Episode 370

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Hello again, friends.

And you are our friends and welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornette's drive-thru.

Right here, wherever you find us, wherever you are, wherever we are.

It's the post-Thanksgiving, not necessarily hungover, but stuffed, stuffed with food.

and stuffed with wrestling talk edition of the drive-thru.

I'm your host, the great Brian Last.

The energy has already left.

Here he he is, Mr.

Jim Cornette.

If they're our friends, truly and really and honestly, then why are you subjecting them to that oral assault

on your keyboard?

Well, first of all, I wouldn't call it a keyboard.

Second of all, I was going to use the Continental.

Hold on.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

It says.

It says like the music that follows the fat guy down the street.

but well if that's not a

okay yeah time out

if that's not a keyboard then how do you make those sounds that's part of the mystery that's what people have to figure out in their head you close your eyes what does he look like what is he playing where is he what's going on what's happening who am i I don't know that a lot of thought would be given to any of those things except maybe the last one by anybody out there.

But nevertheless,

nevertheless.

Nevertheless, and don't let me digress.

It is the post-Thanksgiving.

You know, Brian, here's the thing:

there are people all over the United States of America.

I don't know where else in the world.

Maybe in our subsidiaries in Guam, they celebrate the American Thanksgiving on the

last Thursday of the month of November, unless it falls on the last day of the month, in which case that it's the second to last, but that's a loophole that we don't need to go into now.

And Canadian Thanksgiving is when?

It's like Wayne Gretzky's birthday or something, right?

It's either that or no, the day after Christmas is when they box all their shit up and take it back if they don't want Boxing Day, right?

Oh,

that's that's

I thought it was invented by Jack Curley.

I didn't know what Boxing Day was.

No, it was actually William Muldoon had a hand in it, but Google that while I continue on my tirade.

So most people.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, because it's followed by the Saturday and then Sunday and nobody works.

So you're just, you just

might as well just go the whole stretch.

You get a Thanksgiving weekend.

Many people out there

are spending this day in celebratory fashion with their families and relaxing in the comfort of their easy chairs in front of their fires while they regurgitate all of that trip to fan from the turkey.

Or they're out there for some reason risking their lives trying to take a ball peen hammer to get the last fucking Betsy Wetsy doll away from some guy at Target.

I don't know what goes on on those things.

But here we are talking to each other.

How did we get ourselves into this position?

Why have we done this to ourselves?

We're independent contractors.

We allegedly work for ourselves and set our own schedule.

And somehow.

We never have a day off when most people have a day off.

How has this happened to ourselves?

What, that grammar?

Or what specifically was it?

Well, then there it became.

How has it happened that we,

you and I,

graduates of major universities, as Carson used to say to McMahon, have found ourselves in a position where we work on days when most people don't?

Well, it depends if you consider it work or not.

Well, it's talking to you for four hours.

That's pretty laborious.

Well, if that's too much, I could give you four hours of this.

Well, but let's

continue our conversation.

Oh, okay.

So it's the day after Thanksgiving, and yes,

what was the

menu like there at Last Manor?

Did you have just

a feast there on the table?

You've got young ones there.

You've got Swami.

You got a whole bunch of mouths to feed.

Have you taken in any refugees or even relatives that might have come by?

There were no refugees here, but we had a lot of relatives here.

And we had a fantastic feast.

You bring up Swami.

That's the biggest problem.

All these people are at this big table.

Who does the one person he comes to non-stop?

Scratches the side of the seat, scratching my leg.

He thinks I'm the only one there that's going to feed him.

And he ends up being right because I get sick of him and I start throwing him turkey.

Well, that he knows which side of the turkey his bread's buttered on.

There.

But it was delicious

well there you go and and see we we downsized this year at castle cornet what'd you do let me guess emo's pizza and your world famous macaroni and cheese

i don't have world see you don't even pay any attention when i try to teach you about the the foodstuffs that go on in the world

You don't even, it's not macaroni and cheese from emo's.

Oh, you're way off.

You're just way off.

It's not Mandalay Industries.

You made a special meal the ghost and mr chicken parmesan

actually you know what when i write my cookbook i've been threatening myself

i've been threatening myself i'm gonna do this since i got skinny to show people how you can cut corners on these recipes and still eat fairly fat guy sloppy food but you you you shave a little off everything and you get in the right direction but I'm going to steal that, the ghost and Mr.

Chicken Parmesan.

But no, because the in-laws, this is their last Thanksgiving in California before they'll be moved out here in the new year.

And so they're all out there.

And

my cousin is indisposed because of his health.

So there wasn't a big particular get-together there.

So Stace and I decided I was only going to sign action figures for half a day.

And then I knocked off and we had a nice family Thanksgiving dinner with me and her and Harley where we can sit here and watch cartoons on Me TV Toons.

Oh, how do you get it?

Whoa, let's stop right there because you've never revealed that you finally accessed it.

How do you get it?

I got it because she got it on her TV and she knows how to turn it on and watch it.

And I was sitting there while it was going on.

She used an app?

Apparently, you'll have to, it's no secret.

She apps things.

Right, but there's no Me TV Tunes app.

You have to get it through another app.

I was just curious what method she used to access these classic tunes.

Oh, God damn it.

Now you have to make everything fucking complicated.

I know something that was,

she can change the channel on the TV on her phone.

Yeah.

I mean, everyone does that.

What do you, yeah, you just say that, yeah, like, hey, I can eat lightning and clap thunder.

Well, yeah.

Is it clap thunder?

I always thought it was eat lightning crap thunder.

Well, it became clap thunder whenever the wrestler started stealing it on television, but you couldn't say crap.

But anyway, back to my

dinner over here at Castle Court Air.

We had some peace and quiet, and I didn't feel guilty for not fucking doing anything for once.

And said it, and Stace, with her bad back, by the way, we set up a station

where she had a chair so she didn't have to stand for long periods of time because she prepares all this stuff.

And I was the one to just stick it in the oven or pull it out to get basted or get pans out of the fucking high or low cupboards or whatever.

So I was the sous chef.

Actually, if I was ever a chef, I bet I'd get sued pretty much immediately.

By Stephen Pinu.

No, he, I would think he would at least give me some kind of immunity if even if I poisoned somebody.

Unless you fed him.

Unless he had to eat it.

No, I would never do that.

Anyway,

Stacy fixes the

best turkey.

The skin is crispy with the seasoning that she does.

It's like it's a goddamn rotisserie rotisserie.

It's history.

That's my upcoming podcast, The History of Rotisserie Chicken.

And then you'll do a coffee table book about that.

Well, the legs will fold out.

Anyway, the skin is crispy and it's seasoned like a delicious rotisserie chicken with this special herbs and spices mixture she does, while the meat is still juicy on the inside instead of so dry, you got to eat it in the rain, like a lot of people's turkey.

And I was just gnawing on one of the legs while I was putting things away after we ate dinner.

Then I had dinner, but it was a succulent turkey, is what it was.

And of course, with gravy, because you got to have that to put on the mashed potatoes.

And she roasted some sweet potatoes because she likes sweet potatoes, and Harley had a few of those.

Harley had her own baked naked chicken tender

because she's so frisky and her appetite is back.

We've got her on the right cocktail of medications per day.

And we also had

my mother's recipe of the broccoli and cheese stuffing,

which are not broccoli and chip, but broccoli and cheese casserole.

which everybody likes, and stuffing, which Stace had to have, but I can take or leave because I feel like it takes up room.

You could be eating more meat and you don't want to be a hero.

And also green beans from Paul's market and

she made a dozen deviled eggs

just to say we did.

All right, but it was just...

Does Paul's market have special green beans?

What's that?

They got great green beans.

Great green.

That's why we like the green beans.

So instead of us trying to make substandard green beans, we get the good green beans from Paul's.

And that was so.

We see this all sitting on a table, and there's her, me, and Harley.

And

she's saying, Just the two of us, we can eat it if we try.

But we've still got a lot of turkey left over because she's making homemade hot browns with a homemade Mornay sauce tomorrow for the

weekend of Thanksgiving feast

and

individual bunt cakes and either bunt cakes from nothing bunt cake or cakes in a tub from Paul's market.

What is this Paul's market?

Are they sponsoring you?

I've never heard of this place.

And all of a sudden, you've mentioned them like a hundred times.

No, because I love going over there because they have great burger meat and cake in a tub.

And they also have a bunch of people.

What is cake in a tub?

What is

missing?

Instead of having to buy an entire cake, right?

And then you're, and I'm not minding this, I don't mind commitment, but you're committed to eating a whole fucking cake,

or buying a slice of cake that somebody has sliced, and sometimes the icing to cake ratio is not correct, or they've chosen to make it particularly that size and blah, blah, blah.

Paul's market has cake in a tub, where it is a

plastic tub, I guess of, oh, let's say a 16-ounce variety.

And they just, the, the, the supplier of the cake that they get it from

plops a bunch of fucking cake and a bunch of fucking icing in there

and snaps the top on it.

And then you can just take the tub.

And if you want to eat the whole thing,

or if you just want to eat part of it and then put the top back on, it's fresh, it's airtight.

And you can control your balance of icing to cake

because you're just digging into it and it's in there at random.

Cake in a tub

from Paul's boutique.

Yes,

there on Greenwich.

Or what street was that on?

That was very good.

You know, I'm not sure, but you may have.

Or it was in the Bowery somewhere.

Well, the Bowery is a street.

The Bowery is a long.

Well, then, it was, but nevertheless.

So, I got different flavors for each day of the goddamn celebratory Thanksgiving weekend season.

That way, you can just, you know, you can have your variety there.

All right.

This has been Bunt Cake Talk.

All right.

Well, you know where you can get variety real quick and let's get it out of the way.

JimCornet.com.

You can get all kinds of variety over there.

And if you have,

and you probably have, if you're hearing this, missed out

on the $40 off on the Midnight Express Action Figure 4 pack that took place until Tuesday, December 3rd at noon.

Then God help you, as Mama Cornette would say, you have shit and fell back in it.

But

things are still on sale at everyday low prices at jimcornet.com.

And

again, God help you if you don't order quickly because we've

the day of Thanksgiving, we were almost caught up to the end of November as far as what's been signed and in the pipeline.

But especially

even domestically, if you don't get your order in in the next few days,

it'll be a New Year's present instead of a Christmas present is all I'm saying to you.

JimCornet.com

and no fucking body is going to beat you over the head with a ball peen hammer trying to get in the door to get the last Betsy Wetsy doll.

You know, one of my random new action figures, Brian, actually pisses itself.

What do you do?

You like squeeze the legs together and it pisses out?

And no, it just leaks for some fucking reason.

I don't know why it came like that in the box.

So I put it just at random and was so one happy person is going to get a leaky Jim Cornette doll that pisses on itself.

It's like the golden ticket.

Yeah, it's like when they have like a picture of the Virgin Mary, it starts crying or something.

This is a big deal.

Yes, it'll be one of a kind.

It's the only one I found yet.

And it only leaks if it's over 50 degrees.

So in the wintertime, you should be good.

JimCornet.com.

JimCornet.com.

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

It's time to move on.

Yes.

And, you know, I know we're going to talk about dynamite.

And you watch some of Raw.

I don't even remember if I did, and I really don't care.

Well, and that's the thing is, is I've got a couple of observations, but I think they're not wanting us to really care that much right now.

They're saving it.

Yeah.

And the pay-per-view is about to happen, but I want to start with a couple of stories just because they're actually kind of happening on Twitter right now as we're recording.

The first one revolves around the latest Wrestling Observer newsletter star ratings for AEW Full Gear.

Oh, Christ on a cracker already.

I have not seen these yet, so let me open this up and we'll go through this.

Because we just reviewed it, and,

you know, again, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, every match at a certain point went at least 20 minutes.

Yeah.

Felt like it was longer, had long moments of just silence, and then everyone kicked out of everything

over and over and over again.

Well, half of them are the

badasses, and half of them are the video game characters or the kung fu movie specialists.

And so you got the extremes of either one or the other.

Anna J defeated Deanna Perazzo, seven minutes, 22 seconds, one

and a quarter stars.

I can't argue with that because I didn't watch it.

Buddy Matthews won a four-way over Commander, Beast Mortos, aka Frank the Lawyer, and Dante Martin,

three and three-quarter stars.

Oh, Jesus.

So

by the first

men's match, the four-way on the pre-show were up to almost flaring steamboat levels.

But we're not there yet.

Big Boom AJ defeated QT Marshall 11 minutes, 44 seconds.

Okay, hold on a second.

Hold on a second before you tell me anything.

And we've talked about that we did watch this match, and we said, basically, besides the fact that it got over with the people, you know, better than almost anything on

the rest of the event,

that they had a basic match that they didn't fuck up in any way and now we found out the poor guy

old old boomer AJ the AJ boom

uh broke his foot in one of the early spots and still finished the fucking match and he hadn't worked in 27 years or whatever the fuck it is They had a basic match they didn't really fuck up and they did it for the fucking room and for the publicity.

And

if you rate it on a level of, did it succeed in what it was supposed to be, it would be four stars.

But if you're rating it as a wrestling match, what would you say?

Two or two and a half on anybody's reasonable

scale?

And that's what it got here.

Dave Meltzer gave it two and a half stars.

Okay, and then he did it probably because that's political, because he didn't want to put it over too much, but he couldn't fucking bury him.

So he put it in the middle.

You know, another thing that needs to be said, considering what we said before about the 20-minute matches that went on endlessly on this show,

that match was 11 minutes and 44 seconds, and it was kind of perfect that it didn't go any longer.

Yeah.

If it had, it wouldn't have been, the pops wouldn't have been as big.

The excitement would have gone down.

It just would have fallen apart.

A lot of these matches, I'm not saying everyone's big boom AJ and QT Marshall,

but a lot of these matches would have done a lot better and been more effective, been effective at all if they weren't 20 minutes.

Well, and with QT and AJ,

everybody's initials are over these days.

They probably went out there thinking bell to bell they were going to go 10 minutes and it took them an extra minute and change whatever it was because people reacted real well and they took a few minutes or not a few minutes, but a little bit longer each time to fucking milk shit.

And that's probably what they were aiming for to begin with.

And that was exactly what they needed to do.

The opening match on the main show: Private Party retaining the AEW tag titles over the Outrunners, the Kings of the Black Throne, and the Acclaimed 13 minutes, 22 seconds, two and a quarter stars.

Okay, and we didn't honestly have time to peruse that on this five and a half hour marathon, so I can't argue with him.

MJF, and this is the final

under 20-minute match, I think, until the Lashley match.

MJF defeated Roderick Strong 13 minutes, 40 seconds,

three stars.

Oh, good Lord.

So

the four-way with Random Jones and his, you know, Hillbilly gang

in the pre-show is three and three-quarter stars.

But the star of the show, one of the only stars they got left, and they're about to shoot that golden goose in the foot.

And

Roddy, who's more over at this point now than Adam Cole, as we mentioned, and

three stars.

That way, they can't get too mad at me.

But again, it was only 13.

Imagine if it had gone 20 minutes and they had another seven minutes to kick out of stuff.

I think then it would have really elevated it instead of the finish where the heel just won quickly.

If they had gone like even Steven, another five minutes, like crazy moves, but kicking out, I think it would have really helped them with the star ratings.

Mercedes Monet

retained the TBS title over Chris Statlander, 19 minutes, 24 seconds.

According to Dave Meltzer, the longest AEW women's match in history.

And it certainly seemed like it.

Four and a half stars.

Oh, come on.

It was also Monet's best match in the promotion.

And I can't disagree with that.

I know.

Now, if he'd have stopped there before the four and a half stars, I would have agreed with him 100%.

But what the fuck is he on?

It,

you know, can you imagine how Kurt Angle feels?

Oh, god damn it.

You know, well, he's no Mercedes Monet.

Well, he certainly isn't.

Jay White defeated Adam Page 19 minutes, 53 seconds.

Every single solitary bit of it.

Four and a quarter stars.

See, this is where Dave loses credibility.

What the fuck?

Do you get a star for every section of the fans that fall asleep?

Again,

this is where politics comes into play because he can't offend any of these people and they have come to expect this.

Apparently, either that or he's just not

what.

Again, if a match goes too long, you would think you would lose stars because you've gone too long.

You would think you'd get to a point where your crescendo, if you keep going past that, you're only going to lose.

And they went a long time.

But let's go to the next one.

I don't think Dave ever gets to his crescendo.

That's the problem.

If he crescendoed more often, he wouldn't have time to fucking do shit like this.

Well, I think that's the point of it.

It went from a four-star system to a five-star system to a six-star system to infinity.

It's now infinity.

Kyle Fletcher defeated Will Ospreay 24 minutes, 14 seconds.

Hold on, let me count this.

Five and a quarter stars.

When they're all together, like at the the little star, sometimes you can't tell what's five or six.

Doesn't it take away from the match when one guy picks the other guy up and leaps off the apart of the ring and Tombstone Powell drives the motherfucker on the top of the steel ring stairs and then they get up and start doing another five or ten minutes worth of shit?

That doesn't, that's not a demerit.

No,

because,

you know, that's not how it works.

Reality and realism don't really count when it comes to star ratings, but let's go to the next match.

Daniel Garcia defeated Jack Perry to win the TNT title 18 minutes, 15 seconds,

three and three-quarter stars.

Well, that's almost a slap of the face at this point.

Yeah, and that's pretty high considering the crowd was dead.

And, I mean, they came up for the finish of Garcia finally defeating Jack Perry, but.

That was a bad match.

Well, I think, like you said about one of the matches, and it could apply in a number of cases.

A lot of people popped it when the shit was over.

Oh, thank God.

Well, I think people were relieved that Jack Perry wouldn't be the champion.

I think people there did want to see Garcia win, but also the Heels won almost every match on the show.

This is one of the few examples where the Heel didn't win.

The next match, a surprise match, Konosuke Takesha retained the international title over Ricochet, 19 minutes, 14 seconds, four and a quarter stars.

But, you know,

again,

when you're getting up to the level of

WrestleMania main events involving Michaels and the Undertaker and every top flare match ever, and as I said, the angle scale, what is it?

I think

they repeat this every so often on the internet, but Osprey has had...

37 five-star matches or whatever, and Kurt Angle never had any.

I can't remember whether this, I don't agree with four and a half stars or whatever, but I can't remember whether this was any good or not.

What was wrong with this?

The crowd was dead because they were tired by this point, and the match went way too long.

And then eventually Takesha won.

But

again, I like that.

I think what the finish,

the finish was flat also where they kept beating the babyfaces.

Whenever they'll beat them, they'll just beat them instead of fucking them or cheating them or in some way

leaving it open.

Well, there ought to be a rematch.

Well, I'd never do that again in a million years.

Just here, I'll boom, hit you with this.

You're done.

Bobby Lashley defeated Swerve Strickland.

13 minutes, 24 seconds, three and three-quarter stars.

Oh, good Lord.

And again,

now he's under four stars just because they didn't do cartwheels?

Well, it was kind of one-sided.

Maybe it wasn't easy.

That should have been.

As we talked about, that's the only thing they could do because Lashley just got there.

They rushed the whole thing.

But if you talk about a match

that pretty much accomplished the purpose, that was one,

if not the other one, being MJF

that accomplished some kind of business purpose leading forward or getting a star over or just

not doing goofy, embarrassing shit.

And finally, the main event.

The AEW.

Speaking of goofy, embarrassing shit.

The AEW World Champion Jon Moxley defeated Orange Cassidy 19 minutes, 14 seconds, four-star match.

All right, with the other guys, yeah,

they're so adept at the tumbling, and the spitting kicks are so remarkable, and they do dive after dive.

And it's all so spectacular.

But here, Moxley's work is amongst

the worst of any pushed wrestler ever.

And

look at the other fucking guy.

Would Dave Meltzer not have laughed?

Orange Cassidy out of the building in 1993 or whatever if it was either company, WCW or WWE?

And that's somehow a four-star.

The work is not good.

The fuck?

How does he justify this?

I don't know if he really can justify it.

Well, I think somebody ought to get him on a goddamn phone and say, justify this, but not acknowledge me, but justify me.

Well, the interesting thing is, you know, when Dave,

you know, because he has a very interesting way of just condescending and fighting with people on Twitter as a business strategy.

But he'll say, I am critical of AEW.

You don't read the issues.

And again, we've said this before.

He comes to the point that all of us came to a long time ago, months after everyone, and then acts like he had a big discovery.

But you can't say, I'm properly critical of AEW when you just blow the matches that are part of the problem.

That's part of the problem.

All these kind of matches aren't doing anything to get anyone interested or in the door.

You know, look at what WWE is doing.

You don't really talk about the matches.

When you get a great match, it stands out.

But there's a satisfaction you get from watching the stories and the people that isn't there from AEW.

And when you say, this match was four and a quarter, this match was four and a quarter,

really?

For throwaway matches in the middle of the pay-per-view where the fans go silent?

There's a big disconnect between reality and people stuck in the wrestling bubble.

And unfortunately, I think Dave is in a self-induced wrestling bubble.

I think that's what he spends most of his time doing is blowing bubbles.

Just all day long blowing bubbles.

And sooner or later, Bubbles is going to get tired of it.

Well, Jim, let's go now to another story.

And this is one

there's a lot going on.

So trying to wrap my head around it.

I don't know how much you've seen about Ricky Starks.

Apparently, Ricky Starks, who we have not seen on TV since the spring, he was one of the the tag team champions with Big Bill.

And then he was gone, and Big Bill was put with Jericho.

He has been home.

Everyone's been wondering what's going on.

There are rumors that maybe Ricky Starks had,

depending on how you see it, the wrong friends for AEW.

Maybe the right friends for a career and for good advice.

I don't know.

But Ricky Starks got some heat apparently when he showed up with Cody Rhodes at the Royal Rumble, and security footage was leaked of that.

He's been home.

Apparently, he was at full gear backstage.

Tony Khan agreed to let him work indies.

He made an appearance for Game Changer Wrestling at the mall in East Rutherford, a big mall.

Did a promo,

and then we heard that he was pulled from all future dates with Game Changer Wrestling.

Now, this comes on the heels of us talking briefly about They booked their second show at the Hammerstein.

They did one a few years ago, I think, and it was kind of a disaster.

part of the problem is i think if you are doing garbage wrestling or you know hardcore wrestling whatever you want to call it you probably shouldn't be running in new york city the athletic commission is going to kill you you can't do anything well yeah yeah yeah it's everything

that they attempt to do is something that the commission will shut you down for doing right so that's your brand of wrestling it may not be the best thing strategically to do a the biggest show ever in a place where you can't do your style but they were coming back to the hammerstein they just announced it in january

Well, they announced the date is in January, let me clarify.

And then AEW announced three dates in December at the Hammerstein for a Ring of Honor pay-per-view, a dynamite taping, and then another taping.

So, obviously, there were some problems there.

Before we discuss any more, I'm going to play you a few clips of audio here.

Well, and

can I say something just about that?

That

I'm sure that the folks up at, and by the way, we affectionate know of GCW as garbage championship wrestling because they tend to champion that type of drink.

But

they can't like claim ownership of the Hammerstein ballroom.

Ring of Honor was running it four times a year,

well, for one period, but ran it or the Manhattan Center downstairs, the

Hammer, the goddamn, the other room, Manhattan Center, right?

Is that the name of the whole complex?

No, the complex is,

what's the Hammerstein?

And then the Manhattan Center was at the top.

Yes, well, the point is, it's somewhere in the building.

Ring of Honor ran it four times a year for years.

And now this company has gotten in before and they're going to do it again a couple of years later.

I don't think it was any

revelation that suddenly, oh, goddamn, GCW is going to run New York at the Hammerstein ballroom, and we've got to do something to fuck up their business.

As much as, again, Tony Kahn,

who appropriated many other things from Ring of Honor in that purchase, said, well, goddamn,

you know, we only need a couple of thousand people and it's in New York City and we could do three days in a row or someone pitched him this idea in the company.

We do three days in a row in the same building before Christmas and people ain't going to be traveling on Christmas and we can save load in and load out.

And it's a wrestling building, and it ties to Ring of Honor final battle, and then we get our other taping in.

And

old GCW is just collateral damage from my assessment of having been in negotiations to run that fucking building, and blah, blah, blah.

I don't think they're trying to put these people out of business, but then again,

apparently somebody else said something snippy about Tony or his family, and that may not have helped.

And we're going to play a few bits of audio here to try to get some clarity on this whole story.

And it is important to know, GCW,

I don't know exactly what, but

they've had some sort of relationship or tried to form a relationship with WWE.

We've seen pictures of the promoter with Stephanie McMahon at WrestleMania.

And,

you know, there's reason to think that WWE, while they're...

Go ahead.

Oh, that's some weasel sliding up to Stephanie.

Can I take my picture with you?

Or whatever the fuck?

Yeah, you know.

Come on.

Well, let's go.

I feel like Stephanie is going to have any talks with any independent promoters about business at WrestleMania.

Well, let's first go to this audio.

This is Ricky Starks.

I'm not exactly sure who did this interview, so I apologize for not giving credit, but the interviewer is not pictured here, and it doesn't have where this is from.

But let's go to this first.

I was so frustrated with the, so the day before, you know, Tony comes out and announces that punk is gone.

And then I actually opened that show with a promo.

Watch the promo.

Very good.

And you can kind of tell what's happening.

But I was so frustrated about things happening the way they have, right?

And I'll never forget someone telling me, like, just be grateful that you even have a job.

Like the Saturday, I remember someone being like, just be grateful you have a job.

Like,

And I'll never forget feeling like, how dare you?

Don't tell me to be grateful for something that I've worked very hard for.

That's saying, I know that you're hungry for a dinner.

Here's a half-eaten loaf of bread.

Actually, no, let me take that back.

Here's just the crumbs.

Fuck you.

Don't tell me just be grateful for something.

You don't live my life.

Let me stop it there for a second because that's not just an AOW thing.

In the past, that was a big WWE thing.

What do you think about the idea that these guys should all just be grateful for being there?

Well, some of them should, but he wasn't one of them.

See, that's the thing.

When you look at, I mean, Chuck Taylor,

give me a break, right?

When you look at some of the people and what they're being paid or that they're being paid at all, yes, they should consider themselves lucky.

But Starks wasn't on that list.

But that's the way a lot of them think: hey, we got, you know, we can play with our friends.

And, you know, the guy's a billionaire and his dead get blah, blah, blah.

But Starks wants to be better.

And that's again,

you know, he was

used well by CM Punk on the brief period of time that Punk had some say or in the collision program,

or he was with Cody because they were friends because Cody could see a guy that had talent that could go somewhere, do something.

You know, imagine if Carmelo Hayes was actually interesting and Reggie Starks became the first-round draft pick.

He could have got some attention with it.

But he's got the wrong friends because he was friends with other stars that were motivated to do business instead of be happy

that they had fucking jobs or whatever.

Well, let's go to the end of this part of Ricky Starks' audio.

You don't understand the things that I have gone through to even just get in this moment.

That it really set me off.

So

when it came to Sunday, I was looking forward to it, but I didn't realize what laid ahead of me and what I was actually going to be capable of doing.

Let me stop it there.

I have another little section of audio here from Ricky from the same interview, apparently.

Let's go to this.

This is talking about when he was caught on security camera with Cody Rhodes at the Royal Rumble.

I had people from my job being like,

I had one guy, he was just like,

were you at the Rumble last night?

I said, yeah, and what the fuck about it?

What about it?

He goes, just saying that's a bad look, you know?

I said, how is it a bad look?

I can't control somebody taking a security footage while I'm walking to a bus.

I don't control that.

Like, how is that a tell me how that is a bad look?

We got people on our own program talking about other people at the other company, but yet me having my security footage

exposed is a bad look.

Give me a break.

I had people from my job.

Oh, and then it replayed itself.

But again, I think beyond just the Ricky Starks part of this, and that's the part of, I mean, that's the whole story here, but it goes to a lot of the mindset of the people in AEW.

Again, Ricky Starks, in terms of political favor,

he was a guy that Cody Rhodes was a big supporter of.

He was a guy that purportedly CM Punk was a big supporter of.

Those guys aren't there anymore.

And certainly in the case of Punk publicly, it was an acrimonious split.

And now he's still back there.

And I must mention,

this is all coming on the heels that right now on Twitter, the way they do the trending stuff is a little differently now.

It's like stories.

AEW's contract strategy with Ray Phoenix sparks debate.

Because the word is now coming out, I guess, again today.

Here from the Wrestling Observer News that AEW is reportedly not letting Ray Phoenix out of his contract, but they have no plans to use him.

So again, we're talking about Ricky Starks here, but the idea that people get sent home, never hear anything from AEW.

We heard this really early on when Jelly Natello left.

Remember?

No one from the company ever contacted him ever again?

Yes.

And

first, let me say that, by the way, so nobody can say, ah, Cordet's a hypocrite.

The guy from the WWF that went to the TNA show that time and got fired, he said, well, he should have known better.

He was sitting in in a fucking crowd and was on camera on the production, not on security footage in the back of the goddamn building or wherever.

And

you, in modern times, in the old days, if a territory was running opposition

and you showed up at their show, you were asking to get fired.

But in the modern era, we've had numerous examples of people from the WWF going to indie shows or whatever, or advice all these companies to support their friends and not making public appearances or being seen, whatever, sometimes

being seen,

actually probably trying to.

But he went to,

I don't even know where he was in the building, but the only way they got any footage of him or anybody took a picture of him was the building security camera.

So I think that's pretty much as K-fabe as you can get in the modern world to not make it drawing attention that you're somewhere for another company.

So again, Ricky Starks in AEW limbo doesn't seem like he's much more knowledgeable about his situation than the fans are.

And Tony Khan extending the contract of Ray Phoenix,

seemingly just because he knows that Ray Phoenix is going to be signed by WWE.

There are guys,

again, purportedly, sent home like Miro,

who

they don't intend to use.

He won't approve any of their creative, and they won't let him out of his contract

because they don't want him to go to WWE.

There's a pattern here.

Now, to the GCW end of it, before this Ricky Starks thing, there was some heat again.

I don't even know if heat's the right word, but probably just what the fuck are they doing when they announce the Hammerstein dates?

Effie, who's a wrestler for GCW, I believe he's one of their top guys.

Effie?

He's the one famous for trying to shove Marco stunts' face onto a dildo.

Oh, geez.

He's, you know, there's some sort of perverted gimmick.

I don't know what, but he was on a podcast or it's his podcast.

I'm not sure.

Commenting about AEW and GCW and this Hammerstein thing.

So I got a few bits of audio here.

Let's see what he says.

We are moving forward to

the big Hammerstein show.

And let me just be, let me be honest, all right i don't i'm not gonna say frank i'm gonna be fucking frank we announced the show it's big we're returning almost three years later to the date big time

and i don't there's no way it's not gonna make me sound like like somebody could clip this and be like he's being a jealous bitch not only like two weeks later aw announces they're gonna do the same venue three nights for them it would be considered a smaller venue ring of honor historically has used this venue wwe has historically used this venue ecw has historically used this venue.

There's a lot of wrestling history in this venue.

The current Ring of Honor is not what Ring of Honor was before.

It's mostly just kind of their AEW dark product.

I understand they want to do it.

It's very exciting for people to do it.

I don't understand

why there's no

exclusivity to wrestling.

I guess we didn't negotiate it.

Let me stop it there for a second because, again, you have negotiated with that building.

In terms of exclusivity for wrestling product,

should it be there?

Is that something you could have asked for and would have gotten, or is that something that would have never been on the table?

And

if AEW's booked themselves in there and they announced it two weeks after GCW,

based on your experience, how long do you think AEW at a minimum would have likely been negotiating with the building or talking to the building?

It's not, do you think it's something that they would have done right after GCW's announcement and put the deal together in two weeks?

Or what do you think?

Oh,

then they've changed management considerably if they got from start to finish, hey, can I have a date to it's announceable in two fucking weeks with those fucking people?

Jesus Christ.

We ended up finding out about one day before we announced it one year with Ring of Honor, that final battle that they said we had the date.

We didn't have the date.

And we had to do it a week later because

they said, oh, well, we rented the upstairs building for

or the

which one was upstairs the the manhattan center upstairs haverstein downstairs okay

we had the manhattan center for final battle they said oh no because we've rented the downstairs building and you can't use the elevator how the we're gonna get a wrestling ring up six flights of so anyway

they will you around and

sandbag or whatever there's no way that they did this from start to finish in two weeks i can't believe that no

um Exclusivity.

Yeah,

you can't get like

exclusivity.

If you've never run the building before,

you can't just say, okay, now you're not going to take any other wrestling shows, right?

Or if you haven't run it in three years or whatever.

But if you do have

a date, you can reasonably ask for

exclusivity.

And remember, Vince used to do this in the old days.

Give me

14 or 21 days on either side of my date, no other wrestling events.

And then he'd figure out a way to book a date in that building so that it was always less than 21 days.

You see what I'm saying?

On either side.

Wrestle War, was it Wrestle War in Nashville where Vince ran the building in Nashville the day before the NWA pay-per-view and had his crew stay there late so that they couldn't set up?

Yes, because that's when TBS had just taken over and didn't realize what the fuck they were doing and not getting exclusivity on the dates.

But no, even with Ring of Honor, yes, with some of these places that we would go, we'd ask for 14 or 21 days before or afterwards, depending on the venue.

And a lot of people would do that.

And they started doing that in the wars in the 80s between Crockett and Vince.

When they're,

again, when they're legitimate buildings, sometimes it's just a fucking rec center, and I'm going to put Floyd, my cousin, at the front door to sell tickets at a table, and you get what you get.

Well, let's go back to audio from Effie.

But by the way, so far, I haven't disagreed with anything this fucking guy said so far.

Me neither.

I don't see what's inflammatory yet.

Well, let's go back to Effie.

Let's see what he said here that caused the problem, allegedly.

Also, it's very confusing that, like, within the same month, y'all got to run the same venue as us.

When for us, as an independent, this is a larger thing.

for you this is a way to cover up the fact that a ring of honor pay-per-view right now could not sell out the tickets you think it could and even asking daniel bryan to come back for the last big one you did in texas to come to that show still wasn't that sold

well there's the tick tock noise there at the end that's where this video came from that's the end of part one

I mean, I could see why Tony being sensitive would have a little bit of a problem with, at the very end, they're saying, I can see why you're doing it because you can't sell tickets to Ring of Honor under your management we've come to find out that when people even just talk sternly or strenuously to tony that he tends to get intimidated and just because he's not used to that type of thing in this world so that's right maybe that is it i don't anyway what's in part two yeah here's more from effie

Still wasn't that sold on tickets.

And this is nothing to the talent.

I think the talent, you should take anything you can get, but also y'all have no buzz, no draw.

And we've been riding the lightning on having to actually run a profitable company for the past few years to continue existing.

We do not have as much backup.

Let me just, I'll put it this way: my company, I don't run a company.

Our company, GCW, GCW can't run on a $40 million deficit and continue to run shows.

Let me stop it there for a moment.

I think we may have found the smoking gun.

We may have gotten to the root of the problem here, Doctor.

And again, I don't know about whether or not Garbage Championship Wrestling, because let's remember who we're talking about still here, is riding the lightning bolt, riding the edge of the lightning bolt, baby, on their own part.

But, you know, but in terms of having to be profitable, though, that's, I mean, that's the thing.

You know, that is a company.

I'm pretty sure they don't have multi-million dollar investors.

They are, you know, bootstrapping it.

So whatever success they do have, they have to make it work.

You know, apart from a little overconfidence

in his team, I, again, still can't disagree.

But

he's speaking facts.

It's what he's doing.

But I see the part where Tony Khan may have gotten nettled.

Well, let's go back to this.

But some of us have the privilege of being able to run at a $40 million deficit.

Brett doesn't own a football team?

Brett does not own a football team.

Brett doesn't have a dad who pays him to stay away.

I don't want this to be a personal thing.

Like, I don't.

but hey, guys, you're not, you're not the only game in town.

It's fine.

I can't stop you from running venues.

But in my line of work, when TNA Impact wanted to run center stage, GCW, a month before and a month after, were told we could not have those dates that we had secured before because it was competing with something they were doing.

And now it just seems the game and the respect never goes both ways.

And it's fine.

We're not mad.

Our people will be there.

Our show will be great we will show it out but it isn't fun to see that like we're so out of ideas right now that the timing is that conspicuous to you showing up and doing that immediately after we announce that we're doing that

well there it is part two and i think that's the other line center stage um

we ran also and they will do that It's a smaller facility.

They're a little bit more professionally run down there in Atlanta

than this fucking moonie orifice that we're talking about here.

And also, it's Atlanta, not New York City.

So as I recall, they did do a month

before and after as an exclusivity period for a particular genre of event, not like just concert, but, you know,

pro wrestling is kind of a specific thing.

One of the lines that people have really honed in on, that apparently was one that upset Tony Khan, and I'm not even sure how this was brought to Tony's attention this interview.

You would think Tony's a busy guy, was saying that Tony's dad paid him to stay away.

Yeah, that was a little stiff.

And I didn't know he had to stay away because everybody says the Jaguars are pretty much as sloppy as AEW.

AEW apparently pulled Ricky Starks from future GCW dates, including, I believe, the Hammerstein.

And the word that came back was...

They won't let him work their show on the Hammerstein.

So the word that came back was this Effie interview was a big part of the reason why, if not the primary reason why.

What do you think of that?

Because again, Effie doesn't own the company.

He's just a wrestler on the show.

He even said it there.

It's not my company.

It's our company.

What do you think about the idea that

a promotion's being punished?

That's the only way you could see this because it's embarrassing as fuck when you have someone debut, debut, announce dates, and then the next day he's pulled.

That's embarrassing.

Well, you know, there's, again, there's levels to this.

There's degrees to this,

inter-promotional commingling.

In Ring of Honor, 12 years ago, whatever it was, some of these guys still wanted to work pro-wrestling gorilla.

in Reseda because it was where they went and played with their friends.

Even though they got contracts, they said, can we please do this?

All right, they're not on pay-per-view, they're not on television, nobody knows about it, they sell DVDs, you can do this.

But then,

and I mean, that was the thing it always had been with Carrie Silkin, yes, blah, blah, blah, but with Sinclair, they're signing contracts,

they're wondering why are these people being allowed to go do this in a barn, right?

So

we would give them that wanted them that wanted it the exemption to go to PWG and then somebody I can't remember who got hurt wasn't life-threatening but injured and missed some shows

and we're like why are we doing this again because they want to

uh what but what the fuck we've got to go tell somebody in the sinclair accounting department that we've got to you know we got to

goddamn pay this guy for these couple of shows, but he can't wrestle.

He's going to talk because he hurt himself.

Where'd he hurt himself?

Well, somewhere else.

Yeah, blah, blah, blah.

So there's reasons why that you would not want and

exclusivity in markets or confusion in the marketplace.

You wouldn't want your regular guys doing things for smaller promotions that would conflict with your business.

But having said that,

They're not using this fucking guy.

They are paying him, but obviously they don't want to use him and he obviously don't want to be be there.

They won't let him go.

So they say,

all right, we'll let you do some independence because he wants to wrestle.

He's going to be there.

If he doesn't wrestle for two years,

he's going to kind of be the shits for a while again.

So they tell him he can work some dates where at least he can work on some shit and get out there and blah, blah, blah.

And then what I think is probably, as I said, an unrelated matter, they just,

AEW has reached the point where they have to go to as small of a building as GCW considers a big building, and they've met in the middle, but they couldn't have done this

from scratch in two weeks.

I'm sorry.

And Blabbermouth there said the truth and pissed off an overly sensitive man.

And now this, or somebody, you know, around Tony going, well, see, those outlaws, you know, you try to do a favor for a guy and they badmouth us.

And he, well, don't let him work it.

It's just fucking children.

All of them, children.

So here's a question.

GCW is involved with, I believe, Josh Barnett's Blood Sport.

That's the stuff that he does.

It's shoot-style matches where they take the ropes down.

It's a cool look.

Is Moxley and Marina Shafir, are they going to be allowed to continue to participate?

Is Moxley banned from GCW also?

Because there were stories where Moxley apparently held up the promoter.

I don't know if you want to say hold up.

I'll say it.

He held up the promoter and said he insisted on Nick Gage getting paid the same amount that he does, or he wouldn't work.

Oh, well, that would have put an end to fucking me offering Mr.

Moxley any continued dates as a promoter.

But, you know, you never know.

It will be interesting if they go play in somebody else's pool after this guy has muddied the puddle.

And here's what The Observer says about this.

While nobody officially said anything, the strong belief actually confirmed to us.

the strong belief actually.

While nobody officially said anything, the strong belief actually confirmed to us

is that the comments from Effie of GCW on Tony Khan, particularly a line he said about Khan's father paying him to stay away, led to Khan feeling he didn't want to do business with GCW.

Those very close to the situation confirm this is accurate.

AKA Tony Khan.

That Khan made the call to pull Starks

because he felt the line insinuating that Khan's father pays him to stay away, Dave's written it twice now, was uncalled for.

And those in AEW also noted the story about AEW having no buzz or draw, apparently based on what Effie said, is notable when GCW was putting up flyers for their show at the Hammerstein.

at AEW's Newark, New Jersey pay-per-view show that just did more than 10,000 fans.

Effie Effie has complained about Khan booking three dates at the Hammerstein a month before GCW's show.

And then it says here,

again, we just heard the audio, so here's Dave's summary of it.

Effie said that AEW has no buzz, no draw, and how we have to run a profitable company, and we don't have the backup.

He said that our company can't run on a $40 million deficit and continue to run shows.

But he said others have the privilege of being able to run at a $40 million deficit and it continue to run shows.

He said that Brett Lauderdale, the promoter, doesn't own a football team or have a daddy who pays him to stay away.

That's three times Dave has written it.

Jeez.

The latter was the line that broke the camel's back.

He said that a GC, and then he talks about the stuff we all heard.

But this happened two days after Khan had allowed Marina Shafir, an MVP, to wrestle for a GCW show, Josh Barnett's Bloodsport.

And he also allowed allowed Moxley to appear.

So, again, there's a lot here, you know, for the cynic out there who thinks, oh, they're obviously building up a big invasion angle where GCW will invade.

That I guarantee that would be the biggest disaster ever.

They're not doing that.

But what do you think?

I mean, is the solution just release Ricky Starks if you're not going to use him?

You're not the good guy for paying him to stay home.

Yeah, see, that's the thing is,

I don't know that it's as much of a business strategy for Tony Kahn to keep people away from the WWE when the WWE would want to sign them, as much as it is he wants to avoid confrontations with people.

And when they're away from him and he can feel good that he's sending them a check and they're making their money, but he doesn't have to talk to them, he doesn't have to deal with them.

If it's going to be awkward for him,

then that's, I think, a bigger

motivation for him than, oh, I don't want the WWE to have these guys.

And they just,

they want to get out of there because it didn't fit what they wanted to fucking do.

Do you make him a bigger star by holding him to the contract and everyone knowing about it?

So that, I mean, he can't hold him forever.

Eventually, he will be free.

Well, but no, you don't make him a bigger star because remember everyone in quotation marks, as Cowboy Bill Watts would say.

It's not, everyone is not living and dying with the movements of Ricky Starks' employment.

He needs to be able to get out there and get and get some buzz and get some people seeing him and talking about him again and doing something and applying himself.

And he can't do that sitting at home.

And he's still not, he's got all the potential in the world and he's very good at what he does, but he was still on the secondary show in and out

quite a bit.

And it suffers the same as

everybody else of the bad booking is just it's worn off now because he's been off so long he'll have goodwill with the

with the independent audience and with the audience up to the level of the aew audience but he'll be brand new to the goddamn

nxt or wwe or wherever he would end up up there so it's not good him just sitting back wasting time he doesn't want to

if you were the promoter do you think that Effie did anything wrong?

Did Effie do anything wrong?

I mean, he's on his podcast venting his frustrations about a very real situation.

This is before the Ricky Starks thing.

Was Effie wrong to take that public, or was it just that, you know, the shots at Tony Khan obviously had repercussions?

Well, here's the thing.

We don't know how the promoter thinks because maybe there was talk, maybe the promoter already

had decided, well, fuck these fucking people anyway or whatever.

But I don't know.

I wouldn't know a picture of Effie if I saw it on a post office wall.

I've never seen Effie wrestle or whatever the fuck.

But I would assume that Effie is not one of the main event guys.

Here's the thing I'm trying to say.

If this promoter of garbage championship wrestling still wanted to use

AEW guys

and still was having a relationship with them just because they had announced the Hammerstein ballroom events and one of my

underneath or middle card guys, or even a made-of-med guy,

went into business for himself and said shit in public that pissed the promoter off to where I can't now use the talent or the goddamn business relationship,

I would be with a club beating fucking Effie over the head right now.

But if that, if that had already been blown up behind the scenes before he made these comments and he didn't know it, or the promoter feels the same way that Effie does.

Well, then that's that's another matter.

But

and should Tony keep holding these guys that their contracts?

Well, hold on.

And I'll because the reason why that I say that about Effie and his comments is because I guarantee Goddamn T you

that there's no way that AEW hadn't started trying to do three days of TV taping in a smaller location in New York and decide on the Hammerstein ballroom and get the building contacted and all of the deal executed and the contract where they could announce it in public in two weeks, as you said, from the time that the other folks announced their shit or whatever.

It's just not possible.

It used to take that long to get an insurance goddamn thing back and forth with these people.

And so he made those comments that pissed Tony off for nothing.

He should have just bit the bullet and said, Well, yeah, they're coming in, but we're going to have a once-in-a-lifetime or once every three years event or whatever and not vet it in public unless he asked his boss, Hey, can I blister

this billionaire on a fucking podcast?

And I believe the promoter, Brett Lauderdale, said that he doesn't.

It was either he doesn't know Tony Connor, he's never dealt with Tony Conn.

So, whatever appearances in the past, like a Moxley or whoever has made on their shows, it wasn't him working, you know, office to to office to put it together.

Oh, Jesus.

Even worse than

even worse than.

And I guess why would we think Tony would want to take time away from his busy booking to talk to other promoters?

But that's even worse than if he'd been working through Chris Daniels or somebody in the office.

And then this guy goes anyway.

Should Tony hold guys their contracts?

If he wants to use them and they say, well, we don't want to do this shit, which we hear happens

up and down the card of people.

Instead of saying, Okay, and they go home and they get paid,

then he should say, Okay, you're going home, but we're going to suspend you for refusing direction, and we'll start paying you when you come back and do what we want you to do.

That's how you ought to hold them to their contracts.

Or if they just say, No, I'm going home and I'm not coming back

until you find something creatively I like,

then yeah, hold them to their contracts and say, no, you're going to goddamn do this.

But if you don't want to use a guy

and not just for a few months, but you've just, I don't want to use him anymore,

then that's bullshit.

He's been gone so long.

Let him out of his deal so he can go somewhere else.

It's not like

you don't want a guy leaving TV directly and going to the other side, but it's been months.

And with Ray Phoenix,

if a guy was hurt

and you extend the time, that's one thing.

If you paid him while he was injured and he was out for months and months,

then you come back and you extend the contract where you're going to pay him

the extended period of time too.

I can understand that.

But not if I want to use this guy.

He's pissed me off.

My friends don't like him.

But I'm just not man enough to say, hey, let's negotiate your release.

Give me a 90-day window.

You can't show up on TV.

Whatever the fuck.

Don't just make him sit there.

Well, Jim, if I asked you to place a wager, if I said, hey, do you want to go down to the casino and bet on if Ricky Starks will be on Dynamite or NXT?

Which show will he be on first?

What would you say?

Well, Well, I'd say we don't have to go down to the casino, Brian, because the casino will come to us.

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Isn't that right, Jim?

That's exactly right, Brian.

The crown is yours.

Well, no, you take it for a while.

Well, Jim, it's that sad time of the show now.

We must go to

this past Monday, another WWE Raw.

A two-hour edition, something to be happy about, but maybe because it was Thanksgiving week, maybe because there really wasn't anything pulling me to the show, I had it on in the background, and I don't even remember how much of it I saw, but

well, what did you watch?

That right there is what, no, hey.

The

raw.

It's

the problem.

That has sounded better in the past.

The raw this past monday i think is part of a bigger strategy brian it's what i was going to ask you about are they

not tanking the show

but are they are they cooling the show off because in

what a little over a month we're going to debut on netflix with john cena's retirement tour and the rock is lurking in a piss bottle somewhere and on a farm

the move to netflix and they're going to bring some more punk Punk is back.

Drew McIntyre is going to come back.

We got more stars that are going to be coming back.

Pissbury Farms.

That could be the Rocks farm.

Pissbury Farm remembers.

So the question is, are they just cooling this thing off?

They were in Glendale, Arizona.

I remember that great song, Somebody Robbed the Glendale Train.

by the New Riders.

What?

This morning, half past nine.

Is that a real song?

That's a real song.

Somebody robbed the Glendale train.

I swear I'm not lying.

Well, you ought to record it and put it out there, then somebody would have heard of it.

But hey, we're in Glendale, Arizona, which I believe is near Phoenix, is it not?

It was a minor hit in like 74.

That's not the question that I posed to you.

You know, I don't know my

average.

It's got to be near Phoenix.

What else would it be where they had 13,216 people?

Where else, besides around Phoenix and Arizona would they be doing that?

How's the business in Tucson?

I don't know.

Is Rod Fenton still the local promoter down there?

How is the business in Tucson when you've gone there with WWE?

I don't know.

I don't remember the last time I was in Tucson.

If I was in Tucson, I can't say I've driven through Tucson.

I had to work Tucson once.

But maybe I was Tucson to remember.

Anyway, they had 13,000 people, but here's the, it's just

there's nothing offensive.

There's nothing

amateur-ish or, you know, lackadaisical or whatever.

It's just, there's not nothing happening.

Not much.

They give you enough.

You remember the main points.

And that's what we're going to talk about: the main points.

Damien Priest and Gunther are coming up next now because they did a big long promo where Priest just had all the opportunity in the world to tell Gunther what was wrong with him and say he lost his confidence, he's lost his edge.

And then,

when Gunther responded by whacking Priest over the head with the microphone and clearing the desk off, Priest bowed back up and razors-edged Gunther

through the desk.

So they're trying to use Gunther to,

again, elevate Damien Priest.

We love Gunther.

And we thought that Priest had all the potential in the world, all the tools, all the

things, but the stars have not aligned.

Is it like

Jerry Briscoe or some of the old timers used to, he can't kick it into high gear or third gear or whatever.

I drive an automatic, but whatever gear is the big one.

He doesn't have that yet, does he?

I mean, that's the thing that he's really been missing the entire time.

He's got the size.

He's got the voice.

He could do the right things in the ring, especially with the right guy.

But

there's a certain fire

that leads to a fan connection also that hasn't been there.

Fire,

kisses like fire.

Burn me up with fire.

I like what you're doing now, fire.

I don't like that.

So, and I will say that jackie redmond that's not nice is the she's the best female announcer in the business she's the only one that doesn't sound like

that she's just doing a scripted question but instead sounds like she'd be on the sidelines for cbs or somebody i think she really is i think she i could be wrong maybe it's not hockey but there's you mean i didn't i didn't know they allowed uh their employees to do unsavory things like being over on the sidelines for cbs i don't know what the heck you're talking about but I mean, I think she's a real genuine reporter.

Like, there are a lot of,

a lot of, there are a few women that WWE has hired over the last 10 years that like came from ESPN or some sort of sports network where they really do it.

And

certain people just have it.

She is very good at it.

I always get a kick.

Well, I like the women that really do it.

She calls Michael Cole Cole.

Yeah.

Not Michael or, you know, Mr.

Cole, not that that would be appropriate, but Cole.

That's right, Cole.

He deserves no respect.

So,

no,

he's a fine fellow, except for his choice of hairstyles.

He's always got something shaved or something going on around the edges.

But anyway, and then now, Jade Cargill is apparently really injured.

You told me this last week, but when they saw her

lay it all splayed out on that car hood,

it was a cover apparently for a very serious injury.

According to Bianca, I wrote this down.

It's a quote, She banged up.

She's not going to be back here for a minute.

So that sounds serious.

That sounds like when they asked the cop in Night of the Living Dead, he said, oh, yeah, they're dead.

They're all messed up.

No, but apparently she is.

Apparently,

who knows what?

Oh, what is that?

Sounds like a bomb's being dropped on me.

Well, they finally figured out where you live.

I haven't heard a hit anything.

It's still dropping.

I don't know what's happened.

I don't know if you could even hear that, but.

All right, it's gone away.

It must have been just a plane.

Watch out for the fallout.

You know, Jade, it's interesting that she's so banged up.

It's not,

you know, it's not like she's working long physical matches.

She has a very limited way that she's being used, which is the smart way to use her.

It's a shame that she's banged up this early on.

Well, but it can happen in the twinkling of an eye.

Just plant your foot wrong and pop goes the fucking ankle.

You never know, whatever it is.

And we'll see what this means for the whole Bianca Jade thing because everything was kind of, they weren't rushing that at all and it was working.

Well, Bianca got snotty with Rhea Ripley, which you better not do if you expect to stay a babyface because people will turn on you for not hailing the queen.

Hey, give me that match, honestly.

Best women's match you could have in wrestling.

I was saying it when they were wrestling each other in NXT.

Bianca and Rhea.

That's the match I'll always stop and watch.

Well, maybe we're going there because that's what, and the other girls were trying to figure out who their fifth girl is, and then Rhea came in and got a big pop being on the screen.

And so, as I said, she and Bianca exchanged some snotty business.

And

they're still trying to get the creeds over.

The less said about that, the better.

Braun Breaker versus Ludwig Kaiser.

And again, I'm not going to blow by blow this match, but Braun Breaker,

I just like watching him.

He's so far ahead of anybody else in the business at this stage of

his career, his experience level, his

all, again, all the tools.

Plus, he's got a goddamn high gear, whatever gear that is, maybe sixth or seventh.

He's just amazing.

If you wanted to create a goddamn WWE champion in a fucking laboratory, I know that's other people's material, but

and already now

he's done nothing to turn babyface, but people are liking him.

He's going to be one of those.

And they put him in with Kaiser

because they're doing a three-way thing with Seamus.

But the people were instantly on his, and he can sell for a guy that size and that impressive.

And so the people are barking for him.

They're going to like him when he finally finally does become a babyface, but we're not hurrying anything because that's a long time away.

And they did a DQ so they didn't beat either guy.

Seamus ran in

and Pierce ran out and made a triple threat, which I'm not looking forward to because it's a goddamn triple threat.

But they had a hell of a pull apart, a big fight all over the stage and everything.

And I remember it because that's the only one they had in this show.

So again, they're doing the best stuff with Braun Breaker, and he's getting quicker.

It almost looks like a visual effect when he's hitting the fucking ropes.

But that was the first hour, Brian.

Your thoughts?

That was the first hour.

And those were my thoughts.

Well, there you go.

And then

we finally got...

I don't think it's a breakup, either, but it's Stern Words between the new day.

Normally, I I wouldn't even have bothered to watch, but I had to say they got beat in like

30 seconds by Otis and Tozawa.

And then this day's anniversary, wasn't it?

Yes.

Well, no, it's about to be.

They've announced it.

So, because that was, that was their, that was what they mentioned at the close of this, but they walk back

arguing with each other and they're, they spend some time telling each other off big time.

And it sounded like both of them had a point.

And the crowd didn't particularly give a shit about the match.

They were excited it was over that quickly, but they were into the argument.

And Kofi told Woods that he's never been champion because he isn't good enough.

And Woods said he was good enough to help make Kofi champion.

And then he lost to Brock in six seconds.

And the crowd started, and they're in the back with the camera shooting them.

They're showing it to the crowd on screen.

And the crowd is chanting, fight, fight, fight.

So they're even getting this shit over.

And then they told each other that they would see each other at their anniversary.

So I'm sure that's going to be a big wing ding with the ring dressed with some type of anniversary apparatus.

But

even the middle card guys now and stuff on the screen, the fans are reacting to it because they're following it.

Because

if you're predisposed to watch this program, when it's over with, you remember what you're supposed to remember.

You can keep track of shit.

It follows if you really want to watch all of it, unlike us, you understand what's going on, right?

Right.

And that's

on the other side of it.

He's like, what the fuck?

With a goddamn note, with one of those court stenographer things where they

just sit there and type it,

you can't keep track of it.

It doesn't add up.

And then finally, the main event was Bianca against the refrigerator because they're

they

had Bianca beat

the fridge.

So the babyfaces will have advantage in the women's war games.

But they've only got four people anyway, so maybe that will figure in and they have announced they're going to have a women's intercontinental champion too

i can't wait to see that

what's your thoughts on that brian on them adding another belt right after they announced that they were going to add the u.s women's championship on the other show i think yeah exactly i think they're starting to get a little bit of the aew problem where they're too belt happy over there and there's too many belts the rock also has his bullshit belt that but i'm saying it is part of gimmick.

It's his.

He'll be out there with that.

It's like his FTW belt.

And now you're going to have all these belts.

Well, the thing is, even if you want to get a belt over on for another belt for the women on both programs, doing it at the same time, doesn't that create some confusion in the marketplace?

Yeah, I don't.

Do it six months apart.

I also don't see the demand.

I mean, that's the other thing.

I think when it comes to women's wrestling, WWE.

I've seen the line of women's wrestlers hanging outside of the fucking Triple H's office if you want to see demand for another women's belt.

No, but I just mean in terms of fan demand, in terms of whatever I say about the women's wrestling scene, the caveat is always that WWE's top-flight women are the very best and they belong.

And everyone chasing the world champion is one thing.

When all of a sudden you have a secondary belt,

you know, again, I don't think it shouldn't just be the men have all these belts, so the women need them too.

And sometimes it feels like that.

Yeah.

Sometimes it feels like it's for PR purposes as much as any other good reason.

Well, you know, and they call it the workhorse title, also.

The interconnect.

So I think he made some allusion to that when the announcement, whether the working person's title or whatever.

How nonsensical is that?

Because somebody,

when

the generation that were were fans of the 80s and 90s

actually got involved in the goddamn office in the 2000 and whatever's and they realized that a lot of times the intercontinental champion was a better worker than the wwe champion

especially in the 80s

they they've they started calling it the workhorse title doesn't that tell people that your world champion is is in some way a fucking lazy fuck or not as good as the secondary champion?

I don't, just to appeal to fans who

know the smart terminology.

See, that's a new added benefit of being the world champion.

It was always if you're the champion, you get the biggest purse.

If you're the champion, you can maybe get a piece of the house.

Certainly get a piece of ass.

You're the champion.

You can do whatever you want.

Now, you don't even have to come to work.

All right, they're the workhorse.

I'll be the

sleeping late champion.

I'll be the nap time champion for a few weeks, and then I'll go do a promo and I'll take another few weeks off.

I don't know.

The Intercontinental champion, or the North American champion, or the United States champion, they've got all of them now.

But theoretically, that was the person who was

next in line was pretty much the most important single wrestler in the industry, except for the world champion himself.

And,

you know, that was prestige enough.

They didn't have to compliment you for how many times you showed up to wrestle.

But I digress, Brian.

It's your program.

Oh, and that was raw.

Yes, it was.

And that was raw.

We didn't spend a second cooking it.

Well, let's get right to Dynamite.

AEW coming off a string of astoundingly awful shows in multiple genres of professional wrestling arts.

Coming off a pay-per-view,

which was not.

Boy, you read The Observer, you would think it was a great show.

I was not feeling that.

And here was the post-pay-per-view, Dynamite coming off Jon Moxley defeating Orange Cassidy.

A lot of things still need answers.

Let's talk about Dynamite.

November 27th, the night before Thanksgiving, and all through the house, there were a lot of empty seats because they were in Chicago, and they killed it when they ran CM Punk off, and he was sleeping with a mouse.

I can't make it fucking rhyme, but

you know, they've got AEW Dynamite, they've got AEW Collision, they've got AEW Rampage.

I think they ought to all have one,

the shows have one name to be under the same umbrella: AEW Shambolic.

Can you, doesn't that kind of sum it up?

You know, it could be a thing.

Remember how Paul Heyman was smart enough to jump on extreme before everything became extreme, extreme sports and this and that?

He was there in the early days.

He recognized the word and where it was going.

Maybe Tony can popularize his brand of shambolic entertainment.

I think it's worth it.

And, you know, they ought to trademark it at least.

Maybe Jericho will.

Anyway.

He is a sham.

There you go.

So everything about, and he could do Sam the Sham.

Fozzie could release Sam the Sham hits.

Woolly Bully.

Woolly Bully, Woolly Bully.

All right.

Chrissy told Tony, there's a thing I do, won't get you no viewers, but I like it too.

Woolly Bully.

Anyhow.

So the main part of the exercise here is talking about the television show and the continental classic that it's time for that

falderall and hokiness again.

You got the blue and the gold leagues with the odd brackets that nobody that

hasn't followed New Japan wrestling with pen and paper in hand for the last 15 years is going to be able to figure out what the fuck's going on with these tournaments.

But at least they entered with the Hurt business to start the show, or the Hurt Syndicate, I'm sorry.

And

again, these guys look like stars and they're the real deal.

NMVP cuts a promo like

a manager.

It's so refreshing to hear a wrestling promo from a manager.

He's hype man.

He's Carnival Barker.

Eddie puts Shelton and Bobby over and compares them to

Chicago's greatest athletes like

Michael Jordan and Montell Williams.

I can't remember who was the second guy he talked about.

Michael Jordan and somebody.

Well, Montel used to do his show there in Chicago.

Did he?

I believe he did because I'm pretty sure one of the guys that used to do our post-production down at Channel 3 in Chattanooga, the last year of Smokey Bound Wrestling, ended up going to Chicago and producing the Montel Williams show.

But anyway,

when Monteo, Monteo, Monteo, when Montel Vontavius Porter offers you a card,

it's an opportunity to change your life for the better if you're smart, but if you're not smart, like Swerve,

and they actually start chanting Swerve's house a little bit

because they were good with the promo.

And then MVP said, Lashley beat the snot out of Swerve.

And he pitched to the highlights of him beating the snot out of swerve.

And MVP said Lashley is the most dangerous man in AEW.

And when you look at him, he is hard to argue with that.

So then Shelton is going to have a tournament match here.

We'll see how this progresses.

But

the opening promo, they look like stars.

They're getting a reaction.

They've obviously,

there's so much of themselves in this that I'm sure they, in their matches, that I'm sure they have some type of input.

And, you know, it's kind of like it's an island unto itself in terms of

a gimmick or a group or whatever you want to call it that you're supposed to take seriously.

But they're doing a good job so far.

In this program, at least.

Yeah, they carry themselves like stars.

It's not even that they look like it.

They carry themselves like it.

And

again, it's AEW and they fuck up everything and this tournament's about to happen, but

Shelton's been, I'm more interested in Shelton right now than I was in a while, in the last good while of his run in WWE.

Well, and that's the thing is because you can tell he's motivated because he's got some spotlight.

They were using him as an afterthought.

Or if that, or just, you know, go out there and do a minute and a half, Shelton, whatever.

And what can you do with that?

But now he's motivated.

He's always been this good.

He just didn't have opportunity or particularly even reason

the last few times we've seen him up there to show it.

And then

again,

you know, the tournament, okay, it's a good way to get him in that.

I fear where it's going to go unless he wins or places highly because

I can't read those goddamn brackets and graphics, and I don't know what the fuck is going to happen but is you know

if he's in this tournament he's got to get in the ring with one jack perry or somebody and actually make the guy look like he's competitive

the bloom could be off this quick but we'll see

but he had a uh shelton that is he

had a tournament match then with mark briscoe

and this was i mean well you saw some of them In Ring of Honor, the Briscoes had a ton of great matches with Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas.

So they know each other.

They have for, you know, a number of years.

So the match was fine.

But it's the rules.

This is the tournament where nobody's allowed at ringside, no seconds, no managers, and nobody's allowed to run in.

Remember, they did this last year, which just tells everybody that, well, they could just tell people you can't run in anytime they want to.

And there's 20-minute time limits, and it's a point system, and it's round-robin, not single-elimination, and blah, blah, blah.

But they had

a good match.

It is what I was talking about the other day on one of the programs when you work

to the presentation of the other guy, not necessarily his ability.

Don't take a guy that's been presented as a regular fella, and just because he can do all the shit, have him do every goddamn move in the world, but still don't treat a guy like Mark Briscoe, Briscoe, who

would be much more over with good booking, but is still people like him.

You don't treat him like a job guy.

This was a good match, but

it wasn't Shelton winning within an inch of his life.

And they did this professionally.

They took big bumps.

Shelton belly to bellied Mark on the floor and bounced him off the rails and the stairs, and Mark would do his dive.

But when they did, they would be in and out of the ring on the floor.

They would break the count, they wouldn't bury the ref.

They would do big shit when it was called for, but the shit didn't look hokey and they weren't trying to cooperate with each other.

And

then Mark opened up, hit the froggy bow,

but Shelton rolled to the floor.

He hit an elbow off the apron of the floor on Shelton, rolled him in, hit an elbow off the top, but Shelton raised his knees and gave him two of those

big-release German suplexes.

And again, Shelton's a real deal when he can do that shit.

You know, he doesn't need a lot of help.

And so, and the people can tell.

And

then Shelton with those super kicks, which are goddamn, they're right there, boys.

Not a lot of daylight there.

Super kick, suplex, power slam combination, one, two, three.

12-minute match.

It was serious.

It was good stuff.

A good win for Shelton.

Mark Briscoe looks like a guy that can do something.

You know,

it's schizophrenic, this program, when you get something like this, and then,

you know, you'll come up on the next match we're going to talk about, which is completely different in the Monty Python definition,

or

Maria May and Tits McGee shaking their boobages, or whatever the fuck.

It's just all over the page.

It's shambolic, is what it is.

Yeah, and again, that's kind of a good word for the Continental Classic and this bracketing and the Blue League and the Gold League.

And,

you know, again, it's not for me.

But what's going to happen when the Justice League gets involved?

Okada versus Shelton.

That'll be interesting.

Oh, good Lord.

Can you see Okada's face when Shelton gives him one of those belly-to-back fucking overhead throws?

Here are the rest of the first-round matches.

And again, we may not see all of them because some of them will probably play out on the other shows.

Shelton versus Fletcher, Shelton versus Garcia, Shelton versus Mortos,

and Shelton versus Okada.

Jesus Christ, how many

matches is somebody going to have to win to win this tournament?

Well, then, is it that the two league winners will face each other?

Because then there's also the other, the gold leash.

Well, speaking of, there's somebody else that could enter that tournament because they're unemployed from their previous occupation, Brian.

Camille

is apparently a free agent now

because Tony Schiavone brought her and Mercedes Moon out to do an interview.

And Mercedes started talking, and the fans were groaning.

It wasn't like, boo, we hate you.

It's like, oh, God, please don't talk anymore.

Jesus Christ is fucking drivel.

And then that's where

the statistic was revealed to me that Mercedes and Statlander was the longest women's match in AEW history.

And I guarantee you, Tony Khan came up with that one.

And it felt like every bit of it, too.

And

Mercedes did the scripted stuff and then turned around and started to fire Camille.

But Camille said,

shut up and got a huge pop.

Everybody has been wanting this mush-mouthed imbecile to shut the fuck up.

So points for that.

But Camille says, are you stupid?

You can't fire me because I quit.

And she walked off and left.

That's it?

That's the thing.

In under three months, she came in as a dominant female bodyguard that you weren't going to want to fuck with.

And then she's been

beaten and womanhandled and turned into a flunky.

And then on the verge of being fired, she bows up and says, I quit.

And there was no, and she didn't beat up Mercedes.

There was no split.

There was no breakup.

Fuck you.

Well, fuck

and that's it.

What the fu?

What was the meaning of all of this?

Well,

I mean, there's no good answer to that because I don't know if it's been well thought out if this was the Mercedes-Monet Pepperday booking committee, because I've never seen

the eventual babyface turn to the bodyguard character bungled like this

as fast as this.

You say they brought her in as the big muscle bodyguard.

She never even got established as that.

They immediately went right to the fact that she was like a bumbling idiot for Mercedes doing her scripted promos.

Hurt her arm week after week, became a running gag on the show with Statlander.

They missed, like, it's like, it's like they know what they want to do.

Like, oh, I want to do something like when Diesel turned on Sean finally and people were ready for him.

And then he won the title from Backland.

You know, everyone was ready for it.

But they have no idea how one thing got to another.

And nothing is timed.

Like you said, I quit.

And she just turns around and walks away.

Yeah, I'll show her.

What the fuck?

You'll have to carry your own bags now.

I got even with you.

At least slap her by something so that like there's a reason that she demands a match or that a match.

I don't know.

They do nothing right.

They do nothing.

Are they going to when Camille is apparently she's hurt,

when she's okay, are they going to have a match or is that just all forgotten?

Oh, they can't do that.

Where she quits it, but she actually really does go home for a while, so you forget all about her completely.

Then is she going to manage somebody else against or bodyguard?

How did she bodyguard him by one fucking arm?

Jesus Christ.

Well, it was better than what came next.

Brian, remember I said the next match would be completely different from Shelton Benjamin and Mark Briscoe having a pro wrestling match.

We were treated to the long-awaited rematch

and bonus for the Ring of Honor world title between Chris Jericho and Ishi.

And I wrote, oh, fuck, no, not on a holiday.

But

they did

the same

goddamn thing that we laughed at the last time.

And

it wasn't any better this time.

They started out

trading a total of 51 chops before any other move was executed.

And then they went back to the chop.

And it was sad and embarrassing and fake.

I can't.

Apparently, this time, instead of blading his chest, Jericho had

some type of blood apparatus in his mouth at one point, it looked like.

But they did almost nothing except stand there and slap each other or forearm each other or chop each other,

or then they'd break the string and then go back to it.

And it looked like dog the bounty hunter beating up a senior citizen every time that Jericho was in charge.

And

this fucking little,

this poor old man,

why do they make him go out there and embarrass himself like this?

He's obviously almost immobile.

If he was your child's toy, you would give him to Goodwill and buy the kid a new one.

This was bad to us.

I think this was bad to a lot of other wrestling fans.

Imagine if you were flipping by

and you were a WWE fan or just a casual person who, you know, you know, some people like wrestling, but you really don't know anything about it.

And this is what you see:

embarrassing, terrible, and embarrassing.

Why do they treat him like he's Hogan?

I'm talking about easy

because he was really good a decade ago.

But not here?

Not never here, no.

So

Jericho hit the Judas Elbe

L breaker, the Judas elbow and a code breaker,

and the poor, broken-down old man kicked out at one.

And then EG did some kind of awkward something and got a two count and another two count.

And then he ran face first into another Judas, and then Jericho gave him another Judas and then beat him.

And

Anyhow, moving on.

And there's a fan base that thinks that was great.

That's the crazy disconnect that, you know, come on.

You can be a mark for a person,

but you have to acknowledge a match is bad when it's bad

and unproductive.

How does it,

when they try to climb on the top rope and take 30 seconds for Jericho to set up a superplex just to superplex the fucking guy, and then the guy stands back up no selling that and no sells fake forearms

how is that a great match

well there was punnymore great wrestling and dynamite once again from chicago yes their birthplace and a town they have a town that they have pretty much finished off because i guarantee you

They were in the wind trust arena.

Did they have 5,000 people?

Once they finished running punk off, that was the end of that fucking town to draw them a decent crowd.

So then I know everybody's wanting to know what in the world happened at the end of the pay-per-view.

Hangnail Adam Page was involved.

He got beat in his match by Jay White, but then he came out and he beat up Christopher Daniels and he hit Wheeler useless with a chair and he helped Christian Cage.

So Tony Schiavone brought Hangnail to the ring to answer all of these questions.

What in the world is going on?

And Paige just snatched the microphone and started yelling and doing his growly voice.

And he said he made a deal,

but if Cage had kept his part

of the deal, then Paige would be world champion now.

I'm trying to figure out what the fuck was supposed to happen.

Brian, from this explanation that he gave, Paige wants the world title back.

And he had a meltdown and said the title had always been his.

And that, you know, this fuck this Jay White and these other people.

But apparently, was the deal that he made that, okay,

I will come out and hit Wheeler useless with a chair in the main event world title match so that Christian Cage can come out and cash in on the heel champion and win the title and then give me a title match so that I can win the title from the guy I'm helping.

Was that the plan?

That was certainly never explained.

I guess you could argue that was technically implied, but nothing was explained.

Well, but that's the best I could come up with from the clues that they gave me here.

But then when I put that together, it sounds like a bunch of goddamn heels fucking each other over.

And why are we supposed to cheer for any of them?

But then

I know you're thinking, well, Paige has to be finished because it's coming up on the nine o'clock hour.

We got to get something out of here to draw a rating.

Jay White comes out, and I'm like, oh my fucking God.

And he comes in baggy street clothes and looking like a recovering meth head.

And again, we opened an hour ago.

We had three professional athletes dressed in $2,000 suits.

And now we've got a goddamn basket case from a Dropbox at Salvation Army.

And he wants to be the world champion.

And he has beaten Adam Page five times.

And goddamn, it still didn't help a bit to get him over, did it, Brian?

I beat him once, twice, bang, bang, bang bang bang bang bang as every promo i did that oh i beat you five times dang bang bang

no one cares they they put him over mjf before the title match with mjf and no one gave a

yes

meanwhile juice is in that tournament he's gonna be getting pinned by everybody

well he's a baby face now so they want him to get sympathy How are they?

That's the other thing.

Why are they baby faces and how did they become baby faces?

I don't remember.

I don't think they told us.

And where's Juice?

He's gone again.

Well, he's in the tournament.

He's getting ready to be in the tournament.

Well, goddamn, why ain't he out here with his fucking boy?

Because his boy needs some help.

I will say this as a compliment.

This is the best version of Adam Page.

Screaming and acting crazy.

I like this better than every other version we've seen in AEW.

Well, it is better than the morose, somber, drunk.

So he's got that going for you.

See, that was the first sign.

What is their audience?

Who are they booking this for exactly?

They're upset that their friend is a drunk, yet he drinks on his way to the ring.

That's how much of a drunk he became suddenly.

And they accept rides on his lawnmower while he's been drinking and driving.

See, you can't drink and drive.

You've got to drink and then finish drinking and then drive.

No, again, let's not take advice from anyone like

that.

No.

Well, you can't drink and drive.

I'm just telling you.

We'll get you for that.

Jason, if I'm making noise, it's because this show sucks and I'm banging and clanging and I got papers.

Why wouldn't it be sucking about this?

Not this show.

I'll be dynamite.

Were we done with the Adam Page Jay White thing?

I don't even know.

No, we're not done yet.

Now, I'll tell you, Brian, I'm about to explain something to you.

Or maybe you're going to have to explain it to me, but I'm going to relate it to you.

I'm going to tell you the rest of what happened here and see if you can figure it out.

Terrific.

So Jay White and Adam Page are upset.

They both want to be the world champion.

Jay White says he's beaten Paige five times.

Well, all of a sudden, Pack appears and jerks Jay White off the apron of the ring and starts beating the shit out of him.

And then Wheeler Useless attacks Paige, who is a heel,

and they're beating the shit out of him.

And then Paige rolls rolls off to the floor.

Jay White comes back in and beats up Useless and Pack.

And then Paige

gets back in and levels White,

who has just been beating up the guys that just beat up Paige.

Then Schaefer

knocks out Paige with the Shafer.

I'm sorry, what?

Some people may not be aware of who you're talking about.

Marina Schaffer.

Marina Schaefer.

Yeah,

you need to fear Schaefer.

She knocks out Adam Page with the briefcase, but then swings at Jay White, but Jay White ducks and grabs Marina Schaefer like he's going to give her his finish.

He's got her bent back.

Either that or he's going to give her the tongue, one or the other.

He's got her bent way back.

And suddenly the plumber, Moxley, comes in and grabs a sleeper on Jay White from behind and Schaefer gets out and beats up Jay White and gets a reverse sleeper on Jay White

where she is in effect smothering him

in between the mounds of her boobages, of her cleavages, of her upper frontal protuberances.

It was a titty smother.

Well, she, I mean, she's not like Mina Shirakawa or anything.

Well, you're what are you trying to insinuate?

She's president of the itty-bitty titty committee?

No, you just did that.

What I'm insinuating is you can't titty smother someone unless like you're really fucking titty smothering them.

Well, you can't titty smother somebody unless they're a willing participant in it.

But Jay White wasn't getting out and the crowd for all of this was deathly silent.

And she apparently put

Jay White out with her lethal mammaries.

And then the heels were all kicking him.

And now Paige had disappeared at this point.

He got knocked out with the the briefcase, but I guess he got up and said, Well, fuck it.

They kicked my ass.

I'm going to leave because he's gone.

And then Pack hit Paige with the case again,

and the heels left through the crowd.

And the only member of the group that wasn't involved in that was Claudio.

His tournament match is next, so he's coming through the crowd.

Well, the rest of his group has just committed an aggravated mayhem and is leaving through the crowd.

Claudio is wandering in through the crowd to have a fucking regular single tournament match.

Can you help me figure out what the fuck?

No, I warned you.

I said the Death Rider shit is going to swallow everything in the company that Jon Moxley wants to work with.

And

I think

they're doubling and tripling down on this shit that ain't working.

You thought Jay White was dead before.

He just got choked out by a woman.

And I'm not saying there aren't tough women out there, but I'm saying to just show your babyface, your newly made babyface on TV, getting choked out by a woman.

He wasn't over as a heel, and he's less over as a babyface.

And now he's getting beat up by women.

Big pop when Adam Page teased hitting her with, or Jay White teased hitting her with the move.

Yes, because somebody, again, if she's allowed to kick the shit out of men weekly,

not weekly, as in W-E-A-K-L-Y, but weekly, as in every fucking week,

somebody's got to get even with her.

But who's going to get even with her?

Because they won't let a man beat a woman or a man hit a woman.

Or is spanking okay?

A good old-fashioned spanking?

We used to get tons of mileage out of that.

I mean, what about dropkick?

I mean, you never hear about that as like a domestic assault thing.

That's what I always said.

You know, scoop slams and suplexes ought to be fine because that's not usually an issue in a domestic dispute.

Have I said that?

What happened here, ma'am?

My husband hit me with a hurricane round off the top.

He hurricane rotted me off the kitchen table because breakfast was late.

And then there was a tope.

How do you spell that, ma'am?

T-O-P-E with a drava over the E.

And when I first learned that, I was like, what the fuck's a taupe?

All these Luchadors doing their taupes.

This guy does a great taupe.

And then Eric Bemben told me, it's Tope, you idiot.

How the fuck am I supposed to know that?

Well,

it was,

it should have been required in all the...

grade schools up there in Jersey.

But anyway,

this death rider stuff, though, is death.

And you wheel or Yuda, give up on it.

I mean, come on.

It's insulting now that they keep throwing him out there with the badasses.

And Moxley is just,

it's

his ego and his superego and his id all together with a bunch of money behind it.

Being able to do all this stupid shit that appeals to only him.

They had a preview video of something with them.

Once again, they're driving in the desert.

With a camera crew, of course,

filming them sit in the back of the fucking pickup truck.

This This stuff's lame, and it's going to kick.

Is he going to get a sponsorship from Chevy out of this?

I doubt it.

It's the heartbeat of America, baby.

Maybe a sponsorship from Chewy, but I don't know.

But that's

that was the Adam Page promo Jay White Death Riders segment.

I'm not sure whose side Adam Page is on.

We don't know what's going on there.

They have a tournament.

Hey, one last question.

They had Moxley last week at the end of the show.

This week they did it at the nine o'clock hour.

What do do you think of that?

Well, I think he's starting to realize if I wait till the end, nobody will see me.

It's not like they're doing it for ratings because nobody's going to watch him anyway on purpose, but at least this way,

it's before everybody gives up and bails out

because I'm sure he wants people to see this so they'll be as confused as we are.

Yeah,

see me,

hear me,

feel me, touch me.

I just saw Tommy the other day.

I was about to say, that deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure can't fucking book pinball.

That deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure's got a big checkbook.

Tournament match, Claudio versus Ricochet.

Claudio's got 12 inches on the guy.

He's got 80 pounds on the guy.

And so

it went a while.

and lots of gymnastics i can't i don't did you hear the fans the story of the match was the fans well that they were chanting what was it bald forever at one point well it was all sorts of bald chants at one point they were just chanting bald bald bald bald

but it evolved into that eventually it was you know

you know, ball, they were cheering one bald guy versus another bald guy.

Then it was just all around cheering for baldness.

But here's the member of the Death Riders.

They like to ride death and they beat people up.

They try to murder people at the pay-per-views.

And Ricochet, WWE superstar, here to prove himself.

What, two months now?

It's been, right?

Has it been longer?

Ricochet, how long has he been there?

When did he debut?

If it's three months, that's the very top.

It's somewhere in that range, yeah.

So already he's one of the boys.

I mean, you know, he's doing gymnastics.

Who gives a shit?

Everybody else there does their too.

He stood out in

WWE because not as many people were doing that stuff.

Not as many people were bald.

And there you go.

And Claudio, you know,

he's there now, but it was a match.

And finally, Claudio dropped Ricochet crotch first on the guardrail around the ring.

And Ricochet crawled in.

And Claudio clotheslined him and beat him one, two, three.

So now they've given up on Ricochet, just beat him flat by a guy that

it's a tournament.

He'll get a couple wins back from someone else.

Well, but

give the guy some type of goddamn make the heel cheat for once.

I know somebody's going to say, well, dropping him on the fucking rail crotch first is cheating, but the referee saw it.

They were outside the ring with the referee staring at them.

So it's not like.

You can't, they can't figure out how to cheat a babyface where

you feel like that the guy got cheated

and again this came off marina shafir killing uh jay white they went right into this match and the fans were more interested in the follicle challenges of the two wrestlers the folliculi folliculi folliculi folliculi i mean it says something when the fans care more about popping themselves than they do about anything happening in the ring well that's it that they were keeping themselves occupied because you know they were like what are we watching here

it's

their fans are going because of

maybe not habit, maybe just a feeling that they ought to.

They're coming live to town.

Are they going ironically, as the kids say?

Because since the primary AEW fans are

people who watch wrestling ironically.

want to laugh at it, not wanting it to be serious, not wanting it to be realistic, but just want it to be a clown show.

Are they now coming to

laugh at the clown show rather than with the clown show?

And by the way, you asked earlier,

according to WrestleTicks, 4,709 tickets distributed

in Chicago.

Previous time there was July for Dynamite, 5,291 tickets distributed.

And the Thanksgiving show in Chicago.

We did,

again, Crockett, Thanksgiving

at Starcade 87.

10,000 people sold out the UIC Pavilion.

See, I think that's, you know, I mean, it's funny you bring that up.

I think a lot of AEW is becoming like a steady Starcade 87 kind of feeling.

Like

the Road Warrior is lost and there's no good reason.

I can't explain any of this.

Why do I like this?

What's happening?

What is happening with this company, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I mean, just that feeling of like things that shouldn't happen happen.

And, you know, AEW, it feels like it's getting to a point where they're constantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Well, with the next segment, you tell me what's going on here now.

Adam Cole, Matt Tavin, and Mike Bennett go to the ring.

And Adam Cole.

Adam Cole is pissed off.

He's tired of playing these games with MJF.

Max,

if you were half the man you claim to be, you would fight me, but you won't because you're a little bitch.

And after what you did to Roddy, to Roderick Strong, I swear to God, this is Adam Cole, I swear to God, on my mother, I'll beat you within an inch of your life.

And nobody made a sound.

This man hates his mother.

It was, that's

what I was thinking.

That's what they must have sat there and thought

because

he's yelling and he's swearing vengeance and they're just sitting there.

And then here comes Kyle O'Reilly to the ring in complete silence.

People are like.

And Kyle says, hey,

Adam, it didn't work out when you fought MJF.

Let me fight MJF.

And so first, Kyle was the one to come out and say, no.

Don't fuck with MJF anymore.

Just get over this.

He's going to fucking kill you.

And you're going to get us all hurt.

All of your friends.

Roddy, everybody's going to get hurt because of this.

We can't handle this fucking guy.

I mean, that was the promo last week, right?

And now this week, don't fight him.

Let me fight him.

And Adam Cole says, you don't need to do this for me.

I need to handle MJF.

And Kyle says, I'm not doing this for you.

I'm doing it for Roddy.

I don't know what the

doing it for the fans.

No one wants to see this anymore.

Yeah,

somebody's got to stop this match from taking place adam because nobody wants to see it and he's going to kill you

i mean that's that's the angle here i don't i've never seen a situation where you had babyface said no don't don't fight this heel he'll kill you gonna hurt all of us if you let me fight him at least

I've never seen a situation where you had multiple outs on a feud where the fans want it to end.

There'd be multiple occasions where they, it looked like they ended it.

Remember when MJF first came back as a babyface and he beat up suddenly a heel Adam Cole in the middle of the ring doing a promo?

Oh shit, that's the end of it.

There have been multiple times where they could have ended this thing that needs to end.

And now what's going to happen is MJF is going to finally come back and get dragged right back into this shit.

And that caps MJF at this level.

These guys who have no heat and the fans don't give a shit about them.

I don't mean heat.

They're not heels, but the fans aren't reacting to anything they say.

Well, and also,

and by the way,

that wasn't over yet.

As soon as I'm doing this for Roddy, MJF appeared on the screen and got kind of a small reaction.

They reacted, but it wasn't like, oh, my God, like they were losing their minds like it was a while back.

I'm afraid they have.

potentially mortally wounded the golden goose and he may be bleeding out in front of us.

And MJF said, I'm not going to fight either one of you because next week is the Dynamite Ring Battle Royal.

And I've got my mind on that because he'll have to face the winner of the Battle Royal for the Diamond Ring.

And he played his music on piano

to the out on that video.

And so Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly have both entered.

the Battle Royal to see if they can win it so they can.

I liked it too.

And then they both yelled at the video screen.

Yes.

The video was off.

It was gone.

You saw that the video ended.

But it's not like it's not live anyway.

Because

Adam Cole said something to the video screen.

I'm thinking, oh, he's doing this again.

This is so stupid.

And then when Kyle grabbed the mic and he's looking right at the video screen, I was like, who is he cutting this promo on right now?

Oh, everyone wants this to end.

This is killing MJF.

MJF keeps sending in these videos that are pre-taped.

Everyone knows they are.

But I think it's just as well that he is because people don't want to see him in Adam Cole anymore.

They want this to go away.

End it.

You know, there was a couple of different times where they could have just never mentioned it again, backed away slowly.

People's attention would have been diverted, but no.

They keep reminding us.

Okay, Brian, certainly.

You swear my mother.

When was the last time you heard a baby face say they swear to mother and you don't believe him?

Yeah, I don't know.

I swear my mother.

I'm going to beat you with an inch.

No, you're not.

Stop it.

The only thing is, he may mean it, but I don't believe he has any chance in the world of doing it.

So it doesn't really matter whether he's telling the truth or not, because it's like, I'm going to go to the moon.

Well, you might intend to, but motherfucker, I'll bet I won't see you there.

MJF should never come back next week.

He should send like Bobby Fish out as a heel move.

Wrestle this guy.

You know, if they could find

like a 12-year-old kid that looks like MJF

and he could just send him out, he'd be size-wise, he'd be comparable

instead of the old midget deal because that would be seen as insensitive.

Yeah.

Anyway, can you explain to me

the tournament that Jamie Hayter and Queen Wyata

were in.

Because I know that old Sockface, old Excalibur, he explained it.

He rattled off the matches and the promotions and the people involved in the promotions and the matches and the countries and the

it was gibberish.

But some way or another, while they're having this Continental Classic tournament, They're also cooperating with a multi-promotional tournament involving a lot of outlaw girls from Japan

in the Wrestle Dynasty tournament where the winner gets in a four-way and the winner of the four-way gets a shot at a bunch of other titles from independent promotions at the Tokyo Dome in January.

Is that correct?

Something like that, yeah.

Well, it took up 12 minutes is what it did.

I watched it.

You know, every time they put Queen Aminata out there to lose to someone, which is the role they keep giving her, she's the one that comes away looking impressive, I think, more than the person she's wrestling.

Hater,

there's something off since she's returned.

I know she's dropped weight,

but the look, there's something that's just something.

Suddenly she's a female Ronald McDonald.

Where did all this color come from?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's an interesting choice.

It really is.

But.

Yeah, I don't know.

Then she's yelling at the...

Did you see the end?

I mean, you say you didn't watch the match.

Did you see the post-match with the light?

Oh, what happened with the light?

The light shined on the stage because Julia Hart, obviously, from the House of Black, who remember, they control the lights.

Oh.

They're part of the union, I guess.

I really don't know how they control the lights everywhere they go.

But, yeah, the light was on the stage to indicate that Jamie Hayter is going to have problems.

Oh.

That old empty light, whenever that thing shows up, that was the Twilight Zone episode.

The guy would see the empty light on the soldiers' faces, and they were the next ones to be killed in battle.

Well, I'll tell you who I'd like to see killed in battle.

Renee Moxley Good was doing a sit-down.

What do you have?

What kind of problem do you have?

No, not her, not her, the person she was talking to.

No, you mock her, but killed in battle.

Of all the ways to be killed, too.

Renee Moxley Good was talking to

Mina Mellons.

Mina Mellons is the one

that I would like to see killed in battle.

Stop it.

You've heard of the Battle of San Juan Hill.

How about the Battle of Mina's Mountains?

This was like they were on a set in front of like a photographic backdrop with the TV lights, like a sit-down interview, and it looked like an audition from toddlers and tiaras.

And

they've kicked it up a notch on this television program from just

people doing stuff like this and doing bad acting, but now they've got bad acting and they've upped it a notch, bad acting from people who can't speak English to begin with.

She actually speaks English better than most of the Japanese wrestlers, although it's obviously not perfect and I could see people having problems with it.

However, watching this promo, I guess we call it.

I guess we call it a promo.

Is it a promo?

I guess.

It was an interview.

Watching this promo, the surprise ending on this set, where all of a sudden the champagne bottle is everywhere now.

That popped me just because it was so stupid and unexpected.

She's sitting there and talking to Renee, and she's talking about Maria Mae and how she's going to get a hold of Maria Mae or whatever.

And suddenly, you see Renee go, oh, like somebody has just appeared, and the camera widens out, and

Maria May hits Mina over the back of the head with an obviously fake bottle and breaks it into a million pieces.

And Mina goes down and goes, Oh,

girl, if you got a bottle broken over your head,

you'd be done for the night.

And then

Maria whips her with the title belt that she's carrying around.

Just on the when Renee jumped out of the way and just, yeah, there's just attempted murder amongst the women on the interview set.

Had to be a bottle because of the champagne bottle, and they still have not followed the script of the champagne bottle celebration movie that I saw.

It's all the leftover bubbly from Chris Jericho shit that he was trying to sell five years ago.

Well, apparently, she's drunk it because it was an empty bottle.

All right, then you want to adopt.

You know what?

I mean,

it's almost like there are two different women's universes in AEW.

There's the Sasha Banks stuff, and then there's whatever's going on here.

Again, who's.

I get a kick out of it because it's bad wrestling TV, but who is this audience exactly for the Mina Shirakawa Mariah Mae

love story?

They confessed that they were the love of each other's lives, and then she tried to turn on her with a bottle.

They got speared off stage.

Then she returned with another bottle because obviously she had had to get even the right way with a bottle.

But who's this for?

Who is this for other than to laugh at it?

If Tony, if this is not some kind of fetish of Tony's, then how are they talking him into it if he's not in favor of it?

Who would talk you?

Who would put your job on the line to pitch something like this to the boss?

Let's do this on your TV show.

See, the truth is he doesn't approve any of this, but when people meet with him, if you ever seen him at the press group, he just nods his head up and down nonstop.

So people think they got the approval, and then they tell someone else, and there's no communication, so they get on the air.

And then they're going to find out that his mother was scared by a bobblehead when she was pregnant with him, and that's the only reason he nods up and down all the time.

He really hates everything you're saying.

You better stop, he's going to give you the Effie treatment.

Watch what you say.

I've got to see Effie to find out what the Effie treatment might be.

Anyway,

and we were at the main event, Brian, on this program.

Oh, Joy.

Another tournament match, Brody King versus Darby Allen.

Now, here's the thing.

Darby is all bandaged up, coming in.

He's got a bandage on his head.

He's got a bandage on his ribs.

He drove his own car into Moxley's truck on the pay-per-view.

He hurt himself.

This idiot

is coming into this match banged up, not because of the heels, but because he ran a fucking car on purpose into a pickup truck.

Yeah, and by the way, would you insure him?

If you're a Geico

and you see that this is the way this guy's behaving and he keeps driving, are you going to insure this man?

Or if you're a health insurer,

how is he k-fabing the fact that he's regularly jumping over his own home in fucking various buckboards and things?

Yeah, hopefully no one knows I drove into someone with my car on TV.

So

we know that Brody King is,

I don't know if he's the number two guy or the number three guy in the house of black.

He's definitely number three.

Well, actually, he's number two with me because Malachi is the worst one of the bunch, but Buddy's a star and stuck in the middle of that quagmire.

Darby Allen is one of the only baby faces that they have left that the people really like.

And they like him.

The people that are still there, the fans of AEW, like him as much as they did four or five years ago.

Maybe a little more.

Maybe he's the exclusion.

There's not as many fans as there were four years ago, but maybe they like Darby even a little bit better

because he's always

letting people try to kill him, but nevertheless.

So

they make this match as a tournament.

They start the match shaking hands,

and then they go a minute to the break, which there was no overrun this week because they actually had college basketball on, some kind of special tournament game thing instead of modern family that they can just do whatever they want with.

But they have Darby coffin, drops this guy off the top rope to the floor.

His finish

off the top rope to the floor.

Then he rolls him in a ring and he hits it off the top rope in the ring.

And then he goes to do something else.

And Brody King just catches him in a fucking sleeper.

He took the guy's finish off the top rope to the floor

and in the ring.

And then Brody King catches a sleeper and then turns it into a powerbomb one, two, three,

and beat Darby Allen.

Again,

a round-robin tournament means all of your fucking guys are going to have to do some kind of job or almost all of them.

That's why Starcade 89

was so fucking rotten with the Iron Man and Iron Team tournaments that Jim Hurd insisted on because

Muda had to do three jobs in one night or whatever.

And again, at least Darby is kind of over, not just one of the fat guys in one of the groups.

And then

Claudio came to the ring with a chair, I guess, to work on Darby, but Brody stood over Darby and stopped him.

Because next week, it's Brody wrestling Claudio.

Who are the fucking heels?

Well, I think House of Blacks should be heels, but Brody has shown himself to be a compassionate giant.

Remember, he beat up Darby Allen for years, but it turned out he was actually concerned

for his little opponent.

So it really makes you look at the man a different way.

Claudio has shown himself to be both mean and bald.

So he has that going for him.

Should be a barn burner in the sense that you may burn your own barn down and hope that someone takes you someplace with no TV so you don't have to watch this fucking match.

I wanted to watch that wrestling show, but instead I had to commit arson on my own barn to get the fire department out of here to keep from having to fucking watch it.

That's right.

Well, that was AEW Dynamite and the Continental Classic Tournament.

We'll see just how classic it is this year.

I guess Okada is going to have to reappear.

He's the reigning champion and he's in the tournament.

But, Jim,

perhaps,

I don't know, really.

Perhaps, Jim, that there was a way to take all this Continental Joy and box it up and somehow sell it to everyone.

to have a store where you could sell Continental Joy,

the Tony Conway.

If If none of this makes any sense, there's a good reason for that.

I have no idea what I'm saying.

But, Jim, Shopify is a product.

Yes.

Or something.

Yes, I'll tell you what.

Whether you want to buy Continental Joy or KY Jelly, it doesn't matter, folks, because Shopify,

and that's Shopify.com, for those of you not aware of how the interwebs work.

They're the home of the number one checkout on the planet.

Nobody does selling better than Shopify, folks.

If you're starting a business or you've already got a business established or the feds are cracking down on your business and you need a lifeline of some kind, well, Shopify knows all the tricks.

They can get you out of federal investigations, boom, in the twinkling of an eye.

But if you've got an honest business, even better, because that will save quite a bit on legal fees and strongarm men.

However,

With Shopify, you can take your product or service and you can put it on a platform to broadcast it to the whole wide world.

And if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are, whether they're scrolling or strolling or rolling on the river, on the web, in your store, in their feet or in their feelings, and everywhere in between.

Shopify will send beams of hydrosonic sound out to everyone's brains saying, buy from George, buy from George, buy from it's not the way it works.

No, they guarantee no subliminal audio messages, subliminal

parts.

That's part of the

sublimality is very subliminal with them.

That's how they can get away with it.

They've only got a 5%

sublimality rate.

But what they did was they went to one of the highest peaks in the Tibetan mountains and jacked up this broadcast tower.

And once you sign up with Shopify for the number one checkout on the planet and the best converting checkouts and then they beam these signals into everyone's brains it starts at the brainstem and works its way up buy from george buy from george unless of course your name is sam that won't happen which case that won't happen they'll customize they'll customize it to buy from sam buy from sam no just hear no no no no no because none of that's going to happen what they're going to do is hey there for you

there's a lot of people that hear no no no no all the time they're all married but the point is you want to hear

that's what you want to hear and with shopify i guess you're going to vegas you're going to hear it way less carts are going abandoned and more sales are going

with shopify that's right but yes go yes yes yes the secret thing we are committed we we may disagree but we are committed to the cause Yes, you could upgrade your business and get the same sound effect.

No, that's the wrong one.

Not even that.

You want to hear more of that?

You want to have the coinage falling in your pocket, the filthy lucre, the coin of the realm when people are sending money just to make you go away, if nothing else, where you can upgrade your business and get the same checkout that all the top people use.

You know, you wouldn't believe who's in on this.

Some of the biggest movers and shakers in the world.

Some of the biggest.

You can hobnob with them.

They use Shopify because Shopify is is there and they are established and they can help you sell your products.

They can help you.

They can help me.

They can help all the listeners.

Yes.

Tell the listeners how to get it without guaranteeing anyone else's involvement that you don't know anything about.

A lot of South American governments have been using Shopify.

Again, you know, nope, let's not make it.

They want to build up a good war chest in case the people try to overthrow.

Well, you can sign up, folks, for your $1 a month trial period right now at shopify.com/slash JCE,

all lowercase for that JCE, shopify.com slash JCE.

One dollar a month trial period.

So they're basically they're going to give you a trial period.

And in essence, I mean, what's a dollar?

You can find that in the couch.

Shopify.com/slash JCE, and you will be upgrading your selling today.

Shopify.com.

I hit the wrong note.

My hand was stretched, but no, you hit the wrong note.

That means it's time to move on, ladies and gentlemen.

And of course, that means we're going to get to some questions.

Jim, this was sent via email to corney drivethrough at gmail.com by Eric Escola.

And he didn't write anything.

He just sent a link to something else.

All right, let's click this.

Okay, he did a lot of work for this, Eric.

Can we get your thoughts on this quote from Paul Heyman about championships, the amount of championships in wrestling?

Apparently, this is from an interview with Shaq Wrestling, whatever that may be.

I'm not a big fan of a multitude of titles,

unless you can give them enough time.

We had proper focus at that time on the championships that we held and didn't feel that we needed more more championships to tell better stories and felt that therefore the introduction of more championships only waters down the championships that we already have the spotlight on at the moment.

Listen, if there are 14 titles and they all mean something, then you should be looking at doing number 15.

If you have seven titles and you're struggling to put relevancy on all seven, then you need to cut down the number that you have.

What's working?

If it's working, let's do more of that.

If it's not working, change it.

Well, there it is, Paul Heyman on having too many championships in wrestling.

What do you think of his comments?

Well, surprisingly,

nothing to disagree with there.

He's exactly right.

And when can you,

of course, he was

supposing when he said if you have 14 titles and they're all over, then you add a 15th.

But when have you ever seen one promotion with 14 titles and all of them were over?

That's the point.

You dilute, you water down, as he said.

If you've got seven and you're struggling, maybe make it less.

And,

you know, yes, you can say the WWE has three different television programs counting NXT or three different brands, SmackDown Raw, NXT.

And then apparently you have to have a women's title to counteract any men's title.

But you're still only talking about three world champions, three secondary champions, three tag team titles,

and then

commensurate fucking secondary titles for the men and women.

You're still only talking about

nine titles over three brands for each gender.

You get the point.

When I first got into wrestling, WWF had three championships.

I guess the women's one, but it kind of went away right away when I got to being a fan.

It was never long-term.

Right.

So this is like 1989.

They had the world title, the Intercontinental title, and the tag title, and everyone who held every one of those belts was over.

Savage lost to Hogan.

Rick Roode won it from the Warrior and then lost it to the Warrior.

And then you had Demolition and Datullian Arn back to Demolition.

That was it.

And

it was later in that decade when all of a sudden there were tons of titles.

Now we see with AEW, but now WWE too, like you said, with the women, all of a sudden introducing secondary titles.

And at least think that they did drop that 24-7 thing, and they dropped the hardcore title when the novelty of that went away long ago.

They can be dropped.

They just don't ever do it a lot.

Did you think it was too many titles when you got to work for Dusty?

Not at first, but then

again, when we started, when we, yeah, me and Effie, we're running this thing.

When they started, the company that I work for started buying territories.

Then it went from, okay, there was the NWA world champion, obviously.

There was the United States champion.

There were TV champion, but then there became the

auxiliary championships that were inherited from,

you know, buying Florida or buying Kansas City or the UWF titles specifically.

And then the Western States Heritage title when they were going to expand out west and

the various tag team titles that,

again, when

it was only

world tag team title and U.S.

tag team title, because Crockett had at some points eight, ten tag teams, top teams working in the territory.

Okay, then that's fine again.

But

multiple titles of every kind and description it did.

And the junior heavyweight title, when they bring it back and put it on Denny Brown,

that was, it was a little much then.

That was one of those things that looked cheap to me when I first started seeing tapes of Denny Brown.

I'm like, man, that junior heavyweight's got a beer gut.

Yeah.

And I mean, when it was Nelson Royal, okay, that was kind of legitimate because Nelson was kind of legitimate.

But,

you know, it was not focused on and not

there to me, there was never any reason to have a belt of any kind on the undercard unless it was the old deal we did with Candido, where guys used to do every once in a while where they had their own belt trying to get heat with it like they were a real champion, but you made fun of them for it.

Nobody gets made fun of these days, even though they've all got their own fucking belts.

All right.

Well, those are the comments on that.

Jim, let's get another question here.

This one was emailed to corney drive-through at gmail.com from Kevin.

I can't say that without laughing.

Kevin.

I can't ever say that without laughing, thinking about Mark Laurent saying, the winner of the match, Kevin.

Kevin.

I would appreciate your perspective on this, as I can't come up with a definitive answer.

If Jim had a more regular in-ring career whilst whilst managing, what finishing move

would have been most complimentary to Jim's skill set?

I'm not expecting top rope moves.

I'm not even set on it being a submission hold or a pin.

Some obvious possibilities I could think of would be sleeper hold, knuckle duster punch, Boston crab, side suplex, elbow drop.

What do you think?

And that's from Kev, Liverpool, England.

Well, I wouldn't have had any finishing move because I would have never have beaten anybody.

And see, that's well,

in my career, I wrestled, as we all know, numerous times of being the manager forced into a match.

or in a spot show situation or whatever.

There's hundreds of those.

So I've had hundreds of matches,

but I've never beaten a female opponent, and I never beat anytime I ever fought a midget.

And most of the time, I would always lose when I fought guys, but I think I've won like five times over the course of the career

where I would be on the verge of death, and some way or another, my guys would,

you know, do something to bullet Bob Armstrong,

and I'd fall over the top of him unconscious and get a one, one-two-three or whoever it might be

the baby face and that's the only way I would ever win anything because otherwise it would have been insane

the whole idea was that people paid to see me get the shit kicked out of me and that they knew that was going to happen because I couldn't beat anybody but I would try

and I'd do damage to somebody that was already down or with a foreign object or blind them with something or attack them from behind or hit him with the tennis ragged

and get some heat because you have to,

but then sooner or later they'd make the comeback and beat the shit out of me.

And the exception to that was the aforementioned when I beat a couple guys with other people's help,

then that was to set up out of a tag team match or whatever, coming back.

with a single match between me and that person so they could beat the shit out of me again.

So I would not have had

a finishing move.

And

to

expand my in-ring career or wrestle more

while I was still managing would have just, it would have hurt the managing because I wouldn't be a main event guy.

And if I'm out there managing and getting

wrestling on the undercard, managing a main event team, but wrestling on the undercard and getting beat in random cold matches,

then I wouldn't really keep any heat on me.

What about a signature move, even if it's something that you always attempt but always fail at?

Is there something you could see?

Does that make any sense?

I had a signature.

The elbow drop was a signature move because it was one of the five things I could do.

I could kick, I could punch, I could drop an elbow.

I could, if the guy was

small enough, technically, I guess I could body slam him.

And what would be the the other thing that

did you ever have a problem

conceptually punching?

Not actually doing it, but just the idea that Jim Cornett maybe shouldn't be able to punch.

Well, no, because that's the thing is, if you think about this, it doesn't take

any athletic talent to ball your fist up and punch somebody in the face or try to.

But you so the theory that I always worked with as a manager was

I should look like I'm trying my best and it it still shouldn't do much damage unless the guy's already down already hurt whatever So it wouldn't look like a fake punch.

It would just look like a punch that didn't hurt a fucking guy.

That's why I always tried to make sure it looked like I was connecting

because I wanted people to think I was trying

All right, Jim.

Well, let's get another question here.

Let's see if you can keep making people think you're trying.

This This one was sent to Cordy Drivethright.

I'm going to get a medium uphill struggle now.

CourtiDriveThru at gmail.com.

This was sent by Jose O

from the goose.

What?

Whatever that may be.

He's from the goose.

V-E-G-O-O-S-E.

It's either a band or a locale.

I thought you said from the goose.

I'm currently watching an old interview with Dusty Rhodes from 1999.

And on the topic of him working in WWF in 1991, Dusty admits that he was at one point trying to see if he could take Pat Patterson's place as Vince's right hand, second Booker, he referred to it as.

Do you think this would have worked?

Would Dusty have elevated WWE going forward, or would two strong personalities clash too hard, a la Paul Heyman and Vince McMahon, and it end

in bloody ruin.

Shambolic.

So the idea in 91, Dusty goes back to book for WCW.

That's when he called you, obviously.

What if he didn't do that?

What if he stayed with WWF, retired from an in-ring role, and replaced Pat Patterson, who for one reason or another wouldn't be there?

Would it have worked, him and Vince?

Him and Vince wouldn't have worked.

Dusty could have booked the WWF and,

I think, done wonderful things with it, but not with Vince around.

Same reason at Watts for that brief two months or six weeks or whatever.

You could see that he was starting to do some things that were, because it was dreary at that point, what, 94,

early 95.

But Vince

wouldn't leave it, he wouldn't let anybody else be the booker.

They had to be his assistant.

And

That's when Watts left.

He said, Vince, there's only room for one Titan in Titan Sports.

So I'm I'm going home.

With Pat, he didn't mind being the idea guy.

He didn't mind being the second in command.

He didn't mind being,

you know, Vince's guy to go to for in-ring stuff, but Vince had the final call.

Dusty was a

Sylvester Stallone.

He was a writer, director, actor.

Mumble mouth.

Mumble mouth.

He would have wanted

more pull and more control over the roster and what they did and the product because he put so much of himself into it and I could identify with it that if it was good or bad or indifferent, he wanted it to be his.

So whereas Pat was comfortable working in that spot and being Vince's right-hand guy, but not

being responsible for the whole thing,

I don't think it would have worked with Dusty and Vince just any more than it worked with Watson and Vince.

It just wasn't going to work with Vince giving any kind of final say-so on anything to anybody.

You know, that was kind of one of the big tests, too, when Dusty went back and

it worked out.

And we all like Dustin, but that was one of the things about Dustin.

Dustin kind of took the place of Dusty on the roster in a way.

But Dusty wasn't booking himself.

Previously, when you were there with him, he was booking himself.

I guess that was a bit of a transition, the idea that you're the booker and you're no longer.

Because he never came back.

I always expected it as a kid, as a fan.

I was like, oh, Dusty Rhodes is there on commentary with Jim Ross.

I just saw him wrestle a couple of months ago.

Surely he'll be in a match sometime.

And it never happened.

I don't know.

Probably part of the deal he made.

to come back was he'd focus on booking and not be in the ring because

that was part of the problem the previous time is that a lot of guys said well dusty won't get off the car and get out of the way well by that point though it wasn't as easy to or wasn't as hard to talk dusty into it because he was five or six years older or whatever and he could see that you know time waits for no man

so but again with even the same thing

In the WWF, even without Dusty being in the ring and just being

in the office and on creative

at that point in time.

Now, later on, years later, when Dusty was in NXT and, you know what, that was a whole different kettle of fish than being the booker for the guy that owns the whole thing.

And that way he could just sit down there in Florida and talk to the boys and girls.

And one of the guys said one time, Dusty was just sitting there, he said,

Out of the blue, he said, Vinceman, man, better be glad I didn't save my money.

and that's why he was there in NXT

because that would change everything, you know.

I've got five dollars more

if he'd have saved all of that money, he wouldn't have been fucking sitting around at that arena probably at that point in time.

Jim, a question from the Culta Cornet Facebook group.

This was submitted by Daryl Woodruff.

Why are wrestling t-shirts almost universally terrible?

I don't mean this to include Jim's stuff, but 90% of them are shirts I'd be embarrassed to wear in public.

What do you think about the idea that wrestling shirts, whether it's the design, whether it's just shit all over the place, the front and the back,

that maybe some of them, some of them, I mean, somebody AEW once, there's an Anna Jay one, it's like fat ass and bad attitude.

Who the fuck's going to wear that?

A guy with a fat ass and a bad attitude.

The Britt Baker t-shirt with the black eye.

I mean, there's this whole bunch of bad ideas that have come out of AEW's merchandising, but wrestling t-shirts being embarrassing to wear in public.

Well, I mean, this is not a new thing because think about,

I mean, wrestling t-shirts going back to the 70s.

Les Thatcher did some of the first ones

in the Carolinas with some of those guys.

They didn't look bad for the time, but there were some in Memphis that had like a black and white picture kind of superimposed somehow on the shirt.

They were selling them cheap and they weren't spending money to have them made.

And then when it got to be a business that you could make money out of, remember in the 80s, the Crockett shirts were garbage.

They were amateurish looking.

It looked like they had found an artist at some art school to do the drawings or they just didn't look good, not stuff guys would wear.

And

TBS continued.

Remember, the TBS shirts were garbage.

Just awful designs and bright neon colors.

Even if it was the early 90s, most guys didn't want to wear this shit.

Did you like your Midnight Express shirts in 1990?

No.

Because for one thing,

the art looked like it was done by goddamn Harley Quinn.

And

Stan had somewhat of a fucking droopy face on that shirt.

And

we were heels.

We didn't expect we were going to sell a lot anyway.

But of course, I think we got a check for $26 one time for the t-shirts.

But I ended up, Casey, the guy that did the merchandise, when I left, walked out, he called me.

He said, hey, he said, we got like 200 of these Midnight Express buttons and a bunch of odd sizes of the t-shirts.

You want them?

I'll sell them to you for whatever.

Yeah.

And we couldn't hardly sell them on indie shows.

They were just ugly.

Now they go for a fortune because there's hardly any out there.

But no, all of that stuff, Vince in,

I don't know about the 80s t-shirts and merchandise.

I wasn't there, but the stuff in the 90s, they got into a

little groove there where the shirts look cool with Brett or Taker or Nash or Michaels or, you know, all the stuff.

They're like a big fight shirt with the two faces, you know, head off at each other.

I remember Michaels and Vader for SummerSlam 96, kind of a cool shirt.

But that was the first time that wrestling stuff, even from the big companies to me, had looked like shit you'd actually want to wear.

And I don't know why it is either,

you know, everybody's trying to save a dollar, don't want to go to a good designer.

And I found out anytime I've tried to sell a shirt except black,

most of my audience does not take kindly to that.

I'm not saying they're portly or that black is slimming, but there may be a correlation somewhere.

Well, everyone needs an undershirt.

But, all right, that was that question.

Jim,

that means it's time for another question.

Looking at the questions here, there's a whole bunch of them.

Here's a question sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Jason Heron.

Can Jim talk more about wrestling at the Coliseum on the fairgrounds in Jackson, Mississippi?

Oh my God.

My dad and uncle used to go and watch wrestling there in the 70s and 80s, and I've seen a couple of WWE shows there.

Okay,

the Coliseum at the Fairgrounds in Jackson, Mississippi.

is one of the older buildings that was classic in the, you could tell in the territory days, you could see the ghosts of those old matches appearing and hear the echo of the bell.

You smell the popcorn cooking.

It was an old-time arena at the fairgrounds in Mississippi, and they also had livestock shows.

They had cow pens out back

and like a fucking pasture or a field or whatever.

And they had all the

so

that was where they had run the big shows in Jackson going back to the 50s and 60s.

There was another building on the fairgrounds that was smaller that, you know, in the old days of the

George C.

Culkin local Mississippi promotion, when they weren't doing well, they had gone to that building and it looked like some Paradise Alley shit in there.

But the Coliseum was great.

And as I recall, I think it seated around 8,000.

And so it wasn't too big, but it wasn't too small.

And it had a great atmosphere because it was one of those old-time arenas where all the sound carried.

But that was the place

that one time when we used ether

on Tommy Rogers when we were wrestling the Fantastics.

And I'd come out with ether and put the rag on his face.

And

I've told this before, there's a trick to the ether.

When you spray part of the towel, if you hold it right, you can fold a clean part of the towel.

over the top so the guy's face is not right in that goddamn ether, right?

But it's the middle of summer, Jackson, Mississippi, and it's hot weather.

And I don't know if there was air conditioning in that building, but it didn't feel like it.

And it was so hot and they'd been going so long, so hard.

Tommy's sucking wind.

And

he got a big fucking couple of big breaths of that ether and he started getting sick and gagging.

So we got out of the ring, go back to the locker room.

And we're grabbing our shit and we're going to get out of there because the finish was kind of hot anyway, but they've taken Tommy Tommy to the back door

where they've laid him out to get some fresh air and he's vomiting in front of the fans that are at the back door.

They've seen the ether finish.

Now here's this guy.

They've drug him out back.

He's on his hands and knees and he's puking.

So that lent some extra credibility to the deal, right?

So now me and the midnight are leaving.

And the cops said, hold on, we've got an issue out there because so many of the fans had congregated to watch Tommy fucking throwing his toenails up

that they the cattle chute area where we park and pull from the back of the building, they're congregated around there.

And when we go out with the police escort, Tommy's still laying there and we stepped over his body and laughed at him as he's like,

and

then we get in our car and I'll swear, I swear to God,

the cops, and they were official

gun-toting, badge-wearing Jackson, Tennessee police officers.

They announced to the crowd that the car that we were in was going to start momentarily, and it was going to move forward.

And if the people wanted to be out of the way of it, they better move now.

And then the cop looked at me and said, drive through them.

Yes, sir.

And boom.

And those people fucking scattered.

Right?

That was the way that the cops validated us getting out of the goddamn building.

But it was fun.

And I used to do,

there was a DJ in Jackson, Scott Matir,

and he did the Dawnbusters morning radio show on the rock and roll station.

And I used to do call-ins, and I was in the studio one time with him.

And

I don't know if I did this on the air, but I used to call his show the Dawnbusters.

But we did a fucking rock and roll versus disco

debate one time on the air.

And I said, Well, if you don't think we're going to beat the Rock and Roll Express, and you just come on down here tomorrow night to the Coliseum and you troop right up there to the rig and you watch us do it.

Well, somehow once I left and,

you know, I left the studio, I didn't know what he said.

So he apparently on his own

promoted that he was going to be in the corner of the Rock and Roll Express the next night at the Jackson Coliseum to see Rock and Roll triumph over the Midnight Express.

So we go to the building the next day, me and the midnight Dundee comes in and says, Cornette, what the fuck did you say to that DJ?

I said, What do you mean?

He said, Well, he thinks he's going to be the Rock and Roll Express's manager tonight.

And I said, Well, I didn't say that.

He said, Well,

goddammit, he's going to be.

We've got the biggest advance we've had in six months.

It did $40,000 at tickets 10, 7, and 4 to see that DJ walk out there and get confused and watch the Rock and Roll Express beat us.

But he's a yeah, Cornet shot his own angle.

He sold the fucking building out.

And that's why we had the last stampede there.

And the house was $62,000, I believe.

Jack Curtis said the last time that there was that many people in the building for wrestling, the house was $18,000 because tickets were like $250 a piece.

So it is the Jackson Coliseum, Mississippi.

Wonderful place.

Jim, another question sent via email to corney drive-through at gmail.com from Rocco

in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

Believe it or not, that's a real place.

But is this a real Rocco?

We will find out with his question.

I was wondering, why do you think David Schultz never went to NWA?

I feel he would have been a major success there.

I always thought his gimmick would play better in the southern territories.

Remember, we talked about that one time here on the show.

People can probably look it up on the YouTube channel, but for the purposes of this exercise,

Schultz did do better.

The Tennessee territory was where he shone because he could be himself and do the things that he did.

Remember, we talked about

the situation under which he left the WWF was acrimonious, to say the least.

And not only that, but especially because he had left the AWA working for Vern to come to work for Vince, specifically because Hogan wanted him to come to work with him.

And

he also felt like that he had done what Vince wanted done

in the garden with John Stossel.

And right about that time,

I truthfully, I don't know

where Dusty Rhodes and David Schultz would have ever met or coexisted.

Can you think?

Because Dusty was booking Crockett at the time.

Did Vern bring Dusty in at all for a one-off in like 83 at all?

82, 83?

Can't remember it.

Japan, maybe New Japan?

Very possibly.

I don't remember when David Schultz first went to New Japan or when Dusty last went to New Japan.

They may have actually missed each other, but maybe that's.

Well, but you have

had some interactions with Schultz and George.

And, you know, he's done some interviews.

The point is, he was not only kind of pissed off, he had left Vern to go to Vince.

I don't think there was a close relationship with him and Dusty.

Dusty had a crew full of people.

Schultz at first was making good money, you know, for the time for independent shows per night, but that's when he got into the

body hunting, the help me, the

body hunting, the, the, uh, the, the, the bail jumping, the, uh, the bailing, the dog the bounty hunter.

There we go.

Body jumping.

The body hunter.

It's a fucking holiday.

I've got Burgoo waiting on me, goddammit.

We're going to have Burgoo and Texas toast tonight.

I think he just, he got out of wrestling, and

the body hunting was more his style anyway, and was more profitable at that point.

So I, you know, I think that's probably why he didn't pursue it any further.

But if he was, would he have been successful?

That promo, his style of work.

Oh, yes.

Virginia Rocket promotions, let's say when you got there in 85.

Yeah, and

unless he did something either in the locker room or out in public that

caused a strain on the relationship, Schultz would have fit right in with that crew and the way that he talked and worked.

Yeah, he would have been a big star, but I think by that point, he was kind of sour on the whole thing.

Well, you know, a lot of people get sour on a lot of different things, Jim.

And one of the things that can cure that sourness, maybe cure the sourness of one's day would be a fine tune.

Maybe listening to your favorite podcast clearly.

with comfort applied to one's ear.

What the fuck are you doing?

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That's the more you know.

Yeah, that's something.

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That's right, because there was an epidemic that a few years ago with people putting Raycon earbuds in a variety of their underwear.

No.

With

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Well, and you put them in your ears is what you do with them.

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But buyraycon.com,

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Can you do that on the notepad?

How many earbuds would you have to to buy where you could get three pairs for free?

Listen, let's not worry about being freeloaders.

Let's talk about paying your way and getting something worth your buck with.

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That's right.

And Jim, let's wrap up with a few more questions.

No songs or anything this week.

It's after Thanksgiving.

We're both tired.

It is getting dark here in the East.

Burgu.

Some breaking news as we are recording.

Not big news, but following up an earlier.

Game Changer Wrestling has announced the replacement for Ricky Starks at the highest in the room show in Los Angeles against Matt Cardona.

The replacement, Effie.

Effie will be replacing Ricky Starks

at this show.

Yeah,

you had to open your big mouth, asshole.

This is all your fault.

You go out there and get the shit kicked out of you.

So there's the late-breaking news, but Jim, let's get a few more questions and get out of here.

One thing also I do want to say, we've been hearing from a few listeners wondering if you're on Blue Sky.

You are not.

So whatever account is there is not actually you.

I'm there.

I don't know if you're...

You're over there now?

I'm everywhere, but it's the Great Brian Last.

The Great Brian Last is the account.

Obviously, it has a weird Blue Sky address, but I'm there on threads and Blue Sky.

Jim's not anywhere but Twitter, correct?

Somebody is saying that they're me, but they ain't me.

Yes.

But no, I'm not going to learn another one of these goddamn things and have something else to fucking look at every day and see what the fuck is happening.

That's bullshit.

I'm not real thrilled with the Twitter that I've got.

I don't want any more of them.

What the fuck?

If you see me on anything, chances are it's not me, unless it's JimCornet.com or the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel or wherever you find your favorite podcast and you can hear my voice.

Otherwise, I'm not there.

All right.

Well, let's

get a few more questions if you're there for these.

Jim, this question was submitted by Justin Lee James via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group.

What was, for you,

the most emotionally charged angle in wrestling that you've ever seen that got over?

Well, there's a lot of qualifiers there.

I mean,

how do you term emotionally charged?

Is it

the emotion from the participants and the perpetrators, or the emotion that

you got out of the people that were seeing it?

I mean,

you know, it'd be hard to beat the

original 1980 deal in the Omni where the people were trying to climb the cage and riot to get a hold of the Andersons for turning on Dusty and a blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, and you witnessed that live.

Yes, and it was quite chaotic.

Or

was it, you know,

somebody retweeted this not long ago.

What do they call it on Blue Sky when they re-blue sky something?

They blow you.

Oh, well, maybe I might stop by there just to see what all the shouting's about.

But

the deal with Flair and DBase on Mid-South television, where it was emotionally charged between Murdoch and Flair and DBase, and they switched DBase baby face because he was

nearly died of blood loss.

Or,

I mean, there's been all kinds of emotionally charged angles, especially that caused riots, the thing in Cleveland with Ox Baker and Johnny Powers and Ernie Ladd.

Or,

you know,

I don't really know a way to answer that question because there was so much emotion and so much of that shit in those days when people

could get lost in it and buy it.

And, you know, if the fucking baby face was getting carted out in an ambulance, the people were going to go around back and wait for the fucking heel to emerge from the back of the building so they could get even.

That's emotion.

What do you think?

That I witnessed live?

Geez.

Well, I mean, well, actually, I don't know how I'm thinking of the Louisville riot in 95.

But, you know, that was a little different because that was,

they had anger and they were going to direct it someplace.

They couldn't get through the cage.

They can come right to us.

But when I think of emotionally charged,

I guess like the Terry Funk retirement in 83,

right?

I guess you would say that.

Yeah, that's emotionally charged because that wasn't people trying to kill anybody.

That was, again, the outpouring of emotion for Terry Funk, the beloved funk who they thought at that point they were never going to see again because he was retiring.

And the emotion was all, or

that was El Santo's funeral, for fuck's sake.

You know, it wasn't an angle.

It was a hell of an angle they did.

Hell of an angle.

Wait till they worked the return.

Had a big funeral and the streets were closed.

And Now that he popped out, did a tope.

And I mean, I've been in a bunch of emotionally charged angles where I didn't get a chance to witness them very clearly because I was fighting for my life as the fans were fucking assaulting us on the way back to the locker room.

But you don't get a good fucking overview of everything at that point when you're just being pummeled.

And

so, I mean, that was everything,

unless it was just

a bad town in a good territory or a shitty night somewhere, or just a really

territory on the verge of death, there were emotionally charged angles in almost every territory on almost every night of a show.

I'm a big mark for some of the stuff from really kind of the same period of time, the Rock and Roll Express in Mid-South, but maybe more specifically the early days in Crockett, the Von Ericks, and all Japan women, where you had tons of girls in the audience screaming, where it was frequent to see a close-up of someone crying because of something.

Something had happened, so they're crying because, you know, Carrie had to leave.

I mean, that's a different kind of audience that you'll probably never get again for wrestling.

But that was just screaming girls emotionally invested in their wrestlers.

Yeah.

And like you said, whether it's the rock and roll or or the von erickson i saw both of them in person

it was just it was beetle level just screaming just screaming because they were looking at oh yeah there they are

but then

the major heat angles of you know

of all time and in birmingham alabama

In the fucking very, it may have been 1969, it may have been 1970.

Bearcat Brown?

They painted Bearcat Brown white

because he was teaming with Lynn Rossi and the Heels.

I think it was the interns and Raimi.

Ken Raimi loved Heat.

Oh, you want to be a white?

Because Bearcat Brown was an African-American, in case anybody's not clued in on this.

And in Birmingham, Alabama,

he was one of the top two babyfaces at that period of time.

They loved him.

And he was the first.

or they were the first interracial tag team in the South, Bearcat Brown and Lynn Rossi.

They painted him white because he wanted to be a white guy and they sold the building out six weeks in a row, 6,000 fucking people coming to see them kill the goddamn heels.

And that was emotionally charged, but you couldn't do it today.

A TV station would lose their fucking license.

What was that?

What was what?

Something fell.

Something fell somewhere.

And if it wasn't on your side,

Things are falling down all around you.

All right.

Well, Jim, let's get one more question.

We'll have more questions next week.

And a boo-boo.

And,

of course, there'll have a lot more action on the experience in just a few days.

Yes, and by the way, we're going to take a nice two-week holiday break, and the fans are going to have some wonderful programming, but we're going to rest our goddamn brains.

However, if someone does something extraordinary,

We will be here on the YouTube channel at least.

No, and say it the way you normally do, extraordinarily stupid.

Well, one way or the other, we will be there to cover the big things as they happen.

That's our commitment to you.

Yes.

Jim, here's a question sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Matt Thompson.

Well, I will answer it because that's my commitment to you.

Kevin Sullivan once said that WCW knew the areas of the country where illegal cable boxes were more commonly used to access, I think he beats PPVs.

He wrote POVs

to access POVs.

I can understand you could access some of those POVs on the internet now without.

I may have had one in university in the early 2000s myself.

In Jim's time in WWE, was Vince or the office worried about those boxes cutting in the buy rates?

And was it a factor at all that they considered when averaging the number of buys?

Also, did Jim or or Brian ever have one?

Ever?

Oh, no, an illegal box?

No, I was goddamn doing everything I could to make my legal boxes work right.

When I worked with Kevin in WCW, that was in what, you know, 89, 90.

It was too early in the game yet

for the technology for us to know anything about illegal fucking piracy streaming or whatever.

There's barely been pay-per-view for, what, three or four years.

So

the guy that wrote this question is probably referring to something Kevin said when he was in the

WCW in the later 90s when they had more technology.

Turner Broadcasting was running all the pay-per-views, or Turner Home Entertainment, et cetera, et cetera.

I didn't know, honestly,

that there was a way that they could determine how many illegal cable boxes there were.

I know that in modern times, what, several years ago, we were seeing that the UFC was combating illegal piracy and it was affecting WWE on the pay-per-views and they were trying to crack down.

But I don't,

again, I can barely get a goddamn pay-per-view on cable television.

I don't know how to steal one on the internet.

Brian, I won't speak for you on that.

But I never tried to anyway.

Usually I was on it.

I wanted to have a good quality copy and record it, right?

But when I was in the 90s working for Vince in the office,

I can't really say that I remember past if somebody had sent a letter from the office saying, well, we understand that, you know, there were illegal downloads of the pay-per-view in Pakistan or whatever, he might have, I don't remember it being a big, major concern.

The pay-per-views were starting to do very well at that point.

And

I don't think Vince was bothered by

who was going to have an illegal cable box at that point in time.

It may have gotten more prevalent as people got smarter to the technology and I left and didn't give a shit.

Well, all right, there it is.

I guess I'll throw in my answer.

I never had one.

We were always on Long Island.

We always paid for cable vision.

I don't think it was that terribly expensive.

The other thing, though, was not only did I not have one, I remember sitting by the TV and watching the scrambled version or listening to it, just so I could at least follow along with the pay-per-view that I couldn't convince my father to buy.

Well, yeah, because that's the thing.

When it first started, if you went to the pay-per-view channel, you could kind of most of the time you could hear it, but the picture was scrambled and you couldn't see what was going on really, but they had some kind of

switch they'd flip.

When you bought it, the signal would unscramble.

And that's another thing.

You had to.

You had to call your local cable company.

You really did.

You called a phone number and somebody answered, and you said, I am so-and-so at such-and-such address.

I

have your cable, and I would like to order the pay-per-view on such and such a day.

Please turn it on for me.

And most of the time, they would do it.

Sometimes you'd call and the motherfucker would say yes, and then he wouldn't.

And if you waited till the day of, because it was on a weekend, you were fucked because you couldn't call the day of the pay-per-view because nobody was in the office.

It was a weekend.

So when I was on

goddamn pay-per-views on Turner that were being promoted on Turner Broadcasting System, that were being issued by Turner Home Entertainment, the NWA, WCW, biggest stars, blah, blah, blah.

They're doing a couple of hundred thousand buys or whatever the fucking thing is.

If I didn't call my cable company there in suburban Charlotte by Friday at five o'clock, I couldn't see myself on the fucking pay-per-view.

That was fun.

As was this.

And with that, the drive-through is closed.

Oh, here it is.

Hold on.

Oh, boy.

I was substitution music while I looked for this.

Thank you, Maurice White.

I'll just be over here and be his brother Verdine.

I am currently, as of today, better than Maurice White.

Well, yes, you are, because he's been dead for three or four years.

So we agree.

It's no contest.

Exactly.

Of course, you can hear more of this contest on the Jim Cornette Experience in a few days, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And next week, right back here on the drive-thru with your questions.

We don't have AEW ratings.

Let me just close out by saying that, because I guess.

It's a holiday.

That's right.

So no ratings.

We'll have them on the experience, and I'm sure they'll be fantastic.

But, Jim, let's release it.

You know what they should have done, don't you?

No.

The night before Thanksgiving, that's what we did in Morristown, Tennessee, one of the Smokey Mountains, the first

official Smoky Mountain Wrestling Show, night before Thanksgiving, Morristown, Tennessee.

We went out and bought five turkeys and gave free turkeys away to the lucky number winners the night before Thanksgiving.

That's the way you get people in a fucking house.

And then they have to sit at their seat with a turkey?

Well, hey, you got to put some work in if somebody's going to give you free food.

All right.

Well,

but those turkeys, you know, they were still frozen, so it wasn't like mushy to sit on.

There's no free food at jimcornet.com.

What's going on there, Jim?

It's

great.

Just go there, jimcornet.com and buy things and hurry if you want it by Christmas.

Because I'm not running a goddamn make-a-wish here now.

I've got responsibilities

at JimCornet.com.

That's right.

The Law Office of Stephen P.

News sponsors all the shenanigans.

877-50 Steve.

Get even with Stephen, newlawoffice.com.

You know where to find us.

Of course, Jim's not on Blue Sky, but I am.

You can find me there if you're looking for the show.

And with that, we'll talk to you in a few days for Jim Cornette.

I'm the great Brian Last.

Tally hoe.