Jim Cornette Experience - Episode 595: Bloody Ticket Stubs

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

This week on the Experience, Jim reviews AEW Dynamite, and Karrion Kross' interview with Ariel Helwani! Plus Jim talks about Travis Heckel quitting, WWE vs. AEW, the earliest wrestling broadcast, ratings, and more! Thanks to our episode sponsors: SHOPIFY:  Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/jce BEAM:  Visit https://shopbeam.com/JCE and use code JCE to get our exclusive discount of up to 40% off. CORNBREAD HEMP:  Save 30% on your first order and free shipping on orders over $75! Go to cornbreadhemp.com/jce and use code JCE at checkout. 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 in Kornet. The keys to the future. Help by Annette. Join us as we take a three-hour tour through modern wrestling, classic wrestling, and all the stuff that happened to us this week. And joining me, Hawaiian Brian the podcasting line,

the king of the Arcadian Vanguard podcast network, Mr. co-host to you, if he'd been the first mate instead of Gilligan, love he'd still be back in Honolulu. Be great, Brian Last, everybody. I'll just cut it short there. Aloha, Jim. A pleasure to be here once again.

Action-packed show, lots of action. A.E.W. has so much action. But there's more than that to talk about. You cut it short. That's the first good thing it's happened to be this week. And I've got a bad taste in my mouth right now. and I don't even mean from watching the shows. This mouth rinse that my dentist has given me,

I had the infected gum a couple weeks ago, and I've got the consultation now with the oral surgeon. I'm going to have two teeth pulled instead one up and one down because the one up was the one that I knew looked a little shady. The one down was the one I had no idea of there was anything wrong with. so he's I would not be exponentially more miserable with the twos and I'm going to be out might as well take them all pull my toenails while you're at it fuck but now I got this mouth rinse and it it it's not pleasant it's not Sprite zero

let's put it that way have you ever had a bad taste in your mouth Brian from dental work or dental uh just a bad taste in your mouth in general or just a, you just walk around every once in a while or a week or so with a bad taste of your mouth. That ever happened to you? Yeah, actually the other day I got a salad. And the salad was supposed to have a very nice sweet vinegrette. And that was not what it was.

It was quite disappointing and it ruined the salad. Sweet vinegarette. My salad never tasted so shitty. All right, well, before we go any further, ladies and gentlemen there there's there's rumors and speculation going on about something here and we wanted to go ahead at nip it nip it in the bud as as barney fife would say a lot of people know over the course of the years he we've talked about him you've seen his his work but the guy that does and has done the artwork for both of our shows experience and drive through

the YouTube channel, the thumbnails that the kids call them, and a variety of your programs, Brian, on the Arcadian Vanguard network, Travis Heckel, announced that he was not going to be doing the art anymore. And he, you know, this is what's come up over the last few days that he made that statement on Twitter, but the way that he did it, he left it open as to any reason. He just, I'm not going to be doing the art anymore and, you know, blah, blah, blah. That's about it. So since he didn't say whose decision it was or what it was about or whatever, people have started.

I know you'll find it's hard to believe, Brad, but people on the Internet are making up conspiracy theories and stories and starting drama. It's over money. It's over money. They fired him. Why would they fire him? What in the way? So we're going to put. the rumors to rest before all of the fake drama gets going because the real drama is good enough.

But anyway, no, we didn't fire him. No, it wasn't over money. Going further, we have to back up a little bit. Brian, I guess it's been, well, I've known Travis for years, years. He's from here in Louisville. He's been a wrestling fan forever. And so I can't actually remember the very first time that we met, but he's been. been doing our art for close to 10 years, certainly eight, I would think.

Seven or eight, seven or eight, well, you know, as I get older, I, you know, I can't keep track of time. It just starts melting away. But anyway, he's been doing the art for us for almost 10 years, one way or the other. And, you know, Travis was his son, Aidan, we've talked about. He'd like take Aidan to Disney World and take him to his ball games. And a lot of times, you know, we work around schedule sometimes on the art. Oh, shit, they're out of town at a ballgame. No worries, blah, blah, blah. And he would tweet pictures years ago on his Twitter of the trips to Disney and cartoons and art and things.

And we've never had a crossword between us, the three of us that I can think of in all of those years. and what we knew about Travis's personal opinions was, you know, he was a big Disney fan. And he did always say he didn't like talk about politics. That's fine. And he did make a point at one point of letting everybody know that he didn't like the vaccines. I thought maybe after he got COVID a few years ago and was in a hospital for slong and almost died, that might change. but that's nevertheless. And you reminded me, Brian, here several days ago

that it was probably about, I don't know, five years ago, whatever, he told you, I'm getting off of social media. Because he'd been, you know, Disney Dad Travis on Twitter with the pictures of the Magic Castle. And we followed him. And, you know, went back and forth, blah, blah, blah. So he said he was. getting off social media and, you know, okay, a lot of people do that.

Believe it, if I wouldn't have to keep up on the wrestling news, I wouldn't be on the goddamn internet at all. Everybody's well aware of that. So we had no issue with that. And I can't say that I've seen Travis in a while, but in person, but I've seen a lot of people in person in a while. We talk on a phone every once in a while. You've been in constant contact with him.

because of the art either by text or email, I would say, multiple times per week, right? Yeah, for about 10 years, give or take, you know, almost 10 years of, you know, constant all the time correspondent. And let me just, if you don't mind, jump in and make a little bit of a correction. Previously, a while back, because, you know, I first got to know Travis through the shows through social media, through him reaching out and sending artwork and stuff. And then we found out that we had met each other years earlier after the, Louisville show in 95. And he had said to me, and I don't have the exact thing in front of me, but it was a variation

of I hate all the political things I'm getting off social media. And I think that's like the healthiest thing anyone could do. Whether or not you hate political things or not, it's not always healthy for people. But, you know, he said that. And then I know he would kind of disappear or reappear on Facebook because I'm out on social media as much as, you know, people probably think, it's usually just posting clips and looking for news and that's it. And yeah, because we don't have a lot of time.

And I don't know how this shit works. I'm not interested in learning. Yeah. And I knew he was on Facebook because a couple of times he bowed out from being, I know it was in the mothership Facebook group. It may have been when we first started the Colt of Cornette group, you know, he was like a mod and he bowed out, you know, just I don't want to be on social media. Hey, fine, no problem.

I don't know if he ever really left with the Twitter situation. Whatever that original account was that we got to know him on social media with, I think it was like classic Memphis wrestling or Memphis classics, it was some variation of Memphis wrestling. That went away. Then there was the Disney account. And I don't know if that went away or not, but... That went away because we followed it.

Because I asked Stacey to make us, do we used to follow Travis? And she looked at nobody and tweeted on it and found. But I had not seen Travis on Twitter in forever. I didn't even know we had a Twitter account. Well, point B. So again, you know, there's never been any conflict in a relationship. And nobody ever said anything to anybody about anything that might be happening. And then last week or two, I've seen on Twitter either, I think somebody tweeted me,

but didn't give any specifics. And then I was in one of those conversations I was eavesdropping on where people are talking about basically, I was like, boy, I wonder if Cornett saw what Travis Heckel said on social media or what, and I no, I didn't. So I asked you before we got ready to record something the other day, week, whatever.

I said, did Travis say, has he become a closet AEW fan? Is he saying something on social media I should be aware of? You hadn't seen anything? and we got other, you know, things to dwell on. I said, if it was important, I would think I would see it or whatever. And that's where we left it. And it was important, and I saw it eventually. I guess it was this past Sunday.

I'm looking on Twitter and somebody has tweeted me, Hey, Jim, what in the world do you think of this? and it is a quote tweet where Travis has tweeted on his new account that we were not being followed on or aware of. Joe Biden is a pedophile. I looked away for a second like I'd accidentally seen my parents having sex. Because I'm like, what? What? Oh, my God.

And come to find out, if you look for a little bit of, for not just a pedophile, but a confirmed pedophile. Everybody knows this. And in investigating the rest of Travis's account, and folks, again, this is not going to be a political thing. I'm so sick and tired of hearing that. This is going to be a, of something, I don't know what, Because if you look further at what Travis had been tweeting,

it was like he had a checklist provided in the daily newspaper of every fringe, mega, grievance, issue. Not just the regular shit, not just, he doesn't believe in climate change. And he, January 6th didn't have. and they have opened the borders and they're going to change your kids' sex and not tell you about it. That's there. A lot of it is just silly and silly. Nike is evil.

Sammy Zane is a commie dirtbag. He's mad at Billy Joel because Billy Joel said in the new documentary that he was done with Trump after the good people on both sides. deal. He's pro-dildo throwing. He's constantly chiming in just, I hate commies, exclamation point, exclamation point. It's the pro-dil-dil-throwing thing

that's a step too far, I think. Well, nobody he knows watches PBS. Sesame Street, now, for Christ's sake. Aiden never watched Sesame Street? The Department of Education are all commies. And CBS has never been news. It's always been propaganda. This is a quote, I swear to God to everybody.

Walter Cronkite fooled you all. Oh my God, really? Cronkite! I'm not making this shit up. They are! Walter Cronkite, no, the most trusted man in America now is on the the defensive 40 years after his death over at the fucking right-wing loony camp,

then they're mad at Cronkite? Billy Joel's one thing, Cronkite. That's a new one. I didn't know that was a complaint amongst people that Walter Cronkite had fooled people on behalf of the communist organization CPS. But the point is getting back to, what was way too far. This is the

not only the content and the tone but the frequency gave you the impression that the hinges were starting to flap. And we get back to the main point which was, that was only the third time over the week period that he had tweeted

Joe Biden is either a confirmed or verified pedophile and was asking why nobody is going to pick him up. Like it's a known fact. Oh, shit, they found him guilty and shit they sentenced him and he's just walking around. Nobody's bothered to pick him up yet. I don't know what to fucking say. I have never been so embarrassed in my life and I'll get to that in a point in a minute.

But and also his other thing is he's. happy about the military takeover of the nation's capital because the Democrats are okay with people being murdered because of their severe TDS. So now, here's the thing. Before I go any further, the reason why that the country is in the shit shape it is in right now is because people like Travis and so many others have been fed this horseshit and made to believe it and then they spread it. And nobody connected to this program is going to be doing that.

But I get ahead of myself again. because you know me, Brian, I'm level-headed, I'm reasonable. I didn't want to fire Travis. I want to go over to his house and choke him. Because how can he, how can he do this behind my back? You were pissed off.

I had not heard you that pissed off about a person in a while. You were. Because here's, no, here's the thing. All the people who hate us and don't like me and you don't want to make me better. What, I don't care, right? But when it comes from inside the house,

that's on another level because I had no idea that these things were being said or going on by a person connected to the program. Anyway, point being, when I calmed down a little bit, I called you because you are a little bit more level-headed about these things. I was about to go to the pool with my family.

It was Sunday afternoon. You're not quite as prickly. You know, you're just sitting there by the pool with the family waiting to hear about this. And you were, I overused the phrase gobsmacked, bum-fuzzled, astonished when you viewed the content as well. Yeah, and specifically the Joe Biden thing, and I think these are the exact words I, said to you, I don't have a problem with someone criticizing Joe Biden. I don't have a problem with someone criticizing his administration, the way things were run, what it led to. I don't have any problem with that, but when it's not any of those things, it's not some criticism that seems

to come from a level place or just reasonable. Joe Biden has Alzheimer's. Well, you know, unfortunately, probably. They were trying to cover it up so that we could save the fucking world, but that's probably true. That's something that's at this point been talked about, rumored in books from every side of the aisle. So that's fair. Joe Biden is a confirmed, verified pedophile, Brian.

You haven't heard about this? There should be somebody picking him up. And again, what you said at the very top was it was the quantity. And I kind of thought Travis was like a libertarian and he hated all the politicians. I didn't realize it was seemingly, I don't want to say an obsession, but it's seemingly something that meant a whole lot to him

that he really felt like he had to just issue a barrage of tweets seemingly every day. Every day. And, you know, like you said, it's not about you're not allowed to have your beliefs. It's a free country. There's freedom of speech. It's all that. But he's representing the Jim Coronet podcast. and that's the part that

When I type Travis Heckel's name in, the first thing that comes up is Jim Cornett's artist Travis Heckel. So I would have thought that he might have mentioned something like this to me in the previous 10 years that he was going to, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So in you trying to throw a blanket on me, I try to be professional. And Brad, remember what I've always,

every time I try to be professional, it doesn't work, but would I scream at somebody and physically assault them? I usually get what I want. Let's try to be professional. I don't have to have this long personal relationship with Travis. Let's not fuck the show, you, the fans. Travis is out of a well-paying second job that he has.

Let's not just to not disrupt everything. I'll just be over here. You continue to deal with Travis. Travis continues to do the art. Travis continues to get paid for the art. The fans get to see the art. Just don't say anything else crazy on Twitter, I believe was my quote.

Don't say anything else crazy on the internet. I may have made it broader just to not leave a loophole. Quit saying crazy shit on the internet. And you in some fashion probably more politely delivered that. I emailed him before I went down to the pool to meet my family after I got off the phone with you. I sent him an email and I let him know because it was the maddest I had heard you in a while. I let him know that you were as mad as I had heard you in a while. And it was because you had just found out because listeners had gotten in touch about these tweets.

And specifically the Joe Biden is a pedophile one, specifically that we didn't even know he was on Twitter. He doesn't follow us and we didn't follow him because we didn't know he was there. It's almost like it was, again, he felt an urge. He had to get these thoughts out there under his name on Twitter. I don't understand, but I explained all this to him and I said that this is a problem. If you're going to continue to do this, we probably have to figure out something. Let me know what you want to do. And later on that day, he sent me back an email and he's,

He also sent it in text, I believe. And it said, you know, that he was really sorry and that he really appreciates you and he would never want to do anything to upset you. And I'm like, okay, cool, you know, now we're back to where we were. Travis, I'm not saying, change your thoughts. I'm just saying. That sounded like normal Travis. That sounded like the Travis we've always had communication with.

And, you know, again, we're not saying, we didn't even say take down stuff. We just said, no more. Quit. Just stop. And again, you Google Travis. I actually didn't think about taking shit down. I forgot you could do that. We didn't even get there. We didn't even get there.

So I think we're okay. I think the next day was Monday. I had a bunch of meetings and a bunch of things going on. And then overnight at three in the morning. So I didn't see it until I woke up. And by the way, he did take it the first day off. And I don't know how long. And he didn't tweet.

because, you know, you'd look. So then, like I said, three in the morning, I saw it the next day at seven when I woke up. He sent me a message saying, hey, I thought about it. And I think I'm just going to drop off the show. No hard feelings. You guys have done a great job.

He sent me a note that he appreciates everything. I mean, again, you know, that's the thing. I know Travis, I like Travis. I care about Travis. We've been through a lot with Travis. And I think him and his family, family are terrific. And I, you know, it's just, he's representing the show with seemingly any crazy fringe

thing. And then insisting that this is the way it is and then tweeting about it over and over again. And then, well, he doesn't, he appreciates me. He appreciates me and never wants to do anything to me. And then he turns around and everything I publicly stand for. He's like, this is bullshit. Well, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

No, but I mean, again, it's, he's, he's. Obviously, got a lot on his mind with this stuff. He's come a long way from I hate politics and tweeting just that all the time. Now, it seems that he's got a lot to, he's got a lot of feelings about this stuff. And that's his right. So yeah, he decided to leave. And then he put out a statement because we weren't going to say anything until we had a chance to do it here on the air. I didn't put out any kind of statement or anything.

We still had Travis artwork in the pipeline. We're just about done with that. Go ahead. Also, we were going to wait a couple of days to see if maybe he might rethink this, giving the income that he's losing on a... In all these years, he's into six figures with what he's made, just doing this art. And... But go ahead.

Yeah, and I mean, he's told me in the past, because, you know, always like hearing these stories that I think him and Aiden always got a kick out of being recognized, having their names recognized. happened a couple weeks ago. They went to get pizza somewhere in Louisville. And the person there was like, are you Travis Heckel from the Jim Cornett show? You know, so people associate him with the shows. But yeah, he put out a statement. It had like a weird line where it was like, you know, if that's your kind of thing, you know, continue to support it. Whatever, whatever that is, I don't know. But like I said, I think this whole thing's unfortunate. And if Travis isn't, you know, it would be like

if Travis had a Twitter page, to take politics out of this, if Travis had a Twitter page and was talking about how Vince Rousseau's a genius, and it was just nonstop stuff like that. It's not even, I mean, that... No, but I'm just saying it's diametrically opposed to what your views are.

I know, but let's take the silliness out of the equation of any of this. As far as if it was Vince Rousseau or whatever, or maybe let's put some silliness in it. If Donald Trump hired one of those blonde Bimbo Stepford wife press secretaries

to lie for him but she came out and said yeah this fucking guy's full of shit I don't think he knows what he's doing but here's what he wants me to tell you I don't know if she'd have her job very long either but but it depends how blonde

but go ahead it depends how Bimbo let's make it more serious first off as I said for the the country is this is happening because this guy has normalized this to just lie and be accepted

because these people, they fall down the rabbit hole or the maggot hole and they can't get out of it. And I don't hate Travis. And I'm not mad at Travis. I'm sorry we lost Travis as a person. I don't believe Travis is evil. I think what he's being told by evil people, he believes. And that's the problem that we've got to stop.

We can't keep letting people just spread this horse shit. They're eating the dogs and cats. And we've got troops in the fucking streets kidnapping people because of this shit. Because crime is up when crime is down. And it's all performative with this fucking wannabe, lunatic, dictator, and all the people that are falling into the sway of the whole thing. He's just the figurehead of it, but it's out there in other places. And all these right-wing liars are trying to jockey to be the next one after this old man

kicks the fucking bucket. We're still screwed. We can't even hope for a fucking happy ending because there's more of them. But here's another thing. It's personal because Travis. And by the way, he's got my phone number. He's got my email. And I emailed him some of this same stuff.

So why? And he hadn't bothered to answer me yet. But were we friends? Then Brian, didn't he go behind my back for however long he's been doing his saying this stuff? What was his plan here? I sound like fucking Chris Hansen. What was his plan that nobody was ever going to tell me?

and that he were, you know, or as an employee for the aforementioned large amount of money over almost a decade and having a job for life, he couldn't have come to me or you were either one of us and say, you know, I'm really feeling an overwhelming urge to say a bunch of shit on Twitter that will make Jim make your head blow up. And as your employee, is this going to call it? is a problem do we need to have a peaceful transition here is there something out yeah just i'm going to do this rather than take my money for however long he's been doing this say this shit behind my back until somebody stooges on it then i'd ask him how the foul i'm surprised it took this long

and that's what i'm mad but i'm more embarrassed that of alleged friend employee and or member of the program here is going to just, oh, fuck you. Oh, yeah, you won't catch me till eventually. I apologize to anybody who saw this stuff or heard him say these things and thought that I knew that it was happening and I hate to admit having feelings.

God damn it, but they're hurt. Yeah, and beyond your feelings and beyond my feelings and beyond either of our political leanings. Sadly, you also have to look at it from the business perspective. We have partners. We have lots of people we work with, from advertisers to our advertising agent

to international distribute. We have all sorts of people we work with who are partners in what we do. You don't want them to all of a sudden be like, hey, what the fuck is this? And if any of them saw it, I'm pretty sure no matter what side of the aisle they are on because again it's not just like oh this is a conservative point of view

that's not what it is it's beyond that and it's the kind of thing that's embarrassing it's the kind of thing that if it got noticed could cost this business if wait a wait a minute

if we read one of those tweets on if we just said what he said on YouTube without any context saying this is crazy that they said that in the sentence, we would get kicked off goddamn air. You can't know.

And again, for anyone who thinks it was about money had nothing to do with money. And for all I know, I think Travis and his family have been very happy. I don't think there's ever been an issue with money with us. And for anyone who thinks this is just a difference of political opinions, it's more than that.

And again, it's Jim's shows. His name is honest. it. The people that do business with us are doing business with the Jim Cornett podcasts. We can't have that stuff being out there in the show's name. That's the end. And I find it very ironic. And you can put this out there in my name. I find it very ironic that he is accusing the former president of being a confirmed pedophile pedophile given the current occupant of the office. It's just, it's crazy. And I'm I'll just say one more time.

Again, I'm mad that Travis has had that this has happened to Travis, the same way that I would be mad in invasion of the body snatchers when the seed pod takes over another member of the group. Why? That's the issue of being upset about this thing because it's, we've had, since this whole thing, nightmare began 10 years ago, or whatever with this guy and this whole, all these people around him.

I've had emails on and off. Because I've been saying the same thing since the start. So people have heard it. And I've had emails right along every once in a while. I don't understand what it is, Jim. I've had to stop speaking to my best friend or member of my family. Or they just, you can't talk to them anymore. I don't know what it is.

about a fat man wearing orange makeup that's an obvious grifter and con man and a series of lying stooges around him. That's part of it, but the bigger issue is it's beyond just Trump. It's beyond just man. The news dissemination. It's flat earth kind of shit, you know? It's like, but it's the news dissemination about the, that these people can somehow be made, can be built by Jack Feffer, this band of freaks, a fat grifting con man, a criminal family, and a bunch of lunatic plastic surgery victims all around him.

A news network can take that and make this goddamn cult to the point where people will, they'll leave their jobs or they'll not speak to family members or, unfortunately, want to speak to family members and the family members can't speak to them. It's just insane to me and it's not even good lies. It's shit, it's on the surface of it you can see through.

And then when you dig further, it's even clearer. Well, again, Donald Trump and his kids aren't going out there and saying Joe Biden's a pedophile. I guess that's the issue. It's not just he supports any of that. And I don't even know if he does, I assume, but I don't know,

I always thought he was just a libertarian who hated all politicians. But again, you know, I don't want to just keep going over this over and over again. It's all unfortunate, like I said. But Travis, the views that he, again, felt the urge to obviously spend time putting out there every day don't align with these programs. And again, it's all unfortunate. But once again, we didn't fire him against my best interest because he quit anyway. I should have just said, fuck it being professional,

but we didn't fire him. It wasn't over money. He decided not to do this to tweet stuff to 900 followers. The problem was one day something that he might say might hit the big time. And then there we are. And I, again, I apologize if anybody thought that I knew about what was happening before, I knew what was happening.

Yeah, and I think I speak for both of us. Like I said, we never had an issue with Travis. Lovely family. Like I said, we've been through a lot medically with Travis. I care about the guy. And, you know, it's unfortunate. That's why I am mad at this shit. I'm mad at this whole movement that is leading so many of these people

down this path and that there's again you can't yell fire in a crowded theater right Brian that was adjudicated long ago and you know the reason behind it because if you yell fire in a crowded theater where there is no actual fire taking place you will institute of panic where people in trying to get out of the way are going fucking get hurt. Because there was a thing that used to happen back in a days when you could yell fire in a crowded theater.

It's the same thing. Whether it's the news networks or the politicians and you know who they're all sucking up to and he's the king of all liars. They spread shit. To cover up their own shit people believe.

it and then they turn around and they repeat it. And sooner or later, you've got all these people believe in it. And this is what's happened. And, you know, it's got to draw a line somewhere. And the other thing, too, is whether it's this situation with Travis or anyone out there, if you just call people a pedophile because you don't like them or you search for evidence to prove this idea you have must be true. you water it down for when a real pedophile needs to be exposed.

If you call everyone a commie, when there are legitimate commies out there, when there are people who are commies, if you just call everyone a commie, you water it down for where the real commie needs to be pointed out. And it can't just be, I don't like you, so I'm going to, you know, it's not giving people nicknames like Twinkle Toes McFingerbang.

It's like, Twinkle Pedophile Mick fucks the boy. Like, it's just, it's over the top. top and, you know, when there really are people out there who are fucked up, that need to be exposed for a lot of things, you don't want to be just, you know, I don't like Joe Biden, he's a pedophile. Look, here he is next to a girl at the White House in front of the press. Like, what the fuck? Taking pictures.

Fucking. In front of the press, it wasn't like, I found this hidden video. It was like the press's video. It was like the press's video. Oh. But, but again, yes. you can't just you can't

you can't I know so again we're sorry about the whole thing and in terms of artwork we have a few Travis things in the pipeline that'll probably be out by the time you hear this we actually found a bunch of clips that didn't get released for one reason or another old Smackdown

and raw reviews from a year ago so all of a sudden those go up and you're like what the hell is this that's what it is but really happy to say George Livenitis, who has been a tremendous help to us over the last several years. Originally, he was a guest artist when Travis got sick, and we enjoyed his work, and he's been doing a lot of guest artwork for the channel. He's going to be stepping it up and contributing more, and we're really happy about that. We really like him and his style of art.

And we're also opening up the floor again for guest artists. If it's the right person, and you understand what we do, the feel of what we do, the fun of what we do on there, and do you think you're... or the fun feel. If you would like a fun feel. Well, no, let's not say that, but hit us up. If you want to, if you've ever wanted to do art for the show, get in touch corny drive-thru at gmail.com, we'll try to get to everyone. A lot of people always want to get in, so it's nothing personal. If we don't go right to you, some of you, actually, maybe personal, you just may not understand what a thumbnail is. But guest artists, we got George moving forward. We got a lot of big things we're working on, big things coming up.

and I wish the very best to Travis going forward. But we got big things happening and exciting times here. You sound like Nick Goulis now. This is the biggest show we've ever done. Yeah, one of the biggest cards I've signed in Minnie is headline. Well, it is a big card. And I got some big emails here. We've got viewer mail, Brian, and we're going to go through a little bit of that.

Because, again, we got detectives in the audience. A bunch of Sherlock Holmes is a bunch of calls. Columbo's, a bunch of, what was Colombo's first name? Well, we got a few of those, too. Some gimmicks, definitely. Do you know what, it was. Do you know who that is? Yes, the cartoon character that does the thing with the gadgets.

It's Carlito's way. I vaguely know. All right. I don't know Colombo's first name. Peter? Peter Columbus. It sounds like a bodybuilder from, the 60s.

Anyway, we've got some viewer emails, and this is from Lucas in South Africa. Just real quick, we wanted to say hello to Lucas. He's been listening since 2019, but his father just passed away, and he was a big fan

and introduced Lucas to wrestling when he was a kid, so he was thanking us for the entertainment during this period of time, but we appreciate you, Lucas, and everybody wishes you well also. Go ahead.

I was going to say that's right. Yes, we do. Well, yes, you were going to, yes, well, that's nice of you to agree with me. But he's Lucas in South Africa as opposed to Lucas anywhere else. Just in case every Lucas was trying to jump onto that shoutout and try to claim it for his own. If his dad was a wrestling fan in South Africa, makes you wonder if he was at that famous Terry Funk Hulk Hogan. Was that South Africa? That happened South Africa, right? yes yeah oh maybe he was we'll never know now but thank you well Lucas if you're listening

because you're a listener tell us if your dad was at the match and we'll follow up with your next email yeah and if you got a program let me know I'll buy it oh good god or ticket stub are you you're gonna inject the commercialism and the collectivism into this thing he he wants to keep those things for souvenirs hey Lucas let me know. I'll give, I'll top the off. Perhaps the ticket stub was dipped in Terry Funk's blood as it fell under the ground. That was happening a lot. There were those

days, fans would be shit of blood. Not only did it happen, I've seen it happen, and I did it. I did it, Brian. Did I ever tell you this? You may have. Who's blood was it? And I still have it. Because I was 13 years old, I guess.

Yes, I was. But in the old, days kids after the matches were over with if the main event had been real bloody and everything

and they dripped on the canvas when the matches were over and people are leaving the building in Louisville Gardens they had a fucking clothes line right with a break in two places where you know the guys walked in

and you could just step over it and the crowd would go up around the ring and put their finger in or blot their programming or whatever the blood to say is that real or what the fuck's going on, right, to inspect the shit?

And the famous Mongolian stomper and bullet Bob Armstrong match where, Jesus Christ, I don't care what anybody has ever said about wrestling for a two and a half minute period, you had 4,000 people screaming at the same day, including me, I couldn't figure out how they did it. I didn't know this was the most violent, bloody, real. Holy shit. The place went bat shit. It still exists on film, thankfully. I have a copy.

And they both got incredible juice, and it was a double countout where Bob was right. And this was before I was the official photographer. Now, bear in mind. Bob was, they were right on top of, or Bob was right on top of him. And they were right in front of us, and we'd got front row by that time, and I got the great picture right.

It's on the cover of Tuesday night at the gardens. And they left so much blood on the canvas there by the time that it was all pulled apart that all the people started fucking going up and put. And so I went up and put a piece of my notebook paper in that, and fuck, it's covered, right? And I still have that to this day. I'd put it in a frame, 50, one years ago or whatever it was. Do you know who's it is or is it a mixture?

What is it? No, it was a mixture. They were there for a while doing the fucking, he was beating a shit out of Stomper so they could be counted out on the aprons. It was just, it was everywhere. Now having been able to see the film with modern eyes, all of the Bob Armstrong and Stomper matches were good.

And this one was good until he, Stomper had started. getting the heat on Bob. And I know now what they did, but nobody did then. Stomper fucking hits the ropes and does his big leap in the air

with those cowboy boots and comes right down, and it looked like he potatoed him now on Bob's forehead, where everybody could see it, and Bob set up and blood just gushed down his face instantly. And the people saw that,

and were like, oh! and then Stomper starts getting more heat on the cut and the way Bob's selling that, oh my God, this blood is coming out and the people are starting to come up and then Bob the bullet, he's got that fire. He starts firing up and the people are with it and he makes the comeback and now Stompers bleeding. And the people are going bat shit for like this just couple of minute period.

He's like, ah, and it was violent as hell. and they end up getting counted out and et cetera. What had happened was Bob, old trick, he bladed while he was down before the stomp. But they had timed it so perfectly because whatever stomp I can't remember what he did to put him there, slab, body slam, whatever. As Bob is laying there while the people are looking at stomper hitting the ropes,

Bob had done it, and when he hit him with the stomp, and Bob sat up, it was already coming. And it was seamless. Nobody would have looked at Bob to be touching his head before that. I'm sorry, go ahead. Were you already the president of his fan club at that point? Yeah, as a matter of fact, yes. No, wait, no, hold on.

Hold on there, cowboy. No, that was when it was still my old friend Mike Gibson from Ackworth, Georgia, who later relocated to the Northeast and owns a bookstore there now. The way northeast, like almost a Cape Cod or whatever. No, I was a member, but I was the official correspondent since Bob was in the territory, but I was not yet the president. Did you send in photos? As a matter of fact, I think one of the, maybe the last bulletin that he did was one of the pictures

that I took of this incident that I'm just describing to you. but it reprinted in black and white on copy paper on his sister's, you know, fucking print somewhere or another, I remember that at one point, I think it was his sister that had a copy machine in her work or something. But, yeah. We're thinking about you. Anyway, yes.

Oh, we're back to, yes, back to Lucas in South Africa. How did we get to Bob Armstrong and a stomper? Don't even tell me. be in South Africa. By Omaha. Well, Kurt, from, I don't know where the fuck he's from. I'm not going to give his email address. Has said, I assume you've been getting a few of these,

and we've got more than a few because I saw a couple, and I don't see a lot of stuff. But when we were talking about the Fritz von Erick letter to Jack Pfeffer, trying to get booked, and he gave as his, his resume, his background in athletics that he had played pro football for the New York Yankees. Now, have you, are you smart to this yet?

I have received a ton of correspondence about this since it aired, yes. Yeah, well, apparent, but now there's an asterisk here where we weren't completely just oblivious. They're not the Yankees. It was the New York Yanks, apparently there was a professional football team in the New York metropolitan area

from 1949 to 1951 called the New York Yanks. And then they got yanked out of the tri-state area and then went to Texas. But that's part of the story, right? People were saying that even if he was aligned with that team, it wasn't when they were in New York. It was when they were already in Texas, right? Well, I don't know because this was. in early

1953 he had already done it. Did he play in New York or did he play when they went to Texas? It seemed to me like he said he made it seem like he would have played for the New York team because why wouldn't he call them the Texas cornholers or whatever they became? And I would never stretch the truth.

He didn't have as far to stretch it back then because it hadn't been as long since he'd been in it. Yeah. Anyway, but yes, and also apparently there was a football team even earlier than that, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Did you see this trivia? Yeah, I knew that. I knew that. And obviously the New York Giants.

Oh, I knew that. Well, why didn't you chime in about this? Well, he looked like idiots. Because you didn't ask anything about the Dodgers was specifically to the Yankees. Well, you could have anecdotally. It's a different league. It's not even the same league. I don't care.

I don't know what fuck league is to begin with. You could have anecdotally said, well, you know, there was one time there was a football team called the Brooklyn Dodgers. So maybe it's possible. Jim, there's also a football team called the New York Giants. And back in the old days, there was a baseball team called the New York Giants. They moved the San Francisco. The San Francisco football team is not named the Giants. They're the 49ers.

And of course, the St. Louis Cardinals were both baseball and football. This has been a sports minute. I'm Brian last. Sports Center, brought to you by sexual harassment in Connecticut. You know, if we actually bothered to try to come up with bits for this show, it would probably suck. I'm like these great improv bits that are just wonderful. Well, you know, well, at least it entertains us. And that's really all we could hope for in the end.

I'm reaching the end, Brian, of my, I'm in the December of my years before I go. go sit out under a tree and become compost. So I got to entertain myself. All right. We've been talking about the wrestling history on television. We have been since the Pfeffer file visit that I had up at Notre Dame and, you know, we've been going through some of the things that we got and we uncovered because we talked previously about the history of wrestling on television and the earliest

that anybody was coming up with was well 1947 for Los Angeles and at 1946 they signed on the air in St. Louis or something and did something with Bill Longson on a talk show, whatever. But then through these letters from your friend and mine, IT Flatto, not only the attorney for Jack Feffer for many years, but also the promoter of the Ridgewood Grove Arena. Or is it Ridgewood Garden?

We'll get to it in a second. But anyway, point being, we saw them talking about the NBC original commercial telecast that went to a select few people in the New York metropolitan area. We're broadcasting wrestling in 1939 and 1940. and that was, you know, something that we were talking about a couple of weeks ago. Well, we've got a couple of things. We're going to go back in time. And I will start in the modern era of 1939 and 1940.

And then we'll go back further than that. But we were talking about the magazine transmitter from NBC that, Brian, you sent me a link to. And these are on the Internet. How did you find it? I forget what I Googled, but I googled something and that was one of the hits, but if you Google NBC transmitter, it'll come right up. It's the in-house trade magazine for the National Broadcasting Company, and specifically, well, I mean, it was, they were radio, the network,

and also the record end of the business and everything for those people who liked music in their homes. and they were experimenting with television. And so the in-house magazine, Richard, sent a piece that he researched the same file you did. And he says in the 1940 collection of NBC transmitters, page two of the February edition, you'll find the following passages. And this is from the magazine of that time. NBC television ended the year 1939, having put on 668 individual programs in the eight months from April 30, 1939 to January 1st, 1940. The schedule was on average five days a week, two hours a day for a total of about 360 hours or an average of a little over 10 hours a week.

That was when television was on the air in one place in the country. The programs were made up of approximately one-third from the studio, one-third film, and one-third outdoor pickups. And some of the shows were, Brian, most of the Brooklyn Dodgers professional football games, the six-day bike races at Madison Square Garden, remember that was a thing back in those days, the Bear Nova fight. That was Max Bear was the heavyweight champion at the time

and the father of the guy who played Jethro on a Beverly Hillbillies for the kids. What was Nova's first name? I keep wanting to say Aldo, but that didn't just be a fantasy. Mike Bucci. No, quit it, no. Or Mucci, whatever you pronounce him. No, it wasn't a Lou Nova.

He was a more modern boxing figure, wasn't he? I can see you're impressed about Nova. I don't know. They also did the television ball from the Waldorf Astoria, the premiere of Gone with the Wind at the Capitol Theater, and the weekly boxing and wrestling matches from the Ridgewood Grove Arena. And it said our television audience, this is where I wanted to go with this,

because the Ridgewood Grove Arena again is the one we found the letters where they were complaining that they had spent money to out, or he was complaining. They had outfitted the arena for television and wanted to continue on the experimental basis of not paying for it. He wanted 50 bucks. You wanted 50 bucks a week, God damn it,

and 100 bucks for the boxing. But anyway, this concludes with our television audience, and this is in New York City. And at the time, and again, we may find out shit. We're finding out all kinds of stuff. but nobody else was transmitting television in the United States because NBC was in the process of working it out, right? So we've established that.

So this would be the total television audience, not just in New York, but nevertheless, to be estimated in the neighborhood of 2,000 home receivers as of January 1, 1940. And as we've said, a lot of those were either, in the RCA executives, the technological folks that were working on the project, had these in their homes and some rich people and connected people.

And it goes on to say with the average of four or five persons per receiver, as indicated in an early survey, it means that our potential audience is between 8,000 and 10,000. that originally if you had a television in your home not only would everybody in the house probably be watching if it was on but you would have people over so the the very earliest estimates were yeah four or five people are watching each set every time that we do something on average

which meant maybe the chairman of r c at general david sarnoff was home alone in his den, but there was 10 people over at the fucking production engineer's house. Well, the other thing is, back then, too, how many people turned on a TV set alone? I mean, was it a big deal? Hey, I'm going to turn on the TV. They'll be programming from 2 to 4 on Wednesday.

So come over. Hey, when I was a kid, there had to be one person watched the picture and one person behind fiddle with the rabbit ears. But I digress. That's why, as we'll talk about later on here today, if we get to it, the average, they now count number of viewers because all the statistics are so minute,

but the way that television ratings evolved for years through the 90s, I believe it, they counted the homes, not the individual viewers. They did separate surveys, and they had an average number of viewers per home, which went down steadily. in 1953 when if you had a TV it was one TV in a whole house it was like three and a half people per home were watching or whatever and by the late 80s early 90s it was like one and a half person you know per home and then now it's just figured in a completely different way

but so yeah so you had they were shooting these things or airing these things before basically most of the people that were able to watch them were either in the homes of RCA executives and or friends and they were trying to work it out and that's 1939 and 1940 so we've established

that and I've got hold on I thought I had another goddamn it, wait a minute well I guess the thing too is that if there was anything before this period of time it seems more than likely it could only be experimental and based that in New York and probably the future

WNBC Channel 4 that we're talking about forget the exact initials I don't have this in front of me well yeah well I'm going there but I thought I had something else about 1939 first I thought but nevertheless and maybe you'll answer this I don't know but the other question I have is when you did the breakdown about what was currently airing

you know I think it was a third in the studio a third live events, a third on the street or whatever it was. When did they do the first live remote? Or when did they first start doing that? Because then we kind of have an idea when they even had the capabilities of wiring the Ridgewood Grove Arena or whatever it is. See, that's the thing is outdoor pickups. I don't know if that means that they went out

outside shot it and then came back and broadcast it or whether they, I would have to think, I don't know if they were trying to broadcast live on an outdoor location at that point, but probably somebody's going to tell us, but that was basically the fine point of the thing. Yeah. But Brian, and you sent me this. You know what I'm going into here because I don't know what this guy's name is because you said this is off of Reddit and I don't know how Reddit works. but it's a page from Reddit.

Yeah, it was... What does this fellow's name has done this research? I don't even know. Someone sent this to us. It was from the Squared Circle page on Reddit, and it's someone who listened to the segment you did, talking about what you discovered at the Feffer Library

about the earliest known broadcast in the United States of a professional wrestling show, and he had his own research. And it was W-2-X-A-B that were the call letters that... letter from up in where it's Connecticut or whatever but anyway

this fellow has searched for the old listings in newspaper archives and he found a television listing well it was an article

I guess or an announcement or whatever August 27 1931 issue of the New York evening post where W. 2XAB announced they plan to air an experimental wrestling match. And the August 23rd edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle said that they plan to experiment with different lenses and tinted backdrop screens to enhance the picture quality

of its boxing and wrestling telecasts. So they're announcing this. that finally is listed and there's a clipping here of there and we'll get to this lineup on their experimental television in a minute but the 15 minute broadcast

simply listed as wrestling match was broadcast at 10 p.m. on September 17th, 1931. Wow. 30 years before my birthday. Eddie says by November 1931, boxing and wrestling

were among the most popular W-2-X-A-B offerings, but let's stop here for a second. How big was that audience? If a little 10 years later, nine years later, whatever it was, there was only 2,000 transmitters, how big was the audience in 1931?

Well, see, here is the thing is I don't believe there was technically an audience. I think because, and I don't know, a lot of these since RCA and NBC was connected to radio also and that was the the reason for the NBC transmitter magazine, the in-house magazine we were talking about earlier

and that was the reason why that the radio listings back then were in the newspaper every day like the television listings became. So I'm wondering if they listed the experiment television broadcasting conjunction possibly because it says M107-2850K has got the frequencies

I could was this a radio-oriented broadcast as well whatever the case why did everything sound more like the future then than now it does right to five here on the air yes

but here's what I'm going to say is before we talk about the wrestling programs and I'll read a couple other things here in a second, but it says they plan to experiment with different lenses and tinted backdrop screens. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you about. What does that mean? Where are they? Well, here's the thing.

They says there were limitations. The director fellow was credited William A. Shoot, S-C-H-U-D-T, should? He should or he shouldn't? was credited with inaugurating the early programs, but there were limitations. Boxers and wrestlers alike had to compete in a miniature ring and could easily fall out of the view of the camera.

They also fought in a dark studio for the projector's benefit. Yes, and that's what I was wondering, yeah. Erring blonde competitors was a hassle. Hey, in the early 1970s, a couple of Nick Gullis's team like from Huntsville were so cheap that when the interns were there and they'd shoot them across the ring and their fucking white outfits, it'd just bleed all the way across. It said which meant light or dark backgrounds were needed to account for each wrestler's hair color.

But for the limited audience back then, these minor issues didn't matter. And he says he cannot 100% confirm whether the broadcasts were professional wrestling or amateur wrestling but one would think if they had a ring even for boxing there wasn't a lot of difference in amateur and professional wrestling at that point

in people's minds and there wasn't a lot of amateur wrestling programs so I think we're looking at but here's the point I was going to make with the backgrounds and the different lenses I don't think there was an audience I think this would remember we saw

what was it was footage the early george hackenshmidt what did hackenshmidt footage where he was working out with somebody and that was the film they found i think so from england and yes and i think and it would i think uh this was kind of a thing where they just had boxers box or wrestlers wrestle and i there's no indication there was any kind of studio audience and they weren't in an arena if they were experimenting with backgrounds. But listen to this schedule, Brian, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. was experimental programs. I have no idea what that might contain. Sounds far out. I wish I could see that. Groovy man. Experimental TV. Yeah. Hey, just make sure you don't go too far. But then from 8 o'clock until 11 o'clock, every 15 minutes. At 8 o'clock, Helen Rowland, Contralto. 8.15.

Sketch, Shadows of the Night. 8.30, how to finger the violin with Vincent Sorsi. Oh, boy. 845, Natalie Towers' characterizations. 9 o'clock, miniature musical comedy. 9.30, Mississippi. History sketch, the television ghost. 945 Dave Franklin songs.

10 o'clock, experimental wrestling match. 1015, Elliot Jaffe, songs. 1030, Abigail Pericles, songs. And the last program of the day, 1045, cartoons drawn while you look. That's a fascinating show right there And none of this could have been live They had to be filming it first And then broadcasting it

One would think because they couldn't How you could have a fucking mystery sketch Followed by songs followed by right Here comes the wrestlers The other day one of the listeners And I apologize for not remembering who it was Because they deserve credit They may have sent it to YouTube

They sent me some sort of video on YouTube It was a history channel kind of show But I don't know if it was on the history channel about Philo Farnsworth versus RCA versus Sarnsworth. And, or not Sarnsworth, um, Sarnoff, excuse me. Sarnoff. Sarnoff and Farnsworth. Boy, that sounds like a law firm.

But it was all about that feud. And remember, part of the issue was the patents that Farnsworth had that he created was better visually. It used more, I guess, resolution, more, I don't know how to phrase it. It went to say same lines, the 525 lines, I think, was the standard for a long time that they went to. And I think that was his. So when you talk about this being shot and the wrestler's hair color being an issue,

remember, this wasn't that. This wasn't the technology eventually that RCA was able to use, and NBC was able to be formed because of this. this was whatever RCA was developing on their own to the point where they needed they somehow get Farnsworth's patents. But besides that, I mean, with all due respect to Philo, if you put the picture that his, you know, concept could deliver on the receiver that existed at the time

and showed it to somebody today, they said, my God, anybody looked at that? it still wasn't you know goddamn high deaf boom boom 4K again I'm only 63 still for another four weeks or so but when I was a kid and my grandmother stayed with us

and she had brought she was recovering from surgery and had brought some of her things from home and her little television that was probably from at the time 1952. It was a 12-inch

screen, you know, black and white, obviously, and it was hard to tell what the fuck was going on on the Twilight Zone, much less what they were using that had been manufactured 20 years earlier

and wasn't even perfected yet. And again, this is coming from RCA, if I'm hearing everything you're saying correctly and understanding it, I think it's RCA, this is before Rockethore. center. So wherever they were shooting any of the studio stuff, wrestling or anything else. It was in Schenectady. It was in Schenectady. It was in Schenectady. Because that's at that time, you know, who would have thought that the biggest money-making

enterprise in the history of the world about to happen was coming from Schenectady? Farnsworth was out of Philadelphia. Did he ever do any experimental broadcast? Because again, if we're just talking about one company, the one that ended up winning. Well, hold on in Google this, you son of a gun, because you're quicker at it than I am, but I am still, and I'm trying to think all of the documentaries I've just watched, but Farnsworth was never able to finance anything like the NBC, you know, system on his own. He came up with the concept, but and the patents and things on his deal,

but was not able to put anything like this in motion. According to the internet, and they're never wrong. Never. Philo Farnsworth conducted experimental television broadcast from the early 1930s, notably through his station W3XPF in Philadelphia, and later W9WFT in Fort Wayne. And ain't nothing plain about Fort Wayne. But what was he, whether we need more?

Who was backing him here? What was, did he have an entire network behind him like NBC did? Oh, I don't think he had that. Shouting into the wilderness. I mean, he had investors, and I don't know how much money was pouring into different times, and he was always searching for more investors because, you know, the philosophy was to try to bankrupt him, making him fight for the rights to his own patent for years and years and years.

Well, then I would, then if Philo and Flatto had gotten together, can you imagine that? I'm booked I'm booked next Tuesday for Philo and Flatto. I just don't understand how you call an office up like, hi, honey, is he there?

It's IT Flato. That name. But nevertheless, if Philo had only found Flatto, maybe he would have been broadcasting how to finger the violin. But, you know,

a lot of this stuff, there was things going on that we didn't know. and now 1931, September 17th, a wrestling match that was recorded somehow, at some point, was broadcast at 10 o'clock Eastern time, I assume. I think it was before they had such a thing. Now we have to figure out what that is. On W-2A-X-A-B. There has to be a way.

We have to figure out what that match is. I may be crazy research from back in the day, but there must be something. somewhere. Well, no, because again, they probably brought them in and just had them in the miniature ring they were using for boxing and experimented with the lighting and had them wrestle it and nobody was there. So, unless Fever kept notes on it. Hey, it's the right time. It's the right time period. But now, this is all fascinating. So we went from thinking it's one thing to another thing. Now we think it's 1931. We're 15 years. We've added 15 years just with bringing this topic up

and getting everybody to chip in and talk about it. Well, we're now at 1930. We're now at 1931. We need to try to find that more information about what that match was, where it was, anything from 31, but I didn't fill in the gaps between 31 and 40. You know what?

I feel like Carl Colchak in the Knight Strangler when he was with Wally Cox in the newspaper morgue and they were finding a series of similar murders happened every 21 years back to 1880. It's like, should we try 1920? I'm so happy that Me TV is finally taking Colchak off. I like Colchak,

but it's the same episodes over and over and over non-stop. So now it's the Adventures of Superman have been added to Saturday nights. That are the same episodes over and over and not. They haven't been on in a while. They haven't been on. But poor Carl. No, they're on. It's more than one season.

They're on handy TV every Sunday, morning. But there's multiple seasons of the Adventures of Superman is one season of Colchak. That's not even a long season. No. And these 24 episodes, I could be wrong. But I was so seldom, ma'am, why would we assume that? All right. If they come up with an HD transfer of the masters, then I'd want to watch it. But it has to look like Manix. It can't look like Canon. It has to be top of the line, look good, not this like, you know, we have a VHS copy. We're going to air it.

If you found a kinescope of this 1931 wrestling match, would you want to watch it as it is, or would you want to have it remastered? I would say, holy shit, we have just discovered that they discovered kinescope years earlier than we thought they did. That would be what I said. Well, see, I'm working on that, too.

We're going to go the way back machine with those kinescopes also. It's really interesting just to think about, like, let's say from this point in time until 1950. Let's use that as the after the war. kind of when TVs really start being sold. Just everything came together. Eventually they have a, they have networks,

they have channels, they have programming schedules, like everything came together within these years and, you know, the war threw everything off, obviously, but I love this stuff. I'm sorry, I'm just geeking out over here. I apologize.

Well, Larry, well, you know, it never, the view never changes, baby. The view never changes, because there's always a war, there's always the ratings to think about, there's always the audience and who can, you know, shimmy and screw the other person

out of that audience and jump in. So should we go from, just for a minute from 1931 to 2025 and see that something, the view never changes, baby? Have you heard that apparently the WWE is, See, Uncle Dave is trying to phrase this or present this as,

oh, WWE's really worried about AEW. They're going all out. They're trying to counter-program them. They're putting the big shows against him. I take the viewpoint that I think that the WW, now that they have conquered the world, and there were $747 billion in 16, cents.

I think that they have announced the time that we can demolish this little motherfucker. We'll just wipe our fucking shoes on him. He's lost talent. He's got the same, he's lost viewers. He's got really the same

base and his TV show creatively is a mess with many people not over or floundering around. So let's just fucking finish it off. And Brian, I don't even know if that's an unpopular viewpoint that I have, or if more people are starting to recognize that now they're just not even making any bones about it.

We're in a tank and he's in a wheelbarrow. And we're just going to shovel him over. WWE wants to own the entire industry. And it's not just wrestling. It's everything. It's everything. From podcasts, the toys, to everything. They want to own it all.

And if they don't own it, you will be some sort of subservient company reliant on them. Like TNA. And, you know, Tony Khan's biggest threat to WWE is simply money. That he could throw money, he could raise the pay scale, and potentially maybe one of these guys that we have as a Starwool, take him up on his offer. But they're going to do everything they can to stop him.

They're going to run against him. They're going to try to make it so he can never get another television deal again. so that even if you don't want WWE TV, they're like, oh, well, hey, here's TNA. Here's AAA. Get some Latino viewers. Here's NXT. They are dead set against AEW, and they're going to look to kill AEW, and this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's a little more overt now than even when Vince was there, which is saying something, but it's not necessarily about Tony. They would do it to anyone who was number or two right now, but Tony

specifically, you know, I don't think we're talking out of school saying they don't take Tony seriously. Whether you think they should or shouldn't, they don't, and they also enjoy fucking with AEW. Some of the wrestlers do, but the people who are running things do. You mentioned it was even more so than when Vince was there, but Vince not only was, he was doing things the old-fashioned way, when he would do them.

And I don't think that he took AEW that seriously because he never took any other company really seriously except WCW that time. But at the same time, his people were saying, well, we got to watch the pay scale. But now that these, there are Shark Hollywood agents and big time wheeler, dealer, and dealmaker people involved and staffs of them and major corporate executives. even if only one of them was only a tenth as predatory as vents there's three times as many now of them so they know all the ways to just fucking bam bam and they've got all these deals that they're making and they're guarantees that they're getting and at the same time they can just elbow this son of a bitch

out of the fucking elevator before the doors close and it's all their group and we'll talk about a couple of different ways they're doing it, but taking it, I don't know if it's in order, but at least one at a time. So now the paper views on September 20th are, there's dueling paper views. I'm getting my two teeth pulled on September 22nd. I don't know which I'm looking forward to least over that weekend is having to watch two of their paper views at the same time are getting two teeth pulled. But this. This was a recent addition, wasn't it, to the W.W.E. calendar against their September 20th gimmick they're doing?

Yeah. They found that AEW had all out, and they waited until the very last minute they could, and then they surprise, announced a premium live event, direct head-to-head up against it. Yeah. And now that there's no more pay-per-view, they don't have to worry about, like, you know, pay-per-view or the cable company saying you can't do this, they could fucking stream anytime they want. Well, that's the thing is, did they have a big premium live event announced for September already, and they changed the date, or did they just, September was open?

I believe it was open. You know that? Because I wouldn't. I believe it was open, but I'm not certain, but I believe that was the case. So they just held it. Yeah, okay. But again, the all in, the all, it's all out this time in September. That's one of Tony's little pride and joys.

and, you know, so they're fucking with that. But they're also talking about now from what I understand, I hear through the grapevine, the idea that they're going to move the Saturday night's main event December date and which theoretically then would become John Cena's retirement match to December 27th up against, what do they call, World's End, which it may be every year I feel they're going to be prophetic.

But if they can work it out with NBC, apparently, they're trying to do Sena's retirement against their World's End pay-per-view and Cina's retirement would be on network television. I'll save my thoughts or questions about the idea of doing that for after we talk about AEW, but yeah, they're doing that to fuck with AEW if that happens. And I mean, that's good.

going to cost them AEW being them too many pronouns pal that's going to cost them some viewers definitely off of their couple of their biggest shows of the year while at the same time will you be able to tell if

you know an extra 150 or 200,000 people didn't tune into Sina's retirement on NBC Christmas week when it'll probably do two million fucking people it's going to be negligible, if anything. And Tony's pay-per-views are still out there. They're not on Macs.

You can get them from HBO. You can get them from Amazon or this place or that place. He hasn't sold those rights. You know, WWE just sold their premium live event rights. Separate from everything. I mean, everything is for sale to a different party. It's incredible. But Tony has everything.

Everything's in the Warner Brothers Discovery basket. There's no Ring of Honor deal. dark and elevation left YouTube not that they were great or anything, but it was just programming that one day was gone. And you have these premium live events that apparently they get really good pay-per-view numbers and that's people having to buy the pay-per-view

because there's no $9.99 option. Well, and speaking of which, we're going to have to get together you and me off the air for you to tell me what the, how the fuck I'm going to watch the AEW pay-per-view since there's no pay-per-view channel on my cable anymore. And I have to find out who is operating this thing or carrying this thing. And that's, again, the WWE, we mentioned they're doing the different streaming deals,

et cetera, and the news we talked about on the last show we did, where is it paramount, has paid $7 billion for UFC for the streaming of the shows? and et cetera. So I saw, again, somebody just added up for the wrestling without UFC, if you're a fan of both, but just for the wrestling,

what will it cost you? To buy whatever services you need to either buy the show itself or buy the service that you need to get the thing that the show is on. You know what I'm saying, right? Yeah. It's $100 a month,

just right now with what they've announced to get everything that the WWE has. And if the UFC is doing something else with somebody else that if you wanted both, you're closing in on, you know, fucking three, what, two grand a fucking year or whatever. Yeah, and they're saying that people with the ESPN deal like we talked about last time,

that potentially if you have cable, you may eventually by the end of the year be able to get it once the cable operators negotiate with ABC and Disney. but if you don't have cable and the whole thing is that people don't have cable people are getting rid of cable

then you have to pay $30 a month so it's going to be very interesting how this one. Well yeah and that's part of the $100 is that you might get the thing for free if you have the other thing but you have to pay for the other thing so they're taking that into account.

Yeah, then you'd have to have the other thing and people are dropping cable so people are just going to have to get the $30 thing. Us cable people, we have a good deal. And it's dissed that or the other thing. And in the meantime, I'm finally in the financial news. Now they're saying the WWE is plotting to help T&A get on television.

Have you heard about this, Brian? Have you read about this and put them on TV in opposition to AEW? Does that surprise you? Does that surprise you in any way? Well, no, no. And yet you've been calling this all along. But now it's, again, it's an example of, well, here's this separate entity. that we don't own and actually control, kind of,

but they are our little buddy, and they will do whatever we want, and so we ain't going to fuck with them. So it's a block against the antitrust monopoly accusations, and it's also another product that can independently, with a little nudge in the ribs, be pitched by more professional people and people that have a track record in this major entertainment landscape

instead of Tony Kahn try to talk Jack Warner into putting Ring of Honor on their network when their viewers on the existing programs are drooping. Tony needs to fight back. What he should do right now is put together a two-hour highlight reel of the Vince Rousseau years and send it to every television executive and say, this is TNA, watch this. make them answer for this. No, they're going to do everything they can

to drive Tony out of business and to own the entirety of the professional wrestling space and there are rumors going around about a T&A sale. I don't know how true they are. I only saw a couple things, but even the name's being rumored. Are people tied in with TKO and people who are working with TKO?

They want it all under their umbrella. And they're going to get a jamping. company one of these days. And I, you know, I've said it before. I want Tony, Tony Khan needs to fight back. I want him to fight back for the health of wrestling. Someone needs to fight back.

And then I want to root for the guy. And then I watch his show and I'm like, man, this fucking sucks. And then we'd have this. Yeah, like the booking is horrible. Don't tell me, oh, we do have stories. If the stories suck, your stories suck. But the booking's horrible. It's like, fuck, how's he going to fight back?

But he needs to. And, you know, it's not going to stop with Tony. You know, it's not going to stop with Poland. He's not going to stop. They're going to keep going. No, WWE wants to take over every aspect of everything. If there is a media deal to be had for professional wrestling, the agents who run WWE want that deal.

And they want all that money. And they want to keep building up the stock value. you so eventually they can convince some friendly Saudi to buy it. But this is not going to change. And Tony Khan needs the fight back. I just don't know how he will. I don't know how. And I think he's,

I hate to use the word arrogant, but I think he's arrogant enough to think that he has a handle on it. And then people on the outside who talk to people in that company or just are paying attention, realize, no, you don't. You don't have the team. You don't have the team in terms of talent. You don't have the team in terms of executives.

And it's going to be interesting how this plays out. But at some point, and I'm not going to go through it all, but Brandon Thurston put up a series of tweets looking at the MLW lawsuit and what is and isn't a monopoly right now or an attempt to have a monopoly. But we're looking at WWE trying to set themselves up for a monopoly. But hey, you can't say that because the AWA is in Minnesota, so they'll have TNA. And here's the thing. Tony's like his baby faces.

He's kind of ineffectual and nobody thinks that he can whip anybody. Yeah. He can't fight this. Look at the way he comes off to big business typhoons. And, you know, I'm sorry, but it's a whole other world. And, you know, that's the thing is, is, again, he, I don't say arrogant because that makes him sound like some kind of, and I don't mean it that way, you know, a smooth operator.

Yeah, I think you're saying. More, more like clueless, like, well, they can't do that to me. I've got a lot of money. Well, they just did it to you because they got even more money now. Because he's going to be fucking heartbroken when Warner Brothers Discovery, or whoever owns it at that point in time, says we're not renewing you. Where is he going to go?

He's not going to Disney. They got WWE. He's not going to Fox. He's not going to... Fox apparently already said no. They're not going to CW. They're not going to NBC Universal who owns USA Network.

They're not going to Netflix or, as of this moment, Peacock, you wouldn't think. And again, that's part of NBC Universal. YouTube is... YouTube's talking to WWE. There's something that's going to go down. It'll probably be the catalog,

but we'll see. But there's going to be nowhere to turn. Uh, nowhere to... to run to, baby. Nowhere to hide. Oh, you know where that you can turn and hide? Nowhere. Tell me, please.

Brian, I'll tell you where you can turn and hide from all of this, all of this stress and discomfort and achy paininess that you have. And the way you can unwind, cornbread hemp, CBD gummies. Oh, yeah. That's the way you can, yeah, you can turn and hide there, just burrow down into one of these things, because if you want a natural way to relieve the aches and discomfort that comes with living a life, if you want to de-stress and maintain not only your physical but your mental wellness,

a peace of mind, Brian, all I want is to have my piece of mind. You can sit down with a CBD gummy, courtesy of cornbread hemp, and you can put Boston on the headphones. and boy howdy it'll take you back to the days when life was worth living you hear singing like that you wish england won in boston well hey don't don't mess with my tea party cornbread hemp CBD gummies are made to help you feel better whether it's stress whether it's discomfort just needing a little relaxation they only use the best part of the hemp plant the roots no i'm saying it's the flour for the purest and most potent CBD. I thought the best part of the plant would be the roots.

That's where all the life comes from. It grows at it. Will you eat a lot of beet root, don't you? To keep regular? You talking to me? Yeah, yeah, I'm talking to you. I don't need a lot of beet root. What are you talking about?

Oh, you're supposed to eat. Beat root and fucking onion cloves to keep your poop going regular. Well, once again, we're not talking about the roots. We're talking about the best part of the. plant. Yes, the best part of the plant is the price. I'm fixing to save you some money. They use only the best parts and they are formulated to help relieve the discomfort, the stress, the sleeplessness, the sleepless nights laying away tossing and turning,

and all of the products from our friends at cornbread hemp based right here in Louisville, Kentucky, are third party lab tested. They will not go to a lab unless they've been to at least three parties in that place so they can see what their pharmaceuticals are like. Boy, howdy, you ought to go to one of these things. The fucking black light and the disco ball. Not that kind of party. Holy shit.

No, this is, of course, an outside party that several of them ended up outside in the yard and the parking lot. We're talking about the best part of the plant and we're talking about the best deal for the listeners and let's plant that in the ground and go that

way. Yes, yes. Well, there USDA organic, USDA organic, or USDA organic. To ensure safety, it's not more. It has to be one of the other. To ensure safety and purity.

And you know, if you take one of these, it'll automatically turn you back into a virgin. Again, no, that will not happen. Right now, I'm telling you what, boy, howdy. You're not. I'm telling you that right now you can save money. You can save money because

all you got's to do is go to cornbread, that's C-O-R-N-B-R-E-A-D, cornbreadhimp.com slash J-C-E, and you're going to save 30% off your first order. 30% off your first order of these fine, pure, potent, and good for you. CBD Gummies at cornbread hemp.com slash J-C-E. 30% off just like that because we have, we put the word in for you. That's right, a great product. Very popular here at Last Manor.

I know there's some big fans over there, Castle Cornette, Cornbread Hemp, a great deal. One last time, Jim, that promo code. Well, it's JCE. I mean, at this point, Brian, we've been doing this for so many years. Don't you think you'd remember it? You may try to mess me up and say ECJ.

Well, I'm not easy. I don't know about you. Well, you can mess me up. But once again. You know, JEC almost sounds like, that almost sounds right. Well, once again, ladies and gentlemen, don't be messed up. Don't be almost right. Be right.

I don't know how any of this ties together. Be messed up the right way. Cornbread hemp. Yes. And the don't eat the roots. Anyway, speaking of roots, let's get to the root of a problem here. There's debate on the internet. Brian, I don't know if you're up to date on this.

I need some guidance. the carrion cross situation, is it a work, is it not? Did his contract expire, his contract expired allegedly? They want him, they want her, they want both, they don't want either. He's beaten around the bush in some fashion and creating some attention and interest in this one way or the other. But I'm wondering why that they would want to if this is all a carefully contrived work, is he interesting enough or enough of a top guy if they gave him the push that it would be worth

is he Brian Pilman all over again? These are my thoughts. Well, we have some audio we could play. He was on the Ariel Hawani show. Now, that in and of itself made some people say, you know, look, see, it's a work. Ariel Hawani is a very friendly relationship with WWE. Why else would he be booked on this show?

and then he immediately came out on social media, he said it's not a work. It's not anything like that. Paul Heyman had previously been on the Ariel Hawani show and put over Carrying Cross, saying that the groundswell of support, I'm paraphrasing, was akin to the way the support started for Steve Austin.

Is what Paul Hayman said. Hey, well, Paul does have a flowery way of phrasing most everything, But I don't see that, but I think we're being a little grandiose. Go ahead. And again, he disappeared. They didn't renew his contract after he seemingly was getting more TV time on his own than he ever had before. The stable with him and Paul Ellering and the authors of pain was not exactly doing it. Everything since NXT has been off.

It was finally connecting. Here he is talking with Ariel Hawani on the Ariel Hawani show. This is about this not being a work. people could talk about the unreals and all that stuff I think there are certain questions that you shouldn't ask out of respect for what you do and what it's all about I appreciate that but I do feel like I need to ask you a certain amount of questions

and I need to be as sort of pointed as possible okay sure of course are you working us right now no no I'm not answering questions today as a character this is legit yes this is this is Kevin yep okay what you put out on your YouTube channel on on Sunday evening a riveting documentary that I urge everyone to see you almost have about 800,000 views as of right now in three days. That's incredible. You said that your WWC...

Well, actually, it cuts off right there. We'll pick up more audio here. What are your initial thoughts? Just the idea he's being asked if this is a work, and he's immediately saying no. Well, that would be what you would say if you were working somebody. See, that day... God damn it. I don't... My head is spinning because of the world that wrestling is in these days. but again if you're working somebody the first thing you're going to do is deny that you're working

them so that in itself means nothing and you would say no i'm here i'm not in character now i'm here as kevin that in itself means nothing what i'm trying to figure out is what is the upside potentially of going to all this trouble and yes he was getting himself over with promos and different things, but it didn't particularly look like they were trying to shove him down anybody's throat. And every time he has a big match with Sammy, he pretty much loses it,

and they don't set the world on fire. And so that's, I'm just, but I've got thoughts about, is this a Jerry Lawler type of walkout because they fired the cat if they just didn't want scarlet, and he said, well, I ain't going to take your offer. There's all kinds of things that can, and there's a rumor going out they didn't want Scarlet.

And I don't really know what purpose Scarlett serves besides giving us something to look at while Carrying Cross is out there. But go ahead with your story. Well, it's not my story, it's his story, and it was told to Ariel Hawani. Well, and he's sticking to it. On the Ariel Hawani show,

this is carrying cross talking about the contract that was presented to him. Well, I mean, truth of the matter, is I mean you've already stated like you know my contract was up last week I never actually received a contract like an offer until last week so do you remember what day so your contract expired August 10th which I do believe was Sunday yeah I think it was Tuesday off the top of my head okay you know I got the offer I wanted to know how they came to the valuation of that offer

Just wanted, you know, like some information, some metrics, some analytics that's supporting to, hey, this is how we got here. When I inquired about that, they were unwilling to provide that information and told me he had 24 hours to agree to the offer or they were rescinding it. So, you know, the next day we talk, I ask if they have the information. They don't. And I said, I can't make an informed decision without the information. and I'd like to keep the dialogue open. Well, let me stop it there. What are the analytics exactly? I mean, do they have analytics now?

Is that a thing that they have, that they have to show anybody? I never realized he was Canadian. He must be Canadian, right? That accent. I don't know. I don't know. I got to look into it.

I thought he was from Queens. Look into that. Well, maybe he's from Long Island, and he's just hoity-toity. But nevertheless, the point is... No, there could be real metrics, for instance. I mean, assuming it's everything, merch. How much merch am I selling?

How much... How valuable am I, when it comes to that in terms of if he's moving any numbers? I don't know if they present that to people. I mean, that's another issue altogether. Well, I mean, you know, you're allowed to... Used to be you're allowed to check into your merchandise sales, but I'm not talking about it.

It's all bullshit. The only thing he ought to be asking is, because this is the way that they used to do it, offer him what the other guys in the spot that we've got for him on the card are making. Because, you know, that's about it. I mean, unless you're Steve Austin or some major superstar where you have a track record of look at the business this pay-per-view did or this series of live events did when I was on top,

Again, whatever, what metrics can they have for Carrying Cross who's just been on the card that was going to do, and this is not even disrespectful to him, because there's a lot of talented people on the cards that how would you quantify that? Because the house and the ticket sales and the rating would have been the same either way, whether they were there or not, except when you get to the top guys. And he hasn't been there yet, so he has no traffic. record, so how would they have analytics? Yeah, all the shows that you've been on had seen it was in the main event of, they've done great. So let's give you a raise. How does that work? I'm not sure, but to answer your question from earlier, here's Ariel Hulani talking to

Carrying Cross or the former Carrying Cross about Scarlett. When they made that offer, was it for the two of you? Nothing. She had nothing. There was no offer to her. Nothing? No. I was told at one point, because I did inquire, of course.

after we deal with you, we'll deal with her. Do you think that they were going to get to her? Like once they were probably hoping you'd say yes, do you think they were going to get to her, or do you think there was a chance that she was not going to be brought back regardless? I don't know. Wow.

But I just, I didn't, I don't see why we just could not have done things the way we did them before, you know? Well, that's that clip right there. What do you think of that? You know, those words have been said quite often. I don't know why we could have just done things the way we did it before.

I mean, and again, we weren't a room. We're not in a conversation. We're speculating on what we're being told. But from, again, just experience in the office, maybe somebody saying, you know, they probably had contracts that were signed for the same terms, or for the same term length of time, I should say, at the same time.

So they kind of were together. and maybe they want to sign him for a longer period of time and then they want to sign her, maybe they don't really want to sign her at all. Maybe it just, they want to do something different with him. Who knows what the fuck? But do they have to say that?

I mean, that's how you break up a marriage. We signed him, we'll deal with her after you. By the way, we're not going to deal with her. Well, I love the way. I wonder if it was really, uh, fucking phrase that way. We'll deal with her as soon as we finished dealing with you.

Like, after we finished dusting you off, motherfucker. I mean, you know, again, this is his side of the story, is he saying, well, where's her contract? Well, we don't want it. Well, when you send her one, I'll look. I mean, who knows? Who knows? But I think that he's doing a wonderful job of calling attention to this, but I don't know why.

And I've been fooled here recently. They'll go to any lengths, but why for him? I don't see him or them or this as an attraction that can be made with a payoff that is commensurate with the effort to go into work and the boys about a mid-card guy's contract. But I mean, maybe they just got a lot more employees up there so they got a lot more people to have things to do.

And what do you think about the idea that it's a work? It seems like the only thing they'd be promoting is if he made a surprise appearance somewhere else. But again, If he made a surprise appearance somewhere else, I might think it was a work. If he starts making a bunch of advertised appearances ahead of time, then that might say that maybe they just didn't want Scarlet and he got mad. Because the guy that you see ranting about WWE,

the next step would be you want to see him on the opposition show saying these things, and all of a sudden you have a character you could believe in. But we haven't really known for a while what's going on with his creative and his booking and remember after WrestleMania, I literally like right after WrestleMania, he did a promo online.

I mean, they're all online at this point, saying that this isn't Carrying Cross, this is Killer Cross, and everyone was buzzing about it. It was a really good promo. Yeah. Scarlett sat there.

It was a really good promo, you know, to her value. No, I shouldn't say anything, but, but it was a really good promo. Here's what Carrying Cross says the creative team, and of course that means Triple H running the creative team

what they thought of the promo. Everybody was cool with it. They were like, holy cow. They said another word we're not going to say, but yeah, they were, everyone was really blown away. And I let everybody know, let's make sure this is somewhat protected

from the audience, but let everyone know internally that this is a work because not every department is constantly in lockstep communication with one another. So I told everybody that. sure enough not everybody knew that that was a work you think it backfired uh well i can't say that it

backfired but people were very upset with it because they thought it was real when you say people specifically like higher ups i'll say higher ups they were offended or did they feel like you you you were too aggressive like what could they have been upset how do how would a wrestling lifer see that and be like yeah that's too far or you cross the line or is this real or not i don't want to speak on behalf of them but this is this is what i will say about it. So a lot of everything that you see goes through the creative process. It goes through a team. I was under the impression that we were doing something improvisationally and it was okay. But like I said, sometimes the communication is not in lockstep with each other. So no one told them that this was

a work. No one said, I shook everybody's hands. I gave Megan a hug before I left. So they're under the impression like a week goes by that, you know, I flipped out. So Let me stop it there for a moment. He has a little bit more about this specific thing. So he does this promo. The creative team doesn't know. He thinks they're under some sort of arrangement where, you know, let's all do improvisational stuff.

What do you think of this story so far? Well, the one comment that Ariel Hwani made there was, well, what do the, like, the wrestling lifers think, were they upset? I think probably the wrestling lifers, because I'm one, the first thing I would have said when I heard that if I didn't know anything about the genesis of it what he was supposed to say or told to say whatever I would go to whoever did know

and say was that a work I wouldn't just because I would to be quite honest with you I thought that it was from the beginning because when we saw him again that that was either his goddamn notice on the air or they told him to say it to get attention or let him say it to get attention.

So I think it, he's talking about hires up, so we're not talking about just the average greenhorns in the locker room. We're talking about Triple H and Bruce Pritchard. Well, no, I'm thinking that I'm thinking at Triple H, if nobody told Triple H he was going to say things like that, then Triple H would have probably fired the guy said it was okay but then didn't tell him it wouldn't have been the heat on cross and and bruce would

have been like what the fuck but he probably a bruce probably didn't like it because he doesn't like anything that approaches a shoot of any kind but i'm thinking it had to be the writing staff that was offended the not the wrestling people but the writing people that from the way that he phrased that because it was primarily them that would have been offended by everything that he said. But no, if you have been in the business very long at all, in the actual wrestling business, you would have either said he's working or you would have gone to the ultimate authority

that would know whether or not that he'd just had a goddamn mental breakdown or whether somebody said it was okay to say that. Before you formed an opinion. Before we continue on with this specific question and anything else here, what do you think right now? After hearing what you've heard, do you think it's a work? I'm not saying it might not turn into one eventually if everybody just calms down and starts talking again. But I think it's, again, a very odd work to use it on this guy.

And it's probably from some ill feeling about they didn't want Scarlett or they didn't want Scarlet as long or they wanted to make sure they had Cross before they signed. What would happen if they gave them both a contract and Scarlett signed hers? cross didn't sign his. And it is, what the fuck? I mean, any of these things can be going on. I'm sure the other side has some points, but it's, it's an

odd work at this point. You know, there are so many couples now in wrestling, I mean, everywhere, that you don't really hear too much about that bad idea that may be more of an idea of the past where it was a commodity to have a woman on the show, the idea of it's a package deal.

If you want my girl, and I hate to put it that way, If you want my wife, whatever it is, you got to book me. And the same thing the other way. She comes with me. Yeah, or Sable and Mero. You know, you got to have him to get her. They may be trying to avoid that type of situation. I don't know.

But it's an odd work, an odd work. Let's go back to this about the reaction from higher-ups to his promo after WrestleMania. One day I waited for a honor outside the production meeting. actually brought to my attention that he was not okay with it. And I explained everything to him. No one told them anything. So as far as I know, at that point, we were good.

But everyone was under the impression. A lot of people, like I just lost my mind. I was just trying to be like, hold on. There you go. Because if he had to pull Triple H's side and say, well, you know, then I want to know who cleared it and what the conversation was with Triple H and them. What I want to know. That's my job.

That day was to make people believe, like any other day. And, yeah. Do you think it's possible that they thought that you were going into business for yourself or maybe trying to take away from WrestleMania because you weren't a part of the... Oh, that's where that clip ends here. Again, this is all from the Ariel Hawani show. So the creative team, led by the guy who runs the company right now, didn't know what he was doing and thought he lost.

this mind and somehow there was radio silence or whatever it was for a week. Again, if you're the Booker, I mean, how does it... See, I don't know about that either, though, because if triple-A, if I was Triple H and I was in any way upset about what he said, I would have got to the root of it

before I left the building. I would have either talked to who was producing the segment or I would have gone to the guy himself and probably the producer. because it'd be quicker and get a straighter answer. Except if the producer then was the one that was like, oh, maybe the producer said,

oh, shit, I didn't know he's going to say all that stuff. Well, again, he does this promo. But that's the problem with having all these different shows and pregame shows and postgame shows and Internet shows and this and that. They've got all these different crews and all these different producers going through all this stuff. and did somebody overstep their authority to bless that, potentially?

That is... Well, he talks a little bit here. Let's play this for a moment. Because remember, they put him in this feud with Sammy Zane, which started where, like, they had these backstage confrontations where he was telling Sammy that he had the, you know, I guess for lack of a better term, let the heal out if he really wants to get the world title. And then they had these matches that felt like they were,

building towards him winning something and he lost every single match and he was still trying to get Sammy to commit an evil deed which Sammy never did well here he is talking about the booking for night of train even though he's a commie dirt bag Sammy would not commit an evil deed well those are not your words for they may not uh well the audience will have to listen to the rest of the show

but yeah everybody you need to start to finish this all this shit will make sense uh Jim here is carrying cross the former carrying cross I don't know what it is, talking about how he got booked for that show, Night of Champions, against Sammy Zane and Saudi Arabia. You tell us about that. I really only kind of want to say what I said in the documentary, which was essentially Ron had pulled me aside and talked to me, and he basically, he just, he knows what's going on with me.

He's been in my corner. He's always been in my corner. I've always been in his. Ron, somebody I've always gone along with. We have mutual friends. Shout out to Conan. Yeah, I love that dude. Who is Ron?

I'm not sure. Ron Killings, maybe. Are there any other Ron's on the roster? What happened to his push? I was meant, so wait a minute. I forgot. He was supposed to be a big star. Jesus Christ, what they didn't?

Another casualty of the Sina turn. Ron Killings. But let's go back to this. Night of Champions was a little rough because one of my relatives, my Uncle Chris had passed away a little bit before Night of Champions and the process of developing a service forum was taking a little bit. So right around the time that my family had announced we were going to do a service forum, I got a call to ask me to go to Night of Champions. So I told the person over the phone, let me call you back. Let me see how like my family feels

about this because I don't want to agree to anything over the phone. I'm thinking I'm going to the service. So that night of champions match didn't happen. I spoke to some of my relatives and they said, your uncle Chris would want you to go do this match. You can grieve anytime you want. This is something that's coming around right now and it's important that you go. So I had their support.

I spoke to quite a few of them and that was kind of the consensus. So I went. And it's just you're in the moment and you're enjoying it. No regrets about it. but then there's also that and you're in this weird seesaw all day and the whole trip like almost feels sometimes like guilty that you're having a good time yeah with this on your mind and i just kept thinking about him all day and talking to him under my breath um i talked to ron a little bit about that on a plane you know i'm getting the impression he seems like

one of these guys that it's awful hard to negotiate with because he thinks deeply about everything. You know what I mean, Brian? Have you ever had that in your lines of work like we have in the wrestling business when you get a guy that just thinks real deeply about everything? You know, I think he should go to Hollywood. I think he is a good actor and maybe he could, he has a good look and he's not like too big. So maybe he could do something there, but let's go to this. Not too big.

This is Carrie and Cross talking about other promotions if they've reached out to them. I believe this is our final clip from the Ariel Hawani show. Let's go to this. That was the advice that I was given. Since Sunday, have other promotions reached out to you? Yeah. Of course. Big ones?

Yes. Can I ask specifically? You can ask, but I won't tell you, brother. Has AW reached out? No. No. No. Are you surprised?

No. Why? A lot of people. it there. If big promotions reached out and it wasn't AEW, who was it? I was about to say we're awful short on the list at this point after that. Hello, Carrion, this is Shinma. What are you doing? Friday. Yeah, what about Gleet? I wonder if Gleet has called. If Gleet has called, then we know that the bidding war is on. but first of all

I think AEW they're probably is thinking we're not going to get in this right now this probably is a fucking work we'll look bad they're trying it's a Trojan horse they're trying to swerve us and to be quite honest

he ain't there he ain't their kettle of fish in the ring he's not going to do all that shit with the children he didn't take bumps for Sammy Zane and that audience is so antithetical. Oh, another WWE guy. And then how much would Scarlett want?

And would that upset the, not the apple cart, but the peach cart over in the women's locker room? I do. And there may be people there who were there in TNA, who they have issues with, which would be a whole other thing. And again, Oh, I forgot about it. the family of Don.

Well, let's go, let's get away from that scarlet fever and let's go back to the remaining audio here from Ariel Hwani and Carrying Cross. No. Why? A lot of people think it's a work. They were the ones I was thinking of when you said, hey, people don't know whether or not to reach out. Because the theory that I've heard is if Cross shows up on TNA, this is all a work because they,

they're in cahoots, right? If he shows up on AW, obviously this isn't a work. Yeah. Do you agree with that sentiment? Yeah, that's what everyone is thinking. I've read it. I've seen it. I've seen it.

Everyone's thinking I'm just going to pop up under some other company that's in the WWE umbrella. They're hoping I do because this seems so nonsensical to people. People are following the course of events that have happened to get to here and they're going, how did this happen?

This must not be real because this makes no sense. Let me stop it there for a second. That's the biggest argument for being a work, the fact that he was getting over. The fans were finally reacting to him, the guy who takes no bumps. The fans are reacting to the guy who takes no bumps. That's a sign in the right direction if you really think about it.

And they book him into oblivion and he's gone. But I maintain what I said a little while earlier. I think he's still got a ceiling unless they are confident that, oh, this is the start of great things for carrying cross. I look and see, you know, he ain't going to get over to L.A. night's fucking level. just me, but besides that, again, he could just be one of these guys that they just were like, you know what, Jesus Christ,

we don't want to talk to him anymore about fucking analytics. This is a lot of trouble. Yeah. Or we don't want the wife or, I mean, sometimes those things happen and it's inexplicable to the talent, but it's not inexplicable to the office. Or they could have a,

tremendous idea to break him loose into the stratosphere that I don't see working, but they're going for it anyway. But he better hope that it's a work because if it ain't a work, he can't show up in T&A because they're part of the system. And he ain't going to show up in WW. He ain't going to show up in AAA. And if AEW doesn't want him, he ain't got no place else to pop up. Well, let's go back to the remaining audio.

Believe me, I also think. that this makes no sense either. Yeah. This is baffling to me too. And it drives me nuts that I have to that I actually even have to admit that. It is baffling. It is. So it would be an all-time story if you go up and show up on the Indies and then come back. That's what people are concocting this. But you have said repeatedly this is not the case. Is it are you open to even talking to others at the moment or are you still holding out hope that things will get sorted with WWE? I've talked to, And that's where that one cuts off. He's still holding out.

Well, he's talked to many others, but the rec center just, you know. Oh, here's something. I don't want to give him the extra hot dogs. Here's a little bit about that. No. Why not? I spoke, I had a conversation with him earlier. I saw my triple H.

They took a point man and they put him between us to communicate. So now the point man is responsible for. all the dialogue. You can't circumvent that guy. You have a personal relationship, a history with Paul. He knows that I want to talk. Yeah. He knows what I want to do. He knows. Are you tempted to send him a text? I don't know what I would send him. Yeah. That guy who they put in front of them to talk to me is telling me that everything is coming from them. Got it. I've made it very, very clear that I want to keep the lanes of communication and dialogue open. It's a very weird situation. Yeah. It's weird, dude. I get it. So I can date everything.

I can. It's really like, this is the way forward. Everyone just needs to stop being weird. In life. Well, let's stop it there. You know, see, this, this, he's starting to convince me this is real.

Because, well, no, because here's the thing. He is astonished. And he's a very good actor, but still, he sounds genuinely astonished. Why can't I talk to Triple H? Why this point, man?

because it sounds to me like that Triple H is he's not high on Triple H's priority list and Triple H has given Joe Schmidtlap the job of look get this guy under a fucking deal like we talked about or let him loose one of the other I ain't got time and Cross can't understand it because he because it's him and he don't want to think that Well, Triple H just don't give a shit and he ain't got time for me. I'm not The Rock. I'm not Sina. I'm not whatever.

Well, there it is. There's another quote where he talks about how much it means to him that Paul Heyman has been so publicly supportive of everything. So obviously he has supporters that are part of the creative team and Triple H was a supporter. And what would an athlete be without his supporter? There you go. It's an interesting scenario. The idea that he just left and he immediately did this very, very public.

promo, do you think just scares off someone from signing them? Well, I don't know that there's a ton of fucking people that need scared right now. Again, we just went through, who's it going to be for anything meaningful? Is he trying to, you know, again, fly his own flag and force the issue and get the talk out there and make himself, you know, the center of attention controversial, what's going on? because he thinks it'll force their hand if it's real, or he's doing what he would do if it's a work. You know, you said it before and it really hit me as I was listening to him talk.

It does remind me of the Jerry Lawler cat thing, because right after it happened, Jerry Lawler was doing interviews. And I remember it was kind of like the same thing. Like, I don't know. They didn't tell me. They just said, you know, good luck and shook my hand. It's kind of the same thing.

I'm not saying it's the same thing, but it feels very similar. Well, and that's the thing is that, you know, he may be trying to press this issue on his own because he can't understand it that, well, why? All of a sudden, and if it's real, then somebody on the creative team or somebody in the office has said,

for whatever reason, we don't want one, we don't want the other, we don't want both of them together, or they're a pain in my ass for some reason, either do this deal with this guy, or let him go. And if Triple H is not, again, if they have big plans for the guy enough

to do a big worked angle like this, then it just seems odd that they would throw in, that he would throw in, that he's got a middleman, he's not talking to Triple H. That seems like an odd detail, because you would want to think, well, Triple H is trying to talk me into it,

but I, you know, something like that. that rather than no, they're treating me like a fucking flunky. Well, that's the other thing. I used to hear that with Vince all the time. Like, you know, Vince likes me. Vince isn't the problem. You know, it's these people in between Vince and me, they're the ones letting me go.

Yeah. But it's like, yo, Laurenitis can't let you go unless Vince says it's okay. It's not just doing it willy-nilly. And it sounds, again, that sounds a little bit like what's going on here if this is all not a work also. But we shall see. Well, nevertheless, we will. We will keep on top of that.

We will keep, who are you going to put on the crossbeat, the carrion crossbeat this week? Does Shark Nato have anything to do? He's plenty busy, and we'll find out what's going on. I'll see if Kippelman has any time for the, whatever the hell it is we're talking about here. But yes. Well, you know what? Just make sure they all get a good night's sleep, Brian. I mean, I don't know how I'm going to do that, but what do you have?

Well, I know how you can do it because we can tell the folks right now how you can do it. Everybody knows how you can get a good night's sleep. sleep, wake up refreshed with no groginess, and that's with our friends over at Beam, and they're amazing, fantastic, wonderful Beams Dream Powder. You just get some of the Dream Powder and you mix it up and you drink it down. It's an all-natural sleep blend with science-backed ingredients, backed by the science, and an old scientist also. He's a hunched over, he's got gray hair, a little goatee, and he's made.

this stuff designed to help you fall asleep, stay asleep and wake up refreshed. And unlike other sleep aids, there is no next day groginess, just real deep sleep that helps you feel good in the morning. What morning that is depends on how much of it you take. It could be the next day. It could be the day after. It could be the day after that, but you're not going to be groggy. We're focusing on the next morning, which will be the likely result, of course, from a wonderful night's sleep with a delicious drink of beam. Yes, well, and sometimes you need to get a head start on that morning and do it the morning or two previous and just sleep all the way through and you'll even yourself out. I don't think that's how it works, but it works the normal way for the listeners.

Yes, and, you know, if you add dream powder to your routine, you're going to sleep through the night without tossing and turning, a whipping and a whopping and a flippin' and a flumping, reeling at a rockin until the break of dawn against you. Again, you wake up refreshed, not exhausted. And I know many people in today's world have the problem with waking up from a long night's sleep and they're exhausted over it. Well, sleep will not be tiring on the beam dream powder. They've improved over 17.5 million nights of sleep. 92% of users surveyed reported better sleep and waking up refreshed. and 8%

I'll have you know reported that they were going to come back and let us know how things worked out because that was actually the first time they'd ever gone to sleep and it was so shocking in experience they wanted to do it again

but Beams an American company Brian did you know that? It's a wonderful company, a wonderful drink a wonderful solution to those needing a good night's sleep without the groginess in the morning our friends the very, very fine people have beaten. That's right.

You just, again, you put the dream powder in the water and you mix it up and you drink it down and be sure you're wearing a helmet if you're standing up because when you fall over unconscious after that hits your stomach. That's not, ladies and gentlemen, the goofy comedy part is over. There will be no helmet needed.

You will get a good night's sleep. You will escort yourself to your bed after having a nice drink of beams dream powder. You can escort yourself, but wear your knee pads, because when you're crawling up those stairs, boy. You don't need any. It's best to guard. No. No.

What most people do is they'll call an EMT about 30 minutes ahead of time so that once you take the dream powder, sitting down, and the EMT can help you to the bed. Again, not needed. And this is part of the silly, the silly, silly, silly, part. But, of course, the legitimate, realistic. let's pay attention to the facts ma'am part is talking about the benefits and the deliciousness and the usefulness of Beams Dreampowder, Jim,

let's get through the rest of this without any improvisation. And there is also, in addition to all those other things you mentioned, there's the cost, the cost of the thing because now you can save up to 40% off. Yes. It's their best offer yet for a limited time only

Beam is giving our listeners. That's you out there in Beamland. Up to 40% off, you go to ShopBeam. B-E-A-M-ShopBeam.com slash J-C-E. Use the code J-C-E at checkout. You're going to get up to 40% off on the fabulous, the wonderful,

the well-working, science-backed American-made Beam Dream Powder that will help you sleep like a baby rocking in a cradle all night long and well into the next day if you play your cards right and also when you wake up the next day you will recognize almost everyone in your immediate family Jobbeams.com

there will be no changes in your recognition skills ladies and gentlemen but you can recognize a good deal and that's what we're delivering to you a good deal from Beam Jim I understand you were about to say the actual link Yes, the actual link. Shopbeam.com slash JCE. Use the code JCE for up to 40% off. And don't worry, you'll remember what Aunt Fannie

looks like, but Uncle Chester, well, he's kind of plain anyway. Don't worry. Sleep happy. Don't worry. Sleep happy with Beam. Oh, you know what? Somebody ought to write that and make it a song. Don't worry.

Sleep happy. Well, I don't know if we could steal. that but again you can steal a good night's sleep anytime you want with beam and uh yes this is your show yeah uh-huh well it was somebody else's show on august the thirteenth when a ew did their weekly thing that they do on the on the network on the cable cast they're in the brady music center in cincinnati or they were this past week brian and those people uh they're They're in a music center, but they ain't doing a lot of singing.

The people were kind of like, what the fuck is going on? This show, I'll tell you where I finally threw in the towel, but it gets more and more incomprehensible. And there's just nothing. They devalue everything that they try to do. They have a champion, so then they have 27 champions. they do an angle, they do 20 million angles, they do the same kind of shit

endlessly to wearing this thing with this, at Darby Allen, they put a guy in a bag and took him out of a bag and the other guy was in the bag and now they're going to take it, knock his head off and break his neck, and I don't, what the flying fuck is going on? I don't know. But does that preface the show well enough

so we can get started at the top of the program? You know, I said it a little earlier when we were talking about how WW is going after AEW. I want to root for AEW now more than ever. I want Tony Khan to fight back. I want there to be a strong number two or at least a strong system outside of WWE. And then I watched this show and I'm like, man, fuck this company. This is the worst book show ever. You know, even for the people that are like, no, you guys say there are no stories.

They have great stories. They have awful stories. This is the worst booked show And they do nothing to like Build up past their base audience I'm not even talking about like long term Every show is just for like the tiniest audience And man this is a bad show

I would have left when you left I don't even know when you left I had to watch the whole things I thought you watched the whole thing Oh no no no But anyway nevertheless They bring MJF out at the start And they still react to him

It's not like the old days. Granted, they're in a smaller building than they used to be in. But it's just, he's introduced as the CMLL world champion because now they feel they have to work with CMLL because AAA is with WWE. And that may be fine to work with them. But the guy that wants the world title is already coming out with a world championship belt. but he's going for another world to everybody has a belt

it's been way past meaningless and I'd rather watch him in the main events at Arena Mexico than against Adam Page that's where you get real heat that's where it's like a real fun show that's another part of the problem is here comes Paige and they're stuck with him

as champion after the last unpalatable champion and they're going to have a face off in the ring with nobody in the ring nobody's separating them because they can't fight or it's a six-figure fine. How about having a $100,000 battle royal in Moline, Vern? People will love it. So, and I'm not going to tell you the promo back and forth.

And MJF, he, you know, again, great delivery and he's very well-spoken. But at this point, it's the same thing. and and he's having to he's the devil and and you know he's a goading page and and it's just there's no material here there's no energy there's no interest MJF has the talent they've devalued him he's alone in these promos because he's got nobody to work with he's got nobody to produce these whole things or help with any of this booking. And he told Paige off forever

and then Paige responded with one of his even more boring soliloquies where he's got the phony inflections and the over pronunciations. Let me tell you something. There's a fucking AW fan base right now that say that he's like the best promo in wrestling and I don't see it at all. He's so fake.

You don't believe him. And then his arguments are all ridiculous. Well, there's a lot of ridiculous people out there. Maybe they like the ridiculous arguments. But it's just, again, the stuff doesn't add up. It doesn't make sense. It's not. Page was, did the whole deal of goading MJF into executing his contract

instead of just giving him a match. And finally, the way he goads him into it is to, he says you need to do that to prove to yourself that you're more than a gutless coward yeah what the fuck and because of mjf's insecurity he flips out the devil gets pissed off he screams something that got bleeped as he accepted it so we didn't hear him accept it and then he realizes that he's fucked up and he has the look on his face like oh my god what have i done this is the the dumbest devil in the history of the Bible. The devil never outsmarts anybody.

The devil always gets played here. The devil always gets goaded into doing the shit that he doesn't want to do. How is MJF the devil? Unless he wins the belt. Unless they somehow give him the belt here, which I don't think they're going to do. But see, no, because that would just, that would salvage something out of this. it's not the way to present, build the match to have the devil outsmarted

and then him win. It's to see the, you don't want to pay to see the fucking devil win something. You want to pay to see the good guy overcome the devil, which is what we were supposed to be seeing with Paige and goddamn Moxley. He challenged the devil to overcome his feelings. But yes, yes, because the devil

is insecure. That's the thing is that MJF, going back a long time, should be the one to smooth talk and out smart and convince people until they find out otherwise that he was the devil in disguise. Instead of coming out and saying I'm the devil

and running everybody down to their lowest point and then having them make him flip out and get mad. I don't understand the logic. But nevertheless, so the devil got outsmarted again and he said he was going to sign the contract for the match.

And this was 15 minutes that seemed like 30. Brian, to be quite honest with you, I don't know. You tell me. I find Adam Page unbearable on the mic. And again, there's a big ground swell support behind his promos. People who think his promos are good and there's no one who has

the emotion that he has. In front of a small room, yeah, he does a good job. of getting people to quiet down and listen and yell when he starts yelling. But if you listen to his messaging, it's not a mainstream baby-face message. It's a fucking weak placeholder message. Everything with Adam Page from day one has been booked.

I just call it rotten material. So stupid, but now that he's the champion, I think it's unbearable. Well, and here's another thing. I use teleguise in OVW. they do an interview, I'd say, use some contractions. This is what? When you speak like this and enunciate every word correctly

because you are a coward. Then you're giving a fucking pre-recorded speech. When you get into somebody's ass and you're fucking reading them out verbally, you're going to say can't instead of cannot or don't instead of do not. or you're going to use some contractions and you're not your verbiage, your English is not going to be perfect because your emotion is carrying you away. But he's rehearsed this in his head and he thinks he's John Ford. So how does that one movie buffs?

How does it help MJF if he loses the match? I don't know. I don't know how they would know either, but I don't think they're worried about helping MJF anymore. they haven't given him any help so far it can't be like the Hertz syndicate come out and cost them the match they're the baby faces you can't come out and do that

and if it's that it was all a swerve and that him and the Hertz syndicate didn't break up I think fans are getting a little sick of swerves again so no this I don't think this is a swerve because if again they would have done it better if they'd plan to do it all along the separation of MJF and the Hertz after they just got him in it

if it had been the plan they would have done it better and everybody's pretty much acquiesced that it was supposed to go longer but it got cut short and people are saying well it's because of problems or a problem with one person in the group but i i point being unless mjf beats him it's going to be kind of the shits all the way around and if he does beat him i don't see how this promoted the goddamn thing and and truthfully they did miss the opportunity to if they wanted to put the belt on MGF, the best way they could have put the belt on the devil is if the devil had goaded Paige into giving him a title shot and he still had his contract. And Paige gives him the shot and fucking beats him and then

Foggling Foggling him over the head with a ball peen hammer and cash says in his contract wins it. Then you, hey, you might have had something. Anyway, next match. was Dick the Boozer versus Kevin Knight. It lasted 15 minutes, and I know you're shocked, but Moxley won. Now we can start talking about what happened after that. Brian, did you see this fucking mess? Which mess specifically, who you're speaking of? Well, here is what happened, folks, if you can keep track of it from the notes that I took.

Of course, Moxley wins, but again, it takes him 15 minutes to do it because they think by giving these green guys long matches and then choking them out it it gets them over and then wheeler came in and got in a sloppy fake kind of heat situation on kevin night and hong kong fooey they stopped him and then derby allen's music plays and boy here he comes carrying a skateboard and a body bag and he zombie walked to the ring and he he did the thing and wasn't this where he jumped up with the skateboard

and skated off of Wheely's back and he and then he put him in the bag he put Wheeler in the bag while Kevin Knight in Hong Kong Fu he had a fight with Moxley out on the floor but we never saw that because he was taking so long to put this other goof in the bag.

But then Claudio came in and beat up Darby. And then Claudio took forever to unzip the bag and get Wheeler useless out of the bag. And then they put Darby into the bag and then zipped him up. And then put the bag up on Claudio's shoulders and gave the bag an airplane spin. and dropped him and then unzipped the bag and put a chair around his neck and we're going to stomp it while he's laying part of him's laying in the bag and they've got the chair right his neck and claudio's going to stomp the chair how many goddamn angles are they going to do that nothing else is going on right all is bagging unbagging it looked like walmart at rush hour

and then Osprey is there to pull Claudio out and save him from the stomp. I'm like, Jesus Christ, I can't remember who was even in this thing originally. And then Osprey beat up Claudio and then beat up Wheeler and then Moxley stared at everybody. And the heels wandered off while Osprey got on a microphone and made a challenge for a tag team match player in London. player? How do you do player with an English accent? The player. The player. Gov, brav, gov. And it's going to be in a cage. So they just, they just did this angle to set up a goddamn cage match between these two teams of top alleged individuals that's going to happen. And what is it now? nine, ten days away from the thing. This was one of the biggest messes I've ever seen.

What do you think would appeal more to fans? All of these men in a cage or loser eats worms. Because I think there's a way to avoid all these injuries. I mean, if we're just going to do stupid stuff, like take airplane spitts and fucking body bags. I mean, if he didn't weigh 120 pounds, anyone else, they'd be dead. Just these bumps that he takes without looking, without seeing where he's going. but again, if you can do an angle with a body bag,

put one motherfucker in a bag and zip them up. They put the one guy in a bag and zipped him up. They took him out. They put the other guy to bag and zipped him up. They took him out. They put him up in the thing. They took him out. They zipped him bag in the bag in the bag.

We'll see what happens with the Death Riders. And, of course, later on, there'll be more on this show about them putting their team together for this big London extravagance. Did you see the girl's six-man tag team match? I believe that would be six woman, not six man tag, and I saw parts of it. Well, I saw the first part, which was the very first move of the match. Alex Windsor is on one team and blue skies on the other team. And they tried to start doing this duck run, reverse, go behind, duck again spot

that was way over their heads. And again, that's why somebody, some producer, has to tell these people to their face, look, you ain't that good yet. Just do some simple shit. But Alex Windsor ended up powerbombing blue sky right on her ass. I've never seen that before. A power bomb to the ass. She didn't sell it.

I'm never seen it before, but I'm willing to see it again. Well, at least she had a lot of padding down there. But the thing ended, I don't know who one don't care, but there was eight girls having a sloppy fake fight in the ring and Tony Storm and Athena were having a fight in a balcony and Mercedes was involved for some kind of reason and after they cleared everything out, Storm and Windsor were in the ring and they actually danced the tango.

It was like a fucking acid flashback here. These people are on goddamn, them psychotropic medication. Beam dream powder. But they don't go to sleep. No, no, no, no. Ladies gentlemen, beam dream powder will not make it

mentally where you think that AEW television is real life. No, no. And apparently the reason they don't have a women's tag team title right now is because when they just had a bunch of women wrestle a match at the paperview, like half the women and the match got hurt. So they keep getting hurt.

This women's division is a disaster. Well, speaking of disasters, this is what really, this next thing is pretty much what turned my stomach. Edge versus Stokely Carmichael. Hathaway? Huh? Hathaway. Stokely Hathaway, I'm sorry. And the whole thing has been a mess because Christian, the heel partners and friends of Christian turned on him.

but yet he came out was the biggest prick ever last week. It insulted Edge that he's supposed to try to get back together with. But originally FTR was turned on by, I'm sorry, Edge was turned on by FTR. And Stokely's their manager, but they've gotten a restraining order or something. What the fuck were they can't be around Edge or he can't be around them, but Edge cornswogled him into a match against Stokely against Stokely's wishes.

And here we are today with Edge versus Stokely. Did I do about as good a job explaining all that as they did? I would say so. All right, well, and I said this the other day, but I'll repeat it shortly, briefly, just in case anybody missed it, the way this works is if you've established.

And one thing that I know about is forcing a manager to get in the ring with the top baby face, right? I think everybody can give me some credit for experience with that. You have a manager that you've put in a main event position with credible talent that has some track record of success and has been given a lot of promos and or a lot of opportunity to interfere on his men's behalf and to be a Thorne in the side of the baby faces and to cost them something that was dear to them, title, money, glory, whatever, right? Have I given them the picture, Brian? I think so. All right. Then once you've established that guy, then as he's done something to a baby face or a group of baby faces, and they want to get even then you force him into signing a baby face. And then you force him into signing a a contract that he doesn't realize or in some way being again snowjobed into the ring in a

tag handicap match with his boys and the baby faces or just one on one or whatever there's a million ways to do that and then generally that would be on a big house show or a pay per view or something where that is what you have built that the people need to pay to see is the baby face getting his hands on the manager to get even with some stipulations that would seem to prevent the manager's heels from helping him out. That's the way it works. And now again, if you're talking about,

I said pay-per-view or big show where they got to pay, well, now TV, you're getting rights fees, I can understand that, but you still have to do the other shit to make it make any difference to make it mean something to make it not just be comedy and an embarrassment for Edge

who used to be a star and to be a waste of him to be slow and unexciting and boring and goofy and we'll get to the ratings here at a minute I don't honestly

know what they are at this point in time, but as I've said, I've done a lot of the manager wrestler matches, and all of them were either the Great American Bash or a pay-per-view or a big live event where they had to pay, but I did one, Brian, one on television in WCW, the match between me and Shane Douglas that Shane ended up bitching about. We might tell that whole story again some other time.

Was that early 1990? 90? Yeah, the late 89, as a matter of fact, December. But the point is, is that that's what we had done. I had been their advisor as well as the Midnight Express man. And nobody gave it. And remember people now, oh, Shane Douglas, he's been a big name forever. No, this 1989, he'd been a kind of a small to medium name for about 12 months. And Johnny Ace, John Laurenitis, everybody knows now. But back then, he was a guy, wave the sheepherders flag. So when they put them together as a baby face team to try to be in that rock and roll express vein to work against the Midnight Express. And the program was because, as I mentioned, the herd didn't like the midnight and hated the dudes worse.

And so he didn't care what we did as long as it was with each other. But to work with the Midnight Express was elevating them because the Midnight Express had been multiple world tag team champions, multiple U.S. tag team champions featured in main events for the previous four plus years, whereas they had no track record of anything. You guys were over.

Even despite the booking of 89, you guys were super over. And also because of my track record, I had managed the top guys or managed against the top guys when I became their advisor, it brought them up into that the stratosphere in the fan's eyes.

Then when I turned on them, even though the people cheered it because they hated the dynamic dudes, because they were lousy baby faces with a shitty gimmick. We were trying. It was the hand we were dealt. But then that angered,

angered the baby faces to want to get even with me for stabbing them in the back. That was a reasoning. And then finally a month later, whatever when they did it when we signed the contract on television. But it wasn't for the match. I thought it was.

It was for Shane Douglas, because this was my angle, by the way. And there's no way, there was absolutely no way that I was going to work with John Laurenitis in any capacity with two left feet and him being a clutz. Shane could do the moves and was a fine young athlete. He just wasn't smart to the business then. so we signed the contract on television for the next week and I shit myself and I'm scared because if I'm scared and then the fans want to see it

that's how we built the thing and hold on let me bend over and grab my notes I just so happen to have in the Midnight Express scrapbook we shot both those TVs in Green with the Coliseum and when the 12 December 30th, 1989 edition of WCW Saturday night. So the two matches that were advertised were me and Shane Douglas and Sting versus the Dragon Master.

Oh, Kenne-Naggersawking. Yes, but not exactly Sting and Lugar at the time. We did a 3.4 rating and a 6.5 share. We were in 1,7, 1,759,000 homes, which by the measuring of that time period was a little over, I think, 3 million people. It was the second highest Saturday night rating in over a year. And the previous high rating was the Midnight Express and Dynamic Dudes rematch

off of the clash of champions on December 2nd, like four weeks before that, because it meant something and people wanted to see me get my ass kicked and see what was going to fucking happen. And, you know, otherwise, this was just a fucking clown show. I'll tell the story later on. That was also the start of the heat

between Shane Douglas and Rick Flair that Shane waged that one-sided 20-year program about after that because he couldn't get over it. Do you think these fans are invested in seeing Stokel get beat up? No, that's the point. He's not been established as a top guy manager. I didn't even mean that was a pun with FTR as a manager of top talent because they haven't been on top since he's been with him.

And he ain't been with him that long. And he ain't been with anybody else that ever gave a shit or mattered a shit. And he's never accomplished anything by basically coming out and screwing a fucking main event baby face out of a championship or a pay-per-view main event. And he's never been allowed to go out and cut promos, meaningful promos. He can talk. So it's a thing, the talent now in the locker room and the creative teams.

They think because the guy can talk and he's glibbed, that means he can talk. He can talk entertainingly, but he ain't got anything to talk about besides a little stuff to get himself over, but he's not got goals that he's achieved or mountains that he's climbed or a track record that he can rely on or the material for a good angle that you can sink your teeth into where he can talk about the evil things that he's done and the more things that his boys are going to do. He's just out there doing funny lines and that's what the boys now think means you can talk. He's really entertaining.

Yeah, he's entertaining. What's he fucking talking about? I want to pay to see or want to go out of my way to see. So they start the match with security, throwing him into the ring where he never tries to run. He never tries to run. He turned around and speared edge and bounced off. And since the setup was so off,

and there's no heat in this, the fans are just laughing because it's comedy. But it's also obviously phony comedy. It's not even like the manager getting his come up and it's where the people can laugh at him. They're just laughing at what he's doing because it's obvious that it's bullshit. And I'm sorry, but I always took pride

in having the fans laugh at me being embarrassed or humiliated or getting the taste of my own medicine or whatever it may be rather than the shit that I was doing was funny because it was all phony and made up and we were just jacking off. Can you see, Brian, that there might be a little bit of a difference? Yeah.

So then my notes, there was no action. There was no excitement. It all looked fake. no energy, there was no heat. The fans, and he spared him again and bounced off. And then the fans are like, one more time, one more time.

Edge got the microphone and went out in the crowd and let a fan cut a promo on Stokely. And then he asked another one of the girls if they would fuck him. He didn't say fuck. He said, any hoes out here?

So he asked one ho. Ho. The self-admitted. ho her name was flow she was part of the show so ho flow show would you basically say you're gonna get with stokely oh no oh no ho the flow part of the show but it was no go and then he just went out and grabbed stokely and threw him back in the ring and speared him and it just this took for ever. And then FTR came out, but they got a restraining order or whatever. So they're asking, Edge, don't hurt Stokely, so Edge spirit him again.

The dreaded heels begging the baby face not to hurt their manager. Oh, yeah, please, please, Hammer, don't hurt him. And then Edge asked the fans if he could pin or should pin Stokely, and they're like, no, no, beat him up again, and then FTR runs in. and I don't know if anybody went to jail over this, but Edge beat them up and then went to spare, spare, went to spear Stokely again,

and now he throws the powder. After Edge, a Hall of Fame level superstar has speared him twice, now he throws the powder. You know why Shane Douglas was pissed about that match we had and made us redo it and got that heat with flare because he didn't want to sell the powder. You remember that story?

I do remember that story. He even told me after we, the previous week's television, we had led up to this and I told him what we were going to be doing if we were going to sign a contract, get me in the ring with him. In the airport, he had said, now, you know, I don't sell that powder in the eyes

because he'd been to Memphis for like three weeks and thought he knew what was going on. and I thought he was kidding it. He had a straight face. And I told him, I said, I think you're going to sell it when I throw it at you. I let him know, we're going to throw the powder. And the deal was that I'm forced into the goddamn match.

I'm scared to death. I'm at my wits end. And so when the match starts, I throw powder in his eyes and blind him while the Midnight Express is distracted. Johnny Ace, his partner and the referee. And then for like two minutes, I've got a rope and I choke him with the rope and I've got the gimmick and I stick in his eyes.

And I got, I cheat and I let the midnight interfere and choke him while I'm drawing the referee and anything I can to avoid this guy from killing me. And then after a couple minutes, I fuck up and he makes a comeback. And boom, and I take the big bump and he gets on me and he's choking me. he's going to choke the life out of me, but my shoulders are down and I get counted out. And then the midnight hits and Johnny hits and they drag me out before he gets a chance to finish the job. He didn't even pin me on purpose. So now, 20 times in the month of January, all around the country and major arenas, the Midnight Express will face the dynamic dudes. And if the dudes beat

the midnight, then Shane Douglas gets the five minutes with me to get him. Tigee, it even again. It's a goddamn infomercial. But after we shot it, and by the way, the people in the arena were fine with the happenings, flares the booker.

It's my angle. The only reason that the dynamic dudes at that point are even booked in anything besides to get beat because herd hates them is because I said, okay, I'll take the other team that he hates. and I'll work a program with the Middite Express with them because at least we can get a match out of them

and it's something for everybody to do. And Flair has approved all these things. Well, now, Shane, because like I said, he could do the moves then. He was an athletic young man, but he wasn't smart to the business, and he took himself even then way too seriously. He called her.

He didn't call Flores. Blair the Booker and say, Rick, you know, I really, I sold too much for a manager. That was his bone of contention. Two and a half minutes with two guys helping him blind and, or two guys helping me and blind and foreign objects, he sold too much. Made him look weak. So he didn't call the booker Rick Flair and ask, hey, can we do something? He called Jim Hurd over Flair's head.

and of course Heard couldn't stand me couldn't stand to midnight didn't like Shane and Johnny but if it's some way to overrule Flair sure do it again

reshoot it so we got the word that now we're going to have to reshoot this deal because Shane called Jim Hurt so Flair immediately said who the fuck is this guy fuck this fucking guy

we inherited this goddamn the most unpopular baby-faced tag team in history from the booking committee after George Scott because JR said, well, we ain't doing anything with these two guys and they're blonde and they can smile and he saw somebody skateboarding on TV and said, hey, the dudes skateboard. Johnny couldn't even fucking ride to skateboard. He had to carry it.

So Flair said, fuck these guys. Okay. So what we did was at the next TV. before the thing aired. We re-taped it where I came out with a doctor's note, my arm and a sling. Stan Lane had a single match with Shane, and we did some kind of fucking finish.

And then the matches that were booked for them in all the arenas for them to beat the Midnight Express and get five minutes with me, Flair just fucking beat him. He said, fucking just beat them. They don't get it. They don't get the stipulation. and then after a few weeks we had about four or five left and it was a big town

and he said well this has been so fucking flat we'll put them over and then they jerked me in and to cover me boom one two three because i wasn't going to after that because it was a personal insult not only to me but to flare i wasn't going to fucking put any energy and taking bumps for them or trying to get them over so we did that three or four four times. And the Rock and Roll Express were back and we didn't work with the dudes anymore. And they went on to put the, I guess every other team on the roster over.

But that's what started the heat between Shane and Flair because then Flares, well, fuck these guys. Who the fuck do they even think they are? This is a favor spot. And he called over my head. So he just beat him the rest of the fucking time. But nevertheless, back to this thing. Yes.

So Stokely throws the powder in fucking Edge's eyes after he's already been speared twice. And then I wrote idiots. And then FTR get the heat on edge, but they hold him for Stokely to throw a punch at him. But Stokely throws the punch at him and is still selling and falls down. Not the time, Stoke. That's not the time for the comedy. that's where the manager pulls himself up in the corner and starts selling his guts or his leg or his head or his mouth or whatever and pointing at his guys kill him killing me hurt me that's where your heat comes in not by going over and being comedic again Jesus Christ does anybody teach anything these days for fuck's sake

and FTR got slow uninspired heat and then went for the stuff pile driver and Christian Cage's music plays oh my God here comes Christian Cage out with a spiked bat I know they do the spiked bat but again this is not the time for comedy it's edges spiked bat specifically

but I know they do it but it's not the time for comedy It's just ridiculous and preposterous to look at And he didn't use it And ain't going to use it But that's the thing This is the age and Christian reunion After Age had a five-minute comedy segment With a manager that is not over

And is then being half-ass beaten up By not the fucking people That Oh Jesus Christ and then he comes out with a spiked bat but nick plane comes out and swings a chair at christian so christian hits the chair with the bat and nick bales but pip sabian shows up but edge spears him and then the heels all leave and edge and christian do the bump back spot and turn around like oh my god and 500 people in the fucking brady music center are chanting hug it out

So they did. These guys were two of the biggest stars in the business at one time. And they haven't been together at 11 years or whatever they said it was, however many years. And this is the way they put them back together. Or this is the way they allowed themselves to put themselves back together. And this is not having a book of. Is the team FTR or is the team Pip and Nick?

It better not be Pip and Nick. because Edge and Christian against Pip and Nick would be like fucking Dumbo and Goddamn Godzilla against two mosquitoes. I believe that is the match coming up them against Pip and Nick Wayne.

But I mean, the match, is that to set up Edge and Christian for FTR? One would hope so. It has to be. If not, it has to be. But after all of this, why do we want to see Edge and Christian

against FTR? No, we don't want to see. see any of it. I mean, that's the biggest problem with the booking is that they do these things, they're poorly thought out. Again, the Hardys are in T&A. They're about to do something with the Dudleys who are reuniting. Somehow, Edging Christian

reuniting on national TV proper means less than all of that. This has been... The whole edging Christian feud. When he got to AEW, that was done poorly. Why'd you think they would do this right? And FTR, it was noticeable how quiet the fans were

when FTR got involved. they don't care about FTR anymore. When's the last time FTR did anything that we give a shit about seeing? The match with, the match with Juice Robinson and Jay White. That was two years ago. I still got it on my DVR. That was in July two years ago.

So yeah, I'm not excited to see Edging Christian Reunite or anything else that's going to happen here. This whole segment was ridiculous. By the way, folks, there's a trivia note for you. the one modern wrestling program that I have saved on my DVR, out of all the WW pay-per-views, all of the major events, everything we've recorded, is an AEW show. FTR versus Jen and Juice, old Juice Robinson and old Jay White, whatever happened to him.

And that's because it was so far and away, the not only the greatest, but the only great, what I would call great tag team match that I've seen in the past 10 or 15 years, and it was on an AEW show. And they never did it again. Yeah, they never followed up with any of it. So anyway, after that on this program,

I saw what the next match was, and I'll tell you what it was. It was Kyle Feltcher, Josh Alexander, and the Hardly Boys Against Brody King, a guy in a mask, Takahashi, and Ishi. And I said, I can't do this anymore. I was, I was nauseous. There was about 40 minutes left into the show at that point.

And I, I, I couldn't. I quit. I don't know if I missed anything. I don't know what happened. I don't care. I couldn't do anymore. You know, what happens? Sometimes I give you a lot of guilt and, well, you know,

that you should have watched that girls match. should have watched Eoske. I'm not going to give you any guilt here. This is a bad show that I wouldn't have kept watching if I didn't have to. I thought you were going to keep watching. We'll go over what happened with the ratings in a minute. Well, in that case then, folks, I think somebody, I think the moral of the story of today's program, I don't know who it is, but somebody needs to find a new line of work. and I think there's no better way to do that, Brian,

than to follow your dreams. Because, you know, if you enjoy what you do for a living, you'll never work a day in your life. That's what they used to say, right? Well, I'll tell you what, if you don't care whether you enjoy what you're doing for a living or not, but you want to make some money at it, then fucking just go ahead and do some miserable shit for a short period of time,

make a fortune, and then relax and jack off. How's that sound? Again, I don't know if this is the advice that we should be giving the audience, but good advice is that if you do start a business, if you leave AEW to start a business, or if you have a business and you don't work for AEW. Or you leave anybody else and need to start a business. You need the right support, the right team behind you,

and you can get that from our friends at Shopify. That's right, because there's no me and team, folks, and the folks that Shopify are going to get behind you, they're going to push you, they're going to put your nose to the grindstone, they're going to be cracking that whip. You come up with a product, a dream,

a service that you'd like to sell, and they're going to put you to work, and they're going to push you, and they're going to ride you, and they're going to haunt you and stomp you until you make millions of dollars. It doesn't work like that. There are no guarantees,

but it does not work like that. Well, if you break down and just, fall into the dust and wither away before they've finished driving you and wamping you and stomping you you. You ain't going to make millions of dollars. You've got to be resilient, folks. You're going to fall into the dust?

They're going to fall into the dust. That's right. Just right into it. Just drop right into it. They're going to get behind you and they're going to push you with their great team. They have hundreds of ready to use templates that help you build your online store. They're your own design studio. you can accelerate your content creation.

The helpful AI tools that write product descriptions and page headlines, I'm smiling. They can enhance your product photography. You know, they've got a camera. If you've got a picture of a person with their clothes on, they can take a picture of that. It looks like they're naked. It's enhanced. Get the word out like you've got a marketing team behind you because you will, constantly pushing you, work harder, longer hours.

They want you to make money because they're going to get part of it. Easily create email and social media campaigns to beg people all across the world to give you money. That's not, no, you're not begging people to give you money. You have your business. Your business will be displayed all over the world via the worldwide web and, of course, smartphones and all other sorts of technology. And it's easy.

They power our online store, Arcadian Vanguard. You can find it. In the shop app, there's a purple button. Hey, what's better than that? Shopify. What's better than purple? And these social media campaigns, they will, I'm telling you right now,

they're going to make people want to buy your stuff because that's right. And watch out now. That kid on that bicycle. They're going to make people buy your stuff and you're going to work hard to create it and then they're going to buy more of it. It's going to be an endless loop.

You're going to be just a hamster in the wheel. you're making the stuff and they're selling it for you you're making it and they're selling it you're going to have a lot of money no time to spend it you're going to be a workaholic with a broken family but you're going to be successful at it you will be doing what you do today but with more support and more help for you and of course your products Shopify that's the Shopify way this is the Shopify sound there it is yes as i talked over it and as more that they could do there's a great price to try it out check it out today We trust them. You could trust them. Jim, I trust you, will give that information, Shopify.

Well, and in Shopify we trust at Shopify.com, you can turn your big business idea into... Chaching? Chiching? There it is. Reality. With Shopify on your side. Shopify will be on your shide, ladies and gentlemen. and in the shower with you as well. Sign up now for your $1 a month trial period

and start selling today at Shopify.com slash JCE. That's Shopify.com slash JCE to start selling today and working today and living to work another day and work till you drop in the big city. Don't stop till you get enough. Shopify.com slash J.C.

how all right so so i guess before we go the question is did anybody watch this program this week on our normal monitoring of the ratings they were they were way up last week they were over 700,000 for the first time in what a month or so well what happened a w dynamite for Wednesday August 13, 2025, 8 to 10.06 p.m. on TBS. On average, watched by 690,000 viewers. Well, that's not bad. They are back down below 700, but they're way above the low sixes that they were in for a while there. They were stuck in the middle with you. 3% down from last week, which was 7-11, and 10% up on the trailing four-week average of 630,000 viewers. We have the quarterly number.

And I mean, is there any way, before you get to the quarters, is there any way in this barring any kind of major competition from a huge sporting event or a big WWE event or something, is there any way at this point they're going to do more than 750 again or any less than 550? It's always, or even, even, they've got down in the fives on dynamite, not as an overall number. but they trail off into it. But they haven't done $750 and I don't know how long, and they never go below $5.50.

So that's where their range is. Now, this I think is the peak. This is as good as it gets. Right now there's no NBA. Right now is the time where you could really take advantage of the sports schedule and hopefully pull in some numbers. Let's go to these quarterly hours. These were compiled by Ressalonomics.

And of course, it does not include Max. or HBO Max, I guess it is again. Quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m., the MJF Adam Page Live promo, and the John Moxley promo, 864,000 viewers. Oh, good Lord. All right.

That's the biggest lead-in that they have had, the biggest first quarter, I should say, that they've had in months and months and months, and that also shows that they're going to go back to their old pattern of starting big and precipitous drops, you know, all the way to the end. So they've avoided that for the last few months now, where they've started lower, but they've maintained more of their audience and a couple of times even fluctuated.

I think, what was it, a week or two ago, one of their quarters was bigger than their first one, which never happens. But now was there something odd on the lead-in, or is it just the lack of any other sports competition and people are watching the Big Bang again? What was with that lead-in? I couldn't tell you. You know, typically MJF segments have, even with the declining viewership with AEW Dynamite, they've done better in the key demo, better.

Yeah, but typically, but this is so much higher than that. I don't even know if that would be. Yeah. Yeah. This is for, when they didn't know what place he was going to be in the show and suddenly he's there and there's an extra 150,000 people sitting there waiting on it, I, you know, again, we'll see what percentage of the audience they lose, but they had more, in times previous, they had more casual people that you could tell were checking out the show until they got bored or disinterested or saw who they could see. and then it just steadily lost. They've reversed that over recent weeks. Let's see what this does.

We go to quarter two, 815-830 p.m. John Moxley versus Kevin Knight with picture and picture, 774,000 viewers. Oh, good, lawyer. Okay, there went 90,000 right off the bat, and they've got a lot of room to go to hit this average. so they're continuing in that direction. The direction continues in quarter 3, 830 to 845 p.m.

The Death Riders, Jet Speed, Darby Allen and Will Osprey Live Angle, and the Adam Copeland FTR video, followed by an ad break, 769,000 viewers. That's not actually bad, that's 5,000. That's kind of normal, fluctual. I'm interested to see what my counterpart of modern times Stokely, the manager match, has to do here. Well, first we have to go to quarter four, 845 to 9 p.m., Mercedes Monet, as well as Tecla, and Sky Blue versus Alex Windsor, Queen Amanata, and Willow Nightingale, with picture and picture ads, and the post match. with Tony Storm and Athena and the Will Osprey backstage promo,

718,000 viewers. Ooh, see that? There goes another 51,000. Now they're down 146,000 since the start, and it doesn't look well for Edge and Stokely because they have a rotten lead-in, even though they're at the top of the hour. We go to the big 9 o'clock hour, quarter 5, 9 to 9 15 p.m.

Adam Copeland versus Stokely and the post match with FTR, Christian Cage, and the matriarchy, followed by a hook video, and an ad break, 699,000 viewers. All right, so they lost another 19,000. They're under 700,000. at the top of the owl because of that crummy segment that led them there. Well, the crumbiness continues, Jim, we go now to quarter six, 915 and 9.30 p.m. Brody King and the conglomeration and Hiromu Takahashi versus the Don Callis family and the Young Bucks with picture and picture twice.

Oh, boy. 610,000 viewers. Good Lord. So not only was that a match nobody wanted to see, and it had the buckaroo effect of running everybody off, but they went through two breaks because they couldn't just get the fuck out of there. So now they lost 89,000 people in 15 minutes with a kid. Don Callis is the top manager.

He's supposed to have the top stable of heels. These guys were the EVPs, the big. Tag team of the year. They lose viewers every time they show up. Now there are 254,000 people down from the start of the show. Here we go. And by the way, they lose viewers. They lose viewers in the key demo.

For everyone who always said that was the key objective, the overall number doesn't matter. It's all about the key demo. That's the only thing advertisers care about. The only thing the station cares about. Those are where they lose people. And I don't have the numbers in front of me. And I don't know if anyone has the time or the patience,

but I would love to know. next to the young bucks and john moxley does anyone on a e w dynamite have a record like they do of dropping the numbers below five hundred or below six hundred and the key demo under two hundred but let's go back to this quarter seven nine thirty to nine forty five p m the continuation of brodie and the conglomeration in takahashi versus don callus's family and the bucks an ad break and the Swerve, Shrickland, Kazushka Okada, ramp angle, 560,000 viewers. Oh, good Lord. Under 200 in the key demo, 194. So from the quarter before the Bukaru showed up to the quarter when they were done,

they lost 139,000 people, and that's in the space of 30 minutes. Well, Jim, yeah. Let's go to quarter. Quarter eight, I remind you we have a six-minute overrun. Quarter eight, nine, 45 to 10 p.m. The Death Rider's Young Bucks backstage angle, an ad break, and La Faxione Ignobrales, versus the ops with picture and picture. These are the things I missed, huh?

This was the main event. 570,000 viewers, 190 in the key demo. Six-minute overrun. more of that match and Adam Page gets jumped in the parking lot by MJF 573. So they actually gained 10,000 viewers for LaFuckers and Goober's main event after the Buccaroos had got off the screen. So they start at 864 and end at 5773 and they dip to 560 along the way.

They were officially at one point down 300. and 4,000 viewers from the start, which again is well over 30%. Remember when we would calculate it every week, they lose 35% of their audience. If they start with a big number, obviously some of those people are not regular viewers, and they just happen to be there and they give them a chance, and they sometimes they make it 45 minutes or whatever, and then they just start leaving in droves. but you know whether three-hour raws or three-hour smackdowns or Saturday night's main event or whatever,

the one thing you can say about the WWE and every other wrestling program I have ever heard of or been involved with, you don't lose a third or more of your audience that you start with by the end of the show. And as we've mentioned 18 million times, that used to be the highest rated part because that was your main event and it still is for the WW and some other situations but not not these fellows because the show is all the same

it doesn't make a lot of sense and finally you get frustrated well that's the dynamite way speaking of being frustrated that's right is that are we out of time as well as frustrated and confused we're all out of time I have

no more time to spare. There is no more time in that case. Ladies and gentlemen, until next week or the next show or both of the above. Thank you. Fuck you. Bye-bye, everybody.