, different matchups than what was drawing the big money, except for Raqqa and Star.

They had a couple of matches in the garden, did they not?

I don't know for sure.

I'd have to go back and check, but it is interesting.

You know, if you go back to the beginning of the century, there were matches in boxing and wrestling called the Match of the Century.

Yeah.

Here's another one: The Dream Match.

Hey, here was one.

Here was one we had here in Louisville.

Austin Idol versus Jerry Lawler, Grudge Match of the Year.

Guess what the date was?

What was the date?

January 4th.

First show of the fucking year.

Yeah.

But this is the dream match of the century, Raqqa versus Star.

It's interesting thinking about that being, you know, the big dream match.

Well, Raqqa and Star, similar in styles, if anybody could be similar to either one of those guys.

Well, and now the people get the idea they were jumping off the top rope constantly.

They weren't really high flyers as much as the

Raqqa had the acrobatics, the leapfrogs, and the drop kicks, and the kicking the guy in the face with his foot, and the shoulder ride.

Whereas Ricky Starr legitimately had the ballet background,

and he also was

apparently a fairly salty shooter and combined that to do the spinning and the pirouettes and the leaping and the kicks.

And he ended up for a couple of years in this country.

He was one of the biggest box office attractions in the business and then went and had a long run in Europe and kind of disappeared from the United States in the 60s.

But Raqqa and Starr, because both of them were so unique and had that,

you know, mutual odd style, that was kind of the two guys that were

in fans' mind.

Oh, we'd like to see this guy against that guy.

So they did it.

I got to send you a picture of this.

It's a picture of Dr.

Jerry Graham.

It says, inside dope.

Dr.

Jerry Graham, popular Matt star, gives Morris Siegel, the nation's top TV sports commentator, some inside information on wrestling over the Capitol Arena TV network.

Do you know too much about the other Morris Siegel, the one who's not a wrestling promoter?

Well, I thought that's the one you were talking about until you just said that.

And I was like, what is Morris Siegel doing up there on

the Capitol Wrestling TV network?

Yeah, I got to look for the.

I thought it was Lance Russell on first sight.

We'll see what we can find out.

That's the capital program.

Let's get another one here.

This one's not a program.

This is a postcard with an attached pass that you can cut off.

Ah.

The

two other big bouts that are not listed here.

Let me just say that.

Will Weidner

versus Gorilla Ramos.

Billy Hansen versus Jumping Jack Claiborne.

Okay.

The unmasked Golden Terror

versus Irish Pat Fraley.

And finally,

by public demand and edict,

the Cougar

versus Vincent Lopez

resume their feud.

Okay.

Will Wheaton, was he in the first match listed?

Widener or Weidner, W-E-I-D-N-E-R.

Yeah, I got no idea.

Gorilla Ramos, there was an Apache Bull Ramus, but this is way before his time because of a name in the next match.

I don't know who Hansen was, but Jack Claiborne

was one of the first

African-American male stars, along with the Black Panther, Jim Mitchell, and Seeley Samara.

He was of that same

generation.

So this,

to me, and

again, the unmasked golden terror, who the fuck knows?

Pat Fraley,

again, a name that I've heard from

the 40s and the cougar, no idea, but Vincent Lopez

was not only the top babyface, the top draw in

Los Angeles and a lot of Southern California.

In the 1940s, he had one version of the world title out there.

And I think he was

probably the top guy right before the television era when Gorgeous George came in and that took over Hollywood Wrestling.

Would I be crazy to say that this is some kind of

suburb of the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles in the Southern California area

sometime around the mid 1940s, 1946, let's say.

You know, I mean,

it was such a hard one to figure out.

You came so close.

That was actually excellent.

It's at the Olympic.

Okay.

The Olympic Auditorium, Wednesday.

It just didn't seem like a big enough card.

Wednesday, April 11th, 1945.

Oh,

and this

the day before FDR died.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

And this pass here, which is again a postcard that has a perforated part that you could just rip off, this card entitles you to a 50% discount on ringside and lower floor reserve seats.

Present this card at the box office Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday in exchange for your ringside and reserved seats.

No phone orders, please.

Save and see a great wrestling show.

Void after 8 p.m.

on day of show.

And then it has here reserve 50%,

$1, federal tax 40 cents, state tax 10 cents, total $1.50,

or reserve 50%,

50 cents, federal tax, 20 cents, state tax, 5 cents, 75 cents.

But there it is, the Olympic auditorium.

Okay.

April.

And that was 1945.

And I have, again, I mentioned Jim Mitchell's.

I have his date book, and I've talked about this before that John Cosper found when they he found the guy that had bought Jim Mitchell's house.

And

it was about a year or two later.

I'm trying to think what it's, I can't reach it, 46 or 47, but Jim Mitchell came in and had a main event at the Olympic with Gorgeous George, and it caused a riot.

And that was a famous match in Los Angeles history at that point point in time.

And his records indicate that he got paid $140 for that main event against Gorgeous George.

Now, with those prices that you just quoted,

if the Olympic Auditorium drew 5,000 people,

that was probably,

what, a $5,000 or $6,000 house because tickets were around $1 a piece.

Gorgeous George would have made $500 because he always got 10% at least, right?

Depending on what the after-tax was.

But point being,

when you figure for inflation, because I was doing this for another project, 1946, a dollar today, it's almost 20 times.

Somewhere around, I think, $17, $18 or whatever.

Jim Mitchell would have got, yeah, he got like a $2,500 payoff, but Gorgeous George got almost $10,000 in today's money in those days for a main event at the Olympic Auditorium.

What are your thoughts on the idea of sending out a weekly postcard to your regular customers?

Or I guess not your regular.

I mean, your regulars probably don't need a discount to come in.

They'll be the

one.

That's the thing.

It was World War II.

It wasn't over yet.

A lot of the guys were in service.

Look at this fucking card, the unmasked golden terror, the cougar.

There's two people on the card that even we have ever heard of.

Well, Vincent Lopez was a big star.

Yes, Lopez and Claiborne.

But that's the thing is that Southern California wrestling and a lot of wrestling, anything that didn't involve Wild Bill Longson during World War II was down.

For some, that's he vaulted ahead of everybody and he was old enough they didn't draft him.

And he was drawing mega money in Toronto and St.

Louis and Houston.

and all these different places, but in a lot of other locations, wrestling was down.

It wasn't setting setting the world on fire in Southern California, and there was no wrestling in Madison Square Garden.

So they were sending out passes trying to revitalize

what was going on out there.

And then by the time TV came in and Gorgeous George, then the Olympic was the place to be and they didn't need to give discounts.

But these things come and go.

All right.

This next one, we'll see how in your wheelhouse it is.

The big thing is for you to guess the year, I guess.

The opening ball.

I'm off on the years today for whatever reason.

The opening bout, Les Thornton versus Nick Koninski.

Or Kiniski, excuse me.

Kiniski.

C.

V.

Offy, or as it says here, Civa Offee

versus Jake Roberts.

Billy Jack Haynes versus Hercules Hernandez.

Adorable Adrian Adonis

vs.

Tony Mr.

USA Atlas.

Corporal Kirschner vs.

Paul Mr.

Wonderful Orndorf.

The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff vs.

Mike Rotundo and Dan Spivey.

A tag title match one fall one hour time limit.

Dynamite kid and Davey Boy Smith, the champions,

versus JJ Funk and Haas Funk,

the challengers.

For another championship, which I won't name,

Randy Macho Man Savage, the champion, versus Pedro Morales, the challengers.

Oh my god.

And finally, the main event, one fall, one hour time limit.

King Kong Bundy and Big John Studd

versus the super machine and the giant machine.

And uh, giant was Andre was super was that mulligan or was that Edie?

I think it was Bill Edie.

Boy, howdy, wait, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine matches.

Or if you want to do it this way: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, twenty twenty-four stars on the card.

Did you notice

every time you do an old show, Brian, from the 40s or 50s or maybe 60s, there's like three matches, four matches, five matches.

And today there's like nine matches, 10 matches, 11 matches.

The formula for paying the boys never changed.

You're just cutting instead of six slices of the pie, you've got 24.

And that's what happened to money in wrestling as they had to make the cards bigger.

They just didn't increase the fucking

percentage of the payoff.

But, nevertheless, this is obviously the WWF.

Nick Kiniske was a son of Gene Kiniski and brother of Kelly Kiniski.

He broke in

around the time we were in Dallas.

We worked with him some in world class.

Jake, everybody knows who all these people are.

I can't even really give you any trivia except Jimmy Jack and Haas Funk were Jesse Barr and Dory Funk Jr.

because

Vince didn't like the name Dory, I guess.

And when Terry left to care for his sick horse the first time, they brought Jimmy Jack in as the other brother.

Can you imagine that conversation?

Listen, I hate Junior.

Okay, we don't have to use Junior.

No, I hate Dory, too.

But Haas is okay.

The Savage match was the Intercontinental title because that's when Pedro was champion, right?

No, it's and Savage was champion.

Was Savage champion then?

All right,

but nevertheless, the point is: this is the WWF.

It doesn't seem like it's the garden.

I don't remember the machines maintaining the garden, but anything could have happened.

But the year would have to be

for all these people to be there and in those positions, would it have to be 1986

or late 85?

The day.

Oh, go ahead.

I'm saying I'm just

Philadelphia.

Man.

What?

The day, Monday, August 25th, 1986.

Madison Square Garden.

Madison Square Garden.

New York, Dark.

You talked yourself out of it.

I talked myself out of it.

All right.

Well, nevertheless.

A lot of matches, though.

I mean, that's the thing.

You don't see,

I mean, nowadays it's TV tapings with long promos, obviously, a different animal animal altogether.

But look at how many matches are on this show.

And it was televised.

And they were probably all still five minutes long.

All right, final program here today.

This is going to be a tough one.

Uh-oh.

Event number one:

KO Ken Yates

versus Danny Little Bear.

The second event,

Evil Eye Valentine

versus Chief Crazy Horse.

Oh, good Lord.

There will then be an intermission.

The third event, Tito Carrion

versus Pancho Rosario.

Pancho Rosario also worked at one point in time as either Gypsy Rosario, and I think he may have even tried to be Gypsy Joe.

And that's Bruno San Martino,

isn't it?

That's right.

He was Bruno San Martino.

Then there's Baby Blimp versus Dick Steinborn.

Okay, Baby Blimp is George Harris, George Tuton Harris, George Bunk Harris.

He wrestled as the baby blimp because he was childhood friends with Roy Welch and Buddy Fuller.

Well, with Buddy Fuller, and Roy Welch was already an adult, but he was friends with the Fuller and Welch family.

And he broke in as a wrestler, and he looked like a littler version of Martin the Blimp Levy.

He was like 600 pounds.

So he worked as the baby blimp and then became a manager, George Tuton Harris.

But all the boys called him Bunk

because of his stories he used to tell.

And

he ended up being.

one of the maintenance guys along with Klondike Bill for Crockett Promotions.

And briefly, before he finally retired, I think 1990, worked for TBS.

So he went all the way from outlaws with the fucking Fuller family in the 40s to working for Turner Broadcasting.

And who do you wrestle, Baby Blimp?

Baby Blimp versus Dick Steinbourne.

Steinborn, he's back again.

Okay.

Ray Gunkel

versus Wild Man Weiba.

Okay, Ray Gunkel.

Obviously, was the husband of Ann Gunkel, and Ray Gunkel was an NCAA champion wrestler that became became the top babyface in Georgia and owned part of the promotion.

And when he had the heart attack and died, and they tried to split the company, and that's what led to the Georgia wrestling war.

Jim Weiba, Skandor Akbar, oh, Jimmy Weiba.

Wild Man Weeba.

Wild Man Weiba.

The butcher

versus Greg Peterson.

There's not a picture here, so I can't help you with

if it's Paul Vachon or someone else.

Another intermission.

And then finally,

tag team match.

Main event of the evening.

Two different sets of titles.

I don't know if it's a giveaway or not.

Ah, what the fuck.

What the fuck?

European champions versus southern champions.

Both titles are at stake.

The Infernos,

managed by J.C.

Dykes, the European champions,

versus Enrique and Alberto, the Torres Brothers.

Torres Brothers.

The Southern champions.

Okay.

Well,

you said this would be hard.

Actually, this one's easier than that other fucking fiasco you gave me.

Danny Little Bear.

He was just on the card at that point, but Danny Little Bear was big in the central states.

This is not there.

Kansas City area for a long time, and he did a lot of work in Tennessee in the 70s.

He also went to, he lived in western Kentucky for a while and went to jail for some type of improprieties, I think, and carrying things around he wasn't supposed to have.

Tito Carrion was an old-timer, as was Poncho Rosario, the baby blimp and Steinborn we talked about, Ray Gunkle and Weba.

We talked about.

Greg Peterson was a baby face at a variety of the southern territories,

especially over in Mobile, Alabama and southern Alabama.

The butcher, I think, was Paul Vashon rather than Abdullah the Butcher, because we are in Georgia and it is the 19,

late 1960s, I believe,

possibly early 70s.

I haven't narrowed that down yet.

The Infernos were Frankie Kane.

And I believe his partner at that time would have been Rocky Smith.

J.C.

Dykes Dykes was their longtime manager.

He was from down around Chattanooga, Tennessee, and

managed all over the South for a long time.

The Inferno Frankie Kane had the loaded boot, and they also threw fire.

And

the Torres brothers, which two of the three were these?

This was Alberto and Enrique?

That is correct.

And there were three Torres brothers, but again, they were

two of the biggest babyfaces in the Georgia territory in the late 60s and early 70s as

Hispanic talent, but they just, they caught on.

And Enrique had been a major star on the West Coast, you know,

10 years earlier.

Well, you expect that because California has a Hispanic population, but in those days in Atlanta, that was like, wow.

So it is Atlanta, and I bet you it's the city auditorium.

And the only thing I'm looking for is the year.

And I'm going to just pluck something out of the fucking air and say 1968.

Oh, man.

Again, you give me that.

Atlanta's wrestling program, The Ringsider, on the cover, Atlanta's favorite son, Ray Gunkel.

25 cents, Friday, July 8th, 1966.

Ah!

Well, there you go.

Goddamn, I'm good on the places.

I'm fucking up on the dates this time.

Program subject to change.

We reserve the right to change the order of events.

The promoter is not responsible if contestant failed to appear in the ring due to conditions beyond our control, such as injuries, illness, accidents, etc.

When possible, substitute matches.

When possible, there's no comma.

When possible, substitute matches will be made.

The law forbids throwing objects into the ring.

Do you like to have someone throw things at you?

We're sure you don't.

That's why we ask you not to throw anything into the ring or at the wrestlers.

Throwing objects at a wrestler also is a violation of the city ordinance, and anyone caught is subject to arrest, fine, and imprisonment.

No, that used to be in a ton of programs because people, we talked about this the other day on one of the shows.

People would beam the heels with anything they could get a hand, a hold of or get their hands on.

That's why they quit selling glass bottles in arenas, but anything that was in a woman's purse or a guy's pocket or what they could pick up or wad up.

It was, you know,

it was an issue.

On the back cover, we also have an ad.

There's lots of ads for local

motel.

There's at the Atlanta Sports Arena, there's dancing and all.

Was the varsity advertising back then with the wrestling?

I don't see that.

Refrigeration mechanic by Atlantic Fixture and Sales Company.

The varsity is the

largest fast food place in the state of Georgia.

Maybe it's a giant thing, a huge parking parking lot, drive-in, burgers, dogs, that type of thing.

Well, we have a nice photo here of Fred Blassey.

It says, Fred Blassey says, by all means, come and see me at all means.

I screwed it up.

By all means, come see me at Al Means Four Ford.

I can't say this.

Fred Blassey says, by all means, come see me at Almeans Ford City,

1665 Scott Boulevard, Decatur, Georgia.

Get the Blassey deal on a new 66 Ford car or truck or good used car.

No other dealer can beat my deal.

They wouldn't dare.

And he was working there.

He was a salesman there.

Blassey had had kidney issues and had a kidney removed and retired.

from wrestling for what was it a year, year and a half, maybe that period of time.

It was living in Georgia and taking advantage of his celebrity?

Because he had been a huge draw there as a babyface and a heel.

Well, that was this week's edition of Guess the Program.

And you know what?

We promised questions, questions next week.

We had a lot to go over and there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

And we in fact have phone calls to quickly jump on soon.

Yes.

And also, I have fun guessing the program, even if I fuck it up.

But, Jim, if people feel they were ripped off and the show wasn't long enough today, they may want to sue.

Well, if they want to sue, I'll tell you what, they can go ahead and try because we can do anything we want.

And I'll tell you who else can do anything that he wants to do at a court of law, and that's this man.

If you need to see

news to reduce to the news to reduce

an outlaw

or two

yes, ladies and gentlemen, Stephen P.

New at new lawoffice.com, 87750 Steve.

Brian, I'm going to tell you what, this is serious today because

do you know that Stephen P.

New has collected so far,

over, not collected, I don't know, has been awarded awarded for his clients over $12 million in judgments because of his crusade against the West Virginia jails and their horrible systemic problem with overcrowding, bad oversight, lack of health care.

West Virginia had the highest death rate in the country in their regional jails from 2009 to 2019, 50% higher than the national average.

And

these are people in most cases that haven't been convicted of anything.

They've been arrested and they're awaiting trial.

Whether they're

guilty or innocent has not even been determined, but they can't afford bail.

So they get stuck in these jails and they end up dead.

And as a result, Stephen P.

New and his law office have been trying to bring some accountability.

And he's very proud of that.

That so far, in addition to pissing the ex-governor off at him, he's been awarded over $12 million in these judgments, and more

are to come.

But you don't have to go to jail to retain Stephen P.

New.

It helps, but you don't have to.

Just call 877-50-STEV or go to newlawoffice.com and find out what he's all about and what he's up to.

I don't know if I would say it helps, but once again, newlawoffice.com.

Well, it can't hurt.

877-50-STEV.

Try to stay out of jail.

Why don't we start with that?

But, Jim, why don't we get a few songs and get it out of here, of course?

If you have a song you'd like to submit, an original song, a parody song, nothing with AI,

corney drivethrough at gmail.com about the show, something we talk about on the show, not just, hey, I wrote a song about wrestling.

Let me send it in.

Let's just go now.

Yeah, you're awful surly today.

Tell your story walking.

Just take your business on away from here.

This one was sent to corney drive-through at gmail.com by Stefan of Auburn, Maine.

Here we go.

This one is

about Mercedes Monet, apparently.

Let's go to this.

A good word

with all the lead may love to bring a Joshi girl.

It's Kenny's thing.

And the moon waves goodbye, give this next gal a try that morning

Went to work, utilized like Riho undersized that a morning

Bells will ring, it don't mean a thing, modern wrestling, why Brian couldn't tell ya,

Oh wait, Mercedes morning, giving me signing trailer for Acabella

Superstar thinks she's cool and imposter that bull that's a moaning

Take a chance now, Tony, with this clound bring Moni planty

Like a fart in a church, her chromoshing its boring

Jim scoff into often ship her up to Boston.

That's a morning

all right, you know.

I mean,

he's trying hard.

He means well.

I'm now curious what his other songs are.

Hold on, here's another one he sent.

See what this is.

Hold on, let me see.

That wasn't me now.

That was me, apparently, in the past.

He has other songs here he attached to the end of the song.

So, why don't we

just make it this one song for today?

Because otherwise, it's going to go for another three minutes.

Jim, any thoughts on that?

Simone?

Yeah,

we got that.

Yeah, yes.

It was

very different and humble and lovable.

All right.

Thank you, Stephan of Auburn, Maine.

Once again, corny drivethrough at gmail.com.

Lior, please, wherever you are, check in.

But this one was sent to corny drivethrough at gmail.com from Donnie

DiGiacomo.

Let's go to this.

Whoa, come on.

DiGiacomo.

Tony Khan's in the back room, sniffing lights all night.

Got a vision for the future.

This has to be AI.

This That's the way this is real.

What do you think?

Is this AI?

I don't have any idea.

Maybe they're just

angry in the garage.

All right, that's seems to be repeating himself.

Yeah.

Once again, please send in your submissions to corny drive-through at gmail.com.

Thank you, Donnie, for that submission.

Let's go to this one.

This one is about Tony Khan and his tweeting.

Does this person have a name?

I am the one that contacted you on Twitter about song submissions.

I hope you enjoy this.

The song is called I Have No Name.

The song is called Stop and Put Down Your Phone.

Please credit as Your Beliefs and Jay Coogs.

All right, let's see how this

stop

and put down your phone

before

you take an L.

So now he's doing come jokes on Twitter with family fan.

Baby, baby, I'm aware of when you tweet

Each time I scream to leave,

I watch you be in it for

acting like you're still in great school.

It's time before you run to tweet,

leaving you with no bad heat.

Think it over.

Why are you wasting your time?

Think it over.

Junior, don't do more lines.

Stop

and put down your phone

before

you take an L.

Stop and put down your phone

before

you take an L.

Get over.

Yeah, funny enough, this song was actually sent in by AEW's producers and agents.

I've known of your

internet rants

And all the marks who won inside your pants

But is their cage match rating

worth more than crowns and T V ratings?

This time before you sight the score

Go off steam with the whore

The website owner hates you

Not much to hate you too.

Stop and put down your phone

before

you take an L.

Stop and put down your phone

before

you take an L.

Think it over.

Take it over.

I've tried so hard, hard to be patient

Hoping you'd stop this infatuation

But each time you start your tweeting

I'm so afraid you'll be getting a real beating

Stop and put down your phone

Before you take it Everything

before

you take it.

Now's the time for me to go out there and whip out my cock.

I don't remember what clip that's from.

Where did that come from?

Well, thank you to your beliefs and Jay Coogs for saying.

If that was not AI, then she's got a set of pipes on her there.

I think that was a real female singer.

Well, a real female?

Listen to this.

I think that was a real girl.

I think that was a real girl.

Well, boy, howdy, she can sing.

She can belt it out there.

It's so stupid, but I always think of the song Multi.

I don't know if you know that song by the barbarians about the drummer who lost his hand and they wrote a song about it.

And the rumor is that it's the band playing on the track.

It was when they were still doing stuff like studio work.

And they played on the track.

And at one point, at the very end, after talking about losing his hand and everything he's like now i just need a girl a real girl

but real girl gets me every time but that was uh those were the songs and this is the drive-through hold on

where is there we go oh

All right, pleasant ending to a pleasant show.

More next week, wherever you find your favorite podcast, and of course on the Jim Cornette experience in just a few days.

The official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Go there.

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He's there as well.

Great stuff.

He might not be for too long if you can't even say his name.

And of course.

You can get access to the brand new t-shirts with more to come.

They're on the YouTube page.

Go to arcadianvanguard.com or go to Shopify.

Go to the shop app and look for Jim Cornette.

If it's by Arcadian Vanguard, it is the real thing for anyone asking.

Hey, is this really you?

Yes, it's me.

It's us.

Yes.

And here we are.

It is we and we are we and we are all together.

But these other assholes selling this cheap knockoff shit that'll give you a bad rash in your armpits.

Don't buy that.

And of course, you can buy other stuff at Corney's Collectibles from JimCornet.com.

What's going on, Jim?

Well, we've got had a big sale in March, and now we're gearing up for the big spring Mayhem sale, and more on that to come because we are finding one-of-a-kind and limited-edition type of things, including vintage stuff from the vault more soon.

At jimcornet.com, the drive-through is brought to you by the law office of Stephen Pinu, 877-50 Steve.

Don't forget, you can go through the archive, patreon.com slash cornet, $5 a month going back to 2013.

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But until next time on the experience and next week, back here on the drive-thru for Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian Last.

Tally ho!