Episode 374: Jim Reviews AEW Worlds End

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Hello again, friends!

Happy New Year!

Am I loud?

I must be loud.

I'll be adjusting these settings.

You're screaming, and I don't know why.

Welcome back to another year and another edition of Jim Cornett's Drive-Thru, right here, wherever you find us.

Happy 2025.

I'm your host, The Great Brian Last.

That was the theme to the Great Brian Last.

And here is the star of the drive-thru.

He's feeling good today, Mr.

Jim Cornet.

What if we don't want to be found?

What about that, wherever you find us?

What if we're trying not to be found?

What if we're trying to evade detection?

What then, oh, great Brian Last?

Where do they turn then?

It's not.

We ain't got no answer.

It's not about the process of finding someone.

It's wherever you are found.

First thing I say to you in a year and you got nothing.

It's wherever you may be, wherever you find yourself, not wherever someone finds you.

Well, I find myself in betwixt a rock and a hard place.

First of all,

we left the people when we did a show two weeks ago.

And then we announced we were taking our Christmas break.

And the...

The fine omnibi have been out there and forced to keep the people happy on the podcast feeds and the YouTube channel and things of that nature.

And we had grand plans for our vacation.

And it's the first show we've done in those two weeks.

And in those two weeks, not only we left the people with a cliffhanger, I was starting to get a little sniffly.

I was starting to feel under the weather.

I said, am I getting something?

Well, not all we blew.

We had Starcade of sickness because we blew it out.

Not only did I get sick, but but Stacey got sick, and you got sick, and your entire family got sick over our two-week Christmas New Year vacation.

Am I exaggerating

the level of germaphobia here that's been going on amongst our various clans for the last two weeks?

There's been a lot of sickness, and for the record, I was a lot of sickness.

I wasn't on vacation.

We didn't record, but I worked every single day.

Well, you know what?

Our vacation from the world, where we

attempt to get away from this for just to clear, as Ernie Ladd would say, to wring your brain out because it's like a sponge.

And then start the year anew.

I had projects

that I was wanting to accomplish.

And this story will have a silver lining here in a minute, folks.

I'm not just going to vent about the holidays and cuss Christmas.

It might take me a second to get to the silver lining, but.

I had the things that I wanted to do that required physical activities, the things I've been putting off, the shampooing of the carpets, the rearranging of the garage/slash stock room, as well as

you, you workaholic.

I was going to spend time in a quality fashion with Stacy and little Harley Quinn.

But I wanted to feel good to do it.

But the

pretty much a couple of hours, I think, after you and I finished recording, that last program, I can't even remember, Time Blurs,

I decided that I was sick.

Ah, do you hear that?

Ah!

I decided that I was sick, and Stacey had been sniffling all week.

And we said, We're just going to go.

We've got a cold or something.

We're going to go to the urgent care right over here.

It's a mile and a half way.

We're going to get some antibiotics and some of them

anabolic steroids they give people.

Boom, it's going to knock it right out.

Could you hear that snap snap just like that?

Snap of the fingers.

I haven't never, I've never heard anyone just say it like that.

Do you actually say, Can I have some anabolic steroids?

No,

whatever.

I'd say, give me the steroids, and they determine whether I need that.

No,

this is the steroids they give you when you got a cold or a flu or whatever.

It's the prednisone and the

bug tussle or whatever else it is.

And clearly, people need that, and it helps them.

I just don't know how many people walk into the doctor's office and demand steroids.

No, I'm saying, give me some goddamn Deca Durabalin, motherfucker.

For you old-time bodybuilders out out there, Hercules Hernandez did a fucking promo.

I was managing him in Mid-South Wrestling, and I do the brunt of the setup with him and hacksaw Duggan, and then I pitch it to Herc, and he fucking hits a double bicep, and his arms are massive, and he's fucking 280 pounds with like 2% body fat.

He says, See that Duggan?

10 Decadura Balin a day.

It was a different time, but anyway, we went over

to the aforesaid urgent care and

being good citizens, because we got the sniffles and we're sneezing, we're wearing our masks as we go into this medical facility, right?

And the staff there are wearing their masks also, except the people behind the glass window aren't.

I think, you know, but

when they take you back, they're wearing a mask and et cetera, also.

And the first clue, because now you've been seeing on the news, there's a rise in RSV, the respiratory virus.

There's a rise in COVID now.

There's a rise in all kinds of illnesses, flus, and respiratory ailments because people, once again, have gone back to all their sloppy fucking habits.

More on this in a moment.

So anyway, we only have said, there's never anybody in this place.

We only have to wait about 10 minutes, but actually,

unbelievably enough, two people came in during the course of time where 10 minutes we're in the waiting room.

They're coming into a place where sick people go.

Even if they're not sick in a viral fashion, maybe they've herniated their hymen or broken a fucking,

you know, coccyx bone or whatever, but

they come in with no mask on and they're sitting across from us with masks on, sneezing.

And they're just playing with their fucking phones.

So anyway, they take us back and the first thing they say is, I said, well, we both have the same thing.

They put her in one room and me in the other, but I was referring to Stacey also.

And I said, we both have the same thing.

And I think I usually get this kind of thing.

And blah, blah, blah.

He said, well,

no, she, the nurse first said, well, we've had a lot of COVID positives today.

So the doctor is telling us to do COVID checks on every.

So again, two of these people had walked in the fucking waiting room.

into a medical facility where a bunch of fucking people with COVID had come and they're just barefaced and don't give a shit.

More on this in a moment.

So they do the stick the thing up our nose, right?

And then the doctor comes in about 10 minutes later.

Well, I say comes in in the loosest description of the word.

He's wearing a fucking mask and he's standing in a doorway.

And he's shouting the instructions.

And he said, well, your wife's positive for COVID.

Yours hasn't come back yet.

And I'm thinking, well, what the?

Oh, yes, Ding.

you got it too.

Almost five years I avoided this fucking thing.

And we've tracked it down to where either it was Stacy's MRI on her back

or me

going to meet with my dear financial advisor.

And he wasn't sick.

So we assume.

It may have been Stacy's medical visit, but nevertheless,

they say, oh, yeah, there's all kinds of people now.

It's boom, blah, blah, blah.

And you don't see anybody wearing a mask.

But here, you see the doctor wearing a mask and standing in the doorway yelling instructions at me about the medicine they're going to give me from eight feet away while I'm wearing a mask.

I mean,

people with leprosy get closer contact from medical professionals.

He didn't want any part of this shit.

And by the way, he's wearing a mask.

And that's where the point I was going to make.

Before I get to the silver lining,

was it

I still get on Twitter and whatever people are, well, what did you think when you made all those comments about wearing a mask in COVID?

Now that it's been proven that masks don't work, now that it's, it's, they're the now that it's been proven crowd,

no matter what batshit thing that they don't want to believe is true that is actually happening,

they will find what they've who's proven it where

on Fox News they believe that shit

nothing else in the world they believe that shit

now that it's been proven that January 6th wasn't an insurrection in what universe they believe it now that it's been proven that masks don't work

Besides the fact that you could go to the Mayo Clinic website or the CDC website or go to any doctor telling him you've got a communicable disease and he's going to be staring at you from behind a fucking face mask.

You idiots, slobbering morons.

So apparently, everybody around the country's been sick for the past six weeks or so, according to all these reports that are coming out.

And they're just going around slobbering all over everybody again because we didn't learn our fucking lesson and because irresponsible, criminal-minded fucking nut cases get on the goddamn news and tell you the opposite of what common sense dictates.

That if you'd cover your fucking face up, you wouldn't spread your germs around.

You fucking filthy, filthy people.

But I mentioned a silver lining, didn't I, Brian?

I will say this.

I do think it should be mandatory to wear a face mask in a medical, like when I go into a medical building and there's lots of doctor's offices, like there,

that's the one place.

Who wants to sit in the waiting room when people are coughing and sneezing and snotting all over themselves?

I don't care if it's COVID or what.

Do you want to go to the grocery and pick out the produce when people are snotting and coughing all over the cabbage?

Also, make it mandatory on the Long Island Railroad.

Some of those people are disgusting.

Well, are you?

Hey,

I'll tell you what, that fucking

train trip that the Midnight Express and I took that time from, what was it, Philadelphia to New Haven.

Guy next to Stan Lane smelled like a goat.

Stan didn't eat right for three days.

Anyway, back to your story.

Back to the silver story.

Back to the story.

So, oh, I wanted, before I get to the sale, let me jot down the word silver lining.

This may take another second or two.

See, I'm full of the piss and vinegar today, folks.

So they give us medicine.

That will

combat this fucking disease now that we've got.

I'm thinking, oh, God, is this the end for little Rico?

And I told you the next day, I said, I've been sicker, but I've not been madder because of the timing.

And they prescribed the medicine.

We'll find out that's a whole thing going back and forth till they finally got it ready.

But guess what, Brian?

And what is the name of the ship?

Paxlovid, I believe, is what they gave us.

And in all honesty, it did work.

You could tell it, you could even taste taste it working.

But we have more on that in a second.

Do we have to talk about wrestling today?

Fuck that shit.

So we, at the pharmacy, we have insurance,

right?

We have insurance.

We pay for it ourselves because I am self-employed, because I'm the only boss I've ever been able to get along with.

But guess how much this stuff costs if you have insurance, at least our insurance,

for a box of you take three tablets,

three in the morning and three in the evening for five days.

So, whatever that math is, that's how many tablets is in this box.

Guess how much it costs us with insurance?

Like a copay?

What gave when it the cost of the prescription and the insurance pays the deal or negotiates the deal that it does?

It's not a copay.

$80.

You are incorrect.

I won't even milk it.

$375

per box.

So $7.50 for the both of us, along with $1.23 for the optional cough syrup.

But guess how much it would cost?

Yes.

And you haven't paid $3.75 for a box since that trade ride to New Haven.

Oh, I'll tell you what.

I haven't paid $375 for a box since I used it to get somebody over when they came out of it.

But guess how much it would cost if you don't have insurance?

And I know, again people around the world, the United States,

we accept this kind of thing because

the only people that want to change it keep getting slapped down by the billionaires and the current ruling class.

If you didn't have insurance, it said cash pay,

it was fucking like $1,300 per box.

So we were, the two of us would have paid almost $3,000 for this shit to save us from the scourge of COVID,

which is probably a reason why a lot of people are walking around with scourge of COVID.

But what exactly, I mean, versus waiting it out, I mean, did it make a remarkable

yes, because

the very next day,

or later on that night and the next day, we both felt like complete shit.

Whereas Stacey was sweating nonstop and sweating to the point where she gets so wet, then any kind of breeze, you know, the coldness, coldness, right?

Oh, God, you're sweating and shivering.

Whereas I'm the opposite.

I've got a sweatshirt and a fucking fleece jacket on and two pairs of sweatpants in the house with a blanket over me and the heat turned up.

We had to go to opposite ends of the house because we couldn't stand the climate.

And I didn't eat

really almost anything for two days, could have cared the fuck whether they made food or not.

And

the snotting and the wheezing, cough was not bad.

And then, but taking this stuff

within 48 hours, or even a little bit less, you could start to tell an improvement.

Then I spent two days eating everything I could find in the fucking house and

felt normal and stopped sweating and, you know, had a normal temperature.

But the shit makes your breath taste, or not your breath, but your mouth,

it tastes like you've been sucking pond water.

I told you it ruined the taste of mouthwash.

And that was, you know,

so you could tell it was working.

But anyway,

you know, then the lingering symptoms have just been still snottiness and a little spittiness and general

don't give a fuckedness.

But over the course of the first three days, we,

you know, were not that happy.

But anyway, the silver lining.

Whereas I'd planned to do all that stuff, instead, I didn't do any goddamn thing.

And I would have liked to have felt better, but we had a wonderful time

sitting on the goddamn couch and petting the dog and eating when we finally regained our appetite.

And that is the first time that I have taken that much time to not do anything in over 10 years.

So my brain is wrung out.

And now I'm not real fucking happy about commencing this all over.

We got to do this for another year.

It's what you're saying at the top of the program with this brand new year thing.

At least another year.

I mean, we have commitments going to 2029, 2031.

Wait a minute.

I don't know if I have commitments going to 2031.

You didn't tell me anything with a three in front of it.

We'll talk about it.

We'll talk about

these these other fucking suckers will pay us for, well, nevertheless.

Nevertheless.

Well, I'm thinking about, I'm trying to constrict my retirement age down while I still can before the inevitable financial collapse of the United States with the new criminal regime and all this other stuff begins to hit.

I'm going to enjoy some peace and quiet.

And

I got the energy.

About three days ago to actually do something and tried to move some things around and tweaked my back.

And now

I'm sitting sideways.

But that gave me another excuse, just sit back down on the couch and say fuck it and pet the dog.

And Stacey and I watched more television.

And since we got to talk about wrestling today,

then the experience next week is where I'm going to talk about all the other non-wrestling things that has struck my mind.

It'll probably be more interesting than this fucking fever dream Tony Khan's in.

And we'll talk about some emails and some Christmas presents and acknowledgements and everything on the experience.

So there's another cliffhanger for you.

Wait for that for either three days or maybe six months.

I may take another vacation.

What do you want to do here today?

Well, I mean, a lot has happened over the last,

what's it been?

It's been a while.

Back in the before time.

There's been a pay-per-view.

There's been TV shows.

People have said stupid things.

Lots of other stupid things.

So, I mean, there's lots going on.

I guess, chronologically,

we should start with the AEW pay-per-view World's End, which took place last year.

And you know what?

It may have been better for them if it had.

What, if the world had ended?

Yes.

Come on.

Well,

then we would have been saved the TV show they did on the first day of the new year.

I think they should have pulled a Costanza.

They should have tried to do something to go out on a high point and then pray that the world ended before they had to do anything else again.

But they didn't.

They were in Orlando, Florida, I believe.

Yeah, yeah.

That's typically where people think the end of the world begins.

Orlando, Florida.

If it's not the end of the world, you can see it from there.

I'm trying to, yes, I have my notes here now.

Orlando in a quote jam-packed arena.

That's what

the commentator, not the fancy twice-baked tater, but the commentator said, old sock face.

They were in a jam-packed arena.

As long as the camera could see the seat, it was packed.

Someone wrote to us, they said, did he have a stroke?

Because he's having trouble just completing sentences or thoughts.

He starts trying to say something and he loses his train of thought.

You know what he's got now?

Is he's got, what are they...

What are they calling?

We're talking about Excalibur, folks.

The guy with the fucking nylon panties on his head.

The guy who would be the worst commentator in wrestling if he wasn't sitting next to Tony Schiavone.

Well, but now, depending on how you define commentator, you still got Officer Barb Brady to deal with back there.

He's back on a show in Force.

But nevertheless, what do they call the thing when gymnasts start second-guessing themselves and

their heads can't process or control where they are in the air?

You know what I'm saying?

And they start making.

No,

They can't process where they are on the ground either.

I think old Sockface has that now.

I think he's just, he's realized that he's said all of his shit that he can say about the tornado, tornillos and the, you know, whatever the fuck, fancy moves names.

And he's doing the same shit over and over again.

And he's trying to figure out some way to be a real announcer, Pinocchio.

And

it ain't coming across.

And he's got

the Jimmies or whatever, the Jimmy Legs.

But anyway, back to this pay-per-view in the jam-packed arena.

God, if I

know this is going to happen in the next week, but if I see another tournament ever on this television or any of their associated programming, it will be too soon.

If never.

And what the.

Can I just, before we start talking about the first match was Osprey and Felcher,

in the tournament, can I set the tournament up?

We would be remiss in our

standards as professional broadcasters if we didn't, for our audience who didn't pay attention to this tomfoolery, recap how these semifinal and final matches came together on his pay-per-view.

So just so the people know, right?

Right.

You're with me.

I didn't think that I had to.

I thought it was an implied right.

Well, I had to breathe because I'm a COVID survivor, goddammit.

I thought it was an implied breath.

I'm going to start a fucking GoFundMe.

So I don't want to, I don't want to take it upon myself as a mere novice in these blue league and gold league and B block and A block and H and R block tournaments.

I'm a novice.

I want to go to a professional to explain to us, Brian Last, how these semifinal and final tournament matches came to be on this pay-per-view.

I'm going to Uncle Dave.

Oh, okay.

This was written in the wrestling observer.

Guy sent me

this copy, but I don't know what, I guess it was the observer that covered the

dynamite and rampage tapings in New York's Hammerstein ballroom.

Because the way that Uncle Dave describes it as

the show that they taped to that night was built around setting up the Continental Classic semifinals.

The booking came together strongly on the last show as every match had meaning.

Are you ready to hear the meaning in the gold league, Brian?

Please.

Well, when Will Osprey lost to Ricochet, it seemed impossible for him to make it because he had to beat Brodie King to finish with nine points, and everyone figured Claudio Castignoli would beat Commander and be at 12.

If Ricochet beat Darby Allen, he'd be at 12 and they would be the two to go.

If Allen beat Ricochet, he, Ricochet, and Osprey would tie at nine, and Allen would have beaten Ricochet and Osprey, so he'd go with Castignoli.

King would have nine with a win and would have a tiebreaker over Allen, but not over Castignoli or Ricochet.

But Castignoli lost, and Ricochet drew Allen.

That put Ricochet in, and Castignoli and Osprey tied for second, but Osprey won their match to advance.

Got it?

I have no idea.

No,

I do not have it.

Whoa, then you gotta learn, baby.

Learn, baby, learn.

Meltzer Inferno.

Learn, baby, learn from the mother.

So now the Blue League.

Don't be back there cackling, but sharing with the whole class.

Haha.

The Blue League now.

This is an interesting case.

This is clear-cut right here, straight down the middle.

The Blue League saw everyone but Beast Mortos still alive going into the last day.

Services for him apparently will be taking place this weekend.

Okada had seven points, and Benjamin had six going into their match.

The winner would likely go to the final four.

Kyle Fletcher had nine points, Daniel Garcia had seven, and Mark Mark Briscoe was in the clubhouse with nine.

And Okada versus Benjamin Draw would put Briscoe in the playoffs.

Benjamin would die Briscoe.

I think that means tie.

I don't think they're suggesting any kind of homicide.

Benjamin would tie Briscoe with a win, but beat him head to head, so he'd likely be in.

Okada beating Benjamin put him at 10.

Had Garcia beat Fletcher, Okada and Garcia would be tied and they had a draw.

It was said since they both made it, there would be a coin flip of who faces Osprey and who faces Ricochet.

If Fletcher won, that gave him 12 and Okada 10.

A draw was all Fletcher needed because he'd have 10, as would Okada, and he'd finish first based on the head-to-head win.

It's as plain as the nose on your fucking face.

The booking all came together.

That's where you started.

So that's what they're trying to sell the people in fucking Cleveland.

You brought up before the idea you don't want to see another tournament.

The Owen Hart usually starts, what, in the spring?

Oh, God.

Right?

I mean, that's the annual spring thing.

And then this is it.

And then I think there's other ones randomly throughout the year.

This is clearly something Tony Khan loves.

I'm sure he spends lots of time and lots of pads figuring out the outcomes and the points.

Dave loves it too.

I don't think it connects to the regular fan.

I don't think it connects to the regular human brain.

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But anyway, so we had Osprey and Felcher

that have taken the path that we have just described to you, ladies and gentlemen.

And, you know, all of the

top AEW talent,

Will here and old Kyle here,

they're all MDs.

You know that, Brian.

They got their degrees.

They're MDs,

move-doers.

And

again, for the kind of people who like that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing those people like, but they can't contain themselves.

Because

for the only audience that these guys care about getting over to,

this is what they want.

But

a billionaire is spending money on these people to do more than lose ratings and lose interest because it's all the same goddamn shit.

They think they're in a video game and they're going to base that

on everything they do.

And they're trying to make Kyle, as we said.

18 months in an OVW or a small regional territory if something like that existed.

I'm not talking about today's OVW.

I'm talking about in the day.

You know,

you could develop him or NXT possibly.

But no, you ain't going to get, he's bald.

He looks years older because he did look 14, but he also looks miles more boring.

It just, it ain't all together yet.

They're doing it out.

They're doing the rehearsals in front of the fucking

audience on opening night.

They started 100 miles an hour with a a choreographed routine, and they have no reactions to what is happening because they're facially so intent on nailing the next flip and ducking the next fucking

swing your partner Dosi Doe.

And

it's either by the numbers memorized swing dancing or everything that they do individually looks fake, so they do a bunch more of them thinking that that will

make it better.

They'd go on the floor forever, and the referee gawks.

The camera stayed off of Osprey for so long so he could get his color that I thought they'd forgotten he was there.

And then Fletcher now is a blood licker.

Did you see the blood licking Brian off of his boots and everything?

Yeah, I saw it.

I hate whenever they do anything like that, drinking blood or licking blood or licking their hands covered in blood.

I'm not a fan of that.

Again, you know, if it was Abdullah the butcher that came to your town once a fucking year doing it, oh, oh, my God.

But it's like they.

But at least he wasn't drinking it out of a water fountain like old who's he whatsy was, a swerving.

But anyway,

but this is what they do.

Osprey will, they'll get some heat on him and then he'll make a big comeback with his flips and then

Kyle will suplex him on his head.

So Osprey will just stand up and grab Kyle and do a backflip with him.

And then they'll both lay there.

Okay,

go up and hit somebody in the head with a baseball bat and knock them down and let them pop right back up and then give you a urinagi and then they'll realize that their brains are melting down the back of their shoulder blade.

They traded chops while daring the other guy to give them chops and then they flipped back and forth some more.

I wrote down while

they're not selling, but then they both sell the guy that got hit and the guy that hit the guy that got hit.

And I guess that's to prove that they do sell, whether it makes any sense or not.

And then

they did a headbutt exchange where they both got on their knees

and they traded headbutts over and over,

not working headbutts, not using their hand, but just headbutting each other.

But it was both fake and real.

They were hard enough to hurt, but obviously being pulled to try not to hurt too bad.

So was that worth the fucking potential hematoma, Brian, when you're trying to do something that you think will convince people

that it's somehow real when you can still tell it's not, but you're really hurting yourself.

Help me.

No, I don't think it's a good idea, and I think it's something that even hardcore wrestling fan, AEW fans probably are uncomfortable with.

Again, Shibata had to have his brain removed, according to the Wrestling Observer, after the headbutt spot.

Yeah.

It was.

And it doesn't even make me uncomfortable for the, because I don't care about either of these guys, whether they do brain damage themselves, but it makes me uncomfortable as a professional to see people do a stupid, phony shit that also hurts.

So there's that

and then osprey kicked out of a brain buster and a power bomb and a lot of leg slaps and immediately jumped up and grabbed the fucking guy that had just done all those things old Kyle Felcher and fucking picked him up and gave him a styles clash one two three

I've never seen

He brain bustered Osprey and he power bombed him and he kicked and slapped that leg a couple of times and Osprey just like, oh, fuck fuck it.

Styles clash, one, two, three.

That is something you see a lot in modern wrestling.

The idea, I mean, the selling is an issue everywhere, but

someone gets killed with a bunch of stuff and all of a sudden they have a burst of energy and they jump up and do something ridiculous.

In this case, it was the finish, with someone else's finish, the styles clash.

Well, yeah, and

again.

I know that, you know.

Why not the tiger driver?

He was so afraid to use it and then he used it.

Why not use it against against the guy you were afraid that he knows where your kids go to school and everything?

Well, that's well, maybe he's still afraid because he knows where his kids go.

I don't know, but I know that Pockets, the mascot, does the stunner, and, you know, and that just reminds people of Austin, but, you know, he's and now Owens.

And Austin and Owens have the connection where he doesn't mind it.

He used it, so whatever.

So, but he's a joke.

But if this guy's going to be fucking a legitimate top guy, why is he using another guy's fucking finish?

Again, the joke, the mascot does the Roman Reigns's too.

He does everybody.

It's the fucking rib,

but not a serious guy.

Anyway, and not in a non-serious way.

So

you didn't like that much at all?

You didn't like it at all.

Well,

how can they, again,

I've said they're both great athletes and they can do wonderful shit that if it was produced, if they had been taught by anybody that knew what the fuck fuck they were doing before they figured that they fucking knew everything that they needed to know,

if that makes sense to you, then yes, both the and Osprey,

he's amazing.

He can sell and make the comeback with the.

I sound like Pat Patterson now,

but not when the, it's just a video game nonsense match over and over, and it looks like everybody else is just executed better, but nothing is over because the individual moves aren't over.

The fucking,

it's, it's, no, you just,

you cannot prostitute

the idea of doing any of these things, picking a guy up and dropping him right on his fucking head for a two count.

And then the guy pops up a second later and does something.

You cannot prostitute the entire business just to let these guys live out their fantasies.

of being Olympic level gymnasts and of some kind of action video game.

They could could both be taught and produced and developed to be good wrestlers, but in left to their own devices, they do this mark fucking bullshit.

And there you have it.

Sorry.

Well, let me ask it this way, too.

The fans there really seemed into this more than anything else on the show.

And they had an opening match, and we know how things work there.

These guys did everything they wanted to do.

There wasn't an agent saying, hey, hold back a little bit.

They went a while.

They did everything they wanted to do.

The fans fans were into it the fans didn't react to the rest of the night exactly because you don't put the goddamn

second coming of jesus christ on first and then end up the show with the uh what do you want to have for the last supper i mean like brett versus owen opened the show and it was an amazing match but they didn't do everything you know they didn't kick out of everything

No, and then it also it was wrestle fucking mania.

And there was still some things to do.

Should WWE have their eyes on when Kyle Fletcher's contract comes up based on his size, his age, and whatever.

Well, the only thing is, yes, to all of those things, but I don't know what kind.

Is he one of these knuckleheads like Ricochet that just wants to play and traffic?

Or is he a guy that's coachable and teachable and can adapt?

to working with the professionals.

That's the only thing I don't know because I've never met the guy.

I'd haven't heard anything about it.

I'm sure he's a wonderful fellow, but does he understand that he's on an indie-level kind of path now and he would need to have the input of real professionals?

So, but yeah, no, they both can do all kinds of shit.

That's not the problem.

The problem is they do all this shit.

And the people like it, yes, because it's crazy in the building in front of them.

And then what's going to follow it?

Number one, so they've shit on everybody else on a card.

And number two,

what can you

again?

They're pouring bleach down people's throats and they're throwing them off balconies through furniture.

And they there's a flamethrower on a fucking guy, right?

And nobody still cares, nobody believes any of it, even when the guy's really on fucking fire.

It's just bullshit to these fans.

Yay!

But that's why they're tuning out because how many more motherfuckers can you set on fire?

They've seen it.

You need Agent Orange now where the skin will melt off.

That's why things don't get over because none of these personalities are over or their reasons for interacting.

A la Seth Rollins and CM Punk or any story that the WWE has going today, practically, where people care about the people involved and why they're...

treating each other that way, so they don't have to fucking amputate limbs.

They've got the pile driver over again.

These stupid motherfuckers are kicking out of loop-leaping tombstone pile drivers on fucking stairs because they're idiots and they're marks for themselves.

And the billionaire that's paying them more money than most of them are worth is a mark for that shit, too.

And that's why

he's spending all his fucking money to fucking do this instead of create any type of serious fucking competition.

Well, I don't know if you know this, but part of the issue, like I said before, the wrestlers decide what they're going to do in the ring.

There's no agent overruling anyone.

Tony's not going to do it.

And part of the reason for all this is Tony's in the back listening to his favorite songs from the 80s, trying to find songs that will fit in different places in the AEW universe with his Raycon earbuds.

Well, you know, that's a thing that I almost forgot about.

Is it, well, it's been so long since we did one of these fine.

It's been a year, Brian.

I almost forgot that we could mention some of our friends on the program as well in this type of thing.

And our friends at Raycon are friends of ours, and therefore they're friends of yours.

They're forever friends.

And, you know, that's why.

Now that I think about it, Tony's back there.

He's watching the monitor.

He sees what's going on, but he doesn't realize that it doesn't make sense because he's listening to, let's say, the Pointer Sisters on his Raycon Everyday Wireless Earbuds.

But folks, you don't have to just listen to tired 80s music.

No, you can go for the classics, the Zeppelin, the Stones, or you can go for the

modern day stuff with the

Diddies and the Daddies.

I don't know who these modern people are.

Let's not go for them.

Let's also not put down the Pointer Sisters as being tired 80s things.

What the hell?

Well, as far as for a wrestling application, it certainly is, but we'll get to that when we talk about dynamite.

But folks, you can even listen to us on your raycon everyday earbuds they're the perfect gym buddy let's say you're in i'm not talking about me gym you got a new buddy i hear well it's a it's a it's one of those bouncy buddies but no it's at the the gym gym

where the gymnasium where you go to work out you're going to listen to something while you're sweating sweating to the oldies sweating to the newbies Sweating makes the world go round.

Or let's say you want to tune out a co-worker.

Just put these things in your ear.

They're so small and they're wireless.

Most nearsighted people won't even notice them.

You can just nod and smile and you can listen to whatever you want to listen to.

Or let's say you want to talk on the phone.

Well, you can talk into your phone, but you can hear them on your Raycons, can't you?

And if you're on a three-way call, well, you can hear one son of a gun on the left or one son of a gun on the right.

And you can just drop out of the middle of the conversation and let them fight it out.

Because they've got active multi-point connectivity where you can pair these two suckers up and then let them go at it while you stand back and watch the carnage.

And they come with active noise cancellation.

So if the profanity gets too much, you can just, boom, cancel that noise right now.

As a matter of fact, when you're talking to somebody and you activate the active noise cancellation,

boom, a recording comes up to say you've you've been canceled for your noise, motherfucker.

That does not happen.

Again, these are features that are actually part of Raycon, but these are not applications or ways to use it that Jim has no idea.

I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

Well, you mean to say when you cancel somebody's noise, you don't even have the courtesy to tell them about it?

Well, I don't know.

Again, it's noise canceling, but I don't know if that's exactly how it's applied.

So it's a feature.

Well, it's certainly a feature they have, the fine Raycon earbuds.

Yes.

Well, you want to talk about features.

They start at just half the price of the other premium audio brands, but they sound just as good and they come in a variety of vibrant colors.

So

you can match your style or you can match your skin tone.

Or, you know, some I like the checkerboard.

Really?

A lot of people come up and try to do a double jump and get me to king them.

But right now,

if you want to go to buyraycon.com, that's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N.com slash j ce

you can get 15 off site-wide of everything you buy there and as we've said let's say you buy 10 pair that's 150 off that means that they're going to pay you half just to take them it's amazing what you can do with this new math

so if if you think 2025 is going to suck folks we're using the old math ladies and gentlemen it's still it's still it hadn't come in yet no new math no new math is not a thing yet no Oh, well, okay.

Well, using the old math, you're still going to get 15% off.

So 2025 is going to suck.

We know that already.

So just don't listen to it.

Listen to what you want to listen to on your Raycon everyday wireless earbuds.

15% off at buyraycon.com slash JCE.

That's right.

Raycon.

A friend of ours.

They could be friends of yours.

And speaking of friends, nobody loves friends more than Tony Khan.

And it was a gathering of the friends at AEW's, I can't speak, AEW's world's end.

Well, another tournament match followed the first tournament match, and I don't know if it followed it, but it came afterwards.

Let's put it that way.

See, folks, I should have been, I would have been a killer on the Borsch Belt in the 50s doing all the clubs and the Poconos.

Ricochet.

The Catskills.

The Catskills.

Well, I want to work it out on the road first and then go to the Catskills.

Another tournament match, Ricochet and our friend, Okada.

Because I can't even have any fun with this fucking broken down shell of a man by giving him a nickname anymore.

Please, can't somebody put him in a chair and wheel him the fuck out?

Geez, so Ricochet was a big babyface.

He came in

with great fanfare and

from what we were led to believe is millions of dollars of commitment on Tony Khan's part part from

the WWE to debut and, oh, they loved him.

And has he been there three months?

And he managed to somehow go from being a fucking raving babyface that everybody was saying was the savior of the company to, oh, we don't really like this guy.

Boy, this guy's turned out to be a fucking nerd.

Well, did you see that?

And there was footage at the Hammerstein.

I think that was one of the shows that aired during our break.

I think it was him against Osprey, and the fans had said his streamers were throwing toilet paper at him.

Well, yes, and then they actually did something on one of the TV tapings that they did.

Or no, on this pay-per-view here, what am I thinking about?

It's on this coming up.

See, my mind, I've got, I'm a COVID survivor, goddammit.

That started in Ring of Honor back in the late 2000s in Manhattan Center in the Hammerstein Ballroom,

where they were for the big title matches, they would throw streamers, right?

Like they did in Japan.

And it was a cool visual in that building.

And everybody, you've seen it.

They throw the streamers and blah, blah, blah.

They were doing it before then, though, for the record.

Who was doing it before then?

Ring of Honor.

They were doing it before the Manhattan Center in, you know, 2009 or anything.

Okay, but what I'm saying to you is in that particular building, I'm not saying they invented the concept in the whole fucking universe.

I'm saying in that building,

they were throwing the streamers, and then, and I can't remember who it was, what heel it was, so I'd be happy to

be, you know, informed.

But to be wise asses, the New York fans, is to throw in streamers at them.

They threw toilet paper

like you are the shit.

So that's what the people were doing there was they remembered

from doing that years ago.

That is not a

thing that just happened.

A lot of people may have seen it for the first time from their reaction.

But then

that's what I'm saying is bad enough when the fans do it, but the fans, then then they actually make it part of the show where

it just

they can't help but being cheesy, can they?

Is what I'm saying to you.

So you're against the idea of embracing it?

Well, I think it's great when the fans do it, but when you've got the guys out there copying the face, you've got a top babyface copying something the fans just did.

What organically is the kids say?

I think that looks cheesy is what I'm saying to you.

If he'd have thought of it or if he'd have thunk of it first is what I'm saying, but when you, the fans have already done it and now, oh, here we

here comes Swerve stealing other people's material.

I don't know.

But that's the point I'm making also.

Ricochet went from second coming to can you please be going.

Now the people hate him.

He's a douchebag.

His real personality is apparently showing through on Twitter.

So now they've just not only made him a heel, but a nerd or a geek type that gets pushed around and or made fun of and or whatever.

Has there ever been somebody that was

probably in this company?

Yeah, you can quote me three or four that started out so popular and got so fucking unpopular so quick, but maybe Mercedes or even then.

They still haven't thrown toilet paper at her.

Yeah, I think she almost has a slight recovery just because at least they like her matches.

But with Ricochet, it's,

you know, it's not that long ago where WWE at the end of his contract was giving him a push, and he was involved in that program with Ron Breaker on Raw.

And it was the best stuff he ever did in WWE.

And it was kind of, I guess,

potentially a sample of how they would treat him going forward.

And then he went to AEW, came in with a bunch of fanfare, got the big reaction to First Night In.

And now the fans are sick of him.

And the fans are throwing toilet paper at him, and one of the baby faces is wiping his ass with it and throwing it on top of him.

And so, anyway, we got to get there first, folks, because Okada

seriously help me.

He looks like facially like he ought to be working in the accounting department and moves like he should be in a body cast.

And he actually jumped up and tried to do a few things over the course of this night, but the announcers have to put him over like he's this,

you know, world-beating, incredible fucking athlete and wrestler.

And what people are seeing doesn't fit.

And they're wondering why the people don't give a shit besides people who already knew who the fuck he was

and nobody else.

Because if you've just seen this, it's you're, what the fuck?

And

again, Ricochet and Okada, now, who's the heel here?

Okada was in the top heel group, the Lollipop Guild with the Buckaroos until they,

the last we saw of them on camera was they ran in fear out of the building

and that was it.

So now this guy can't talk.

He can't work.

He looks like shit.

He's got no angle going, but he beats every fucking body.

The crowd was cheering him here because Ricochet is a bigger dick.

But it was a glacial pace compared to the first match because there's no way that Okada could do anything like any Ricochet, Osprey, or Fletcher.

But Ricochet tried to make up for it by going twice as fast.

But I mean, did you say

Okada told the crowd to be quiet, and they didn't have a problem following that instruction.

And then he ran crisscross around the ring.

hitting the ropes four times while Ricochet was just sitting there on his ass dumbfounded.

And then he ran up behind him and slapped him in the head.

is i

this guy is supposed to be the greatest tournament wrestler in the world and he's doing boogie woogie jimmy valiant spots from 1993

they kept saying that i mean by the end of the night especially in that on dynamite the greatest tournament wrestler ever

and who gives who gives a

and it

and the fans have seen him in exactly one tournament where's eddie kingston Didn't Eddie Kingston win this last year?

Well, yeah, but he hurt himself.

Did he break his leg?

Did he?

Or was that the time before that?

Point is, he's been gone a long time.

I forgot he was the continental champion.

Well, that's the thing is Okada, and then last couple minutes, he'll turn it up a little bit, but he works like he's doing the walkthrough at 3.30 in the afternoon.

And Ricochet is embracing

being a heel to people, people, but now they've got a midget heel whose only appeal is doing flashy babyface shit

for millions of dollars.

And

a lot of this was brutal.

And then Okada says, oh, keep chopping me.

Now let's do the fake forearms.

Ricochet flipped some ore, but he's a heel.

So who gives a shit?

Okada did the clumsy elbow off the top, gave the camera the finger.

They flipped back and forth for a minute.

Okada hit a drop kick, and Ricochet immediately reacted to that by picking Okada up and dropping him on his head and getting a two count.

And then Ricochet hit a shooting star press off the top rope and got a two count.

And then

more kicks by, I'm reading my notes now.

More kicks by both.

And suddenly Okada jumped up and hit that shitty Rainmaker clothesline and beat him one, two, three.

So,

again, leaping,

flaming pile drivers can't stop you, but that one little short arm clothesline is deadly.

The fuck.

And then, do you want to get to the afterbirth or any comments on this match?

No, I mean, it was fine, I guess, for what it was.

You kind of hit on the big thing.

Okana coasts, and then he turns it up for the last few minutes, especially in the later match, but he did it here too.

And I guess booking-wise, you had to tease of a potential Ricochet Osprey rematch, but instead you got Okada Osprey.

Well, you might have had a rematch, or you might have a deal where they both go in together, and one with six points, and the other with three points, and then they have a draw, which is like kissing your sister with your finger up her ass.

Is that what that's like?

That's sissy.

That would be the setup to the next tournament.

So then Okada left, and Swerve came out and stood in the entranceway.

And Ricochet told him, I'm going to win this, or no, Ricochet didn't.

He told Ricochet

that he said he was going to win the tournament.

But Swerve said if Ricochet blew it, he was going to embarrass him.

And so now we're going to clean up your mess.

And Nana came out with a fucking little red wagon full of toilet paper

and gave it to the fans and they threw it

at Ricochet.

But they had just previously done that

at the Hammerstein in New York on their own, which is why I say it was at the...

Now they're just trying.

But anyway,

so that

now we've swerved has been reduced to coming out and

giving the fans toilet paper.

This supposed most dangerous man.

It wasn't even a novel way to embarrass him.

The fans had just done it.

That's my point.

All right, moving on, correct?

Or do you have any comments about the tidy bowl?

Moving on.

So then we get the Tijuana street fight for the women's title between Maria May and Thunder Rosa.

Brian, you're aware of what the rules are of a Tijuana street fight women's division, aren't you?

Not specifically that stipulation.

I know street fights.

I have seen wrestlers from Tijuana.

I don't remember if I've seen this match specifically before.

Well, it's no disqualification.

Weapons legal.

Falls count anywhere in the building.

Shitty booking.

My New Year's resolution number one was not to watch girls' garbage matches.

They cannot help themselves.

They think this shit is good.

And for again, for the dwindling audience that they still maintain it might be.

But

two, after they've had the first match where they did everything physical that could possibly be done in a wrestling ring, then they follow it with a match that was not really as interesting.

Then

they have two girls come out and use chairs and trash cans and fight on the stage and spit tequila on each other and break open a piñata full of thumbtacks and roll around in the thumbtacks and use a logging chain.

And finally, the finish of this girls match

is Maria Mae Powell drives Thunder Rosa off the apron through a table to the floor.

One, two, three.

And Tony Shivatti, and I quote, said,

Thunder Rosa will have to be helped out after that.

You think?

You think, my God, she was just run down by a buddy bread truck.

Well, somebody help her up and dust her off.

She's going to need a hand to get back up on the curb.

It's a fucking.

Do you have any other observations about the girls Tijuana street fight contest?

No, no disrespect to either of the girls or women wrestlers.

Oh, I meant as much disrespect as possible, but you can do what you like.

But this was my break match.

This was I'm going to go outside and,

you know, do a couple things and then come back in.

Well, for a lot of people, this was their breaking point.

Every now and then I rinse it out.

And I need to be rinsed tonight.

And I need it more.

I get with the bed and the smell of the leaf.

I don't know what to do.

I'm always in the dark.

The swecking deck shore smells like a dark car.

Downy rinse fights stubborn odors in just one wash.

When impossible odors get stuck in,

but then they continued

with the dynamite diamond ring showdown

between MJF and Adam Cole.

MJF comes out

and this was a pay-per-view AEW crowd, so a crowd of their most faithful,

and the response was a fraction of what it used to be because they have cut the throat of their biggest future star with the way that he's been presented and been

backed into a quarter and forced to have been presented.

And then Adam Cole comes out, and

except for the audience participation where they get to go boom and baby,

I've seen people walking up to a bus stop attract more attention.

It's just, they didn't want to see this, did they?

Did the people want to see this match with any outcome?

The people wanted this feud to end with no ending several months back, almost a year ago when MJF first returned.

They didn't want them to keep doing this and now here it is the end of the year.

It looks like they finally end it.

The other problem is people didn't want to see it.

The people that did see it seemed to take more to MJF than Adam Cole.

And I think a lot of that is specifically because of the visual.

Well, and it's still because that MJF had more goodwill because he was consistently good for so long until they started monkeying with him that it takes a while while to lose that luster, although the process has begun.

But with Adam Cole, they paired him with guys that they presented as jobbers and idiots.

And he looks

not only visually, but looks like in the course of the story to be a complete imbecile because of the way this whole thing's been fucked up.

And they just don't care.

And then,

you know, when MJF threw Adam into the steps to where Adam could get his color, He gets in the ring and tells the crowd to shut the fuck up because the only ones making any noise were the ones cheering for him.

And MJF, again, he's trying to make the fans care.

And

his matches put together always usually make sense, but it,

you know,

no.

At one point, Adam made a comeback and there was kind of silence, indifference.

And they kept trying, you know,

where Adam would hurt his ankle and MJF would clip it so they could extend this dramatic presentation that people didn't want to see the beginning of to begin with.

And then

Adam Cole pulled MJF into the fucking post, and he got juice.

And now they got a double-juice match going on where nobody gives a shit.

And

anyway, finally,

it just went on and on.

MJF rolled out and slapped the stairs behind the referee's back and took a bump and blamed Tavin and Bennett so the referee could kick them out of ringside because they were guarding the diamond ring.

What sense does it make to have two guys in the matches, two friends guarding the fucking ring that is possessed by MJF?

Yes, it's on the line, but you say, well, anyway,

the referee kicked him out.

MJF immediately goes and gets the ring and comes in and runs into a super kick.

And Adam Cole gets the ring.

And he swings, but MJF kicks him into balls and hits him with the draping pile driver one, two, three.

So

the baby face looks even worse when he takes the goddamn gimmick away from a fucking heel and the heel still beats him, doesn't he?

I mean, the booking's never good, it never makes sense.

At least MJF won, but the way everything happened, and then the post-match.

But if I was Adam Cole, I'd say, just knock me out with the fucking ring, Jesus Christ.

Don't give me a goddamn gun, and then I can't fucking shoot straight.

If I was Adam Cole, I'd say, give me a protein shake.

Give me an inflatable

skin divers outfit and just cover him somehow.

But so MJF gets a chair and puts it on Adam's ankle.

He's going to break the ankle, go for the stomp, and music plays, and here comes Roderick Strong.

And he hits the ring, and MJF bails out and runs to the entranceway.

But then Kyle O'Reilly comes out and grabs MJF and throws him back in the ring.

And O'Reilly and Roderick Strong beat MJF up and hug Adam Cole

and then hold the heel so that Adam Cole can punch him.

And then Tabin and Bennett come back in and the five babyfaces celebrate because they all together were able to beat up the one heel.

Who won the match?

Who won the match?

Hopefully that's the end of all that.

And hopefully that's the end of all that with the feud.

I have to be very honest with you.

We'll talk about dynamite a little bit later.

I'm over everything with the undisputed anything.

I don't want to see these guys anymore.

You're disputing it, is what you're saying?

I am.

I'm saying there's a dispute, and I don't want to see any more of this kingdom or this era or whatever the fuck it is.

Or this time period.

Just use our

time machine.

Get us out of this.

So we don't have to talk about the rest of the pay-per-view?

No, we have have to.

No, I didn't know what exactly we were getting out of, but we're back into that.

Well, now we're back into this for the international title.

Another one.

We had our friend take a shit defending against Powerhouse Hobbs.

Can I say one thing, and then I won't say anything else about this match?

This is the most disappointing match to me as a fan on the show.

I was hoping for more out of this.

Well, you silly boy, how how dare you have hope?

How dare you have?

Because AEW will strip the hope away from you, and it will give you cope instead of hope.

Oh, God.

So

what has Hobbs done to deserve this?

And what is this?

He's gone forever because he's hurt.

He comes back in a muddled situation where his manager had totally forgotten about him because he was so unimportant.

So he becomes a babyface just by showing up on the other side.

And wasn't on, wasn't his partner, wasn't it Ricochet?

Am I misremembering that?

Who was whose partner?

Remember when Hobbs showed up here a couple months ago again and Callis had forgotten to re-sign him?

Who was his partner in that match that brought him back as a babyface?

I have to double-check.

It may have been Ricochet.

I think it was Ricochet.

So then you don't seem Hobbs, I'm talking about.

And then

now he's going to do a job for this,

again, for this bogus title.

There's no thought to getting him over first before he does any of these things.

He returned in November as Ricochet's surprise partner against the Don Callis family.

Boom.

Well, now

he came out to get his ass kicked.

Is Take a shit still a member of of the Don Callis family?

He is, charter member.

Well, there you go.

So at the bell, they stood and traded 13 fake forearms and three shoulder tackles before Take-A-Shit took a bump.

So way to get Hobbes over.

I know, yes,

our friend Take is a wonderful young athlete also, and we've said good things about him.

But he shouldn't be standing toe-to-toe with Powerhouse Hobbes.

This match shouldn't even be happening right now,

especially the same kind of matches everybody else has.

They did the fake forearms.

Then they rolled it out and fought on the floor while Aubrey Ed stood and stared at him.

And then

Take got a heat on Hobbes's bad knee.

And again,

they put him in the position.

Remember when I was talking about how Braunbreaker was trying to sell?

a body part the other day?

Was it his arm or whatever, his ankle, whatever it was?

But he was trying to sell like Ricky Morton and it don't work.

You can't

have a beast say, he has to sell the concept of the pounding and the blows or a big concussive effect and you get whatever.

They got Hobbes trying to learn to work.

I'm sure somebody has pitched him.

Oh, you learn to work by selling.

Well, not like this.

He's trying to sell like Ricky Morton on a bad knee.

But look at him.

He's a powerhouse.

So this could have been put together better, but I don't know who's putting anything together.

Take shit, can't lead, and Hobbes has been booked into an unwinnable situation where he never gets a chance to be dominant over any fucking body.

And then

Hobbes had to make one-legged comeback.

So a lot of that shit looked like shit.

Then have him sell his arm.

Don't have him sell his leg.

At least, you you know,

the fans were ready for Hobbes to win it.

And then Hobbes went to the top

to do something, allegedly, but Tegashit caught him and they had an awkward struggle to pull off a superplex.

And they lost their balance, and both of them fell off and crumbled to the apron.

And they went right back to it.

Like idiots, where they'd established, here's what we're going to do.

Oh, but shit, we don't have the balance to do it.

We fell off.

Now we'll climb back up, and my opponent will be extra careful in helping me give him a superplex this time.

What should they have done?

Do anything else, bud?

And they both fell off on either side of the goddamn ropes, get on the floor, bing, bing, roll back in,

shoot, duck, fucking spinebuster.

Whatever the fuck.

Who was going to take a shit?

Was going to give him the superplex?

Then let take a shit duck something and hit him with a goddamn flying Japanese ding bat.

But don't go back and do the same thing you just fucked up, obviously,

and then be more.

So, it's like Hobbes then just climbed right up

here, superplex me, friend, because then it will fuck it up again.

And then Take a shit came off the top with a centon

and then ran into a spine buster and got it.

So

Tegashit superplexed him,

then came off the top with a Centon on him and then hit the ropes and ran toward him.

And Hobbes got up and gave him a Spinebuster and got a two count.

And then they both climbed up to the top again,

not smoothly.

And Hobbs power slammed him off the top and sold his knee.

So

again,

yes, it's a great idea.

Hobbs is so strong.

I bet I can power slam you off the top rope.

It's not executing the move.

It's the phoniness of getting there

that fucking doesn't come into their mind.

And then take a shit, hit him with a kick, an elbow, a knee, a front face lock, and a suplex and beat him one, two, three.

After he's slammed off the aspine bustered and power slammed off the top rope,

well, I'll just kick him and elbow him and knee him and front facelog him and suplex him and just beat him one, two, three.

I'll just do that.

And after all that other shit,

he just beats him flat in a horrible finish.

Thanks for coming, Hobbes.

And it's almost like Wardlow.

I mean, it's not an exact thing, but it's like they do something bad and they think they're going to repair it.

You know, we'll talk about Dynamo when we talk about it.

They give Powerhouse Hobbes a big handicap win.

But this match.

Oh, boy.

And one of the other people apparently was really handicapped stop it stop he was a smaller man he was a smaller man that's for sure no no he was a wise ass he was a smart ass we'll get to him but i would have if if it had been on ovw television it's been a wrestling school i would have gone around the announce desk hit the ring and pulled the guy out myself he was so unprofessional my point is this match didn't do anything to help hobbs and i think like i said it was disappointing we finally get hobbs versus takesna

and it just wasn't happening.

And it didn't happen, but it happened.

And then the women's title was on the line with Mercedes Mooney versus Chris Statlander.

I will say this.

At the top of it, I said I feel sorry for Statlander.

We like her.

We see something there, but oh, hell no.

And I was rewarded in my first thought because this from

Belle to Belle was close to 25 minutes, wasn't it?

Yeah, they typically give her at least 20 minutes for her big matches.

Well,

finally, the heel beat the babyface clean in the middle of the ring with a fancy babyface roll-up.

And I wrote, God, I hate these people.

They wonder why the fans don't care about anybody because the the baby faces all get beat in the just

it was like the old Billy Jack line, not Billy Jack Haynes, but Billy Jack movie.

He tells them what he, I'm going to take my right foot and kick you on the left side of your face.

And then he does it.

It's all the heels say, I'm going to beat you in such and such a way.

And then they do, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

No, I don't even know what I was going to say.

Where's Camille?

Well, she escaped.

Have we ever gotten an explanation exactly what went down?

No, no, there has never been any.

I haven't asked anyone.

Now I may have to because I'm

there's there's not been any public acknowledgement of

what how

I want to know from somebody, how did they bring her in there?

What idea did they pitch her?

How did it suddenly turn into whatever it turned into?

And did she finally just say, you know what, let me the fuck out of here?

and then because she's gone without any comment whatsoever yeah they have stopped saying her name and when they had that recap video 2025 for mercedes there was not a clip of her

so i'm i'm sure there's an nda involved on one side or another but

could let maybe she had some kind of leverage she only signed a sort short a sort a short term she only signed shined she only signed a short term contract i mean that's always an option if she is.

That's a spoonerism.

One of the fans reminded me of.

Why would Tony do that?

Why would Tony take someone down and let her sign a suicide contract

if he knows that NXT would want someone like that?

I don't think there's any short-term contracts.

Well, remember what maybe

both sides wanted her?

Maybe she said, well, I'll...

I like what you're saying to me, but I need to experience it firsthand.

I don't know.

But point is, she was in there.

She was bungled badly, made to look like a complete idiot on television, but she was allowed to get the fuck out.

And they're just acting like she wasn't there.

Here's another one with Statlander out there.

Whatever happened to Stokely?

I forgot about him.

Right?

He just disappeared.

He was just on TV nonstop and then he was off TV.

Well, he's probably like Don Fallus.

He forgot about her.

You know, a lot of these managers, they got so many people, they forget about some of them.

He just forgot to start, stop keep going to the uh to the ring with her or whatever

well while that was a short review i do have to ask you something about it mercedes monet the outfits yes the wigs yes the jewelry all the things happening

is aew paying for this and if so

would she be allowed to resell it can she just start her own

you know, Mercedes,

not Salvation Army, but something where she could just sell things that were given to her.

Gently used merchandise, gently used ring-worn item.

I bet she could sell some items she's worn to some segment of the population, but it's it all revolves around the dollar sign.

Brian, she got the dollar sign on the on the outfit, got the dollar sign on the wig.

She's Mercedes Moon,

eh?

And she's all about making the money because she's a CEO of the M-O-U-S-E Club.

And, you know, you remember back in the dark days, Brian, before we established our modern form of currency when Shopify, our friends over at Shopify, pulled us all out of the dark.

You know, we were using bags of shells and boxes of rocks as currency and coin of the realm until Shopify came around and just revolutionized everything, started making everybody all this money.

You remember those old days?

That's not exactly how I would put it.

I mean, Shopify.

Well, yeah, let's say you wanted wanted a loaf of bread.

You go down to the breadmonger.

You say, I have a bag of shells for you, sir.

And he'd break you off a piece of bread and hand it to you, however much the shells were worth.

That's pretty much the way things happen

until Shopify has revamped this whole system.

And now, if you're on a platform like Shopify, because they're all over the world, they're just covering the world.

Well, then automatically, if somebody in Bolivia wants to buy your tchotchki and they've only got Bolivian rubles or potentially just a gallon of goat's milk, boom, Shopify will take that and turn it into real money and hand it right to you.

For your tchotchkis.

For your tchotchkis.

That's a word not used enough anymore.

Well, the tchotchki people use it all the time, but they need to get the awareness out.

That's why you need Shopify, folks, because They can shell tchotchki, shell tchotchkis, they can sell tchotchkis.

Right by the seashore.

Right by the seashore and get you a bag of shells and turn it into.

Point is: if you've got a product or service that you'd like to get out there, and I mean, let's face it, sometimes you can use code words for these services: wink, wink, nod, nod.

And you know, you need to get it out there.

You need a platform that will facilitate your selling.

Nobody does selling better than Shopify, the number one checkout on the planet.

Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%.

And well, in that case, your conversion is automatically worth half again what it was before.

They've converted it.

And there's way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going

with our friends at Shopify.

So if you're selling those icicles to Eskimos, you got to upgrade your business right now and get the same checkout that the big boys use, the big major platforms, the industrial giants.

the kings of commerce, they're all with Shopify.

And you can get your deal for only $1 a month.

It's a trial period, at which point they'll put you on trial.

They'll cross-examine you.

They'll make sure you're being honest with them, and then they'll continue the arrangement.

There will be no trial.

Well, it's a trial period.

They can have a trial during that period, can't they?

It is a trial period.

You will not be on trial with Shopify, at least during that period.

Well, so they'll guarantee you immunity for a dollar a month, folks.

You will not be able to be put on trial.

Well, just because of the timing.

It would be a remarkable thing to move through the court so quickly that they would be able to get you to trial so fast.

Well,

we're guaranteed speedy trials of this system, except if, you know, you appoint the judges.

But you can get a $1 a month trial period at shopify.com slash JCE.

That's all lowercase, the J, the C, and the E.

Shopify.com slash JCE

to upgrade your selling today.

It's a dollar a month trial period where they will show you how that they will make themselves indispensable in your life.

You'll become addicted to them and you won't be able to quit them.

You won't be able to get away from them no matter what you do because they're going to be so good to you and it's going to be such a rush.

Shopify.com.

You can stop anytime you want.

Slash JCE.

Well, let's return.

Oh, do we have to go back, Daddy?

Back to the world's end.

Let's go back to the end of the world.

Do we have to go back, Daddy?

Let's go back.

AEW.

Don't take me back.

World's End in Orlando.

We're ready for the next match.

Well, it was the time for the time for the tournament final is what it was time for.

The tournament for the

Continental Classic.

Wait a minute.

Let me go back to Uncle Dave's thing.

Does he say what exactly this goddamn deal was?

The Continental Classic?

That's what it is.

Well, it's the Continental title.

It used to be the Classic when there was three belts involved, but now it's just the one belt because they split the other belts up.

So the continental classic is only for the continental title.

Not to be confused with the intercontinental title.

But it just so happens that the continental champion, Okada, is in the final.

What if he wasn't?

Well,

no.

Because they said last year that the continental champion would only be champion for one year,

and then the new champion would be the champion.

So he's got to come back and prove himself.

That's when they took the other two belts out of it and gave them to other people because that would have muddied shit up really bad.

Are you clear now?

I mean, as clear as I'm going to get about this.

Okay, it was Osprey and Okada.

Otherwise known as more of these two.

You know what?

This is Okada's best match in AEW, I think.

Okay, again, to be the nicest guy in prison is not an honor that our children should aspire to.

It's his best match out of a bunch of shitty matches.

But again,

regardless of whether they're MDs or not, move-doers,

here was the setup to this.

Osprey bled a bucket in the previous match and went 20-something minutes.

He comes out.

His head's all bandaged.

He's still bloody.

He's selling the previous match.

So they start out the match by trading the forearms.

And then Osprey did a dive in the first 45 seconds.

And then they fought on the floor for an extended period of time.

And Osprey gave Osprey, Okada gave Osprey a couple of different DDTs on the floor on his busted open head from the previous match.

Within the first two or three minutes, I feel like I'm in hell being forced to watch the same thing over and over and over.

Do you think Tony told Osprey about Ted DiBiase and Rick Flair with Dick Murdoch in 85 in Mid-South, and this is like their version of that?

Like DiBiase coming out after getting busted open and he's got the wrapping around his head.

But how could they even have to do it?

They heard Frank DBTs him on the floor a bunch of times.

They even had a video guide of how to do it then if that's what they were trying to do and they didn't do it.

But the

Osprey is supposed to be the one fighting from underneath, you know, but

then the injured guy is more like an Olympic gymnast suddenly.

And Okada's bumping like he's made out of paper mache because he's, I don't care whether everybody says, oh, he turned it up or not.

He's still doing everything he can to protect every part of his body.

And they went back out to the floor for a while, and I zoned out.

And then they both started going 100 miles an hour.

And Osprey hit another styles clash and got a two count.

So he can,

he can go through all this and still hit the, and Okada hits a clothesline.

He gets a two count.

And then Osprey was selling like death, and Okada was just forearming him lackadaisically.

And I got to be,

they were 15 minutes in by this point.

I zoned out.

I said, fuck it.

I fast-forwarded another couple of minutes.

And they went back and forth, and Okada clotheslined him one, two, three.

So just beat him flat.

They put this broken down dumb shit over one of the two top babyfaces they've got clean.

I don't know why they do it at all,

but they do everything in the goddamn world to each other.

And then when they run out,

the heel just beats the babyface with a half-assed move that was less dangerous than 14 other things they did.

And then they shook hands with each other with Osprey, the babyface, on his knees in front of the Japanese prick that calls everybody bitch

that just beat him.

And he shook his hand while on his knees and bowed to him.

He get a little head bow.

Is that any wonder why they can't keep viewers or make stars?

When this whipped fucking puppy, he came in for millions of dollars as the second coming,

even the first coming.

And now he's fucking shaking hands with this broken down fucking asshole that they put over everybody

and bowing to him.

Can you tell me the

fucking idea behind this?

You know, Will Ospreay was the guy they had a chance to make their own breakout star or try to, and he's just another one of the guys in AEW losing matches.

He's lost a lot of matches if you really think about it.

And,

you know, it was the best match Ocott has had in AEW,

but I think the problem is the finish.

And I think we first noticed it a few pay-per-views ago.

The heels keep winning all the matches.

And I know it's like an AEW fan base out there post-babyface and heel, or at least that's what Cody was telling us a few years ago.

Before he went back to where they were with babyface and heels and made a fucking fortune.

We don't do anything with those boring tropes like babyfaces and heels.

We're past that.

Well, look at what goes on here.

And I think the fans get more and more deflated.

You know, they're on max now.

And the interesting thing is, and they were hyping it up too,

2019.

You can go on there and see the start of AEW.

It's like another company.

Big buildings, a lot of fans.

Not just the amount of people, how loud they are, how active they are.

It's another company.

They burned out their fan base with the booking.

And it's not going to get any better from here.

All right, when they explain this to me, as soon as they're finished with the match, Chris Daniels comes out on the stage and congratulates Okada.

And he says, I can't present the belt because I'm no longer an executive vice president.

And they said that again on Dynamite.

But at the same time,

they said, but he's still an official of a did he quit?

Did someone demote him?

What is this?

sub-show story that's carried out on Rampage?

Why is were we told he was an EVP?

I don't think he was ever an EVP.

I think he was Tony's

fucking surrogate for a week there to come out and announce matches until he stopped doing that a week later.

Anyway,

he said, I can't present the belt.

I'm no longer an EVP, but this man is.

And they play music, and out comes

the triumphant return of Twinkle Toes McFinger Bang.

He's back.

Good old Kenny.

And he took the belt to the ring and handed it to Okada and turned around and left.

And it was 30 minutes from the entrances of this thing to the belt handoff.

So now we get the tease of Okada and Omega, which was a big match in New Japan.

How many years ago?

I mean, you know, it's funny.

You don't really have to be a woman.

Was it before Okada's near-fatal fucking train wreck he apparently was in.

It was before that.

It was before Kenny's issues.

So you have to wonder what it would be like now.

You have to wonder what kind of schedule Kenny's going to be able to work.

And

again, they bring him back for this, unannounced, comes out, presents the belt that he has nothing to do with, except he's EVP, I guess.

He's wrestling at the Tokyo Dome.

His return, that's what he's an EVP again.

So using his corporate corporate duties, he's going to go wrestle for someone else.

But he should

be able to get him to get him.

He's going to

give somebody else a belt, and then he goes to Japan and wrestles.

You would feel sorry for Tony if he hadn't had so many numerous episodes of proof that he's being taken like a goddamn sucker and drained for his blood by these guys.

Unless he buys New Japan.

That's the only way it makes any sense the amount of promotion all of a sudden he's giving New Japan.

But we'll talk about dynamite when we talk about that.

Well, speaking of draining blood, can you imagine

Tony Khan who thinks he understands the wrestling business in Japan trying to run a Japanese company?

I can absolutely imagine that.

I'm not saying it's a good idea.

I'm not saying it's going to happen.

I can imagine Tony Khan thinking, hey, you know what?

I can run New Japan.

How much is it?

I'll buy it.

Well, then we come to: is this the last match?

Thank fucking God.

The World Title four-way match was the big main event of this fiasco

with Pockets versus Light Switch Jay White versus Hangnail Page versus the champion Dick the Boozer, the world's most dangerous plumber.

And

it writes itself.

It started with a dive and a four-way on the floor.

And since all three of these numb nutses are mad at

the plumber,

they're all ganging up on him at the start.

And they were, when they had him out on the floor and up against the railing, they beat on him with some of the fakest looking shit I've ever seen in a wrestling match.

It was like they didn't want to piss him off.

They were just at one point just

not even trying to do pockets as fake kicks.

It was just all fake.

And then Claudio came out and pulled Moxley over the rail and took him like to the back of the arena.

And the other three followed.

And they all fought in the stands and in the arena.

And Wheeler Useless got involved and Marina Schaefer and Security, but it's not as exciting as it sounded.

They were all involved, but it was just...

The same bullshit where they fight out in the crowd kind of and then they fight back.

The fan reaction is part of the story.

They don't react to any of this.

They're standing there smirking at him.

They won't even get out of the way when these giant, sweaty men are fighting in their direction.

They're like,

they're not going to hurt me.

And at four minutes in, Moxley and Pockets got in the ring, actually, and then they rolled back out.

And then all three of them powerbombed Moxley through the announce desk,

but then Hangnail double-crossed the other three.

And they had a three-way on the floor while Moxley sold the desk, selled the desk, sold the desk, but nobody would get in the ring.

And then finally,

in about 10 minutes, Dick the Boozer popped back up and beat up the mascot.

And somewhere, I guess, on the on the desk, Moxley had busted the back of his head open.

And then Moxley and Paige did fake forearms and bad indie indie spots.

And then they went into the part where everybody did everything over and over.

And Moxley was actually selling for the emaciated little fucking delinquent.

I'm sorry, I should be more specific, the mascot.

And then

Paige pulled out one referee so he couldn't count.

And they got a second referee in there, but Useless, who's not even in the match, came in and glommed him and beat him up.

And then Marina Schaefer got in, but White grabbed her without knowing it was her and gave her his finish, which that actually got a pop.

And then Useless hit the knee on White, and Moxley gave White his double arm, and Claudio rolled the first referee in, and he did a flat, slow three count, and Moxley won again.

And people are like, hey.

And then the heels went to start beating up Jay White.

But then

FTR's music played.

And they walked out to the ring.

And then the lights went out.

And Edge's music played.

And he came out looking like

handsome Jimmy Valiant does today.

And

then FTR slid in and had a sloppy fight with Claudio and Wheeler and beat them up.

And then

Edge and the boozer faced off.

And Edge speared him and broke off the chair support and cross-faced him with it in his mouth.

Because remember, they did that in the WWE when Edge was a star.

And

then Claudio pulled him out and Edge started talking into a dead microphone

and realized it.

So it asked him if they'd give him another.

They gave him another.

And he told Moxley, you're all mine and we're taking it all.

What are you taking?

And what do you want?

Kept calling him kid too.

And then Tony Schiavone would, when he said, you're all mine, we're taking it all.

Tony said, I love AEW.

Yeah.

There you go.

There's a lot to break down there.

Tony Schiavone sucks more than anything on commentary because all he does now is just, wow, what a great roster we have.

He said that the other night.

I'm like, will you shut the fuck up?

And then here, of course, he loves AEW because

the Cope returned with, not even the Cope, just Cope.

Adam Copeland, the Edge, returned with FTR, who are deader right now than they've been since they first came in.

With that bad music, driving a truck.

No one wants to see the Moxley stuff to begin with.

This isn't promising.

And then it was just classic AEW.

He gets the mic, he's all fired up

and it doesn't work.

And you see his face and you feel bad for him.

He's like, motherfucker, I'm ready.

It wasn't even feeding the broadcast, but not the PA.

It was just dead.

It was feeding nothing.

It was going out of nowhere.

They gave him a dead microphone.

The baby face hits the ring and they give him a dead microphone.

Remember, we talked the other day about, you know, great entrances where as soon as he hit the ring, somebody fucked and shit the bed.

Yeah.

Yeah, this wasn't as bad as that.

But him on the mic here talking to Moxley, that didn't, I don't think that was working based on everything Moxley's been doing, you know, the attempted murders and everything.

Hey, kid, I'm better than you are, kid.

But here's the problem is, yes, they've made the point that.

I think Edge said something to the effect of, you know, I started doing this when you were still growing pubes or whatever.

but look at how old Moxley looks.

How old must Edge be?

And look at how old Edge is looking now.

So

I don't know if kid is the thing I'd be calling the fucking 40-year-old guy that looks 50.

Well, that was AEW World's End, an exciting end.

How many matches did the Heels win?

The main event, Moxley.

Okada.

Monet, that's three in a row.

Well, can we now wait a minute?

MJF.

Hold on.

Is it every match?

Mariah?

No,

Osprey won the opener.

That's right.

Yeah.

The match that actually had the fans.

And Okada beat Ricochet, but you can't really tell who the heel.

Ricochet.

I don't think Ricochet was all the way heel as the match started.

I think after the match, it was firmly established.

He is now the heel.

When the fans threw shit on him.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the heels won every match except for the opener, which coincidentally enough was the only match the fans were into from Bell to Bell.

Ah, well, it's your show, kid.

Well,

that was World's End, Grandpa.

I can call you kid because I'm older than everybody.

Kid, I mean, just, I don't know, of all the things to call Moxley there, it just doesn't.

Let me tell you something, asshole.

Like anything else.

Well, we have more AEW with Dynamite, but before we go there, let's break it up a little bit.

Because Raw, which we're not going to review all of, no, please no.

No, because we're going going to do that next week when they debut on the what is it?

What are they on now?

Netflix?

The Netflix.

The Netflix.

Well, there was one thing on Raw this week, though, that was worth you reviewing, and I know you watched it.

And let's talk about CM Punk and Seth Rollins.

Well, I was trying to detox from most wrestling, but when I heard about this segment,

I didn't turn my DVR off, it was still there.

So I had to go back and look.

It was the main event, the last segment of Raw.

And

Seth Rollins, we have,

we've, we've, we've liked his promos when he's more serious.

And when he does the,

you know, the acid trip thing, we just, we haven't liked him so much, but he still managed to do his gimmick, but be serious.

And

he and Punk went at each other verbally, back and forth with the most venomous barbs.

They aired out why they don't like each other, and it all made sense with their history, and they both believe that they have a point, and the people were eating it up, and they were oohing and on every word.

It was as good a

face-to-face interaction between two opponents building a match as you will see in today's modern environment.

And it was done to build up and promote next week.

We're going to get the biggest fight.

They're calling the biggest fight in the the WWE is going to be Seth Rollins and CM Punk on the debut of Netflix.

And they did, what was it?

Was it 10 minutes?

Maybe it was 15.

It flew by because you didn't want it to be over.

But they did

the best job you could possibly do in today's environment of talking up a fucking match between two guys and making people just...

halfway believe something might go on.

I applauded them for it.

You know, beyond the outfit, this was the best of Rollins on the mic.

Someone who I've criticized a lot on the mic.

This was the best of what he could do when he actually believes some of what he's saying.

Yeah.

And

again, that's the thing,

is

they had Punk, who was half the equation, and we all know how that turned out.

And

God damn it, it's almost embarrassing at this point that the WWE has Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns that were the plumbers' partners, and they're two of the biggest stars and the biggest company in the world.

And here's this fucking bald, obscure motherfucker on the other side trying to do his own indie movie to dwindling response from a dwindling audience.

That's right.

Ripping on me during the raw review.

Who saw that coming?

But I mean, again, this is the guy that when they were all three together, Uncle Dave said, oh, well, the star is going to be this Dean Ambrose character.

He's great.

We have great talks.

But yeah, Seth and Seth Rollins, CM Punk,

I've already had Stacey download or install or upload or whatever you do to the Netflix so I can see it on the TV in the house that I know how to operate.

And I'm going to be waiting for the biggest fight in the WWE.

Well, any thoughts on the actual context of the segment, the things they were saying, the insults levied?

Well, yes, well, I didn't make notes because I was still on my vacation.

So I don't want to

not do justice to some of their accusations.

But it was the flavor of the whole thing.

They're both serious.

They both sound like they mean it.

They both have their points and they get the oohs and ahs in the right places.

And that's the thing is, especially at that stage with that

level of importance on the line, to have something that good between two guys that goes that long and really builds up their fucking issue without resorting to the, and then somebody's going to jump somebody and put them through a table.

They just talk to each other and swore they were going to rip each other limb from limb.

That's what we need to see, but there's so few guys that can carry it off.

Should there have been people in between them?

Well, you know, I've,

I always now just accept that there's not going to be a show host, an announcer holding the microphone, not even refereeing, but just being the facilitator in between to still make it look like a professional sports program.

We've lost that.

It's probably not coming back.

So yeah, there should.

I'm not saying

that you should have had 18, you know, guys, indie guys dressed as security guards.

People have smartened up to that.

Those fucking haircuts that half of them have.

Just have the announcer and have the announcer have enough respect from the people, like a Gordon Soli or a Lance Russell or Jim Ross or whatever, that they're not going to just bully the guy.

AEW, Tony Schiavone is the worst, but all of them do it.

There'll be an announcer for the program there talking to people.

And as soon as somebody comes up and interrupts, they just fucking bail.

They don't

wordlessly.

Here, take the microphone.

You guys take over.

The fuck, do they do that in the National Basketball Association or on wide world of sports?

So I've accepted that, but yes, there should,

it would help, I think, these segments if there was somebody there, at least at the start,

that stayed with it and hung with it until maybe they got heated and snatched his microphone away or whatever the fuck.

But somehow maintaining control of the program, but we've lost that in modern wrestling.

What did you think of the, I think it was two different times, the comments about Vince.

Oh, yeah, when Rollins said you took your ball and you went home, and Punk rightfully so brought up that's a Vince line, which is bullshit.

And second time, when he said, I didn't have a problem with the place,

the guy who ran it.

Well, that was the thing is when he said, I didn't have a problem with the place, I had a problem with the guy that ran it, that he got the ooh,

but then he doubled down on it and said, but he just loved you, didn't he?

Oh, that was good.

And, you know, I'm telling,

it's a friendly shoot.

You're not calling out, you know, how bad the guy looks physically or how old he is or how he's had 14 hair transplants.

You're getting edgy, cutting lines in

on a guy that are sometimes so uncomfortable.

that the fans may think, well, there's no way he agreed to let him say that.

He had to just come out with that.

About shit that doesn't detract from anybody.

As a wrestler or a competitor or fucking guy you don't like,

you're not trying to be,

you know, funny, like stand-up funny where everybody has to lay.

You're like trying to fucking humiliate him with a funny line or stick him with a pointed comment without,

you know, bringing up, well, and also, you know, everybody knows that you haven't got your dick hard since 2017.

That's, you know, know that's why i don't understand why they tear all the guys down

on aew instead of because they don't have any producers instead of having people

building each other up but making each other uncomfortable verbally on in the wwe which is what is a lot of these promos what led to the success that they're having now

well that'll be on Raw on Netflix, the big debut, three hours.

And of course.

Well, no, have you heard this too?

God damn it.

Now we're in worse shape than when we started because Raw was three hours and SmackDown was two hours, but now Raw went to two hours and everything was manageable.

And now Raw is going to three hours and so is SmackDown.

So now we've lost another hour of our fucking lives every week.

Why don't we do like a weekly poll like the fast forward hour?

There's one hour on one of these shows that enough people agree that we can fast forward, that we don't feel like we pissed off too many people.

Well, but

the cunning bastards, they sprinkle it through to where, you know, there's at least one star in every hour.

But we'll figure that out.

Well, three hours of raw and three hours of SmackDown, you know what that really means?

It means one more hour, I'll be falling asleep early.

And of course, if you're going to fall asleep early or late or at the normal time, what are you?

You may need a fine mattress, one of the best mattresses you'll ever have, if not the very best.

I love them.

You'll love them.

Jim will tell you about them.

I will bow out.

Well, thank you very much, Tony Schiavone, for just handing me the microphone and walking off to.

I love working here.

This place is great.

Stand in the corner.

You need a mattress because you need to get a good night's sleep and figure out exactly what you're talking about as to whether or not.

that we're going to have more time or less time when the shows go to three hours.

But I've got an idea.

Maybe we can sleep through the three hours like we used to sleep through the two hours.

And that way, it doesn't matter at all.

But it does matter that you get a good night's sleep, folks, on the helix mattresses that we have been talking about and praising the attributes of for so long now.

They are our friends and they help us fall asleep at night.

As a matter of fact,

You can get a mattress for any body type, any sleep preference, any size, any shape.

Let's say you can't go to sleep

until somebody comes over and rubs your tushie.

Helix has a tushy mattress that comes with a tushy rubber.

When was the last time I heard the word tushie?

Every time you lay down on this tushy mattress, then someone will come and ring your doorbell and come in and rub your tushy until you fall asleep.

That's the service.

That's not the service that

it's completely a coincidence that as soon as I got this mattress, the guy started coming and ringing the doorbell every night.

Yeah, listen, that has nothing to do with, ladies and gentlemen, no one will be ringing your doorbell, offering to rub your tushie.

No one from

Helix Sleep, that is.

And of course, it depends on what neighborhood you live in.

You can't make a blanket statement.

Helix Sleep delivers their blankets and pillows and beds to any neighborhood, Jim.

And of course, we can let everyone know about that in a very easy way to communicate the information.

Tell them, Jim.

Well, that's what I was trying to do.

I was trying to say, let's say you got sleep apnea.

You're doing well.

Or back pain or have problems sweating when you sleep.

Well, they've got mattresses where people will come and rub your back or help you breathe.

They'll put straws up your nostrils.

No.

No.

Or they'll dry you off if you're in a bucket of sweat.

They'll take the towel to you.

No, they're not going to take a towel to you.

There will be no nostrils.

There will be no straws.

You'll have nostrils.

They'll take something to you, all right.

No one's coming to rub anything.

They're coming to deliver your healing sleep mattress which you will take into your house hey don't open up on your own don't tell these people nobody's coming to rub anything i'm trying to sell these mattresses you're trying to sell a rub maybe

i don't want to i don't want to rub the company the wrong way folks if you go right now to helixleep.com slash jce

what you're going to do is you're going to take a little quiz on what you like in the way of sleeping what you like to say hard firm mattresses or soft plush mattresses or the big ones or the small ones ones, or the heating ones, or the cooling ones, or all that type of thing.

And they will pick you out, the perfect mattress, and you purchase that thing.

They will bring it to your home.

You can place it where you want.

You can unbox it, and poof, it appears.

And right now,

their new year sale has been extended until January the 12th.

You can get 25% off-site-wide, anything at helixleep.com, H-E-L-I-X,

20 off site-wide and two of the free dream pillows with every mattress purchase

so how can you afford to not

do the thing that you have to do to get a good night's sleep and that start with a comfortable surface upon which to lay down your weary head and drift off to dreamland you don't even have to count sheep and they actually have a special sheep scented mattress no once again for those of you who like to, you'll get the idea that you're in the barnyard.

There are no, no, there are no barnyard-scented mattresses from Helix.

The mattresses will be scented with natural scents that you will like and will find pleasing, we hope, as you go to sleep with Helix sleep.

Let's go to sleep, Jim.

What's the help?

You think it's just because the truck went by the farm down on the corner before they got here that I got the barnyard scent?

It helps me count sheep.

I can look at their footprints at the same time.

Folks, again, Helix Sleep.

HelixSleep.com.

Yes, slash JCE.

I've got, you know, I'm a COVID survivor.

That's right.

Well, I don't know why you threw that in at the end there, but helixleep.com.

Slash JCE.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you were to.

I can't squeeze there.

If you weren't going to support this, Jim is a COVID survivor supplier.

I was going to say supplier.

Listen, he's a COVID supplier.

We need your help.

Support Helix Sleep.

They are great.

Seriously, folks, we have them here in the house.

I love them.

The kids love them.

Make sure they come over regularly.

They'll eat you out of house and home, these people.

They will stay out of your home.

The mattresses are great.

HelixSleep.com/slash JCE.

What's that promo code, Jim?

I'm just squeezing.

It's JCE.

All right.

Well,

let's get back to hold on.

I got that up.

That was a that was a shell I coughed up just now.

It's back when we used to use shells for currency.

Well, let's get back to

the coin of the realm now.

And that, of course, is distribution, whether it's TV, whether it's streaming.

or in this case for both companies a new beginning aew

the first dynamite of the year the first show to be simulcast on Macs, the streaming service.

I ended up doing both on two different monitors in the office to weigh the experience.

But let's talk about AEW Dynamite.

Well, how much did the experience weigh?

On Macs, you get everything you get on TBS minus picture and picture.

You get full screen ads.

So you get less on the Macs than you do on the regular television.

Technically, if you consider Picture and Picture to be part of the match, you want to see, and it's hard to watch any kind of wrestling like that.

Well, yes.

But you don't get that at all.

That content, because some people thought it would be, I guess, fight or something.

Used to stream dynamite, and during the commercial breaks, you got whatever they were actually filming during the commercial breaks.

Which was the match.

If there was a match.

But that ain't going to happen here.

That's right.

So fuck you, then, is what they're saying.

I don't know who's saying it exactly, but a lot of they say it.

A lot of people are saying it.

But this, it was a brand new year, Brian, January 1st, 20 of 25, 20 of 25.

That's the year.

They were at the old Asheville Civic Center, which now apparently has been rebranded the Hera's Center of some description.

And Tony has gone on a music spree again.

He's gotten cutting edge theme music for dynamite.

It's the new stuff.

It's the happening stuff with the kids these days.

It's the electronic dance music, right, that is all the rage.

I'm so excited by who?

The pointed sisters?

The Pointer Sisters.

Oh, come on.

They're great.

Don't put them down.

A brand new group.

People were upset

when they would tell me that I'm behind the times in Smokey Mountain Wrestling when I would use music that was eight years old.

This music is 36 years old.

Well, beyond that, and I like the Pointer Sisters, very talented women.

It don't fit wrestling.

It did not fit the clips they were even showing with it right there at the open.

The first thing they show is Moxley.

And he doesn't make anybody excited.

When you see Moxley, do you think of the Pointer sisters?

I don't think of excitement.

I bet neither does Renee.

What was it on this?

I want a booker with a slow hand.

I want a producer with an easy touch.

Someone who will teach these.

I'm sorry, you go ahead.

Maybe your lyrics are better.

Someone who will run off the audience.

See, I don't know where exactly.

Oh, see, I was going for someone who will tell these dumb fucks how to work a match.

But anyway, I guess we shouldn't sing at all because it's time to talk about this program.

They started out with Okada

to calling him the greatest tournament wrestler of all time.

Then

Dick the Boozer

was in the hallway with his stooges.

Okay, you had asked me before we went on the air, did you listen to the Moxley promo?

And I said, I tried to.

They're in a concrete hallway.

They're using boom mics and they're echoing, and it sounds like they're in an oil drum, and he's slobbering, and he's drooling, and the shit that he says is incomprehensible anyway.

And they had two cameras in his hallway, and he was trying to decide which camera to talk to.

So he started talking to both of them.

The deal with two cameras there is you're supposed to talk to one and the other one is supposed to be able to something that they can cut to seeing you talk to the first camera.

Just to have some variety in the shot, you're not supposed to talk to both those fucking cameras.

You've seen the effect I'm talking about on various television programs.

They're talking to one, the other one's looking from the side.

I've seen it on their program.

That's the way they've done it in the past, even with some of the Moxley promos outdoors.

Well, he's talking to all of them.

But what was he saying?

Because again, between the oil drum audio and the drooling and the slobbering and the story that he's trying to tell anyway, which I ain't figured out.

What the fuck did he say?

Yeah, the Death Riders, or as I call them, Moxley and the charisma vacuums.

Oh my God, they just stand there and suck out the energy.

I had a reaction.

I put it on Twitter even.

He's starting to sound like my impression.

Like more than ever before,

he's talking so much gibberish and shit.

And the way he's saying it and delivering it, he's starting to sound like a mockery of himself.

And at one point, he's building up his whole little crew and marching back and forth.

And this is the line that got me.

He goes to Marina Shafira.

She stands there stone-faced and doesn't react to a fucking thing.

And he goes, She is an impeachable character.

And he meant unimpeachable and he said impeachable.

He's all serious and deadly.

And he said that, and I lost it.

I lost it.

He can reap holes in her any day of the week.

She's impeachable.

Well, he was talking about his Zoza tugger bullet.

And I got a tag a bullet.

Now he's in Rambo first blood and he's out in the fucking woods and they're shooting at him.

Watch out, Brian Dennehy.

Bless his little pee-picking heart.

He was a big man.

He just passed not long ago.

We should be having respect.

Oh, you're right.

He was a good actor.

Didn't get enough roles.

The roles he had were good.

That's right.

He was always late to catering.

The roles were always gone.

He got stuck with the leftovers of the salad.

But then after.

Just wait until I see FX2.

If Moxley ever starts watching FXX, we'll be really in trouble.

Then they went from that to FTR and Edge doing a promo.

We just talked about cheesy shirt designs of the 80s.

The rated FTR shirts.

Oh boy.

Does that look like, is that going to be the next Austin 316 or a smoking skull shirt, Brian, that colorful little FT, rated FTR logo?

I don't know.

I got a bad feeling about.

this.

I mean, we'll see how much of it, we'll see where it goes after they leave their hometown next week.

But but i mean ftr have done this before remember right before punk left all of a sudden it was cmftr or whatever it was well ftr was over at that point so was punk and they had good matches that but this wearing the cheesy shirts and

interacting with the people they're having to interact with now i don't hold on a lot of hope well we'll talk about the one later on with big bill because i think that was a good exposure of the problem but i don't know how this is going to work

Well, then so we went from the Pointer Sisters to Dick the Boozer in the hallway,

Edge and FTR doing the promo, and then the first entrance for the first match starts, and it's pockets.

This is a supposedly important show

in the first day of the new year, and we get backstage promo, backstage promo, company mascot.

And they actually, his graphic was

he is AEW's win leader for two straight years.

Not only is that a problem because it's true, but it's a problem because they released the information.

Can you imagine

the WWE on Monday Night Raw as here comes Tozawa to the ring?

Tozawa is WWE's win leader two years in a row.

This is what's wrong.

By the way, what does that mean?

I mean, mean, does that mean he also wrestled the most amount of matches?

No, that means he's won more matches than anybody else in a fucking company for the past two years in a row.

There are people with higher winning percentages, but he's won the most matches.

Yes.

And that means that a lot of people lost fucking matches to this fucking joke.

Should they have loaded up this show a little more with stars actually being there?

For Max, or should they just treated this the way they treated this show?

Oh, my God.

Not even just load up with stars if you can find them,

but also with

something good to look at if they thought they were going to be exposed to a new audience.

This started out bad and got worse.

And that's so upsetting.

You lead with the fucking nondescript company mascot, a joke comedy wrestler, wrestling Adam Page, and you give them

12 minutes before Page, a legitimate wrestler in their universe, wins with his finish.

And then he gets some more heat and gives him two dead eyes.

And Daniels and the referees come out, and Paige beats up Daniels.

So, yeah, they're trying to get heat on Adam Page, but give him a real opponent for fuck's sake, if that's the first thing that people are going to see when they tune into your program on a new platform.

Don't make them immediately think, oh, well, this is some kind of kids wrestling or low-budget bullshit or whatever, which is what normal people think when they see Orange Cassidy.

They went too long.

I was starting to get dead eye myself watching this match.

But yeah, no star power here.

And they begin with Adam Page getting a long win.

As a positive,

Beyond the Pointer Sisters, and again, that's not, I like the Pointer Sisters.

It's not the right usage of it.

I like the look of this show.

If this is a little glimpse of the look going forward in a smaller buildings or with a smaller setup, no ramp,

I thought that looked good.

Now they need the crowd to have energy, but the way it, I thought in a smaller building with a smaller crowd, it actually looked really good.

On camera, when you're in a building where your stage is bigger than the amount of the crowd you can shoot on the other side, that looks like you're in an airplane hangar.

So now they've still got the same amount of people, but smaller stage, smaller building, they can shoot the same amount of people, but it looks like more, if that makes sense to you.

It's trick photography.

As the Monroe brothers would say, it's a tropical illusion.

But anyway, the second match, I actually

did some business.

And imagine that.

Because it's the Hurt Syndicate.

Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley with MVP against the acclaimed.

And they're doing the deal that Caster is a heel and he's a prick.

And he and Bowens have been arguing with each other.

But again,

every

time

that there's a segment with Shelton Benjamin or Bobby Lashley or MVP.

More often than not, there's that time that Swerve ran out in the parking lot and just pushed them all over.

But more often than not, they get over.

It makes sense.

It works for them.

They establish themselves as stars.

And before I talk about this, I will say another thing that I watched on the Christmas break.

I had to because I heard about it and I said, oh, man.

But

it was actually good.

Shelton had a match with old Danny Garcia on collision as part of this bogus tournament.

And of course, they put Garcia over, which is a booking crime that should be punishable by firing squad.

When you got Shelton getting over like a fucking star and to have this bland indie fucking mooch beat him, but since they had to in a screwy Fakta tournament, as Howard Finkel would have said.

Very good.

Shelton had a match with him that he obviously called and produced and controlled, where he threw him around and manhandled him through the whole fucking match, gave Garcia hope spots and moments of shine, and then shut him down and then lost on a complete fluke with a roll-up.

And the babyface rolled out on the floor, and Shelton was like, What the fuck happened?

That shouldn't have happened.

He did the best that he could with that situation and still did.

If that was an isolated thing,

where was the only time Shelton had been beat?

I would say, well, that was brilliant.

Even though you picked the wrong guy to do it, that's the way you beat a guy that's still getting over as a star and doing a good job of it.

But then he does jobs for other people too.

And there's only so far you can take that before a guy that's even doing a tremendous job of getting over on his own is hamstrung by these fucking indie goofs that he's having to put over.

But I wanted to mention that.

If anybody wants to see an example of how a top guy should work with a mid-card guy and has to slip on a banana peel and put the mid-card guy over, but still come out looking like a star, that match is as close as you'll find to one today.

Sadly, it cost him three points.

Yes, unfortunately, that three points could have made all the difference.

He might have made it to the clubhouse.

But anyway, and they mentioned that the acclaimed have had,

they're talking about how they've been such a long-running team.

They've had 81 matches as a team.

That's fucking two and a half months worth of fucking tag team wrestling at any other point in history.

Did you see the promo they did before the match?

Yes, they were arguing with each other and Caster's being a prick and he's the best wrestler in the world and Bowens is fed up with him.

He had one of my favorite, I don't even know if it's a line or just the way he did it because I I always want someone to do something like this.

He goes, I'm the best wrestler in the world.

And Bowens stops him and starts giving him a hard time.

And Caster says, now, when we're doing our interview,

you had all week.

Now?

You know what?

Seriously, more people should say that.

Castor's in maybe the best shape he's been in.

I have no idea what the hell they're doing with him.

Well, yeah, that's the thing is they're not only turning him, but they're making him out to be an asshole that you don't like and a heel that you

wouldn't give a shit shit about, an idiot.

Yeah.

And

so basically,

Bobby beat up Castor for a while, and the fans were chanting, Bobby, Bobby.

And then Bowens got in with Shelton.

And

again, you remember when I was talking before about

somebody went back and did the same thing that they had just fucked up and told the people blatantly that they had fucked it up by going back and doing the same thing.

The acclaimed were trying to do a blind tag,

but they

Shelton was backing up Bowens, but Castor was on the wrong side of the ring post, and he tried to step up on the ropes and reach over and tag Bowens' shoulder, which none of that would have been legal anyway.

Your feet have to be on the apron, and you got to tag hand to hand.

But he couldn't fucking reach him.

And Shelton had to just shoot him off.

And then Bowens

tried to to shoot him off, but Bowens realized that he hadn't been tagged.

And he stopped.

And it was awkward.

And they went back into it.

And as they were going back into it,

Castor goes around to the proper side of the ring post and shows, oh, he was on the wrong side.

And they did the exact same thing where now Caster slaps Bowens on the shoulder.

And Bowens is mad that Caster tagged himself in.

But they can't even goddamn call something else in the ring when they fucked one thing up to get to the same place.

And

if they don't know how to do a blind tag, somebody, a producer, for instance, could have illustrated, hey, numb nuts,

if the guy's got you in a headlock, then you need to be on this side of the post or that side of the post, and you need to reach out this way.

Or if the guy's going to shoot you off, you got to be on the other side.

But they're just.

So then they did, then

Sheldon did four German suplexes on Castor while Bowens walked out because he was mad at him.

And then Lashley destroyed Castor and Hurt locked him and they beat him.

So that was fine.

The Hurt Syndicate was not damaged in this, but

Caster must have really pissed these people off because they're actively trying to

make people say, fuck this fucking guy.

It's a weird, I guess slow build isn't the right word.

It's a weird slow

train wreck i guess

watching the acclaim break up right i mean it's been going on for a little while started calling himself the best wrestler alive or whatever months ago

but this is being done in such a weird way you know with someone like castor

who keeps getting in trouble for shit he says

and people know that

fucking run with that Not to say he's Brian Pillman or anything, but if people know the guy keeps getting in trouble and you plan to continue to employ him,

why not do something with that instead of making him

turn him into a jerk-off character because he's a fool now?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

They're not trying to make a heel that will draw money or sell tickets.

They have said, we hate this fucking guy and we want to make him go out on television and either act as stupid as possible or we want to treat him as badly as possible.

Or they just don't know how to book anything.

One or the other.

The fans really reacted to the Hurts Syndicate.

Again, they continue to like their stars.

There was a spot, a little thing I liked, where Shelton and Bowens bumped into each other,

but Shelton didn't move.

Shelton didn't flinch, even though Bowens is kind of the, I guess you would say he's the power guy of the tag team, even though Caster's a bigger guy, but Bowens kind of wrestles like that.

Shelton didn't move, and Shelton shouldn't.

Shelton's been treated, other than like a loss to a Daniel Garcia or a very, very long match with a commander or shit like that.

Shelton's been used better here.

And because of that, he's come across, I think, as a bigger star so far.

Well, yeah, and it's not even, it's not the way he's being used, it's the way he's performing.

Right now, Shelton Benjamin is the best wrestler at AEW.

I can make that blanket statement because think about it.

Who else has come in and six weeks later, eight weeks later, has been even more over,

has more interest, has gotten over by his matches as a top guy that you would believe in than Shelton Benjamin has.

Everybody else comes in and within weeks, people can't stand them.

Or they're the shits.

Nobody cares.

Or maybe a hechacero.

Oh, come on.

No, but seriously, from the moment they walk out.

I'm not crazy about the music, to be honest with you.

From the moment they walk out.

It's not the Pointer sisters.

When they walk out MVP with Lashley and Shelton right there, I mean, they look like stars.

They look like they should be kicking everyone's ass, and so far they have.

Yeah, but that's why I'm saying Shelton Benjamin is the best wrestler in AEW right now because he is the only one that has come in and I don't know how long and done what you're supposed to do, which is go out and have matches that get yourself over as a legitimate threat to anybody.

He's not been helped by the booking.

He hasn't been tremendously hurt by it.

And most of the people didn't see him get beat by some of these, you know, jobbers.

But he's the only one.

So he's the best wrestler in AEW right now.

He's the only one doing what he's supposed to do.

Sorry.

But now he's got competition, Brian, as best wrestler at AEW because the next match was Jamie Hayter versus Julia Hart.

Oh, man.

Oh, come on.

Did I miss anything

involved in this?

Well, tell me what I missed until I got to the finish, which I got to as quickly as possible.

Jamie Hayter is like, I don't know.

She used to be out there looking like a badass.

I think she had a little more weight at that time, but also just the look, what she was wearing, her hair, like plaid

and glitter.

I don't know.

Like, she looks like a hostess at the fucking pancake cottage with a wedgie.

And I like Jamie Hayter, but her look since she's returned, is just, I think,

she loses some of her charisma.

I guess is the way I want to say it.

But the match was all right.

I guess it went a while, went through a commercial break.

Yeah.

And Julia Hart sprayed the mist.

Well, wait a minute, Donda, you're jumping ahead because first she got an arrow.

Yes, she's been for archery.

She's trying to win her way to your heart.

Yes,

Archer Hart.

She gets an arrow and and brings it into the ring.

And referee Aubreed, she's on the spot as usual.

She was right there, and she gets the arrow and is going to hand the arrow out.

And as she turns her back, Julia Hart spits.

It was called missed.

It was allegedly missed.

I didn't see anything.

Well, she spit it in Jamie Hayter's face, but

either there was something and it,

I think, did she maybe spit the whole fucking rubber out?

Because

explain yourself, please, before you get in trouble.

No, but she had to, because there was no mist on her mouth.

There was no mist on Jamie Hayter's face.

There was no mist on the mat or anybody's hands.

I think she tried to bite the fucking rubber and spit the mist and spit the whole fucking rubber out.

For people who don't know, that's the way to do it.

You load up a condom.

Yeah.

Well, who doesn't know that?

Has anyone ever just spit out the condom before?

Yes.

Yes.

It can happen.

And also, you know, if you take the Alka Seltzer so you foam with the mouse, sometimes you spit the fucking Alka Seltzer out.

But I, because there was no mist in her mouth

at all, on her chin, nothing on anybody's hands, nothing.

And Jamie Hayter kept her face covered up with her hands as she was rolling around around and selling.

So nobody could see it, but there was no mist.

But the announcer was, oh, the mist and it burns.

So maybe a poom.

Instead of

it just boom.

Either that or

they're just ribbing Julia Hart, telling her, keep putting these rubbers in your mouth for practice.

Well, Julia Hart got the win.

And then, of course, I wonder what they've knotted up in those things.

She lip-synced her song afterwards, of course and uh

that was her big return welcome back 2025 julia hart

well and then we got packages on felcher and osprey and okada and kinny because those are the the rivalries we have to look forward to i guess while wwe has punk and rollins

uh

okay why did mercedes moon

need the special table set up in the ring with her display of belts that

she's gotten from various sources that nobody cares about, and the champagne bottle, and the fucking champagne glass.

And

she came out to cut a promo

basically saying she's wrestling Omina Mellons in the Tokyo Dome Saturday for another promotion, New Japan, and she wants the Rev Pro championship,

whatever that may be, to add to to her women's title in AEW and her New Japan

Strong Women Championship.

And it's going to be title versus title with old Mina Mellons.

And then she drank champagne and did the stripper dance and left.

Well, they also had a video.

They had a video of her in 2024, some of her big matches, and there was not a sign of Camille anywhere.

Well, yeah, well, yeah, but I mean, you know, that's old, old news under the bridge and around the corner corner of the bend and down the stream.

That we've, you know, Camille's gone.

She escaped.

Who knows what kind of paperwork was signed for her not to reveal how she managed to get out of there so quick?

You know, and that's another thing.

How many guys and or girls are sitting there under the contract?

I know a bunch of them are just saying, hey, this guy will pay me no matter what happens, as long as I just sit here.

But some of them want to get out of there.

Some of them want to escape.

There's a lot.

More than people realize, yeah.

Did I wonder how much dissension that has spread when Camille was able to fucking get the fuck out of there?

Well, again, let's find out what happened.

We still don't know where Odyssey Jones went.

But back to this Mercedes-Moni.

Well, no, we know why Odyssey Jones went.

We think we do.

That's never been confirmed, has it?

Well, at least it was suspected.

Nobody has said Camille was on the lamb from the FBI or fucking engaged in international terrorism or some unsavory activity.

We know that she was brought in, booked to the moon for two weeks, flummoxed and fumbled, made to look like an idiot.

And just when we were saying, my God, can't she get out of there before it ruins her career, she's gone and they don't even mention her name anymore.

This promo, though.

After they show the video, she's standing there and she does this promo on Mina Shirakawa and the Tokyo Dome match.

They put up a graphic in the lower left-hand corner for the Tokyo Dome match.

I'm like, oh, you know, I don't even think about it being this weekend.

I don't even think about New Japan anymore.

Maybe I'll get it.

But it didn't say available on pay-per-view.

It didn't say stream here.

Nothing.

They were basically advertising a match interview in the general vicinity of Tokyo.

Are you ribbing me?

No.

Did you see anything that said available on pay-per-view?

Well, no, but I wasn't looking because I don't intend to fucking look at it.

If it's available on every fucking channel, I'll turn the TV off.

But as I'm looking at the graphic and I'm thinking, man, this match isn't available anywhere.

Then she goes, and I want you to put up the Rev Pro title to no reaction because no one's ever heard of this belt.

It's never been mentioned before.

So again, they're plugging another company's show, which...

But they're actually selling a show in another country that you can't even watch.

Hold on, let's see.

Wrestle Kingdom.

They didn't say you could watch it.

So

Wrestle Kingdom.

What the fuck?

just so they can masturbate to the idea that they're getting to work in Japan.

You could watch it apparently on Triller.

Oh, boy.

Or on, well, this can't be right, New Japan World.

See, it says RTN Horse Racing and

the Disc Golf Network.

I don't know if these are just other networks.

But they didn't say any of that.

They basically just put up a graphic for a match.

that they're not going to have on AEW-TV

for a title title that's not an AEW title.

It's not even a New Japan title.

That's the lack of focus there.

Even if Tony wants to let these people do all these things, how does it help them

for any viewer who's tuning in to ever

follow along and care enough if it's just referencing all sorts of shit you can't keep up with?

Because it's not even on the show.

So,

yeah.

They advertise the max that's not available.

Well, yeah, I wish more of them were like that.

But then we got to 9 o'clock and we got to see

the equivalent of an Eddie Graham charitable presentation on Florida Championship Wrestling.

Dax and Cash,

I think Dax was the one that I

noted was there presenting a $25,000 check for Asheville's hurricane recovery and relief.

That was very nice.

And they live there and they've been spearheading that.

Did you see when they showed the first responders in in the building

no i didn't i didn't see that because i've i've zipped through the commercial breaks until i see what i believe to be a wrestler and then i stop

and

so some of that went by i was watching a commercial me and stace both were thinking is this part of the wrestling and then it was a commercial so i didn't see that part you sure it was a commercial or a teaser for uh bandito coming back again but no i have a feeling it'll be a while before he comes back again i'm not sure but so they show all this stuff and it's nice it's wonderful that aew AEW is being supportive of the community there and that things are getting done.

I just saw a video that like the Amish showed up and in like a couple of days.

What made them furniture?

What did they do?

They built 80 little houses in like two days or something like that.

Yeah, they just came and built, you know, small little housing.

You just say what you want to about them fucking Amish, but they're dedicated.

Oh, man, if you can get Amish book cabinets, those are the best ones.

They're just not allowed to read any of the books that rest on the bookshelves, but you, the presentation, the first responders.

Oh, so then they go back to the building and they say, here we have, here we have someone.

I suppose first responders, whatever the fuck he says.

I guess it was supposed to be like someone from whatever.

There were four guys standing there in darkness.

So the camera's filming them.

You can't see any of their faces.

It's just four silhouettes standing

for like a minute.

And they're like, here are the first responders.

And you can't see who any of them are.

They're able to respond so quickly because they're mere shadows.

They just fly around.

Yes.

They can appear out of nowhere.

Well, you'll be happy to know that Officer Barb Brady got together with Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly and Roderick Strong, and they're back together.

That trio of miscreants.

And they got

a

A three-way match coming up over here that it was next after this interview where Roderick Strong was going to wrestle Jay White was going to wrestle Swerve Strickland, and the winner of the three-way gets into next week's casino gauntlet match to determine the winner of that will get a world title match the following week on TV.

I believe I covered that correctly, didn't I?

Yes, the casino gauntlet is back.

Just what we needed.

And

I swear to God, again, it's a three-way match, make of it what you will, with confusing stipulations of the guy who goes into the casino gauntlet.

And last time Roddy was in a casino gauntlet match, Brian, he didn't even get to get in it because it ended before he got in it,

which is another thing that's wrong with their fucking match.

But finally, Swerve is on the floor,

and from the crowd, Ricochet runs up to the rail behind him, wearing a suit, and stabs him in the head with golden scissors.

Wasn't that a Beatle song?

Golden scissors in your head.

It was golden slumbers and it wasn't in your head.

Well, I was slumbering by this point because it was so boring, but he stabbed him in the head with the golden scissors and then was standing there at the rail, literally one foot away from the people in the front row, and the fans were standing next to him, just staring at him.

And one guy's his phone up just lackadaisically, oh, they're next to me.

He's stabbing people in the head with scissors, and they don't care.

Where's security?

Obviously, the security in Asheville's gone downhill.

Where's Doug Dillinger when you need him?

And I told Stacey, I pointed, I said, I backed it up.

I said, look at this.

I've been in that building a bunch of times.

And I guarantee you, if I had come up on the fan side of the railing and grabbed Ricky Morton and stabbed him in the head with scissors, I wouldn't have got out of there alive after the next 15 seconds.

They would have been on me like duck on a June bug, like ugly on an ape, like white on rice,

like bad booking in AEW.

And then Jay White hit Roderick Strong with his finish, one, two, three, and left.

And then you see that Swerve got juice, and Ricochet Ricochet is still standing there and now goes after Swerve with the scissors.

And there's Prince Nana.

And he goes up to Ricochet, and Ricochet stood him off by pointing the scissors at him.

So Nana just stood there and watched Ricochet stab,

Swerve, and punch him.

And remember, I've told you, just because the announcer's not an announcer, the manager is not supposed to be able to beat up a wrestler doesn't mean when it's a babyface manager, he should not try to in some way help his friend.

But he stands there through all that.

He's stabbing him in the head with scissors.

Then when Ricochet goes and gets a chair, that's when Nana springs into action.

And he grabs the chair away from, or tries to,

from Ricochet.

So Ricochet shoves Nana into the stairs and takes the chair and hits him with it.

And then takes the chair in the ring and unfolds it and sits next to Swerve and head-butts him so he can get his blood on his suit.

And then puts Swerve in the chair.

And Swerve is sitting there like an imbecile

while Ricochet backed all the way up across the ring and ran and clotheslined him while he was looking at him coming.

And then Roddy and Cole and Kyle O'Reilly get in the ring, and Ricochet bails out.

And the fans were

standing there silent, immobile, immobile, faintly smiling.

What are they doing?

I don't know.

I get the idea of wanting to do hot angles where babyfaces get brutalized.

We also saw Tommy Rich bleed all over the place for years.

But the fans weren't really reacting.

The babyface that made the save,

kind of recent babyfaces that the fans haven't taken to in the Undisputed Kingdom.

That do nothing but get the shit kicked out of them.

And yeah, security does nothing.

He stabs the guy.

How many times have we seen Swerve down and out now?

See, that's the thing.

I guess I see doing that with a babyface and the value in it.

I don't think it's working here.

Swerve is not the traditional babyface since he's the home invader and the baby threatener and the most dangerous man in AEW.

How is he the most dangerous man?

Bad things will happen to you if you're close to him

because he's always getting a shit kicked out of him.

You'll catch some of it.

Yeah, the fans started reacting to him when he was a bad guy.

Then they made him a babyface, getting his ass kicked.

They're not reacting the same way anymore.

They like Swerve's house because that's their part.

That's their line.

They all want to be, let's face it, the prime AEW audience is marks that want to be in the ring, like the ones that are already in the ring.

And that's, and they identify with some of these marks that are already in the ring because they think if this guy can do it, I can.

anybody can

so they want their audience participation and it's the same thing in a lot of cases with the cody rhodes whoa

or the seth rollins whoa or whatever they like the audience participation but that's all swerve's got now

is they want to chance swerve's house and otherwise

They need to call Swerve a fucking ambulance every week.

Yeah.

You think he regrets throwing that toilet paper at Ricochet a couple of days before this?

Well, you know, he brought it on himself now that you think about it.

If he hadn't opened his big mouth in his big bathroom and brought out all that toilet paper, the Ricochet wouldn't have had to stab him in the head with scissors.

You know, it really hit me this week, too, coming out of the pay-per-view.

They had such a long gap between the pay-per-view and dynamite, it didn't feel like they had any momentum coming out of it to carry into dynamite.

You know, it would be one thing if dynamite was on Monday, but being on Wednesday and the pay-per-view Saturday, and then none of the people, MJF wasn't at the, uh, wasn't at Dynamite Live.

Kenny wasn't there.

You know, I don't know.

It just, it felt like they didn't really,

if they had any momentum coming out of that pay-per-view, they didn't capitalize on it.

Well, I think they had a lot of momentum, and all of it was slow.

And then

the next segment puzzled me, and I like Jeff Jarrett.

I'm a fan of his work, and I'm a fan of what he's done in the business.

And in my opinion, they should have had him at least promoting live events or agenting some matches or trying to teach some of these dumb shits how to work a long time ago.

But I don't understand what they did here

because

it's going to lead to having to look at Jeff Jarrett versus Dick the Boozer

if it's followed through on.

And

I've, you know, I feel sorry for Jeff at this point in his life that he has to tolerate having to work with a fucking louse like that.

But I don't know that it's going to do any good for AEW or more just tear down somebody else that's having to get in the ring with the plumber.

But they did the backstage interview with Lethal and Sanjay and Zippy the pinhead.

And

they haven't seen Jeff, but then Jeff comes in and they know it's a big night for Jeff.

But they were beating around the bush without saying what was going on.

And

they said, well, we can't find Karen.

Jeff said, Can you find Karen?

That's what Kurt said.

Hey,

not at the double tree.

And then

Karen comes in and says,

I know wrestling is what brought us together, but it's also sometimes I've seen it tear you apart.

And

I'll support you.

She pledged her undying love with whatever he was going to do, if he was going to go through with this, whatever this was.

So then they go to a break and they come back, and Jeff comes to the ring with his boots in his hand and a guitar on a stand.

So now he's got the boots in his hand.

You know, he's teasing his retirement.

And he got emotional and said he had a lot in, in, uh, in his career to be thankful for.

And he's, it's sad to think about things maybe coming to an end.

And he's, he gave the history of the Jarrett family.

started in 1946 in Nashville when his grandmother took a second job selling tickets.

We've covered it in more detail than they have on this pro on their program.

And it changed his family's life.

I never heard her called the CFO before.

Well, chief financial officer, she was the one that kept the books for Nick and Roy.

No, I know she was.

I just never heard her.

I was called that before.

Well, because there was no title, but how could

it sound better than saying she was the bookkeeper, but

she did keep the books.

And

Nina Bond was the only other lady working in the office.

And she wasn't as good with numbers as Teeny was.

But then in Jerry's history, and then he started in 1986, Jeff did.

And finally,

he picked up the boots and he said, should the last outlaw ride off into the sunset?

Hell no.

And then he revealed, I've signed my last wrestling contract.

I re-signed with AEW.

So he's 56 years old

or 55, I'm trying to count.

Point being,

if you know, probably this is the last contract he signed, but he signed a contract and Tony's going to pay him for another two years or three years or whatever, I guess.

And

they've already buried him and his whole crew of misfits.

So I don't know what positive is going to come of it.

They won't put him in positions that he has experience in that could help this company greatly.

But he challenged

for the title.

He said, I want AEW gold on my last run.

I want to get in the gauntlet match next week.

And my new year's resolution is to become AEW world champion.

Are you excited about where this is going to go?

You know, I'm trying to keep an open mind about it because if it really, you know, wrestling is about lying to people, but.

If it's really his last

year, did he say year or just last contract?

Last contract.

So it could be multiple years.

I guess that confirms he's not a Triple H guy.

I just don't want to see him have to work with Moxley.

Well, yeah, I think it's more about the road to getting a title match, which could be interesting.

That's why I'm not just shitting on this than the actual title match.

And there goes Swami.

If Jeff has to.

Swami thinks you're full of shit.

If Jeff has to somehow run through some kind of obstacle course to get there, it could be interesting.

I just don't know.

It could be interesting, or it could also be fucked up like everything else they do.

And they'd have, they've had what, three or four years now to make Jeff

do anything with Jeff.

That's the other problem.

If they begin, they begin this segment, really, with that promo in the back.

Jay Lethal, Sanjay Dutt, and the giant,

they've been treated a certain way on that show that you know how you should treat them.

So when you begin with Jeff, like they should have almost done this where Jeff didn't even reference them.

I just went out there and did it.

Can you imagine if they had given Jay Lethal half of the push they've given that fucking Garcia?

A guy that can really work and a guy that can really talk and a guy that looks like something and a guy that has experience and people know

who the fuck he is on some level already.

And then you start giving him wins over top guys.

Imagine that.

Or take this fucking bland, moke-faced fucking Cretan

and let him beat everybody in the company and nobody gives a shit because he's still a bland, mope-faced indie jackoff.

That's an option, too.

I'm editorializing now instead of asking a question, aren't I?

I don't know what your question is, but with Garcia and with Yuda, it's like Tony Conner's two Eric Watts.

And that's not to put Eric down.

It's more about what Eric symbolized and what he really was in 1992.

And that's the way it comes across.

People are being forced down everyone's throat.

Wheeler Yuda is all over these main event segments now.

And no one reacts to him.

No one reacts to him.

All right.

Well, anyway.

What did they say a long time ago?

A full-grown version of superhuman.

That's what he looks like.

Yes.

He looks like, you know, the challenged fellow on the internet that jumps into barbed wire in his backyard.

But speaking of mentally challenged individuals,

one of the guys in the next segment would have been mentally challenged if I'd have been around because I would have taken a hammer to his fucking head.

I have never seen, even on an AEW television show,

this level of just unprofessionalism from some dipshit jack off that nobody's ever seen or heard of before.

Must have been somebody's brother-in-law.

Somebody loaned him some tights.

I can't believe he ever got booked on a wrestling show or made it through any kind of school acting the way he did.

Did you see the two job guys they put Hobbs in with after they beat Hobbs on the pay-per-view, I was wondering what you were talking about.

For no reason, then they decide to rehabilitate him by letting him beat up two guys on this TV show.

Both of the jobbers looked horrible.

Okay, I'm sorry.

And they've got FTR and they've got Edge in town.

They ought to know

two legitimate, decent-looking athletic indie guys that could come and do a job on national television for who knows how much money.

But instead, these two fucking

illegitimate sons of goddamn homeless bums under the overpass in Hendersonville.

That's North Carolina, in case you're not familiar with the Asheville area.

One guy was being a comedian.

Did you see it?

I did, and one guy was somewhat smaller, even for AEW amongst the wrestlers.

But the comedian

was what got me.

That's the one I said earlier in the show.

If Ed had been at OVW,

at a wrestling school television taping, and I'd seen him do that, I would have come out from behind the announce desk and pulled him out of the ring myself.

He was being a fucking comedian,

overacting and trying to draw attention to himself like a jack off.

Phony bullshit.

His shit looked horrible.

And I want somebody that knows who this motherfucker is to play this for him.

So he will know that if Jim Cornette ever saw him in a goddamn wrestling match, I would hit the rig with my tennis racket.

And I dare you, you fucking fat, slobby, pissy-looking asshole.

Do something about it.

I've never seen this level of unprofessionalism.

The boys should have been waiting for him in the back to kick the shit out of him for acting that way on national television.

fucking asshole

and this is what hobbs has got to put up with a fucking star ready to happen but he's got to deal with these children and their

mark bullshit and their playing of the parts of the wrestlers without actually being them

and this guy was playing oh i'm gonna act scared look i'm pointing at him how scared i am and oh i'm trepidatious and i'll chop him but oh i can't hurt him because you hit hit him like aunt clara on bewitched

fucking

floating deflated truck stop novelty condom

jesus anyway that was that was that guy yeah i mean you know obviously this was his big night his big uh nationwide tv debut and uh max he went all out and did all this shtick

and uh i can't again that's the kind of shit that guys used to be thrown out in the alley behind a building with their bag on top of them for and never to be booked again.

Guys didn't want funny jobbers?

New.

You didn't want funny jobbers?

New.

There's no call for funny jobbers doing bits.

Speaking of funny jobbers doing bits, so Big Bill and Brian Keith.

We're in the back of the arena with Officer Barb Brady doing a promo, and suddenly they noticed that FTR and Edge were standing eight feet away from them under hot television lights.

They couldn't couldn't have seen that until they happened to look in that direction and then they exchanged it, exchanged it, exchanged the scripted banter

that FTR and Edge had to stand there and listen to Big Bill's dead.

This has killed Big Bill deader than Kelsey's nuts, that he has to talk in that stilted manner, deliver this rotten

material, be a flunky for Chris Jericho and his senior citizen crisis.

His reaction to Edge's

lame, whatever it was, making fun of his face, he reacted like a child.

Well, yeah, and Edge, nobody did Edge any favors by giving him any good material either here.

And it was all to promote a six-man tag team match on Saturday that nobody's going to fucking watch anyway.

But that, uh, and then MJF,

he's in a VTR from last Saturday.

He's already gone back to the movie set or wherever, and he doesn't have to deal with these fucking Cretans.

But he's doing a promo bloody after the match, laughing about beating Adam Cole.

And now he wants his title back.

And he started talking about Moxley.

Under normal circumstances, you want everybody talking about your world champion and wanting to wrestle your world champion.

But when your world champion is a delusional, mentally afflicted fucking rehab patient that works like a goddamn cow on ice.

You don't want to see your top stars get mixed up in that.

So now MJF is talking.

This will be the arrow in the back.

Well, Dodge, Julie, your heart's gimmick.

This will be the stake in MJF's heart if he has to get involved with Moxley.

He will be no good to anybody else from that point on.

And who would be the heel there?

Well, let's see what happens.

Like Jeff Charrett, I guess a lot of guys on the show are now

calling out that they want the title.

It doesn't necessarily have to be on Moxley.

Someone else could be the champion.

We can hope.

I don't know who the hell that would be.

Exactly.

So then the man of the hour, the Tawa Powa,

Dick the Boozer, and the rest of the plumbing crew came out through the crowd to the ring to complete silence.

When they turned their music off, you can hear a mouse pissed on cotton in the corner.

Did you notice that?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's been a growing problem.

The fans are not.

The AEW hardcore fans don't like the Moxley thing, and then the people who don't like AEW don't like the Moxley thing, and the fans don't react to it.

This has been a complete swing and a miss every step of the way.

And they could sing Wild Thing.

They knew the words.

So it was somewhat, there was energy going on.

But now, this, whatever this is,

they're just standing there staring at it.

And then

out comes FTR again, Rivero, a year ago, two years ago, you heard their music.

The people came up.

There was a mild pop for FTR and a bigger pop when it was said from Asheville, North Carolina.

Yeah, our town.

They've killed them even in their hometown.

And then Edge came out and got a big pop.

But he used to be a star on real television.

And he's lived there quite a while, also.

But now

they've got somebody the people will still cheer

because they recognize that they were a big deal in the wrestling business a while back in a big company.

And we know he can't be Edge.

He has to be Adam Copeland because Edge is trademarked.

Trademarked.

It's been up a tree.

But now his new name

is Cope.

Here's FTR and Cope.

And to make sure we get the idea, they called him Cope with every breath.

Excalibur said it nonstop.

Cope is not going to work as a name for Edge.

They need to cope now and get over it.

Adam Copeland will work.

Get ready for Cope versus Dope

on AEW Dynamite.

Next Wednesday, 7 p.m.

Central.

Not even the Cope.

Not that it's any better, but.

Well, no, what is the Cope?

But what is Cope?

At the Copa, Copa Cabana.

Get that music.

Tony will buy it.

What is Cope other than what the AEW fans need to do with the reality of AEW?

Cope with it.

They're monkeying with him by giving him a stupid fucking name.

Oh, no, I promise you this is his idea.

I promise you.

Well, I promise you that somebody at a responsible company would have X-Nayed it, whether it was his idea or the Pope's idea.

Even if it was the Pope's idea to cope, there'd be no hope for Cope for the Pope.

If FTR are really his friends, they didn't say this is a bad idea.

That's the worst name any wrestler's ever had ever.

So the main event was Wheeler Useless, Claudio, and Dick the Boozer against FTR and Cope.

And right as the bell rang, Tony Schiavone

plugged the death of Sweet Daddy Seekey.

So he had a hand in training Cage and

Cope and

Daddy.

Ronson?

Ron Hutchinson.

He was a real trailblazer for African American.

I guarantee you, Tony Schiavone had never fucking seen or heard of Sweet Daddy Seekey before 4 o'clock that afternoon in the production meeting.

And Sweet Daddy Seekey was a big deal in Ontario, and I'm sure he did

have some hand in helping Ron Hutchinson at his school and etc.

But to

a point is somebody just gave Tony bullet points.

Talk about Sweet Daddy Seeky, who?

Hey, help trained Edge and Ron Hutchinson.

Tony, who?

The guy that trained Edge.

So the reason for this six-man tag was that the faces stopped the heels from pouring bleach down the mascot's throat.

So that old angle, that old chestnut.

And I was expecting to write, well,

you know, FTR's work is great and Edge knows what he's doing and poor Claudio knows what he's doing.

It's just these other fucking two.

And then I swear to God, Edge got into a spot with Claudio and Edge couldn't figure out that Claudio was one supposed to have the headlock and they started doing the fucking spot

they did something and then came together and Claudio was gonna uppercut Edge and then grab him in a headlock but as he went for the uppercut Edge grabbed him in a headlock well then Claudio backed him in the ropes but

he was like he started to shoot him off and then he was telling him I need to have the head.

And then they fucking flummoxed around and then

Claudio grabbed the headlock and then Edge shot him off for the spot.

I'm like, even these guys, it's contagious.

And Schaefer posted Edge.

They went to the break.

Moxley got on Edge with his fake forearms and the punches.

They're just embarrassing.

Cash Wheeler made a great comeback.

He, again,

always with him.

He's always really good.

In the ring,

he may be the best.

I said Shelton Benjamin was the the best wrestler on the roster, and he is because he's gotten over with no help.

But Cash may be the best in-ring physical performer,

and you never get to see it practically, and he's been made completely meaningless on the card.

And,

you know, but it's good stuff.

And at least they timed their break.

They went to their last break at three minutes till 10 because they came back on at 10 o'clock so they could could get that big overrun.

And finally, they built all match to Edge and the plumber getting in.

And they got in,

faced off with each other and traded forearms.

And then Edge went for the spear, but Moxley rolled out.

So they fought to the back of the arena and then fought back to the same place they left.

And Moxley tagged out.

They just had to go back into stands for no fucking reason for 45 seconds.

And then

Edge and Wheeler got in the ring and did shit

while you could see on camera the other four guys crouched on the floor in the respective corners, just looking up, watching, waiting for their cue.

Not selling.

There wouldn't be anything to sell that long anyway, but just kneel taking a knee.

And watching what was going on instead of being on the apron involved in the match.

I know

15 guys that would have kicked the shit out of all of these guys for doing that stuff.

And now they call it that way.

So they crotched Edge on the ring post and leveled FTR because they're ineffective and don't matter.

And then

Moxley put Edge on the desk and took forever.

He was going for a pile driver, but he was milking it.

And then you realize he was taking so long and milking it and time was standing still because Jay White had to come to hit the ring behind everybody's back and hit his finish on Wheeler.

And then Claudio and Schaefer chased Jay White to the entranceway,

and Edge backdropped Moxley on the announce desk, and then the camera panned over, or they pulled up the shot of Claudio and Marina Schaefer at the tunnel standing there staring at Jay White.

And they missed the shot of Edge spear and Moxley through the railing.

And then

all three babyfaces suddenly jumped up into the ring.

And FTR hit their finish on Wheeler, and Edge speared him one, two, three.

Because the hometown guys had to win,

and nobody's going to beat Moxley, so everybody beats useless.

And Jay White was necessary in this confusing fucking mess because he has some issue going on with these other fuckers.

And

you can't expect any kind of coherence when you're trying to keep 18 alleged angles alive all at the same time so there you go and that was that show what'd you think

i mean

there were moments the people there really seemed to get into it there were also some cold tags

i'm not a big edge fan and i never really have been and i think he was a main eventer in a period of time where there weren't a lot of main eventers still there because a lot of guys are starting to leave and also when the company was the main event more than the actual wrestlers.

And

since he returned to WWE and then came to AEW, I just haven't enjoyed any of his stuff.

And then you start thinking, like, well, they keep telling me he's a legend, but I don't really like anything he does.

I hate his promos.

Well, remember, I was more complimentary, especially when he was in the WWE because the shit made sense, came together, did get a little dramatic at points, but I

I was pulling for him.

He's a heck of a guy.

But, you know, after, especially after this last time when he jumped off the cage and hurt himself, he's been gone so long, he comes back, and everything else is so dreary.

There's nothing that he can get into that

you really think he can lift up or do anything with.

Yeah, see, I don't think there's much excitement about Cope versus Dope.

I don't think a lot of people want to see him against Moxley.

I don't think FTR has any excitement from any fans right now because this was the best case scenario.

Hometown fans.

They just gave $25,000 to the city and they still couldn't get a standing ovation.

I don't know.

I think all these guys have had a lot of damage and we blame Tony, but a lot of it was also self-induced.

When you decide you're going to be Cope,

and he put up a picture.

on social media, or someone did, of him and his attorney celebrating that they got the notice that they trademarked Cope.

Oh, good God.

So this has been in the plannings for a while.

Oh boy.

And I think he's going to have to cope with the fact that no one likes his name and he's going to have to cope with the fact that it's a bad idea.

And Adam Copeland, actually, it's not as good as Edge because Edge was established.

But it's as good as you're going to get it.

They knew who Edge was, though, because of the modern idea of, you know, talking about people by their real names as well in publicity.

And

the fans have kind of figured out that adam copeland was edge's real name yeah i mean the song says you don't know me yeah because you keep changing your name

just pick one and stick with it i get i get you can't use edge but we've already seen you as adam on this show for a while you broke your leg you were adam copeland you come back you're just cope

corner

what If he couldn't be Edge, could he be Corner?

Yeah, you know, that's the thing.

Could he be the Edge?

Could he change his name legally to Edge Copeland?

Well, no, then the U2 guy would get on him, wouldn't he?

Well, I mean, it's two Stings.

It's two different forms of entertainment.

Unless he puts out an album, then he'd be fucked up.

Well, I'll tell you, you know, they had a fight over that.

Fucking Steve Borden finally put him in a scorpion death lock, and Sting was like, oh, Roxanne, come help me out of this Scorpion Deathlock.

You win.

Another one in your vocal range.

Yeah, you're very fortunate here today.

Roxanne, you don't want to turn on your TV.

AEW is on tonight.

You don't want to see this stuff, I'm telling you.

Go out and turn tricks.

That's the problem.

Take sperm from strangers.

It'll be more fun than watching AEW.

Will you stop it?

But that's

the problem here.

You have FTR who barely been on this show.

They've been on collision, I guess, I assume.

But the fans, this is their hometown crowd.

This is the best it's going to get.

Adam Copeland hasn't been on this show.

He's now back.

Moxley's been all over the show, and the fans don't want to see him anymore, and they don't react to him.

And then Claudio, like I said, Claudio, Marina, and Wheeler.

Wheeler.

Yeah, that is his name.

Wheeler.

Yeah.

Are just charisma vacuums.

What happened to PAC?

He's in the group.

He doesn't come to work anymore.

Not that I'm complaining.

He probably needs a visa renewal.

It's that time of the year.

I thought Moxley was the king of that country.

He should be able to wave his scepter and get Pac in.

Yeah, well, that's uh, you know, but then they get that moment.

How many times that happened with Pack, where he's in the middle of stuff, he disappears, you don't even notice,

and then a few weeks later, you're like, Hey, where's Pack?

And then a couple months later, he just shows up again, like, Oh my god, it's Pack.

He's returned from the abyss more times than anyone in AEW,

and that was dynamite.

Oh,

we have landed once again, folks.

Hello, people of Earth.

We are here in the future.

Is it?

Do I have to chew gum when we time travel like you do to keep your ears from popping in the airplane?

Because that was painful.

Am I popping my peas?

When I talk about being painful, I don't know what you're doing over there.

I should get one of those screens.

That big old screen they put in front of the microphone where you're popping of your peas and you're

all that

daffy duck kind of stuff.

That doesn't

translate.

I'm here too.

I don't want to hear this.

You're there too.

Well, I'm over here now.

You certainly are.

You've already got me leaning back away from the microphone.

You say

I'm too boisterous.

Well, we are here, ladies and gentlemen, in the future.

We dicked around and we still ain't got no ratings for that shit show that they started the year off with.

Apparently, when the

how is it that January 1st being a holiday affected

the ratings?

Because the business offices are closed every Wednesday night at 8 o'clock Eastern.

You would think that since everybody was open up on Thursday, things would just progress right along as normal.

Wouldn't you?

Well, you would think, I mean, there's always, there's no real reason there should be any delay on the ratings.

It's just data being pulled.

All the company has to do is release the data.

Well, yeah, so they need to get some more pullers.

They need to get some yankers because the pullers ain't ain't doing their job.

They need to get us a yank that data.

What if they could go to the American Dairy Association, get some cow milkers to start yanking data?

They would be yanking cranks all over the country.

Well, as we were saying, we do not have dynamite ratings as of the present, as we are recording.

However, there's another rating story.

I've been waiting to see how it played out.

AEW Collision.

Oh, boy.

On December 21st.

I got to find the overall number.

It was like the highest overall number in years.

But now, bear in mind, this is the episode of the much maligned collision program that immediately followed a college football bowl game that did 18 million viewers on

TNT TV.

Whatever.

What is collision on these days?

Is it TBS or is it over on TNT?

It's on TNT.

Well, okay.

Well, they had 18 million people watching the

basketball

right before this program came on the air.

And let's see how many of them stuck around.

Well, Jim, I have it right here as reported by WrestleNomics, AEW Collision, December 21st on TNT, 8 to 10 p.m.

635,000 viewers on average.

It is the highest overall number and key demo number since July 29th, 2023.

And it had the and by the way, that was when

our friendly neighborhood CM Punk was running things over on that branch of the company.

That's when they were doing some good grappling over there.

Had some big matches.

Felt like something.

The summer of 23, Brian Adams ought to do an update.

All right.

Well,

they say you're old.

It was the summer of 23.

Yeah, Punk and FTR.

They had some bouts with that other guy I forgot about.

Anyway.

Well, Jim.

It was the summer of 23.

They had a big lead-in.

A lot of people thought they were.

Yeah, they did.

This was cause for celebration.

It's such a big number, but they had a big lead-in.

They had Clemson versus Texas College Football.

It's a playoff game.

But here's the quarterly numbers.

8 to 8:15 p.m., quarter one.

Big Boom AJ

and Big Justice live promo.

God damn it.

Followed by Ricochet versus Will Ospreay with picture and picture.

1,260,000 viewers.

Holy shit.

So Big Boom AJ is now officially the ratings champion of all history of AEW.

501,000 viewers in the key demo.

So they only lost 16.7

million people from the football game.

That ain't bad.

We go to quarter two, 8.15 to 8.30 p.m.

Ricochet versus Osprey continued.

And an Adam Cole MJF live promo.

And I actually saw this.

I wish you had it so we could have talked about it.

801,000 viewers.

ah wait a minute

is that a dump you know what that is don't you Brian

that's the that's the truffle pig

that's a my my friend Joni Aries out in Washington Washington state that is sent me a it's a toy for Harley it's a it's a plastic

little truffle pig and why are you playing with it well because the truffles you know grow under the shit you got to get really deep to get them truffles.

And since they've lost 459,000 viewers in 15 minutes, they're already underground.

They're under the shit.

They need to get the truffle pig to root them out.

Well, we go to quarter three, 8.30 to 8.45 p.m.

The continuation of the Adam Cole MJF Undisputed Kingdom Live Angle.

Chris Statlander's backstage promo, an ad break, Orange Cassidy's backstage promo, and the start of Penelope Ford versus Chris Statlander,

634,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Well, that's

167,000 viewers, but it doesn't look so bad since they just lost 459,000.

But that is a, they have lost

half of the audience they started with in 45 minutes.

Okay.

Well, we go to quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.

AEW collision, once again, not dynamite.

Penelope Ford versus Chris Statlander continued with picture and picture and full screen.

Ads, that is.

What other thing would there be?

Either picture and picture or full screen?

They had both.

The post-match with Mercedes Monet.

An ad break.

The Learning Tree Big Boom AJ Big justice live promo.

Because Jericho found a way to latch on to them.

Big Boom and Big Bill and Big Justice had a big promo and boom.

491,000 viewers.

Oh,

boy, howdy.

That's another

143,000

that they're down in the first hour.

It makes a total of, no, I'm sorry, 140,000 in quarter four makes a total of seven I can't do this math 780,000 give or take from

the start go ahead and as we wrap up this hour let me just say 501 was the key demo for quarter one it went from 501 to 380 to 284 to 219

they had more people in the key demo in the first quarter than they did watching in entirely by quarter four.

Certainly they picked up some steam at the all-important

top of the nine o'clock hour or whatever time this was.

Well, usually it is a bounce.

Maybe in this case, because of all the big, there'll be a big bounce, but we'll find out 9 to 9.15 p.m.

quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour.

The learning tree, big boom, AJ, Big Justice, Anthony Bowens live promo.

The Bowens?

Bowens was involved with Big Bill and Big Boom and Big Justice and Brian Keith?

Was he in there?

Deanna Perrazo and Taya Valkyrie and Tony Tony Storm's backstage angle and the start of Shelton Benjamin versus Daniel Garcia with picture and picture ads.

Okay, that's the one that I saw that I talked about.

493,000 viewers.

Well, there you go.

The big bounce comes.

Big bounce.

See what I did there?

They picked up 2,000.

Well, we go now at a quarter 6, 9.15, 9.30 p.m.

Shelton Benjamin versus Daniel Garcia continued.

The post-match with the Hurt Syndicate and Swerve Strickland, an ad break, and Mark Briscoe versus the Beast Mortos,

495,000 viewers.

See, okay, now, what did I say earlier in the program?

Shelton Benjamin is the only wrestler in AEW that's actually getting over.

He's the only person that actually increased these numbers.

Or at least held on to them.

491 to 493 to 495.

Right.

I'm saying no one going in the right direction.

No one else even held on to an audience.

He actually has a build.

No one else.

Nobody held on to an audience.

It was like limmings going over the edge of a fucking cliff.

Well, we go now.

They couldn't hold on to their hands were greased trying to hold on to these people.

They were like sperm swimming up the birth canal.

Well, let's go back to the cliff.

Get me out of here.

Corner seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The continuation of Briscoe versus Mortos

with picture-in-picture and full-screen ads,

the Julia Hart, the A Julia Hart promo, the only one,

the Thunderosa Mariah Mae live angle, and an ad break,

469,000 viewers.

We've now dipped below 200 in the key demo, 192.

There you go.

Again, the only person to gain the audience, Shelton Benjamin and the Hurts Syndicate.

And we go now to quarter eight, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

Claudio Castignoli versus Darby Allen with picture-in-picture ads,

459,000 viewers.

And they held the 192.

So I can do this math because it's almost even.

They lost 801,000 viewers from start to finish.

That's got to be a record, right?

Never.

When they did, you know, we ought to go back, and I don't expect you to do it right now because, for heaven's sake, you're good, but you may not be that good.

But their first show back many moons ago when they did 1.2 million people to say, that was the, well, no, that was the show that Punk came back, wasn't it?

They've done two big numbers.

I think the first show and a show where Punk came back.

We ought to go back and reflect and see how much of their audience they held on those.

Because they ain't sticking around today,

even when they get a big number.

If you know you have a big lead in, what do you do if you're Tony?

Like all joking aside.

Now, Big Boom, AJ, and Big Justice are certainly not wrestling personalities, even though they've done some stuff recently.

But

they

to a sports audience or a college basketball audience, they probably know them from

getting the fucking rotisserie chicken at Costco or whatever their fucking M.O.

is over there.

If you're on TikTok, my kids know them from TikTok.

So, I mean, everyone, they're known.

But they go from that.

Tickery, tickery, talk.

This chick, all right.

Well, it goes from that to Osprey versus Ricochet.

Is that how you would have started?

If you know you're going to have a big.

Well, that's definitely a departure.

They're showing they got something for everybody.

You know, that's the problem is that

there's really nothing

that AEW is doing right now that would be of interest to

an audience, I don't think, that's watching college basketball, a sports-oriented audience or a young guy audience, because they'd look at half the roster.

Well, I can whip these fucking guys.

The other part, well, look at these stupid fucking people doing this bullshit.

Or what there's,

you know, MJF could attract that kind of audience, but he's been neutered.

And

Osprey could be cool if he wasn't just left to his own devices with trying to put all these other fucking indie weasels over, like his friend Felcher and

Okada and et cetera.

But do you really see anybody on this roster that anybody that's not an indie wrestling fan, but that's a casual WWE style fan that's used to professional looking guys at least, or heaven forbid, a real sports fan with a UFC or basketball football crossover.

Like there's been

a crossover in the fan bases of football and wrestling a lot of times because there's been a crossover between football players to wrestlers in the past.

That doesn't often happen anymore.

There was a big crossover in the fan base of MMA and wrestling until wrestling got fucking silly and soft and all girly.

But I think there's less crossover for AEW style wrestling amongst any mainstream sports fan today, don't you think?

Should they have started with the Hurt Syndicate?

It wouldn't have hurt.

It should, because then

there you've not only got guys coming out that look like stars and that they probably know if they're going to know anybody on the show, they'd know MVP Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin from the big time.

And you could have had Shelton do or Lashley do some of the shit they do where they just ragdoll and throw motherfuckers around.

And it could have been impressive for an audience that just finished the basketball game or the football game or whatever the fuck the game was.

Did I say basketball administration?

Well, goddamn it, it's all played with the ball.

What's interesting, too, they began with Osprey versus Ricochet.

So, any casual fan, whatever that means, anyone who's not a usual viewer of AEW who stayed and said, let me see what this is, saw a wrestler getting pelted with toilet paper by the way.

Oh, God, you're yes.

It's the first thing they see after Big Boom, AJ, and Big Justice.

No Rizzler, apparently.

And then old Big Justice, he's bigger than Lil Ricochet.

He throws a better punch than every single person on the AEW roster.

I don't know if he can do anything else in the ring, but he he threw a better punch than everyone they have.

He's got more weight behind it.

Well, we will have to wait and see if these dynamite ratings come in, Jim.

But that's a new red.

That's, I don't know percentage-wise, because didn't we figure out they lost

about 66%, two-thirds of their audience?

No, maybe not, but this is

they ended up a 450,

just roughly.

I'm not going to ask you to do any work.

They lost

60% of the audience here or more.

That's 60 to 63, let's say.

Somebody will figure it out and tell me I was right.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, we've gone.

Can you stop with that?

People aren't going to know exactly what it is every segment.

They're going to think you're farting.

They're going to think you have a dog.

No, it's the truffle pig.

How would anyone know that?

Because I just said it a few minutes ago.

We were talking about the same shit.

Well, let's get a few more topics.

Speaking of the same shit, Jim, the Young Bucks recently did an interview,

and a lot of the listeners have been sending this in to corny drive-through at gmail.com as well as just sending it over to us however they can at this point.

They did an interview with

Tunnel Talk

on Social Suplex.

Is that a friend of theirs that's got his head up his own ass?

I'm not sure, but it says Tunnel Talk on Social Suplex, whatever that may be.

Oh boy.

Matt says he enjoys being uncomfortable and trying new things.

What?

He enjoys being uncomfortable.

That's why he sleeps on broken glass every night, folks.

Nick added.

I think part of it is after doing it for 20 plus years now, sometimes the normal gets boring.

And you just want to think outside the box.

Oh, Christ.

Matt continued.

You want to entertain yourself, but to Nick's point, you go to a rock show and you want to hear the songs that you know.

Whenever they play the new stuff, everyone is just like, oh, come on, the new stuff, this sucks.

Because you're going to band your dad likes, kid.

But as a performer, as a creative person, I always want to come up with something fresh.

Then why haven't they been having the same matches for the last fucking 15 years?

Here's a good example.

When we did the EVPs thing,

we were like, let's just have really boring matches.

Let's stop doing all the super athletic moves that get big reactions.

Oh, the super athletic move.

You know, these guys are the next thing to fucking Alexander Carolyn.

They're a goddamn experiment.

They've been trained and scientifically enhanced since they were babies in the cradle to fucking be the supreme athletes.

But go ahead.

It is hard because one of the things in general is that most of our stuff is pretty exciting.

It's high spots.

We did it.

Nick added, I stopped doing dives for maybe eight months.

I didn't do a tumble out to the floor for about eight months.

And that was on purpose.

I didn't do a tumble.

We literally wanted people to think, are these guys not athletic anymore?

Are they just boring wrestlers now?

So let's stop there.

There's a little more to quote here, but the idea,

it's not a crazy idea, the idea that a babyface would change their style if they became a heel, as opposed to a heel who backs itself into a babyface.

Correct.

That concept isn't crazy.

Let's be boring is a crazy concept.

And by the way, you're always boring because it is the same shit all the time.

And the fucking

EVPs was just the same old shit with rotten booking or even rottener.

Is rottener a fucking verb?

Anyway, it is now.

What it is, is these

guys are childish in more ways than one.

They've always had a bad fucking attitude.

Hence the name of their book, Killing the Business, because everybody told them their shit would kill the business.

And well,

look at here.

But in Ring of Honor, in 2010 or whatever, and remember, I've told a story how we ended up with them before we wanted them to begin with.

And

when they were working in TNA and Sinclair had bought Ring of Honor and we were

working on contracts with the talent,

they had called and talked to me and to Delirious.

And yes, for the Ring of Honor audience of the time, they were known.

They were a lot younger.

They were certainly a lot cheaper.

I wasn't particularly big fans, but I knew the audience liked them, right?

So we were trying to be nice.

And we both, Delirious and I both said, well, you guys are under contract with TNA through the end of the year.

By the end of the year, I'm sure we can work something out.

We'd like to have you, you know, keep in touch with us.

Let us know what the fuck's going on with you, that type of thing, right?

We get a call two weeks later, they fucking quit and they let them out of their contracts to get rid of them because they didn't want them down there either they said when can we start we're like what the

and then we had to

it talk

it joke off into talking

greg the office boy into flying these two num nutses from

fucking kookamonga or wherever they're from to the east coast plus a hotel room plus they'd been making 500 bucks apiece per show

with the previous ring of honor, which again,

at this point, whether you say they'd ever drawn any money or not now is questionable, but they'd never drawn any money then.

And they only wanted to fly them out for TV tapings where the budget was bigger instead of putting them in Collinsville, Illinois.

And then they got fucking pissed and started complaining because we weren't booking them when we didn't fucking want them at that point to begin with.

But I had a point to that story, Brad.

Oh,

so they had a TV match one time.

We're doing TV in Baltimore.

And I was about

their gravy had gone all over my plate already, even back then.

Right?

And

Delirius had sat down with them and said, whoever they were working with, I can't remember, but we wanted a serious match.

We put it in the main event slot.

We didn't want goddamn cartwheels and grab ass.

He sat down with them to be more of the generation to give advice and said, hey, have a good match with these guys and let's the fast-paced high spots and boom, boom, boom, but not so much of the gymnastics that you do, right?

So we're sitting in the truck and you know what they did?

They started twisting the arm, holding a wrist lock, standing flat-footed, and then tagging out and boom and coming in and hammer fist in the shoulder

and they did that for 10 minutes that kind of thing and i'm looking at him i said what how we're supposed to get this young fucking

hippie dippy fucking high spot tag team and instead we get bruiser and fucking crusher

i said they're working flat-footed like fucking ox baker because they're pissed because we said just wrestle athletically Don't do your goddamn gymnastic horse shit because we're trying to run a serious operation here.

and you guys ain't the top tag team.

And instead of trying to prove that they could do it, they instead chose to stink up 10 minutes of TV match,

which I then took back and edited out about three minutes to stink less before it aired.

But they've always had bad attitudes, unless they're allowed to do whatever they want and go home whenever they want and get their music and their friends' jobs,

and their wife can do the fucking merchandise or whatever.

Rotten attitudes.

How did that come up?

Oh, we were talking about their quotes from an interview with.

Yes, so they so they've

they think that they should have boring matches because they're heels, and that way people people were already booing them anyway because they're just sick of them.

But heels don't have matches like baby faces.

That's true, but heels have exciting matches like heels have.

And you work just as hard on being a heel and putting yourself in that position and swaying the audience's emotions and roughing up a guy that the fans are more likely to be sympathetic to because of the issue and his demeanor.

And that's the way that you perform the art of being a pro-wrestling heel.

But since these children developed their own selves on their fucking trampoline,

they didn't get very deep in this.

The only deep thing they've got is

the truffle pig looking for the ratings under the shit.

They were asked about some of the fan comments on social media, about their in-ring skills.

Here's a quote from Nick.

I see some of it.

I stay off most of social media.

But one thing that really pissed me off was someone said, I thought the young bucks were washed.

And I was thinking, oh, come on.

You guys fell for the gimmick that we were doing.

Oh, God.

We didn't forget how to wrestle out of nowhere.

Come on.

Don't be dumb.

Brian, is this the first time in history that you've ever heard any professional wrestler say, ha ha, food, my match didn't stink because I can't wrestle.

I was trying to make it stink.

The other thing is, is this a rewriting of history in a sense?

Yes.

Because the young Bucks who were killing the ratings in every segment they were in, and people were talking about how they're dead on arrival right now.

No one wants to see them as babyfaces.

No one wants to see them as heels.

And they don't mean anything.

They started getting a little backlash when it became obvious that even though FTR at the time was the much superior team and the people wanted to support them, the Little Weasels would never clearly put them over in a two out of three situation situation or without a bunch of bells and whistles and oh yeah,

oh, why I autas.

That's when they first started getting a little backlash from even their faithful and then it went downhill from there.

Remember when they disappeared off TV, when they came out and the fans started chanting FTR at them, they were on the ramp and it was like an aggressive like, FTR!

Yeah.

And then we didn't see the Young Bucks for a while.

Listen, this is Tony's project, but they're doing their project.

It's just Tony's funding it in the middle of Tony's project.

They work with their referee.

They've got their moron announcer on commentary.

They've got all their friends there as stooges.

We're giving them jobs.

They protected Colt Cabana's job.

He's done nothing since.

I don't want to hear about it.

Oh, behind the scenes is a big player.

Behind the scenes, the company's a fucking mess.

So give me a break.

Well,

behind the scenes, what's he doing?

Getting coffee?

They don't have producers they ever listen to.

There's no reason.

How is he going to tell anybody how to do anything to begin with?

They turned heel and didn't know how to do it.

And Tony Khan didn't know how to do it.

Jack Perry and the Young Bucks attacked Tony Khan.

First of all, if the Jack Perry shit is in any way run by the Bucs and they thought it was a good idea and then Tony did, there's part of the problem.

Why is he the scapegoat?

Exactly, what is he the scapegoat of?

I mean, none of it makes any sense.

And the Bucs didn't work.

They were the kind of heels that Moxley is now.

They don't cause people to want to see you get your ass kicked.

They cause people to turn the channel.

And it wasn't because they were boring.

I don't remember seeing those complaints.

Do you?

No.

They're boring now.

I used to like them, but now they're boring.

I don't remember seeing that at all.

I mean, I agree with them.

The matches did stink,

but that was no different than their previous matches.

Because they all stink.

Because it's the same shit from these fucking kids that want to fucking play like they're tough guys.

And whether it's Pie Face or the bald one,

the one flips over and they ram the fucking guy in together.

And then the one back flips over the second rope and then moonsalts off the fucking apron.

They've been doing that since 2010.

I've been having a look at that shit.

It's just, it's their play wrestling that could only go so far when it was on an indie level and they went to different buildings a few times a year live and the 700 people or whatever there were just happy to see them.

But it doesn't play every week because normal people watching television across the country are saying, What the fuck?

You expect me to believe this guy's a fucking wrestler and look at what they look like and look at how they talk and look at how they act and look at these fucking matches.

Well, here's the question I have:

when they come back, and if the rumors are true and they come back with Kenny Omega at some point

to be the ones that take down

Moxley and the Death Riders, the original EVP save AEW and save Tony Khan, even though they beat up Tony Khan a year ago, but they save the company.

Well, time heals all wounds from the Death Riders.

Is Road Warrior Buck gonna

sell for Moxley, or is Moxley and Claudio are they gonna be selling for the Bucks after not selling for anyone?

I predict that old Maddie, oh, Matthew,

he'll double fucking Northern Lights Suplex Claudio and Moxley together on top of Marina Schaefer, who will have been leveled moments before.

See, they're still EVPs.

They should use that and fuck with Moxley.

They come back like, you know, John, you think you're so big and bad?

Guess what?

I'm an EVP.

My wife is now going to design your shirts.

She's in charge of merch again.

You're fucked, man.

There goes your income.

Again, maybe one day in the future, the Death Riders versus the Elite.

Would you put money on it?

That it's going to happen.

Well, I tell you, you can put money on most anything these days, but I think that might be a sucker's bet.

Maybe we just will bet that if it happens, it's going to suck.

That way, we wouldn't be suckers.

But you know what wouldn't suck is if you,

not you, Brian, but the you out there in podcast land, if you want a bunch of money, could we, we talked about these.

Playoffs they were doing in the bowl games and all it's big shit happening in the sports world, right?

This is the time of year where, well, even more people do that kind of thing than normal.

And right now, you can get in on the action at the DraftKings Sportsbook.

They're an official sports betting partner of the NFL, you know.

And you know what they do in the NFL, don't you, Brian?

They score touchdowns.

You've seen those.

Well, some do.

Some teams don't.

Well, I thought sooner or later, everybody does at one time or another, don't they?

I mean, these things happen in football.

I'm so lucky to have grown up up here as a Giants fan.

I don't know if I could have taken the Mets and the Jets.

The Jets are are not a pretty sight.

Well, if you want to bet that the Jets and the Mets can get together and score big,

you can go to DraftKings and you can bet on scoring touchdowns because that's the key to winning the game is the scoring of the touchdowns.

Is there a way to deliver these lines without sounding like Bill Cosby?

Well, it's the scoring of the touchdowns is the key to winning in the playoffs.

And if you can bet on the, like, just go to DraftKings and download that sports book.

And

you can bet on whether there's going to be a touchdown or not.

And it's football.

Now, that's a pretty safe bet because if you were going to bet there's going to be a home run, well, you might have a problem there.

That's more difficult to accomplish in a football game.

But let's say you're not

an experienced better.

Let's say you're ready to place your first bet, bet on something simple, like one of the players to score six points.

Wow, that ought to be easy.

That's

not even 10.

Why, they'd only have to score a touchdown and get the extra point after the punt passer throws the kick in from offsides.

And they could do that.

So you can go to the DraftKings Sportsbook and make your pick right now on their app.

Boy, and I'll tell you what, also,

boy, boy,

boy, I'll tell I'm a COVID survivor, damn it.

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But new DraftKings customers can bet $5,

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Now, let's say.

There's a football game going to be played, and

you're going to bet $5 on somebody's going to score a touchdown.

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How many people's on the team?

Oh, I don't know.

I don't really watch it.

Well, I'm sure 40 would cover the main ones that might have a chance on scoring a touchdown.

Well, then you've got it covered.

You're bound to win.

Just bet on everybody.

Well, again, you're not bound to win, but there's always a chance.

And you can see if your chance, if it's your day.

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That's right, they are.

And, you know, Jim, unfortunately, you gave COVID to our friend who usually comes and reads his little announcement.

So we do not have any.

And wait a minute, Styles Bitchley?

That's not Stiles Bitchley.

We exposed that a long time ago, Jim.

I thought he was coming in to do the cover of this, but he's he's still

on probation, huh?

Well,

we do have a disclaimer here for the people.

Yes.

Well, I'm a COVID survivor, you know.

So am I.

Okay.

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Once again, DraftKings, the Crown Emperors, promo

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All right.

Alrighty, then.

Jim, a couple more things before we wrap things up here today.

I have a report from the recent edition of the Wrestling Observer newsletter.

I'd like to get your thoughts on this.

Oh, boy.

Dave Meltzer wrote: So for WrestleMania, the reports of Rhodes versus John Cena are accurate as things stand right now.

The idea of Cena challenging one of the two champions in an attempt to break the so-called record of 16 reigns that he and Flareshare

that he and Flareshare

has

got more than their fair share has been working, has been a working idea for months At first it was the raw title given Rhodes vs Rock would be the other title and the people's title This isn't etched in stone because whatever Rock wants to do he's likely going to be able to do I do he always puts that in doesn't he?

I do know that I don't think Rock didn't get to do last year what he wanted to do, did he?

I do know that people are expecting him to appear on the show in some form.

As for wrestling on the show, I even know people at the top who are expecting that, but it's not a sure thing, and one would think that the Netflix show on the 6th will kick off the season and tip the hand.

Rock could do another match, even though WWE title versus people title was what he wanted after Mania.

So a few things here.

What are your thoughts on

the idea of Cena versus Cody

at WrestleMania?

And based on last year's WrestleMania, is it a little bit of a letdown not to get the Rock versus Cody?

Well, honestly, again, this is something in reverse from last year.

They had teased something, and then they tried to give them Rock and Cody, and they said no.

But now they kind of might expect Rock and Cody.

If Rock is going to be involved in some kind of way, it should be with Cody.

I don't know about the

WWE title versus people's champion belt, the people's title.

It sounds so odd.

The belt that Muhammad Ali crafted with his own hands.

Yes, he was.

A lot of people don't know.

Before he started boxing at Joe Martin's gym here in Louisville when he was 12 years old, he was an accomplished welder.

He built that bicycle that

the people stole from him.

That's when he went to the police.

What I was trying to say is that

unless Rock was going to drop the people's title to Cody,

then I don't like the title versus title because

it, again,

the Rock as a heel in that situation against Cody or against Roman Reigns, I believe, should be the one to do the job.

But at the same time,

does Cody want the people's title?

Because it's not really the people's title.

It's The Rock's bullshit heel

people's title.

You see what I'm saying?

I don't think that's an important part.

The Rock can play it up like, if you beat me, you'll be the People's Champion.

But I don't know that that's an important selling point to the public.

See, the other thing is behind the scenes, The Rock could build it up like, I win this one and then you'll get the next one.

But what if he gets a film role?

What if something happens?

Like, The Rock's a little bit of a different case than any other wrestler.

There are outside things that could prevent, like right now, they don't know if he's going to do WrestleMania in January.

Besides that,

it's age.

It's, you know,

The Rock

probably has

this big WrestleMania single match main event in him.

But, you know, what about next year, the year after that, when he's 50-something and he's got a movie role or he's torn a fucking muscle in training or whatever?

No, you don't,

for the sake of one one major appearance a year, derail somebody that's producing the revenue on a regular basis that Cody is, or even that Roman Reigns is, or Seth Rollins is, or CM Punk is

right now, in my mind, because

it's not.

I don't know what the percentage would be, but back in the 80s, 90s, when Vince was so wrapped up at WrestleMania, WrestleMania,

that was months of his normal company's income in one night.

And that ain't the same configuration anymore.

They can make tens and hundreds of millions of dollars a week between the goddamn site fees and the rights fees and the pay-per-views and the peacocks.

And

so you don't cut the legs off of somebody that's there.

People will say Roman Reigns is part-time.

Roman Reigns is a goddamn workhorse next to the rock.

So the more that they can get those people there, the more that they need to be putting those people over

the people that are still attraction, even Brock.

If Brock comes back, I think he needs to put Gunther over.

But, goddammit, draw tens of millions of dollars.

Do you hear me?

What I'm telling you?

All right, well, that covers the Rock and Cody, the match that was teased last year, or the Rock Roman.

What about Cody Rhodes and John Cena?

I love that if The Rock is not going to be involved

because,

again, this is, it's a story for Cena.

You know, could I be 17-time champion, even though the numbers are fudged on everybody's part?

But that's a story for Cena, and he's going to be a raving baby face.

But at the same time, Cody would love to take on that challenge, I believe, of having

a match with John Cena at WrestleMania where he's even the subtle heel like Dory Jr.

used to be with Jack Briscoe in Florida.

But he still doesn't do anything that Cody Rhodes, the American nightmare, the son of the plumber son, wouldn't do.

He's not going to be kicking people into balls.

He's not going to be trying to stab them in the face with a screwdriver.

They'd have a tremendous match.

And,

you know, it would be big box office if the Rock is not over here doing something else besides with Roman.

If they get Rock and Roman, they could could do Cody and Cena.

And

fuck, they could put goddamn Hillbilly Jim in the opening match and sell out.

I hope so.

We need a retro figure of Hillbilly Jim.

There isn't one.

Jim is a retro figure.

He's old.

I love Hillbilly Jim.

He is a heck of a guy, but he's an old-fashioned kind of guy, even back then.

With the exception of the opening match, which was Jim Powers versus the Genius, where the microphone broke and we didn't have to hear the poetry.

My first card, I could recreate the entire lineup in retro figures, minus one match, which was Andre the Giant versus Hillbilly Jim,

replacing Big John Studd, who walked out or quit, or I think that's what it was.

I don't have Hillbilly Jim.

Everyone else on that card, I have a retro figure of.

Well, I bet, you know, if you just write to Jim in Bowling Green, I bet you he could find something in his garage to fix you up with.

I thought he lived in Mudlick.

Well, you know, he went uptown when he started getting money.

All right.

Well, Jim, let's get one last topic here on this catch-up edition of the drive-thru.

Normal historical wrestling segments and fun.

We'll bring back further files and guest the program next week.

Yes, and plus, and bearing in mind that I'm going to have a winter ice storm here in the metro Louisville area the day before we're supposed to record the next program.

Hopefully, I'll have power and we'll have a bunch of holiday catch-ups and miscellaneous topics on the experience, also.

Well, Jim, our final topic here is something that a lot of people were sending in while we were off.

Actually, it's two separate topics, but they both involve CM Punk.

The first one,

footage emerged, Madison Square Garden, a holiday show for the WWE annual tradition.

CM Punk in a towel and shower cap

hits the ring to help the baby faces.

I've seen split opinions on this.

Some people think that's classic wrestling.

This guy loves his wrestling.

Others thought that's exactly the kind of cheesy stuff we don't want to see.

What are your thoughts?

You know, well, I think it also depends on your age group again, because now the younger people are used to seeing everything being played for laughs and being silly and being presented as silly that when they see something that in another generation people would have instantly understood and

been jumping up and down screaming about, you know, cheering, they don't get it.

This is not new.

I hate to bury our friend Mr.

Brooks, but

he researched an old wrestling idea that's been done, I don't know how, countless times, right?

Are most of the fans aware of this, Brian, or do you think I'm breaking new ground here already?

Oh, you're definitely breaking new ground for some of the younger fans, but explain.

Okay, well,

back when this shit used to have to make sense, right?

Back when the people were expected to believe what was going on was spontaneous and not all part of some grand scheme,

there were certain things that you had to do to close loopholes.

Let's say, for example,

you know, now when they're in the big NBA-sized arenas for a TV taping

and the heels are beating up the baby face

and, you know, you're expected to be upset about this and people, oh my God, if someone could save him, and then here comes the babyface running down finally.

Well, in a building that size, you can believe it took somebody

a minute or whatever to be made aware that, oh, your friend's in trouble, right?

Oh, shit, I got it.

And even sometimes the WWE, because they're trying to put a little more production pizzazz in this, they'll show

the guy running in from the back on the screen, whatever.

But back in the old days when a lot of wrestling television

was taped in television studios,

let's say, for example, that Jerry Lawler's the big babyface in Memphis.

And the second biggest babyface is Jimmy Valiant.

Well, Jimmy Valiant wrestled in segment three, and he did his interview, and they come back two minutes later, and here's Jerry Lawler wrestling.

Now, the heels jump him,

and they're kicking the shit out of him, and you're expected to be worried about Jerry Lawler, but

it would bury Jimmy Valiant,

who the people know was just there.

If he didn't come out to help Lawler, people go, well, fuck you, you asshole.

You could have helped him.

So, one of the ways they used to delay that inevitability of happening is the heels would get a minute on the fucking baby face they'd have him bleeding or they'd have him in trouble or they'd do whatever they were going to do and then here would come the baby face

in like slippers or shower thongs and goddamn under trunks maybe with a towel around him and shampoo in his hair and fucking make a mad dash to get oh no and the heels would bail out

and the people would instantly realize oh my god he would have been here earlier but he was in the shower.

And the classic example of this that I remember,

it was like 1973.

It was, I think it was the, because Harry Thornton was the announcer, I'm pretty sure.

It might have been Sterling Brewer.

Now that I think about it, it was Sterling Brewer, which means that the tape was probably from Birmingham, Alabama, the southern end of the Gulis Territory.

And Don Green

had wrestled a match earlier in the show,

and they had interviewed

his daughter, who was probably like a 16-year-old teenage girl or whatever.

But Don was a big baby face, and they interviewed his daughter.

She was there either because it was her birthday or maybe his father's day.

Who knows what fucking, you know, reason they came up with.

And she just said something good about her father.

And they go to the break and they come back in the heels.

Her out there with their man.

I think it was the Infernos and JC Dykes, but I may be wrong.

I bet you Scott Teal would know.

Anyway, point is

the fucking manager starts berating Don Green's daughter and telling her what a slime ball her father is.

And when

she has had enough of it, she reaches up and fucking shoves him or does whatever, and he slapped her.

And when he slapped her, oh, geez, the people went crazy, and she's selling it.

And goddamn, the announcer gets in between, and he's the heels are yelling, and blah, blah, blah.

And

within like 30 seconds, here comes Don Green covered in fucking soap and under trunks only and barefoot and you know, fucking mad and crazy and going after these fucking people.

And the place and the fans in the studio went crazy.

But anyway, it's old as the hills in terms of even in the Louisville Gardens or any other arena, you know, from years ago,

the fans knew that there was,

if there were 14 guys on a card, seven of them were babyfaces and seven of them were heels.

That means that

the early match babyfaces, the people, okay, the preliminaries, they've already left.

They got to go wherever they're going, right?

And many times they had.

But those top babyfaces that wanted to stay over in the main event,

they either needed to have an excuse for not coming out and helping or be too late or whatever the case, or it would bury them

and the people knew they were in the fucking building.

So there would be different reasons why that they left early or called away or on the phone or whatever the fuck.

What about the shower cap?

Was the shower cap a bit much?

The shower cap was a fucking, well, again, it's a modern time.

The shower cap looked fucking great.

I've never seen that done.

It's always been shampoo in the hair.

But I can't believe, you know, he is a, he's got a very spelt figure, does Punk, that he was able to find a towel that he could keep on while he got all the way in the ring and everything.

Hopefully he had under trunks on underneath anyway.

But yeah, that's what he was doing.

It was an homage.

They let the heels have time to get their heating it.

Here comes fucking Punk to save the the day.

Somebody had to go and get him.

And I see nothing wrong with that.

Again, the shower cap, but they had to see it.

It's Madison Square Garden.

They were full.

They had to see it back in the cheap seats.

So.

And for the people saying, well, here's Punk doing silly stuff now that he's in WWE, even if you think this is silly, this is the same kind of stuff he was doing at the end of AEW shows.

I mean, that's what a modern wrestling thing that WWE started and AEW immediately continued.

Like, as soon as the televised portion's over, now it's like after hours.

Now we can have some fun.

So it's not a new thing.

But on the topic of CM Punk and AEW, because it's been a topic forever.

This past week, a story broke out, and I believe it all comes from quotes from Dave Meltzer.

A story broke out.

It had all it could take.

It couldn't take anymore.

It had to get the fuck out of there.

The headline: this is at itrwrestling.com, Inside the Ropes.

Tony Khan believes CM Punk all-in footage, key to WBD media rights deal.

What?

That the airing of the footage with Jack Perry and CM Punk, introduced by the Young Bucks in the midst of their heel turn, weeks before they beat up Tony,

that that was the key

to getting this big WBD media rights deal.

And how does he attribute that?

How does he flesh that out?

Here's a quote from Dave meltzer on wrestling observer radio

i have discussed this with him you have no idea how much

and it's always the same thing that he believes that that was the key to getting that deal so i will tell you i mean in every discussion there's not even a thought in his mind that he made a mistake there

If it helped making the deal, then he's right.

But I,

you know, certainly didn't think long-term it was the right thing, even though, yes, it did help make Jack Perry a star.

What?

I just didn't think it was a positive for the company in the big picture.

I guess the question

that Dave doesn't really...

Didn't the, but wait, by what?

I was talking about an explanation of I attribute it because the rating skyrocketed or because we started selling out all the buildings or because the merchandise went through the roof.

What, Which of those things happened that I missed?

Yeah, see, that's the crazy thing.

If you look at everything, the ratings went down.

I mean, we've been talking about it for a while that if you look at everything since Jack Perry's CM Punk, that's when the real nosedive happened.

In terms of getting Jack Perry over as a star,

no,

I don't think so.

In terms of...

creating buzz and getting online discourse about AEW,

none of it was positive.

I bet it was all bad.

It was all negative.

So it can't be like, oh, WBD saw that everyone was talking about us and it had to get a deal.

In that case, everyone's been talking about TNA for 25 fucking years.

So I don't know.

How could it be positive?

How could it get them the deal?

I don't.

There's no potential possibility that any programming executive said, oh, that's the greatest thing I ever saw.

That 30 seconds of footage with no audio of one of your fucking wrestlers front face locking the other one.

So we'll give you a bunch more money.

How do how

it the ratings went down after the houses went down after people shit all over them on it?

It deflated their regular fans because it was so

bleh and nothing really.

And at the same time,

it alienated the punk fans because they're like, this fucking clown,

Jungle Jack, deserved it.

It was all bad publicity.

And

Jack Perry ain't a star.

And again, let's talk about how it happened because it didn't happen in a vacuum.

It wasn't just like, hey, it's time.

Let's air the footage.

Punk made some comments about Tony in that Ariel Hawani interview.

And Tony had a hissy fit and said, now's the time to release that.

That's right.

Oh, and by the way, it had proved that Tony Khan

lied and said he was in fear of of his life because a guy turned and yelled at him

for four seconds, maybe.

It made Jack Perry and Tony Khan look awful.

Yeah.

And the Young Bucks look awful because they were presenting it like it was a big deal.

It showcased a star on another company's show and just made him a bigger star.

So I think, well, I guess I'll ask you the question.

Do you think Tony Khan

maybe convinces himself of things and has a very difficult time acknowledging his faults as a booker and as a promoter because i don't remember him ever taking a taking the blame for any of the things he actually did

it's no i mean but that's two different things now though no he never says anything was other than than great

um

you know it and all the booking came together wonderfully like in the tournament and the gold block and the fucking cheese block or whatever

but that's different than

this wasn't something he really booked.

Obviously, he didn't orchestrate it from the start.

He just had an idea to put it on.

And he should have known better than that.

It wasn't even about his booking.

He didn't have to admit his booking sucks.

He could have just said, I'm not going to fucking go out and look the people on television straight in the eye and tell them that the guy did something to make me fear for my life and then show footage of him not doing it and me looking like a pussy.

And also,

the guy's already gone and is in a bigger company and is drawing a fucking fortune.

I don't need to show him really manhandling these fucking goofy kids on my roster that I still want to fucking use.

And it didn't make Perry look good because he got fucking front face locked for being a smart ass and he had no rebuttal for it.

And what constitutes a star?

It made him a star.

How?

Well, because, well, he got a

van to ride around in.

The neighborhood registered offender, you know, sold it to him secondhand.

And maybe that's, I don't know how this, they think he's a star.

He's a star in their eyes, in their world.

He just doesn't.

sell any tickets, draw any money, get anybody to watch, or particularly have great matches.

He's a star, except for the fact that he's been off TV for a few months now and nobody's missed him.

Well, I was about to say a minute ago, and we got sidetracked, but what, what, do we know what happened to him?

He lost the title to Daniel Garcia.

He had to go away.

Well, I'd

go away in shame, too, if fucking Garcia beat me.

Well, Jim.

That is the drive-thru for today.

Hold on, let's do this the right way.

Well, I thought we'd never get here.

You know, I'm a COVID survivor, you know.

Well, you stop with that.

I had COVID too.

Well, you didn't have, you're not as old as me.

I got less time to get over it.

All right.

Well, let's get over it right now.

Of course, the experience returns in a few days and the drive-thru, wherever you find your favorite drive-thrus,

sometime soon.

Of course, the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Go there.

All the full episodes, clips of the episodes, the omnibus collections, the Travis Heckel artwork, the guest artwork.

And there's a few omnibuses that are about to be up on that channel that are not going to be in the podcast feed just yet.

Omnibuy.

The official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Go through the archives, patreon.com/slash cornet.

$5 a month gets you access to the archives going back to 2013.

Patreon.com slash Cornette.

Coronets collectibles at JimCornet.com.

Are we back open?

Are we back rocking and rolling?

We never closed and we always rocking and rolling, baby.

Well, you just aren't in a rocking.

You push.

But we are applying ourselves even more than ever before now.

So just start sending money and we'll send you merchandise.

But big plans for February, the month of love, are coming up soon.

And we'll announce those in the next week or 10 days.

It's the new Stan Lane variant figure with no pants.

Actually, it's a deviant figure.

You're correct.

JimCornet.com for all you deviants.

The law office of Stephen P.

New sponsors the drive-through.

Jim, tell everybody about Stephen.

Oh, boy, I'll tell you what.

You know what that is?

That's my truffle pig rooting out underneath the shit to find the truffles.

And that's what Stephen P.

New will do for you, new lawoffice.com, 87750 Steve.

He's going to root and scoot through all the muck and the mud and the shit.

And he's going to find the diamond in the middle of that turd.

And he's going to find it for you.

And he's going to win it for you in court.

He will protect your rights, the rights of the common man.

Don't be drugged down into the muck of avarice.

Stick with Stephen P.

New and he will root out your justice in court.

877-50-STEVE.

That's right.

Get even with StephennewLawOffice.com.

But until next time for Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian Last.

Tally ho!