Episode 380: Jim Reviews AEW Grand Slam Australia

Hello again, friends!

It's my show.

You get the extended cut, and you are our friends, and welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's drive-thru.

Right here on another cold winter's day.

I'm your host, the great Brian Last.

We're going to have fun.

We're going to talk about a voyage to Australia and more fun with this man, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr.

Jim Cornet.

That was the Inagada Da Vita

version.

A little iron butterflies there at the top of the program.

Brian,

the bouncing ball of bad luck is now in your court.

over the last day or so.

We got back on schedule from things that have been going on here.

And so it wasn't nice for you to fool with Mother Nature.

And you're apparently just, I think it was maybe just your residence there.

I don't know if the rest of the eastern seaboard caught the apparently not only you've had the snow, you've had the ice, now you had high winds.

power down.

You know, it seems like a man as business-minded as you and looking ahead with a forethought to the future would not have purchased a palatial home with your generator sitting on the other side of your broadcast station.

So are you back plugged into the goddamn governmental grid at this point now?

You know what?

The power was on and off because of the windstorms.

It's been very dangerous.

Stay safe, ladies and gentlemen.

But beyond that.

Yes, if you're out in a windstorm trying to get a suntan or whatever, stay safe.

Beyond that, there was a period of time yesterday when we were supposed to record when we had full power, no generator.

It came back.

And I'm like, oh my God, I almost feel like I should call Jim and say, all right, let's do it anyway, even though we're five minutes behind schedule.

And then the internet went out.

I was like, all right, we can't win.

We can't win today.

It'll be tomorrow with more of this.

No, no, no, no more.

No moss, no moss.

Well, down here down south, where it's sunny and balmy,

I mentioned on one of the shows we did here lately that

Stacey's mother and stepfather have finally moved here, the planned move they made from California to the worst winter that the state of Kentucky has had in 25 years.

We've had more snow, more rain, more flooding.

And they've stepped off the plane and they've seen almost a daily barrage of snow at some point of the day or night.

They don't know what they're waking up to when they look out the window.

And now, and we're trying to ferry them back and forth so that they can unpack things at their apartment while they've still got the hotel room and they've got a day or two of that.

We're supposed to get another three or four inches of snow.

So they've, they still love the place if if they can see it for all the fucking snow on top of it.

But that's, that's been an adventure here for the past few days also.

This should be a fun next several years, the Jim Cornette in-law years.

They'll come on.

All new characters.

It's like the Ropers left, and all of a sudden, Mr.

Franley has shown up.

New characters for a new season of Cornet.

We've introduced an all new cast of characters.

What was it?

What happened with the fucking Doris day show at one point

she may have had a mental breakdown i recall she was a successful career woman in a city you know working in a workplace of some kind and suddenly i remember she was on a farm with children

i don't know anything about the doris day show it was before your time but k sarah sura i may be i may have been watching something on one of the other networks when the doris day show was on if i was alive back then well i think it i think it may have followed mr ed so I was just naturally flowing in.

Yeah, but she was on the farm with children, and I should get one of my books down, but I'd have to disconnect myself from this fucking set of headphones that you

insisted.

The Arcadian Vanguard Network supplied headphones here that not only squeezed my head and hurt my ears, but also now

there's something going on in the corridor.

Intermittently, I can hear myself back,

just a

half a beat, as the musicians say later on.

And I don't know if it's me talking to me or you talking to me.

I'm hearing voices in my head.

They talk to me.

I don't think this is a Brian issue.

Where's the technical wizard, Hodgkiss?

The guy you're always saying, oh, he invented this.

Oh, he invented that.

Tell him to fix whatever's going on over there.

No, he didn't manufacture these.

He's not getting into these.

It'll avoid the factory warranty.

He's going to drive them back to the factory at fucking Shanghai.

But he's coming over on Friday, and we're going to get to the root of some of these things also, just so that you're aware of that.

And he'll have more fingers of blame to point in the proper directions.

We'll get on top of some of these audio things, and we'll stop Jim's garage from ever opening again.

Well,

I'm way away from it, but

I got to get one of those new silent openers.

Oh, that can't be real.

Well, Stacy's going out in the four-wheel drive to pick up

folks for lunch while I'm here talking to the people.

All right.

It's going to be like you're on the road with Midnight Express again.

Meals non-stop, driving around town, hanging out with your new team.

Yeah,

I don't know if I'd put them up against Hawkin' Animal.

But

this is your program, Correct?

Can I just ask politely

here if we can address something that I've just seen again?

Or you told me about it yesterday, but then I've seen it on Twitter again

that some

Cretanist capitalist tried purely for mercenary financial gain, put out the story with the headline, update on Jim Cornett's return to WWE.

Oh, I actually have an article right here.

That was going to be the first topic, first question I asked you.

Oh, well, well, see, great minds think alike, and makes me scared about my own now.

But go ahead then.

Don't give these people any credit, but just let's tell the people what the story is so that we can laugh together.

I'm not even sure who to not give credit to.

Again, a lot of the listeners started emailing this and tagging us and different things with it.

The article I have is from a website that's referencing something that was said on another website,

but we don't know exactly what they said.

So

without giving any credit credit to any of these people, sorry.

Jim Cornette WWE return update.

Amid continued announcements of the 2025 WWE Hall of Fame inductees, questions regarding Jim Cornette's status with WWE came up.

Jim Cornette is a name currently missing from the Hall of Fame, despite many names within the industry, including Stone Cold Steve Austin, pushing for him to be inducted.

no

and by the way this was like he said this on a podcast or tweeted at one of the other or maybe it was a tweet with a quote from a podcast whatever the case a couple years ago right this is not like he's engaging in an

ongoing flag-waving campaign and going out getting signatures on petitions that he's demanding something.

This was a comment that he made, and I appreciate sentiment.

This is not new is what I'm saying basically on Steve's part.

What I remember seeing was I think a tweet from Steve Austin saying that you and the Midnight Express should be in the Hall of Fame.

And I think The Rock may have quote tweeted it and said, like, I agree.

That was my favorite stuff ever.

Well, see, I was I was trying to also mend the bridge between The Rock and Austin after their many in-ring

showdowns.

They can come to common ground on how the magnitude of me.

So again, we don't know how this came up, but I'll continue here.

I will give credit for where this came from because maybe then we'll get an answer on some of this.

Regarding a possible WWE return for Cornette, Feightful Select reports that his name hasn't come up in creative discussions in recent years, recent years being a quote.

The report specifies that this isn't in a,

quote, we aren't bringing him anyway,

just that the belief within the company is that Cornette is successful and content with his current projects.

Cornette hosts two weekly podcasts, The Drive-Through and the Experience, in which he reviews WWE and AEW shows, as well as discussing topical news from around the industry.

Topical, always topical.

Cornette was on hand in 2017 to induct a Rock and Roll Express into the WWE Hall of Fame, but hasn't made any appearances for the company since then.

During the WWE Thunderdome shows.

Wait a minute, except for the constant reuse of video sit-down interviews that I shot 10 years ago to where I was still popping up on AE last year.

But I did sign the release.

No, I'm kidding.

Go ahead.

Stephen P.

New will not be hearing about this.

During the WWE Thunderdome shows in the pandemic, A collection of band fan signs and images emerged that featured Cornette's face logo.

There have been two members of the WWE Hall of Fame class.

Well,

that's because they didn't want me to be selling E-T-shirts

because I was out selling some of their own talent.

There have been two members of the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2025 announced thus far: Triple H and Michelle McCool.

You know,

if I had only married

into the Hall of Fame,

think about it.

it.

So far, everybody announced for this year's Hall of Fame is a spouse of somebody.

Well, there is a rumor that going in this year, and we'll see because they just signed Legends deals ending years of bad feelings between WWE and Bill Edie, but demolition,

which from a WWE end is a major omission in the Hall of Fame.

For kids who grew up who were my age, they were the biggest thing.

There you go.

There's the tag team then.

And,

you know, now that they've mended that fence or whatever.

But the point being back to this story, so the update was: there is no update because nobody's talking on either side to anybody about anything.

But they had to stick my name in the headline, Brian.

See, that's the question.

Did Fightful select, like, was it a QA show where they were answering questions from like subscribers?

And then this guy, whoever wrote this, I don't even think there's a name.

Is there a name?

There is a name.

It's a woman, Amanda Savage.

Did she?

Well, wait a minute.

It might be a way, it might be a Nom de Plume.

Think of Amanda Savage.

That could kind of be a fucking ring name.

Okay, look, we don't know who this person is, but did they just hear the fightful select thing and go, hey, there's a headline that isn't right there?

It's about Coronette.

We'll get some clicks.

Update on his return.

There's no update.

Back after this.

And again, it's, you know, it's also nice that the company appears to have a better grip on

basically what I think our relationship is than many of the fans do.

Like, he's mad they won't bring him back or how they're trying to bring him back or all this other

gaga speculation, as the dream machine would say.

You know,

they're happy doing their thing, and I'm happy doing my thing.

And I'm happy that they're happy, except if they start trying to do my thing, then I'd have to do something about that.

I need to have some help.

The idea that Fightful went to their WWE source and was told that,

you know, however that was originally phrased, they believe you are successful and content with your current projects.

Do you think a lot of that is the idea that what that really means is he has no incentive to sign one of our one-way legends deals?

Well,

and we're not putting anyone in the Hall of fame unless they sign one?

And well, is that a rule these days?

Now, there's a new administration.

In all honesty, I would like some feedback from some of the little birds that sometimes tweet in our ears as far as if you do go in the hall of fame,

still to this day, do you have to sign a contract giving any kind of

rights to the company for your name and likeness for any period of time or obligating you to do certain things, or whatever.

What are the deals that's being done these days?

I'd like to hear that.

The first question that I asked him for the 2017 Hall of Fame to induct the Rock and Roller Express was, oh, and what was

the fucking guy's name?

Tal Relations guy.

They fired him.

Garbage bag was involved.

Oh, what was his name?

I know who you know.

God damn it.

Was it Seaman?

Was it Canyon Seaman?

No, I never met.

Oh, man.

Mr.

Seaman?

I never met Mr.

Seaman.

But I, goddamn, when I heard about it, I popped and I was, I always wanted to just to see what he looked like.

But anyway,

Mark Carrano,

does that name sound familiar?

Is that a mechanic at my fucking local Valvoline?

I think that's it.

Okay, well, anyway, I asked him, I said, I'm inducting these payments.

Is there any

contractual commitment past the one-night appearance and

signing a release for any footage or whatever that I do, the work that I do to be released on an ongoing basis, but there's no other commitment?

He said, no, you're fine.

I said, okay.

So that's what my deal was.

But I don't know what

they're doing with the inductees these days.

I think that's part of the issue, why they know there's an issue, because they want guys.

There's no WWE legend that does the business you do, respectfully of everyone.

You know, Rick Flair can find some sucker to, you know, say, Hey, well, come on, slap your name on this jar of pickles or whatever the fuck they're doing.

Don't malign these people, call them suckers.

Some of them might be Egyptians.

No, but I'm saying your business doesn't rely on hoping you find an angel, your business relies on you actually have a business, unlike a lot of people.

That's why

you're not in a position that a lot of veterans are in where they kind of have to say yes to anything.

I think that's, I think that's part of the issue with WWE because they don't have leverage over you.

Well, god damn it.

That crowbar, I'll tell you what, up the ass.

Thank you for,

you know, giving a more self-aggrandizing estimate of my current popularity and tremendous success than I would have been able to do myself.

And I'll, as a matter of fact, I didn't know I could type that quick where I could send it right to you.

You could read it right off.

But that, again,

for guys who have

gotten older, that they can't wrestle anymore, whether the pandemic cut down autograph sessions, or the just point is they've had health issues or whatever.

I think those type of legends deals

are great if they could give those people them.

I think for

you know,

the guys like whoever the big names are, the main event inductees,

they're probably negotiated somewhat separately, and they still have the chance to do their own things or whatever the fuck.

But I don't want, as I've said for what, about five years or more now, I don't want to be obligated to anybody to do anything that I don't want to do except me.

I make myself do things I don't want to do all the fucking time.

But

I don't want to be obligated to do anything for anybody.

And therefore, I don't want anybody to be obligated to pay me money for anything that I might not want to fucking do.

And I do my own thing and we do our own thing and we own all of our things and we play with our own things and leave other people's things alone.

And they should keep their hands off my things.

Did I make myself clear about this whole thing?

I believe so.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, all audio issues will be fixed in the future.

Oh, goddammit.

I moved again.

Here, I'm moving this chord around now, and I bet you

didn't do anything.

It wasn't that.

That wasn't it.

That wasn't it.

It was a simple issue, but I need the brain surgeon Hotchkiss to show up first.

What I was going to say is, if I was WWE and I was trying to play it smart,

if I want you in the Hall of Fame, I'm waiting until they do the WrestleMania in Indianapolis because it's close enough.

I can convince you to drive.

I'll drive to Indianapolis.

I'm not agreeing to go in, but I would potentially drive to Indianapolis.

See, at least there there'd be a connection to Jim Cornette.

Like, you wouldn't want it to be like, you're going to be in the Hall of Fame.

We're inducting you in Omaha.

Like, there's no connection at all to Jim Cornette.

There's a connection with Indianapolis, Indianapolis wrestling.

Technically, that is the first wrestling I ever saw, a story which we won't go into again because it's been told so many times.

But yes, so,

and also the

the uh uh home of Bobby Heenan

my spiritual mentor as a child and all that so there's yes there's a connection there

but wait but what

what quota slot would I be uh fulfilling in the uh on the list

do they have a category for blind people ex-fat male managers

They do, but it's not called that.

But technically, if you look at who's in there,

you may be in some good company.

Well, I don't know about the X-Fat.

I may be on a hill all by myself.

Maybe they don't have to put you in.

Maybe they can get around it.

They could just give you the Warrior Award.

Actually, they got rid of that.

It plays me to the ring.

They got rid of that.

They got rid of the Warrior Award.

They got rid of Mrs.

Warrior, too.

Well, that's the update on the update on Jim Cornett's WWE return.

Stay tuned.

We'll tell you more next week about his AEW return.

We'll have news, exclusive news next week here on this show about Jim Cornett's AEW return.

Stay tuned for that.

Hey, Jim, you going back to AEW?

No.

Well, again, we don't want to play spoiler.

Next week on the show, we'll talk about this.

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Jim,

before we get to talking about AEW's

excursion to Australia, I have a list of names that WWE has trademarked.

Also, I have pulled up a list of porn star names.

I'm wondering if you can guess or figure out which are the porn stars and which are the new NXT, I presume NXT, wrestlers.

Oh, God.

Now, are these

the classic porn stars, the Desiree Cousteau's, the Lonnie Sanders, the Seikas?

The ones you would know?

No.

The ones I would know.

The Kelly Richards.

None of the.

This is just women.

I have to find some men name to men name.

Well, you can't find some men's names, too.

You have to find some men names.

Some men named.

I was going to say, how do they get to the name?

You can't tell a difference these days in the terms of the nameology.

I don't know how many of these people have actually

named.

What is a Caden?

Caden?

Caden.

I don't know.

A male or female name?

I think it could be both, technically.

Well, see, there you go.

All right.

Well, let me give you a name.

Tell me, is this a WWE trademark name or a porn star?

Abella Danger.

Abella Danger.

That's got to be a porn star.

Why?

Well, because she's probably working for Wicked Video with the last name Danger, doing a fucking sub-genre of a fucking fetish line.

Well, you're right.

It is a porn star.

I don't know if Wicked Video is even still around, but that is a porn star name.

Here's another one.

Sweetie Fox.

Sweetie Fox, that's got to be a WWE name.

Sweetie Fox is a porn actress.

Oh, goddammit.

Apparently, she was in the series.

I assume series that says 2021 to 2022.

Let's try Anal.

She, she was, oh, what are you?

Is that a question you're asking me or the next

series of films?

That's apparently the series of films that Sweetie.

Oh, oh.

I think, well, she had that breakthrough role in Rebecca Does Dotty Brook Farm.

Jim Hayes Jameson.

Okay, that's got to be a porn star because

that's a takeoff of,

say it again now.

Hayes

Jameson.

Jenna Hayes and Jenna Jameson, right?

I know Jenna Jameson.

I don't know Jenna Hayes.

That's a porn star.

I think she's on the star.

She's not on my list.

She's not on my list here.

I've heard that fucking name.

All right.

Well, Hayes Jameson will soon be coming to a WWE arena near you

in some fashion.

They've trademarked the name.

Jim, another name?

Pornstar or future WWE superstar, Mason Holiday.

That's a WWE name.

There's nothing sexy about that.

That is indeed a WWE trademark name, Mason, spelled with a Y, M-A-S-Y-N.

Mason.

Well, now, see, no, if you'd have told me that, I would have said porn star.

See, you got to be.

The spelling matters.

Okay.

If you can't partake or transfer or impart, is what I'm trying to say,

the full weirdness of the spelling of the name, because a lot of porn stars like Ys.

They like to put Ys in all consonants.

They like dinner at the Y.

They're all over the Ys.

Well, Jim, let me ask you another name.

What about Draco Knox?

And I'll spell it for you, D-R-A-K-O-K-N-O-X.

Could that be, that's got to be a WWE name, and he's going to be like fucking Gunther's

ex-general.

You are right.

I thought you would have picked porn name for that.

No, that sounds too much like a foreign wrestling menace.

All right, Jim.

What about the name Mia Malkova?

Ooh,

this could go either way.

I could see,

I'm sorry, I'm just, that was an unintended pun.

You hear him licking his lips over there.

What's going on?

Yeah,

I just took a sip of sprite because I'm getting dry.

I got to have to wet my whistle there, son.

This could go either way because that could be one of these goofy wrestling names, or it could be, you know, a headliner in Italian porn with Malco.

Well, or would that be more of a Russian type of sounding name?

I don't, I've been saying porn star.

That is indeed a porn star.

Boom!

I'm doing pretty good at this.

It says here she's an actress, producer, and director.

So she's a triple threat.

Jim Chantelle Monroe.

Well, that sounds porny.

Chantelle Monroe.

Yeah,

Chantelle.

Yeah, that's got to be a porn name.

Coming soon to NXT?

Chantelle Monroe.

What about Aria Bennett?

Spelled A-R-I-A.

Like an opera.

Aria.

That sounds like an NXT type of name.

That is indeed an NXT type of name.

What about Natasha Nice?

Oh, okay.

Now, see,

now we're going back to one of those sub-genre fetish up the anal protrusion of the door type of thing.

That's got to be a...

She's got to be like...

With the last name of Nice, she's going to be 6 feet 6 and 200 pounds and all jacked up and carrying a big fucking club.

So, what do you say?

In a porn movie, in a porn movie, she okay.

Well, actually, it is a porn star, an actress, writer, and director.

It says here she's tiny, five foot two,

but extremely cute, busty, and curvaceously brunette.

A knockout.

She was born in France, but moved to California.

She lost a virginity at 17.

Why is that in her fucking trial?

That's a jump.

Can we have the list of her references on that

resume?

Braxton Cole, porn star or wrestler?

Braxton Cole.

That sounds like another NXT type of, but that's got to be a guy, doesn't it?

Braxton?

Wasn't there a Braxton?

A wrestling Braxton?

I'm saying there was a Tony Braxton, but what about a wrestling Braxton?

I don't know.

I have no idea.

But that is indeed a wrestler.

That is a wrestler.

What about Tate Wilder?

Geez, that sounds more like a fucking insurance adjuster, doesn't it?

Hold on.

I don't have a coin to flip.

I don't have a coin to my name to flip.

It's a fucking porn star.

Tate Wilder is a WWE trademark name.

What about Blake Blossom?

She's got to be

the new star of the DVD series Jugs.

I'm saying old Blake Blossom is doing

the big bosom line for potentially Vivid or whoever's still in business these days.

Well, again, Blake could be a guy's name too, but you are right.

Apparently, it is an actress, director, and producer, star of the 2022 porno film, An Honest Man.

That's a thing

on the marquee at the adult cinema.

What the fuck is a porno movie?

An honest man?

Yeah, which one of these stands out?

I'm going to read you the list of some of the porn names we hear, real quick, and the movies they're in.

Which one stands out?

Blake Blossom, An Honest Man.

Brandy Love, The Candidate.

Autumn Falls, Drive.

Lena Paul, Sleepless Nights.

Skylar Vox, Load Lovers 2021.

Jim Summer Sorell, porn star or future WWE superstar.

And by the way, I want to go back to, I'd like to meet Autumn Falls just to shake her hand for coming up with that one.

That was, that was

bravo, bravo, young lady of

whatever moral virtue you may possess.

What did you just ask me?

Summer Sorel.

Summer Sorel.

And I'm not going to say that you should assume anyone's a boy or a girl because we shouldn't make that assumption while playing the game.

Well, I would think that summer would be a young lady.

Like, you know, summer.

What was her fucking, there was a summer in wrestling.

There were quite a few summers in wrestling.

Summer sounds like a girl to me.

She's got to be an NXT

girl, lady.

Well, apparently she will be.

Again, these are names.

We don't know if any people have actually been applied to any of these names just yet.

Wait a minute.

You mean they're just trademarking names before they even see a person to stick it on?

That's right.

I think what they do is they tell the wrestlers to come up with some ideas for names and then they sit down with them and they look over all these shitty names because no one has a gimmick.

It's just names that people are concocting or going to AI to come up with.

WWE agrees and says, hey, that one you came up with is pretty good.

We'll trademark that and we'll own that just in case this works out.

And that's how this happens.

Trill London, T-R-I-L-L, Trill London.

That's

why would that be either of these things?

What in the world?

NXT.

Once again, you got it.

NXT.

Because it's too stupid for porn.

Well, I think have we gone through the...

They have a higher standard now when it comes to tickling your taint and getting the general saluted and everything.

All those metaphors.

Osiris Griffin.

That's a porn star.

That's a future NXT star.

Ah, I was just, I was missing that on purpose.

All right, let's end with this name here, Harley Riggins.

Well, one would assume

that they would stay away from Harley in wrestling right now, and because of the reputation of the legendary Mr.

Race, as well as the big-bosomed ventriloquist that's currently.

So that's it's gotta be it's gotta be a porn star.

Harley Riggins coming soon to NXT or WWE or something.

Who's Harley Riggins?

So, real quick, let me read you the list of names they've trademarked and we'll end with a question about them: Osiris Griffin, Hayes Jameson, Trill London, Harley Riggins, Summer Sorell,

Jax Presley, Mason Holiday, Draco Knox or Draco Knox, Tate Wilder, Braxton Cole, Chantel Monroe, and Aria Bennett.

The WWE still in this post-Vince era, we assume, in this post-Vince era, is giving guys an NXT, and again, I'm assuming none of these are indie guys.

I'm assuming these are like the people they're finding from scratch and developing.

They're giving them the stupidest, fakest sounding names.

And if any of these people have any sort of legitimate athletic background, which I think is what they're going after,

stop changing your names unless it's just an awful name, unless it's like, you know, Ken Reaper.

Even if they do have to change their names, because maybe they don't care that this guy was the champion pole vaulter in the history of fucking Idaho.

But don't give him a stupid fucking name that people can't remember.

Don't register.

Bland, meaningless, generic in

generic in not a John Smith way, but just generic in a way of just gibberish first and last words that sometimes aren't even names.

What the fuck?

But when you said the post-Vince era,

if indeed the heartbreak kid, your friend and mine, Cock Eye Michaels, is the chief cook and bottle washer of NXT, who did he actually learn almost everything from running a wrestling business or booking one?

I worded that very unwieldily at the start.

Who did he learn all that shit from?

The guy he worked for, Vince McMahon.

So is that something that he's still applying, or does he not care?

Does he not know that people would

possibly like a name closer to Ox Baker than fucking,

you know,

I can't even remember any of those names.

That's my point.

Or

himself.

Press Stone Cold Steve Austin versus Heartbreak Kid Sean Michaels up against

Boris

Vladivostok versus Caden Chance.

Yeah, Braxton Cole and O'Siles Griffin.

I have no idea why they do these things,

but they're going to change it anyway.

And that's what I

could

not only understand, but even condone

in almost most cases, when a guy went from developmental to the main roster, that they were going to change

some element of their name or their gimmick or whatever the fuck.

But that's when developmental

was

not on national television.

When you're on national TV or available, whether it's the third-rated show or not, whatever, when you're on national TV and you're on the same network, available to the same audience as the main roster, then

by that point, everybody ought to be who they're supposed to fucking be from now on, is

what I'm saying to you.

Do you hear me?

What I'm telling you?

I mean, most people don't come up and immediately have a gimmick, but it also stands out that like no one just has like a, like there isn't just, you know, you can't just copy, but there isn't a crusher or a bruiser, like someone who's more known by a nickname than like by some fake sounding name.

Like Seth Rollins is a big star,

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And it's, I guess it's better than Tyler Black.

At least they think so.

They own it.

But there's something about these names that just, it's.

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Why you got my chair run down so low, Brian?

Well, it is cold weather.

I just wish I did that one for you and Stacey.

It is cold weather.

And of course, if you were a wrestler wrestling in the cold weather, sweeping the nation,

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AEW finally.

Is that what they called that back then?

AEW finally hitting Australia.

Well, I don't know if they hit Australia or just slapped it in the face.

So, and

again, by the way,

I was under the assumption that their big lead-in for the AEW Grand Slam was the NBA All-Star Game.

I didn't know that it was just NBA All-Star Saturday night, night, and this is still going to be.

It was a fucking dunk contest.

They had a white guy about 5'11 jumping over cars and shit.

It was highly entertaining.

He might be the next AEW superstar.

But it wasn't even the game.

It was a bunch of people in a building watching.

I guess they had various

games and

competitions.

And the dunk contest was the main event of it.

And it ran till about 1050.

But that was, that's the biggest lead-in they're going to have all year was the night before the game.

Well, again, the dunk contest is a pretty big deal, like the home run derby for baseball.

Well, but I mean, you wouldn't think it would be as big as some of the games that they actually fucking have on there.

All-star games,

all-star games suck, is the reality of 2025.

But let me ask you this: Do you remember?

Because I don't.

When those former wrestling fans who were watching the NBA stayed for AEW and saw Chris Jericho and went on Twitter and just attacked him.

Yes, yes.

Was that the all-star game or was it just an NBA game?

It was an NBA game because I remember them

people saying, like, NBA Twitter or something is a buzz over discovering Chris Jericho is still wrestling or something to that effect.

But I think it was an NBA game and a bunch of NBA fans from the Attitude era and

all of a sudden Jericho was first.

But at least they were a buzz

because they knew who he once was and who he still aspired to be because they had a problem with that on this program.

But to set the stage, I know we did this last week.

Let's just run it down real quick, Brian.

At first, this was announced instead of Grand Slam at the Arthur Ashe

tennis facility there in New York, because they sold out the first year and dropped, they burnt that out.

They announced a stadium in Australia.

And

we said at the time, what the fuck?

Because how, and what is their viewership in Australia that they

that they believe they can do this?

And a lot of our fans in Australia,

good day, mates.

They said, no, they're not available on any kind of widespread television.

Wasn't that basically the summation of what everybody said was that people watch it, but not in numbers that one would think would fill a stadium, is what we heard.

What we heard from people was kind of a variation in different forms: this is not a wrestling country.

This is a WWE country.

And they've been the only game in town, despite, you know, independents that have done okay.

There really isn't a large AEW exclusive audience.

And the other thing is, you know, AEW

with Wembley, they announced Wembley and people said, How the hell are they going to get anyone in that stadium?

And the first one, you got a lot of people there for a variety of reasons, dropped off year two.

I guess you could understand why Tony would think maybe that would work in Australia, but it's a different kind of country, different layout.

It's hard to get anywhere there.

Boy, that's almost even like saying, well, if it works in Chicago, will it work in fucking Knoxville?

There's just a lot more people to pick from in general in one place.

But nevertheless, so then

things didn't look real good, you know, in the way of filling a stadium, even with a partial setup, and they moved it indoors.

But in the process,

And again, we're willing to be corrected here, but I've seen people tweeting that it was on their AEW, the AEW official schedule at one point as a pay-per-view event.

And the people thought they were going to pay-per-view in a stadium.

Then it was moved indoors, and then there were no big...

Remember how they built Wembley like they were building the goddamn Egyptian pyramid?

But there hadn't been a lot of build for this bad boy.

And the other thing is, Grand Slam traditionally was dynamite.

It wasn't a pay-per-view and it wasn't a collision.

I mean, maybe they had matches roll over to Rampage and collision, but Grand Slam was a dynamite.

This wasn't even that.

Well, and that's that's where I'm going.

They moved indoors.

They did, it ain't a pay-per-view.

They haven't had any big matches built for it until they were farting them out as they usually do, you know, the past few weeks for the most part.

And then they get a collision taping with Ring of Honor, a Ring of Honor and collision tape at the highest prices that

I bet you quite a few of these folks have ever paid for a wrestling ticket

because they still they didn't.

I mean, you can correct me, Brian, if you Google it, but I'm not sure they had quite at 10,000 people.

And they still did over a million dollars at the gate,

which

and here's the thing:

I want to know this because I don't think we delved deeply enough into this.

For the

initial people,

when the stadium went on sale,

didn't we hear that it was about

eight or ten thousand that bought tickets or whatever?

Is this the same people?

Did they just hold the tickets and make it good for the new building?

Did they say, turn your tickets back in and get new ones?

How did they handle that transition?

I'm not exactly sure.

I was under the impression it was kind of like WWF with WrestleMania 7, where they moved indoors, even though they had already sold tickets for the LA Coliseum.

They just found a way to reshuffle the arrangement so that everyone got something close to what they thought they were getting in the stadium.

So have you been able to find out any reporting on an honest basis of how many people they had in this indoor building?

Well, WrestleTicks reports that the Brisbane Entertainment Center listed the capacity as 13,500.

The venue has 11,000 tiered seats.

And AEW, as of this email, only had 665 tickets available.

So it sounds like they were in the range of 12,000 to 13,000.

Okay, so, but

I guess what I'm saying is, did

is that everybody that had bought tickets to the stadium and just switched over?

Has there been any real movement since then?

And I'm not talking even about tickets distributed, which is probably what WrestleTicks would have.

I'm talking, did they actually sell any new ones?

Because they

ended up doing a show that they had booked in a 70,000-seat stadium set up for 40 to 50,000 that fit into a building that holds 13,000 tops

is where we went with that.

Well, the other thing was, what if the stadium had worked out?

What if they had sold 50,000 tickets?

Was this the card they were going to do?

Was it going to be just a short collision and then Ring of Honor in a stadium?

No, if they had...

MJF wasn't there.

I mean, how many other wrestlers didn't make the trip?

I didn't see MJF on this show.

If they had 30,000 tickets sold two months ago, you'd have seen a lot more than what you saw there.

But

so that basically they ended up with a collision in a ring of honor taping with the highest prices ever in a small building from a stadium.

And

so I think they thought that they would make up for it

in Tony's mind, they being Tony, with

all the

high spot matches and the craziness without even any of the

bad interviews or

fucking filler of a regular television show.

So

it was a good display of what AEW is, but I'm not sure that that's what they would need for their biggest audience,

or at least the biggest audience at the start.

We'll

find out, I guess, hopefully very soon

how far they fell.

but

it looked good the crowd indoors compared to some of the ones they've had here domestically lately but should we go ahead and before we talk about the the show talk about the ring the ring controversy

might as well get that out of the way i mean it was one of the first things people noticed we started seeing photos go around before we saw any of the actual matches or anything people noticed that the ring was smaller.

Reports said that it may have been 16 by 16, which is pretty small.

They had problems fitting the aprons on, obviously, because the ring was smaller.

I saw an image with like a step stool instead of ring steps.

They had a step stool to get people in and out of the ring.

I mean, Telamon's the same guy that throws money.

He just put Rita Chatterton under contract and brought her into Jaguars games.

He has money up the gazoo and he'll spend it.

They didn't want to bring their own ring.

Well, and again,

if you're running a a business and you're running one show in Australia and you can find a local ring instead of goddamn either putting one on a boat for three months or whatever that process is or flying a goddamn wrestling ring to Australia, if you're running a business, yes, you would try to find

something over there that would serve.

For the same guy that

spends as much money as it would cost to have one built over there and fucking polished and the post powder coated and shipped in there and put up by naked hookers.

He spends that much money on Danielson's entrance music for a pay-per-view.

So what

it

it's it's hard to hold these folks to the similar standards, but I didn't go ahead.

I was gonna well, no, you go ahead.

I was gonna bring up the buddy Matthews tweet, but but I'll do it after you talk about this.

Well, okay, because I want to know more about, because I saw him limping, but I thought he'd been selling his knee from some crazy thing that he did a second before that.

But nevertheless,

the ring was a normal fucking ring.

That's what people are so used to seeing.

The WWF, it shows goddamn.

Netflix trailers on an LED screen on all four ring posts that everything's lit up and lightning flies out of everybody's ass.

And with AEW, they do dress up as well, but this was a regular fucking probably Australian indie ring.

The ropes were nice, they had the AEW turnbuckle pads.

The ring posts were neither painted any fancy colors nor particularly straight because they had the square posts that bend without the angle iron on the outside, or making a six-inch round post that won't bend unless you hit it with a 18-wheeler.

but I digress.

I didn't take a bump in it, but I saw it had some give.

The mat didn't look too bad.

Apparently the apron skirt, what everybody's freaking out about is I hadn't even really noticed or paid attention, but

it looked like it was an 18 by 18 foot ring, the same as an old WCW ring or any of the territory rings from the

from the days of the territories, except for WWF and Vern, they always used a 20-foot ring.

And Sheik and Kobo had a 24-foot boxing ring.

We got to ask fucking

super mouth Dave Drayson why that was sometime.

That's one thing I've never thought to ask him.

But this was just a regular size fucking ring.

Maybe it looked even smaller because they were actually in a big building with people in it.

Well, again, people were saying 16 by 16.

It looked really small.

It looked like the ring from the ICW studio.

No, I've

run

16-foot rings, and that was bigger than that.

I mean, 16 by 16 is fucking embarrassing.

You can take two steps and hit the other side.

Obviously, we'll review the match later on, but Buddy Matthews tweeted out, so thoughts after AEW Grand Slam Australia.

If it wasn't a 16 by 16 shit wrestling ring, I wouldn't have destroyed my ankle on the entrance.

Due to holes in the padding.

Okay.

Okada wouldn't have been able to put his foot on the rope, and I'd be champion.

Shit happens.

Now, again, he said 16 by 16,

but saying he destroyed his ankle due to holes in the padding, what does that mean?

Well, that means that they had shit padding.

And that's the same way that I tore my left ACL in Philadelphia because the padding was separated.

There was a crack where if you put your foot down in the wrong place, you can roll your ankle or your knee can go sideways or whatever.

But that

on one of the nice rings these days, whether it be AEW or WWE or, you know, the standardized big companies, they actually, in the old days, you got fucking indoor, outdoor carpeting rolled off a goddamn trailer that was exposed to rain and snow was the padding for the ring.

But now they have that,

I don't call it composite material, but it comes in rolls and they roll it all the way across and it's seamless in that respect.

And then it's also straight, so they can tape it down where the rolls meet, and you don't have any

holes or dips or valleys where if you plant your foot wrong, you're fucking yourself up.

Apparently, they have not in Australia invested in that type of material yet.

If he had a hole in the ring, that's what that means.

But

truthfully, as I said earlier, I had seen him

limping, but I thought that he was doing something from

selling something from a movie he'd just done.

It might have hurt himself too.

But did he say he did it on the entrance?

Yeah, he did it at the beginning.

And still got through, and still was more impressive than fucking Okada.

Holy shit.

Well, how was so?

Any update on the injury or whatever?

He said, more soon?

Ankle injury, more information soon.

Apparently, he was enjoying his honeymoon with Rhea Ripley while they were in Australia.

So he's out and about and hopefully healing up.

But there are photos, I guess that's how we know that.

There are photos of them hanging out and he has a crutch.

Well, yeah.

Well, now don't call her that.

I'm talking about the crutch.

He can get over on his own merits.

No, I'm not saying she's the crutch.

How dare you?

I'm saying he has a crutch.

Well, I'm saying, don't say you sounded like he's out and about.

He's hopping around on one leg, but he wasn't going to let that interfere with his nuptiations.

You think hoppy's a better name than Buddy?

It would almost have to be, wouldn't it?

But anyway, so here's what was wrong with this program.

At the top, they've got the big lead-in from the NBA festivities and the fucking 5'11 white guy jumping over the cars and shit.

That was entertaining as fuck.

But nevertheless,

so

as you referred to Jericho a few minutes ago, what it was a few years ago was a big NBA game or whatever.

And then they boom and then the Twitter lit up.

Jericho's still wrestling, but at least there was some buzz, some

we know this guy.

He used to be so-and-so.

What they did here was

what I termed the other day, the

basically

the preacher selling the religion to the choir,

in that they came on the air with the big

Train Chimpanzee high spot video game match, with everybody

getting an individual entrance that they took their time on because of the big crowd, to the point where they rang the bell for the tag team match 10 minutes into the show.

And their big lead-in was the first thing they saw was our our friend Take-A-Shit,

long, and then Kyle Felcher,

and then Osprey, and took his time, and then

the second coming,

the music, and the lighting, and the pyro, and the drama, and the time consumption.

And then it's still just Kenny.

And out comes Kenny.

And they rang the bell 10 minutes into the show, and they had the big lead in and spent 10 minutes on people walking to the ring that none of those fucking people that were watching had ever heard of before.

Am I lying or am I lying?

Are you lying or are you lying?

Or, well, or am I?

Well,

you just answer the question.

Your feet are off the ground, obviously.

Let's answer the question.

I think.

Don't try to dodge this issue.

The only one they could possibly know would be Kenny Omega based on being on AEW-TV on TNT or TBS for the last five years.

But if, again, if it's supposedly bringing them a brand new and much bigger audience, a lot of those people ain't been watching Kenny on AEW on TNT for the last five years.

Well, based on who was on this show, who would you have started out with?

Not adding people that weren't on it because we don't know who went to Australia and who didn't.

Well, based on who was on this show, I believe I would have slunk off in a corner in shame.

So you see, you had to pick something.

But

I'm watching this.

I mean,

you know, here's the thing.

Edge, they would have known who Edge was, but then

they had a Brisbane brawl with the ratings killers.

So I guess maybe you're right.

I have it on in the background to watch it a second time while we're reviewing it.

My DVR.

The first 20 minutes of the NBA dunk contest.

You got to wonder how many people DVR'd this major event from Australia and didn't get the last 20 minutes because of how it worked.

I think this ring is smaller than a WCW ring.

I mean, I could be wrong, and you were able to get it.

Okay, but this.

Well, I was looking at a big screen television.

And these are little guys.

I mean, but

Takesha and Fletcher aren't that small.

I think it's, it may be 16 by 16.

It may be.

Okay, then if you think so, then I'll tap out.

Because when I heard of it, I didn't notice anything.

And then when I heard about the controversy, I went back and looked.

And,

you know but at the same point wcw was 18 by 18 oh yeah all rings pretty much everywhere

were 18 by 18

uh and then i'm trying to think

i mean like i said vern gagne

Most of his were, maybe some smaller shows would have been different, but most of his were 20 by 20, and they always used them in the WWF.

And I think the first time I was ever actually in a 20-by-20-foot ring was when I came up to do a show for Dennis Coraluzzo

in a New Jersey ring.

I like the old 40 by 40-foot rings at the Olympic Auditorium.

Well, but they had such a wonderful apron.

You could, you know, paint a line down the middle and have traffic going both ways.

But anyway, back to this, the match, the tag team match.

It was the dream match of all the people who like that kind of fucking thing.

And it was,

it's like, you know,

fucking

Pavarotti for me trying to put up with Millie Vanilli watching it.

A hundred miles an hour back and forth with moves.

They don't.

Not talking about selling like people are dead, but I'm talking about the selling and/or registering.

I've mentioned the trading of blows where they're punching each other in the side of the head and nobody's facial expression changes.

But the

no facials, no selling, no registering, no logic, no psychology.

Nobody's following any rules.

The referee wasn't just buried.

He was encased in concrete like he'd crossed Capone.

At various points, two guys would just roll out of the ring and hide behind the apron until their cue came up.

The four ways minutes, as a matter of fact, I think I did I make some notes here.

Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

But early on,

they've just got to do this shit because they don't know what else to fucking do.

The babyfaces,

Kenny and Willie,

did the double dive out of the rig on opposite sides, but they took so long.

They first, they had to get down on their knees and

you know, drum the mat to get the people fired up and then stand up and point and gesticulate and then run the opposite way.

And there's the two heels standing there, slack-jawed, gape-mouthed,

wide-eyed,

waiting to catch him.

Fuck, what the whole build, even if they're not on TV camera, the whole building is looking at these numb nuts is just standing there waiting, oh, here you come.

The fuck, it's a goddamn embarrassment.

There's no heels, there's no baby faces.

At one point, Kyle just cut both of the alleged babyfaces off by himself without even cheating.

Boom, here you go.

Boom.

Throw you into this guy.

Shit, can you?

Now,

it's over and over.

But in between is the awkward shit, the sloppy work, the rotten basics, the stuff that looks phony.

the obvious cooperation.

It's like a routine by gymnasts on America's Got Talent.

And then they all pose and point and turn their back on their opponent.

If I was breaking this down in wrestling school,

it would be a multi-part series with two hours each day to point out the basic shit that these dumb nutses either ignore, can't get, or were never taught.

And I don't understand how it's gotten this far with nobody correcting them all somehow that if you just apply all this athleticism to do something else besides pretend you're at a fucking video game,

then you would

prosper

much farther in this industry.

Because if they ever go,

of course, now they got a billionaire paying them whether they draw or not, so they don't care.

But if they were to ever go to the WWE system and become legitimate stars in wrestling, they would have to be completely retrained.

For Kenny, that's why he's where he is, because it's too fucking late.

For Osprey,

I think he liked the idea of living in England and commuting.

For poor Tegashit, he was probably wrapped up because the offices were working together and his knowledge of the American wrestling scene may not

be

up to par.

And

it was the other fellow.

Oh, Kyle.

He's the one because he's youngest, he's got the most potential.

The more he does this type of thing here, the harder it's going to be when he ever makes it to NXT.

But

physically, he can do this shit.

The heels out wrestle of faces at every turn,

but it wasn't so bad because you can't tell which is which by the work.

And then,

oh, here we go.

The last 11 minutes of the match, Brian, guess what they didn't do?

They give me tags?

Correct.

You are correct, sir.

They did a tag at one point, and there was not another tag for the last 11 minutes of the match.

It was either a constant, choreographed four-way in and out at will in front of the referee, or two of the guys hiding behind the fucking apron, and then they just roll in at the appropriate point.

And finally,

Kenny and Willie won.

For

the type of people who like that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing those people like.

They sure do just jump around with a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

For anybody who's ever worked in the wrestling industry in a booking or training or

any capacity for any length of time before this mental illness took over, it was maybe the worst tag team match ever on television.

Am I being too harsh?

I mean, you're very, very harsh on this match.

Well, it's just, they don't even try.

They don't even try.

They are

until they get to WWE.

And one of the heels was a hometown hero.

Kyle's from Australia.

So what the.

Until they get to WWE and are told to work a different way by the people paying them.

They're going to keep doing what they want to do and what their instincts tell them to do.

And you brought up the spot with Kyle Fletcher before, making his own comeback against both guys.

He's the heel without cheating.

The spot where they did the double dives and you just see Takesha on the floor looking up, waiting.

Yes.

When is this going to happen?

Like he looks bored.

This is their style.

This is the AEW style.

And that's why if you watch the match, if you listen to the match, you got moments with big pops surrounded by moments where everyone sat there waiting for the next big pop.

Yeah.

And,

you you know, again, we'll see what happens.

I think Takesha,

I think all four of these guys, in their own way, are great for,

I shouldn't even say great for AEW.

Takesha needs to get out of there.

Fletcher needs to get out of there.

Osprey is just going to do his own thing until whenever, until his body's broken down.

And Kenny Omega is probably the predominant, preeminent AEW star, but Don Callis sucks as a manager.

By the way, the commentary sucked.

Got to bring that up, too.

Well, yeah, and but I didn't think it was the worst thing in the world.

But again, also, is Don Callis the only manager ever in history that only sits at the announce desk and never stands up unless he's going to go to the ring and interfere?

Well, he's the only manager there that's buddies with Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega.

I mean, he was a favorite hire to begin with, and he is not a serious manager.

WWE is Paul Heyman.

Everyone takes him seriously.

They've got a guy playing the role of a, he's like an indie manager.

You would see him on a dentist show.

yeah unfortunately that's the the state of things but you can think yourself don okay you can manage someone that's what it would be

you but you mentioned the the

the overall the the commentary

even though it was rotten it i said it wasn't as rotten as it normally is because these people they didn't even get the the a announce team

They didn't even get Taz and Shivani and Sockface.

They got

Shivani and Nigel,

which Nigel's probably, if he was unfettered and alone, the best of the bunch of them.

But they didn't even get the A-team there.

They had to be thinking, what the fuck?

And then I was wondering if Tony even made the trip, but I understand he went out in front of the live crowd and got shit booed out of it.

Yeah, they booed him.

Because look at what happened.

They thought they were getting a big Australian AEW event.

Whoever, even if it's not a stadium, 13,000 people thought they were going to get a big AEW event.

How many people weren't there?

How many people weren't flown over?

The ring wasn't flown over.

And then you get a makeshift collision/slash ring of honor.

You can't bring the ring over, but you can bring over the ring of honor crew?

Well, they had no ring of honor.

They only had ring of ill repute.

All right, should we move on to the

women's title match, the big showdown between Mercedes Moon and Australia's Australia's own Harley Cameron,

the daughter of the legendary Dave Cameron, the

historian of

relation.

Well, it's not that far, right?

They had to take boats back in the day in order to mate with people in nearby locations.

I mean, technically, they took a boat to get to Australia originally, but again, let's say.

That's why, that's why the sheep were so nervous out there in those days.

Harley Cameron's, again, it's a silly comedy act, and I think she's really talented.

I'd love to see her, you know, on the Stephen Colbert show or something, not here.

But they have successfully gotten her, through exposure to her, over.

She may not be talented in the ring, but she is over with their fans right now.

Well, and she was even over on TV here on the build to this over the last couple of weeks without being in her home country.

And then they go to Australia in a big crowd in their home country.

And

I'm thinking,

is this the time where maybe they might realize let's get something out of the?

I think we agreed the other day, Mercedes for the money spent and the bally who was the biggest female flop

that they've ever flopped here

in AEW.

So could they put the

new phenomenon over and get

something out of this thing?

But

they didn't do that, did they?

And,

you know, here's the thing.

The match, like you said,

Harley is not

it.

It was like two drunk strippers watched a tape of a wrestling match and tried to imitate it.

There's no leader here.

I know Mercedes is trying to tell her things to do that she thinks might be

wise to do, but we've seen what her matches look like a lot of times.

And

to me,

it came down to Harley's not good, but at least people like her where Mercedes is rotten and nobody's caring.

So,

besides the fact that this was kind of phony looking because they try to do too much out of their depth, and Harley was using the puppet to come off the top rope for whatever, but they didn't even use the puppet creatively.

At one point, Mercedes football kicked it, but otherwise, Harley was just waving it around like it was a pom-pom.

She could have fucking stuck her hand up the fucking puppet and then had the puppet fucking

grab Mercedes in the crotch or something.

I don't know.

I don't know if that would have worked on TNT.

Well, but it, well, it was late at night,

but the

oh well you can't deny that i mean i don't know if tnt changes their standards that much later well it's it's late night it's playboy after dark baby

you know it's not the family hour anymore we could let our freak flag fly that's right back to electric blue Yes, well, back to it is finally it wouldn't end until Mercedes hit that shitty finish that she does and beat Harley one, two, three also.

So what is,

you know, Mildred Burke going to have to come back from the grave to end this winning streak of this obviously egotistical young flopola?

Just an honest question I ask of you.

I mean, Tony's happy with Mercedes-Monet,

and

I don't know what to say about the women's division.

They have some talent there, but it's never going to work when you just throw them on in the middle of the show when there are other matches that people care for.

Harley Cameron's gotten herself over with the puppet.

I know it's not an easy thing to do, but they should sell the fucking puppet, just have them everywhere.

But merch is not necessarily their strong suit.

But take advantage of this right now.

If WWE ate Harley Cameron and all of a sudden they discovered she's a ventriloquist and it got over, they'd be merch up to gazoo already.

Is there anything from AEW?

I don't know.

She didn't win.

AEW is on a

run of disappointing finishes.

I'm not just saying the good guy has to win and Tony Storm got a big win and they really like that.

But between Harley not winning and the way Cope lost,

there was enough here to deflate people.

You know what I mean?

Just like,

okay, I've seen that.

That fucking Cope,

let's not blame him.

The Dick the Boozer match, which we'll get to, was a goddamn, that was the wrestling equivalent of a tranquilizer dart.

Just took the fucking energy out of everybody.

Oh, well, anyway, yes, Mercedes won, didn't she?

Mercedes Monet did win.

She is still the,

no, the other one's the woman.

She's the TNT champion.

Well, she's got like four belts or whatever.

Well, only one of them is recognized or official.

No, believe me, she's got four belts, but nobody recognizes any of them.

Like, what's that?

So Harley Cameron, not necessarily someone who's a wrestler.

Someone told me her husband is an athlete who was signed to WWE and that she came over here with him.

And that's kind of what her introduction to wrestling was.

So, not someone with any sort of background or interest in being in it, but got into it.

And she has talent.

She could sing, play guitar, and play with puppets.

Is that someone WWE should be interested in?

Or would they say, no, stay in AEW?

Well, no, I wonder why

that she didn't, if her husband, boyfriend, significant other, whatever was involved with the WWE system, why they didn't

get involved with her at the beginning, or maybe they did, or maybe she wasn't interested then and chose another path or whatever, but

she probably would have been,

she probably would have been better served in NXT because if the only

perspective she has on wrestling is what she sees behind the scenes and or in the ring in AEW,

she's going to have a long road a hoe, as Mama Cornette used to say,

if she wants to continue in the big leagues and go through NXT.

If she at least got in that system first,

she'd still have a limited understanding of wrestling, but she would have a better understanding of what the fuck, how to separate business from all of this tomfoolery.

Does that make any sense?

It does make some sense.

And again, Harley Cameron getting over, talented, has her puppets.

If AEW isn't going to sell them, maybe she could sell them herself, set up an online store, make a bunch of money,

control her destiny with Shopify.

You know, I can hear it right now.

I can hear the cash register ringing and ka-chinging because, and Harley Cameron, she could sell her puppets.

She could sell anything she's had her hand stuck halfway up into the elbow in.

And she could own all of her property, all of her intellectual property and run her own business.

But you still need help, folks, even if you're an entrepreneur and you got the idea.

And you got the drive and the determination.

You need the platform.

You need somebody to help you out and navigate the interwebs and the wide world of commerce.

Now that we're a global entity around the world with the interwebs,

you need somebody like Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet.

Shop pay that boosts conversions.

Way less carts going abandoned.

And a cart is a terrible thing to waste, ladies and gentlemen.

And way more of the sales going

kaching.

That means money.

That means De Niro.

That means pesos.

That means moolah.

Not the female kind.

You can pay for younger women, but it means financial recompense to you in your pocket if you're growing your business.

Your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are, whether it's on the web, in your store, in their feed.

and everywhere in between from feelings to follicles.

And businesses that sell more sell on Shopify because

they take the novice, they take the idea, they take the concept, and boom goes the dynamite.

They make it become a reality.

Brian, you have seen, as a matter of fact, this guy had an idea for a theme park, Pisney World.

And over the course of a weekend, Down there in Delray Beach, they built this guy an amusement park.

And now

he's letting children come in for a quarter ahead.

I don't know what they're doing.

They stay there all day.

In Delray Beach, Pisney World.

I don't know what.

Well, he had to be far enough away from Orlando.

They couldn't see the sign.

But right now, folks, you can upgrade your business and get the same kind of checkout and platform as the big boys use, and it's only going to cost you $1 a month.

How can you do this?

You say to yourself, well, you don't say it yourself, or otherwise, you'd be not using the word you.

You say it to me.

How can you do this?

Or how can they do this?

Who's doing this?

Let me clarify this.

Shopify is going to give you a $1 a month trial period if you go to shopify.com slash JCE.

That's all lowercase there, the JCE.

Again, it's an important thing to them, so I went along with it.

Shopify.com slash JCE

to upgrade your selling today.

Shopify.com.

Have I repeated this enough?

Slash JCE.

And boom, you're going to be farting through silk and swimming in Scrooge McDuck's money bin.

Unless, of course, your business that you're wanting to get into is illegal, in which case they'll give you another website you need to go to.

No, they will not have nothing about it there.

No, they won't tell you anything, and you could talk about that by yourself.

That's right.

You know, you'll have no recollection of it afterwards.

That's what the courts will say.

They will not say anything because these conversations won't happen, but you'll be selling lots of stuff with Shopify one more time.

What's that?

Promo code, Jim.

Oh, I thought you wanted to hear this one more time.

The promo code is JCE.

All right, you know what that means.

We're back to Australia.

Well, here came Edge.

And

this was the again,

I said at the top of the program, they should have led with somebody that maybe the new audience might know that at the same time would still mean something to the AEW crowd.

Edge would have been the guy, but this brutal, rotten, indie garbage match that he was involved in would have

driven people off the fucking show like women and children off the deck of the Titanic.

But he was over.

The fans sang his song.

When the music cut off, they continued singing to him.

and they know him, and he's been a star for a while, even though,

you know, he now looks like Dan Haggerty's elderly uncle.

And then here came Jay White, and, well, there came Jay White, but

he's over there because

he's one of those folk.

Where is he from?

I think he may be New Zealand also.

He is so

again, you know, they're close to home.

They don't have the loyalty the Samoans do.

But still.

Where's Old Zealand?

Well, it's under the sea.

It's next to Atlantis.

That's why they had to make a new one.

The other one sank.

And then here came Dick the Boozer and the Boer Horseman through the crowd.

And they're having a Brisbane brawl with no disqualifications, no count outs, no tags.

They even said no tags.

How was that different from the last match they just had?

Where they could have been counted out many times, but weren't.

They could have been disqualified, but weren't.

They had no tags.

And the fight on this one started on the floor.

And they fought in the entranceway.

And they fought through the arena.

And they fought into the stands.

And they fought in the trenches.

And they fought on the front line.

But it's the same shit they always do.

And the pace on this was somewhat glacial.

And then we found out,

and I'm trying to think,

there was a place we went for a Ring of Honor show.

It is 15 years ago.

I want to say, was it Canada or whatever the fuck?

where they couldn't find any tables.

And I mean, there were panicked faces like, oh my God, we can't have a wrestling show without tables amongst the wrestlers, believe it or not,

because

the tables that are broken in wrestling, have we ever talked about the measurements, Brian,

of the tables that they break?

I don't think so, no.

Okay,

they're, I call them lunchroom tables because that's what when I was a kid, the foldy-leg tables that you see everybody sliding a ring and set up.

That used to they'd set it up in the lunchroom or in the gym or whatever if you were having the pizza party.

But the tables that get broken are eight-foot tables.

And now that you have heard that, can you visualize when a guy's stretched out on it, his head maybe almost goes to the top, his feet almost go to the bottom, right?

Right.

Because

an eight-foot table, when you hit it with a weight in the middle of it, in the sweet spot, it'll break clean and potentially safely.

But if that table is six feet long, and that's what with the Ring of Honor

show I was talking about, I think all they could find were four-foot tables.

Your sweet spot almost ain't there.

The closer in that the legs are to the middle of the table,

the sturdier it's going to be, the less it's going to, or the more it's going to take to break it, the less likely it is to break in the middle.

You get my drift here.

And when they pulled at least one of the tables I saw out, it looks like Australia has like five-foot tables, maybe six,

but they were all so thin when you, when Edge got power bombed through off the apron, I think, and just matched through one of those tables, and it looked like he got power bombed through a fucking cardboard box from U line.

It just snapped like balsa would, like, chopsticks.

The point is, in other countries, they have other office supplies with other measurements, and maybe they're on the metric system over there.

I don't know what's going on, but did you notice the tables were a little flimsy?

When they put,

I can't remember who, I think Kyle laid on it for a minute.

It looked like it was going to break in half just from the guy laying on it.

Anyway,

yeah, flimsy table break.

Just random notes.

Moxley's shit looks so fake.

That the power bomb through a table was the break spot.

When they came back, nothing was really happening.

Then Edge made a comeback, Moxley stopped him.

And the Jay White made a comeback with a kendo stick and they stopped him.

The Road Warriors sold like Ricky Morton compared to these fucking heels.

And then Wheeler, old Wheelie boy, he just rolled in and started whipping people with a belt.

And then Edge speared

who's he, what's he threw the fucking table, and Claudio, and Speaker Moxley?

And then Edge pulled out a barbed wire chair,

a chair wrapped in barbed wire,

and hit Moxley with it.

Is it worth Brian stopping and taking a moment to pump the brakes and ask this question again since it's been a couple years since I did the last time?

What the fuck application does a chair chair wrapped in barbed wire have in real

civilian life?

Well, there is none.

We're supposed to assume that the wrestler left it there knowing that he'll need it, not that it was something that happened to be there, I guess.

Well, but again, so now

guys are allowed to put their own personal weapons.

Under it's so stupid.

The whole idea of the chair shot to begin with

in an arena, in a wrestling arena with spectators, there are chairs around and something you'd grab and pick up in a fight.

If it's something that could be under the ring, I can go for a chair.

I can go for a board.

I can go for an extra turnbuckle.

I can go for a toolbox, fire extinguisher.

But a chair wrapped in barbed wire for any normal person,

of course there are none, but any normal person that was watching this show would go, what the fuck is the matter with these people?

It's just so stupid.

And then

Marina Schaefer,

oh, god damn it.

Somebody had a wonderful nickname for the we ought to start calling her

on that they tweeted, and now I've forgotten what it was.

I just remember saying, I should fucking write that down.

Then I didn't write it down.

But Marina Schaefer hit edge with the briefcase, but not really because she missed him.

But he sold it, and Moxley got the choke on him, and everything came to a halt.

There was no motion.

It took forever.

All of the extra people, the heels that weren't in the match, were holding Edge's solitary partner away from making any kind of a save.

And then the referee rang the bell.

And the crowd booed,

not in the way of boo, we hate you, you heel.

It was like, boo, that's the fucking finish.

And he just, it was a garbage match with a rotten finish.

And then, before you comment,

when Moxley kept choking

Edge, the crowd started chanting bullshit.

Because it just, it was going nowhere.

And then Moxley jumps up like a

maniac running around, cussed and got bleeped, whatever he said.

And then the heels wandered around while Moxley acted like a tough guy and flipped everybody the fucking bird.

And it was like garbage championship wrestling with

a budget.

And after all the other

self-inflicted wounds and bad booking decisions, it may be, after all, it may be this fucking low-class clown that kills this whole thing and just runs everybody off.

He is the worst wrestler in the world.

I'm sorry.

Please give me your feedback.

I've drummed on for too long.

You didn't know this.

I literally was going to begin by saying Jon Moxley is the worst wrestler in the world.

Well, I'm sorry I stole your material.

When I first said that several years ago, we would still hear a lot of pushback.

Can you imagine how crazy Cornette and Last are?

They think Moxley sucks.

Everyone sees it now.

His ideas are terrible.

His work is terrible.

The fact that they're putting over so strongly a heel team that the fans reject, this isn't heat.

Channing bullshit isn't heat here.

It is the fans are sick of this with Moxley, him choking people out, killing people.

The other thing that's scarier is what this could mean.

Moxley and Edge are about to wrestle at the AEW pay-per-view coming up.

Edge just got choked out.

Does that mean he's going to win?

Which scares me because if he wins the title, first of all, I wouldn't make him the world champion right now.

But second of all, does that mean Christian's going to cash in right away?

I mean, there's all these dynamics.

None of them are good.

The world champion is Moxley.

You never see the belt.

And it's like a vacancy at the top of the card right now.

They've killed every single segment.

They've been in ratings-wise.

Tony has put them.

If you notice over the last like three months, Tony has put the Death Riders in like every quarter of the show, just trying to find any place where they won't drive people away.

It's impossible.

The Death Rider stuff is only good to Jon Moxley because he's a wrestling moron.

He knows what he likes.

He knows what he wants to be, but he doesn't know what people want and what people want him to be.

Terrible match.

Terrible.

I said it the other day.

None of these people are marketable.

They just put out a white t-shirt.

That says Death Riders at the bottom, apparently, that they're selling.

It's just bad.

And I don't think anyone wants to see Edge.

He got a great reaction here.

It was a wonderful moment when everyone's singing his song because the Australian fans are happy to see him.

But his run in AEW has been awful.

And him against the Death Riders has been god-awful.

If he's about to wrestle for the AEW World title, and

you know, at least many of the AEW faithful are on board with that, right?

How old is Edge?

Is it 53?

I'm trying to remember.

You might be able to Google it, but the point of the matter is, is that wasn't it just a few weeks ago that Uncle Dave was saying, well, about Shelton Benjamin?

I don't know, pushing a guy that was 49 years old and wasn't used real well on TV in the WWE

a few years ago.

Edge is 51.

Okay, Edge is 51.

Look at Edge at 51 next to Shelton Benjamin at 49.

Tell me who might ought to be the world champion between the two of them.

Well, that was that match, Jim.

And of course, there was still more to go, but the fans were pretty deflated by this point.

AW Grand Slam.

Yes, they looked like one of those

wind socks and a calm wind at the airport.

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The international title was on the lab.

Is that the international title?

The

intercontinental to continental title?

One of the titles was on the line.

Yes, it is.

The other one's the Continental.

Yes.

It was Okada versus Buddy Matthews, and we mentioned it earlier in the program.

This is where Buddy

injured his ring, injured his ankle, apparently, in this ring.

And again, I thought that I didn't catch it because it was on the entrance, and he made it through this whole match and was the most impressive guy in the match.

And I'd seen him limping at one point, but since then he was doing a running spot.

I was like, oh, he was selling what he was doing before, but he's just apparently a tough fucking guy.

But

it's insulting to Buddy, as hard as he works and as much as he tries to get his shit over, to have to work with a fucking lazy ass piece of shit like Okada.

Be quite honest with you.

I'm just being honest.

Instead of recounting the matches and the endless blow-by-blow description,

here's what I'm saying as a person who has been involved in training programs and talent scouting and fucking

development,

invented developmental, for fuck's sake.

Because that's what I was going to say.

Stacy was watching part of this thing with me.

And I said to her, I said, Look at this guy.

I said, am I

overly critical?

Am I biased?

Look at this guy and his appearance in the ring and his work that he is exhibiting

and tell me, would he have stood out in an Ohio Valley wrestling class?

And she said, no, he's a shit.

And she reminded me of who he works like.

Do you know who Okada works like?

I have no idea.

David Flair.

Oh, come on.

No, bless him.

Come on.

Bless him.

He was a heck of a nice kid.

But David Flair

didn't get it.

And

that's when Okada,

he's soft, he's bland, he's slow, he's boring.

He's obviously not working any harder than he has to at any point.

And there's no charisma.

There's no look.

There's no,

what the fuck?

If I said Mercedes was the most expensive female flop that Tony's ever purchased,

the men's title has to go to Okada.

He looks like a Japanese Elon Musk.

And his shit is unwatchable.

Did you see the elbow fall off the top rope?

He didn't drop it.

He just fell.

It's

buddy with, again, buddy's from over over there, down under,

with the Vegemite and all that type of stuff.

Can you hear the thunder?

You better run, you better take cover.

They want to see him do something.

The fans were with him.

And again, he's doing all this shit with one foot.

And finally, Buddy hit a superplex and a jackhammer and got a two count.

And he got Rhea's clover leaf.

And Okada rolled through,

kicked him into balls, hit him with that shitty clothesline, and beat him one, two, three.

Here's this jacked-up beast hitting this fucking

slight-built Japanese businessman-looking fuck

with all these big moves, and Okada wins with a shitty clothesline that only got over because Buddy took a hell of a bump for it.

And

what the fuck is

at some point,

do you not say to yourself,

I can't believe that I paid what I paid for what I'm staring at on this monitor with my own eyes, and I need

to either tell him start working hard if he can, or phasing him out and get somebody over with his name while he's still got one.

I think Ibushi'd be better than Okada, and he had his feet amputated, right?

Let's not go crazy.

Ibushi may be past the point of no return.

You know, Okada has not been impressive in AEW.

At one point, you want to talk about the ring.

At one point, he did the move, the move.

He hit the mat and he tried to roll out and he got caught on the bottom rope.

Because I guess the ropes are lower than

they are.

Usually, he couldn't just roll out of the ring.

He got caught in the rope.

Buddy Matthews has a great look,

has an awful name, was in front of a hometown crowd.

You could say the same thing about Harley Cameron in terms of being in front of a hometown crowd.

Now, they got the Tony Storm match, but there was a lot of things in between that deflated people, like this match.

You're paying Okado all this money.

Tony Khan could do it.

I'm not even going to blame him for that.

He could do it.

He doesn't have to care.

But if you could recognize what's happening,

maybe it was worth it to kind of try to do something here and give Buddy a big win.

Roll the dice.

See if he can get something out of any of this.

Because otherwise, Okado just won another match.

He's kind of a nothing champion.

He's got nothing going on.

He's virtually done nothing since the Bucs haven't been on TV.

Well, as I say, his group, his cohorts in crime, they just went home because they weren't over and it was embarrassing them.

to go on TV and flop.

So they just went home to get paid and left him standing around doing interviews where the only word he can say in English is bitch

and having these slow ass,

you know, fucking shitty matches.

And what can he be involved in?

I don't think AEW can push people based off reputation.

It has to be based on what they bring to the table right now.

That has to be the way AEW deals with things.

Capitalize on the moment, jump on things that work, try to make something work, not just keep doing what you're doing.

Moxley's the world champion.

People hate him.

They hate watching him.

The continental champion is Okada.

He's not lighting the world on fire.

The international champion, is that still Takesha?

I believe so.

He just lost in the tag team.

I mean, just none of the champions are the right guys or presented well.

But yeah.

He beat Buddy Matthews here.

This was a chance to, even though he's hurt and we now know that, if they had put Buddy over here,

maybe you have a chance of having someone who could be a bit of a star for you.

Well, but they've re and that's another reason.

Why is he wrestling for a singles title when they have just

the leader of the group that he was in,

that he was really presented as the third-place guy in, has just left the company.

So they repackaged him and Brody King as a tag team

and then

beat them right away.

They lost their first tag team match on dynamite and then they put buddy in as a single wrestling for a title and he gets beat too

so what

anyway well that was that match but if there was ever a time to do something that was it we wish uh him a speedy recovery so he can come and put the girls champion over

and speaking of the girls champion for the women's title whichever one of the women's titles that Mercedes doesn't have,

it was Maria Mae and Tony Storm.

And again, the

dramatic return to Willa, Maria, where's Maria from?

You mean Mariah?

Yeah, well, you say Maria, I say Mariah.

I wish they'd called the whole thing off.

Her name's Mariah.

I think she's from England.

So she's from, she's got an accent too.

So a lot of, but Tony Storm is the hometown girl here.

Let me just double shut.

Yeah, she's from London, England.

Well, there you go.

So you got, you got Queensland versus England.

But,

and I do mean the word but,

during Maria's entrance,

who comes out

after she gets in the ring,

but Luther

in a bellhop costume comes out of the stands and gestures grandly and flabbily toward the video screen for Tony's big entrance.

They flew Luther

to Australia,

mugged an organ grinder, stripped his monkey, and put the outfit on Luther.

But they can't take a ring over or bring any of the major stars of wrestling.

But Luther,

you think they had to buy that fat ass two seats on the plane?

I don't know.

I'll let you think of a better fucking retort to that.

Oh, come on or something.

I don't have any Luther retorts.

He's beyond retort.

Beyond retorting?

Yes.

He's beyond retorting.

We're doing the retorting on Luther.

Jericho's retorted friend, Luther, was on the show.

That's right.

He's another one of the Winnipeg.

You got the Kookamonga Click and

the Winnipeg Warriors.

And so then Tony Storm entered in black and white.

And I, you know,

it's better than Mercedes and Harley, but what wouldn't be?

But they want Tony to win.

And up to this point, Stacey, I think that's where she got up because she said,

you wouldn't have aired any of this.

I was like, because I was complaining about the finish of the last match.

I'm just, Tony Storm wasn't bad until this gimmick.

Remember, we liked Tony Storm.

She was a good wrestler with a

seemingly bubbly personality.

But then she went Hollywood and got this bald fat fuck from Winnipeg to be her Eric von Stroheim and this whole goddamn

it had nothing to do with all about Eve.

Come to find out.

Watch the goddamn movie, people, and compare All About Eve to anything they've done here.

And then she's got amnesia.

And then I'm so tired of amateur cartoon wrestling that I don't care whether this match was any good or not.

Tony gave her six German suplexes and beat her up on the floor and three Asta faces and a pile driver.

And then Maria

hit two Death Valley drivers and got a two count.

Then they had a girly slap fight.

So they followed up pile drivers and Death Valley drivers with a slap fight.

And then

the weirdest finish I've ever seen.

Tony Storm hits a pile driver on Maria.

Maria rolls to the floor so she can't be covered because she's injured

and then rolls back in and gives Tony Storm a pile driver.

And then gets up and is going to pick Tony Storm up.

And Tony Storm,

instead of small packaging her out of a pickup attempt,

stood straight up for a second, looking like she was going to pick her up and body slam her, and then small packaged her there.

One, two, three.

So

they each traded pile drivers within 45 seconds of the finish that they forgot about, and then the finish was a small package.

Help me.

New world champion.

Once again, world champion.

That wasn't the help I was looking for.

It's not about the help you're looking for.

It's about the help Tony needs.

Tony Khan, that is, not Tony, not Timeless Tony.

Well, there's too many Tony.

Say, Tony, Tony, Tony.

It's too many.

Needs to be just one, even if they do spell them differently.

You got a Y, you got an I, you got an E.

I just don't say it the same way.

Again, I don't understand the idea that you could fly over all these people.

Luther was flown over.

Tony Schiavone, I guess you needed a commentator, but that's who they chose.

All these people, and they didn't bring a ring.

They couldn't just bring their ring.

Well, now, in all fairness, again, you can't just buy a fucking ticket on Delta for you know, yes,

like 2472 to fucking Brisbane in first class for the ring.

You have to get a cargo,

a cargo plane, you'd have to be a billionaire able to rent a cargo plane.

Well, but again, that's what I'm saying.

Yes, he's got he spends the money on entrance music and talent scouts and

miscellaneous, you know, falder all for his cast of merry pranksters, but

I don't understand why they didn't get.

That's a big gate.

Didn't they want to see the Hurt Syndicate?

You know, fuck just because why are they still, why are the rosters still somewhat separate on collision and rampage?

Now that Punk is not there to beat up any of the Bucks childhood friends,

why can't all the stars appear on all the programs?

It might help their ratings.

Well, Jim, before we wrap up our look at AEW's Australian vacation,

here are the results for the Ring of Honor show we did not watch.

Uh-oh.

Bandito and the Outrunners.

He's back.

Defeated Big Bill, Brian Keith, and Chris Jericho.

Ring of Honor Pure Champion Lee Mariarty defeated Robbie Eagles.

Mark Davis defeated Tommy Knight.

The Ring of Honor World Tag Team Champions, the Sons of Texas, defeated the MXM Collection.

And finally, for the Ring of Honor Women's World Championship, Athena defeated Alex Windsor.

Ooh.

I thought he was one of Dory Funk's junior's trainees, Alex Windsor.

He just died a couple of years ago, too.

That must be a different person.

Well, it's in the women's division.

I assume it's a different person or Alex Winsor.

Well, either, you know, he decided to make the change.

We could all support that.

So

they just messed up on part of the advertising because they had promised Australia a veritable who's who of professional wrestling.

And instead, what they meant was a veritable who's that of professional wrestling.

Well, that was AEW's Australia Grand Slam.

We shall see what happens if they return to Arthur Ashe and what that is, and if they ever go back to Australia and what ring they use.

But Jim, yes, would you like to put money down?

Do you think AEW will return to Australia next year, yes or no?

I have a feeling who runs Australia?

Is that a president or a prime minister?

Or whatever the case?

I have a feeling that the head honchos down there in Australia have already filed paperwork to ban AEW from appearing on their soil as unsavory elements.

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All right, that was the worst I've ever done, but

we had to get here somehow.

Oh, good.

Get hearing somehow.

That's not what I said.

I said, we had to get here somehow.

We have a lot going on.

No, I said I've got to get hearing somehow after you blitzed my drums with that little serenade.

Well, Jim, let's get some questions.

This came from the cult of cornet.

That's not where it came from at all.

This is from corny drivethrough at gmail.com from Paul.

Hello, I had a question about wrestlers with bad attitudes.

In your opinion, Should I as a fan care about if a guy is hard to work with?

Or should I just like who I like and let their bosses worry about that stuff?

There are a lot of wrestlers who are annoying backstage, but

this guy must be there.

But I think are really talented.

Should I put myself in a promoter's shoes or just focus on the TV product that they deliver?

And that's his question, but let me just add, the most important thing, I guess, just in this day and age.

Well, that's the thing.

That's the first thing I was going to say is it depended on the era

because

most of the guys in the old days, before everybody was smart,

that were hard to work with were also big stars because that's why they were hard to work with.

They could oftentimes get away with it, or there was a reason for it.

You weren't having.

You know, poor Pat Rose wasn't going to go to Bill Watts and say, no, fuck you.

I'm not putting dog over.

So

at that point, those people being hard to work with, sometimes there was a business reason and sometimes there wasn't.

It was only in their own mind.

But the fans didn't really

realize

or know what was going on.

So they would, you know, still be predisposed to like the guy if he had

something going on, Bruiser Brody, for fuck's sake.

He could get over with the people.

He was tough on the promoters.

In today's age, when

everybody knows everything and knows who's fucking who around backstage and whatever,

there might be an element of fan backlash

against somebody that

they know is kind of actively

stonewalling or sandbagging or not giving them

the show that they should like to have because their own selfish selfish interests are taking precedence, such as, you know, Dick the Boozer, The Plumber Moxley, whatever.

That may color it, but no, just like, you know,

if you're watching

a movie and you don't know that a guy is an asshole or a convicted so-and-so or a Trump supporter or whatever, you can like the movie and like the acting, but once you find that out,

it's sometimes hard to forget,

you know, that you found out something about that particular guy you don't like.

So it depends on the era, Brian, is the answer to the question.

And what do you think about just the idea of acknowledging,

I guess not all wrestling fans care about the wrestlers behind the scenes.

They literally just watch wrestling or attend wrestling and move on with their day and move on with their life.

Because people are,

you know, they're still fans of Pitty Diddy's music or Puffy Doody or whatever his fucking name is.

I don't know if anyone's a fan of his music, actually.

Well, there's somebody somewhere.

I guess so, maybe, but.

I mean, there are people in Germany that like to have their balls nailed to a step stool.

Jim, our next question was sent via the Culta Cornet Facebook group

by Sandy Dan Rackley.

What?

Sandy Dan Rackley.

It wasn't funny, and then you had to say, what?

Now I can't look at it without laughing.

Hello, Sandy Dan.

Sandy Dan wanted to know,

how did wrestlers during the World War II period manage getting to bookings when gas rationing was in effect?

And most of the travel in between shows would have been by car?

Good question.

Well, as I recall, Of course, I was only just a teenager at the time.

Yes, there was gas rationing and most wrestlers didn't

fly in those days, except for the biggest stars, the Jim Londises or whatever.

But there was also trains.

And you, in, and, Brian, you've seen this.

A lot of the old wrestler, you know, books or period pieces.

You know, and I was on a train with Strangler Lewis.

They actually did that that shit up until,

fuck the 50s, I guess, right?

When then it started getting really hard to get a train anywhere in the United States.

By the way, not just wrestlers.

I mean, you see, like, Babe Ruth was on the train with people.

Yeah.

It was everyone.

Yeah, well, and that's how the movie stars and the studios, if they had to bring stars across the country for a barnstorming publicity tour for a new movie or whatever, they'd put them on a train and have banners and shit.

harry truman was the end of that ladies and gentlemen that was the last time it was done

but also uh in those days except for the

the main event

which may be the the big stars uh still except if it was a major major wrestling market show there would be a lot of local guys underneath and what was it three matches on a card so you're talking six or eight wrestlers.

It, you know, they got around however they had to get around.

And also guys weren't working

in the days before television and before the territories had been established.

They weren't working every day because of that, because of travel time.

They either had time to

or had to have time to

get in a car four or five at a time.

Those old gangster cars from the 30s and 40s, you could put

a two-bedroom apartment in the fucking thing.

So they'd pile up in the car or and they would have an extra day in between to drive from Rochester, New York to Pittsburgh because there was no interstate.

So they did what they had to do.

It wasn't like everybody was driving a Cadillac and, you know,

driving by themselves.

Well, Jim, our next question sent to CorneyDriveThru at gmail.com from Jack in Indianapolis.

Was Gary Hart considered a good manager by performers within the business?

I ask because he never seemed to do anything during his guys' matches.

And he never went to the WWF.

Was that just his shtick?

Not doing anything except look mean?

Did other performers think he was useless ringside, but a good promo?

Thanks.

Well, he did at one point

was about to go to the WWF, and I think that story has been told.

Who was it?

Was it Strong?

Strong Heat Wither, whatever?

They didn't send anybody to pick him up.

He got mad and went back.

It was either that, you know, I think it was that, but I also, for whatever reason, I thought he actually showed up at the building and pulled a knife on Strongball.

But maybe I'm wrong about the situation.

Well, I mean, and it wouldn't have been a knife.

It would have been a razor blade.

But

yes and no to all of the above, and I'll try to explain why.

And, you know, Uncle Gary, I liked Gary when I got to know him later on in our careers, but I, as a fan and when I first got into business, I kind of thought the same thing.

I think the problem is, is that Gary

had such longevity,

but he really,

after the plane crash and he kind of settled into the

sinister Playboy Gary Hart, you know.

I don't want to say character gimmick, that he didn't really change a lot for the 80s.

Dusty thought so highly of him.

He was a huge drawing manager in the 70s in Florida.

That was Dusty as a heel was part of the Gary Hart Army before they switched him babyface and Gary had packed song and they sold out everywhere, blah, blah, blah.

Gary had learned to wrestle badly.

He was not a good wrestler, never had a physique and wasn't really...

You can see the old Chicago tapes, but what, late 50s, early 60s?

But his calling wasn't as a wrestler, but he had that voice and that delivery and that face, that expression,

and he could make you believe things.

So by the late 60s, as a manager, he was getting over and he drew money in most places.

And also, as a lot of the

guys who

excelled as managers were

he was he had a booking mind and that's where he got his best reputation inside the business to answer the question more directly i think by the 80s everybody that had to work with him as a manager at ringside probably was like oh this is a little difficult but he had more respect from people from the booking he had done and in Dallas or in Atlanta or, you know, Barnett

liked Gary because of his mind and how he could develop talent and kabuki.

So he had a good reputation in the business, but there was that when Flair was a babyface against Terry Funk in that series in 89, Gary's at ringside.

Gary wouldn't put Flair over.

When Flair's charging up to him, Gary just stood his ground.

And Gary was bigger than Flair was.

And you see, Flair would have to grab him and jerk him around a little bit to get him to just leave.

There's a moment where you see the frustration in Flare.

I think it was the Texas death match, or not the Texas death match, the I-Cord match.

I think it was that match you see in his face.

He goes back for a second.

He's frustrated.

Gary won't do anything.

Yeah.

And part of it was after that plane crash, Gary, you know, and that was 15 years after the crash.

Well, you can't play that card with Flare.

Hey, I was going to play well that's what guess what, buddy?

But at the same time, Gary

couldn't take bumps and couldn't do a lot physically after that.

So you had a heel manager that was really big and really menacing looking, but he could do only the barest things for you to get,

you know, even with him.

And

he wanted to keep his heat to the point where he didn't want to look scared of the babyfaces.

But like I said, by the time the 80s rolled around national TV, TBS, there's me, there's Jimmy Hart, there's Heenan.

We're bumping, we're being more

over the top, so to speak.

And Gary was, he was different, but it was sometimes difficult for the babyfaces to work with and or sometimes the fans by that point thought, well, he's not really doing a lot because he wasn't really doing a lot.

By that point in 89, it was you, it was Heyman, it was Teddy Long, it was Gary and the rest of you, even Heyman.

Heyman would at least like run around.

He would move around.

He may not take bumps or do it well.

But he was in motion.

Gary would just kind of stand there and every now and then walk.

And that was it?

Yeah.

And I mean, less is more, but when it's so much less, because it's the same thing you've been doing 20 years ago,

that's a little too less.

All right, Jim, our next question, or actually, I guess it's a list here.

Potential names for Adam Copeland.

This was sent in by Ben to Corney DriveThru at gmail.com.

He wanted your thoughts.

Would these be better than Cope?

I guess that's the question for each of these.

Fringe.

Is fringe better than cope?

It might be.

It depends on how you cope with the fringe.

Perimeter.

I like perimeter.

Perimeter.

Okay, so I'll put a check mark next to that one.

Brink.

Oh,

maybe even better, and it fits better on the fucking marquee.

He can come out in in a brinkstruck.

Well, no, he could play it.

And I'm one step closer to the brink, and I'm about to bring.

All right, so you like that one.

What about Verge?

Well, Verge

is still not the edge

because the Verge is before the edge.

I guess it's close enough to edge.

That's kind of the thing without being edge.

What about margin?

Would margin be a better name for Cope than Cope?

I'll go with that.

Maybe even median.

Again, I don't know how this one would work.

Lip.

Just lip.

Followed by on the list here, limit.

Of course, and it says here this one may be too political.

Border.

Border.

But now that could be his tagline.

One thing you're going to learn, don't ever cross the the border.

See, that wow, that is good.

You came up with that quick.

That's good.

I hope we don't convince him to use it.

But what about Jim Better Than Cope?

Yes or no?

Or on par with Edge?

Precipice.

Oh.

Can you imagine

the videos they could build and put together about

someone falling from the precipice?

What about Brim?

Brim.

Sounds a little grim.

Advantage.

Here he is, the rated R superstar.

Advantage.

See, now we're getting away from the literal description of the name and going more to the

figurative.

Superiority.

I don't know if that one would work so much.

Head start.

I don't know if I was anybody in AEW right now, if I'd come out a t-shirt that said head start.

What about ascendancy?

I think that's somebody has to be a little too high.

And then finally on this first list, the upper hand.

Is the upper hand better than Cope?

I don't know, but the right hand's better than all of them.

And then according to, what was the name of this person again, according to Ben, I feel any of these would fit in with AEW television.

The synonyms for edge as a verb also have potential.

Jim, what do you think of creep?

What do you think of the rated R superstar?

Creep.

Creep.

Or skirt.

Skirt is also a verb.

What about trim?

The wrestler, trim.

That may work.

Finally, Flank.

Flank.

Flank.

And Rim.

Well, and you've been defeated by the Rim job.

That could be the finishing move of Rim.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Rim does the Rim job.

Against Flank.

He gave Flank a Rim job and beat him one, two, three.

It's ridiculous to have a wrestler named Flank, although it sounds like it would be a brand new women's promotion to Japan based on the name of that.

They're going to be in a big war with Gleet.

Did you hear Julia's going to Flank?

She left Gleat.

Well, these are potential names for Adam Copeland.

It appears that maybe a couple of them met your approval.

Let's get another question here, Jim.

Yes, back to the questions.

This one was sent via the Culta Cornet Facebook group by Nate Pelley.

Does Jim have any memories of Peel's Palace, Erlinger, Kentucky?

Smoky Mountain ran shows there in 94 and 95.

I attended my first non-WWF show there the night Dan Severin defeated Chris Candido for the NWA title.

Would love to hear any stories or memories Jim has of the city or venue.

Good Lord.

Peel's Palace, I wonder if the building is still there.

I bet you the business is out of business.

But it came about because

Les Thatcher, who had been friends with for ages,

and he had started doing the television program.

When we originally went on the air with Smoky Mountain, Les had a

God, was he, he was managing a gym or doing something in Cincinnati where he couldn't get away on a regular basis.

But he had done, you know, some of the live events that we taped for home home video.

And then when he took over co-hosting the television program, he knew a guy at a low-power station in Cincinnati.

I think it was Channel 64 that ran several different territory wrestling programs.

And we got Smoky Mountain on that station.

The problem was it was a low-power station, didn't have a big viewership.

So it's not like we were going to

run the Cincinnati Gardens, right?

But less found, Peel's Palace was this kind of bar/slash nightclub/slash entertainment venue

that

you could get.

I can't remember.

I think if we ever maxed it out, which I don't think we did, you could get 800 people in there or whatever.

And

we could at least open up the Cincinnati market, work with the locals' TV stations such as it was,

you know,

try to get another town on the the calendar.

And we ran a couple of times there, including, as the questioner mentioned, that's where

we did the Severn Candido match for the NWA title.

And it was a dump, but at the same time, we're a, you know, fucking independent wrestling promotion looking to break into a new market.

Yeah, well, why'd you, if you don't let me ask it, and you did the title switch there, and again, it wasn't really your title, although it was your wrestler holding the title and it was your show that the title change was on.

But was it just that you really hadn't done anything to establish Candido as the NWA champion territory-wide?

Is that the reason you didn't do it in like Johnson City or Knoxville?

Well, as I recall, it was basically that

maybe, because you knew Dennis, why did they need to switch the belt at that point?

They just made the deal, right?

With Seth.

Well, actually, you know what?

It may have been that, but Chris won the title November, I think November 19th, 94 and then was the title switch was it February 95 was it that late I think it may have been early 95 when did he go and become a body Donna

well oh that was much later on that year but see what the deal was was remember the reason why the Chris won it was because they had to have a second tournament because Pauli and Shane Douglas fucked the NWA over and fucked Dennis over with the ECW deal.

That's right.

So then they needed a champion, so they wanted to put it on Candido, Candido, and then they made a deal with Dan Severn because Dan had the international reputation and was legitimate.

And,

you know, blah, blah, blah.

But then, as far as I can recall, the reason why it was done there is they had a date on Dan.

They needed a place for Chris to lose the title to Dan.

And I think Dennis basically said, where are you guys running?

February 25th or whatever the date was.

I said, yeah, we're in Erlanger, Kentucky, on the outskirts of Cincinnati at Peel's Palace.

That's probably the

most complicated it got.

If it had been Knoxville on that date, would you have done something or would that have been a problem?

Because it would have been out of sorts with everything you had done in Knoxville.

It actually would have not made sense and also would have robbed us because Candido was figured in,

you know,

various programs, whether it be with the Rock and Roll Express or whatever the case.

So it would have

hampered us to have to take his regular program match off our biggest town to put a NWA title match that honestly nobody in Knoxville was going to give a shit about.

So that was

lucky we didn't have to do that.

But anyway, that's and so Peel's Palace.

The point is to get to the bottom line, we ran it a couple of times and it did okay.

I can't remember

without looking at my

records whether we did, you you know, 500 people both times or whatever the fuck it was.

But the last time we were going to run it,

Les called,

I want to say either the night before, maybe even the morning of the show.

And Knoxville to Cincinnati is

probably 260, 260 miles, whatever.

But he called, he said, well, the guy at Peel's Palace wants to change the deal.

He wants X more on rent or he wants to do this or whatever.

I said, what the

day of?

I said, no, we've had an agreement on how much the rent was going to be on the building and the financial deal on the building.

And we've advertised this show and it's tonight.

If he wants to raise the rent for the next show, then that's fine.

We just won't come back because we ain't setting the world on fire there anyway.

But no, he has to stick to the agreement that we've got for the show that's starting in fucking less than 12 hours.

And Les called back and said, well, he won't.

I said, well, then tell him, fuck him, and we ain't coming.

So I called Hildebrand and we called all the guys that we could get a hold of

and told them not to go.

The show was canceled.

But

oh, I remember.

Oh, it just hit me what happened.

Is this when I don't want to spoil it?

The people that didn't get the memo or actually they got it and they still wanted to go

that's what i remember too they still even though they knew it was canceled new jack and mustafa

they had made plans because they were going to go up there and i don't know if they had girls or they were going to party or they're whatever but they went anyway and d'lo went with them And the fucking guy that ran the building ended up calling somebody, who knows who, and having some kind of outlaw show there that night since people were coming to see wrestling.

And New Jack and Mustafa and D'Lo,

New Jack did it on D'Lo's behalf because D'Lo was still new.

From what I understand, strong-armed their way onto the show to get a payoff.

And then in the hotel next door later that night, that's where Jack and D'Lo got in a fucking fight.

And New Jack punched him.

And again, poor D'Lo was new at this point, didn't want to fucking rock the boat and fight everybody and get fired and everything.

But what

and then hildebrand calls me the next day and say well they had a show and new jack and mustafa worked it i was like what yeah they went up there anyway

jesus christ but that was peel's palace in erlanger kentucky right off the interstate on the way to cincinnati how far from louisville

90 miles maybe is that the closest you got to home on a smoky mountain show yes as a matter of fact that would be Technically, because even though

we were in

eastern Kentucky, that's still farther away than the suburbs of Cincinnati are from Louisville.

Well, Jim, a lot of people, as we are recording, they're sending this in, so I'm trying to catch up on it live.

Triple H reveals WWE's newest championships for their top independent wrestling prospects.

Oh, Christ, now they're adding belts.

This is from Cagesideseats.com by Sean Reuter.

WWE is adding a new layer to their developmental system

with WWE ID,

a program for independent wrestlers and schools, and Evolve,

a new streaming show that will showcase ID wrestlers along with NIL talents.

and existing members in the NXT roster who aren't being used on that show.

But stop there for a moment.

Evolve

was the promotion that Gabe Sapolsky started, I believe, after Ring of Honor, right?

Yes.

And I think, because Gabe's worked for them for years now, so I think didn't they buy the rights to Evolve or buy something where they could, at one point they were going to do something on the early network with some independent shows.

And I think that may have been.

going to be part of that.

Well, Gabe's there now.

You have to wonder how involved he is.

Again, I don't know too much about Evolve and this, but what do you think?

Well, it seems awfully coincidental.

What do you think of the idea of a streaming show, which nowadays is as good as a TV show in a lot of cases, but you're featuring independent talent,

NIL talent, which is basically people who have no wrestling background, they're athletes who you tried to get and craft, as well as people in NXT,

but not on NXT's TV.

What do you think of the idea of introducing a new show and now now titles?

We'll talk about the titles, but a new show for this.

There's a wide range of competency level among the people you just mentioned.

If it's people that have been in NXT but aren't being featured right now on that particular program, they've still probably got plenty of training.

If it's indie guys, they could be great.

You could find the diamond in the rough, the undiscovered jewel, or you could find the turd in the punch bowl and be the shits.

And

if it's, you know, name, image, likeness, whatever, you know,

the coming generation that hadn't been trained yet at all,

do you want,

do you not only, if somebody's worth something in the future and you think they might have potential, do you...

Do you want people to see them when they really suck, when they don't know what they're doing?

And there's nothing that looks faker and more embarrassing than people who have never done wrestling before trying to do it in front of people who know what wrestling is supposed to look like.

So

that kind of is all over the spectrum to me.

And I would have to know more about what they're going to have people doing to be able to figure out

whether it might be fucking bowling shoe ugly, as JR used to say, or

you know, or what.

Well, according to Twitter, Triple H has tweeted out this morning, a couple hours ago, a picture of him with two new belts, a white one and a black one, showing WWE ID.

All the old belts on the wall behind him, they look a lot better than these new ones.

The top independent wrestling prospects have been ID'd.

And now we're ready to spotlight the best of the best.

Here's your first look at the men's and women's WWE ID championships.

And then WWE ID

retweeted that

the first WWE ID championships will be determined in a tournament across the top independent wrestling promotions.

The WWE ID championships will then be defended on the indies.

Stay tuned to this account for more news soon.

Is this an official?

It's at WWE ID.

It's got 45.

I don't know if this is an official thing now that I look at it.

So let's.

Wait a minute.

Has this just been a whole fucking rib?

No, no, the Triple H thing is right, but the idea it's going to be defended on the Indies.

Let me see if I can find any.

Well, it sounds to me like they're trying to get a foothold.

They want

all the talent under their auspices in some respect or another that they can get from the locals and the Indies.

They don't want them dealing with AEW.

They're also protecting themselves even more from antitrust, monopoly, independent contractor

harassment, blah, blah, blah.

And they're getting the nerd fan that lives on the internet

and lives and dies with this stuff.

They're getting them more

beholden to them than they are to Tony Khan, who was their previous darling, because Tony's fucking up.

And you're cutting off Tony's pipeline.

That's the other thing.

They're locking down all future talent.

I almost had a heart attack there.

I thought you said they were cutting off Tony's pipe.

That would be,

but they're doing all those things and they can because they're making all that money and for their main audience may not ever even see this stuff because they can't.

watch three hours of SmackDown and two and a half hours of Raw and the three-hour pay-per-view every four weeks and the fucking Saturday night's main event, and the blah, blah, blah, and the NXT

and that special.

And now they're going to watch this.

A lot of people won't see it, but

their presence is still there.

This is like Pro Wrestling USA for the Indies if Vince owned it.

That's what it is.

Let's get all the indies together, and we'll own everything.

And then we'll take all their best talent, and then they won't be drawn anymore either.

Well, you know what?

On the other hand, again, it'll all be for a WWE system.

That's an issue.

But if it causes WWE to invest money in finding real promoters, developing real independence,

but it probably won't.

But are they going to make that effort?

Or are they just finding the talent and they don't care whether it's, you know, Moon Mullins fucking running the show where they found him from?

And here's the thing.

There's not going to be,

because a lot of people are going to say, wait, Cordette, your promotion worked with the wwf

yeah we got the undertaker and we got steve austin and we got back at the steiner brothers you know we got names on our shows so that was kind of worth it

but i don't know if getting the next generation of indie superstars on your indie show just because they're been

blessed by the WWE is going to sell a lot of tickets for you.

Well, we'll see what happens, and we'll see who gets crowned the ID champion, who gets carded.

But, Jim,

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All right, Jim.

Let's get a few more things before we get out of here.

This email was sent to CourtneyDriveThru at gmail.com from Zane.

Hello, Jim and Brian.

Hello, Zane.

A high school in a town near me, Butternut, Wisconsin, has the nickname the Midgets.

Supposedly named after a famous wrestler from the 20s and 30s from the area by the name of Charles Fisher,

otherwise known as the Milwaukee Midget.

I'm curious if Jim knows anything about Mr.

Fisher or if there are any interesting stories regarding him that he has heard.

Jim, any stories about the Milwaukee Midget, Charles Fisher?

From the 1920s.

And

30s.

And 30s.

Yeah, he had a long,

illustrious career.

I've never, no.

How many ways could I say no?

Did they even have midget wrestling in the 20s and 30s?

Did they start to, was the,

they started doing like like the

mud matches and the, you know, the battle royals and the tar and feather matches and everything in the 30s and into the 40s because of the slump in World War II.

But did they do midgets until the 40s?

You know, this may sound crazy because it is.

I think I may have the largest collection of midget wrestling photos that are actually

filed.

in alphabetical order in the world so i will see if i can find out anything about it's either one of two things Many of them, Tony Lanzas, I bet, because he was in Montreal.

Absolutely.

So, we'll find out one of two things.

Either there was a wrestler named the Milwaukee Midget, Charles Fisher, or this Zane hates some guy named Charles Fisher.

And he's like, hey, listen to the Cornet Show.

They're going to talk about you, old man.

Little old man.

How long does it take for you to live down being born in nut butter, Wisconsin?

No, butternut.

Butternut.

No.

Oh,

well, that may change things slightly.

All right.

Well, we hope we answered your question there.

Zane, Zane, it was.

Jim, our next email, sent to CorneyDriveThru at gmail.com from Barrett in Washington, North Carolina.

Jim, hope you're doing great.

My grandfather worked tugboats along the East Coast and on the Gulf of Mexico throughout the 80s and 90s.

He was telling a story.

over a Saturday dinner and mentioned working with Dusty Rhodes as deckhands out of New York during the late 80s, as he recalled.

Now, wait, what?

My grandfather met him initially playing pool with the rest of the boys and asked him why he was working on a boat, where his money all went,

to which, says here, Rusty, to which Rusty replied, whiskey and women.

Just curious if this lines up with what you know about Dusty, and if you know of any other lines of work Dusty may have had.

So after the NWA, after he lost his booking job, he decided to go out and work the tugboats.

And he,

you know, I swear, I think I've told this story before, but it's like

one time years ago, the heating and air guy came to do my furnace service or whatever, and he saw one of the posters on the wall, the mass superstar.

And he said, yeah, I used to live next door to him.

I said, oh, really?

He said, yeah, down in Bowling Green.

That's where he's from.

I said, well,

I think that on a poster, that's probably a different mass superstar.

He said, yeah, this guy was the original.

You know,

people tell

their family members stories of them having interactions with famous people.

And sometimes they truly believe them.

Like the...

You know, the mass superstar, you couldn't tell.

He didn't know what he looked like without his mask on.

But the fake Stan Lane in Memphis.

But maybe there was no thought applied.

Maybe there was just some fat guy with a white afro playing pool with his friends, and some guy runs up to him.

Hey, are you Dusty Rhodes?

Yeah, sure.

Where'd your money go?

What are you doing here at the pool hall in New York on the dock?

Whiskey and women.

Ah, it sounds about right.

Good to meet you, Dust.

See you on the boat.

There may be an element of that also.

Remember when,

oh, god damn it.

Who did they say it was?

Ozzie Osborne?

They introduced him at a garden show, and it looked like Dana Carvey in a wig doing a rib.

Sammy Hagar, right after he was named the lead singer of Van Halen.

Yeah.

See, Cal Rudman was involved.

Whatever happened there, Cal Rudman, as soon as the guy gets out of the ring, like gives him a hug and escorts him in the back.

And that's like the end of Cal Rudman's run doing anything with WWE.

So who knows what happened?

It looked like Dana Carvey in a wig to me.

Was that before Dana was anybody?

That was 1985.

Dana would go on to be on SNL maybe a year later, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't him.

So Cal Rudman just put in a fucking fake Sammy Hagar to give his notice.

That's what I've always wondered.

Did he tell them, I've got Sammy Hagar here.

It's great.

He wants to come out and say hello.

And it was just some fucking flabby guy in a wig.

gets in the ring and in no way was anyone who knew anything about rock and roll because the people pop for it.

They hear there's a rock star there.

But anyone who knew anything based on look and sound, it wasn't him.

Right.

And for the younger folks in the audience, Cal Rudman was a Philadelphia

personality.

Cherry Hill.

Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Well, okay, Cherry Hill.

People will probably know the Philadelphia fucking general area better than Cherry Hill, but it's nevertheless, it's very close.

And he did wrestling announcing in the spectrum and some of the stuff for the WWWF back in the 70s, early 80s.

But he was primarily,

you may know the exact, but he was a music industry expert as far as with one of the magazines, one of the Friday Morning Quarterback.

He was actually his magazine.

Yeah, it wasn't Billboard or whatever, but

his primary job was in the music business in that respect.

Yeah, anyone who wants to learn more about it, there's actually a great book called Hitman about the era of independent promotion guys and that era of record executives.

They have a whole bunch about Cal Rudman in there.

Check that out.

But all right, let's move on now, Jim.

But I don't think it was Dusty on the dock.

All right, it wasn't Dusty on the dock.

Jim, we have another question here.

This was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Johnny Sousa.

Hi, Jim.

I've heard you speak about the many tag teams from the 1980s, but one team that I haven't heard much about is the team of the Batten brothers.

Were they good workers?

What kind of guys were they backstage?

Also, were Dennis and Bobby fine with putting the brothers over for the Central States titles?

Thanks for any insight you share.

Yeah, Bart and Brad Batten were,

I think they were identical twins.

I had trouble telling them apart, but they were twin brothers from West Virginia.

And they actually,

when we opened Smoky Mountain Wrestling,

we got TV in Beckley, West Virginia, which was right near where the Battens were from.

And even though the heavily bodies, Stan Lane and Tom Pritchard, were working with the Fantastics in

Tennessee and eastern Kentucky or whatever, we did a special

little program with the Battens in West Virginia because people knew who they were there.

They were very good,

solid workers, good baby faces.

They were short.

They were vertically challenged back at a time where that meant more than it does today.

How short?

Well, I mean, like 5'8?

I remember 5'8, 5'9, something like that.

They weren't, you know, a big team, but at the same time, they were about the same size as the Fantastics.

Fantastics were a little flashier, a little bit more, you know, widespread reputation.

But Bart and Brad were good workers, and they were another couple of guys that were just victimized by the constriction of the business when all the territories went away.

They were solid territory babyfaces as a team or as individuals, but they weren't going to go up and light the two national companies on fire, and that's pretty much most of what there was.

As far as putting them over i've told that story when they they sent us up there

from dallas to the kansas city territory and we worked a couple of shows with marty jannetti and bulldog bob brown

and st.

Louis and Kansas City after Much Nick had retired and it was so

just so depressing up there and nobody was making any money and we spent more

even though they got us a plane ticket by the time that we flew up there one day rented a car got a hotel room worked a show drove to the next town worked that show got another hotel and turned the car in and flew home it was three days of our lives and we came out in a hole because we only got like 80 bucks a night

and

so

that when they called to book us back, we were already in Charlotte.

And yeah, or no, I take it back.

They didn't call to book us back.

They had booked us back from the Dallas office.

But in between the time they booked us and the time that the shows were coming up, we had moved, had given our notice in Dallas and gone to Charlotte.

So

Bob Brown calls me up and says, hey, you guys are still coming, right?

I said, Bob, I said, I got to be honest with you.

Last time, three days of our lives, fly from Dallas up there.

Now we're going to come from Charlotte.

We only got, I think we got 100 bucks a night or whatever.

I said, we've got to have 200 bucks a piece to come to this show in Kansas City.

Let me get back to you.

So

he got with Bob Geigel and I'm sure they, you know, agonized over it

and then called me back and said, okay, you guys, you got it, $200 a piece.

And we were just doing Kansas City, not St.

Louis.

And we get there.

It's a tag team tournament.

They had us working four times and putting the battens over in the finals.

We beat all their other teams and were never coming back there.

They were just so desperate to get their one team over

international stars, as we were, that they had us beat their babyface teams and their heel team

in the same night and then put the battens over.

But we ended up getting 50 bucks a match.

So that was a rib.

But no, we didn't mind putting them over because it was Kansas City and nobody was there.

And it aired on their television, which nobody was watching.

And we just wanted to go home.

But Tibatans were nice guys.

You used them in Smoky Mountain, didn't you?

Yeah, I just said that a minute ago because they were from West Virginia.

You weren't listening to a word I said, were you?

I was.

I got very into the Kansas City story.

Ah, yeah, because we can't.

That's where the origination of the term we Kansas cited ourselves.

Whenever you're going to do something that you don't really want to do to begin with, and you certainly don't want to have to do it again, don't do a fucking good job the first time.

We went in and still had good matches, and they tried to bring us back.

We Kansas cities ourselves.

Well, Jim, let's wrap up here today with a little bit from...

From the files, for the files, from the files, in the files.

Mildred Burke, the file for Mildred Mildred Burke I have in the wrestling news archive.

The subject of the Queen of the Ring movie in which I am starring in a scintillating part with the premiere taking place Tuesday, February 25th at AMC Stony Brook in Louisville with many of the stars, including myself, where I will put my handprint, footprint, and dick print in cement right out in front of the theater before the showing.

Because they've just redone the parking lot.

If I wait too long, the cement will dry.

How the hell are you going to do that?

Are you going to just lay in the cement or are you going to individually

put your hands down, then your feet down, and your dick down?

I'm just going to kind of fall face first and waller around in it for a little while.

It sounds like a happening.

Be there, folks.

But, Jim, let's go to the Mildred Burke file.

There's a bunch of interesting things in here.

Here's a folded-up copy.

Sunday, July 8th, 1990, from the National Sports Daily, Wrestling with the Devil by Frank DeFord.

Mildred Burke created a sport and became its greatest champion, all in spite of the man, her husband, who was trying to destroy her.

So there's a little bit of, from 1990, the story was already starting to get out there.

Well, of course, Frank DeFord, the mentor in the journalism category of our friend Uncle Dave, he was the guy that Dave looked up to.

Yeah, but when you put it like that, people are going to dismiss it.

He's a legend in terms of sports journalism.

Well, I didn't say...

I didn't say Dave could replicate that tie.

I said he looked up to him.

Frank DeFord was a big-time sports writer.

Dave wanted to be like Frank.

Don't be like Dave, folks.

Be like Frank.

I have a stack here of original Mildred Burke 8x10s,

all stamped with the ring on the back of it.

Here's another.

It's back from the Nat Lubette days.

Here's another one.

This one, Mildred Burke World Champion Wrestler, 1955.

Another 8x10.

Here's an interesting letter.

It's kind of a part of a two-part thing here.

January 1st, 1973,

and this is also initialed at the bottom.

I,

Marilyn Bender,

do hereby make the following statements of my own free will and will declare it to be the absolute truth.

Mildred Burke, the manager for the following girl wrestlers,

Betty Mahafney, aka Mae Weston,

Opal May Ernst, aka Rita Bennett,

Gilda Marie Vagnon,

Marie Vagnon,

and myself, Marilyn Bender, booked us all in the state of Kentucky for a Mr.

Saul Weingeroff and a Mr.

Phil Golden.

Phil Golden, Marie Vagnon, or Vagnone,

was the girl that Phil Golden's All-Star Wrestling was using as their women's champion.

They would have four matches on all these outlaw cards.

It'd be a tag match, a single match, a girls match, and

an opening match of either two midgets or two guys from the tag match.

And she was

used on almost all the shows.

And

Mae Weston,

not to be confused with Mae Young,

Mae Weston was one of the pioneer girl wrestlers that worked with Mildred Burke years before, but she had become Ma Bass and was the, like a Ma Barker type, but was the manager of Ron and Don the Bass Boys.

And she used to get so much heat, she got them shot at.

Did you get to see her?

On TV, but not ever live.

But on TV, you got to see her.

Yeah, she had,

God, I think it was a cane that had a lead tip on it and dressed in the western string tie sometimes and the hat.

And Ron and Don Bass were either from Oklahoma or Texas or whatever.

And the cowboy types.

That was real early in both of their careers.

And, but anyway, yes.

So the point is because they were an outlaw group and Saul Weingroff was booking probably for Phil Golden, they couldn't get Moolah's talent.

So they went to Mildred Burke, who in the early 70s was trying to train.

her own girl stable to try to replicate the Glory Days.

And these girls that are being talked talked about here were

were those girls and she did send them at some at one point on a tour of japan for

it was the iwa at that point right

the third group over there let me go back to this letter mildred burke told may weston that she could keep all her money if she would look after her business and send back the booking fee from the other three girls

may weston immediately started to double-cross Mildred Burke by telling the girls that our contract with Mildred was no good and could be broken at any time.

As Mildred Burke's contracts read, 25% to manager after transportation,

she said she would book us for 10%

and drive us around to the matches.

Although we stopped there.

What do you think of that?

Mildred's deal was 25%

and then Mae Weston said she'll do it for 10% and she'll drive them.

Well, Mildred's debt, that was Moolah's deal, wasn't it?

25%, maybe a little more if she could get it.

But Mae Weston's like, no, fuck you.

I'll do it for less and I'll drive you.

She wanted to take over the girls so she could get the girls booked in all of those towns.

And Mildred Burke at the time, wasn't she living in California?

That's right.

It was just, it was her name.

and her reputation in, especially in Japan, but in some of these outlaw groups that got the girls booked, but Mae Weston was the one on the ground that had been with her since the start, but now she's thinking I can take this thing over from Mildred.

Back to Marilyn Bender's letter here.

Mae Weston also said that Mildred Burke would soon be out of business.

And no time did she let us know that she was permitted to keep all her money and still complained about the contract.

We were overcharged on our transportation, and at times she opened our envelopes and we did not even know how much we really had been paid, but had to take her word for it.

We did not know that we had worked for six weeks before Mae Weston sent any bookings to Mildred Burke or even contacted her only one time at Mildred Burke's insistence.

Everything she did or said was detrimental to Mildred Burke's business and and moral character, even to the point of causing friction between Mildred Burke and the promoters.

For one thing, knocking all of Mildred Burke's other girls in order to keep her from getting any more bookings for this or any other area.

One instance, I know for a fact, that Mildred Burke had booked a new girl into Kentucky to replace me when I had to leave for Japan.

Her name was Valerie Griffin.

I know that Saul Weingroff had agreed to this booking because I heard them talking about using her in a tag team match, excuse me, in tag team matches.

When the girl arrived, she was told that Mildred Burke had not booked her there and she was stranded.

After several weeks, she was, Jesus, after several weeks, she was given a few shows so that she could return home, still believing that Mildred Burke had lied to her about being booked.

I know that she was booked because I heard the promoter and et cetera talking about the booking of Valerie Griffin.

I personally intend to let Valerie Griffin know that Mildred Burke did not lie to her.

Let me stop it here for a second.

Again, dated January 1st, 1973.

What are your thoughts on this women's wrestling drama here outside of the Moolah camp, less popular, less publicized than the Moolah camp, all this happening?

Well, I mean, again, it's, you know, somebody trying to undermine a booking agent and take their talent away through hook or crook and then make a profit by turning around and booking them with the promoters.

That's as old as wrestling.

And

the thing with

Mildred

or the girl getting stranded and not having a way home, I wondered, did

they just have her sleeping in a fucking sleeping bag under the overpass or did they let her hang around in this town for a couple of weeks to starve her to the point where she'd take the job at blah, blah, blah.

But the same thing happened to the headbangers once when they were the spiders before they came into, I think it was before they came to Smoky Mountain.

They went to Arkansas for Burt Prentiss, where he had started a territory and they were working six nights a week in this territory for

very little money.

But then one morning, all the wrestlers woke up, and Burt was gone, and the territory was closed, and some of them didn't have enough money to get home.

I think that maybe they came to Tennessee from Arkansas

because it was halfway to New Jersey.

At least they'd be further home.

But sometimes you get stuck in those days.

Back to Marilyn Bender's letter/slash declaration.

There is no doubt in my mind that Mae Weston is trying to steal Mildred Burke's business, girls, and even her champion that she has spent three years trying to build up.

We are speaking of Marie Vagnon.

Is that how you pronounce that?

I'll go with that.

V-A-G-N-O-N-E, for those of you who are wondering why we're trying to figure it out.

Who has now sent in her written notice to quit wrestling?

It is unfortunate that May Weston.

Apparently she did because you ain't never heard from her again.

It is unfortunate that Mae Weston is Marie Vignon's aunt.

I am signing.

It's all just so incestuous.

I'm signing these statements in the hopes that it will stop some of the injustice that Mae Weston is doing to Mildred Burke, who has a legal contract sanctioned by the California State Athletic Committee.

These contracts are valid worldwide and apply to Mae Weston, Opal Ernst, aka Rita Bennett, Marie Vagnon,

as well as myself.

Mildred Burke has many girls, and most of them are better wrestlers than any of those mentioned above,

including myself.

Including me.

In my opinion, Mae Weston should be made to pay her percentage of her booking fee to Mildred Burke for all of her matches in Kentucky, as she did not look after the business to Mildred Burke, excuse me, to Mildred Burke's best interest, but to bring her great harm.

I know

I was there.

I was there.

I knew that's the way it was going to end up.

I know who you are, and I saw what you did.

Obviously, it ended up in this file, but we don't know who it was sent to and how it got here.

So it's an interesting little artifact.

Here's a picture of Mildred Burke

and Mae Weston.

Here's the one and only world champion girl wrestler, Mildred Burke, 8x10 with her famous belt.

Here's her sunbathing.

Mildred Burke, world champion lady wrestler, suntanning at her California home.

A lot of these photos are photos you may have seen.

Here's Mildred.

You know, do you have any Mae Weston bikini photos?

From what I remember, they used to put those in prison to cure the sex offenders.

Here's a photo of Mildred Burke with a headlock on Al Jolson of radio and screen fame.

And as I said, Mammy

said, Mammy.

Again, lots of photos from all over the place.

Some of these are labeled.

I am looking for.

Here's an article on Queen of the Mat.

This appears to be quite old.

Here is something from the desk of Stanley Weston.

He appeared to doodle a lot.

Lots of drawings of men on here.

Here's a girl wrestler,

Mildred Burke's protege,

Holly Howard, girl wrestler, Sun Valley, California.

It's a picture of her with a man in an airplane spin.

You familiar with Holly Howard at all?

Never heard of Holly Howard or Holly Hawk for that matter.

But that was unfortunately

what the last

15 or 20 years of Mildred Burke's involvement in wrestling was, was living in California as a kind of a kindly grandmotherish type, training girl wrestlers that didn't really ever go anywhere or make any names because she was shut out from booking them anywhere important

there's some black and white photos that aren't even good or i mean some of them are blurry but they're all stamped for booking contact worldwide women's wrestling association the www a yes van nuys california or call middle milt midrid or call mildred burke and it has her phone number with a 213 area code.

A lot of these are stamped.

And a lot of these feature women I've never seen before in wrestling.

And an older Mildred Burke.

It's weird seeing her with the belt as a little old lady.

Here's a picture.

This is

from a tribute to Jim Londis.

It's Mike Mazurki, Mildred Burke, Jim Londis, and George Parnassus.

While Jim Londis cuts a cake.

And then there's another one here:

George Parnassus, Mike Merzerki, Mildred Burke, Jane Sherelle, Scarlett, Hardy Kruskamp,

and

Rama Franco.

So, this tribute to Jim Landis sounds like a real party.

Yeah, boy, I tell you what, they stayed up till all hours that night.

So, I got these photos here of

a protest in front of the Olympic auditorium, and I got the letters that correspond to it.

The main event at the Olympic was

Rivera versus John Tolos, Victor Rivera versus John Tolos, roller games Saturday and Sunday.

And Mildred Burke and her women wrestlers are in their gear, well, they're in their gear, she's just dressed like an old lady.

But they have placards: we want minimum pay of $50 for each girl per night.

Another sign says, unfair to local talent.

Another sign says, we want equal rights for women wrestlers.

Mildred Burke holding up a sign that says, if you like girl wrestlers, please write to Governor Ronald Reagan,

Sacramento.

And then another sign, we want a girls' wrestling match on every wrestling event.

These photos were taken by a photographer, Phil Miller.

Highland, California.

Well, and that's the thing at that time.

That was 1975 if the main event was Rivera and Tolas, right?

73.

73.

Sorry, I was two years off.

That is 1973, if memory serves me correct, like the Iron Chef,

was where they lifted the ban in New York on women's wrestling.

Moolah made the first appearance in the garden.

Was there a ban on women's wrestling in Los Angeles at that time, or was it just as I'm rem because I remember seeing pictures of Moolah's girls and

Peggy Patterson and et cetera in the Olympic auditorium.

Was it just they weren't using Mildred Burke's wrestlers?

And I think that she wanted to push the issue.

Why won't you book local talent?

We live in California.

They're bringing these girls in from South Carolina.

That type of thing.

So the earlier letter I read was from January 73.

This Phil Miller letter is from June 11, 73.

So later in the year, six months later.

Dear Norm,

got your first issue under the new format.

Looks really good.

Incidentally, I received two copies, so check your mailing list.

Enclosed are a couple of stories.

Norm,

I wish you would really blast Mildred Burke for her tactics in trying to get her incompetent girls work in LA.

In case you're not familiar with the case, here's the background.

A couple of years ago, Mildred started a girls' wrestling school in North Hollywood.

While Mildred was a great wrestler in her day, she's in no physical condition to teach wrestling personally, and the girls she trained were really exceptionally poor workers.

The Olympic used two of them and found them so bad that the guarantee

that the guarantee was paid after the first match and they were dismissed, not finishing the five shows covered by the money.

Let's stop there for a second.

So they were booked for the Olympic, a five-match guarantee to use women wrestlers.

They were so bad that Michael Bell, who was really famously, you know, tight with a buck, he was like, you know what, just keep the money, don't come back.

Yeah, well, and obviously they had him come in for a week.

The deal for five shows, that would have been a week in the LA territory.

And,

you know,

they said, oh, fuck, we can't put this out in front of people again.

Here, just go away.

When the forum tried competition to the Olympic, Mildred had several of her girls on the two cards the forum had before they shut down.

This double cross angered Mike LaBelle, and he would not use Mildred's girls, even though she had acquired contracts.

on a couple of good workers trained elsewhere.

Finally, LaBelle did use a couple of Millie's girls.

Jane O'Brien did quite well.

She had received training by Panama Franco

and things

right there.

It looked no further.

And things for Jane look good.

Then, Jane went to Mexico where she picked up the Mexican style.

Too acrobatic to be believable to American fans.

Jane also brought back a Mexican girlfriend, Perla Gonzalez, and caused some sensation in the Olympic by practically performing lesbian acts in the ring.

Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

Sure, I'll book you guys again.

Just don't do anything outrageous.

Can you just

drop the 69 spot?

She's been in that leg scissors for a long time, hasn't she?

Let's go back to this letter here.

Jane also brought back a Mexican girlfriend, Perla Gonzalez, and caused some sensation at the Olympic by practically performing lesbian acts in the rig.

That finished her with LaBelle.

It's well known that except for Panama and Warstar, all Mildred's girls are lesbian.

Later, Panama and her daughter, Warstar, were used in Bakersfield, California.

After the match, which was quite good, Moto, that's Mr.

Moto, found out that Warstar is only 14 years old.

Oh boy.

Millie's gym is open to the public and has large signs on the store-type front.

People walk in off the sidewalk, watch the girls' training, and immediately become, in quotes, smart.

The girls bring their friends and families to watch, and they get, again, in quotes, smart too.

About a year ago, Millie made a deal with an LA night spot to have her girls' entertainment.

The bout, bouts in quotes, ended with one girl having the top of her tights ripped off and exposing her breasts.

The commission stopped this performance after two shows.

Let me stop for a moment.

Once again, it sounds like a lot more fun than Moolah's girls were at the time.

There's a lot going on here.

Warstar and Panama are the only girls that weren't lesbian, according to Phil.

And of course, Warstar was the 14-year-old daughter of Panama.

Is that an uncommon thing?

Not necessarily the age, although.

What, for them not to be lesbians?

No, for...

A mother-daughter team to work together.

Well, no, I've seen a few mother-daughter teams work together, but you're talking about wrestling.

Not in the Danny Hodge sense.

I'm talking about in the wrestling sense.

Hey!

I actually met

one of Danny's mothers and daughters, and there was a granddaughter by that time.

But nevertheless, stay tuned to the Mid-South schedule as we pick it back up soon.

That's going to come into

Little Rock in about May or something.

Anyway, back to this.

I don't know what was going on with the 14-year-old girl.

Well, I mean,

see, in all seriousness, and we're not trying to cast aspersions, but Soraya Paige, her mother

is a wrestler also.

She was second generation.

They made the movie Fighting With My Family.

How old was Debbie Combs when she started working with her mother?

I would think she would have had to been, you know, maybe

she was certainly almost 18.

Maybe she was 17 in a state that didn't require a,

you know, athletic commission license, but she's working against her mother and riding with her mother.

The mother was under a mask.

But I've never heard of Panama Franco or

War Star or War.

Oh, neither one of them have I ever heard of.

And so they were just, it was local indie southern california lucha shows in a barn somewhere probably

what are your thoughts on again this is phil miller he's a photographer he's not necessarily a promoter or a wrestler

but the photographer is noticing a problem with people off the street and then their families becoming smart to the business what do you think of that

well i mean if it's if the photographer has to fucking be the one to report this i've never heard of phil miller as a southern California wrestling photographer, but maybe he was just doing some independent stuff and kind of on the, you know, you've heard of Theo Erett.

You've heard of some of the other

California photographers.

Oh, yes, what was his name?

Dan Westbrook.

Dan Westbrook, yes.

Mike Lano.

Well, let's not go too far, cowboy.

But, you know, that's what I'm saying is it's the same thing in, especially in indie wrestling, or as we used to call it in those days, outlaw outlaw wrestling, whether it's the East Tennessee outlaws or the Texas outlaws or the

California outlaws, it's just constant

drama and bullshit and infighting and nattering at each other and trying to steal a town or steal a talent or just fuck the other person around.

And, you know, and just trying to, again,

poor Mildred

trying to regain the glory days, she She didn't really train any of those girls the first go-round.

She just sometimes,

you know, those who can't do teach, but those who teach are not necessarily the best doers, but they're the best teachers.

Well, let's go back to this letter from Phil Miller.

In March of this year, The front page of the sports section to the L.A.

Times Valley edition had several photos of Millie's girls and an article about the school.

In the article, Millie was quoted as saying that wrestling was a show and that the promoter determined who the winner in each match would be.

She also exposed all the wrestling terminology.

Oh, she's babyface, heel, go over, kayfabe, high spot, wow, et cetera, et cetera.

So

this shows one of two things.

And I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but it shows both why the established promoters didn't want to deal with her and or how mad she was that the established promoters weren't dealing with her.

Did she say all those things because she got shut out?

Probably.

Or did they not want to use her because she was saying those things?

But I think it's the other way around.

Yeah, is this Mario Galento on the radio?

Yeah, it's like, fuck you guys, you're fucking me around and I've put up with this for 15 years.

Well, here's your goddamn deal.

In the enclosed photos, note some of the signs.

Unfair to local talent, minimum of $50 per night.

This is disillusioning to fans who believe wrestlers have unusual backgrounds and earn thousands of dollars a week, especially girls.

Let's stop there.

That's an interesting takeaway.

The idea that them protesting exposes that wrestlers aren't aren't glamorous, successful, making lots of money athletes.

Yeah.

And

exactly.

And that's what

even, you know, they didn't need to put a figure on the, you know, minimum guarantees or whatever.

They didn't need to put a figure on.

But some of the guys and girls, especially at the indie level in the business,

They don't understand.

They think that everybody, because everybody in their social circle and everybody on their internet bubble thing is smart to the business and knows how much everybody makes and what, you know, how the business works and all this other stuff.

The average person,

especially in those days, had no idea

how much a wrestler made.

And

they did know that baseball players and football players and Joe Namath and these type of people, they're on TV.

They're probably doing pretty good.

But here, the pro wrestlers have to strike to get 50 bucks a night.

And then the average jack off doesn't differentiate between,

oh, but you know, the NWA world champions in the main event in the Olympic, he's making a fortune, and they're just paying these fucking goofy local girls 50 bucks.

It's just everybody's devalued.

Back to this letter here.

About the only place Millie's girls can work is Japan, where they're used to make the Japanese girls look good knocking them off.

Millie has sent 14 and 15 year old girls with only three or four weeks training to Japan

for six or eight week tours.

The Japanese girls just beat them in almost shooting matches.

It's crazy seeing all these terms in a letter in 1973.

I don't know if I've ever really seen that before.

Millie is also the world's best double cross artist,

frequently getting a 50% kickback from promoters, then taking 33.3%

from the girls' remaining 50%.

Recently, two of her wrestlers traveled to Phoenix, stayed overnight, and got a grand total of $15 each.

I think she's a real liability to wrestling and that her operation should be put out of business.

You can check all the above info with Jeff Walton.

Enclosed are a couple more photo stories.

Well, yeah, well, Jeff Walton just happened to be the publicist for the LA office that they were striking against.

I'll shoot some more colors soon and send the negs to you.

Regards, Phil.

Once again, Phil Miller, June 11th, 73.

So there you...

Do unto others as they do unto you.

In January, she's getting screwed around, and in June, she's screwing somebody else around.

That's a wrestling business.

Here appears to be the master photo of her and Jack Pfeffer with her and him in the airplane spin.

Oh, good lord.

Yeah, see, there's a lot of stuff here you could tell based on the handwriting it came from Pfeffer.

Here's a Believe It or Ripley's Believe It or Not with Mildred Burke.

Mildred Burke, Kansas City, Missouri, champion woman wrestler, never lost a bout,

can do 80 body bridges in succession.

Believe it or not.

And

I think that's about it because the rest of these, here's a bunch of more photos and here's a bunch of of Billy Wolf photos.

Have you seen the photo of Billy Wolf playing cards by himself?

Oh, wasn't that reprinted in

a book at some point in the modern era?

It seems like I remember something about it, but not specifically.

It may have been, but there it is from the files, Mildred Burke.

And, you know, in a period of time where people were going to learn a lot about her, you know, she really struggled later in life.

All because of everything that went down, everything that people were about to see in the movie.

You know, she didn't die right after the movie.

Yeah, no, it wasn't over at that point.

When did she?

She lived into the 80s, did she not?

I think so.

Let me double-check that.

Hold on.

I believe she did.

But that was the thing is after.

89.

Wow.

1989.

After 1956, her

only...

involvement or presence or impact in wrestling was doing

that early 70s Southern California wrestling school thing that didn't

take off.

She never was able to get back in anywhere except in Japan because

she was the girl when they discovered pro wrestling.

She was the female champion and had a reputation there like Carl Gotch.

So

that was pretty much it.

Well, you know, the interesting thing too from the two letters, obviously a very polarizing figure at that point.

There were people that were appreciative of her.

I mean, I assume this woman didn't write this declaration under duress.

And then there are people that are working with the office, I guess, that see her a completely other way.

And again, I look at it as someone who's struggling to take the one skill she has and make some money with it.

Yeah, and that was

the thing is that

she never was able to do anything again.

She was completely shut out after that split on a mainstream basis.

You know, that was it.

Well, perhaps if Mildred had been around today,

she would have sued.

And boy, I'll tell you what, I know somebody that she could have called to stand up for her rights, to fight for her justice in a court of law, to make sure that she had equal protection under the statutes.

And I'm talking about the man, the myth, the legend, the bulldog himself.

If you need to see

the news,

news, to the news, to be news, to be new,

news, news, and outlawmud show or two.

Those are the rest.

Folks, I'll tell you what, if Stephen P.

New at new lawoffice.com 87750 Steve had been around back in the days of Mildred Burke.

He would have brought her justice.

She would now be as famous as Taylor Swift if Stephen P.

New had been running things and he can do the same thing for you.

He's like a New York haberdasher.

If one suit don't fit, he's got another suit that he can try on, and he's going to keep suiting until that suit fits and sticks.

Stephen P.

New

87750 Steve, new lawoffice.com.

That's right, newlawoffice.com.

And Jim, before we get out of here, we promised everyone a song this week.

So let's play the one that was sent to us the most.

It was a version of Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar, but it's you talking about Jungle Boy.

Have you seen this?

I saw this and I retweeted it.

I didn't.

I don't know, Mr.

Lamar, and I didn't know this was an actual existing song, but it just,

the video that accompanies this song was equally as brilliant.

And what caught that it must have taken hours and hours and days and days for them to search through to find these things to fit this.

But but yes, it is quite a rip snorter.

Well, let's get it queued up right now.

Can you give me a beat?

Subliminal, lyrical, rap megastar, cynical, here's Johnny Fournette Lamar, Jungle Jack, son of a TV star.

Who the fuck do you think you are?

I'm hearing those jungle drums.

Used to hang around with chimpanzees.

What is his gimmick?

He's a homeless bum.

Pooh, flinging, swinging in the trees.

He's gonna sit in one of those little kids' seats.

Jungle Jack wanted to use broken glass.

Real glass.

The medical staff said, we don't think you ought to do that.

This is where this fucking clown's head's at.

Lil Jack got his panties and a bunch, so it was brought to CM Punk.

He said, we don't do that on Saturday night.

They're going to Wembley.

He grabbed him by the goozel pipe.

Real glass, you dick lick.

He did not punch a person, he choked one little nitwit.

Curly-headed, entitled little prick.

What'd you think he was gonna do?

Dip shit, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride me a river.

Mine for wrestling of a slug in a sewer.

You're not a TV star.

You're tired.

What the fuck?

He looks like a miner.

Jungle Boy sucks.

Jungle Boy sucks.

Jungle Boy sucks.

Jungle Boy sucks.

Jungle Boy sucks.

Jungle Boy sucks.

Don't run your fucking yap.

Don't fuck around and find out.

Jungle Jack.

Well, you got to do something about it?

Yeah, apparently.

Oh my God.

He grabbed me.

Tony ended up firing his biggest star.

Punk should be sending Jack off a Christmas card.

Look in my eyes.

What do you see?

CM Punk.

Who the WWE?

What's Jack Perry gonna fucking do?

Tony.

Fire the fucking little goo.

Arrogant knob.

Indy Knitwit.

Here's your contract, Jack.

Rip, rip, rip.

Tony went, he made me mad.

Send him another check, but don't let him come back.

Jungle Boy sounds fake.

And like a dork, runs and hides because he doesn't like to talk.

Homeless Jack living in a box under an overpass on cocaine?

Shot into space.

Jack is slapping himself in the face.

He's ready to get butt-fucked by Sonato, the Kookamonga kids, Mr.

Okada, and the independent legal team.

They get through a bucket of Vaseline.

Hey, scapegoat, nanny goat, Billy Goat,

sweet chin, music you're a fucking kid.

Hey, he caused the thing with CM Punk, which he did.

Hey, this place is a joke, you're a clown, and I quit.

Hey, he's got very feminine hips.

Hey, he might look good in a bikini, bitch.

Hey, Jesus, I'd want to snatch him around the neck.

Hey, bland, boring, mumble-mouthed drech.

Jungle Boy sucks, jungle boy sucks, Jungle Boy sucks,

Jungle Boy sucks, Jungle Boy sucks, Jungle Boy sucks.

Look at all this shit that he directly caused.

Punk doesn't have to put up with these children anymore.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Scared for his life.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Scared for his life.

Punk can still be on our show.

The incident at Wimbley.

Oh no.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Scared for his life.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Scared for his life.

step this way, step that way, step this way, step that way.

Jungle Boy is a bell end.

Quite the ending there.

That was by Here's Johnny TV.

You may remember some of the fine, fine submissions in the past from Here's Johnny TV,

Jim Cornette buries Jungle Boy.

To not like us, it's on YouTube.

You need to see the video if you like the song.

That was amazing.

Both the audio and the video, a work of art.

Mwaha.

With that, Jim, the drive-through is closed.

I promised new sounds for the year.

Hold on.

Yeah, I think you can go back on a promise everyone.

Oh, no, real quick.

A new one this week and then a new one next week.

New sounds.

Let's see how this works.

How's that?

Sounded like a looney tune ran out of fucking battery.

All right.

Well, that's kind of what I was going for.

Of course, you could hear more of this next week here on the drive-thru.

And an even better show, promised, guaranteed, he was saying it off the air.

It will be amazing this week.

Better than this on the Jib Cordet Experience.

Wherever you find your favorite podcast, don't forget about the official.

Oh,

I press this again.

Let me put it down.

Don't forget about the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Clips of the episodes, full episodes, omnibus collections, all with the very popular Travis Echo artwork and more.

The official Jim Cornette YouTube channel, patreon.com slash cornet.

Go through the archive.

$5 a month.

Patreon.com slash cornet.

Cornettes collectibles at jimcornet.com.

What's going on, Jim?

The big sale for February.

$20 off all the tag team sets.

If you buy a tag team set, you get any Jim Cornette action figure for half price.

And anybody that spends $50 or more gets a two-hour classic wrestling DVD for free, JimCornet.com.

That's right, JimCornet.com.

Of course, the drive-through is brought to you by the law offices, Steven P.

New, 877-50 Steve.

Get even with Stephen at newlawoffice.com.

But until next week on the experience, or this week on the experience, and next week back here on the drive-thru.

For Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian last.

Tally ho!