Episode 409

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Hello again, friends.

And you are our friends, Jesus Christ.

We are here again.

Jim Cornette's drive-through from one JC to another.

I'm your host, the great Brian Last.

We got big wrestling talk with a big wrestling personality, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr.

Jim Cornet.

What did you slap or hit or kick right as you ended that?

Oh, that was my dick.

No, that was.

I hit the desk.

I hit the desk.

What do you mean?

Yeah.

Well, you didn't hit any of the notes.

I'll tell you that.

That's what I started laughing about.

Is there's

norm normally when you do that,

that thing that you do there with your organ,

there's a couple of kind of bright peppy spots

that kind of gets me, that I kind of look forward to most weeks, if anything, of that performance.

And somehow, from the start, you managed to just it's like you purposely left all of those out and just played all the notes that I don't like and none of the little notes that I did like.

Which little notes in the theme did a great Brian like that?

There was just there was a variation today.

It was more somber and fucking funereal.

If

it was the funeral for an organ grinder's monkey, it would have been a funeral dirge rather than the up-tempo peppy light.

We're in an up-tempo mood.

This is going to be an up-tempo show.

That was the up-tempo theme here for this extravaganza.

Well, it sounded more like it was daggum

as sad singing and slow walking, as the dream machine would say.

Be ready to be laid out and have words spoken over you.

A lot of people are going to be talking about the dream machine in the months ahead.

He's going to make a resurgence.

That's right.

Based on, we're not here to just plug my book right off the top of the bat, the big announcement, the incredible revelation that in the last six months to keep myself from going bat shit nuts over everything else going on in the wide, wide world these days.

I have sat down and created a masterpiece, a piece of merchandise that's going to go on sale at jimcornet.com

on October 11th, since we're just blurting out all the details here, Saturday, October 11th at noon Eastern, my new book, Heroes and Friends,

with extensive essays, remembrances is what they are,

on a variety of great wrestling superstars that I have interacted with.

And Brian, you have seen

an advanced copy of this adventure, and it ain't too bad.

For a guy in his spare time, from what I'm being told by you, for government work, it ain't too bad for government work, as they used to say.

I could say I think people are going to really like it.

I think people are going to love the articles, but the thing that has blown me away, and I think people are going to see this, is the photography.

And specifically, there are some of your photos that I'm familiar with that have been around.

Other people have seen them too.

They may not realize they're your photos,

but they've been around and you have reproduced them in the highest possible quality.

It blew me away.

And I think

people are going to love it.

I don't want to give the people the idea that just every single picture in the thing is mine.

We have some historic and some classic stuff too, and

stuff that people haven't seen in 50, 60 years, even before I was born, and rare things like that.

But some of the photography,

specifically the chapters on Lance Russell and the chapters on Troy Graham, the dream machine, who was a...

as I sat down and wrote and wrote it and laid it all out, was a pivotal person in my career early before I had a career.

But nevertheless, back to Lance.

You and I were looking at it, and we've been talking about this.

And this is something that we'll see in a variety of projects I hope to be doing coming up.

But specifically, the first look is in this book.

Hotchkiss Featherbottom has been able to take my negatives.

And we talked about this the other day on the experience.

The state of the art of photo printing

in the last 45 years has changed a little bit.

And I was gobsmacked.

I actually have one of the famous pictures of Lance Russell and Dave Brown at the desk in Memphis in the TV studio was one that I took.

And I have the print,

three and a half by five print from 45 years ago.

And I have an 8x10 enlargement from 45 years ago.

And I have the original negative.

And what they can do now with the negative, Hotchkiss was able to reproduce this in such high res and then turn around and put it into this printing program.

It looks like a completely different photo.

And another one of Lance that we were looking at just earlier before we went on the air,

you can see one of the gold molars in his mouth.

And I was using,

for anybody that's a...

a 60-year-old photographer, 400-speed Kodak color film with a Canon AE1 and 125-millimeter telephoto lens in a TV studio,

which sounds great, but when you got the print back in those days,

it wasn't capable of reproducing what the negative had recorded.

And now they are.

And

you can eliminate dust and smudges and whatever.

It's insane.

So,

anyway, since we got that plug in, Bobby Heenan, the chic, Bruno San Martino, Ray the Crippler, Stevens, the Dream Machine, Paul Bear, Vader, Sputnik Monroe, Lance Russell, Ron Wright, Boo Bradley, aka Balls Mahoney, and my favorite chapter, The Green Shadow Pat Malone.

We're going to find out a lot of stories have been on here.

Some haven't.

Some are the...

product of the research I've been doing over the last year and even the stuff I found out a bit in Notre Dame.

And

as all the Sputnik stories are there, but you and I were talking about, we believe we have

a photo that I didn't know it.

I knew the story of his interaction with Sam Phillips' sons, Knox and Jerry.

Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records, who discovered Elvis.

Knox and Jerry and their friend, who became the Memphis radio legend, Johnny Dark, were

the leaders of Sputnik's fan club in Memphis in the early 60s.

And I tell the story of how Sputnik almost got Jerry Phillips stabbed

when he was 12 years old by a mad fan in Arkansas.

But we have a picture reproduced in that chapter of two of the kids that I just thought was his random fan club members.

And you believe it may be

at least one of Sam Phillips' kids.

Yeah, I think it's Sam Phillips' son with the other co-president of the fan fan club we'll find out during the break i love we'll somehow get confirmation on this age yeah we'll story

we'll have uh

we'll have uh freddy de cordova the producer get back to this in the break over here and uh

but anyway i so that is again Only 24.95 and autographed folks, 100 pages on all of these people and my interactions with them and all kinds of shit you ain't never seen before for the wrestling fan for Christmas.

But

in a related matter, as I was researching some of these people and their schedules and the things that happen,

and Brian, we've talked about how the Nashville wrestling promotion of Nick Gulis and Roy Welch is based in Nashville, Tennessee.

It acquired the Memphis end of the territory in 1957.

Memphis had been its own

separate city affiliated with the St.

Louis and the Tulsa offices had its own promoter, and they hadn't used any of the other Tennessee talent.

So Gulis and Welch had set up Nashville as a weekly town.

The Hippodrome, they seat 3,000 people a week, most time did.

And every week was Chattanooga, 140 miles to the southeast.

In the memorial auditorium, seated 5,000 or 6,000 and often did.

And Birmingham, Alabama was 180 miles south of Nashville.

It still is, as a matter of fact.

They hadn't moved it.

And that was every week as well.

That was their main territory.

And the spot shows in the small towns around Huntsville, Florence, Alabama, and different places in Tennessee.

When they got Memphis in effect, instead of just getting one town,

They kind of added a different territory to their auspices because

Roy Welch living in Dyersburg, which is just about 75 miles north of Memphis, right?

He had sat and waited.

He lived there and they had towns, small towns all around the area with their wrestlers.

He just sat and waited to get Memphis and they finally did.

But they kept it separate.

And Roy, as we've always told the story, Roy oversaw Memphis, whereas Nick was fond of Birmingham, his hometown, and they were both on Monday nights.

So that was how that Memphis was always kind of the

outsider town that got all the attention

still in the territory because they had the big building.

The Ellis Auditorium

at that time was bigger than could potentially be bigger when they, you know, used all the seats.

Then the other buildings in the territory, they had a big TV and a lot of towns around it, right?

So

would you like to know, Brian, or would you like to take a guess?

If you lived in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1961 and you were a fan of professional wrestling, do you know how many times per week,

if you were willing to drive 90 miles,

that you could see

live pro wrestling matches?

Well, again, I'm not too big on knowing how much mileage there is between different towns, but I'm going to guess

based on the fact that you're asking this question.

Yes.

I'm going to say six or seven days.

Oh, goddammit.

You son of a bitch.

Well, would you like me to actually more than that?

But

you couldn't be in two places at the same time.

But would you like me to elaborate on this?

Because this is, again,

in this day and age, when,

you know, live events,

I mean, again, the WWE draws major crowds, but they only come to a city of 3 million people like Chicago twice a year.

Did I just undercut Chicago?

Maybe it's 10 million now.

I don't know, but you know what I'm saying.

These were the old days when you were going to small markets and

doing it the old-fashioned way.

In 1961, or at least part of it for the time period covered in this program, they were inviting you to come to all of the matches that ran and were promoted off Memphis TV.

And on Monday nights, obviously, that was wrestling in Memphis, right, back then at the Ellis Auditorium.

But they also had a deal.

Herb Welch

ran Blytheville, Arkansas.

as a weekly town.

I've seen ads that I've uncovered up to the early 70s.

And Herb was the big name of the Welch brothers in the ring.

Roy was the promoter, but Herb had a long career as a top babyface, but he didn't quit wrestling until he was like 60-something.

And he was the salty old bastard that trained guys like David Schultz

out in West Tennessee, stretching him in his barn, right?

So he ran Blytheville, Arkansas, I think, at the Legion Arena.

And even in the 70s, they were charging like $2 ringside and $1 general admission or some shit for two single matches and a tag.

So they would run Blyville, Arkansas on Monday nights also at that time.

And that's, again, one of the old spot shows for Memphis TV, 70 or 80 miles across.

The city of Memphis sits on the Mississippi state line.

So you can drive south 10 miles from downtown Memphis and be in a state of Mississippi.

But if you cross the river, cross the Mississippi Bridge, or cross the Mississippi River, cross the bridge, you're into Arkansas,

and you're not far from the boot heel of Missouri.

So

that's why that Memphis TV hit portions of three or four different states.

On Tuesday night, they'd do a regular weekly show in Kennett, Missouri.

Again, as an old

Memphis town in the 80s that Buddy Wayne would run, but this was weekly on Tuesday nights.

and wednesday in those days they were both running jackson tennessee

which is 80 miles from memphis up the road uh toward nashville and clarksdale mississippi

which is about 70 or 80 miles kind of a southerly southerly direction from there

Thursday nights was Tupelo, Mississippi.

I don't know where they were running.

I can't believe the building we were running in the 80s could have been standing that long.

And then on Saturdays, they did their TV at WHBQ Channel 13,

even though it aired late afternoon in those days.

They would tape it in the studio at noon

so that they could then go to Jonesboro, Arkansas, which is 75 miles away, of course,

known now worldwide as the birthplace of Randy Hales,

on Saturday nights and do a weekly show there.

It was

literally Randy Hales hails from here.

Randy Hales hails from here.

They had their own territory off one TV and they could keep the guys busy that were living in Memphis

every, you know, every week, you know, five or six times.

And plus, bring in, obviously, they were still bringing in some of the stars from the other end of the territory, but Sputnik Monroe was a main event guy.

And I don't know that he ever worked in Nashville on that run.

200 miles up the road.

Hey, a couple questions for you.

One,

when would you say Memphis became the priority Monday night town?

Because obviously Nick Gould has had a different town that was a priority.

At what point did it become the priority?

Well, it depends on

that until Jerry Jarrett broke away.

No, no,

I think it was always Roy Welch's priority.

I think it was it because they gave it a ton of opportunities and he switched things up quite a bit.

They paid, from what I understand now, 30 grand for it, allegedly.

And that was in

Jesus Christ, what was that?

That would be $300 and something thousand dollars.

To Les Wolf?

To Les Wolf.

But then they still used him as a front man a time or two.

And they tried different things.

You go back and look.

They had a Gorgeous George came in in 1958.

And the newspaper publicity also mentioned that night lower prices for the summer.

They lowered prices on Gorgeous George.

They,

Memphis Wrestling, and this is talked about in the article in more detail, but Buddy Wayne, the Memphis guy years ago, was there.

He had just had his first professional match like two months before the Sputnik Monroe-Billy Wicks match at Russwood Park that popped the whole thing.

And he said wrestling in Memphis was dead and Sputnik Monroe saved it.

And you can see where

Some of the shows, they were skipping weeks.

Some shows didn't draw a thousand people in Memphis at the Ellis Auditorium.

And then Roy Welch takes over.

Spring of 57, by the end of 58,

I mean, there's nothing in the papers like, oh, anything's happening or interesting.

It's just a drab

results.

And then

he brings Buddy Fuller in from Mobile, where his son, Buddy Fuller, had opened.

That's what the Welches did.

They opened territories.

He'd opened up Mobile and he got two guys over named Sputnik Monroe and Billy Wicks.

So he brings Buddy up to be the front promoter and the booker.

And then Billy Wicks and Sputnik Monroe show up.

And of course, by then,

I don't know if it was a year later, Buddy Fuller was out because he got in trouble with the commission.

Like he, it seemed like he had a problem with the Tennessee State Athletic Commission over a period of years with paying the commission taxes.

They were not fans of his.

But

by then, they had things going, and I think Roy just took over fully.

But the point is, Sputnik Monroe appears, and in three months, the newspaper said, We have the largest crowd in wrestling crowd in Memphis in five years.

And then the largest wrestling crowd in Memphis in almost 10 years.

And then By the summertime, they're doing regular shows in a ballpark and drawing.

Well, Sputnik drew the two biggest crowds in Memphis wrestling history in the same month.

So

whatever he was doing, it worked.

And when did TV start?

TV, they had gotten TV not long after Roy bought the town in 57.

They got it first on Channel 5.

And historically, a guy named Jack Eaton was the announcer.

He was a Memphis sports legend still with Channel 5 in the 80s.

But then it didn't last whatever.

We don't know.

More to come.

But they ended up on Channel 5

or on Channel 13, I'm sorry.

And that's where Lance Russell worked and was serendipitously

the only guy that had ever done wrestling because he had done a little studio show they had done in Jackson, Tennessee, a few years earlier.

Yeah, and I have a lot of the programs covering that period of time where they got the TV, when they moved TV, I guess I should say.

And I'm a big collector of those programs.

And I have almost a complete year of 59.

If anyone has any, let me know.

I need to complete my set.

But if I think of the end of the 50s, early 60s,

Memphis, I've seen some other programs from various towns throughout the Gulis-Welch area.

But when you bring up all the different shows within 90 miles of Memphis, if you had to guess, how many of those shows were three matches?

Most of them.

Most of them, that's what they had in those days.

And

oftentimes,

the first match would be one fall, and then the last two would be two out of three.

Sometimes all three would be two out of three falls.

You'd still get your two-hour show,

but it, you know, the expenses were low, as they say.

And then,

you know, actually, I think, do you remember?

You've seen the lineup there, but at Russwood Park, if there was four matches on the card,

that would have been big and

they drew and an intermission and they drew, you know, almost 14,000 people and they tore the fucking fence down and,

you know, got in after they locked the gates.

So that's the thing is these guys

had to get over in rudimentary, you conditions, but Sputnik made a difference.

He instantly, and in the book, there's newspaper articles that tell the story of his encounter with the cowboy and the arrests and the civil rights situation.

But he was all over the place for almost two years, but especially that

summer of 59.

And then,

you know, it ends up, honestly, that the city, but they still, they just had a Sputnik Monroe day.

And they had another one.

The first one was 20 years ago, but that was still the one place where he could go, where they still remembered, where he was still the diamond ring and Cadillac man, right?

Because everywhere else, I mean, you know,

he had been a security guard in the 80s.

So they had long forgotten.

But Memphis, he could always come and pull that

same suit out of the closet and, you know, and be thought of the way he used to be.

All off of that one summer.

It's, it's incredible.

You know, it's interesting, too.

There's never another summer.

You know, for Sputnik,

you know, I guess you could say, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, he really isn't a political player in that office going forward.

Him and Fargo apparently didn't get along.

There's not a lot of big runs of Sputnik after that.

And Billy Wicks, you know, he eventually goes, whatever it is, the Sheriff's Department, or you would know better.

Well,

that was the thing is that the other lost part of the equation was Billy Wicks.

But he, after, I think, another year or two, went full-time with the Sheriff's Department and still wrestled on those towns on the weekends, closer to Arkansas and Mississippi, just to stay, you know, in the business.

And he was a shooter, competitive wrestler, and trained guys until his,

what was he, 80 or whatever.

Had you met him before you brought him to the Smoky Mountain Night of Legends?

No.

No, because see, he had been out at that, not only at that end before that end became Jarrett's end, but he'd been out of the business for so long.

But the old timers, you know, still remembered him, but that's why nobody does because he went, instead of sticking with the business and being integrated into the full Tennessee territory then in the 60s and getting on more TVs and wrestling more places, he just

worked for the Sheriff's Department and did those other things and

wrestled on weekends for a while through, I guess, the end of the 60s.

Well, we could do this all day.

This is a fun thing.

We could do this all day.

It's a lot of fun.

Once again, when's the new book go on sale?

Saturday, October 11th at noon Eastern at jimcornet.com along with action figure discounts and more excitement, a couple of more new things going on and

various other holiday cheer.

We start our holiday sale in October so we got time to keep up with it, folks.

So, and I hope you like this book because I'm actually, we've talked about the pictures and shit, but I wrote it too.

And goddamn, that took longer even.

I'm proud of that too.

Once again, jimcornet.com.

Learn more about Sputnik Monroe and so many other important figures.

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And Jim, speaking of important figures, I guess in the modern day sense, why don't we talk about what you've watched over the last few days?

A lot of buzz around certain events on SmackDown and Raw.

Why don't we start with SmackDown?

Well, why don't we just lay the smack right down there on SmackDown?

This is amazing.

When you when you look at what they're fucking doing,

and again,

you know, some people are saying before I get started, people are like, oh, Cornet's blowing the WWE.

Cornet's getting paid.

But, you know, I used to get a royalty check back when they had those things, but then they started the network and fucked everybody out of their royalty.

But I don't get any money from the WWE.

And I'm not, they actually think that I'm blowing the WWE.

When I say, God damn, this show is so fucking boring, except at least at the top they do some good shit,

rather than this fucking incendiary car wreck on the interstate known as AEW over here.

They say, Oh, he's not being fair.

Someone accused me yesterday of being on AEW's payroll.

What gave that away?

When I said Tony Khan can't do this, he's not the one.

Only if, in the words of Big Bad John, they just love being whooped.

Then they might pay you.

But no, what they have done here,

Chicago for SmackDown was sold out with 16,000 plus people.

They just came back from Paris,

Gay Paris, where they did 30,000 for a pay-per-view and 23,000 for Raw.

That is 70,000 tickets in three shows in six days

for no more than what they're doing.

See, that's how

I don't know if the people

get

the fact that it's not really a compliment when it's more astonishment when they're doing these giant numbers and they've got like two and a half things now that are really funny.

They got John Cena back,

back in the saddle again.

Jesus Christ, can you, they botched six, seven months of that fucking thing just because The Rock couldn't keep his yap shut.

But they got Cena back there going bat shit.

And now they've got

the goddamn modern-day equivalent of Jimmy Garvin and Precious and Sunshine and

Insert Baby Face here, Chris Adams.

This is tremendous.

And SmackDown featured both of these things and was the best SmackDown

that they've done in ages because they only had

an hour in between the Cena stuff

and the

punk and AJ and Seth and Becky stuff

to, you know, to borrow with.

Normally, you got to wait an hour and a half at least in the middle.

Am I exaggerating, Brian?

Oh, no.

At least an hour and a half.

At least.

But no.

And

after seeing

what they did with John Cena's interview, which opened the show,

What the?

Can somebody go find The Rock and ball gag him, bind his hands behind his back, tied along with his brain up his ass?

Why did they?

He gave the most incredible babyface promo

with the huge ovation

with thank you, Cena chance, where he couldn't talk for minutes because it's his last time on SmackDown.

And three months ago, they had him coming out and telling all the people to go piss up a rope.

What the fuck was the matter with them now that I see this?

Remember when everyone jumped on me and said, This will all make sense?

You're wrong.

This is all good.

You see, it got a big pop.

Everyone's talking about it.

It was not well thought out, not well done.

Forget about Travis Scott, who was kind of in the middle of the whole thing.

That didn't work out either.

The Rock now looks like he's half the size that he was six months ago.

So that ain't.

Oh, he's half the man he used to be.

And apparently he's trying as hard as he can to be considered serious as an actor right now.

It may be hard because everything you see him in, it's Dwayne Johnson trying to act.

But he ain't going to be back anytime soon.

No, at the same point, though, now,

since he's lost 50 pounds, we are sure of one thing, he ain't going to wrestle.

and you know and if now you can make up a baby face if a bunch of heels beat up on the sickly looking rock

doesn't have to you know what if but no but if i was the rock and i could have gotten the shape that i was in as he's in or you know what i'm saying over the last year or two i'd have had a goddamn match with roman reigns just to do a family member a fucking favor instead of trying to be the final boss and pissing everybody's post-hosties

but anyway back to Cena in the ring here.

Even said, I've dodged roadblocks and pivots.

But you guys,

you know, I'm so great.

He's grateful to Chicago for always being critical of him, but making him work for it.

And he left it all out there on his final tour.

And he put them over strong and talked about how they

They bring they their power.

They got the power.

They bring people back.

And the people start chanting, A.J.

Lee, which was a brilliant little.

I'm just saying, this was so well put together.

It's his last time in Chicago, last time on SmackDown.

It was 23 years ago in that very building.

And I, of course, did not remember that, where he came down and slapped Kurt Angle.

And he talked about the big matches in Chicago, but he got pops for each one of them.

He wasn't

somebody standing there saying, and when I faced Oblivion J.

Jones in Coroquin Hall in fucking Tokyo, and people were ready, reedy.

And he said Chicago was the greatest WWE crowd, and the people were left chanting, thank you, Cena,

one of the great babyface promos.

of anybody's, you know, history.

And he said, thank you for the beautiful ride.

And the music plays.

It is Sami Zayn's music.

It's that commie dirt bag Sami Zayn.

Who could ever like him?

Seemingly no one.

The fans were ready to boo him right away, didn't it?

Well, because no, here's the thing: if you had played

goddamn Tinkerbell's music and had the fairy come out and sprinkle fairy dust,

they would have booed because they thought it was a turn coming

and this and it was great because you knew the guys in the ring knew that was going to happen and they didn't with them they got their in and had a ball doing it because sami zane can talk his ass off

which again so

i had him when he was a mute again what's what is my timing what is life

But that's the thing.

As soon as his music came down, as he started to speak, they were booing the shit out out of him because they just knew, oh my God, he's going to kick him into balls or some shit, right?

And Cena even said, it's happy hour in Chicago.

I'm here for the booze.

And then

as Sammy, they're booing him, but when he starts talking, at least they're not just doing the fake boo where they're trying to drown him out.

It's where they're genuinely expressing displeasure at what they think he's going to do.

But when he says, John, I want to say thank you from the boys in the back.

Thank you for what you did for me.

Now they started warming up a little bit.

They were like, okay,

well, now we don't know, but we'll just not shit on him right directly.

And then a little history, and I'm sure this is why they had this match.

Again, I'm sure there's folks out there that will remember this happening fondly.

I didn't even see it and didn't give a shit.

But Sammy's debut was apparently against John Cena for the U.S.

title when Cena was doing the open challenge thing, right?

So now he is the U.S.

champion and he wants to pay it forward.

And he wanted to,

you know, introduce or institute.

the Sami Zayn U.S.

Open Challenge.

And John's like, I like the idea.

Okay.

And he starts to, yeah, do it.

And he's going to leave.

And Sammy, not so quick.

And now again, they're like, woo.

But then you can kind of tell by the demeanor, Sammy wants to defend the U.S.

title against Cena, to share a ring with him, to give him what he gave Sammy years ago.

A shot at the U.S.

title.

And now the crowds roaring, yay, yes.

And how about in Chicago?

Yay!

Right now, yes, yeah.

I mean, the people are just throwing the babies and goddamn fondling themselves.

And then Sammy says, if you want some, the whole crowd says, come get some.

And Sita milks it.

And Sammy's got his hand out.

And Sita says, you're on.

And they shake and they pop again.

It was like, Jesus Christ.

Brian, I'm just,

how could you have done this any better than what they just just did this?

I mean, in terms of setting up an angle for a match on the show between two babyfaces, I guess they did it pretty good.

It did seem like the fans were kind of ready to boo Sammy.

And I think there's something interesting there.

I don't think it was just about someone's coming out here to confront Cena or talk to Cena.

I think it may have been specific to Sammy, too.

You know, we have seen the, we have seen like kind of the pacifist pansy character for a long time.

And I know they tease the idea that like Harrion Cross was trying to get to his soul and change him back to who he's supposed to be.

And I think there was a segment.

I think there was a segment of the fan base that was kind of like

getting behind that.

And then Karrion Cross is gone.

We're just right back to Sammy being,

you know, again, the pacifist pansy.

So you've, well, you think maybe some people who like Sammy were like, oh, shit, if he turned to heel, he'd get a bigger push.

I think there is some of that, too, because there is a dedicated Sami Zayn fan base that like think he should be the world champion.

But

it did seem like Chicago, it did seem like they were ready to boo Sammy, and he had to kind of work overtime to get them to not boo him.

And again, he wasn't going to kick him in the balls or anything.

So now, with that said, I thought it was a really intriguing segment.

And like you alluded to at the top, when I watched SmackDown or Raw, I'm just always waiting for the ball to drop.

You know, I'm always waiting for like something's going to happen and this is going to become unwatchable anytime now.

And they kept my attention throughout this, and I was very curious to see how they're going to do the match because I don't think Cena's going to win the U.S.

title.

Is Cena going to put over Sammy?

I mean, that'd be an interesting move on his way out before the Brock match.

And then, of course, we got the match, but I thought it was a really good angle.

Well, and that's the thing is that

I'm sorry, but it's just obvious they have a large crowd that knows everything that's going on because it's simple enough to keep

the basics of the people that you like in your head rather than this constant chaos and you get other places.

And it's stars and it's people that are recognized.

And it's a show that's produced well.

And details are not forgotten.

And now you got two baby faces, but they're just amped to see Cena's last match in Chicago.

And still, what's going to happen?

You don't know.

So anyway,

they're 25 minutes into the show.

They come back from the break.

The match is already underway.

But now they're back to booing Sammy

when he's on the offense.

They booed, but they're doing arm drags.

They're having a wrestling match, and the people are into it and they're invested.

And if Sammy arm drags Cena, they'll boo it.

If Cena arm drags Sammy, they'll cheer.

And it said Sammy is not healing,

but it doesn't matter because the crowd has a clear favorite.

And

Cena can't go as hard or as fast as he used to, nor

can he bump as hard.

But they don't care because it's him and they're seeing it and it's the last time and blah, blah, blah.

But think about this for a second, Brian, because a lot of people,

is it, Cena's got, what, three months left on his retirement tour, right?

And that would mean, I don't, he stopped doing the countdown, but if he's going to be there 10 or 12 more times, and that's, I assume, Survivor Series and the network debut and a

big Saturday night show, wherever a couple of other pay-per-views, right?

during that time.

Is that correct?

You would think so.

They're going to end, I guess, the last match is, what, Saturday night's main event in washington dc

it's supposed to be boston that's now a house show

i think well but and then a survivor series and whatever december pay-per-view they have he's in the main event or feature match or of events that are going to gross or because of the rights fee be paid

They're going to be compensated for whatever $50 million.

Is that an exaggeration?

Based on the figures that you've seen publicly reported, they're going to gross $50 million on on just the events he's got left.

Is that a terrible exaggeration?

Again, I don't have the numbers in front of me.

It doesn't seem like a terrible exaggeration.

It might even be undercutting them.

What kind of pressure?

This is what nobody is asking.

What kind of pressure is it not only on him, but whoever he's in the ring with?

Because he's doing these moves that he doesn't normally do as a tribute to other people he didn't get to work with, like he does the pop-up power bomb for Owens and he does this and that thing, whatever the right.

Well, that's he doesn't do regularly.

Plus, he hasn't had a regular schedule like this, and he's doing these long matches.

And yes, he's in great shape, but what kind of pressure must it be on him?

Think I better not,

you know, hurt myself,

or

it's it's throwing a 50 million dollar fucking wrench in this deal, and for the people in the ring with him.

When Sami Zayn gives him an exploder,

he's at a very safe distance from the turnbuckle.

Because what kind of pressure must it be on Sami Zayn to say when he's picking up the guy that's going to be in the feature match of $50 million worth of business in the next three months?

And he needs to make sure he puts him down right.

John's going to do as much of what he wants to do as he can, but he's not going to be stupid.

And they're going to have him work with people.

I know I can't believe I'm saying, even Brock that are not going to be stupid with him.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, I mean, you don't want him to get hurt.

And if someone did happen to be the guy to hurt him, there would be a lot of pressure.

With that said, how's he going to wrestle Brock Lesnar and not be a physical thing?

Well, it's going to be a physical thing, but it's not going to be a stupid thing.

Because,

I mean,

I would hesitate hesitate to say that John probably figures he's going to get tatered a couple of times in the side of the head, but he's not going to be picked up and thrown in such a way that he's going to have to have surgery.

Right?

That's the thing is Brock has the ability and the mental acumen for this thing to know

how, you know, when to control himself a bit.

but still project the aura, but he's not going to be goofy with Cena.

But it's still going to be physical, but that's something that they will take pride in rather than taking stupid risks.

And

you know,

sometimes guys are good enough

that they can make the safe shit look

more painful than the dangerous shit.

And that's what they, that's what he did with

Sammy here.

Instead of fucking up, however, made tens of millions of dollars, but they had a smart, logical, professional wrestling match, and the fans were into everything because the guys in it were over.

Isn't that the most important part?

Like, they didn't have to do anything else, they did exactly what those fans were ready for.

Yes, and

again, you know, it made sense, and it was a wrestling match, and the crowd was into it, and it harkened back a little bit to that's the way that the crowds used to be in kind of almost all the matches years ago before everybody got smart and became looking at it like Rex Reed instead of,

but they went through several breaks.

They put some time in.

They had some big false finishes.

And then Cena even hit the

GTS and then he hit a spear

and he was getting big pops on these two counts, right?

And the fans started chanting RKO.

So he tried the RKO, but Sammy shoved him off and Cena hit a clothesline

and hit the AA

off of the turnbuckles and got a big pop.

And both of them were selling after this.

They went about 20 minutes and had a heck of a match.

And the fans were chanting, This is awesome as they're both laying there after the big move.

And that's when they hit Brock's music and the people go bat shit.

And

you will recall, Brian,

that when was it about a month ago he came out and just fucking F5'd Cena and off he went, right?

And

we said he didn't come to TV.

What the fuck?

Well, just to make sure everybody remembers what he did, he came out and he F5'd him again.

He F5 Sammy, F5 Cena, and he'd F5 Cena again.

And then he put his fucking hat back on

and walked out of there.

And, but here's the thing, and that's again with Brock.

The most dangerous thing he did when he pulled the referee out, poor old Rudy Charles, whatever his real name is, that goes by now.

He hurt him.

That was fucking stiff.

He pulled him and he couldn't control his fall to the floor.

Yeah, that was rough.

But the F5s on Cena

were just

fine.

So he knows what he's doing when he wants to.

And

again, F5, F5 laughs, says nothing, and walks out.

And then, you know, when they go to break, they come back and

it's the replay of his run-in and Brock in the back saying, I'll see you at WrestlePalooza, bitch.

Doesn't sound just him having to say Wrestle Palooza just didn't, yeah.

But, and then they made the match official for September 20th, Cena and Lesnar.

So

the first 50 minutes of the show was all Cena and this business, and

it flew right by.

You didn't want to just go, what the fuck are they doing every couple minutes?

Cause it wouldn't go away.

You know, I know ECW used it, and obviously Lala Palooza is a big deal.

But WrestlePalooza is like one step up from Wrestlelicious.

It's just like a stupid.

It just sounds stupid.

Hearing Brock Brock Lester go, I'll see you at WrestlePalooza.

You know, why don't you just invite him to Wrestle Rock?

Like, it just, it sounds so wrong.

Yeah,

I'll see you at that pansy name they've given for this wrestling event, bitch.

The fuck.

Yeah, I mean, you know, again, it's so interesting that all this is happening around the idea of a pay-per-view in whatever, a week and a half, two weeks, and then Cena leaving in a few months.

They said Brock signed a new contract, or I read that Brock signed the new contract.

So they they have to have more plans for him down the road.

Well, and let's clarify that because there were stories that

when he was announced as having been legally cleared from this rigamarole by their staff,

people were saying he'd been paid the whole time.

And then they said he signed a new contract.

Both was apparently true.

He was paid through the end of the contract he had for a while, even though he hadn't been used.

So again, hooray for him, but what a bunch of knuckleheads.

I'd have put a hood on him if I had to, if I was paying him that kind of money.

Come to fucking work.

But anyway,

they signed him to a new contract going forward because it expired during the term of the brew ha ha,

is, I guess, what the official detail is.

But he's back.

So who's going to win?

Cena's retiring.

Brock signed a new contract.

But does anybody want to see Brock beat Cena now?

Now that he's back to his

former vim and vigor as an honest, righteous, upstanding babyface

simpleton?

Or what?

I mean,

no one wanted to see Brock beat the Undertaker, and they did it.

You know, I thought the idea is that Brock is supposed to be the guy that looks like he can beat everybody, that you want to make somebody, you want to make people see somebody beat him,

but you would have to beat him for that to happen at every once in a while so

but see that's that's why they make horse races as lance russell would say or don't make horse rad's why they have horse races do they book horse races what would be the verb

for the horse races i don't know i can't answer that all right i thought you came from a long line of horse racing people i mean i've had some

i've had some fun

But Saratoga.

Belmont.

Yeah, Belmont.

Well, that's a place in New York I can think of.

But, you know, Jim, John Cena getting ready for the big match, having to do with Brock Lesnar, who just throws referees around and everyone else around.

Yep, yep.

He's got to be sore.

Got to be.

Maybe even having a rough time sleeping with all these pressures on him.

Tossing and turning.

He could use some help.

some friendly help and it wouldn't be the first time that John Cena got some help from Louisville,

from our friends at Cornbread Hemp.

You know, that's exactly right.

And I would encourage John Cena to think about this and all the people who like and support John Cena now that he has seen the light and they want to follow his example and live an exemplary lifestyle like him.

You got to think that he got trained in Louisville, Kentucky.

And now he needs to turn back to his roots and come back to Louisville, Kentucky for our very own hometown product, cornbread Hemp, baby, because I knew these people were over with me and now they proved it.

They're sponsoring the University of Louisville basketball program and the football.

And I believe they play some type of lacrosse and tiddlywinks and possibly competitive disc golf.

I'm not sure, but they're sponsoring the U of L athletic program.

And that's because they're a big deal in this town, Brian.

I hope you know Cornbread Hemp.

Their names are on the tip of people's tongues all over town because all over town people are popping their cornbread hemp cbd gummies in their mouth to deal with the constant stress of daily life if you just need a little relaxation or you got the stress or you got discomfort now it won't help you with granny sour belches but if you're getting granny sour belches because of stress eating away at your insides and you're making your liver quiver, your knees freeze, your spleen turn green, ladies and gentlemen, if you can de-stress and get rid of that discomfort,

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You know, the CBD gummies, Brian, are used.

Well, they're only used.

They only use, you know, here's what they do.

You know, Brian, they only use.

Yeah, what do they do, Jim?

Or what do they use?

Not what do they do.

What do they use?

Well,

they only use, Brian, the best part of the hemp plant, which is the flower, the purdy flower, for the purest and most potent CBD

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So that it goes in these gummies.

So they're formulated to, again, you sleep, you sleep much better.

If you got the sleeplessness, you'll start sleeping with these things.

You know, if you don't sleep for long enough, then sooner or later, you're going to enter into some type of anaphylactic shock of the body.

This has been proven by many studies, Brian.

I don't know what study.

No, we don't know anything about studies either.

You don't know anything about studies.

What are you talking about?

Let's say you go seven to 10 days without sleep.

And then suddenly you're just, your arms start shaking and your knees are weak and you can't seem to stand on your own two feet.

And that's what you need to sleep much more often than every seven to 10 days, folks.

So if you're sleepless, whether you're in Seattle or not, Take one or two or three or as many of these gummies as is formulated on the bottle there.

The recommended amount.

Whatever is recommended, whatever they say, you know, or if somebody's written it on there in Sharpie, you can go by that too.

Of course, that would be an aftermarket addition.

There won't be any Sharpie on the official releases from Cornbread Hemp.

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Well, Jim, SmackDown still had more action.

And a lot of it we both mutually

decided to skip past.

I'm sorry, I know Aleister Black has fans.

I'm not one of them.

And him against Damian Priest is like not an appealing match to me in any way.

I'm not sure I want to take that kick.

I don't really see how he's got full control of that kick when he's going that fast from that far around and it's behind his head.

He's kind of looking around.

You can tell Damian Priest wasn't sure about that kick either.

His head turned and his hand went up.

And he still may have caught at least a French fry, if not a potato.

And they had a girls match, Brian.

And what was that match?

I don't know.

It was girls.

They were doing the things that girls do.

Well, Jim, there was another big segment on SmackDown, one that was, although the Cena thing ended up being a big deal.

The real big deal, the reason a lot of people were tuning in was the idea that someone could be returning, and there was a big segment around it.

Someone apparently got

178 million social views.

Now, I think having having a social view of somebody used to get you arrested in some states, but now it's just

not frowned upon at all, and they got a bunch of them.

We knew this.

It was set up so perfectly.

And again, and I'm going to explain

to people that may not yet get it why this is

money

they start out with sess music so they can whoa and do the whole thing and we know he's in the stands then they go to a break and i'm again i'm wondering after they played the music he comes out he's in the stands up there with the spotlight and they're all whoaing and they go to the break And they came back three and a half minutes later, the music's still playing.

They're still woeing.

Does he have to stand there and just whoa?

And do these people continue to whoa

during the whole goddamn commercial break, Brian?

I don't know.

Any of this makes me feel like I'm tied to the trio whoa.

I mean, it used to be

you didn't have to work so hard when you paid to go to see the show

without having to woe for some, but anyway,

he basically does the introduction.

Tonight, the legend of CM Punk Punk dies.

And of course, they're in Chicago.

So, of course, he's got nuclear heat already.

And he gets the big CM Punk chance.

And Seth introduces Becky.

And Becky comes out to makes her entrance down the aisle, gets in the ring, and she's got big heat.

And it's the same thing we were talking about with this whole Cena thing and blah, blah, blah.

These people are over.

The fans know

what their interactions are with these other people and with the references they're making.

And

it's a personal fucking issue, which we'll get to in a minute, but it's understandable.

And the people are with it.

And the crowd immediately, as soon as Becky's music dropped, was chanting, AJ Lee, AJ Lee, how dare you chant somebody else's name?

And she,

every time she screeches at them like this shrewish,

you know, bossy bitch,

they boo the shit out of her.

And again, not in the fun way, like, it's fine.

Now it's where we're supposed to scream over Dominic or whatever.

It's no, we don't.

We don't like you.

You're saying shit we don't like.

We don't want to hear this.

Boo, you're a bad person.

I'm not saying they want to stab her, we're not going that far, but it's the same different tone.

But you know what?

She does good with it too because she changes her tone and she raises her voice like they're not going to stop her, as opposed to other people we've seen.

They just keep talking the way they're going to talk.

She does good with it, I think.

Well, yeah, and

again, she's so good at being this bossy, shrewish, condescending,

nasty, nasty woman, just

browbeating people.

And she's bitchy.

And she, and she went down the list and she named all the Chicago sports teams.

I mean, she covered football, basketball, baseball, fucking hockey, whatever.

And they all suck.

And so does CM Punk.

And they boo again and suddenly like a Mussolini

to talk to Becky.

Here comes Punk now and the place blows and he comes a big pop and they did it clobbering time.

And he's coming down to the ring.

Becky's in the ring.

Seth is up in the stands.

The people are chanting CM Punk.

And Punk says, it's not about you, Becky.

It's about your coward husband.

hiding behind his goons and hiding behind Heyman and hiding behind his wife.

And they're again, they're chanting AJ Lee, AJ Lee.

And I know people are like, well, they should have kept it a surprise.

This is perfect because it's telling everybody at home, even if they don't know what the fuck's going on, shit.

We've missed something.

We need to be tuned into this thing here.

What's going on?

These people are going bats shit.

Who's AJ?

She haven't seen her in 10 years.

They're going to fix that.

But anyway, and Punk says, you will let him chant AJ Lee.

And he's got Chicago as backup.

And he mentions, you know, he could have called Bailey or he could call Rhea

if he wanted.

And then Becky goes off and slaps him again and paintbrushes him again and slaps at him some more

and cut a promo on him just like she did last week as he's walking out of the ring, berating him.

But this time

he goes to the entrance and he says, I would never put my hands on a lady, but I've got somebody who will.

And they play AJ's music.

Here is the person that these 16,000 people have been chanting for.

We've got her.

Here go the babies.

And she comes out

and

Brian, here's the thing:

I don't know that I've ever seen an AJ Lee wrestling match

because remember, she's been gone for 10 years.

It's well, it's been more than 10 years now, right?

Because the punk was gone for more.

Nevertheless, I wasn't paying any attention back then to what the WWE was doing.

But I know

that basically crazy is her superpower.

And how do I know that people are scared of her, Brian?

Because if she comes down all smiley, about to fucking go crazy like a goddamn Chucky doll or whatever,

Becky Lynch is in the ring shitting herself.

Oh, shit.

That's the way you get shit over.

Because I saw somebody on Twitter is like, why was Becky acting like she was scared of this little girl when she doesn't act scared of goddamn,

what the fuck's her name?

The refrigerator, Jax.

Because that sells tickets.

Becky has to be afraid that this fucking wife of the man that her husband has been fucking around and now she's fucked him around.

His wife's crazy and here she comes.

And if she's not scared, it kills the whole deal.

They're telling a story here.

And AJ skips around the ring and smiling while Becky's begging off.

And the people are chanting, holy shit, holy shit.

And then when AJ gets in the ring,

she snaps and double-legs her and beats the shit out of Becky.

Apparently for real, because she had a black eye on Raw, right?

But she just, she's wailing on her, and Becky gets out from under it.

And AJ Thes presses her and pounds on her again.

And the big slap, and Becky takes a big bump and is selling all over ringside, like when I sold for Bill Watts.

And the people are going crazy.

And Punk and AJ celebrate in the ring, and Seth and his wife had a guy.

It was perfect.

This is a personal issue.

This is what wrestling has been missing for a long time.

The only thing that will ruin it

is if AJ and Becky in this tag team match that they're about to set up here soon on Raw,

when they have it, if AJ and Becky start trying to wrestle and do

one tackle, drop down, hip toss, hurricane Rana, fucking dive, it'll kill it.

They want to see these two beat the shit out of each other.

I'm not saying they can't body slam somebody, but if they start doing this goddamn certain de Soleil cartwheel wrestling,

it'll kill it.

But they want to see these two fucking fight and beat the shit out of each other.

It's classic wrestling, a guy and his wife against a guy and his wife.

And everybody knows who they are.

And this was perfectly built.

And then,

again, they're going to introduce Becky for the newer, not Becky, but AJ for the newer audiences,

more on Raw to make sure that everybody's with it.

They're telling the fucking story.

I don't care who else is on

Lollapalooza.

I just want to see this.

I don't care what the fuck the rest of it is.

All right.

Are you muted?

I'm no, that wasn't really a segue or anything.

I was listening to you.

Well, that's a safe listen every time.

But what do you think there, son?

You know, I was a bit conflicted on it.

Everything you just said

is right.

And you're almost convincing me not to think what I thought.

But,

you know, my original, I think my original statement was if she comes out there skipping, it kills it a bit for me.

Something along those lines.

And she came out there skipping.

And the fans went crazy for her skipping.

And that's kind of what she did 10 years ago plus when she was there,

which was a period of time I really didn't like.

You know, it wasn't like,

man, the whole show sucks, but the AJ Lee stuff is great.

I mean, she was part of the show, and I wasn't really into the show at that point in time.

Not to say I won't get into this.

And, you know, we'll talk about Monday when we talk about Monday.

But I still wonder what it would have been like if she

wasn't in her gear and somehow just reached over the barricade and started punching Becky Lynch.

And you realize, oh my God, that's AJ Lee,

who we expected.

But, you know, instead, it was

B for Raw from 12 years ago, and I did not like that product.

But here's the thing: do you know what Vince McMahon would have said about that idea?

We're K-Fabing ourselves.

Because sometimes

you can get in a position where you can actually manipulate the people

into demanding something that you then can just give them.

But if you bring it out of nowhere, you've missed a lot of that anticipation and a lot of that pop.

And

for the skipping,

again, that's why I said I haven't seen any AJ Lee matches, but I understand the gimmick is she's crazy.

So I view this as Rough House Fargo.

She can come out and skip and look all.

And by the way, they're the same size because somebody's going to say, well, she's like a little girl and you don't like a little girl.

Well, Becky's fucking minute also.

So here's the thing.

And Rough House wasn't that big either.

Well, in Rough House,

that's what you meant.

I thought you were saying AJ Lee's the same size as Rough House Fargo.

No, no, no, no.

I mean, she's the same size because some people are going to say, well, she's a little tiny girl, but so is Becky.

They're the same size.

And the rough house Fargo thing is if she comes out skipping and the people are going crazy and are chanting her name and they're screaming, why step on the pop?

And then she snaps and go and kills the girl, which she did.

Then,

okay, that's her gimmick.

And I want to see that.

She can fucking skip and smile all she wants to around the ring and with the fans and whatever.

And

she can be animated like that as long as then, when she snaps, she's goddamn crazy.

And then, and there you go.

Now we got something.

And that's that's again why I'm saying they don't need to wrestle, they need to fight.

And I think they both

probably can.

I don't know how AJ's work is, but again,

they don't need to.

this doesn't need to be a scientific classic that all the

indie wrestling fans will love so they know she's got no moveset no they need to be slinging each other into shit well that's another thing i mean considering what this is which was becky lynch slapping around aj lee's husband they shouldn't lock up or anything right they should just start pounding each other

well i mean they should

The guys are going to start, I would think, because I can't see any way in the world that with the people involved, they wouldn't want to build it to where the girls get to each other.

And at that point, it's no, I wouldn't think it'd be a situation where they're going to circle around the ring and lock up.

I think they'd have this needs to be like a Ronda Rousey debut.

Remember where they worked everything around her and Stephanie, and it was fucking brilliant.

And then she never had a match that good again?

I'm not, these girls could actually work already, but they need to,

they need to build the match around, in large part, around the girls getting a hold of each other and in different creative ways, but not too much till the end.

But yeah, again, this could be the main event.

I don't, you know,

bless Cena and Cena and Brock.

That's a strong match.

But this could be the main event of any regular pay-per-view.

It could main event any arena in the country, and I'd be happy.

And again, we'll talk about Raw shortly, but another thing this reminded me of, it's been a long time since AJ Lee's been on this show.

And again, that wasn't one of my favorite times.

I forgot how much I hated her goddamn music.

Just that music.

As soon as it hit, I was like, oh, no, I remember this.

But again,

they super served their fans and the fans that were there to see this.

This was Chicago, which is like her adopted hometown, I guess, because.

She's married to someone from Chicago.

I don't know how that works.

It's her place.

Well,

they know she resides there.

Larry would get a pop.

You know what?

God damn it.

Oh, Rollins has to get a dog.

Rollins has to get a dog.

No,

no, hold on.

They need to have Larry come out and bite fucking Rollins in the ass first.

And then Rollins goes and gets a dog.

And they have a six-person.

Well, not even six-person, a six-species.

Well, it wouldn't be six species.

An intergender.

Well, it wouldn't be that.

A six-entity, three-on-each side family contest.

See, I like the idea because he's a heel.

You would think he would get a bigger dog than Larry, and then you would get to the point in the match where the match is about the beginning.

You would have to hand the leash over to Heyman, who would have to control the dog.

I like that idea.

Have you ever seen Alfred Hitchcock walking a dog?

Or picking up after it?

No.

No, well, he's used to picking up after it.

He would tear his pants.

If he bent over to pick up some crap, I don't know why we're fantasizing about Paul Heyman walking the dog.

Well, I wasn't going to use the word fantasize either about any of this.

Well, that was the AJ Lee return on SmackDown.

And Jim, of course,

this big return means something.

And what it means is that AJ Lee may have a little less time to focus on that new business she was going to start up.

This is an awful transition.

Maybe now she really wants to start up that business.

Look, if you have a business and you need an online friend, a support system there for you, get your items into the biggest possible storefront.

Help me.

Ladies and gentlemen, our friends at Shopify.

You got some business to attend to, ladies and gentlemen.

You want some risky business, Jack?

If you have no business doing a transition to a commercial, then you may be Brian last.

Folks, I think that what Brian was trying to say there and failing miserably is that you need to have a business because you got to support yourself somehow.

Apparently, still in this day and age, they've not made it where you can just wander around aimlessly through life without any means of support, or sooner or later, somebody's going to get mad at you.

So let's say you've got an idea, you've got a brilliant concept, you've got a strategy, you've got a product, you've got a service, you got something you want to sell, you've got a song that your heart wants to sing and you need to sing it,

but you got no way to end there.

See, there you go.

Zing, zing, zing went the trolley, team, ding, ding went the bell,

zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings, because my business went to hell because I didn't team up with Shopify.

Because Shopify

will take your business and it will shove it straight to the top.

It will cram it all the way inside the hearts and minds of people all across the world.

And then they will instantly know that you are selling succulent seafood.

Or

why would that be the example you went wrong?

Or perhaps

you're selling a natty embroidery product or some type of

things that help Boy Scouts dig holes, whatever your brilliant,

brilliant,

brilliant idea is.

Shopify could help you.

Well, you know, Boy Scouts are of the age where they like to dig holes and put things inside of them.

Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of holes in the ground.

Millions, and behind millions of businesses around the world.

Yes.

10% of all the holes in the ground in the United States.

No, I'm sorry, 10% of all e-commerce in the United States is

run by Shopify.

And they can get you started and they can run you all the way through to the finish line.

They can help you with not only setting up your website, your beautiful online store,

your own, you could consider them your own design studio, but you can also accelerate your content creations, writing product descriptions, enhancing your product photography.

They've got a marketing team that was all around the world.

They will say, old Joe over there digs the best holes in town, and he'll dig a hole for you no matter where you are.

And then you can run around the world digging holes.

And you can create email and social media campaigns that tell people all about the holes that you're digging.

And

they've got all the expertise you you need to hear that magic sound of revenue, commerce, money pouring in, cash money.

They even take green stamps.

Have you seen the Shopify green stamps, Brian?

I don't believe that's a thing.

Let's just say that it's not.

That may be still be in development.

A Lola had books and books of S ⁇ H green stamps.

I don't know.

She got a lamp one time.

But folks, you're going to sell more than a lamp on Shopify because they will turn your big business business idea into

that little chinging noise that you just heard there that signifies that your trolley to the top awaits.

You're going to take a trolley car to the top of the world, Ma,

and you can right now

get Shopify on your side with a $1 a month trial period.

No, they're not going to send you a dollar.

You got to send them a dollar, but for that $1 in a month, you will have access to their brilliance and their ability to take whatever weasly low-class idea you've got and turn it into something that people will actually pay money for and start selling today, or at least during the one-month trial period, at shopify.com slash JCE.

Chiching?

Yes, shopify.com slash JCE $1 a month trial period.

How can you beat it?

You can't beat it.

Not at all.

There it is, of course.

Rice-arone, the San Francisco treat.

Jim, zing, zing, zing.

Let the trolley go.

Alrighty.

I don't know why that got me.

I hadn't thought of a trolley yet as an option.

I've been thinking so much about a little kid on a little bicycle ringing their little bell.

But, Jim, it's time to go.

Rice-arone.

It's time to go

back to WWE.

They were in Milwaukee.

That's in Wisconsin.

Yes.

And of course, they were there for.

That's next to Illinois, which is right down the road from Chicago.

See how this works?

See, they were only 90 miles.

They only got 90 miles in three days.

Well, WWE Raw in Milwaukee.

Again, a show with...

At least one big angle and maybe some other things you watch.

Well, now, why do you always set the expectations so low here?

Well, maybe some other things you watch.

Again, we're just trying to, we're not trying to bore the people, unlike the WWE.

We're going to get to the meat of the matter.

They got two things percolating over here.

The rest of it is filler and travelogue.

The Usos are back together

and they are

opposing the bronze, Reed and Breaker.

And what did I say last week?

Brian, if you wanted to have tag team matches mean something, it was last week or week two, two ago, whatever.

If you want to have tag team matches mean something, the Reed and Breaker

are perfect heels to start.

And they've got to face some guys that have been featured at some level of the main events to make them interesting.

And now they got the Usos history and they see that maybe,

you know, poor old Jimmy may be malingering a bit, you know, so let's give him a little bump.

But at the same time, we can put them back together short term.

I'm sure they've still got individual plans, at least for Jay, whatever.

But this helps the tag team situation.

It doesn't help them be fucking

matches between the Midnight Express, the Fantastics.

We're not going to get that, but it's at least putting some focus on,

you know, tag team matches involving guys that are seen as main event level.

It's what I'm trying to say.

And

it happened last week on

Raw.

They had attacked Jay and Jimmy and saved.

So now they're both coming out together in Milwaukee, as I said, down the road from Chicago.

So

you've got the knowledgeable fans.

They're predisposed to like the punk deal later on.

But this is another big crowd, however the fuck many of the building holds.

And that's double the Yeats.

So they just,

again, it's endless.

They just, they play the music, they yeet, they scream.

And then, as soon as the baby faces say 20 seconds worth of shit, here comes the fucking heels.

And Braun Breaker started cutting the promo.

And he fumfered something.

about it, tried to express how mad he was, what they did to Heyman, but it works for him.

And

he has intensity.

And he needs that.

That's why I don't know why they,

okay.

Heyman was put in the hospital by a front facelock.

God damn, I believe my aunt Lola could have come back from a front facelock in a fucking week or whatever.

But

poor blessing, poor thing.

Bless his little heart.

As we say down south, he can't take a bump.

He might

pop, and the splatter would kill somebody.

But Braun and Bronson need the manager.

Braun Breaker right now needs to speak because he can and very well, but he needs to speak in explosive bursts that get his personality over and just go off

and do his thing and be natural.

But he doesn't need to give any details.

He doesn't need to tell any long-winded stories.

You see what I'm saying, Brian?

He needs to just be himself.

And And Bronson Reed right now needs to speak as little as possible because his voice in no way matches his intimidating look.

And the less that he opens his mouth till he really gets over,

the better off he probably is.

So I really wish that

they had Heyman for this bill.

Did he actually injure himself falling down from a front facelock, or did they just agree to give him some time off to go have some type of

medical treatments?

I have no idea.

I don't know.

Maybe they've got him on something.

They've sent him to Duke.

He's got the Yokozuna suite.

Anyhow,

the idea of this match and probably the execution of this match will be better than this promo was, but

Jay and Jimmy have a cute little brother promo style where they call and answer each other, but they're relying on personality.

They're not relying on substance because they can't really tell a fucking story either.

It's personality and it's charisma.

They've got that point across.

But finally,

L.A.

Knight jumped on both of the bronze and had a fight, and the Usos finally helped him.

But it was kind of, it wasn't a particularly

earth-scorching fight, and it was a little too choreographed because they had to make sure that LA Knight almost accidentally fucking hit Jay again,

but then

he moved and the heel hit Jay anyway.

So Jay was unhappy with LA Knight.

There was a lot of choreography there, and

it wasn't a real just blistering fight nor a smooth execution.

Do you see what I'm saying to you?

Yeah, and obviously they were setting up that little thing with L.A.

Knight and Jay Uso.

Do you think there's a problem with the fact that the baby faces outnumbered the heels?

Well, I mean,

long day, if that was the only time it happened, it wouldn't be horrible.

It's just that they're trying to

complicate this issue.

They're trying to promote the Usos versus Reed and Breaker, while at the same time,

the issue is going on with LA Knight and

Jay, so there has to be some crossover back and forth, but it does muddy the waters a little bit.

Now,

is LA Knight going to end up turning heel?

Because it obviously ain't going to be Jay Uso,

or is this just going to be a red herring?

If LA Knight's turning heel, and maybe that means he gets a more favorable push, then I'm not necessarily against that.

But if they're all just going to

stay where they are, I think it's muddying the build a little bit of the tag match.

Do you feel me, bro?

It seems like WWE's been doing that a lot lately, though, muddying the build the things.

Like something else happens on the way to the thing that you thought was about to happen.

Well, sometimes that can be a pleasant diversion, like when you find an envelope of money laying in the street.

Well, I didn't expect that to happen, but it's nice it did.

But other times it, you know,

oh, golly, I was rolled by a drunk in a gutter at knife point.

Really didn't want that to happen.

Well, Jim, since we're talking about the opening segment and this angle with the Usos, and I know there was a promo backstage later on where Jay talked to Jimmy, and boy, they don't even look alike anymore.

He wouldn't even believe they were twins if he didn't know they were twins.

But, you know, it's telling him that LA Night's an all right guy or whatever he was saying.

He watched a main event match.

Well, yeah, that's why I was going to say there's

another chapter to this thrilling episode.

And also, when Jimmy and Jay were talking in the back, Jimmy's trying to say to Jay, well,

LA night's all right.

L.A.

Night's all right with me.

L.A.

Night's all right.

Oh, yeah.

I knew you were going to go there.

Yeah, well, I went there, baby.

But Jay had his bag and he was heading out.

He was on the way to the wing place or something.

He was like, hey, we'll...

deal with our shit at WrestlePalooza.

Fuck L.A.

Nighties on his own because LA night's in a main event against Big Bronson Reed.

And

Jay, you know, Jimmy can't talk Jay out of it.

Jay's got it.

So anyway, they have the match.

Again, okay match,

but the finish is the thing, as we're aware by now.

And finally, LA Knights got him where he wants him.

He's going for his finish.

The BFT, Braun jumps up, breaker.

So he runs over and he nails Braun Breaker.

But then when he turns around, Bronson Reed gives him the Big Death Valley driver, whatever he calls the thing, one, two, three.

So, I mean, these are

these are simple fucking finishes that you could find laying around most of the houses in America, right?

It's just average everyday shit, but they're getting to the meat of the matter.

They get a little bit more heat just in time for Jimmy to come out, but they stop him.

And boom, boom, boom, they get him down.

And then, no, Jay didn't leave.

Jay's music plays.

And here comes Jay and makes a comeback.

And then Braun speared him.

And they had them both laid out.

And Bronson Reed was going to go up to the top and splash both of them.

When L.A.

Knight comes up with a chair and whacks Bronson Reed, knocks him off the rope and fucking chases him away.

And he looks at Jay, says, all right, we good now?

And he goes over and helps Jimmy up.

And they exchange pleasantries

and then he turns around and jay spears him

and boom and now jimmy's like oh

you've ah man

you shot marvin in the face

you speared la night there jay what and and jay's like well

him

Now we're good.

So

I don't know where it's going.

And I don't know where it's been.

But

if they're going to do something with somebody,

obviously, Jay Uso is not going to turn heel.

So, again, as I said, if LA Knight maybe gets a little prickly about this,

then that may be something.

But elsewhere, I think it's a little confusing with the other two heel fellows there.

Well, that was the confusing

setup to something there at the end.

Yes.

No Heyman.

But of course, another Paul Heyman

guy.

Maybe I should phrase it differently, but another person who is in the stable of Paul Heyman is Seth Rollins, Seth Franklin Rollins, and he was a part of the big angle on Raw.

Well, and a Paul Heyman girl, too, because if Becky is in the stable of Heyman,

then she's one of his horses also.

But she's a Philly.

She's one of the Phillies.

But they weren't in Philly.

If they were, Heyman would have showed up in a goddamn neck brace or an oxygen mask or something.

Anyway, we mentioned it before.

They reported that A.J.

Lee's return on SmackDown got 178 million social views.

People, you know, peeking in the curtains couldn't get enough.

And they also had done earlier, they did a package on her with some highlights, which which she was there before and whatever, went in the belt.

Because it's been 10 years, they recognize.

I think, as I said before, that not everybody out there knows that so-and-so had a grueling match with such-and-such in Mexico City in 2014.

So, just to make sure, and then

when AJ comes out

to the big response and the welcome back chants, she she did the same thing.

She introduced herself to the new fans, but in

a charming way, self-deprecating way, or whatever, not like I'm this and I'm that.

But you may not know

because it's been 10 years.

They wanted to see her there, they were ready to see her, and they were.

I will say,

I believe that it could have been a little shorter.

I think it's also her first promo in 10 years, so not bad for that on national TV.

But

the basic story was that she retired 10 years ago.

She wasn't sure, or she was sure

that she wouldn't be back in the ring.

And she did other things.

And

she said she went on a mental health journey and went to therapy and got the fans to chant therapy.

So again, they're listening to these people.

They're not just sitting through it like they do on some of the other programs, waiting for a zinger that they can ooh at.

They're picking up on this shit as it goes.

And anyway,

in a roundabout way,

and I do like her facial reactions to things, and especially when Becky comes out of here in a minute, because this is the first time I'm here to talk, also.

But she finally got the point was

she was doing good until she watched Raw.

And then she was not doing good, seeing her husband in the ring with Becky Lynch.

And as soon as she starts talking about Becky, here comes Becky's music.

And here comes Becky.

And she says, this has got nothing to do with your skank ass husband.

And Becky, by the way, I forgot to mention AJ Lee when she comes out.

She stole the belt.

She's wearing Becky's Intercontinental Belt, right?

That's the women's intercontinental title, right?

Correct.

I wasn't sure what they had named it, but oh, I'm shifting my hip hurts.

Nevertheless,

Becky's pissed.

You're wearing my belt.

I'm the greatest of all time.

And the people chant, you suck, you suck.

And Becky starts having that meltdown again where she's screaming at people and she's losing her temper and they start chanting therapy again

it's perfect

becky takes off her glasses she's got a black eye

from what aj did to her the other night

and

anyway she's screaming give me my belt back and aj's like oh i'm so i completely forgot that i've been skipping around my house with this for the past few days and just being a smart ass.

And she said, Tell you what, come and get it, Becky.

Here it is.

Come and get it.

And Becky doesn't come in and get it.

Now the people start chanting chicken.

It's like they've paid these people

to be extras in the goddamn deal.

They're on queue.

They're perfect.

And then Becky says, Where's your husband?

And they chant, see him punk, see him punk.

And Becky cuts a promo and brings her husband out.

They play Seth's music.

Seth comes down the aisle to Becky and says,

I'll take care of this.

And he tells AJ, it's easy.

Just give Becky your belt back and we can all leave.

And AJ said, well, we could do that.

Or Becky could take it and get another black eye.

Or I'll give it back to you if you'll agree to a tag team match, player.

And Becky's like, no, no, no, we're not going to know, no, no, no, no, and says that

I'll take care of this.

And he goes in the ring and he's going to get the belt.

And he starts to pick the belt up and AJ steps over it.

And she jumps sideways and she blocks it.

And she jumps the other way and she blocks it.

And Seth starts getting stern with her.

And suddenly, here comes Punk out with no mute or whatever

from behind Seth,

picks him up for the go-to-sleep.

Seth slips it and bails out.

And now, Seth is pissed.

If you want a match, you got it.

And Becky's like, no, no, no.

And AJ tosses the belt at Becky.

And now we got the match for Wrestle Paloozer.

This is fucking great.

Again, it's wrestling.

The guy and his wife are going to fight the guy and his wife i want to see that

nobody has to be hospitalized to do an angle here it's made the people are working with them

i

you know you brought up world class earlier in the show and the big difference is obviously that precious and sunshine were valets they weren't wrestlers

what should the match be

going with the idea that this match won't be the end of the feud

Well, and again, I, you know, mentioned earlier, they shouldn't wrestle

because

if they all work, if this is a family fucking fight, and if they all work a fight, and I'm suggesting that Seth and Punk have more of a fight.

And by a fight, I'm not talking about a garbage match with furniture all over the building.

I'm talking about a rough, believable conflict and do enough to milk the girls getting a hold of each other because Becky's not going to want to fucking get a hold of AJ.

It's almost like an old-fashioned manager match where the heel manager might get a shot in against the babyface girl,

you know, before the babyface girl finally gets her hands on him to get on her to get the heat right.

But Becky and AJ don't need to be doing hurricane ranas off the top rope and dives out of the ring unless it's a flying Fez press off the apron to tackle the Becky when she's trying to get away or whatever, that type of thing.

They need to have,

and for lack of a better word, a good old cat fight.

What people are going to fucking see.

They don't want to see them wrestle.

That defeats the purpose.

They're supposed to be mad at each other, and

it's a wife against a wife, not a girl wrestler against a girl wrestler.

And I don't know if I would be mad if they brought this back, if the heels went over the first time in such a way that it necessitated some type of not ridiculous stipulation

to bring it back again

or to do some kind of offshoot where

Seth and Punk have the match, but whoever wins their wife gets the other wife for five minutes at a disadvantageous position or whatever.

Keep the personal issue going.

And what do you say to that?

And what do you say to the fan that says Jim Cornett's being unfair?

He hated it when Kenny Omega teamed with a woman or whatever intergender stuff they did on AEW.

What's the difference?

Those people, number one, weren't over.

Number two, the fans weren't demanding it before they actually did it.

Number three, the performers involved didn't nearly have the verbal talent or the booking philosophy that this has had so far and that they have behind it.

Need I go on?

It's just mindless.

Oh, this girl does wonderful cross bodies like I do.

Maybe we can do a crossbody together in the match rather than.

No, it's my wife who's also a fucking ex-wrestler and can come in and have a mixtag with this other other famous main event level married fucking couple.

Jesus Christ, it's not that hard to fucking figure out.

It's just doing silly wrestling moves versus getting people involved in a goddamn issue between main event level stars that they can believe

down deep or at least put aside their

knowledge to the contrary.

are mad at each other, want to pull each other's hair out.

Cat fight.

Weird thought, but in some ways, this is so much this period of time, not just this angle, but this is so much more the way this is set up, like

the way it would have been done in a territory versus wrestling in terms of the turnaround.

They're doing angles now to set up pay-per-views, like within a week or two out.

Used to be months out.

You kind of knew two months before a pay-per-view what a lot of the matches were going to be because it was going to be building towards it.

Now there's so many that it's like you're building to something that's going to be on next week.

Yeah.

And

the thing there is because there's not only the monthly pay-per-view, but there's the Saturday night's main events, and there's the,

well,

multiple night pay-per-views, two of them now, and et cetera.

So

you can build talent always,

just individual talent, and you can

start teasing issues amongst talent that are over,

but you can't really specifically promote a match or a goddamn specific stipulation or whatever more than a couple of weeks out now, because, like you said, people will forget about it.

It'll get confused with the other shit.

So

there is a bonus to that,

at least if

you have it planned out in advance, if nobody gets hurt and nothing goes wrong, here's what we want to do.

Then when you announce it, at least when you're doing something like this, it has some level of immediacy where people are like, oh, shit, if they like something and it's going to happen next week, they ain't got time to get sour on it or forget about it or just get used to it.

So there's that.

That's why,

you know, the old weekly territories that could pivot around and bring stuff back

if it got over,

they had that immediacy working for them.

Well, that was WWE Raw.

Did you watch anything else on Raw?

There was a really good Lyra Valkyrie Raquel Rodriguez match, which surprisingly pulled me in.

I thought it was really good.

Did you watch that?

I avoided being pulled in by that vortex, but I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Really good.

What else did you watch?

What else did you watch?

Not a goddamn thing on that show.

No, that's the thing.

They've got two things going on, and the other show has two things going on.

And kind of one of those things is fucking on both shows.

So

otherwise, there's nothing going on.

And that's what, again, that's what the point that I'm making.

It's so incredible that the WWE is doing this kind of business with just a couple of things going on at any one time that people give a shit about.

And

the other side can't get out of their own way to just slow down and let me figure out who half these people even are before they're sent to the hospital

and it just blurs into mind-numbing insanity

and they're they got 900 people in a bingo hall we can still say the bingo hall in insult in 2025 can you imagine that we can still quote that and it's still true It's a 900-seat toilet in a bad neighborhood.

And that you look at the other show and they've got 20,000 people at a goddamn stadium they get people to chant for therapy yes the other show the picture and the other side needs therapy yeah

he still won't play the music

no just tiger da whatever the hell that is all right well that was wwe raw

and jim uh there's a lot of contemporary wrestling uh

news and topics and things going around.

On the topic of Raw, because a bunch of listeners have sent this in.

I have not seen it.

I read a little bit about it.

AJ Styles, apparently, was on the mic while the show was in commercial.

Did you hear about this?

I did not hear about this.

Was he

trying to keep the people occupied while they were, you know, in break or what was going on?

Let's play this because I have not heard it, but there apparently is a fan base that believes that he was shooting, whatever that's worth.

Let's go to this.

Okay.

Dominic Mysterio got his little buddy, that coffee bean Americano, to get involved in my match and cost me the Intercontinental Championship.

And to be honest with you,

it could have been my fault.

You see, for the first time in my career,

I've got no one watching my back.

Gallows, Anderson, they're not here.

Mechanics on SmackDown.

It's like someone orchestrated

a way for me not to win anymore.

Not to have help.

I'll let you make your own conclusions.

By the way,

we are here right now from all over the world, but arrest everybody isn't a commercial break.

I'm telling you something that you're probably not supposed to hear, but somebody doesn't want me here.

All right, that's the big moment, I think, but he's still

So,

what we're going to do

is you're going to beat the piss out of Rondi Americano tonight.

Well, he's back into working volume.

Okay, well,

he never left.

He never left.

Maybe the reason why people thought he was

shooting is because he was doing a poor job of getting out whatever the point was he was supposed to make.

It sounded to me like annoying

that he was supposed to say something, and there's something they're going to be doing, or something making out of somebody's against me or orchestrating.

I ain't got no backup or whatever.

He was supposed to make some kind of point, and

he struggled making it, and then went on to his other thing.

But that's what it sounds like to me.

I don't believe he was just announcing to the goddamn world that.

the office hates him in a commercial break on the microphone before the match.

Not the office, Paul Hammond.

Well,

nevertheless, whoever the case.

Is he office?

Do you consider Paul Heyman office?

Now he's part of that writing team.

Well, yeah, he's kind of the office.

But again,

I don't know why that he would,

unless they told him say things during, why would he just pick up the microphone during the break and say shit unless he was told say things?

And that sounds like

he was either trying to make a point or trying to fill time or whatever, and he was struggling with it.

But I don't think it's a

revolutionary shooting statement indicting the it's not a pipe bomb.

All right, Jim.

Well, as we are recording, Triple H has done an interview with the Pat McAfee show,

of course, known for their scintillating conversation.

Known for their Pat McAfee.

Here's a quote about the criticism that WWE or he have received received about Unreal.

Let me get your thoughts on this.

Oh boy.

It's funny that the internet is all complaining that we're lifting the curtain and showing stuff.

Meanwhile, they're doing a podcast that all it does is talk about the behind-the-scenes shit that's going on.

I don't understand that logic.

The world knows.

An eight-year-old kid picks up his iPhone, Googles stuff, and it tells him all the behind-the-scenes stuff right there.

Now, is that legitimate?

Are there eight-year-old children working phones these days?

Younger than that, yeah.

I mean, I don't know if they're saying like, hey, fabe, I don't know what they're putting into their search engine, but God.

Do you think what he's saying is a justification for them exposing what they do on that show?

Well,

there was always

a difference in

Some people say, well, people have always known wrestling was phony.

And other people say, no, they didn't used to to believe it all.

And neither one is true, but there was some middle ground

in that.

And I lived through a lot of it, so I can tell you a lot of people always knew.

Some people didn't know at all.

Other people were capable of being convinced, but nobody really knew how and why for sure because the people involved in the business didn't come out with it, or at least on a regular basis nationally, where everybody had access to the information.

But it's still different

when the people actually involved are not only showing you

how they say exactly, when you're seeing how they set it up beforehand and then how they

hug each other afterwards, it's so much even more

cooperative and friendly and choreographed and pre-planned and homogenized and sanitized and pasteurized,

then one would think it is in their imagination.

When you actually see it,

it's there's some element of Santa Claus ain't real.

There's some element of the fucking tooth fairy ain't real.

There's some element of the Easter bunny

done really shit fucking colored eggs.

I don't know how the Easter Bunny got involved in Easter, but nevertheless, when you're seeing the people that are up till now you have seen have these violent altercations and you've heard their works,

you've heard they cooperate, but you've never actually seen them sit down and tell you how they're going to do it and then hug and kiss on each other afterwards,

that still takes away some of the oomph to it.

And even if David Copperfield or

who's a modern-day magician,

Chris Angel, he was 20 years ago.

Is there a modern-day magician?

Franz Franz Harari.

You do, and you'll clean it up.

He was the black scorpion in 1990.

Oh, Christ on a cracker.

Well, any great magician, you know that their tricks are tricks, but

if they sat down and showed you all the false pockets and the fucking

whole deal and the pattern that conceals the movement and everything, then

you ever see that Penn and Teller show where like different majors.

They're all us.

Yeah.

And they don't come out and expose anything.

They let you know that they know.

They say enough that the person admits they know.

Yes.

And they never tell you exactly what it is.

And it's better for that.

I saw once or twice

the thing was so fucking rudimentary that they say, oh, come on.

I've seen, you know, I've seen several of them, but, but for the most part, they'll go, no, they won't blow the fucking guy's trick, even if they know how it's done.

They'll,

you know, they'll k fave it to some extent because it's respect.

And, but this is,

it means more glory for them and how great they are as creative writers and another show they can get paid a fortune for and

just more egotistical methane up your own fucking ass type of stuff.

Bretton, there's a difference between

people online saying it, or even podcasters saying it, and you as the wrestling company saying, well, they're all saying it, so we might as well just show them everything and turn the cameras on all the time.

Doesn't seem like it makes too much sense.

I think it only hurt them too, some of the exposure to the behind-the-scenes stuff from around WrestleMania.

Would have been better for them if that stuff didn't get out.

Well, yeah, especially when

they have to go back and doctor things or rewrite a little history or, you know, whatever, because

some of their shit turns out not to be a good fucking idea in the first place, and they've got to pivot.

But, you know, I just,

like I said, the unreal aspect when,

and take all those goddamn boring ass, fucking,

plain ass writers completely off the air because the idea that they would tell any wrestling personalities what to say

when they look like they've never said boo to a fucking goose just kills it.

But when you had guys like Punk and Rollins saying they really didn't like each other, so we're going to magnify that

or Rhea's real injury.

And, you know, things like that, that I can go for the real side of it, because it still makes these people look like stars instead of actors that are told what to do.

You may get a goddamn Oscar

for being an actor that's told what to do by a famous director, blah, blah, blah.

But people don't want to see their wrestling heroes as people that are told what to fucking do.

And the whole idea that heels get over is because they're people that don't do what you tell them to.

So where does that leave us?

Huh?

Yeah.

I don't do no jobs in front of 70,000 people either.

So where does that leave us?

And again, look at it the other way, too.

If they had been doing Unreal 10 years ago, maybe we would have been able to stop Vince and Laurenitis on their depravity tour.

They would have had more cameras in the, what is what you're saying in the, in the office.

Potentially.

I don't.

I have a feeling Vince would have still had some type of pit.

Down in the basement underneath the, oh, what was the fella's name that used to run

the lunchroom?

He made great chicken fingers.

Can't remember his name, but under that level, there was a pit somewhere where Vince had people captive in it and lowered lotion down by a rope.

Well, we'll see what Triple H does with his lotion, I guess, in the future.

Here,

I've heard he puts it on the skin

or else he gets hosed again.

He does what he's told.

Who knows who's telling him that?

But, Jim, maybe Triple H just needs to listen to some music and lighten up a little bit.

Stop being so hard on the online fans and on the podcasters.

And just you can sit back and just listen to whatever it is that I'm sure he has an awful music taste, but whatever Triple H listens to, he can listen to on his Raycon.

Well, no, he listens to all of that music where the people rev the motorcycles and drool and spit the water and do the thing and make the mean face there, Brian.

That's the kind of music that he listens to.

Time to play the game.

He's from New Hampshire.

And things like that.

But you know, I'm sure that now that he's a father and he's a major corporate executive, maybe he's listening to listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, telling me just what a fool I've been.

Just something pleasant and peaceful.

But it doesn't matter what you listen to, folks, as long as it sounds good.

Because you can listen to Bach and Beethoven and Lennon and McCartney.

And if it's on a soup can,

then it ain't going to sound good.

If it's on a soup can connected to a wire, connected to a pole, connected to the leg bone of a chicken, your audio quality is just not going to come through.

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Brian, you just take these things and you stick them in your ear and that little ergonomic part at the end hits the G spot in your ear and hooks right onto it.

No, and no matter what you listen to, whether it be top 40, whether it be classic rock, whether it be soul or jazz or whatever, every time you turn these things on, it makes you come.

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Well, see, that's ergonomic.

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Once again, we're not talking orgasms.

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Let's get back on track here.

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There's no good ending to that.

Good Lord.

No, there wasn't a beginning either.

We are here in the future.

Thanks Thanks to the sounds of Raycon.

No, we are here in the future, and we have more topics, more things happening, Jim.

How are you?

I'm okay.

How are you?

Doing all right.

Let's move on here with the show.

Jim, have you been following?

No, I wasn't even there.

It wasn't me.

You can't pin it on me.

I've got an alibi.

Well, I haven't really seen these, but I heard that there was something.

Ronda Rousey did an interview with the Lapsed Fan,

and there are some quotes that people are talking about.

Here's one.

The fact that they had me fighting Alexa Bliss at all was fucking ridiculous.

And you want to know why they had me against Alexa Bliss?

Because she had the most merch sales at the time.

Like, what the fuck?

That's your decision-making process?

So let's stop there.

That's the first quote.

A lot of people have a problem with the fact that she's complaining about working with Alexa Bliss, or that the wrestling promotion will push the person with the most merch sales.

Well, and

you know how, what did they say?

The internet meme,

when the worst person you know makes a good point, or whatever, there's some element here.

Ronda Rousey, with the reputation she had, UFC fighter, baddest bitch on the planet, planet, whatever the tagline was.

Alexa Bliss, as we've mentioned, is stretching it based on her size and diminutiveness for

anybody.

But she was popular,

as is evidenced by the merchandise sales.

But the thing I was about to say is, the problem is, Rhonda Rousey was so rotten.

She was rotten, Rhonda, for that last run

because it wasn't a fun little frolic for her.

You know, she and her friends, when she was in the UFC, always dreamed about

being wrestlers together when they would sit in the hotel room and eat pizza and play with

fucking Barbie dolls.

I don't know what the women do these days.

But when after that initial run,

And then she went home to have babies and breed goats or breed goats and have babies or breed babies and have goats.

I don't know.

She came back.

She was rotten, and we talked about it.

She looked like she didn't want to be there.

It was a job.

Yeah, couldn't be bothered.

Very unimpressive.

How did anybody ever fall so far, so fast?

That type of thing.

And that's when she's

telling them, and your creative sucks, and I don't want to work with this person or whatever.

So she was no better at that point.

She was a disappointment because she didn't give a shit and she didn't want to do it.

So all of these,

Alexa Bliss doesn't have any fault in this besides just being small, but

there's enough blame to go around is what I'm saying.

Jim, I have another quote here also from the lapsed fan interview.

Who is this guy and why did he lapse?

Was it a lapse in judgment or a lapse in character?

I believe it's more than one person and it's a program.

Oh, a lot of them.

Well, you know, a lot of them follow the road to ruin these days.

Apparently, she was talking about how when the regime change happened,

they only cared about the bloodline because it was spearheaded by Paul Heyman.

Let's get this quote.

They were only spending a little bit of time on the bloodline because Heyman was the head of all that.

And he was like the Vince whisperer of being able to get shit through.

And it shows.

It shows that it's like, oh, we're going to spend some time on it and run this and fuck everyone else.

That's why they were doing the same rehash shit over and over and over again,

because that was just what Vince came up with the night before.

Wasn't, didn't she used to be a Heyman girl?

Wasn't Heyman a big proponent of hers?

Has she turned on the worm, as the old saying goes?

I don't know, but I I mean, is that a

bloodline wasn't always perfect, but it was also the biggest thing and the longest-lasting thing they've done in the most recent period of time.

Is she crazy for criticizing the amount of time they gave the bloodline?

Yeah,

compared to the

once again, how delusional is she that you know she thought she needed to be on screen anywhere near as often as the bloodline.

And

basically the her friends in her group of girls all flunked out and schaefer's over now

looking lovely in a tight top and stoogen for the worst wrestler in the world and

where'd the other girl go what was her name uh jessamine duke was it jessamine duke no but there was another one

shayna baszler where's she at

They let her go, I believe, or her contract expired.

The point is, they were supposed to give them as much time as they gave the bloodline?

I think not.

Well, here's another quote.

This one from the.

Oh, no, this is from a different interview.

This is an interview with Cage Side Seats.

Apparently, she's doing the rounds.

The other guy must have lapsed.

She said that superstars like Logan Paul or the Bloodline got special attention that people like her didn't get.

They were handed things the day of the show.

Here's the quote.

the bloodline is able to plan things out a year ahead of time and they won't even talk to me until i get to the arena about anything proved in my first match that if you give me the time the resources and preparation oh jesus christ i can put together an amazing match and i think if you give me the time the resources and the preparation it was her first match they practiced it

nauseatingly to get it right.

And it was a masterpiece of the booking.

And they carried it off.

And she carried it off.

It was the greatest debut of all time.

But it was that, as I was explaining earlier, talking about the mixtag with Punk and AJ and Seth and

Becky.

They need to work it out ahead of time so that the girls are the highlight of the thing and give them the spots like they did that match.

Because that's a special fucking match also.

But she can't expect that

every goddamn time she was ever going to get in the ring.

And here's another thing: yet they may have planned out some of the bloodline essence a year out,

but I'm sorry, if you sat down

a year ago or two years ago when this was going on and said to any member of the bloodline, even Heyman,

tell me everything's going to happen right now for the next year.

They would have gone,

huh?

Everything?

It's no,

she was an attraction, but she dumbed herself out of position, Ronda Rousey, by being

rotten and showing the people that she didn't give a shit.

And then they turned on her, the fans and the office,

because she didn't give a shit and they knew it.

And I had an email from someone in the office who said, however difficult you may think she was to work with, it was worse.

So, well, let's uh

let's finish this quote here, and I apologize for any modulation issues here on the line.

And I feel like oh, now yeah, you're directing it that way, aren't you?

It's late in the day, people are using up the electricity around here.

And I feel like they're really doing that with Logan Paul and allowing him to rehearse and put these things together and have all these different resources and producers to bring him to his highest potential

Because he's now only had 23 matches.

And to be quite honest, almost every single one of them he's knocked out of the park where she debuted with a bullet and fucking lost ground until she fell off the charts.

So, again, Logan Paul, bigger attention, bigger gross, bigger performances gets more attention.

Ronda Rousey was asked by Raj Prashad of Yahoo Sports, another interview

about if she would go back.

I really have no reason to go back.

I wanted to do a run with the four horse women, and I never got to do that.

And now I feel like and now I feel like I've already accomplished everything that I wanted to in WWE, and all that's really left for me is to go there and have fun with my friends,

and none of my friends are there anymore.

Uh-huh.

And breed goats.

I know where one of her friends is.

She ought to go there to the ultimate to have fun with my friends' fucking resort.

What was it?

Didn't she like do a dark match like Ring of Honor?

Like the weekend of a paper?

She did it.

Yeah, she did a Ring of Honor match so she could team up with one of her friends.

I just don't know if I could ever be on the road with that company again.

I have two girls now, and hopefully we could have some more soon.

I'd love that.

And there is just no room in my life to be able to maintain that lifestyle and a family at the same time.

Well, and I'm firmly in favor of Ronda Rousey picking her family over wrestling.

I think it'd be better for everybody.

Have some more babies.

Just pop them right out.

Well, Jim, one more quote from Ronda Rousey.

This one is about Jon Moxley and what he has done for Marina Shafir.

Going from being like, how do I do an arm drag, to being part of five-star matches and stuff like that, it's really great to see her just having so much joy with it and rising to the top of the and rising to the top level of the industry.

Hold on, wait a minute.

I got to find something sharp so I can start sawing at my juggernaut.

Five-star matches and stuff like that.

I think so much has to do with Jon Moxley being the most incredible human being ever.

He is just so supportive and so kind and so passionate.

He's just so humble.

Has she had some type of relations with him i thought she was married to some other mma fighter but he's jon moxley is so kind and caring and passionate and giving

and he always makes sure i come first

he's just so humble that i feel

i can't read it after what you just said he's just so humble He's a giving lover.

And I feel like so much of that success stems from his talent.

And not just his talent,

but his willingness and passion to give back.

See, now I can't read any of this, you fucking

up everybody with him and have his rising tide lift all of their boats.

Boy, I'll tell you what, somebody's tide is high.

And I'm so grateful for him and the kind of friend that he's been to Marina.

See, that's all that it takes is for someone to glorify her and her little circle of friends, and she thinks they're incredible.

But the actual talented, successful, smart people in the business that don't think that there's any money in them anymore, well, they're just horrible.

People like Moxley are the real lifeblood of this industry.

And I hope that continues and that it's encouraged and that it's not like some cutthroat me versus you kind of environment.

It's the culture and the giving back to each other and the constant hands helping each other up.

That's what makes it continue to be great.

Hands helping each other up.

And we'll continue to make pro wrestling rise in cultural awareness.

How about in goddamn tickets sold?

Fuck rising tides and boats and hands lifting each other up and cultural awareness.

Sell me some fucking tickets, bitch, or elsewhere I'm going to cut you and find somebody that can.

That's the goddamn wrestling business.

You don't get to play with your friends all the fucking time.

Jesus Christ.

Go have goats.

That's, you know,

my advice to her.

No wonder she likes Moxley.

She likes goats and farm animals.

So it's right there in the same fucking personality traits.

But with Marina, too, she's been used with the main event act at AEW

to stand there and walk around

and do a judo throw.

And I mean, I'm not pushing for her to have a larger part in the thing, but nobody still, nothing has been done in a year with.

She's still doing the same thing.

She wanders around with the Buster Keaton face and she does a judo throw and interferes every once in a while.

And now, on pay-per-view, she's allowed to take a bump every great

so often.

It's the same thing, there's no development here.

What have they done

to make her draw money by like

not just Marina Schaefer, who they've been pushing for a year

on AEW television?

in some role, whatever this is, whatever

she's the

straw that stirs, whatever.

They got AJ Lee over in two weeks to draw money in a main event of a fucking pay-per-view.

They've been pushing this other girl for a fucking year at AEW, and she hasn't sold a ticket to do anything because she hadn't done anything.

And again, you go back to look at it a different way.

WWE has AJ Lee set to headline a fucking pay-per-view, and AEW brought back Riho.

What I'm excited excited for.

Where is this?

For the record, I'm excited for Riho versus Mercedes.

Oh, Christ.

But, but I mean,

that's the problem: is that some of these people who get handed these positions, like Ronda Rousey, because of

who they were previously,

never get a chance to go through the process and be fully smartened up to the fucking business.

And they

naturally then gravitate gravitate to these indie-minded small-timers who have the attitude about the business that she just expressed.

In hands, helping hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you,

sweet wrestling.

And they want to play with their friends

versus if you

started not thinking you were smart and you were broken in by experienced experienced professional people, and you were told how to think about the business,

then you would be with the smart folks over here making all the fucking money

knowing how to think about the goddamn wrestling business.

And a guy and his wife against a guy and his wife is going to draw more money than every Japanese legend and fucking friend that loves to do their routines with each other.

Because that's what people want to fucking see.

Can you run a company if you have multiple?

I mean, you can, and they have the money too, but you know what I mean.

Practically, if you have multiple people on your roster who require you to give them a producer that will go through everything weeks in advance and work over matches, if you have a bunch of people like that, it can't work.

Well, no, besides that, again,

it's a special,

a special occasion when you have Logan Paul in his first four or five matches or Ronda Rousey in her first match with the daughter of the goddamn boss at the time, whatever.

And you got to work this out.

Or some big main event that's drawing tens of millions of dollars if for some reason one or both of the talent feel like they got to rehearse or whatever.

But no, that's not what the majority of this is.

Even if you know what you're going to do, or even somebody tells you what the finish is,

you know, you still, you get there that day and go to the ring and work something out.

It's not like that you can just have everybody up and down the card, you know.

Oh, we'll send a producer down to Tallahassee or wherever you live next week to work this out for your third match on the fucking pay-per-view.

What?

No, if you're a professional,

and if they think it's bad,

again, I've mentioned that for the entire time that I was in the business as a manager,

you found out what you were going to fucking until I got on the booking team, obviously.

Then I had some clue.

You found out what you were going to goddamn do when you showed up at TV that night, an hour before the bell.

What the?

Yes, it's gotten more complicated, but

if you know at noon that day and you can't figure out something to do,

then

call Shopify and find a new line of work.

Should Tony Khan consider signing Ronda Rousey, maybe even Shayna Baszler?

Should he consider it?

He needs stars.

I'm not saying she'll be the easiest to work with.

She may not even want to do it.

It's a light situation.

But then besides that,

then the rest of his girls' division would have a cow because then...

Well, Rhoda didn't want to work with Alexa.

You think she's going to work with Riho?

Is there any kind of heat

Mercedes?

I think she'll work with her friends.

And then it'll be kind of like a hurt syndicate situation where there's no one to work with.

So you just kind of see them.

Every now and then they stand around and tell you something.

I think she needs to go back to the farm.

Rhonda.

Jim, speaking of AEW, some AEW news, let's get to that.

And we may not go too much longer.

Wardlow.

Your voice is giving out.

You're starting to feel puny.

It's getting there.

But Wardlow, speaking of feeling puny jim wardlow wardlow god damn just had his big return at for big

and he's gone

he just had his big return he beat up prince nana

at the pay-per-view and then he showed up that wednesday on tv standing there with don callis while other people did the physical stuff According to a report from Fightful Select,

Wardlow is dealing with another injury, and it is apparently, or at least rumored to be, a torn pectoral muscle, which would keep him out of the ring for an extended period of time.

He could possibly stay on TV as some kind of enforcer, but

yeah, the one-armed enforcer.

Man, how bad is that?

At least we know he could take David Jansen's wife.

Well,

Wardlow,

Carl Pavano, no Wardlow,

been laid low.

Yeah.

I'm not laughing at the guy getting hurt.

I'm laughing at the preposterousness of just the whole situation with, and I

would never want the guy to get hurt.

We've been wondering where he might be and when he might show back up.

And now he's gone again.

But you have to laugh.

It's what we used to call snake bit.

Not just with injury.

It's bad luck.

It's not just with injuries.

It's with, again,

they pick the same week to have 900 people in a barn in Philadelphia that the WWE is in Paris in front of 30,000 on their TV.

All of their top baby faces are hurt.

WWE gets A.J.

Lee.

They get Riho.

WWE gets ESPN.

I don't know what the fuck they get.

They're snake bit.

And a lot of it's self-inflicted, but some of it is just they just can't

buy a break.

They can buy

a big house every now and then or buy their way onto

the various things they bought their way onto.

But this is ridiculous.

And the thing is,

if what we're led to believe is true, that Wardlow got hurt on the angle

that he, that his return angle,

then we mentioned how preposterous that was.

That the goddamn main babyface was already down and beat up, and Wardlow came in and beat up the manager, but we're expected to believe he got hurt beating up the manager.

We're going to find out he got hurt trying to take off his jacket.

Well, and that's it.

Remember, I said, My God, it looks like they stuck an air hose up his ass.

He was blown up huge.

He wasn't, he was always a big guy, but he wasn't,

I don't know, like goddamn Jeep Svenson

And

did lack of ring activity for a year.

He doesn't wrestle anywhere else, he doesn't do indies.

So he get he gains all his weight and looks massive for his big return,

but he's fucking stiff as a board.

He hadn't been in the ring in a year, and he fucking does one move and he tears a peck.

I see another report here.

He He has now moved to Bulgaria.

Oh, come on now.

He's on the AEW pension plan.

You can't.

He has been literally, he's been paid for one match in the last year, right?

Well, I don't mean, I mean, he's been paid for a year to have one match.

I don't mean he's been paid for one match.

That's the thing.

He's worked one time, I think.

Has he worked?

Didn't he?

Well, maybe longer than that.

Yeah, I don't know.

And then he had American gladiators, apparently.

And he'll have his arms.

No, it was the British gladiators.

Is that what it was?

Or the UK gladiators, some gladiators away from us.

Oh,

I didn't know that.

And that's why he came back so big.

It looked like he was gladiator.

He ate everything else.

He went from meat and porkies one to meat and porkies three.

But now, whatever they had planned, and I mean, it didn't

didn't look like the return

like they had very much planned because he as i said he returned beat up prince nana

but whatever now that's out the window if that caused him to get hurt that's embarrassing just because that was even the way he was booked and then it led to that yeah

but now i would say he's in his late 30s right

No, he can't be that old.

Hold on.

Let me.

I think we said that one time.

We said, how old is he?

And you found out he was 30-something.

37 years old.

Wow.

Well,

I think he needs to be talking to Shopify at this point because five years ago,

when this fiasco first went on the air, everybody thought, well, he is a goddamn future star, breakout star.

And for a little while there, when he just powerbombed people.

If he had at that point

gotten the fuck out of there and gone to NXT,

we would have seen by now whether he's going to make it or not.

The only reason he wouldn't make it is if mentally he just can't get it.

And that's a possibility.

We've heard him speak a few times,

but

he would either be, we would either know now he wasn't going to make it, or he'd be probably on the main roster.

And now

he's never had that opportunity to learn.

He's

practically forgotten about.

He comes back and hurts himself again.

And now, by the time he gets back in the ring, he's going to be

almost 40, even closer.

They're not going to take him now over there in NXT.

If he got the

itch to go.

So I think the ship has sailed.

He could have been there, Batista, you know, an older, you know, not a young guy, and you could still.

I don't know, though.

I don't know, though, because, well, but I get with the age and the,

you know, those similarities, but Batista had the incredible magnetism and the appearance that Wardlow doesn't have that.

He can, he can get to people behind the power bombs, but he doesn't look like Batista.

But again, there was a moment.

32.

Yeah.

At 30.

Yeah.

At 32,

you saw enough that, okay, with training and somebody to explain what the fuck's going on to him instead of the

indie level stuff,

he was a candidate.

Now he's going to be 38 and he's done nothing in five years and

you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

I predict the ship has sailed.

And it's another one of those things that we criticized at the time.

And now years out, you look back on it.

And yeah, I mean, it deserves even more criticism now, but he was so hot coming out of that MJF match.

Turns babyface because the fans are demanding it.

They're chanting his name.

Beats MJF.

Now, of course, the next Wednesday is when MJF did that promo calling Tony Connor fucking Mark.

Yeah.

And then he disappeared after getting the shit kicked out of him by Wardlow.

And didn't Wardlow then get into a violent angle with the security guard?

That's the thing.

That's the thing that really took it down.

The security guards led by Mark Sterling.

Oh, I forgot about that.

That's what it was.

He's worse.

Stokely looks like Heenan next to Mark Sterling.

But if he had come out of that pay-per-view beating MJF no matter what he did the next Wednesday, if he had been in a top thing,

it would have meant something and you would have had something to build on.

Instead,

they took him right back down.

Right back down.

Well, get well soon, Waldorf, or Wardlow, excuse me.

Yeah, well, see, and unfortunately, by the time that he's ready to come back, they won't know the difference between Wardlow and Waldorf.

Jim, on the topic of AEW,

this got into the news, and several listeners have sent over various things about it.

Photos from MJF's wedding.

Have you seen this?

I just heard about this yesterday.

I didn't get my invitation.

It must have been lost in the mail.

But apparently, he married Alicia Atut.

That is right.

That is correct.

And she's now Alicia Atut.

Fine, fine.

What's his name?

Fine.

Friedman.

Furbag.

What is

well, you know, it's funny.

She took his name.

It's funny, Jim.

The first time I saw, I think either one of them was in a promo together, the one where he called her Tits McGee from Horror Island.

That was the first time I saw either one of them.

And now they are married.

That's a good name, Tits McGee.

I got to fucking write that down.

Use that somebody.

Well, the photos have gone around.

According to Dave Meltzer, apparently, MJF is saying that he's not happy about it, that people went on the social media pages of various friends and family and distributed the pictures.

But these pictures.

Well, wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Now,

are you mad?

Are you mad then at the people that walked through the parking lot, found the lost money money and gave it to charity?

Or are you mad at the people that were careless and lost the money in the parking lot to begin with?

I'm asking you.

You're the.

I just asked you a question.

But I'm turning it around to you.

You're the star of all the show.

Then he ought to be pissed off at his friends that had to plaster it all over social media if he didn't want the goddamn pictures.

That's why I had to quit taking pictures.

Because

people just put them every goddamn where.

Well, Jim, as we're talking about this, some of this needs to be visual.

So I've just sent you an email

with an image, a group shot, a large AEW contingent,

babyface and heel,

man,

woman and human, all together.

Persons with other people.

Various persons here.

I've sent you this to your email address.

And of course, it ain't got here yet.

The question the fans are wondering is, what do you think of this going public?

The idea that you have this group photo.

Somehow the groom is not the man in the middle.

But this group photo of everyone from AEW, what are your thoughts on this disseminator?

Well, it just landed here.

So I will look at it right now.

Jesus Christ, it's a big crowd.

Wait a minute.

Why is Tony Khan next to MJF?

Where is the MJF's wife?

It's Tony Khan hugging MJF.

And then

some fucking bald guy that looks like he works for the building is next to Tony and then the wife.

I think that's MJF's father based on AEW TV in the past.

So Tony got in between MJF and his father at MJF's wedding?

Well, again, it looks like an AEW group shot.

Of course, Tony wasn't.

So Tony Schiavone, where does Schiavone live these days?

Is he still in Charlotte?

He lives in Atlanta now.

I thought he was in Georgia at least a few years ago.

Yeah, he's lived in Atlanta in recent times.

Where was this wedding?

Why would you expect a man the age of Schiavone to fucking travel that far?

Well, if Tony

and Tony Khan's flying everyone in, why not?

Boy, if you weren't married and you were going to get married and I had to get on a plane to go to your wedding, you wouldn't see me at your wedding.

You know, the good thing about this, though, with there's the girls and there's the guys, and there's baby faces and heels, but luckily, I only know who about three of these people are.

Tony Shivasi, Danny Garcia trying to peep his way over MJF's shoulder.

And otherwise, you wouldn't really know who any of these people are if they were walking down the street.

So it's not breaking Kayfait.

Well, obviously, Karen Jarrett and Jeff behind her on the right there.

And on the left, one of the big things that people are complaining about, or at least people are talking about.

Wait a minute.

Okay, I see Karen now.

I didn't know that was Jeff, but see, it's a very small photo, but I thought that that was Kenny Rogers or a Kenny Rogers impersonator rather than Jeff Jarrett.

But Hangman Adam Page is in this photo.

What are your thoughts?

Who's the guy that either looks like a vivid video porn agent or a wannabe Barry Gibb on the left right next to Paige.

Who is that?

I believe that's Kip Sabian and Penelope.

Well, Pip looks bigger than he does on television.

I guess just next to all these people that are smaller.

What did you ask about?

Oh, but Paige, Paige shouldn't be there with MJF, should he?

Aren't they mad at each other?

They're in a feud.

They're in a top feud.

Paige is the babyface AEW champion who's been having these issues with MJF.

This photo gets well no wonder he's standing all the all the ways 10 feet away with like eight or 10 people in between between him.

So thankfully, elsewhere, the whole thing could have degenerated into a brawl.

Is this an issue?

Should it be an issue?

Well, yes, it's not an issue that they all went to the wedding.

It's an issue that none of these dumb shits are smart enough not to put pictures of baby faces and heels up on Facebook or wherever

for everybody to see it.

But you don't expect anything different because most of this generation

thinks there's nothing wrong with it and hasn't been taught properly.

And apparently, nobody in this generation has been taught how to take a good picture or how to pose a large group either.

Because half these people, you can't even see who the fuck it is.

Their heads are obscured, their faces are obscured.

Many of them, their appearance is

improved by that method.

But God damn,

what you needed to do was get the tallest people to stand up in the back

and then get the shortest people to kneel down in the front and then get the medium people to stand in the middle.

And now you don't have to go out so wide and you can get a little closer on people's faces.

There are pictures of the moon that are farther away than

these people are

not recognizable.

It's terrible photography.

Did they pay this person?

Again, I don't know who's taking, I have no idea what the hell is happening.

So how did you get this picture?

Because it's all over the internet.

Were you there?

I certainly was not.

Well, it would have been a bigger haul also if you'd have had anything to do with it.

It looks like they're in the goddamn breezeway of a Hilton Garden Inn.

Well, listen, the question has come up, what would Bill Watts do?

How would Bill Watts do?

He'd have come in there with a big stick and walked tall and knocked the punch over.

taken a big piece of cake and fired everybody or at least fined them $50.

The idea of baby faces and heels, let alone the top babyface and you could argue, one of the top heels who are feuding with each other, both being there, Tony Khan jumped into the fray and said, Alicia is a great person, and the fan favorites came to support her on her big night.

Now, that's a Bill Watts explanation.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Is that acceptable to Watts?

No, that explanation would be the only connection to Bill Watts would be it smelled as bad as one of Bill Watts' jockstraps.

No, that's ridiculous.

And also, nobody knows who Alicia is because she's only on a Saturday night show that when she interviews people for 30 seconds.

And

so it's not like she would engender this goddamn outpouring of.

And besides,

why would they have to go to support her?

Because they realize she's making a mistake of her life, marrying a weasel like MJF.

Why didn't they just elope?

For heaven's sake.

It could have saved everybody all this trouble.

We wouldn't have had to fucking dissect this.

None of these people would have had to left their homes to go to this goddamn wedding.

Does anybody go to a wedding for fun?

Have you ever gone to a wedding where you enjoyed yourself?

I'm not a big fan of other people's weddings.

I don't have a good time at these things, though.

So it's a lot like other people's children.

You're happy that they have them, but you don't want to fucking participate your own self.

Well, again, maybe they've been dreaming of a big wedding for years filled with all their favorite.

If this these are all their fucking favorite people, then goddamn, they need to go back to dreaming.

But how did Vladimir, the super fan, how did he get in the back row there?

What?

See him peeking up over?

That's not.

He's so flat.

Next to the.

I don't think that's

there's a guy over Danny Danny Garcia's shoulder that looks like he's auditioning to be the next Sven Gooley.

Yeah, that guy does look ghastly.

Like something's wrong.

Is that Cash Wheeler or a guy cosplaying as Timmy White next to him?

And then there's Vladimir over the top of his head.

I don't think that's Cash Wheeler, is it?

Well, he...

No.

I don't know.

See, this, again, it's a bad photo.

Who's the guy that's?

It's a guy with a round head and a beard.

And there's a guy next to him pointing at his dick.

Who's that?

Well, now, too many pronouns, pal.

are you saying he's pointing at the other guy's dick or his own dick well look there's only one guy with his hand out like look at it it's not really well it looks it's not really

pointing at it it's more like he's about to cup his balls

you're like here it is i'm gonna weigh this thing right now very carefully in my hand did someone say hey everyone aew let's all get together let's have a big aew photo and then tony just jumped into the middle Because Tony's the only one like not standing still.

He should have also, well, he's not.

He's standing still.

It's just everyone else in here that look at him.

He's squirming a bit, but because he's, he's mashed himself in between MJF and his father, his coat is pulled because it's not unbuttoned.

And it's just, it's like they've wrapped him in some type of vinyl bag that they're trying to contain him in.

And then apparently there's a waiter over beside.

See the guy behind Jeff Jarrett?

He's not even looking at the camera.

That's Max Caster.

That's probably, sir,

you need to put your card down for another hour on the ballroom.

I think that's Max Caster.

If you notice, he's a head taller than everyone else.

He's wearing glasses.

He wants to be able to read.

Well, all right.

Looks very bookish.

Is it a good idea to invite Tony?

Like, do you think if you invite Tony and you give him a few drinks and he has a good enough time that maybe he'll just say, it's on me.

How do you know he was invited?

He had to be invited.

There's no way MJF,

you could argue a political player in AEW.

There's no way he's not inviting Tony Khan.

No way.

Well, I've just said Tony might have just showed up on his own.

He's like, hey, he's like me.

His invitation got lost in the mail.

No, I'm sure he was invited and

he may very well have paid for something.

Who knows?

Who do you think gave the best gift?

Who do you think gave the worst gift?

Again, without knowing who all these people are, I would have to think Shivani would have been the cheapest.

Yeah, Shivani shivani was probably just there for the free champagne

all right jimo of course who are the girls i i recognize karen i believe

rosa in front of karen and behind she's gained weight and will you be nice she looks well i'm i am she was paint painfully thin before that's that's a compliment she looks very nice and behind her i believe is the widow of brodie lee

i think amanda huber is her name and that's aubrey okay well then i'm I wouldn't be expected to.

Is that Aubrey Edward?

Jesus Christ, is she standing on a box?

That's Aubrey Edward.

She has a very defiant grin on her face, but again, she looks

massively tall.

She says, Maybe none of these people are very fucking big.

Well, we will stay on top of the wedding news and

see what more photos and whatever else we can find in the future.

Jim, Yes.

If you had a big wedding and your photos somehow escaped after sucked like this, after they were posted all over social media, you may want to sue.

I'd want to, I'll tell you exactly what I'd gall darn do.

I would call the best lawyer that I know, and I would say, just go scorched earth on these some bitches and leave no stone unturned until you have broken them and put them in a poorhouse and put all their money in my pocket.

And I know who I'd

Call Steven

P.

News

News, Telestein News, TV, News, TV, News, Tuesday, If you need

Tuesdays, TV News, TV News, TV, News, TV, News, TV, News, TV, News, TV, News, and Outlaw Mud Show or Tuesday.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen.

Stephen P.

New,

the wizard, the man behind the curtain that pulls all the strings in the jurisprudence world, new lawoffice.com, 87750 Steve.

He will

quickly determine what the right course of action is, and then he will blister a son of a gun, leave no meat on his bones, and leave the remains out in the desert for the vultures to pick and choose from.

And he will get you compensated for the wrong that has been done to you, and that wrong will be righted.

The frown will be turned upside down by the man, the myth, the legend, the barrister of champions, Stephen P.

New, 877-50 Steve.

That's right, get even with Stephen, newlawoffice.com.

But Jim, let's get a few more questions or a few questions.

We haven't had any yet, really.

I've got some questions, but go ahead.

Jim, let's get some questions here before we wrap things up.

Speaking of West Virginia, this one was sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group by Caleb Henchman.

As a native West Virginian, I'd like to know Jim's go-to tutor's biscuit order.

Well, first of all, it's not Caleb, it's Caleb.

Caleb, everybody knows that.

And I can't remember what the ding-dong name of the thing is, but I'll tell you what, I like a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit.

A big old sausage patty and nicely fluffed up scrambled eggs on top of there with some cheese and maybe even a piece of bacon.

But at Tudor's Biscuit World, they have a variety of biscuits to fit all

tastes and shapes and sizes.

Promo code JCE.

All right, Jim, our next question

sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent by Rob Diggity.

Diggity?

Does Jim think Paul Heyman or Jim Ross could have taken TNA higher than Hogan and Bischoff,

or was it always doomed?

Okay, well,

Hogan and Bischoff and JR and Heyman.

So is he saying that we want to compare, we want to

JR and Heyman are going to be the team or either one of them individually versus what Hogan and Bischoff did.

What is the exact?

He did say or, so it could be or and or okay.

Heyman definitely, see, here's the thing.

And what job would they have would they have had?

What power would they have had?

It's not fair to compare something that might have happened with something that did happen.

Whether or not Hogan and Bischoff could have done a good job or not, they probably couldn't.

But they were unfairly handicapped also by the fact that Dixie still owned the thing and was involved at some point, and they had no office staff whatsoever to compete in a major national type of situation.

Having said that,

if you just.

If you said, okay, here is TNA owned by Dixie Carter, but she is going to turn over complete creative control and complete control over what talent is brought in and utilized and what talent's fired and etc.

And they've got 18 months

and nobody's going to fuck with them.

Then,

even though the TNA office and the office personnel and all the interns that Dixie had hired out of college and et cetera, weren't in anywhere near competitive with the giant office staff in Stamford of Titan Sports, Paul Heyman would have done the best job, Jim Ross would have done the next best job,

and Hogan and Bischoff would have done what they did, which is have shitty ideas,

hire all their old friends,

and

run the place pretty much into fucking ruin.

But yeah, Heyman could have done a better job than anybody,

but only under the conditions that

they give the guy full control and they stick with it for a period of time to see how it's going to work out.

In the case of Hogan and Bischoff, they couldn't really stick with it any longer because they'd have been out of business.

But you know what I'm saying.

All right, Jim, our next question sent via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group was sent by Tony Kearns.

I posed this question to the.

You You think he's just changing his name a little bit there to avoid detection?

I posed this question to the cult a little while back, but I wanted Jim's opinion.

Does Jim look at Seth Rollins the way he did Triple H

in that Rollins is not the guy, but the one who works with the guy?

So the question is: how do you see Seth Rollins?

You know, that might

be the case, but I don't know that it's pronounced as much now as it was then, because you had

at the time, four or five really megastars, Austin, Rock, Taker,

Foley could fit in there at that point, at that level,

over that, you know, three or four or five year period.

And Triple H was right there with all of them, but he was never, and this is.

This is maybe, you know, what the revisionist history has done for us with all of the, you know,

footage that's been replayed of all his victories and championship wins and et cetera.

But at the time, and I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Brian, but from 1998 to 2003 or four, whatever it was, Triple H was in a lot of those main events and a lot of that picture, but he was never seen as a box office draw at the level of an Austin or a Rock or a Taker or a Foley

or

maybe one or two people in that rarefied air, even a Kane at one point.

It was, it just wasn't comparable to

the gates, the crowds, the ratings, the whatever that those other guys had done.

Or am I misremembering this?

No, I mean, I don't think you can compare anyone to Austin or The Rock.

And The Rock may be the closest comparison just because they both kind of came up at the exact same time.

But Austin, and I'd say The Rock,

those two on top really changed the business.

Undertaker and Mankind were a big part of that main event mix.

But I think Triple H benefited from that, from everything getting built up the way it did, more than any of them did.

Well, yeah, and also the guy that works with the guy that draws the money is an important spot

because

the one key thing is that he was able to work with all those guys.

You want a guy that can have a good match

and do shit with all of those stars.

And he did that.

But so there's no shame at that level necessarily in being the guy that worked with the guy that drew the money.

But I always saw him at that point.

And then in the mid-2000s, when I quit watching and

He and Stephanie were even closer and he was a member of the family, I know he was beating everybody and his brother.

I don't know or care about that point, but they,

you know, they didn't have any bigger stars at that particular time.

They did

in that attitude era and shortly after.

And when you started watching Seth Rollins or working with him specifically in Ring of Honor, what did you think his limit was?

Where did you think he'd go?

Well, I, again, you know, I go back to watching him and Davey Richards that night in Toronto and thinking this is a modern flaring steamboat kind of thing because they're so athletic and they're

hitting hard in safe places.

They weren't doing crazy shit, but it was definitely impactful.

I said, this is a modern version of that.

And they're being athletic, but there's entertainment in it.

I think Seth, and he, of course, he's,

it's been 16, 17 years or whatever.

So he's slowed down now in terms of just doing crazy shit that he did.

I don't even mean crazy.

They weren't going through 15 tables, but just

40 minutes all-out athletic shit.

He's picking his spots now.

He's learned to slow down and sell.

He's a more professional, all-around performer now.

But I always thought

that he was going to be a top guy because not only did he have the size and the

good looks,

but he had the ability in the ring.

And

we were just seeing, just starting to see a point where maybe whether he could cut a promo or not.

Because he still had a bit of the whiny voice.

And so

that was, I was disappointed when,

as I've told the story, when he left and took the deal in NXT, when we were just getting started with the Sinclair version of Ring of Honor, because I wanted to work with him longer.

But I was happy to have

helped advise and or delay him from signing an offer that TNA gave him.

It was just bogus horseshit

so that he would be not tied up when NXT called, which they did shortly thereafter.

So,

and that was the same time as Chris Hero and Claudio went to NXT, and they were my favorite heel tag team in Ring of Honor.

And I knew what was going to happen.

They were going to like Claudio because of his physique.

They weren't going to like Chris because of his physique.

They didn't realize that Chris had taught Claudio most of what he knew.

And they were both better off together as a tag team because they were tremendous that way.

So they pushed Claudio.

They buried Chris.

They ran him off.

And then Claudio never really

made it to the upper echelon, but now he's stuck over in La La Land.

So

there you go.

What were we talking about?

Seth Rollins.

Well, I'm done.

This question was sent via the Cult According Facebook group by Michael Mills.

Not Mike Mills of Booking the Territory, I don't believe.

But hello, Mike, if he's out there.

But here's a question from Michael.

Does Jim know why they assigned Heyman to Brock Lesnar when he went to the main roster?

Hard to imagine them not being linked now after all these years.

Well, yes.

I mean, that it was even more important then than it is now because

Brock was still new.

He was still green.

He needed somebody

not only setting up things for him or, you know, giving him pointers or tips or advice or whatever, but somebody that would also be at ringside

to maybe throw in a comment or two, but just

The same thing that Heyman does for a lot of guys in that position

is try to

hide their greenness, cover up their weaknesses, and accentuate their strengths.

So

that was perfect because remember, Brock started in OVW, was not a natural,

as we've talked about many times, natural pro wrestler, especially not next to Shelton, because Shelton had been a fan and was a freak.

But also then Brock pulled strings to get out of Louisville early and go back home to Minnesota.

Claim his previous girlfriend was pregnant or whatever.

I can't, but yeah, that was his excuse.

And he ended up trading some with Brad Reagan's in a barn.

So he really,

when they brought him up there, he still had a ways to go as far as figuring out

how to think about the business.

Now he's got it.

But that was 20-something years ago, and he had not been in the ring with every major star up to that time at that point.

So,

you know, he needed somebody to

guide him in the proper way.

Were you surprised that it worked out so well, personally and professionally?

Well,

I mean,

I never would have thought that Brock and Heyman would have ended up good friends because Brock hates people.

And

While I know that Paul recognized the incredible financial benefit of being associated with Brock Lester, I didn't think he could tolerate a fucking,

you know,

cowboy from Saskatoon or whatever.

They're completely different people.

But

I knew it would work out professionally because it's a perfect combination.

I just, I didn't know they'd get to be bosom buddies.

All right, Jim, one last question here this week.

We'll have a lot more questions next week here on the show.

Jim, this was sent in via the Cult of Cornet Facebook group.

That is

Corey Pogue.

Can Jim explain what the difference is between beating someone clean and beating someone flat?

Well, no, sometimes when you beat someone clean, it is flat.

It's too.

When you beat somebody clean, that means you've just beat them with your move or with your talent.

There's no, they have no bitch.

You didn't cheat in any way.

They didn't suffer some kind of, you know, injured body part, which played a part in failing them at the end.

You just, you won the match straight out.

Boom, one, two, three.

No doubt about it.

When you beat somebody flat, that's the same thing, but it's more described as flat.

Like he just beat him flat when it's an angle match, when it's because I mean, the finish of every squash match was you beat him clean.

The finish of every match where it's just a

chance to show the big star against maybe one of the preliminary guys, you beat him clean.

There's nothing wrong with that, but when you beat somebody flat,

it's like this was an angle or a grudge or some kind of allegedly big match that might have sold some tickets, and you just beat the guy flat.

There was no

meat to it, nothing to chew on, nothing to get excited about, no no reason to bring it back,

and just kind of flat.

You expect a one-sided squash to be flat in the finish by the nature of it, but you don't expect a goddamn alleged competitive main event or angle or storyline match to be just flat at the end.

Slight difference.

Well, the only thing flat here will be the notes.

With that, Jim, the drive-through is closed.

That was a flat way.

See, there was a flat one.

It was supposed to be a big angle, a big show, and instead it was a flat finish.

All right.

Lots of fun.

That brought it back up.

Yeah, sure it did.

I am losing my voice.

We'll be back on the experience in a few days.

And next week, back here in the drive-thru, patreon.com/slash cornet.

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Subscribe, watch videos.

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What's going on, Jim?

Heroes and friends, the new book, ladies and gentlemen, It Cures Hoarseness.

Available Saturday, October 11th at noon Eastern.

And how come I'm the one that does all the talking and you're the one losing your voice?

At jimcornet.com.

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But until next time, if there is a next time, and of course, right back here next week on the drive-thru for Jim Cornette on the great Brian Last, telly-ho!

We need more time to rehearse these things.