Jim Cornette Experience - Episode 550: Ratings, Rankings, and Rantings

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

This week on the Experience, Jim reviews WWE Smackdown's USA Network debut & AEW Dynamite! Plus Jim talks about The PWI 500, Mark Henry & Bryce Remsburg, Raygun, Batista, Dave Meltzer's star ratings for All Out, ratings and much more!  Follow Jim and Brian on Twitter: @TheJimCornette @GreatBrianLast Join Jim Cornette's College Of Wrestling Knowledge on Patreon to access the archives & more! https://www.patreon.com/Cornette Subscribe to the Official Jim Cornette channel on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/c/OfficialJimCornette Visit Jim's official site at www.JimCornette.com for merch, live dates, commentaries and more! You can listen to Brian on the 6:05 Superpodcast at 605pod.com or wherever you find your favorite podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Like the midnight and the rock and roll. He's in a fight for wrestling soul using a racket and some mind control. He's Jim Cornett. The keys to the future held by the past and with tag deep art. Antings and ravings and Raygun. It's a rousing edition of the Jim Cornett experience. And joining me to Rouse the Rabell. Hoi and Brian, the podcasting Lion, the King of the Arcadian Vanguard podcast network,

Mr. Co-host to you, he's the Royal Rascal himself, the great Brian Last, everybody. Aloha, Jim, a pleasure to be here once again, the last beautiful weekend of the year, maybe, 80 degrees up here. How are you? They're eating the dogs, Brian. They're eating the dogs. Who is? Nobody knows. Except one demented moron. I just had to say those words out in public. I won't even go into a thing here. I enjoyed watching Kamala Harris roast the repugnant pig in Philly the other night. But even if he had been debating a goddamn drugstore mannequin, how can anybody seriously? I know they still do because they're under the spell.

But this guy wants to be the leader of the free world. He thinks they're eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio, because some dingbat told him that. this is how easily you don't think Putin would have any problem bending Trump's ear a little bit and swaying him when he believes shit like this and says it out in public they need to put him

somewhere where the doors lock from the inside do you think you know Kamala Kamala now I'm calling him that yeah that was his name Kamala yes it there was the accent driver over the other syllable. They're in Kamala, the Ugandan giant Kamala James Harris.

So, Kamala Harris in a sense, passed away several years ago. If he was alive, would he be able to capitalize on this in any way on her running for president? You know, that's it. It would either be a positive or a negative, wouldn't it? Right. Someone can announce, I have an interview on TV tonight with Kamala Harris, and all of a sudden he shows up

slap in his belly. He might get booked more, but he might also become one of those right-wing memes. You never know. But anyway, nobody's eating Harley over here. She's just fine. She's frisky and full of em and vigor. But I've got a lot of notes. We've got all kinds of stuff to talk about here today.

Can you hear my notes from there? There's something going on over there. Well, it's notes. I've got to say thank you to some people because as you know it is well by the time the people hear this my birthday may be upon us or even past us September 17th

but some of the people knew of course in advance and several people have sent me things I've got a short list of thank yous here starting with my old friend Stuart Busby from across the pond over in the UK guess what he sent me. Is that the weatherman in Louisville you always talk about? Stuart Busby?

No, that's Mark Weinberg. Oh, why would I get those confused? I don't have any idea. No, Stuart Busby, I've thanked him. Did he send you honey? What? Busby? Bees, buzz?

I thought you were thinking of Stuart Little, but he wouldn't do honey either. That was Winnie the Pooh. Stuart Little was, wouldn't he, a mouse? I believe so. Well, you're the one with the kids. Why aren't you on top of this shit? They're not really watching Stuart Little. They watch Paul Patrol.

Well, they get into the Winnie the Pooh world, don't they? Children with the Christopher Robin and the gentle creatures in the forest? No, they haven't really experienced Winnie the Pooh yet. There's a Winnie the Pooh Lego that we have downstairs. They've seen that. Oh, good Lord. Anyway, what are the kids into these days, if not reading Winnie the Pooh books and then going out in the yard and playing with sticks? There's lots of stuff on YouTube they like.

No wonder the children are in the state they're in these days. Not enough Winnie the Pooh. Anyway, Stuart Busby from over across the pond sent me a box of Nando seasonings, which are always welcome here, but also since mine and Stacey's birthday was close together, he sent me a Rio Ripley coin that has been minted by the WWE or some contractor. Maybe the San Francisco

meant did some stuff for the WWE on the side. I don't know. And also sent Stacey a Harley Quinn medallion, which is very cool, a limited edition medallion there in a fine display box. Are you going to comment on any of these things? Like, ooh. What do you do with this medallion? Well, you display it.

Where? In your Harley Quinn collection. How do you display it? Oh, for God's saying. Just have a little box out with a medallion, a coin in it? It's a fine box and it's got a medallion in it. You can display it. He sent you the box to or you have your own box?

No, it's the box of case. in. The medallion came in a box. The medallion came in a box. This is a fascinating story. What's is supposed to come in, a goddamn chewing tobacco pouch? What are you... Technically, you could just send the medallion in an envelope, I would imagine.

How did the Mid-South television title show up at the offices in Bixby, Oklahoma? COD, from what I remember. But anyway, thank you, Stuart. And Max, Max, Max from Madison, Wisconsin. whose mother Lori is a huge fan also happy birthday Lori at least Max said it was your

birthday is very close to mine but he sent me a you know we we talk glowingly about punk's work these days but he sent me a DVD that the WWE had previously released or a DVD set

of punk stuff from like 2009 10, 11 and then and that's way when I was not watching WWE. So this is all new to me. And a Culver's gift card. The Butterburgers are on Max from Madison.

You have Culver's up there? Are you still deprived in a food wasteland in New Jersey? I think there's one actually that did open up over by Parsipani, maybe. But what's a Butterburger? The Wisconsin Butterburgers. or they butter the bun when they toast it. So it's a buttered bun, not a buttered burger. Well, they call them Wisconsin butter burgers,

and they have the Wisconsin cheese. When you go to Wisconsin, you'll see, you'll notice that they love their cheese up there. Every time you enter the state of Wisconsin, you can smell that dairy air. And so they have Wisconsin cheese and butter on the buns. That's right. And the state song is The Crusher by the Novas.

that due to Crusher. And finally, I would like to thank he said I couldn't pronounce his real name, so he said, just call me Brown Mark.

Yeah, but that may not be a good name to call someone. What the hell kind of suggestion is that from this guy? Well, that's what he said. So,

you know, maybe it's Brown, comma Mark, like Mark Brown, but you put the, I don't know. He said, don't confuse him

with shit stain, no, just because he's Brown Mark. but he sent me a fine high-quality volume, a book, a tome, if you will, my God, it weighs 20 pounds, it's beautifully illustrated. On the early days of the movies, Bronco Billy, and the S&A film company, the very first Western hero. Well, this is a subject I'm not too familiar with.

How much do you know about this? Well, I'll tell you, sir, how much I know about this time. No, Bronco Billy Anderson. And remember we talked about Bill Anderson, the Arizona wrestling personality here not long ago. And I see he was named after the Western star, Bronco Billy Anderson. And you just acted like you understood what I was saying. He was like the first Western movie star in the early 1900s,

but he also behind the scenes with a partner formed the S&A, ESS-A-N-E-Y film company S for his partner's last name and A for Anderson and they produced like some of the first major motion pictures that were made in the history of the motion picture business because it had just started but I don't know a whole book's worth of stuff about it so I'm looking forward to to hop it into that but thank you. Thank you, everybody, for recognizing my birthday. What are you being all sullen over there for?

People didn't send you cool stuff like that? I'm okay with people not sending me stuff. Well, with an attitude like that, I'm not surprised you don't get anything. Anyway, and I was going to have, I've had a week, folks. I've had another one of those weeks and problems. But I was going to have some emails. We've started to get some emails of people trying to explain. I haven't seen anybody defending

but explaining the forearm exchange thing that every indie idiot is doing now they just stand there and just act like they're hitting each other with no contact in front of people over and over but I couldn't print them out

so that I could shuffle through them and read the pithy excerpts from the you know the various emails because my printer ain't goddamn working we had a transformer apparently down the road somewhere I heard it the other morning I was in the garage with Harley and bam

and immediately I noticed the the laundry room in the garage the light was out and then it was on and I said well what the fuck happened there and come to find out the power went off for just a few seconds or whatever but something blew down the road and the electric company people have told me, Brian, I don't know if you're aware of this, that when you hear that bam,

the transformer somewhere blows and your power, you know how when it blinks sometimes, that's a transformer farther away from you having some issue, and the backup comes in. And if it's somewhere close to you, then your power goes off for a second, but then the backup or whatever, and it comes back on. But if your main transformer was the one that blew,

that's when you're standing there in the dark. Have you ever heard this? I've never heard that, no. I've seen Transformers blow when I stayed in Long Beach during Hurricane Sandy or Superstorm Sandy. I saw Transformers go. It was crazy. Well, in that case, everything's going out. But this is just one of those goddamn deal.

But the point is, everything came back on. but my printer is no longer connected, and Stace is the one who fixed it the other day, and put it back online, as the kids say, when we had our internet worked on. So I asked her, and she was up here for 30 minutes. She said, I don't know, what's the matter of this thing?

It's stuck in deep sleep, and it will not align itself with the computer or whatever. So I can't print the email. So Hachkus is coming over in a few days to try to address this problem. Things will go from bad to worse now. Oh, come on now. He has no idea what he's doing.

He always takes a screwdriver to your stuff. No, but it works that way. And plus, I can dust the inside of the units easier with the back off of them. Better watch out for this guy. I'm telling you, he's bad news. He came up with that brilliant plan about... He didn't come up with anything. He came up with the brilliant plan about sales on merchandise,

at below their normal regular price. We'll talk more about that in a minute. But anyway, thank you to everybody there. The emails we'll have next week. What is this that we've got to update of a personality in the world that has become popular on the show? Ray Gunn, oh, Rachel Gunn,

apparently the illegitimate daughter of Johnny Gunn, she is now rated the number one break dancer in the world by what governing body is this is another fucking fecal standards company in Zurich, Switzerland? What's going on here?

You're keeping up with the pop culture news this week, aren't you? I saw this article pop up in the New York Post the other day and I was thinking maybe it was a joke article but then I remember the post isn't exactly the onion and this was real. the Rachel Raygun drama Rachel Raygun gun

The Rachel Raygun gun The Rachel Raygun gun Now wait a minute Is that why she couldn't break dance Because that's the girl It used to be on the food network Rachel Ray No it's not the same person

She's still out there From what I understand The Rachel Raygun gun gun drama Has taken arguably Its biggest twist yet After the Australian breakdancer returned home The 37-year-old

Touchdowns in Sydney on the same day she was revealed as the new world number one breaker. Gunn made worldwide headlines following her divisive performances during the Paris Olympics, which saw her finish second to last. Wait, who was last? Ahead of only one disqualified athlete. So they never even got out there. They were disqualified.

Okay, let's stop there. I know there may be more to this, but let's stop. up there for a second. Who was it divisive with? Didn't pretty much everybody agree that it, it sucked Dalmatian balls? I guess maybe it was divisive with the people who felt bad for her because of the public ridicule? That could be the only thing, right? No one said, wow, this is great. Yeah, no, there wasn't two different art critics looking at this thing and having the, you know, polar opposite viewpoints. and the judges gave her a score of zero, didn't they? But anyway, go ahead.

Let me go back to this article, and as you were talking, I was pulling up more articles just to see what everyone's saying. Despite those displays, which resulted in her failing to register a single point, the World Dance Sport Federation released the latest rankings

with the Aussies sitting atop the list. Reagan was catapulted into the world number one ranking thanks to the 1,000 points she claimed. winning the WDSF Oceania Championship, which booked her a spot in the Olympics. Four Aussies find themselves inside the top eight on the list with Holly Molly, Hannah, and G. Clef. Wait, Molly, Holly.

Joining Reagan. No, Holly Molly, the opposite. Well, there's some kind of gimmick infringement in there. I guess actually it could be Holy Molly. Holy Molly. Holy moly but look here back up a second she what competition did she win was it a a Paralympic no type of thing where she was the only able-bodied person once again she won a thousand points in the world danceport federation's Oceana championship which used to be the all-Atlantic championship from what I understand well then they changed it to international didn't I think so and that's where we are now where is wait a but where is

Oceana. Where is Oceania? Isn't that like in Iceland or something somewhere? Well, here's an article, actually. Let's go to something maybe something. No, no, no. Let's answer my question. Google me some fucking Oceania.

Where did this competition take place? Was this at an Arctic outpost? Oceania is a geographical region including Australia, Melanesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Oceania is generally considered a continent

while Australia is regarded as an island or a continental landmass within that continent. Does that make any sense? Well, is there a lot of breakdancers in Micronesia? Because how the fuck did this girl win any woman, I should say? She's nearly 40. Australasia, is that what you say? Australasia.

George Barnes and Bill Dundee came to Tennessee in 1975 as the Australasian tag team champions. But nevertheless, how did she win anything in front of anybody in public? If anybody else was competing. Why isn't New Guinea protesting this? But I have an article here, Jim. They're being used as guinea pigs. The New York Times, again, a little more prestigious than the New York Post.

You would think they would have probably a more thorough recording. Let's see. The number one breaker in the world is Reagan? The Australian breaker who was mocked at the Olympics for her kangaroo hopping routine is now atop the official world rankings. Here's how it happened. By Victor Mather. The breaker known as Ray Gun did terribly at the Olympics,

losing all three of her head-to-head battles, each by scores of 18 to nothing. Can you just imagine getting the Olympics and this is what happens? I didn't know they could even give you zero. It's never happened before, has it? Her unusual routines also made her an unexpected face of the Paris Games and earned her mockery worldwide. But she did receive one accolade this week. Somehow, improbably, B-girl Raygun, yes, the same Raygun who hopped like a kangaroo in her Olympic routines,

is now the number one ranked women's breaker in the world. Goes into a little bit of her history here. I was just going to say we've got to remember here that people were saying that somehow her husband was involved in judging at some point there was a whole backstory on did they create

their own dance federation or whatever but I mean at this point does she have pictures of Denny Terrio with a goat or what? How the fuck is she doing this? I'm looking down I mean there's a lot here apparently fans around the world

many being exposed to breaking competition for the first time as the sport made its Olympic debut were baffled amused and in some cases outraged Raygun's total score of zero points put her in last place amongst the 16 breakers in the main Olympic competition

in the latest world rankings how could Raygun be the number one be in the number one spot yeah after receiving a barrage of questions the World Dance Sport Federation, which oversees the sport internationally, released a statement Tuesday explaining the seeming incongruity. The ranking is based on events over the past year, the Federation explained.

During that time, the majority of breakers were focused on qualifying for the Olympics. But because they have limited fields, with a small number of competitors, Olympic qualifying events and the Olympics themselves do not count towards the world rankings. Therefore, Raygun's low-scoring performance at the games did not hurt her ranking at all. Further complicating the rankings, there were hardly any events in the last 52 weeks that weren't Olympic qualifiers. The Federation said that no official breaking events were held in 2024 before the Olympics. To, quote, allow athletes to fly athletes to fight.

focused solely on the last part of their Olympic qualification without the added pressure of additional ranking events. For Raygun, her only ranked competition in that time period was the Oceana Continental Championships in Sydney, October 2023. She won that event, which was hardly of international importance. Of the top 15 finishers, 13 were from Australia and two were from New Zealand. It was not a strong field. Raygun, the winner... The sun was in their eyes. Raygun, the winner, had finished 64th in the World Championship the month prior,

the month prior, excuse me. Good Lord. In fact, the ocean event caused a stir after Raygun's performance at the Olympics. The Australian Federation released a statement after the games, saying to respond to speculation about her win at the event, contrary to circulating misinformation, Dr. Gunn's husband, Ray Gunn's coach, Oh boy. Was not a member of the selection panel or judging committee.

This would have constituted a conflict of interest. Dr. Gunn. Dr. Gunn is a lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, where her research interests include breaking, street dance, and hip-hop culture, and the politics of gender and gender performance. The politics of dancing? After the Olympics, she received a deluge of criticism with her dancing style

and even her uniform, green track pants and a polo shirt being mocked. Raygunn seemed to be bouncing back from the hands. Wait, wait, wait a minute, hold on, before you go any further here, I think now, now that we know that this is her background also, I think some of the American colleges should invite this fishy white Australian. woman to speak on street culture and breakdancing at all the major American universities.

I think that would be popular. Yes. For her. And then, boy, howdy, she could finish it off with a combination breakdancing and rap performance that I bet would leave them standing in the aisles. See, this is why people complain about universities. Anyone could be a professor. You just got to go to school for a while and pay a bunch of money.

But anyone could be a professor. sometimes you can even create your own course. Raygun seems to be bouncing back from the hate, posting photos of herself smiling and laughing with Richard Branson and Boy George. So she'd break right back into 1985. She time traveled on us. At least we always go forward.

We don't go back. Noted breakdancing lover, boy George. What does he have to do with? He has to do with patience. Different kind of music altogether. But that's the story. Raygun number one, apparently, because no one else was competing, it seems like. Well, something's going on there.

And again, you know, she gets out there. She looks like she's playing a game of solitaire twister. Whenever she... There's no performance to this. It's just awkward. It's like, oh, look at that poor woman. I wish medical science could help her out. but anyway

that's what they break dance like down in Sydney apparently what's going on what kind of scene I mean AEW is about to head down there so we'll find out what kind of scene they got I want to know who outdraws each other AEW of the World Dance Sport Federation wait a minute wait a minute I've got the natural goddamn program

what are they calling it over there Grand Slam AEW in Australia that's right the Grand Slam, what'd you just say Rachel Ray Gunn's profession was? She's a professor. Well, she's a doctor, Dr. Gunn, right?

Dr. Ray Gunn versus Dr. Britt Baker. Oh, shit. There you go. You got to get her involved, you would think. And it's not like that she'd be any worse than some of the other girls they put Britt Baker in a ring with. and there you go my god they can promote that all over the country and they can draw the crowd from micronesia you know we won't even get into the discussion of where did britt baker disappear

to after the pay-per-view because we haven't seen her again since but you're maybe on to something tony needs publicity and he has shown that he's willing to spend the money and do anything he'll burn a house kidnappings anything that's unrealistic he'll do why not just spend that money and hire the biggest pseudo-celebrities of the moment? Like, why not Hawk to a girl versus Raygun? Who cares that they can't work? Nobody can. Just put them in there and let them run around the ropes like idiots and laugh at them.

Well, no, I think you've got to mix your top talent in with the celebrities so they get the rub. I think they've got to have Hawk to a girl against one of the AEW girls. Maybe they have some kind of competition to figure out who should be the the best one to face Hawk toa girl. But I think you got a natural doctor, doctor rivalry there

with, with Baker. Or you could have MJF and Dr. Gunn against Britt Baker and, you know, one of the other guys because then MJF and Dr. Gun could both do the kangaroo kick.

What about a team of Raygun and Helico? Remember he used to come out there and do his own dance, he's kind of doing his own thing. If you have a few people dancing independent of each other, but somehow making their way to the ring, that may work. It could elevate him. It almost, I'm afraid it almost might look like,

well, here comes these, these poor people are epileptic. They're having some kind of seizure on the way to the ring. Then would you have a, would you have a doctor manage them? They're all inclusive. Because we're trying to, we're trying to help these people. They can't help these spastic movements. There was a woman. Oh, no, I don't even know where you're going.

No, there was a woman that worked at the goddamn deli counter at Kroger some years ago. I haven't seen her in a while. But she had some kind of, what is they call it, Tardiff dyskinesia on the fucking TV commercials, involuntary spasmic movements. And I didn't know this the first time that I saw her. I went in there and at the deli, I said, could I get a pound of, of the Black Forest ham thin slice, please.

And I'm watching this woman behind the counter or behind the slicer and she's got the thing and she's putting it up there and all of a sudden she goes, like that and kind of let out a little, a little, oh. But mostly just her arms,

whenever her head shook, you can't say there's no video to this, but imagine me going, woo! And then I thought she had almost dropped the thing or she'd cut her finger or whatever. but no then she went right back to the task at hand and I started counting because when she did it the second time I said how long is it because it was about every 45 seconds to a

minute she'd just do a fucking double take start whoa and you'd think my god she's seen a robber coming in or something and then she'd just go about her business and I thought why did they put her in the deli to operate to slicer. That just seems like that's a recipe for destruction. They used to be a great coffee shop in Long Beach where I grew up called the Cozy Nook. For people in the East End, you can get every magazine there as a kid. You can get any comic book, magazine, baseball cards, bubble gum, and it was a diner.

It was just tremendous. The guy who owned it was named Marv. Marv Nook. He would not be, sometimes he would go cook some stuff if the chef was off, but he would be like behind the little area where at the register and he would have. have like the baseball cards near him and stuff. But he had an issue where he would just constantly go, ah, ha!

So it's like kind of weird that he would want to open a restaurant, you know? Just kind of eat me, he's like, ah, ha! Like nonstop. So every now and then when the chef wasn't there, and it was always the same guy, when the chef wasn't there, he would have to go prepare something. He'd be cooking the food doing it, and you don't want to hear that. You know, just... Eh!

Ah! Ha! Ha! Ha! What is that condition? I don't know, but it was so loud and it was so constant, but a nice guy, and I missed that place. Great, great place.

Would that be a form of Tourette's, I wonder, or some... Maybe. Some had that, piss, piss out my ass. See, the first time you see it or hear it, you think he's clearing his throat. And then you're like, this man has a lot of phlegm. And then you're like, the flam ain't stopping. There's something else going on. It's like that Kirby Enthusiasm episode where they hire a chef with Tourette's, but he's a

French man, but he just curses out in English. shit motherfucker goddamn! And then everyone starts doing it. Great episode. Well, you know, that way, he doesn't feel like he's the center of attention there. The spotlight is on him. If everybody's doing it, it's somewhat normalized.

And he doesn't have to feel like the odd duck. Well, speaking of the odd duck, that was the Raygun story. Yes, well, would you like to know, well, you're going to have to duck coming up. I'll tell you why, because on Saturday, October 5th at noon, Eastern, so many people are going to be reaching for their computers and telephones and interwebish devices to take advantage of the big holiday merchandise sale that's

starting at Jimcornette.com that you're going to have to duck or people might knock you down. They're going to be lurching, grabbing, diving toward their various equipment so they're not left out of all the wonderful things and deals. because, as I said, Hachkes has invented a process known as a sale where you lower the price of an item, either for a limited period of time or if they buy another item, and you advertise that fact. It's going to take the retail world by storm, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, the biggest news is the final Jim Cornett action figure variant is going to,

on sale. No more will be made. No more will be produced in the future. I'm too old to take on these projects that take two or three years from behind the Great Wall of China. Brian, I'm simplifying my life. I'm starting to wind these things down. So imagine how much money these things are going to be worth when I'm dead. See, I got that to look forward to. No, you don't have that to look forward to. Let's not look forward to that. That's a pretty morbid. thought. Well, it just, and there'll be antiques by then, too. But anyway, the final action figure variant, Jim Cornett, the man in white, my favorite suit and Stacy's favorite suit of mine that I always wear whenever I've lost a significant amount of weight and want to show off,

as well as the fact that it matches everything, my white jacket, white pants, along with the black shirt and the red tie, and matching white tennis racket, you can have me manage your other favorite action figures or for the customizers out there. And that's how the bloody variant came into being actually because somebody had made one, had painted one of my other variants. And it was very cool. And the toy company and I got together, we got to do one of these. But anyway, you can customize this any color in my various catalog, as they say,

my infamous rainbow collection, or the best thing of all, this is where Hotchkiss is brilliance and the computerization he's done in my website comes into play. If you buy a Midnight Express or Heavenly Bodies tag team set or four pack of any kind,

you get the white variant for half price, 2495. and that is a Christmas present to everybody who's supported all the previous deviance or variants, I should say, of me. So you're getting a deal on this and also the tag team sets as well that you can stick me in the middle there and I can manage. And the white variant as always can be personally autographed if you fill in the various information in the personalization box.

So that's Saturday, October 5th at noon Eastern, and also, for those of you have been asking, now that they can say fuck on television, they do it all the time, the thank you fuck you buy t-shirts are coming back on sale for the holidays after what it's been a couple years now. So, you know, they might as well,

wear them to church or to your kids' elementary school to pick up the small children or whatever, because they're saying fuck on the wrestling show, so I guess it's okay now. Thank you, fuck you buy t-shirts, back on sale Saturday, October 5th at noon at Jim Cornett.com. Brian, it's going to be a Merry Christmas

with all these big things going on to saving people all this money. That sounds like it'll be a Merry Christmas for you, and of course the people who receive these wonderful items. Yes, these wonderful items will make anyone... And you can, you know, if you're, I guess if your wife or mother is a little on the portly side, you can have this action figure as a stocking stuffer because either either you're going to stretch your stockings out a little bit. See, I like the idea that you can customize it.

Like you can get a black Sharpie and like draw a dick on the suit pointing to your face. Oh, come on the back. Kick me on the back. Yeah, these are great ideas. We're not talking about that. We're talking about taking, you know, model paint and a fine point brush. It's been better. And carefully and with loving care.

You could draw a dick like Rick Rood's artist used to draw him on his tights. No, I'm talking about customizing the color of the suit and the tie or the pants or whatever to mat and the racket to match the various, you know, other figures you might have or other things you want to see me wear rather than drawing phallic symbols on me and inviting people inciting violence against me as my figure walks by the other figures with a kick-me sign on the back, I'll be, I won't be the man in white, I'll be black and blue. You know, maybe I'm gonna get a few of these.

This sounds like fun. Oh, God damn, man. I can paint all sorts of shit on these. And then sell them. Limited edition. Dickhead Cornet version figures. I just, no, I just want to say one thing now. I want to put this warning out right now to everybody.

that there is no i am not going to accept people buying these figures and draw it all kinds of dicks on me and say it all kinds of horrible things all these people that don't like me the AEW fans and all the ninnies and ninkoops and nattering nabobbs of negativity out there on the internet's i don't want them buying these figures and drawing horrible embarrassing things and saying things and taking pictures of it and putting it on twitter that would embarrass me it would hurt my feelings. I heart the bucks. No, no, no, no.

69 me, Kenny. Oh, if they did that, if they bought my figures starting Saturday, October 5th at noon Eastern, and wrote those horrible things and said those horrible things and took pictures of them and put them out on Twitter where more people would do that,

or God damn it, I'd be, I would, every day I'd get up mad and I'd kick things and break my toe. I killed George the rat. Oh, now you've gone too far. No, no, no. It's not Spectrum, it's me.

No. Well, again, lots of ideas. Anyway. Lots of Sharpies. Have fun, everyone. And of course, you're fine acrylic paints, whatever it may be. Fine quality acrylic paints from Jerry's Ardorama. But that's what's happening.

So that's what's happening over in my world for the holidays. What are the holidays going to be happy? For Mark Henry and Bryce Rimsberg, have they had a dust up on the internet recently? You were telling me something about it before we came on the air. Well, apparently, they may have made up already, but it was an interesting story for a day or so because it was somewhat unnecessary, it seemed like. Remember we talked about during the review of, I guess it was MJF versus Daniel Garcia, there was a moment where there was a roll-up, and seemingly, based on the video that we were

watching live or on tape, Bryce Remsberg, the referee, counted one, two, and then push the leg to break the count. Yes, and it was like, the motion he made in between the two count and what potentially would have been three was to reach up and kind of shove

the knee of the guy that was in the small package or jackknife or whatever it was. To like, hey, kick out, motherfucker, and then went to count again, but it was too late. He'd already kicked out. And by the way, I was wrong. was Danielson versus Jack Perry. He pushed Jack.

I'm watching a video right now. He pushed Jack Perry's leg, it appears. Oh, well, but to point is, same thing, just different person. And we said at the time, because I said, I've never seen anybody, any referee actually do that specific thing before. And I speculated, did he, was it like a nervous tick? You just do something without thinking about it like we were just talking about the woman at the deli and the guy in the kitchen with him,

eh, or whatever, or did he think that somehow, that Perry, the guy that was dead, he didn't see the first count, or he didn't know that he had already counted one, so he thought two was one, and he wasn't going to kick out on the right one,

I got to do something, and he just had a brain fart and said, I'll just shove his leg instead of saying, kick out. Or, what could have been the explanation of this? That's what we were discussing. Perhaps he saw a foreign object in Jack Perry's boots.

Well, in that case, then, he would have grabbed his fucking foot. Well, apparently the video, the video of just this specific moment was going around on Twitter. Someone named Vic posted it and wrote, WTF, I've never seen a referee do this before. to which Mark Henry replied, I'm not commenting, I'll be called a hater. Now, I believe Mark Henry has done some interviews and made some appearances since he left AEW

and he's let it be known that perhaps he wasn't listened to, that he didn't do as much as he would have liked to have done, and that maybe a lot of people, you know, do their own thing there, I guess you could say. Well, Bryce Remsberg in a now deleted tweet, Oh, that's where you know that there was some second thoughts when they delete to stuff. He tweeted out, hey Mark, this angle doesn't show exactly what happened. You were always so nice to me backstage at AEW, and I constantly helped you with your travel whenever I could.

If you think something is wonky, feel free to reach out directly whenever. So let's stop there. Any thoughts on that? Well, that was about as inoffensive a statement as you could not. make and some people may say well why didn't he just privately email or call Mark Henry if he's helped him with his travel he probably knows where he lives and

say that personally but but that was such a milk toast comment besides wanting to remind Mark that hey I used to help you is that in flying? I never left you at the airport like punk why you're doing this to me now yeah yeah

I always got you a car when we went to Wimbly. I never treated you like Stephanie Vakor. Never stranded you in a foreign country. But that's not inflammatory. Where does it kick up a notch? Where can we get some emeralds on this? Well, it kind of doesn't really kick up a notch. It stays at this point.

A lot of people were jumping on it because, again, it's public. They were killing each other with kindness. And then Taz jumped in, retweeting the now deleted tweet from Bryce Remsberg, I believe. Hey brother, you do not need to explain yourself or apologize for anything to anybody. That's the AW motto. As you know, as you know, shit happens out there in a ring, and talent aren't robots. They are human and no one is perfect. You are the best in the biz, in my opinion.

Fuck all that noise. Keep being great. And there's a little fist emoji there. Was it was the fist did it have a finger sticking out of it or was it like swinging at your face or was it like a right on type of thing or? Yeah, just kind of I guess like you know brotherhood right on fist bump. I don't know what the fuck it is. I don't use emojis. I'm a man. It's a 68 Mexico City Olympics. It's got a black glove on it. It could mean all kinds of things. So again, in terms of what people were seeing and why people were sending it to us, it was really more people saw Bryce Remsberg's comment to Mark. Henry's than Mark Henry's. And then they see Taz

jumping into immediately defend Bryce Remsberg. Any thoughts on this? Yes, why don't they all just goddamn talk personally? Unless they're going to come out and say, look here, motherfucker, and then we're interested. Then we'll get to popcorn. But if they're going to be either non-committal, uncommenting, or unfailingly polite and

possibly a little snarky at a passive-aggressive way, is not really a conflict that I have time for. Yeah, and don't be surprised when people who left AEW can finally say what they haven't been able to say out loud for the entire time they were with AEW about the sloppiness and things that shouldn't be on TV and things that should be done better. But let's go back to this. Yes. Bryce Remsberg, another tweet.

Jesus Christ. Good morning. Mark Henry called me this morning and we had a mature, considerate discussion. We understand each other's perspective better. I regret the reaction and negativity I helped to create. Support each other and support pro wrestling. Onward. Upward.

Oh, no, he didn't say that. Yes, he did. Onward, exclamation point, upward, exclamation point. Excelsior! Excelsior and beyond, cumaya, my lord, cumaya. Who? Why was that? It sounds like after they've, the International Peace Accord has taken place, somebody has prepared

that statement so that you'll know that Micronesia and Lithuania are not going to be engaged in all-out war and have come to an agreement. Nobody said, Mark Henry didn't even say anything about it. If I said, I think I'll be a hater. Why was there needed to be a reply to that? He didn't say anything. That's what I said. It's a non-story that became a story because of the need to publicly respond.

you're going to just called Mark Henry at that point. And again, he says, you don't know what happened. The angle doesn't show it. And then Tass is like, shit happens in the ring. You don't have to defend yourself. Because people were coming down the street with pitchforks and torches and ready to, you know, string him up from the castle Frankenstein. It's like a fucking moron a few weeks ago, threatened to sue me for shit that I didn't say. I let you say it.

So he's going to sue me. I'm like, you stupid motherfucker. What? there's nothing there. I think people are just disappointed because he's one of the only good referees typically in AEW and it was an unexplained. You know, we've seen things before or the referee stopped before three and it becomes awkward. This was right on camera and it, unless there's another angle that shows that his hand did not push the foot.

Okay, but think about, see, I don't, again, sometimes there are cases where you have a brain fart, you go, why did I fucking do that? or maybe he does have some budding form of Tourette's. Maybe he needs to get a cat scan. But if you're down counting and a motherfucker is rolled up, wouldn't you just, instead of visually shoving him or even giving him an Iggy in that obvious of a way where you're reaching up with his leg,

or reaching up to grab his leg, you're down there, wouldn't you say, Jack, kick out, this is three? I don't know. why this display of something would have needed to be done. And I don't know what it was, but regardless, and nobody said what it was. And Mark Henry didn't say what he wanted to say. And then Bryce Rimsberg said to Mark what he wanted to say about what Mark didn't say out in front of everybody,

which necessitated everybody else having an opinion on it. and then yeah if I comment on something on Twitter or out in public you'll definitely know what I think about it

or elsewise it's not fucking germane to anything isn't it or is it imagine if Mark Henry actually said something like this is bullshit this is sloppy this needs to be done better

he didn't say anything and usually Mark do go on quite at length about anything. But nevertheless, I hate to hear that these people are having this horrible exchange of compliments and kindness. I'm glad they got it all worked out. According to the article I'm looking at here, it says that Mark Henry confirmed on May 27th that his AEW deal would be up on May 28th. He was not seeking renewal and he is now working as the Booker for all Caribbean wrestling.

Whatever that may be. All righty then. Well, if you want to go to the Caribbean folks or young wrestlers, call Mark Henry. Am I now to assume by what you've told me before we went on the air, Brian, that they have made another list of 500 fucking alleged professional wrestlers in the industry today around the world. they've found 500 that they believe need to be recognized as professionals over at Pro Wrestling

Illustrated and they have put out this list again this year. It is the annual. How many years have they been doing it? It doesn't say 34th annual PWA 500. We talk about it every year. And back in 1990, you may have been pressed to find 500 legitimate pro wrestlers. But if you included Japan and Mexico, you could probably do it. but I am astonished that they can still claim that they are doing this.

Well, look at this. It's a picture of Cody Rhodes holding a PW. Is this current or is this from when he was in AEW? Does WWE allow this? Oh, no, copyrighted. They did allow this. Uh-huh. Wow, interesting.

Well, and next thing, you know, Bill Aptor's going to be on Raw giving out the awards. Which awards? The Jerry Lewis Awards? No, the PWA Awards. Oh, oh. Well, he's not with PWA anymore. Well, they can't have anybody but Bill do that on a... big time television.

Well, let's go to this list. The PWI 500. You like Dick Clark, after the stroke, he was still doing the New Year's Rock and Eve. The primary... And everybody was drunk about 10 minutes to goddamn midnight on New Year's Eve, and there comes Dick Clark in that condition. And it actually raised the suicide rate on New Year's Eve up 22%.

Oh, you stop it. Clark. Leave him alone. He was the world's oldest teenager. And then he was the world's youngest fucking vegetable. He was your world's oldest teenager until Dave Meltzer took that title. Jim, the primary criteria for the PWA 500 is in-ring achievement, the win-loss records, the championships, the tournaments,

influence, which is visibility and prestige within a promotion and or the industry, technical ability, the quality of moves, matches, and in-ring storytelling, competition success against the most varied and high quality opponents and finally activity a minimum of 10 singles non-tag

10 singles matches total or barring this six such matches in separate months what what are you saying what's happening there to be considered you need to have a minimum of 10 singles matches

or six six singles matches in separate months. You have to be active in six different months or you have to have at least ten matches. Jesus crap. Well, what, ten singles matches, but so does that mean that hawk and animal at one point would not have been considered for this list

because they didn't have singles, they only wrestle tags, or that means that you have to wrestle at least in half of the month, one time in half of the months of the year, be, Jesus Christ, I could be considered a goddamn professional international traveler because 10 years ago I went to the UK. All right, so yeah, you got to wrestle half a dozen times a year and have some singles matches and they're legitimately going to try to pass 500 full-time, heard of,

legitimate professional wrestlers by us here on this list. All right. That is right. Well, let's get going. We have a long way to go. Let's get going. And a short time to get there. Jim, number one on the list.

No, we're not going to read all 500 of these fucking things. It's not if you keep stalling. Number one on the list, Jim. No, not at all. Come on, we got to get going. It's a big list here. Who do you think's number one? Any prediction?

If you had to pick who's the number one wrestler in the industry today, who would you pick? I would think it would come down depending on when their press deadline was Cody Rhodes or Roman Rains. At number one, Cody Rhodes. Boom. 18 years pro. His path to number one, in 2007 he debuted at number 172 on the list. Last year, he was number 10. His previous highest amount was in 2022.

He was number six. Who do you think is number two on the list? Roman Raines? Swerve Strickland. Oh, God damn it. Fifteen years pro... Wow, really? I had no idea.

Fifteen years pro, last year he was ranked 112. Any thoughts on him being number two? I mean, it's not even knocking him to say by what in the world. How can you be the number two? star in the entire industry when you're not even the top guy in your own promotion that is outsized and outshadowed by the WWE to a ridiculous degree. Who do you think is number three? If Cody's number one and swerves number two, who's number three?

Well, okay, then I'm going to say MJF. Number three, Will Osprey. Oh, Jesus Christ. 12 years pro. Last year he was number 17 on the list. So did they kind of work? Because it's a work anyway, right?

But they're board of editors or whatever considering all these goddamn different facets of people's careers. It's a fucking work, try to sell magazines. So did they make the deal that, well, we've got to give the number one spot to a WWE guy because then it would really be ridiculous if we didn't. But we don't want to piss AEW off because their fans are probably even more of the ones motivated by all the magazines.

So we'll give them the number two and number three spot, even though nobody in AEW has the drawing power or is the goddamn in-ring or television performer that the top six or eight guys in the WWR right now. Well, it says here his decision assigned with AEW has been second-guessed by some. but the criticism is only motivated Osprey to prove his work ethic is second to none. A true artist in the ring is competed in eight matches this year alone, earning five stars or more from the Wrestling Observer Newsletters, Dave Meltzer, including bouts with Kazushka Okada, Josh Alexander, MJF, and Michael Oku. That's number three, Will Osprey. Who do you think is number four?

Oh, God damn it. Cody, Swerve, Osprey? Where would Roman Reins be at this point? I don't know, is he even on the list? Has he wrestled in six different months or had ten matches? If that's the criteria, he may not be on the list.

Good Lord. So one of the biggest stars of modern times who has set gate record after gate record might not be on this list because, oh, geez. All right. Well, then Brock Lesnar would, be around at all, would he?

Um, then let's go with, uh, Gunther. Number four, Seth Rollins. Nice, darn. Last year he was number one, 16 years pro. He's a visionary. Every bit of it. Number five, any predictions for number five, Consular we're on. Gunther, good pick.

Number five, Tetsuya Naito. Oh, for fuck say. 19 years pro, he was not ranked last year. Who do you think is number six? Well, I was going to, Orton just came back recently from a back injury. Again, I don't know when their printing deadline was, but is Randy Orton going to be in here? Is L.A. Knight going to be in here? Is Logan Paul going to be in here? Is who of the top people that I'm forgetting about in the WWE?

They've got so many. Is Rio Ripley? Or is this only guys? I believe this is only guys. Okay. Then in that's, well, in that case, why can't they put in where? And here's the cutoff line where Ria Ripley could kick the shit out of all the rest of the guys on the list. Let's say, now you've thrown me off. I'm still pulling for Gunther. At number six, from the Bronx, Damien Priest. Last year, he was number 71.

Well, that was when they were pushing him with the World Title Belt. but, you know, all those people that I just mentioned are bigger stars than Damien Priest is. Who do you think is? Number seven. Number seven. Gunter. MJF.

Okay, now they finally remember to go back the other side of the street. Nine years pro. Last year he was number six, so he drops a spot. Number eight, any prediction for number eight? Gunther. John Moxley. Oh, for fuck. Last year, he was number three, and he's 20 years.

years pro. Wow, really? Yeah, and every single bit of it shows on his fucking face and his stoop-shouldered, awkward, disconnected bucket of body parts physique. Who do you think's number nine? Gunther. Number nine, Gunther! Last year he was number four, he's 18 years pro. That's amazing, but at least, you know, if he had come to the United States, before the last few years when the administration came in it would appreciate him, we probably wouldn't be talking about him now because they'd have ruined him and he'd had gone home in misery. So I'm glad that he stayed hid over there from the mainstream television over here for that long

until he got really fucking good. You kind of just described what happened in the past of number 10. Who do you think is number 10 on the list? Oh, now you've baffled me. I got nobody else, Gunther. Number 10, mystico. 26 years pro. Last year he was number 46.

And now we'll go through some of the other ones. Number 11, Samoa Joe, 12, Sammy Zane, 13, Drew McIntyre. We forgot about Drew McIntyre. My God, how's he not top five? 14 Brian Danielson. 15, Moose. 16 Sonata Who?

From New Japan Affiliation He's with the group Just Five Guys No he's doing burgers No not five guys burgers He's just five guys That's kind of like Rays

Pisa versus Famous Rays versus Rays famous You know So what do they do a bun with no burger Or a burger with no bun? Well it doesn't say here But number 17 is Jay Uso What do you think of that? Ooh. You know what it's a shame we talked about all the stars that are over? He's over like crazy. God damn, his work. It's like it regressed when he became the hot dogging baby face and it's just so phony looking. Am I overstating this?

He's not a favorite of mine in the ring. Number 18, El Hiro do Vikingo. Oh, for Christ's sake. 19 Mustafa Ali Wait a minute, back up Vikingo number 18 in the world of professional wrestling and we have not got C.M. Punk in there yet.

Well, it says he's been out of action since the spring, but he continued his unreal crash and burn performances for half of the evaluation period. He defended the mega championship in the U.S., Mexico and Australia,

via Ring of Honor, AAA, and Game Changer Wrestling. Did you realize I just said we ain't got punk in there yet? And they're almost at 20 and they're talking about Viking-no? Number 20, Eddie Kingston. Oh, Christ, on a cracker. 21, Kazushka Okada. 22, Nick Nemeth.

What do you think of that? One of your former students. He can outwork half of the guys on or more on the top 20 that you've just read off. But at the same time again, you know, where is he currently making a massive, you know, difference in something as related to the people that we're talking about that they haven't put on this list yet? Well, let's go back to this list.

Number 23, Alex Shelley. Number 24, Orange Cassidy. Jesus. Number 25, Alex Kane. What? He is the suplex assassin. He entered the evaluation period as the MLW World Heavyweight Champion. I've never even heard of him.

Huh. Well, we'll find out more about him in the future when he goes to another company. 26, Adam Copeland, 27, L.A. Knight. I'll stop there for a moment. Oh, Jesus. Again, L.A. Night. They're chanting on network television. L.A. Knight, yeah.

But he's below Viking O and who-O-is-that-O? And he's right next to number 28, Trick Williams, 29, Christian Cage, 30, Ilya Dragonov. You know, this really points out why they should do a PWI, it couldn't be 500, maybe PWI 50, the best part-timers in wrestling, because all the main eventers are part-timers. Roman, Brock, punk, if punk didn't qualify for the list, put punk on there too. Number 31, Mark Briscoe, number 32,

Katsuiko Nakajima. Oh, you're just making that up. Number 33, Zach Saber Jr., number 34, Mike Speedball Bailey, number 35, Kenno or Keno, I don't know. I couldn't be Keno. Kenno. How many ends is there? There's one N.

Is there a Drava over the E? No, just K-E-N-O-H. Oh, there's an H. then I think it's got to be Kenno. Number 36, Mascara Derrata 2.0. Number 37, Logan Paul. Number 38, Michael Oku. Number 39.

Oh, who? Oh, who? Number 39, cruel. K-R-U-L-E, by the way, not even C-R-U-E-L. Number 40, number 40. Where's he been lately? You never hear of him anymore. He's the NWA world champion, according to this. Oh, okay.

I've been keeping up. I'm sorry. What do you do if you want to disappear? You win the NWA world title. That's what you do. Number 41, Yuma Anzai. Number 42, Adam Page. 43, Josh Alexander.

44. Satoshi Kajima. 45. Ray Misty. Oh, Christ. Behind... All right. Yeah, this list is getting...

I'm trying to see. It's just falling off. Number 55, Randy Orton. Oh, Jesus Christ. Number 52 Bronwicker. Randy Orton, number 55. 52 Bronbreaker. And behind these names that you've been rattling off.

Well, let me go back to the list here. 51 Joe Hendry, 52 Bronbreaker. 53, Obafemi. And if you haven't seen him yet, you probably do need to in NXT. He is impressed. I thought it was one of the girls from the name. No, he's a, he's a rookie wrestler in NXT. You have to see him.

He's got a look. He's got size. He can move and there may be something there. Well, you'll see him when the NXT debuts on the WB. What is it? The CW. What is it? I can't remember.

The CW. UPN. Oh, CW. No, Dumont. But Oba Femi. Number 54. Max. Drives a hemi.

No, Vince does. Number 54, Max the Impaler. Number 55, Randy Orton. Number 56, AJ Stiles. 57, Claudio Castagnoli. 58 Kevin Owens. 59, Jack Perry. 60 L. Desperado.

61, Atlantis Jr. All right, how far are you going? 62, Rocky Romero, 63, Rickashay. You can get millions of dollars, even if you're 63. 64, Blake Christian, 65, Kyle Fletcher, 66, solo, Sacoa, 67, Kanozke, Tecestra, 68, Finn Bauer, 69, Dominic Mysterio, 70, Chris Saban. Now it's about to really fall off here, because now, yeah.

All right, we can stop soon. Who's number 500? Hold on, I'm going through this. Let's see if there's any puzzling names at the end. Let's go towards the end. There's all sorts of pictures and names. I don't know who any of these people are. Number 491, Lucas DeSangro,

nicknamed Twitch. Number 492, Isaiah Wolf, trained by Johnny Rods. Number 493, Rohan Raja. His signature move is a modified jumping flatliner. 494, Christara. Out of Montreal. 495. Where a Christara?

Chris Stara. One word. I'd share. Chris Stara. Like Christoph. Chris Stara. 495. T.J. Sykes, the Red Prince.

496. Smiley. His secret weapon is derangement. Wait, what's Smiley? That's right. Is there a photo of Smiley? There is no photo, but he has held multiple titles in New Jersey's pro wrestling magic, whatever that is.

I live in New Jersey and I don't know anything about pro wrestling magic. Number 497, Anakin Murphy. 498, Santana Jackson. His signature move is the Moonwalk DDT. That the Michael Jackson impersonator? I bet you it is.

499, Travis Lee. His home promotion is the ECWA. And finally, number 500, memes, a.k.a. Blue Paine. A.k.a. Blue Cane. Have you ever seen a person dressed like cane but blue, not red? No. What?

That's Blue Cane. He's number 500. How, how, what is his size? What are his dimensions? It doesn't say here. Social media sensation gained a lot of buzz this year, but also had a lot of wins. How multiple, multiple championships in his native UK, he bested Charles Crowley in a buried a live match and became the

obsession and briefly the arch nemesis of Matt Cardona. So he's reached the pinnacle of indie wrestling, I guess. But what I'm saying is, is this just some normal looking schlub dressed up as a blue cane or is he really

seven feet tall and 300 pounds or whatever the fuck? See, now I'm confused. I'm going to go through a few more here. 4.51, Austin Luke, Prince Harming. 452 Tony Deppin Or Deppin Deppin I think

453 Baron Corbin 454 Lucky Oh excuse me Laney Luck Nickname Luchelani 455 Ellie Everfly

Or Eli Everfly I guess Here's where I'm confused 456 Machi Ito Secret weapon Obscine finger gestures Why is a woman in here if... See, that's, I don't understand. And what does that say for Blue Cane when she's 50 points ahead?

Yeah, I don't know. Here's another woman. Sawyer Rek. Who's this? Ring style hardcore. Impressive team 3D Academy grad missed some ring time due to injury. Defeated Milo for the hood slam best athlete in the East Bay title, retained against Rob Hens, picked up multiple wins against Jimmy Lloyd, and beat Billy Dixon

in a Falls Count Anywhere match. And you should have seen that goddamn knockdown dragout she had with Arnold Finster. And Tits McGee was the referee. Well, here's an interesting one. They had a big crowd on the street corner. At 396 is Microman, build height three foot three, pop. Popular young wrestler is great at being opponents who underestimate him. Biggest win this year, arguably, was Joey Janella's cluster-fuck battle royal during

WrestleMania weekend. He defeated Danhausen, Brandon Kirk, and Dark Sheik, amongst others, and challenged Joey Janella for the extreme title. Micromat, three feet. So now we have women and midgets, or little people, they used to be called midgets, in here. Dwarves are actually the real. term. All the wrestlers who were

advertised in wrestling as midget wrestlers were actually dwarves. Ricky Morton's son, Kerry Morton, number 354. It's a picture of him here. But he's neither a midget nor a dwarf. I don't know why this just hit me looking through this, I guess because I saw a picture of a hairy wrestler.

What happened to Cameron Grimes? We heard he left WWE, but that was it. We haven't heard anything else. I assume he's going back to his previous name and personality and attempting to further himself. You would have thought AEW would have jumped all over someone like that. No, he can work. Okay, you have a good point.

Maybe they wouldn't jump all over that. All right. Well, this is the PWA 500. It certainly was. On newsstands, wherever you find wrestling magazines in 20. Go to Barnes & Noble. Well, where can you find a magazine these days? That's why people are so stupid.

Nobody's reading anymore. All they do with their lives is get on their telephones and then go to sleep at night, Brian. And I only agree with one of those things. I feel like you got to go to sleep and sleep. You got to have a good night's sleep. It's part of a healthy routine if you sleep for some period of time once a day. Can you agree with me on this? I'm a big fan of sleeping.

I'm a big fan of napping. when you get a chance. It's always good to have a nice little nap in the middle of the day. Sometimes it's like a trailer or a teaser for sleep. Well, I'll nap and then that way later on I can look forward to sleeping. But you can do all of those things and even more on a Helix sleep mattress. You know Helix. They've been our friends for so long now.

You can sleep on a Helix sleep mattress. You can nap on a Helix sleep mattress. You can watch TV on a Helix sleep mattress. mattress. You can eat your dinner if you got a nice bed tray, like, you know, Betty Davis and whatever happened to baby Jane or whatever the fuck. Or there's other things you can do on mattresses that I've been told, but that's up to the individual. But they got the best dagum mattresses of any mattress people that you're going to come into contact with, and you don't have to go to them because they will come to you.

Brian, no more do the people have to go out to these shady mattress stores in these back alleys and get the, you know, the black market mattress, the epidemic of those back in the 70s was what was led to most of the, you know, socially transmitted diseases. I've never heard that. It's true. Before mattress delivery to your home in a box was legalized, you had to go. out to a mattress store in a back alley and do it in a shady way where you actually had to lay on a mattress that other people were laying on to see whether

you liked it or not. And that's what led to the great plague of 1987. Almost a quarter of the populace didn't make it through that because they had been laying on tester mattresses. And it was kind of like the green stuff that grew on Stephen King and Creep Show. but you don't have to do that anymore because Helix has streamlined the process. You just go to helix sleep.com. That's where you're going to find them. And then you take the quiz.

And you tell them what kind of, or do you sweat when you sleep, probably because you're fretting over all the evil things you've done to people. Or do you like to sleep on your side or your back? You want to be cooled down. heated up, flipped over, whatever the case, and they will pinpoint the mattress that they have that you want and they will send it to your door and you just take the box into the bedroom or wherever you have your mattress and unbox it and poof, there it is. Remember that song? Poof, there it is.

No, that's not it. It was wump, there it is. Well, there is no word named wump. That's the problem when I first started hearing. it before it was a hit song I would hear it at center stage watching WCW Saturday night. I couldn't tell what the fans were chanting. Like, what are they saying exactly? And then the song hit. No, there, well, there's, there's, there's, there's, only deals in real words. Poof, there it is. Right there on your bed and you've got, oh, a long time. I can't even find the line to tell me how long you have to try it out in your home before you can still get your money back if you don't like it, but what kind of asshole would you be if you didn't

like these Helic Sleep mattresses, and they've got 10 to 15-year warranties. The 100-night trial offer stands in effect, and there's no fiberglass. There's not going to be any kind of fiberglass wrapped up in these mattresses. Some of these other mattress companies are actually grinding up returned Coca-Cola bottles and making mattresses out of the fine powder. Have you heard this on the news? I have not heard it. You have not heard it. There's no evidence of this. You don't have to worry about this with the fine mattresses from Helix sleep. I know for a fact that they were doing this because it was on the news when when a person in Springfield, Ohio, ate a dog that had been chewing on the mattress made out of the ground Coca-Cola glass.

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Sleep, the sleep of the eternity. Just lay down and drink. drift off, folks. It's an easy way to go. Helixleep.com slash JCE, 25% off all mattress orders, and two free pillows for our listeners right now. Go to helixleep.com slash JCE. Well, Jim, I know we just reviewed AEW All Out 2024,

but Dave Meltzer's star ratings are now out, and people have typically enjoyed us reviewing them. You misspoke. We didn't just review it. We reviewed it before. but it's not what we just did. Well, I mean, we just did it on the most recent episode. Yeah, but we didn't just do it right now with what we were just saying just beforehand. See, that's like, let me ask you a question.

The day of the, if you are on a Monday, right? Yes, the horse's name was Friday. No. Oh. If it's Monday, as we're standing here just as an example, if it's Monday, the upcoming Saturday, is it this Saturday or is it next Saturday? The upcoming Saturday on a Monday? Yeah.

This coming Saturday. Yeah, but the thing is, that's also the next Saturday that you come to. That's why I said it's this coming Saturday. No, no, no, because it's this Saturday, but it could also be next Saturday. Both of those things are correct. That's why we've got numbers on the day. Well, it can't be this Saturday if it already passed. Now it can be Saturday after next

See what I'm saying But nobody says that anymore Clearly Saturday after next That was out next Saturday And people show up on the wrong fucking day And they go where were you? Well you said next Saturday Well this was the next Saturday after you said that

What does this happen to? Many people you see it on the news You see it on the news all the time People are there They're showing up to eat dogs and they show up on the wrong day. I saw it on television. Yeah, I've not seen this story,

but maybe it's only in the Louisville metropolitan area. I think, and it was Canton, Ohio, is where it was. Anyway, what did you say? I said, well, and then you said, what did you say? No, no, what were you saying before you said that? Oh, back to the action. the star ratings Dave answers star ratings and the rest of the Observer

Newsletter Folks the entertainment value is going down from here now we got to go to fucking Uncle Dave's babblings There's always a chance that this could be where he shows you that you and him think alike he could surprise you with a star rating here and you go you know that's not unfair

he is flatter in these fucking people like a drunken sailor sucking up to a New Orleans whore So I expect everything from five to seven point five stars. Every time they go out there with Uncle Dave watching, they know they stand to make between five and seven stars. The hard way. The hard way.

Well, Jim, we did not see the pre-show. On the pre-show, the acclaim beat the Iron Savage's eight minutes, eight seconds, a star and a quarter. Wait, whoa! What you? Did someone have a fucking bout of explosive diarrhea in the middle of a hip toss? According to Dave Meltzer, this was the weakest AEW match on a pay-per-view show in recent memory. Good. Do go on. Tell me more about this.

It was almost like God was punishing Max Castor for claiming he's the best wrestler alive because of how messed up stuff was here. Oh, good Lord. Wow, I guess we know who Dave doesn't like. Jeez. Fuck it, Elman. And think about how bad it had to be. Did he give any specifics, or is that just the overall impression? Again, I'll go through what it says here. Jack Jameson, whoever that may be, challenged Billy Gunn. Caster did a brutal-looking Hurricane Rana attempt on Boulder. Attempt? The MXM Collection, those are the former models who, I guess,

WW is not fighting them on that intellectual property. Oh, yeah, go, no, I'm sure they're sending them some more. Here, take some more of that shit. They were watching because they're building to something with them versus the acclaimed, according to Dave. Oh, that'll put asses in seats. Now I wish I would have watched this. Castor botched the Ray Stevens, Rick Flair flip into a buckle spot. Oh, Jesus.

Bronson did a tow pay on Bowens. Giant Boulder did a moonsault on Castor for a near fall. Giant Boulder did a moonsault on someone for a near fall. Bronson did a splash and landed on his shoulder, ugly. Boulder Power Slam both acclaimed members at the same time. Jameson tried to interfere. I'm sure that felt good too, by the way. What these big stiff fucking green indie motherfuckers,

power slamming two guys on top of themselves. gun pulled Jameson off the apron and punched him. The match story was that Caster kept trying to pick up Boulder and collapsing to build to the spot at the finish where he finally got him up for the Death Valley bomb. Then they did the arrival and the mic drop on Bronson. Oh, boy. All right. Well, you know, now that may have been the match I might have enjoyed more if that had set the tone for the evening.

But I knew I knew we were in for four hours. so I didn't really dive into it an hour and a half early. The next match we didn't watch, Dustin Rhodes and Sammy Gavara and Hologram, defeating Tony Nees and Aria Davari and Josh Woods nine minutes and 50 seconds, two and three-quarter stars. Well, things are looking up now from the one and a half or whatever we got beforehand.

Another match you did not watch. Juice Robinson and Austin and Colting Gunn defeated Josh. Josh, John Silver and Alex Reynolds and evil Uno. Oh, Christ. Seven minutes, 33 seconds. So they're still indulging that fat, pleather-clad fuck that he's a wrestler to where he can at least, you know, work on. Oh, send him out on the pre-show. We don't want to hurt his feelings.

What the fuck? Two and three-quarter stars. He must have not been in much. Then came the angle where Sky Blue came out on crutches. and Mariah May went after her to be saved by Queen Amanata. Skyboo was a baby. I believe she was a heel when she got hurt, so I guess they're bringing her back as a baby face, or maybe just because it was her hometown.

No stars applied to this. I think the final match we did not watch, Mike Bennett and Matt Taven and Roderick Strong won a three-team over Dante and Darius Martin and Action Andretti and Beast Mortos and Shane Taylor and Lee Moriarty, three and a half stars. All right, so that, uh, that was the pre-show show, which had to go, what, about an hour and a half?

We now go to the main card, Jim. MJF defeated Daniel Garcia, 23 minutes, 41 seconds, four and a half stars. All right. I mean, again, You know, it was the... How would we boil down our critique of it? It was the best of a bad lot.

You know, that type of praise. This was not the best MJF match ever. They didn't... You know, nobody just fucking broke their own goddamn leg or, you know, tore their quads and was left crawling on their bellies like a reptile in the middle of the ring. It didn't suck.

Nobody had the explosive diarrhea or projectile violence. but again it was Garcia you know so it was a nice MJF match that he participated in and then you know was made somewhat of a fucking goof out of at the end because I guess he's he's gone away but is that steamboat flare ranking quality four and a half stars I don't think it's MJF Darby Allen

What was it? Full Gear. It was one of those paperviews. That was the opening match on the paperview. It was the best match on the paper view, and I think it was like four and a half stars. But that match was better than this match. Well, you, because at least Darby Allen has some element of weird charisma, rather than a lot of elements of no charisma.

Well, the next match, Jim, the No Charisma Express, Claudio Castignolli and Wheeler Yuda. Oh, God. Lost to the Young Bucks, 15 minutes, 43 seconds. Four stars. I wonder if Wheeler Yuda had to butter up his mother to have her vote for him in the beautiful baby contest. He's just fucking there, Edna.

He's just there. And Four Stars is just there. I mean, it kind of says a lot that this Youngbucks match, which was a nothing happening match, no one cared about it gets four stars when it was middle of the road. I wish that was a star rating you'd get middle. of the road. Again, if you're even grading on his scale, whatever that may be,

with MJF and Garcia, you had something that made some sense that had some build and for the kind of people who liked that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing those people like. Garcia does have his fanciers in the crowd in AEW. But this match, the tag team match, who gave a fuck about that? Who, how was it?

pushed in any way was it a a contribution to the evening's festivities and how was it executed almost flawlessly where it could be a four-star endeavor?

What to fuck? Well, Jim, the next match, Will Osprey defeated Pack 20 minutes, 35 seconds. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let me guess. It's either six or six and a quarter.

Five and a half stars. Okay, he's getting more conservative in his old age, his Uncle Dave. It really is crazy when you think about it because the only way it works is if there's a limit. If the idea is the best of the ranking system could be this, even if you later expand it from four to five stars, for instance,

or even five to six stars, that means six stars has to be the limit. I've heard Dave say that the limit is infinity. What does that mean? Like if you are a wrestling fan and you're still at this in like 200 years, you'll have like 135 star matches just because time has gone by

so you have to keep expanding the system. It doesn't make any sense, but five and a half stars for Osprey versus Pack. Well, I mean, it, again, I hate to repeat myself, but for the kind of people who like that kind of thing, that's kind of thing those people like. You know, they did all of the the athletics and the gymnastics and the aggressive

parkour and they do it better than anybody else does. They're very sharp with it, that type of thing. But it got, as we mentioned, just ridiculous. It's not a contest anymore. It's live action kung fu movies and video games. Yeah, no kidding. You know, I've been going back through my old Shaw Brothers films because I have like the box sets now on

Blu-ray. So I've been able to watch. all these movies I haven't watched in years. That is what it is. This is like the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon era of high flyers and it's not enjoyable all the time. And, you know, besides that, my God,

when you're five and a half stars, so we've surpassed anything in modern wrestling up until, you know, 10 years ago in the Tokyo Dome or whatever, with all the great stars and the best workers there's ever been. But still, was this

a goddamn big money fucking match? Was this a culmination of a major fucking angle or program or feud or whatever? Was this or are you just grading on they didn't slip and fall

on any of their big flips? See, the one thing they have going for them is the crowd was really into that match more than anything else on the show. It hurt the rest of the show besides the booking. The crowd was into that match. What else was left to do? Well, the next Next match, Jim, Chris Statlander defeated Willow Nightingale in a Chicago street fight,

14 minutes 58 seconds, 4 and 3 quarter stars. Oh, and thanks for coming, Kurt Engel. You know, if he got Stokely to manage him, maybe it would help. He never got. He never got five. I don't know if he got four and three quarters, but he never got five. I mean and you know

read because I've seen bits and pieces of the recaps on the people have tweeted but didn't he go on and on about the thumb tacks and the barbed wire and the garbage cans and so and so took a muffler off a 67 Chevy

and shoved it up the other ladies fucking uterus until it came out her throat and she was whistling Dixie every time she breathed. That wasn't this match. Maybe you're thinking of a Japanese match. But how is it? Do you, you, you took a wonderful shit.

We've got to really, or, well, see, that's, you know, you, you infected more people with that virus than anybody else in town. We're going to award you a spit, what the fuck? Well, you've kind of hit. on another thing, not to say that this match was a virus or these women have won this. I thought this was the most enjoyable match on the show and I said it before. But Dave has also graded on this curve of I personally don't like it. I don't enjoy it.

You know, four and a half stars. So now you're trying to think the way other people think, but you don't think? Like, there's no sense to that. Yes. No, there's no logic there whatsoever. Otherwise, now he's ready. If you like this kind of thing, then this is the, the kind of stars you would give it, but I don't like this kind of thing.

But the reason why I don't like this kind of thing is because it's girls. Bleeding and fucking hitting each other with goddamn blunt instruments. Sounds like the Beastie Boys for a second there. And going through tables. Girls, girls, girls, girls, girls. And going through tables and doing all this other goddamn garbage and the thumb tacks and the fucking hypodermic needles and the fucking, God damn it, you're plutonium. radioactive fishing material

what the fuck how hard do they need to make it on themselves everybody's already having surgery everybody's already hurt and banged up or we're going to go through another pain pill era or straight to you know goddamn let's just sign twice many wrestlers as we need because half of them are always going to be hurt

so they can keep doing this fucking garbage indie bullshit and get five stars from Dave Meltzer. It's amazing. All the stuff in the 90s in Japan that was like underground and dark and, you know, Corrican Hall wasn't sold out. That's the style that a lot of these people have accepted here in America all these years later.

But Jim, the next match, Kazushka Okada, retained the Continental title in a four-way over Konoske Takesha, Orange Cassidy, and Mark Briscoe, 15 minutes, six seconds, four and a quarter stars. Just keep moving.

Just keep moving. Because what the fuck? He gave one star for every person in a match and an extra quarter is a tip. That's 25%. Well, this next one I'm interested in, Mercedes Monet, retain the TBS title over Hikaru Shita,

16 minutes, 32 seconds. Did he, and that was the longest goddamn match of the previous several. And it seemed like every bit of it. Did he mention the wig? No. What? How does he not mention this? Maybe, I must be missing.

Let me just tell you, two and three quarter stars, two and three quarter stars is the star rating. The crowd is really loud early, so it was nothing like the Wembley mat. The crowd was really loud, really? What? What? was dead, but these two just weren't close to the rest of the matches on the main card. Sheeta did four drop kicks.

It looked like Stan Lane taught her how to do them. And the horse collar. But Monet made the ropes. There was some sloppy stuff. She did a nice Frankensteiner. One person almost scalped herself. Sheida did a nice Frankensteiner, but missed a drop kick.

Monet did the old bank station. but Sheeta made the ropes. Monet did a sunset flip power bomb and double knees for the near fall. Monet came off. Monet bent over and her hair fell off. Monet came off the top rope, but Sheetup got her knees up. Sheeta hit three falcon arrows for a near fall. Sheeta hit the katana, but Monet kicked out at one.

Both ended up in a tug of war over a kendo stick. No mention of the wig. That was another tug of war. And here's the thing. We spent a lot of time on the last few minutes that match. Can you imagine if we had picked it apart minute by minute like he is? How the fuck could Dave not mention that the final several minutes of the match were her holding her wig in place, selling her scalp? No matter what she did or what was done to her, she adjusted her wig.

That was the story of the match. You know what? You know what she should have done? she should have done the old inner ear injury and come in with a fucking amateur wrestling headgear and that and don't that would encourage the people to make noise like when when stan lane got the artificial hair for that brief period of time he did the old mongolian stomper thing where you got a bad inner ear fucking problem and if the fans make noise you're it's going to be painful and you get these things to cover you up and that way it holds your wig on

and at the same time the fans are encouraged to scream at you so you can say, stop it, stop it. And they need to have some encouragement to make any noise, except farting in her general direction whenever Mercedes comes out. You know, with the idea that I, and I'm assuming you, have no idea how painful it is for the remainder of the wig and whatever glue holds it in place to come ripping off, we don't know. If it rips up scalp, we don't know. But if you had this happen, and you were the promoter, the booker, would you almost think of it as a

as a good thing that you could play into that do something with to make the match come alive and then again even if you didn't do the headgear thing just something the fans now have that they get yell at her and get excited about teasing her over it would just lead to something as opposed to selling your scalp the entire second half of the match

if I was the promoter what I would do is check with my attorney and of course my attorney would be Stephen P. New so he would know right off if there was a hair clause in the contract. And then I would go back and I would say, look here, I'm paying you allegedly millions of dollars a year. You didn't disclose to me that you were as bald as a peeled egg.

You didn't disclose to me when I purchased you for all these millions of dollars that you were bolder than a cube all. and and now I want to nullify this contract because I did not buy for millions of dollars of a wrestler that's going to be tugging at their wig all the time until you can grow some hair I want my money back if you're again we don't know if she's bald I think she may just have real hair that's taped down so they can put the color of wig on maybe she's got the she's got the heartbreak of psoriasis or what Eric caused her. hair to fall out or whatever.

If you're Tony Kahn, do you insist that she fires whoever her gluer is? Whoever did the glue job? You're blaming the gluer? Who else would you blame? That glue did not mix good with sweat maybe. I don't know. Maybe the gluey. Maybe she did something.

Maybe she was monkeying with it. Maybe she was, you know, trying to fiddle around and fix it after it was glued. I think that the gluer should be at least brought in for a deposition. But you can't just blame the gluer ahead of time. Maybe the wig manufacturer. You know, maybe they didn't manufacture the wig properly to be glued onto someone's sweaty head, as you mentioned. Well, let's move on here.

It makes me wish I was still doing a show at Ron Fuller. I could have asked an expert in wig. Oh, hey! But let's go to the next match here. Brian Danielson, excuse me, ma'am. Brian Danielson retained the AEW title over Jack Perry. 27 minutes, 53 seconds. Oh, my God.

Four and three-quarter stars. Okay, wait a minute. What did he give Pack and Osprey? Let me scroll up. I think it was five and a half. Five and a half stars. Okay. Jesus Christ.

If you're rating the art form of wrestling rather than the video game form of wrestling, will you like him or not? Danielson and Perry had the people more. It was more dramatic. It was more of everything. So if that wasn't on this scale, considering the opposition, and if that wasn't five stars, I don't know what fuck he's looking at.

What do you think? I didn't think the match itself was all that great. And again, part of it was it's just hard for me to lose myself and seeing Jungle Boy as someone who could be a serious competitor against someone who's an athlete or someone who has experienced. Brian Danielson's supposed to be the best Matt wrestler. Well, yeah, I'm aware. We, we reviewed it.

But in this field, trying to make some sense of the gradation of his degradation, how was that not comparable to and greater than some of the other fucking things going on? Well, you know, Osprey and Pat kicked out of more cool stuff. I think that's really what it counts. But let's go now, Jim, to the final match of the double main event. Adam Page defeated Swerve Strickland, and it lights out cage match, 31 minutes, 21 seconds.

Good God on that. That last hour was two matches. Oh, boy. Four and a half stars. Four and a half stars, because, unfortunately, the plan was for hangnail to rip off Swerve's pants and pull out his massive throbbing dong

and circumcise him with a rusty fishing knife, but they ran out of time on the pay-per-view window, and they had to drop that spot. They had to cut that spot. And they had even consulted with a moil. I bet you didn't know I knew that word, did you? I'm shocked to hear you say that. I don't know who would have done their consultation.

Tony Connie ain't consulted with a moil. I'll tell you that. My favorite episode of Seinfeld. The moil? The moyle. And I could have been drunk and laying in the gutter a piece of garbage of people stepping over me. That episode aired recently within the last few months and I watched it and I always hated

that actor and it finally hit me he did a really good job in that role. Yes, because he was so obnoxious that you didn't even like him when he was being brilliant. Yeah. Nevertheless, speaking of being so obnoxious that you didn't like him, but neither one of these fucking assholes were brilliant. did he have anything to say for the the stabbing of the needles through the face has anybody

come out and said okay yeah he did he gave him Novakane and made his fucking brain numb or what was that for what was the the concept of that otherwise than to be fucking weird weird

you know there's nothing in the match review. So let me just go up a little bit to what Dave wrote about the overall pay-per-view. Maybe he mentioned the wig here. I don't see anything here either. But he's nice. He just, oh, four and a half stars because they just did all these things to each other and didn't have any controversial opinions about the chair shots. Was the chair sanded down? Actually, let's hear what Dave says here. The performance by both men was great. the match included both men taking bumps on a cinder block using a burned wood spike

supposedly taken from the house burned down multiple staples all over each other's body with blood coming from chests backs and cheeks the finish saw a page use a hypodermic needle and shot Strickland in the mouth and through the cheek he is just again

he's just recounting this like this is something... Can you imagine if a football writer it was supposed to be writing about reviewing a football game and he said then the quarterback pulled out a giant hypodermic needle and shoved it in the face of the fucking opposing goddamn guard. Well, there's a little more here, let's see, because I'm...

Just dry and just as matter of fact. The cinder block stuff was dangerous enough that Pages back was ripped open by it. The needle was gross, a turn off to many, but not super dangerous. Oh, the chair shot is a different issue. I think one of the things that has happened

is that with the current people involved in wrestling, mostly becoming fans in the late 80s and 90s, there is no personal frame of reference to so many 1970s stars having dementia later in life and probably won't until the era's stars they relate to get into their late 70s or 80s. To me,

seeing the heartbreak of once brilliant guys not be able to remember a thing, far more than my parents, friends at a similar age, something you start to see when you are in your own 50s and those people are in their 70s. AEW will argue that the chairs they use

are gimmicked and thus safe. It's hard to convince me of that. But given AEW has now done this twice in the last three pay-per-views, it looks like it's going to be a thing. And we are 17 years

past Chris Benoit, and the mentality towards wrestlers from far too many fans is that they are cattle who should be there for our entertainment, and it's up to them to decide if they are fine with it, and we don't care. Anyway, I left the show with a very negative feeling. Five stars. Yeah, he gave those matches like four and a half, like right under five stars. What's he talking about? All right.

We can come back to his foolishness if you want, but that brings something up. and can I address something real quick that nobody is getting the fucking point of about the the 70 stars having dementia later in life and the chair shots and blah blah blah may I? Yes, please, because as you're saying that,

I'm thinking how many of those, how much of that was caused by chair shots? Yes. How many times did Nick Bockwinkle let Dick the bruiser draw back and full just full on hit him as hard as he could over the head with the fucking chair without blocking it

exactly zero in his fucking career, right? I watched the guys in the 70s. I worked with the guys in the 80s. Every once in a while for the angle, for the big shocking thing on television, then there'd be the agreement of the Midnight Express, the Fantastics did it twice. WCWM.

That's the earliest example I could think of of like really hard chair shots, 84? Well, because a lot of the other stuff was done in the territory. in the 70s, it doesn't exist, but it wasn't done, it was done very rarely, and it's done for the fucking angle, and it was done for the maximum amount of people to see it. And there was some agreement beforehand,

everybody knew it was coming, and those guys still had ways to fucking block some of the goddamn thing, and the guys swinging knew how to swing, and the guy's catching knew how to catch, right? It's still hard, but nevertheless. then suddenly he in the 90s, everyone had balls Mahoney, boo Bradley, bless him, you know, but stuff like that going on. That was a completely different animal.

And that's what these people's frame of reference is, gimmick, chair or not, but it's not the chair shots in probably the majority of cases that are going to get you. because again, as we said, the 70s guys weren't taking share shots like that, but they were taking bumps over and over. And they weren't taking bumps through furniture, for the most part, and nobody was jumping off the top rope to the concrete floor for the most part. You can find an example of anything's from somewhere, but it was the repetition, which is what these were. guys are still going to have to contend with because the guys in the 70s took a fraction of

the amount of bumps in a match. How much harder were those rings? The rings were a lot harder, but that's counteracted by the biggest bumps these guys take her out on a fucking floor. And even with a pad, there's no give. So you've got an acceleration of, what was the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, repractor or was it Dr. Francois and the W. François Petit?

Yes, Francois Petit. He said a flat back bump like a body slam, right? A guy picks you up and gives you a body slam. That's the equivalent of a 30 mile an hour rear end collision in a car. And, you know, so drop down one tackle, hip toss, scoop, slam, fucking whatever, that spot, that was called millions of times in those old shitty rings. But think what's being called now. We're coming off the top with a back-flipping Spanish fucking fly.

If the ring is better, we'll just come from eight feet farther up. That's what I'm saying. That's what's going to affect everybody, whether you're hitting somebody overhead with a chair or not. The chairs can be done with sensible fucking application by professionals who are told the way they're going to do it, regardless of how they want to do it, oh, just hit me, I'll take it.

Well, no, he won't hit you. We're going to do this. I did that in OVW and Ring of Honor. And nobody ever got concussion. A lot of people got hit with chairs. The right way. It did not be stupid. Yeah, I don't think it was chair shots that led to Vern Gagne or Red Bastine getting dementia.

How many? fucking times do you think Vern Kanye ever let anybody hit him with a fucking chair have you ever seen documentary evidence photo, video that anybody was ever allowed to hit Vern Gagne with a fucking chair? I think Eddie Sharky may have tried once.

Well, again, I'm just telling but nevertheless, that's so they're all fucking digging in the wrong well for, it's

it's just be sensible about how much punishment you put your head through regardless of what the movement is. And these guys flipping over the table. And that match the other day that we were talking about. The girl's on AEW of us. She flipped off the fucking apron, go through the table and caught Willow in the back of the head

with her legs and liked to knock her face into the fucking concrete. They're just goddamn human pinballs. And it's going to catch up with them. them. Yeah, I always think that whenever someone does the dive that they set up and ends up, like there's eight guys on the floor waiting to catch the person. And the person's diving on them, the idea is that it's going to be a safe landing for them. But everyone underneath, that has to be one of those guys that everything's just landing right on his head or... Somebody gets the knee. Yes, somebody gets the elbow and you need reconstructive surgery

on your face. It's a matter of time. It's fucking ridiculous. That's why I've said, I would rather let And they have all done this to me. Jerry Lawler, Paul Orndorf, Powell drive me a hundred times in a row than be in the middle of those people to catch one of those stupid fuckers coming one time with his boot heels or his elbows

or the fucking knees or the back of his head could have cave my face in because he has no idea where he's landing. Well, that was the AEW. all-out star ratings by Dave Meltzer, the wrestling observer's newsletter. No mention of the wig. We need to get to the bottom of this. You know what?

It's a cover-up. Jim, any thoughts on the passing of Kuniaki Kobayashi? Yeah, I'm surprised to hear it. I have no idea that this happened. When did this happen? It happened this past week. Well, nobody told me I didn't get a heads up on it. You know what?

He was a fucking bad ass. in his day, wasn't he? You know what? He looked more like Bruce Lee than anyone else. So when I first tried to get in Japanese tapes, I was a big mark for him. The hair.

Where did he, where did he fall in terms of in between what rivalry of Tiger Mass? What year would I have seen him for was that 82-ish? 82-83, because I think he was after, he was after dynamite. He was, I think he may have been really

the last great Tiger Mask feud before, Siyama quit New Japan and stuff. started UWF with Maida and Shima. Yeah. And they called him Kid Kobe, did they not? Oh, I don't know. I've seen some, or I saw some magazines of the time period with, you know, with the fucking karate stuff and everything. It was kind of, it was very cool, as you mentioned.

Yeah, I always like those matches. Just as, I mean, the dynamite matches are incredible and they are the historic ones. But as far as actual matches go, like, if you want to rate Pack versus Osprey ahead of, like Osprey versus whoever he's been feuding with for two years, the matches may have been better, Kobayashi and Tiger Mask. Oh, yeah, well, because they were doing some of these things, but they had still been trained by people that had the contest came first. They didn't lose the thread of the contest,

and the aggression and the emotion was there. And even though Japanese wrestling logic has always, been different, you didn't get the idea that it just, here, let's stand here and let each other hit each other, or let's cooperate in this extended series of gymnastics stalemates that go nowhere and then shake hands. It was quicker movement, if that's possible, and more, it looked more impromptu, more, you know, like some legitimate escapes when a guy cartwheeled out of something and landed on his feet, you were like, oh, shit. He almost got him with that one instead of, oh, that was pretty.

Like the people imitating Billy Robinson and Tony Charles only not being salty old fucking middle-aged 40-year-old fuckers that really knew how to shoot, but guys doing homages, some of the video game wrestlers look like an homage to the type of things that they were doing in the early 80s, you know, junior heavyweight, light heavyweight division in New Japan. I prefer that to the guys copying Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko. Endlessly. Endlessly.

Well, Kuniaki Kobayashi, there it is. Check out his stuff if you have never seen him. Kuniaki Kobayashi versus Tiger Mask and his red trunks. Check it out. That would have to be on YouTube, right? That would still, because I mean, we just, because you and I have the. mammoth tape collections and or you know we've been watching this shit for so long

we just assume well yeah you know pop one of those VHSs in the in the machine and check him out can they can they get it on the YouTube it's definitely on New Japan world obviously but I think there has to be some stuff on YouTube or Daily Motion so Kuniaki Kobayashi

Hey Jim one other thing that a lot of the listeners have been sending in Batista is on a press tour for his new movie Killers game or The Killers game according to this poster here, and he sat down for an interview with, I always get to see the right or wrong, Chris Van Vleet, I think.

But we have this, our friend Chris. You know him. Well, I've never met him, but you've never met a lot of the people you call our friends every time you open a show. The listeners are my friends.

Well, I'm sure Chris Vel de lill is a listener. I don't know about that. But let's go to this. He's smart he is, but go ahead. This is from the YouTube page, CVV clips. This is Batista on Jim Cornett. Let's go to this. 2002 has talked about all the time.

It's legendary, right? Did that help you or hurt you? Like, help you in the fact that you're learning and growing with Randy Orton and John Cena, Brock Lesnar and Shelton Benjamin, or does it hurt you that now you need to do that much more to be better than them? It didn't hurt me as far as they went. They only helped me. They only drove me.

Like when you are surrounded by greatness, it brings out the best in you. And these guys, to say they were competitive would be a massive understatement. I mean, it was a class full of studs, man. These guys were athletes. Let me stop it there for a second. Any problem with what he's saying? No, I agree with him. And it's pretty much the consensus from everybody else that was named there that they all kind of felt.

Field. Field? They all kind of field that way. Let's go back to Batista, see how he felt. So I was good there. I needed them. I, you know, thank God they were there. What hurt me was my character that I had in OVW because I really had,

and I always get grief about this because people think that I don't respect Jim Cornett, you know, and I really do. And the reason I do is because Jim Cornett taught us so much about the history of wrestling. He taught us so much about the traditions of wrestling. but I won't back down when I say that career, that character, it stunted my growth in OVW because I had nothing but squash matches. That's what I did. Leviathan?

Leviathan. I went out and two, three moves, and my matches were over. I had Goldberg matches. Let me stop it here for a moment. There's a little bit more, but any initial thoughts on this? Well, here's the problem. Yes, on TV, he had squash matches. And when we introduced him, we had some in house shows also.

but Brian you've seen some of the programs and some of the videotapes who did he wrestle at the big matches at the Louisville Gardens the big show Paul White that one the big show he also wrestled Kane

Glenn Jacobs Kane he was the guy to wrestle the giant muscular wrestlers yes he also when he lost because he was going to the WWF or WWF he lost to the guy named the prototype

who was John Sina I think the match went fucking 14 15 minutes whatever and then there was the problem of the classes we didn't fucking say goddamn don't come to class

we didn't say I'm not saying he didn't come but I'm saying we didn't say don't come to class just do TV squash matches he was in the classes except what he was injured and he was doing everything everybody else was because it didn't matter what your gimmick was in class and Rip Rogers was

teaching the same things verbally to everybody that was there that, you know, regardless of what their gimmick on television was. And I, you know, David at that time, I said he was very meek and very, and I appreciate the nice things he said about me. and I'm not saying bad about him except he was very meek and he seemed very unmotivated

a lot of times because I don't think he was comfortable with the gimmick because Brian, let me ask you a question you loved horror movies

when you were a kid like all fucking young boys we like to watch the creature features, right? Well, like my era was Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street and child's play

and it was a great series of movies, yeah. The scary movies, right? Yeah, lots of, And boy, and Michael Myers a cool motherfucker, right? Jason. Never got into Halloween. Well, okay, but I'm saying the

stars of these movies, whether it's Frankenstein, because you're 100 years old, you're as old as Carl Lemley like me, or whether it's goddamn. What, reference, what, you win today, you're the winner. But the point is, here's this guy, he looks like that.

Why have you shaved your head and fucking jack yourself up to weigh 340 pounds and 6 foot fucking 5 and you got these tattoos if you don't want to and somebody gives you the opportunity to play a fucking monster in a horror movie and you're not having fun with it you wanted to instead

Batista the whatever when he was dressing like James Bond and sunglasses and he was a ladies man Well the other thing is you and anyone else who knew anything about wrestling, you wouldn't have thought more than likely that they're going to bring up someone who looks like that and at the time moved like that and have him wrestle classics.

That would have been an unreasonable thought to train him towards that, wouldn't it? Well, and also, like when Big Show came in, he understood, right? I said, we're building this guy, he's the monster, you're coming in as the irresistible force for the immovable object, and he was calling shit where Dave would spear him. out of his fucking boots. And Dave would give him the big, you know, belly to back, you know, whatever the fuck, and do all of his shit. So he could help get this guy over.

So it wasn't like squash matches when he's wrestling, and glended the same thing. And as a matter of fact, the way that we beat him against Kane was that Steve Austin rolled in. Remember it to big Christmas chaos show. Steve Austin rolled in and gave Batista Leviathan a stuff. a stone cold stunner and then cane chokeslammed him

or whatever the fuck. We protected him. He was never beaten because he wasn't a good enough worker back then to get beat looking like that and still not kill himself. That's, well, no, that's industry terminology.

I don't mean he would commit suicide. I mean, when a guy was green and looked like that into territory days unless you beat him in certain ways, to protect him and he didn't know any better than to just let somebody fucking beat him then it would kill him

it would kill him off it would bury him as they say so that was the strategy and that's what he got over to our audience more than almost any whether it be seen or Lester

or whatever as the personality that he had here the people turned him baby face because it was so fucking it was something they enjoyed right but it would point is I said it a different way rather than

yes we were pointing him to I figured I can train him for pay-per-view matches and runs and rivalries with The Undertaker with Big Show with Kane with some of the go back and look at the roster in 2001-2-3

there was a few more there Mark Henry who was training with him down here a lot at the same time. But also the way I told him, I said, you can't go out there and start taking arm drags in a second match. Your look is also a handicap. And, I mean, I've seen pictures of him lately. He's dropped a lot of weight. I hope everything's all right.

But everybody go back to a picture of him. At one point, right before he got here, he weighed 375 pounds. Wow, he was that big? When he was training, I believe, with Alpha, I think when he started. Wow. And it's not like he was a fat fucking guy, right? But when we got him, I'm going to say he was between 335, 345, 345.

And then he got a little leaner because, as I've mentioned, when he started in OVW, he'd only made a few weeks of classes, tore either a bicep or a tricep, something involved, his arm, it's been 25 years, pardon me, where he had to get surgery and he had to sit out for a few months and he was observing classes and he dropped some weight. But point is, how the fuck is he going to go through developmental and him show up as an unknown fucking guy to do a local dark match?

You know, you couldn't, no, you can't be taking arm drags in the second match. You have to be a main event guy the way that you look or be used somehow in the periphery of a fucking top spot or else wise

is fucking ridiculous. And that's, you know, that's what we were doing. Well, let's go back to this audio once again. Oh, there's more.

From the CVV clip site on a page on YouTube, here's Batista promoting the killer's game. I didn't, I didn't progress like the rest of the guys. I didn't progress like Brock Lesnar or Randy Orton, you know, even those guys are incredible athletes.

And, you know, obviously with Randy being a legacy, you know, I think he was born and bred into this business. But I was just stunted a little bit. I never got to speak on the mic. I spoke on the mic a few, few times. And it was me screaming into the mic, but I just, I think my growth there was, it was a little bit stunted. And I went into the, um, WW completely unprepared. And it was like a whole new learning curve. And I, and I remember it.

And I will say it over and over that fit. Finley and a day changed my life. You know, I went and that was kind of a last stitch effort. You know, John Lahr and I sent me down to work with Fit. And Steve Regal, Dave Taylor, and Fit just took me aside and just started talking to me.

Well, there it is. That's the end of the clip. Well, and there was a last ditch effort because here's another of the problems. I don't want to say he wasn't motivated, but Dave was not a per. He was a very meek giant. He didn't speak, he just sat around waiting for things to be told to him a lot in those days. I remember Mosley sitting in the corner with his hoodie.

We didn't just fucking burst out and tell Brock Lester, hey, do a shooting star press at this show at the gardens. You know what? We knew he could do it because he's in practice. He was like, hey, let me do this. Let me try this. He got the crash pads out. Everybody was trying to do shit.

when a guy that's 300 pounds says to me, I'm going to do the shooting star press, okay, and I asked Danny Davis, can he do it? Oh, yeah, he did it. All right.

But I'll give you an example. It was the Rising Sun, Indiana, event. Les Thatcher, the HWA, he was working with him also, the W.W.E. Developmental. And he gets a sold casino show. There's a casino up there, right?

and it was quite a bit of a money deal for his promotions so he got one of the bigger WW Stars time who was Kane to come down and appear because Glenn knew less from Smoky Mountain etc and I brought Leviathan up to wrestle him in the main event because then we could put on the pictures of Leviathan on the posters Hey kids, make your parents bring you to the casino.

Look at these two motherfuckers, right? And it was also because that was part of the program. Again, as I mentioned, Dave was in all the classes with all the other guys that he could do anything he wanted to fucking do if he asserted himself. And everybody was getting taught the same things. So I was teaching him out of work a gimmick that might lead him. Same way I did Glenn to a moment. multi-year program with the undertaker for pay-per-view.

I didn't think that Dave Batista was going to be in the third match on a pay-per-view in a clinical classic. But anyway, so we get Dave and Glenn sat down in the locker room at the casino show, and Glenn knew the drill. He knew what I was trying to do. And he asked David, what do you do? They said, oh, whatever you want. No, what do you do?

I had to sit there and say, look, he does the spear, he does the spine buster. Because Dave is just like, oh, whatever you want to do. He was just, so we were giving him these opportunities. I, you know, I don't know what Fitz said that made the bell ring. Maybe it was that they had sent him down there as the last gasp. Maybe the last gasp made the bell ring. The next person had talked to him gave him a good idea. I don't know.

Maybe he just needed more personal reassurance and petting, because everybody else we were just saying, hey, do your shit. Well, there it is, the comments of Batista, promoting his new film about Jim. No, no, wait a minute. We won that suit. He cannot make a new film about me.

No, that's not what I was saying. That's not what I was saying. You said he was promoting his new film about Jim. We got the script squashed. As a matter of fact, it's a stamped confidential. What do you think when you hear him say that he respects you, that people are wrong when they say he doesn't, that he really does? Well, he's probably, it's nice that he's clarified things because originally the bone of contention was from what I recall again after the years have gone by. his blanket statement in his book was, I didn't learn anything in OVW.

And I'm like, really? You didn't learn anything from Danny Davis, from Rip Rogers, from all of the WWE affiliated trainers and coaches and producers that came down, from Tom Bridger to Al Snow, I can't remember who was going through at his specific time period. From all of those classes with all of those other guys

that said they learned so much. How did all this escape you just because we didn't have anybody else that was capable of going 15 believable minutes with your giant freakish fucking ass? And you mean that in a good way?

In a good way. Yes. It violates every rule of fucking wrestling not to put that guy on television. Again, I dare anybody. Go back and look at a picture from 2001 of Leviathan and OVW. and tell me that you would have this guy get on TV

and not just beat up two or three people at a time in about a minute to promote having to buy a ticket to see him against Kane or against the big show or against the OVW champion, whoever that may be at the time. That ain't going to be on TV. That's why you've got to pay to see it. Motherfucker, this is goddamn wrestling. If you can't learn how to think about the business,

than just be a monkey and do moves from that concept. I don't know what to tell you. Well, you know, Jim, one thing Batista can do is call somebody and say that he needs a good phone plan. Or possibly to gain some weight. Drink a milkshake.

But, you know, our friends at Mint Mobile don't make milkshakes, but they do make wonderful phone plans. And, Brian, they send us some, some PR information, some advertising info so we can pitch these things. And it says, you know, when you discover a song that you bump on repeat and have to share it with your friends so they can experience just how awesome it is, I don't think that really takes into account how awesome it is when you find out what kind of phone plan you can get

from Mint Mobile. I think it's more like when you go to court and they let you leave or when you get out of jail, that type of rel- or when you've come back from taking the test and they said it's negative. That never happens. Who's gone to court by and where I'm allowed to leave? I'm not talking about that kind of court. I'm talking about the kind where sometimes they keep you for a while.

That type of relief and exhilaration and relaxation comes when you find out that you can get a cell phone plan from Mint Mobile for $15 a month. It's a three-month plan. That's $45 altogether. You see the math there. And you get the unlimited high-speed data and the talk and the text that all the other big high-priced phone plans have. And you don't pay that much money. Now, occasionally, there is a party line aspect to it where you're not paying much money, so you might have to wait until Gertrude hangs up with Eloise talking about their rheumatism. But otherwise than that, it's the same as all the other phone plans. There's no party line aspect to this. This is a real phone plan just for you and just for all

your phone needs. It's just like everything else, but cheaper. Well, imagine if you got on a party line with somebody that was engaging in some type of erotica via the telephone, you could listen in. I wonder if they did that back in a 30. back in Salina, Kansas. Do you think in the 30s when they had the party lines... Salina, Kansas? Well, or any rural area of the country,

do you think that some night there, old Elieze was talking to Clem, the farmer, about the various dittle hopping they could do? And then suddenly, somebody else was listening in... You fuck, son of a bitch, you, I hope you die in the next 30 minutes, you motherfucking bastard you. Yeah, see, that's the kind of stuff they might have been listening to.

Well, not with Mint Mobile, folks. It's a premium wireless plan without the premium price. It's the price of every man, the price that people can afford. You know $15 a month, Brian. That is 50 cents a day. For the text, everybody you know, it's still 50 cents a day. Can you beat that? I think it's a great deal.

How many people do you know? I know a lot of people. How many people can get me on the phone? That's another story. Well, but no, but they don't have to get you on the phone. You can text them and tell them to fuck off, and you don't even have to speak to them. And it's all the same price.

I leave everyone alone. Well, nobody else with a cell phone does. So folks, right now, if you are a new Mint Mobile customer, now if you've already got the Mint Mobile, you can't get a deal on the Mint Mobile that you're getting because you already got it. So see, you should have waited.

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telephone, telegraph, telubbies, you can watch the telitubbies. Texting is different than telegraph. Well, it's still a written fucking method of communication. Well, that's true, but it's not a telegraph. And the phone can be your pony express. Say you think about it that way. I have to say there is something missing.

Like, there's one thing about getting a congratulatory text, but it was always a big deal. Like, we have a telegram that just came in. Elvis and the colonel want to congratulate the Beatles on coming to a America. And they would hunt you down in the hotel lobbies in various places to give you that telegram. How many telegram servers or whatever deliverers got punched out because people thought they were

being served with papers? Oh, no, because they were wearing the little, like the organ grinder and the monkey outfit. They had the little cap on and a little jacket. You knew immediately they were coming up to give you the telegram because they were, they were dressed like little fucking goofs. all right well don't be a goof stop with mint mobile stop you can text all your friends stop

stop right now before we go any further do you love mint mobile will you love it forever and just remember folks there's a $45 up front payment required equivalent to $15 a month you're not going to fuck them around new customers on first three months plan only speed slow we're above 40 GB on the unlimited plan additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply cement mobile for all the details. And now we're praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive

because if I got to spend another minute with you, Brian, I don't think I can barely survive. But we're going to AEW. That's right, where Tony Kahn can afford an AI Phil Rosuto if you want one. Oh, boy, they need some AI. They need to do the Thunderdome thing, don't they in AEW now, where they just put a screen on the chairs, the empty chairs in the arena and put up somebody's but it'd be the same four faces. What would it be like if you had seats with screens on them and they were empty? There's no people showed up to be on screen. They would call it collision. A.W on September 11th, and there's a line there on that date that this television program occurred, but I don't want to cross any lines in delivering it, so I'll let y'all do your own in your head.

But the scene of the disaster was Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, about 65 miles down the road from me. and I mean we're going to talk about some of the things that went on on the television program but basically to ask questions about what the fuck is going on and then we'll talk about the fact that there was nobody there and then we'll discover whether anybody watched or not with the ratings but this was one of the most bizarre television shows I've ever seen it's like they just said, everybody just go out there and come up with something to do on your own and do it. Because the shit didn't even match what was going on beforehand.

What, are they serious with this? They being he, yes. They being he? Well, let's sit down and recoup the, uh, recoup the various recap, maybe recoup. How do we recoup? How do we recoup our time for watching this thing? So they used the parking lot a lot. The parking garage they got there at Rep Arena.

It's a beautiful building. There are more people in the parking lot. Yeah, because the attendance were back there. And the cold open of this thing was the plumber speaking in riddles while spooky music was playing in the background. And he was egos or out of control. I can't take it anymore. And he's talking about

his lordship. He's referring to Regal, who's not there anymore, but my mentor. But also he said, I am the one true king of these lands. Diplomacy has failed. I choose war. Are we going to have to watch this fucking movie that he's ripping off so that we know what in the hellless gibberish is? He may be ripping off more than one movie at the same time at this point.

point. It seems like John, I think what happened is Brian Danielson decided to give John Moxley a copy of War and Peace. And now Moxley is just ripping off dialogue right from it. Because if he's a badass, he shouldn't be talking this way. Where it's like, I'm going to convince you, I know big words that I heard Danielson say in the car. Well, we went from that as the cold open and the plumber will be back later on in this program. too, seeing Darby Allen's skateboard into the garage. And then we had Tony Chavani in the ring with Christian Cage and his various ephemera, Nick Plain, Nick Plain's mom, and the lizard. And Tony Chavis, this was a night of mistakes and fuck-ups and brain farts and

delirium. where you imagine that some of these people may have a high fever. Tony Chivani says that Christian Cage has a contract to get a World Heavyweight title match whenever and whenever he wants. All you got to do is stand there and just pitch it to him, Tony. My God. And when Christian Cage catches it

and drops it on the ground, he's trying to paint the picture that he finally made the Dino douche there get aggressive and be a monster on purpose when in the the big multi-person, whatever the fuck they call it match they had yet, when Lucha, when Kill Switch grabbed me for the choke slam,

I looked in his eyes and then Christian said, and the light bulb finally went off. Not the light bulb finally went on. The light bulb finally went off. I didn't even pick up on that. Exactly. what he said the light bulb finally went off. Yes, he went from having some semblance of

thought in his head to being completely blank and vacant. And then, so now he's a monster and a killer because his light bulb went off. And they did small what's from the small crowd, but they kind of started chatting luch, SRS, a little bit. But Cage wants to take the world title from Brian Danielson. And, you know, he's like a, as you've said before, for a Bond villain, but it was a good heel promo, especially in this, judging in this atmosphere, but if a, if a good promo falls in an empty forest, does it draw any money?

Did I, did I miss any of the nuances of this thing? Probably not. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I like Nick Wayne in this role. As far as all the young skinny guys on the roster, I think he's the least offensive because you buy him as a young punk. I shouldn't say punk. You buy him as a young punk punk or someone who just doesn't do right or someone who makes bad decisions and they have a mom leading him along the way. You buy him in that role. He works.

You buy him as a juvenile delinquent. You know, I hate to put it that way, but yes. They should have him flattened tires and like key and doors in the parking lot and smoking behind the barn. When you're in high school, there were certain kids you always went to school with and then one day they were gone and you're like, oh, did they leave school? Oh, no, they got sent to Nike. What's Nike? That's where they send the bad kids. Oh, okay.

Is that, so is that how they make those shoes? I don't think that's the same, uh, sweat shop, no. Um, anyway, so, Renee Mockseley Good was in the back with Don Fallis and Cal Feltcher and Take a shit and Osprey. And now, and again, help me try to what the fuck. Don wants Osprey to team with. Kyle tonight in the gauntlet

match for the World Tag Team title shot. Osprey is already the not the intercontinental, it's international champion and he's a single's, and he's a baby face, but Kyle is a heel except he's friends with Osprey, but Don is still allegedly a heel manager in me because these are all the people he supposedly manages. And then he's trying to call in a favor from Osprey

that Osprey allegedly owes Don. But then Kyle pleads with him in a voice I can only describe as a Dickens Urchin begging for more gruel. You're my friend, be my partner. Yes. And please, may I have some all? And so Osprey agrees, and then everybody hugs him, including the heel manager, except for Take a Shit,

who has not had. happy and stares at him instead of giving him a hug. Who's the fucking baby faces here? Help me. Again, the booking is completely ass backwards and wrong, but there are individual good performances within that. I think Takesha's perfect in that role. It's just that... Of not saying anything and having a sour look on his face, I agree with you.

I've been thinking for a while they're going to set up something where Callis and Fletcher turn on Ospre and it'll probably happen in that Bucks match, you would think. And then they'll be more clearly defined as, heels, you would imagine. But for right now, and for the last several months, they're tweeners. They just, they're there, and he's a heel manager, and there's no redeeming value to him, but he's also friends with the good guys. And he's benevolent to the people in his charge. Like when Gary Hart returned the world class in 84, and he wasn't exactly a heel manager,

but the fans didn't accept him, so they didn't cheer him, and then he became a heel manager again. And then he sliced open the missing link. Anyway, They had a TNT title match, now Jungle Jackoff. Oh, Mr. Perry is, he has to pull into the garage or the parking lot or wherever, I guess, of the arena in his dingy black scapegoat van. So somehow apparently, instead of being a celebrity who flies first class or at least business across the country to wrestle on this national telehealth, television promotion. He's driving this goddamn Chester the Molester van

across the country and the highways and byways to get to the shows. And again, is one thing if they show a van like that pulling up to the show and a Nick Comerado or something gets out of it. It's Jack Perry.

He's a little kid. He looks ridiculous. And then there's the match. Well, and then the spooky metal music though where he walks out and it's very ominous and there's

2700 well no I think what it was it 2700 tickets distributed who knows how many took them up on it but there's in a building it seats 23,000 people for basketball and he's walking out there and there's murmuring

how the fuck it and the guy holds the sign up that we would see a lot over the course the night, Jim's not going to like this across from the hard camera. And they were very perceptive on their timing on when I wouldn't, wouldn't like something.

And it's Jack Perry against Leo Rush. Wasn't Leo Rush a fucking heel? Or was that one of the jobs he had that he quit or got fired from or retired from the business from beforehand? I think he was a heel, but he was also kind of buddying up.

to at the time way back like top flight or something to he was acting like a baby place to lull them into I don't know what happened he got fired and now he's back and I thought he was a heel again but Jack Perry's a heel well anyway

Perry jump started it and they went right to the break they must have been running long after that dissertation earlier and they when they came back from the break you know boom boom boom and I'm just listening Perry gives Rush the snap dragon

suplex and there's silence and then Rush runs to the ropes and jumps and he does these unorthodox moves taking advantage of his microscopic size and his quickness and he's going to do some kind of ass

first bounce off the bottom rope and bounce backwards into giving jungle jack off a flying stunner and he stumbled and fell on his ass, but the counter to the flying stunner was going to be that Jungle Jack was going to run and give him the knee, right?

Coming off for the stunner. But since he stumbled and fell on his ass, Jack went over the top of him and fell on top of him. And then he jumped up and hit him with another knee, one, two, three. And then was it because that he had completed, missed his goddamn first attempt because the guy stumbled, or is this part of his character

that Perry just then, as soon as one, two, three, he rolled out and walked out to no response, didn't look back, didn't milk the camera, whatever the fuck, just like, ah, fuck. And boom.

And then, I guess, they may have wanted to address that or whatever the fuck. Marvez, Barb Brady, was in the back where Perry walks up and says, people like me are crucified in this life so we can be worshipped in the next. What?

No, yes, that's what he ever... Yeah, no, I know that's what he said. That was my reaction. What? Yeah. People like you are parking attendance in this life. What does he mean? Skinny people that grow their hair long and grow beards?

I don't know. I don't know. The children of rich, successful celebrities? We will always be crucified. We're not nepo babies. Scapegoats. Maybe that's really what he's talking about with the whole scapegoat thing. He's rejecting being a nepo baby, gets the worst looking, like you said,

Chester the molester van, paints it all black, drives into the parking lot, jumps out with his belt jumps back in. Maybe that's what it is. I'm still thinking that somebody needs to ask the local authorities. to look in the back of that van. Anyway, speaking of imitation badassery,

Rene Moxligood was in the back with hangnail, Adam Page. And he does some more dramatic acting. And then just because obviously it called for it,

even though they don't usually do this, after his interview, he walks off and they just follow him with the camera. And he walks past a bunch random job guys and he's giving out the intimidating looks and then suddenly he comes face to face with Jeff Jarrett

and Jeff Jarrett it cuts a promo where he basically psychoanalizes him and tells him what's wrong with him and that his toughest opponent is going to be the man in the mirror and then Paige punches him and tosses him

over some chairs and Karen and the jobbers all come in and Page walks away. But regardless of whether Page's acting is bad or this the whole thing is preposterous or what, it's kind of a moot point, again, this show.

Everybody's brain farts, everybody's quality control. I'm surprised there wasn't another fake drywall wall in this. If you watch this segment, in the back of this, there are like five or six building employees like the concession people or somebody in fucking maintenance whatever

they're sitting in a row of seats against the wall and they're just watching this and Brian what happens if you're if you are an employee of an arena backstage or if you're an employee of any company anywhere and within 20 or 30 or 30 feet of you, two guys suddenly start fucking wailing away at each other at a big fight.

You don't necessarily break it up. But don't you stand up and assess whether you need to get further the fuck away? Yes. Absolutely. No, they're sitting there. You see what guys are their legs crossed? They're sitting there watching this shit right on. They couldn't say, hey, can you please get out of the way of our shot?

Well, maybe it's because if you're in the AEW backstage area, you're used to seeing these kind of skirmishes break out. It's not a big deal. It just, what the fuck? They can't even look through the viewfinder of the camera. And they go, oh, if those six people are sitting there while there's big fights going on, all these people are running up yelling, and they're sitting there like they're watching a movie,

maybe we should ask them to goddamn move over. or change our camera angle. Did you watch the... Are you excited for the Jeff Jared Adam Page thing that they're for some reason kind of building up? It's not just this thing. It's been several incidents now. I don't know what they're doing.

And Jeff was... He did a great promo one week and it got him over as a baby face. And then they've been beating him up ever since. I don't know where that's supposed to. fucking go. Well, to be fair, he also co-hosts the pre-show with Renee and RJ. Renee and RJ. And Double-J. And Double-J. And OJ. All right. Anyway, private party and commander with Alex. Did you watch the break dancing entrance by the baby faces? Yeah, I guess they needed

to have something new for Alex to do since the Lucha brothers are going to WWE. They didn't take him. and now he's with these guys and you say their breakdancing was his that really stood out. Well, he made old Raygun look good. And, but anyways, but here's private party. It's just silliness and commander there for whatever that's worth. And Alex is dancing like a fucking fool.

And they're in an empty building and people are in an eh. And there's three opponents in the ring. And suddenly the plumber and Marina Schaefer and Pac and Claudio come in and beat up all six of them. The job guys in the ring and the fucking three baby faces and I guess the manager and I don't. And then they just were gone. They just left. They took their ass whipping and departed. And then they start doing the, I can't even call it a promo because it's just

just nonsensical. Pack is saying, this company is broken. No response from the people. We are inevitable. Silence. Diplomacy has failed. This company is ours.

And people are, what the fuck? What diplomacy? What the fuck are you talking about? Kissinger. You know, it's a goddamn Berzensky. He took over for him.

Or Neville Chamberlain. I'm not sure who he is. And then Pack left and the plumber wandered around kind of and then he left and there was the sign Jim's not going to like this and the people are like, anyway, should we move along? Well, what do you think? Again, this has been playing at now, John Moxley invading the show even though he's one of their wrestlers and beating everyone up and saying that, It's not their company anymore.

He wants to speak to Darby Allen. And again, Pack now gets on the mic and there will be no diplomacy, be no embassy, there will be no ambassador. I don't know what's happening here. Whatever direction they're going to go and we don't know yet. There's still people that think Shane McMahon will be tied to this. Yeah, well, and there's still more shit going on with Moxley and Darby on this program. But go ahead. But just what do you think of this tone?

Because like you said, and it's not just this. so this isn't really singled out, the crowd's dead. The crowd's not reacting. And it seems like these guys, specifically Moxley, is performing for himself. Yeah.

They're all, they're auditioning for... What, reading poetry, whatever he's saying in these. Yeah, they're auditioning for things they'd like to do in the future whenever the billionaire finally gets tired of paying them. You know, we've seen the WWE create intrigue, who's going to turn in the bloodline,

which way is that going to go? But this is speaking in riddles when people don't even understand the particular riddle game they're playing or where any of this is coming from so that you can explain it to them afterwards, maybe, whenever whatever needs to be revealed is revealed, and then there's an aha moment,

oh, now we understand all of this. except are we even going to ever get that moment? Or is this just they're being overly dramatic because they think it's cool. They're all getting a chance to be creative. But no. The people were

the people were sitting there going what the fuck is going on here? We don't understand this. We can't even hear wildpang anymore. Yeah, by the way, it seems like security would have a pretty good idea of where he is, he just walks through the crowd from the same place

if he had to stop him from attacking people wouldn't be that hard. But then we wouldn't be able to figure out what is going on here and whose company it is. And they better hope they got Shane McMahon to make them forget how this whole thing

started whenever they... I don't know whether they'll ever tell us or whether he'll just keep going on acting like this and they'll never make it clear. Well, what was next on his show? Well, I'll tell you that Chris Jericho wants the $7,000 for his jacket that Orange Cassidy dumped on him four years ago. Four years ago. Why is this a thing now?

Because he wants the money. He's hard up. I want the $7,000. from four years ago now? Jesus. Yeah. The lack of creativity in some of this stuff is amazing. Well, we'll hear more about that later on

because another of this show was just the same people over and over with same grievances. Rickishae. Got a big singles match with Sammy Guevara. Brian, remember when Sammy Guevara was over? I do. I remember when we thought he was going to be. be one of the breakout stars and you remember when they were standing up and down screaming

until they got to know him personally and he kept continuing to be a dipshit over and over they have all successfully teamed up to negate sammy guvara he came out and they're like nothing and they have the match the video game match sammy back sammy back Back flipped. Wait, did you even say who he's wrestling? Ricochet and Sammy Guavara. Okay, I didn't know if you said a ricochet. Well, yes.

I think I said it. Well, God damn it. I'll say it again. Ricochet and Sammy Guevara. And again, they have the video game match. Did you see Sammy backflip off the entranceway and almost break his own leg? Yes. He's loco.

Oh, and he made sure to show. at first, but, and again, people used to love that, right? They popped on a guy diving off the goddamn balcony, but then they didn't care. And I guess, did he finally get enough heat on himself that they just said, fuck it, we're giving up on Sammy? I don't know, but I think a lot of the problem beyond personal things or behavioral things was they tied him to Jericho for too long, and they broke him away once, and then he brought him back to being Jericho's lackey.

Yeah. And unfortunately, one of the only things left to do is have him do a feud with Jericho and beat him. And the last thing anyone wants to see is him feud with Chris Jericho. So it creates a real problem. Well, and also ricochet, the new high-priced high-friar, he won the match with two kicks to the head and some kind of suplex. He does all the dives and all the flips and then his finish.

I'm going to kick him in a head and the superlice. flexing. And he just kind of beat him flat, but then rigor mortis came in and speared ricochet. So this, again, he's one of the new masked luchadors, but he's

the big one, the fairly thick fellow. And when he spears ricochet, ricochet sells that like grim death, and Sammy comes back in with a chair and saves the guy that he just got beat by

and then mortis leaves and Sammy and Rickache shook hands so what the fuck does Rickashey

seems special or just like one of the guys there already he's one of the guys have we heard him speak yet we've seen him stare at a TV monitor and they're going to do him in Osprey that's one of the big matches

that they're excited about I mean we've heard him speak in the WWF, so I'm not excited to hear him speak, but he's in a new company and he's already going 15 minutes with middle card or unimportant

people, and you know, and he stands around and watches TV every once in a while. And gets speared by a fucking miscellaneous mass Mexican guy. So then René Moxley God was in the back

with O'Cody, who was trying to emote himself. Now they've got him trying to act, and he was fake almost crying because of how, you know, it was tough fight, but he managed to win, and then he, you know, laughed about it. And then Don comes in, he's a heel manager. He's got his boy take with him and says, hey, you didn't beat my guy.

And O'Cody calls Don a bitch and then take steps up in O'Cody's face. And who's the baby face here that we're supposed to be pulling for or rooting for? The heel that's lined up with the heel EVPs or the goddamn heel that's lined up with the bald-headed evil heel manager of the Phallis family? Any ideas? No. and then we were at 9 o'clock and here came Darby Allen, wandering to the ring, just blah, blah. And of course, Moxley has been referring to him

and saying he needed to talk to him over the past week or two, so Darby says, somebody's been looking for me while I'm right here. That is the extent of everything he said when he came out. And he didn't even say that with his, as much enthusiasm as I just had. And then Moxley's new music plays, and here he comes with Marina Schaefer,

wandering through the arena, and Schaefer goes face-to-face with Darby. She's got bigger arms than he did, and he was wearing a big pink bushy hoodie. And then, Brian, is this another, is it so smart, so, inside that I don't even understand it, much less the average wrestling fan, where they talk about how noxley says nothing has changed between me and you. Any kind of half-ass has been

putting him over, but whatever the fuck. But then Darby cut him off and I used to be a homeless dishwasher. N AEW gave me everything and you were my hero because you wouldn't change for anybody. You still do Indies. Oh joy. But any bitches he mad about what he did to Brian. But you used to be my

don't we hear that all the time now and or I used to be a homeless dishwasher? We just heard the hero thing or the I look up to you thing from Britt Baker in the Mercedes Monet contract signing a few weeks ago. But I mean, again,

most people would go what the fuck you still do Indies you're on national television you're supposed to be a big star what are you a fucking idiot but it's a hero type of thing a noble thing for them because he used to be a homeless dishwasher

so what do you want Moxley is what he's saying so Moxley then and Brian this is where you got to help me and we got to help the viewers or the listeners or everybody. Everybody needs help. Moxley then says that Darby Allen

was going to wrestle Brian Danielson for the AEW title at Grand Slam which is the dynamite episode from the Arthur Ashe Stadium. But since Danielson is indisposed because of the plastic bag that was put over his head apparently he's trying to murder him.

Yeah, I tried to murder him. They tried to murder him. Yeah. So, and hey, Darby, you weren't ready to be the world champion anyway. So Moxley wants Darby to hand over his title shot that he earned with Brian Danielson to him. But Darby says, well, I'm not just going to hand it to you. You got to do something about it.

and Moxley says, okay, then in New York City on September the 25th, the title shot, they're going to fight for the title shot. The winner gets the title shot. And then Moxley talked in some more riddles and kept saying, I don't have time to explain to you now. I wish you had time to explain this to us. I don't have time to explain, but this is the way it's going to be. Why don't you have time?

What else are you doing? What else are you doing? Wander around. Come out the entranceway instead of through the crowd and save you five minutes a night. But anyway, so now we've established that Brian Danielson, the world champion can't wrestle Darby Allen

at Grand Slam because he's been bagged. So Darby is going to wrestle Moxley with the title shot against Danielson on the line. That's where we've got so far in this thing, right? Well, technically, the title shot is on the line, but yes, against Danielson, it would appear. Yes, they're going to wrestle for the title shot. I can't explain anything else. I got to go. I got a cab waiting for me. I have to go. But just remember, that's where we've left it. Yes, Brian Danielson cannot wrestle on Grand Slam,

so we're going to get Darby Allen versus Moxley. And you know what? For AEW, that's a pretty big match. That's the match of Grand Slam, because there's no Brian Danielson. For the kind of people that like that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing those people like. Yeah. So then we see dramatic foreshadowing in the back. Christopher Daniels is about to say something, and Nigel McGinnis comes in and he said, I've got to talk to Tony Kahn. And then we have to set through Mariah May versus whoever.

And the Buccaroos, Maddie and Nikki in the back with more of their blathering where they never really do anything anymore and not that anybody's clamoring to see him do anything but then we get again this show the disastrous everything everybody's brain farting everybody's fucking up everybody's missing shit or saying something wrong or there's no people in the building there's another jericho promo about his jacket that you know he wants the seven thousand dollars for that pockets poured the orange juice on him and he's stolen pockets his backpack

and he showed a picture in this guy's backpack we're alleged to believe that he carries around an 8 by 10 framed picture of him with his former best friends remember chuckle fuck Taylor and Trent

and then he's Jericho was saying there's Stalander and Statlander forgot forgot yes I bet she'd like to forget she was in the photo. And then as Jericho is knocking, you know, there are no real friendships in pro wrestling,

everybody's going to use everybody, blah, blah, blah. Then there's Big Bill looking sideways at him, right? Like the light bulb went off. And he starts, so that's dramatic foreshadowing. But Jericho's screaming, I demand the cash, I want the cash. I want the money for my jacket.

So then suddenly pockets pops up on the screen. And he's like, well, you know, I don't have it on me. But my friends are bringing it. I got the cash. And then here comes Kylo Raleigh and Mark Briscoe on. What is the technical term for that thing? The big, not a bulldozer, but the big machine with the big scoop on the front of of it that you scoop up the

dirt or stuff it's not a tractor they're not mowing anything or pulling anything it's a self-propelled machine that has a scoop on the front an earth mover type of thing whatever the fuck

but it's got the big scoop and in the big scoop is allegedly the $7,000 that Jericho wants for his jacket it in coins, in quarters, and they dump it onto Jericho's fancy Dan brand new Bentley that they've established

that he pulled up in earlier in the program. That he drove to Lexington in. Well, it had Kentucky plates. It had Kentucky plates on it and a vanity plate that said, hi, guys, but it was G-U-Y-5. So I don't know where. where they is a gimmick played it has to be

but also where they got but the point is they were trying to recreate Mr. McMahon's Corvette and Austin dumping cement in it right? Same flavor of thing that was supposed to be but when they dumped the

quarters into the car nothing fucking happened to the car it's a converter they just went into the seats it may have scratched the paint, we couldn't tell. But it's not like the car exploded. They dumped.

If that was $7,000 in quarters, that ain't a lot of goddamn quarters. Yeah, Jericho had to sell the hassle of cleaning it. Yes. He's like, you know, it's going to take me to get this detailed. What the fuck? They dumped a load of quarters into a

convertible and nothing happened to the fucking car. And the people, you can hear the people are like, uh-huh. It didn't fill up anything. It was just on the floor. No, it was on the floorboards were horribly messy and there was stuff in the bucket seats.

The fuck. If it had been comically overdone and they'd let loose an avalanche of coins that would completely fucking cover the whole car, that would have been a big fucking pop, right? But it was like, oh, we're going to fucking spill these in your floorboard. And boy, this comedy troupe of Orange Cat, Mark Briscoe and Kyle O'Reilly.

It's a shame what they're doing to Mark Brisco, but at least they're tying Jericho into this and get all the joke people in one angle. Speaking of well, it's not a joke because a joke has a punchline and you either get it or you don't, but this is still up in the air. Here's the second

half of the conundrum we had earlier. Nigel McGinnis is in the ring and he announces that since Darby Allen is now putting the shot he has at the world title on the line against Moxley. There's going to be no world title match. Well, there was supposed to be no world title match because Danielson just got a plastic

bag put over his head was the victim of attempted murder, which is why that Darby put the title shot on the line against Moxley loosely. but now he's put the card before the horse so since Darby's wrestling Moxley there's going to be no world title match and then he said and Danielson's probably in an iron lung anyway but the world champion

should at least compete on the big Grand Slam and then he keeps talking about Brian Danielson's success should have been mine and he's been making comments on the secondary television programs because Danielson and Nigel had a big rivalry in like 2009 and 10 in Ring of Honor and they are playing off that and Nigel's the over

the top heel now and so they've been talking about that on the shows that Nigel is on but does anybody Brian on Wednesday night know why that or even if they've been watching these other shows have they made it clear why Nigel McGinnis thinks that Brian Danielson's success should have been his but instead Danielson went on to greatness and Nigel had his career pulled out from under him because of a hepatitis diagnosis with the WWE rescinding his contract I'll go a little further unless you were following Ring of Honor then you may not even know he was a wrestler because other than his run as what Desmond Wolfe and TNA yeah he has only been used as a commentator on NXT and now here and he's not even on the main show.

He's on the Saturday show or one of the weekend shows and maybe a few matches during the pay-per-view. That's it. So all of a sudden he's out there. They haven't done any video packages and he used to look different with the hair, obviously. He was blonde as dark. But the spiky hair too.

Well, yes. But there's a chance that they may be overthinking the amount of people that understand who he is and what his history is. They are preaching to the choir without bothering to convert any of the heathens, is what you're saying. There's a lot of heathens. A lot of heathens out there. So there's this guy that's never even on Wednesday night saying,

Brian Danielson, the world champion, is afraid of me. But Tony Kahn isn't afraid. And Nigel shows a contract. I've got this from Tony Kahn at Grand Slam. It's going to be Brian Danielson versus Nigel McGinnis. now and then they have since either put up a graphic or a tweet or whatever well if brian danielsen is able to show up or wrestle or whatever however they phrased it but wait so danielsen was going to defend the world title against derby allen but then in the angle that

danielsen is bagged and injured so moxley goes to derby and says Since the world champion is indisposed, you can't wrestle him. How about we wrestle for the title shot against the world champion, and Darby agrees. But then Nigel comes out and says, well, the world champion should at least compete, even if he's not defending the title. How can you be cleared? Well, as long as you're not defending a title, go ahead on out there with that broken leg.

You'll be fine. What, how, what? And again, what was it? achieved with the Moxley turn or the Moxley attack on Danielson. They hit the ring, beat him to the point where he was just carried out of the ring by the team with an oxygen mask. They tried to suffocate him. Yes.

If you want to beat him and get the match in a couple of weeks, why would you do that? And then he does this whole thing with Darby. He must feel like the biggest idiot of all, all of a sudden, Nigel got the title match. Well, but also, and somebody that wasn't even there when all that, happened to him is the one who gets a match with him on the big show while the other fucking so anyway it's you know it's it's interesting i mean the idea of nigel returning i know he did the match at wembley but him against danielsen not only is that the storied match but that was a pretty physical feud i mean it was at times uncomfortable with some of the head butts and stuff yeah

what are they going to do danielsen's not what he was then and he has to worry about all sorts of issues health-wise. And Nigel, I know he's had a lot of time off, but there's good and bad to that. Well, and then we were at our main event, which was a tag team casino gauntlet match to determine who gets a title shot with the Hardley Boys.

And at that point, I realized that this is going to go a while. And also I had forgotten, when I'm watching this on DVR, I'd forgotten to DVR the modern family that followed it, so I knew I wasn't going to see the finish. And I said, you know what, I just can't. I just can't. So, Brian, it's your duty to now tell me what happened in the tag team casino gauntlet match for the tag team title match with the Kukamunga kids.

At Grand Slam. At Grand Slam. What happened was exactly what you thought would happen. What they telegraphed earlier in the show, because it sets up the Fletcher-Ossprey angle. They won, the gauntlet. Here's the order of the tag teams that came in. Number one, FTR. Number two, Osprey and Fletcher.

Number three, the righteous. Number four, the undisputed kingdom of Taven and Bennett. Number five, the acclaimed. Number six, the MXM collection. Those are the former models. Oh, boy. Number seven, top flight. Number eight, the outrunners.

And number nine, the grizzled young veterans who immediately brawled on the stage with FTR, who eliminated themselves fighting with the grizzled young veterans. Osprey and Fletcher versus the Bucks, that grand slam. Is that when you pull the trigger on Cal, Ellis and Fletcher turning on Osprey? Well, one would imagine, why would, why would you go?

But then, again, you've got Osprey that you've just spent millions of dollars on, trying to elevate, instead of people still need to be elevating him, he's only been there, what, full time six months,

or has it been? I don't know. What the fuck? He hasn't drawn a doubt. yet, at least he's the most likely to of any of Tony's recent signings between O'Cody and Mercedes and ricochet.

Osprey has something, but goddamn, now he's going to be working with underneath guys that have suddenly got a tan and a new haircut. And yes, Felcher is just all kinds of athletic, but who the fuck is he? We're not talking about Randy Orton here. So, I... And meanwhile, MJF is working with Garcia.

And nobody would care about it. If they fucking lit him on fire into town square. No, he's not. MJF's gone. I don't know who Garcia is working. Well, no, I'm saying MJF working with guys. He just did it. I'm saying you've got Osprey working with underneath guys.

You got MJF working with underneath guys. You got everybody that they have that has half a name is working with underneath guys. And again, in terms of follow up, where was Garcia? MJF's out of action. Garcia got what Wardlow never got. which was a definitive destruction of MJF and he's gone. No, remember Wardlow got the definitive, diminutive. The diminutive destruction.

He powerbombed him, pinned him one, two, three. And then by the time that MJF came back from whatever that hiatus was for, he was a top guy and Wardlow was gone. So you got that going on, the Fletcher Osprey thing. The bucks, you talked earlier about the crowd not reacting to stuff. The Bucks are the lead heel tag team who, I mean, how do you build up someone stronger than saying they're EVPs of the company? They could do whatever they want. They beat up the boss of the company.

They take over the show. They tried to put old Kenny Olivier out of commission permanently, remember? The crowd sits there and doesn't react. And it's a harsh reality about the reality of the young bucks and their appeal and lack thereof to a lot of people. They're bad booking, their tiresome matches that we've all seen over and over and over again. And the excited young fan of 10 years ago who liked them on the Indies, they've got other things to do with their life now. And it's not the young bucks.

And they've got a better wrestling promotion now to serve as an alternative instead of the shit show run by the evil billionaire that everybody hated. I wonder if WWE is going to do anything different now with their tag team division. If the rumors are true and they got the Lucha Brothers and the Motor City Machine Guns, even though I'm not a big Lucha Brothers style fan, that's still pretty big to have those two tag teams. When you think of the limited amount of tag teams that have been pushed anywhere over the last 10 years, those are two of them. And W.W.E is a chance to remake their tag team division starting now

better than the AEW one. They just added the grizzled young veterans who are, or off NXT. FTR are dead in the water. The bucks are dead, completely dead. Osprey and Fletcher is a thing that's about to end. So it's not a thing.

And then you have a bunch of tag teams the acclaimed or, you know, they... Boy, they've even lost Uncle Dave. When, as they said about Walter Cronkite, when you've lost Uncle Dave, you've lost Middle America. And then you had a couple other teams like the Outrunners who were only on like the B shows.

They have no tag team division. It's awful. Tavin and Bennett. Does anyone want to see Tavenan and Bennett? Not anymore. Well, that was Dynamite. Well, before we talk about, because I want to talk about Rupp Arena, a place near and dear to my heart. But before we do that, what were the ratings on this fiasco for the national audience?

Before we examine how many people in Lexington didn't want to see it. AEW Dynamite on September 11th on TBS, 8 to 10.08 p.m. on average, watched by 716,000 viewers. Holy shit, they're back over 700,000. Hooray, hooray. Hallelujah.

According to Wesslenomics, Dynamite was outranked in the key demo among cable originals in prime time only by MTV's video music awards. So, and they did a 728,000 viewer average. although you have to think a lot of that, if not the majority, skews young. Skew, it positively stops young.

I can't imagine anybody over the age of 30 watching anything with that. I saw highlights on the news is what I did. Well, let's go to the quarterly hours and see how they compare to previous weeks. These were compiled by WrestleMania. Quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m., the Moxley tape promo, the Christian Cage live promo, the Don Callis, Will Osprey and Family backstage promo, and the start of Jack Perry versus Leo Rush, 888,000 viewers.

Oh, okay. That is the high point for the episode, in case you didn't know. I was figuring it was going to be, that is way better than they've normally been doing at the top of the hour, so I assume they got handed a nice little audience, and also from their average, I can see that it's, going to start plummeting like a turd. Well, the turd continues in quarter two,

815, 8.30 p.m. The continuation of Perry versus Rush, with picture and picture, the Adam Page, Jeff Jarrett backstage angle, 74,000 viewers. Oh, good Lord. So, 184,000 people in 15 minutes. Well, we got a quarter three,

830 to 8.45 p.m. the private party commander Moxley Marina Shafir Claudio Castignoli Pack Live Angle an ad break the Learning Tree's backstage promo and the start of Rickishay versus Sammy Gavaro a picture and picture 685,000 viewers

oh good Lord okay now they're down over 200,000 in 45 minutes and they've almost got to go up they have to go up at some point just to make their average now. Well, we got a quarter four, 845 to 9 p.m. The continuation of Rikoshe versus Guevara, a recap of All In, an ad break, the Okada-Tekhta backstage angle, and the start of Darby Allen's live promo, 691,000 viewers.

Well, that's up, but not very far. Maybe I'm wrong. That 888 for 15 minutes at the top will artificially inflate their average a good bit. That 888 for one minute while the Big Bang Theory is still on is what it is. We go now to the big 9 o'clock hour, 9 to 9.15 p.m. quarter 5. Darby Allen and John Moxley's live promo, Christopher Daniels and Nigel McGinnis backstage, and the start of Mariah May versus Queen Amanata, with picture and picture and full screen ads,

720,000 viewers. Okay, so they picked up 29,000 people at the top of the hour to bring them to the second highest quarter of the show so far at 720,000. Well, we continue that into quarter six, 915 to 9.30 p.m. The continuation of Queen Amanata versus Mariah May, the post-match, the Young Buck's backstage promo, an ad break, and the Learning Tree versus the Iron Savage's. Oh, boy. 680,000 viewers.

Well, and... And the low point in the key demo, it ties with another segment, but 251,000. Well, that also, that's the low point for the show so far, and they lost the 29,000 that they got back at the top of the hour, plus another 11,000. thousand in that 15-minute segment. Well, we go to quarter seven, 930 to 9.45 p.m. The Learning Tree Conglomeration Live Angle with Coins in the Car, an ad break, Nigel McGinnis' live promo, and Hook's promo on the street. 697,000 viewers.

And quarter eight? Quarter eight, I remind you, we have. of an eight-minute overrun, quarter eight, nine, 45 to 10 p.m. The World Tag Team title contendership casino gauntlet match, where picture and picture ads twice, 687,000 viewers,

eight-minute overrun, match continues, 679,000. Wow, so the overrun narrowly beat out quarter six for the lowest rating of the entire process there. They went from 888 to 679 over the course of the festivities. And the key demo, the trend line, it's below the trend line, it really takes off below the trend line in the second hour.

And a lot of that you have to think is because of the MTV Awards, because if you have to choose between that and this, you're going to go with that. but more importantly Rupp Arena and the the crowd or lack thereof in that giant building and we talked about I mean they did 3,000 said a little less than 4,000 last time but this is now less than 3,000

and that's tickets distributed who knows how many were paid for and who radio giveaways please announce us, get somebody to come down, whatever. I mean, 23,000 for basketball in Rupp Arena, and they've got

a national television set up with 2,700 people in the building. There's no, don't run Lexington if there's no other building. And it's not like that Lexington is a bad town, the WWE in the day when they would,

do pay-per-views or big events there have sold out Rupp Arena and they have been there in more modern times where they do very respectably. I have some recent numbers if you want them real quick for this. Go ahead. So we can go back to 2021, October 2021, WWE Super Show, that's a house show in Lexington, 3,470 people or tickets distributed, I assume. And that's horrible too. Then we go to. Then we go to to January 25th, 2023 AEW Dynamite. So same event. And these are from Russellticks, by the way.

5,494. Tickets distributed. We now go to June 16th, 20203, Smackdown. 9,841. That sounds better. We now go to August 19, 2023, as you mentioned before.

Collision. 3,228. And finally, February of this year, WWRWA, 10,108. That shows you how they got hot. Well, and as a matter of fact, when they were hot in the early 2000s, they were still hot at the house shows,

even when the wrestling war had run its course, and they did the all-time record gate in the state of Kentucky in Ruff Arena and Lexington. It did 20,000 people or whatever it was. And Lexington has always been a great market, and I've talked about when Jared opened it up. And the thing is, there was some element of, even though Lexington became a great market for the Memphis Territory, as I'll tell you in a second,

there was still some element of, boy, this is a big bill. building that kind of held the atmosphere down when there were seven or eight thousand people in a place because it's so big. But we've told the story before. Lance Russell knew the guy who had become the program director at WLEX-18 in Lexington, the NBC affiliate, because the guy had come from Memphis. And Lance sold him on the idea, well, at Channel 5 in Memphis, WMC, we're doing these gigantic ratings, Saturday morning at 11 o'clock.

Over in Louisville, WAVE, Channel 3, the NBC affiliate, Saturday at noon. It's the most watched program in the time slot, Memphis Wrestling. Put it on here, and they did. And the thing at Rupp Arena was motivated to find events to put in there because it had just opened. I think, what was it, 75, 77? maybe whatever. And the reason why, 50 years ago, there was a 23,000-seat arena

in a state of Kentucky in a town of 160 or 70,000 people was because the University of Kentucky. The basketball team would fill it. People would fight over tickets still with that big of a building. But they couldn't get anything else. And the UK still had a

the old Memorial Coliseum seated 10 or 12,000 or whatever, but wrestling had always traditionally been to one of the high school gyms in Lexington when they could get a spot. So Jarrett went to Rupp Arena and they cut him a deal for Thursday nights once a month. They would put this giant, heavy, black stage curtain down the middle of the building and they'd rent him half of it. and the ringside and lower bowl just on half the building would seat 6,000 people

and if you had to open up the upper deck, then you knew you had a really strong house, right? And then they could put, how many more thousands in the upper deck? It was ridiculous. So Rupp Arena prospered because they had people paying for parking and they had thousands of people buying hot dogs and drinks and beer

or whatever and their their usher services and they're building people and their concessions they all had an extra night's work a month so they didn't expect to rent the whole goddamn building every night of the week and they still

it still takes a pretty big event to fucking justify reparina right but anyway when they got the TV and then they went to Ruperina and said we're on WLEX. There were three TV stations in Lexington at the time.

And we'll come there once a month. They started building and they always went up. The first show, well, the first show was 1,500 people. A second was like 1,350. And then it went to 2,600 people and then 4,000 people and then 5,000 people. And they started in spring of 7,000.5,000. by the early 80s, 81, 82, 83, the gates were bigger than they were in the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.

Of course, they ran Memphis every week. They ran Lexington once a month, but Lexington, an average card would do 30 grand, and the big ones would do 40, and that's when the tickets were $5 and $6 a piece. Because in Memphis, they still had the $3,000, or the $3 general admissions, So if you had an 11,000 person sell out in the Mid-South Coliseum, the gate was 46 grand.

You could do 40 grand in Lexington with 8,000 people. Having said that, from 1982 until today, a dollar then is worth $3 now. So you're talking about once a month, they would do an arena show where their gate was between 90 grand and 120 grand. So you do that 12 times a year and that's why that Lexington was such an important town in the Memphis

territory and they didn't stop running it until they lost the TV in the late 80s. But you can't go in there. And that's another thing. Think about this, Brian. What was Jerry Jarrett's talent payroll on a show that would do the equivalent of $120,000 house. Here, Tony has these multimillion-dollar talents

and these national television stars and these widely known names and didn't sell 3,000 tickets. And Jared would draw crowds of up to 8,000 people. I guarantee you he didn't spend more than 12 grand on the entire talent roster, including the referee and the goddamn guy all in the ring. Help me try to understand the economics of all of this.

I can't help you explain the economics of Tony Khan running the Rupp Arena again. There isn't a market I could think of for dynamite or, you know, even collision or rampage where they've gone up. Everything is whenever we have the information, the previous time there, there was 500,000 more people. before that, $1,000,000 more than that. Like it's the same scale. It's going down. Meanwhile, WWE,

even when they don't sell out when they hit a market now, it's a big deal. The AEW, I think they've killed a lot of these places they've run smugly thinking they were doing good shows

when they were doing market killing shows. When is the last time they sold out a building that they ran the actual building, not the setup they had, like a 12,000 seat building, we got

it set up for 3,800. When is the last time they filled the building they were in, if the building they were in was filled? I don't know for certain. It probably would have been one of the pay-per-view events either in Toronto or maybe California or

well, probably Toronto. I don't know. Did you see on Twitter one of the excuses why that the AEW apologists were saying the REPARA live crowd was down? No. The Killer on the Loose theory. Oh, yeah, I meant to ask you about that, because that's a big story in Kentucky right now, isn't it?

Well, yes, he's dead in a forest. He shot himself or done something to himself. For those of you don't know what's happening, since this is the United States of America, some nut went out and bought an assault rifle, an AR-15 or whatever, and perched himself on the side of Interstate 75 down in Laurel County around London, Kentucky,

and was shooting at people as they went by and apparently hit five or six of them, whatever. And they found out who he was. He took off. He left behind his car and at least one gun, but he took off, but they know who he is. They're looking for him. But he's in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

And so they're having to go heat-sensing things and they're going with machetes through the guy. I forget it's like 200,000 acres of just, it's the Daniel Boone Forest man. So they're pretty confident that he hasn't come out, but it's been a week now. And I don't care if you were fucking Rambo, you're not going to live for a week in the National,

in the Daniel Boone Forest with no, they have no knowledge he had any kind of food prepared or whatever. and he's on foot, I think he probably killed himself, and they can't find him because he's under a log somewhere. But nevertheless, that's 60 miles from Lexington, and they canceled a high school of football games in London and the surrounding area, but Lexington life is continuing on.

And I don't know that he would have been a threat to, if the place had been sold out for wrestling, is he, what's he going to do? Come and try to lose himself in the crowd. But they said, well, there's a killer on the loose. No wonder nobody went. They can't just come out and admit they can't sell out a men's room with free condoms.

Well, what match on this show was the match that was supposed to draw someone? The tag team in Gauntlet? Ricochet versus Sammy? Jericho and his team against the Iron Savage? What match was the draw? Was any of that even advertised? Certainly not,

because they didn't know they were going to have it a week or two ahead of time. Now, if you are a hardcore AEW fan, you probably know there's going to be no MJF and no swerve. You probably assume no Danielson. So then you left with

who's the top draw on the show. Is it Moxley? Is it Darby? Darby gets a great reaction. I don't know what they said. Well, is it one of those of you? Darby will be here and he'll speak. But what are you actually billing them to the local,

I don't know what their local, is because we do hear from people who say they do a shitty job promoting locally. I've seen some good jobs of it in New York. I've seen MJF all over TV in New York in the past. But what are they doing in these markets and what are you giving people? With WW you're going to see the stars. See, that's the thing. You know the stars will be there. With AEW, who's going to be there? What's the match? What's the match and the feud and the angle that's causing people to want to attend. There isn't. You're getting closer and closer to late 90s indie-sized crowds to sit there and just watch the show. And before they start moving everyone around to be all huddled together,

so it looks like you have a crowd, you see photos, just person here, person there. It looks like it would be fun to just have your own section. I just show out. Seriously, I'd love to do that. But they can't draw. And they're chasing away their viewers. And, we're supposed to believe that everything's good. But nothing improves. Nothing is ever an improvement. And I said it before. Everyone's saying, oh, they'll get the TV rights deal,

and then it's all profitable all of a sudden. That's not going to stop Tony spending. That's going to increase it. He's going to do more stupid things. More songs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. They basically just tease the final countdown again for Arthur Ash. You mean to tell me that they're going to book Arthur Ash and have him come out to the song The Final Countdown?

Unfortunately, that's not possible, but any other Rupp Arena. That's right. He's got some backbone and some principles. Arthur Ash is not going to lower himself to wrestling for AEW. Well, I'll tell you what, you know, I felt at one point during that program, Brian, like I ought to cut my throat. but you know what stopped me? I don't know, no.

What stopped me was, I've got the sharpest razor blades in the world, but they are German engineered into a beautiful non-cutting head, courtesy of our friends at Harry's. The safety razor, the five-blade cartridge, you can't cut your throat with that. It will not allow you to sever you, your carotid artery or any of the valuable tendons and ligaments you have in your various orifices and or appendages.

You can only have a close, comfortable shave with no knicking and irritation and aggravation. So I was unable to put myself out of my own misery with my beautiful five-blade ergonomically designed handled razor from Harry's. wasn't that a bummer what I'm telling

that's the only thing to perk me back up was how soft and ebullient my face looked and felt after I shaved with my hairies and immediately I got in a better frame of mind but it was touch and go there for a while

but folks I'll tell you what the blades are sharp and the handle is ergonomic and the foaming shave gel is not only aromatic but slicker than whale shit in an ice flow. And that razor just glides across your face. Well, now, Brian, you've been going for the Grizzly Adams look. I understand you've been growing all of your facial nose and ear hair since 2017.

Is that true? That is not true. I'm very, even when I have a beard, I look kind of neat and nice, I think. Well, I remember you used to have the edges, kind of like the old cartoons of the devil, where you would have that beard, but the edges would be kind of closely green there, and it would come down into a point.

Why don't we talk about that mustache you had in 91 that people love so much? Well, that's- Where's that variant? I'm going to mark up my new Jim Cornett figure with the Sharpie. I'm going to put a mustache on it. It was just a rib on me. Actually, I had a rash is what it was.

But anyway, folks, we've talked about our friends at Harry's so many times. You want to look nice. You want to feel good. You want a slick face. You want to be able to not only have good smelling deodorant and lotion and body wash and hair gel, but you want to feel like you're somebody. Well, Harry's is going to fix you right up at an unbelievable value. You know, when you go into stores, you get these cartridges these days.

They got the thing, the ball and chain connected to them. They got to disable it at the checkout counter. Sometimes, if you try to walk out with the, of the big, building with the cartridges, you're instantly electrocuted. People have been doing at it at Kroger getting electrocuted trying to steal those things. Because they've got the sensor in them. Well, you don't have to worry about that now. You just go to harries.com.

By the way, there's no apostrophe. And it's just H-A-R-R-Y-S, no apostrophe, harries.com. And you can get a five-blade razor, a weighted hand. the foaming shave gel and a travel cover all in their trial kit for just $3 when you go to harries.com and use the slash JCE. I guess that's a promo code too, right? Yes, well, I guess the... Is it if it is a slash a promo code?

No, that is a promo link. The code would be an independent JCE. Oh, well, it doesn't say independent JCE. It just says JCE. That's it. So it's a slash. So harries.com, which is funny when you think about it, slash JCE, and it's a razor company.

They're slasherers. But nevertheless, harries.com slash JCE. You get the trowel kit for $3. It's regular $13. Well, everybody knows how much these razors cost in a store. It's like they're made out of platinum. and is it not the old-fashioned straight razor that they used to use in the Western saloons, folks? You can be drunk and use this and you can't hurt yourself.

Just keep it away from your eyes. Do not try to shave your eyelashes, ladies and gentlemen. Let's just focus on the areas of your face with beards and mustaches and sideburns and how these can take care of all that in a comfortable and fashionable way. Yeah, you're not talking, you're talking about in front of your ears there, down under your neck, round to the other side, and people occasionally, the backs of their knuckles need to shave, but don't try to shave your eyelashes. Again, folks, and then if you love the trial kit, you know you're going to for only $3,

you can shave yourself multiple times with this thing, it's pennies on the shave, and then you can sign up with the convenient subscription option that you can cancel at any time, and they'll send this to you regularly so you don't run out, and then until you stop growing facial hair. If that happens, then you can cancel. But then if I were you, I'd go to the doctor. And they've got other things like the body wash and the sense of redwood and wildlands and stone and moss and tree and rock and otter. smells just like an otter's ass and the extra quality

amazing smelling deodorant for just $5 so you can not smell offensive and at the same time save money it's all about multipurposing here you want to look good you want to smell good but you also want to look and smell like you don't spend a lot of money to make yourself

look and smell good like it's just natural if you want people to look at you and say I bet that motherfucker doesn't spend 50 cents on looking good. That's the look you're going for, right? Where it's just natural to, it comes natural. You're not even artificially trying to look or smell good.

Harries.com slash JCE. Right now, $3 for all that stuff you need. What do you need at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week? A fucking straight jacket, a psychiatrist, No, we have a good time, we have a good team. We're always looking for more people for the team. But no, we just want to continue doing what we're doing, which is producing the best wrestling content available for free.

Wherever you find your favorite podcast, of course, information about all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcasts or on Facebook. Facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard. How fast can I do all this? The Wrestling News! Every day, get your wrestling news for free from the wrestling news. No paywall, no clickbait, just the wrestling news. Get rid of the opinions and the star ratings.

Get just the facts, ma'am. Go to thewrestlingews.com directly, or wherever you find your favorite podcast, of course, stick to wrestling with John McAdam, another fine look at 1984, what was happening 40 years ago. Hear it today. McAdampod.com,

or wherever you find your favorite podcast, stick the wrestling with John McAdam, and of course, the 605 super podcast, The Mothership! Go through the archive, 605 pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcast, The Mothership. trying to work on some stuff, but we're also trying to get some sleep.

More to come from Arcadian Vanguard and the 605 Super Podcast. You know, if you're trying to get sleep, I can recommend the Helix Sleep mattress. Now you go to helix sleep.com. What's the promo code? JCE. Okay, dokey. Well, the moment we've been waiting for has finally come. The debut of Smackdown on the USA Network, the first, the, the,

What did they call it the season premiere? At first Michael Cole said series premiere and then season premiere. Yeah, I wasn't sure if that was intentional, though, that he did both. Series premiere and then season premiere, because he didn't cut himself off. He just did him both as separate sentences. I think he realized, ah, it's not the series premiere. The series has been on as we're going to talk about for 25 years. But anyway, I never listen to the theme music.

And I accidentally did this time. So I don't know if it's new or not, but this is the worst thing. music for any TV show of any kind ever. Now go back and listen to it next week. Holy shit. But this was on Friday the 13th that this show happened and it was more fitting if it had been the AEW show

from Wednesday that was on Friday the 13th because where everything went wrong for them, 2,500 people in a 25,000 seat building, people miss speaking, shit didn't make any sense, people botching moves. It was a goddamn, it was a rib. This show was one of the better ones they've done,

if only for the first 40 minutes. That alone, they did everything right, even though one would think that the vast majority of people that watched the program, watched it when it was on Fox or watch Raw or watch the WWE in general, they treated this like we're going in to get some new viewers. We're going to get people that maybe watch USA on Friday nights

that tune in and don't know we're going to be on, but we're going to hook them. We're going to explain shit to them. It's going to make sense to a new viewer. And I mean, this is Television 101, but Vince used to be big on that. Makes sense to the new viewer, but it works in everything.

And as soon as, they came on. Here comes Triple H. Huge pop. Big cheers. Michael Cole is plugging the Paul Triple H Levec era to explain

that he's the chief content officer and this EVP is actually over. The Triple H chance wouldn't hardly let him speak. And then he introed the WWE title match and revved the people up and welcome

them to smack down. And we had the pyro is back for the big event and they were lowering the cage and they announced it's going to be the first 30 minutes commercial free for the world title pin submission

or escape the cage, hate the escape part. And they went to a history package to explain Solo and Cody and how this match came about. And I mean, So far, again, it's like when

a show I love the UFC did when they debuted on Fox like what 15 years ago. For a new viewer, they explained everything while at the same time it was a good show for the person that watches every week. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, and I don't know how many new viewers they would have, but for a new channel,

you know, there was nothing about it that felt like, oh, they're talking down to me to explain stuff I already know. I thought they didn't. a good job explaining all the things that are happening, but it wasn't too much different than a normal Smackdown. No, but they know how to format a fucking show. And it just kept, boom, it looks big and they've got 15,000 people in the building in Seattle. And everything is making sense. And it looks important. It was just refreshing. What did you think of going with Cody Solo to start the show? And also, what did you think of the commercial free aspect? Well, it was perfect because it was.

breaks would have hurt this match because they had such a good match and they did such a good job with everything. And if they'd have broken like normal, they would have hurt it because you get distracted. But this is some, instead of just having a normal show and going commercial free for an hour,

half an hour, whatever, if it's a big match, they hook the people. And, you know, it's the weekend, so the numbers aren't out yet. But we ought to do the ratings next week. Just to see what the fuck, because I can't believe they would have certainly not lost anybody

and they probably gained people over the course of the first two or three quarters. I'm writing down now to do the ratings next week. All right. But anyway, as Solo and Cody and Cody, huge pop, they sang his song, whoa, the whole nine yards. They did the big match in-ring introductions.

Alicia Taylor is not. not Samantha Irvin, is she? She looks like she stuck her finger at a light socket. Is that a choice, or was she scared by something? Well, that's her look. I want you leave her alone. She hasn't done anything wrong to you yet. Well, yet, see, you can always expect it.

And then they had a good match. And the thing is, instead of going back and forth or play by play on, you know what the match was, it just observations besides the, fact they're doing long audio mutes. I have a feeling people are chanting you fucked up or holy shit or whatever. I don't know about that. That's what I was wondering because they were really long, longer than usual on Fox,

but there also wasn't any chant that you heard going into it or coming out of it that would have, you know, you didn't hear the word fuck at all or anything. You think it's a new person on the button that's not used to wrestling? I don't know. But it happened twice, I think, on this show, right? I said, no, several times. Oh, okay. More than twice.

But anyway, the match, it was good because Cody is a genius at selling and the pained expression and the gasping. And then he'll fire up and do his shit and give the people hope and then he'll get cut off again. And that was the story through the match as they built to the big things every once a while. Cody hit a cutter off a cage and got a two count, that type of thing. but they would sell these things in between and they would react to things that it was somewhat logically either okay now they're trying to escape and climb out

or now they're trying to go through the door or whatever the case and Solo would stay on him long enough that he had to fight from underneath and they kept it fresh they still did the big stuff you know off the top or off the at one point

remember we were were talking about Bryce Rimsberg and the count on the AEW show here was an example Cody went to the top of the cage and did a cross body on Solo and when Solo

caught him right but he was coming from such a height the momentum when they went down Solo's head bounced off the fucking mat and he grabbed the back of it and you could tell he rung his bell and that was a cover in the reference

free one, two, and solo didn't kick out, but he raised his arm enough. And it was like, oh, shit. You know, that's one of those things. If, you know, if you get your bell rung like that, you can't keep track of a count in an arena, 15,000 people screaming. So that was a close one. But, you know, they did that. And Cody bled just enough, not like a stuck hog.

And finally, you know, they built up to it. Cody was crawling for the door. Solo slammed the door on his head. Went for the spike, but Cody foiled that and hit the crossroads, one, two, three. And that was a great cage match right there, but then they're going to the angle. But, well, your thoughts on the match first, because I want to say something about Solo in a second. I thought the match was really good. I think the things that they did, you mentioned the one, there was another one,

where Cody landed like the top of his shoulders slash neck. Yes. And it's just, oof, like, you know, because of anything you do in the cage or off the cage, it's not like doing it off the top rope. The height changes the trajectory and it changes the way you have to land. It's almost like if someone dives on you, you have to jump out just to be able to take a flatback bump. When you catch them. And that's why it ain't that easy.

And the thing with Solo is, as you'll know, when we. talk about the angle here in a second. Solo is not a cool heel because Solo is I hate to say this, it's going to sound like I'm knocking him. Solo's not an impressive enough worker to be a cool heel. But Solo has gotten good enough for this spot because the people,

they put him in a spot where he's tried to take Roman Reigns' place and the people, he has heat because of that with the fans. if he was doing the Jacob Fatu stuff, it would be too much. Solo can get by and he can be a heel, but he's not so impressive that you start falling in love with him. Does that make sense? Yeah.

And the thing with Jacob is you need somebody that does all that impressive shit, but he's the enforcer. He's the guy that's under Solo's thumbs. so to speak. And that way he can do all that shit. You can put his shit over like a million dollars because at some point, as we've talked about,

Jacob will look at Solo and said, no. And then you got something there, but solo to carry the heat as the top guy, he shouldn't be too good. And it's perfect. But anyway, at that point, here came the Tonga Twins. and Fatu, and they climbed the cage.

And as Cody's waiting on him, solo comes up and spikes Cody. And then they get heat on Cody, and they're beating him up, and they set him up for Jacob, who does that triple jump moonsault flawlessly. And then he's going to the top of the cage, and suddenly music hits, and it's Roman rains, and the people go bat shit. and Roman comes down to the cage all meaningful and menacing and he gets in and pulls the door shut and people pop because he's closing himself up with the whole bloodline

but did you notice when Jacob was on the top of the cage and Roman got in apparently Jacob got to the floor because Jacob was not in the cage when Roman was in the cage Yeah, they never show you him climb down And I did have a second before Roman came out And I'm like, oh my God, are they going to already have Jacob Fatu do a move off the top of the cage? Because he'll do it. He's crazy.

But is now the time. And then Roman came out at the perfect time, but you needed some sort of explanation for Jacob not being on top of the cage anymore. Well, and the thing is Jacob did not confront Roman physically. Roman gets in the cage, closes the door. Solo runs into the, or he starts kicking ass on the, Tonga's first, right? And then Solo stopped him a bit, but then Solo was running at him and ran into a Superman punch. And Jacob's on the floor, and as Roman and Solo are, looks like Roman's going to get him,

Jacob jerks Solo's feet out from under him and pulls him out the door. So as the enforcer, he's also the bodyguard. He went down to the floor so that he could get Solo out of harm's way. but then Roman calls Jacob Fitu in, just like motions, like, come on, and they do a face off. And that's another one of the long audio mutes. I don't know what the fuck.

But then solo jerks Jacob by the feet and pulls him out the goddamn door. And the Tongas jump on Roman, and they start getting heat on him, but Cody comes up and saves Roman. And then Roman and Cody turned to each other with tense looks, you know, and no affection or handshaking or whatever, just looking at each other. And I'm like, what a fucking angle.

And we were 37 minutes in the show and you didn't get tired of it. Because there was something going on with no commercials. So, I mean, I just loved, I love the first segment here. I love that Jacob and Roman did the exact same thing. and they got in the cage and they closed the door right behind them with their one hand.

Yeah. And then you never got it. And you still want it. And this set up the rest of the show, everything with Cody and Roman, but good, I mean, great opening to the show.

I mean, how could you open any hotter? And if it had been the other guys, they would have given you so much of it, you never wanted to see it again. Anyway. I was afraid Cody was going for that moon salt off the top of the cage again.

Like he did an AEW. So when he was climbing that one time, I thought, yeah, And, boy, but see, that's a risk that they can't afford to take. Imagine how much money would be lost if Cody hurt himself doing something like that. That's what I was afraid of with a lot of the stuff in this match because of the height of the cage, especially. I mean, if you think about that blue cage, I know it was a pain to work with, but the height was perfect in a lot of ways. Big boss man took the superplex off the top of that thing.

This thing's so big. And again, there's little room for error. And Cody right now cannot go down. I was surprised they did some of the stuff they did. Bubba had called me after that. It was Saturday night's main event, right? Bubba and Bossman or Bubba and Bosman and Hogan. They did house shows and then it ended with the Saturday night's main event match.

Well, he called me after that one because he said, you see the Superplex? They had been doing that in most of the house shows. He talked Hogan into it, but the thing is he was most proud of it because he was making $12,000 a week going around the loop with Hogan. So he was happy to take that one superplex off the, even on those old hard rings.

But whether, so that was 1988. We just talked about 1989. May of 89. May of 89. Sorry, sorry there. Creskin, the amazing Creskin. But $3 to a dollar for

1983, so almost three. So he was making like, the $30-something thousand dollars a week, the equivalent of today, going around with Hogan at those house shows. And if you remember, I mean, it says a lot about how the boss man was used and how well he did in his role. That was like one of the better performing Hogan house show runs, surprisingly, him and the boss man.

Yeah. Well, because Bubba could work and he was big enough that he could be believable against Hogan. And he actually got Hogan to get up off his ass every once in a while because he could take such bumps. Hogan loved to give them to him. Anyhow, after the first

segment, the world title match, I'd like to say everything was that good on Smackdown. We got Piper versus, and I'm not talking about Roddy Piper, Piper Niven and Mia. And, okay, we've got to acknowledge, even though they had very little to do with it,

Waller in theory, had a tag team match that I've, I had to watch. Because it was supposed to be against Owens. He just said when he came out, his real partner had travel issues, so he got a partner on the fly. And he introduced a guy named Ricky.

And out came some job guy you've never seen before, apparently named Ricky. Well, like he was going to be Owens' partner. Go ahead. We didn't get his name yet. he said, you know, here's the partner that they have for him. And out comes this guy, the back of his trunks, I think, said midnight heat. And then he gets in the ring and it's got some fur on him.

And you're thinking, okay, this is interesting. I don't recognize this guy from developmental. I don't know who this is. And he said, what's your name? And then he whispers at the Owens. Then he goes, Ricky. That's all you got. That's, yeah.

The fans ran with it from there for a minute. The fans started chanting, Ricky, Ricky. And that's why I think it's, they have gotten these people to enjoy this shit so much they will chant the names of random job guys that they've never seen before. And meanwhile, you know, what's going on

on the other side. So suddenly, when they've established it's going to be Waller in theory against Owens and Ricky, then a production assistant calls Owens over and says, he's his. He's here.

And Owen said, oh, okay, and turns around and gives Ricky the stunner. And he bounces away never to be seen again. And they play Randy Orton's music. And here comes Orton. And he's over. And right as he gets in a ring, it's right about coming up on 9 o'clock. And immediately they start a fight and it's on the floor and there, blah, blah, blah. but the only thing I was surprised,

they went to break at 901. And they're doing picture and picture, but still, they got this thing in the ring and ready to go at 9 o'clock, they went to break at 901. I don't know what happened there. But I like this match

because it wasn't anything majorly different in terms of performance than what everybody usually does except they had a long set where they made Owens fight for the tag. And they milked it like crazy that he couldn't get the tag and couldn't get the tag. And finally, they did a spot where everybody was down and Owens rolled out on the floor, ran around the ring post, rolled back in the ring right in front of Orton and hot tagged him there. And that was a great spot and got a big pop.

And Orton made the comeback and bounced both of them off the desk. and they did the stereo draping DDTs and then a stunner and an RKO and Orton pinned Waller. And the crowd loved it and it was, it was different. They actually did something different for once that half-ass made sense.

But what did you think of the match here? I'm disappointed. I really wanted to see Owens and Ricky. I wanted to see what was going to happen with Ricky. I wanted to see what Ricky could do in there. Now they got to bring back Ricky at some point, don't you think? well I think Ricky's got a lot of splating to do that was that was great because you've seen them try to do not them but you've seen stuff like that tried in the past in other places and even with WW with the fans just don't

react because they don't care they care about everything so much they started chanting for Ricky and he fed into it he raised his hand in the air that was his moment this guy whoever that guy was that was his moment as a wrestler being Ricky well anyway um but it's going to be rocky from here on out a rocky road because now the oldest said that solo has made a challenge for bad blood's going to be the next big paper view solo and jacob fatu want to fight cody roads and roman rains and there you go now we're going to have to see

to and Roman, right? Except Cody came in and said, I'm done with the bloodline. They're Roman Rains' problem. Ain't gone dot. So Cody will not sign the contract. And Aldus was somewhat

off put by this. And it ain't gone dot. And that's, again, it makes sense, after all they've been through, what's in it for Cody to want to team up with this fucking guy, right?

it just fits anyway did you see the refrigerator's promo in the ring where she sounds like a soccer mom and looks like a soccer field and the crowd was whetner and Bailey came out what are you laughing about I had not heard that one before every now and then you still get me with what I've never heard before Bailey came out and Tiffy came out

and Naomi came out and Naomi hit Tiffy in the face with her ass and that was a big deal there. Carmelo wrestled Andrade again and I said oh hell no but Andrade won and then L.A. Knight out L.A. night out. L.A. night came out

because they were fighting over a shot at the U.S. title and everything that he says is over and they love it and they yeah and they L.A. Knight But he's still, why the fuck is it just they've got so many stars? They don't have room to put him against somewhat important.

But Carmelo Hayes, I'd like to remind you, number three draft pick above brawn breaker. Hello. So Andrade is going to get the U.S. title shot next week and there you go. Are you ready for the main event, Brian?

Yeah. Because now Nick Alda still has to talk to Roman Reigns and he gets Roman to come out to the ring and Roman basks in the adulation that he's getting and of course now he's over and they're chanting OTC and the whole nine yards and Alda starts talking

and Roman holds his hand out. and he's obviously going for the microphone. Aldus gives him the contract and the way Roman reacted. He's like, you gotta be kidding me with the facial expression, the whole thing, and drops it down, holds his hand out, and the people pop. They picked up on it. He didn't say a word. He just reacted and they popped like crazy.

And so Aldous gave him the microphone and he cut the promo. The only thing, hey, some things change, but not me. I don't need partners. I don't need Cody. Whether I have the Ulifala or not, I am the only tribal chief. This is my ring. This is my show.

This is my WWE. And then suddenly Cody's music plays and out of come Cody kind of stove up a little bit from wrestling in his street clothes, not a suit, but just warm-ups. He's got the belt. and my DVR froze.

What a fucking red. Did they go, did they do an overrun on this? Yeah. Well, they goddamn, they're doing the same thing as AEW did. And they got to tell us. So what the fuck was said? Not much was said. Cody reached out into a major pop because the fans started booing. They were disappointed when Cody didn't sign the contract earlier.

He signed the contract. So now we're gonna get Roman and Cody Against Solo and Jacob Fatu at bad blood, I believe is the pay-per-view Not good blood, but bad blood Do you think they have to pay Neil Sadaka? I don't think so, I don't think so. But I almost feel weird saying this out loud, but I've said it before And that was before they did all this stuff the last few weeks

It's very reminiscent of something with Dusty. It's very reminiscent of like Oli Anderson getting Dusty to beg him to be his partner. We'll see where it goes, but I don't know. I've had that, you know, that's one thing about Cody. There's always little homage as to Dusty in the booking, whether it's from him or from above, you know, from Triple H, whoever. You know, the idea, Dusty, everyone turned on Dusty, everyone, no matter what friend he had other than Magnum, because his career ended. Everyone turned on dusty. So that's the only thing I'm thinking.

Get them locked in a cage. All of a sudden, Roman turns. No, it's too early. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree. It's too early, but I'm having that thought. That would piss people off in the wrong way.

But it might very well happen with Orton. Because you could never trust a snake. If they're doing that match of bad blood, at what point do you think Hayman returns? And should Hayman be with the two of them? I don't think we've seen the incident. that would happen yet to bring Heyman back. I think, you know, we're going to have to be,

it's probably going to have to be rumblish, building for mania, whatever they're going to do there with the various players in this game to determine where Hayman would make the biggest impact. So I would think it's going to be till then. We're still seeing Roman reins going after Solo and his people.

We're not seeing Roman reins trying to put together his bloodline again. that's what we haven't seen yet. Well, it's going to take some time and why rush it? All he has do now is walk out to the ring and the people are screaming. Imagine when he actually does something. Well, that's the key to wrestling, isn't it? And that was SmackDown. And since we've stopped there at Friday the 13th, which was a very lucky day for the WWE,

then let's stop here. And it's a lucky day for the listeners. And we'll come back in a few days with another program when they're already. for something again. How's that sound? That sounds good. And I think we'll have a lot more action and of course omnibuses of plenty. Check out your podcast feeds and the official Jim Cornett

YouTube channel. Omnibai a plenty. And otherwise, and Harley's right behind my chair and scratching and wanting to go outside. So it's a good time for us all to go out and take a piss in a yard, folks. Thank you. Fuck you and bye-bye, everybody.