Episode 419

Speaker 0 Hello!

Speaker 1 Hello again, friends!

Speaker 2 And you are our friends, and welcome back to another edition, a thick edition of Jim Cornett's drive-through right here.

Speaker 2 Another cold day for some of us. And if it's not cold for you,

Speaker 2 it is for us. Thank you then.
Yes. Welcome to another show.
I'm your host, the great Brian Last.

Speaker 2 We have a lot to get to, some reviews, a lot of history, and so much more with this man, the leader of the cult of Cornet, Mr. Jim Cornette.

Speaker 1 The cold, Mr. Jim Cornette.
Boy,

Speaker 1 that note you hit there, that Zam right there, that was like one of those trumpet blasts on the sound effects in the 66 Batman series. Bam, boom,

Speaker 1 Brian's, organ,

Speaker 1 Brian's,

Speaker 1 organ, organ, organ, organ, organ, organ, organ, organ, Brian.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 All righty then. So, you know, goddammit.
What are you already, you're scoffing at me and snickering at me when I'm just trying to give an assessment of your

Speaker 1 playing that, You know what? I've, I've come to because we don't have video because we're grown adults. We don't need to stare at each other's fucking faces for three hours while we do this.

Speaker 1 It's the theater of the mind, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 2 Your podcast would be so much better if I could just stare at you.

Speaker 1 Then I'd have to cut my nose hair on a regular basis. And I've let that go too since I became a senior citizen.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, everybody's camera is looking right up their fucking nose like a goddamn ENT exam. But nevertheless, I've got the image of you, Brian, there.

Speaker 1 I've realized what's going on with you and the organ playing because you're a one-man band there,

Speaker 1 where

Speaker 1 you're an on-air co-host, as well as you're an organ player. You're the band leader, as well as you're recording this whole thing, because Lord knows I have no idea how to do it.

Speaker 1 And so I read, since you're performing multiple tasks, I've visualized now

Speaker 1 what your setup is of why your organ playing sounds like that, because you're leaning over trying to be in front of the microphone to talk.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, you got your left hand over here on a keyboard where you're operating the recording apparatus.

Speaker 1 And with your right hand, you're holding up your goddamn notes and everything because you're the producer.

Speaker 1 So that only leaves your unsocked right foot to reach over there onto that keyboard and play those those ivory tickled notes. So that's what's happening.

Speaker 1 You're like a fucking modern day Rosemary Woods. And boy, that reference has popped the over 60 crowd.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you're just you're playing it with your right foot, with your, with your, you're tickling the ivories with your toes, your tickle toes.

Speaker 1 Did I come close to describing it?

Speaker 2 Well, you know, I've kind of been working on the tickle toe style. That's kind of my thing.

Speaker 2 Chico marks meets helen keller that's kind of my style

Speaker 2 and i think i'm kind of nailing it but no i do have uh the keyboard slash organ apparatus is set up to my left and everything else is kind of on a big desk in front of me two microphones or well the microphone two computers the speakers

Speaker 1 I think we established before that, yeah, you're where it's at.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 uh-huh.

Speaker 1 All righty. Well, don't get too jocular here before we start with your program.
You know, we were near the brink of societal collapse earlier today as we sit here to record this.

Speaker 1 We were on the brink of disaster. A cataclysmic occurrence of seismic importance had happened not only here in this country, but across the globe.

Speaker 1 And there was panic in the streets, people running around with their hair on fire and waving their arms in the air and screaming like chickens.

Speaker 1 Twitter went down.

Speaker 1 you you even you experienced this in the process of your trying to tweet our business out to the to the tweeting public

Speaker 1 what did what is this cloud flare business who are these people has some kind of sinister society like a goddamn

Speaker 1 You would fight on the man from Uncle now in grip and hold of our internet technology here? What's going on, Mr. Smarty Pants? You know this stuff.

Speaker 2 I can't speak to the sinister society other than to say that's a great tag team name.

Speaker 2 But the server for a lot of different websites, including Twitter or X,

Speaker 2 as it's stupidly been renamed, but I still call it Twitter.

Speaker 2 The server went down. So it affected people trying to get on Twitter.
But for instance, it affected some people trying to download the experience, which had just gone up hours before.

Speaker 1 So, well, wait a minute. Hold on now then.
Who is this server that went down? Have we been overworking him?

Speaker 1 What's the matter with him?

Speaker 2 Why did he go down? It's not that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 Is he a drunkard?

Speaker 1 Is he a drunkard of some kind? He's not serving very well if he's going down on the job and now they can't listen to our show.

Speaker 2 Well, there's a lot of people who think servers need to be paid more, but that's besides the point. What I'm saying, Jim, is that there was a global outage that affected websites around the world.

Speaker 2 Around the world. And briefly, because it was rather brief.
I mean, people acted like the world fell apart. It was a few hours at the most.
Some websites like Twitter were down.

Speaker 1 Well, you don't get any goddamn explanation. It's just, oh my God, it's out.
You can't do this.

Speaker 1 And I experienced it when I get up in the morning and look at Twitter to see what the twits have tweeted.

Speaker 1 It said, oh, you can't do this. It's Cloud Flare.

Speaker 1 Well, cloud flare, for one thing, sounds goddamn vaguely sinister, like there's some kind of going to be some radioactivity going on in the clouds that's preventing it shit. And don't go outside.

Speaker 1 Cloud flare.

Speaker 2 That's what you think of when you think of clouds. You think of a mushroom cloud?

Speaker 1 Well, in this day and age, what the fuck? When you got a big screen that's instead of the nice little Twitter thing, you got cloud flare

Speaker 2 error.

Speaker 1 It's down. You don't know what's happened around the world.
And that's jarring. And they ought to at least have a picture of some kind of Bob Ross painting.

Speaker 1 We're momentarily inconveniencing you because of an electronic issue.

Speaker 1 You know, there's a please stand by.

Speaker 2 There's a Bob Ross channel on one of maybe on several services, maybe on YouTube too, but I think it was on like...

Speaker 2 One of the things on the downstairs TV, like Pluto or Tubi or just one of these things that are just there.

Speaker 2 And they have a Bob Ross channel 24 hours a day streaming Bob Ross.

Speaker 2 And you go and you watch it. And I still love watching Bob Ross.
There's something very soothing about it. And also,

Speaker 2 if you're a creative person, it kind of gets you going.

Speaker 2 Fascinating what this man can accomplish in 20-something minutes.

Speaker 1 It's better than watching TMZ.

Speaker 2 But I guess to pay for this channel, they have to insert commercials that weren't necessarily there on PBS.

Speaker 2 Uh-oh. So he's painting and he's just like, All right, let's make a happy little crowd.
Hey, the new Verizon. I just, what the fuck? Just screaming at you.
It's so much louder than Bob Ross.

Speaker 2 It throws you off. I know it's probably hard to screen those commercials.
And I don't know if they just take what they can get with the Bob Ross channel, but man, it kind of ruins the experience.

Speaker 1 Well, somebody's got to pay the estate of Bob fucking Ross.

Speaker 1 He can't just be giving away his happy little clouds for free anymore.

Speaker 1 Happiness is at a premium in the world. But so now Twitter's back up.

Speaker 1 Everybody's okay, but I'm going to be the one, Brian. I'm telling you, I am going to be the last person

Speaker 1 able to exist in this society without computerized technology.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 rely on it for business. And it is convenient when I want to know something, but

Speaker 1 I still know how to do all the other shit. I still have my address and phone book on paper.
I still know how to read a map. I know how to go to stores and purchase things on a personal basis.

Speaker 1 I don't need the smartphone because I don't do the texting.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to be the, and then I'm going to be giving classes to all these dumb shits under 40.

Speaker 2 Where online?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I'm going to, I'm going to be up on a giant stage above the madden crowd and I'm gonna speak from the mountaintop.

Speaker 2 The mountaintop,

Speaker 1 the mountaintop, the mountain. See, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna affect an accent because it'll make me sound even more like I know what I'm doing,

Speaker 1 and I'm gonna preach all these common sense things like it's a goddamn telephone, it can be wired into your fucking wall,

Speaker 1 things like that.

Speaker 2 I think about it more and more because of the coming robot war against human beings.

Speaker 2 You kind of want to get away from all these internet or smart things because they're going to take them over. And then they take over your house and they kill you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, see, well, there's nothing in my house that's smart, pal, and it's going to stay that way.

Speaker 2 Your refrigerator is, isn't it? And your TV.

Speaker 1 That was a joke. I was.

Speaker 2 They're going to all start talking. I'm telling you.

Speaker 1 Hyperbolic. No, they talk to each other, but they don't talk to me.

Speaker 1 I turn the volume down on them,

Speaker 1 but they can still communicate with each other. But so far, except for every once in a while, I go in the kitchen every morning and,

Speaker 1 you know, the refrigerator is about a foot over to the left. Otherwise, Net, I haven't noticed anything.

Speaker 1 All righty. You know what else came up the other day to me, Brian? I'll have you know and or and make you aware of this.

Speaker 1 Somebody tweeted, again, it's the center of the universe, but somebody tweeted an old clip from the Saturday night TBS show from the studio of Rick Steiner, you know, messing out wrestling, abusing, making fun of one of the job guys and Kevin Sullivan's there, cheering him on.

Speaker 1 And Steiner got him kind of a, he wasn't hurting him, but he got him in the sugar hold and he was using his other hand to

Speaker 1 pick the guy's nose or whatever.

Speaker 1 And I just tweeted something about, yeah, this is the, this is the, you know, a loose version of the sugar hold, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 And I got people to, oh, that's what the sugar hold is. I've heard of it, but I've never seen it.

Speaker 1 And you know what? That got me started thinking,

Speaker 1 even the amateur wrestlers that get into business

Speaker 1 just for a fucking hold,

Speaker 1 that if nothing else, so that they can work the people

Speaker 1 or in any context, nobody uses a sugar hold anymore. And some people don't know what it looks like when it gets referred to.
And it's so fucking simple.

Speaker 1 Have you noticed that?

Speaker 2 You know, years ago when we had William Harding on the 605 Super Podcast, I talked about his sugar hold escape from Bob.

Speaker 1 His adventures in Frankfurt.

Speaker 2 That was one of the interesting things.

Speaker 2 It's something you hear about. It's something wrestlers, especially guys who came from the snake pit in Florida, talk about.

Speaker 2 But there aren't any great examples.

Speaker 2 When you would ask a wrestler who knew what it was, if they knew of a good example on YouTube or something,

Speaker 2 they would say there's nothing. And sometimes it would be like, hey, there's footage of Bob Roop stretching a fan for a moment.
He almost kind of has like the,

Speaker 2 what the fuck. So, no, I don't think a lot.
I think most people have no idea what it looks like i'm still not sure what it looks like

Speaker 1 well well in that case then young brian imagine that you are down on the mat and you're not flat on your back straight out you are turned over on let's say because i lay your left hand side so you're on your left side straight out laying on the wrestling mat right

Speaker 1 i am going to kneel down

Speaker 1 right behind your back

Speaker 1 and i'm going to take i sound like Billy Jack now in the movie. I'm going to take my right foot.

Speaker 1 I'm going to take my left arm

Speaker 1 and I am going to go

Speaker 1 hook over your right arm,

Speaker 1 behind your head at your neck,

Speaker 1 and then

Speaker 1 over your left arm. So basically, my entire left arm is behind your neck with both of your

Speaker 1 goddamn arms extended

Speaker 1 over the top of your head. You see what I'm saying now?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, again, I've heard this explanation before.
I still need to see it, but yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, and then with my right arm, I'm going to reach down and I'm going to grab a hold and I'm going to post up real good with my left hand. So I've got those locked, but also my arms are straight.

Speaker 1 And at the same time, because I've got your body turned sideways with my weight in a certain way and trapped, you're trapped from turning backwards because I'm right behind you and I got my weight on you.

Speaker 1 I am going to crank that and it's either going to pop the blood vessels in your eyeballs or it's going to pop your eardrums or it's another version of choking somebody out because you can compress

Speaker 1 the neck and et cetera and all the various parts enough to for the guy go,

Speaker 1 that's what Watts put on the fucking guy that wanted to wrestle doc that night and then didn't want to wrestle, couldn't get him out of the ropes.

Speaker 1 But Watts put a fucking sugar on him and cranked it. And the guy stood up, had no idea where he was, got out of the ring, walked about halfway to the front door and fell down again.

Speaker 1 Wait, nevertheless.

Speaker 2 When was that? Where Bill Watts put the sugar hold on someone who wanted to fight Dr. Death?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 there was

Speaker 1 some guy at a TV taping in Shreveport, Louisiana, one night in mid-south that had

Speaker 1 somehow i don't know but he had made a bad impression on everybody because they this is the only time they ever did this i was there for a year at every tv but this guy somehow had insisted he was going to be a wrestler he could be a wrestler he could whip a wrestler whatever the i'm going to show you what i can do and okay motherfucker

Speaker 1 And the guys actually stayed after TV to watch this fucking guy show everybody what he could do.

Speaker 1 So Watts said, okay, wrestle Dr. Death.
Well, he gets in the ring with Dr. Death.

Speaker 1 And suddenly, the only thing the guy wants to do is grab a hold of the goddamn ropes. Anytime Doc would try to drag him out of the ropes, he wouldn't let go.
The referee would say, you got to let go.

Speaker 1 He lets go. He jumps back.
He can't get him. He can't fucking.

Speaker 1 Doc can't do anything with him because he's holding on to the ropes like a goddamn chimpanzee. So finally, after they've done this for five or six minutes, I said, all right, all right.
Tell you what,

Speaker 1 we need more

Speaker 1 idea of what you can do as a professional style. So tell you what, I'm an old man.

Speaker 1 I'm 45 and this fucking college age guy or whatever, he's beefy and chunky, but now he's also halfway blown up because he's been gripping the goddamn ropes every time Doc gets a hold of him, like the lifeboat at the Titanic.

Speaker 1 So Watts says here, I'm an old man

Speaker 1 he takes his jacket off and his hat and everything and he says i'll give you a headlock they get a headlock on me show me what you can do

Speaker 1 the guy grabbed watson a headlock just like he'd seen on television and watts give him that thes belly to back over on top of his

Speaker 1 head and turned him over and put the fucking

Speaker 1 the sugar hold on him and cranked up until the fucking guy's, it looked like his right hand could pick his own left ear.

Speaker 1 And he just turned him in all kinds of goddamn contorted positions with just a sugar hole.

Speaker 1 And then he let him up and because the guy couldn't do anything else and was screaming at the time.

Speaker 1 And the guy stood up and got out of the ring. And as I recall, just was started to walk toward the front door and fell out again.
And what's all right, workout's over.

Speaker 1 And then we all left and went home. But, you know, and Watson, he split his pants, getting the sugar hold on him.
I just thought of that. He got him in a sugar hold.

Speaker 1 Watson's pants, his fucking white, goddamn underwear, mooning everybody, but he's cranking on that fucking, because it wasn't like they did that regularly to entertain the boys and be sadistic and horrible.

Speaker 1 Somehow, this guy

Speaker 1 had presented himself and made such

Speaker 1 an impression on

Speaker 1 whoever, Grizzly Smith, Jack Curtis, whoever was at the front door, whoever had lined this up, there was really, really no local Shreveport promoter.

Speaker 1 This was just some asshole that had pissed everybody off enough. They're like, all right, you want to wrestle somebody.
Here we go.

Speaker 1 And then he fucking pussied out when he'd built it all up. And then Watts fucking

Speaker 1 sugared him.

Speaker 2 So this was a mark running his mouth. However, it's still a mark.

Speaker 2 Any issue with the idea that there were baby faces and heels staying after to watch? Or how did that work?

Speaker 1 Well, no, because it's the goddamn giant Irish McNeil Boys Club. You know, the fucking

Speaker 1 well, I mean, it's a basketball floor. We could stand over there, and the other guy could stand over, you know, all the baby faces like we're at the ring.

Speaker 1 As a matter of fact, I'm trying to think: was this before or after Doc had even switched heel?

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 nevertheless, it wasn't like everybody was standing around. It was that we were in the building observing this conduct go on.

Speaker 2 Was that the first time you had seen the sugar hold?

Speaker 1 Well, no, because,

Speaker 1 well, besides the fact that it's as old as the hills and

Speaker 1 was probably one of the first shoot holes in pro wrestling,

Speaker 1 Remember, I've told you this. Well, I guess it's been so many years.
As a rib one night,

Speaker 1 it was a six-man with me and the Midnight Express, Bobby Eda Discondry, in Homa, Louisiana, against the Fantastics, Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers, and Hacksaw, Jim Duggan.

Speaker 1 And it's fucking Homa. And we never wanted to get serious heat in Houma because they'd already tried to fucking kill us on a few different occasions.
But what Dennis taught me the fucking sugar hole

Speaker 1 in the locker room. He just here, boom, boom, boom.
Okay. And

Speaker 1 legitimately, at a couple of times in my life, that people have,

Speaker 1 not in a confrontational way, but just kidding around, you know, in public civilians, all that wrestling stuff. I said, well, here, I can show you one little hold.

Speaker 1 I've immobilized people bigger than me.

Speaker 1 Because if they don't know what the fuck, and they'll let you get it on them, right? But nevertheless, it works. So Dennis shows me the sugar.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 at the point where they're going to get the heat on Tommy Rogers and tag me in so I can do an elbow dropper manager kick or whatever and then get chased back out.

Speaker 1 Instead, before he knew what I was doing, I slid in and got the sugar hold on him. And he's like, what the fuck? I said, all right now.

Speaker 1 He said, please let me up. Please let me up.
Okay, shooter.

Speaker 1 And then we did something, you know, but just as a rib, it got a pop out of it. I don't know if Duggan was laughing, Bobby Fulton was tickled.

Speaker 1 But it's, it's just, it's a simple thing that works. And the only time that it doesn't,

Speaker 1 and the reason

Speaker 1 why that William Harding got that money out of him.

Speaker 1 If the guy applying it,

Speaker 1 his size works against him. If the other guy is smaller, his small size works for him.
If you got a big muscly guy trying to sugar a wiry little skinny guy that's all skin and bones,

Speaker 1 then you can't trap the body enough to make it work and he can squirm out of it.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 in the case of the sugar, it's better for a smaller guy to put it on a bigger one than a bigger one is to put it on a smaller one. Does that make any sense?

Speaker 2 It does. And William William Harding was smaller than Bob Roop, also a martial artist, so somewhat limber, could move around.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he didn't.

Speaker 1 And Roop was rotund even at the time.

Speaker 2 And you were a little when you said that's what he had to do to get the money out of him. No, he had to do that.
And then he also had to get the crowd going because they didn't want to pay him.

Speaker 2 And then he had to get the

Speaker 2 newspaper to write an article because they still wouldn't pay him. And then eventually they paid him.

Speaker 1 But he started the ball in motion by actually getting out of the fucking hole.

Speaker 2 And if you're listening, hello, William. Very nice man.

Speaker 1 Hello, yes.

Speaker 1 Sugar, sugar. Oh, honey, honey, let me go.
Now you're popping my blood vessels.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I thought you were going one way, and I just,

Speaker 2 I guess you put the Archies in the sugar hole there, I guess we could say.

Speaker 1 So how are you doing, Sugar?

Speaker 2 Well. As we said before, we have a packed show today.
We have a lot to get to. And why don't we start with some news that we heard this past week, some sad news,

Speaker 2 and it made a lot of people think of you when they heard the news.

Speaker 2 The passing of Bob Coddle,

Speaker 2 legendary commentator for Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, and of course, for the first few years of Smoky Mountain Wrestling, he was the voice. For a long time, him and Dutch Mantel.

Speaker 2 He was on WCW. Maybe they didn't use him enough.
But Bash89, it's Jim Ross and Bob Caudle, and they're working really well together. So, Jim, let's talk a little bit about the life of Bob Coddle.

Speaker 1 Well, and first of all, we'll talk about all the Smoky Mountain announcers, how they interacted with Bob here shortly.

Speaker 1 But you mentioned specifically that Bash, anybody could work with Bob because he was the

Speaker 1 consummate television broadcast personality.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I've talked about it so many times, the charm of local television and the trading ground of local TV in the live days and the early studio days.

Speaker 1 And it was like the vaudeville for television personalities where they got a chance to do everything.

Speaker 1 And that's what Bob had, he was 95 years old, bless him. So

Speaker 1 he was the same generation as Lance Russell. And kind of the same thing where they had had the opportunity to do every job there was in broadcasting at some point or another because of their careers.

Speaker 1 He'd been on radio. He'd been the weatherman

Speaker 1 at WRAL Television in Raleigh, where they also did the old studio wrestling show for Crockett before they moved out to the arenas at the start of the 80s.

Speaker 1 He had gone back to studio wrestling in the late 50s.

Speaker 1 And that's why it was so easy to work with him. And he was so smooth smooth because he'd had a microphone in his hand talking to people.

Speaker 1 You know, when he was doing the Smoky Mountain show, that was 30 years ago. He was 65 years old.
He'd been doing it for 40 fucking years then.

Speaker 1 So, and he never got

Speaker 1 flustered, really, or upset or nervous or.

Speaker 1 You know, even when shit was going on that

Speaker 1 he may not necessarily have understood what the fuck is happening when his shit might have been falling apart on TV, right?

Speaker 1 He just knew enough when to just lay out or when to go, oh, golly, to his broadcast partner, but you never caught him, you know, at a loss, right?

Speaker 1 And so anyway,

Speaker 1 he was.

Speaker 1 He was just,

Speaker 1 again, along with Lance Russell, I think of Bob the same way I thought of Lance, not only because they were the same generation, same profession, same

Speaker 1 professionalism, but because they were both among the nicest guys in the world.

Speaker 2 You know, you want to talk about a dream team of announcers.

Speaker 2 NWA 1989, Peak Jim Ross. I know everyone likes the Attitude Era stuff, but to me, this period of time for Jim Ross, he was incredible.

Speaker 2 Lance Russell.

Speaker 2 Gordon Soli, who may not have been the Gordon Soli of years earlier, but was still good and had that big night in Troy, New York, calling the Terry Funk Ric Flair match.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 had the gravitas. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And Bob Cottle.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's a Mount Rushmore of wrestling commentators right there.

Speaker 1 And it basically coalesced the

Speaker 1 announcers from the strong NWA territories that had persevered, you know, until the end.

Speaker 1 And actually,

Speaker 1 to be honest, when they had all those announcers on the same programming, even though they all weren't paired on the exact same shows, but under the same umbrella,

Speaker 1 it did sometimes take away from each one of them because,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 they had always been

Speaker 1 in various points in different parts of the country, the lead announcer that would have a sidekick. And suddenly the all-star team,

Speaker 1 it almost takes away when there's no sidekick.

Speaker 1 But nevertheless, I,

Speaker 1 and of course,

Speaker 1 Lance Russell did not have the chance in WCW. He went for the guaranteed money and he, you know, had friends there, et cetera.
But

Speaker 1 they just offered him so much money, it was like, oh my God. And he saw that Memphis was on its way down.

Speaker 1 But when you only got

Speaker 1 like green screen Lance,

Speaker 1 you know, and doing the leads for Power Pro or NWA Pro or whatever syndication, you weren't getting Lance.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 a lot of those guys didn't have time to get over his personalities with the viewer because they were just being changed from one syndicated show to the other.

Speaker 1 But back to Bob.

Speaker 2 Who's on plenty of syndicated shows and was so good he made Johnny Weaver bearable.

Speaker 1 Poor Johnny Weaver was,

Speaker 1 he was trying, but sometimes he just couldn't quite get it out.

Speaker 1 The first time,

Speaker 1 actually, the first time I met Bob Caudle was the first time he interviewed me in,

Speaker 1 I guarantee you, I'm 100% sure it was Spartanburg, South Carolina, when we had just gotten there.

Speaker 1 working for Crockett. And the first time we met face to face was on the set in front of the live crowd that was screaming.
You know, the old Spartanburg Crockett syndicated tapings, right?

Speaker 1 That crowd screaming, and there's a couple of spotlights and the NWA backdrop, and they do the interviews in front of that next to the desk, right?

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 through the darkened ringside area, because they wouldn't light the whole building, you walk through that and then you get it to the ring. It's a small place, it's always packed.

Speaker 1 So I had never

Speaker 1 actually, as I said, met him because

Speaker 1 the building was so small, not only inside,

Speaker 1 they'd get 1,800 or 2,000 people in there and it would be

Speaker 1 150 degrees, but behind the scenes was small too. That's where

Speaker 1 Dusty and Magnum pulled me out of the building and tied me to the back of the truck and Baby Doll almost decapitated me.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's that building.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's only two little little dressing rooms for all the baby faces and all the heels and the fucking referees.

Speaker 1 So what they would do is they would put Johnny Weaver, David Crockett, Bob Caudle, Tony, Schiavone, whoever the announcers were at the

Speaker 1 specific time

Speaker 1 in another small little office.

Speaker 1 behind the set so they could just walk right out and back and didn't have to go through the people. And

Speaker 1 it just saved room in the locker room, right? There was no room.

Speaker 1 So finally, my

Speaker 1 promo came up and I'm just, I don't even remember what show it was on

Speaker 1 or even,

Speaker 1 it was the first time I had had the opportunity on Crockett syndicated TV to be mad about something.

Speaker 1 Maybe Jimmy Valley had done something. I don't know, but it was, we'd only been there a few weeks.
And I fucking

Speaker 1 charge across there and I'm yelling at the people and Bob's holding the mic mic and I'm doing a yelling and all of a sudden he said something and when I looked at him

Speaker 1 it would Bob with that basset hound face he was just such a kindly looking man right

Speaker 1 but at the same time it's a summertime and it's 150 degrees in that fucking building and I'm sweating and he's not only sweating he's red in the face and we're all about ready to have a stroke

Speaker 1 And I just the red face and the fucking sweat, I said,

Speaker 1 shut up and don't interrupt me, you drunken alcoholic, or something like that. And I go back and cut the promo, right?

Speaker 1 Because I never knew what I was going to say till something's in front of me.

Speaker 1 But when I get to the back,

Speaker 1 you know, after the segment or whatever,

Speaker 1 David Crockett came in and he said, Do you realize what you just said? I said, What do you mean? I didn't cuss.

Speaker 1 He said,

Speaker 1 You called

Speaker 1 an aide to Senator Jesse Helms a drunken alcoholic.

Speaker 1 And at that point, I said,

Speaker 1 who is Jesse Helms? Because I'm 24 years old. I have no goddamn, maybe not even yet.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the fuck's going on in the world of politics. I'm still trying to learn the wrestling.

Speaker 1 And for the younger viewers out there,

Speaker 1 Jesse Helms was the Republican senator from North Carolina who was ancient even then. He's, I'm sure, been dead for 30 years, but he was known

Speaker 1 for being the most prim and proper and anti-smut and, you know, church going and conservative, back when they were still

Speaker 1 weird conservative, but not insane like today conservative.

Speaker 2 Well, he was a bigot, too.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, the standard regular old fucking conservatives, rather than the goddamn cultish ones today that'll just go along.

Speaker 1 But nevertheless, whatever the fuck it was of conservativism back then, he was it.

Speaker 1 And Bob Caudle,

Speaker 1 who after his career, because remember then at 40, he's in his mid-50s then.

Speaker 1 After his career at the TV station, he had stayed with Crockett, but also taken a job as his senior aide. So,

Speaker 1 on one of the most popular syndicated television programs in the fucking Carolinas, I've called Jesse Helms's senior aide a drunken alcoholic. I said, Should I apologize?

Speaker 1 They said, Oh, Bob's not mad, but somebody might try to kill you.

Speaker 1 See, so that's when I first met him.

Speaker 2 Senior aide, was he ever making phone calls? Like, is the president there? I have Jesse Helms.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't know because I just

Speaker 2 that voice. I mean, he had that great voice, you know.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But that's, you know, that's the thing is that he did never, I never sat and talked to him about politics. As I said, I wasn't, you know, involved or interested at that point in time.

Speaker 1 And it's not like, you know, Bob was just the most pleasant fucking guy, but he's there to do the wrestling show.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 remember we told a story not related to,

Speaker 1 you know, anything about Bob's health.

Speaker 1 We didn't know this was obviously going to take place a month or two ago when we were just talking about he named the November to Remember, the rating sweep period

Speaker 1 series of matches that we did in WCW in 89

Speaker 1 or the November 89 sweeps month.

Speaker 1 And he's the one that named it. We had just told that story.
But,

Speaker 1 you know, he was always,

Speaker 1 he was always there with some suggestion or something or could bail you out of a pickle if you got stuck on a promo or whatever. With

Speaker 1 it was just because he was smooth. And especially in Smoky Mountain,

Speaker 1 there were sometimes that he was encountered with things he didn't know was going to take place, either on the technical side or just we hadn't thought of it yet.

Speaker 1 And or the backdrop would fall down or whatever.

Speaker 1 but he'd go with it, right?

Speaker 2 There's that footage of one of the early gangsters promos where New Jack is just saying outrageous things on TV,

Speaker 2 and it's a close-up of New Jack,

Speaker 2 but you see Bob Connell like holding the microphone, standing there, you just see him shaking his head. I think it's when he thanked OJ, said, like, you know, two

Speaker 2 less of him to worry about. You just see Bob Connell like, no,

Speaker 2 it's amazing you got him to travel that much. I mean, I guess not amazing, but you know, when he did the tapings for Crockett, it was all in the Carolinas.
He wasn't, for the most part,

Speaker 2 I mean, was he ever going to Tennessee? Was he ever going to Kentucky?

Speaker 1 No, not until,

Speaker 1 obviously, you know, Crockett started expanding, but Crockett was still doing TV all over the place. Remember, even before

Speaker 1 started doing TV all over the place, even before they sold to Turner.

Speaker 1 But with Bob's travel, then, see, that was why I had such an amazing lineup of announcers, but I didn't have the all-star team all at one time because I was able to,

Speaker 1 when we first started,

Speaker 1 Les Thatcher was available and able to do

Speaker 1 our special live events, like the big events that we would tape in Knoxville or Johnson City, like Fire on the Mountain or the Volunteer Slam or whatever, because Les had a business going in Cincinnati at the time.

Speaker 1 I believe it was a gym.

Speaker 1 Nevertheless, he couldn't get away during the week, but he could get away on weekends.

Speaker 1 And obviously, we had talked to Bob Caudle

Speaker 1 about doing the show since,

Speaker 1 you know, the inception of when we publicly revealed the idea, because

Speaker 1 Sandy Scott had known him forever, and he was a voice of a lot of markets that we wanted to get into.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Knoxville being our base, we were obviously wanted to have a connection with Les also.

Speaker 1 But with Bob living in Raleigh at the start, go ahead.

Speaker 2 Les had been the commentator for Southeastern Wrestling.

Speaker 2 So he had a long history of doing commentary in eastern Tennessee for the fans who may not understand the connection between Les Thatcher and Knoxville.

Speaker 1 Well, I just automatically thought, my God, it's, you know, household knowledge all across the world, even in greater Swaziland and northern Norway. But nevertheless, so Bob was living in Raleigh.

Speaker 1 But when we first started smoking about wrestling, you know who else was living in Raleigh?

Speaker 1 Who?

Speaker 1 Ron Wright.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 1 Ron Wright had moved when there was...

Speaker 1 The business had closed down in East Tennessee. I think he had,

Speaker 1 again, something to do do with mechanic. He had a mechanics go-kart repair, whatever, you know, because he raced shit and did stuff all his life.

Speaker 1 So he had some type of business, I believe, in Raleigh. Bo James is probably going to be screaming at his speakers.
You got it all wrong. But nevertheless, Ron Wright was living at Raleigh.

Speaker 1 And we needed him. When we first made the deal, Ron.

Speaker 1 And Bob were riding over to the tapings together, and it was once every three weeks.

Speaker 1 And so, again,

Speaker 1 bless him, Bob was 65 at that point, 30 years ago, or almost 65, 33 years ago, whenever we started, whatever.

Speaker 1 But they could ride together, and it made the trip easier. And I just used Bob for the actual TV tapings.
He never did any of the

Speaker 1 live events because that would have been another trip over. And he was doing us a favor anyway.
And bless his heart,

Speaker 1 he got $450

Speaker 1 for every TV taping

Speaker 1 and I can't even remember how we arrived at that figure

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 and that is that is more like fucking you know 1200 bucks or whatever in today's money but still maybe a grand I don't know that was one of the great things about Smoky Mountain though the team of Bob Connell and Dutch Mantell

Speaker 2 One of the more underrated commentating teams in wrestling history just because you don't hear more people talking about them. But for the run of them being there, they worked so well together.

Speaker 2 And it was such a good dynamic that worked for a heel

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 the straightest of straight men. And it worked.
And, you know,

Speaker 2 you know, I'll always hate the Puerto Rican promotion for stealing Dutch Mantello of commentary because it was such a great team. And,

Speaker 2 you know, that was one of the highlights of the early years of Smoky Mountain was that team.

Speaker 1 Well, and see, again, now Dutch was living in Nashville at the time. And so it was just three hours over for him for Knoxville or, you know, a few hours more for the TVs we did in Virginia.

Speaker 1 But nevertheless, Dutch was wrestling some too as part of the stud stable with Robert Fuller and Jimmy Golden. But he was the regular color guy with Dutch or with Bob.

Speaker 1 And like you said, he was an entertaining heel whose job was not to

Speaker 1 make people hate him. The other two in the ring could take care of that.
And at the same time, he always knew that he'd look out for his buddy Bob if anything broke down, right?

Speaker 1 And Bob Caudle, as Jim Ross called him one time, the epitome of a white man who is just brown shoes and

Speaker 1 just a jolly attitude.

Speaker 1 And they work so well together, and Dutch's signs would make fun of Bob in a kidding way.

Speaker 1 But again, that was was

Speaker 1 so Bob and Dutch would do the actual weekly television taping, but when we do a big,

Speaker 1 you know, a big event taping, we'd have Les come and do it with Dutch a lot. And sometimes Dutch do

Speaker 1 some of the regular monthly arena shows if we needed somebody for an angle by himself.

Speaker 1 And then, as you said, Dutch got the job to book in Puerto Rico and had to leave. But by that point,

Speaker 1 we were able to get, you know, more dates on less.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, Bob was a constant for what, the first,

Speaker 1 really the first 130 or 35, 40 shows. Yeah.
Out of, out of 200, you know, the first two plus years.

Speaker 1 But then

Speaker 1 at Elwen out of Cape, forget Lance.

Speaker 1 I never got Lance and Bob together, but I had Lance and

Speaker 1 Les

Speaker 1 because Lance came over and did the bluegrass brawl for me that one year and did another.

Speaker 1 And the same year in Knoxville, did the volunteer slam

Speaker 1 because he just wanted to take a trip to the mountains with Audrey. And he's, oh, I love to, Paola, come over and

Speaker 1 it was just great to have those voices on those events. But

Speaker 1 then JR

Speaker 1 had gotten shystered by Vince one of the many numerous times. I can't remember what happened, not germane to the story.

Speaker 1 And JR and Dennis Brent had, I had talked to them

Speaker 1 about not only JR doing the TV, but they were starting to run the Smoky Valley Wrestling 900 number when that was a thing.

Speaker 1 And blah, blah, blah. And some, we were wanting to get J.R.'s voice on

Speaker 1 as much as we could to try to get an international deal that Howard Brody was working on at the time.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 Ron had moved back to East Tennessee and Bob was starting to get older. And I gave Bob the, I said, Bob,

Speaker 1 we have,

Speaker 1 we have JR coming in and he's going to be,

Speaker 1 you know, doing more with us in various aspects of the business. You know, I know it's getting harder on you.

Speaker 1 And that way he could could bow out gracefully and say, I'm not going to drive over those fucking mountains.

Speaker 1 He would never say fuck, but I'm not going to drive over those mountains anymore for $450 or whatever.

Speaker 1 So that's the only reason that he stopped doing the show was because we took pity on him and he didn't want to let us down.

Speaker 2 You know, and at the very end was kind of the only time he may have ever showed his age because that's when at the very, very end, he started like Steve Skyfire became Steve Skydiver.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you got Storm and Jericho mixed up, but, you know, they were also brand new and he had never been.

Speaker 1 Well, but yeah, but that's the thing is that at that point,

Speaker 1 you know, and we didn't air in Raleigh.

Speaker 1 So he couldn't watch the fucking TV. I mean, you know, if he'd asked,

Speaker 1 he might have sometime. We gave him the VHSs, but it's not like Bob at this time of his life was studying the wrestling, right?

Speaker 1 And so we would show him these people that nobody's ever fucking heard of before. Here, this guy's name is Wang Doodle Peterson.

Speaker 1 And so, yeah, but it was more of a,

Speaker 1 we're having pity on you, Bob. You can, you can retire now

Speaker 1 because, you know, we've got

Speaker 1 other people to take over. Thank you, but we don't want to kill your ass.

Speaker 2 You know, he was so good. And it came across genuine, everything he said.
Again, he kind of had like a folksy kind of thing. It just felt genuine.

Speaker 2 David Crockett was never more bearable than when he was teamed with Bob Caudle. They hit a lot of David Crockett's weaknesses as a commentator, which makes me wonder:

Speaker 2 was it a scheduling thing or

Speaker 2 was he even up for the TBS job? You know, going with Shivani was interesting because he was a young guy,

Speaker 2 had really just gotten going a couple of years earlier, not even in the office and doing some interviews. They went with him and David Crockett.

Speaker 2 When for years, David Crockett and Bob Cottle had been the combination. Would there have been a scheduling thing when the tapings were, or what do you think?

Speaker 1 I mean, there might have been some consideration to that. I'm not saying there wasn't, but I, I think to be quite honest, they,

Speaker 1 Jimmy Crockett Jr. and

Speaker 1 everybody had high hopes. They knew David was never going to be the lead guy, but David sort of, you know, he got the spot because they couldn't hurt his feelings, right?

Speaker 1 But Tony was the young guy. He was the guy that was going to be the, because they just gotten, they moved away from Gordon solely.

Speaker 1 Well, Tony Schiavone, at that point in time, may have been the best wrestling announcer he've ever been 40 years ago. Yeah.
He's gone downhill ever since.

Speaker 1 But they wanted a younger guy, fresh-faced, TBS.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, that's when a couple of years later, JR kind of moved in. They, you know, it had been Tony's spot, but at the same time, JR

Speaker 1 was still young then, had had no health issues and could outperform everybody.

Speaker 1 And that's why Tony ended up leaving and going to work for Vince for that year because JR was kind of iggying him out just because.

Speaker 1 TBS wanted him.

Speaker 1 He was better. He was a more sports announcer.

Speaker 2 Oh, right. He was incredible.
I mean, Jim Ross was great in the UWF and Mid-South, but he turned it up a notch, 88, 89, 90. I mean, just everything through 92.
He was incredible.

Speaker 1 Incredible. And let's Tony and David were helped in the 86 to 87 period by the fact that it was the biggest stars in the company and the business and it was so hot and they just kind of had to not.

Speaker 1 And sometimes they did trip over their own dicks live on the air, but

Speaker 1 it wasn't that hard. But then as pay-per-view became a thing and

Speaker 1 more

Speaker 1 serious announcing of longer matches, the specials, the clashes,

Speaker 1 Tony nor David was going to be

Speaker 1 stellar at that. So, but back to Bob, because you asked about that.

Speaker 1 To be honest, at first, when Crockett got the time slot, I don't know that Bob Caudle at that point, because that was,

Speaker 1 he was, he would have been in his mid-50s at that point and still working, I believe, in Raleigh for the CITA.

Speaker 1 I don't know if he'd have wanted to fly every morning to Atlanta to do a two or three hour television taping in addition to the stuff he was already doing.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 I don't even know.

Speaker 1 Never really asked whether or not that

Speaker 1 the Crockett increased schedule when they got more national

Speaker 1 may have contributed to him retiring from the other stuff but

Speaker 1 i think they wanted somebody young and new

Speaker 2 anyway so i don't think bob campaigned for it or it was in any way offended if they didn't want him for it well he was also one of the last i guess part-time announcers they would have had because everyone there Shiavone, Lance Russell, Jim Ross, everyone was a full-time, this is what you do.

Speaker 2 The Jesse Helms job was his full-time job. This was the side job.

Speaker 1 Well, that's what I'm saying is I think by the time that Crockett expanded his schedule, even before TBS bought the company, I think that Bob may have retired or slowed down from that.

Speaker 1 Because he was still doing more traveling than he was ever used to in the old days for Crockett before TBS even bought it. But at the same time, again,

Speaker 1 we're thinking about this guy's age in 90 when they bought the company because he lived so long and bless him that he did that. But so

Speaker 1 TBS bought the company in late 1988,

Speaker 1 which was 37 years ago. Bob was already almost 60.

Speaker 1 So it wasn't like he was going to goddamn change his whole life around.

Speaker 1 And as I I said, Lance had that run, what was it at two years in

Speaker 1 WCW,

Speaker 1 never had expected he would do it, never had particularly wanted it, but

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 he was such a

Speaker 1 announcing name when they first took over and wanted this dream announcing staff. They offered him more money than he ever thought he'd get.

Speaker 1 And he couldn't turn it down because Memphis was falling apart. So

Speaker 1 these were both guys late in their lives that were not looking for

Speaker 1 long-term career changes or employer changes or whatever and big runs.

Speaker 2 But when you think about any of the mid-Atlantic studio stuff that's out there, or most of it,

Speaker 2 or especially any of the mid-late 80s

Speaker 2 hot syndicated crowds for Crockett, the voice you think of is Bob Caudle yelling, not even yelling, but he had a good voice to when things got loud, he got louder.

Speaker 1 Raise it above the crowd with a sense of importance. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But so many of those things, you know, the Ronnie Garvin angle we talk about, that was on syndicated TV. That wasn't on the studio.
So many of the hot moments, Nikita Turning,

Speaker 2 you know, was the syndicated stuff with Bob Caudle.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, fans, and that's another thing is that, you know, they could be fans.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 talking to them however you say that it makes me he always said fans are right but he always addressed the fans as fans yes imagine that

Speaker 1 and it again it was just smooth and and folksy and and uh

Speaker 1 easy to digest and he treated things seriously because the

Speaker 1 he was just the you know, the salesman there selling you the wild, wacky world. He didn't need to be wild and wacky or elsewhere,

Speaker 1 what he was trying to sell you, you wouldn't believe him.

Speaker 2 I do think about what Howard Baum said, that it always looked like his microphone was filled with helium and he was trying to hold it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He held it sort of out away from his mouth and like he had a boil under his arm like I did that time. And I had to hold my racket out at a 90 degree angle.

Speaker 1 But it was, that was his, again, that was back when those microphones were directional.

Speaker 2 You had to talk right into it back in the old days but again a heck of a life and a great career as a wrestling commentator his wife i believe just passed away this past june i want to say yes they had been married 76

Speaker 1 years his wife's name was jackie

Speaker 1 and i last saw them at

Speaker 1 you know, probably the, what was it, six years ago with the last time I was at Wrestle Cade, I believe it was, in Greensboro.

Speaker 1 You know, saw him and

Speaker 1 he had had some health issues then, but they, you know,

Speaker 1 they didn't get very far apart from each other. So I have a feeling, you know, a lot of his

Speaker 1 enthusiasm went when she went earlier this year.

Speaker 2 Again, a fantastic commentator, the voice of the Mid-Atlantic, the voice of Smoky Mountain, Bob Cottle.

Speaker 2 And Jim, another passing I want to mention here before we move on, because I was quite surprised by this news. George Tahinos has passed away.

Speaker 2 That may not be a name that the average wrestling fan would know. George was a photographer.

Speaker 2 If you ever watch ECW from the ECW arena specifically, from the 90s, there's a photographer, smaller guy, backwards hat, beard, mustache. That's George.
He was shooting for PowerSlam magazine.

Speaker 2 That was how he got involved with it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I had just been dealing with him.

Speaker 2 That's why i was surprised to hear this news uh we'll talk about that in a moment but he started shooting ecw for power slam then eventually shooting everything from ring of honor to tna and whenever ww would let him in because they would always give him a hard time he told me all about that apparently they gave him and george napolitano a hard time at wrestlemania not too long ago so yeah because they're they're so snooty But George just passed away, and I thought we should mention him because I always think it's important to acknowledge the ecosystem around wrestling.

Speaker 2 And I mentioned Jim that I had been talking to him and you know this because you know a lot of the things I do with wrestling, I fill you in on everything as it's happening.

Speaker 2 George reached out to me because he wanted to sell his photo catalog.

Speaker 2 He said that he just doesn't have a use for it.

Speaker 2 He was looking to sell it. He chose me.
I'd never communicated with him before. And we started talking.

Speaker 1 Well, you have a reputation for preserving things, as I do in some circles.

Speaker 2 And we started talking about his photos. We were not able to come to a deal for a variety of reasons, but very nice guy.
We had a lot of talks. Big fan of the Devils, big fan of the Yankees.

Speaker 2 We talked a lot about sports. Used to deal in baseball cards.

Speaker 2 But he told me something that was extraordinary.

Speaker 2 You know, I own.

Speaker 2 a major, one of the biggest photo catalogs in the world for professional wrestling. You own

Speaker 2 not even just yours, but other photos, as well as your incredible archive. And you shot Ringside.
You know what it takes.

Speaker 2 George, when we were working on this deal, told me he had 2.5 million photos

Speaker 2 he had taken since he started shooting for PowerSlam for ECW

Speaker 2 in the early 90s.

Speaker 2 And that number is staggering. Well, what do you think about that? Because again, it's a different era.
Shooting on digital is obviously very different than having negatives and having to buy film.

Speaker 2 But what do you think when you hear 2.5 million photos?

Speaker 1 Well, that was the thing when you mentioned it to me. I didn't know how to comprehend the answer because.

Speaker 1 That is the difference. And George goes back so far.
He was, you know, shooting at one point on film. I think he goes back so far.
He was, you know, on a cave wall with a rock. Oh, stop it.

Speaker 2 Stop it.

Speaker 1 No, I know George because of not only TNA, I have pictures of myself that he had taken and sent me from when I was in TNA. And then also on FanFest when he was there, if I

Speaker 1 would say, George, I got to get a picture with

Speaker 1 ex-wrestling hero of mine. If I call for you, please take a picture.

Speaker 1 So I got a bunch of that from George. Just a nice guy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he just sent a bunch of that over too, of photos of you at various conventions years ago with different people. He thought you would like it.
So he just recently sent that.

Speaker 1 Well, thank you for letting me know. But nevertheless,

Speaker 1 no, I'm sure you'll be forwarding those to me for

Speaker 1 COD.

Speaker 1 But point being,

Speaker 1 that's the thing is that that's so many images

Speaker 1 that at that point,

Speaker 1 which is one of the main drawbacks of why the deal didn't get done, because you'd have to have a dedicated staff

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 assimilate and/or you know use in

Speaker 1 some fashion or to be able to judge this is the best of the best or this is this subject or what do we got here

Speaker 1 when you do that for so many years because like we've had been talking about

Speaker 1 i was a ringside photographer for a six-year period

Speaker 1 And we've been talking about my ongoing process of just cataloging or sleeving, sorting my negatives, which number in the tens of thousands.

Speaker 1 This is hundreds and hundreds of times more than that. It just boggles the mind.

Speaker 1 But he was at it for so long and went so many places, did so many things.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and again, started with ECW. Watch any of that footage from the 90s.
It's the same photographers usually. It's George Tejinos, Linda Rufa.

Speaker 2 There's another name that you don't hear anymore, but she was around everything in the 90s, at least.

Speaker 1 She fixed my glasses one time in St. Louis, but nevertheless, continued.

Speaker 2 Eric Rosen, and then there was a kid, I think his name was Jeffrey or something. Those are like the regular photographers there for at least the early years.
And then George was there the entire run.

Speaker 2 And he was a regular, you know, when slam wrestling was a thing under Greg Oliver's leadership, they always do like photos of the different conventions.

Speaker 2 And those were always George's photos, if anyone ever saw those catalogs.

Speaker 2 And like I said, very, very nice guy. And I'm very sorry to hear it.
Was a vague, somewhat vague statement from the family. It sounds like it was.

Speaker 1 Well, no, no, hold on. Now, don't say vague.
Like, what are they hiding here? He was taken away in the night. It was like an unexpected cardiac situation, which could cover a variety of things.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it sounds like Vince McMahon crafted that statement there when it's, he doesn't want to say hospital.

Speaker 1 He took him to the medical facility.

Speaker 2 But, you know, again, very sad news. Very, very nice guy.
And

Speaker 2 I know a lot of the listeners or some of their listeners may know who he is, and some others should know who he is. If you see a lot of the photos of ECW in the 90s, they're his.

Speaker 2 So George Tejinos.

Speaker 2 And Jim,

Speaker 2 with that, we shall return after this short commercial timeout.

Speaker 2 All right, we continue here with the show. The drive-thru rolls on.
And Jim, nothing can stop aew they have another pay-per-view coming this weekend full gear

Speaker 2 from newark new jersey you're gonna want to put your car in full gear to get the out of newark as fast as you can

Speaker 1 but full gear at the prudential center are you excited about another aew pay-per-view event oh for heaven's sake out you know what another aew pay-per-view event is kind of like the sugar hole that we were talking about it compresses you in an anatomically uncomfortable position It restricts your blood flow.

Speaker 1 So does watching these pay-per-views. Now, let me get this straight.

Speaker 1 Last week on television, as you will recall when we left our space travelers, they had two, not one, but two hour-long 12-person cage

Speaker 1 blood and guts

Speaker 1 slaughter massacres, where they

Speaker 1 not only lost as much blood as could fund the Red Cross for a fucking war in the Pacific Theater for six months,

Speaker 1 but they used every type of weapon known to

Speaker 1 man,

Speaker 1 beast, or wrestler.

Speaker 1 And in the preliminary match in between those, they electrocuted a fucking guy.

Speaker 1 And now they want us to pay $50 to see this show.

Speaker 1 What are they going to do? I mean, a human sacrifice at this point would be a letdown unless it was some kind of entertaining way.

Speaker 1 Like we're going to have honey poured over him and set the goddamn fire ants on him in the middle of the ring.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 1 What's worth 50 bucks here? You got a lineup?

Speaker 2 Well, as AEW does, they have a pre-show, which I guess the whole goal would be to pump you up to purchase the pay-per-view event.

Speaker 1 Pump you up to purchase the pay-per-view?

Speaker 2 Would this pump you up to purchase the pay-per-view, Jim?

Speaker 1 Do you hear it thundering over my head right now? Apparently, Tony Khan's father has billions of dollars at an International Space Station to monitor me.

Speaker 2 A few months late, but it's thunder over Louisville today, folks.

Speaker 2 But, Jim, on the pre-show, the team of Boom and Doom,

Speaker 2 Big Boom AJ, and QT Marshall

Speaker 2 with Big Justice versus RPG Vice, Weiss, Rocky Romero, and Trent Beretta.

Speaker 1 He's still there.

Speaker 1 Trent is still there.

Speaker 1 What was his old partner's name?

Speaker 1 Chuck, Chuck, Bobuck, Banana, Fana, Fofa.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 1 I wonder if he ever got that Rosatia cured.

Speaker 2 Again, we're talking about this match. Boom and doom, Jim.
Boom and doom.

Speaker 1 Boom and doom. It sounds like gloom to me.

Speaker 1 Well, again, I'll go with the gloomers.

Speaker 2 Well, again, big boom. AJ has a following on social media, but there's one more match on the pre-show, Jim.
This is.

Speaker 1 Wait a minute. Only two matches on the pre-show.

Speaker 2 So far. Announced beforehand.
It's Tony. Oh, shit.
It's early in the week.

Speaker 2 A $200,000 four-way tag team match.

Speaker 1 Oh, Christ. The winner's a match.

Speaker 1 Christ on a Ritz cracker. Nothing tastes like it sits on a Ritz except for a $200,000 four-team

Speaker 1 cluster. Fuck

Speaker 2 what? The winning team will receive a $200,000 cash prize. Max Caster and Anthony Bowens.

Speaker 1 What? Wait a minute. They split up versus

Speaker 1 at each other's heels and

Speaker 1 taints and all manner of their anatomy.

Speaker 2 Apparently, they've been put back together on collision.

Speaker 2 But they'll be going up against the bang bang gang of Austin Gunn and Juice Robinson

Speaker 1 versus

Speaker 1 where's the other gun and

Speaker 1 Jay White?

Speaker 2 How come Juice Robinson hasn't been on dynamite at all?

Speaker 2 Versus Big Bill and Brian Keith

Speaker 2 versus the Outrunners, Truth Magnum and Turbo Floyd.

Speaker 1 Good lord,

Speaker 1 for $200,000 20 years ago in the wrestling business, you could have not only had a better match, but you could have found somebody to fucking fucking kill all these people and bury them in the desert.

Speaker 2 Well, that's just the pre-show, Jim.

Speaker 2 Now, on to the main card:

Speaker 2 Darby Allen versus Pack.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Is this not

Speaker 1 somewhat of a downfall for the hottest little babyface fella in the whole company? Said now, eh.

Speaker 2 I bet you that'll be a good match

Speaker 2 because Pack

Speaker 2 is not the tallest of gentlemen.

Speaker 2 And against Darby, it won't, it'll look good. It'll, it'll be a probably

Speaker 1 six-inch Lex Luger

Speaker 1 next to Darby, who looks like a five foot, six inch medical school skeleton.

Speaker 2 That's kind of his gimmick, Jim.

Speaker 2 But let's go back to the car.

Speaker 1 Well, but I'm a doctor, doctor jim do you have a prediction for for the match darby versus pack i hope darby wins it'd be a shame if he didn't

Speaker 2 jim in a no disqualification match for the tnt championship

Speaker 2 if mark briscoe loses he'll be forced to join the doncalis family Oh, well. Kyle Fletcher, the champion with Don Callas, versus Mark Briscoe.

Speaker 1 I would like to say that they would do the thing that the fans would like to see them

Speaker 1 do,

Speaker 1 but I'm afraid that they might not. Obviously,

Speaker 1 they've either thrown this little stipulation in to make it like one of those guaranteed type of things so people wink, wink, know, know that.

Speaker 1 Wink, wink, they'll know that Mark Briscoe is going to win. He's going to win the belt.
He doesn't have to join the the family.

Speaker 1 He finally gets some measure of revenge against the heel that has tormented him. They do something to elevate him a little bit since he overperforms all the time.

Speaker 1 That would be the common sense, logical thing to do.

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 somebody has scripted a goddamn independent film with all the cute vignettes they can do as Mark Briscoe being a member of the Don Fallus family and engaging in comedic extrapolation with Same.

Speaker 1 So they'll make him reluctantly join to the family, and then he'll be

Speaker 1 some type of goddamn irritating force from inside going forward in unfunny vignettes that nobody wants to fucking see.

Speaker 1 But they'll think it's as good as sunshine washing the fucking donkey or whatever.

Speaker 2 It was a horse. Is that your prediction?

Speaker 1 I'm hoping that Mark just wins the goddamn thing.

Speaker 1 And again, then Kyle has had plenty of.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying ever let Kyle win anything else. Kyle's had plenty of victories and plenty of attention lately.

Speaker 1 Let Mark win one when all the chips are down, and then they can fuck him up later, which they probably will.

Speaker 2 Jim,

Speaker 2 with participants to be determined, and the only announced entrance being Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, Ricochet,

Speaker 2 Kevin Knight, and speed ball Mike Bailey. Oh, Christ.
There is a casino gauntlet match for the AEW

Speaker 2 National Championship.

Speaker 1 You know, again, this is just,

Speaker 1 it's Tony

Speaker 1 hitting the wall and having too many things doing, being burnt the fuck out. And let's have another one of these things.
And

Speaker 1 I don't know whether maybe they'll have a surprise person come out and win the whole thing, or whether the surprise is that Lashley just tears through all of these fucking people, except for Benjamin, and somehow they do something at the end to possibly tease some problems in the hurt syndicate, since that'd be another stupid thing they could do at this point.

Speaker 1 So they finally got something over. They fuck with that.

Speaker 1 Who knows what he's going to do? And nobody, again,

Speaker 1 nobody could even keep track of all these belts, belts, belts, belts, belts. And they got another belt because Tony likes belts.
And what does it mean?

Speaker 2 What do you think of the thought that MJF

Speaker 2 may return?

Speaker 1 Well, if that's, if he does come back, he needs to win something big and do something.

Speaker 1 profound.

Speaker 1 And he might be the only one that could cut a good enough heel promo to get the idea of this weasel who has a worthless belt, but he claims it's worth something over.

Speaker 1 So if he's in it, I would wholeheartedly support that. But

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ, another belt, another

Speaker 1 somebody did the math, but it may be skewed because

Speaker 1 I said,

Speaker 1 Can somebody do the math on the percentage of multiple man matches to just regular wrestling matches?

Speaker 1 And the guy got back to me, did the math, but he included tag team matches as multiple man matches.

Speaker 1 And technically, those are still regular wrestling matches. However,

Speaker 1 they very rarely have tag matches anymore because it got to be six or eight guys.

Speaker 1 65 to 35, Brian, is the

Speaker 1 percentage for multiple man matches.

Speaker 2 Well, Jim, on the topic of multi-man matches, if this qualifies,

Speaker 2 a $1 million trios match,

Speaker 2 the winners will receive a $1 million cash prize.

Speaker 2 Kenny Omega and Jurassic Express

Speaker 2 versus the Young Bucks and Josh Alexander.

Speaker 1 Good lord.

Speaker 1 And again, okay, if you're going to give away a million fake dollars on the pay-per-view, why do you have to give away $200,000 fake dollars on the pre-show?

Speaker 1 Then it's just all gaga.

Speaker 2 And it's Tony's new gimmick. All the matches are for cash prizes.
It's been a thing.

Speaker 1 He's got nothing left. There's no personal issues.
He doesn't understand. It's all about what belt, what amount of money can we put up?

Speaker 1 Or, you know, how many people can we put into this?

Speaker 1 Four team, six team, eight team.

Speaker 1 And this is the kids' chance to play now with Josh Alexander. I guess, is he a new kid that moved in the neighborhood and started going to the same elementary school?

Speaker 1 But otherwise,

Speaker 1 they were doing this five years ago.

Speaker 1 It's Kenny and the Hardley Boys and Jungle Jack and Dino. And they all get to play like they did on the trampoline for a million of Tony's fake dollars, and they make

Speaker 1 lots of Tony's real dollars. Nobody wants to see this, nobody gives a shit about the bucks in specificity.

Speaker 1 The lizard gets a pop

Speaker 1 in certain circumstances, and they never try to capitalize on those things. People would rather see

Speaker 1 tracks of dog shit on their carpet in the living room in rainy weather than see Jack Perry.

Speaker 1 And Kenny is

Speaker 1 a shell of his former shitty self.

Speaker 1 Josh Alexander has a twin, Gabe Kidd. They're interchangeable.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 this is to make Tony's friends happy and

Speaker 1 they can claim to him that they're contributing something. I'm sorry.
I don't mean to carry on.

Speaker 2 Well, you didn't give a prediction, but that's the thing one day we're going to see interviews with the young bucks like yeah we did this great storyline that gets no respect where we lost all of our money and then we had to do things for the money they think this stuff is great in their eyes but prediction who's going to win uh

Speaker 1 hopefully the lizard will turn on all of them and eat them

Speaker 2 All right. I don't think that will happen.
Also, I don't know if that answers the, I guess, double DQ. No contact.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there you go. One team was eaten by the other

Speaker 2 how that works jim

Speaker 2 for the aew world tag team championship the champions bro dito

Speaker 2 comprised of bandito and brodie king

Speaker 2 versus ftr

Speaker 2 cash wheeler and dax harwood with stokely

Speaker 1 do you remember way back in the before time in the long long ago when it used to be that you could at least look forward to ftr's match most of the time,

Speaker 2 um, you don't think this will, I think this will be a good match. You don't think this will be a good match?

Speaker 1 It'll be a better match than normal, but again, who gives a shit

Speaker 1 the awkwardness of the

Speaker 1 angle with steamboat that led to the other two coming in.

Speaker 1 If I see that fucking bandito do that goddamn ridiculous thing where the guy assumes a position where he's about to be frisked, frisketed or anally anally penetrated,

Speaker 1 and hangs there while the guy does the flip over and the flip back

Speaker 1 in the suplex.

Speaker 2 He was throwing those shots at Cash Weiro, looked like his grandmother hitting Dax the week before. Just nothing, just awful.

Speaker 1 I know, I don't know what's happened to all of these people, but it's,

Speaker 1 you know, the yes, their fans like Brodidoo

Speaker 1 and they're okay for government work in this fucking environment. And FTR and Stokely, I don't know what they're completely flat.
It never works. The promos make it worse.
They died.

Speaker 1 They've lost their way.

Speaker 1 They're high. We lost balls in high weed screaming, find me.

Speaker 1 So, yeah,

Speaker 1 it is what it is.

Speaker 2 Again, a prediction. Do we have a prediction for the match?

Speaker 1 Bro, Dido is going to win because the fucking

Speaker 1 Booker likes him.

Speaker 2 Jim, in a steel cage match

Speaker 2 for the AEW Men's World Championship,

Speaker 2 hangman Adam Page, the men's champion versus Samoa Joe.

Speaker 1 You know, I saw somebody sent me a clip where he actually

Speaker 1 says that from his own chicken lips. Page says,

Speaker 1 Well, I prefer the men's championship because if you just say the world champion, that seems to insinuate, of course, he didn't say it nearly this literally, literally, literally,

Speaker 1 I can't say that.

Speaker 1 It seems to insinuate

Speaker 1 that the

Speaker 1 women's championship is inferior to the men's championship.

Speaker 1 No shit, Sherlock.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it doesn't fit your

Speaker 1 ideals, but it is. And it's always going to be, especially in this company.

Speaker 1 But so he's the men's world champion

Speaker 1 they're in a cage just the two of them

Speaker 1 just the two of them

Speaker 1 they can make those flowers grow in the cage just the two of them they just had 25 bleeding people in a cage with spears and

Speaker 1 scimitars and

Speaker 1 augers and and things that they could grind into people's sphincters.

Speaker 2 I think you're watching. Why do I care about these?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I'm telling you, it was a fucking heck of a fucking show.

Speaker 2 That was a dynamite. That was Cafe Flesh, sir.

Speaker 1 Well, one of those places or the other. I've been to so many these days.
So why do I care about these two at a fucking cage? I love Samoa Joe.

Speaker 1 I don't care, give a shit about the other guy, but they've just given us everything you can possibly do.

Speaker 2 Again, in terms of prediction, do you think they'll give us a title change or is this just no?

Speaker 1 Because Tony's too hung up in the whole idea that Paige is somehow over to people when he's not. And Joe is always the

Speaker 1 bridesmaid and never the bride.

Speaker 2 And again, there's one more match. I'm sure there'll be more.

Speaker 1 After the world title in the cage?

Speaker 2 I'm sure there'll be more matches announced just because there are some people you notice are not on the card. But finally, Jim, for the AEW Women's World Championship,

Speaker 2 the champion, Chris Statlander versus Mercedes Monet.

Speaker 1 Well, as they used to say in the locker room back in the old days, Tony, you don't have a single hair on your balls if you don't have old Mercedes lay down in the middle of the ring for old Chris Statlander there.

Speaker 1 But otherwise, it's probably going to be Mercedes. Did you see the, she was at an outlaw show where she won a 13th belt

Speaker 1 last week. And it was at a goddamn gym where they had pipe and draped it off.
And her

Speaker 1 entourage of guys carried all her belts came out and she was following them. And they all got stuck in the goddamn curtains and pulled the whole backdrop down.

Speaker 2 She was just standing there.

Speaker 2 So prediction. We need a prediction.

Speaker 1 Obviously, I think Mercedes and her no-job contract is going to beat Statlander, but we'll see if they've got any business sense or not. But at some point,

Speaker 1 somebody's going to have to beat the fucking female Luthes here.

Speaker 2 Well, we shall see what happens. That's AEW Fole Gear 2025 from Newark, New Jersey.
Review to come next week.

Speaker 2 But Jim,

Speaker 2 perhaps you look at a show like this and you think about wrestling photos and you say, I want a photo of none of this,

Speaker 2 but I'd like to cherish some of the wonderful photos. I guess when we're talking about photos, Jim,

Speaker 1 yes,

Speaker 2 let's get away from the whole wrestling dimension. Let's talk about families.
Let's talk about

Speaker 2 the good times, the good experiences, those moments that have been captured and maybe digitized.

Speaker 2 What if there was a wonderful way

Speaker 2 that you could tell the listeners about a great friend and a great product that you could display your photos on, our great friends

Speaker 2 with aura frames?

Speaker 1 Boy, howdy, that one, I'll tell you what, it was twisted into a pretzel, folks. What Brian is trying to say is that we don't want to talk about all this wrestling stuff.

Speaker 1 We want to talk about good things like family and friends and memories, memories like the corners of my mind misty watercolor memories of the way that we all were before we became the way that we are now and it's been upgraded to the space age digital technology of modern times now in the hurry scurry 21st century world we live in you can get one of these frames from aura frames a u r a because they got an aura about them

Speaker 1 you can get one of these things and you can either keep it in your own home or you can send it to a family member or loved one.

Speaker 1 And you guys can just pitch these pictures back and forth off your phones on the internet. I don't know how all these things work, as well of you, all of you well know,

Speaker 1 but they do because as I mentioned last week, As soon as we got the aura frames in, Stacy went crazy because her nephew had got one for her mother. And now we had a couple more.

Speaker 1 So now they've all got them. I was over at the in-laws this weekend.

Speaker 1 And there is the frame sitting there with a steady slideshow of all of the pictures of Stacy's mother's grandson,

Speaker 1 because that's the one he gave her. And they just, they just mystically fly by on their own without any goddamn prompting.

Speaker 1 Normally, in the old days, if you wanted a picture and a frame to do something that that you wanted it to, you would have to scream at it for a long time.

Speaker 1 But now they just, whoo,

Speaker 1 and you can do this. You've got control over who has access to your frame.
The Aura app lets you share photos more securely than with email.

Speaker 1 You know, sometimes you could get hacked and there could be,

Speaker 1 I don't know, Granny's beaver hunting Oregon spread out on the internet for the world to see.

Speaker 1 But you can also upload videos up to 30 seconds long. So if you want to tell Granny what you think of her.

Speaker 2 Just get away from Granny, please.

Speaker 1 Or maybe just remind Granny who you are. Just record a video saying, hi, Granny.
It's me, little Billy. You might not remember me tomorrow, but this will play again.
So to remind you.

Speaker 1 And your favorite live iPhoto, iPhone photos, those things will play right on the frame.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's a speaker in this son of a bitch. It plays audio on demand.
You just say, I demand you play audio, and boom, it kicks into some goddamn rock and roll.

Speaker 2 And I don't think that's how it works, but

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 1 the aura frames have meticulously calibrated high-resolution displays.

Speaker 1 So it looks like the person is really there in the room, except only if your loved ones and relatives are only about fucking a foot and a half tall, but react with cute emojis to show that you love a photo.

Speaker 1 Send congratulations and more. They've even got a little middle finger thing.
If somebody sends you something you don't want to see,

Speaker 1 you just send them that back, and boy, they know what the fuck's going on.

Speaker 2 Again,

Speaker 1 these devices can just bounce these images back and forth.

Speaker 1 And it's just, it's amazing. You can, you know, you can save money, Brian.
Do you know, Emma, a lot of money? They can save you some bread.

Speaker 1 If you go right now for a limited time to to auraframes, a-u-r-a frames.com

Speaker 1 and use the promo code JCE at checkout, you're going to get $45 off Aura's best-selling Carver mat frames. They were named number one by Wirecutter.

Speaker 1 And if the industrial espionage experts figure this technology is good, then it'll be fine in your own home around your children.

Speaker 1 This exclusive

Speaker 1 Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year. You got to keep up.
So order now before it ends and mention the show at checkout

Speaker 1 and see, just see how far that gets you. I'll tell you that.

Speaker 1 AuraFrames.com, $45 off with the promo code JCE. Stacey loves it.

Speaker 1 Nephew loves it. Granny loves it.
Everybody loves the thing.

Speaker 2 they all they all work it just i don't know how this stuff happens they're great suzanne has it set up in the bedroom and one of the cool things too is when you turn out the lights it turns itself off

Speaker 1 well

Speaker 1 that's i wish i wish people were like that you turn out the light it just turns them off like they don't make any more noise they just leave you alone like the friends you always wanted sharing your memories and leaving you alone otherwise aura frames one more time jim

Speaker 1 that promo code well the promo code is JCE, as you know it should be, for aura, a-u-r-a frames.com. Promo code JCE, $45 off.
It's Black Friday. It's Cyber Monday.
It's not going to last forever.

Speaker 1 Get in.

Speaker 2 Get in. That's right.

Speaker 1 Get in a car.

Speaker 2 Well, Jim,

Speaker 1 sometimes. Terms and conditions do apply, by the way.

Speaker 2 Of course.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the terms are, but I'll make the conditions if you make the terms.

Speaker 2 Jim, let's get away from that.

Speaker 2 Of course, some great deals don't last forever. Some programs do.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about WWE Raw last night as we are recording.

Speaker 1 Well, it was the big one.

Speaker 1 Brian, I got it right down here.

Speaker 1 It was SRO

Speaker 1 at MSG in NYC.

Speaker 1 Because they could only see him one more time.

Speaker 1 And then they couldn't see him anymore.

Speaker 1 This was a fucking out to first of all. At the top of the raw programs, November 17th, they were in the Madison Square Garden up there in the New York City, the Big Apple.

Speaker 1 The aerial shot of New York gave me anxiety just to look at it.

Speaker 1 That's what I can't get the image out of my mind that whenever I'm in New York City, I'm in the middle of that.

Speaker 1 And it is miles and miles of miserable, time-consuming travel for me to get to a goddamn place with a bunch of fucking room and some trees.

Speaker 1 It just gives me

Speaker 1 the heebie-jeebies is what it does.

Speaker 1 That's a big city. It's just plain large.

Speaker 1 Well, that's all I got.

Speaker 2 Yes, it is. Some of us did do that.
Move away to a place. of our own with a bunch of trees

Speaker 1 yes but it's just you're still you're trapped trapped.

Speaker 2 So nevertheless, the heart of Manhattan, Madison Square Garden, although you wouldn't know it unless they told you, because it just does not look like Madison, I've never seen as long a walk away to the ring as they had there for Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 1 Well, what they did was

Speaker 1 traditionally

Speaker 1 in the garden, the guys came out the side.

Speaker 1 And it was a short walk to the ring. And people say at WrestleMania 10,

Speaker 1 Brett Nolan, whatever, you know, know, the right across from the hard camera, it was a short walk.

Speaker 1 Back in the old days, that was because they didn't want the talent to have to walk that far through the people because the heels would get stabbed.

Speaker 1 But then it just, and the locker rooms are right behind that. The boys use are right behind that area.
So it's always just been a shorter

Speaker 1 way to do it. But they wanted to accentuate this crowd because they had

Speaker 1 almost no entranceway at all. It was just the at the very end of Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 1 They had, what was that, a 15-foot-high video wall that stopped so that the people in the bleachers above it could see over it.

Speaker 1 And that's even when Cena came out, it was like, well, there are people everywhere. They wanted to accentuate that crowd.
They got as many in there as they could. I don't know if we have official

Speaker 1 word, but it had to be with that size entrance

Speaker 1 somewhere between 17, 18,000, would you not think?

Speaker 2 They made Madison Square Garden look bigger than it could be. I mean, it looked,

Speaker 2 it didn't look like Madison Square Garden. And again, a lot of it is that, like you said, the construction, the locker removed, the exit signs not there.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 they made it look, I'm thinking, even if you could put in a long runway, where the hell would it be that it would be that long?

Speaker 2 But yeah, it looked impressive.

Speaker 1 yeah but nevertheless they had shots of you know paul e and his bunch get to pull in the building and get out of their suv but cody was shaking hands outside i've told you what it used to be like you could if you were a babyface you didn't dare go out on the fucking streets

Speaker 1 but anyway they played the package of cena winning the

Speaker 1 Intercontinental title and then the big Cena chant had already started and they played the music. It got a big pop.

Speaker 1 And here comes Cena and he had them.

Speaker 1 This was another one. They were here to see the big

Speaker 1 last MSG appearance. They could have shit in the middle of the ring and it wouldn't have mattered.
And the chants and cheers got louder and louder

Speaker 1 as they went on. And he didn't.

Speaker 1 He didn't over milk it because they were doing it anyway. He was, you know,

Speaker 1 he didn't do anything to discourage it too much.

Speaker 1 But the whole thank you, Sina, after the big introduction, the last raw, the last garden.

Speaker 1 And then all he had to do was thank them. And, you know, it's you that I should say thank you to.

Speaker 1 And now the champ is here. And they chanted some more.

Speaker 1 And then before he really

Speaker 1 had time to start his heartfelt speech, and it sounded like he was really going to say something profound,

Speaker 1 Dominic's music plays.

Speaker 1 And here he comes. And

Speaker 1 I don't know how long that entryway was, but he milked at a goddamn entrance. He was chewing his gum and just,

Speaker 1 you know, wandering on down.

Speaker 1 And the people were on him.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 he's spoiling the moment. And this,

Speaker 1 I think, probably the scene of retirement. Brian, before we go any further, what do you think? Has the Cena retirement done any more for anybody than Dominic so far?

Speaker 2 Big knife for AJ Styles. Cody beat Cena for the title, but again, Cena beat him and Cody's booking has never recovered from everything with the beginning of the Cena heel turn.

Speaker 1 But I mean, did more for, because with AJ Styles, it was a good match. AJ's already been there and he's retired next year.

Speaker 2 The Punk match was a really good match, but it didn't do anything for Punk. Yeah, I guess you could say Dominic's the one guy on the roster, the young guy.

Speaker 2 He's in his 20s that Cena did anything for on this run.

Speaker 1 And so naturally, it doesn't have to be brain science or rocket surgery at this point.

Speaker 1 Dominic wants a rematch.

Speaker 1 Cena asks the people, Do you want it right here, right now? Of course, they do. And Dominic says, No,

Speaker 1 I'm not doing it your way again. I'm doing it my way.
And then

Speaker 1 the fans chant, shut the fuck fuck up. And Cena says they're saying Choco Fun Cup.

Speaker 2 That was good.

Speaker 1 It was good, but they bleeped him anyway.

Speaker 1 And Dominic wants the title match at Survivor Series in San Diego, his home turf. And Cena agrees, but

Speaker 1 I got to have a match tonight. And I see an opponent, so no title.
Just face me one-on-one right now.

Speaker 1 And a music plays. And here comes Finn and JD.

Speaker 1 And I know what they were doing, what they had to do. They're putting John in a six-man tag so the people get to see his comeback and his moves and a people pleaser like they're about to do.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 boy, when Finn and JD came out, people weren't like, they were kind of like, ah.

Speaker 1 But I mean, they made it good, and that's it, it ended up just fine. But

Speaker 1 they have the three-to-one on Cena, but then the music plays. Here comes Seamus, and he makes a comeback, but they stop him.
And then here's the music, and Rey Mysterio is out, and the

Speaker 1 babyfaces dumped the heels. And Cena challenged for the six-man tag, and the referee hit the ring, and the bell rang, and we went to break.

Speaker 1 But at least we've set it up, and 20 minutes is about over 20 minutes. But it was great because it's a completely sold-out mass of people in Madison Square Garden going bonkers and ape shit

Speaker 1 for John Cena

Speaker 1 last time. It's good television.
Dominic gets the rub,

Speaker 1 and we set him up in a six-man tag with four people that we could.

Speaker 1 Well, Ray is fine, but the other people we could take or leave, but it is what it is. Out, you tell me, what did you think?

Speaker 2 I enjoyed the energy. I love the Dominic Cena

Speaker 2 thing.

Speaker 2 You know, it's another.

Speaker 2 Other than Ray, has Dominic had another veteran that he can kind of talk to the way he's talked to Cena. It makes it ridiculous, but it also just works perfectly.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I've enjoyed that.

Speaker 2 You know, setting up the six-man was a bit deflating.

Speaker 2 Before we talk about that, the question I have for you.

Speaker 2 What do you do now in San Diego? Dominic versus Cena for the Intercontinental title. Is it as simple as Dominic wins it back as Cena's going away?

Speaker 1 Therein lies the problem because

Speaker 1 the last time is now. The last actual match is going to be December 13th on the Saturday night's main event,

Speaker 1 which is obviously not going to be, and we've talked about this

Speaker 1 as important an event now that it's just on peacock, whatever, than

Speaker 1 a big show like Survivor Series.

Speaker 1 At the same time, I was thinking Gunther's going to win this tournament, and maybe Cena puts Gunther over on the way out. But now Cena's got the

Speaker 1 Intercontinental title. Is that a way to get the Intercontinental title back to Gunther so he has some bragging rights?

Speaker 1 We haven't established whether or not that that would have to be for the title now.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I don't think it hurts Dominic

Speaker 1 to lose in San Diego. Oh, it's too close to my hometown.

Speaker 1 And I think it would be, I don't know,

Speaker 1 it'd be kind of blah if he just won it back. But does he do something to hamper Cena for his very last match in the process of getting disqualified or coming up short from actually winning the belt?

Speaker 1 But I don't think that

Speaker 1 it's necessary for Dominic's long-term success that he has to win in San Diego. But I wouldn't have John lose his last two in a row because then it

Speaker 1 makes it, you know, each one mean less.

Speaker 2 Good opening segment. We'll see.
I mean,

Speaker 2 other than Gunther, is there anyone else in the tournament you'd want to see in a John Cena last match? I don't know. One last question about this and we'll move on.

Speaker 2 If Gunther put over John Cena in his last match, does it hurt Gunther at all?

Speaker 1 I don't think it helps him. And I think they probably wouldn't make the winner of the tournament Gunther

Speaker 1 if he wasn't going to beat Cena. I don't see why he would.
They could have figured out something else to do.

Speaker 2 All right, Jim. Well, let's continue on with Raw.

Speaker 1 Ah, what? The tag team match.

Speaker 1 That's where we're at now, Playa.

Speaker 1 And I mean, it was what you would think it would be. They got heat on Seamus at first.
Mostly people didn't care.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 Mysterio got the tag made to come back and nice stuff. And then Dominic stopped him and they went to a break.

Speaker 1 And then they came back and they

Speaker 1 had the heat going on Ray. And finally, he hit actually an illegal tag on Cena because John was reaching under the top rope.

Speaker 1 So it actually didn't count, but nevertheless, big comeback. Everybody hit some kind of move, and then

Speaker 1 the heels all three. JD hit Cena with a moonsault,

Speaker 1 Finn hit him with a double stomp off the same buckle, and then Dominic off same buckle with the splash. And all three of them covered him like the old midget match spot.

Speaker 1 And then the other faces made the save at the count of two.

Speaker 1 They got the triple 10 beats from the Bowery

Speaker 1 and the triple You Can't See Me.

Speaker 1 And then Ray hit a double 619 on Finn and JD and Cena attitude

Speaker 1 adjusted JD 123.

Speaker 1 So that was a spot show match, and the fans loved it. That's exactly what they wanted to see.
They didn't need to do anything different.

Speaker 1 And Dominic was out of the ring when the pinfall was made. So

Speaker 1 they could have done that much better.

Speaker 2 Did you see them going to the back?

Speaker 1 I didn't really pay any attention.

Speaker 2 Rey Mysterio on Cena. I didn't jump at anybody.
Rey Mysterio was on Cena's back. It just looked like they were having a party going back.

Speaker 2 But that's the final time in MSG for John Cena, this six-man match.

Speaker 1 And you could tell this was what people in New York viewed this as a big deal, and that's what they came to see. And

Speaker 1 you had to make them as happy as possible.

Speaker 1 So, the right move here.

Speaker 2 Well, Jim, there was more happening on Raw. What else did you watch?

Speaker 1 Well, there was a John Cena tournament match with Solo, and Nick Nimeth came back.

Speaker 1 And while his work is incredible, I could give two shits about Solo these days.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 Nimeth got him into it. He had him believe it.
He might do it, and then Solo spiked him.

Speaker 2 Dolph Ziggler, for the people who don't know what they're saying about.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I thought they, I actually don't remember listening to them call him by name. Did they call him Dolph or did they call him Nick?

Speaker 2 No, he was Dolph Ziggler.

Speaker 1 Was he Dolph? Yeah. Well, the people up there know anyway.

Speaker 1 Becky Lynch wrestled Model Girl for apparently the 150th time for the Women's Intercontinental title.

Speaker 1 And this time,

Speaker 1 A.J. Lee came out.
and distracted Becky Lynch and Model Girl hit a crossbody off the top rope one, two, three, and won the belt.

Speaker 1 Brian, I don't know if you had any time to watch this to see if she's any better than she used to be, but

Speaker 2 maybe we'll. I did watch this.

Speaker 2 I still don't like the whole H.A. Lee skip into the ring thing.
I know I may be, I don't know, limb here, but it's just not for me.

Speaker 2 However, besides that small thing.

Speaker 2 I think Maxine Dupree gets people behind her, and that kind of makes the match.

Speaker 2 because the whole point is like can she really do

Speaker 2 anything you know like you're waiting to see can she pull it off there may have been a few botches it may not have been the smoothest affair

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 the fans were really again it was a hot crowd and they sensed that there was going to be a title change

Speaker 2 and when it finally happened they were really happy

Speaker 1 So what you're saying is the people are so convinced that she's going to just fuck up that if she doesn't actually accidentally fall out of the ring right in front of them, they get behind her.

Speaker 2 The people were very happy. They were very happy.

Speaker 1 That's good psychology, though. It is.

Speaker 1 All righty, but

Speaker 1 there was a John Cena tournament match between Gunther and Javon Evans.

Speaker 1 I may want to adopt Javon Evans. I love him.

Speaker 1 This was perfect. This was, this is

Speaker 1 Gunther

Speaker 1 excels at a big man, little man match

Speaker 1 by keeping it logical, but still exciting. It's one-sided physically, but it's not a one-sided match because he

Speaker 1 calls the thing to where these fucking guys have logical things they can do and that he can miss because they're quicker and a smaller and a whatever.

Speaker 1 Evans has not only great fire, but great babyface body language. He fights from underneath.
He sells great.

Speaker 1 He's got feistiness all over him that won't quit. That boy Bouncy

Speaker 1 and Gunted the match. He stayed in control, but he gave Evans plenty of hope spots to where all that could be shown.
There was a clear babyface and a clear heel.

Speaker 1 They didn't use any furniture. They didn't bury the referee.

Speaker 1 It's almost like,

Speaker 1 I mean, Evans is still green. His punches, he has a lot of enthusiasm.
Some might need to be worked on, but it's not like the kids over on the other channel where they don't even fucking try.

Speaker 1 It's like that these guys are doing an exhibition of what wrestling used to look like before they fucked it all up.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they did a great spot to go to break at one point where Evans exploded with his comeback and did some of his fancy shit and then did a dive.

Speaker 1 But Gunther caught him in mid-air and just ran him into the ring apron.

Speaker 1 But when they came back, they were having a slug fest and a back and forth. And

Speaker 1 Evans got a big dive at a crossbody off the top and a big splash

Speaker 1 and got a two count that got a pop because they were convinced he was going to do it.

Speaker 1 And then Gunther stopped him and got the suplex, the power bomb, and got a two count. And he got the sleeper, but Evans was fighting, but finally he had to tap out.

Speaker 1 It was competitive, but not overly so.

Speaker 1 He's still Gunther, this was not a pay-per-view match with a

Speaker 1 you know, a long-running, heated opponent. This was him and a young kid on the way up.
So the kid fought, but he still tapped out. And it didn't take Gunther a hand grenade to do it.

Speaker 1 But this was lovely. What did you think of him?

Speaker 2 I really enjoyed the match. Thought it was interesting that Gunther came out to his old music when he was Walter and NXT.

Speaker 2 I guess my question for you would be,

Speaker 2 what are your thoughts on how they're bringing up Javon Evans? The first time we noticed him on the the main roster was the Sami Zayn match, the open challenge.

Speaker 2 Really good match. Sammy won.

Speaker 2 Now here,

Speaker 2 again, he's against the top guy,

Speaker 2 but again, the other guy wins. We've talked previously about Tommy Rich in Georgia getting him over.
I'm not saying this is the same thing, but

Speaker 2 what do you think about the fact they brought him in and it's two high-profile losses?

Speaker 1 This is the difference

Speaker 1 between what they're doing here and what Tony does when he just brings everybody in and beats them repeatedly.

Speaker 1 It's that they

Speaker 1 not only have the competitive matches that they always lose, which this is two big ones for Javon,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 it blends in with their do-it-they do it the same way with everybody.

Speaker 1 In this case, if somebody comes in

Speaker 1 to the WWE on the main roster that they're trying to push and to get over, they certainly win more than they lose. It's at least equal.
But when it's somebody like this kid,

Speaker 1 well, they did the same thing with Sammy Zayn at various points. You can beat him because he is the underdog, but he tries and he almost makes it.
And finally, he does.

Speaker 1 And they did the same thing

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 1-2-3 kid

Speaker 1 was just some skinny job guy, but suddenly he beat Razor Ramon.

Speaker 1 That was a big goddamn deal. I would think at some point

Speaker 1 over the next little while, Javon Evans will get a big win in some fashion. If he doesn't, and they just keep using him like this, then I don't think that's very beneficial.

Speaker 1 But it looks like what they're leading up to is

Speaker 1 making the people specifically focus on this guy and wanting to see him win something.

Speaker 1 That's the way, rather than just bringing somebody in and they do a job in the match, and then an angle occurs with other people involved. And who was in that match that lost? We don't even remember.

Speaker 1 If you're going to beat a guy like this, is the perfect guy to beat the underdog, but focus on how closer he comes until you get the people ready to see him win the big one.

Speaker 1 It's psychology

Speaker 1 in where you're going with people

Speaker 1 rather than they're going to have a great match and then you win. That's superficial, shallow thought.

Speaker 2 Silly thought, probably.

Speaker 2 Do you think they're going to turn Gunther babyface?

Speaker 1 I don't.

Speaker 1 I think he had he's the honorable heel.

Speaker 1 I don't think he needs to be turned. I think it, I think he should stay like he is, but it depends on who he's wrestling.

Speaker 1 He's the honorable one of the heels. He has some type of code to him.

Speaker 1 The ring is sacred. So he's not like a

Speaker 1 full-fledged glory hound

Speaker 1 egomaniac heel.

Speaker 1 But I wouldn't fuck with him. If he becomes a babyface, it almost kind of

Speaker 1 weakens definitely the reason why people kind of get into him to begin with.

Speaker 1 He's this big Dick York-looking fucking nerd.

Speaker 2 That's right. That's why people got into him because he's a big Dick York-looking nerd.

Speaker 1 Well, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 Usually does this. He's part of the heat.
They got to find a big Dick Sargent-looking nerd for what he jumps to AEW.

Speaker 1 Hey, whichever big dick you want, Gunther's the man. Well, let's get away from that.

Speaker 2 But Javon Evans, any final thoughts on, I mean, you have been effusive.

Speaker 2 Yes. About him.

Speaker 1 Yes, that's why I say they ought to

Speaker 1 make him the guy that's featured doing a lot of the shit that all the luchadors do with the interchangeable fucking mask gimmicks

Speaker 1 and the various diving because

Speaker 1 he needs to be the guy that they let do 90% of that shit, and he'll be a fucking massive star.

Speaker 2 Well, of course, Jim, when in there with Gunther,

Speaker 2 you best know how to sell.

Speaker 2 And on the topic of selling, a lot of people have products to sell. A lot of people have businesses producing products to sell.

Speaker 2 A lot of people need a helping hand out there in that scary world of e-commerce. And we know a place, we know a group, a people of sorts that we can point you to.
Our good friends at Shopify.

Speaker 2 That's right, Jim. Shopify.

Speaker 1 There's that button.

Speaker 1 Yes, it's actually a close-knit, secretive society of people who live in the shadows that

Speaker 1 how to how to help you make money off the people who live out in the light that's right you can stick it to the light creatures while remaining a subterranean type of dweller with shopify because they'll just fix you right up you do not have to pop your head above the surface with shopify they'll lead you by the hand or by the ear, grab you by the tip of the dick, whatever they got to do to drag you into the modern times.

Speaker 2 No, they won't multi-million dollar e-commerce business they got going on let's leave the genitalia out of this but let's talk about a helping hand for business of course we all need someone to handle our e-commerce we trust them jim with our store and everyone else i thought you were gonna mean we trust them with our genitalia No, let's

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 2 stop it.

Speaker 1 Let's speak about genitalia only in generalities, folks. You know, you can't do it yourself.
You're just a small bird in a big cage in this wonderful world of today. You need the big boys behind you.

Speaker 1 Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, 10% of all the e-commerce in the United States.

Speaker 1 As long as we've been quoting that statistic, I bet you they're up to 18% now.

Speaker 2 Well, we can't

Speaker 1 cite any statistics, so you shouldn't say that you think well it's it's a true fact of things

Speaker 1 that you allege. What if if you can't design a website? They can.
If you need a hand, they've got a hand they can give you. It doesn't matter whether you need a website job or a hand job.

Speaker 1 They can help you with anything.

Speaker 2 What if people haven't heard?

Speaker 2 Ladies and gentlemen, they are there to help you if you need a website. They are there to help you if you need again.

Speaker 1 A helping hand.

Speaker 2 Sales you can trust. You know what's going on.
The money.

Speaker 1 Hands across the water. The water.
What if people haven't heard about your brand? After Shopify gets finished running their mouths, they will. Shopify will tell everything they know about you.

Speaker 1 Don't confide in them.

Speaker 2 That's not how it works. That's not

Speaker 2 spread it all over the world.

Speaker 1 They will

Speaker 2 not spread anything.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 1 email campaigns, social media campaigns. They are going to blanket the world with everything they know about.

Speaker 1 People are going to be talking about you from the time you get up until the time you go to bed.

Speaker 2 People will leave you alone.

Speaker 1 I can't keep their mouth shut.

Speaker 2 People will leave you alone. And of course, Shopify is only there when you need them.
They will leave you alone and handle your business the way you want. They customize for you.

Speaker 2 You pick what you want to do. Go where you want to go.
Be who you want to be. Control your business.
Of course, just like Antonio Inoki.

Speaker 2 What the fuck?

Speaker 2 Antonio Anoki controlled this business. Oh!

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 you know, Shinma must have gotten to this thing right here.

Speaker 1 Go where you want to go.

Speaker 1 Be what you want to be. I think that's the new Christie minstrels.
And remember, Shopify's got a big mouth and they'll tell everybody about what you're doing.

Speaker 1 And people will start sending you money all over the place. But right now,

Speaker 1 you can sign up for a $1 a month trial period. That's all it's going to cost you for them to put their beneficence upon you and give you that hand job

Speaker 1 that you need, the hand up. Again, pull yourself up by your own

Speaker 1 straps, whatever you're strapped to. Hands across the ocean.
Shopify, hands across the ocean, the water. Shopify.com slash JCE.
The one dollar a month trial period is what that is. For shopify.com.

Speaker 1 And it's a dollar a month, is all it is. Shopify.com/slash JCE for that thing there.

Speaker 2 Oh, actually, shopify.com slash Cornet.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 well, even

Speaker 1 different then.

Speaker 2 Actually, a way to differentiate us from them over there at the experience, that team.

Speaker 1 Have we got another team?

Speaker 2 You can use shopify.com slash cornet.

Speaker 1 Just disregard everything I said after

Speaker 2 the things

Speaker 2 that I said.

Speaker 1 Shopify.com slash Cornet.

Speaker 1 C-O-R-N-E-T-T-E.

Speaker 1 not tiger bomb uh but shopify.com slash cornet will get you that one dollar a month trial period and get us credited in the right place where you can't do the other unless you're listening to the other show just get just a hand job just remember that no don't remember that no ladies and gentlemen no hand jobs where we shouldn't even be saying that what we're talking about once again is shopify.com

Speaker 1 slash cornet Yes, slash cornet. Remember that.
It's a very important part of the equation.

Speaker 2 Shopify, Jim.

Speaker 1 You know, every time an angel gets a hand job.

Speaker 2 Let's not say that. But, Jim, let's get back to WWE Raw.

Speaker 1 Well, the only thing to get back to is the big main event interview.

Speaker 1 And there Paul came out with his group of bronze and the Reed and Breaker and Logan Paul and Drew McIntyre's with him. Now he's made an unholy deal with Alfred Hitchcock.

Speaker 1 And Pauli did his thing. He introduced everybody and put them all over as the greatest team ever for the War Games.
And as soon as he got started, Lackam Mussolini

Speaker 1 in MSG

Speaker 1 coming to join the party

Speaker 1 because he's the cult of hand jobs on Broadway.

Speaker 1 Now, with tomato, I don't know what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 Whether it's on Broadway or behind the dumpster, folks, let's get back to Raw.

Speaker 1 So he comes out in the small entranceway, and maybe it was the small entranceway.

Speaker 1 But it looks like the Grinch's heart has grown two sizes that day. Punk looks 20 pounds bigger and 20 years younger than he did in AEW.
Have you noticed?

Speaker 1 It's like a burden of weight has been lifted off of him.

Speaker 1 And he came down the long aisle to the ring, and he stopped at ringside, but he's alone. And the announcers are like, oh my God, he's alone.
And they're all.

Speaker 1 And then the Usos music plays.

Speaker 1 And both of the Usos yeeted through the crowd and down to ringside, but they're still outnumbered. But then

Speaker 1 Cody music

Speaker 1 and Cody came down the aisle and the babyface has surrounded the heels, and they got in a big fight.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 everybody hit the floor except Logan Paul and Punk. And Punk leveled Logan Paul, say that three times fast.

Speaker 1 And then music hits. It's Brock's music.

Speaker 1 Holy shit. And the people, now they're losing their mind.
They've been with this whole fucking thing.

Speaker 1 And Brock comes the ring and he German suplexes Punk twice. And then,

Speaker 1 and after he suplexes punk, they start fighting with Cody and he suplexes Cody twice. And

Speaker 1 as he stands up, there's the credits are on the screen.

Speaker 1 And you say, holy shit. And then the music plays and it's Roman.

Speaker 1 And this was the only part of it that I didn't like.

Speaker 1 All the top talent, including Cody, they all disappeared as Roman walks to the ring purposefully

Speaker 1 forever.

Speaker 1 And they have the face off.

Speaker 1 Where did all those other fucking, they're just laying there.

Speaker 1 I think if Roman could have hit with a little more expeditiousness and got to the point, but nevertheless,

Speaker 1 Brock and Roman get in a fight.

Speaker 1 And Roman Superman punches Brock to the floor, but Bronson Reed

Speaker 1 stops Roman and goes to the top to splash him, but Roman comes up and Superman punches him.

Speaker 1 And then they get, they actually had fake cops in uniform.

Speaker 1 Brian, you've seen a lot of cops in New York City. Do any of them look like these guys did?

Speaker 2 No, none of them look like indie workers. None of them look like next week they'll be holding Mercedes-Monet's belts.

Speaker 1 Have you ever seen any cops in New York City with uniforms as well-fitting or clean as these?

Speaker 2 Oh, no, I know some people high up in the food chain.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've seen clean. Well, I mean just down on the street, the street patrol.
No.

Speaker 1 Well, nevertheless, the cops hit and re-rahi.

Speaker 1 Roman speared Reed through the barricade, and we went off the air. But the war games are fast approaching.

Speaker 1 Oh, joy, oh, bliss.

Speaker 2 It was a relief because they announced the war games and they only had four on four. And I was like, you know, it doesn't work.
It has to be five on five, I think.

Speaker 1 Well, if you don't have five on five, they can't strive to survive.

Speaker 2 Well, now

Speaker 2 you have

Speaker 2 really a pact.

Speaker 2 Talk about the main eventers for the last year:

Speaker 2 Punk, Hody,

Speaker 2 and Roman all together. And Jey Uso's been a big thing, so the Uso's back together.

Speaker 2 Logan, Paul, Brock in War Games.

Speaker 2 And now we have to compare this to the Blood and Guts matches we just saw.

Speaker 1 You think that's going to be like comparing some kind of goddamn blockbuster $100 million Marvel Universe movie to the little Indy down the street from

Speaker 1 San Luis Obispo?

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 these are all major stars with incredible television promotion behind them, and they're going to,

Speaker 1 they'll probably do more than

Speaker 1 one would in a traditional War Games match, but it's not going to be the ridiculousness

Speaker 1 of what we just saw with AEW, who every indie-minded

Speaker 1 thought and

Speaker 1 inspiration they get can instantly be brought to fruition because they have no restraint and a mark's boss.

Speaker 1 And they're not, I would think, going to be just entering and leaving the cage at will and back and forth and

Speaker 1 etc. And I don't believe we're going to be seeing anybody swimming in fucking blood, but

Speaker 1 at least they're names. So let's see what the star power does.
And they're going to have what 30,000 people in a stadium.

Speaker 1 So it should be an interesting spectacle, at least.

Speaker 2 Well, that was WWE Raw at Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 2 All right, we are here in the future.

Speaker 2 And Jim, that was modern wrestling and WWE Raw. Why don't we do some history stuff? We're going to get to some questions, too.

Speaker 2 I was going through the files the other day. This is the introduction for From the Files.

Speaker 2 Because of you,

Speaker 2 I went to see what I had on Jim Clintstock.

Speaker 1 Ah, because we discussed the alleged murder of and definitely the death of Jim Clintstock back in 1944 in Wilmington, North Carolina, the other day on one of the programs.

Speaker 2 And what I seemingly have are a bunch of eight by tens, like a stack of them, of him, you know, doing holds on other people, his original press photos, and various other photos.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 near that file, what caught my eye was Chain Gang.

Speaker 2 So I said, oh, let me me go look in this file. And I don't care if you're talking Hans Schmidt, Baron von Raschke,

Speaker 2 anyone you could think, any German, none of them had as much Nazi shit on as Don Fargo in the 70s.

Speaker 2 It's stunning. It's almost comical, the amount it's on.
And then, of course, the big patch that says fat Jesus.

Speaker 1 No, fat Christ.

Speaker 2 Fat Christ. That's what it means.

Speaker 1 Fat Christ.

Speaker 1 I have some of those photos as well. And before anybody thinks that Don Fargo was a Nazi,

Speaker 1 Don Fargo, just besides the fact that that was the

Speaker 1 part of his life where he was living with, I think that was the part of his life. He was living with some of these biker gangs and got all of their gear.
And that's what they wore.

Speaker 1 He was committed to a gimmick, whatever the gimmick was.

Speaker 1 So he was going to wear the most offensive shit possible, but he wasn't really a Nazi.

Speaker 2 Well, there are lots of photos of him and his partner in the chain gang, who, of course,

Speaker 2 the real-life gang that they were intimidating ended up chasing away minus a leg or whatever happened.

Speaker 1 Even photos. Oh, no, come on.
Don't leave it like that. I know a lot of people know the story, but his original partner, Frank Dillinger,

Speaker 1 when they were wearing all these biker gang colors and shit, and the real biker gang,

Speaker 1 after a show in

Speaker 1 Wisconsin, when they were working in Chicago, they invited him to a party where they then

Speaker 1 shot Frank in the leg several times. And Don apparently escaped death by diving out the window and swimming away or whatever.
But that was the end of Frank's wrestling career.

Speaker 1 And they had to tone down the biker shit.

Speaker 2 And I have a lot of photos of Frank before the chain gang. So some interesting stuff there.
But

Speaker 2 then it got me thinking about the Hells Angels.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 the Chris Colt file is kind of bare. There's not much there, which was surprising.
And I found it. It's in the Dupree Brothers file.
Aha! And that's what I have here. The Dupree Brothers, Ron Dupree,

Speaker 2 of course, was

Speaker 2 I guess the one who started wrestling first as Golden Boy Dupree for Tony Santos.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then Chris Colt came a few years later, and then they became a tag team. And there is footage in color from Detroit that people could see of them against, I think, J.J.
Dillon and Arnie Skoland.

Speaker 1 Yes, the old big-time wrestling studio show that is out there on YouTube. And Ron Dupree did start wrestling first.
He was a little bit older.

Speaker 1 And then, as you will recall,

Speaker 1 Chris Colt, who was Chuck Harris from the Midwest, was pen pals with Tom Burke back then in the early 60s and made the move to come to New England, to Boston.

Speaker 1 What was it, 64-ish, 5-ish or whatever, to train with Tony Santos? Les Thatcher was,

Speaker 1 I think, had just started wrestling a couple of years beforehand, trained with Santos.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's where Chris Colt met. Ron Dupree and he became his brother.

Speaker 1 And they also were a couple.

Speaker 2 And this folder, Jim, seems to have every single press photo for sure that they ever took. Some of these are ridiculous.
But through the years, the Dupree brothers, the chain gang.

Speaker 2 Here's a stunning one of Chris Colt with valet Bill Colt. That's Bill Anderson.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 that was from 1975.

Speaker 1 But some of the stuff there, and also

Speaker 1 the Dupree's as the Hells Angels, they were one of the last teams that Jack Pfeffer booked.

Speaker 1 He got them booked into East Tennessee and the Kingsport territory in

Speaker 1 like the late 60s. And there are letters in the Pfeffer file from them giving him their bookings.
Here's where we are this week, and et cetera, et cetera. This was

Speaker 1 probably

Speaker 1 either right at the time or right after that Pfeffer split up with Fargo's.

Speaker 2 I have a photo here, has on the back of it September 14th, 1959, Santos Wrestling Enterprises Inc., Massachusetts Avenue, Boston 15, Massachusetts.

Speaker 2 And it looks like it could be Pfeffer's handwriting, Golden Boy Dupree, Hollywood, California.

Speaker 2 I have some negatives here of photos of them.

Speaker 2 And I'm trying to see any actual

Speaker 2 articles or anything. There's a ton of photo.
I didn't think there was anything with Chris Colt, and now I seemingly

Speaker 2 have all stuff from all different points in his career.

Speaker 1 Well, and they did the Hells Angels too, without his violent

Speaker 1 result. And actually,

Speaker 1 I think Fargo and his partner weren't really calling themselves the Hells Angels. They were calling themselves the Chain Gang.
They were just wearing all of the

Speaker 1 patches and the colors and some of the symbols and shit that got that one gang upset.

Speaker 1 But the Dupree's,

Speaker 1 their Hells Angels was more like

Speaker 1 the Adrian Street and Bobby Barnes Hells Angels in England, where

Speaker 1 the Dupree's, like Adrian and Bobby Barnes, wore black leather with the studs and the wristbands and the collars, and

Speaker 1 more like a Judas Priest,

Speaker 1 80s, early 80s Road Warrior type of Hells Angels, where

Speaker 1 it was more about the

Speaker 1 insinuation of actual hell. Adrian and Bobby even had

Speaker 1 robes made one time where they were all in white, but when they opened the robes, their lining was red.

Speaker 1 So, like angels, hell's angels, but they weren't technically riding motorcycles to the fucking ring like Fargo when he was the Dillingers.

Speaker 2 Here's an 8x10

Speaker 2 Dupree Brothers, Canadian Hell's Angels, tag team champions with manager Sam Sam Bass.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 This can't be the same Sam Bass from Memphis.

Speaker 1 It's the same Sam Bass. That was, I think, one of his, if it wasn't his first job in managing, it was his first major one.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Sam Bass, who would be Jerry Lawler's manager in the early 70s in Memphis,

Speaker 1 his real name was Fred White.

Speaker 1 But as Sam Bass, he managed the Dupree's in East, again, in East Tennessee, and I'm not sure how many other places.

Speaker 1 I think from like 1968-ish, 69-ish, something like that.

Speaker 1 And then was in Alabama when Lawler was sent to the Montgomery, Alabama territory to learn. That's where he met Jim White and Sam Bass.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they became a team, and that was Lawler's first push when they all three came to

Speaker 1 Memphis. And then Bass stayed with Lawler until he was killed in that car wreck in July of 1976.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't even think it's the same guy. He looks so clean-cut here.
He has a cane. He has a suit on with the Hells Angels or the Canadian Hells Angels around him.

Speaker 2 There's no date on this. It's a letter written on the stationary of the Frontier Motor Hotel.

Speaker 2 Vacation in Phoenix, the Valley of the Sun.

Speaker 2 Highways 60, 70, 80, and 89.

Speaker 2 They have triple-A affiliation, a heated swimming pool,

Speaker 2 cooler and refrigeration,

Speaker 2 TV and phones in every room, and kitchenettes.

Speaker 1 I was about to say, I asked you if it plugged TV in every room.

Speaker 2 Dear Lou,

Speaker 2 just a few lines to say hi.

Speaker 2 Also to say, I'm doing very well.

Speaker 2 I'm out here in Phoenix. I got a tag team together in about five months now, the Dupree Brothers.

Speaker 2 Lou, you can help me and my team very much if you can rate my team if possible.

Speaker 2 Again, so it's in script. It's hard to say.

Speaker 1 And is this letter, is Lou spelled L-E-W?

Speaker 2 That is correct.

Speaker 1 That would be Lou Eskin, who was the editor of, oh, God, what was the magazine that would have existed at that time, right before Wrestling Monthly? Was it Wrestling Review?

Speaker 2 It would have been possibly Wrestling Review at that time.

Speaker 1 I think it was late 60s.

Speaker 2 Again, if you could rate my team, if possible, saw you rate the Assassins, but they are no longer a team. One had to quit because of gallbladder trouble.

Speaker 1 The gall of him.

Speaker 2 So if possible, you would be doing me a great deal, it looks like that says. So write me at this motel, okay?

Speaker 2 We'll send you all the programs we are going for.

Speaker 1 Boy, the dagum, the opportunistic part of him, the one guy gets gallbladder trouble and fuck him. He's got a bad gallbladder.
Raid us in his spot.

Speaker 2 The world's tag team champions.

Speaker 2 We are undefeated and are doing great.

Speaker 2 So please write me

Speaker 2 Your friend always, Ronnie Dupree,

Speaker 2 care of the Frontier Motel,

Speaker 2 2823 East Van Buren, Phoenix, Arizona.

Speaker 2 Hotel stationery.

Speaker 2 Something you see a lot of when you look through old wrestling correspondence. What do you have to say about that?

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 that's where everybody was.

Speaker 1 And you don't have that anymore. I was in a hotel this summer, and there wasn't even a goddamn advertisement.
They'll just turn on the television. I want the paper.

Speaker 1 That's where all the guys were, and they would load up on the free stationery and envelopes.

Speaker 2 Again, a ton of photos in here, photos I've never seen before of

Speaker 2 these guys. This is pretty incredible stuff, actually.
Here's Golden Boy Dupree and Hank Williams Jr.

Speaker 2 Son of the late and great country and western singer Hank Williams Sr. of the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, Tennessee, in the dressing room of the Boston Arena, where he worked for Tony Santos.

Speaker 1 He went from hanging around with Hank Williams Jr. to hanging around with Janice Joplin.

Speaker 2 I have an article here. This is from a newspaper.
It's the actual newspaper here.

Speaker 2 Boston Record American, Thursday, March 22nd, 1962.

Speaker 2 The story:

Speaker 2 Disabled Dad tells of little mother,

Speaker 2 girls' leukemia, death unlocks secret. And there are two photos here: one of Christine Gately of Roxbury.

Speaker 2 She whispered her tragic secret to the judge,

Speaker 2 and wrestler Golden Boy Dupree

Speaker 2 in Dying Girl's Favorite Photo. And as a press photo that you may have seen before of him with his hand on his chin,

Speaker 2 the death in city hospital of Joanne Gately, 10, Roxbury, leukemia victim, unlocked the secret of her sister, Christine, the twelve-year-old, quote, little mother.

Speaker 2 Frank Gately,

Speaker 2 disabled war veteran and maintenance group leader at South Station Postal Annex, told the story as arrangements were being completed for the funeral of Joanne Thursday afternoon. Joanne died Tuesday.

Speaker 2 Here's a quote from Gateway.

Speaker 2 Gately, excuse me. I want to tell the whole story story just to say thanks to the many people whose kindness has carried me and my family through a terrific time.

Speaker 2 I was going to say terrible, it says terrific.

Speaker 2 And then it says had dad's letters.

Speaker 2 He and his daughter, Christine, came into the news last November when the girl wandered through corridors of municipal court seeking someone whom she could deliver her father's letter.

Speaker 2 He had been summoned for failing to return a batch of traffic tags.

Speaker 2 The reason he couldn't get in was that he was in Veterans Hospital undergoing an operation.

Speaker 2 His wife, Anna, was in the hospital, suffering from a nervous breakdown.

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 His daughter, Patricia, 14, was in a boarding school.

Speaker 2 Joanne was then in city hospital. And he said he had been informed she was suffering from leukemia.

Speaker 2 At home, Christine played mother to her brother Frank, nine.

Speaker 2 The letter she carried in her hand when she went to the court explained it all to Judge Elijah Adlo.

Speaker 2 Attorney Paul Smith, who defended the Brinks bandits, saw her wandering and led her to the judge and became her advocate. The parking tickets were filed.

Speaker 2 On her last visit home, Christine and her father were especially kind to Joanne.

Speaker 2 She had seen wrestlers on television. She wanted to see them.
Her father took her to the arena, and there she saw and fell in love with Golden Boy Dupree.

Speaker 1 Boy, talk about a hopeless dream.

Speaker 2 After the matches, she god damn you.

Speaker 2 After the matches, she met him.

Speaker 2 While she was in the hospital, he went to visit her, touched by her smiling acceptance of her illness and her fate.

Speaker 2 He autographed and gave her his picture. Her father said she died with the picture in her hands.
Aw. Joanne's body is at the Murray Funeral Home and has information here.

Speaker 2 Golden Boy Dupree, 1962, Boston.

Speaker 2 This young girl's favorite wrestler.

Speaker 1 Shows you the state of the wrestling business in Boston in 1962, though.

Speaker 2 And then I have also here another newspaper article. This one, December 14th, 1966, Arizona Republic.
This must have been also sent in by Ron Dupree

Speaker 2 in giant black marker, right up in the Phoenix paper.

Speaker 2 And it's an article here by Dave Hicks, Matt Meanies,

Speaker 2 Rouse Rabble,

Speaker 2 gang ambush attacks, rats, and hoodlums, special privileges.

Speaker 2 Why, that's enough to influence one to practice abstenia at Madison Square Gardens weekly wrestling matches.

Speaker 2 I've been supremely successful at it. But periodically, an incensed fan brings to light innumerable atrocities committed on Friday evenings at the garden.

Speaker 1 And by the way, this would be the one in Phoenix, Arizona. That's right.

Speaker 2 That's one in New York City. And the public deserves enlightenment.

Speaker 2 Recently, it was Don Arnold who was incurring the wrath of all about him.

Speaker 2 I investigated.

Speaker 2 I didn't find much atrocious about Don Arnold. Funny, but not atrocious.

Speaker 2 Now, Canada is exporting two commodities that threaten, insist my correspondence, to destroy all U.S.-Canadian relations.

Speaker 2 As a Kansan,

Speaker 2 I'm familiar with the dreaded Dalton Brothers of the 1890s.

Speaker 2 But the dreaded Dupree Brothers of the 1960s must be something else.

Speaker 2 Here's a quote. If any of you news hounds, writes my correspondent, want to see an unusual Roman holiday style of barbaric wrestling, now is your time to attend the matches at Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 2 The usual style of wrestling was introduced to Phoenix wrestling fans about two months ago at the Sportatorium by the Dupree brothers from Canada.

Speaker 2 They are granted the special privilege from the Arizona State Athletic Commission for both brothers to be in the ring or straddle the ropes when only one wrestler is due or should be away from the ring and out of sight when his brother is in the ring.

Speaker 2 ring.

Speaker 1 What kind of goddamn deal are they doing here?

Speaker 2 I thought it would be better for tag matches. It almost sounds like if one of them has a singles match, the other ones will have to just hang out in the ring.

Speaker 2 Just hang out in the ropes. You can let me reread that line.

Speaker 2 They are granted the special privilege from the Arizona State Athletic Commission for both brothers to be in the ring or straddle the ropes when only one wrestler is due or should be away from the ring and out of sight when his brother is in the ring.

Speaker 2 But on the first showing of these.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, their manager has to be in a special closet backstage next to the fucking fryer at the concession stand.

Speaker 2 But on the first showing of these Canadian wrestlers, rats and hoodlums,

Speaker 2 both Canadian brothers have already been in the ring at the same time, on the ring apron, hanging, lounging on the top rope, etc.,

Speaker 2 when only one of the rats was due in the ring.

Speaker 2 Among other atrocities, I gather, is the fact that the Dupree brothers, drat them,

Speaker 2 are allowed to, here's another quote, wear and use stomping boots, wear a hollow belt buckle to carry metal weapon.

Speaker 2 And it really does bring the blood and knock an opponent out.

Speaker 2 The informant declares: both Canadian rats are allowed to be in the ring and attack one opponent.

Speaker 2 Yes, that is hard to believe. It does destroy one's faith in fair play,

Speaker 2 but it's true.

Speaker 2 And a final invitation:

Speaker 2 So you be at Ringside about 8:15 or before,

Speaker 2 trying to get a seat where you could easily watch both sides of the ring, and also sit in front of several talkative men, etc.,

Speaker 2 who may have inside dope about the matches.

Speaker 1 Gads!

Speaker 2 I am stirred by such promise.

Speaker 1 Gads!

Speaker 2 But I still prefer Phoenix Star Theater.

Speaker 2 So there's some early promotion for them in Phoenix, Arizona.

Speaker 1 Holy Christ.

Speaker 2 And that's a little bit from the files here. Oh, there's an article here.

Speaker 2 We'll end with this. Well, this one was typed on

Speaker 2 regular paper, but it's all marked up like they cut things out of the article. New England Wrestling Score.

Speaker 1 Is it a ransom note?

Speaker 2 Here we are for some more human interest stories on Boston's Matmen. Joe Red Sasso,

Speaker 2 a local boy of Revere, Massachusetts, is packing them in wherever he appears. He stands 5'10, weighs 250 pounds, and is billed as the new Gus Sonnenberg of the Mat.

Speaker 2 Now there's a whole bunch crossed out. They just left the word dangerous flying tackle.

Speaker 2 They crossed out everything around that, which looks like puts his opponents away in record time.

Speaker 1 I've never seen a redacted press release before.

Speaker 2 No, this is an article. It looks like that someone sent in for the magazine, I would guess.
But along with Red,

Speaker 2 other favorites are Eddie Ortiz, the young Puerto Rican sensation, who is known for his flying dropkicks and aerobatic movements.

Speaker 2 Eddie hails from San Sebastian, Puerto Rico, and is the original Mr. Puerto Rico.

Speaker 2 The perfume Hollywood honey, Golden Boy Dupree, is another young and versatile wrestler who appeals more to the feminine sex than to the men in the audience.

Speaker 2 There's a bunch crossed out here. He throws flowers to the ladies in the audience before he wrestles.

Speaker 2 Killer Douglas.

Speaker 1 And then he gives them tips on interior decorating.

Speaker 2 Killer Douglas still holds the East Coast Championship. Giving the killer a rough time is the Oklahoma Cyclone Jesse James, who is the former East Coast champ.
James wants another crack at Douglas.

Speaker 2 Also, the tough and rough Bull Montana.

Speaker 2 The Boston Gardens resumes wrestling, featuring many of the top TV stars. And then it's just all marked up and crossed out after that.

Speaker 2 But there we go from the files. The Dupree brothers,

Speaker 2 the Hells Angels, any final thoughts?

Speaker 1 Yes, Boston was ready and ripe for the picking in the mid-60s to be assimilated into the

Speaker 1 WWWF family, and that kind of shows it.

Speaker 2 And Ron Dupree,

Speaker 2 other than,

Speaker 2 you know, you talk about there not being much Chris Colt footage, other than the footage of them in Detroit, is there any Ron Dupree footage?

Speaker 1 That would even be harder because

Speaker 1 he was older. He had the

Speaker 1 ill health and then died of a heart attack

Speaker 1 when he was announcing a wrestling event out in the Pacific Northwest. And that's when

Speaker 1 Cole kind of went farther on the road as a single and went farther out as a

Speaker 1 loose cannon personality when he didn't have Dupree to stabilize him.

Speaker 2 You can see there's a difference between him and Dupree in these photos, the beginning and the middle, just how they looked at different times, and then him and Count Drummer.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The time machine.

Speaker 1 Count Drummer was from the 1800s and Chris Colt was from the 2000s when it was 1977.

Speaker 2 Well, of course, Jim, a lot of wrestlers sent a lot of letters on hotel stationery. That's where they were.
That's where they had free papers and pens.

Speaker 2 And they also had beds.

Speaker 1 They had beds there. They weren't free.
You had to pay for the beds. You got the pen and the paper free.

Speaker 2 But imagine how many wrestlers would be feeling better today if all those crappy hotels and motels replaced their shitty beds with a great bed, a bed that we love in my house, a bed that you love in your house, a bed from Helix Sleep.

Speaker 1 Well, you're wrong there, Brian. They shouldn't replace the beds.
They should replace the mattresses.

Speaker 1 Now you can sit a helix sleep mattress on a dagum bunch of, I don't know, fruit crates, and it'll still be a wonderful sleep because it's the mattress that makes the difference, not the platform, Brian.

Speaker 1 So we got to make that clear. Now,

Speaker 1 if you go to Helix Sleep and you try to find,

Speaker 1 I don't know, let's say a giant bed like Dick the Bruiser had that's 20 feet wide and 10 feet long.

Speaker 1 They don't have those because that's just crazy. But what they have is mattresses to fit anything that you can commercially come up with.

Speaker 1 And we mentioned they're also good to put out in the backyard in case you need to jump out of the third floor window in case of a fire. I'm going to die on that hill.

Speaker 1 I'm telling you, I would line the whole backyard with these things. But

Speaker 1 more to the point, you say you need a good night's sleep in one of these fleabag motels that you apparently think people are staying in along the highways and byways of the country.

Speaker 1 You're not going to get it there. They've got sacks of wheat, sacks of wheat and pillowcases stuffed with plastic wrappers from the local fucking fast food joints.

Speaker 1 That's what you're going to sleep on at one of these fleabag motels or one of these fly-by-night mattress places. You know, all they do is they get behind the dumpster behind McDonald's.

Speaker 1 and they take all of those quarter pounder boxes and mash them up and stuff the mattresses with them and then sell them to you on the open market. That's what a lot of these places are doing.

Speaker 1 It's been on the news. Have you seen this, Brian?

Speaker 2 I have not seen this. I don't know why we're focusing on this when there's a great mattress, a great bed, a wait to show you what the alternative is.

Speaker 1 Do you want to sleep on a bunch of crunched-up McDonald's burger boxes,

Speaker 1 or do you want to sleep on fine-quality

Speaker 1 natural ingredients, American-made fabrics like parsley and sage and rosemary and thyme and whatever other

Speaker 1 fabrics they put in mattresses.

Speaker 2 This is not Scarborough Fair, Jim.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it might be Joe Scarborough. He sleeps on one of these.
I have it on. Mika told me.

Speaker 2 You do not know that you can't assign her things. Well, I'm not supposed to say that you don't know anything about.

Speaker 1 I'm not supposed to admit to people that I talked to Mika because we got a thing going on Joe doesn't know about. Will you stop?

Speaker 2 Can we get back to this?

Speaker 1 and mrs mika mrs mika mrs mika mrs mika again let's see if you want to go to bed ladies and gentlemen well let's see sika now there you're talking

Speaker 1 if you want to go to bed with sika ladies and gentlemen back to a mattress that we all love

Speaker 1 Yes, I could lay down with Sika on a Helix Sleep mattress or in a bed of, you know, burning rubber.

Speaker 1 But right now, if you go to helixleep.com, Sika might not be available, but a good night's sleep is. That's H-E-L-I-X helixleep.com slash J-C-E.

Speaker 1 And you just take the quiz on what kind of mattress you'd like from their

Speaker 1 array, their arsenal of mattresses. It's amazing plethora and cornucopia of mattresses and shapes and sizes and firmnesses and hardnesses.

Speaker 1 If you want to get it really hard every night, They got something for you. And if occasionally it can be soft, these things happen.
They'll take care of you too.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you're going to save money because right now, using our code helixleep.com slash JCE,

Speaker 1 27%

Speaker 1 off site-wide.

Speaker 1 That's what you're going to get. So if you order five or six mattresses, then you're going to get 27% off of everything.
And then you've just saved. so much money you can

Speaker 1 well you can buy sika to put on this mattress because you know she is older now, and I would imagine she's not in the demand she used to be. So I wouldn't think it'd take more than maybe

Speaker 1 $170, $180.

Speaker 1 If you've got any kind of out-of-secondhand jewelry, she might accept that also.

Speaker 1 But you can get Sika on one of these helixleep.com mattresses if you work hard enough and pay her her going rate. Right, Brian?

Speaker 2 No, not right, Brian. What you could say, right, Brian, about is the great deal on Helix Sleep mattresses that we have for our listeners.
Not about any other perversions, but right.

Speaker 1 Well, that's how you're going to save enough money to afford Sika with 27% off all these mattresses.

Speaker 2 I said people, because you were talking about Mika, they could Sika a great deal, and you went right down the porno road.

Speaker 1 What you were talking about? It's the only Sika I know. Well, I guess the Samoan.
You know the Samoans. You don't want to sleep like the Samoans do.
They sleep up in palm trees.

Speaker 1 Again, and that's not comfortable think of sika the porn star rather than sika the samoan for all the listeners who want a great mattress that we love and approve of helix sleep one last time jim one last time here today that program one last time helix sleep.com slash jce 27 off site-wide on these fine mattresses

Speaker 2 all right

Speaker 2 Jim, let's play some guest the program. Get you in a good mood.

Speaker 1 I thought you'd never ask.

Speaker 2 Guest the program is where i go through programs in my collection give gem jeam i give gem details about the programs and he guesses the time the date quickly i'll do it quickly today everything he has let's uh get to this everything i've got baby in my borderline mystical way This one.

Speaker 1 I got good in Buffalo the other week.

Speaker 2 You did it spectacular, I would say, that day. This one here, Jim.

Speaker 2 Grizzly Boone.

Speaker 1 Oh, good lord.

Speaker 2 Versus Ron Garfield,

Speaker 2 Alex Perez

Speaker 2 vs. Stan Lane,

Speaker 2 Manny Fernandez

Speaker 2 vs. Radamias.

Speaker 1 Good lord.

Speaker 2 Midgets, midgets, midgets.

Speaker 2 Butch Cassidy

Speaker 2 vs. Little Tokyo.

Speaker 2 In a tag team match, Jim, Dory Funk Jr.

Speaker 2 and Merced Solis

Speaker 2 versus Mr. Pogo

Speaker 2 and Akio Sato.

Speaker 2 And the main event for a tag championship I won't name.

Speaker 2 David and Kevin von Erich

Speaker 2 versus Ted DiBiase

Speaker 2 and Jack Mulligan.

Speaker 1 Good lord. Okay,

Speaker 1 things became clear. After those first two matches, I thought I was in some kind of fucking hallucinatory state.

Speaker 1 Let's talk. Grizzly Boone versus Ron Garfield.
Grizzly Boone

Speaker 1 would later on

Speaker 1 become

Speaker 1 more widely seen out of the Georgia Independence when he did some low-level stuff for WCW. And wasn't he partners with, were they the commandos? He and Ray Candy?

Speaker 1 Or was that in Jody Hamilton's

Speaker 1 independent promotion in Georgia at that point in time.

Speaker 2 You may be right.

Speaker 1 Ron Garfield,

Speaker 1 at one point, Don Fargo was his brother, too.

Speaker 1 For whatever reason, during the, I believe, summer of 1978,

Speaker 1 Nick Gulis used Ron Garfield and his brother Don Garfield, who was obvious. They even called him sometimes Don Fargo Garfield.

Speaker 1 Fargo had been in Nashville for 20 years with their manager, Las Vegas Louis. It's the the only time I've ever heard of Ron Garfield being booked.

Speaker 1 Al Perez and Stan Lane. Alex Perez

Speaker 1 was an old-time

Speaker 1 Tennessee favorite as a heel, but this is Al Perez, who later on would become.

Speaker 1 Al Perez with Gary Hart and everybody knows what's going on there. Stan Lane, wonder whatever happened to him.

Speaker 1 We'll come back to that. Manny Fernandez, the Raging Bull, against Radamias, who was Bill Howard, with some kind of hooded, druid-looking, spooky fucking gimmick that I never fully understood.

Speaker 1 But I loved the name because a lot of the fucking local ring announcers would, it was spelled R-A-T-A-M-Y-U-S.

Speaker 1 But I think especially the announcer in Indianapolis, Bob Beach, who was a mushmouth, called him Rattymus.

Speaker 1 Butchcasty and Little Tokyo, two of the midgets of the time.

Speaker 1 The two tip-off matches are Dory Funk Jr. teaming with Merced Solis,

Speaker 1 who would later become Tito Santana.

Speaker 1 But this was very early in his career against Akio Sato,

Speaker 1 who would later on work in the office in Kansas City and be one of the links to Japanese talent when they came to America and vice versa. And Mr.
Pogo,

Speaker 1 goddamn, he worked here also in 77 in Tennessee for a brief period of time. But what

Speaker 1 it's not gonna, it's not gonna change my

Speaker 1 knowledge of this card or this date, Brian. But Mr.
Pogo,

Speaker 1 what was his Japanese name when he went back and was somewhat of a high-level star in Japan?

Speaker 1 What the fuck was his name?

Speaker 2 Well, he was still Mr. Pogo for FMW against Oneida years later.
That was like one of Oneida's big feuds.

Speaker 1 Okay, then I guess he had another name here that he worked. Did he work under another name in Florida?

Speaker 1 Why am I thinking he had another name?

Speaker 2 I just don't know.

Speaker 1 Nevertheless.

Speaker 1 And David and Kevin von Erich against Ted DiBiase and Black Jack Mulligan. Everybody knows who they are.
And this is

Speaker 1 the West Texas territory

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 the funks had sold it to

Speaker 1 Murdoch and Mulligan,

Speaker 1 and it was Stan Lane's first territory out of the Carolinas.

Speaker 1 And because of that,

Speaker 1 I am going to say

Speaker 1 that this is 1979 in Amarillo, Texas.

Speaker 2 It is a program from February 9th, 1978.

Speaker 2 Ah, Lubbock, Texas. Ah!

Speaker 2 And what's interesting here is that the Von Erickson.

Speaker 1 Lubbock instead of Amarillo also. There's 50 miles difference.

Speaker 2 The Von Ericks are heels here, it appears.

Speaker 1 If I go to an article. Yes, because there was the thing of Dallas and, you know, Mulligan was a hero in West Texas, and so was Teddy.

Speaker 2 American Tag Team

Speaker 1 Unsportsmanly?

Speaker 2 That's what it says.

Speaker 2 There was every reason to believe that had they stayed in the match against the team of DiBiacia Mulligan, they would have lost the American tag team title.

Speaker 2 A stiff fine was not enough, and the NWA has ordered a rematch with the titles at stake and a special clause that reads: If they are counted out this time, the title can change hands.

Speaker 2 And the result written in

Speaker 2 DiBiase and Mulligan won via disqualification. David and Kevin hit referee Terry Garvin.
Good lord. They were full-fledged heels.
Wow, I didn't realize they did that in 78. That's something.

Speaker 1 Well, see, here's the thing. At this point in time, the Funks had sold the territory to Dick Murdoch and Blackjack Mulligan.
And Murdoch and Mulligan business was down already.

Speaker 1 Murdoch and Mulligan were trying to make a go of it. The Funks, I think Terry was already living in

Speaker 1 Florida, maybe at that point in time. I don't know, but Dory was on the card here.
But,

Speaker 1 you know, it wasn't like this was a goddamn major money match with Dory Funk Jr. And

Speaker 1 the rest of the card, Stan was there in the West Texas territory, but they were having to bring in the Von Ericks from Dallas.

Speaker 1 as their main event guys. And that's when Fritz had brought the American tag team title into existence the year before when

Speaker 1 David and Kerry broke in and they were the first champions. And they beat the Funks, as I recall,

Speaker 1 for the American Tag Team title to establish it in Dallas. And the Funks from Amarillo from West Texas came in as the heels there against the babyface Von Ericks.
When the Von Ericks, they had no.

Speaker 1 The Von Ericks had no reputation at this point in time. They were rookies.
So they could come in and be heels because they're from Dallas going against our local guys.

Speaker 1 Simple as easy as that.

Speaker 2 I would have loved to have seen that in 78, how skinny David was, and Kevin was just starting out a couple of years in as chicken.

Speaker 1 David was a heck of a heel in Florida a couple years later, so he was probably pretty good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'd love to see that stuff. But

Speaker 2 let's go to our next program here, Jim.

Speaker 2 Special added attraction: pro wrestler Tuffy Truesdale will will wrestle a live eight-foot-long alligator.

Speaker 2 Russian style Wrestle Royal

Speaker 2 Four singles matches as men are eliminated from Wrestle Royal, which will contain Carl and Eric von Bronner,

Speaker 2 Saul Weingroff,

Speaker 2 Herb Welch,

Speaker 2 Tamaya Soto,

Speaker 2 Corsica Joe,

Speaker 2 Jose Moto,

Speaker 2 Chuck Conley, and Ronnie Etcheson.

Speaker 2 There'll be an intermission with lucky numbers. And finally, the main event for a title I won't name.

Speaker 2 Wilbur Snyder versus Al Costello.

Speaker 1 Good lord, this.

Speaker 1 Tuffy Truesdale not only had wrestling bears, but he also did a thing where he wrestled an eight-foot live alligator. So that is, but he traveled.
That could have been anywhere, any place.

Speaker 1 That doesn't tell us anything.

Speaker 1 Carl and Eric von Brauner

Speaker 1 and Saul Weingroff, the Carl and Eric days,

Speaker 1 I believe were in the mid-60s.

Speaker 1 Herb Welch being on the card puts us somewhere in the Tennessee territory

Speaker 1 because at that stage of his career, he was not still working out like Georgia or other territories. Corsica Joe also

Speaker 1 lends it to be the Tennessee territory, even though the Corsican brothers, Joe and Gene, were

Speaker 1 on top in Georgia and Florida at various times. Chuck Conley was one of the original scuffling hillbillies, along with Rip Collins.

Speaker 1 And Ronnie Etcheson was a top babyface in the central states area for years and years, but he's out of place here.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 Al Costello-Wilbur-Snyder match,

Speaker 1 Al Costello was in between partners in the kangaroos, probably at this point, which is why it points me again to the mid-60s.

Speaker 1 And Snyder,

Speaker 1 the only question what title this would have been

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 it wouldn't be Snyder the United States champion because that was in the 50s.

Speaker 1 Would it have been for Al Costello's international title, possibly?

Speaker 2 That one could lead you a lot of different ways. So I will just clarify what the title was.
It was a return bout for Wilbur Snyder's U.S. Heavyweight Championship.

Speaker 1 But then they've just made it up that he's, or

Speaker 1 was this when he was the United States champion in San Francisco?

Speaker 1 But this is still in Tennessee or thereabouts.

Speaker 1 This is very, or did they just say

Speaker 1 we're bringing Wilbur Snyder in? He's the U.S. champion.
And Costello was a single heel.

Speaker 1 I don't know that this looks like a Memphis card, but it might be something for Nashville.

Speaker 1 Fuck it, I'll say Memphis, 1965.

Speaker 2 Ooh.

Speaker 2 Huh? Jim, Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 2 Monday night, October 10th,

Speaker 2 1966.

Speaker 1 Shat.

Speaker 1 You know what? This makes sense as I go back and look because

Speaker 1 this is a lousy card, to be honest with you. And the very next year

Speaker 1 is when Roy Welch would say to Jerry Jarrett,

Speaker 1 why don't you see if you can book this thing?

Speaker 1 He would just, he was burnt out, running out of ideas and talent.

Speaker 2 I wasn't familiar with Wilbur Snyder's Memphis run. That's what surprised me about this thing.

Speaker 1 Well, that's that's the thing is there, there

Speaker 1 was not a United States title recognized in the Memphis territory for any length of time at any point. So in 1966, what U.S.
title would Wilbur Snyder have had unless they just gave him one?

Speaker 2 Let Trech Phillips wrestle with your insurance problems now connected with the Continental Assurance Company, Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 You know what Tretch is short for, don't you? Treacherous. Treacherous.
Treacherous Phillips.

Speaker 2 All right, Jim, this next program, I'm going to institute one of the rules that we've used previously and leave off one match, which could be too much of a giveaway.

Speaker 2 That would be the opening match.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 The second match, I believe this would indicate one fall, 30-minute time limit. The Butcher

Speaker 2 versus Battleship Johnson.

Speaker 2 The third match,

Speaker 2 two out of three falls, two-hour time limit, no DQ.

Speaker 2 World tag title.

Speaker 2 Two Different Tag Title Claimants The Enforcer and Ox Baker vs. Chief Hill and Al Madrill

Speaker 2 An Intermission

Speaker 2 Match 4

Speaker 2 One Fall to a Finish

Speaker 2 Maniac Tolus

Speaker 2 vs. Freddy Blassey

Speaker 2 One Last Intermission

Speaker 2 And finally, one fall 45-minute time limit.

Speaker 2 Chavo Guerrero

Speaker 2 versus Victor Rivera.

Speaker 2 Warning, no throwing anything into the ring or touching wrestlers at any time. You will be fined and or arrested if caught doing so.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Good lord.

Speaker 1 Here is the

Speaker 1 opening match. I don't, was Gene LaBelle in it?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 The butcher.

Speaker 1 I mean, is that Butcher Brannigan? Butcher Vashon? Probably not.

Speaker 1 That's open to interpretation. Battleship Johnson didn't make a large impression on the wrestling profession, apparently.

Speaker 1 Ox, that's Ox Baker, right?

Speaker 2 The Ox? Correct. Ox Baker and the Enforcer.

Speaker 1 And the Enforcer would be Enforcer Luciano.

Speaker 2 One of the worst wrestlers ever. Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Chief Hill would be Frank Hill, who later became Jules Strongbow, Jay Strongbow's last tag team partner. They were the Strongbow brothers.
And Al Madrill,

Speaker 1 the journeyman in a variety of places. Let's skip to the main event.
Chavo Guerrero, that's Chavo Sr., and Victor Rivera.

Speaker 1 All things point toward

Speaker 1 being

Speaker 1 the dying days

Speaker 1 of the Los Angeles Territory, except suddenly

Speaker 1 there's the biggest drawing match in the history of Southern California wrestling. John Tolos and Fred Blassey is the semifinal, but this was not

Speaker 1 1971 in the LA Coliseum.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 my thought is that

Speaker 1 Mike LaBelle was trying to do something, anything,

Speaker 1 and some way or another, the California Commission, which had necessitated Blassey

Speaker 1 leaving the state and moving to

Speaker 1 become a manager for Vince Sr. in the Northeast in 1973, because that's when he turned 55 and he couldn't get a wrestling license.
This is, I'm going to say,

Speaker 1 at least five years later, if not six, Chavo was still a

Speaker 1 young, fiery babyface, and Rivera, they both lived out there. Rivera had made money there before, but

Speaker 1 this is Los Angeles at a very

Speaker 1 poor period of time for business. And I'm going to say 1979.

Speaker 2 Once again,

Speaker 2 huh? Jim, it's the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, Friday, November 7th, 1980.

Speaker 1 Oh, even worse.

Speaker 1 The more recent it gets, the worse the business was. So, Fred there was

Speaker 1 62.

Speaker 2 And he looks 72.

Speaker 2 The match I didn't tell you, I thought it would be too much of a giveaway. I don't even understand exactly what it is.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 Three fall 30-minute time limit, it seemingly, it indicates a 3-3-3 match.

Speaker 2 The assassin,

Speaker 2 Mondo Guerrero,

Speaker 2 and Cowboy Tom.

Speaker 2 Ha!

Speaker 2 Which is Tom Pritchard, I believe.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 But I don't know what that is. What's a 3-3-3 match? Was that a three-way match?

Speaker 1 I don't know what the fuck they're doing there.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it would...

Speaker 1 Seem like it. But is it

Speaker 1 a three-fall 30-minute match with three guys is it some kind of deal where they rotate and the first person to win two falls or something

Speaker 1 i don't know maybe

Speaker 1 maybe but uh cowboy tom was tom pritchard that was one of his first ventures out of texas mondo was obviously chavo's brother the assassin

Speaker 1 Was that Ronesto? Was he

Speaker 1 trying to book for them then? Or

Speaker 1 maybe they just put some guy under a fucking hood, but Renesto worked for that office at some point.

Speaker 2 Well, there it is. I thought Cowboy Tom would be the big giveaway for you.

Speaker 3 You wouldn't

Speaker 2 down.

Speaker 2 Jim, our next program here. This one will be tough.
Took me a while to actually figure out the date.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 The opening bout,

Speaker 2 a special handicap match.

Speaker 2 The undefeated crusher Derek,

Speaker 2 278 pounds,

Speaker 2 versus

Speaker 2 John Gizzardo, Len Gizzardo, and Don Reese,

Speaker 2 250, 260, and 230 pounds individually.

Speaker 2 A one-fall midget match, 30-minute time limit.

Speaker 2 Little Tojo

Speaker 2 from Japan versus Mighty Little John from Kentucky.

Speaker 2 Main event number two:

Speaker 2 one fall to a finish.

Speaker 2 World champion Paul Christie,

Speaker 2 two hundred and twenty two pounds, Evergreen Park

Speaker 2 vs. Wild Man Alexi.

Speaker 1 Okay, Jim Alexi.

Speaker 2 Two hundred and forty pounds, Grease.

Speaker 2 And finally, the main event, two out of three falls,

Speaker 2 sixty minute time limit.

Speaker 2 Graduate Angelo Poffo

Speaker 2 and Thunderbolt Williams

Speaker 2 versus the White Knight and the Masked Avenger.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 first to a crusher, what was his last name? Crusher. Derek.
Hey, Derek.

Speaker 2 Crusher Derek. That's right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And the other guys,

Speaker 1 the midgets are outlaw midgets.

Speaker 1 The only white knight masked Avenger who knows Thunderbolt Williams. no fucking clue.

Speaker 1 The giveaways here

Speaker 1 are the World Heavyweight Championship match with Paul Christie as the champion against Jim Alexei

Speaker 1 and Angelo Pafo being in the main event. This was when...

Speaker 1 Paul Christie at one point in time was the world champion for Phil Golden's all-star wrestling.

Speaker 1 And that Angelo Pafo worked a program with him and was the top heel back in that 72, 73 period

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 Phil Golden was trying to compete in Louisville and different places with Jarrett and Gulis.

Speaker 1 And then later on,

Speaker 1 that same territory as we've talked about, Pafo would try to run when he had the ICW with his sons Randy and Lanny.

Speaker 1 And at one point, after Phil Golden had pulled out,

Speaker 1 Paffo continued on with putting some of his own money in it. That's the only thing he'd spend money on, is promoting wrestling.

Speaker 1 So I think this is

Speaker 1 Angelo Pafo

Speaker 1 using Paul Christie, who lived in the Illinois area

Speaker 1 as the world champion after that TV had folded and just running his own independent show.

Speaker 1 And so I'm going to say that this is somewhere

Speaker 1 in

Speaker 1 the southern Illinois or western Kentucky area

Speaker 1 in 1974.

Speaker 2 All right. Well, you may be right about the first part or the second part.

Speaker 2 The town, Racine, Wisconsin.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, I'm not. That's way off.

Speaker 2 The promoter, I just saw his name, Dick Carlson.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the date,

Speaker 2 Sunday, February 4th, 1973.

Speaker 1 Okay, I was one year off, but Racine, Wisconsin is a long way away. But this was a

Speaker 1 and the promoter, Dick Carlson, this was an Angelo Pafo production.

Speaker 1 Some way or another,

Speaker 1 he found this guy and got because Racine in 1974 was AWA territory. Vern

Speaker 1 could not have been happy. Paul Christie was working for Bruiser at that point in Indiana.
So he was around.

Speaker 1 And Angelo, being the only other name on this whole show, he got this guy to run this town and had a piece up

Speaker 1 for whatever reason.

Speaker 2 Based on what I know and pictures I've seen, I think the little photos of the white knight in this program, I think it could be Randy Savage.

Speaker 1 That's very possible.

Speaker 2 I think it's him. Yeah.
Wow.

Speaker 2 Well, there we go. Racing 1973.
At least one last program here, Jim.

Speaker 2 This one,

Speaker 2 I'm going to use the rule and leave off one match, the opening match. Okay.

Speaker 2 $1,000 bounty match.

Speaker 2 John Condry

Speaker 2 versus Tommy Gilbert.

Speaker 2 $5,000 challenge match.

Speaker 2 Buzz Sawyer vs. Sweet Brown Sugar.

Speaker 2 Coco Samoa and El Gran Apollo vs. the Outlaws.

Speaker 2 Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk

Speaker 2 vs. Mike Graham and Jerry Lawler.

Speaker 2 And the main event,

Speaker 2 for a title I won't name,

Speaker 2 Dusty Rhodes versus the Assassin.

Speaker 1 Assassin number one, actually, is what it's assassin number one.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 John Condry is not Dennis Condry.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I don't know whether he went any further or not, or if he changed his name or whatever.

Speaker 1 Buzz Sawyer against Sweet Brown Sugar. That's early Buzz.

Speaker 1 And sweet brown sugar was Skip Young there, not the Cocoa Ware version.

Speaker 1 Coco Samoa would later on in Memphis become Sabu the Wild Man, but he was the original Sabu before Sabu

Speaker 1 existed, but

Speaker 1 he was primarily

Speaker 1 he looked like Jimmy Snooka, except he was six inches shorter, had the same body, used to claim he was related to him.

Speaker 1 El Gran Apollo was this good-looking babyface kid that worked in Florida, which is where we are

Speaker 1 in the late 70s, early 80s, and drew money because he was Hispanic and

Speaker 1 that was part of their market. Um,

Speaker 1 not sure who the outlaws are here. Would that have been the Davidson brothers? Would it have been the

Speaker 1 Ron Bass and someone?

Speaker 1 Nevertheless, the funks against Mike Graham and Jerry Lawler, Lawler.

Speaker 1 This was when Lawler was making shots in Florida and Funk was making shots in Memphis. And Dusty against assassin number one, that's Jody.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the question is, where in Florida is this in 1981?

Speaker 1 I believe 81, or am I jumping ahead because it might be 82? No.

Speaker 1 Because Tommy Gilbert

Speaker 1 was not working the Florida Territory in 1982, I don't believe, but he was there in 81.

Speaker 1 This is 1981.

Speaker 1 In

Speaker 1 if Lawler's on the card, it has to be one of the bigger shows because he only made shots. St.
Petersburg, 1981.

Speaker 2 The date,

Speaker 2 July 14th,

Speaker 2 1981.

Speaker 2 Tampa, Florida, Fort Hester. Tampa.
Armory, Tuesday night.

Speaker 1 I was 20 miles off.

Speaker 2 The match I didn't name was Hero Matsuda versus Kelly Kiniski, and the title I didn't name was the World Heavyweight title. This was a Dusty Roads World title defense.

Speaker 1 And that would have narrowed it down to, that would have given me the year there because of all of that.

Speaker 2 Well, Jim, another great effort, and we'll be playing again very, very soon. Guess the program, and of course, the listeners have all heard you stomp right through wrestling history.

Speaker 2 And people want to stomp, or need to stomp, I guess, not want, in the mud, in the muck, in the mire. If you have to get gritty work done, you got to do your thing.
You got to get it done.

Speaker 2 You want to feel good on your feet, Jim Brunt.

Speaker 1 Boy, words and phrases. I'll tell you, I like the Brothers Johnson.
Everybody take it to the top. We're going to stomp all night.

Speaker 1 And you can stomp too in your work boots. from our friends at Brunt.

Speaker 1 Because whether it is the Marin, the lightweight, waterproof, slip and oil resistant, heat resistant, electrical hazard-rated boot, or the Omen,

Speaker 1 which has all those fine qualities but attaches in a different way, they're all great.

Speaker 1 You can join over half a million other customers by finally having durable work boots that are as comfy as sneakers. Do you know?

Speaker 1 Just to test this out, Brian.

Speaker 1 What I did was I went and put my brunt boots on and I hid in the bushes and I waited till an old lady walked by me and then I tiptoed out from behind the bushes and went up behind her and screamed, ah!

Speaker 1 She never heard me because the brunt boots, they're built to last, but they're like sneakers.

Speaker 2 Why would you use this example? What kind of example is this to use?

Speaker 1 She never heard me sneak up on her. That just goes to show that if you want to sneak up on people in work boots, no, these are the boots to get.

Speaker 2 If you want to do work in work boots that look good, that feel good, that get the job done, that are sturdy and again, stylish yet comfortable.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Well, you don't need to worry necessarily about the style when you're out covered up to your crotch in mud and muck and mire and phlegm and animal shit and deer. Who are you?

Speaker 2 Where is this happening?

Speaker 1 Just out in the backyard.

Speaker 2 Your backyard?

Speaker 1 But at the same time, you can just hose these son of a bitches off and your feet will stay warm.

Speaker 1 Whether I've been climbing up on high things to grab boxes or mucking around in the mud, my brunt work boots are the nicest I've ever had. And the Marin six-inch soft toe

Speaker 1 is built for workers across a variety of trades without crimping. You know, I got that bunion.

Speaker 1 And the bunion don't like the hard-toed boots, but these, there's no problem. No blisters, no pain.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you can also sneak up on people if you want to kick them.

Speaker 1 You know, let's say, for example,

Speaker 1 if Ben's over to pick up some chains, you want to kick him right in the taint. Not the asshole, not the balls, but right in the taint.

Speaker 1 Boy, you can register your displeasure on a son of a bitch with these things. Boom, right there.

Speaker 2 Ladies and gentlemen, you could certainly do damage if you kick someone with these boots because they're the real deal, but we don't want to encourage that.

Speaker 2 In fact, we want to discourage that and say, Well, you only do it if you have to kick it into high gear and get that work done around the house or in the forest, wherever you may be.

Speaker 1 Yes, that's these are built for the toughest job sites, and that's where you want to be able to kick good.

Speaker 1 Because if somebody tries to steal your job, just kick them right in the head on the job site.

Speaker 2 No, you'll get over.

Speaker 2 You'll go away is what you will do. But, Jim, let's

Speaker 2 kick out some, let's kick out the jams. No, let's kick out some great prices, some great deals for the listeners.

Speaker 1 Yes. Well, with temperatures dropping and the holidays coming up, you don't want to be on frozen feet because if

Speaker 1 you get your Tootsies amputated, then you won't be able to fucking play the organ like Brian. All reasons to treat yourself and the worthy, hardworking man in your life to real comfort.

Speaker 1 So skip those throwaway gifts like use toilet paper and underwear with holes in them and get him something built to last. Brunt Workwear, right now,

Speaker 1 you go to Brunt. That's B-R-U-N-T.

Speaker 1 It sounds just like, what do you think it sounds like, except

Speaker 2 grunt and brunt sound alike. They rhyme, but we're talking about Brunt.

Speaker 1 One of those rhyming words, bruntworkwear.com. And use the code JCE.
You're going to get $10 off your order, $10 off,

Speaker 1 which in this day and age, at this time, every nickel and I would say penny counts, but they don't have them anymore. Every nickel counts.
So save $10

Speaker 1 off your entire order with the code JCE at bruntworkwear.com.

Speaker 1 And then let them know that you heard about them right here.

Speaker 1 And then kick somebody in the head or the taint.

Speaker 2 Metaphorically speaking, kick the world in its tail and do great, but let's also

Speaker 1 kick everybody to the side.

Speaker 2 Metaphorically speaking, kick everyone to the side side and leave everyone alone. Uh, metaphysically, but once again, Brunt,

Speaker 2 we love them, we support them, they support us, you should support them

Speaker 1 except the people you're leaving alone, Jim. That promo code, one last time, brunt bruntworkwear.com.
The promo code is J-C-E.

Speaker 2 All right, Jim, this begins the dramatic portion of the show.

Speaker 1 Gee, should we open our hymnals to page 72?

Speaker 2 You know, we were going to play.

Speaker 2 We were going to go through some listener questions. We were going to maybe play a song or two, but we've got Tony Khan audio.
So that makes sense.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow, well, but hold, hold on. Hold on.

Speaker 1 That's the only sound effect I've got anymore. I can get away with here.
I should have had a

Speaker 1 screeching tire effect. Because wild card bitches.

Speaker 1 I got something for you. The guess the program segment is not over

Speaker 1 because now the tables are going to be turned and the worm is going to turn and the mood is going to change.

Speaker 1 The seas are going to ebb and flow because now the shoe, as they say for another simile, Brian, is going to be on the other foot.

Speaker 1 I got a card for you, baby.

Speaker 1 Would you like to take up my chat? See, this is the... The opening segment of Raw where I come at it.
Would you like to take my challenge for tonight?

Speaker 1 I got a card for you. I want to see if you can determine where and when

Speaker 2 this topic goes on. 1949.

Speaker 1 I'll let you know what the matches are.

Speaker 1 Like that's going to do you.

Speaker 2 It was worth a guess because if I had hit, that would have been the most impressive thing ever.

Speaker 1 Oh, well, then I wouldn't have told you, and I'd never spoke to you.

Speaker 1 I'd have made up some reason that, no, I can't talk to him again. He's got

Speaker 1 bad foot odor.

Speaker 1 But are you ready to accept this challenge here?

Speaker 2 I want to hear all about Greensboro 1977.

Speaker 1 You won't quit, will you?

Speaker 2 You won't quit, will you? Let's do it. I'm looking forward to this.
Let's do this. All right.

Speaker 1 This is going to be funnier than you think it's going to be.

Speaker 1 The first match:

Speaker 1 The Invader versus Executioner Number Two.

Speaker 1 The second match,

Speaker 1 Don Hogan

Speaker 1 versus Executioner number one.

Speaker 1 And then we have the first of a big triple main event.

Speaker 1 For the United States Heavyweight Championship,

Speaker 1 Junior Adams

Speaker 1 takes on Eclipso,

Speaker 1 managed by Big Eddie.

Speaker 1 Next up for the World Heavyweight Championship.

Speaker 1 This obviously, of course, I would assume is going to be a one-fall 60-minute time limit contest.

Speaker 1 Greg Smith versus Stanley Flair.

Speaker 1 And then finally,

Speaker 1 the six-man tag team grudge match.

Speaker 1 The Tucker Brothers, Jim and Larry, teaming up with Playboy Barry Hill

Speaker 1 against the Doyle Brothers, Danny and Bobby Bow,

Speaker 1 and their partner, Rick McCord.

Speaker 2 Finally, a name. Finally.

Speaker 2 All right, hold on. I'm actually, I was writing it down, so I'm just finishing in.
Rick McCord.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 A popular bleach blonde undercard wrestler of the 80s.

Speaker 2 Because of him, I'm going to say it's the Carolinas. Because of the randomness and the

Speaker 2 if Jack Pfeffer was aliveness of some of the names, I almost was going to go with Malden, Missouri, just like the kind of names you would hear on one of those.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 Like, yeah.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 I'm going with

Speaker 2 this. Can't be in like a legitimate city.

Speaker 2 This can't be like Charlotte. This can't be Greensboro.

Speaker 2 I don't even think it could could be Raleigh.

Speaker 2 I'm going.

Speaker 2 I'm going with Raleigh.

Speaker 2 It's going to be South Carolina. I'm going with Raleigh

Speaker 2 19.

Speaker 2 Don Hogan. Don Hogan.

Speaker 2 Was it Stanley Flair? Was that the name you said?

Speaker 1 Stanley Flair.

Speaker 2 Stanley Flair. Now, wait a minute.

Speaker 2 You know, I was going to go in the 80s. I'm going to

Speaker 2 guess maybe Don Hogan. You know what? I think it's worth it to go with an early.

Speaker 1 Don Hogan, also, wasn't he a famous golfer? Or was that another Hogan? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Ben Hogan.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go with Columbia, South Carolina, 1977.

Speaker 1 You know what?

Speaker 1 You son of a bitch, when you said Greensboro, North Carolina, 1977 as a a joke before I gave you the card, I was almost ready to piss myself. You were

Speaker 1 three weeks and like 60 miles away.

Speaker 2 Man,

Speaker 2 see, I told you it would work. I told you it was a good philosophy.
It could work.

Speaker 1 God damn you.

Speaker 1 This was Mount Airy, North Carolina,

Speaker 1 Saturday, January 21st, 1978.

Speaker 1 And Mount Airy is,

Speaker 1 oh God, I lived in Charlotte so long, but is it 90 miles straight north of Charlotte, almost to the Virginia state line?

Speaker 1 Mount Airy, North Carolina is where Francis Bavier that played Aunt B on Andy Griffith lived for

Speaker 1 years and years. And Mount Erie is kind of like the Mayberry.

Speaker 1 That's technically, you know, what Andy Griffith, you know, Mount Pilot in the Andy Griffith show, Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, these places. So nevertheless, that's what Mount Airy is known for.

Speaker 1 It's not a very, it's not a city.

Speaker 1 It's like you saying Raleigh compared to Mount Airy is like New York compared to fucking Columbus, Georgia.

Speaker 1 It's a little, a little fine little place.

Speaker 2 See, I'll just let you know before you reveal anything else, my. train of thought here.

Speaker 2 Rick McCord took me to mid or early 80s in the Carolinas.

Speaker 2 But then I'm thinking, this card cannot be booked in a legitimate building in any big city. It just couldn't.
Executioners, if you got magazines, you saw

Speaker 2 there were mass executioners in the WWWF.

Speaker 2 I don't know who Big Eddie or Eclipso or Junior Adams or the Tuckers or the Doyles.

Speaker 1 Get out of the way for old Dan Tucker. He's too late to have his supper.
You know who they all are. They're all a bunch of guys that got together and did this.
I'm going going to tell you why.

Speaker 1 Well, and by the way, oh, go ahead.

Speaker 2 I was going to say what threw me back to going to the 70s at the very end, because Don Hogan made me think, okay, Hogan's a big name. And, you know, there's Randy Hogan.

Speaker 2 Maybe Don Hogan was like that.

Speaker 1 But Stanley. I think that was probably his real name.

Speaker 2 Stanley Flair.

Speaker 2 When I paused on that for a moment, I said, wait a minute. And I don't think I've ever seen a card with Stanley Flair.
So it really got me thinking. Then I thought South Carolina, but I was close.

Speaker 1 But that's the thing is this.

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, I want to thank Jeff Sharkey, who sent this to me because he was

Speaker 1 searching for something for some reason and came upon an ad for it. This is an indie show from Mount Airy, North Carolina, the Reeves Community Center, January 21, 1978.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 there, the Eclipseo, by the way, way, is spelled in the in the ad Eccipso, E-C-S-I-P-S-O.

Speaker 1 But Jeff says there was an ACW, I think it was a Virginia Independent, that Rick McCord and Boris Zerkoff, Jim Nelson, because he was from the Carolinas before he became,

Speaker 1 had

Speaker 1 started.

Speaker 1 Eclipso worked with them. Stan had told me, and this was not the one, but

Speaker 1 his first ever match was like him and remember Steve Travis, whose real name was Steve Muslin. He was from Virginia or Upper North Carolina there.

Speaker 1 And they had been fans. Stan had been watching since the 60s, George Catalina Drake.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 They had gotten into, there was some early outlaw group like in the mid-70s. And Stan was supposed to wrestle, but he had ended up hurting himself himself somehow training.

Speaker 1 So he managed another guy, Steve Travis, was on the card, and they never did it again.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 Flair started training him after they met at the,

Speaker 1 you know, the Hilton and Myrtle Beach when Stan was doing room service and brought the 10 Bloody Marys to Flair's room at fucking nine o'clock or whatever.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 before

Speaker 1 their first territory or his first territory, Stan's, we talked about this on the guest program,

Speaker 1 was Amarillo, West Texas, because Blackjack Mulligan was friends with Flair.

Speaker 1 They had worked at Big Angle in the Carolinas. They were close friends.

Speaker 1 So Flair knew Blackjack needed talent. So he got Stan booked in Amarillo.
But before, because that was February,

Speaker 1 completely independently.

Speaker 1 of us doing that guest the program. I just seen my email that Jeff had sent me this ad,

Speaker 1 but this was like two weeks before he left town to go to his first territory and it was an indie show and they called him stanley flair because flair had been training him

Speaker 1 and it also says watch championship wrestling on saturday night at 1 a.m on wxii tv 12.

Speaker 2 oh wow which

Speaker 1 but no here's the thing

Speaker 1 I don't know this was before

Speaker 1 easy home video cameras.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the fuck they were doing in the way of a television show, but they had obviously paid because I think Channel 12 is from the Greensboro, Raleigh, Winston-Salem area.

Speaker 1 So they got some off-brand TV show. Stan was not involved in the promotion of this,

Speaker 1 but Rick McCord, who's from Roanoke, Virginia, or Salem.

Speaker 1 That's when he was just starting to break in.

Speaker 1 So whoever these outlaws were they had some off-brand tv show on at one o'clock in the morning and their world heavyweight champion was greg smith

Speaker 2 steve travis one of the last young baby faces to rock a mustache

Speaker 1 yeah you had you know what that's right and then it it the worm turned

Speaker 2 All right, this has been Guest the Program. I'm happy with my performance here.

Speaker 1 You've, I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't fault you for your second guess. That would have been close enough, but the first one that you just pulled out of your ass because you were being a prick was ridiculous.
All right.

Speaker 1 Back to normal programming.

Speaker 2 Back to normal programming. Like I said, we have a Tony Khan audio.
That's how we're going to wrap up today's show. We'll catch up with everything else next time.

Speaker 2 But I do have one tweet I want to read you, get your thoughts on this.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 Triple H

Speaker 2 tweeted out

Speaker 2 from Maxine Dupree:

Speaker 2 winning your first title from a multi-time world champion at the world's most famous arena

Speaker 2 doesn't get bigger than that.

Speaker 2 This is the garden. Congratulations, Maxine Dupree.

Speaker 2 Standard fare for the Dana White of WWE to say something like that, correct?

Speaker 1 A promoter type thing, nothing inflammatory.

Speaker 2 Listen to this retweet with a quote from Becky Lynch, Rebecca Quinn on Twitter.

Speaker 2 Three letters, NML,

Speaker 2 no

Speaker 2 manager's license.

Speaker 2 In the state of New York, that is governed by the State Athletic Commission, a manager's license must be attained for interfering parties to be allowed at ringside.

Speaker 2 Therefore,

Speaker 2 hence, vis-à-vis

Speaker 2 the outcome of this title match,

Speaker 2 which has been clearly rigged, is hereby under protest.

Speaker 2 You'll be hearing from my lawyer imminently. The changing of the side plates will result in a lawsuit.

Speaker 2 What do you think of that?

Speaker 1 Oh, that's perfect. Well, that's true.
A.J. Lee has no manager's license.

Speaker 1 And New York is one of the strictest commissioned states in the country. I think this thing should immediately go before the

Speaker 1 at least regional courts so that it can be adjudicated properly and Becky Lynch can have her championship restored.

Speaker 2 You know, heels lie. Heels cheat.
That's what makes them heels. Yes.
What do you think about the frustrated heel who is actually completely correct in almost like Drew McIntyre?

Speaker 2 You know, like everything they're saying, yeah, you know, they're kind of right, but they're still the heel.

Speaker 1 Well, see, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 That's what the territories made money with because

Speaker 1 the whole idea was personal issues draw money. And you needed to put your heel in a position where

Speaker 1 when you could do something you needed to do something like that somebody distracts him and it may be lose or whatever he deserved it or she deserved it in this case that's what makes them heels it's about time

Speaker 1 they got a taste of their own medicine

Speaker 1 and that's the way that you could always

Speaker 1 Again, in the territory days where every finish had to lead to the next week or next two weeks, next month show or whatever,

Speaker 1 you could give the heels reasons to bitch.

Speaker 1 He didn't be fair and you could still actually keep the thing fresh.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, the heel, the fans were thinking, well, the heel wasn't out there saying,

Speaker 1 I didn't beat him fair when he did the same thing. God damn it.
You see what I'm saying? It's fucking tit for tat. So did maybe not with the girls.
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 You know, it's an interesting out for like a female heel if she ever wants to get out of a title match in new york like what's going on we understand there's a disturbance and come back i'm not letting this commissioned doctor touch me get this person away from me

Speaker 2 it would work in new york state it would be true but uh very good there funny funny tweet because it's uh

Speaker 2 it's true and it's honest very good there Very good.

Speaker 1 I applaud Becky Lynch. And the commissioned doctor thing might have some legs.
The old doctor in Evansville back in the 70s, Lance Russell had the camera there one night.

Speaker 1 They were filming a fucking interview with Jimmy Valiant because he was down from Indianapolis.

Speaker 1 And the doctor at the time, old Doc Schrieffer, I think his name was, he had to be 75 years old if he was a day.

Speaker 1 And he'd check your blood pressure and you weren't sure that he had one, right?

Speaker 1 He'd nod off pumping the deal.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so they got him on camera one time, interviewing him on the pretext of Lance said, I want to do an an interview with you for TV.

Speaker 1 For, you know, you're the commission doctor, so you're official and we're, you know, making this very, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 And the first question was, so I understand that, Doc, you've been doing this for many years. Oh, yeah, yeah, 50 years back to Strangler Lewis, whatever.

Speaker 1 He said, and I understand you give the wrestlers an examination. Oh, yeah, I got to check them out.

Speaker 1 Now I hear that a lot of these wrestlers they get from the falls and the slams, they get a lot of hemorrhoids. Is that true?

Speaker 1 And the doctor is like, well,

Speaker 1 I don't necessarily know about that.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 then Lance said, oh, I've heard from being picked up and slammed down that they get these giant hemorrhoids. Do you have to do anything? Well, no, I don't really check them as.

Speaker 1 And then Lawler runs in and pulls his pants down and bends over and says he sticks his finger up our ass to check and see whether we got any hemorrhoids or not.

Speaker 1 And the doctor almost had a heart attack. He thought they were on television, right?

Speaker 2 Like

Speaker 2 the camera that he was this nude wrestler and oh my god jesus christ well good job becky lynch i guess that was the point of the whole thing yes and she don't have hemorrhoids and that's how a heel uses twitter

Speaker 2 oh i thought you meant that's how a heel got hemorrhoids jim tony kahn has returned to the ariel hilani show the last time he has returned and he is here you may remember the last time he appeared on the show him and ariel were not getting along mainly because Ariel was trying to get answers and Tony was obfuscating to the max.

Speaker 1 Tony, what's your favorite color? Well, I'd really rather talk about the pay-per-view this Saturday night.

Speaker 2 Exactly. He deflected everything.

Speaker 2 Well, he returned, and

Speaker 2 tons of listeners have been sending over various sections of this. So we're going to try to get to some of these quotes and some of these comments that everyone wants to get your thoughts on.

Speaker 1 Well, I've got one report from one of the listeners that listened to this fiasco when it first came up on the air live.

Speaker 1 It was apparently in total an 80-minute interview, and Tony put up on the board 88 grates, which that means there's an average of one every 54 seconds

Speaker 1 through the entire thing. So I'm not even going to use the bell.
Just bear in mind that. At least once a minute, if he don't do it one minute, he'll make up for it the next.

Speaker 1 He's going to grate you.

Speaker 2 We need to keep track of that because it would be interesting. Obviously, there's length to this interview, so there's a lot of grates, but in terms of grates per minute, is that middle of the road?

Speaker 2 Is that good for Tony? Is that good?

Speaker 1 I don't know. It's remember the

Speaker 1 bro count on that dark side of the ring appearance for Shit Stain was off the charts.

Speaker 1 So I think if we got them together,

Speaker 1 something would short circuit. Nevertheless.

Speaker 2 Right, let's go to our first bit of audio of Tony Khan on the Ariel Hilwani show. It's available on YouTube.

Speaker 2 This is Tony talking about the current booking, the creative in AEW and the process behind it. Jim, as always, stop it along the way to make any comments you'd like to make.

Speaker 1 If he gets to a point or even a pause in some train of thought that makes any sense, I will interject to comment on it.

Speaker 3 As far as AEW is concerned, you're still the head booker.

Speaker 3 Is it just you? Are you the judge of jury, or is there a committee? And if so, there's always questions, I think, as to like who's in the committee.

Speaker 3 So, could you tell us, like, what is the sort of state of the booking process right now?

Speaker 3 Well, I put the shows together, and this year I feel like I've been especially hands-on at every episode about every aspect of every segment in a way that I was in Daly's place in the pandemic.

Speaker 3 And at the beginning of the year, I kind of said

Speaker 3 since last year's holidays, that I was going to step back

Speaker 3 and look at it for a moment like I did five years earlier. And Christmas 2019, I had said, you know, there's a couple things that I knew

Speaker 3 might not work and I did them against my best judgment. So why would I ever do that? Don't ever do that.
And it's like a diet. You do your best to stick to it.

Speaker 3 Nobody's perfect, but like, you know, every once in a while, I still might do something against my better judgment. But I kind of told myself, stop doing it.

Speaker 2 I'm going to stop you for a moment.

Speaker 2 He says a lot quickly.

Speaker 2 Jimmy, your thoughts on,

Speaker 2 I guess he's as happy as he's ever been with the creative process, which, as he said, more than any other point before,

Speaker 2 he's very hands-on in every single segment of the show.

Speaker 1 Well, no, that's possibly the reason they all look the same. But

Speaker 1 again, he's this.

Speaker 1 Oh, I did some things against my better judgment, and then I took a look back, and then I'm doing like I did at Daly's Plate, like there's some golden era that he's got to harken back to.

Speaker 1 He can't harken back to any golden era because he's lost all the golden talent.

Speaker 1 I don't know what he regrets doing if he's proud of what he's been doing lately.

Speaker 1 And I'm still waiting for any kind of meaningful response to the question that was asked, which was plainly.

Speaker 1 Besides you as the head booker, is there anybody else on a committee? And how is this done?

Speaker 1 Not what goes through your mind when you wake up in the morning and have another one of these whims about an 18-man gangbang match. But I'm sorry I'm interrupting.

Speaker 2 Now, Tony Heard, how do you feel about what you like doing? Yeah. Let's go back to this.

Speaker 3 Doing things against your better judgment. So even in January, and it was the same exact thing, too, where in January 2020, there were one or two things where I said, why did I do that?

Speaker 3 I said I wasn't going to do that, but then kind of caught myself and I did that again this year. And I really felt like

Speaker 3 it's been

Speaker 3 a lot like the shows like I would have put together in the pandemic where I come in with more of an outline of everything I want to do, but I also like hearing everyone's ideas and I utilize them. So

Speaker 3 I feel like we have a really good group of people. It's evolving and changing.
And the one consistent thing is there's one person that's at all the shows and it's me.

Speaker 3 And that's the thing is there's not any other one person that goes to every show. There's a hundred and

Speaker 2 hold on.

Speaker 1 Good lord, what? Wait.

Speaker 1 Wait here. Hold on here.
Hold on now, cowboy.

Speaker 1 He's the only person that goes to every TV.

Speaker 1 Whether,

Speaker 1 I mean, even in the territory days,

Speaker 1 not counting the talent, the announcers, the office representatives, the booker, whatever,

Speaker 1 they better be at fucking TV.

Speaker 1 And with Vince or TNA or

Speaker 1 WCW, I can guarantee you

Speaker 1 there were minimum 40 people in the building, more with the WWF,

Speaker 1 that were at every TV.

Speaker 1 Or Vince would have been going, or somebody been going, where the fuck is so-and-so?

Speaker 1 You're talking crew people, office representatives, producers,

Speaker 1 the local promoters of the building.

Speaker 1 He's the only one that's at all of them. No wonder it's a goddamn disorganized shit show.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 2 That's why wrestlers disappear off TV when they're getting close to Tony's record. He's like, he just stops booking.

Speaker 2 You were getting close to being at every show this year, so I had to send you home. Only one person is at every show.

Speaker 1 I don't even know what to say.

Speaker 3 Well, there's 104 dynamites in collisions because now that there's dynamite in collision, there's two shows a week. Wednesday nights, dynamite on TV.

Speaker 2 Oh, oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Oh, my aching heart. My asshole is spurting blood

Speaker 1 in projectile fashion at two TVs a week.

Speaker 3 Saturday night's collision on TNT, also on HBO Max, like this Saturday, but it's on an hour earlier for the tailgate brawl.

Speaker 3 Well, the only person that goes to all those TVs in the pay-per-views is me.

Speaker 3 There's not one other person that's, there's a lot of great people that help out, people that work in different departments, wrestling, creative, and they could be coaches. It could be senior figures.

Speaker 3 I have great people who could contribute ideas like what everybody from Brian Danielson, who's an all-time legend in wrestling, but also has some great ideas and different people on the staff.

Speaker 3 And it's a great group of women and men, but among all of them, the only person that goes to every TV is me. So

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ. Stop it there.
He's named one other person, Brian Danielson. And then he just said there are women and people.
Yes, and

Speaker 1 persons.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But again,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 every major company that I've ever worked for that did their television, which is all of them,

Speaker 1 had

Speaker 1 the same. And

Speaker 1 two TVs a week is not goddamn ridiculous. I'm sorry, but if you think,

Speaker 1 I guarantee you, think of how many people at Vince McMahon had at Monday SmackDown or Monday, Monday Raw and Friday SmackDowns for so many years.

Speaker 1 The same fucking people doing the same fucking jobs.

Speaker 1 Jesus H. Christ.
It's, you know, that's

Speaker 1 they know days off in show business, but there's

Speaker 1 there is now in wrestling, and he thinks this is something that he can't have

Speaker 1 a structured office and production staff in charge of. No wonder it's a shit show.

Speaker 3 I have a pretty consistent idea of what I'd like to do, but also whoever's in the room of

Speaker 3 coaches and staff that day, I will talk to them and hear out their ideas, but it might be a different group.

Speaker 3 It's kind of like, do you like Ghostbusters? I used to, yeah.

Speaker 2 What the fuck is going on?

Speaker 3 Scene in Ghostbusters. I was thinking that this one is pretty convoluted, but this will give you insight into my thinking.
There's a scene in Ghostbusters.

Speaker 1 Insight into his convoluted thinking.

Speaker 3 Ray and Winston, and

Speaker 3 the original Ghost Posters.

Speaker 2 And they're just driving in the car

Speaker 3 on the bridge here in New York. And it's Ray and Winston.
And then I realized, and I'm like, you know, that's not the two that you always see together. It's like shifts.

Speaker 3 And like, you get different pairs of people. And like,

Speaker 3 if that makes sense, like, you know, you might see Ray with Egon or you might see him with Bankman, Bill Murray, or with Winston. But I was like, it's different shifts.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, the whole movie, it hasn't just been Ray and Winston, but they're in the car now. This is their day.
This is their shift.

Speaker 3 Dude, within every group of people, there's what is he fucking rambling about?

Speaker 1 What the fuck? This is an explanation. The Ghostbusters do it.

Speaker 1 So that means my multi-million dollar fucking company can't have a staff of executives and production people and creative that goes to two TVs a week because of the fucking Ghostbusters.

Speaker 2 All right. Well, he's explaining why

Speaker 2 people work with other people.

Speaker 1 I had Brian Hildenbrand dragging his poor scrawny ass to four shows a week.

Speaker 1 He didn't fucking talk about the Ghostbusters.

Speaker 2 Let's go back to

Speaker 2 Rick Moranis and Ghostbusters, Tony Connor.

Speaker 3 That's right. That's not always the ones you think when you see the people walk and stand together.
So I have a different group of people

Speaker 3 and almost every

Speaker 3 different combination of people

Speaker 3 than I did at the beginning. But I think there's been a common thread and a consistency.
And I like that from show to show because I feel like I have a good sense of what AEW is.

Speaker 3 And I am a fan of wrestling. But also,

Speaker 3 since I've been here, I feel like I,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 have

Speaker 3 through the years followed the fans. I like to stay in touch with the fans and hear what they like and don't like about the show.
And I feel like

Speaker 2 he looks in their windows.

Speaker 2 Let me stop here for a second. We're almost done with this question.

Speaker 2 The question is about the booking process, the creative team, the committee, how it works, who's on it, who participates.

Speaker 2 We found out that

Speaker 2 there's only one person who's there all the time, and it's him. He said that.

Speaker 1 And he's pretty much taking the blame.

Speaker 1 So, yeah.

Speaker 3 Really good job of listening to the fans and putting on a really good show, you know. And

Speaker 3 I would say that start to finish so far, we're in November. I think as far as doing the TV every week and the pay-per-views, this is my favorite year of shows, personally.

Speaker 3 And everybody, it's a cool thing about wrestling is it's all opinions.

Speaker 3 But for me, as far as how many great matches and how consistent everyone's been and how happy I've been coming out of the events, it's my favorite year yet.

Speaker 1 He's made himself happy with all these shows. And in all seriousness, we're laughing and it is laughable.

Speaker 1 But yes, it's natural to want to listen to the, because he said, I listen to the fans. He listens to the fans that tell him that the shows he does are great.

Speaker 1 Literally. And that's a more dwindling number.
And it's a certain niche audience to begin with that all these other kids have lived in that bubble.

Speaker 1 But while it's a natural thing to listen to the people who say everything you're doing is great,

Speaker 1 you might want to listen every once in a while to some constructive criticism. Not to people are going, fuck you, and fuck your other guy and fuck your fucking dog.
But seriously,

Speaker 1 you know, here's some shit that's wrong.

Speaker 1 But he seems to tune all that out,

Speaker 1 whether it's us on a show or other people on the news sites or whatever

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 criticize and rightfully so and provide documentation and examples of same,

Speaker 1 he never addresses that.

Speaker 1 And at some point, you know, I had Ring of Honor, I had to go out a couple of times and say, yes, we know our technical efforts let you down during the Sinclair era and the go-fight live,

Speaker 1 you know, fiasco's.

Speaker 1 You got to do that along with, hey, we had a great show. But nevertheless.

Speaker 2 Well, Jim, here's Tony's thoughts on his current booking run.

Speaker 1 I thought that was just his, oh, god damn it.

Speaker 3 On the one hand, I could say I've only been a wrestling promoter for six and a half years, and I've only been booking and

Speaker 3 producing wrestling shows for six and a half years. On the other hand, that's one of the longest runs anybody's ever had.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I've been fortunate to learn a lot of things. and I'm fortunate that tomorrow I get to do another one, and Saturday I get to do another pay-per-view.
And I'm

Speaker 3 never

Speaker 3 ungrateful for that. I'm always very grateful to the fans who watch the shows that we're still in this position.

Speaker 2 All right, let me stop it there, Jim.

Speaker 2 He's been at it almost as long as anyone. Well,

Speaker 1 again,

Speaker 2 as far as it really makes you question how time works.

Speaker 1 Well, as far as he has some point in there,

Speaker 1 as far as a booker booking for six and a half years straight,

Speaker 1 he's nearing

Speaker 1 a record because a lot of times either the promoter would change bookers, or if it was a guy that owned part of the company, he would tag off like Jarrett Lawler and Dundee did.

Speaker 1 But as a promoter, he's at nobody's,

Speaker 1 there were promoters that were in the business for 40 fucking years. So that's not, he's not even in the talk.

Speaker 1 But also,

Speaker 1 none of these other people actually just had unlimited money to make themselves these things, whether there was success or not, which is kind of flaws any kind of streak you're going for, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 Again, it's a different playing field than it's ever been for anyone else before.

Speaker 2 Let's hear Tony and Ariel talk about the ratings and attendance for AEW in 2025. Once again, this is from the Ariel Helwani Show.
Here's Tony Khan.

Speaker 3 Fans, there's always a lot of talk about ratings, about attendance. Honest assessment of where you're at right now from a ratings perspective and attendance perspective.
Thank you for that.

Speaker 3 I am very excited. We're coming off of an awesome event this past week and awesome ratings.
We had a great week.

Speaker 3 We were one of the top shows on cable. Okay.
And this year, what did that do? I don't know.

Speaker 3 It was so I don't have all the numbers of the DVR and I don't know the streaming numbers. You got to remember that you have a lot of fans who watch on HBO Max now.

Speaker 2 There was a lot of them.

Speaker 2 There was a lot of them.

Speaker 1 A lot of them watched on everything. I don't have any numbers to give you.

Speaker 2 I can't back that up with any facts or anything.

Speaker 3 It was 600,000 and it was in our time slot one of the top shows and it ranked somewhere in the top 10 on cable for the entire night. And in its time slot, I think it was along with ESPN and Fox News.

Speaker 3 TBS was one of the top three channels. And it was also,

Speaker 3 to me, if you add in what I would believe we have on our streaming audience, more people watching than last year's Blood and Gots.

Speaker 1 And our audience. Oh, yeah, hold on.

Speaker 1 Hold on. He had 600,000.
That's the number that came in on the new rating system for Dynamite,

Speaker 1 which

Speaker 1 that was their big show, and they're back to kind of doing what they were doing for a while before the new rating system, and they went in the 400s.

Speaker 1 And he still claims to not

Speaker 1 know

Speaker 1 how many people watch on max

Speaker 1 if

Speaker 1 he is anything or anybody to the wbd conglomeration

Speaker 1 and he's producing a television program for which they're paying buku bucks then it would seem to me that he could say hey I need some fucking numbers from your company on how many people are

Speaker 1 watching on your service here, not only for

Speaker 1 my own personal information, but also because when it ever comes time for us to renegotiate.

Speaker 1 You mean to tell he's doing deals with this company and he doesn't have a clue how many people's watching on his thing and how important it is to HBO Max or whatever this goddamn deal is?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's number one.

Speaker 1 And in number two,

Speaker 1 if he doesn't know for real and he's not lying

Speaker 1 and he is not insane and a rotten business person,

Speaker 1 maybe has he told him, don't tell me. I don't want to know because then I'll have to say.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 How else do you explain this?

Speaker 2 I don't explain it at all. Let's go back to Tony and hear how he explains it.

Speaker 3 Audience this year, our cable. Do you know what the streaming numbers are? No, I don't have them.
They don't tell you. No, I don't have them.
Okay, okay.

Speaker 3 And I honestly don't know how many people would have watched, but knowing that it was our most watched show in months on TBS, I would expect it was probably our most watched show in months on streaming.

Speaker 3 From what I've seen in sports, we don't get every streaming number from every game with all the data.

Speaker 3 But I do know from the NFL that there's a healthy and growing audience that watches the events on streaming. So I think that TBS is still...

Speaker 1 Oh, they tell the NFL.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 They're big blabber mouse to the NFL, but Tony, your wrestling program, fuck, that's in Fort Knox.

Speaker 2 He has an idea how the NFL does. He didn't necessarily say he knows how his team does.
He tried to get away from that probably because he would realize that it would.

Speaker 1 Well, it also,

Speaker 1 old Ariel said, they don't tell you, I don't have that. Yeah.
Which is

Speaker 3 kind of bread and butter on Wednesdays and TNT on Saturdays, but I think that's a growing part of the audience, especially in the younger demographics.

Speaker 3 What's been really exciting for us is at the beginning of the year, I was thinking that there was a possibility, okay, we have this audience at the end of 2024.

Speaker 3 I was here in New York for the holiday shows. We're coming back again to do Christmas Collision and Dynamite on 34th Street around the holidays.
At Hammerstein, right? At Hammerstein.

Speaker 3 They were great events last year, and they really set the stage to come in and have this great year we're having now.

Speaker 3 And, you know, looking at it back then, I was thinking, okay, well, the new year's about to start. This is uncharted territory.
We've never done the simulcast.

Speaker 3 We've never done Dynamite Live on Wednesday. It's still on TBS, but now we're also going to have people watching on HBO Max.

Speaker 3 Collision is still going to be on TNT, but we'll have people watching on HBO Max. My thought is we're going to have

Speaker 3 some new cutters that have never watched before coming on HBO Max. We're also possibly going to have some cord cutters that have been away from cable coming back to AEW on HBO Max.

Speaker 1 But I have a one-risk cut.

Speaker 3 It came out the other way. In Q1, Q2, and Q3, if you look, our share went up and our total audience went up.
So we have this really great success story.

Speaker 2 Wait, wait, hold, hold.

Speaker 1 He's saying the first three quarters of this year,

Speaker 1 the ratings for Dynamite went up.

Speaker 1 Haven't we been watching them for quite some time now slowly trickle down?

Speaker 2 We covered them week by week for several years. We have at least one and I think one in the can, one that's out and one that's coming in terms of omnibuses of us covering the ratings.

Speaker 2 This was a down year,

Speaker 2 not an impressive year.

Speaker 2 He's saying everything was up.

Speaker 2 Previously, I heard him make a comment like that, but he had a qualifier. It was like: if you look at

Speaker 2 quarter-hour versus quarter-hour,

Speaker 1 it's up.

Speaker 1 But also, dynamite, not dynamite, but collision on Saturday nights is in the 200,000s. We used to make fun of it when Punk left and it dropped into the fours and fives.

Speaker 1 So it's now in the twos,

Speaker 1 which is lower than fours and fives.

Speaker 2 Well, the other thing important to mention here, too, is that this is now six years or so

Speaker 2 of this is my favorite year. Everything's great.
I think we're on a great run of shows. We've been hearing the same things over and over and over again.
This isn't like a new concept,

Speaker 2 but he just keeps saying the same thing.

Speaker 3 It's interesting because we don't get the same kind of numbers.

Speaker 3 In Q4, there's been this big change in the Nielsen system, which is why it was great to see this huge number we did last week for us because it was like, well, that's the best number we've done since the change.

Speaker 3 And so clearly there was a great response to it. But also, collision the previous Saturday had done the best number it had done since the change in this in this system.
So we're seeing good response.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we've really closed the gap.

Speaker 3 It's kind of like in the pandemic. If you look at where AEW is as a percentage of the WWE shows, this is really one of our strongest runs oh christ on a cracker

Speaker 1 he's closing a gap with the wwe

Speaker 1 jesus christ watch out nick con

Speaker 3 i don't i don't even have anything to say it's a robust gap let's go back to tony runs and if you look at where wwe is say the audience of dynamite compared to smackdown for example or raw this is a great time for us and you would say that along with some of the peak times in AEW,

Speaker 3 this is right there, 2025 right now, what's happening, that the AEW audience as a percentage of the competition is about as good as it's ever been.

Speaker 3 And with the streaming audience, like I said, at the start of the year, I wasn't sure if the cable audience...

Speaker 2 Could that be true? As good as it's ever been? Early on when Dave Meltzer was even pitching the idea that they could surpass Raw,

Speaker 2 they weren't closer and they had bigger attendance figures on a regular basis. They weren't closer to closing the gap then than now?

Speaker 1 He is somehow

Speaker 1 because all of the WWE programming now that's on the various streaming services that he doesn't have numbers for, or he can, is he claiming that his TV ratings are close to like the NXT ratings, or the gap isn't as wide between him and SmackDown now, which is true because SmackDown was on network TV, but you're not counting Raw and Saturday night's main event, these giant premium live events, and these massive multi-million dollar gates, but there's some statistic in there.

Speaker 1 I don't fucking know.

Speaker 3 Audience, if where they would go, and actually the cable audience at the start of the year, and then again,

Speaker 3 as the year went on, grew. So that was pretty exciting.
And so from the first three quarters, that's the case. And now they track the data differently.
So we'll see how this goes.

Speaker 2 But we're in the fourth quarter and so far it's been been this awesome year jim those were tony's thoughts about ratings and attendance

Speaker 2 they had a good attendance for aew and greensboro for the war games

Speaker 1 40

Speaker 2 no for the blood and guts blood and guts i mean i was 40 something hundred people out here and it looked good but you know noticeably they went to smaller buildings because they had to and you can't say attendance is up that would be ridiculous but tony seems to say that the ratings and the attendance are up despite what we hear or see.

Speaker 1 And somehow he's got a statistic that can prove that there's more

Speaker 1 18 to 34 lesbian nuns. So that makes the win.

Speaker 2 Jim, one of the big things that a lot of listeners were sending over from the Ariel Hawani interview with Tony Khan were the comments about CM Punk, CM Punk's departure, playing the Jack Perry footage on TV.

Speaker 2 You may remember the Jack Perry footage was played as a response, it seemed, to CM Punk's interview with Ariel Hawani.

Speaker 1 Yes. Funny how he's always in the middle of things, a shit disturber.

Speaker 2 Well, he gave his tale of what happened with him and Jack Perry at Wembley Stadium.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden they released this backstage footage, which appeared to back up everything Punk said, kind of.

Speaker 1 Almost to like be synced to it.

Speaker 2 And then Tony Khan said he was in fear of his life.

Speaker 2 But let's hear what Tony Khan says now about everything with CM Punk.

Speaker 3 I'd be remiss if I don't ask you about the CM Punk story. Do you have any regrets about how that was all handled? Obviously, he came on the show.

Speaker 3 There was that big interview, and then you guys played that footage. Looking back, are you at peace with how it all played out? Or do you wish things could have been done differently?

Speaker 3 Well, there were so many things. So I, you know, like the playing the footage.
Did you think that that was the best move in response?

Speaker 3 Because it felt like that was in response to the interview, unless I'm... To your interview.
That's what it felt like.

Speaker 3 It's interesting because I do think that I didn't necessarily agree with the description of how it all happened. So that was your way of showing like

Speaker 3 not necessarily. And by the way,

Speaker 3 I really think you're a great interviewer, and I very much appreciate it because

Speaker 3 we've had a very, very good interview. And I think I've been very good to answer all the questions so far.
And now you've got me where I'm enjoying talking to you so much.

Speaker 3 You've really got me hooked in. So I want to answer your questions, even the challenge.

Speaker 2 Let me stop it for a moment. What in the world?

Speaker 2 He's

Speaker 2 explaining why he almost feels like answering the question about CM Punk and everything that happened.

Speaker 2 And so far he's defending the idea of playing that video, which seemed to immediately begin a downfall at AEW popularity across the board from what we saw. And that's

Speaker 1 why noted by many people.

Speaker 1 They finally, they saw, they said, that's it. And Tony looked foolish for describing it as this chaotic scene when it was

Speaker 1 pretty much a locker room fucking scuffle.

Speaker 2 He also didn't answer the question. I mean, there's more here, but did you release that footage as a response to the interview he did with me? That's very interesting.

Speaker 2 You know, I didn't agree with what he said. He just completely went in a different direction without answering.
But let's go back to this.

Speaker 3 Challenging ones. And I didn't necessarily agree with everything that was said in that interview about how things happened, but also it's a TV show and it did a very strong number.

Speaker 3 And if you look, it was- Are you talking about the video response from you guys? Yes.

Speaker 3 So, for many reasons, I think that it made sense and it was a thing that was advertised and it got a lot of attention. That did a very strong number.
And also, it's in the eye of the beholder.

Speaker 3 Just like

Speaker 3 he said that you want to now reach out.

Speaker 2 It's in the eye of the beholder.

Speaker 1 It's in the eye of the beholder.

Speaker 1 And it killed your numbers and it pissed off off a lot of the fans that this bullshit was made a big deal of

Speaker 2 it completely killed off any chance jack perry had once people saw that video that video did aew no good even if it pulled a better number that night because the numbers precipitously went down after that

Speaker 2 let's go back to tony con and cm uh tony con about cm punk refute

Speaker 3 i think the tape spoke for itself and i think that i didn't agree with how it happened. And obviously, it

Speaker 3 was a major part of why things were no longer able to continue with us, even though I would have liked to have been able to. And it's clear that I wanted to reconcile and do those things.
And

Speaker 2 you...

Speaker 3 You wish that maybe, like, by him leaving and then showing up on WWE like two months later, that was a huge boost, right?

Speaker 3 I think really for us, we've had...

Speaker 3 a great run for six years.

Speaker 3 And if you look at the time before Phil came to AEW, we were having a great run and we had some great times together but we've been on a great run and we're having this great year right now with this roster and I think this is the best roster and the best AEW locker room and it feels like in and out of the ring the combination of them this is the best we've been but I also there was a question

Speaker 3 we had great times together and it was clear when we started doing collision i wanted to reconcile and find a way to still do those things and i guess that wasn't possible but i didn't necessarily agree with everything.

Speaker 3 Did you learn any lessons? Because one of the things that he said in that interview was that like,

Speaker 3 you know, and I hope you don't think this is coming from me. I'm paraphrasing that like, you know, you're not growing up as a boss, but people kind of like walk all over you.

Speaker 3 And so that felt like an indictment on you as the leader of the company, which is what you are. And so I'm wondering.

Speaker 3 What your response would be to that. I don't agree with that, but I also think that everybody's entitled to their opinion and that's feedback, and it's fair if that's how he feels.

Speaker 3 But I didn't agree with the description of the way things played out, and that's okay.

Speaker 3 And that's all in the eye of the beholder, just like the whole situation. If you see that, the way it came out, it all was in the eye of the beholder, and that's okay.

Speaker 2 I think that's his new phrase. It's three: the eye of the beholder, the eye of the beholder.
He's going to trademark that. A W, eye of the beholder.

Speaker 2 He learns famously.

Speaker 1 But besides that,

Speaker 1 it showed that he had lied. No one could be in fear of his life from what happened there.
Or is it just because he decides that he was in fear of his life that made it so?

Speaker 2 And by the way, the only way it would work, too, is if he said, I was in fear for my life because I thought if he did attack me, all the wrestlers would run and leave and not help. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, he was surrounded by wrestlers. They were everywhere.
They were next to him.

Speaker 2 Let's go back to Tony Khan speaking to Ariel Hawani about CM Punk. He must say something at some point here.

Speaker 3 I think AEW is doing really well right now, and I'm really happy with what the people on the shows are doing. And

Speaker 3 it wasn't the first time that he and I disagreed about something, and it may not ever be the last, and that's okay.

Speaker 3 But I had tried to reconcile, and I wanted to find a way for everybody to be able to work together, and that didn't work, and that's okay.

Speaker 3 And it seems like everybody's happier and doing better right now.

Speaker 3 I know in AEW, right now, everybody's really happy, and it feels like this is the best the locker room's been since the Jacksonville lockdown days.

Speaker 2 And we had over we've heard that exact thing several times since the punks, young bucks fight, that exact thing.

Speaker 1 But besides that, have you noticed that whenever he's asked a question about anything, the most important thing is that the locker room is happy and that he feels great when he leaves the shows?

Speaker 1 That's that's all they're just

Speaker 1 it everybody wants to have fun

Speaker 3 for a year of shows.

Speaker 3 And I said at the beginning of the year, I wanted to bring that mentality to every show for everybody, that either how I put it together or the way we all interact or the way we all just sit down and are straight with each other and don't

Speaker 3 let the distance grow because in Jacksonville, it felt like the locker room was super, super tight. And then we became nomads again and we went on the road and it wasn't like that.

Speaker 3 And this year, it really has been. And it feels like this is probably the closest it's been since the beginning of AEW.

Speaker 1 So you can only have a functioning goddamn talent roster if they're in the same building every week instead of out on the road where they might not be able to speak to each other as often.

Speaker 1 Because everybody's personal friends, not co-workers. And we need to know if anybody's goddamn psoriasis is acting up.
Can he just shut the fuck up or get to a point?

Speaker 2 Everything was so much better when we were all locked in a room getting COVID together. It just, it felt like we were all one.

Speaker 2 Jim, any final thoughts on his comments about CM Punk before we go to our final section here?

Speaker 1 Where you're I didn't hear him say make any, so that's my final comment.

Speaker 2 That they could, uh, they've disagreed in the past, and he's sure they'll disagree in the future.

Speaker 1 I'll bet on that, I'll put some money on that too.

Speaker 2 He did everything he could for them to reconcile.

Speaker 2 You put money on that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, what the no, he didn't.

Speaker 1 be a boss, stand up, manage your locker room, manage your employees, kick out the fucking dead weight, not the biggest star, do any of those things. No, he didn't.

Speaker 1 He just avoided confrontations so nobody would yell at him and scare him.

Speaker 2 What do you think about CM Punk saying that you let guys walk all over you? Well, he's entitled to his opinion. That's your answer to that.

Speaker 1 It's in the eye of the beholder just because I got

Speaker 1 prints on my fucking face.

Speaker 2 It's worth two in the bush.

Speaker 2 We're just using half of these expressions.

Speaker 1 I don't know if Tony's ever been in one bush. Anyway, is he done?

Speaker 2 No, we have a little more here, Jim.

Speaker 1 God damn it.

Speaker 2 You're cited. You were mentioned a little bit earlier.
We're not going to play audio.

Speaker 2 Ariel Hawani asked Tony what he thought about certain critics, and he mentioned specifically Cornet, Bischoff, and then Tony went off and talked about Bischoff, never brought you up again, never said anything bad.

Speaker 2 You were brought up again.

Speaker 1 I feel left out.

Speaker 2 You were brought up again when the conversation turned to the wwe tna partnership

Speaker 2 and if it's a reaction to aew let's go to this okay

Speaker 3 i do i do want to ask you about this i had um matt and jeff hardy on in july and i asked them like what do you make of this wwe tna partnership and matt said to me like let's be honest it's the hurt aew do you view it that way as well that's the way he put it I really like Matt and Jeff a lot.

Speaker 3 I like Matt and Jeff a lot, and I loved working with them when they were in AEW, and I still love Matt and Jeff very much.

Speaker 3 And I don't think it was malicious. I don't think at all.
But do you think that that's the impetus? I respect that opinion a lot. I think you agree with it.

Speaker 3 I think it's probably true, and I respect that Matt said it, honestly.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's really cool.

Speaker 3 And I think Matt's a great guy. I think Jeff's a great guy.
What do you make of that? The fact that they're so tight now. It's interesting.

Speaker 3 I think it's a very interesting collaboration, but I think Matt hit the nail on the head that it makes sense. And AEW is a very strong challenger brand, and it's not that unusual.

Speaker 3 You take it as a compliment, but yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 Like, you you know, I remember when WCW was starting to do better, and Smoky Mountain Wrestling was running shows in Georgia, that Vince McMahon called up Jim Cornette and sent a bunch of the WWF wrestlers to Smoky Mountain Wrestling to help history repeating itself compete with WCW.

Speaker 3 So, I do think

Speaker 3 that's a strong challenger brand. It's not that unusual.

Speaker 1 Hold on, hold on.

Speaker 2 Time out.

Speaker 2 Vince McMahon. So, how did it work, Jim? You were sitting in Morristown one day, and the phone rang, and it was Vince McMahon, and he said, WCW is getting stronger.
I want to send you talent.

Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 No, what happened was, and I'll try to make this brief because he can't, and this way we'll get finished with this.

Speaker 1 But Smokey Mountain got our television on on Joe Peticino's wrestling block on Channel 14 in Atlanta. Remember when he showed all the wrestling shows?

Speaker 1 And we

Speaker 1 with Petesino doing the TV and having the local connections, we ran the Marietta Cobb County Civic Center.

Speaker 1 Oh, God damn, what was the furniture store guy, the wolf man at the furniture store, not the vitamin Wolf man from Smogy Mountain, but he was a sponsor. And that's where I found New Jack and Mustafa

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 old Sammy Kent's local North Georgia wrestling, they got some sponsors for us.

Speaker 1 And we booked the show, but I told

Speaker 1 Vince, as well as everybody else in the office, that we were running Marietta because I wanted to get a couple of names.

Speaker 1 And he said, how many guys do you need?

Speaker 1 I said, oh, well, you know, whatever you can spare, get with Pat and see who's off that night.

Speaker 1 And to add a little extra oomph to it, he sent me, Luger lived there. We had the advanced tickets on sale at.
the gyms that Luger and Sting owned at the time.

Speaker 1 And he sent me, Jeff Jared was supposed to be there. I think did he end up, he was some, whatever the fuck.
Point is we had about six guys, Mike Rotunda, six WWE names.

Speaker 1 I had Kevin Sullivan there, plus our regular crew. We did the Armstrong family reunion because they were from Marietta.
And we ended up doing about a thousand people.

Speaker 1 And we made a little bit of money. because of the sponsorships we had also on that show.
Then we came back later on with a few more and lost it.

Speaker 1 But Vince basically paid for the guys to

Speaker 1 come. I didn't have to pay those six guys.
So that was a, that wasn't like a, let's stick it to fucking WCW. That's here.
Let me help you out and rub it in their face at the same time.

Speaker 1 And our, also, our Marietta crowd did draw better than at least one, if not more, of the WCW shows at the Omni.

Speaker 2 Well, that was going to be my point. It was 94.
It's not like WCW were hot. So Vince Aguin is like, we got to do something to stop them.
They weren't drawing anything in Georgia. No,

Speaker 1 he was just helping me out to fucking fuck with him because I could outdraw them. Not that he could outdraw.

Speaker 1 Here, I'll give you a couple of guys. You out draw them with your little fucking dog and pony show.

Speaker 2 Well, a final few seconds about this from Tony Kahn.

Speaker 3 It's unusual to see the WWF collaborate with another company. We saw that with Smoky Mountain there.
And in Memphis, I think did some of the same things to compete with WCW shows.

Speaker 3 So it's not that unusual. And again, I don't take it personally at all.
It makes sense looking at the wrestling playbook of the WWF.

Speaker 2 Well, there it is, Jim.

Speaker 2 Any thoughts about him comparing the WWE-TNA relationship, which he said he kind of agrees with the idea that it was done to screw him over, and that does seem to be a large part of it,

Speaker 2 compares to the Smoky Mountain WWE relationship or USWA

Speaker 2 WWE relationship against WCW.

Speaker 1 How are they trying to screw WCW? I don't know. The point is,

Speaker 1 we've talked about what the reason for the WWE and TNA relationship is. That is part of it, but not as far as, oh, goddamn, let's put on a better show than they do.

Speaker 1 It's to fucking get the pipeline of the future talent and to fucking block

Speaker 1 other TV opportunities and chessboard moves like that. And at the same time,

Speaker 1 it's also to protect them

Speaker 1 from the

Speaker 1 antitrust impending. Somebody sooner or later is going to say, what the fuck?

Speaker 1 They probably can't get them on an antitrust now because of Tony Kahn.

Speaker 1 Like, oh, yeah, anybody with $250 million to spend can open up a wrestling promotion. But

Speaker 1 there may be some advantage to

Speaker 1 the WWE, additionally, on the independent contractor thing if they're working with TNA and the guys can work more than one place and blah, blah, blah. We've talked about all this.
So

Speaker 1 this is not a full frontal assault on

Speaker 1 the, you know, the Omaha beach to fucking put Tony out of business, but it's strategic moves to keep him in his place and prevent anybody else from doing anything.

Speaker 2 Well, there it is. Tony Kahn on the Ariel Hawani show.
Again, it's available on YouTube. Check it out.
It goes a lot longer. Talks a lot about talent.
I'm sure it does. Talks a lot about talent.

Speaker 2 It does not sound like Adam cole is uh anywhere close to ever returning again

Speaker 2 but any final thoughts on tony khan uh he i will say this you just listening to the audio not seeing the video

Speaker 2 yeah he has what uh someone who does business with us referred to as high school hair

Speaker 2 but in a lot of ways he was more composed and together

Speaker 1 than usual well i think he's he probably realized he flipped out on the guy the last time and they had a big whoop-to-doo because he wouldn't answer any questions And Hilwani came out and said, Yeah, it was the most evasive interview or whatever I've ever had, or just drek or whatever.

Speaker 1 So he probably

Speaker 1 took a deep breath, possibly

Speaker 1 some type of suppository tranquilizer or something, and

Speaker 1 tried to slow down a little bit. But he still can't focus, he can't address topics and answer questions with any specificity or details.

Speaker 1 He's just all over the place about how happy he is and how happy he wants his employees to be.

Speaker 1 I know Vince was a fucking asshole,

Speaker 1 but I have never

Speaker 1 worked for a promoter that first and foremost,

Speaker 1 the most important thing about business was that the locker room was all happy with each other.

Speaker 1 There's never been one before in the history of wrestling or any other business.

Speaker 1 That was their first concern. Maybe a flower shop over in fucking Hudson Bay.

Speaker 2 And by the way, that's a departure from, if you remember Tony's public comments before everything went down with Punk and Hangman Page, it was all about how,

Speaker 2 look at everything with Brett and Sean. It's healthy for a locker room to have dissension.
It produces great content. It's healthy.
Well, goddamn it.

Speaker 1 That's a markish look at it, too, though. Vince always always liked competition, but Sean and Brett took it way too far.
Mostly Sean.

Speaker 1 Brett didn't put up with much of it.

Speaker 1 But just how about shoot for something in the middle where everybody's fucking professional?

Speaker 1 And if they've got drama, then you go to the side and work it out.

Speaker 2 Well, Jim, that was the Tony Khan audio. And with that, where did I just, there we go.
With that, the drive-through is closed.

Speaker 1 All right. If I were you, I'd go back to handling my organ.

Speaker 2 And by the way, a correction or at least an addendum to an earlier story from, I think, your show.

Speaker 2 The Farmer's Almanac indeed going away. The old farmer's almanac

Speaker 2 has put out a statement they will still be publishing. Apparently, and I didn't know this, they are two different publications.

Speaker 1 I heard this also.

Speaker 2 There is a farmer's almanac and the old farmer's almanac, which is kind of the one i was thinking of that's the look i think of when i think of the farmer's almanac i just figured like they had two different covers they have like the one for people who don't like old-timey things and then the old timey cover

Speaker 2 but two different publications this one

Speaker 2 234 years and still going strong

Speaker 2 well good for them sun moon stars and planets useful with a pleasant degree of humor just the way there is some arthritis after 234 years but Jim, we will be back in a few days on the experience.

Speaker 2 And of course, next week on the drive-thru, a lot of big historical segments coming up. Stay tuned.
We've enjoyed recording them. You're going to enjoy hearing them.
Stay tuned for that.

Speaker 2 Of course, go through the archive, patreon.com/slash cornet. $5 a month gets you access to the archive.
Going back to 2013, patreon.com slash cornet. The official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Speaker 2 Just go to YouTube and subscribe today. Full episodes, clips of the episodes, omnibus collections with the very popular George Levinitis artwork.

Speaker 2 Check it out today, the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel, Cornettes Collectibles at JimCornet.com. What's going on, Jim?

Speaker 1 Oh boy, Hotchkiss and I have been moving literally tons of merchandise. We weighed the shit and we're very sore, but working on the personalizations of the books, things are flying out the door.

Speaker 1 And I have a feeling that everybody that's ordered a book

Speaker 1 by, say, November the 5th or so, if it's personalized, you'll get it by Christmas. But if you want a book, but you don't want it personalized, here's a book hack.

Speaker 1 If you order by Thanksgiving weekend and you're in the United States, you still will probably get it by Christmas because the regular just signed books are quicker to process.

Speaker 1 That's a hack from me to you, jimcornet.com.

Speaker 2 That's jimcornet.com. Hacks now available at jimcornet.com.
Of course, the drive-through is brought to you by the law office of Steven P. New, 87750 Steve.
Get even with Stephen, newlawoffice.com.

Speaker 2 Don't forget about the wrestling news each and every day, wherever you find your favorite podcast. Hear the news with no opinion, no conjecture, no paywall, just the news.

Speaker 2 The wrestlingnews.com, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

Speaker 2 But until the experience in a few weeks, in a few weeks, the experience in a few days. Really? Really? The drive-through next week for Jim Cornette.
I'm the great Brian last.

Speaker 2 Tallyho!