Episode 367

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Hello again, friends.

And you are our friends.

I may not sound great today, but welcome back to another edition of Jim Cornett's Drive-Thru right here on another day.

It is indeed a day, and you are with us.

I'm your host, the great Brian Last.

We're going to be talking dynamite at some point, some of the news and headlines happening in wrestling, and

your questions with this man, the leader of the cult of Cornet,

Mr.

Jim Cornett.

Thank you, Liberace.

That was a wonderful introduction there.

The way you tickle those ivories.

Oh, Jimmy, ow.

Well,

that's my Liberace impression.

It's always better to have two lips on your organ than roses on your piano.

But nevertheless, speaking of

speaking of dicks, let's just jump right into acknowledging the results, the news of the particular week here.

Because on the last program that you and I did, the experience, Brian,

you know, we said we're doing this before the election.

We don't have any results yet because it ain't happened yet.

Well, now we're doing this one after the election,

and we do have the results.

And I've got to say something here in public to you, Brian last, and to the...

Listeners out there that I have never said before.

Do we need a drum roll roll on this or hold on here?

Oh, hold on, hold on.

Oh, I could do that.

No, no, don't you make the drum roll.

Oh, where did I have to?

No, hold on.

Oh, come on.

Where did I put this?

Put your drumstick away.

I beat you to it.

Son of a bitch.

Oh, it's over on the desk over there.

Yeah.

This is what I've never said before.

Mama Cornette was wrong.

Because I did say on the last program that whenever something would happen when I was a kid that was apropos of this statement, and that could be a variety of things,

she would say, Jimmy, just always remember, there's more good people than there are bad people.

Well, Mama Cornette was wrong, and now

we actually have statistical proof.

Because not only

did the citizens of the United States of America not recognize that many people,

including many people inside this country,

have thought that they were stupid,

stupid.

And not only did

the citizens of America band together to say, well, that's just...

That's just your opinion, but they decided to put it down on paper, Brian.

They decided that we basically, we took a big sheet of paper, we drew a line down the middle of it,

and we counted up.

We said, okay, now how many people

think that we ought to be

run by

a sane,

rationally speaking, experienced human being?

Okay, telling them.

And how many people

are on the side of the stupid asshole?

And a bunch of hands went up over me, me, me, me, me, me.

Stupid asshole wins.

Not only were they not satisfied with people around the world thinking that we're batshit fucking nuts because of this guy,

but they decided to document it on paper.

They divined themselves.

We have stooged on ourselves as a country.

But

as they say,

people

get the government they deserve.

And

I think I can say without fear of contradiction, we are all about to get what we deserve.

However, I would like, on behalf of all of the citizens of the United States of America, to apologize to the rest of the fucking world

because

I know a lot of you may be laughing right now, going, oh,

the Yanks or the Americans or whatever the colloquialism is over there for wherever you are for us,

they've elected the fucking foon again.

And it is funny.

If you're not here, it's hilarious, except

the President of the United States of America

can fuck up the world.

So I would like to apologize on behalf of all the Americans for putting you in this fucking position, too.

Because,

you know,

we kind of set up the world order when we saved democracy 80 years ago, and now we're going to come and take it back.

But nevertheless,

otherwise than apologizing to the citizens around the world, Brian,

yeah, we pretty much are going to get what's coming to us.

And

I mean, you know, we're going to have to sit back and just

observe as it, if the mind virus holds through

famine, pestilence, plagues of locusts, what is it going to take with this guy for people to see through him?

But

I saw somebody on the news the other night say, Trump didn't change us, he revealed us.

So I guess technically, Mama Cornette was wrong all along,

even though she hasn't said that statement, obviously, in quite a number of years.

They were here all along,

and there was just not anybody that was low enough

to take advantage of them all.

Every gullible group and every fringe

fanatic, all bundled together, makes more than half of this country.

So the question is:

I'll leave you one more thing, one more thing.

This guy's an 80-year-old fat fuck that's eaten McDonald's for 40 years.

Even I got off of it.

So

when nature takes its course,

if it's within the next four years, we end up with J.D.

Vance as the leader of the free world, who the fuck is this creep?

And what the fuck is his problem?

Just he

appears like the,

I joke about the invasion of the

potty snatchers.

Invasion of the potty snatchers.

You joke about that all the time with your buddy Vince McMahon, I understand.

Yes, yes.

We often do in stalls next to each other.

The invasion of the body snatchers and the pod people, and they look like your family member, but they're not really.

This guy skipped the part where he even looks like he's a real human being.

So, you know,

and surrounded by idiots would be this guy

as the leader of the free world behind the most powerful fucking nation on earth who the citizenry of

have just abdicated

their responsibility as the most powerful nation on earth by allowing two of these cretons to be in charge of it

what can possibly go wrong

and and and and i'll tell you another thing

while there's still free-speaking outlets like ours that can't be censored.

I'm going to tell you some more shit about these two motherfuckers.

This one no-good

and another thing about this son of a,

but they're never going to be able to shut us up in telling you that.

All right, another banner episode of the drive-thru so far.

We had an election talk as well as Springery, I guess.

I've got some breaking news for you.

For me.

You no-good, sorry, gum-bumpin' sack of snake feces.

Good-looking, wonderful, honest, noble person, yes.

With integrity and humble also.

That's right.

You can't deny that, can you?

Last 2028.

Well, I've got news that you're always bringing in breaking news.

Well, I've got news.

Did you hear about the mysterious black balls?

I can already tell you no.

But but before you even go any further i could tell you no you haven't heard about the mysterious black balls

that that washed up on the beach in sydney sydney australia down there down under where are you getting this news from no i have not heard this is no this is all over the goddamn news sources thursday november 7 it was at 2 49 a.m i'm just hearing about it now but

Basically, the mystery has been solved.

There were black balls that were washing up on, apparently, they take pride in their iconic beaches down there in Sydney, Australia.

And these balls were washing up thousands of them.

And the beach people were closing the beach seven.

The beach people.

Well, the beach authorities.

You know, you've got to run for office there, too.

Every two years, you got to, you know, run for office to be

the beach authority, the beach board.

You've heard of beach boards.

I grew up on a beach.

I resent being called beach people.

Well, the people

who are a beachist.

The beach administration.

The people in charge of the beach had to close the beaches, is what I'm saying to you.

Right.

Seven of them, because lifeguards spotted thousands of these things

washing in, and they started trying to clean them up.

And they.

I thought you said there were two.

What?

I didn't say there were two.

I thought you started this by saying there were two black balls.

No, the mysterious black balls.

Have you heard about the mysterious black balls?

Anyway,

they didn't know what they were, but

here was a quote: lead investigator, associate professor John Beaves of the University of New South Wales, UNSW, for the alumni,

said they smell absolutely disgusting.

They smell worse than anything you've ever smelt.

And when

the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority, or the NSWEPA,

first warned Sydney residents to avoid swimming or touching the big mysterious black balls on October 17, after they were spotted at seven beaches, at that stage, their contents were a mystery.

And local officials ordered a series of tests to find out what they were, where they came from.

Well, what they now, they're called fat bergs.

Brian, have you ever heard that term?

I've heard nothing about any of this.

They were mini fat bergs.

Apparently,

fat and oils and substances, which we'll talk about in a second, conglomerate together, sort of like the conglomeration, you've heard of that,

in the ocean and

they float around, right?

Well, this was unusual in that they had never seen this phenomenon

before,

but the fat bergs were made up of, among other

hundreds of other vile and befuddling substances.

Here's some things that were in there: human feces,

methamphetamine,

human hair, fatty acids, and food waste.

Initial testing suggested that they were

made from unrefined oil, potentially from an oil spill, but further testing indicated a different, more disgusting composition.

So they're congealed masses of fats, oils, and greasy molecules that can accumulate in sewage, noting that their presence highlights the issue of pollution among Sydney's coastline.

I wouldn't want to be swimming with them, the professor said, but

I could okay grease and oil and

human hair, but methamphetamine?

Yeah, the blobs contained everything from fecal matter to medication and recreational drugs.

Where the balls came from still remain a mystery.

However,

and Brian, I'll open the floor to discussion on this or anything else.

Oh, great.

In 2021, a massive 330-ton fat berg wreaked havoc in Birmingham, UK when it clogged a city sewer for weeks.

What the fuck?

Actually, I believe this is some sort of advanced promotion for AEW coming to Australia.

And those aren't black balls.

Those represent the black holes of charisma that are some of the wrestlers on the roster.

no that they got these promotional beach balls made but they were

cheap material and they

they

they melted in the ocean and washed up on shore so that would be good promotion everyone in town's been wondering what are the mysterious orbs that have been arriving on the beach yeah it's a failed project from the son of a billionaire Let's get more about it.

Supposed to be little, little mini holograms.

And they were supposed to wash up on shore it cracked one open it contains uh an unsold copy of the video game

and oh that that thing pretty much self-destructed like a tape on mission impossible i google it kids yeah that thing's sunk on its own now that i think about it

uh

all right

before we uh

Before we engage in any more wrestling frivolity, I just wanted to make sure that story got wider pressed.

You never know when something's floating up on shore.

But a lot of people heard about this the past couple of days with all the other things going on.

This was

not good news for wrestling fans and

all of us who have been friends of Dutch Mantel's forever and eons.

Dutch's daughter Amanda has set up a GoFundMe.

for not only Dutch, but his wife Kathy.

And I don't know if people know or not, but Dutch and Kathy have been married for over 50 years.

It may be the longest

marriage.

I don't know.

It has to be currently in wrestling, right?

I mean,

goddamn it, unless

who is Bill Mercer still married?

Bob Caudle.

Yes, he's definitely still married.

Who knows?

But

Dutch and his wife Kathy have both had bad health issues over the last year.

And,

you know, we think back a few months ago when Kevin Sullivan's family had put up a GoFundMe for him, one of the things that he had been having trouble with was sepsis.

Dutch has had sepsis, been in and out of the hospital for that twice.

But

for all of that, it sounds like Kathy's health issues have been worse and she's been hospitalized.

And I'm not going to read their chart on the air here, but there is a GoFundMe for,

and again, Brian, I always ask you because you know everything about the internet, but if they just type in Dirty Dutch Mantel,

they're going to get it.

There's no Dutch impersonators yet on GoFundMe.

Well, I'm pretty sure if you just go to Google and search for GoFundMe, Dutch Mantell, or go to GoFundMe and search for Dutch Mantel, dirty, not even needed.

Well, there you go.

Well,

it is in the title.

Help Dirty Dutch Man, because he's Dirty Dutch to

all of us.

To the clean folk.

To the clean folk.

But anyway, yeah, that's how the kids Google these things.

But anyway, yeah, you know, if you've liked Dutch's work over the years, whether it be you're a fan of Memphis wrestling or you're a fan of, he's been everywhere at one point or another, but I've, you know, obviously a fan of his work in Memphis, but also he worked with me in Smoky Mountain.

When TNA worked with him, he had good moments.

Dutch man was behind most of them.

There you go.

I worked with him not only in WCW and later in WWF, but then he's the one who kept me from committing aggravated mayhem a number of times in TNA for all those years.

So

one of the funniest guys in the business.

But anyway,

I just wanted to bring that up because

if you go there now, they've exceeded the original goal.

But that's the thing is Amanda has basically

been taking care of both of them to the obviously the detriment of her having time to actually work or do anything else.

So,

and

a lot of their,

I don't know, I've fortunately never been in this position, so I'm not sure how it works.

But for those of you around the world, we have insurance here in the United States if we pay for it or if we're old enough to have Medicare, but they've still got caps on hospitalizations.

Brian, you know,

if you know how that fucking works, you could chime in.

But point is, you're still screwed over here if you're old in the hospital, one way or another, generally.

So that's to try to assist with all of those things.

All right.

He was the first guy you managed, and you did the thing where you printed up the

photo that you took of you guys together, and then he destroyed it on TV as his way of saying, I'm out working with you, geek.

But

what was your relationship like with Dutch before that?

How well did you know him from when he first really, I guess, with the first family in 81 was

a big push there for him?

Oh, well, I had met him in

Chris before Thanksgiving time of 1976 is the first time that I met him because he came in and briefly he was partners with David Schultz at that point.

And,

you know, he was, I guess, at that point, four or five years in the business or whatever, and had just

really adopted the name Dutch Mantel because,

as we talked about before, there was an original Dutch Mantel from the 19 teens and 20s that was a noted shooter and was a big

drawing card and promoter out in West Texas that Roy Welch was influenced by.

You know, when Dutch got into the Tennessee system, Magulis and Welch, et cetera, that's how that came about.

But nevertheless, yes, he was away for a few years and then came back.

Actually,

was it early 1981?

He and Austin Idol were partners.

And they had been in Georgia and a couple of different places.

Because there's that great photo you took of the first family with them and Dream Machine.

And who's the fourth person I'm forgetting?

Oh, I forget now.

Wait a minute.

It was Dream.

It was Jimmy Valiant.

Jimmy Valiant, that's right.

Yes.

Yes.

Dream, Jimmy Valiant,

and then Idol and Dutch and Jimmy.

But nevertheless, and yes, because I'd take it a million picks.

Dutch was one of the most popular baby faces after he switched and left the first family into Tennessee territory from 1981 through,

well, my God, I left the territory and he was staying, you know, through 84.

And then I think they he went to mid-south for a while but nevertheless and then when he came back him and Dundee turned heel yes but Dutch was selling pictures at one point the equivalent of anybody except Lawler Dundee or the fabulous ones at their hottest streaks and when he first turned babyface and for was really working on top He was out selling

sometimes Lawler and Dundee because they they had more pictures of Lawler and Dundee, right?

But he was really over.

So we had worked together and talked and known each other a bunch.

And then

when

we were presented with the idea, I'm trying to think what the fucking timeline was, but

basically, you didn't find out what you were doing in Memphis

until you showed up on TV on Saturday morning, except if you had talked to Jerry Jarrett,

you know, and or Bill Dundee, the booker, at some point, you know, during the week.

And I was not of the status where I was, when I was first being introduced, I'd done like fucking three or four TVs.

I wasn't calling to check and see what was going on, right?

So

Dutch told me the week before,

he said, and that's why we had time to do this shit.

And you mentioned the picture, that's where this is going.

It's all going to tie together, kids.

Take the ride with me.

Dutch said, hey, they're going to do a thing

where,

you know, I agree to sign with you.

Because when I first started managing, after the Sherry Martell thing, I had come out and

I tried to pitch, you know, Lawler, please sign with me.

And he laughed at me, made fun of me.

And Dundee, please sign with me.

And he laughed at me and made fun of me.

But then Dutch, since Dutch's gimmick was that, the fucking gimmick babyface,

you know, the kick-ass tough guy.

His story was going to be that he wasn't above taking me for a ride for some money.

If my rich mother is going to pay him some money, sure, he'll sign with me and he'll take me for everything I've got, right?

And again, the people laugh at me, but it's a different goddamn concept.

But this is what's giving me the grudge against all of the members of the babyface roster.

So when I say, oh, fuck, I'm signing a goddamn heel to get even with all y'all.

There's Jesse Barr, but we'll get that later.

But never so

so dutch told me

but dutch told me a week before and we had a picture taken of the two of me in my manager suit and him in front of my backdrop i think lawler took it because you know he was the only other one could use the camera

and

so i i had a picture of us and then we did the thing on tv where

You know, I announced that

I've signed Dutch and I'm going to be in his corner.

Monday night when he gets even with Jerry Lawler for me and he beats him for the Southern heavyweight title.

And that's, you know, that was the thing is, I've told the story before

my first appearance in the Memphis Mid-South Coliseum in my wrestling career as a performer was managing Dutch Mantel in the main event against Jerry Lawler for the Southern Heavyweight title.

So needless to say, they needed to give me a heads up a couple of days beforehand so I wouldn't be shitting myself out there, right?

So, Dudge, I'm going to sign with you, boom, and you boom.

And then we had the picture taken.

So, when the match comes about on that Monday night, he's told me, you just stay out of the way, and I'm going to take care of this.

And as I remember it from 42 years ago, there was a double knockout of some kind, and Dutch ended up on top of Lawler, but the referee was down.

And I get get in the goddamn ring, and I'm dragging the referee over to try to make him count for Dutch, who's got Lawler covered for the title.

But when the referee, Paul Morton, Ricky's daddy, by the way,

when the referee wakes up and sees that it's I'm in the ring, the manager, and there's Lawler down, and he fucking disqualifies Dutch.

And Lawler retained then, goddamn it, and then Dutch gives me the fucking, what the fuck?

And I'm, oh, please, I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

And that was where, if you've ever seen that video, Brian, you remember the sailor hat, the yachting cap

that I was wearing as the rich kid, right?

Well, I was getting those from Caulfield's novelties here in downtown Louisville.

And

in 1982, they were like $3.95 a piece because they were cheap as shit.

And

it had no shape to it.

It was just white material.

But the way they'd made shape to this fucking yachting cap that my rich ass millionaire mama's boy is wearing is they've just stuffed like wrapping paper

around the edges of it so it'll stand up in the shape of the yachting cap, right?

And I'm sweating anyway, wearing this hat at ringside, and I'm fucking sweating all through this match.

And now I'm getting in there and I'm pleading with Dutch.

Oh, please forgive me.

And I'm just throwing, I'm taking my hat on and off to smooth my my hair out and the goddamn paper came like you've you've seen guys walk out the shithouse with the toilet paper hanging out of their ass

i had like four feet of look like toilet paper hanging out of the goddamn back of my hat i didn't realize it went okay

so

so anyway then

The following week, the incident that you brought up, we go on TV for our live interview.

And

I believe, I can't remember if I've already talked about, well, you know, Dutch, there was this charge at the liquor store and this charge for cigars and this charge at the restaurant and the bar and you know the hotel and the blah, blah, blah, but it's all worth it.

And that's when I announced that this is a great, we're going to officially sign the contract.

Because last week was a trial period.

We had a little few bumps in the road, but everything's smoothed out now.

And And Dutch is officially going to sign this contract with me.

And I have even

brought out a special gift that I'm going to give to Dutch Mantel.

And I open it up, and it's the picture we had taken in Louisville that Lawler took.

I got blown up to an 11 by 14 in this cardboard folder that said to my good buddy Dutchy, Jim Cornet.

And the story behind that was, again,

Dutch, it buzzed buzzed me because, see, now I'm still,

I'm starting to manage, but I'm also going to all the Louisville shows because that's where I'm picking up and dropping off all the pictures that I'm still taking.

Because I'm just not at ringside, but I'm still taking all their pose shit in the back because who's going to goddamn, we got to think of the children, think of the fucking picture sales, right?

So.

Dutch had buzzed me what we were going to do this week because he was able to talk to Dundee and talk to, you know, Jerry, whatever.

And I think he was coming up with a lot of this himself.

So I was neither a babyface nor a heel.

I'm just, you know, what the fuck is this guy doing here?

So I pick up Dutch and we ride down to the spot show on Friday night.

And then on the way to TV, we go over what we're going to do the next day on Memphis television live.

in front of 300,000 people.

And because I've still, I've only done a few of these, right?

It's a big fucking, fucking it's a big deal to me as lawler said one time to lance russell

so and dutch just we just talked about it came up with ideas because they're going to give us four or five minutes on the live television show and the point we've got to get across is that i'm trying to sign now dutch officially and i think that it's all roses and he's going to then inform me that it's not and tell me the fuck off and say he was only taking me for a ride

But we got to make that last four or five minutes and make it interesting, right?

So Dutch says, you know, I'll lay the premise down.

You've got the gimmick, you got the picture, you got the contract, you got the pen.

So it, and

you lay the premise down, Jimmy.

And then I'm going to say, well, wait a minute, you know, because

Because

if we're going to work together, I need to know more about you, right?

So, because that's how he starts to say, let's flesh out,

you know, what your fucking gimmick is supposed to be.

You're the rich mama's boy whose mother is buying him into wrestling, and you're a nerd, and you're a goof, and you're unlikable.

What are your heel qualities, right?

And there's Dutch, the fucking

you know, Willie Nelson of fucking wrestling back when the cowboy, not when he was 90 years old, right?

But back then, they were all cool.

He's got the cowboy hat, the bull whip, right?

He's smoking a cigar.

So Dutch says, I want to know more about you now.

For example, like,

Jimmy, you don't,

you don't like to smoke or have any bad habits like that.

Well, he's got a cigar in his mouth, right?

I'm like, oh, Dutch, no, that's a, that's a nasty habit.

Nasty, nasty.

That's what I thought.

And Jimmy, you don't.

You don't drink and go out and carrot and chase women, do you?

Oh, no, no, no.

I try to be home in bed by nine o'clock.

And Jimmy, you don't take them steroids and them drugs like them pro ball players do because something was in the news.

Oh, no, Dutch, no, I would never do anything like that.

And Jim, and somehow he got me to admit that I like to get up on Saturday morning and watch Richard Simmons or whatever the fuck.

And he just did the interview, and I'm just, oh no, or oh, yes, and I'm making a fucking dick out of myself, right?

And we're laughing and driving back thinking of this shit to do.

And so so then the people can see it coming a mile away, but

I'm so fucking starstruck or clueless or a dumb fuck or whatever that I'm just oblivious when he says, well, now, Jimmy, I'd like to take this contract.

I'd like to take this pen.

And he had one line in the car.

He said,

he said, I'm going to say, I'd like to come out here on public television.

sponsored by Exxon or whatever.

I'd like to come out here on public TV and take this paper and this, this contract and this pen.

And I'd like to take this pen and I'd break it in half.

And he threw it at me and he'd grab the contract.

I'd like to take this contract and tear it in half.

And he threw it down.

And he said, I would never work for you for a million years.

And the only reason as different than me than Lawler and Dundee is that I wasn't above taking you for a ride, you idiots.

Stay away from me.

And then he grabs the picture as he starts to walk off, but he grabs the picture and he takes it out of the fucking thing that says to my good buddy Dutchie and he tears the picture exactly in half and he takes his half and he gives me my half back.

And it leaves me sputtering, but I spent money on you.

And Lance is laughing and the people in the studio audience have gone out of their fucking mind.

And we did five minutes of fucking improv on local TV that we talked about.

the night before in the car on the way back from Covington, Tennessee or whatever.

But that's, yeah, and that's a way Dutch could,

you know, help teach a lot of the guys is just by just talking to them and say, well,

what would we say?

It was good like that.

But anyway.

When you look back on that, are you happy with your performance?

Now, no, but for, you know, four weeks' experience, yes, you know, it was pretty fucking good.

And maybe that's one of the times where they actually started seeing, you know, he's not fucking actually sucking here.

I don't know because they started giving me a lot more to do shortly thereupon after that.

All right, well,

but anyway, Dutch Mantelle, I guess that's the uh and

again, somebody who's helped me a lot at various points

in my career with teaching me or working for me alongside me or just in the locker room with me.

It's your show, though.

Well, Jim, let's uh get to some of the big topics, some of the big news items that a bunch of the listeners have been sending over.

So they're unavoidable.

We must discuss them.

Jim, as you may or may not have heard already, last week came the news that Marco Stunt has announced his retirement from wrestling.

Have you heard about this?

I saw something briefly on

the social media.

But obviously, there have been other things going on the past few days that I haven't really investigated further otherwise.

I think it was either somebody had a headline, Marco Stunt retires, or somebody said, what are your thoughts on Marco Stunt's retirement?

I didn't know that he hadn't already retired.

I mean, has he still been doing this type of thing since we've seen him?

It hasn't been long enough since we've seen him, but it's been quite a while.

Was he still perpetrating this type of activity?

He must have been doing something somewhere, and we did see him on AEW programming recently, which is

hold on now.

Of course, he was doing something somewhere.

I don't know what, where.

Even if he was in an iron lung, he was goddamn doing something somewhere.

Yeah, he's laying there motionless in an iron lung.

But I'm talking about has he actually been

imitating wrestling still at this point?

Other than that appearance we saw from him on AEW-TV, I have no idea, but we have a statement.

We have an official statement.

Oh, is that from his probation officer?

According to this,

the title of it is Notes App Text Thingy.

I'm

not sorry, what now?

It's his notes app.

Notes App Text Thingy.

Okay, is this code?

Is he being held hostage?

And he's this is, do we need to get out our decoder rings and try to, what the fuck does that mean?

I think he's just trying to sound cute, but here's his message to my fans, friends, and the wrestling community.

But his voice wasn't that deep when he actually said this.

Today I write this with a heavy yet grateful heart as I announce.

No, no, there's nothing on his body that's heavy.

They have to tie him down on windy days.

Come on, we're a sentence in.

Hold on.

I write this with a heavy.

yet grateful heart as I announce my retirement from professional wrestling.

This decision was not an easy one.

Well, wait a minute now.

Now, when we're talking about Grateful Hearts, now that he's got to the meat of the matter, everybody's grateful.

This decision was not an easy one, as wrestling has been the biggest part of my life for so long, filled with moments that have shaped who I am today.

But that guy pushed my face onto that dildo.

There have been people that have been captives of hostages of fucking home invaders and not been forced to do the things that he's done in the fucking wrestling industry.

It has been an incredible journey, one full of passion, sweat, tears,

and unrivaled joy.

Over the years, I've given my body up to professional wrestling.

I am obviously not the biggest, and I used that, and I allowed myself to be battered.

But man, did I love it.

However, after consulting with my doctor, I was advised to prioritize my long-term health and step down from in-ring competition.

Wait,

is this a recent, did he just now consult with a doctor?

Or would a doctor have told him that about seven or eight years ago when he first saw him doing his shit?

Imagine you're a doctor and this is your patient.

You walk in, so tell me about yourself, what's wrong?

Well, you know, I'm a professional wrestler.

The guy's like, what?

How?

Well, remember this, he did this guy, he was doing

some type of sunset flippage activity, Canadian destroyer, whatever, off of a bar, an actual bar in a bar where they were having a show and hit a railing and broke his leg before.

And wouldn't a doctor at that point have said, what?

Look at the state of you and what are you doing

take up books though me i'll continue here he can't pick them up accepting this reality has been one of the toughest moments of my career but i know it's the right decision

first and foremost i want to express my deepest gratitude to all elite wrestling aew

thank you for giving me the chance to showcase my abilities and share my passion with fans around the world.

I used to be code for like, I fuck people everywhere.

I share my passion everywhere I go.

Being able to wrestle on national television was a dream I could hardly have imagined when I first stepped into the business.

No shit.

And it was AEW that made that dream come true.

To everyone involved in AEW, from the production crew to the fellow wrestlers who became my family, thank you for believing in me and giving me a place to call home.

I also want to thank you

to Brett Lauderdale and Game Changer Wrestling, GCW.

Brett, you gave me my start.

And GCWW.

So he's the one to blame if anybody wants to pick up a pitchfork.

And GCW became the launching pad for my career.

It was where I discovered my voice, learned to embrace my uniqueness, and grew into the person and wrestler I am today.

You provided me with the opportunities that changed the course of my life.

And for that, I will always be indebted to you, unless you ask for money.

Nah, that part.

To all the wrestlers I've shared the ring with,

to all the wrestlers I've loved before,

to all the wrestlers I've shared the ring with,

you know who you are.

And you prefer to remain nameless.

So hopefully the fans will forget.

That's such a weird way of putting it.

You know who you are.

Yeah, every one of you has asked me not to mention you and bring that memory up again.

Each of you has played a role in my journey, teaching me lessons, pushing me to my limits, and sharing unforgettable moments.

Whether we battled as opponents or stood together as allies,

you all hold a special place in my heart.

Doesn't he sound like he's on some kind of Lord of the Rings quest bullshit going on here?

Lastly,

to the fans who cheered, supported, and believed in me throughout every match and every show,

thank you.

Your energy, chance, and unwavering support fueled me more than you'll ever know.

You are the heart and soul of this industry, and without you, none of this would have been possible.

Oh, so now we got to blame everybody.

As I step away from the ring, I take with me memories and friendships that will last a lifetime.

While I may be retiring from in-ring competition, wrestling will always be a part of who I am.

I'll be working a match with my pillow later today.

I hope to continue contributing to this amazing industry in different ways and to stay connected with all of you who made this dream a reality.

Thank you for everything.

And this is from Marco Stunt.

Look, I have never met this little fellow.

So he could be the nicest, most polite

little church mouse that's ever been.

Although from the way he was so convincingly a little fucking annoying prick on camera, one would think that it might lean in that direction, but I don't know for sure.

But I have no personal

grudge against this guy otherwise than it was fucking embarrassing.

It was embarrassing to the business.

And

it's typical that he thanked two guys, the head of garbage championship wrestling that

idolizes the bank addicted drug robber and will put anybody he fell out with them apparently he's no longer working with them oh i thought you meant he fell off the wagon well maybe that too actually i'm not sure well what but the point is that they love that they love that kind of outlaw bullshit phony

indie wrestling super fringe

super fringe and

you know they have 400 people in a bar that are just loving this little fucking fellow doing all this shit while they're drunk.

And it creates an atmosphere that these small-time,

this guy, Fort Lauderdale, or whatever, these small-time promoters that are marks themselves, love this kind of sideshow bullshit.

And then he thanks Tony Khan because Tony Khan is the only guy ever with a billion dollars that has also had some kind of fascination with the smallest common denominator, indie bullshit wrestling.

And they put something like that on national television and not only make the business look bad, but made their business look bad initially.

When they're trying to compete, even then, they had a

when they initially came on the air, AEW was still trying to compete.

with the WWE, who had an evil owner that people didn't like, but it was still a goddamn halfway professional program.

If you didn't look at some of the content,

and it just

was another amateur hour self-inflicted wound by AEW to have this little fucking train chimpanzee

interacting with legitimate wrestlers.

And

as I believe we mentioned after that first injury, either we said,

wake up, ding-dong.

Yes, you're 120 fucking pounds doing all this shit.

And no, it's not going to be smart.

It's not going to last long.

And

wouldn't you know who won the pony?

It wasn't that smart and it didn't last that long.

So I'm not like, oh, I'm glad he's in pain forever and must retire and sell pencils in the street.

If he's however old he fucking is and he thought he was going to be a professional wrestler for the next 25 years or make enough money at it to retire,

then he's out of his fucking mind anyway.

So I would assume he's going to have another

line of work.

So I'm not vilifying him or,

you know, setting fire to him in the town square, but no, it was embarrassing to wrestling and it was indicative of the

indie-minded shit that a lot of wrestling promotions have trying to appeal to the same small audience that they present on their program that presents the or that prevents the

mainstream audience, the much larger one

that are following the big guys to

joining their little fucking group and their effort.

It makes them look fucking local cable and fucking funny.

Oh, I'll giggle at that.

Yeah, look at that bullshit.

But they're spending money on the WWE because they're not fucking broadcasting children wrestling.

But all the best to him.

All right, well, Jim, let's stay on the topic of hot breaking news here today.

A story that emerged, and we had heard

some whispers about it in the days in advance.

And then here's the story: Dave Meltzer reporting, uh-oh, Bruce Pritchard and Michael Hayes on temporary leave of absence from WWE.

Longtime Longtime WWE creative members Bruce Pritchard, 61,

and Michael Hayes, aka Michael Seitz.

Son of a bitch, that's right.

Bruce is younger than me, by the way.

And look at the state of him and look at my, he hadn't seen the South Side of 200 pounds in a long fucking time, baby.

Well, speaking of which, Michael Hayes, aka Michael Seitz, 65

are currently on temporary leave of absence, according to multiple sources in the company.

Both are expected back, although the timeframe was said to be indefinite.

Indefinite?

That usually doesn't mean they're coming back, but let's continue.

Pritchard's absence is officially said to be due to a family emergency, and we'll come back to that.

Hayes's absence is due to personal issues.

While both absences have taken place.

Those are kind of interchangeable, aren't they?

Really?

Well, I think personal issues.

A family emergency could be a personal issue and vice versa.

They don't send you to a special facility to facilitate your or deal with your personal issues.

Family issues sounds like it could be something.

Well, again, we'll get back to this.

While both absences have taken place at the same time, there is no actual connection between the two.

And those in WWE emphasize that this is not the old guard being moved out.

As people would speculate, and that both would be back.

Pritchard is one of the key guys in the creative chain of command,

above the writing team, and directly under Paul Levesque.

He had stints on and off with the company dating back to 1987.

Hayes, a Hall of Famer as part of the Freebirds, a landmark group that set box office records.

I'm not going to go through all of his accolades there.

Did his press agent write this?

Has been with the company since retiring as a full-time wrestler in 1995.

He had a short stint as a wrestler in 84, but was fired.

He was a performer mentoring the Hardys,

worked behind the scenes as a producer.

There was immediately speculation that something was amiss when James Gibson, that's Jamie Noble, I believe,

was listed as the producer of the Bloodline matches Crown Jewel.

Hayes, who goes back with the Anawahi family to the 70s, having grown up and broken into the business in Pensacola, where the family was based at the time, was the regular agent for Reigns' matches.

Hayes would work with Paul Heyman, who was heavily involved in everything Reigns-related in regards to wrestling and the direction of the main angle.

So that's the story.

Bruce Prince

and Michael Hayes.

Hold on, you've buried a lead in there.

Michael Hayes, since 1995,

that's 29 years.

Can you imagine if you had bet anybody in the wrestling business any amount of money 30 years ago that Michael Hayes would keep a job anywhere, especially a goddamn corporate environment for 29 years, who would have possibly took that bet?

That's amazing.

Now, he's had a couple rocky spots, but

here's the,

you know, it does seem odd that two people who try not to ever miss anything are suddenly missing things together.

And of course, there is the natural mistrust that we have for

anything that the major corporations say about employees, especially after they've been bought by other major corporations.

And let's not forget this comes on the heels of the news that Vince McMahon is indeed starting a new company with former employees of WWE.

Well, hold on now, because I guarantee there is every,

there would be every possibility that that could include Bruce Pritchard, but I don't know that there's any possibility that would include Mike Ways,

just right at this particular moment.

The question is,

are they trying to have some distance?

from anybody who had anything

really administratively to do with the old

the old company because of the

various pieces of publicity have come out in the last couple of weeks and

the new lawsuit or whatever.

I mean, there's always potential or something to it, or it could just be that, I mean, knock on wood, that it's not, but that Bruce's wife is sick again, or that Michael needs to

go away and

rethink his caloric intake again, or whatever the fuck, right?

But one has to wonder with the

nefarious nattering nabobs of negativity that populate the wrestling world these days.

Well, that's the thing, too, as Triple H

holds on to control the company, he obviously wants his people in place, whether it's NXT, whether it's the producers and agents, everyone.

They're his people now.

He inherited Bruce Pritchard and he inherited Michael Hayes.

Michael Hayes got bombed and sang at his wedding.

I mean, he inherited these two guys.

Yeah,

wasn't that when they made him the first time they made him take that stuff, it makes you get sick at your stomach if you drink alcohol?

That was one of the times, I believe.

Yeah.

But they inherited Bruce.

It's more like

he was an adopted child, but then the parents were killed and the plane crashed.

He showed up on a doorstep.

And here's this millionaire living his life, and suddenly he's got this delinquent child to care for.

Well, and here's another thing.

Michael Hayes, 65 years old.

Why the fuck doesn't he just want to go back to Pensacola and sit on the beach?

What can motivate people even older than me?

Because I'll guarantee goddamn T you right now, I'm the farthest thing from motivated.

There is no motivation in my fucking body right now.

What can motivate people to go through this shit from here to Saudi Arabia and and back again at 65 years of fucking age.

Well, you think you would think about it differently if you didn't at any point stop the grind?

I mean, I think that could be part of it, too.

If you're someone who's been doing this forever, you may not want to stop.

You may not be able to envision your life not doing this.

If I had been doing this as long as he's been doing this, I would have stopped it because I'd be in a fucking solitary confinement cell in either a fucking local

rubber room at the puzzle factory or a penitentiary somewhere for strangling somebody.

Do you think this is an opportunity if they bring Michael back, as they're saying, at temporary leave?

Is this an opportunity for him to reinvent himself and start dressing like a normal human being

instead of a fucking clown?

Is this a chance for him?

Because no one ever saw Michael Hayes in the 80s and said, I can't wait till this guy's dressed like in a fucking Zoot suit in 30 years.

With

sleeves that are long enough to double as a straitjacket.

Yeah, I don't know where the suits came from.

But, you know, but hey, 23's could do.

But no, if Michael came in in like a goddamn polo shirt and the khaki slacks and fucking dress shoes with his hair slick back,

sunroof top, digging a scene with a gangster lean, it would be, you know.

He doesn't have to do that.

It could just be blue jeans and a black t-shirt.

I think that would work.

Well, that's what he wore 40 years ago.

Think about every picture you see of the Free Birds.

He's got blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a fucking ripped up black Free Birds t-shirt on.

And now he's dressed like he's at war with Dolomite.

So maybe this is a chance for him to come back and all of a sudden.

You know, he hadn't been the same since he

found Freddy on the corner.

Freddy's dead.

You know, I don't know know why this made me think of it, but I had to go to a trunker treat for my kids.

I didn't have to go, but I enjoy doing these things with my kids.

It was trunk or treat where everyone in the community, you know, gets together and it's a big event and it's candy.

We talked about that last year, possibly.

So I go there and

actually,

how many kids did you get in a trunk?

Ha ha ha, that's very funny, you sicko.

Listen, I actually was telling the wrong story.

I meant to say it was the Halloween parade at the school that I'm thinking of.

They start playing music, right?

They play the Monster Mash.

Okay.

That's a traditional song for Halloween.

They play the Addams family theme.

Makes sense.

The next song was Sweet Home, Alabama.

And I was just like, what the fuck?

No one's reacting.

I'm the only one.

I'm looking for anyone that will make some kind of weird movement so I can make, yeah, they see it too.

You're in fucking nose-in-the-air, New Jersey, and they're playing Sweet Home, Alabama.

So then I'm thinking, okay, maybe even this is kind of the beginning.

Maybe they ran out of Halloween songs and they decided to go with skinnyard i really don't know the next song was thriller so now i'm really confused how did sweet home alabama get in the middle of this

but anyway uh let's go uh did you ask anybody i did not ask anybody i said i didn't even ask suzanna because she didn't even pay attention to it i'm why didn't you go up and comment was there a dj well there was a parade they were teachers and students and police officers too uh doing a parade where was this music coming from i don't know i didn't get close enough wait how did you not get to find out where the, how could you hear the music and not know, was it coming from a speaker?

Obviously, it was a speaker, but I can't tell you any of the information about the speaker or the chords or whatever.

Was the speaker on the float or was it just, were they just playing it in that location?

Or was it as the float was going down or the people were parading?

Was the music going with them?

You could have, you could have gotten in that line and snatched somebody by the neck.

Well, on the topic of a parade float, let's now focus on Bruce Pritchard here.

So Bruce Pritchard, leave of absence.

Again, he's one of the names that a lot of people, Rhonda Rousey was very public about it, but she's not the only person to talk about it.

She was just very public about it.

Bruce is Vince McMahon's avatar.

Bruce Pritchard was brought back to WWE when Vince was looking for,

at a time where we now know Vince was out of his fucking mind.

Yeah.

He was looking for loyalists, and Bruce was his guy.

Wait a minute, now you say it like this.

He was out of his fucking mind, so he hired Bruce Pritchard.

Yeah, so he needed someone who wasn't going to say no.

Well, both things just happened at the same time because I know Vince hired Bruce Pritchard at least twice before he lost his mind.

So those things didn't have to go together.

Again, Triple H inherits Bruce.

Well, yeah, and that's the thing is that

I don't know that Stephanie has been the biggest Bruce fan in the past when the creative

team was under her auspices or whatever.

Bruce has had numerous, you know, different jobs

in the company over those years.

It wasn't all on the creative team where they were butting heads, but

they want somebody

newer that's in their system with them.

I mean, I don't even specifically know who that would be, but I just know who how

bookers and/or promoters are.

and especially when it's a family generational thing.

When it's someone that you know is a stooge for the former boss.

Well, that I mean, who still owns shares?

That is probably that's a more, well, but a minute amount of shares in the overall scheme of what it was.

But that was even more pronounced in the territory days where you didn't want,

as you said, the stooge of the former guy there, except now

they're still in the same family.

So, you know,

there's an element of that, but it's not as pronounced as it used to be when you just cut all contact off with the ex-booker or the promoter, you sold the territory or whatever the fuck.

But they still got to see Vince at Christmas and shit.

But they don't have to see Bruce.

That's my point.

Well, exactly.

That's what I said, too.

They want their own guys, new guys, guys in their system,

people that they want to bring up.

Because again,

if Bruce is 61,

then

Triple H is also wanting somebody that's younger and svelter and more energetic and whatever, and thinks the way he thinks all the way down the line instead of,

you know, Bruce.

Well, Vince would have said, well,

Vince would have said, hold on while I shit on your head.

Well, yeah, explain to to me Bruce's role, too.

According to this, what Dave wrote,

Pritchard is one of the key guys in the creative chain of command above the writing team and directly under Levesque.

So what exactly is Bruce doing?

Well, there are, remember we talked about this on a recent show.

I can't remember.

In the last week or so, we talked about the writer's room and how many people were in the writer's room.

I think it would probably be

worse.

We talked about that and we said that they talked about the unnamed wrestling people who have been in the company a long time, didn't want to upset Vince and were doing inappropriate things.

And we guessed it was Bruce and Michael Hayes and now they announced both are taking a leave of absence.

Yeah, that is a thing that

that is a thing that's come up.

But what I'm saying is, is they think that it was bad when Vince would often be in the meetings.

I think, especially when Vince came back and was trying to sell this thing and probably didn't have as much time to fuck with other departments as he normally did,

he wanted Bruce to be in there to shoot down the shit that he didn't have time to shoot down and/or bring back to him

the shit that he would like shipped directly over to him.

And be that, because Bruce could filter a lot because he knows exactly what Vince would say, want, not want, et cetera.

And potentially he's doing the same thing with Triple H because

Triple H has Shawn Michaels doing NXT, from what we understand.

There's a staff of writers for Raw and SmackDown.

Do you think Triple H is sitting in there with 27 of them all the fucking time?

He's probably got other things to do.

But he's probably also giving Bruce directions, instructions, A,

they they need to be writing for this fucking guy,

or don't beat Braunbreaker or whatever the

doctrines may be that Bruce then takes to the

assembled writing union over there.

It's just, it's, but it's, it's so big, it's very confusing, and that's why a lot of shit gets lost and a lot of shit gets just boring.

I guess that's kind of my question, other than being a stooge and other than, you know, being able to carry a paper paper from one side of the room to the other.

No, no, I will say, no, Bruce is very, he's organized and he takes.

Here's the thing: somebody has to fucking tell people what the boss wants if the boss ain't in the fucking room.

Bruce is good at that.

Bruce is very organized and detail-oriented and has notes, and he also

knows how to answer questions.

If you're asking, should I give Vince chocolate or strawberry

he'll be able to lead you in the direction of the right flavor all that type so he's serving a purpose as a goddamn you know go-between his expertise is being the go-between between you and vince mcmahon yeah that's what it is the royal you there not just me specifically when he was in mlw

when he was in Impact, I think it was at the time.

I don't remember exactly.

I think it was Impact at the time.

Yes, and I fired him.

Yeah, that's right.

It became global force.

I don't know who you talk to or what you hear, but I talked to talent, and every one of them was

no one was impressed with Bruce in a creative role.

Without his role just being relaying Vince's stuff when it was Bruce on his own,

people did not think he really had a clue what he was doing.

Well,

if

we were still in 1994 with

T.L.

Hopper or whatever the fuck, that you know, the underneath gimmicks, and then

if he had a couple of main event guys that he could replicate some late 80s WWF type of programs, but that's Bruce's problem is he spent so much time working with Vince that that's what he's got there, except without the

overall big picture, you know, evil empire magnate.

It's very WWF-ish from years ago.

But I haven't been around him in a while in a creative capacity.

Well, we will follow up on any news that we hear about Michael Hayes or Bruce Pritchard.

And of course, if anything's wrong with any of their family members, we wish everyone the very best.

And we take back anything insulting that we said.

Well, not everything, but Jim, as we move on, some Vince McMahon news, as we just talked about.

he's been trending for a few days on Twitter because a lot of people are expecting a pardon for Vince McMahon at any point after January.

But this morning, as we are recording, the TKO COO,

Mark Shapiro,

did an interview with.

Okay, now wait, a TKO COO.

The TKO COO

did an interview with CNBC, and Vince McMahon came up.

Shapiro, Shapiro, TKO, COO.

And according to WrestleNomics, the latest disclosure showed Vince McMahon still has 8 million TKO shares, just under 5% of the company.

But let's go to this quote.

Yes, he's a small-time player these days.

Since we're talking about Vince, one question about Vince.

He's not a part of the company anymore.

He's sold out.

Do you still hear from him at all?

I had breakfast with him a few weeks ago, just to check in.

Been a long time.

Haven't heard from him at all.

Obviously, Obviously, the series on Netflix came out.

I wanted to see kind of where he was.

By the way, he couldn't have been more cooperative, he couldn't have been, he couldn't have been nicer.

I mean, he was a total pro at breakfast, if you will.

It's a one-on-one get-together, but he's out of the business entirely.

He doesn't make decisions, he's not on the board, he doesn't opine, we don't consult him, he's got some litigation that he's working through, and frankly, he wants the privacy and the time to work through it, which is great because, in the meantime, we're going to keep building TKO and WWE and expanding the horizon, expanding the opportunities.

And by the way, he's still a shareholder.

Not the shareholder he once was, but he's still a shareholder.

But he's supportive of the direction WWE is going in and has gone.

Couldn't have been more positive, but I wasn't asking for his opinion.

Well, let's stop it there.

Vince, at breakfast, what are your thoughts?

Well, first of all, he's a complete pro at breakfast.

I mean, the way he ordered the eggs, Benedict, my God, like he'd been doing it for years.

And then also.

Yeah, but that was an interesting copy.

He's a complete pro at breakfast.

He keeps it professional at breakfast.

I would never dare go to lunch or dinner with this man.

No, but at breakfast, he keeps it completely professional.

It was a one-on-one, but most one-on-one professional encounters are illegal in that state.

But nevertheless,

and he says, and of course, he's completely supportive, but I didn't ask his opinion.

I didn't ask him what he had to say.

I didn't give a shit, right?

That little boom in in at the end.

He was ready, though.

He was like, He doesn't opine, we don't ask him, he's not there, he's not.

I know this guy, that's what I'm saying.

This guy is smooth because even Vince, everybody talked about how smooth Vince was when he was younger before

the slowdown came.

And, but he was always like, he would throw in his

little phrases like, and notwithstanding,

and nevertheless, and things like that.

But this guy was just right out with it.

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

You can see he could sell you a fucking car, this guy.

The old COO Shapiro.

But

Vince, say hello to your COO.

And then they pipe in the music over the fucking

system.

So he owns under 5%.

He doesn't have any voting power.

He doesn't have a voice in the company.

Yet after the Netflix special came out, Mark Shapiro still sought him out to, I guess, fly to either Connecticut or Florida.

I don't know where he is, and have breakfast with him.

Well, but now we don't know that potentially Shapiro was in the town or Vince was in the town to do other business.

And one would think that one of these

business downtown.

You sounded like fucking Kool-Aid man there at that time.

I'll be in the meat packing district.

Meat packing.

Now, wait a minute.

Meat or fudge.

Which

meat packing are you talking about?

What I'm trying to say to you is

they could have been merely ships passing in the same town in the night

and didn't fly across the country to see one another or whatever the fuck.

The point is,

is Mark Shapiro, again,

one of the Hollywood types, one of the big agents, one of the movers and shakers.

They're always on the horn, on the phone with everybody, keeping an eye on everybody.

Vince McMahon,

as Shapiro is

eminently aware of,

has at least $2 billion,

and he's a guy that he's done business with.

If you

know a guy that you've done business with that has $2 billion, you're going to drop him a line every now and then and say, hey, what are you doing?

And how much money you got?

type of thing.

Just to keep an eye on where it is.

So I'm not surprised at all.

They They have to keep track of what's going on.

That's why

I'm not in this fucking rat race of chasing these billionaires around.

See, I can just sit back and analyze this.

Okay, so let's end it with this hypothetical, based on what you just heard there, what we know about how much he has in terms of cash, let alone 5% or less than 5% of the company here.

If he gets a pardon and he starts up, he's doing whatever he is with his own people, do you still think we're 100% done with Vince McMahon ever appearing on WWE TV?

I don't think the pardon will make

the pardon will make a lot of difference for Vince.

But I don't think the pardon would make a difference from a PR sense.

And again, at Vince's age

and what's he going to look like in three or four years,

I mean,

it may have opened the door somewhat a crack, but

I don't think it's going to be still anytime soon.

Certainly not, because there's still suits being filed.

And how long is this and the federal investigation?

And then after that, no matter what happens with the federal investigation, Janelle Grant's suit is still going to...

go forward.

So it's going to be a while

before he would be free of any kind of litigation.

That I would think they would want him on television because then they might be thinking, fuck, if we put him on TV, what are we going to hear next week?

See, if they put him on TV, it would backfire.

I mean, it would backfire for a number of reasons, and I don't think they should do it, and I hope they don't.

But if they ever did, it would cause people to instantly think he's involved at the top level again.

Because no one would think that you would see him on that show if he wasn't doing something.

Maybe they could just have a wax figure of him made and have a Mr.

McMahon's office exhibit and just have people sit in there at random.

Unfortunately, right now, he seems to be the living embodiment of the wax figure of Vince.

That's right.

We wouldn't be able to tell which was which, would we?

Well, you know, Jim, maybe part of the problem is all those nights that Vince claims he worked throughout the night.

Now we hear he was doing other things, but he was working throughout the night, very little sleep, power naps here and there.

Maybe a good night's sleep would have helped.

Maybe after all those bumps after the age of 50, all those aches and pains, maybe a little something could have been applied to help.

We know someone we could send them to.

A little something is what you're saying that could be applied to any of those things to help you recover after physical activity if you're feeling the pain or maybe get more sleep.

If Vince had slept more per night and worked out and worked less, maybe he wouldn't have gone insane.

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Well, Jim, it's time to move on here with the show.

It's one of those days where I can't tell if it's the noise or my tinnitus acting up, but there's all sorts of things buzzing around us.

Well, besides the fact you're sitting next to a beehive, everything sounds good from this end.

Possibly it's just the sounds in your own mind.

Jim, another

story, if we can call it that, I don't know, was sent to us by a number of listeners and several people sent different links.

I have a few of them open here, and I'm trying to get a

wrap around these issues.

Have you been following Jake Hager's behavior on Twitter, I guess is the best way of putting it?

No, again, you know, it's been a busy news week.

I haven't had time to hop on the Hager beat and find out, is he still around?

Where is he at?

What's going on with him?

I think last we heard he was,

I don't know if he was released or they just didn't renew his contract, but there was a parting of ways a while back we heard about.

He apparently may be the highest paid wrestler per match or per appearance in the history of the world because what?

He's been there for five years and well until he was released or escaped or whatever recently, but he he'd pop up

like every six months he'd see him and then he was gone

and nobody was clamoring for him to come back.

So what's the deal?

Again, I'm not exactly sure what started this.

Apparently on election day,

there was a tweet from Jake Hager.

It was an image of someone voting with the comment, not his comment, it was attached to the image.

Dad voting for Kamala in hopes that one day his granddaughter can be aborted.

And Jake Hager.

What the fuck?

Jake Hager tweeted that and said, hope this triggers all the commies.

Oh, no.

So he really is one of those all the way, isn't he?

And I guess he got some.

And

what does a communist have to do with abortion?

That's a good point, actually.

I mean, honestly.

That's not one of the things they were known for.

Karl Marx wasn't sitting around talking about abortions.

No, and the, you know, the women that need abortions in Orangeburg, South Carolina are probably not communist.

Well, apparently, Mr.

Hager received some negative feedback.

I love all the women's rights wrestling fans coming at me because I'm against killing babies that are alive.

Y'all are the same ones that said women needed a shot to be safe.

It wasn't their body then.

He's one of them, too.

Good lord.

Again, I'm reading these verbatim.

Yes, I am support Trump.

Yes,

wake up at what time of day or night

is that listed as to what

was this very early in the morning or it doesn't have a time.

It just says one hour ago from whenever someone took this screenshot.

Yes, I am support Trump.

Yes, I am support Trump.

Yes, I'm against killing babies.

I guess that makes me a racist.

No, again, no.

No.

These issues don't have anything to do with each other because the women that want to have abortions because they need them

and it's health care

are either white or black or any color of the rainbow.

And they don't have to be communist.

So what is he's mixing his metaphors?

A reminder, Chris Jericho told Tony Conno would be a good idea to hire this guy.

But

he replied to someone, I don't know who this is.

They wrote, I'm going to ask you this completely seriously.

What do you, as a man, know about a woman's body?

And why do you, as a man, think you get any control over it?

Like, have we considered all the uses for abortions?

How there are medical dot dot dot?

It cuts off there and I can't see it.

Right.

Jake Hager retweeted that.

I know

trying to speak some sense to this raving lunatic.

I know a woman doesn't get to define murder because it's inconvenient to their life.

Oh my God.

So then someone replied, you don't know the first fucking thing about what you're talking about.

To which Hager said, okay,

you're the only one who gets information.

Well, that's like the old Steve Allen line.

Do they get your program in Cleveland?

Well, they get it, or they watch it, but I'm not sure they get it.

What is he doing?

Again, nobody's killing live babies, first of all, which is ludicrous, but they're killing live women who can't get the dead babies

or babies that are soon to be dead removed in time because the doctors don't want to go to prison.

Do you think he's wearing his purple hat?

As he tweets these out?

Well, he never leaves home without it.

Well, this is where it got really interesting.

A couple of tweets here, Jim.

Tony Khan is someone who threatened my job if I didn't stop promoting my Trump.

He,

my Trump, he, instead of is, it's JS.

He is a communist.

Oh, my.

I'll read that to you again.

Tony Khan is someone who threatened my job if I didn't stop promoting my Trump.

He is a communist.

And then the next.

what does that have to do with the...

No, don't say this batshit stuff while you work for me when you're a communist.

Especially one of the most well-paid, undeserved jobs in the history of wrestling.

He may have a point here without us even really thinking about it.

Who has given away more of the wealth than Tony Carr?

Well, there's another tweet here.

Why do all these simpletons think that everybody's a communist because they want a decent, rational world?

I don't...

And this guy has a wife, doesn't he?

Didn't he have a wife or a girlfriend?

He has a wife or a friend.

Another one that was wandering around with him?

She was on AEW a few times.

That's what I'm saying.

Yes.

He thinks that way about her.

Well, you don't get to commit murder just because it's inconvenient for her life or your life or whatever the

what a fucking prize he must be.

Well, another tweet that unfortunately he didn't really follow up on i'll tell you that right now do you want proof that tony khan is a communist oh yes we do and threaten me to be silent or else

or else is tony khan threatening murder now what is this

tony khan can't tell guys no to their ideas he's gonna rub out jake hager

get the fucking

pockets and fucking all the rest of the lollipop guild walk in there and come out with whatever they want, and they've picked Tony's pocket.

But Jake Hager, the MMA fighter, goes in, hey, bow down or else, motherfucker.

Hey, QT, I had one more thing I had to ask you.

Have you ever killed anyone?

Could you just

make him disappear?

And then as a follow-up to all of this, I guess where the story kind of...

Well, there was no proof then that given later.

And no proof.

Or else.

There was no proof supplied, although it was promised about Tony Khan being a comment.

We're still open to seeing the proof.

If you're listening, Jake, Hager, if you have proof, please deliver it.

We would give it an honest interpretation on the air.

If you've got papers now, the documentary, is he or a Marxist or a Leninist or

any kind of issue?

Well, there's a wrestling company called Blitzkrieg Pro.

Of course there is.

I'm not too familiar with them or where exactly they are.

Let me see if it says where they are.

They are established

northern Connecticut Western Mass.

Oh, well, they're the close.

Jake Hager will no longer be appearing on December 14th in Enfield, Connecticut.

On top of sponsors no longer being willing to work with him, we also just have to do what we think is right for our roster and fans.

We're going to get to work on a replacement ASAP.

However, a few people that are signed to appear, and he lists a bunch of other wrestlers,

none with the notoriety, I guess, of a Jake Hager.

Is that Die Jack on the poster?

I'm not sure, but

there it is.

Now he's losing bookings over this, apparently.

He's losing brain cells first, though.

Did he get drunk celebrating his My Trump, his Trump's victory, and just blurt out a bunch of stupid shit?

Or does he act this way normally and that's why Tony Khan said, hey, quit saying stupid shit or they'll be canceling my shows instead of your indie bookings.

Jake Hager retweeted apparently at Accountant VP Comics.

You are a disgrace, Blitzkrieg pro.

Such a disappointment to the pro wrestling community and to your paying fans by depriving them of an attraction they paid to see.

That is the first time that phrase has ever been attached to Jake Hager.

All because your salty and snowflake emoji about real Jake Hager supporting the new POTUS along with 71.6 million.

It didn't really seem like it had anything to do with him supporting Donald Trump.

It was just him running

running his mouth, running his Twitter like crazy, it seemed like.

He was running something all right.

Well, do you think that's the last we'll hear from Jake Hager?

No, no, he sounds like he's got a Billy Jack Haynes kind of future.

I think we'll hear a lot more from this fucking guy.

That was the line that popped me when I went back and when I was doing the editing on the show, the Val Venus segment.

Whenever you said, he's a conspiracy nut, this and that, with a hint of Billy Jack Haynes.

Just a touch.

The hint.

The hint is what put it on the table.

Well, you know what they say?

CTE is a hell of a drug.

Again, this guy had a job in AEW for a very long time, making a lot of money.

He debuted on the very first dynamite.

A lot of money.

He worked for a communist.

Yeah, he wasn't complaining when Tony was giving him the money.

He wasn't complaining then.

Exactly.

This non-patriotic turncoat traitor to America was taking money from a known communist.

I think that somebody in the federal government ought to investigate old Jake Hager.

And I'm sure.

Wouldn't that make him a communist?

There's going to be a government agency to investigate citizens fairly soon.

Let's get his name on the list.

Wouldn't that make him a communist sympathizer?

Yes.

Jake Khrushchev?

He was very sympathetic to the communist Tony Khan.

So there you go.

What about Jake Koloff?

That would be better.

Well,

maybe a charisma vacuum that will prevent him from reaching the heights of Nikita.

What about just cough just jake off

maybe that would be better well we'll see where he ends up apparently Vince McMahon's hiring so uh good luck Jake Hager Jim let's get to some questions from the listeners here today

and actually before we do that now that I think about it you did say you watched Monday Night Raw live on tape oh now you change your story from Saudi Arabia well I want to get this out of the way because you know it's raw in Saudi Arabia it It doesn't get anything.

Well, yes, yes.

And that's

when it opened up there in Riyadh.

I said, they're still there.

Do you think there was some delay of the plane?

Apparently not.

No, in this case, they actually had a Monday night booking.

I don't think there was a delay of the plane.

All right, an emergency raw.

Go back to the state.

I'm just thinking maybe they said, hey, you can't leave just yet.

Might as well stick around.

But this was one of the, I mean, this could have been done on the telephone.

I'm looking at my notes here.

And besides the,

again, the reliable bloodline segment,

the opening of the show was Liv and Dom

and

Rochelle Rochelle,

a young man's journey through Minsk.

And Liv.

A young woman's journey from Milan to Minsk.

Well,

she stopped over in between Milan and Minsk.

And

nevertheless, Liv is the voice, she screeches the thing, the Valley Girl thing.

Dominic starts to talk.

They play the music, and out come Jade and Bianca.

And Jade and Bianca

are not happy because, you know, they crossed paths last week.

So you want a piece of the tag team champions?

And Liv said, why are you guys coming out all angry?

And so, what we've got is Liv doing a promo in the voice of a six-year-old girl.

And

the whole thing is to set up that Jade and Bianca aren't really friends like her and

Rochelle.

Rochelle are, old Rachel Rodriguez.

And,

you know, you're going to, one of them is going to stab the other one in the back at any minute.

And Bianca says, well, we'll do this right now.

And then Pierce and the referees came out and said, No, you won't.

Everybody has to leave now.

And then that's when Liv told Jade to watch out for the knife that Bianca is going to stick in her back.

And Bianca slapped Liv.

And then

Pierce had to say, Okay, well, then in that case, Liv, you're going to defend the title versus the winner of tonight's Battle Royal.

And the tag team champions are in the Battle Royal, and it starts right now.

And I was like, What the fuck?

And then we had 18 women in the ring for a battle royal.

All 18 of them were wearing scuba diving outfits from head to toe.

It looked like Halloween at SeaWorld.

And

this was better than the first, I don't say better in any respect, this was longer

than the first half hour of the show.

And then they paid it off with

Jaden Bianca

top rope the other two who they were left with EO Sky and Lyric Valedictorian

but they hung on the apron so that Jade and Bianca could stare at each other to build anticipation like now they're gonna have to fight but they neither one should have ever thought for a second that they'd eliminated the other girls because they were still on the apron And of course, the heels came back in and boom and jumped them and interrupted it.

So

Jade and Bianca

hit their finishes on the other two girls and went to dump them out.

But there was Rachel at ringside and grabbed Bianca's six-foot ponytail and was trying to pull her out.

And Jade was holding on to her and Liv

pulled both of them over.

And now bear in mind, Liv and Rachel were not in the match, and it was right in front of the referee, but the announcers made the point of mentioning, it's no disqualification.

Lazy booking.

It just looks so bad when the referee has to stand there and stare slack-jawed because

they've just, they don't care anymore.

They've just, well, everything's no DQ, so we can do whatever we want.

And then Jaden Bianca chase Lib and

Rachel off and the other two continued the match and did the longest, most choreographed, bullshit, apron bit

back and forth, teasing their elimination

that I think has ever been done in wrestling.

And then Lyric fell off the end.

34 minutes.

Your thoughts.

Do you think this is too early to tease Jade and Bianca?

If they're going to do anything at WrestleMania, do you begin to tease now?

Does that tell you they're not going to do anything then?

I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

Oh, no, they've got plenty of time for WrestleMania.

And I'm not saying that it's even too early.

It was just kind of blasély done in that

I think maybe they just wanted to see if the people would react.

But this was Saudi Arabia.

They didn't react for a minute.

I don't know whether they got it or not.

And then

they kind of started rumbling, but the heels were back in and blah, blah, blah.

But no, this wouldn't be, this would neither be too early nor too late for WrestleMania, depending on the build.

I mean, they could do it at the Royal Rumble for fuck's sake, or have some climactic

issue at the Royal Rumble.

There's plenty of time.

But

I think that Jade needs to be the heel because she's more effective that way.

But I almost think it would freshen Bianca up a little bit

if they surprised people because

that goddamn hopping and skipping and smiley, twirly

hair thingy.

I'm just.

Yeah, but you know what?

That's worked so far.

My problem would be, can you see Jade as a long-term baby face?

Not really.

That's what I say.

It'd be easier and more expected if Jade was a heel.

But at least they wouldn't be talking like that to each other all the time.

Oh, girl, a girl, and a girl.

I don't know what the hell you're doing.

Well, they do.

It sounds so phony when they do all this backstage banter between the two of them it's ridiculous so that's why you want them to be broken up

no i'm just i'm just saying at least we wouldn't have to hear any more of that

well what else

what what else girl did we have to hear on raw i'll tell you what girl

um

did you see the wyatt video thing with miz i mean oh yeah the kidnapping yeah

They picked the right country, I guess, to film that segment in.

Oh, good lord.

I didn't even think about that.

Where can we do an abduction and a kidnapping and maybe have a bone saw around?

I don't know.

How about Saudi Arabia?

Tie a motherfucker to a chair with duct tape over his mouth.

Let's do it in Saudi Arabia.

We check the statutes.

It's perfectly fine.

Then the Kofi and Woods were doing a promo in the back when all of a sudden the Wyatt video pops up, and there is The Miz in a dark room tied to a chair with a horror mask on.

And Bo Dallas is off camera reciting some kind of Edgar Allan Poe bullshit.

What will this Edgar Allen Poe bullshit be over with?

And then he pulls the horror mask off and Miz has his mouth taped and he pulls the tape off and Miz is like, you want the final testament.

You don't want me.

Just what a gutless weasel, right?

You want the final testament.

He'd be the only one.

And he said, it's all a misunderstanding.

I'm I'm willing to forget all about this.

And again, Bo Dallas does some kind of

was that maybe a Shakespearean reading.

And then a guy in a mask, apparently, that may be Uncle Howdy, it was very quick, ran up from behind and grabbed Ms.

The End.

And I wrote, This is the stupidest shit, without a doubt, that I have ever seen.

Thoughts on that?

Very out of place with the Triple H, the Paul Eve era.

This kind of stuff.

This belongs in a past era.

And, I mean, I know it's mid-card,

if that,

but it doesn't fit in with the tone of everything else.

It belongs in the Ed Wood era.

And is it in this day and age, with when people expect to be able to hear and see things clearly, is the treatment of the old VHS tape rolling and contorting and converting or whatever?

Is that getting over with the young folks?

Or is that seen as avant-garde in some fashion?

Most fearless people in wrestling, the cameraman with Moxley, the video editor with Bray Wyatt's crew.

Especially when he has to say, I'm sorry, Mr.

Wyatt, but it looks like the video looks like shit.

We're going to leave all the fucking distortion in.

That's my look.

Leave it.

I mean, we really, that's the thing.

And the other part of the problem is WWE received this and said, yeah, let's air it.

Yeah.

Should we hand it to the authorities?

Maybe Tuesday.

Let's air it on Monday.

As soon as we air it, we're going to immediately send it over to the police because that guy looks like he needs some fucking help.

Please help me.

Call police.

Anyway, so that was that.

And then the new day wrestled the War Vikings.

And the War Vikings won.

And son of a a gun we were at nine o'clock.

That was the first hour.

So

Sami came to the ring, Sami Zane, at the nine o'clock hour and the people love him and he spoke to them in their language, their native tongue.

What is it Saudi Arabianese or what language do they speak over there?

You know, I'm not sure.

Not sure.

Possibly more.

Please help me.

Don't saw my head up.

No, no, I have a family.

No, let me go.

Think of the children.

Yeah, that's the kind of language they speak.

But anyway, and then he said in English, that's why I know what he said, that he was proud to come out before his people and speak their language.

And French Canadian?

Well, that's French in Montreal.

What language exactly?

That was like, it was like, wait a minute, you happy to come out before all you French Canadians?

we established before, and I've forgotten because it's confusing and it all revolves around religion, so I don't care to begin with.

But Sammy was on the outs over there, he couldn't go over there because the people that

were running the place were mad at his people.

But now

they're not mad at his people anymore, and his people are your people, and your people are our people, and we're all people.

And the checks, cash, and the checks cash.

So then suddenly, Jay's music interrupted, and the crowd went nuts.

And

here comes Jay, and he's over.

And Jay tells Sammy, thank you for helping me at Crown Jewel, you know, and

I appreciate what you did for me, Oos, and blah, blah, blah.

And I've got to ask you, was it an accident when you kicked Roman Reigns in the face?

And see, that is going to be, that's the thing, that's the bone of contention.

Was it an accident when they shot Marvin in the face?

I'm sorry, it's a wrong movie.

Was it an accident when he kicked Roman Reigns in the face?

Oh, man, you shot Marvin in the fucking face.

All Sammy had to say was, don't you a peacock?

Go back and watch the footage.

Squeers Day was an accident.

Well, he was standing in the fucking ring at the time, but nevertheless.

So then when he asked that question, before Sammy could answer, Jimmy's music plays.

And Jimmy comes in pissed because everybody saw it.

Sammy Zayn kicked Roman Reigns in the face on purpose.

And I'm pissed, and Roman's pissed, and you ought to be pissed too, Jay.

And we can't trust this guy.

So now, here again, you know, the

dissension is rearing its ugly head in the bloodline.

But Sammy bowed up at Jimmy.

You?

You?

you.

That's exactly what he did.

You, of all people,

are trying to say you can't trust me.

You,

you're the one.

And then they went back to the angle.

And you know what?

It fits.

You brought me in the family to begin with.

You're the one to kick me in my face.

You kicked Roman in the face and you kicked Jay in the face.

So why aren't you the one that we can't trust?

And then yes, you made bad decisions before.

But at Crown Jewel, for a minute, just a minute there, it felt like old times where we were all standing together, fighting for the common good.

Maybe Sammy's a communist.

Well, that's what Valvinas said.

Valvinas accused them of being a...

That's true because he stood together and fought for the common good at Crown Jewel.

Shit, he's going to AEW then.

And then they're all going to be a bunch of commies down there.

God damn commies.

But anyway.

Said you were a commie too, by the way.

Well,

Comrade Cornette.

I hate all them motherfucking commies because they're even commier than I am.

But Sammy finally said, I'm not going to have my integrity and my morality and my motives questioned anymore.

I love you, Jay, but I can't do this again.

I can't go through it.

I'm out.

And Sammy's leaving to walk that aisle.

And then Jay, Jay says, Sammy, Sammy, please don't go.

Don't go.

Oh, Christ's sake.

Come on.

No, stop.

If you leave, at least tomorrow.

I will leave in the next minute.

It's a nightmare.

I could be loved by someone as wonderful as you.

Please don't go.

He said, please don't go to Sammy.

Did you go?

Did you go away?

Or are you still there, Brian?

Hold on.

Let me remove these Q-tips that I stuck as far into my ears as I could.

Hello?

Well, you know, sometimes

you can get a little tickle out of that if you go in deep enough.

Oh, let me try that.

Yeah, and it's, as a matter of fact, if you go right till you feel your brain and then go just a little bit deeper, it feels fucking great.

Oh, I'll let you know how it feels.

Okay, and let me know if you can still speak English afterwards.

But anyway, so Jay asked Sammy, Sid, please come to SmackDown.

Please come to SmackDown for the springtime.

We'll stay up in the mountains so far that we can't be found.

Did you put the q-tips back in?

I guess he did.

So Sammy said, please come to SmackDown,

Sammy, to talk it out

with Roman and

the whole gang.

And Jay

told Jimmy that Sammy is family.

And the people started chanting Sammy Uso

and all that type of thing.

The end.

So another incredible dramatic reading, a rendition, if you will, a perpetration of an Oscar Wilde stage play

adapted by

Oscar Levant

with

Rogers and a Hammerstein score.

It's an expensive crew here.

What'd you think?

You know, it was all right.

The only thought is it feels like, you know, it's like a reunion of everything from years ago, but it worked then, and so far, so good now.

So you're saying it's deja vu all over again.

Yes, Yogi.

That's what I'm saying.

All right.

Well, hey, hey, thank you, Boo-Boo.

So then

we got Chad Gable and Dragon Lee, but I forgot to pay attention.

And apparently, Gunther

is giving Ludwig Kaiser some tough love because

Kaiser was doing a promo where he said that Cody got lucky, and that was all it was.

But Gunther cut him off and said, put Cody over and said that night he was the better man.

Either he said he was the butterman.

He's in the eggs and butter business now, possibly bought a dairy.

I'm not sure.

But

Gunther had one good line about tonight's four-way.

You have three very capable performers and Dom.

So even the heels give Dominic absolutely no respect.

But Gunther said, it's up to me to do better.

And he looked at Kaiser and he said, we both have to do better.

So there's tension there.

And

poor Kaiser.

He's always getting pushed around.

But then it was time for the main event.

I swear to God,

I've described this whole program.

They could have telegraphed this in, much less phoned it in.

The main event was a winner as the number one contender match.

That's a revolutionary thing they've never had before.

Damian Priest versus Seth Franklin Rollins versus Dominic Mysterio versus Seamus.

And the entrances took 10

complete minutes.

And they still rang the bell with 20 minutes on the air.

So,

I mean,

would you like a complete blow-by-blow, move-by-move breakdown of this 20-minute-long four-way match, or

you want to just let me fast-forward you to the last five minutes where something happened?

Yeah, you know, that sounds good.

Okay, well, all of a sudden, Bronson Reed showed up and grabbed Seamus and Priest and ran them them into the ring posts down on the floor.

And Seth saw him and they got in a fight.

And Bronson Reed cleared the announced desk off.

But Priest and Sheamus got back up

and got on Bronson Reed.

And Reed rolled into the ring and starts beating up Priest and Sheamus again.

Again, they're saying, well, it's no DQ.

This guy's beating people up that's in the match.

He's not even in the match.

And you've created a situation where the referee just has to stand there and look at it.

And it's, it's just,

but anyway, he,

so for the integrity of the match, not so good, but to get Bronson Reed over, it's good.

He splashed Priest.

He

splashed Sheamus.

My God.

He splashed Priest.

And then he

executed the splash on Seamus.

And then he splashed Seth through the fucking announce desk.

And this is great.

And then Dominic

splashes Seamus off the top rope,

one, two, and Priest saved him.

And I'm like, what the fuck?

I'm like, Jesus Christ, that was out of nowhere.

And I guess they wanted to give Dom something.

But then Dominic goes to the top like he's going to splash somebody.

And Priest got up and chokeslammed him or grabbed him in a chokeslam and chokeslammed him one, two, three.

So

it would have been great if Dominic had got the win in the cheapest of fashions after everybody had written him off with that behind-the-back splash there.

But

instead, they went with Priest.

But you can't have Dominic against Gunther.

Well, that was raw.

And of course, Jim.

You don't have any incisive.

No, I was done done by this point.

I was done by this point.

See, now you're getting spoiled when they go back to three hours, pal.

Oh, stop it.

Then we're really going to know misery.

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Jim, let's get to some questions here on the show.

The ones we're going to go to today are part of a thread on the Cult of Cornet Facebook group.

Max Heron

wants to know,

how much can one truly separate the art from the artist?

I just want to sit down and enjoy something like WrestleMania 18, but I can't without thinking what a shit stump Hulk Hogan is.

So, Jim, whether it's Hulk Hogan or whether it's even stuff outside of wrestling, separating the art from the artist.

I mean, I don't, you know, I was never a fan of Hogan's matches to begin with, so it didn't necessarily hurt my feelings when he turned out to be a lunatic.

I mean, there's some cases,

you know,

do you have a personal dog in the fight?

Has someone done something that offends your personal particular piccadillos?

Or was it that,

you know, he just turned out to be a general asshole and somewhat of a disappointment to the world at large?

I think

if you read a book or

watch a documentary about almost any person in any entertainment or sports or whatever, there was something

wrong with 75 or 80% of them at least that you could,

you know, pick out as being something that

you couldn't separate the artist.

How was it phrased?

The artist from the person or whatever?

From the artist, yeah.

Yeah, but

you know,

try not to think about it at that time.

And of course, you know, I've tried to take my own advice.

I'll tell you,

I loved the TV series Frasier.

And I thought it's one of the funniest fucking TV shows

that,

or comedy series that have been on the air.

And I thought, well, Kelsey Grammar is fucking, he's smart and with it and witty and hilarious.

And of course, I found out he's a Trumper.

And now I don't really want to watch the show anymore.

Because that's, you know, that's the bridge too far for me.

But

I guess to this question, you're saying you're not.

Well, but but at the same time,

I can watch Chris Benoit matches

because I knew everybody involved.

And at one point, you know,

he wasn't crazy.

See, I can't.

That's one of my lines is Chris Benoit.

Just because.

See, that's the thing.

Did you really know him beforehand or do you just know of what he did?

No, it's the idea of sitting there and he was one of my favorites.

I enjoyed his matches and watching stuff I enjoyed with someone who is a reprehensible human being who did awful things,

it's it's hard.

I can't, you know, it's hard to do.

Okay, well, and I can I can agree with that.

And also because

you raise,

I don't want to say this the wrong way, but it wasn't like I was, Chris Benoit was a, I was a huge fan of his because I was already in the business before him.

And so it wasn't like I watched his matches for great enjoyment.

I was, this was part of my work, and I liked my interaction with him as a person

several years before he went out of his mind.

So I remember thinking that when everything happened, I'm like, man, he was friends with Hildebrand.

You know, and I thought, I thought the world of Brian Hildebrand and, you know, it was little things like that that really fucked with me.

Yeah, and see, that's the thing.

You know,

when you have experiences like that with somebody, you, you have a different outlook on separating one from another, or when you just, well, I always thought that guy was cool, but he's a fucking asshole.

And it's like, eh.

Yeah, so it just depends.

Jim, another question from the Cult of Cornette Facebook group was sent in by Manny Rivera.

If they ever had Mania in Louisville and Punk wanted Jim to be his manager against Roman and Paul Heyman, Would he make a one-night return to work with people he likes and a big payday?

Oh, good lord.

Where are they going to have mania in Louisville?

By the way,

Redbirds Stadium where the fucking minor league ball team plays or whatever.

Kentucky Downs.

There is no Kentucky Downs.

What is it called there?

Churchill Downs.

Churchill Downs, excuse me.

Kentucky Downs.

That is never going to be a thing that ever takes place.

But yeah, if they want to give me a WrestleMania payoff to manage punk at Churchill Downs in Louisville, I'll do it.

Big payday.

Would you do it anywhere else?

Well, I might go as far as Bowling Green, but then they're going to start kicking in paying trance after.

I'm talking big payday.

You're going to be a manager in the main event of WrestleMania.

You'll be sending in promos from home for a few weeks shop by Hotchkiss Featherbottom.

Okay, as long as I can drive.

And hey,

for a big enough payday i'll leave a couple hours or a couple days beforehand so i i've got a pretty good range there

all right i feel like we almost have a deal here so if it's in florida basically we've almost well not florida now you said if you could drive you said yeah but look at the state of florida now i'm not talking about the state of florida i'm talking about the state of florida all right if they do well it's wrestlemania we're talking about so there's only limited locations they would really if they're you're not going to drive to minneapolis well now we've gone from churchill downs to goddamn minneapolis Well, no, they're not going to do it there because of the weather.

That was SummerSlam they're doing there.

Well, nevertheless, no, I'll

go.

So now the deal is almost done.

We just got to get the paperwork from the office.

All right.

Our next question, Jim, sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Keith Oakey.

Should Larry?

Should Larry Zabisco have had an intercontinental title run after turning on Bruno?

Oh, God.

Well, good Lord, that came out of nowhere.

He's been thinking about it a long time.

A long time.

It was 1980, but he wanted to carefully formulate the wording of his question.

I mean, I don't see what the benefit would have been to anybody because,

I mean, and you're the WWF expert, Brian, so correct me if I'm wrong, but number one,

Zabisco was making a lot more money working with Bruno than he would have with the IC title at any point.

Secondly,

didn't he leave the territory after the program with Bruno was over with because the,

well, I mean, I know they got Hansen out because he had so much heat after the rematches with Bruno over the broken neck thing.

Hansen told me himself that They didn't move him down the card.

They just sent him out because they didn't want somebody to fucking kill him.

But Zabisco left right after that program, didn't he?

I believe he was there through the end of 80 because there are matches with him and Backlund.

And I guess the puzzling thing has always been, why didn't Zabisco get more of a run after Bruno?

The Bruno program did record business.

Zabisco really came into his own as a heel promo.

It was working.

There wasn't like a big feud with Backlund or anything.

There wasn't anything else.

He was just gone.

And I think maybe

the thing that was the biggest asset to him also was the thing that could hurt him, which was the relationship with Vince Sr.

and Bruno.

And remember, Bruno left shortly after that too.

He ended up suing.

Yeah.

The lawsuit was settled in 84 as part of the settlement was Vince McMahon Jr.

made Bruno a commentator.

hired David San Martino.

And at the time, the rumor was they were also going to hire Zabisco.

And that never happened.

He went to the AWA after Georgia, ended up marrying Vern Gagania's daughter.

But there was never, for someone who did record business in the territory,

for someone who did record business in the biggest territory in the country for money and for, you know, just fan population,

they never did anything else with him ever again.

It's weird.

Well,

I mentioned Hansen earlier.

Did Hansen ever go back?

Yeah, he worked a feud with Backland.

That's right.

He did in what, 82-ish, three-ish?

81, 82.

81, 82.

Yeah.

But, yeah,

well, but you know what?

That was kind of a moment in time.

And I don't mean to disparage Larry's contributions, but

could that have been

Ken Timms as Bruno's protege that turned on him and clocked him with a chair, and they'd still drawn significant amount of money.

Zabisco's promos put it over the top.

Yes and no.

Anyone working a program like that, a feud like that with Bruno San Martino in 1980, it was going to be big.

But with Zabisco, there was the legitimate,

if you'd been watching wrestling for the last eight years, 10 years in New York, you had seen Zabisco on that show.

It was always said that he was from Pittsburgh.

He was Bruno's protege.

You know, he was a tag team champion.

So it wasn't like,

here's this guy.

Here's Eddie Gilbert as Bob Backlash's protege.

And then he turns on him after like two weeks.

You know what I mean?

Oh, no, and I agree with you.

I'm not saying that.

I'm saying because it was Zabisco and he was the protege and that was the angle.

It could have been anybody else if they had legitimately been the protege.

Zabisco did a great job with it, but anybody could have drawn money in that position.

The point I'm wondering is, is either did

Junior, was Junior not a fan of Sabisco's, or did they just not think that he would work in the territory with anybody other than the personal connection with Bruno, who was gone and on the outs with him?

That's what's crazy is that they didn't even try.

They didn't even try a feud with him and Backlund, anything with him and Pedro when Pedro would come back for the Intercontinental title or anything.

They never tried anything again.

With Zabisco.

Here's your one shot, kid.

All right, we're going to set record business across the territory.

All right, we'll call you if we have anything else.

Yeah, thanks for your contributions.

We'll never see you again.

All right.

Well, that did not answer that question, but we got something out of it.

This next one we'll do.

This one, Jim, was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Ken Brzezinski.

Who are some of the wrestlers you came up with who would be able to adapt to today's more physical style?

and some who might not be able to.

I think your classic characters like Hogan or Sting might not be able to take a series of chops from Gunther.

But I do feel like guys like Bret Hart, Kurt Hennig, and the like might welcome the physicality of it.

Well, yeah, and see, that's

today the style is not more physical.

The style is more dangerous.

And there's a different

style of offense that is involved.

I mean, I, you know, I would routinely, he talked about the guys I came up with,

routinely, if it was Bobby Eaton and Ronnie Garvin or Wahoo McDaniel or whatever in Fayetteville, North Carolina, they were hitting and chopping and forearming and

landing shit much

more stiffly in safe places than most of the stuff you see on TV today from either company.

But at the same time, nobody was being

thrown through,

you know, furniture or, you know, taking these ridiculous bumps off the top rope to the floor or diving.

See, that's the real physical.

When he says, would they be able to adapt to the physicality of today?

The matches and the wrestlers were actually more physical than when he says, like, Hogan wouldn't have done it.

Go watch Hogan's Japanese stuff.

He took plenty of chops.

Well, yeah, but then the thing is, you can point out, you know, a guy or two in any company or territory,

you know, after Jimmy Valiant got to be a babyface icon in Memphis and North Carolina,

he could have elbow dropped an egg and it would have been fine.

And nobody was, you know, there were certain guys that, as we've talked about with Stone Cold Steve Austin's mud hole stomps, they looked like shit, but nobody cared because he's over.

There were guys that had weak shit and sometimes It was the top guy that he had to take care of.

But up and down the card,

not in any one particular company, but in every company,

the standard match was more physical, more hard-hitting, stiffer, whatever.

There's more contact with more force in wrestling in the territory days than there is now

in the wrestling part of it.

And where the guys get hurt is in the diving and the furnituring and the leaping off high

things, which was not

done.

So it wasn't even an aspect of the business in those days see that's the physicality gunther would be able to go back in time and work with ric flair johnny valentine wahoo mcdaniel ricky steamboat but those guys wouldn't be able to come forward and work with the young bucks jack perry orange cassidy it works the opposite way and the physicality of what they're doing is you know i'm going to land on your head when i dive on the four people that

yeah

or i'm going to land on your head when you're laying in the middle of the ring they do that a bunch, too.

So that's, you know, it's completely different

things.

And that's why I disparage most of the actual wrestling match these days because that part

is the shit that looks fake.

And the part that they're really damaging each other with the dives and the furniture and the stuff.

That most of the time looks fake too, because it's so complex.

You've got to show obvious cooperation to set the shit up.

Or elsewise, you've just

thumbed this guy in the eye, and that's the reason why he's laying on the top of a table for a minute and a half, motionless.

All right, Jim, our next question sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent by Joseph Anthony.

Jim's thoughts on if they should do a Survivor Series match, TNA versus NXT.

I don't know whether NXT could

survive that one in the ratings or not.

Well, at Survivor Series, not on TV.

I was just trying to make a pun, trying, failing.

At Survivor Series, you know, I can see them potentially putting, and I'm not saying it's going to happen.

I'm saying in any year's Survivor Series, I can see them putting an NXT team in with guys or

girls or whoever that they have pushed and that they're thinking about elevating to the next level.

But

I don't see featuring a TNA team, which has a specific, much smaller audience on your

giant,

you know, worldwide pay-per-view on PACAC and

et cetera.

And, you know, unless they were just used as

the NXT jobbers to put the NXT team over.

And then how does it really help TNA when four of their people just got the shit kicked out of them?

I like their doing a little crossover every once in a while on

the TNA TV and or sending somebody back and forth or whatever, but

I don't know if it would be,

it wouldn't be a big attraction to anybody on pay-per-view.

It would be

an attraction to the audience that's already watching the pay-per-views, wouldn't it?

The really dedicated fans that know who these people are?

Yeah, I don't think WWE is like, oh, if we can only pick up some of that TNA pay-per-view audience.

Yeah.

So, I mean,

they could do it, but then I think a lot of their own talent would be like, fuck, I ain't booked on Survivor Series.

And here these fucking guys come.

Jim, our next question from the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent in by David Melendez.

If in the 1990s Paul Heyman had a billionaire dad like Tony Kahn,

how different would have ECW been?

How do you think he would have spent the money to compete with Vincent Bischoff?

Oh, God.

So here's the question.

Paul Heyman, if his dad was a billionaire,

willing to give him as much money as he wanted for anything.

I do not want to try to have the task of getting inside Paul Heyman's voluminous head or psychoanalyzing him as to what he would have done with a billion dollars.

I think he would have had a lot more top wrestlers under contract

and probably would have run a few bigger buildings and probably would have still done everything himself and probably would have still

been late with everything because he was doing everything himself and missed all his deadlines.

And,

you know, probably

that's the thing is

a billion dollars, you can do anything.

He would have certainly done a much better job than Tony Kahn/slash AEW.

It would have been a much better wrestling product.

It would have got the most out of the least of the talent.

But still, would he have crossed the line and got kicked off of some network that he got on?

Or

TV rights fees were not a thing then like they are now.

Would even Paul Heyman have said, well, just because I can spend $500 million to make 50 million back, does that mean I should do it?

Well, you know, the one thing that hurt ECW, well, there are a lot of things that hurt them in the end, but

early on they started losing talent to WCW and WWE.

If Paul Heyman had that kind of money, you would think that you wouldn't have had Raven jump to WCW,

you know, right when they had everything going with him and Tommy Dreamer, the Sandman jump, Public Enemy.

I think Public Enemy may have been first, actually.

Well, yeah, but think about this.

If

If Paul had an unlimited financial backer from the start, would any of those guys even have would it have made a shit if they left?

Would they have been created or would have Paul just hired them?

Exactly.

Would he have been would he have created them from indie guys because he couldn't afford guys that were national stars?

So would it have mattered?

Because it would have it would it have ever happened?

It probably not.

He would have Paul knows talent.

He didn't just decide decide, these are the best guys in the world for me to get for my wrestling company.

It was the same thing as me and Smoky Mountain Wrestling with a different geography.

These are the guys that I can afford to get that aren't with the big wrestling companies.

So if he didn't have to worry about money, he'd have probably had half the WCW roster and a couple of the WWF guys.

But then, and I'll say, and you can ask me this in a second, but then to put an exclamation point on that, just because he would have had the money to buy them doesn't mean that he would have because Paul Heyman,

even though the thing that everybody's always said is the drawback he had was he was a horrible businessman, he's still a better businessman than Tony Kahn in a wrestling business.

So would he have overpaid for talent just to get him?

I don't know.

If you had had a billionaire father for Smoky Mountain Wrestling, what's the one thing you would have taken, if you just had unlimited capital?

Where's the one area you would have dedicated some money?

Was it just to get more TV?

Yes.

Again, that's the thing is, if we could have got on television in enough big markets, there wasn't another problem.

So it wouldn't be like I needed a billion dollars.

In four years, we probably didn't spend $2 million of Rick Rubin's money.

So you wouldn't need a billion dollars, but to get on television in Charleston, Huntington, West Virginia, back then, it was still $1,800 a week if you wouldn't just buy an hour in a good daytime slot.

So I would have done what we did in Knoxville and to a lesser extent in Johnson City, but I would have done it in Charlotte and Asheville, Greenville, Spartanburg, and Chattanooga.

and Lexington, Kentucky, and Charleston, Huntington and Roanoke,

just get on television and then start running the building.

We were making money overall in Knoxville because it was a big enough town and we could run once a month and people would actually come to it.

But we couldn't get enough of those big towns.

So,

yes, I mean, the first thing, I mean, I would have obviously, if I had unlimited money, the TV shows would have,

we would have then taped every two weeks instead of once a month and do four shows in one night.

We'd have taped, you know, potentially if I could have done the workload with unlimited money, we might have taped every week.

But that wasn't really necessary in those days.

Every couple of weeks was easier for everybody and didn't make a fuck in terms of the ratings.

And

I would have also tried to pay the guys a little better than what I did.

There wasn't any need to rent different buildings because I've mentioned this.

We talked about the Smoky Mountain days before.

The Knoxville Civic Coliseum was a 6,500-seat building in the middle of downtown Knoxville and fully staffed the rent and the ticket master charges that we were, it was like $2,500.

So

try to rent a goddamn place to have a bar mitzvah or a wedding reception now for $2,500.

So it's not like we needed to spend more money on buildings.

We had the buildings.

We needed the TV.

Jim, our next question sent once again to the Cult of Cornet Facebook group.

This was sent by Rick Beerbauer.

Who taught Jimmy?

Rick Beerbelly.

Rick Beerbauer.

According to this, he's a rising contributor on the Cult of Cornet Facebook page, whatever that means.

A rising contributor?

Has he got a little chubby now or or what?

You leave him alone.

What is your problem with everyone today?

He's got a beer belly.

How can he tell whether he's got a little lead in his pencil?

He's not a beer belly.

He's Beer Bauer.

And let's go to Beer Bauer's question here.

Beetlebomb.

Who taught Jim his working punch?

It's almost reminiscent of Scott Hall or The Rock, in my opinion.

Okay, I don't see that.

Because for one thing, they both did that open-hand bullshit.

Nobody

sat me down one day and said, little Jimmy, today we're going to do the punch.

You know, and I'm going to reveal this wisdom to you.

But I grew up watching Jerry Lawler and Jackie Fargo from the time I was 10 years old or whatever.

And I'm managing Bobby Eaton.

And there was also something to be said for Terry Funk, who I was a huge fan of.

And

all those guys, you know,

you kind of absorb things by osmosis if you pay attention to what they're doing.

And

I just kind of, you know, put that into what I was doing.

And it got to the point where

by the time that all those guys were gone from the business and I was about ready to be gone from the business,

I was a 50-year-old guy throwing the most credible-looking fucking punch in the goddamn wrestling industry.

But just because nobody else,

a lot of these guys just do it as a thing to do while they're talking to somebody.

I'm going to punch you five times in the face while you're backing up and I'm calling a spot and I'm paying more attention to what we're going to do than what we're actively doing.

But if the whole idea of every time you do it is to draw back and throw something and simulate the contact as much as possible and follow through with your body and get as much out of it as you can

and not think five steps ahead that it's it's easier to do.

And

you've also got to not have somebody that's covering up.

Because remember we talk about all these guys now, they get on top of a guy and they turtle up into a ball and they just throw windmill punches at their general direction.

And nothing lands and everything looks fake.

You got to have an open target and that guy's got to trust you

from night after night of doing it that he's not going to knock your fucking teeth out.

I worked with Bobby Fulton so much, the Fantastics thing,

that at any point I could just feed over to Bobby and just be leaning over with my chin out.

And I knew that he would nail me from any fucking angle, and it would

never hurt,

and there'd be contact enough for me to fucking sell.

And I wouldn't think of of blocking it because that would throw his fucking aim off.

But the thing, nobody blocked shit when guys knew how to work.

But now that they're just throwing kicks and punches in the general direction of their goddamn face, maybe I don't blame them for blocking shit.

The way you said you learned how to do it from watching Memphis Wrestling, and when you look at Jeff Jarrett, who I think throws one of the best punches.

Yeah.

It's reminiscent of what you would see based on what you saw, the things he grew up watching.

But it's interesting, you know, beyond throwing a punch at someone's face and for the most part not hitting them, what about the leg work, the footwork, how you move?

I love how Jeff Jarrett, again, reminiscent of classic Memphis Wrestling, he reaches down and comes up with it.

Yeah.

And I think that's one of the key things that makes it look so good, but it's also his feet as he's doing it.

What are the other intangibles?

Well, yeah, it's the follow-through also.

And whereas Jeff reaches down and comes up with with it, if you'd notice Bobby Eaton strike like a cobra, he would come from around the right side and it'd be more level, but under the chin, where there'd be a little.

And yes, if you're right-handed, which most people are,

when you start off, your left foot's in front of you, your right foot is kind of to the back because your weight is on your right leg.

And as you're drawn back with your right hand, and as you start throwing the punch, you're shifting your weight from your right foot to your forward foot, your left foot, and you're also turning somewhat at the waist because your shoulders have to follow through with this also.

Remember, Luger would stand there and do a little square shouldered box punch where it would be like his shoulders were

still

completely squared off straight in front of the guy and his arm would just go in front of him.

But if you're throwing a fucking big football pass, right, your right arm is back, your left arm's in front, your shoulders are sideways and your body rotates at the waist and your arm comes to your shoulder to turn.

You're throwing a punch, same thing.

Boom.

And that way, a lot of your

follow-through

convinces people that you've struck your target also.

Of course, they're doing it as Solo's doing it now.

where they do the fucking thing with the open hand and then he does a little bobble move and and

throws his hand out like he's following through, but

there was a pause.

Have you seen that one?

Yes.

And that calls attention to the fact that he didn't follow through.

He paused and then he did it to make you think that he did it.

So, but that's the, it's your whole body, you put your whole body into it, the body language.

You not only put your whole body into selling when you're selling,

but you put your whole body into your offense when you're on offense.

If you're kicking a guy with your right foot, you're not just kicking him.

You're again,

your right foot goes back, your left foot's in front.

Then you bring your right foot in, and when you throw the kick and snap it at the guy at the same point, your left foot comes a little bit up off the mat and stomps a little bit just to make a little noise.

And at the same time, your hands go to your sides like you're throwing everything into the goddamn kick, unless unless you're hanging on to the top rope where you're really digging in with the kicking and you're pulling yourself in with your body at the same time.

But there's never just a one limb movement to any of this stuff, or there shouldn't be.

But those punches too, I think of the camera angle, the far one in the Memphis Mid-South Coliseum, watching Lawler

throw punches like that.

They're like the perfect kind of punches to get the fans up.

I don't know how to say it any bit.

Yeah.

To get a big oh from the crowd when you throw the punch.

It's the move, the way they move, Jeff Jarrett, Jerry Lawler.

It's the perfect way to throw.

Well, it all comes from Fargo, from that big arena body, whole full body selling type of thing when he would start making a comeback and he would start throwing those punches.

But that's also the thing is that the people would whoo

because

the timing of the babyface making the comeback is important.

And when they get used to him, then they can go with it.

Because Lawler's, if he threw three punches and then the big one, he would still be reaching back and throwing it whoom,

whoom,

whoom.

And then he'd grab the guy by the hair so he could lift the fist in the air and show the people and milk the anticipation.

And then the big one, whoom!

And there would be the same amount of time in between the first three woms so they had time to do it right it was like he was a conductor

leading the orchestra but instead of the band it was with punches and it all timed where you whoom woman who

you know i forget what the exact clip is and i'm sure you'll know but i always love the clip of uh from the mid-south coliseum once again but it was from the floor

Fargo is punching Lawworth in the corner.

I think Fargo's in street clothes, but every time he punches him, he looks at his hand.

And then he'd punch him again, and he'd look at his hand to see what's on his hand.

And that was 1976 in the Coliseum.

It was Mike Shields on the floor camera at that point in time.

And that was one of the times where Fargo had

either been injured or been out of the territory and then came to the big angle.

And the big program was in 74.

But he came back in 76 and had another series of matches that were instigated by him being in the corner of the babyface and blah, blah, blah.

So that was Fargo, when he'd been in the corner of, goddamn, I'm trying to think who it was at this point, but it doesn't matter, had come in the ring to, you know, fucking kick the shit out of Lawler and set up they were going to work the following week.

But that's the thing is when Fargo would throw those, he had a different stance to it, but he would cock his fist back and he would throw a straight right hand to the guy's head and it looked like just a jab to the forehead.

And boom, every time he'd hit him, like you said, he'd look at his hand like, shit, did I break my knuckle?

Boom!

Oh, shit.

And

the eye that they had for detail and distance and accuracy was incredible.

But that was the most

important part of Babyface's game.

They could wrestle all night long, but when the time came for the comeback, the people wanted to see the babyface punch that fucking heel right in a goddamn mouth.

And that's what got the reaction.

And every time,

I mean, this was not limited to the Mid-South Coliseum,

but in those days, every time the babyface would finally start to come back,

every time he'd hit the fucking heel with a punch, the whole crowd would go,

woo, woo, and it was,

you know, it was the biggest reaction of the match.

That's what they waited to see.

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Well, Jim, one final question in this round.

We'll see how we do with time after Dynamite, but one final question right now.

This was sent via the Culticornet Facebook group by Wayne

Easlick.

What is that, Wayne from Classy Motors?

It's Easlick, or I think that's how you say it.

Wayne Islick.

Jim, we know you've been a booker for many years.

Tony jumped into it right away in AEW with no experience.

My question is,

how long into your career did you feel comfortable enough to book shows?

Well,

it's not a matter of feeling comfortable.

Like if they came to me and said, Jim, we need a card for fucking Tuesday.

I'm not comfortable right now.

I started, my first official booking position was, as we've talked about, on the WCW Creative Team in 89 under Flair.

But before that, I had, in effect, pitched finishes to Dusty that he did.

And he said, okay, kid, you know, you take care of it.

And I'd lay it out to the midnight and their opponents or whatever.

That's part of booking.

On the WCW committee is the first time I actually got to

literally put a TV format to paper or to contribute to live event cards.

Did you feel like you knew what you were doing, or at any point, did you feel like I hope I'm doing this right?

Well,

again, I've seen the formats before that other people have written.

So

I know how to kind of translate the concept: we want to have this guy wrestle this guy.

And after the match is over,

he's going to go to the desk and do a promo, but the other guy's going to come out and they're going to have a fucking argument.

And then they're going to go to the desk and we're going to do the angle.

We need some agents and referees.

I know how to put that on paper.

So

the biggest thing about the challenge about booking is doing it yourself

rather than doing it as part of like you're helping somebody else who's more experienced.

And that in Smoky Mountain, that's where the first time I had to do it by myself.

And

again, I'm replicating, I can put the lineups in the book the way that other people do it.

I can write the formats the way other people do it, but the ideas now have to be all mine and the finishes have to be mine or the

promos, what the guys are talking about.

I have to give them the subjects, even though I'm not writing it word for word.

And that's where, again,

in Smoky Mountain, I had a lot of experienced guys that you'd only had to tell them.

on a promo, who are we talking about?

And remember, last week we used the ether and we're coming up in Knoxville, no dq whatever okay

um

but i think my booking was better in ovw

because i'd had the experience in smoky mountain there's things i again i've said this before god damn it i still kick myself that i didn't put the babyface team over at the bluegrass brawl in pikeville

and and uh then get heat afterwards instead of putting the heels over because it deflated the house there.

But we were coming back to Knoxville Knoxville and Johnson City in 10 days with rematches.

Things like that.

But my booking in OVW was better because I had more experience at it.

I had a more varied,

more number, more numerical talent roster than I had in Smoky Mountain because we could afford more guys that were either on contracts or were paying us to learn to wrestle.

And

I just had more experience at it, and the shit made sense from week to week and TV to TV much better.

OVW is the best booking I've ever done.

With the WWF, that period of time, that's being on Vince's creative team.

So

you're helping somebody fill in their fucking crossword puzzle.

But it's not like you

just suddenly say, you know, I'm comfortable booking a fucking show because it doesn't matter.

You don't get to book one anyway, unless you're a fucking booker.

And then, if you become a booker, you better be ready to book a lot of fucking shows.

Does that answer your question?

Maybe a little bit of it.

I don't know.

In terms of Tony Khan, jumping right into it, we've seen how it turned out over five years.

We've seen the problems that manifested quickly and the ones that it became apparent were going to happen over time, and they've all happened.

But in advance of that, what did you think would be the, what would you have thought would be the toughest thing for someone, a novice, to get right out of the gate?

And was that what Tony got right or wrong?

Or was it not exactly what you thought would happen?

Well, no, but the timing of the shows, obviously, is one of the issues.

Well, but I mean, Jesus Christ, again, you can train a fucking chimpanzee.

But part of the, well, actually, maybe you can't because part of the thing is, is that if you're timing your show and you're not giving the guys the finishes, they're coming up with their own finishes and they can't figure time.

And they they tell you, give me a three-minute queue to go home.

And then they do it in four and a half minutes.

It's not your fault.

But you ought to be giving them the finishes and the fucking time cue, which is, as we mentioned, what I did in OVW.

If I gave them a finish and I said, you've got a three-minute queue to go.

And if you do, if your timing is right in this finish, then we'll have 15 seconds left at the end to say, God damn, can you believe what happened?

We'll see you next week.

And if you rush, you're going to be short and you're going to have have to stand there with your dick in your hand.

And if you're long,

then it ain't going to make the air because we're live to tape.

That's how they learn.

But Tony can't time a show because he doesn't know how long a finish is going to take to be able to give the time cue because he can't see it in his head and he can't fucking feel it because he's not giving it to the guys to begin with.

And then

talent roster

and presentation.

You can't just give everybody everything from spaghetti with sardines to fucking blueberry ice cream.

Put your roster together in a

kind of a sensible way that everybody's able to present the product style that you want to present and you haven't shot your wad at the beginning.

You've got guys that can come in later on and take these guys' place as you gather more viewers so that you're upgrading instead of having the 20 best wrestlers you can have at the start of things.

His roster was all over the place.

He had the legless man, whatever the fuck.

You can't do this unless you have sat in the locker room and or in the car and or in the fucking TV studio with people who knew how to do it and did it successfully and watched them do it and see what happens to them and see

when they're trying to talk somebody into doing something that they don't want to do

and and why it makes sense for them to do that and you have to be able to explain that to them

and

no it's not that Tony was good at one thing or bad at another thing it's that he was totally unprepared for every fucking thing

because you you you can pretend to do this on the internet or in your notebooks as a as a kid which we all did at varying ages.

I was already in the business when Tony was doing it on the internet,

age-wise.

But you can't actually do it for real until you've watched people who know how to do it for real and they have told you some things about it.

And then you've tried a little bit of it with somebody else to correct your shit and tell you what's wrong with it.

And tweak it a little bit.

That's the problem.

Tony has never thought that his things were wrong.

His ideas were wrong.

He thought he had a hang on this and he could figure it out from day one.

Well, that's why it's all been caca.

But that's, you know, that's why that nobody was ever

made a booker in wrestling until they had

some lengthy experience, whether it be as a wrestler or as a referee or even as a manager or as

Jerry Jarrett.

had promoted towns when he was a teenager.

He'd been selling programs since he was six years old.

So he had been around the business and talked to people, even though he actually became a booker before he was a wrestler.

He had refereed and promoted,

and he had the benefit of Roy Welch, one of the most experienced human beings alive in the wrestling business at the time,

riding in a car with him to Memphis and back every week to fucking tell him what was going on and ask him what he thought.

You don't just, oh i've i've

i've done this as a fan

with other fans we've played around at this so now i'm going to do a national tv show and that's and what has happened has been what has happened that's what it looks like

you know and that's what the 500 million dollars or whatever has covered up for but that doesn't mean that the shit has made sense or that you could even

Every time somebody comes back to AEW,

if you played the tape of the last time we saw them on television, and then

you saw what they walked in and did on that program, it doesn't make sense from one thing to the next.

They might be a baby face, might be a heel, might be mad at a guy, they come out, whatever the fuck.

There's been no

coherence in that program from start to finish.

And that's because Tony's,

I've had people tell me he's all about making moments

Like, oh, look at this guy.

Here he comes.

Where'd he come from?

And why is he here?

And boy, we just saw a guy come in last week.

This is kind of the same thing.

The timing and the context and the story and the reason why we're supposed to go, oh, shit, look at that guy.

Tony don't do that.

Tony don't play that.

He just wants everybody to go, oh, shit, look at that.

And then five minutes later, they're like, oh, shit, look at that again, because they forgot the previous, oh, shit.

Well, what a perfect transition.

Let's go to the world of Tony Kaka or Tony Khan, as you call him.

Kaka Ka-Kakan!

And AEW dynamite.

All right, we are in the future.

Because only in the future could AEW possibly make some sense.

Well, you're getting a little fancy there at the end there, Captain Planet.

And also, if we're going to do this, can we just go four years?

Just four years from this January.

It'll be just fine.

But we time traveled a little bit because you had to take,

see, you're feeling puny and your symptoms are getting worse and you're trying to hide it.

And so now you're on the drugs, the pharmaceuticals.

You had to take some SudaFed.

Is this what I'm here?

You know, the only thing you can do with SudaFed that actually works is make myth.

Because the rest of it doesn't.

Here's something to do with the rest of the day.

It'll dry your mouth out, but it's not going to affect your goddamn self.

That shit's phony.

Phony as a football bat.

Sudafed from the pharmacy, you know, when you actually go to the counter and ask for it, as opposed to the crap they have out there for all the civilians.

I'm not talking about truck driver speed or some bullshit.

I'm saying the product titled and copyrighted and and trademarked Suda Fed,

I have found in my life don't do shit.

That's what Jesse Ventura did.

Suda Fed.

Thank you.

I'll be here all week, ladies and gentlemen.

Not with material like that, you won't.

Oh, now I'm feeling even worse.

You see, you had to make it worse.

And do I hear a buzzing in the background over there on your end?

Well, let me tell you something.

I couldn't sleep really well because I was all clogged up and I'm blowing my nose and I got a cough that I'm hiding successfully so far.

And then all of a sudden, I finally get to sleep for the final time.

And around

5:30 in the morning,

it just feels like there's like a loud buzzing.

And I'm like, what the fuck is that?

Is something wrong with something?

I don't even know what it could be.

I woke Suzanne up.

I'm like, do you hear that?

And she's like, yeah, what is that?

I said, I don't know.

And then she fell back asleep.

So from before 6 a.m.

this morning, the gardeners next door, and then immediately before they were finished, actually, the gardeners on the other side, and then across the way,

they've all been doing the leaf cleanup, non-stop blowing of leaves, capturing of leaves, wherever they dispose of said leaves, non-stop.

And I got real paranoid.

So I texted my guy.

I said, are you coming today?

He said, no, we're coming tomorrow.

Is that okay?

I said, no, that's great.

I'll be sleeping.

Don't come today.

But that's the update.

That was Diamond.

They're across the way.

They're down the street.

They're doing the curly shuffle.

They used to play during Mets games and it got a big pop that would show like baseball highlights.

Well, it's

anything entertaining in the middle of a fucking baseball game.

At Shea Stadium.

God, if paint drying were to break out, it might cause a riot.

Oh, stop it.

Anyway,

better booking there than on some of these wrestling shows.

Well, I can't dispute that that fact.

And we've

the AEW program this week, folks, and it was another one of those weeks, but now it was the shoe is on the other foot week.

Because remember, it was a couple weeks back when

the folks on Dynamite at AEW had to move nights and they had to go to Tuesday

where the incumbent

is NXT on the CW network.

And now this time it was the Vice E Versailles,

in that Dynamite was on its normal night and NXT was venturing back

into previous territory.

They used to be on Wednesdays and they left years ago.

And now they were on Wednesday opposite the Dynamite presentation.

So

this was one of those weeks where we were going to see what we were going to see about who sees what.

See what I'm saying?

If you're the person who owns Wednesday night, if you're Tony Connob or just any wrestling promoter in that spot, do you load up this show against NXT or do you just do what you're going to do anyway?

Well, herein lies the problem.

If it was a normal situation,

I would say that if I was the incumbent, I would make sure it was a good show.

I would think that

normally

the person who's on the regular night wins the night pretty much regardless of who it may be.

But I wouldn't, you know, know, just put like one of those RAWs from Saudi Arabia where it just, oh, geez, will this ever get over with?

I would make sure it was a good show, but I don't know if I would do Stark 886 on,

and if I was the other side,

if I was the

ones going to that night, I would try to do that because

now I'm on a different night.

And,

you know, at the same time,

it depends if it's competitive because if it's not competitive, you don't want to load your show up and nobody see it, right?

So AEW has to think about that.

We've talked about that before.

But since

in Tony Kahn's mind, every episode of Dynamite is loaded up.

And he listens to Uncle Dave, who will

enumerate this long list of

great matches that they're going to have on this program.

They've advertised.

And some of the great matches involve

Pockets or

Vikingo

or

Holu, whatever the fuck, right?

So great is being bandied around,

you know,

a little loosely these days anyway.

And even some of those matches that I guess those fans anticipate when you watch them transpire.

Yeah, some of the big moments get a reaction, but more and more,

the audiences at AEW are dead silent throughout matches where you would think they would have some sort of emotional investment or at least a curiosity, something to make you buzz like the buzzing behind me right now.

Just something, but they have nothing.

They just sit there and

watch it.

They're even more timid than the Japanese crowds of the 90s.

Well, it's not that they're timid.

It's that they're waiting to see something that they either,

you know, like the furniture breaking, that always gets a pop, no matter who does it, because they like to see furniture breaking and people, you know, attempt to kill themselves for real.

And

when the finish comes and everybody starts kicking out of shit that would kill a bull moose and they do some fancy shit or somebody runs in or whatever, they'll start yelling at that, but there's 20 more minutes of that shit and they've seen it all.

It's every every match.

It's the same thing.

We laugh about it.

Jumpstart, dive, fight on the floor for two minutes.

I mean, all the patterns that we talk about.

So

if you're there live and you're waiting to see the things you came for, which are the really big stars, the furniture breaking, and

is there going to be some kind of surprise?

Because now people expect Tony's moments.

Tony loves to have moments

without any

build or logic or rationale or

restraint involved in how many moments you give him until all the moments become one of those goddamn

montages for we didn't start to fire.

Did I go too deep on that reference?

No, it's still burning.

Okay, well, it's always turning.

You know, it's interesting on that topic,

AEW has a lack of star power.

This is despite the fact that actually I think the Hurt Syndicate have gotten over as stars and have been treated like stars so far.

Tony hasn't fucked that up too much.

Moxley is not as over with those fans as he was, and he's now the killer, the killer heel, the leader of his gang.

Hey, when you took Wild Thing away.

When you take away their sing-along and it's just your mope face, you gomer pow-looking son of a bitch that, you know, has got to carry this thing you know for those who had money on moxley being compared to gomer pile this is your week

but my point is they need help mjf's not been on these shows other than these you know clearly taped things you know they're supposed to be live like transmissions from the mansion he's in or whatever

did you hear about kenny omega

No, I did not, truthfully.

And was he in the mansion with MJF?

Is MJF going to to be allowed to leave?

No, Kenny Omega made his return to wrestling.

He didn't have a match, but he had an appearance.

Okay.

He appeared in Osaka at a New Japan show

and intimated that he may be ready for the Tokyo Dome on the 5th.

And they even did an angle in the back where it was an angle without being an angle.

They had two of the wrestlers do.

an argument and a pull apart with enough time that the Japanese press could run over and take lots of photos of it.

You know what I mean?

With him and Gabe Kidd one of the top stars in New Japan.

Kenny Omega is one of the biggest stars in AEW.

But that's what happens about his.

Where is he?

He's over in Japan and he can do shit, but he can't do shit over here for this guy that's paying him millions of dollars to go get his intestines removed.

Why is his first appearance in months on a New Japan show?

He's an EVP, or maybe he's not, who knows?

But he's one of the top paid guys in AEW.

Why is his return on a New Japan show to tease a future New Japan match?

Someone explain how any of that makes any sense to AEW or how that benefits AEW.

Because Tony wants to make sure that the Japanese show is good so he can watch it.

I mean, I don't know.

You know,

that's what he's a fan of.

By the way, they better hope they get Omega.

The main event of the the Tokyo Dome is going to be Zack Sabre Jr.

versus Shodo Umino.

Okay, one, I know, it looks like a q-tip, and the other one, I don't know.

Oh,

umino.

Umino, by umino, there you go.

Let's just say the new Japan fans have rejected him brutally.

Ooh.

And Zack Sabre Jr.

has never drawn a crowd in Japan, and that's the main event of the Tokyo Dome.

So we'll discuss that, I'm sure, as it comes to pass.

But Kenny Omega, and boy, if you're going against NXT, that's why I guess I'm bringing it up here, and you want to load it up or just have something.

Why is he making a return in Japan to tease something that will happen in Japan?

I'm sure they have a plan.

Well, they have a concept of a plan.

A Japan plan?

A plan for Japan.

Don't pan their plans.

I've been watching you since Bobby and Stan.

Well, since you growled like a tiger that one day on the podcast.

What was that?

And my name was Tiger Dan.

So they were in Manchester, New Hampshire on November the 6th for AEW Dynamite, and they just popped right up on the air with Tony Schiavone in the ring.

They can't even get a wide shot of the ring anymore unless they're shooting across the ring toward the entranceway because they can't get enough people in the fucking stands to do the wide shot.

And in Manchester, New Hampshire, I mean,

it's not exactly a, you know, giant metropolis.

But apparently they got a big building because it looked like a piss hole in a snowbank.

Anyway, Tony Schiavone introduced the Hurt Syndicate.

And here they come, and you refer to this a second ago.

The fans are already taken to them as stars.

They're heels, but it doesn't matter.

The people are, they're giving them

the WWE fan treatment.

They already know what to chant, when to chant it.

When these guys come out, they look great.

They're in suits.

They're kick-asses.

They look like fucking celebrities.

And they act like it.

And they talk like it in MJF's case.

And

in MVP's case.

Noted member of the Hurts Syndicate, MJF.

Yes.

Well, now there's too many goddamn initials.

You know what I'm saying?

MVP.

And the fans are chanting MVP, MVP.

So then he says, well, I need no introduction.

You know who I am.

I am Montel

Vesuvius Porter, otherwise known as MVP.

And they get a, he, he introduces Shelton with his legitimate background and builds him up like a carnival barker, like a manager is supposed to.

And Shelton gets a big pop.

And then they were chanting Bobby, Bobby, before MVP even introduced him.

Yeah, how about that reaction?

The reaction Lashley was getting from those fans.

Well, yeah, because he's a former fucking WWE world champion.

He was in the main event of WrestleMania and blah, blah, blah.

And he looks like a million dollars.

Actually, in today's economic climate, in the TV rights era and et cetera, he looks like millions of dollars.

And MVP gave him the big intro, and he got a pop.

And MVP cut the fucking promo.

They are there to wreak havoc.

And they were,

you know, they tried to,

well, they didn't try to, they tried to sign Swerve, but he said, here's what happens if somebody turns down our proposals and they go to the VTR of them beating up Swerve.

And he said, we don't want to make an enemy of Swerve.

Swerve wanted to make an enemy of us.

And then boom, here comes Swerve with Nana.

And

I have to be honest, I don't know what kind kind of deal Nana has with the coffee company.

And I know they like to chant, whose house, wherever's house, and et cetera.

But in this case, I don't think he should have been dancing and holding his tallywhacker and doing all that because it was so serious.

Because

these guys are serious.

That's why they're getting over.

They're grown adult men.

I'm talking about the Hurt Syndicate.

They're grown adult men in a land of children that are obviously

seeing that they just need to be

serious and look like stars and act like stars and they will be treated as stars.

Revolutionary concept, I know,

but it hadn't been tried often on this program.

So I think, oh, go ahead.

Well, what did you think of Swerve, though?

Because he came out there.

He wasn't yelling or screaming or...

you know, doing anything.

He was just kind of, I don't know.

It was an interesting way he played it, him coming out there.

What did you think?

Well, I agree that he, you know,

you don't want him to go ballistic and have his eyeballs popping out of his head.

And some do, you know, when some of these guys go over the top, they

look more

insane than they do mad, right?

But all he did was say, Bobby Lashley,

full gear.

And MVP's like, well, we'll see you there, kid.

And also, because I don't care how tough Swerve is, there's Lashley and there's Shelton and there's MVP.

They're kicking a shit out of Swerve and Nana.

But

I think it didn't need to be, again, the Gettysburg Address, but

I'm thinking that they could have come up with 30 seconds of something for Swerve to say

that,

you know,

it might have been a little more pithy about what he was going to do about this situation.

I don't know.

We've seen Swerve on the mic a lot.

He doesn't get to the point quickly ever.

Well, but somebody could have fucking jotted something down for him.

Just say this.

How many times I've had somebody, well, I can say that.

I just say this.

Just say this.

It'll be fine.

But we'll see you there, kid.

So,

Swerve is going to need some assistance here.

Is he not?

Maybe Nana knows some

coffee grinders that can get to work.

Some baristas looking for revenge.

I don't know.

And here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the badass barista.

Only Nana knows.

So we're a few weeks away from full gear.

And it's pretty official, I guess.

Bobby Lashley versus Swerve.

Lashley's just coming in.

It would be stupid for him to lose.

Swerve kind of needs to not lose, but I guess that's the way it is.

He better get used to the fucking idea.

I mean,

I don't know what else to say.

No,

my God, the penalty in wrestlers court

for beating Bobby Lashley on his first fucking match in a company would be, I think, firing squad or potentially hand grenade shoved up the Sphincter.

Should Bobby Lashley have any matches before then, or should they just have him coming out there in his suit with MVP and Shelton?

He's already over.

Hello.

Hello, lady.

Bobby.

He's already over is what I'm trying to say.

He's already over.

There's no.

Is it going to get him more over if he gets in the ring with one of these dip shits and hurt locks him in two minutes?

Or even worse, if he was given some,

you know, guy from the land of Lilliput offense before his pay-per-view match and it's fucking, as you mentioned, two weeks away.

So no, they know who he is and they know what he did.

Remember, that's an old William Castle flick from the 60s.

I know who you are and I saw what you did.

Well, they know who he is and they know what he did.

And a lot of people don't think it'd be like it is, but it do.

One last thing on this, and of course, Tony Khan can always find a way to fuck up the most simple of things.

But I actually think so far, even despite what Dave Meltzer said a few weeks ago that we talked about,

I think Shelton's almost come across like a bigger star here so far than WWE.

Yes.

A large part of that is the presentation and also the way the fans have been.

reacting to him.

Do you think to keep that momentum, he should get a few wins between now and full gear, for instance?

Yeah, I think anytime you have Shelton going out and throwing people up in the air and suplexing them and beating them,

it's good because he does have an image somewhat from the WWE that would need to be rehabbed.

But the difference, there's two differences here that I see.

Number one, as I mentioned before, this fan base is not used to

an athlete of that caliber who's also that good of a worker.

By terms of good worker, I'm not even talking about the athletics.

I'm talking about that smart of a worker to know how to get his shit over and

what to do in a fucking match

but also at the same time

in the wwe they had shelton pigeonholed and you see him being presented here

as a stronger force as a single already even though they beat him way too prematurely because all these things are rushed when they bring in new talent.

But so, and

also,

to be honest, in the WWE, Shelton was not

outclassing the entire rest of the roster in terms of size or athletic credentials to the degree he is here,

but he's also being allowed to do more of his own shit and not

have to be in their stooging for,

you know, a guy's the equivalent of Gargano and that ilk over there on the other channel.

So

it's meeting in the middle, and that Shelton is, you know, to me

has gotten over

better than any

new acquisition that I can think of.

Everybody they brought in new, and I will move on, but everybody they brought in new that's been over at the start has gotten successively less over.

Shelton is continuing to get more over.

Of course, Lashley just got here, so I don't include him, but you see what I'm saying.

Yeah.

Do you think they need another guy, someone who can be the one to take some bumps and maybe

take some pins?

I wouldn't rush it and take, fuck, just don't beat any of these motherfuckers for a little while.

And, you know, and just concentrate on what you've got here because you've got two singles or you've got a team and you've got a manager and he can be looking for other people,

but that can be a way for him to set up

matches with either of the two people that he's already got.

So

there's no reason to turn it into the fucking NWO wolf pack or whatever, just real quick.

But that was that.

And I believe, once again, after Dynamite, that was the most viewed clip from Dynamite on AEW's YouTube channel.

Imagine that.

And then here's the problem with the program in question, AEW Dynamite.

We went from that where the fans were with these people

for all the reasons we mentioned, and they're interested, and it's fresh, and it's different.

And then they go to

a video package of Pockets' problems with the plumber.

And there's Orange Cassidy conflicted because he might be the only one that can save us from this evil group of

merry misfits following this fucking bald-headed dipshit around.

And

again, the dichotomy here.

How about that word?

The paradox, which, by the way, is not a place to park two boats.

MVP's group looks, works, and talks like stars and know how to present themselves.

And they've been here for a month, and they're more over than Moxley's bunch that's been around in various stages for years.

Am I lying?

If I'm lying, I'm flying.

My feet ain't left the ground.

No, not only that, but they're bigger than them.

They look more imposing than them.

And the manager of that crew can kick the shit out of the entire team of

the Jon Moxley bunch.

The only one that fits in the Hurt Syndicate is Marina Schaefer.

And then, so they follow that package up.

Here comes the Death Riders entrance.

I guess it worked better than Johnny and the Good Boys.

What about,

who is it, Eddie and the Cruisers?

Here comes Eddie and the Cruisers.

They even made a sequel to that crap.

Their brands were still on fire and their hoofs were made of steel.

Their coats were black and shiny, and their heartbeats you could feel.

The Death Riders come out, but here's the thing: we ride death

and put him away wet.

The

see, you're gonna cough now, aren't you?

Here's the thing: the goddamn, the their Death Riders entrance video

for whatever this fucking somnambulistic music they got going on.

It sounds like a funeral march in Czechoslovakia.

But the Death Riders video is on the screen, but these chuckle fucks are still entering through a back door and walking out into the crowd.

So you can't even shoot

them and their entrance video.

And the people start looking at the video because it's on this goddamn 80-foot screen.

And here these fucking nitwits are just wandering around in the crowd with one spotlight on them.

Well, the other thing is they wander into the arena, even when Moxley's with them, and they walk to the ring with security there.

Security's waiting for them when they walk out, and then they walk with them.

Well, yeah, it is because insurance liability, it has to be a planned entrance, and it has to be supervised.

They're going to all this trouble just so these fuckers can just walk in through the arena.

Like, we know they work there

in their minds only.

It was cool when they had the wild thing, and it's one guy doing it, or now with Jey Uso

because it's audience participation and they wave and they yeet and everything.

But this was just, there's no excitement.

And so

they have,

it's Claudio and Wheeler and Pac.

And then Pockets comes out to the stage by himself and just stands there in the entrance way like, oh, come, I'm ready to fight.

And he has a weird,

a weird stance when he's bowing up like he's mad.

You can tell he's never got to be mad at anybody before because they slapped the fucking teeth out of his mouth and his head would have looked like a goddamn jack-in-the-box.

But Claudio and Pac go to get him, and suddenly Darby appears on the top of the tunnel and does a dive off onto both of them.

And they just do the big four-way

indie-style fight on the ramp and the floor.

And then the ref rang the bell when

they got in the ring.

And it,

I mean, look at Pack.

He's not tall, but he's jacked.

And then look at Claudio.

He's tall and jacked.

And it looked like a kid and his divorced uncle picking a fight with two bodybuilders at Goals Gym.

The white nationalist Simon and Garfunkel.

I mean,

based on the gimmick.

Well,

I don't care what it's based on.

It's fucking visually funny.

And this went on and on.

On and on.

It just kept on going.

And the more it went, it kept on blowing.

On and on.

So the mascot made a comeback on the two giants.

And there was a bunch of dives and spinning about

and the mascot allegedly knocked out Claudio and Wheeler with one punch each the the Superman punch that has been downgraded to the Jimmy Olson's blues in my

in my mind

um

and then he went to punch pack but Marita Schaefer came in and just kicked the referee out of the ring

And then there's Moxley, and he grabs pockets and a sleeper, but Darby

gets in there somehow with his skateboard and whacked Moxley with the skateboard.

And then Wheeler got on Darby, but Darby beat everybody up.

This little fucking,

oh my God, this diminutive pygmy is beating everybody up after he's been had the shit kicked out of him.

And then Claudio murdered Darby.

He just picked him up and just launched him.

on the floor toward the ring post and he hit and bounced off.

And then all the heels were beating up pockets when Briscoe's music played and here came Mark Briscoe and Kyle O'Reilly and Rocky Romero and Ishii.

And as soon as the heels saw that onslaught, they just bailed out of the ring.

This was just, it was.

What is going on here with these people?

And how do they think that any of this is ever going to register when it's just chaos with a dozen people every goddamn week?

Yeah, and again, AEW is not really a self-aware company, and Tony Khan's not really good at addressing his personal faults with booking or stopping other people from having really bad booking ideas.

It's clearly not working either.

And the other problem is you can't ask anyone even if they're an AEW fan to explain it.

If you just tuned in this night and you were sitting with an AEW thing and said, oh, what's going on?

Why is this guy trying to murder that guy with that choke?

Oh, you see, he wants to hurt everyone to teach them a lesson.

Yeah, because they don't appreciate their job, so he wants to kill them and bury them in the desert.

What is this?

It's so bad, and it's not resonating.

And you're coming from the hurt business, which is major league, and it's getting major league over, and it's working with those fans.

And then you go from that to an amateur hour.

Two guys.

I guess AEW should just have 160-pound weight division.

They'd be loaded.

But when you have those guys beating up or staying equal with PAC and Claudio,

and then it goes right to the Moxley angle, which isn't working, which isn't working at all.

Losing Wild Thing, like you said earlier, was a big expose on how over he isn't.

And they're seriously thinking that somehow, just because Tony thinks he's cute or whatever the fucking attraction is, that Orange Cassidy

can be a serious

addition to the roster and be put in a money position and expected to produce, which is ludicrous.

But they're going to shove it.

They're going to make it happen.

That's the problem.

It's not about, well, this isn't working.

We need to change course.

No, they're going to make it happen to say they made it happen.

Well, but they're not going to make it happen.

It's going to happen, but it's not going to draw.

Well, that's right.

Yes.

Yeah.

So they're not going to make it happen where they're like, oh, we finally pushed him over.

No, you're going to push him off eventually.

There will be a precipice somewhere.

But

so anyway,

Briscoe and O'Reilly and Ishii

stayed in the ring so they could go to a break.

And then they came back.

And before they went back to the ring, they set up that tonight.

The Don Fallus family is going to take on Ricochet and a mystery partner.

And the Hurts Syndicate then surrounded Ricochet in a menacing fashion and wished him good luck because they've known each other from previous world tours and things and such of that nature.

But anyway, then we go back to the ring.

And Brian, after they've just had this giant goddamn

arena-wide fight where they started with a, hold on, I'm checking my notes, a dive off the top of the tunnel,

and they fought all over the goddamn arena and all over the ring, and then had multiple people running in and angles being done where people were launched headfirst into ring posts, etc.

They decided it'd be a good idea to follow it up with a six-man fight without honor,

which is the ring of honor version of no disqualification.

And now it's also become lazy booking.

Fight Without Honor, also known as Match Without Ratings.

Fight Without Honor, soon to be known as Fight Without Fans.

So now it's a no DQ six-man.

Anything goes

minutes after just all this other fucking meaningless chaos.

And Jericho and Big Bill and

Brian Keith, not Cage.

And they start with an instant six-way to the floor and kendo sticks and chairs, and they're using the title belt.

And Ishii had suplexed

Jericho through a table on the floor in the first two minutes.

And

the table is also going to figure

into like not three or four other spots and to finish.

It was a furniture store.

30 seconds after the first table, Kyle O'Reilly and Brian Keith fell through another one.

And then Big Bill chokeslam Briscoe through a ladder as a break spot.

And I was fast-forwarding at this point because why?

What can you possibly retain from this at this point?

And then at some point,

Big Bill and Kyle O'Reilly ended up fighting in the back of the arena in a hallway, and

Big Bill took a very long time to set up two tables next to each other, and then he and O'Reilly fell through both of them.

And then Briscoe gave Jericho a J-driller and put him on a table on the floor, and then came off the table.

No, it was in the ring.

I can't remember.

But he came off the top of a ladder with the froggy bow to put Jericho through another table.

And that was a two count because Brian Key saved it.

And they did more dives and shit.

And then suddenly,

Ishii just picked Jericho up and held him up in a vertical suplex position and gave him kind of a half-assed brain buster.

One, two, three.

Of all three of the baby faces, this guy is the worst by far on the team.

He gets to win.

And the

finishing maneuver, it looks like a love tap from an anemic baby next to everything that's gone on in this fiasco to that point.

And they expect people to remember what the fuck goes on here.

Again, the ratings have been in a free fall.

Fan interest in a free fall.

You need to boost ticket sales.

Why now are you giving Ishi another push?

Does it make any sense?

It doesn't make any sense.

Who, what, what is the audience for that?

Is he even at this point, look at the state of him?

Is he still one of the top guys in New Japan?

Do their fans even,

you know, still, oh my gosh, Ishii, he's great.

He's 50.

fucking eight years old or whatever, but he's great.

He'll have good matches on the show, but he's not going to draw the house.

How can he have a good match?

Well, he used to.

I'm not saying now.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Is he still at a point now where even the new Japan fans go, wow, it's our guy or boy.

Look at him now.

I don't know.

They're in a pretty sad state.

They're rejecting their top guy right now.

They'll probably take anyone they can get.

Well,

well, then good.

Take him back.

Anyway, we were almost at the nine o'clock hour.

We had Moxley and company in the back.

I don't even,

I can't even transcribe it.

What he's trying to say or the point he's trying to make.

He's telling Pockets that Wheeler isn't as friend as he thought he was.

And I don't know what the fuck is going on.

And then in the middle of the promo, he starts doing turn, turn, turn.

Every season, turn, turn, turn.

I really like Roger McGuinn.

Like, what, what the fuck?

Every week, you could just wait for the Moxley promo.

At which point is he going to do prose, poetry lyrics whatever it is that he stole from someone what is he going to incorporate into this and it's going nowhere and it still doesn't make any sense it's been weeks now we were guessing a couple months ago oh shane mcmah because otherwise nothing makes any sense and it wasn't shane mcmahon and nothing makes any sense hold on now you said we you got a frog in your pocket over there I don't have one.

I have one in my throat right now, actually.

No, I wasn't saying that.

I was the one that said that nobody is going to be the boss of this fucking egomaniac, Moxley, and his

audition for independent film stardom, but him.

It's going to be him.

And that's what he came out the next week and said,

you're all working for me or whatever it was he said to indicate I'm running this.

He has admitted to fucking the dog.

The rest of us are just holding its head.

Again, hit the ring when the hurt business or hurt syndicate are out there.

That's what I want to see.

That's the episode of Dynamite I'll Watch.

Johnny and the Good Boys confront the Hurt Syndicate.

Start the show off with that.

Build it up for a few weeks.

That'll pop a number.

And then do the old rib when you got separate locker rooms.

Tell both sides they're going over.

All right.

Well, at nine o'clock, speaking of both sides, I've looked at wrestling from both sides of nine o'clock now, and it's going to go downhill from here.

Adam Cole made his entrance, and Malachi Black made his spooky entrance, and it was Adam Cole versus Malachi Black.

And

you may recall that for some

unknown reason, MJF just gets to dictate whatever the fuck stipulations for other people's lives.

And he said, if Adam Cole or

Roderick Strong can get three wins in a row or three wins between now and then,

then I'll fight either one of them.

It does it at full gear.

I mean, I don't know how else to explain this nonsense anyway.

He should go one step further.

And if one of you guys can win four matches, I will ask for my release and I'll go to WWE.

But that's why Tony Khan comes out and makes other rulings.

Why does he remain silent on MJF saying?

And then, Adam Cole, after you win three matches, then I want you to put a new roof on my house or whatever.

But anyway,

so that's the situation is that Adam Cole's

won one.

He's going to win another one here.

And goddamn, when you look at these two guys in a ring, Malachi Black may be the equivalent to exciting a crowd, what a bucket of ice water is to a hard dick, but he looks like he could murder Adam Cole.

Doesn't he?

He absolutely does.

And this is coming off Buddy looking like he could murder Adam Cole last week.

Tell me he's going to beat Brody King next week.

Is he going to wrestle Brody King?

Well, hopefully, because, you know, out of the three of them, that fucking big bowl of pudding, Adam ought to be able to put him away quick, but Malachi Black looks better than he did last time.

I saw him physically.

He's goddamn, he's in shape.

And

look at Malachi Black and look at Adam Cole.

Also, what are their ages?

Can you Google that?

Is that a thing that you can Google Phi?

Yeah, give me a second.

Because

I'm not saying that Adam looks like he's 12 years old facially.

He does have a beard and

the facial hair, and he's not as young as he.

I knew him when he was 19.

He still looks good for his age, but when he's in a long shot in the ring, it looks like it's a 12-year-old

child running around.

And Malachi Black,

because of partially because of his gimmick with the wild hair and the contact lenses and everything, he, I'm sure, looks a little more mature, but this looked like a Cub Scout being assaulted by a guy from Rikers Island.

Well, I have the information here, and again, it comes from Wikipedia, so you kind of have to take things with a grain of salt, and I'll tell you why in a second.

Malachi Black, 39 years old,

but it says here 215,511.

Adam Cole, 35 years old, and it says here six foot, 201 pound.

Oh, boy.

Well,

I mean,

according to this, he's taller than Malachi Boy.

Well, yeah, and

I know, I know Adam, six feet isn't far.

It's not like he's 5'7, but he hadn't seen 200 pounds in a while.

You know, he's probably close enough.

If you put him in shoes and stood him on the curb, he could be six feet.

But anyway,

and most of their work is good mechanically.

But I mean, Adam just, that's, as I said,

physically, he looks five years younger than he did when he was 19.

Cause when he was 19, he was in shape and he was kind of lean.

But,

and the fans a lot through a lot of this were just kind of sitting there texting

or just doing whatever.

And

I'm thinking

they were dead.

They were completely.

I was surprised.

I was shocked how dead they were.

And, you know, I was thinking as I noticed that Adam also,

I mean, he used to be able to go all night

and his shit started getting weaker under 10 minutes in.

And I was thinking, because he's been off for so long, how do these guys stay in ring shape when they work once a week?

Maybe.

Even the ones that aren't off hurt.

I You know,

I don't know how they fucking do it.

But

the biggest pop at one point in the match going toward the finish was Adam.

Cole hit a loud leg slap, and people pop for that because it was a sudden loud noise, right?

And then Cole ran into Black Spin Kick that he does as a finish, and there was a bigger pop because it lit for once, I don't think he tatered the poor fellow because we've seen some taters coming out of those boots, but it looked good and it got a two count.

And Malachi Black was shocked, and me too.

I'm like, well, what the fuck now?

And

I swear to God,

they go right into this thing where Black misses a charge into the turnbuckle.

He splashes it, boom, and he just backed up two steps and bent over and put his hands on his knees and waited motionless for four full seconds, 1,001, 1,002, 1,000,

for Cole to hop up on the ropes and do the Panama Sunrise.

And then he didn't just hit him with the Panama Sunrise.

He super kicked him.

And then he super kicked him again.

I think that may have been when he was on his knees.

And then Adam Cole fell down on his ass and sold like he was all blowed up.

And

then they both get up, and Malachi Black falls over on his ass again and just sits there

and looks at Adam Cole

and beckons to him with his hand.

And the announcers didn't,

they made a point of saying, well, we don't know exactly what Malachi Black is asking him here or wanting him to do.

I think noting Malachi Black's propensity for doing the spooky shit, the supernatural shit, or the dramatic shit from some kind of fucking movie he's been watching, he was probably saying, I can't continue anymore in this combat.

You must finish me now, like an honorable soldier.

And so,

I swear to God,

Adam Cole pulls his knee pad down

and reveals that when he got his spray tan, he had his knee pads on.

That was the only thing I could pay attention to for the rest of the match.

And then he ran

and hit the ropes and came with a flying knee to the back of Malachi Black's head,

which is apparently a great babyface move.

and covered him one, two, three.

So think about this.

They've had this match where

they've done all these things.

And finally, the guy they want to get over, Adam Cole,

foils the heels attack, gets out of the way of the charge, hits the Panama Sunrise.

He doesn't cover him one, two, three.

Bear in mind, he's going to win anyway.

He super kicks him.

These super kicks him again.

then they both fell down then they both got up then the other guy fell down

then asked the babyface to finish him off

and then the baby face finished him off by hitting him from behind

then cover one two three in a match where the fans sat there and didn't react and again it stood out it was like a woman's match on this show i've never seen a crowd just go dead and i think part of the reason is this adam cole stuff has backfired bad

They, if they were going to bring him back and have him wrestle MJF,

you know, like what we said earlier with Lashley, that should have been the first time we saw him with his trunks on or anything else.

Because

it's an exposure now.

A lot of the things we said about various people over the years,

it's now being accepted about him by their audience.

He looks like a guy off the street who could do the moves and who can kick out of things.

Because the look, the physique, unfortunately, is a big part of this story.

Especially when you keep putting him in there with bigger guys or cut guys, guys who look like they go to the gym or

have a protein shake, just simple things.

It's not working, and having him win long matches

where, you know, it's back and forth.

with other guys is not helping him.

I think it's exposing him more.

The move to AEW for him, almost nothing has worked out, and it's reaching new lows every week.

And by the way, it's not over yet.

Because

after he got a free shot at the heel and decided the best way to do it was hit him in the back of the head,

then they both shook hands and

traded a big hug and face patting.

I thought there was going to be some type of kissing involved if they kept going that way.

So what

now the heel

that said, go ahead and finish me, I can't fight on anymore.

And the fucking guy took advantage of it by just

kneeing him in the back of the head from behind

feels that he has to not only shake this guy's hand, but fucking hug him.

And then Malachi Black left, and we got story time with Adam Cole.

And Adam Cole puts Malachi Black over as one of the best he's ever fought.

That led to internet rumors that Malachi Black was done with AEW, but they said, no, it wasn't a farewell.

He was just expressing that, you know, he liked the match.

I was like, what the fuck is this going for?

He's just really appreciative of this much bigger, tougher guy putting him over the way he did.

And not potatoing potatoing him on the spin kick, probably.

Might have had to pay him some money once he got in the back for that one, too.

But Adam says he wants to talk to Max because

I've won two matches and Roddy,

Roddy needs to win two more,

and he'd have three

so that that way we can have a three-way because Tony Khan has said at full gear.

If I win three and Roddy wins three, also we can have a three-way

at full gear so now it's going to be two alleged baby faces versus one heel

and the promoter has agreed with that and here and also

one of the alleged babyfaces roderick strong has been presented as a whiny annoying heel for the past fucking two years plus

And the other one, Adam Cole, we have just discussed the trials and tribulations there.

And the one heel

is still the biggest star in the company in terms of interest and/or

talent.

And so then

Adam Cole's music starts playing, and they do a dissolve.

Okay,

maybe this ridiculous juxtaposition of where Adam Cole is versus where MJF is can be softened with a fucking dissolve, like George Melier's in 1906.

MJF is in an obvious location somewhere besides the arena in a

home or,

I don't know, it could possibly be a funeral home, a mortician's location, whatever.

But he's drinking wine and he's pissed.

And they've still got Adam Cole's music playing up over this video.

So when he switches off the monitor that is,

again, so positioned where you can't see the screen, you just see that he's looking at a monitor.

He turns that off and the music goes away.

And he makes a phone call

and tells whoever on the other end,

I need you to pay someone a visit.

And he hangs up without telling the guy who or where.

And we go to the break and scene

the fuck should they just go ahead and say look this is a trade school for aspiring filmmakers now

I think they should just say this is a disaster and get MJF away from it don't even do the match don't even do the match mjf got hurt he fell off a helicopter

he's going to be out for the next year get him away from all of this you can't keep bringing him back and putting him in there with

guys who just don't have it

And this is not it.

This doesn't work and this doesn't have it.

Well, what do you think the odds are, Brian, that they're going to go through with it anyway?

Well, on my show, I'm very happy that someone remembered there was another spot to do.

I think the odds are that Tony Khan will push forward with his idiotic plan.

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All right, well, we had left off with MJF giving a cryptic phone call to somebody who needs to pay somebody a visit.

And now we go to the back with Rene Moxley Good

and light switch Jay White, and he starts talking.

And normally I am not a proponent of

every time that somebody starts talking, they cut them off within five to ten seconds.

And that's why nobody's over because you never get to hear anybody make a fucking point.

But within 15 seconds,

Adam Page had tackled Jay White and they fought into the arena.

And so we've got more chaos in the fighting in the arena in another, just back-to-back to back.

And then Adam Page is about to hit Jay White's bad ankle with a chair because he's hung in a railing.

And Juice came out and grabbed the chair.

Does Juice wrestle anymore?

He came back from injury, I thought.

Why can we not see him?

If I remember right, he wrestled on TV and then Jay White returned.

And then we haven't seen him wrestle again.

Yeah,

so

Juice grabs the chair, but now you got two alleged babyfaces against one heel.

So Juice laid back, and Jay White

fought back against Adam Page, and they went to the ring, and then

Page bailed.

And now, goddamn it, that's when Jay White grabbed the microphone and cut his promo.

And the fans were up at least a bit at the fighting and everything, but then the breathy and whiny British soliloquy calmed him back down where he was vowing the revenge.

But so there's more fucking chaos.

Yeah, nothing I can add to that.

So then we go to the back with Renee Moxley Good.

I know you're not going to believe this, Brian.

Because we just went, we were just back there, and somebody said something to Renee Moxley Good, and then someone immediately attacked them, right?

And

it can't possibly happen twice in a row unless this Renee Moxley Good is somehow she has been cursed by an old gypsy woman.

But yes, Renee is there, and Chris Standlander walks up and says 10 words

and then walks off camera

exit camera right.

And you hear tires screech and kind of like a railing falling over and a scream, and the camera pans

to the right.

I'm trying to figure out how to describe the ludicrosity and the ridiculousness nature

of what you saw.

Chris Statlander is on the ground, but like 10 feet past this railing that is still moving,

and a car

has just hit this railing.

and knocked it over.

But

when she went off camera to the right, she had to immediately dug down and run over and lay down on the floor.

And then they ran the fucking SUV in and hit the railing.

And it would have knocked her 15 feet.

She'd have been goddamn unconscious.

And instead, she's laying there on her side like she's at a picnic on the blanket next to the box of ham sandwiches.

And then she's looking up shocked.

that

and she's crawling dragging her leg so they're trying to say she got hit by the car.

She'd have still been rolling if it had hit her that hard.

Like the railing was.

Anyway,

goddamn, they're trying the special effects.

They're reading all the amateur cinematography books.

So then the camera pans to the vehicle and inside is Mercedes Monet.

And she's mad because Camille's driving.

And Camille, she said, you can't hit her.

Well, too late now, bitch.

But then Statlander's up after being hit by the fucking car

and drags Mercedes out of the car.

And then Camille pulls Mercedes away.

And

Statlander slams the car door on Camille's arm.

And she goes down selling.

And then she does some kind of slam to Mercedes on the hood of the thing.

And security runs in and seen.

But now, have they broken Camille's arm already?

I was going to say, has there ever been a bodyguard character booked as bad as Camille?

Right out of the gate?

Right?

Sid Vicious, Diesel, Hercules, Hernandez.

So many people have been the bodyguard.

I've never seen it this poorly done.

I think it's almost like she's Kato.

She's bodyguarding Inspector Clusot or something.

What the.

Again, she's down.

She's hurt.

She's incapacitated.

incapacitated she's defeated

she

oh

but uh but now so now they hit somebody with a

car

and we're not able to hit her yet is it supposed to be that they hit her or that they tried to hit her

well she was down and then she starts dragging her leg as she's trying to pull herself up so what i guess so because i mean because then they cut to camille and she's like i don't want to do it not Not like, I can't believe I did it.

But that's why I'm not sure exactly what happened.

I do.

Well, but the other one was saying, well, you're not supposed to hit her.

Oh, that's right.

So they didn't know what they did.

And anyway, we move on.

Here came Christian Cage and Nick Plain and Nick Plain's mom, and now Pip Sabian has joined

the crew there.

And Christian Cage also had extra security out with him,

allegedly to keep Hook away, because, you know, Hook is after him because he thinks they're the ones that bombarded his old man Taz.

But the security was dressed in ninja outfits.

completely all in black with black hoods over their heads and eye slots.

So why would you have to bring out

extra security with their faces hidden unless it was a bunch of the fucking underneath boys that you didn't want people to know who it was?

What would be the other reason for that, Brian?

I don't know.

Well, that's what I'm asking.

Come up with one.

Come on, Sputnik.

You know how stupid people think.

It looked ridiculous.

And

now he's saying that Pip is in the group because he's a fatherless loser looking for guidance too, but he helped save the contract for me with the blah, blah, blah.

And Christian hugs Pip, and Nick is getting jealous.

And meanwhile,

Mama Wayne is still standing there.

She's the biggest one in the group.

And Hook comes out to the entranceway.

And Christian says, you know what?

I admit it.

We were the ones that took your dad out because I want you to be my son.

That's why we got rid of Taz.

And the fans were whating Christian,

one of the best promos in the company, but this Drek is so

drivolous and frivolous.

And they were whating fucking Christian.

And then Christian said,

I just can't figure out why didn't Taz tell you it was me all along.

You didn't have to, it's because he knew of whatever the fuck.

He tore Taz down

and he asked Hook if he wanted to be an announcer like his dad or a champion like Cage.

And

I wish your father was dead.

What the fuck?

Yeah, let me let me just jump in here because

the Christian stuff is so tired.

And again, another thing that started out wasn't too bad and quickly went off the rails with stupidity because it's always about your mom and your dad, and this person's dead, and this.

If he did everything he's doing with a group and made none of it about you're looking for a dad, you need a because that's the stupidest part of the whole thing.

If it was just I'm Christian, I'm now dressing like this, and these guys are following me because I have a track record, it would be a whole lot more interesting than I want to be everyone's father or whatever this is.

This stuff's terrible, yes.

And it's and remember a few years ago,

Christian Cage is the best heel promo in the company.

And now it's like people are like, what, what, what?

Because

why, why, why?

And then Hook charged past the four ninjas

and grabbed Cage and the ninjas attacked him.

And Christian and all of the name

talent bailed and Hook beat up the ninjas.

And it was flat as a plate full of piss

and nobody cared it was cartoony

anyway that was that

okay

here came the resolution

of the mjf phone call

And boy, what a segment this was.

Our friend.

This may have been my favorite segment on the show for the acting here.

Well, yeah, because it starred.

I mean, I can't believe they have not had Alex Marvez on Inside the Actor Studio

to share with us the secrets behind his incredible method acting.

It's like it was really happening.

He's the epitome of sincerity.

So

he's standing there with old Don Fallus is Alex Officer Barbrady Marvez.

And they're talking about the new team of Lance Archer and Brian Cage that's in the family.

And Don is saying, no more 50-50.

We're squashing everybody.

It can't even be straight on it.

And then suddenly this big, huge black guy with long hair that we have never seen before.

Looked impressive.

Looked impressive.

Was not identified.

Was just a guy that came in.

And as soon as he walked into the frame, frame,

Marvez turns around and says,

Who are you?

And then he backed up with a look on his face like they had set off a stink bomb right under his fucking yap.

And he screwed his face up and he's backing up like, oh my God, he smells like he just came from the fucking sausage factory outhouse.

And the guy

hands Don an envelope full of cash and a ring box that we find out contains the dynamite diamond ring.

And then he plays a voicemail from MJF.

Hey, Don, I need you to take care of a baby for me.

Don't scratch the ring or I'll be upset.

Good night.

These are the worst criminals in the world.

They plan everything and they put it on tape and then they play it on national television.

Who are you?

Who are you?

Well, what else would you say when you're doing an allegedly live television program and some guy you've never seen before just wanders into the fucking shot?

Who are you?

So wait a minute.

If Callis...

If Adam called us to win one more match and it's going to be one of Callis's guys, what are the options?

He's going to beat Brian Cage.

He's bigger than Buddy Murphy.

What about Lance Archer?

Lance Archer.

He's taller than Malachi Bryan.

Okay, what about

who else has Don got?

He's still got, because everybody is either in the thing or out of the thing.

He's still got Felcher.

And Takesha.

I don't think they're going to beat them.

No, they can't.

It'll be Brian Cage because he can't beat anybody anyway.

He's all show, no-go.

Boy, that trade that Jake Roberts made is really paying dividends for his career, isn't it?

Well, yeah.

It's launched Jake back into the limelight.

So what did he get again?

He got three luchadors.

Oh, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Will you trade us Lance Archer for who I forget who it was?

It was.

Like Beast Mordos and a couple other guys who we then saw on TV without Jake.

Yes.

And

then we haven't seen them either.

Most impressive guy on this show may have been the guy who, whoever this guy was, who made the surprise appearance on behalf of MJF.

And now we're about to get to the most impressive guy on the show.

And

what we were doing to him.

Maybe it was Marvez.

Maybe I'm wrong.

But

so we went from who are you?

To the next match, which was Jamie Hayter versus Penelope Pitstop.

And now we say, who are they?

They did make Penelope has been out for nearly two years with an injury.

Did she have both legs replaced?

What happened to this woman that she was out for nearly two years?

Well, I don't know, but I think I think I said this before.

I had heard that she was one of the people using the AEW program to go back to school.

So I was under the impression that she had gone back to school as well.

So I don't know.

Well, maybe she went back to school because she was injured.

Had to have a

kidney ectomy or something.

Maybe Miro should pull that.

Tony, send me back to school.

I want to go to university.

I want to go to university.

I want to learn the things.

All right.

Well, anyway,

the finish on this one, just for you completists out there.

Penelope missed a moonsault, and Jamie gave her a pretty stiff knee lift and then a brainbuster,

and then went for a clothesline.

And Penelope, after

missing a moonsault, getting knee lifted and brainbustered, 15 seconds later, not even she

back bended and limboed under a clothesline and then gave Jamie Hayter a cutter and got a two count.

So they have nobody producing their matches

because there's no way they said to anybody, well, we're going to do that.

What?

And then Penelope picked her up.

And Jamie landed on her feet somehow and clotheslined her one, two, three.

So again,

she could have beat her with the fucking brain buster as the same goddamn fucking result.

It eliminated 30 seconds of the match.

Heel misses the moonsault and the babyface hits her goddamn finish.

Instead, they did this back and forth.

She hit her.

She missed her moonsault.

And the babyface hit two finishes.

And then the heel turned around and just came back on her and got a two count and then turned around and got beat.

What the fuck is going on here?

You know, I watched this match.

I actually thought Penelope before it looked pretty good in there.

Jamie Hayter has lost a lot of her charisma or whatever it is.

There's something missing ever since she changed her look from,

I don't know, she's very pale.

And her hair is like very red and there's something

not working right now.

And the outfit, and the outfit matches the hair.

I don't know.

Well, yeah, yeah, she was off for quite a while when she was getting over with the whole other thing she was doing with Brett Baker and them.

And then she got hurt.

And she was, and I don't remember her looking anything like any of this.

And again, I'm watching the match, and it was all right.

Penelope Ford was doing stuff.

And all I'm thinking is she hasn't been on this show in forever.

She's working her match.

She's doing, obviously, she's doing everything she can to have a good match.

And the crowd is dead.

It was awkwardly dead.

It always is during the women's matches.

It was during the Adam Cole match here.

But man, how do you, I can't even imagine what it's like to work in front of a crowd that

you don't know if they're, you don't know if they're breathing.

Like, you don't even know what's happening.

Oh, believe me, it is even worse than you can imagine.

And sometimes, hey, I need to hold a mirror up in front of your mouth to see if you're breathing.

But at least you were at ringside.

At least you're someone who can make some noise.

You got to do anything.

You can make some noise.

There was no noise.

There was nothing.

You almost wanted the timekeeper to slip and accidentally hit the bell just so there'd be some noise, let alone maybe the conclusion of the match.

Well, and in all truthfulness,

it's different when there's like 150 people in a building and they're not making any noise.

Because

I've never experienced when there's 2,000 people in a building and they're all that fucking quiet.

I don't remember that one.

And that's got to be even scarier.

And how many people did they have in

Manchester, New Hampshire?

Did we even hear, were there 2,000 people in that building?

Because that's another part of it.

They see constant chaos.

Multiple furniture breaking, people be run over with fucking cars.

multiple notice qualification matches, everybody running in, interfering, beating down all the time.

And then there's two girls trying to have a regular match.

As of the day of the show, according to Wrestle Ticks, there were 2,416 tickets distributed.

Distributated.

So they probably ended up with it.

And we've said from the statistics that they're trying to compile based on investigations over with Thurston Howell III, etc.,

they usually get 10 or 15% of the crowd or of the tickets distributed don't show up or whatever, however I'm trying to phrase that.

Figure they had 2200 maybe

so

part of it is that they won't

just

they won't stop and now it doesn't matter whether they stop or not now people will just be disappointed because

there

there's no way to

do anything to anybody that hasn't been done well plus again There's a harsh reality a lot of people have to face about the popularity of women's wrestling.

And if you really want to give it a fair shake, it should have its own show and be promoted and book right.

But just shoving women's matches at random into the wrestling shows helps nobody.

Doesn't help the women get more over.

It causes a bathroom break.

We've heard from people at the shows.

Some go quiet.

Some leave.

They go do something else.

And you know, it's causing me to gain weight too because to eat that much, so I have to go to the bathroom for that long.

See, think about that.

I was not thinking about that, but

this is my show.

Well, it is, but it's our main event.

That's what's coming up.

Well, they did a package on our friend Okody

and all of his exploits in Japan and whatever's going to go on there.

Where, again, do the people in Japan,

do they recognize that

he's broken down to this extent?

Or does he actually still

work like he means it in Japan whenever he's there and

takes a bump every now and then.

Or are they seeing the same thing that we're seeing over here?

This broken down, slow,

crippled-up old fella?

I don't know, to be quite honest with you.

I think he definitely has more of an aura over there than he does here, just because at least it's a track record and history.

But it is important to note that New Japan right now is, in my eyes, a sad, sad company.

And it's getting more and more absurd.

Yeah.

Well, the main event, speaking of obsidity,

was old Kyle Felcher and our friend Take-A-Shit

going up against Ricochet and a mystery partner.

And

the heels entered, and then here came Ricochet, and he had a microphone with him.

I'm like, oh, no.

And by the way, Ricochet was introduced at 208 pounds.

So remember when I said

they could give these guys 10 or 15 pounds when some of the guys they introduced at 188, they could easily do, you know, 199, whatever, right?

But now they're trying, but

that's a big exaggeration, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Again, compared to other people on the show like Orange Cassidy or Adam Cole, I guess Ricochet may be a little bit taller and he's lean, and he's in shape.

No, I think Pockets is taller than

Rockefeller Ricochet.

I mean, nevertheless, when you saw him standing next to MVP and the Hurts Syndicate earlier in the show, it stood out just how compared to them, he's a little guy, but in the world of AEW against a Will Osprey, he doesn't look like it.

It looked like they were taking a FanFest picture.

Who's this funny-looking guy in the suit?

Yeah, well, at least he dressed up to come see us.

But anyway, Ricochet cuts the promo, said he's done research, and as of October the 4th, a guy's contract with Don Fallus's family has expired.

And this guy is mad and pissed off because he feels forgotten about.

And he introduced Powerhouse Hobbes.

This is how they brought Hobbs back.

They brought him back with the hot angle that he's so worthless, his own own manager forgot about him.

No,

no thought, no plot, no plan, no carefully laid out.

We're going to bring this guy back

as a fucking monster single with a grudge against the world or something for his injury.

No footage of how he was injured before or his rehabilitation he's been undergoing, no

impact that he can make when he suddenly comes out and turns the tide in a major way and fucking

they just bring him out.

And by the way, wasn't he still a heel?

He was still, I know the

Phallas family, they're babyface their heels depending on what match they make week to week, but Hobbs was a heel.

He goes away.

Nobody's even mentioned his name in fucking months.

And then he just comes back and he's a babyface because his manager forgot about him, because he was that important.

Was this the way to bring back a guy that looks this good

and has this much potential?

No, I don't think so.

I've always been a fan of Hobbes too, and I was happy to see him back, but there had to be a better way to do it.

And maybe that's a card that MVP needs to hand out.

You know?

Because then, well, the whole rest of the fucking roster could just say, fuck it, we're going home with those three guys.

And the manager can whip half of the fucking roster, even in a working way, much less as a shoot.

Imagine how much he would learn in a car with them going town to town or to the Britain once a week.

What?

I was imagining going down to town,

going 10 minutes from the hotel to the arena.

But anyway, so they have a tag team match, and it starts out with a big four-way all over the floor.

And then they did a spot where Ricochet stood up on Hobbes' shoulders and backflipped off of him, over the top rope, onto the both heels on the floor.

And Hobbs looked tremendous.

And

actually,

again,

all of these guys, Felcher's trying, and he's got the size and he's athletic.

And our boy take,

we've said before, they could have done something many of times.

Do you think Fletcher looked a little bit too much like Randy Orton in there

at this point?

Anybody on that roster that can look like Randy Orton needs to.

It seemed like they changed his look to look like Randy Orton of like 2005.

It was weird.

I saw a couple of people mention.

I was like, good, it's not just me.

That's an interesting way to come up with a new look for him.

Someone else's look.

But that's the thing is that every, and Ricochet, I know he appeals and his style appeals to the fans of the people who like this kind of thing.

But again,

you've got Hobbes as a monster, and he's in this 20-minute long match where they're just taking all kinds of false finishes.

And

you, again,

you could push almost any one of these guys individually, but

it's just, this was names written down to have a match, and they had a match with every kind of fucking.

I wrote at one point, what is going on?

Ricochet hit a shooting star press, got a two-count,

and got up and hit a clothesline that was about a tenth as impressive as the shooting star press, and then one, two, three.

Ricochet beat, can't remember which one.

Hobbes didn't even get the win.

And then

Kyle takes a chair to Hobbes,

and

then he's going to hit Ricochet because he's behind Ricochet.

But Ricochet turned around and saw him coming at him with the chair and turned back around

and fed him his back so he could hit him in the back with a chair.

And Nigel even had to try to cover it.

But, well, he didn't want to get hit in the face.

So fuck.

And then they play music.

and Mark Davis comes out wearing

you thought he looked like a bum last week.

God damn, did he steal this shit out of a Salvation Army drop box?

And was it a bandage he was wearing, or was he wearing dress shoes with only one sock?

And the other ankle was bare, and then it looked like he had some kind of sweat clothes on.

And he's shoving Felcher, and Archer and Cage come in and they beat up Davis.

But Adam Cole comes out with three seconds of music

and tackles take a shit and they fight off.

In like 20 seconds, they're gone.

So the heels are holding Davis, who nobody gives a shit about

because they didn't remember who he was last week.

And

they're going to stab him with a screwdriver

when Osprey comes in and tackles him and

barely really does anything before Hobbs is up and the heels bail and the end it was over.

So Osprey was there the whole night and one of the top baby faces that you're pushing as a company who hasn't been on the show in weeks

wasn't on the show all night and then he runs out there dressed as casual as he ever has

and

It obviously took a little bit to piss him off.

You know, he's got an even temper because he waded through every kind of attempted murder in the world before finally, that's all I can stand.

Okay, when they go to stab somebody with a screwdriver, I got to come out here.

It just from top to bottom of this show, there's no way to even differentiate it.

It's just different people doing the same shit over and over and over.

There's lots of heel gangs.

Well, you got

Johnny and the fat boys.

What was Johnny and the Good Boys?

Johnny and the Good boys.

It works.

It works.

From up there in Newport.

Well, anyway, that was the main event.

And that was AEW Dynamite, another banner episode.

I will say, the product's awful, but it is getting funnier and funnier every week.

You have to find something to laugh at at this point to keep from crying.

Do you think it's an intentional thing with Marvez?

Like, it's an intentional, I'll I'll be a really bad actor.

Because when you think of the amount of things, like the Will Osprey segment in the garage, in the hotel,

we've seen enough examples that's so awful

you would almost have to make an effort.

No,

I think he's genuinely

trying to do what he thinks is acting.

And

some people, you just can't be on television.

And

there's nothing you can really do about it.

Well, let's go from the modern version of you can't do that on television to the ratings, Jim.

Of course, Antony.

Hold on, I'm getting my pen here.

And by the way, we're going to compare these things with the NXT program, correct?

We will.

And

we're not going to go quarter by quarter through the NXT show.

Well, no, I don't mean with, you know, goddamn granular detail.

I mean, basically, this is a head-to-head thing.

So we're going to find out who won.

NXT

on November 6th, Wednesday night, not the normal Tuesday night, 8 to 10 p.m.

on the CW,

619,000 viewers.

Okay,

and that's 5% up from last week, according to WrestleNomics.

So they were up when they switched nights.

That almost never happened.

I can't remember when that's happened to anybody for any show.

But

refresh me or help me out.

When they were against on Wednesday nights at the start, when they were against AEW several years ago,

NXT did not beat AEW.

AEW won the so-called ratings war on Wednesday nights, but NXT was still doing

600-something thousand people then, right?

I believe so.

I don't have any of that information in front of me, but that sounds right.

But that's what they they lost with.

They were

chased off Wednesday nights with.

Yeah, well, that was Uncle Dave's characterization.

And so now

four or five years later, or whatever it is, they do 600,000 on a Wednesday night.

It's about the same thing they were doing.

What did AEW do?

AEW Dynamite on November 6th, 8 to 10:09 p.m.

on TBS, on average,

523,000 viewers.

Oh

not even close.

And this is AEW's night.

Well, it wasn't their night, but it was their normal night.

And NXT switches nights,

increases the audience from their normal night last week, and beats AEW by 96,000 people.

When they did it a couple of weeks ago, and they were on Tuesday night.

AEW switched nights, AEW, NXT.

What were those numbers?

Because I can't remember.

We go through so many numbers.

Well, Jim, it was October 8th, Title Tuesday, you may remember, where it was NXT versus AEW.

NXT on that night, their normal night on CW, and this, I think, was the second week they were on CW,

874,000 viewers on average.

AEW, which aired from 9 to 11:10, so was head-to-head with the second hour,

329,000 viewers.

Which was the record low.

So basically, AEW went against NXT on NXT's night and got their ass handed to them.

And then AEW went up against NXT on AEW's night and got their ass handed to them.

Hmm.

What were the quarter hours on the AEW 523,000 fiasco?

Well, let's go to the quarter-hour breakdown.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one, eight to eight fifteen p.m.

The Hurt Syndicate Live promo, a recap of the events with Moxley and Orange Cassidy, and the start of Darby and Orange versus Claudio and Pac,

666,000 viewers.

Well,

the mark of the beast.

In this case, the beast is a little puppy named Pockets.

Well, The Beast, we'll find out if he's still there in quarter two, 8.15, 8.30 p.m.

The continuation of the aforementioned match.

The post-match with the other Death Riders and the conglomeration and an ad break.

575,000 viewers.

Ouch.

So

66 and 20, 80, 91,000 people already said, well, hell with this.

Quarter 3, 8.30 to 8.45 p.m.

The Ricochet confrontation with the Hurt Syndicate in the back, and the learning tree versus the conglomeration.

No honor, or whatever it was here with picture and picture,

516,000 viewers.

Oh, good lord.

So they've lost 150,000 in the first 45 minutes.

Well, we go from 516, aka Nassau County,

to quarter four, 8.45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of the tree versus conglomeration match, an ad break.

Jon Moxley backstage quoting the birds.

And then the start of Malachi Black versus Adam Cole,

535,000 viewers.

Oh, so

some more people wandered back in.

They got 19,000 back.

So oh boy.

The continuation of Malachi Black versus Adam Cole in quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour, nine to nine fifty p.m.

with picture-in-picture ads and the post-match.

Congratulations or a handshake or whatever it was.

511,000 viewers.

That thing did go on for a while.

And as you mentioned, the atmosphere was very funereal.

I think this may be an issue with Adam Cole going forward, especially again to give him long competitive matches.

You're going to have a problem.

Quarter six, 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

The MJF

Mansion video, whatever that was.

Jay Whiten, Hangman Adam Page's live angle, an ad break, Chris Statlander run over by Mercedes and Camille,

followed by the Christian Cage hook live promo or the start of it.

469,000 viewers.

oh good lord okay that is

197,000 people down from the start of the show and they're under 500,000 now

well we go now to quarter seven 930 to 945 p.m the patriarchy hook live angle continues followed by don callis and alex marvez being confronted by

Someone.

Someone.

And Penelope Ford versus Jamie Hayter and an ad break.

498,000 viewers.

Jesus Christ.

So

they at least came back.

Who was in the 469 again?

That was the MJF thing, which was rather brief.

The Adam Page Jay White thing, which led to Jay White on the mic.

An ad break.

Mercedes and Camille running over stout holder.

And then the start of Christian and Hook's thing.

So they said, okay, Mercedes is come and gone.

It might be safe.

And also, we got rid of Jay White, so 29,000 people came back.

Well, we go now to quarter eight, and I remind you we have an overrun.

9:45 to 10 p.m.

The Continental Classic video with Okada

and the start of Powerhouse Hobbs and Ricochet versus Konosuke Takeshi and Kyle Fletcher with picture-o-picture ads.

455,000 viewers.

Oh, no.

Nine-minute overrun, continuation of the match, and the post-match with Adam Cole, Mark Davis, Lance Archer, Brian Cage, and Will Osprey.

460,000 viewers and under 200,000 at 198,000 in the key demo.

Okay, Brian,

get your calculator fired up here.

Because from

we'll go ahead and use the overrun.

It's 5,000 people difference.

It makes it a rounder number.

They lost 206,000 viewers out of 666,000.

That is,

God damn, doesn't that has to be 30-something percent, ain't it?

Or, well, I can't do the math.

Well, and by the way, if you take out the overrun and you take out the opening segment, the true number, as we always call it when we've done it here, 508,000 viewers.

And we've said it before.

If they continue on the path they're on, they're going to end up with Collision's audience, and they're there.

They are now there.

Now, again, this was head-to-head with NXT, but it was on their night.

And we'll talk about the head-to-head.

I'll pull those up.

NXT wasn't as hurt as AEW was.

What does that tell you?

And by the way, AEW lost to NXT in the key demo as well.

They both started at the same: 666 AEW, 665 NXT.

Wait a minute.

NXT started at 665,000, 1,000 less than AEW, and they still did almost 100,000 better on average.

Quarter two with the Pockets and Derby match against Moxley's boys.

Up against that was Lola Weiss.

Ethan Page and Rich Holland had a promo.

Kalani Jordan and Rob Van Damm's angle and the family angle.

I don't even know what that is.

That did 674 versus 575 on AEW.

Jesus, they gained audience.

Quarter three, which was Wesley versus Javon Evans.

Rob Van Damme again was an ECW theme.

And Ava and Robert Stone and Eddie Thorpe, whoever that is, they were all playing backstage.

653

against 516 for the learning tree.

But things tighten up here.

Quarter four, 845.

Continuation, whatever that backstage shit was.

And then Julia.

Oh, no, Rhino.

Rhino was there.

And then Julia, Stephanie Vacora, Kalani Jordan, Zarya, and Jordan Grace's angle.

That only did 596

versus 535.

9 o'clock hour, 588 for Bubba Ray Dudley, doing something with Ethan Page and Trick Williams.

9.15,

563 against AEW at 469.

For more of of the Dudley stuff.

Tony DiAngelo versus Nunzio from ECW.

I don't think it's a big, with all due respect, it's not like a bunch of people like, oh my God, Nunzio's back.

We got to tune in.

So that's what beat AEW there.

Quarter seven, 590 versus 498.

So now they're close to 100,000 up for Nikita Lyons promo.

And then a Nathan Frazier Axiom angle.

Oh, good lord.

And then finally, quarter eight, there's no overrun.

625

versus 455

for an eight-woman tag match.

Julia Jordan Grace and Kalani.

Julia Jordan Grace, Kalani Jordan, and Stephanie Vacour versus Zarya.

Oh, and Zarya versus Cora Jade, Roxanne Perez, and Fatal Influence.

That did better than Hobbs and Ricochet versus Takesha and Fletcher

by almost 200,000.

I shouldn't say that.

Not even a little under that, but

what are they doing?

Oh, God.

Well,

Mighty Mouse cartoon reruns are coming up next week.

I wonder how they'll fare against them.

Well, those were the ratings, and this was the drive-through, and we're going to wrap things up pretty quickly.

Let me.

You're feeling mighty puny, aren't you, son?

I don't know if I would use any might

in any

of this.

All right, we'll be back on the experience.

I'm sure it'll be a barrel of laughs

wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

And we'll be back next year on the drive-thru.

Next here.

We'll be back next week here on the drive-thru.

Next year, we'll week back.

That's right.

With more of your questions next week and the usual shenanigans, follow us on Twitter, the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel, patreon.com/slash cornet for the archives, cornets collectibles at jimcornet.com for all sorts of stuff and the figure, the law officer, Steven P.

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I've gotten through it all.

For Jim Cornette, I'm the great Brian last.

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