Episode 376

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That's right.

Hello again, friends.

The great Brian last here.

What show is this?

Hello again, friends.

That's how we usually begin it.

Welcome to another edition of Jim Coronet's Drive-Thru, another action-packed edition.

with reviews, questions, fun, hijinks, files, and so so much more.

With this man, he's in a great mood today.

Let's keep that spirit going.

Mr.

Great Mood himself, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr.

Jim Cornette.

You know, the problem is, Brian, is that this you're the leader on this program.

And if that introduction gives the people any indication of where it might be going, and maybe

I'm telling you,

I'm just, I got to be silly today.

I got to be silly and have the jocularity flowing to overcome that.

I'm getting, it's not cabin fever.

I've been out.

Unfortunately, I've been out more than I wanted to be.

But you know

that it is

Sunday the 6th.

So it's been 12 days now or so.

that Louisville, Kentucky and its surrounding environs have been covered in snow and ice.

Now, yes, they've cleared not all of the roads.

I mean, there's people out in the,

and not only in the

suburban suburbs, but also out in the country, as we say down here,

that the only snow plow they may have seen is their own.

But people are out and about and

commerce and activity is going on, but the ground is covered and there's still in the parking lots, five, six foot high mounds of snow that they've scooped up and got out of the way of everything except the turning lanes.

So the parking lots are like goddamn bobsled runs.

The fucking maniacs.

But it's depressing.

And now

it's going to be above 40 degrees for a couple of days, miraculously.

It's the first time it's been above freezing since it happened.

And then we're going to get rain.

So that should hopefully melt away most of the

the slush and everything.

And then the cold is going to come again and the the wind chill like Monday and Tuesday is going to be 10, 15 below zero.

So it's going to be like a skating rink.

But it depresses me when we're covered in how do the people in

what is it, what the fuck, Alaska,

or up in the upper reaches of the provinces of Canada where they got snow like fucking what, six months out of the year?

How do people

not go out of their minds?

They go out of their minds.

That's why they move to Tampa and become wrestlers.

Well, you got me there.

But I'm not even talking about the specific Canadians that we all know and love, but just general people.

It just, isn't it depressing when you just go out and it's cold and it's slushy?

You can't sit on anything.

It's all wet and it's icy and it's...

It's disgusting.

And you'd be broke and drunk in a gutter.

No.

You can't sit on anything like what?

What are you talking about?

Well, if I want to go out and sit in the backyard, there's still fucking ice or shit all over my goddamn furniture.

You want to sit that badly yard furniture.

You want to sit that badly, just get some waterproof pants.

Well, I'm wearing those underneath my sweatpants, but that's for a different fucking complaint I have that we won't go into now when we're talking about the weather.

What does that even mean?

What complaint is that?

Take it as you like.

But anyway, I just hate it.

And the other, yesterday it was when the sun started finally perpetrating through all the shit on my roof, and it sounded like a goddamn Santa's sleigh and all the reindeer had landed on my roof when an iceberg slid off out into the hinterlands and shit like that as we slowly fucking defrost from this goddamn eagle.

I feel like a Swanson frozen dinner.

Remember those kids?

No, the kids don't, but we do, kids.

I always liked the seafood.

Were you a fan of TV dinners?

Oh, my God.

When I was a kid, anything you could eat out of aluminum

was a big fucking deal.

And I got hot when at whatever point they switched from the aluminum trays that looked like you were actually, you know, being at least served a meal in prison or something.

to the goddamn this this pansy ass fucking plastic they got now if you try to put it under the broiler get a little singe on the top of your frozen goodies, it'll melt and fucking give you cancerous tumors.

Well, either way, they now say that anything we have with plastic water bottles, anything that food is served in, all of it, there are tiny little particles of plastic that are entering our bodies and that we have more plastic in us right now than obviously ever before.

And we don't know really how that affects the brain and everything else.

Is that why that I've been able recently to extend my arms at least a foot longer than they normally used to be?

I didn't mean it would give you the qualities of the classic plastic man or anything.

But here's another question for you.

One of the least heralded superheroes, Plastic Man.

Well, yes, but why did they call him Plastic Man?

Because he could stretch and bend into all kinds of shapes when you can't do that with plastic.

You'll break that shit in a fucking second.

What should his name have been?

Rubberman.

Do they think the kids would confuse him with a condom?

See, but it doesn't make it.

See, it doesn't add up.

That's why he was unheralded.

I guess so.

Because even a kid said, well, fuck all the shit.

We got plastic.

It breaks at a fucking heartbeat.

Why is this guy so fucking stretchy?

Like, even on like Super Friends as a kid, when you'd see him like teaming up with like Superman to solve a crime or to do something, you're like, man, that's a weird partner for Superman to have.

Plastic Man just doing his own thing.

He could go where he wants to go and do what he wants to do because he's Plastic Man.

He can assimilate any shape.

or i bet he's been in some interesting places but you like the tv dinners in the aluminum oh that's what we were talking about yeah in the aluminium

i enjoy the the the television dinners it you know gave an air of

class to the proceedings when your tray was all shiny was mama cornette cool with you eating while like in front of the tv not at the table or anything

Well, no, the TV dinner was, you know, not an everyday thing.

It was, that's another thing.

When you're a kid, it's a special occasion thing where like, you know,

early on when I was very little and my mom and dad would go to dinner, I'd get one with the babysitter or whatever.

Or then later when

we were coming back from fucking wrestling shows late at night and I popped this in the oven, that type of thing.

I wasn't a kid then, but I still liked them.

But it was every once in a while.

Were your eating habits what they were before you were a manager, but you were already like, you know, you were already in the business.

You were a photographer going to multiple shows and doing multiple

shows.

Were your eating habits the same or once you were on the road, did they change?

No, just the volume.

But the things that, no, I've always been a cheeseburger.

The only

fast food restaurant, if you call it that,

when I was a kid in our little suburban neighborhood was Jerry's restaurant.

It was Jerry's drive-in.

And you actually drove up and they hung the speaker on the deal

and you ordered and they brought it to you and they hung it on the tray on the side or whatever.

It never broke the window out like it did in happy days.

I don't know what they were doing.

And you could eat in the car.

Well, that was just swell, right?

I'm five years.

So that was the thing.

I was a Jerry's Jay Boy fanatic, which was the freshest big boy of this apparently fucking

rival, potentially a plagiarist chain of Jerry's J-Boys around town.

But so I always liked the cheeseburgers.

I just had access to them on a daily basis when I started traveling and fucking passing by goddamn

burger joints.

Why are you always so fascinated with my goddamn eating habits?

And now J-Boys is an annual New Japan tournament.

No, I just, I was just curious.

I was thinking about it just in terms of talking about the TV dinners and everything.

You know, again, you were kind of on the road already, although it was not necessarily as strenuous a schedule.

I was just wondering in terms of what you would actually eat when you got home, if that changed.

Well, and also when we started going to Evansville, Indiana every Wednesday night,

I was

summer of 79.

My mom took over selling the

merchandise, such as it was at Evansville.

They only needed one person, but I was

not only taking pictures there, but I would, that's where I would probably get the guys, because they were bored out of their fucking minds in a locker room in Evansville, to do interviews on cassette tape on a fucking tape recorder to give to Teeny for the spot shows.

They'd send them to the radio station.

They played

in Russell Springs, Kentucky, they would play an audio cassette recorded on a tape recorder by a fucking 17-year-old kid talking to a fucking wrestler for 60 seconds.

If it benefited the fucking JC's or the booster club.

So I'd do that, and sometimes I'd fill in ring announcements and then when everybody started getting music, I would use the same recorder to plug into the PA system and I was in charge of playing the music.

So I would be up there ready.

I'd play the fucking music.

I'd shut the thing off.

I'd run down.

I'd take pictures at ringside and then I'd go and repeat the processes.

Where was I going with that?

Oh, so we would go to the Rocka Bar.

In Evansville, the original location I understand is no longer there.

What it looked like in 1979, I wouldn't have bet it had been there in 87,

but it lasted till just a few years ago, apparently.

The neighborhood might not have

been, you know,

equally as tasty as the pizza by the time they closed.

But we would go there because they were the only thing really open in Evansville, Indiana, that wasn't out of the way of...

Teeny and whoever her driver was going to Nashville and us coming back to Louisville, or potentially they were coming back with us because we were going to Lexington.

But we would stop at the Racco bar and they knew we were coming.

So the nice old Italian couple would keep it open a couple extra minutes because they knew we were going to eat like we were going to the chair.

And occasionally some of the boys would go over also just to get something if they were headed back to Louisville or whatever.

And

then I got smart to the fact that not only was the pizza fucking incredible and the guy ground his own

sausage and made the little balls and he cut it in the square pieces.

But somehow they artistically arranged it so there was a sausage ball on every fucking square.

And boom, and they made the dough by hand.

And

I don't know, he may have put his own piss into the goddamn mix to make it special.

I don't know what the fuck they did.

But

I'm sure this guy in 1979 was probably 70 years old.

So

I'm not saying it's the same these days.

But whatever he did was a great pizza, and he would pre-cook

these pizzas for you if you wanted to take them home and you could put them in the oven and heat them up a little bit all the way, or you could freeze them and then pop them in the oven for like 15 minutes or whatever, and boom goes the dynamite.

And I started getting

about three of those bad boys to bring home.

He'd wrap them in aluminum foil and I'd put them in a freezer.

That way for the next week, if I was out after a show and we got back late, whatever, I would pop the rock a bar pizza in the oven.

So that's why I did put on about 10 or 12 pounds in a couple of years before I started managing

was from eating rock a bar pizza four nights a week.

Did that answer your question?

And so much more.

And so much more.

I'm sorry.

I don't mean to digress about these things.

But speaking of which,

what's the last show we did the experience, my show.

I told the people I'd been to the doctor, and apparently there was nothing wrong with me.

And I was, you know, catching up or checking off the list of my vaccinations and

scans and fucking probes and anything that needs to be done to me.

And I got the results of my blood test back.

And I've got bad news for some people.

And that there's still nothing fucking wrong with me.

There's

one thing that I've found,

you know,

back in the old days, you know, when they still were using leeches and things like that in modern medicine,

the doctor used to come in and you'd piss in a cup and they'd take your blood and then you'd go back

sometime later and they would have got the results and he'd sit there with a fucking piece of paper and he'd say, okay, well, you're goddamn, you're about to have a stroke or your fucking left kidney's up your ass and needs to be removed or whatever the fuck.

But now they send you this, the results of your blood test on the internet

with graphics,

with like pie charts and

fucking level meters and shit.

It's amazing.

And they have they have analyzed your blood right down to the fucking nub and it's like if you're

I can't remember what the color was, but let's say yellow if you're low and green if you're fucking good and red if you're high, right?

And I was all green, baby,

except for the one thing.

And actually, I tell a lie.

I think then you're yellow if you're a little high, and then you're red if you're dead.

But the only good red is a dead red.

Isn't that what they used to say?

Commy coronets back, I see.

Well, nevertheless, the point is,

I gotta cut down on the cake.

I gotta cut down on the cake, the cake and the rees.

Because every single category, I was

guns blazing,

green light ahead, ready to go.

And then it's like, nah, yeah, you're about

six fucking points higher or whatever.

I don't know.

They used to call it blood sugar back in my day.

But now there's a

glucose and a bun and all these other things.

But on this reading, I need to drop about

12 points or whatever the fuck it is.

So I'm cutting down on the cake and the Reese's.

You know where the money is?

You got to write a book, The Cheeseburger and Sprite Diet.

My key to long life.

Well, I've.

No one's ever written that book, and you keep getting these results, and you're in better shape than you've ever been now that you're not on the road.

I've started trying to, you know, not just binge and gorge and flummox around and just, you know, wallow in feed bags for the past number of years.

But at the same time, the complete crap that I ate for so many years should have played a part in something, but so far

it is not.

And I'm pooping well, I'll have you know.

No complaints with the poop.

And that's a big part.

You know,

if you got complaints with the poop, that's a sign of bad things to come, Brian.

Have you ever complained about your poop?

No, I'm good, but that's what Austin Idol used to always say a lot.

He used to always talk about fiber.

Watch your poop.

You want it to be mush.

You just, if it's mush, you're healthy.

If it's mush, you're good.

You know what, Dunn?

You know what Ronnie Garvin used to say?

He said, people would say when he's at the gym, people would say, you know,

the accent.

How do I lose weight?

And Ronnie'd say, well, how many times a day do you eat?

Three.

How many times a day do you shit?

Once.

Reverse the procedure.

You know, there aren't a lot of Canadians that have a natural tough guy accent.

Ronnie Garvin, everything he said, he sounded like it was like almost standoffish.

Yes.

And,

you know, not only with the accent, but the expression on his face.

And then you'd watch him in the ring and you go, fuck, I'll just be over here.

I don't want to piss him.

It was scary to work with him.

And I knew he was working with me.

But God damn,

when he made his comeback in Charlotte, he's already, I've thrown powdered his eyes.

He's already already gotten juice for me for the nooks, so he's bleeding.

And we're inside a cage, and finally he jerks me down off the cage, and he gets on top of me, and he's standing over me, and he's going to throw the fucking hands of stone down to the forehead, right?

And as I looked at the look on his face, I swear to God, that must have been what Jack the Ripper looked like when he was about to dive in on fucking.

And it was like, God damn it, I'm scared.

And boom, he threw three of them.

I never felt any of the three of them.

And then he snatched me around the neck, throttling me with the intent to kill.

And I never felt that.

And then the referee counted three, and the doors opened, and the boys came in to save me.

But he was very

believable, very convincing.

Which Ronnie Garvin do you prefer?

Ronnie Garvin with kind of the floppy hair or Ronnie Garvin with the flat top?

You know, actually, Ronnie from

what was it, 1983, maybe in Georgia, that period of time through the end of the Crockett years,

was the closest thing to the real Ronnie Garvin because he dropped the gimmick he'd had in the 70s as a heel.

And then in Southeastern, he kind of looked sometimes like a fucking hippie, and he had dark hair,

a hippie in terms of dress in a fucking tie-dye t-shirt and jeans, whatever the fuck.

But Ronnie Garvin of that 80s period, when he was just working out in the gym and going in the ring and stretching job guys and having those physical matches with Flair and working that style, that was the club, the hands of stone, the, you know, the whole nine yards.

He was an incredible worker to make you believe

two guys were having a fucking struggle.

And those matches with Flair, even in a TBS studio, where it sounds like rifle shots when they're smacking each other.

And just the,

they're, it looks like they're trying to gouge each other's eyeballs out, like this fucking match has gotten out of hand, type of thing.

People have overlooked that because it's not as celebrated as some of the other stuff.

It's not just flare.

The other day, after we heard about Black Bart, I went to look for some Black Bart footage just to, for the first time in a while, watch some, and it was him against Ron Garbert at the TBS studio.

Ronnie Garbage slapping the shit out of him.

Just

and, you know, and that's the thing is that the people believed in him somewhat, and he believed in a lot of that, too.

And he and Orndorf in Smokey Mountain Wrestling had great in-ring physical matches because the Orndorf liked that shit also.

But they knew how to work too.

And blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I like that because it was more natural.

But I mean,

remember he was, you know,

really bleach blonde with Ron and Terry Garvin with manager Jim Garvin.

There's Terry in a goddamn negligee.

And Jimmy Garvin is dressed in like, you know,

like a skinny Oliver Humperdick because he's just happy to be there.

He's 18 years old.

And there's Ronnie, probably one of the toughest guys in any locker room.

And he's got the combed over long blonde hair and wearing a fucking purple jacket.

It

didn't fit.

When he finally blossomed as a single, I think that was the best Ronnie.

When I first became a fan in 1989, one of the first feuds, in the middle of all the big things like Ultimate Warrior versus the Heenan family and Hogan versus Savage and Zeus,

Ron Garvin, rugged Ronnie Garvin, versus Greg the Hammer Valentine.

You know, which is interesting.

When you think about like 1989, 1990 WWF, all those gimmicks, you never think about those two.

But they had a program where all of a sudden on TV, They had a match.

I think it went like this.

They had a match.

For no good reason, Schiavone was at ringside because they were trying to find a way to use him on the shows.

And he interviewed Greg Valentine.

He challenged Ronnie Garvin to a loser leaves town match, a loser must retire match.

Ronnie Garvin loses.

They make him a referee, a troubleshooting referee, which was entertaining.

He was good as the babyface referee fucking over the heels.

Then they made him a ring announcer at SummerSlam where he started to insult Greg Valentine.

And then they finally had the blow-off match at SummerSlam.

And again, in a sea of gimmicks,

to me as a kid, that match worked.

That match registered.

And it had the one funny moment when Ronnie Garvin blocked the figure four because he had one of those,

what was it called?

The Shingard.

No, but Greg Valentine had a specific name for it.

I can't remember what it was.

Oh, God.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

But he had one too.

And he was, you know, making faces at Greg Valentine while in the figure four.

But yeah, underrated feud, I think, Ronnie Garvin and Greg Valentine.

Here's another thing.

Some people may not know that Ronnie Garvin's nickname

in

Southeastern wrestling in, what, 79,

70, well, 77, probably 77, 78, 79, and then he broke off and went to ICW was the one-man gang.

Yeah.

One-man gang, Ronnie Garvin.

They broke in

big kid named Crusher Broomfield.

And when he left and went to Mid-South Wrestling, that's when he started using the name One Man Gang.

But that's where it came from.

You want to talk about one man gang, Ronnie Garvin, specifically in Knoxville, and the footage ended up being used forever on ICW-TV.

The footage of him and Andre the Giant,

which is like the biggest ass kicking I've ever seen Andre take from Ronnie Garvin in that match.

And Ronnie Garvin's a tough guy, but what was he?

5'10, 5'11, maybe?

No, no.

I don't want to swear, but 5'9 is what I would say, but

you know,

well, maybe 5'10,

but at the same time, 230 pounds or whatever in fucking shape.

He wasn't in the lean shape in Knoxville that he was later on

for Crockett, but he was always in shape and he could always go and he could do that shit.

He could.

But here's the thing.

It was,

as I recall, and I'm willing to let a Knoxville historian correct me.

But Ronnie Garvin had been working a deal with Roy Lee Welch, member of the Welch family.

He was, Roy Lee was,

god damn it, the nephew of, oh, never mind.

It'll take us too long down there.

Roy Lee was Lester's son.

Roy Lee was Lester's son.

There you go.

And Ronnie Garvin.

And

somewhere or another,

Ronnie Garvin said, I can beat you and any of your fucking friends.

One of those type of deals.

And they booked it Andre the Giant and Roy Lee Welch against Ronnie Garvin.

It's the only time Andre ever had a handicap match where he was the two-guy team, right?

But they did

because Andre and Andre was French and Ron, Ronnie was French-Canadian.

He got him to, and he respected him.

He got him to do a little deal.

I don't know that Andre knew that that film camera was up in the fucking bleachers.

Well, yeah, that's the thing.

He may not have known it was filmed, but he also liked Ronnie Garvin because they were both French-Canadian.

Well, not French-Canadian, but.

Well, but

Andre had moved to Quebec and lived there for years.

So technically, blah, blah, blah.

But But anyway, yeah, Ronnie's beating him up in the corner and Andre's selling.

And then Ronnie hit him with the table at the table in the ring and fucking all this shit.

And we used that in Spokey Batt Wrestling 15 years later, that footage to, you know,

publicize Ronnie.

Yeah.

But nevertheless, so that's the thing is that Ronnie was very legitimate.

And, you know,

and also if you go back and do look at the matches he had with Flair in 86, 87 on TBS or house shows or whatever.

I don't know what's out there on YouTube.

Remember, he's in his early 40s

at that point and in that kind of condition and going that hard for that long.

He was just, he was amazing.

That's why he'd take the job, guys.

And

because

he didn't want to work with a guy that was just coming in, you know, flabbier than a fucking flat tire.

And Mike Jackson is, you know, smarting them up and giving them a ride up there, right?

He, he did not put it, how did Thez put it?

He didn't brook that type of shenanigan.

So he, he would take them down and put them into holes, whether they liked it or not, and take their own fingers and stick them up their own noses and make them pick their own, you know, because nobody fucked with Ronnie Garvin, right?

He'd slap the sugar on you.

And then when you got Garvin and Wyndham Wyndham against the Midnight Express or Garvin versus Flair or any of his main event matches on television, then he was one of the best workers in the fucking locker room.

He could sell and he could fight back and his shit looked good.

And you knew it was there when

he was exchanging the chops with Wahoo McDaniel or whatever.

They were fucking hitting each other harder than I'd care to be hit.

But like I said, when I worked with him, he's throwing punches at my head that I'm selling because I can feel his hand and they look like they're killing me.

But

I'm okay.

He was just, he was very, very good.

How did we get started with that?

Well, we were talking about Ronnie Garvin, but hey, you brought up Royley Welch.

You know, the first time I ever heard of him, Eddie Mansfield's IWF aired in New York in like 1992, 1993.

And they're building him up on that show like he's a legend I should know.

And I'm like 12 i've never heard of this guy and i don't even know what his name is because they keep going roy lee welch i'm like he's a royal what what are they saying exactly roy lee is that one word i never knew you know until years later his name was roy lee welch

i had no idea who the fuck he was they were talking about it like he was an all-time legend Well,

he was in Eddie Mansfield's IWF or whatever.

I think that's he was

that would have been late in Roy Lee's Lee's career, and he was probably trying to help him get it off the ground because he was in Florida, too.

Uh,

see him Russell.

I didn't even see him Russell, it was just like they were building up he was going to be there.

Like, this was a big thing.

I don't think it lasted that long, it wasn't that big of a thing.

But Roy Lee's brother, Jackie, wasn't a bad worker, he was a good babyface.

He spent some time

working for uh Jarrett in 78,

I think.

And

he was a nice fellow.

What did you think of Ricky Fields?

You know, I never saw much of them, the Fields Brothers, because

they were in Louisville like sometimes in 72, 73,

before I started going to the matches live, and they weren't really featured in Memphis after Jarrett took over the book, maybe for who knows what reasons.

So I never saw much of the Fields Brothers.

All right.

Well, this has been happy talk.

Well, of course it has.

Hey, you want to get happy?

Hold on.

Let me get,

I'll make you happy.

But anyway, no, you know what?

We started the whole goddamn thing.

I'll put a period on this.

We started the whole thing talking about my health.

How's your health?

My health is good.

As much as it may frustrate some people, I'm going to be around for quite some time to point out your flaws and inconsistencies because I'm all right.

Nobody worried about me.

They didn't say anything about your vocal cords.

Any issues with your vocal cords?

No, they say after, you know, I had to quit singing years ago because of my throat when the guy threatened to cut it.

But

it's

right now it's.

Where is that man?

Can we find that man?

Is that man available?

He's locked away.

I'm in the best singing form I've ever been, is what the doctor said.

Well, you know what else the doctor says?

The cure for anything is coronets collectibles at jimcoronet.com.

That's where I was going.

I'm trying to say I'm trying to find my notes here because February is a big deal, a big month, big things going on.

It's Valentine's Day.

That was the last thing on your mind when I queried you about that subject a few days ago.

But Valentine's Day is February 14th.

You know, you might want to tell your sweetie.

what to get you for Valentine, or you might be the sweetie

that is going to get something for somebody, or you can tell your sweetie to get something for you and that way the sweetness is passed around you know like goddamn sugar bowl

but one way or another we are going to what do you know you when you pass around

no i do not know do i know sweetening things when you're sweetening your oatmeal to make the sugar go down

or the spoonful of sugar that makes

the world go round and round.

Will it go around in circles?

We don't know.

But at jimcornet.com

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Have I fucked this up?

Is there a 29?

If it's all month of February on jimcornet.com, we got a sale for you.

The Featherbottoms have outdone themselves.

Hotchkiss and the lead of this thing.

All of the tag team sets.

This is the biggest.

Is it okay?

February 1 through 29.

You get an extra day of savings, ladies and gentlemen.

God damn it, right here on the air.

It's not a leap year.

2024 was a leap year.

Okay, well, then fuck you.

You're going to have to get it in the first 28 days.

No dilly-dallying around and malingering.

But all the action figure sets of the tag teams are going to be $20 off.

So you can lay your hands on the heavenly bodies or take a ride on the Midnight Express for Valentine's Day all month long.

And

as a special bonus, if you buy any of the tag team sets, even the four-packs are going to be $20 off, too.

And of course, they come with the autographed pictures and etc.

Just go to the website for details.

You can click right on it, it'll tell you what's going on.

You get the book, you get the certificate, you get the autographed picture, depending on what you're going for.

Buy any of the tag team sets with $20 off, and you can get any of the Jim Cornette variants remaining on sale.

I believe we still got three, including the final man in white,

for half price, $24.95.

And those bad boys will be autographed too.

And finally, and lastly,

for those of you who would choose to spend $50 or more in merchandise, you're going to get a free two-hour DVD of classic wrestling from the 70s and 80s from the Wrestling Gold series, included in your package free of charge.

And I think it's going to come in a jewel case.

So right there, there's a quarter.

You mean diamond or ruby?

No, plastic.

Oh.

But it doesn't stretch or bend.

That's why I can't figure out that whole thing about plastic man.

But that was a previous conversation.

Anyway, jimcornet.com in February is the place to go.

And of course, we're open for business.

If you don't want the action figures and save the money there,

then you can go ahead and order whatever you like.

And especially,

we thank you for your support.

All right.

Cornets Collectibles, JimCornet.com.

Get in there and get your wrestling gold

with everything else.

And plastic.

Jim, we have a lot of plastic.

Golden plastic.

We have a golden plastic.

Keep going.

Golden plastic is what you're going to get from me.

And that's just all I had to say.

You keep rushing me.

Is this important?

Keep rushing you?

You're a Russian?

Commie Cornet?

You see?

You chastised me earlier for going into too much detail about certain things that you had asked about, so now I'm scared to open my mouth.

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No, well, we have to hear what you have to say because the next thing we're going to talk about here before we get to the fun stuff later on, although I'm very curious to hear what you're going to say about a few things here.

AEW Dynamite on January 15th

in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Was the Louisville show going to be Dynamite or Collision?

Which show got moved from Louisville?

I swear to God, that's what I was going to ask you.

Because

they were apparent.

And now, are they doing collision live?

Are they coming back on Saturday?

Oh, no, it's been taped.

It's been taped.

Okay.

So

the Wednesday and a Thursday, they were both nights.

They were in the

Rogers and Hammerstein Music Center, whatever the fuck it was in Cincinnati.

One of them was supposed to be Broadband Arena in Louisville.

The Andrew J.

Brady Music Center.

Isn't he the fucking guy that got shot next to Reagan?

Andrew Brady?

No,

that's

the Brady Bill.

What's his first name?

James Brady Brady.

The Brady Bunch?

James Brady.

I thought it was Robert Reed.

But anyway, one of these was supposed to be.

He liked getting shot in the face.

Hey, yo, come on.

Oh.

Anyway, one of these was supposed to be in Louisville, and I just thank goodness for the health and welfare of my city that it wasn't this one.

But the problem became then that

they had to find a.

I don't know why, and it hasn't been talked about, and I assume it's probably there's an NDA involved, why they moved

from

Broadbent Arena in Louisville, besides that it might have smelled like a fucking stock show.

But now they had to,

on short notice, put people in this small building in Cincinnati two nights in a row when,

you know, the only thing they had going for them in Cincinnati is it's Jon Moxley's hometown.

He's probably been to a concert there.

And so, oh, you ought to run this because, oh boy.

Point is, we'll talk about it more in the review here in a second, but can you

Google our friend Thurston Howell?

Did anybody say how many people they had in this place?

Because

I've

seen game show tape tapings that practically had more fans that you could see on camera, except when they went back to the concession stand and shot over everybody's head with a wide angle.

But the

general admission seats looked odd because there was a

I don't know, it looked like people were sitting in a chicken coop up there.

There was a wire apparatus in front of them that,

you know, looked odd.

And then there was only like three rows of general admission or bleachers or whatever you, upper deck, whatever you would call it.

And then it was a big flat room, right?

You know, I like rooms like this, and I think it gives you better energy.

It's kind of like the Hammerstein if you have a good Hammerstein.

The issue was the way it was laid out.

And I think if they had shot the camera a little off-center, it wouldn't have been so bad.

But dead against the camera was just a black wall.

And they didn't put anything there.

And you kind of needed something there because it felt a little, it felt a little blank, I guess.

Yeah.

Well, and that's the thing is, I think

part of the problem may have been it looked like when they were shooting from the back that some of the floor people were under an overhang.

And if you'd have shot the other way, you wouldn't have, I don't know if you'd have seen them any.

It's a concert fucking music venue.

It's not

necessarily a tag.

I don't know.

I just thought it

sort of looked like a giant pole barn.

According to Russell Ticks,

1,570 tickets distributed, which I think would have been a sellout or approximately around there.

And, you know, again, if there were that many people there, you couldn't tell.

And a lot of it's just the way the building, too, was laid out.

If you looked at the first, I don't know what it would be, the Loge, the first section above the loge the loge reserved if you look there there were people sitting and it looked like they couldn't put anyone else there but it also looked like there was a big gap between them and the next person almost like they were seats for like a single person with a lot of space uh i don't know but i thought that i think that it was bleachers rather than individual chairs and i think people just didn't want to

hump the person next to them when there wasn't because oh i'm not talking on the floor i'm talking about up

up.

Yeah,

that's that's the thing is that if they distributed 1500 tickets, but all if all of them didn't come, the farthest away seats would probably be the ones that you would have some vacancies in, one would assume.

Speaking of vacancies, what's in between Dick the Boozer's ears?

So they opened the show

with an artistic video.

A lost q-tip.

There you go.

Dick, you and the horseman

were explaining why we should care about what the fuck's going on tonight with Hobbs.

I guess, right?

This, again, every Moxley promo is terrible.

He has words he wants to say.

And clearly in his head, it all kind of comes together.

It's not coming together for a single other human being right now.

I don't know why his friends aren't honest with him about it.

You know, we've been saying the Boer Horseman.

It's the most boring faction of killers

because they've tried to kill people.

And it's not like, I want to put him out of action.

They wanted to suffocate him so he couldn't breathe.

Oh, I like the bleach better.

Then they wanted to pour bleach down his throat.

It was security, by the way, but whatever.

This was a complete example, though, of polar opposites.

And

you had the boozer and the horseman.

Just he's rambling, and they're showing the footage of whatever they're doing, but it doesn't explain anything about what the hell has been going on or

what this whole thing is.

But then they transition to Hobbes, and he's speaking, and he looks like a star.

And in probably 30 seconds, and maybe it was edited, but what's fuck?

At least it came off on television.

He cut a great promo in plain language explaining kind of why he wanted Moxley, how he got to Moxley, and why he wants to kick his ass.

And

it was, that's, you know, I knew, I don't know what the fuck's going on with these other people at the start, but that big fucking mean-looking guy wants to kick this guy's ass.

He got my attention, and I

didn't say anything.

I was going, what the fuck is happening here?

And i agree but the problem is as i was watching this all i'm thinking is how are they going to do the match if he loses

it kind of takes away everything i've done in the last week and a half two weeks to try to build him up and if he wins you have a new world champion So I wasn't sure.

And the way they went.

There are shades of gray in between that they could have done if they knew what they were doing and they didn't do any of them.

But I understand your point.

And that was it?

Well, and that's, and we'll, we'll get there because that's our main event, ladies and gentlemen, of this.

Did we mention it was on January 15th, or did we even

yes, I said that.

Well, you will in C.

Well, I'm just making sure I got to keep an eye on you.

So, and they plug the other main matches for the night, and then

our opening match is Brian Cage

and our friend Kenny Olivier returning to the ring in AEW.

Brian, is this a lesson in context and venue?

When,

you know, Brian Cage comes out to the ring, fine, good.

I still think he's a lost cause because he doesn't get this mentally.

He looks like a million dollars.

He could do all the shit, but he just does too much of it, et cetera.

But when Kenny comes out with the ridiculously over-dramatic entrance, and at least they cut

the running gag where Justin Roberts would give him the,

you know,

allocades, as Luger would say,

you know, and the whole, that whole mouthy thing.

But he's got pyro and lighting

and the fucking screen, and Justin Roberts herniates himself to announce him.

You know, if he was was a guy that was over currently in the WWE, in the venues they're running with the production they have, something like that

would not look out of place.

But does it look ridiculous when they're coming out, as I said, to what looks like in some angles, a glorified pole barn?

If you give you deserve all this shit,

what the fuck are you doing here?

Do you see what I'm saying?

I see what you're saying.

I mean, I'm not going to nitpick it that much just because it was his return match.

Obviously, he was the most over guy in the entire show, and they missed him.

It's interesting that, like, Moxley,

they've changed his music.

And with Omega, I don't think it's helped him.

Like, he used to have music that kind of got you pumped into it.

It's different now, and it's not working.

But again, that's a minor thing.

I've noticed it the last few times.

The people were happy to see Kenny, and they got classic Kenny.

Well, it certainly was.

And that's as dramatic as the entrance is, it can't come to the physical drama that our friendly neighborhood Harpo Marks lookalike winner, you know, goes into when he gesticulates and finger points and gasps for air.

But

I mean, this was, you know,

the atmosphere of the crowd was you can hear individual people expressing emotions,

right, in between the moves.

It's then they're sitting there, and a random fuck Don Callus chant broke out.

I think that's what they were saying.

In the first couple minutes, Kenny tried to do a thing where he fucking jumped up, turned around and picked a bale of cotton, jumped up and flipped over

Cage off of Cage's shoulders onto his feet, but he over-rotated and face-planted in the goddamn mat and busted his own head open.

Which it wasn't a cut.

It was a mat burn that trickled blood and had kind of a bloody spot.

It wasn't a

stitches or anything, but he just face planted, boom.

And,

you know, I don't.

They like these kind of matches, but I saw

the same thing as they usually do.

And he got heat on Kenny and they fought on the ramp.

And it's every Japanese video game match and the finger pointing.

And then,

again,

at one point, Cage,

I had to go back a couple of times and

just see how obvious this was.

Cage climbed up on the turnbuckles while Kenny was on the apron.

But

Kenny was next to him.

He wasn't trying in any way to assault Kenny.

He just got his feet on a second rope and leaned over the top turnbuckle and held onto the fucking post

and just bent over like that.

And then Kenny standing right next to him slaps him about 15 times in the head like he's trying to stun him.

And my Lola used to shoe flies harder.

And then Kenny jumps from the apron of the top rope and flips over and powerbombs Cage off the top rope.

That's what position Cage has been in for the previous 15, 20 seconds.

And I'm like,

when they watch this back, do they not see

how rotten and stupid and phony that looks?

Does nobody point it out to them, hey,

dumb shit, why did you put yourself in that position?

When the guy that you're fighting is a foot and a half to the left of you.

Then Kenny ran and missed a knee lift on a stationary target.

He hit Cage in the arm and Sockface had to.

Well, it was a glancing blow.

At first he said direct hit, I think.

And then when the replay showed that he hit his shoulder, then they had to say, oh, it hit his cheek.

You know what?

I think.

I think first he said, oh, a direct hit, and then he realized then somebody else said a glancing blow and then they fucking compromised in the middle.

I don't know.

But at the end

at one point, Kenny points to the ropes and he points to the sky and he hits the ropes and he runs right past Cage.

He's trying to do like a duck and roll up from behind or whatever, but he just ran right past him.

And Cage picks him up.

He tries to drop behind.

He went sideways.

They went back and forth and Kenny hit a big knee lift that looked good.

And then Cage is on his knees in the ropes, and he hits another knee lift.

It looks like shit

because there's no place for the guy to take a bump.

And then instead of doing anything else to like, or just covering the fucking guy,

he leaned Cage over the ropes and got in between his legs.

Maybe I'm not like it sounds.

Let me back up.

He picks Cage up, who's supposed to be halfway stunned into

incoherency, and leans him over the top rope.

And Cage is having to lay there while he leans his head,

Kenny does, in between Cage's legs.

And then Cage can hold on to the top rope and help Kenny pick him up

for his fucking finish, the one-winged angel.

Or the one-winged fairy.

I forget which it is.

Lazy cover one, two, three.

That's the only finish in AEW they've ever put over strong.

If you really think about it, who else has a finisher?

I guess Moxley choking people to death.

Who else has a finisher that no one kicks out of?

It's Omega.

That's the only one.

I dare one of these guys to start doing that move in the middle of a match and kicking out of it like you do at everyone else's finishes.

There you go.

Except I.

It looks a little dodgy to me on one spinal column.

I don't know if I would be trusting this guy or anybody else to fucking do that.

But

I was always taught: never take a bump completely folded up because you've got nowhere to fucking absorb the shock.

And that's exactly what these knuckleheads do.

Real quick before you get to the post-match stuff, so obviously, your feelings aside, any thoughts I have that are negative aside, Kenny Omega

may be the most popular in-house guy they have in AEW with the fans still.

What do you mean in-house now?

I mean, the most popular guy in the company that when he makes an appearance, you know, Will Ospreay is popular, but Omega, it's a different reaction.

Well, because he's been gone for a fucking year.

Let him hang around for about four months.

Well, that leads into my question.

If you know he's coming back and

I'm going to assume he, well, let's see what kind of schedule he works.

If you don't think he's going to be wrestling that often, do you have this match on Dynamite?

Or do you save a Kenny Omega match where people could pay for it?

Because

he's one of the guys you could say has proven in the past he's been a pay-per-view draw for them.

So if you have that,

you have a match here.

It was a pretty long match, more competitive than it probably should be for a Kenny Omega return match.

Well, of course.

But why would you give that away?

Should you hold that kind of match back for pay-per-view?

Well, there could be the thought that, well, then if he appears regularly to promote the match that we're holding back for pay-per-view, then he's got to talk.

And

even I will admit that of two things, to see Kenny Omega talk or to see Kenny Omega fucking wrestle, I'd probably rather see him wrestle, which shows how much I want to see him talk.

But it's not like that he's proven that he can talk to people into the building.

He's the guy in the ring.

But I certainly

would have

either booked him against somebody, not one of these comedy comedy job guys either, but a competent

middle-level fucking

predominantly heel

that he could have had a six or seven-minute match with just as like a tune-up thing.

He really wants to prove he's going to start at the beginning of whatever, then do your fucking angle afterwards,

or maybe not even do your angle afterwards.

Maybe do that once or twice or three times on TV and then do your angle afterwards.

and then let him have a competitive match

on pay-per-view that people need to pay to see.

But they've already wasted

the goddamn, the gut.

Everybody's hitting him in the stomach now.

They've already done that and haven't even got him advertised in a fucking main event style match.

So there's your angle and you've done it.

Oh, Kyle has punched him.

Somebody else fucking punched him the other day or vice versa.

Well, no, it was in this afterbirth.

This is where they did the angle already.

And I'll just say this before you go to the angle, a couple of things real quick.

Don Callis is like a parody of a manager.

And I don't know how anyone would ever take him seriously.

And that's the problem.

If you're going to have managers, you have to have good ones, serious ones.

Not that they can't be funny like you were, but people took you seriously.

Don Callis, it's like a guy performing.

He's playing at it.

Playing a manager.

He's performing as a manager.

That's one thing.

Second thing is his stable sucks and none of them know how to do a beatdown.

If you watch, and it wasn't even just here.

Later on with PAC, I noticed it too.

No one knows how to just stomp a guy on the mat.

And then when Lance Archer started throwing shots at him on the mat, he couldn't do that either.

I know.

I don't know what has gone on.

I don't know what.

Again, you need snap in your kicks and you need to make a little fucking noise with them.

And not kicking the guy, but kicking the mat, making noise with your movement, putting oomph into it with the punches.

They need

these weasels need to open up, and you need to know how to throw a fucking punch.

It takes two to fucking tango, and you need to punch people in a believable fashion and

just show some aggression and some body language and some urgency when you're trying to get heat.

But Archer and Don came in on Kenny.

I wrote phony kicks and weak punches.

And then old Kyle came in and and hit the big gut punch,

which they already have done in an angle here not long ago, right?

When he first came back.

He should have never cut his hair.

I'm sorry.

Oh, boy.

And then, but here then comes Osprey,

and he hits the ring.

And he and Kyle are going to have the one, two, one, two, and he's going to fucking dump Kyle.

And they trade punches that are fake because they don't change their facial expressions.

They don't don't register them with their body language.

They throw them,

I hit, you hit, I hit, you hit,

next to or in the vicinity of the guy's fucking head and face, but it doesn't even change their

expression because they're going through the motion of doing this.

And that's why it looks like shit.

And then Osprey dumped Kyle and staggered Archer.

And by that point, Kenny, whose surgically repaired gut just took the big punch from Kyle, who must fucking hit like my Aunt Lola,

Kenny was already up and knee lifted him.

And then Osprey hit that shitty elbow that he, for whatever reason, he uses as his finish.

That this time it was his armpit that hit

Archer in the back of the head.

And then

Kenny started kind of arguing and confronting and

being as aggressive as he usually normally ever is verbally

with Osprey, who's the guy that helped him.

But then he shoved Osprey out of the way and dove out on Kyle,

who apparently was

going to try to jump him.

And so I don't really know why that Kenny would be so ungrateful, but we didn't find out because

as soon as he did the dive, the music hit, and here came Tega Shit.

And he just got in the ring, and he and Kenny just started trading forearms and punches without selling them.

And it was a small ramp, it was kind of ridiculous.

They hit his music for the run-in.

Well, yes, it was fucking 50 feet from the curtain to the goddamn ropes.

And

so then Kyle gave Kenny

the Snapdragon, the Begonia suplex, the Marigold suplex, whatever.

And then

take a shit, clothesline Kenny.

I had to take notes.

Take a shit, clothesline Kenny, but Osprey got back in and fought Kyle and take,

but they stopped him and then gave both guys brainbusters next to each other.

And then all the heels stood there and celebrated while nobody

came to help either babyface or even

referees coming out to wave their arms.

They just did all that.

Well, what'd you think?

I mean, I thought the match went too long.

I'm not a Brian Cage fan.

Every time I want to give the guy a chance, the match goes too long and I get to see too much, I guess.

The fans love Omega.

And

I don't know if that meant they wanted to see him go back to La Feud with Don Callis.

You know, it's like MJF.

When he came back, people didn't want to see him go back to the Adam Cole feud.

When Adam Cole came back, they didn't want to see him go to the MJF feud.

I don't think it's to that level.

I think people were hoping that Omega, right out of the gate, would be used really strong on top.

And, you know, right now they're going to do something with him and Osprey, a front of me kind of situation.

Why?

Why?

But why were they arguing with each other?

Because they have a history.

Because they have a a history where they didn't want to.

No, wait a minute.

Fucking Osprey didn't even get here until after Kenny was already out hurt last year.

Remember, Osprey wrestled Kenny at the Tokyo Dome, I think.

Oh, Christ.

I want to say it's been a while and they do so much stupid shit.

I want to say they did something with him in AEW.

Remember, Osprey was originally with Don Callas.

Well, yeah, but that was also after Kenny left, wasn't it?

Yeah, maybe it was.

I don't know.

And obviously,

Excalibur did not do a good job of explaining any of this.

Well, but besides that, they're worried about who was mad at who in Japan seven years ago instead of what they might be able to put together to make anybody interested right now.

And the last thing they need when they got two popular baby faces is to have either one of them arguing or teaming and splitting up to have a big dream match, which will inevitably cause somebody to pick one over the other.

Then you're devaluing one of your fuckings,

the Bruno Andre fucking principle.

That's why they never had the match.

Anyway, would you like to move on to

I would like to move on to sunnier climates and happier times.

Well, happier times, sunnier climates.

And of course,

in these happy situations,

everything's going good.

You're feeling good.

You may want to make a wager.

You may want to take a chance and

pay two bucks.

You may just be walking down the street, just snapping your fingers, wearing your Zoot suit, spinning your watch around, thinking, wow, man,

I got a lot of what it takes to get along.

And you want to make some more.

You don't want to go into a back alley and start throwing craps with somebody with three fingers that you're not really familiar with.

You don't want to go to any unsavory people and...

put money on the numbers.

You want to do this the legal, the moral, the ethical way, the way that's going to make you some money that you can spend in decent places and take home to your wife or your mother.

We're talking about DraftKings Sportsbook.

They are fine, upstanding people.

You know that everybody at DraftKings Sportsbook, there is an FBI file on them.

They've checked them out.

As a matter of fact, many of them already had a file with the FBI.

They were being proactive.

And they check these people out to make sure that they can't play any hocus pocus with your money.

When you go into the DraftKings Sportsbook virtual world of the app, you're not going to have anybody picking your pocket as you go in a door, Brian.

You've obviously had your pocket picked before.

I can think of one guy that picked both of our pockets at one point in time.

And that's a horrible feeling.

Virtually.

Virtually.

Folks, scoring touchdowns is the key.

To winning in the playoffs because they're playing off now.

You've heard of fighting off.

Well, now they're playing off.

And all over the NFL, they got playoffs.

I guess that's it.

Or is it time for basketball playoffs?

The Harlem Globetrotters are here this week.

Can you take bets on the Harlem Globetrotters?

You cannot.

We are on the road to the Super Bowl.

Are the Harlem Globetrotters really in Willisville this week?

They certainly are.

They had a Globetrotter spinning the ball while walking through the snow on the news the other day.

Or I believe it might have been today.

I recently saw the Harlem Wizards, who were kind of like the Globetwatt, Globetwatt, who were kind of like the Globetrotters of old, and they tour the various areas and facilities.

Well, so they're basically doing a fucking Wendy's hamburgers, Judy's hamburgers, Frisch's big boy, Jerry's J-Boy type of thing, some kind of infringement.

I don't know.

You never really hear about the Globetrotters anymore.

You used to know them by name.

Now I can't name a single one.

Well, that's because Metal Arc Lemon retired.

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And Jim,

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That's right.

And Jim, speaking speaking of flow,

there was more to

leave the...

I don't want to say anything bad.

There was a lot more dynamite to go.

It was going to flow on.

It was like

Golden Rivers by I.P.

Freely.

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So, speaking of draft kings, wasn't Ricochet the king of something at some point?

Wasn't he king Ricochet?

Was that in the in the other company?

Well, it wasn't here, yeah.

Well, boy, now

he's gone from being the king of his own domain to

an inhabitant of Swerve Strickland's guesthouse.

He comes out to the ring, and the fans boo him, but

again, this is almost kind of like they're

Yeah,

they're kind of enjoying booing the guy because they don't really like him, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

But they love saying Swerve's house.

So now that he's messing around with Swerve Strickland,

they can say Swerve's house.

And

he milked it for a while, but it wasn't like

one of these epic milks on Raw, you know, that goes on forever.

And the people are, it wasn't that overwhelming besides Swerve's house.

And he comes out

in a suit with the golden scissors in his pocket,

the breast pocket of his jacket.

Did you see that?

I did.

What does he have to do with golden scissors?

Besides the fact that he previously tried to or did stab the guy, I can't remember.

It's just, you know, one of many felonious assaults.

But

am I missing the Brutus the Barber beefcake connection to the fucking hedge trimmers here that why Ricochet is noted for stabbing people with scissors past two weeks ago?

Until we saw it.

From the first time we saw it, that was the first time I saw it.

I don't remember him ever having a

connection to scissors.

He has no hair.

This could be the first time, maybe

the last time.

I don't know.

He just butchered the Rolling Stones, but okay.

So, well, they're old and I can get away with it.

But they're alive and you should have some respect.

Well, pahak patoui, Miccajack.

I humble you.

But nevertheless, the golden scissors were in his pocket.

And his first words after all this dramatic milking of the kind of tepid response was,

you know what?

And I'm like, what the fuck?

This fucking guy.

And

is he, you know what?

Whatever you think, pictures speak louder than words.

And it showed a picture on a screen of him over Swerve and Swerve's bleeding buckets and everything.

And then suddenly Swerve's music plays.

And while he's looking for Swerve,

Nana slides in behind and hits Ricochet with a chair and knocks him goofy.

So now

Nana has been.

And I haven't been an advocate of this, but Nana's been punked out and backed down with a cold, icy stare by every fucking heel.

But Ricochet gets in with a chair just knocks the shit out of him

and then swerve comes from the from the other side from the entranceway and has a logging chain and takes a big swing is gonna whip ricochet with the chain and ricochet rolls out

on the floor and does the stumble thing pretending like he can't get to the exit which is The exit door on the other side of the arena is 50 feet from the ring.

And so he throws a security guard at Swerve and then takes off out the door into the snow and ice.

They have just made Ricochet the biggest fucking flunky in the world, have they not?

I mean, not just with this, but just

he came in with

the big fucking hoop law and was going to be a major babyface.

It is the, you know, one of the top guys,

beating the other top guys.

And

has it been six months?

And he did.

If Swerve had run in there and attacked him, it's one thing.

But for him to take a chair shot from Nana, who then starts dancing.

Nana's never done anything to show that he is a pair of balls as a character on the show.

And then this.

That's the thing.

It's like I want to lean into the ricochet thing and like it because, okay, he's all of a sudden dressing like a nerd.

And it kind of matches the voice.

But he gets beaten down by the fucking manager manager of Swear.

I mean, everything they do, it's like one step forward, five steps back.

Every time you want to give him a little bit of credibility, they treat him like a jerk off.

Don't usually, don't the baby faces switch heel because they feel like they can do better.

They've been wrong somehow.

As a babyface, people were cheering him.

And he was just beating everybody.

Oh, he opened his mouth.

Yeah, he started doing promos and people heard him talk.

Yes.

And then

when people told him on Twitter about how bad they didn't want to hear him talk, then he started fucking cussing him out individually.

And now he's a fucking heel that gets laid out by the manager.

Anywho,

should we even talk about the

Mercedes Moon video package?

She was on a talk show.

Is this a recognized show?

I didn't catch the first run of it.

There There were clips on this package, and she was shopping.

We know she can shop.

And I didn't see her dropping.

So she didn't shop until she dropped.

But

she,

you know, for people who don't know anything about wrestling, she does come off like she ought to be somebody because she's convinced.

I mean, I just, I don't know.

Like a character.

That's yeah.

She comes off like a person who's convinced she's she's playing this character full-time, not like someone who's really that person.

So, you know, there was that.

I don't know if we can really go delve into any detail on that.

No, it's been a few weeks without Mercedes Monet.

Maybe she's looking for Camille.

Maybe she can't find Camille.

And she's like, where's Camille?

I can't be a TV, Tony.

Give me your charge card.

I got to go shopping.

Because I need to have nice clothes on when I find Camille.

That's right.

Well,

why did they do what they did?

I wonder.

Oh, I wonder, wonder.

Oh, but oh, why, why, Tony, why?

MVP wrestled in a six-man tag on this television program.

Already.

It was Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, and MVP against Private Party and Mark Briscoe.

They

put MVP in the ring with what did they announce this on Twitter or maybe on Collision or whatever the fuck?

But

a cold TV match against mid-card talent.

They put the manager, the only one that has any legitimate,

I don't know if you can call it heat now overness.

And they put him, and he wrestled most of the match.

Instead, that was a pay-per-view money match.

If they'd have done

anything right, including waiting on it.

But

this didn't do these guys.

I mean, Mark Briscoe is a great pro, but

he's been rendered somewhat meaningless.

But Private Party ain't ready to be in this position.

And

the match wasn't good.

A lot of times there was silence from the fans because they're like, what the fuck?

These three guys guys could obliterate.

You know, and they kind of like Mark.

Neither private party guy got in until I think they'd gone through a break.

It was a mess.

It looked like at one point Shelton Benjamin gave the green-haired private party guy something, but Shelton sold it and got covered for a two-count.

And then Lashley gave up Mark Briscoe an incredible belly-to-belly throw on the floor.

But it was just in the middle of all of this mess.

Private party number one

jumped off private party number two's back to do the like big leg Lariat back kick in the corner and almost flew through the ropes and fell out of the ring and barely touched Shelton Benjamin with the kick.

And then Lashley chokeslammed one and Shelton suplexed another and Lashley speared one and Shelton German the other and super kicked him one, two, three.

But it

the MVP did not need to be in the ring in just some fucking match.

That is something you should have saved for a legitimate pay-per-view draw.

Private party

shouldn't have gone honestly, five minutes with Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley.

they're not ready to be in that, and it was too long.

Besides, they just started indicating that there was going to be some kind of thing with Lashley and Shelton as a tag team against private party.

We were just talking about it last week.

We were talking about how exciting it is.

Hey, you know what?

That could be something for the tag team.

Well, you were talking about how exciting it was.

I was talking about good, then they can put the belts on Shelton and

move on.

Well, I'm saying it would be a different look for the tag team division, and it would be a whole new set of matches like them against FTR, things we've never had.

Then the next week, they put him in a six-man match with their manager who's not wrestled in AEW before.

Again, MVP was like an Intercontinental Champion stuff a while back.

He's a fantastic manager.

I don't even remember the last time I've seen him wrestle.

Well, they said it was two and a half years since he'd had a match or whatever on commentary, but that again, the point is that's why it should have been saved for a pay-per-view main event where,

and not with Private Party, man, with the next more

credible tag team, hopefully, out there that Lashley and Benjamin would be working with.

And then

MVP does something that

they have to go and get another guy, and he's forced into the thing, and blah, blah, blah.

We've done this drill many times in many ways over the years.

And this ain't it, bro.

Bro.

Did you see the little little sit-down with FT Cope?

The comments from the media scrum.

Actually, I did not see this.

I missed this.

Well, they just put it in there.

It was like a minute from the media scrum with some, you know, B-roll of some highlights or whatever.

But the whole point of the thing was that they were all best friends.

Oh, yeah, I'd love to be able to do this with my friends.

You know, Edge said when, you know, when I was training to come back, I trained with, we live in Asheville.

You know, we're great friends.

And

Daxon Cash said, yeah, he's a great friend of ours.

We all were,

but it's a rib at this point.

The babyfaces should be friends.

But now all friends wrestling has become

everybody, the whole boat of contention from the start is, are you my friend?

Would you be my neighbor?

But anyway.

Should we get into it now?

It's time for it.

The next segment, which started at 8.55 p.m.

Eastern, went across the top of the 9 o'clock hour, and for all we know is still going on today,

was with Jeff Jarrett and MJF.

And by the way, I would like to acknowledge the fact that there was

a Dick the Boozer sign.

held up on television during this segment, even though the boozer wasn't in this this segment.

He got it on TV before they took it away.

And we'd like to thank, I'm just going to give his first name, Dylan from up in Florence, Kentucky.

Florence, y'all.

Dylan, thank you very much.

You are the winner of the Dick the Boozer sweepstakes.

And Brian, what does he win?

A hearty hand clasp or a pat on the back?

You win 48 hours with the Boer Horseman.

Spend time with them as they drive endlessly to nowhere.

All along,

you go nowhere with the Boer Horseman, courtesy of your friends of AEW and, of course, Dick the Boozer.

And by the way, folks, that was totally unprepared copy that he just recited there.

Boyden, Ontario.

There certainly is one there.

AEW security did not like the sign.

They confiscated it about 15 minutes after he got there

or held it up or whatever, but he attached the photos of the sign that was held up in the, and I saw it on the camera.

So I saw it on the camera.

The funniest thing is not just the sign being held up.

It's when you see the person's face and they're having the time of their life holding the sign up.

And you know that Tony and security are like, oh shit, get the sign, get the sign, get the booster sign.

They're the happiest fan in the fucking room when they're holding up the sign.

But anyway, so, but back to this, I'm just trying to prolong.

Boy, when you,

I personally

like one person here, and well, I can't say I've obviously people know that I have worked with MJF in the past.

So I personally like both people, but professionally, Jeff especially, and professionally,

you know, MJF has

such talent and had such promise.

And

Jeff comes out and says five words in the MJF music.

And that used to be, okay, we're on autopilot for the next 20 minutes.

Whatever happens, we're going to enjoy it.

And

it ain't there no more.

Because I don't know what

is going on here, but they,

Jeff is, I like the idea of Jeff, and we talked about this.

And you said you were even somewhat interested in the idea of Jeff making some,

you know, last run, the last outlaw at winning the title and being an important person.

And they had Dustin come out later on and give him a pep talk about, you know, we're a last of a dying breed and you're a veteran and blah, blah, blah.

I said it could be something if done well.

I'm not a fan of Jeff Jarritz, and I've not been a fan of him and AEW, and I didn't think AEW should bring him in and make him an on-air character.

However,

but it's a story.

If it was done well,

again, at the same time, WWE is doing the Cena thing.

If it was done well, it could be good TV.

That's what I mean.

And at the same point,

for me, MJF and Jeff Jarrett, because MJF is a worker and a student of the game, and they,

with all the tricks that Jeff knows and all the things that MJF has the aptitude for, could put together a heck of a match without the Havoconronas and the flips around the fucking

periphery.

And I'd like to see that.

But after this promo,

I don't know if I want to see any of it.

What they did here

was

it was the promo equivalent of the indie match that goes too far and goes too long.

And

there were too many devastating maneuvers in this interview.

And you could see that if this, again,

if all things were equal, and this was on WWF or WWE television,

and it was the Tewasina or Punk or Rollins or whoever their top cutting linguists are that were cutting,

drew an edge to the bone promos at each other,

that one of these 10 or 12 lines that they uttered would have gone, oh,

and then the other one may have, the other one may have come back with one more line or just started the fight.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

But this was a goddamn complete

you know

friars club roast evisceration of both guys practically but

i mean

jeff mjf says leads off with jeff jarrett is the last thing you see before your favorite wrestling company dies

Again, maybe a true statement, but maybe not the thing you should say.

Yeah, but

yeah, the guy you're about to work with in some allegedly main event program, but also actually theoretically, no, not correct.

Because Jeff Jarrett wasn't the final champion in WCW.

TNA wrestling still exists to this day.

Global Force didn't make it, but I don't think that was anybody's favorite wrestling company.

Not even Jeff's.

There you go.

So, you know, but it's for the insiders.

This was,

and Jeff went right along with it.

But MJF called Jeff a raging alcoholic

and talked about sending him back to rehab.

Oh, but I'm a big fan of that sexy MILF Karen.

While you're in rehab,

you know, tell her to call me that way.

And later on, she can show you what a generational talent and an Olympic gold medalist balls taste like.

And Jeff is in the corner and he's just having having a smirk and laugh it off because he's going to come back with all this stuff.

But

again,

a little inside,

kind of bad taste,

but also it's so much.

They're in a pole barn in Cincinnati.

Hey, can I ask you a question?

I know that Jeff's not hidden the fact that he had an issue with substances and, or I guess you would say, substance abuse and he's clean, but has that ever been talked about?

Well, I don't know if it was alcohol, it wouldn't be

alcohol.

Well, I believe that was the case.

I mean, unless you count vodka and bourbon as two different things or whatever.

I don't think it was on fucking crack and mushrooms, but go ahead.

I don't, see, I don't know.

And again, I don't think mushrooms are really a problem.

Mushrooms are a wonderful thing that can enlighten.

All right, Dr.

Leary, let's stay on topic.

But no, but crack is bad.

Crack is whack.

Crack is whack.

Is what I'm trying to say.

But has that been established on TV?

Has that ever been talked about?

The fact that he's no.

No, that's what I,

again, this is all for the people on the internet.

But what I'm saying to you is if

somebody in the wide, wide United States of America happened to be turned on to TBS on a Wednesday night to see these two guys in.

in a wrestling ring, but there's the entranceway 50 feet away, and it looks like a Nickelodeon Lodean game show set.

And there's not 1,500 people there because there's only 1,500 tickets out.

That includes the freebies people didn't fucking show up for.

And these guys are talking about what each other's balls are going to taste like to their fucking wife.

And

you're a raging alcoholic.

And

then

Jeff comes back and he's trying to,

after that evisceration, he still has a story to tell

where he knows his best years are behind him.

But when he entered the Owen Hart Cup, the fans woke up a desire in him.

Could he do it one more time?

Gotta blah, blah, blah, and that type of thing.

Could that put me on track to be the AEW champion?

But you think you hurt my feelings?

All that's been said before.

So apparently everybody talks bad about Jeff, but he said, I've done all your shit better than you.

Now, here's the problem:

is that, yes, Jeff was a heel for most of his national television exposure, but I don't know

that anybody thinks that he

was the verbal linguist equivalent of what MJF does.

But at the same time, Jeff's done a lot more dirty things.

physically because he's been allowed to.

Well, no.

I mean, in angles that meant something with main event talent because he was in a company that allowed that type of thing.

But the point is, he's telling that story.

It's like he wants to get

sympathy behind him as a valiant veteran trying to...

But then he comes back with, I don't know if you're a dumbass or a scumbag because...

Your family life, you were raised by a call girl mother and an ambulance chasing father.

Where did that come from?

That's why I don't fucking know.

When your father knocked your mom up, did she still make him pay for that shit?

What is, I mean, suddenly we got, you know, the goddamn comedy Central roast up here.

The other problem is, MJF, no matter what lines he's saying,

he'll try to get into the intensity of it, and he tries.

Jeff's delivery,

beyond the material, he was doing hit youngman, but his delivery sucked.

Like, Jeff, I thought one of the issues here was the overall segment, there are a lot of issues, but Jeff's,

I just didn't think Jeff was really,

I don't know what good could have been done, but Jeff was not doing good here.

Jeff is not an insult comic.

And then he said, and your old lady,

girlfriend, not mother, your old lady is a Canadian call girl.

And I actually wrote, What is happening?

What is happening?

And then Jeff said,

while you were going 60 minutes with Osprey, your wife, your old lady was out in the parking lot banging 10 guys.

And you're a scared little boy.

You're scared of everything.

You're scared of being a one-hit wonder.

And so that now, if you think we're done, you know, ladies and gentlemen, MJF comes back and hears it.

You said MJF always tries to sound like he means it.

The problem is

he's too mad too often for it to register or land, as the kids say,

as impactfully as it once did because now he's always up like that.

And he said, I didn't need my daddy or to start my own company to be a made-off guy.

I've got Wimbley.

I'll always have Wimbley.

And the records I set, and I got screwed out of my title and my reputation.

And I wrote, this is so long.

And MJF said, No wrestling fan has ever given a shit about you.

Way to build up, probably the guy that's had more national television exposure over the years than anybody else on your program.

That's a different thing than no

wrestling fan gives a shit about you today, old man.

That fits the story.

No wrestling fan has ever given a shit about you,

only

registers with the

honestly the fucking wrestling observer marks that because Jeff didn't do moonsaults and even Dave liked him when he was a fucking rookie.

So

it doesn't, this whole thing is not for anybody other than who they've already got and not a lot of them.

And then, well, I'm just going to say, and then MJF has to

then, you know,

kind of get on Owen Hart in a roundabout way by getting on Jeff because you're just a leech riding your friend Owen Hart's goattails.

And that's when Jeff nailed him at the 12-minute mark of this thing.

It took.

And there's more, but let me stop you right there.

Yes.

And I may want to ask you questions about some of the other stuff, but the Owen Hart thing.

Again, they have a deal with Dr.

Martha Hart.

They have Owen Hart tournaments for men and women.

Even with that being...

What about the ministers by the way?

Come on now.

Talk about discrimination.

Well, they have to take them out of the heavyweight division and give them their own division first.

But with that said, they still have dropped people from the ceiling.

You know, even though I guess they obviously did it a lot safer than WWE did, the point is, I don't know if I'd be doing that.

Now they're using Owen Hart

in this kind of situation here.

What do you think about that?

Is that something that should bother people?

Well,

again, and Jeff and Owen really were friends.

And that part is true, and people know that.

That's why they're trying to play on this.

But

the point I was going to make about the tone of the whole thing,

and it applies to using Owen's name also, so it's answering part of your question.

This was like

the dying day of a territory when

they were, did they do anything that Fritz von Erich having a heart attack and the advance of Reunion Arena or whatever, depending on whether he was getting better or getting worse,

or the closing days of the Sheiks TV when he'd be strangling a bloody guy with a fucking 10-foot snake and they still didn't, it was in a TV studio, nobody cared.

The venue,

any of these lines

on

RAW, spoken amongst the top guys,

would get the big ooh, the big pop.

But there were dozens of them.

They just eviscerated each other, but also

It was so smart and so inside because so much of this stuff didn't

apply to any story that had been told on television.

We didn't know for example that

MJF's mother was a fucking whore.

We weren't aware of that.

It hadn't been brought up before.

That's what I mean.

The fans didn't give a shit.

I mean, Jeff Joe was saying all this stuff to MJF and the fans, you know.

It was almost like they were thinking, well, is Jeff just trying to say that stuff to see if he'll get MJF to hit him and give him a taste of his own medicine, which may have been the point of the whole thing.

But yeah, that was the thing, I think.

Just I'm going to do what you do and show you how ridiculous it is.

But it kind of

didn't really connect.

It was a small room with fans that were disinterested in a lot of things.

And of course, the program,

it looked desperate.

It looked, oh my God, we got to say anything.

Killing puppies.

Remember the skit on Saturday Night Live?

Dan Aykroyd is the radio talk host.

So I want you to talk back to me tonight.

We'll talk about the Secretary of State.

Gives the phone number.

Nobody calls.

Well, also, we'll talk about abortion.

Nobody calls.

Well, also, we'll talk about gun control.

Here, call this number and talk back to me.

Nothing.

Finally, he's like.

Killing puppies.

I'm for it.

What do you think?

Call.

And then the phone rings, it's the fucking wrong number.

It's des they were, it was desperate here.

It's desperate.

They're, they're having their Fritz having a heart attack in a three-quarters empty building to say that I just,

it didn't,

I don't know.

The other thing is, like I said to you, I think for two previous segments, maybe three

leading up to this, if Jeff Jarrett's last year

was done right, it could really be something.

It could be good TV.

If you were going to do something with him and MJF,

I would have to think there were other ways you could have made it different than this.

Well, but

besides that, they didn't need a promo battle.

That wasn't what Jeff Jarrett needed to be in.

No, no, this was

kind of a one-sided thing.

But again, with the material, maybe MJF wrote some of that material.

It's not Jeff's normal style, but it doesn't matter.

Besides that, if you were going to do something like that with Jeff, why would MJF be the first fucking thing?

Because MJF's still

one of your more valuable commodities shrinking fast on the exchange.

But why wouldn't you give Jeff somebody that he would succeed against in some

three or four week deal or whatever the fuck?

on his or maybe a couple of them and then MJF where that goes to a pay-per-view and you have have some type of ability to monetize interest because you've got to show Jeff capable of doing part of the

marathon

before the people are going to believe he might be able to complete the marathon, right?

He hadn't started yet.

Well, speaking of marathon, we weren't even done with the segment.

Well, yeah, because then finally when...

When MJF

said that about Owen and Jeff pickled him, he got on him and started beating on him and security came in.

And actually, the people booed a little bit security, the idea they were going to break it up.

And then Karen comes in, and she's trying to pull Jeff back.

And as MGF gets up, he grabs Karen and hides behind her and then bails out of the ring and runs off.

What I thought they were going to do for a second, and at this point, my God, it might as well have shot somebody, is I thought MGF was going to come out of the corner with the diamond ring and Jeff duck and him pickle Karen.

But I bet that crossed somebody's mind.

But

again, this, it,

it's all like, oh, Jeff has signed for one more year and he's going to try to march to the title.

And then, well, here's MJF.

Well, goddamn.

I don't really see that Jeff should come out on the winning side of a feud with MJF, but

he didn't do anything to prove he was capable of any of this yet.

Timing, timing.

I think the material was an issue.

I think the

way this is going is not connecting with people, but I also think Jeff specifically,

even if he was given bad material, his delivery and the way this all came off did not work at all.

And unfortunately, I think a lot of fans feel that way.

And,

you know, I can't keep saying this, but they, they, you know, you, you can't keep saying restart or get this guy away from this guy.

But it's like every feud, everything happening here, you're just like, I wish they could take this guy and just have him work with someone else.

Every one of these son of a bitches ought to be put in isolation.

Just get everybody on the roster away from everybody else on the roster.

Do you think if MJF retires Jeff, that maybe he'll set up a new online store?

to sell wrestling goods and wrestling gear and maybe

he could find some call girls he could sell out

well i understand global force canada hookers what i understand they've got them in canada those call girls yeah global force hookers gfh that would be uh i'll tell you what you know the best time to start your new business is right now

that's uh there's no doubt about that and if this is indeed jeff's last year i think he's going to have to have a nice cushion to fall back on in his golden years.

And he's always got ideas.

He's always got ideas for goods and services.

Well, our friends at Shopify,

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A lot of times they'll call you on the phone.

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There will be no phone calls.

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That is not Shopify.

That is whatever goes on over there.

If you live in a major metropolitan area, they'll have somebody tap on your window, but they won't do it loud so they don't wake the kids.

If they be Spotify, they are Shopify.

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A guy in a 67 Mustang with his tricked out fucking dashboard is going to drive up, hand you your cash once a week.

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But what happens if you don't act now?

You'll regret it.

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And then you're going to be up shit creek without a paddle and dicked by the dangled dong of destiny.

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So Shopify can set you up where you can get a truck and you can go out and you can get a truckload of those pop bottles.

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Shopify.

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One more time.

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Yes, that is it.

Well, back to the land of Tony Khan, AEW Dynamite in Cincinnati.

Oh, boy.

They

did a brief package on Okada and Ishi.

Did you hear the voiceover on this?

Well, that's why I was going to mention it because they had old sock face.

It sounded like he was recording it in his hotel room at 2 a.m.

and he didn't want to wake anybody up and he was SOMAD

and he was reading the copy for the first time ever.

But otherwise, Nat, it really got me hyped up for the match.

When does that match take place?

I don't know.

And again,

Okada and EG,

who cares?

Why?

For what purpose?

And they're going to do the same shit that they always, everything that EG does and everything that Okada does

that we don't like to see individually, they're going to do it together.

But yeah,

I mean, that's not even trying to be,

and I'm your manager, you know, Gary Burbank or whatever.

That was just, yes, and Okana will face Ishii like they did last year.

Yeah, that was the worst voiceover I've heard this side of Chris Jericho.

That was terrible.

Well, and he's not supposed to be a professional.

And

the other one is is a qualifications.

And the other one isn't a professional.

He's a good one.

No, the other one's supposed to be a professional.

Keyword, but possibly allegedly.

Impersonating and I don't know.

All right, should we talk about Christian and Hook?

No, no one should watch this or talk about it, is really my opinion.

But go ahead.

In the spirit of trying to help a young man,

we were going to see Christian versus Hook.

Well, Christian enters with Nick Plain's mom.

She's right along with him.

And Hook jumps Christian on the ramp before he even gets.

And the ramp, as I said, was 50 feet long.

And they fight on the floor.

And

Christian goes to the entranceway leaving, and Hook brings him back.

And

Hook needs to work on his, I don't know if you call them strikes or the punches and the chops.

He has awkward shoulder and upper body movement where

he looks, he puts you in mind more like he's trying to make an unnatural gesture and throw it and pull it rather than an actual real chop or punch or whatever.

And I know maybe, certainly somebody has said something to him before now,

but he gets on and

the square-footedness also, when he's just hammering on somebody, he's kind of hopping up and down.

He needs to be more fluid.

He needs to move a little smoother.

And that would make his stuff look better.

Maybe do a few less things and put more emphasis into each of what you are doing.

But if his stuff looked better to the people,

it would be a better

visual disguise to his

still thinness and

lightness of weight and his greenness because you see guys that are still somewhat green moving in the square-footed, squared-off-shouldered manner that I'm talking about.

And Christian, you know, is trying to do a lot of the same things Christian's always done.

But there was, you know,

it was a fucking match.

And finally,

I got distracted, actually zoned out whatever, but I don't know what they did the last couple of minutes, but Hook got the choke.

And all of a sudden, Pip Sabian and Nick Plain came in and got the disqualification.

Remember when they wouldn't have a run-in and a DQ on a pay-per-view main event that could have led to a rematch in the early days, but now they'll just DQ random TV matches.

No bullshit finishes, no ref bumps.

Those are the early days of AEW.

Well, that's before they found out that they couldn't go without them.

Then they do too many of them at the wrong time.

Anywho,

they start to get heat on hook and they got a couple of chairs.

And actually, you said Kenny was the most over guy on the show.

And I will.

I will acquiesce to you that.

But I think the highlight moment that got the biggest pop was when Taz stood up

and was about to, I'm not going to let this happen.

The people came up and then suddenly music hit, and it was Samoa Joe's music.

And then they went ballistic.

And then, and then again, Joe

Joe got the reaction of the night to me.

He threw the heels around, and the fans were chanting, Joe, Joe, Joe.

And he beat up Pip and he shit canned Nick.

And then he held Pip and Shibata was there for some reason.

Shippupi.

And Shippupi kicked him.

And the heels bailed.

And the people went crazy for Samoa Joe.

And how long has he been gone?

It was December of 23, wasn't it?

Well, he beat MJF at World's End, right?

That was the beginning of the year.

And then he lost the belt a few months after that.

It's been almost a year.

Yeah, it's been a year.

That's right.

Won it in December of 23 and lost it not

terribly long afterwards.

We just said this about Omega and Don Callis, and we said it about MJF and Adam Cole.

Wasn't Samoa Joe doing something with Hook right before he left?

They were friends, yes.

And the choke, and the, you know, the mentorship.

Right back to that.

All right.

Well, they're trying to be consistent.

They've had now multiple guys from Omega to Samoa Joe show up in the last few weeks that the best thing for their business would be them just instantly beating Jon Moxley, getting a monster pop,

and a restart with one of those two guys as the world champion.

I'm sorry.

That's the truth.

And they ain't done it.

And they ain't gotten that.

All right, you son of a sea cook.

What?

You told me, oh, you got to watch the women's because I did not try to watch this program live because I nodded off on Raw.

I would have probably gone into a coma.

I can't be up past nine o'clock Eastern time at night.

I'm too old.

So I watched this the next day, and you'd already say, well, watch the gauntlet, women's gauntlet.

It's not that long.

The fuck, that's like saying the batan death march wasn't that long.

Oh, but compared to everything else on this show, it was relatively short.

No, it wasn't.

Only the height of the participants.

No, there were some tall women in there, it seemed like.

Well, no, there wasn't.

And that's another thing you're going to have to identify for me.

Who, well, hold on a second.

They had a women's gauntlet match, and obviously people come in at random times, apparently, and it's, you know,

it can end at any time, like the announcer said.

Well, it certainly could have.

As far as I was concerned, I was in agreement with them.

It could end at any time.

But the first two were Chris Statlander and Jamie Hayter,

which last time I checked, weren't those both baby faces?

But they had to wrestle each other for however long

until Statlander gave Jamie a big move of some description and music played.

And here came

what looked like a fucking what it was: the female Vikings were the Valkyries, right?

She's dressed in a goddamn headset.

Looks like some

Bob Mackey 70 share business going on here.

Megan Bain.

And I'm like, who in the wide, wide world of sports is Megan fucking Bain?

And apparently she is a, at aforementioned, she's a Viking.

We know by the way she dresses, but she's from stardom in Japan.

How come

at first all the Japanese girls were four foot nine, weighed 80 pounds, and

looked like, you know, Japanese fucking

Adrians from Rocky.

And now all the girls from Japan are six feet tall, tall, English women, or American women, or Caucasian women, however you would term it,

with long fucking hair and big upper frontal protuberances.

You know, she had a look.

I mean, she was all right in the ring, as best you could tell in a chaotic match like this.

Yeah.

But she had a look.

If you had someone like that you were bringing in and going to do something with, would you just debut them like this?

That's why I thought

during Standlander and hater the announcers pushed well it could end at any time if a pinfall nobody else will get to come in i thought megan bain here she comes look at this amazon

she's gonna beat these other two up and they're gonna put her over and nobody else it's gonna end right

odo

nothing ever ends in aew

no program or nothing ever ends

She got in the ring and Hater was on the floor somewhere selling the one bump that Statlander had given her.

and Megan Bain and Statlander fight.

Well, now

Statlander is the biggest girl otherwise in the match.

So now immediately Megan Bain's size is somewhat normalized.

And she gave Statlander a big move and covered her.

And then Jamie Hayter saved.

So then Statlander rolled out and

Megan Bain and Jamie Hayter fought.

And then

here's the problem.

The longer that Megan Bain went, at first you thought, oh, shit, put her over now.

Boom, new women's champion.

Yeah, boom.

And then the longer this went, the more you're like,

maybe not.

She picks Jamie Hayter up for a vertical suplex and holds her.

And then it looked like they were trying to do the spot where Jamie rolled through with a small package because she'd let her down or lost her.

And then Jamie tried to roll through, but Megan Bain landed on her fucking fucking head in the small package.

And Jamie Hayter just rolled away.

And then Megan Bain rolled out of the ring.

And then here came Julia Hart.

So now Hayter jumped out on the ramp and started fighting Julia Hart.

And we went to the break, and that was Megan Bain's window.

And

the windowsill slammed on her knuckles because now she's one of the girls.

So they came back, and Willow

and Willow was trying to fight with Megan Bain, and now

she was kind of wandering a bit, Megan.

And they were fighting in the ring and on the floor at the same time.

So now it's turned into a mess.

And

Tony Storm comes in, and now it's back and forth with all of them.

And people dove off the stage.

And then Harley Cameron.

What in the world, Brian, do you see in Harley Cameron for this for this fine wrestling program?

That's not what I said when I put her over to you last week.

I didn't say she was fine for the wrestling program, although I did enjoy her here.

I thought she did a good job with what they gave her.

But she is a talented, good-looking woman.

When I say talented, how many good-looking women in skimpy outfits do you know that are good ventriloquists?

What?

She is...

Incredible as a ventriloquist.

She could play guitar.

She could sing.

If I was managing her.

Hold on, wait wait a minute just has anybody ever asked that question before how many good-looking women in skimpy outfits are good ventriloquists exactly if i was managing her i would turn her into a national star not wrestling get away from the wrestling but back away slowly from the wrestling exploiting everything else about her from her character to her ventriloquism and we'll focus on that exploiting everything from her character to her honor to her no that's not what i'm saying honestly to her morals.

Very talented woman.

Very talented.

They would all be exploited.

If I had a talk show, I would have her on at least once a month.

If I had a Harley, I'd talk her into mold.

No, but see, the problem is someone has to write her skits.

See, that's the thing.

She has the ability, but someone needs to actually be able to write her act.

So you just want her to be a mere puppet that you can just stick your hand up her.

And make her do things.

That is not what I'm saying.

That is what she's saying.

And that's not even what she's saying.

that's what the dummy says you can't see what she says she's that good blame it on a dummy she's that good you big dummy well i'll tell you who the big dummy was julia hart

and paul winchell

and did you ever see paul winchell in skimpy clothing paul winchell lived in point lookout so i grew up hearing all about knucklehead smith and jerry mahoney

Did you ever go up and ask Paul to throw his voice?

And if you did, did he throw you out?

He was in the Three Stooges movie.

What was it?

Stop Look and Laugh.

Was that it?

Yes, he was the host.

That's right.

The compilation of Fine Stooge Efforts.

We are making all the 70-year-old listeners feel like kids.

Oh, yeah, right now.

Over here at the Alzheimer's home, they are rolling in a fucking.

We're probably going to flatline some motherfucker over there.

Well, he shouldn't have been listening to us on a ventilator.

Folks, if you're intubated currently, please turn off the program.

Julia Hart, this time, remember last week or whenever it was, she spit

missed that nobody saw, that the announcers called and the girl sold, but that you couldn't see anything on anybody?

Apparently, she somehow took a swig of a 16-ounce black food coloring and spit it in Harley Cameron's face.

It colored her whole fucking head.

And then when she did that, Tony Storm, small package, Julia, one, two, three, and won won the fucking thing.

So,

and thanks for coming, Megan Bain.

Tony doesn't know how to get people over.

I mean, I mean,

she was in the middle of a seven-girl gauntlet match that she didn't win in her debut appearance.

She came out, she looked terribly impressive, and then she looked terrible, and then she was gone.

And then most fans are saying, what was her name?

The The girl that wore the headdress.

Tony Storm versus Mariah Mae, Grand Slam in Australia, which apparently will be available on Max, I believe.

What are your thoughts on them going back to Tony Storm and Mariah Mae?

Well, but it's not a grudge match anymore because Tony Storm doesn't remember Maria.

Or she's saying that.

This could be a performance by Timeless Tony Storm.

She's playing the role.

of a naive Tony Storm.

To what purpose would...

To get the title.

To get the title?

What about if she came back and said, I'm Tony Storm?

I'm the former champion.

You screwed me around.

I want my rematch.

Why does she need amnesia?

The women's division.

You need some psychological games.

Well, that was the women's gauntlet match.

Aren't you glad you watched it?

Yeah, I'm going to talk to you off air about

recommending things to me here in the future.

It was better than what else was on the show.

Well, we're about to, we're to the last thing right now.

Poor,

poor Will Hobbes.

Poorhouse Hobbes.

That's his new name.

Poorhouse Hobbes.

Alas, poor Hobbes.

I knew him well, Horatio, a man of infinite possibilities.

Here came Hobbs, and then here came Dick the Boozer with Marina Schaefer, and the arena was so small the idiot had to walk in from out on the sidewalk out on the street in the snow.

And at least he was wearing

a little hoodie, but she was bare-shouldered, could have caught her death of cold.

And that was the only way they could get farther than 50 feet from the ring.

They walked in the front door, and literally that was the gorilla position.

And boom, here you go.

And

does anybody mention that?

Are we tired yet of Smiley Roberts and that ring announcing?

He sounded on Moxley's introduction like he was giving a breach berth.

What more can you do?

You can't make up for the fact that nobody gives a shit about a guy and there's no people in the building by screaming his name and elongating it to the point where you pass out from oxygen deprivation.

Is that an attractive part of the presentation to anybody at this point?

If you remember, I got a lot of heat early in AEW when I suggested that never should have hired him at the very beginning.

Because I said he's not very good.

It's just that he was on WWE for a while because Vince McMahon McMahon had a really not very good program and he was the ring announcer.

And they went with him.

I wanted Dasha, if you remember at the very beginning to be the ring announcer.

I thought she was better.

Well, I think they

started.

And then she started forgetting everyone's name and maybe she wasn't.

I don't know.

But they should, well, they can give her a card.

They should dash back to Dasha.

But anyway, so the main event is Hobbs and

Moxley for the title, and Hobbes got the

won the match and the opportunity, I should say, to get this match.

And then before the bell even rings, here's Pack and here's Claudio, and they're surrounding the ring and getting up on the apron

and trying to get like they're going to get in the ring.

And the referee is staring at him.

And then he turns around and calls for the bell anyway.

And that's when Hobbs runs.

Yeah, Moxley wasn't even in the ring when he called for the bell.

Yes.

But he saw a cue, apparently.

So

he rings the bell with the heel fucking Stooges on the apron acting like they're about to get in the ring to where Hobbs runs at one of them and Moxley jumps Hobbes from behind.

But then Hobbs comes right back.

Moxley slumps in the corner, lets Hobbes beat on him, and then they went to the floor.

And herein lies the problem.

Hobbs is still not

an experienced leader.

Think about about how often these guys work or don't work and how little they've used him, even though he's been there five years.

You don't see,

you know, powerhouse Hobbes competing on a lot of independent shows.

You don't see reports of that, I should say.

So he needs a good worker and a good leader to call the match for him and get him over because he has a lot of talent.

And they need to set the pace until he gets more experience.

And

Dick the Boozer ain't any of those things.

Poor Hobbs may,

and I'm sure he's a very nice guy and a respectful youngster.

He may think because Moxley's been into business and makes all this money that he knows what the fuck he's doing.

And unfortunately,

I bet you nobody in that company will pop that bubble for him.

But

they fought into the arena and wandered through the fans and then came back to the ring where Hobbs was biting Moxley's ear so they could go to the break.

When they come back from the break, Moxley has bladed his ear,

but it's bleeding profusely.

He's covered with blood from the fucking ear.

And why did we need biting the earring out?

And then they trade forearms.

And

again,

a really experienced veteran that's over

as a heel that could call a match to accentuate Hobbes' strengths and keep him on the right pace.

Don't let him rush, don't let him wilt, those type of things.

You got something here.

But if Moxley's going to have him do all of this fucking goofy shit that Moxley likes to do, you've just, you've done damage.

Hobbs picks Moxley up.

He's standing on a second rope.

and gives Moxley a power slam off the second turnbuckle.

And when they landed, Moxley grabbed an arm submission.

He himself a fucking power slam, this unprofessional, outlaw-looking fucking prick.

He looks like he ought to be digging a ditch on community service.

And then

Hobbs rolls out to the ramp.

Moxley draws the referee's attention, and here comes Wheeler Useless out of nowhere and does the flying big knee to Hobbs on the ramp.

But Wheeler took a bigger bump than Hobbes did.

He splatted on that fucking hard service, popped right up and ran off.

And then

as soon as fucking Hobbs is rolled back in the ring, he spinebusters Moxley.

So why did this fucking moron just run out and fucking give me the big knee?

And the next thing that Hobbs does is offensive.

What the how is this?

And then Marina Schaefer hits Hobbs in the head with the briefcase,

and it staggers him, and Moxley schoolboys him and gets a two-count.

And then Moxley hits him with his double-arm DDT and gets a two-count.

And then Moxley got the choke on him and choked Hobbs out.

They did this completely backwards.

He should have hit him with his finish, the DDT.

One, two, kick out.

He should have got the choke.

And Hobbs stood up underneath him and was walking him across the ring.

And when Hobbs got to the ropes, the referee made Moxley break.

And then as Hobbs is catching his breath over the rope, Schaefer hits him with a briefcase.

Down he goes.

Then cover him.

One, two, three.

You fucked the babyface, you fucking morons.

You just choked out a giant black monster that could fucking pick his teeth with you and leave the fucking remains for goddamn birds.

You choke him out because you fantasize that you're goddamn Rambo, you fucking balding fucking moron.

How can this be done?

And then all they, all the other boar horsemen jumped in and got fake-looking heat on Hobbes and took his knee brace off and hit the leg with a chair and then pilmonized the leg with a chair.

And then finally, music played, and here came Edge and FTR.

They didn't wait till they amputated the leg.

They just shattered it.

And with the heels bailed out, and

the fans are like, eh, what took you so long?

Eh.

So they,

again, this 40-year-old, and he looks 10 years older,

fucking

delusional prick that is the worst pushed worker in a wrestling business today,

choked out this giant monster guy that they could make a babyface that people want to fucking like.

And then they beat him up and crippled him

and again too if you're gonna do this match and they set it up last week where they said that

apparently unbeknownst to us Jon Moxley got him his job in AEW and he's gonna make Jon Moxley his bitch We've been waiting for any babyface to say that something like that that attitude We're still waiting for one to do it though.

And the match happens in Jon Moxley's hometown.

It happens in the place most suscept to cheering the heel.

That's where they did the match.

And then they choked him out.

And they just did this.

It's not the exact same thing.

Big Bill just got choked out by Edge to build up to, you know, him and Moxley could choke people.

Right now, if you're asking me who I'm going to push, Powerhouse Hobbs or Big Bill or Cope and Mox, I'm trying to find a way to get those other two guys over and do more with them.

Yeah.

And get Big Bill away from Jericho.

Yeah.

Then this, Choking out Powerhouse Hobbs killed him.

It killed him.

They have not done a single goddamn thing for the booking of Will Hobbs since he got there.

He got there.

He's like, wow, this guy's impressive.

And then they made him a heel.

Like, okay, they're trying to do something.

They made him powerhouse Hobbs.

That was it.

That was the last moment they ever did anything for this fucking guy.

They made him powerhouse Hobbes.

Jim Ross kept calling him Willie on commentary, I think.

Willie Hobbs, baby.

But he was a heel.

He was doing the stuff with Ricky Starks.

And then like everything just has not,

it's like two years now, just non-stop stupidity.

They built him up.

And even AEW fans were a little hopeful because they want this Moxley shit to end.

And it's not ideal.

I'm not saying you should be able to do that.

Remember,

we talked about this a week or two ago, that when Powerhouse Hobbes came back as a babyface, it was

because his manager forgot about him and he was the babyface partner of the big babyface Ricochet.

Ricochet, that's right.

And that was two months ago.

So that's all worked out, apparently.

Terrible.

Terrible.

The fact that they're still going with this Moxley shit, and we'll talk later on about some of his quotes in the media the last few days.

Oh, boy.

That Tony Khan thinks this is good

is astounding.

This is some of the worst wrestling TV we've ever seen, ever.

Oh, you can't compare it to WCW.

Yes, I can.

Yeah.

I can compare this to the worst of TNA.

I can compare this to the worst of WCW.

I can compare this to the worst of WWE.

This is really bad TV.

This is the worst modern TV for any major wrestling company.

I'll put it that way.

Just terrible.

The wrong guys get pushed.

They went from pleasing their fans.

Like you said, clean finishes, no ref bumps, athletic matches that in their own own weird, led by Tony Conway, all kind of made sense in a weird way.

You kind of had to stretch things.

Now they have guys all over the place.

The babyfaces never win.

We've had multiple pay-per-views now where the babyfaces lost almost every single match.

And the crowd reactions and the crowd sizes and the crowd energy.

Well, and

also even after they lose those matches, the heel still then jump on them and beat them up more and nobody comes out to help most of the time.

Because, see, that's the problem.

Tony is the sounding board.

And Tony will never just come out and say, I have no idea how someone gets heat.

I don't know how heat works.

He'll never say that.

He'll go, oh, yeah, I've been reading a match for so many years.

Here's how you do it.

Here's what I used to do with my fucking message board.

Here's what he doesn't know anything.

He doesn't know anything about booking.

It's just, it's amazing.

Some people are like, oh, no, it's WWE's hot.

No, it's that Tony's a fucking nincome poop when it comes to booking.

Some people watch Mid-South Wrestling and just focused on, wow, these matches are great.

And those matches are great.

Other people realized, man, the commentary was a major part of it.

Those angles were so hot, you had to see what would happen.

And the promos, the finishes, and the promos, all the things that were important, none of that is applied here.

I'm telling you, AEW is getting worse and worse.

Even the people I like, they're starting to do worse and worse.

I hate this.

This fucking show.

Meanwhile, Penta, who I've never liked, went and had the best match match I've ever seen him happen ever on Monday night, where he's the biggest babyface, and children are crying in the fucking crowd.

It was his kids, though.

If they didn't say that, I would have just thought this child's emotional about this scary demon man.

It doesn't count unless it's other people's children who don't know you.

But no, oh, and people are mad at me.

Because I said it was, thank Chad Gable.

And I still, Gable was the perfect opponent.

Gable got his shit over.

And some of it was still sloppy.

But it's not that people say, oh, he doesn't like Mexican wrestlers.

No, I don't like sloppy ones.

I like Eddie Guerrero, Hector Guerrero.

Hector got the fuck over with me in 1979.

Rey Mysterio, back in the day, if we want to go pure lucha, wasn't Negro Casas

pretty fucking sharp.

He's still pretty good.

He's like 65 or something.

Jesus Christ.

Well, but, you know, I remain to be fully convinced about old Penthouse, but we shall see.

He did look much better, but that would be hard not to.

Well, that was AEW Dynamite.

Another big week, another big Cincinnati show.

We'll see what happens the next time they go to Cincinnati.

Maybe there's a barn.

But, Jim, let's talk about ratings as I turn this piece of paper over.

We have ratings for AEW Dynamite as I drop my pen, making noise all over the place, ladies and gentlemen.

You know, you're going to get in trouble for making all that noise over there.

I already anticipated it.

That's why I'm trying to give myself an out.

Let's talk ratings, Jim.

How are you doing?

Well, I'm doing pretty good.

Ratings, how are you?

I'm still trying to get this piece of paper over.

Hold on, here we go.

The ratings for you turn a piece of paper over.

You need to be exercising.

And then it turned itself over because of the wind from when I punched a table.

And then, ah, AEW Dynamite, Jim.

Yes.

January 15th, 2025, in Cincinnati, Ohio,

from 8 to 10:07 p.m., on average,

679,000 viewers.

Holy moly.

So they made up for having nobody there live by having an extra, what, 40 or 50,000 show up this week on television.

Well, that's, hold on here a second.

Just.

And while you're applauding, according to WrestleNomics, this was up 10% from last week, which was 6.15,

and 13%.

from the trailing four-week average, which is exactly 600,000.

So do you think they're mounting a big comeback?

I don't know.

I think Kenny Omega came back.

I mean, that's the one thing we could definitely say happened on this show.

And I think he does cause a little bit more interest,

but I also think they've had a stronger lead-in, right?

For a while, wasn't the lead-in like getting lower and lower?

And I feel like the last couple weeks it got in higher.

Well, it's higher and higher.

It's come in higher.

I'm higher.

Your lead-in's lifting me higher and higher.

Uh, now,

Jackie, we'll see.

Well, Jackie Jackie learned a lot from me.

Besides that,

it does show that being on Macs has not siphoned any of the cable viewers away, so they have alleviated those fears.

Do we have any knowledge that anybody that wasn't watching before is now watching on Macs?

Or is that yet to be determined?

I have not heard anything public, but I also have not checked.

I can check a little bit later on.

But as I told you, I didn't think it was going to really be

a factor one way or another.

It's not Netflix where they're going 100% to for Raw.

This is just a simulcast.

This is just another, this is another cable outlet, if you really want to look at it another way.

Yeah.

So I don't think it's really doing anything.

And again, I don't know if the archive is doing too much either.

But let's go to these quarterly numbers.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

And it says, by the way, it doesn't include viewership on Macs.

So this is not including Max numbers.

Well, we figured that.

We never thought it would be.

Quarter one, eight to eight.15 p.m.

Kenny Omega versus Brian Cage with Picture and Picture,

831,000 viewers.

Woo!

That's bigger than they've been in a while.

We go to quarter two, the continuation, 8:15, 8:30 p.m., excuse me.

The continuation of Omega versus Cage,

the post-match with Osprey, Fletcher, Archer, and an ad break,

and the Chris Jericho promo.

Good boy.

703,000 viewers.

Oh, okay.

Well, because

the end of the Omega match came in quarter two, but there was still more stuff, and boy, Jericho will run people off like nobody's business.

But it doesn't look promising that they lost 128,000 people before Kenny's match was over with, or right about the time Kenny's match was over with.

Well, we go to quarter three,

8:30 to 8:45 p.m.,

the Ricochet Live promo and dangle with Sorb Strickland and Prince Nana, the Mercedes-Monet video, and the start of the Hurt Syndicate versus Mark Briscoe and the Privates with Picture and Picture,

683,000 viewers.

And there goes another 20,000.

They're down now to within 4,000 of their average, so we know that they've got further to fall.

But

holy mackerel, maybe they should have handled those privates a little quicker.

We go to quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of the Hurt Syndicate versus Briscoe and the Privates.

An ad break, and the start of Jeff Jarrett and MJF's live promo,

649,000 viewers.

Oh, good lord.

This is also the low point in the key demo.

It went from 234 to 212.

Well,

they've almost got to pick some up at the top of the 9 o'clock hour seg 5, which would still be mired right in the middle of the MJF and Jeff Jarrett character assassination segment.

But just that they're down this far,

this quick ought to be somewhat disheartening.

What is quarter five?

Quarter five is the big nine o'clock hour, nine to nine: 15 p.m.

The continuation of Jared and MJF Live,

the Hook versus Christian Cage match with Picture in Pictures, at least the start of it,

675,000 viewers.

Key demo bounced back up to 246.

So that probably can be attributed pretty much to MJF, but now we're it's 26,000 viewers and

less than that, but still something in there, or maybe about that in the key demo.

It's one of those things you worry about when a lot of people see something or, you know, a good amount of people see something that may not be the, like it's done, I think, like almost 300,000 views on YouTube so far.

But it's like, do you want, is that the video you want people to watch?

You know what I mean?

But we go to quarters.

And the problem is also just the MJF effect is not there like it used to be where he could instantly command a bunch more people to pay attention because of all of this falder all that's going on.

Go ahead.

I'll go back to what we said months ago.

MJF should only be working with top guys.

And Jeff Jarrett has not been used as a top guy.

We can't treat him like a top guy.

He's close to 60 years old.

So, I mean,

hey, watch out now.

It's the same problem.

He's only 54.

Oh, okay.

I thought he was 57.

He was.

He turned pro in 19, well, hold on.

86?

He turned pro in 1986, but when he started refereeing, had he turned 18 yet?

But he's born somewhere around 1969, which would make him 56 this year, but can't remember when his birthday is.

55.

You'll defend him over anything.

I said 55.

Don't make him 60.

Well, Jim, we go to, where are we?

Quarter

six.

Six.

It's quarter six.

It's 9.15 to 9.30 p.m.

It's Christian versus Hook continued.

And the post-match with Samoa Joe.

A casino gauntlet recap.

An ad break.

And Jeff Jarrett and Dustin Rhodes in the back.

642,000 viewers.

And there's our low points so far, and we got two more quarters.

We go now to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9.45 p.m.

The Women's Casino Gauntlet match with Picture and Picture,

673,000 viewers.

Holy shit, what an insult to Seg 6 that they got 30,000 extra people to watch that women's mess.

Also, the high point of the key demo, 265.

How many of them were males?

Hey, listen, I'm all for at this point trying things.

Make the entire show women's gauntlet.

Just two hours of women's gauntlet, and let's see what kind of damage you could do to the business.

Let's go to quarter eight.

I remind you, seven-minute overrun.

Quarter eight, 9.45 to 10 p.m., an ad break, and the start of Powerhouse Hobbs versus Jon Moxley with Picture and Picture.

606,000 viewers.

Oh, good lord.

Seven-minute overrun, continuation of the match, and then the post-match with FTR and Cope,

611,000 viewers.

And that was supposed to be Impractical Jokers this week instead of Modern Family.

And it was after this.

And it was Impractical Jokers.

The World Championship match is by far the lowest rated portion of the program.

And

that's an accomplishment.

Bravo,

Boozer.

Yeah, I'd say the interesting things here are once again, because this is not a new thing.

Jon Moxley and the Death Riders drive off viewers and no one's coming back to see them.

You have a problem.

You have a world champion people don't want to watch.

The women's match, a big surprise there.

It popped both numbers, the key demo and the overall number.

The MJF Jeff Jarrett thing got a big improvement in the key demo number, but that's probably the best thing you could say about that.

And at least the biggest audience, I guess, were there to see Omega do his moves with Brian Cage.

Well, but they didn't see all of them.

That's true.

Last quarter two, they'd lost a bunch, but again, maybe they hung on for three or four minutes and then everybody just turned it off.

I don't know.

Every wrestling show is different, obviously, but what do you think about starting a show with a long match versus a shorter match and getting a promo or just something else so you have more things in the first quarter?

Well,

again, it's not any formula.

It's what do we have.

If you've got...

Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mr.

McMahon in the day, you'd just give them 15 minutes first quarter or whatever.

They'll talk.

It'll be better.

But sometimes you might want to start off with a hot match, but you don't want to make it,

you know, last a half an hour unless it's a match that's going to go.

You know, in the old days, the hour would be most of an hour or whatever.

There's all kinds of different ways to do it.

But

with this program, no matter what they do, they can't keep the audience they start with.

They never do.

So I don't blame them for wanting to put one of the bigger things that they want people to see on first.

But at the same time, they can't let that go on forever while you got that big audience at the start, get the point across, and get somebody else out there that may be able to hook them to it.

Maybe you can keep a few of those.

I don't know.

Again, this is

a unique problem.

If in my time in WCW or WWF, or was smoking about wrestling on a local or OVW on a local broadcast level or just the ratings that we report on now with WWE,

you never had

a wrestling program that lost 20, 30, 40% of its audience from start to finish.

It just didn't happen.

And this is an odd thing.

And so I don't really know how you format around this.

Well, that was the ratings.

And now we will see how we format around this.

We'll be right back after this short timeout.

All right, we are back.

A short timeout.

We had to talk to station management.

There was a lot going on here in the uh

in the house.

But I understand they were trying to drop turkeys for a Thanksgiving promotion, but we stopped that.

Were you a big fan of WKRP?

I love WKRP in Cincinnati.

Lonnie Anderson.

What was there not to love?

Love?

Dr.

Johnny Fever, Herb Tarlick,

Les Nessman.

What a cast.

What a crew.

What a show.

You know, and a lot of people haven't seen it because it was tough to see for a lot of years.

It may still be because of the music rights issues because they use real music on that show.

Well, they could dub it over with stuff from the network, couldn't they?

We'd still see the comedy and frivolity.

What do you think of the Midnight Express music they use?

Oh, I don't even know what that that shit is, but it's obviously all piped in because it mutes some of the crowd noise and et cetera.

And,

you know, I think everybody realizes they've, you know, it's a bad edit to cover up shit they don't have the rights to play that we didn't have the rights to play, but by God, we played it anyway and we liked it.

See, that's the thing.

Whenever anyone talks about you going into the WWE Hall of Fame, the conversation becomes, who should induct them?

Should it be Sam Punk or should it be Paul Heyman?

No one ever says Giorgio Moroder.

Push him out on stage, let him talk about this song that he didn't get a cent for the use of.

Yeah, and he can cuss us and everything.

Casablanca Records could get in on it.

Well, no, they're out of business.

Well,

somebody owns the intellectual property, don't they?

Where's old Neil, Neil Bogart?

Where is he these days?

Neil Bogart.

He died in like 1982, 1983.

Well, see, that's why we got away with it.

And then he lost Casablanca by that point.

Didn't he start another another label, Boardwalk?

I don't know.

I think after he lost Casablanca, he started Timbuktu.

All right.

Well, okay.

I attempt to steal a drink of water in between all that.

Yeah, ha-ha-ha-ha.

Quick bancer.

Let me talk for five minutes while you just drink and have a fucking banquet over there.

Eat your pitted prunes.

Jim, I have a press release.

January 16th, 2025.

WWE and TNA Wrestling announce multi-year partnership.

NXT Superstars and TNA Wrestling stars to appear across weekly WWE and TNA programming, WWE Premium Live events, and TNA pay-per-views.

So let's stop there and talk about the headline.

And of course, TNA has pay-per-views coming up, as we talked about a few weeks ago, Los Angeles and New York.

Makes a little more sense now, doesn't it?

Well, maybe, maybe not still yet, because it depends on the talent crossing over, the way it was worded.

I get the idea that it's going to be NXT

talent.

Yes.

And I'm not against this

concept or this deal because it's the same kind of thing.

Vince worked with Memphis and Smoky Mountain Wrestling in the 90s

because we were not ever going to, we're not designed to try to take business away from him.

We weren't going for national advertising.

We weren't trying to do pay-per-view.

But it was a place where he could get talent and potentially have a pipeline.

If we help them out, then,

you know, we can get their guys, which they did from us.

They got Lawler and Jeff and a couple other people from Memphis.

They got a lot of people from us.

And it's the same kind of thing with OVW.

It was designed more as a wrestling school slash territory with a local television than an actual regional territory.

But it was somebody that they could work together with because

we weren't trying to compete with pay-per-view, national advertising, blah, blah, blah.

With TNA, I think they have proven that Whether you like them or not, they're not trying to put the WWE out of business, nor would they be capable of doing so.

But they do have the capability to sign

for decent money some talent that could be developed later on for the WWE.

So

instead of those people potentially being on the market to go to AEW and being wasted and not available to them, they're saying, hey, we'll do business with TNA.

And if there's an official relationship, we'll get, I would assume, first crack, crack, first pick at anybody that we would want that comes through their system.

And at the same time, the reason they're still in business is because the

parent company bought them for programming for their television network access,

which is the same kind of deal that Sinclair did with Ring of Honor.

But,

you know,

I think it benefits the WWE in terms of getting access to young young talent that they may potentially find and some they've already got there.

And also, it starts setting up

a defense for the independent contractor, antitrust, monopoly,

however you want to phrase it, defense that might be necessary at some point in the future, without giving any legitimate

competition, any ammunition.

And we know who the

maybe ought to call them illegitimate competition.

One guy's got a lot of fucking money that he's willing to spend.

And we don't want to fucking be beholden to him because he's a fucking nut and he don't know how the business works and he's fucking everything up.

So we'll bolster

the smaller groups that don't want to get in our way and help everybody.

Well, the other thing too, I said this a few weeks back, it cuts off the pipeline,

another pipeline for Tony Khan.

And remember, he had that relationship first.

I mean, they existed first, but when he started up AEW, pretty quickly, they had the relationship with TNA.

Don Callis was with TNA.

Scott DeMore was running TNA.

Remember?

And it was even weird because Tony was doing like promos with him and Schiavone running down TNA.

Yes.

And then Omega was there.

And then that relationship ended.

And now look at this.

I think Don and a few other people were just looking at a way to get the fuck out of there and, you know, work for the billionaire that had deeper pockets.

But it's going to be good for TNA because, as I said, it still may be a chore for them with somebody from NXT exclusively to fill these big buildings they were talking about running in New York and Los Angeles.

But we thought they had to have something besides what they normally have, and they apparently have that now.

Let's get a little bit from the press release that...

isn't just verbatim.

What I read before is the headline.

Here's a quote from from Ariel Schneer,

the senior vice president of content and distribution for TNA Wrestling and Anthem Sports and Entertainment.

Remember when it was just Toots Mont promoter.

This historic relationship demonstrates that collaboration and competition do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Our partnership allows the TNA Wrestling brand and its incredible athletes to reach a significantly wider audience, while giving WWE and NXT stars an opportunity to cross the line

and gain value.

You've gone too far now.

You've gone too far now.

You want the TNA.

All right, let me go back.

They will cross the line and gain valuable experience as they join forces with one of the most talented rosters in professional wrestling today.

Again, this was something that AEW needed more than WWE in terms of having another company with other wrestlers that you could funnel in and out.

Former TNA knockouts champion Jordan Grace and Joe Hendry

frequently appeared on NXT programming last year.

And many NXT superstars also

crossed the line.

into TNA wrestling, including Wes Lee's short-lived reunion with the Rascals.

Short-lived reunion with the Rascals, and they just

couldn't hit the notes on Good Loving.

Yeah, Felix dropped out pretty early on that, from what I understand.

Charlie Dempsey and the no-quarter catch crew, Riley Osborne, Dante Chen,

Gallus,

Ariana Grace, Tatum Paxley,

Izzy Dame.

Lots of the worst fucking name.

Izzy A.

I-Z-Z-I

dame.

Izzy Dame.

Izzy a dame?

Wendy Chu

and Brindley Reese and more.

So I don't know if Brindley Reese is going to pack him in in New York and L.A.

But it's a step in the right direction for these fine, fine business organizations.

We applaud them.

You know, there are people that say

that one of the reasons the AWA was so important was Vern Gagne, who had been an NWA guy, NWA United States champion, when it was treated

as the top title, that, yeah, he didn't get the NWA title, but also him being cooperative with them and owning such a large territory in such a large part of the country with Wally Carbo,

it destroyed the argument of antitrust,

of a monopoly.

And that is that.

Well, that's what I was saying earlier: they are also at the same time when they let one of the guys that wants to do that type of thing go and work,

you know,

an independent show, or they're working with TNA, who's another promotion,

they're getting the benefits that they want to get out of the deal, but also they're laying a potential future defense for, no, we're not a monopoly, and we're not, there's no antitrust.

And

they are independent contractors where they get to work for these other people.

So that figures into it also.

Jim, a bunch of the listeners have sent over several different articles from different places, all centered around.

Let me open one of these.

Action Bronson.

I don't know if you remember Action Bronson.

He is a.

Wait, Action Bronson was one of the

celebrities that they had do a match in AEW at one point.

Well, he does hooks theme music.

Okay.

Entrance music, theme music.

Like he's Batman.

Yeah.

Well, he's got a hook signal.

That's right.

But he did the hooks in the song.

That's right.

And he was the one.

He was bigger than all the boys and fucking

handled himself pretty well, from what I remember.

And that was a local show.

Local.

I mean, it was a New York show, and he's a New York guy.

Here's some quotes.

He was on the Ariel Hawani show.

That's usually where trouble starts.

Every time someone's on that show, here's the quote.

Asked if he wanted another match.

He was dismissive.

And then he said, you know what they do?

They don't call you back.

I never got called back.

There was an angle there.

I'm ready right now.

I'm ready for whoever.

Oh, my God.

Ariel asked him.

You know what he thinks now?

He thinks he can come in and be a contender.

Apparently, Ariel asked him if he liked being backstage at AEW.

At first he said yes, and then here's what he said.

Actually, no.

I enjoy the act.

I don't like the.

The backstage is weird over there.

It's just weird.

It was just like everyone's clicky.

You could tell it was weird vibes.

So.

Wow, even

the

novices can kind of pick up on this shit.

If you have a celebrity, and we've seen this time after time in just the last few years alone with WWE, if you have a celebrity that really wants to be a part of it, you end up using them,

it kind of works, they're over, and they're willing to do more, and they set up an angle.

You don't call them, you ghost them too?

Well, you ghost them like they're jelly Nutella.

But hold on here now, because this guy also sounds like he's there.

Well,

I'll go in there and, you know, I can have a pay-per-view match with so-and-so.

We don't know how he was to deal with.

And I'm not trying to defend by any means the talent, management skills, and et cetera of the AEW

company as a whole over there.

But does this guy sound like,

does he realize it was kind of a gift because he's a celebrity or does he think he's ready to be a championship wrestler?

I don't know, but again, Bad Bunny.

Yeah, but I remember Bad Bunny being better than Bad Bronson.

But we didn't know that.

You know what I mean?

That's a case of someone who was a wrestling fan and WWE embraced it.

And he ended up really involved for a while there.

I'm sure he'll be back at someone.

You can tell.

Not only if you work the guy out just to see where he's at physically, but attitude-wise and the way he...

But you've got to have a professional organization in place before you can expect the...

the amateurs to come in and understand what's protocol is.

I have some things here from the Observer website article on this, but there's no actual quote.

In his lone match in September 2022, as part of Rampage Grand Slam, it wasn't even on Dynamite.

On Rampage Grand Slam, he teamed with Hook against Matt Menard and Angelo Parker.

During the interview with Ariel Hawani, he intimated he wanted to do more in the match, but that his opponents didn't want to take some of his offense

like a top rope splash.

Okay, okay.

Or a facebuster.

Oh, yeah.

Well, hey, come on, bust my face, Bronson.

See, that's what I'm talking about.

These, they, because it's such a hey, kids, let's put on a show atmosphere.

These people think they can come in and, oh, I'll do this and that because it's all, you know.

And I'm sorry, but a lot of guys, even some of these guys from the Indies, don't want a 280-pound fat fuck that's never wrestled before to jump off the top rope on their fucking bodies.

Well, Bronson, a big wrestling fan, said he trained for each other.

I'm sure he is.

Said he trained for eight weeks for the match at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York with Taz and Hook.

Okay, by the way, guys used to train longer than eight weeks in OVW to get on the show at the flea market.

And this guy trained for eight weeks to be at the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

on television.

He said he was in the ring for two to three days a week, and he was training on the off days, and that MJF even showed up on some days.

He 100% wants to wrestle again, and that if he gets the call for a big show, he's there.

How old is this guy?

He also intimated he would wrestle for WWE and mentioned fellow musician and occasional WWE wrestler Bad Bunny as an opponent.

Okay, so maybe this guy's just setting up his own ankles all over the place.

That's what I'm saying.

Bunny versus Bronson.

Book it now, baby.

I don't know.

I

get gas from all these people.

Did you ever have that happen to you?

You leaned in a little bit to someone who was a local celebrity or just a celebrity or anyone like that, and they got too close, they wouldn't leave.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

Yes.

There was one here in Louisville.

There was an attorney that was the son of an actually well-thought-of-attorne, but the son was

nuts.

But he had a sheriff's deputy, or he was some law enforcement official.

I don't want to misquote it now,

that

had kind of, I think, had some intimate knowledge of wrestling on a limited basis.

And, oh, this guy could sell a bunch of tickets and we could do this and that because the lawyer was a mark too.

So I put him on a show and they wanted to.

The lawyer wanted to tackle the cop afterwards and do something.

I said, no, you can't do anything to look like shit.

Don't.

So he did it anyway.

And it looked like shit.

He tackled the guy and fell off him.

And they did some phony ass bullshit.

When he got back, I was screaming, cussing at him.

And he was standing there slackjawed, like I can't believe somebody's talking to me this way.

I said, You fucking idiot.

You fucking exposed the goddamn entire business.

We said, Don't do anything physical.

What the fuck?

I said, I'm going to, I'm going to walk over here.

When I come back, don't be here.

I'm going to fucking kill you.

And I turned around and left.

I think one of the boys said, I think he's serious.

And he got mad and fucking left.

But the guy, and the cop wasn't a bargain because he had his own entrance music on a cassette or a CD, whatever the format was then, years ago.

He brought it in.

It even had a voiceover on the entrance music.

What?

He is here.

He has arrived.

Officer Yancey, I've kept this.

I kept this CD.

He is the law enforcement officer of the year and he served on this thing and he is he is here and he has arrived.

And

god damn it.

I'm like, we sold 250 tickets, but fuck.

Anyway, that was that was that.

Yeah.

What was your question?

I'm sorry.

He has arrived, guys.

He has arrived.

And he is here.

He did both.

He arrived and got here.

My question was about guys who got very close to the business and wouldn't leave.

Well, there you go.

was there was one of them all right well jim let's get another he left after i cussed him

let's get another uh question here jim speaking of people won't leave the business have you been following the tony khan kevin kelly uh well it wasn't even a back and forth it was really just kevin kelly tweeting out about tony kahn Well, I saw something to this nature, but filled the fans in and me at the same time on the exact quote and refreshed me.

I believe first was this quote.

Now, this is a weird thing because I have not read up on this or asked anyone or followed it at all.

So with that caveat, we're going to give our expert analysis.

With that said, there's something going on with Corey Graves and WWE.

And I don't know what.

Okay, well, I know this.

Yeah.

I don't know what parts of work and what part is Corey Graves needing a timeout or I don't know what's going on.

And then there's other people saying he's having a mental health thing.

So then you feel like, oh, if he's having that, I really feel bad, but I don't know what.

I don't know.

Because then there's people say it's an angle.

But in the middle of of that.

He seems to be a sharp young man that would be a good self-promoter.

And probably unless he was ready to go and go somewhere else, he wouldn't malign the company to any great degree.

I have to say, I was not a fan of his in his lesbian Max Headroom days, but he has gotten better.

And I actually think his work lately has been the best work he's done.

But

Kevin Kelly tweeted out,

put me and Corey Graves together at the desk.

Corey would become the biggest commentary star in wrestling because I would actively try to get him over, let his star shine.

So let me stop it there because, again, that's not directly about AEW, but it's more about, I guess, the philosophy of a commentator.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well,

there has to be a partnership, teamwork between the play-by-play guy and the color guy, whether it was Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan or Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler or

myself myself and Jim Ross, you know, any commentary duo, Vince and Jesse.

The play-by-play guy, the host, the straight man,

can't just disregard or shit all over or not go to his analyst and ask questions.

There has to be back and forth.

And

if a good play-by-play guy with experience knows,

okay, my color guy, he's good at this type of commentary or this type of thing or extrapolating in this area, but he's not really good on,

I don't know, you know, the nuts and bolts of that or whatever.

You'll pitch more of the stuff the guy can be entertaining at.

You see what I'm saying?

And Gorilla was setting up some of Bobby's lines.

So

that's why Jesse Ventura didn't work in WCW and he worked in WWE because the interplay with a Gorilla consumer or Vince McMahon was much different than with a Jim Ross.

Yes, because it was two different.

First of all, Jesse's style was made for the WWF.

That's where it was made, and it was made for that.

WCW had a different presentation.

J.R.

and Jesse

didn't particularly, to me, have personal or professional chemistry.

But it's different contexts, different teams, different

presentations.

On a level playing field, the play-by-play guy tries to work with the color guy so he can be entertaining, but still telling the stories, calling the match, disseminating the information.

But you play to the guy's strengths.

And because the play-by-play guy is usually the first one you hear on the program, the last one you hear before they go to a break, the first one you hear coming back from a break, he's the framework.

So if he monopolizes it and never goes to the color guy,

or, you know, whatever, then, yeah, so I see what he's saying there.

Hopefully I've explained it right.

Well, that tweet apparently caused someone named Kenny Jones, not the former drummer of the Who and the Faces and the Small Faces,

to tweet out.

Yeah, after he got that glandular condition, his face really enlarged.

It annoys me how AEW screwed you over and was so fun listening to you and Nigel together.

At least they had someone calling the in-ring product instead of telling us, we'll be in bum fuck Arkansas.

Tickets on sale Saturday.

What a monumental maneuver.

Erg.

Kevin Kelly retweeted that.

All I wanted to do was call wrestling.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd have to listen to a stuttering son of a billionaire feeding me lines and then correcting himself.

and telling me I was doing great.

They waited until I had a mental breakdown to fire me.

Oh, boy.

Well, that's...

That's pretty stiff.

And can you imagine?

I didn't even think that that was a possibility, that Tony Khan would be in the announcer's headsets telling them how to announce the wrestling.

What do you think is telling Shivani every stupid thing he says?

Oh, my God.

So that tweet, I'm sure, landed well with the land of Lilliput.

Well, that's been the the first thing we've heard from Kevin Kelly in a while.

And the first thing is saying the stuttering son of a billionaire.

He's saying something and then correcting himself.

Vince wasn't doing it.

Vince was just yelling things.

He wasn't saying, stop, I got it wrong.

Yeah, no, he never corrected himself.

Even if you said, I just said that about 30 seconds ago, Viz.

Well, say it again.

Make sure to reiterate it.

Actually, it looks like another person jumped in.

This is Jose Marrero.

Oh, Jose has an opinion.

I understand why you thought it would be a good opportunity, having not met the guy, but I'm sure within weeks you saw

what a disorganized mess that company is.

To which Kevin replied, yeah, it took one day.

No production meeting.

Four mats at 6 p.m.

for a 7 p.m.

start.

Oh, my God.

Now, you obviously have more experience with wrestling production than any of us.

Is that a typical thing?

No production meeting, formats an hour before live broadcast?

No, well, you hear the stories all the time that Vince would,

you know, tear stuff up at the last minute, rewrite it or whatever, and here's the new segment six or whatever, but not just no formats at all until six o'clock, and no production meeting never happened.

Now, I've heard that maybe in the

dying days of WCW, they were handing out hour three during hour one or whatever, but

but no, no production,

Even with an OVW television or Ring of Honor TV or anything

with a minuscule budget compared to what they're doing,

if I had to, I would say 30 minutes before Bell, get the fucking director out of the truck.

I need the camera guys.

I need my audio guy.

I need all the referees and sit them down here.

We're going to run through this fucking format.

Usually,

especially Ring of Honor, when we were taping three and four shows in one night, we would do it at one, two o'clock in the afternoon.

And Vince's usually at 11 o'clock pay-per-views, 12 o'clock TV tapings in the day.

But the idea that you never got the crew together to read through the format,

not only maybe that's why they pitch to the wrong things or the audio on a pre-tape doesn't come through to the house or the mic's not live or all the other things,

But that's where all the various departments

ask questions.

You can't just say, well, they magically appear at a partridge family bus.

Okay, what door are they coming through?

How long is my camera cable?

Do we have goddamn light over there?

We might have to.

There are multiple departments that need to know.

how they're going to bring this to life.

The last production meetings I did

were the NWA NWA shows when they first did the studio taping infamously down in Atlanta.

And

they were using some guys that were

not terribly experienced in doing a live-to-tape television production.

So that's why they had me in the production meetings because I would try to ask the questions on their behalf.

If I raise my hand for audio purposes, when this guy interrupts, has he got his own mic or is he picking one up or is it going to be live?

What's the cue?

Or for timing purposes, how much time do these guys need to execute this before we're drastically over time?

Or

whatever department it might be, let's see if we can figure out what might go wrong before it's in front of people based on the reading of the television format.

Does that make any sense to you?

It certainly makes sense to me.

So, again, the idea of-or you can just go out there and okay, start shooting it.

What?

I would have guessed that it's hard to hit your times

if you don't have this all figured out.

Well, they get overruns, so what the hell?

Jim, let's get a few questions.

This was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Dallas Nelson.

What does Jim think of the career of Abyss?

He definitely had a lot of highs and lows over the years.

Where would Jim rank him as far as Monster Gimmick goes?

Oh, good Lord.

I'm not going to answer even that, even attempt to answer that question because then we'd have to go back.

Well, Monster, he let's start with goddamn Man Mountain Dean, whatever the fuck.

But no, I thought he was a tremendous talent.

I thought the Abyss gimmick was a good gimmick.

The first time that I saw him was on the Ring of Honor shows he was doing before I ever went to TNA or maybe before he went to TNA.

One of the other, when I first started with Ring of Honor, was that 2004 or 5-ish, whatever, making a few shots.

But I thought for his size, he could move well and he had fluidity.

And his shit was safe, at least to other people.

The big backbreakers and the big spinning Bubba Slam, the black hole slam.

And,

you know, a very nice guy.

And I think I've told this story before, but it's been several years at least.

But the problem became

that

I think he

thought very highly of Mick Foley, Mankind, Cactus Jack, as did we all.

Sometimes people thought the Abyss gimmick with that mask was kind of a mankindish thing, But since Abyss' style was totally different,

that didn't bother me.

But what he did

was he couldn't, he made it to TNA and was making good money and was working with legitimate professionals in the same company with Sting and Kurt Angle and Jeff Jarrett, et cetera.

He couldn't get out of the outlaw indie garbage match bullshit mindset.

That he wanted to have the thumbtax and he wanted to have the monsters ball match.

And

one time when they brought

god damn what was his name uh from puerto rico judas messias

who was another name in puerto rico but he was a puerto rican talent that came from under the ring dumped out a bag of broken glass and was slicing up abyss's arms in

In the fucking studio at Universal Studios in Orlando with all the park goers and the kids.

And Abyss was blading his fucking arms.

And you could tell that he was really cut.

You didn't necessarily know how it was happening, but it was great.

And I'm like, what the fuck?

If we don't get kicked off Spike TV, we might get kicked out of Universal, but why would you do this anyway?

The fans were just sitting there going, uh,

ugh.

Because it was so indie

garbage wrestling bullshit.

And

at one point,

they gave Abyss, I think it was six months, it was an extended period of time off television because

he'd been taken bumps off the stage.

He had been thrown into thumbtacks.

He had done, his arms were carved up with broken glass, all this barbed wire bullshit.

There was nothing left to do to him.

But Jeff and Dutch, everybody liked him so much, and there was a talent in there.

And of course, they were letting him do too much, but he would do too much in the in the parameters they gave him.

So they gave him time off television to refresh him and bring him back new.

And I swear to God,

it was either the first or second TV taping after they'd brought him back fresh from the break that he had

that somebody threw him off the stage

through a table while it was on fucking fire.

And he caught fire a little bit in the process.

And he would always say, well, what'd you think?

After I said, I think you fucking didn't learn anything.

I think, what the fuck?

You just,

they give you time off so you can come back fresh because you had done everything to yourself.

And now you've just set yourself on fucking fire.

So

he was very savant-like in that he could remember the order of a match.

That's when I saw a guy start actually calling the entire match before they got in the ring,

where they'd call it practically move for move.

I'm like, how the fuck do they remember this shit?

When did this start?

But he can remember all this shit.

He can remember other people's shit.

He became an agent.

But he just,

he, I think,

in another company besides TNA, because he was a victim of shit-stains creative, who liked all that kind of shit and encouraged him to do more of it so they can have last rights matches and fucking cool visuals because Russo thought he was going to win some kind of Emmy back then.

In the WWE,

with a push and being produced as a modern day type of mankind, his work in the ring physically, he could have been a huge fucking star.

And then I guess they made him a twin brother of himself and he became a fucking lawyer or an accountant or goddamn stockbroker or something.

And, you know,

that's pretty much it for Abyss, unfortunately.

But now he's behind the scenes somewhere doing something.

I forget where he is.

So there you go.

Yeah.

Well, maybe now he's calmed down.

He's

got Sting in the face.

Oh, I'll let you go to your thing before you get to my question.

What did he do to Sting?

He stabbed Sting in the face

because they had that goofy because Russo not only went on the

he thought he could book wrestling, but then he went on the religious delusion where he thought he's a Christian, right?

And he's born again and he praises God and Allah and all the other people up there in the sky on the clouds.

And so he decided, and because Sting is Christian,

we were looking everywhere for half of our main events at a goddamn pay-per-view one time on location, not even in Orlando.

It might have been St.

Louis.

Me and Dutch looking everywhere, where's the goddamn main event?

Where's all of them?

They were having a religious service with Craig Jenkins and Sting and a bunch of the religious, AJ, a bunch of the religious folks up in some meeting room in the building at three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon with seven o'clock bell time for a pay-per-view.

I said, can they fucking go to church in the morning on their own time?

We got to lay this shit out and it don't make any sense anyway.

But nevertheless,

so they had the last rights match where

Sting versus Abyss and they've got the ring tricked out where they have fake Liberace candelabras on the corner ring posts and they had the platform.

I think they even had a fog machine where you would have to put your opponent on the platform and then he would be raised to heaven.

That'd be how you'd win the match and the guy had the last rights.

I don't fucking know.

That's where the Fire Russo chants started.

And that's when

goddamn Russo managed to convince Dixie.

That the Fire Russo chants were about shit that he didn't have the idea of.

You think Dutch Mantel said, let's get some candelabras on the corner posts and do a religious themed match where the guy that loses descends to heaven.

You fucking lying sack of shit.

Ascends, not descends.

Well, no, this was a descent.

So, anyway,

they worked a fucking spot where Sting shoots Abyss into the fucking corner.

And he's going to give him the Stinger splash.

And Abyss reaches back and grabs the candelabra.

And when here comes Sting, he's going to whack him over the head with it.

Well, that cheap plastic prop bullshit that they'd got, it broke and it stabbed Sting in the face.

It like a puncture wound and a cut.

I can't remember which side of his eye it was on, but it was like

maybe a quarter, a third of an inch from his fucking eye.

And as soon as they found, and then they're chanting fire Russo in the crowd.

And then when Sting got back, first thing he did was go to the mirror to find out how disfigured he would be and whether or not that he had indeed lost his eye because the blood he couldn't fucking see.

Oh, because this fucking moron is, oh, let's have a last rights match.

I don't know how any of this works, and I've never done it, but I'll tell other people to do it and we can put their fucking eyes out.

What were we talking about?

I was going to ask you, are you surprised that Abyss is an is a producer for WWE?

Well, no, because as I said,

he's a nice guy and he was very, he worked his ass off or was dedicated to anything that you would give him to do and he wanted to do well.

And he can remember

move after move like one of these mathematical savants.

He worked with a lot of guys that

had great psychology.

And of course, this is 15 years ago I'm talking about when he was lighting himself on fire and sticking thumbtacks in himself on a regular basis.

So maybe he calmed down.

I'm happy for him.

All right.

Let's get another question.

This was emailed to corney drive-through at gmail.com from Todd.

I was recently on a website.

Oh, Todd.

Oh, Todd.

Todd, like everybody knows who Todd is.

I was recently on a website that lists the history of WWE house shows.

In May 1994,

the WWE ran house shows in McMinnville, Tennessee

and Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.

Two relatively small towns in a region we Tennesseans refer to as Middle Tennessee.

Yes.

Geographically, neither town was associated with the USWA nor with Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

Does Jim have any idea why the WWE ran house shows in these towns?

Well, I think McMinnville, maybe at one point

Memphis television would have reached there, but the schedule had been cut down by 1994.

And it was still too far

toward the western part of the state for Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

And

I was going to say McMinnville, but it's Murfreesby.

Middle Tennessee State University is in Murfreesboro, but they call that area Middle Tennessee.

That is when,

as I recall, or maybe it was early on, right before, but

they were starting to try to run B shows again because the arena business was in the

lulls.

You know, it wasn't doing well, 94, 95, but they had guys on the

roster that weren't getting a lot of bookings.

And back before they had everybody on guaranteed contracts, if you didn't get booked, you weren't making a lot of money.

So

they were trying to

figure out a way to run B towns, secondary towns with an A town, the garden or Philly or whatever.

And then we're over here in Turd Blossom.

That's also around the time the first time I remember WWE ever doing like branded house shows as a tour.

That was WrestleMania Revenge.

Remember, right after WrestleMania 10?

Yes, that's when they had somebody in the studio that was spearheading that kind of promotion.

And they were having Ed Cohen book the arenas on a loop that they could say the WrestleMania Revenge tour or the Summer Mania, Summer Mania, SummerSlam

Clapback Tour.

I don't know what the fuck they all were.

But yeah, they were trying to just energize the live events and get, I don't know why they picked specifically McMinnville and Lawrenceburg, unless

it may have been that they were in close adjunct to TV tapings that we had either done on the Monday and Tuesday or were about to do the following Monday and Tuesday.

Maybe we were in Nashville and Memphis and they, oh, well, we'll send a small crew in early.

I can't remember the specifics.

But then

when I got up there in 96, they still had, that's why I was doing third-party bookings with some of the guys.

Road Dog and Billy Gunn couldn't buy their way onto a WWF show, but I could book them regular.

But we went to Ed Cohen.

I did it.

I said, why, why are we not running spot shows?

Well, it's too expensive.

And

the way that they figured out,

they had gotten in such a habit of being big league, they couldn't remember how to run

a spot show at a college gym in front of 2,000 people and make money.

And it was costing at that time like $60,000 to have a WWF house show, no matter where they had it.

I said, well, goddamn then, no wonder you're not running spot shows.

But they, they,

they couldn't figure out how to change.

I said, drop the marketing, take less trucks, send one referee.

You know,

all the ways that you would have to cut costs if you had to cut costs, but

they had progressed past that at that point.

And so they sucked some more pond water for about a year until the houses started coming back.

All right, Jim.

Well, as we begin to wrap up this episode, we'll wrap up.

As your attention begins to wane, it's time for from the files.

Uh-oh.

This is part two of the the Dave Meltzer one.

It could be a multi-part, but we're going to stop at two for at least now.

This is a long letter, and I got a long reply.

And by the way, the From the Files segment, for the folks who haven't tuned in recently, Brian is going through the wrestling news files of Norman Keitzer and Jim Melby that he owns and possesses has the rights to.

And Norm Keitzer kept every letter and communication he ever got and a copy of everything he ever sent out, much like like the Jack Pfeffer of the wrestling magazine industry.

And on a recent program, we went through

Dave Meltzer's attempt to sell Melby on the idea that he could do a story on the San Francisco U.S.

title and the

Japanese wrestling scene that he was well connected with.

This was from 1982, I think, right?

And then Norm Keiter's attempts in the 80s to get issues that the Observer sent to him.

Yes, even when he was trying to pay for them.

Well, this one, we're going to take a step back.

September 5th, 1984.

So this is before WrestleMania.

This is after Cindy Lauper.

A little over a year after Norm Keitzer lost the WWF business.

Dave Melcher's Observer has been going for a little while now.

Let's go to this.

Dear Mr.

Keitzer, I received the most recent issue of your publication, October 1984, today

and had a few problems with it.

Uh-oh.

Which I thought it would be better to contact you personally about than air any of these gripes publicly.

A gripe.

Now, wait a minute.

This guy, he was writing, Dave was writing a year and a half earlier.

Please plug my newsletter that I'm going to do that I think will be the greatest newsletter ever.

And also, can you please let me write some articles for your magazine?

And if he didn't complain about the $35 that he got paid for that one article, then what's he got to complain about now?

A few minor points.

In the fan club column, you have continued to list the observer as being monthly, when in fact it comes out every three weeks.

The subscription price is $13 for six issues with one issue for $2.

The reason being.

What?

Now, wait, what?

Back up.

What?

The subscription price is $13 for six issues with one issue for $2.

dollars.

If I send you two dollars a week at the end of six weeks, I'm a dollar ahead, aren't I?

It sounds like that's exactly what's

well look.

They're ten dollars each or two for 50.

Well, the reason being that this excuse me, that the mid-January issue will be the annual yearbook.

The yearbook will be about 50 days.

The yearbook.

Well, wait a minute.

Again, I don't mean to bog you down here, but that fucking pricing scheme seems to be year-round.

And we're not just talking about, why doesn't he have a set price for issues?

And then in the add-on, a la carte the annual.

I'm just, I'm just spitballing here.

I don't know.

The yearbook will be about 50 pages and individually costs $5.

I have also asked a number of times recently to mention I am interested in trading either VHS or beta tapes with anyone

right now.

Especially if you have a good-looking girlfriend.

Right now, especially the Mid-South area.

Actually, I am now receiving regular tapes from every major circuit except Southwest and Mid-South, thus can offer WWF,

AWA, Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Memphis, World Class, all three Japan groups when the third gets its TV outlet.

Wait a minute.

He said he's not getting mid-South television in 1984?

September 84.

Had he moved from Wichita Falls, Texas?

Because he was there

in

a couple of the towns where we had the last stampede.

He was working at a newspaper.

I didn't know him then and had never met him and hadn't even heard of him, but he has since talked about working at a newspaper, I think along with Mark Nulty for a brief period of time.

Yeah, that's right.

And he was watching the Mid-South TV in 1984.

He was going to some of the shows, I believe, in Oklahoma City, I want to say.

Yeah, Oak City is where it was.

He was at the last stampede.

Well, anyway,

he's trying to con somebody.

Well, it says San Jose.

He's back in San Jose now.

They ran him out of Texas.

And Calgary until it disbands, along with Portland in exchange.

Actually, the main issue I am writing is because of the nature of your past issue in regards to the real story about what is happening in wrestling.

Uh-oh.

Now,

I am sure my personal feelings about what Vinny is attempting to do to the business.

He's calling him Vinny already?

Once again, now I am sure my personal feelings about what Vinny is attempting to do to the business are pretty close to the same as yours.

Since you have more of an economic interest,

you probably feel even stronger about it.

But being an avid fan and one who sees the business going into a major slump next year, my thoughts are similar.

Wait,

he called for a slump?

In 85.

Okay, I didn't know anybody in 84 was calling for a slump.

They were calling for trouble, but things were just heating up.

At the same time, I think your issue moved into bill after journalism

with its making up facts in order to get across the point.

I realize I take a very strong stance on the current state of wrestling,

but never, and that's underlined, have I made up a fact or printed anything

that

he, I guess, the original wrote what, so he crossed that out.

That's what screwed me up.

Anything that at the time I printed it, I didn't believe it to be the truth.

I often.

It's wrestling publicity.

Norm Keitzer was doing magazines to be sold in the arenas by the promoters and on the newsstands for wrestling fans that wanted to fucking know about their goddamn favorite wrestlers.

They didn't want non-Kayfabe shit that they didn't understand.

Dave has been narrow casting since the start, hadn't he?

I often make mistakes.

And my buddies, and that's in quotes, at Titan Sports continue to swear I'm never right more than 50% of the time.

But because of the nature of the business, it's impossible to print anything meaningful without occasionally being in error.

I certainly agree it is insulting to fans to tell them that the wrestling they have supported for years is minor league.

I also agree WWF has a horrid record for developing new talent, which I believe would be the worst effect if McMahon's pipe dream becomes reality.

So let's stop there.

That's interesting.

1984, McMahon's pipe dream, which was eating up the entirety of wrestling, which kind of happened,

and it killed the pipeline for talent.

Yeah.

Which is exactly what ended up happening, which is why they needed OVW.

And that's

everybody.

was assuming that Vince was nuts with what he was trying to do.

Well, not nuts, but that he wasn't going to succeed in 1984 in running everybody out of business.

But they were incensed that he was not only damaging the business by running opposition to everybody, but by

openly making it more entertaining and silly, which did hurt.

I don't think that Vince running against

some of the promoters, Mid-South, Crockett, Memphis,

world-class, the strong territories.

I don't think the bigger production or the major league is what swayed people.

I think that

the very point of Vince's product, that it's kind of over the top and silly and not to be taken seriously and it's not a blood struggle for revenge, hurt the territories that were booming where everything was a blood struggle for revenge.

Because it kind of took this like, oh maybe they're not as serious as we thought.

You see what I'm saying?

I do.

A lot of the fans felt that way in the Carolinas when I was actively speaking to them and seeing them walking into the fucking building every night.

But that's the thing is, I don't think the promoters thought that he was going to succeed until

him taking so much of the over-talent in so many of the key places hurt the businesses to the point where they were on the verge of.

And then it was like, oh, shit.

And by then, everybody's getting smart.

Not everybody.

Now everybody's smart.

But people are being smartened up.

And

kind of entertainment wrestling was the

thing that was bulletproof because you already knew it was bullshit.

But the other promotions were harmed by the revelation that it was bullshit.

And again, this is that period of time pre-WrestleMania, just months before Mr.

T would get involved, months before David Schultz and John Stossel, and they got a ton of publicity.

Yeah.

There was a perfect storm at the beginning of 1985.

But how about Dave writing a guy that's been publishing magazines for 20 years and he's like a 23-year-old journalism

graduate.

And he said, oh, I had a few problems with your recent publication.

I'd be like, motherfucker, you were asking me if you could write for me a year ago, and now you got problems with my publication.

Let's go back to Dave.

Whether the WWF has more top talent working for it than the NWA, AWA, and Mid-South combined is, of course, opinion, and you are entitled to it.

I disagree, however.

When it comes to meaningful talent, which really counts, the few with real box office appeal, the WWF has a distinct majority with only a few real draws, Kevin and Carrie von Eric, Ric Flair, Jerry Lawler, the Road Warriors, and a very few others left.

Let me turn the page here.

Your first knock against Titan

is they have bought

T V time out from existing AWA or NWA promotions.

While I'd rather the business didn't operate this way, I have grown accustomed to the business practices in wrestling, which are like an old-style Texas deathmatch.

Anything goes until one man is left standing.

The fact is, tracing history, the TV time slot that WWF bought from the AWA here in San Francisco, which is really the only direct theft, shall we say, KPLR TV in St.

Louis.

Yeah, KPLR is

going to

drop Geigel, whether Vince had come to town or not, was originally an AWA theft from ICW.

He was probably going to pick up Matasek, though.

They would have picked up Matasek, and then Vince came in and they forced Vince to work with with Matisig, and then Vince pushed out Larry Matisig.

But again, to end this sentence, and there was a lot in between, he's saying that Vince, the TV Vince is being,

that they're saying Vince stole, the AWA stole from ICW

when the Paphos somehow got TV in San Francisco, if you remember that.

Oh, good lord, that's right.

That's when they started saying on TV in Lexington they were having big matches at the Cow Palace.

In fact, for all the multitudes of complaints from the AWA when WWF first came to this area, the AWA came in when an existing NWA group, Roy Shires, was still operating regularly.

If you look at crowd figures from this area, it is obvious the wrestling public is quite happy with the change.

At least at the present.

I realize your publication will never print anything negative about the AWA,

but when you realize the AWA only averages 800 fans monthly and and WWF has topped 10,000 three straight times, you can see which side the fans have chosen.

So I'm guessing Norm Keitzer

wrote an editorial saying they're not doing good everywhere and Dave's taken up for the San Francisco part of it?

I believe so because Norm, again, Norm lived in Minnesota.

He had known that's how he had got started, was doing AWA publications and Vernon, et cetera.

So with Vern

running the, but at that point in time,

when Vern made money in San Francisco and going out to Northern California, Shire

was really only running the cow palace.

His territory had fallen apart and he had stopped even producing his own television, was using another tape and bringing in talent.

And that's what Vern invaded and,

you know, took over and did well for a while in California.

And then Vince came in and snatched, you know, the whole roster.

I always say, what side is Leo Namolini on?

And that's where I go.

There you go.

You can't go wrong with Namolini.

The next knock is Titans' ticket prices.

I lived in Texas and know that for a big show in Dallas, the best seats go for $30.

I don't know anywhere McMahon charges more than $30.

$30, by the way, that would have to be front row at Texas Stadium.

Because you could still get front row at the Sportatorium in Dallas in 1984 for like fucking ten dollars.

Well, yeah, the next sentence says McMahon charges no more than $12 for any tickets.

$30 for 1984 doesn't seem like a lot now.

That's an extraordinary amount for Ringside for

weekly territory or anything.

I don't even think that that was front row at Reunion Arena for a Christmas or Thanksgiving Star Wars.

He had to be talking about Texas Stadium.

We'll see what we can find out about that.

The Mid-South shows in Oklahoma City charge $12 for ringside for a normal show and $15 for a special show.

Special.

Yeah.

It quotes.

The special...

Whenever the Midnight Express was in the main event, they got $15, baby.

Special meaning any card after a previous sellout at $12.

You know what?

That's true.

The AWA here was charging $12 until crowds got so bad.

They got so desperate and chopped $2 off.

In most competing cities in the AWA region, the prices between both groups are comparable.

WWF charges $3 more in Miami.

Why is he telling Norman Keitzer this, who could give two French-fried titty fucks about it to begin with?

WWF charges $3 more in Miami than the NWA group and charged $1 more in what had been Lawler's region.

But your blanket statement is false.

In fact, it was Bill Watts, not McMahon, who had the the nerve to charge $50 for the recent Superdome show.

Was that ringside at the Superdome?

$50?

I was okay, $50 then.

That would have been the front row at the Superdome.

That's not Ringside.

That would just be the front row.

Second row would probably be $25 or whatever.

It was in Florida on NWA soil that they had the nerve to charge $100 for the Orange Bowl show.

Holy shit, really?

I didn't know that.

No wonder they didn't do a fucking major house there in addition to the fucking inclement weather.

No wonder Dusty said, hey, Eddie, I'm leaving unless you give me the fucking money I drew on this fucking show.

And you know what?

When they gave Dutch Mantel the book in Florida and he got things going kind of good,

they had a sellout in one of the medium-sized towns

and they told him in the office, they said, oh, well, you know, that's almost the best we've ever done.

Well, fuck, if it was sold out, how's that not at least equal to the best you've ever done?

Oh, well, we had a show there before.

We raised prices.

That was the first time Dutch had been to Booker.

He said, Hell, I didn't know you could raise the prices.

Let me, I will raise the fucking prices.

Anyway, go ahead.

Now,

for action received, I agree.

Titan shows are overpriced, which is why I will no longer attend them.

But they aren't higher priced than all the other promotions, as you indicated.

Your knocks against Hulk Hogan, I won't waste space on.

Because of how unimportant in reality wins and losses are.

However, to my knowledge, Bob Backlund never pinned Hulk Hogan, and I'm certain Santana never pinned Hogan in WWF territory.

And even if he did, those bouts took place three years ago, thus aren't valid in anyone's mind, except for the precious few wrestling historians.

So probably Norman is doing the old thing where, well, Hulk Hogan has been defeated defeated by Bob Backlund and Tito Santana and this and that guy.

And Dave's got to tell him, no, he hasn't.

Norman probably knew he hasn't.

Again, Jack Pfeffer, where do you think his shit came from?

More interesting, he says it hasn't.

Then he says, well, even if it did,

no one would care except for the precious few wrestling historians.

It's Dave putting down the historians.

Oh, God damn it.

Next,

in the past, most top stars, this is a quote from Norman.

in the past, most top stars move freely back and forth between all the major organizations.

End quote.

Quit spewing the party line when it's a bunch of crock.

If somebody writes you, no wonder.

No wonder there was heat.

If somebody writes you out of nowhere, some fucking college kid,

well, quit spewing the party line in your magazine.

Are you going to, what the fuck are you?

Once again, quit spewing the party line when it's a bunch of crock.

They move back.

A bunch of crock.

They move back and forth only at the whim.

I thought a crock was the container.

They move back and forth only.

You can't have a bunch of containers, can you?

You'd have to have a bunch of shit or a crock of shit, but the shit would be integral to be the stuff that's inside the container.

I think he's trying to say shit, but he went with crock.

But anyway, the wrestlers move back and forth only at the whim of their controlling promoter.

What?

Don't talk about all the freedom these wrestlers have.

He still didn't know how the business worked then, in terms of if Guy fucking then gave his notice and left, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted with anybody that would hire him.

Don't talk about all the freedoms these wrestlers have, when in reality, they have little.

And McMahon's competition actually gives them more options.

In your Georgia section,

you stated how, quote, through a corporate takeover and corporate decision, end quote, McMahon got control of Georgia Championship Wrestling Incorporated.

Why don't you just say he bought the stock out from a majority of the shareholders and the courts ruled there was nothing illegal in the way he did it?

Vince may have done some crooked and unscrupulous things,

but as far as legality is concerned, that certainly wasn't one of them.

a lot of it seems like semantics too but uh let's continue here a lot of it seems like how much free time did he have to again norman kitzer had nothing to do with any wrestling promotion and he was operating a

nice little magazine there and he didn't want to hear any of this shit he didn't give a shit

the biggest complaint i have

is your coverage of the Anoki Hogan bout from Japan.

Oh, here we go.

Don't touch touch Japan.

First off, you left out several important details of the match.

The two double countout endings.

But even worse,

you claimed that the bout was for the WWF title.

You must have known full well, since you receive the same reports from Japan as I do, that this was billed as for the IWGP title.

I realize your magazine apparently has a very personal grudge against Hogan for reasons I don't know.

But this pathetic attempt to downplay his WWF title using non-factual material really bothered me.

Do you think that it may have been that since Hulk Hogan was the WWF champion and they had pictures of him and Anoki in Japan, that since nobody...

in the goddamn United States of America had ever heard of the IWGP title, they just, oh, here's Hogan defending his title because it was fucking wrestling.

Well, see, that's the thing, too.

And I have to go back and check because I have everything.

I have the finished copies and all the content, the contents of everything that made up the copy.

But Koichi was sending all the photos and the reports.

And,

you know, again, I don't know.

Well, we do have Norman Kaiser's response to this.

But I don't know exactly what would have caused this.

But Dave was very upset, of course, as we.

Very upset, perturbed even.

I realize your magazine magazine has a personal grudge against hogan for reasons i don't know but this pathetic attempt to downplay his wwf title using non-factual material really bothered me

hey

i wasn't complimentary to hogan covering the same match being that his massive ego forced a ridiculously contrived ending which damaged the promotion greatly

You then wait a minute, wait a minute.

Wasn't that the fucking thing that everybody thought was a shoot?

I think that was the year before, because this is 84.

That was 83.

Okay, okay, I'm sorry.

And by the way, 83, if you remember, it was a tournament, but technically the IWGP championship is separate from the IWGP tournament.

So, in terms of what title he was talking about here, but anyway.

Yes.

You then say, quote, we are not sure where the claim originates, end quote, referring to Cobra's NWA Jr.

title.

Well,

Cobra's belt is the same one Les Thornton lost in Japan in 1982 to Tiger Mask.

Does that refresh your memory?

God did.

And I ask you again, Mr.

Keitzer, and I remind you, you are under oath.

Dave has been an insufferable fucking spectrum rider since even before I never saw this in his younger days, but I fortunately apparently didn't have to have these marathon letters written to me.

He liked your magazines.

When Sayama retired, Cobra and Davey Boy Smith were placed in an elimination match, and Cobra won.

You also state:

quote, in cities, WWF is going head to head.

The crowds have been fair to poor in most cases, end quote.

Okay,

there have been some major failures, and there will be more for reasons I've outlined a million times in The Observer.

However, this area has been a major success.

St.

Louis is still generally doing better for WWF than NWA.

In fact, even your beloved twin cities

that you genuinely fleck to have shown the WWF

have shown the WWF beating the AWA solidly.

two of three times.

It was two out of three falls and the WWF got it.

The Miami crowds are nothing great,

but are about what the NWA does weekly.

The Atlanta debut drew better than 90% of the Georgia Championship Wrestling shows had in that city over the past year.

If you were going to tab WWF road crowds as fair to poor,

wouldn't it be responsible journalism to mention the home promotion is doing poorly or fairly as well?

My last disagreement.

So he wants to freelance for this magazine and change their entire editorial policy and stance.

To his slant on things.

And again, if you're listening to this, he had a hang on a lot, but

not as much of a hang as he would in a few years.

We have to talk to a lot more wrestlers.

So let's finish this off, though.

My last disagreement.

is your suggestion that McMahon has a staff of more competent announcers than himself,

and his ego makes him take center stage.

Well, yes, his ego makes him take center stage, but what more competent announcer are you referring to?

Monsoon is even more obnoxious on the air than Vince.

Gene doing play-by-play is setting standards for incompetence, and the rest of the crew are thoroughly worthless.

The only more competent announcer on Vince's staff than himself is an unnamed individual who...

What?

Is an unnamed individual who he is keeping off the tube completely for that very reason.

Who is that?

The only more competent announcer on Vince's staff was already working there in 84 than himself.

But now announcer, ring announcer would be Howard Finkel, but Finkel was always ring announcing.

But he's saying commentary and he keeps him off TV because he's better than McMahon.

Not talking about Pat Patterson.

No, and he had been removed from commentary a year and a half earlier or so.

Well,

boy, Dave, Dave leaves these teasers.

I don't know who that might be at that time frame.

And by the way, we're going to end with his last little bit here, and we'll pick up, we'll do a part three next time with Norman Keitzer's response to this.

My last question will be answered.

Did it begin with, hey, motherfucker?

Okay, go ahead.

My last question will be answered probably in your next issue.

Will you try and create a federal case when reporting the results of the July 25th match when Jumbo Ceruta beat Rick Martel via count out to keep a title, but not the AWA title?

In fact, the whole match has been ignored by Gagne and his promotion here.

And there was no interference in that match, nor

two double countout endings prior to that.

And he signs it about all.

What?

About that.

It's about all.

Last time it was yours in wrestling.

Now it's yours in wrestling, comma.

Now it's about all, period.

Dave Meltzer, San Jose, California.

So again,

you know, I think in terms of communication skills and interpersonal skills and

being able to

take what you truly believe is the only way to see things,

I guess what I'm trying to say is it doesn't seem too dissimilar than the way he behaves on Twitter right now.

Well, but he's been doing it since before he knew anything or should have thought that he knew any goddamn thing.

Because now he's all inflated because he's been doing this for 40 years and he's talked to everybody and smoked everybody, whatever.

But then he was still, he was telling this guy's been doing this for 20 years, doesn't give a shit about what he's saying.

Oh, yeah, you ought to do all this this way.

He's always been like that.

Huh.

Again, noticeable is the ending.

Yours in wrestling versus about all.

About all.

That's about enough of you.

It's about what I got to think of you right now.

You're dismissed, and I will call for you when I need you again.

Well, like I said, next time on the drive-thru, Norm Keitser's response from the files, Dave Meltzer, Volume 3.

But with that, the drive-thru is closed.

All right.

Stay tuned.

My new album will be coming out soon, Blow Jobs in Outer Space.

You think it'll be a big hit on Arcadian Vanguard Records?

We're looking for a good distributor.

We'll let you know how that goes.

Jim.

I understand that MJF's old lady could probably handle that.

She's distributed things all around the world.

See, this is what happens.

Christian starts talking about Moxley being a drunk.

It unleashes this.

He starts talking about the prostitutes and wrestling, and that unleashes you.

I don't know what's going on, but we also don't know what's going on or how to get out of this.

We'll be back on the experience in a few days.

Next week, more questions.

We just had a new thread with questions in the Cult of Cornette Facebook group where more people are in than ever before.

And we'll get more questions on next week.

For the files, volume three, we'll have more guests to program soon.

Cornets Collectibles, Jim Cornett.com, the law office of Stephen P.

New.

Call Stephen P.

News, Timew, Steven Pendu, Steven Regina.

If you need to see Stephen Renew, Stephen Reduce, TV,

Stephen, renewed, Steven, reduced, and renewed, steady news to an outlawmod show or two

news.

Those are the rest.

All you got to do is call 877-50 Steve or logify onto newlawoffice.com for a whole brand new day

in legal jurisprudencingifying.

Stephen P.

New.

That's right.

Get even with Stephen, newlawoffice.com.

But until the experience in a few days and next week, back here in the drive-thru for Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian Last.

I messed up.

Tally-ho!