Episode 373

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Hello again, friends.

And you are our friends, and welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's Drive-Thru.

Featuring the theme to the Great Brian Last, I'm your host, The Great Brian Last.

We have another fun week, the last fun week of drive-thru of 2024 to talk about AEW, to talk about bad executives or bad behavior amongst executives,

as well as much more, a bunch of questions, some classic talk with this man, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr.

Jim Cornett.

Well, Brian, it's going to be one of those days.

It's going to be one of those seasons, I think, one of those holiday seasons, because I've told you, you've been laughing at me already before we went on the air here.

I'm coming down with something for the second time

in

almost five years come February,

I am catching some type of cold or

dreck of some description.

It ain't there yet.

Maybe it won't go there,

but it's already manifesting itself.

A little snottiness, a little wheeziness, a little coffiness.

The general malaise.

I wasn't hungry last night.

That's not a normal thing.

I had cheeseburgers as an option and chose not to pursue that.

Does that tell you I wasn't feeling up to sorts?

And now

I'm here on the program.

But I may be drippy.

Oh, no one needs any of that.

I may be drippy or a little snotty or what, not only in sound, but in attitude.

You're plenty snotty.

Here, and the reason why is

I think the people that listen to us regularly are well aware and have been informed by our recent broadcast that you and I both have been looking forward to just having just 10 days at the holidays where we don't record constantly because even the most you eat filet mignon every day.

Sooner or later, you get tired of it.

Even the most pleasant things,

you like to have a break every now and then.

And we get 10 days at the holidays.

Otherwise,

51 and

two-thirds weeks of the goddamn year

we are talking to each other and to the people the cult of cornad quite often

and i'm fixing to get sick for my break it's going to be one more year i'm going to have to wait to be healthy i can feel it in my bones

And I was telling you also yesterday, this is the 40th anniversary of the same goddamn thing happened to me.

You know, we've been doing the

history of, and going through my schedule in Mid-South Wrestling in 1984, we fell woefully behind, but on the experience and some of the drive-thrus,

we've done it.

And

we just on the last show finished the end of March.

But

the most disappointed sick I think I've ever been, where, you know, where you get sick, and even though you're violently ill, the worst part of it is you looked so forward to that period of time where you wouldn't be sick, that it's even worse, right?

You know what I'm saying here to you?

Yeah.

So we had spent a year in Mid-South wrestling doing that schedule that we've been talking about,

working our fingers to the bone.

And what did we get?

Bony fingers, bony fingers.

And we were going to have

like December

18th through the 30th, off.

And we were fixing to move from Louisiana over to Dallas.

We told that story.

I'm not going to get into it, but

the point is,

is that I had 10 days or whatever to be at home here to spend Christmas with my mom, Aunt Lola, Uncle Tommy, everybody was still around.

And

then I was going to start Dallas.

Well, I ended up getting sick the very first day of the break as I was on my way to Louisville.

Got home and was violent.

I don't know what it was.

It was goddamn

flu or bronchitis or sinus infection.

I was sick

for the next several days, had to fly back to Dallas because we had to do Reunion Arena on Christmas night.

So

we had a break except for that.

So you get everyone on the plane sick.

Well, and also that's

the match with the Fantastics where they beat us our first night in in front of 20,000 people in the tag team title match.

And I threw the temper tantrum in the ring.

And when I threw the temper tantrum, I almost had a goddamn brain aneurysm.

Bobby.

Bobby and Dennis, because I had a high fucking fever shit, right?

Bobby and Dennis had to almost carry me to the back.

I was so fucking dizzy.

And then I flew back to Louisville and I spent another four days in bed and then got up and drove back to

Dallas to move there.

As a matter of fact,

here's what'll get you sick.

Without going into the goddamn whole scheduling thing and the matches and everything, but you know, we've been going through our book.

On December 14th was a Friday night.

We had to make Greenville, Mississippi to have a scaffold match with the Rock and Roll Express, and that was almost a 500-mile round trip.

And then on the 15th, on Saturday, we drove six-plus hours to Little Rock, the farther northernmost city in the Mid-South Territory, and had a scaffold match there.

Stayed over in a hotel the next day,

flew

from Little Rock through Dallas, by the way, to goddamn Baton Rouge because we had to go to Lafayette, Louisiana, which was the farthest southernmost point of the fucking territory,

have a scaffold match with the Rock and Roll Express, then go back to Baton Rouge, and the next day fly to Dallas, where we did the Fort Worth TV taping for world-class wrestling,

and then the next day

fucking flew back to where did I fly back to?

Goddamn, I can't remember where we, but some way or another,

oh,

I had to fly back to Little Rock because then I had left my car.

Because in Little Rock, I was only 500 miles from fucking Louisville, but I had flown to where I was 1,000 miles from Louisville.

So we flew back to Little Rock where I got my car and drove to Nashville.

and stayed over and then drove to Louisville the next day.

And by then, who would have thought it?

I was fucking sick.

We've always seen these angles where our guys lose matches because the babyface valiantly is trying to overcome his 104-degree fever or something.

But who was the actual sickest you've ever seen work a match where they successfully hit it from the fans?

Like, you wouldn't have known this guy was about to die minutes ago.

Bobby Eaton in Chattanooga for that match with the Fantastics where we went the whole hour on Crockett's syndicated television.

He was throwing up in the back.

He was sweating.

He had like 101-2 fever, whatever the fuck it was.

And

I had to actually sit down with him and say,

do you think you can do this or do we need to tell Dusty now?

He said, I can do it, Corney.

I said, okay, Bob.

And,

well, you've seen that match a number of times.

Was that match of the year or second place to the other Fantastics match?

I mean, up until a couple of years ago, it was the consensus for the best tag team match to ever air on television in America.

But only that.

But yeah, but he, oh, he was sick as a fucking dog.

But, you know,

the light came on.

The bell rang.

Have you ever seen it go?

Have you ever seen it go the other way?

Well, yes.

Well, hold on a second, but it's funny you brought up the babyface 104-degree fever because you're talking about Carrie, right?

In the match with Flair.

That's one of the times, but I've seen it being, I've seen it done as an angle, too.

Well, but that's the thing is, is that when I went back,

I drove back to Dallas

and stopped and vomited along the way.

And that's our first week in

the world-class territory culminated.

In,

I guess, it was what the first show of January that they had at the Will Rogers Coliseum.

They sold out, and Carrie was so fucked up, they had to tell that story.

Well,

fans, he was battling 104-degree fever.

He was, I think he was battling 104 fucking

milligrams of whatever he fucking took.

But somebody who couldn't hide,

I mean,

you know, there have been people that shit on themselves,

you know,

regularly in the ring at some point or other in their life.

Didn't Louis Martinez do that to the Sheikh there was like some kind of thing where he warned the sheik I have a stomach ailment and the sheik fuck with him in the ring and hit him in the stomach and then to get revenge Louis Martinez put him in a stump puller and just

shit right down his back

i think you say yes as a matter of fact i think it may have been

and but there was

there was i mean i shit on myself when i was wrestling i've told that story i was wrestling the principal of east high school in morristown there was a famous fucking picture that one of the fans got at the louisville gardens in

in 1973.

This is before I started going live, but I've seen the picture and, you know, I've seen the cards and done the research and everything.

So I know the match happened.

They brought the Maguire twins in, Billy and Benny, right?

640 and 660 pounds each.

And they put them in a handicap match against all the heel managers, which I believe at the time

was Jimmy Garvin, maybe Jimmy Kent.

Either that or Sir Clements and Sam Bass, Sam Bass Lawler's manager.

He was in it definitely

because they did the deal

where they shot all the managers in the turnbuckle, right?

Boom.

And then they went and they belly flumped them.

They did the old belly flump, Brian.

You see, you hear me what I'm telling you.

See, I sound like Big Bad John now.

You hear me what I'm telling you.

He did the belly bump on him.

And Sam Bass was in the back with all the other managers on top of him.

And here comes these fucking bowling balls with arms and legs.

Whoa.

Sam Bass was wearing white trunks and

white tights with the black stripe and the blah blah blah.

And he shit all over himself.

And the fan got the picture from behind of his entire seat of his white trunks turned brown.

Where did you see that originally?

At the matches.

Because it was the same.

Remember, I've seen the same people coming every week.

What was her name?

Pat.

She had a big beehive hairdo.

Was it Pat Zimmerman?

But

they all had their photo albums of all their favorite pictures they had taken and they brought, and that's what they said and talked about.

And

anyway, so sometimes it's not easy to cover it up.

What about wrestlers vomiting?

Because they go to the ring sick or they get sick while in the ring.

You know,

I have actually not seen as much of puking as from people who get sick, either because they've just overdone it or the heat got to them, or you know what I'm saying?

Because remember that was the reason why Samoa Joe got pissed at that fucking goofy Teddy Hart at that Ring of Honor show 20 years ago in the cage match.

Oh, where he got a concussion and then jumped off the cage 100 times?

Yes.

He said he was what here he said he got a concussion.

That's why he he was puking, but he was fucking, I don't know what he was doing.

But

again, I'm not going to tell old stories repeatedly over and over.

But for some reason, he thought it was a good idea after the match was over to climb the top of this big ass tall cage and do a backflip and stick the landing in the middle of the ring.

Okay.

And stuck it in terms of landing on his feet.

Boom, yay.

And it was like, wow, people, yay.

And then he climbed the other side, side, did the same goddamn thing.

There's the match is over.

There's nobody else to fucking ring.

So then he climbs the third side.

He does the same goddamn thing.

Well, now people are like, what the fuck?

It's not even special anymore.

He's killed his own deal.

And about the time he climbed the third side,

he also leaned over the top of the cage and started projectile vomiting.

Over the out of the cage, out toward like the front row.

People, oh, shit.

And then he turned.

I guess he thought, well, I guess I shouldn't puke on the customers.

So he turned around and just

he just starts spewing like a goddamn family guy fucking scene into the ring.

And it's gonna fly like a fucking fire.

And Samoa Joe's back there.

He's got to go out and work.

And whoever, whatever else was the next main event or whatever, the final match, we had to go out in this in the fucking.

So this and he he flipped off all four sides and puked over two or three of them.

And then

got you,

and then he came back.

And as he came back, Samoa Joe's there, you stubborn, you dumb motherfucker.

What the fuck are you doing?

He's going to fucking eat this guy.

And years later, I told this story 15 years ago somewhere.

And it, because I came and kind of

see Joe get in trouble.

And he was a,

I was, I was, I don't even know if I'd started with TNA yet.

I may have just, you know, been

a bit of honor show.

Yeah, I think this may have been well before then.

Yeah, but I just didn't want Joe to get in trouble.

Joe, come on, I can't get gone, don't worry about it, whatever.

And

later on, Teddy Hart said,

Cornette's talking like he saved my life.

He would have killed Samoa Joe, is what

Felonious Feline, it was saying.

That would be Teddy Hart's name if he was a massed wrestling superhero, Felonius Feline.

Is he in prison?

I don't know.

We haven't heard anything about him.

I think he may be.

He may be.

Well, no, I think nobody's ever said they've ever sent him to jail for anything.

They just keep arresting him and then either doesn't show up or moves away.

I don't know what's going on.

He did a documentary series on him, and then it came out that a girl that he was dating disappeared.

A girl that he was dating disappeared doesn't exactly exactly cover it now.

And then there was a bunch of other small incidents, and then he got accused of being a pimp.

Wait a minute, that he apparently was the last one to see anywhere and had her passport or something or whatever.

Hey, look it up, folks.

We don't want to cast any false aspersions.

Was it on the Netflix that Raw is going to be on?

Maybe they could bring Teddy Hardy in to co-promote Netflix.

It may have been Peacock.

I'm not sure, but

apparently he says the concussion in the cage that day is what really turned him to a life of crime in cats.

Oh, crap.

But anyway, yeah, sometimes, you know, but a lot of the illnesses

that you see in the ring sometimes are from

other things that you did before you got in the ring.

Or remember Chris Colt and the

story on the dark side episode.

He took acid and then got in a cage match and thought he saw giant spiders

climbing the cage to come in and get him.

So he climbed out of the cage and started beating up random members of the audience.

Which is

even at a wrestling show, that's kind of unusual, I guess.

Well, Jim, speaking.

What were we talking about?

Oh, we were going to see if I was going to get sick or not.

That's where we were at.

And so far, I don't really know either way.

On that topic, you'd have to be sick to think you're going to get something from Cornett's Collectibles right now, right?

Oh, goddammit.

No, don't even just give it a fucking rest, folks, till the new year.

We got some fun things that we're going to talk about, but

I can't deal with it anymore.

I love you.

I love you all.

JimCornet.com.

That's right.

JimCornet.com.

All right.

Well, let's get stuff out of the way.

I want to get as much fun stuff in as possible.

Let's start off with dynamite.

Well, now, wait a minute.

See, now you've already,

you've screwed the pooch here.

You've shipped to bed, as Mama Cornette would say.

You've said, let's get the next part of the show out of the way so we can do something entertaining is not the way

to present these programs, especially when I may not be particularly entertaining today because of my physical condition.

Well, we will find out.

AEW Dynamite aired last night as we are recording.

We'll find out if you thought it was particularly entertaining.

Of course, we had another near-fatal Darby Allen moment, but we'll get there.

There are a lot of things leading up to there.

AEW Dynamite from, I believe, Washington, D.C., where they first ran dynamite.

Yes,

Washington, D.C., but

in a smaller building, it looks better.

They actually looked like they had somewhat of a crowd.

I don't know if we have any statistics on how many people were there, but it was the

What was it?

The fucking Herb Welch WrestlePlex, the name of the building, the Washington Sports and Entertainment

Center or whatever the fuck it was.

It wasn't like they were at the Capitol Center in Landover.

They were at the Entertainment and Sports Arena, Washington, D.C., as of yesterday,

yesterday afternoon, 28,000 tickets distributed.

How about, wait, what did you just say?

Excuse me, 2,800.

2,800.

Then they shot it bad if it was 28,000.

But it looked that you

could actually see more of them than you can in the big arenas with the same number of people because they get back wider and they're not seeing the empty seats on the peripheries.

The peripheries.

You see what I'm saying to you.

You hear me what I'm telling you.

But this was an odd episode because

do you think if

Tony has the unlimited amount of money that we know that he has,

Could they offer something to, could you join a club

or subscribe to some kind of service where every, if you want to watch Dynamite,

they can send you a goddamn court stenographer to sit next to you and take notes that you can refer to later so that you can keep track of whatever the fuck is going on.

I mean, would that be a possible thing?

Yeah, I don't know if Tony's going to go for that.

That may be the limit of where he'll spend his money.

Something to point out the problems in the booking.

Well, just the cluttered, this was the most cluttered up fucking because this was different than the way they normally lay things out is they were in the back a lot, and there were even more graphics and more billboards and more

graphics.

The big thing that stood up to me, maybe was the Mercedes-Monet match.

I'm not sure.

They shot the introductions from inside the ring.

They didn't go to the wide shot.

That's something I have not noticed before.

Well, they're trying to get fancy like the WWF is doing.

Oh, the WWF has the big

4 million K camera or whatever that makes everything look like an acid trip.

And meanwhile, they're just shooting an HD over there down

in the ghetto.

But it was just this show, god damn it.

They started with Renee Moxley Oxleygood in the back with Pockets and Jay White.

And it's

again, a lot of weeks they just start with ding, ding, the bell rings, or somebody jumps and starts and has a fight because they think they need to cook, cook the hook the audience or cook the audience.

But in this case, they were five minutes of bullshit in the back before they ever even started anything.

And Jay White and Pockets stand in there, is that

the first visual that you want people to see of your flagship national television program?

It looks like a holding cell at Juvenile Hall.

And

White whined for a little while because he doesn't like Adam Page, but Adam Page is going to be their partner later on tonight.

And the six-man

or the trios,

blah, blah, blah.

Page comes in, and he and White are just screaming at each other.

And then

they wander off, and Pockets just stands there mute.

And then he puts his glasses on and wanders off.

And then they go to talking heads

of Darby and Osprey

about their match later on that night.

And

we'll talk about that in detail, not a play-by-play, blow-by-blow detail, but a fucking

evaluation of psychological and booking lunacy.

Then they had a lot of tournament graphics where they got to grab this guy with the headshots, going to fight this guy with the headshot.

And then there's the fucking graphic that the

checkerboard where there's random numbers and names across and lateral and vertical and the gold and the blue.

And

what the fuck?

And then MJF is walking in the back of the arena.

But then they go to more match graphics.

What the fuck?

Am I overstating this?

No, they definitely wanted to overwhelm you with the amount of things coming up later.

So don't go away.

It would have worked.

What about if

they opened the ring with who's the most sympathetic announcer they got that the people actually like?

Do they have one?

That's a tough one.

What about Justin Roberts?

Oh, Smiley Roberts.

I guess.

Well,

he sits out there amongst them.

So at least maybe they might like him.

What about if they just opened on him and he just opened the show with, ladies and gentlemen, please, we're not going to overwhelm you with a bunch of stuff that you can't retain.

You're not going to understand.

And it's just meaningless drivel.

Just our only message to you at the top of the program here is just please don't stop watching.

Just please don't go away.

At least hang with us for 30 or 45 minutes.

That's all we ask.

Anyway,

they did that.

And then, after five minutes of,

you know, whatever the effluvia

came Mercedes Moon.

Mercedes Moan and Anna J

is the first match after

this is over, the first match of the program.

And on Mercedes' Way to the Ring, they showed her against Mina Mellons in a dance-off on a

New Japan pro wrestling show with a lot of empty seats in the fucking stands.

Where did this take place?

I didn't jot it down.

I was still transcribing from the graphics earlier.

I believe California.

Well, Well, there's a lot more people than that in California.

Not for that.

Not for New Japan and America right now.

So Mercedes and Anna Jay was the

opening match, and

Mercedes hit that,

whatever that sloppy finish is that she called one, two, three, and we were 20 minutes into the show.

But the big question is, Brian,

do you know, have you got your reporters at the Wrestling News out on the case?

What's the deal with Camille?

Who?

Camille.

That's not a name I hear on AEW TV.

I don't know who you're talking about.

You're going to have to help me out a little more than that.

No one knows.

No one has any idea what the hell is going on.

They brought her in,

immediately

bungled her as the bodyguard, then made her the bodyguard who bungles.

Then

she's off TV.

Was she hurt for real?

I don't know.

I don't know.

They've not done a single thing right since they brought her in.

Not to say that she's Mildred Burke or anything, but they brought her in.

No, she's June Byers.

Well, and we'll talk about that later on, but they brought her in and then immediately just made her another putz.

And then she's off TV.

I mean, that's like, that was pretty quick.

That's like mel time.

Well, and again,

the word, the word emanating from

out there on the west coast is that

you may have seen the last of Camille and AEW.

And

I mean, we, I called it from about the third week.

I think that'd be the best thing she could do is get the fuck out of there.

But perhaps did she take my advice?

Because I mean,

it's not like they figured, well, we're only the way that they brought her in was not like you would bring somebody in to be a flunky in three weeks and be done in 10.

Well, again, I mean, a lot happened in those weeks.

She almost,

remember, she screwed up.

She was supposed to run over Chris Snatlander and she didn't actually kill her.

So that was like, that was mistake one.

That's one.

Then she got speared through a wall.

And

you know what?

And that's why, because when they went through that wall where there were no studs every 18 inches, they were at least four feet apart, that AEW got reported to the Building Commission and they got fined heavily for that.

That's probably what happened.

You didn't watch any of the match?

Oh, come on.

It was pretty good.

First,

I know I've got two hours of this stuff to cover.

And this is what I'm going to get the taste of my mouth in for first.

The taste of Anna Jay was a whole lot better than I even saw on the show.

What kind of taste have you got in your mouth?

Now, listen, this match was maybe the best thing on the show.

Well, Osprey versus Darby was a spectacle,

but this match actually got the fans really into it.

And you don't see that a lot.

You don't see that with the women's matches.

You don't see that with the opening matches on AEW.

The fans get quiet quick.

They got into this.

They got behind Anna Jay.

Whatever you want to say about Mercedes-Monet's bad booking, her matches are connecting right now with with those fans.

It's some of the only ones that are in the company.

It only took her six months to get warmed up is what you're saying.

Let her wrestle, don't let her book.

That's what I'm saying.

Well, I've never seen her wrestle, but I have seen her box.

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So then

FTR were sitting

in their apartment.

I don't know, they were on the couch somewhere.

The blandest room I've ever seen.

Not a book, not nothing.

This is perhaps

perhaps it was a hotel lobby but they were somewhere but not not there

and they started out the promo by saying that they told

moxley's bunch dick the boozer

that they had no problem with them

and that maybe AEW needs to be forced into changing.

So like now they're starting out like, well, you know, we're kind of sympathetic to these fucking guys.

We don't want to piss them off too bad.

And then they said, all we did was we stopped you from poisoning a man.

That is a quote.

We stopped you from poisoning a man.

And they showed the B-roll of them preventing them from pouring drain cleaner.

Your goddamn, I don't, you know.

Jokes on you.

You say I'm a plumber.

I'm a janitor.

I've got the funnel.

I've got the Draino.

I've got the plastic bags.

And the janitor came out of the drum.

You know, any janitor that comes out of a drum is over.

But so they said, we stopped you from poisoning a man.

And then apparently they referred to it.

We saw B roll.

So what

did Moxley's bunch did in return last Saturday on the show that

nobody watches and the people who do try to escape quickly, we may talk about that?

They put hoods over FTR's.

So they're in some kind of, again, this goddamn indie movie fucking scene that we call a collision.

And they put hoods, black hoods over FTR's heads, choked them out, and threw them out in the parking lot.

Why didn't they just piss in their mouths while they were down there?

Oh, the hoods were covering them up.

They couldn't get a good shot.

We didn't have a problem with you guys.

All we did was stop you from murdering someone.

Why do you have a problem with us now?

Yeah, why did you beat us up?

Because now we're not cleared till January the 1st.

We are not medically cleared to wrestle

until the very night that we're going to be in our hometown on TV.

And then we'll be there versus the Death Riders.

Death Riders in the sky.

Have they,

what in the world?

Have they just made FTR into the biggest simpletons?

And

none of the baby faces have any

guts or any luck or any talent or any goddamn gumption

or emotion?

No, FTR has been bungled multiple times alone in just the last year and a half or so.

Some of it's self-induced.

A lot of it's Tony Kahn-induced.

The tag team division's a mess.

The booking of FTR, they're always weak.

They're never strong in the booking.

They tease that they're going to come back with a friend.

A lot of people assume that'll be Edge because he lives in Asheville as well, I believe.

Yes, yes.

So that's what

Integrate whenever

we'll just stay home and let this fucking simpleton send us a check.

And every time they run our hometown, we'll show up.

But that's what we may have to look forward to.

Maybe it'll be just on collision, who knows?

But FTR and Adam Copeland,

who's all over fucking social media with his arch enemy Christian, selling a plank machine.

Sarah, what?

Like, you know how you do planks?

You like, I don't know if you've ever done a plank before.

What are you?

What is it?

You lay on the ground on your forearms.

You're not a plank of wood.

No, a human plank.

You're building a shed.

You're building your abs.

You lay on the ground with your forearms.

Instead of like a push-up position, you have your forearms down and you suck in your gut and you hold it.

Apparently.

Well, that sounds hard.

Well, it sounds pretty self-explanatory.

I don't know why a machine or a device would be needed to aid with that, but whatever they have to do with their private time, these two, again, blood feud enemies on AEW-TV, wearing workout clothes and selling equipment on fucking Facebook.

But that's what we have to look forward to: Edge and FTR versus the Death Riders.

That is death right there.

That is death.

Adam Copeland's booking's been a mess since he got there, and FTR.

It's just the booking.

Again, some of it's self-induced, a lot of it's not.

But this is nothing that I'm looking forward to.

And let's see.

I'm very curious.

You know, I know Asheville, their hometown, I just saw, what was it, Charlotte?

Are they running Charlotte?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Did you see that?

The old Charlotte Coliseum that Crockett ran back in the day is now called the Bojangles Coliseum, because Bojangles Chicken is

wonderful, by the way.

I wish we had one right here down the street from me.

Yeah, I've never seen one.

Oh, my God.

You have never been Bojangled?

Up here in New Jersey?

Just Bojangled.

Well, in your various travels around the world, when you were a younger man and an avant-garde, bon vivant.

Yeah, I figured you might have stopped in at the Bojangle.

That's where us avant-garde people go usually.

Bojangles.

That's where you meet the bon vivants.

And their gravy.

Oh, boy, and biscuits oh boy and their saho i tell you but anyway what about their arena their arena seats 12 000 people

and they've apparently and that's not the big arena in town so we said go to the secondary arenas but still charlotte coliseum seats 12 000 people for a full wrestling setup i know because i've been there and sold it out However, I think they're set up for what, like 2,500?

Is that what I was saying?

That they're just

trying to sell.

Not that they have sold.

Well, they're set up for, and it's AEW Collision on Saturday, January 4th.

They're set up right now for 2,100.

There are currently 12,000, 1,2,000.

I did it again.

There are currently 1,200 tickets distributed, 16 days until the show.

Oh.

Last time they were there, by the way, Collision, January of 2024, almost exactly one year earlier,

3,800 people.

Well, and that ain't too great, but nevertheless,

speaking of not being too great,

I think they've finally done it.

MJF's music hit

the only thing the people have seen in the ring is a girls match, which they, yeah, well, and by the way, you said they liked it.

Maybe it's because that's the only thing they'd seen in the fucking ring.

Everything else was backstage and graphics and in somebody's apartment.

So then MJF's music plays

and

the reaction is not what it used to be.

It's now,

at one point, they were into the idea of booing MJF, not only because that was the thing to do, but because he really had a little,

fuck you, that type of thing.

And then

at some point, they realized he was the only entertaining thing on the show.

And

the ones that did boo him were working with him.

But

whatever, he got the biggest reaction, or one of the biggest, one of the two or three biggest, maybe.

It ain't what it used to be, is it?

The old gray mare, Brian?

I think even though he hasn't been there, the bad bookend got him.

That's what happens.

And,

you know, they rushed through the babyface thing.

They didn't have any heels ready for him when he turned babyface.

The Adam Cole thing,

which even when it was its hottest with AEW's fans, I wasn't a real big fan of.

I thought it was too cheesy.

It was too silly.

But they at least had positive metrics they could show.

And then since that time.

And they had a place that they allegedly were going with it.

We don't know what that would have been because everybody goddamn ended up in intensive care over a period of, what, a year and several months.

And since that time, nothing that MJF has been a part of has,

I mean, he's still doing stuff with Adam Cole.

This is forever now.

Nobody wanted to see this.

And they had multiple chances to divert both guys in different ways.

And they didn't, you know, when he became babyface, Christian started doing all of a sudden the whole, your dad's dead.

Your mom's dead.

I'm your dad.

Like he almost took the parts of MJF that no one else was doing and he just was a little more serious around it as opposed to MJF.

No, they have to do something different.

MJF has to do something different, and it starts with getting the fuck away from Adam Cole.

And the problem here is abort.

The promo in some ways was a return to form.

But if you look at it that way, too, he's pointing out the truth about Adam Cole as a heel.

And when Adam Cole finally comes in there and gets his hands on him, I don't believe it because everything MJF just showed on on the screen looks about right to me.

Well, let's let the people in on it.

Um, because the

guy who used to be compared to the devil and was the hottest heel in the company came out and knocked the local sports team, the Washington Wizards.

What do they play?

The Wizards?

Basketball.

All right, but they haven't been there long, have they?

It's been a good while now.

Well, back in my day, Washington didn't have wizards playing basketball.

What day is that?

Well, I remember the days of

the Washington Celtics.

Really?

I don't know.

Anyway,

he knocks the Washington Wizards, and he got a fucking chant from the Wizards suck, Wizards suck.

So then he

plugged Hanukkah and told him that Santa Claus wasn't real, and people started chanting Santa.

And

then it's.

Should they bring in Santa to work with him?

It would be better than what they're about to do.

That's right.

Because then he's doing a stand-up bit now, but like you said, it was so

true.

And where

sad music plays, and he does a little voiceover piece for Help Feed a Hungry Small Child This Christmas.

Adam Cole and a picture of a small yellow baby

goes up on a screen, which,

I mean, there was some small amount of photoshopping or tweaking or AI going on, but they made Adam Cole look like he was a living skeleton with it, accentuated his skinicity.

And it was fucking

way too close to the bone.

And it says, please help by buying the pay-per-view so you can put a small yellow child out of his misery.

So he's making fun of his fucking,

well, I can't say physique because he doesn't have one anymore.

And the bad spray tan, and just that he's,

it's just,

go ahead, go ahead.

And then part of the problem, too, is, and I'll let you finish what else happens here, but they go to Adam Cole in the back.

And for the first time since he's returned, he has no spray tan.

Now he just looks pale and sickly.

Lay in the sun.

Get some vitamin D the old-fashioned way.

What the hell are you doing, kid?

Didn't they all move to Florida?

I mean, I could understand not being able to lay out if he was still in Pennsylvania or whatever.

I think he moved back to Pennsylvania.

Well, good goddamn, there's tanning booths.

I mean,

anyway, well, Adam Cole got on the screen and said he met with Tony Kahn

and Matt Tavin and Mike Bennett walked in.

They're going to apparently, he just said they're going to be watching his back, right?

About the ring thing or what because they're fighting for the ring.

He said, but the way he said it was a way to build to a pop that never came.

He goes, I talked to Tony Khan, and when I wrestle you, I'm going to have two guys watching my back.

And all of a sudden, they walk in from the left and the right.

And the crowd there, no one's popping for Tavin and Bennett.

Well, yeah, no, there was no reaction to this.

And then

he said, oh, and

one other thing, am I kicking your ass yet?

And then they get a shot of MJF going, what the fuck?

And Adam Coles in the ring behind him.

So he'd been talking to us as a pre-tape.

Because he's only 110 pounds.

MJF didn't hear him coming.

He didn't feel the vibration of the mat.

And then he beat up MJF and MJF ran off.

That should be his new gimmick, Quiet as a Mouse, Adam.

Yeah.

I mean, you know what?

They ought to fucking go in and do audio edits every time that Adam Cole takes a bump.

Instead of the ring noise, bam, it ought to be poof.

Woof.

But that,

no.

I don't think anybody wants to see this because of all the reasons that you just mentioned.

And it's just using MJF up.

Again,

wonderful performance, but to

diminishing returns from diminishing people.

And the other problem is after this, I'm not sure where they're going to go with MJF.

You got to hope something new, something fresh

will be fresh for us.

With Adam Cole, there's no one there I want to see him in a program with.

No one.

I don't want to see him wrestling.

Maybe Leo Rush.

But Leo's in shape.

But seriously, I don't want to see this anymore.

Now that they're talking about it on the TV,

this guy that you guys have not been reacting to for weeks, who you guys almost groaned when he beat Brian Cage,

here's an image of him that makes him look even skinnier.

No one buys this.

Well, and besides that, Taven and Bennett,

how long have they been there now?

Close to three years?

And have they ever won a tag team match on Dynamite?

It's too late now, but he could look at the two guys are

more impressive than a lot of these fucking people.

He could have made them something,

but now he's putting them in his position after never making them anything and then barely being seen.

So, anyhow,

Christian Cage and his bunch

came to the ring that

the big prehistoric lizard has been replaced by the

minute English

microbe

Pip Sabian, but he's got Pip

and he's got Nick Plain and Nick Plain's mom,

and they're going to fight

Hook and Shapupi.

So Christian Cage and Nick Plain versus Hook and Shapupi, with Hook and Nick starting.

Do you remember that TV show they tried to do 20 years ago or whatever, Matt Ratz, about teenage wrestlers?

I've heard of it.

I never actually saw it.

I think even Bischoff was involved in some kind of fashion and potentially the aforementioned Teddy Hart that we were talking about earlier.

Yeah, like teenage wrestlers.

And the Calgary bunch was advanced in that category as they train at birth up there.

Those are the greatest teenage wrestlers ever.

But it looked like Hook and Nick Plain.

It looked like Matt Ratz

on this program that increasingly looks amateurish, not in terms of,

well, I would say not in terms of TV production.

Sometimes they nail that too, but no, they're shooting it and high def and everything, but the people on it don't look like they ought to be on television.

They look like the people that Darby Allen told us they were a week or so ago.

He said a lot of these guys have never made a living from wrestling before, so they don't want to rock the boat.

Remember when he said that on TV?

Yep.

Now they got

some of them in the ring for us to look at.

So Nick's mom drew the corpse referee so he could stand there and jaw at her for ages while Christian hit his finish on shapoopy and then

let Nick pin him.

One, two, three.

Well, I'm was I missing any of the high points that I didn't watch?

There were no high points, Jim.

When you send someone out there with Ishii or Shibata as their partner, you're telling the fans not to give a fuck.

And

all this Christian stuff with Hook has been bombing to me.

It's been going on for a while now.

Enough.

Just enough.

Enough.

There's so many people here that are the steady forces of everything while the ratings have gone away and interest has dropped.

Maybe it's time to start looking at that and changing things.

Maybe they could put this on hold until Taz gets back.

If he just got surgery, got a new knee, maybe he could work with Christian.

I'd like to see that.

No,

I don't want to see Taz work.

I don't think that's a good idea.

I don't want to.

I'm being a smart Alec.

Although, actually, over this, I would watch Taz right now, even if he's on crutches versus Christian.

over this is what I would do.

Maybe they can make Taz a heel manager again.

Was that the reason he stopped being a heel manager and started being a commentator?

Was whatever his ailment was?

Not ailment, but he had surgery.

Was it his knee?

Was it his leg?

Whatever he didn't need.

I don't know.

I haven't read his medical file, and I'm not sure what the whole story was.

But, you know, goddamn, we.

I'll take Taz's head in a jar of blue liquid

right now in a variety of these places, over some of these other people.

You put him on top of one of the ring posts of one of those glass domes and let him emanate his voice from.

All right, well, that was the Christian match.

Yes, and it was followed, Brian, again, by graphics and billboards for seven

different upcoming matches, both tonight and Saturday.

including all of the information on the tournaments and the gold blocks and the blue blocks and the blue blockers.

That's where he got the idea from that commercial from a number of years ago.

But that's again, graphics and billboards, seven different things in a say just over and over.

How are you?

What?

You know, in the middle of the show, for the first time ever, I got a commercial for TNA live events because they're coming to New York and LA.

But starting now, I mean, that's in the middle of next year, I think July, they're coming to New York.

We got a commercial now for the first time I've ever seen one.

And I'm probably pretty sure that was a local buy, which you can, because some people are going to say, well, how did they get on?

You know, you can buy local avails from your local cable company that still exist around the country.

But how are they,

they're advertising a show six months in advance while they're telling the talent that they're cutting their money is what you're saying TNA is doing?

Well, we'll have more about TNA when we have more details.

Well,

I don't mean to hop ahead of, but I'm just, that's, that takes balls.

They've told somebody, well, we're going to have to fucking pay you less.

And then the guy just sits down and they bought television commercials in New York.

Those are more expensive than they are in Pixley.

From what I understand.

Speaking of New York, why is Chris Jericho the king of New York, brian

because he's bored he needed another gimmick another stupid thing to try to trademark i guess

because he's bored i mean everything at this point is like jericho trolling all the people that don't like him which outnumbers the amount of people that do like him so it's a kind of self-defeating

process here but this is terrible and he's by the way he's plugging the ring of honor pay-per-view which Is either Friday or Saturday.

I don't even know when it is.

It's this week.

Well, yeah, well, that's the thing is.

You spent like three minutes looking at Chris Jericho

waving with fans and going around to various New York landmarks or pieces of real estate or the fucking pizza place or whatever on the street.

And he's doing a goofy voiceover of this gimmick of, you know, why I used to be the king of the world.

Well, now

I'm the king of New York.

And

again,

there was very little fucking promotion of a point of,

I'm going to be here for Ring of Honor.

We're going to be three nights in a Hammerstein ballroom, whatever the fuck.

It was just him being goofy, posing on video around the streets of New York.

Yeah, King of New York, by the way, was the New York fans that were the first ones to chant, please retire an NDA at Chris Jericho.

That started on Long Island.

Those are New York fans.

And could he not be live in Washington, D.C., because the authorities might have a problem?

Because his wife was at the insurrection four years ago come January 6th.

Well, they don't just nail your spouse for that.

They get you, not your spouse.

Well, maybe he might have been hauled in for questioning.

He's Canadian.

He's Canadian.

He's Canadian.

It could start some kind of big thing between the countries.

No, he's got dual citizenship.

We've got the right to spank him, too.

Can we give him back?

Do we have the right to give him back to Canada and force him to stay there?

It can be revoked.

You know, that's why I'm serious.

You know what?

No, that's serious because

his mother was Canadian, father American.

He had dual citizenship.

I know this because when we brought him into Smokey Mountain Wrestling, Lance did not.

We had to get him papers.

We didn't for Chris.

But

if you had some kind of dual citizenship going on, would you let your wife go to an insurrection of one of those countries on the theory that maybe it might be revoked on one side?

We never thought of that before.

You know, the other thing, too, is he did the voiceover of this thing, and it really made me think of, you know, he's done a lot of voiceovers on Dark Side.

He sucks at doing voiceovers.

And I know why they got him to do it because of the tax credit because he's Canadian.

Well, exactly.

Half Canadian.

It shouldn't even apply to him.

He's half Canadian.

See, that's bullshit.

That's bullshit right there.

He's not even a real Canadian.

He should only get half the tax credit.

He's a bullshit Canadian.

They shouldn't get any tax credit, but he's really bad at voiceovers.

He just does not have the voice for it or the delivery.

He's really bad at it.

Well, speaking of not having a voice or delivery,

the nine o'clock hour came, and Tony Schiavone was in the ring and introduced.

Hold on.

He introduced

Ricochet.

Oh,

geez.

Now, can I I stop you before you go any further?

Go ahead.

There's a lot of ricochet on this show.

He was bouncing around everywhere, wasn't he?

Is Ricochet of the mindset that what he is doing outside the ring, not even talking about his in-ring stuff,

that what he's doing outside of the ring is good?

That this is leading to fans wanting to see more of him?

Or is this a deliberate attempt to

sabotage his career by some unnamed person?

Because what the fuck are they doing?

a ricochet?

Well, first you're supposed to hide the negatives, accentuate the positives, and don't mess with Mr.

In Between.

Now find the negatives and broadcast them on the mic over and over and over again.

At first, I was like, oh my God, he's going to talk to begin with because it's the nine o'clock hour and I can see putting him in a match for that audience, but he's going to talk.

But then he didn't because Tony asked him some

meandering and nonspecific question about

the attitude change he's had lately.

And right as he said, like two words, the hurt syndicate music interrupts and out they come and come to the ring.

And

again,

by the time that the camera has the hurt syndicate in the ring, Tony has already just handed Ricochet the microphone and has turned and just walked out of the ring just like a fucking mute whipped puppy.

It's like, but it's looking like it's all by, oh, this is where I step out now and this is the scene.

Instead of, you're still the announcer of the fucking show.

You had the microphone.

You were talking to this fucking guy.

These people are interrupting you.

Why do you not then, as a bridge from the talent in the ring to the talent coming out, say something to the effect of, well, now here comes so-and-so, and it's it's certainly not their time because we're busy talking to Dick Lick over here.

And then, when they get in the ring, then they can, if they want to, they can run him off.

And that looks bad enough, but you just leave like a goddamn limp dick.

He hands it over.

They used to say the announcer should never let go of the microphone.

He just hands it over and then leaves.

Sometimes he just stands in the corner, other times, he leaves the ring.

Yes.

And I do what.

So, anyway,

Ricochet is like, well, hey, you know, we all look good in our suits here.

And he's like

an Eddie Haskell-ish type of little wise ass that's suddenly got the big football players around him in high school.

Hey, did you

guys see how I beat Commander

and Brody King and Shelton?

Maybe you and I are going to face each other in the tournament.

And, you know, I've got six points.

Maybe you'll get six.

He's being a little smart ass

to these guys, all of whom, including the manager, could tear him apart with their fucking teeth.

And then he plugged more tournament matches.

Like, he's out there doing the announcer's job.

And we're going to have this match, and that guy's going to wrestle this guy.

And finally, MVP just says,

you still got my business card I gave you.

Let me see it.

And

Lashley grabs Ricochet in like a souped-up version of the Christine Jarrett grip,

where she would grip an offending wrestler who had done something wrong with a thumb on one side of the cheek and a fucking forefinger on the other and squeeze him a little bit and talk to him like that.

But he just fucking goozled Ricochet

and literally almost lifted him up off the ground.

And MVP took his card from Ricochet's hand and tore it in half.

Look, what the fuck is going on?

And I said, thank God.

And MVP said, nobody likes a kiss ass.

And then

Lashley let him go and didn't even tell him verbally, just basically gave him the nod, take the fuck off, hit the bricks, pal.

And he did.

He got out of the ring and fucking brushed himself off and left with his tail between his legs.

These baby faces are.

Boy, I wish I'd have

had him charging up San Juan Hill with me.

Good Lord.

And then

MVP went to the desk for color.

Lashley left for the time being, and Shelton stayed for his next match in this bogus tournament.

And like you said, that's not all we'll see of Ricochet, but

this is the worst, but this is the worst he's ever been made to look,

where

the whole point of the segment is to make him look like shit.

And I'm sure they have something in their head that they'll recover from it.

And maybe he'll,

I don't know what, he'll be there, Eddie Haskell, or all of a sudden he'll get hard.

I don't know what it'll be.

But this show, and this wasn't it,

made Ricochet look like the dumbest motherfucker out there.

And he already does, honestly, because between him again arguing and cussing out to random fans on twitter back and forth like over and over and the

just he doesn't have a

a good personality he if you like the flying stuff he can do the flying stuff if they showed him in the ring but when you hear him talk

and or he just says these goofy things

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Anyway, speaking of goofy things in this tournament, they booked Shelton Benjamin against Rigor Mortis.

And

why have this?

Shelton is for the Gold League for three points.

What do you mean, why?

Why?

Well, you know what?

But

again,

Shelton is one of the only people that's come in and gotten over

rather than less over as the weeks go by with his matches and his performances.

And you put him in a match with this sloppy ass fucking guy that's going to do a bunch of, try to do a bunch of shitty lucha

and drag him down.

And that's what happened.

When Shelton was in control doing his shit or doing anything,

it looked great.

When Rigger Mortis

started, he whiffed a spinning head scissors with his fucking

giant beast with the big ass upper body needs to be doing spinning and scissors.

But he missed it.

And all of his shit looked rotten.

I don't know if he hit one major thing correctly and you couldn't figure out who the fucking heel was.

And finally,

Sheldon super kicked three Germans, two knee lifts, a suplex, and beat him.

One, two, three.

So he did the best he could with this guy, but

it wasn't that good

because

why would you have this?

Why would you not be able to see what this would look like ahead of time?

Well, they're in the tournament.

They have to wrestle each other and it had to be here.

It couldn't be on occasion.

Take Mantar out of the fucking tournament.

Well, he's representing the Beast Division.

No, but it was all right.

Shelton's become one of my favorite guys actually in the company.

So I didn't mind this match terribly.

But,

you know, for everyone who likes the Beast Mordos, because he could do things, he looks horrible out there.

Like the outfit, the tattoos, the mask.

What was he doing that was impressive that he wasn't flummoxing up or completely missing?

Well, for a bigger guy, he can, you know, do a backflip when you hold him up and he could flip around and move around and he could do that Cody Rhodes scoop slam.

He can do the first half of whatever he tries to do.

And he's a lawyer.

You know, he's a lawyer named Frank.

Well,

I'll be Frank.

He sucks.

So then it's not over

because then here comes Bobby Lashley in, and they start beating up rigor mortis.

And then the music plays, and here comes Danny Garcia, and he doesn't

run out there to save the fucking guy.

He stops in the entryway and says, and does a promo and says, I know what'll happen

if I come down there three-on-one,

but I'm going to anyway.

But before he can,

they play Mark Briscoe's music and he comes out.

And both of the babyfaces hit the ring.

And I swear to God, they fucking beat them up too.

They beat up Garcia.

They beat up Briscoe and they took Danny Garcia's belt and made off with it.

And I'm not saying that they shouldn't be putting the fucking hurt syndicate over because, yes, they're the only stars you got at this point.

But every babyface in every situation is just,

well, fuck you.

That's it.

Are you there?

Yeah, I mean, there's not really too much I could add.

You're right.

I mean, all the baby faces suck.

And the heels are the ones, in this case, the heels are the ones who are badass and cool.

Actually, I don't know if all the baby faces suck.

I think half of them suck and the other half blow.

Mark Briscoe's booking in AEW so far has not done anything to help him.

He's been involved with all options.

He's been involved in the conglomerate with Kyle O'Reilly and Tomohiro Ishii and Pockets.

And what happened to Willow Nightingale?

Remember she hit the ring and like speared Marina Shafir?

Then we never saw her again.

Well, man, they buried her in the desert.

I bet you they did.

I bet you we're going to go out there one of these days and we're going to find the mummified corpse of Willow Nightingale in a shallow grave out in the Mojave.

Because that's where all Dick the Boozer and his Death Riders hang out, isn't it?

I don't know where they hang out.

Do they all hang out together?

Do they actually spend time together talking over this stuff?

Well, because they like to be close to mocks.

All right.

It's almost like we're transitioning to a spopple.

We don't have

new birds suddenly appear

every time

you hit me in the ear.

Alrighty, they had more tournament highlights and graphics.

We got that.

And then

Renee Moxley Good was in the back with the aforementioned ricochet.

And

I'm...

And all I'm thinking is they made him look so bad in that previous segment.

Surely they will not do the same thing here.

Well, first he seemed somewhat flustered and mumble-mouthed, but he still mentioned he had six points in the tournament.

And he plugged that Saturday he's going to wrestle Osprey.

And I noted, who gives a shit?

There's another match with two baby faces and it's further going to make him look bad.

But as he's droning on, then Nana and Swerve come in.

And

Swerve just belittles him.

And I'm thinking again, who is the heel here?

I can't keep track with Swerve and Nana.

I'm trying to, did they turn back or the turn back which way?

But Swerve just belittles him and calls him Trevor.

Say,

you're still just the same old Trevor.

I've known you for years.

What is happening here?

Yeah, why did he go, well, you're just Shane?

I've known you for years.

Instead, he acted like the Trevor thing bothered him.

Well, and besides that, as soon as Swerve came in, the people are conditioned to chant for

whose house, Swerve's house.

So, not only were they yelling even over Swerve's promo, but there was it was like

you could hear a mouse pissing on cotton when Ricochet was talking, and then Swerve and none of they see them, and I go ballistic.

Yeah, Ricochet said, he goes, I wondered how long it would take for me to hear it's Swerve's house.

And they're already chanting it when he said that.

They were already chanting it.

So

I don't know, but

maybe Ricochet pissed somebody off.

Maybe he acts around the locker room like he does on Twitter.

Well, again, it's AEW, so you have to assume a lot of this is stuff he wants to do.

That's what's even crazier.

It's not like a booker punishing someone.

It's someone punishing themselves.

And very often it's AEW with the booking, and he walked away.

He has like this now, this.

this little laugh he does and you hear

whatever he did as he walked away did it a couple times on here.

I'm intrigued to see how they're going to fuck up Rick.

Not that he was Hulk Hogan or anything, but I'm intrigued to see how they're going to fuck up Ricochet.

They being Ricochet and Tony Khan.

I'm intrigued to see what's going to happen here.

Well,

weeks, weeks.

How much money did they spend on him?

He was one of the bigger purchases, right?

Seven figures.

He's a seven-figure purchase.

And it's been, it hadn't been six months, has it?

All right.

Well,

by the way, speaking of things that you don't understand that probably cost Tony Khan a lot of money, Tony Storm did a sit-down with RJ City,

rock star Tony Storm.

She is thrilled that she is finally in AEW.

It's hard to believe she's here.

She's made it.

She can't believe it.

She's watched all the TV shows.

Now

she doesn't remember

being in AEW or Timeless Tony Storm or the black and white camera press.

So this means that not only was the company AEW, and boy, their legal department, harried and frazzled as it is, going to hear about this.

But not only was AEW as a company disregarding a woman's obvious mental illness and amnesia that she was going through, but also the production crew.

They said, this woman is obviously mentally disturbed, so let's figure out a way to shoot her in black and white rather than calling a psychiatrist or somebody.

And now she's back.

She doesn't remember any of it.

She doesn't understand what everybody's talking about.

You know, there have been so many different opportunities for AW to use successfully to help the company.

Not logically, but to help the company to use the amnesia.

It could have been used with MJF and Adam Cole.

The Bobby Ewing.

It was all a dream the last year.

This is what they're doing it for.

That Tony Storm, when she actually created a character as goofy as it was, got over with those fans.

Now she's just a wacky character who...

Is going to pretend like none.

She wasn't that character the entire run in AEW, by the way.

Now she's pretending like she just got to AEW.

Yeah, no, she was, she was herself for what, about a year before she went insane.

She was with Soraya.

Yes.

Well,

we don't know what they do in their personal lives.

We only hear rumor and supposition.

So don't say that just as a blanket statement.

Toni Storm is really good in the ring, I have to say.

I never want to see her again.

I'm enough of this.

Never want to see her again in wrestling.

She wants to take her show.

AEW has

to take her shirt off.

She wants to take her show on the road.

No, no, no.

She wants to take her show on the road.

AEW has talented people,

especially in the women's division, who just don't belong in wrestling.

And Tony Storm's good in the ring, but, you know, I don't want to see any more of her bad acting.

I'm sorry.

I don't.

Well, speaking of being good in the ring, but not wanting to see any more of their bad acting,

Will Osprey and Darby Allen in a tournament match.

And

it was babyface versus babyface.

Well, that's what I was going to say.

I'm not going to give you a play-by-play of this match.

It was what

you would imagine it was.

It was two guys who there's nobody to produce them or teach them

just

playing a video game with themselves in indyrific fucking people are doing moves to each other back and forth, bouncing up and down and not selling anything until they all decide to sell something at random choice.

But the booking insanity and that they would do this.

Osprey was another one of their big purchases.

And unlike Ricochet, we could see him being the fucking top guy, right?

And the people loved him when he first came in and still

They've probably done less damage to him than anybody.

But he because he goes home so often.

Well, exactly.

And also, you know, he's been somewhat protected, maybe just by accident.

I don't know, from doing

anything too ridiculous.

But nevertheless,

Osprey could be the AEW champion.

Be the top guy, be the top babyface.

Not suggesting that they put him in a ring with Dick the Boozer.

I'm just saying he could be at some point.

He could be the guy.

Darby Allen, they've been going in that direction.

And right now,

the people may purely like Darby

more than anybody on the roster, except maybe Osprey.

Don't you think?

I mean, you know, the Hurt Syndicates over as stars, but they don't necessarily personally like them.

Yeah, no, I think they're the two top baby faces in terms of popularity.

So what the fuck?

This is booking to have this in a tournament that means nothing.

Nobody gives a shit about this bogus ass fifth level title.

You've given it away in a meaningless tournament.

There's nobody there to produce the guys, so they have every bad

indie gymnastics meet match that you've ever seen on a fucking indie.

Only they do things better than most because they're wonderful athletes.

But now you've given it away.

And also,

you've not only given the idea of the match away, but you've settled it.

At one point, Darby did a coffin drop off the top rope to the apron.

And when Osprey moved,

Darby didn't just land on the apron.

He bounced off the edge of the apron.

The hardest part of the hardest part to the fucking floor.

And that was a break spot.

And they continued the match in picture and picture.

And the breaks, what are the breaks?

Three and a half minutes?

By the time they came back, Darby Allen was back on offense doing more flipping over him and

shenanigans.

They're just taking turns doing shit.

That apron spot was so loud, too, the way he hit.

And then when he landed on the ground, he didn't move.

I was like, oh, yeah, that clearly broke his entire spine.

Well, and of course, and it should, and it should be sold like it did.

But it wasn't because these two are fucking complete idiots and there's nobody to put their foot down to produce produce the performers.

The movie has no director, the actors are just jacking off on camera.

So then,

finally, Osprey gives Darby Allen.

I assume everybody's familiar with the styles clash.

I don't know how to explain it to you, the belly-flopping thing that AJ Styles does to people upside down.

But he gave Darby Allen a styles clash off the apron of the ring onto the floor.

And not only was Darby face-firsted to the floor, but then Osprey sells his knee and sold the shit out of his knee

and rolled in the ring and is still scooting around selling his knee.

And Darby is the count is seven, the count is eight.

And suddenly, after nine, he just got up and dove headfirst in the ring.

And then

Osprey jumped up and hit a Cody cutter cutter off the ropes onto Darby and got a two count.

So his knee is fine and Darby's fine.

And then

Osprey went to do something else and they spun around each other and Darby reversed it and did a scorpion death drop, a coffin drop and another coffin drop.

One, two, three.

And beat Osprey after the styles clash off the apron that he sold for the count of nine.

and then got in and just whirlwind

beat the fucking guy.

And

first off, you shouldn't have had to fucking match because there might be a time when either one of these fucking yahoos is the champion

when you would want to have a pay-per-view main event

where the other one

fucking challenges in a

Bruno Pedro moment or Andre Hog or whatever the fuck.

Or

if

you wanted Darby to win, why didn't God damn he just barely beat the count

when Osprey gave him the thing but hurt his knee?

So then

you would have a disputed decision and you could even fucking say, oh my God, you could put out the story that Osprey hurting his knee.

Now the tournament is in turmoil.

This was, you know, this was not planned.

And the points are, we might have to have a whatever the fuck.

Or don't do that move.

Don't do the styles clash off the apron of the fucking ring.

Do something else.

Or

let fucking Osprey barely beat the fucking count in because he hurt his knee, but the other guy can't.

But you've left nothing for the future.

You've settled the matter flat that Will Osprey can't beat Darby Allen no matter what he fucking does.

The whole thing is fucking phony.

And

if you had a world title match that people had to pay for on pay-per-view between these two guys in the future, why would you give a shit?

Because Will Osprey lost in the content of the classics of Darby Allen.

No, I mean, it doesn't make much sense.

The commentators suck, by the way.

I guess it's important to point that out here as well.

It is important to note that.

You know, you brought it up a little bit with Shelton against Beast Mordos.

Why do this match?

Why are they having this match?

In a lot of ways, you could say that about most things in the Continental Classic, as opposed to a traditional wrestling tournament where if you have eight opponents, let's say, you can conveniently, smartly book it out so that you get the desired matches all along the way without the matches you don't want.

Right.

In this case, everyone wrestles everyone, so everyone's going to look bad at some point against other babyfaces, heels against other heels.

And then with AEW, some people, you just don't know what they are.

Yeah, you can't really, they just don't fit any category except possibly boring.

And speaking of boring, we have come to the time.

Remember what I always told you, Keith Mitchell in TNA, he was the producer in the truck.

He would always say every single taping.

He'd announce in the truck, and ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the match we've all been waiting for, the last one.

A six-man trios match with Dick the Boozer, Wheeler Useless, and Pack

against Light Switch White, Pockets, and Hangnail Paige.

And

I'm sorry, I couldn't take this seriously anyway.

At children and cosplayers.

They were a few minutes in, and

White tagged himself in from Paige, and Paige got mad at that and just walked out.

And then finally in the overrun,

because they had to run over even though nobody was clamoring for it, I think if you could have done an interactive poll, if the announcers had said, ladies and gentlemen, would you like us to stay with this match till the conclusion?

I don't know if that would have won.

But finally,

Paige came back in and jumped Moxley, and they did some sloppy choreographed shit where Pockets hit Moxley with a Superman punch while Paige was going to buck shot.

And then Paige did the buck shot, but

was he going after Pockets, but he hit Moxley?

I don't know what the fuck.

And then Paige and White started yelling at each other again.

And dick the Boozer schoolboy Pockets one, two, three.

And then while the babyface team was

was arguing with each other,

they got a sloppy six-way with the heels where the heels kicked some more shit out of them,

and then Boozer and Schaefer ran off.

I would have to think running off was the key at the end of the program there when we

get those quarterly, hourly, quarterly, hourly ratings, Brian,

uh, that a lot of people had run off by then.

We'll see.

There's gonna be a lot of suspects.

The Christian tag team match, that could do it.

The Tony Storm segment, that could do it this one should most certainly do it you know when moxley and his crew all of a sudden grabbed chairs and got around the ring again as the three baby faces were fighting with each other i said oh this is gonna be a mistake if these guys hit the ring again the fans are gonna really be sick of it even more and they did and they did

and they were and they were Who wants to see this match, the main event of the pay-per-view?

Moxley versus these three guys?

I don't think anyone wants to see it.

Well, then, but now there's intrigue as to whether Paige and White are going to be mad at each other and fight each other.

And Lord knows everybody wants to see that too.

And then they've thrown the mascot in again.

So,

no, no, nobody wants to see that.

But

instead of World's End, they'll probably need to change the name to Will It Ever End.

Well, that was AEW Dynamite.

It ended, and we shall return momentarily with more of the usual fun.

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All right, Jim, you know what time that is.

Good lord, it's

rush hour at romper room.

It's time to romp on, to move on before we get to more contemporary wrestling, a quick classic wrestling topic.

From the files, I've gone to the files and I've pulled something from the files.

This is the Brian Hildebrand file.

Oh, no.

I have a letter here.

It's not dated.

Jim, which would be the Jim Melby.

Here are some pictures.

Now, wait, wait, you must explain to the new listeners in the audience: the wrestling news files is what you're digging into that you have purchased and curated there from the various estates of Norm Keitzer and all the rest of these folks.

And this is a file.

Is this a file of pictures that Brian Hildebrand has sent in as a photographer or of himself as a manager or talent?

This is the correspondence file.

So, any of the photos he sent in, some would be filed away, some would maybe be in the unfiled area.

But this is specifically correspondence.

Jim,

here are some pictures from Steve Curtis of Lawler versus Bach from Louisville, Kentucky.

No DQ.

Result, Ref gets knockout.

Bach drops Lawler, groin first on top rope, and pins him with feet on rope.

By the way, two ends he puts in pins, I find interesting.

Had an opportunity to talk to Bach

three hours.

It was great.

He speaks very highly of you.

Take care, Brian.

Do you know why?

That was the night.

Why weren't you shooting in Louisville?

Because I was already managing.

That was the thing.

Brian came down to spend

some period of time, I can't remember if it was five days or a week or whatever, on the road with me in Memphis.

And in Louisville, the main event was Lawler and Bockwinkle.

And

that's the night that I ripped.

I want to say I was managing the Galaxians.

That would have been early 1983, so that makes sense with Lawler and Bockwinkle.

I was managing the Galaxians against cowboy Jim Dalton and one of the other babyfaces.

And Dalton had just got there and I didn't know that he had actual blank

pistols as part of his cowboy gimmick.

And when they introduced him, he was going to fire two of them off in the air, right?

And

I've got my back turned talking to his Danny Davis and Ken Wayne, the Galaxians.

And all of a sudden, this motherfucker fires those guns off and I dove out of the ring for a shoot and ripped the seat out of my pants from asshole to appetite all the way the whole crotch out on the way down and had my head covered up.

And fucking Danny jumped down next to me and said, hey, stand up straight.

Your pants are ripped.

The point is, well, here's where I was going with this is Brian Hildebrand took a picture of Nick Bockwinkle pointing at my ripped out seat of my pants and laughing at them at the day's end when we dropped you off that night after the matches.

And it says here that he was talking to Bockwinkle for three hours.

Were you there with him?

I don't know if it was three whole hours, but yeah, we rode Nick over to the hotel, and that's probably stopped and got something to eat with him because a couple of times when Bockwinkle came in, I've talked about it.

I was able to have dinner with him one night at the Kingfish.

Not the Amos Nandy character, but the restaurant.

You know, and we assume everyone knows who Brian Hildebrand is.

Brian Hildebrand was referee Mark Curtis, first in Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

He was a manager on the Indies before that, trained as a wrestler, but famous as a referee Mark Curtis in Smoky Mountain and then in WCW maybe the most popular referee really when you think about it maybe the most popular referee of a of a long period of time he was really the fans got behind him yeah not only with the fans but with the boys all all the boys love brian too And of course, he was Mark Curtis.

He was never Brian Hildebrand.

He was Mark Curtis.

I think his middle name was Curtis, and he said he was always a Mark.

So that's how he got the name.

It says here the pictures were from Steve Curtis.

Is that I think I don't know whether he, that's another assumed name because he took the pictures.

I think I have some that he took that night of me and my guys.

But

I don't know why he was using Steve Curtis as a photographer unless

that may be a period of time where he was doing a lot of independent managing in West Virginia.

and eastern or western Pennsylvania, and he may not have wanted Mark Curtis to be seen in a by line as a photographer.

I have a letter here to Brian Hildebrand from Jim Melby, December 18th, 1979.

Hi,

I just thought I would drop you a few quick lines, and closes a copy of Wrestling News No.

57, and a check for your three stories.

I hope you like the way they turned out.

I will be using your story on the Huntington card in the third issue of Ring.

Please read over the enclosed form letter and contracts.

Sincerely, Jim Melby.

And attached is a receipt, a check for $50 to Brian Hildebrand from Pro Wrestling Enterprises.

And that was top pay for

Norman and Jim back in those days.

So they must have been impressed with Brian's stuff.

How did that compare?

You were shooting for all the different magazines.

Now, again, you kind of got yourself into a nice position of leverage, but

not counting Japanese magazines, the American magazines, and and there were still a lot at that point.

How did they pay?

And I can't speak for all of them because even with my wide reach,

with the wrestling news magazine, at first it was just a mere pittance.

And then I started, you know, Norman would say, can you please shoot a special color slide for me for a center fold or a cover or whatever, blah, blah, blah.

But if you got a check for more than $50 or $100 at any one time for a number of things from them.

That was significant money.

With London Publishing and Bill Apters magazines,

they had different deals with the photographers.

As I've mentioned in the past, sometimes they would just pay a photographer a flat fee to go to, if it was Bill Otten was in Florida, well, go up to the Omni and shoot and just send us all the film, and we're going to pay you X amount of dollars for this trip.

But since I was using them for the programs here, for the concession stands here, for multiple purposes, Bill would just have me send stuff either that he wanted specifically or that he thought, I thought that they would be able to use.

And if they used the prints, they sent me a check.

So they never got my negatives or whatever.

But that was, you know.

That's still maybe twice as much.

I think I got $250 for shooting a color center fold of Lawler for for Pro Wrestling Illustrated in 1982.

But it still wasn't ridiculous money.

And what about the Japanese mags?

Well, the Japanese magazines,

I might not make as much from them as I did from actors, but it was more per picture.

I just, I'd send, I knew who they liked.

And I would send those to Koichi Yoshizawa, you know, if the funks came through or pictures of guys with belts or anybody that,

had been to Japan before was familiar to the Japanese audience, I just send him a stack of prints and they'd send back

checks for not only the magazines that they were in, but checks for $200 or $300.

And this was

1979, 1980, 81.

So that wasn't bad.

I have a letter here from Jim Melby to Brian Hildebrand, February 5th, 1980.

Dear Brian, hi.

It was good hearing from you.

I'm returning your story on Benello and Scott.

I've never heard of these guys.

I doubt if they would be of interest to my readers.

Oh my god.

Indirectly, Terry Justice is doing some stuff for Eddie Gilbert for Bill Apor.

He called to explain to me that Eddie had given Apor permission to reprint stuff from the club calendar.

Yes, I did see Darla in Kansas City.

We had a few.

Darla Staggs was one of the smart fans in Kansas City, one of the five or six of them back in in those days.

We had a few drinks with some of the wrestlers and some fans, and you had better believe that I'm all set to taxi down that terminal in Atlanta.

Sincerely, Jim Melvy.

I'm not exactly sure there.

I think they were talking about the Atlanta upcoming Wrestling Fans International Association convention.

That would have been the summer of 1980.

Again, we don't want to go too long with this.

This is something we could always return to, but going a little forward in the folder here, I have an envelope postmarked November 30th, 1983, to area close-ups, care of the wrestling news from Brian Hildebrand, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mount Troy Road.

Mountain State Wrestling runs shows in Morgantown and Terra Alta, West Virginia.

Recognized champions, West Virginia champion, J.W.

Snakeman Hawk.

The World Junior Heavyweight Champion, Zoltan the Great.

That's Kenny Jugan.

And the West Virginia tag team champions are Bill Berger and Buckwheat Jackson.

The big news here is the feud between manager Greg Punk Rock Mason

and Mark Curtis.

And at this point, Curtis has two S's at the end of it.

Yes.

Curtis refereed a few shows, and Mason tried to take a few shots at the self-proclaimed Master of Disaster, who is now hearing cheers as he feuds with the manager.

Curtis has teamed with Mike Savilli and Buckwheat Jackson to get at Mason and his protege Zoltan and Hawk.

Other wrestlers in the area, Buddy Donovan, The Beast, The Bulk,

The Bulk, yes.

The Bulk.

He was a giant fat guy.

You never would have guessed.

Bob Beecher and Rusty King of Payne Jones.

That's all the news for now.

Sincerely, Brian C.

Hildebrand.

And that was actually, that was his

Brian Curtis Hildebrand was his full name.

Then he also sent along the results for the Cardinal Tuna.

For World Championship Wrestling November 3rd, 83, Les Thatcher beat Joe Lightfoot.

Ron Garvin over Paul Ellering by DQ.

Road Warriors over Wrestling 2 and Pez Watley.

Brett Wayne over Jake the Snake Roberts by DQ.

And the main event in a cage, Tommy Rich beat Buzz Sawyer, reported to be a sellout.

Promoter Gene Dargan

is doing great in Pennsylvania with WCW wrestlers.

Next card, 11:30 in Johnstown.

Home of the flood.

That was Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

That old building

was

probably

my least favorite facility anywhere in the state of Pennsylvania.

What a dump.

And you could see where that town could be flooded real fucking easy with a catastrophe like that.

That's one of the things I love about the Norm Keitzer magazines, especially from that period.

It's the only look you get in a lot of cases of some of the smaller, not even territories, but you want to talk outlaw groups.

Yeah.

Guys running shows with skinny wrestlers and wrestlers you haven't seen in a while and people you don't know who the hell they are.

But there's more reports of that stuff in those magazines.

I mean, you read about Randy Savage in there before you read about him anywhere else.

Well, and see, that was because Norman, for a lot of that time with the wrestling news, ring wrestling was a different thing.

And later on, he got newsstand distribution, but the wrestling news was primarily sold in the arenas by the promoters.

And so he tried to cover as much as he could because if you didn't have any of the local guys, and

even then, though, you can only go so far.

Like Bonello and Scott, right, were not exactly household names, but the more he covered, the more promoters would want to get.

Well, send me 50 of your magazines so I can sell them at the matches.

And he would give the

wholesale price to the promoter and then blah, blah, blah.

That's why

that I started doing my own magazine in the Memphis territory because

originally he've sent magazines to Pat Malone and Christine Jarrett, the wrestling news, and I started sending pictures and stories for them so that the Memphis fans would want to buy those magazines in the arena.

But then

gradually it became,

well, there's only,

you know,

four or five stories of the Memphis guys in this particular wrestling news because he's got to cover, you know, Atlanta and this territory and that territory.

So I started doing a little 16-page magazine, championship wrestling magazine, that he printed for me.

And it was all Memphis guys.

And I wrote stories, took the pictures.

But then after the first three of them, he said, well, now everybody's buying your magazine.

They're selling out and nobody's buying the wrestling news.

So how about for the same price, I'll print you,

God damn, what was it?

It was it a 48-page magazine or whatever with all of the wrestling news advertising in it and

if you'll just sell those so that way i don't lose my advertising customers

i was okay so that he doubled the size of the magazine and only put in half again you know as many pages as ads so i had all kinds of space to fill up now for nothing extra

but that that was the deal is if If he couldn't sell in the newsstands, he had to cover all of the territories that he could so the promoters promoters would buy the magazines and sell them at the matches.

Well, Jim, we will close this edition of From the Files with this final thing here because it clarifies something earlier.

A typed letter from Brian C.

Hildebrand, May 1st, 1983.

Dear Jim, once again, Jim Melby,

as always, I hope this letter finds you in the best of health, mind, and spirits.

And Brian still had his spelling issues even then.

In other words, I hope that you will be taxiing down the runway into the open space of the mind any day now.

My my what college does to a person.

Sorry that I haven't written sooner, but school is a bitch.

And now I'm finished with it for another year.

So now I can sit back and get some articles written and get it sent out.

Listen, when I graduate

if I graduate, do you know of any promotion that needs anyone for anything?

I mean that as long as I've been in the business, I've done just about everything except suck Barnett,

who he misspells the name of.

He adds an E at the end.

Is there any positions opening up in the magazine?

Keep your ears open, please.

I might have an opportunity to be the commentator for the ESPN Poffo show.

Huh?

Oh my God.

But I'm afraid of being blackballed from the rest of the wrestling world.

Let me stop there for a second because this is May 83.

I had never heard any rumors or anything about the Pothos getting ESPN.

Well, and

that's what jumped out at me.

And

because Brian was working with the outlaw promotions,

the early independents

in West Virginia, there really was no territory except crocket shows in West Virginia at that point.

And,

you know, Western Pennsylvania, Johnstown, Pittsburgh, et cetera, a lot of those guys would go to work for

the PAFOs, ICW, even if only to do jobs on TV or just, you know, whatever.

So there was some

back and forth.

I don't know that there was any, ever, any legitimate chance or close chance or even talks have not been

uncovered between the PAFOS and

I'm telling you, folks, and again, I love territory wrestling but their television show was low budget

I don't see how that ever would have been possible at that stage of the game

they were almost ready to go out of business but was Angelo telling people that he talked to somebody or did he talk to somebody

and he was just telling them his part of the conversation to get people to think, you know, hang on, we got something big coming.

That might be possible.

Let me go back to this letter from Brian Hildebrand, May 1st, 1983.

I've been reffing for the WWA occasionally, but I have to lay off for the summer due to me being in PGH.

Pittsburgh.

And plus the fact that I broke my foot moving back.

And guess what?

Brewser, in his infinite wisdom, has me booked for a number of dates in Indiana.

What's even funnier is that he won't give me his number.

So how am I supposed to get a hold of him?

I called Colt to tell to Brew what my condition is.

And that would have been Bobby Colt, who at the time Bruiser was using as his top heel because they were about to go out of business.

And Bobby Colt knew Brian from the Indies.

I don't know.

I still think I'm going to get heat.

So what's up with you?

Done any more traveling to any exotic wrestling areas?

Do me a favor.

If you see Peggy Lee anywhere down the road, give her my regards.

I have included to you The Mighty of All Editors, a story for any one of your magnanimous I've been listening to Paul Ellering too much publications.

I've got a lot of stuff from the WWA,

so you won't have to worry about that area for a while.

Well,

it's about the time that I get back to what we call work here, so I could dream up a couple more stories.

Take care and keep in touch, Brian.

And then in parentheses, Steve Curtis, Steve Cutis.

You see, I can't even spell my alias right.

P.S., why don't you come on down to Pittsburgh some weekend?

It would be great to see you again.

And there it is.

Brian was always wanting to get in the business.

Anything that he, when he would come down and go on the road with me, he did it twice in Memphis when I started.

And then,

you know, later on toward the end of the run, he spent a week down there shooting pictures with us in Louisiana when I

moved there.

And then, you know, when I started working for Crockett, we went to Pittsburgh regularly.

So I've told the stories about when Brian's dad was a Pittsburgh cop,

and he would drive, you know, me and Bubba or me and the Midnight Express to the building, you know, from the the airport hotel and then back.

And we'd eat at the Eaton Park.

And, goddamn, coming out of the civic arena one night,

it was me and Bubba, and Brian and his dad was driving,

and people swarmed the car, and his dad just got out with that fucking police gun and held it up over his head.

It's like, oh, goddamn it.

People fucking scattered and climbed lamp posts and everything.

And off we went.

His dad was such a nice guy.

Yeah, but old Rege, but

he was a licensed to kill kind of individual up there in Pittsburgh.

But yeah, Brian always wanted to be in the business and he did everything, literally everything, as he said.

Yeah, you see, there's a couple of interesting things there.

One is I think a lot of people, and I did for a long time too, I didn't think about it too much.

When you hear the stories about Dominic DiNucci's school, you always hear Cactus Jack and Shane Douglas and Brian Hildebrand almost like they came up together.

He was already there for a long time.

Yeah.

He had been doing, I mean, he was one of the trainers, wasn't he?

Yeah, because

I mean, well, think about it.

You've seen pictures of

Mick or video of Mick Foley's first match in the WWF as a TV jobber.

What was that, 85, 86 with the Bulldogs?

86 or early 87, probably

like that.

86, I think.

Well, yeah, that's when Mick was just breaking in.

Brian had been trained by Dominic.

It was you saw those letters there.

He'd been since the late 70s.

When I met him at the 79 WFIA convention in Memphis, he had already been wrestling and managing on these little independent shows.

He had pictures of him.

The incredible bulk guy was like 5'2 ⁇ and 400 pounds.

And the exact opposite, he and Brian standing next to each other looked like the number 10.

And, you know, he had already been doing this.

So, yeah, he was one of the guys.

And he knew he wasn't going to be a full-time wrestler in any major promotion, but he did it because he loved it.

And he kept going to the school so he could work out with all the guys as they came through and came up and everything.

So this letter is 1983.

He's

asking for any help he can get from Jim Melby or the wrestling news in terms of a job anywhere in wrestling doing anything other than sucking Barnett.

It's interesting.

Even in 83, people...

behind the scenes are making jokes and writing about that.

Oh, they were doing that in 73, but go ahead.

But you would end up hiring him with Smokey Man Wrestling in 92,

and he probably didn't think of it.

Well, who knows what he thought?

I was going to say he probably didn't think of it as his big break, but it ended up being his big break.

That's a long time from 1983.

What do you remember about when you hired him?

I mean, was it immediate, I'll drop everything and be there?

Oh, yeah.

Well,

it wasn't an immediate because I wasn't just giving him like a deadline of next Friday.

And see, remember, he had still kept doing photography all through the 80s for a variety of the magazines.

He was also managing and working on independence.

There's tape out there of me and Stan Lane against

Mark Curtis and Jerry Lawler on one of Dennis' shows in Cherry Hill, New Jersey from 1991.

And he managed bad company.

Paul Diamond and Pat Tanaka against The Midnight in 89 in that show in Ohio when we were on break from WCW.

So he had still been doing everything he could around a wrestling business.

And finally,

when I knew that we were moving forward with Smoky Mountain Wrestling, I called him and I said, hey,

for the first three months, we're going to do a weekend where we do a TV taping and then a couple spot shows because the guys are in town.

And then

we're going to try to do a bigger schedule, but you'd have to move to Knoxville.

He said, no worries.

And

at first, his dad came came down with him

on those first weekends because his dad was his number one fan and videotaped all of his matches and everything.

So his dad and he came down for the weekend trips and then he scouted out places to live.

And when we were ready to go,

not full-time every day of the week, but fuller time, he was

already able to move down.

Well, there it is.

Brian Hildebrand from the Files, referee Mark Curtis.

And we'll definitely do this again from the Files, but that was a classic wrestling break before we get back to modern wrestling.

Although I have to say, the one big thing on Raw this week was pretty good.

Once again, another great segment on Raw this week.

Well, yeah.

And again, it's such a

vast difference when the other program, they just won't stop.

Just won't stop with anything.

Just everything's crazy.

And Raw, now they've set it up where we were kind of convinced, oh God, this is so boring.

And then they threw a show in that jazzed everybody up.

Holy shit.

And then they go back to.

But now,

now it's like, as long as there is one or two major things that go on in the program, everybody seems happy.

And you remember what it is.

And

they were in Boston at the TD garden, not the classic garden, but that new one,

the infidels.

And again, I don't know what they did there, but it looked like a big-ass crowd to me.

But everybody during the walk-ins, you know, this guy's going to be here, and this girl's going to be here, and here comes so-and-so.

And then they showed, and after

we were off the air at Saturday night's main event, Owen's pile driving Cody.

So they did it off the air on Saturday night so that they can build this around it.

And it's new news that it worked pretty seamlessly, didn't it?

It worked great.

And, you know, the best way to start these shows when CM Punk's music hits, it's not just because I'm a fan of his, but you kind of know it's going to be a pretty good angle.

It's going to be a smart angle.

Yes.

The actor studio level is going up a notch here.

We're not dealing with Ted Max amateur hour anymore.

And they started off again with the hottest angle.

Well, I shouldn't say that.

They've done a couple of big ones lately, but they started off with with a real hot angle.

Lacallini!

Coming to Netflix.

That doesn't rhyme, though, does it?

Doesn't sound good either.

Oh, well, you know, I'm sick.

I'm ill.

You're making fun of the disabled here.

I'd say you're sick.

You're really ill.

You know what?

We agree on something for once.

I'd say you're ill.

All right.

Anyway,

he comes out, he gets the big ovation, the CM Punk chance,

and he says, well, some people might get mad if you chant my name.

And then he makes fun of a fan wearing a New York shirt in Boston.

But again, the thing about punk is this doesn't sound like a bunch of pre-planned

memorized material, scripted remarks.

He flows with it.

He feeds off what's going on around him to weave in and out of it where it's more natural.

And that's why he's a good

promo, storyteller, communicator, verbalizer, whatever the case.

But he was in a bad mood.

He said, because of Seth.

And,

you know, the history they've got.

I said, I wasn't thinking about him, but over the last few weeks, I have been.

And it's only a matter of time.

Before I have to face Seth in the ring, we got to get this thing behind us.

So

again, every time that I talk to you people, I know that stupid music is going to hit and out he's going to come dressed like Liberace.

Not there's anything wrong with that.

He didn't say nothing there's anything wrong with it.

Then he had to defend his fandom of Liberace.

Well, that's, you know, he said, hey, he said, hey, I'm a fan of Liberace, but just because you wear Elton John sunglasses doesn't make you Elton John.

And putting on a pair of wrestling boots doesn't make you CM Punk.

But he's trying to goad Seth into coming out.

And,

you know, and he referred to Seth as my, you're my failure because,

you know, when you wanted me to teach you to wrestle, I should have.

But now,

if you still want

me to give you a lesson for free, if you want to interrupt me,

do you think you're tougher than Drew McIntyre was?

There won't be enough staples to put you back together again.

Still no Seth, right?

So

finally, he told the fans, why don't you chant for him?

And then all of a sudden, you hear Seth on the PA

from the stands he's up in the stands in the spotlight

and seth's deal is hey i see you now the way the fans see you from up here getting this viewpoint and now even from from way up here you're still an asshole

and then punk said well you belong in the audience with the fans which was a good one

and then

But he should have directed that at a bunch of people he used to work with.

And then Seth said, Hey, I stayed around and carried the WWE when you left.

And I've got more WrestleMania main events than you ever will.

That's what's important.

And Punk said, Fuck it, he opted the rail.

And they meet each other in the aisleway, and they're having a hockey fight.

And here come the agents and the referees.

And they do the pull apart and they're fighting all over the place.

And they pull them apart and they break loose again.

And they and Punk's facials were fucking insane.

He was like, Hockey,

He was over the top and the people are chanting, let them fight.

Let them fight.

And then they both back up and spin away from their restrainers and run to the back of Ringside and fight again.

And they're being pulled apart in this sea of people in this crowded building.

And that, that, well, that was just swell.

You know, that's pretty much what

the business of the whole show was.

And then I'll let you comment, but they went to the back after the break, and there's Pierce with Seth.

And

Seth is saying,

I want to fight CM Punk.

They're actually using terminology that people would use if this was an actual thing that they were doing.

Do your job.

Get me the match.

And then Seth saw Drew McIntyre.

And now they're doing a whole thing with Seth and Drew Where Drew said, hey,

Seth, you know, you told me one time about Roman.

You said, oh, I just get over it.

Well, you aren't over it.

And

Drew told him, you know, Jimmy and Sammy or Jay or whoever, they all need to go.

And Seth said, well, they're my friends and you're not.

So I got to go do something you couldn't do in CM Punk.

So now the two tweenie guys on the different brands still don't like each other.

This is fucking great.

They can make a match anywhere.

It's like one of those Venn diagrams or something.

Well, this is great, and they can make a match anywhere.

And they did.

What do you think about the fact this match they've been teasing for a while?

They're finally interacting, Rollins and Punk, and it's going to be on Netflix.

Yeah.

They are hot shotting

at 9 o'clock, the top of the 9 o'clock hour.

they announced with Adam Pierce that on the January 6th raw debut on Netflix, it'll be Punk versus Rollins.

So

now they've got that, which is

mania or rumble worthy.

They've got the return of Cena.

They've got all this other stuff going on.

You know,

they're going to be farting through silk.

But they're saying for the for the money Netflix is giving them, they better be goddamn serious about this thing, though, they?

I think they're pretty serious.

And that was the best thing on Raw by far.

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Yeah, and otherwise,

Braun Breaker and Ludwig Kaiser, Braun did not have a good night.

And Ludwig...

Why do you say that?

What does that mean?

Well, Ludwig worked his ass off,

and he's the veteran he was calling his thing, but...

Braun's in a babyface position there with Kaiser and for the Intercontinental title.

And they apparently were going to have a little experiment and see if Braun could sell like a babyface, which they did the wrong kind of selling.

He was trying to sell his arm, and at one point

he was selling his bad arm by tucking it into his side like it was goddamn glued to him.

And

Braun doesn't need to sell a particular body part like the arm like this, and he wasn't very effective at it.

I think Braun needs to sell

impactful shit,

running into a boot in the mush or a suplex or a goddamn big bump on the floor, sell the whole body.

And you can get away with selling in a babyface fashion.

But when, especially when Ludwig is

compared to Braun, big around is my little finger, it just, it didn't, it didn't come together.

They, and they gave him, they went through two breaks.

They gave him a lot of fucking time.

It was a bit long and not Braun's best, and they need to tweak,

you know, how they have him sell.

He has to show vulnerability,

but he can't just do it like everybody else does it.

And when he made the one-armed comeback, he was trying too hard to sell the arm by not using it,

except

then at one point, Joe Tesatore said, he hasn't moved that left arm in minutes, and he immediately moved the arm.

Because there's things you have to do with the arm, But

he hit the Brekensteiner with one arm or whatever.

But

anyway, that was that.

And then

Cody and Owens package, just what we've talked about that they

did.

They

had a wonderful girls match.

Rhea's the number one contender for Liv Morgan, and Rhea called Dominic a chicken tender slut.

And then they put the belts on the Vikings,

which was kind of surprising, but

they did it in a way.

It was Finn and JD defending against the War Raiders now, or was it War Machine now?

War Machine's what they used to be.

On the Indies, yeah.

Then they made them the Viking Raiders, then they changed to the War Raiders, whatever the fuck.

These guys are, I said, when I first saw them in there, I managed them years ago at an indie show.

They're fucking great, especially they can move for their size.

They had good shit,

but they just cartooned them up under Vince.

Maybe now

this is an attempt to make them a little more serious, but

they combined this with the deal going on with Priest and Finn because Priest kept Finn from using a chair on them.

And then the Vikings hit their finish one, two, three.

So it was still Priest that kind of caused the turn of the tide, but

maybe the poor old Vikings have

been brought into the 20th century.

And that was raw.

And that was raw, and boy, was it.

And, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be back with more wrestling talk and wrestling news and wrestling.

We're stalling for the ratings on the AEW show is what we're doing.

Well, we'll be stalling more, or the stalling will end, and there'll be more wrestling talk right after this short commercial timeout.

Ow!

Oh!

All right, well, how does this stop?

There we go.

That's what a lot of people are asking.

We are in the future.

It was quick, it was brief, but we are here.

I don't know how long we're going to be here.

We have a lot to get in in a very short period of time, and things are happening, and the wind is

very noisy.

The wind is howling outside your door.

It's not a fit night out for man or beast, and you have to shovel some snow or

snovel some show, as I said earlier.

There's a lot of show to snovel.

Woahen is banging upstairs.

I'm recording.

We are back here.

Has that band of flamenco dancers not moved out of the apartment upstairs yet?

I'll tell you, I don't know what the hell they're doing.

But Jim, we are back, and we did not have the dynamite ratings earlier, and we're going to get to them in a moment.

We also have some news about the collision ratings against Saturday night's main event.

But I have to bring this up to you as we are recording early in the morning.

I did not watch the big Ring of Honor pay-per-view last night, Final Battle.

I'm assuming you did not as well.

You would have, you would not make an ass of you and me if you assume that.

I've only seen one clip from the entire pay-per-view,

and I have to bring it up because everyone seems to be jumping on the same thing.

I don't know if it's an official medical diagnosis yet, but Bandito returned.

Bandito returned saving.

No, no, hey, wait, wait a minute.

Hold on.

They've been doing these videos,

these corny videos of him with Old West cowboys on the streets of Dodge City or whatever on dynamite, and he returns on a Ring of Honor pay-per-view.

Guess, by the way, guess where that old Dodge City is?

I just found this out.

I didn't even know about it.

Where?

It's in Netcong, New Jersey.

It's right over here.

It's not even in the Wild West.

Netcong.

Are they related to the Viet Cong?

I don't know if that's how it started, but Bandito, as I was saying, they've been showing his vignette videos in the Wild West with a bunch of

the gang that couldn't shoot straight looking for him.

He returned at the Ring of Honor pay-per-view.

He's a former Ring of Honor champion, and I saw the video.

Again, with AEW, you never know if they just are really, really, really bad at micing the crowd or if the crowd's just not exploding the way they're supposed to.

But not the big reaction you would think, or at least I would.

But he hits the ring because Matt Cardona is being beat up by Jericho and Big Bill.

He's coming for the save.

And Brian Keith.

He's coming for the save.

He goes to the top rope and hits a drop kick, but more British Bulldog style than, you know, Jim Brunzel style.

And he immediately.

Well, yeah, you know, like he jumped off and he's straight flat out.

His back is to the ground and he's ejecting both feet out rather than the sideways drop kick is what you're saying, right?

That's what I'm saying.

And apparently with the thing that everyone's jumping on, he immediately concussed himself.

Oh, no.

What?

I hate to laugh about a concussion, but he immediately, upon his return, gave himself a concussion, looked a bit confused.

The referees seemed to realize something was wrong.

Big Bill, I think, realized right away, I can't do anything with this guy.

I'm just going to get out of the ring.

I'll see if I can find some video real quick for you.

But, Jim, what are your thoughts?

What's the quickest you've seen someone go down once they return?

Oh, my God.

Well,

I've told the story about Glenn Koka, that Canadian football player that they had in the early developmental days when it was still the funkin' dojo.

And he's this big, jacked up, muscled-up guy, a great guy, right?

And had a good look and great body.

And he just started.

He was very green.

He'd been training, but he went back to to his hometown in Canada where he was.

And he played football up there.

So there was 1,500 people or what it was, a good house in this gym and this guy's hometown.

And he gets the big introduction and he jumps up on the ropes and rah-rah on the turnbuckle and turns around and jumps off and lands in the middle of the ring and breaks his fucking leg.

See, again, I hate to laugh.

It's just the but you know, but if you're gonna, you know, and boom, and down he goes.

And, you know,

that's not really a, it's kind of a return, but, you know, this is,

I'm trying to think what else.

There, well, this wasn't this guy's fault.

There was the time that the bell rang and low-key did a spin kick on that guy and knocked him slap dab out where he couldn't even get up and then kept trying to pick him up to do more shit to him.

Robert Gibson took a hot tag from Ricky Morton one night and fucking threw his left leg up to

step in over the rope and his right foot slipped off the edge of the apron and he fell right on the floor.

Oh, wait, you know, I'm forgetting about maybe the champion, the reigning champion, Shane McMahon.

Shane!

When he had his big return moment at WrestleMania, got his pop did a leapfrog and never came back up ever again.

Yeah.

Drop down, leapfrog, stay down.

All right,

ever call that one, but anyway.

I've sent you an email.

It should be there momentarily.

It is from one of the many Twitter videos going around.

Bandito's big return.

Yeah, I've heard there's a lot of things going around these days.

And, you know, you said it was the gang that couldn't shoot straight, but I'm just wondering if it's the gang that can't shoot over at AEW.

Here it is.

Should I click on this?

Will I be amused?

You should be amused.

I don't know if there'll be volume playing on your end, but give it a click.

Well, I've clicked.

Well, you know, I got the my computer's got the rockin' pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu.

So it takes, ah, here it's it's going now.

It's moving.

Oh, this is a minute and 13 second clip.

There's

the building doesn't look as great as I thought it was.

Oh, here comes Bandito.

And he's coming down the entranceway and he jumps up on the apron and he kicks old Big Bill and he goes to the top rope and the shot's so wide you can barely tell.

And a drop kick and boom and he landed on the back of his head.

And he can't get up and he's on his knees and he's holding his face and now he's on his knees leaning back holding his face and now he's got his arms outstretched like i just did something

and he's trying to get to his feet referee's checking him and he stands up onto his feet and he crouches and grabs brian keith and spine busters him kind of

and groggily

goes for old Big Bill and Big Bill throws him back in a turnbuckle and is going to hit him in the head.

Oh, that'll work.

No, but he didn't.

What the fuck?

Big Bill just got out of there.

He said something to the referee when he took a shot to the balls, and they both just walked out of the ring.

Yeah, but I didn't even see the ball shot because he threw Bandito in the corner and then acted like he was going to clothesline him.

Wait a minute, let me see if I can find that again.

And

then

he just left him.

Yeah, he

okay, he slams Bandito.

Oh, there's the ball kick.

He slams Bandito in a corner, goes to punch him, and Bandito kicked him in the balls.

And he awkwardly sold over and stepped out of the ring.

And the referee's just telling Bandito, get the fuck out of here.

You've been in that building for Ring of Honor title matches.

That crowd is muted compared to what it used to be.

But besides that, I'm trying to figure out why they're shooting in this direction.

Hmm.

I didn't even think.

I didn't even realize.

Well, now I'm listening to the audio because

I wasn't before when I was talking to you.

You can hear the guys yelling at each other in the ring over the crowd.

Oh, good Lord.

But what I'm saying is, that doesn't look as impressive as I thought they could make the Hammerstein ballroom look

on television.

I would have thought they would have figured out some way to put

the hard cam on the stage and shoot across where you can

or maybe that's what they did in it no because they have the people coming out the stage

so

yeah you can't you see a lot of set

and then when they take a wide shot over there you see all the people but it's not across from the hard camera so if you're going to do these bandito vignette videos for three weeks or whatever it was two three weeks you're building them up for a big return Why would you do this?

Forget it.

I mean, you can never predict someone's going to get a concussion, even though maybe that's not the thing you should have done there, or at least the way you should have taken the bump from it.

But what are they doing?

What I don't have any idea why you would,

again, a guy's

big, long, long-awaited debut

on

the Ring of Honor pay-per-view instead of the TV show that's seen by,

if there's 600,000 watching Dynamite, that's probably 575,000 more than seeing that Ring of Honor pay-per-view, wouldn't you think?

Should they do a vignette video this week where instead of the old West, it's like a hospital and it's a bunch of doctors.

I'm looking for this man.

Wanted, dead or concussed.

Well, there it is, the big return of Bandito.

We will keep you up to date with his medical condition and if he's cleared.

Welcome back to the world of Tony Khan Bandito.

Jim, before we get to Dynamite, AEW Collision in their normal time slot was against Saturday night's main event, especially on NBC on Saturday night.

That's why, hence the name.

December 14th.

I have here the quarter-hour breakdowns, one show versus the other.

The collision ratings, Jim, I don't have them in front of me.

I think it was in the range of 280 this past week.

It was up like from the lowest.

Yeah, we said it was, I think it was 286.

That number seems to stick out, but.

Well, the quarter quarter hours really tell a story because they started at 391

for Will Ospreay, Darby Allen, backstage angle, Continental Classic promos, Will O'Nightingale versus Jamie Hayter.

There's Will O'Nightingale.

I was wondering where she was.

Picture in picture.

391.

They go from that to 313

for Willow versus Hayter.

Continue.

Julia Hart and Antbreak.

Okada versus Mortos,

which continues into quarter three.

Okada versus,

oh my god, that must have been an all-star classic.

Well, that went from 313 to 266

quarter three.

Followed by

there were full screen ants, Shaza or Shaza Mackenzie versus Tony Storm.

Is that Tony Storm's return match?

I guess so.

Apparently.

Well, we go from that to quarter four, 8.45, 9 p.m., 239,000 viewers.

Two ad breaks in the quarter.

Mariah Mays promo.

Thunder Rosa, Tony Storm backstage angle, Action Andretti, and Leo Rush versus Top Flight.

That continues into the big 9 o'clock hour at 205,000 viewers.

Then we get Statlander versus Tootie Lynn,

whoever that may be.

Tootie, T-O-O-T-I-E, Tootie Lynn.

The granddaughter of Toots Mond.

Dustin Rhodes backstage promo and ad break.

That was 205.

From there, we go to 915.

That'd be quarter six, 194,000 viewers.

The Outrunners Daniel Garcia, Commander, and Orange Cassidy versus the Premier Athletes and the Eminem Collection with Picture and Picture and Full Screen.

Then we go to the next quarter.

Picture and Picture was higher rated than the full screen because at least people could watch the commercials.

The seventh quarter, Don Callis's promo and the start of Briscoe versus Fletcher,

178,000 viewers.

Jesus.

And that ends up being the only thing on the show not to lose anyone.

9:45 to 10 p.m., the final quarter.

Briscoe versus Fletcher continued.

Post-match with Willow, Orange Cassidy, the Death Riders.

Oh, no, Death Riders FTR backstage Anglo.

That must be where they got kidnapped.

180,000 viewers.

So they started at 391 and ended at 180.

That's somewhere around close enough.

55% of the audience they lost.

At the same time, Saturday night's main event, 8 to 8:15 p.m.

quarter one, they opened 1.79 million viewers.

That's the intro stuff.

Jesse Ventura, start of Drew vs.

Sammy, continues into quarter two, with an ad break, 1.56 million.

Quarter three, Lib vs.

EO, post-match with Rhea,

and an ad break, or two ad breaks, 1.58 million.

And I should mention these were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter four, 8.45 to 9 p.m.

Gunther vs.

Finn vs.

Damien, 1.47 million.

That's the low point of the show.

Big nine o'clock hour, 1.51 for the continuation of that match.

Into quarter six, 9.15 to 9.30.

Mishin vs.

Chelsea Green and the post-match with Piper Niven,

1.54 million.

Good lord.

Quarter seven, Pat McAfee, Jesse Ventura angle, Kevin Owens video and entrances, 1.54.

Finally, quarter eight, 9:45 to 10 p.m., Cody versus Owens and the post-match,

1.73 million.

So they started at their high point, 1.79 million, but but then fluctuated through the show between

1.47 and 1.58,

and then finished back up to 1.73, almost where they started to begin with.

So they lost, I can't even know, what's 60,000 people out of 1.7 million.

I don't even know, 2%.

I don't know what the fuck.

But it's interesting when you look at the collision quarterlies because it's a straight path down.

Again, the last quarter, they got 2,000 people back.

But it's not like people were.

I mean, again, you see the Saturday night's main event number, it's steady.

Yeah.

You know, big at the beginning, which makes sense.

Pop for the main event, which is all you could ever ask for.

But it was steady.

I mean, they had 1.54 for two straight quarters.

And that was Mishin versus Chelsea Green.

That was against the Outrunners match for anyone that was like going back and forth, but I don't even think we have channel flippers here.

I don't can't imagine there's any channel flippers there.

I guess that's the point.

I don't think this.

Well, there's some channel changers.

I don't know how much of this collision number is Saturday night's main event and how much of it is just as the show's happening, people are like, I don't have to stick around for this.

Well,

it's really that because

they the Saturday night's main event was not picking up anyone at the same time as

collision was really losing.

They were kind of in the pocket the whole time, and their number was so much bigger, it would be marginal anyway.

Well, there

we'll see what happens next month, Collision versus Saturday night's main event, part two.

But what in the world happened on Dynamite?

Let's go to AEW Dynamite.

How did the death ratings, I mean, the death riders perform this week?

I apologize if you hear noise behind me.

The wind is mighty crazy today.

AEW Dynamite Gym, December 18th, Wednesday night on TBS, 8 to 10.06 p.m.

On average, 625,000 viewers.

Ouch.

That's up 5% from last week and up 6%

and 6% from the trailing four-week average.

I didn't realize that.

I thought last week was 6.

Something better than that, but go ahead.

Last week was 594.

The four-week average is 589.

And Dynamite came in number three on cable in the key demo, only getting beat by California versus UNLV in football, college football, of course.

And Gutfield or Gutfeld on Fox News.

I don't watch it, so I don't know.

I guess it would be Gutfeld.

The challenge at MTV was number four.

But let's go to these quarterly numbers.

These were compiled by WrestleNam Exchange.

You know, that also brings to mind that all of television just sucks today.

But that's the other thing.

Everyone always points to the problems with

the changing technology and the way people consume media.

The other problem is TV sucks.

Yeah, what do you want to consume there?

You know, when people are like, oh, people don't watch late-night talk shows anymore.

Well, maybe because they're all fucking soft and shitty.

Maybe that's why.

Maybe because people don't want to just watch people play games with celebrities.

Hey, let's all have fun and be friends.

Fuck that.

Let's go to the quarterly number breakdown.

If any

programmers need someone to take over, let me know.

Yeah, there you go, Fred Silverman.

AEW Dynamite.

He ran two networks.

AEW Dynamite on TBS, December 18th, 2024, quarter one.

One of them into the ground.

8 to 8.15 p.m.

Let's talk about the positives, Jim.

8:8:15 p.m.

Orange Cassidy, Jay White, and the hangman, Adam Page, backstage.

Followed by Darby Allen and Will Osprey, backstage for promos, followed by the start of Mercedes Monet versus Anna Jay

with picture-in-picture ads,

737,000 viewers.

Again, their big start is smaller than it used to be.

We go to quarter two: the continuation of Monet versus Jay,

the FTR promo in a,

let's say, unmarked.

FTR in an unmarked grave or an unremarkable promo?

The FTR promo in an unremarkable room, I guess is the way to put it.

The MJF Adam Cole live angle and Jamie Hayter's backstage promo,

725,000 viewers.

Well, now that's a surprise.

When is the last time you can remember they only lost 12,000 viewers from quarter one to two?

I can't.

It stands out, and it goes against the trend line of the last 90 days, obviously.

And, you know, whatever you want to say about Mercedes-Monet, you know, I said you almost have to believe that a lot of the fans that watch AEW think of her as two different people.

They like her in-ring work and they hate everything about her character and her promos and her angles.

And the Anna Jay versus Mercedes-Monet match, for whatever reason, or maybe it's Anna Jay.

For whatever reason, you and Anna Jay.

For whatever reason.

Well, it's not me.

I'm not 725,000 people, but it held the audience.

But let's see what happens next, quarter three, 8:30 to 8.45 p.m.

An ad break.

Hook and Shibata versus Christian Cage and Nick Wayne with picture and picture,

596,000 viewers.

Oh.

So that's, wait a minute, for 129,000, that's more than they usually lose from quarter two to quarter three or most quarters.

That is a significant drop.

I think I said before we had the numbers when we were doing a review, I had to think that that match would be one of the big things to drive people away.

Nobody cares about the Christian Cage stuff.

Nick Wayne's not been established well if you were going to.

Hook has less buzz now than ever before, and Shabata is going to cause people to turn the channel.

No matter how fair or unfair that is, based on talent, how he's been used with his little fucking pocket talker or whatever.

The pocket talker.

But we go now, Jim, to quarter four, 8.45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of Hook and Shibata versus Cage and Wayne.

The Chris Jericho video in New York.

Oh boy.

The Bandito video.

An ad break.

And then Mariah May's backstage promo.

622,000 viewers.

So boy, howdy, it was that match.

They gained

26,000 and they never gain in quarter four.

So a lot of people just said, fuck, we'll watch a test pattern.

It's, you know, when we get to the end, you'll see it's very interesting.

The things that we predict people are going to say, I'm not watching, it's happening.

It's really happening in real time.

But we go now to quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour, nine to nine, fifteen p.m.

Ricochet and the Hurt Syndicate live, or live angle, excuse me.

Shelton Benjamin versus the Beast Mortos

with Picture and Picture and the post-match with the Hurt Syndicate.

And Daniel Garcia,

626,000 viewers.

So they picked up 4,000 at the top of the hour.

Awesome.

Also, in terms of the key demo, 1,000 off the high point, which was the second quarter of Monet versus Anna J.

And, you know,

the Hurts Syndicate has done a wonderful wonderful job getting over so far, but against the,

you know, great value Mantar,

that's fun.

Anyway,

we go now to quarter six, 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

An ad break, Ricochet and Swerve Strickland and Prince Nana's backstage angle, Tony Storm's interview,

Will Osprey versus Darby Allen, the start of it at least,

608,000 viewers.

Oh,

so

I don't.

Osprey and Darby Allen are two of their most popular guys.

You would think that for this audience, that's something they would have wanted to watch, even though it was a goddamn pinball machine.

But they lost 20,000, no, 18,000.

Well, we go now to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The continuation of Osprey versus Darby, picture-in-picture ads, and the post-match with Claudio,

601,000 viewers.

Jesus Christ, and they didn't keep the ones that they had for the start of it.

That surprises me.

And again, this may be the other story.

The Mercedes-Monet Anna J match holding the audience, the Christian Cage match not surprising anyone by completely losing the audience.

This is the other story, because it's a multi-week story now.

Quarter eight, I remind you we have a six-minute overrun.

9:45 to 10 p.m., An ad break.

Hangman Adam Page, Jay White, and Orange Cassidy versus the Death Riders with picture-in-picture ads,

519,000 viewers.

Oh my God.

Six-minute overrun, 534,000.

Bunch people looking for modern family.

Also, quarter eight was the low point in the key demo.

It went from in quarter seven, Darby versus Osprey did it 601 with 249 000 male 18 to 49 that dropped to 216

519 and 216 in the key demo for the moxley stuff every quarter they put the moxley stuff in it was the lowest start of the show when they started them on the show it's killed the end of the show it's killed the nine o'clock hour every segment they put the Jon Moxley Death Rider stuff in is killing the audience.

But you got to admire them for their consistency.

Again, two stories here.

The Mercedes-Monet match somehow keeping that audience, and then everything else driving everyone away.

And so, from the start of regulation to the end of regulation, they had lost 218,000 viewers and picked up 15,000 in the overrun.

So, I guess we should talk about it briefly here, because when we return from our break, ratings may be a bit different because the streaming on mac starts in january

so you have to presume they're going to have a precipitous drop because people may be streaming it as opposed to watching it on tv how much more how much more precipitation can they take i don't know because the other thing is it's not like

you know they're always ecw was desperate for clearance because the idea was if we can get more people to see us

there are more fans who would want to watch us.

That's always been the overriding theory.

Right.

If we can get our pay-per-view everywhere, we're not saying everyone's going to buy it, but there's fans spread out.

We need them to have a chance to get it.

With AEW going to max, it should be a situation like that.

Now it's going to be more easily available.

It'll be everywhere.

But I just don't know if it's going to really cause.

Like, there's no one like, I just wish I could see AEW.

I can't.

Like, there isn't a fan like that.

It's everywhere.

Their YouTube numbers are going down.

It's the interest in the product.

So now they'll be on Max, and

this may end up being a more interesting story in the long run, considering the changes at Warner Brothers Discovery and the decisions they've made.

But we'll see what happens.

But the ratings are about to.

Well, now, let me ask you this:

for the people who like this streaming television.

If you've, if you're in your house, you have cable and streaming, if you got both of them,

then which one would you, as an unbiased person, not like me, rather watch, the cable or the streaming, if you could watch the same show on each

service?

If I'm in my office, I'm going to watch on cable first.

If there's any problems with that, I would go to streaming, but I'd watch on cable first, but I guess that's because I grew up with cable.

I've always had it.

I still prefer it.

But especially amongst the younger audience, it's the opposite.

You have kids who have kids who have never had a TV in their room.

You have kids who have never had cable, never wanted it.

And yes, I agree with that.

So I think for them, if there is an audience, and I don't know how much of an audience there is, of people who really wanted to watch AEW but didn't have cable, so they had to access it through,

it's not nefarious, just bootleg means.

I mean, I don't even know how, or just wait for YouTube.

The question is, and I don't think it will, is this going to cause a major surge of people to check out the product product because it's on Macs and have never seen it before?

Well, I don't think so because there's

the TV show that people are seeing is not causing a surge of people to want to watch it.

But the point I was making is maybe it won't be that big a drop because we know

that the people that are already watching it have cable.

So that was my question is I wonder if there's any statistic of the people who, if you've got both cable and streaming, which one do people watch primarily if it's the same show on both things?

That would determine whether or not, see, yeah, you hear me what I'm telling you?

Yeah, I mean, I literally had a cable person here in my house maybe a year and a half ago, and they were working in one of the rooms and they were telling me, oh, you can get rid of the cable box here.

I said, what do you mean?

They said, well, if you get an Amazon Fire Stick, or Roku,

you can use that and then use the cable company's app and just stream your cable.

Oh, good lord.

And, you know, I was like, I never knew that was a thing you guys allowed.

Oh, yeah, you could just stream.

Instead of having a cable box, you could just plug your streaming thing in and stream the cable service in the house.

So we'll see, but that's the AEW Dynamite Ratings.

One last thing, Jim, on AEW.

Briefly, because we don't know too many details, we talked about AEW coming to Louisville, Kentucky.

That has been scrapped.

They are not coming to Louisville.

I feel like it's personal.

No,

remember, we were talking about they were coming to Broadbent Arena, which was when we announced their new schedule and that it was going to be smaller buildings that a lot of people had been saying they ought to do.

I said, The thing about Broadbent is,

besides the fact that it's used mostly for livestock, rodeos, horse shows, fair type of things, so it's got a bit of a permanent whiff of bullshit literally, in it.

The backstage facilities are not real big, and the locker rooms and wherever they're going to shoot pre-tapes and all that stuff.

The building is big enough itself that they weren't going to, it seats 6,000 and it's a big floor.

So they were going to probably cut that in half to begin with.

But I don't know about their television production and the bringing a big national cable production into that building.

Maybe

they sent somebody from the production department to actually look at it finally.

And they say, oh, Jesus Christ, because now they're going to some place in Cincinnati that I've never heard of.

I don't, do you have the, hold on, maybe I have it here.

What is the name of this place?

It is the Brady Music Center.

So I assume that's not an NBA arena in Cincinnati.

The Andrew J.

Brady Music Center in Cincinnati.

Let me see here.

It opened July 2021, located in the Banks neighborhood on the Ohio River.

And capacity

outdoor.

Outdoor.

Outdoor.

I don't think they're going to be outdoors.

It says outdoor 8,000 capacity, indoor 4,500.

Good lord.

They're building bigger buildings in the suburbs these days than they used to.

But yeah, they moved up there.

Do you think it's because of the smell?

Did they hear what you said?

Tony listens.

Did Tony hear what you said about the smell and say, there's no way we could run this place?

No, because his shows always stink anyway.

But no, I think maybe somebody from production came down and said,

I don't know.

It could have just been,

you know, they found out this place existed in Cincinnati and it'll be easier to work with.

All right.

Well, let's get.

A couple more things here before we get going.

Jim, I did want to ask you a quick question here that was sent to the Cult According to Facebook group from a listener, James Bacon.

Can you please explain?

Is that the Hollywood columnist, James Bacon?

I don't believe so.

Can you please explain to someone in the UK what the difference between local access, cable, syndicate TV in the U.S.

is and was, and how it impacted the territories.

All we had here in the UK until the late 90s were four national channels

and one of them showing local programs for only about two hours a day.

Also, what's a feather bottom?

No,

let's talk.

You know, you never think about that.

A lot of the international listeners and even a lot of the younger listeners may not understand what the landscape was like.

And you throw a lot of terms out there, syndicated TV, local TV.

I don't know how much we've talked about local access TV or public access, but I'll throw this to you.

Well, and

first of all, I can vouch for it.

When I was in the UK, you know, there were many things.

We've discussed my trips and there were many pleasant things about it, but TV sucks over there because

there's not that many channels in the hotel rooms.

And the ones that you get

are not really, most of them aren't even showing entertainment-oriented programs, news or talk or whatever.

Just dry, dry, dry.

I saw Raw when I was in London once.

It was on late at night.

It wasn't like the normal time slot.

And they had in the bottom corner, they had someone doing sign language because at one point someone was getting choked and they were choking themselves.

Yes, yes, they do that to the sign language in the corner,

whether you need it or not.

But anyway, okay, so we joke about cable access.

In the early days of cable, when your local cable system was bringing you

not only your local stations, but also the

satellite, the super stations like TBS or WGN out of New York or whatever, you might get 30 or 40 channels back in those days, all told combined.

The early ESPN, MSG network, whatever the fuck it was.

So

they would also have,

I don't know if, I think it might have even been required at that point by some kind of federal communications ruling or just it was what, but

the local cable company would provide a local access or cable access channel to people in the community for

their own programming, community affairs or local shit, supposedly some, you know, to encourage

local artists or news or whatever discussion about the

market.

And it quickly became just these amateur fucks,

you know, hey, kids, let's put on a show.

There was actually on our old cable company here 20 years ago.

I can't remember what it was back then, and it's now it's become spectrum, but

there was a program on their their cable access channel called I Eat Poop the Show.

Yes, the show.

And it was just a bunch of fucking local kids with a video camera doing stupid shit with each other.

And that's, you know, that's why I compare some of these AEW productions to cable access.

But that's what that was.

And wrestling in the territory days was never on cable access, not only only because there wasn't a lot of cable in those days, but also because they always had

real television in their markets.

Local television means the actual

television stations in your town.

If we live in Louisville, when I was a kid, we had three television stations, Channel 3, Channel 11, Channel 32.

And 32 came on the air the same fucking year I was born, 1961.

So we only had two up until that point.

And then we got WDRB, the independent station, in 1971.

Point being,

that was local television.

Those four stations, if the Memphis Territory wanted to run Louisville, they had to get TV on one of those four stations or nobody in town was going to fucking see it.

So that's local television.

And

you could be doing a show just for that market, or you could be a promoter in Memphis doing a show and also get it on there.

But you're still on local TV, but you're in several markets.

When you get into syndication,

that's not only, and really it's syndicated when you

produce a program and you send it out to multiple stations.

You're syndicating it across these stations.

But it really wasn't the true meaning of syndication for the territories because

they only wanted the markets in their specific area that they were going to run live events in.

A syndicated TV show like Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune,

that's been on the air, you know, Family Feud, that's been on the air for years and years and years, that's produced with the idea of syndicating it to every local market in the United States.

And that's what Crockett and Vince started doing opposite each other in the war in the 80s because

the rule of thumb, then

I can't remember the exact percentage, but if you could get 75 or 80 percent of the country,

your program available in those, not to say everybody was watching it, but it was available on enough stations where 80 percent of the country could get it, then you could sell national advertising and get big money for it, allegedly.

And that's what they were trying to do.

So it's varying degrees of local cable access for amateurs, local television for people who just wanted to broadcast to that market, regional syndication for the territories, and national syndication

for the

national promotions.

And that doesn't even take into account any cable network whatsoever.

Did that answer that question?

I think so.

And I guess in terms of timeline, here in New York, for instance, by the late 90s, that's when they kind of started giving up on local syndication, which had been the most important thing for wrestling companies up until that point.

Even with the cable penetration, it was the local TV that promoted the local shows, it was the local TV that spoke to the people in the market.

And that was one of the big shifts when it was kind of, let's just go with the cable stuff.

We don't have to worry about a syndication package or anything.

Well, and that's also when guys lost the ability and the knowledge and the training to do local promos.

When the shows were just being broadcast to everyone instead of that local market.

That, you know, when I tried to get teach the Ring of Honor guys in 2000,

what was it, 11, 12?

Okay, here's how you do local promos.

They were,

I mean, a lot of them took to it and they were, you know, excited to have the opportunity, but it was like, okay, here's who you're talking about, Chicago, this match with these stipulations versus this guy.

And

make it local.

Talk about people in Chicago, you know, heels, knock their pizza, whatever.

And they're like, oh, shit.

And then

when we would have the tapings, we would do three weeks' worth at a time.

So I would have all the fucking

notes.

I would draw them out with a Sharpie on copy paper as a slate for the cameraman.

Okay, this is for air in Tampa, show number 46, break two.

And they would have to know not to talk about anything that had not happened as of show that number break two.

But it was a learning experience for them.

Anyway, that's, yeah, and

that was the same thing with Crockett, though.

In the 80s, TBS was to

make the stars get the talent over, increase the exposure.

But the local syndicated television in the

markets and the cities across the country that they were running live events in, that's the ones where we did specific promos for this day, this night, and this building.

And more people

in that particular town were watching the syndicated wrestling program that were watching it on TBS because more people

could have an antenna and get it for free instead of pay the cable system and have cable in those days.

All right, Jim, a couple more questions before we get to our final final topic.

This was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Aiden Barnhart.

Oh, come on.

What was it like doing live?

Why are you making these names up now?

Charlie from Starkville, I could believe that was some Goomer's name, but these.

This is Aiden Barnhart.

Aiden Barnhart.

Say it.

I don't need to aid Barnhart.

He can do it on his own.

What was it like doing LiveWire in 96 with Vince, Schittstain, and P.

Hay?

I think it means Michael P.S.

Hayes.

It was the first thing I ever saw involving Jim and wrestling a few years ago, and it's what first got me into the cult.

Oh, good lord.

You never think about that, do you?

The idea that there are fans who discovered you on Live Wire?

No,

more like the fans who fucking fingered me on Live Wire.

Yeah, that's him.

That's the one.

Let's not talk about you being fingered.

Let's get back to this question.

That was the worst television show that the WWF has ever done.

And for those of you who don't remember it, it was they got, it was on USA, right?

Yeah, in the morning.

Saturday morning at like 10 o'clock, WWF Live Wire, where we would be, go ahead.

I was going to say, did it replace WWF Mania, the Todd Pettengill show?

Something like that.

Yeah.

There was a show that had compilations of different matches from different tapings that aired.

And and

maybe it was more to appeal to the kids on Saturday morning but instead that was it Vincent Kevin Dunn had a brilliant idea live wire where all of us would be actually in the

control room at the studio at the at the TV studio in Stanford

And we would be getting, this was the early days of email, so we'd be reading people's emails as they came in and people would call in

and it would be like a news

central program, whatever.

I don't know what the fuck.

Point is,

I think five or six weeks in a row until somehow I got out of it and it didn't last long as a program anyway.

But I had to get up on Saturday

at like fucking seven o'clock in the morning and go to Stanford and stand there and do this fucking show.

That it was the only wrestling show in the history of wrestling.

It didn't have any wrestling in it.

And it was just like, it was like a television show of call-in radio.

Am I overstating this case?

You remember it.

It was a very interesting thing at a time where Vince seemed to be throwing anything against the wall, just hoping something would stick.

It wasn't even just that WCW was breathing down his neck.

You know, there have been several years where Vince was trying to figure out the next thing and he went with this.

This is where.

Vince Russo first got on TV.

This is where they would do.

I don't even know if you...

Speaking of throwing something against the wall, it would have probably been better ratings if i'd have thrown him against the wall i don't know if you would call it an angle but this is where they would do angles or stuff like having paul heyman call in as a what was his name bruce in connecticut bruce from connecticut so i mean it was uh it was an interesting idea in the early days of the internet the idea that you're doing chats and you know just the idea of getting fans involved and well they were doing chats when nobody was chatting

and nobody watched this show and it killed my saturday morning And that's where the clip where I had to fucking suffer the presence of shit stain wandering in and doing his fucking shtick with his Howard Stern wannabe and his black clothing and his,

you know, anti-establishment.

I'm one of the cool kids because I replace all my S's with Z's bullshit

that we had to fucking stand there and fucking suffer through.

It just,

I don't,

does anybody remember how long that show lasted before they changed the format again because it wasn't long

i wonder if that's on the wikipedia i'm looking for it now uh oh wow this is this true hold on one second

the history of wwe's most bizarre show for the sports sir

did it last as long as they're saying here that's what i want to see

according to this it lasted until 2001 What no, okay, wait a minute.

That can't be right.

When did they change the format?

I'm not saying how long did they have a show called WWF LiveWire, but how long was it that we were in that fucking studio?

Hold on.

It went off the air August 2001.

By February 97, LiveWire reverted to a typical wrestling recap.

Okay, all right, okay.

When did it start?

It started in October of 96.

Oh, there you go.

Okay, so four months, but I think I got out early.

What did Vince think when he watched it?

I mean, I'm assuming he watched it when he wasn't there, but I mean, what, did he think this was good or was he just willing to try?

Because usually he only does the things he personally likes.

Did he like this?

I think he was there the day that I argued with Russo and Tammy was on there and all that stuff.

I think he was there.

But I think it was like Shotgun Saturday Night

when they launched that and they were going to do it from nightclubs all over New York City with the dancing girls and the fucking young hip vibe and the flying nuns and all that other other shit.

And that lasted about six or eight weeks.

And then they just shot it after a raw taping.

And it was in an arena.

And there you go.

But

Jim Ross was on one of the, I think, the show with me and fucking Russo sniping at each other.

And there's a picture of Still Frame I've seen on Twitter where he's just looking at the camera like, God, can somebody just shoot me in the head to get me out of here?

This is Saturday fucking morning.

And what are we doing?

And nobody's watching this.

But well, I say nobody was watching it, but I bet now

with the changing times, there was probably about as many people

watching on Saturday morning on USA, us stand there and fucking talk to random fans and plants as there is watching Dynamite.

Jim, another question from the Cult of Cornet Facebook group.

This was sent in by Chris Younger.

It's a frequent topic of conversation.

Which wrestlers were legitimate badasses outside of the ring, like Harley Race?

My question for Jim is: what managers who weren't originally wrestlers were legitimate badasses?

Well, that may be.

Hold on.

Well, let's first off start naming

managers that weren't originally wrestlers.

Me,

Paul E.

They were safe on the the badass list from either of those.

Jimmy Hart.

Jimmy Hart.

I'm sorry, I know this may pop a lot of people's bubble, but Jimmy was not a student of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.

Now, let's actually, some of the people who were wrestlers, who some fans may not know, like Paul Bearer, Percy Pringle was a wrestler.

Oliver Humberdink was a wrestler.

Yes, and that's what I was going to say.

Bobby Heenan

actually,

he managed first, but he kind of started doing both at the same time.

And they would just have him fill in before he became a manager that anybody would want to see,

you know, actually wrestle on purpose.

But, you know, Bobby, he wasn't a big

hump,

no Percy, no.

I mean, I'm trying to think if you.

And again, badass depends on your interpretation.

Paul Ellering was a manager, but he was a wrestler and an incredible powerlifter and bodybuilder first and

a very intelligent guy and very level-headed and soft-spoken, except if he was riled up or something.

But you wouldn't think of him as a badass, but in his day, you would not have fucked with him.

Karen Jarrett.

Well, now, hold on, we may have one for the badass list.

Um,

boy, if she if she is stiff as shooting with you, she is working with you.

Um, no, we love you, Karen.

Um, you know, Skandor Akbar was a wrestler first, he was a badass.

Um, the Commandant,

he was not a wrestler.

I'm trying to think of any managers that weren't wrestling.

I mean, really, when you think about him, Gary Hart even wrestled before he was a manager, and Gary was probably more dangerous as a manager than he was as a wrestler.

Gary, in the early 60s, as a wrestler, was rotten.

Albano and Blassey, both wrestlers, Grand Wizard, obviously, not, but not a tough guy in any way.

Oh, uh, Paul Jones, former wrestler, yeah.

I don't think it's that genre has existed because here's the thing.

If a guy was that tough,

they wouldn't start him out as a manager.

They would start him as a wrestler, which is why we're having this conversation.

And part of being a manager

in the vein of me and Heenan and Bobby Davis and Paul E and Jimmy Hart, et cetera, is that we are weasels that,

you know, would be easy prey prey if the situation was fair.

So

it really doesn't, yeah, go ahead.

You know who, but it went the other way.

Dallas Page.

Because before he was a wrestler, he was what, six foot six as a manager?

He owned a bar?

Well, I don't think he's 6'6.

6'5 ⁇ .

I think 6'3.

Oh, really?

I think.

I'm willing to be corrected, but I mean, I've never thought of Page as a basketball star, but he's a big, tall guy.

No, I thought he was like 6'5.

Well, he had a couple inches of hair in those days.

That's true.

That's true.

But again, before he was a wrestler, he became a wrestler, what, 92, 91, 92?

Yeah.

He may be on the list for biggest badasses who were managers but never wrestlers.

But he might not want to be on that list because you're like, that's like being on a list of the nicest guys in prison.

What the fuck?

The early days, Leo the Lion, Newman.

Wild Red Berry.

Wild Red Berry.

Was a wrestler.

Bobby Davis.

Junior heavyweight champion.

Bobby Davis didn't wrestle

first.

He wrestled when forced, not first.

Well, see, that's a thing.

The Bobby Davis, Bobby Heenan, Jim Cornett, Jimmy Hart, Paul E.

lineage,

they don't wrestle first.

They wrestle when forced.

Teddy Long.

He was a referee first.

Well, but I mean, and again, Teddy, I wouldn't want to just go up and say, well, fuck you, do something about it, but Teddy's not a goddamn haku.

Yeah, I guess that's uh it's hard.

It's a hard question when you really think about it.

So who's the biggest badass amongst Heyman Cornett, Jimmy Hart?

Whoever

I got to go with Bobby Heenan, but you don't consider

he could have whipped all of us.

But again, I guess that goes back to the question.

They were not a wrestler first.

Like you said, Heenan, I mean, when was his first match compared to when he first started managing?

Well, that's the thing is they told him they were going to make him a manager,

and he was going to manage Guy Mitchell and Joe Tommaso were the assassins for Bruiser.

But his first show was in Louisville, and I think it was Tommaso didn't show up, so they put him under the fucking hood and had him stand in the corner because he didn't know what the fuck he was doing.

But he was one of the assassins, but technically he was supposed to be their manager, but that was his first fucking deal.

So, but he didn't really wrestle.

So, I mean, it's up in the air.

All right, Jim, one final question before we get to our last topic here on the final drive-through of 2024.

This was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Antonio Orlando.

He's an all-star contributor, it says.

Did he break up with Don?

That's a different Orlando.

That's Tony Orlando.

Well, that's what you said.

Well, this is Antonio Orlando.

Well, you're being more proper.

Maybe this is Tony Kahn's alias.

Who knows?

Does Courney think Michael Jackson would have been a good worker?

And could someone like Sean Michaels have headlined a WrestleMania with him pre-allegations?

Pre- or post?

No.

Pre-po during.

If he actually was committing the acts that he was accused of, it wouldn't have gone on WrestleMania.

Did you hear that right before he died, they were going to do a big co-sponsorship for that tour with McDonald's and Michael Jackson?

For the This Is It thing?

No, No, I didn't.

Yeah, they were going to come out with a McMichaels sandwich, a 40-year-old piece of meat in between two 10-year-old buns.

Okay, that's

and that's terrible.

But they never, they never.

But again,

he was going to do

a whole tour with Elton John ending in an HBO special where they duetted on Don't Let Your Son Go Down on Me.

Okay, listen, let's get back to the question.

It's a serious question.

Would should

Michael Jackson have been a good worker?

So before we get to the Shawn Michaels match, in terms of working a match against another 115-pound man,

do you think he'd have the ability to sell, to maybe do some fancy moves?

What do you think?

No,

remember.

Promo?

Yes, he was.

Let me tell you this.

I'm bad.

I'm bad.

Shit, honey.

Yes, he was a great athlete as a dancer and to do all of that stuff.

He had cardio and wind, but also, also, as you said, he was 115 pounds.

One body slam, it might have displaced his fucking internal organs.

And

because of the nature of his life and upbringing and everything, I don't think he ever

did anything in the way of sports or whatever.

And

it was wrestling, I don't think, would I think would be more aggressive, possibly, than his normal personality and demeanor seemed like that it would.

Can you see him doing a promo as as a baby face or a heel

um no

yeah so no I don't

now could it be that old Tony Orlando there is on the pro profile too and that's where he came up with that question I mean it's an interesting question no it's not you know he obviously

he would have been able to feudal Michael Hayes over the moonwalk in the ring who moonwalked first I think that could have been something

that could have been really a big deal and him against Sean Michaels would Would Shawn Michaels have been able to get a good match out of Michael Jackson at WrestleMania?

No, no.

Pre-allegations.

Again, pre- or post or whatever period of time, no, because even if Michaels was a stellar worker, you can't...

You can't get blood out of a turnip and you couldn't get a fucking WrestleMania match out of Michael Jackson.

I'm sorry.

It just, no,

that would not compute.

If instead of Mr.

T, it had been Hulk Hogan and Michael Jackson against Roddy Piper and Paul Rendorf?

In that case, I bet you Piper would be more famous than he is now.

Because I guarantee you he'd have gone into business for himself on that one.

You know, the other thing, too, is beyond, you know, getting all the allegations and beyond Michael Jackson even, the idea of

a dancer, someone who's been dancing at that level, those kind of dance moves for so many years, getting into the ring, you have to wonder about wear and tear.

I mean, it looks so nice and fluid, but they're fucking up their knees, they're fucking up everything, their their joints, because you're not supposed to move in a lot of the ways that they're moving as often as they do it.

So you have to wonder one bad run to the ropes, they're fucking negos.

Well, but remember Ricky Starr, the ballet dancing wrestler.

That was his whole gimmick because he was a ballet dancer.

And also, but he was,

he wasn't the biggest guy in the history of the wrestling business, but he wasn't

like six feet tall and 115 pounds or whatever.

So he was an athlete and he was able to,

you know, coalesce the ballet into the wrestling and pirouette around and still make it fucking make it work.

All right, but no Michael Jackson.

No Michael Jackson.

No Michael, no Michael, no Michael.

All right, Jim, our final topic here this week, and this is a big story.

I don't know how much of it we're going to read through.

It's a big article in The Athletic, and also the New York Times broadcast it, broadcast it, published it.

The headline:

Lee Fitting was ESPN's golden boy.

Then his alleged misconduct finally caught up to him.

Published December 18th by Katie Strang and Andrew Marchand, or Marchand, the Marchman, whatever he is.

Marchman Marchand.

You've had a lot going on this past week.

Have you been following this at all?

Did you get to see any of this?

Well, I've read up on some of this here, and I have some notes printed out.

The article in the athletic, as you said, said, printed in the New York Times.

And there's some quotes and et cetera.

But they basically tell the story.

Lee Fitting is the guy who replaced Kevin Dunn, obviously, for our audience and our purposes, and has transformed the look of the

WWE television programming where everybody's like, God damn, what could have got rid of Kevin Dunn 20 years ago?

And everybody's praised that.

And the article says that they praised him.

His work at ESPN was allegedly stellar.

And

so everybody's saying not only does he get the business and

know how to produce this show and hire the people and et cetera, but also they said that he had a great personality and he schmoozed with the sponsors and the corporate

business people that they had to

be associated with.

But now when that came out, I was like, oh, God, what would this guy?

Whose head was he shitting on now?

But when you read this, it's like,

Jesus, H Christ on a cracker.

I want to go through a few of these things because

people are.

You really do have notes.

Yes, because people are so until his behavior caught up with him.

And I'm thinking, oh, what the fuck have they found out this guy did?

Now, there was something

about

the College Game Day on ESPN.

They were involved in a scheme

to falsify their submissions to the Emmy people.

And a College Game Day ended up getting like 30 fucking Emmys that they really shouldn't have gotten.

He's banned for life.

Well, and, you know, one would think that

that'll do it.

And, you know, you need to get fired for that one.

What's interesting, though, all the talk about Paul Heyman thinking guys deserve an Emmy of Lee Fitting is the executive producer, his name's at the end of every show now.

Does that preclude any consideration at all?

Because he's not allowed to ever participate ever again?

Well, but at the same point,

maybe they thought, well, if we hire him, we can get some fucking Emmys.

No, but anyway, I would back

if you've been in a scheme to

be awarded fraudulent Emmys and you're a television producer, chances are you're going to get to fucking boot, right?

But this is not what they're talking about.

And I want to go over a few.

Do you mind if I go over a few of these things?

No, please, please.

Okay.

His behavior went unchecked for years, the story said, and was said to have devastating effects on numerous women.

And some noted they left ESPN in part due to experiences of working with this guy.

Apparently, some people, a group of employees, went to human resources

in ESPN,

and here's some of the things that he's

accused of doing.

Right, there was a claim

that he and others were watching a basketball game in a conference room.

They weren't playing the ball game in the conference room, they were watching it on television, and they were in a conference room.

I want to make that clear.

And Lee Fitting talked about a woman who didn't work at the company and said her ability to open her throat to drink a beer

made it

said that she'd be good at oral sex

so i've never heard

i've heard a lot of you know people talk about a member of the opposite sex giving them a blowjob or whatever but i've never heard a guy say look at the way that woman can open her throat

But again, they're sitting there watching a fucking ball game on television and they get a fucking shot of a woman drinking a beer and he's, I bet she'd be a good blowjob.

God damn, somebody's put this guy in fucking prison.

What the fuck?

Here's another one.

Go ahead.

Again, I don't think there's any issue with saying that amongst your friends sitting there watching it.

The problem is,

whether right or wrong, if someone, if anyone is bothered by that comment in the room, no matter how many people are there, that's enough for them to file a complaint.

Well, then they ought to leave the fucking room because this guy was the boss.

What the fuck?

And who's going to be

again?

Big shit.

He denied that happened also.

Also, in a production meeting with no chairs available for a woman to sit in, Fitting patted his lap and said, I've got a place right here.

Yeah, that may be a problem.

Okay, but let me ask you, I need some context.

Did they actually

go and get a chair for this woman and bring it in, let her sit down and continue on with the meeting?

Or did he make her sit on his lap or stand up?

Then I got a problem.

Otherwise, what the fuck?

He's jacking around.

There is shit happening in the world that is actually worth being written about in the fucking news, and this ain't it.

Um,

um, an ESPN employee said Fitting sent her a text message saying, You look hot.

Okay,

maybe she did.

But again, though, this isn't just.

But a producer claimed the woman's hands were shaking when she showed him the message.

Because again, you're leaving at the part where he was the boss.

All of a sudden, the boss is texting the woman.

Yes, if the boss tells me I look hot, I'm like, hey, fucking A, there you go, I'm in.

But is it going to make your hands shake, or are you just going to text back, thank you, move on?

Whatever the fuck.

If he saw a woman in an outfit he liked, he'd tell her.

See, again, though, that's where it gets ridiculous.

He's producing a television show.

Yes.

Well, then, that's a.

He said fitting would tell women on camera how to style their hair, what outfits to wear.

He's the fucking producer.

He told one woman, put your hair at a ponytail.

And she claimed he said, if you don't do it, I'll do it for you.

Well, did he do it for her?

Or again, I need context.

Somebody said he bragged about his sex life with his wife.

Was that in the context of a joke, or did he just blurt out one day in the middle of a production meeting?

By the way, Phoebe gave me a hell of a blowjob last night.

You know, that shot you got of the crowd the other day was really, oh, by the way, you know, I was fucking the shit out of my wife last night, and I thought, man, I got to let everyone know how much I love fucking.

They said he would direct the cameramen, or it says on what I've got here, he'd direct the producers.

He was a producer, that's it.

But he would direct the crew to scan the crowd in the ball games for hot women to show on the air.

Isn't that what they all do?

Not just ball games.

If a wrestling production had the budget and the extra cameras, when we only had two or three, we couldn't get crowd shots at all.

But yes, Jackie Crockett made a goddamn career out of finding hot women in the fucking crowd to shoot, whether it made air or not.

See, that's that's the problem.

I think nowadays you need a producer who could say, ignore the gorgeous people, let's see some fuglies on the show.

That's what we need-more ugly fans, not the hot fans who somehow get mixed in with the fucking general population.

Okay, wait a minute.

He said, They said at one point at a 2012 Notre Dame game, he thought the Notre Dame cheerleaders weren't attractive enough and ordered no shots of them.

See, that's

I'm sorry, that's funny to me.

Yes,

I swear to God, I've been.

Don't shoot the ugly cheerleaders.

Who's complaining about that?

I'm trying to think.

I have been,

I don't remember where it was or when it was, but I've been there with somebody.

Oh, Jesus Christ, don't shoot her

on a wrestling show.

Anyway,

so I've,

another woman said she asked to meet with Fitting three times about her career.

And each time he asked her to go out for drinks.

That might be a fucking hint that he doesn't really is not interested in talking about your career.

But she declined.

There are no assaults.

There are no false imprisonments.

There are no

inappropriate contact.

There's no actual accusation of anybody getting fired because they wouldn't diddle this guy.

Just, he's,

he apparently has got a fireball personality to him.

He likes to make fucking remarks.

But

my favorite thing is the actual image of him at the top of the thing.

He just looks like such a happy guy who's going to immediately cause trouble.

Yeah.

But.

Hey, big smile, big smile.

All right.

Hey, did I tell you I was fucking my wife?

But that's the thing is that, you know, the former espn president calls this guy a golden boy because of his personality his ability to connect with coaches socialize with executives corporate sponsors over drinks he does a great job producing television for a variety of genres

i'm sorry this is what the fuck has everybody lost their sense of proportion and and then

janelle grant's lawyer Listen to this.

Again,

she jumps on everything.

They jump on anything.

They don't know when to pick their spots.

And they start sounding like whiny old wash women instead of people trying to fight for justice.

Because she said, listen to this.

How can WWE claim they're committed to improving the company's culture and at the same time hire a man earlier this year who was accused of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment in his previous role?

These allegations are extremely concerning.

Revelations like this are why Janelle Grant's lawyers sent a letter to WWE and Endeavor encouraging or urging them to release all current and former employees from their MDAs.

The same old boys club who enabled

Janelle Grant's abuse are continuing to put alleged predators in a leadership.

How is he a predator?

At worst, he's rude and potentially obnoxious.

What the fuck?

I mean, it's.

WWE has stated a comment.

He's fitting right in.

But I'm sorry, but you got to just have some goddamn context and some perspective to these things.

People, if you're going to be calling people a predator because they fucking

Ask people to sit on their lap at a production meeting.

Go ahead.

I'm just pissed.

No, I was just going to say, Janelle Grant's attorney, right or wrong, jumps on any story at all involving WWE or the McMahon's or anything involving them.

Of course, Lee Fitting had nothing to do with anything during the time that Janelle Grant was there.

Predator?

You can call this guy a predator because he got a bad sense of humor.

The fuck.

It's ridiculous.

And that's why a lot of people

with that goofball

shyster Greek lawyer that was doing the concussion lawsuit.

Oh, Constantine Kryos.

There you go.

He just, he did such a shoddy job and was just bleh.

But people,

when they first heard about the Janelle Grant lawsuit, they're willing to go, oh, shit, we need to hear more about this.

But when they just beat it to death and they lose their credibility, as Butch Reed would say, selling wolf tickets, crying wolf, where there ain't no problem, then that's why people tune them out and it hurts their client.

Well,

the other interesting thing is this article comes out.

You know, I don't know what the timing says.

Usually with things like this, when they get out there,

there's something going on.

But this article all of a sudden comes out.

It's not like it's going to change anything about Lee Fitting's role in WWE.

They're not going to make a comment.

This is an old thing.

It makes you wonder where this came from.

that all of a sudden now,

you know, they said they've been talking to lots of people.

They spoke to, I think at one point said like up to 20 different women that had worked for espn who has a long history by the way espn of issues with sexual harassment or misconduct in the office going back to the beginning if you read the espn oral history the beginning of espn all the secretaries were hookers

but anyway espn's had issues with their culture that way they had something to fall back on And, you know, it's funny, you think about someone, Lee Fitting, he was working ESPN.

That's Bristol, Connecticut.

It's just a ride up the road from WWE.

So

he's still in Connecticut.

I wonder if he uses the same personal trainer as Vince.

There's joking around.

Obviously, some of the women probably felt like they had to do something sexual, although no one's saying they did anything sexual.

Well, yeah, that's the point.

I'm saying there's actually nobody saying that anything legitimately happened happened.

That would change the story.

Now you change your story.

Well, do you think this is a non-story or do you think this is anything?

Yeah, no, nobody.

The job this guy is doing, and if he's as

qualified and competent with all of the bullshitting with sponsors and all that stuff, and as on the ball as he's allegedly is in every other way, they're not going to get rid of him because

somebody says, Well, he tells bad jokes and made my hand shake when he told me I was good looking.

The fuck.

Well,

what a fitting end.

The fuck.

The fuck?

The fuck.

Oh, that's not the sound I want.

Hold on.

What is this?

But ladies and gentlemen, with that.

Had too much feedback on that.

We're going to wrap up the drive-through.

We're going to wrap it up for 2024.

Of course, there'll be omnibuses coming up for the next week or so.

There'll be lots of clips on YouTube.

Anything big or breaking happens, we'll be here.

If anyone big breaks anything, we'll be here also.

But Jim, final words to the listeners, 2024, another year in the books, 2025, right around the corner.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody.

We appreciate what you have put up with from us over the course of this last year, and we'll try to give you even more happy horseshit in 2025.

That's right.

On behalf of myself and everyone here at Arcadian Vanguard, Merry Christmas.

Happy Hanukkah.

Happy New Year.

We hope everyone has had a wonderful 2024.

2025 will be better.

The shows will get better.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's our commitment to you.

Now, let's not box this in.

Songs and the usual shenanigans return in the new year.

But one final time for Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian last.

Happy New Year!

Tallyho!