Episode 375

Hello again, friends!

And you are our friends, and welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's Drive here, right here in the sunny year of 2025. I'm your host, the great Brian Last.

We're going to have fun today with lots of fun and fun wrestling talk with Mr. Fun himself, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr.
Jim Cornett.

And we'll have fun, fun, fun till Brian plays that tune again. You know, that one sounded eerily similar to the one you tried to play last week.
Well, that's the theme to the Great Brian Last.

Of course it is.

It's it's close. I'm like the Grateful Dead.
I never play it the exact same way two times.

It's always incredibly melodic and tuneful in a spooky kind of way, deep inside your soul, but it comes right out and it always modifies So you never know exactly how to be settled.

Does that make sense to you? You know what I mean?

I will admit to you that grateful dead is a phrase that will be applied to you at some point, as in we are grateful, that at least that song may be dead.

But

see,

you're pressing my buttons already, Brian, here, because you know I'm broadcasting again from a disaster zone.

I'm in the middle of a natural disaster, a state of emergency, a fucking pickle here. It's snowing again in Louisville, Kentucky.
We're never going to see the north side of the freezing mark again.

And we reported on the last program where we were in the midst of the onset, the onslaught of the disaster that we got between Sunday and Monday.

We got like 10 or 10 and a half inches total of snow over various points and some sleet and freezing rain in on that to where

at first it was it was crunchy, and now by now it's got the consistency of freezer-burnt vanilla ice cream.

Because even though it has not been above freezing in the past several days, the sun has hit it and glazed it over to where now I'm not as big as I used to be. I'm 185 pounds, though.

I can stand on the top

of 10 inches of snow in my yard in certain places, and I won't crunch through.

Because now it's just become, it's a goddamn perma ice pack.

And now it's snowing again. They're calling for two to five inches, and it's just started.
It's supposed to snow till midnight tonight.

On top of all this other, the schools have been closed all week.

They've had multiple wrecks on the various roads and interstates.

I

really don't have to fucking go anywhere, thank goodness.

I can go everywhere I need to go. I've mentioned that every

business and good and service and outlet and whatever the fuck I need is within three miles of the castle.

And I got Black Beauty. Not only is it a 6,000-pound Ford expedition, but it's got 300,000 miles on it and holes rusted in the doors.
And I don't give a shit what happens to it.

And I just popped that thing into four-wheel drive and down the, it went up up and down the driveway with all that snow and ice without slipping and sliding a bit.

I only know where the driveway is because I know where my driveway is. Otherwise, you would have just had to guess for a couple hundred feet.

But I've successfully navigated that and have been out exploring. It's the other people.

that I feel bad for. People who have to go to work in this,

even though the schools are closed and certain things are closed or whatever, they're highly displeased.

And I think I would turn to crime before I got on the Public Works Department. It was one of the people

snowing and salting and snowing, scraping, shovel, snoveling the show

and scraping the ice and salting the shit because what the fuck, that has got to be miserable.

So

further.

Further activity is happening. We may be cut off from the outside world here soon.

So I'll be broadcasting, trying to give you the update on what's happening in Louisville as we go through this program.

Well, of course, speaking of actual disasters, we want to send our best out to everyone who listens from California. Obviously, they're going through a lot right now with

multiple wildfires all happening at the same time. It's insane.
Did I? Well, and

they had wildfires in Northern California last fall when My in-laws had been out here and my mother-in-laws, we told a story, had to go to the hospital with an emergency and Stacey's stepfather had to go back home because they were in a wildfire area.

And now that's Northern California. Now it's in Los Angeles.

How did, do you have any idea? Being as you're the weather expert here, you always tell me what's going on with the weather. How did they have 100 mile an hour winds and it's not raining?

What the did they did they just in California and Southern California have 100 mile an hour winds pop up?

Or was this part of some freak thing that's led to this freak fucking thing? They have winds that have popped up and that regularly pop up. It's never been like this.

You know, for years, everyone talked about the big one. It's not an earthquake, it turns out.
It's the wildfires and the winds sweeping it all over. They haven't had rain.

There's no rain on the schedule.

So, I mean, you could certainly

be plenty of places with wind with no rain. Well,

everybody's got wind. God damn it.
That's like air. Wind is air.

We are here in a tornado-susceptible area, this corridor, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, as we've talked about many times.

Severe weather, a tornado

actually whipping through the F0 or whatever, the lowest designation is a little under 100 mile an hour fucking wind force.

And that comes with severe thunderstorms and fucking all kinds of cataclysmic lightning and shit going on.

I've never heard of a place, at least in the United States, where there was just the wind decided to blow 100 miles a fucking hour

without some other weather condition going on. I'm not trying to be facetious here.
So I'm wondering what the fuck caused that.

That's some badass wind. That's some badass you want to with that wind the fires are still going you know i've learned the two you know it's all

oh go ahead the two things you can't beat water and fire you know you can prepare as best you can

but a wind can take something and just destroy everything and you know i ignored the mandatory evacuation for superstorm sandy and stayed on long island stayed in long beach and it was insane And it's nowhere near as bad as it is out there.

And again, there's only so much you can do.

If these things happen, there's nothing stopping. I mean, that's the scary thing.
There's nothing that can stop it. And they've run out of water.
Apparently, they were opening up fire hydrants.

There was no water in them, which is crazy. I can't even imagine what that's like.
But they have a drought, I guess, and they have no water. So they can't even fight fire with water.

I saw them bringing water from a pool in like pouches to put out spot fires. It's scary.
And meanwhile,

we've got here creeks and rivers. I've got a creek in my backyard.
And if you melted the frozen water that we have, it would be hundreds of millions of gallons all across the region.

But we're not doing anything bad to the climate.

And also, here's what I was going to say a second ago. This is like fucking Raw was in Los Angeles four days ago.
Had this started at all then? Was there a fire that...

was starting to spread or this sprang up this quickly and this

the drone shots of the Intuit Center didn't look like the wind was blowing 100 miles an hour.

Do we know when this began?

We don't. I mean, I don't.
I mean, the other thing is other fires are just popping up. The other night, the Hollywood Hills all of a sudden went up in flames.
Like, how did that happen?

That was nowhere near any of these other fires. Do you think this originated with the fan reaction to Hogan? Do you think it was Hogan?

Do you think it was Hogan? You boo me. I'll show you.
No, I shouldn't even make a joke about it. No, I will.

He'll blame it, though. I started it.
Well, no, it was Harley Race. Came and set the ring on fire for running to town.
But seriously, we have a lot of listeners out there, and we hope everyone's safe.

And

we hope it's just, it's scary. It's really horrible.
My heart goes out to everyone.

You say fire and water. And water.

But what about earth and wind?

Earth and the wind

is part of it what's earth earthquakes you mean earth no earth wind and fire i'm thinking so we got they left water out that's right what what did maurice white have against water he was a dry man possibly water offended him while he was a member of the ramsey lewis trio but nevertheless you got the earth is the earthquakes right that's what that's right california is noted for that's why they set the goddamn movie there

So you got earth, you got wind, that's the high winds, the tornadoes, fire, self-explanatory, and water.

We're all going to fucking submerge one day under the oceans because of the melting polar ice caps. So that is the four horsemen

that the ancient prognosticators predicted would bring an end to civilization. We figured it out.

That was pretty fucking deep. Should we just end the show now?

Well, no, I mean, this was our attempt to say something nice to the people going through it, not to make this really depressing and thoughtful.

Well, or we could, well, you said you didn't want to make a joke out of it. Goddamn, make up your mind.

I'm trying to follow you here. This is your program.
No, we love everybody in California. Everyone be safe.
And also, Nevada. How far might this spread?

Has anyone said anything about Nevada?

I don't know, or Nevada, either one. Well, it's Nevada, but I mean, are you just saying that for any reason? Have you seen something on TV that it's spreading?

No, I'm saying that would be if it keeps blowing that direction, they're the next ones over, aren't they?

Yeah. I mean, how far is this going to go? I don't know if anyone's predicting that yet.
God,

you know what? I'm going to the basement right now. Fuck it.

2,000 miles, but you know what?

By the time it hit the fucking Ohio River, the fire would be put out, but all this goddamn ice were encased in.

If you had the money to put in like a top of the line, almost like a luxury condo as a bunker, which apparently is what a lot of the the billionaires do. Deep underground.
Would you do it?

Do you think it's worth it?

No,

a luxury condo underground is going a bit far.

I think it's cool when

the guy next door to me had built a new fucking house, right?

He's got the room down under the ground where they can go and lock the door and they got all the shit just in case anything happens.

But that was new construction.

You know,

my father in 1952, when the plans were drawn up,

didn't anticipate that it would get this bad this quickly.

But I think a room underground would be cool, just so, you know, you could do the Twilight Zone fucking episode and shit. But otherwise, I think, you know, I'm not going to stay down there forever.

I'd rather be up on the goddamn hill. And that way you can kind of fucking survey everything from a distance rather than under the ground where you don't really know what the fuck's going on.

Shit's breaking down and it's dangerous. You're not going to the top of the hill.

Well, yes, I'm going to the top.

Haven't you ever played king of the hill? What the fuck?

Not during an earthquake, no. Well, there's not going to be a goddamn earthquake in Kentucky.

Not during a tornado. I'm talking about anything else besides the tornadoes, which you can't do anything about.
I've got the booby trap trees. I've got the hidden fucking moat.

I've got the spike strip across the driveway. I've got the fucking turrets on the goddamn deck in the back.
I'm,

you know, I just want to be able to see everything coming.

All right.

Don't go low. Go high.

Well, speaking of high, why don't you go to Cornett's Collectibles at jimcornet.com and say hi to the wonderful people there stocking the shelves. Tell us about Jim.
Well, and that's another thing.

Poor Hodgkin's Featherbottom don't have four-wheel drive, so he had to postpone pigging some things up from the Christmas New Year's week season.

But everything's been signed and it will be to him very soon,

even if he has to get over here and I got to take Black Beauty over and fucking meet him in the goddamn flat parking lot. But nevertheless,

this week coming up on the experience,

I got a big sale to announce and other of Hotchkiss's innovations and all kinds of stuff for February Valentine's. It's a month of love.

And we're going to show the fine customers at Cornett's Collectibles at jimcornet.com some love. Love will be

disseminated all over them.

It's going to be in every package.

All right. You may want to wait until the spring sale, ladies and gentlemen, at jimcornet.com.
Hey, wait a minute. You don't know what we're going to do in the spring.

Yeah, it's a time for fertilizer. Things are blooming.

Well, you got me there. Ladies and gentlemen,

you know what that means. It's time to move forward and move beyond and above.
Move up.

Just rise above

the black flag would say so high. That's right.

Well, Jim,

we have a lot to talk about and something breaking as we're recording, so we're going to kind of discover it together.

Okay, because I don't know what's gone on all morning because I was out with Harley crunching through this. I have to lift her over some of the crunchy spots so that she doesn't slip and fall.

Vince McMahon has tweeted, Oh, goddammit. 10:44 a.m.
on January 10th.

The case is closed.

Today ends nearly three years of investigation by different governmental agencies.

There has been a great deal of speculation about what exactly the government was investigating and what the outcome would be.

As today's resolution shows, much of that speculation was misguided and misleading.

In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments that I made several years ago while I was the CEO of WWE.

I'm thrilled that I can now put all this behind me.

Now, this is not about the Janelle Grant case.

Well, I figured that, but here's the problem between the carefully crafted statements that Vince McMahon's PR people and personal trainers and who knows who else has a hand in.

Since I don't know what the resolution was,

what is his spin on this? There was ever nothing ever more to this than minor errors. Did he get slapped on the wrist instead of the electric chair? And he's trying to dodge and evolve.

What's going on here?

And again, this is the Vince McMahon spin on the story. I have an article here from CNBC.com

by Dan Mangan. Let me close up this pop-up.

SEC charges former WWE boss Vince McMahon

over two undisclosed settlements with two women.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged former WWE boss Vince McMahon with failing to inform his Pro Wrestling Company's board of settlement agreements totaling $10.5 million

with two women on behalf of himself and WWE.

McMahon has agreed to settle the administrative charges and agreed to pay a $400,000 civil penalty and reimburse the WWE

$1.33 million.

Jesus. The SEC said.
So again, this is not at least about the big janelle grant case i don't know if that's one of the payments covered in this that he didn't disclose to the board but vince mcmahon

reaching a deal with the sec what are your thoughts well but so

we already had his running total a couple of years ago up to like twenty million dollars that they found out so these are not new

cases that

were unreported. These are two of the cases that they had to stink about to begin with a couple of years ago, totaling $10 million.
We don't know which specific two of these people.

Some of them are known, some of them aren't. But the point is

they felt that he did the wrong thing enough to, and I know it's not a lot of money for Vince McMahon. $2 million.
He just got $2 billion in cash from these people, but

$2 million because you fucked up, fella.

And he's like, oh, see, this shows it was no big deal

what the

I guess minor accounting errors for

a ten million dollars worth of payments and you got to you're fined in in effect that's like a fine they're forcing him to pay blah blah blah civil penalty that is a fine civil penalty yeah a couple million dollars

it's not like fucking speeding and reckless driving is it well let me go through a little bit of the article here they charged vince mcmahon with violating federal federal securities laws by failing to inform his pro-wrestling company's board of the settlement agreements.

McMahon, whose wife Linda, has been nominated as Department of Education Secretary by President-elect Donald Trump. Of course she has.
Agreed to settle the administrative charges. We'll pay $400,000.

This is everything we just read. McMahon, there's a statement which we just read.

A source familiar with the situation said the Department of Justice has ended its criminal probe of McMahon and will not charge him. So let's stop there because there's news.

Well, that

may be disheartening to some, but.

But everyone presumed when he got raided that it was about Janelle Grant. If it was just about this, and

even if the payments were to Janelle Grant, this is not about that case. This is about the actual embezzlement of money or...
the misappropriation of company funds more than anything else it appears.

Well, do we know now?

Because his best friend just tried to put a pedophile in charge of the Department of Justice. Are they just saying, well, fuck it, there's no reason to waste our time two more weeks or whatever?

So at this point, can that be trusted? The Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office.

Wouldn't you know who won the pony?

Vince will not be investigated by the government 10 days before his fucking criminal friend takes over the government. A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S.
Attorney's Office declined to comment.

I'm sure he did. McMahon's lawyer declined to comment.

That's a new one. The SEC said...
Maybe the lawyers figured, fuck, I'm just going to stay out of this. It looks like we're in the clear.

The SEC said that McMahon's failure to tell WWE's board, legal department, accountants, or auditor about the settlements caused the company to make material misstatements.

in its 2018 and 2021 financial statements. See, that's what it is.
It's all about the fact that they filed false numbers because Vince wasn't.

I guess Vince didn't account for any of the money he decided to take as petty cash. Good lord.
Here's a quote.

Company executives cannot enter into material agreements on behalf of the company they serve and withhold that information from the company's control functions and auditor, said Thomas Smith Jr.

from the SEC's New York office.

And it appears that's all the big news here.

Well, there you go. Oh, here we go.
The SEC said that because the agreements with the women were not recorded, WWE overstated its net income for 2018 by about 8%.

Wow.

And its 2021 net income by 1.7% approximately.

8%? Wow.

That's a lot higher than I would have thought. Net income, but

that's $10 million.

So that would be 8%

their net income after everything a hundred million dollars that ain't hay

am i doing the math wrong no i mean you uh

see you gotta you gotta look at how that's phrased mcmah received incentive-based compensation it's not it's not the gross beforehand it's the net after the splooge McMahon received incentive-based compensation and realized profits from the sale of WWE common stock during the 12-month period following the filing of financial statements that WWE subsequently restated due to the facts described herein.

The SEC said, McMahon has not fully reimbursed WWE

or its successor in interest for these profits and incentive-based compensation and therefore violated Section 304

of some Act here.

So he wouldn't give them the money back that they gave him before they knew that he was going to cost him all this shit.

So Vince McMahon's claiming victory that this,

I mean, he's saying it's not what everyone thought it was.

I guess just that it was the federal, the government investigation wasn't what everyone thought that was going to be sex trafficking, like Puffy, because of everything that was alleged in the Janelle Grant case.

If it had nothing to do with sex trafficking and it was all about cooking the books, that changes everything.

I mean, it doesn't change anything, actually, but it certainly makes you rethink a lot of things. It certainly makes you wonder, you know, now he has all that money.

Now he's got a lot more time on his hands, and he's not worried about the government.

And that's a, you know, again, to they just scrubbed him from everything they did historical on Raw and Saturday night's main event, and they've scrubbed him. Well, but you know what?

It's that's for the best anyway, because the fans still are like, what the fan? And especially the show keeps getting better now that he's gone. And he was a creepy old man in his old age.

And he went mental for whatever reason.

But as far as to Vince, that

paying women $10 million because, you know, of the various things that I did, that's no big deal. This is $10 million.
And accounting errors. Yeah, I'll pay the couple million dollars.

That's Vince. It's like he doesn't even have any kind of sense of proportion anymore.

So to him, it's a bit, yeah, it was no big deal.

Anybody else would be shitting all over themselves? Yeah, Vince, how many millions did you give that woman who says you sexually harassed her? That was an accounting error. Yeah.

That's a new way to look at it.

But, you know, it's trivial to him. And, you know, again,

why would anybody waste their time?

Nobody inside the click, the real click now, is going to be going to jail for the next four years, so there's no reason to waste your fucking time.

Well, that's the Evince McMahon news. We will, I'm assuming at some point while we're recording, hear a statement from Janelle Grant's attorney, but we'll get to that when we get to that.

Jim, on the topic of WWE and WWE happenings,

NXT this past week,

there was...

I guess one or two segments that everyone was talking about for one reason or another.

The Rock,

who popped a number, the rating for this was tremendous.

The Rock appeared on NXT, where his daughter's the general manager

got to, I guess, drink one of his waters that he owns, free advertising on TV.

Is that water? I don't know what it was. Who knows what's in that bottle? But he's in a couple of segments on a big show where they have title changes and it's in LA.

Again, before everything went crazy in LA,

what did you think of The Rock on NXT?

I well,

there were two appearances. One was a pre-tape or backstage segment, whatever they call them these days.
And the other one was live in the ring. So, well, let's do the backstage first.

And Yura Ava is his daughter.

And

for whatever reason, that has never been, was it ever explained in any way, even if it was a weak explanation on

NXT television, why that this

young girl who's not particularly a great television performer and not the most stunning creature we've seen since Greta Garbo, she has no credentials as a business person or a goddamn wrestling legend

or an active competitor of any note to be the general manager.

Was it explained on NXT television how this role was, this important responsibility that she shares with the other brands of Adam Pierce and Nick Aldiss and

Ava Rain on our parade?

Did they ever tell us why?

I remember she was on NXT. I think she was either a wrestler or escorting wrestler.
Like she was part of like a group of guys and girls. Yes.
Well, it would have to be pretty much one or the other.

But

I said wrestler of notes. I have the Wikipedia bio.
Well, there you go. Let's go straight to the gospel according to Google.

On October 25th, 2022, on an episode of NXT, Ava made her television appearance, her first,

revealing herself to be a member of Joe Gacy's villainous faction,

Schism.

We've missed this era of NXT, I guess. Oh, Christ.
She debuted under the ring name name Ava Rain,

but it was later shortened to Ava on February 14th, 2023, when it discovered as a porn star, probably named Ava Rain. Like every name in NXT.
I think, you know, either Ava Gabor or,

you know, Ava, the only other one I could, Ava Gardner.

Ava made her in-ring debut on April 1st at Stand and Deliver with Schism.

Losing the Chase University.

Schism would slowly begin to disband in September 2023, starting with the.

It began to fall apart, much like a leprosy victim losing chunks as he motivates down the path. Starting with

the expiration of the dyads contracts on September 14th and culminating in a backstage segment in October where Gacy declared that Schism is dead.

After Schism, she became the on-screen assistant of senior vice president of talent development creative, Sean michaels oh good lord on january 23rd she was promoted to become the new general manager of nxt

becoming the youngest general manager in nxt

ava made her main roster debut appearance three days later coincidentally this is all january 2024 that's right when the rock fucking came back right when when the the the money changed hands and the board of directors seat was filled and the

Plans for WrestleMania were being implemented. If you are a relative of The Rock

and you come out of high school or maybe some college, whatever it may be, and you don't have like a direction, you don't know where to go or what to do, he'll just get you a job with WWE.

Or you can carry his piss, one or the other. Oh,

but anyway, all right, so that's obviously it was a long road

to the top if she wants to rock and roll, but she got to be the general manager and she was talking to Ethan Page

and he was being

somewhat contrary with her and not going to accept her authoriti

when suddenly

The Rock walked in behind Ethan Page wearing Roy Orbison's glasses.

And

for a minute, I almost thought it was a seal peering through a block of ice because they were so they were large even for a man with a large man. Charles Nelson Johnson.

Oh, we love you, Charles.

So The Rock told

Ethan Page, like I told all of the NXT talent, anything you need, come to me. Like he's the benevolent, you know,

head of the monastery going around distributing blessings. But anything you need, come to me.
I'll help you out. But on this show, she's the final boss.
so you and her need to be cool.

And Ethan's, oh, yeah,

we're cool.

And he actually,

okay, and as Ethan Page is walking by, The Rock says,

Get your sweet ass on out of here, and whacked him on the butt

like he was dealing with a kid from romper room.

And

okay, that was, let's discuss the pre-tape or the backstage or whatever.

The Rock's been doing backstage segments going back to his, you know, the height of his career. He's kind of known for doing these and having a little bit of comedy.
I don't know about the slapping.

I don't know. I guess you can call that sexual harassment in a way.
I don't know about the executive slapping the other guy in the ass and saying, get that sweet ass out of here.

While he's wearing his Charles Nelson Riley glasses.

I don't know. I don't know how that works.

HR made a better situation. We'll know something's up for sure if they change Ethan Page's name next week to Paul Lind.

They had to do something with Ava and The Rock together to justify any of this with her being there. They had to do something with them together.
It made sense.

I don't know about dressing down. Again, you don't want a Stephanie McMahon on the brand, you know, where she could dress down the wrestlers and shit.
Yeah, that's it.

He's their top heel, right, at this point.

Or

if not being presented as the top heel, the one that most people talk about.

Oh, but he got whacked on the ass. Get your sweet ass on out of here.

So that was okay. You know, it's a pre-tape.
But later on tonight,

here on NXT, you're going to get to see The Rock. He's going to come out.
They were in Los Angeles at...

What was it? The Shrine Auditorium, right? Yeah, it looked great.

And again, you know, this is a place where they've had award shows and, you know, all kinds of television broadcasts. And

that's what I was thinking. They might be able to make the Hammerstein look a little snazzier in AEW than what they did.
But this was, it was

very nice. But anyway,

finally, it's the last segment. We're 10 minutes before we're off the air.
And as we know, the CW

can't,

you can't just call and ask for more time. They've got commitments with local stations.

Which, as a matter of fact, you know, I think it's New York that didn't see the last minute of this.

You know that story, right? I thought we did get this. No, I don't know that.
Well, maybe it's not.

There's a big market. Is it New York?

I mean, L.A. I think it's LA because of the prisoners and everything.

Well, no, no, no. No.
I mean, on a regular basis, since they've switched over to there's one big market station

that has a commitment to one minute before 11 go into their local news or whatever.

And so they never see the last minute anyway.

How does somebody else can

chart me up to who it is? Well, Channel 11 news is a different kind of news. I got Greg Macher running around the subways and stuff.
It's a different kind of station.

I thought you watched the stations out of Scarsdale. There are no stations out of Scarsdale.
What about Teterboro? There are no stations out of Teterborough. Well, see, that's the problem.

But anyway, so it's 10 minutes till, and here, boom,

the rock music and the lightning and the big screen and the big pop, and he's over and he shows us the goose bumps. Do you think that's like...

Is that the same kind of thing as the kid in second grade that could blow milk out of his nose anytime he wanted to, that he can just do that? Yeah, it's every time he comes out there.

Look, I have goosebumps on my arm. Yeah, stop smacking your arm, asshole.
Maybe start with that. Well, we got to send him to a fucking AEW show.

And if he can get goosebumps there, he can get goosebumps anywhere. By the way, how many guys? I mean, that probably happens to a lot of guys.
You come out there, your music's playing, the pyro going.

He's the only one who gets to show, look, I'm special because it means more to me than the other guys. What does that exactly connotate? The idea that

he still means something to me, even though I feel I'm above all of you. What does that mean?

He is still moved by the by the common people he's still moved by the the reaction of the commoners as he comes out to bless them

with his mag magnifosity

and his golden you know that they're they've magnified the magnifosity quite on this program i mean it's just through the roof

and

again he he's over the chants the poses the cheers the close-ups and the plenty of milking he can just turn the shoulder and they know that he's milking them to do something.

And the rocky chant, and more goosebumps, and some humbleness and milking that got him the NXT chance.

But at the same time, I'm thinking, my God,

they're burning daylight.

And it was five minutes and 15 seconds from the time that his music first started till he opened his mouth to actually speak and spoke. And it was,

is that a

pop culture thing that because didn't he do that the other day, or didn't somebody else do that the other day?

They scream something.

What did he do there, Brian? You're young. I don't, it's a reference to something that I don't get.

It sounds like someone disemboweling a cat without anesthesia.

Yeah, I don't know.

I've got some audio recordings that were disturbing, say the least.

So he started the promo and then he stopped so they could chant more.

And then he got bleeped for, in a short period of time, I'm going on my notes now because it's going to happen some more, but in a very short period of time, he got bleeped for goddamn and fuck.

And this is going to

your local stations during prime time that they're going into. I know that the news anchor here,

if they were going into his program, he wouldn't enjoy following fuck, but whatever's happening on the local station, the point is they're under FCC rules. It's broadcast.
He knows

you can't,

it's not even like USA or like

cable in general.

you really can't do that here.

And he's doing it anyway, because he knows they can,

they'll most likely bleep him.

But at the same time, if they're not real good, because a lot of this was very ad-lib, to say the least. So it's not like they were reading a script waiting for the right minute.

You got to have nimble fingers on that seven-second delay. Him coming out there and cursing, and I'm not against the idea of cursing, but you have to know where you are.
The venue.

And he is an executive. He's on the fucking board.
Him coming out there and doing that is the same as him showing up to a film set 10 hours late.

It's creating problems and more work for the people who are doing the work.

And

that's why people there are going to start to have a lot of resentment towards him. Just watch.
But hold on.

That is an apt comparison to the relationship with the company.

But with the network,

the CW network may have made an investment in NXT, but their

fortunes, their living and dying, rising and falling, does not depend on this one program.

And if they've just got this deal, and do you want to piss them off? Because it wasn't just that, as we'll get into,

he's doing it a bunch more. But besides that,

he's a movie star, he's a wrestling star,

And everybody thought it was a good idea if he just went out there with absolutely nothing to fucking say.

We didn't even discuss that yet.

When I told you about this, I said,

you know, because I have, I think the rock as a person is full of shit. I think The Rock as a performer is amazing when he's on.

But for me, especially in the last half of the Vince McMahon years, there was a lameness. There was a lack of creativity, there was a coasting,

and this was more than that. But did y'all, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
This was not coasting, this was fucking twisting in the wind.

This was, this was proof that Pavarotti didn't always hit the fucking note right. This was proof that Michael Jordan could miss a dunk.
This was

one of the greatest orators,

orators, orator, orators

in the entire history of the business going out there and not having anything goddamn ready to say. I don't know how it was to, and

potentially having been sipping on his tequila that he's got a financial interest in, or either that, or he just didn't give a shit. Because again,

the language.

He

did some things about, oh, last year,

everybody said, Why are you so mean to Cody? And a year later, I wanted to give props to Cody, and they,

all the fans on the internet, was like, Fuck now, we're not getting this fucking match. You yanked our cranks about for the past year.
They said, Don't be so nice to Cody.

And he got bleeped again.

And he said, Oh, the final boss is thinking 20 steps ahead, so enjoy the ride the rock is taking you on. And then

he took us on a ride, all right. He didn't have anything else to fucking say.

It was another goddamn.

He got

away. He had already got the earlier.

He got a time cue that by the time that he had finished his massive entrance, he had six minutes and 33 seconds left.

And then by the time he's done that business, he's, oh, we got two minutes. Well, fuck that.
We'll go all night.

And they believe. But again, I wrote, has he gotten lost? Is he tipsy? Does he not give a shit about the new deal with his network?

And he actually said,

I asked to go to NXT a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't really know what to say. So I asked Ava, and Ava told him, You're going to feel the crowd.

Well, he felt he felt them up.

He yanked their dicks and gave them nothing.

He just just said, Thank you for coming to the NXT show. Now, the

raw show, the big raw show with all the stars, that's the one you had to be at.

But this is the show you wanted to be at.

And it,

but I, but hey, the guys and the girls in NXT could be WrestleMania main eventers, too.

And but, but anyway, it's easy to go to the place with all the stars. It's not easy to go.

I swear he said this. It's easy to go to the place with all the stars.
It's not easy to go to. And the crowd started groaning.
Yeah, because they think the NXT people are stars. Yeah.

And that's what he said. And goddamn right, they got stars here.
But he was going to say, then come to the place with no stars. I don't know what that was the only

thing you could have been saying there. That was the only thing you could have been setting up.
Yeah.

And he says Flex Cavanaugh was a fucked up name.

And he said, fucked up. And then

so

he was, and I'm sure they were giving him the, we've got to go. We cannot stay behind the camera.
And he said, my, my job will take me away many times, but I will always come back home to you.

If you smell the bullshit that's going on here.

and it went a million people were watching that because of him.

And there was no,

even if he didn't want to have a

verbal exchange live in the ring with any of the NXT guys,

couldn't they have arranged some type of interaction with some WWE talent to pay off the idea and involve an NXT guy peripherally or

just an interview in some way putting the fucking product over of the television show he's on

or in some way being coherent and

not trying to to cuss every

when was he known for just saying fuck all the time is he Does he do a bunch of fuck movies or movies where you say fuck a lot? Like, is he working for Tarantino?

Why is that is him and body mouth? Why is that known with The Rock now that he's got to give it to him? Because I think he's high off his ass on his ego when it comes to WWE.

It's the one thing where he still can't be touched.

You know, people criticize the movies, whether it's critically or some of the ones that haven't performed, people criticize these stories you hear about him. But WWE.

I mean, what else would you call both nights? Again, he was a heel. He left as a heel and he came back and immediately.
Well,

that's what I said on what the, it was my show, goddammit, that we did a couple of days ago.

Now we're not getting rock at WrestleMania. We're not getting rock and Cody.
We're not getting rock and Roman. He's hugged him and kissed him and said, I love you.
So I said,

I don't understand.

And NXT

did 957,000 viewers. That's the highest overall number since 2019.

That's a major number. And if the rock being there got people in the door, that's amazing because all they did was try to make people all night.

Julia Obafemi, Stephanie Vacour, all they did all night was try to make people. But if you tuned in for The Rock

and then he gave you nothing,

are you ever going to tune in again if it's tease that the rock's going to be on NXT? Unless there's a direct thing that you're told it's going to be. You start training people to dismiss.

Pump the brakes because because, are you ever going to tune in again?

Yeah, probably because it's still something. But they got a few hundred thousand more people than they usually get.
That means they tuned in for something.

But if they said, well, The Rock's going to be, but well, let's see if he's got something to say for himself this time. They might give him a second chance.
They might not.

It's not like a cut and dried, the curtain has fallen, but it doesn't help and it's not productive. And,

but also, I,

again, The Rock is one of the greatest performers in the history of the business. So I'm thinking from, I'm trying to think from his perspective.
If that was me, why am I out there?

And I don't know what the fuck I'm going to talk about. And I'm cussing.

That's the difference. Well, I know.
You've shown that you could think on the fly. The rock is called with notes on his hands.
God damn it.

Hey, there's people in speech therapy class could have fucking muddled through this better than

I'm not trying to get put over here. I'm saying if I was putting myself in that position as a business before I went out there, I would want to, as a professional,

I need one or two things to talk about. What is a why am I doing this appearance? What is the point we're trying to make with my presence here tonight? What are we promoting?

What's further down the road? Give me some direction and we'll put something together that is me, but

accomplishes this fucking purpose. That's just as a,

I can't believe that The Rock being a movie star and The Rock being a wrestling star and The Rock just, if he was being professional, would just go out there and feel the crowd

and be all over the fucking place and not have Dick to fucking really say that meant anything in a public appearance on television in front of a million people on broadcast and however many watch it on the YouTubes.

That's what I'm trying to figure out why that happened.

And did, were they back there? Did they know? He don't know what the fuck he's going to say. Well, we need him to say this, this, and this.

If I was producing a television program and I knew the rock was, if I had the rock coming to OVW,

like I did Steve Austin or The Undertaker or Mick Foley or blah, blah, blah,

I always,

in a very professional, friendly way, suggested to them, hey, can we talk about this and do this with this guy and blah, blah, blah, and how you want to do it.

But there was a reason for them to be there.

So this is just flabbergasting to me on all fucking fronts. I'll get off the soapbox now.
If you were a fan of The Rock and you tuned in to see The Rock, would you be disappointed?

Well, yes, it is a disappointment. I don't know that it's going to cause people to start putting together fucking threatening letters in the mail from magazine article words, cut and pasted.

I don't think it will, but I think if the rock continues

appearances like this where nothing happens and nothing is said, and you're teased that he's here, he's here, and then nothing happens. Yes.

Yes, I admit it, counsel. Yes, it will be.
It was disappointing and will lead to further disappointment if they're not appointing someone to point him in the right fucking direction.

How come he hasn't gotten any jobs for any of Rocky Johnson's other kids? He has like dozens of brothers and sisters all over the place.

Not one of them has got a job with WWE. There is not dozen.
What was there? Seven confirmed. It's at least least half dozen.
Something around. Well, there's, there was some dozen in the phrasing, but.

So that was NXT again, a big night. And if you were going to do a big night, the rock obviously brought an audience.
So a lot of people got to see whatever they were trying to do there. But

I think it's two nights in a row, two appearances in a row. Kind of disappointment for what you're getting.
If you're ain't anything. The first night was disappointing, but not unprofessional.

Because we said, well, why did he hug these people? Why is this all of them? You know,

they parted. Rock and Cody parted like fucking,

you know, Wyatt Earp and his nemesis in the old West. I'll see you again one day.
And then they do, and they hug and kiss and fucking drink tequila and do whatever the fuck.

So that was a disappointment, but what Rock

said and or did.

on camera didn't make you think he'd been drinking or was just spaced out and didn't give a shit about whether he was any good or not.

So

the second night was a whole different kettle of fish in that regard. This is two years in a row where The Rock hugged Cody and Cody had that look on his face like this fucking guy.

Yeah, what the fuck? This fucking guy. Two Januaries in a row, this has happened.

It's like when Marlon Brando would hug him and kiss him on the cheek. Well, you know, Jim, perhaps the issue.

What is the issue, Brian? Perhaps the issue is the Rock's instincts at this moment. And perhaps if he quit it with the tequila and he moved to something like CBD,

perhaps he would be in a better frame of mind. Perhaps all the injuries he has from lifting way too much weight with way too much synthetic muscle,

perhaps all those injuries, the pain and the soreness, the aches and pains, no sores. Perhaps that would start to diminish.

Perhaps he would be in a better frame of mind, be a healthy weight, and deliver meaningful promos if only he switched up to CB Disstory.

Well, you could just wind that

description up anytime, any place, Brian. And we've got it down.
We know that he doesn't have sores currently, although we don't know what might happen in the future.

But, folks, if you're sore and we're not talking about pissed off,

we're just talking about sore, sore, achy from exercise or the burden of life today.

Or if you can't sleep because your mind is complicated with the burdens of life today, or you feel stressed during the day because of the burdens of living life in the world today, then that's what you need to do.

You need to go to CB Distillery. We don't know what the rocks issue is.
He's farting through silk. He's got more money than Carter's got little liver pills.
And he's a big-time movie star.

And he obviously has a good sense of his own self-importance.

So we need to worry about the little people out there, the ones that he sprays his piss bottle on and you, you folks, and us folks and we folks,

we are the little people that get pissed on. That's why we need the CBD.
That's what he calls the people he pisses on, the we people. The we people.

Well, we, the people, want the CBD, and you can trust CB Distillery Distillery for their commitment to quality.

And to your satisfaction, they have over 2 million satisfied customers, and they offer a 100% money-back guarantee.

Now, try to buy CBD behind a dumpster over on Main Street and see if it comes with a money-back guarantee. I think not.

They have plant-based solutions. to help with stress, mood, and focus, and pain after exercise, and plant-based solutions.
Brian, they're going back to the olden days.

Back in the olden days, the Native Americans who roamed the plains knew that if you grabbed some marigolds and some dandelions and just chewed them up and just ate them either that or rolled them up and smoked them, well, it would make you feel better.

And so now, you know, there's not enough dandelions and daisies and magnolias and things like that to go around. So they've got to distill these things

over there with the CBD.

But it all comes from

the earth, Brian,

from the Native American soil. They had the answer till we poisoned them.

What do you say? What comes from the earth? The plant-based solutions.

It all comes from the earth. That's where plants come from in my neck of the woods.
Okay. Where do the plants grow from? That's where they come from here, too.
I just.

Well, then, what are you questioning me?

You lost me around a bend. You lost me.
You can't. Well, you need to bend over farther.
That's why you need CBD because of your bad back.

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Right now, go to cbdistillery.com and use the code JCE for 20% off any of their fine products and solutions, cbdistillery.com. The promo code is JCE,

and you can feel as good as me and Brian, or even better if you're younger and more physically fit and don't have as much pressure and stress and heaviness

on you mentally, and you don't have all these other goddamn distractions and

fucking stress and people calling you and goddamn things going on and beyond your control. You have to fucking deal with this guy and that guy and the other guy.

Well, you you'll feel even better than we do because we feel pretty good and we got all that shit going on yeah that's right yeah cbdistillery.com promo code jce

throw your stresses out the window pack them up in your old knapsack and take them out in the woods and bury them in a shallow grave

yeah or something like that metaphorically speaking with cb distillery one more time jim concisely what is that promo code One more time.

Will you take them and pack them up in your knapsack and take them out in the woods? Oh, you mean the promo code?

That's what I mean. The aforementioned promo code.

JCE.

All right. We continue on with the fun,

happy, fun show. Happy fun.

The super terrific happy hour. Well, this is the happy hour.
We guarantee at least one hour of happiness every week, and that is the second hour, of course, of the program.

So, this is the hour where it'll be.

I was happy. I was happy a few minutes ago.
You mean I wasn't supposed to be happy? You have to be happier. That wasn't happy enough.
There's a happy quotation to have to be above.

If I get any happier, I might hurt myself. Well, speaking of hurt yourselves or hurt others, hurt fans, whatever it may be, for whatever reason, maybe it's the time of year, the end of the season,

or I don't know what, but we've received a lot of emails and a lot lot of people getting in touch with us about the Jaguars.

Of course, the Jacksonville Jaguars, owned by the Khan family, specifically Shad Khan.

Tony owns a piece of it because

Shad owns a piece of Tony, I guess. Yeah,

you know,

he was involved in the procreation.

But in the middle of getting all these emails, and I know you told me before you have one,

Christopher Mad Dog Russo, who I grew up listening to on WFAN and New York York, Sports Radio 66, Mike and the Mad Dog every day. Now, he's no relation, right? No relation, no relation whatsoever.

And he has had a long career, very outspoken, entertaining. He went off on the cons,

specifically the dad, but mentioned Tony the kid on ESPN. So

what have you seen? What do you know? Well, I saw the clip where he just

had a conniption fan. And I'm not a New York sports radio

aficionado listener or whatever. So I wasn't really, you know, up to date on this whole thing as far as who the people are on this show or whatever.
But obviously, it's a mainstream sports show.

And he was drooling about how bad the Jaguars were, how badly they'd been mismanaged. You know, Shad Khan did this, the other thing, but then when he got to, and the kid,

it's the same thing that Nick con said right the kid is that how

tony is known amongst

the the other the mainstream pro sports franchises the hollywood people the deal makers whatever the kid

it's jeff wilpon i've been saying this all along the father bought the team the kid came along as part of the deal

But unless the kid, and there's been lots of them in history, Tony's the latest, unless they break out and show they have ability or understanding, somehow they get it right,

then you got a problem. There's been a lot of rich kids who think they're brilliant interfering in various sports franchises for as far back as I could remember.

Well, you know,

hold on, I made a note here. Ah,

he said his kid is the head of stat data. What's he ever done in football? It's like the football equivalent of who'd he ever beat

and and he this guy actually said the mad dog oh i don't like to say that other name nobody is worse than con

he's he said he's won 10 games a year once in 13 years as owner of that team see my favorite thing because he also you know chris russo has a speech impediment and he like screams and sometimes he just, I guess, throws in words.

The way he said it, he goes.

Now, let's face it now, if he he wasn't a noted commentator and personality on this show, if he was on a street corner, you might call some type of city authority. He is by far

horrendous.

That one got me because I didn't expect horrendous to be the next word. He is by far horrendous.

Horrendous by far. That's, you know, you can't hardly come back from that.

But is that the football people are offended too, right?

For their football, like we are for our wrestling. If you're someone

who has been working in football for 20 years, for 10 years, whatever it may be, but you've been working behind the scenes, you've worked your way up,

you do that because you actually have some talent, some skill, and there's someone who has just been placed in a role where they actually think they know more than everyone else.

Don't ever forget that Tony truly believes he knows more about wrestling and how to do it than everyone else and he knows more about football and the statistics and all this than everyone else did he start the statistics company or did he buy it

and we don't hear anything about that anymore but if he's doing the statistics for a team that continually fails But besides, how is he booking all these shows and making all his deals in the wrestling business and doing anything with the football team, still running a statistics company?

I mean, he might own something.

I'm sure they have plenty of fucking companies.

But

like you said, we've been getting emails also. And then the mad dog had gone off about this thing and brought it to the attention of the mainstream sports world.
But we got an email from.

He said, why don't they kill the owner?

He recommended that they kill the owner.

I don't know that we need to go that far, ladies and gentlemen.

See, now a lot of other people say inflammatory things on the programs, and we always seem to, that's because we have such a wide listenership. But anyway,

Zach,

I'm just going to give this man's name as Zach. I don't want anything to be held against him in a court of law.
But he wrote at about the same time as this commentary was going on with Mad Dog.

As a die-hard fan of both wrestling and the NFL, I loved the videos you've posted in the past talking about the Urban Meyer fiasco.

That was the coach of the Jaguars that they fired for all kinds of stuff.

And how awful Shad Khan is doing as the owner of the Jaguars. Now that their season has ended, I think it's appropriate to tell you from a football fan perspective how terrible of a job Shad is doing.

compared to what you guys already know about his son's wrestling company.

So here's terrible being used, but not beyond horrible yet. By far, horrendous.
By far, horrendous.

A lot of people don't think it'd be like it is, but it do. I'll nail that one of these days.

Before this season, Shad said in an interview, make no mistake, this is the best team assembled by the Jacksonville Jaguars ever.

They ended up going 4-13,

the fifth worst team in the NFL by draft order. I'm not familiar with the technical terms.

And that matches up with Tony as Rome was burning, as shit was breaking down, whenever the things are cratering.

Everything's great. Everything's great.
This is the best show we've ever done. We're on the best run of shows.
I think we're on the best run of shows we've ever done.

Let's go to the next question from WrestleKiss or whoever the fuck's out there. Wrestle Kiss.
Well, you know.

Hey, I'll tell you what, they get some scoops. There must be some kind of pillow talk over at WrestleKiss.

But anyway,

with a season that bad, Zach continues, after very high expectations set by the owner, you'd expect changes within the organization.

On Monday, they fired the head coach Doug Peterson, a former Super Bowl champion coach with the Philadelphia Eagles. However, they kept the general manager Trent Balky, B-A-A-L-K-E.
Balky?

Who was the GM that was responsible for hiring both Meyer and Peterson,

as well as building the team in the way it has been built in terms of personnel? Most, if not all, Jags fans hate the decision to bring Balky back.

They were balking all over the state on Balky. You've heard about this, haven't you, Brian? I have.
And you want, honestly, this is the problem. Who's really the GM of that team?

Is this guy a real GM or does he just do what Tony wants? Who's running that team?

Well, to the point that they were upset that during a streamed press conference to announce the firing of Peterson and keeping of Balky, their fans put nothing but clown emojis in the comments section.

During this press conference, Khan said that he would consider firing Balky

if the coaching candidates they interview give him a reason to. He said this while on a Zoom call with Balky.

The guy was sitting right next to him.

I'll be happy to fire this guy if someone gives me a good reason.

And then Balky was looking for all the hands to go up. Okay, since 2012, Khan's first full season after buying the Jaguars, they have by far the worst record in the NFL with an astonishingly bad

64 and 148,

with the next worst team having nine more wins. They've only made the playoffs twice in 13 seasons.

And while they have been consistently one of, if not the worst team in the NFL throughout his tenure, their struggles don't get talked about very often on national sports media outlets, besides the Urban Meyer controversy, or when they made their superstar quarterback walk back to the locker room after a serious ankle injury, because they have the fourth smallest media market, with only Green Bay, Buffalo, and New Orleans being smaller metro populations with an NFL franchise.

And that's, I'm surprised, New Orleans is smaller than Jacksonville

population-wise. That's surprising.

But it's safe to assume that if the cons were doing this badly in a major city instead of the least relevant media market, that there would be people that work for national sports media calling for him to sell the team.

And

apparently, Closey says

there have also been rumors since the start of his ownership that he wants to move the team to London to play at Wembley as they already play two of their 17 games in London every season.

But the NFL has not fully addressed these rumors, possibly because they don't want to ruin their international market by making the UK watch eight or nine games a year of absolutely terrible football.

That was one of the things Chris Mandog Russo said in that thing. He goes, yeah, how are you going to be in a team from London? My mother's English.

The exact quote was, nobody cares about the stupid Jaguars in London.

Well,

they're offended that we call football football, right? Because

of their football. Do they have a good reputation based on film? The idea that they would be the people to bring.

No, remember that those fans are the ones that says he masturbates dogs.

I don't think that's a good relationship. That's right.
I was trying to be nice for the sponsors. I'm not like The Rock.

You think masturbates is nicer than wank?

Well, it's a bigger word. It's okay.
Hold on here a second. Now, see, we go to the market.
I'm not saying wank's going to be in the dictionary. I'm not saying that.

We go to the American Heritage Dictionary.

You can say it on TV if it's in the dictionary.

That's my rule. That's what I've stuck by all these years I've been on television.
So let's see. You got Matt.
You got

50 years. Mastodon.
Mastodon.

Wait a minute.

Who wrote this? Masturbate.

Masturbate. Yeah.

Baited or baiting to excite one's own or another's genitals by means other than intercourse.

Also, masturbation and masturbator.

Now let's see about wank.

Now we go over here that we got we got wall to wall. We got warden.

It'll be somewhere in between. Wayne, Wangle, want.
No wank, wanton,

immoral or unchaste, lewd,

unrestrainedly excessive,

frolicsome or playful. Well, hey, see, all those things can work for you.
According to Merriam-Webster, wank

is chiefly British slang, usually vulgar. Aka wanker

means to masturbate.

Well, see, it's vulgar, though.

And who would know better about vulgarity garrity than miriam webster she was a fucking prudish old bitch well if i click masturbation does it say it's vulgar no it ain't it says it's natural everybody does it

sometimes to other people by instrumental manipulation occasionally by sexual fantasies or by a various combination of these agencies what the fuck in a definition is this

see i told you miriam didn't want to talk about sex. Well, let's get off Miriam and let's get back to Tony.

Get off Miriam. She don't want you on her.
You know, again, this ties to wrestling. I guess that's really where it all started with the emails about the Jaguars and Fulham.

When you see the issues they've had in AEW,

when you see the way that things have been handled. And again, we say Tony.
Don't forget Mega.

was the Jaguars legal person. Yeah, she was.
She was. And she was having a party over in AEW, and now she's back with the Jaguars.
It's the same group of people that don't know how to manage things.

She had been there for years, and her primary before the AEW gig was primary with the football team. And as you said, that's where she's back.
And again, Chris Russo said it, and I've said it before.

He's made billions with that patent. Give him credit for his creation.
for owning the patent and for having balls of steel not to sell the patent.

Because, you know, he's been offered billions billions for it. He must have been.

It's worth a lot of money. They've used that money to buy a soccer team or a football team, an American football team or a football team, whatever you want to think,

a statistics company, apparently, a wrestling company.

What is lighting the world on fire? You know, you can own an NFL team and that opens all the doors and... You're almost guaranteed you're going to make money.

That's like the attitude at AEW. It's like, well, Tony made the money.

Tony's made the money with the media rights. Yeah, but the actual content is bad and people aren't coming.

And with Jaguar, with Jaguars, with the Jaguars, it appears that their fans and the Fulham fans and the frustrated wrestling fans

all understand each other.

But there are all kinds of

football soccer teams and all kinds of football football teams. But unfortunately, there's only a couple of wrestling companies.

And so I think it's more impactful besides the local market, Jacksonville or

Fulham.

Is that a town, Fulham? Are they the Fulham Fighters or whatever? The name of the arena I know is like Craven Cottage. Well,

these Craven cowards hiding in their cottage. No wonder they never win a game.

But the point is that besides the local area there, there's all kinds of other football teams and soccer teams and everything.

But we got to suffer under this on national TV over here, all of us as a group, as a family of wrestling fans, as a community, as the kids say.

Well, Jim, speaking of which, let's get it out of the way before we have some more fun. AEW Dynamite this past week, they were in.

Where were they? I should know this. They were in

Clarksville, Tennessee. Clarksville, Tennessee, putting Clarksville on the map.
I guess next to the Seafood. Is that what I know Clarksville for? But no, that's Clarksville, Indiana.

And it's a long way, it's a long way in between.

Well, Clarksville, Tennessee. You just mentioned it.
They were in a community. They weren't really in a city.
They were in a community. No, Clarksville.

I actually had feedback on Twitter that they got mad at me.

And when I said

facetiously or smart alicada,

I don't know, several weeks ago, that Clarksville was suburban Nashville, quote unquote. I said, that may be how they try to sell it.
No, Clarksville is 50 miles away from Nashville. And they've got

this new building out there now. And,

you know, it

looked like they had more people than normal because they're in a smaller building, but still they didn't fill up the smaller building. But they're in Clarksville.
So that,

you know, there's if everybody in town came, they'd have a hard time.

Tony Schiavone was on assignment boating with Walter Cronkite, I suppose.

So we had commentary from Sock Face, Daddy Mac, and Ian Ricobani.

Yeah, can I say something here at the start? Please do. Not having Schiavone there was the best thing possible.

And he just acted like a fool on Twitter with this Chris Charlton thing, telling him on behalf of AWGFY.

Okay.

What the fuck?

Okay.

But he sucks so bad that it was just a great thing not to have him on air. Excalibur's awful.
Excalibur sitting next to Ian Ricobani has further exposed Excalibur.

And the feedback we've heard from AEW fans

who liked Excalibur, who were sick of him,

I think that's a bigger audience than people realize. I'm not saying Ian's perfect, but Ian may be the better person right now to have on that show.
Get Excalibur on a Ring of Honor or something.

Something. Well, yeah, because

he's a legitimate, real, normal person

who is a competent broadcaster

who knows his shit and could appeal to a younger demographic because he's younger.

And instead, you got this fucking guy with

these fantasies that he was a known wrestler by anybody except his immediate family, wearing his fucking clown outfit and doing the same commentary he used to do on VHS tapes in his fucking basement.

That's where he's progressed to in life.

He's 40 fucking something years old, right?

I believe so. He hadn't figured because his friends found an angel and got a money

mark to oh, here, hire this guy. He does great commentary for PWG VHSs.
The fuck.

But

at this point, he's not close to their biggest problem, but point register.

The opening match.

I'm not going to really talk about what they did in these matches. I'm talking about what they fucking could have done.
Or why did they do this thing?

Will Osprey versus Buddy Matthews.

And we've said said before, Buddy Matthews has the size, has the physique, his work physically, the performance of the moves, and etc., his look, they're all great.

Fucking, he's a caveman.

He's in a rotten group. He's been booked horribly and has the worst heel name ever.
Those are the drawbacks.

But you have this match, and Buddy Matthews is in the house of Bach

with Malachi Black and Brody King. Would you ever see them together? Not that I'm complaining,

but he's been presented as a heel pretty much the whole time, except when for some reason the house of black were fighting the other heels. And who knows?

Who can remember anything that happened in this company past three months ago anyway? Maybe.

But here they've got this match. So this jacked-up

monster in this heel group could

beat the shit out of Will Osprey

and have Will Osprey sell like Ricky Morton, but have him fight from underneath and get the fans behind him and use his babyface athleticism and his

tricky, flippy, snazzy moves to foil

the strength and power of the bigger guy and triumph possibly by outsmarting him.

Or

they could do what they did.

They They could have a match like their physical equals.

Do the odd combination of square dancing and gymnastics that all these guys do. Buddy Matthews can pretend to be a luchador.

Osprey can land on his feet from multiple directions for no apparent purpose. You can have no discernible baby face or heel.

You can get no heat for the fucking struggle itself, but you can get the fans to just register and pop on the moves.

And you can do moves back and forth with no rhyme or reason just because you can do them and have nobody come out of the match better.

Because since they both did the same shit

equally as good,

and Buddy looks twice as good physically,

they ought to just put Buddy over and pay him the millions of dollars they're paying Osprey.

If it's just

moves,

right?

I think

they were both baby faces, it seemed like here, and that's what this is. And I think that's what you're going to get with Will Osprey.

That'll be the thing that differentiates AEW's top guy or one of their top guys from WWE. It's not about stories, although the fans who love them will tell you, it really is the stories.

They're just, they're really deep. And, you know, he's afraid Fletcher's going to go to his kids' school.
That's not a story. That's stupidity.

But But yeah, it's going to be when you see him against Buddy Matthews, it's not going to be

the bigger, more muscular, clearly, you know, visually, just way more muscular guy than 99% of the people on Earth, let alone Will Ospreay.

But with a Will Ospreay match, it's a move-for-move, spot-for-spot match. And Matthews is out there doing the same foolishness.

And risking he's going to hurt himself.

But they both kicked out of a half dozen finishes without

seconds later showing ill effects. And then the finish was,

Matthews is on his knees in the middle of the ring, and Osprey backed up in the corner and took off his elbow pad and stood there preparing or squatted there preparing like he was shitting in the woods.

And Matthews looks up at him and stares at him.

The camera, the close-up, sees him staring at Osprey for 10 full seconds before Osprey takes off and runs and hits him with that shitty looking little elbow deal

with Matthews not trying in any way to move.

You say, oh shit, this guy's going to run and hit me. Fuck, I wish I could do something about it, but I can't.
Bam.

One, two, three.

Same match every other one of these morons has.

Buddy could be a player with a name and a gimmick and a presentation.

I don't know why that Osprey uses that elbow as a finish when it's the 27th

most impressive thing he does.

And then

the condescending promo.

He gets the microphone and tells the people, give it up for Buddy Murphy. And he's Buddy Matthews.
He forgot his fucking name.

And that's, you know what? That's like one of those minor league things you hate to see happen because the last thing you wanted people to think about is Buddy Murphy.

That's worse than Buddy Matthews. Buddy Matthews is bad enough.
They don't even own that name. So, yeah, that's a shitty slip-up.

Well, but the point is, he forgets his name, and he normally speaks like a kidnap victim with a tube sock stuck in his mouth. I'm talking about Osprey, but he's garbage and he's after the match.

But his promo was to say how good that Buddy is and that he can win gold too if he works hard.

Buddy looks like he should eat this little piss ant.

And Osprey is condescending like he's speaking to a fucking monkey.

And then Osprey offers his hand and says, if you ever need someone in your corner, I'm your guy.

And the heel that he just beat reaches out and shakes his hand. I'm like, what the fuck? Every other match, the heels get heat afterwards, but here they don't.

So Matthews, and if they're trying to turn him babyface, why'd they bring him out and fucking beat him?

And then have one of the other babyfaces pat him on the head like, good kid, you'll be something someday.

Matthews got beat flat, told he can be a champion if he works hard, and then shook the hand and thanked the guy who beat him and told him that. Should he just go away now?

Well, apparently, Malachi Black is on the way out.

At least that's the presumption. I'll be honest, if I'm WWE, I don't know if I would want him, but I guess they want him.

I don't know why. I haven't seen anything that made me think this guy needs more TV time.

And maybe him leaving is the key to Buddy and Brody

getting new names,

but getting some more TV time and getting used better because they don't have Malachi Black holding them down anymore. How is he using somebody better to bring him out and beat him?

And switch him, apparently, babyface without actually doing it.

So so nobody knows what the fuck to think they've kind of slowly weirdly been turning brody king and buddy babyface for a little while buddy's been getting good reactions for a little while

and of course he lost here in the opening match

i mean he looked good in them they both look good in there and the fans love osprey the problem is you keep starting these shows out with osprey

It's hard for anyone else on the show to compete with what he's doing. He's kicking out of everything and doing everything.

And then he starts to show.

They actually might could have

just put Buddy over, maybe made something out of him there. Like I said, they could pay Buddy Osprey's money because he's bigger and looks better and can do all the same fucking moves.
So,

and he can probably talk better, unless he can get that tube sock out of his fucking gullet,

bruv.

Anyway, then we came to a Tokyo Dome package where there were

random highlights and comments from the talent, and most of the time they could only shoot up to show the roof of the Tokyo Dome because, as we mentioned, there weren't a lot of fans in a building that size.

But here's the thing. The Buckaroos were wrestling there with no explanation of why they won't show up here.
They were just holding their...

The tag team belts from over there and said, well, we might bring these

to AEW. That's all we need.

And then there were highlights of Kenny wrestling,

including diving off of something

and saying, I'm back.

And then he came out later on in the show to milk whether he was going to be able to come back or not. Did you catch that?

I did.

What the? They just showed him diving off. He looked like fucking Johnny Weismueller diving off a goddamn waterfall in a Tarzan movie.

Then an hour later, he limps out like, I don't know whether I can keep up with this or not.

Anyway, then let's move on to the

private party, shall we? You want to go to a private party, Brian?

Oh, not this one, but

we could talk about the private party. I guess it's not even their segment, their involvement in this next segment.
Well, it was such a private party, they had to pay the girls to come to it.

Private party came out on stage, and there was the table set up with champagne and the ice buckets, and five strippers from Nashville.

I give them the benefit of the doubt.

They may be from Clarksville because I've been to Clarksville in a while, but I don't think when I was there the last time that they actually allowed stripping in Clarksville, so I think they had to bring them up from Nashville.

Is that true? One of them had half her head shaved. Is that true? They didn't allow stripping in Clarksville?

Oh, are you kidding?

There's tons of places in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, where there's various laws against any nippleage being shown or any touching being done or any garments being removed or whatever.

There's all kinds of... This is a Bible belt here, pal.
What the heck? I just figured there was a Mons Venus everywhere.

No, there wasn't even the Mons Mercury, which was considerably hotter.

So they have this whole stage set up, and the fans barely care at all that these people are speaking.

They're trying to celebrate them winning the tag team title and they've got the guy with the velvet rope to let people in and everything.

And the people are just sitting there and there's kind of conversations rumbling in the, in the arena.

Should it be the same security guard, the same one we see every week walking Moxley and his friends out to ringside, the same one we see.

escorting any of the women anywhere, the same one we see anytime anyone's in the crowd? Should it be the same guy to be the guy with their velvet rope? Yes, he's got kids to put through school.

He needs to pick up these extra jobs wherever he can.

You know how much this gig pays to stand there and let some fucking morons in through that fucking rope?

And it's easy work if you can get it.

Anyway, they do this and nobody cares. And then the music plays, and here comes MVP and Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley.

And then the people wake up and they start reacting because here's some stars that carry themselves and they look

impressive.

And again, it's just a difference in the overall presentation. And the fans reacted.
If you notice when the music hit for them, it's a different kind of pop that everyone else is getting.

Not to say it's a Rogue Warrior pop or anything, but. Well, yeah, but it's not like the giggle or it's not like,

it's like, oh, shit, here we go. You know, more type of,

we're going to get serious. Somebody's going to get their ass kicked around here.

And MVP goes in and builds them up like he's putting them over, putting the guys over. Hey, what you've done, and blah, blah, blah.
We want to party too. We want to dray.
Let's have a shot, whatever.

And they're

again, private party, whether they realized it or not. He's like, well, the one guy was like, oh, yeah, let me get you a glass.

Like they immediately become subservient, but they're just kids and people can tell

and they don't have it yet.

And

MVP does the deal. Let's all raise a glass and drink to Private Party the tag team title and to the Hurt Syndicate taken the tag team title.

And then Lashley poured the drink in their ice bucket and they

fucking walked off and Private Party stood there and took it.

I am a hurt syndicate fan, so I got a kick out of it. But on the other hand, should the babyface tag team

be treated like that and then react like that?

Well,

yes and no.

If they were the top babyface team, which let's face it, they got no business being the world tag team champions of a national company right now at this stage of their game and the way they've been presented.

And also, look at no, they get their fucking ass kicked if they will fuck with these guys.

The problem I have it being for the tag team title if it had been some middle card team and the fucking hurt syndicate comes out there and does that

yeah that's getting the hurt syndicate over because they're going to draw you some money but the fact that these guys the tag team champions it was like oh

this is the state of it but no they should have done that because private party's not going to fucking sell any goddamn They're not going to sell pussy on a troop train, much less tickets to a wrestling event, see them fight Hurt Syndicate.

Hurt Syndicate needs to win the fucking belts and move on. You know, we haven't really talked about that.
We've talked so much about Lashley as a single or Shelton as a single.

Them as a tag team, it's pretty interesting because that's a tag team division that's dead.

And

instantly, it has a new look

and a new kind of feel.

I don't really want to see FTR against anyone right now. FTR against a Hurts Syndicate,

that's interesting. You know,

that would be tremendous. Yeah.

For professionals, say what you want.

And that's also, they're going to have a problem because who's believable against Lashley?

The fucking land of Lilliput here. So as a team, you can do certain things.

But anyway, but yeah, but anyway, private party man, more on him in a minute. That's what they should do.
Who could stop Lashley? Who is there that could stop this man's dominance?

You can build that forever. Well, but no, they're too busy trying to sell that fucking white boy from Cincinnati as the toughest man on the earth.

But they went to the ring. The Hurt Syndicate did, and Lashley had a match with Mark Briscoe.
And here was another lesson to be learned about booking.

Well, and there's been several. The time that Mark could have been one of the top two or three babyfaces in his company and done him some good is long over thanks to this shit booking.

So he might as well put Bobby Lashley over. And,

you know, at least that's something positive for the future of the company. But

even Bobby mostly beat the shit out of Mark Briscoe at the start and through the match as he should to get over. But the people

feel so bad for the way that Mark has been treated in the booking that they don't want to see him get the shit kicked out of him. And they just sit there.

But they book themselves into a corner because they can't at this point in Lashley's trajectory have a competitive match.

So

finally, Mark did a dive, and the fans woke up. And he did another dive, and a froggy bow, a one count.

And then

Lashley speared him, chokeslammed him, and hurt locked him. Ding, ding, ding.

And, you know, again, it's, it's, it's a waste of Mark

because of what, what, where Mark should be and could have been in the pecking order, but the way the way it is now, what the fuck.

And then they go for more heat,

and the private party comes in, which both of them had chairs and just stood up and stood there with the chairs. Like, please, please don't make us use these.
Please do not make us engage. And

MVP and the guy, they just stand up and MVP is, okay, no problem, kids. We'll go on and we'll leave.

They step out slowly and private parties stand there with chairs in hand, dicks in hand. They They didn't know.

But again, you don't, you know,

even the two of them with chairs,

Lashley and Shelton and MVP would destroy them. So,

but that was that. What'd you think?

I thought it was all right. Again, I'm intrigued about the idea these guys will be in the tag team division.

Hopefully on top of the tag team division, opens up a whole new set of possibilities for matches and everything else. Mark Briscoe,

you know, they've had missed opportunities. And also,

when there was a time after that,

they put him in the conglomeration. Yeah.

Which were four guys standing in the back doing goofy interviews while the commentator or the announcer, Renee, mostly, played along, laughed along, had a good time with these wacky wrestling characters.

They've done no favors to Mark Briscoe.

And

that's that. But, you know,

you have to wonder, like Lashley and Shelton, I think everyone kind of knows they're badasses.

And unlike an MVP,

they're clean-shaven.

I've never seen Bobby Lashley with a mustache. Nope.
I've never seen Shelton Benjamin with a goatee.

Well, I do have one picture of Shelton with a sheep, but not a goat. Well, again, that's not what I said.
That's what Jim Cornette said.

But what we are saying is, if you want people to think you're a badass, or if you just want to look good for your lady, or if you just hate facial hair, you need to shave your face, and we know someone who can help you do just that.

Well, actually, they will. For an extra charge, they will send somebody to your house.

All you have to do is bend over your sink and just face the mirror, and they will actually do the shaving operation for you.

I don't know who they is, but no, they won't. Well, it's a young woman named Gladys.

And Gladys Areola, she advertises on the internet, and happy endings are optional. But if you just want the starter set, folks.

Listen, again, none of this has anything to do with what we're talking about. We're not talking about Gladys's Areola.
We're talking about Harry's.

Well, that's because you don't want your lips and cheeks to be hairy, or elsewhere, Gladys may not be able to give you her Areola. But I'll tell you what, right now, folks, Harry's has a...

an incredible deal for all of you men out there that need to shave your face on a regular basis and even potentially some women.

We know that there are some circus performers out there that listen to the program. Well, right now they've got an incredible $13 trial set available for just $3.

Now, when you go in a supermarket or any type of modern day store and you try to buy these

engineered multi-blade cartridges in any of the modern big league brands, you will find that you'll have to fill out a credit app.

They're attached to the shelf with a ball and chain, and you've got to go through some type of demagnetizer just to get out of there without being shot on sight by the attendants. No.

Well, I've gone through that. There might be bigger crime in my area.
But it's a pain in the ass.

Well, Harry's will send you the same type of stuff right through the mail where all you have to do is fight anybody that happens to be in between you and your mailbox.

And I'm talking about German engineered blades made in their own factory that stay sharp longer because we know those Germans, they are tough.

And you've got a five-blade razor that goes or the cartridge goes right onto the end of the weighted handle with the ergonomically designed

handle on there so you can you can you can hold this thing with like two fingers And while you're giving somebody else the finger, and it just, it smoothly goes all over your face, eliminating, it's like the hair just dissolves away.

And they've got customizable delivery options for scheduled refills as low as $2.

We're talking half or less what you pay for the big brands. And they've got the skin-softening body wash, Brian, and scents like

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If you want to smell like stone, folks, you can't take it for granted.

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Based on scent? Well, that's where they can smell you coming. Plus, hair and other grooming products that fit your unique look and needs.

If you have a unique look, they have grooming products that will help you keep that look up. If you want to keep it for whatever reason, you want to keep that look.
So, if you look like Pampiro Furpo,

no worries, they'll help you. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

And right now, as I mentioned, you can get this trial set. That's the razor, the handle, or the razor blades, I should say.
It's all part of a big razor, folks.

But the razor blades cartridge, the handle, the gel,

and a travel cover for just $3.

It's normally $13, but we're going to get you a deal. Harry's.com slash JCE.

Harry's.com slash JCE. See what I did there? The razor slash.

You didn't do that. What are you talking about? Well, as far as you know, I did.
What did you do? You read the copy?

No, you did not. A lot of people didn't know what to call it before.
They called it crooked line. And I came up with, well, I just slashed it.
What do you slash one more time?

I slashed the prices of the Harry's trial set down from $13 to $3. If you go to Harry's.com slash JCE.

All right. Well, let's go back to about four days of growth, AEW Dynamite.
Oh, boy. So then we had the long-awaited Casino Gauntlet match.

They had another casino gauntlet for a shot at the world heavyweight title held by Dick the Boozer, the world's most dangerous plumber,

that will happen next week in the Boozers' hometown of Cincinnati, where,

from what we are told and what we are seeing here now on this go-round,

nobody gives a shit in Cincinnati that Jon Moxley lives there or is from there. He never draws in Cincinnati.
Is he the only

majorly pushed wrestler in the world that doesn't draw in the place he lives? Yeah, he's the worst kind of heel, an unknown heel

in his hometown.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they've done better crowds in Cincinnati.
It feels like they've gone to Cincinnati a lot.

Well, remember, they were supposed to be in Louisville, but they ixnade that and they moved to Cincinnati on about two weeks' notice. Jon Moxley's segments have killed the ratings.

Jon Moxley's segments have caused AEW fans to just pray for it to end. The amount of people I've seen praying for Kenny Omega to just win the title and the Moxley stuff to go away.

And by the way, I'm on that team now. Just give Omega the AEW title.
Let's go back to what it was a few years ago. This Moxley stuff is terrible.
He's a heel that you wouldn't want to support.

Why would anyone in his hometown want to support him?

It's like when

Nick Dinsmore was at Ohio Valley Wrestling, every time we would have a spot show at his old high school,

it would draw five, six, seven hundred people, right? Coming because, you know, Nick had,

you know, become something of a draw in the local scene in the wrestling business. And then after he

becomes the Eugene and he's on national TV, we ran the same show there to 200 people. Because, like, what fucking school would want to claim that they

fucking produced this guy? Here's our former valedictorian right here coming out. Yeah, here he comes.
He's waving at the crowd. So that killed that.

Anyway,

I'm not even going to... This thing went half an hour plus.

Jay White and Hangnail Page started out, and then came Wheeler Useless, and then came Ricochet. and

when ricochet came out they played swerves music at first and then switched it over so the fans were extra pissed

but apparently the the the fans are enjoying booing ricochet maybe not in the classic money drawing sense but just telling him what a fucking putz he is yeah it's interesting the other thing i thought while watching this is like This whole casino match, it's like one skinny guy after another.

Well, speaking of which, number five was Adam Cole.

And bless, and I like Adam. I enjoyed working with him in Ring of Honor.
I thought he was a

very talented young man. And the promos, and they had a thing going in NXT.
I don't know what's the matter. What's happening? And again, if it's an illness or some physical issue,

then I apologize, but

what is going on here? Not even, certainly he's had no,

he must just not give a shit about any input in his booking because it's been spectacularly bad.

But what the fuck are they trying to accomplish here now? If he doesn't need to be in the ring, should he concentrate on trying to get better?

If there's something to get better from, I don't know what's going on.

And speaking of not knowing what was going on, number six was Danny Garcia

out to complete silence.

I don't think they knew who he was.

And then... And another really skinny guy.

It was a noticeable difference from this

to NXT or WWE, anything you see. Everyone was a slight guy.

Slight. I was slight.
Love to be. They were very emaciated.
Not emaciated, but just slight. Like, no one is imposing in any sense of the word.

Well, here we go then. Because number seven, very integral part of this, Powerhouse Hobbes.
Now he's impossible. Friend Willie Hobbs.
Now he's imposing.

And he got in and threw everybody around. And it woke the people up when

he would do that. This went across the nine o'clock hour, but it was 20 minutes and it was still going on.

But when Hobbes was beating everybody up,

I thought, you know, they could get him over if he wins this, but then he'd have to wrestle Moxley. And I said, oh, fuck, I don't want to wish that on him.

But then, more on this in a moment,

Roderick Strong.

And then Lance Archer came in. And

again, a few years ago, without the Jake Roberts thing and the beating up the production assistants and the here today, gone tomorrow, and all these other things, you might could have got something out of Lance.

But right now, he detracted. from Hobbes being the biggest guy in the match.
And Hobbes versus Archer did neither guy any good

because they both have to be big and

invincible, and nobody's going to tell Archer. Apparently,

fucking fly for Hobbs because he's our horse in this race. So

then Kyle O'Reilly.

And then finally, and remember, he had said he was going to be in this.

Jeff Jarrett.

The music plays, and here comes Jeff. And the people really woke up for pretty much the first time 25 minutes in.

Hey, listen.

Despite that email you got, it may be 50 miles outside of Nashville, but that was a Jeff Jarrett crowd. Well, yes, because it's still the Nashville TV market.

And most of those people probably came, to be honest, from Nashville.

And because Clarksville ain't that big a town.

And besides that, he's been on television here for almost 40 years next year.

And you know, because he's in Nashville and he's business-minded, I'm sure he was doing some local publicity.

So, and

they wanted to see him in the goddamn casino gauntlet. They probably wanted to see him win it, but maybe if somebody eliminated him last, they might get some heat for doing it.

Or any of it, but as he's on the way to the ring, Wheeler Useless, of all people,

jumped him from behind in the aisleway

and they fought to the back.

And Jeff Jarrett never got in this goddamn match, never even made it to the ring.

And you could tell the fans were fucking hot,

and they still had to watch more of this bullshit match.

So that's now squashed any response they're going to get for anything. And two minutes later,

Hobbs spine-bustered Kyle O'Reilly.

You're going to win a big big fucking match. You're going to win it over Kyle O'Reilly that hasn't beaten anybody since he beat his fucking sister playing fucking checkers when he was in sixth grade.

He spine-bustered O'Reilly one, two, three. And it,

so they did put him over, but after they pissed the fans off that they didn't get to see Jeff and it was a flat finish. And now he's got to wrestle Dick the Boozer.
And that's going to suck

because Moxley can have a good match and he won't put this guy over. So his push is going to last all of one fucking week.

What has Hobbes done

to these people?

And then... Did you see the promo afterwards? Yes, Renee Moxley Good gets in the ring and asks Hobbes about the match next week against, she doesn't say this, but against her husband.

She just refers to him against Jon Moxley.

And Hobbes, Hobbes can talk,

which makes it even more shocking they can't figure out how to do anything with him.

And he said he plans on shocking the world and making Moxley his bitch into his wife.

So Hobbs wants Renee's job.

And then

Hobbes left the ring.

And we're 30 minutes into this fiasco at that point. And as he's on the way back,

Jeff Jarrett comes back out and shakes Hobbs' hand

and then starts walking to the ring. And the announcers don't even mention Jeff's presence in the building, even though he's on the monitor on the camera shot.

They go to a package on the history between Christian and Hook

as Jeff is meandering back to the ring with a hang dog expression.

Your thoughts before we come back from the break? My thoughts on which part of it exactly? On what the fuck's going on here? That casino match went forever.

I like the idea of Hobbes getting a push. I like the idea of Hobbes getting interview time.

Unless they're going to do Rocky III

and it's going to be like a 90-second thing where he destroys Moxley, it doesn't help him to have a competitive match with Moxley right now.

This is a guy that still needs recovery from, at this point, years

of missed opportunities and bad booking.

Oh, you mean Hobbs needs recovery from Hobbes. I thought you meant Moxley needed recovery from things he's recovered from before.
I don't think anything's going to change there.

So we come back to the ring, and now Ian Ricobani is in the ring with Jeff Jarrett. And

Ian says, well, you know, how you feeling, Jeff, after you didn't get in the goddamn deal. And the crowd cheers him.

And Jeff's whole promo, he starts out, you know, I was wondering, do I still have what it takes? And he got some cheers.

And then

suddenly,

MJ, before he's really said anything,

MJF's music plays and

he comes the ring and they have a face-off and there Ian just slinked off to the corner.

Already before anybody had even spoken to him,

what the

why do the announcers,

why are they treated like whipped puppies and have no credibility? They're the goddamn hosts of the program. Does this happen in the NBA?

But anyway,

then MJF said, hey, Ian Rickaboni, you Bible-thumping prick, get out of my ring.

I didn't know that Ian was a thumper of the Bible, but regardless,

the announcer, that's why they're just jokes to people.

And the only one that they don't talk to like a flunky is the one that really is a fucking flunky, sock face.

So, anyway, this

was long,

and I'm not sure where they're going,

except that I want to see the match instantly because MJF probably, the best match he can have in the company against somebody that won't hurt him is probably Jeff Jarrett.

But MJF wants the belt,

his belt back that he never really lost, but the title picture is complicated.

And one man might be worthy of wearing that belt, Jeff Jarrett.

And of course, MJF said, my dad was a fan of yours when he was a kid.

But MJF reveals that the contract, Jeff signed, the last contract, was for only one year because that was all they would give him.

And so he's got a year to prove that he's still got it. And MJFs, I can help you.

Without my help, you couldn't win a match. But when I help you win the belt, I'm first in line for a title shot.
That's the deal.

And you,

I mean, yeah, they're setting it up, okay, but you already know where this is going. I don't think it's like Jeff is going to give this any consideration.

And Jeff takes the microphone and then he cuts the promo. You learn a lot more from your failures than you do from your successes.
But Max, you're a one-hit wonder.

And he got to people actually chanting one-hit wonder.

This was the only thing, Jeff was the only thing I think people were consistently interested in all night in this building.

And Jeff said, I've been at rock bottom, but I can fight my way back. And you could have entered the gauntlet, but you ain't going to, I'm going to make the most of 2025.

I don't need you, and I ain't buying it. You entitled prick.

And he left.

So

I don't know why they promised

Jeff was going to do something in a building that was wanting to see him do it and then not have him do anything in it.

And

like I said, I'd like to see

MJF against Jeff

just because it'll be a good wrestling match, but I don't know

that's the answer to their box office woes at this point. What's going on here, Brian? And on that topic, real quick, I'll say it here.

According to WrestleTicks, 2,482 tickets distributed for their debut here in Clarksville.

You know,

I said it last week when you were more critical than I thought you would be, actually, about the Jeff Jarrett promo. I said, I'm willing to give it time and see where it goes.

I don't want to see him against Moxley, but the idea of Jeff Jarrett chasing for the title could be something.

MJF

is kind of going down that same road. He's chasing for that title.

And the idea of MJF and Jeff Jarrett doing something together could be good. Now, if last week was Jeff Jarrett saying goodbye to Jay Lethal and Sanjay and the Giant and Karen

for a while.

And we can get just Jeff Jarrett chasing, Jeff Jarrett having an obstacle and someone who's chasing after the same thing fighting him,

it could be good. Yes.
If it's two weeks and then they both just move on to something else, that ain't good.

And by the way, if they're going to have a long-term chase, these two guys and whoever else in the company for the world title,

fingers crossed, it's Kenny Omega, not Jon Moxley, holding that belt. Omega versus MJF?

I'm intrigued by that. Omega versus Jeff Jarrett will be worlds better than Jeff Jarrett versus Moxley.
Again, it's a slow build, it seems. Two weeks, no one's gotten punched in the face.

But they're going somewhere with this. Well, week three is usually where some kind of diabolical thing has to happen.
So we'll see.

Some, some.

What was the goddamn phrase again? Now I've lost it again. Beyond horrid.
Well, and they're doing this at the same time the John Cena thing's happening on Raw. or on WWE overall.

In AEW, how many things are there that guarantee you a title match? If you win the casino match, is that what Darby had? He won the casino match? No, no, he won a casino chip.

Didn't he? Did he win it in the casino gauntlet match or in the casino?

How many do they have every year of those?

I don't know.

You can get a title match anytime. Anytime.
And everybody's got a title, so it doesn't matter.

So do you. But it's speaking of Darby.
So you're not looking forward to MJF, Jeff Jarrett, really? What do you mean?

You know, cutting down on the whole thing.

I just, I don't know what they're doing here.

Again,

get Jeff in the gauntlet.

If you don't want him to win it, let fucking

Hobbs go over some kind of way. But if you want to get some kind of interest going in MJF and Jeff.

with MJF just making a ridiculous proposal that you know Jeff is going to turn down for the pop in the building is not earth-shattering, and we don't know what the fuck's happening here.

But you see, to me, I look at this and I say, here's a couple promising things for the future. MJF Jeff Jarrett doing something if it's done smart, if it's done well.

I want to see the match, yes. I just don't think it's going to help them that much.
Or maybe a series of angles.

I'm just saying, in terms of my personal enjoyment, if they do a series of angles that are actually good and make sense, could be good.

If Lashley and Shelton with MVP are on top of the tag team division, same thing. There's something I'm looking forward to that's good.

So it's a couple positive potential steps in the right direction for AEW. I'm just gun shy.
I don't trust any of this stuff because it always goes to hell.

But you mentioned Darby Allen earlier. You know, he's gone now again.
Is he climbing a mountain or what's he doing? He got kicked down the stairs. Apparently on, what was that?

On Friday or Saturday night. Well, they don't do Friday night anymore.
It must have been Saturday night.

The boozer and company kicked Darby down a flight of stairs in a stairwell in one of the arenas.

And

Darby was so happy when he heard that he was going to get to take that bump that he had him cover it with three different camera angles, including a camera underneath the stairs so you could look up through the stairs.

They were shooting an interview, but just happened to have a cameraman under the fucking stairs.

It's,

and you know that he went in there and go, Tony,

I can take a bump down the stairs. They can kick me down the stairs and I'll go all the way down.
Come on, you remember the work I did at Gum Alley, right? Give me another shot.

And now, so he's off. They say, well, we haven't seen Darby Allen since then.
Well, it ain't even been a week, but still. And we haven't seen Shivani either, coincidentally enough.
Well.

And two tickets were charged to the Cayman Islands. What is going on here? I didn't know that Tony would ever go ahead and just say, heck with it.

I'm going to go to the Cayman Islands with a skateboarder. Fuck Lois and the kids.
His nephew. He calls him his nephew.
Oh, is that what they call it?

When he checks in at the hotel, this is my. Oh, I see.
There's a very, very famous record executive who's still alive, so I can't just come right out and say, who

secretly for years and then eventually announced that he was indeed a homosexual, He had a gay life on the side where he would get like male strippers or playgirl models or whatever it was and fly to the islands with them.

They were his nephew. He had like a fucking dozen nephews in like a few months.

Maybe you have a big family. But we don't mean to insinuate that any of that is all comedy referring to Tony Schiavone because he doesn't have a secret gay life.

He doesn't even have a very happy life. The idea they're doing these things on collision, the kidnapping of the Rock and and Roll Express.

Now Darby's thrown down the stairs. They tried to murder Ed.
I mean, they're just this Moxley stuff is so bad on every show, and no one's reacting to it except the idea that people hate it.

When is Tony Khan going to have the balls to put his foot down? When is Tony Khan going to realize this is bad? Ask Mad Dog Russo.

He is by far horrendous.

By far horrendous. That's it.
I'm going to write that down.

Oh, wait a minute. Can you hear that?

What's that? I got sirens, sirens in the background.

I don't know. I heard the fire engine or something going on.
It's snowing out there. There might be some emergency vehicle trying to get by.

Speaking of

emergencies, can we declare one on poor old Edge?

Good Lord.

Now he's involved with this whole thing with the boozer and company, but also

did you see the shirt he was wearing, Brian?

Yeah, and my opinion is if you can't be edge, you can't be edge. Don't try to be cute and get around it, especially when you're trying to rebrand yourself as something else.

But a lot of people are going to think, well, that fucking moron just doesn't know how to spell legend

because there's no D in legend.

And they're going to say, well, there's somebody that just,

he's illiterate.

But anyway, he put over.

Because that's what wrestling fans want to go out there and be known as. Illiterate.
That illiterate wrestling fan. Oh, come on.
Leave those people alone. No, literally.
Look at his shirt.

He's illiterate.

But he put over how tough he was. He broke his leg.
He came back. He broke his neck.
He came back. I'm thinking

as he's going through this list, I'm thinking, well, fuck, I'll fight this guy. I touch anything.
It's going to fucking snap.

But he said, what can you do to me, Moxley,

that hasn't been done? You hurt Brian Danielson, you hurt Darby Allen, but now the,

you know, what you can't come back from of me, you went after my buddy's FTR.

So you ain't going to do anything to me. And in the Boozers music plays, and here comes Dick and Claudio and Useless, and FTR jumped them, and they have a six-way fight.

Schaefer distracted Edge, and PAC!

PAC showed back up

and hit Edge with the briefcase, and the heels beat up the faces.

And then Moxley put a choke on Edge and choked him out in the middle of the ring again.

Edge only has two friends in his whole fucking company. Nobody else will come out and fight these fearsome people.
We'll just let him kill Edge.

And they go to put the plastic bag over his head. And fada boom, they play Hobbes music.

And Hobbes walks out, and all five of the heels just stepped out with no contact, and that was it.

So

in Moxley's demented mind, he's thinking

that they're showing deference and respect to Hobbes when the four of them, plus the woman that has a weapon in her hand,

get out of the ring. But

in their universe of logic, they've already created, these guys beat up everybody. And every time somebody runs in, they just beat them up some more.

But suddenly, this one guy,

they're not even going to try. They want to build the anticipation.
The next, there is no anticipation.

They gave Hobbes one fucking win out of nowhere, and nobody gives a shit whether Moxley sets himself on fire or not.

And

Edge once again gets his ass kicked. How many times have we seen him just down and out?

Comes out there. He looks so old.
He looks so much older than he is.

And then he does these promos and then he gets his ass kicked.

Moxley and his crew never sell and they never stay down and they're so desperate to get any heat on Wheeler Utah that they always have him as like the first guy to get his ass kicked or jump in.

But this stuff is not connecting. This stuff is not good.
If you wanted to have FTR and Edge make the save, or FTR make the save and they do something, you should have done that.

Then all the baby faces just look like weaklings again.

They repeat the same thing over and over again with Moxley.

Well, but at the same time, you know,

what the fuck?

Maybe Hobbes will get mad and break him in half for real next week. And then we can rejoice.
But poor Edge, maybe that's why he changed his name.

You know, like, fuck it. Can I just go by an assumed name if I'm going to be doing this shit?

Alrighty, then Maria Mae and Harley Cameron. What's the fuck's the matter with them?

Was there something on the show? Because I did not see it. Maria Mae was doing a promo in the back about the upcoming Women's Casino Gauntlet match.

When Harley Cameron came in screeching and overacting, overacting, where it was like she was worse than Tony Storm was a few months ago before she went away and came back with amnesia.

And she's screeching and talking in an accent and overacting. And then they're both...

Can we order either one of these two, some fucking talent? Let me stop you right there.

Harley Cameron.

I would hire her in a second. To do what? To do anything other than wrestling.

To do anything other than wrestling. I just saw a video of her.
You're not going to believe this.

She appeared to be one of the best ventriloquists I've ever seen in my entire life. What? I saw a video, I guess maybe from her cameo someone sent me.
They said, you got to see this?

It was her and a dummy, a puppet, and she was better than Willie Tyler and Lester.

She was really, really good. And then I saw something on TV the other day where she sang a song.
I'm like, man, she's really good. Wrestling may not be her thing, but she's

a talent. I would hire her.

A girl that looks like that who could do ventriloquism?

When the fuck is that ever happening? Well, when are you going to open up a ventriloquism company? I think it's a missed opportunity. I think there's a route.

There's a market for ventriloquism companies. I see a path.
Not for ventriloquist companies, but to promote and manage and really push

a ventriloquist, if it was the right one nowadays.

Can she refrain from acting or trying to act or attempting to act on the wrestling shows? That's my whole thing. It would get her away from wrestling.
Well, you said wrestling.

I thought you meant the physical act rather than the goddamn. I don't know.
No, but my point is, she's a talented person.

And she's trying to display all of her talents that she can on wrestling in the 90 seconds they give her. and it comes across as too much.
She appears to be really talented. It's just,

it's not professional wrestling. It doesn't appear so.
I remain unconvinced.

We shall see if she can throw her voice, if she can make noises without opening her mouth.

Hey, listen, I'll take watching Harley Cameron before I have to watch more of Dick the Boozer and the Boar Horseman any day of the week. Oh,

that's how you do it. Wait a minute.
That's how you do it, ladies ladies and gentlemen.

Boom. They just all went down the stairs.

Alrighty, then. I've got to write that one down.

Okay, well, up next to bore us, a three-way where the winner is the number one entrant in the casino gauntlet to determine a challenger for the women's title. Say that again, Will.

This was a three-way with the winner being number one to enter the casino gauntlet for a winner to get a shot at the women's title. Oh, that's right.

We determined last year that being number one is a good thing because that means you could just pin number two and the match is over and all the surprise people will never come out. There you go.

And we've already established that they will end the fucking match or not put a featured person in the match and piss the fans off.

Knowing your distaste for three-way matches and women's matches, did you watch this? And specifically, did you see the spot that everyone was talking about?

No, I didn't, and I didn't know there was one. Okay.

What was it? Like a slingshot. You know, the slingshot where you take the opponent's legs and you fall back and they sling up.
The boomerang. The boomerang.

Right into Chris Statlander's pussy, who's standing above the. What? Did the girl's head stick in it? They had to call triple-A with a winch to get it out?

She was standing there. The boomerang or the slingshot was done straight up right into the girl.
But did the other girl's head lodge there? I will find you this spot and send it to you.

I can't believe you didn't see this. This is the only thing anyone was sending me for like a day.

I didn't see it.

But it took 15 minutes on the air for this whole thing. And Stadlander beat Tony Storm.
So now that Tony Storm has amnesia, she's a job girl again, starting from scratch.

potentially having crotch rash or whatever's going on with these people. And the other option, it's either amnesia or

timeless Tony Storm is tricking everyone. Her latest role is the role of Tony Storm from a few years ago.
Neither idea is very good. Okay.

But she did say, Tony, she being Tony Storm said that, you know, she did her best, but she's not ready. It's a great honor to be out there and she's going to keep working hard.

What the.

So

amnesia is a hell of a drug. All right, I have a video of the full match.
I'm going to be sending you in a second. I'm trying to find exactly where the

spot I was telling you about took place. There's a lot of action that I'm scrolling right past.
Everyone's down.

Everyone's up.

Everyone's down. Everybody up? Everybody down.
Everybody is high. Everybody is low.
All right. Well, I will find this and send it to you for your opinion, but let's continue on with this.
All right.

Well, because we got a big fucking closing fucking deal here

because Twinkle Toes McFinger Bang is back, baby.

Kenny Olivier, the world's greatest wrestling artist, our old friend,

he is back

and he came out in.

I guess for AEW, it was a snazzy set of street clothes. Hey, that was the healthiest he's looked.
Now that we've seen him after a long hiatus, you realize how long he did not look very healthy.

You know, if he look at his eyes here, it was very different than before he left. He didn't look like two piss holes in a snowbank here.

He kind of looked like he knew where he was and what was going on. He wasn't so frazzled, so

stressed. You know, he probably needs the CBD because he was so stressed.
Well, CB distillery, to be specific. Well, yes.
That's the only place to get it. If you know what you're doing,

he got some some kinny chance. He got some welcome back chance.
He's got a giant gig on his forehead from New Japan. It looks like he got juice with a weed eater.

And

he's telling the story about a year ago I got news. I had diverticulitis.
And, you know,

the doctors.

Said, wrestle again.

If you hadn't come in when you did, you may not have been living. And he's asking the questions, you know, about what his future is going to hold.
He still can't talk.

I think it's bland. I think it's wishy-washy.
I think he's got the phone sex voice, and he sounds as exciting as a librarian.

But basically,

he was milking the people on how bad his health had been and what was next.

And not only did he just wrestle in a Tokyo dome, but they showed footage of him diving off the thing in the highlights from the Tokyo Dome. So where was the mystery here?

There wasn't one. People knew the resolution was going to be when he said, What purpose do I have on this planet?

It's not about the money. It's not about the glory.
What purpose do I have on this planet if I don't have you people cheering me every night? None.

And he got fired up about important it was for him to prove to the fans that he's still the the best. And

right as the overrun is starting, that's when Don Fallus' music plays. And I'm like, oh, God.

And Don came out starting to speak in the entrance. He's on the microphone before he gets a few words out.
Kenny dives out of the ring and just runs down there, jumps him, starts wailing on him.

And here comes Lance Archer and Brian Cage, and they pull Kenny off and throw him in the ring. And here comes Kyle, Kyle Felcher.

And they beat up Kenny. And Cage,

I guess they're going to try again with this fucking guy. He gives him the gut shot.
Boom. Oh, my God, the diverticulitis.

And then here comes Will Osprey's music, and he runs out with a chair and runs the heels off.

Okay, so is there going to be some kind of,

you know, super power alignment here? The original big flashy baby face and the new big flashy baby face.

But then, Osprey, when he runs the heels off, then him and Kenny have a face-off and a stare-down.

And the announcer is like, oh, shit, and they do nothing. But

why would they be mad at each other? Because Kenny's been gone since before Osprey got here.

The only

Japan again, oh, they were mad in Japan. Who gives a shit? Nobody knows that.

So

instead of shooting an angle to tease a match with Kenny and one of these heels managed by Don, they put the fucking

attention on the match between Kenny and the guy that just saved Kenny from getting his ass kicked by other people.

Normal people watching this are going to go, what the fuck is going on here?

And that was the show. I liked Omega charging Don Callis right away.

That was something I didn't expect. And I thought that was a nice little touch.
He really hates this guy who tried to stab him with a screwdriver.

You should have seen the other time he tried to stab him with that old-fashioned. But if you look at the state of AEW right now,

I don't care what you have planned. If you have Kenny Omega,

why wouldn't you have him come back and do a promo saying, I'm here to save the company, I'm going to end this Moxley shit, and immediately go to that and end it?

Because I don't think it's going to help Kenny Omega if that's the end goal, if he's going to be bogged down with the Callis family again now.

No one said, I want Kenny Omega to return to team with Osprey against the Callis family. And you shouldn't do Osprey Omega.

If you have bigger plans, and you got to get the belt off Moxley immediately. So that's my theory.

You think, is it just everybody telling Tony, not everybody, but a lot of people telling Tony, we just don't want to be involved with Moxley. Just we'll do something over here.

Because you know, he listens to those type of things. I think with Jon Moxley, it comes down to Jon Moxley wanting to do something with someone else.

And everyone else at the company, it's presumed, would be involved with something with Moxley, unless he didn't want to work with them.

The Boer Horseman.

It's the worst stable. Their fans don't care about him.
Someone said, oh, you didn't hear them booing Wheeler Yuta. Give me a fucking break.
Yeah, yeah.

You're never going to convince me at this present time that Wheeler Yuta is over as a heel. They resent the push he's getting because he looks like a fucking child.
He has no muscle mass.

He has no size to him. And he's getting shoved down everyone's throat.

It's not the same. It's not Dominic Mysterio Heat.

When you're at the Macy's parade and from a side street comes a dump truck full of manure and blows over the fucking Smurf float and covers everybody in shit. They boo that truck too.

That doesn't mean they want to see it again.

What are your thoughts, though? If you have Kenny Omega right now, the state of AEW,

what would you do coming out of the gate? Do you build the something with him or do you try to go right to it? Well, no,

they've established that he's a vice president. They just said that.
He's still one of the EVPs. That's right.
That's right.

So just half the company, including all of the wrestlers that have been acknowledged to be executive vice presidents in the company, are either not present or completely ignoring this fucking crazy lunatic that's trying to take over the company.

So how to and

Tony Kahn

has yet to make any comment, right, about

on the program, about Moxley or the Death Riders' intentions,

Even though

when his own EVPs gave him the fucking flippy Meltzer Powell driver on television and it is so bad that he had to wear the neck brace to the NFL draft,

he was all over commenting about that. But this is a guy who doesn't even have an EVP position and a band of followers he's got trying to take over the whole company and beat up all the babyfaces.

Tony has nothing to say about it.

The guys who work for him either don't come to work or like shows up like Kenny and doesn't even acknowledge anything's going wrong with the company. None of this makes any sense.

So

what would I do with to

draw any money with Kenny?

He's probably, does he have anything left with that other

for the kind of audience who likes this kind kind of thing? That's the kind of thing they'd like. Does he have anything left with Okada? Can Okada fall down four more times before he breaks in half?

And they tease that. Remember, at World's End, when Kenny Omega came out to present the Continental Classic Award or belt or whatever it was, they teased everything with him and Okada again.

Okay, then have that match and put Kenny over.

Because he's at least something that that fan base likes that can actually produce something somewhat. But then I think you

ought to pass the torch from Kenny to Osprey.

I mean, you know, whether the fuck Moxley and the whole goddamn thing, their belt's worthless. Nobody cares to see those fucking people anyway.

But again, for their audience, the only one they got left, let Osprey beat Kenny to be the new high-flying, flippy-doo, Tokyo Dome sensation guy that they like.

Because the one guy's had illness and injury and is almost on the downside of his career. And Osprey may have a few more years before he fucks himself up.

So if they're going to do that, get Osprey over.

But none of the booking makes any sense from where anybody is to say, well, I do this with that guy.

Because then he'd have to rebook another six guys to get them to where they made any sense with them.

Well, that was AEW Dynamite, and one last thing from Dynamite to complete the segment we were talking about earlier.

I sent you an email, Jim, with the move I explained, I believe, as a direct shot right to the pussy. Yeah.

Tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me if it's something you've seen before.
What do you think? Well, hold on here. I'm clicking on it now.
It is a link of an isolated clip of just this moment.

So, yes, Statlander is posing in the middle of the ring, doing the double bicep, when

Tony Storm is laying underneath her, as if in

a position where if she sat up, she might be able to go to lunch. And Willow gives her the old fabulous kangaroo's boomerang, so her face crashes into

Chris Statlander's vaginal area.

Yeah.

Yeah, and Sockface is fucking just hilariously uproarious about it. It was inventive.

Yeah, obviously the commentators always being goofy idiots isn't a big help, but that was ABA.

Well, the thing is, he, you know, he's playing the part, and it was typecasting of some fucking teenage guy in his basement that never gets laid. Oh,

look, they're hitting each other in the pussy.

Jim, what do you think of the chances that Tony Khan will pay attention to some of the positive reaction to Ian Ricobani this week? Some of the positive reaction to Tony Schiavone,

his favorite Stooge, not being there.

To many of the comments coming from longtime AEW supporters criticizing Excalibur, what are the chances Tony Khan will realize this is the time for a change?

The odds. The odds.
What are the odds? What are the odds?

What are the chances I'll say the right thing? Well, it's all about the chances of the odds. And obviously, in this case, you didn't.

But folks, if you want to say the right thing and do the right thing, you can go and speak to our friends at DraftKings Sportsbook, and then they can help you do the right thing.

And that is wager on the big professional sports going on. They're an official sports betting partner of the NFL.

And from what we've heard, if you bet that the Jacksonville Jaguars ain't going to make a touchdown or ain't going to win a game, well, that's a pretty much as a safe bet as you can possibly find but you know if you just want to bet on touchdowns we've talked about this they score them in football games sometimes and if you want to bet on somebody or some team scoring a touchdown boom you can do it at draft kings sportsbook or if a player is going to score a certain amount of points or this team's going to win or that team's going to lose the basic stuff they can fix you up at DraftKings Sportsbook and right now they're you know, they're doing playoffs, Brian.

It's time of the year for playoffs again. You know what that leads to? In football, yes.
Well, yes.

And the playoffs inevitably lead to championship games. You can bet on those too.

It's almost like that they do this to keep you going all year with the football and then the basketball and then the baseball and then the hockey. There's something going on all the time.

It's like they're colluding together, Brian.

Do you feel colluded?

Not really. I feel like, no, no collusion.
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Well, we shall see with DraftKings, and I understand you have a special statement for all the people. Oh, good Lord.
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Well, I need the oxygen tank right now.

All right.

The crown is yours. The headache is Jim's.
Jim, we're going to get a few questions.

The show is yours. And stuff here on the show.

We don't have any ratings yet.

Speaking of shows for the dynamite, what's going on now with the slacking off of the reporting of the ratings? It has been longer than it normally is. We don't have our information yet.

Yeah, I'm not sure. And again, I'm not seeing any signs yet that Max is introducing a new audience or that people are switching from TBS or TNT to Max.
So we'll see what happens.

We'll stay on top of that and monitor the situation as the numbers come out. Jim, let's get some questions and stuff.
This was sent to CourneyDriveTruGmail.com from Dan in Wolverhampton, England.

Okay.

Hello, Jim. What do you make of Jeff Hardy's recent comment that he could have been bigger than John Cena if he had taken better care of his health when he was younger?

For what it's worth, I'm personally inclined to agree with Jeff, as I believe that his Google searches were approximately on par with John Cena's around 2009, in spite of Cena being pushed far more heavily by WWE at the time.

I have a link here that he sent.

Here's the quote.

The way I was living life in my 20s and 30s, and if I was living life the way I'm living life now, oh my gosh, there's no telling.

I would probably be bigger than John Cena today because I was born with such a gift to be a pro wrestler. It just felt so natural.
And like I was totally created to do this thing.

And the cool thing about that is I'm still here, I still have life and I feel good.

And then apparently he talked about how him and Matt now enjoy ice baths, but ice baths. What are your thoughts on the idea that Jeff Hardy believes he could have been bigger than Cena?

Do you think that's a fair thought? Do you think that's

what are your thoughts on that? Well, first of all, I'm...

I'm going to say maybe with all that they've done to their bodies, maybe submerging them in ice is probably a beneficial thing. But no, I'm not going to.

I'm not going to trash Jeff Hardy here or Terry Bay. He at one point was

one of the hottest baby faces, if not the hottest babyface in a company.

I don't know if it was that 2009 period. I don't have my notes with me, but

Jeff was a big name.

And yes, I do agree with the statement Jeff made that if he had

taken better care of himself, we all know what that means,

then he would have been much bigger potentially or at least as big for longer.

Would he ever have been bigger than John Cena and that last, would he ever have been bigger than John Cena at points? Maybe.

Would he have been bigger than John Cena in total over the last 25 years? I'm sorry, I still can't say that

because.

Even if Jeff had been able to be trusted at various points, if they put him in a prominent position that something wasn't going to happen.

He still wasn't ever going to be the face of the company. And like I said, hot streak aside,

Cena could cut better promos. Cena physically looked better.

Cena, I know Jeff had a tremendous appeal with the youth audience and sold a lot of merchandise, but over

he, John Cena wasn't really a fad guy.

He was consistent

through much of his career, whether the really devoted fans liked him or appreciated his work or not, with the merchandise sales, the pay-per-view gates, the TV ratings, the whatever the metrics were at the time.

So yes, was it entirely possible and maybe subject to debate that Jeff was hotter at one point in his life than John Cena

or almost anybody else, but at the same point, those points didn't last long and there wasn't the longevity.

And they were never going to have Jeff Hardy out there even physically looking like that as this is our Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, Rock, Cena, Roman Reigns guy.

Did I say anything inflammatory there that could be misconstrued as being vicious to Jeff Hardy?

You know, it's one of those things where how much further could he have gone if he had never had any of the issues?

i don't see any way he could have been bigger than cena other than like a momentary period of time yeah i think cena was just too big i mean look at the reactions he always got

well and also let's face it jeff's work with the basics and especially as he got older and was working around injuries but it was all about

The high risk, the cool dives, the flashy outfits, the makeup, the blah, blah, blah.

You can argue that John's work was the exact opposite, which was more conducive to making money and having a long career, and that they kept him because of his importance from doing anything risky,

which is why he

is still able to do this. Whereas Jeff, the only way that he really could get over with his limitations in other departments was to do the risky shit,

which led to

all the other problems that he had.

So he wasn't going to be the top guy for a long period of time.

Jim, this is news that just broke over the last day or so: the passing of Black Bart. Oh, no, it just broke with me right now.
Seriously? Oh, I didn't know that you didn't know about this.

Yeah, no, well, it's been the snow, and Harley's sick, and Stacy's back, and it taxed time for me to get with the accountant. And I've been looking at the internet.

I saw

something something that indicated on the internet a few weeks ago that he had decided to give up his treatments,

but I didn't know it had progressed to that point this quickly. I'm sorry to hear that.

Black Bart spent a lot of time with me and the Midnight Express in the car when we first started working for Crockett. But go ahead.

I was going to ask you, what are your thoughts and memories of Hangman Rick Harris, Black Bart, someone you were around for a period of time and an interesting career? I think he had more in him.

He didn't go as far as he could have, I think, because he just was never used the right way at times. But what are your thoughts on Black Bart?

Dusty really liked him because Dusty liked all the Western-oriented characters and Dusty used him fairly well in Florida and for Crockett.

But Bart, first of all, was a nice guy, just a big night and a big country boy.

and was married for years to his wife, Miss Bonnie. Miss Bonnie's at home waiting.
And,

you know, we rode with him a lot. I've told a story before.
We were in a fucking van with me and Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condry and Black Bart and Buddy Landell and maybe one or two other people

coming from Albany, Georgia, all the way back to Charlotte, which is like goddamn

500 miles, whatever it was.

And Buddy Landell was bothering Black Bart and blistering Black Bart verbally. And they were as opposite two personalities as you could be.

And finally, Buddy decided he wanted to take a nap and go to sleep. And Bart was still fuming.

And Bart had, the boys were drinking those Miller ponies, the little small Miller bottles, and they were easier to piss in, too, when you were on a long trip.

And Bart pissed in one of those Miller pony bottles and handed it up to me. He said, pour that on Budrow.
I said, what? He said, pour that on Budrow. I said, are you back here in case he gets me?

I'll take care of it.

And I poured that on Buddy and handed Bart the fucking beer bottle back and sit back. And Buddy woke up and was all wet.

He looked at me because I was right behind him. He said, Jimmy, did you pour water on me? I said, Buddy, I swear to God, I did not pour water on you.
And he looked at Bart. Well, you did it.

Bart said, well, what are you going to do about it?

And they fuss. And Buddy didn't realize it was piss until he got home at like six o'clock in the morning and went in his apartment and his dog started humping him.

And Bart was a big fan of, when we would go to Williamson, West Virginia or some of those towns for Crockett, he was a big fan of the Hatfield and McCoy's feud.

And see there, boys, right across this river. But a real nice guy, good worker, big, believable guy, and could cut a great promo.

And,

you know, he wasn't.

He wasn't going to be the world champion of a national organization, and he wasn't going to, you know,

world class. That was one of the things that happened world class after the NWA.
I said a major organization. At that time, that was not it.

And he wasn't going to dress up and go out and, you know, make a big hit with the sponsors, but he was fun to be around for the boys. I hate to hear that.

See, I like Hangman Rick Harris better than Black Bart. To me, the name Black Bart, it was hard to take the name as seriously.

It was hard to, it sounded comedic like a, you know, Looney Tunes cartoon. Yeah, and the first time I saw him was in 1990, I think, on WWF-TV as an enhancement guy.
Is that the first time you saw him?

Well, you weren't really alive watching the mid-80s stuff first run, were you? There were a lot of guys that the first time I saw them around that same period of time were as enhancement guys.

Him, Pez Watley, Buddy Rose,

like a bunch of guys who a decade earlier had been stars in different territories. It was a different story now.
And he was in mid-South, I think, maybe two, as briefly as hangman Rick Harris.

And I thought he was really good there.

Yeah, and that's the thing is he was one of the guys and some of the other ones that you just mentioned that when 1988 came, 89, and every place else had closed up besides Memphis,

Atlanta, and Vince, you know, the territories. Bart moved, you know, I don't know if he moved back to Texas.
I think he'd already been back there, but he had lived in Texas for years and years.

He just became kind of a fixture of whoever was running in and around Dallas and then would, you know, try to get some shots with Vince and it would end up being TV jobs.

But a lot of the guys that had been stars on the territory level of some degree got squeezed out when there was no more territories.

Jim, on the topic of passings, any thoughts on the news that sweet daddy Seeky passed away? Yeah, you know, we we were talking.

I was told, was it you? I came, I almost talked to no one but you,

but we were talking about Sweet Daddy Seekey and Reggie Seekey not long ago. Maybe it was when we were the Londos book, we were talking about that either on or off the air.

I was not aware until sometime recently

that the Reginald Seekey that you would see wrestling in the 1940s wasn't the

rookie year of this Reggie Seekey, who would only have been like 14 years old at that point. Sweet Daddy Seekey took the name of

one of the rare black African-American stars from the 30s and 40s, Reginald Seakey. But Sweet Daddy Seekey

had more longevity and did more notoriety with the name.

Think about it. He was one of

Buddy Rogers' guys in the, what, late 50s, early 60s. He main evented in the Northeast and the Garden and Boston, Philly.

He was big in Toronto and lived there and stayed there for years and years.

You know, the name pretty much got recognized all over the world because of his

run during that period. And

he was a country music star. And he even ended up, remember I said he ended up working Memphis,

I think maybe the last territory he worked in 1987, 88, that time period, he would have been 55 years old even then. Well, he was there in 80.
He was there in 85.

I think that may be what you're talking about because

it didn't work out the way they wanted. He came in as a heel, I believe, managed by Tux Newman, Jeff Walton.
Yes, yes. And they were building him up to face Lawler.
And when he got there,

I guess the story is they realized that 60-something or late 50s-something Seeky

wasn't going to be a heel. And he came out and did like a babyface promo.
If they're building him up for weeks as a heel, he came out as like a babyface that he had no problem with Jerry Law.

I got no problem with him.

And also, you know, Memphis is a heavily black market and they liked black babyfaces.

And why would you not take one of the biggest names in the history of African-American wrestlers and try to piss people off at him? So, you know,

that didn't fly for too long. But, But no, he was a big name.
And as I said,

he had the bleached blonde hair like 30 years before Shelton Benjamin did it and the fancy robes and the

patter, the promo.

But he was, what, 91?

So you

have to acknowledge he lived a long, full life.

Well, Jim, when we get a few more topics and questions here this week, this was sent

to corney drivethruergmail.com by Les Winslow.

These are the Korean Wrestling Awards. Now, I'm sorry, what? Well, specifically, the South Korean Pro Wrestling Forum Awards.
I guess there's a forum for the South Korean Pro Wrestling Forum.

Well, now,

hold on.

Narrow this down.

Is it a forum for South Korean pro wrestlers or a forum of wrestling fans in South Korea who are watching?

Do they have pro wrestling in South Korea?

What the fuck is going on here? I'm not sure. I've attached translator results for both best and worst.
If you're curious how South Korean internet marks think of the current American product.

Okay, well, there we go. So it's the South Korean fans viewing the American product.

Yes, I am curious. I have the best and worst list.
Do you want the best of everything or the worst of everything? Give me, let's see what they consider the best.

Best male wrestler, Cody Rhodes.

Okay. Best

shocking. I'm just, that's not a shocking thing to say.
Best female wrestler, Liv Morgan.

Well, I agree, less, but they haven't gone off the beam too far. Best team of the year, Solo Sokoa's Bloodline.

Well, okay, they're not technically a tag team. It's a group, but, you know, okay.

Best heel of the year,

Solo Sokoa.

They're liking the bloodline over there a lot, aren't they? I don't know if I wouldn't talk about Drew McIntyre or someone of that nature, but again.

Best babyface, best worker, and best champion of the year, Cody Rhodes.

They really like Cody.

Best match of the year, Roman Raids Raids versus Cody Rhodes.

WrestleMania 40. Best moment of the year, Cody Rhodes finishes the story.
Okay, did Dusty ever do a South Korean tour?

Best segment of the year, Rock and Roman and Cody and Seth at WrestleMania 40 kickoff.

Okay.

But here's some other ones. Feud of the year, best feud of the year, CM Punk Drew McIntyre.
Can't argue with that, really. Best catchphrase of the year, I believe in Joe Hendry.

Okay, that one came out of fucking sideways, but well,

I guess there you go. But maybe do the South Korean fans know more about American wrestling than the American wrestling fans that pick

Maka Shakababi for the best wrestler? Well, this is not an outrageous list so far. Best newcomer of the year, Jacob Fatu.

Best mic worker, CM Punk. Boom.
Best non-wrestler, Paul Levesque. Can Tony Khan get the South Koreans to book his program? Well, that's, I mean, it keeps going on from there.

Let's go to the worst list. Besides a little Cody favoritism,

you can't argue with a lot of that. Worst male wrestler, Jon Moxley.

God damn. They are more in tune than the American fans.
Worst female wrestler, Mercedes Monet. Boom! What in the world? Worst tag team of the year, the Young Bucks.

Worst babyface of the year, Jon Moxley.

Worst heel of the year, Jon Moxley.

Worst champion of the year, IWGP champion, Jon Moxley.

Worst worker of the year, Jon Moxley. Jon Moxley.
Worst match of the year, Jimmy versus Jey Uso, WrestleMania.

You hated that match. You can't disagree there.
I hated it, but I wish Moxley had gotten a clean sweep. Worst moment of the year, Jon Moxley choking Brian Danielson with a plastic bag.

Worst feud of the year, Brian Danielson versus Jon Moxley.

Worst catchphrase of the year,

Death Jitsu, Jon Moxley.

Worst newcomer, Kazushka Okada. Worst mic worker of the year, Kazushka Okada.

Worst non-wrestler of the year, Tony Khan.

Most overrated of the year, Jon Moxley.

Most underrated of the year, Chad Gable.

The, I don't know what this means, Christian Awards. Chad Gable, dead from Wyatt 6 debut.
I don't know what that means. Worst move of the year.

Is it because Christian is always talking about people's fathers being dead? Oh, maybe. I guess something like that.
Maybe the translator didn't.

Worst move of the year. Jon Moxley, Sleeper Hold.
Worst gimmick of the year. Jon Moxley.

Worst news of the year.

AEW releases all-in London security footage.

Worst theme of the year, It's Our Moment, DIY's theme song.

Worst brand of the year, AEW. Worst event of the year, AEW Wrestle Dream 2024.

Worst

worst part-time wrestler of the year, Adam Copeland. Worst Booker of the Year, Tony Khan.

Worst main event of the year, Brian Danielson versus Jon Moxley.

Wrestle Dream. Worst face turn, Adam Cole.
worst heel turn Jon Moxley

botch of the year Adam Page sneaks out early during Jay White versus Christian Cage on dynamite and finally worst entrance Jon Moxley

so what are your thoughts on the popularity of Jon Moxley in South Korea well John more importantly what do you think about your popularity

I don't have any winning comebacks because I didn't know I was going to sweep the fucking awards

I'd like to thank Tony.

I'd like to thank Pak Song Nam

for representing me in Korea.

You know, they have a better handle on the wrestling business than the American fans do, unfortunately, over there in South Korea.

Are these Leo Garibaldi's grandchildren or something?

It does make you wonder about the international thoughts of non-WWE wrestling.

You know, there's a lot of parts of the world where either their first exposure to wrestling or the first wrestling that looked major league was WWE and it still is.

If they're watching AEW

and then you're watching the spectacle of WWE,

again, it shouldn't be a surprise.

They're basically voting the same way if this is real, and I don't have any reason to doubt it because apparently other people have said it too.

They're voting the same way a lot of people here in the States would.

But boy, I tell you what, they love them some Cody and they don't like no Moxley.

Well, there are the South Korean Wrestling Awards for

worst lunch, anything Jon Moxley eats. They love Cody.
They hate Moxley. Worst illness, anything Moxley has.

All right, well, Jim, let's do a little from the files. Uh-oh.
I got a bunch of papers here. Let me move this.
Let me move this.

Oh, did I hit the wrong thing? And then it bounced off this. I'm still connected.

Let me see what I have here. This is the Dave Meltzer file.

Let's see. Oh, boy.
Now, from the Wrestling News Archives. From the Wrestling News Archives, for instance, this goes back pretty far.
October 3rd, 1982.

Dear Mr. Keitzer, I apologize for the paper noise, Jace, and everyone at home.
I'm enclosing a check for $16,

which you can forward to your subscription department to extend my subscription for another year to the Wrestling News Wrestling magazine.

Well, he told Norman he could forward it to his subscription department. That means Norman would put it in drawer C.

That's very true. Thank you for listing my name in your recent magazine per videotape swapping.
Although I haven't heard from anyone from Japan,

I have made some new contacts in the U.S.

By the way, I hope you can list once again that I would like to trade VHS mode videotapes with fans in Japan, St. Louis, Texas, and Louisiana.

Right now, I'm receiving weekly tapes from WWF, both shows, Florida, one show,

Georgia, both shows, Mid-Atlantic, both shows, and AWA one show, and can trade any of those shows with anyone. who contacts me.
As I wrote you earlier, I will be starting a bulletin in January 1983,

and I'd like to hear from people who are interested in being correspondents. You have my name, address, etc., with an application on file.

By the way, I've noticed your series on the various title histories in the magazine. I have a very complete records of the U.S.
title recognized here in the Bay Area dating back to the mid-60s.

through 1981.

I don't know if you're interested, seeing as the title was dropped when Roy Shires stopped promoting, but I could do a very complete story on it if you're interested.

The actual belt, by the way, was the oldest in existence as the same belt which was originally worn by Vern Gagne, called the US TV title, in the 1950s.

That's the same sentence. In the 1950s, was the same belt that Shires recognized throughout the 60s and 70s.

I don't have photos of the guys with the belts, so with the story, however, most of the champions are internationally known competitors, Bill Watts, Fritz von Erich, Patterson, Stevens, Moscow, Morocco, Lonnie Main, My Via, Dusty Rhodes.

So, I'm sure you have shots of most of them on file.

Dave is trying to spend this much time to pitch and sell Norm Keitzer on him writing an article about a defunct promotion that Norman Keitzer probably wouldn't pay more than $15 for to begin with, but there was no way for Norman to sell any magazines in San Francisco for the Roy Shire promotion because it was already out of business.

And that's why, as we've talked about, Norman wanted to put articles in his magazine about the different territories that were active that would buy magazines from him. Sincerely, Dave Meltzer.

It's actually stamped David Meltzer with his address in San Jose, but he wrote Dave above David. P.S.

I also have complete records from 67 to 80 of our world tag title.

And I have a response here from Jim Melby, November 3rd, 82.

Dear Dave, hi. I would be very interested in publishing a story on the old U.S.
Heavyweight Championship. I'm sure we have the photos in our files of the wrestlers involved for illustration purposes.

There are some things I need from you first. Please read over the enclosed contract and letter of explanation.
Also, I need your social security number for payment purposes.

If you decide to submit the story, please make sure it's typed and double spaced.

Thanks, Jimmy.

You know, they did take your social security number, but the thing is, nobody ever made more than $600 from that company in the course of one calendar year, so you never actually had to report it on your taxes.

Well, from January 14th, I have Dave's signed contract here.

Dear Norman, enclosed is the debut issue of our publication, Wrestling Observer,

or I should say, Observor, O-B-S-E-R-V-O-R.

I've filled out the application. I'll be putting out a monthly publication, but would like to warn you ahead of time that our publication date is the 20th of each month.

This issue is coming out early, so to speak. just for future reference.
The price is $150 per copy or $5 for four issues. As the bulletin gets more popular, I will actually lower the price.

But for the next four issues, the price will stay at this rate. This is why I'm only accepting subscriptions up to four issues.

I wasn't particularly satisfied with this issue, although I do feel it's a damn good debut issue.

Things will definitely pick up in the next issue, and coincidentally, I'm pretty sure by April that this will be the best bulletin going. Wait, do you see where we are in 40 years?

Thanks for your help. Yours in wrestling, Dave Meltzer, editor.

And I have a signed contract here for so he's always been humble.

I guess you can look at it that way. I guess so.
Well, there's a lot of stuff here. There's a lot here, more than I thought would be here.
So bear with me for a moment. Writing to pitch stories.

Did you ever have to do that?

No, I did.

Basically,

the idea, as I said, was that

Normkaiser sold all the magazines to the promotions who would then turn around and resell them in the arenas. So the more content there was on

the Memphis guys, the more that they would sell in the Memphis Territory. That's why Norman did different editions.

There would be the main wraparound of the magazine that would have some stories that everybody would get, but there would be the NWA East edition, where it was primarily for the NWA territories in the East, or NWA West was out in Texas, or the AWA edition.

He even did a stranglehold edition for Bruiser's WWA just in the state of Indiana, maybe Chicago.

But I would just, when I got some pictures or had an idea to write a story on one of the top guys in the territory or somebody new coming in, I'd just write it, put the pictures in, and send it to him.

And he'd run it because Teeney told him to run shit about the wrestlers in the territory so she could sell more books.

I never pitched anything. All right, I have another letter here.
This is after that first one I read back from Jim Melby, November 30th, 1982 from Meltzer.

Dear Jim, received your letter the other day. Thanks for the prompt reply.
Also, much thanks for your listings for the awards.

I'll keep them in the strictest of confidence, Jim Melby sent in his submission for the Observer Awards.

I will be sending you our yearbook in late January. I'm pretty excited about putting together a bulletin once again.
That's fine about sending programs in exchange for it.

One more thing, if you ever want to do stories concerning activities in Japan,

I'm sure I could do a good job in that area. I have traveled there in the past and have a decent knowledge of the language.

And from this area, I do receive videotapes of all the TV shows and many clippings and magazines through friends in that country.

I don't know how regularly you receive photos from Koichi and any of the others, but I can write stories about the various feuds and matches from that area.

I think that an interesting article concerned the feud between Enoki and Fujinami versus Rushikamura, Hanimo Hamaguchi, and Isamu Taranashi.

Lots of interesting twists and a very wild bout, not to mention good crowds, have resulted from that.

Aside from that, the only real major things going on are the tag tournaments, and I'm sure you're aware of that. I also heard that Enoki and Shinma had bought out LaBelle's promotion in Los Angeles.

Oh, good lord. But have yet to hear if they are promoting any shows or anything else.
I am sure you know more about that situation situation than I do. Please keep in touch, Dave Meltzer.

Some things never change, do they? That's one of the earliest, I guess, examples of Dave trying to pitch his expertise in Japanese wrestling.

I mean, there weren't a lot of people in America, I would have to think, until videotapes that could monitor what was happening there properly. Yeah, well, and also, I wonder how many

issues of the wrestling news that Norm Keitzer was selling over in Japan.

But that,

you know, that's the thing is that the wrestling news magazine covered a variety of eclectic things that

the London publishing, the Bill Aptor magazines, didn't cover because

Apter and under instructions from,

you know, the corporate hierarchy, they wanted to put on the cover the NWA champion or Bruno or Mascaris or

somebody national that was going to sell magazines or blood, you know, sometimes or whatever. And

most of the articles were the big geographic territories with the major population centers, WWF, AWA,

Georgia, because of TBS, et cetera. And so Norman filled a niche that the newsstand magazines didn't feel that, you know, he would cover the

there'd be something from Amarillo, for heaven's sake, you know,

and they were underrepresented. Well, here's a letter from Norman Keitzer to Dave Meltzer, as it says here.
David Meltzer, July 21st, 1987.

I have written to you several times, along with the complimentary copies of the wrestling news I've been sending you, but I have not heard from you in over a year now. Wow!

So Dave was all fucking sweetness and light, sunshine, lollipops, rainbows, and waterfalls when he was trying to get printed, but now a few years later, he don't want to hear from his buddy Norman.

Possibly the address I had was wrong, as I got a notice from the post office today that the last issue of the wrestling news that I sent you was forwarded to the address I am sending this letter to.

At one time, when I started to curtail the publishing schedule of the wrestling news, I sent you payment to make sure that you continued to send me your newsletter. That was over two years ago.

At that time, you wrote me that I didn't need to send you payment because you would continue to send me the newsletter because my plugs in the wrestling news are what helped you get it started in the first place and because I was continuing to give you free advertisements in it.

I guess you changed your mind, which I can understand,

but I have written to you several times saying I would like to be a paid subscriber and receiving no reply.

Nor am I even sure I have your correct address at this time.

Whatever the case, I am in hopes that this will reach you.

And I've included a postage paid envelope so that you can write me back and let me know the cost of getting to be a paid subscriber to your newsletter. Thank you.
Norman Keitzer.

Oh, man, here you can't even fucking back out of it because I didn't send a stamp. Here's a stamp self-addressed envelope.

Well, I wonder what happened to drive a rift into their relationship. It appears someone has made a mistake, too, in the middle of the Meltzer file of a bunch of pictures of Sam Menneker.

Let me put these.

Someone filed wrong before it got to me, ladies and gentlemen. Going through a bunch of these papers here as they pop up.

November 4th, 1985, dear Dave, below is a copy of your advertisement as it will appear in the wrestling news number 120.

Please let us know right away if you want any changes in the wording of it. Otherwise, it will go in just this way.

Also, always let us know if you want any changes in the future issues for your advertisement other than updating as far as new material received. And then it has his plug here.

And at that time, what was it?

Dave Meltzer, Turlock, California, sent us four issues of his Wrestling Observer newsletter during the past two months.

He doesn't promise an exact schedule, but it appears that it comes out about twice a month.

Each of these four newsletters contains eight letter-size pages packed with news, results, inside information, and opinions on the major promotions. Dave charges $5 for a four-issue subscription.

I thought he was going to lower that price when it took off. He also asks that we mention that he has videotapes and he charges $2 for a copy of his 50-page VHS tape listing.

of more than 500 hours of main event matches.

You know, you forget about that, the idea that it wasn't as simple as, hey, you have a tape, I will tape, let's trade.

Sometimes it was, but you had to get catalogs, you had to look through things, you had to have a conversation to pick out what you wanted.

Someone wanted a compilation tape, that was a big pain in the ass. Oh, a pain in the ass.

Any thoughts on any of this? Yes, it was a pain in the ass. That's why Weasel Dooley was doing all of my duplication at that point.
I was on the road.

He was making the, he was culling it down into what I needed to see and sending it off to me at that point. A lot of interviews from the AWA program, but

poor Dave, it seems that

he's left a trail of broken relationships everywhere he goes. Here's a checkmail to Dave Meltzer for $50,

December 26, 1987, right after Christmas, Campbell, California. From Norman Keitzer.
Above check is for a 50-issue subscription to your newsletter.

I haven't haven't received an issue since last month.

So I assume I am off your... Just cutting this son of a bitch off right has said no grace period whatsoever.
So I assume I am off your comp list

again.

I want to get the newsletter, so I am subscribing. Enclosed is a copy of my latest issue, number 124, with your free ad in it.

Also a copy of the ad I plan to run in issue 125, which I am working on now.

And there's a check for $50,

a copy of it. What of no good? He's running free ads for Dave and having to send checks to subscribe for a year because Dave won't send him his shit.

And it appears this right here is this the U.S. title story?

Here's a letter from Dave Meltzer to Jim Melby, February 11th, 1983. Dear Jim, got your letter last week, and always interesting hearing from you.

Agree with most of your comments, particularly about the Japanese wrestling. I enjoy Inoki's group, particularly the junior heavies, the best also.

In Noki success at the box office shows, also.

These are ridden really poorly. Really, he has by far a better group of Japanese wrestlers in his stable, which is the main difference as both groups book similar number of quality Americans.

As I think I told you, I'm familiar with the Georgia problems, but I don't know the reason.

I do know people who see them live don't seem to like the promotion nearly as well as the people from out here who only know of them through the cable.

To the fans out here, it seems the Georgia promotion is like the ideal promotion, so to speak. Other things may be good, but nothing can compare with Georgia.

Although I don't know the reasons, I will assume that you're right in saying If they lived there, they wouldn't hold the same opinion.

Let's stop there for a second because Georgia Georgia TV was on cable and you could see it in different places. This is 1983, February 83.

This was really the beginning years of world championship wrestling being seen nationwide.

People in other places thought it was great because it was different than their wrestling. At the same time, people in Georgia were rejecting it.
Well, and that's true.

And with a lot of places where they got over in the Sheikh's old territory, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia,

not only had, as we've talked about many times, that had been dead and sheik had stopped running, but the product the last few years of his promotion was just horrible in ring.

Everybody was 80 years old. Or,

you know, let's face it, Vern had major names and stars, but they were all old.

And he didn't have a lot of action in his territory because it had been built that way and he didn't have competition.

But when they see the Freebirds in Georgia, all this new young talent and an NWA-style promotion with a ring that wasn't made out of concrete and guys taking bumps and cutting these wild promos,

that appealed to Roy Shire's promotion had gone out of business a couple years before in Northern California, and it had been on its ass for a couple of years before that.

Where there wasn't a strong promotion or a strong youthful promotion, the Georgia TV was the thing everybody had to see. But

in the state of Georgia,

where they had not only been used to that style and that method of presentation, but every major name in the NWA

had been in there regularly for the previous 10 years.

They were harder to fucking please. And Ole's booking at that time, that 1983 period, guys were going to Japan and he'd just

fucking, they'd be off and then they'd come back. It was kind of like Tony Khan's booking.
You'd see him, then you wouldn't see him, and things wouldn't make sense, and phantom title changes. And,

well, the Road Warriors are here, but goddamn, last month it was a completely different team, and somebody else was champion. And

it just, it was, it was a mess in Georgia where they had been watching it weekly and going to the live matches weekly for

years and years and years. That was the summer

we went to Georgia from Tennessee, me and Dundee and the Georgia wrestling superstars, because the state of Georgia,

every town was on its ass.

Columbus, Macon, Knoxville,

Chattanooga, Augusta, Georgia. Nothing was drawn

because they just burned it out and it didn't make sense.

Well, back to this letter from day February 11th, 1983.

Most people who get videos from everywhere seem to say that Memphis has the best TV show.

I know they get incredible ratings, but I never liked the show.

It was always a little too uncontrolled for my taste. Uncontrolled for my taste.
They certainly get more mileage out of their talent than any other group I've seen.

My favorite show is also Mid-South, which combined an interesting and somewhat unpredictable hour with at least some first-rate wrestling, although I'm disappointed in their hero side with Stagger Lee and Two.

Their hero side.

Let's remember, ladies and gentlemen, Dave was a stone cold mark at one point, didn't even know the lingo. You know, Dave has always pointed to this example

that

when he used to have a problem, and when you guys would even try to talk about it, about

Dave's changing thoughts on all this, he would point out that there were wrestlers who hated Memphis wrestling, that they thought it was Lou Thez or whoever, who did he say, Harley or I forget who it was, guys who all ended up working there.

Thes ended up opening a promotion in Nashville. But it was like guys looked down on Memphis wrestling.

This is the first time I've ever read Dave say he looked down on Memphis wrestling. Well, see,

it always comes back to what Dave felt, and then Dave tried to find people that agreed with the way that he felt.

But the guys looked down on the Tennessee Territory more because of the payoffs, especially because Nick Gulis had set that precedent.

But Jerry Jarrett wasn't going to go hungry at the expense of taking care of a wrestler. And the guys didn't mind working there, except for a

Lou These who had somewhat

you know, high standards. But it was the money, not the style of the wrestling.
And Dave didn't get that.

They would knock it just because they didn't want to come out and say, Well, I didn't make any money there. Says, ah, it's a bunch of bullshit.

Yeah, and I didn't make any money doing bullshit. Other people made money doing bullshit, so they must be better than I am.

And by the way, for the record attached to this letter, it was a little more too.

A copy of the check sent to Dave Meltzer, San Jose, for the U.S. title history used in number 93.
How much did he make for that article? $35.

Okay, I said $15. I was undercutting it.

I'm quite interested in how WWF draws next month in LA.

AWA may get a good crowd on March 5th in San Francisco. I've heard a decent amount of comment about Lawler, plus Hogan versus Ventura has been very well promoted.

Here's my social security number. I'll be sending you my bullet.
What is that? Can you read the number? I am not going to do that. That is not allowed.

I'd be most interested in programs from Mid-South, with Southwest and any AWA programs that aren't sold in this area, also of interest.

Don't know your publication frequency, but we often have shows every six weeks. So I may not see all your issues of the AWA program.

I really enjoyed the Japanese wrestling the most because it was so unique. I treated in such a high-class manner, etc.

I have tired of Abdullah and Sing's antics, although at first they were great.

Sometimes, when they don't have good Americans, Baba's show is just tough to watch because it doesn't have the first-rate Japanese wrestlers.

And Noki's Japanese villains make his show almost never tiresome, although they abuse that double countout ending a little too much.

That's all for now. Keep in touch.
Dave Meltzer.

You know, the Japanese TV shows in 19, I first started seeing them in 1980.

80, 81, 82, 83, they were incredible.

And we've talked about you saw not only the best Americans, which Baba had the best Americans, and then his top Japanese two or three guys were okay, and then it dropped.

Or Inoki was stuck with only having mostly WWF guys, but he also brought in the Mark Roccos and the guys from England, and it had more international flavor.

It was a great show to watch wrestling matches, and you got to see,

like, we never got to see goddamn Ricky Steamboat on television in Kentucky, but we got to see it on tape from Japan, or Nick Bockwinkle, or the Funk Brothers, or every top American.

And the matches were good

to great.

But when I was watching, I was like, this is great. I'm getting to see.

I liked,

obviously, Tiger Mask was a thing, and Dynamite Kid was great. But as far as the Japanese talent, Inoki was good.
We knew Baba, you know,

was past it at that point. Inoki had an aura about him, and his guys seemed like they wrestled harder, but there was an element of interchangeability.

And there was also

no promos, no interviews.

So

you liked being able to see the American wrestlers and the top stars that you hoped one day you'd get to see live or in your own territory.

And wow, this match, you know, Dory versus Terry going 56 minutes. That was a curiosity that you enjoyed seeing, but

didn't live up to the hype. When you saw the pictures, I heard they wrestled each other.
I don't know what I expected when I eventually saw that years after the fact, but it wasn't the match I saw.

Well, and they had to put Dory over, even though Terry was the more exciting at that point because seniority, Dory was the, you know, the more well-respected guy because he came first.

But point being,

you got to see all that stuff, but it didn't replace

Memphis wrestling or mid-South wrestling or mid-Atlantic wrestling where you'd have a Ric Flair or a Jerry Lawler, a Junkyard Dog or fucking whoever coming out and cutting promos and the personal issues and the angles and the fuck finishes to build a stipulations.

That was what I liked about wrestling. And then,

you know, when you watch the Japanese tapes, which I still have every single one, I have a tape of every Baba and Anoki show from 1980 through 1992 or so.

The matches were great, but you also, you wanted to, I always liked

seeing the American guys go against people you never got to see them work with.

That,

you know, Nick Bockwinkle wrestle some other great talent that only wrestled for Crockett, never went to work for Vern or whatever. That was the appeal of the and also

Japanese wrestling is the only place then anywhere you got to see main event arena matches, which was

wild and off the charts as far as holy mackerel, look what they're doing.

So there was an appeal to it, but it at no time did I

or anybody that was watching or viewing it with me, Norman Dooley or whoever think that

that program or that promotion could replace Memphis Wrestling in Memphis or the Crocketts in the Carolinas or whatever,

it was a curiosity from Japan that was cool to watch on video, but it wouldn't fly here and nobody ever thought that except Dave.

Well, this is going to be the end of part one of From the Files, Dave Meltzer, because I have a long, long back and forth here. I have found.
And he do love to type, don't he?

well this is from 1984 it's pages and norm keitzer's reply of him having issues with norm keitzer's reporting and what he's reading in someone else's publication so we'll get to that next time on for the not for the files from the files what a tease dave's first uh foray into antisocial behavior jim if norm keitzer felt he got ripped off if he felt i'm sending this guy money and i'm not getting the subscription i'm giving him free advertising and I'm not getting any issues with the observer.

And if he didn't have the music queued up also,

he would probably sue.

Yes, he would. And I'll tell you who he would go to.
He would go to the man, the myth, the legend, the man that could

spring into action.

and lay waste to the evildoers. That man himself is Stephen P.
New.

That's right. And as I said, the music isn't queued up.
So

I thought you'd have time to cusick the music, cue the music.

Regardless, even if you can't carry a tune in a bushel basket, you can go to newlawoffice.com or you can call 877-50-STEVE,

and the man will come running on riding a white horse with a lance or a sword or one of those

jousting stick, and he will knock the black knight off his horse and restore your justice to you and maid marion in a court of law and then eat a turkey leg

he's the knight in shining armor of the legal profession stephen p new new lawoffice.com 87750 steve

that's hear that music quicker next time we will have it ready next time they know him all over the place they know him very well in california they may be knowing him really well in st. Louis soon.

But Steven PNU, the man for you, new lawoffice.com. California, St.
Louis, and Tokyo is next. He's going to chase Dave Meltzer wherever he's been.
87750 Steve.

Jim, before we wrap things up, let's do dynamite ratings. Ah, you got him in.

We got him in. And again, last week, I think I don't have it in front of me.
I believe, actually, I do. It was 588 last week, which was not an outrageous number.
It was in line with the trend.

What they've been doing, we didn't see any

attrition over to Net, not Netflix, but to Max. Max Flix.
Max Flix.

It was about the same number, give or take, as they've been doing on the cable.

AEW Dynamite Gym on TBS, Wednesday, January 8th, 8 to 10:05 p.m.

On average,

615,000 viewers. Well, they got back over 600,000 for the first time in quite some time.

Are there about what

30 or 35,000 Twinkletoes fans that wanted to see him return, or what do they attribute this to? Well, let's see what kind of story the quarters tell. These were not compiled by WrestleNomics.

I got these from an independent source. Jim Quarter 1, 8 to 8.15 p.m.

Will Ospreay versus Buddy Matthews,

732,000 viewers.

Okay, and that,

as I recall, that's up, isn't it, from their starting point? Because they started lower last week. I believe they did.

Quarter two,

8:15, 8:30 p.m., the continuation of Osprey versus Matthews, the post-match, the private party Hurts Syndicate confrontation, and the start of Bobby Lashley versus Mark Briscoe.

There's a picture and picture in there somewhere.

623,000 viewers. Ouch.
Okay. And immediately there goes 109,000.
So we're following the normal pattern.

And again, with the normal idea that quarter two is the truer number than quarter one with a lead in, that's kind of the baseline, which is up a little bit from where they've been, quite frankly.

Yeah.

Quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

Continuation of Lashley versus Briscoe. The beginning of the Casino Gauntlet match.

Picture and picture and commercial breaks here in this

555,000 viewers.

Boy, I was going to say, that casino gauntlet will kill anything. And

now they've lost 177,000 or thereabouts, but now they've got to pick up something or they won't be able to make their average. So who's going to make the difference here? We go to quarter four.

Once again, the continuation of Casino Gauntlet, two times a picture and picture,

573,000 viewers.

So 20,000 or so variation, and that thing took forever.

All right, quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour, nine to nine: fifteen p.m.

The continuation of the casino gauntlet, the post-match, where Powerhouse Hobbs told Renee what he thinks of her husband that she walked off,

the hook patriarchy video,

and the beginning of the Jeff Jarrett MJF confrontation,

658,000 viewers. Wow.
So they picked up a

85,000 at the top of the hour in a place where they usually stay flat or even lose.

That's right. We go now to quarter six, 9.15 to 9.30 p.m.

Continuation of Jeff Jarrett and MJF live angle.

The

Adam Cope, I guess I got to call him Cope, the Cope Death Riders FTR Powerhouse Hobbs live angle. Live angle.
It's a dead angle.

614,000 viewers. What a commercial break in there, too.
Excuse me. And they're starting to drop again.
So

MJF and Jeff Jarrett were on for the majority of the second highest quarter after the lead-in of this whole fiasco.

We go now to quarter seven, 9.30 to 9.45 p.m.

The backstage segment You Love So Much with Harley Cameron and Mariah May

and Chris Statlander versus Tony Storm versus Willow Nightingale, picture-in-picture and full-screen commercials, 594,000 viewers.

And they're going down again, but to be honest,

nowhere near the

drop off a cliff that they usually have at the end of one of these programs because 594 is still only the third lowest quarter in the

show so far. And we'll briefly talk about the key demo numbers after this because it tells a story as well.
Quarter eight, I remind you, we have a five-minute overrun.

9:45 to 10 p.m., continuation of the women's match. Renee backstage with Tony Storm and the start of the Kenny Omega interview, 575,000 viewers.

Five-minute overrun, including the Don Callis family and Will Ospreay,

606,000 viewers.

The key demo,

267, 218, bottoms out at 199,

202, 238,

229, 236, 250. So it actually rose throughout the second hour.

So

besides the fact that

MJF and Jeff Jarrett was involved in the middle of the show,

they stuck around to see what Kenny was going to have to say for himself, didn't they?

Because they always lose

in incredible numbers, especially when there's a girls match that late.

But this time, for the people who like that kind of thing, there's 575,000 or 594,000 or 606,000. They want to see what Kenny's going to do.

And again, a little bit of a bump in the key demo. It's interesting.
The key demo, 18 to 49,

the Kenny Overrun, for instance, 250,000 viewers. 18 to 34,

73,000.

So it's still 34 to 49. It's carrying the professional wrestling.

Carrying the business. That's right.
Jesus Christ. Well, those were the dynamite ratings, and we still have so much stuff, but we've run long, and we're going to call it here, Jim.

We've run, we've run, we've recorded a lot of audio this week. And we're coming back in two more days to do it again.
That's right. Any final words, any closing thoughts here on the drive-thru?

Yes, I'm done. Say bye-bye.
All right, for Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian Last. Let me play us off.
Hold on.

All right. We'll be on the experience with all the usual plugs and everything else.
For Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian Last. Tally ho!